20 February 2015 4 Comments

Ajin: Demi-Human, Volume 2

Ajin: Demi-Human, Volume 2Creator: Gamon Sakurai
U.S. publisher: Vertical
ISBN: 9781939130853
Released: December 2014
Original release: 2013

I tend to enjoy darker-toned stories about immortals, so I wasn’t particularly surprised that I enjoyed the first volume of Ajin: Demi-Human. The manga series was conceived of by writer Tsuina Miura and artist Gamon Sakurai, but by the second volume it appears as though Sakurai has taken over the story of Ajin as well. (Although, it should be noted that Miura and Sakurai’s pilot chapter for Ajin, “The Shinya Nakamura Incident,” is also included in the series’ second volume.) Ajin: Demi-Human, Volume 2 was originally published in Japan in 2013 while the English-language edition of the manga was released by Vertical at the end of 2014. The first volume of the series established an intriguing premise—immortal beings, considered to be less than human, who are persecuted and subjected to cruel experiments—as well as an exceptionally dark atmosphere, and so I was particularly interested in seeing where Sakurai would take the story next.

Kei is on the run. Recently discovered to be an immortal demi-human—only the third to have been officially confirmed to exist in Japan—he is trying to avoid capture by the Demi-Human Control Commission and hoping to find allies in other immortals. When he is contacted by two rogue demi-humans, Sato (also known as “Hat”) and Tanaka, it seems as though Kei’s hopes have been answered, except for the small matter of the two men having taken his sister hostage. But with a little bit of effort and some unexpected theatrics, Sato is able to readily explain away the kidnapping and even manages to earn Kei’s trust in the process. Though Kei is unaware of it at the time, that misplaced trust will have severe repercussions for him. Sato and Tanaka are very interested in the young man. Not only is he a demi-human, just like the two of them Kei is a variant immortal capable of manifesting and controlling a black ghost. However, it is a power that he has yet to understand or to completely control.

Ajin: Demi-Human, Volume 2, page 61Despite being a large focus of the first two volumes of Ajin and around whom much of the manga’s plot revolves, currently Kei is actually one of the least compelling characters in the series. The people and events surrounding Kei tend to be much more engaging. Sato in particular is a tremendous presence. It is easy to see why he instills such fear among those in the Demi-Human Control Commission—he cannot be controlled. Sato is a coldly calculating and ruthless strategist with extraordinary combat skills and the ability to manipulate both the people around him and the situations in which he finds himself. He is terrifyingly effective in the execution of his plans. At this point only some of those plans have been completely revealed, but it is obvious that Sato is willing to sacrifice anyone in order to accomplish them. In comparison, Kei seems to be incredibly weak-willed and naive, lacking a strong sense of self. Granted, almost anyone would when compared to Sato, but it’s also somewhat understandable since Kei’s entire worldview has been shattered. With his new-found immortality, he is still trying to understand who he is.

Ajin is a very dark and violent manga. The experiments carried out on the demi-humans are brutal and cruel. Generally, the most graphic moments are implied rather than seen, but that makes the torture no less disturbing. Demi-humans, especially those controlling black ghosts, are more than capable of fighting back, though. For example, Sato’s repeated attacks on research facilities associated with the Demi-Human Control Commission and his complete disregard for life are astonishing. Sakurai’s artwork is particularly effective during action sequences, of which there are plenty in the second volume of Ajin. The second volume also addresses some of the social issues surrounding demi-humans, in particular the fact that not everyone feels that demi-humans should be discriminated against just because they happen to be immortal. So far, Sakurai has been able to strike a good balance between the series’ intense action and horror and its exploration of deeper moral and ethical concerns. I’m certainly looking forward to seeing how the series continues to develop.

