A Lighter, Japanese "It"

 

First of all, dear readers, allow me to apologize for the massive gap between my last review posting and this latest one.  I have gotten into the habit of finding the nine manga I year that I want to review, and then writing all of my reviews of them in one big folder before posting them.

So, naturally, I first had to wait until I could find nine new manga to talk about.

And Covid has taken away all the good chairs at my local Barnes and Noble, so I don't exactly get to go there all that much any more, even if I didn't have an entire life to already keep me busy.

 

But enough of that: Let's get to reviewing Yoko Komori's "Mermaid Scales and The Town Of Sand".

 

Again, as with Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible, this series was also recommended to me via banner ad on my phone’s Google Chrome home page.  But, for those who didn’t have that luxury, the series that I am reviewing today was blurbed as “a cute manga with a dark twist”.

 

And I don’t know about you, but those terms made me instantly think of horror manga.  So, supernatural mermaids and horror?  I was all over it.  Plus, it just so happened that I had the evening free on the release date last week, so I figured what the heck?

 

When twelve-year-old Tokiko’s parents divorce, she leaves with her father to the seaside town of Sunanomori, where she had briefly spent time as a toddler.  But, back during those days, a sudden instance of near-drowning had led to the young Tokiko being saved by what appeared to be a merman.

 

Grappling with her own hazy memories and her new living situation, Tokiko desires to find the merman once again and thank him for what he has done.  Along the way, she deals with conflicts from both inside and out (but nothing too apparently supernatural or dangerous).

 

The story felt very Stephen King to me, particularly his more child-based stories such as “It” and “The Institute”.  There is mystery, the threat of danger and a hint of the supernatural, but there is also the occasional (okay, more than occasional) snippet of just plain, ordinary, run-of-the-mill life.  There is even a conspiracy among the adults to keep the children from going into a certain sewer pipe and risk seeing what’s on the other side.

 

SPOILER ALERT: Sadly, all this secrecy comes close to a satisfying payoff, but it still falls short.  This did not turn out to be a horror manga, per se; more like a supernatural-tinged slice-of-life mystery.  (Which is still good.)

 

Art-wise, the artist pairs her simplistic character designs with almost watercolor backgrounds, leading to a nice artistic dissonance.  Like adding salt to one’s caramel.

 

But be forewarned: While there is no real blood, sex or violence in this manga, there are a few scenes of our underage protagonist appearing naked in her dream worlds/Imagine Spots.  No doubt this is merely meant to emphasize the scenes’ etherealness, but I figured a warning was better safe than sorry.

 

While this manga is only a single volume and not an ongoing series, I feel like I can still recommend it to you readers to pick up.  Maybe I’ll even pick it up once or twice in the future from my local library…as long as it remains on the shelves…

 

A Rare Bright Spot

 

On my second-to-last visit to my local library, I saw on the shelves Volume 2 of something called “Rainbow and Black”.

 

The blurb on the back made it sound mildly interesting, but I couldn’t very well start with Volume 2, now could I?  So I went into the library catalog online and reserved a copy of Volume 1 (which they thankfully had), and it came in yesterday.  Unfortunately, I had to work, and could not go and pick it up until this afternoon.

 

The basic synopsis of the series is that protagonist Kuroe Shirahoshi (beautiful Japanese wordplay on the words for black “kuro” and white “shiro/a” there, on par with My Hero Academia), a woman who “sees things in only black and white” one night finds a strange and adorable animal abandoned on the side of the road.  This feathered mouse creature is Niji, a “Rainbow-Colored Heavenly Parrot”, a rare animal that defies all description and classification.

 

Now, before you say anything-This is a slice-of-life manga more than anything.  Niji is not a magical talking animal from another world.  He did not name himself, and he only speaks in a disturbingly knowledgeable parroting of phrases that he hears.  Kuroe is not a sorcerer, nor does she fall into another world like every other manga protagonist seems to do these days.  She’s just a regular Japanese college student who still lives with her mother in (I think) Tokyo.  She even uses social media (to a degree).

 

While this is probably one of the funniest manga I’ve picked up in a while, with a ton of visual gags and gobbledygook nonsense, all stemming from the actions of Niji, the story blurbs themselves are a tad misleading.

 

There is all this implication that Niji’s presence will somehow help expand Kuroe’s world to help her accept that some things are not “all black and white”, but there is little of that actually happening in the first volume.  Kuroe remains steadfast in her life philosophy, and Niji doesn’t actually seem to be doing much in the way of changing that.

