Children of the Sea, vol. 1

By Daisuke Igarashi
Published in the US by Viz’s Ikki Comics

Slugline:  Manatees make for good au pairs.

Ruka has been banned from handball on the first day of her summer break so she has to deal with her father, who works at an aquarium.  While there she meets Umi and Sora, two boys who were raised by sea manatees.  Umi and Sora feel a connection with Ruka and act on it by first making sure that she sees a falling star with Umi and later taking her with them when they 'borrow' a boat to swim near where the meteor splashed down.  There they see thousands of fish with phosphorescent spots, reminding Ruka of when as a child she saw a ghost disappear from an aquarium tank.  Umi and Sora seem to know more than what they are saying about what is going on, but Ruka is drawn ever closer to them even as she tries to recover from their dive.  As she practices snorkeling, Sora's weakness and the unusual situations in the surrounding ocean becomes more pronounced.

This is a series where the beginning scenes seem to tell a minor and unimportant story (a kid being kicked out of a school sport, visiting a friend in a hospital) but will lead to major events.  Exactly what those major events are remains uncertain, but you can feel the weight of them in the actions of the the characters as they also seem to be anticipating something.  When the first volume is broken down by scene even though it is longer than the traditional manga volume not that much happens in it.  But the tension and sense of rising action is managed so well that is easy to overlook it.  What also makes this an unusual manga is the art is very impressionistic rather than the heavily stylized like most manga. This is very effective in the underwater scenes, as it helps it give a sense of otherworldliness, that there is of the nearby world that is intimately tied to our own yet still is unfamiliar.

Children of the Sea, vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Ferdinand

Future Diary, vol. 1

By Sakae Esuno
Published in the US by TokyoPop


Slugline: Knowing the future means knowing how you are doomed.

Yukiteru doesn't have any friends but he consoles himself by having a hobby, which keeping an exhaustive diary of the events around him on his cell phone. It is one of the few things he talks about to what he considers to a playful yet dangerous imaginary god of time and space Deus. The imaginary god turns out to be very real when Yukiteru's diary changes to show what he would have written for 90 days into the future. At first Yuki enjoys and exploits having future knowledge but this ends when Deus' playful and dangerous nature is revealed. It turns out Deus gave 12 people future diaries based on diaries that they were already keeping and whomever is the last one alive will replace Deus as the god of time and space. Yukiteru's initial enjoyment of his diary only made him a prime target of a serial killer and a terrorist bomber, both of whom are diarists. As a mixed blessing, a fellow student at Yuki's school, Yuno Gasai, had been stalking him and her diary is filled with details of his life, which helps him survive. The detective Keigo Kurusu has his own criminal investigation diary and is determined to end all of the mayhem that the future diaries are causing and the three of them ally together by the end of the volume to stop the other diarists and keep Yuki alive.

Think of this as a less dark version of Death Note. Not to say that this light and fluffy, but it isn't quite as nihilistic as Death Note was. At least, not yet, though the series could easily go very dark or get less intense fairly easily from this point. The fact that I don't which direction it will take is a good sign. The good guys have some major problems, with Yuki's near breakdown in the face of danger, Yuno having more than a couple screws loose and Keigo almost a little too willing to sacrifice Yuki . The mechanism of the diaries help drive the action, though while some of the diaries at least for now seem like that they can get a little silly. As an example, a bomber keeping an escape diary? But the story grabs hold of ordinary people, throws them into deep end of the pool and we get to watch them react and struggle to survive in a very realistic way.

For those that are curious, here are our reviews for Death Note 1-6 and 7-10.



Future Diary, vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga

-Ferdinand

Gakuen Prince, vol. 1

By Jun Yuzuki
Published in the US by Del Rey


Slugline: A beautiful story about the cruelty and ugliness of teens

Mizutani has transferred into a new high school which was formerly an all-girl school and is only recently become co-ed. There are very few boys there, and Mizutani learns rather quickly that the boys are a commodity that the girls use and abuse as they wish. One of the few ways out for boys is to be in a relationship with a single girl, and in desperation Mizutani finds the first girl that doesn't seem to be interested in hunting him down and dragoons her into being in a relationship. Okitsu has spent most of her time in high school trying to avoid attention, but with Mizutani's announcement, she is now in the sights of every girl in school who thinks they deserve a chance at Mizutani. She is bullied and even set up to be sexually abused, despite Mizutani's various attempts to protect her. He eventually releases her from their 'relationship' but Okitsu, upon seeing Mizutani being cornered and threatened with being tasered into sexual activity, restarts their 'relationship.' But there are more traps that remain for them.

