Month: August 2017

An Updated Update In Case You Never Understood The Last Update

I got an email when I got home.  I was asked why I am not updating CBO?

Please, are you reading the posts?

1)  Nothing to review so nothing to review.

2) As I have pointed out over and over, this blog does NOT pay my bills. My situation is that I cannot afford to waste hours writing and updating a blog when I need to eat and pay bills.

I have tried everything to keep things going even down to pushing my books and trying the PayMe support for the blog.  Nothing.

People come here for free entertainment and don’t really give a crap about who does all the work or supporting the blog.

So why should I work like crazy?

There.

Dragon Ball Z -Yes, I HAVE Changed My Mind

I have been asked once more for my opinion and I can add no more than I wrote here. It should answer questions and I stick to what I wrote.

 Above: This is so similar to Hong Kong Manhua covers and posters not to mention splash pages that the mind tells you this is Manhua influenced.

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You see, I was working after publishing that Dragon Ball Z and Manhua influence and images started flashing up in my mind.  Art I had seen a long time ago but realised it wasn’t Chinese.  Something was “off”.
So, I looked around on my bookshelves.  Nope.  Searched some of my old web groups but accidentally came across one of the recalled images!

Above: VERY Manhua in style.
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It was from Dragon Ball Z and so I did a quick search and….well, I came up with a lot of very Manhua art, but altered so that it was more in-keeping with “the Manga style”.
Far from being coincidental I think it is very likely.
First time I saw Dragon Ball Z I thought it was Manhua but looking closer you see the Manga influence and, to be honest, a Japanese creator HAS to include those popular Manga traits to get a comic published and sold.  The people who head businesses in Japan are VERY conservative and tend to look down at foreigners and things from outside Japan. 

 

 Above: This could well have been lifted from a Jademan comic. It screams “Manhua!”

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Working in a creative arts media Toriyama would have seen lots of material -also Chinese martial arts films became major outside Hong Kong in the late 1960s/early 1970s -when I went to see Bruce Lee, etc., in kung fu movies. Now, a Japanese businessman visiting, say, London or a European city -even the USA-  would have had to have been blind NOT to see this explosion of kung fu mania. And that leads to the question: “what inspires these movies that make so much money?”  And from that….Manhua.

I have looked at what I can find of Dragon Ball Z and you look at Jademan Kung Fu comics that burst on the scene in the early 1980s and the similarity is rather striking.  If you asked me to give a per centage figure on the likely probability of Manhua influence on Toriyama and this series…75% which is as far as anyone can go without being told “No” by the man himself.

So Derek Padula may well be on to something.

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Below: Do I need to say more?  Toriyama is famous, I’m told, for being reclusive. I’d really love to know what has to say because only he knows!