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Apr 10, 2019
[ ----- Short ----- ]
Tank Tankuro is historically important as a 1930s pre-war "manga", an early pioneer of story-driven manga, and an inspiration for Astro Boy and Doraemon, but the medium has come a long, long way since then. Pick this up for historical interest and the insightful essays bundled with the English print version, because the comic itself has little entertainment value.
[ ----- A bit longer ----- ]
Tank Tankuro is a "superhero" of sorts, but is basically just a weird guy in a ball who fights weird enemies... like a sumo wrestler in a tree and a big monk with a bell. Tankuro initially
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goes around fighting a bunch of different characters, but eventually the stories coalesce into one long, war-themed imperialist plot with a talking monkey.
Tank Tankuro feels a lot like its inspiration, older Sunday comics from the West. Each story is squished and condensed into very few panels/pages, with little room to tell a complete story. At the same time, it tries to pull off more action-y scenes typical to manga, with much less dialogue than Western Sunday comics. But combining these two makes a total disaster: there aren't enough panels to fully describe a manga-like action sequence, and there's not enough dialogue to make it interesting. Ultimately it comes off as... boring.
This series was directed specifically at children in 1930s Japan, so it's a bit unfair for a Western adult in 2019 to be dumping all over it. But from the choppy story to the un-endearing main character, Tank Tankuro is a series that doesn't even hold up to its Western counterparts at the time (Popeye and Little Nemo, for example), much less modern-day manga. Pass on this one.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Feb 28, 2019
I really want to say that I love this series because I can relate to Kabi-sensei's struggles, but I think it's more correct to say that Kabi-sensei made me relate to her struggles. I felt myself empathizing with Kabi-sensei while reading her earlier work, My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness, feeling sorry for her as she described her depression, anxiety, and sexuality.
But with My Solo Exchange Diary, it was so much more intense. This series isn't at all structured like My Lesbian Experience, which had a well-defined beginning, middle, and end all centered around her lesbian experience. In fact, My Solo Exchange Diary doesn't have much
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structure at all, reading like random entries in Kabi-sensei's diary: a chaotic whirlpool of emotions that sometimes contradict themselves as Kabi-sensei tries desperately to rationalize her own depression.
Not all of the chapters are good, and not all of the chapters are interesting. But because of that, it doesn't feel at all fake, and the most extreme moments come out of nowhere and hit like a truck. In a raw and open display of her own fragile mental health, Kabi-sensei meticulously describes and analyzes all the details in one day, and then suddenly snaps, spending only one page glossing over an episode of serious self-harm and self-hatred. A particularly shocking point in chapter 18 made me put down the book... I felt like I needed time to process all of the thoughts that Kabi-sensei was expressing.
And to make things even more direct, the audience actually affects the series: Kabi-sensei talks at length about how the success of My Lesbian Experience and even earlier chapters of this series affected her personal life, perpetuating her anxiety and self-harming. In some sense, by buying the volumes and even writing this review, I've become part of the mad cycle of Kabi-sensei's life... and I even felt guilty reading some of these chapters.
In similar "suffering" manga series like Welcome to the NHK, Tokyo Tarareba Girls, and Chikan Otoko, the appeal is in watching a loser claw themselves up to redemption, and then feeling not so bad about your own problems. My Solo Exchange Diary has a lot of this, but I think its true value is teaching how depression, anxiety, etc. can feel like, and how to understand these issues if you have them. I know that's a pitiful way to advertise a series (if I had read this review, it wouldn't have convinced me), but I hope that everyone gives My Solo Exchange Diary a chance, because I think it's a series that *needs* to be read.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Feb 25, 2019
----- Short -----
This series really showed what Masuda-sensei could do... and what he couldn't do. The endearing characters of Jitsu wa just didn't show up here, and what we got was an average sports series that got axed.
