In Translation | "The Nintendo All-Stars Free-For-All! Smash Brothers" by Hirokazu Hikawa
The Super Smash Bros. manga, fully scanned and translated in English
I'm just going to cut the preamble today: here is a complete scan and translation of the official Smash Bros. one-shot, written by Hirokazu Hikawa for the February 1999 issue of CoroCoro Comic!
Hikawa is quietly a very large name for our favorite pink eldritch ball of fun, Kirby, being the artist for their manga (also published in CoroCoro) for literal decades now, doubtless playing a not insignificant role in developing their personality. And reading this, it's hardly a surprise: Hikawa packs his pages dense with off-the-wall family friendly gags, plot zooming by a mile a minute as every other panel introduces some new absurdity. It rocks, he rocks, this rocks.
Enjoy this long sought after piece of history!
Music of the Week | Good Morning Good Night by Sachiko M/Toshimaru Nakamura/Otomo Yoshihide
Stefano
A defining work of onkyo-kei, a style that plays with the physical space and form of music, this is the ultimate “two minuses make a plus” album. The players here improvise with such classic instruments as…sine waves and empty sampler machines creating the inverse of noise: long stretches of silence punctuated by the subtlest humming or ringing. If it sounds aggressively experimental, well, yeah it is, but it’s also so warm and expansive. A veritable digital garden fill with blossoming flowers of every variety as far as they eye can see, all made out of the simplest machines and sounds. I always get lost in it, always find new surprises, always feel my soul refreshed when things are over.
Book of the Week | The Labyrinth House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji
My adventures with Ayatsuji continue with this, a mystery writer writing a mystery novel within a mystery novel about mystery writers writing mystery novels for a mystery writer who all start dying in ways that mimic how they die in the mystery novels they are writing. Simple, right? Aggressively metatextual, Ayatsuji uses his encyclopedic, academic knowledge of mysteries to present a thesis on the genre that plays out like a cruel prank against the reader. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book that feels so much like the author is laughing directly at you, but I’m so here for it.
Movie of the Week | Raigyo (dir. Takahisa Zeze, 1997)
A thriller hollowed out as far as it can go. Vague and distant and cold and mean, sex and violence alike played out with a harshly alienating desperation and despondency, actions that reflect in feeling the trash and dead animals that litter wide, decaying landscapes. More important than all that, though, is how heartbreaking and honest it is. Beyond its very tricky and complex thematic concerns, Raigyo simply captures that thing called depression about as well as anyone can. A fog in the head committed to celluloid.
Have thoughts about anything covered this week? Got a recommendation you’re dying to share? Want to tell me how handsome and cool I am? Leave a comment below!
oh and here's a post celebrating the Japanese movie pamphlet