Manga Village

Comparison is one of the great powers of the human mind. We categorize and store information throughout our lives, and then at every step necessary, recall and compare, oftentimes synthesizing new information and opinions. It is hard to review Usamaru Furuya’s Lychee Light Club for the simple fact that there is very little that I have ever read that would allow me to compare, analyze, and then synthesize an opinion of the work. When the mind cannot find the most immediate comparisons, it digs harder and deeper, looking for the things it has experienced before to connect the dots. It is in the shadows of Lychee Light Club and its distinctive beginning that make it such a strange, visceral experience. By Usamaru Furuya Publisher: Vertical, Inc. Age Rating: 18+ Genre: Seinen/Horror Price: $16.95 Lychee Light Club is, if I describe it in general terms, is a Lord of the Flies with an added bonus of homemade robots programmed to find beautiful girls to worship. The characters of Lychee Light Club are all adolescent, prepubescent boys, who are unsustainably obsessed with beauty and androgyny. Lychee, the robot, is probably the most human of the entire cast. There is internal conflict over…

By all appearances, Soichi Negishi is a sweet, well-mannered boy who loves Swedish pop music, trendy boutiques, and all things fashionable. But at the same time he’s also Krauser II, front man for Detroit Metal City, an indie death metal band whose popularity increases by the day. Once the DMC makeup goes on and Soichi takes the stage, his natural talents as a death metal god can’t help but flourish. Is this the band he’s truly destined to be in? By Kiminori Wakasugi Publisher: Viz Media – Signature Age Rating: Mature Genre: Music/humor Price: $12.99 When Detroit Metal City was first announced, there was a lot of excitement for the series, and reviews of the first volume were well received. By Volume 5 though, some of that excitement waned, and the cursing and jokes got tiresome. Now at volume 9, and not even having read the first 8, the jokes still come off as tiresome, but by the end, some plot-ty stuff leading up to the end of the series breathes back some life. DMC comes off as the same joke told over and over with some profanity to up the shock value. The series started with jokes about Soichi…

A decent read, but not the fun ride volume 4 was.

Life is always about patterns. In the pharmacy world, we look at physician prescribing patterns, dispensing patterns by geographical location, and pricing patterns based on trending legal proceedings. In manga, we see patterns in various genres – the shonen fighting manga, the shojo school-girl manga, all have similar formats that we know sell well, and work well in the Japanese market. Some series attempt to subvert or modify these patterns, which is part of their appeal (or the reason we don’t like them). Even authors follow patterns based on what they are interested in, or what they like to discuss. By Naoki Urasawa Publisher: Viz Media – Viz Signature Age Rating: Older Teen Genre: Thriller Price: $12.99 Naoki Urasawa has a pattern that manifests itself all too frequently in his suspense and thriller manga – when he gets stuck, or doesn’t know how to work his way out of a problem that he has written himself in, he introduces new characters to his stories. In 20th Century Boys, Volume 7, we see Urasawa flounder to produce a back story for the Bloody New Years, and so he introduces a student Koizumi who looks too closely at the history books, and…

Oishinbo is something of a cultural oddity here in the United States. It follows a sultry, gourmet journalist Shiro Yamaoka and his girlfriend/wife Kurita Yuko in their quest to create the Ultimate Menu, which has been commissioned  for the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Tozai News.  Shiro is a slacker cynic, but has an incredibly refined palate, and so along the way to the completion of this menu McGuffin, Yamaoka teaches his friends and colleagues the finer points of just about every type of food. Written by Tetsu Kariya; Illustrations by Akira Hanasaki Publisher: Viz Media Age Rating: Teen Genre: Food Price: $12.99 Shiro isn’t all-knowing – his knowledge and attitude kept in check by his father, a potter virtuoso and elite gastronome. The two constantly fight, and occasionally the old man gets a few past his son. This tension keeps the story engaging, and this tension makes Oishinbo a great comic instead of it being more of a illustrated Japanese food encyclopedia. The artistry of the book comes in two forms – the depictions of the food and background, and the depiction of the characters. The characters have been drawn simply, without much thought to shading and…

One of the most used, and possibly most cliché phrases in the English language is “Hindsight is 20/20,” that is, that everything is clearest when looking back on it. There are parts of a situation where you have missing information, where decisions that seemed like good choices turned out to be catastrophic. Even more frustrating, there are scenes, moments of our lives where we’d like to use our perfect hindsight to change. That fight in elementary school, that comment in high school, that one night stand in college. These moments that changed who we are for better or worse are some of the most vivid in our minds, and are the ones we’d most like to manipulate. By Jiro Taniguchi Publisher: Fanfare/Ponent Mon Age Rating: Older Teen Genre: Drama Price: $23.00 While this idea has been toyed with in film (most notably, in the dreadful Butterfly Effect), nothing brings the concept to life more realistically than Jiro Taniguchi’s A Distant Neighborhood, a two-volume affair that has been co-published by Fanfare and Ponent Mon. In this sweeping childhood tale, we meet Hiroshi Nakahara, a middle-aged man who, under the influence of a nasty hangover, misses his train from Kyoto to Tokyo…

