Year one manga.

 

Or 小学一年生 1st year student.

This is a long running manga from Shogakukan stable, seriously its a hundred years old, that is aimed at the 1st year student. More importantly its one of a few manga I picked up at the long defunct Lewisham boot sale in the late 90's, with the aim of drawing some stuff in D Paint.

 So what's the line up and what do I get in  this 1st year student manga?.

I'll give you a line up of the manga involved along with a few oddities.

Donkey Kong and Mario manga.

A Yoshi manga.

Wedding Peach manga

Kirby Manga

Puyo Puyo Paradise

Bomberman manga

3 Chome Tama Manga

Urana no omakase (Witch manga)

Some mini 4wd pocket racing car manga.

Chalk Hakase Manten Juku Some sort of cram school manga that is only one not in colour.

Finally something that is either Chin Puru or Yume no Oka no Daijiken some sort of sleeping bug manga with a bunch of weirdos.

Non manga involves some make and do stuff. Making a seat out of a cardboard box, taking your waistcoat off without removing your jacket, and most important of all some kids have found a bagworm and have given it a bunch of stuff to make its home out of.

Finally you have a story involving a nightjar called yodaka no hoshi a short story by Kenji Miyazawa. Which is not only out of copyright but has a good summary of the tale on wikipedia.

Finally there is some dice you could make out of a template involving Arle from Puyo Puyo which has faded to buggery now.

Le Anime et stuff.

 Got two things this week, first up is an update of stuff and the second is a video, both are French, or rather in the first case, French Canadian.

Videotron Update.

Not sure if I ever wrote about this before, but for a time our cable box was supplied by Videotron rather than Cable and Wireless. This meant we had some primitive games to play on our TV as a service along with cable television to our notoriously bad reception area.

There's an update of sorts on HG101, where one of the games (an ambitious adventure title is being reworked as a Coleco / NES game.  We still have our old remote in the cupboard at home along with a found manual, I picked up from the rubbish years ago. 

And if any of the games should get a rework, then its the break out game where you got an extra life for hitting a goldfish or the Qix clone, both were pretty good. 

The booklet I will have to dig out and scan if I haven't done already done so. Maybe add to Archive.org as well, but see below.

Jeane et Serge.

We picked up a tape called Jeane et Serge (Attacker You) along with a south bank show on electronic music that may have been overwritten by Power Rangers, along with something that just says X ray Documentary 1996.

Jeane et Serge is part of the Dans La Meme collection which has dubbed versions of Kickers, Ai Shite Knight, Story of the Alps: My Annette, Hiatari Ryoko!  Swiss Family Robinson: Flone Of The Mysterious Island and Pollyanna.

 I've romanized some of the titles here to their Japanese originals, and will kind of add a scan when I'm not busy. I have decorating to do, as my bedroom is being overhauled for the first time in years. We have a lot of stuff to shift.

From what I can tell, its a volleyball anime with some romantic overtones. The UK missed out on some stuff can only really remember Robotech or Voltron, being the parallel series back in the day, and that was strictly cable only. 

 Edit 

South bank tape is entirely overwritten by Power Rangers. On the upside have recorded some Mr Motivator bits and pieces and some ads along with some CITV from a Saturday. Still no sign of the Videotron manual though.

Phantom Freighters and the like

Have a new selection of books for you to read now. This is the Phantom Freighter another Hardy boys mystery. Number 39 if you will. It comes in both the original and UK edition remake.

To be honest, it's not a bad little mystery, the lads are investigating a few related mysteries. A shipping company that really does not want them to travel with them, and a courier service delivering boxes to residences where the original owner is not in but a gang member is. 

There are a few differences from the original to the remake. Chet has a hobby where he's making lures for fishing and there is a section where they test them out.  

In preparation for their often aborted trip on the freighter the boys get smallpox shots and have some crummy passport photos done., while obviously outdated the photo bit is obviously relatable nowadays, especially from the booths you see in malls and bigger supermarkets.

Finally the ending is changed from Joe Hardy squeezing through a duct to enter the radio room of a ship to them simply tricking the captain in the original.  I know which one I prefer.

