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dereksmcgrath · 2 years ago

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On today’s livestream:

Ongoing Bakugo drama

Why anyone teaching comics needs to oppose rightwing book bans

And a live-reaction to the newest chapter of Blue Box!

A recording of the stream will be available after the stream concludes (around 12 noon EDT).

A preliminary transcript is below and will be corrected later.

Let’s get started. Today is August 21, 2022. This is Sunday Morning Manga. I am Derek S. McGrath, my pronouns are he/him/his. I’m here every Sunday, 11 AM EDT on Twitch and YouTube. You can read my writing on Tumblr and Wordpress, @dereksmcgrath, and email me at [email protected].

On today’s stream:

Ongoing Bakugo drama

Why anyone teaching comics needs to oppose rightwing book bans

And a live-reading of the newest chapter of Blue Box! If you would like to read along, open up the chapter on the Viz web site. I’ll put this and other links from today’s stream into the chat window.

What Akane-banashi Tells Us About Shaggy Dog Stories and Gintama

Last weekend on the livestream, I talked about the value of Akane-banashi as an example for how to teach public speaking, and how the story spoke to me personally when it comes to a father coming up with a name for their child.

But something I hadn’t considered, despite it staring me in the face, was what the Jugemu story has to tell me.

I’m going to read a modify version of something I posted to my blog this week. Link is in the chat.

I’m a big fan of Gintama. A few months ago, I had written a review of the final movie, as well as a recommended watchlist of the series’s most essential stories.

And then I realized, “Oh, Gintama is just a bunch of rakugo stories.” And I don’t just mean because a character, the pet monkey Jugemu, is named for the same rakugo story, only ramped up to be even more absurd and a lot more vulgar.

In one of the first chapters of Akane-banashi, we get a flashback to her teacher explaining why rakugo persists: they’re shaggy dog stories. They’re stories that still entertain because they speak to something still persistent in Japanese culture–and, in my selfishness, as I sit here in the United States, many of those stories speak in ways to us readers. I don’t think this is my best recommended text, given its problematic content, but hearing the rakugo stories in Akane-banashi, and then seeing those same stories bastardized in Gintama, is like the academic essay “Shakespeare in the Bush,” in which American anthropologist Laura Bohannan is struggling to understand how, while talking with members of the Tiv in West Africa, they are interpreting Hamlet so differently, due to differences in how we all view parent-child obligations, whether ghosts are a thing in our culture, and so on. (And I’ll have more to say about ghosts, cultural transference, and localization later.)

But that word, “localization” is at the heart of this. So much of our debates in translating and dubbing content in manga and anime is about “authenticity.” I love Gintama even though I don’t understand even one percent of the references in it coming out of rakugo and Japanese culture. I don’t understand all the depth of Akane-banashi, but I do understand what it has to say about storytelling. And just as Gintama is boring the same rakugo that Akane-banashi is pulling from, we have to be open to these reinterpretations. I have been really bad at that–I cling to nostalgia and how I think something should be, not because what I’m seeing is doing a good job at adapting or translating or updating the material, but because I want what is familiar to my very first encounter with it. And I have to do better at that. And that’s another detail I didn’t get to talk about with Akane-banashi, as a lot of the series is also about traditions over new approaches. But this is a long bit of rambling. The point I wanted to make–all I wanted to say, is that reading Akane-banashi has given me a new appreciation for how great Gintama was at translating rakugo stories, too. And in that watchlist document I made, I neglected to bring up all the filler. Maybe a reverse of that watchlist would be fun for a livestream topic–“essential Gintama ‘shaggy dog’ stories.” Would that be something you would want to hear about? Message me in the chat or email, [email protected].

Bakugo Drama

Another postscript: if you are listening to this, I recommend stepping away for maybe five to ten minutes–you’ll know I’m done when the next slide pops up–as I’m going to get into spoilers for the newest chapter of My Hero Academia. I know today’s live-reaction is going to be Blue Box, but, once again, I sought out spoilers for the newest My Hero Academia chapter, so now you are stuck hearing me complain about how that story arc is going.

