Manga Triple Header.

First we have what I call: "It's a Wonderful Suzumiya." Volume 7 of "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya." This issue was the story board and script for the space battle sequence I already have seen in the anime. In other words, boring. I have been ambivalent towards this series since I first heard about it last year. I liked season one. Hated season two. Manga is not helping what so ever.

Maybe with this issue we finally get into some unknown territory. Almost. While we finally break from the anime, we certainly break character. I had been anticipating "The Disappearance Of Haruhi Suzumiya" for some time. Something new, finally. Except we get Kyon way over-reacting. After all the crap he's been through, nothing could phase him at this point. Wow, the way he treats Yuki and Mikuru, you'd think they were the ones trying to kill him and not Ryouko.

 Speaking of which: "Haruhi-chan."

I used to be one of those guys that thought that the TV show, movie, anime, cartoon, or whatever had to be perfect to the source material to be good. I am so over that. So over it that I am willing to give "The Clan of the Cave Bear" movie another try. If I can find it. (Not a high priority.) The downside of this manga is that I had already seen it in anime format. So I was rather bored reading it. Also I noticed that the manga was a little jumbled up from the anime. Which I find interesting because the original anime is jumbled up form the original manga.

However, I must say that Haruhi Suzumiya actually works best as a comedy. For some strange reason it makes some sense that way.

 ST: OMG! "Conundrums."

"Oh My Goddess" volume 36 flew in under the radar and surprised me by arriving in the mailbox this week. This issue follows the same plot that episode of a popular science fiction series that just aired on the BBCA. Everybody loses their memory. After twenty some odd years, Kosuke Fujishima can still find something infesting to do with these characters. The only part I didn't like was how it dragged on. I was lucky, I got it collected in one volume. The Japanese originally had to suffer through this over six months.

What I found neat were al the mistakes that were made. The back cover said "Plus your fan art and letters..." Which wasn't included. Just fan letters from Japan, 20 years ago. Somehow Keiichi managed to remember the precise location of the girlie mag in his room, but nothing else. At least a couple of instances of Urd having the wrong color hands. A major unresolved change in that Velsper talked in front of Megumi. (Remember, Megumi doesn't know the secret of the Goddesses.) How did Megumi figure out that Keiichi is her brother just from her license and from snooping in his room?


Stuff like this makes things all the more fun. Probably not for the author and publisher. I'm keeping this to just me, you, and whoever else might see this. Imagine that their email inboxes must be flooding from all the otaku's pointing this out.

Here's my question: The original issue these mistakes were made came out sometime in 2006. (The math is very unscientific and I'm very uninterested in getting perfectly right.) The graphic novel came out in Japan in 2007. It's now 2010. So why hasn't the color of Urd's hand been fixed?