I was ready to take one for the team here, because the back cover text made me expect that this was going to be some piece of painful fluff. But within a few pages, when the girls decide to 'initiate' the new boy in the school with some sexual abuse, and the boy is smart enough to realize he may not like it, this manga showed it understood human nature. Sometimes it can be very impersonally cruel, and the manga shows how the bullying culture in Japanese schools can tear people down just because they are in someone's way. Or simply because they merely appear to want to change, irrespective of what their true plans are. Sure, some of the set-up of the situation is a stretch, but how the characters acted spoke almost brutally true. Especially the moment where Okitsu remains suspicious of the other girls motives, but wanted to believe for a few moments that maybe, just maybe, they liked her. There was no happy fluffy shojo happiness here, or people searching for true love, but teenage hormones running amok and an attitude towards sex that is both envious and dehumanizing. It is a honest look of what would really happen if some of the silly situations that seem to proliferate in shojo would actually happen, and so needs to be read by everyone who sighs dramatically over shojo. Sure, most shojo is written as an escape from the reality of teenage romances, but in this someone can see what happens in the real world and emphasize more with it.



Gakuen Prince, vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga

-Ferdinand

Pluto: Urasawa X Tezuka, vol. 1

By Naoki Urasawa and Osamu Tezuka, Co-authored with Takashi Nagasaki and Supervised by Macoto Tezka with the cooperation of Tezuka Productions
Published in the US by Viz

Slugline: A re-imagining of a classic Tezuka/Astro Boy story

Gesicht is a homicide detective in a near future where intelligent robots are common. It has been only recently have robots become difficult to tell apart from humans with robots getting married and having child robots, but robots are still somewhat removed from humanity by an emotional distance. Even Gesicht, himself a robot, can't help but feel some distance from the victims he tries to find justice for. His latest case is the murder of Mont Blanc, has very little emotional distance for everyone in Europe, since Mont Blanc was a beloved and wildly popular forestry robot who was also an environmentalist, poet and former soldier from the Asian wars. Mont Blanc's crime scene is very similar to the crime scene of a human murder which cause a great deal of worry for the authorities. If the two murders are related, only a robot would have the strength to tear apart Mont Blanc but no robot has killed a human in eight years. This disturbing contradiction drives Gesicht to consult with that killer robot, who warns him that there are 8 targets, all powerful robots many with connections to the Asian war. One of them is Atom, better known to American readers as Astro Boy.

This is an authorized extension of a Tezuka's Astro Boy story arc, now told as a murder mystery starring what was then a supporting character. I was not aware of all this back story when I picked up the volume but it was easily able to stand on its own. The characters and the plot are very subtle, holding more than what first appearances would suggest. Sure, there are some silly bits, such as robots with robot children, but once you accept the premises of the story, everything else flows naturally. Knowing Tezuka's titles would deepen one's appreciation for this homage, letting one recognize the off-handed Black Jack mention, but it is strong even without that knowledge.



Pluto: Urasawa X Tezuka, vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga

-Ferdinand

20th Century Boys, vol. 1

Story and Art by Naoki Urasawa
Published in the US by Viz


Slugline: What if you were kept to your childish promises to save the world?

When Kenji was young, he and his neighborhood friends had a secret club, with a headquarters in an empty field and a secret sign. Now that they are all adults, they barely remember any of it though many of them still live in the same neighborhood, taking over the stores their parents once ran. Unknown to them at the beginning of the story there is a cult, using some of the same symbols as their childish club and whose leader seems fixated on the neighborhood events of more than 20 years ago. Kenji is drawn into the mystery when one of the old gang commits suicide after seeing the symbol, something the other members of the gang who reunite for the funeral for the first time in years have a hard time believing. As the story flashes back and forward, we see the characters as children and as adults, we realize that this is now how the characters will fulfill their childish desires to save the world.

