Quick recap: Orochi appears to be an ordinary, generically pretty young woman, but is actually a seemingly ageless being with vaguely defined supernatQuick recap: Orochi appears to be an ordinary, generically pretty young woman, but is actually a seemingly ageless being with vaguely defined supernatural powers. She has a gift for spotting people who are going to have interesting things happen to them and following their lives. See my reviews of previous volumes.
This is the final volume in the series, containing two long stories.
“Eyes” has Orochi’s attention caught by Keiko Taguchi, a blind girl in her teens. Keiko’s been blind since birth and goes to a special school, having become quite adept at navigating her dark world. She lives with her father (no word on what happened to Mom) in company housing for the factory he works at. Her one close friend is the much younger Satoru, who used to go to the same special school before he had an operation that restored his sight.
One night, Keiko’s father is delayed coming home from work. A friend of his knocks and asks to hide from someone trying to kill him. Unfortunately, Keiko is not able to close the door fast enough, and his pursuer enters as well. This is lethal for the friend, but the intruder spares Keiko when he realizes she’s blind. Keiko passes out from the shock. When Mr. Taguchi arrives home, he foolishly picks up the murder knife, getting his fingerprints over it. It’s at this point the police arrive and arrest him.
Keiko’s wild tale of a stranger and the description she gives based on hearing and smell clues are dismissed by the police, especially as none of her neighbors saw any such person. They’re very comfortable with the suspect they have, thank you. They don’t even do a search of the house for clues.
Later, Keiko finds the real killer’s ID card which he dropped in the struggle, but the name kanji are too difficult for Satoru to read, and the card is accidentally destroyed before she can get it to the police, who scoff at the possible existence of such a thing.
Meanwhile, the killer realizes he’s lost his ID, and where that must have happened. (But of course, doesn’t know that it’s been destroyed.) The rest of the story is a cat and mouse thriller between him, Keiko and Satoru.
This is intense, exciting stuff. The killer’s motivation and the reason Keiko can’t get help from the neighbors is very Seventies. But Orochi is barely in the story, and only observes the goings-on. There’s no supernatural element other than Orochi’s observation.
“Blood” is about the Monzen sisters, Kazusa and Risa. Kazusa is a couple of years older, and the very model of a good little girl that brings honor to her prestigious family. Risa is…not. Risa is constantly compared unfavorably to her older sister and emotionally abused by her relatives and the servants. Unsurprisingly, this results in Risa acting out, which gets her labelled as “difficult” and “wicked.” Only Kazusa is ever kind to Risa.
Orochi has infiltrated the mansion, initially to see what was inside, then to observe the sisters. No one seems to notice. She watches for decades as the sisters reach adulthood, get married and lose their husbands. (Kazusa by becoming a widow, Risa through divorce.) Orochi senses that the worst is yet to come. Risa drives drunk, and is about to crash when Orochi intervenes for the first time, protecting Risa with her body.
While Orochi survives the experience, we finally learn one of her limitations. Once every hundred years, she must sleep for a couple of decades to keep from aging. While her actual age isn’t specified, we do learn she’s been around since the 18th Century. Due to the severe injuries from the car crash, the sleep has been triggered early. It’s all Orochi can do to find a cave to hide in.
While Orochi’s body undergoes the Orochisleep, her consciousness somehow finds itself inhabiting the body of Yoshiko. Yoshiko is a teenage orphan whose foster parents are exploiting her labor. This doesn’t last too long as the wicked stepparents are only too eager to sell Yoshiko to a stranger who claims to be related to her. Orochi, while awake and able to see and sense everything Yoshiko’s body does, cannot actually control the body or affect Yoshiko’s actions.
The stranger turns out to be Risa, now an older woman. She explains that Yoshiko is a distant relative of the Monzen family (there is a resemblance) and she was touched by the girl’s plight, so bought her as a companion for the now bedridden Kazusa.
Treated well for the first time in her life, Yoshiko quickly bonds with Kazusa and works as her companion faithfully. Unfortunately, the better Yoshiko gets on with Kazusa, the more angry and abusive Risa becomes, seemingly framing her for small crimes to have an excuse to berate and abuse her.
When it looks like Kazusa’s heart is about to finally give out, Yoshiko trips on the stairs and starts dying herself.
Orochi wakes up back in her own body, rotting clothing and all. She’s convinced the Yoshiko thing was not a dream and hurries back to the Monzen mansion. Sure enough, there’s the now elderly sisters and the dying body of Yoshiko. Orochi is emotionally invested in a way she’s never been before, having experienced Yoshiko’s life directly.
And then there are a series of reveals, including Yoshiko’s actual thoughts that Orochi never heard, that hammer home the tragedy of the situation. Stunned, Orochi walks away but no one there notices, only a passerby as she faded from view.
A very bizarre story to finish the collection. Who and what Orochi actually is, we will never know. Presumably, she is still out there, watching humanity.
The art continues to be excellent, highly detailed when it needs to be, and giving the feeling of the darkness surrounding the characters.
