Deva Zan is © 2013 Yoshitaka Amano/ST DEVALOKA.

The Best Manga, 2013

By Shaenon K. Garrity
 OTAKU USA
THE BEST MANGA, 2013

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 3

SHOJO
The Heart of Thomas .......................................................................................... 5
Loveless .............................................................................................................. 6
Paradise Kiss ...................................................................................................... 7
Limit .................................................................................................................... 7

SHONEN
Heroman ............................................................................................................ 9
Knights of Sidonia .............................................................................................. 9
Kitaro.................................................................................................................. 10
The Last of the Mohicans .................................................................................. 11

SEINEN
The Drops of God: New World .......................................................................... 13
Thermae Romae................................................................................................ 14
Message to Adolf .............................................................................................. 15
Sunny ................................................................................................................ 15

ALTERNATIVE/OTHER
The Demon’s Sermon on the Martial Arts ...................................................... 17
Tokyo Love: Rica ‘tte Kanji?! ............................................................................ 18

SPECIAL FEATURES
Digital Manga
Shonen Jump Alpha (Viz) .................................................................................. 19
ComicLoud (BookLoud) .................................................................................... 20

Return of the Henshin Hero

Kamen Rider .................................................................................................... 22
Skullman .......................................................................................................... 23
Inazuman .......................................................................................................... 24
Kikaider ............................................................................................................ 25

© Copyright 2013 by Sovereign Media Company, Inc., all rights reserved. Copyrights to illustrations are the property of their creators.
The contents of this publication may not be reproduced in whole or in part without consent of the copyright owner. Sovereign Media
Company, 6731 Whittier Avenue, Suite A-100, McLean, VA 22101 • www.otakuusamagazine.com
THE BEST MANGA, 2013 INTRODUCTION
2013 in Manga
By Shaenon K. Garrity

SIX MONTHS IN, could 2013 be the year manga

grows up? After years of American manga publish-
ing being mostly a shonen-and-shojo affair, sud-
denly publishers are scrambling to license the
biggest new seinen, alternative, and other adult-
oriented titles. Yen Press grabbed Mari Yamazaki’s
Thermae Romae, a surprise blockbuster in Japan
and winner of this year’s award for oddest manga
elevator pitch: ancient Roman architect travels
through time to modern Japan to learn about dif-
ferent kinds of public baths. Dark Horse published

Deva Zan is © 2013 Yoshitaka Amano/ST DEVALOKA.

Emerald, an eclectic collection of
short manga by Blade of the Im-
mortal creator Hiroaki Samura;
Kodansha published Danza, a
collection of six stories by the
prolific Natsume Ono (Ris-
torante Paradiso, House of Five
Leaves); and Viz gave us the
contemplative orphaned-kids
graphic novel Sunny, the latest
from alt-manga superstar
Taiyo Matsumoto (Tekkon-
kinkreet). Meanwhile, Vertical
skipped ahead in its publica-
tion of the acclaimed wine-
tasting manga The Drops of
God to produce The Drops of
God: New World, an om-
nibus collection focusing on the chapters
about American and Australian wines. It
can’t hurt to tap into some of that Napa
Valley-loving Sideways readership.
Publishers also ventured beyond the
usual boundaries of manga. This
summer, two major manga-ka
have illustrated prose books
out in English. Slam Dunk and
Vagabond creator Takehiko Inoue’s
Pepita: Inoue Meets Gaudi is a
journal of Inoue’s trip to Spain to
study the work of architect Antoni
Gaudi, while Vampire Hunter D
artist Yoshitaka Amano’s fantasy
novel Deva Zan is lushly illustrated
with his own paintings and prints. In-
ternational collaborations between
American and Japanese creators
seem increasingly common, ranging
from The Demon’s Sermon on the
Martial Arts, the latest in a trilogy of
thoughtful manga
adaptations of classic
samurai texts by Sean
Michael Wilson and
Michiru Morikawa, to the
Stan Lee/Tamon Ohta
shonen manga Heroman.
This has been a killer
year for English transla-
tions of classic manga, starting with the gorgeous
Fantagraphics edition of Moto Hagio’s legendary
proto-BL epic The Heart of Thomas, about the
drama that erupts at a German boys’ school when
a lovesick student commits suicide, which has

3
 been at the top of many an indie manga about the
THE BEST MANGA, 2013
it s

otaku’s please-translate list my

prob-
for years. So has Shigeru lem!
No t
Mizuki’s beloved spooks-and- yours!
scares kiddie manga GeGeGe
no Kitaro, one of the most
lovable manga of all time,
now out from Drawn
& Quarterly as Kitaro.
Even more ambi-
tiously, PictureBox has
announced a new “10
Cent Manga” line of vin-
tage postwar-era chil-
dren’s manga, starting
with Shigeru Sugiura’s
bizarre adaptation of
Last of the Mohicans. And
if you’re looking for
something adult—make that very adult—
PictureBox is also publishing The Passion
of Gengoroh Tagame, a collection of
BDSM bara (gay-oriented) erotic comics
by Tagame, an artist as brilliant and ac-
complished as he is obscene. As radi-
cally different as these titles are,
they’ve established PictureBox as a
publisher that’s willing to take risks with gen-
res other American publishers shy away from.
Manga has been around in translation for long
enough that the return of a
previously-translated but
long-out-of-print title is
cause for celebration. The
folding of Tokyopop in 2011
freed many of the prolific
publisher’s licenses to be
snapped up and reprinted by
other publishers—like Viz,
which is now bringing Yun
Kouga’s hit shojo fantasy/
romance Loveless back into print in a series
of omnibus editions, and Vertical, which is
doing the same with Ai Yazawa’s stylish fash-
ion-world dramedy Paradise Kiss. Other
reprint projects are more surprising. Rica
Takashima’s cute semi-autobiographical
Wait,
J u li.
Tokyo lesbian scene, Rica
‘tte Kanji?!, published ten
So years ago in a low-budget
you
have
noth in
format by Yuricon founder
g
to
say ?
Erica Friedman, is back, in
a snappier edition with pre-
viously untranslated bonus
material. And Vertical has
resurrected Osamu Tezuka’s classic WWII es-
pionage drama Message to Adolf, the first
of Tezuka’s manga ever translated into
English (originally by Viz), out of print
since the 1990s.
Of course, in the
minds of some
manga fans, books
are passé anyway.
After years of strug-
gling to compete with
o n l i n e p i ra c y , b o t h
Japanese and American
publishers are finally
embracing digital manga.
So far this year, two major
English-language digital
manga magazines have
launched, Shonen Jump and
ComicLoud, and publishers
are racing to find ways to get
manga online—and, more chal-
lenging, make it pay. Old-school
manga fans haven’t been forgot-
ten in the digital rush. Comixol-
ogy.com’s online publication of a
wealth of classic Shotaro Ishi-
nomori manga, including Kamen
Rider and Cyborg 009, suggests a
future for classic manga in electronic
media. After all, unlike the edition
previously published by Tokyopop, the
digital Cyborg 009 need never go out
of print, remaining available to future
generations of kids. As manga in the
U.S. starts to grow up, lets hope it
never loses its cyborg-battle-loving
childhood heart.