Kenji is the motivating force among the characters, the one that notices that something weird going on and drags the other characters toward figuring it out. If there hadn't been a flash forward at the beginning of the volume giving you a hint what was going on had global consequences, the story would feel like it is just a slice of life. But once you know the stakes, everything takes on more meaning, and you can spot the signs in the story. The story also speaks of the balance between adult and juvenile urges, the juvenile urge to be the hero, to have meaning, but the reality of the adult life is that you very rarely have a chance to be one, and most of the time you don't realize that the opportunity is at it hand until it past. This is a story of lost chances, and being able to take them again, and what their cost can be.



20th Century Boys, vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga

-Ferdinand

Be With You

Written by Takuji Ichikawa, Art by Sai Kawashima and Script by Yoko Iino
Published in the US by Viz


Slugline: For parents, even while dead they still have to do the laundry and remind the kids to eat all of their vegetables.

Takumi has been raising his son Yuji alone after the death of his wife Mio, but to put it kindly there are a few gaps in his parenting skills. Yuji is not too worried, because of a story Mio wrote and read to him, he is under the impression that Mio will visit at the beginning of the rainy season and will leave again at the end of it. Takumi is merely accepting of his son'ss belief, until Yuji and he find an amensiac Mio in the woods. They have the rest of the rainy season to reconnect, with Mio remembering some of her memory, and the entire family relearning to love each other again. No matter what happens to her this time, her family will be better off.

This is an especially strong one-off volume of lost love regained. It undoubtedly benefited from having been a novel, movie and tv series, each showing the way, because the manga hits all of the beats perfectly, switching emotions and grabbing the high points consistently. Despite the subject matter causing one to think the manga could be a little depressing it never drags the story or the characters down. Obviously not everything is happiness and light, but at the end of the story, the experience that the characters have gained makes it all worth their while. It doesn't quite have the doomed love vibe that makes tween girls sigh, but it comes close in a manner that even I, an over 30 guy, can appreciate. In a manly way of course, no sniffling here.



Be With You is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga

-Ferdinand

Cowa!

Story and Art by Akira Toriyama
Released in the US by Viz


Slugline: A main character that is half vampire/were-koala? What does he eat, the juice of a Eucalyptus tree?

Paifu is a half vampire/were-koala that lives in the isolated village of Batwing Ridge, where humans and monsters live together far from the intolerance of the big cities. But all of the kid monsters are afraid of the human that lives on the outskirts of town, Murayama. It turns out that there is a reason that everyone in town avoids Murayama, he was once a sumo wrestler who accidentally killed a competitor in the ring. So despite being called the Volcano and having been famous for being really strong, Murayama exiled himself to Batwing Ridge and even there had little to do with the rest of the village. But when an epidemic of monster flu starts to spread through the village, Paifu convinces Murayama to go with him to get the cure from the witch. Paifu bends the truth a bit along the way, Murayama learns a bit about himself and others, and all have a grand time rescuing the village.

Akira Toriyama is better know for the Dragon Ball saga (reviews here), but here he turns in a perfectly balanced one volume story. Everything here has some meaning and both Paifu and Murayama change and improve themselves and both are forced to stretch themselves. Even the fights are well choreographed, not at all over the top or confusing as it was sometimes with DragonBall, but is still not too intense for the kids that are presumably the audience for this all ages title. It even has a sense of sly, self-aware humor that is funny without ruining the story's illusions. This shows an Akira Toriyama as a creator to be reckoned with, far better than the one that did the early volumes of the DragonBall saga.



Cowa! is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga

-Ferdinand

Speed Grapher, vol. 1

Written and Illustrated by Tomozo and Yusuke Kozaki, Based on the story by GONZO
Released in the US by TokyoPop


Slugline: Not about a guy who can draw real fast.

Speed Grapher is about war photographer Saiga's new job as a freelance political paparazzi in a near future Tokyo suffering from another major economic crash. After an injury forces him to take a less 'strenuous' job photographing corrupt politicians and dodging their security details, Saiga confronts one of the corrupt politicians that he had revealed as he is being killed by a man who literally stretches like rubber. Escaping through the use of his wits, Saiga traces the politician trail to an underground club that is using an unaware student named Kagura to grant some people strange abilities and to kill others. In the confusion of confronting them, Kagura gives Saiga the ability to destroy anything he takes a picture of, and they them flee as Kagura awakes, trying to avoid others that Kagura has given abilities to and trying to uncover what is going on.

