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Jason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga: Pilgrim Jäger




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Fronzel



Joined: 11 Sep 2003
Posts: 1906
PostPosted: Thu May 13, 2010 8:32 pm Reply with quote
I've never head of this one, but I've actually thought that the Reformation would make good fodder for an outlandish action series, and one that need not be mindless since that was an extremely important period in the history of the West.

An interesting choice to give time to what you ultimately consider to be a failure. That's the sort of thing we'd be unlikely to hear elsewhere, I think.

I appreciate numbering the installment of the series.
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21stcenturydigitalboy



Joined: 20 Aug 2008
Posts: 103
Location: Virginia Beach, Virginia
PostPosted: Thu May 13, 2010 8:52 pm Reply with quote
Very interesting. This seems like the kind of series that even if it fails, it has enough good that you don't want to ignore it entirely - the kind of thing I might read enough of to get the general idea of just for fun, but not necessarily finish. It's always a little depressing when these things don't like up to their full potential, but it's also fun to see the things that they do offer that you might not find anywhere else. (An example that comes to mind is the anime The Big O. I couldn't finish it because the plot was such a clusterf*** but it was still very interesting to see what is one of the only examples of film noir in anime and a world that really deserves to exist beyond the ham-handed story.)
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dizzon



Joined: 22 Sep 2008
Posts: 338
PostPosted: Thu May 13, 2010 9:21 pm Reply with quote
Dang you Thompson!, you've found one of my many weaknesses....buying anything with Jager in the title. Twisted Evil

Edit: I forgot how to put the umlaut over the a.
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mckg1



Joined: 24 Dec 2009
Posts: 287
Location: From Puerto Rico living in Japan
PostPosted: Thu May 13, 2010 10:54 pm Reply with quote
Never heard of these mangas before, but now im interested in getting a few of them that are listed.
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ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster


Joined: 07 May 2005
Posts: 357
Location: San Francisco
PostPosted: Fri May 14, 2010 12:13 am Reply with quote
I like Pilgrim Jager, I really do... even if it is a big ol' mess in its current form. Really, I'll read anything with Mami Itoh's artwork, and I'm a sucker for historical-religious stories, so it's hard for me to put down, despite its flaws.
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Dudley



Joined: 07 Jul 2008
Posts: 29
PostPosted: Fri May 14, 2010 2:52 am Reply with quote
It's official: House of 1000 Manga is my new favorite column on ANN!
A well known masterpiece the one week, and a semi-trashy contemporary action manga the next week? That's the way I like it! Very Happy

Keep up the good work, Jason!
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Penguin_Factory



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 732
Location: Ireland
PostPosted: Fri May 14, 2010 3:29 am Reply with quote
Quote:
The invisible demons people into something like zombies, quoting Bible verses (““Thrice you denied me before the cock crowed that night!”) as severed rooster's heads spill out of their orifices.


That sentence alone makes me want to read this.
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gartholamundi



Joined: 18 Mar 2010
Posts: 316
Location: Gainesville, FL
PostPosted: Fri May 14, 2010 8:05 am Reply with quote
ptolemy18 wrote:
Really, I'll read anything with Mami Itoh's artwork, ...


i'm totally intrigued by this "1000House" review, and even if the Jager storyline doesn't hold together i'm already looking for copies just to see what's up with this artist.

thanks so much for the review, and for this fantastic new column!
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CaptainAvatar



Joined: 28 Aug 2006
Posts: 381
Location: Saint Louis, MO
PostPosted: Fri May 14, 2010 11:41 am Reply with quote
I'll have to go back through my Robot Anthology volumes, but since it is there, I am sure I was impressed with Mami Itoh's artwork when I first read them. I have really enjoyed this new column so far.
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teh*darkness



Joined: 16 Feb 2007
Posts: 901
PostPosted: Fri May 14, 2010 2:23 pm Reply with quote
Haha, I actually have the first two volumes of this manga. Wasn't sure if they ever got around to releasing any of the other volumes, as I know they had tentative release dates in the back of the volumes I owned, but I never saw them in stores. Sad that it even got cancelled in Japan.

And as snl67 said, I'm gonna have to go look through my Robot anthologies now to find the pieces Itoh drew. I knew I liked that artwork.

