Deathco ch. 46and
Ch. 1-8 (Habanero Scans, M3OW)
Ch. 9-12 (Bernd Scans)
Deathco Vol. 3
Deathco Vol. 4
Deathco Vol. 5
Deathco Vol. 6
Deathco Vol. 7
We did it! Well, this was a rocky ride but... it's done! Loved this manga and it had a lot of problems and breaks and a lot of people worked on it and I wanna thank every single one of them.
I don't know where I'd put it among his works, I did say I prefer Soil over Wet Moon (but honestly not by a lot) and right now I feel like I would also put Deathco above WM but not sure if tied with Soil or slightly lower. Whatever, I don't like ranking stuff like that, it's kinda lame.
Going back to Soil, his style was not quite developed there yet. Yes, it's still unique and yes it's still cool and there's a lot of awesome imagery in it but if we're talking strictly about the art, Wet Moon looks far better than Soil. Y'know, it's easy to say Kaneko's style is similar to Charles Burns but in Soil it's... not all that similar, that's a clever way to spot someone that knows their Kaneko, if they mention Burns then they watched and read interviews with him because the similarities are... not quite there in Soil. They are in his later works though (although, again, you can see an influence but they have very different styles in terms of composition and stuff, it's mostly just the drawing style that's similar and even then...). But yeah, Wet Moon looks incredible, even from the very first pages with that red(and brilliant use of red later on too), and holy crap just thinking about it is making me (mentally) drool (that means I'm not actually drooling. It's a metaphor... but not quite). Anywho, what I'm getting at is that Deathco looks even better, holy fuck does this mango look amazing, it's positively orgasmic and there are so many pages that would make for cool phone screensavers and wallpapers (as well as some desktop wallpapers too) it's actually insane... much like the manga itself. Now, granted, this might just be me being biased because I love this gothic world that he created and the heavy blacks that he uses in this series are to die for (pun intended, and yes I know it's lame, sorry), it's the blackest of his manga and that might be a reason why I prefer it, his unique style consists of nothing but black and white so no greys and I wonder if anyone is reading this and going "holy shit, that never even crossed my mind because I was always so absorbed by his art I never noticed the lack of greys".
I said that its only real flaw is the pacing and I maintain that opinion even though I feel like the pacing in the last three volumes or so is very tight and pretty flawless, but it does take a while to get going and this "western" style pacing combined with the fact that it's such an action heavy series can detract from all the other cool stuff it's doing, so yes (and again), the pacing is flawed - which is my way of saying that the pacing isn't perfect but it's still great overall (particularly from the second volume onwards), and y'know, I did say that it can take a while to get going but wasn't that the case with Soil too? Like, you read the first 2-3 chapters and in no way do they prepare you for what's to come. Now, granted, it is a fairly simple story compared to Wet Moon and Soil but that only shows his versatility, sure, you can tell me that, as everyone will say "Soil is basically Twin Peaks: The Manga" and there is a point to be made that the Twin Peaks inspiration is (obviously) still there in Wet Moon along with Lost Highway and Branded To Kill (because he uses common tropes and narrative techniques from noir and he turns them on their head like Suzuki did in his film) and this Branded To Kill influence is also present in Deathco but just look at how different the three series actually are, now that's how you use your influences! And hell, you only see these influences because you've seen said films and Kaneko himself has named David Lynch and Seijun Suzuki as his favorite directors so it's easy to spot them, but what about the rest of his influences? are they as easy to spot? Still, Soil is a bit of an anti-Lynch in a way because he ends up explaining everything by the end and most of it through text too, if anything that's probably my only "problem" with it but it's more of a personal nitpick than an actual critique, the ending of Soil is incredible, and so was the Wet Moon ending, but there he actually does not give you all the answers and I've seen some interviews with him and he does refuse to explain things away in typical Lynch fashion (though let's be fair, it's not all that complicated there are just a few things left up for interpretation), and in Deathco he yet again delivers a great ending. And just look at how different these endings all feel.
You know what's really surprising? He went to film school, he loves film and it clearly influenced him far more than manga ever did, but his works are actually not "cinematic", they're very manga, his pages never fall into that (imo overrated) cinematic style and that's incredible, the fact that he can so easily discard his cinematic eye and do very manga manga... or I guess comics manga because he has a lot of western influences. Whatever, it's the same medium, it's the industries that are different.
