Category Archives: Review

Review: Limit, Vols. 1-2

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Limit, Vol. 1Limit, Vols. 1-2
Written and Illustrated by Keiko Suenobu
Genre: Shojo/Survival/Horror
Publisher: Vertical Inc.
176 pages | $10.95 US, $11.95 CND
ISBN-13: 978-1935654568 (vol. 1)
ISBN-13: 978-1935654575 (vol. 2)

Seeing Vertical get into shojo was a bit of a surprise. Princess Knight, a Tezuka classic, was a highly demanded piece of work from the Tezuka fan-base that Vertical has cultured, so it wasn’t a surprise to see that published, but Limit is arguably their first attempt to break into a vampires, glitter, and flowers market (I say this endearingly, since the majority of manga I read is shojo).

Please note that this review may contain spoilers. Find out how to win the first two volumes of the series here!

Despite the genre it has been lumped into, Limit certainly follows Vertical‘s edgy, indie ethos. The story follows Mizuki Konno, a self-described “popular girl” who hangs with the right people in school and does the right things to stay popular. On the outside, she is bubbly, careless, but cute, hiding a calculating and stone-cold personality. Her clique picks on a few people, but none more than Morishige, a tarot otaku, making her the brunt of jokes and putting her in situations that embarrass her. The beginning of the book is very Mean Girls, but things suddenly change when the school trip to a week-long camp-out crashes deep into the Japanese forest. Suddenly, the matriarch of Konno’s clan is dead, and the girl at the bottom of the heap, Morishge, now controls the group of survivors with social manipulation and by wielding a scythe (a “tool” brought a long to the camp to cut long grass).

The power twist and destruction of social order in Limit is very reminiscent of Lord of the Flies. Controlling the one weapon gives Morishige all the power, and her rage at being tormented by her peers corrupts her decision-making. There are survival things going on here too, like catching fish and collecting other food, but the real action is Morishige’s maniacal leadership. Seeing how Konno and the other girls in the group react to Morishige is the strength of Limit, and its real draw for me in future volumes (plus a major plot twist I won’t reveal here at the end of volume 2).

Limit, Vol. 2Keiko Suenobu has had another piece of work published in the USA (Life, which was published in 2006 by TOKYOPOP) and her art seems to have improved substantially since that time. Limit is gorgeous. Great shading, dynamic panels, and some of the best power and action lines I’ve seen in shojo manga (or any manga for that matter) to date. Suenobu’s characters are well drawn and well conceived. Morishige as a tarot otaku is a great touch in the middle of volume one; the creepiness of the girl sitting in the middle of a pentagram performing tarot ritual is almost unbearable after seeing some of the proceeding scenes.

One thing that I don’t understand about Limit is its proposed audience. While Vertical claims it is a shojo manga (Limit was published in Bessatsu Friend a manga anthology for teenage girls, and the original publication place of The Wallflower, My Heavenly Hockey Club, Othello, and Mars) it doesn’t seem to fall in line with any of the shojo trends that are currently popular. This doesn’t mean it’s not good manga, just that I find it hard to accept that the target age group is going to really dig Limit. I expect that Limit is more likely to be read by horror fans, josei/seinen fans, and less by those looking for a standard rom-com.

For my money, Limit is one of the better series released in 2012. It has amazing art, really interesting social power interactions, and a riveting storyline. 2013 is going to be a great year of manga because of Limit.


For Fans Of: The Lord of the Flies, Mean Girls, revenge thrillers, any survival story ever
Final Verdict: Highly Recommended

Review: Heroman, Vol. 1

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Heroman, Vol. 1Heroman, Vol. 1
Written and Illustrated by Tamon Ohta | Original Concept Stan Lee + BONES
Genre: Shonen/Science Fiction
Publisher: Vertical Inc.
203 pages | $10.95 US, $11.95 CND
ISBN-13: 978-1935654582

Imagine, for a moment, that you could turn a toy robot into a hulking super hero, just by wanting to be special. In a nutshell, that is the premise of Heroman, an anime from studio BONES, in coordination with Stan Lee. Tamon Ohta’s adaptation of this  television show into the medium of comics has its high and low points. Let’s run it through. Joey Jones is a pretty average kid who ends up finding a toy robot that’s been smashed. He uses his scientific know-how to fix it up, but when a strange calamity strikes, Joey finds out that his toy robot can transform into Heroman, a powerful semi-sentient robot.

