Review: Culture Crash
By Enzo Makalintal

We all know about the recent rise in anime and manga here in the Philippines. Actually, we've been subject to it for years. In the realm of comic books we have everything from "Angel Ace" to the Rockman (or Megaman) inspired Combatron. One of the newest entries into this world is the Culture Crash book. It's not really a series but more like an anthology, a collection of four different stories drawn anime style and set here in the Philippines, in Tagalog no less. It was supposed to be an effort to combine Japanese art style with Filipino stories. A sort of combination of the two cultures, hence the title Culture Crash.

It really isn't bad as a first effort. The art was okay. But the stories left a lot to be desired. It's true that the book is still an anthology and therefore we should expect a lot of stories that are to be continued, nabibitin tayo in other words. Stories that leave audiences hanging aren't necessarily a bad thing, they leave you craving for more on occasion but I feel that too many writers use this technique to cover up the fact that they don't really have good ideas for the next story or that it's just another cheap trick to get us to buy their books. I'm tired of cheap tricks like this, I want a story that makes me want to buy the next issue of a comic book. Then again, it is an anthology but the stories still don't interest me. They all seem like they were copied, sure I haven't seen other issues yet but what I have seen so far doesn't interest me.

The first story in the book "Solstice Butterfly," is actually the annoying one. The art for it is no good, there are just too many words on the page at the same time. That could be the style of the artist or storyteller but I feel that it's just no good. The art basically sucks. It's so flat and uninteresting; there are no features that actually draw you into reading the story.

The next set of stories is a little bit better both in terms of art and story. I don't have as huge a problem with these stories as I do with the first story. I don't have as big a complaint with them as I do with "Solstice Butterfly". Although "Pasig" is a bit boring and the art is a little gray. Nothing much happens, we just see a girl get her gun stolen and meet some guy he gives her gun back to her. "One day isang diwa" is actually interesting and the art seems to be better than the rest (the same goes for Cat's Trail but then the artist is the same). And something actually happens although they should not have left us hanging during the actual appearance of Diwa. I guess in a sense it is appropriate since this is only an introduction to a bigger story. Cat's trail is just about the same only funnier (or it tries harder to be funnier). Some jokes just try to hard (na-flush sa toilet si Bay-Gon-Jin).

One thing I am really wondering about is who are these people really marketing this book to, anyway? The stories are in tagalog, but all the articles are in English. They should have had the whole book in tagalog instead of the way it is. Why bother with the articles in the first place. If they are marketing it to the normal audience of comic books then I'm sure they know by now who the x-men are or how RE: code veronica looks like. Besides the pages just takes away from the most important part of the book, the stories. It would be a shame to market this book to the usual collectors of comic books (foreign). Because it is in tagalog, the book can be marketed to the kind of people who buy horror comics or funny comics.

It's still not bad for a first effort and if you ignore the extremely short stories there are actually some good things about this book. The art isn't completely bad all the time, there are parts in the book where the art actually looks good. All it needs is a little improvement and we'll have a better product and hopefully they can develop the art form of manga here in the Philippines.

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