 

Truth be told, Volume 1 reads more like a calming slice-of-life exotic pet care informational manga than anything really thinky or life-altering.

 

And Kuroe’s whole problem seems very ill-defined to me.  Seeing things in all black and white, to me, means all-or-nothing, right or wrong, Up or Down and so forth.  Either something is or it isn’t.  Either something is wrong or it’s right.  But I see little of that in the personal problems that she shows us in Volume 1.  All that I see of her is that she’s a stickler for the rules and doing what’s right, and that she has some social problems that eerily mirror my own as an autistic man.

 

But, in Volume 1’s defense, Kuroe does wind up making friends with a fellow Rainbow-Colored Heavenly Parrot owner on social media, and winds up meeting up with her IRL and spending time with her as a friend…in the very last chapter [that it contained].

 

But I don’t regret having read this manga.  It was funny and heartfelt, tugging on the strings of one’s heart with its depictions of pet-and-owner love relationships.  Niji is cute and weird at the same time.  There is no mystery or violence or romance in this manga, and that is weirdly fine, given what it actually is.

 

It may not be much, but I think I will try to keep up with this series, whenever and wherever I find it on the shelves.

 

What The Cluck?

 

It has been a dry season at my local library (but isn’t it always?).  A while aback, I saw Volume 1 of Shu Sakuratani’s Rooster Fighter on the shelves…and immediately dismissed it as more goofy, isekai random Japanese nonsense.  You know, like Reincarnated As The Dungeon’s Only Vending Machine or So I’m A Spider, So What?

                                      

But an exceptionally dry spell without any really new manga on the shelves and a boring couple of weeks had left me desperate for something new to review.  Really needed to stretch those creative muscles.

 

And, surprisingly, this manga did NOT suck.

 

The back of the manga espoused it as “one ordinary but heroic rooster is mankind’s only defense against giant monsters-beware his cock-a-doodle-doo!”.

 

I did not make that up: The aforementioned cock-a-doodle-doo is actually his finishing move, a crow that resonates with the bodies of his opponents and makes them explode.

 

Granted, it is just as comedic as the premise and the blurb make it sound, but it’s more than that.  The rooster, Keiji, is pretty much every Gritty 90’s Anti-Hero trope rolled into a tiny, feathered package.  He is, for lack of a better term, a man’s man who claims to not like kids, hates to see women cry, and beds a different one in pretty much every town.  The characters he encounters have deep, emotional backstories.  And he is even on a quest for vengeance against the monster that ate his beloved little sister.

 

Imagine if someone like Jotaro Kujo was a rooster.  Seriously, even the artwork is all gritty and realistic.

 

If I had to describe it, Rooster Fighter is a battle/horror comic much like Jojo, but with more comedy to it, from physical comedy to funny faces to our running gag of Japanese-style humor that I’ve talked so much about.  The demons are bizarrely humanoid and born from the everyday stresses of average people (for the most part).  Many of the characters can exhibit strange and bizarre personality traits (even Keiji, who often walks the line of Comically Serious).  And then we have the humor of a tiny ordinary rooster, not even two feet tall, running around on the skins of demons to peck at them once or twice before finishing them off with a sonic, shattering cock-a-doodle-doo.

 

Despite its premise, it is far south of the sliding scale of dumber comedy manga like Bobobo-bo-bobobo, or just another dumb isekai.  Not much is explained, but not much needs to.  There is occasional graphic violence and adult themes, but, at the end of the day, it’s just a goofy, fun romp.

 

That being said, while I will keep my eyes open for it when I go to the bookstore from now on, I doubt that I will be actually making a purchase of this series any time soon.

 

PS: I have recently begun following newly-released manga from Shonen Jump, albeit translated and released on their website every Sunday.

 

Do you people want to see me reviewing some of those?

 

Wait a second-I already have, back when I posted my review of Candy Flurry last year.  So I guess I will go ahead and do that, if I happen to run into another dry spell and find myself desperate for material to review.

 

Not like anyone really reads this blog, anyway…

 

(sigh)

 

Is Radio Even Still A Thing?

 

Okay, first of all, Happy New Year.  2023, baby.

 

Who’da thunk it?

