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I first heard of director Shinkai Makoto through a brief mention of his work in Asia Pacific Arts’ Best of 2007: Asian Film roundup. I do not usually find anime recommendations over at APA, which made this mention worth investigating, so I added Shinkai’s work to my Netflix queue. I started with Shinkai’s most recent work, 2007’s 5 Centimeters Per Second, then jumped back to Voices of a Distant Star, the early short film that Shinkai created all on his own, just one man with his laptop. And finally, I’ve just finished watching The Place Promised in Our Early Days, and it’s edged out 5 Centimeters Per Second as my favorite of Shinkai’s works.

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I’ve just started watching the BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad anime courtesy of Netflix (verdict so far: not bad at all!), and it inspired me to brainstorm all the manga and anime that I know that feature rock music as a subject or as a central theme.

First, there are the obvious shojo and shonen-ai counterparts to BECK: NANA and Gravitation, respectively. I think Yazawa Ai’s NANA is brilliant, but I found Murakami Maki’s Gravitation nearly unreadable. Then there’s 20th Century Boys by Urasawa Naoki. In this wonderful series, rock music is a important theme and motif, but the story is not structured around the central character’s musical career.

Beyond this, I have to look to western comics to find more series about rock music or rock musicians. The very funny Scott Pilgrim series by Bryan Lee O’Malley has strong manga influences (don’t miss the NANA references in the backgrounds!); the title character is a twentysomething slacker who spends some of his copious free time performing in a very bad indie band.

And that’s all I can think of right now! The other music-centric anime and manga that I can think of are both about classical music students: Nodame Cantabile and La Corda d’Oro. What am I forgetting? And what are your favorites? Tell me in the comments.

My review of vol. 16 of Fullmetal Alchemist is now up at Manga Life.

My review of Bus Gamer is up at Manga Life.

I’ve also added a link to the comments RSS feed on the sidebar, for anyone who might be interested in that.

For me, learning to interpret a whole new set of cultural references and symbols is one of the pleasures of reading manga and watching anime. And one of the most widely used symbols in manga and anime, especially at this time of year, is sakura, or cherry blossoms.

Sakura is known for its short-lived beauty. As a result, it’s a symbol of transience and mortality (or, in the words of my friend Oyce, “DOOM”). In art and literature, it’s also linked with Japanese nationalism and samurai. Since sakura blooms in April, it’s associated with spring and the beginning of the new school year. In Japan, there’s also a tradition of flower viewing in the spring known as hanami.

(For more information on the cultural significance of sakura, see Wikipedia.)

So in honor of spring (which has finally arrived where I am living), here are some of my favorite uses of sakura imagery and symbolism in anime and manga.

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My review of vol. 1 of Honey and Clover is up at Manga Life.

My review of vol. 15 of Fullmetal Alchemist is now up at Manga Life.

Just a couple of reviews this time around:

• Micole at Coffee and Ink on Vampire Knight, v. 4 and Kaput and Zosky.
• Joanna at Comics Worth Reading on Honey and Clover, v. 1.

FYI, my comment notifications don’t appear to be coming through at the moment, so I apologize for any delays in responding to or moderating comments.

I’ve decided to start a new feature for this blog: the recommended series. I’ve been writing reviews of individual manga volumes and plan to do some of individual anime DVDs, but sometimes it makes more sense to write a post on a series as a whole. To start things off, here’s a look at one of my favorite anime series, Cowboy Bebop. It wasn’t the first series that I watched and liked (Fullmetal Alchemist takes that honor), but it was the first series that I watched in its entirety.

Cowboy Bebop is set just a few decades in the future, in the year 2071. Interplanetary travel is now a reality, due to a network of hyperspace gateways set up throughout the solar system. But the gates come with a price: an industrial accident involving one gate has sent debris from the Moon raining down on Earth, destroying much of the world’s surface. As a result, most people have left Earth to find a better life in the colonies on colonies on the other planets, and those who remain on earth live underground.
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Hana-Kimi, Vols. 1-2
Story and Art by Hisaya Nakajo
Translation by David Ury
English Adaptation by Gerard Jones
Rated T+ for Older Teen
Viz, 2004
(First published in 1997)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59116-329-9 (Vol. 1)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59116-398-5 (Vol. 2)

Review

Japanese-American teen Mizuki Ashiya has admired youth high jump champion Izumi Sano ever since she saw one of his competitions on television. Now she’s transferring into his school in Japan in order to meet him, but there’s just one catch: it’s an all-boys’ school. Mizuki can cut off her long hair and wear a chest-flattening vest, but how long can she really hope to keep her sex a secret in the close quarters of private school dorm life?

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