Japan Inc.: An Introduction To Japanese Economics (The Comic Book)
The main drawback with this book tends to be that on most every other page they put a little text passage that deals with economics, but has nothing specific to do with the page it is printed on. Attempting to read the comic story and the text passages at the same time is a mistake as it breaks up the flow of the story. You should read either the story, or the information, first then go back & read the other.

Page 49, Panel 8. "Well, aren't we high and mightly!"

Page 66. They are watching the news on a blank TV. Lazy artists or is this just a fancy looking radio?

Page 68. I think this is a printing problem rather than a typo. In the caption at the bottom of the page the word industry looks like incustry because the vertical line didn't print. The C has serifs on the ends which I think are the traces of the vertical line so I don't think it was a typo.

NANJAO. They identify this Arab country as Country P, (rather like an story from the 1800s where they identify a person solely by an initial). Interestingly enough one shot of a plane has "Islamic Republic Piran" on the side. (Oh those wacky Japanese & their made-up names. Earlier they had an American executive, Ironcoke of Chrysky Motors.)
One nit. The I in Islamic doesn't match up very well with the rest of the word on the plane.

Page 135. "No only that." I think they meant Not only that.

On page 209 they mention the years 1931 & 1932, then on page 210 they say, "In 1930, the situation began to improve." and on page 211 they say, "Next year, on February 25, 1936". I think 1930 was a typo.

Page 221, Panel 3. Again someone is watching a blank screen TV.

"If the Vatican is involved in a financial scandal and one of its banks collapses, it will lose confidence of Christians all over the world."
Well, Catholic Christians. I don't imagine too many non-Catholic Christians had confidence in the Vatican in the first place.

Page 256, Panel 1. A dialogue balloon is drawn like a thought balloon.

Not a nit but if you've read the Inuyasha manga and then watched the anime one of the differences you might have noticed is that Kagome is consistently referred to as "Lady Kagome" whenever
Miroku or Sango are talking about her.This doesn't happen in the anime,at least not as far as I have been able to discern.

This probably is the result of Kagome supposedly being Kikyo's reincarnation and the way she is treated as though she were a priestess.Notice that both Kikyo and Kaede who were/are priestesses are also referred to with the honorific of 'Lady'(in English).

Astro Boy, called Tetsuwan Atom in Japan, was the story of a robot boy who helped humanity in the 21st century. The original stories were serialized in the magazine Shonen.

Astro Boy Volume 14
One puzzling thing about this is that the stories are not in chronological order, but there doesn’t seem to be any reason for putting them in the order they are in.

The White-Hot Being Shonen January to March 1961
Page 23, Panel 8. Gaston says, "But I leave it uto you, Professor"
I think "uto" is supposed to be 'up to'.

Uran Shonen August to September 1960
The story begins with Astro Boy’s creator asking Uran & others when she became Astro Boy’s little sister & everyone having a different answer, then just jumping into the story without really answering it other than a throwaway line about Uran & Cobalt being recently made.

Page 98, Panel 5. Dr. Xcess says, "All I had to do was open the took the bait right away!"
A couple of words seem to be missing there.

Fortress Of The Centaurs Shonen May to July 1958
Page 170, Panel 5. Akoboshi says, "I need everyone to try 'n find the horse’s real identify".
Identity, not identify.

Page 201, Panel 8. The writing on the side of the jet is reversed.

Gernica Shonen New Year’s Edition
The ending of this story is obvious, one wonders why no one else in the story thought of it?
Also you'd think the Gernica would have encountered this substance as they destroyed the various towns. It's not uncommon & every house would have some.

Free Collars Kingdom
Volume 1
Page 29. Cyan knows about fighting games & has used several fighting techniques, but when Amesho asks if he wants to fight him, Cyan says he doesn't know about fighting.

Volume 2
Maybe it's just my general unfamiliarity with reading translated Manga where the pages & panel structure are backwards from American comics (right to left instead of left to right), but several times it seemed like some panels & word balloons weren't in a consistent order.
Nothing I could say was 100% wrong, but did require some rereading on my part to make sense of some sequences.

The fanservice also got a little more creepy here then in the previous volume.

Volume 3
Who brings a flashback to a catfight? I think even the X-Men, the most talky, flashbacky team in comics usually had the decency to not interrupt a fight with a flashback, but here Cyan asks Siam a question and she obligingly explains & has a flashback. No wonder the Siam Army can't defeat the Free Collars.

