Forum - View topicRIGHT TURN ONLY!! - Ultimo Fighting Championship
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GATSU
Posts: 15620 |
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Still waiting for my Amaz-ingly slow shipment on Boys 7 to come in. *sigh* As for Ultimo, I'm more willing to give it a B-, but only because it's a step up from Shaman King where SJUSA ended it. Well, that, and the girls aren't as tsun-tsun in this manga as they were in SK.
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8503 Location: Penguinopolis |
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God (and by that, I mean an old homeless man who loves bowling) I love 20th Century Boys. It's really a spectacular story, told with great art. This month this new volume is out and the second live-action movie. And me with so little cash!
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ABCBTom
 Posts: 183 |
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I do respect Urasawa's work, honest I do. I think he's really, really good, and I enjoy Monster a great deal. However, his weaknesses have totally destroyed all enthusiasm I have for 20th Century Boys. And I'm quite certain I must be the mad one, because I never see anyone else bring up the fact that Urasawa has the subtlety of a pink jackhammer. It's so obvious to me because he makes his works so realistic in location and time, but then tries to pull off some ridiculous things with his characters.
Take Monster, for instance. I will stick with early material as to avoid spoilers. It's not enough to make Tenma a good person, or even a great person. Urasawa has also made him the most persuasive (or second most persuasive) person in the world. He is able to reunite families, end feuds, and change lives by reciting trite advice column answers. And it's not merely enough that Johan is a killer, and we see how menacing he is by action alone. No, he exudes pure evil. Any character that has encountered him remembers, clearly, just how evil that he was, and how he relished pain and fear, and was a "monster". I think 20th century boys lost me for good at one of three points. First spoiler[was the time Kenji was able to convince a cult member that everything he was doing was wrong, and got him to run back into a burning building to rescue someone. It didn't take any complicated deprogramming, or anything similarly difficult. Just the mere words of a good person were enough to break the spell of Friend's cult and convert this person to a hero. Second, the psychic homeless man "God", who couldn't have laid on foreshadowing more thickly with a trowel. Third, the fact that (I assume) the identity of the avenging hero in Thailand was supposed to be a big secret when it couldn't have been more obvious.] Is it just me? Do I need to approach his works as I would a Greek drama, with all of its broad strokes and repetition and foreshadowing that's impossible to miss? I understand why his works are appealing, but the fact that I rarely see this criticism mystifies me. |
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penguintruth
Posts: 8503 Location: Penguinopolis |
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spoiler[Well, first of all, I'm pretty sure it was Otcho who convinced the guy in charge of the Friend cult's drug operation to stop being a member, and not just by some talking to about how he's doing wrong. The guy was already feeling guilty about killing his friend, and Otcho tells him about his son's death, and faced with somebody who was fearless, the guy turned. It was later on that this guy decided to run into the burning factory and rescue as many people as he could. The cool thing about the "God" character is how cheesy the element is, but he's such an eccentric character he manages to fit in with the other weird happenings without seeming to over the top. At least, to me. And maybe I'm slow, but I didn't know who Shogun was right away, myself.] Urasawa shows that these characters who get convinced of things by others want to be convinced or have some weakness in them, that nobody really wants to be evil. |
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Mr Adventure
 Posts: 1598 |
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I agree with all of this. 20th Century Boys is so far one of my favorite comics of all time. Yeah, its a bit of a slow burn, but to me, that's not a bad thing here. There is just so much going on, it just takes its time to take you to all points in the setting, not just rushing everything through. As to ABCBTom's points. In particular this
I think you're missing the point. Urasawa is painting a 'realistic' world, but they adding these 'fantastic' elements to it drawn from Japanese childhood fiction. Old men who can see the future, kung-fu warriors, world wide cults, laser guns, giant robots, even super detective crime solvers, In some way its suppose to seem 'cheesy'. But its a sinister cheese. That I would not have any other way. |
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Sandstar
Posts: 196 |
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I'm going to agree a little, with the evidence against for 20th century boys. The flashback describing what happened on bloody new year's eve only lasts for 2 more chapters, and I think it was a bad idea to leave those two chapters for volume 8. They should've finished it in volume 7.