----- Long -----
I'm not giving this series a 6 because it was cancelled (Masuda-sensei wrapped up SO WELL on such short notice). I'm giving it a 6 because it was going downhill and becoming a boring slog... which is probably why it got axed.
Compared to his previous work Jitsu wa Watashi wa (one of my favorite seres), Masuda-sensei really tried something different with Shuukan Shounen Hachi, switching from
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a harem rom-com to something of a sports/battle-shonen. At first, I was both shocked and impressed. The first few chapters showed potential for great battles and unique, endearing characters.
But it quickly turned into a focus on the two least interesting characters: a self-insert MC with dumb hair, and his perfect rival with no personality. And worst of all - they never interact. In contrast, I loved the characters of Jitsu wa Watashi wa because they were so fleshed out and "real." You could see all of the characters talking with each other, and these interactions would change as more things happened in the story and more characters were introduced. Masuda-sensei weaved an incredibly complicated web of characters and relationships where almost every thread was funny and engrossing.
In Shuukan Shounen Hachi, there aren't enough interesting threads between characters because there just aren't enough important characters. The main conflict is between Hachi and Mike, who are so far separated from each other they might as well be in different manga series. Mike doesn't really interact with anybody else (Myaako might as well be a brick wall), and Hachi's group isn't too big, with only 2-3 other characters with any depth (there's a whole CLASS of unimportant background characters...). While Handa/Panda is a great character with hilarious interactions with Hachi, the other combinations just don't click.
There are tiny gems of Masuda-sensei's brilliance in this series (like the outlandish comedy), but this genre just doesn't do it for his style. The battles and conflict feel incredibly forced, while the comedic parts feel much more natural. Maybe this series would have succeeded in the long term when Mike and Hachi interact more, but the 42 chapters that we got didn't show any of that.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Feb 25, 2019
----- Short -----
A short, charming slice-of-life story about daily life with a GIANT SPIDER. A solid read and definitely worth the time, but there are far better series in the genre.
----- Longer -----
The quickest way to get a feel for this manga is just to read it. It's so short that you might as well read the series rather than this review, and I really recommend that you do! Despite how this review sounds, I think this series is worth reading.
Giant Spider and Me is a cookie-cutter iyashikei/"healing" series, much like Hakumei and Mikochi, Aqua/Aria, and Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou. These slice-of-life series all show slow-paced
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daily life in absolutely insane settings: "Borrowers"-like tiny forest villages, wet Mars, and post-apocalyptic Earth with robots. For series in this genre, the creativity of the setting/characters is the most important aspect, as the slices of daily life help fill in the details of the world and flesh out the setting.
Now Giant Spider and Me has one great thing going for it: a GIANT SPIDER. This sort of "living with a cute monster" thing isn't new, but it's still a refreshing take. Asa the spider is the center (and star) of every chapter, and he's drawn just cute enough to teeter on the border between cute and scary. But... he can't talk, and the other, less interesting characters take over.
My main issue is that Giant Spider and Me fails in its setting: a post-apocalyptic (flood) woodland. This isn't a totally uninteresting setting, but while reading this I couldn't get the three series I mentioned above out of my mind. Hakumei and Mikochi does the forest/woodland setting so much better, and the post-apocalyptic scenario here is an afterthought compared to the detailed treatment in YKK. In comparison, Giant Spider and Me makes its world look plain, and it's just not long enough to fill it out more.
In a genre that depends so heavily on detailed, creative world-building, Giant Spider and Me tries to be unique with its GIANT SPIDER... but falls short by trying to duke it out with some iyashikei heavyweights on their own soil. Maybe if it were longer, it could surpass the other series in the genre, but it's just too short in length and too few in ideas.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Feb 15, 2019
Short:
2001 Nights is hard science fiction done right. Its interconnected stories are endlessly creative, painting a picture of a future that seems both fantastic and realistic. The universe that Hoshino constructs isn't just the best in manga sci-fi, but one of the best in science fiction in general.