The background of this manga feels a little odd, with the special abilities of the world relying on neither magic or science. The powers depend on the receiver's psychological state, where the power derives from the character much more than in other titles. The war photographer Saiga takes pictures of things and places in the process of being violently destroyed. But rather than capturing that moment in a photograph, Saiga now causes that moment to be forever lost, showing an internal conflict of Saiga. There is also the inherent subtext of Kagura, the overlooked and forgotten student, being able to give powers to people who want them, but the powers she grants are never exactly what the people need. But through it all Kagura is able to maintain her own detachment and 'innocence' from the consequences of the abilities she grants. Even though these subtexts are not fully explored in this volume, it does set up some interesting character bits to be followed up later. I have not seen the anime that the manga is based on so I do not know how closely the manga follows the anime's plot, but at least it seems implied that these points will be dealt with. Not only is there depth to the story and how the powers work and how they reflect the characters, Saiga shows cleverness in using his environment and his own abilities to even up the odds in otherwise difficult situations. The fact that the characters and story show such signs of thought and consideration, for the moment at least, gives me hope for the series and makes me half interested in seeing the anime.



Speed Grapher, vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Ferdinand

Me and the Devil Blues, vol. 1

By Akira Hiramoto
Released in the US by Del Rey


Slugline: Don't base any school reports on Robert Johnson or the blues on this manga

This manga freely admits it is a dark reimagining of the early career of blues musician Robert Johnson known as RJ. In the rural south in 1930s America you can imagine life for blacks was not pleasant. But some made it less pleasant for themselves, since RJ had a tendency to oversleep and spend too much time at the local blues joint thinking he could one day master the blues. Local blues musicians tell him he is so bad he may as well sell his soul to the devil, since that will be the only way RJ he will gain any skill. RJ has a pregnant girlfriend and so he is reluctant to throw his soul away. One night after leaving the blues joint he finds a teacher who shows him how to play. RJ returns to the blues joint and tears the place with his guitar amazed at how much he has learned in just a few days. Too much to have actually been learned in just a few days, he has been gone for six months and his pregnant girlfriend and child died during childbirth. It is only through that tragedy does RJ becomes a true bluesman. And once he does, his travels get him mixed up with pre-Bonnie Clyde Barton and further aspects of his deal with the devil.

I looked up Robert Johnson on wikipedia, and surprisingly a lot of what is in the manga are already part of the Robert Johnson myth. The art is almost old school, far more seinan influenced than what is the norm in imported manga. It is not a true horror, nor J-pop influenced (though I understand that the blues is popular out of proportion in Japan) and not crime or slice of life. It does wander in amongst all of those genres, making it hard to categorize. But it does show a part of American life that is usually and purposefully forgotten, life in the American south in the Depression. This is a time when lynching may not have been open as is described in the book, but is still a fact of life and casual racism is part and parcel of human nature. There is also the desire to be meaningful and important that RJ is trying to work out through being a blues musician, which was perhaps was the only means a young black male at that time had to increase his importance and feelings of self worth in that environment. But the story also descends to genuine creepiness as RJ is confront by supernatural forces just as insidious as racism.



Me and the Devil Blues, vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Ferdinand

Flight Explorer, vol. 1

Edited by Kazu Kibuishi
Published by Villard Press


Slugline: Not that much flight or exploring, but still enough of both along with pitch perfect tone to make if perfect first graphic novel for any age.

Well this is not manga per se though some of the creators of the anthology come out of the US OEL/OGM movement. Flight Explorer is the younger skewing version of the Flight anthology, an award winning series that has released 4 volumes so far. So despite this being the first volume it already has a great pedigree. As a anthology it's themes are fairly loose, with flight being only incidental in many stories, or being at best a metaphor. Most of the stories are slice of life, with humorous undertones, though the cover illustration is for the big action adventure story of the volume. The stories are fairly straightforward and connect on an emotional level, which is what a volume like this needs to hit its aimed audience. A couple of times some of the flow between panels is not very clear, so I think it may be a little confusing at times for newcomers, but it is only a few moments distraction. The full color art of the stories is the major draw of the volume, with each story and it's creator working in their own distinctive style that fits the need of each story.



