A Spirit of the Sun

Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 6:46 pm

Hooray for volcano explosions.

Roadie Joined: 10 Mar 2004 Posts: 45 Location: Located

Nice addition to the MS roster! Nothing quite like natural disasters to bring out the best in people.

Roadie Joined: 02 Sep 2003 Posts: 61 Location: Belgium

i like it but i hope it won't become too heavy blah. it's good but still not on an urasawa level good Wink

looking forward to more as right now nothing much has happened (ok, except some earthquakes and volcano-eruptions... ^^;; )

Posted: Mon Sep 27, 2004 9:34 am

Well, as far as I can figure out by looking at the pretty pictures and by utilizing my very limited language skillz, the beginning is really just sort of setting the scene for the "real" story.

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2004 12:14 am

Yeah, it'll be hard to judge Spirit until we get partway into the 2nd volume, because the entire 1st volume is essentially the prologue of the story. I'm not exactly flying through it though.

I'd recommend this title to fans of later Urasawa... I would say it's the return of dense epic storytelling for Mangascreener, after the conclusion of Monster, and now that 20th CB is slowing down.

Groupie Joined: 03 Apr 2004 Posts: 118

Something about Kaiji Kawaguchi's work simultaneously annoys and interests me. Can't really pin it down, but I like to read his stuff.

Of course there's the young male idealist (not pacifiist) as a lead. And Kawaguchi seems slightly better at drawing women this time around but I don't think his style will ever really be suited for it.

Dude, what the hell kinda father thinks his son is a loser politician and hopes his grandson will survive because he has potential?! Talk about ambition of family legacy and its perfectly normal in this story....

I think its pretty unrealistic for China to ever occupy Japan under auspices of disaster relief. Relations aren't that good and China is not capable in terms of manpower, organization, capital, etc. All they have going for them is the fact that they are damn huge. It's much more realistic for a UN and US led occupation. Twisted Evil

And of course, America gets flack for helping out because they have selfish reasons. Duh, doesn't everyone?!

Still I love Kawaguchi's "alternate reality" takes on politics. Gets me thinking.

Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2005 9:34 pm

I find that Kawaguchi reminds me a whole lot of the American alternate history author, Harry Turtledove. He's not a particularly adept writer, which always introduces a level of fatigue once you've read enough of his material to notice the everpresent flaws, but he does have an excellent imagination and a keen talent for creating fascinating situations.

For those who are not familiar with Turtledove, he has written a metric ton of literature about such scenarios as: the South winning the Civil War and remaining a sovereign nation up through WWII, Hitler winning WWII and conquering America, the Japanese conquering America in WWII, aliens attempting to conquer the world in the middle of WWII, the Conquistadors conquering England, a fantasy analogy rendition of WWII, etc. The manner in which he manipulates story elements to interact in interesting and unexpected ways is always clever, but he's an awful writer who's very comfortable with the way he writes and thus he'll never change. One thing he has over Kawaguchi is that his characters are typically fatalistic, while Kawaguchi's are idealistic, and those idealistic types have the potential to be far more annoying at times.

Still, since the premise is interesting and it's not too long yet (unlike Zipang, which is out of reach now, and of course Silent Service, which is endless), I figured we needed to do one of his big ones, and Spirit fits the mark pretty well.

Amateur Musician Joined: 08 Feb 2004 Posts: 197

Whilst not strictly manga, I wish some group would resurect subbing the Zipang anime. Crying or Very sad

Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2005 4:10 am

Oh, it's so good! The latest chapters bring a really good turn to the story. I liked the "i already gained all my memory back". This was also what i liked about eagle the best, showing there will to change things or making strong statements. It reminds me a lot of fighting mangas, same scenes but instead of fists they use words.

For an austrian like me, the thing about travelling in one land trough different zones was really interesting. After worldwar two (my grandma told me) the people in my city (linz) were also sepperated in two zones. Everything on one side of the Donau (a river) was american and everthing on the other side was governed by the russians. Without passport you couldn't even go to your relatives. But in the manga it seems more like Japan was occupied by america and china and that they are not only helping japan to come back on their feet.

I really want to know, how this story decvelopes. And i can't believe i had to search for this topic on the second page because no one seems to be discussing it....

Fan Boy Joined: 29 Mar 2005 Posts: 23 Location: Venezuela

Well i hope that people starts getting more into spirit now that it has a similar release schedule as our other projects (no more 4 months or anything between releases), because i think its one of the best series we're doing atm, and i'd like to present Genichiro as the substitute for Kenji as the "guy you'd like to be your friend when the shit hits the fan (or a earthquake splits your country)".

Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2005 1:50 pm

Yeah, the releases should be coming a lot more regularly with an everpresent editor around to work on it. And now we are really starting to get into the "meat" of the story, since we've finished the prologue-y bits.

Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 5:45 am

that's great to hear. a question is bothering me since i started reading the first few pages: how many volumes are there? I hope more then ten?

Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 6:08 am

Volume 9 just came out, that's the latest, and it doesn't seem to be showing any signs of slowing.

Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 10:23 am

thanks. thats good to hear, but i thought it would be so, because the story is developing smoothly and there haven't been much characters introduced by now.

Posted: Fri Dec 15, 2006 7:32 pm

Spirit of the Sun just won the Grand Prize in the Manga category from the 10th Annual Media Arts Awards. It's the 2nd Grand Prize winner we've been involved in scanlating, and the 9th that has been among the 5 titles they announce every year.

Monster (1st year)
Megumi no Daigo (2nd year)
Sexy Voice and Robo (6th year, Grand Prize)
20th Century Boys (6th year)
Helter Skelter (7th year)
Mushishi (7th year)
Witches (8th year)
Pluto (9th year)
A Spirit of the Sun (10th year)