The Manga Thread: Unlimited

Viz to Zef:

If you asked me about my favourite comic, I'd probably single out Dorohedoro. I've done so before, when the subject has been put to a community vote, and that position and appreciation hasn't really changed since. Delineations in the absolute are however largely pointless, and so if met with the same inquiry another day, I might just as well offer up another work very special and important to me: we're talking about With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child by Keiko Tobe.

Presenting the two works as a set does more than illustrate my personal tastes, as I've come to view them as an useful contrast in what it takes to get noticed in the field and cultivate awareness about one's work. Both series began serialization around the same time, and became their authors's longest works; neither Tobe nor Q Hayashida are household names but if they're known for anything it's for the synonymous association with these representative series of theirs. Both are works by women, but Dorohedoro always benefited from its chosen genre as a horror comedy action series filled to bursting with gleeful violence and gore; it was the sort of stuff that would get passed around and picked up by scanlation enthusiasts and not necessarily be read as feminine in the pejorative. The recent anime adaptation has only made its profile rise ever upward now that Hayashida's work on the series has concluded and she's moved on to new projects. The contrast that exists here is that as a nerd on the Internet, I would have been primed to stumble onto Dorohedoro even if not seeking it out for the demographics it appeals to and the qualities that have made it so eye-catching for its over twenty years of existence, whether the scale of that interest is considered niche or underground--and I did, leading me to follow the official localized serialization to its end.

For With the Light, a comic that occupies a genre and stylistic and aesthetic space so distant from its peer and yet which I value in equal measure, that never would have happened. I have not seen a single person talk about it in the years I've orbited and passed through enthusiast circles and communities; it's not ever mentioned even in passing. The intimation isn't to declare that it was a totally unknown series with no audience or that it was never acknowledged casually or professionally--its serialization spans a decade, after all--but that the distinction in what kind of discourse it could even exist in differs. It's not the kind of series that explodes into pop culture notoriety because it's about a topic many don't want to broach even fictionally, and it's not loud and impactful in an outwardly projected way--all the emotional significance is internal and slowly simmered. And yet the only reason I know about it is because someone believed in it, at Yen Press in 2007, and localized and published it to its respective conclusion. I don't know if fan scanlations of it exist, because I never came across or had reason to seek them out, and because word of mouth for the series has been totally nonexistent in my personal context, it really was just all chance that I picked up the volumes of my own volition and curiosity when I did. It's a small miracle that it ever worked out in a way that landed the volumes on my shelf where they stand now.

The deeply personal connection that can be cultivated when engaging with "unknown" works is something that understandably many of us are suspect of, but I have that streak in me in the media I tend to connect with, and I'm not inclined to stamp it out just to preserve an artifice of ostensible critical rationality. I did always delight in With the Light on the level of pure craft in the kind of work that it represents--a soapy, melodramatic and intensely empathetic drama with Big Issues social relevance--but it's ceased only being about reveling in the niche for its own sake. A recent readthrough of the series is the first time I've done so after my own diagnosis of being on the autistic spectrum, and that context applied to a work I already loved is transformative in ways that I struggle to capture in words; I'll just have to summarize that it affects me differently now because of the lived experience that I can retrospectively apply to it and on my own life. That I feel the work to be elevated by this new context instead of somehow ringing hollow for it is statement enough to at least one individual's assessment of Tobe knowing exactly what she was doing with her work.

Research and an informed perspective are what fuel With the Light and what it is. Tobe herself wasn't autistic, and neither was anyone in her immediate family; reportedly her son's autistic classmate is what inspired her to explore the subject and in essence dedicate large part of her life to it, as any long-term scheduled creative work demands. You get the sense reading her work that she means her comic to be an educational piece, both for herself and her readers, as it's a gradual process constantly layered on with new nuances of representing autism authentically and with kindness. In search of that balance much of her work is directly based on real-life experiences and perspectives by autistic folks and their families, whom Tobe contacted, interviewed and worked with to integrate into her own fictionalized account of Hikaru Azuma and his family. The individual traits of Hikaru's autism, the insistences characteristic of him, and the challenges of navigating a society uncaring or unaccommodating of them are often sourced from these models who've already lived them without the safety net of a fictionalized representation of how the world operates. The work itself makes it clear that none of it is callously or ignorantly handled, and each volume includes written essays by those very same people Tobe's story is patterned after, lending them a platform and a voice to tell their own stories and how they're reflected through the fictionalized treatment.