-Ferdinand

SERIES UPDATE: Eternal Sabbath (ES), vol. 8

You can read our earlier reviews of Eternal Sabbath vol. 1 here, vol. 2 here vols. 3-4 here and vols 5-7 here.

The series draws to a not-terribly-surprising end, though there's a decent twist or two along the way. After all that's happened, it's no surprise that it comes down to Shuro and Isaac to duke it out, and the end result of the fight is interesting but ultimately not a surprise either. It's a mild disappointment after such a strong start, but on average this is still a four star series aimed at the non-teenaged reader. I will be looking forward to Fuyumi Soryo's next manga.



ES vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3 vol. 4, vol. 5, vol. 6, vol. 7 and vol. 8 are all available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Miranda

Fever, vol. 1

by Hee Jung Park
Published in the US by Tokyopop


Slugline: Screw-ups and lovelorn of Korea, unite!

The structure of this volume is nice and tidy: we meet Hyung-In, we meet Ji-Jun, and Kang-Dae brings them all together for a first meeting. What happens next is anyone's guess, but if the dialogue maintains this quality and Bong-Nam the spaniel sticks around, I will too.

Hyung-In is wrestling with the consequences of her friendship with an unpopular girl. Ji-Jun is...unlucky, in more ways than one, and more or less adrift in life. And Kang-Dae is the sort of scattered oddball that could make things interesting. Bong-Nam brings the drool and a waggy tail.

4 stars, with a bullet.



Fever, vol. 1 is available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

-Miranda

Manga Sutra, v. 1

By Futari H and Katsu Aki
Published in the US by Tokyopop


Slugline: A realistic story about figuring out how to enjoy sex.

It should be noted that pornography is not an accurate representation of people having sex – this is. And it’s not pornography, in that it’s more concerned about plot than gynecology.

The story centers on Makoto and Yuri, two virgins who meet through a matchmaker and get married. They are both willing and eager to enjoy sex, but reality keeps getting in the way. They both need practice, they’re both embarrassed by not getting it right the first time, and they both have siblings who try to educate them. No, there is no incest porn.

Factoids are sprinkled throughout the story along with a bit of explanation about various techniques. The central story is simple and straightforward and sweet in its way, but the obvious aim of the series is to educate. I think that’s a great idea, because sex requires practice and exploration and the fib that everyone’s automatically good at it really needs to be laid to rest.



Manga Sutra, vol. 1 is available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Miranda

SERIES UPDATE: Loveless, vols 4-7

Feel free to check out our previous reviews for Loveless, vol. 1 and Loveless, vol 2&3.

The story drifted a bit, introducing characters who may or may not become more interesting, some bits of intrigue and some ass-dragging on Ritsuka's part. But in vol. 6, he demands to visit this Septimal Moon that has been mentioned and lo, in vol. 7 we are making progress. A diversion of sorts is begun in vol. 7 with the likely goal of making a team of Ritsuka and Soubi. It's sure to have repercussions later, no mystery about that.

And the short stories at the end of some volumes are cute too.



Loveless vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3 vol. 4, vol. 5, vol. 6 and vol. 7 are all available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Miranda

SERIES UPDATE: Eternal Sabbath, v. 5 - 7

You can read our earlier reviews of Eternal Sabbath vol. 1 here, vol. 2 here and vols. 3-4 here.

Through these volumes, Shuro and Mine try to influence Isaac by way of his friend Yuri. Although they make careful moves, things take a turn for the worse. Isaac does show some signs of human emotion, but he doesn't know how to act on them correctly. In the process of erasing his "mistakes" he sets off another encounter with Shuro. When the scene escalates, Isaac actually seems off balance due to the emotional fallout from Yuri, and the plot begins to shift in a new direction.

Tough subjects are tackled in these three volumes -- child abuse, the stresses of parenting -- and this series will be staying on my short list!




