Category Archives: Written Word

All written posts

Give My Regards to Black Jack

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Give My Regards to Black Jack

A manga about a young idealistic doctor who must battle against the harsh realities of the current medical system of Japan.

I love Shuho Sato’s Tokkou no Shima and always wanted to read this one. We checked out volume 1 for a recent episode. This book really shows how much Sato has improved his artwork as this earlier work is more rough around the edges. The subject matter seems pretty standard fare for any medical based drama but I did like the main struggle of the protagonist as he clumsily tries to fight against the modern medical machine.

You can read the entire series for free in English on Sato’s website Manga on Web by clicking here. Warning, the site is only in Japanese.

~dakazu

Higanjima

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Higanjima

A manga about a group of young adults trying to survive on a remote island ruled by vampires and hidieous monsters.

I personally love Higanjima but this series is not perfect by any means. First of all, the story doesn’t even start getting interesting until around volume 10. It’s asking a lot of a reader to trudge through a generic and mediocre for that long before you get to the good stuff.

Second, Koji Matsumoto is really terrible at drawing character faces. If you look closely, you can see that almost every character has the same face because he’s incapable of drawing them differently and it actually becomes worse the longer the series lasts.

Lastly, the grotesque designs of the monsters range from original to borderline stupid. There’s a lot of vile sexual violence thrown in there to boot and Matsumoto really seems like he’s leaning into trying to shock and awe the reader. Since the franchise has been serialized for so long and now entered it’s third run I feel like Matsumoto himself is struggling to up the ante now.

That said, there is something unique with the monsters and bad artwork in this book that continues to keeps my interest, along with it’s many fans.

~dakazu

Shingan no Yusha

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Shingan no Yusha

A manga about a shut-in who’s teleported to a fantasy world by selfish goddess who promptly discards him for being weak. He swears revenge and beings his quest to return to his home world by making a pact with another goddess for the power of the “God’s eye”.

It’s another typical isekai manga based on a light novel so it’s filled with typical male empowerment fantasies of female harems and ridiculously overpowered abilities. I will say that making the weapon of choice a log is both stupid and hilarious in a way almost made me wonder if the author is poking fun at a lot of fantasy light novel tropes. However everything else about this is pretty standard so I doubt that.

~It’s log~ It’s log~ It’s big, it’s heavy, it’s wood! It’s log~ It’s log~ It’s better than bad, it’s good!~

Logs are good. Everything else is meh. Not recommended

~dakazu

Kiseijuu Reversi

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Kiseijuu Reversi

A spin-off of the Parasyte series that focuses on the son of mayor Takeshi Hirokawa investigating his father’s secret relationships with the alien Parasites.

Moare Ohta did a one shot for Neo Parasyte that was excellent so he was chosen to startup this spin-off series. I’ve only read a little but I’m happy to say that following the new character Tatsuki has really added a lot to the world of Parasyte.

I’m hopeful that this will eventually be brought to English officially so more people can enjoy more Parasyte!

~dakazu

Kyujyo Sajiki

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Kyujyo Sajiki

A manga about a man who loves baseball and always has his breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the stadium.

This is an unique read. It almost acts like a review of different real-life stadiums all across Japan. Each chapter follows the protagonist as he visits a different stadium, talks about it’s historical significance, comments on the layout of the stadium itself, and eats the food you can get from the stands. There’s even a hexagon graph at the end that rates everything from prices to how comfortably you can watch the game.

I personally don’t care about baseball but found this book informative and fun to read because of the focus on the stadium food.

~dakazu

In/Spectre

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In/Spectre

A manga about a teenage girl and a young man who have gained powers from dealing with Japanese mythical demons who work together to maintain the balance between the human and demon worlds by solving cases.

This series was suggested to us by a listener and I’m glad I got to check it out. I really liked how the yokai demons are presented not as pure monsters but have a wide variety between good and evil.

So far I’m not really behind the relationship between the main characters because a young girl being love obsessed with the guy seems so generic and gross but I hope they’ll expand on this and make it better.

Available in English from Kodansha Comics.

~dakazu

Karakuri Circus

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Karakuri Circus

I’ve been re-reading this classic shonen adventure series by Kazuhiro Fujita. It’s a damn shame that they’re skipping over so much of the story with the current anime adaptation but it’s also fascinating to see how they decided which scenes to include and piece together. I’m just really bummed what they did with Lise and now she’s just there with the Nakamachi circus without an introduction. It reminds me how jarring Hakyuu Houshin Engi was earlier this year.

Still a fantastic series that gets me every time.

~dakazu

Black Lagoon

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Black Lagoon

A manga about a Japanese office man who ends up leaving his country and job to join a mercenary group while in Thailand.

Revisited this series after hearing it came back this year and it really hasn’t aged well at all. Maids & nuns with machine guns makes this feel like the a relic from a time when mixing fetishes with gun violence appealed to fans looking for “edgier” content.

Not for me but if you loved Black Lagoon it’s back so enjoy it I guess.

~dakazu

Chichi Chichi

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Chichi Chichi

A manga about a short picture book writer who ends us living together with a tall and very busty woman.

I checked out this book because it was done by the same creator of Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid which I really enjoyed. Unfortunately I was very disappointed that this was a straight up pervy series that was just using breast fetishism and macrophilia as a selling point.

It tries to do some character building by having the main character be a victim of bullying but it’s kinda difficult be emotionally invested in someone who “accidentally” ends up titty fucking his roommate all the time and has a busty sister who wants to bang him.

Shallow and basic. Not for me.

~dakazu

18 Rin

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18 Rin

A manga about a prestigious young teenager who starts working at an adult film production company to make ends meet after dropping out of high school.

I was extremely skeptical of this manga when I started reading it because I was just waiting for the protagonist to be taken advantage of in some horrible way and it does immediately start with some exploitative fan service by putting the girl in various porno costumes because she doesn’t own any other clothes. But while they do start with jokes revolving around her child-like innocence about sexual content, this series starts to focus on the members of the company working together to make a successful product.

There are some fun behind-the-scenes information about the Japanese adult film industry that were interesting to learn about and the wacky cast of co-workers ended up making this an actually nice story. The ending was pretty abrupt so I presume it ended up being got canceled. A shame because you could tell there were some story plots that were never finished.

There was a drama adaptation which I think could be funny and I’d like to check out sometime.

~dakazu