After many busy weeks and months, we're EXTREMELY pleased to present a new Yoshida Sensha scanlation! As many of you know, bringing Uncle Sensha to English audiences was our original mandate for starting this blog, and so we're geeked to get back to our gag strip roots.
That said, this comic (translated by yours truly, lettered and touched-up immaculately by Evan, per usual) takes Yoshida Sensha's yon-koma sensibilities to previously unknown scales. How can you argue with 19 pages of loincloths, monkeys, muskets, fastballs and curveballs? (Answer: YOU CAN'T). Please enjoy, and let us know what you think in the comments!
Short news tidbit that cracked me up. Details taken from this article out of South Africa (Especially notable bits in bold by me).
Shock at horror cartoonist's stripy plans
Tokyo - Kazuo Umezu, the father of a Japanese genre of gory comics, is also causing horror for his neighbours because of a plan to paint his new house in vivid red-and-white stripes.
The skinny cartoonist with curly hair is often seen wearing bold red-and-white stripes, a habit attributed to his fantasies of being a pirate.
"Red and white stripes are my trademark and I planned to paint them somewhere on the house," the 70-year-old told the private TBS network.
"But it was said to destroy the landscape," he said. "I was in high spirits but now I'm deeply troubled."
Umezu says he has not broken any law and argues that his house in the quiet backstreets of the trendy Kichijoji area would be "beautiful."
But some residents are not amused and have fought to block him.
"Please understand our mental suffering as we have to live with the view no matter if we like it or not. This is nothing but violence of colours," one resident said before television cameras.
"My heart is also daubed over in red and white," she said.
The two sides are seeking reconciliation through court arbitration.
Umezu already has a house painted yellow in another part in Tokyo and a red-white striped resort house in the central mountain town of Nagano.
He pioneered horror cartoons in the 1960s. He also ventured into the world of comics in the 1970s and scored a huge hit with a series featuring a kindergarten brat who does everything to upset adults.
A similar controversy erupted last year after Italy built a red 12-storey cultural institute in central Tokyo, with Tokyo's governor saying it jarred sombre Japanese sensitivities.
Check out a clip of the Japanese TV news coverage on the Umezu house controversy from our friend Clay, about 1:50 in to the video:
Sorry for the latest posting drought. I blame... the climate crisis? Actually, I'm just a lazy sod with a job that's been keeping me insanely busy. New posts soon, with a huge batch of reviews, scans from Junji Ito's newest collection (a bootleg Chinese copy, but still...) and other goodies.
Meanwhile, let me present another outstanding scanlation from the one-man Italian powerhouse, Anonymous K. We've been emailing over the past few weeks, and he's given us permission to post more of his Shintaro Kago scanlations. To note, he did all the scanning/translation/editing on these, and we're simply sharing the wealth.
Like ABSTRACTION, Kago gives us more formalist musings and sex comedy in BLOW-UP. Be warned, right under the surface is another mindfuck grenade waiting to blow up in your face. As with before, it's not singularly graphic, but nudity/sexual imagery permeates throughout and make this very NSFW.
This is another you just have to see to believe. Enjoy, and leave feedback/praise for Anonymous K in the comments!
Sorry for the lack of posts this past week or so! The two main reasons for things being quiet on my end were: 1) I was on relaxing, getaway vacation from July 4th until the end of the weekend and 2) It's impossible to top that Shintaro Kago scanlation. Right?
(Oh, and on the Shintaro Kago scanlation tip, we've actually just heard from the guy that did the Abstraction scanlation, and will be talking to him about hosting and posting his other Kago comics here. He's done some impressive stuff.)
Here's to posting more frequently again, starting today! First off, here's an interesting read from Philip Simon, the editor of MPD Psycho. This was posted in late May on the Manga Zone section of the Dark Horse site. I found it an interesting read on their approach to this infamous, fan-favorite title.
Also, a quick note-- Philip talks about MPD translator Kumar Sivasubramanian, who I have a fanboy manga crush on. In addition to his work on MPD, Kumar produced one of the best recent translations for another DH title, Octopus Girl. Seriously, this dude has talent.