Stories printed in Singapore's Greatest Comics!

Balance
Technically the title looks like "Bal nce" since they have the hero in place of the second A & he's not even posing like an A.

Page 63, Panel 2. The text of the article about Full Force appears to be random gibberish, lots of Js, K, Bs & some other letters thrown in, which is odd since other equally small things, like "Remington City" at the start of the article & "Continued on page 3" at the end are readable.

House Of Kung Zoo Fu
First one on Page 123.
A ladybug & spider are going to fight. The ladybug says, "You name the time, I'll fix the place." Then the ladybug names the time & the spider names the place.

Claymore is about the women of an organization that fights demons called yoma. The women have demon flesh in them that gives them strength & abilities to destroy demons, but at the risk of themselves becoming demons - Viz Media

Claymore Volume 2
Rabul, the organization's man who deals with clients & the women, refers to the organization as Claymore, despite earlier statements by Clare that the organization has no name, & is only called Claymore by people after the women's swords.

Clare & a couple of knights in armor are running around on a slanted rooftop.
Riiiiiiiiiiiight... guess they're all just that good.

Claymore Volume 3
Turns out the young girl who's been following Teresa around is Clare as a child.
If this was the case then why didn't this information come out when Clare tried to get Raki to stop following her around?

Claymore Volume 4
The back cover gives the plot summary for Marked For Death as the summary to The Slashers

In volumes 2 & 3 Clare fought what she thought was a voracious eater, in this volume Raki asks what a voracious eater is.
So didn't she tell Raki anything about the yoma she fought?

Claymore Volume 11
Rubel says, that Alicia & Beth don't have a soul, but earlier said the fact that they were twins is what saved their soul. (The more power a Claymore uses the more they risk turning into a Yoma. Alicia & Beth are mentally linked so Alicia fights while Beth psychically keeps her from going too far.)

Princess Resurrection is about a princess whose father is the king above all monsters & she is in a battle with her siblings over who gets the throne.

Princess Banishment Princess Resurrection Volume 4
Reiri (the vampire) is shown to turn into hundreds of little bats to avoid attack.
However in an earlier story in this same volume, Riza handcuffed herself to Reiri to force Reiri to take Riza to Duke Kiniski. So why didn't Reiri turn into bats then? Especially during the fight.

Princess Coma
The characters are trapped in a dream, & Princess Hime asks Reiri if her body had fallen asleep where the morning sun could reach it.
Ever since Reiri was introduced she has been seen walking around in the sun.

Day Of The Princess Princess Resurrection Volume 5
At the end of this story it's revealed that Princess Hime & her siblings will become immortal phoenixes if they live to adulthood, which is why they are fighting each other, because too many phoenixes will throw the court into disorder, so they fight to only have one survive.
This doesn't make much sense at all really.
Earlier it was stated that they were fighting for the their father's throne, which would imply that their father had died, except that if he's an immortal phoenix why should he step off the throne at all?
Also since the number of immortal phoenixes keep increasing does it really matter if only one or several become phoenixes?
Why don't the older children kill their younger siblings when they are too young to defend themselves. Heck, baby birds know how to do that & there isn't the age gap that you see here (the oldest are in their late teens/early twenties & Princess Sherwood looks to be between 5 & 10.)

Princess Duel
Duke Kiniski, a vampire who had captured a princess & was keeping her prisoner while he fought the siblings for the throne as well, tells his prisoner that Princess Hime has killed Prince Severin. Her only response is that it saves her the trouble of killing him herself, to which Kiniski thinks to himself that he'll never understand the royals.
Yeesh! If Kiniski had any brains that statement should worry him, as it indicates that she is not the unwilling prisoner that she appears to be. I think it'll be revealed in a future book that she allowed Kiniski to capture her since she knew that he would do things that she would not be allowed to do.

The Haruhi Suzumiya series is about a Japanese schoolgirl who is bored with normal people & wants to meet aliens, time travelers & espers, and, dragging the narrator Kyon into it, creates a club to search for these things. Kyon later discovers that aliens, time travelers & espers are fearfully watching her.
 
The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya Volume 1
NNAN. Kyon says that most of his classmates came from the same middle school & Higashi Middle School is named by a student in the same panel, but later it turns out that Haruhi came from Higashi & he had no idea who she was.
True, Kyon doesn't identify his middle school, but the naming of a middle school in the same panel would certainly lead one to infer that that was his middle school, which causes some confusion.
 
