yayo's blog ( ^^)ù

I'm very sad in reading this new today of another blogger arrested [1], in Myanmar (Burma) this time. NAY PHONE LATT was used to write a blog in his language to discuss the difficulties of every day life in his country. Twenty days ago [2] it was LE THI CONG NHAN in Vietnam, and FOUAD AL-FARHAN in Arabia later, at the 10th of December [3]. And God knows how many before of them, and how many will follow.. >:'(
Damn censorship! Set them free and let them talk, damnyou!

y.

Some days ago I've read one time again the 1st book of DeathNote by Tsugumi Ohba (plot) e Takeshi Obata (drawings).
The 1st book was the only one I bought untill the past week, and I refused to fall into the desperate search for the missing books, some of which are now out of print. But now I have also the 2nd. And maybe I can read them all..

I found the 1st one by chance: when it has been published here in the end of 2006 I didn't pay attention to it.
Today the number of manga published is way higher than 10 years ago, and this obviously means to be forced to make a selection (it's not possible to buy anything! It'd be nice, but even supposing to have enough money, who would have the time to read them all? and room enough? >:'/)
Generally I take a brief look at the content of the 1st book, I check the drawings, the story abstract, the price, the name of the author and of the editor. But it may happens to miss something good.

In fact I became curious about it, later. And I accidentally found that my seller were keeping a very reduced amount of copies of the 1st book, not exposed, available only for everyone who asked for it. I asked and I got my copy of the 1st book.

Nice. Perhaps not a masterpiece, seems to be the usual thing about japanesestyle monsters, but it's not bad at all. Nice drawings, very clean. Generally well done.
Plot: an annoyed god of death drops into the human world his notebook to see what happens. A smart guy find it and decides to use its power to clean up the society from its dark side, getting rid of the criminals. But an enemy wants to stop him and this starts a cynical battle developed over murders.
I discover that I want to know how the story goes. And this is for me always a sympthom that its a good product.

Past wednesday (after months and months), I went to the shop and I found the 1st and 2nd books exposed, that I thought out of print. I supposed they were reprintings, but I wasn't sure (that editor rarely does it). Sadly during latest 2/3 years my sttention for italian mangas went down a bit, because of some other problems that took my attention, and then it happens sometimes that I miss some news like these...
I ask for confirmation: they're reprinted. The only difference is that it's written inside. Which is something I can't care less because I only want to have the chance to read the story and keeping a copy when it worts it (made of same format books if possible).
What makes my angry is when they comes up with surprises like new editions instead of simply reprints, because such new editions have always a different format. So it happens that I have a part of the series and I have to decide if It's better to go over all the pain to find the missing veryexpensive books up and down on comics fairs, while the other chance instead is to buy the new edition of the missing books getting also all the related troubles (1. having a half of the book in postcard size and the other half in phonelist book size; 2. buying 2 books of the new edition in place of 1 of the old, only because the different number of pages yeld to a different distribution of the chapters all over series; 3. variations about dialogues/names due to a different new adaptment; ecc..)
This makes me very angry. But if it's a simple reprint with a only tiny "first reprinting" added inside.. well, it's definitely ok for me.

So I bought also the 2nd book, planning to buy them all. (12 books. What do you think about it? Do I have some chances? >:? )

Luckily the editor (Panini) seems to slowly wake up, starting to consider a fundamental thing: if you let books go out of print HOW THE HECK CAN YOU SELL THEM? : P
(Not a hard concept, why does it requires all these years to be understand?)
They now made some reprints too, but rarely and in a weird customized way (like limited edition reprint for book shops only, not for news stands!). It's something, yes, but still... : /

Anyway an important question remains in my mind: how many comics/books/musics/films/whatever could suddenly disapper from usual selling channels?

The problem is that in our society, the culture is subordinated to proceeds. All these expression forms are spread only via commercial ways. When something stops making money, it's simply dropped, to move to the next one. And, as usual, we "customers" are always the f**ked side. >: /

And here comes the internet! : )
How to read to books if the editor wouldn't have published this reprint? The solutions was to search in the internet for scans of the pages. Or going to ebay searching for someone selling his copy. : /
What about listening to a music or watching a film no more available in the shops? Maybe the only feasible solution would be searching on the sharing networks (peer-2-peer) for some good guy who is sharing his copy of the CD/DVD.
Right past sunday, a friend asked me if it'd possible to find via internet the soundtrack of an old videogame. Do you really think it's possible to buy something like this here? Obviously not! : P
Well, in the internet I found the list of all the related albums and some different ways to get the files. It'd probably involve some minor issues, like making a little donation, or sharing something back in exchange, but they're surely available! : )

Sadly we're not only victims of objectionable commercial matters, but we're also labeled criminals and thiefs because we download files from the internet, with all the legal consequences constantly hanging around (like for example the recent peppermint [1] case, here). >: (

And this is why I'm glad to read about [4] [5] [6] this campaign (iwouldntsteal.net [3]) of the european greens (Greens EFA [2]) pro free culture sharing!

«We believe that consumers are willing to pay if offered good quality at a fair price. We also believe that sharing is expanding culture – not killing it.»

I'll add as soon as possible a link/antipixel to the left column list, to support this project. : D

SHARING CULTURE IS NOT A CRIME. CULTURE IS PEOPLE'S PROPERTY. : )

Said this I show you something interesting before to leave: while I was re-reading the 1st book, in the scene where Light shows to the god of death all the names he wrote into the notebook («you're the 1st one that I know of who killed so many persons in 5 days only»), I noticed that many names weren't written in kanji and with a wild effort (it's very tiny-written!) I found some known names. See the pictures below...
Perhaps that Light Yagami thought that killing Rocky Balboa and Indiana Jones was the only way to stop them to appear in other movies? : P
(Maybe we could ask to the authors to add also the names of the copyright holder companies? ; P)

the list

Rocky Balboa/Neo Anderson

Mike Oldfield

Indiana Jones and the above one seems to be a mispelled Catherine Zeta Jones

y.