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Manga Critic

7 Essential VIZ Signature Manga

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Are you an adult reader new to manga? Or a librarian who’s looking to add more graphic novels to your adult collection? Then this list is for you! The VIZ Signature imprint is one of the best resources for adults who read — or are curious about — manga. All of the Signature titles originally appeared in Japanese magazines that cater to grown-up tastes. As a result, the Signature line has broader appeal than many of VIZ’s other imprints, offering something for manga lovers who have “aged out” of Naruto as well as general interest readers who are more likely to discover a graphic novel through The New York Times than The Comics Journal.

Below, I’ve compiled a list of seven titles that best represent the VIZ Signature catalog. In choosing manga for this list, I was less concerned about identifying the “best” titles and more concerned with steering readers towards stories that resonate with their taste in movies, television, and comics. I’ve also focused on more recent series, as some of the line’s older titles — Monster, Sexy Voice and Robo, Phoenix — are out of print. Manga fans are strongly encouraged to add their recommendations in the comments section!

All My Darling Daughters
By Fumi Yoshinaga • 1 volume
The five vignettes in All My Darling Daughters depict women negotiating difficult personal relationships: a daughter confronts her mother about mom’s new, much younger husband; a college student seduces her professor, only to dump him when he tries to court her properly; a beautiful young woman contemplates an arranged marriage. Like all of Yoshinaga’s work, the characters in All My Darling Daughters love to talk. That chattiness isn’t always an asset to Yoshinaga’s storytelling, but here the dialogue is perfectly calibrated to reveal just how complex and ambivalent these relationships really are. Yoshinaga’s artwork is understated but effective, as she uses small details — how a character stands or carries her shoulders — to offer a more complete and nuanced portrait of each woman. (One of my picks for Best New Manga of 2010.)

Recommended for: Readers who liked Drinking at the Movies, Dykes to Watch Out For, Make Me a Woman, and other graphic novels exploring the everyday lives of women; readers who are reluctant to commit to a multi-volume series.

Biomega
By Tsutomu Nihei • 6 volumes
In this sci-fi/horror hybrid, an outbreak of a mysterious virus turns all but one resident of an island colony into zombies. Zoichi Kanoe, a corporate bounty hunter, is sent to retrieve that survivor, only to discover that she’s being guarded by a talking, gun-toting bear. Tsutomu Nihei has the artistic chops to pull off some outlandish stuff, including a rooftop chase scene that borrows a few pages from Bullitt and a spooky Martian prologue that would do John Carpenter proud. Nihei also has the good sense to exercise restraint — if one can describe an apocalyptic zombie scenario with pistol-packing grizzlies as “restrained” — revealing key bits of information only as the characters learn them. The result is a lean, fast-paced shoot-em-up that has just enough thought behind it to make it plausible but not so much that it seems ham-fistedly allegorical. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 2/14/10.)

Recommended for: Readers who like science fiction with elements of horror (e.g. Alien, John Carpenter’s The Thing); readers who like zombie fiction, comics, and movies.

Detroit Metal City
By Kiminori Wakasuhi • 10 volumes
Satirizing death metal is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel: how hard can it be to parody a style associated with bands named Cannibal Corpse or Necrophagia? Poking fun at death metal while respecting the sincerity of its followers, however, is a much more difficult trick to pull off, yet Kiminori Wakasugi does just that in Detroit Metal City, ridiculing the music — the violent lyrics, the crudely sexual theatrics — while recognizing the depth of DMC fans’ commitment to the metal lifestyle. Though the musical parodies are hilarious, the series’ funniest moments arise from classic fish-out-of-water situations: Negishi driving a tractor on his parent’s farm while dressed as alter ego Lord Krauser (complete with makeup, fright wig, and platform boots), Negishi bringing a fruit basket to a hospitalized DMC fan while dressed as Krauser… you get the idea. The series begins to run out of gas around volume six, but has the decency not to overstay its welcome. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 5/28/09.)

Recommended for: Readers who love musical parodies (e.g. This Is Spinal Tap, South Park, Flight of the Conchords); readers who have fond memories of attending KISS or GWAR concerts back in the day.

House of Five Leaves
By Natsume Ono • 8 volumes
Timid ronin Akitsu Masanosuke can’t hold a steady job, despite his formidable swordsmanship. When a businessman approaches him with work, Masanosuke readily accepts, not realizing that his new employer, Yaichi, runs a crime syndicate that specializes in kidnapping. Masanosuke’s unwitting participation in a blackmailing scheme prevents him from severing his ties to Yaichi; Masanosuke must then decide if he will join the House of Five Leaves or bide his time until he can escape. Though Toshiro Mifune and Hiroyuki Sanada have made entire careers out of playing characters like Masanosuke, Natsume Ono makes a persuasive case that you don’t need a flesh-and-blood actor to tell this kind of story with heartbreaking intensity; she can do the slow-burn on the printed page with the same skill as Masaki Kobayashi (Hara Kiri, Samurai Rebellion) and Yoji Yamada (The Twilight Samurai) did on the big screen. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 8/20/10.)

Recommended for: Kurosawa junkies; readers who like costume dramas; readers with an interest in Japanese history.

Oishinbo a la Carte
Story by Tetsy Kariya, Art by Hanasaki Akira • 7 volumes
Equal parts Iron Wok Jan, Mostly Martha, and The Manga Cookbook, this educational, entertaining series explores Japanese cuisine at its most refined — sake, seabream sashimi — and its most basic — rice, pub food. The stories fall into two categories: stories celebrating the important role of food in creating community, and stories celebrating the culinary expertise of its principal characters, newspaperman Yamaoka Shiro and his curmudgeonly father Kaibara Yuzan. (Fun fact: Yuzan is such a food snob that he drove Yamaoka’s mother to an early grave, causing an irreparable break between father and son.) Though the competition between Yamaoka and Yuzan yields some elegant, mouth-watering dishes, Oishinbo is at its best when it focuses on everyday food in everyday settings, shedding light on how the Japanese prepare everything from bean sprouts to ramen. Warning: never read on an empty stomach! (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 6/24/09.)

Recommended for: Foodies, gourmets, and other people who like to watch the Food Network (or have daydreamed about becoming a restaurant critic); readers who enjoy The Drops of God.

Real
By Takehiko Inoue • 15 volumes (ongoing)
In lesser hands, REAL might have been an Afterschool Special in manga form, an earnest, uplifting story about disabled teens who find a new sense of purpose on the basketball court. Takehiko Inoue, however, steers clear of easy sentiment; his characters are tough, competitive, and profane, occasionally self-pitying, and fiercely determined to create a space for themselves that’s theirs—and theirs alone. Though the court scenes are brief (at least by shonen sports manga standards, where matches can take several volumes to unfold), Inoue captures the speed and energy of his athletes with consummate skill. A funny, honest, and sometimes rueful series that works equally well for teens and adults. (My choice for Best New Manga of 2008 at PopCultureShock; reviewed at The Manga Critic on 5/3/09.)

Recommended for: Basketball enthusiasts; readers who enjoy sports stories with a human interest angle.

20th Century Boys
By Naoki Urasawa • 24 vols.
Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys tells a twisty, layered story about ordinary people saving the world from annihilation. Other auteurs have explore similar turf — Tim Kring’s Heroes comes to mind — but Urasawa manages to sustain the reader’s interest without succumbing to cliche or unduly testing our patience. The key to Urasawa’s success is strong script with vivid characters and a clear sense of purpose, reassuring the reader that all the plot strands are just that: strands, not loose threads. Crisp, detailed artwork helps sell the more ludicrous aspects of the story, and distinguish the sprawling cast from one another. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 1/9/10.)

Recommended for: Conspiracy theory buffs; readers who enjoy television programs that blend elements of science fiction, suspense, and paranoia (e.g. Alcatraz, Heroes, Lost).

The Best Manga You’re Not Reading: I’ll Give It My All… Tomorrow

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I’m not a big fan of squirm-inducing comedies like The Office; it’s hard to root for a loser who makes everyone uncomfortable with his general lack of self-awareness and humility. Yet The Office was undeniably compelling, even if it was sometimes hard to watch. The genius was in Ricky Gervais’ performance: he embodied a type that we’ve all encountered in our working lives, someone who felt small but used his job to make himself seem bigger or more important than he really was. Gervais never tried to make his character appealing in his vulnerability, and in so doing, forced the audience to confront the fundamental falseness of the lovable loser stereotype; we may feel better about ourselves for identifying with a decent underdog, but we probably have more in common with David Brent than we’d care to admit.

I’ll Give It My All… Tomorrow, an unsparing farce about a forty-year-old father who quits his job to become a manga artist, inspires a similar mixture of love and squick. Shunjo Aono makes no effort to endear his protagonist to readers; Shizuo is a loser with big dreams but terrible follow-through. Like many daydreamers, Shizuo failed to realize that his fantasy job would be just as grueling as the one he quit, a revelation that sends him into a tailspin of binge drinking, prostitution, and video gaming. The first volume’s blunt, unsparing tone yields some squirm-inducing moments that are just a little too truthful to be funny, such as when Shizuo bumps into his eighteen-year-old daughter at a love hotel or parties with younger colleagues.

