A feel good boys love anime/manga with uplifting music and story line! by Stuffsbooks

Gravitation,  (art by: Maki Murakami) while the characters aren’t the most original they do make you laugh, with a gun-toting manager, a popular lead singer with a stuffed animal and hilarious personality, along with another lead singer who grew up mimicking his idol who falls in love with a cold, elusive romance writer with a dark past. This manga, including its anime, will make you love them even with there outrageous behavior that  makes you laugh. This might be a Shonen-ai (yaoi), but you don’t need to be a fan of that genre to enjoy this series.

The story surrounds an aspiring singer, Shuichi Shindou, and his band, Bad Luck (formed with his best friend Hiroshi Nakano, who is on guitar). Shuichi wants to become Japan’s next big star, and follow in the footsteps of the famous idol Ryuichi Sakuma, lead singer of the now-disbanded legendary group Nittle Grasper. One evening, Shuichi is looking over lyrics for a song he was writing when his paper is blown away by the wind and picked up by a tall, blond haired (light brown in the manga) stranger. The man dismisses Shuichi’s hard work as garbage, which hurts Shuichi deeply. Despite his anger, he is intrigued by the stranger. This will be their first encounter as Shuichi becomes fascinated by the stranger, who soon turns out to be the famous romance novelist, Eiri Yuki (real name: Uesugi). Both the manga and the anime follow this plot.  Source Gravitation Wikipedia

Yes it is a boy’s love story, but so what? The graphic, the story, and especially the music (from the anime) is extraordinary. The manga has released twelve volumes, with six compilation following it in America in the year 2005. With a sequel called Gravitation EX on hiatus after only two volumes and a one shot “Shindo Family Circumstances”   This manga has gotten a lot of followers from its official serialization in Gentosha‘s Kimi to boko in 1996.

The anime and manga are different in some aspect, the manga is set in the last year of high school and continues on; it also includes character you don’t see in the anime. The anime starts out with Bad Luck already having a deal with N-G studios, and very fast going. Though they are different, they are both based on the same theme: Shuichi-kun meeting Eiri-san in the park at night and there lives are forever entwined.

Almost half a million copies of the Gravitation manga have been sold from its North American release from 2003 to 2007,^[33] and in 2005 it was the top manga on BookScan with BL themes.^[34] Rachel Woods notes that even a milder shōnen-ai manga “relies on sexual innuendo, comic double entendres, and coded visual references in order to maintain an erotic undercurrent that is not sexually explicit in nature”, and discusses a page from Gravitation which shows the characters kissing, but using “fragmented panels” which show Yuki’s “wandering hand” to provide a “tantalizing and suggestive imagery” that encourages the reader’s imagination. Source Gravitation Wikipedia

With Kotani Kinya singing the main songs from “Bad Luck” and “Nittle Grasper” you can be sure that the songs from the manga has come to life. Kotani Kinya is a male singer and actor from Saitama Prefecture, Japan. His songs were made into theme songs for the anime Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle and various songs for Gravitation. Wikipedia

With his amazing talent bringing to life the music, you can’t help but dance along. As a fan of the series, I hope you can enjoy the series as much as I still do. @Stuffsbooks

Here are the voice actors of both the dubbed and subbed version of Gravitation:

• Shuichi Shindo – Rich McNanna (dub) – Tomokazu Seki (sub)
• Eiri Yuki – Rome Elliot (dub) – Kazuhiko Inoue (sub)
• Hiroshi Nakano – Daniel Kevin Harrison (dub) – Yasunori Matsumoto
• Suguru Fujisaki – Luke Novak – Fujiko Takimoto
• Ryuuichi Sakuma –Kenneth Robert Marlo – Kappei Yamaguchi
• Touma Seguchi – Bill Rogers – Ai Orikasa
• Noriko Ukai – Megan Hollingshead – Haruna Ikezawa
• Tatsuha Uesugi – Jason Griffith – Hideo Ishiawa
• Mika Seguchi – Debora Rabbai – Hiromi Tsuru
• Mr. Sakano – Bill Timoney – Takehito Koyasu
• Taki Aizawa – Tim Breese – Shin’ichirô Miki
• Ayaka Usami – Rachael Lillis – Rie Tanaka
• Claude “K” Winchester – Brian Mailard – Ryôtarô Okiayu

(Got more on this topic? Leave a comment with your opinion! NO slamming, bad words, please keep it clean. Thank you!

Ask John: What Can Make One Piece Successful on American TV?