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18 February 2015 Leave a Comment

Henshin

HenshinCreator: J. M. Ken Niimura
U.S. publisher: Image Comics
ISBN: 9781632152428
Released: January 2015
Original release: 2014

J. M. Ken Niimura is probably best known for his collaboration as an illustrator with writer Joe Kelly on I Kill Giants, an award-winning American comic that was completed in 2008. Among many other honors, the work earned Niimura and Kelly the top International Manga Award in 2012. A Spanish artist of Japanese descent, Niimura currently lives and works in Tokyo. Henshin is his first major Japanese publication. The collection includes thirteen short manga that were originally released online between 2013 and 2014 on the website for Ikki, a magazine that has been the home to some of my favorite mangaka, before finally being collected into a single volume. (An interesting sidenote: I Kill Giants was also published in Japan by Ikki Comix.) Henshin was subsequently released in Spanish in 2014 by Norma Editorial and in English by Image Comics in 2015. Out of the three print releases of Henshin, the English-language edition has the largest trim size.

The manga collected in Henshin are short, anywhere from twelve to twenty-eight pages in length. Although there are a variety of genres and styles, the stories generally fall into one of two broad categories: those that are semi-autobiographical, focusing on either Niimura’s creative processes or his love of cats, and those that are fictional narratives largely set in or near Tokyo or otherwise featuring Tokyoites. For the most part, the individual manga are unrelated and stand perfectly well on their own, but the first and last stories do share the same lead characters and there is a running episodic story about Niimura and a cat that lives near his apartment. Henshin includes slice-of-life manga, as well as manga with science fiction and fantasy elements, pieces infused with nostalgia, family and friends, pieces where loneliness and missed connections predominate, stories with a bit of humor, and stories with a bit of sadness.

MerciAlthough the manga in Henshin are all different, they do share some thematic and narrative similarities. The first story, “No Good,” perfectly captures the tone of the volume as a whole. It starts out as a seemingly innocent tale but it suddenly shifts into something completely unexpected and outlandish. Most of the stories in Henshin have some sort of twist to them that require the reader to reconsider and reevaluate everything that has come before. Those surprising plot developments may be humorous, touching, absurd, disconcerting, or even morbid, in any combination. In Japanese, “henshin” means transformation, metamorphosis, or change, which is exactly what the stories collected in the volume have to offer—pivotal moments in which all of a sudden things are no longer the same, demanding a new and different understanding of reality.

Niimura exhibits a range of art styles in Henshin, drawing influence from Asian, European, and American comics traditions. Some of the illustrations are simple caricatures while others are more detailed or involved, some even reminiscent of classic ink wash paintings. The artwork in each of the short manga is tailored to fit the specific story and its mood, but in every case Niimura’s illustrations show impressive narrative strength. In general, Henshin uses minimal text and dialogue—one manga is even completely wordless—relying on the artwork (which performs magnificently) to actively aid in the telling of the stories. Henshin is an excellent and rather delightful collection of charming and quirky short manga that, in all of its strangeness and occasional absurdity, remains emotionally relevant and carries an impact. I enjoyed Henshin immensely and hope to have the opportunity to read more of Niimura’s comics and manga in the future.

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16 February 2015 8 Comments

My Week in Manga: February 9-February 15, 2015

My News and Reviews

Last week was a two-review week here at Experiments in Manga. I read and loved Ellery Prime’s Gauntlet, the first novel to have both started and finished in Sparkler Monthly. I’m not sure the review really does the book justice—the story is difficult to write about without spoiling it—but Gauntlet is really good stuff. Ever since reading the novel, I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. (Coincidentally, both Gauntlet and Jen Lee Quick’s marvelous comic Off*Beat are currently on sale!) The second review posted last week was of Setona Mizushiro’s After School Nightmare, Volume 2. So far, the series remains a disconcerting but compelling work. The manga has a lot of dark, psychological drama, which I tend to enjoy, although that can also make it a difficult read from time to time. Many of the characters simply aren’t very nice people. The review is a part of my monthly horror manga review project; next month it will be Mushishi‘s turn again.

