Tag Archives: webcomic

Kashikokute Yuuki Aru Kodomo / A Smart and Courageous Child by Yamamoto Miki

Have I ever mentioned that, while I sometimes complain about it, I have a very manga-positive library system? Because I really do. I found this odd little duck of a story: A Smart and Courageous Child in the adult manga section of my local library.

It’s very simple in a lot of ways, but it is  definitely a grown-up story.

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The one-shot opens with Sara silently letting her husband Kouta know that they are expecting a baby. She basically points to children playing and then to herself. Kouta is overjoyed. This moment is drawn with intense emotions that you can just feel coming up off the color pencil sketches. 

Sara is an interesting protagonist because she’s somewhat difficult to take seriously at the start. She’s so incredibly gungho about all the things that she wants her expectant child to do and become that the reader–or at least this oneI–initially worry that this is the kind of parent who imagines children as fully moldable clay, not small people with their own interests, wants, and needs. 

Sara and Kouta have this insane list of things they want their child to do and talk incessantly about how they’re going to have a smart and courageous child.

The problems begin when Sara becomes obsessed with a magazine called Child (fully fictitious so far as I can tell)  that apparently features young people of note. For instance, it’s here that Sara reads about Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani equality education activist, who won the Nobel Peace Prize at 17 (for those of you less familiar with Malala, spoiler: she’s still alive today.)  But this story takes place in 2012, when that was uncertain, as she was attacked and shot in the head by gunmen who stormed her school bus

When this news is broadcast about the attack, Sara is just about at her due date, and, suddenly, Sara isn’t so sure about bringing smart and courageous girls into the world. She spends her days at home as she becomes more and more overdue reading The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank and One of Us:The Story of a Massacre in Norway by Åsne Seierstad and other things like this and getting more and more depressed about the idea of bringing a child into a world that’s this dangerous and awful.

It’s horrifically relatable–probably to anyone alive in these times, but definitely to parents (of any kind.).

As MangaKast readers may know, I started this site in part so that my son and I could squee about the manga we were reading together (this site started as a podcast, hence its name.) So, my wife and I went through a lot of these same feelings when she was pregnant, like  is it responsible to even consider trying to conceive when the world is the way it is? How do you protect your children from the worst? Can you?

And, ultimately, Sara and Kouta come to a place where they realize that people get hurt as part of living. LIterally, in the case of the manga, they accidentally bump into two young girls that are racing a crossing light and so they have a kind of physical epiphany that, not only can you not protect your child from physical harm, you might accidentally be party to hurting someone else’s child. And it’s kind of just how it goes as a human. The risk that comes with living, ultimately, is worth it.

As weird as that sounds, it’s just what Sara needs to let go and allow this child to come into the world. 

My only hope at the end is that Sara and Kouta lighten up on the workload they planned for this child and won’t be too disappointed if she turns out to be self-indulgent and not particularly bright! Some of us just aren’t all that! I say as someone who is clearly a disappointment to her own folks. 

At any rate, would I recommend it? I don’t know. The art is absolutely beautiful. It’s also really unusual to see colored pencil work like this in a manga, so if nothing else, if you come across it you should just flip through it for the art. The story itself? I mean, it will put you through some feelings if you’re inclined to feel things about pregnancy and childbirth. 

If not, you can pass on it. 

Two Sizes, Too Small by Mizore

I have to apologize for being absent again for an extremely long time. All I will say about it is that I’m an American….

Unfortunately, I have to return with Two Sizes, Too Small, which, while I really liked, I also found myself feeling deeply uncomfortable with from time to time.

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The manga starts out with a very cute premise. In the zero chapter, our main character, Keaton, explains that a lot of the time having a stature smaller than that of the average woman has it’s advantages…..

As someone who is 5’2″ on a good day, I fully appreciate stories about the hardships of being crowded subway–face to armpit–with most of the rest of the crowd.

Naturally (and honestly, just like I did in Real Life,) Keaton falls for a taller than average guy. In my case, my wife is 6’1″, which yes. makes her almost exactly a foot taller than I am. This is about the height difference between Keaton, a vetrenarian student, and Ben, a game designer.

I will say that even at the very end of chapter one, I got an inkling of the problem that would haunt me through this entire manga.

Ben had been reacting to Keaton’s cuteness throughout this first chapter apparently under the assumption that Keaton was a middle schooler. A lot, in fact, is made of the fact that Keaton doesn’t look his age. So, it’s not only that he’s short and cute, but he’s short and cute and looks… 12.

And therein lies the problem.

