Here’s a fun review
grab bag of manga that I read in the last week or so. I have been trying to think about cutting down my collecting, but then I ended up in Kinokuniya, so…we can all guess what happened (three more volumes of manga for the double stacked shelves).
Sketchy is by the same author as Is Kichijoji the Only Place to Live?, which I’ve reviewed here previously and really wish would be put out in print editions instead of digital only. As a result, I was really happy to see that they’re putting her skateboarding series in a physical format. The series follows Ako, who is in her 30s and works at a video rental store. She’s sort of drifting through life, with an underwhelming boyfriend and the sense that she’s not doing as well as her friends. One day she sees a teenage girl skateboarding at night and she gets the idea to start skateboarding herself. There are also other women introduced who end up getting into skateboarding at the same time as her for reasons of their own. Makihirochi is great at getting across subtle emotions and I love how realistic all her characters feel. You really get the sense of how important their frustrations are, which might come off as trite in the hands of a less skilled author. I’m looking forward to collecting this as they come out and I hope that US manga publishers will translate more josei.
Our Torsos Align is a short story collection with the general theme of humans and monsters being in love. Despite the author’s other work (MADK, under his penname) being super sexually explicit, this is rated Older Teen and there’s nothing objectionable beyond kissing. I love his art and this was a good group of stories. My favorite was the first one (“Naptum”) about a woman getting lost in the Amazon and being saved by a bird creature. He can speak English, so this puts them on a decent intellectual footing in terms of consent, and the story is really sweet. I also liked “Inhuman Flower,” which had a good twist. I do enjoy a short story collection and am happy to see how much of his work is getting translated over here, because he is extremely talented. This is a keeper.
Finding books like this is why it’s still so worthwhile to go scour bookstores in person; I never would have heard of it if I didn’t trawl the shelves, and there’s no way an algorithm is suggesting it to me because I don’t have any other samurai manga on my shelves. Nevertheless, the art and the tone struck me when I saw it and I’m glad I took the chance. The Blue Wolves of Mibu is a historical samurai manga with some intense themes (child slavery, kidnap, murder). Nio is an orphan who ends up joining the Miburo, a group of samurai who are in Kyoto to try to provide some order. However, the political situation is very complicated and the good vs evil narrative that Nio initially sees gets blurry very quickly. Nio is an appealing main character and I liked seeing his growth even within this one volume. I liked all the characters and even though I can tell there’s going to be some serious tragedy to come, I’ll keep reading future volumes.
What can I say about this, it’s great! I picked this up on a whim (as I seem to do quite often) and loved it. I made a special trip out to Kinokuniya today to get the limited edition dust jacket for Volume 2, that’s how much I love it. March Comes in Like a Lion is about Rei, a professional shogi player (basically Japanese chess). He is seventeen and has been through a ton of tragedy, but the presence of the Kawamoto family in his life provides a little cheer through his depressive state. Umino is extremely good at characterization and emotion, with a great ability to balance an increasingly large cast. Rei’s inner turmoil is very well depicted, and even characters who seem to be terrible people right now will probably get some explanatory depth to them as the series progresses. I love slice of life like this and true to life emotions. The river scenes and the environment are very well done also.
In conclusion, I love manga!
