Was anyone else here a fan of the film Labyrinth? (For those who don’t know, it was a collaboration between George Lucas, Jim Henson, and David Bowie, and was completely awesome.) I must have watched it ten times as a kid. Anyway, I was browsing Indigo the other day and something caught my eye: a manga called “Return to Labyrinth”, with a very bishounen Jareth on the cover. I bought it out of sheer curiosity (I never buy manga), and was pleasantly surprised by the contents. It’s a sequel, taking place about 15 years after the original, with Toby as the protagonist. Overall I was quite impressed. They had to do three balancing acts:
-Balancing old familiarity with new story.
-Balancing Muppet style with anime style.
-Balancing the nonsensical mythos of the film with deeper understanding of the story and characters.
They did an excellent job overall, with about seven or eight quite intriguing new characters and nearly every old character getting at least a cameo. I was a bit put off that they took some lines verbatim from the film, which wasn’t necessary, but other than that I’m quite interested in what happens next (apparently there are two other books in the works).
It’s published by TOKYOPOP. If you liked the film you should definitely give it a look.
1st off, anyone who hasnt heard of Labrynth shouldnt even be alive.
2nd, I saw the “Manga” (it’s as much manga as Teen Titans is anime), and it’s pretty shitty…
As far as I’m concerned, any graphic novel in that particular shape and that particular style is a manga. Whether or not it was written by a Japanese person has nothing to do with it.
I dunno, to me it shouldnt have been messed with. It just felt like a fanfiction. And that’s like saying “Oh, who cares if it’s not japanese. If they have big eyes and sweat drops, then it’s anime”
It is, as far as I’m concerned. Seriously, from the point of view of someone who watches a dub, who cares what nationality the person who came up with the characters’ lines is? If an American writes a haiku, somehow it’s not a haiku because it wasn’t written by a Japanese person?
Anyway, it’s true that Labyrinth was a great self-contained film, but there’s also tons of room for expansion and depth there. Very little was actually explained. That worked, but it can be expanded on. The manga looks like it’s going to do a good job of explaining the past (not everything, of course; there’s still going to be lots of weird mystery to it) while exploring what happens in the future. I’ve already seen some pretty imaginative things in there.
I bought that first book. I found it to be quite entertaining. I kind of wish(even though I know it’s a lot of work) that they had kept up with the same level of art style in the whole book as opposed to just the cover.
That’s exactly what I liked about the cover art. =p The inside art was too simplistic for me. Of course I could be vamping up my little interest in the inside art do to not having seen this comic for about a year…
Am I the only one here who has never seen Labyrinth?
Also, they made a Famicom game based on the movie, but never released it outside of Japan for some reason. There’s a translation patch for it floating around somewhere…
If you haven’t seen it, you should definitely at least grab a torrent somewhere. It is really really cool.
I know there was a Famicom game somewhere, but what little I’ve heard of it indicated it sucked.
The inside art was more of a mix between anime and the movie’s style.