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Dec 2, 2022
Undulating, writhing masses of sexless flesh and muscle and bone; a fetishistic reimagining of the entire world through skin. Saint Muscle, the (aptly named) fleshbomb masterpiece, is a bizarre and singular work that, in every page, every panel, draws connections between the bodies we inhabit, the architecture we create, and the very earth we stand on. Scorpions fight, wolves kill, man destroys in a strange wasteland world that combines mythic greek heroism with classic shounen movement. And lots of muscles. So many muscles.
A clear forefather to later works of hyper-masculinity like Fist of the North Star, Baki, and Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Saint Muscle is at
...
once erotic and disgusting, a deep understanding of anatomy used to twist and distort the male figure into hulking masses--careful, sensual details paid at times to things like leg hair and the fold of a gut--of impossible musculature traversing largely episodic stories about the oppression of the lower class. Though it might try and claim otherwise, this is a furious and political work from an author intimately familiar with capitalism's vicious, master/slave dynamic to the common man and the laborer.
This is told with a style as they come, hitting like an ancient legend, and as gruesome too, full of moments of incredible horror and violence: a mansion made from corpses; slaves trapped in a death race; a seemingly infinite almost apocalyptic desert of rock and sand. When it was released, the series floundered, readers shocked by its odd movements, bold worship of the male body, and disgusting, fun-house mirror reflections of our own world. And it hasn't lost an inch of its power to shock some forty-odd years later.
There's nothing else quite like it. Praise the muscle. It is our only hope of freedom.
More thoughts (including the history of the series and its author) here: https://baxtersmono.medium.com/the-biggest-flex-in-manga-saint-muscle-f87209aa341c
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Mar 13, 2018
Both daring in how it pushes for social issues and clumsy in how it marries them with the thrills of horror and mystery, Yuureitou is pulp through and through. If one has even the slightest place for spooky mysteries, then this series is an essential, and wildly enjoyable trip.
A brash explosion created and populated by self-proclaimed pulp obsessives, the manga takes place in the golden age of Japanese mystery literature and positions this mass creation of the unknown as simply a reflection of an unknowable world. There are ghosts and ghouls (or are there?) and murderers abound, and everyone has a secret, a trick
...
which allows the reader to be in a constant state of unease. Nobody is free from suspicion. But the secrets they all hold are also what connects everyone, what traps them all in this world of unending horror.
And those secrets are that the characters of Yuureitou aren't who they say they are. They are not a man, or a woman, or straight, or sexually active, or a horrible ghost monster. The manga explicitly tackles gender politics with a zeal, the cast populated by confused LGBTQ+ individuals. Throughout the main mystery of the series, characters try to 'solve' their gender identities and their perception of other non-binary people. But, as with their attempts to discover the secrets of the mysterious clock tower, they only ever seem to find more layers, more confusion. They traverse literal mazes while hunted by deranged killers, paralleling their scared wandering through gender and the threat that what they were is dead, and what they are can not survive.
The blending of mystery and horror with gender dysphoria is interesting and gutsy. Unfortunately, while Yuureitou tries and succeeds in many aspects to discuss gender politics and promote a more open and progressive society, it falls face first just as much. The characters are deplorable in their society; they are degenerates. And while on one hand the attempt to mirror this with a world full of crime makes sense--society accepts neither and views both as beyond saving which in turn makes the characters question their own goodness--by positioning almost the entire cast as both non-binary or queer AND criminal, the manga trips over its own message, equating LGBTQ+ people to killers and monsters. This is clearly unintentional, as Yuureitou desperately pushes for acceptance and understanding in the confusing struggles of its characters, but is an awkward reality of the manga all the same.
Furthermore, through much of the manga when the transgender male character is sexualized as female, it is specifically through the prism of other characters who often are struggling with their own identity. This is great and creates nicely complex moments. The characters can't simply turn off their own sexual desires or the mores forced onto them since birth like a switch. However, the title pages almost always ignore the character's identity and insist on falling back on tired, sexy poses. This is bad. When outside of the narrative, the manga leers and creeps and ignores its own message, becoming another piece of the oppressive society weighing down on the cast.
