The Flowers of Evil - manga part 2

The Flowers of Evil (惡の華) is a psychological romance manga by Oshimi Shuzo.  The manga was originally published between 2009 and 2014 and has been compiled into 11 tankoubon.  For a more detailed review of this story I have broken it down into two parts.  Part 1 covers tankoubon 1 through 6.  Part 2 covers tankoubon 7 through 11.

    What follows will spoil some things if you have not read the first 6 tankoubon.

    The 7th tankoubon starts off 3 years after the events at the end of the 6th tankoubon.  Kasuga and his family have moved away from their small town.  He has given up on literature and has become an empty shell, a survivor of the journey to insanity with Nakamura.  He goes to school, keeps to himself and comes home to his parents fractures relationship.  He has lost any drive at life that he once had and continues along aimlessly, just existing.  A chance encounter with a classmate Tokiwa Aya, who also happens to be one of the most sought after girls in school, begins to shift him out of his shell.  He finds her at a small book store with a copy of Flowers of Evil in her hands and something inside of him begins to tick.  He learns that Tokiwa is an avid reader and she begins to lend him books.  Kasuga eagerly falls back into his passion for literature and eagerly accepts anything she loans him.

    The unusual relationship though brings complications, things that Kasuga has gone through before.  He is the strange outsider and she is the popular girl, who also has a boyfriend.  Tokiwa enjoys finding someone else who deeply loves reading and Kasuga is enjoying a return to the good parts of his older self.  In a freak encounter the pair run into Saeki and her new boyfriend.  Saeki too has moved away from their hometown and has tried to move on with her life.  Even though she has tried to put it past her she is still bitter about Nakamura's influence on Kasuga and forces him to question whether he is seeking to use Tokiwa as a replacement for her or both of them.  The brief conversation with Saeki shocks Kasuga into fully examining his current mental state and what he really felt about the events from three years in the past.  He has to figure out what all three of the girls mean to him and what he wants to do moving forward.

    The second half of the story shifts it a little bit and in a really good way.  It isn't as psychologically stressful and moves more into a retrospective and self evaluation mode.  The story thrusts Kasuga into the role of the main character and forces him to come to terms with the past while dealing with the present.  Tokiwa is more of a conglomeration of all three main characters instead of her own unique character, but she works well as a catalyst for real, healthy change in Kasuga.

    In the end The Flowers of Evil is an uncomfortable look at the loneliness of being a teenager who doesn't fit in.  It's principle players take their manifestations of how the world should work to some extremes and have to deal with the consequences of their actions.  Nakamura undoubtedly suffers from mental heath issues and her father hinted that her mother has the same problems.  As I have touched on before, Japan is behind America (which isn't that good either) on diagnosing and treating mental health.  Nakamura is obviously in need of counseling and medical attention but instead she if being viewed as someone who doesn't repsect authority and is rebelling against the proper order of things.  As she struggles with the things in her head she latches onto Kasuga as a way to make sense of her world.  Kasuga, weak willed and easily influenced by those around him, becomes wrapped up in Nakamura's issues.

    But Nakamura isn't a bad guy, and Kasuga isn't absolved from his own actions.  I feel sorry for Nakamura and I really feel sorry for Saeki.  Kasuga though, I don't give him as much slack.  His indecisiveness caused everyone around him a lot of problems.  He goes from being a loner in the corner to being the center of attention between two girls.  One which fulfills his physical desires and the other which fulfills his psychological desires.  Yet the two aspects, incapable of sharing him, cause friction and mental duress on everyone involved.  Tokiwa said it the best when Kasuga told her about the events that caused him to leave his home town.  She told him that he put too much of a mental burden on her with the story, that she needed time to absorb it all and what it meant for her relationship with him.  Tokiwa is both an amalgam of the traits Kasuga sought from Nakamura and Saeki and a representation of the reader and probably the author as well.  She is the outsider who is in the middle of everything and has a hard time understanding the reasoning behind the actions.
 
    The story is deep and oppressive at times.  You know it will never end well for anyone involved and a lot of damage is done along the way.  The author even wonders if its conflicts and suppositions are superfluous, like Kasuga thinking he is better than his peers because he claims to understand the novels he is reading.  Kasuga questions how bright and unique he really is at one point, admitting that much of his reading is to show off to others.