4
 SHOJO
THE BEST MANGA, 2013

The Heart of Thomas

Thoma No Shinzo by Moto HAGIO © 2007 Moto HAGIO All rights reserved. Original Japanese edition published in 1995 by Shogakukan Inc., Tokyo. The Heart of Thomas, Fantagraphics Books, 2012.
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Story and Art: Moto Hagio
Rating: Unrated/13+

On the first day of spring, a student at a German

boys’ school jumps off a bridge to his death. He
leaves behind a letter (one of two, it turns out) to a
classmate: This is my love. This is the sound of my
heart. Surely you must understand.
So begins Moto Hagio’s The Heart of Thomas,
one of the towering classics of manga and a title
many American fans have been aching to see in
translation. One of the manga that redefined
shojo in the 1970s, The
Heart of T h o m a s w a s
also, along with Keiko
Takemiya’s Song of the
Wind and Trees, the pro-
g e n i to r o f B oy ’ s Love
manga. But modern BL,
with its fluffy, apolitical sex
fantasies, has little to do
with Hagio’s masterpiece.
The Heart of Thomas is
Romantic in the capital-R sense: adventurous,
emotionally harrowing, concerned with the beauty
and love and the soul, straining toward the sublime.
It’s about boys in love, yes, but by the end of the
manga “love” has exploded beyond sexual feeling
to encompass all vital human connections.
But my prose is purpling. The story gets under-
way after Thomas’s suicide, when Erich, a boy with
a haunting resemblance to Thomas, transfers to the
still shell-shocked school. Although Erich looks like
Thomas, he’s nothing like the shy, gentle boy his
classmates remember, and he resents being com-
pared to the dead boy. Despite himself, he becomes
entangled in the lives of the gregarious Oskar and
his cool, studious roommate Juli, two upperclass-
men who were scarred by Thomas’s death.
The Heart of Thomas is about scars, literal and
figurative. The ever-present specter of Thomas be-
comes a symbol of emotional wounds left unhealed,
absent friends and enemies who will never come

5
SHOJO
back to clean up the messes they left behind. As the
cast expands to a dozen or so major characters, we
learn that everyone has wounds like this, and the
only way to heal is to reach out to other people and
risk being wounded again.
Hagio’s art is glorious. Her sweet-faced charac-
ters tumble across stark black-and-white back-
grounds, illuminated by symbolic flashes of light.
Elegant collage compositions wreathed in flowers,
vines and stars illustrate the characters’ fantasies
and fears. In intense moments, Hagio’s effortlessly
clear line turns jagged and pained. It’s dramatic but
never overwrought, always the work of an artist in
complete control.
In Japan, Hagio is often ranked second only to
Osamu Tezuka (and frankly, her output may be more
consistently good), but it’s taken a long time for her
work to make headway in the US. Thanks to Fanta-
graphics and translator/editor Matt Thorn, it’s finally
getting the attention—and the beautiful hardbound
editions—it deserves. The Heart of Thomas is one
of the best manga ever published in English.
Shaenon Garrity
Loveless
Publisher: Viz
Story and Art: Yun Kouga
Rating: 13+
Beneath his lovely face, the bandages
he always seems to wear, and his cat
ears, Ritsuka Aoyagi is a strange and
broken 12-year-old. His psychiatrist Dr.
Katsuko knows the story: at home, he
is abused by his mother, and he suffers
from amnesia and dissociation ever
since the mysterious death of his older
brother Seimei. He is distant from his classmates,
even the few, like sweetly clueless Yuiko, who try to
get through his shell.
“Life sucks,” he thinks. “I wish it would hurry up
and end.”
Then he meets Soubi, a handsome, cat-earless
young artist who claims to have known his brother
in college (as friends? Lovers?). Something about
the powerful adult sets Ritsuka’s heart awhirl, and
for Soubi, the feeling is even stronger: “I love you,
6
Ritsuka,” Soubi promises. “I’ll protect you. I’ll do
anything for you. I give you all of me.” Soubi makes
himself a part of Seimei’s life, smothering him with
tenderness not quite familial, not quite sexual, not
quite that of a faithful servant. Soubi also tells Rit-
suka that his big brother was killed by a secret or-
ganization called Septimal Moon. Soubi is fighting
Septimal Moon, but he needs Ritsuka’s help to do it,
waging strange, psychic battles where the two of
them become linked by psychic chains and use
“word spells” rather than physical blows. With Soubi
at his side, Ritsuka enters the secret worlds of
magic and adulthood, although deep down, he wor-
ries if Soubi, this strange, mysterious adult, really
loves him at all…
Previously published by Tokyopop, Yun Kouga’s
Loveless is now available from Viz in snazzy new
omnibus editions including bonus pages and color
art. It’s a long, meandering, magical-realist crawl
through favorite fujoshi themes: loneliness, love,
bondage, suggestive male-male relationships, and,
of course, cat ears. In the one really brilliant idea
in the series, it’s set in a world where virgins have
cat ears and tails which fall off when
they have sex, a transformation befit-
ting this rite of passage. Metaphors
literalized as fantasy are also behind
the magic chains which link lover and
beloved, master and servant, and the
idea of words turned into psychic
force (“He’s doing it again, killing me
with sweet words…”).
There are a lot of ideas in this
manga, on top of a large cast of an-
drogynous-looking characters all with
their own damaged psyches. Unfortu-
nately, some ideas aren’t so well
fleshed-out: the fantasy/sci-fi/dark-conspiracy ele-
ments, for instance, and the word battles, which
consist of little more than pointless posing and
seem shoehorned into the series to give it a poten-
tial action hook for an anime series. There’s also the
question of how seriously we’re supposed to take
the borderline pedophilic relationship between Rit-
suka and Soubi. It seems that for Kouga, sometimes
it’s titillation, sometimes it’s a joke (“This guy is a
pedo freak who’s obsessed with a sixth grader”),
SHOJO
and sometimes, rarely, it’s a loving platonic relation-
ship between a boy and the 20-year-old man he idol-
izes … but it does make the series hard to
recommend to people who aren’t familiar with the
kinks of Boy’s Love manga. At its best, it’s a
metaphorical journey through issues of adulthood
and childhood, the need for love and the persistence
of emotional scars; but it’s also a very rambling,
geeky manga, whose better moments
are buried beneath fujoshi fanservice
and sometimes confusing panel lay-
outs.
Jason Thompson
Paradise Kiss
Publisher: Vertical
Story and Art: Ai Yazawa
Rating: Unrated/16+
If I could steal one cartoonist’s art
style, I might pick Ai Yazawa. In her
breakout manga Paradise Kiss, she
developed a style that’s equal parts
sexy, stylish, cute, and quirky. Her im-
possibly leggy characters model chic
fashions one minute, topple over in
stick-figure pratfalls the next. She
draws people, their clothing, and the
tiny details of their worlds—beads,
candies, cups of coffee—with equal fa-
cility and imagination. Although all too
often she falls back on pasted-in photo
backgrounds, she can even draw great
environments.
Paradise Kiss returns again and again to one cru-
cial set, the cozy basement studio of the art-school
fashion students who call their line Paradise Kiss.
As Yazawa puts her characters through a relentless
gauntlet of teenage agonies, the studio becomes
first a retreat from the world, then a home. This is
most true for heroine Yukari, a studious, strait-laced
girl who starts skipping cram school to hang out
with the weird fashion majors: frilly and childlike Mi-
wako, sardonic punk Arashi, glamorous cross-
dresser Isabella, and, most of all, the sexy, brilliant,
bisexual designer George. The Paradise Kiss gang
recruits Yukari to be their model for the art school’s
7
big fashion show, but Yukari can’t balance her de-
manding college-track life with her secret life in
fashion, and it soon becomes clear that something’s
got to give.
Paradise Kiss, previously published by Tokyopop
and now back in print from Vertical, is a semi-se-
quel to Yazawa’s previous manga, the untranslated
Neighborhood Story, and occasionally crosses
streams with her most recent series,
the music-industry soap Nana (pub-
lished by Viz). All three manga are
about creative misfits falling together
into makeshift families, and all deal
with art and style as personal expres-
sion, as windows into the soul. Yukari
soon finds that pursuing George
means competing with his art: “He
got me all worked up,” she complains
at one point, “but once the subject
turned to clothing he totally forgot
about me.” But, as her new friends
gently try to point out, maybe what
Yukari really needs is to find her own
artistic voice.
All of this is told with a mixture of
high soapy drama and tongue-in-cheek
humor. The characters frequently refer
to the fact that they’re in a manga,
sometimes announcing in advance
what the plot of a chapter will be. Ulti-
mately, it’s less about sex and romance
than it is about growing up, rebelling,
and finding yourself. It’s a love story,
yes, but in the world of Ai Yazawa, art
and love are achingly close to the same thing.
Shaenon Garrity
Limit
Publisher: Vertical
Story and Art: Keiko Suenobu
Rating: Unrated/13+
Teenager Mizuki Konno knows how to survive high
school. As long as she keeps her head down and
stays on the right side of her queen-bee best friend,
she can drift in the rarefied air of the popular girls
and look down on the miserable, misfit ranks of the
SHOJO
bullied. Then a horrific accident strands Mizuki and
a group of her classmates in the wilderness. While
they wait for help that inexplicably fails to come,
they’re forced to rely on their own strength and wits
to survive. And in a survival situation, the girls who
were once on the bottom of the high-school pecking
order are suddenly on top …
Keiko Suenobu’s previous manga Life, about a
girl who engages in self-mutilation, dealt with such
hot-button teen issues as suicide, bullying, and
rape. Limit picks up many of the same themes, es-
pecially the cruelty of teen cliques and organized
bullying, and moves them to a setting where the
emotional brutality turns physical. Even as the girls
realize they need each other to live, their fears, jeal-
ousies, and resentments turn them against each
other. The nerdy, bullied Arisa takes advantage of
the opportunity to wreak revenge on the popular
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girls, Mizuki’s friend Haru reveals the frustrations
seething beneath her flawless surface, and Chieko,
a quiet nobody at school, turns out to be preternat-
urally competent in a survival situation.
Limit is Heathers and Mean Girls mixed with Bat-
tle Royale and survival-story horror manga like
Dragon Head and The Drifting Classroom. Some-
how, Suenobu’s polished and pretty teen-shojo art-
work gives the claustrophobic brutality and violence
of the story an extra gloss of horror. When cute
sailor-uniformed schoolgirls lunge at each other
with scythes or dissolve into torrents of unhinged
laughter, something has gone very wrong. It re-
mains to be seen whether Suenobu can maintain
the taut, unsettling tone past the first volume, but
so far Limit is as intense an experience as you’re
likely to have reading a shojo manga.
Shaenon Garrity
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 SHONEN
THE BEST MANGA, 2013

