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scans_daily2018-10-30 11:24 pm
malurette) wrote in scans_daily2018-10-30 11:24 pm
Entry tags:
LastMan
Not to be confused with Y: the Last Man, Last Man Standing, Last Man on Earth or with a regular manga by the same name, LastMan is a one-of-a-kind hell of a series.
It sometimes get classified as a franga/french manga because of its format–-200 pages each volume, not chaptered, the first few pages in colour and the rest in black and white, pages smaller than classic albums, more the size of a deluxe manga... plus a use of tropes reminiscent of shounen manga.
I won’t post a lot of scans for this series, because an English translation exists but I don’t own it myself and I feel stupid scanning the original French and redoing all the work someone else already did. Wish I could get a copy to share...
Honestly, the beginning of the series is not very good. The more I reread it, the less I understand how it got insanely popular at first. Legend has it that the authors wanted to make a porno series in which their hero would be the last man in the world and fuck every woman he crossed paths with. Dudes never heard of Y: the Last Man beforehand, probably. No publisher agreed with that so they changed their minds and toned it down. But be warned: one of them is a raging misogyne and the treatment of their female characters is sometimes sketchy.Wow, I'm shooting myself in the foot here if I really hope to sell the series...
OK. Let's get to the good aspects of it. Hum. There's adventure, a lot of action, humour both light and darker, and the female characters get better as the series goes.
LastMan also spawned a cartoon prequel, introduced as such:
«Have ever sensed that other worlds exist, adn that of all those worlds, the one you are stuck in a just a miserable dead end? What if, behind what we call reality, there lies a secret passage? Would you be prepated to cross to the other side, to drink the nectar of truth, and brn your eyes at the sight of the very fabric of the universe?
Our libraries are brimming with stories from the worlds of legends. Their dusty covered tomes form a labyrinth that guards the only among them that is true: the Legend of the Valley of Kings.»
Let's sort out something important first: the Valley of Kings has nothing to do with the Ancient Egyptian pharaoh's burial site. It's a generic European-based medieval fantasy.
And in this Valley, one young Adrian Velba, 8 years old nearing on 9, is training very hard to take his part in the next great martial arts tournament. See him at home with his darling of a single mother.
It'sh so good! / A melon salad. As I walked past the marketplace I thought you would like it.
Don't you eat? / No, I already had a bite at work. // Know what, Mom?
Tell me. / Even if my partner isn't very strong we're going to win this tournament! I promise. Then we'll get the big cup full of gold coins and we'll go to the market and buy all the food we need! Forever!
-
Aww, he wants to help his poor mother out... / I think we already manage pretty good between the two of us, don't you? / Yes.
So tomorrow don't think about me. You'll be there to have fun, never forget that. And now, time to sleep so we're in good shape tomorrow.
The next day right before the tournament, Adrian's partner bails out. Comes in our secon protagonist: Richard Aldana, way into his 30ties, rude, lone wolf, careless with his women, unaware of local ways, and bent on participating in the tournament too, for reasons of his own. So of course they'll pair up.
I'm sorry but the participants' list is written down and is about to be sent to the king and queen. / You're telling me I rode 3,000 kilometers on my bike for nothing?
What's Mybike? / I dunno. / Didn't get that one.
Give me the bloody inscription form, damnit!
-
He' the one who has the form. / So I put my name here? And what's this, I sign?
A partner?! Wait, these are tag team matches?
Are you serious? / It's tradition. // You know what I'll just put my name twice, then it's settled. A partner would do nothing anyway.
Yuppp, this is a classic Richard introduction. (If you've watched the prequel already, jsut know that some 10 years have passed in between and things haven't got any better for it.)
And it begins like a very classic action shounen manga: pummelling down their way through a line of opponents.
So we have a cast with the no-nonsense mother, the nice female best friend, the hero's skeevy rival...
Ho, calm down, don't talk to me this way. / Sorry. Elorna... / You're our last hope. Never before did students from our school get this far. I'm begging you! If «we» mean anything to you, get on this ring. And beat Adrian. / Do you remember our promise? Say? Do you? / Do it for me. Do it for us.
-
Go Elorna! / Take on him!
Do the same as before Adrian. Go on big guy! / Savage him Elorna! Throw him off the ring!
