Reincarnation no Kaben
A manga about humans who access the powers of historical figures from their past lives by using transmigration.
While it’s interesting to see how creator Mikihisa Konishi interprets the powers of various historical figures, this book fails on executing it’s story with giant dumps of exposition and some confusing panel layouts.
You can listen to us discuss the series on this episode if you want to hear more details.
~dakazu
Pentabu to Sensha
A wacky comedy about a military otaku who time travels back to join a tank squad during the forgotten Soviet-Japanese war of 1939.
The concept of sending an otaku back in history isn’t unique as I’ve talked about Sengoku Comiket before. The main difference here is the leader of the tank squad has a fetish for tanks and eventually decides to keep fighting so that he can one day attend comiket.
Honestly I’m wasn’t interested in a lot of the moe based jokes so this one fell a little flat for me but I did really like Rem Sakakibara’s character art.
~dakazu
Orebushi
A manga about a young man who leaves his hometown for Tokyo to become an Enka singer.
I decided to read this because I was immediately intrigued by the art. Seiki Tsuchida uses are very realistic art style and it fits with the tale of young Kouji who tries to overcome his social awkwardness to become a performer. The story is filled with romance and drama. I enjoyed the use of real Enka song lyrics that accentuated the plot, making a kind of soundtrack to for the book.
~dakazu
APOSIMZ
A manga about a futuristic world where humans try to survive against extreme conditions, invading armies, and a frame disease that slowly changes you into a robot-like doll.
This series is basically Tsutomu Nihei’s take on a shonen manga and a sentai hero. The protagonist abandons his humanity to gain super powers to fight against an oppressive regime. Even the design of his doll armor is very reminiscent of the insect inspired designs of Kamen Rider.
One thing to note is how Nihei’s art style has evolved since his days of writing BLAME!. While completing Knights of Sidonia, you can tell he started replacing his black inking and leaving them white. This style works well with the snowy setting of Aposimz and gives it a much cleaner look.
Although I miss the ambiguity of his storytelling, this new work by Nihei is still great.
~dakazu
Mimic
A manga about a pretty and refined high school girl who secretly lives a wild life as a hunter living in the mountains in a cave.
This was alright. They pair the girl with a boy who crushes on her and finds out her secret and he gets to experience her lifestyle of hunter and foraging for food. I would preferred to have the stories focus more on the survival aspect but that takes a backseat to some possible romantic plot lines.
I’ll probably keep reading it for now.
~dakazu
A Drifting Life
An autobiographical manga about Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s journey to becoming a manga artist and being a leader in the gekiga-style manga movement.
I finally checked out this wonderful book recommended by our co-host Seamus. I’m a huge fan of Manga Michi and other memoirs about the golden age of manga creators in the 1950′s to 1960′s. However I wasn’t aware of how the gekiga style was popularized in western Japan so this really entertaining to read through.
The only part that bothered me was Tatsumi’s relationship with a young high school girl. While I appreciated his honesty about what happened it still wasn’t great to read about.
If you have any interest in how the greats like Takao Saito started then I highly recommend this series.
~dakazu
216 – Triple Dip 31 – Starving Anonymous, Scum’s Wish, The Fable
On this episode we check out 3 more manga for another Triple Dip! Seamus picks the ultimate unrequited love story of Scum’s Wish, darfox with the crime drama about a legendary hitman in The Fable, and dakazu brings the grotesque horror of Starving Anonymous!
Continue readingDevily Man
A manga about a low ranking demon with a pure heart that teams up with a young boy genius to exploit corrupted adults and take their dirty money.
You can see hints of a really interesting story here with the mystery of the young boy’s motivations and the juxtaposition of the demon being the moral center of the duo but this series was canceled after only 16 chapters. It’s another unfortunate example of a young manga artist put into the Weekly Shonen Jump meat grinder of new releases. It makes me wonder if series like these would have had better success in Weekly Shonen Sunday or Weekly Shonen Champion instead.
~dakazu
The Garden of Words
A manga adaptation of Makoto Shinkai’s anime film about a teen who wants to become a shoemaker befriending a young woman he meets in a pagoda on rainy days.
We’ve talked about this movie on an episode a long time ago. It’s a gorgeous film but we really weren’t fans of the whole teacher/student romance because it’s super cliche and gross. I checked out this manga adaptation but I felt it didn’t really change my opinion of the story.
I’d recommend checking out the movie as long as you’re OK with a story about a teacher/student stuff. It should be interesting to see some of Shinkai’s themes that are carried over into Your Name.
~dakazu
Binzo
A manga about an idol otaku who becomes a zombie while still retaining his human intellect.
I rather enjoyed this despite the overused zombie genre. It was interesting to see the main character figuring out how to control his zombie powers and I really liked how they immediately set up another smart zombie serial killer as an antagonist. The story also follows the actions of the government which makes sense considering a zombie out break is happening.
The art style is very similar to Hiroshi Takahashi. Almost so that I was surprised when I realized he wasn’t the artist.
I’m slightly torn that it was only 4 volumes. Short enough that it didn’t overstay it’s welcome but also felt that there could’ve been more stories to explore.
~dakazu