Manga review, Halloween 2022 edition: Chainsaw Man
Posted: October 31, 2022 Filed under: review | Tags: action, Chainsaw Man, comics, Halloween, horror, manga, Tatsuki Fujimoto 1 Comment
Winner of Shōgakukan and Harvey awards, highest-ranking manga in our 2020 and 2021 best-comics-of-the-year lists… But does it live up to the hype?
Chainsaw Man (チェンソーマン Chensō man) vol. 1
Language: German (originally Japanese)
Author: Tatsuki Fujimoto
Publisher: Egmont (originally Shūeisha)
Year: 2020 (originally published 2018)
Total number of volumes: 12 so far in Japan
Pages: ~190
Price: € 7
Website: https://www.egmont-manga.de/series/Chainsaw%20Man (German publisher), https://www.mangaupdates.com/series/ylx5wzn/ (Baka-Updates)
ISBN: 978-3-7704-2847-2
The world of Chainsaw Man is similar to our own, except for the constant threat of so-called ‘devils’ – demons in various hideous shapes who seek to enslave or outright kill humans. Thankfully, the Japanese government has installed a devil-hunting task force to protect its citizens. The newest among those devil hunters is Denji, a teenager who himself has fused his body with a devil, which allows him to transform his head into a chainsaw and to grow chainsaw blades from his arms.
So far, so weird. But protagonist Denji has a backstory that endears him to the reader: having inherited his father’s debts to the yakuza, he was destitute before joining the devil hunters. All the money he earned went straight to the mob, and he could barely feed himself and his pet devil dog. It’s not as powerful a poverty narrative as e.g. Hideo Azuma’s Shissō Nikki (Disappearance Diary), but it seems to work well, as pretty much every reviewer on the Internet ends up rooting for Denji.
Unfortunately, as in so many other manga of this type, this origin story is quickly told and done away with, and then it’s monster slaying time. Denji continues to be an interesting and relatable character though, being driven by much more basic needs and desires than his co-workers who have more noble (or enigmatic) motives. The action scenes are also enhanced by Tatsuki Fujimoto’s drawing style. Some people have called the artwork crude, but it’s actually often quite elaborate on closer inspection. Fujimoto deliberately uses coarse-grained screentone effects to diversify the tonality of his artwork, and his sound effects are a masterclass in typographic design.
As for the design of the ‘devils’, however – they look more silly than terrifying. What is it with the Japanese and their rather ridiculous monsters, one is tempted to ask? Kiseijū, Evangelion, Naru Taru… Perhaps the look of those creatures fits the overall wackiness of Chainsaw Man, but that doesn’t mean you have to like it.
Scariest moment: there is a simple but effective sort of ‘jump scare’ when the devil hunters open a door to reveal a ‘fiend’ (a human body possessed and grotesquely altered by a devil).
Rating: ● ● ● ○ ○
Find the previous Halloween blogposts here: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.
Manga review, Halloween 2021 edition: Berserk
Posted: October 30, 2021 Filed under: review | Tags: Berserk, comics, fantasy, Halloween, horror, Kentarō Miura, manga 2 CommentsWhile usually placed in the ‘dark fantasy’ genre, several people on the Internet rank Berserk among the best horror manga ever. And although there are still quite a few ‘old masters’ of horror manga not covered on this weblog – Kazuo Umezu, Hideshi Hino, Suehiro Maruo – the untimely passing of Kentarō Miura earlier this year makes Berserk a fitting choice for what might be the final installment of this Halloween blogpost series.
Berserk (ベルセルク Beruseruku) “Ultimative Edition” vol. 1
Language: German (originally Japanese)
Author: Kentarō Miura
Publisher: Panini (originally Hakusensha)
Year: 2019 (episodes in this vol. originally published 1989-1991)
Total number of volumes: 40 individual vols. so far in Japan (this German book is a 2-in-1 volume)
Pages: ~400
Price: € 19
Website: https://paninishop.de/mangas/berserk/ (German publisher), https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=88 (Baka-Updates)
ISBN: 978-3-7416-1210-7
The beginning doesn’t look very auspicious though. There’s our protagonist, Guts, the “Black Swordsman”, who travels around a vaguely European medieval world, killing people with his giant sword (and other weapons) on a quest for revenge. Not much is revealed about who did what to him, which makes his acts of killing appear all the more haphazard.
The quality of draughtsmanship leaves much to be desired, as the proportions of the characters, especially Guts, look awkward and implausible, as do some of the town buildings and castles in the background. With his tiny head on his excessively muscular and slightly elongated body, Guts looks much like other 80s action manga heroes such as Kenshirō from Hokuto no ken / Fist of the North Star (the writer of which, Buronson, incidentally collaborated with Miura on two other manga). One cannot call Miura’s drawings careless or hasty though, as many of them contain an insane amount of detail, which is probably what makes people believe that the artwork is awesome.
Anyway, things get interesting (i.e. horrific) when Guts has his first hallucinatory vision of a monstrous fetus-like creature crawling towards him, with only one eye, just like him. We don’t get to learn what this creature is exactly, but it continues to haunt Guts in each of the three loosely connected stories in this volume.