Translation Notes says that the phrase "It's not like they'll wear out." refers to a Japanese myth that when breasts are touched or groped they grow larger.
... well, that's an interesting interpretation of the phrase "wear out". Presumably they use it to mean growing out rather than how an American means it. (And it certainly adds an interesting interpretation to all those manga & anime with large-breasted females.)
 
NANJAO. They include the opening of the translated novel of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya at the end of the manga. Obviously they used a different translator on the novel than the manga, because in the novel Haruhi's middle school is East, whereas it's Higashi in the manga.

in the novel Haruhi's middle school is East, whereas it's Higashi in the manga.
And in Volume 3 Higashi Middle School is translated as West Middle School.

So what does Higashi mean in English?

Soul Eater is a weird series about teens & their demon weapons.

Soul Eater Volume One

Soul Eater is a demon scythe who if he eats 99 human souls & one witch soul will transform into a death scythe & become the new weapon for Shinigama-sama (basically the Grim Reaper). Blair is identified as a Witch to the readers, but when Soul eats her soul it does nothing because she was really a cat with a lot of magical power.
1. The author identifies her as a Witch in Prologue 1, and in Chapter 1 he identifies her as a Cat Witch, so clearly she is a Witch.
2. At no point is it specified that the witch has to be human as well, just a witch. Her soul should count.

Since Shinigama-sama already has a death scythe, & we don't actually see him go out reaping, why does he need another death scythe?

Also a big deal is made out of Maka & Soul working together, but what's the point if he's just going to become somebody else's scythe?

If Soul Eater, who can turn into a normal (more or less) scythe, eats 99 human souls & one witch's soul he becomes a death scythe. Presumably Tsubaki, who can turn into a chain scythe, would also become a death scythe. However Death The Kid uses two demon pistols & they each have to eat 99 human souls & a witch's soul as well, but what the heck would they turn into?

Maka & Soul Eater go to Death Weapons Meister Academy.
Why? Maka & Soul seem to be doing a pretty good job of reaping on their own...

In Prologue 1 it's said that Maka's mother made Shinigama-sama's current weapon Death Scythe*, but later near the end of Chapter 1 it's said that Maka's mother was Death Scythe's second partner, that his first was Doctor Stein.
So is this a translation error, i.e Doctor Stein created the weapon that would become Death Scythe, but it was Maka's mother who caused the actual transformation to his death scythe state, or did the author just not care about continuity?

* Confusingly it's both a name & a type of weapon.

Japan Inc.
Introduction: "the mothers of America, together with their allies in Congress, the churches, and the schools, succeeded in forcing the comic book industry to adopt the Comic Book Authority, a self-censorship system not unlike the old Hayes Office in Hollywood."
1. Allies in Congress? Maybe I'm just cynical, but I wouldn't call corrupt politicians leaping upon an opportunity to extend their power allies.
2. I'm not sure that a self-censorship entity was what the various protestors were aiming for.
3. Comics Code Authority, not Comic Book Authority.
4. The internet can't seem to decide if it's Hayes Office or Hays Office, so I'm not sure if that's an error or not.

The description of manga development in Japan is interesting, but it gives the impression that Japan pioneered some artistic trends rather than independently developing them.
One instance mentions 1947's New Treasure Island as incorporating cinematic techniques into comics, although Milton Caniff had done that around ten years earlier with Terry & The Pirates. (I don't think Terry & The Pirates was ever run in Japan, at least not back then, so I think the use of cinematic effects in manga was developed independently.)

On the indicia page of the first volume of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya it says that it was first printed in Japan as Suzumiya Haruhi No Yuuutsu, but the next three volumes spell Yuutsu with just 2 U's in a row, so I'd guess the 3 U's in a row was a mistake.

Digimon is based on a Japanese computer game that branched out into anime and manga. The Digimon or Digital Monsters evolve into more powerful forms.

Digimon Volume 2 - Tokyopop

Chapter 9: Ghost Town

At the end of the last chapter Devimon scattered all the kids and their digimon to different parts of the island. When the story gets to Joe he's trying to decipher the code in a maze and he is with Palmon, Mimi's digimon, and Mimi is lost in the maze with Tentomon, Joe's digimon.
NNAN, but slightly annoying to just jump right in at that point.

Chapter 11: The Lion's Share Of The Battle

Tai arrives and mentions that they were held up by a Mojyamon with a black gear.
Apparently referring to a battle that wasn't important enough to show in the book, so why mention it?

