Osamu Tezuka - Dr Thrill

Here's a classic Tezuka series from 1959. There's a boy solving mysteries and having adventures with his faithful dog, which saves him from lots of cliff hanging style dangers. It's got all the classic characters in it, like Inspector Mustache and lots of others I recognise but don't know their names. It's a good silly book.

Here's a bit of whats going on from the proper Tezuka book review site - "Along the way they encounter an evil group of assassins that plant a time bomb in the belly of a foreign dignitary in an attempt to kill his prince, and the leader of a gang of narcotic smugglers who dresses like a giant insect and hides their wares in honeycombs.  They duke it out the Black Tengu gang for possession of a treasure, come to the aid of a young boy with insomnia who witnesses a murder.  They even get kidnapped by an evil gang of international conspirators – and that’s just the beginning!". Cool.

Taiyo Matsumoto - Sunny Volumes 1 and 2

I really liked the first two volumes of Sunny by Taiyo Matsumoto. It's about a big group of kids living in a children's home. The slice of life stories follow different ones of the kids, or different groups of them as they get up to things.

The drawing is amazing as to be expected.

Sunny is the name of a yellow car that's parked behind the childrens home. The children often sit in the car and think about things or imagine they are driving along. Matsumoto draws the best cars, bicycles and animals, which are about the hardest things for me to draw.

I'd really recommend this series, it's out in English too.

Taiyo Matsumoto - Brothers of Japan and Zero

I got a few more Taiyo Matsumoto books in Japan too. Here's the first 'Brothers of Japan'. It's a book of his short stories. There's a wide range of different stories. Here's one about a gorilla riding in a motorbike race. The drawing is all great as usual with amazing lines, and great use of black and white.

Also I got 'Zero' which is about a boxer. Here's a double page from it.

This one is great too. I always like how he puts so many animals in his stories, just wandering about in the backgrounds. This one seems more like a standard comic, with more of a usual story, but it's still very idiosyncratic.

Usamaru Furuya - Bokura No Hikari Club

This is a pretty twisted manga about a gang of misfit boys who form an evil club. This is a prequel to the main story apparently, showing how they get together in the first place.  In the later volumes they build a robot to kidnap women for them as they are all losers. It's a very satirical story with lots of black humour, it's not trying to be serious.

It's all drawn in a very similar style to Suehiro Maruo, which is funny. The kids look like his drawings of evil boys.

Here's the leader of the gang trying to be evil by painting a big black star on the floor. I found this manga very amusing.

Osamu Tezuka - Microid S Volume 1

Here's another book by Osamu Tezuka. This one is about an army of insect people who are planning to exterminate all humans. Three of the tiny insect people escape from their base deep in the desert to try and warn the humans. They keep getting captured by humans and put in jam jars, nearly eaten etc. They are quite superhero looking with letters on their shirts and special powers.

They try and warn people at the United Nations but no-one will listen, except for one scientist. Meanwhile a kid is being bad at school and fighting gangs of kids and his evil teacher, but he will turn out to be the hero.

The insects attack in lots of places and kill loads of people leaving piles of bodies in the streets. Can they be stopped?

There's lots of adventure and excitement, it's a good story.

Osamu Tezuka - MW Volumes One and Two

I went to Book Off again when I was in Japan, under the bridge in Akihabara and bought a big pile of super cheap manga. Here's one of them, Osamu Tezuka's 'MW'. It's available in English as well which I didn't know.

It's a weird one as Tezuka is trying to write a much darker style of manga. The antihero is this banker character here. As a child he was saved from a poison gas attack on an island by the hero, a priest. The gas caused him to lose all his conscience so he is very evil and does whatever he wants, such as bank robberies, kidnappings and murders.

The antihero is gay and so is the priest character. The antihero is always disguising himself as a woman to carry out his evil schemes, as he is here. The priest is a very conflicted character who blames himself for the evil antihero, who he is in love with, and is trying to save him.

There's a lot of action, brutal murders and very dark stuff. By the end the antihero is trying to get hold of the MW poison gas that nearly killed him, and release it, to kill everyone else on earth. It's very 1970's which is fun. I had to look up the English synopsis to find out what was going on by the end, as it was getting very busy.

Nekojiro - Nekojiro Udon 1

This is the last of the manga books I bought on holiday. I remembered Nekojiro from 'Secret Comics Japan' or 'Sake Jock', one of those early books of underground Japanese comics. Do you remember when that was the only way to see any weird manga? This collection has the story from there, the one where they hold a court to judge insects in their backyard. The other stories are all different types, a lot are dark, weird or philosophical. The stories usually star the brother and sister cats. They can be cruel, but they are cats after all.