Before the week-long hiatus, we ended the previous chapter with Shigaraki attacking Bakugo, again, and now Bakugo is seemingly dead.

So, this week’s live-reaction was to be for only the newest chapter of Blue Box–but, you know what, let’s also take a look at the latest chapter of My Hero Academia. I already saw spoilers online, so let’s see whether what was spoiled online matches what the official translation says.

[A TRANSCRIPT TO THE LIVE REACTION TO MY HERO ACADEMIA WILL BE INCLUDED HERE.]

And if you opened the newest chapter, it should say, in the official translation, something to the effect of Best Jeanist taking Bakugo’s pulse, and confirming, yep, no pulse. So, he didn’t say “Bakugo is dead,” but if he has no pulse, that means dead.

I’ll talk about the artwork in a moment, because I do think the choices in drawing Bakugo’s death are effective. But I’m also going to talk about how this supposed death, even illustrating it, is not making me feel anything.

I’ve said before that judging a series by its chapters is not as helpful as judging the work as a whole. That is fair from the perspective of appreciating, analyzing, and interpreting this comic as a work of literature. But in terms of marketing, and serialized narrative, I don’t think this arc is working. There is little build-up when someone dies or someone unleashes more power, which should make things feel realistic–but instead it feels unbelievable, because it seems by chance, hence by the author deciding “and then this happened.” I’ll say more about this later, but at least the Eri bullets leading to All For One’s regression makes sense. Dabi, just continuing by anger, makes little sense.

Artwise, Bakugo bleeding out dead should do something for me. Mirko being surrounded by hands should make me fearful for her safety and proud of her defiance. I’m not feeling that. I’m not connecting with these characters.

Speaking of Mirko, I’m not liking how she’s handled in today’s newest chapter. I have been curious, given what happens to her and Aizawa in the newest anime season coming soon, how Studio BONES and merchandise will handle representing them with missing limbs, how they gain accessibility, and how their disabilities will be handled. I get a sense that the lack of merchandise showing these two with their disabilities is not just to avoid spoiling the anime; I have this nagging fear that this is reticence to represent disabilities in consumable products, including in stories. I’m going to invoke DuckTales 2017 later in a moment, but compare how Mirko and Aizawa’s artificial limbs are treated, compared to Della Duck in DuckTales, as well as how Scrooge reacts to seeing her artificial limb. Look at interviews by the DuckTales staff where they talked about how they spoke with advocates for representations of people with disabilities in children’s animation. I know My Hero Academia is not kids’ fare, I know that animation is not just for kids–which is why I find it more worrisome that a kid’s cartoon may better address accessibility.

And that’s personally disappointing for me, as I’ve presented at conferences about how My Hero Academia was so good at addressing, if not accessibility directly, then gesturing towards analogous concepts, such as All Might’s injury, how Ojiro��s clothes are modified for his tail, how doors into buildings are designs for all heights. But then Horikoshi started emphasizing the discrimination against heteromorphic characters like Spinner and Tokoyami, and the My Hero Academia spinoff Vigilantes addressed people with giant Quirks being segregated into substandard government-assistant housing that is still not ideal in size and definitely not near sufficient mass transportation or groceries. But that’s a longer diatribe.

The point I’m trying to make, is that all of this with Mirko, in that art, seems less like showing how desperate she is, literally biting her way through Shigaraki’s hands, and how he is pulling her apart, than it is feeling like fetish content. That’s not just up to the creator; that’s on readers, so that’s on me seeing that and not saying, “No, you know what he’s going for.” That being said, you are showing Shigaraki covering over Mirko. I know, in light of recent debates about Game of Thrones and representations of sexualized violence, we have to be aware that some content, even if demanding a content warning or being triggering, has to be so in order to get across that this is wrong. But tone and context are important, too. I want to act like this is new to My Hero Academia, that it’s too violent–but we started this series with Bakugo in the slime monster and All Might’s injury. But when you add to this context what happened to Midnight, Star and Stripe, and Nagant, it is hard not to read more into this.

