It has been Confirmed!!!!!!

It was just confirmed this morning that The FlaminDessa will be speaking on Medical Manga for 20 minutes at the Comics and medicine Symposium on June the 17th!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

CELEBRATE!!!!!!!!!

Okay, now that the jubilation is here, I've decided to do lots of (relevant) manga reading and hopefully I'll be able to concoct a not-so-overly-excited presentation.

I don't want to burden my friends, but if some of them want to go, then you have to book a place and tickets for students are 25 pounds. I don't want to make them pay that much just to hear me talk manga when it's all free on my blog. But contact me if you want to come along (you know my e-mail address).

http://graphicmedicine.org/#/conference-2010/4536634000

Manga Block

I've made a promise to Miss Short Fuse that i won't read manga until the exams are finished, that's one month away! it's been 2 days and I'm already crabby. :( I don't know how I'll survive this.

On the other hand: Egypt won the African cup of nations for the 3rd time in a row, we get to keep the cup! It was a grueling match against Ghana and they played very well. We on the other hand didn't behave too well.

Corruption by Money or by the System?

It is 1.58, and I'm reading some manga till I get sleepy, and I when I read a particular page, I was so impressed by the message that I think it out to have some mention on this rather low profile blog, Click to enlarge:
For people's interest, the 'system' is the Japanese Healthcare System. I don't know if I entirely agree with the message, but it's pretty strong all the same.

How to survive 16 foodless hours

Firstly: to Miss. Huda: I'm sorry I haven't replie to your text yet, I shall get round to doing it today :)

It's RAMADAAAN!!!! I'm about 11 days late in stating this, but better late than never :D

The first couple of days were okay for me, didn't feel hungry, just tired. lately I've taken to not eating before dawn, so now I am indeed hungry.. or only hungry when people mention food.

The best things about ramdaan is that I feel like I earned my food, and so, eating in the evening hours feels much happier and fulfilling than normal. Other good things are:

1. Mum makes nice soup she only makes in ramadan (although there is no force on earth stopping her making it the rest of the year).
2. Everyone's too tired to argue/fight/get angry (though tension is sometimes high as is normal when you haven't eaten for a long time).
3. I have loads of time to read (I don't see why I didn't find this out before, maybe eating normally takes out a lot of time in our daily lives)
Quran on a daily basis (though I'm about 100 pages behind) and hence I physically feel a lot lighter than normal.
5. I stop reading crappy manga and read good manga (you have to stop bad habbits)
6. MY STOMACH IS FLATTER!!! (because there is no food inside it)
7. I eat loads of dates when time permits me.
8. Me and Miss. Short-Fuse stay up till 2 am reading/chatting/eating.
9. I have taken up baking carrot cakes.



To update you all I've gone into a sort of reading frenzy, as it passes time really well, and getting absorbed into another world helps take your mind off the one you're already in. Books I've read are:

1. Harry Potter 6 (brilliant, but the film was rubbish)
2. Harry Potter 7 (It was time I re-read it)
3. The Yacoubian Building (already mentioned before)
4. Persuasion by Jane Austen (Wentworth, I love you!)

I have picked up David Copperfield by Dickens at the library, I don't know why, probably because Mr. Fullah couldn't stop talking about it, but the sheer size of the book ensures that it'll keep me occupied for the rest of Ramdaan. However, I want to read Pride and Predjudice for the upteenth time again, and I'm in a dillemma as to which I should start....

On a slightly different note, I have been reading manga, some of which I will be reviewing on my blog soon, They are:

1. Onidere
2. Hadashi de bara wo Fume
3. Naruto/
4. Bleach
5. Eensy Weensy Monster (just finished now.. so cute!)
6. Love Letter (war time romance.. sad)
7. Nodame Canatabile (read 5 chapters and am very impressed, despite it being all about pianos which I know nothing of)

And countless other that I'm not bothered to mention.... But I really do like Nodame Cantabile, the characters are so unique and matched well in the plot for maximum entertainment.. I should stop talking about manga...

But one last note! I am having trouble deciding what to talk of for the Manga of the month this month... I'm thinking of Akira, Onidere, Naruto, or Until Death do us Part... I'm not sure which yet. I'm more inclined to do something on Onidere.

And here's a random Manga pic for ya!

