Monthly Archives: October 2018

Cells at Work [BLACK] 

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Cells at Work [BLACK] 

A manga about the hustle and bustle of cells trying to keep an unhealthy human host alive.

A spin-off of the popular Cells at Work series, this manga is about a human who’s riddled with health problems like smoking, alcohol addiction, and STDs. Just like it’s title, the tone is much darker and grimmer. It also gender swaps the main red blood cell and white blood cell characters.

Funny story is that before the anime started I had only read this manga so I was pleasantly surprised to learn that this was a spin-off specifically following an unhealthy human. I recommend watching the anime or checking out the original because the tone of this one is just too depressing.

~dakazu

211 – Manga in Motion 33 – Animal World

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211 – Manga in Motion 33 – Animal World

Apologies in advance as Seamus had to skip this week’s podcast so we changed from our planned retrospective to another Manga in Motion instead. So at darfox’s request we look at the Chinese Animal World based on Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji!

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Butsu-Zone

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Butsu-Zone

A manga about the 1000 hands Senju who must protect a young girl who is the reincarnation of Gautama Buddha and help her reach enlightenment.

This is the debut work of Hiroyuki Takei, who is most well known for his ultra popular Shaman King series. Although Butsu-Zone ended early, you can see hints of motifs and designs that Takei would eventually use in his future projects. Even the popular character Anna Kyoyama was originally used in this book and some of the mech-like armor designs would be used in Takei’s Jumbor series.

It’s an interesting manga to see where Takei started.

~dakazu

Buggy Whip

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Buggy Whip

Sports manga about a high school boy with terrible tennis skills named Arata that get’s trained by Sakura, a former genius upperclassman.

A pretty decent realistic take on the sport of tennis, similar in feel to Baby Steps. Compared to typical shonen sports manga, this series isn’t about Arata’s journey to become the number one player in Japan. Instead it follows him as he slowly breaks through his own inferiority complex while butting heads against his mentor and it ends quickly once that resolution is reached. This kind of story progression might be why this ran in the seinen magazine Monthly Afternoon. My only complaint was that there wasn’t enough distinction between characters because many of their faces look too similar.

A solid sports manga that was interesting for it’s story.

~dakazu

Prison School

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Prison School

A manga about 5 boys who attend the recently co-ed elite private boarding school Hachimitsu Academy and are imprisoned on campus after peeking the girl’s bathing area.

This is a manga that fits the concept of a serious comedy, that was described in the manga Bakuman, to a T. All characters are 100% serious about their actions and motivations but they are so extreme and over-reacting that it looks absurd from the reader’s perspective. The extreme part helps me look past the insane amount of fan service and T&A in this series because at the manga is so self-aware of what it’s doing. Though I do think Akira Hiramoto is having his cake and eating it too when it comes to the vice president character.

This manga is hilarious. The anime and live-action were also hilarious. Available from Yen Press.

~dakazu

Hyouge Mono

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Hyouge Mono

A manga about Sasuke Furuta, a samurai under Nobunaga Oda who was obsessed with the ways of tea and sought the path of being a comical fellow rather than a warlord.

A great series that mixes history with humor. Yoshihiro Yamada is a master of over the top expressions. Despite the heavy historical setting and deep political intrigue, these colorful reactions help keep the story fun and jovial. I’ll admit that toward the end of this series I had a very hard time following all the various characters. Despite that I would recommend this series to anyone looking for a very different take on the popular warring states period of Japan.

~dakazu

Utsu Gohan

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Utsu Gohan

A collections of sad and depressing experiences involving food.

This is a bizarre manga to say the least. Each chapter revolves around the author trying to enjoy some food, whether it be a soft serve ice cream cone or some fries and cola at McDonald’s. But every story ends in a minor tragedy. 

With the ice cream, he get’s embarrassed about being a grown adult walking around with it, tries to eat it quickly, and then ends up with brain freeze. While carrying his McDonald’s tray upstairs to the eating area, he knocks over his drink and spills cola on his tray, the fries start soaking up the cola, and he spills more cola on his pants as he tries to avoid other customers on the stairs.

Every chapter left me with an undeniable sense of melancholy. It didn’t feel good but in a weird way I was impressed with artist Yuki Shikawa’s ability to make me feel bad…should that be a positive for this book?

I kinda liked this but probably won’t go back and re-read it ever again.

~dakazu

210 – Manga in Motion 32 – Bleach

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210 – Manga in Motion 32 – Bleach

This episode we look at the recent live-action adaptation of Bleach and ask ourselves the question “was this ever good to begin with?”

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