Let’s just say it out loud. The pedophilia is just right there, just BARELY under the surface. Keaton is legal, so a person can tell themselves that they are enjoying this story of two adults where one of them just happens to look like a twelve year old. Until we get to the sex scene in chapter 49 “Let’s Get Inside,” where the way things begin to unfold feels very…

I mean, it’s uncomfortable.

It’s technically full of consent, but the whole “can I touch you here?” starts to feel like an adult talking to a child?? And the images of their size differences….

I’m so sorry, but it’s really not okay.

Which is a shame because this romance is absolutely adorable and I love Mizura-sensei’s artstyle. There’s even a really interesting subplot about Keaton’s older brother, Karl, who is super overprotective. Though, when we are first introduced to Karl, even the reader is uncertain who Karl is to Keaton and so, when Karl announces to Ben that he’s Keaton’s boyfriend, even the reader is like… “Oh, oh well, I guess that’s the complication!” Especially since Karl is kind of a snack….

So, a big part of Ben and Keaton’s relationship actually begins as friends. They have video games in common and so Ben and Keaton just start hanging out regularly to play. Keaton forms a relationship to Ben’s cat, Mr. Smith, who, thankfully Karl is allergic to.

We get to know the other people in Ben’s life, too, some of his co-workers, and, in the way of such things, fate continues to push Ben and Keaton together. Eventually, Keaton is able to explain that Karl is not his boyfriend, but his brother. They also talk about the reason that Karl is so over-protective, which is that Keaton once made friends with a homeless man and his dog. The homeless man went on to be involved in a murder, and this convinced Karl (possibly correctly? The jury is still out as far as I’m concerned) that Keaton just doesn’t have a good sense of people.

We meet Ben’s mom, who runs a bakery, and who is rooting for her son to find a nice young man. Even though a lot of this feels very Japanese, the attitudes towards queerness are very open. Like, people on the street will say “Aw, what a cute couple” and Ben and Keaton will openly hold hands in public, even kiss. So, I *think* it’s supposed to be taking place in the US, because at one point Karl has a movie shoot (did I mention that he’s an actor?) in “another state.”

If you can ignore the underlying pedo vibes, this story is actually very sweet and wholesome. I really rooted for Ben and Keaton to get it together.

But, I mean, the whole thing is a lot of this…

Where, visually, it’s just hard not to go to very weird, uncomfortable places.

So, do I recommend? I mean… no? But, also, I wish I could?

ReLife by Yayoi Sou

I watched the first two episodes of the anime of ReLife at a friend’s house and decided to hunt down the manga/web comic. While there’s nothing wrong, per se, with the manga, this is probably one of the rare instances when I think I’m going to quit reading and, instead, go back to the anime.

I’ll tell you why.

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The premise of ReLife hooked me. Our hero, a twenty-seven year old NEET (not in employment, education or training), Kaizaki Arata is not having a good night. His friends are all having successful careers and he quit his job after only three months. He’s been working part time at a convenience store and living off his parent’s largess. When he fails yet-another-interview, his mother cuts him off. He’s already had a humiliating night because his friends invited him drinking and he lied about his work prospects, and so when a random stranger offers him a way out–take this drug and be part of a year-long experiment and we’ll pay all living expenses–he jumps at it.

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Or, at least says he’ll take the drug home and sleep on it… only to drunkly take it almost immediately.

In the morning, he discovers that the drug makes him look 15 years old again and the experiment involves sending him back to high school for a ‘second chance.’ Kaizaki considers saying ‘no,’ but the sweetener to the deal is that the agency, ReLife, of the title, promise a job placement after the year. It’s just too good of a deal. Kaizaki signs on the dotted line.

The things that initially excited me about this manga was thinking about what it would take for me to consider returning to high school. I’m not sure there’s enough money in the world for me to consider this, and the manga does play around with what is awful about high school including embarrassing yourself in gym class and having to think about algebra again after forgetting about it entirely for a decade or more.

I also moderately enjoy redemptive arcs, though I have to admit that I never saw Kaizaki as terribly awful?

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You went to graduate school, dude. You’re doing better than me.

I do like the moments when he acts like ‘an old man’ or has to hide the fact that he’s still smoking and drinking like an adult, but the manga wandered off early into some high school subplots that I really didn’t care about–while ignoring mysteries that I cared a lot about (what happened at the previous job that Kaizaki quit it? Who was subject 001 and what happened to them?)

Probably, if I keep reading, some of those questions will be answered, but I’m currently bogged down in some drama involving the high school volleyball team (Kaizaki isn’t even remotely involved in this part of the story) and so I think I’ll be better served watching the condensed anime version.

However, if you try this and it’s your jam, there’s a lot of it and the story is complete (and completely scanlated/officially translated.) For myself, I think I’ll go watch what there is of it on Crunchyroll and call it even.