"Educational" media carries with it an undeniable stigma, as it evokes associations of forcibly and clumsily communicated cornball misfires that in effect repel people away from the subject they're meant to elucidate about, and this is an unmistakable aspect of With the Light that might chafe, depending on one's willingness to roll with its narrative rhythms. There's an afterschool special sensibility to some of its episodes, as it casts a wide net on many social issues that are not strictly dedicated to autism and Hikaru's everyday life, but encompass the cast around him no matter their level of relevance to his personal context. The strength of the approach is that Tobe's craft as a visual and serial storyteller enables her to integrate whatever topic she wishes to explore into the makeup of the comic without compromising anything about its value as entertainment on a page. It's not a how-to for rearing autistic children or interacting with autistic people as the comic stresses with relatably emphasized patience that each manifestation of autism in the individual differs and cannot be treated as an universal; all it does is concoct as many authentic situations and scenarios, big or small, through its thousands of pages to both provide a relatable context to its material and to ensure that the story has innate merit outside of its more lofty purposes. It's not study hour and not meant as such, but because of how naturalistically just learning about autism works as the crux of the narrative--Hikaru is the center of his family's life while others in different circumstances and exhibiting different characteristics are regularly featured--the end result is still the same in that engagement with the storytelling is equal to engaging autism honestly, demystifying it in the process no matter one's prior level of awareness.

As a true-to-life slow-burn drama anchored by the birth and gradual development of its featured character, With the Light is not one to work according to fictionalized standards and trends that other genres might be defined by. It's a work created for an adult audience, with the priorities and concerns an adult might have should they find a mirror for themselves in the material. Hikaru is the central subject of the piece, but the series is told primarily from the perspective of his mother Sachiko--hers is the written voice that defines the narrative, in all the ordeals she's subjected to in creating the best possible life for her son and family, often sacrificing her own health and personal desires for it. Sachiko is intensely driven in all she does but she's not portrayed as infallible or untouchable nor romanticized for enduring her hardships: she represses her own insecurities and doubts as she weathers criticism and microaggressions from all directions, directs them to jealousy and at a low point in her life, is shown to have physically abused Hikaru in a panicked effort to calm him down and to relieve herself of the burden she felt his existence placed on her. The series takes these actions seriously and condemns them in no vague measure, but it has the understanding and willingness to admit that abuses like them occur even in "happy" homes and by those not singled out to be offenders. Sachiko's mistakes as well as everyone else's are always grounded in empathetic cause and effect, as the series depicts people at their worst and does not place the blame on strictly the individual but the failures of the institution to protect their charges or on the lack of social support systems for those that need them. It deals in the governance of the educational system to a primary focus, spotlighting the added complexities and bureaucratic bigotries directed at disabled people and their families trying to navigate them with dignity, and frames all of its social critique in a similarly holistic manner.

Ethical complexity is a primary vector in understanding how Tobe depicts the people in her work. For a series concerned with strictly realistic if dramatized tonality, it's difficult to apply a "villain" to any of the ongoing story arcs. None can rise to take the mantle by themselves as there are always moments of mutual connection and rapport between even the more obstinate persons Sachiko encounters, and rarely if ever are those attitudes fostered by active malice. It's institutionalized apathy and neglect she has to overcome, or the social barriers whether professional, gendered or generational. The range of teaching methods applied by those responsible for Hikaru's schooling often serve as the foremost obstacle for Sachiko to navigate and mediate around, walking on eggshells around ossified practices and beaten down by life professionals. This could easily take the pattern of Sachiko educating all in her way and in one altruistic, beatific swoop enlightening people for the better, but in practice it's not how it usually works out, as the lessons she tries to impart on others are sometimes applied only partly, downright ignored, or eventually reverted in time. There are no easily artificial redemption arcs for anyone in the story, as pre-existing habits and flaws still turn up even as the emotional pivot point in the story is reached for many of the characters. One of the most present and multifaceted is Sachiko's mother-in-law Takako, whose treatment of Sachiko and her family oscillates according to her own biases and ingrained insecurities, ranging from a goodly grandmother to a vindictive and petty matriarch. All of this is done with not to establish her as the evil antagonist to be dressed down for good, but as someone the Azuma family increasingly have to interact and live with, painting a complex picture of family dynamics that differ based on the individual and the rigid mindset of one coached in suffocating tradition and inability to compromise. Takako would be a cackling villain in other contexts but here she is a complex, flawed individual granted her own interiority and perspective on matters that she is often unambiguously wrong about but still afforded the opportunity to be so and be framed no less sympathetic for it. It is through her that some uncommon attributes shading the series manifest, like the willingness to portray old people as possessing personal lives of their own and romantic arcs that play out as integrally as any other narrative texture utilized.