Bacteria to School Just when you thought you have seen it all, Del Rey brings one of the most original and funny stories to English this reader has read in a long time. The first Moyasimon is the tale of university student Tadayasu’s opening days at a Tokyo agriculture school. He is joined by his buddy, Kei, the son of sake brewer. What makes Tadayasu special is his secret ability (that everyone seems to know about) to see microscopic organisms with his naked eye. Any bacteria, fungi, germ, or other microbe appear as tiny (and cute) little guys floating in the air. Since each microbe has its own qualities, each looks different (for example, a microbe beneficial for making sake appears to Tadayasu as a little smiling ball with a top-knot like a samurai). By Ishikawa Masayuki Publisher: Del Rey Manga Age Rating: Older Teen Genre: Comedy Price: 10.99 USD Despite Tadayasu’s truly unique ability, he is one of the most down-to-earth characters in the book. Between his eccentric professor who takes Tadayasu under his wing and bad sake-brewing classmates, Tadayasu’s special talents come into play again and again in some often bizarre and always entertaining situations. What makes Moyasimon…

Yotsuba is back, and this time from Yen Press. The quirky, inquisitive little girl is still romping around with her favorite pals: her dad, Ena, Fuuka, Asagi and Jumbo. Originally reviewed by Dan Polley By Kiyohiko Azuma Publisher: Yen Press Age Rating: All ages Genre: Comedy Price: $10.99 The mischievous antics start when Yotsuba and her dad move in next to the Ayase family, which includes Ena, Fuuka and Asagi, three girls. Of course, Yotsuba wanders off and Fuuka talks to her dad and agrees to find him. Yotsuba, who thinks Fuuka is a stranger and should not be trusted, runs away, and the pair almost get hit as Jumbo pulls up to the house. And that’s just the first chapter. Another one of Yotsuba’s curiosities is her ability to not fully understand what the adults or older kids tell her. This is exactly what “Global Warming” is about when she hears “glowball warming.” Yotsuba proceeds to deem anyone with an air conditioner on as an enemy of the earth. The young girl is full of good intentions, and that’s what leads to her getting into trouble most of the time. This is best seen in “Helping Out” in the…

Many people wonder about the motivation behind a mountaineer’s desire to risk their life in order to scale a dangerous peak, and George Mallory (1886-1924) has been attributed to have given the most famous (and also simplest) reason why. When asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, the world’s tallest mountain, legend has it that he simply said: “Because it’s there.” While the authenticity of this quote has come into question in recent years, there is no denying the profound, yet puzzling nature of those three words. Perhaps only the bravest of mountaineers will be able to fully comprehend them. If Mallory and his partner Andrew Irvine had survived their ill-fated 1924 Mount Everest expedition, further light could have possibly been shed upon the subject. Review written by Matthew Rozier Writer: Yumemakura Baku; Artist: Jiro Taniguchi Age Rating: Not rated, Older Teen (16+) rating Genre: Drama, Adventure Price: $25.00 Jiro Taniguchi’s five-volume manga adaptation of Baku Yumemakura’s original novel of the same name attempts to solve the mystery behind what makes a mountaineer tick. The novel was written between 1994 and 1997, and the story itself takes place in 1993, both before Mallory’s body was found sans his Kodak…

If you knew a person that reacted to love with violence and hatred, what would you do? Enter Shogo, a young man whose childhood has caused him to react violently to any display of affection, be it from man or beast. His hatred is not unnoticed, though. As punishment for his aggression against love, a goddess appears before him and relates to him that he is to be punished by the gods to find the love he was never given as a child, and then have it snatched away violently from him over and over again. By Osamu Tezuka Publisher: Vertical, Inc. Age Rating: 16+ Genre: Drama Price: $19.95 Often claimed to be one of Tezuka’s most erotic and dark stories, Apollo’s Song is not the Astro Boy and Black Jack you’ve been used to. There is little cheer or happiness in Apollo’s Song. Vertical Inc. has released this comic to mixed appeal from many reviewers, and for good enough reason – its age. Apollo’s Song was written in 1970, a much less progressive time, especially in Japan. With each passage, we see characters and ideas rooted in that time. Women are treated more like objects and less like characters,…