However, what makes Berserk unmistakably a horror manga is the true nature of Guts’s enemies. Mere humans he slaughters with ease by the dozen (did I mention he’s half blind? That doesn’t bother him at all), but their leaders are demonically possessed supervillains, which makes for some truly creepy transformation scenes. In one of them, a swordsman grows a tentacle arm, which is eerily reminiscent of Tetsuo’s transformation in Katsuhiro Ōtomo’s Akira – it’s hard to say which of the two chapters in question came first, though; both must have been published in 1990.
The overall atmosphere is enhanced by a sense of nihilism that pervades the manga, embodied by the anti-hero Guts. Granted, the people he fights are evil, but he only goes after them because of his personal vendetta, and when Guts protects the innocent, it’s only because their tormentors conveniently happen to be his own targets anyway. At least that’s what he says. But in his conversations with his fairy companion Puck, the more he denies any feelings of pity and compassion, the less we believe him. Thus Berserk turns out to be not nihilistic at all but rather deeply, almost philosophically, concerned with morality – a concern shared with e.g. Gō Nagai’s Devilman, or Hitoshi Iwaaki’s contemporaneous Kiseijū / Parasyte. This allows the readers to enjoy the protagonist’s murderous rampages while resting assured that he’s essentially one of the good guys.
In the end, Berserk is a mixed bag in terms of both writing and art. Horror purists may want to give this manga a pass, but it’s clear to see why so many action/fantasy fans love it.
Scariest moment: when the demonic Count infests one of his henchmen to imbue him with superhuman strength.
Rating: ● ● ○ ○ ○
It should be noted that Berserk is one of those long-running manga series of which people say that ‘it gets really good once you get past the first x volumes’, and my verdict, of course, refers only to this first volume.
P.S.: if you read German and are considering getting this Panini edition – don’t. The translation is the worst I’ve ever seen in a manga.
Find the previous Halloween blogposts here: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.
Manga review, Halloween 2020 edition: Suicide Club
Posted: October 31, 2020 Filed under: review | Tags: comics, Halloween, horror, Jisatsu saakuru, manga, prostitution, self-harm, suicide, Usamaru Furuya 3 CommentsAnother classic horror manga, though not quite as old as last year’s…
Suicide Club (German: Der Selbstmordclub, Japanese: 自殺サークル jisatsu saakuru, lit. “suicide circle”)
Language: German (originally Japanese)
Author: Usamaru Furuya
Publisher: Schreiber & Leser / Shodoku (originally Ohta)
Year: 2006 (original run 2002)
Number of volumes: 1
Pages: 170
Price: € 9
Website: https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=3439
ISBN: 978-3-937102-53-5
Loosely based on the eponymous film by Sion Sono, Suicide Club is about Saya, a high schooler who clearly has some severe mental issues which drive her into self-harm and prostitution. She feels out of touch with herself, and also withdraws from her best friend Kyōko from whose perspective the story is told. Then Saya meets the enigmatic schoolgirl Mitsuko and joins her cult in which disaffected misfits gather. Mitsuko’s control over her acolytes is absolute, and they eagerly do her bidding – up to, ultimately, collective suicide. But the story of Saya, Kyōko and Mitsuko doesn’t end there…
Furuya comes from a fine art and alternative manga background, and one can see traces of this in his drawing style, a certain deliberate crudeness and starkness. At the same time, the figures with their clear, thin outlines and little shading and the smooth page layouts with their almost always rectangular panels make for quite a matter-of-factly visual storytelling.
This art style complements the plot nicely. It is a horror story that almost entirely abstains from supernatural elements. Most events can be explained psychologically. For instance, Mitsuko’s seemingly hypnotic power over her devotees might be due to their unstable minds, and to the fact that she is the first one to listen to their troubles.
Of course, one could read Suicide Club as more than ‘just’ an entertaining horror manga. The social commentary is there: after all, suicide was and still is a major issue in Japan, the country with the highest suicide rate in the world. Likewise, the issue of child prostitution is pointed out precisely by the offhand way in which it is depicted. But the social criticism (if one can call it that) of Suicide Club appears almost as detached as its characters – it’s not the engaged Confidential Confessions type that wants to offer help to readers who might find themselves in similar situations.
Scariest moment: the first time we get to see Mitsuko. There is something creepy about her face, and you immediately get the feeling that it’s going to haunt you (as it does Kyōko).
Rating: ● ● ● ○ ○
Find the previous Halloween blogposts here: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.
Manga reviews, Halloween 2018 edition: Ajin, I Am a Hero, Uzumaki
Posted: October 29, 2018 Filed under: review | Tags: Ajin, comics, Gamon Sakurai, Halloween, horror, I Am a Hero, Junji Itō, Kengo Hanazawa, manga, mystery, Tsuina Miura, Uzumaki, zombies 5 CommentsHalloween means scary manga time at The 650-Cent Plague. As always, here are short reviews of two recent and one classic horror manga. Find the previous Halloween blogposts here: 2017, 2016, 2015.