Reading With the Light is often very emotional just for where the comic's priorities lie and how easily they can be applied to the individual, but it might have a claim for the most gutwrenching manga there is just for its publishing context. The series ran until 2010, with its final volume coming out in the middle of that year, but that release was posthumous for Tobe. She passed away in January after battling cancer for most of the previous year, with the series going on hiatus during that time. The last volume, especially in the English double-sized format, is uncommonly slight, for it comprises all of the remaining material that Tobe created during this period, compiled after her death. The final few chapters are presented only as uninked manuscripts and storyboards on the page--what they are are effectively the creative testament of a creator who continued creating even on her deathbed. As anyone who follows serialized media, there will always be instances where a creator's passing brings sorrow for the loss of the individual and the complicated reconciling of that with the realization that the story one enjoyed has also now been cut short into perpetuity. Many people in this medium recently had to take stock of that with Kentaro Miura's passing and the enormous legacy and unfinished story he left behind. With the Light will never be recipient to tributary mourning on that scale, and it doesn't have to be; it's not a competition. In this respect and this respect only it is my Berserk, the work that will leave a space that can't ever be truly filled, and that I'll always feel a gnawing sense of unfulfillment about; Hikaru will always remain a junior high student as his sister Kanon will remain in elementary school, and I'll never know what resolution Tobe had in mind for any of the Azumas. Maybe that's okay though, as the goals of the series narratively and in the professed wishes of its cast were never anything monumental, and so can reflect how to feel about it today: just living life each day and challenge at a time, holding on to hope in the face of hardships.

Obviously, I recommend reading With the Light, but I don't know how easy it is to access these days. Look for reprints if ones exist, and maybe it's been digitally released on Comixology or the like. I would be delighted if more people got to experience it.

Read the first volume of Mao, Takahashi's new serial. It's Inuyasha by way of Rin-ne, rather more somber than humorous or energetic. Looking it up online, there are nine volumes out in Japan, which makes me a little sad in that Viz seems not to be aggressively publishing these very close to their initial release as they did with IY back in the day. Stands to reason, though--this is not glossy ultra-current and/or horny stuff, seems more written for us oldsters who have fond memories of Takahashi's earlier work rather than teens, despite its running in a shonen magazine.

I read the first volume or so of MAO as it was coming out. Your description of it seems apt. I seem to remember it being described as a production where Rumiko Takahashi was taking more of a backseat in the production - where she may be writing and story boarding the comic, but her assistants are now doing the bulk of the illustrating? It definitely *feels* that way even if not actually true because I found a lot of the illustrations and particularly the background art to be kinda lacking compared to a lot of her other works. I’m mildly interested in the comic itself and would love to read updates on what you’ve got to say further into the comic but I stopped after a certain point from disinterest.

On a side note, did Rinne ever get a conclusion? I was fairly invested in that comic, but free, official, online distribution of it ended when the 2011 Earthquake happened. The TV adaptation got three seasons and I thought was really beginning to find it’s grove but that seems to have ended and at a place that doesn’t remotely feel conclusive.

It doesn't seem all that different from Rin-ne as far as the level of backgrounds or character work goes. You're probably right that she does layouts and major character work and leaves the rest to her assistants, which isn't too different from other mangaka who've been at it for decades. Maybe she's drifted further into a workmanlike zone in the last decade or two. But I think the settings of the alley, sinkhole, Nanoka's home and school, etc. are nicely done and I was able to sink in to Mao like I can with any author I've been familiar with for years and know what to expect, which isn't a terrible thing. The way I'm describing it seems sad, and I do think the inspiration and general level of energy isn't there anymore, but Takahashi is a pro who knows what she's doing and I don't see this going the way of Bleach or whatever other manga by a less experienced and more "glossy" mangaka that loses its grip a dozen volumes in and never finds it again.

