A Bride Story, Vol. 1 by Kaoru Mori

A bride story is the tale of a young woman who is given in marriage to a much younger boy. She quickly finds that her husband’s family are lovely and treat her well. However, this is complicated by the fact that her family wants her back because they want to marry her off to get a much more advantageous relationship with a rival clan. This is a slice of life story set in Central Asia, notably very unusual for a manga title. The artwork is phenomenal. There are many manga that have beautiful art but this one might be the best. I have only read 1 volume because naturally the second volume is impossible to find in stores. Nonetheless I would wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone, especially to those who don’t necessarily like manga because this is not at all like a traditional boy’s fighting comic.

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead by Haro Aso, illustrated by Kotaro Takata

This manga really captures the zeitgeist of the anti work moment that we are currently in. Zom 100 tells the story of a young man who hates his job so much that the collapse of civilization due to a zombie apocalypse is a major upside because it means that he does not have to go into work. It is often very funny, very lighthearted, and always entertaining. It’s fun it’s silly it’s a grand old time. I hope to share more of my thoughts as I read more into it but 12 volumes deep so far, the story is a very good time. It’s unusual to see a zombie story so lighthearted but that is a major part of the appeal.

Mao by Rumiko Takahashi

If you didn’t know that the author of this story was also the author of InuYasha, you would think that Mao plagiarizes InuYasha. There is a teenage girl who falls head over heels in love with a magical white-haired man who is part demon and who whisks her off into adventures in a previous time period of Japan. This time, we are visiting the Taisho period, which take place in the 1920s. I love I love the folklore that manages to find its way into the story. The manga tends to have various episodic turns where our characters must face off against folkloric creatures using traditional Japanese folk magic. There is a long rivaling conspiracy in which involves various Long live sorcerers and a demon cat. It also has basically the relatively tame yearnings of a teen girl that are projected onto an inscrutable age-inappropriate love interest. It is nowhere near the creepiness of twilight, which is why I have managed to read 19 volumes of this so far.

Crying Freeman by Kazuo Koike, illustrated by Ryoichi Ikegami

Crying freeman is basically James Bond meets pro wrestling, with a very generous heaping of martial arts, gun play, and gratuitous nudity. There is a lot of anti-black racism, and a whole bunch of weird misogyny where a bunch of male and female characters insist on fighting each other naked. One of the major female characters has a demon Cortana in which she seemingly can only wield when she is buck naked. I had a wonderful time with this, even if I was cringing at some of the horrific depictions of sexual violence and racism. There is something so over the top and absurd about this story that it never fails to be immensely entertaining. Basically, this is the story of a young art student who is secretly a hit-man for the triads and is groomed to become the boss of the triad gang that he joins. He was enslaved by the triads, and he is known as the crying freeman because he weeps every time he kills somebody. There’s a bunch of absurd James Bond ask subplots in which women can’t help but fall in love with him after he sleeps with them in absurd situations. The main character has to get naked a bunch of times to show off his cool dragon tattoos. The artwork is absolutely stunning, which is kind of funny. You never imagine that such pulpy material would be so lovingly drawn but now that I think of it, there are many pulp fantasy in genre artists who create beautiful works of art of women in fur in chain-mail bikinis that I find stunning and a little vulgar in equal measure. If you can find a way to navigate that thorniness of what is often a very entertaining story but at the same time has almost embarrassing levels of cringeyness, then this tale might be for you.

Shinto: Volume 1 By Sebas Riera

I’m not going to go into too much detail about this one. This was a disappointment. What I came away appreciating from this title is that the quality that is achieved in something like one piece for example, is actually really hard to do and it increased my admiration for the creators of those such titles. Unfortunately, this title did not six seed at being an entertaining or coherent comic. In a way it almost felt like an incomplete draft, something that never should have been published. It almost feels like the publishers did the author dirty by publishing this clearly unpolished and incoherent work. Unfortunately, I do not recommend this.

