#and with Bomb watching it has extra poignancy

[gofancyninjaworld]

OPM Manga Chapter 150 Review: Master and Disciple

Needless to say, this is going to be long.   Needful to say this is going to be almost entirely meta. 

There’s a new archive site being considered for OPM manga chapters.  No need to sign up with Google to read, no ads, and so far I’ve found it clean and fast loading.  So, please go read chapter 150 here if you need the story/want to refresh your mind on the fine points:  https://catmanga.org/series/opm/150  @vibhavm​  would also like to know what you make of the site -- message him directly. :)

Right, with that out of the way, let’s GO!

Excellent call back to Bang using the same words

The Rod of Discipline

I have been dying for backstory for Bang and Garou forever, and here we are!  Normally, I do get annoyed when backstory is interspersed with a current fight, but in this instance, it adds a much-needed context to everything that is happening.

We find out mostly through Bomb, who is watching the showdown between erstwhile master and disciple closely.  As the elder of the pair,  Bomb has seen it as his role to correct the dissolute life his talented younger brother once led.   The cruel, selfish, hard-drinking, hard-fighting and sluttish life that Bang had once led would be difficult for anyone to countenance and with Bang hurting people on a whim,  Bomb decided that he had to step in.

“You haven’t even overcome yourself.” That is for me the pivotal line here.

Overcoming oneself seems to be the theme here.  It’s definitely been the big thing for Bang, first feeling ashamed that he had tried to kill his own brother while the latter had shown restraint even as he beat him down.  

Bang disciplined himself, set aside his offensive style to develop an incredible defensive style, opened a school and even became a hero more recently.   We see a series of snapshots as Bomb watches Bang’s development approvingly.  He’s been more ambivalent of Bang’s decision to become a hero,  but you can’t fault Bomb for still keeping an eye and supportive hand on his brother, come what may.

It's good to see that while his brother succeeded in admonishing him for his selfish and anti social life, Bang still has to learn to truly give of himself to others. Turning over a new leaf is a nice idiom, but truly changing oneself is a long-term project.  I’ve written before about Bang’s failings as a master. Bang acknowledging his failings as a master in text is so important. It's not just Garou: losing nearly all his students is an outcome of his neglecting them. 

Even in his ninth decade of life, there’s something wholesome and humbling about seeing Bang realise that he still has things to learn and room to grow.   He wants to get through to Garou the way Bomb got through to him.   That’s why he’s thrown away chance after chance to land a killing blow, getting hit and hit again as he faces off against Garou and hopes to reach him.

We leave off as something seems to be happening to Garou.  He’s still and his mask is cracking.  Bang is watching expectantly and...

...ah, but we’re going to have to wait and see what happens as we go to see what else is going on.

To the Bitter End

Over on the other side of the battlefield, something else is going crack and another disciple is questioning his convictions. Under the relentless assault of billions of monsters, Genos’s legs have finally given way and he goes crashing to the ground.   But he doesn’t think of his predicament first: Tatsumaki is also down for the count and she’s in a worse state than he is in.   He rockets over, slams the Black Sperms holding Tatsumaki into paste and starts to drag Tatsumaki away.

Unfortunately, her dress is a heck of a lot stretchier than it looks, making dragging her hard work.  Black Sperm isn’t helping, taunting him with the number of ‘him’ left over ( about 4.5 billion).  It’s hopeless.  There isn’t a way to turn this situation around.

As though to echo Genos’s gloomy thoughts, Tatsumaki briefly regains consciousness to ask him to run away already.

Tatsumaki, going back to Demon Cyborg rather than Genos is on one level emotional separation, but it’s more than that. By calling him by his hero name, she's also absolving him of any guilt in abandoning her.  Heroes hate to leave someone behind and are big on berating themselves that there should have been something they could have done.  By telling him there's nothing he could have done, she's telling him it's okay to leave.

And in answer, he laid on top of her to shield her from the monster as long as possible.