Rosewood said:

The way I'm describing it seems sad, and I do think the inspiration and general level of energy isn't there anymore, but Takahashi is a pro who knows what she's doing

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Yeah I generally agree with all of this. It was just a little disappointing coming into MAO off of Rinne that, while it wasn't the greatest thing in the world, still had a lot of energy to it and was just fun. I hope MAO gets an adaptation at some point because I'd be interested in seeing how it would fare. And yeah, Takahashi is a pro's pro, I don't doubt she's got good ideas that she's building up to.

Thinking back on Rinne, that whole comic is just such an interesting curiosity to me. It's a comic that got its start at the very height of the Great Recession, and the whole comic's broad themes focusing on class and money, despite also having a very Buddhist take on the afterlife is just so... interesting and weird for lack of better descriptors. Like, one of the central tenants of Buddhism is about the futility of worldly attachments and accruing wealth, and Takahashi is like lol what if the afterlife ran on money too. This is just baseless guesses, but it always felt like Takahashi wanted to make a comic that spoke to kids who might be going through some financial troubles at home. But the humorous and blasé way it handles Rinne's quite dire financial struggles and how he lives hand to mouth feels a little dismissive of general financial struggles/the homeless. And when the 2011 earthquake in the Tohoku region went off, and Viz stopped simulpubing the comic, I'm extremely curious about that development. The Viz side of things seemed blindsided by being cut off because I remember them promising updates on the situation for months with nothing to show for it. I wonder if Takahashi took a break or reevaluated her work in the wake of all that devastation and death so close to home? Or was just using the natural break the earthquake provided to renegotiate how her stuff got distributed? It was just a weird event that would have been Big Important News had it been for a comic Western fans pay more attention to like Naruto, but nobody really cared about over here back in 2011.

I haven't gotten all that far with Rin-ne--it's part of The Project--but yeah, I hadn't considered how Takahashi's own circumstances might change things like that. She seems a more private person than many other mangaka, maybe because she doesn't put any kind of author's note in her books, even a single sentence.

A review of the first book of Mao that I read, said that elements of the story in the Taisho era are pointing toward the Kanto fire in the 1920s, so that perhaps even more indicates a post-disaster real life seeping into her stories.

Ah shit I forgot to go to my comic shop and pick this up. I'll make do with the digital version and report back, then grab the physical when I go over there next weekend.

Hot tip for the rest of the year: if it's in print, popular, available, and you want it, either get it right away or be prepared to wait a while. Goes for any kind of book. Printer and shipping capacity and paper availability are a bit out of hand for the foreseeable future.

I'm feeling that. I was only able to pick up the first volume of The Rose of Versailles last year on release, and procrastinating on the others as they've come out lead to me only being able to get two of the remaining four volumes... this week. Hoping I can eventually complete the set.

Yeah… I placed an order for a bunch of volumes of Dorohedoro a few months ago, and I'm still waiting on a shipping confirmation. Which is no surprise (several of the vols were out of stock), and I can wait, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a bummer.

Just understand that publishers literally cannot print or ship anything any faster at this time.

No, I get it. Not blaming anyone!

Rosewood said:

A review of the first book of Mao that I read, said that elements of the story in the Taisho era are pointing toward the Kanto fire in the 1920s, so that perhaps even more indicates a post-disaster real life seeping into her stories.

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Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking as they both got to addressing the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake more directly, as well as tying that back into the personal tragedy of the main character's whole origin trauma.

Sarcasmorator said:

Hot tip for the rest of the year: if it's in print, popular, available, and you want it, either get it right away or be prepared to wait a while.

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I've been a terrible RightStuf junkie in pandemic times, and my collection is kind of a mess because of all the backorders that might have in part been caused by these supply and/or logistics issues. Ah well, it's a great time to whittle down the ol' backlog!

After dropping it on my e-reader ages ago, I got around to Kiriko Nananan's Blue this week. It's a 230ish page single volume from 1997.