I have to warn you that around the middle of vol. #2, there's a scene really awful when one of Richard's opponents loses her match by... losing control of her hormones and trying to fuck him right here on the ring. At this point I threw the book down and it's only because I had watched and loved the prequel cartoon to bits before and I really really wanted to know what became of the characters after, that I gave the comics a second chance and picked it up again.
Good thing I did, or I would have met Cristo Canyon.
Now we're nearing the end of vol. #2 and of the tournament arc. See little Adrian go full fanboy mode over his next opponent and winner of the previous tournament:
Teamwork?
Did you see how Cristo fought? He got rid of his opponents in ten seconds top.
He did his Thousand Fists technique again.
-
That, and this Mandingo was super strong too... but couldn't land a single punch. / D'you think that one day I'll fight like this?
Yeah...
Cristo Canyon will become very, very important later on. Speaking of the prequel again, if you watch it until the very very end, yup, the stinger and the sequel hook after the last credit sequence that brings you to tears, you'll recognize the mask of his clan.
Things go to hell at the end of vol. #2 when Aldana really fuck things up, and then...
...and then Marianne and Adrian become even more important!
They cross the path between worlds, the other way around,
They find themselves in Nillipolis Island, a seedy backwaters place where the only welcoming people are a brothel's owner and his main girl. Greedy guys who want Marianne's map to the other world even more than the gold coins in her bag have her arrested and we see their weird idea of justice where wrestling replaces pleading.
At the end of vol. #3 they leave that awful place and get to Paxtown, the place Aldana cama from in the first place, a fictional almost parodic version of a big US city, slightly futuristic and awfully corrupt. Everything bad Nillipolis was, this.. is worse.
But then we take a turn from fantasy into urban science fiction! Yeah!!
At this point somebody decided that wow, that shit has serious potential about the rights for an animated adaptation. Trouble is, there wasn’t enough material yet to work with, the comics’ format wouldn’t translate well into episodes, and scenarists for both the comics and the putative cartoon felt that rushing to set things in stone would block them later. So instead, they went with the idea of a prequel: Aldana’s youth in Patxtown ten years before he entered the Valley, what happened during his formative years, what backstory led him to become what he is now.
And the cartoon is what I really to talk about today! the cartoon is amazing. They took one mess of a comics and made something great out of it.
So I'll stop talking about the comics now: I honestly cannot recommand it by itself. It's a good but not great adventure series, but its prequel is even better.
Suppose you're stuck at the end of vol. #6, you might want to go watch the series to fill things up while you wait for the rest of the English translation. If you manage to keep reading further in another language, once you get to vol. #9, you'll find there are bits missing. And by vol. #10, without the cartoon, you'll be lost. So I really suggest you watch the cartoon first, cry ou in frustration because there'll never be a second season, and then read the comics to see what became of your beloved characters after.
The cartoon is only one season long, 26 episodes, 11 minutes each—yep that’s short but it's good—so it’s quick to decide whether you like it or not. I’d say, by episode 2 you have a pretty good idea already and by episodes 4 or 5, you’ll know.
To keep with the Hallowwen feeling, there are Muscles, Machine guns and Monsters in it! (Also humour, action, sex, violence... and feeeeelings.)
The following rec is courtesy offlo_nelja, translated from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
amours_de_fans with her permission. I second her opinions!
What is Lastman?
Lastman is a very niche thing: a french adult animation series. It's coming from a bande dessinée. However it's not a direct adaptation: it takes place ten years before, and tells the pas of main character Richard Aldana.
Even if the comics was written first, advice is to start with the cartoon, first because it takes place prior, then because the comics isn't that good at the start at gets better only later. It helps getting acquainted with the universe.
What else? The DVD box was released last december (and you can also stream the episodes, on Mondo/VRV in the US, on Netflix in France, and there are illegal subs of dubious quality floating around). There is an English dub, the translation is very slightly faulty at times but the voice acting is very good.
26 episodes, 12 minutes each, waiting for you! It's a fast watch, and still allow for good character development and a fascinating universe!
Yes, but what is it about?
A modern city, over crowded, inspired by the US (complete with a few satirical bits, not always subtil). Our hero, Richard Aldana, is a boxer who could be great if only he worked a bit on it. Instead, he freeloads at the boxing club's owner's place. He tries to find some paying job, only to get into trouble with the local mafia.
