It’s really cool how, if you look across the Earth, you can still see representatives of different parts of the history of life today. Deep in the ocean, around thermal vents, you’ll find extremophile bacteria that are likely living the same lifestyle as the earliest cells. There are tons of photosynthetic bacteria, representing a shift towards oxygenated respiration. There’s jellyfish, which are part of a line that goes back to the Ediacaran era, as well as all sorts of simple invertebrate life that’s been here since the Cambrian. Fish exist in great diversity as well, including the ancient coelacanth. Mudskippers are land-dwelling fish that live in what must be a similar way as the early land colonizers. Amphibians have held on through all the great mass extinctions, waiting for their chance to rule the riverbanks again. Reptiles, though very advanced now, have retained many basal traits that the first amniotes developed. Birds are the current masters of the air, keeping the dinosaur line alive and taking over from their pterosaur cousins. We even still have monotremes like the platypus to show what earlier mammals, before the development of live birth, were like. Despite all this, it’s also true that the majority of life that has ever lived is gone, with entire lineages unaccounted for in this day and age; no one here knows what therapsids would have been like in life, for instance. The history of life is really impressive.
Anyway, after writing up my big seasonal review of manga, where I said a couple times, “this is one of the best books I’ve ever read,” I got thinking about what I would put on that list. So I did some thinking and came up with this, which isn’t complete. To be clear, while I do love all these books, I didn’t just make a list of books I enjoy the most. I did some hard thinking to put together a group I think in terms of craft and skill are objectively, truly great works. I didn’t do books like Dragon Ball, One Piece, or JoJo, even though they’re all really good and two are up there in overall quality. There are also books that almost make the list but suffer notably somewhere; both High-Rise Invasion and Beasts of Abigaile are doing incredible things, but they don’t end as strong as they begin. And then there’s books that have a big impact on me, but I’m either not up to date on them (like Spirit Circle, which I haven’t read in a few years) or can’t quite articulate a case for (like Pompo the Cinefile). So here’s what I thought of this week.
1. Yuri Is My Job! by Miman is a story about a girl, Hime, who is brought on to work at a yuri-themed café and subsequently lives out a real-life yuri drama. It’s great at adding layer after layer to every panel, making it a dense read that rewards rereading. At the same time, it never feels that way, instead coming across as a fun, dramatic romance that you tear through, without dwelling overly long on any one moment. To demonstrate this, I want to discuss one emblematic example that happens to be one of my favorite ever sequences in manga. It’s in the first chapter, and it’s a two panel sequence that represents the first big heart-throb of the story, typically an important, big, and dramatic panel in a romance. In comics, there are a lot of different sound devices, and manga uses a ton more of one of the most versatile: The handwritten note. It’s what it sounds like, usually used in the vein of dialogue or inner monologue, and most often exists outside of thought or speech bubbles. It doesn’t follow standard rules. Depending on the story, it could be literal dialogue, or it could be “what they really mean” but not what they say; other characters might be able to hear it, or they might not; it could be part of the same conversation, or it might not be; these things may be clear, or the notes could jive enough with the spoken dialogue and action that you couldn’t tell the difference. So it’s often ambiguous and non-literal. In this sequence, our Hime has an interaction with Ayanokoji that gets her heart aflutter. Hime is staring at her, looking maybe dumbstruck or impressed, and over her left shoulder is a small, handwritten note that says “ba-bump,” with dialogue call-out lines around it. This is an unusual choice. After all, sound effects are very often drawn by hand so they can visually match the sound and tone desired, and no one’s literally hearing a heart throb in the first place. And why would a sound effect have dialogue call-out lines? It comes across like something is missing, and the emotion has to break in any way it can. It comes across like the suggestion that this is what should be felt, half-joking like someone teasing her in the background. It comes across like someone is trying to tell her something, and there’s no expectation that she’ll notice. And it’s over her left side, like her heart is what’s “saying” this. In the next panel, Hime turns and looks in that direction, confused. That’s the key moment. Throughout the story, she thinks she understands it all, but there’s something she’s not grasping, or ignoring. She pretends to not know, to be so confused what anyone is suggesting, but we saw it at the beginning. She knows. She heard it. Of course, the two panels go by quickly and cleanly; you make note of the strange choice of sound device, then you see the next-level reaction that garners more reaction from you than its modest panel size would dictate, and you can keep reading. No big visual effects, no major real estate, no outsized focus on the page. That’s the kind of book this is.
2. Murciélago by Yoshimurakana is one of the best crafted books I’ve ever laid eyes on. It follows Kuroko Koumori, a prolific serial killer turned police asset after they manage to arrest her for the over seven-hundred murders they can prove she committed. The story begins as a new case proves to be a part of a much larger conspiracy, with someone in the shadows manipulating other psychopaths. It brings together many different elements, being a combination of dark psychological horror and detective mystery, with a good dose of gore and yuri romance in the mix. The series doesn’t shy away from the fact that Kuroko is the worst villain in the series, while also making her one of the most compelling, fascinating, charming, and hilarious characters in fiction; you know she shouldn’t get her way, yet you can’t stop rooting for her. The characters are wonderfully realized and designed, the action is kinetic and creative, and mystery is multifaceted and engrossing. The thing that impresses me the most about the book, though, is the layout. This is one of the best laid out books on the market, with incredible control over every aspect of the story, themes, and reading experience through detailed and often bold choices in framing. It’s a common statement that a book pulls you through because it’s so good, you want to keep reading; while that applies here, I think Murciélago controls your reading pace on a much more fundamental level, able to speed you up or slow you down with the placement of panels, and it does so more effectively than most books.
