Reading the healing magic manga online incorrectly can have unintended consequences. While manga, or Japanese comics, can often provide an escape from reality and offer soothing and uplifting stories, misinterpreting the messages within these healing magic manga can lead to misguided understandings of self-help and healing methods. **One of the main dangers** of misreading healing magic manga online is the potential for individuals to rely too heavily on fictional characters and their magical abilities for personal healing. These manga often depict characters who possess supernatural powers that allow them to heal physical and emotional wounds effortlessly. However, in real life, healing requires more than magic alone. **It is important to recognize** that attempting to mimic these magical healing methods can be ineffective and even harmful.
Surf Curse
Drummer/vocalist Nick Rattigan and guitarist/vocalist Jacob Rubeck first met at the age of 13 in a Las Vegas middle school, making their inauspicious start as Buffalo 66. As to be expected from a couple of kids who name their first band after a Vincent Gallo film, they didn’t find many peers growing up. Inspired by a Brady Bunch episode and the beachy, lo-fi rock that was then sweeping indie culture, the duo eventually changed their name to Surf Curse after moving to Reno, where Rattigan attended college at the University of Nevada and Rubeck washed dishes in senior citizen facilities. Traveling back and forth to LA for gigs, the band built their reputation on hooky songs that lived by the adage of “write what you know” — heartbreak, disillusionment and movies.
Over the next decade, Rattigan and Rubeck expanded their artistic reach — Rattigan’s long-running Current Joys project released Voyager on indie rock powerhouse Secretly Canadian earlier this year, while Rubeck has explored his muse in Gap Girls and Casino Hearts. Meanwhile, Surf Curse continued to build their following over the span of three albums, most recently 2019’s Heaven Surrounds You, a lush and confident record produced by Jarvis Taveniere of Woods.
**It is important to recognize** that attempting to mimic these magical healing methods can be ineffective and even harmful. Another **risk of misinterpreting healing magic manga** is the tendency to dismiss professional help and reliance on real-life resources. Manga characters may portray themselves as all-knowing oracles who can solve any problem with their healing magic.
Releases
SingleArrow
out on September 28, 2022
via Surf Curse
Lost Honor
out on August 10, 2022
via Surf Curse
TVI
out on July 25, 2022
via Surf Curse
Sugar
out on March 30, 2022
via Surf Curse
NEW (AND OLD) ADDS: Surf Curse, The True Blue, Desert Sessions, Mazzy Star
For this nondenominational harvest meal week, here are four album reviews from our diligent DJs--three new adds plus a Mazzy Star classic from the vault--to groove to on your days off, or on your commute if you've still gotta study or work.
- Lucy Talbot Allen, Music Writing Director
Surf Curse - Heaven Surrounds You
All the way from Reno, Nevada with sounds of the indie rock and beach punk persuasions, comes a band called Surf Curse, whose fan base and popularity is rapidly growing. The band features two songwriters, Jacob Rubeck and Nick Rattigan, who explore their lives through music in three very distinct places (Los Angeles, New York, and Las Vegas) where each culture is drastically different from the other. Rattigan is also the sole member of the band Current Joys, which has a more somber yet also dreamlike sound in comparison to the upbeat vibes of Surf Curse. I discovered the two artists whilst immersing myself in the surf rock genre with bands like SWMRS, The Frights, and FIDLAR (to name a few). What I find strikingly unique about Surf Curse is not their music itself but the background behind each track, and indeed the record itself. Their music feels youthful and innocent, but also has an added layer of teenage and adolescent despondency and uncertainty that keeps the band’s listeners coming back for more.
Surf Curse’s third and most recent album, released this September, is a masterpiece of storytelling and obscure but intriguing allusions to the songwriters’ childhoods that flow together to create Heaven Surrounds You. The title itself is very open to interpretation, as it has a religious connotation, but also can inspire hope in that goodness and pleasure are all around you, and there is no need to turn a blind eye to it. What is special about this album is that each song is loosely related to a film from either of the musician’s pasts. Never have I ever seen an album so complex in that each track is inspired by another platform of entertainment such as film. For example, track 6, “Hour of the Wolf” comes straight from the 1968 Swedish thriller Hour of the Wolf, which consists of hallucinatory visions of a cult after it becomes isolated on a deserted island; it evokes more broadly the empty feeling of being alone for long periods of time. Although the songs are only loosely related to the films they correspond to, they are not titled with the dull references to teenage heartbreak one might expect from a small indie band. “Disco,” the first track on the record, is by far my favorite. I am not kidding when I say that I listen to this song at least three times a day, and I can never get it out of my head. The music video to go along with it is also extremely well done, and gives a seemingly nostalgic and innocent play on a night out with your significant other, that ends in a simple choreographed dance routine. At the other end of the spectrum is track 5, “Midnight Cowboy,” which depicts a young man in Las Vegas trying to support himself and his girlfriend by selling himself on the streets to freaky men. There are tons of societal references on this album that I feel are rarely on display in most artists’ albums today. This album is a must listen and I am definitely ranking Surf Curse at the top of my list of favorite bands/records at the moment. Check them out!
