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House of 1000 Manga Finale: Part II
In the final installment of House of 1000 Manga, Jason both looks back at some of his favorites from the last 5 years and looks forward at what's to come!
― House of 1000 Manga: The End If this column was a horror movie, like the one it's named after (I've actually never even seen it), this is the part when the House of 1000 Manga burns down and the traumatized survivors tell the sheriff about how t...
House of 1000 Manga Finale: Part I
The House of 1000 Manga is closing its doors after 5 years of excavation and discovery. Co-author Shaenon Garrity counts down her favorite manga from the column.
― Shaenon's Ten Favorite 'House' Manga It falls upon my bowed shoulders to announce the news: House of 1,000 Manga is ending. After five years of weekly columns, the time has come to move on. Among other things, we're kind of running out of...
House of 1000 Manga - Kekkaishi
Jason exorcises some demons with the teenage spirit-banishing crew of Kekkaishi, a 35-volume action adventure hit.
― Kekkaishi
Manga years are like dog years; a popular shonen or shojo manga lives for 10 or so years, it has a rich, full life (or not), and after it's gone you remember it fondly. (Unless it's a manga that keeps dragging on forever on life support, getting worse and worse and draining ...
House of 1000 Manga - Five Amazing Untranslated Manga
Shaenon uncovers five incredible manga that, for whatever silly reason, haven't been made legally available in English yet, including one by the author of Fullmetal Alchemist.
― Five Amazing Untranslated Manga When I tell people I work as a manga editor, one of the first and most reasonable questions I get is, “Oh, you read Japanese?” Sadly, no. All I bring to the job are my Seven Sisters-honed writ...
House of 1000 Manga - Meteor Prince
In a mad scramble to find a manga to review this week, Jason rolls the dice and winds up with a magic space boyfriend falling right on his head.
― Meteor Prince 10 a.m., Wednesday. House of 1000 Manga is due in four hours, and I've read everything in the house. Drinking coffee is just making me more nervous and jittery, and making me think, when will someone translate a coffee-themed manga? Is Rei H...
House of 1000 Manga - Sunny
The acclaimed author of Gogo Monster turns in a highly personal series of vignettes that offer a peek into his life.
― Sunny
In my House column on Taiyo Matsumoto's GoGo Monster, I mentioned how the alt-manga master's career has drifted from fantasy to realism, toward work that feels increasingly drawn from life. Best known in the U.S. for Tekkon Kinkreet (also published as Black and White), a sci-f...
House of 1000 Manga - Inuyashiki
An old man becomes a cybernetic killing machine courtesy of the author of Gantz. Just don't get between him and the early bird special.
― Inuyashiki “When I see old men eating beef bowls alone, late at night…lonely old salarymen…I wonder what their joy in life is. Why are they eating alone? Don’t they have families to be with?” I almost read a YA shojo manga for this week, but instead, somehow, I'm ...
House of 1000 Manga - The Earl and the Fairy
A plucky redheaded fairy expert gets more than she bargained for, along with a magical boyfriend. Shaenon investigates.
― The Earl and the Fairy I admit it: I feel like I'm behind on the shojo manga these days. The most popular shonen series make enough noise in fandom that even an old Dirty Pair-reading fart like myself knows more or less what's up, and anyway right now it's mostly Attack on Titan ...
House of 1000 Manga - Poverty, Princesses and Zombies
Jason checks out three prose novels about the life and challenges of working as a mangaka.
― The Poverty, The Princess and the Zombies The way reading about food makes you hungry, reading about manga makes me want to read manga. In our ongoing exploration of “What is it like to be a manga artist?”, this week we check out three very different prose ebooks about the life of a mangaka… Manga Poverty
Sh...
House of 1000 Manga - A Zoo In Winter
Shaenon follows up A Drifting Life with Jiro Taniguchi's autobiographical manga that follows in the same tradition.
― In my last House column I talked about Yoshihiro Tatsumi's opus A Drifting Life, which follows the manga industry from the postwar era to the year 1960. I wish Tatsumi, who passed away earlier this year, could have drawn a sequel about the second half of his career, during which he b...
House of 1000 Manga - Kakukaku Shikajika
If you were ever curious what life was like for the woman who created Princess Jellyfish, Jason has the manga for you.
― Kakukaku Shikajika
“I want to go back in time and beat up that moron.” —Akiko Higashimura, and many other artists, talking about their younger self Few artists “live the dream” of becoming a professional when they're still a teenager. When I was a kid I dreamed of being a horror a...
House of 1000 Manga - A Drifting Life
Shaenon conquers legendary mangaka Yoshihiro Tatsumi's enormous (and enormously beloved) autobiographical opus.
