Dorohedoro

I knew Dorohedoro manga several months ago.  The story is about a man whose head turned into lizard-like, more exactly looks like iguana’s head.  In the first chapter, this man, the name’s Kaiman, had fight with men, then Kaiman tried to swallow a man’s head. In the end he chopped the man into pieces. What? It is a psycho manga! he just chopped a man like human’s nothing (that’s what i thought). Then i dropped it. I thought it was a cheap manga, but i just realized  i was wrong, totally wrong.

Then just several days ago, i read again this manga once again. I learned Kaiman’s lizard head was because a magic user’s spell, not only lost his head, he got amnesia. Since that time, everyday, he used to hunt magic users to find out who did that to his head. Luckily, he got accompanied by Nikaido, cute girl i thought. After read several volumes i found out the story became more interesting.  Even with a lot of sadistic scenes, i like the humor parts, i just laughed a lot. Up until now, the scanlation just until volume 15. I don’t want to spoil, but the story went deeper and rather complex. It’s getting more sadistic and darker. I just like to say, the plot is totally interesting!

Dorohedoro is a kind of guro manga. You’ll find a lot of chopped meat and blood.I myself personally don’t like guro scenes. Chopping men or cut off man heads is disgusting and weird. In Dorohedoro, the guro scenes got its humor parts, or i can say it is black comedy. I mean in Dorohedoro’s world, when a characters lost his limbs or the body organs, they didn’t worry a lot. There’s a character that has ability to restore his companion’s body no matter how bad it is destroyed, even another character could revive a dead body.

The interesting drawing style of Dorohedoro is kinda like a scratch, it is unique so it make the magical world in Dorohedoro looks like rotten rotten world, fits for its guro style. Mangaka of Dorohedoro is Q Hayashida, this manga once the assistant of Tsutomu Nihei (oh wow now we know what influenced most to this creepy drawing style). What made i feel shocked is Q Hayashida is female (WHAT??? WOW!!!). I know several female mangakas who wrote shonen or ecchi but a female wrote this guro manga, it’s just shocking.

Dorohedoro, in my opinion is one of the best seinen manga, unlike her senior Nihei, Hayashida could create a good story. If you fan of seinen manga, Berserk, Blame!, or Billy Bat, you really really shouldn’t missed this manga.

Don’t Look Back, Chihiro

Just go back they way you came, you’ll be fine. But you have to promise not to look back till you pass through the tunnel

Just feel curious why Haku said it to Chihiro. Then i’ve found some interesting opinions from fans in internet.

If Chihiro looks back maybe a spell which lead back to human world will vanish and she can’t go back to human world or maybe something terrible would happen, like Yubaba will get furious , trapped forever in spirit world, or something.

Another opinion what i liked most, the reason is told Chihiro to move on and never look to the past so she can continue her life. If she looks back maybe she will feel sad or regret to leave Haku alone. She was going to leave her first love and probably she would change her mind to stay with Haku rather than go back to her family

I think the ending is quite sad, when Chihiro said would they meet again someday. It is like they will separate forever, but i hope they both will meet again someday

NSE: Net Sphere Engineer ネットスフィアエンジニア

This manga is “failed” sequel to Blame! with only one chapter released in 2004. The second chapter has never been released by Mr Tsutomu Nihei, who has been regarded as a trouble-maker-in-his-own-manga.

The story is about the remnants of Electrofishers. A group of Electrofisher discovered a nexus tower, which is power source of megastructure. Then they planned to take benefit of this power source but unluckily, they were all killed by safeguard. Then the hero came, a man whose apparel similar to Trigun’s Vash Stampede. He said himself as a Dismantler. He came to The Electrofishers village, did some arguments about human should not go near to nexus tower with the heroine from the village.

This dismantler left from Electrofishers village and the heroine, driven by her curious, followed the hero to the nexus tower. Safeguards appeared then bang! bang! bang! surprisingly he killed every safeguards even the giant safeguard had no power against him, then it is made the heroine stunned. The End. Yeah it is the end and we’ll never know the continuance. NEVER!

All hail to Nihei,  trouble-maker-in-his-own-manga!

The Electrofishers, riding robot or creature similar to horse

The Heroine, she is Electrofisher

The hero, he imitated Vash Stampede :p

Eden

Eden is  a seinen manga by Hiroki Endo. The story circulated around post-apocalyptic era, gangster war, cyberpunk, terrorism, and even evolution of humanity.