Because the last story is about abuse, sensitive readers should exercise caution.
Overall, Orochi is more of a “horror host” than an actual character in the stories, and they tend to be light on the supernatural, so this collection may appeal more to people who like horror-tinged thrillers than to the supernatural horror fan. Some fine work though....more
Quick recap: Orochi is a mysterious, seemingly unageing woman with vaguely-defined supernatural abilities. She wanders around Japan observing bizarre Quick recap: Orochi is a mysterious, seemingly unageing woman with vaguely-defined supernatural abilities. She wanders around Japan observing bizarre occurrences in humans’ lives, and sometimes interfering in them. As of yet, we know nothing of her own past or why she does what she does, beyond curiosity and moments of compassion.
“Stage” is the first of two stories in this volume. When Yuichi is three years old, his father is killed trying to save him from a hit and run driver. Yuichi identifies the culprit as “the Morning Man”, actor Shingo Tanabe, star of “Good Morning, Children.” Despite the grownups thinking that Yuichi might have mistaken this familiar figure for someone who looks similar, they investigate.
Mr. Tanabe turns out to have a history of driving recklessly and has no alibi for the time of the accident. Plus he’s kind of a flashy jerk in person. Despite Yuichi’s dramatic testimony, the judge finds him an unreliable witness, and there’s no direct evidence against Tanabe, so he’s freed. Tanabe claims he didn’t kill Yuichi’s father, but cops to not having the best personal life and retires to his home village to start over.
Yuichi refuses to shut up about the “Morning Man” long after everyone else has gotten sick of his obsession, and turns from a TV-loving toddler to a television-hating child. In elementary school, however, Yuichi suddenly becomes obsessed with new hit singer Hideji Hanada, and himself decides to become a singer.
Yuichi lies about having an uncle in Tokyo who will host him for high school, but his actual plan is to become the apprentice of Hideji Hanada and…that would be telling.
Orochi doesn’t use any of her powers during this story except not aging and just happening to arrive to witness important events. At this point, it appears that most of her stories overlap in time, with the various important events happening between those of other tales.
A bit more comedically in the middle of the story, we learn that a reality show to find “rising young talent” is in fact scripted, with the winner decided in advance.
Yuichi’s revenge plan is twisted and Jacobean in nature; while avenging his father might seem a reasonable motive, his willingness to ruin lives of people who have done nothing to him but be in the way is chilling. And is his revenge really for his father? It’s a striking story that raises uncomfortable questions.
“Combat” is the story of Tadashi Okabe and his father. Mr. Okabe is a teacher at the junior high school Tadashi attends, and is an unusually kind and forbearing man. Most people find Mr. Okabe a good man, a virtuous man, but Tadashi alternates between admiration and irritation at his father’s peaceful behavior. Sometimes his charity is outright embarrassing.
A mysterious disabled man approaches Tadashi several times, asking him to carry messages to his father. The boy finds this creepy, and neglects to do so. He starts noticing that his father has nightmares and moments when he doesn’t quite act himself.
Finally, the disabled man manages to corner Tadashi and reveal his past with Mr. Okabe. It has to do with their time at Guadalcanal during World War Two and what they were forced to do to survive. It’s a disturbing tale.
Orochi uses her powers to invade Mr. Okabe’s dreams and get partial confirmation of what happened.
Tadashi doesn’t talk to his father about what he’s learned, but instead avoids him, no longer trusting him as a human being. Then an incident happens that traps him and some classmates in a cave for several hours. The other boys lie about what happened, casting him as a villain. Mr. Okabe is fooled by the rumors.
Now that father and son both no longer trust each other, it might be a bad time to go mountain climbing together. The ending is ambiguous.
This is amazingly strong stuff for a comic book aimed at teenage boys, and sensitive readers might want to skip this one as the backstory goes into detail about how the soldiers became “beasts.”
The art remains excellent, and these are both impressive stories in different ways. Recommended to horror fans, especially those who read the first two volumes....more
The “Cat-Eyed Boy” is the son of a nekomata cat monster who for reasons unknown but probably involving infidelity, was born far more humanoid in appeaThe “Cat-Eyed Boy” is the son of a nekomata cat monster who for reasons unknown but probably involving infidelity, was born far more humanoid in appearance than his parents. His mother died in childbirth and his putative father abandoned him some months later at a human shrine. Never given a real name, Cat-Eyed Boy is too monstrous in appearance to fit in human society but too human to be accepted by the youkai. He wanders from town to town, living in people’s attics, but wherever he goes, strange things happen.
This horror manga ran from 1967-69, with a brief revival in 1976, by the same creator as Orochi, which I’ve reviewed previously. This is one of two collected volumes.
“The Immortal Man” starts us off with Cat-Eyed Boy introducing himself. It’s been ten days since he started living in the attic of this mansion. Unfortunately, it appears that strange things are about to happen, not related to our mysterious lurker.