Not that Black Sperm is making it easy.  Genos has propped himself up as much as possible so as to provide a buffer between himself and Tatsumaki and the monster is pile-driving his head and what’s left of his arms into the ground, but it’s worse than that. The last page is filled with blood splatter and that blood is Genos’s. It’s not easy to make a full-bodied cyborg bleed (but we saw such an event early on, when Genos ripped Armored Gorilla’s limbs off and thrashed the poor creature so soundly blood poured out of its nose), but you can... and with so little body, Genos doesn’t have much blood to spare. This isn’t just broken parts to be fixed overnight.  He really is getting beaten to death here.

Looking at this, I’m thinking just how true to his name, Genocide, he is.  You see, the kanji with which his name is written means ‘great slaughter’ but it also means ‘to fight fiercely until the end’.  Even in the terrible state he is in, he still has the power to slaughter every last monster on site by self-detonating and erasing all life in a five kilometer radius.  But he’s turned away from that to continue to fight for the life of one lousy human being with whom he’s never gotten along, even at the price of a slow and painful death.  Even if it turns out to be for nothing. 

If that’s not strength, I don’t know what that is.   A lot of the words may be carried over from the webcomic, but they hit completely differently. It’s sad to see Genos thinking himself weak because he can’t do what Saitama does and stretch out a lazy arm to eliminate even the toughest enemies, but he’s shown us so graphically how much more to strength there is than inexhaustible physical prowess.

Meta: The More Similar, The More Important the Differences

It’s easy to see the physical similarities between Garou and Bang and easy to note how both of them are drowning in talent   But I can’t help but be struck by how different their rationales are in coming off the rails.  There is no way Garou would not have been appalled by Young Bang.  Garou is motivated by his struggling to think of how to make a positive, noticeable impact on the world, not just his own personal gratification. 

Garou does not drink, smoke, take drugs, chase after women (or men).  He may be getting in a lot of fights, but they’re not purely for fun.  He’s a good person wrestling with his place in the world.  On the other hand, Bang has been a bad person who is wrestling with his desire to become a better person in this world. 

I’m thinking... just as we know that Bang’s joining the Hero Association wasn’t mainly intended as a message to Bomb (who saw it as his little brother saying ‘I’ve really changed), I’m sure Bang is seeing Garou as being just like him in the reason he’s acting out, which isn’t right either.

I’m not having a good feeling about this as I look at the brothers’ hopeful faces.

Coda: ONE is evil, part 66

I've been saying that this arc, ONE has been going out of his way to break heroes in a way they find most painful to them, and he’s really brought the savage. Melting off Darkshine’s skin.  Killing Atomic’s friends and mentors in front of him in the nastiest way possible. I’m sure that Atomic Samurai is going to be triggered every time he even hears someone slurping up a thick milkshake.   A guy like Genos, who likes a six-foot separation distance between himself and 99.9999999% of the world, ONE loves inflicting prolonged, sadistic, dignity-attacking manglings on him. 

This time, ONE has outdone himself, by presenting Genos with situations where putting himself in compromising positions is the only heroic course of action.  Way up too close to Drive Knight, who compounded the indignity by discarding him shamelessly as soon as he got what he wanted from him.  I can see ONE now, steepling his fingers.  'Oh, you want to protect Tatsumaki at all costs, eh?  Admirable, admirable, now climb on top of her. Yeah, you heard right. Chop-chop, those little monsters aren't going to wait around forever.  She won’t mind -- she’s passed out.  Oh, you mind? Look on the bright side, once they beat you to death, you're not going to have to remember this. Then again, given how tough you are, that may take a while...'

If Bang is hoping that the cracking of Garou’s mask is going to reveal a newly-penitent student, ready to give him another chance, he may be in for an unpleasant surprise.

