Friday, October 03, 2008

A FEW MORE TOKYO ZOMBIE REVIEWS...

Really positive reviews are continuing to trickle in about Tokyo Zombie. Check out the latest I've found...



Daily Yomiuri Online (wow!)
Afro-haired Fujio and bald Mitsuo, the protagonists of Tokyo Zombie, are keen judoka who know all about this, so when Fujio inadvertently kills their boss during a disagreement at work, they know just the place to get rid of his body.

When they get there, they find a middle school gym teacher disposing of his former students. The man is literally dismembered (with the emphasis on member) by a naked woman who rises from the dead. It seems the mixture of sewage, garbage and rotting corpses on Dark Fuji has unleashed a plague of zombies.

All of this within the first 13 pages of this good example of heta uma, or "bad, but good," manga that, like the 2004 British zombie movie Shaun of the Dead, treats its gruesome subject with tongue firmly in cheek.


Disaster Year: 20XX
Just finished reading Tokyo Zombie. Dead people rise out of a rubbish tip! Bald and Afro martial arts blue collars must kick ass and drive gaudy trucks to survive! Expect swearing, pig surfing, and minutely observed renderings of mixed martial arts grappling. With a grin on my face I raced to my computer to look up author Yusaku Hanakuma.


PopCultureShock's Manga Recon
Any of this sound familiar? Zombie comedy? Gentrification? The poor laboring thanklessly to provide for the rich who live in furnished apartments? Zombie games? Believe it or not but these aren’t tributes or nods to any of the recent spate of zombie movies. No, in fact this book came out back in 1999, well before either of the movies that most people will compare it to. It’s almost enough to make one wonder whether or not Romero and Wright are closeted manga fans with hard drives full of scanlated volumes of underground horror series.


About.com's Deb Aoki
If you're looking for refined artwork, dynamic character development and complex plots, this might not be your thing. But if you appreciate manic, manly manga and over-the-top black humor, then Tokyo Zombie will not disappoint.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

by the way thanks for the copy of Tokyo Zombie. I received it and read it, and yeah I loved it.
It was funny and interesting and a very enjoyable read. =]

Chris Ready said...

Thanks for the link! Very kind of you. You have both done a superb job on Tokyo Zombie. If this book does well, can we expect to see more Afro and Hage adventures translated?

Ryan S said...

@Jaclyn: Glad it made it to you safely!

@reds: I'm really happy to hear that you enjoyed it. I'm not sure on exactly how well it's SELLING, but all the review for the book have been really, really positive. Hanakuma has a lot of other, wild books that I would love to see in English. Time will tell :)