Wealthy kid Takeo is being chauffeured to school when the car hits an ugly man. When they get out of the car to check, the man has vanished. After school, Takeo is trying to get home in the rain when the ugly man offers to walk with him using an umbrella. Takeo isn’t willing to walk with him, but accepts a package from the man to give to his father. This package turns out to contain a severed forearm and hand. Not the ugly man’s, presumably as he had two hands.
The father recognizes the hand, and warns Takeo against further contact with the ugly man. Takeo’s not going to be able to keep that promise. The stranger is the “immortal man” of the title who can regenerate from wounds or missing body parts. And he claims to be Takeo’s real father.
Interestingly, it’s never made clear that the immortal man is the bad guy here per se. His behavior is certainly creepy, and one of his severed limbs regenerates on its own to become a monster, but we’re not given any proof that he’s lying and Takeo’s father is telling the truth. Nor do we learn any details of their shared past beyond that it might be blackmail material.
“The Ugly Demon” has a title character who’s born hideously deformed, shunned and reviled by everyone except his father. He responds to this abuse by becoming cruel, torturing and killing animals. No plastic surgeon could help. When he was twelve, he developed a crush on a pretty girl named Yuko. The “demon” stalked her and eventually wrote a letter asking her to be his friend. That ended exactly the way you’d expect. After that, she had a bodyguard who beat the demon if caught anywhere near Yuko.
Shortly thereafter, his father and he left town and seemingly disappeared.
Cat-Eyed Boy comes into the story ten years later, looking for a new place to live. A dying man warns him of a “beast.” Shortly thereafter, near an abandoned factory, Cat-Eyed Boy runs across a man going on all fours, with a handsome face marred by a head scar. The man is feasting on a corpse, and snarls like a cat.
The feral man attacks, knocking the wind out of our protagonist. Before the fight can go further, a strange man appears and cracks a whip to control the beast man. As Cat-Eyed Boy faints, the man introduces himself as Professor Yokai.
Cat-Eyed Boy is taken captive, and learns that Professor Yokai is a mad scientist. He’s into brain transplants, and has already tested it on the feral man, exchanging his brain with that of a leopard. Shockingly, the man volunteered for this. It’s the Ugly Demon’s father, who hoped that Professor Yokai would be able to fix his son.
Ugly Demon rejects Cat-Eyed Boy as a possible transplant donor, as the youkai is also monstrous in appearance. He wants a handsome, strong body that will allow him to be admired by society. But he’s going to use it to make “normal looking” people suffer.
As it happens, there’s a handsome young man who has been in a car accident and suffered terminal brain damage without marring his face or physique. Time for that brain transplant! But after what he’s suffered at the hands of Ugly Demon, Cat-Eyed Boy isn’t going to let the newly handsome monster have his own way.
It’s pretty clear that Umezz saw The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958).
“The Tsunami Summoners” is Cat-Eyed Boy’s origin story. After being left at the Nio (fierce protective spirit) shrine, the infant was cared for by Mimi, a spinster who wanted a child so much that she prayed to the Nio statue, and was willing to overlook the baby’s uncanny appearance. As he grew older, the Cat-Eyed Boy became mischievous, stealing whenever he was hungry, but Mimi tried to instill basic morality in him.
Eventually, the village priestess starts getting omens of doom approaching the community. It’s so overwhelming that she can’t get a reading on why the doom is coming, but the villagers decide it must somehow be the fault of Cat-Eyed Boy. It’s actually the Tsunami Summoners, youkai that disguise themselves as rocks and possess humans to take them to as high a place as possible, then summon a tsunami. They’ve been barred from the area for a long time by the Nio, but the Tsunami Summoners have a plan to get around that.
Cat-Eyed Boy tries to warn the villagers of the real threat, but even when he saves a baby from the ensuing flood, the villagers just assume that he was trying to eat the infant and is somehow responsible for the Tsunami Summoners being there. (“Cat-Eyed Boy: Threat or Menace?”)
“The One-Legged Monster of Oudai” has Cat-Eyed Boy crossing the title mountain when he sees a nail in a tree. He reaches towards it out of curiosity and it pops out of the tree, burying itself in his flesh. This is the work of the One-Legged Monster, and no matter what Cat-Eyed Boy does, he cannot remove the nail as it gets larger.
Meanwhile in nearby N City, a boy named Natsuo is an avid insect collector. He’s often been to Oudai to look for rare and unusual specimens. He does enjoy the local fame he’s getting for his collection, but his real joy is in stabbing the bugs to death with pins to mount them.
It turns out that the One-Legged Monster is angry at Natsuo for his unnecessary cruelty towards insects, and is using the Cat-Eyed Boy as a mobility aid to get its revenge. Our protagonist is not at all pleased at being used, but realizes that Natsuo was not an innocent.
“The Band of One Hundred Monsters” moves us into major plotline territory and only the first half is in this volume. Cat-Eyed Boy moves into the attic of a boarding house, one of the tenants being manga artist Taro Amadera. As it happens, Amadera-sensei specializes in horror manga featuring scary monsters, Umezz-sensei poking a bit of fun at himself.