First, without getting too specific about plot, Stan Lee’s influence is immediately visible. From the setting, the stereotypes (the nerd, the blonde cheerleader, the football jock, the supportive minority friend), to even the names of the characters, its clear that Stan Lee’s influence is pervasive. For those of you who don’t read American comics, Stan Lee is the creator of comics like The Amazing Spiderman, X-Men, The Fantastic Four, and more. Lee is even featured in some of the panels of the comic (much like his walk on appearances in most of the Marvel movies). And while Lee can construct some interesting fantasies, he requires that your suspension of belief be at maximum – and that’s not something that generally works for Heroman for an analyzing or critical reader.

Most stories in manga are implausible. Psyren for instance, is about a game where people travel back and forth through time, called forth by a mental psychic program called Nemesis Q. Not exactly believable. But what makes these implausible stories interesting is how characters interact, how the fantasies are called forth, and if the world created by these fantasies is cohesive. While Heroman certainly has its own breed of storytelling, I can’t say that it works for me as a critical reader. I find the characters to be what are essentially one-note stereotypes (our hero, Joey Jones is especially so, being nothing but a characterization of faith and doubt), and their interactions are then doomed to be similar stereotypes (the jock vs. the nerd, the hottie defends the nerd vs. the jock, etc.). The fantasies constructed are interesting enough (bug creatures invade the Earth, Heroman is our only hope, “with you, I can fight!”) but the way that they are constructed is haphazard.

More interesting is Joey Jones’ internal struggle in the later half of the book, although it ends in a very spectacular, over-the-top manner like the beginning of the book. We see him trying to come to grips with Heroman and his abilities, and his responsibilities (a la Peter Parker). Our hero manages to come out of his slump and successfully battles more bugs – with a bit of a twist ending that is certainly going to escalate the action in Volume 2.

Dispite my misgivings about the story construction, Heroman feels great for younger readers. There are a lot of messages about hope and friendship that we often see in shonen manga, but they are amped to 11 in Heroman. Younger readers who are more likely to suspend their disbelief, will find this bug squashing, ghost busting beat-em-up to be a real thrill, and it has a typical shonen ethos. I like this comic a lot in the traditional shonen age group, because it looks good, there is a lot of action, and it doesn’t bother getting technical about the fantasy. It’s all POW and WOW, and very little else. This is an untapped audience for most manga in the USA, Chi’s Sweet Home being a notable exception.

The production value on Heroman seems a bit lower than Vertical‘s regular releases. I assume this is because they are trying to fit into a price slot controlled by Viz Media, Kodansha, and Yen Press, but I am used to cleaner, whiter paper and higher-quality inks. This type of production is also present in releases of The Limit, which I will likely review next week. (of note, josei works like Sakuran and Paradise Kiss both have beautiful production, Vertical‘s standard).

Overall, I recommend Heroman to younger readers, but find that if you want your science fiction to be better explained, you aren’t going to enjoy Heroman. If you are turned off by stereotypes, Heroman again might not be your thing. Slightly lower production quality keeps it in an affordable price range, and this book (plus or minus a Heroman DVD) would be a great present for a 8-12 year old.

For Fans Of: The Amazing Spiderman, One Piece, “Friendship, Hard Work, and Victory”
Final Verdict: Recommended with reservations

Review: Barbara

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BarbaraBarbara
Written and Illustrated by Osamu Tezuka
Genre: Geikiga/Seinen
Publisher: Digital Manga Publishing
440 pages | $19.99 US
ISBN-13: 978-1569702826

I’m giving away a copy of this book as part of a series of holiday giveaways (check out the details here!)