Absolutely phenomenal.
Longer:
Anime and manga have had a very long and tight relationship with science fiction, from Astro Boy and Gundam to Gurren Lagann and Steins;Gate. Yet few series have tried tackling the more Western (Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein) genre of "hard" science fiction, which takes a more realistic approach to storytelling, even if the end result is about something
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like aliens.
And maybe rightfully so, because 2001 Nights exists. It's been a full 35 years since this series came out, and STILL every story amazed and inspired wonder in me. Sure, tropes like FTL drives and aging slower have gone stale (look at Gunbuster and Voices of a Distant Star, among many others), but Hoshino makes them seem so fresh by telling small pieces of a bigger story.
Each chapter in 2001 Nights is a separate story set in the same universe, and it's mostly chronological. Starting slow, Hoshino tells stories inside the solar system. Eventually, though, the stories show mankind discovering FTL travel and other technologies... and then going out into the stars. It's a step-by-step exploration of not just one point in the future, but an entire timeline of events from present day to hundreds of years later. This approach combines the believable near future with insanely fantastic other worlds, and it's all just TWENTY chapters long. I was really shocked when I finished the series and saw the tiny chapter count.... the stories describe a universe vast enough to fill twenty books.
I'm a huge fan of good worldbuilding, and 2001 Nights really delivered. Its weak points are obvious, though. For sci-fi characters, check out Planetes. For sci-fi story, check out Legend of the Galactic Heroes. 2001 Nights is very different: little plot and no time for character development, but with a single, intense focus on sci-fi ideas. And in that arena, nothing beats 2001 Nights.
P.S. My favorite chapter was easily Night 7: Lucifer Rising. The concepts in that chapter were crazy, and the moral conflict in the main character... it hooked me.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Dec 4, 2018
Short version:
The Scientific Boys Club is a wonderful, "modern" sci-fi fairytale about a woman and three old men achieving their pipe dreams... and a drunk guy.
Long version:
Imagine grandpa tells you about the time he flew to Mars on a ship he built with two of his old buddies and a drunkard, based on some completely bogus theory. That's total nonsense, right? But what if it /were/ true?
That's the point of Spirit of Wonder: Scientific Boys Club.
It's a very feel-good story, not just because of the slow pacing and realistic characters, but also because it grants the unrealistic wishes of these characters. Windy's scientific theories were
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mocked and proven wrong, and now she's a stay-at-home wife. The three old dudes of the scientific boys club have believed for 50 years in a totally nonsensical claim that aliens live on Mars. But luckily for them, this is a story where pigs fly and the sky falls down, and all their unbelievably fantastic dreams are fulfilled.
This ova is the total opposite of "hard" science fiction, where all the science-y stuff has to be scientifically accurate. Instead, Tsuruta has gone out of his way to emphasize how non-scientific everything is. It's a sci-fi that's not supposed to be sci -- not supposed to be believable. And it feels so good.
P.S.: for more reading, I wrote a bit more with spoilers here: http://flomu.net/blog/2018/12/spirit-of-wonder-scientific-boys-club
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Oct 10, 2018
Short: On the surface, Moteki is a hilarious comedy about a virgin loser trying to get with women. A little deeper, it's an honest and raw story about discovering oneself and finding happiness.
Longer: I've read three of Kubo-sensei's works: Again!!, Moteki, and 3.3.7 Byooshi, and they're all fantastic. She really likes main characters who fit the "loser" stereotype in one way or another. In 3.3.7 Byooshi, it's a country hick in the big city. In Again!!, it's a loner. And here in Moteki, it's virgin* loser Fuji who has no self-confidence.
It's hard to talk about Moteki without bringing up Welcome to the NHK, another redemption
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story about a loser, and one of my favorite series. Like Satou from NHK, Fuji is an amazingly flawed character who constantly messes things up, and constantly thinks of how other people see him. Listening to his internal debates and thoughts is a real treat, especially when all of the other characters are so flawed too. It becomes this wonderful mess of misunderstandings where Fuji can't tell what's going on because he's thinking of only himself, but the other person isn't much better.