Amadera is targeted by The Band of One Hundred Monsters (there are not actually one hundred members) a terrorist organization. As their leader Kodomo (“Child”) explains, despite their monstrous appearances and strange powers, the members of the gang are not in fact youkai but humans born that way, what Marvel Comics fans would call “mutants.” They resent being outcasts for their looks and have a hit list of particularly obnoxious “normal” humans that they plan to mutilate and humiliate.
The manga artist is their target because of his mean depictions of monsters. The band invites Cat-Eyed Boy to join them, but as he’s a “genuine” monster, he feels no kinship with “humans”, no matter how monstrous they look.
After the manga artist, the band targets a corrupt politician, and then a wealthy family that is rejoicing at the death of the miserly patriarch, but all intending to get rid of the others for the money.
Can the Cat-Eyed Boy protect the humans from the Band of One Hundred Monsters? Does he even want to?
There’s a certain amount of overlap between the themes of Cat-Eyed Boy and Orochi, they’re both drifters who become involved with weird events they stumble across. But while Orochi appears human enough to blend in, and is often the only overtly supernatural thing in her stories, Cat-Eyed Boy will never be able to pass as a normal or even slightly odd human, and battles other genuinely unnatural threats. His appearance tells against him, and it’s always assumed by the humans that he’s somehow to blame for the bad things happening. And honestly, he’s kind of a jerk, who’s more likely to fight the baddie of the story because they’ve personally offended him than that it’s the right thing to do.
Indeed, the main thing separating Cat-Eyed Boy from some of the villains of these stories is that he hasn’t allowed his hardships to turn him into someone who is deliberately cruel to others. He may have a low opinion of humans, but won’t usually go out of his way to do more than prank them. And every so often, he’ll do something genuinely nice. Not that this ever helps him gain acceptance.
Oh, and every so often, he’ll talk directly to the reader. “I know…I’ll stay at your house.” pointing his finger directly out of the panel.
There’s some cool monster designs and power usage, particularly in the One Hundred Monsters storyline. But other monster designs are just gross, and may put off the casual reader.
Content note: Violence, often fatal. Lots of body horror. Child abuse and cruelty to animals. Prejudice against people who don’t look sufficiently “human.”
This is old-fashioned horror for teenage boys, less cerebral than Orochi (which wasn’t all that deep itself.) Some of the endings are more open than others, with the menace not so much over as just gone. It was popular enough to spawn an anime (which is mostly still images with special effects) and a 2006 live action movie (not currently available in English.) Recommended to horror fans, but you may want to order it from the library....more
Kazuki Makabe lives on Tatsumiyajima, an isolated island far off the coast of Japan. He’s looking forward to leaving the island one year from now, oneKazuki Makabe lives on Tatsumiyajima, an isolated island far off the coast of Japan. He’s looking forward to leaving the island one year from now, one way or another, whether to go to a mainland school or join a fishing boat crew. He’s the best athlete on the island, but doesn’t think too much of it–I mean, #1 of 60 boys his age isn’t that much to brag about. He has a couple of friends, but he hasn’t talked to his former best friend Soshi in nearly five years. That, and many other things, is about to change.
This “light novel” is based on the first few episodes of Fafner in the Azure: Dead Aggressor, an anime that aired in 2004. It had character designs by the people from Gundam Seed, but the sensibilities are much closer to Evangelion.
It turns out that Japan, and most of the Earth, has been invaded by hive-mind aliens called Festum, who have basically won, with only remote outposts left to resist. Tatsumiyajima turns out to be an artificial mobile island that’s been covered by a holographic “mirror” that rendered it invisible from the outside. Unfortunately, the telepathic Festum have finally narrowed down the stray thoughts they’ve been picking up and located the island.
The humans were really close to being ready to defend themselves, with their Fafner mecha, piloted by the teenagers of the island (who’ve they’ve secretly been preparing since childhood). In just one more year, the program would have gone live. As it is, Kazuki’s the closest thing they have to a ready pilot, and Soshi to mission control, and they must work together to defend the island with the Fafner Mark Elf.
The novel reworks the first few episodes of the TV series, starting with an ambiguous prologue when the main characters are children who’ve found a broken radio.
Then we plunge right into a battle where Kazuki is a hardened warrior to demonstrate the basics of mecha vs. alien combat. (The Festum are, on the surface, divinely beautiful.) Badly wounded, Kazuki passes out and dreams of a time when he thought there was “peace.” This portion covers the day just before the invasion and his first mission, then a bit of the early training.
Then it’s back to the present, where Kazuki must deal with the fallout of the many battles he’s fought, and how it’s changed his relationships with the other main characters.
Good: The Festum are convincingly alien and menacing. The Ring Cycle theming for the mecha is interesting. There’s some intriguing hints at what’s been going on in the backstory.
Less good: There’s a lot of repetition in the battle and science fiction sections of the story. It’s meant to explain the more difficult/unfamiliar concepts to a young adult audience, but felt like word count padding since I would see the same explanation repeated three times in as many pages with almost identical wording. (It’s possible that the translation might have flattened some of the intended effect.)