    The artwork as with the first volumes isn't bad, it isn't anything spectacular.  The backgrounds are the better aspects of the work, well detailed and based on real settings.  There are other moments when the characters have incredible expressions and actions that greatly heighten the story telling.  In the end it works very well with the story by not distracting you from what is being said, instead enhancing those critical moments.  At other times though it is awkward, just as the characters are, but I don't think that was intentional.

    I really enjoyed this manga and was glad to have read it.  I first watched the 13 episode anime adaptation that only really covers about half of the story.  The anime as well is fantastic and really captures the tone of the story.  The entire series was released in North America by Vertical and is readily available.  I highly recommend it.

The Flowers of Evil - manga part 1

The Flowers of Evil (惡の華) is a psychological romance manga by Oshimi Shuzo.  The manga was originally published between 2009 and 2014 and has been compiled into 11 tankoubon.  For a more detailed review of this story I have broken it down into two parts.  Part 1 covers tankoubon 1 through 6.  Part 2 covers tankoubon 7 through 11.

    Kasuga Takao is a bit of a loner in school.  He spends much of his free time reading and obsessing over obscure poetry and literature.  His favorite book is a poem collection by French surrealist author Charles Baudelaire called 'Flowers of Evil'.  Like all middle school boys he has a crush on the prettiest girl in his class, Saeki Nanako.  One day he goes back to school to retrieve his book and Saeki's gym bag falls to the floor, her gym clothes spilling out.  Kasuga, drawn to it uncontrollably, picks them up, smelling them, taking in her fragrance.  He becomes spooked and flees the school with her clothes under his shirt.

    The following day the class is in an uproar about the pervert lurking in their halls who stole Saeki's clothing.  Originally intending to return them secretly he is now paralyzed with fear of social ostracism and the inevitable hatred from his crush.  On his was home that day he runs into a classmate who is more of an outcast than he, Nakamura Sawa.  Nakamura performs poorly and has a nasty attitude towards both peer and staff.  She stops Kasuga and tells him that she saw everything he did with Saeki's gym clothes. 

    Nakamura uses this to blackmail Kasuga into doing whatever she wants him to do, always holding the fact that he has Saeki's gym clothes with him over his head.  As the parasitic relationship grows so does Kasuga's mental anguish.  His psychosis is exacerbated when Saeki begins to warm up to him and they go on a date.  Nakamura decides to play along and assist the two, but Kasuga can't figure out if she is working to sabotage his relationship or not.  The anguish and torture push him further and Nakamura uses this to begin committing brazen acts of vandalism and social protest with him.

    Can Nakamura gain any control over himself and will he be able to break away from Kasuga's influence or will he embrace it and sacrifice his relationship with Saeki and normalcy?

    This story is entirely character driven and focuses almost exclusively on Nakamura, Kasuga and to some extent Saeki.  Other characters are shown but they provide little in the way of influence on the plot as it evolves.  What started as an innocent enough event evolved to something out of control because of Nakamura's influence.  She dangles Kasuga's guilt over his head and forces him to enter her world, a world filled with hatred, fear and confusion.  Nakamura views herself as someone capable of seeing through the veil or the world around her.  She struggles to break through that veil to what she thinks will be satisfaction and truth.  She see's a compatriot in Kasuga and forces him to help her to destroy normalcy and pursue a different path.  She recognizes that they are perverse in wanting to abandon societies standards and feel's that the only way to become free of normalcy is through extreme actions.

    Kasuga works hard to be different and above his peer's.  He also see's hope and excitement with Nakamura, even if their relationship is abusive and destructive.  When all of the odds stack in his favor and his wins the hand of the girl he yearns for he can't keep away from the allure of Nakamura's abnormality.  Nakamura revels in the dark places, but Kasuga isn't strong enough to withstand the pending social rejection and personality destruction that Nakamura seeks.  It soon develops into a case of Stockholm Syndrome and Kasuga attempts to impress his captor with increasing extremism.

    Saeki on the other hand is the model student, the admired peer.  She is drawn to Kasuga's difference and intensity.  But she struggles with jealousy over his attention to Nakamura, not understanding why she controls him the way she does.  As she begins to learn their secrets she begins to yearn for changing her reality as well, but she is unable to commit as deeply as them.