As for what is going to happen to Bakugo, I have a thought:

In one of Horikoshi’s previous series, Oumagadoki Zoo, three supporting characters gave up their lives to give their abilities–their pseudo-Quirks–to the main character so he could save the day. The last chapter acts like this is their death…only to almost immediately reveal that the protagonist could release those abilities back to the deceased, resurrecting them. When people online are thinking Bakugo is coming back, and thinking he’ll be one of Izuku’s pillars alongside other wielders of One For All, don’t be surprised if his resurrection invokes imagery from O-Zoo.

Turning back to what I said earlier about the villains:

…Just let Dabi get defeated already.

Do you know why Dabi getting defeated by Todoroki worked? It was unexpected but not impossible. You know why Dabi _eventually_ unfreezing himself and continuing the attack works? Because of course he can–he has enough firepower that I do think he could get out of the ice; after all, in the popular imagination, fire has no maximum temperature, while ice can’t really get any colder. But the timing here is off: he is already out of the ice and showing that anything Todoroki did was pointless. And it doesn’t do much aside from, “Ah ha, coincidentally, all of these bad things happen at the same time, turning the tide of this battle! Bwa ha ha!”

I don’t mind the coincidence; I mind the timing. I mind that Dabi getting out of the ice is so quick as to be done off-screen. I mind the lack of build-up. I mind the storytelling choices and where you put the panels, or, if you want a film version, the camera–why was Dabi emerging not shown? Is this to save for that reveal for the anime, where animating the scene somehow will make it more impactful? If so, what does that say about undermining and underestimating Horikoshi’s talents, as well as how good comics can be compared to animation? This is one reason why I have been hesitant to talk about the art in this arc: the paneling has been so hard to follow what is happening in the action.

It’s not even like these panels are poorly organized to reinforce how chaotic the plot has become. This is ridiculous. This is not a chess game–it’s just, “Ah ha, you didn’t expect this, now I have done this!” As I said, at least All For One’s empowering has to do with the Eri bullets; Dabi just being too angry to die is lazy. It’s not even “Ludwig Von Drake forgot to die,” which remains probably the best joke DuckTales 2017 ever did, and they held it off until the grand finale because it’s such a dumb moment that breaks an already broken story.

But what did you think? Is Bakugo dead? Is the artwork or the story effective at making you care about what the characters are going through? How do you think My Hero Academia can handle representations of disability? Leave your comment in the chat, and maybe I can revisit this topic in response to your comments next weekend.

Let’s move onto this week’s Fandom Report for Sunday, August 21, 2022. This segment looks at recent news, not only in manga and anime but in larger pop culture, too.

Anna Lauzeray-Gishi Off Classroom of the Elite

We start with news about a role being recast.

From Anime News Network, voice actor Anna Lauzeray-Gishi has been removed from Crunchyroll’s French dub of Classroom of the Elite due to prior involvement in a Chainsaw Man fandub.

Again, potentially burning any bridges I could have with the anime and manga industry–this is silly.

I have read debates by voice actors online, in separate discussions not about this case explicitly, that any aspiring voice actor should never do fandubs, and if you do, don’t share them online as a series. I appreciate this criticism, but it sounds a bit like “I got mine, go get yours the right way.”

I’m not going to pretend there are tons of voice actors that we know who got their start from fandubs–I can think of two who got their start on abridged series–and I’m not going to pretend that these actors online, with their advice, aren’t making a good point that these corporations are looking for any excuse not to hire and are protecting the brand.

But a good actor who is acting ethically is a good actor who is acting ethically. Yes, she was in a fandub–debate whether that is ethical or not, but that is so low on my list compared to, ahem, certain other voice actors who have gotten away with worse. I appreciate that Lauzeray-Gishi has asked that the next actor not be harassed–that is a stand-up action, and while I know nothing about her or her talent in acting, I hope she has a career in voice acting ahead of her. Given the other roles she has had in anime dubbing, I hope that’s the case.