Chapter 14: Tokomon's Great Escape

They arrive at a village filled with pagumon, but they are surprised because they say that Whamon told them that it was a village of koromon.
Whamon must have told them off-panel because it never came up while they were with him.

Shouldn't the board name "Oriental Comics" be changed to "Asian Comics"? I know the word Oriental refers to inanimate objects, but is that word still in use?

Supposedly, these days, it is considered an offensive racial slur. At least that's what I've heard.

I dont really care if the board's name gets changed, though, as I never read these kind of things. My German cousin likes Manga, though. She's 14, BTW!

Luigi, IIRC in the second NextGen Guide Phil mentions that Asian refers to the continent of Asia, but Orient refers to a much wider area. Phil grew up in the Phillipines which is Oriental, but not Asian.

Apparently the idea that Oriental is insulting is an American thing and not an idea held worldwide.

Andre, well you shouldn't just dismiss them out of hand. They do cover a wide variety of subject matter so it's possible that there could be a manga (or other regions comics) that you would like... if it was in a language you could understand.

Well, there is Star Trek Manga, for both TOS and TNG. I might check them out at some point.

According to my review in the Graphic Novel Review thread I thought one of the Star Trek Manga collections was one of the better attempts to do Star Trek in comic form.

Solar Lord was the man, who with the power of Zeus, would try and defeat the Emperor of Darkness.

Untitled Original publication unknown Reprinted in Solar Lord #1 (Image)

The story starts of with a "newly discovered manuscript" of Nostrodamus. It then mentions how it got nearer to 1999 people were worried about the prophecy and how in the 1970's a scientist tried to disprove the prophecy.
Wait what? When was this "newly discovered"? In the past 30 years???

To disprove the 1999 prophecy, Dr. Hiroshi Shinjun, fed into 3 supercomputers data on Earth's position, movements of the planets and gravitational forces in the solar system and was shocked when the computers revealed that in 1999 the planets would be pulled from their orbits and form a crosslike formation.
He should be shocked. Astronomers have been calculating planetary orbits for hundreds of years and have never had a math screwup that bad. *rolls eyes* If only the author had included something like some newly discovered objects entering the solar system to introduce an element that could be used as an explanation for why the supercomputers calculated something that couldn't happen. *sigh* The writer seemed to think supercomputers can predict supernatural forces at work.

Page 17. The Z on the people's medallions is flipped.

Page 24. The top row of panels reads right to left.
Oddly enough the rest of the page reads left to right.

As this is a Hong Kong comic rather than Japanese it's technically a manhua rather than a manga.

Oriental Heroes started off in 1970 as a comic called Little Rascals, a violent action comic, by Wong Yuk-long aka Tommy Wong. After the passing of the Indecent Publication Law of 1975 banning violent action in comic books, Wong created the daily paper Sang Po, since the law specifically targeted comic books, not papers. He renamed the feature Oriental Heroes, the setting was changed to Japan, and Wong found creative ways to show violence without all the blood and guts that got people upset.

Victory Prizes Oriental Heroes #10 (Jademan Comics)

NANJAO. Reading this issue I got the feeling that it was just kind of marking time and that it ended not at a natural break point. Looking up information on the series I found that the pages originally ran in a daily paper and then was collected into book form which helps explain why it didn't feel like a complete segment of a longer story, they just took 59 pages and stuck them together and it ended where it ended.

Tony Wong is credited as the artist, but it's probably more accurate to call him the main artist as some artists breakdown the action for him to draw, other artists design new characters, which he approves, but still when you look at a page and see 2, or more, distinct art styles panel to panel, it's clear that he's not even doing all the finished art.

Page 2, Panel 1. The letterer misspells Global Cult as "Global Gult".

Page 7, Panel 3. Tiger thinks, "I'll lost if I try to match his inner power..."
Either 'I'm lost' or 'I'll lose' would have worked better. (I'm assuming that the unnamed letterer made these mistakes, but I suppose they could have been present in Mike Baron's English script.)

Page 48, Panel 3. Crag Castle Prison is misspelled as "Grag Castle Prison".

Page 53, Panels 6 & 7. On the previous page Gold Dragon took out Longevity Devil's right eye, but here he's covering his left eye as if it was injured.

Page 55, Panel 9. Caption reads, "Blood on the testifies to Gold Dragon's wound."
The missing word would seem to be 'water'.