Blue is the story of high school girl Kayako Kirishima feeling drawn to and befriending the recently transferred Masami Endo. Three guesses where that concept goes and the first two don't coooount. Am I culturally savvy enough to be able to accurately identify an intended Class S relationship if presented with one in fiction? No, not really! I did sit back after I'd finished it, asking myself if that's the type of story Nananan was looking to tell, but ultimately I don't think that's the case. The way Kirishima talks and thinks about Endo is realistically messy and complicated. She does some real interesting things to try and really work out why Endo is the way she is. There's not a lot of fluff on display here and I really hesitate to call it a romance. Sure it's romantic, but in a way that reminds me of my own high school emotional angst and that's not quite the same thing now is it? "I thought it'd be simpler to love a boy..." I don't fully understand how this manga manages to make this feel like a slow burn in such a short amount of space, but it does. I can't really think of anything I'd want to see expanded on to lengthen the experience though. Especially not seeing how much thought that's gone into putting what is there, uh there. It's less about telling a full narrative and more channeling Kirishima's experience directly onto the page. Small moments stretch out into multiple panels, making the time around them flow just a little slower. Endo's smile is the focus of any panel it shows up in.

If I had to pick a word to describe Blue, I'd probably go with intentional. Nananan falls under the la nouvelle manga umbrella and approaches her work panel by panel instead of as a bigger whole. Every panel is meticulous in what it chooses to show or not show, what details to include, the body language, the framing, just all of it carefully and painstakingly considered. If it's there and shown in a certain way, there's a reason for it's inclusion and it probably took her hours to put it there. As such, backgrounds come and go throughout the work as they're needed. The opening scene in a classroom transitions to a more simply hinted at cliffside then fades away entirely as the two girls chat and get to know each other, only returning to denote the passage of time. Lots of white space in this story, which I don't see as a bad thing. Considering the subject matter all that empty space not only makes for a striking visual effect, but pulls your focus to the emotional tension happening. These characters aren't paying a damn bit of attention to the space around them, so you don't have to either.


Without spoiling the thing, remember that it came out in '97. Don't expect a feel good ending. Since it's only one volume, I wasn't invested enough for the ending to hit with enough force to be a full gut punch, but it sure didn't feel great. Nothing really wraps up cleanly; there's not a sense of catharsis. Less of a definitive end, and more of a big bundle of emotions disguised as a transition. It's true to real life and I think that's really the only way for a work like this to go.

Final conclusion? Blue is an aesthetically pleasing punch in the mouth. Absolutely a departure from what I expect from a manga from this time frame.

Also: There's a movie adaptation that came out in 2002! No idea if it's good or not, but I at least wanted to mention it.


Also also: It's worth noting that Nananan got her manga start in the rad as hell looking Monthly Magazine Garo. Does anyone know where I can find translated versions of some of these issues?


(Okay my formatting looks correctly aligned in the editor, but goobers up on the actual post and I don't know why. Ain't gonna keep making edits to try and fix it.)

Kodansha has been republishing the English-language Battle Angel Alita volumes this year in paperback format, and I'm supposed to receive volume 3 in the mail today! Unfortunately volume 4 doesn't release until January...

I first called it years ago, but I'm calling it again since the reveal is likely close now that they're on the moon: the person responsible for petrifying the world in Dr. Stone is going to be Senku's biological father. Note that this is a guess—I do not have any inside info, despite working on the series. (I have no idea if this is the consensus prediction or anything, this is strictly my supposition from reading it twice.)

Sarcasmorator said:

I first called it years ago, but I'm calling it again since the reveal is likely close now that they're on

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Spoiler tags please...

Dr Stone definitely jumped the shark a few arcs back. But I don't mind. It's still fun. And it's very blatantly drawing to a close here. The only thing I'm bummed about is that the side story that Boichi wrote a year or so back that followed Senku's dad is noncanonical and. not going to figure into the actual story here. It would have been fun!

Oh it's been silly for ages. I just want to know if I'm right, and I've had my suspicions for a long time now.

Wouldn't be a very satisfying answer tbh. It would feel more like an ass-pull. It's secretly this character who we've never seen before or even named? I really hope not. The comic is far too clever and narratively tight to do anything like that.