ES vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3 vol. 4, vol. 5, vol. 6 and vol. 7 are all available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Miranda

Empowered, vol. 1

By Adam Warren
Published by Dark Horse


Slugline: A title that revels in its own absurdity.

Don't you wish that more people gave manga a try rather than just knee-jerking writing it off as something strange and foreign? I am going to give you the same challenge for Empowered, a title by the original OEL artist, Adam Warren. It is a title about superheroes. Yes, yes, I understand, superhero comics are the devil compared to the purity of the manga, but then you are just as guilty as the people that are decrying manga, right? And let's face it, are the ninja feats that Naruto pull off or badassitude of Rurouni Kenshin that far off superheroes like Batman?

And if you strip all that out, the genre trappings, this is ultimately a story about college aged people trying to figure out what to do with their lives. And screwing up, and wondering what the hell they are going to do to pay the bills until the stuff they really like doing starts paying off. With boyfriends, booty calls, going out with girlfriends until you come home more than a little tipsy. After reading probably hundreds of high school stories where everyone seems so prim and proper, even the hooligans following a constrained set of behaviors, it was great to finally read some truly bad and but also behavior that felt more real. And relationships that start with sex and hormones and evolve towards love and that other sort of stuff rather than vice versa.

Empowered is a superheroine with a name that was best she could come up with and a supersuit that nothing to hide her butt or any other embaressing body parts. Worse still, while bulletproof it tears easily, and until it regenerates most of her powers are gone, so she ends up tied up way too often. Fortunately she has her boyfriend Thug Boy and her girlfriend Ninjette to bolster her while Sistah Spooky and the rest of the Superhomies continually belittle her. As you can see, this is something of a parody, something of a slice of life and a whole lot of the funny.

And as for Adam Warren, his first OEL was the US version of Dirty Pair in 1989. He has the experience and style, learned through years of practice and experience, so that it comfortably straddles both US and Japanese art styles and so it has become its own. Read it and realize that OEL can be and is it's own thing, and should be judged for what it is, not what you think it should be.



-Ferdinand

Translucent, vol. 1

By Kazuhiro Okamoto
Released in the US by Dark Horse Manga


Slugline: Is becoming invisible a curse or a blessing for a teenage girl?

Shizuka is a teenage girl who has a medical condition that makes everything in her life harder to deal with. No, not diabetes like in an earlier review, but she is translucent. She turns invisible and back to visible in a monthly cycle (much like another cycle girls her age learn to deal with.) It is treated like an uncommon but still normal disease in the title, which frees the title to talk about how Shizuka lives with it rather than focusing on the disease itself. This is a slice of life title, with no overarching plot as such, and Shizuka and her friends, especially Tadami, in turn deals with and try to work around Shizuka’s translucent state.

The writers of Buffy: the Vampire Slayer had a saying about writing their episodes, "What is the metaphor?" While there was always a monster, each monster had to tie in some way back to the themes of growing up and high school. While this is a slice of life of comic, it is also has the metaphor of withdrawing from life and society made physical through the use of the translucent syndrome. Here, the metaphor is not particularly deeply hidden, where the confusion of wanting to be noticed and to be like everyone else is made concrete (irony only somewhat intended.) Shizuka's feelings of shame and confidence directly feed into her appearance, and the confusion in the steps between childhood and being a young adult is also expressed through her ‘disease’ and her friends, especially Tadami’s, attitudes and willingness to relax into childish games, but also to reject them. It needs to dial down the obviousness of the metaphor sometimes, but it is still an outstanding title.



Translucent, vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

-Ferdinand

Welcome to the NHK

By Tatsuhiko Takimoto
Published in the US by TokyoPop


Slugline: Look into the darkness long enough and the darkness may just sit you down and tell you the way of the world.

This is a novel, so I am not going to give it an age rating, but it does have an Parental Advisory for Explicit Content, mostly for drug use and suicide, I suspect. Use your own discretion.

Satou is a hikikomori, the Japanese name for the tendency for people to withdraw from the world and spend most of their time isolated in their homes. While the back cover blurb says that Satou undergoes a hilarious journey out of his shell, the journey is anything but hilarious, filled with pain, confusion and backsliding. I suspect that this is a lot darker than the manga or anime, neither of which I admittedly have see . But it is a very raw look at depression expressed in several different ways, and the stumbling attempts to both survive and get out from underneath it.

