I keep telling people that Shuzo Oshimi is my favorite magaka. That’s not a lie. You might know him from The Flowers of Evil if you’re more into anime than manga. If you do read a lot of manga, there’s Flowers, plus Inside Mari, Welcome Back, Alice, Blood on the Tracks, and a lot more […]
Read more "The Eternal Triangle: Waltz"The manga Heaven’s Design Team gets itself hyped with the blurb, “Does for zoology what Cells at Work! does for human biology.” I know this for a fact. It says so right on the back cover. Except it doesn’t. A lot of people like Cells at Work! and I’m one of them. It’s a neat […]
Read more "How Not to Start a Story: Heaven’s Design Team"Okay, yeah, I know you never heard of Toshiko Tamura. Let me lay down some backbeat here. If you ain’t heard of Osamu Tezuka, you’re probably reading the wrong blog. I mean, he’s the dude Mangajin magazine called “The God of Manga,” because they decided other titles he’s also been given, like “The Father of […]
Read more "Character Analysis: Toshiko Tamura"And Yet the Town Moves is one of those silly little slice of lifers built around a slice of the life of Hotori Arashiyama, and her friends, family, high school, and pet. Cutely, mostly it revolves around the maid cafe where Hotori works. It’s run by a local old lady (called a grandmother, as is […]
Read more "Character Analysis: Hotori Arashiyama"Sweat and Soap is one of those things that when you describe it to someone sounds either sickly sweet or more than a little creepy. I mean, it’s basically a story about two people falling in love as they find they complement each other (that’s the sickly sweet part) because she has a strong body […]
Read more "Character Analysis: Asako Yaeshima"Every once in a while I fall into a rabbit hole and can’t climb out. So I have a subscription to Crunchyroll, and there’s an app that gives me access to certain manga they support. And I happened onto this little gem called Silver Nina. Now, it’s kind of dumb and the art isn’t especially […]
Read more "How to Cook a Series: Silver Nina"You know, in a certain way Rea Sanka, the titular character of Sankarea, is one of the saddest characters in anime. Sure, there are characters who are supposed to be sad, or whose loss is shocking. Right? When Kaori dies in Your Lie in April – oh, man, what a tearjerker. But Kaori’s JOB was […]
Read more "Character Analysis: Rea Sanka"Gleipnir is one of those things that manages to use a story to hide something in plain sight, and that is that it’s thinly-veiled pornography. And let me tell you, that’s one thin veil. So the deal is … do I even need to go through what the deal is? … the deal is there’s […]
Read more "Okay, I Get the Joke: Gleipnir"If you read back in this blog – oh screw it, here’s a link – I was really unthrilled with the manga version of Komi Can’t Communicate. Y’see, our gal Komi is a gal with some severe psychological problems. She has what we in the communication business call “speech apprehension” (you might call it “stage […]
Read more "Medium Matters: Komi Can’t Communicate"What is it with Japanese anime boys and kinky fetishes? First we get Yamazaki from Welcome to the NHK, who prefers his women 2-D, and now there’s Kuruya from Sankarea who gets off on zombie girls. Maybe it’s like a defense mechanism. You know, “I’ll never get a real babe so I’ll lust for a […]
Read more "Medium Matters: Sankarea, Undying Love"
Confessions of an Overage otaku 