Very nice column. Will be watching for it in the future.
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ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster


Joined: 07 May 2005
Posts: 357
Location: San Francisco
PostPosted: Fri May 14, 2010 2:46 pm Reply with quote
Pilgrim Jager is an example of one other kind of manga I like: the 'ideological differences = actual battles' manga, or the 'fighting with swords and words' manga, to paraphrase David Rees' "My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable."

People fighting over immediate, personal, emotional stuff ("You killed my father, I will have revenge!" "I'm in love with your boyfriend, let's fight over him!" etc.) is exciting. But there's something especially entertaining about stories where people are fighting over ideological differences, whether political, religious or whatever. Political arguments in the form of fighting happens fairly often in American comics... it's one of the things I liked about Mark Millar's run on "The Authority" (one of the only Millar comics I like, actually, after that his kneejerk cynicism got to be too much even for me....). Openly political stuff doesn't get discussed much in manga, *but* there *is* a very common thing in manga where the hero and the villain, or the hero and the rival, represent differing philosophies of some sort. As someone else said, it's not enough that you just defeat your enemy, you must convince them (or otherwise demonstrate) of the wrongness of their path. -_- In the most generic, common way this happens in manga like Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh!, where the hero is all "Pokemon/cards are FRIENDS!" and the villains is all "Pokemon/cards are just tools to be used! Mwa ha ha!" (I hate this one, since it's so common, and so deeply cynical and capitalistic to encourage kids to be 'friends' with their collectible merchandise... -_- )

But occasionally in manga you get more interesting arguments/debates in the form of fight sequences. It would have been fascinating to see if Pilgrim Jager went in this direction, with the heroes and villains arguing over stuff like "Christ's human nature was dissolved in the divine!" "No, Christ's human nous (thinking) was replaced by divine nous! Take that!" "Bakana! No, you're both wrong! Christ's human and divine natures were combined without alteration to either! DONNNNNN!!!!!" (Well, at least it would have been fascinating to me.) Too bad the manga ended early.
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Laethiel



Joined: 29 Jun 2007
Posts: 42
PostPosted: Fri May 14, 2010 6:19 pm Reply with quote
ptolemy18 wrote:
But there's something especially entertaining about stories where people are fighting over ideological differences, whether political, religious or whatever.


So does that mean we'll be getting a future post about Mudazumo Naki Kaikaku?

I noticed a copy of the first volume of Pilgrim Jager at a friend's house and was intrigued by the art, but I found Ubukata Tow's writing a bit too unfocused and odd (the same issue I have with Le Chevalier D'Eon).

EDIT: Is there going to be an RSS feed for this column? I just happened to notice the new one because I was on the site today.
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vashfanatic



Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 3495
Location: Back stateside
PostPosted: Fri May 14, 2010 10:00 pm Reply with quote
ptolemy18 wrote:
It would have been fascinating to see if Pilgrim Jager went in this direction, with the heroes and villains arguing over stuff like "Christ's human nature was dissolved in the divine!" "No, Christ's human nous (thinking) was replaced by divine nous! Take that!" "Bakana! No, you're both wrong! Christ's human and divine natures were combined without alteration to either! DONNNNNN!!!!!" (Well, at least it would have been fascinating to me.) Too bad the manga ended early.

No, no, no -- that would've been the in the 4th-5th centuries, not the Reformation! They'd be screaming, "Transubstantiation!" "Consubstantiation!" "No, it's symbolic!" "Heretic!" "And Mary didn't remain perpetually virgin!" "Blasphemer!!"

/exit religious studies major
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ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster


Joined: 07 May 2005
Posts: 357
Location: San Francisco
PostPosted: Sat May 15, 2010 5:06 am Reply with quote
vashfanatic wrote:
No, no, no -- that would've been the in the 4th-5th centuries, not the Reformation! They'd be screaming, "Transubstantiation!" "Consubstantiation!" "No, it's symbolic!" "Heretic!" "And Mary didn't remain perpetually virgin!" "Blasphemer!!"

/exit religious studies major


I know it's totally anachronistic! I just the 4th and 5th centuries, so that's the first example I think of when I think of inter-Christian arguments. -_-;
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The Xenos



Joined: 29 Mar 2004
Posts: 1519
Location: Boston
PostPosted: Sat May 15, 2010 1:53 pm Reply with quote
A manga with a weird fictional version of Saint Francis Xavier? Sold. I went to a Xavierian Brothers Catholic high school. Funny, as I remember learning that Xavier was one of the first missionaries to head to Japan.
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