Barbara has a very unique story as far as manga published in the West. The simple recap is that is it is the first volume of manga to be successfully published using Digital Manga Publishing‘s Kickstarter initiative. This has included 4 seperate Osamu Tezuka titles, with Barbara being the first, and UNICO, Astrocat, and Triton of the Sea being the others. DMP has also used Kickstarter to reprint Tezuka’s Swallowing the Earth.

Barbara is the story of Yosuke Mikura, an up-and-coming writer who, while in the tunnels of the Shinjuku station, finds a drunkard who can recite French poetry. He takes her home, and the rest of the volume are tales of the two together (and apart).

In some ways, Barbara shows the progression of Tezuka’s craft. In this comic, the beginning is rather segmented. The first five chapters might as well be short stories played with the two actors Barbara and Yosuke. Chapter six is where things start to get interesting. An old friend of Yosuke’s, an African writer, reveals to him that Barbara is a Muse who takes a suitable form to inspire artists and writers. Yosuke is originally incredulous, but things become more and more strange – and as the book progresses, the writing improves. Instead of being segmented, the story becomes continuous, and you don’t feel like you can read one or two chapters and set the book down.

While there are definite colors of “The Tales of Hoffmann” here (a muse visits and inspires an artist and has him fall in love with her), I can’t help but feel that Tezuka was also pulled into writing about an ongoing occult craze. The beginning of the book is much more classically oriented, and as it progresses, we see voodoo dolls and sacred witchcraft ceremonies. The two halves are disjointed. This doesn’t make it bad – the last section of the book is a real page-turner. But people looking for a straightforward story are likely to be disappointed.

This manga certainly falls in line with some of Tezuka’s crazier work (Swallowing the Earth being the prime example here) but isn’t quite as unrestrained, and while it is heavy handed with its discussion of art, the spirit of production, etc. it doesn’t seem to push the themes of moral decay and humanity the way that some of his other adult works have (Ayako, MW, Ode to Kirihito). Yosuke is presented as a sexual deviant in the first chapters of the book, and that theme of deviance could have been critiqued or used as theme in a fuller way, but it seems to have been abandoned for voodoo dolls and a black mass.

Overall, Barbara is fascinating and bizarre. While it isn’t as structurally sound or thematically deep as some of his other adult works, it certainly stands up as a piece of fiction. Tezuka lovers will find this an indispensable part of their collection, and casual readers can find a lot to love, provided you are ready for the crazy.

For Fans Of: Swallowing the Earth, Osamu Tezuka, The Venus of Willendorf
Final Verdict: Recommended

Review: Strobe Edge, vol. 1

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Strobe Edge, Vol. 1
Written and illustrated by Io Sakisaka
Genre: School Days/Romance
Publisher: VIZ Media Shojo Beat
200 pgs. $9.99 US, $12.99 CAN, £ 6.99 UK
ISBN-13: 978-1421550688

If you read any amount of shojo manga, one of the things you can expect to see infrequently is a completely unique setting and unique plot focuses. While there are some amazing and notable examples, there are quite a few more series set in high school, focused on the relationships of students and their dilemmas. There is good and bad to this – the good is that there is a lot to be said about the finesse of an artist; how can you take known quantities and turn them into something new or different? In the same way, there are hundreds of shojo schoolgirls in print at any given time in Japan, and SOMETHING, some unknown quality, is what draws a foreign publisher to a series in order for it to be published outside of Japan. So, of all the school days manga that we get here in the USA, we are likely getting the choicest bits, even if it isn’t wholly original stuff.

Strobe Edge is a very simple story – the main character, Ninako, is flummoxed by her feelings and lack of understanding of love, and from the beginning of “what is this heavy feeling in my chest,” to “I think you are a great guy but I don’t love you,” we see her learn more about relationships and about herself. It’s an early place to start a romance manga, and for some, this might be a major turn off. But on the other hand, we get an entire volume learning about Ninako, something that will serve the readership well in coming volumes.

Ninako has two boys in her life – the enigmatic and dark-haired Ren, and the good friend who has a very obvious crush on her, Daiki. While the first volume deals with Ninako’s understanding of her feelings and the rest of the story is a little enigmatic, I think that it is safe to say that this is going to be a series where anything is possible. Which pairing will end out as the winner is a little cloudy at this point and it’s uncertain if Ninako’s first volume crush will lead anywhere.

