Wanted: Cheap Manga

When Comipress started their online publication of the book, Manga Zombie, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Comipress has always been a reliable place to find really amazing, original content about manga and Japanese culture. Often they will translate and publish articles from Japanese blogs, which are always poignant and relevant. But this time, they’ve embarked on a project which truly overshadows everything that’s come before it:

I give you, Manga Zombie! Okay, before I launch into useless fanboy kiss-assedness, here’s a nice quote to get you in the mood:

Burn manga. Especially Eighties manga on.
Burn these pre-programmed comics that have been churned out ever since manga turned into a business. Burn these bastard things conceived in boardrooms and born as products.
For example, love stories that go on…and oon… and ooon…and oooon.
Burn them. Stories about heroes beating the odds through sheer grit and friendship. Burn them.
‘Interactive’ stories swinging any way the reader surveys tell them:
Burn. Them. All.

Come out of the grave, manga!

Screaming and streaming blood and sweat, pages spattered with artist’s crazed flesh, manga that grab and throw you deep into the warped and fucked-up pit of the artist’s mind itself. And leave you there.
To live it. And manga, staggering on their very last legs, drawn so the artists could eat one more day.
Come back. All is forgiven.

And what comes out of the graves are the manga come back to life. Now don’t get too excited, this isn’t about manga zombie stories. If you’re looking for those, check out High School of the Dead, which would definitely land on Udegawa’s list of manga to burn (although, I do enjoy it.) Manga Zombie is really about resurrecting past manga, from a time when manga-ka really poured their blood, sweat, and tears into their manga. A time when every page they drew meant another day they could eat. And a time when it didn’t matter how few joints a man had, if he needed to bend an arm in five places in order to make that double-page body slam spread work, by god, it could happen.

The book is organized by artist, and Udagawa starts the book with artists of the “Fleshbomb” style. What’s interesting is the amount of information on the artists’ life, something that paragraph-sized bio’s on the backs of manga never delve into. These artists that Udagawa feature truly have interesting lives. They aren’t generic Shonen Jump clone artists; they have distinct lives and raw inspiration. Take Miyaya Kazuhiko, for example. His marriage to a right-wing politician and subsequent divorce practically ruined his career as he exhaustively replayed the romance with his ex-wife in his manga stories. Or Fukushima Masami, who practically disappeared hermit-like after his manga quit being published.

The most recent chapters have focused on another “style” of manga called Trauma Manga. I’m not entirely sure what this means, since Udegawa doesn’t seem to clearly define it, but it seems characterized by extremely disturbing situations and subject matter in manga. The authors he’s mentioned have some “trauma” in their lives, but I’m not sure if this is where the manga is derived from. Compared to the “fleshbomb” artists, these “trauma” artists were extremely successful. Both artists that have been mentioned had movies made from their manga stories. Visually this “trauma” style isn’t as fun to look at as the “fleshbomb” style, but the life stories of the artists seem to make up for it.

Manga Zombie is currently being serialized on the great site, Comipress. Follow this link to start reading it from the beginning. They seem to be publishing a chapter about every 7 days. Also check out Comipress’s other content. They have lots of great translated articles and interviews about manga, anime, and Japanese culture.

And, if you find yourself wanting more of these artists, as I did, then check out the links below for more resources of the artists. Also, I included the Japanese names, if you want to search Google yourselves.

If you’re interested in other things that Udagawa Takeo is up to, you can check his Japanese-only blog here.

George Akiyama - ジョージ秋山

- http://www.george-akiyama.com

Murotani Tsunezo - ムロタニ ツネ象

- http://www011.upp.so-net.ne.jp/lac/m_/murotani/murotani.html#

Miyaya Kazuhiko - 宮谷 一彦

- http://homepage1.nifty.com/DORA/miyayaf.html

- http://miyaya-fan.cocolog-nifty.com/

Sakaki Masaru - 榊 まさる

Fukushima Masami - ふくしま 政美

- http://blog.livedoor.jp/textsite/archives/50051084.html

- http://koware.hp.infoseek.co.jp/jyu-goya/comic/ryu.htm

And if these pitiful pages aren’t enough, read my next blog: Tachiyomi: the art of reading one chapter of manga while sitting down.