The one chapter that immediately comes to mind when I think about this series is 16. I absolutely adore all the depressed barely functioning Deathco scenes when she's not in reaping mode. There's something so fascinating and twisted about these scenes... but also a bit said... and very harrowing, they feel like those lighting you see in the distance, you heard no thunder and then a few minutes later, the storm has arrived.
And also, big round of applause to our great fearless leader(-kun) here at Bernd-Scans because despite the fact that typesetting was never something he was very interested in and his idea of cozy days involve nothing but cleaning and redrawing, he really did improve a lot (and maybe he'll keep improving?) and so towards the end of this manga, the lettering looks really really good, his work on the sfx is so awesome and because of the way Kaneko uses sfx, it really comes at you and I think it's a fantastic ts job, I don't care if some of the dialogue is off by a millimeter sometimes, it's perfectly readable and the sfx is so well done it really compliments the work. And again, dude, this manga was so freakin' gooooood. Hey, you know when I made that lame pun earlier? I'm actually not sorry about it.
Tokyo Girls Bravo ch. 25Tokyo Girls Bravo Vol. 1
Tokyo Girls Bravo Vol. 2
At first glance this might not seem as deep as her other works but I think that's deceptive. Now, yes, Pink and Helter Skelter do explore subjects that are a bit more mature in terms of content so they're provocative and edgy as opposed to the more high school adventure orientated TGB but there's a lot more depth in this series than meets the eye. In a typical Kyoko Okazaki manga, we'd be following the life of Makin instead but you shouldn't typecast her and think she can only do one type of story with slight variations, typically, the characters in Kyoko Okazaki manga are broken and in TGB, they're... pretty normal, both the main character and her more prominent supporting cast. I recently said that River's Edge is like the side B of this casette tape with Tokyo Girls Bravo as the side A, on the surface, the nihilistic tone and morbid elements present in RE will give you the impression that it's deeper but if you carefully analyze this "tape" then you'll realize that both sides have depth and you can prefer one over the other because one is louder shoegaze-y while the other has a more mellow indie feel with folk elements but you can't judge a book by its cover or in the case of manga (particularly scanlated manga on the internet) you can't judge it by the tags. And I'm not biased just because we worked on it, hell, once we completed UYM some people felt I was a bit too harsh that one, in the end I enjoyed it but it didn't live up to the potential that it sets up in the first few chapters,. Anyway, I guess I do think Pink is the better work (and Helter Skelter her magnum opus) but I like Tokyo Girls Bravo and River's Edge a whole lot and probably about the same. Or at least that's how I feel about them today.
TGB is a story about a silly teenage girl, she's funny but she's also kinda dumb and she feels like a real person, with flaws and with typical teenage problems. This manga is a true slice-of-life, see, most sol is usually also 50% drama but TGB is just a sol. Think about it, there's no real clear goal or something that the manga builds towards, there's no drama that moves the plot forward, you just get a slice out of Sakae's life. The narrative starts with her moving to her dream city and fantasizing about all the cool stuff she's gonna do and then it becomes about her plans to somehow stay in Tokyo when she finds out her mom is getting back with her dad, and along the way we get to see her build friendships, trying to fall in love, skip school, party, get detained by the pigs, trespass on school property at night, pull off an all nighter with friends on a project, get bullied, run away and shoplift. Quite a lot happens in just two volumes, if you think about it.
