ARTBOOK SPOTLIGHT: Kazuo Umezu Prints 21
Posted: October 31, 2010 Filed under: Artbooks 1 Comment »I’ve talked about the magazine 21st Century Prints/Prints 21 before, when I featured the Moyoco Anno issue. I haven’t found out that much more about it since, but I don’t think they make a habit of featuring manga artists. Though this month is a feature on GeGeGe no Kitaro’s Shigeru Mizuki, possibly keeping with a Halloween theme, or something. I don’t know.
This issue is from February 2010, and features horror artist Kazuo Umezu. He’s quite famous, not only as a manga artist but also as a personality in Japan. Several of his works have been translated into English. I talked about Cat-Eyed Boy earlier today, but you could also pick up Scary Books, Orochi, Drifting Classroom (highly recommended, and the only one of his long series published here), and Reptilia, the oldest shoujo manga volume to be published in English as of yet.
I am inordinately fond of Kazuo Umezu, both because he draws really great manga series and because I love that he retired and then decided he would make a name for himself being an eccentric old man. Everything he does is spectacular, and he loves being a celebrity. This magazine only really scratches the surface.
Cat-Eyed Boy 2
Posted: October 31, 2010 Filed under: Cat-Eyed Boy 1 Comment »Kazuo Umezu – Viz – 2008 -2 volumes
I liked the first volume of this series quite a bit, but my roommate had such a negative opinion I thought I would hold off reviewing the second volume and re-read it at a later date. He’s a big fan of Umezu, so I thought maybe I just got caught up in the shiny newness of this series and the fact it was published in a large fancy omnibus with color pages.
In some ways, he was right. There are two things that Umezu is fantastic at drawing: terrified children and humanoid monsters. These work well for short stories, and in an anthology series like Cat-Eyed Boy, a new monster and a scared bratty kid are all you need to carry a short story, where the plot can be any simple idea. But it doesn’t hold up so well when the stories are longer. “The Band of One Hundred Monsters” and “The Meatball Monster” take up the first 300 pages of this book. “One Hundred Monsters” is a carryover story from volume one, and runs for 100 pages. Basically, the Cat-Eyed Boy is trying to save a family (specifically an innocent little boy) from a demon siege. There are some choice moments here, for instance the duel with a spider-woman and the scenes where Cat-Eyed Boy slowly unmasks the band, but the fact that most of the plot involves running from monsters, being tortured by monsters, or fighting monsters means that the novelty gets old fast. This is taken to the extreme in “The Meatball Monster,” where Cat-Eyed Boy spends 200 pages fighting one monster as a family acts as stupid as possible and he is continuously hindered by a “human blood transfusion.”
The problems in the first two stories are magnified by the very thing that made Drifting Classroom so much fun to read. Frequently, Cat-Eyed Boy can just “do” things that it doesn’t really make sense he can do. The biggest offender is when he suddenly starts breathing fire in order to stop the spider woman in the first story. This is “explained” by swallowed gas and a hot coal in his mouth, but there’s quite a bit of this, and it always feels a little cheap when it happens. Sometimes the results are quite funny, like when Cat-Eyed Boy discovers a cure for cancer, then immediately disregards it, but reading the two long stories with lots of instances of these types of things is really frustrating.
The last third of the volume is quite enjoyable though, as we get back to basics with short stories and terrified children running from monsters. The scenarios really are fantastic, and we get everything from a child’s Bosch-like trip to Hell to save his mother to a very young boy getting kidnapped by a snake man in a trenchcoat. One of them also ends with a little boy being pursued by his mother’s rotting corpse through the street. The stories are short enough to be enjoyable both on Umezu’s best strengths and by good ideas, and I’d absolutely love to see more of them. Even a slightly longer story, about a wooden Kannon that comes to life to drink the blood of those her nun saves. Not only is the image of the killer nun and the bloodthirsty hundred-armed Kannon an excellent one, there’s also a little bit of a mystery keeping things interesting. There’s a nonsensical, but interesting, twist at the end as well.
It’s also worth noting that this is one of the only instances of a female Buddhist nun I’ve ever seen in a manga.
