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Saturday, November 21, 2009. New Comics were 3 days ago

 

Manga Salad #3: Guilstein

By Jason Thompson

Tuesday February 19, 2008 10:00:00 am

The idea that "turning into an adult means turning into a monster" is fertile ground for a story, and Guilstein starts well, before getting into predictable shonen hero territory as it goes on. However, the Guilstein manga is not an original work; it's a tie-in to a failed multimedia franchise. How failed is it? It's so failed that the Guilstein movie, which was being hyped for U.S. release at Comic-Con back in 2001, never came out in English. (http://www.animedream.com/) According to Monkey Punch (who didn't work on, but helped promote the project) the title is short for "Guilty Frankenstein." The monsters were designed by Yasushi Nirasawa (Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust) (http://d-arkweb.com/nira/).

Muscled-out monsters, world-destroying teenage angst—it must have looked great on paper. I haven't seen the movie, so I don't know if it was actually bad or if the U.S. release fell through for other reasons (though it's worth mentioning that most self-styled "CG anime" from 5-10 years ago are pretty dated-looking). Regardless of the quality of the animation, perhaps the central combo (Spawn meets Evangelion) is a little too good to be true, like so many projects which attempt to pander to perceived tastes but end up just a little behind the curve.

The manga adaptation, however, is pretty good on its own terms. The artist, Hisao Tamaki, is best known for science fiction and tie-in manga—Star Wars: A New Hope, Ultraman Dyna, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam and his short-lived original work Astrider Hugo (you don't want to know what the PULP staff called that one). Though not a prolific manga artist, Tamaki has a pleasant cartoony style, faintly '80s-90s character designs, and he can draw good action scenes—a major element of Guilstein.

But how does it look on a cell phone? That's another story. Like all cellphone adaptations of comics, Guilstein has some issues. The graphic novels are cut up into installments of about 3-4 manga pages each, with panels appearing one at a time, like a slideshow. The central problem is that unlike comics, where you can have images of all sizes and shapes, on cellphones all the images are the size of the screen.

There is a certain optimum scan size which makes for the best cell phone image, and it's not very big…so little head-shot panels (as in a four-panel manga or newspaper strip) look decent, whereas big dramatic panels lack impact. The panels are cut up rather like a movie panned-and-scanned for an old TV show, with varying results. (It's a little similar to the way my comic adaptation of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath was scanned and turned into a DVD.)

Another thing which these screen grabs doesn't show is that the images often slide on and off the screen, which lets you see more of big images, and gives it a slight movie-like effect. However, this "sliding" effect is in fact the biggest flaw in the gocomics service. Every panel slides into the next panel when you push the button, and although you can pause on any given panel, you can't speed up the sliding process, so for experienced manga readers, the manga reads…verryy…slooowwly.

It took me about three times longer to read Guilstein on a cell phone than it would have to read it in a graphic novel. If it was possible to just jump from one image to the next as quickly as you can push the buttons on your phone, the book would be much quicker and easier to read. I assume this was a conscious choice of the interface designers ("you'll read at the speed we tell you to, and you'll like it!") rather than a technological necessity of "load times," and it's a major inconvenience. With each graphic novel subdivided up into about 52 numbered but unnamed installments, it's also difficult to remember what installment is what, and to jump around to different parts of the story.

New Guilstein installments are uploaded on a weekly basis, and the manga is worth checking out. A Google search turns up the fact that I am the first person to review this manga, which is a fate it doesn't deserve. However, I'm left with the feeling that I'd much prefer to read it in print, or as an ebook. It's also worth mentioning that Guilstein is censored; the gore remains but some nipples are gone, although it's not obvious if you haven't read the original manga, since the "pan-and-scan" cell phone format means that if they don't want to show breasts, they can work around it by just not showing that area.

Guilstein is an interesting experience, but I think in the end, the best cell phone manga will be simple four-panel manga…or manga created specifically for cell phones. Manga for Blackberries? Manga for ebook readers? The possibilities are endless, but the perfect shape of the bicycle is still unclear.




Previous: #2, Cell phone manga
Next: #4, Biblical adaptations

Jason Thompson is one of the best-known manga critics in the US. He currently writes for Otaku USA and is the author of Manga: The Complete Guide. His website is www.mockman.com.

Manga Salad is © Jason Thompson, 2009

 

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