I finished this month’s Harta!
I really enjoyed it! Four debuting series, and enjoyable chapters in a lot of my favorites.
ハルタ ９２号
The first debuting series is 対岸のメル ‐幽冥探偵調査ファイル‐ by 福島聡, following up on an earlier short (I think from Terang?). It’s about a girl who can talk to ghosts and a detective-inclined boy who are together going to set up… well, a 幽冥探偵 agency I suppose. I think it did a good job building out what was intriguing in the short into the start of what should be an interesting series!
The second debuting series is ウスズミの果て by 岩宗治生, and I think it’s very promising! It’s about a lone person traveling through a post-apocalyptic city cleaning up the remains of the disaster. That vibe feels fairly familiar from things like… I dunno, Girl’s Last Tour, or even Yokohama Shopping Trip, etc. But I really like the art and I think the world shown has the potential to develop in its own interesting ways going forward.
The third series debut is 珍獣のお医者さん by 二宮香乃 about exotic animal veterinary medicine.
It seems like an interesting series, of the “here’s an interesting specialized craft or profession” type! It wouldn’t be the faint of heart if you don’t want to see hurt animals (that are then healed, but still).
The fourth series debut is かわいすぎる人よ！ by 綿野マイコ, about an uncle raising a niece - and the uncle happens to be extremely cute and androgynous. It’s pleasant and heartwarming! Seems like one where the premise is more of a bit of additional flavor than like, the main driver of the plot.
Other memorable stuff:
猫のまにまに this month is about a cat girl peeing. So… for someone out there, this is really really up their alley. Let’s all be happy for that person.
ホテル・メッツァペウラへようこそ makes great use of the Finnish setting by having a “go have a fight in the extreme cold then immediately get in the sauna and bond” scene. (volume 2 out now btw)
I remain very taken with 希釈王 - it’s… hard to describe, and even harder to predict.
I liked the ショートショート by 池袋万里 called ホビーショップヤッホー a lot. (it’s about two employees reading the manual to turn off a realistic cute electric doll at the end of the day, to everyone’s horror)
Finally, I feel like I haven’t talked as much about あかねさす柘榴の都 as some of the other series (like the Hotel one), but it’s awfully good too.
One negative memorable thing for me is this issue has another appearance of 東田裕介’s very infrequently recurring boy detective stories, which remain pretty much the one thing in Harta I actively don’t like. The artstyle’s just very… shotacon? and exaggeratedly sexualized in general in a way that isn’t for me at all.
One very positive thing though: the ads for next issue promise the debut of an ongoing series by the author of some of my favorite 読切, 田沼朝! I liked their work to the point of translating a story to share it with my friends, so I’m very excited to see what the ongoing will be like! Growing to recognize an author’s name from shorts and being excited as their career progresses is a really cool positive about reading manga in magazine form! (it’s why I tend to put the author’s name a lot in these recaps, if that wasn’t clear - just so I remember them better and can look them up better later if a name or art style in a different story seems familiar)
Manga report:
- ちびまる子ちゃん (1)
I picked this one up a long time ago thinking it might be an easy read early on. It turned out to not really be well-suited for that purpose at all though, as it’s very wordy and full of hand-writing and cultural references. Now that that’s not a barrier though, I really enjoyed it a lot! It’s a semi-autobiographical account of being a kid in 1970s Japan that’s vivid enough to be a fun picture of the time and place, and self-deprecating enough that it feels frank and relatable. A good way to feel the memories of shirking summer homework, begrudgingly participating in school plays, etc. It’s a slow read still for the reasons I mentioned, and being very episodic, but I’d definitely like to read more sometime! - ハクメイとミコチ (4-10)
I’ve caught up now with Hakumei and Mikochi, and I really grew to love it over the course of these volumes! It’s got a similar kind of chill comfort and joie de vivre that say, Yokohama Shopping Trip has, but Hakumei and Mikochi takes a much much more maximalist approach, stuffed to the gills with food, clothes, crafts, neighbors and friends, outings, etc. Over the course of the series, despite not really being plot-driven, it develops a really surprisingly voluminous and memorable cast of characters, who will often borrow the spotlight or interact with each other for a bit with the two leads always being somewhere in mix as well. Some of my favorites include the skeleton re-animator Sen, the librarian, the flustered beetle, the bartender, the singer’s neighbor, etc. … there’s really a lot!
I was especially impressed that even though the tenth volume was mainly or entirely made up of chapters I’d already read and enjoyed serially in the magazine, it was my favorite volume! As having gotten to know that sprawling cast over the course of the series made the stories that much richer even if I hadn’t been missing out on plot details or anything like that the first time. - ドラゴンボール (3-4)
In the mood for something light, I picked up where I left off at some point with Dragon Ball!
I really like Dragon Ball! I think Toriyama’s style is delightful, and you never really quite know what direction things will take since the world has so many strange and fun elements. I’ve seen Dragon Ball Z (as an adult) but not the earlier episodes, so it’s interesting to see where things start out too - like the first 天下一武道会 is in these volumes. I like the silly martial arts vibe, and the 武道会 announcer/referee/bewildered onlooker is an A+ background character. Now it’s transitioned to more of an adventure story where Goku has to fight an army looking for the dragon balls in a snow area? which I might be less into but again, it’s fun how Toriyama will go in whatever direction he feels like, and I caught a glimpse of Frankenstein’s Monster so I’m looking forward to that.
Whenever it was that I read the first two volumes, I remember having some trouble with them… now I can read these lightly and easily without a dictionary! Pretty cool! And gives them that extra breezy fun that feels like how they’re meant to be read. - ゴールデンカムイ (3)
Nothing to say I didn’t already for the first two volumes! I remember not really liking the part where Sugimoto briefly ditches Asirpa and with this one I was less sure I was right to reread rather than skipping right to where I’d left off in English. Still got a long way to go! - ふしぎの国のバード (8-9)
These felt a bit less special since we aren’t reading them out loud anymore and I’d already read (to varying degrees) most of the chapters as they were coming out in the magazine. Still good though, and I really enjoyed the most recent chapter in this month’s Harta! - 大ダーク (2-4)
I’ve caught up with Dai Dark, and I think it’s great! Comparing it to something else doesn’t really do it justice, but I’m gonna gamely try anyway and say it feels a little like… Adventure Time, but in space and everything is a weird death metal album cover? Like it’s got a free-wheeling easy-going anything-goes attitude, and stars a plucky kid and his weird transforming… friend? guardian? as he makes new friends and tries not to get killed by… well, everyone else. The vibe is very fun and pleasant although the aesthetic involves lots and lots and lots of bones and guts and such. The presentation of the volumes is also fantastic - the transparent covers are inventive and cool, and there’s a fun little crossword at the back of each volume that teases the next.
Getting on this series’ wavelength makes me a lot more excited to give ドロヘドロ another shot down the line.