[thegloober]

RIFF 2018: Iceland, Donbass and Swimming with The Fifth Element

by Matt Fagerholm

October 1, 2018   |  

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“Mighty heartbeat of the ocean’s cold depths,

my strength and peace I drink from your sound.”

This except from the poem “Surf” can be found on a plaque near the statue of its author, Einar Benediktsson, in Iceland’s capital city, Reykjavík. Revered for his Neo-Romantic portrayal of natural wonders, the poet is immortalized in stone on the lawn of his former home, where presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev held their historic summit in 1986. Benediktsson’s monument is framed against a range of snow-capped mountains, the sheer awesomeness of which no picture could adequately capture. One of the most enticing aspects of the Reykjavík International Film Festival (RIFF), currently running through Sunday, October 7th, is inarguably the landscape itself. During my lengthy bus ride from the Keflavík airport to Reykjavík, I was struck by how the rugged, largely barren terrain still appeared to be untouched by man. On multiple occasions, I spotted what appeared to be human figures perched at the edge of cliffs. Only as they grew clearer in the misty, rain-drenched air did the figures reveal themselves to be nothing more than large rocks, with a small rock stacked on top of each. With its citizens numbering well below 350,000—the majority of which are located in the capital city—Iceland remains Europe’s most sparsely populated country, yet there is no lack of vibrant humanity in its culture.

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Americans disillusioned by the current state of governmental affairs will likely find Icelandic society to be a welcome reprieve. It runs almost completely on renewable energy (my bus ride included), provides universal health care, has the strongest journalist protection law in the world and—most importantly—is almost entirely free of mosquitoes. The country’s support for environmental protection is embodied by its current prime minister, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, a member of the Left-Green Movement and the second female to serve in that position. Preceding her was Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, the first-ever openly lesbian head of government, who amended Iceland’s marriage law to make it gender-neutral in 2010. Not only is Iceland’s highly approved president, Guðni Thorlacius Jóhannesson, well-schooled in history, he’s also famous for translating Stephen King books into the national dialect. The spiritual linkage between Reykjavík’s striking architecture and the prominent figures of its past is perhaps best expressed in the image posted above, showing how a statue of Norse explorer Leif Erikson blends seamlessly into Hallgrimskirkja Cathedral, a towering structure serving as the city’s North Star. 

Kicking off the 15th installment of RIFF on September 27th was “Donbass,” a punishing yet vital work from Ukrainian filmmaker Sergey Loznitsa that seeks to illustrate how our current era of alternative facts has reduced everyday citizens to expendable extras in the celebrated stories of tyrants. The picture is particularly impressive in terms of its scope, as the narrative baton is passed from one character to the next in 13 plot threads that circle back to the beginning, like a snake engulfing its own tale. Since there is no central protagonist to become fully invested in, the film functions as less of a searing drama than an absurdist allegory about the escalating insanity in eastern Ukraine, as local nationalists clash with the Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic. The recurring theme of fake news materializes as sincerely delivered statements are repeatedly debunked as acts of political theater, such as when a man utilizes hastily placed items in a storeroom to prove that a hospital is fully stocked, only to be applauded after going “backstage” to the doctor’s office. There’s a “Catch-22” level of maddening surrealism to the sequence in which a poor guy tries to pick up his stolen car at a police station, only to be shamed and threatened into giving it up as a necessary sacrifice supporting the fight against fascism (“It’s not robbery, it’s expropriation,” the officer explains). 