― A Drifting Life Yoshihiro Tatsumi passed away last month, bringing an end to one of the most remarkable careers in manga. Happily, he chronicled a sizeable chunk of it in his 2009 doorstopper of a manga memoir, A Drifting Life, which should be required reading for all who would dare call...
House of 1000 Manga - Kazuhiko Shimamoto
Jason's series on manga about manga continues with a blood-pumping journey through the work of hotblooded Blazing Transfer Student mangaka Kazuhiko Shimamoto.
― Kazuhiko Shimamoto “I’m just a fanatical hot-blooded mangaka! I can teach you about plot structure, but I can’t give you relationship advice!” “It’s not enough to burn only in your own world! In the face of a crisis, will your burning heart ...
House of 1000 Manga - MBQ
Shaenon dives into the world of MBQ, a hyperactive dream of manga stardom from the now-legendary Felipe Smith.
― Recently, manga scholar Matt Thorn ruffled some otaku feathers with a blog post entitled “Why it bugs me that you call your comics ‘manga’.” Although I admire Thorn above all other manga nerds, and as much as white kids appropriating Japanese culture bug me, too (albeit in a personally cr...
House of 1000 Manga - Bakuman.
Jason straps in for a series of columns focusing on manga about manga, and naturally, his first stop is writer Tsugumi Ohba and artist Takeshi Obata's Bakuman. Plus: Jason's new project!
― In honor of my new Kickstarter, Mangaka: The Fast & Furious Game of Drawing Comics, for the next two months I’m going to be writing about meta-manga: manga about manga artists! Please enjoy, and if you like, pleas...
House of 1000 Manga - Vinland Saga
Shaenon sharpens her blade and gets ready for viking-on-viking violence in the epic historical drama Vinland Saga.
― Vinland Saga The Internet loves pirates as kitsch, but real pirates are noting to LOL about. A while back, my House compatriot Jason invited a friend to play a pirate-themed RPG, only to be told, “I hate pirates! Pirates boarded my family's boat to America! They killed people in front...
House of 1000 Manga - Sparkler Monthly
Jason checks out a site dedicated to manga-inspired US comics, which have kind of a bad rap. Is it deserved?
― Sparkler Monthly “What kind of people go to these anime conventions? Is it mostly Asians?” one of my elderly relatives asked me once. I took a deep breath and gave her a lecture: anime and manga wasn't something ‘just’ for Asian-Americans, fans of all ethnicities enjoyed Japanese pop cultur...
House of 1000 Manga - Apocalypse Meow
Shaenon learns that war is hell, even if you're a fuzzy bunny, in Motofumi Kobayashi's hit manga.
― Apocalypse Meow The most disappointing title change from manga to English translation happened last year, when the American movie version of All You Need Is Kill was released as Edge of Tomorrow. (Okay, okay, All You Need Is Kill was a light novel before it was a manga, but bear with me, I'm riffing.)...
House of 1000 Manga - Otomen
Jason is tickled pink by Aya Kanno's gleeful, playful comedy about taking on gender stereotypes.
― Otomen
“A business like this is so great. You can talk to other men about shojo manga like it’s the most natural thing…”\ Handsome, strong, a kendo and judo champion: Asuka Masamune seems like the ideal man. Girls swoon over him and offer him presents and chocolates, but he turns them away; he's polite...
House of 1000 Manga - Helter Skelter and Pink
In both Helter Skelter and Pink, Kyoko Okazaki loves peeling back the skin of femininity to poke at the sex and violence writhing underneath.
― Helter Skelter and Pink
A word before we begin: a laugh and a scream are very similar. This line, from the opening of Kyoko Okazaki's Helter Skelter, could be printed on the first page of any of her work. As many artists have tried to do and precious few hav...
House of 1000 Manga - Master Keaton
Naoki Urasawa's world-famous globe-trotting insurance investigator comes under Jason's microscope.
― Master Keaton
“Insurance is gambling. It’s nothing other than betting money on the probability of people—the insured—dying or not dying within a given period of time.”
Insurance doesn't normally make people think “adventure.” But then again, manga is great at finding excitement in strange and seeming...
House of 1000 Manga - Children of the Sea
Shaenon attempts to understand Daisuke Igarashi's beautiful and ponderous exploration of the ocean and other unexplored spaces.
― Children of the Sea Usually, with these columns, I start with the story, because I'm human and humans love stories. Then I talk about themes and ideas and styles, and finally I get around to trying to describe the art. But with Children of the Sea I have to start with the...
House of 1000 Manga - Cat Paradise
Jason adopts a manga all about magical cat familiars in an academy where pets are certainly allowed. If you've never read it, the time is meow.
― Cat Paradise
"I've always loved animals, so I put them in my manga a lot.”
—Yuji Iwahara There are so many manga about people partnered up with monsters, dragons and so on, you'd think there would be more manga about people partnered up with real-life anim...
