4000$ Education

So yesterday I did my first day of work as a teacher's aide for a child with special needs (subbing only).

It wasn't too bad, actually. The school was the same as ever, the kid was great, lunch was fish (bleh), and everyone took me seriously.

I also get the feeling that I spent two years in college, and almost 4000$, training for a position which I probably could've done just as well without the college. That was a bit weird. The child didn't really have any severe needs, and the staff didn't really tell me anything about her. I just got a schedule telling me what usually went on when, and that was it.

Maybe it's different with a child with higher needs... I dunno.

Anyway it was pretty good... and I got a cupcake out of it so that was awesome (whipped cream frosting, yo).

Mail Volume 1

Housui Yamazaki

Postcards from Purgatory…

Private detective Reiji Akiba has a theory about those weird coincidences we all encounter in life. They are actually encounters with the dead – their way of sending us a message. But you may not want to open such strange mail from beyond – not unless you can see the ghostly attachment, like Akiba can. And not unless you carry a tool that can kill what isn’t alive, like Akiba’s sanctified gun Kagutsuchi… digging a divine grave to lay to rest the evil dead! (from the back of the book)

(Spoilers below)

Mail is a horror manga about ghosts. It’s a short series (only three volumes long), which makes it fairly easy to read the whole thing in one sitting.

The three volumes are made up of short stories with the only recurring character being Akiba Reiji, a detective /medium/ghost hunter who looks to be in his late 20s or early 30s. Akiba is really the only thing remotely tying these stories together. Otherwise they’d just be unrelated ghost stories.

There are six different stories in Volume 1, and none of them are connected in any way aside from Akiba’s presence.

The first story, called Wine Cellar, opens at a photo shoot for a dirty magazine, where some of the photographers find a skeleton near where they were working. When one of the photographers, Harada, develops the pictures she notices something in the background of one of them that looks like a headless child. Thinking that she got a picture of a ghost, she calls up an occult specialist/detective, Akiba. Akiba and Harada, along with one of her coworkers named Imai, all head out to go look for the child’s missing head. Their search takes them to an abandoned house, where Harada and Akiba locate the missing head in a wine cellar… along with a great number of missing heads, and the body of the man who took them. The man’s spirit attacks Harada. Akiba saves her by whipping out a gun and shooting the spirit, sealing it in the bullet.

Hide and Seek is the second story and starts off with a woman named Adachi Mari. Mari has just moved into a new apartment and has decided to spend her day off cleaning it up when a letter drops into her mailbox, sender unknown. The letter is from the apartment’s former tenant, and details the strange happenings she experienced while living there. Mari realizes that the exact same things are happening to her, so she has no problem agreeing when the letter writer insists that the apartment is haunted. It does help the letter writer’s case when the ghost of a little girl emerges and drags Mari inside the apartment walls. Akiba then bursts in to save the day, shooting the ghost and freeing Mari, still alive, and the three previous tenants, all skeletons.

Story number three is Twins and begins with a little girl named Tamami bandaged and laced-up in a straight jacket in a hospital; with her mother and Akiba as visitors. According to Tamami, she is being haunted and beaten up by her twin sister Tamamo, who’s been dead for six months. Tamami’s mother thinks that the little girl is making everything up. Akiba takes the case after coming across a picture Tamami drew asking for help. Tamamo’s spirit appears at the hospital and Akiba shoots her.

The fourth story is Drive and begins with Akiba putting to rest the spirit of a woman, before switching over to a young woman named Michiyo driving home on the highway. Akiba contacts her on her cell phone to tell her that the car she has just purchased, and is currently driving, is haunted by the ghost of a child who died in the trunk. The child’s spirit soon takes over the car, causing Michiyo to lose control of the vehicle. Luckily Akiba arrives on a moped to stop the ghost and save Michiyo’s life.