Manga of the Month - July

I'm sad and yet happy that I can only vent out my manga enthusiasm on this blog, writing my opinions down allows me to improve the way I present them, instead of being overly zealous (which happens while I'm speaking so I look like I'm talking jack), this unfortunately tends to scare my audiences away, even so, only the most patient of people read my manga talks on this blog, and to them, I am grateful. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside :D

So, time for some manga, well, I'll be talking about a series that is relatively newly started and I only finished reading yesterday. I really enjoyed it as I could relate to some aspects of it (as I will be detailing later on), but let me tell you how I got into this manga and the mangaka's works (the manga writer).

*Ahem* well, I came along the series name 'Kimi ni Todoke' or 'Reaching you' in english,.I read the blurb and thought 'this is not something I'd read' but what brought me into reading it was not the artwork, or the storyline, but the covering picture, it was of the two main characters just looking into each others eyes.... Now this little scene has been overly replayed in shoujo (girl's) manga, but for some reason this paticular picture really grabbed my attention and it made me sort of sink into the picture too.

I decided then and there that I'd read it, so I clicked onto the link for the prologue and LO! There was an example of one of the best drawing styles I've seen, simple but bold, delicate but affective, and most of all, wonderfully variable! (you'll understand me if you read it, which you won't, because not many people even read my recommendations.. or listen to me for that matter).

Well, let me get to the plot of the story, It's about this girl called Sawako, but she's accidentally called 'Sadako' as the scray girl character from the film 'The ring' (originally japanese) was called Sadako. And due to her unfortunate stereotypical appearance of a 'Traditional Japanese ghost' she's feard by her entire school, this had been going on scince elementary school when a rhumour became fact by word of mouth. (I hate it when that happens). She therefore gains no social skills of communicative skills, and her kind intentions are always misinterpreted. Resulting in an accumulated classroom fear of Sawako and her isolation.

The humour of the situation is well described in the manga, but the sadness is not ignored. I could understand Sawako's situation slightly (not to say i'm some sort of rhumoured ghost) but in the respect that I too could only start speking with people when I was 14/15, I even had no personality until I was 17. So I could relate to the female protagonist alot and it made me empathise with her too.

A word on the themes of the story must be mentioned, I'm doing a disrespect by mentioning it so late, so i'll just start now :D The romance is really cute, it is slowly drawn out and develops gradually, from a respect to a care to a deep feeling, which I assume is what's supposed to happen rather than a 'love at first sight' crap? But the importance of the romance in the story I believe is overshadowed by the indispensability of friendship. The great focus in 'Kimi ni Todoke' is the journey Sawako makes to enhance her communication skills and aquire friends, something I too can relate too and respect its difficulty.

It is a Shoujo but it does not exclude the male audience, however if you're looking for bad ass awesome fight and action this is not for you, if you're looking for something that relates to human relationships and good comedy with subtlty but not overly thoughtful, then this is for you.

I hope someone out there gets affected by this >_< I really do love this manga and give it 9/10.

Time for some Manga!

Well, it's been some time since I've reported on some Manga, I've decided to have a 'Manga of the Month' and 'Manga of the week' reccomendation system in order for me not to fall out of the habit. So for this month's Manga, I've decided to write about a paticular Shoujo Manga (girl's Manga) that I paticularly admire. It's called Gekka No Kimi, www.onemanga.com/Gekka_no_Kimi


This series is designated for fans of romance and history, ivery much love the draping Kimono's and Yukatas, I think they're beautiful and well drawn in this series. Well, the story can be considered 2 plots in one. This is because a loose adaptation of an old folk story 'The Tales of Genji' is portrayed in paralell with the story of a modern day couple.

The events that which happen in 'The Tales of Genji' transfer and modify themselves in order to occur in the modern day tale, hence you can see the occurrences that happened 1000 years ago, and what they would be like had they happened in these modern, urban times.

The drawing is very very good, I'm a fan of the mangaka (Ako Shimaki) as I quite like her feminine drawings, but I like how they're not typical and how each panel has a sort of silkiness to it, I'm also grateful for the lack of overt use of background tones... when you see flowers and blossoms in virtually every slide it's gets boring. Maybe I'm being over descriptice, but at the end of the day: the drawings are nice to look at. Being a female-audienced series I don't recommend it for the boys, plus they'd get bored with all the sophistication.

