MangaQuake #2: reviews

[House of Usher]

REVIEW AND POSSIBLE SPOILERS


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I picked up MangaQuake #2, and I must say, as a self-confessed Mangaphobe, I really enjoyed it! (Largely thanks to the Wildcard Taskforce Robo-Guardians strip by Mongoose McCloud, it must be said.)

I liked MangaQuake #1 well enough, especially Massacre, Love Story and Wicked Rails, but I felt the title as a whole suffered from formalism, especially Natalie Man's Counter Play, which I felt could have benefited from an actual story, despite looking very nice and deploying a lot of recognisable genre elements.

Anyway, onto MangaQuake #2. Sonia Leong's Cyborg Butterfly was a convincing evocation of a Manga style, and actually had a proper story (hooray!), but I thought the characterization of Dr Mayhew was weak.

The Stunt and Squandered Eden were good examples of economic story telling, and as such were very good value.

Play Ball was a nice way to end the book, and confounded my expectations in a good way, but I thought the dialogue was aggressive at the expense of clarity, and I was sorry there wasn't more Michiru Morikawa in the comic.

The Three Sisters didn't reproduce well, and looked a bit like a game of Valhalla on the ZX Spectrum, but the payoff was good, and the writer's imperfect command of English lent it some authenticity as an homage to a foreign art form.

Reading Robot Hunter Sol I suspected English wasn't the writer's native language either, but given her English name I decided I was wrong on that count. Can't fault the artwork though, and the writer definitely knows a thing or two about pacing.

Wildcard Taskforce Robo-Guardians was a real treat! Too often when I hear people talking about Manga it's in a deadly serious or overly reverent tone, as if Manga holds the key to some great mystery if only one might take the trouble to properly understand it, like it was geomancy or astrophysics; or else they rhapsodize about big robots, battle suits, almost human simulacra, nanotechnology, sadism and the eroticization of assassination and futuristic (combat) technology.

WTRG was refreshing in that it paid homage to giant monsters, giant robots and Power Rangers, without taking any of it seriously, while still showing a proper understanding of the thing it was lampooning, which someone who hates all that stuff simply couldn't do.

I won't go into more detail, except to say I was amused by the 'Wildcard roll call' that showed team members with Japanese names but by and large European features (notable exceptions Samson Yamato and Yumi Rose); compare with Cyborg Butterfly, page 3: (Nationality: Japanese, ethnicity? probably not).

One last thing: Jack of Clubs is my hero. Funniest thing I've seen in months!



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[House of Usher]

itallics off, dammit.

:(

[Carlsborg Expert]

Mangaquake is good. The Wildcards story is extremely funny.

|=|_|c|{!N9 |-|i|_4)2i0|_|5 in fact.

[House of Usher]

|=Uc|{!|[backslash]|' /-[backslash] !

[Bico]

sp34|{ 3|[backslash]|9L1$|-|!

[Carlsborg Expert]

 I said, it was fucking hilarious.

[Bico]

'/E5, 1 k|[backslash]|o|/[backslash]| +|-|4t.


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[Bolt-01]

Ha Ha Ha!

Hilarious!

Bolt-01

[House of Usher]

MANGAQUAKE #2 Spoiler! Look away now if you haven't already read Mangaquake #2, but intend to!


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I noticed a billboard yesterday featuring an advertised for the Daihatsi terios. I don't know what this looks like to you, but to me it looked like the mighty Robo-Battler getting some revenge...">

[House of Usher]

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c381/HouseofUsher1/Daihatsuterios.jpg">

[DavidXBrunt]

On the way to the chippy last night I was looking at the driver in that poster and thinking that the style looked familiar. Colin Macneil? Andy Clarke?