Anyway original is here and the remake is here. Enjoy.

VHS MESS

Finally have a few new bits of VHS Mess for you. On a video with the cryptic label of BFG, Snow White and Cartoons we had no hope of finding anything strange.  

BFG is of course the well loved cartoon version of Roald Dahl's book. It''s got David Jason in it as the titular giant. It's not bad.  Snow White is the Cannon Video version with Diana Rigg as the evil queen and Nicola Stapleton as a young Snow White, I guess fresh from starring in Simon and The Witch.

No it's the third one, that nebulously named cartoons that got my attention.  I kinda guessed that the Snow White might have been the Disney one (it's not,) but I guess the cartoon bit was some old Warner Brothers Merrrie Melodies stuff or Tom and Jerry.

What it actually is, is Fables of The Green Forest.

A sort of 70's anime version of Animals of Farthing Wood where no one really dies but the dubbing is fucking awful. No seriously there are whole episodes on Youtube in the original Japanese and what sounds like Spanish and its charming if a bit old.  

The English dub is shouty and horrible with some awful music to boot as well. The episode I have is a small lemming critter trying to evade a pair of foxes one is, for some reason, an old granny in a shawl.

He tunnels, they pounce and shout out. He tunnels some more and hides out in a barbed wire covered log and the fox fucks up his paw. Granny covers herself in snow to become a makeshift snowdrift. Lemming dude sees through this obvious disguise, evades her and gets picked off by an owl. 

Then the tape ends.

It has it's charms when not saddled with a horrible dub (there's a reason we went for subs back then) and there's a whole playlist up on youtube for you to look at. One of those 70's oddities to play along with Rascal Raccoon and Anne Of Green Gables.

Battle Angel Alita

Finally got round to seeing this, as it was on Sky Movies, Friday, and all I can say is, wow.

Didn't realize it's a James Cameron film either, and after Titanic and Avatar which in my eyes are both abysmal films. This is a real revelation.

I won't spoil it and I've purposefully used the naming from the old Manga release we got here of the anime. It's something like Alita: Battle Angel (and GUMN in the original Japanese) but don't let that put you off. It's epic.

The plot, has her found mostly broken and tossed out on the scrap heap at the edge of town. Repaired by Dr Ido with the mech body that would have been his daughters replacement legs, she explores the world and learns that there is a big fuck off midgar style plate that serves as an upper city and that the world was plunged into a post apocalypse wasteland due to a war with Mars.

I will not spoil any more but will say this, it's miles better than Captain Marvel.  For one, when Alita fights, she gets knocked down, loses and picks herself up and fights again. She's flawed in a way that Captain Marvel isn't.

I know the MCU has its fans and that but I found the whole thing to be boring, she was a perfect superhuman and apart from smashing a blameless Streetfighter cab, largely a personality vacuum.

Alita isn't. She displays emotions, and acts just like a teenager would, which is cool and entirely in keeping with her character. I can't remember what emotions Captain Marvel did but I don't see her getting smacked around by the Kree and then coming back to wipe them all out. It just went on with her acting like a big space Karen, wanting to talk to the manager and that.

The only weak bit is Dua Lipa's track on the end credits, which although good doesn't really fit, would have preferred some sterling electro or synthpop maybe Luke Eargoggle or Analogous Doom as the outro, The main music is fine and is by Junkie XL which is cool he's done a lot of film work, think "Deadpoof" and you'll be halfway there as well as A Little Less Conversation by Elvis.

And yes before you as its set up for a sequel and you do get used to her big eyes in this.

Overall score. 9

Round up.

We haven't had one of these in awhile so here goes.

Coro Coro Comic update.

Been looking into the few manga that are suitably bizarre to warrant this blog.  No, not the Bomberman  4 Koma. but Himitsu Keisatsu Holmes (aka Secret Agent Holmes)a sort of kid detective that investigates murders and such, and harukanaru Koshien Kakero! Ozora, a baseball manga who's hero seems to be a reporter and such.  Thought it was about a deaf school team that he was leading, but that turned out to be by a different author.  Be cool if  it was though.