I reccomend this, but not soo much as it's not one of the best out there, it's a very very good shoujo though, however there is an over-use of girly poses on the male protagonist , which is not very good. There are also scenes of an adult nature so not one for the kids either. Overall, an enjoyable, fresh and new read. Dessa ratings = 7/10

How to break off a bad habit?

You simply start a new one. This my dear audience, is my theory in life. And like all theories, it has no solid proof to become a fact. The reason my theory has no solid proof to become fact, is because it is a stupid theory. Actually, it's a VERY stupid theory, it's so stupid, that I've wasted four days with the strong will in the morning to 'do some hard core work' but end up at 9 o'clock in the evening still reading manga from the 'oh just one chapter won't hurt' instinct- another stupid theory.

So what do you do when you've read 50 chapter of an awsome manga that you can't put down but need to put down in order to collect some form of life energy in you? You simply start a new manga to throw off the first: BAD IDEA. You're better off sticking to the first one because now you have 2 full on Bad Ass mangas to read. Consider this an iteration that continues on for 4 days, this equals to: total watse of time.

However! (and this is where my manga pride kicks in) I love it when I come across those deep social and emotional manga that has the ability to inspire new found ambititions in one's rotten soul! I came across this manga today:
It's called Solanin, and it's drawn pretty realistically, there's no faffing about with idealistic characters, everyone is falwed and human. It's about this young woman who gets fed up with the encaging oppression of her job (but that's the same with everyone isn't it?), which is a typical office job, common in Japan. So she quits and understands that the unconstrained boredom of freedom is just as bad as the oppresion she was suffering from in her employment.

A very good read, the comedy is perfect and the drawings are pretty unique, it's targeted towards an older audience, but this is the stuff that I think manga should ultimately be about: lives of the people that read it. For people who are bored and unhappy with life I think this is the manga that works for you :)

Time for an opinion

Not that I think my life is worth telling the world wide web about. But I have been feeling distinctly disgruntled lately, i.e, I'm loosing my cool more quickly than before. I think I'm going through a change... hmmm.

Anyway. I've noticed how wonderful libraries are, I went to one a couple of days ago and picked up a Manga that didn't really seem the type I'd normally pick up, ironically. But the blurb caught my attention as it had some relevence to a project i'm currently researching for. Then I read it. WOW! It's called 'Real' and drawn by the renouned mangaka Takehiko Inoue (Inoue Takehiko is the proper way to say it though) who has also created 'Slam Dunk' and 'Vagabond'.

The plot revolves around three individual characters with very different personalities, one of them is a high school drop out and shunned as 'useless' by society's standards, another is a man who'se leg was amputated as a result of Bone cancer, and the third is a high school student who got hit by a truck as he stole a bicycle. Through each of their hardships they are united by a common goal: to play basketball. The ending of this line might sound a little climatic, but Inoue himself has rather an obsession with the sport and has utilised this thoroughly in his current and previous works. The main issues Inoue has addressed in 'Real' is the overcoming of society's restrictions and the power of capability in a human that is equal between the disabled and able; that no man is any less human whether able-bodied of disabled.

Even though I've only read the first 2 volumes, I have been very impressed by the use of graphic imagery and symbolism Inoue has used to describe the sensations his characters are feeling. For example, in Chapter 5, when the student who stole the bicycle and subsequently gets hit by a truck wakes up in hopital, he is actually shocked to find his legs barbed with wire, symblosing the cruel and painful imprisonment of his legs away from the rest of his body. This was later accompanied by the inability of the boy to actually reach his legs with his arms, the drawing itself had a very desperate air about it, and the description of 'not being able to feel my legs' was very impacting to me.

I look forward to reading the rest :)

Hello!

Hi! Let me introduce myself: I'm The FlaminDessa, call me Dessa and if you think I'm getto enough, then call me Flamin. (I'd like to think I sound cooler being called Flamin)

Well, I never really wanted a blog before, but now I'm really happy I got one and hope to use it for my own personal space to just rant or to share my tales, myths and specimens of imagination.

So, I thought I'd be awsome and write something inspiring but right now I'm feeling kinda dumb. In fact I have an essay to finish and I'm just looking for procrastination (which i'm never short on btw).

Two things are vital for anybody to know about me: I am horrible at spelling (simply atrocious) and I love Manga, like really love it. If I didn't have manga it would be like amputating my heart and throwing it in a sanitation ditch. The picture is from a manga (also an anime/film) called death Note which i urge EVERYBODY to read/watch because it's good for your soul.

Well. Bye!