Chinese Cosplayer in Trouble

In other news of people getting into trouble: a cosplayer in China has gotten into trouble for dressing as Ushio Kofune from Summer Time Rendering, due to a Chinese law forbidding wearing a kimono, given what it evokes from human rights abuse by the Japanese military during World War II. This is a complicated topic, and I do not feel like I can add much to this discussion–I leave it to people more verse in Japanese-Chinese national relationships to discuss.

Nintendo Sexual Harassment Allegations

And more legal trouble–Nintendo has been accused of sexual harassment. The details are troubling to read, so I’ve included a link in the chat. I also am including a response that Nintendo offered after these allegations.

Anime Feminist has an article about what went wrong with the Netflix Cowboy Bebop. I already discussed localization as an idea when reading and watching Akane-banashi and Gintama, and this post by Madeline Blondeau gets to the point that the series seems to be made for what she calls an American audience more interested in a post-Bill Clinton conception of police procedurals.

I can’t speak to how accurate this argument is: I have almost zero-interest in watching the Netflix version, not because it exists, but because, given how transphobic Netflix has been, they aren’t getting one dollar from me if I can avoid it.

But I’m not yet entirely convinced by the argument in the article.

I appreciate the point that anime Spike and Jet seem far more complicated in representing forms of masculinity, than their live-action US counterparts who are so much more Americanized in indulging in pointless acts of violence for the sake of a blockbuster shoot-’em-up production. I personally think there is a lot to pull out of these action stories that shows a lot of complexity, even if a lot of it is accidental–but maybe this is my bias, as I have published in or helped copyedit books that have tried to find subversive forms of masculinity in films that we may oversimplify as just dumb action movies.

And I found myself scratching my head about the “villainization of radical leftism”--which, again, I have not watched the Netflix series, so Blondeau is who you should listen to, not me, but I can’t help but ask how much of that was also baked into the anime, where the bad guys in those same stories were also taking on environmental bents. Granted, this then would lead me down a tangent about other anime that mocks environmental activists, like Patlabor, and how poorly those dumb takes hold up as our planet is on fire and we’re rationing water in Colorado and the wester United States, so, yeah, go read Blondeau’s article–the link to the piece from Anime Feminist is in the chat.

Let me know what you think about Blondeau’s article, as well as how Spike and Jet adhere to or contradict traditional notions of masculinity, especially in Hollywood cinema and popular culture. Drop a message in comments and continue this discussion.

Write to Your Favorite Mangaka!

Finally, the Shonen Jump Plus app has added a feature that will submit your fan letters to your favorite mangaka. A link with more information is in the chat.

Academic Corner

Now onto another segment for today’s stream, the Academic Corner. One of my specializations in teaching is in comics, so there is some overlap in this stream about what I like to read in manga, and what I like to teach from it. In this segment, I talk about recent developments in education, not all of which always connect to manga, or my teaching interest in comics, but I hope it’s of interest to you. Links to these pieces will be in the chat.

William Davies has written on the challenges of teaching in virtual settings and how the crippling fear of being accused of plagiarism is tormenting students.

Time Magazine has an article about whether an increased in teaching phonics can help increase literacy scores in schools.

On Wednesday night, the Japan Foundation of Toronto had an excellent lecture by Dr. Pedro Bassoe about the literature of Kyoka Izumi and the illustrations of Settai Komura. (It was amusing to hear Dr. Bassoe refer to the Kyoka Izumi from Bungo Stray Dogs as a witch–which is not exactly accurate but is clear enough to briefly explain a complicated plot. It’s even more hilarious that, this week, the Bungo Stray Dogs mobile game features a variant of Kyoka now as a yokai.)

I don’t know whether the YouTube video of Dr. Bassoe’s lecture is public online–but if the Japan Foundation does make the YouTube video public, I highly recommend watching it, it was really informative, especially about neat tricks in Komura’s illustrations to make facial features indistinct to blend into white backgrounds, enhancing those feelings of anonymity, isolation, and horror.

Also, in his lecture, Dr. Bassoe cited a book I want to try to get: Dangerous Women, Deadly Words: Phallic Fantasy and Modernity in Three Japanese Writers by Nina Cornyetz. It’s from 1999. Sounds like something that would help how I look at gender in a lot of my scholarship.