As the story progress, however, Shizuo spends less time pretending to be twenty and more time writing stories. Volume two opens with a scene of Shizuo pitching an ill-advised story Murakami, the one editor at EKKE magazine who can tolerate Shizuo. Following the dictum of “write what you know,” Shizuo has penned “The History of Me,” an autobiographical comic depicting Shizuo’s ongoing struggle to find his true gift, the thing that, in his own words, makes him “different from other people.” It’s an exquisitely uncomfortable scene, as Murakami must endure Shizuo’s pompous editorializing, making it almost inevitable that Shizuo’s work will be rejected swiftly. Worse still, Shizuo’s journey of self-discovery is anything but; he’s failed at everything he’s tried — street tough, folk singer, salary man — yet hasn’t abandoned the delusion that he’s “too big” for the “little” opportunities he’s been given thus far.

In subsequent volumes, Shizuo’s progress remains fitful, impeded by his ego and his inexperience. When he does have an epiphany, it’s usually because he’s failed spectacularly and must rationalize the choices he’s made. In volume four, for example, Shizuo is assigned to a new editor, Aya Unami. After reading his latest excruciatingly autobiographical manuscript, “Live to 300,” she promptly tells him, “I think you need to know when to give up.” Oguro is initially stunned, but soon realizes that Aya might be the only person with the vision and honesty to help him improve. Whether she’s willing to coach him, and whether he can accept her guidance, however, are a different story; it’s hard to imagine Aono treating this moment as a major breakthrough in Shizuo’s journey from amateur to professional, the first meeting between a gifted natural and the coach who will lead him to stardom.

The artwork mirrors Shizuo’s skill level and emotional maturity: the lines are thick and imperfect, the shapes are basic, and the characters’ bodies are awkwardly proportioned. Shizuo has an enormous, round head that seems ill-suited for his body, and tiny eyes that remind us just how myopic he is in every aspect of his life. (See “bumping into teenage daughter at a love motel,” above.) In a particularly skillful touch, Shizuo’s own drawing mirrors that of Aono’s, only executed with less command of line and form — a subtle reminder that the prevailing aesthetic of both stories is meant to reflect how Shizuo sees the world, not an artistic failing on Aono’s part.

I’m probably making I’ll Give It My All… Tomorrow sound like a colossal downer; after all, it’s hard to laugh at a character who seems so pitiful. Yet for all Shizuo’s self-aggrandizement, there’s something honest about his efforts, and that’s what makes this squirm-inducing comedy readable. We may do our best to be responsible — to hold good-paying jobs, pay our mortgages, and raise our children to be good students and citizens — but for many of us, a soft, nagging voice asks, “Is that all there is?” Shizuo’s decision to act on that doubt isn’t wise or noble, but it’s testament to a deeply human need: to create meaning out of our experiences, and to find proof that our lives are intrinsically interesting to other people. Recommended, though you may want a stiff drink afterwards.

This is an expanded version of reviews that previously appeared at The Manga Critic on 8/20/09, 11/08/10, and 11/28/11.

The Best Manga You’re Not Reading: I’ll Give It My All… Tomorrow

by

I’m not a big fan of squirm-inducing comedies like The Office; it’s hard to root for a loser who makes everyone uncomfortable with his general lack of self-awareness and humility. Yet The Office was undeniably compelling, even if it was sometimes hard to watch. The genius was in Ricky Gervais’ performance: he embodied a type that we’ve all encountered in our working lives, someone who felt small but used his job to make himself seem bigger or more important than he really was. Gervais never tried to make his character appealing in his vulnerability, and in so doing, forced the audience to confront the fundamental falseness of the lovable loser stereotype; we may feel better about ourselves for identifying with a decent underdog, but we probably have more in common with David Brent than we’d care to admit.

I’ll Give It My All… Tomorrow, an unsparing farce about a forty-year-old father who quits his job to become a manga artist, inspires a similar mixture of love and squick. Shunjo Aono makes no effort to endear his protagonist to readers; Shizuo is a loser with big dreams but terrible follow-through. Like many daydreamers, Shizuo failed to realize that his fantasy job would be just as grueling as the one he quit, a revelation that sends him into a tailspin of binge drinking, prostitution, and video gaming. The first volume’s blunt, unsparing tone yields some squirm-inducing moments that are just a little too truthful to be funny, such as when Shizuo bumps into his eighteen-year-old daughter at a love hotel or parties with younger colleagues.

As the story progress, however, Shizuo spends less time pretending to be twenty and more time writing stories. Volume two opens with a scene of Shizuo pitching an ill-advised story Murakami, the one editor at EKKE magazine who can tolerate Shizuo. Following the dictum of “write what you know,” Shizuo has penned “The History of Me,” an autobiographical comic depicting Shizuo’s ongoing struggle to find his true gift, the thing that, in his own words, makes him “different from other people.” It’s an exquisitely uncomfortable scene, as Murakami must endure Shizuo’s pompous editorializing, making it almost inevitable that Shizuo’s work will be rejected swiftly. Worse still, Shizuo’s journey of self-discovery is anything but; he’s failed at everything he’s tried — street tough, folk singer, salary man — yet hasn’t abandoned the delusion that he’s “too big” for the “little” opportunities he’s been given thus far.

In subsequent volumes, Shizuo’s progress remains fitful, impeded by his ego and his inexperience. When he does have an epiphany, it’s usually because he’s failed spectacularly and must rationalize the choices he’s made. In volume four, for example, Shizuo is assigned to a new editor, Aya Unami. After reading his latest excruciatingly autobiographical manuscript, “Live to 300,” she promptly tells him, “I think you need to know when to give up.” Oguro is initially stunned, but soon realizes that Aya might be the only person with the vision and honesty to help him improve. Whether she’s willing to coach him, and whether he can accept her guidance, however, are a different story; it’s hard to imagine Aono treating this moment as a major breakthrough in Shizuo’s journey from amateur to professional, the first meeting between a gifted natural and the coach who will lead him to stardom.

The artwork mirrors Shizuo’s skill level and emotional maturity: the lines are thick and imperfect, the shapes are basic, and the characters’ bodies are awkwardly proportioned. Shizuo has an enormous, round head that seems ill-suited for his body, and tiny eyes that remind us just how myopic he is in every aspect of his life. (See “bumping into teenage daughter at a love motel,” above.) In a particularly skillful touch, Shizuo’s own drawing mirrors that of Aono’s, only executed with less command of line and form — a subtle reminder that the prevailing aesthetic of both stories is meant to reflect how Shizuo sees the world, not an artistic failing on Aono’s part.

I’m probably making I’ll Give It My All… Tomorrow sound like a colossal downer; after all, it’s hard to laugh at a character who seems so pitiful. Yet for all Shizuo’s self-aggrandizement, there’s something honest about his efforts, and that’s what makes this squirm-inducing comedy readable. We may do our best to be responsible — to hold good-paying jobs, pay our mortgages, and raise our children to be good students and citizens — but for many of us, a soft, nagging voice asks, “Is that all there is?” Shizuo’s decision to act on that doubt isn’t wise or noble, but it’s testament to a deeply human need: to create meaning out of our experiences, and to find proof that our lives are intrinsically interesting to other people. Recommended, though you may want a stiff drink afterwards.

This is an expanded version of reviews that previously appeared at The Manga Critic on 8/20/09, 11/08/10, and 11/28/11.

MMF: An Introduction to the VIZ Signature Imprint

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If TOKYOPOP was the company that first embraced the teen market, licensing Sailor Moon and bringing manga to big chain stores, then VIZ was the company that first wooed adult readers, using distinctive packaging and punchy trade names to help older manga fans distinguish stories about boy ninjas from stories about disillusioned samurai. VIZ wasn’t the only company courting older fans, of course; Dark Horse has been synonymous with manly-man manga for most of its licensing history, while TOKYOPOP made several unsuccessful forays into ladies’ comics. VIZ, however, has done more than any major American publisher to create a market for titles like Oishinbo and 20th Century Boys, seinen works that appeal equally to male and female readers in their twenties, thirties, and beyond.

One of VIZ’s first branding experiments was its short-lived Spectrum Editions line (1990-91). VIZ published three seinen titles in a prestige format with vinyl dust jackets, high-quality paper, and a large trim size. Those titles — Natsuo Sekikawa and Jiro Taniguchi’s Hotel Harbour View, Yukinobu Hoshino’s Saber Tiger, and Yu Kinutani’s Shion: Blade of the Minstrel — didn’t make much of a splash in the market, but they anticipated some of the design choices that VIZ would make with its Editor’s Choice and Signature imprints a decade later.

Another important precedent for the VIZ Signature line was PULP: The Manga Magazine. First launched in 1997, VIZ billed its monthly anthology as “manga for grownups,” and featured edgier stories than its companion magazines Animerica and Manga Vizion. Titles such as Banana Fish, Bakune Young, Dance Til Tomorrow, Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga, Short Cuts, Strain, and Uzumaki debuted in PULP before they were collected into graphic novels that bore the magazine’s name.

After struggling to find an audience, PULP was canceled in 2002. The significance of PULP wasn’t lost on its editors, however; when the magazine ceased production, they issued the following statement, summarizing their achievement:

PULP was the first English-language magazine to run the kind of manga that make comics a mass medium for ordinary adults in Japan, from dynamic action narratives to avant-garde ventures, when it debuted in December 1997… PULP offered readers a Japanese comics contrast to both the superhero genre that typifies American comics and the stereotypical “anime-esque” manga often offered to U.S. readers.

After VIZ phased out the magazine, several PULP titles — Dance Til Tomorrow, No. 5 — found a home at the newly created Editor’s Choice imprint. Like PULP, the Editor’s Choice line was designed to appeal to older readers, featuring titles such as Maison Ikkoku, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Phoenix, and Saikano. The Editor’s Choice imprint had something else in common with PULP: it was short-lived. By 2006, VIZ had rebranded the catalog with the VIZ Signature name, using it to help adult readers distinguish Naoki Urasawa’s Monster from Naruto.

