Gantz - a walking tour

I'm a huge fan of Gantz - quite possible the most nihilist manga out there that is still running. As I mentioned in a previous post, it's now being published in Tankobon format (collected volumes). One of the big reasons I enjoy it so much is not the ultra-violence, the fan service S&M gear everyone is wearing, the borderline pornography or the lack of a socially-redeeming question - no, the reason I like it is that it's very much based in the real world of Tokyo's city streets. I used to live there, fully integrated into that society as a tax-paying, commuting, white-collar working individual. And after a hard night's heavy drinking (which was quite common), it thrilled me to see some of its neighborhoods rife with demons and blown apart with science fiction weaponry. Some of the neighborhoods and districts of Tokyo were explicitly known, others I've had to guess based on the visuals provided:

Ikebukuro - scene of the battle between the Gantz players and the Oni Aliens, where regular humans could finally see the bad guys and the common masses really started to freak out. Ikebukuro is not much more than a shopping district, sort of a lower class Shinjuku. It has its own red light district and similar to Shinjuku, is pretty much its own self-enclosed city.

Shinjuku West Gate - where Shion Izumi gunned down tons of innocent victims in a fucked-up effort to recruit new Gantz members. West Gate is Shinjuku's main shopping arcade, with connections to gay town 3-chome, the "Little Korea" Okubo and the hardcore red light district/Chinatown of Kabuki-cho. Shinjuku's East Gate is skyscraper-ville so its West Gate where all the action is. I tended to not stay there too long or else the place gave me massive headaches.

Gokuku-ji Temple - I'm *not sure* if this was the actual temple where the Gantz team fought the Kappa aliens and his dinosaur demons. The problem is that as far as massive Buddhist temples are concerned, Tokyo doesn't have that many. And from layout and architecture, Senso-ji in Asakusa, Zenpuku-ji in Azabu and Zojo-ji in Daimon don't match up. I am convinced that Oku Hiroya made this one up but used elements of Gokuku-ji to do it.

Minato-ku - this is another guess. But from every time the Gantz members are in the apartment with the big black ball, they look out the window and see Tokyo Tower pretty closeby. From the distance which looks like 2 or 3 km away, there really can only be a couple of places that make sense - Shimbashi, Kamiyacho, Shirogane, and Takanawa. But for sure it's in the harbor borough, which means that Gantz must have a pretty good income in order to pay for the lease.

Dotonbori River - this is in Osaka (and obviously where the Tokyo Gantz team encounters the Osaka team), which for those that don't know is a day's travel from Tokyo by shinkansen (bullet train). The scene where people like to jump off the bridge and into the river whenever the local baseball team wins the pennant (which has not been much) and home to some pretty awesome neon.

Does this sound like a tour-spiel? Yeah maybe, but you know what, check it all out for your Japan pilgrimmage. The place is cool and I miss it tons.

Giant Gundam statue - final day, Odaiba

Thx to Mike C, from Shiokaze Park, Odaiba. 18m tall, full scale. Today is the last day before it will be taken down and most probably, serve as a member of Japan's parliament.

Our own cosplay photoshoot

Behind the scenes of our upcoming project.
Location: VanArts Studios, Vancouver

Enough quality - let's post some Garth Ennis crap!

I have a love-hate with Garth Ennis... well, mostly love. But I have to admit that the stuff that he can write is utterly hateful, wrong-headed garbage. But it's so much damn fun to read - the laugh-out loud type of fun - that well hell, you wouldn't want to watch Masterpiece Theatre all the time, would you?

THE PRO

What would happen if a single-parent prostitute without a shred of normal middle-American values was given superpowers? The answer is The Pro. In this obvious and profane satire of the Justice League, a down and out hooker is given superpowers by The Voyeur (a spoof of Uatu the Watcher) and inducted into a good ole gang of superheroes. Without the fighting ethos of her other spandexed compadres (BTW, she does note the spandex is "lame" especially when her boobs can't stop popping out), she pisses golden showers on her enemies and punches off their jaws. And to leverage her newfound powers into a little money making venture - blows a thousand men in one night at super-speed to grant herself a year's worth of salary. Well, why not? But the best scene is where she gives Boy Scout (the Superman parody, obviously) a quickie and his ejaculate blows off the wing of a passing plane. Come to think of it (pun intended), how does Lois Lane survive these things? There's also a brilliant clumsy lesbo come-on by the Wonder Woman pastiche. It's all drawn by Amanda Conner (who now does Power Girl, but The Pro was following her stint on Archie comics, so look for that distinctive style)