In Other News

In other news, speaking of the Japan Foundation and yokai, their New York City branch will have a free online talk about yokai. It’s titled “Yokai: How Japanese Folklore and Its Monsters Shaped Modern Horror.” It’s tomorrow, Monday, August 22, at 9 AM EDT. It’s free to watch. The EventBrite registration link is in the chat.

In other Japanese art news: Humble Bumble features more than $200 worth of books about Japanese art and culture, including about anime and manga, for a minimum donation of $18.

Also in EventBrite news: a workshop class for BIPOC writers is now available for registration, titled "Exploring the Inactive Protagonist." That is an engaging title. I read online that there are some free spots for the workshop if you can’t pay, so worth a look.

The Buffalo Syllabus

Now, getting into heavier content:

It has been months since the deadly shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.

This has the most tangential of connections to me: I worked in Buffalo, I lived in Buffalo–and where I was living was only a few blocks from that Tops Grocery Store in Buffalo, so while I sit here with my privilege as a white person in the United States, this story has geographical significance to me, beyond just the horror of how rightwing terrorism against Black people in this country persists–and of course I’m a human being with empathy who can look at this gun madness in this country and recognize how the bigotry that should be stamped out is instead inflamed by these gun nuts.

This gun nonsense, this racism, this bigotry, this rightwing nonsense–it all has to stop.

I don’t want to make this all about me, but I have to say, I have been disappointed by the lack of a response from many educational groups at the national level when it comes to the intersection of guns and bigotry as it harms schools. And I have been even more disappointed to see educational groups in Buffalo say next to nothing about this tragedy, as well as concrete actions those groups could take to help us prevent these mass shootings in the future, and send these craven white supremacists back into their holes.

All of this is to get to my point: there is at least one really good thing being done to combat this bigotry. I appreciate seeing J Coley, a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University at Buffalo, is working with Buffalo-born and -raised scholars to collaborate on the Buffalo Syllabus.

Quoting from the document:

The syllabus accepts recommended additional readings at the web site, bit.ly/BuffaloSyllabus.

Onto other topics, I want to give a plug to a podcast. I mention The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal at the end of every stream of Sunday Morning Manga. And Driftglass and Blue Gal have another podcast, Science Fiction University! The newest episode talks about representations of extraterrestrials in film and literature. As Blue Gal is a religion scholar, I was particularly engaged with her analysis of the Old Testament and the New Testament as similar to alien stories…It was a better way of linking aliens, sci-fi, and religion than I’ve seen in certain comics coming out of Japan (*cough* Fire Force is trash *cough*).

Now we get into more heavy stuff. I think this is the third livestream in a row where I complain about what is happening in the educational system. The last two times were about Texas. And today’s focus is on my home state, the crappy state of Florida.

I was born and raised in Florida. I have taught college in Florida. The current so-called governor of this state needs to be voted out. Teachers need to oppose this nonsense that is censoring course material.

In the last week, these are the stories:

A Florida classroom had its photos of notable Black historical icons removed, including photos of Martin Luther King Jr and Harriet Tubman. That teacher has quit.

Duval County in Florida has mandated that materials that support and affirm LGBTQ students be removed. Those jackasses should resign, not that teacher I mentioned above.

And to top it off: due to that ridiculous law in Florida mandating that schools hire people to review the books to make sure they don’t violate the dumb laws forbidding anything that says non-white people deserve respect and that LGBTQ people are valid, Florida is going to get rid of book fairs.

Oh, and because I won’t stop bashing Texas’s nonsense, they have banned a graphic novel of Anne Frank’s diary. There–there’s the connection to comics in this livestream that would otherwise be a mostly apolitical look at the newest manga chapters and instead keeps turning into a tirade trying to get more people to register to vote, to run for office, and to protest this inanity.

This nonsense has to stop.

By the way, Snopes says that this isn’t a book ban–the Anne Frank graphic novel was simply pulled from shelves for re-evaluation, and, if the book passes new standards, will be returned to shelves.