Here's a double page from a story about priests trying to convert the cats, but they are not keen.

Matsumoto Taiyou - No. 5 Volume 1

 This is a very fancy manga from Matsumoto Taiyou. It has lots of colour dustjackets and fold out paintings. It's about a group of global security masters who are protecting the world. One of them goes rogue so the others decide whether to kill them or what else to do. It's a lovely looking book so well worth buying for the artwork, as always with Matsumoto. This was the hardest of my manga purchases to follow so I didn't understand the story properly, the first two came out in English but they never finished the series which is a shame.

 It is full of drawings of animals, nearly every page has at least a few.

 There's a lot of violent fights in some sections as the masters try to kill each other with assassins or by battling in the thick dark forests.

There is a very fancy colour fold out painting at the back of the book, with a lot more animals.

Atsushi Kaneko - Bambi and Her Pink Gun Vol 2 - 1

 This is a fun manga I picked up. I'd heard of Bambi somewhere so it caught my eye. Bambi is driving her tiny car (with eyes painted on) through the post apocalyptic landscape. She has kidnapped a child who is always starving to eat as much junk food as possible. There's a massive reward on the child's return so all the gangs of bikers, bandits, crazed truckers, Mexican wrestlers and psychopaths are out to kill her. It's very Mad Max. She kills a lot of people with her gun.

It's got a very nice print job with lots of different colours of printing for different chapters, tinted pages and ends up all red in a massive explosion.

Nananan Kiriko - Blue

This is a really great comic. The drawing is very minimal but it gets everything over really well. Here's the first lines of the comic- “The sky that stretches out above the dark sea. The school uniforms and our desperate awkwardness. If those adornments of our youth had any color it would have been deep blue.”
A lot of the comic is about being awkward.  The schoolgirl protagonist makes friends with a new girl, they become romantic, then break up awkwardly.

I really like the minimalist artwork. Nearly all the drawings are of the schoolgirls. Lots of feet, hands, close ups of them turned away from each other. The story takes place at the school, at each others houses and a lonely looking beach front.

This book was brought out in English by Fanfare / Potent Moon so I would recommend that, its a really good manga. Here's a review of the English version from Derik Badman.

Taiga Sassa - Isabella Bird in Wonderland - Vol 1

This is a cool little manga. It's the manga version of a book from 1878 written by Scottish adventurer Isabella Bird, who travelled from Edo to the far North of Japan. I'd heard about the book from my guide book to Japan, so when I saw the manga I bought it. I wish they'd have had more volumes as she meets the Ainu in Hokkaido later in her adventures and I would have liked to see that.

In this first volume she hires a guide and tries to get used to Japanese food as she starts to travel North.

She is attacked by hundreds of fleas while sleeping. She gets over this and starts to enjoy some of her adventures. She makes friends with a young Japanese girl. I liked the drawing and the story was easy enough to follow in Japanese.

Rumiko Takahashi - Urusei Yatsura 15 & 16

I haven't got any of the Urusei Yatsura books in Japanese so I picked up these two. I bought all my manga from Books Off in Akihabara. They were having a massive sale and I spent a long time going through the shelves.

I was thinking about Urusei Yatsura a lot on my holiday as we were in Nara for Setsubon. That's the day when children throw beans at Oni to drive them out, it's very familiar from the manga.

 Here's some Oni in the Nara deer park. They must be cold.

And here's some fancier Oni at the big celebration that night, running round on the stage in front of the temple with flaming torches. A hero came on after a bit and fought them until they surrendered.  Then local dignitaries threw packets of lucky sweets to the crowd.

Shigeru Mizuki - Nonnonba

I got this book for Christmas off my brother and wasn't disapointed. I have also read his 'Onwards Towards our Noble Deaths' but the translation in this one was a lot better. It took me a few chapters to get into the book but then it all made perfect sense. The other book had so many characters that it was difficult to follow but this one only has a few, and they are a lot more distinctive.

Its the story of Shigeru as a young child growing up in the 1930's in rural Japan, and his elderly neighbour who he calls Nonnonba. She is always telling him stories about the yokai, which are ghosts and spirits. Its a pretty harsh world as kids are always dying from disease, and even being sold by impoverished parents. Shigeru is always drawing the yokai and trying to work out what they really look like so he can draw them better. His family are really well drawn, like his mother who is forever on about how her family used to be rich and have three storehouses, and his dad who was the first in the area to go to University and is a bit of a dreamer who wants to run a cinema. The kids fight all the time against neighbouring gangs in their 'kid army'. Its a really good read and is funny and sad. Highly recommended.