Same page & panel. You'd think if there was supposed to be blood on the water, the colorist might actually add red to show it, but no.

Page 61. The promo for the next issue has a bunch of typos.

The first reference to Crag Castle is spelled correctly, but the second reference spells it "Cray Castle".

Guy, a proper name for one of the heroes, is uncapitalised in sentence 4.

"the AIDS Couter crashes in and helps them escapes."
Escape not escapes. (Additionally I'm wondering if Couter is supposed to be Copter?)

Are the new bad guys supposed to be the "Three Hell Menares" or the "Three Menaces"?


Tiger By The Tale

NANJAO. This is the letters page. Typos continue.

Roman Rivers mentions a friend who collected Tony Wong comics. "Hin favorite is Oriental Heroes."

Nghia Le, a ninth grader at Boston Latin Academy, writes, "the art you are greating."

Joe Tran, in his first paragraph, writes, "I briefly looked through the comic and decided to but it." & in the second paragraph, "Not only was the art sensationally drawn, buy the story was also great."

"I tell you, Oriental Heroes is something to be belonged with."

Additionally the first reference to Oriental Heroes in Tran's letter is not italicized, but every other reference on the whole page is.

Additionally I wonder if Rodney Sailna is supposed to be spelled Rodney Salina.

Digimon

General
Given such a large cast (7 humans with 7 Digimon) the artist obviously takes shortcuts by not drawing all the characters if he can avoid it. Sometimes even the group shots will be missing someone, or he'll just draw them as silhouettes and you can't always tell what black blob is supposed to be who.


Beginnings Digimon Digital Monsters Volume 1 (Tokyopop)

Page 3, Panel 6. "The beams smashed into the ground and vanished, but they left behind these weird electrical".
Tai seems to have left out a word there.

Page 4, Panel 5. "don't ask, I have no"
Words apparently. ;-)

Page 12, Panel 1. "They transformed or something, and looked a lot more".
Tai seems to have trouble finishing his sentences.


Rising From The Ashes

Page 5, Panel 5. "Matt spent the rest of the night explaining why his Digimon could school mine in a".
Tai you've got to learn to finish your

Page 22, Panel 6. "As if that wasn't weird enough, Meramon said he didn't remember a".
Apparently Tai's forgetfulness is catching.

Page 23, Panel 4. "And it was nice that they".
*sigh*


Izzy Meddles With Technology

Page 4, Panel 4. "...was not what we were expect-"


Oh, Poo!

Page 11, Panel 6. "Andromon had more in common with Meramon than just that black".

Page 18, Panel 6. "Who'd have thought Numemon hate the"
What's really annoying is that the caption box had plenty of room for additional words.


Joe And Gomamon's Eggcellent Adventure

Page 2, Panel 1. "Unfortunately, as soon as we left, the temperature started dropping -- like the".
Words at the end of Tai's narrations. ;-)

Page 3, Panel 2. "Oh well, never look a gift spring in".

Page 4, Panel "It was worth the".

Page 5, Panel 4. "At first we were all so careful, but now everyone's being way too"
Now Joe has caught Tai's habit of not finishing his

Page 6, Panel 1. "I'd bet we could see pretty far from"

Page 6, Panel 3. "I'm climbing that mountain and drawing"
Flies?

Page 21, Panel 2. "We had a long"
Pause?

Karakuridoji Ultimo was a series created by Stan Lee and Hiroyuki Takei and it featured two mechanical boys, one, Vice, was created to be pure evil and the other, Ultimo, was created to be pure good.

Chapter 0 Shonen Jump Special (Viz)

Okayyyyyy, so a thousand years ago, Dr. Dunstan creates two mechanical boys, one good & one evil, to be released on the world, then he kills himself and a thousand years later the boys "awaken" and begin fighting.
1. A thousand years ago was the year 1009 AD. Not exactly a time period noted for the building of robots.
2. Dr. Dunstan sounds European, not Japanese. Were their Europeans in Japan in 1009 AD?
3. Why kill himself before activating his robots?
4. Why the thousand year wait? Why not unleash them immediately?

NANJAO. While it's possible to come up with more boring scenarios than simply "robot of pure evil fights robot of pure good" I find it hard to get excited about this idea. I mean if you're true to the idea of them being robots that are programmed to be what they are then there is no possibility of growth or change. If you're not true to the idea of them being robots, then why make them robots in the first place?