MPD-PSYCHO: NERVOUS LAUGHTER AND EMERGENCY PERSONALITIES By Philip Simon - Updated 5/22/2007
When I first looked through the eleven existing Japanese volumes of MPD-PSYCHO, I was struck by Sho-u Tajima's arresting art style and, sure, those scenes of death and mutilation that everyone's talking about and anticipating. However, when Kumar Sivasubramanian's English-language translations started coming in (e-mailed from Australia to my Dark Horse computer in Oregon), I found that I was struck more by the humor that writer Eiji Otsuka has peppered throughout this story than the violence. I was surprised that a book with such a gruesome, sensational reputation could be so funny--dark humor, slapstick humor, and a little nervous laughter on my part--so be watchful for Sasayama's exaggerated personality, a guerrilla journalist's curiously hip eye patches, chocolate mousse cake, and the jaded banter between cops, private detectives, and their somewhat sane companions and tagalongs.
If you're not familiar with this series, MPD-PSYCHO is a gory and complex tale. The first few volumes probe into the troubled life (and past) of an ex-cop who suffers from dissociative identity disorder. After an encounter with a serial killer hits too close to home, this good cop--Yosuke Kobayashi--winds up doing prison time for act of violence supposedly committed by another personality inside him. When Kobayashi can't deal with certain pressures or situations, he shifts to an alternative self. Upon his release, he's invited to join the Isono Criminal Research Lab to assist in solving grisly murder cases. (The Isono team is somewhat similar to the colorful investigative team in the Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service manga, also written by Eiji Otsuka and also published by Dark Horse Manga.) Kobayashi becomes, literally, a multiple personality detective, now going by the name Kazuhiko Amamiya. We'll be providing character charts as the series rolls on, and there will be plenty of names for you to keep track of as the body count climbs.
The intelligent, problem-solving Kazuhiko Amamiya . . . driven ex-cop Yosuke Kobayashi . . . the ruthless (murderer?) Shinji Nishizono . . . and the tentative, stuttering (murderer?) Kiyoshi Murata are all in the same body, and Amamiya, for the most part, is in charge. He's the voice we first hear and the personality we first meet when MPD-PSYCHO begins. Amamiya's on a quest to figure out which personality is his true core personality, his real voice. Looking at it this way, MPD-PSYCHO can be seen as a very personal chronicle of one man's fall and his attempt to sort his life out and find emotional balance. It's also a fun, grisly thrill ride, with Amamiya acting as our "tour guide" from twisted case to twisted case and with the team of Otsuka and Tajima pushing the boundaries of fear with their creative, fictional murders.
Actually, each new crime that the Isono team investigates seems to be linked to a wide-reaching "Barcode Puzzle," the influential pop star Lucy Monostone, or the shadowy Gakuso Organization. So enjoy each read for the strange deaths, mysteries, and shock value fun, but keep looking at how a larger mystery evolves. As each book tops the last in brutality, each book also adds more layers to an overall puzzle and more links to other MPD-PSYCHO volumes. Oh, and be ready to be surprised--not only by a manga that lives up to its sensational reputation, but by some comic moments that Otsuka and Tajima have snuck in just to make sure you're breathing.
I'd like to mention, too, that Dark Horse Manga is releasing every MPD-PSYCHO volume completely uncensored--a promise we were able to make to Kadokawa Shoten Publishing when we were in the process of acquiring English-language rights. As the project's editor, I am quite proud to be a part of the team that's finally bringing this work of art to English-language readers. I'm also proud to be a part of a publishing company that values creativity, freedom of speech, and creator rights as much as Dark Horse does. As a teenager, I discovered the works of William S. Burroughs and Henry Miller at my local library (both banned authors at some point), and they changed the way I thought about writing and literature. I feel that it's necessary to trumpet and support works of art that push boundaries, instigate discussions, and explore concepts and situations that should never happen in the real world--but are so damn enticing (and perhaps necessary) because they exercise and exorcize our minds. MPD-PSYCHO is such a book, and I can't wait to read your reactions to it. Please visit our manga message boards and share your thoughts.
