Category Archives: Manga

What went wrong with Attack on Titan?

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Attack on Titan Vol. 1 Cover[Spoiler Alert – it’s pretty much everything.]

After 12 years of serialized manga, Hajime Isayama’s Attack on Titan is done. It didn’t take long for the online critics to start dissecting the controversial conclusion: Is it unsatisfying? Is it maybe a little cringeworthy?

I’d argue it’s both. But more than that, now that we can analyze the work as a whole, I’d say Attack on Titan was probably never very good to begin with. The signs were there almost from the very beginning.

It’s hard to overstate how massive a phenomenon Attack on Titan was in its early years. In Tokyo, you could hardly buy snacks at a convenience store without seeing the image of the Colossus Titan peering over Wall Maria. In hindsight, though, maybe a few such iconic images were all the manga really had going for it. » More... » →

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Horror from the East: The H.P. Lovecraft manga of Gou Tanabe

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H.P. Lovecraft manga of Gou TanabeHorror author H.P. Lovecraft never wrote with an Asian audience in mind. He identified as an Easterner, having spent most of his life in New England, but of the Far East he knew nothing. He never traveled abroad. In fact, the farthest he ever ventured from his beloved Providence was to New York, an experience that later led him to describe Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood as “a maze of hybrid squalor.”

About that word, “hybrid.” Lovecraft wasn’t one for mixing with foreigners. While the degree to which he was an overt racist is sometimes overstated, his xenophobia and his mistrust of unfamiliar cultures were real. In fact, they underlie many of his most memorable stories.

Given all of this, it may be surprising to learn that, in my opinion, some of the best recent comics adaptations of Lovecraft’s weird fiction have come from the pen of Japanese manga artist Gou Tanabe. » More... » →

It ain’t easy being a successful manga creator

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I was fascinated by the sections of Frederik L. Schodt’s Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics describing the breakneck, seemingly even harrowing nature of the Japanese manga business, and I wanted to learn more. I found what I was looking for in another book: Manga in Theory and Practice, by Hirohiko Araki.

This slim volume from Shonen Jump was first published in English by Viz Media in 2017 – meaning some 20 years had passed since the revised edition of Schodt’s book. Still, not much seems to have changed in terms of how manga are produced. » More... » →

Frederik L. Schodt wants to introduce you to manga

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I almost didn’t read Frederik L. Schodt’s Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. I’ve been reading a lot of manga lately, so a history of the subject sounded appealing. Had it not been for the Covid-19 pandemic, however, it might have been a near miss.

You see, I’d checked the book out of the public library, but the dense text and its textbook-like format, with its multiple sidebars and explanatory notes, put me off. As its due date approached, I still hadn’t read more than a few pages and I was about to return it. That’s when San Francisco issued its “stay at home” order for the pandemic and the entire library system shut down, book deposit boxes and all. As a result, Schodt’s book was mine for the duration, so I decided to put on my thinking cap and give it a whirl.

I’m glad I did. Manga! Manga! has maintained its reputation as the definitive English-language work on the subject, and despite being somewhat dated – it was the first such work ever written – it deserves its accolades. » More... » →

The bonkers chaos of Go Nagai’s ‘Devilman’

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Manga and AnimeWhen Netflix released Devilman Crybaby last year, I enjoyed the anime, but it made me realize that although I was cursorily familiar with the character, I had never really gone back and read Go Nagai’s original manga from the early 1970s. When I found out that Seven Seas Entertainment had released Devilman: The Classic Collection in two volumes the same year, I decided to check it out. And what a ride it is. » More... » →