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The path of travel of a robot gaining AI intelligence had already been intimated in the first part of My Name is Shingo . Although not yet named as such, the implication is that Shingo started out “life” as 'Monroe', a construction robot at the factory where Konma’s dad works. Since the workers there know little about computer technology, Konma has helped Monroe develop self-learning capabilities. Perhaps not as much as he thinks when he starts playing with the programming, but at the same time although those changes are taking place gradually at the start of this second Perfect Collection of the series, there is clearly a long way to self-awareness yet. Funnily enough - though not if you are familiar with Umezz - his young children protagonists are embarking on a similar journey. There is a bit of a setback for Konma at the start of Volume 2, when Marin's diplomat father takes the family to England. Monroe is also behaving erratically and the factory, as might have been f...

Japanese artist Gou Tanabe continues his graphic manga adaptations of the dark horror of H.P Lovecraft with At The Mountains of Madness , an extended tale that delves into the origins of his some of his most famous creations spoken of in the Necronomicon; the Old Ones, the Cthulu and the fearsome Shoggoth. The story of their arrival on our planet, their enforced 'hibernation' in the Antarctic and their terrifying re-awakening. It's a story to inspire the most imaginative of visual presentations and Gou Tanabe does that impressively across two volumes. In1930, the Miskatonic University expedition led by Professor Dyer delves deeper into this frozen and inhospitable continent than anyone has been before. They soon discover some fossils of great interest, of a kind never seen before, and excitedly one of the scientists, Lake has commandeered some planes and a team to explore further inland. Despite an incoming storm, they discover a hitherto unknown range of dark jagged mounta...

The dark imaginative worlds of H.P. Lovecraft, his created mythology and monsters, are among the most influential works in the horror genre, and yet the visualisation of those worlds are as difficult to pin down as it is to measure the increments of rising fear they inspire. Lovecraft had a way to tapping into those deep primal fears, leaving much to the imagination, making them feel like part of a mythology based on another reality that is within reach - which, if you consider it as fear, is exactly what it is. When it comes to visual depictions of his work, it must similarly be a case of capturing that sense of inner fear rather than seek to make it concrete in images. And yet, there is always something fascinating about seeing how others visualise those tales. The Japanese artist and writer Gou Tanabe works not in the typical manga style, although it is certainly comparable to the more refined artwork of latter day Junji Ito, but closer to the style of Bernie Wrightson's elabora...

Now 87 years old and retired for a few decades, Kazuo Umezz is considered one of the most important and influential of Japanese manga artists in the horror genre, a master recognised by current leading artists in the genre including Junji Ito , but until relatively recently little of his work has been translated into English. One feature that is becoming common now that more works are being published in the West, is the question of how children relate to the the world their parents have created for them, whether it's the apocalyptic landscapes of his masterpiece The Drifting Classroom or the legacy faced by a child twisted by her mother's complex with her appearance in Baptism . The first volume of My Name is Shingo , now being published by Viz, is another major Umezz work that points in the same direction. The subject that influences 12 year old Satoru Konma and sets him apart from his parents appears to be their relationship to new technology, but inevitably the situation is...

Published in 1973, Barbara is one of Osamu Tezuka's mature adult comics, which means that it has some nudity and sexual content, but it actually means more that it deals with different themes and approach from his more obviously children-oriented comics. It's also quite a daring subject, an adventurous one rather than a political one, dealing in some ways with the idea of art and craft, but in a more serious way than how the artist sometimes inserts himself self-effacingly and self-critically as comic moments in his other books. Barbara the character is something of an enigma, a muse perhaps, one that Tezuka recognises as being influenced to some extent by Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann . Unlike Nicklausse however who tries to keep her master on the right path, Barbara is a more inconstant companion to her sensei. Yosuke Mikura is a "popular Symbolist writer' who picks Barbara off the streets, a drunk, delinquent, with a shady background. There is a literary bent t...

Created in 1972-73, Ayako is one of Osamu Tezuka's dark exploration of people and society, specifically dealing with the significant post-war years from the 1950s, right up to the present day in the 70s. It's not a pleasant story to say the least, the American occupation giving rise to enormous upheavals that Japanese society is incapable of adjusting to. More than that, but seen through the eyes of one family, who represent many aspects and attitudes of Japanese society, it even seems to bring out the worse in the Japanese character. Ayako opens with Jiro Tenge returning from the war, the country defeated, its impact shock to the whole nation. He returns to his home village in the country, Yodoyama, to the grave disappointment of his tyrannical father who is ashamed that Jiro didn't die honourably in the war like so many others. Jiro finds that much has changed in the time he has been away, as much with Japan as his family. His teenage sister Naoko is secretly part of a l...