Ah see, the absence and the overall lack of info about his father (without it being dwelt on), plus speaking in Senku’s voice and seemingly a superscientist, is exactly why I think it’ll be that. There’s just enough that it’s not a complete ass-pull (at the very least no more than Xeno) and he’s the only person from Senku’s past apart from his mother (who has not been mentioned at all IIRC) who has never been accounted for AND could have been around at day zero. Anything else aside of it being some other version of Senku himself (via time travel or cloning or whatever) is a Necron-level sudden endboss. It's going to be someone linked to Senku, I'm certain, and everyone else is accounted for.

I finally had a moment to catch up with the latest volume of Spy X Family and it’s a good one. Aside from the usual stellar reaction faces, the first half of the book has Twilight going undercover at a tournament of underground, no-holds barred DEATH TENNIS and it’s fantastic.

Sarcasmorator said:

Ah see, the absence and the overall lack of info about his father (without it being dwelt on), plus speaking in Senku’s voice and seemingly a superscientist, is exactly why I think it’ll be that. There’s just enough that it’s not a complete ass-pull (at the very least no more than Xeno) and he’s the only person from Senku’s past apart from his mother (who has not been mentioned at all IIRC) who has never been accounted for AND could have been around at day zero. Anything else aside of it being some other version of Senku himself (via time travel or cloning or whatever) is a Necron-level sudden endboss. It's going to be someone linked to Senku, I'm certain, and everyone else is accounted for.

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I'm so glad that literally all of this is baloney. Dr Stone has some leaps in logic and some insane production timelines, but the comic as an ethos has been staunchly faithful about how it represents science and how the world works. The comic has never, at literally any point, made a big deal about Senku's biological father. It's a non-factor. It would have been the biggest ass-pull of all time to bring that into the equation at this late a stage. Especially when it would have been a betrayal of everything Dr Stone stands for as a narrative. About science being this universal thing anyone can do. It would have been an even bigger betrayal than Naruto secretly being Ninja-Jesus, or Goku coming back from the dead in the Buu Saga. The real answer it turns out was telegraphed from the beginning, but wasn't super-easy to predict exactly waht was going on. This is probably a best case scenario for how this could have played out.

I wouldn't say "The petrification devices are alien life-forms that speak through radio waves" is any more telegraphed than "The main character whose parentage is pointedly unknown turns out to have a biological parent significant to the proceedings" would have been (and I've read most of series three times so far). I don't mind at all that it took a different route, because the latter path is where I expected it to go, and this is more interesting, but come on now. It would hardly be the first time for that particular reveal, in manga or otherwise.

I think Wist is coming at this from the same point of view that made it disappointing that Rey turned out to be genetically descended from the Emperor. The idea of a democratization of the Force, where anyone could be important, is more interesting than a universe where only people from Special Dynasties get to have an impact on the course of history. Since a big point of Dr Stone is "anyone can science", having one bloodline destroy and save the world would be similarly disappointing. (Though you're also right that it wouldn't be terribly unexpected in the general context of manga plots.)

Sure, and I should note, I wasn't in favor of it being his dad, I just made a prediction that it would be, and why I thought so, and I don't think it was an unreasonable one.

What Kirin said. But also:

Go back to the very beginning of the comic, and Senku lays out three basic scenarios of who/how it happened. It’s never really brought up again, but if you’ve been paying attention to everything we’ve learned in the comic up to this point, it’s pretty easy for us to eliminate two of his three options with the information we’ve gained since. The Medusa-tech is just way too advanced to be man-made, and any human origin would thusly have either included time travel - which would have been an ass-pull, or involved ancient-precursors - also an asspull. Dr Stone as a comic has gone out of its way to be written with a certain amount of logical consistency/lack of ass-pulls. All of it designed to reinforce the comic’s core ethos of rationality and science. Of logical problem solving and the power of the scientific method. A lesser comic might have indulged in making Senku a secret Sayian, but Dr Stone has gone out of its way to make most of its plot devices reasonable/within the realm of plausibility, with the Medusa being the sole exception.

I don't believe I said anything about a human origin for the petrification tech! I only predicted that his father was behind the petrification event in some way, given his absence and the way Why-Man spoke in something that sounded like Senku's voice. That wouldn't have precluded his using alien technology to do it.

EDIT: Hm, the post I was replying to is gone.