Yoshihiro Tatsumi - Fallen Words

I enjoyed this new collection of short stories from Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Its very different from 'A Drfiting Life' or his older short story collections. These eight short stories are all from the very old Japanese tradition of storytelling called rakugo. I'd never heard of that before. The main difference is that the stories are much more comedic than his other work, some of the stories are shaggy dog style tales and some build up to great big puns at the end. They are all set in Edo era Japan with lots of brothels, inn keepers and temples. The first two stories were a bit confusing but after them I started enjoying all the others a lot. Here's a proper review of the book from Rob Clough.

Naoki Urasawa - 20th Century Boys Volume 19

I wonder who else is still reading this series. I still like it a lot. It's good now you can tell it's finally reaching the end so the excitement level has gone up again. The twists feel like they will be the last twists now, and that they might actually be the truth of what happened. There's only two or so more books left in the series, though I just found out there might be a couple of 21st Century Boys books after that...
I am looking forward to the last one then I can re-read the whole thing all the way through next time I'm feeling rough and hungover and just want to spend the whole day reading in bed.

Osamu Tezuka - Buddha (volumes 2 & 3)

I've been enjoying this series which I have been getting out from Bolton library. They are ideal books to get out from the library. I don't think I would buy them, especially not while I'm a bit skint, but they are great to read for free. Also it means I can read them quite quickly which feels right for a lot of manga. I hope I can find the rest of the series there soon. These two volumes are about the young Siddharta (Buddha) and his quest to escape his upbringing as a spoiled prince and become a monk.

Shigeru Mizuki - Onwards Towards Our Noble Deaths

This is the first book by Shigeru Mizuki to be translated into English. That seems mad as they have been out in French for years, they even won a prize at Angouleme a few years ago. I hope his supernatural story books (like Non Non Ba) get translated next as I'd really like to read them.
This book is the '90% fact' story of how the army unit that Mizuki would have been attached to ended up having to make a suicide attack in Papua New Guinea. Some of the men managed to survive and then were told that as their 'noble deaths' had already been reported they would have to go back and attack again, and this time make sure they all died. Mizuki had lost an arm and had malaria so had been sent to the hospital instead of to this unit.

It's a very very angry book. The army looks like hell. The newer rookie soldiers are constantly beaten and slapped, almost on every page. Even if they hadn't done anything wrong they are beaten at each rolecall. They are constantly starving hungry and mainly think about food.

The drawing is very strange in many ways. There are a lot of really detailed backgrounds but the people look more like Japanese gag cartoons. Each different soldier is drawn in a very different way, with a lot of cartoony-ness and distortion. It is from the 1970's. It takes quite a lot of getting used to, I had to read it twice through to follow the different characters properly. You can feel his rage with the commanders and the terrible waste of lives on almost every page.

Highly recommended.

Imiri Sakabashira - Nekokappa

I had seen this manga artist in The Comics Journal so I thought I'd buy his book. It's in French but it doesn't matter as there are hardly any words. There's one of the great full page scenes he draws above. These are the adventures of the cat / water spirit character on the cover. There not really adventures though as they are very surreal and he just wanders about looking at all the weird stuff. They are full of decaying organic machinery, giant factories, people buying rotten meat and fish and monsters. I like them a lot. There are also some stories I wouldn't have expected, like a weird giant monster story and 'TikiRod', about tiki statues and American cars. He draws a lovely decaying urban scene, all damp and filthy with loads of black ink.

AX Alternative Manga Vol. 1

I hope that Volume 1 in the title means there are going to be more of these as this is very very good. There's some really great stories in this anthology. 'Love's Bride' by Yoshihiro Tatsumi cracks me up, it's very funny and dark and was my favourite. I also really liked Katsuo Kawai and Kazuichi Hanawa. It's great to finally read full stories in English of all these manga artists I have only ever read about before. I had never heard of Toranusuke Shimada before but I really enjoyed his 'Enrique Kobayashi's Eldorado' about the strange history of a rare motorbike. Some of the other stories didn't do much for me, but they all have interesting and very varied art at least so there is always something to look at. It made me want to go and draw after I'd finished reading it so that's cool.
Highly recommended to everyone.

Naoki Urasawa - 20th Century Boys Volume 9

I'm not buying many comics at the moment because I am skint but can't resist keeping up with this series. Not much happens in volume 9, it's a bit of a filler one after the extremely exciting volumes 7 & 8. It's all setting up the next volume.

This is my favourite manga series by a long way these days, it's so exciting. I always read them too fast to see what happens, but last week I went back and re-read the last eight volumes which was ideal as I was hungover and useless that day. Urasawa does an amazing job of keeping you excited even though for all nine volumes he's been playing with almost showing the bad guys face and then thinking of an excuse to cut away and not show us. You'd think that would have got very tired by now, but somehow it's not. I can't wait for the next one to come out.