The Fractal Hall Journal

Holy crap do I want to own an Alien/Predator chessboard. I have no idea where this sudden need for overpriced AVP tat is coming from, but boy is it intense.

I also notice io9 reporting an American live-action remake of Akira. Oh no oh no oh no. Is not going to work. Whinge whinge whinge.

In nicer news, getting through the latter half of Series 3 of Battlestar Galactica. It’s been awesome to see Dean Stockwell, Al Calavicci from Quantum Leap, turn up again, this time as a bad guy. Reminds me of how creepy he was as Devil-Al in that QL episode with Stephen King in it. Damn, I loved that show, and damn the show’s final episode was shitty. I really hope Galactica doesn’t screw the pooch when it comes to an end, because the rest of it’s been so very good.

With all the other superhero films doing so well, it’s going to be interesting to see how the X-Men franchise pans out in the next couple of years. It’s really the series that proved the viability of a new approach to rubber-trouser characters, in terms of faithfulness to the themes and stories of the original material, and a way of taking the best bits of what went before. Sure, Blade is technically the first of the successful comic book adaptations, but that really is in spite of the original rather than because. And I like the Tomb Of Dracula stuff.

If I were being pessimistic, I’d say I don’t have a whole lot of hope with the Magneto prequel. First of all, you’re not likely to find a young actor as good as Ian McKellan to take over the role, and someone of the calibre of, say, Hayden Christensen isn’t going to be able to handle what will inevitably be a pretty dark film. It was never going to be all bright pink flower-bunnies, but after The Dark Knight you can bet the message Hollywood will be taking from the public reaction is nightmarish, unrelenting grim is what’s required. There’s too much scope to mishandle this one.

Wolverine, on the other hand, had got Hugh Jackman going for it. The stupidest thing about X-Men 3 was the way Cyclops was killed off for essentially being a boring goody-goody leader type, only to be immediately replaced by a neutered Logan in the exact same role. A prequel means angry loner Logan, hopefully with a dollop of the sinister slaughter from X-Men 2. Also, Deadpool, and who doesn’t want to see a cinematic Deadpool? I just hope they use some of Grant Morrison’s take on the Weapon X programme; after all, there was a split-second shot of a “Weapon Plus” vial in The Incredible Hulk. Also, I don’t notice any stinkers on director Gavin Hood’s IMDB page, in the way that Brett Ratner’s previous convictions correctly indicated a screw-up.

Negatives? Well, Morrison aside I’ve never liked the Weapon X stuff. Gambit’s in it. The last X-Men film was poor and allegedly plagued with studio meddling, so is that going to play out this time too?

Wolverine’s a funny old character. First time I saw him was in Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends when I was but a lad. He used his claws to make an impromptu kebab. So I kind of missed out on the edgy killer persona that so captivated a generation. Then he turned up in a few places- a Hulk comic, Spider-Man, a few other things- and he was, frankly, a bit of a dickhead. I must have missed out on the nuance of his mysterious loner thing, but then he was a short-arse in yellow lycra with a daft haircut who was being a twat to Peter Parker. I couldn’t really see the attraction, and to make it worse he turned up in every fucking issue of every fucking comic during the 90s.

I wouldn’t say I ever really warmed to the character, but he certainly bugged me less as time went on. And thanks to Jackman’s performance in the first film, I finally understood where the character was coming from. It was properly surprising, really, but I ended up rooting for him, in particular during the aforementioned rampage in the mansion in the second film. Funny how things change, but that really goes to show how good Jackman did at grounding the character, leaving me more optimistic than not for the solo film.

Still prefer Cyclops, though.

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My earliest giant robot related memory isn’t Transformers, but a Mazinger Z video I’d get my Dad to rent out for me from the local garage. I think it was a garage, anyway. May have been a newsagent. It certainly wasn’t a dedicated video shop. It would be a couple of years before Caerffili got one of those. I was 4, maybe 5, and I suspect the cartoon had a disproportionate effect on me. About the same time, S4C started showing their Welsh language dub of Voltron. These were the first anime programmes I remember watching, the other Japan related cartoon being Hanna-Barbera’s Godzilla, which I really loved.

It wasn’t until the early 90s that I became aware of Japanese anime having a specific kind of identity. Around then, the Guyver series was released on video, along with the publication of Manga Mania. The latter was a magazine that reprinted various stories, including the legendary Akira, Appleseed, and an adaptation of the mid-80s Godzilla reboot movie, another video rental that I’d loved when I was younger. I distinctly remember the accompanying article comparing the Gozilla movies’ new direction to Burton’s Batman. It was an informative read, and explained a lot about what constituted anime, manga, and Japanese comics.

The Guyver was a revelation. It was released along with a wave of other anime titles, all significant in that I’d never seen animation like it. It was dark, adult and pretty fucking violent. The creature designs were absolutely brilliant, the mysterious backstory intriguing, and the main character’s voice an annoying nasal whine.

I haven’t really watched much anime since the Guyver ended, only about half of Evangelion and Miyazaki’s films, and haven’t read any manga for a long while. The gap in my knowledge of manga as a genre emphasises the difference between my perception of manga and anime being largely horror-based adult material, and the current prejudice of manga being only for kids and (icky) girls. Needless to say, both skewed views are wrong, and very much a product of their respective times. It illustrates, perhaps, the limitations placed on the medium in Europe and America by two differing marketing philosophies seperated by about twenty years.

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