 

This year, having learned my lesson from 2022, I tried to wait until early morning of New Year's Day to post this, so as not to have it accidentally count as a "last year" post again.  But then came family dinner, which took up the entire day (plus the Nuzlocke I was doing).  So that explains why you are getting this fresh new content on January 2nd.

 

But at least it does count towards 2023.

 

And now on to your scheduled first manga blog post of the year.  Two for two.

 

Now, Masaaki Nakayama hasn’t exactly written a ton of manga, but boy-do those few he has written stay with you!

 

I could liken his work to that of Junji Ito, in a way.  Many creatures, human (oid) and otherwise wind up being distorted to an unnerving effect in both Nakayama’s and Ito’s works.  And very few things from either of their manga ever really get a concrete and satisfying explanation.  But, for better or for worse, Nakayama apparently doesn’t share Ito’s medical background, which allows him to really give us the creepily-realistic details that he does.

 

Not that that’s a bad thing, mind you.  Such lack of fine detail can often add to the unnatural-ness of whatever we’re seeing.

 

Nakayama also operates on a dark variation of the “Japanese humor” that I’ve talked so much about before on this blog; Rather than having someone do something goofy out of nowhere during a serious scene to break the tension (or vice-versa), Nakayama often has something horrifying or just plain weird and out-of-place appear out of nowhere in order to create horror.

 

It’s almost like the manga equivalent of a Jump Scare-again, like Ito, in that Ito often leaves the horrific images that his stories are always building up to on opposite pages, so that it’s up to the reader to turn the page of their own will and willingly invite the horrific image into their eyes and brains.

 

I think I might have seen some pictures from [Nakayama’s] earlier work Fuan No Tane (Seeds of Anxiety) online before, but I think PTSD Radio is/was the first manga of his that I’ve actually picked up and read.

 

Going by the tropes page for Fuan No Tane, said book was basically a collection of occasionally-related nonsensical ghost stories with little to no explanations and a ton of creepy shock value.

 

PTSD Radio is only mildly better in that regard.

 

We cut between POVs so fast that this reader was practically given whiplash, but there are a few loose threads that seem to tie together.

 

Chifuyu and Keita used to date, until a supernatural hair-pulling thing started to place a strain on their relationship.  Elsewhere and elsewhen, a little girl that we can assume to be a young Chifuyu is forced to have her head shaved by the traditions of her small rural village.  Her late mother also has her head shaved when she passes, which the village elders attribute to the appeasement of their god, Ogushi-sama.  In his name, people’s heads are shaved upon death (and apparently at other points in their lives) and their hair offered up in sealed boxes covered with talismans.

 

There are also crows that are connected to Ogushi-sama, as well.

 

The horror in these tales comes not only from the hideously distorted features and the seemingly random cosmic horror-like world that the characters live in, but also, as in his previous work, from the fear of being watched by or followed by something that you cannot see or understand.

 

So, naturally, in addition to the hair motif, there is also a serious eye motif going on throughout the work.  Eyes for watching, you see.  Eyes where they shouldn’t be, eyes NOT being where they should be, too many eyes, etc.

 

Each chapter is only a few pages long, which also does not help with overall story cohesion.  The book that I picked up from my local library was an omnibus containing Volumes 1 and 2 out of the 4 that there are, so one can hope for a concrete ending that ties everything all together, but I personally would not hold my breath.

 

If I happened to see the next and final volume omnibus available on my library shelves, I might pick it up just for the sake of trying to figure out what the heck is going on, but that’s it.  One can only stare at unsettling images for so long before you either get so creeped out by them that you never want to see them again, or else you get used to them and they lose their power.

 

But this is still only the first post of the new year, so, with luck, the next 8 series that I intend to review for this blog in 2023 will be of higher storytelling quality.

 

 

 

Well, as promised, just in time for Halloween, here comes my review of Be Very Afraid of Kanako Inuki, her latest English-translated release here in the US for no doubt decades by this point.

 

To start off, I would like to discuss the packaging that the book came in.  I can't remember if the back cover was all that special (and can't check), but the front cover was quite artfully done.  As you see above, a distorted, doll-like face grins up at us from a sea of innocent pink roses.  It is almost too on-the-nose in that regard; that is pretty much what you're getting when you pull back the cover.  Initially, I had been expecting a thick hardcover book, more along the lines of a Junji Ito collection.  I got a small and thin paperback.

 

The book does begin with a table of contents but also, strangely, a set of introductions and profiles of the characters we would meet going forward.