In its six years of existence, the VIZ Signature line has been steadily diversifying to serve a wider audience. Speaking to Publisher’s Weekly in 2009, VIZ Managing Editor Leyla Ayker explained that one of the goals of the line was “to create a balance between the more ‘literary’ works that would appeal to readers of Western graphic novels like Fun Home or Asterios Polyp and the more ‘action’ works that would appeal to readers of American superhero comics and genre fiction.” To that end, VIZ has been licensing a mixture of highbrow titles — All My Darling Daughters, Oishinbo A La Carte, Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka — and pulp fiction for mature readers — Black Lagoon, Biomega, Dogs: Bullets and Carnage.

The Signature line was never tied to a print magazine, but in 2009, VIZ launched an ambitious collaboration with the Japanese anthology IKKI: select IKKI titles would be serialized online, allowing North American readers to read free monthly updates of series such as I’ll Give It My All… Tomorrow and Saturn Apartments. VIZ would then publish those series as part of its Signature line, with a special logo to distinguish the IKKI titles from other Signature manga. For a year and a half, the site flourished, offering readers a mixture of new comics and feature articles: an interview with Q Hayashida (Dorohedoro), a comic drawn by one of the VIZ designers. By the end of 2011, however, regular updates to the site had ceased, prompting speculation about the future of the project.

Whatever the future of SigIKKI, the project epitomizes what the VIZ Signature line does best: publishing high-quality manga that appeal to a wide spectrum of adult readers As Leyla Aker explained to Publisher’s Weekly:

The reason why IKKI and Signature are such a good fit is because their objectives are the same: to publish series that offer a diverse range of content but that are all marked by creative excellence. Another factor is that both lines are gender-neutral, so to speak; their content is aimed at both adult men and women, which is fairly unusual for manga.

And that, in a nutshell, is the VIZ Signature imprint: 43 titles that run the gamut from kitchen-sink drama (All My Darling Daughtes, Gente: The People of Ristorante Paradiso) to horror stories (Cat-Eyed Boy, Uzumaki), sword-and-sandal epics (Vagabond), science fiction (Bokurano: Ours, Saturn Apartments), thrillers (Black Lagoon, Monster), romances (Ristorante Paradiso), mysteries (not simple, Sexy Voice and Robo), and fantasies (Dorohedoro, GoGo Monster).

N.B. VIZ began designing a new Signature website which remains unfinished as of 4/22/12. In the comments below, reader Eric Rupe notes that VIZ doesn’t seem to have made much progress on the site; links redirect the reader to an empty product page at viz.com.

* * * * *

The goal of this month’s Manga Movable Feast is to create a place where grown-ups can discuss their favorite — or least favorite — VIZ Signature manga. Anyone can contribute: all you need to do is send me a link to an essay, podcast, or review about a VIZ Signature title, and I’ll feature it in one of my daily round-ups. (Email or Twitter are the best way to submit links; Twitter submissions should be directed to @manga_critic.) Note that the feast runs from today (Sunday, April 22nd) through Saturday (April 28th). For more information, please visit the VIZ Signature MMF archive.

An Introduction to the VIZ Signature Imprint

by

If TOKYOPOP was the company that first embraced the teen market, licensing Sailor Moon and bringing manga to big chain stores, then VIZ was the company that first wooed adult readers, using distinctive packaging and punchy trade names to help older manga fans distinguish stories about boy ninjas from stories about disillusioned samurai. VIZ wasn’t the only company courting older fans, of course; Dark Horse has been synonymous with manly-man manga for most of its licensing history, while TOKYOPOP made several unsuccessful forays into ladies’ comics. VIZ, however, has done more than any major American publisher to create a market for titles like Oishinbo and 20th Century Boys, seinen works that appeal equally to male and female readers in their twenties, thirties, and beyond.

One of VIZ’s first branding experiments was its short-lived Spectrum Editions line (1990-91). VIZ published three seinen titles in a prestige format with vinyl dust jackets, high-quality paper, and a large trim size. Those titles — Natsuo Sekikawa and Jiro Taniguchi’s Hotel Harbour View, Yukinobu Hoshino’s Saber Tiger, and Yu Kinutani’s Shion: Blade of the Minstrel — didn’t make much of a splash in the market, but they anticipated some of the design choices that VIZ would make with its Editor’s Choice and Signature imprints a decade later.

Another important precedent for the VIZ Signature line was PULP: The Manga Magazine. First launched in 1997, VIZ billed its monthly anthology as “manga for grownups,” and featured edgier stories than its companion magazines Animerica and Manga Vizion. Titles such as Banana Fish, Bakune Young, Dance Til Tomorrow, Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga, Short Cuts, Strain, and Uzumaki debuted in PULP before they were collected into graphic novels that bore the magazine’s name.

After struggling to find an audience, PULP was canceled in 2002. The significance of PULP wasn’t lost on its editors, however; when the magazine ceased production, they issued the following statement, summarizing their achievement:

PULP was the first English-language magazine to run the kind of manga that make comics a mass medium for ordinary adults in Japan, from dynamic action narratives to avant-garde ventures, when it debuted in December 1997… PULP offered readers a Japanese comics contrast to both the superhero genre that typifies American comics and the stereotypical “anime-esque” manga often offered to U.S. readers.

After VIZ phased out the magazine, several PULP titles — Dance Til Tomorrow, No. 5 — found a home at the newly created Editor’s Choice imprint. Like PULP, the Editor’s Choice line was designed to appeal to older readers, featuring titles such as Maison Ikkoku, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Phoenix, and Saikano. The Editor’s Choice imprint had something else in common with PULP: it was short-lived. By 2006, VIZ had rebranded the catalog with the VIZ Signature name, using it to help adult readers distinguish Naoki Urasawa’s Monster from Naruto.

In its six years of existence, the VIZ Signature line has been steadily diversifying to serve a wider audience. Speaking to Publisher’s Weekly in 2009, VIZ Managing Editor Leyla Ayker explained that one of the goals of the line was “to create a balance between the more ‘literary’ works that would appeal to readers of Western graphic novels like Fun Home or Asterios Polyp and the more ‘action’ works that would appeal to readers of American superhero comics and genre fiction.” To that end, VIZ has been licensing a mixture of highbrow titles — All My Darling Daughters, Oishinbo A La Carte, Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka — and pulp fiction for mature readers — Black Lagoon, Biomega, Dogs: Bullets and Carnage.

The Signature line was never tied to a print magazine, but in 2009, VIZ launched an ambitious collaboration with the Japanese anthology IKKI: select IKKI titles would be serialized online, allowing North American readers to read free monthly updates of series such as I’ll Give It My All… Tomorrow and Saturn Apartments. VIZ would then publish those series as part of its Signature line, with a special logo to distinguish the IKKI titles from other Signature manga. For a year and a half, the site flourished, offering readers a mixture of new comics and feature articles: an interview with Q Hayashida (Dorohedoro), a comic drawn by one of the VIZ designers. By the end of 2011, however, regular updates to the site had ceased, prompting speculation about the future of the project.

Whatever the future of SigIKKI, the project epitomizes what the VIZ Signature line does best: publishing high-quality manga that appeal to a wide spectrum of adult readers As Leyla Aker explained to Publisher’s Weekly:

The reason why IKKI and Signature are such a good fit is because their objectives are the same: to publish series that offer a diverse range of content but that are all marked by creative excellence. Another factor is that both lines are gender-neutral, so to speak; their content is aimed at both adult men and women, which is fairly unusual for manga.

And that, in a nutshell, is the VIZ Signature imprint: 43 titles that run the gamut from kitchen-sink drama (All My Darling Daughtes, Gente: The People of Ristorante Paradiso) to horror stories (Cat-Eyed Boy, Uzumaki), sword-and-sandal epics (Vagabond), science fiction (Bokurano: Ours, Saturn Apartments), thrillers (Black Lagoon, Monster), romances (Ristorante Paradiso), mysteries (not simple, Sexy Voice and Robo), and fantasies (Dorohedoro, GoGo Monster).

N.B. VIZ began designing a new Signature website which remains unfinished as of 4/22/12. In the comments below, reader Eric Rupe notes that VIZ doesn’t seem to have made much progress on the site; links redirect the reader to an empty product page at viz.com.

* * * * *

The goal of this month’s Manga Movable Feast is to create a place where grown-ups can discuss their favorite — or least favorite — VIZ Signature manga. Anyone can contribute: all you need to do is send me a link to an essay, podcast, or review about a VIZ Signature title, and I’ll feature it in one of my daily round-ups. (Email or Twitter are the best way to submit links; Twitter submissions should be directed to @manga_critic.) Note that the feast runs from today (Sunday, April 22nd) through Saturday (April 28th). For more information, please visit the VIZ Signature MMF archive.

Manga Artifacts: Love Song

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Back in the 1990s, Matt Thorn labored hard to make Keiko Nishi a household name among American manga readers, translating six of her stories for VIZ. Two appeared in Four Shojo Stories alongside work by Moto Hagio and Shio Sato, and four appeared in a stand-alone volume called Love Song.

VIZ made a conscious effort to present Nishi’s work not just as comics, but as literature. Love Song boasted fancy endpapers — the kind you might find in the Everyman’s edition of Middlemarch — and a back cover blurb that defined shojo manga as “a literary genre of Japanese comics in which the relationships between characters are as meticulously crafted as the story’s action.” Lest the reader interpreted that statement to mean, “Here be romance comics,” the editor optimistically declared that shojo manga was “created by women for everyone!”

