It's Halloween already, which means our favorite manga event of the year has arrived... and sadly, already passed! That's right, Kazuo Umezu's birthday and accompanying Umezz Festival! Never fear, you manga fans unable to attend due to geographic and temporal restrictions-- as with last year, our buddies over at Tokyo Scum Brigade were there documenting and participating in UMEZZ CARNIVAL 2010!
In a series of posts on their blog, Voidmare & Dr. Senbei covered the actual Umezz Carnival, along with his live rock concert and the accompanying animation festival. Here is the list of must-read posts (The 1st post includes bonus Demerin-as-Hebi Onna cosplay pics!)
+ Umezu Carnival 2010
"This year, the Kichijoji Theater provided the backdrop for a three-tiered event grounded with a talk show delving into the man's obsession with snakes, followed by an appearance by anime diva Horie Mitsuko, then topped off with a performance by his band CAPS!! and the Gwash dancers."
"If anything, retiring from manga has given him the time to focus on his second passion: Music. Umezu began writing songs for popular musicians back in the 70's and even recorded two full length CDs, Yami no Album (The Darkness Album) and Gwash!! Makoto-Chan/Umezu Kazuo World. The Umezu Carnival is held both to celebrate his birthday and scratch the rockstar itch that has been driving him batty for the past quarter of a century."
"The 5th annual Kichijoji Film Festival was held yesterday as part of Kichijoji Anime Wonderland. Hometown animation companies Studio 4 C and studio Studio Deen, as well as manga publisher Coamix, were there to represent their turf. They were backed up by academic manga researchers from Kyoto Seika University, Takekuma Kentaro and Tsugata Nobuyuku."
Unrelated to Umezu, I'm curious to know if anyone did horror/indie manga cosplay this year? Last year's bunch was fantastic... please email me any photos and I'll post them up! My buddy Moni and her BF dressed up as Maruo characters...
As a follow-up to my previous post from last week, another video has been posted of Shintaro Kago's mesmerizing inking technique. The previous post and this one feature him inking pages from his newest manga, アナモルフォシスの冥獣 (Dark Beast Animorphosis), which looks to be a Horror/SF kaiju-Cloverfield mutation story. There aren't a lot of details yet on the book itself, but it's schedule to come out in Japan on 11/23/2010, published as a book by コアマガジン (Core Magazine).
Here is a new video posted on the "ANIMORPHOSIS" blog, basically a sped-up clip of him inking the cover illustration. Pretty amazing to watch him fill in all the details:
More details as I have them about the book itself. You know I'm gonna have to talk the San Francisco Kinokuniya into importing myself a copy!
Our buddy Brendan Ninness reminded me this morning on Facebook of some exciting pre-Halloween news... HOUSE by Nobuhiko Obayashi comes out on Criterion DVD today in America!
I've blogged previously about this this masterpiece of goofy surreal horror-- one of my alltime favorite films. This official and lush DVD include the following notables:
Constructing a “House,” a new video piece featuring interviews with director Nobuhiko Obayashi, story scenarist and daughter of the filmmaker Chigumi Obayashi, and screenwriter Chiho Katsura
Emotion, a 1966 experimental film by Obayashi
New video appreciation by director Ti West (House of the Devil)
New and improved English subtitle translation
PLUS: An essay by critic Chuck Stephens
The main piece of awesomeness is simply having HOUSE available on a non-VCD, non-fan translated rip-- but I'm pretty stoked to see the interview with Obayashi and his daughter(!) along with a DVD-quality of his short film Emotion. For folks interested in learning more, Criterion posted a great interview with Janus Films’ Brian Belovarac about the process of "discovering" and releasing the film for English-speaking audiences. Here is the excellent essay about the film by Chuck Stephens on the Criterion site.
Little Thunder is one of our favorite contemporary illustrator/cartoonists, an artist around my age working in Hong Kong. She does narrative comics, along with illustration and design gigs for rad products and sites around the world.
Last week, Little Thunder posted a new batch of sketchbook pages, paintings, and illustrations to her Flickr. I actually gasped when I saw the Shojo manga-inspired "JOEY" series, which summon the sexy and rich textures and compositions of Moto Hagio and other Magnificent 49ers masters.
Check out more of LT's work on her flickr andInstagram, enjoy these pieces, and spread the word about her awesomeness.
For folks within driving distance of the Bay Area, tomorrow is the 2010 Alternative Press Expo! I'll be tabling for the 5th consecutive year with the supergroup known as THE BANG GANG!
I don't have any brand-new zines this time, but will be selling PRISON FOR BITCHES, the Lady Gaga fanzine that me & Michael DeForge created, featuring comics/essays/art by our favorite indie cartoonists and illustrators. I'll be tabling with a fantastic squad of comic creators, and they'll be slinging awesome comics and prints and goodies: Hellen Jo Calvin Wong Anthony Wu Derek Yu Aaron Mew Ryan Germick Angie Wang Mare Odomo
We are at booth #613, located here: [Click for big version]
We'll be there Saturday from 11am-7pm, and Sunday 11am-6pm. Stop by and say hello!
We haven't posted lately about our friend Shintaro Kago, but that doesn't mean he hasn't been keeping busy! Between gags and a longer "sumo detective" comic for the eManga periodical ComiCloud, Kago has also been working on a new book called アナモルフォシスの冥獣 (Dark Beast Animorphosis), which sounds like a twisted kaiju science fiction/monster comic. AWESOME!
I'm not sure of many of the details about this book, but did find a great series of videos on this new "ANIMORPHOSIS" blog of Kago penciling and inking a few panels from the book. They don't give away much plot-wise, but the level of precision and detail he puts into his line work always amazes me. I was lucky enough to snag twopieces of his original work, and I find myself often squinting and staring at them in our hallway remaking on the insane cross-hatching, dot tones, and fine inking. No matter the subject matter, magazine or medium, dude is truly impressive.
I'll dig around for more information on this book (coming out this week on November 18, 2010) and will post them on Same Hat. In the meantime, enjoy these videos!
Updated: SAME HAT stopped updating in 2013! For all new projects, please see Youth in Decline's sit and Instagram.
All fan translations of manga that you'll see in the archives are previously untranslated into English and range from comedy to horror to avant-absurd weirdness.
Same Hat is written & edited by Ryan. If you would like to contact me, please email: samehat @ gmail.com. Also, you can Ask me anything on the Same Hat Tumblr!