Too bad, one day, his coach and best friend, Dave, is killed by a man who shoots lightning out of his hands.
Of course, nobody would ever believe that. But Dave secretly had a daughter, Siri, and this man and his goons are after her. She's young, she can't escape them alone. Richard chooses to help her, and gets dragged into a mess with demons, alternate worlds, magic and science-fiction, with no other mean to figth than his two fists. As the US trailer says it: he's the last man for the job.
(You can watch the trailer here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ6CPq0H8IU
on the series' official channel.)
And why is it so good?
The first thing is humour. It's not always sophisticated but it works and it's rather original. But it's not a funny series—at times it gest really dark—but it takes some talent to balance the dark stuff with humour that won't unsettle things, and it does it right.
Then, there's urban fantasy making use of both universes. The urban side is well developped, notably the seediest parts of the city. It's not just a pretext, stuff about mafia and drugs have their importance in the narrative, and when a character is broke or wants a shinier future it's not treated as a joke. It allows for characters not involved in the surpernatural part of the story, like Tomie Katana, to fully exist and fit in anyway.
And there's the fantasy part. It holds multiple fancy themes, like demonic possession, special powers that could be limited but get used creatively, trying to explain supernatural stuff by science that don't work yet are not mocked par the narrative nor are useless, dangerous and cruel creatures with hints that they weren't always that way... it's coherent and satisfying, and still opens the way for something even bigger.
More, characters are interesting and sympathetic! And the end is both surprising, and, if you really think back about everything, you see all the hints leading to it you missed at first.
What about theses likable characters?
OK ! Let's take the group picture, left to right.
* Howard McKenzie. He's Dave's younger brother, deeply involved in the «demons» hunt (it's more complicated but we'll stick to this generic name to avoid spoilers) they used to do together before the beginning of the series, unbeknown to Richard. He's good with science and occult stuff, he's cold and seemingly unfeeling to the point it gets unnerving, but there are many hidden layer under that.
* Dave McKenzie, Richard's boxing coach. Dave is a cool, badass guy, who protects the ones in need. Still, he makes compromises with the mafia when there's no other way. He died way too soon.
* Richard Aldana. Richard is a loser with no motivation, so it's easy to feel him, but he can also go at it very hard if he really needs to—often with his fists. He's got an awful sense of humour and it's still funny as hell. He's also got a n easy going sex life and respect women, something that's neat to see.
* Tomie Katana is a singer who wants to become famous, and to get there she'll have to bounce her boobs and get involved with the mafia too. She accidentally crosses paths with Richard several times, and as time goes by, she progressively becomes his love interest. She's got a strong personality, she's often funny and at times touching.
* Monica Mendoza is the cop leading the investigations about our heroes' crimes, she's very competent, and that's sort of a problem. Yup because killing demons that nobody knows that there are demons and leave human looking corpses behind, is not very legal.
* Siri is Dave's adopted daughter, and deeply tied to the supernatural part of the scenario. She's very well written: her character arc involves cute bits, angry bits, self doubting bits, and child endangerment, and all this stuff could be stereotyped, yet it forms a coherent character, like a normal little girl and without becoming a cliché.
* (Richard again)
* Behind Siri and Richard's picture : we can see Rizel, the demon that killed Dave with electricity. He's one of the main villain, but not the only one. He lacks one eye. He's searching for Siri. All of this is duly explained within the series.
(We won't show the other villains here. Let's keep some surprises! Not showing, either, Duke, Richard's boxing partner, who's great but comes in later in the series.)
Anything else?
We really recommand this series! It's interesting, with good pacing, more original that this summary can show.
(No canon mlm stuff but several stuff shippers can latch on, and a bit of canon wlw with background characters.)
It bears repeating, it's an adult series! There's gore, sex, nudity, drugs, deaths. And more than that, of course, but the guys in charge never held off when it helped get the narrative further.
If we get back to the comics series, right now it amounts to 10 volumes out of 12 planned, and #11 will be out just next week. The first 6 make up a first arc, the 6 next another after a ten-year time-skip. (Also, some spin-off one-shots were announced, one was issued early this year and... I thought it was terrible. I don't know how it sold, and what'll happen to whatever else was planned.)