Though Nishi didn’t catch on with Western readers, it’s easy to see why Thorn championed her work: she’s a terrific, versatile storyteller, equally capable of writing light-hearted fantasies and character studies of deeply damaged people. Of the four stories that appear in Love Song, two are standouts: “Jewels of the Seaside,” a black comedy about three sisters who compete for the same man’s affection, with disastrous results, and “The Skin of Her Heart,” a sci-fi tale about a young woman torn between what she wants and what her mother wants for her. The other two stories — “Love Song” and “The Signal Goes Blink, Blink” — are also strong, if more conventional. “Love Song” focuses on an angry young woman who dominates her saintly boyfriend, while “The Signal Goes Blink, Blink” explores how fame transforms the life of a bullied teen.

Common to all four stories is a palpable sense of longing. The characters desperately seek human connection, but face genuine obstacles to their happiness. Yoshio Yamada, hero of “Signal,” is a perfect example: he’s the kind of small, quiet person whose shyness makes him a natural target for other kids’ scorn. (Even his own family detests him for his weakness.) When his newly discovered healing abilities land him television appearances, he worries what will happen if his powers fail him — not because he fears the stigma of being discredited, but because he fears being alone. “I’m afraid that if I lose this power, I’ll just go back to being a nobody again,” he tells his agent. “Are those people going to play with me? Will they come to school with me?”

The female protagonists of “Love Song” and “Skin of Her Heart” are also dissatisfied, though neither can fully articulate what they want. Saki, the heroine of “Love Song,” is perplexed by the intensity of her anger; though she readily admits that she was scarred by her first romantic experience, that alone cannot explain the cruel delight she takes in manipulating her current boyfriend. Lin-Lin, protagonist of “Skin,” also has difficulty pinpointing the source of her frustration, rejecting a suitor who could solve all of her financial and family problems. Only in the final pages of the story does she realize that moving to another space colony might change her life in ways that would help her “learn to open my heart to someone.”

Even the “Seaside” sisters are prisoners of their own desires. All three fancy their cousin Daniel, a handsome, polite young man, but each secretly worries that she compares unfavorably with her siblings. Their desperation is played for macabre laughs — poison factors into the narrative — but each sister’s pain and fear of rejection is very real; the punchline of the story is simultaneously amusing and horrifying, as we realize the true cost of their insecurities.

Nishi’s artwork is the perfect vehicle for such nuanced character studies, at times precise, elegant, and naturalistic, and at times loose and sketchy, with the white of the page playing an important role in underscoring the emotional distance between her characters. Her minimalist approach won’t be to every shojo fan’s liking, but she demonstrates that it’s perfectly possible to convey the interior lives of her characters without resorting to the kind of visual shorthands — flowers, sweatdrops, nosebleeds — that have been overused in contemporary shojo manga.

Readers wishing to track down a copy of Love Song should know that the title is officially out of print. (You won’t find it listed anywhere on the VIZ website.) Unlike Four Shojo Stories or A, A’, however, Love Song is still relatively easy to obtain through online retailers like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and eBay. Highly recommended.

Manga Artifacts is a monthly feature exploring older, out-of-print manga published in the 1980s and 1990s. For a fuller description of the series’ purpose, see the inaugural column.

LOVE SONG • BY KEIKO NISHI • VIZ • 208 pp. • NO RATING

Manga Artifacts: Love Song

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Back in the 1990s, Rachel Thorn labored hard to make Keiko Nishi a household name among American manga readers, translating six of her stories for VIZ. Two appeared in Four Shojo Stories alongside work by Moto Hagio and Shio Sato, and four appeared in a stand-alone volume called Love Song.

VIZ made a conscious effort to present Nishi’s work not just as comics, but as literature. Love Song boasted fancy endpapers — the kind you might find in the Everyman’s edition of Middlemarch — and a back cover blurb that defined shojo manga as “a literary genre of Japanese comics in which the relationships between characters are as meticulously crafted as the story’s action.” Lest the reader interpreted that statement to mean, “Here be romance comics,” the editor optimistically declared that shojo manga was “created by women for everyone!”

Though Nishi didn’t catch on with Western readers, it’s easy to see why Thorn championed her work: she’s a terrific, versatile storyteller, equally capable of writing light-hearted fantasies and character studies of deeply damaged people. Of the four stories that appear in Love Song, two are standouts: “Jewels of the Seaside,” a black comedy about three sisters who compete for the same man’s affection, with disastrous results, and “The Skin of Her Heart,” a sci-fi tale about a young woman torn between what she wants and what her mother wants for her. The other two stories — “Love Song” and “The Signal Goes Blink, Blink” — are also strong, if more conventional. “Love Song” focuses on an angry young woman who dominates her saintly boyfriend, while “The Signal Goes Blink, Blink” explores how fame transforms the life of a bullied teen.

Common to all four stories is a palpable sense of longing. The characters desperately seek human connection, but face genuine obstacles to their happiness. Yoshio Yamada, hero of “Signal,” is a perfect example: he’s the kind of small, quiet person whose shyness makes him a natural target for other kids’ scorn. (Even his own family detests him for his weakness.) When his newly discovered healing abilities land him television appearances, he worries what will happen if his powers fail him — not because he fears the stigma of being discredited, but because he fears being alone. “I’m afraid that if I lose this power, I’ll just go back to being a nobody again,” he tells his agent. “Are those people going to play with me? Will they come to school with me?”

The female protagonists of “Love Song” and “Skin of Her Heart” are also dissatisfied, though neither can fully articulate what they want. Saki, the heroine of “Love Song,” is perplexed by the intensity of her anger; though she readily admits that she was scarred by her first romantic experience, that alone cannot explain the cruel delight she takes in manipulating her current boyfriend. Lin-Lin, protagonist of “Skin,” also has difficulty pinpointing the source of her frustration, rejecting a suitor who could solve all of her financial and family problems. Only in the final pages of the story does she realize that moving to another space colony might change her life in ways that would help her “learn to open my heart to someone.”

Even the “Seaside” sisters are prisoners of their own desires. All three fancy their cousin Daniel, a handsome, polite young man, but each secretly worries that she compares unfavorably with her siblings. Their desperation is played for macabre laughs — poison factors into the narrative — but each sister’s pain and fear of rejection is very real; the punchline of the story is simultaneously amusing and horrifying, as we realize the true cost of their insecurities.

Nishi’s artwork is the perfect vehicle for such nuanced character studies, at times precise, elegant, and naturalistic, and at times loose and sketchy, with the white of the page playing an important role in underscoring the emotional distance between her characters. Her minimalist approach won’t be to every shojo fan’s liking, but she demonstrates that it’s perfectly possible to convey the interior lives of her characters without resorting to the kind of visual shorthands — flowers, sweatdrops, nosebleeds — that have been overused in contemporary shojo manga.

Readers wishing to track down a copy of Love Song should know that the title is officially out of print. (You won’t find it listed anywhere on the VIZ website.) Unlike Four Shojo Stories or A, A’, however, Love Song is still relatively easy to obtain through online retailers like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and eBay. Highly recommended.

Manga Artifacts is a monthly feature exploring older, out-of-print manga published in the 1980s and 1990s. For a fuller description of the series’ purpose, see the inaugural column.

LOVE SONG • BY KEIKO NISHI • VIZ • 208 pp. • NO RATING

The Apartments of Calle Feliz

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The Apartments of Calle Feliz begins with a scene cribbed from an Audrey Tatou flick. Luca, a struggling writer, has a terrible day: he breaks up with his boyfriend, then fights with his editor, who chastises him for writing “dark” endings. (“Nobody wants to read your sad story during a recession,” he tells Luca.) Desperate for a new place to live, Luca answers an ad in the paper for an apartment on — irony alert! — Calle Feliz (a.k.a. Happy Street), in a building affectionately known as “Final Feliz,” or “Happy End.” Javi, the landlord, offers Luca a couch, rent-free, until Luca can get back on his feet. At Javi’s urging, Luca decides to pen a novel about the other tenants.

Somewhere in the middle of the prologue, my Geiger counter began registering dangerous levels of whimsy: impossible coincidences! unnatural and impulsive behavior! a character who wants to fix other people’s lives! It’s a measure of just how much I like est em that I continued reading; she’s one of a handful of authors I trust to turn such a cutesy premise into a compelling story.

What follows is a series of vignettes about Luca’s new neighbors. In the first story, for example, we meet Dino, a designer, and Salvador, his boyfriend, who are slowly drifting apart, thanks to Salvador’s eccentric behavior: he declines all social invitations, preferring instead to wander around their apartment in the nude. Though they have maintained an uneasy truce for years, an upcoming business trip threatens to destroy their relationship. Dino and Salvador’s inevitable confrontation is heartbreaking; as silly as the plot may be — doesn’t Salvador ever get cold? what about crumbs? — Salvador’s pain is real, as is Dino’s inability to understand Salvador’s unusual strategy for coping with fear of loss and change.

Other stories illustrate similar themes of loss and estrangement. In chapter four, for example, Pepe, a dollmaker, befriends Matias, a lonely teen. Matias has become painfully self-conscious about his voice; once a source of pride, the onset of puberty has lowered and coarsened it, making him ashamed to sing in public. Only his visits to Pepe give him a sense of purpose, as Pepe’s dolls provide Matias an outlet for ventriloquizing his feelings about his mother’s recent death, and about the changes to his voice.

