What Did You Eat Yesterday? vol. 1

What Did You Eat Yesterday?, vol. 1, by Fumi Yoshinaga, 200 pages

This is a mash-up of three types of manga that I thought worked really well together- slice-of-life, gay romance, and food.  Combining those three distinct genres made for a really subtle work that didn't feel like any specific one of the genres.  Shiro and Kenji appear to be pretty different- Shiro is a hard-working, serious, closeted lawyer, while Kenji is a fun-loving, openly gay hairstylist.  But what matters the most is that Shiro loves to cook elaborate, thoughtful Japanese dishes and Kenji loves to eat them.  The story here is not much of anything, being a slice-of-life, but there are recipes throughout that sound delicious and it offers a sort of fascinating glimpse into a section of contemporary Japanese culture.

Cinderalla

Cinderalla, by Junko Mizuno, 144 pages

Okay, this is a super-adult, super-weird, kind of grotesque, wait- really grotesque, loose re-telling of the Cinderella story.  Cinderalla runs a yakitori restaurant with her dad, who dies, but becomes a zombie, as the dead do.  He falls in love with a fellow zombie who also has two zombie daughters.  Cinderalla is soon constantly making pancakes for her new zombie stepmother, making bras for one of her step-sisters and keeping the other from performing lap-dances on customers (note: see the first sentence).  Also, everything is drawn in a very cute manner, but belies the fact that it's pretty darn gross most of the time.  And despite all of that... I found this utterly fascinating.  Also, kind of humorous if you can get past the gross and weird and unsettling.  A pretty fascinating read on a fairytale retold in a very unique manner.

Hellsing Volume 2

Hellsing Vol 2 by Kohta Hiranko, 188 pages

This is the second book in a ten volume set that follows the Hellsing Agency. For those that didn't read the previous reviews or the series yet, the Hellsing Agency hunts downs and kills vampires and other supernatural creatures that are causing trouble. In this volume Hellsing is nearly destroyed in a sudden attack by the mysterious group called Milleinum.

Before continuing I want apologize for calling the books I was reading anime instead of manga. As I found out anime only refers to the animated TV shows and movies, while manga is the written books.

This volume, like the first is very well illustrated and is very bloody. There are scenes where arms and legs are getting ripped off people, violent head exploding gunshots and someone is set on fire. There is also a vampire that can use some sort of dark magic where he some how shape shifts into a shadow dog with lots of eyes, but asides from being impressive is also confusing.

Overall I am still enjoying the series and plan to finish it, though maybe not with a post per book.

Hellsing, Vol 1

Hellsing Volume 1 by Kohta Hirano, 208 pages

This is my first foray into the world of anime and so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had always heard good things and that people never talked about not liking anime. But I wanted to make sure I started off with something I had a high chance of liking. So I did some research and came across the 10 volume series of Hellsing.

It was advertised as an anime for those people that love the supernatural and horror novels/movies. As I enjoy all those topics I thought it would be the one to start with. The fact that it only has ten volumes and not the hundreds that the larger series have was also a benefit.

It took some time to get use to reading backwards but luckily the first couple pages only made sense in one direction. As for quality of writing I enjoyed it. Like I expected from anime it was well drawn and the pictures conveyed more than the actual words on the page. Some of the imagery was a little sick and twisted, but not enough to put me off reading it.

After reading graphic novels for so long, it odd reading something in comic form that is not in full color, but in this case it might have helped the story. It leaves our imagination to color the scene and by doing that makes us form an image in our heads.

If this is the standard for amine, I can see why so many people read it. While I can’t say I will make the leap to other anime series stay tuned for volumes two through ten.