BTW, when has it been acceptable that kids can be a hard boiled detective and poke around in corpses and such. See also Detective Conan and the like, there are quite a few murder mystery manga for kids that really to my western eyes, pull no punches.

Succulent News.

Had a brief look for Trichodiademia a shrubby mesemb species, that has a few cactus like spines at the end of its leaves, and we stumbled across Howstuffworks.com. Needless to say they need the talk about what is succulent and what is cactus. Although they seem to be fine on some stuff, lets put it this way not everything with spines is a cactus.  Especially not Asparagus Ferns which despite some pretty thick roots. It's not a fern either as it has flowers and seeds too, which you can see on that wiki link.

Finally a big shout out to Cambridge University Botanic Garden for flowering their Agave, after 57 years. It'll flower and die, but not without it doing this if you're lucky.

Not Cambridge but Cyprus, but you get the idea.

That's also a pretty good article explaining Agaves to the non cactus / succulent growers out there. So once again good luck and hope you finally find out what you have there.

Edit It's flowered now and is apparently narrowed down to Agave Vivipara but are waiting till it sets seed or does what the picture above is doing and throws out offsets.  Further info here, and yes it's still an excellent article of information on Agave.

Coro Coro Comic

For those that know, Coro Coro Comic is a phone book sized monthly manga, that is known for putting out the Pokemon manga amongst others. I have two issues, September 1996 and an issue from 20 years or so later. I got the 90's issue from the long defunct Lewisham bootsale for the sum of 75p, and while it's tatty round the edges now, it came with a few Pokemon pencil case games, and other bits and pieces.

Recently been scanning in bits and pieces from this brick sized comic and trying to see if there's a scan of the obscure Mole Mania manga, which features in it. 

Looking through there are ads for Popolocrois, Bubblicious gum, and lots of Hudson Soft games, Bomberman and it's B-Daman spin off, which I remember there being an anime for a long time back, the manga is featured in there of course, along with Bomberman Yonkoma.

 My favourite is of course Class King Yamazaki and blue sky ozora. A gag manga and roughneck baseball manga respectively. There is of course a few Nintendo manga in there. Pokemon, as mentioned, but there is Kirby Manga and expand dong (Donkey Kong) also feature, too. 

Finally to cap it off there is some Doraemon stuff, which is probably translated into Spanish as they love the little guy. It revolves around cavemen and Colonel Sanders, along with the regular crew of Nobita and Doraemon.

Names on a postcard please.

I'll leave you with some scans I've already done. The J league stuff is interesting. I think the ginger guy is Alexei Lalas. Whereas the guy with the fish is this guy Looks like a bad pun on Maguro / Magrao.  Finally I'll add the odd Shiren the Wanderer maze which I'm sure I've added before but can definitely be added again.

Can you make it to the exit.

Iron Wok Jan

Not sure if I've covered this before (that is the peril of being long running) but have recently started to read Iron Wok Jan again.

For those of you not familiar with this series, its a cooking manga that focuses on uber jerk Jan Akiyama and his rivalry with the Gobancho Chinese restaurant.  Though the issues that I have the rivalry is between the super critic Otani and both the Gobancho and Akiyama families in one big Chinese food cook off. Indeed the earliest anthology I have is volume 14 where Nitani brings in a talented french chef to cook a next level goose dish and challenges Jan, Kiriko Gobancho and Celine to match it, whilst dressed as pigs before a live TV audience.

This is one of the reasons why I like this the other is that its super detailed about food and such.  Things will be added in footnotes about what such and such is and what style its cooked in.  I learned about chinese seasoning and Yuzu, as well as an epic way to steam fish. That was incidentally Jan's battle vs a hemostatic cooker a type of souped up Microwave and the chef with it.

As the books themselves are now out of print, (I have a few picked up cheap from Forbidden Planet years back, in fact this is where I first encountered it) and are not cheap, I've put a link up in the first paragraph to the first 7 books on line that you can read for free, ironically its none that I actually own, but if demand is strong, I would consider scanning what I have (Volume 14, 18, and 20,21 and one or two more) and putting them up on dropbox or archive. org.

