Keith Palmer's Multi-Purpose Journal

After having read the earlier manga adaptations by Gou Tanabe of H.P. Lovecraft stories translated and released by Dark Horse, I went ahead and ordered the adaptation of The Shadow Over Innsmouth, complete in one thick volume. The story’s another known quantity to me; I was interested in seeing how the adaptation turned out.
( Terrifying tensions )

Looking back at my records, I see that I read the second and third volumes of the Emanon manga (subtitled “Emanon Wanderer,” parts one and two) not that long after experiencing the first, self-contained introduction to the enigmatic Emanon herself. The afterword at the end of the third volume talked about a fourth to follow, but the elusiveness of that follow-up was one reason why I was half-inclined to believe negative comments about Dark Horse’s willingness to keep translating and releasing manga for very long when it couldn’t meet presumably considerable sales targets.
( Picking up again )

Seeing a new volume of Nichijou appear in lists of upcoming manga was a bit of a surprise. Some time has passed since the previous volume offered a certain slight air of conclusion to its continued absurdities; Keiichi Arawi went on to a similar comedy manga named CITY, which I also read. I went ahead and got a copy of the Nichijou revival, but I suppose I’ve got to admit there could have been a sense of “inertia again, even after so long?” The manga had continued on past the misdaventures of the anime, but it just might have been a case of “the adaptation does manage to add something to the original” for me for all that I can imagine “of course; it was a Kyoto Animation production” being proclaimed.

When I started reading the new volume, though, something about it really did appeal. Major and minor characters returned, some gleeful participants in, some enigmatic participants in, and some aghast witnesses of the assorted absurdities. While CITY had been a little different for having main characters no longer in high school (college-age, perhaps; at least they aren’t in school uniforms), I did miss anyone packing the simple heart of the robot girl Nano. (The talking cat Sakamoto who lives with her and the little-girl Professor did seem to swear enough in this new volume to not quite fit in, though.)

Cruising to Iceland and back by “the Viking route” did have me thinking back to having watched the latest block of Vinland Saga anime. When those idle memories swam into my mind the way a song might come back to you without quite desiring that, I did get to thinking “good grief, you can’t process everything through an anime/manga filter.” Eventually, I read a nonfiction book on the subject of the Vikings from the ship’s library (Neil Price’s Children of Ash and Elm). When I got back to my own place, though, in the last days of August I did go back to the original Vinland Saga manga rather than take on the stack of unread volumes from assorted series down in my living room. As impressive as that series remained, to get back to taking on manga I hadn’t read before I did start thinking of how the first three volumes of a series had been waiting for some time, and picked up Shunsuke Sorato’s The Girl with the Sanpaku Eyes.
( The eyes have it )

Once I’d bought a copy of Uta Iska’s manga Is Love the Answer?, I took some time getting around to reading it. This had something to do with the sense this manga had very much got my attention, it was more significant than one more instalment in some long-running series inertia played some role in continuing it, and waiting amounted to “saving the best for last.” At the same time, though, I was at least a little uncertain about what I’d be left with once I’d finished it.
( More than one answer )

Having been struck by the sense when I at last read Rumiko Takahashi’s Maison Ikkoku that the manga was just a bit different than I’d long thought it would be got me posting about it, and I managed to keep eking out comments about each volume of Viz’s new release that followed. Then, I got to the tenth volume, with cover art that had me more or less hoping this would bring the story to a close, to go with the hope that I’d be able to say something about it as well.
( Happily ever after )

With the Vinland Saga anime adaptation picking up again right when I’d decided to put myself sixty-odd “old” anime episodes away from watching anything not on that timeline, it seemed the right moment to get to the thirteenth double-length volume of Makoto Yukimura’s original manga. The twelfth volume had concluded with Thorfinn and his fellow voyagers setting sail for the west of their world and Vinland itself at last. Getting to that point as a mere spectator to the story had been affecting, but from the moment Thorfinn had begun to dream of going to a new land beyond war and slavery, for all of his own efforts to master himself first of all I had to keep facing thoughts of “but can they get beyond what’s carried inside everyone?” The previous volume had made a point of showing the worm was already within the bud.
( Into a new world )

For my final sample of anime from the 1980s, I dug out and opened at last a DVD box set of a series not quite as notable now as other titles from its time but still connected to manga, at least. Yawara! adapted a manga by Naoki Urasawa, who nowadays seems a rather respectable manga artist. Sometimes, though, “respectability” threatens to get entangled with “the sort of manga that doesn’t get adapted into anime.” I at least recall seeing comments this “judo series” acquitted itself well against Ranma 1/2’s “anything-goes martial arts” when they both got on the air in Japan around the same time. The adaptation of a Rumiko Takahashi manga was licensed over here long before Yawara!, though, and that seemed to make a difference...
( A fashionable judo girl )

As I headed into the ninth volume of the new release of Rumiko Takahashi’s Maison Ikkoku I already had an impression of what the tenth volume’s cover would be, and that was enough to get me thinking things just might not run on that much longer. I suppose there’s a tension between “the promise of a conclusion; this is a relatively realistic romantic comedy” and “when you’ve got a good thing going...” The question did come to mind “when the reputation of this series was building among English-language manga and anime fans, what else was it being compared to?”, but that might be shading towards unfairness.
( As for “unfairness” in the story... )

Another manga long discussed by English-speaking fans moved into the realm of “available for sale over here (without making the point of importing Japanese-language copies, anyway)” when Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou was licensed, its title left untranslated just as fans had made a point of before. Once again, I considered myself obligated to buy a copy after having managed to go through “scanlations” some years ago. It did take just a bit of extra effort to track down a print copy, though: not having made the point of preordering it, I found it didn’t seem to be available from the usual handful of online stores I patronize. It was only when a bit more looking reported one copy in the big bookstore a few city borders away that I drove over and managed to buy it.

The manga is one of the coziest catastrophes around, as sea levels gradually rise and the green-haired robot young woman Alpha serves a handful of occasional customers at her quiet cafe and pokes around her world, which goes so far as to have a trace of magic to it. Many warnings warnings, fictional and otherwise, have been made about catastrophes turning out much worse than that, and yet there’s something to just contemplating out-there possibilities too. While I can find myself remembering a “signature graphic” putting down the manga while jibing at its art from a message board I used to read some time ago, going back to that art now did offer a flavour hard for me to define yet distinctive. It was only in wondering if another volume has been scheduled yet that I ran into some current reviews criticizing the print quality; reading it I’d just noticed certain colour pages right in the middle. Getting to the end of the volume and noticing certain speech patterns had been modeled on those of the Canadian Maratimes did get my attention, too, for all that I had to remember not having got out there myself last month because of an actual “too much water” situation.