House of 1000 Manga - Cat-Eyed Boy
Shaenon dares enter the vault of Kazuo Umezu's surrealist, ultraviolent horror serial, Cat-Eyed Boy.
― Cat Eyed Boy One of my all-time favorite pieces of comic art is a two-page spread from Jack Kirby's gonzo Planet of the Apes riff Kamandi, The Last Boy on Earth. It's a four-color map of Kamandi's postapocalyptic world, packed with detail and such intriguing labels as “Wild Human Preserve,” “Island...
House of 1000 Manga - Four from Crunchyroll
Murderers, reckless investors, deadly games from an unknown authority, and teenage assassins abound in four titles available on Crunchyroll's manga service.
― Four from Crunchyroll Crunchyroll has become my favorite digital manga service. I hate to admit it, but I always forget to keep track of Shonen Jump; the read-it-every-week-as-it-comes-out magazine system is easy to fall behind in, and hey, ev...
House of 1000 Manga - Massive
Shaenon tackles Fantagraphics' compendium of and about gay erotic manga featuring enormous men and the enormous things they do (NSFW text).
― Massive A while back, my “House of 1,000 Manga” collegue Jason Thompson devoted a column to “64 Pounds of Porn,” his box of strictly-research porn manga. Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It is almost 64 pounds of porn all by itself. The title is ...
House of 1000 Manga - Learn English with Jojo's Bizarre Adventure!
Of all the many wonderful gifts bestowed upon us by Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, now we can count the gift of English among them.
― House of 1000 Manga Special:
Learn English with Jojo's Bizarre Adventure! Beyond the level of "Where is the hotel?", you can tell a lot about cultural perceptions by how people study a language. In the early 1990s, when Japan was synonymous with big business, Mangajin maga...
House of 1000 Manga - Gogo Monster
Not an adaptation of the classic film Monster A-Go-Go, instead a captivating and beautiful tale of childhood by legendary mangaka Taiyo Matsumoto.
― Gogo Monster I know childhood isn't magical, because when I was four years old I told myself so. I made a point of burning a message into my brain: Adult self, don't go thinking children have any insights or magical perceptions, because we don't. That m...
House of 1000 Manga - Japan Sinks
A classic disaster story about what would happen if the oceans swallowed Japan whole catches Jason's eye this week.
― Japan Sinks
"It's not as if our people simply moved to this island from somewhere else…even if we did, afterwards we've become one with it. We're Japanese…we're not human first and then Japanese…we are Japanese through and through!" I love apocalyptic stories. In some form they've al...
House of 1000 Manga - Summit of the Gods
Shaenon gives thanks today for Jiro Taniguchi's manly man manga about manly men scaling manly mountains.
― The Summit of the Gods Jiro Taniguchi is an artist who hasn't made nearly as many appearances in the House of 1,000 Manga as he could. Jason Thompson discussed his blissfully plotless Walking Man a million years ago, he has a story in Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators, and is that really the only ...
House of 1000 Manga - Gen Manga
Shaenon does the impossible and tries to marathon all of One Piece in a... wait, nope, this is about quirky underground manga from publisher Gen!
― Gen Manga My colleague Jason just spent the past two weeks of this column covering Naruto, the most popular manga of all time, at least in the U.S. It got such a positive response that we've decided to go all-mainstream, all the time. Which is why this w...
House of 1000 Manga - The 48 56-Hour Naruto Marathon, Part II
The conclusion of the tale of a man who set out to read the entire Naruto saga in 2 days, only to do it in about 2.5 and nearly scramble his chakra in the process.
― The 48 56 Hour Naruto Marathon: Part 2
"The sensation is just like that of vomiting." —Killer Bee
SPOILER: I couldn't do it. I couldn't read all 71 (I mean 72) volumes of Naruto in 48 hours. I dropped volumes, I blew past the deadline, ...
House of 1000 Manga - The 48-Hour Naruto Marathon Part I
Naruto is coming to a conclusion, so what better time for Jason to try and read the entire thing in a mere 48 hours?
― The 48-Hour Naruto Marathon (Part I) The other day I was talking to one of my most deep-otaku friends (we watched all of the original Evangelion together, as well as tons of kaiju flicks and ‘70s and ‘80s Italian horror) and asked him what movies he'd seen lately. “Guardians of the ...
House of 1000 Manga - Midnight Secretary
What better way to celebrate Halloween than with sexy vampire comics?
― Midnight Secretary It occurred to me that, in honor of Halloween, I should cover a scary manga this week. But in my previous column I took on The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, the most traditionally horrific manga in my To Overanalyze inbox. So for this week I offer Midnight Secretary, a shojo manga about…oh yes…sexy vampire...