Youtube and Junk Tour

Well it looks like Youtube are gearing up for some changes and that.  If you are wondering what I'm on about, I'll explain.  In the week they provided an option to how your subscriptions are laid out, either as a group listing or as it normally is as a list. On the downside they completely removed the ability to see all subscriber activity, which if you are lazy like me allows you to discover some channels worth a damn and see what your "friends" like on YT.   Personally I still would like them to drop Google + their failed Facebook and reinstate the preview system that they used circa 2010 or so.  It allowed you to see the first four pages of videos of a subscribers channel and let you look to see if they were worth subscribing to or not, and was genuinely useful.

Junk Tour Lewisham.

Not much to really add today except quite a bit of rap and Happy Hardcore, including Reacts Hardcore Cheddar compilation for sale along with some more tougher Gabber and non gay hardcore. Lewisham is one of those towns where they have a massive immigrant population, indeed when I was a kid they had large Caribbean community as well as a decent bootsale in the Car Park on a Sunday (long defunct).  On a side note they had a Jiji from Kiki's Delivery Service on sale and as I'm a sucker for Ghibli films this had to be bought.  Possibly Phil Hartman's finest hour as he provided the voice for the Disney dub of this, you may remember him as Lionel Hutz or Troy McClure from The Simpsons back when it could do no wrong. Its about 3'' tall and has the proper tags and what looks like a Steiff button on its back complete with tag.  I'll add a picture as its quite cute and all.

Ideal Home 2015

Some better news and that, first up, Fox have finally committed to making more X Files, apparently they have Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny on board to make 6 episodes starting in the summer, now all they need is to lure Vince Gilligan from Better Call Saul and have him write for them again as his episodes were always ace.

Also before our main feature I will give you fellow limeys a heads up. Film 4 are having a Studio Ghibli season  (today's feature was the UK version of Arrietty with Olivia Coleman and Geraldine McEwan on excellent voice duty) looks like they'll be Ponyo complete with its ropey Western opening song and My Neighbour Totoro. Fingers crossed for Princess Mononoke with voice duties from... Gillian Anderson.

Much more info here.

Ideal Home.

Took advantage of some early bird offers to get cheap tickets here.  Its a place I've actually got nothing much from but always enjoy going round.  Went with my mum and dad and found out that it'll take place at Olympia and that there are no trains direct, but there is a rail replacement bus.  Look outside and there is a massive queue outside Earl's Court, tailing right back to the crossing.  Waiting in the queue I noticed a guy on a massive scooter (it was huge) and a Jewish guy with a plastic bag covering his fedora ha,t looking not unlike someone shrink wrapped some of the Reddit army.

 Finally got on the bus and we made our way inside, ground floor is traditionally show floor and gardening complete with ideal home of the future and sheds of some description. We noticed a few things, they had a Weedle up for rehoming at the cat's Protection stall. Gregg Buttery Biscuit Bass Wallace was flogging his own range of barbecues on his stall sadly didn't get a photo of him, did however get a shot of Joe Swift from Gardeners World who was very entertaining and doing a talk.   They had the Dutch bulb people over again flogging tulips and much more exotic stuff as well and the garden accessory folk which were selling metal birds which my mum bought for the garden.

There was the usual massive swingers hot tub and spa and new for this year a billion things to vibrate you, cushions, treadmills and chairs all of it pointless and that they also had a kraftmatic adjustable bed for sale with vibe function.

Upstairs is the home and beauty section and food of all description, so if you ever wanted a duck wrap or any amount of artisan cheese this is the place to go.  They also have free samples on offer so had some nice herb cheddar which was ace and some feta which wasn't.  Also they had some champion sausage for sale and proper fudge too (no gay jokes pls).  Finally the beauty bit is always has some hot chicks trying to sell you stuff and there was a dance revue of sorts with some birds dancing around to Womanizer in glasses.

Crow Ornament

Goody bag center, has free lube.

Womaniser dance thing.

Space Cat control.

Bitches on segways.