The art is like most other Shojo Beat manga – there are sparkles and sunbeams galore, and faces of characters are drawn in intricate detail. Still, Strobe Edge avoids some common flaws, and the paneling advances the story very easily. Sakisaka uses illustrations that exceed borders and page edges in a way that most mangaka do not, and it has a really interesting effect in Strobe Edge - characters drawn in this way seem more dynamic and sometimes more pensive.

While I can’t claim that everyone is going to like Strobe Edge, especially if you are sick of seeing the same types of stories again and again, I can say that I enjoyed it. If you are a fan of the familiar, this manga should be quite the treat.

For Fans Of: Kimi ni Todoke, Skip Beat! Shojo that isn’t about vampires
Final Verdict: Recommended

Review: Pupa, Vol. 1

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pupa, Vol. 1
Written and Illustrated by Sayaka Mogi
Genre: Horror/Fantasy/Science Fiction
Published online in English by JManga
Originally published by EARTH STAR Entertainment
599 points ($4.80-5.99 based on points plan)

Horror, in all its forms, isn’t exactly my favorite thing. Half way through Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I decided it would be a better time if I watched the wretched film The Replacements, (happily, even Keanu Reeves was better than Chainsaw). I’ve never watched SAW, and I’m not big on any of the scholocky horror of the mid-80′s either. So pupa, a horror manga about a little girl who turns into a monster and eats human beings, isn’t really my cup of tea to begin with. Still, the price point was fine, and every once in a while, I try to things I have previously not enjoyed.

pupa is the story of Utsutsu and Yume Hasegawa, two children practically orphaned after the death of their mother and the negligence of their abusive father, who encounter a strange woman warning them of red butterflies. The two do not heed the warning, and tragedy soon follows.

The following chapters show us that Yume and Utsutsu have been infected with some unknown virus that causes people to mutate into gigantic monsters with a lust for human flesh. Utsutsu has not awakened as a monster, but can spontaneously heal any wounds, making him the perfect snack for his sister Yume.

Despite the horror elements of pupa (which are darkly drawn, bloody, and violent), I dislike Yume and Utsutsu’s relationship even more. Utsutsu’s friends comments make it clear that she is an obvious object of affection, and no one is enamored more with her than her brother. This was icky at first, but got worse when she is literally eating his flesh saying lines like, “Big brother your meat is so good!” and he is somehow relishing it. Creep signal, activate!

Other issues with the series is its fairly inconsistent artwork. I’m not a big fan of the way that Sayaka Mogi illustrates the darkest scenes. Likewise, character illustrations are disproportional in certain scenes, and profiles of each character a real sore spot. The character designs don’t have a whole lot of reasoning to them either – having your main character have a dark scar running down one of his eyes and things that are supposed to look like cigarette burns on his arms makes him stick out, yes, but he looks like a garbled mess.

The story also leaves a lot to be desired. The opening (the abusive father, the tragic family history illustrated with teddy bears) really has no bearing on the rest of the story. It feels superfluous. I can suspend some of my disbelief regarding the whole monster thing, but there are a lot of questions left hanging from the first chapter that aren’t ever mentioned again (why red butterflies,etc.) Ultimately, the mystery of the horror, and the tension of the unknown is just so dull that it doesn’t really work in the context of the rest of the comic.

There is one scene in the entire volume that really hits home for me – it’s a scene with a cocoon that’s been smashed – a character calls it a “sloppy mess.” My only thought was – yep, this scene, and every other one in pupa. I’m sure there is an audience for this kind of “entertainment,” but that audience isn’t me. The lack of consistency in art and storytelling, the big brother little sister relationship, and other factors make this a no go for me.