Okay, so that was a lot of text (and I didn't even write it). To make this post a little more worthwhile, here are the original Japanese covers for MPD Psycho 1-11:
I have usually refrained from posting/hosting other people's scanlations, mostly because I'd rather focus on MYSELF (yes, the ego knows no bounds!). Seriously though, it's fairly easy to do a little detective work and find other scanlator groups tackling various genres, with a wide variety of specialties and philosphies. (For folks that dig what we've done in the past, I'd recommend the blog Mangaijin for thoughtful scanlation recommendations and commentary.)
But, this week I've decided to start up a new category of posts (aptly tagged other people's scanlations) to highlight comics that rattled/impressed me or were just simply too strange and interesting to not pass on to you guys. The impetus for this was a 16-page comic I just found when trolling Blog Search for manga gossip, posted on one of those "DUDE, CHECK OUT HOW WEIRD JAPAN IS" forum threads. This one hails from infamous Ero-Guro manga maestro Shintago Kago. Kago's short 'Punctures' is probably his most famous (and least explicit) comic English-speakers know, and was featured in Secret Comics Japan.
I'm gonna keep this short, because ABSTRACTION is a comic you simply have to see to believe. It's distilled surrealism and fourth wall smashing, like Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch meets Animal Man, as filtered through some strange Dali-meets-Scott McCloud formal and experimental impulse. YEAH-- I WAS SCRATCHING MY HEAD TOO. BUT JEEEZ, IS IT GREAT.
Kago caveat: While this strip doesn't include the kind of mutilation/incest/sexual violence junk you might rightfully associate with his manga, this one is definitely NSFW due to some sex/nudity and gore imagery--- on par with a Lynch flick or Un Chien Andalou at worst.
OK, JUST READ THIS THING, AND THANK ME (and Anonymous K, the scanlator who worked on this) LATER!
This is a quick post before the weekend starts. Most of you have probably read volume two of Junji Ito's Gyo, and would agree that the bonus story The Enigma of Amigara Fault is absolutely horrifying and great. If you haven't read it, you can click here and/or pick up a copy of the Viz re-release of Gyo this Fall.
On 4chan and other imageboards, the haunting DRR DRR DRR sound effect became a faddish meme for a while, and someone created this parody; I just found it on someone's LJ this week and wanted to share the wealth.
Somehow in my previous guide to Kazuo Umezu's page, I missed one of the most fundamentally awesome bits: materials and instructions for creating your own OVERSIZED GWASHI HAND!
These files are taken from the GWASHI page of Umezz's site (in Japanese). Click the images below for the printer-ready oversized hands.
SABARA HAND
GWASHI HAND 1
GWASHI HAND 2
Being the generous dude that he is, Umezu also created three How-To comics for your own GWASHI hands. It's basically: 1. Print it out (duh) on 2 sheets (or bigger) 2. Glue it to something study 3. Tape a string to the back of the hand 4. Be careful when using scissors (ohhhh, you'll see).
When you're done, it should look like this on the back:
CLICK! CLICK! for steps:
INSTRUCTIONS #1
INSTRUCTIONS #2
INSTRUCTIONS #3
And if you make one, SEND US a picture of you posing with it to samehatATgmail.com!
On Tuesday I caught a great radio program on my local NPR station, KQED. They featured an hour-long discussion with a few of my favorite mangaologists on the legacy of Osamu Tezuka and the current state of manga in America. Forum explores the growth of Manga, a form of serialized comics extremely popular in Japan. Host: Michael Krasny Guests: Carl Horn, the Manga editor for Dark Horse Comics Fred Schodt, author of "Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics" and "The Astro Boy Essays." Schodt is also a translator and Tezuka Osamu historian. You can stream the show from their page or download it as an MP3 (right-click to save).
My impressions from the program (SPOILER ALERT!):
Schodt has a awesome voice. Also, he would make a really cool uncle.
Schodt is the go-to guy for discussing Tezuka, and talks anecdotes both here and in his latest book, The Astro Boy Essays, about his personal friendship with The God of Manga.