    The characters, in their own way and as a group, explore and face the challenges of adolescence and understanding their place in society.  They do it through extreme view points and actions, trying to establish their own version of order and acceptance, pushing at what is deemed appropriate and what is not, trying to gain ground on an ethos they see as being more correct.  It is a fight that everyone goes through to some degree as they enter adulthood.  Not everyone is able to escape the world they build as they transition into full members of society.

    This is a very tense story and the characters are well established over its course.  The writing and characters are quite realistic and the artwork is subtle.  The backgrounds are well detailed, much of it based on the town the author grew up in.  The characters themselves are simple but effective and realistic in their depiction, no big eyes small mouths here.  At times you have to slow down while reading this story to really absorb the atmosphere in the artwork instead of pushing fast through the dialogue.

    The conclusion of the story and the review will be in Part 2.  Though there will be some spoilers in that review.

A Retrospective on Slice of Life Anime & Manga - Part 2

Quite a lot of slice of life anime has been consumed by me since I put together the first Slice of Life Retrospective post.  So here is a quick look at a bunch more slice of life stories.  As with the original post I will separate the titles into a few vague categories.

General Slice of Life 


A Drifting Life: Semi-biographical account of the authors entry and maturation in the world of manga after the Pacific War.  His experiences and the way the industry change reflect the way the nation rebuilds and modernizes its self.

    This is an excellent history lesson in the way people strove to change the way manga was perceived and consumed.  While no where near as in depth at the day to day details as Bakuman, A Drifting Life did a fantastic over view of how the modern manga industry emerged from the end of World War 2.  This is kind of a must have for any one series about the medium from an academic point.

 
Father & Son: A fun look at the life and difficulty of a single parent raising his young son.  You is a reformed gangster turned high school teacher who has to keep his rambunctious son Shou on the straight path.  But he's only in pre-school so how hard can it be?

    This manga is a little reminiscent of Yotsubato! with the ensemble cast that help control and reign in the wild child Shou as he shows tendencies of his former bosozoku dad.  While much more comedic than Sweetness & Lightening it is very similar in the telling of a struggling single father who works as a teacher, raising their young child.  Though in this case, Shou's mother, Mami isn't dead, just so completely lacking in direction she wanders the globe obliviously.

Flying Witch: Sweet and calming tale about a with in training who moves to the country side to live with her relatives and begin her road to being a full blown magic user.

    While about a witch and dealing with some super natural things this is a very mundane and peaceful slice of life series.  it does a good job of revealing a little bit of the main characters world and the way her normal relatives interact with the super natural elements.  I could definitely go for more of the anime.

Honobono Log: A series of unrelated snap shots of young domestic life.

    There is not much to say about this short series based on an art book.  Its quaint, charming and firmly rooted in realism.  The shorts show 2 to 3 people who are deeply invested in each other and funny situations that show how deep they are connected in only a few worlds and actions.  Very well crafted, telling volumes in only a few sentences.

Itohen: A short manga about an idealistic young woman who forces herself on a young tailor/shop owner when she makes herself his apprentice.

    While the author went to school for fashion design this is the first time she has ever done a manga dealing with that world.  This series is cute, enjoyable and easy to read, would make a great live action movie.

Sweetness & Lightening: Another story about a single father and his young child and the struggles he faces.  Unlike Father & Son, this one centers around the characters relationship with food and how it represents their daily struggles and coping mechanisms for the loss of the mother.

    A fantastically sweet manga and anime that will warm any cold heart.  Plus the food is fantastic and the manga has great recipes.  If you can't find something to like with this sweet story you are a cold jaded human who only cares about self satisfaction.

Wakako-zake: A quirky manga/anime about a young single woman obsessed with the finer points of Japanese street food.  There is no plot or character development, it really is all about the love of food and detailing different cuisine, usually ones designed to be eaten while drinking.  While enjoyable, it reminds me that a lot of Japanese street food isn't appetizing to me...I got this thing against eating organs and cooked fish.  Either way fun series that works to expand your knowledge.

Dramatic Slice of Life

A Distant Neighborhood: A middle aged man suddenly finds himself back in his adolescent life.  Once he over comes the shock he uses the opportunity to try and reverse events that shook his family, hoping to reverse the damage done.

    This is a fantastic manga about the consequences and challenges of revisiting your youth, or anytime in the past.  If you could change the past what effect would it have on the future and present?

