Manga Mavericks

It’s been almost six months since we last released an episode of this podcast, but that doesn’t mean we stopped recording it! On the contrary, we’ve got a dozen episode backlog that I need to work through. It might be a while yet before some of those episodes come out, but we’re getting back on track by releasing the most recent episodes we recorded and working backwards. Which means starting with the episode we recorded last week. On this episode VLordGTZ and I are joined by Colton to follow-up on our Death Note discussion on Manga Mavericks by talking about Netflix’s recently released live-action film adaptation. We discuss why the movie fails to work as an adaptation and as a standalone story, what didn’t work about the characters, and just how stupid the whole mess was. At the end we answer some questions about the manga itself, including our favorite moments and the dumbest things Light and L ever did. Manga Mavericks @ Movies is back and better than ever! Oh yeah, in case you didn’t notice we’re cal

Even though the original manga ended over a decade ago, Death Note has never really died. It has remained ingrained in the zeitgeist, transcending the status of merely being a popular anime series to being a story even those outside the community would recognize. Hence why it’s getting a Netflix live-action film adaptation, the newest in a series of attempts to cash in on the franchise since it concluded. So Death Note is an evergreen series everyone still talks about, but does it actually hold up? Was it really as tightly written and thrilling as you remember? Do its themes of justice, good and evil hold any actual weight? That’s what the Mavericks intend to find out as they re-read the series for the first time in nearly a decade. VLordGTZ also joins us to give his impressions of the series as a first-time reader, to see if the story could still grab the attention of modern fans. Together they discuss the good and the bad, and why Death Note still captures the imagination of fans nearly fifteen years later.

It feels good to have finally released the Pokemon Adventures retrospective after months of editing it on and off. Doubly so after refueling my passion for the series upon flipping through the Pokemon Adventures artbook that Viz just put out earlier this week. It’s chock full of beautiful color art and illustrations from Satoshi Yamamoto’s entire run on the series, from the early GSC stuff to the recent ORAS arc. In addition to gorgeous renditions of the cover artwork, there are a lot of great colorized versions of iconic scenes from the manga that you can’t find in the regular volumes, which are a real delight. Even more so is the inclusion of the first chapter of the Pokemon Ranger webcomic Yamamoto drew back in ’06, which has never been collected in graphic novels before or translated in English! Yamamoto promises that in the next artbook, he’ll include more chapters, and considering that this story seems to explain what happened to Deoxys after FireRed & LeafGreen, I really hope he does so. This artbo

Yo! Here’s how the story goes you find out. About a manga in Shonen Jump, there’s no doubt. The podcaster whose eye is on it he’ll say “I’ll be making a podcast, s’what I’m gonna be making!” So we set sights on One Piece, Eiichiro Oda’s monolithic manga that has been enthralling fans worldwide for over 20 years. To help us commemorate this hardy occasion, we brought aboard Sam Leach, a shipmate over at the One Piece Podcast, to help us make merry over our One Piece memories. During the course of our three hour reminiscence, we’re reminded how through it all - through all the troubled times, through the heartache and through the pain - we know that One Piece will be there to stand by us, just like we know we’ll stand by it. We are on a cruise, and have been for the last twenty years. No matter how much longer this journey may last, know that there is always room for you if you want to be our friend and join this adventure with us. Together we will find everything that we’re looking for. So come aboard and bri

I want to be the best there ever was. To beat all the rest, yeah, that’s my cause. Unfortunately, just like Ash, I keep getting stuck in set back after set back, taking far too long to make any real progress. Until now! After spending three months in editing hell, the long-awaited second half of the Pokémon Adventures retrospective is finally here! In this special podcast I’m joined by Annaliese Christman, the official letterer of Pokémon Adventures for Viz Media, as well as fellow Pokémon fanatic Johnathan Lewis to discuss the entirety of the Pokémon Adventures manga from the beginning. That’s right, we talk about all fourteen arcs – you can see why this podcast ended up so long, right? Topics of discussion include the manga’s fidelity to the games, the missed opportunities of the FireRed & LeafGreen arc, difficulties in translating the manzai jokes in Diamond & Pearl, why Ruby is so fabulous, and tangents about all sorts of random things! All in all, we had a great conversation about what makes this