Cat-Eyed Boy is at its worst when the stories are long, but the short stories that make up the rest of the series are very much worth reading, and they’re interesting from a historical perspective too, since we see very little manga from the 60s in the US. Tezuka and Umezu are the only two artists, I think, unless some of the Tatsumi stories that have been translated hail from the 60s. I don’t think we saw any Golgo 13 stories from the 60s in the material that was translated into English. And… hm, the last story in Hino’s Lullabies from Hell may be of a 60s vintage, I’m pretty sure that was one of his debut stories. The first volume has a few more short stories in it than this one, I think, but this one is still worth picking up for the stories in the back. Power through the boring stuff in front, if you want. It is kind of ridiculous how long the Meatball Monster story lasts.
I would still love to see more of Umezu’s work in English, especially his longer series, since Drifting Classroom raised my expectations. The story of Chicken George, the evil human/chicken hybrid in Fourteen, is still my top choice. Especially since it has the most terrifying covers I’ve ever seen.
Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service 11
Posted: October 31, 2010 Filed under: Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service Leave a comment »Eiji Otsuka / Housui Yamazaki – Dark Horse – 2010 – 14+ volumes
Unusually, we see a little bit of Sasayama in this volume. The stories tend to spotlight a member of the delivery service, in most cases lately revealing everything about their background. Sasayama is a special case, since presumably we will find out about him in MPD Psycho. This story is about a troubled little girl he took in, and the crimes surrounding her life a few years ago and in the present. It’s a genuinely creepy story, and the motives of the little girl are pretty ambiguous almost until the end. Unsurprisingly, she possesses a kind of strange sight in one eye. It’s not… really the same as the various specialties of the Kurosagi group, but it is interesting, and she puts it to good use.
Also unusual is that the Kurosagi members don’t really play prominent roles in this story. It’s largely all the little girl, she does the investigating, gets involved in the incidents, et cetera. The story starts with Makino and Yata getting student teaching positions at the school in question and Numata getting a guard position. Karatsu and Sasaki appear periodically with information relevant to the girl’s case.
While this volume is definitely awesome, I’m still waiting for all the fun details about what happened to Karatsu several volumes ago, or the whole story behind him. I’m willing to bet that’s more of an “end of the series”-type revelation, but I’m still curious.
I’m also a little worried the series is moving away from the “Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service” as a group, since the characters are so clearly unsuccessful at making a living at what they do best. The scenes with Sasaki and Karatsu in the meeting room by themselves were particularly eerie.
While the story of the little girl takes up most of the volume, there’s a one-off case included in the back that… I don’t know, I think the bodies are zombies, and it has something to do with performance-enhancing drugs. It was everything you’ve come to expect from the series… creepy, a little funny, lots of science, pop culture, urban legends, and other stuff come into play, and with a fantastic walking dead ending. The gigantic, bloated rats were particularly memorable, and they didn’t even play a part, really.
I still enjoy this series as much as I did when I picked up the first volume. Even more, in fact. It’s one of my absolute favorites coming out right now, and I hope desperately that it’s popular enough that Dark Horse sees it through to the finish.
Pet Shop of Horrors 9
Posted: October 31, 2010 Filed under: Pet Shop of Horrors Leave a comment »Matsuri Akino – Tokyopop – 2004 – 10 volumes
I broke my own rule and went ahead to the tenth volume after this one. It was good. Really, really good.
More and more hints about D’s identity are dropped. Small things mostly, everything from telephone conversations with his father to flashbacks to his childhood to… judgment calls on his part. The volume ends with an intense and bizarre story about a 16-year-old girl who thinks that she is destined to be with D. It’s an interesting story, because it shows both a human side and an inhuman side. It reveals without really saying much. It’s characteristic of the series, and somehow, is not as infuriating as it sounds at this late stage of the game. As I said, I wasn’t really expecting to know much about D, since who he is isn’t terribly significant to anything that goes on.
There are one or two standard chapters in here too, one about a gift of a tiger to a young girl getting pushed around by an underworld kingpin, and another about a family that keeps finding their pets suffering from unfortunate, gristly deaths. This one had a nice twist at the end, and while it wasn’t completely a surprise, it was interesting that the story worked both with and without the twist.
The other character-centric story was about a young woman seeking vengeance on Leon for the death of her boyfriend, a man Leon killed while trying to apprehend him. Chris and D are both involved. It’s a pretty dark story, and I do like that these plot-centric stories grow increasingly dark and closer to the characters as the series progresses. Previously, it was more a matter of all the characters getting involved in someone else’s escapade, and we’d get some character development when we saw how Leon and D reacted differently to the situations. But now, it’s all about the lives of Leon and D.
