This is Tamayama and I see you in the future, reading the last chapter of Atsushi Kaneko's Wet Moon, a double sized 50 page chapter. In the present you are about to read chapter 28, it also being 50 pages.
SKKKREEEEEEEEEEEEE
That's gonna be all this week. Turkey day and all. We'll bring you more goodies next time 😄
I adore this chapter of Saltiness, it's just beautiful and so tranquil... yes, even with the shouting. And obviously funny. But I just really really like it and, if you can, try to imagine the series got axed here. Don't you think it would be a good ending? Abrupt cancelations happen sometimes and if it had been shitcanned here... I'd be satisfied. Now, of course it didn't get canceled here... matter of fact, we're not even halfway through this series. But an interesting experiment, I'd say. This chapter is pure Minoru Furuya, it's sad, it's cheery, it's deceptively deep, it's funny it's... it's Minoru Furuya in one chapter.
Wet Moon, on the other hand, is anything but beautiful [*raughs*]. Fantastic chapter. Revelations.
I really like the use of the van Gogh motif throughout Tokyo Kaido. Mochi is a fantastic storyteller.
And now another Mochi oneshot from early in his career. I gotta tell you, I pity the editors that handle these chapters, all the sfx... Working on early Mochi is, as pip3 put it, an exercise in masochism.
This is such a good chapter though. Super fun.
Welcome to the dance party of the dead, a Disco... a Death Disco... A DEATHCO! BLEEEEEEEEHHH!
Atsushi Kaneko is a special mangaka, his style is instantly recognizable and he taps into his influences to create many different kinds of manga, but never forgetting to imprint his special unique flavor.
The first 8 issues were done(years back) by Habanero and M3OW so I guess I don't really have to tell you what it is about, but the elevator pitch would probably be "Crying Freeman mixed in with The Addams Family", or perhaps I should say John Wick? that's what's trendy now.
The cool thing is that the first 4 chapters are very action heavy so the people that have never read it before can just breeze through that first "arc".
I'd say, so far, Deathco seems like the coolest looking one of his manga. Some of the panels just look 2cool, y'know? Like you just wanna snatch 'em up and use them as a background on your phone or a screensaver. Like
Concerning its schedule, don't expect frequent releases for now, Kathulluh still needs to scan it and translate it on top of her Tokyo Kaido responsibilities. Also, it's about 30 pages/chapter that need to be cleaned and while I love Kaneko's use of sfx, you have to understand that typesetting him is not as fun😅. We'll bump it up to weekly once we finish up our two long running scanlation projects.
Speaking of, this week's Tokyo Kaido chapter is, if you had to sum it up in one word, "beautiful". Seeing Hashi and Hideo hang out is just so nice😊
And Minetaro Mochizuki oneshot collection continues with another short one, apocalyptic family drama.
That's gonna have to be it for this week😊 See you next week for Saltiness and Wet Moon.
Coming at you with a real treat here. Many people know of Garo but AX, its spiritual successor, is still a bit overlooked. Although "spiritual successor" isn't quite right because it rose from Garo's ashes, it is, for all intents and purposes Garo2. Blue Franju, a story published in 2005 by an obscure mangaka you've probably never heard of. And as much as I liked making that joke, if you're here early, you can check the MU page of Reiroku Haru to see zero entries(I imagine someone will make one for Blue Franju eventually, but if you spotted this early...).
Topshelf put out a collection called "AX - A Collection of Alternative Manga" some 10 years or so ago. As with any anthology it's a mixed bag and some of the stuff in there has been collected in other stuff and some have been scanlated. There are very few stories in it that are meh, the rest range from okay to good to even a few really great ones. And some of the people in it still don't have anything else published or scanlated in english (such as Keizo Miyanishi, he had a cool story here). The real kicker is that this has a "vol. one" on the spine but it sold poorly and they never did more. The problem with all these small publishers doing alternative and gekiga stuff is the limited distribution, well that and the lack of coverage they get. So really, aside from a higher cost that the usual stuff, small printing numbers and general lack of publicity and attention, there's also the fact that some can kill you with shipping. If you live in the US, you might have heard of Glacier Bay Books, a small publishing company made by some ex-scanlators with some very obscure alternative manga, something worth checking out but if you live outside the US, shipping costs can be a pain in the butt(you can buy most of their stuff digitally DRM-free though, except for Glaeolia).
Anyway, Blue Franju is really good, I stumbled upon it and found the art to be fantastic. Big thanks to Gyoshi for translating this and going over it with me so we get this right, big thanks to alti for cleaning and big thanks to The Artist Formerly Known as AshneeHS, Kathulluh, for typesetting this, it was a bit harder than a regular cl/ts job. And big thanks to elemhunter for scanning this and a whole lot of other cool stuff and making them public. Hopefully we did it justice.
New project
And so we pay another visit to our ol' buddy ol' pal Minetaro Mochizuki. Zutto Saki no Hanashi is a collection of early short stories, lit. translation would be "Story set in a future".
Huge thanks to Choolastre for these huge, sexy 600dpi scans, he's gathered a wonderful team, and as DJS, they are scanlating the gekiga masterpiece Dousei Jidai by Kazuo Kamimura, I've already told you about them but check 'em out. Also, if you're interested in cleaning/typesetting, contact them. Or if you know anyone that can clean and typeset, tell them DJS is looking for people.
We won't be able to do this project at our regular weekly pace but they're one and done stories anyway so it should be fine.
The first story, "COLOR", is indeed in full color. At its core it's a fairly simple and easy to understand story but it's well done and fun to read, some fantastic imagery here. I can't tell you the exact year this story was published in but it's probably close to 2000.
Now onto Wet Moon. Near the finish line here.
Someone's got some explaining to do in Tokyo Kaido