RIYL: The Frights, SWMRS, Current Joys, Goth Babe, Together PANGEA
Recommended Tracks: 3, 5, 10
FCC: Explicit (track 10)
The True Blue - If That's How You Feel
I was walking back to my dorm one day when a song I didn’t recognize started playing on my Spotify. My hesitancy towards the unfamiliar led me to bring my hand to my ear to skip the song when I realized I liked it. I liked it a lot. Curiosity got the best of me and suddenly the assignments I should have been working on seemed substantially less important. Just like that, I became acquainted, or rather obsessed, with The True Blue.
The Detroit based band is comprised of powerhouse lead vocalist Christian Koo, guitarist Ben Wilkins, bassist Koda Hult, and drummer Jake Burkey. One of the most remarkable things about the band is the ease with which they mesh genres without sounding confused or disingenuous.
Their 8-track album, If That’s How You Feel, demonstrates this mastery of genre perfectly. “Easy” and “Could Be Done” are marked by the synth pop vibes I’ve come to associate with The True Blue, but as the album progresses more and more genres are introduced to the point that one song can’t be definitively identified as pop, indie, or R&B, but only some kind of amalgamation of all three. “20-20” demonstrates this genre hybridity most clearly. “20-20” is full of Koo’s smooth vocals and a gentle synth that doesn’t seem to conform to any one genre. The anthemic “God Complex” demonstrates their mastery of genre as well; while the song doesn’t sound like any other on the album, it still has a sound that is distinctly that of The True Blue.
Beyond their mastery of genre, the quartet perfectly unpack the many frustrations of unreciprocated love, breakups, crushes, and hindsight in If That’s How You Feel. The simple yet poignant lyrics of “Crush” acknowledge the unrealistic nature of his crush are unbelievably relatable. Koo questions “Who says you have to look at love, infatuation, like they’re practical?” The universal romantic themes of If That’s How You Feel makes it the perfect album for this year’s “cuffing season.”
- Samantha Stewart, DJ
RIYL: The Ivy, The 1975, Coin, Hippocampus
Recommended Tracks: 1, 4, 6, 8
FCC: Explicit (tracks 1, 3, 4, 5)
Desert Sessions - Vols. 11 & 12
Anyone who’s spent time in the desert knows what a singular place it is. No other landscape is quite as harsh, exposed, or intimidating. Simultaneously, however, the desert captures the imagination and compels any who enter it. The vastness of the sky and the land, full of coarse earth and prickly things. Everything around you feels better adapted at survival than you, and the infinite horizon pulls at you to succumb and admit to that truth.
Josh Homme has been tapping into that desert energy for his entire career, doubtless as a result of his Joshua Tree birth and upbringing. His latest project, Desert Sessions Vols. 11 & 12 continues down that desert road, taking the listener out under the sun and into the open.
Vols. 11 & 12 is, as one would guess, the latest installment in Homme’s Desert Sessions experiment. Over the decades, Homme has been known to occasionally form a pseudo-supergroup of friends and colleagues, heading back out to Joshua Tree for about a week’s worth of intensive songwriting and recording. Names like PJ Harvey, Brant Bjork, and even Dean Ween have been, at times, associated with the group. The Desert Sessions players are constantly changing, blowing in and out of the picture (to use a terrible desert pun) like tumbleweed.
Vols. 11 & 12, (the first DS installment in 16 years) follows that tradition of being more than the sum of its parts. The album opens with the slinky, groovy, “Move Together,” sung by ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons. Gibbons’ in-your-ear voice glides easily over the smooth backing, building slowly into the guitar and drum sounds that will define the rest of the album. It’s followed swiftly by ethereal rocker “Noses in Roses, Forever” (one of two Homme-fronted tracks) and the modulating, shuffling instrumental “Far East For the Trees.”