Most of the story is told from a tight focus on Kazuki, the stoic loner type. We do get omniscient narrator hints as to what’s going on with other characters, but little to no development of relationships beyond Kazuki and Soshi’s. The very end of the flashback has Kazuki beginning to bond with his new battle partner, only for the ending to reveal she’s long dead.
Content note: Emotional abuse, body horror, death of sympathetic characters in war. Teenagers should be able to handle it.
This book is an alternate telling of the first plotline of the anime, and as such isn’t very satisfying on its own. The first season of the anime is readily available on the internet, and has a really good opening song “Shangri-la.” Try that first, and if you like it, see if you can track down this novelization for an expansion....more
Quick recap: Orochi is a seemingly immortal being in the shape of a young woman who can pass anywhere from high school to college age. While her name Quick recap: Orochi is a seemingly immortal being in the shape of a young woman who can pass anywhere from high school to college age. While her name evokes the eight-headed serpent of Japanese folklore, Orochi does not appear to be of ill intent. She’s motivated primarily by curiosity about the short-lived humans she dwells among, going from place to place and observing strange situations.
This volume contains three stories from the classic late Sixties horror manga.
“Prodigy” opens randomly at a street festival (with a shout-out to Kazuo Umezz’s other series about a mysterious being who gets involved with weird events, The Cat-Eyed Boy.) Orochi is following a young man who she’s been keeping tabs on since he was an infant. Yu Tachibana used to be a happy baby with doting parents. On his first birthday, a robber broke into the house, and in the ensuing struggle, Yu was stabbed in the neck.
Orochi lost contact with the family for a short time when they moved to Tokyo; by the time she finds them again, things have changed. Yu is shunned by other children because of his ugly neck scar. His mother has become obsessed with Yu’s academic achievement, forcing the preschooler to study rather than play, which the child naturally resents.
At school, Yu gets the derisive nickname “Books” because all he does is study, never playing or showing interest in fun (and the kids are still creeped out by the scar.) His mother is a demanding “education mama”, insisting on giving him a tutor to study subjects well in advance of what a normal child would be handling. His father has become something of an alcoholic.
At age eleven, Yu visits a library on the pretext of a social studies project, and reads a news story on the attack that scarred him. Suddenly, he stops fighting back against his mother’s domineering demands, and becomes a model student on the surface, though he has disturbing ideas about how to get ahead. Even so, Orochi is still worried about the child, and once he gets into high school, joins him as a classmate. The other students are still creeped out by him, but the bullying dies away as they mature a bit. Yu still doesn’t make any friends.
Finally, it’s time for Yu to test for admission into his father’s alma mater, K University. Time for the horrific twist!
“Home” tells the tale of Shoichi Sugiyama. He was raised in a remote farming community, and had a normal rural childhood. But in school, he became dissatisfied with the farming life so resolved to move to the big city on the invitation of a friend. Sugiyama vowed not to return until he’d made a success of himself.
But about a year in, his friend absconded with Sugiyama’s savings and clothing. At that point, Sugiyama found out the money he’d given his friend for rent had not been paid to the landlady, and the alleged friend had also forged his name on multiple debt documents to get enough money to blow town for good. Sugiyama was also forced to leave town for his own safety and took up life under a different name, sinking into gang life.
Orochi comes across Sugiyama again a few years later, just as he gets into a brawl. Orochi helps him out with her powers, but he is still badly injured and lies at the brink of death. Orochi decides to travel to Sugiyama’s home town in hopes of finding someone (his parents perhaps?) to notify and perhaps convince to come for the dying man.
To her surprise, Sugiyama is also on the train, looking much better, and ready to finally return home. When they get to the village, it is much the same as when they left it. At first. As Sugiyama settles in with his still living parents, Orochi begins to notice there’s something wrong with the town. A childhood prank by Soichi Sugiyama may have unleashed a great evil.
This is the most openly horrific of the stories in this volume. There’s a final twist that would have spoiled a lesser tale, but works well here.
“Key” opens with Orochi deciding to move into an apartment complex because she senses something interesting will happen there. The first person she meets is a little boy who gives her bad directions. Hiroyuki Watanabe is a brat who constantly fibs for no good reason, steals things he has no need for, and doesn’t study in school. Everyone except his parents calls him by his nickname “Liar”.
Liar’s reputation comes back to haunt him when he witnesses his neighbor apparently murdering her handicapped daughter. No one believes this tall tale. Well, almost no one. The parents of that little girl would like to have a word with him…alone. And no one is going to help a brat like Liar, when they all know he’s just fibbing to be mean to the nice couple.
Orochi’s snoopiness comes in handy here, and the story ends a bit more happily than it might otherwise have done. But Liar doesn’t appear to have fully learned his lesson.
Orochi remains an enigma in this volume, with almost nothing revealed about her personal past or exactly what kind of being she is. Her powers are ill-defined, but are notably weakened when she’s injured. She might do protagonistic things from time to time, especially in “Home” but is far more interested in being a meddling observer. The primary interest is the human stories going on around her.