City of Light: A series of vignettes about different people in a promising housing development and the dark secrets that seep into the facade of normalcy and progress.

    Honestly on of Inio's weakest manga that I have read but still better than most of whats out there.  The story flows a little uneven as it appears to try and capture the methods used in Pulp Fiction to tell realistically dark tales of lost hope and desperation.

Colorful (movie): The spirit of a dead person is given a second chance at life by inhabiting the body of a suicide.  Can he discover the reasons behind the suicide and come to terms with his own death at the same time.

    While this movie does have a super natural undercurrent it is firmly rooted in the real world and real struggles.  It is an excellent mouth piece for the struggles modern adolescents have to deal with as they and the world they live in changes rapidly and confusingly.  There is an unrelated ecchi comedy TV show from the turn of the century called Colorful too that is worth checking out for abusive humor.

Only Yesterday: A young woman questions the direction of her future as memories of her childhood during the beginning of the modernization boom flood her mind.  She feel's that a different life awaits her away from the city but isn't sure if that feeling is realistic or authentic.

    A classic movie by Studio Ghibli's other director genius.  This is an excellent examination of the changing social conscious of Japan following the post war economic recovery.  The main character acts as a manifestation of questioning how the historical identity of Japan can survive modernity.  She is uncomfortable with her city living and upper middle class upbringing, but are her yearnings for a simpler, more rural life really just the playful musings of a spoiled brat?

She and her cat - Everything Flows - : A remake of Shinkai Makoto's student animation.  The story is a heartwarming and heart breaking tale of a woman living on her own in the city and her faithful childhood companion cat.

    Get the Kleenex out, the feels are strong with this one.  Shinkai is so incredibly good are telling sad tales.  Sad, heart warming, life affirming tales.  Damn you Shinkai!!!!

Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju: A low level criminal decides to turn around his life by becoming an apprentice to a rakugo master after serving time in prison.  The master reluctantly decides to take him in but mostly as a way to reconcile the man he apprenticed along side decades earlier.

    This was an incredibly surprising and excellent story.  The majority of the first season dealt with the master telling his apprentice his life's story, which was fantastic.  A second season is right around the corner and will focus more on the apprentice and should be just as fascinating.

Sunny: This manga is a tale of a private orphanage in the late 70's and its inhabitants struggles with accepting the way the world views them and how they view themselves, the abandoned ones.

    Some of Matsumoto Taiyo's best work.  The cast of characters are memorable and their stories transport you to a different time and place in which they live only by the benevolence of the strangers who have taken them in.

Tabimachi Late Show: A series of shorts dealing with loss, regret and life's fickleness.  Each story is more and more engrossing and is a good example of deep story telling in brevity.  The third one will likely get the water works flowing.

When Marnie Was There: A girl who is uncomfortable with who she is is sent to find her self with relatives in a small ocean side town.  There she discovers a girl from the past who has a strange and strong connection to her.

    This was the last movie to be made by Studio Ghibli and it is a well made human drama.  There aren't any super natural elements to it, at least not that we are familiar with in Ghibli films.  It is a really nice piece about a girl discovering herself and gaining confidence in who she is.

Comedic Slice of Life

Handa-kun: Taking the main character from Barakamon and showing what he was like in high school, as he was already a star in the world of calligraphy.  Unlike the original series, this one is a goofy gag comedy piece that shows Handa as an obtuse outsider and the people who fawn about him.

    Completely different flow and feel of Barakamon but still entertaining, if somewhat unoriginal in some of its delivery.  I'm a fan of quick paced gag comedy and there are some weird situations that are set in a mostly realistic world.

Himoto! Umaru-chan: The perfect girl in public transforms into a spoiled otaku brat when in the comfort of her own home.  How can her adult brother deal with her toddler like tendencies?

    This is a cute, and mildly fan-serviced, show that uses super deform in a new way for great affect.  Umaru is almost like a magical girl when she switches between star student and spoiled shut in.  Filled with some good laughs and touching moments of human weakness.

Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto: Sakamoto is the new student everyone is talking about.  Everything he does is cool, confident and stylish.  The school thugs can't stand his attention and plot scheme after scheme to make him loose face.

      This series reminded me at times of Cromartie High.  The situations Sakamoto gets into and out of are pretty clever and it doesn't really drag at any point.  The cast of odd ball characters, who are not Sakamoto, give it touches of color that the ice cold main character can't deliver.

