This January I set myself the ambitious goal of reading one manga per day. Ultimately I read 16 volumes and started a few I haven’t finished yet. There were some fantastic discoveries, new series I want to look further into and some disappointing titles too, but that is always the danger of randomly picking new titles. I hope you will find some manga that will catch your interest!
Omoide Emanon by Tsuruta Kenji (Art) and Kajio Shinji (Story)
The first manga I read this year and it’s already a contender for my yearly favorites list.
Omoide Emanon is Science-Fiction story, more poetic than story-driven. Japanese fiction often gets wrongly described as „Murakami-like“, which is often due to a lack of references, but in this case time it feels appropriate. The Story: An aimless student who loves Science Fiction novels on a ferry trip back home meets a strange girl, who claims to have lived since the beginning of life on earth. Is she just making things up or is she really what she claims to be? The two spend their time on the ferry eating, drinking, smoking and, more than anything, talking, before going separate ways.
Good poetry manages to encapsulate a feeling, an emotion, a landscape or a space for eternity. Omoide Emanon is a poetic work, one that will stay with me for a long time.
Chainsaw Man Volume 12 & 13 by Fujimoto Tatsuki:
I stopped following the weekly release schedule* and stick to the volumes instead, a decision I’m glad I took, apart from the constant threat of spoilers on Twitter. I wonder what the Spoiler Devil would look like.
Chainsaw Man, Part 2 is at the same time a continuation and something completey new. In a way, it’s what Kill Bill 2 was to Kill Bill 1. I can see why some fans might be disappointed by the change in tonality and pacing, but for me the one year break helped to look at the series with fresh eyes. It helps that Asa is a great character and that I love her infinetly more than Denji. I used to read Chainsaw Man for any character other than Denji. Now I read it for Asa alone.
The porch scene was great cinema!
* I do read One Piece on the Jump+ app every week though, because honestly I don’t care anymore.
Manshū Ahen Squad Volume 1 by Tsukasa Monma (Story) and Shikako (Art):
This is a series I wanted to check out for a long time, because I love dark and gritty stories and the historical setting sounded intriguing. But more than that the art and general tone reminded me of Samura Hiroaki’s Die Wergelder, which is the main reason I wanted to read this manga in the first place.
Manshū Ahen Squad starts in 1937 in the puppet state Manchukuo, that was set up in Manchuria during Japanese Imperial rule. Our protagonist Isamu is a poor Japanese boy, who was send to Manchukuo with his family to protect food production for the Japanese military. After losing one eye, he has to work on the fields. His botanical knowledge makes him discover a secret opium field, which again leads him to the daughter of a mafia family, who wants to team up with him to free herself by building her own drug empire. In order to provide for his younger siblings and his sick mother, Isamu reluctantly agrees. The first few pages of volume 1 foreshadow that Isamu will rise to the emperor of the underworld in the course of the series. In Manshū Ahen Squad, Breaking Bad meets Lady Macbeth.
The scenes showing opium addicts are grossly exaggerated, so is the almost comically sadistic Japanese military police leader, who looks like a character type you’d rather find as Seme in an hardcore BL manga. Sometimes the manga tries to be a bit too brutal and edgy, so I’m worried the narrative and style might not fit the premise in the long run.
Asobi Asobase Volume 1 & 2 by Suzukawa Rin:
This year I try to actively challenge myself to read more gag manga. It’s not that I dislike comedy, it’s just when I have to choose between something like Asobi Asobase and Manshū Ahen Squad, I will always pick the grittier option. That being said, I was intrigued by the cover art and when a Japanese friend, who owns all the volumes (in itself a statement in a country, where space is scarce), recommended Asobi Asobase to me, I had to check out the first two volumes. It was fun. I wasn’t dying from laughter, but I had a good time. The Boys Love story in volume 2 and the introduction of Aozora Tsugumi – both name and character are reference to Ōzora Hibari from Eguchi Hisashi’s legendary Stop!! Hibari-kun! – were my highlights. Asobi Asobase is definitely stronger in its execution of visual humor than it is in terms of writing. Some of the chapter artworks look so gorgeous, they make most Haruta manga look unimpressive in comparison.
I don’t feel compelled to read any further than this, unless I happen to stay at somebodies house again, who happens to have all volumes on their shelves.
River End Café Volume 1 & 2 by Tanaka Akio
Most of my late research as a student was on the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and the way it has been depicted and discussed in Japanese fiction. So when I found out River End Cafe was set in Ishinomaki, a city seriously affected by the disaster, and that it deals with the trauma of those who survived it, I knew I had to read the series.
The schoolgirl Saki is an outsider. As we find out later, it is one particular comment that made her the target of bullying. She mentions to one other schoolgirl that she hates the word “Kizuna” (絆) , it makes her feel like a cow or horse that is tied to several ropes and is forced to work hard relentlessly. The word quickly spreads and Saki becomes an outcast, neglected by both students and teachers. Later she meets the owner of the titular River End Cafe, who, upon hearing her story, laughs and says: „What did you expect?“
„Kizuna“, a word that was originally attributed to familial bonds, became a slogan in the post-Fukushima discourse, a keyword for national solidarity. The horse illustration above is one of the most powerful ones I’ve seen in manga on this topic (it should be noted that starving catttle was a common theme in photography dealing with the disaster, as farmers had to leave the affected areas).
This is when the manga is at its strongest. From there on Saki and the Café owner meet various, oftentimes strange characters from the region, among them a fortune teller, a boy looking for his girlfriend who has turned into a demon, an Enka Singer who spend time in prison and an old man looking for a pornographic video of an actress. This is when the manga is at its worst. Every time I thought about reconsidering my opinion on this manga, there is a chapter about a vintage porno screening or some other weird sexual thing around the corner to make me want to drop the manga again. Which is a shame, because sex work is an important topic to understand the effects the Tohoku earthquake had on the affected regions. Sometimes it feels strange when you find out a serious manga is published in a magazine featuring gravure idols on the cover. This one does not.
The character art is a bit reminiscent of Urasawa, but with less variation, especially when it comes to Saki’s face, which has more or less two expressions. The drawings of hisotrical people like actress Takamiya Setsu or sculptor Takahashi Eichi are more detailed. Watercolors are used to imply abstract recollections of the past. Saki’s PTHD is conveyed by disconnected pieces of past imagery.
River End Cafe is a quick read, Oshimi Shuzo quick. It’s a fun read, which is great, but also a bit of a shame, because it could have been much more than that. The whole series is available for free on Kindle Unlimited, so I will read the remaining volumes eventually and maybe come back to my criticism in another review.
The World is Dancing Volume 1 by Mihara Kazuto
Set in the early Muromachi-period (1336–1573), this manga deals with the young Zeami Motokiyo, an actor and playwright who become one of the most important figures of Noh theatre and Japanese culture as such, the Japanese Shakespeare so to speak.
We are introduced to Zeami as a young boy who is so immersed in his own thoughts, he doesn’t care that he’s being kidnapped. Later we see him walking straight into a river and almost drowning, because he doesn’t want to lose his train of thought. As the word ADHD didn’t exist in the 14th century, Zeami gets scolded by people around him, his father in particular, for not focussing on what he should focus on. Instead he spends his time daydreaming and thinking deeply about what performance means and why people dance in the first place.
The World is Dancing is finished after 6 volumes. The art style can be a bit simplistic, but if you are only remotely interested in historical settings and traditional Japanese performing arts, this is a manga worth checking out.
This was only part 1 of my January Review. In part 2, I will discuss my favorite new manga series.
Here’s a short musical interlude. See you next time!
ZEAMI by Wednesday Campanella: