Tag Archives: yoshihiro yamada

Giant

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Giant

A sports manga about Japanese slugger Mitsugu Kyoho who makes one last ditch effort at becoming a professional baseball player by entering the minor leagues.

I finally got around to reading this fun series by Yoshihiro Yamada. I’m a big fan of Yamada’s stuff and really enjoyed his other sports manga Decathalon. Yamada is the master of over-the-top facial reactions and they work perfectly as Kyoho knocks baseball so hard they fly out of their cow hide. This is an entertaining read as you see Kyoho struggle facing tough opponents despite his huge size. Highly recommend this if you prefer non-shonen sports stories that don’t go on for over thirty volumes.

~dakazu

306 – Fantasy Magazine 2 – Science Fiction

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306 – Fantasy Magazine 2 – Science Fiction

Seamus is out this week so Morgana, Darfox, and dakazu submit their top science fiction manga picks they’d like to license for another edition of Fantasy Magazine! We also discuss Monster #8, Chainsaw Man, I Had That Same Dream Again: The Complete Manga Collection, Lv1 Maou to One Room Yuusha, Mieruko-chan, and more!!!

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Bokyotaro

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Bokyotaro

A manga about a Japanese man who awakens five hundred years into the future after a malfunction in his cold sleep machine. Stuck in an abandoned post-apocalyptic world, he decides to try and travel from Iraq back to Japan.

This is Yoshihiro Yamada‘s current series and I’ve been really enjoying it. What sets apart this post-apocalyptic story from all the others is this twisted sense of logic the current society has adopted. Human decedents are not vicious cannibals but simple folk who have adopted a lifestyle devoid of material wants. The catch is they participate in brutal hunting rituals against deadly feral animals to prove themselves. I love this contrast that the main character struggles to adapt to.

I really think Yamada has a talent for sci-fi stories. His canceled Dokyoboshi was also really good. Fingers crossed this one lasts a while.

~dakazu

Dokyoboshi

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Dokyoboshi

A manga about a Mars space exploration mission gone horribly wrong which leads a young Japanese trucker named Dokyo to become an astronaut.

We’ve discussed this on a recent episode.

Wow, this manga is great. The astronaut training parts feel extremely close to Space Brothers and they’re good but the science fiction segments on Mars are the highlights here. A lone surviving astronaut tries to make sense of the incident that killed the rest of his crew and the mysterious Tesseract that stalks him. The Tessaract is able to manipulate objects that ignore perspectives which make for really interesting art work within the panels.

I’ve read a few of Yoshihiro Yamada‘s manga but I personally loved this one. I feel like science fiction is actually Yamada’s strong suite even though he’s more known for his historical series Hyouge Mono. I think it’s a damn shame that Dokyoboshi was canceled and the story is incomplete. Now I know why there are fans still clamoring for this series to get rebooted and finished. And I’m one of them now too.

~dakazu

Hyouge Mono

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Hyouge Mono

A manga about Sasuke Furuta, a samurai under Nobunaga Oda who was obsessed with the ways of tea and sought the path of being a comical fellow rather than a warlord.

A great series that mixes history with humor. Yoshihiro Yamada is a master of over the top expressions. Despite the heavy historical setting and deep political intrigue, these colorful reactions help keep the story fun and jovial. I’ll admit that toward the end of this series I had a very hard time following all the various characters. Despite that I would recommend this series to anyone looking for a very different take on the popular warring states period of Japan.

~dakazu