Part of the problem with doing a bi-weekly podcast is that you’re always a week late to the discussion, even if you made plans before everyone else. First, ANNCast did a Rumiko Takahashi retrospective last month when I’d already planned to do one this October to celebrate her 60th birthday, something I’ve had in mind for the past year. Then, Wave Motion Cannon, Manga Machinations, and Manga In Your Ears all put out an episode on My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness within a week of each other after we had just finished recording ours. And now, practically every anime and manga-related podcast is doing an episode complaining about Anime Strike!, including Colton who cucked me and went off on his own to record one with Buggy and Doctor even though he knew me and VLord wanted in. What am I supposed to add to the conversation now, huh? Why couldn’t we all be on the same page…well actually we all were on the same page...but why couldn’t we all done one big collaboration instead of all these fragmented discussions

They say that dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff which it is made. Unless it’s a dancing manga, in which case it’s made of paper and ink or pixels if it’s digital. Today the Manga Mavericks find their rhythm and explore the meaning of dance through Tomo Takeuchi’s Welcome to the Ballroom, a resoundingly popular dancesport manga whose anime adaptation promises to be one of the best shows of the upcoming summer season. Considering Colton was not a fan of similar dancesport manga Straighten Up!, will the Mavericks be able to get into the groove of the series, or will they lose their footing and fall out of step with its story and messages? Well if the only way to describe dance is to show dance, then the only way to learn what people think is to hear them, so listen away! Of course we’ve got news to cover first. Colton cheats on the show with another podcast, so Sid is forced to recruit VLordGTZ yet again to discuss the latest happenings in the world of manga. From great deals like the F

Ever wanted to know what a slime monster tastes like? Apparently mangaka Ryoko Kui did. This week the Manga Mavericks fill up on her D&D-inspired cooking manga Delicious in Dungeon, recently published over in the west by Yen Press. Did it whet the boys’ appetite for a fantasy cooking manga, or did it leave a bad aftertaste? If you’ve read my review of the first volume, you can probably guess, but listen and find out anyways! Before that, we’ve of course got news to deal with! We run down Oricon’s latest semi-annually top-selling charts, exciting upcoming new manga, and changes going on in Weekly Shonen Jump’s lineup, including the addition of two new Jump Starts, Shudan! and Cross Account! Shudan! already debuted in this week’s Jump, and it’s one of the best first chapters I’ve read in a while. Definitely look forward to us discussing it more in-depth on the next episode of the show. Between the news and our Dungeon discussion, this is a short but sweet episode that’ll be sure to satisfy your cravings f

Pokémon Adventures is perhaps the most famous and by far the best Pokémon manga ever made. To celebrate its 20th anniversary, LumRanmaYasha is once again joined by Annaliese (Ace) Christman, the official english letterer for the series for Viz Media, as well as the self-proclaimed Pokémon fanatic Jonathan (Vix) to discuss the series and its legacy. In the first part of our two-part retrospective, we reminisce about how we discovered the manga, and naturally, how we got into Pokémon in the first place. What results is the realization that Pokémon is more than just a franchise designed to make kids waste their money trying to collect everything associated to it, but rather a lifestyle, one that an entire generation has collectively grown up with. We’ve made friends, learned to read, and even gotten jobs thanks to Pokémon; it’s become an irreplaceable part of our lives. Thanks to Pokémon, every day along the way, we have been prepared. With every challenge, we have gained knowledge to be shared. And in our hea

Even if rakugo was a dying art form, manga surely isn’t! The anime adaptation of Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu was critically acclaimed among anime connoisseurs in the west, so the Manga Mavericks take a look at the original manga, licensed and renamed Descending Stories by Kodansha USA. Can a manga capture the essence of rakugo as an auditory performance art in a soundless medium? Or is this another case of an anime adaptation transcending the limitations of its source material to transform a good story into a masterpiece? But first, news! Colton’s back from buying cigarettes at Anime St. Louis, and rejoins Sid in discussing the latest happenings in the world of manga. We feign enthusiasm for the return of Hunter X Hunter, speculate on the potential of a Hollywood-produced Saint Seiya live-action film, and salivate over Seven Seas’s latest tidal wave of manga licenses, including the likes of Devilman and Captian Harlock! So sit down and get comfy as we deliver a podcast as entertaining as listening to a rak