On to other interesting reading and news from elsewhere online! The Young Adult Library Services Association has released its 2015 Great Graphic Novels for Teens. The annual list is always worth a look. The manga for 2015 include All You Need is Kill, My Little Monster, My Love Story, Seraph of the End, Summer Wars, Voice Over! Seiyu Academy, Wolf Children: Ame & Yuki (the only manga included on the top ten list), and World Trigger. Over at Organization Anti-Social Geniuses, Laura from Heart of Manga provides The 2015 Shoujo Manga Forecast, a comprehensive overview of the shoujo manga that has so far been announced for this year, listed by publisher and expected release date. And on the Vertical Tumblr there is a post Reviewing the “Best Manga of 2011” from a licensing angle which I found to be particularly fascinating. Speaking of Vertical, three new licenses!—Seraph of the End light novels, Ninja Slayer manga, and KizuMonogatari.

Quick Takes

Air Gear, Volume 32Air Gear, Volume 32 by Oh!Great. This is actually the first volume of Air Gear that I’ve ever read, and the only other manga by Oh!Great that I’ve been exposed to is the very beginning of Tenjo Tenge. From that limited experience, I expected there to be violence and a fair amount of fanservice in Air Gear, and there certainly is. Since I’m not particularly familiar with Air Gear, its plot, or its characters, unsurprisingly I was a bit lost reading the thirty-second volume. It didn’t help that Oh!Great’s use of flashbacks and flashforwards seems haphazard, making it difficult to maintain a firm grasp on the manga’s chronology, and therefore was not as effective as intended. There are only five more volumes in the series and even though I’m unaware of all of the details, it is quite obvious that there has been a tremendous buildup to reach the thirty-second. The volume concludes at least one major battle and leaves several important characters dead. Even though I wasn’t able to follow everything that was going on story-wise, I could still appreciate Oh!Great’s dynamic artwork (beginning with the stunning cover illustration) and the series’ over-the-top action. If nothing else, Oh!Great can draw.

Assassination Classroom, Volume 1Assassination Classroom, Volumes 1-2 by Yusei Matsui. The junior high students of class 3-E are the academic underachievers and juvenile delinquents whom no one else in the school wants to deal with, but they’re apparently also the only ones who have any chance of saving the world from being destroyed. The teens have less than a year to assassinate their teacher, a superpowered tentacle creature who plans on disintegrating the planet after their graduation. Although he has a few weaknesses, Koro Sensei is extremely powerful, impervious to most weapons, and able to move at Mach 20. A successful assassination will require a significant amount of creativity and teamwork. Surprisingly, even though he intends to destroy Earth, Koro Sensei is actually a great teacher who seems to genuinely care about his students, challenging them to better themselves and encouraging them not only in their studies but in their assassination attempts as well. Assassination Classroom is a strange but enjoyable series. 3-E is a class of losers and outcasts who, when given the opportunity and shown that someone actually believes in them, are able to overcome challenges even if they haven’t figured out a way to kill Koro Sensei yet.

From the New World, Volume 6From the New World, Volumes 6-7 written by Yusuke Kishi and illustrated by Toru Oikawa. The manga adaptation of From the New World frustrates me immensely. The story is fantastic, the setting intriguing, and the atmosphere incredibly dark. But overall the manga just isn’t very satisfying, suffering from tonal imbalance and uneven worldbuilding and plot development. Although there’s still some ridiculous fanservice—Saki’s breasts in particular are constantly being emphasized to the point of distraction—these volumes fortunately are mostly lacking in the explicit sex scenes found throughout the rest of the series that seem completely out-of-place and interrupt the narrative flow of the story. The final volume with its dramatic conclusion of the war between the morph rats and the humans, would have been one of the strongest in the series except for the fact that the last chapter, which serves as a lengthy epilogue, slightly fumbles what is perhaps the series’ biggest twist. Quite a few of the reveals in the final volumes likely would have been more powerful if they had been encountered earlier in the story. In the end, I still think what I really want is to read Kishi’s original novel.

