My News and Reviews

Although expected, it was a particularly slow week here at Experiments in Manga, especially after the flurry of posts I made for the Usamaru Furuya Manga Moveable Feast not so long ago. January’s Bookshelf Overload was revealed and the Genkaku Picasso Giveaway Winner was announced. I also posted one last roundup/final farewell for the Usamaru Furuya Manga Moveable Feast. Apologies for such a brief news and reviews section—I’m still recovering from the Feast!

Quick Takes

Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad, Volumes 1-4 by Harold Sakuishi. Only twelve volumes of Beck, a thirty-four volume Kodansha Manga Award-winning series, made it into English. The protagonist, Koyuki, is a fourteen-year-old boy who leads a fairly normal, boring life. Things start to get a little more interesting for him when he is introduced to indie rock music. This, among other things, inspires him to learn to play the guitar. Beck isn’t a particularly quickly paced manga, but the story is fairly solid. The fourth volume ends with Koyuki about to take the stage with his friend’s band Beck. I’d like to see how Koyuki’s first performance as part of the band turns out and where he goes from there.

Comics Underground Japan edited by Kevin Quigley. A manga anthology from 1996, Comics Underground Japan may now be out of print but is still worth tracking down. The volume collects fourteen short comics from twelve different artists working in alternative manga. I picked up Comics Underground Japan specifically because I wanted to read Suehiro Maruo’s contribution “Planet of the Jap.” I’m glad that I did because the collection is marvelously diverse; I was introduced to mangaka I wasn’t previously aware of and whose work I’d like to read more of. Unfortunately, they don’t all have other manga available in English. Often strange and bizarre, each comic in the anthology leaves a distinct impression.

Steady Beat, Volumes 1-2 by Rivkah. Part of Tokyopop’s abandoned original-English manga line, only the first two volumes of Steady Beat were published. The third and final volume was to be released online, but if it ever was it doesn’t seem to be available now. Leah, the daughter of a conservative Texas state senator, discovers that her older sister might be a lesbian, throwing her life into confusion. Steady Beat is actually a rather silly comic and makes use of quite a few cliches. When it does pause to take itself seriously, it comes across as preachy. While there was certainly room for improvement, and some things annoyed me tremendously, there were many aspects of the series that I really enjoyed.

Neon Genesis Evangelion: Platinum Complete directed by Hideaki Anno. Somehow, I’ve gone this long without actually having seen Neon Genesis Evangelion. I found it to be fascinating and enjoyed much of it although occasionally it was also very confusing. Still, the psychological exploration of the characters was compelling. The director’s cuts of episodes twenty-one through twenty-four (included in the boxset) really help to tie everything together better than the originals. The final two episodes, while interesting, are drastically different from the rest of the series and aren’t led up to very well. I’m not surprised fans revolted against them—they don’t make for a particularly satisfying ending.