그 남자의 ��이힐 / Why Did Men Stop Wearing High Heels? by Jimmy Kim

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그 남자의 하이힐 / Why Did Men Stop Wearing High Heels? is the queerest straight romance that I have ever read. On top of that, it genuinely made me cry the kind of intensely personal cries I usually reserve for ‘queer folks finding acceptance.’

Hats (or Heels?) off to mangaka, Jimmy Kim-sensei.

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One of the things I really love about a lot of the manhwa coming out of Lezhin Comics is that they’re complete at 60 or so chapters, which means that you get a decently-sized, complete story. Things actually get to some kind of satisfying conclusion, and, yet, a voracious reader like myself can read it all in one or two sittings.

I also feel like there’s something kind of groundbreaking in some of the themes that get explored.

In 그 남자의 하이힐 / Why Did Men Stop Wearing High Heels?, we follow Kim Manseok who is described by his office co-workers as such an average non-entity that he’s completely forgettable.  So little stands out about Manseok that he’s an interchangeable cog in the machine.

Except, Manseok has a secret.

Yes, he’s a completely cis, straight guy, average in every way, but he really, really loves wearing women’s high heels. It’s not even a fetish for him. There’s nothing about wearing heels that’s sexual in any way for Manseok.  But, wearing them and talking about them and collecting them makes Manseok feel good.

High heels are hobby that makes him happy, and he’s figured out a way to share his fannish squee. Manseok happens to have tiny, feminine, shapely feet, and so he’s adopted a female persona on the internet and runs a highly popular blog reviewing and showing off his newest heels.

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The company Manseok works in is very conservative, as is much of South Korean society (according to the mangaka, at any rate,) and so he is always on edge about this hobby. He’s had some personal trauma when people have discovered his secret, and he lives in fear of being outed.

You can see instantly how this reads queer.  I think was also taken by surprise by how much this fear of outing intersects with being a weirdo-fan…. of well, anything: manga, Star Wars, anything that might quirk an eyebrow among the “mundane.”  In fact, that connection is made explicitly near the end of the manga, as part of the feel-good resolution.

This was just really well-written.  The mangaka doesn’t shy away from having main characters who are queer in a number of different ways. There is a shoe designer that ends up recruiting Mansoek as his Muse, who is straight-up (as it were) a foot fetisher.  We never see him being sexual about feet, but it’s very clear that feet turn him on and are, in a weird way, what he emotionally connects to in a person.

Mansoek actually meets Oh (the designer) because he hunted down Oh’s rickety shop in search for the ‘perfect’ heel for his blog and when it looks like Oh won’t let him buy them, he takes advantage of a distraction to snap a picture.

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I also found it wonderfully complex that the person who gave Mansoek his trauma about being a “pervert” and fear of being hated if anyone should find out, is his younger sister whom, it turns out, is hiding her own secret… that she’s a lesbian.

So pretty much every character in this manhwa has some kind of moment when people accept them for who they are, including two office ladies. One of whom loves all the femme stuff and gets passed over for promotions because she’s “too flashy” (and thus seen unfairly as “slutty” and power hungry) and the other who just never wanted any of the make-up and high heels bullcrap (and thus is seen as ‘not putting in the effort’ to be successful and/or being seen as ‘too manly’ and therefor aggressive.)

On top of being queer af, this is an extremely feminist story. Because what woman has not been the the receiving end of these conflicting messages?

A big theme of this is that people should be able to be who they are. What’s interesting, too, is that just leaving for a more accepting place (in this case, like France,) is floated a LOT.  Like there’s this real sense in the manga that maybe some places are just too conservative for people like us.

Which really, REALLY resonates.

At one point Mansoek gets demoted and sent to a smaller town and it’s the most terrifying thing, because if you can’t be queer in Seoul, where can you be?  I won’t spoil what happens entirely because I want all of you to read this one.

EVEN THOUGH THE ROMANCE IS STRAIGHT.

I know, right? You never thought you’d see me telling you all to run out an root for those het pairings, but here I am.

This one is a good one. Even if, like me, you have zero interest in high heels.

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P.S. Apologies for my long absence, yet again. This time my excuse is that I was at a four-day science fiction convention.  So, I am only now bleary-eyed recovering. Hopefully, I will return to a more reasonable publishing schedule soon.

One-Punch Man by Yusuke Murata (One)

Since all the cool kids were doing it, I thought I’d finally get around to checking out One-Punch Man.

I read the first volume and I sort of feel like my review could be summed up by this (web) comic strip from Questionable Content: “I can’t tell if it’s a brilliant deconstruction of shounen anime tropes or just garbage.”

