338 – One Shot 36 – Mermaid in the Bottle & Leaper & Mine-kun is Asexual
On this episode we answer lots of emails and dakazu reads about the devastation on the Sanriku Railway during the 2011 Tohoku tsunami in Santetsu! Then we review Isaki Uta’s Mine-kun is Asexual, Mermaid in the Bottle, and Leaper! All three doujinshi are available from Irodori Comics!
Continue reading304 – Kasane part 1
Welcome as we begin our newest Retrospective on Daruma Matsuura’s Kasane! We’re excited to dive into this dark fairy tale of Kasane Fuchi and her magical lipstick that allows her to swap her hideous face with others. Join us as we discuss everything from Kasane’s addiction to beauty to the Japanese ghost story it’s based on!!!
Continue reading277 – Manga in Motion 41 – Mary and the Witch’s Flower
On this episode dakazu checks out more volumes of Maiden Railways, Darfox experiences his first Kazuo Umezu manga with The Drifting Classroom, and Morgana wasn’t expecting the dark turns in BEASTARS. Then we compare Studio Ponoc’s debut movie, Mary and the Witch’s Flower, to Ghibli films for Manga in Motion!!!
Continue readingThe Wize Wize Beasts of the Wizarding Wizdoms
A manga about anthropomorphized animals who attend a school to learn magic.
Man, this one was such a disappointment. I love Nagabe‘s The Girl from the Other Side so I was looking forward to reading this.
Nagabe‘s art work shines in the designs of the various anthropomorphized characters. They have a similar but contrasting style to Paru Itagaki‘s BEASTARS characters. I loved the framing of panels and subtle touches like adding an animal index at the end of each chapter. Unfortunately I kinda hated all the stories.
There is a chapter about a romance between a teacher and student. As a teacher myself, I will tell you that nothing makes me roll my eyes faster than seeing this cliche in manga. It’s incredibly stupid. Another chapter had a creepy crow who manipulated others so he could claim the attention of his beautiful peacock friend. Then there was also a chapter about young vampire bats kissing and it felt like I was watching children exploring sexuality and that really grossed me out(though to be fair there isn’t any indication about their actually age).
Basically, lots of the story content seemed to line up with bad troupes of older BL and I really hated those parts. I did like the story between a red deer and his cold blooded lizard roommate because it felt devoid of those troupes. But I had high expectation for this book and I feel let down.
2/5 stars on the Morgana scale for me. It’s available in English from Seven Seas Entertainment.
~dakazu
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