These stories succeed in spite of their art-movie preciousness largely on the strength of est em’s artwork. Like many boys’ love artists, she draws characters with sharp features and lean, angular bodies. est em softens those shapes with energetic, scribbly linework that helps individualize her characters, whether she’s adding a bump to a long nose or deepening the circles under an older man’s eyes. These subtle imperfections help make the characters’ interior states more accessible to the reader, helping us understand how each character inhabits his skin; when Pepe or Dino stares into the distance, we can practically see what they’re thinking. Even when we’re asked to accept an outlandish premise — a man who falls in love with identical twins, a transvestite who lives with a troupe of noisy circus musicians — the characters’ reactions to one another register as true to life; we appreciate the degree to which routine, silence, and complacency erode human connection and exact a toll on the body and spirit.

est em demonstrates a similar talent for resolving her stories in a nuanced fashion. Some endings are sad, some funny; some are surprising, while others seem inevitable. Whatever happens at the end of each story feels right for the characters and their situations, however; there’s never a moment of sitcom cuteness or sentimentality.

So if you can tolerate a bit of forced whimsy, The Apartments of Calle Feliz offers bountiful rewards: elegant artwork, memorable characters, and happy endings that are neither predictable nor pat. Recommended.

THE APARTMENTS OF CALLE FELIZ • EST EM • CITRON COMICS/JMANGA • 190 pp. • NO RATING (BEST FOR MATURE READERS)

Show Us Your Stuff: Morgan’s Reading Rainbow

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Apologies for the late posting — yesterday was very hectic! This week’s featured collector is Morgan, a.k.a. ZepysGirl, a manga lover whose tastes run the gamut from CLAMP to Akira Toriyama. She attributes the size of her impressive library to her nose for deals; as she explains below, she rarely spends more than $5.40 on a volume of manga, even though she usually buys her books new or slightly used. Read on for her excellent shopping and organizational tips! – Katherine Dacey

Hi! I’m Morgan, aka ZepysGirl, and this is my manga collection. I’m a senior in college, planning to graduate soon and enter the industry. I’m kind of “in it” already: I work as a typesetter for the Digital Manga Guild group Purple Prose Killers. I would really love to spend all of my days surrounded by manga, and that’s reflected in my room. When we moved into this house, I declared that I would have a “Manga Wall” — and now I have two! My favorite genres are definitely fantasy and comedy, and I tend to skew more toward shojo than anything else.

How long have you been collecting manga?
I’ve been collecting since near the end of my freshman year in high school, so that would make it spring of 2005. So, about seven years! And everyone thought I would grow out of it…

What was the first manga you bought?
I was somewhere online when I came across a picture of the main characters from DN Angel. I couldn’t get the picture or the name out of my head, so I went on the hunt. At that point in time, I had no idea what manga or even anime was (I knew I liked Digimon, but had no idea it came from Japan. The search for DN Angel led me to a Waldenbooks, where I found a whole wall of manga! I bought up everything of DN Angel that was out at the time, then started moving through other series. I was so cute in those days; for a while, I honestly believed the only place you could buy manga was Waldenbooks!

There’s something ironic about the first series I ever started being one of the ones least likely to actually finish here any time soon…

How big is your collection?
I’m over 2,000 volumes; I’m edging into the territory where I just say “a lot” whenever people ask me.

What is the rarest item in your collection?
I tend to avoid looking up my out-of-print series on Amazon, but it’s probably a volume from one of those. I’d rather not know how expensive a book is on the secondary market, because I have no intention of selling any of them. The ones I like, I want to keep. Oh, and it’s not manga, but the “rarest” item is probably an art book I have for RG Veda. It’s a really nice hardcover book — complete with obi! — and it’s all in Japanese. I looked it up on Amazon once and it was going for $80. I bought it at a Half Price Books for $20!

What is the weirdest item in your collection?
Probably my German edition of Wild Rock. I honestly didn’t know it was German when I ordered it (you have to watch out for that with The Book Depository), and so the first time I opened it was quite a shock. A hilarious shock. I can’t even be annoyed with myself, it’s so entertaining.

How has your taste in manga evolved since you started your collection?
Not much. The series that I loved when I was younger are still some of my favorites now. One thing I have noticed, though, is that I tend to be more discriminating when deciding whether or not to continue/pick up a series (I know it might not seem like it, but it’s true!). A big factor of this is that I know my own tastes better now, and I’ve broken myself of the “But I already have the first volume… maybe it gets better!” mindset. Back in the beginning, I was buying almost at random because I was in love with the medium. Nowadays, I know the difference between “I like it” and “it’s okay” and adjust my buying habits accordingly.

Who are your favorite comic artists?
So many! So first, the people with their own shelves: Fumi Yoshinaga (love her stories!), You Higuri (love her art!), and CLAMP (love the stories AND art!).

There’s also Matsuri Hino, Yoshihiro Togashi, Sakura Tsukuba, Julietta Suzuki, Mizuho Kusanagi, Kaori Yuki (who really should have her own shelf), Karakara Kemuri, Matsuri Akino, Natsuki Takaya, Nari Kusakawa, Bisco Hatori, Yun Koga, Kyousuke Motomi, Svetlana Chmakova, Wann, Arina Tanemura, Usamaru Furuya, and Kazuya Minekura!

Okay! I… I think that’s all of them? You can see why I end up with so much manga, when I have so many manga-ka that I like…

What series are you actively collecting right now?
Ah heck, this is going to be even longer than the last list. Get ready, y’all: 13th Boy, Air Gear, Alice in the Country of Hearts/Clover, Arata: The Legend, Arisa, Black Butler, Blue Exorcist, Bride of the Water God, Countdown 7 Days, D.Gray-man, Dawn of the Arcana, Dengeki Daisy, The Drops of God, Fairy Tail, Fushigi Yugi: Genbu Kaiden, Gate 7, Goong, Hunter x Hunter, the InuYasha VIZBIGs, Itsuwaribito, Jack Frost, Kamisama Kiss, Kekkaishi, Kimi ni Todoke, La Corda d’Oro, Loveless, Maoh: Juvenile Remix, Mardock Scramble, the Maximum Ride manga, Naruto, Natsume’s Book of Friends, Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan, Oresama Teacher, Ouran High School Host Club, Pandora Hearts, Psyren, Replica, Sailor Moon, Sakura Hime, Shugo Chara Chan, Skip Beat!, Soul Eater, Tegami Bachi, Tenjo Tenge, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, The Story of Saiunkoku, Vampire Knight, and The Wallflower.

So… around 50 series? And that’s not counting the new series I’m most likely going to start (A Devil & Her Love Song, Durarara!!, etc…) or the older ones I’m finishing up (The Antique Gift Shop, Gimmick!). See, this is the main reason why I have this many manga: I like too many series!

Out of all that I’m collecting at the moment, my favorites are Skip Beat, Dengeki Daisy, and Oresama Teacher! I read new volumes of those as soon as I get them, which is unusual for me; normally I wait until I have a big chunk before diving back in. My favorite “new” series (well, new to ME) is Gimmick! — and no, that’s not Hot Gimmick. Gimmick! is the type of series that I want to throw at anyone and everyone! It’s rare that I get this in love with a series, but I am definitely in the honeymoon stage with Gimmick! I can’t even think about it critically because my brain just keeps stuttering “WOW. I did not even KNOW I wanted this!” Yes, boys and girls, read Gimmick!: it will reduce you to a blathering fangirl/fanboy in the best possible way. I dare you not to squee.

Do you have any tips for fellow collectors (e.g. how to organize a collection, where to find rare books, where to score the best deals on new manga)?
Oh gosh, I could talk forever about how to find the cheap stuff!

Finding good deals on manga is what I live for. It’s almost to the point where I’ve been thinking about asking to guest-blog somewhere about how to shop for manga. More people should know the tricks to getting $2 manga, I say! Seriously, though: I only have so many manga because I’m very good at shopping for them. My average price per volume is $4.50, so it’s no joke when I say I’d only have half of what I do if I’d paid full price. Sales and coupons are very important, young Manga Padawan.

This is entirely too abbreviated, but:

  • General Organization & Deals: Amazon.com
  • Used Manga: GoHastings.com (sometimes Amazon as well)
  • New Manga: Right Stuf & Midtown Comics (and GoHastings, but only if there’s a book I have to have RIGHT THIS SECOND!)
  • Yaoi: Akadot Retail
  • Honorable Mentions: PaperbackSwap.com, The Book Depository

As far as rare books go, I’ve actually had some success finding them in physical stores, so check out your local half-price bookstore or comic shop. The comic shops ESPECIALLY because those guys never seem to realize what they have! As far as online shops go, I’ve had some luck finding OOP books at both The Book Depository and Midtown Comics.

And for organizing… there are many ways to organize, so just choose what works best for you. My manga are currently alpha-by-title, with a few exceptions. CLAMP is separate to ease lending those books out to other people. I’ve met a lot of people who have only read the popular CLAMP series and haven’t even heard of some of the shorter stuff. The yaoi is off by itself because most of them are one-shots and would get lost in the library otherwise. Oversized books get their own shelf because they simply don’t fit on half of the shelves (the wall-shelves are custom designed for normal manga size). And Fumi Yoshinaga and You Higuri only got their own space because I am severely lacking room in the over-sized bookshelf. I kind of have a shelf of what I need to read next, but that gets oft neglected and I end up reading something completely different. Also: rainbow-order looks really awesome, but you can’t find anything that way. It was short-lived.

To view Morgan’s entire album of pictures, click here.