The art is impressive, and gives a dark, gloomy feel to the stories whenever necessary.
That said, these are stock stories in their way, just very well done, so they may seem overly familiar, especially “Key”.
Content note: bloody violence, peril to children, child abuse.
If you liked the first volume, this one is also good value....more
**spoiler alert** Note: This review contains SPOILERS for earlier volumes of Asadora!
It is 1964, and the Tokyo Olympics are about to begin. But there **spoiler alert** Note: This review contains SPOILERS for earlier volumes of Asadora!
It is 1964, and the Tokyo Olympics are about to begin. But there has been a sighting of “that thing”, a gigantic creature of unknown origins, in the vicinity. If it can’t be driven off, the Olympics will have to be delayed or cancelled. The one person in a position to do anything is seventeen-year-old pilot Asa Asada, who has encountered “that thing” before during a typhoon. She takes off in a Piper Cub with Keiichi Nakaido, a college student whose deceased teacher left notes on possible weaknesses of the monster. Meanwhile, two of Asa’s classmates face their own troubles.
This is the latest manga series from Naoki Urasawa, who’s produced such hits as Twentieth Century Boys and Monster. He’s known for having multiple subplots and intriguing characters, and trying out different genres. In this case, it seems to be a kaiju (giant monster ala Godzilla) story, but there’s other things going on.
Asa’s mentor, Haruo Kasuga, was a fighter pilot during World War Two who fell on hard times after the war. He kidnapped Asa as a child, but a typhoon happened, the two had to work together to survive, and became friends. Now he runs a small aviation business. Mr. Kasuga isn’t available for the mission as he’s taking responsibility for an auto accident caused by a tabloid reporter who’s been stalking Asa.
Asa’s friend Yoneko “Yone” Nakajima has been scouted by an entertainment agent, who turns out to be underprepared for the interview, as the only dress he has in stock is embarrassingly undersized. (He has also fallen on hard times.) Yone’s “guardian” Eisaku Noro shows up to protect her interests, but it turns out he’s been in the entertainment industry himself, and Yone is in for more embarrassment.
Miyako, Asa’s other school friend, was tailing Yone because she wants to break into show business herself, but got lost in a bad neighborhood. Miyako is threatened by a gang of juvenile hooligans, but before anything truly bad happens is rescued and introduced to the world of professional wrestling.
Back in the main plot, Asa confronts “that thing” and we learn that she may have a prophecy about her.
While most of the immediate plotlines are resolved by the end of the volume, we’re still in the early part of this manga, so there’s sure to be some major twists ahead.
Urasawa’s art remains impressive, the characters are easy to tell apart (important in a large cast), and the writing is intriguing. The subplots are just as important to the characters experiencing them as the main kaiju invasion is to the story.
The period setting also allows for interesting detail. The slang term “transistor glamour” is used for an attractive petite woman because at the time transistor technology was the new hotness. The agent is floundering because entertainment trends are changing in ways he doesn’t understand. The war generation is hitting middle age, though some appear to have aged more rapidly than others.
Content note: Yone dons a couple of “fanservice” outfits at the request of the agent and her guardian, and isn’t comfortable with this. Miyako is threatened with sexual assault.
It’s not clear exactly where the series is going from here given Urasawa’s love of twisty plots, but past experience leads me to believe the journey will be interesting and fun. Recommended to manga fans who are willing to wait for answers....more
Despite her rather ominous name, Orochi doesn’t stand out in a crowd. She appears to be a moderately attractive woman in her early twenties. If you saDespite her rather ominous name, Orochi doesn’t stand out in a crowd. She appears to be a moderately attractive woman in her early twenties. If you saw her on the street, you might not notice her at all. But Orochi isn’t quite human, and has strange powers. She doesn’t seem to be evil, but her perspective is that of an outsider, and so she inserts herself into people’s lives and strange situations.
Orochi is the continuing character in a series of horror manga by Kazuo Umezz, who was big in his day and influenced Junji Ito. Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch, which I’ve previously reviewed, was based on one of his stories. This fancy hardcover volume collects two of the tales of Orochi.
“Sisters” begins with Orochi just trying to get out of the rain. One of her gifts is to make people think she’s someone who is supposed to be there, and the beautiful woman who opens the door accepts Orochi as the new maid. Rumi and her equally beautiful sister Emi claim to live alone save for an “animal” on the upper floor. It’s actually their hideously deformed mother.
It seems that the women of this family are under a curse, or perhaps a rare genetic disorder. They are beautiful until about their eighteenth birthday, then develop moles, starting with their foreheads and fingers, but eventually covering their entire skin in dark lumps. Emi is almost eighteen, and knows she should break up with her boyfriend, but he’s also her only comfort.
The mother is now to the point where the skin growths have destroyed her health, but before she dies, she whispers a secret to Rumi. This secret turns the sisters against each other, and the story ends in tragedy.
Through all this, Orochi is mostly a passive observer. Her first intention is to serve the sisters as a maid until they die, but she’s tossed out of the house after a particularly violent quarrel between Emi and her boyfriend. (Orochi is still able to see what goes on by looking through the eyes of a portrait in the house.)