Osamu Tezuka's 1965 science-fiction hero team adventure Wonder 3 is aimed at a younger audience and with Tezuka's imagination, style and dynamism there's plenty to enjoy. If you want you could maybe even find a little bit of broad social commentary, but if not, it still seems fairly on the money in respect of its traditional SF theme of showing the planet Earth in decline and in need of outside intervention if it is to be saved. Things are so bad however that the Milky Way League aren't even sure the Earth is worth saving. They decide however to send a superhero Space Patrol Squad team The Wonder 3 to monitor the planet for one year and if it doesn't show any sign of being worthy of redemption, they are to use their Antiproton bomb to destroy the place. It's too much of a risk to the rest of the universe. Arriving on Earth the three decide to disguise themselves as animals in order to blend in (the idea of taking human form too disgusting to contemplate). The t...

There's not much that is typical about Junji Ito's manga work, but he certainly had his own style and methods for delving into the dark, the bizarre and the horrific, with no small amount of body horror. That's sounds like it might be somewhat formulaic, but within that genre he often manages to be very creative and surprising. Some of his works are episodic in nature, each chapter revealing a different type of horror that individually culminate in an explosive manner building up to an even more shocking conclusion, and that is very much the style of Black Paradox . Within that however, anything can happen... Four young people - Taburo, Pii-Tan, Baracchi and Maruso - gather together under unusual circumstances, meeting on the site Black Paradox and agreeing to form a suicide club. Without much preamble, they drive out to a location where they will realise their desire to exit this world. Each has their own motives but there is a common feeling that drives them in some way, ...

One of the characteristics that make Junji Ito a master of horror, aside from his own imagination and creativity, is the way his stories are often connected to Japanese folk character and tradition. It's something that all the best horror writers do, tapping into mythology and dark fears rooted in traditions that have an element of the eerie or bizarre about them. That's true about at least two of the stories in this new collection, but there are other deep concerns related to recent social and health issues that seem to have influenced and added to how Ito approaches the dark turns each of these stories take. In his afterword, Ito talks about how these stories may have only made it to the light of day because of the Covid lockdown. Developed from sketches of ideas that had been around for a long time, it seemed the right time to let his imagination and talent loose on them. The fevered aspect of the stories certainly reflects some of the concerns and fears going through his an...

Published in France, but not yet in the UK or the US, Baptism  ( Senrei ) is a later work from Kazuo Umezz (Umezu in France), the author/artist of the 1974 end of the world monster horror epic The Drifting Classroom . Created in 1995, Baptism is also a little more refined and paced while still retaining the character of Umezz's classic manga art style. Just as importantly, the story also manages to take a classic horror trope as its basis and do something entirely different with it; a Frankenstein-like science experiment, a body-swap horror that has a typically sinister twist. A famous movie actress from the olden days, Izumi Wakakusa has retired at the height of her career, terrified that the make-up she wears will no longer be able to mask the horrible disfigurement that she bears down one side of her face. She leaves the world of cinema and becomes a mother, devoted to her daughter Sakura. In fact, she may even be a little over-protective. We soon find out why. The only reason ...

Even in a collection as relatively slim as Sensor , Junji Ito manages to find plenty of imaginative new ways to depict a tale of terror. His 2019 graphic novel develops in a direction not even expected by the artist when he started out on the story, developing and expanding on ideas and horror, chapter by chapter in a number of episodes that extend out to the cosmos but also deep into inner fears. For some reason she isn't quite sure of, Kyoko Byakuya is drawn to visit Mount Segoku, an active volcano that is noted for the strange phenomenon of its volcanic hair. Rather than the more common hard black strands of volcanic material, the area around Segoku abounds in the golden light of glimmering "angel hair", known to locals as Divine Amagami. Kyoko is brought to the village of Kiyokami that is bathed in the light of this substance, where she learns the myth of its origin in the Edo era. The reason Kyoko has been drawn there is because she has been chosen by God for a speci...

Kazuo Umezz started his professional career as a comic artist in the 1950s. Now aged 85, he continues working in the medium up to the present day, and is something of a personality in his native Japan. Little of his work has been published in English (although there is more to come and more if you look for French and Italian editions), but his classic 1974 serial The Drifting Classroom that made him famous is at least available in English translation and published by Viz Media in three bulky Perfect Edition hardback volumes. It's an incredible piece of work that stands as one of the all-time classics of Japanese manga. The Drifting Classroom 's themes are similar in content and style to the early works of the modern horror master Junji Ito, while from a western perspective being reminiscent of the dark horror artwork of Charles Burns. Umezz's naive cartoony artwork however is closest to style of the master Osamu Tezuka. Umezz started his career in that era and continued to...