…That’s a ban. You can call it a “temporary ban,” or “a probationary ban.” It’s a ban. This is the same nonsense when certain academics in 2015 and 2016 said, “You can’t call the Republican nominee for President a ‘fascist’ because he doesn’t check off every item on my personal list defining the traits of a fascist!” It’s a ban. He was and is a fascist. This is like the Grinch promising to return that Christmas tree to repair it: I hope the books are restored to bookshelves, but out of my cynicism, I have been burned too many times by rightwing forces within education that do not honor promises and continue to drag this country further and further to the right. Goddamn it, Snopes–you’re full of shit on this one.

If they are going to pull these comics for poorly argued reasons, you know, as a manga fan, they will come for that. A few weeks ago, I mocked people upset about Square Enix’s new app Manga Up for putting black bars over even kneecaps–silly, yes, but I had confidence that, sorry to sound like a capitalist, market forces would pressure Square Enix to get rid of this stupid decision. But this stuff? With libraries and schools? They are coming for your manga, and when the government is making these ridiculous decisions, that is actual censorship, and it has to be opposed.

If you like manga, if you are like me and you have taught manga, you need to oppose this. Register to vote. Run for school board. Run for office. Vote these Republican book-banning bullshit artists out and vote in Democrats and put pressure on them to undo this madness.

Meanwhile, on the job market front:

I’m going to be honest–my experience on the job market, in education, has been difficult, whether having limitations put on my degree progress or just the challenge of finding a location where everything aligns, in terms of opportunities, contacts, atmosphere, and promotion.

And it hurts hearing other people facing these problems, including in other industries. I haven’t talked at length about how Discovery is screwing over Warner Brothers, but go listen to the newest episode of the podcast Kyle and Luke Talk About Toons, hosted by two of the creators of the Warner Bros series Mighty Magiswords, which, thanks to Discovery, has been removed from HBO Max. When I hear Luke talk about the job market in animation, and how long he has been at it, I look at when I got my PhD, how long that’s been, and thinking, yeah, this job market sucks.

I can always do more, and I”m trying to do more. This past week, I was in the audience for two online workshops or panels about applying for work with a PhD, whether in academia or outside of academia. I thought the discussions were useful and gave some direction in how to modify documents for working in teaching, research, or alternate-academic careers. I am looking for job opportunities, including in teaching, copyediting, and administration. I have ten years of experience in teaching writing, 19th-century United States literature, gender studies, and comics, and I have additional experience in organizing virtual and in-person conferences. If you know of job openings in teaching, copyediting, and administration, feel free to message me–my email is [email protected].

And I submitted another teaching application, which took a lot out of me for revising one of my syllabi in American literature–which, shameless plug, I’ll have up soon on my WordPress @dereksmcgrath, if you’re interested.

Plus, reading through job advice online linked to me to read from Christopher Caterine–their web site is in the chat.

And there is a job opening at UBC in Canada: its Sociology Department seeks a research chair in race or ethnicity studies. Link is in the chat.

And I only saw these job openings this morning, so I didn't have time to add them to the graphic.

The first is Assistant Professor of Indigenous Literatures at New York University. A link to the job posting to apply will be in the chat. Applications should be received by October 3.

And the University of New Hampshire at Durham has a job opening for what they are calling a "fully remote with some travel to N[ew] H[ampshire] for College events" position as Instructional Technology Designer. I applied previously to a similar position at the University of New Hampshire System and had a good interview with their staff, so I recommend looking into this job. This job will be filled as soon as possible, so get going on applications. I’ve included a link in the chat.

If you know of any job openings in education–maybe ones I could apply for, or maybe one you think can help other viewers–feel free to message me, the email address is [email protected].

Live-Reading: Blue Box Chapter 65

Okay, that takes care of a lot of academic stuff. Let’s wrap up today’s stream as we do every Sunday, with a live-reaction to a new chapter that has come up and that I haven’t read. And today’s live-reaction will be to Blue Box, Chapter 65!

