Katawa Shoujo is Ready to Play!

Happy new year, everyone! Just a quick post. Katawa Shoujo, a game I first discovered just under two years ago and wrote about in this post, is finally completed and ready for download! Their site servers seem to be in and out as of this post, probably because people are trying to get the game.

Quality seems to be top notch, and it's totally free! I'm hoping to play it myself and get a review up at some point. In the meantime, try out the game! Be warned that it is advertised as having erotic elements (some even say it's a hentai game), so kids and anyone easily offended should avoid it.


Blackbird.

Blah blah blah: Crazy Coffee Cat Manhwa Review

One of the mildly relevant title intro panels.

So far I'm not so crazy for Crazy Coffee Cat, a Korean webtoon written by Um Jae Kyung and drawn by Choi Kyung Ah. As far as I can tell from the few scanlations now available, it's a comic of the soonjung romance, slice-of-life variety. Basically it follows protagonist Kho Yang Yra, a girl who has been given a job at a coffee company. Strangely enough, however, I'm eight strips in (which are essentially eight chapters) and I still don't know too much beyond that.

I think part of it is that I don't really understand where this thing is going yet. The exposition is weird in that it feels as though all of the events just sort of happen, without too much buildup, like there isn't any forward movement or logical progression of events. I can't help but wonder if the writing was really planned beforehand, or if it was written as ideas simply occurred to the writer. Even in slice-of-life pieces there's some sense of forward progression, however small. Regardless, I'm getting the feeling that after eight strips we're still not into the meat of the story, so I'm probably making assumptions too early.

American Otome Games?: Harlequin Dating Sim

Harlequin must really be expanding their product line: In addition to Polecat’s relatively recent discovery of the romance novel manga, I just found out about a Harlequin dating sim, Harlequin Presents: Hidden Object of Desire, while researching otome games for a previous post. The game was released some time last year.

Here’s the blurb from Big Fish Game’s website, the distributor of the game:

“Allie's on a quest to find some breaking news in the Kingdom of Adamas, but must now choose between her friend's well-being and true love! The bachelor Prince of Aristo is the most enchanting man she has ever met, but she must fend off his charming advances long enough to figure out what is going on.”

In addition to the game, I think you're given a digital copy of a romance novel based in the same romance novel universe as the game. More details can be found at this review on the Dear Author blog, including screenshots.

I’m not sure how exciting the whole thing sounds, since it appears that you don’t even have any choice in your love interest. It really is a visual novel, maybe even more linear than most VNs, but maybe that makes sense for a company that makes its money being a factory for trashy books.

And I'm the Mouse: Cheese in the Trap Manhwa Review

  A promo for the Cheese in the Trap drama CD.
I discovered Soon Kki/순끼's manhwa Cheese in the Trap a while ago, and I have no idea how. All I know is that I had approximately 60 tabs open in my web browser, and that the first one featured Baka-Updates Manga's page on this webcomic.

Yep! A webcomic. It's a format that I think Cheese in the Trap utilizes well, which I'll go into in a little later.

But first, the story. Cheese in the Trap follows Sul, a college student who is returning to school after taking a year off. The circumstances of her leave aren't immediately clear, but they seem to have to do with an upperclassman, a handsome guy named Yoo Jung. Not only is he super cute, but he's apparently very polite, smart, and rich. Despite the fact that the ladies line up for this absolute heartthrob, Sul isn't so taken with him.

Now, doesn't that sound positively boring and cliche? A female protagonist who has a love/hate relationship with an impossibly perfect guy. Never seen that in EVERY SINGLE CHICK FLICK EVER MADE. But that's where the cliches stop.

At first Sul's reaction to Yoo Jung seems typical of a female protagonist in a romance comic. She's highly skeptical of him, and perhaps too immune to the charm that has managed to affect every single girl except her. It seems as though she'll end up learning to love him as his sudden, mysterious interest in her slowly wins her over. However, as the story progresses, partly through flashbacks woven throughout the present narrative, the reader discovers that Sul's disdain isn't so unfounded.

The End of Tokyopop Manga

This is the fourth post I've written tagged with Marmalade Boy, by the way.

