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MPD Psycho
Publisher: Dark
Horse
Story: Eiji
Otsuka
Art: Sho-u
Tajima
Kazuhiko
Amamiya, a police detective with a split personality, is taken
out of jail to deal with an epidemic of gruesome serial killers.
Cannibals, amputation fetishists, psychotics who plant flowers
in their victims’ still-living brains ... each killer is more
horrible than the one before, and each one is linked by a
single clue: a barcode imprinted on their eye. A long-running
crime/horror classic, MPD Psycho (aka “Multiple Personality
Disorder Psycho”) is one of the most graphically violent manga
ever released in the US, a product of the decade that brought
Seven and The Silence of the Lambs to the public eye. The
subsidiary characters—a grunge TV journalist, a psychological
profiler, a token high school girl—are hip and cynical, often
inappropriately so, but Amamiya is a serious force of justice,
until his split personality takes over and he goes “bad cop.”
Like, really bad cop. Fans of guro manga (such as Suehiro
Maruo) will recognize the influence in MPD Psycho’s full-page
shots of women’s corpses mutilated in inventive ways. The
gore wouldn’t work if it weren’t so well-drawn; Tajima’s linework
is dark and fluid, with extremely realistic human anatomy,
sinister narrow-eyed faces, and glistening blood. Also check
out the Takashi Miike live-action adaptation and Otsuka’s
other manga The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. BACK
TO TOP.
My Heavenly Hockey Club
Publisher: Del
Rey
Writer: Ai
Morinaga
Like
Rumiko Takahashi, Ai Morinaga’s romantic comedies can appeal
to readers of both sexes; her art is boyish, her stories are
slapstick, and her teenage characters are hot. Unfortunately,
both of her translated series (CPM’s Duck Prince and ADV Manga’s
Your and My Secret) have gone on hiatus. Compared to her other
translated work, My Heavenly Hockey Club is a relatively conventional
shojo comedy, the story of a girl who just wants to sleep
and eat and how she ends up joining the school hockey club
with five good-looking guys who never actually play any hockey.
Will Hana Suzuki end up falling for Izumi Oda, the rich sophomore
who founded the club just so he’d have an excuse to travel
to away games in exotic destinations and eat local delicacies?
Or will she be grouchy because now she only gets 10 hours
of sleep at night? One thing’s for sure: you don’t have to
worry about a Morinaga series suddenly getting all serious
and depressing. The best jokes involve wacky (but surprisingly
realistic-looking) animals, including an amorous monkey met
at a hot springs, and a drooling bear who is recruited as
a goalie. BACK
TO TOP.
Street Fighter Alpha and Street
Fighter Sakura Ganbaru
Publisher: Udon
Writer: Masahiko
Nakahira
In
1996, I worked for a short-lived magazine called Game On!
USA that ran translations of fighting game manga, and so I
feel qualified to say: most video game manga sucks. One exception
is Masahiko Nakahira, previously known in America only for
Viz’s long-out-of-print Super Street Fighter II: Cammy.
Serialized in the now-defunct arcade game magazine Gamest,
Street Fighter Alpha follows the same formula as most licensed
adaptations—the whirlwind plot is just an excuse for
Charlie, Birdie, Dan, Rose, Sodom, and other Alpha characters
to show up one after the other—but Nakahira’s
art is unusually good, with attractive characters, fantastic
action scenes, and every “shoryuken” looking just
like a sprite from the CPS-2 engine. The story follows martial
artist Ryu across Paris, Florida, and the Amazon, fighting
Shadaloo and trying to control the “Dark Hadou”
power inside him, which periodically transforms him into an
unstoppable killing machine. (Nakahira’s so-called “Evil
Ryu” later appeared in the Street Fighter Alpha sequels.)
Coming out in July, Street Fighter Sakura Ganbaru is a light
spinoff based on the Alpha character Sakura, the earnest schoolgirl
martial artist who wants to be just like Ryu except that her
panties flash every time she does anything. (Sakura only shows
up at the very end of the Alpha manga.) As a high school martial
arts comedy, it’s less dramatic than Alpha, but you
do get to see Sakura fighting on the wing of a flying plane
and meeting her rival, Karin, another one of Nakahira’s
inventions that Capcom paid the compliment of using in a game.
If you have any interest in the Street Fighter games, these
comics should be on top of the heap. (Udon, how about translating
Mami Itoh’s Capcom manga next?) BACK
TO TOP.
Peace Maker
Publisher: Tokyo
Pop
Story and Art: Nanae
Chrono
The
anime aired on American cable TV, and the sequel series Peacemaker
Kurogane was briefly licensed by ADV Manga, but the original
Peace Maker manga has never been translated until now. Set
in 1864 Japan, this series combines imaginary samurai/ninja
intrigue with real historical figures from the Shinsengumi,
the elite Shogunate police force that protected the city of
Kyoto. (The much different Kaze Hikaru involves the same group.)
After their parents are murdered, Tetsunosuke, the childish,
spiky-haired hero, and Tatsunosuke, his pacifist older brother,
seek to join the historical Shinsengumi. But their motives
are very different; Tetsu wants to grow stronger and get revenge,
while Tatsu, an accountant rather than a samurai, seeks the
path of forgiveness. In Chrono’s hands, the Shinsengumi
is full of bishônen innuendo, comedy, and occasional
shocking violence. Unfortunately, the art has its weak points,
and the series has been on hiatus in Japan for over a year—will
Chrono ever finish it? BACK
TO TOP.
Pretty Face
Publisher: Viz
Media
Story and Art: Yasuhiro
Kano
Now
this is a weird manga. Masashi Rando, a short but tough teenage
martial artist, is caught in a bus accident and presumed dead.
A year later, he awakes from his coma to find that his horribly
burned face has been surgically reconstructed ... to look
just like Rina, the girl he has a crush on! Turns out the
plastic surgeon used the photo in Rando’s wallet as
the model for the reconstruction, and now Rando has the head
of a cute girl. While running around the streets trying to
figure out what to do with his life, he is mistaken for Rina’s
long-lost twin sister and adopted into her family, leading
to one of the most bizarre cross-dressing comedies imaginable.
Yasuhiro Kano is mostly known as a light novel illustrator,
so his artwork is precise and detailed, but his wacked-out
facial expressions are as hilarious as his character designs
are pretty. Ridiculous twists and turns, gender confusion,
and great art. BACK
TO TOP.
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OTAKU
USA. Copyright 2007. |