It sometimes get classified as a franga/french manga because of its format–-200 pages each volume, not chaptered, the first few pages in colour and the rest in black and white, pages smaller than classic albums, more the size of a deluxe manga... plus a use of tropes reminiscent of shounen manga.
I won’t post a lot of scans for this series, because an English translation exists but I don’t own it myself and I feel stupid scanning the original French and redoing all the work someone else already did. Wish I could get a copy to share...
Honestly, the beginning of the series is not very good. The more I reread it, the less I understand how it got insanely popular at first. Legend has it that the authors wanted to make a porno series in which their hero would be the last man in the world and fuck every woman he crossed paths with. Dudes never heard of Y: the Last Man beforehand, probably. No publisher agreed with that so they changed their minds and toned it down. But be warned: one of them is a raging misogyne and the treatment of their female characters is sometimes sketchy.
OK. Let's get to the good aspects of it. Hum. There's adventure, a lot of action, humour both light and darker, and the female characters get better as the series goes.
LastMan also spawned a cartoon prequel, introduced as such:
«Have ever sensed that other worlds exist, adn that of all those worlds, the one you are stuck in a just a miserable dead end? What if, behind what we call reality, there lies a secret passage? Would you be prepated to cross to the other side, to drink the nectar of truth, and brn your eyes at the sight of the very fabric of the universe?
Our libraries are brimming with stories from the worlds of legends. Their dusty covered tomes form a labyrinth that guards the only among them that is true: the Legend of the Valley of Kings.»
Let's sort out something important first: the Valley of Kings has nothing to do with the Ancient Egyptian pharaoh's burial site. It's a generic European-based medieval fantasy.
And in this Valley, one young Adrian Velba, 8 years old nearing on 9, is training very hard to take his part in the next great martial arts tournament. See him at home with his darling of a single mother.
It'sh so good! / A melon salad. As I walked past the marketplace I thought you would like it.
Don't you eat? / No, I already had a bite at work. // Know what, Mom?
Tell me. / Even if my partner isn't very strong we're going to win this tournament! I promise. Then we'll get the big cup full of gold coins and we'll go to the market and buy all the food we need! Forever!
-
Aww, he wants to help his poor mother out... / I think we already manage pretty good between the two of us, don't you? / Yes.
So tomorrow don't think about me. You'll be there to have fun, never forget that. And now, time to sleep so we're in good shape tomorrow.
The next day right before the tournament, Adrian's partner bails out. Comes in our secon protagonist: Richard Aldana, way into his 30ties, rude, lone wolf, careless with his women, unaware of local ways, and bent on participating in the tournament too, for reasons of his own. So of course they'll pair up.
I'm sorry but the participants' list is written down and is about to be sent to the king and queen. / You're telling me I rode 3,000 kilometers on my bike for nothing?
What's Mybike? / I dunno. / Didn't get that one.
Give me the bloody inscription form, damnit!
-
He' the one who has the form. / So I put my name here? And what's this, I sign?
A partner?! Wait, these are tag team matches?
Are you serious? / It's tradition. // You know what I'll just put my name twice, then it's settled. A partner would do nothing anyway.
Yuppp, this is a classic Richard introduction. (If you've watched the prequel already, jsut know that some 10 years have passed in between and things haven't got any better for it.)
And it begins like a very classic action shounen manga: pummelling down their way through a line of opponents.
So we have a cast with the no-nonsense mother, the nice female best friend, the hero's skeevy rival...
Ho, calm down, don't talk to me this way. / Sorry. Elorna... / You're our last hope. Never before did students from our school get this far. I'm begging you! If «we» mean anything to you, get on this ring. And beat Adrian. / Do you remember our promise? Say? Do you? / Do it for me. Do it for us.
-
Go Elorna! / Take on him!
Do the same as before Adrian. Go on big guy! / Savage him Elorna! Throw him off the ring!
I have to warn you that around the middle of vol. #2, there's a scene really awful when one of Richard's opponents loses her match by... losing control of her hormones and trying to fuck him right here on the ring. At this point I threw the book down and it's only because I had watched and loved the prequel cartoon to bits before and I really really wanted to know what became of the characters after, that I gave the comics a second chance and picked it up again.
