Malcontents Within Panels

A log of all the manga I've read. Includes sample pages and sometimes short commentaries. Musings and other stuff are at @moonson_lunar

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(Ran to Haiiro no Sekai, Aki Irie, 2008-2015, 7 volumes)

Beautiful. Simply so beautiful and magical I’m speechless. If those pages didn’t convince you already to read this manga I’ve no words to say.

That said, there is one thing that some people might have problems with, that is the central relationship between Ran, the protagonist, a little girl that can transform into adult form and Outaro, a playboy who founds true love with Ran’s adult form. Without spoiling it, I’ll just say that it is handled the best way it could be handled. 

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(Hadi Girl, Akino Miyabi, 2011-2013, 5 Volumes) 

It’s a rather typical romance story where an awkward girl discovering love because initially she is half-forced to by supernatural sources. It tends to really focus on her cute awkwardness. 

To be honest, I’m kind of rolling my eyes every time she’s really worked up over little things rom-com manga perceived as romantic (“Ohmigod, we share umbrellas”, “Ohmigod, we take a photo together”, etc).

If cuteness is sugar, this is like drinking a full sack of sugar in one gulp. I like candies, but this is too much. The task-based approach also make it feel formulaic instead of a relationship developing organically. Perhaps my reading habits just isn’t suited for this, it’s just one of those manga where it’s intended to be read week-to-week rather than marathoned.

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(Inu to Hasami wa Tsukaiyou, Shunsuke Sarai (author), Kamon Ohba (art),  2012-2014, 4 volumes) AKA “Dog and Scissors”

This is probably the most incomprehensible manga I've read (not in a good way). Try reading this:

The protagonist, Kazuto Harumi, is a huge bookworm. One day in a cafe while he tries to protect a girl from a gun-toting criminal he got shot and killed. But his unquenchable desire to read books cause him to reincarnate... in the form of a dog. The only person who can understand his words is the girl he saved earlier, who seems to be a big sadist with a pair of unnaturally sharp scissors. Hence, Dog and Scissors. He then founds out that she, Kirihime Natsuno, is actually the writer of his favorite book series. As they live together they talk about writer and reader's philosophy, making obscure references, but more often it's just she threatening to kill or castrate him the moment he gets a bit cheeky. 

The story then changes into detective mystery genre as they try to search Harumi's killer. After correctly deducing his position it turns out he has turned a new leaf after he read books and he is resisting arrest because he want to read more books and he is now able to do the martial arts from books that should be impossible to do real life. After he is defeated then Harumi and Natsuno talks about the nature of vengeance. But it turns out the root of the problem is that the cafe owner is a drug dealer. And let's not forget about Natsuno’s masochist editor and Harumi's yandere little sister who wields a tuna knife that can transform into a chainsaw and a bazooka.

As you can see, this is a mishmash of a LOT of ideas and genres, mixed into an incomprehensible mess. This is actually a pretty common thread of Light Novels (this is adapted from a Light Novel). They mostly feels like a young writer's first draft of the first unpublished novel: A few good ideas, tries to combine many things they feels cool, references to things they like, with few thoughts of classic narrative beats. 

It doesn't always comes out bad, and sometimes the core ideas are strong enough to sustain the whole thing, but this one is definitely one of the worst I've read so far. 

Another specific disappointment: I'm disappointed that for a writer-reader pair, Harumi and Natsuno make almost no literary references at all, and instead using references from manga and games. Not that it would make it any better.

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(Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas - Meiou Shinwa, Masami Kurumada (author), Shiori Teshirogi(art),  2006-2011, 25 volumes)

A prequel to the original Saint Seiya, this tells the story of the previous holy war between Athena and Hades. 

Rather than the haphazard plotting of the original, this story actually attempted a real pathos, by setting up Pegasus, Athena, and Hades as originally childhood friends, wedged by fate (Hades chooses a mortal as a host every holy war, and in this generation Athena chooses to reincarnate in the human world instead of in the Sanctuary). The art is also noticeably better, attempting to do actual back-to-back and physical contacts instead of simple energy ball fights of the original.

But that attempt to do better is undermined by the core appeal of Saint Seiya itself. Saint Seiya’s main core appeal has always been the power armors and its powers. It is no wonder what many people usually talk about is the 13 Gold Saints that represents the Zodiac. Now, that means at least 13 characters, plus their respective enemies, plus the main cast and supporting casts, that’s at least 30 characters. 

It’s impossible to meaningfully develop that much characters. As a result, the fights rarely have emotional weight behind them, and any attempts to do so honestly feels underwhelming. 

What makes the original Saint Seiya interesting just isn’t suited for a more typical narrative.

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(Saint Seiya, Masami Kurumada, 1986-1991, 28 Volumes)

Like so many kids who grew up with Shonen Jump properties, it’s impossible for me to view them without nostalgia goggles. 