ADVENTURES IN THE RIFLE BRIGADE

I have no idea what Garth Ennis was trying to do here except show his contempt for the British military and its school system, the Scots, the Germans and the Americans. I guess he hates them all by reducing them to one-liner cliches that never rise beyond their stereotypes or given any development. Of course he makes fun of the Nazis, he's got the Prussian horn-dog, the little vanker Gestapo kraut, and his SS torture bitch with huge tits. But he really sticks it to his "heroes" - 1) an overly "Jolly good, ole chap" bullshit brigade commander who admits buggery is part of growing up upper crust English, 2) a public schooled, flower-smelling second-in-command whose dream in life is to be given a handjob by his commander, 3) a mentally-retarded working-class English behemoth who is also a cannibal and has only one line that he repeats incessantly: "Ee-yoop!" 4) a violent Northern English Yorkshire yob who is ace with knives but only has one line that he repeats incessantly: "Yer aht of ordah!" 5) an East Coast American demolitions thug who only has one line that he repeats incessantly: "Gawd dammit!", and 6) a scrawny but totally balls-out insane old Scot who is deadly with his bagpipes made out of someone's face. Those charming Celts. Basically more of a tale of six assholes being played off each other than a true narrative, it's what MAD magazine would come up with if they were adult-oriented.

Fables of Deconstruction Part 2 - League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Today was a tough call, do I cover one of the finest series ever penned by the uber-author Alan Moore, or utter crap like Ikki Tousen or Tantric Stripfighter Trina? Admittedly, I do like reading fan service bullshit once in a while (and I *may* write about it another day). But ever since I put down the first Fables of Deconstruction covering Planetary recently, this second entry has been nagging me.

Okay. Now. For all of you five or six people out there who didn't know, LXG was not just a terrible film starring Sean Connery that was widely panned by critics and filmgoers alike. It was not just a terminal flop that was responsible for the career downfall for its director, Stephen Norrington (who has not made a movie since, and he directed the first Blade). No, it was actually based off one of Alan Moore's best pieces of writing (along with Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and The Killing Joke), believe it or not. Moore himself distances himself from any of his works turned to celluloid in the assumption that Hollywood hacks ups the crap factor to his stories, but there was no finer time in history that proved him right.

The printed form of LXG is in reality a monument for people who love literature. The storylines are literally stuffed to the gills with literary references, so much so that I'm only going to touch on some of them here. There are entire websites out there that attempt to source every inclusion they can find. If the lead Victorian Age characters themselves are based on icons from Bram Stoker (Mina Murray), H. Rider Haggard (Allan Quartermain), Robert Louis Stephenson (Dr. Jekyll), H.G. Wells (Hawley Griffin) and Jules Verne (Capt. Nemo) in the first volume - then for sure the villains, settings, and obscure cameos are themselves literary references. In the first omnibus, the main villains are Professor Moriarty of Sherlock Holmes fame and Fu Manchu (of whose name is never given) and an early ally is the fat and slimy Campion Bond, a predecessor of Agent 007.

Volume Two of course goes further by adding the entire plotline of The War of the Worlds. The tripods come to Earth after having had their asses handed to them on a plate by an insurrection on Mars led by John Carter and Gullivar Jones. It's only through the involvement of a deranged hybrid-making geneticist who we all know is Dr. Moreau (and whose menagerie is savage versions of Rupert the Bear, Wind in the Willows and other beloved children's anthropomorphic tales) that Earth has a chance of survival.

Chronologically (albeit not in published time) Volume Three takes place in 1910, with the original team down to Murray and Quartermain. New allies are the eternally young she-male Orlando, the awesome ghost hunter-who-deserves-his-own-movie Thomas Karnacki (rather like today's Johan Krauss from the BPRD), and the smooth criminal E.W. Hornung's A.J. Raffles, an early type of Thomas Crown. Villains include Nemo's daughter, Jenny (the Pirate Jenny from Three Penny Opera), Mack the Knife, and a metaphor of the very real Alesteir Crowley, Oliver Haddo. The three storylines of a mass murderer, the rise of Jenny and the possible birth of the anti-Christ are interwoven here.

The Black Dossier takes the largest leap by being set in 1958. Interestingly (and wonderfully) taking place after the fall of INGSOC (the totalitarian government of George Orwell's 1984). Murray and Quartermain (Quartermain himself is now made younger from bathing in the light of She, from the story of H. Rider Haggard) are on the run from the government. They are pursued by the sniveling and psychopathically inept Jimmy (as in James Bond), Emma Night (to become The Avenger's Emma Peel eventually) and the aging Hugo Drummond. Murray and Quartermain attempt to flee the UK to make it to The Blazing World, where Prospero (from Shakespeare's The Tempest) had fled. Prospero himself was the leader of the very first League in Elizabethan times.

So as you can see - with very volume filled with literary allusions and with previous Leagues that have not received any print (going back to the mid-1600s with characters like Lemuel Gulliver, the Scarlet Pimpernel, Reverend Christopher Syn, etc) plus other countries such as Germany and France having their own versions, the possibilities are endless. There is, however, a final volume coming, taking place in London 2008. The Antichrist foretold in 1910 will come to pass. I wonder what that will look like, and moreso, what characters will show up in that tome.

Giant Mecha Spider in Yokohama

Kind of like the one from Appleseed. Thanks to Mike C... To see it move, visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqolwulVlsc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCIzVYCfWX4&feature=related

Yet more shots from Comiket

Final batch, and thx to Phil C from Odaiba...