Ajin – Demi-Human (亜人 / ajin, lit. “sub-human”)
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Authors: Tsuina Miura (story), Gamon Sakurai (art)
Publisher: Egmont (originally Kōdansha)
Years: 2015- (original run 2012- )
Number of volumes: 12 so far
Volumes reviewed: 1
Pages per volume: 226
Price per volume: € 7.50
Website: https://www.egmont-manga.de/buch-buchreihe/ajin-demi-human/ (German publisher), https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=75929 (Baka-Updates)
ISBN: 978-3-7704-8605-2
When high school student Kei is hit by a truck one day, he discovers that he is an immortal ‘ajin’ – one of 47 such beings known to exist worldwide. Ajin are not considered human, and Kei fears he will be experimented on if he gets caught. Now he is on the run from both the government and bounty hunters.
Ajin suffers from the same mistake that many mystery manga series make: somehow the creators think the basic premise (in this case, Kei’s immortality) isn’t interesting enough, so gradually more and more supernatural phenoma are revealed (here: the ajin’s petrifying voice, demonic figures with razor-sharp claws, and who knows what else in the following volumes). In this and some other ways, Ajin is a poor man’s Death Note with its ‘howcatchem’ plot structure and its eccentric detective character.
On the plus side, the art is pretty cool, particularly the motorcycle chase scenes. If I had read this manga when I was 14, I would probably have loved it, even though (or maybe precisely because) the publisher’s age recommendation is 16+.
Scariest moment in vol. 1: there’s nothing really shocking here, but it’s quite a chilling scene when Kei realises that he can heal his injuries by killing himself – whenever he dies, he is alive and healthy again shortly afterwards. This is perhaps the most interesting thing about Ajin: how on the one hand his friends, family and everyone else around him turn away from him when they find out he is ‘not human’, and how on the other hand he slowly embraces his newfound power so that he is indeed in danger of losing his humanity.
Rating: ● ● ○ ○ ○
I Am a Hero (アイアムアヒーロー / ai amu a hīrō)
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Author: Kengo Hanazawa
Publisher: Carlsen (originally Shōgakukan)
Years: 2012-2018 (original run 2009-2017)
Number of volumes: 22
Volumes reviewed: 1
Pages per volume: ~230
Price per volume: € 7.95
Website: https://www.carlsen.de/serie/i-am-a-hero/30897 (German publisher), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Hero (Wikipedia)
ISBN: 978-3-551-79491-8
You might have already heard that this is a series about an average guy trying to survive a zombie apocalypse. This first volume, however, deals much more with protagonist Hideo himself than with flesh-eating undead. We get to know his daily routine, his lacklustre job as an assistant in a manga studio, his difficult relationship with his girlfriend Tekko, his futile attempts to get his own manga published, etc.
Hanazawa’s attention to detail is admirable. He uses a great many panels for the mundanest of Hideo’s activities, e.g. his lonely TV dinner after work. Each panel itself is meticulously drawn, sometimes obviously photoreferenced with reproduced lens distortions. Not only does this slow build-up make the eventual confrontation with the zombies more dramatic, it also allows Hanazawa early on to plant subtle hints about the coming zombie virus outbreak. But is he able keep up the suspenseful atmosphere over the course of 22 volumes? I don’t know yet, but at least vol. 1 is highly successful in this regard.
Another asset of I Am a Hero is its meta level. Hideo’s work at the manga studio, his dealings with magazine editors, co-workers and rival mangaka, and his ramblings about what makes a good manga all amount to a sometimes straightforward, sometimes satirical perspective on the manga industry.
Scariest moment in vol. 1: forget the zombies. Granted, the final scene in which a zombie crawls towards Hideo (and the picture surface) is impressive. But far more terrifying are Hideo’s hallucinations which are unrelated to the zombie apocalypse. This man simply has some severe mental issues. Thus when he is alone at home at night and starts seeing faces and arms outside his window and under his bed, it is so frightening because Hideo is such a realistic character. Some other reviews have descrived Hideo as “eccentric” or a “loser”, but he’s neither – he’s quite a normal person like you and me. So which is the scarier notion: getting attacked by fantasy creatures, which we know don’t exist in real life? Or losing your mind, which happens all the time to people in real life?
Rating: ● ● ● ● ○
Uzumaki – Spiral into Horror (うずまき / uzumaki, lit. “spiral” or “vortex”)
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Author: Junji Itō
Publisher: Carlsen (originally Shōgakukan)
Years: 2013-2014 (original run 1998-1999)
Number of volumes: 3
Volumes reviewed: 1
Pages per volume: 201
Price per volume: € 7.95
Website: https://www.carlsen.de/serie/uzumaki/33037 (German publisher), https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=6086 (Baka-Updates)
ISBN: 978-3-551-79271-6
The classic horror manga for this year’s review comes from one of the master mangaka of horror, Junji Itō.
The town of Kurōzu is haunted by spirals. In the first chapter, the inhabitant Mr. Saito develops an obsession with all kinds of spirals, collects kimonos with spiral prints, seashells, pottery with spiral designs… but that isn’t enough for him, he wants to become a spiral, and in the end he dies after twisting his body in a spiral shape inside a barrel. In the second chapter, his widow develops a phobia against spirals. In the third chapter, a girl at the local high school is slowly swallowed up by a vortex growing on her forehead (perhaps the most famous image of this manga), etc. etc.