I am going to get into spoilers for Blue Box, so if you want to read along, open Chapter 65 on the Viz web site–I’ll include the link in the chat.

Last time in the series, Chapter 64 from two weeks ago, the students had put on an updated rendition of Snow White–one that was struggling to respond to the problematic content of a guy waking up a sleeping girl with a kiss, but also debating whether revising such content removes the spice of a romance story. I appreciated that little debate, although the chapter’s wrap up exposes a lot of cliches that have plagued the story for awhile–but I’m guessing we’ll get into that with the newest chapter, Chapter 65.

But what about those of you who haven’t heard of Blue Box? What’s the series about?

Viz describes the series as follows:

…That’s kind fo short. And I debate whether we can call one of them a “lover” when we don’t know her feelings with the same interiority as the guy’s, but we’ll get to that.

Let’s talk about the plot in greater detail.

Beginning in April 2021, written and illustrated by Koji Miura, Blue Box is about Taiki Inomata , a high school badminton player who has a crush on his upperclassman, the basketball star Chinatsu Kano. When Chinatsu’s parents have to work abroad, she ends up staying with Taiki’s family. Hilarity ensues as Taiki manages his crush, his sports ambitions, and an emerging love triangle with the high school gymnast Hina Chono.

Not to be too mean to this series, because I do enjoy it, it is suffering a bit from what it wants to be, and what tone it’s striking. It’s not wacky enough to get big reactions to the comedic misunderstandings and failure for Taiki to make progress in his relationship with Chinatsu. And the sports match arcs come at an infrequent pace that it’s not matching the structure you would get from, say, Hajime no Ippo or Haikyuu.

But that’s not ignoring what the series does well. You want to root for Taiki, as he’s not a toxic “nice guy” archetype, or at least avoids most of those tropes, and certainly not without getting properly mocked for any of those qualities he does have. You want to root for Chinatsu, who comes across as well-meaning, friendly, and legitimately kind to others. But it is hard for me to get a sense of what they want. I don’t get that same enthusiasm for their sports like I get from Hinata in Haikyuu!! or understand some tragic back story behind the motivation to win, like Ippo in Haijime no Ippo. Not every story needs to be that deep–and that is kind of what Blue Box feels like: it’s the comfort food of manga reading. And that’s fine every Sunday, something to ease the nerves after how anxious things get around reading My Hero Academia, or how over-the-top and hilarious the goofy manga can be.

As for the sports component to this series: I don’t know enough about badminton, so I can respond to one review I read that said some of the game details in the manga were inaccurate. But if the manga isn’t getting the sports right, I can’t say I’m surprised, because when it comes to representing the main sports of badminton and basketball in this series, I don’t quite know who Blue Box is for. I’m not getting much out of to learn about sports. A few months ago, Jump pulled the tragically underrated baseball manga, Nine Dragon’s Ball Parade…which only now am I reading that title aloud and thinking, “Ah, gee, maybe don’t call it that…” But the series is getting a volume release from Viz, so there is that. But whereas Nine Dragons’ was getting my attention each week and helping me appreciate a sport as boring as baseball, I can’t say Blue Box is getting me that kind of excitement when it comes to something as easy as basketball or as physically complicated–for me anyway–as badminton. At least with Haikyuu, I get into the game, and I think I’m learning something about the sport as I read it. Granted, once I knew how that series ended–because I can’t resist reading spoilers–I was disappointed, and it has soured me on re-reading the manga: it’s like re-watching a sports game when you know the outcome–aside from skipping to the best plays in the game, what’s the point?

And just as the sports isn’t really doing much for me, I hate to say it, but the romance is lacking that spark. I feel like this series, in some way, wants to be like Toradora: Ryuuji and Taiga were practially already living together, the series had as its mission statement almost spoken aloud at you from the first episode of the anime that these two were going to be the couple of the story. Taiki and Chinatsu are almost there by sharing the same house, but it feels so much more sibling-like that trying to get a romance is not really working for me. There’s not that spark like there was between the passive homebody Ryuuji and the passionate but emotionally vulnerable Taiga.