Rounding off our My Hero Academia podcast trilogy is this long-awaited Q&A special! We received so many questions for our Manga Fight we couldn't possibly use them all, so we organized this special episode to answer them! Both Jeff Ruberg and Doctor return to give their takes on your questions, and what results is the realization that all podcasters are evil, Stain is best girl, Mineta should make a Spirit Bomb out of sticky balls, and lots of lucrative ideas for ScrewAttack! Before we get to all that we have to cover the news first, but because Colton abandoned the podcast to go to Anime St. Louis to buy cigarettes, I had to find another co-host for the week. Thankfully, that scumbag VLordGTZ just happened to be in the room so I pulled him over, sat him down, and forced him to talk about the latest happenings in the manga industry for fourty-five minutes. We discuss how confusing Yu-Gi-Oh! is now, dance on Fairy Tail's grave, and speculate on the Attack on Titan/Madagascar crossover that is totally defi

Who's the greatest teacher in manga? Korosensei? Zetsubou Sensei? The Ultimate Otaku Teacher? Ha! Posers, all of them! They pale in comparison to the original gangsta, the one and only, Great Teacher Onizuka. To celebrate the GTO manga's 20th anniversary, we're schooling you guys a crash-course on the fundamentals of GTO. Fellow All-Comic manga specialist Nick Rowe joins us to give us the 101 on how the old folk discovered GTO back in the days of Tokyopop and how filthy rich GTO's creator Tohru Fujisawa became because of it's success. Not only do we talk about the original manga in depth, we touch upon the prequel, sequels, and spinoffs as well! Everything you ever wanted to know about GTO is covered in this erudite educational episode. But first, we've got about an hours' worth of news to peruse through! We correct the previously misreported circulation numbers for One Piece, butt heads on whether Keijo!!!!!!!! was unfairly canceled, and are simultaneously bemused and amused over the recent controversy over

It’s time for another episode of All-Comic Presents: Manga Mavericks Presents: Manga Fights sponsored by Geoff Martin Art Sales (not really)! Operating in the same fashion as Screen Junkies’ Movie Fights, Manga Fights features passionate manga fans debating it out over manga-related several topics both intriguing and insane. With the Manga Mavericks as your hosts, intelligent conversations, heated arguments, and unintentional comedy is always sure to abound! Manga Fights returns for a three-month hiatus with a fight of heroic proportions! Continuing where we left off with our My Hero Academia debate, Doctor rejoins us to debate Jeff Ruberg, mobile developer for Viz Media, in a series of MHA-related topics! For the very first time ever, every topic picked for this episode was a listener suggestion! Not knowing just what to expect, Jeff and Doctor argue over what makes a good hero and villain, what defines a "comic-book style," and most importantly, who the best girl and best boy in the series are! The debates

There's been a lot of gloom and doom about One Piece recently. It got taken off Toonami, then it got dumped by Hulu, and now everyone's aflame over whether the Pudding twist was sexist or not. In these trouble times, just remember - One Piece has three times as many volumes in print than the entire population of Japan! It has more graphic novels in circulation than any other comic book in the world. Crazy to think about, isn't it? For all the ups and downs One Piece might go through, no one can deny it's success, and it's indomitable presence in comic book culture worldwide. This week we don't have a discussion, but the Mavericks still manage to go on for about a hour and a half on a ton of news! We cover the March Bookscan list, the latest licenses, and a ton of noteworthy circulation news! We cap off the show covering a list of long-running manga people dropped before their conclusion and the results are...not surprising, but interesting nonetheless! It's a shorter show than usual, but hey, after weeks of

I AM HERE! And our never-ending fight to discuss great manga continues with another Shonen Jump series discussion! This week we're talking My Hero Academia with Doctor of the Ass Backwards Anime Podcast. We talk the good, the bad, the ugly, the all right and All Might - every quirky detail we could extrapolate from the series for the sake of doing it justice! It's all for one great all-encompassing MHA podcast, one for all you MHA fans to enjoy! But before we get to that, we've got some news to cover! We round off our discussion of the recent Jump Starts by going over Tadatoshi Fujimaki's Robot X Laserbeam, a golfing manga featuring a protagonist who's as excited about the sport as most readers! Then, we wish Makoto Raiku well after his heartbreaking decision to cancel Vector Ball, eulogize the passing of the High School of the Dead mangaka, and speculate about the upcoming Blazing Transfer Student show on Netflix! Finally, we round off the show with a dozen of MHA Q&As from one seriously dedicated MHA s

