I've achieved a small milestone in my life, finally finishing the first manga I ever picked up. The series was Area 88 by Kaoru Shintani, the tale of a Japanese airline pilot shanghaied into joining a mercenary air force in the Middle East where he must fly combat missions for money if he's ever to return to Japan, and his fiancee Ryoko. Area 88 was one of the first Japanese manga comics brought out in English 22 years ago (ack!), and although the original English-language run didn't last long, it was the beginning of a big change for the U.S. in terms of accepting a new form of visual culture. Young people these days might not believe me, but there was a time when a person had to learn to read Japanese if he wanted to know how a particular manga story ended, which turned out to be a good thing for me since reading all the classic comics of the 80s and 90s exposed me to tons of useful kanji and vocabulary words, eventually finishing all 13 volumes of Area 88. If you'd like to try studying Japanese through its manga culture, J-List has some great tools to help you, from the Japanese in Mangaland series to many great manga volumes with furigana beside the kanji to make them easier to read.
I finally got around to finishing Area 88, the first manga I ever read, this time in Japanese.
7 comments:
Awww, man!
My girlfriend (Berit, if you know her) sent me this blog because Area 88 was also my first manga. However, in the US, they never finished translating the entire series (Eclipse International was bought by Viz Communications when they were up to "Mission" 42, then it was canceled). I haven't had access to the rest of the "missions" (Eclipse published the comic such that each issue was a single mission) in Japanese, and my Japanese isn't much beyond kana and basic grammatic syntax....vocab is practically non-existent. So I'm kinda trapped at the part where Prince Saki is confronted with an impending massive mercenary attack. Argh! Must find Japanese manga!
Yes, that's why I had to read it in Japanese. I was pleased with the series overall, good story and pacing, and the "Area 88" aircraft carrier they get later is awesome, if unrealistic. Maybe you should check out the 2004 anime, which I only just found out about -- I'll watch that too and see if it's good.
Ah, that anime....
Umm....I don't know if they made it passed ep 12, but from what I saw, it was okay. It definitely wasn't following the manga to a T (why they changed the photographer's name, I have no clue), but it was okay. I LOVE Bach's Little Fugue, so the theme song (Mission - Fuga) was a real treat.
While it's not the manga, it's cool to see a modern anime representation of it. Go 3D graphics!
Have you played the old arcade game? I made a victory play through in Mac Mame when I finished the manga. It was fun.
Wow....no one else chiming in? :)
As for the arcade game, YES, I've played it. To the ground. In the arcades. I actually played the game first. I didn't know that U.N. Squadron was named Area 88 until I stumbled upon Mission 8. I bought it in the bargain bin, then started reading it, and said, "Hey, this guy's familiar.....IT'S SHIN!!" And that's how I discovered manga. Ha ha!
Ah, I rented the SNES game once. It was pretty fun (though not quite enough fun to warrant an actual purchase...) That was around the time I was just starting to get into manga, so I was able to recognize—"Hey, it's that Viz comic!".
(Bach's Little Fugue? Really? Now I feel like playing Rockman Dash again...)
Ah, good times, good times. I wonder when they realized that tying anime to games = sales? I remember finding a Hokuto no Ken game for the Gameboy, and played it for hundreds of hours just because of what it was, ignoring that it wasn't the best done game ever. But it was fun, looking back.
Post a Comment