Good thing I did, or I would have met Cristo Canyon.
Now we're nearing the end of vol. #2 and of the tournament arc. See little Adrian go full fanboy mode over his next opponent and winner of the previous tournament:
Teamwork?
Did you see how Cristo fought? He got rid of his opponents in ten seconds top.
He did his Thousand Fists technique again.
-
That, and this Mandingo was super strong too... but couldn't land a single punch. / D'you think that one day I'll fight like this?
Yeah...
Cristo Canyon will become very, very important later on. Speaking of the prequel again, if you watch it until the very very end, yup, the stinger and the sequel hook after the last credit sequence that brings you to tears, you'll recognize the mask of his clan.
Things go to hell at the end of vol. #2 when Aldana really fuck things up, and then...
...and then Marianne and Adrian become even more important!
They cross the path between worlds, the other way around,
They find themselves in Nillipolis Island, a seedy backwaters place where the only welcoming people are a brothel's owner and his main girl. Greedy guys who want Marianne's map to the other world even more than the gold coins in her bag have her arrested and we see their weird idea of justice where wrestling replaces pleading.
At the end of vol. #3 they leave that awful place and get to Paxtown, the place Aldana cama from in the first place, a fictional almost parodic version of a big US city, slightly futuristic and awfully corrupt. Everything bad Nillipolis was, this.. is worse.
But then we take a turn from fantasy into urban science fiction! Yeah!!
At this point somebody decided that wow, that shit has serious potential about the rights for an animated adaptation. Trouble is, there wasn’t enough material yet to work with, the comics’ format wouldn’t translate well into episodes, and scenarists for both the comics and the putative cartoon felt that rushing to set things in stone would block them later. So instead, they went with the idea of a prequel: Aldana’s youth in Patxtown ten years before he entered the Valley, what happened during his formative years, what backstory led him to become what he is now.
And the cartoon is what I really to talk about today! the cartoon is amazing. They took one mess of a comics and made something great out of it.
So I'll stop talking about the comics now: I honestly cannot recommand it by itself. It's a good but not great adventure series, but its prequel is even better.
Suppose you're stuck at the end of vol. #6, you might want to go watch the series to fill things up while you wait for the rest of the English translation. If you manage to keep reading further in another language, once you get to vol. #9, you'll find there are bits missing. And by vol. #10, without the cartoon, you'll be lost. So I really suggest you watch the cartoon first, cry ou in frustration because there'll never be a second season, and then read the comics to see what became of your beloved characters after.
The cartoon is only one season long, 26 episodes, 11 minutes each—yep that’s short but it's good—so it’s quick to decide whether you like it or not. I’d say, by episode 2 you have a pretty good idea already and by episodes 4 or 5, you’ll know.
To keep with the Hallowwen feeling, there are Muscles, Machine guns and Monsters in it! (Also humour, action, sex, violence... and feeeeelings.)
The following rec is courtesy of
flo_nelja, translated from amours_de_fans with her permission. I second her opinions!What is Lastman?
Lastman is a very niche thing: a french adult animation series. It's coming from a bande dessinée. However it's not a direct adaptation: it takes place ten years before, and tells the pas of main character Richard Aldana.
Even if the comics was written first, advice is to start with the cartoon, first because it takes place prior, then because the comics isn't that good at the start at gets better only later. It helps getting acquainted with the universe.
What else? The DVD box was released last december (and you can also stream the episodes, on Mondo/VRV in the US, on Netflix in France, and there are illegal subs of dubious quality floating around). There is an English dub, the translation is very slightly faulty at times but the voice acting is very good.
26 episodes, 12 minutes each, waiting for you! It's a fast watch, and still allow for good character development and a fascinating universe!
Yes, but what is it about?
A modern city, over crowded, inspired by the US (complete with a few satirical bits, not always subtil). Our hero, Richard Aldana, is a boxer who could be great if only he worked a bit on it. Instead, he freeloads at the boxing club's owner's place. He tries to find some paying job, only to get into trouble with the local mafia.
Too bad, one day, his coach and best friend, Dave, is killed by a man who shoots lightning out of his hands.