The High School Life of a Fudanshi: Life as a heterosexual high school student is tough when your greatest passion is yaoi manga.  It's even harder to find others who are into it as much as you.

    This gag only travels so far, but luckily the series is only a few minutes per each episode so it doesn't wear its self out too fast.

Joshi Kausei: A manga with almost no dialogue that details some quirky personal moments of three average high school girls.

    The artwork is the best part of this manga, its very well done and the execution is fantastic.  Over all its a fun read, even if its solely based on the situation, at times it gets slight fan service based, but usually in good taste.

Kuma Miko: A remote villages young shrine maiden wants to break out of her country bumpkin shell and attend high school in a nearby city.  Her talking bear shrine companion doesn't think she has the mental fortitude to actually pull it off.

    While the humor is pretty good and the cast of characters is colorful, eventually you start to realize that Maki has severe social disorders and what starts out as a joke become cringe worthy as her mental illness becomes more apparent.

New Game: A fresh recruit learns all the ropes to producing video games when she is hired at her favorite company.  The rest of the staff are spunky moe girls who cheerfully help her navigate the pratfalls of the industry.

    I was hoping for the video game world version of the excellent Shirobako but instead got a moe fantasy land full of panty shots, absurd scenarios and a cast of annoying archetypes.

Nichijou: Tokisadame is a town full of strangeness, but that strangeness only really impresses its residents at it's worst.  The series follows a cast of characters through mini vignettes.

    Nichijou may be the funniest slice of life school age comedy series ever.  It's like the best of Azumanga Daioh, Lucky Star and Pani Poni Dash all rolled into a fast paced, absurdist landscape.  So many quality moments accented with imaginative animation and delivery.

Please Tell Me! Galko-chan: Galko is a gyaru who has a little more to her brain than one would imagine.  She wiles away her school days with her close friends, wondering about the strange things teenagers wonder about.

    While the artwork leaves some to be desired for the conversations and interactions are fantastically realistic.  Fun for the 6 or 7 minute bursts each episode is but I wasn't upset when it ended its run.

Seiyu Life: Three girls try to find success as voice actors in an increasingly demanding and stressful career field.  To survive they have to work in as many projects as possible, to try and build their experience and credibility.

    As with New Game, I was hoping this would be a fantastic and well laid out expose on the world of voice acting as Shirobako was on anime production.  Sadly it became too focused on building the moe level of the characters and I lost interest half way through.  It is better and more believable than New Game, but still a little too fantasy land for me.

Shonen Maid: A newly orphaned boy suddenly fins himself as his estranged, eccentric uncles house keeper.  The thing is, he forced that role upon himself due to his obsessive cleanliness and his uncles sloppiness.

    What originally might have been a cheap gag ended up being a touching story about family and connecting with them.  I was rather surprised that this wasn't just some stupid on-running joke about the main character always wearing a frilly maid outfit.  Instead it was about him learning about his mothers past and connecting with the family he never knew.

Tanaka-kun is Always Listless: Tanaka-kun is the king of slack.  He expends as little energy as possible, mostly using his energy to achieve maximum listlessness.  He relies on his close friend to help him achieve this goal.

    This is a fun series that goes a little beyond Tanaka's hang ups about being energetic.  It incorporates a small and well developed cast of friends that really make this a fun show about building personal relationships.  The slacker thing is thrown in, rather heavy, for comedic effect.  But beyond that its a fun slice of life story.

City of Lights

City of Lights (ひかりのまち) is a single volume dark slice of life manga by Asano Inio.  It was originally published between 2004 and 2005.

    The City of Light is a recent development project in a non-descriptive Japanese town.  Beautiful high rise apartments and fancy shopping arcades designed to be enclaves for the up and coming middle class families.  Behind the modernity and bounty there exist darkness and regret.  While things may seem pleasant and cheerful humans can never get away from their problems.

    The story follows a few loosely tied characters in their troubles relating to the City of Light.  The first real character is a middle school boy who struggles with his father, a disgraced police officer.  In an effort to help an older girl he likes he puts his own life at risk.  Another story follows a street thug with dreams of restoring the neighborhood of his youth to the quaint glory he remembers before the yuppie developments.  In another, a preschool boy is haunted by the desires and regrets of a man who died too soon.