 

Only 12 hours later do I realize that this "collection" is indeed a collection: a sampling of short stories from various horror series that the author has done in her lifetime.  And these people are her various recurring protagonists and villains of said multiple series.

Anyway this collection contains stand-alones from Inuki's Presents, Bukita-Kun, Big Sis Sasori, The Haunted Examination Room, Fulfilled Wishes and The Mysterious Tatari-Chan.

 

Each selection had its own subtitle, the title of the story from each series, but I had forgotten my notebook when I left for the bookstore last night, and had to take my initial review notes down on my phone.

Thankfully, the free Amazon preview I just found just happened to contain the title page, including the subtitles, in their entirety.

"The Birthday Present" from Presents: There’s an old saying that it’s not the passage of time that makes you older on your birthday; it’s the “extra years” hidden inside your presents.  Is that why Mayuko’s old classmate Kurumi, who has never gotten any presents, has remained a child all these years, while Mayuko has grown old?

 

"Lolita" from Bukita-Kun: Little Marimo wants to grow up and become an adult.  When she encounters teen Bukita, she finds a way to get her wish, but it may wind up being more than she can handle…

 

"The Sasori Doll" from Big Sis Sasori: When bullied little sister Sanagi prays to Santa for a doll that her mean eponymous sister cannot break, both horror and warm fuzzies are found inside her stocking the next day.

 

"Lovesickness" from The Haunted Examination Room: The serious Dr. Kanawa narrates for us a case involving a bullied young girl taking refuge in her delusions of a fictional romance.  And, as it turns out, the perfect man does exist only within her heart…literally…

 

"Happiness Hidden in the Dark" from Fulfilled Wishes: In a fantasy kingdom, a blind princess has everything that she could wish for, except sight.  She learns of a demon-summoning ritual that can grant her wish, but she soon learns to be careful what she wishes for…

 

"Friends at the Smiling Gate" from The Mysterious Tatari-Chan: When bully boy Noroi sticks a worse-than-usual “Kick Me” sign on the back of shy Tatari, it unleashes the fury of an angry mob on the hunt for a scapegoat.

 

Now, don’t get me wrong: Inuki’s works in this book do qualify as horror.  But, so far, it’s sort of a Goosebumps meets Junji Ito meets Kazuo Umezu thing, with a shoujo manga twist.

 

The stories are all centered around children, a la R. L. Stine, but that doesn’t make them any less unsettling.  The cruelty and selfishness of children is on full display here, and played for all the creepiness it is worth.  The artwork is reminiscent of Umezu: decidedly unsettling, particularly with it all being printed on stark white paper with stark black ink.  And Ito’s influence can be seen in how it is often the darknesses and madnesses lying deep within ordinary people that winds up doing them in.  Wishes are twisted in this series.  The cruel and the greedy are always punished in these stories, so you readers should probably be prepared for a definite preponderance of Downer Endings.

 

But this is fair, as it really plays into the “horror” aspect of tragedy, by definition.

 

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, there are two great tragedies in this world.  One is not getting what you want, and the other is getting it.

 

And don’t get me wrong: the artwork is definitely unsettling, but I am glad to report that it was nowhere near enough to ever make me stop reading or want to slam the book shut and look away.  (Kind of hard to slam a paperback shut.)  That is often the problem I’ve had with Junji Ito-due to his extreme attention to detail, his artwork can often be a little TOO unsettling for my tastes, no matter how good the writing is.  And while there is thankfully very little graphic blood and gore, that only helps to make it stand out even more when it does show up.

 

There are also short descriptions of the origins of each story posted beforehand, as well as several horror-related Top 5 lists that help give us a deeper insight into the author.  And they do add something to our understanding of the works.

 

But, finally, there is one thing I don’t 100% understand.  The child-friendly descriptions and “getting to know the author” stuff, plus the simplistic notes before each one that explain how to use the Japanese honorifics within (which all seasoned fans of anime and manga already know) seem to point to the series being targeted towards children.  But there is blood, mentions of adult situations, and plenty of creepy imagery that they might find too disturbing.  The labels on the back of the book say Ages 16+, so that’s another wrinkle to it.

 

But, as an adult who has literally just turned 34, I’d say that this work is definitely worth reading, for those who can handle it.

 

And, as R. L. Stine would say, have a scary day, everyone!

 

(And a scary rest of the year.  Good night, Seattle, we love you!)

 

(References.)