Heroman
Publisher: Vertical
Story: Stan Lee/BONES
Art: Tamon Ohta
Rating: 10+

When comics legend Stan Lee (think Marvel

Comics) turns his hand to manga, you know
something good is going to come of it. In this
case, very good. Heroman is an exciting, en-
gaging story of a “superhero for the 21st
century,” as Lee himself puts it.
Cheerful American boy Joey Jones lives
with his grandmother in Central City on the
West Coast and works earnestly at a break-
fast joint before school to help pay the bills.
Unfortunately, his
paychecks aren’t
enough that he can
afford the coolest,
newest toy on the
market: a robot
called the Heybo.
Fortunately for
both Joey and the
Earth, he finds a
broken, discarded
Heybo and sets
about repairing the small robot, which he
names Heroman. What he doesn’t know at
the time, but discovers soon after, is that
Heroman transforms into a giant robot that
has the power to save Joey’s friends from
the insectoid alien invaders known as the
Skrugg. As the story unfolds, Joey begins to Stan Lee - Tamon Ohta / BONES

learn that even a poor working boy can gain

the power to change his life and those around him.
Lee and BONES weave a heartfelt, optimistic
tale sure to charm the imaginations of both kids
and adults. Heroman takes some of the best qual-
ities of the shonen and mecha genres (gentle
humor, action-packed battle sequences, good
friends, and, of course, giant robots) and presents
them in a story equally compelling to both Amer-
ican and Japanese audiences. Tamon Ohta’s art-
work is clear and precise, a pleasure to view as it
flows easily from one page to the next; the char-
acter designs are fun and immediately likable.
In short, Heroman is a well-rounded, thoroughly
enjoyable romp. With luck, the quality will hold
through future volumes, and it will go down in his-
tory alongside predecessors such as Astro Boy
and Speed Racer.
Amanda Vail

9
SHONEN
Knights of Sidonia
Publisher: Vertical
Story and Art: Tsutomu Nihei
Rating: Unrated/16+
Far in the future, the solar system has been de-
stroyed by the alien Gauna, colossal beings like giant
embryos that roam the stars consuming everything
they encounter. The Sidonia, a city-
sized space ark made from the ruins
of the planet, is home to the only sur-
vivors, preserving a few thousand
specimens of humanity on a voyage
through the galactic night. Nagate, a
teenager who was raised secretly in a
hidden room in the ship’s bowels,
emerges after his grandfather’s death
into the real Sidonia, where fanciful
castles and gardens cling to the
spaceship’s interior walls, where new
genders and human-animal hybrids
are common, and where corpses are
recycled into compost so that nothing
is wasted. Luckily, Nagate has incred-
ible combat skills, and instead of get-
ting composted, he joins a group of
other gifted teens in piloting the
“Garde,” giant humanoid mecha that
are the best defense against their
nearly indestructible enemies. But
can Nagate truly fit into this brave new
world? And how long can humanity
run from the mindless (?) tentacled
monsters that still pursue them?
The back cover text calls Knights of Sidonia “Tsu-
tomu Nihei’s most accessible work to date,” and it’s
hard to argue with that description. (And in this case,
“accessible” is a good thing.) Nihei’s previous works,
Biomega and Blame!, were full of H.R. Giger-esque
monsters and stunningly audacious science fiction
visuals, but were more like FPS video games than
stories, following blank-slate protagonists through
ever more perilous challenges. In contrast, Knights,
his first shonen manga, is full of boys’ manga
clichés—teens piloting giant robots, classmate ri-
valry, school hijinks, sexy girls and girl-boys—and
even such un-Nihei-esque things as character and
10
dialogue. Yet the mix of the familiar and the strange
works just right; Nihei’s quiet, understated style re-
strains the usual “blood, sweat and cheese” loud-
ness of shonen manga, and he handles the “space
ark” premise with the hardscience-fiction sense of
awe found in all his works. Valiant pilots giving their
lives to save humanity, a long voyage through the
stars with limited resources fleeing an implacable
enemy, dark secrets and soap-opera
drama between the pilots themselves
… it’s got all the elements of a boys’
mecha show, but it’s also a bit like
Battlestar Galactica if the Cylons were
designed by H.P. Lovecraft. Good stuff.
Jason Thompson
Kitaro
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Story and Art: Shigeru Mizuki
Rating: 13+
Kitaro is a yokai. While the word is
often translated as “demon,” it is
more accurately described as a mis-
chievous spirit; yokai can be good,
neutral, or evil—just like human be-
ings. Kitaro is good and kind, even if
he is a bit strange. For one, he likes
to hang out in graveyards in order to
absorb spirit energy. For another, he
only has one eye (his left eye is actu-
ally his father, who occasionally
hops out of Kitaro’s eye socket to
provide assistance or advice). He is friends with
gross bugs, slugs, and scavenger birds, and he
has extraordinary powers that enable him to be re-
markably resilient in his fights against evil.
Shigeru Mizuki’s classic stories of Kitaro have
been reworked and reimagined many times since he
first created them in 1959, although the only English
translations are in obscure out-of-print bilingual
editions. Fortunately, Drawn & Quarterly has taken
on the task of making Kitaro and several other
Mizuki works available in English. Mizuki is, hands
down, a master of his art. His exquisitely rendered,
detailed line drawings of background scenes and
SHONEN
a story that pits science against nature and spiritual
power. Kitaro journeys with young scientist Shuichi
Yamada to the South Pacific to investigate the exis-
tence of a Zeuglodon, a strange landwalking crea-
ture thought to be the immortal ancestor to the
modern whale. Yamada, wanting to keep the glory
of scientific discovery all to himself, sets off a dis-
astrous chain of events that show the dangers of
fear and selfishness, particularly when coupled with
the devastating powers of science— such as the
atomic bomb.
Mizuki, who was a soldier in the South Pacific
through the horrors of World War II, is a pacifist, a
message that often comes through in his works. In
Kitaro, he maintains an avid curiosity about the
world, and a belief in the power of any one individual
to change things for the better.
Amanda Vail