Of course, nobody would ever believe that. But Dave secretly had a daughter, Siri, and this man and his goons are after her. She's young, she can't escape them alone. Richard chooses to help her, and gets dragged into a mess with demons, alternate worlds, magic and science-fiction, with no other mean to figth than his two fists. As the US trailer says it: he's the last man for the job.
(You can watch the trailer here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ6CPq0H8IU
on the series' official channel.)
And why is it so good?
The first thing is humour. It's not always sophisticated but it works and it's rather original. But it's not a funny series—at times it gest really dark—but it takes some talent to balance the dark stuff with humour that won't unsettle things, and it does it right.
Then, there's urban fantasy making use of both universes. The urban side is well developped, notably the seediest parts of the city. It's not just a pretext, stuff about mafia and drugs have their importance in the narrative, and when a character is broke or wants a shinier future it's not treated as a joke. It allows for characters not involved in the surpernatural part of the story, like Tomie Katana, to fully exist and fit in anyway.
And there's the fantasy part. It holds multiple fancy themes, like demonic possession, special powers that could be limited but get used creatively, trying to explain supernatural stuff by science that don't work yet are not mocked par the narrative nor are useless, dangerous and cruel creatures with hints that they weren't always that way... it's coherent and satisfying, and still opens the way for something even bigger.
More, characters are interesting and sympathetic! And the end is both surprising, and, if you really think back about everything, you see all the hints leading to it you missed at first.
What about theses likable characters?
OK ! Let's take the group picture, left to right.
* Howard McKenzie. He's Dave's younger brother, deeply involved in the «demons» hunt (it's more complicated but we'll stick to this generic name to avoid spoilers) they used to do together before the beginning of the series, unbeknown to Richard. He's good with science and occult stuff, he's cold and seemingly unfeeling to the point it gets unnerving, but there are many hidden layer under that.
* Dave McKenzie, Richard's boxing coach. Dave is a cool, badass guy, who protects the ones in need. Still, he makes compromises with the mafia when there's no other way. He died way too soon.
* Richard Aldana. Richard is a loser with no motivation, so it's easy to feel him, but he can also go at it very hard if he really needs to—often with his fists. He's got an awful sense of humour and it's still funny as hell. He's also got a n easy going sex life and respect women, something that's neat to see.
* Tomie Katana is a singer who wants to become famous, and to get there she'll have to bounce her boobs and get involved with the mafia too. She accidentally crosses paths with Richard several times, and as time goes by, she progressively becomes his love interest. She's got a strong personality, she's often funny and at times touching.
* Monica Mendoza is the cop leading the investigations about our heroes' crimes, she's very competent, and that's sort of a problem. Yup because killing demons that nobody knows that there are demons and leave human looking corpses behind, is not very legal.
* Siri is Dave's adopted daughter, and deeply tied to the supernatural part of the scenario. She's very well written: her character arc involves cute bits, angry bits, self doubting bits, and child endangerment, and all this stuff could be stereotyped, yet it forms a coherent character, like a normal little girl and without becoming a cliché.
* (Richard again)
* Behind Siri and Richard's picture : we can see Rizel, the demon that killed Dave with electricity. He's one of the main villain, but not the only one. He lacks one eye. He's searching for Siri. All of this is duly explained within the series.
(We won't show the other villains here. Let's keep some surprises! Not showing, either, Duke, Richard's boxing partner, who's great but comes in later in the series.)
Anything else?
We really recommand this series! It's interesting, with good pacing, more original that this summary can show.
(No canon mlm stuff but several stuff shippers can latch on, and a bit of canon wlw with background characters.)
It bears repeating, it's an adult series! There's gore, sex, nudity, drugs, deaths. And more than that, of course, but the guys in charge never held off when it helped get the narrative further.
If we get back to the comics series, right now it amounts to 10 volumes out of 12 planned, and #11 will be out just next week. The first 6 make up a first arc, the 6 next another after a ten-year time-skip. (Also, some spin-off one-shots were announced, one was issued early this year and... I thought it was terrible. I don't know how it sold, and what'll happen to whatever else was planned.)
no subject
The tone, the unapologetic humour and all those twists.
And the silly bonus pages by Balak at the end of every tome!
I only recently began to watch the cartoon. I was a but reluctant because I thought it would just be about Aldana, his boxing days and his story with Tomie. Whelp, I was wrong. I'm hooked.
no subject