Story five is Ka-tsu-mi and starts off with two teenage girls taking pictures of themselves in a park. One of the girls, Yumi, is dead by the next day and the other girl, Yuko, is frightened by this. She thinks that Yumi’s death has to do with a local urban legend involving a ghost, so she contacts Akiba to see if he can help. Akiba tells Yuko that the area where she and Yumi were taking pictures is built on a site that used to house an old warehouse where a teenage girl named Katsumi hung herself in 1938. He ends up telling her that Yumi’s death was because of Katsumi and asks Yuko where they were taking pictures the night before. Yuko doesn’t tell him but returns to the place that night and gets attacked by Katsumi’s spirit. Akiba, who had followed her, arrives to save the day.

The last story in this volume, Visibility, is when we finally get some information about Akiba by way of a flashback. It doesn’t say how long ago it happened, but it tells of how he obtained his gun Kagutsuchi, that shoots special bullets to ‘kill’ ghosts, and became a detective/ghost hunter. Akiba grew up blind, but was able to eventually regain his sight due to advances in medicine. It’s at the hospital that he meets the previous owner of Kagutsuchi, who explains to him about the ghosts still wandering on Earth. One such ghost follows Akiba home a few days later and the strange man from the hospital comes to his rescue. The man then gives Akiba Kagutsuchi.

Mail is my favourite horror manga. It isn’t too gory, and it isn’t too confusing. It’s a series of simple ghost stories all tied together by one unique premise.

As I said before, all six stories in this volume are totally unrelated: they all star different characters, different ghosts, and different settings (although they all take place in Japan, possibly Tokyo). The only thing that ties these stories together in any way is Akiba himself, and even the way he shows up differs from story to story. Sometimes he’ll be contacted by that story’s main character, sometimes he’ll have been contacted by someone else, and sometimes he’ll just show up having come across the situation some other way.

Although he’s the only constant character throughout the volume, we don’t really know much about Akiba. Even the last story Visibility, while being all about Akiba, doesn’t really tell us much about him at all. The most we know about the man is that he used to be blind and that he hunts ghosts for no other reason than the fact that he can.

The spirit gun Kagutsuchi, which Akiba uses to shoot spirits and trap them inside special bullets, isn’t really explained much either and even then it isn’t explained at all until the last chapter. Nothing is really explained in this volume. New characters are introduced in each story and then promptly abandoned when their story is over. Most of these characters are just one-dimensional with barely any defining characteristics; Akiba is probably the one exception to this. The spirits are actually more interesting than the humans. This isn’t a problem; I quite liked this arrangement.

The art style is realistic and very detailed. I especially like the two-page cover spread for Hide and Seek, which almost makes my hands cramp just looking at it. There is a nice variety of character designs, it’s without any exaggerations or comically huge eyes or mouths (like what is common for a lot of manga series). The realistic art style really works well with the creepy imagery, making even simple things terrifying.

Now, this particular volume was wrapped in plastic when I bought it, and that’s because of the nudity and gore. There isn’t really much of either in this volume, but it is there. The first panel on the first page has a naked woman on it, and then later on there’s another naked girl. I don’t want to call this fan service since their nudity makes sense in context. I usually refer to it as casual nudity. The gore is minimal as well; severed heads and knife wounds that wouldn’t be so shocking if the art weren’t so realistic. I wasn’t too bothered by it, though, since they didn’t get much panel space.

Mail doesn’t get its scares from gross-out factor, which I liked.

Mail Volume 1 is a great opener for the series. It doesn’t really explain anything until the end, so just read the last chapter if that bothers you. The chapters don’t really need to be read in any particular order since the individual stories have nothing much to do with each other. The rest of the series could be just more ghost stories, which certainly isn’t a problem, but one can’t help but hope that we’ll learn more about Akiba in future installments. The art is great, the stories are interesting, and the visuals go along with the narrative to make everything just that much scarier.

I don’t recommend reading it alone with the lights off.

YUSS!

Finally got into Pottermore!

I've been curious about this site ever since I first heard of it almost a year ago.

It's recently been open to the public so I was able to sign up today. And it is awesome!

It's a completely different way to explore the Harry Potter books; with interactive scenes, wizard duels with other members, potion brewing, spell casting, and a whole butt-ton of new and old information to read.

You also get to have a wand choose you and get sorted into one of the Hogwarts houses (I'm in Hufflepuff FIND!).

I've been on it for the better part of the day, making my way through the first book and having a great fucking time.

It was definitely worth the wait.