January 2023 Manga Review Part 2
Titles: Mieda Sensei, Fool Night, Glitch, Toratsugumi, Kemuri to hachi, Kotonakare, Toge Oni
It is not rare for magazines in Japan to come out one or two months earlier, probably so that bookstores will have them longer on display. The opposite can be said for part 2 of my January review. Please still share!
Mieda Sensei (Oneshot) by Ichikawa Haruko:
When was the last time you read a manga that (almost) made you puke? For me, it’s probably when I read Itō Junji’s Gyo in middle school, which I shouldn’t have done, but I digress. This 33-page ebook exclusive has everything I love about Ichikawa Haruko. It’s stylish, twisted, erotic, weird. It should be noted that „weird“ is not a word I use carelessly when I refer to Japanese fiction. Ichikawa Haruko is.
At its core, this story is about a woman who seemingly effortlessly adapts to her professional environment as a doctor and s a young man who just wants to function as a human being and envies her. On a date, he claims he might be a domesticated vampire. In response, she reveals that she is the descendant of a witch bloodline whose powers have significantly weakened. She proves it by conjuring confetti, reminiscent of a certain scene in Hōseki no Kuni, Volume 11.
If you have read some ofIchikawa’s short stories (both collections are on the top of my reading pile, but I have only read one so far), you will have an idea about what to expect. In any case, don’t eat anything while reading this, in particular no potato wedges. You will understand what I mean.
Fool Night Volume 1 by Yasuda Kasumi
Eternal night has fallen over the world and as plants die out due to the lack of sunlight, humanity has invented a way to turn humans into plants to make up for the lack of oxygen. A governmental program provides financial incentives for people to undergo the procedure. This arguably strange dystopian setting is executed in an outstanding way, visual and storywise. The social implications are clear: people who are persecuted for crimes, chronically ill or those suffer from poverty are most likely to apply for this procedure.
Our protagonists Toshiro and Yomiko are childhood friends. Toshiro has big dreams, but ends up in poverty. He is trying to save money for education, and to buy medication for his mentally unstable mother. The more realistic Yomiko works for the government, coincidentally in the facility that turns people into plants.
There are many dystopian manga dealing with precarity, but in Fool Night there is a sense of realism many other works lack. When we see Toshiro working at the factory, he is so deprived of sleep his eyesight starts to fail. He is scared about loosing his already low salary in case he messes up or has to take a break from work. He appears naive and pure-hearted, which lead to some twists I didn’t see coming, because I’ve seen too many virtuous poor characters in fiction. Could you be virtuous, if life keeps punishing you? The final chapter of the volume on parental abuse has stayed with me until now.
Everything in this volume filled me with amazement, starting on the first manga page, which includes the table of contents. Where did you ever see that? Then there are depictions of humans slowly turning into flowers and the contrasting darkness of the night. Yasuda Kasumi makes perfect use of the medium to create atmosphere. The character designs are outstanding as well, reminding me slightly of more obscure and experimental titles like The Life of Ichabod. I never get tired of Yomiko’s design.
Once I finished volume 1, I went out to buy every other volume of the series (4 so far). This might be the best manga I’ve read since Igarashi Daisuke’s Designs and a lot would have to go wrong in the following volumes for this manga to not appear on my top three for 2023.
Glitch Volume 1 by Shima Shinya
I have never heard of this artist, who seems to have built a small cult following (I just found out Lost Lad London has an English release). Their style is distinct, even experimental when it comes to the titular glitch, a strange phenomenon that occurs in the town the story takes place in. There are no soundwords like in a Sakamoto Shin’ichi manga, but the art looks closer to that of American indie comics, or at least that’s how I perceive it. The mystery of the town is engaging, but never shocking for the sake of being shocking.
The cast is diverse, with the protagonist and his sister having a Korean surname. The cheerful and energetic Kei, likely of Brazilian or Afro-American descent, is my favorite character so far. There is also a guy whose head is made of feathered bird wings. The manga is pretty subtle about questions regarding identity and belonging, but there are hints that these topics will play an increasingly important role in the following volumes.
Toratsugumi / Tsugumi-Project Volume 2 by ippatsu:
Volume 1 was my favorite discovery from last year, so I don’t have much to say other than: If you remotely care about manga as a visual medium, read Toratsugumi. Let me mention one thin: Every single time Tsugumi appears on a page, her facial expression is drawn in a different, but still authentic style. What manga artist does that?
Kemuri to Mitsu Volume 1 by Nagakura Hiroko
This gorgeously illustrated series set in the Taishō era and published in Haruta asks the question: “What if child marriage was wholesome?”. I can’t deny that this manga, on a technical level, does a fantastic job at what it is trying to achieve, but should it do so in the first place? The whole concept of this episodic manga is built around the 18 year age gap between the 12-year old Himeko and the 30-year old Bunji, whom she will marry in three years. Just think of that one teacher student-relationship in Card Captor Sakura, but at it’s whole manga. The contrasts don’t end with the age gap. Bunji is a military officer. He doesn’t talk a lot, smokes, has dark circles under his eyes and looks like he came straight out of a Hirano Kota manga. Himeko is depicted as an innocent girl, but “fetishistic depictions” are limited to Bunji. It is shown in excruciating detail how he puts on his military uniform and there is a whole chapter that just shows him gracefully eating a lot of food and cleanly separating fish meat from its bones, which apparently counts as a fetish in Japan. I haven’t seen a manga exploiting gap moe with this level of perfection. The title itself, “Smoke & Honey” exemplifies this. Is it good, ethically asking. No? Would I read an academic paper about it. Most definitely.
Kotonakare Volume 1 by Oogatsu Katsuo (Art), Hoshino Shigeki (Story)
I picked up this volume in an obscure bookstore that sells a lot of indie/underground manga. I just like the cover and the book was sealed, so I bet on the chance that I might be about to discover a hidden gem. Well, you can’t always win. Kotonakare is the kind of manga you find in magazines that are not targeted at manga readers, it’s boring and generic. Every page screams: no experiments! Something about this kind of manga and its use of screen tone offends me. I don’t know why. The story is finished in two volumes, but the second one was never released, so it’s probably not just me hating. At least I learned that the Asahi Shinbun has its own horror themed Shōjo manga magazine (yes, I was surprised as well) called Nemuki+, and even Itō Junji published some of his manga there.
Tōge Oni – Primal Gods in Ancient Times Volume 1 by Tsurubuchi Kenji
This manga takes place in mythical setting that turns out to be science fiction or something. The character art reminded me a lot of Kobayashi Jin (School Rumble), if anyone still remembers that. The art is gorgeous, as to be expected of a Haruta manga, and yet it lost me at page 30 and now, two months later, I can’t recall anything that happened in volume 1. I checked some reviews on Amazon and 読書メーター (a kind of Japanese Goodreads) and they were overwhelmingly positive. Maybe I read it at the wrong time, maybe I didn’t. Honestly, I am too old at this point to praise stuff that didn’t resonate with me at all and that’s fine. If someone tells me this is the greatest manga they read in a decade, I might give it a try again, but until then, I’d rather not.
That’s it for this time. I choose to end this newsletter with some negative reviews, because not everything I check out is great and that’s fine. January was a lot of hit and miss, but the good titles make up for everything. There are so many good manga out there and I hope you will check out some of the titles I discussed. Have a good day!