It’s impressive how many variations of the spiral theme Itō comes up with. The episodes are only loosely connected through the high school couple of Kirie (a classmate of the girl from chapter 3) and Shuichi (son of the Saitos), though apparently in later volumes (see e.g. Jason Thompson’s review), an overarching plot emerges. Thus the stories in this first volume have a kind of Tales From The Crypt feeling to them. Their ‘twist’ endings are never funny, but somehow still darkly humorous. A great deal of this gloomy atmosphere is conveyed through Itō’s fine linework with which he subtly varies his characters’ facial expressions.
Scariest moment in vol. 1: when Mrs. Saito, already in hospital due to her fear of spirals, realises she has spirals on her fingertips – her normal papillary ridges – and wants to get rid of them.
Rating: ● ● ● ○ ○
Manga reviews, Halloween 2017 edition: Scary Lessons, Doubt, Naru Taru
Posted: October 28, 2017 Filed under: review | Tags: comics, Doubt, Emi Ishikawa, Halloween, horror, manga, Mohiro Kitō, mystery, Narutaru, thriller, Yoshiki Tonogai, Zekkyō gakkyū 7 CommentsHalloween is around the corner again, and that means reviews of recent and classic horror manga here at The 650-Cent Plague. Today’s three titles show once more how diverse this genre is, and that there are manifold (maybe even medium-specific?) ways for comics to elicit fear from their readers.
Scary Lessons (絶叫学級 / zekkyō gakkyū, lit. “Screaming Lessons”)
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Author: Emi Ishikawa
Publisher: Tokyopop (originally Shūeisha)
Years: 2009-2017 (original run 2008-2015)
Number of volumes: 20
Volumes reviewed: 1
Pages per volume: ~190
Price per volume: € 6.50
Website: http://www.tokyopop.de/manga/tokyopop-manga/shojo/scary-lessons/ (German publisher), https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=35025 (MangaUpdates)
ISBN: 978-3-86719-846-2
A horror manga for the shōjo demographic, can this possibly work? Well, it sure did scare the bejesus out of me – this is definitely the most frightening manga of the ones I’ve reviewed so far. Each chapter is a self-contained episode with a different cast of characters, only loosely held together by a framing narrative with a Crypt-Keeper-like narrator. All stories mostly take place at school (hence the “Lessons” part of the title) and have middle-school girl protagonists who are concerned with the usual things: boys, clothes, mobile phones, puppies, classmates… Each protagonist wants something, but when she gets it, it goes terribly wrong. In the first episode, for instance, a girl desperately wants a handheld gaming console, finds an abandoned one on the street and keeps it, but it turns out to be cursed and the game on it seems to affect people in the real world, even causing their death.
While death and violence do occur in this manga, they aren’t depicted that explicitly. In another episode, a girl is hit in the face by glass shards, but only her body from the chin down is shown in that panel. Still, I’m not sure if this manga is suitable reading material for readers of the same age as the middle school protagonists.
Another similarity to EC horror comics is the moralising and the gleeful twist ending in most episodes: our heroines eventually become aware of their vices and the mistakes they’ve made and resolve to behave better in the future. But often it’s already too late and they have to pay for what they’ve done.
Due to their self-contained nature, the individual stories are fast-paced and lack subtlety, but otherwise this first volume is a finely crafted manga, though I’m not sure if the suspense can be kept up for the remaining 19 (!) volumes.
Scariest moment in vol. 1: at the end of the fourth episode, when our young protagonist goes home and thinks she’s safe, only to find the killer is already waiting for her there.
Rating: ● ● ● ○ ○
Doubt
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Author: Yoshiki Tonogai
Publisher: Carlsen (originally Square Enix)
Years: 2010-2011 (original run 2007-2009)
Number of volumes: 4
Volumes reviewed: 1
Pages per volume: ~200
Price per volume: € 7.95
Website: https://www.carlsen.de/serie/doubt/18200 (German publisher), https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=18068 (MangaUpdates)
ISBN: 978-3-551-754431
Protagonist Yū is a high school student who plays a mobile game called “Rabbit Doubt” which is based on “Mafia” a.k.a. “Werewolf” a.k.a. “Murder in Palermo”. In the beginning of the manga, he meets his five fellow players face to face for the first time and becomes friends with them. Then, however, the game turns into deadly reality when they are abducted and one of them murdered.
The plot shifts into more of an escape room / Fermat’s Room kind of setting when the kids explore their prison and are confronted with puzzles such as locked doors and corresponding keys, all the while suspecting that one of them is in fact the abductor rather than a victim. Like with Death Note and other similar manga, the author unfortunately doesn’t have much faith in the initially simple but intriguing premise (in this case, the “Mafia” game) and keeps adding more and more elements, characters and game rules in an attempt to stretch out the story.
Although Doubt (and its sequel, Judge) has found a place in some ‘best horror manga‘ lists, it has more of a mystery / detective thriller vibe to it because Tonogai takes great care to present all facts and details of the setting in great clarity to the readers so that they can guess along with the characters who the killer is. Which is a shame, because the first 50 pages set quite a different, subtle and atmospheric mood, which is then abandoned in favor of a still suspenseful but more ‘economic’ storytelling.
Scariest moment in vol. 1: when a guy believed to be dead suddenly comes alive again.
