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meichenxi · 3 years

Note

Hey! I hope you feel better soon

We haven't had a good long linguistics rant from you in a while!! How about you tell us about your favourite lingustical feature or occurrence in a language? Something like a weird grammatical feature or how a language changed

If this doesn't trigger any rant you have stored feel free to educate on any topic you can spontaneously think of, I'd love to hear it :D

ALRIGHT KARO, let's go!! This is a continuation of the other ask I answered recently, and is the second part in a series about linguistic complexity. I suggest you check that one out first for this to properly make sense! (I don't know how to link but uh. it's the post behind this on my blog)

Summary of previous points: the complexity of a language has nothing to do with the 'complexity' of the people that speak it; complexity is really bloody hard to measure; some linguists in an attempt to be not racist argue that 'all languages are equally complex', but this doesn't really seem to be the case, and also still equates cognitive ability with complexity of language which is just...not how things work; arguing languages have different amounts of complexity has literally nothing to do with the cognitive abilities of those who speak it.

Ok. Chinese.

Normally when we look at complexity we like to look at things like number of verb classes, noun classes, and so on. But Chinese doesn't really do any of this.

So what do Chinese and languages like Chinese do that is so challenging to the equicomplexity hypothesis, the idea that all languages are equally complex? I’ll start by talking about some of the common properties of isolating languages - and these properties are often actually used as examples of why these languages are as complex, just in different ways. Oh Melissa, I hear you ask in wide-eyed admiration/curiousity. What are they? By isolating languages, I mean languages that tend to have monosyllabic words, little to no conjugation, particles instead of verb or noun endings, and so on: so languages like Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai and many others in East and South East Asia.

Here’s a list of funky things in isolating languages that may or may not make a language more complex than linguists don't really know what to do with:

Classifiers

Chengyu and 4-word expressions

Verb reduplication, serialisation and resultative verbs

'Lexical verbosity' = complex compounding and word forming strategies

Pragmatics

Syntax

I'll talk about the first two briefly, but I don't have space for all. For clarity of signposting my argument: many linguists use these as explanations of why languages like Chinese are as complex, but I'm going to demonstrate afterwards why the situation is a bit more complicated than that. You could even say it's...complex.

1) Classifiers

You know about classifiers in Chinese, but what you may be interested to learn is that almost all isolating languages in South East Asia use them, and many in fact borrow from each other. The tonal, isolating languages in South East Asia have historically had a lot of contact through intense trade and migration, and as such share a lot of properties. Some classifiers just have to go with the noun: 一只狗，一条河 etc. First of all, if we're defining complexity as 'the added stuff you have to remember when you learn it' (my professors hate me), it's clear that these are added complexity in exactly the same way gender is. Why is it X, and not Y? Well, you can give vague answers ('it's sort of...ribbony' or 'it's kinda...flat'), but more often than not you choose the classifier based on the vibe. Which is something you just have to remember.

Secondly, many classifiers actually have the added ability to modify the type of noun they're describing. These are familiar too in languages like English: a herd of cattle versus a head of cattle. So we have 一枝花 which is a flower but on a stem ('a stem of flower'), but also 一朵花 which is a flower but without the stem (think like...'a blob of flower'). Similarly with clouds - you could have a 一朵云 'blob of cloud' (like a nice, fluffy cloud in a children's book), but you could also have 一片云 which is like a huge, straight flat cloud like the sea...and so on. These 'measure words' do more than measure: they add additional information that the noun itself does not give.

Already we're beginning to see the outline of the problem. Grammatical complexity is...well, grammatical. We count the stuff which languages require you to express, not the optional stuff - and that's grammar. The difference between better and best is clearly grammatical, as is go and went. But what about between 'a blob of cloud' versus 'a plain of cloud'? Is that grammatical? Well, maybe: you do have to include a measure word when you say there's one of it, and in many Chinese languages that are not Mandarin you have to include them every single time you use a possessive: my pair of shoes, my blob of flower etc. But you don't always have to include one specific classifier - there are multiple options, all of which are grammatical. So should we include classifiers as part of the grammar? Or part of the vocabulary (the 'lexicon')?

Err. Next?

2) Chengyu and 4-character expressions + 4) Lexical verbosity

This might seem a bit weird: these are obviously parts of the vocab! What's weirder, though, is that many isolating languages have chengyu, not just Chinese. And if you don't use them, many native speakers surveys suggest you don't sound native. This links to point number 4, which is lexical verbosity. 'Lexical verbosity' means a language has the ability to express things creativity, in many different manners, all of which may have a slightly different nuance. The kind of thing you love to read and analyse and hate to translate.

But it is important. If we look at the systems that make up the grand total of a language, vocabulary is obviously one of them: a language with 1 million root forms is clearly more 'complex', if all else is exactly the same, than a language with 500,000. Without even getting into the whole debacle about 'what even is a word', a language that has multiple registers (dialect, regional, literary, official etc) that all interact is always going to be more complex than one that doesn't, just because there's more of it. More rules, more words, more stuff.

Similarly, something that is the backbone of modern Chinese 'grammar' and yet you may never have thought of as such is is compound words. We don't tend to traditionally teach this as grammar, and I don't have time to give a masterclass on it now, but let me assure you that compounding - across the world's language - is hugely varied. Some languages let you make anything a compound; some only allow noun+noun compounds (so no 'blackbird', as black is an adjective); some only allow head+head compound (so no 'sabretooth', because a sabretooth is a type of tiger, not tooth); some only allow compounds one way ('ring finger' but not 'finger ring': though English does allow the other way around in some other words), and so on.

You'll have heard time and time again that 'Chinese is an isolating language, and isolating languages like monosyllabic words'. Well. Sort of. You will also have noticed yourself that actually most modern Chinese words are disyllabic: 学习，工作，休息，吃饭 and so on. This is radically different to Classical Chinese, where the majority were genuinely one syllable. But many Chinese speakers still have access to the words in the compounds, and so they can be manipulated on a character-by-character basis: most adults will be able to look at 学习 and understand that 学 and 习 both exist as separate words: 开学，学生，复习，练习 and so on.

I'm going to sort of have to ask you to take my word on it as I don't have time to prove how unique it is, but the ability that Chinese has to turn literally anything into a compound is staggering. It's insane. It's...oh god I'm tearing up slightly it's just a LOT guys ok. It's a lot. There are 20000000 synonyms for anything you could ever want, all with slightly different nuances, because unlike many other languages, Chinese allows compounds where the two bits of the compound mean, largely speaking, very similar things. So yes, you have compounds like 开学 which is the shortened version of 开始学习, or ones with an object like 吃饭 or 睡觉, but you also have compounds like 工作 where both 工 and 作 kind of...mean 'to work'...and 休息 where both 休 and 息 mean 'to rest'...and so on. So you can have 感 and 情 and 爱 and 心 but also 感情 and 情感 and 爱情 and 情爱 and 心情 and 心爱 and 爱心 and so on, and they all mean different things. And don't even get me started on resultative verbs: 学到，学会，学好，学完， and so on...

