Black Blizzard

First published in 1956, Black Blizzard is a juicy pulp thriller that will irresistibly remind Western readers of such movies as The 39 Steps, The Defiant Ones, and The Fugitive. The hero is twenty-five-year-old Susumu Yamaji, a down-on-his-luck pianist who stands accused of murdering the ringmaster of a traveling circus. The circumstantial evidence against him is so compelling that even Susumu — who was in a drunken stupor at the time — believes he did it. After surrendering to authorities, Susumu is handcuffed to hardened criminal Shinpei Konta, a middle-aged man who’s spent most of his adult life drifting in and out of jail. (When Susumu admits to his crime, Shinpei sniffs, “Just one? Tch! That’s nothing! I’ve been convicted five times. Twice for murder.”) An avalanche provides the shackled pair an opportunity to escape into a raging snowstorm, police hot on their trail.

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The Best Manga You’re Not Reading: ES: Eternal Sabbath

Back in June, Brigid Alverson, Robin Brenner, Martha Cornog and I gave a presentation at the American Library Association’s annual conference called “The Best Manga You’re Not Reading.” Our goal was to remind librarians that manga isn’t just for teens by highlighting fourteen titles that we thought would appeal to older patrons. Response to our presentation was terrific, so I decided to make “The Best Manga You’re Not Reading” a regular feature here at The Manga Critic. Some months I’ll shine the spotlight on something obscure or out-of-print; other months I’ll feature a title that you may have heard about (or even read) because I think it has the potential to appeal to readers who aren’t necessarily mangaphiles. This month’s title — ES: Eternal Sabbath (Del Rey) — was one of Brigid’s picks, a sci-fi manga that she felt had strong visuals and a suitably creepy atmosphere. I couldn’t agree more, so I decided to revise an old review from my PopCultureShock days to explain why you ought to read this trippy, thought-provoking story about the perils of cloning and extrasensory perception.

ES: ETERNAL SABBATH, VOLS. 1-8

BY FUYUMI SORYO • DEL REY • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

The vivid images that haunt us when we sleep seem like perfect fodder for art, yet we often produce dream-inspired work that’s much goofier and far less potent than our nocturnal imaginings: think of Salvador Dali’s unabashedly Freudian dream sequence in Spellbound (the one false note in an otherwise great thriller), or John Fuseli’s heavy-handed symbolism in The Nightmare (in which a Rubenesque sleeper is tormented by a ghostly horse and an incubus, the ultimate Romantic two-fer). These images fail to shock because they seem too mannered, too staid — in short, too neat, failing to capture the subconscious mind’s ability to juxtapose the banal with the fantastic. In ES: Eternal Sabbath, however, manga-ka Fuyumi Soryo (best known to American readers for the shojo drama Mars) steers clear of the cliches and overripe imagery that reduce so many dreamy works to kitsch, producing a taut, spooky thriller that reminds us just how weird and terrifying a place the mind can be.

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Short Takes: Afterschool Charisma, Bamboo Blade, and Higurashi When They Cry

To mark the official beginning of summer, I’m dedicating this week’s Short Takes column to three series with serious beach-reading potential: the first volume of sci-fi conspiracy thriller Afterschool Charisma (VIZ), the fifth volume of sports comedy Bamboo Blade (Yen Press), and the first volume of Higurashi When They Cry: Time Killing Arc (Yen Press). Which are duds and which are winners? Read on for the scoop.

AFTERSCHOOL CHARISMA, VOL. 1

BY KUMIKO SUEKANE • VIZ • 208 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

If you cloned, say, Napoleon Bonaparte, would the 2.0 version be inclined to invade Russia and pick a fight with the world’s greatest naval power, or would he chart his own course as a diplomat, an artist, or a business executive? That’s the basic premise of Afterschool Charisma, a sci-fi thriller about a high school comprised of famous people’s clones; Joan of Arc, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, and Marie Curie are just a few of the students enrolled at St. Kleio Academy, where the only ordinary human is Shiro Kamiya, the headmaster’s son. When one of the school’s most prominent alumni is assassinated, the whole purpose of St. Kleio is called into question, inspiring a wave of panic among the clones whose originals met nasty ends.

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Banana Fish Roundtable Continues!

Drugs! Thugs! Bullets! Mullets! ‘Staches! Yes, it’s time for another installment of Breaking Down Banana Fish, a project initiated by Melinda Beasi (Manga Bookshelf) to explore one of mangadom’s odder ducks: a shojo title with the swagger of a gangster flick and the heart of a shonen-ai drama. Joining Melinda for this month’s roundtable are Robin Brenner (No Flying, No Tights), Connie C. (Slightly Biased Manga), Khursten Santos (Otaku Champloo), Michelle Smith (Soliloquy in Blue), Eva Volin (Good Comics for Kids), and yours truly.

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Ode to Kirihito, Vols. 1-2

“When he heard his cry for help, it wasn’t human” — so went the tagline for Ken Russell’s Altered States (1980), a bizarre fever-dream of Nietzchean philosophy, horror, and mystical hoo-ha in which a scientist’s experiments result in his spontaneous devolution. That same tagline would work equally well for Osamu Tezuka’s Ode to Kirihito (1970-71), a globe-trotting medical mystery about a doctor who takes a similar step down the evolutionary ladder from man to beast. In less capable hands, Kirihito would be pure, B-movie camp with delusions of grandeur — as Altered States is — but Tezuka synthesizes these disparate elements into a gripping story that explores meaty themes: the porous boundaries between man and animal, sanity and insanity, godliness and godlessness; the arrogance of scientists; and the corruption of the Japanese medical establishment.

At its most basic level, Ode to Kirihito is a beat-the-clock thriller in which a charismatic young doctor named Kirihito Osanai tries to discover the cause of Monmow, a mysterious condition that reduces its victims to hairy, misshapen creatures with dog-like snouts. Kirihito’s superior, the ambitious Dr. Tatsugaura, dispatches Kirihito to Doggodale, a remote mountain village where hundreds of residents have developed suggestive symptoms. Once in Doggodale, Kirihito contracts Monmow himself, thus beginning a hellish odyssey to escape the village, arrest the disease’s progress, and share his findings with the medical community.

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Short Takes: The Apartment, How to Seduce a Vampire, and Otodama: Voice from the Dead

One of the things I love about the DMP catalog is the sheer variety of titles: where else can you find Bambi and Her Pink Gun, Taimashin: The Red Spider Exorcist, and Selfish Mr. Mermaid peacefully co-habiting? This week, I thought I’d explore some of DMP’s latest offerings, focusing on the bishier end of the spectrum. First up is The Apartment, an adaptation of a Harlequin Romance novel; next on the agenda is How to Seduce a Vampire, a story about a bloodsucking hairdresser and his favorite source of O negative; and last but not least is Otodama: Voice of the Dead, a crime drama about a hot guy who hears dead people.

THE APARTMENT

BY RYO ARISAWA, ORIGINAL TEXT BY DEBBIE MACOMBER • DIGITAL MANGA PUBLISHING • 128 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

The Apartment is a prime example of what I call the “tomato, tomahto” romance, a story about two people who discover common ground despite their inability to agree on the pronunciation of oysters, pajamas, or potatoes. In this case, those two people are Hilary, a twenty-three-year-old trust fund girl with an independent streak, and Shaun, a soldier looking for opportunities in the civilian world. The pair unwittingly rent the same apartment, reluctantly agreeing to become roommates until Shaun can find a new pad. Not surprisingly, their lifestyles clash: Hilary, a professional flautist, is neat and likes Rossini, while Shaun is messy and likes — quelle horreur! — country music.

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