Rating: ● ● ○ ○ ○
Naru Taru (なるたる / narutaru, English title: Shadow Star)
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Author: Mohiro Kitō
Publisher: Egmont (originally Kōdansha)
Years: 2001-2006 (original run 1998-2003)
Number of volumes: 12
Volumes reviewed: 1
Pages per volume: ~215
Price per volume: out of print (cover price € 5)
Website: https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=2394
ISBN: 3-89885-148-6
While swimming during her summer vacation, eleven-year-old Shiina finds a cuddly little alien on the bottom of the sea. The alien, Hoshimaru, can’t talk but has supernatural powers such as flying. An E.T.-like friendship begins. But then Shiina meets other children who also have alien companions, some of which are using their powers for sinister purposes.
Naru Taru has a reputation for starting harmlessly and then turning dark, deconstructing various shōnen manga tropes along the way and thwarting readers’ expectations. Some label it a horror manga, but I’ve just finished vol. 2 and at this point it’s more supernatural thriller than horror, although it’s hard to say which direction the story will take. From what I’ve read about the series, things are about to get darker still. Chances are that I won’t find out anytime soon, because the later volumes in particular are hard to find at reasonable prices.
Apart from this genre-wise ambiguous story, what makes this manga stand out is Mohiro Kitō’s art. As in his previous manga, Wings of Vendémiaire, there are many weird design ideas, but the true charm lies in how he depicts his characters and objects: from all angles, employing a real 360° ‘camera’, not shying away from daring foreshortenings.
Scariest moment in vol. 1: when another girl, Akira, quietly slits her wrists with a razor, it’s creepier than all the supernatural fighty-fighty before.
Rating: ● ● ● ○ ○
Manga reviews, Halloween 2016 edition: Shi Ki, Detective Ritual, Parasyte
Posted: October 27, 2016 Filed under: review | Tags: Chizu Hashii, comics, detective, Eiji Ōtsuka, Fuyumi Ono, Halloween, Hitoshi Iwaaki, horror, Kiseijū, manga, mystery, Ryū Fujisaki, Ryūsui Seiryōin, science fiction, Shiki, Tantei Gishiki, thriller 6 CommentsContinuing the ‘tradition’ from last year, here are some more reviews of relatively recent creepy manga:
Shi Ki (屍鬼 / shiki)
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Authors: Fuyumi Ono (original story), Ryū Fujisaki (manga adaptation)
Publisher: Egmont (originally Shūeisha)
Years: 2013-2015 (original run 2007-2011)
Number of volumes: 11
Volumes reviewed: 1-4
Pages per volume: ~190
Price per volume: € 7.50
Website: http://www.egmont-manga.de/buch-buchreihe/shi-ki/ (German publisher), https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=15089 (MangaUpdates)
ISBN: 978-3770481163
In a remote Japanese village, a mysterious epidemic breaks out. One by one, several villagers become anaemic and then die. The local doctor, Ozaki, resolves to find out the cause of the supposed disease.
What starts promisingly as a suspenseful medical thriller soon (in vol. 3 at the latest) turns into a generic vampire story if there ever was one. It turns out that the family who recently moved into a castle-like mansion near the village are vampires who suck the blood of the villagers and turn them into vampires too. Part of vol. 4 is even told from a villager-turned-vampire’s perspective and leaves no doubt about what they are.
That being said, this manga has some things going for it: on the one hand, it manages to keep up some of the suspense even after the vampires have been clearly established as the cause of the deaths. Plus, the art style is truly distinctive – characters are elongated and twisted, faces become fine-lined caricatures, stark contrasts are employed and inverted again. In some instances Fujisaki relies too much on photo-referencing though, resulting in overly flat compositions.
In any case I don’t think I’ll read the remaining 7 volumes anytime soon.
Scariest moment in vol. 4: the little vampire girl with the puppet.
Rating: ● ● ○ ○ ○
Detective Ritual (探偵儀式 / tantei gishiki)
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Authors: Ryūsui Seiryōin (writer), Eiji Ōtsuka (storyboard), Chizu Hashii (artist)
Publisher: Tokyopop (originally Kadokawa Shoten)
Years: 2011-2012 (original run 2004-2009)
Number of volumes: 6
Volumes reviewed: 1-3
Pages per volume: ~170
Price per volume: € 6.50
Website: https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=15089 (MangaUpdates)
ISBN: 978-3-8420-0134-3
Detective Ritual is more of a mystery than a horror manga, but it’s sufficiently creepy to be included in this Halloween-themed review post. Set in the near future or an alternate present, the story is about two rivaling detective organisations aiding the police in murder investigations, one government-sponsored and the other a group of precocious teenagers. The former, however, becomes the target of mass murder themselves…
The artwork is competent but unremarkable (except for the eccentric character designs) – the biggest draw of this manga is its irreverent attitude towards the detective genre: time and again, the initial, overly convoluted explanations that the detectives offer as solutions to the murder cases turn out to be wrong. There’s also a nice metafictional sub(?)-plot about a former detective who has become a writer of mystery novels.
This is certainly a manga that stands out by virtue of its weirdness, but it’s hard to really like it.
Scariest moment: the first of the eponymous ‘detective rituals’, a gruesome mass decapitation which is re-visited several times.
