Tachikoma Pilot

The Ghost in the Shell

What started as a great Manga by Masamune Shirow, well two actually, became a really great anime. First off as a movie, I mean who hasn’t seen the anime movie, but to follow on with three prequels and a sequel was a great move.

In case you were wondering, it goes like this ;

1. Ghost in the Shell, Stand alone Complex
2. Ghost in the Shell, Stand alone Complex, 2nd Gig
3. Ghost in the Shell, Stand alone Complex, Solid State Society
4. Ghost in the Shell
5. Ghost in the Shell, Innocence

I don’t think that I would be too disappointed if the franchise continued on, so long as the quality is maintained.

I recall when watching the first prequel (#1 in my list), only being disappointed in an attempt to create drama by putting Togusa in a life threatening situation. You know that he wasn’t going to die there, because he has to appear in the movie (#4).

While the anime are very easy to digest, some may find the manga not so easy. It tends to be a bit talkative, and delve into politics quite heavily. But its all good.

And I was amused to notice how the anime ‘skirted’ around Motoko’s sexuality. I guess having a lesbian combat android was a bit too much for the general audience. Certainly Dark Horse didn’t consider it too appropriate when they hacked out two colour plates of Motoko’s recreation time with her girl-friends on the first release of the Manga.

It’s all good. Watch when you can.

An eReader for Manga

I have been seriously thing about getting one of these to read manga with. I have been looking at the technical specifications of several models now, and the units manufactured by Tianjin Jinke Electronics seem to have the widest range of supported formats, against price.

Most use e-Ink (for Electronic Ink) is a fairly new concept in screens. No where near as fast as LCD, but because it behaves like ink on paper, it is slower to update than LCD, but is not backlit. In fact it is designed to be used in daylight. But the big advantage is that it only uses power to change the contents of the screen. For many of these units, the on-board power supply will last for 5000 to 7000 screen changes.

It is this units ability to read .zip files is the winning factor. A manga’s pages, usually stored as .jpg or .png can be bundled into a chapter or volume as a single .zip file. So manga is easier to manage.

Of course, it can also be used for reading novels too.

The downside is price. The screens are still quite expensive, so the unit price can be quite high, specially when the likes of Sony use them.

Evangelion Manga

My first though was that this post would be prefixed by “alternate”, but then, all manga associated with this story is an alternate as it was an anime first.

Without a doubt, the official manga would have to be Sadamoto Yoshiyuki’s adaption, and it is well drawn and follows the anime quite closely, but not exact as he puts his own spin on certain plot aspects.

And then there is Min Nemuri’s Gakuen Datenroku which I haven’t much more than the first couple of chapters of, which is set in a school where all the characters are classmates, and Rei is the new transferee to the class.

Another is Fumino Hayashi’s Angelic Days, also apparently school based as well.

It seems at least the last two variations are based upon the sequence in the Televised Evangelion conclusion where Instrumentality all based in Shinji’s mind and one of his alternate realities is where he is at school, and Misato is just his guardian.

A surprising manga variation was Evangelion Retake. It could almost be classes as a sequel, but also a “retake”. It begins with Shinji waking up in hospital after his encounter with Leliel (this was the angel that appeared to be a round black shape on the ground which everything sank into).

Everything after that happened after that was a “dream” or pre-cognition. And Shinji uses this to his advantage when re-encountering the angels a second time to be a more effective pilot.

… or was it? Reality is bent in all shapes with this manga, and the drawing quality is good enough, but what will stand out most from this story variant is that it crosses well into the “hentai” genre as Shinji is more sexually active in this story than the original anime.

Retake could easily be just disregarded as a hentai title, but the story line is much better thought out and involving than any other of this inferred genre.

If you are not offended by sexual explicitness of the title, then it offers a good read for the Evangelion story arcs, as there are many interesting plot elements on offer.

Evangelion 2.0 You can [not] advance

Needless to say, the viewing of the second Evangelion movie was a great experience, despite the quality of the imagery, audio, and subtitles.

I’ll be looking forward to getting to see a better version.

The big surprise was in how much further the story line is branching away from the original series. When I first heard about this movie series project, I had assumed that it was going to be a re-imaging, to take advantage of better CG to tweak certain elements that were unable to be achieved in the first rendering.

I was pleased to be mistaken. Obviously some elements are the same, but animation of the Angels is far better this time than previous.

And recently I acquired my own genuine copy of the first movie. While I praise the efforts of the fan-subbers, it is good to get a copy that has been professionally produced.

Back again

I’ve not touched this for such a long time, that my tumblrarity had been reduced to zero. Not that it was very high to start with…