The Girl from the Other Side
A manga about a young girl protected by a demonic looking man who is an Outsider.
This manga is fantastic. Nagabe’s art work is phenomenal and gorgeous looking. The plot might be a little slow but I really liked how they used that slow pacing to maintain a sense of dread and uncertainty with barely any actions.
We’ve discussed it on this episode if you’d like to hear our detailed thoughts. Highly recommended you check this book out for yourself.
~dakazu
Uramichi Oniisan
A manga about a man who works on a children’s television show who ends up showing his dark, cynic, and pessimistic personality sometimes.
I love this kind of dark comedy. Uramichi bitching about responsibilities of being a functioning adult to the children on his show are priceless.
On an interesting side note, I learned about this web manga series after creator Gaku Kuze posted a small Uramichi Oniisan short on twitter complaining about the state of manga piracy. Somehow it was very fitting for this character to explain why Japanese publishers were hesitant to crack down on manga piracy. It’s a good thing they’ve recently changed their attitude about it.
~dakazu
Yokohamasen Doppelganger
A manga about a man accused of murders he didn’t commit that travel back in time 11 years to team up with his younger self to find the true killer.
An interesting murder mystery with a sci-fi twist. I really liked the idea of a protagonist who can literally trust himself. There’s some great parallels happening with the future version being obsessed with killing the killer and the past self wanting more to save the victims. I won’t spoil it but I really liked the ending too.
~dakazu
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
Devily 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