In between working on the new online episodes, I'm working through the older stand-alone episodes, remastering them in Manga Studio for print. It's a bit of a slog, but well worth the effort.
A whole bunch of things have occurred to me as I've been doing this. Unfortunately a lot of it is pretty pretentious. So it needs some more thinking about before I inflict it on the world.
However, here's something concrete that's come out of my thinking. I want to organise the stories in the next book in chronological order, according to Policy Police time.
Some episodes presume knowledge and events from others, other episodes contain clues as to the season, for example. Well, having thought about it, it seems to me that everything in the Policy Police world (at least as far as the stuff I've got planned until December 2011, our time) takes place within the space of one year.
So, here it is. Makes sense to me, anyway.
March – April 2025: Reaching the LEARNER
April 2025: Cutting a dash (the original)
April – May 2025: Up close and personalised
May 2025: Election special
May 2025: Going green
June 2025: Big Breakfast
July 2025: Surplus to requirements
September – October 2025: Return of the repossessed
January 2026: Pretty Vacant
February 2026: Cutting a Dash 2
February 2026: NOT PROTECTIVELY MARKED
March 2026: Anniversary Waltz
Tuesday, 29 March 2011
Thursday, 24 March 2011
Nana and the tsunami
We're booked to go to Japan at Easter. So, as you can imagine, I'm following events there with great interest. If the Foreign Office changes its advice, we certainly intend to go.
I know it's a bit off of me, but there's a place in the back of my mind where I've been worrying about the fate of the characters in the manga 'Nana'.
Nana Osaki and most of the members of the two bands Blast and Trapnest hail from a coastal town in the northern part of Japan. Or at least a part where it regularly snows in March. So I feel it was certainly hit by this month's tsunami.
Nana will have just celebrated her 30th birthday and it's 10 years since she left for Tokyo to pursue her singing career. So there's a kind of excuse for them to be in their hometown about now.
I'm sure Ai Yazawa has thought of this as she recovers from her illness. That there is now an option where all the main characters are wiped out in a single catastrophe. I've got a catastrophic ending to Policy Police that I know I can fall back on if all else fails. A kind of nuclear option. But, as our leaders used to say in the cold war, the point of such an option is not using it.
The tsunami also offers other options. It is also a story of survival. That "life is about getting knocked down over and over, but still getting up each time," as Nana once said to Hachi. Losing things that were "always there" can focus our minds on them even more sharply. If Ren's warehouse apartment is destroyed, will it help Nana finally get over his death? If the Terashima Hotel is washed away, will it force Nobu to make an active decision about the family business? These events may even offer an opportunity for Takumi to redeem his past bad behaviour.
Just goes to show that despite the extended hiatus in the Nana story, and the vast amount of writing and drawing that would fill the gap until the present day, these comic-book characters live for me in a kind of parallel-universe Japan.
I know it's a bit off of me, but there's a place in the back of my mind where I've been worrying about the fate of the characters in the manga 'Nana'.
Nana Osaki and most of the members of the two bands Blast and Trapnest hail from a coastal town in the northern part of Japan. Or at least a part where it regularly snows in March. So I feel it was certainly hit by this month's tsunami.
Nana will have just celebrated her 30th birthday and it's 10 years since she left for Tokyo to pursue her singing career. So there's a kind of excuse for them to be in their hometown about now.
I'm sure Ai Yazawa has thought of this as she recovers from her illness. That there is now an option where all the main characters are wiped out in a single catastrophe. I've got a catastrophic ending to Policy Police that I know I can fall back on if all else fails. A kind of nuclear option. But, as our leaders used to say in the cold war, the point of such an option is not using it.
The tsunami also offers other options. It is also a story of survival. That "life is about getting knocked down over and over, but still getting up each time," as Nana once said to Hachi. Losing things that were "always there" can focus our minds on them even more sharply. If Ren's warehouse apartment is destroyed, will it help Nana finally get over his death? If the Terashima Hotel is washed away, will it force Nobu to make an active decision about the family business? These events may even offer an opportunity for Takumi to redeem his past bad behaviour.
Just goes to show that despite the extended hiatus in the Nana story, and the vast amount of writing and drawing that would fill the gap until the present day, these comic-book characters live for me in a kind of parallel-universe Japan.
Sunday, 6 March 2011
Policy Police: Return of the repossessed #2
At last the second episode. You can find the comic in THE STORIES tab, under the heading, Return of the Repossessed.
My computer died within days of me surrendering my work machine, but thanks to ebay I'm back up and running again. Was away all last week, too, so it was all a bit touch and go this month.
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