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Yeah, it’s pretty brilliant parody.  I mean, I guess.  I don’t fail to see the humor in a guy who “over trained” and can now defeat all his enemies with one punch. I kind of even adore that he got into hero-ing for “fun,” (although the author seems to change his mind about this backstory and there is, at least, some sense that Saitama has a well-honed sense of justice that go him into hero-ing even earlier.)

But, will the joke sustain me?

Eh, I’m not sure.

This is where I get into arguments with people who try to tell me that the best comic book superhero movie of all time was “The Incredibles.”  Yes, it’s a good movie.  But, to say that “The Incredibles,” which is intended as a send-up, a parody,  is the best superhero movie  is to actually discount what I LIKE about superheroes, and to only enjoy the ways in which people make fun of superhero tropes.

I feel very similarly about shounen.

I know it’s cheesy. I know it’s melodramatic.  I know that so many of the fights are unrealistic and drawn out and could just be over if someone would just Do The Thing (or if the villains weren’t quite so OP, too.)

But, okay, one of my favorite themes is good conquering evil–and part of that story is always how HARD good has to fight to win.

I dunno.  Maybe I wasn’t in the right mood for this.  Probably it’s better consumed as an anime, even though it was the web comic that went viral.

The robot is cute, though. I now at least understand the copious amounts of fan art of him. And I do kind of love this art style when it crops up:

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So, I don’t know. I guess I’m going to go against the grain here and say, “whatever.” Have fun with it, kids. I’ll just enjoy your fan art instead of canon, k?

Let’s Take the Train Together, Shall We? #10-14

Somehow I missed a bunch of these!  The bonus is that I got to read a whole slew at once, which is lovely.  If you’ve not caught up either, you can find them all here: http://bato.to/comic/_/comics/lets-take-the-train-together-shall-we-r18448 (official scanlation site.)

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If these two don’t end up as lovers by the end, there will be gross sobbing and possibly a little raging from me. I can no longer pretend I won’t be devastated if this ends in a platonic way.  Also, if these two just end up bro’friends at the end?  Sally-sensei is a queer baiting son-of-a-b*tch!

Because Chapter 10 is literally about how Chen Yuchen is having an extremely sh*tty day until he sees Li Tingyu in his street clothes.  Seriously.  Just seeing Tingyu in casual clothes lifts the cloud from Chen Yuchen’s day.

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Listen, I have some really awesome friends in my life with whom I have a 100% platonic relationship with, but they usually lift me out of  my crappy mood by talking to me about their lives or hanging out with me.  I do not get happy just by seeing them in cute clothes.

When I see my wife coming out of work in her cute shoes and a kicky skirt? Holy sh*t, yes. Just watching her walk will bring a smile to my face, brighten my day–before I even talk her.

Do you see the difference?

I don’t think that people in Taiwan are that much culturally different than people in the U.S.  Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe bro’mances are really different in Taiwan. Maybe guys there are just more laissez fair about it all. “Dude! Cute shoes! OMG, they make me so happy! How do they make you feel?” But, I have tons of girls who are my friends who do not make my day just by wearing something I’ve never seen them in before.  Hell, half the time I don’t notice when my friends who are girls get new glasses or change their hair, but that might be part of being a lesbian.  So, maybe this isn’t a Taiwan/U.S. thing, maybe this is a straight thing.  Maybe straight people really get happy when they see their other straight friends looking good.

BUT, JUST FYI, THIS READS AS VERY QUEER TO ME, AS A QUEER WOMAN.

Especially since the next three chapters are all about the guys finally exchanging phone numbers and then spending a lot of their waking hours wondering why the other one won’t call.

Plus, we do get some full-on queer baiting/fan service, when the two high school girls who were hoping to score some adult salaryman action try to get closer to Chen Yuchen and Li Tengyu again, and, when the train breaks suddenly, slam the two men “too close” together.  This ends with a bloody nose from Chen Yuchen, which has its own kind of cultural double-entendre, but in this case is actually cause by a hard skull whacking into a nose.

So, yeah, what to make of where this is going…. I’m not sure.

Let’s Take the Train Together, Shall We? is not, so far as I know, listed as a yaoi, so I can’t be certain things are going to go as they should.  In fact, what I’m suspecting is going to happen next is that now that Li Tengyu’s overly touchy boss is sitting next to him on a the train and is more a little sloshed, having had an afternoon client meeting at the Taiwanese version of an izakaya, there’s going to a Big Misunderstanding between our boys when touchy-feely boss gets a little too physically friendly with Tengyu.

Now, how that’s going to play out will be interesting.  Is there going to be a whole lot of Chen Yuchen avoiding Li Tengyu because “OH SHIT HE’S A HOMO!” or what?

I don’t know, but things could go terribly, terribly wrong from here.

Someone hold me.