Time and again, the severing of an empathetic connection between strangers is magnified. A wealthy woman struggles to remove her mother out of a musty bomb shelter, less out of concern for her mother’s well-being than to avoid personal embarrassment, while referring to the surrounding impoverished inhabitants as “scum.” An old man branded a “Ukrainian exterminator” is publicly beaten with such unrelenting cruelty, one expects a lynching to break out, and it’s in moments like these where the camerawork is unflinching to the point of bordering on excruciating. Of course, the real star of the film is its Romanian DP, Oleg Mutu, one of the greatest living cinematographers, whose lensing fully immerses us in the characters’ plight, whether it be through a static wide shot or a snaking unbroken take (a prime example would be the intimate stroll through the labyrinthine bomb shelter). His sense of composition is impeccable, often building tension or crafting poignance by holding on the protagonist’s face in the midst of a crowd, such as the young woman seeking an illegal abortion in Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or-winner “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” or the girl dancing defiantly at her friend’s wedding in Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Gross’s masterpiece, “In Bloom.” Here, Mutu’s approach is more akin to the cinema of Michael Haneke, culminating with an 11-minute shot that serves as a fitting bookend, affirming the scripted nature of modern truth. 

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After enduring the horrors of “Donbass,” not to mention the icy temperatures one can easily weather when sightseeing, nothing could possibly offer more welcome relief than watching Luc Besson’s 1997 cult classic “The Fifth Element” from the comfort of a heated swimming pool. This is how I chose to end my first full day in Iceland on the evening of September 29th at Sundhöllin pool, and the experience was utterly euphoric, not in the least due to the film itself. Besson’s playful sci-fi fantasy is an ideal choice for such a venue because it is pure lightweight fun unencumbered by the self-important exposition that mars so many contemporary blockbusters. It isn’t beholden to any preexisting franchise or comic book, and therefore has the freedom to take risks without treating itself with the seriousness typically reserved for Biblical scripture. Besson’s film only pretends to be a cheesy bore at first, but as soon as its lovably nonchalant hero, Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis), enters the yarn, it makes no secret of the fact that it is, in essence, a full-on comedy in the vein of “The Princess Bride.” Each new character proves to be more uproariously outlandish than the last, from Milla Jovovich’s multipass-brandishing Leeloo and Gary Oldman’s twangy thug Zorg to Chris Tucker’s manic blur of a talk show host, who exclaims, “Bzzzt!”, as if his finger is perpetually stuck in an outlet. 

Though the special effects never overwhelm the charm of the characters, Besson’s portrayal of airborne traffic interrupted by hurtling bodies is infinitely superior to their ripped-off variation in “Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones,” primarily because the universe crafted for “The Fifth Element” feels infinitely more lived-in. One of the most transcendent moments in ’90s cinema occurs when the blue-skinned Diva (voiced by Albanian soprano Inva Mula) sings a haunting aria that erupts into an exuberant fusion of hip-hop and opera, requiring her to hit notes so high, they would even prove formidable for “The Magic Flute”’s Queen of the Night. As the song reaches its climax, editor Sylvie Landra juxtaposes the Diva’s performance with Leeloo effortlessly taking on a roomful of goons with her fists. The sequence is such a timeless crowd-pleaser that it prompted the entire swimming pool to break out into thunderous, frothy applause. There’s no question the audience had been anticipating it, since the Diva’s vocals could also be heard over the speakers in the shower room, as a performer dressed as Korben Dallas jumped out at random swimmers, armed with a replica of Willis’ gun. Another performer dressed as Leeloo interacted with participants in the cavernous indoor pool area prior to the film playing on a full-sized theater screen, and there was even a robotic DJ wearing a silver skullcap evocative of Zorg’s plastic headpiece. 

Many Icelandic locations were utilized for “The Fifth Element,” including the country’s largest ice cap, Vatnajökull, another potential reason why the film was selected for this year’s installment of the festival’s annual Swim-in-Cinema event. Besson would’ve undoubtedly been pleased with the screening, especially since he had originally intended on being a marine biologist (both of his parents were scuba diving instructors). Among the benefits of watching movies in a location this freeing is it gives audiences the opportunity to react not just with their guffaws and clapping hands, but with their entire bodies. Bad films will cause participants to amble distractedly around the water within minutes, so it’s a testament to “The Fifth Element”’s ageless appeal that for the entirety of its two-hour-plus running time, it left the crowded pool of moviegoers transfixed with delight.