Stones of PowerStones of Power by Isora Azumi. A few years ago I read and enjoyed the first quarter or so of Stones of Power when it was initially being serialized in the Gen anthology. The manga has since been collected into a single volume, including material that I believe hadn’t previously been released. Stones of Power is admittedly unpolished and its artwork fairly generic, but there are things I really like about the manga. It mixes the mundane with the supernatural in rather curious ways, especially in the beginning. Fujita is a young man with a passion for fish who ends up being hired to maintain the aquarium at a small cafe. That might not be a particularly strong hook for most readers, but I happen to really like fish and used to keep a tank of my own. It just so happens that the fish Fujita’s been put in charge of are actually dragon gods and the two siblings he works for are fox spirits. From there Stones of Power spins off into an increasingly strange and dangerous situation in which Fujita, who apparently has an unexpected affinity for the occult (or at least the dragons), is unwittingly dragged into a battle between the foxes and an ancient power that threatens the life of an innocent young girl.

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13 February 2015 2 Comments

After School Nightmare, Volume 2

After School Nightmare, Volume 2Creator: Setona Mizushiro
U.S. publisher: Go! Comi
ISBN: 9781933617176
Released: December 2006
Original release: 2005

The second volume of Setona Mizushiro’s After School Nightmare, a disconcerting shoujo manga series with dark psychological elements, was originally released in Japan in 2005. The English-language translation was published by Go! Comi in 2007. The entire ten-volume series is now out-of-print in English, but happily the individual manga can still be found relatively easily. I had initially read the first few volumes of After School Nightmare by borrowing them from a library before deciding to track down a set of my own. However, I never got around to reading the entire manga until now because, although the beginning of the series immediately captured my attention, the manga was honestly discomforting. The first volume introduces a surreal setting in which dreams can be just as terrifying and damaging as the realities from which the characters would like to escape. After School Nightmare is a manga that is both fantastically strange and oddly compelling.

Conflicted and confused over his gender due to having a body that is neither entirely male nor female, Mashiro has tried to keep his physical condition hidden from others by living his life as a boy, but now that closely kept secret is out. Every Thursday after school, he and a handful of other students participate in a special class required for their graduation. During the class they literally share a dream, or rather a nightmare, together. In the process their true selves are revealed to the other students, and so a few of Mashiro’s classmates have found out about his body. Within the dreams, Mashiro has fallen victim to the cruel Black Knight, another student whose identity he is unsure of but who he suspects may be Sou. In waking reality, Sou has forcibly kissed Mashiro, insisting that he is a girl and even going so far as to declare his love for him. It is not a situation that Mashiro is comfortable with and if he can get up the courage he intends to confront Sou, whether it be in the nightmare or outside of it.

After School Nightmare, Volume 2, page 56Frankly, Sou is a jerk. He may be earnest in his feelings for Mashiro, and he’s at least started to try to reign in his aggressiveness, but he has yet to show Mashiro any sort of respect. I can’t like the guy because of the way he treats Mashiro, however I do still have some sympathy for him. Sou, like all of the other students in the special class, suffers greatly from emotional abuse and trauma. Still, that does not excuse his behavior towards Mashiro. Even so, he is positioned as one of Mashiro’s two potential romantic interests in After School Nightmare, the other being Kureha. Although she has made an exception and is currently dating Mashiro, she hates and despises men. Mashiro and Kureha generally get along, but their relationship isn’t as healthy as it could be, mostly but not entirely due to Mashiro’s continued insecurities over his gender. He seems to believe that his identity is defined and determined by the person he is intimate with. Because he’s desperate to be seen as a man, this calls into question whether or not he’s actually in love with Kureha, or if he’s simply dating her as a way to prove his masculinity.

