In 1931, Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama published the Four Immigrants Manga, a collection of comic strips that offered readers a unique window into the lives of four Japanese immigrants living in San Francisco in the early 1900s. Stonebridge Press rescued Kiyama’s work from obscurity in 1998 with a beautiful new edition that was translated by Frederik Schodt, and while […]
Recent Posts
“It Gets Good in Volume Two”
New York Times television critic James Poniewozik recently posted an essay on the defining problem of the streaming era: the show that takes 10 or 20 episodes to find its footing. Should you start watching from the beginning no matter what, or is it OK to skip ahead to the section where the characters, premise, and plot finally gel? This question has obvious implications for manga readers, since many series' debut volumes are plodding, incoherent, or so focused on laying the groundwork for … [...]
Ravina the Witch?
Cute characters behaving badly -- that's been Junko Mizuno's MO since her professional debut twenty years ago. Her latest work, Ravina the Witch?, is more picture book than manga, eschewing panels and word balloons for glossy, full-color illustrations, but the story it tells is pure Mizuno: a young woman meets a witch, inherits her wand, and then wanders the countryside meeting depraved men whose hobbies run the gamut from S&M to binge-drinking. There's a little more to the story, of … [...]