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[mrmichaelchadler]

RIFF 2018: Iceland, Donbass and Swimming with The Fifth Element

“Mighty heartbeat of the ocean’s cold depths,

my strength and peace I drink from your sound.”

This except from the poem “Surf” can be found on a plaque near the statue of its author, Einar Benediktsson, in Iceland’s capital city, Reykjavík. Revered for his Neo-Romantic portrayal of natural wonders, the poet is immortalized in stone on the lawn of his former home, where presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev held their historic summit in 1986. Benediktsson’s monument is framed against a range of snow-capped mountains, the sheer awesomeness of which no picture could adequately capture. One of the most enticing aspects of the Reykjavík International Film Festival (RIFF), currently running through Sunday, October 7th, is inarguably the landscape itself. During my lengthy bus ride from the Keflavík airport to Reykjavík, I was struck by how the rugged, largely barren terrain still appeared to be untouched by man. On multiple occasions, I spotted what appeared to be human figures perched at the edge of cliffs. Only as they grew clearer in the misty, rain-drenched air did the figures reveal themselves to be nothing more than large rocks, with a small rock stacked on top of each. With its citizens numbering well below 350,000—the majority of which are located in the capital city—Iceland remains Europe’s most sparsely populated country, yet there is no lack of vibrant humanity in its culture.

Americans disillusioned by the current state of governmental affairs will likely find Icelandic society to be a welcome reprieve. It runs almost completely on renewable energy (my bus ride included), provides universal health care, has the strongest journalist protection law in the world and—most importantly—is almost entirely free of mosquitoes. The country’s support for environmental protection is embodied by its current prime minister, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, a member of the Left-Green Movement and the second female to serve in that position. Preceding her was Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, the first-ever openly lesbian head of government, who amended Iceland’s marriage law to make it gender-neutral in 2010. Not only is Iceland’s highly approved president, Guðni Thorlacius Jóhannesson, well-schooled in history, he’s also famous for translating Stephen King books into the national dialect. The spiritual linkage between Reykjavík’s striking architecture and the prominent figures of its past is perhaps best expressed in the image posted above, showing how a statue of Norse explorer Leif Erikson blends seamlessly into Hallgrimskirkja Cathedral, a towering structure serving as the city’s North Star. 

Kicking off the 15th installment of RIFF on September 27th was “Donbass,” a punishing yet vital work from Ukrainian filmmaker Sergey Loznitsa that seeks to illustrate how our current era of alternative facts has reduced everyday citizens to expendable extras in the celebrated stories of tyrants. The picture is particularly impressive in terms of its scope, as the narrative baton is passed from one character to the next in 13 plot threads that circle back to the beginning, like a snake engulfing its own tale. Since there is no central protagonist to become fully invested in, the film functions as less of a searing drama than an absurdist allegory about the escalating insanity in eastern Ukraine, as local nationalists clash with the Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic. The recurring theme of fake news materializes as sincerely delivered statements are repeatedly debunked as acts of political theater, such as when a man utilizes hastily placed items in a storeroom to prove that a hospital is fully stocked, only to be applauded after going “backstage” to the doctor’s office. There’s a “Catch-22” level of maddening surrealism to the sequence in which a poor guy tries to pick up his stolen car at a police station, only to be shamed and threatened into giving it up as a necessary sacrifice supporting the fight against fascism (“It’s not robbery, it’s expropriation,” the officer explains). 

