I read 孤島の鬼!
It’s an Edogawa Ranpo novel. I picked it to read now because I’ve been enjoying the 獄門島 book club a lot, despite not reading the novel (since I read it last year), and I thought 孤島の鬼, in being an island-based mysteryish thing from an author in Yokomizo’s general ballpark, could satisfy that itch in a way.
Turns out though, other than both involving islands, and murders, and mysteries, the two books couldn’t be more different! While Yokomizo in 獄門島 very carefully and deliberately sets up an evocative setting that surrounds and informs the entire novel, here Ranpo does a whole lot of “reader, I’m going to tell you later about something that was very ghastly!!!” and then veers the story into strange and unexpected directions. There’s nothing especially wrong with Ranpo’s approach, but I like Yokomizo’s way more the juxtaposition maybe didn’t put 孤島の鬼 in the best light…
I enjoyed parts quite a bit, but I lost a lot of steam with the story in the later parts when it turns into like, a treasure hunt story for pirate gold – although to be fair I binge read most of the novel over the weekend in a way where it was easy for my endurance to be heavily worn down. The most memorable part of the novel I think is definitely the artificially attached conjoined twins of opposite sex, although the general presentation (and long list in the back of my edition of words to describe people with disabilities that have gone out of favor since the novel was written) make it hard to tell exactly how I feel about of her presentation (the male twin is really more of a bad thing inflicted on the female twin than a character, for example) or that whole deformity angle in general. Seems like the main emphasis is on the shock value, and it’s fun for that I suppose! The main detective-y character having an intense gay crush on the narrator was an interesting (and endearing) element! That character in particular (in contrast to the narrator…) seems to have a lot going on… The afterword mentioned this is an antecedent to other same-sex-attraction-tinged mysteries popular in Japan right now? I wonder which mysteries those are…
There’s an edition on bookwalker with contemporary-looking illustrations that are pretty cool
manga report:
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波よ聞いてくれ (1)
This volume I read in English from the library a long while back and thought it seemed interesting but wasn’t quite sure what to make of it – it seemed so heavily loaded with Japanese regional and cultural references that even at the time it felt like one I should read in Japanese if I was going to read it. So now I read that volume in Japanese! And I guess it did feel like I tracked a bit more?
It’s about a 20-something woman in Sapporo with a brash and outspoken personality that gets her scouted to be a late night radio DJ. The artstyle and general demeanor are interesting and unique (at least among the manga I’ve read – the author also did, in a completely different genre, Blade of the Immortal which I’ve heard of but not read), although not really in the kind of way that immediately gets me hooked to read a lot of it, if that makes sense. Still curious, will see where it goes. -
ヴラド・ドラクラ (1-5)
This is a currently running Harta series and it was the first one I started completely skipping in the new magazines because it came across as extremely dry, boring, and hard to follow. So I was hoping catching up in volume form would change my mind on it. And… it did! It took a little while, but I am on board now.
If you’re hoping for a spooky supernatural Bela Lugosi style Dracula – this definitely isn’t that. But if you want a full-on historical drama about Vlad III of Wallachia and 1400s politics… check it out! Because that’s what this is. The sensationalism meter is generally dialed quite low here (like definitely drier and more history-focused than I dunno, Game of Thrones or Vinland Saga or something if that works as a reference point), which does make it hard to get into, but it also makes it feel especially impactful when things like, you know, impalements happen, and the series is definitely at its best when Vlad is glowering in the midst of some historical calamity (and there is plenty of that). Reminds me of Legend of Galactic Heroes, actually, in terms of over-arching political events told through the the lens of a handful of key figures who get to be very exaggerated.
I have no prior conceptions of anything to do with Romanian history in detail whatsoever so I have no idea how it plays from that perspective. -
あさドラ! (1-2)
Naoki Urasawa is an author whose work hasn’t ever been an outright favorite of mine (so far), but it’s always consistently extremely solid to the point that I’m baseline interested in anything he’s done. So I’ve been piling up the volumes of this ongoing series of his as they’ve been coming out.
And what do you know, it’s extremely solid! My most memorable Urasawa experience was falling quite far into scans of 20th Century Boys on the bus in high school before losing track of where I was and never finding my way back (that’s one to make up for later…) and this feels like it’s setting up some similar over-arching mysterious threads, but in a less frenetic and more lived-in way. It comes across as thoroughly planned, and very endearing. So I’m curious where it goes! Especially about the kaiju. I’ll probably catch up fully soon.
The first volume came out in 2019 and the very very beginning teases a scene involving the 2020 olympics happening in 2020 so uhhhhh I wonder if how things went will color anything later in the series… -
人造人間キカイダー（1）
I picked this up because I’ve previously watched the tokusatsu show based on it (looks like that official channel took down a lot of episodes? Booooo), and so far I really like it a lot!
This is my first manga by Shotaro Ishinomori, and his art here is very reminiscent of Tezuka (which makes, he started as an assistant for him), but stands up well under the comparison, which is saying a lot. I’m extremely not an expert in either author’s work, but I suppose the difference I see here is Ishinomori puts more of an emphasis on bold lines and action, and the humor is a bit more like “and here’s the comic relief scene” instead of rippling back and forth between drama and humor the way Tezuka seems to do a lot. (but I might be completely off base)
It’s interesting to compare to the show – this feels a lot… dramatic? Like the emotions and brooding tended to get lost in the peppy episodic tokusatsu fights in the show, but they’re fully in the forefront here. It’s also interesting to me to see Hattori Hanpei here as like, a bit more of a hippy/dirtbag/Shaggy type of character (complete with a Velmaish partner!) when in the show he’s in a Sherlock Holmes costume and in full-on over-the-top goof mode all the time.
I enjoyed the show, but I think I already probably like the manga more… there’s just something about a crisp page of comics!
Plus it managed to scratch the kind of Dracula itch that Vlad Dracula wasn’t so much interested in…
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極主夫道 （9）
I have absolutely nothing new to say about this that I didn’t say when I read the rest of the series, but it was quick and pretty fun.