The first part of the story is about two young teenagers, Ennoia Ballard, and Hanna Mayall who are the survivor of closure virus that almost wiped out humanity. They seemed the only survivor of humanity because both have their own immunity against the virus. Then the story went to 20 years later now focusing to their son, Elijah. After this part, Elijah met a NOMAD, which is wandering armed group, and trapped in a fight against The Propater. Now the story became a bit complicated. Actually Enoia and Hanna wasn’t “the new Adam and Eve” since closure virus only wiped out 15 percent of human population. After the virus outbreak, the world turned into chaos then the world divided into two, Gnostic and Agnostic. Gnostic is group of countries that called The Propater that could be said is lead by superpower countries such as England, USA, Australia, and other superpower countries. Agnostic is countries which didn’t join to The Propater. Gnostic mainly are wealth countries but Agnostic are poor. Agnostic blamed The Propater since they sucked natural resources from Agnostic just because of economical reason. This condition made several group became enemy of The Propater, included NOMAD and radical movements.

Let’s back to Elijah, he met a nomad group whose members is from different tribes and background, for examples, a female hacker, a martial artist from japan, and ex-Muslim mercenary. I was paying attention to Sophia, the female hacker, not because she would have important role of the last past of the manga but it is because she was so similar to Motoko Kusanagi from my favourite movie Ghost In The Shell. The i could say Hiroki Endo was influenced by GITS since when you are reading this manga you will see high class hacking in warfare, such as manipulating sattelite broadcast data, or frying the hacker’s brain when the hacker breached the firewall.

After this guerrilla war flavored by cyberpunk, the story continued to the next part when Elijah went to Chile in South America. The story changed to drug cartel lead to gangster war. The fight scenes became interesting since the gangsters were using cyborg or another advanced machines. The story revealed that Ennonia, who is Elijah father, was the biggest Drug lords at the South America, and at the same time Ennoia became one of the biggest threat to The Propater.

One of the sidestory is about Minority ethics goupr against The Propater. Why this became so interesting because it is the issue in this presert era, when poor country are being expoitated by superpower countries then radical movements that common people called terrorism occured. The Propater as the superpower countries can’t be said as the good man. This humanity issue which is bought into this manga, again, similar to what actually happened right now, ethnic cleansing in Africa, civil wars, undeveloped countries, or resources occupation by liberalism.

The last part of the story is about mutated closure virus called, disclosure virus. Disclosure virus convert physical body of the sufferer into crystal then formed a massive colony called Colloid. Inside the colloid human who were dead because of Disclosure Virus weren’t actually dead because Colloid convert their souls into a something similar to large database storage that saved almost all of information of humanity history even human individual memories. Colloid is similar to sea of LCL if you watched Evangelion, people inside  Colloid merged into one single consciousness. This virus opportunely came when humanity lost of their hope by war, diseases, disasters, or poverty. Again, i’ve found interesting part of this manga: Some people who are already despair because of the rotten world came to the colloid to “suicide” or wanted themselves to be absorbed by Colloid. Then other people, who chose to struggle against the cruelty of the world rather that absorbed by the Colloid.

This manga is worth to read by anybody who likes science fiction. The scenes is brutal made the reader couldn’t guess who is the next character would die, if they died, Hiroki Endo would show no mercy, since almost of characters died in pathetic of sadistically death. The story told us about philosophical reasons why war always exists, or why every human in this world seeks happiness. It also explored evil and good of humanity. Maybe you’ll found this manga lost of focus in its plot since in a part it is about gangster then later it’ll become science fiction. Nonetheless, every stories is well developed so you should read this 18 volumes manga until the end to reach the conclusion

This is My Ghibli Week

My first Ghibli movie i’ve watched is Howl’s Moving Castle, and then i figured a genius movie director named Hayao Miyazaki, then i watched his best-known movies such as Mononoke Hime, Spirited Away, and Nausicaa. Hayao Miyazaki’s film is extraordinary and so much of fantasy.

This week,  i’m getting excited to Ghibli’s movie again and downloading some of Ghibli movie such as Totoro, Tales from Eathsea, Kiki, etc. Not all Ghibli’s movie was good. Tales of Eathsea, i think isn’t very well because i just could predict the ending and the characters are so cheap. Totoro is very nice one, the story i think is simple but delivered very good and i love the happy ending part.