The Last of the Mohicans

Publisher: PictureBox
Story and Art: Shigeru Sugiura
Rating: Unrated/All Ages

With The Last of the Mohicans, PictureBox launches

one of the coolest manga translation projects to
©Mizuki Pro

come down the pike in a long while: “10 Cent

Manga,” a line of early pulp manga of the type that
monstrous yokai are balanced by overly simplistic drew Japanese children to magazine stands and
but somehow expressive renderings of the main manga rental shops in the
characters and other humans. 1950s. Creator Shigeru
Perhaps the best way to describe Kitaro for a Sugiura was one of the
Western audience unfamiliar with Japanese folklore bestselling manga artists
is to reference The Twilight Zone. The early serials of the postwar era, and The
are like slightly more playful versions of that classic Last of the Mohicans was
television show—a bit eerie, unexpected, and odd. his breakout hit. The ver-
Kitaro uses his bag of fantastic tricks to save hu- sion published by Picture-
mans from malevolent yokai and ensure that crim- Box is a remake drawn in
inal individuals get what they’ve got coming to them. 1974, when Sugiura was in
Mizuki pokes fun at a number of internationally fa- his 60s, after he had devel-
mous predecessors along the way, including Holly- oped an interest in alternative gekiga and reinvented
wood movie monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein, the himself for an adult audience. It’s a peculiar, hyp-
London werewolf, a Western witch) and Japan’s own notic blend of old-fashioned children’s manga and
Godzilla. 1970s pop-art experimentation, the manga equiva-
As the serials progress, Mizuki’s compositions lent of Nobuhiko Obayashi’s deliberately cheesy yet
become more daring and dynamic, and his stories genuinely disturbing 1977 horror film House.
likewise. In “Creature from the Deep,” Mizuki crafts The Last of the Mohicans makes only glancing

11
SHONEN
© 2013 Tsutomo Sugiura. Courtesy PictureBox.
contact with James Fenimore Cooper’s novel; the
protagonist is named Hawkeye, there are Native
Americans with hooded eyes and white colonists
who look like textbook illustrations of George
Washington, and there the resemblance ends. The
plot is a red-blooded Western adventure set in a
cartoony world where characters turn to the
reader to provide exposition and the horses and
bears talk. The anachronistic humor and slapstick
gags create whiplash changes in tone that make
Tezuka at his wackiest look sedate. Things get
particularly weird in the battle scenes, which are
half realistic carnage and half people getting
bonked on the head to wacky sound effects. Bloody
confrontations and somber death scenes coexist
with lines of dialogue like, “Shut it, Hawkeye, you
bedwetting brat! Sure you don’t need to go before
nighty-night?”
The art is a jumble of drawing styles, giving The
12
Last of the Mohicans the kitchen-sink feel of
American underground commix. About half the
characters are drawn in a detailed, realistic style,
and the rest are rubbery cartoons. Hawkeye him-
self is a round-faced little kid who resembles Bob’s
Big Boy. Much of the art is crudely drawn—either
with the crudeness of children’s comics or the
crudeness of underground art—but Sugiura peri-
odically lavishes attention on detailed, expansive
wilderness vistas, many of them copied from old
Jesse Marsh Tarzan comics.
Last of the Mohicans is the kind of comic that
defies criticism. Is it a juvenile mess or a brilliant
postmodern collage? Is it an adventure-comedy
for children or a pastiche for adults? Is it a good
comic, a bad comic … or an awesome comic? All I
can say is that I can hardly wait for the next 10 Cent
Manga.
Shaenon Garrity
 SEINEN
THE BEST MANGA, 2013
The Drops of God: New World
Publisher: Vertical
Story: Shu Okimoto
Art: Tadashi Agi
Rating: Unrated/13+
In the 80s and 90s, when stores were wary of buy-
ing long-running manga series, American manga
publishers concealed the length of their manga
by using subtitles instead of volume numbers, in
the hopes that someone would pick up (for exam-
ple) Maison Ikkoku: Good Housekeeping when
they’d be intimidated by Maison Ikkoku Volume
11. Apparently the old ways are back, because
Vertical has jumped ahead in
Drops of God, the epic wine-tast-
ing manga, publishing Volumes
23-24 as the omnibus Drops of
God: New World. The skipping-
ahead makes some sense, be-
cause the New World story arc
focuses on something of obvious
interest to American readers:
American wines (well, and Aus-
tralian wines; the term “New
World” here refers to all non-Eu-
ropean vintages).
The backstory: Shizuku (a
young man lacking book smarts,
but gifted with amazing senses of
taste and smell) and Issei (an
equally gifted, but cool and arrogant, wine expert)
are competing to identify the “Twelve Apostles,”
the world’s 12 greatest wines, based only on flow-
ery descriptions left behind by Shizuku’s late fa-
ther, a wine genius. To read Drops of God requires
accepting the premise that wine tasting is objec-
tive rather than subjective, and that the hero and
his rival can hear a description like “A dark purple
reminiscent of jet-black darkness. A wondrous
aroma of eucalyptus leaves, mint … an intermin-
gling of Orient and Occident wafts up from the
glass …” and respond “Oh, sure, I know that wine!
That’s a 2004 Heitz Cellar Cabernet Sauvignon!” In
this world, sniffing a glass of wine means tripping
13
out through phantasmagorical images of gardens
and falcons and castles and fine art (”Burgundies
depict stillness and endless, magnificent depth
and complexity, using only one color like an ex-
pertly crafted ink painting. This wine, though, is
like a monochrome lithograph by Georges Braque,
with assertive contours yet somehow offhand,
which in fact is part of its appeal.”) (For some
strange reason, there are no scenes of them sniff-
ing a bad wine and being transported to a garbage
dump of rusting machine parts, piles of fish heads
at the dock, etc.)
In New World, Issei heads to California’s Napa
Valley, while Shizuku heads to Australia, both fol-
lowing clues that they think will
lead to the Seventh Apostle. In
the process, both of them taste
lots of wines (whose labels are
shown in closeup so the reader
can buy them) and get involved in
the kind of adventures Indiana
Jones might get in if he was a
wine taster: kidnapped at gun-
point by crooked wine-dealers,
caught in a forest fire, etc. For all
its high-class pretensions, smart
and subtle it isn’t (the scene with
anti-Japanese racists is like
something from an 80s manga),
but the combination of shonen
manga gung-ho enthusiasm and
bourgeois wine trivia somehow works and makes
this one of the most entertainingly over-the-top
manga of recent years. The art is smooth and at-
tractive, although the sometimes wonky faces of
the minor characters make it pretty clear they’re
drawn by assistants. Considering that New World
jumps ahead 12 volumes from the last volume of
Drops of God, it’s fairly readable as a stand-alone
book—more a testament to the lack of plot than
anything else— but if I have one criticism of the
Vertical edition, couldn’t they have added at least
a short plot summary or character descriptions
for new readers?
Jason Thompson
SEINEN
Thermae Romae
Publisher: Yen Press
Story and Art: Mari Yamazaki
Rating: Unrated/13+