House of 1000 Manga - Detroit Metal City
Jason attempts a little Krauser control. WARNING: NSFW language.
― Detroit Metal City
"They start feeling like prisoners, helpless/Till someone comes along on a mission and yells, bitch!"
—Eminem Warning: this is a manga where the main character's power is to say the word "rape" 10 times in one second. Detroit Metal City is the one of the filthiest, most offensive comedy manga ever translated. At le...
House of 1000 Manga - The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service
Just in time for Halloween, Shaenon digs up Eiji Otsuka's gruesome tale of those who can speak to the dead. There's no turning back now!
― The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service Psychic. Dowsing. Hacking. Embalming. Channeling. Puppet. Each cover of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service advertises the unique skills possessed by each of the five-and-a-half members of its titular startup. Individually th...
House of 1000 Manga - Attack on Titan
Jason blows the dust off of an obscure old manga about humanity's desperate struggle against giant humanoid monsters. You've probably never heard of it.
― Attack on Titan
"I killed dangerous beasts! They only happened to resemble humans!" Zombie stories work because, deep down, we know human beings are the scariest things on Earth. Sure, on a cosmic scale, the planet might be destroyed by solar flar...
House of 1000 Manga - Rumic World & Rumic Theater
Shaenon leafs through the two anthologies of Rumiko Takahashi's short-form manga.
― Rumic World/Rumic Theater When I think of the comics that floored me as an impressionable young nerd, the ones that got me obsessed with what this mongrel art form can do, I think of a lot of the acknowledged heavy hitters. Maus. Understanding Comics. Phoenix. The works of Lynda Barry and Moto Hagio. But there are al...
House of 1000 Manga - Inubaka: Crazy for Dogs
Jason em-barks on the tail of a girl who loves dogs, a guy who loves dogs, and the store they run together. Warning: it gets a little ruff.
― Inubaka: Crazy for Dogs
"I've been thinking of hiring somebody who can think about nothing but dogs 24/7. Someone simpleminded…" If you've been following my Twitter or, really, talking to me at all in the last two years, you've probably noticed: we got a dog a...
House of 1000 Manga - 7 Billion Needles
Shaenon takes in Nobuaki Tadano's science fiction opus, and discovers its chief influences along the way.
― 7 Billion Needles Sometimes I feel guilty for not knowing more about Japanese science fiction literature, because manga writers seem to be pretty well-versed in the American stuff. Osamu Tezuka borrowed liberally from Isaac Asimov's robot stories for Astro Boy. When Moto Hagio attended the San...
House of 1000 Manga - Kimagure Orange Road
1987's hottest shonen romance is finally available in English and Jason just couldn't resist.
― Kimagure Orange Road Summertime in Tokyo, 1984. Green trees and blue sky. A teenage boy is walking up a long steep street along a hillside when a breeze comes and a straw hat, carried by the wind, sails through the air. ("A UFO?" he thinks for a second, seeing the saucer shape.) The boy jumps and grabs th...
House of 1000 Manga - One Pound Gospel
Shaenon gets in the ring with Rumiko Takahashi's wacky rom-combination of boxing and Catholicism.
― One-Pound Gospel The new Viz edition of Rumiko Takahashi's classic kung-fu comedy Ranma 1/2 is the first English edition printed in the “unflopped” right-to-left format, even though the manga has been out in English since the 1990s. Viz originally licensed Ranma back in the ancient days when flopping ...
House of 1000 Manga - Unico
Shaenon takes a magical journey with Tezuka's famously adorable little unicorn, Unico.
― Unico Kickstarter can be a powerful force for good or evil, and not everyone agrees on which is which. When professional companies and Hollywood stars started to use the crowdfunding site to raise money for projects, many observers worried that it would destroy Kickstarter's indie sensibility and undermine its c...
House of 1000 Manga - Zatch Bell
Jason remembers one of the strangest shonen fighting manga ever to hit it big, Zatch Bell.
― Zatch Bell Want to read about a Pokémon rip-off? First published in Shonen Sunday magazine in 2001, Zatch Bell was one of hundreds of manga competing to be Number Two in the newly established genre of "heroes who fight using cute-but-violent monster/animal/pet companions." But Zatch is an extreme case becaus...
House of 1000 Manga - Danza and Tesoro
Shaenon takes a tour of two works by legendary mangaka Natsume Ono.
― Danza and Tesoro In 2009, I found myself browsing the then-newish branch of the Mandarake manga bookstore in Akihabara, Tokyo's otaku mecca. Never mind how I found myself there; it's one of the job hazards of the professional nerd. Bored by all the Shonen Jump and Shonen Sunday tankobon collections, my husband pulled an unusual-lo...