For Fans of: Attack on Titan, Those skeezy little sister anime shows
Verdict: Not Recommended

Review: Attack on Titan, Vol. 1

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Attack on Titan, written and illustrated by Hajime Isayama
Publisher: Kodansha Comics
Genre: Shonen/Speculative Fiction/Horror/
|208 pgs|$10.99 USA| $11.99 CDN|
ISBN-13: 978-1-61262-024-4

I have been lucky in my reading that I rarely come across things I actively hate. Sure, I have had a few instances (Sasameke comes to mind) but the stuff I don’t like I just don’t like, and there are no hard feelings. But there are times when I consider a new title to add to the “shit list,” and unfortunately, Attack on Titan is one of those times.

At the core of Attack on Titan is a futuristic version of the Earth where the human race has been driven nearly to extinction by a race of giant monsters called Titans. These creatures seem only to exist to devour human beings. Humanity has responded to these alien creatures by building a giant walled city to protect themselves, and created an elite group of fighters who protect the human race by using retrofuturistic grappling hooks and natural gas to propel themselves through the air and kill Titans. As far as end of the world stories go, it’s a fairly original premise.

While the premise is original, the execution in Attack on Titan is poor. The tone of the dialogue is always some flavor of “I’m so scared/I’m the best patriot/We are all going to die/I’m the best fighter” that the writing flows together in a monotonous mess. Indeed, the entire driving force of the story of Attack on Titan is a mawkish “patriotism vs. individuality” argument. The humor and mystery that Isayama attempts to weave into the book do nothing to dispatch the overwhelming sense of fruitless angst and horror that  permeates the book. The ending of the first volume is even more underwhelming, building  an entire team of characters only to kill them all off at the end – not that I was expecting anything less. The question remains though – why kill off your main character after 1 volume?

Not horrifying – just miserable. From Attack on Titan, Vol. 1

The misery of the story of Attack on Titan is fueled by sketchy, dark art. Isayama uses an abundance of cross-hatching and thick black shading lines that blur faces and make action scenes incomprehensible. What Attack on TItan could have really used was a couple of packs of grey screen tone – it would have made flaws in the art such as improbable posturing and odd arm and leg lengths much less glaringly visible. Eyes are also not Isayama’s strong suit – they are either white circles, almost haunted-looking, or dark black circles – these can be with or without straight shading lines drawn down over a person’s face. Needless to say, it is at times hard to read characters and their projected emotions without Isayama forcing them to say “I’m so scared!” The style is certainly gritty, and I suspect that is part of the point, but I feel the style accentuates flaws and makes the entire comic much harder to read.

I really don’t have a problem with the violence or the pessimism of Attack on Titan. My main issue is how shoddily the whole book is done. Bakurano: Ours is a similar piece of fiction, heavy with the weight of death. But where Bakurano gives each of its characters the stage of death in which to tell his or her life, Attack on Titan is a veritable slaughtering, and without regard to the expectations of the reader. Killing off the main character, the only character you have allowed the reader to connect with, seems fruitless. Perhaps volume 1 of Attack on Titan just ends in a bad spot for the story… but I wouldn’t be able to tell, since there’s no chance I will be reading future volumes.

For Fans of: Bokurano: Ours, Gantz, incomprehensible bloody messes
Verdict: Not Recommended

Review: Soul Eater Not! vol. 1

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Soul Eater Not!, written and illustrated by Atsushi Ohkubo
Publisher: Yen Press
Genre:  Slice of Life/Action/Fantasy
|203 pgs|$11.99 USA| $12.99 CDN|
ISBN-13: 978-0-316-21362-2

It makes sense to me that one of the most cutting edge manga in Yen Press‘ manga collection is Soul Eater Not! The series is published on the same day and date in the USA as it is in Japan, and is the only series that Yen Press releases with that schedule. In Japanese comics, it stands beside Rumiko Takahashi’s Rin-Ne from Viz Media as the only other mainstream* comic that is released day and date in both Asia and America. The reason why this makes sense to me has quite a bit to do with the characteristics of Soul Eater Not! - it is neither shojo, shonen, or moe, but rather a strange mix of all three.