“Bones”: We are introduced to a woman named Chie who’s had a hard life. Her mother died in childbirth. Her father was an alcoholic who neglected and abused her, and when he remarried, her stepmother did the same. Despite this, Chie grew up to be a rare beauty. Her father sold her to the first man who came up with a decent bride price.
Chie’s luck had at last turned, for Saburo truly loved her, and was a kind man. All was well for a few years, until he was hit by a car and crippled. This is where Orochi initially comes into the story, as she’s now working as a nurse in an Izu hospital. The initial prognosis is that it will take three years for him to fully recover. But with luck and hard work, Saburo is soon well enough to leave the hospital and recover at home. Chie gets a job to support them. Soon enough, Saburo is able to walk around outside–and then falls off a cliff and dies.
Chie is inconsolable and calls for her husband to return to the land of the living. Orochi, touched by Chie’s grief, decides to grant her wish. She creates an effigy in Saburo’s image, so that she can insert Saburo’s spirit into it, giving him a new body. However, this is a horror story, and Orochi’s first attempt at raising the dead. The effigy fails to animate, but Saburo’s rotting corpse is suddenly alive. Mostly.
Saburo winds up at the hospital, but when Orochi goes to notify Chie of this good news, she discovers that the woman has abruptly remarried and moved with no forwarding address. Saburo disappears from the hospital, and Orochi also leaves town.
Two years later, Orochi (still wearing the same nurse uniform!) finds Chie and her new baby. Chie seems less happy than Orochi expected that Saburo is back from the dead. Orochi off-screen gets a job with a local doctor as a nurse (that mind-warping effect must make job interviews a snap.) Saburo eventually shows up, but he’s changed, and I don’t mean just having more body parts drop off!
Has Orochi learned her lesson about meddling in human affairs? This is only the first volume, so I doubt it.
The art is excellent, and sets the mood–you can really see where it influenced Ito. There’s a bit of same-face when it comes to pretty women, so we only know which ones are supposed to be especially beautiful by the dialogue and narration.
The first story is “gothic horror”; you could make Orochi a normal maid and not need any outright supernatural element at all. The second, on the other hand, puts the walking corpse front and center for much of the run time. Orochi’s an enigma at this point in the series, with no clues as to what she really is, her full motivations or her background.
The hardcover is a bit spendy, you may want to see if your local library can get you a copy to read. Recommended to fans of old-style manga horror....more
Charlene “Charlie” Bravo was an excellent basketball player in high school, and got a scholarship to State. But for various reasons, her freshman yearCharlene “Charlie” Bravo was an excellent basketball player in high school, and got a scholarship to State. But for various reasons, her freshman year was a disaster, and Charlie has transferred to the Georgia O’Keefe College of Arts and Subtle Dramatics to focus on her film major. Joining another basketball team is off the menu! But obsessive organizer Olivia Bates has other ideas.
Despite considerable initial resistance, fueled by Charlie’s anxiety and trust issues, Olivia and the rest of the prospective team win her over. In addition, Olivia and Charlie seem to be forming a more personal bond.
The characters are in college, but there’s nothing in this volume that a senior high-aged reader couldn’t handle. Not a lot of time is spent on explaining the rules or the technical side of basketball, as readers are expected to already know these details. And the game itself is relatively low-stakes as they’re participating in a “fun league” for small specialty colleges. (Their first match is against the Cuddly Retrievers of a veterinary school.)
Instead, most of the page space is devoted to character interactions, especially between Charlie and Olivia. (We see almost nothing of Charlie’s roommate, who isn’t happy to be sharing a room.)
There’s a fair amount of diverse representation here, including different ethnic backgrounds, religions, sexual preferences and genders. this being a modern college story, all this is taken as granted by the characters.
While all of the characters have some irritating traits, they come across as sympathetic and worth rooting for.
Most of the drama in this first issue is Charlie dealing with her issues and slowly opening up to Olivia. There’s a cliffhanger at the end of this volume that’s more about the basketball part of the plot, and some bits of background are clearly being held back for reveals later.
The art is nice, and it’s easy to tell the main characters apart. (Diversity helps!)
If lesbian sports romance is your thing, I highly recommend this volume....more
A churchyard in a village not too far from Cambridge in England has one too many bodies in its graves. The victim, a respected organist, was entombed A churchyard in a village not too far from Cambridge in England has one too many bodies in its graves. The victim, a respected organist, was entombed alive, and odd details about the scene make it clear that this was murder most foul. Detective Chief Inspector Archie Penrose is called in from Scotland Yard to investigate.
One of the clues brings DCI Penrose to Cambridge itself, where the victim was a student at King’s College before World War One. As it happens, Penrose’s good friend, mystery writer Josephine Tey is in town, house-sitting for her very good friend Marta. The days are turning chill as Armistice Day approaches, but there’s something else that is bringing fear to the university town–a series of sexual assaults on young women.
