MadInkBeard | Derik A Badman

Taniguchi, Jiro. A Distant Neighborhood v.1. Fanfare/Pontent Mon, 2009. ISBN: 9788492444281. I read the first volume (of two) of Jiro Taniguchi’s A Distant Neighborhood the other night. I am so far not very impressed. At this point the story reads like a partially autobiographical story that indulges in the often wished for desire to “do [...]

Over at Graphic Novel Reporter Review you can now read my article on “Cooking with Oishinbo”. Basically I read Oishinbo (read my previous review) and then made a Japanese meal using some dishes from the manga. Today’s post is an overview of cooking and the meal. It will be followed by four days of recipe [...]

I knew I’d love this manga as soon as I heard about it, a long running series about food, not where food is just part of the setting but rather an integral part of each story. Oishinbo has been running in Japan since 1983 and totals over 100 volumes. Viz is here translating the “A La Carte” series, a repackaging of stories from across the title’s run into thematic volumes. That immediately tells you one thing: you don’t read this for the larger narrative arc or the character development.

Here’s a list of my complete series on Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix (1967-88) (Translation in 11 volumes: Viz, 2003-2008). Starting overview of the series Volume 1: Dawn Volume 2: Future Volume 3: Yamato Volume 3: Space Volume 4: Karma Volume 5: Resurrection Volume 8: Robe of Feathers Volume 6: Nostalgia Volume 7 and 8: Civil War [...]

After a little delay I’ve reached the last Phoenix story: “Sun”. This story was published between 1986 and 1988 with Tezuka dying early in 1989. It was one of his last works, and the last completed in this series. That is not to say this is the ending of the series. It is said Tezuka planned to continue these stories so that the past and future time lines converged at some point in the present. In this regard, “Sun” is an aptly fitting place for the series to stop, as the story incorporates both a past and a future timeline into the same story.

I finished up my reading of Lone Wolf and Cub. I’m not going to post about the whole series, it’s just too much to deal with right now. Suffice to say, I really enjoyed the series, and do recommend it highly. It is both narratively and visually engaging with strong historical and thematic material too. [...]

“Strange Beings” is another short Phoenix story that takes place in the past (1468 AD). This one features a young woman, Sakon No Suke, who has been raised as a man by her warrior father. When her father gets a cancerous growth on his nose (like the oft-appearing Saruta), a female monk from a nearby temple is called for and claims that she will heal the man. Sakon goes with her manservant to the temple to kill the nun before she can go back and heal her father because Sakon wants her father to die so she can live as a woman.

Besides my ongoing reading/blogging on Tezuka’s Phoenix, I’ve also been making my way through two other “classic” manga series: Koike and Kojima’s Lone Wolf and Cub and Otomo’s Akira. These three works are very different creatures on many levels, but primarily for me in my changing and opposite reactions to re/reading them.

Two short stories in volume 9, and once again, for reasons that are not clear, Viz has put the stories out of order. This volume places “Strange Beings” before “Life,” yet both in the order Tezuka made them and in the structure of the series, “Life,” a future story, should precede “Strange Beings,” a past story. I’ll keep with Tezuka’s ordering, so first up is “Life.”

The story “Civil War” takes up most of two volumes in the Phoenix series. Again, the story goes back in time to the end of the 12th century, following a number of characters during a tumultuous time of civil war in Japan. From some recent reading, I know Tezuka used historical events as a backdrop for his stories, so I’m assuming a lot of the major events and leaders in this book have some historical basis. At times the various clans and factions and places do get hard to keep track of, some seem to appear out of nowhere with little context. I’m not sure chaos doesn’t help the story by making the civil war a little more hard to grasp.

Nostalgia” originally appeared from 1976-1978, five years after the previous Phoenix story, “Robe of Feathers.” It is another futuristic story, which, according to that handy chart in the back of the books, takes place approximately in the 25th century. This is one of the only stories that does not give an explicit date at its beginning.

Tezuka, Osamu. Phoenix Vol. 8: Civil War (Part Two) and Robe of Feathers (1980, 1971). Viz, 2006. ISBN: 9781421505183. See previous post on Phoenix Vol. 5: Resurrection. It may seem I’m posting out of order, skipping from Volume 5 to Volume 8, but this disorder is created by Viz, not me. The story in Phoenix [...]

Tezuka, Osamu. Phoenix Vol. 5: Resurrection (1971). Viz, 2004. ISBN: 1591165938. See previous post on Phoenix Vol. 4: Karma. And back into a science fiction future, with robots! This isn’t one of my favorite stories in the series, though it has its moments. The narrative rambles a few times. “Resurrection” does offer another variation on [...]

Tezuka, Osamu. Phoenix Vol. 4: Karma (1970). Viz, 2004. ISBN: 1591163005. See previous post on the first half Phoenix Vol. 3: Space. If I were to recommend a single volume of Phoenix to a new reader, it would have to be Volume 4: Karma. This story can work well as a stand-alone and showcases a [...]

Tezuka, Osamu. Phoenix Vol. 3: Yamato/Space (1969). Viz, 2003. ISBN: 1591161002. See previous post on the first half Phoenix Vol. 3: Yamato. Viz’s Volume 3 continues with “Space,” which oddly enough is called “Universe” in the chart of stories at the back of each volume. Translation issues? Neither are evocative nor apt for the story, [...]

Tezuka, Osamu. Phoenix Vol. 3: Yamato/Space (1969). Viz, 2003. ISBN: 1591161002. See previous post on Phoenix Vol. 2: Future. Viz’s Phoenix Volume 3 includes two stories, the third and fourth in the series. This is where the volume numbers and the story numbers will stop matching. Later there will be stories that take two volumes [...]

Tezuka, Osamu. Phoenix Vol. 2: Future (1968). Viz, 2004. ISBN: 159116608X. See previous post on Phoenix Vol. 1: Dawn. Yes, I spoil the larger plot points. Isn’t it the journey that matters, anyway? I already wrote briefly about Phoenix Vol. 2 in my post on the structure of the series. It’s odd writing about this [...]

Tezuka, Osamu. Phoenix Vol. 1: Dawn (1967). Viz, 2003. ISBN: 1569318689. Warning: I’m sure there are spoilers. Also, I added a bit to one paragraph in my previous post on Pheonix about characters who appear in multiple volumes. This was to correct something I said that I realized was wrong. I’m planning on writing about [...]