3. My Neighbor Seki by Takuma Morishige is the funniest book you’ve maybe never heard of. It’s a simple gag manga that pairs the otherwise straightlaced middle schooler Yokoi, who just wants to take notes during class, with her seat neighbor Seki, a boy who refuses to do anything academic, especially during school hours. Every chapter, Seki has some new, elaborate game to play in secret at the back of the class, and our viewpoint is Yokoi consistently failing to ignore these games because they’re too engrossing. Over the course of the series, there are small variations added, like a few venue changes, a few other characters, and artistic and style flourishes that accentuate the theme and punchline of the chapter, but overall the gag is always the same. It runs for ten volumes, and it continues to innovate and surprise the whole run. The author ended the series there because he felt he was close to running out of ideas, and he didn’t want it to peter out. It’s an evergreen comedy that’s always funny, no matter when you read it or how many times. It’s just so deeply well-crafted as a comedy that it’s impossible to understate. A key part of that is the other strong point of the series, the characters. Any long-running title needs consistent, well-developed characters, and this book has that in spades. Although it’s clear that Yokoi knows Seki so well that she basically reads his mind, at no point does it come across as if she’s acting like a good-faith narrator; at most, she’s a “level-headed” person with safe opinions, a conformist rule-follower. Her viewpoint is evident, frequently the source of the humor, and is utilized by Seki as part of his games. As the series progresses, you get this thorough picture of who Yokoi is, and both who Seki is and how Yokoi misinterprets him. There’s a level where you can read the whole thing as a character study, which is really neat. But mostly, it’s an amazing master class on how to write and draw a gag comedy.
4. Asumi-chan Is Interested in Lesbian Brothels by Kuro Itsuki is a book I’ve definitely not talked about enough, because that’s not possible. In case you haven’t heard me say it yet before, the story begins when college sophomore Asumi finds out that her childhood friend and first love, Mai, whom she called a “whatever” kisser the last time she saw her, is now working as a lesbian prostitute; her new mission, track down Mai, no matter how many call girls she has to go through, because this definitely isn’t an excuse to sexually experiment with attractive and skilled partners. This book is incredibly charming, hilarious, and sexy as all get-out. It has all the big strengths any book needs, including character design, layout, and a balance between themes and narrative; in those terms, this book is every bit as top quality as any on this list. Since this is a sex comedy, the standout is how it balances the humor and the eroticism. It comes down to Asumi being a nervous, unsure, and in many ways oblivious person. Her lack of confidence and trepidation make her relatable and sympathetic. In her day to day life, this nervous nature makes for great comedy, while the tension and vulnerability makes the sex scenes feel more personal and intense. The fact that she doesn’t know how much game she has, or how her sensitivity affects her partners, further enhances both qualities, while feeding back into the thematic core of the story; she doesn’t know how she relates to others because she doesn’t know herself, at least not until it’s too late.
5. Goodbye, Eri is the Tatsuki Fujimoto story I chose to put on this list, but to be clear, I could have also included Chainsaw Man or Look Back just as easily (I still need to check out Fire Punch). Part of the reason I chose this over the others was because I figured there could be people out there who don’t want to get into shonen action, and this is a lot more inviting for them. The story follows Yuta, starting in middle school and then through to his adulthood, as he films people close to him. His first subject is his mother, who was dying and wanted him to record her final moments. Then he started filming his high school friend, Eri. Much later in life, as Yuta is in a low point, we see him revisit his memories with Eri. Most of the story is told through the perspective of his camera, and we see first the parts that made it into the movies, and then the greater context and truth of these relationships that he didn’t include. It’s an incredibly powerful and affective story about life, death, and how we navigate our experiences of these things and our relationships with others through art. Like most of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s work, it’s got this impressive mixture of sadness, deep despair, and life-affirming hope and joy, along with crass humor as rough characters grapple with their fears. A striking element of this particular story is that there are no thought bubbles, no inner monologues, and he really takes advantage of the space. There are so many pages that linger on moments to provide weight and depth to every little thing you see. Fujimoto once wrote a 32-page short story out of spite because his editors chided him for not being able to draw anything in less than 32 pages; these days, he’s more famous for a serialized series with an average of like 15 pages. If you’ve mostly been reading that, or other comics or manga that focus on speed and momentum, this is an incredible showcase of a master of real estate and slow storytelling at its finest. It’s a real tearjerker that will stay with you for a long time.
I’ll call it there for this week. They’re great books.
Weekly Thoughts 10/21/23
Life in the Gutters 