If you're savvy on manga publishing in America, you might already know that Tokyopop shut down its US manga publishing operations on May 31.

I became obsessed with manga when I was about eleven. One of my friends, older and more informed than I was about the medium, took me to a Waldenbooks at a local mall. The manga section only took up one small shelf, crammed next to the cash register. I didn't know too much about what I was looking at, since while I was a comics reader, it was mostly of collections of Calvin & Hobbes and The Far Side. I had read a little manga at the beginning of the whole Pokémon craze, a flipped version of Ono Toshihiro's Pokémon: The Electric Tale of Pikachu, when I was about six, but I never went too much beyond that and some dubbed episodes of Sailor Moon. I did draw a lot of Pokémon fan comics, but we don't need to go into that.

She suggested Wataru Yoshizumi's Marmalade Boy to me, licensed by Tokyopop. The cover was pretty unassuming, featuring a smiling girl looking at some unknown thing in the corner, but the story intro hooked me in the minute I skimmed its pages in that store, and I bought it.

The Search for Otome: SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER SEQUEL!

RE: Alistair++, a free, full-length otome game.

Since the summer's begun I've had lots of time on my hands. Thus far, I've rewatched almost all of the episodes of The Office (US version, if you care to know) available on Netflix. One would think I'd have done more than that, but sitting in front of a computer marathoning a show I've already watched takes up a significant amount of time.

So there's that. And I've also been playing a lot of Chain Factor.

Despite my packed schedule, I've been doing research on one thing I haven't looked at in a long time: Otome games! Free ones, specifically. It seems like there have been quite a few new English options to be released since I last did a post, though that also could mean I didn't do a good job researching them in the first place.

I was originally going to do another big post, but the more I wrote, the more I realized that it didn't make sense to put it all together in just one entry. So in the coming weeks, look out for reviews and other opinionated pieces on just otome games! It'll be really swell, and hopefully a little different from what you'd typically find on blogs dedicated to otome. It's not what Manga Meditation's about anyway, and those blogs already do their job way better than I could.

Speaking of which, here are a few links to games, developers, and other otome miscellanea:

The Search for Otome

Heileen, one of the few available English otome titles.

Last semester, Polecat, Starfish, and I found a number of ways of avoiding our always mounting work. In-between playing flash games (Winter Bells, anyone? Drench?), watching movies, reading the news, baking cookies, watching Buffy, and knitting, we sometimes fell into our fangirly, Manga Meditation-ish ways.

While I personally fell off the manga reading train, Polecat and Starfish continued to diligently log onto Manga Fox and One Manga and whatever other scanlation aggregates on the Internet. The three of us also continued our K and J drama nights; we're almost done with Hana Yori Dango 2, by the way.

Starfish took it further and began to delve deeper into the girly comics universe: Dating sims. If you know your shoujo manga, chances are you've at least heard of dating sims, and if you're even more dedicated, otome games.

Delightful Girl Choon Hyang: Initial Impressions

Not so delightful.

Well, I've begun the Korean drama Delightful Girl Choon-Hyang, and I'm very unimpressed. I was originally going to write episode summaries, or something semi-regular, but I've decided instead to write one review of the series as a whole once I've slogged through the whole thing, with a separate analysis following.

The reason I abandoned my original idea is that I'm having trouble just watching this thing. With it being one of the most popular dramas in the past ten years, I was expecting something really, genuinely good, something well-written, well-acted, and funny. Something on par with, say, Full House, My Girl, and, while it's a huge stretch, Coffee Prince (we're big fans here at MM). I knew it was too much to hope to see something as good as the latter drama, but couldn't it have at least been like My Girl?!

The Mangaka Review: Yoshizumi Wataru

The mangaka herself.

Yoshizumi Wataru's mangas hold a special place in my heart. While I had seen and read manga for many years, her works were the first I bought in earnest, back when the manga in bookstores did not occupy five bookcases. Marmalade Boy was not truly a standout manga in any sense, but for my impressionable, naive, eleven-year-old mind, she was a genius.

The Mistakes a Pepper Makes

Look! Bloopers!

And if you're confused, please refer to this post.


--Blackbird.

Intensive Korean Study: Week 3

SO.