Horn compares & contrasts the American and Japanese comics industries. In the US, the '50s comics code killed off their "ability to create stories that ordinary people could relate to" and also "contributed to a narrative stereotyping of comic books in which the acceptable types of stories you could, not just in terms of nudity of violence but of world view, gradually narrowed."
Schodt says that translating manga into English has gotten easier and easier in the past 20 years. There was a time when early manga translators worried that American audiences wouldn't be able to handle the cultural details and exotic minutiae. There has been a mindmeld between young Americans and young Japanese in the past 15 years; American kids grow up eating sushi, sleeping on futons and are raised on a lot of Japanese ideas filtered through cultural exports. Gags, language puns and visual puns are very hard to translate, sure, but it's much easier to pitch things now than when he originally was translating Phoenix, etc.
Horn notes the difference in geopolitical discourse about the Japanese in the 80s, which was always about Japanese politics and economy, and never about pop culture. Now it's the exact opposite, and the only thing the US media covers is Japan's "soft power" AKA pop culture. In response to an aside from the host about the Rape of Nanking, Horn notes that an upcoming issue of Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service has the crew going to Harbin, China and raising discussion about Unit 731 and other Japanese war crimes during WWII.
Schodt talks about flipping comics, and how the young, sophisticated readers of nowadays prefer the unflipped editions (that's you guys).
Schodt makes the point that what most Americans see as 'MANGA' is a few steps removed from how Japanese would describe it, for two reasons. One is the inherent (but shrinking) time lag between a manga's release and popularity in Japan and it's release in English in the U.S. The second is the natural filter of what is profitable and gets picked for release in the US; Looking simply at that, Schodt notes, Americans would think that manga is weighted heavily toward technology, atomics bombs, the internet. What is hard to see from here is that manga is much more broad in Japan that what bit of it we get exposed to here. American publishers are forced to focus on works that they think there are a market for; this means the most manga in English until now has been focused on young male readers.
Schodt discusses 'gekiga' as a reaction to Tezuka, as a realist movement read by construction workers and college students.
CALLERS AND THEIR WEIRD QUESTIONS:
Otaku culture notes from the guy who helped design the Hotel Tomo in San Francisco. The hotel is totally themed in anime/Japanese '90s pop culture, and is basically way over the top and insane.
Why do nerds and computer geeks specifically also like anime and manga?
Why do the humans all have big "Betty Boop" eyes in manga? (DERRRR) Short answer from Schodt: Blame Tezuka's love for Disney and early American animations.
Questions about Adolf series-- Was Tezuka anti-semitic? Schodt dismisses this and talks about the breadth of subject matters in contemporary manga. He also mentions that he's re-reading an autobiographical manga by "an aquaintance of mine" about his time in Japanese jail: Sounds like he's talking about Kazuichi Hanawa's Doing Time. Dang, Schodt knows everybody!
What do you recommend for a teenager studying Japanese that wants to try to read a manga in the original Japanese? Schodt says read a manga about something that you already like so it's easier to follow. Horn recommends the dude reads a Japanese manga magazine directed at young kids for practice.
Caller asks about anti-war themes in Tezuka's work, and Schodt expands on these themes in Astro Boy and Jungle Emperor. Schodt also says that in America, the manga that is very popular is about robots, destruction and conflict, but that this is based more on supply & demand than prevalence and reiterates that Japanese manga covers board games, salaryman life, etc.
All in all, it was a pretty excellent hour of radio. Man, I've never heard something mispronounce the word manga so many times in one hour though. MAIN-ga, MEHN-ga but never 'manga'-- Not to be the otaku king who gets fussy about that sort of thing, but jeeez.
Updated: SAME HAT stopped updating in 2013! For all new projects, please see Youth in Decline's sit and Instagram.
All fan translations of manga that you'll see in the archives are previously untranslated into English and range from comedy to horror to avant-absurd weirdness.
Same Hat is written & edited by Ryan. If you would like to contact me, please email: samehat @ gmail.com. Also, you can Ask me anything on the Same Hat Tumblr!