As a final note, the manga for whatever reason steps back from some amazing paneling as it progresses. The first volume in particular is filled with astounding sequences which quickly focus in on the smallest of character reactions or brief flashes of memories which create some of the honest to god best horror scenes in any manga ever. There are pages in Yuureitou that should be used in schools to teach visual storytelling. By the end, Yuureitou largely neglects this style and whether this is a thematic choice (their secrets aren't hidden anymore) or a practical one, it is a bit of a shame.
Yuureitou is like a storm. Loud and violent and inevitably messy, striking down trees and turning the ground to mud. Storms have potential to be good or bad--they can destroy and hurt, but they can also provide water that is desperately needed. Of course like most everything, they're never really just one or the other, and neither is Yuureitou; a good-hearted, hurtful, hopeful, gross, storm of a manga.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Feb 20, 2018
Fire Punch rules. A free-wheeling psychedelic commentary on violence (all kinds--physical, sexual, emotional, etc) in media and our relationship with these stories. A manga that treats the traditional narrative and plot hooks of the medium with disdain as if they themselves are an act of opression, bearing down on the lives of its characters. An intelligent and carefully crafted work that refuses easy solutions or simple emotions. A story where a man who fights by hitting bullets with a baseball bat is confronted by a woman in a bikini (the world has frozen over in Fire Punch, a perpetual winter) riding on a katana as
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if it was a hoverboard. Fire Punch rules.
It's hard to blame anyone for backing out early here despite the amazing premise and promise of real scuzzy exploitation fun in the first chapter thanks to the following volume worth of oppressive and at the face meaningless cruelty. Sure there are some jokes, but it all weighs heavy on you as bad things keep piling up on each other as if that's just the truth of the world. And most reviews or impressions of Fire Punch seem to suggest that most people did stop here. They call it out as pointlessly edgy and immoral and nihilistic. And hey, I was seconds away from quitting myself. But then a character appeared and recontextualized the preceeding pessimism. Togata, a camera wielding maniac, almost literally hijacks the manga early on. The protagonist disappears, replaced by someone whose entire life is formed through stories. Someone who can't help but see the world as a narrative. She constantly and overtly discusses the narrative beats of the manga itself, explaining like an author or a critic how each scene should fit within the overarking story. Or she would be, but things keep going wrong. The manga refuses to abide by the tired and true beats of traditional manga. From here on, the form of sequential art is twisted and played with as expectations and cliches are constantly dismantled with an infectious glee: the super special ultra technique exists for a gag, the quirky and mysterious side characters are almost immediately ignored after their introductions, fights are born and raised for the sake of the anti-climax, so on and so on. The initial darkness that turned so many off is seen in a new light now as a sort of mockery. The main character, his motivations, his personality, the very world he lives in is all so silly, like some sort of joke. Except it isn't.
Except it is.
Except it isn't.
The audience is in this way confronted with how society consumes art: that is to say, constantly and hungrily. Are we like Togata, whose life has no meaning without stories to watch to pass the emptiness of life, or are we like Agni (the protagonist) whose life is, knowingly or not, shaped and defined by the violent stories society loves. Or are we like the antagonists, who tell their own fiction so much they end up believing in it themselves. The answer is, of course, a complicated "yes".
And through that "yes" an optimistic vision of creation is formed. Fiction can, Fire Punch supposes in the midst of its chaos and confusion, allow the oppressed to be free, give meaning to the meaningless, and provide comfort to the suffering. Fire punch is, after all, a manga, created by an artist who is unabashadly in love with stories.
There's a lot to talk about with Fire Punch. There's a lot to talk about with all art. The series is extremely compassionate towards minorities in a way that is rare for manga; the ending is bold and touching, transforming the work again into something even bigger; religion plays a major role, both as a concept within the series and symbolically (the main character's name, Agni, is that of a Hindu fire god--I know nothing about Hinduism but ya'll know I'm gonna be digging deep into this now). But most of all, what Fire Punch wants you to remember is that at the end of the day, movies exist. And who doesn't love movies?
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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