The shared dreams in After School Nightmare are a way of forcing the students to face and work through the darkness that exists within their hearts and psyches. In theory, those nightmares are supposedly intended to be kept separate from reality, but the two worlds do have an effect on each other. The distorted forms the students take within the dreams can be terrifying, but what really makes them so disturbing are the troubling truths and dark pasts that they reveal. The pain, suffering, and hatred that is readily visible in the nightmares still exists and is present in their waking lives. Usually hidden, suppressed, or otherwise concealed, the prejudices that the students carry within them occasionally erupt violently. The skills and maturity needed to deal with these emotional, psychological, and physical disturbances are at least in part being developed within the dreams. In After School Nightmare, Volume 2, Mashiro begins to learn the importance and power of mental strength and fortitude, but both he and his classmates all still have room to learn and grow.

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11 February 2015 Leave a Comment

Gauntlet

GauntletAuthor: Ellery Prime
Illustrator: T2A
Publisher: Chromatic Press
ISBN: 9780993861123
Released: December 2014

Although Ellery Prime has been writing for years, Gauntlet, illustrated by the talented T2A, is her first original novel to have been published. Gauntlet is also the first novel to have both started and finished in Chromatic Press’ multi-media online magazine Sparkler Monthly before being released in print. Gauntlet began serialization in the very first issue of Sparkler Monthly in 2013 and was completed in 2014, after which it was revised and complied into a single volume. The finalized version of Gauntlet also includes additional material not found elsewhere: “Square One,” a short prequel to the main story, as well as a few amusing yonkoma-style bonus comics. Gauntlet has been very accurately described as a “survival horror romance novel” by the publisher. I’m actually kind of glad that I waited to read Gauntlet until it had been finished; the number of twists and cliffhangers would have made the wait between chapters torturous.

Twenty-two-year-old Clio has recently moved to the big city. Embarking on her new life as a responsible, independent adult, Clio is largely enjoying living on her own. After three months she has grown more and more comfortable as a resident of the city and with finding her way around its streets and alleyways, but that all changes when she makes a wrong turn and puts her trust into the wrong people. Suddenly Clio finds herself a reluctant participant in a game of survival, trapped inside the Gauntlet—an incredible and expansive system of interconnected buildings at the heart of the city. Clio doesn’t even know the rules she should be following, nor does she know who is responsible for the game or why she was chosen as a participant. Each person she encounters in the Gauntlet has their own reasons for being there, and many are playing by their own rules. Clio may be in even more danger than she realizes. The other players she meets are just as likely to manipulate or betray her as they are to help her.

Gauntlet -T2AOne of the things that makes Gauntlet particularly engaging and enthralling is its setting—the Gauntlet itself. The complex is logic-defying, a constantly changing labyrinth that presents very real survival concerns: finding food, clean water, and safe places to hide and rest, not to mention avoiding capture and falling into the hands or under the influence of people who, intentionally or not, mean harm. But the Gauntlet is also insidiously seductive. At first Clio desperately wants to find a way out and to escape, but there’s an underlying fear that she will lose her will to do so. Some people, perhaps most, never leave the Gauntlet after entering it even if they survive. Clio discovers many who are mindlessly shuffling through its halls and corridors as well as participants who have simply give up, content to be controlled by others. But most dangerous and terrifying are those people who have made deliberate, conscious decisions to remain within the Gauntlet’s depths.

The characters in Gauntlet are just as intriguing and complex as the novel’s setting. In the beginning Clio isn’t nearly as independent as she believes herself to be. Very early on she attaches herself to Britt, another young woman in the Gauntlet, which will have significant ramifications later on. Again and again Clio comes to rely on others and again and again she is taken advantage of by those very same people, all of whom have their own motivations and desires. But she grows and becomes stronger, impressively so. In some ways, Gauntlet feels like a dark homage to Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland—the Gauntlet and the people within it operate by their own logic with surprising, unexpected, and sometimes curious and peculiar results—and there are frequent nods to other stories and fairy tales as well. After finishing the novel, not only did I want more of Gauntlet, I also wanted to immediately read it again to see how all of its individual pieces fit together from the beginning. That, to me, is a sign of a great piece of fiction.

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