Manga Challenge – October Update

Casper

Oct 31

Featured Image provided by 100procent-Juul. Check out her work here.

This month was a wee bit scarce. Both because I was busy preparing Spooky reviews for October and because I was out of the country. As mentioned in a prior post, I was on a roadtrip through the DMZ between The Netherlands and France. An adventure that left me with little time to read. Unless I was prepared to seriously upset my traveling companion. Nevertheless, I did get to tackle some interesting manga that I wanted to share with you all.

First up Robot Keiji by acclaimed author Shoutarou Ishinomori. This is an older manga from 1972, starring an usual duo of detectives. Shiba is an aging, old-fashioned copper. A man who relies on instinct and experience to solve his cases, and who resents both modern technology and our increasing reliance on it. This becomes an issue when Shiba is teamed up with the department's latest acquisition: the robot detective K. An android equipped with every capability needed to solve any case. Even if given a hundred years, the best detectives of mankind wouldn't be able to crack the kind of cases that K could solve in seconds. Needless to say, the relationship between Shiba and K becomes immediately antagonistic.

The dynamic between these two characters makes for an effective hook to keep you reading. And from there, Robot Keiji quickly develops into an interesting tale of mystery and conspiracy. A story that also features ample amounts of action, drama, and even hints of romance.

I got really into it, which does make it sting that much more that the ending winds up feeling sudden. Not inconclusive or even bad; it just felt like there was potential left untapped here. The character arcs especially feel like they are left without a pay off. A shame, since the characters are super interesting and enjoyed some fantastic development up until then.

Another interesting find was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. In that I literally found it in my house with no knowledge of how I ever came to own it. It was between a stack of comic books that I haven't browsed through in years.

This is the official Zelda manga that apparently ran in Nintendo Power. It's printed in Western style, but was also written by Shoutarou Ishinomori. This is all coincidence, btw. I didn't plan for any of this to happen.

Though following the basic premise of the classic game, Shoutarou's manga takes a lot of creative liberties. The lore and characters are fleshed out differently and there's even a few characters wholly exclusive to this manga. While this might upset fans of the game, I personally enjoyed this original take on it. It has a strong sense of adventure with many exciting moments and some comedic touches in-between. All presented in full color art no less!

I am not sure how hard this manga is to find, but I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Lastly, I have been making good progress on this challenge's secondary objective: reading every manga that I physically own. It's now down to just 4 series. That being Witch Craft Works, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, and Chi's Sweet Home. All of them I am very excited to finally read, though they are also very long. It's going to be a tight deadline for this challenge!