This is the seventh in a series of mystery books starring a fictionalized version of author Josephine Tey. For starters, in the books this is her actual name, rather than being a nom de plume for Elizabeth MacKintosh (1896-1952). The real author is perhaps best remembered for her 1951 novel, The Daughter of Time, in which a hospitalized police detective amuses himself by investigating the supposed murder by Richard III of his nephews. But this story is set in approximately 1937, as it’s mentioned that Alfred Hitchcock is loosely adapting one of Tey’s books into a movie.
But Mr. Hitchcock is only mentioned; the primary literary influence here is M.R. James, once Dean of King’s College, and famous for his chilling ghost stories. The murderer seems to be taking inspiration from those stories, and all the victims were once in the King’s College Choir (which sings the Nine Lessons and Carols from whence the title derives.)
The subtitle on the cover is “some wounds never heal”; Inspector Penrose and some of the other characters are still carrying the scars from the War, while others are dealing with more personal wounds. Another theme of the book is kindness, given, withheld, found in unusual places and the devastating effects if kindness is taken away.
An important subplot is the romantic relationship between Inspector Penrose and his current (and former) lover Bridget. She’s been keeping a large secret from him that Marta (and thus Josephine) have learned about. Keeping this secret is a betrayal, but it’s not theirs to tell.
There’s a lot of glowing description of Cambridge’s architecture. I’ve only been there one day many years ago, so cannot speak to the accuracy of the descriptions, but the author lives there so presumably knows what she’s talking about. The author deliberately moved some 1970s events into the 1930s to fit them into this novel.
The murder mystery part of the book wraps up several chapters before the end, allowing the other plotlines to take the foreground. The ending is bittersweet at best; criminals have been found and taken off the streets, but the wounds they caused remain. (Content warning: rape, suicide.)
Some bits made me cry, but then I’m the sentimental sort. Recommended to fans of historical mysteries.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from a Goodreads giveaway for the purpose of writing this review. No other compensation was requested or offered....more
Akira Tsubaki is a normal 17-year-old high school student. New student Mikoto Urabe appears to be anything but normal. Her bangs cover her eyes, she sAkira Tsubaki is a normal 17-year-old high school student. New student Mikoto Urabe appears to be anything but normal. Her bangs cover her eyes, she sleeps during lunch and class breaks, bursts out laughing in the middle of class for no apparent reason and carries scissors in her panties. All very odd and mysterious. One day, Tsubaki wakes Urabe up after school is over, and notices that she’s left a puddle of drool on her desk. Impulsively, he tastes it.
That night, Tsubaki has a dream set in a bizarre cityscape, and he and Urabe dance together. A couple of days later, Tsubaki falls ill for a week. Urabe hears people talking about it and puts together what’s happened. She visits Tsubaki’s home, lying to Tsubaki’s older sister about why she’s there, and lets Tsubaki taste some of her drool off her finger. He feels better, and she explains that he’s now addicted to her spit. Why? “That’s just the way I am.”
Over time, Urabe lets Tsubaki taste her drool on a daily basis, and sometimes she tastes his. Eventually, they become a couple, though Tsubaki is still baffled by his mysterious girlfriend.
This seinen (young men’s) manga ran in the monthly Afternoon magazine, and this edition contains the first two Japanese volumes. The author mentions in his notes that the lead characters are seventeen so that there is a question as to whether sex will happen. (A couple of years younger, they definitely wouldn’t in this kind of story, a couple of years older, and they definitely would.) That doesn’t happen in this volume, though there is male-oriented fanservice and one outright nudity scene. Mr. Ueshiba has gone on record that he thinks too many young people rush straight to sex when they’re in love, and he wanted to show a couple enjoying other ways of connecting (some quite kinky) that don’t involve putting Tab A into Slot B.
Tsubaki, as the “normal” boy, is kind of bland. He has normal sexual urges and a pleasant way about him. He does quickly learn to let Urabe take the lead in how fast she wants to take the relationship and what they will be doing. He also figures out quickly ways of reassuring her about his faithfulness while still having other female friends.
Urabe is fiercely protective of her secrets. Where did she get her saliva-based psychic powers? How did she learn her ability to cut through anything with safety scissors? Why is she so sensitive about being touched without her permission? What does she do outside school when she’s not with Tsubaki? All deflected with “that’s just the way I am” or ignored. She’s also not one to ask unsolicited questions, so only slowly learns about Tsubaki’s background.
We do learn that swapping spit only has unusual effects with people Urabe has a connection of some kind with. She also turns out to be very normal in some ways, liking cute kittens and being shy about wearing a bikini. Her bedroom also looks normal, but her family is not home at the time so we don’t get any information on them.
There’s another couple that appears frequently, Tsubaki’s friend Ueno and his tiny sweetheart Oka (who becomes Urabe’s first female friend.) They have a more “normal” relationship and Oka helps Urabe open up a bit to social interaction and eating lunch.
As mentioned, there’s a fair amount of kinkiness and it’s very male-oriented–I think it will appeal most to senior high male readers and up who like romance with a bit of mysteriousness attached....more
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