House of 1000 Manga - One Thousand and One Nights
It's a loose adaptation of 1001 Nights, it's full of bishonen, and it's the first Manhwa ever covered in this column.
― One Thousand and One Nights
"You don't need to write what really happened. Why don't you write the ending as you wish it to happen instead?"
Poor manhwa. While Japanese comics have enjoyed fame and success in North America and elsewhere, Korean comics have generally been overshadow...
House of 1000 Manga - Thermae Romae
"Thermae Romae is the perfect manga for fans of a) classical history and b) taking baths." Well, who doesn't love both of those?
― Thermae Romae
Rome, 129 AD. Lucius Quintus Modestus, an engineer specializing in thermae, or public bathhouses, has creative block. Soaking in a hot bath to ponder ideas, he gets sucked down a drain and emerges in a public bath in 20th century Japan! At first Lucius is s...
House of 1000 Manga - Ajin
Jason enters the world of amorality and immortality in Gamon Sakurai's Ajin.
― Ajin
Immortality would be great, wouldn't it? It's got to be just sour grapes that there are so many stories about how bad immortality would be, all the way back to ancient myths like the Greek hero Tithonus, the first person to suffer the mistake of wishing for immortality without eternal youth. Of course, even if you do...
House of 1000 Manga - Drops of God
Shaenon swirls around a glass of the mega-popular bacchanalian festival known as Drops of God.
― Ten Cent Manga
I've never met a food manga I didn't like. And there are so many! The king of the genre is Oishinbo, by Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaka, which has been running since the 1980s and is now over 100 volumes long. There are countless other variations on the concept of “manga + food,” like the ...
House of 1000 Manga - Ten Cent Manga
Shaenon digs through some weird old pre-Tezuka manga.
― Ten Cent Manga
Indie art/music/comics publisher Picturebox closed its doors in December of last year. It was a blow to fans of out-there American comics like the Art Out of Time anthologies of bizarre vintage comic books or the work of multimedia art collective Paper Rad. But it was also a sad day for manga, because Picturebox put out some cool...
House of 1000 Manga - Manga Hell, Part II
Jason's travelogue through manga hell concludes with a trip down through the bottom and a visit with Satan himself.
― Manga Hell (Part 2)
“Your suffering shall be legendary even in Hell!” —Hellraiser
Last week, we followed Yotsuba on her tricycle deep through six circles of Manga Hell. Now, we resume our subterranean journey to the final three circles where the world's worst manga are tormented for ...
House of 1000 Manga - Manga Hell, Part I
Jason spelunks down into the mythical place where the most sinful manga wind up.
― Manga Hell: Part I Every manga fan knows what hell is like: it's a place where King Enma judges the dead and they're tortured by red-skinned oni with spiky clubs. Or it's a place where moe-looking horned devils scamper around and fight snobby angels who are the real bad guys. It's a place infested by hapless human sou...
House of 1000 Manga - Ristorante Paradiso and Gente
Shaenon explores Natsume Ono's manga for folks with a thing for seniors.
― Ristorante Paradiso and Gente
In last week's column, Jason commented, “There's plenty of manga about oyajicon (old guy fetish), like Ristorante Paradiso.” But really, there kind of isn't. Manga skews young, especially the manga that makes it to English translation, and most teenage readers aren't that into old guys. Sorry, ol...
House of 1000 Manga - Bunny Drop
Jason reads the heartwarming tale of a man who winds up raising a little girl, and then makes the mistake of continuing to read until the end.
― Bunny Drop I've never raised a child, but if it's exactly like taking care of a small dog, then I'm an expert at it. Bunny Drop is a manga about a 30-year-old single father raising a child, not a "lovable bundle of sunshine" child like Yotsuba&!,but a sligh...
House of 1000 Manga - Cross Game
Mitsuru Adachi's beloved baseball manga masterpiece Cross Game throws Shaenon a straight pitch right down the middle.
― Cross Game If you ever have the chance to attend Mass at the Vatican or a baseball game at a major Japanese stadium, take it. There is no spectacle like a thousands-strong gathering of the devout. And one of the most sacred of Japanese baseball games is the National High School Bas...
House of 1000 Manga - From Far Away
Jason dives into a magical shojo fantasy world from another realm: the 90s.
― From Far Away It's the title that caught me: "Kanata Kara," From Far Away. It's simple, but it summons up imagery of fantasy worlds and distant deserts, deep green forests and strange cultures. Like the Kyoko Hikawa manga it describes, it's evocative, but it's also simple and direct. Just don't get it confused with "From a...
House of 1000 Manga - Rohan at the Louvre
Shaenon checks out a full-color manga, published by the Louvre, from the creator of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.
― Rohan at the Louvre
Hirohiko Araki is an interesting cat. Since the 1980s, he's devoted most of his career to his sprawling supernatural/badass epic JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, one of the out-there classics of manga. JoJo has been many things over the years—gothic horror, globe-trotting batt...