Solanin has a rating for Older Teens and I’d say that’s probably about right for the subject, the themes and the manner in which they are handled in Inio Asano’s pleasant - perhaps even just a little too nice - manga story, but that’s not to say that the book doesn’t have attractions for a wider audience. There’s a fair bit of soul-searching here, the story built around a young couple who have met in college and have ended up living together without really planning where they are going. Now 24 years of age, both of them wonder whether they have simply let their lives drift and lost sight of what it is they really want. Meiko realises that she isn’t cut out for mundane office work and suddenly quits her job, while her boyfriend Taneda who has been working as a freelance illustrator decides that it’s time to make a go of his dream to be a famous musician in a band. Deciding to shake-up their lives means however that Meiko and Taneda also have to consider whether they even should remain ...

Featuring a spectacular flying battle between two opposing individuals with psychic powers,Katsuhiro Otomo's first extended work  Domu, The Dreams of Children is the classic stuff of manga comics, one moreover that sets the tone for the artist's only other major comic work – the masterful Akira . A series of unexplained deaths at a high-rise block have the police baffled, the deaths being too varied and frequent to be explained as suicides, accidents or even the action of a single murderer. This is because the deaths, mostly falls from the upper floors of the tenement building, are being caused by a malevolent person or entity with psychic powers. However there is someone else within the building – a young girl who has noticed who is behind the events and who has the power to oppose his random and senseless actions. There could be some social commentary in the generational struggle that ensues, but principally, and after the slow build-up, what Domu really presents is an oppo...

As the introduction by the writer and artist of Akira notes, this is his eighth collection of his shorter work, but the only one available so far in the west (and even now it sadly seems to be out-of-print). It's an eclectic collection, most of the stories having a science-fiction theme, but within that the tone and quality of the work varies widely. The imagery, the exciting dynamic layouts and many of the themes are however instantly recognisable as the work of one of the best contemporary Japanese manga artists. Like his most famous work in Akira , but also elsewhere in his film and anime work, there is very much a celebration of anti-establishment sentiments – often personified in the form of long-haired hippy characters, whose very existence alone seems to threaten disorder and rebellion. Often the characters battle against mere machines, sentinels sent out to maintain order – which again looking very much like the work in Akira . But the rebelliousness can also be in the ver...

Not only is Osamu Tezuka's 1976 graphic novel MW a remarkably different kind of story from the Japanese master of comics, but challenging his country's political infrastructure, the corruption behind election string-pulling, the government connections with rich and influential businessmen and the thorny question of US involvement in Japan, it's a daring and challenging work of great relevance.  More than that, Tezuka explores the human, or perhaps more accurately, the inhuman impulses that lie behind such actions. At the centre of the story is an unusual love affair between a priest, Father Garai, and a morally corrupt young man, Yuki. The two of them have in the past survived the accidental release of a deadly experimental virus called MW that wiped out the entire population of a small Japanese island. Only a child at the time, the experience and exposure to a smaller dose of the virus has however has deeply affected Yuki, the effeminate young man now a quite dangerous an...

Zatoichi? Blind swordsman? Pah! How about a blind swordsman with no arms and no legs either? That would be the condition of Hyakkimaru, his father, samurai general Lord Daigo having forged a deal with forty-eight demons, offering each of them a part of his new-born son in return for bestowing great powers on him. The deformed child is abandoned, but is rescued by a maverick Black Jack-like doctor who creates prosthetic limbs for the child. On discovering from one of the many supernatural creatures drawn to this unusual child that to regain his missing body parts he must find and destroy each of the forty-eight demons, Hyakkimaru becomes a wandering swordsman with weapons in place of his missing limbs. On one of his journeys he encounters Dororo, a fearless child and beggar thief with an equally troubled past. Dororo has an intriguing storyline, one that draws effectively from Japanese ghost and demon mythology. Anyone familiar with Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo will find those themes an...

Taiyo Matsumoto’s wonderful underground manga is a much darker prospect than its flowing, full-colour movie adaptation by Michael Arias. Matsumoto keeps his vision of Treasure Town closer to the perspective its guardians Black and White, two young boys known as The Cats who protect their district from rival gangs that threaten destroy its character in their competition for influence there. Matsumoto’s artwork appears unconventional and almost hallucinatory in places, but the development of the story, the whole pace and perspective, is a familiar one in Japanese manga. Black and White obviously represent the yin and yang, the delicate ecological and psychological balance that is under threat from the ways of the modern world. Once that relationship is altered, events rapidly escalate and inevitably there are violent consequences. This all-in-one phone-book size edition, released to coincide with the release of the film adaptation on DVD, is beautiful, providing a wonderful opportunity t...