Rating: ● ● ● ○ ○
Parasyte – Kiseijuu (寄生獣 / kiseijū)
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Author: Hitoshi Iwaaki
Publisher: Panini Manga (originally Kōdansha)
Years: 2016- (original run 1988-1995)
Number of volumes: 10
Volumes reviewed: 1
Pages per volume: 278
Price per volume: € 8.99
Website: http://www.paninishop.de/parasyte (German)
ISBN: 978-3-95798-893-5
Parasyte is a horror manga classic, but its publication in German began only this year, probably in order to exploit a renewed interest in the property that has been sparked by the recent anime adaptation.
In the beginning of this story, worm-like space aliens fall on earth and crawl inside the heads of sleeping, unsuspecting people to take over their bodies. While the infested humans still look like before, the aliens are able to transform their heads into claws and fangs with which they prey and feast on other humans. When one of the aliens tries to take over teenaged Shinichi’s body, though, the infestation goes wrong: instead of settling in Shinichi’s brain, the alien is only able to take over his right arm. From now on, Shinichi and the intelligent, talking alien in his arm have to learn to get along, and ultimately work together to fight the other, less friendly aliens.
Despite all the gore and horror there’s also a lot of humour in this manga, and in addition to that Iwaaki even manages to insert some environmentalist messages. The artwork has a bit of an 80s feel to it, but some of the transformation sequences are downright trippy.
Scariest moment: that famous scene in chapter 1 where an alien-infested man’s head splits open, turns into a huge mouth and bites a woman’s head off.
Rating: ● ● ● ● ○
Manga reviews, Halloween edition: Limit, Sidonia, Kirihito
Posted: October 30, 2015 Filed under: review | Tags: comics, Halloween, horror, Keiko Suenobu, Kirihito, Limit, manga, Osamu Tezuka, Shidonia no Kishi, thriller, Tsutomu Nihei 8 CommentsI don’t like horror comics. But to get into the Halloween spirit, here are some short reviews of more or less recent mystery/thriller manga:
Limit (リミット / Rimitto)
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Author: Keiko Suenobu
Publisher: Egmont (originally Kōdansha)
Years: 2012-2013 (original run 2009-2011)
Number of volumes: 6
Volumes reviewed: 1-3
Pages per volume: ~170
Price per volume: € 6.50
Website: http://www.manganet.de/buch-buchreihe/limit/
ISBN: 9783-7704-7875-0
Contrary to popular belief, Japan isn’t actually overpopulated. The Japanese population is just very unevenly distributed: outside of the crowded metropolitan areas, there are vast wildernesses. This fact is what makes the story of Limit credible. On its way to a summer camp, a bus with schoolchildren crashes in a forest. Only a handful of them survives the crash, and now they have to endure until help arrives. Which takes days.
In this Lord of the Flies scenario, the greatest challenge for the schoolchildren is not to survive in the wilderness, but to get along with each other. One of the girls in particular who was always bullied in school before now sees the opportunity to take revenge. Through occasional flashbacks to their lives before the bus accident, all of the survivors are well characterised, making for a suspenseful read.
Scariest moment in vol. 3: when they find the dead body of one the girls. Somehow I hadn’t seen this coming.
Rating: ● ● ● ● ○
Knights of Sidonia (シドニアの騎士 / Shidonia no kishi)
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Author: Tsutomu Nihei
Publisher: Egmont (originally Kōdansha)
Years: 2010-today (original run 2009-2015)
Number of volumes: 12 so far (14 in Japan)
Volumes reviewed: 1-12
Pages per volume: ~170
Price per volume: € 7.50
Website: http://www.manganet.de/buch-buchreihe/knights-of-sidonia/
ISBN: 9783-7704-8556-7
Knights of Sidonia, which I’ve mentioned before here, is a weird mix of genres: mecha sci-fi action, harem slapstick comedy… and also space horror and body horror. It takes some time to get used to this, particularly if you’re familiar with Tsutomu Nihei’s earlier, more homogeneous manga, but now, as the series approaches its end, it’s beginning to make sense.
The story revolves around humans in mechas and spaceships fighting against an alien race called gauna. At first, both sides look very different: humans with their angular high-tech machinery on the one hand, the biomorphic gauna on the other. But the lines become blurred when humans build mecha/gauna hybrids and the shapeshifting gauna start imitating mecha pilots.
Scariest moment in vol. 12: when a gauna engulfs an entire mecha – apparently without killing the pilot…
Rating: ● ● ● ● ○
Kirihito (きりひと讃歌 / Kirihito sanka)
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Author: Osamu Tezuka
Publisher: Carlsen (originally Shōgakukan)
Years: 2009-2010 (original run 1970-1971)
Number of volumes: 3
Volumes reviewed: 1
Pages per volume: ~270
Price per volume: € 16.90
Website: http://www.carlsen.de/serie/kirihito/22759
ISBN: 978-3-551-79180-1
This one is a bit older, but it has only relatively recently been published in English (2006) and German (2009). Kirihito is a medical thriller about a mysterious disease that turns people into dog-like creatures. A young doctor, the eponymous Kirihito, is sent to a remote village where this disease has broken out in order to investigate and find a cure – or so he thinks. He soon learns the hard way that the disease is infectious indeed.
