Entries from June 2008 ↓

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. An excerpt:

In Volume 16 of Fullmetal Alchemist, the story returns to the present after the long flashback to the Ishbal campaign in Volume 15. As such, this is very much a transitional volume in the series. The characters are scattering to different parts of Amestris, all intent upon their own goals, but readers only see the beginning of their journeys here. The larger consequences of the decisions made now will have to wait for subsequent volumes.