House of 1000 Manga - The Legend of Koizumi
Jason checks out Hideki Ohwada's politically-charged mahjong manga, The Legend of Koizumi.
― House of 1000 Manga: Mudazumo Naki Kaikaku (The Legend of Koizumi) "THIS is mahjong on the international level! You must reach this level, even if it makes you cough blood!" —Mudazumo Naki Kaikaku "A fucking travesty…not only completely irresponsible but an offensive against (everyone) killed by the Nazis…th...
House of 1000 Manga - Tramps Like Us
Shaenon revisits one of the most popular josei soap opera dramedies of Tokyopop's mid-2000s run.
― Tramps Like Us Shojo manga used to be feminist. Stop laughing over your copies of Black Bird and Midnight Secretary—I swear it's true. The gang of young female creators who took over girls’ manga in the 1970s were hip to the social and political issues of the day. They explored women's rights as well a...
House of 1000 Manga - Nijigahara Holograph
Jason tries to unravel Inio Asano's puzzlebox manga Nijigahara Holograph.
― Nijigahara Holograph This is a manga you'll have to read more than once. Comics are a hiding medium: a single image or a single panel can hold vital information, but your eye might skip right over it, focusing on what you choose to focus on, reading at your own pace, not dragged along by the director and cinematographer like...
House of 1000 Manga - Ohikkoshi and Emerald
Shaenon takes a look at some short manga collections by Blade of the Immortal mangaka Hiroaki Samura.
― Ohikkoshi and Emerald I love short manga, but it seems to be a hard sell to comics fans, both in Japan and abroad. It's easy to see why publishers prefer long series that can keep generating sales indefinitely; for the last several decades, the trend has been toward longer and longer manga, and hi...
House of 1000 Manga - Usamaru Furuya
Jason takes a stroll through the work of the intensely versatile, controversial and talented mangaka Usamaru Furuya.
― Usamaru Furuya "I used to do 'serious' art, and manga was just an extension of that.…Now I want to create more entertaining types of worlds, like creating a Hollywood movie." Usamaru Furuya is proof that, for manga artists, art school isn't a waste of time. His skill level and styli...
House of 1000 Manga - 5 Centimeters per Second
Shaenon takes a crawl through the manga version of one of Makoto Shinkai's beloved films.
― 5 Centimeters per Second Few animators—hell, few filmmakers—have launched their careers with as sudden and spectacular a debut as Makoto Shinkai. In 2002, Shinkai, a graphic designer and video-game animator, released the 25-minute film Voices of a Distant Star, which he had made on his Macintosh G4 using comm...
House of 1000 Manga - Manga Box
Jason sifts through the hefty mobile manga offerings from Manga Box. Deadly plants, politics, abandoned pets, murderers and more!
― Manga Box If 2014 Jason could go back in time and talk to 2010 Jason, my present-day self would probably say "You're paying $2.99 for iTunes manga apps with only three or four chapters of manga?! Seriously?! Are you crazy?" It's a good time to like free (or super-cheap)...
House of 1000 Manga - Saturn Apartments
It's a great big economically unequal tomorrow in the low-key sci-fi tale Saturn Apartments.
― Saturn Apartments In a wistful future, humanity has abandoned Earth en masse to allow the planet to return to nature. Everyone lives, and has lived for generations, in a massive artificial ring circling the planet. A hierarchy has developed: the wealthiest citizens live at the top of the ring, where enormo...
House of 1000 Manga - 64 Pounds of Porn
Jason has 64 pounds of porno manga he'd like to share with you. NSFW Language Warning, obviously.
― 64 Pounds of Porn I recently talked to someone who didn't believe that men share porn. I told him that, while I've never gathered in a huddle around a porno mag like in pre-Internet shonen manga (unless you count once in elementary school, but we were only 8 years old), let alone been invited to sit d...
House of 1000 Manga - His Favorite
Shaenon's love of dorky angry guys is sated by the BL comedy His Favorite.
― His Favorite When I read smut, I want it smutty. As part of my job as a professional manga nerd, I find myself reading a lot of Boys’ Love (have you seen the length of the BL review section in Otaku USA?), and time and again I've been disappointed by titles where hot dudes who are also probably also psychic manimals or some...
House of 1000 Manga - Karakuridôji Ultimo
After he created Spider-man, Stan Lee went on to lend his name to the clockwork superhero manga Ultimo.
― "COMICS! They're so much more than illustrated stories. They're a key to understanding a nation's people and its culture. Slashing samurai, gorgeous geisha, nefarious ninja, rambunctious robots, and much more…Excelsior!" —Stan Lee, back cover of Frederik Schodt's Manga! Manga! The World of Japan...