Time and again, the severing of an empathetic connection between strangers is magnified. A wealthy woman struggles to remove her mother out of a musty bomb shelter, less out of concern for her mother’s well-being than to avoid personal embarrassment, while referring to the surrounding impoverished inhabitants as “scum.” An old man branded a “Ukrainian exterminator” is publicly beaten with such unrelenting cruelty, one expects a lynching to break out, and it’s in moments like these where the camerawork is unflinching to the point of bordering on excruciating. Of course, the real star of the film is its Romanian DP, Oleg Mutu, one of the greatest living cinematographers, whose lensing fully immerses us in the characters’ plight, whether it be through a static wide shot or a snaking unbroken take (a prime example would be the intimate stroll through the labyrinthine bomb shelter). His sense of composition is impeccable, often building tension or crafting poignance by holding on the protagonist’s face in the midst of a crowd, such as the young woman seeking an illegal abortion in Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or-winner “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” or the girl dancing defiantly at her friend’s wedding in Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Gross’s masterpiece, “In Bloom.” Here, Mutu’s approach is more akin to the cinema of Michael Haneke, culminating with an 11-minute shot that serves as a fitting bookend, affirming the scripted nature of modern truth. 

After enduring the horrors of “Donbass,” not to mention the icy temperatures one can easily weather when sightseeing, nothing could possibly offer more welcome relief than watching Luc Besson’s 1997 cult classic “The Fifth Element” from the comfort of a heated swimming pool. This is how I chose to end my first full day in Iceland on the evening of September 29th at Sundhöllin pool, and the experience was utterly euphoric, not in the least due to the film itself. Besson’s playful sci-fi fantasy is an ideal choice for such a venue because it is pure lightweight fun unencumbered by the self-important exposition that mars so many contemporary blockbusters. It isn’t beholden to any preexisting franchise or comic book, and therefore has the freedom to take risks without treating itself with the seriousness typically reserved for Biblical scripture. Besson’s film only pretends to be a cheesy bore at first, but as soon as its lovably nonchalant hero, Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis), enters the yarn, it makes no secret of the fact that it is, in essence, a full-on comedy in the vein of “The Princess Bride.” Each new character proves to be more uproariously outlandish than the last, from Milla Jovovich’s multipass-brandishing Leeloo and Gary Oldman’s twangy thug Zorg to Chris Tucker’s manic blur of a talk show host, who exclaims, “Bzzzt!”, as if his finger is perpetually stuck in an outlet. 

Though the special effects never overwhelm the charm of the characters, Besson’s portrayal of airborne traffic interrupted by hurtling bodies is infinitely superior to their ripped-off variation in “Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones,” primarily because the universe crafted for “The Fifth Element” feels infinitely more lived-in. One of the most transcendent moments in ’90s cinema occurs when the blue-skinned Diva (voiced by Albanian soprano Inva Mula) sings a haunting aria that erupts into an exuberant fusion of hip-hop and opera, requiring her to hit notes so high, they would even prove formidable for “The Magic Flute”’s Queen of the Night. As the song reaches its climax, editor Sylvie Landra juxtaposes the Diva’s performance with Leeloo effortlessly taking on a roomful of goons with her fists. The sequence is such a timeless crowd-pleaser that it prompted the entire swimming pool to break out into thunderous, frothy applause. There’s no question the audience had been anticipating it, since the Diva’s vocals could also be heard over the speakers in the shower room, as a performer dressed as Korben Dallas jumped out at random swimmers, armed with a replica of Willis’ gun. Another performer dressed as Leeloo interacted with participants in the cavernous indoor pool area prior to the film playing on a full-sized theater screen, and there was even a robotic DJ wearing a silver skullcap evocative of Zorg’s plastic headpiece. 

Many Icelandic locations were utilized for “The Fifth Element,” including the country’s largest ice cap, Vatnajökull, another potential reason why the film was selected for this year’s installment of the festival’s annual Swim-in-Cinema event. Besson would’ve undoubtedly been pleased with the screening, especially since he had originally intended on being a marine biologist (both of his parents were scuba diving instructors). Among the benefits of watching movies in a location this freeing is it gives audiences the opportunity to react not just with their guffaws and clapping hands, but with their entire bodies. Bad films will cause participants to amble distractedly around the water within minutes, so it’s a testament to “The Fifth Element”’s ageless appeal that for the entirety of its two-hour-plus running time, it left the crowded pool of moviegoers transfixed with delight.

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