    As with other manga by Asano, the artwork is impeccable in its level of detail and realism and full of his signature character designs.  The stories are interesting and the way they weave together reminded me of Pulp Fiction, but this one would be the weakest of his works I have read.  While they are vignettes of different denizens of the town they didn't flow as enjoyably as I would have liked, causing the narrative to be disjointed.  The best arc would be the one dealing with two men, unrelated, who are stuck raising a small girl that is one of their biological daughters...but they don't know who's.  It was a story about the power of responsibility while being able to compensate for lack of intellect.

    The prelude chapter appears to be more of an anecdotal homage to Asano's inspiration to write this particular manga and was my favorite part in the collection.  If the entire series would have been closer to the style of the prelude it would have been more enjoyable.  At times the dialogue became too obtuse and introspective, particularly the arc with the preschool boy.  That was countered by the way the boys story slips into a lucid state of astral consciousness.  At the end of the day this was still better than many other manga titles I have read.  It felt closer to the delivery and tone of Girl on the Shore than Solanin though, so as with most of his work, prepare for darkness and misery.

    This manga though is currently unavailable commercially in English.

America's dismissal of the Japanese entertainment industry

Why do the American movie and television industries dismiss the relevance and existence of their Japanese counterparts in terms of promotion?  Again and again I have come across references recently in American movie and TV promotions that represent said products of Western production achieving things they aren't exactly eligible of.

     Sometime these inaccurate claims aren't done by the production studio's themselves but are done by echo chambers of promotion who may or may not be financially tied to the studio.  I'm not even going to get into the issue of 'white washing', I don't have the energy nor the detailed ethnographic background to do that argument the justice it deserves.  Instead I am going to list three incorrect claims and theorize why claims like these exist.

    In a number of places the claim that, long running American syndicated animation series, The Simpsons is the longest running animated show ever.  I am not sure if FOX television themselves stand behind this claim, but I have seen it in a handful of reputable locations on the internet.  The series has run for 26 years as of 2016, with over 540 episodes under its belt.  This is incredibly impressive and does in fact make it the longest running scripted prime time show on American TV.  It surpasses the previous holder of that title, Gunsmoke, which ran for 20 years.  Episode count, it is still behind that western behemoth which ran 635 episodes.  It does not, however, match the longest running scripted television show, which is Guiding Light.  The American soap opera aired more than 15,000 episodes over 59 years.

    When it comes to the longest running, scripted, prime time television series though the honors and Guinness record goes to Sazae-san.  It has been running for 47 years with over 7300 episodes so far.  But, its understandable that American audiences would be oblivious to the existence of Sazae-san, it really doesn't exist outside of Japan, partially due to the wishes of its original creator, Hasegawa Michiko, that it never be made available on film.  It only really exists in syndication in Japan.

    The recent live action film Deadpool has in a number of places been promoted as the first R rated super hero or comic book film.  I'm pretty sure Marvel Studio knows a little better than to make that claim, on both fronts.  In the western comic book super hero land you we have The Watchmen, which is very much super hero and R rated and about as well known in Western comic book circles as Deadpool used to be.  Then in the general comic book based movie world there is The Crow, Sin City, Blade, V for Vendetta, 300...and another super hero story in Kick-Ass & Kick-Ass 2.  Sorry Deadpool, even your fanboys should know better than to spout that claim.

    Then we get into the products that come out of Japan.  The obvious choice is to look at the countless anime movies based on per-existing comics, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, etc.  But its not hard to look to the world of live action movies, even some made in America.  Ichi the Killer, the Korean produced Old Boy (which also saw a failed Spike Lee adaptation), Attack on Titan or The Guyver: Dark Hero.  These are a few that are readily available in America in a variety of formats...not to mention all of the ones that are indigenous to Japan and not readily available.  But, these are also films that have a limited audience in America, not existing in the mainstream consciousness.

    The one that tripped me though is for previews of the new CG film featuring Seth Rogan called Sausage Party, billing its self as the first full CG animated film for adults.  The most recent full CG film for adults that I can think of would be the first Ajin movie.  But few people in America know that the Ajin franchise exists given the only legitimate product available in America is the manga.  So again, a product of American origin is claiming something serendipitous with little regard for actual research and global film history.