Hell’s Paradise: Jigokuraku by Yuji Kaku

A ninja, along with nine other prisoners of the shogunate government are tasked with going to a mystical island to retrieve the source of immortality there. They are accompanied by 10 executioner samurai who are there to make sure that they complete their task. Gabimaru the Hollow Is our protagonist, a feared ninja who has murdered hundreds of people. He finds himself on an island with strange monsters, and even stranger companions. In addition, there are gender swapping sex Wizards who are holding on to the elixir of immortality and have no intention of giving it up peacefully.

If you can’t tell, I am really enjoying this so far. I haven’t seen the anime, but the manga is splendid thus far. It has all my interests: ninja, samurai, and gender swapping sex Wizards. Please give this a read.

Under Ninja by Kengo Hanazawa

A loser shut in happens to be a ninja in modern day Japan and is tasked with infiltrating a high school by the ninja high command. This is the story of a weird loser and his weird loser friends, with one of these weird losers having a bunch of very useful skills. This is a very strange tale, which seems to be as per usual for Kengo Hanazawa, who seems to have a penchant for strange characters that find themselves in difficult and desperate situations. I really liked his other manga I am a hero, which is also the tail of a strange loser who manages to survive an apocalyptic collapse of society because he has a few useful skills (i.e. he has a shotgun). This is really weird, but it’s weird in a way that I deeply appreciate.

Lady Snowblood by Kazuo Koike, illustrated by Kazuo Kimimura

I’ll be honest with you: I think I appreciated the movie more then the manga. The manga has a bunch of weird sex an rape scenes that the movie sensibly avoids. That being said, this is still a very compelling revenge tale. However, you might be better served by watching the movie.

Noragami: Stray God by Adachitoka

This is one of my favorite manga’s of all time I absolutely lost my mind when I discovered the anime back when I was in university. I would watch the anime in the library when I probably should have been doing anything else, and I absolutely loved this portrait of modern-day Japan which had a bunch of Shinto deities existing almost in the corner of your eye. The story follows Yato, a minor delivery God who does a bunch of everyday tasks an errands for people in exchange for the traditional offering to a God, ¥5. He soon becomes embroiled in further adventures when he accidentally forms karmic ties with a young high schooler named Hiyori Iki. They soon find themselves on a series of fantastical adventures fighting strange monsters and encountering familiar Japanese deities all across modern day Tokyo. The anime takes a few different twists and turns than the manga does but the manga is very good. I am immensely enjoying revisiting these titles and I will have more to report in the interim.

Steel of the Celestial Shadows by Daruuma Mastuura

This might be my new favorite manga title. A samurai who is cursed to warp any metal that comes into his presence finds himself a strange and mysterious wife who doesn’t mind his poverty or his curse. However, when mysterious men kidnap her, he is forced to find strange and unlikely allies in a quest to reclaim his wife and foil the plans of his wife’s kidnappers. This is awesome: it has strange sorcery, it’s got a bunch of interesting detail about Japanese folklore and historical detail about the Edo period, particularly the sears soothsayers and fortune tellers that existed at the time. I can’t wait to read more of this.

Real Musashi: The Manga Edition: The True Story of Japan’s Greatest Warrior by Touru Sigita

This is not as good as Vagabond, which is not fair because very few things are as good as Vagabond. That being said, I wish that this had more historical detail about the real Musashi, and better artwork. This is a good start for a complete novice to the life of Miyamoto Musashi.

Blame! by Tsutomu Nihei

I read the entirety of Blame!, Which is only 6 volumes. (Note: these are the omnibus editions). This is the story of a Cyborg named Kyrii (Killy) who is on a quest to find a human with untainted DNA. There was a virus that damaged every single human’s DNA which meant that humans could no longer access the safeguard, the artificial intelligence that governs the city, a massive superstructure that is expanding out of control with homicidal robots that hunt various tribes of humans and trans humans that live in these apocalyptic cyberpunk ruins. The art, particularly the depiction of the insane, mysterious, and extraordinary architecture is stunning. The sense of scale and wonder that the artist conjures is frankly incredible. The otherworldly Nephilim that are the safeguard androids and the silicon life that are also violent obstacles create a strange and eerie atmosphere. There are so many unexplained mysteries of foot within the story. Part of the magic of this manga is that these stories will never be explained. You can only catch the faintest glimpse of something that you will never know the full context for, and it will haunt you. Possibly forever.