Lucius is an architect in the Roman Empire, a seri-

ous, conservative man with one professional pas-
sion: making a great Roman bath, a thermae, in the
classical style. When he goes to the bath for inspi-
ration, soaking among the hustle and bustle of
slaves selling snacks and waxing the bathers’ body
hair, he’s suddenly sucked into a drain and emerges
in a public bath in 1970s Japan. (“Pardon me, for-
eigner-san … have you been under the water this

THERMAE ROMAE © MARI YAMAZAKI 2009

whole time? Never seen anything like a Japanese
bath before, have ya?”) Although Lucius doesn’t un-
derstand a word the “flat-faced men” are saying,
he’s perceptive enough to be blown away by what he
sees in this strange
new world: shower
sprinkler nozzles! Cold
beer in aluminum
cans! Plastic water
buckets!!! He soon
time-travels back to
Rome again, but only
until the end of the first
chapter. Again and
again, he time-slips
forward to Japan, and
each time, he learns
new bathing science, as he pops up in hot springs,
bathrooms, water parks, and assisted-living com- manga about “the abiding love of baths shared be-
munities where doddering old men ask him to scrub tween the Japanese and the Romans,” and it’s fun-
their backs. Reluctantly awed by Japan’s advanced niest when it’s pointing out cultural differences,
civilization, he vows to use what he has learned to mostly bathing-related ones, although there is a
make the greatest Roman bath of all! (“It is clear to great chapter about the parallels between Roman
me that these flat-faces treasure their bathing cul- and Japanese phallic cults. (Despite a little steamy
ture…. Learning the best of other cultures is for the dialogue and the naked statue on the cover, bronze
sake of Rome’s future!”) and marble penises are the only ones you’ll see in
Mari Yamazaki, the creator of this surprise this PG-13 manga.) Other recurring jokes involve Lu-
Japanese bestseller, really knows her baths and her cius’s anachronistic attempts to replicate modern
culture-clash comedy: she’s married to an Italian bathing equipment with ancient Roman technology.
man, has traveled around the world, and her remi- Although the art is only just about good enough to
niscences about Turkish hammams and Sicilian hot tell the joke, the early chapters are really funny.
springs in the bonus pages are well worth reading. Unfortunately, the fun can’t last; the joke gets old
Thermae Romae started off as a one-shot gag and cold like a wet towel, due to the same formula

14
SEINEN
(Lucius has a problem, Lucius time-travels to Japan,
Lucius goes back to Rome with a solution) being re-
peated in every chapter. If there was ever a manga
that needed to stop being an episodic gag manga
and develop a story arc, it’s this one, but it doesn’t
(despite some teases of possible story) and the
second half of the first volume gets
tedious. The best thing to recom-
mend it is that it’ll definitely get you
interested in baths, which was cer-
tainly Yamazaki’s intent; like Hikaru
no Go or Kingyo Used Books, Ther-
mae Romae is basically a nostalgic
attempt to resurrect a Japanese
tradition, in this case public
bathing. (It’s notable that Lucius
isn’t initially transported to pres-
ent-day Japan, rather to 1970s
Japan, an acknowledgment that
public bathing is now considered
old-fashioned, a pastime of old re-
tired men and saggy-boobed old
ladies.) Perhaps the 2012 live-action movie does a
better job of making a story arc out of this lukewarm
batch of stories. Special props to the Yen Press edi-
tion for the waterproof cover.
Jason Thompson
Message to Adolf
Publisher: Vertical
Story and Art: Osamu Tezuka
Rating: 13+
The title alone is clue enough that this monumen-
tal work by equally monumental manga author
Osamu Tezuka is far from light. In fact, it is quite
heavy—both literally (the first volume is over 600
pages) and figuratively. And just in case anyone is
holding onto thoughts that the title might simply
be a fancy metaphor of some kind, the cover of
Vertical’s sexy new volume makes it abundantly
clear that the manga is indeed about Adolf Hitler.
If nothing else, that bulldog stare above the signa-
ture mustache should certainly catch some eyes
from across the room in a bookstore.
Tezuka has never shied away from depicting diffi-
cult subjects. In Message to Adolf (previously trans-
15
lated by Viz as Adolf in a long-out-of-print edition) he
follows the lives of three Adolfs from the early stages
of the Nazi regime to its end (although the first vol-
ume only takes us to Germany’s invasion of Poland,
which started WWII in earnest). One, most will know
already: Adolf Hitler. Another, Adolf Kaufmann, is the
son of a German consul to Japan
and his Japanese wife. The third is
Adolf Kamil, a German Jewish boy
who is part of the Jewish popula-
tion in Kobe, Japan.
The driving character of the
story, whose path winds in and out
of the three Adolfs’, is Sohei Toge,
a Japanese reporter whose
brother is murdered by the Nazis.
Toge’s grief over the death of his
brother hardens into a resolve to
bring down the Nazi regime after
his inquiries are met with a bu-
reaucratic smoke screen and
eventual torture at the hands of
high-ranking officials. Toge emerges from that hor-
rible experience with the knowledge that his
brother possessed secret documents that could
bring down Hitler—and he won’t rest until he’s
found them and brought them to light.
As he does so well in his other works, Tezuka il-
lustrates large principles from the perspective of
ordinary human beings. He unflinchingly shows
how all people, even heroes, contain within them
the potential for both good things and bad things,
creation and destruction, light and dark. Tezuka
puts his characters through the wringer, showing
the reader how they react to tremendously painful,
almost unimaginable situations. Under pressure,
even those who strive to right horrible wrongs can
themselves commit equal wrongs.
Tezuka’s Adolf is a tale that defies any pat labels.
It’s a scathing story of political intrigue, blind alle-
giance, and unforgivable discrimination. It’s also a
story of determined friendship, the beauty of com-
mon decency, and the spark of love. It’s a story of
people caught within a machine that is so much big-
ger than they are, and how even small actions can
affect long-lasting results.
Amanda Vail
SEINEN
Sunny
Publisher: Viz
Story and Art: Taiyo Matsumoto
Rating: 13+
You might remember Taiyo Matsumoto
from the 2006 film Tekkonkinkreet,
based on his Eisner Award-winning
manga Black & White. If you haven’t yet
had the pleasure, Matsumoto’s latest,
Sunny, is a good place to start. Far from
generic manga, Matsumoto’s work is
heavily influenced by Moebius, the French comic
artist. Sunny is less abstract and experimental than
GOGO Monster, although Matsumoto once again vis-
its the world of deeply troubled children. Set in 1970s
Japan, Sunny follows the kids of the Star house, a
foster home/orphanage: that is to say, some of the
kids have parents, some don’t, and some don’t want
to see their parents anymore.
Different chapters follow the ensemble cast in in-
terconnected one-off stories. There’s smarty-pants
Sei, who believes his parents might
pick him up again; the school-skipping
“White,” who fantasizes about dying a
gangster’s death in the group’s aban-
doned car clubhouse; and Megumi,
who grieves for a dead stray cat and
wonders who buries orphans when
they die. Matsumoto’s use of splotchy
watercolor-like stains to depict Jun-
suke’s afro is one of many captivating
art choices in the book, although to be
clear, the book isn’t pretty. The Star
home kids are ugly, ruddy-cheeked misfits, and
that’s part of their charm. It’s easier to sympathize
with these kids than the ennui-ridden teens of Blue
Spring, and Sunny never becomes as outright psy-
chedelic as No. 5. In short, if you hated GOGO Mon-
ster you might like this. Although I’m always happy
to read more Matsumoto, I love Matsumoto at his
most surreal, so Sunny isn’t my favorite. Neverthe-
less, I recommend it.
Erin Finnegan

