school festivals, a yokai and a pimp

This week I have an entry that will be familiar to anyone who watches anime set in modern Japanese schools. Plus a yokai, gotta have more yokai! Then there is a more obscure entry of a character who turns up in Yagyu Ninja Scrolls.

bunkasai (cultural festival)

nureonna (snake woman)

Shôji Jin'emon

New Barefoot Gen volumes

Last Gasp has been publishing the new translation of Barefoot Gen. Yesterday I picked up the two latest volumes, 5 ands 6, at their booth at WonderCon in San Francisco.

These two volumes have never before been translated into English. There will be ten volumes in all when the series is over.

It will be a little while before they hit stores so dig out your copies of volumes 1-4 and re-read them, then get the newer ones.

Science Fiction in Anime

I'm doing a presentation at the Livermore (California) Public Library tomorrow Feb 21.

http://www.ci.livermore.ca.us/library/programs.html


Sorry for the delay in getting this out but that flu I had persisted and finally slowly faded away last week so I'm getting caught up on all sorts of stuff.


Suitable for adults, so kids bring your parents.

Buddhism, masks, spooky kabuki and demons

While not all yokai related this week has several supernatural related entries folks will find interesting. Some of these entries even have multiple related definitions making them multifaceted in significance.

han'nya

Tôkaidô Yotsuya Kaidan (Ghost Story of Tôkaidô Yotsuya)

Yasha

Expect more yokai

OK I have to confess I have a thing for yokai. They are just so cool, too bad it is almost impossible to find out much information on them in English.

I'll just have to get back into studying Japanese so I can read about them and use the great database that is online,

http://www.nichibun.ac.jp/youkaidb/

I have heard it has over 13,000 entries.

Anyway several weeks ago I picked up the first volume of Kon Kon Kokon by Koge-Donbo, pub in the US by Broccoli Books. This cute little manga is full of yokai, after all the main character is a high school kid who is a yokai fanatic. Not only is it full of yokai it has a small 'yokai encyclopedia' in the back.

I'll be mining this and other sources for more yokai entries. In fact soon the Anime Companion Supplement will be one of the largest English resources on yokai. Kinda pathetic as it will be so only as there is so little else out there.

Robot, yokai, yokai

More yokai this week, also Japan's first robot which was anthropomorphic and made in the 1920s. The original still exists in a museum somewhere.

Gakutensoku

kamaitachi (weasel slash)

nurikabe (wall bakemono)

Yokai, yokai, yokai!

Yokai, also known as bakemono, are any of a large range of unusual supernatural critters. Not all are dangerous, some are just strange and all are uncanny. There is almost no information available in English on yokai so my entries are few and often short.

However this week I have three more to add with others coming soon.

Hanako-san

Suna-kake-baba (sand throwing old woman)

tsukumogami (spirit of a made object)

If you are interested in yokai I highly recommend the movie The Great Yokai War.

For other entries on yokai see: Culture - Supernatural Beings/Yôkai in the Topical Index

Anime Companion Topical Index Launched

I have now created a topical index for both of the published Anime Companion books as well as the web based Anime Companion Supplement.

You can see it at:

Topical Index

Please spread the word on this. I want more people to know of this improvement.