Dorohedoro by Q Hayashida

This is another weird manga tale that I am having a very good time with. A lizard man has been cursed by evil sorcerers from another dimension who regularly attack and experiment upon the denizens of The Hole, a favela in which our protagonist and his friends reside in. He wasn’t always a lizard man and he’s trying to find out who cursed him to become a lizard man. The only way he can find out is by sticking the heads of sorcerers as deep as he possibly can into his gullet, so that the mysterious man inside him can tell him whether or not this was the guy who cursed him. He also really likes gyoza.

Kaina of the Great Snow Sea by Tsutomu Nihei, illustrated by Itoe Takemoto

I’m beginning to really like this author as this is the same creator as blame! This is a classic fantasy story about a boy who lives in this gigantic tree that grows far up into the atmosphere. He encounters a Princess that is in danger from an enemy Kingdom. This has some flavors of science fiction, as well as some post apocalyptic accents. I’ve only read 2 volumes, and so far I really like where this is going. This feels a little bit like Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind meets Avatar. This is a compliment.

Homunculus by Hideo Yamamoto (Omnibus Vol. 1)

Homunculus is the story of a man who agrees to undergo trepanation surgery in order to see what that would do. A bored medical student carefully chooses the protagonist due to his precarious financial situation, as he is currently living out of his car. After undergoing trepanation, and for those of you who don’t know that’s where they drill a hole into his skull, not for medical reasons, Oh no. You are not supposed to have holes in your skull. This procedure is done so he can possibly attain paranormal abilities. This is sort of a success. This is more of a psychological thriller then a paranormal thriller. I admit, my tastes run to wards paranormal thrillers so I’m not sure that I will continue with this, but this is weird and creepy and kind of fascinating in its own right. I really like the artwork, but I’m just not quite sure that I’m compelled enough to follow along to see where the story is going.

Witch Hat Atelier by Kamome Shirahama

Witch Hat Atelier is essentially Cardcaptor Sakura meets Howl’s Moving Castle. The artwork is extraordinarily detailed and gorgeous. This might be the best artwork I have ever seen in a manga. It is definitely pitched towards younger audiences but don’t let that scare you away. This is a passionately drawn story about the self doubt that artists experience in developing their craft. It’s also a slight commentary on the gatekeeping that the arts community practices in order to keep it within constrained social circles i.e. among the children of the elite. There is also commentary on the capacity for technology to be misused versus the capacity for technology to uplift the masses and the tension between those two sets of beliefs. Being 12 volumes deep into the series, I can safely say that this is a major winner in my book.

Ninja vs. Gokudo (Vol. 1) by Shinsuke Kondo

This is a series that is essentially about ninjas and yakuza. I could not prevent myself from giving this a try, but sad to say this is a miss. I’m not a huge fan of the art style, and the story doesn’t do anything interesting with ninja or with Japanese gangsters. The premise follows an ambitious gangster who has risen to the top of the underworld. He finds himself in conflict with the ninja, who have experienced a resurgence and have come out of hiding after a historical purge of their ranks. The two main characters of the story follow the ambitious gangster and his new young pal, a young powerful ninja. Naturally, they have no idea that they are each others sworn enemies. The ninja have superpowers and as a result the only way that the yakuza can fight against them in any way is through the use of chemicals that can temporarily supercharge themselves. Sadly, the ninja don’t have particularly interesting powers and it’s not particularly interesting that the gangsters are so underpowered. I’ve read 2 volumes and I’ve had enough.

Dementia 21 (Vol. 1) by Shintaro Kago

A series of vignettes about a young woman who works as a home caregiver for the elderly in Japan. This has a lot of interesting commentary about gig workers and the aging population of Japan. The elderly are both exploited and exploiters in turn. It’s strange and quirky. However I do wish that it had a sustained plot that didn’t immediately dissolve into a surreal nightmare. That being said, these are fairly compelling surreal nightmares. This is kind of fascinating, but one volume was probably enough for me.