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Charred Knight
 Posts: 3085 |
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"Many of manga's great stories come from the idea of morality being a gray area, so when a legend of American comics insists on shoehorning his heroes-versus-villains worldview into the medium, it does feel out of place."
Not in Shonen Jump mangas it doesn't. Are you seriously telling me that Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece doesn't have clear cut heroes vs Villains? In Death Note it quickly becomes clear that Light has become corrupted by the power, and sees himself not as a human being but as a god dispensing justice. The result is that the FBI while not pure hearted but still largely good, has to stop the evil Light from achieving his dreams of World Domination. It's not much difference from such things as the Fantastic Four. In Dragonball some guy would arrive start snarling and being evil and then fight Goku who hated to kill people. One of the reasons why shonen series are so popular is that they do have that classic good vs evil, that draw people. Even something like Fullmetal Alchemist delivers in this respect with the heroes being noble, and the Homunculi largely slobering monsters. Theirs a reason why works such as Civil War is considered really bad. |
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Generic #757858
 Posts: 1354 |
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Ditto. This also why I think Monster is the weakest of his works available in English. It tries to be realistic, but the characters are just too extreme to be completely believable. The more fantastical elements of 20th Century Boys and Pluto make such things much easier to overlook.
That was more a case of bad writing, though. There have been plenty of great superhero comics with morally complex themes. See many of the works of Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis or Mark Millar for an example. |
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Mr Adventure
Posts: 1598 |
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Mark Millar wrote most of Civil War. Mark Millar is a TERRIBLE writer with about as much moral complexity as a wet paper bag. You're right about Moore and Ellis though. Also, Charred Knight is right about the fact that 99% of your Shōnen output is about as morally ambiguous as 99% of your typical mainsteam American Super-Hero output. Boys Adventure Fiction is pretty much the same on every continent when you get right down to it. Manga only has the benefit of going outside the genre box more then America's Super-Hero comics do. But even then, you could drown in the number of 'School Age Boy suddenly discovers he is special and then goes on a quest' Shōnen cliches in most Manga. |
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Generic #757858
Posts: 1354 |
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Well, even good writers can write crap comics  . But yeah, I totally forgot that he was responsible for CW, shows what I know. I'd still argue that he's a good writer, since I've enjoyed the majority of his non-616 works and I frakkin' love Ultimates and Red Son.
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GATSU
Posts: 15620 |
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ABCB: Don't feel too bad. I stopped taking Monster seriously when the hero cheated on a test in med school. And I dropped the Master Keaton anime when it couldn't decide its approach to the character and story format. Though the one thing I really don't like about Urasawa in general is he tends to incorporate one know-it-all character into the material who likes to point out the obvious, rather than playing the narrative by ear.
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chrisb
 Subscriber Posts: 652 Location: USA |
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The author of Remember, Benjamin, is incredible in the art dept. but looks like he really needs to fix his stories. They're a tad too pretentious and too emotional. While emotional is great, subtlety is even better. But even so the book is worth owning for the great art.
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malvarez1
Posts: 2175 |
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I've been meaning to read Ultimo. The plot may be nothing special, but I liked Shaman King, so I feel like I should try it anyway.
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ABCBTom
Posts: 183 |
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You're right. I did completely mis-remember that scene, and I regret the error. I re-read it though, and something seemed a little bit off. I think what I've found is that Urasawa does really well with the plot itself, and its twists and turns. It's just sometimes the dialogue used to express that plot isn't quite convincing enough, it seems. Maybe I just need to keep reading 20th Century, since I hear it picks up around volume 7. |
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Carlooo
Posts: 58 |
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Urasawa isn't perfect. Anyone who has read at least two of his works can tell you that he makes mistakes, like laying it on too heavy and making so many twists and turns that the story gets ridiculous at times.
But, every time I read his one of his works, I get impressed by how he tells the stories. He is such a great storyteller, that I don't understand why everyone here seems to be pointing out his mistakes. Pick another mangaka and it's likely you wouldn't even know where to start pointing out his/her mistakes. |
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