Sen wa, Boku wo Egaku

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Sen wa, Boku wo Egaku

A manga about a college student who’s lost his family to an accident who befriends a master of ink wash painting and beginning his own journey as an artist.

This recently started in Weekly Shonen Magazine and I’ve been really enjoying it so far. It’s an adaptation of a novel by Hiromasa Togami and the theme of sumi-e paintings work perfectly within the black and white manga medium. Artist Atsunori Horiuchi masterfully recreates these ink wash pieces within the panels that are so lovely to look at. The story also does a great job conveying how artists emotions and intent are so represented in their work.

Title is also perfect as it translates to “The lines, they draw me”. Works on multiple levels.

~dakazu

265 – Anime Interlude 12 – Fire Force

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265 – Anime Interlude 12 – Fire Force

Miki’s Stopwatch returns to join us for another episode of Anime Interlude! We discuss our favorite series from the summer 2019 season and our impressions of new anime from fall 2019. Also dakazu won’t shut up about his man-crush Kenjiro Tsuda!!!

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Beast Complex

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Beast Complex

The precursor to BEASTARS. Each chapter focuses on the relationship between a different carnivore and herbivore pair.

Reading this you can really tell that Paru Itagaki had everything figured out before she started BEASTARS. There’s so much thought put into this world she’s created. You can almost tell through these little vignettes that Itagaki just wants to share this complex animal society and the interesting stories she can craft here. I love it.

~dakazu

KoLD8: King of the Living Dead

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KoLD8: King of the Living Dead

A manga about young survivor during a zombie apocalypse who gains the ability to command the living dead.

We’ve discussed this series on a previous episode.

This was serialized in Jump+ but ended abruptly without finishing the story. I suppose it couldn’t be helped because it was pretty mediocre by all standards so it was most likely canceled.

I enjoyed Pageratta‘s previous manga called Hinmin Choujin Kanenashi-kun but I was mostly just shocked how they decided to jump from a lighthearted comedy to the horror genre. Apparently there’s an epilogue that’s only in the final volume and I wouldn’t mind reading it just to see what happened.

~dakazu

Yuko Sae Tatakaeba

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Yuko Sae Tatakaeba

A comedy manga about a high school girl who gets recruited into a tournament between demons but doesn’t care to be involved despite her natural omnipotent abilities.

Great premise. I love how this series takes the shonen battle troupe from something like Zatch Bell! and turns it on it’s head. There’s such good odd couple comedy with the demon who wants to fight so badly and the dense girl who just wants to go to school. Even when rivals appear she defeats them handily but doesn’t finish them off because she thinks the tournament is a simple game. This is one of the few series I follow in Weekly Shonen Sunday and it’s gimmick hasn’t gotten old yet.

~dakazu

Shinotori

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Shinotori

A manga about a prisoner who escapes from a hijacked plane alongside a mysterious girl with wings into a world where a viral epidemic is transforming humans into cannibalistic bird monsters.

This is essentially a zombie manga except they’ve replaced zombies with birds. The artwork by Dr. Imu is fairly impressive and creative when it came to the various monster designs but the story felt really rote and predictable. It was pretty mediocre in my eyes and not really worth recommending.

~dakazu

O Maidens in Your Savage Season

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O Maidens in Your Savage Season

A manga about 5 high school girls of a literature club who become conscience about sex.

We discussed this on a recent episode.

This series is kind of a mixed bag for me. I like that it explores the youthful sexual awakening through the eyes of female protagonists. However a lot of these explorations lead to extremely dramatic moments, which the author Mari Okada is known for. I would’ve preferred if the series took a more thoughtful approach to sexual exploration like Scum’s Wish did, instead of using it to create drama for drama’s sake. I did think Nao Emoto‘s expressive artwork was impressive.

It’s available in English from Kodansha Comics.

~dakazu

Kuishinbo!

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Kuishinbo!

A manga about a salary man who’s large appetite leads him into the world of competitive eating.

I really love this series. I remember thinking how unique it was to cover competitive eating as a manga topic when I first read it years ago. Shigeru Tsuchiyama has made his career on making food manga and you can see why here.

It’s available in English through Kindle & comiXology.

~dakazu

264 – dakazu diversions 4 – dakazu’s Trip to Japan

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264 – dakazu diversions 4 – dakazu’s Trip to Japan

On this episode a very jet-lagged and lethargic dakazu has returned to talk about his vacation to Japan! dakazu rambles on about disposable manga magazines, Japanese bathrooms, going to the Shonen Jump bar, and the aggressive animals at the famous Nara deer park by the Great Buddha Hall!!!

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Misoji Meshi

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Misoji Meshi

A food manga about a 30 year-old woman who enjoys meals at real-life restaurants and eateries.

I love me some good food manga and it’s always impressive when have ones like this that incorporate real places you can go visit. There are some really creative reaction scenes as the food sprout faces and talk to the woman in her imagination. I also really loved Shizuka Itou‘s art work. Almost all of her shading is done by hand and that gives it an almost pencil sketch like look.

~dakazu