The best way to describe Soul Eater Not! is that is not the same manga as Soul Eater, another popular release from Yen Manga. Written and illustrated by the same author and set in the same world, it even uses some of the same characters to tell a much different story. Tsugumi, our main character, is a girl enrolled in the DWMA, a international organization in charge of training meisters and “weapons” in order to make sure they are able to control their abilities and support the greater good. Think of it like a Tim Burton-flavored Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. Students are categorized into two different groups – the EAT group, full of characters from the regular Soul Eater and badassery, and the NOT group, the mostly nonviolent portion of meisters and weapons at the school.

While Soul Eater is firmly in the camp of shonen with its ridiculous battles and the odd wars with witches (as far as I was reading at last mention), Soul Eater Not! is more slice of life fare, wherein its three female characters fit neatly into three separate manga tropes, do very cute things like work at a café, and go to class together, and more actiony things like decide what two people are going to be meister/weapon partners, fight some zombie-like interlopers, and protect each-other from marauding dorm-room evils. The tropes that the girls fall into are recognizable from manga like K-On!, but the action and potential love interest business also push it into both shonen and shojo territory. Frankly, it’s a bit of a everything, and because of that, it’s a pretty fresh read.

Ohkubo’s art is quite similar here when compared to Soul Eater, albeit a bit more refined. The volume itself has a lovely matte cover with glossy illustrated overlays. The pacing works for the odd mix of comedy and action, and the page layouts flow seamlessly from goofy moe-style humor to extreme action scene.

While I am not certain where Soul Eater Not! will head after this initial volume, I can say that it a fun, lighthearted popcorn read that offers a well formed fantasy world and hints of darkness lurking underneath a metric boat-load of cuteness. I found Soul Eater Not! fun and amusing, and having read some of the original Soul Eater, it’s a nice complement to Yen Press‘ more shonen-oriented flagship title.

For Fans Of: Soul Eater, a softer side of your favorite shonen beat-em-up
Final Verdict: Recommended

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*GEN Manga‘s releases are all same day and date, however the GEN Manga Anthology
 purposefully represents itself as cutting edge doujinshi manga.

Review: Wolf

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Wolf, released by publisher Gen Manga Entertainment Inc.

Wolf, written and illustrated by Shige Nakamura
Publisher: GEN Manga Entertainment Inc.
Genre:  Seinen/Sports
|450 pgs|$12.95 USA| $12.91 CDN|
ISBN-13: 978-0985064426

GEN Manga is a publisher that I have talked about before – discussing their digital anthology. As a digital product, the GEN Manga Anthology is one of three digital anthologies currently undergoing publication. One of the exciting developments of this year is the release of some of GEN’s initial series in paperback form – moving from the digital world exclusive to the tankobon audience. Previously this year, they released Vs. Aliens, a short rom-com mystery about aliens, Kamen, a super-powered battle manga in feudal Japan, and the volume I am reviewing today, Wolf, a seinen boxing drama.

Wolf is the story of Naoto, a young man from rural Japan who travels to Tokyo to confront his father, a champion boxer, who abandoned Naoto and his mother when Naoto was young. Naoto is set on bringing justice to his father for his own very personal reasons, and Naoto’s father, Kengo, agrees to fight him – inside the boxing ring. What follows is Naoto’s training and matches in order to become a pro, and then meet his father for their fight in the ring.

When I was reading Wolf as single chapters in the digital anthology, each one was a bit of a fun romp. There is a lot of great action in Wolf, and the characters are a bit extreme (in a good way), so it was really fun reading. When all the chapters come together for the tankoban product, things start to go south a bit. The individual chapters don’t really mesh well at times, and there are some inconsistencies with the pacing. I imagine this happens with other manga (most of it probably not published in English), but it’s pretty noticeable here. Additionally, some of the scenes of this manga, when taken in context of the whole, probably could be cut out. A great example is the scene where Naoto and the supposed love interest, Mayumi, brings Naoto a towel for a shower shortly after he reaches the gym that Kengo trains at. There’s a weird, misplaced sexual overtone in this scene that doesn’t match the content of Wolf, and could have easily been removed to the betterment of the story as a cohesive whole

Example scene of Wolf that does not match the tenor of the rest of the book.