Oh yeah, one reason why Ghibli’s movies are so beautiful because of the musics, i found another genius as a composer, Joe Hisaishi. Without him Spirited Away would be incomplete as a masterpiece.

Many of Ghibli’s movies are masterpiece but some not, but all are worth to watch.

Knights of Cydonia シドニアの騎士

No, it’s NOT a song by Muse, what i want to talk about right now is Tsutomu Nihei’s manga. The title is Knights of Cydonia /シドニアの騎士 / Cydonia no Kishi. It’s set in the distant space about a thousand year from this present day. I don’t know the exact reason why Tsutomu Nihei gave this manga a title that similar to Muse’s song but maybe it is just a random name since Cydonia is a name of a region on Mars. Cydonia itself in this manga is name of a spaceship.

Earth was destroyed by alien called Gauna, since then human fled to outer space by using numerous of gigantic spaceships, one of them was named Cydonia. Cydonia itself have lost contact to another spaceships, and Cydonia’s passengers began to believe they’re the only survivor of the human race. Then they have been wandering through deep space for a thousand year, hoping will find a new habitable planet, but yet what they’ve found is nothing but only Gauna’s threat.

Like other Nihei’s works, you will see another Megastructure building, yes, it is Cydonia itself. This spaceship is gigantic, with a shape of asteroid with giant gun. Human in Cydonia seemed has evolved. To survive in outer space, human is beginning to have asexual reproduction such as clone himself. Then human can do photosynthesis like plants since food is very limited. Another weird abnormality, gender doesn’t matter, a person can be neither male nor female.

Now we will talk about Gauna. It is an alien race that have weird shape, mostly its shape will be giant monster. Normally, body of a Gauna consists of two parts, True body (or bodies) and placenta. true body is the core of Gauna, if it’s destroyed then the Gauna will be dead. Placenta itself is some kind of armor that have lot of varieties in shapes, it can be numerous tentacle, insect-form-like, or even gigantic human form. Gauna race itself have its own spaceship (or nest), human called it “Mass Union Ship” which is actually formed by thousands Gaunas. Moreover, The biggest Mass Union Ship human have ever detected is formed by trillions of Gaunas, the one which destroyed the earth.

Chapter 1 of Knight of Cydonia begin with the main character, Tanikaze Nagate, a man who trapped in underground layer of Cydonia spaceship since his birth. He never met with another human except his grandfather, in his days. he used to train himself in a virtual mecha cockpit with simulation battle against Gauna. This training for years somewhat made Tanikaze became expert in piloting The Guardian, name of mecha whose purpose to defend Cydonia from Gauna’s attack. Then one day he came out from his hideout, met people, then he became one of guardians of Cydonia because of his expert ability in piloting mecha. So right now, maybe, we already know why the name if this manga is “Knight of Cydonia”.

You’ll find some familiar name or character inside. If you still remember Kozlov Leifnovich Grebnev, the bear guy in Biomega, you’ll meet a bear, now is female who is a landlord in a dorm where Tanikaze lives. In addition, you must know Toha Heavy Industries (appeared in Blame! and Biomega), now in this manga, this company takes role as factory of producing mecha, The Guardians. Gauna itself appeared in Nihei’s previous work, Abara.

I’ve compared Knights of Cydonia with Nihei’s other works. Nihei’s drawing style has become brighter with less tone, unlike Blame! which is very dark. My opinion, in Biomega, Nihei did experiment with his  drawing style, in the beginning of Biomega, his drawing was dark and abusive but in the middle to the end, his drawing became softer and brighter, then we can see the result in this Knights of Cydonia. What is bugging me, somehow  Nihei’s unrealistic drawings is too hard to understand especially in battle scenes, so i couldn’t know exactly what was actually happened in the battle against Gauna.

Last comment, Why this manga becomes so interesting? Well if you Tsutomu Nihei’s fan you should read this manga. you won’t be disappointed, all of you expects is in this manga: weird-shaped monsters, massacres, and bloodshed.

Weird shape of The Guardian Mecha,
looks like palm tree :p

Tanikaze Nagate,
The main character. typical of common hero of justice,
do good things, save women from the evil.