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16
 ALTERNATIVE/OTHER
THE BEST MANGA, 2013

member his past life anyway: “The mind of the

The Demon’s Sermon on the Martial Arts form follows that form. When the form is extin-
Publisher: Shambhala Publishing guished, the mind of that form disappears, too.”
Original Author: Issai Chozanshi This is obviously a metaphor for death, and
Story: Sean Michael Wilson many of the tales express this materialistic philos-
Art: Michiru Morikawa ophy. Apart from one or two brief slips into com-
Rating: Unrated/All Ages plex Buddhist terms, The Demon’s Sermon
expresses the Zen principle of “don’t think, do; or
Though its source mate- better yet, just be” (my own paraphrase) in ways
rial by Issai Chozanshi anyone can understand. There’s little actual mar-
(1659-1741) is not as fa- tial arts, with the exception of the best story, “The
mous as Hagakure: The Mysterious Technique of Cat,” in which three cats,
Code of the Samurai or
Miyamoto Musashi’s The
Book of Five Rings, this
poetic book immediately
stands out as the best of
Sean Michael Wilson’s
three graphic novel adap-
tations of classical works of Japanese philosophy.
An anthology with a very loosely framed narrative
about a swordsman who goes into the mountains
and overhears demons (or tengu) discussing phi-
losophy in the trees, The Demon’s Sermon ex-
plores Zen Buddhism through seven Aesop-like
fables of humans and animals: snakes talk with
centipedes, a rat petitions a toad priest to ask the
gods for deliverance from a cat, a butterfly dis-

©2012 Shambhala Publications, Inc.

cusses life with a bird.
To call most of these “stories” is a stretch as
they are basically philosophical discussions. A fre-
quent theme is that everything has its place in life
for a reason; the centipede is surprised that the
snake can move so fast without legs, and when the
daytime birds mock the owl for its ugliness, the
owl says this is the way nature made him. Even the
cicada finds that its discarded shell is just as con-
tent as he is: “Because I haven’t got anything in-
side of me, I’ve escaped from the world of pleasure
and pain, of gain and loss.” An anxious sparrow unable to beat a particularly tough rat, go to their
asks the butterfly what it was like to be a caterpil- master for advice and are told the flaws in their
lar, confessing his own worries: “I have heard a respective methods. This is not a book of practical
story that in September I’ll enter the ocean and technique, but as a book of philosophy, it’s fasci-
become a clam.” But the butterfly tells the spar- nating, a dreamlike exploration of consciousness,
row not to worry, for the clam-sparrow won’t re- life and death.

17
ALTERNATIVE/OTHER
Michiru Morikawa’s artwork is the perfect match
for the text, her eerie, detailed illustrations—espe-
cially the lovely renderings of various animals—per-
fectly matching the poetic feel.
Jason Thompson
Tokyo Love: Rica ‘tte Kanji?!
Publisher: ALC Publishing
Story and Art: Rica Takashima
Rating: Unrated/18+ (full edution);
16+ (library edition)
Street artist Rica Takashima, now living in New York,
made her mark in manga with her strips published
in the short-lived Japanese lesbian magazine Anise.
Erica Friedman, the West’s biggest booster of yuri
(lesbian) manga, translated 100 pages of Rica ‘tte
Kanji 10 years ago, and now returns with a 230-page
ebook of old and new material, the ultimate collec-
tion of Takashima’s bubbly art and queer-positive
stories of Tokyo lesbian life. Rica, an inexperienced
but out lesbian, moves to Tokyo for junior college,
where she hesitantly explores the Nichôme bar
scene and meets Miho, a spiky-haired fine arts stu-
dent who plays video games and
sleeps around. “I grew up out in the
country, so I’ve never met an actual
lesbian—this is the first time I can talk
to someone openly,” Rica tells Miho.
Miho is expecting a one-night stand,
but Rica is shy, and somehow they be-
come friends instead. And then, slowly,
between school exams and drunken
nights, crafts projects and sick days,
they fall in love.
As Friedman notes in her lengthy
interview with Takashima which is scattered
throughout the book, Tokyo Love: Rica ‘tte Kanji?!
avoids clichés: it’s neither a angsty coming-out
story nor a sexy love story (nor a combination of the
two, like Milk Morinaga’s Girl Friends). Instead, it’s
a fun look at the lives of two friends-maybe-turned-
lovers, an exploration of a subculture (factoid: “Hey,
do you like Cutey Honey?” can be a pickup line), and
a look at some of the issues same-sex couples face,
such as deciding whether to have children. Re-
18
©Rica Takashima, ALC Publishing, 2012. Some rights reserved, ask for permission.
freshingly, there’s very little pedantic in Rica, no
lengthy speeches or stereotypical homophobic bad
guys; such issues are handled more subtly, like in
the flashback scenes to Miho and Rica’s childhood,
when Rica’s friends pressure her to go out with
boys but her mother demonstrates love and under-
standing. Most of this book consists of short pieces
published in anthologies, and Miho and Rica’s nar-
rative sort of peters out after the first
100 pages, but in return we get some
other Takashima comics, such as the
fluffy but entertaining Fight! Cutey
Beret!, a parody of Cutey Honey with
two half-naked girls in berets and
artists’ aprons fighting the evil forces
of conformity, prejudice and nuclear
power (“Only our love and passion for
art can defeat our enemy!”). The Rica
strips are the best, but these oddities
help make the book the complete (so
far) Takashima collection, an anthology of delight-
ful, highly personal comics published outside the
traditional manga world of readers’ polls and Pho-
toshopped backgrounds. The main book contains
nothing unsuitable for teens, but Takashima’s adult
comics are collected in the 30-page extra ebook
Grace & Miki After School, a cartoony romp about
a Japanese and American girl dating in New York
and their imaginative sex life.
Jason Thompson
 SPECIAL FEATURES — DIGITAL MANGA
THE BEST MANGA, 2013

The Otaku USA Ninja Con-

sultant compares two digital
manga magazines, Shonen
Jump Alpha and ComicLoud.

Shonen Jump
Alpha (Viz)
Even though I own every
issue of Shojo Beat published
in America, for some reason,
I was never an American
Shonen Jump subscriber.
Nevertheless, I am a Shonen
Jump girl at heart. I love the
popular Jump titles like One
Piece, Naruto, and Hikaru No
Go, although admittedly I was
a Jump anime fan before I
read Jump manga. Since I
was typically following the
anime of my favorite series,
I’ve never been one of those
people pirating the latest
chapters online.
I like the idea of Shonen
Jump Alpha, and saw the
need for a legit day-and-date
publication years ago (when
I had to stop coworkers from
spoiling Naruto each week),
but I never thought it would
actually happen. When it did,
in 2012, I had mixed reac- and the more obscure the sport the better.
tions. Is it too little too late, Cross Manage seems fairly straightforward and
in this post-manga-bubble formulaic as sports titles go, with the added
world? What about those twist that it’s told from the male coach’s per-
kids who used to read the print magazine in li- spective as he gets a Bad News Bears girls’ high
braries, now that English Jump is digital-only? And school lacrosse team into shape. The art is clean
what titles are in Alpha anyway? and appealing without being terribly unique.
I’m thrilled to read Cross Manage, the first If Cross Manage hits all my good buttons, roman-
lacrosse manga to be translated into English. You tic comedy Nisekoi hits all the bad ones.
read that right, there’s more than one lacrosse Nisekoi reads like a shopping list of well-worn ro-
manga series, this is just the first to be translated. I mance tropes; Raku is searching for his long-lost
love sports manga, even though I’m not a sports fan, childhood girlfriend, and his only clue is a locket to