The punishment for having such a unique and on the edge publishing system like Gen Manga is creating is that there isn’t a lot of time to do editing in the sense of the regular industry editing that is a main feature of manga. Scenes like this one slip through the cracks because the Japanese writer is not working with a full-time editor, and the English editor/translator only has so much time to get the work into print, so perhaps there is not time to rewrite or redraw content that is slated for any given issue. The end result is a product that is rough around the edges.

Another word about production – I normally don’t have much to say about a book’s construction, i.e. its layout, its binding, etc., except when something bothers me. Wolf as a story is pretty fun, but a little inconsistent. Wolf as a book fairs worse. Pages have bleed-through issues (the paper is thin enough that you can see the ink on the other side), and some of the images (at least in the edition I have) seem blurry, as if the match of the image to the page was disrupted somehow. This isn’t like an ink smear, but looks rather like a low resolution image printed on paper. The result is a little jarring at times. I do have to give major props for the cover design, which is striking with its bold yellow.

If you can ignore a few bad scenes, Wolf would be a pretty good boxing story with a lot of heart. Digitally, there is a lot to like about Wolf, and there’s enough good storytelling here to deliver, especially for the price point. Gen Manga will need to revamp their printing process in the future though, especially for people who demand higher quality paper. For me, I found that I liked the volume despite its problems, but recommend it only with the previous caveats.

For Fans Of: Rocky, sports manga, father-son conflict
Final Verdict: Recommended with reservations

Review: MW, by Osamu Tezuka

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I have been working through Vertical Inc.’s backlist of Tezuka titles the past few weeks with some purchases spurred by the Tezuka MMF earlier this year, and after rereading Ayako and reading Princess Knight, I stepped up to the plate to read the massive tome that is MW. Let me be completely up front here: this content is clearly not for the squeamish, and is a very dark, melodramatic story that you don’t necessarily enjoy as much as experience.

The story revolves around two male characters caught up in a tragic event which reverberates throughout the entire volume – a leak of a poisonous gas called MW (pronounced ‘moo’) on Okinawa Mafune an island in the Pacific in which all people who present on the island minus our two main characters are killed. THis is all the more outrageous because the gas belongs to “Nation X,” a thinly veiled United States. Yuki is a sadistic serial killer, presented as the moral-less antagonist of the book, and his opposite is Father Garai, a priest that is his lover and attempted redeemer. Both are traumatized by the gas attack, but the damage from the MW gas has changed Garai and Yuki in individual ways – Yuki is determined to wreck havoc on anyone associated with the gas attack while the damage from it slowly kills him, while Garai lends his hand to saving others and attempting to prevent Yuki from doing harm.

There is plenty of action here – car chases, cross dressing bank robberies, airplane hijackings; but this story is better understood as an analogy of the relationship between the United States (the evil that made the evil of Yuki possible) and Japan (the greedy, ignorant politicians who sit comfortably in the hands of the United States) during the time of the Vietnam War.

Tezuka makes some powerful statements about the guilt of the Japanese during the Vietnam War, and uses Yuki as a sort channel for the evils associated with that period of world history. Yuki can be considered a harbinger of sorts, or even potentially a symbol of the violence of that period; Garai as well a symbol of how powerless the “good” were in their attempts to stop or prevent that violence, and how easily they too were seduced by the environment that allowed that violence to take place. Innocent people die left and right by Yuki’s hand, and his alliance with major banking, the Japanese government, and the United States military brass is all very well orchestrated; Yuki as an allegory ties these three entities to the death and destruction of Vietnam.

While there is plenty of intellectual content in MW, the story has some serious flaws often associated with Tezuka’s works. Tezuka represents Yuki and Garai as a homosexual couple, but their relationship is potentially based on a pedophillic encounter on Okinawa Mafune, and homosexuality is generally approached in a manner rooted in the time that MW was written. Likewise, women characters in this series are treated as doormats (one character actually loses the ability to walk after Yuki rapes her), with one notable exception. All of this leads to very uncomfortable reading, and although these dark spots aren’t enough to derail Tezuka’s discussion, they are enough to sour a reading experience.