Show Us Your Stuff is a regular column in which readers share pictures of their manga collections and discuss their favorite series. If you’d like to see your manga library featured here, please follow the directions on this page.

The Earl & The Fairy, Vol. 1

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Meet Lydia Carlton: she’s a so-called “fairy doctor,” a healer who acts as an intermediary between the spirit and human worlds. The rapid advance of technology in Victorian England has made Lydia’s job obsolete; most people no longer seek magical remedies for their ailments, and view Lydia as a relic of a less enlightened time, someone who steadfastly clings to the belief that she can see and talk to these mischievous folk. Lydia knows better: not only are fairies real, but they continue to wreak havoc with humans, even in an age of railroads, telegraphs, and steam-powered ships.

Lydia’s predicament would make a swell basis for a manga, but her abilities are more a plot contrivance than a central element of the drama — at least in volume one of The Earl & The Fairy. The initial chapters focus on Lydia’s fraught relationship with Edgar Ashenbert, a dashing young man who claims to be descended from the Blue Knight, a legendary warrior. Edgar enlists kidnaps Lydia because he needs someone to help him find the Blue Knight’s sword, the location of which is inscribed on a coin that can only be read by a fairy doctor.

If you’ve read more than five or six shojo manga — or, for that matter, five or six Harlequin romances — you can guess what sort of chap Edgar is: he’s handsome, possessive, and smug, with a tender side that the heroine’s beauty and decency helps reveal. Lydia is a similarly predictable character: she’s feisty and conflicted, simultaneously drawn to and repelled by her captor. Lydia also happens to be one of the duller knives in the Shojo Beat drawer, placing her trust in anyone who approaches her; she’s kidnapped not once but twice in the very first chapter of the story.

For a grumpy old lady like me, stale, silly lead characters would usually be a deal-breaker. The lively supporting cast and lovely artwork, however, drew me into the story, even when Edgar and Lydia’s conversations inspired eyeball rolling and hair pulling. (In later chapters, Edgar narrates his tortured personal history in comic detail — it’s courtship by information dump.)

The best character in The Earl & The Fairy — so far, at least — is Nico, a magical being who assumes the form of a fussy talking cat. On one level, Nico is a standard animal sidekick, providing much-needed comic relief: in one running joke, for example, he bristles with indignation every time he’s served a bowl of milk. (He prefers wine.) On another level, however, Nico is a reader stand-in, giving voice to our frustration with Lydia’s naivete; in essence, it’s like watching a horror movie in which one of the characters says, “Don’t open that door, dude, the killer’s in there.” You don’t say.

Ermine and Raven, a sister-brother duo in Edgar’s employ, also add depth to the cast. Their backstory is pure manga: both were enslaved by a wicked “prince” working out of the sewers of an unnamed American city. After Edgar rescued them, Ermine and Raven became his most devoted servants, waiting on him hand and foot, defending him against enemies, and wooing Lydia on his behalf. To be sure, henchmen/servants are a standard manga type, but Ermine and Raven have enough idiosyncrasies to make them interesting; Ermine, in particular, is an unusual figure, a melancholy cross-dresser who seems caught between the male and female worlds.

The Earl & The Fairy‘s other saving grace is the artwork. The character designs are crisply executed; though none of the characters are especially distinguished looking, artist Ayuko draws elegant, well-proportioned figures that are pleasing to the eye. The settings are rendered with even greater care, capturing the technology and landscapes of mid-nineteenth century England in convincing detail. (Well, minus the ships: when viewed from a distance, they appear to be eighteenth-century sailing vessels, while their interiors suggest a Cunard ocean liner.) Ayuko pays similar attention to lighting; in several nocturnal scenes, she does a fine job of suggesting the meager, irregular quality of candlelight, using delicate crosshatching to mark the boundary between light and shadow.

If the parts of Earl are greater than the whole, it’s still an entertaining series. I don’t know if moody landscapes and talking cats are enough to justify my investment in all four volumes, but I’m certainly willing to read another before declaring this nice-looking romance a dud.

THE EARL & THE FAIRY, VOL. 1 • STORY AND ART BY AYUKO, ORIGINAL CONCEPT BY MIZUE TANI • VIZ MEDIA • 186 pp. • RATING: TEEN (13+)

The Earl & The Fairy, Vol. 1

by

Meet Lydia Carlton: she’s a so-called “fairy doctor,” a healer who acts as an intermediary between the spirit and human worlds. The rapid advance of technology in Victorian England has made Lydia’s job obsolete; most people no longer seek magical remedies for their ailments, and view Lydia as a relic of a less enlightened time, someone who steadfastly clings to the belief that she can see and talk to these mischievous folk. Lydia knows better: not only are fairies real, but they continue to wreak havoc with humans, even in an age of railroads, telegraphs, and steam-powered ships.

Lydia’s predicament would make a swell basis for a manga, but her abilities are more a plot contrivance than a central element of the drama — at least in volume one of The Earl & The Fairy. The initial chapters focus on Lydia’s fraught relationship with Edgar Ashenbert, a dashing young man who claims to be descended from the Blue Knight, a legendary warrior. Edgar enlists kidnaps Lydia because he needs someone to help him find the Blue Knight’s sword, the location of which is inscribed on a coin that can only be read by a fairy doctor.

If you’ve read more than five or six shojo manga — or, for that matter, five or six Harlequin romances — you can guess what sort of chap Edgar is: he’s handsome, possessive, and smug, with a tender side that the heroine’s beauty and decency helps reveal. Lydia is a similarly predictable character: she’s feisty and conflicted, simultaneously drawn to and repelled by her captor. Lydia also happens to be one of the duller knives in the Shojo Beat drawer, placing her trust in anyone who approaches her; she’s kidnapped not once but twice in the very first chapter of the story.

For a grumpy old lady like me, stale, silly lead characters would usually be a deal-breaker. The lively supporting cast and lovely artwork, however, drew me into the story, even when Edgar and Lydia’s conversations inspired eyeball rolling and hair pulling. (In later chapters, Edgar narrates his tortured personal history in comic detail — it’s courtship by information dump.)

The best character in The Earl & The Fairy — so far, at least — is Nico, a magical being who assumes the form of a fussy talking cat. On one level, Nico is a standard animal sidekick, providing much-needed comic relief: in one running joke, for example, he bristles with indignation every time he’s served a bowl of milk. (He prefers wine.) On another level, however, Nico is a reader stand-in, giving voice to our frustration with Lydia’s naivete; in essence, it’s like watching a horror movie in which one of the characters says, “Don’t open that door, dude, the killer’s in there.” You don’t say.

Ermine and Raven, a sister-brother duo in Edgar’s employ, also add depth to the cast. Their backstory is pure manga: both were enslaved by a wicked “prince” working out of the sewers of an unnamed American city. After Edgar rescued them, Ermine and Raven became his most devoted servants, waiting on him hand and foot, defending him against enemies, and wooing Lydia on his behalf. To be sure, henchmen/servants are a standard manga type, but Ermine and Raven have enough idiosyncrasies to make them interesting; Ermine, in particular, is an unusual figure, a melancholy cross-dresser who seems caught between the male and female worlds.

The Earl & The Fairy‘s other saving grace is the artwork. The character designs are crisply executed; though none of the characters are especially distinguished looking, artist Ayuko draws elegant, well-proportioned figures that are pleasing to the eye. The settings are rendered with even greater care, capturing the technology and landscapes of mid-nineteenth century England in convincing detail. (Well, minus the ships: when viewed from a distance, they appear to be eighteenth-century sailing vessels, while their interiors suggest a Cunard ocean liner.) Ayuko pays similar attention to lighting; in several nocturnal scenes, she does a fine job of suggesting the meager, irregular quality of candlelight, using delicate crosshatching to mark the boundary between light and shadow.

If the parts of Earl are greater than the whole, it’s still an entertaining series. I don’t know if moody landscapes and talking cats are enough to justify my investment in all four volumes, but I’m certainly willing to read another before declaring this nice-looking romance a dud.

THE EARL & THE FAIRY, VOL. 1 • STORY AND ART BY AYUKO, ORIGINAL CONCEPT BY MIZUE TANI • VIZ MEDIA • 186 pp. • RATING: TEEN (13+)

Show Us Your Stuff: Sara Christina Barcelona

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Hola, manga lovers! As you might guess from my salutation, this week’s featured contributor hails from Spain — Barcelona, to be exact — and she has a collection that will make American readers green with envy. Sara owns a little bit of everything: Riyoko Ikeda’s The Window of Orpheus, Sanpei Shirato’s The Legend of Kamui, Asao Takamori and Tetsuya Chiba’s Ashita no Joe, Naoko Takeuchi’s Codename: Sailor V, and Takashi Murakami’s Stargazing Dog are just a few of the manga gracing her bookshelves. Like our previous European contributors, Sara is multilingual, collecting manga in Catalan, Spanish, French, Italian, and English. – Katherine Dacey

Hi, everybody! I’m a girl from Barcelona and a passionate manga fan. I also love singing, having promenades, and speaking with friends. If possible, I buy manga in Catalan, but if the volumes I want aren’t available in this language, I don’t mind buying them in Spanish, English, French, or Italian (or other languages I haven’t had the opportunity to learn yet). I also own some Japanese editions, just to collect them, because I can’t understand them.

How long have you been collecting manga?
Eight and a half years, more or less. I think my parents have already assumed that I’ll be a manga fan for the rest of my life!