Late, late, late! The theme of my week. I kept thinking I would get to this weekly blog at least by Monday, Tuesday at absolutely latest, but now it's Wednesday and too late to even be vaguely considered on time. Oh well.

I made more progress on the Korean and all, but am, of course, behind schedule. I'm halfway through the book! Yeah! But I also only have a week left. No!!

I blame it on the knitting. I've been knitting like crazy this past month, to the point of pure addiction. I know I should stop... I see the textbook glaring at me from across the table, the neglected schedule on my computer slouching in rejection, and the piles of knitted garments, symbols of the hours of life spent clicking two bamboo needles together.

EXPENSIVE.

I'm not a huge fashionista or anything, but when you see a mega awesome cute overpriced Anthropologie sweater selling for $200+, and you know you could possibly, just maybe knock it off in your size for a fraction of the price...

But enough, on to the updates.

Intensive Korean Study: Week 2

Another week! I was able to focus a lot more than last week, but it was still a struggle trying to catch up. I'm starting to think I might be trying to tackle too much; the textbook has been taking a lot more time than I expected, as is the Chunhyang side project.

Anyways, on to the progress report...

Chunhyangdyun Returns!: The Analysis

I admit that my review of Chunhyangdyun might have been skewed by the Chunhyang story itself. After all, it was a little hard for me to like the folktale considering the incredibly antifeminist message of the story. Many fairytales and folktales include those elements, but I guess what disturbs me more is that Chunhyang herself is meant to represent the ideal Korean woman.

There are a few details in the movie that initially suggest a break from the mold. When Mongryong first sees Chunhyang, his servant Pangja tells him that Chunhyang is not too easy to woo; although she is a courtesan’s daughter, she is “well read, and writes poems.” While the subtitles also note that she is “arrogant,” you could also interpret it to mean that she is headstrong compared to other women of the time.

Awesome! An educated, self-assured heroine. What’s not to love?

I got nothing: A Chunhyangdyun Review

Pretty poster, boring movie.

People can usually appreciate a respectable work of art. I’m no aficionado, but it usually doesn’t take a scholar to recognize beauty.

No matter how beautiful, however, no matter how original, without depth or meaning a piece of art is useless. I like a good still-life, but see if I’ll sit around and stare at it for two hours.

This is the sentiment I had while watching the 2000 movie Chunhyangdyun. Directed by Kwon-taek Im, the movie adapts the old Korean folktale of the same name. The general story is that Chunhyang, a young courtesan’s (kisaeng) daughter, marries Mongryong, a governor’s son, in secret. Mongryong soon after follows his father to Seoul to complete a government exam, but Chunhyang cannot follow him; if their marriage is found out, Mongryong will be banned from taking the exam and also be disowned by his father. After Mongryong leaves, the replacement governor, Hakdo, makes advances on Chunhyang. She rejects him, remaining loyal to Mongryong, and is beaten and eventually sentenced to death for her disobedience. In the end, however, Mongryong comes back and saves Chunhyang.

For the Love of Peppers

Here's a quick post before the long Chunhyangdyun movie review coming up.

We here at Manga Meditation love K and J dramas almost as much as we love manga. And true to MM form, we also (lovingly) criticize those very dramas for their sometimes-more-than-campy qualities. It's part of their charm, after all!

The following video is a great K-drama parody titled Gochu (or "pepper" in Korean) by Unit 5 Films, submitted for a contest held by the magazine KoreAm. Think of this post as Manga Meditation's introduction to future K-drama critique. Enjoy!

--Blackbird

Intensive Korean Study: Week 1

And so ends my first week of intensive Korean study! Sort of. I only started Wednesday, and the whole process is taking a lot longer than I expected. Also, I just got the textbook’s accompanying workbook in the mail Thursday or Friday, so I haven’t gotten a good look at it yet.

Before I start my review of this week's progress, though, I should probably describe my previous experience with Korean. As a kid I was taken to Korean school to learn the basics of the language. To be honest, the only information I really retained was the reading and writing aspect which, if you know anything about Korean, is not that difficult in the first place. Basically, a dedicated person can learn Han’gul in a week. The rest of Korean that I know is thanks to the Korean I heard as a kid. Even though I don’t understand a lot of it or the actual grammar, it doesn’t sound unfamiliar to me, and I already understand sentence structure.