And some of that owes to the other problem we have with Taiki as our Ryuuji stand-in: both of these young men see love and the objects of their affection as these idealized images. Being around Chinatsu in the same house should do something to demolish that idealized image more, to make her more human to him so that he realizes whether he loves her despite the everyday flaws someone brings into a relationship…and I don’t get that from this series. We do see more about Chinatsu that makes her even more lovable and admirable, but that only reinforces how Taiki idealizes her.

And then there is bringing in gymnast Hina as part of this love triangle, and given how Chapter 64 wrapped up, with Taiki accidentally kissing her in the Snow White play, I’m sure I’ll have more to say about Hina in this live reaction.

So, with all of that out of the way, let’s jump into Chapter 65 of Blue Box!

(A transcript of the actual live-reaction will be included here after the stream.)

Contact (and Hire) Me!

Thanks for listening to this week’s stream of Sunday Morning Manga! Did you enjoy this new chapter of Blue Box? Or do you have other remarks? Please add them to the comments section–I will respond to whichever ones I can.

And if you did like what you here, then all I can say is: hire me! Borrowing a line from The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal, this is not only something I want to do, I consider it a job. I work in teaching and conference organizing, a decade or close to a decade of experience in both. I am currently seeking work in teaching, copyediting, research assistance, writing, or conference organizing. Job leads are welcome: please email them to [email protected].

And that’s not a blurry photo of me on this slide–that is the second photo I have shared here of a local Florida lizard. That one is an iguana. I have been doing yardwork for months–it has been rare to see these around this part of South Florida for, jeez, years. So, I guess they are making a comeback. And that iguana is meme-able. Looks like that Spider-Man meme looking down and asking, “Can you believe this shit?”

Thanks again for joining this stream, and if all works on my end, I will now direct you to another stream, the Black Comics Chat on Twitch. I’ll be back next Sunday for another Morning Manga edition, where we get into shape with a live-reading of a hilarious manga soon to get its own anime, Mashle: Magic and Muscles, Chapter 121. I’ve been Derek S. McGrath. You have a good afternoon. Bye.

Links from Today’s Stream

My Links

https://www.twitch.tv/dereksmcgrath

https://www.youtube.com/DerekSMcGrath

Tumblr

WordPress

Series Discussed

Blue Box

Akane-banashi

Gintama

My Hero Academia

Fire Force (*cough* is trash *cough*)

Mashle: Magic and Muscles

My Shameless Plugs

What Akane-banashi says about Gintama and shaggy dog stories

Square Enix’s new app is a work in progress

Fandom Report

Anna Lauzeray-Gishi removed from Crunchyroll’s French dub of Classroom of the Elite

A cosplayer in China got into trouble

Nintendo has been accused of sexual harassment. Nintendo hs responded.

Anime Feminist on what went wrong with the Netflix Cowboy Bebop

Write to your favorite Jump mangaka

Academic Corner

William Davies on virtual teaching and plagiarism

Time Magazine on teaching phonics and literacy

Dangerous Women, Deadly Words: Phallic Fantasy and Modernity in Three Japanese Writers by Nina Cornyetz

Humble Bumble’s $200 worth of Japanese books for $18

"Exploring the Inactive Protagonist” BIPOC Writers Workshop

The Buffalo Syllabus

Science Fiction University podcast on extraterrestrials in film and literature

Florida classroom removes Black historical icons’ photos, teacher quits

Florida schools remove LGBTQ-affirming content

Florida school getting rid book fairs

Anti-trans freaks want to go back into your child’s school records to verify gender

Pod Meets World on bigotry, Anne Frank, and Boy Meets World

Snopes doesn’t know what a book ban is

Job Openings

Resources from Christopher Caterine

UBC Sociology Chair

NYU Assistant Professor of Indigenous Literatures (Due October 3)

University of New Hampshire at Durham remote position as Instructional Technology Designer (Due ASAP)

Other People’s Awesome Stuff

Kyle and Luke Talk About Toons

Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal

Black Comics Chat

#blue box #livestream #manga #my hero academia #Youtube

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