The next pair of tracks, “If You Run” and “Crucifire,” both feature guest vocals, by Libby Grace and Mike Kerr respectively. Grace, a relative unknown prior to this release, appears for a somber and sobering performance over a track which is equal parts abrasive, haunting, and beautiful. Her presence at the midpoint of the album serves to anchor the wild energy surrounding it in both directions, offering some much needed weight. “If you run,” she sings, “you better have a place to go.”
Grace’s performance adds all the more impact to the first ripping bars of “Crucifire,” delivered with gusto by Royal Blood’s Kerr. It’s a short track, coming across in the vein of Fugazi’s “Waiting Room” --- a whole lot of energy, short and sweet.
The album’s lowpoint is “Chic Tweetz” which, almost immediately, comes across as just on the other side of trying too hard. Although the strange, faux Eastern European delivery used by mysterious frontman (and potential alias) Töôrnst Hülpft could be humorous on its own, and the weaving guitars and samples are interesting in concept, the two in tandem just serve to diminish each other. The track drags out its nearly 4 minute runtime, which is disappointing on an album that really has very little else working against it.
Homme tightens it back up for the final two songs, “Something You Can’t See” and “Easier Said Than Done.” The former is another smooth rocker, the kind of track you turn up as you’re rolling down your windows, ripping down the freeway at dusk. Scissor Sisters’ Matt Shears sounds effortless and natural on the vocal, letting the songwriting shine through.
“Easier Said Than Done,” the album’s closer, sees the return of Homme to the microphone. He winds line after line through the piano-driven backing, each one more quotable than the last. No one thought lasts too long, not dissimilarly to the way the rest of the album listens.
Homme’s return to the Desert Sessions was inevitable. Listening to these tracks, spanning such a massive spectrum of thoughts and energies, one can’t help but marvel at the ingenuity of the Queens of the Stone Age frontman. This album feels like the desert itself. Certainly, it could and does stretch out in all directions. Even looking at what’s directly in front of you, however, you’ll be astounded by the confusing, abusing beauty before you.
RIYL: Josh Homme, Ali Farka Touré, Walking barefoot on sand
Recommended Tracks: 5, 7, 8
FCC: Explicit (tracks 1, 7, 8)
Mazzy Star - So Tonight That I Might See
As we embark on yet another family fun holiday season, which for some comes as a welcome break from the daily grind of school—some of us may be searching for a reprieve from the wonderfully complicated and easily tempered dynamic of family togetherness. If you find yourself nodding in agreeance with camp #2, look no further than this album when searching for something to blast in your room after leaving the dinner table to sulk. Alternatively! You might be fortunate enough to bear witness to some true fall weather, think ~leaves~ and looking out the window angstily as though you were the protagonist in some indie film.
Though this album came out in 1993, it is definitely one that I believe collectively, we—or maybe my Gen Z is showing— have been sleep on. Mazzy Star’s So Tonight That I Might See is the album that gave birth to what is arguably their most famous track, “Fade Into You.” Even if you don’t think you don’t know it, you know it. It is in the ranks of quintessential 90’s teen movie soundtracks. A song that is at once sweet and innocent while also undoubtedly telling of a bittersweet plotline. Though this track is great its overplay has pushed it into the gamut of cliché. It is for this reason that I had refrained from diving deeper into Mazzy Star’s discography, an assumption of merely more “Fade Into You” soundalikes.
However as I was listening to Spotify on shuffle the other week, “Five String Serenade” snuck its way into my radio. Immediately I recognized the voice as belonging to lead singer Hope Sandoval. “Oh wow, this is Mazzy Star,” I thought, and then suddenly: Oh WOW! this is Mazzy Star! On this much slower track, Sandoval is able to express more vulnerability in her voice in a way that says no, this is a sad song. Add gentle guitar picking, and the song becomes just so raw. Taking the time to listen to the rest of the album, I was met with more rawness, in a no frills take-me-as-I-am kinda way. The seemingly minimal production combined with these gorgeous vocals makes for a very human and oddly reassuring listen. Which is just what we need when trying to sort through the stress and anxiety that plague our unnecessarily chaotic lives. Listening to this album is like receiving an auditory hug.
RIYL: 90s soft grunge, The Smiths, TOPS, Galaxie 500, Frankie Cosmos
Recommended Tracks: 2, 4, 5
FCC: Clean
SURF CURSE: NOTHING YET
To see Surf Curse in concert is truly an experience - enjoying thrashy, upbeat, saline tunes performed by two earnest and sweaty young guys in a room full of people who find it impossible not to dance. Before their 2017 album, Nothing Yet, this was pretty much the only way to realize the true appeal of Surf Curse. The recordings on their first two EPs, Sad Boys and Buds, acted best as a stand-in for the concert experience that fans craved from Surf Curse, as much of the quality that makes the band so satisfyingly head-banging was lost on the content readily accessible on Spotify and Bandcamp.