It’s also increasingly strange how close the two are. They bicker like a married couple, and Leon is increasingly buddy-buddy with D. He still puts up a front of trying to bust him, but he’s over at the pet shop all the time, and… I’m not entirely sure that Chris and Leon don’t live there, because Chris is over there all the time.
But I know there’s more to that story, and volume 10 proves it. The last volume was a strange ride, giving me all sorts of stuff I wasn’t expecting. But that’s a story for next time.
Mad Love Chase 4
Posted: October 31, 2010 Filed under: Mad Love Chase Leave a comment »Kazusa Takashima – Tokyopop – 2010 – 5 volumes
I’m trying to stick to Halloween/horror themes today. This one’s only marginally related, but it does have demons in it, so it sort of counts.
Not really, though. I like it because it’s a goofy comedy with good friends and demons, all things I can appreciate. The one-shot chapters are usually very entertaining, if a little over-the-top, and the characters are way more charming than they have any right to be. This really should be a middle-of-the-road title of limited interest, but quite honestly, I love it to pieces.
This volume had a kind of reckoning in it, and I loved the way it played out. Yamato and Taiki are obviously BFFs, but I always thought it was interesting that Taiki knew from almost the first day that Yamato was the Demon King he was sent to retrieve. yet nobody else knew he knew, nor did they figure out Yamato’s identity. Considering how deep the friendship between Yamato and Taiki runs, I always thought it was odd that Taiki never admitted who he was to Yamato. With a new character thrown into the mix (yet another 3rd party sent from the demon world to find Yamato), the whole situation blows up and everyone finds out what Taiki knows. It’s bad. But it also goes into a lot of detail about just how much Taiki and Yamato mean to each other. It gets about as close as you can to slashing two characters without actually doing it (and even then, I’m not entirely sure it’s not implied), but man, those are some really awesome scenes between Taiki and Yamato. I love stories like this sometimes, where two characters are just really great friends.
There are some sub-par one-shots mixed in, even while the whole plot about Taiki is running, and it did get a little sillier and more slapstick than I like. The new character introduced at the beginning of the volume, a wizard, did add something interesting since he seemed uninterested in Yamato or his disguise, but did like to mess with Taiki and company. At the end of the volume, three women are sent from hell for the retrieval, and so far their main function seems to just be comedy relief.
I’m looking forward to the last volume. Part of me thinks that the majority of the Taiki/Yamato moments were taken care of this volume, but I suspect it will have a pretty grand finish. It’s going to be some wait, but hopefully it’ll be worth it. In the meantime, feel free to catch up to the current volumes. This is a decent series that is fairly underrated.
Dawn of Love
Posted: October 30, 2010 Filed under: Dawn of Love | Tags: BL Leave a comment »Kazuho Hirokawa – DMP/June – 2008 – 1 volume
I reviewed this over at Manga Village, so check out my review over there.
I liked this way more than I thought I would. It has kind of an awful cover, which is why I chose it at random, but it’s far better than the cover and the premise make it sound. It’s exactly what I look for in my BL.
Manga Village Pics 10/6/10
Posted: October 30, 2010 Filed under: Articles on Other Sites Leave a comment »More catch-up to the Manga Village new releases, check out my choice for the week of October 6th over here.
Hmm. I don’t think my volume of Kizuna has arrived yet. How odd. I could just read volume 2 of Viewfinder, but man… that series grossed me out. And that was, like, three or four years ago at this point.
Rin-ne 4
Posted: October 26, 2010 Filed under: Rin-ne Leave a comment »Rumiko Takahashi – Viz – 2010 – 4+ volumes
Ah, this is starting to grow on me a little. It’s still not nearly as good as what I’ve read so far of Inu-Yasha, possibly because there’s not much of a driving force behind the plot aside from Rin-ne being poor and earning money. Rin-ne and Sakura are still rather flavorless as far as characters go, but their relationship does develop a little in this volume. I don’t know if you could call it a romance just yet, but all the same, it’s in here.
The stories are pretty fun this time around, though, and reveal a lot about Rin-ne. We learn about Damashigami, shinigami that kidnap souls not scheduled to die in order to collect extra money, and they play a rather large role in this volume. We also meet Rin-ne’s deadbeat and carefree father, who loves women and spending money. There is a Ranma 1/2-style shinigami fight between Rin-ne and his father later in the volume, and everyone gets involved, including Sakura, Rokumon, and Tsubasa, along with a bunch of other afterlife residents and some cuts of beef. It’s fairly entertaining, though I prefer the fights in Ranma. Rin-ne’s father is really funny though, mostly because he does everything with a straight face and is incredibly persistent and devious. He’s my favorite character so far.
