News and reviews for the discerning manga fan
When I lived in New York City, I went on my share of awesome first dates. Those dates followed a predictable pattern: we’d go to a funky, hole-in-the-wall restaurant, have a great conversation, and discover a mutually-shared passion for Hitchcock movies or dim sum. Second dates, however, were a different story; if someone were to [...]
GTO: 14 Days in Shonan is loud and silly, the kind of manga in which the slightest misunderstanding between characters escalates into shouting matches, bone-crunching violence, or incarceration (or all three). It’s the kind of manga in which the hero is over-confident to the point of being dumb. And it’s the kind of manga in [...]
Among the many books I read and loved as a child, few left as indelible an impression as Mary Norton’s The Borrowers (1952). The book featured the Clocks, a family of mouse-sized people who lived, unseen, in the floorboards and walls of an old English house, appropriating small objects and transforming them into furniture, cookware, [...]
Drawn in a loose, improvisational style, Hiromu Arakawa’s Hyakusho Kizuko may remind readers of the gag strips that round out every volume of her wildly successful Fullmetal Alchemist. That’s not a knock on Hyakusho, by the way; like her fellow sister-in-shonen Yellow Tanabe, Arakawa’s omake are every bit as entertaining as her more polished stories, [...]
The usual gambit for introducing a year-end list is to remark on the abundance of good titles, acknowledge the difficulty in choosing just ten (or five, or three), and comment on the overall state of the industry. And while I certainly debated what to include on my list, I’ll be honest: 2011 yielded fewer contenders [...]
Few things can reduce me to a puddle of tears as quickly as a dog story, especially if the canine subject is lost, abused, or sacrificed for the well-being of his owner. Yet for all my sentimentality, I am particular about my dog stories. Too often, authors allow extreme displays of loyalty or mischievousness to [...]
Reading The Drops of God is like drinking a good table wine: the flavor may not be as complex as a finely aged varietal, but it goes down easily, leaving a pleasant aftertaste of melodrama, intrigue, and romance. Like Oishinbo, the manga it most closely resembles, The Drops of God revolves around a slightly preposterous [...]
First published in 1948, Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human became one of the most widely read books in post-war Japan. The story, modeled on Dazai’s own life, chronicles a dissolute young man’s profound estrangement from his family and peers. The protagonist’s life follows a trajectory similar to Dazai’s: convinced that his life is an empty [...]
“Today, I belong to the enemy” — so begins Dawn of the Arcana, a medieval fantasy in which a feisty princess marries into a neighboring country’s royal family. Nakaba characterizes herself as “a lamb,” sacrificed by her people to help two warring kingdoms maintain a fragile peace. Her husband, the handsome but insolent Prince Caesar, [...]
From the early 1920s through the late 1950s, before television became a fixture in Japanese homes, audiences flocked to kamishibai performances on street corners and parks around the country. A kamishibaiya (storyteller) would pedal from village to village with a butai (small wooden stage) perched on the back of his bicycle. When he arrived in [...]
This slim how-to manual caters to the manga fan … [Read More...]
When I lived in New York City, I went on my share … [Read More...]
Among the many books I read and loved as a child, … [Read More...]
Maria Kawai, heroine of A Devil and Her Love Song, … [Read More...]
In the popular imagination, the yakuza are … [Read More...]
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