House of 1000 Manga - The Flowers of Evil
Shaenon descends into madness and nihilism with Nakamura and crew in The Flowers of Evil.
― The Flowers of Evil How I would like you, Night! without those stars Whose light speaks a language I know! For I seek emptiness, darkness, and nudity! -Charles Baudelaire, “Obsession” Hentai (“pervert/perverted”) is one of the most common vocabulary words in shonen manga. American readers who don't speak any ...
House of 1000 Manga - Lady Snowblood
A famous master assassin takes on the Meiji era in Jason's pick this week.
― Lady Snowblood Snow, darkness, women, swords: Lady Snowblood's biggest mark on America was the fight scene at the end of Kill Bill Vol. 1. The heroines face off in a snowy backyard, spraying sparks and spilling blood, and it's a ghostly parallel of a scene in Lady Snowblood. Even the fact that it's obviously filmed on a sou...
House of 1000 Manga - Astral Project
Shaenon exits her corporeal form to discover the astral world with marginal's Astral Project.
― Astral Project “Why do you want to talk about Eurasian nomads?” begins one volume of Astral Project. Why not? This manga wants to talk about not only Eurasian nomads, but New Guinea natives, CIA-backed psychic experiments, obscure jazz musicians, the art of Francis Bacon, human-computer symbiosis, “transp...
House of 1000 Manga - 10 Great Zombie Manga
Jason sifts through the bloody, dismembered mountain of zombie manga to find 10 great ones.
― 10 Great Zombie Manga After America, Japan is probably the world's #2 producer of zombies. (The only challenger I can think of is Italy, but most of the great Italian zombie movies were made in the early '80s, long ago.) Beginning with Battle Girl: The Living Dead in Tokyo Bay in 1992, Japanese zombie movie...
House of 1000 Manga - Case Closed
Shaenon investigates the strange tale of a children's mystery manga that somehow made it to 50+ volumes in the US. One truth prevails!
― Case Closed When ace high school detective Jimmy Kudo is fed a mysterious substance by a pair of nefarious men in black—poof! He is physically transformed into a first grader. Until Jimmy can find a cure for his miniature malady, he takes on the pseudonym of Conan ...
House of 1000 Manga - Chihayafuru
Shaenon gets competitive with the fan-favorite card-flinging romance manga Chihayafuru.
― Chihayafuru Of all the manga genres I never thought I'd like, card game manga is the most unexpected. My “House of 1000 Manga” tag-team partner, Jason Thompson, is a devoted Yu-Gi-Oh! fan, not to mention the editor of the English-language edition of the manga. As for me, I'm enormously fond of CLAMP's confectio...
House of 1000 Manga - Manga 2.5
Jason checks out Manga 2.5, a new service offering fully-voiced and kind-of-animated manga series including Detective Loki and Otogi Soushi.
― Episode CLXII: Manga 2.5
Will manga and comics eventually be replaced by animation? Sure, they're different media, but at every anime convention there's that guy who says “my favorite series is (insert manga series here)!” and it turns out they've only seen t...
House of 1000 Manga - Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show and The Strange Tale of Panorama Island
Shaenon rings in the Holiday season by delving in to the terrifying work of "extreme horror" manga artist Suehiro Maruo.
― Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show and The Strange Tale of Panorama Island Back in the ’80s and early ’90s, when manga and anime first started to find a sizeable cult following in the U.S., horror was one of the most popular genres. To American manga fans—mostly college students wh...
House of 1000 Manga - Phoenix
Shaenon takes flight with Osamu Tezuka's unfinished 20-year masterpiece of beautiful insanity.
― Phoenix The artistic direction of American comics was shaped by a number of key figures: Charles Schulz, Winsor McCay, Will Eisner, Jack Kirby. But in Japan, it's all about Osamu Tezuka. (Well, maybe Tezuka flanked by the shojo artists of the Year 24 Group, who invented most of the tropes Tezuka didn't.)...
House of 1000 Manga - Crunchyroll Manga
Jason takes a look at Crunchyroll's new online manga reading service, and highlights some of his favorites.
― Episode CLXI: Crunchyroll Manga "Between this and Jump, reading authorized manga online is finally a sane proposition for readers."
—Jake Forbes, former Tokyopop editor and smart person I've been burned by manga sites before, but I'm a romantic; I'm always hopeful the next one will be awesom...
House of 1000 Manga - Domu
New regular contributor Shaenon K. Garrity dives into the psychic world of Katsuhiro Otomo's Domu.
― Domu
Editor's note: things are changing at the House of 1,000 Manga! Moving forward, this will be a tag-team column, swapping off between Jason Thompson and Shaenon K. Garrity, who has written guest columns in the past. This week, Shaenon begins her stint as a regular with one of her all-time favorit...