19
DIGITAL MANGA
which the mystery girl holds the key. (The key and
lock thing had me immediately thinking about me-
dieval chastity belts.) Raku’s chief romantic interest
and key-holder is Chitoge, a girl who love-hates him
and happens to be from a rival yakuza family. In-
stead of reading this, I’d rather have you read
Kitchen Princess, or even watch Onegai Twins.
Yakuza-as-comedy is played off better in Ouran High
School Host Club (specifically Episode 22 or Volume
8). Thanks to shojo manga, I’m sick of characters
who don’t know if they’re “in love” or “in hate.” To
Nisekoi’s credit, if you’re new to manga this plot
won’t be wasted on you. The artwork is clean, al-
though it is neither unique nor memorable.
I loved the first three volumes of fantasy-cooking-
adventure-manga Toriko but stopped buying the
books around Volume 5. If it was consistently in-
cluded in Shonen Jump Alpha I’d keep reading
Toriko. It wasn’t in the two issues I sampled, and I
didn’t buckle down for the annual fee to find out if
it’s usually in there.
I stopped watching Bleach around Episode 60, so
it was bizarre to read Chapters 516 and 517 in Alpha.
It made me feel ancient when I didn’t understand or
remember (or care) about all the rules of using
one’s “bankai.” A few pages of Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
made me feel an order of magnitude older.
As with Bleach, I stopped watching Naruto Ship-
20
puden ages ago. Naruto Chapters 609 and 610 seem
downright apocalyptic, as if the series might be
wrapping up soon (Kishimoto has hinted at the se-
ries ending). I am curious to see how it concludes (if
at all).
I’m bummed that Bakuman isn’t in Alpha, since
it’s the only Jump title I’ve been rabidly consuming
one paper tankobon at a time. Bakuman exposes
the very bones of Jump itself, making one hyper-
aware of which title comes first in the lineup. I wish
Alpha was an exact reproduction of the Japanese
weekly Jump issue, so I could read more Blue
Exorcist, Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan, all the while
dissecting the ratings Bakuman-style.
I read Alpha on an iPad 2, my iPhone 5, and in
Google Chrome. The Viz manga app doesn’t take full
advantage of the iPhone 5 screen just yet, and
sometimes it would crash rather than go to the next
page. It was much easier to read on the iPad in the
Kindle app.
And so, just as I couldn’t really justify subscribing
to the print edition of Jump, I can’t really justify sub-
scribing to the electronic version either.
ComicLoud (BookLoud)
ComicLoud is clunky and expensive compared to
Shonen Jump Alpha. At $4.99 per issue to Jump’s
$1 to sample issues (or $25.99 annual fee), it hardly
DIGITAL MANGA
seems worth the expense, as less than half the titles
are worth reading.
I’ve been waiting for years to read Ippongi Bang’s
comics. Diary of a Manga Artist has some practical
day-to-day mangaka stories with the occasional off-
topic rant, all drawn in a charming, relatively old-
school “chibi” style. I’d pay $5 to read Bang’s work,
but $5 per chapter is steep.
Shintaro Kago is the other artist-worth-reading
in ComicLoud. His weird experimental comics are
reminiscent of Usamaru Furuya’s Short Cuts.
Rather than an ongoing story, each chapter is a
short work, mostly grotesque stories about hospi-
tals and geriatric care, as experienced by a home-
care nurse. In one issue, geriatric delinquency leads
to the invention of a machine that forces cops to
“look the other way.” In an earlier single-page
comic, people are given a lifetime’s worth of toilet
paper at birth.
Then there’s Nobunaga Girl, which is easily one
of the top five worst manga I’ve ever read (a distinc-
tion shared by titles such as Vermonia and Ladder-
top). Taro Matsumoto can draw neither characters
nor backgrounds. The writing is terrible, too; one of
21
Oda Nobunaga’s servants is reincarnated as a mod-
ern school girl with a lame “bio loader” weapon.
Quadrifoglio 2 asks the question, “What if Initial D’s
Shuuichi Shigeno could draw girls in addition to
cars?” I’m not an Initial D fan, but Quadrifoglio 2 is
so weak as to make Initial D look like a masterpiece.
Meanwhile, if you like stories about scientists work-
ing on fightin’ mutants in experimental facilities,
your time might be better spent watching Zetman
or Towanoquon than reading X Hunter Ray. I’d com-
plain about the art, but Nobunaga Girl sets the bar
so low that it’s hard to object.
Early issues of ComicLoud suffer from cloudy
pixelation fragments, but later issues seem to
have solved that problem. Most pages appeared
too small to read on my iPhone 5, and were also a
bit small on the iPad 2, making me wonder what
they were sized for in the first place. Any time you
zoom in to a page you have to X it out to turn to the
next page, which is both counterintuitive and un-
necessary (in Shonen Jump Alpha, anyway). If
ComicLoud acquired one more worthwhile title it
may someday justify the cost.
Erin Finnegan
 SPECIAL FEATURES — Return of the Henshin Hero
THE BEST MANGA, 2013
Shotaro Ishinomori (1938-1998) hasn’t exactly gotten
the love he deserves in America. An assistant of
Osamu Tezuka, Ishinomori created such classics as
Cyborg 009 (the first Japanese superhero team) and
the infamous Japan Inc.: Introduction to Japanese
Economics, jump-started both the Super Sentai (the
franchise that served as the basis for Power
Rangers) and Kamen Rider series, drew the Nin-
tendo Power Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
comic, and is the current record holder for most
comics published by one author.
But secretly, 2012 was the Year of Ishinomori. I say
secretly because nobody exactly caught on to what
was going on until the home stretch, but seriously,
look at what happened: characters from his TV
shows like Space Ironmen Kyodain, Inazuman, and
Akumaizer 3 were reimagined for not one but TWO
Kamen Rider movies, the CG animated film Re:Cy-
borg 009 hit theaters, and the piece du resistance:
Comixology unleashed a portion of Ishinomori’s
manga … in English!
All previously untranslated (or, like Cyborg 009,
out of print), Inazuman, Skullman, Kamen Rider,
All images © ISHIMORI PRODUCTION INC.
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Kikaider, and Cyborg 009 are now available for pur-
chase for iOS and Android devices! I’m still some-
what in denial that this actually happened. Each of
the titles is more than definitely worth your time and
money, not only because they’re all wall-to-wall ac-
tion, but also for Ishinomori’s brand of storytelling.
There are moments where it’s ham-fisted with
camp but there are also moments that will bring you
to tears. Throughout the series, you can see Ishi-
nomori’s beliefs and concerns about mankind’s fu-
ture, the dangers and promise of progress and even
what he feels it means to grow up into an adult.
Here, let me show you...
Kamen Rider
Contrary to popular belief,
Shotaro Ishinomori’s Ka-
men Rider manga wasn’t
the source material for the
legendary 1971 TV series, it
was a tie-in. And out of all
the tie-in manga that were
made for the original se-
ries, it’s Ishinomori’s that
is the most iconic. After all,
it was the basis for 2005’s Kamen Rider THE FIRST
and its sequel, one of the monsters in Kamen Rider
Agito was made as homage, and (regrettably), it was
referenced in last year’s Kamen Rider x Super Sen-
tai: Super Hero Wars. At four volumes (though
Comixology is releasing it in three), it doesn’t just
retell the show, it stands on its own as a great series
and an example of Ishinomori at his best.
The backstory has become a tokusatsu (Japanese
special-effects shows) staple: Shocker, an evil or-
ganization set to rule the world with its army of cy-
borgs, kidnaps motorcycle racer and biochemist
Takeshi Hongo. Against his will, he is surgically al-
tered to become one of the Shocker elite, but before
his memories are erased he is saved by his old men-
tor, Dr. Midorikawa. After narrowly escaping
Shocker’s base, our hero dons the outfit stashed in-
side the Cyclone motorcycle and declares war on the
organization as Kamen Rider!
What’s great about the manga in comparison to
RETURN OF THE HENSHIN HERO
its live-action counterpart is that there are no limits
to the creativity. It’s not trapped by the special ef-
fects limitations of the time that made the show
laughable; the monsters are more menacing, the
fights considerably more violent with limbs being
ripped off, and the story takes a much darker and
more adult tone, matching that of the first few
episodes of the TV series. The most impressive feat
though is how it handled one of the major change-
ups of the series, namely the replacement of Hongo
with Hayato Ichimonji, the character soon to be
known as Kamen Rider 2.
In real life, Hiroshi Fujioka, the actor who played
Hongo, shattered his leg during a motorcycle stunt.
Instead of just ending the show, the Powers That Be
managed to use it as an excuse to revamp the show,
bringing in a new actor to be another cyborg like him
that Hongo had rescued. (In the actual show, the re-
veal takes all of 45 seconds.) Since the manga ran
alongside the TV series, the story in Ishinomori’s
manga ended up being affected as well. While other,
later tie-ins retconned that Hayato was the main
Rider all along, Ishinomori took this development
and ran with it. The passing of the flame from Hongo
to Ichimonji serves as the core of one of the most
graphic, dramatic, and suspenseful moments in the
entire series. I won’t spoil it but said scene was so
powerful that it was adapted by the live-action TV
series into a multi-episode arc! Truly, this is one of
my favorite works by Ishinomori and I cannot rec- eventually became Kamen Rider. However, it was
ommend it enough. deemed too dark and gruesome for kids and didn’t
make the cut. That didn’t stop the the concept from
Skullman being turned into a one-shot comic (it actually beat
Skullman’s exposure to the Kamen Rider to the punch, being published two
West is somewhat jum- years before its broadcast). Billed as a “Ro-
bled. We first got the re- manesque Horror Story,” the one-shot revolves
make/sequel manga by around Skullman and his shape-changing ally, Garo.
Kazuhiko Shimamoto via As it turns out, the two have been on a mass-murder
Tokyopop (now, of course, spree across Japan, with the police unable to stop
out of print), then the them. However, as you’d expect, there’s more to
anime from FUNimation— these murders than meets the eye, the victims being
and all of this before the part of a large conspiracy—one that our “hero” is
actual one-shot manga from Comixology. In a way determined to reveal by any means necessary.
I’m not bothered by the turnout. Because, though it It’s exciting, violent, and otherwise fantastic, but
is compelling, Skullman is unfortunately one of the the weakness of Skullman? It ends abruptly. After
weaker offerings by Ishinomori. 90 or so pages of buildup, it hits you with a hefty
Skullman was the original idea for the show that amount of exposition AND a tragic ending. Sure, it’s

