Category Archives: Written Word

All written posts

Shinjuku Swan

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Shinjuku Swan

A manga about a young man who becomes a scout man for the red light district of Shibuya, Japan.

We’ve discussed this on an older episode.

This is essentially a crime drama. It’s a well done story that follows the main character’s decent into the seedy underbelly of the red light districts. There’s a fair bit of exploitation as the scout men recruit women to work at cabaret bars and brothels while taking a cut for themselves. This manga doesn’t shy away from those elements and the main character strives to uphold a sense of righteousness to protect his clients. Eventually it turns into all out war with other scout groups and criminals that makes this feel like a delinquent series that stars men instead of teenagers. Ken Wakui really evolved his art work as the series progressed and it’s almost completely different for his current manga Tokyo Revengers.

~dakazu

Ase to Sekken

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Ase to Sekken

A manga about a soap maker who finds a co-worker with a scent he can’t get enough of.

Yup, this is problematic.

On the surface this is a romance series that leads to a relationship between a man and a woman but I really take issue with how everything starts. The soap maker smells the woman and literally drags her to a wall where he starts sniffing her. He apologizes and explains that her scent is the key to his new product and she reluctantly agrees to him using her as “inspiration”.

The poor woman is already self conscious about being overly sweaty all the time and now she has a man invading her personal space. When she implies that their smelling time is over because he finished his new project, the man ends up putting his hand up her skirt because he wants to keep smelling her. Though he does realize what a horrible thing he did after she shoves him off and runs away, I thought is was REALLY convenient that he ends up saving her from a creeper smelling her on a train later. It’s hard not to roll your eyes as she tells him he’s nothing like the train pervert and she actually wants him to smell her more.

Eventually they start dating and seem to genuinely love each other but this romance is justifying that a man’s aggressive approach is just what a woman wants. And that is a bad message to sell, even if the rest of your story is about them being in love.

~dakazu

Ninja Papa

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Ninja Papa

A manga about a balding office worker who is a former ninja assassin.

Pretty good! The story starts with the ninja being pushed to the edge by various evil criminals that he punishes with death. Later on he must defend against other ninjas from his clan who seek to punish him for desertion, all while hiding his real identity from his family.

They spend a lot of time emphasizing that the ninja is an ugly guy but he’s simply balding and has a large button nose. Despite his mother-in-law and boss nagging at him I’m glad his wife was there to tell him she thinks he’s handsome. I feel like manga generally emphasizes good/bad facial features and it’s nice to see this book stars an unattractive man who cares for his family.

~dakazu

Musume no Iede

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Musume no Iede

A manga about a high school girl who runs away from her mother to the home of her divorced father and his boyfriend.

We’ve discussed this manga on a Triple Dip episode.

This is my favorite work by Takako Shimura that I’ve read. I like this much better than Wandering Son because each the story jumps from different character to character. Most of the stories involve some kind of family issues. I love how they setup an unfaithful scumbag and then dedicated a chapter to flesh him out with his relationships to other characters in the story. I also give a lot of credit to Shimura for including characters with bigger body types and exploring them.

It’s a lovely series and I wish it would get an official adaptation.

~dakazu

The Heroic Legend of Arslan

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The Heroic Legend of Arslan

A manga about the crown prince of the Pars, Arslan, who must retake the kingdom from the invading Lusitania army.

The Heroic Legend of Arslan is a well known and popular fantasy novel series by Yoshiki Tanaka from the 90’s. It’s had multiple anime adaptations and a previous manga adaptation but this one is drawn by Hiromu Arakawa of Full Metal Alchemist fame. Arakawa’s artwork is a perfect match for the fictional Persian setting. Her expertise in fight scenes work well with all the sword fighting. Also Arakawa’s penchant for manly men characters also fits nicely with all the male soldiers and generals.

A new anime started a few years back but has unfortunately already overtaken this manga’s plot. Arakawa works slowly so it’ll be a while until she finishes this whole series but I look forward to reading more when it comes out.

Available from Kodansha Comics.