I look at this and see that there is a mirror deep within it. Fortunately, I don't see myself in the mirror, but at times in my life I suspect I came uncomfortably close to doing so. Within fandom, there exists the possibility of self-destructive urges. Not that I believe that fandom is the cause of these urges, but by sinking deep enough into fandom one escape from these self-destructive urges merely at the cost of everything else. This can expressed by the stereotypical view of the comic fan as college age person hiding in his mother's basement surrounded by comics. Before the current rise of manga and anime in the US, back in the 1990s, replace the comics with bootleg tapes of anime and porn manga. But it is no more the fault of comics, manga or anime than it is the fault of the NHK. It is simply because people, and the characters in the novel, have become so hurt, so damaged, that no longer have the strength to face the world on its own terms. But even in their apartments trying to face the world on their own terms, surrounded by anime, religion or in the case of Satou nothing at all, the world still bears down. They are not crazy or weak, but they have made the only rational choice that seems available to them.

Read this if for no other reason to get a view into that world, of the people that seem to not have a life, that are willing to debate the fine points of a manga for weeks at a time and realize that there is more going on that you may be willing to realize.



Welcome to the NHK is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

-Ferdinand

Multiple Warheads, issue 1

By Brandon Graham
Released by Oni Press


Slugline: This is the sort of title where a character's name of Sexica does not raise any eyebrows...

Sexica has just returned from an organ smuggling run with some primo organs, such as the midas tush, which turns you know what into gold. She stops by the place she shares with her boyfriend, Nikoli, who she gave a present of a wolf organ for his birthday and he still he wolf dreams. They both share a waking dream, of leaving the Dead City and going to Impossible (City that is), and this last organ run may be what puts them over the top. But the city does not alway let people leave easily.

Multiple Warheads is in a hard format to love, a 48 page floppy. Not something that you can find in most bookstores and most comic shops would not stock it long term. That being said, I think it is still worth the effort of tracking down. Brandon Graham has a sort of mad genius for inventiveness for the future, twisting stuff so they are just outside of the bounds of credulity, but so close to that line you have to think and ponder it. And in pondering it, appreciate it. Plus there is a couple that have a relatively normal relationship when surrounded by craziness, despite being just as weird as the world that surrounds them. When Sexica is worried about Nikoli, you can feel it. Brandon Graham has also done King City for TokyoPop, (reviewed here) that shares a lot of the same impulses, a strange world that you can believe along with characters that are fully share the weirdness but also feel real. There is some sexual nudity here, so it is rated 17+, but despite the difficulty of finding it and the rating, it is worth finding. We would suggest starting with the One Press website. (www.onipress.com)



-Ferdinand

Sharknife, vol. 1

By Corey Rey
Published by Oni Press

Slugline: No need for sluglines when the actual comic has lines like "Let the Poetic Dance of Battle Ooze from our Fists into our Faces!"

Ceasar Hallelujah is a modest busboy at the Guangdong Factory, a five story temple to the art of Chinese culinary chefs, which has creature catastrophically lurking in its walls, occasionally disgorging monsters intent on masticating on customers who are enjoying a power-up at the restaurant! But I insist you leave fear in the anteroom, for Ceasar upon sneaking a fortune cookie is totally upgraded to the lava hot ninja 'bot of bodacious beatdowns, SHARKNIFE! Thrill to massive combo attacks that can only be managed by wielding six controllers at once, a feat of ease due to Sharknife's own Six-Gills Style of Kata knockdown! But perhaps the nattily attired gregarious gangster Ombra has plans to silence Sharknife's sayings from the seers that condense their brainsweat into each and every fortune cookie that is his startup screen!

Forgive me, but I love writing like that. May have exaggerated things a little bit.

But not by much.

This title blends its manga and video game influences seamlessly, along with a healthy does of ironic self-awareness. Sometimes the action is so massive that other than seeing some of tail that is being kicked it is hard to determine what is going on beyond it. But if one wants to see action on a scale only imagined by people who defeated Halo 3 on the "your frickin' crazy" within a single sweep of the timepiece, this is your title.

-Ferdinand