What is all of this, if not complex? It's not grammatical - except that the process of compound forming, that allows for so many different compounds, is grammatical. We can't make the difference between学会，学好 and 学完 anywhere near as easily in English, and in Chinese you do sort of have to add the end bit. So...do we count this under complexity? And if not, we should probably count it elsewhere? Because it's kind of insane. And learners have to use it, much like the example I gave of English prepositions, and it takes them a bloody long time. But then where?

Ok. I haven't had a chance to talk about everything, but you get the picture: there are things in Chinese that, unlike European languages, do not neatly fit into the 'grammar' versus 'vocabulary' boxes we have built for ourselves, because as a language it just works very differently to the ones we've used as models. (Though some of the problems, in fact, are similar: German is also very adept at compounding.) But as interesting as that difference is, the goal of typology as a sub-discipline of linguistics is to talk about and research the types of linguistic diversity around the world, so we can't stop there by acknowledging our models don't fit. We have to go further. We have to stop, and think: What does this mean for the models that we have built?

This is where we get into theoretically rather boggy ground. We weren't before?? No, like marsh of the dead boggy. Linguists don't know it...they go round, for miles and miles and miles....

Because unfortunately there isn't a clear answer. If we dismiss these things as 'lexical' and therefore irrelevant to the grammar, that is a) ignoring their grammatical function, b) ignoring the fact that the lexicon is also a system that needs to be learnt, and has often very clear rules on word-building that are also 'grammatical', and c) essentially playing a game of theoretical pass-the-parcel. It's your problem, not mine: it's in the lexicon, not the grammar. Blah blah blah. Because whoever's problem it is, we still have to account for this complexity somehow when we want to compare literally any languages that are substantially different at all.

On the other side of things, however, if we argue that 'Chinese is as complex as Abkhaz, because it makes up for a lack of complexity in Y by all this complexity in X' (and therefore all languages = equally complex), this ignores the fact that compounding and irregular verbs belong to two very different systems. The kind of mistake you make when you use the wrong classifier intuitively seems to be on another level of 'wrongness' to the kind where you conjugate a verb in the wrong way. One is 'wrong'. The other is just 'not what we say'. It's the same as the use of prepositions in English: some are obviously wrong (I don't sleep 'at my bed') but some are just weird, and for many there are multiple options ('at the weekend', 'on the weekend'). Is saying 'I am on the town' the same level of wrongness as saying 'I goed to the shops'? Intuitively we might want to say the second is a 'worse' mistake. In which case, what are they exactly? They're both 'grammar', but totally different systems. And where do you draw the line?

Here's the thing about the equicomplexity argument. As established, it stems from a nice ideological background that nevertheless conflates cognition and linguistic complexity. Once you realise that no, the two are completely separate, you're under no theoretical or ideological compulsion to have languages be equally complex at all. Why should they be at all? Some languages just have more stuff in them: some have loads of vowels, and loads of consonants, and some have loads of grammar. Others have less. They all do basically the same job. Why is that a big deal?

Where the argument comes into its biggest problem, though, is that if a language like Chinese is already as complex as a language like Abkhaz...what happens when we meet Classical Chinese?

Classical Chinese. An eldritch behemoth lurking with tendrils of grass-style calligraphy belching perfect prose just behind the horizon.

Let's look at Modern Chinese for a moment. It has some particles: six or so, depending on how you count them. You could include these as being critical to the grammar, and they are.

A common dictionary of Classical Chinese particles lists 694.

To be fair, a lot of these survive as verbs, nouns and so on. Classical Chinese was very verb-schmerb when it came to functional categories, and most nouns can be verbs, and vice versa. It's all just about the vibe. But still. Six hundred and ninety four.

Some of these are optional - they're the nice 'omggg' equivalent of the modern tone particles at the end of a sentence. Some of them are smushed versions of two different particles, like 啦. Some of these, however, really do seem to have very grammatical features. Of these 694, 17 are listed as meaning ‘subsequent to and later than X’, and 8 indicate imposition of a stress upon the word they precede or follow. Some are syntactic: there are, for instance, 8 different particles solely for the purpose of fronting information: 'the man saw he'. That is very much a grammatical role, in every sense of the word.

The copula system ('to be') is also huuuuuuugely complex. I could write a whole other post about this, but I'll just say for now that the copula in Classical Chinese could be specific to degrees of logical preciseness that would make the biggest Lojban-loving computer programmer weep into his Star Trek blanket. As in, the system of positive copulas distinguishes between 6 different polar-positive copulas (A is B), 2 insistent positive (A is B), 19 restricted positive (A is only B), and 15 of common inclusion (A is like B). Some other copulas can make such distinctions as ‘A becomes or acts as B’, ‘A would be B’, ‘may A not be B?’ and so on. Copulas may also be used in a sort of causal way (not 'casual'), creating very specific relationships like ‘A does not merely because of B’ or ‘A is not Y such that B is X’.

WHEW. And all we have in modern Chinese is 是。

I think we can see that this is a little more complex. So saying 'Modern Chinese is as complex as Abkhaz, just in a different way' leaves no space for Classical Chinese to be even more complex...so....where does that leave us?

Uhhhhhh. Errrrrr.

(Don't worry, that's basically where the entire linguistics community is at too.)

The thing is, all these weird and wacky things that Classical Chinese is able to do are all optional. This is where the problem is. Our understanding of complexity, if you hark back to my last post so many moons ago, is that it's the description of what a language requires you to do. We equate that with grammar because in most of the languages we're familiar with, you can't just pick and choose whether to conjugate a verb or use a tense. If you are talking in third person, the verb has to change. It just...does. You can't not do it if you feel like it. There's not such thing as 'poetic license' - except in languages like Classical Chinese, well. There sort of is.

The problem both modern Chinese and Classical Chinese shows us to a different extent is that some languages are capable of highly grammatical things, but with a degree of optionality we would not expect. Classical Chinese can accurately stipulate to the Nth degree what, exactly, the grammatical relationship between two agents are in a way that is undoubtedly and even aggressively logical. But...it doesn't have to. As anybody who has tried anything with Classical Chinese knows, reading things without context is an absolute fucking nightmare. As a language it has the ability to also say something like 臣臣 which in context means 'when a minister acts as a minister'...but literally just means...minister minister. Go figure. It doesn't have to do any of these myriad complex things it's capable of at all.

So...what does this mean? What does all of this mean, for the question of whether all languages are equally complex?

Whilst I agree that the situation with Classical Chinese is fully batshit insane, the fact is most isolating languages are more like Modern Chinese: they don't do all of this stuff. And whilst classifiers and compounds are challenging, they're not quite the same as the strict binary correct/incorrect of many systems. I'm also just not convinced that languages need to be equally complex. However.