The pacing is off, the story has its issues (e.g. the problematic portrayal of women) and drags on for too long (even though this is only the first of three volumes) – but the art is vastly superior to that of most living mangaka. Although you could argue that his cartoonish style would be more suitable for a humorous story, the sheer amount of Tezuka’s daring design ideas is astonishing.
Scariest moment in vol. 1: towards the end of the volume when Izumi, Kirihito’s fiancée, finds out that her own parents are not quite free from blame for Kirihito’s disappearance.
Rating: ● ● ● ○ ○
Before Watchmen roundup, part 1
Posted: September 3, 2012 Filed under: review | Tags: Alan Moore, Before Watchmen, comics, DC, horror, Jae Lee, June Chung, Len Wein, LGBT, Ozymandias, pirates, remakes, sequels, superheroes, US, Watchmen 5 Comments
I confess: I have read and purchased copies of several Before Watchmen issues, and plan to continue to do so. For some people, this is an immoral act, equivalent to slapping Alan Moore in the face. Other people say Moore made a mistake when he signed his contract with DC, and now he has to pay for it. In any case, I was curious to see how the Before Watchmen books would handle the unavoidable intertextual challenges that come with such a task.
In preparation, I re-read Watchmen, to be better able to get all the references in Before Watchmen. Maybe that was a mistake, because it raised my expectations towards Before Watchmen even more. Consequently, I decided to read all seven #1 issues and then select which series I’m going to follow.
The books that I dropped after the first issue were Nite Owl, Comedian, and Dr. Manhattan. With Nite Owl and Dr. Manhattan, I found the stories were too close to the original series and didn’t add much to it, whereas the storytelling in Comedian was too slow-paced to convince me that the plot was going anywhere soon. That leaves me with Minutemen, Silk Spectre, Ozymandias, and Rorschach. Ozymandias is the only book so far of which I have read two issues, which I consider the minimum for a meaningful review. (Minutemen #2 came out earlier, but due to a mail order fail I didn’t get it yet.)
Review of Before Watchmen: Ozymandias #1-2
Language: English
Authors: Len Wein (writer), Jae Lee (artist), June Chung (colourist)
Publisher: DC
Pages: 23 (+2 pages of backup story)
Price: $3.99
Website: http://www.dccomics.com/comics/before-watchmen-ozymandias-2012
The framing narrative here is that Adrian Veidt tells his life story on October 11, 1985. I instantly recognized some of Veidt’s words as Moore’s, and thought that Len Wein just wanted to flesh out Veidt’s autobiography as told in Watchmen chapter XI (“Look On My Works, Ye Mighty…”). However, reading both sequences side by side reveals vast differences: in Watchmen, Veidt’s monologue takes place much later than October 11. The wording is different – sometimes considerably, sometimes only slightly, e.g.: “Strangely, before subduing Phoenicia, he had struck north toward Gordium” (Wein) vs. “Strangely, before subduing Phoenicia, he struck north towards Gordium” (Moore). And there are inexplicable visual differences too: in Watchmen, the gravestone of Veidt’s parents is rectangular with a rounded top, whereas in Before Watchmen he is standing at two gravestones in the shape of celtic crosses. So unless Veidt is randomly dropping roses at strangers’ graves, Jae Lee or Len Wein altered the appearance of the grave, presumably to make it look cooler.
The completely new things that Wein adds to Veidt’s origin story aren’t convincing either. As Jennifer Cheng already said in her review of Ozymandias #1 at CBR, it is hard to believe that the reason why Veidt would become the masked vigilante Ozymandias is to avenge his lover Miranda. Furthermore, given the importance attributed to this relationship, what are the readers supposed to make of Veidt’s homosexuality that is clearly hinted at some pages earlier?
Then again, the selling point of the book isn’t its plot, or its unlikeable protagonist. It’s Jae Lee’s spectacular art, as several other reviewers have pointed out. The success of Lee’s contrast-heavy style depends on good colourists, and luckily, June Chung is more than up to this job. Thus, Before Watchmen: Ozymandias is a series that makes me want to read more by Jae Lee and less by Len Wein.
Rating: ● ● ○ ○ ○
As for “The Curse of the Crimson Corsair”, the backup story by Len Wein and John Higgins: while “Tales of the Black Freighter” was smartly interwoven with the main story in Watchmen, an independent pirate/horror story spread across all Before Watchmen series doesn’t make sense to me. I wouldn’t mind reading a well-written and well-drawn standalone comic book in this genre, though (and the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean films shows that this genre has market potential).
Why I stopped reading Swamp Thing
Posted: August 10, 2012 Filed under: review | Tags: Animal Man, comics, crossover, DC, fantasy, Francesco Francavilla, horror, Jeff Lemire, Marco Rudy, mystery, Scott Snyder, Steve Pugh, superheroes, Swamp Thing, The New 52, US, Yanick Paquette 5 CommentsReview of Swamp Thing #7-12
Previously in Swamp Thing: by the time I wrote my last review, Alec Holland was about to turn into the Swamp Thing, and the series was about to get really good.
