Boys who love BL

Volume 1 of the new Genshiken Second Season manga has been out for a few weeks. For me this means not only enjoying a fun manga but also learning more about contemporary fandom in Japan.

And I was not disappointed as in the first chapter we have an example of a new word to be added to the Anime Companion Supplement:

fudanshi (rotten man) 腐男子

Are you a straight male BL fan? Where you now have a term to describe yourself.

To view and read

I have added some additional items to the recommended title pages.

For live action:

- Aragami: The Raging God of Battle
- Seven Samurai
- Shiranami Gonin Otoko

For Prose:

Several works by Kikuchi Hideyuki:
- Demon City Shinjuku: The Complete Edition
- Vampire Hunter D
- Wicked City
- Wind Named Amnesia / Invader Summer
- Yashakiden: The Demon Princess

and by Uchida Yasuo:

- The Togakushi Legend Murders

These titles range from sophisticated to pulp. The good stuff is found both in the high and low.

Getting around and destroying stuff

I've added some new entries to the Recommended Prose page.

 This time two practical books for travelers to Japan and two funs books for fans of space opera science fiction.

 The new entries are:

 Bilingual Atlas of KYOTO

 Bilingual Atlas of TOKYO Covering All 23 Wards

 The Great Adventure of the Dirty Pair by Takachiho Haruka

 The Dirty Pair Strikes Again by Takachiho Haruka

Check out their entries on the page for my descriptions. The two atlases are a must for travelers, the novels are fun, I've been re-reading them on my morning commute.

Adding to the recommendations

Just a short note this week.

I've been adding some new manga titles to my recommended lists.
Black Jack by Tezuka Osamu
MW by Tezuka Osamu

These are not new releases, I rarely do new releases for a couple of reasons, I've been slow to add things and I don't go with the latest hot-to-be-soon-forgotten titles.

I am working on new entries for the live action movie and the prose lists. Expect word on those within the week.

Changes and additions

I've been puttering on a few changes to my website Gilles' Service to Fans Page I removed some sections that were out of date and not likely to be updated and then tackled my recommended title pages. Before today I had three such pages, one for anime, one for manga, and one for live action movies.

What I have done is two things:

Each of the pages had a list of people and studios involved in production. This list was to help readers track favorite directors, writers and studios. As in some cases the same people are involved in different media you had to check each page separately to get information. So I created a new page Creators - Those Behind the Works I Recommend. Now you can go to the list and find if a movie, anime or manga has been based on one of their works, it works other ways too.

The second thing I did was create another new page for Recommended Prose Translated from Japanese and on Japan. This page will be both works translated from Japanese and books about things Japanese. At the moment it only lists the works of Edogawa Rampo that are available in English and my books. I list my books because of the requirement that authors be shameless in promoting their works.

All of this means I have to continue adding titles to the recommended pages to flesh them out and provide more options for people to consider.

Oshii's Virtual Worlds

I just added two new titles to my Recommended Japanese Live Action Cinema web page. These are both directed by Oshii Mamoru who is better known for his animation work.

These two stand out as among the best of his works, and interestingly enough both movies are, while Japanese productions, not in the Japanese language. These two movies are Avalon and its sequel of a sort Assault Girls.

 I had been meaning to add these for some time but was delaying as the Miramax release of Avalon has been out of print for years. Then I was happy to discover that the Japanese editions of Avalon all have English subtitles. In the entry for Avalon I link to CDJapan as I have found CDJapan's prices to be lower than most other sites for Japanese products.