Gen 1

Shige Nakamura / Yu Suzuki / Gunya Mihara / Arisa Karino – Gen Manga Entertainment – 2011 – 1+ volumes

Okay guys, I’m pretty excited about this. Gen is a new digital anthology that publishes underground-type manga short stories from Japan. All of them are previously unpublished, I believe, so in a sense, it’s something like a doujinshi magazine in English. Check it out at genmanga.com. There’s a generous sample available right now, the entire first issue, and you can subscribe and receive the monthly updates for issues 2 and further. The usual subscription price is $3 per issue, but you can get a discounted subscription by following this link, and get the second issue for only $2. That is a pretty sweet deal.

The issue I’m reviewing here is the one that’s available for free on their front page, so feel free to check it out if you’re at all interested. I’m going to do a follow-up next week with issue two, where all four of the stories are continued.

I think this is quite interesting, since this isn’t a format we often see in English. The underground manga that we normally see is usually from tried-and-true artists and their best stories. That’s fair, considering that printing is an investment and going off the beaten path is very risky. I’m glad that digital publication opens the way for more unusual, less proven work however, and I’m very thrilled that this collection exists.

This first issue has about 80 pages of content, and I’ll just go ahead and start with the first story, Wolf by Nakamura Shige. The art is very, very reminiscent of Yoshihiro Tatsumi and what I’ve seen of the late 60s gekiga/underground scene, too. The content isn’t that far off, either. The story starts with a young man boarding a train to the city. We find out that he’s traveling to become a professional sumo wrestler, and he meets another, very aggressive boy on the train. Naoto, the aggressive boy, picks some fights on the train, and later goes to a boxing dojo to engage more people in fights.

The storytelling technique is a little rough around the edges (some of the transitions are abrupt, and the flow of time is a little strange), but the narrative is sophisticated in the way that some of the best gekiga stories are. We aren’t shown the thoughts of the characters, and only know as much about them as they decide to tell others. It’s a technique I’m quite fond of, and it’s not often you get to see “show, don’t tell” in a manga. I also like that one of the boys was studying to become a sumo wrestler (though Naoto seems to be the focus of the story), and that the story seems to be moving in the direction of being about actual, professional training for sports.

The second story is VS Aliens, by Suzuki Yu. This is a bizarre story told in three chapters, about a group of three high school students. Aya approaches Kitaro out of the blue to help her with a problem: one of the students in their school is an alien. Of course, only Aya sees her that way. Kitaro approaches this student, Sana, and asks her point blank about it. Sana is confused, but approaches Kitaro the next day worried that she might really be an alien.

It’s less comedic than it sounds. As bizarre as the premise is, the focus of the story is on the character dynamics. Kitaro is a nice guy, and genuinely wants to help Aya out. Aya really, truly does think that Sana is an alien. Sana has a normal reaction to being asked if she is an alien, rather than over-the-top comedic. And, bizarrely, she takes it under advisement. These are all normal people being run through a weird situation. I’m not quite sure where it’s going, but it was my favorite in the magazine, and after the bizarre cliffhanger, I’m curious to see where it’s going.

Mask, by Mihara Gunya, is third in line. It’s set in pseudo-feudal Japan, and the chapter offers a very brief setup. A man wakes up with a talking mask on his face. An army that’s taking prisoners is on the march. Said army finds the man, and engage him in battle. The mask may… offer some sort of power, but it’s unclear whether the man will decide to take advantage of it. It’s interesting so far, but I need to read more to decide whether I like it or not. That it’s taking its time to set things up is promising.

The fourth and final story is Souls, by Karino Arisa. Of the four, this one was the most confusing. A woman invites a traveler out of the rain, only to be verbally abused by her mother. We then find out that the woman… may be dead, and that the traveler might have come to help the mother grieve, or to help the soul pass on? I was having a hard time understanding this one, but again, I’d like to read more before I pass judgment. The storytelling is a little rough around the edges (I had a hard time figuring out if the woman was dead or not, or whether we were seeing flashbacks, or whether there was some second sight involved, et cetera), but some of the confusion might be intentional, a mystery to be solved in a later installment.

Overall, I was very pleased with the content offered in the first issue. The stories were actually more polished than I thought they would be going into the collection, and all the art is very professional-looking. I was also very surprised by how much I liked VS Aliens, and I’m curious about the continuations of Wolf and Mask. I’m a big manga fan, obviously, and am probably more than a little biased, but I think there are plenty of people who would be interested in stories like these, stuff than comes from a non-commercial outlet. Again, you can check out the first issue for free, and if you like what you see, follow this link to get the next issue for $2.

This was a review copy provided by the publisher.