Language: English
Authors: Scott Snyder (writer – plus Jeff Lemire in #12), Yanick Paquette/Marco Rudy/various (artist)
Publisher: DC
Pages: 20
Price: $2.99
Website: http://www.dccomics.com/comics/swamp-thing-2011
Back in issue #7, the series still seemed to be going in the right direction. With the help of the Parliament of Trees and his “bio-restorative formula”, Alec Holland is finally transformed and emerges from a giant cabbage as the Swamp Thing. The artwork by Yanick Paquette leaves little to be desired.
In issue #8, however, Paquette shares artist duties with Marco Rudy, depicting the clash of Swamp Thing and the army of the Rot. (For an insightful critique of that concept, see Iann Robinson’s review of #12.)
This pattern is repeated in issue #9: the first 8 pages are drawn by Paquette, the remaining 12 by Rudy. This constant back-and-forth between those two artists is annoying, but at this point, their styles had grown so similar that I almost didn’t mind anymore. A lot of mystical, epic fighting takes place in this comic book.
With issue #10, a completely different artist, Francesco Francavilla, takes over (including the colouring). While Francavilla is by no means a bad artist, his style is such a far cry from Paquette’s and Rudy’s that one cannot help but notice the difference and wonder why.
Especially since in issue #11, Rudy is back as the artist. What was Paquette doing in those 2 1/2 months when he apparently wasn’t drawing Swamp Thing? In fact, the next Swamp Thing issue with Paquette as artist will be #13, which is scheduled for October. I couldn’t find a statement from DC that explained what makes this merry-go-round of artists necessary. Apart from being irritating for the reader, I can’t imagine Eisner and Harvey award-winning writer Scott Snyder is fond of constantly working with fill-in collaborators. This situation is telling about DC’s attitude towards its authors.
The last straw came in issue #12 with the start of the dreaded Animal Man crossover story (“Rotworld”). In fact, this issue is part two of a two-part “prologue” to said storyline, the first part being Animal Man #12. Crossovers that require you to read every single tie-in issue to keep up with what’s going on are a clumsy attempt increase the sales of each involved series, and it doesn’t work with me. I have tried to get into Animal Man before, but didn’t like Steve Pugh’s art, so I don’t feel like picking it up now. Neither am I interested in seeing other characters from the DC universe make guest appearances in Swamp Thing (which will happen in issue #13).
So I won’t be reading Swamp Thing anymore. By means of crossover mania and artist roulette (which DC intends to keep spinning), DC has killed a strong series. Still, it was worth reading for most of its first year, both as a DC universe comic that does without (regular) superheroes, as well as for the intricate ways in which it refers to the pre-relaunch era. Thus the first trade paperback, collecting #1-7 and coming out this month, might be of general interest. For me, however, there are more interesting comic books being published by DC at the moment – more on those in later posts.
Rating: ● ● ○ ○ ○
Review: Swamp Thing #3-6
Posted: February 5, 2012 Filed under: review | Tags: comics, DC, fantasy, horror, Marco Rudy, mystery, Scott Snyder, superheroes, Swamp Thing, The New 52, US, Victor Ibáñez, Yanick Paquette 4 Comments
Language: English
Authors: Scott Snyder (writer), Yanick Paquette/Marco Rudy/various (artist)
Publisher: DC
Pages: 20
Price: $2.99
Website: http://www.dccomics.com/dccomics/comics/?cm=20705
Previously in Swamp Thing: Alec Holland is the Swamp Thing, the Knight of the Green… or is he? Scott Snyder doesn’t really answer that question, in what I assume is an attempt to both pay tribute to and at the same time break away from Swamp Thing’s backstory.
Issue #3 shifts the main focus to a new character, a hospitalized boy named William who becomes the first villain of the series. Things get more creepy from here on. In the Alec Holland storyline, we see him using his power to manipulate plants for the first time, and there’s a nice one-page flashback to happier times for Swamp Thing and his lover Abigail (i.e. a tribute to the earlier series). Although only Snyder and Yanick Paquette are credited on the cover, more than half of this issue is actually drawn by Victor Ibáñez (!), which could be the reason why I liked the art a little bit better than in the first two issues.
In issue #4, Marco Rudy suddenly takes over as penciller, and there are three different inkers now. These changes in the art team are highly irritating, but in itself the art isn’t bad. There’s some more nasty horror in William’s storyline, whereas Alec learns about the epic and mystical background of the Swamp Thing.
Paquette returns as penciller and inker in issue #5, and now I remember what I like about him: his inking is really striking. While I don’t care much for his heavy crosshatching, his outlines, which can be up to about 3mm thick in a close-up, are daring. A third storyline about an evil scientist/occultist in the Amazon Jungle is introduced here, and Alec Holland shows off some more of his Swamp Thing powers in a battle against William.
The artist carousel revolves once more and brings us Marco Rudy again as the penciller and inker for issue #6. I’m not saying Rudy is a worse (or better) artist than Paquette, but I wish they’d let me get used to either of them. Apart from that, this is the darkest, most atmospheric and probably best issue of the series so far.
Luckily, Snyder quickly did away with the idea of connecting Swamp Thing to the rest of the DC Universe (that Superman appearance in the first issue was truly awkward) and now pursues a distinct mystery/horror/fantasy tone. If only DC could resolve the artist trouble, this could be a really good comic. (The next two issues are announced with Paquette as artist, so let’s hope they stick to him.)
Rating: ● ● ● ○ ○
The 650-Cent Plague 