Another new story arc starts towards the end of the volume, introducing another new character named Ageha, a shinigami with a grudge against someone who looks like Rin-ne. I’m… not very excited by this. While it proves that Rin-ne’s father will be back, I’m not all that interested in new side characters since Tsubasa, the one most recently introduced, has been tagging along with no purpose whatsoever through this entire volume. I have no idea why he’s still around, except to remind us that Rin-ne’s non-existent romantic angle with Sakura can be challenged at any time.
There were some cute romantic beginnings here, though. I like that Rin-ne is at least thinking about whether he likes Sakura “in that way.” I don’t think Sakura is, but that’s all right. I’m patient. I’m going to keep reading this series, even if it’s just to act as filler between the Inu-Yasha Big volumes. This is definitely not her best work, but it’s still pretty comfortable and familiar, and it is free and current over at the Shounen Sunday website.
Pet Shop of Horrors 8
Posted: October 26, 2010 Filed under: Pet Shop of Horrors 2 Comments »Matsuri Akino – Tokyopop – 2004 – 10 volumes
I am writing this in haste, because compulsion dictates I write it up before moving on to the next volume, and I kind of want to finish the series tonight.
The first story in this volume involves a mermaid and the legends surrounding her. On an island vacation (that, inexplicably, both D and Leon take together, along with Chris), the characters encounter an old sailor with one eye that insists he gained his numerous scars due to a vengeful mermaid and the storm she kicked up. Of course, D gets caught in her clutches and winds up losing all his memories. There’s a misunderstanding, a big heroic finish, some romance, and some comedy and mystery thrown in for good measure. The explanation of how D lost his memories is completely out of left field, but within the realms of believability for D. What isn’t as believable is that none of the characters called him out on it… while he was explaining. I know why they didn’t call him out on it later.
The next story is about a family that can’t agree on a pet, so D gives them one that each member sees as whatever it is they want to have. Only one quiet young girl knows its special human form and can talk to it. This has a pretty predictable twist towards the end, but I have to admit that I did not see the special Pet Shop of Horrors twist at the very end coming at all.
Mmm. Then a story about a romance writer that has everything that she could possibly want, and now wants the most rare and expensive pet that D can provide. This is less about animals and more about a convoluted personal history. I didn’t like this one as much, though I did appreciate that it provided a reason for Leon to get suspicious once again. That never lasts, but I do enjoy watching him switch so quickly between lounging at teatime with D and suspecting him of illegal activities.
There are actually lots of weird goings-on with D and Leon. At one point in a past volume, it’s implied that Chris may just live with D, since D references putting him to bed in the pet shop. Also, Chris is always over there. I thought he stayed with Leon? I know Leon still has his apartment and doesn’t just live with D, inexplicably. The vacation here is strange, and kind of funny since it’s mostly taken in stride. There is no subtext whatsoever for a romantic relationship between the two, and its absence is rather conspicuous. Perhaps I’m just biased, though, and have turned into two much of a fangirl over the years. But… come on.
Crammed in at the end is an extra “Flowers, The Detective, and the Detective’s Little Brother” where D and Leon follow Chris, teamed with T-chan and a badger, as he gets ingredients for a moon viewing celebration. T-chan is pretty funny as a side character, and I’m sad we don’t see a little more of him. And on the subject I was just discussing, D wears a real dress and masquerades as a lady with Leon as they tail Chris. For no real reason. Although perhaps the real reason was that we never see him in Western male attire, and the easiest way around that when he needed to be inconspicuous would be to dress him like a lady.
I love it dearly. On to volume 9!
Manga Village Pics 9/29/10
Posted: October 26, 2010 Filed under: Articles on Other Sites Leave a comment »I’m once again behind on linking these over here, but to check out my picks of the new releases for the week of September 29th, look no further than Manga Village.
I just got Demon Sacred in the mail on Saturday. I’m pretty excited about it, actually. I probably won’t get to it this week (it being Halloween week, I’ll probably try reading some of the scarier entries in my backlog), but all the same, expect it soon. I loved Jyu-Oh-Sei, and this series sounds pretty great.
