Zipang
 

This past weekend, I was at an anime con called Otakon (Baltimore, MD, USA) and I saw the first episode of an anime called Zipang. In it, a Japanese MSDF Aegis destroyer goes through a wormhole to find themselves at the Battle Of Midway. It looked like the writers did their technical homework. Anyway, I couldn't watch more, as I was freezing.

Has anyone seen this, and if so, what did you think?

Sounds familiar...

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0...1.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Only if you look no more than a nanometer below the surface of things. Close to half of Final Countdown had to do just with being sure they were in WWII and the other half is more or less about whether they should intervene. The first problem was solved in Book 1 in Zipang, the 2nd problem is a never-ending issue, but they promptly started intervening by maybe Book 3-4.

It is interesting, but sometimes a little contrived. A lot of Mirai's difficulties had to do with the reluctance of JSMDF officers to use decisive force on tactical problems (this is, by the way, a seemingly neverending theme in Kawaguchi's works - see also The Silent Service).

You went to Otakon? You lucky git! :rock:

This was my tenth Otakon!! :rock:

I saw a 35mm print of Sanjiro on a HUGE screen, and some other really interesting things!! Unfortunately, for much of Saturday I was struck down w/a migraine and was nauseaus.

Next door at the stadium there were three sold out events Friday - Sunday. It was a bit of an odd justaposition of pop cultures w/the baseball and anime fans.

You know, I didn't notice the Final Countdown simularity until Whistler pointed it out.

So if I understand well there is a movie of 92 minutes and a swell a serie of 26 episodes. Is that right?

Silent Service seems to be pretty good too!

How would be the best and safest way to go to have them?

Thanks

I've being reading the books, have until number 7. Didn't know about the anime. It's very diferent of "The Final Countdown", the story of Zipang is getting more and more dense and I don't have a lue how is going to end...

So there are books as well?

In which language and where did you get that from?

I buy them every now and then. There are 23 comic books I know of, in Japanese and Chinese. From what I can tell the Chinese translation is overall quite good. I've also seen Book 1 translated to English in Japan a couple years back. That translation was mediocre and I have no idea if it was ever exported.

With Kawaguchi stuff, if you are really interested in what he's trying to say, I suggest you buy the manga. The Zipang animated version wasn't too bad, truncated at around Book 6 or so, but no serious distortion.

The Silent Service animation was a truncated - covers only up to Book 13 and before the real meat of the story starts and so brutally compressed - it arguably bears less resemblance to the comic version than the film version of HFRO does to the book version, which should tell you how bad it is.

Can we confirm that the Comic books of Zipang are all in Black and white?

Well, the the cover and the first two or three pages are in color, other than that they are indeed B/W. They cost enough that way I don't want to think about buying any full color versions.