Question:
Apparently One Piece is returning to Toonami in May. As much as I love One Piece and am excited about the news, I’m worried about how it’ll be received. While most hardcore anime fans know it was never really reflective of the series, the 4Kids dub (argued by many to literally be the worst English dub of all time) left a horrible taste in the mouths of countless casual anime fans who don’t know anything about the original or the Funimation dub. When I tried talking to my brother about it, he called it “that retarded show about pirates” then started quoting the old rap song. Not only that, but between online piracy, the legal distribution of viewing One Piece episodes online, and many sub-only fans being fanatically anti-dub, I’m a little concerned if audiences will still eat up the show. The climate for anime on TV just doesn’t seem as receptive as it was back when DBZ hit Toonami around ’99. I think audiences would love the show if they gave it a chance, and I’d like to see that happen, but I’m really just not sure what’ll happen.

What are your thoughts, John, and what advice would you give Funimation and Toonami?
Answer:
A realistic perspective on the reception of One Piece in America requires two views. Toei, FUNimation, and the Cartoon Network should understand, if they don’t already, that One Piece will simply never be as successful in America as it is in Japan. Japan has a cultural affinity for manga that has helped make Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece story one of the most successful comic book franchises of all time. It’s the success of the manga that significantly contributes to the popularity and viewership of the anime adaptation. America does not have a big mainstream comic book readership. Even those who devotedly purchase and read Marvel and DC comics are still a fringe minority. America simply doesn’t have the large, receptive mainstream audience for a show like One Piece that Japan has. Certainly, animated adventure films from Pixar and Disney, for example, have done well in America. But films and franchises like Shrek, Toy Story, Ice Age, and Kung Fu Panda are not lengthy stories that unfold over dozens or hundreds of episodes, nor are they stories in which might literally makes right. One Piece occurs in a world in which the most powerful make the rules, justice is not necessarily moral, and individuals take what they want by force rather than negotiation or right. One Piece is a story thematically on a different plane of morality and maturity than mainstream American animation. At the same time, One Piece works on a very simplistic, child-like plane of slapstick boyish adventure. Lufy D. Monkey is an innocent-hearted, idealistic boy lacking the cynicism or jadedness of adulthood. It’s exactly his youthful optimism that allows him to continue striving for his goal, and his eternal loyalty and optimism that make him charismatic. But his literal rubber constitution and his child-like personality make the show itself seem overtly childlike and cause casual viewers to dismiss the show. The very concept of pirates is foreign to contemporary Americans. Hanna-Barbera’s 1991 television series The Pirates of Dark Water was widely acclaimed as an intelligent, well-crafted series, yet it still didn’t succeed. Ironically, average American viewers can more easily accept and relate to space aliens, supernatural creatures, fairy tales, and super powered heroes than ordinary human pirates.

While One Piece is simply never going to achieve blockbuster mainstream success in America the way Pokemon or even Dragon Ball Z did, the show does have some potential to capture mainstream attention; if it didn’t, Toonami wouldn’t be broadcasting it. The distributors involved with One Piece should also remain very conscious of the old adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The very reason why One Piece has become such a massive hit in its homeland is because the series achieves a remarkable excellence in action, humor, and adventure. The show is tremendously engaging largely because each of its characters, including even the antagonists and supporting characters, has enough distinct and creative personality to be interesting and engaging. Even the show’s supporting characters like Buggy, Smoker, Whitebeard, Garp, the Shichibukai, and all of the Navy generals and admirals, to say nothing of the Lufy’s crew members, could practically be interesting, fully engaging protagonists in their own spin-off stories and series. While every narrative wants its supporting characters to be believable and interesting, very few other narratives in any medium invest as much character into supporting characters as One Piece does. While viewers are interested in the characters, we also become engaged in the action and adventure. One Piece is simply a fun show. Lufy’s crew gets into tense, exciting predicaments, and while we always expect that they’re prevail in the end, we can never be absolutely confident that they’ll come out unscathed and victorious. When the crew members use their fighting techniques, viewers cheer. When the Straw Hat Pirates learn new techniques, viewers become excited to witness these new abilities. One Piece is tremendously popular because it’s pretty close to perfect exactly the way it is. So the best way to create new fans is to allow new fans to experience and fall in love with the show in the same way that earlier fans did. 4Kids tried to turn One Piece into something else. The edits and alterations that 4Kids imposed upon the show may not have seemed drastic in isolated abstraction. For example, simply changing Sanji’s cigarette to a lollipop doesn’t seem like a massive change; it’s just altering one type of white tube to another variety of white tube. But the actual effect the alteration makes on the show is tremendous. Don’t try to “Americanize” or “sanitize” One Piece for mainstream Americans. Don’t try to make it like an American program. American viewers don’t want to watch an American cartoon about pirates. It’s exactly the non-conventional American narrative sensibilities of One Piece that make it attractive to Americans. The very fact that Lufy is an outlaw, the fact that his first instinct is to use violence to resolve problems, the fact that he actively opposes authority are all reasons why One Piece is so much fun. The show should not be heavily edited or altered. The show does not need a dub filled with odd accents and quirks. Simply being faithful to what’s already there will allow the show to present its best features and earn new fans.