Tezuka’s artwork is again fantastic in this series. His master draftmanship and layouts propel the story forward always at the right speed for the moment. His illustrations of the aftermath of the gas attack are profound, and while some modern readers may be turned off by the cartoonish look of his characters, his advanced panel composition and pacing is in top form in MW.

MW is dark, violent, and a fantastic tale marred by the heterosexual male chauvanist ideas that were mainstream at the time of its writing. While I do endorse Tezuka to most readers, I feel that MW is a series left best to Tezuka fanatics and geikiga readers who are used to this type of dark manga. It is certainly not a charming book, and not for your average manga reader. For those who are able to look past its flaws, you will find MW an intense and engrossing read full of symbolism and allegory. For the rest – it might be best to stick with Princess Knight.

Review: Cousin, Vol. 1

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5

If you are like me, and you are constantly asking publishers like JManga, Yen Press, and Vertical to publish josei manga, you have to put your money where your mouth is. If any of my readers is a fan of josei manga and isn’t purchasing what’s available, then you aren’t voting with your dollars. And, luckily, JManga has a small, but nice selection of josei titles that are currently available to purchase. One of those titles is Cousin by Ryou Ikuemi, a three volume title which was originally published in Shodensha’s Zipper anthology.

The story revolves around a girl names Tsubomi (everyone calls her Bon for short) and her struggles with relationships and her weight. After graduating from high school, she takes a part time job at a video rental store and meets a few different guys – Shiro, a guy who works most of the same shifts with her at the store, and Nasukawa, a customer at the store and a friend of Shiro’s who owns a late night dive restaurant. Tsubomi’s relationship with Shiro starts when he compares her eyes to those of a famous model, who happens to be Tsubomi’s cousin.

Tsubomi, the main character of Cousin, a josei manga published by JManga.

The first thing you notice as you read Cousin is that the main character, Tsubomi, is not your typical shojo/josei girl – she’s chubby, and she has image issues. She doesn’t wear makeup and she hasn’t really figured out how to talk with boys. However, this atypical presentation works very well for the story Ikuemi is attempting to tell. Her artwork is, like most josei, fairly realistic. This is a big change compared to how most overweight people are drawn in manga – generally they are big fluffy caricatures of someone who is overweight, and not realistically proportioned at all. Ugly Duckling’s Love Revolution is a title I have reviewed previously which has a great example of how not to draw overweight characters.

This is not an overweight person. This is a caricature       of an overweight person. Published by Yen Press, Ugly Duckling’s Love Revolution.

The tone of Cousin sets it apart from the large majority of manga in English; there is a wistfulness and at the same time a playfulness that flows throughout the story. Tsubomi is attempting to make up for the things she didn’t accomplish in high school, and there is an abundance of humor (most of which is self-depreciating). The interaction between Tsubomi and Shiro is really fun, and there isn’t an abundance of male/female friendships in manga, which makes it all the more interesting. There isn’t any romantic overtone to their relationship either, which is a stark contrast to most josei and shojo titles.

The pacing for Cousin is the right type of steady – in a story about personal growth and development, Ikuemi finds a way to make things move in an organic way, and in a way that’s not really predictable. It’s exciting to see Tsubomi move through her small crises and work through her issues, and it feels natural. The art, while fairly standard for josei manga, expresses emotion very well, and the different settings are well illustrated. The story works in such a way as to potentially introduce some big changes in the next volume, but it’s hard to determine what will happen.

At 499 JManga points ($3.99-4.99 based on points plan), each volume is a steal, and at 3 volumes, it’s a relatively small investment for a good story. The JManga platform has its bugs (can’t be accessed on an iPhone or any other Apple device, Flash-based – with planned Apple and Android platforms to be released in the future) but overall it is a good reading experience very similar to that at VizManga.

I liked Cousin quite a bit for its unique main character, good pacing, and smart delivery. It is easily one of the better titles on JManga, and supporting josei on the platform means more josei in the future. Recommended.

(JManga titles are currently available via the JManga website, which is a digital only portal for Japanese comics. You can find more of their content at www.jmanga.com and can follow them on twitter at @JManga_official)