Jason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Dr. Slump
Jason reveals his long-time love affair with Akira Toriyama's famous-in-Japan-only gag manga Dr. Slump.
― Episode CLX: Dr. Slump
In 2002 I met Akira Toriyama. He was in New York for the Shonen Jump magazine launch, signing autographs, and I was super eager to meet him; I had read all 38 volumes of Dragon Ball, from the beginning to the end, and it's one of my favorite manga. I told Toriyama this and...
Jason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Moon Child
Jason checks out a yaoi-flavored sci-fi shojo re-imagining of The Little Mermaid by Reiko Shimizu.
― Episode CLIX: Moon Child
shotacon (noun): a Japanese slang portmanteau of the phrase "Shotarô Complex," it describes an adult's attraction to young boys. The gender-reversed version of "Lolita Complex."
Moon Child is a shojo science fiction version of—and sequel to—The Little Mermaid. It'sfull of han...
Jason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Banana Fish
Jason puts on his fingerless gloves and gets ready to enter the crime-riddled, gang-infested 1980s world of Banana Fish.
― Episode CLVIII: Banana Fish
"I can't have a relationship with someone from the straight world. Because the people from my world just won't let it happen." —Ash Lynx
I discovered Banana Fish in Frederik Schodt's 1996 book Dreamland Japan, and I never got it out of my head. In Sch...
Jason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - To Terra...
It's a desperate struggle to return to Earth in Keiko Takemiya's classic shojo sci-fi tale.
― Episode CLVII: To Terra…
The time: the future, sometime after the year 3XXX. The thing that destroyed the Earth: pollution. With the planet unable to support life, humanity fled into space, living in spaceships and terraformed colonies to give the Earth time to heal. Thus began the "S.D. Era" ("Superior Dom...
Jason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Bambi and her Pink Gun
Jason checks out Atsushi Kaneko's ultraviolent bounty hunter tale.
― Episode CLVI: Bambi and Her Pink Gun
"You tryin' to pollute Bambi's beautiful, pure body?"
A bounty hunter is on the run, protecting a child. The price on the child's head: ¥500,000,000. She must get the boy to the "Old Men", her shadowy employers. But an army of hitmen pursue her, and she has only her pink gun to fight back.
But B...
Jason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Blame!
Jason gets grim 'n gritty with Tsuotmu Nihei's dystopian sci-fi tale, Blame!
― Episode CLV: Blame!
"Maybe on Earth, maybe in the future…" —Blame! Volume 1
One of the scariest things in the world is scale. The planet Earth seems large, but as The Manga Guide to the Universe reminds us, it's a tiny point in a universe that seems to get bigger and more hostile the more we know about it. As Bill Nye dem...
Jason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Special Guest Edition: Cyborg 009
Shaenon tackles one of the most widely-recognized (and soon-to-be reimagined) sci-fi manga series.
― Special Guest Edition - Cyborg 009
Comixology has recently made the world a better and brighter place by making a whole library of Shotaro Ishinomori manga available for download, so this is as good a time as any to talk about Cyborg 009, the first great work by the master of superhero manga and my f...
Jason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Bride's Story
Jason heads out on the Silk Road in search of Kaoru Mori's modern classic.
― Episode CLIV: A Bride's Story
Kaoru Mori's manga are about traveling to another time and place. She loves depicting exotic foreign settings, whether that means Victorian fireplaces and maid's uniforms for Emma (in the bonus material to her anthology Anything and Something) or the clothes and customs of Central Asia in her c...
Jason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Yu-Gi-Oh!
Warning: this column on card-collecting phenomenon Yu-Gi-Oh was actually written by Dark Jason.
― Episode CLIII: Yu-Gi-Oh!
"Games mean conflict - a combat between two enemies. It's the same for all of them! Cards, chess, the blood-soaked wars of the human race… All these are different kinds of games. Do you know what god gave to people so they could play games in this world? A single chip called lif...
Jason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Fist of the North Star
Right before you click on this, Jason shows up in a tattered blue vest and announces "YOU'VE ALREADY READ!!"
― Episode CLII: Fist of the North Star "I didn't want to dirty my fists on a disgusting pig like you, but I guess I have no choice!" —Kenshiro There was a time when I thought all manga was Fist of the North Star. In my early teens before I'd read manga, when I was at best a video game nerd pl...
Jason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Monokuro Kinderbook
Jason strolls through Kan Takahama's anthology of "tales of the darker side of life".
― Episode CLII: Monokuro Kinderbook
It takes a mangaka who breaks the rules to make you realize what the rules are. The first thing that stands out about Kinderbook is the artwork: pages that look like they were scanned from pencils, densely colored in gray tones using watercolor or Photoshop. It looks nothing like...
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