    Hollywood and other American entertainment companies appear to dismiss anything outside of American shores as being relevant or significant when it comes to making claims about breaking trends.  Its difficult to find fault in that way of operating for a few reasons.  Without doubt, Hollywood is historically the strongest and most important player in the television and film industry.  While it didn't invent it, it has established how it operates and produces for over 100 years now.  On the global scale it is incredibly important and significant.  Domestically it is essentially all the exists for the majority of the populace.  So it's simple and effective to discount anything not related to the established domestic industry when promoting said industry domestically.  The only people that will stand up and notice are the obsessive outlier's which tend to go ignored as outlier's as defined by the term outlier.

    Hollywood isn't ignorant, some in the echo chamber are lazy and ignorant, but that's the state of journalism these days, so it shouldn't be terribly shocking.  Foreign production industries find little success in America and offer little threat to the established companies.  It is easy and simple to brush their existence off when it comes to marketing and promotion.  Ultimately no one cares if something is making false claims or is directly related to something of foreign origin.  All they care about is what the pundits and their friends/family have to say about the product.

...don't even get me started about what I think relating to Kubo.and the Two Strings.

My Favorite Manga Authors

As I immerse myself into more and more manga, originally entering the world of otaku through anime, I have begun to gravitate to the works of a few creators in particular.  Instead of listing my favorite manga I thought it would be more beneficial to talk about my favorite authors and why.  The amount of manga I have read and own pales in comparison to the amount of anime.  While I love to read I have always preferred anime over manga over the past 25 years, but in the past 8 or so years that has begun to change.  Even with the significant increase in manga consumption I still consume more anime so I will probably never have the extant knowledge of that medium like I do the other.  A lot of the manga I have been consuming has been contemporary so don't shun me if I don't include classic authors in the list, I just haven't really tapped into their catalogs much if at all.
  
Asano Inio

     First manga read: Nijigahara Hologhraph
     Additional notable titles: Solanin, A Girl on the Shore, Hikari no Machi, Goodnight Pun Pun, Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction
     Genre(s): Horror, psychological, slice of life, seinen.
     Number of years active: 2000-Current.

    There is just something about Asano's detailed and realistic artwork, the way he frames his panels and the realistic way his characters interact with each other, themselves and the world.  This is some of the best slice of life writing around.  He explores different themes with every new work, never content to repeat the same story.  Asano would probably be my pick for favorite manga author.

Azuma Kiyohiko

     First manga read: Azumanga Daioh
     Additional notable titles: Yotsuba?!
     Genre(s): Comedy, slice of life, general audience.
     Number of years active: 1997-Current.

    While Azuma has the least amount of titles on the list he has a particular way of showing the mundane world that makes it a little off color and enjoyable.  While Azumanga Daioh was one of the first comedy slice of life series that kicked off the trend that rolls hard today, his current and long running, if slowly paced, Yotsuba&!, is unique and incredible.

Matsumoto Taiyo

     First manga read:  Black & White (Tekkonkinkreet)
     Additional notable titles: Sunny, Ping Pong, No. 5.
     Genre(s): Slice of life, seinen, super natural, drama, psychological, social commentary.
     Number of years active: 1989-Current.

    Matsumoto has a very distinct and unusual art style, that at times is very rough and raw.  The real strength of his stories are the ways his characters stare into the darkness surrounding them.  What he does best is expose existences that we try to ignore or dismiss.  Life isn't always easy and living in despair as a child is incredibly difficult.  Sunny is partially autobiographical.

Otomo Katsuhiro

     First manga read: Akira
     Additional notable titles: Legend of Mother Sarah, Domu.
     Genre(s): Seinen, super natural, action, social commentary.
     Number of years active: 1973-2012 (hiatus?)

    One of the legends of manga, a man who was able to make Osamu Tezuka nervous.  He has been good at making dark visions of reality where powers beyond normal control can consume you with out a second thought.  Highly detailed back grounds and a desire to portray all of his character realistically ugly.

Shimura Takako

     First manga read: Wandering Son
     Additional notable titles: Sweet Blue Flowers, Aldnoah Zero (character design), Even Though We're Adults
     Genre(s): Slice of life, josei, romance, alternate life styles.
     Number of years active: 1997-Current.

    Shimura has very beautiful character designs and a calming, realistic approach to the struggles children deal with in learning how to grow up, especially in the case of non-binary lifestyles.  Wandering Son is one of the best manga I have ever read, period.