Such is with Saint Seiya, probably the most popular Jump property of the late 80′s to early 90′s. No kid my age then didn’t know about Seiya’s Meteor Punch or the fight against the Gold Saints. 

Describing the story feels like pointless here, as the narrative would fall apart on any level of critical scrutiny. It is simply a reason for guys in power armors with mythology-related powers fighting and killing each other with cosmic energy. The same could be said about the art, which relies so heavily on pure spectacle instead of actual choreography.

That said, there is a certain kind of sincerety and passion that makes it still compelling for me to read it today that has not been quite replicated by its sequels and spinoffs since. Even the actual sequel drawn by Kurumada, Next Dimension feels like a real slog to read.

Another thing that is notable is the effeminate design of some of the guys, to the point that it’s a running question between fans during my childhood (absent of the internet) whether a certain character is a guy or a girl. No wonder it is one of the critical works to the development of yaoi fandom.

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(Yuru Yuru, Takamichi, 2008-2012, 3 volumes)

A slice-of-life story of three girls, Haruka, the childish and naive one, Misaki, the tomboy one, and Yuki, the calm and collected one.

As can be seen from the samples above, Takamichi’s full color art is interesting and unique, but the content is pretty much typical “cute girls doing cute things” style of slice-of-life comedy. It’s also quite lacking in character designs and whatnot to make each characters easily distinguishable from each other, to the point that I had a hard time remembering who’s who until near the end.

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(Stretch, Akili, 2013-2015, 4 volumes)

Most jokes in the manga tend to be of the manzai variety, that is one person says/does something stupid, and the other person reacts to it. That means for that, even in a more down-to-earth slice-of-life comedies, a character is usually given a quirk and amplified to the point of stretching disbelief. The other popular type of joke is comedy of misunderstanding (usually of the dirty variety).

It is genuinely refreshing then, for a manga to not rely on those two type of jokes. Stretch is a slice-of-life manga about two female roommates, who for once acts like actual roommates. The comedy feels very naturalistic from the daily interactions of these two. It's also considerably informative, as these two bonds over the acts of stretching as an exercise. It also knows how to handle the little dramatic moments with subtlety. 

I really didn't expect this much capable storytelling from an author who previously does porn (lolicon porn at that). On that note, it's amazing that it doesn't contain any unsubtle yuri-baiting considering the author's previous non-porno work is a yuri manga. Perhaps it is an important note that the author use a different pen name for this work.

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(Umareru Kachi no Nakatta Jibun ga Anna no Tame ni Dekiru Ikutsuka no Koto, Yousuke Nagase, 2013-2015, 3 volumes)

Due to various factors, manga is perhaps the only mass entertainment media where one can explore objectionable materials with little repercussion. Sometimes, it lead to interesting stories. Most of the time though, it is used simply as shock value to satisfy "thrill-seekers" and the like.

This manga is an extreme example of the latter one.

So it begins with this one otaku who is pretty much set up to be an irredeemable human trash (zero discipline and zero empathy. Even for people who still consider him a friend, he has nothing but scorn for them). When some cosmic force sent him back to his youth, he initially thought perhaps he could be happy if he hooked up with his childhood crush. But after he found out that's not possible he starts blaming everyone else and doing whatever the hell he wanted because in his logic "If my life is destined to be shitty, might as well act as a horrible human being." And he ends up raping his childhood friend. Yeah, there's no defense for that one.

But he got his just desserts. Another timeline was created and the child from that tragedy also time-traveled back, and of course she wanted nothing less than to kill the man who brought so much pain to his mother (Why didn't she abort? That's because she's Catholic. Yeah, it uses religion simply just to give a plot justification). The thing that angers me the most, however, is the implication that in that timeline, this human trash lived a "fullfilling" life because raping his childhood friend gives him confidence. And even after he learned about the existence of that child, he shows no single shred of remorse. 

So with the possibly the worst message ever to give for its reader, combined with the amateurish art, this manga has succeeded to be called one of the worst thing I've read.

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(Hanayome wa Motodanshi, Chii, 2016, 1 volume)

A very informative autobiographical manga about a trans woman and her marriage. There’s a lot of information in it about the current status of LGBT in Japan, and it’s presented in an easy-to-understand manner. The cute artwork also really helps. 

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(Dokuhime, Mitsukazu Mihara, 2002-2013, 5 volumes)

Among genres unique to manga, shoujo fantasy is one of my favorite genre. The reason why is twofold. First, it usually features a strong female character, not in the ironic sense (and it usually does not contain my least favorite high fantasy cliche: threats or acts of rape against woman, because "historical accuracy"). Second, it usually is a considerably low-key drama in a fantastical setting, instead of aiming for epicness that most high fantasy and young adult novels do, even for those that started as a low-key drama such as Twilight.