HOWEVER. In this essay/rant/lecture (?), I've raised more questions than I've answered. That's deliberate. I both think that a) the type of complexity Chinese shows is not 'enough' to work as a 'trade off' compared to languages like Abkhaz, and b) that this 'grammatical verbosity' and optionality of grammatical structures is something we don't know how to deal with at all. These are two beliefs that can co-exist. Classical Chinese especially is a huge challenge to current understandings of complexity, whichever side of the equicomplexity argument you stand on.

Because where do you place optionality in all of this? Choice? If a certain structure can express something grammatical, but you don't have to include it - is that more complex, or less so? Where do we rank optional features in our understanding of grammar? It's a totally new dimension, and adds a richness to our understanding that we simply wouldn't have got if we hadn't looked at isolating languages. This, right here, is the point of typology: to inform theory, and challenge it.

What do we do with this sort of complexity at all?

I don't know. And I don't think many professional linguists do either.

- meichenxi out

#and that my friends is why I love Classical Chinese so much #askies #meichenxi manages #thank you karo that was very very very interesting!!#it's late now so I'll check over it again tomorrow but I don't imagine I'll be inundated with reblogs lmao #linguistics #lingblr #langblr #classical chinese #chinese #modern chinese

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chibimyumi · 4 years

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I didn't know that you hate Vincent . Can I ask why ? I thought Vincent was loved by the fandom Sorry I am new to the fandom

【Reaction to: My least favourite character - Maurice】

Dear @1hellofacookie and Anon,

Vincent Phantomhive is indeed an incredibly popular character despite his little screentime. I think the primary reason is because Vincent fits the popular trope of “the mysterious handsome dark lord with a gap-moe” like a hand in a glove. Remove his good looks, and how much is left still then?

Let us look at his behaviour. While we are at it, I shall use this post as a character analysis of Vincent Phantomhive.

【tw: Emotional manipulation】

Vincent Phantomhive

Vincent is an incredibly unscrupulous person, and that is nothing new in Kuroshitsuji. Vincent’s lack of scruples is supposedly a feat to his job as the Queen’s Watchdog. HOWEVER, we never get to see how this ‘feat’ is put to ‘good use’, how it is employed against the enemies of the crown. Instead, his lack of scruples is almost without exception portrayed as “friendly teasing”, and the people who don’t deserve it bear the brunt of it.

[Note: For this post I have re-translated whatever translation errors there are in the scanlation I found. The retranslations are marked with an arrow.]

Condescending Attitude

The most important example is how Vincent treats Deidrich. In chapter 75 we meet an incredibly angry young Deidrich, and anyone who has ever done group-projects with bad partners can understand how incredibly legit Deidrich’s frustrations are. (UGH my war flashbacks ÒAÓ)

It could be that Deidrich is just somewhat aggressive in his expressions, but it could also be that Vincent is a repeat offender. And knowing Vincent, it is probably the latter ⇊

When Deidrich calls Vincent out on his slacking, Vincent did not show the least bit of remorse. The only two ways to explain this is either that:

Vincent is too proud to admit a mistake, or

he actually believes it is alright that somebody else does his work.

Either way, neither are a good reflection of his personality or attitude in life.

Not admitting fault is one thing, but the thing Vincent proceeds to do is scoff at Deidrich’s expression of legit anger. Vincent does not see Deidrich as a fellow human with feelings; he treats Vincent’s anger the way patriarchy treats the anger of women: laughing it off. It may not seem much on the surface, but this is a very classic tactic of disempowering someone.

Another example of Vincent not taking Deidrich or his feelings serious at all is the panel below. Deidrich has serious concerns about a leader’s responsibilities, and makes clear that he does not think someone as irresponsible as Vincent is suited for the role.

Despite the seriousness of Deidrich’s terms, Vincent waves it off as: “is that all?” and even dismisses Deidrich’s selfless term as: “you have no ambition whatsoever.”

Vincent proclaims that he is going to think of something too, and later we find out he in fact intends to make Deidrich his fag. This is a power-play. He is ‘teaching’ Deidrich what ‘ambition’ is, and feels the need to one-up Deidrich, showing who is superiour.

Hypocrisy

Another serious problem of Vincent’s personality is his hypocrisy.

Vincent is portrayed as an incredibly irresponsible prefect judging from whatever screentime we have of him. The only reference we have of him is him doing nothing a prefect should, plus the assessment from Deidrich (who has obviously seen more of Vincent than we have). As the audience never gets to see anything that could prove Deidrich wrong, Deidrich’s assessment is the closest information we can go by.

Deidrich voices his very understandable concern about Vincent’s legitimacy on the prefect’s throne, and says: “if the prefect’s like this, I wonder how bad the other dorm students are.”

Though this phrase was clearly meant as an insult, Deidrich refrains from making definitive statements. He even backs this thought up with the tradition of the Weston school: “The prefect sets the example, and the house students follow”. Given this tradition, it is not weird at all that Deidrich would wonder whether the house students might also behave as irresponsibly.

Despite Deidrich’s moderated criticism WITH ground, Vincent replies as follows: “would you not talk badly of the other students of the blue house?”, and shows very clearly that he is serious. ↑

HOWEVER, this is an act of supreme hypocrisy, as at the start of this flashback ⇊, Vincent had been the one who first insulted Deidrich, Deidrich’s national identity as German, and ALL Germans in front of him.

Vincent… Deidrich does not get to wonder whether you’ve set a bad example for the house to follow, but you do get to insult all Germans (be it in jest or not?)

Disrespect of Autonomy and Consent

The ultimate slight of Vincent is treating Deidrich as a slave.

Sure, them making a deal using cricket was something the both of them decided, and Deidrich should probably not have let Vincent walk off before they both agreed to what terms they were competing under. However, even without Deidrich’s naivety, Vincent should have shown the decency of NOT turning somebody in a lifetime slave to begin with.

We cannot victim-blame Deidrich for mistrusting Vincent to begin with. But more importantly, Vincent did not respect the most basic principle of equivalent exchange.

The term Deidrich set was for Vincent to step down: the worst that could happen to Vincent was that he’d return to being a normal student. Big deal. Vincent however, decided WITHOUT Deidrich’s consent, that he would turn him into a lifetime slave.

Vincent said “become my fag”, and if we look at the definition of fag, this should be: “a junior pupil AT A PUBLIC SCHOOL who does MINOR chores”. The moment either of them left the school SHOULD be the end of this contract.

Making somebody a fag without their prior consent is bad enough, but Vincent entirely crosses the boundaries, and states very clearly that this status as “fag” was supposed to continue INDEFINITELY. PLUS, he strips Deidrich entirely from his basic human right, as he is supposed to obey him “without question”.

That’s a slave, dear ladies, gentlemen, and gentlepersons. That’s slavery. I don’t know what to tell you, but that’s slavery.

Vincent does not even give Deidrich the proper chance to speak, and simply dismisses his legit protest with: “but I am [done talking.] Hereby stating very clearly that Vincent Phantomhive will from this point on, be the person to have the last word that matters.

