Millionaire manga

You know, I used to have this problem where I confused Warren Buffet with Jimmy Buffet. Now I have a way to tell the difference: Warren Buffet is the one someone wrote a manga about—in Japanese, although the link is to a translation. And now, like all good manga, he’s moving to anime, or at least, he’s getting his own animated cartoon.

I wonder if the real Warren carries one of these in his shirt pocket.

Meanwhile, the movie based on the manga Initial D has racked up 10 nominations for the Hong Kong Film Awards, although it’s up against some stiff competition, including a Jackie Chan movie. If the choice comes down to the flying fists of death versus long, lingering shots of cars sliding around mountain curves, I’m not sure there will be much of a contest.

Closer to home, the newspaper version of Peach Fuzz debuted in St. Paul, Minnesota, last weekend, with the Pioneer Press running the first three strips to bring readers up to date, accompanied by the obligatory article explaining manga and noting that they are hugely popular in Japan and also not just for boys. Unfortunately, the chopping and shrinking needed to bring this manga down to newspaper size make it almost unreadable, at least in the Boston Globe. I doubt it’s going to attract many new readers.