This past May I was able to check off a lifelong ambition to visit Japan. My wife and I spent 10 days traveling around the island, riding bullet trains, climbing a mountain, eating ramen and, of course, enjoying the pop culture.
Since I love comics and classic animation, I've always enjoyed manga to a degree. It's like when you say you like comics; that covers a lot of ground. But people have a tendency to think that "I like comics" means you're in line for every comics IP movie that comes out, and have a pull box filled weekly with the latest Marvel/DC/Image titles. Yeah, I like manga, but not indiscriminately. Like American comics, I have a yen for the older stuff. I like the older style(s) of art, the silliness of comics that didn't feel the need to compete with the New York Times Bestseller list as far as content, and could just be a periodically (pun intended) amusing diversion from everyday life.
There is a great chain of manga shops in Japan called Mandarake (Mahn-da-rah-kay). We visited one in Setagaya-ku, Tokyo. It was genuinely overwhelming. The place was in a sub-basement and was huge, filled with rows and rows of bookshelves packed with manga. Obviously, not being able to read Japanese, it was even more so. Another astounding thing about the manga at Mandarake, is how inexpensive most of it was. Most of the books I'll be showcasing here were between 200 and 400 yen, which is about $1.41 to $2.82, per book!
With exception of the Astro Boy and Super Jetter magazines I picked up at a vintage shop. But more about that later.
First off we have Doraemon. Doraemon is a robotic cat from the 22nd Century who travels back in time to help out Nobita, the child who will become the grandfather of his inventor. It's fun, funny stuff. Lots of site gags. It was created by Fujiko F. Fujio and is huge in Japan. If you go to department stores or stop at the ever-present banks of gashapan machines, you're bound to see some Doraemon merch somewhere. I know people say Astro Boy is the Mickey Mouse of Japan, but in all honesty, I saw much more Doraemon while out and about than I did Astro Boy.
In a similar vein we have Gaikotsu-kun, or "Skeleton". It's another whimsical manga from 1966, by George Akiyama. Akiyama, I guess, is known in Japan as a controversial manga artist who, after this, his first comic strip, did some more dark, taboo-themed material. If I understand the translation, the skeleton in question is actually the grandfather of the boy in the comic. He's come back to make sure his son and grandson are taken care of. There are a lot of site gags, as seen here with the dog stealing his bones and burying him.
Next we have, of course, a staple, a manga version of Ultraman. This was produced in conjunction with the television series, and this particular volume (#2) is from 1968. It what you'd expect from an Ultraman comic: Ultraman battling giant monsters. The cartooning is amazing and dynamic! I believe the artist on this is Daiji Ichimine. Look at the giant bat-starfish monster rising out of the ocean above! It attacks oil tankers, and, as you might guess, causes a lot of fires.
To be honest, when I found this next one, I thought I'd happed upon an El Santo themed manga. Not the case. It turns out it is in fact titled Masked Shinigami, Wrestling Villain Series (per Google translate) and the character on the cover is NOT El Santo, el Enmascarada de plata, but Silver Faced Reaper. It's a fairly brutal comic, as you can see from above. No punches are pulled (tee-hee) in depicting brutal ring violence. There's another motif I've noted in some of the manga I purchased, which is animal abuse. There's some of that in a number of the Osamu Tezuka works I've picked up, as well as this one. Fairly graphic as well.
This next one is admittedly a little different from the others. It's by Ichiro Iijima, and one of his Black Punch Complete Works volumes, titled "Gorilla Marriage". It's a number of Twilight Zone/ E.C. Comics-esque horror and sci-fi stories with an albeit more adult content. Some are downright upsetting, particularly the last story in the collection, about a chef who is trying to please the odd taste preferences of some new employers. The Gorilla Marriage story itself is fairly tame. It hypothesizes a world where gorillas have evolved to the level of humans and are integrated into society as such. It highlights the difficulties one might encounter engaging in a gorilla/human relationship. Bizarrely, it's not as lewd as the cover suggests.