Framing

How is this being framed? As a light-hearted back-and-forth bickering. Alexis’ reaction is used as a ‘tell-device’ to tell the audience that we are supposed to find this a light-hearted back-and-forth bickering between boys. However, we all know very well that this master-slave relation continued to present day, as Vincent made very clearly that this “contract” would pass on from him to his sons.

The reaction from the people who listened to Alexis’ story ranged from admiration to disbelief, but nobody there showed disgust. Or at least, not tellingly. As such we can conclude that the enslavement of Deidrich WAS supposed to be something ‘cute’.

Underhanded Emotional Manipulation

Vincent is a repeat offender of emotional manipulation, and this too is always framed as something ‘cute’.

Let us look at chapter 99.5 where Vincent uses his sick family to emotionally manipulate Deidrich into accepting that ‘a fag’s work’(which Vincent uses his absolute power to make Deidrich do) as ‘willing thoughtfulness’.

“No, I didn’t make you do this work, YOU were just so nice and kind and loving, Dei-dei ♥” was basically the psychological message he was instilling into Deidrich.

In chapter 131, Vincent makes sure that this enslavement would continue to the next generation, and uses the safety of two young children to emotionally manipulate Deidrich into continuing his servitude.

It is very damaging for children to get promises broken - especially promises that have to do with their rights and safety. Even before Deidrich consented to this indefinite servitude, Vincent took the liberty of making the promise to the children in Deidrich’s stead. Herewith he would effectively turn Deidrich into the bad-guy for saying: “sorry kids, I am NOT going to protect you should you lose your father,” even though it is Deidrich’s fundamental right to refuse.

NASTY.

Vincent also makes sure to keep ‘rewarding’ Deidrich for obedience good behaviour, and frequently dishes out compliments; the classical hot-cold treatment.

Again, just like I said before under the caption ‘framing’, this all is framed as a fluffy ‘tsundere’ back-and-forthing between two ‘friends’.

I don’t have anything against unscrupulous characters like Sebastian, or O!Ciel, R!Ciel, Joker, Baron Kelvin etc. etc. But the difference is that all these characters ARE properly portrayed to be wrongdoers.

With Vincent however, it is clearly meant as light-hearted fluff that rides the tailcoat of the ‘tsundere’ trope.

Deidrich is NOT tsundere; he is a victim to Vincent’s continued emotional abuse.

That is why I considered hating Vincent the most out of all characters in Kuroshitsuji - because his slights are never properly addressed, and only ever shown as ‘edgy’.

I hope this helps!

#Kuroshitsuji #Black Butler #Character Analysis #Analysis #Vincent Phantomhive #Worst personnnnnnn #tw emotional manipulation #tw emotional abuse #tw manipulation #tw abuse #Least favorite character #well...one of them #YANA YOU WROTE AN EXCELLENT MANIPULATOR - PLEASE ALSO FRAME HIM AS ONE!! JFC

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recentanimenews · 5 years

Text

All You Need is a White Piece of Paper and Pen: A Conversation with Monster and 20th Century Boys Creator Naoki Urasawa

Editor's Note: This is a republication of a feature by Cayla Coats that originally appeared on Crunchyroll News on 2/6/19.

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This article is brought to you by JAPAN HOUSE. JAPAN HOUSE is a cultural project that aims to nurture a deeper understanding and appreciation of Japan in the international community. Through outreach projects centered in its three locations in Los Angeles, São Paolo, and London, JAPAN HOUSE aims to drive further intellectual exchange between Japan and the world.

***

Naoki Urasawa is one of the modern masters of manga. The artist behind series such as Monster, 20th Century Boys, Master Keaton, and Pluto, his work has earned countless accolades from critics, including the prestigious Eisner Award (think the Oscars of the American comics industry). Urasawa-sensei’s work is currently on display in an exhibit titled This is MANGA - the Art of NAOKI URASAWAat JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles. This is marks the first solo exhibition of his work in North America, and is truly a landmark achievement for mainstream acceptance of manga as an artform.

I had the huge privilege of being invited by JAPAN HOUSE to attend the exhibition and interview Urasawa-sensei. The exhibit was, without exaggeration, quite breathtaking. As a lifelong fan of anime and manga, seeing Urasawa-sensei’s impeccable art framed and displayed with the same care one could find at an art museum was truly wonderful. Images from my visit will follow below, but if you have the chance to see the exhibit in person before its closing on March 28th, please do so. Urasawa-sensei has to be one of the most thoughtful creators I have had the pleasure of interviewing–every answer he gave seemed like a selection from a well-researched written essay! I’m extremely grateful to Japan House for giving me this opportunity to speak with one of manga’s living legends.

Our first question is about how you began as a manga artist. You graduated with a degree in Economics from Meisei University. Did you originally plan to work in the financial industry? What led you to becoming a manga creator?

I think very early on the idea of becoming a manga artist wasn’t on my mind. I started writing manga when I was about four or five years old and when I was eight I drew my first full story to completion. It’s interesting, because at that age I sort of understood the depth of what it meant to create manga, so I could really feel the deep gulf between what I was doing and what a real manga artist was doing. I didn’t want to publish manga for the sole purpose of just making money–I could see that there was a lot of manga that had been commercialized and you could smell the money in it. That really wasn’t what I was interested in.

It’s funny, when I was really young, when I would visit my uncle he would tell me, “oh wow, Naoki, your drawings are so amazing! You could become a manga artist!” That’s when I thought, “oh man, this guy doesn’t know anything about what real manga is.” That’s why I never really thought of pursuing the path of a professional manga artist. I studied economics and thought I would work at some company somewhere.

Colored panel from Monster above a display case with drafts of spreads

We’re going to move into some questions about your specific works. Your manga Monster is set in Cold War-era Germany. What made you decide to tell the story there instead of Japan?

A little while back, I wrote something called Pineapple Army, and it was originally set in New York. But my editor at the time felt that the reader demographic for this particular magazine was males aged 40 and over, and they’re probably more likely to be engaged by stories set in Europe. That’s why, after a turning point in the story, the setting moves to England, the same setting of another series I worked on called Master Keaton.

I think in Japan, our medical industry was influenced by a lot of German technology at the time, so when we think of medicine in Japan, a natural association is Germany. So when I began to write Monster, the protagonist is a doctor and setting the story in Germany seemed natural. As I developed the story, it made sense to place it specifically in post-war Germany so the story could incorporate the neo-nazi movement into the story.

That’s so fascinating. I think a lot of American readers probably missed the connection between the Japanese medical industry and German influence. I think they’ll be very interested to hear that.

When you have your medical records in Japan, often doctors will write them in German as well so that the patients can’t see what the doctor is writing down. That’s just another small way Germany shows up in the way we practice medicine.

The ‘manga tent’ was one of the coolest aspects of the exhibit. You could walk through it!

Moving on to your series Pluto, what led you to pursue a retelling of Astro Boy?

Within the story of Astro Boy, Osamu Tezuka wrote that the character of Astro Boy was built in 2003. So in 2003, to celebrate the birth year of Astro Boy, the rights holders opened up the property and many different manga artists reimagined the story of Astro Boy in their own style. Lots of artists were doing tributes and illustrations or short one-off manga to celebrate his birth year.