What was the first manga you bought?
Technically speaking, I have three “first” mangas:

  • Sailor Moon, Vol. 16: This was the very first manga volume I bought. I didn’t like it at all because translation was horrible. I had watched the anime, so for me it wasn’t a problem to follow the story.
  • Fushigi Yugi, Vol. 1: My first unflipped manga!
  • Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle: Although I now hate this series, it was the first one I collected seriously.

How big is your collection?
Right now, my collection is between 300 and 400 volumes. It’s quite small considering the number of years I have been collecting manga, but I can’t afford to buy more volumes and I don’t count mangas I’m trying to sell.

What is the rarest item in your collection?
Let me see… I own the French edition of Devilman Vol. 1, many volumes of the Catalan edition of Doraemon, Spanish editions of The Legend of Kamui: The Island of Sugaru and Baoh, and some older Spanish editions of Kaikisen, Barefoot Gen, and Promise. I have many other OOP Spanish editions, but they aren’t particularly rare. Finally, I don’t know if it’s rare, but I own the animal encyclopedia of the Nod·d·a·ringniche Island, which is magnificent, even if I can’t read it.

What is the weirdest item in your collection?
This one is easy: DDT and New National Kid. Both of them are quite similar: short stories by Suehiro Maruo, as weird as they are disgusting.

How has your taste in manga evolved since you started your collection?
As I started collecting Tsubasa, I became curious about CLAMPS’s work. Most of the manga I bought then was by CLAMP since I loved their style; when I tried something that wasn’t by CLAMP, I usually didn’t like it. (Shop assistants didn’t give me good advice!) I enjoyed Shin Shun Kaden’s story even if it wasn’t complete, I laughed like a mad with Miyuki-chan in the Wonderland, I was nostalgic with Shirahime-Syo and was traumatized by RG Veda.

When I passed volume 22 of Tsubasa, I started to dislike it and I didn’t find other mangas that satisfied me. This was my crisis manga period. Then one day I randomly borrowed the first volume of Rose of Versailles from a library… and it was so fascinating I couldn’t stop reading. I had to return to the library and take the other volumes the sooner the better. My manga crisis was over.

I’m still angry with CLAMP – so angry, in fact, that I didn’t try Kobato or Gate7 and didn’t finish xxxHolic. I think they have evolved, in both art and scripts. That said, I still like their ’90 mangas such as Tokyo Babylon and X.

Right now, I like well-constructed stories and dramas but I also enjoy good comedies. Even if the genres I read the most are shôjo, seinen and josei, I try to taste a bit of all (except from lolicon and shotacon, which I consider aberrations). Ah! And I love older mangas, especially the ones from the seventies, a decade when many masterpieces were conceived.



Who are your favorite comic artists?
Nowadays, my favorite one is Riyoko Ikeda: I love her dramas and the way her stories develop. Even though the Rose of Versailles Gaiden is horrible and I would have preferred that she hadn’t drawn it.

My favorite slice-of-life mangaka is Fumiyo Kôno: her drawings and scripts are so lovely. When I read her works I feel like floating. My favorite artist is Macoto Takahashi: his fairy tales landscapes are just breathtaking.

What is your favorite series?
This one is pretty difficult. I have many and I can’t just choose one. I’ll try not to name more than one manga per author: Oniisama e… (Riyoko Ikeda), Nagai Michi (Fumiyo Kôno), Coo no Sekai plus its sequel A Patch of Dreams (Hideji Oda), Tokyo Babylon (CLAMP), Fruits Basket (Natsuki Takaya), Ikkyû (Hisashi Sakaguchi), Sand Chronicles (Hinako Ashihara), The Willow Tree (Moto Hagio), Blue (Kiriko Nananan), Red Colored Elegy (Seiichi Hayashi), Calling You (Otsuichi & Hiro Kiyohara), Lovely Complex (Aya Nakahara), Gakuen Alice (Tachibana Higuchi), Uzumaki (Junji Ito) and Stargazing Dog (Takashi Murakami). Of course, they may change in the future as my own tastes evolve and I discover new works.

I suppose that I can’t choose because I haven’t found yet a manga I feel it’s been created just for me. Maybe someday I will.

What series are you actively collecting right now?
Just Gakuen Alice. In fact, I would like to collect actively more series, but I can’t afford it, so I just try to buy second hand books or special offers. There are a few series that I would like to finish/continue; if I can’t find someone selling them at a good price, I’ll buy them at comic shop. They are Ashita no Joe, Last Quarter and Lovely Complex.

I would buy more first-hand comics if the prices were lower. However, Spanish people prefer better-quality editions, and are willing to pay more for manga, even if translation is abominable.

Do you have any tips for fellow collectors (e.g. how to organize a collection, where to find rare books, where to score the best deals on new manga)?
Organization. I organize my manga collection by themed shelves, drawers, and boxes which can change as my collection grows. I also build my own manga boxes. It requires some time but I enjoy making them.

Bargain hunting. I buy a lot of second-hand manga and take advantage of special offers from shops. This is great way to find rare, OOP comics (and sometimes not so expensive, if you’re lucky) and to save money.

For second-hand books, I visit Spanish forums with a second-hand market section. I also visit Barcelona’s Newton shop and Barcelona’s Mercat de Sant Antoni, an old book, comic and videogame market which takes place every Sunday. I also try to find good second hand-offers in big manga/comic conventions, such as the Saló del Manga de Barcelona and Saló Internacional del Còmic de Barcelona.

For special offers, I often visit comic shops and check their promotional displays.

Collection purging. Sell items you don’t like! The best option is through forums or sites such as eBay, because if you try to sell them in a comic shop they’ll pay you nearly nothing. Sometimes, if I bought something really, really cheap I could even earn some money.

Mangas published in other countries. Sites such as Book Depository and Deastore are quite useful for people who know foreign languages but don’t plan to buy a lot of products. (The shipping costs are always free.) If you buy in bulk, you should compare the prices with Amazon, then, because the shipping costs are free if you spend meet a certain minimum. (Editor’s note: That minimum varies by country; in the United States, orders over $25.00 qualify for the free shipping promotion.)

Sara prepared a comprehensive list of her collection; you can view that list by clicking here to download a PDF version.

Show Us Your Stuff is a regular column in which readers share pictures of their manga collections and discuss their favorite series. If you’d like to see your manga library featured here, please follow the directions on this page.

Show Us Your Stuff: Night Rose’s Manga Shrine

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It’s Thursday, which means that it’s time for another installment of Show Us Your Stuff. Our featured otaku is NightRose, who’s been collecting manga since 2008. She counts Arina Tanemura, Svetlana Chmakova, and Natsuki Takaya among her favorite artists, though she reads all kinds of manga: shojo, shonen, seinen, josei. Among the more unusual items in her collection is an art book for Alice in the Country of Hearts. Here’s what she has to say for herself, and her growing manga library. -Katherine Dacey

Hi, I’m NightRose, or Night, or Rose, or Chibi-chan, or Mili-chan, or… you get the point. I’m your typical shy girl with a love for manga and anything related to Japanese shtuff. I live in the USA currently and am a senior in high school, where I lead my school’s anime club. I’ve tried cosplaying, I’ve been to anime conventions (if you’ve been to ACen, I’m the girl with the big “Free Hugs” sign), and I’m trying to improve my drawing skills. Oh, and I like gaming and all that fun stuff. I also read anything that’s everything — I’m not that picky.

What first got me started into anime/manga was anime on TV. When I was little I was addicted to Cartoon Network (and some other cartoon channels I forgot the names of); I loved Cartoon Network with a passion. (Now I don’t have cable and Cartoon Network sucks anyway.) Then going into grade eight, my library had a “read 5 books get one free” program. I looked at the free books they had and I found Fruits Basket. I thought, “What the hell, why not?” I read it and loved it. I went back the next day to get more of the series and other manga. After a while I wanted to collect manga for myself, and here I am today with a mom nagging me about my collection.

How long have you been collecting manga?
I started to collect manga in 2008. When I almost finished all the manga series in the library (over 40+), I started to seriously collect in 2009.

What was the first manga you bought?
The first one I owned was Fruits Basket, but that was free from the library. The first one I bought… I think it was either Full Moon,  Naruto, or Cherry Juice. I’m pretty positive it was Full Moon, though.

How big is your collection?
404 volumes at the moment.

What is the rarest item in your collection?
I’m not sure what you mean by “rare”. But what I think of it, it would be my Alice in the Country of Hearts art/guide book. My then-boyfriend got it for me when he went to Japan. I also have several volumes of Kingdom Hearts manga that are hard to find. Another rare item I have is my Final Fantasy VII PS1 Video Game. That game is what made me start collecting all the Final Fantasy games for the PS1.

What is the weirdest item in your collection?
My maid dress! My ex-boyfriend got it for me as a joke. In terms of manga, I have The Otaku Encyclopedia. Sadly enough, it helped me with a lot of terms I didn’t know.

How has your taste in manga evolved since you started your collection?
When I first started to collect, I would just get anything I found at the store. I didn’t care what it was; I just wanted a lot of manga and to read more in different genres. When I discovered Half Price Books, I started to get different series that you don’t really see in stores. After I’d been collecting for a while, I started to get picky with what I bought. That said, I’m open to any genre besides yaoi, yuri, hentai, or anything in those categories.

Who are your favorite comic artists?
I don’t really have one per se… I like Arina Tanemura’s art but not her story lines, and I also love Svetlana Chmakova’s plots but not her art. Dramacon is amazing; if you haven’t read it then go read it now!