Anyway, this is what I've been up to...

Wearing the Hyphen

Growing up as a "hyphenated" American is a unique experience, and one that can cause one to constantly feel that they are living at the margins of society. As a Korean-American, I had trouble reconciling both labels of my identity as something singular rather than as separate parts. There was the Korean side of me, which consisted of my family and the celebration of special traditions that I assumed other people would not understand or accept. The other half of my identity, however, constantly yearned to be accepted as not the "other," but someone as legitimate as anyone else in the United States.

Though I wanted to feel "American" in my own right, whatever that meant, the racial stereotypes in the media, the blatant stares, the simple tugging at the eyes, told me that I would always be different. Of course, as a child I didn't think of it in articulate terms.

It has only been recently, however, that I've begun to accept my identity as a combination of two elements. I realized that there were people outside of my family that were like me, and in that way I felt less isolated in my experience. But in trying to shape my identity as an American, my "outer" identity, the one I felt I had to exclusively wear, I neglected to also fully develop that related to my ancestry, the "inner" Korean identity that I used to think I could only show to my family. One might even say that I, myself, marginalized my own Korean half.

Chunhyang Filler a.k.a. Thank Goodness for Wikipedia

Hello readers!

This is just a little heads up (and filler, since we suck at regularly updating) to talk about an upcoming post series!

Ever heard of Chunhyangga? Depending on your knowledge of Korean folklore and/or pop culture, you may know that it's one of five remaining pansori performances. Pansori (판소리) is a Korean musical storytelling performance consisting of a singer and drummer. Chunhyangga in particular is interesting in that, according to some interpretations (maybe I'll post a link or two if I can find any) the main character Chunhyang supposedly represents the ideal Korean woman.

Chunhyangga is a sort of Cinderella story (sorry for the ethnocentric comparison; it makes it easier to describe); Chunhyang, daughter of a lower class kisaeng, and Mongryong, son of a high-class magistrate, fall in love and eventually marry in secret. However, after Mongryong is called to Seoul, he is replaced by an evil magistrate who forces Chunhyang to become his mistress. She refuses and remains loyal to Mongryong despite the consequences, and eventually love triumphs and the two live happily ever after.

But enough background info. The point is that Chunhyangga has been recreated many times over the years in various formats. This coming post series, then, will be my various mini-analyses of these adaptations! What I'm looking at right now are Chunhyangdyun, a movie made in 2000 that pretty much sticks to the traditional telling; Delightful Girl Choon-Hyang, a very popular k-drama that gives a modern retelling of the folktale; and finally Legend of Chun Hyang, a very, very loose manga interpretation by CLAMP.

Anywho, it'll be nice to spread our critical wings to Korean dramas and cinema. Look for it sometime beginning in December or January; get excited yo!!

Until then,


Blackbird

PS: And muchos thanks to Wikipedia since it's easily the easiest/laziest way to get information. For more information on the original Chunhyangga pansori, just look at the Wiki page I got it from! And, of course, Google.

An Ode to Anime Conventions, or My Disillusionment

WARNING: The following is a long post that is long overdue. But it's finally here! The Animazement report thing! Please don't be discouraged from reading. Or skimming. Or commenting.

Quite an impressive spread.

Back in Manga Meditation's blog drafts are two entries detailing Polecat's and my (Blackbird) recent adventure to Animazement, a now twelve-year-old convention newly located to the Raleigh Convention Center in Raleigh, NC. These posts, however, haven't been published like we had promised earlier. The reason? To be honest, they were a little boring to write. That, and the descriptions were becoming a little mean.

MJ EVA AMV

I remember closely following my friend’s silhouette as she led me into the cool, dark room filled with booming music and sweaty anime nerds sitting in front of a large screen. As soon as I walked in I found a place along the perimeter of the room, folding my arms with insecurity. I was preparing to be bored, I admit, but instead I found myself somehow transfixed to that large screen.

Anime music videos. I never really expected to develop a crush on them, not at my very first convention of all things, but for some reason the combination of music and video, when done right was, I realized, kind of cool.