“The Greatest Robot in the World” is a very popular arc in Astro Boy, so I asked, “isn’t anyone going to remake this? It’s a great story that needs to be developed more!” Of course, no one had the courage to take on such a big task. My editor asked, “hey, why don’t you do it?” and I said, “oh no, I couldn’t possibly do that, that’s crazy!” Of course, here we are now.

Was the goal with Pluto always to tell a darker story that referenced contemporary events, or did these themes arise organically through the course of writing the story?

I think that the idea of Tezuka’s work being lighthearted is a common misconception–his stories are actually very, very dark. I think when it’s been animated and adapted into many different formats, the general consensus about Tezuka’s work is that it is “pure” and “family friendly.” Astro Boy even aired on primetime TV in Japan. In this way, his work has sort of been reimagined as very wholesome and safe content, but if you really look at Tezuka’s work on a deeper level, it’s very dark. If you aim to properly adapt or remake any of Tezuka’s work, you will naturally end up with a very dark story.

Costume for the character ‘Friend’ from a live action adaptation of 20th Century Boys

Are there any other stories from other artists that you would like to retell in the same fashion as Pluto?

(Solemnly) Never again.

(Everyone laughs)

I’m a very big fan of Tezuka’s work, so I think that sheer amount of respect really affected me as I was working on Pluto. That enormous amount of pressure that I felt both from outside and within myself began to affect my health, and that’s a big reason I don’t want to do that again.

Many of your works could be considered part of the mystery genre. What about the way mystery stories are structured appeals to you?

I think a lot of that comes down to what we perceive as being fun or intriguing. You could take a lot of popular TV shows–I’m sure you all have been in the situation of saying “oh, I have to find out what happens next!” and you binge through Episode 1, 2, 3, 4. Every story that is able to do that to its audience has an element of mystery. You can even take a love story–if you’re binging it and you’re curious about what happens next, then I think there’s a strong element of mystery there. That’s the core of what makes a narrative so intriguing.

Colored panel from Pluto

Unfortunately we only have time for one more question, so I would like to ask a pretty broad, open ended one. What can manga do as a medium that no other art form can?

Let’s take another format–the movie, for example. You have a massive budget and so many different people involved. It takes years to gather all the sponsors, get the casting just right, there are so many players involved to create just one product.

With manga, all you really need is a white piece of paper and pen. No other medium lets you translate your imagination into visuals as fast as manga. Manga can take you to the other side of the universe in an instant. Manga can take you to the distant future with spectacular technology or to the far past when there were dinosaurs. I truly believe that no other medium allows creators to express their ideas as efficiently as manga.

That’s a beautiful place to end, thank you so much Mr. Urasawa.

“20th Century Boys” was originally published by SHOGAKUKAN

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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awed-frog · 6 years

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I only just learned that Christine Nöstlinger died last week. It’s the kind of news that leaves you both sad and slightly incredulous, because even as an adult, it’s hard to see someone like Nöstlinger as a real person. To me, she’ll always be a funny, exotic name on the cover of a book - she was one of my favourite writers when I was a young child, and I don’t think it ever occurred to me that those people - people like Roald Dahl, Astrid Lindgren, Bianca Pitzorno or Michael Ende - actually existed in the real world, and did things as mundane as wear pajamas or brush their teeth. In fact, as I was scrolling through a couple of obituaries today, I was surprised to learn Nöstlinger was Austrian, not Swedish (her books were side by side with Lindgren’s on my shelf) and that if her stories were always delightfully subversive, it’s probably because she grew up in Nazi Austria and experienced that reality first-hand. And while I do understand this is a thing that happens - that people have lives, that they must be born somewhere and do stuff and exist in actual reality - as I read of her death I became a child of eight again; what I found myself mourning was that name on my bookshelf - nothing more. I am slightly ashamed of that, of knowing nothing about this person who brought me so much joy, because over the last few years, I’ve gotten to know some YA writers and I now have a new appreciation of how hard they work and how determined they are to make a difference - not only to make children happy, that is, but also to teach them how to think for themselves, to help them engage with the world around them with full awareness. And so, to honour Christine Nöstlinger and her work, I decided to translate a speech she gave to the Austrian Parliament for the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Mauthausen. I couldn’t find an English version of it, and I think it deserves to be more widely read - especially today.

“I was almost two when the Mauthausen concentration camp was opened, and as the last survivors were freed by American troops, I turned eight. For this reason, you could think this is not a subject I remember hearing about or discussing.

But I do.

I didn’t know the word Mauthausen, but I was certainly familiar with the expression ‘concentration camp’. I would hear it again and again as my grandma grumbled about the Nazis with the dairywoman or at the grocer’s. That’s when someone would whisper in warning: ‘You’ll get in trouble!’, they’d say; or: ‘You keep talking like that, you’ll end up in a concentration camp!’.

One memory is particularly clear and vivid in my mind: my uncle, my mom’s kid brother, is visiting us. He stands in his SS uniform, tall and broad, very close to my mother, and says: ‘Ella, the Jews are all going to pass through the chimney!’. And my mother, who was much shorter than he was, went red with rage and slapped him across the face. I think that was the first and only time my normally placid mother ever hit someone.

Obviously, I didn’t understand what ‘pass through the chimney’ meant, but I could guess it was something really bad. And that was the day I understood that Mr Fischl had passed through the chimney.

Mr Fischl was a shoemaker, and he’d had a shop in our alley. He’d resole shoes, repair heels and fix the toe caps so that those who couldn’t afford it wouldn’t have to buy new shoes for their growing children. In 1938, shortly after the Anschluss, my mother witnessed a chilling scene as she was coming home from work: a group of SA soldiers had dragged Mr Fischl out of his shop and they were now forcing him to scrub clean the three white arrows some regime opponents had painted on the wall. A truck was parked in the street, full of grinning SA men. Mr Fischl, on his knees, was surrounded by his amused neighbours. My mother, with a heavy heart, moved to the other side of the street and walked on; she later heard Mr Fischl had been taken away that very day. Soon after those events, an ‘Aryan’ shoemaker took over both Mr Fischl’s shop and his apartment. Nobody ever mentioned Mr Fischl again - nobody, that is, except my mother. Again and again, she’d tell my sister and me what had happened to him. She always felt guilty she hadn’t done anything to stop it, and would always justify that choice to herself by saying: ‘If I hadn’t had children waiting for me at home, I would have gone there and sent those thugs packing!’.

I was a child then, and when you’re a child you need to see your mother as someone who’s big and strong and powerful - especially if your father has been away in Russia for a long time. I hadn’t known then that adults sometimes lie to themselves. For this reason, I was thoroughly convinced that my mother would indeed have saved Mr Fischl if I had never been born. ‘Where did they take Mr Fischl?’ I asked once, and when my mother answered bluntly ‘To a concentration camp.’, I came to believe his death had been my fault.