Nihei Tsutomu

     First manga read: Knights of Sidonia
     Additional notable titles: Biomega, Blame!, Aposimz, Kaina of the Great Snow Sea
     Genre(s): Sci-fi, horror, action, seinen.
     Number of years active: 1998-Current.

    Nihei has taken the ground work laid by the 70's and 80's sci-fi masters and pushed it into an even darker, more desperate place.  This is how cyberpunk should be, even if his visions of the dystopian future are almost barren of life.  An incredible eye for detail, excellent landscapes and unique realities that scare me.

Unita Yumi

     First manga read: Bunny Drop
     Additional notable titles: Yoningurashi, Toribako House, Sukimasuki.
     Genre(s): Slice of life, shojo, josei, seinen, romance, drama.
     Number of years active: 2000-Current.

    She originally had gone to school for clothing design but instead pursued a career in manga.  Good choice in my mind.  Her character designs are unique and simplistic but have a warm and comforting feel about them.  I just can't get away from the idea that all the men are made to be idiots in her stories.  Her sense of realism and the way her character interact with each other is what makes her work's so good.

Urasawa Naoki

     First manga read: 20th Century Boys
     Additional notable titles: Detective Keaton, Monster, Pluto, Yawara.
     Genre(s): Drama, psychological, seinen, mystery, social commentary, slice of life, sports, action, comedy.
     Number of years active: 1983-Current.

    An absolute master of the art form.  No one weaves a story like Urasawa does, no one.  The most prolific author on my list and among many others.  His breath of work traverses many genres and story types but his eye for detail in both design and exposition is almost unmatched.  I don't care what its about, if it has his name on it you must read it.

Solanin

Solanin (ソラニン) is a slice of life romance manga by Asano Inio.  It was originally published in 2005 and compiled in 2 tankoubon.

    Meiko and her boyfriend Taneda live together and struggle through their lives after college.  Meiko works in a nondescript office setting, continuously being ground down by the mediocrity of adult responsibility.  Taneda works part time as an illustrator but struggles to find inspiration or a drive for anything in life.  Meiko decides that enough is enough and quits her job, feeling that she will be better off and will be able to figure out what she really wants to do.  Instead of figuring out her own life she begins to focus on Taneda's and their life together.

    Taneda is a bit of a wet noodle and shrugs through his existence.  The only thing that seems to bring life to his eyes are when he and his friends from college ritually meet to play music.  Struggling with finding her direction Meiko pushes Tandea to try and tackle music seriously in one final hurrah before truly succumbing to adulthood.  Encouraged by her enthusiasm he throws everything he can into it.  His band gets serious and record a demo to send out to record companies and music venues, seeking a dream that may come true instead of regretting not taking the risk.

    I wasn't sure what to expect out of Solanin, only gravitating to it because of the author and its praise in Western circles.  What I got out of it was unexpected and incredibly powerful.  With each manga by Asano I read I continue to be impressed by his realism in both artwork and the way he depicts people.  Solanin is a raw story about growing up and facing the reality that is modern life.  Every teenager and college student faces the stark existence of adulthood and struggles with it alone.  The understanding and acceptance of mediocrity, joining the ranks of their parents as another part of the machine, letting life slide by as you establish the routine of responsibility.  The characters in the story are in the throws of accepting their existence as people in the background, living a live of repetition and comfort instead of pushing ahead with the wild dreams they had in their youth.  This is the last chance at trying to break out of that mold but will they ever be able to do what countless others before them have failed to do?

    As with his other stuff, the artwork is fantastic.  The backgrounds and direction of the panels are the best part.  The character designs at times, especially Meiko, are a bit weird, but still grounded in reality.  Asano's work is a far cry from the norm that is expected from manga by most people.  It is mature and realistic, detailed in ways that make you forget its just black ink on paper.  That alone is reason to read this excellent manga.  But what is really amazing is the writing and the story telling, the dialogue between the characters, and with themselves, is hyper realistic and relatable by almost anyone.  This is a stark self examination for us that are or have gone through the pangs of early adulthood and a taste of things to come for those not old enough to experience that sense of oblivion.

    Viz compiled the series into a large tankoubon and I highly recommend you pick it up.  A live action adaptation was made in 2010 so I might have to track that down.