310 – Saikyo Selections 13 – Fushigi Yûgi
The wonderful manga letterer Sara Linsley is back to help lead this Saikyo Selection on Fushigi Yûgi! We dive into Yuu Watase’s beloved shoujo series along with the newest Fushigi Yûgi: Byakko Senki which Sara lettered! We praise Watase’s amazing art, appreciate the 90′s pretty boys aesthetics, discuss the often dark drama, and explore the criticisms of certain cross-dressing characters!!!
Continue reading298 – Yu Yu Hakusho part 5
Join us for the penultimate episode of our Yu Yu Hakusho Retrospective! We discuss Yoshihiro Togashi’s deteriorating art quality, major issues with the English translation, and parallels between the events of Chapter Black and current events! Also Seamus talks about Ooku: The Inner Chambers, dakazu follows up on last week’s INVESTOR-Z and I Want to Hold Aono-kun So Badly I Could Die, and we discuss the manga nominees for the 2020 Eisner Awards!!!
Continue reading275 – 2019 Year End News & Manga Review
Welcome to the final episode of Manga Machinations for 2019! Seamus is back, which means all the hosts are ready to discuss all the news stories from this year before sharing their personal top 3 manga, honorable mentions, and worst manga of the year!!!
Continue reading270 – One Shot 25 – The Ghost and the Lady
On this episode Morgana loves the wholesome Nicola Traveling Around the Demons’ World while dakazu reads Nagata Kabi’s newest book and absolutely hates the illogical Kunihachibu. We also discuss updates to piracy litigation and Japanese censorship laws. Finally, we dive into Kazuhiro Fujita’s historical ghost story about the Man in Grey and Florence Nightingale in The Ghost and the Lady!!!
Continue readingSolfege
A collection of BL stories by Fumi Yoshinaga.
I love Fumi Yoshinaga but these stories weren’t great. They’re overly dramatic and don’t get away from the classic yaoi relationships that are basically sexual assault.
The longest multi part story is about a music teacher who sleeps with his student. I will say that I am really sick of stories involving romantic relationships between teachers and students. I’m a teacher myself and I think it’s one of the most overused plots that personally infuriate me. The music teacher is the one to come onto the student so that’s awful. The student is characterized as being somewhat dimwitted which makes it worse. And the happy ending to the story seems to justify that everything that happened was OK. It’s terrible.
Also you don’t say a student isn’t understanding solfege when you’re playing a random note on the piano. You’re mixing sight-singing with notating a melody!
~dakazu
263 – One Shot 23 – All My Darling Daughters
Our regular host dakazu is away this week so it’s up to darfox8, Seamus, and Morgana to do a One Shot on Fumi Yoshinaga’s All My Darling Daughters!
Continue readingWhat Did You Eat Yesterday?
A food manga about a middle-aged gay couple and the meals they eat together.
This is the manga that introduced me to Fumi Yoshinaga and it’s still one of her best series. I absolutely love the relationship between the more serious and closeted lawyer and his effeminate hair dresser partner. As you read the series the lawyer starts to open up about his sexuality slowly to his family and friends and it’s just a wonderful character progression. Also Yoshinaga does not skim over any details of the food and the recipes are covered thoroughly.
A fantastic LGBTQ+ couple and food manga combo. Highly recommended and available in English from Vertical Publishing! I’m looking forward to the live-action drama this year!
~dakazu
Ōoku: The Inner Chambers
A manga about an alternate history of the Edo period of Japan where a disease wipes out 90% of the male population and the government is ruled by female shoguns who make use of a special male harem to produce offspring.
I love Fumi Yoshinaga’s work but when I started reading Ōoku I felt I had to take notes because there were SO MANY characters spanning various timelines of different rulers. The alternate history aspect was also fascinating but hard to follow because I’m so ignorant of Japanese history. The use of early modern English in the translation also didn’t help.
I recently read the newest volume and was reminded of how beautifully crafted this series was. Despite my ignorance with the historical references, I couldn’t help but be invested in the characters and their motives within the Japanese court.
The series is phenomenal and available in English from VIZ. I highly recommended it.
~dakazu
190 – One Shot 11 – A Lollypop or a Bullet
This week we battle against technical difficulties to review A Lollypop and a Bullet!
Continue readingAntique Bakery
Found this older manga by Fumi Yoshinaga. I really enjoy her work and this is no exception. This one follows a bakery run by a genius playboy pastry chef, his high school crush with a dark past, and the former boxer who is his disciple.
While Yoshinaga often writes yaoi/BL manga, I appreciate that she doesn’t focus on sex but instead focuses on relationships and the emotional weight they carry. I want to track down the anime version and watch it as well.
~dakazu