This irrational sense of guilt started to fade away when I finally noticed that my mother was neither strong nor powerful: she was small and helpless, and definitely not capable of sending anyone packing.

But not being guilty is not the same as not being responsible. Many people have fully accepted this, and have done their best to bear witness for future generations - they’ve tried to explain where racism once led us; they’ve stood up and spoke out whenever the mood was souring against a minority group.

Now, that’s not an easy thing to do, and many others were simply too uncomfortable to even try. Instead, those people interfered with this effort to remember, pretended they hadn’t known what was going on, complained about what they themselves had lost in the war, and basked in the self-serving idea of a ‘new beginning’. In order to expedite this ‘new beginning’, our post-war governments were not particularly keen to prosecute those who’d been implicated in Nazi crimes. To be perfectly blunt, those people were simply too many to be locked away. Without them, there would have been no possibility to establish a functioning state. Where on Earth would we have found a sufficient number of teachers and civil servants with a perfectly clean slate soon after the end of the war?

Meanwhile, the efforts to welcome back home those Jews and political opponents who’d managed to flee abroad were lukewarm at best. And there was no question of even discussing how to better integrate the Roma and Sinti communities - or, those among them who’d survived. For all of those reasons, my generation and my children’s generation have grown up in a country in which racism, far from being a bad memory, was instead an ongoing, deep-seated conviction passed down from father to son and from mother to daughter.

And today, not much has changed for the better. The only difference is that racism now presents itself under a different guise. Nobody dares to use (and few to even think) words like ‘master race’, ‘subhuman’, ‘Rassenschande’ and ‘final solution’. There is a strong taboo around them.

No, our current form of racism simply rejects all that is foreign. It sees native people as being threatened by an unsustainable wave of immigration; it insists that foreigners have it easy, and what it means by that is: ‘Those people want to live off us, they want to take something away from us!’.

Those who think these things, those who say them openly when they know others will agree, well - they won’t write racist slogans on the walls, won’t vandalize Jewish tombs, won’t insult a veiled woman, won’t beat up black people or set fire to refugee centres. On the other hand, what they do is giving confidence and justification to the people who actually do all these things; the certainty that they’re acting in everybody’s best interest. They are the fertile ground upon which violence grows.

And the number of minorities against whom people ‘have something’ (in the best case) or ‘do something’ (in the worst) is already increasing. To the traditional victims of disapproval and aggression, today we can add asylum seekers and economic refugees (no matter where they come from); also people with a migration background (no matter whether they’re Austrian citizens or not). And obviously, people whose skin is a different colour. Today, however, unlike what happened in the Nazi era, total assimilation seems to protect from hostility. And I fear that when we’re talking about ‘more integration’, well - to the large majority of the population, what that really means is ‘assimilation’. We do not want to experience and get used to what is foreign and unknown; we want those who only just arrived to adapt to our traditional way of life, and that will rarely succeed. That’s why we are uneasy with living with people from unfamiliar cultures. For a long time now, our politicians’ solution to this problem has been to wait and hope that the issue will fade as those who’re already here slowly become more tolerant and those who have recently moved here slowly learn how to fit in. Often, these expectations have been met; but just as often they have not.

What we need to do is implement concrete measures: for instance, compulsory kindergarten attendance and all-day schools. We need properly trained teachers so that children who speak a different language at home can learn German quickly and efficiently. That way, as they start school, both their language skills and their chances to have a good education will be the same as those of the native speakers. This is the only way to prevent the emergence of parallel societies in vulnerable neighbourhoods. Better schools are also the only viable tool to weaken the deeply ingrained racism of most of our local population. Let’s remember that those who know nothing will believe everything, even the most outrageous nonsense and the most shameless distortion of facts.

That said, we still need to understand why so many people prefer to believe racists over those who say that it’s perfectly possible to coexist peacefully (if not to truly share our lives with others). Maybe there is a reason; maybe our skin doesn’t have seven layers, as we all have learned, but eight. Maybe this eighth layer is a ‘civilisation skin’. We are not born with it. It appears and changes as we grow up. Whether it’s thick or thin, well, that depends on how well we look after it. If we don’t care for it properly, it stays thin and tears easily. And what seeps from those wounds may lead to consequences that will again cause us to say: ‘No one ever wanted that’.”

Christine Nöstlinger, 2015

#christine nöstlinger #austria #history #ww2 #antisemitism #racism #children's books #childhood memories #man she was awesome #if you have kids #please buy her books #they're really good

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ruby-lights · 6 years

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Events of Ancient Era

3/9/18: Tumblr is not formatting my posts properly and apparently if i include a picture it just doesn’t show text at all on the dash....no wonder i get 0 notes on posts lol

I. Astrals and the First King of Kings

The Astrals are the summons in the world of FFXV but are more importantly worshipped and treated as Gods. What we know of the Astrals mostly comes from texts scattered around Eos called the Cosmogony as well as information in the game’s loading screens. The Astrals, also known as The Six or the Hexatheon are described in the Cosmogony as:

Titan, the Archaean, steadfast as stone. Ramuh, the Fulgurian, sharp as lightning. Shiva, the Glacian, gentle as snow. Leviathan, the Hydraean, relentless as tides. Bahamut, the Draconian, unbending as iron. Ifrit, the Infernian, fickle as fire.

Furthermore, there are said to be 24 messengers to these Astrals, which would give each Astral four messengers if split evenly (but we don’t know if such is the case). The only messengers CONFIRMED to appear in game, however, are Shiva’s messenger Gentiana, Luna’s dogs Pryna and Umbra, and Noctis’s guardian, Carbuncle. Astrals do not speak the human language but can communicate through the Oracle and their own messengers, as in the case of Gentiana. Carbuncle does not speak but instead communicates with Noctis through his smartphone.

The Astrals are able to exist in both the human realm as well as the “Astral Realm.”

The gap between the birth of the Astrals and creation of mankind is vague, however humans are said to be made in the Astrals image, like in Fabula Nova Crystallis where humans are made in the image of the goddess Etro.

The first recorded stories of the Astrals and human interaction that we have occurred over 2,000 years ago during what is known as the Ancient Era. While most Astrals did not care for humans, Ifrit admired their strength of will and gifted them the power of fire. Thus, the civilization that became known as Solheim, which translates to “Home of the Sun” in Norwegian, flourished. The Glacian, Shiva warmed by Ifrit’s mercy upon mankind, fell in love with him and developed a fondness for mankind.

Of course, the people of Solheim’s hubris eventually became too much and they thought themselves superior to the Astrals. Ifrit, angered by this betrayal declared war on humanity and desired to wipe them out. However, the other Astrals, sworn to protect Eos no matter the circumstance, turned against Ifrit, thus triggering the Great War of Old. This battle ravaged the land and created landmarks, most notably Taelpar Crag, created during the battle between Ifrit and Bahamut and the Rock of Ravatogh was where Ifrit's original body was laid to rest following his death.