~dakazu

Ahiru no Sora

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Ahiru no Sora

A manga about a short basketball player who enters a school where the basketball team is a hangout for delinquents.

We’ve discussed this series on an older episode.

This is a really solid sports manga. I would go far to say that it is a spiritual successor to SLAM DUNK for basketball manga. The series really examines basketball as high school athletics and lots of the plot revolve around the delinquents having to answer for their past behavior. Sora and his teammates go through a lot of setbacks before they even start to see success and I think it’s realistic. You wouldn’t expect a group of slackers who’ve never committed to a sport to suddenly do well and the series really takes it’s time with that. I’ve also never seen a sport manga with such an accurate representation for a player who quits the team. Takeshi Hinata‘s distinct artwork works hand in hand with the story to express the frustration and elation of the characters.

This long running sports manga is getting attention now that an anime adaptation has come out. Unfortunately Kodansha has yet to put out an official English version. I doesn’t help that for the past few years Hinata has been suffering from medical issues that have kept the series regular hiatus status.

~dakazu

Spotless Love: This Love Cannot Be Any More Beautiful.

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Spotless Love: This Love Cannot Be Any More Beautiful.

A manga about a girl with obsessive-compulsive disorder who falls in love with a child assassin.

We’ve discussed this on an episode of Darfox Dabbles.

An interesting series to say the least. While it’s unique to have a main character who suffers from OCD, the representation here is very stereotypical and offensive. She breaks out in a rash from being exposed to trash and thinks dissolving corpses is beautiful.

Actually the whole manga suffers from any semblance of reality as they have an assassin fight in an elementary schools with remote controlled mounted guns. Like, don’t you think somebody would notice them!?

But despite it being totally unrealistic the artwork is very good with some really stylish action scenes. It’s a relatively new series with not many chapters out so I’ll keep reading more for now. You can read it for free on Manga PLUS.

~dakazu

Komi Can’t Communicate

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Komi Can’t Communicate

A manga about socially anxious high school girl named Komi who wants to make 100 friends.

Super cute series. I like it how funny it is but I can’t help but feel like it’s going to become a harem situation because Komi’s first friend fits that mold of “best boyfriend but not actually anyone’s boyfriend”. Thankfully this series barely has any fan service.

I’m also sad because in the English edition they can’t play up the different character names that represent who they are. Hitohito Tadano is “Tadanohito” which means ordinary guy, Najimi Osano is “Osananajimi” which means childhood friend and so on and so forth.

But my nitpicks aside, this is still a great manga and available from VIZ.

~dakazu

Gohan no Otomo

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Gohan no Otomo

A collection of stories about people and their favorite side dishes that go well with rice.

Love this. Artist Tana has such a cute art style. This also has a lot of color pages which is pretty uncommon for manga. The stories follow different characters but they all exist in periphery of each other that as you read more you’ll see them pop up in the background. Some tales are humorous and others are touching. And to top it off each chapter ends with a recipe page which teaches you how to make the side dish.

A lovely manga that fills both the heart and belly!

~dakazu

Jisatsutou

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Jisatsutou

A manga about suicidal patients who have been stranded by the Japanese government to a lawless island to fend for themselves.

Fantastic survival series. We discussed this one all the time in the early days of our podcast. Kouji Mori has a really interesting writing style where he’ll address the audience directly to give information about survival tips or comments about fishing and eating deer.

The story follows a young man named Sei who teaches himself how to hunt wild game with a bow. The beginning of the series is very intense as many of the stranded immediately start killing themselves in despair. Sei lives up to his namesake(which means live) and changes himself as he learns to hunt for food. There’s also plenty of conflict as the island is lawless and certain groups use power to oppress and steal. There’s even a queer character who gets decent representation.

Everything about this series is engaging and exciting. I think it’s a real shame we haven’t seen any of Mori’s manga get official English releases because they’re all great.

Mori is currently writing a prequel series called Muhoutou. It’s good but I’m not sure how things will go considering the fate of those survivors was already established in this series.

~dakazu