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RETURN OF THE HENSHIN HERO
a way to leave you wanting more, but not research was the way of the future. So
when there’s a snowball’s chance in an yes, it’s a case of Children Are The Fu-
inferno of a continuation. Shimamoto’s ture, but it’s an instance where it actu-
follow-up picks up the slack in this case, ally makes sense: as Ishinomori would
but that doesn’t stop this incarnation of put it, since they’re still children, they
Skullman from ultimately being under- haven’t been corrupted yet by the cru-
whelming. elty of the world. Face it, it’s definitely
better logic than the live-action’s “It’s a
Inazuman kids show, that’s why!”
Inazuman is a rare case of the manga Really, it’s as if Ishinomori aimed to
tie-in outdoing the source material. do to Inazuman what he did with Kamen
Don’t get me wrong, the TV series of Inazuman is Rider’s adaptation and break the dial. If that was the
wild, colorful, and action-packed with one of the case then all I can say is mission accomplished.
best flying cars ever (a sentient flying hot-rod that
shoots missiles out of its mouth), but the manga is
a different kind of monster. It’s more fleshed out
with a stronger storyline and characters, and deeper
roots in science fiction.
Saburo Kazeta is a teen with wasted potential. He
aces all of his tests but does none of the homework,
lounging around and being a complete hornball to
his girlfriend. All that changes when he receives a
telepathic message with one word: “Chrysalis.” The
message comes from the leader of the Youth
League, a team of youngsters with psychic powers
who are fighting a secret war. They persuade Saburo
to join their fight against the evil Banba and his evil
psychic army. With their help, he is able to manifest
his psychic abilities, becoming the human chrysalis,
Sanagiman and his ultimate form, the lightning-
charged Inazuman!
While there are monsters and psychic manifes-
tations, most of the action in the Inazuman manga
is human-on-human ESP battles. But I honestly
find myself thinking of this manga as the Japanese
version of the British sci-fi series The Tomorrow
People. Think about it: both are centered around
young psychics who attempt to rally their peers to-
gether to protect the world. Also, both shows have
reasons for their heroes being so young: their psy-
chic powers develop and manifest more naturally
during puberty. However, the Youth League’s very
existence is more grounded in Ishinomori’s own be-
liefs. (At one point, he actually stops the story to
spell them out for you!) At the time, he believed that
mankind was reaching a dead-end due to corrup-
tion and selfish greed, and that parapsychological

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RETURN OF THE HENSHIN HERO
Kikaider
Remember Kikaider: The Animation? It was one of
the more memorable entries in the early years of
Adult Swim, adapting Shotaro Ishinomori’s manga
tie-in of the tokusatsu series Android Kikaider.
When news of it first came
out, a portion of the old-
school live-action Kikaider
fans weren’t entirely
thrilled with it, labeling it
too dark and melodra-
matic. Thing is, though, the
majority of people who
complained probably didn’t
read the source material or
they would have called the
anime “tame.” Compared to other Ishinomori shows
like Kamen Rider, Kikaider goes down a different,
darker road.
After an explosion in the laboratory of Dr. Komyoji,
Jiro, a young man wearing a guitar on his back, sud-
denly wakes up in the woods. With no idea who or
what he is, he’s soon forced to fight the first of the
many androids from the DARK organization, led by
the twisted Professor Gill. Jiro discovers that he has You’ll get moments expounding the human condi-
the ability to transform, becoming his true mechan- tion, but you’ll also get an android delivering a
ical form, Kikaider, to protect Komyoji’s children, poignant monologue while dressed as Count Drac-
Mitsuko and Masaru. He’s nearly indestructible, ula. Also, Giant Robot Dinosaurs In New York—need
save for one critical weakness: upon hearing the I say more?
sound of Gill’s flute, Jiro goes mad, his conscience But above all else, the finale of Kikaider (which,
circuit working overtime to ensure he doesn’t fall as of this writing, has yet to be released in English)
back into DARK’s clutches. Jiro runs away from the is what elevates this manga to Classic status.
Komyojis, believing Mitsuko wants to destroy him; (Note that the Comixology Kikaider is the classic
in reality, she wants to finish his circuitry and make one, not the modern remake Kikaider Code 02 re-
him complete! Thus begins Jiro’s journey as he not leased by CMX.) The most bittersweet yet amazing
only fights against the forces of DARK who want him thing Ishinomori has ever written, he lays out his
to return, but also to discover himself. response to the manga’s thesis: “What does it re-
I’ve always loved the twist of the Kikaider manga ally take to be truly human?” Throughout the
that it’s Jiro on the run; it’s a stark difference from manga, we’re given constant throwbacks to the
the live-action series where the Komyoji children fairy tale of Pinocchio, the most blatant being the
spend every episode lamenting and trying to find name of the conscience circuit, Jiminy, named
their amnesiac father. At the same time, it’s a fresh after Pinocchio’s own conscience, Jiminy Cricket.
means of exposition and also shows Jiro’s develop- Like Pinocchio, Jiro tries ever harder to become
ment. You get plenty of intense battles between him human. To some extent (trying to avoid spoilers),
and the other DARK androids but you also get pow- he succeeds … but Ishinomori’s solution is both
erful character moments. At times, though, Kikaider challenging and bittersweet.
walks a fine line between drama and ridiculousness. Mike Dent

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