 

1. GATS Says:
   April 20th, 2013 at 7:24 am Let’s be honest. Part of the reason the One Piece anime didn’t take off is Pirates of the Caribbean beat Toei to it here. And now, those films are probably turning off casual viewers from pirate-themed entertainment in general. Anyway, you should just be glad that the manga (barely?) makes enough money for Viz to continue it, especially since the last time they sped it up probably contributed to Border’s losses. But since FUNi’s bringing it back to teevee, they should probably consider putting it in a comedy slot instead of an action one. The latter market is already oversaturated with Airbender, Naruto, and DBZ fans.

   “4Kids tried to turn One Piece into something else.”

   Another Pokemon/Yu-Gi-Oh cash-in.

2. YotaruVegeta Says:
   April 20th, 2013 at 11:35 am Pirates of the Carribean? You think kids cared about that? Also, the last Pirates movie was how many years ago?

   One Piece didn’t catch on for a number of reasons, but I don’t think I can hook onto your pirates theory.

   I think that One Piece needs an HD cleanup, because they’re also going to fight against people who are biased against older anime, even though in my mind, OP isn’t that old.

 

New Releases coming out April 2013

via yenpress

YEN PLUS takes a Peculiar turn… | Yen Press

This month we are thrilled to present the first chapter of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, adapted from Ransom Riggs’s bestselling novel. And if the cover art looks familiar (it should!), that’s because the talented Cassandra Jean, artist of the Beautiful Creatures manga, has done an outstanding job bringing Miss Peregrine to life! The story follows sixteen-year-old Jacob, who journeys to Wales after a terrible tragedy, searching for the children’s home where his grandfather spent his youth. Be sure to check out this eerie, atmospheric tale in this month’s Yen Plus!

This month is also a big month for Yen Plus books in stores! The first volume of Sherrilyn Kenyon’s The Dark-Hunters: Infinity and the third volume of Witch & Wizard: The Manga are on shelves this month, so go check them out and add them to your own collection!

While Nick and the Dark-Hunters are taking a break this month, the magazine is packed with all of your Y+ faves, including the return of Max and the Flock, Alexia’s adventures across Europe, and Soul Eater Not! 22 featuring more Short-Short Shorts!

Let us know what you think of Miss Peregrine and the latest chapters in the comments below! Thank you for reading!

*There is no information yet about the New Talent Search

via YEN PLUS takes a Peculiar turn… | Yen Press.

 

March, 2013 New Releases

Print Manga

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

DVD & Blu-Ray

• 
• 

Books and Left-to-Right Graphic Novels

• 
• 

Red-Hot Savings! At Least 40% OFF Blu-ray & DVD Titles, Plus Merchandise From FUNimation!

 

Right Stuf is burning up with red-hot savings on DVDs, Blu-ray discs and merchandise from FUNimation! You’ll find everything from the latest titles to returning fan favorites, including Shakugan no Shana, Baka and Test, Heaven’s Lost Property, Toriko, Panty & Stocking, Blood-C, One Piece and many, many more!

From now through February 7, take 40% OFF the retail prices of all DVDs, Blu-ray discs and merchandise from FUNimation. (This includes items that are pre-order, in stock, on order and special order!)

Just be sure to place your orders before 11:59 p.m. CT on February 7, 2013!

REMEMBER: If you’re a Got Anime member, you can stack your discounts for even more savings! (This means you have the potential to save up to 46% OFF the MSRP on DVDs, BDs and other merchandise from FUNimation. Check out www.gotanime.com for details.)

* Not sure which products are included in the sale? To get started, just click on the “Red-Hot Savings” graphic on RightStuf.com: It will take you to a list of all of the FUNimation items we carry! (Please note: No other coupons may be used in conjunction with this sale. This sale event may not be applied to pre-existing orders. Also, Bargain Bin and Weekly Special items are not eligible for this sale because they’re already awesome deals, and this will be noted on the individual product pages for these items!)

 

Anime and/or Manga?

If you love watching anime or reading them instead, go to Viz and watch it there! Download the app for your kindle, Ipod, or Iphone today and watch whenever you want!

 

VIZ ANIME: Free Anime Online. All the Time. Naruto, Bleach & More!.

Games Release Dates – Upcoming – Animekon

Games Release Dates – Upcoming – Animekon.

Anime Release Dates – Upcoming – Animekon

Anime Release Dates – Upcoming – Animekon.

Anime News Network

Anime News Network.