Also, around this time, the plague known as the Starscourge began to infect the people of Eos. Its exact origins unclear, the Starscourge has the effects of lengthening nighttime as well as turning humans and animals into violent creatures known as daemons. The corruption which turns humans into daemons in the world of Eos is like both the power of chaos and the Cie'th curse in the Fabula Nova Crystallis mythology.

II. The Chosen Bloodlines After the Great War, while the other Astrals, exhausted from their battle with Ifrit, went into slumber, Bahamut attempted to save Eos from the threat of the Starscourge. He gave his powers to two bloodlines. To the Nox Fleuret family of Tenebrae, he chose a “pious maiden” to become what is known as The Oracle, giving her the power to speak with the Astrals, as well as delay the spread and heal those afflicted by the Starscourge. Bahamut also gave the Oracle his trident. From then on, the women in the Nox Fleuret family would inherit the title and powers of the Oracle.

Cosmogony Entry about the Oracle The Oracle In the distant past, Bahamut, the Draconian, descended to the mortal realm and graced the people of Tenebrae. From among them, he handpicked a pious maiden and bestowed upon her the power of the Stars and his trident. Using these gifts for the good of all, she became the first Oracle—she who joins heaven and earth.

She most pure of faith is the Oracle, a daughter in the line of those said to commune with the Six. Blessed by the Astral gods, she calls forth the power of Eos to heal those who are suffering and afflicted. Her devotion to helping all those in need has inspired reverence for her among people from all over the world. —The Six and the Oracle – II

She is also able to forge covenants with the Astrals. The rites of the covenant are a means by which the Oracle summoned forth the gods, that she might make the will of mortals known unto the divine.

The Revelation Trials by which the Six grant their blessing are first mentioned in ancient tomes dating back to the time of the Cosmogony, some two millennia ago. Revelations left great devastation in their wake, with entire cities being laid to ruin, and people saw them as tests of their faith.

A man, from another yet named bloodline was also chosen by Bahamut. The Cosmogony entry, The Crystal states:

There once lived a man, born a mortal but blessed with powers divine. Conjuring a collection of glaives, he dispelled the darkness plaguing our star. As a reward for his efforts, the gods granted him a holy Stone—the Crystal, which he was to guard at all costs, for it would one day choose a King to see us through the coming disaster and lead us to salvation.

The Final Fantasy XV Scenario Ultimania posits that rather than being able to use the Crystal's true power, kings of Lucis have the responsibility of protecting it, and that the Crystal picks the "Chosen King" /“King of Kings”/ “True King” when disaster comes to the world. Thus, implying that the Crystal has sentience and a will of its own.

The True King is homage to the concept of the Warriors of Light, one of the core concepts of the Final Fantasy series of heroes chosen by the crystals—be it by a prophecy, a will, or by fate—to embark on the journey to fight evil or restore balance to the world.

The line that protects the Crystal would eventually become known as the Lucis Caelums. However, formerly, at least according to the German translation, they were known as the Izunias. The Crystal is a magical stone that is a source of immense power. Though its light is said to be for the benefit of all of mankind, only the kings of Lucis have been gifted the ability to wield its power.

[http://verslin.tumblr.com/post/171568910589/german-translation-of-ardyns-dossier-izunia]

This collection of glaives that the Izunias/Lucis Caelums wield is known in game as the Armiger. This power seems not to draw from the Crystal but is something unique to this family. The power of Lucis Kings are enshrined in royal tombs scattered throughout the world and the weapons they house are special. Every new king's duty is to collaborate to the collective power of kings by adding their own royal arm to the mix, and princes embark on trips across the land to collect the arms of their forebears from their royal tombs. Many of the weapons have been lost, however, the location of their tombs unknown. Thus, there are actually 112 weapons total even though we only see 13 in game.

III. The Ring of the Lucii

Before falling into eternal slumber, the Six bequeathed unto man one last treasure: a ring. Yet who among us was fit to possess this gift of the gods? After some time, the ring was transferred to the hands of a man blessed with powers divine, ultimately developing the mark identifying one fit to rule.

The Lucis Caelums were also given the Ring of the Lucii which allowed the Lucis bloodline to combine their strength across generations by a process known as the “bonding of souls.” The Ring allows for the wearer to call upon the combined strength of all the former rulers of Lucis. However, the wearer must be deemed worthy enough to use the power of the ring by the Rulers of Yore, a select 13 of Lucis Kings and Queens. The ring has taken the lives or permanently injured those who it deemed not worthy. Using the Ring also drains the user’s lifeforce even if they are a Lucis Caelum. Thus, the power of the Crystal gradually concentrates lifeforce until the king who wields all of the Crystal's power will be crowned the True King who can purge the Starscourge at the cost of his own life, or in Bahamut’s words “the blood price.” This became the prophecy: "When darkness veils the world, the King of Light shall come." With the plan to cleanse the world of Starscourge in motion, Bahamut disappeared from Eos, and the tales of the Astrals became legends.

IV. The Founder King Two thousand years ago, our main antagonist Ardyn Izunia was to be the first Lucian king. He believed he was chosen by the Crystal to save Eos from the Starscourge. He did so by absorbing the Starscourge into his own body to protect his subjects. What powers he possessed that enabled him to do so remain unknown. While his actions saved thousands across the world, he was rejected by the Crystal as tainted, and was denounced by the Astrals and his ascendance to the throne was denied. He was unable to die, barred entry to the Astral Realm since the daemons he had absorbed rendered him immortal. He states he was “betrayed” by his younger brother, who would become the first king of Lucis, also known as the Founder King or The Mystic. However, in the Royal Pack, the Mystic pleads of Noctis to "free my brother from his curse." Perhaps it wasn’t even a real betrayal by his brother and the Crystal merely chose his brother over Ardyn regardless of his brother’s choice in the matter. Anger and revenge twisted Ardyn for thousands of years he lost sight of the kind ruler he once was. Ardyn’s actual backstory is still shrouded in mystery which hopefully Episode Ardyn will clear up. Ardyn retook the surname of "Izunia" and plotted to one day end the Astral-appointed bloodlines of the Lucian kings and Tenebraean Oracles, particularly the “True King.”

#*ffxvlore #final fantasy xv #ardyn izunia

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jamiekturner · 6 years

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Consulting – WordPress Theme that Perfectly Fit any Business Site

Don’t think I’ll reveal a huge secret stating the fact that Consulting is a WordPress self-explanatory consulting theme obviously, from the popular Envato Power Elite Author, StylemixThemes. The name speaks for itself!

In time when a whole bunch of handy features fit it best for consulting and business financing, I’ll surely say Consulting might be used as a WordPress business theme in general, despite much of the marketing industry focuses on those two segments stated above.

Therefore, this review deserves a look if you planning to run a business website for yourself or for your own client. Give an overview of my consultation, read to see what this well-developed, thought out, theme can do, and the parameters that it gives you for setting up your site.

The Feature List

Let’s start with functionality and detailed features while we’ll get back to the valuation afterwards:

25 one-click import demo varieties.