Battle between The Guardian and Gauna (in tentacles placenta form)

Hoshijiro Shizuka, the heroine,
what was she doing? Photosynthesis.
To do photoshynthesis, they should be naked
So their skin can be exposed from sunlight :p

Zenonia 2

Right before writing this article i’ve at level 22 with Ecne character. My opinion so far it’s good game, with classic action rpg gameplay.

The gameplay, what i thought, is similar to WoW (what?). There are quests to be done, combine items like enchanting/alchemy, collecting items like herbs, durability for weapon/armor, or collecting a number of item, kill a number of specific monster. My friend who first time saw me playing Zenonia 2 said “hey it’s like WoW !”

You can choose one of four characters : Daza (Paladin), Lu (Warrior), Ecne (Gunslinger), Morpice (Magician). Daza and Lu are close ranged, and both of the rest are long range combat type. Ecne, one of character i’m playing right now similar to Hunter at WoW (for three other characters, i can’t give my comment since i just play with Ecne).

Grinding is important if you want to beat this game, since number of dungeons and bosses is quite few than other RPG. Potentially it will make you boring because most of your playing time will be killing and killing a lot of monster rather than exploring dungeon/city.Moreover, as you can guess, the story itself will be quite short too. The first boss made me defeat him for 10-15 minutes, quite long for a boss. Before that i must grinding to defeat the boss or it wasn’t easy at all. Hmm, next bosses must be harder and longer to defeat…

I’ve dropped this game for a while before i continued playing again, maybe i was bored with the gameplay. Hoping i’ll finish this game until the end, since i can be easily to be bored but Zenonia is worth to be on your Android phone

Oh yeah, i’m waiting for its sequel, Zenonia 3 but they said it’s still available in Korean and i couldn’t find it at Android Market.

The Legendary Pose

Just watched Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and it  is really good film. Lot of scenes made me laugh, but somehow Jules’s execution scene made me chilling. Bang!!!,  i shocked, and the man was dead. Jules and Vega pose above, they are standing side by side in suit and tie, pointing their guns, has also become widely familiar. Here are some spin off from their pose, pulp star wars and even holding banana.

Time Machine? Uh, Just Forget It

Science fiction is still my favourite theme when watching entertainments in movie, manga, or anime. What i likely to know about is universe. Universe in my definition is a very vast space, maybe in human measurement it can be said near-infinite. In time-travelling concept we know that the universe where we live isn’t the only one, but there’s numerous universe.

Talking about time-travelling, somewhat related to multiverse (like John Titor said), for our current technology is impossible. One the most-possible to create time machine is using traversable black-hole or something my knowledge in my brain still limited to understand

CERN facility in Switzerland, that you-must-know-the-name, Large Hadron Collider is the most complicated reserach facility that human ever made. They said they’re focusing on recereate bing bang event.

Most conspiracy-theory lover would like to say CERN is going to create the first time machine, since LHC possibly to create micro black hole. Well that opinion, i think quite dumb and something stupid. I just want to say time-machine still impossible to build, it is science fiction. You’ll find it on movie or if you anime fan you should watch Steins;Gate.

Anyway, LHC is such a great facility, just seeing its photo will make you to say “wow it’s cool to know human made such a huge machines like that”. Out of topic, i found Virtual Reality Web App that show us how’s LHC looks like inside :

http://petermccready.com/

Stardust Memories

Another non-mainstream manga, created by Hoshino Yukinobu in 1995, it is must-be-read manga for science fiction lover. The stories, mostly about deep space exploration set in the distant future.

The drawing style of this manga is influenced by western comics, unlike works of japanese mangaka. If you dont’t pay attention to the author as Japanese, maybe you’ll be mistaken this manga as western comic. The stories itself are very dark and exploring mysteries of the universe. In the distant future human can travel in very far distance. Since space is vast, they meet a lot of unimaginable experiences, mostly unwelcome things, like aliens or very bizzare environments. This makes me wonder about other planets or other lifeforms that aren’t always like we think about. Why i like this manga is the stories is different form another scoience fiction movies that i’ve ever seen. This manga also explores about humanity, both good or evil.

Won’t spoil about the stories, read it with your own risk

If you like science fiction manga like Planetes but expecting more disturbing with dark theme, read this manga.