What series are you actively collecting right now?
Anything that’s not completed yet in my collection. I don’t follow what just came out. If I see a volume in a store that I need and I have money, I’ll get it.For example, I’d get Shugo Chara volume 3 if it’s available.

Do you have any tips for fellow collectors (e.g. how to organize a collection, where to find rare books, where to score the best deals on new manga)?
When you’re first getting into manga, I suggest reading a few different genres to know what you like.

If you don’t care about the condition of your books, find a used bookstore near you and see if they have any manga. Some of them are pretty good, like Half Price Books. Manga costs $2.00 – $5.00 there! Prices vary from store to store, however. I went to a used bookstore and was disappointed to see that not-so-new-looking manga was only $2.00 off the retail price. I would recommend going to used bookstores if you can’t find something you want, especially Tokyopop or CMX titles, older series that aren’t published anymore, etc.

If you want something newer, go to the bookstore (Barnes and Nobles) and get it. You can also get some deals like 10% off or the buy four get one free. You can also try eBay; people sell manga in bulk and sometimes it’s dead cheap.

Last but not least, when you get a bookshelf, make sure there are multiple holes on the sides so that you can add more shelves or make some of the spaces smaller/bigger.

I hope these tips help! Have fun collecting.

Show Us Your Stuff is a regular column in which readers share pictures of their manga collections and discuss their favorite series. If you’d like to see your manga library featured here, please follow the directions on this page.

The Best Manga You’re Not Reading: Benkei in New York

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I’ve always thought that I had something in common with Warren Ellis — besides a sailor’s fondness for colorful language, that is — and reading Benkei in New York confirmed my suspicions: we both like Jiro Taniguchi. Flip to the back cover of the VIZ Pulp edition, and you’ll see Ellis declaring that “Benkei is better than 96% of the crime fiction coming out of America right now.” I have no idea how he arrived at that figure, but eleven years after Benkei’s initial US release, I’m still inclined to agree with him.

Originally serialized in Big Comic Original, Benkei in New York (1991-96) is a collaboration between Taniguchi and writer Jinpachi Mori, best known in Japan for Kasai no Hito, a long-running manga about an eccentric but wise judge. The seven Benkei stories focus on a Japanese ex-pat living in New York. Like many New Yorkers, Benkei’s career is best characterized by slashes and hyphens: he’s a bartender-art forger-hitman who can paint a Millet from memory or assassinate a thug using a swordfish. (Let’s just say they call it “swordfish” for a reason.)

Benkei’s primary job, however, is seeking poetic justice for murder victims’ families. Of course, there wouldn’t be much of a story if Benkei simply used a gun; part of the series’ allure is watching him set elaborate traps for his prey, whether he’s borrowing a page from the Titus Andronicus playbook or using a grappling hook to wound an unscrupulous dockworker. In “Haggis,” for example, Benkei uses a draft-dodger’s memories of a 1968 trip to Scotland to win the man’s confidence, persuading him to visit an out-of-the-way bar where a gruesome dish awaits him. “Throw Back,” another stand-out, culminates in an elaborate showdown in the American Music of Natural History that gives new meaning to the phrase “interactive exhibits”; Benkei and his victim plunder display cases for weapons, dueling their way through the Hall of Human Origins.

As the scene in the Natural History Museum suggests, New York City is as much a “character” as Benkei himself. Taniguchi clearly spent hours poring over photographs of the city: his rendition of Coney Island, for example, doesn’t just show the Cyclone — an easy symbol for this iconic stretch of New York coastline — but all the bathhouses, apartment buildings, and other structures that line the boardwalk, including the distinctive facade of the New York Aquarium. Moreover, he captures the feeling of Coney Island in the off-season — the dark grey color of the ocean, the empty expanses of boardwalk, the absence of people — imbuing the scene with a melancholy authenticity.

Taniguchi’s eye for detail is evident in his busier scenes as well. In the opening pages of “Throw Back,” Benkei pursues his mark through the 42nd Street subway station. A series of narrow, horizontal panels convey the bustling energy of the platform, cross-cutting between a busker pounding on plastic drums (a subway fixture in the 1990s) and Benkei threading his way through the commuters. Taniguchi swiftly pulls back from extreme close-ups of the the drummer and Benkei to crowd scenes, in so doing helping us see this claustrophobic, noisy space as Benkei does: camouflage for the urban hunter.

Like many VIZ manga from the 1990s and early 2000s, Benkei in New York boasts a stylish translation. (Yuji Oniki is credited as the adapter.) The script crackles with wit and energy, as Benkei trades one-liners with clients and targets alike. One of my favorite exchanges occurs early in the volume, as Benkei talks business with the leader of an art forgery ring:

Forger: Timing is of crucial importance. Once we agree on a deal, it’s our responsibility to deliver the product to the client while they’re still drooling.
Benkei: You sound like you run a pizza joint.
Forger: What’s wrong with that? Selling pizzas is how I learned everything about New York.

Hokey as that conversation may be, it wouldn’t be out of place in a gangster flick; one could almost imagine a character in Goodfellas or The Godfather reminiscing about his past in a similar fashion.

If Benkei’s motives and methods are sometimes inscrutable — or downright illogical — the stories still work beautifully, with crack pacing and memorable denouements that can be as deeply unsettling as they are emotionally satisfying — or, in Warren Ellis’ words, Benkei in New York is “diabolically well-told.” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

BENKEI IN NEW YORK • STORY BY JINPACHI MORI AND ART BY JIRO TANIGUCHI • VIZ • 224 pp. • RATING: MATURE (18+)

The Best Manga You’re Not Reading: Benkei in New York

by

I’ve always thought that I had something in common with Warren Ellis — besides a sailor’s fondness for colorful language, that is — and reading Benkei in New York confirmed my suspicions: we both like Jiro Taniguchi. Flip to the back cover of the VIZ Pulp edition, and you’ll see Ellis declaring that “Benkei is better than 96% of the crime fiction coming out of America right now.” I have no idea how he arrived at that figure, but eleven years after Benkei’s initial US release, I’m still inclined to agree with him.

Originally serialized in Big Comic Original, Benkei in New York (1991-96) is a collaboration between Taniguchi and writer Jinpachi Mori, best known in Japan for Kasai no Hito, a long-running manga about an eccentric but wise judge. The seven Benkei stories focus on a Japanese ex-pat living in New York. Like many New Yorkers, Benkei’s career is best characterized by slashes and hyphens: he’s a bartender-art forger-hitman who can paint a Millet from memory or assassinate a thug using a swordfish. (Let’s just say they call it “swordfish” for a reason.)

Benkei’s primary job, however, is seeking poetic justice for murder victims’ families. Of course, there wouldn’t be much of a story if Benkei simply used a gun; part of the series’ allure is watching him set elaborate traps for his prey, whether he’s borrowing a page from the Titus Andronicus playbook or using a grappling hook to wound an unscrupulous dockworker. In “Haggis,” for example, Benkei uses a draft-dodger’s memories of a 1968 trip to Scotland to win the man’s confidence, persuading him to visit an out-of-the-way bar where a gruesome dish awaits him. “Throw Back,” another stand-out, culminates in an elaborate showdown in the American Music of Natural History that gives new meaning to the phrase “interactive exhibits”; Benkei and his victim plunder display cases for weapons, dueling their way through the Hall of Human Origins.

As the scene in the Natural History Museum suggests, New York City is as much a “character” as Benkei himself. Taniguchi clearly spent hours poring over photographs of the city: his rendition of Coney Island, for example, doesn’t just show the Cyclone — an easy symbol for this iconic stretch of New York coastline — but all the bathhouses, apartment buildings, and other structures that line the boardwalk, including the distinctive facade of the New York Aquarium. Moreover, he captures the feeling of Coney Island in the off-season — the dark grey color of the ocean, the empty expanses of boardwalk, the absence of people — imbuing the scene with a melancholy authenticity.

Taniguchi’s eye for detail is evident in his busier scenes as well. In the opening pages of “Throw Back,” Benkei pursues his mark through the 42nd Street subway station. A series of narrow, horizontal panels convey the bustling energy of the platform, cross-cutting between a busker pounding on plastic drums (a subway fixture in the 1990s) and Benkei threading his way through the commuters. Taniguchi swiftly pulls back from extreme close-ups of the the drummer and Benkei to crowd scenes, in so doing helping us see this claustrophobic, noisy space as Benkei does: camouflage for the urban hunter.

Like many VIZ manga from the 1990s and early 2000s, Benkei in New York boasts a stylish translation. (Yuji Oniki is credited as the adapter.) The script crackles with wit and energy, as Benkei trades one-liners with clients and targets alike. One of my favorite exchanges occurs early in the volume, as Benkei talks business with the leader of an art forgery ring:

Forger: Timing is of crucial importance. Once we agree on a deal, it’s our responsibility to deliver the product to the client while they’re still drooling.
Benkei: You sound like you run a pizza joint.
Forger: What’s wrong with that? Selling pizzas is how I learned everything about New York.

Hokey as that conversation may be, it wouldn’t be out of place in a gangster flick; one could almost imagine a character in Goodfellas or The Godfather reminiscing about his past in a similar fashion.

If Benkei’s motives and methods are sometimes inscrutable — or downright illogical — the stories still work beautifully, with crack pacing and memorable denouements that can be as deeply unsettling as they are emotionally satisfying — or, in Warren Ellis’ words, Benkei in New York is “diabolically well-told.” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

BENKEI IN NEW YORK • STORY BY JINPACHI MORI AND ART BY JIRO TANIGUCHI • VIZ • 224 pp. • RATING: MATURE (18+)