That said, this particular manga does not fill my preferred version of shoujo fantasy, because this takes inspiration more from another version of fantasy aimed at young woman I usually does not associate with manga: otome game. Perhaps because it’s actually a josei title.

So our heroine here is really rather blank, but born with extraordinary circumstances. She is basically raised as a human poison weapon used for assassination. She is sent into a country where it is ruled by an eldest son (masquerading as his father) and his two brothers. Her cover is blown and she is kept as a potential political leverage, but needless to say, she attracts the attention of these three siblings. They're almost straight otome game stereotypes, the eldest one has a straight-laced personality, but often condescending. The middle one is the mean jerk who often threatens to hurt the heroine (and he does), and the youngest is a sweet little genius boy who harbors a secret killer second personality. 

The story eventually focused much more on the three brothers though, and the ending can be considered a bad ending in a otome game.

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(Teppuu, Ohta Moare, 2008-2015, 8 volumes)

As far as martial arts manga goes, the martial arts aspect isn't above average, though it does provide some interesting glimpse to the woman part of MMA.

But what makes this manga interesting is the main character. Usually the main character for martial arts stories is the untalented underdog who wins through sheer effort. The rival, a haughty powerhouse with immense talent but undone by his/her arrogance. 

This manga uses that rival character as a protagonist. Natsuo Ishidou is an arrogant bully with an immense talent for any physical activity. Her reason for entering the mixed martial arts world is basically to crush a gung-ho MMA enthusiast because for some reason she piss her off. What makes this manga successful is that it really strikes the right balance to make such a character likable enough.

It also strikes the right balance of realism. Though Natsuo has a great sense of movement, sense can only goes so far if you haven't mastered the techniques, so she actually lose more than she wins, and the wins are often because it hasn't turned into a battle of techniques.

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(The Voynich Hotel, Dowman Sayman, 2006-2015, 3 volumes)

Dowman Sayman is weird in the best way possible. He mixes an inordinate amount of elements that you would think would not work, but they do in a seemingly effortlessly way. A strange hotel with a strange owner and maids with magical origins, a serial killer, child detectives, assassins, deal with the devil, undercover agent. Those are some of the elements present in this work. What’s also amazing is that how he makes the characters so... I don’t know the best word to describe it, fun? He never resorts to easy archetypal characterization and he know how to make them bounce. I’m looking forward for his next work.

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(Ryuu no  Michi, Shotaro Ishinomori, 1969-1970, 8 volumes)

Shotaro Ishinomori, one of the biggest names of classic manga is most famous for his hero work (Kamen Rider, Cyborg 009), but as with Osamu Tezuka who is most famous for Astro Boy, he’s also done a lot of other work. This science-fiction story about a young man who returned from space to found a much stranger earth is perhaps his most ambitious work, on par with Osamu Tezuka’s Hi no Tori (Phoenix).

It can get a little too preachy at at times when it tackles its multitude of themes, and perhaps can also be said to try to tackle too many themes for one story (evolution, robots, biotechnology, war, to name a few) but I really admire it for its sheer ambition. Some of the drawings are also really a sight to behold, as sampled above.

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(Araidoki, Yusuke Hashimoto, 2013, 2 volumes)

A rather typical school-life comedy with a supernatural twist. This time the twist is the hero is a youkai and the heroine is an angel trying to kill him (but she’s too clumsy or kind most of the time to do it). It’s a bit interesting that the youkai characters are among the most nonthreatening youkai possible. The hero is basically a cleaning youkai, and another character is a haircutter youkai. Moving further from the premise, it repeats its jokes way too much even at a measly 2 volumes (the hero is a cleaning-freak, the haircutter is never noticed).

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(Nariyuki Makase no Tengu Michi, Juutarou Nishino, 2012, 2 volumes)

As far as ecchi romantic comedies go, this is actually pretty decent. The lead is more of slapstick Ataru Moroboshi type rather than the typical spineless good guy so the atmosphere is more of a slapstick comedy. The jokes still are rather typical slapstick comedy but it at least never resorts to uncomfortable woman-shaming territory too much. And at 2 volumes it doesn’t overstay its welcome or went to a half-baked dramatic arc.

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(Ryuu no Kawaii Nanatsu no Ko, Ryoko Kui, 2012, 1 volume)

A short story collection from Ryoko Kui. 

Ryoko Kui is definitely one of the best new artist today. Wildly inventive ideas ( How a dragon brought peace to war, the treatment of low-intelligence humanlike creatures, paintings brought to life, living with a strange disease), good art, and most importantly great sense of sequential art storytelling. Her trick of using a simple autobiographical manga for the mother’s perspective and then switching to her normal artstyle for the son’s perspective is especially amazing. 

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(Bad Police, Tetsuya Saruwatari, 1989, 1 volume)

"So bad it’s good” pulp fiction at its finest.