Alternatively titled: Dr. Stockholm, Or: How I Learned To Stop Hating and Love Black Clover. ^ I was thinking of making that the episode title but I thought it would be too long. But yes, today's episode is all about the up-and-coming Shonen Jump hit, Black Clover, to celebrate it passing 100 chapters, two years of serialization, and an upcoming anime. Colton never continued with Black Clover past the first chapter, but since the start of the year, he's been working his way through the series in preparation of doing this very podcast. It was a tumultuous journey, full of ups and downs as Colton struggled to decide whether he enjoys or hates the series. And now, three months later, he finally has his answer. I won't spoil his position, but to quote a certain letterer, "Hooray for stockholm syndrome!" Who is this "certain letterer" I'm referring to, you ask? Why, she's only our special guest for this episode, the one and only Annaliese Christman, the official english letter for Black Clover and World Trigger

We were going to record a podcast about Toonami, but that fell through, so we're talking about Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale instead. What a switch. Needless to say we needed some extra help to get through this, so we recruited our friend Ethan to help us dissect everything that works and the exponentially greater number of things that doesn't work about this latest installment in the illustrious SAO franchise. For what it's worth, this is the best thing the SAO franchise has yet to offer. But by SAO standards, that's pretty faint praise... Enjoy the show, and follow us on twitter at @manga_mavericks, on tumblr at mangamavericks.tumblr.com, and subscribe to us on Youtube. You can follow the hosts on twitter at @lumranmayasha and @VLordGTZ. If there’s something you want to ask that’s too big to tweet, drop us a line in the comments below, or e-mail us at mangamavericks@gmail.com! Thanks for listening!

Hey, I technically got this up on Sunday, right? Ah, I suppose it doesn't matter if you're not listening to this episode on the day it was posted anyway. Sorry for the delay, but the rough audio for this episode was over four hours long and I had to edit it instead of Colton. But hopefully because this is such a long - and stuffed - episode it was well worth the wait! That's right, our long awaited Weekly Shonen Sunday episode is finally here! We're joined by returning guest and good friends Bomber D Rufi, who recently started a blog dedicated to recapping each new issue of the oft underappreciated magazine. We cover several of Sunday's current hits and other underlooked gems in the lineup, as well as some of the most notable mangaka working for the imprint! To top it off, we answer two of the most pressing questions when it comes to Shonen Sunday: why is it so unpopular compared to Shonen Jump, and why the hell was Keijo!!!!!!!! even a thing?!!!!!!!! But that's not all! We've got our regular news coverage

What, another Movie Mavericks in the same week?! That’s right, since this week’s Manga Mavericks is being delayed a few days, we thought we’d give you a little something-something to tide you guys over! In this installment LumRanmaYasha and VLordGTZ talk about the Oscar-nominated animated french-japanese co-production The Red Turtle and the cinematic classic anime masterpiece Ghost in the Shell, a little too late after the Oscars happened and a little too early before the live-action GITS remake comes out! Listen to LumRanmaYasha correctly guess that Zootopia would win the Oscar to VLord’s chagrin, and VLord fume about how terrible the live-action GITS will be. “No! That’s not Kuze! You don’t destroy one of the best Stand Alone Complex characters!” Ho boy, just wait until he actually SEES the movie… Podcast Breakdown: 00:25 – The Red Turtle 22:12 – Ghost in the Shell (1995) 40:07 – Wrap-Up Enjoy the show, and follow us on twitter at @manga_mavericks, on tumblr at mangamavericks.tumblr.com, and subscribe to

Miss us this past month? Well don't fret, because on this week's Movie Mavericks we've got a nostalgic double feature to talk about! First up is the classic Sailor Moon movie "The Promise of the Rose," a movie about Tuxedo Mask's homoerotic relationship with a rose-twirling alien and why Sailor Moon is Jesus Christ incarnate. Then we talk about the latest Yu-Gi-Oh! movie "The Dark Side of Dimensions," or as it should've really been called Kaiba-Oh! The Daft Seto of Duel-mensions! A movie that's not just a fitting epilogue for Yu-Gi-Oh! fans, but gives you all the Seto Kaiba scene-stealing greatness you forgot you needed and now can't live without. Podcast Breakdown: 00:15 - Sailor Moon R: The Promise of the Rose 32:26 - Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions 1:07:30 - Wrap-Up Enjoy the show, and follow us on twitter at @manga_mavericks, on tumblr at mangamavericks.tumblr.com, and subscribe to us on Youtube. You can follow the hosts on twitter at @lumranmayasha and @VLordGTZ. If there’s something you want to