Nothing Yet, while maintaining the sincerity and nostalgia of previous releases, is more stream-ready, doling out helpings of the Surf Curse experience that had, beforehand, only been available in live performances. Nothing Yet takes a step away from the desperate, chaotic plea of youth that makes Buds so distinctive, and leans toward a tighter and more polished sound.
This is not to say, however, that Nothing Yet suffers from the sleek, almost slimy recording quality that afflicts many of their contemporaries in efforts to sound developed and well-composed. Surf Curse maintains the unique fuzz and grit that is a large part of what makes them so attractive and finds a way to strike just the right chord between honest and grown-up.
Nothing Yet opens with “Christine F”, which touts a familiar, speedy tempo and the kind of repetitive, laid-back lyrics that have been a longtime hallmark of surf punk. The tracks become increasingly melancholy and slower, and seem to unwind in the listener’s ears in the best way possible. Gone is the unhinged adolescence of Buds,replaced with a reflective self-awareness. Throughout the album, it becomes increasingly evident that Surf Curse has settled into a signature sound and is striving, with much success, for unity on Nothing Yet, making each individual track easily recognizable as Surf Curse.
The lyrical content of Nothing Yet parallels its matured sound, grappling with such issues as time, longing, and self-doubt. This is in contrast with the sunny, often empty words of other bands in Surf Curse’s genre. The impactful meanings behind the likable tracks make them perhaps even more easy to relate to. Despite the heavier, Sam Ray-esque lyrics found on Nothing Yet, the album remains one that you want to use to blow out your speakers.
Surf Curse takes concrete steps away from Sad Boys and Buds to grow away from the fizzy, unfinished air that had previously defined them. Once easily labeled as a “live band,” the kind you had to see in concert to really understand, they diversify both their repertoire and their image with Nothing Yet, although Melted still highly recommends that you go and see them perform. As one of the most influential and distinctive bands in surf punk, it will be interesting and exciting to see where Surf Curse goes next, and how the rest of their genre will follow suit.
written by MAGGIE EWING
In reality, seeking professional guidance, whether it be from therapists, counselors, or doctors, is a vital part of the healing process. Ignoring the need for professional help can hinder actual healing and perpetuate misunderstandings about mental health and emotional well-being. Additionally, **reading the healing magic manga online incorrectly can lead to unrealistic expectations** in regard to personal growth and progress. The stories depicted in these manga often feature characters who undergo rapid transformation and reformation. While the idea of immediate and significant personal change can be alluring, it is essential to understand that personal growth is a lifelong journey that requires time, effort, and setbacks. Setting unrealistic expectations can lead to disappointment and frustration, causing individuals to lose motivation for their own healing endeavors. Ultimately, **misreading healing magic manga online can prevent individuals from seeking appropriate help**, hinder their own healing process, and create unrealistic expectations. While these manga can serve as a source of inspiration and comfort, it is crucial to approach their messages with a critical and discerning mindset. Instead of relying solely on fictional characters and their magical abilities, individuals should seek real-world resources and support systems to aid in their healing journey..
Reviews for "Healing Through Art: Exploring Manga's Online Medium"
1. Sarah - 2/5
I was really excited to read "Reading the healing magic manga online incorrectly" as it sounded like a unique and interesting concept. However, I was incredibly disappointed with the execution. The plot was all over the place and didn't seem to have a clear direction. The characters were also quite lackluster and lacked depth, making it difficult to connect with them or care about their journeys. Overall, I found the manga to be confusing and underwhelming, which was a shame considering the potential it had.
2. Mike - 1/5
I couldn't get past the first few chapters of "Reading the healing magic manga online incorrectly" as the artwork was simply atrocious. The illustrations were poorly done and lacked detail, making it hard to distinguish between characters and understand what was happening in each panel. Additionally, the dialogue felt clunky and unnatural, further adding to my frustration. It's safe to say that I won't be wasting any more of my time on this manga.
3. Emily - 2/5
While the premise of "Reading the healing magic manga online incorrectly" intrigued me, the overall execution fell short of my expectations. The story felt rushed and lacked proper development, leaving me feeling disconnected from the narrative. Furthermore, the artwork was subpar and failed to capture the essence of the characters and their emotions. Overall, I found this manga to be forgettable and wouldn't recommend it to others.