And as I like to often say, the age of the characters in a story do not dictate if said story is mature or not, this manga touches upon some mature themes and approaches certain aspects of life with a mature outlook, similarly Taiyo Matsumoto's Gogo Monster or Sunny are mature series despite the fact that they feature children as main characters, the films Nobody Knows or I Wish, novels like A Portrait of The Artist As a Young Man or The Sailor Who Fell from Grace With The Sea also feature children as main characters and yet they are not "all ages but they can be enjoyed by adults due to their depth", no, they're simply mature works (for mature individuals such as myself). But no, seriously, you can find shallow movies (like any Hollywood blockbuster) or genre fiction novels (sci fi and fantasy primarily) that are very childish despite starring adult characters. I'm going off on a rant here but the point is that our teenage years are very formative and we ignore the fact that we are still shaped by things we experiences in those years decades later and I think it's silly to imply that your first contact with things isn't important, your first concert, your first kiss, your first designer dress, your first sneaker purchase (not the times when your parents bought you shoes doesn't count, I don't care if your mom is still dressing you even though you're 25), your first true friendship, your first fight, your first fuck, your first heartbreak, your first rejection, these simple things can feel like the end of the world... but then you feel fine. Your taste in things also changes but the foundation is still built at that age, think about how your mind explodes when you first discover Kubrick at 16, or Tarkovsky, or Oshima, think about finding those albums that destroy your brain and heart and then do it again when you replay them, think about finding novels beyond those you're told to read for school. Your fashion style too, I know some people go "damn, what were we thinking back then😅" when looking at old photos but I say fuck you, you used to be cool, you just became boring. Yeah, things change, maybe some albums aren't as good when you're in your 30s as they were when you were 17 but if you hate them now then you were just a trend follower, yeah, maybe you don't dress the same as you used to, your taste can change (but you can also give in to peer pressure and be afraid of being called cringe which is actually the cringe thing to do) but you shouldn't feel ashamed about the person you were back then, because it shaped the type of person you are now.
There are moments in this manga that if you read at 15-18, you won't feel what you're intended to feel, like the ending to ch. 9 or ch. 22, that nostalgic feeling that they evoke is simply not there for you then, but it will be once you get older. The series is never melodramatic because if you look at, for example, Sakae's "suicide attempt", the comedic tone makes you understand that she wasn't actually serious about it but that "apocalyptic feeling" is there, it's the end of the world so she might as well die... "but, like... should I die? 'cause like, I haven't seen my favorite band in concert yet... and wouldn't it be rude to just spread my guts all over the pavement there? People might be grossed out and let's not forget that someone has to clean up after me... AHHH I WANT TO DIE!!! (but not really!!)", her moving away is again such a life shattering thing for her but... it's just moving and when you're a teenager, it's not just moving and you can't see how life can move on but... it does(hehe, you're moving and life moves on). Juggling comedy with seriousness is hard, you don't wanna be corny and stupid and slight but Okazaki is a master so she's never in danger of it, all her works are so funny, but there's also so much depth and sadness, even in TGB, the ending to the first volume is legitimately sad, because the marriage of words and drawings that this medium is supposed to be can yield fantastic results like that last page, the way she words her lines and the way she chooses her words alongside the drawings... it really is sad just how cruel people can be, and often times they're cruel by being thoughtless not by outright generic bullying. That's why it compliments River's Edge so well, there's bullying there, and yes the execution is fantastic but it's "standard" while in TGB it's just heckling and when the heckler is caught she's in trouble so there's no "actual bullying" in this one. Both of these can be read and enjoyed as a teenager, but they both morph into something new once you read them years later as an adult.
You don't get happily ever after with Okazaki, you get something far more complex. She's a better writer than she is an artist, and I know some people are gonna cuss me out on this but hear me out, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with her art style, I said it when we started this series but once you read one of her manga, it's hard to imagine it in any other style than this one, she's very expressive in her drawings. But anyway, my point is that once you get to the end of this manga, you get an epilogue that's nothing more than words on a blank background and they're such simple words and yet they say so much and evoke so much feeling, her closing words can be applied to anything, "people often say nothing happened in x decade. Not for me..." and actually, just last year a friend I hadn't talked to in quite a while told me (paraphrasing a bit): "People said nothing happened in 2020. Not the case for me.", it reminds me of her afterword in Pink, some people will write three whole pages and say nothing in one of these while, again, in few words she says so much.
So yeah, this was a blast to read. Out of these 4 stories that now everyone can read, I can truly say she's only made great manga, some better than others perhaps but none of them's just good, they're great and I'll throw in Chiwawa too because even though we can't read the manga we can watch the movie and despite the fact that you might find some flaws in it(like if you're trying to over analyze the directing or editing -preemptive fuck you, don't even try to imply there are problems with the script), the story is great and the ending is fantastic, typical Okazaki. And I swear to you I am not biased and the sky would fall and crush me if you don't believe me. Maybe.
See you next time. Spoiler alert: That might be two weeks from now, not sure if we can get something done for next week. Oh and don't forget, River's Edge has been licensed in english and it's coming out in december. I recommend buying that.
