Recent posts tagged manga
2013
Paradise Kiss Vols. 2-3 (Ai Yazawa)
A genre-transcending romance reaches its conclusion and ennobles itself in the process.
Creator Knows Best Dept.
If we can't let artists make mistakes with their own work, then they won't be free to make happy discoveries either.
2012
For The Girls (And The Boys, Too) Dept.
Let's see some live-action anime projects in the West that are shojo stories.
Flowers of Evil, Vol. 3 (Shuzo Oshimi)
A further tightening of the screws, and maybe the first step in the next direction for this story.
Heroman Vol. 1 (Tamon Ohta)
Enjoyable if not-impressively-drawn manga take on Western-style kid's action comics. (Stan Lee had a hand in it, and it shows.)
Paradise Kiss, Part One (Ai Yazawa)
What makes a story that's nominally a romance into something a little deeper and more insightful? The idea that the characters want to be more than overgrown children, for one.
Limit Vol. 1 (Keiko Suenobu)
The cost of conformity, explored in a ''Lord of the Flies''-style manga scenario.
Sakuran: Blossoms Wild (Moyoco Anno)
The anti-"Memoirs of a Geisha". Moyoco Anno's manga, source for the film of the same name, is a brassy and sassy tribute to a milieu that often only gets the sleeve-wringing weepie treatment.
The Flowers of Evil, Vol. 2 (Shuzo Oshimi)
Further adventures in antisocial dating, in this sharp little psych-thriller series.
The Flowers of Evil, Vol. #1 (Shuzo Oshimi)
First installment in this diabolical manga series about a high schooler's psychological torment at the hands of a female classmate.
GTO: The Early Years, Vol. #11 (Toru Fujisawa)
Picking up where Tokyopop left off, it's Onizuka before he was the Great Teacher.
Japan (Buronson / Kentaro Miura)
Kentaro Miura and Buronson team up for a collaboration that's if anything even worse than the last one I saw from them.
Big Damn Heroes Dept.
From authoritarian heroes to egalitarian ones.
No Longer Human Vol. #3 (Usamaru Furuya, Osamu Dazai)
The manga adaptation of Japan's "Requiem for a Dream" comes to an unforgiving close, just as it should.
Black Jack. Vol. #17 (Osamu Tezuka)
The end. And it’s a fitting end to a manga series that’s always stood poised on the knife-edge between sweet fairy-tale simplicity and the tougher sensibilities of stories for mature audiences. Black Jack might well have been Osamu Tezuka’s finest...
GTO: 14 Days in Shonan, Vol. #1 (Tohru Fujisawa)
The further (and ever the more over the top) adventures of Great Teacher Onizuka, as he tries to turn around a whole special school full of kids abandoned by their own parents.
So Little Time, So Much To Do Dept.
More choices in entertainment means more competition, all against all.
Princess Knight: Vols. #1-2 (Osamu Tezuka)
Osamu Tezuka's gender-bending fairy tale, now in English, was worth the wait.
2011
No Longer Human, Vol. #2 (Usamaru Furuya / Osamu Dazai)
Further down the spiral with both Osamu Dazai and his 21st-century interpretation via manga master Usamaru Furuya.
Black Jack Vol. 16 (Osamu Tezuka)
The penultimate Black Jacking, with a final installment that's to Tezuka what a side-long song is to a Krautrock band.
A Bride's Story, Vol. 2 (Kaoru Mori)
2nd volume of manga exploration of nomadic steppe life remains endearing and beautifully-drawn.
No Longer Human Vol. #1 (Usamaru Furuya / Osamu Dazai)
A magnificent bleak manga adaptation of Japan's "Requiem for a Dream". Still timely and relevant -- and bleak.
The Book of Human Insects (Osamu Tezuka)
Tezuka explores darkness once more, in the story of a woman apparently unaware of her capacity for evil.
Oh My Goddess! First End (Yumi Tohma)
Enjoyable if inessential light-novel side story for the Oh My Goddess! mythology -- written by one of the show's original voice actors, no less.
Velveteen & Mandala (Jiro Matsumoto)
"Bizarre" is the best adjective for this post-apoc zombie story, but "strangely touching" also comes in after a while.
