Felicitations! We’re the Fast Food Fanatics! We run down all the latest news and gossip in the deliciously detrimental world of flash-fried quick eats! What’s cooking this week? Well, your titular fanatics Colton and Sid are full of beans and keen as mustard to shoot the breeze on some rather fishy business, including McDonald’s new chicken nuggets recipe, the consequences of California’s controversial $15 dollar minimum wage, why you should never ever eat at a Burger King in Brooklyn, and Chik-fil-A’s oh so exclusive “invitation only” loyalty program! (Seriously, did you know about that? I go to Chik-fil-A almost every frigging day, and I’ve never received no red carpet treatment! “A-list membership” my ass! Screw those chicken-shit frying elitists!) Also, should millennials invest in Chipotle stock? The answer might surprise you! We might have our fingers in a lot of pies this time around, but believe me buddy, we know our onions! So let’s fry some fish, and dig in to the meat of thin-
WAIT A MINUTE! Don’t close that tab! We aren’t here to jabber about junk food. We’re the mother-freaking Manga Mavericks, and as per our usual m.o., we mean to madly mutter about manga matters! Which we do after talking 10 minutes about how bad fast-food is for you, especially if you live in New York City. …No, seriously, we’re still a manga podcast! We promise!
Want me to prove it to you? Well, in this installment, we commend the winners of the Tezuka Cultural Prize, ponder the practicality of Nissan’s new manga-inspired Nissan Leaf model, and get excited for the upcoming documentary about Fujio Akatsuka, Makoto Raiku’s new manga, the Cardcaptor Sakura sequel series, and much more! Plus, Colton drops a bombshell you’ll NEVER see coming! There’s no way that can be right! Can it?
Also, we briefly talk about them in the episode, but I wanted to provide links to two fantastic analytical pieces on the Dragon Ball franchise I’ve recently gotten into. The first is the video series Dragon Ball Dissection by a Youtuber named MistareFusion, who has been going through the Dragon Ball manga from beginning to end, thoroughly breaking down each story arc with a critical lens. I’ve seen many attempts at a “History of Power Rangers”-esque overview of Dragon Ball from many different Youtubers, but Dragon Ball Dissection is far and away the best, not only because it bases itself on the original manga instead of the anime adaption like most others do, but also because MistareFusion focuses on analysis over recap and pulls no punches on breaking down both the series’ strengths and flaws in an acute and precise manner.
The second Dragon Ball analytical series I’d like to highlight is Derek Padula’s brilliant Dragon Ball Culture book series. To my knowledge, Padula is the first and only professional literary Dragon Ball scholar. His books are thoroughly well-researched and written in a formal but still highly accessible manner, providing fascinating insight on the culture, themes, and history that influenced the story and world of Dragon Ball. His books so far have encompassed the entirety of the pre-Z era of the series, with additional books including one exploring the “Over 9000!” phenomenon, and a soulful collection of personal reflections on the series from fans all over the world aptly titled “Dragon Soul.” Both MistareFusion’s videos and Mr. Padula’s books are excellent pieces for for any Dragon Ball fan looking to dig deeper into the essence of the franchise, and I highly recommend them.
Oh, and just an FYI, in the episode we discuss Yona of the Dawn going on hiatus, which was still indefinite at the time we recorded of the episode. Since then, however, it’s come to light that the series will resume this month in the 12th issue of Hana to Yume out on May 20th. Which kind of makes that whole talking point retroactively pointless, unfortunately, but that kind of thing’s to be expected when you’re running a bi-weekly podcast. The manga world never sleeps!
Enjoy the show, and follow us on twitter at @sniperking323 and @lumranmayasha. If there’s something you want to ask that’s too big to tweet, drop us a line in the comments below, or e-mail us at mangamavericks@gmail.com! Thanks for listening!
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Thanks for the mention of our event, AnimeNEXT. We’re very excited to be hosting Hiroe.
I came just to listen to the part about Raiku – it’s really nice to hear you praise his work so much, but I wanted to specifically talk about Animal Land – if you’re intending to buy the US volumes, I would probably suggest not to. They’re released slower than any other manga I’ve seen in the states, and the 11th volume is continually delayed the closer it gets to release. Volume 10 came out around a year and a half ago, actually. I personally think that the manga is somewhat lacking in its second half, but this kind of treatment is still inexcusable, whether you blame Animal Land’s first few volumes releasing just as Attack on Titan mania started to take hold, or its presumably lackluster sales, it doesn’t really matter, no manga deserves that.
There’s no official statement on it but I’d say Raiku’s lawsuit against Shogakugan, which was for them losing pieces of his art like you said, is almost certainly the reason Viz stopped publishing Zatch Bell. I’m quite sure Kodansha has the rights to it now and I believe they’ve said as much on their tumblr, but they’ve said a rerelease is unlikely – if you look for these posts there you’ll probably be able to find them relatively easily. I would love for the remaining 8 volumes to be released here somehow, and I think it’s definitely possible many years from now.
For now I can just hope that Vector Ball doesn’t get canceled and gets the all-important anime that’s really needed for a manga to get popular. And if it gets a US release I hope Kodansha will treat it better than Animal Land. Also interesting that the Midori Days guy is starting a new manga, as he was an assistant with Raiku for Ushio & Tora.