47 templates in each Containing the ones for services, case studies, team member pages, and more – WPBakery Page Builder supported.

Appointment booking feature supported by Booked plugin.

Events calendar containing multiple developed display templates.

Slider Revolution.

Multi-location Google Maps display feature and stress-free Google Maps API implementation.

AMP and Mobile-First Index friendly.

WooCommerce and WPML support.

120+ shortcodes.

Built-in Mega Menu Module

25 Well-Built Consulting’s Demos Check Out

The biggest bet by the developers of Consulting as you might notice are the neat demos.

With them all you have to do is just add your content and images and you are set to go up and running

Just as unique, exceptional and creative as professional, they will certainly catch your eye:

With all those varieties you will certainly find the one that will provide the impression you want your site to give and render.

Installation Process – Getting Started

After completing installation of the theme, you need to activate your product under Consulting -> Product registration

Once you acquired your ThemeForest purchase token, enter it so you can activate the theme.

After this you can choose and install the demo content under Consulting -> Demo Import:

Each demo layout requires a number of plugins to function properly. Fortunately, StylemixThemes has made it easy for you to install the plugins and they will be installed automatically during the demo import.

Depending on the speed of your Internet connection, it may take some time to install all the plugins and import the demo content.

After finishing the process, you will get up and running website, and all you need is to change the texts and images.

Customizing The Consulting Theme Options

After importing the demo of your choice and having fully-functioning website, you would definitely like to make the site your own customizing some things around.

You need to proceed with two basic tactics in order to make this happen:

The WordPress Customizer to change general theme style options

WPBakery Page Builder (former Visual Composer) to edit individual page templates

How they work:

The WordPress Customizer in Consulting Theme

Consulting is making an accent on easily customizable WordPress Live Theme Customizer loved by the customers instead of a custom theme options panel

The settings in the front-end customizer are focused for viewing changes in the website preview in real time and not requiring any coding skills

You could observe all of the different Customizer possibilities in the screen beneath:

For example, to manage the address in your header, follow this:

Proceed to the Headertab

Input your new address

Directly grasp alive showing

Likewise, you could as well rapidly shift among the 12 built-in header styles only by using the drop-down in the Header Appearance block:

Furthermore, new Consulting demos are featured by dedicated Header Builder, see how it works here:

youtube

With an intuitive drag-n-drop editor it’s easy to build a customized header and provide great user experience on all devices and platforms.

The StylemixThemes using the Header Builder Plugin in their flagship themes like Consulting, Crypterio and Pearl.

Besides, the WordPress Customizer has a load of features to go around.

Individual Pages Customization Via WPBakery Page Builder

While you use the WordPress Customizer to set up the big picture settings for your website, if you want to edit the actual demo page templates that come with Consulting, you’ll use the included WPBakery Page Builder (formerly known as Visual Composer).

For example, to edit the homepage design on your site, you’d:

Go to the WordPress Pagesarea

Find the page Consulting is using as the homepage

Click Edit with WPBakery Page Builder

Then, you can edit your page using simple drag and drop editor with a live preview:

And it’s not just your homepage that you can edit this way – you can also edit any of the other ~47 page templates that are included with the demo content.

For example, here’s what it looks like to edit your Contact Us page:

I personally prefer the designer’s strategies to developing page templates using the page builder for the reason that you are very easy to enter and customize things around even if you do not know how to code.

Analyzing deeper on Consulting one of a kind Functionality

Since you’ve got the idea how its functioning already let’s deepen into Consulting’s coolest features.

Due to the containing plugins and demo content all of them come already integrated. That is – I didn’t have to manually set any of this up – it just worked from day one.

Book an Appointment Feature by Booked Plugin

When you closely working with clients and among business, appointments bookings are one of the crucial necessity. And that is where included premium Booked plugin comes in which lets you easily set your availability and allow customers to arrange an appointment.

All you do is set up your availability from your WordPress dashboard:

Then, your customers can start booking appointments right away on the included Appointments page:

Stunning Portfolios with Portfolio Custom Post Type

Consulting contains a portfolio custom post type with which you can rapidly present your latest projects through one of the three included Portfolio page templates:

Event Management and Display Options

If your business hosts live events, Consulting’s built-in events functionality will definitely come in handy. Convenient Consulting’s built-in events features would certainly be at use hosting live actions & occasions of your business.

Not only can you manage your events from your WordPress dashboard using the included events custom post type, but you can also display a list of upcoming events using one of the three included Events page templates: From your WordPress dashboard you are not only capable of managing the events using the included events custom post type but also display a list of upcoming events via three handy containing Events page templates:

Final Thoughts On Consulting WordPress Theme

Consulting is an impressively thought-out and carefully developed multi-purpose WordPress theme that is dedicated to the creation of remarkable modern websites of any size and scale in all areas of business. The theme comes with a page builder that saves you time. You just need to drag and drop items into different sections of your site.

With Consulting you can create websites for various types of companies such as finance, business consulting, B2B, brokerage agencies, law firms, etc.

The Consulting theme is SEO-friendly, translated to 10 languages (English, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Dutch, Turkish), and comes with all the premium benefits such as lifetime updates, detailed documentation and professional customer support.

Furthermore, with the Consulting WP you actually save $118 because it includes 3 premium plugins and the theme itself is now available for $39 only on the ThemeForest.

Use the amazing collection of graphics and progress animation to impress your visitors and turn them into customers.

There are ready-made headers and header builder, page templates and business-oriented features.

After that, you just add content and photos. Sounds easy? Yes, because it really is!

The post Consulting – WordPress Theme that Perfectly Fit any Business Site appeared first on Design your way.

from Web Development & Designing https://www.designyourway.net/blog/wp/consulting-wordpress-theme/

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recentanimenews · 5 years

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INTERVIEW: All You Need is a White Piece of Paper and Pen: A Conversation with Monster and 21st Century Boys Creator Naoki Urasawa

---

Colored panel from Monster above a display case with drafts of spreads

We’re going to move into some questions about your specific works. Your manga Monster is set in Cold War-era Germany. What made you decide to tell the story there instead of Japan?

The ‘manga tent’ was one of the coolest aspects of the exhibit. You could walk through it!

Moving on to your series Pluto, what led you to pursue a retelling of Astro Boy?

Was the goal with Pluto always to tell a darker story that referenced contemporary events, or did these themes arise organically through the course of writing the story?

Costume for the character ‘Friend’ from a live action adaptation of 20th Century Boys

Are there any other stories from other artists that you would like to retell in the same fashion as Pluto?

(Solemnly) Never again.

(Everyone laughs)

Many of your works could be considered part of the mystery genre. What about the way mystery stories are structured appeals to you?

Colored panel from Pluto

Unfortunately we only have time for one more question, so I would like to ask a pretty broad, open ended one. What can manga do as a medium that no other art form can?

That’s a beautiful place to end, thank you so much Mr. Urasawa.

“20th Century Boys” was originally published by SHOGAKUKAN

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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