I think that anybody could appreciate some of what makes Fuji tick, even if they might not be in his shoes. His path to building self-confidence is frustratingly slow and painful, but in some sense it feels more real than any other manga I've read.
* not really a virgin
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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May 8, 2018
Short version:
Tsuruta's rough-looking art is absolutely beautiful, and more than makes up for the slow and sometimes complete lack of story. Buy the physical release to get the best experience!
Long(er) version:
This series feels like a cross between two Ghibli movies: It has the biplane-flying ocean setting of Porco Rosso, and a mysterious, legendary island like in Laputa: Castle in the Sky. Going a little further with this comparison, I could say it has the laid-back, almost whimsical attitude of Porco Rosso and the sense of wonder and imagination that drives Laputa.
These are the things that made me read and later buy a physical volume of
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Wandering Island, but the best asset of this series is the art. I don't want to sound like an advertisement, but I really want to stress how good the art looks in the physical volume (I got the U.S. Dark Horse volume - it's really high quality!). The manga mostly sticks to within the borders of the panels, and then, as I flip the page... the art EXPLODES out of the panels, spilling out to the very edge of the page in a huge 2-page spread. I never really noticed that when reading the scans, and I can't get over how such a simple thing could have so much impact.
Anyway, Tsuruta has a rough style that always looks hand-drawn. If you look closely, some lines are kinda crooked, making things like fingers and clothes look funky, but it always looks great when put together. The character design of the main character and really the whole thing looks a little like it's from Blade of the Immortal. In contrast to that, though, the story is really slow, to the point where some chapters have almost no dialogue at all - just panel after panel of Tsuruta flexing his artistic skill.
Check this out if you're looking for a slower seinen series like YKK or Aria, and definitely consider buying the physical release! It's well worth the money.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Dec 27, 2017
Short:
If you like the principal from Prison School, you'll like Cherry Teacher. It's a great ecchi comedy.
Long:
Cherry Teacher is about a male teacher at an all-girls school, and the ensuing funny ecchi things that happen! Sounds horribly generic, huh? But unlike the hesitating, teasing panty shots of so many manga series (Yuragi-sou no Yuuna-san, for example), Cherry Teacher goes all in on the comedy and all in on the perversion. Every scene isn't just about the ecchi -- they're all hilarious.
In some sense, Cherry Teacher parodies everything about the ecchi genre. From stalkers to hot springs to peeping up girls' skirts at the bottom of
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the stairs, Cherry Teacher doesn't take any stereotypical ecchi scene in the usual or expected way. It somehow always turns into a hilariously stupid joke (just like the assman principal of Prison School).
Update: Finished the rest of the series. It gets much lewder and stops being a parody at some points, but the jokes are still funny.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Dec 3, 2017
Short version: Voynich Hotel is a comedic slice-of-life series that excels at not taking itself seriously, and ends up being a lot of fun to read.
Medium version:
Voynich Hotel is a slice-of-life in a weird setting, much like Aria or YKK. But instead of focusing on the imaginative world of Neo Venezia, Voynich Hotel emphasizes the characters. The backstories of Elena and Taizou aren't tough to figure out, but they comes out one piece at a time, revealed through actions instead of straight-up exposition. In the meantime, these two go through the motions of a normal daily life, but in the midst of witches, zombies, and
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murderers.
Everything that happens is over-the-top crazy, but Voynich Hotel treats it like it's a normal everyday occurrence. This matter-of-fact attitude makes each interaction strange and unpredictable, and that combination is addicting. I read this always thinking, "how could they possibly react to this??" ...and still got pleasantly surprised each time.
So what's the worst two things you could put together? Great, now combine them and make it work out. That's the whole feeling of reading Voynich Hotel.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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