On my trip to my hometown of Phoenix, AZ during my summer vacation, I was able to visit a Book Off on Bell Road! It opened within recent years. There have been Book Off stores all along in California. When Mayu and I used to live in America, we would visit the Book Off locations in Torrance, Garden Grove, Los Angeles and other areas. But now both Book Off and Daiso stores have opened in the Phoenix area.
Here are the signs outside.
Look at all the books! The books are in English, of course. Otherwise, the experience is just like a Book Off in Japan. This makes Book Off a direct competitor with the long-standing Bookmans store locations in Arizona.
The store clerk says that so much of this stuff is imported from the Book Off locations in Japan. I guess they buy so much stuff that they just export it to the USA for sale there.
So many anime figures for sale in the display case.
So many pin buttons, keychains, and small figures. Just like a Book Off in Japan.
They have import Famicom games from Japan! Star Wars, Red Arima, Parodius, Galaga… neat stuff!
Import Famicom and Super Famicom games too.
Domestically-released modern games are sold used there as well, of course.
This is the Grave of the Fireflies movie soundtrack on vinyl record. I was surprised to find this.
Huge selection of used, English-language manga. I bought several used volumes of Spy Family.
Gunpla! There were also other model kits there too. I even saw an Eggplane Girl resin figure by Hasegawa there, and for a good price. This is so cool.
Dollar books. Very neat. I didn’t have time to look at the SF book selection there. It would’ve been nice if I had more time to spend, but I had quite a busy itinerary with my friends Kevin and Brian. (Our next destination was Andy’s Hobby HQ which I featured in my previous blog post.)
I finally bought the collaborative, compilation doujin manga called “We Love Nadia” On Yahoo Auctions Japan. I mentioned about this manga before in another post I made about Jean and Nadia’s wedding. It looks like Sadamoto did the cover art, but inside are illustrations and mini comics of Jean and Nadia, with their life past the events of the TV show. I have said many times that the Nadia movie was a huge disappointment. They separated Jean and Nadia by having Nadia pursue a career in journalism in England and left Jean alone in France, reset Grandis’s character, concocted a dumb plot involving a girl named Fuzzy who needs rescuing, and it was just dumb. The only positive about it was seeing Jean and Nadia a few years older. I was hoping that a followup to the stellar TV show would involve Jean and Nadia either getting married, or post-marriage with children.
Well, this “We Love Nadia” doujinshi does not disappoint! This cute manga is a collection of short stories of Jean and Nadia becoming adults, their wedding, and raising a family. It is a collaborative tribute to Nadia from many various people. Some of the art is crap, some of the stuff is comedic, but most of it is fantastic. A story of their wedding, Nadia thanking her father, Jean and Nadia naming their son (Jean wanted to name him Nemo, but Nadia objected and thus became Junior), Jean and a pregnant Nadia explaining to Junior where babies come from, and Nadia giving birth to their baby daughter Cherry! I want to try to translate this as much as I can because this is very precious. It cost me 5,000 yen, but I think it is worth it! It contains some rather charming stories, and I want to translate some of these to put on my Greg’s Life page like I have with other scanlations I’ve done in the past.
Too many doujinshi based on existing properties are pornographic. When I found this on YAJ, it was described as a doujin about Nadia and Jean’s wedding. Well, is it about their wedding or their wedding night? I asked the seller if it was hentai, and he said no. Even Sadamoto was involved, the seller said. I imagine at least the cover art is by Sadamoto.
This is a thank-you letter to Sadamoto.
“I alone will make Nadia happy,” says Jean.
“I’m so happy.”
I swear, this is what I wanted the movie to entail.
Jean and Nadia’s family, with their son Junior and daughter Cherry. I imagine that must be King’s son next to them? There is a picture of a full-grown King and his own son.
Nadia giving birth to their daughter, Cherry. (Cherie?) This is so cool.
Nadia was such a fantastic anime series, and I think it helped that Miyazaki developed the concept plot for the show. It follows in the same Miyazaki style as Future Boy Conan and Laputa: The Castle in the Sky. Young girl is in trouble and being pursued by those after her, young boy rescues her, they go on an adventure. One might be tempted to think that Nadia is a ripoff especially of Laputa, without knowing that both were developed by the same creator and that Nadia was possibly conceived before Laputa.
But then came Evangelion, which in many ways ruined anime. It introduced the anime trope of a brooding, miserable protagonist full of angst and self-pity, throw in a bunch of characters who hate each other in a lazy attempt to provide tension, and give the plot so many psychotic, gross elements that don’t make sense and fools everyone into thinking that it’s “artistic” or something. Sorry, I would rather see Jean and Nadia kissing on the beach than Shinji jerking off in front of Asuka as she lays unconscious in the hospital. Shinji is a pathetic, miserable turd who never develops as a character. Boys need a protagonist to look up to, not a loathsome weakling who wallows in self-pity to commiserate with.
