Grinding the AX: Finishing with a return to the weird shit

One final leg on the trip through AX:

"The Ballad of Non-stop Farting" and "I Can't Stand Pain!"
By Kataoka Toyo

From the title, one would assume these stories are focused more toward the puerile end of the spectrum, and while that's somewhat true (in that there are fart jokes and sex is on everyone's mind), they seem to be more of a gently comedic look at blue-collar workers, following several factory workers as they plug along through the daily grind.  The first sees a couple guys go check on a coworker who didn't show up for work, leading to a darkly comic bit in which they decide to go get a drink before venturing into his house just in case he's dead, which would mean they would have to spend the evening dealing with the police.  There's also a pretty incredible two-page spread of the sick guy laying on some densely-detailed tatami mats, unable to move because of his terrible gas pains, which is an interesting choice.

The second story is a bit longer and gets more involved with the various factory personalities as they go out for a drink after one guy cuts off his finger, and after they admire how much money he must make working two jobs, he admits that he blows it all on hookers.  Maybe this could be interpreted as another look at the pointless nature of modern life, but if so, it's also a warm one, casting a humorous eye on the dumb things people do in order to get by.  The art is passable, fitting the slightly grotesquely cartoony style that you often see in this sort of manga, but the textured details really make it work.

"Kosuke Okada & His 50 Sons"
By Hideyasu Moto

At first, this seems like a silly lark, following a widower who has 50 tiny boys (they're all identical, about six inches tall, milling around his house like rodents), illustrated in a somewhat crude style, but taking the goofy concept at face value.  It quickly becomes obvious, however, that the kids are all imaginary, and he's still grieving over the death of his wife, a revelation that suddenly makes his blissful paternal existence achingly sad.  It's a quick story, but it lingers in the memory, hitting that emotional trigger of lost love, and also the lost chance for responsibility and leaving one's mark on the world through the younger generation.  Sometimes the simpler stories can sneak up on you and end up being the best and most memorable ones of all.

"Les Raskolnikov"
By Keizo Miyanishi

This is apparently an adaptation of part of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, or at least a portion of it, but it's fairly incomprehensible to me, either because I haven't read the book, or because it's just confusing.  There's a hooded figure and a little girl who calls it her brother, and a corpse or something, with lots and lots of narration filling the pages.  Pretty boring, although some of the imagery is arrestingly grotesque, and there's an interestingly angular use of toned shading.  But other that that, it does nothing for me.



"Alraune Fatale"
By Hiroji Tani

This one is apparently based on a German folk tale, and it's interesting, both because of the very non-manga art style, and because of the striking sexuality on display.  A deadbeat guy is about to hang himself, but he finds a beautiful naked woman, takes her home, and has a lot of sex with her as she apparently consumes his essence, then reverts back to a mandrake root and is carried away by a cat, presumably going on to further seductions.  The thin-lined art is densely-shaded, full of dark, foreboding mood, and while the woman is silent throughout, she seems seductively in control, always wearing a come-hither look, displaying her ample assets and just oozing sexuality, making the guy's gruesome end all but unavoidable.  There might be something going on here about the evils of female sexuality, but I can't really work my way around to any sort of intended moral, and with the guy already being kind of doomed from the start of the story, maybe this is just a tale of the supernatural, something to confound analysis and stick in the mind with its weird imagery.  Or maybe it's just a chance to draw a sexy naked lady and some blurred-out intercourse, which is always possible.

"Sacred Light"
By Otoya Mitsuhashi

This one almost seems like it was made up as it went along, starting with an image created by adding small details to some harsh brush strokes to turn them into the scene of a mountainside cabin and extrapolated from there, following a mountain climber who meets a woman that is also climbing the mountain, has sex with her, and then travels back in time to meet his younger self.  Who knows what is supposed to be going on here, but the way the images are composed of those brushes being swiped across the page and details being added later is pretty arresting.  It might be nice to see an actual story illustrated in this style, but this one works as a cool technique and an interesting bit of mood.



"Six Paths of Wealth"
By Kazuichi Hanawa

And finally, more weirdness.  This is a samurai-era story about a woman who schools her daughter in the titular Six Paths of Wealth, a belief system based on absorbing power from insects or something, which basically involves dumping ants on her naked body to keep it fresh and enticing to suitors.  The mother and daughter end up getting shrunk and captured by an ant-sized alien who has plans on world domination, but they turn the tables on him with their sexuality.  Bizarre, but memorable due to the air of strangeness and the crazy imagery like the design of the alien and the mother being turned into a half-ant creature.  Also, lots of nudity.  I'm not sure if this is based on any sort of actual medieval beliefs, or was just made up by the cartoonist, but it's strange stuff, one of those horror tales that doesn't make much sense, but is still pretty enjoyable.

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Final thoughts:

While not every story here is a winner, there's enough really good work here that the volume is definitely worth reading, especially as a source of comics that would never make their way across the Pacific outside of a book like this.  For years, people have spoken of the vast wealth of comics that remain unseen outside of Japan, and this glimpse of some of them is essential, but hopefully not exceptional.  Fortunately, a second volume has already been announced, so if we are lucky, they will continue to appear and weird us out for years to come.

Five favorite stories:

"Push Pin Woman"
"Enrique Kobayashi's Eldorado"
"Mushroom Garden"
"The Song of Mr. H"
"Kosuke Okada and His 50 Sons"

Five cartoonists I would love to see more from:

Kotobuki Shiriagari
Einosuke
Namie Fujieda
Yuichi Kiriyama
Kataoka Toyo

Grinding the AX: Schoolgirls really aren't that interesting

Links:  If you haven't been checking out Derek Kirk Kim's Tune: Praxis and Allies, be sure to do so before it's too late.  He recently posted a message of despondence, feeling like nobody was paying attention to the comic he was giving away for free.  Luckily, many responded, assuring him that he does have an audience, but it doesn't hurt to remind people of the quality work he's got going.  If you don't want to read it on a screen, the first volume, which is almost finished, will be released in print by First Second this spring.  But do give it a look, if you like good comics.

In the "unfortunately will never see print" category, Becky Cloonan started off the year by mentioning the sad news that her graphic novel series East Coast Rising (I reviewed the first volume here, if you're interested and don't mind less-polished writing) will in all likelihood never be finished, but she does at least rectify the cliffhanger ending of the first volume by posting its resolution, starting here and continuing for the next several days.  Awesome.  Just a taste of what we're missing out on thanks to Tokyopop.

And speaking of opportunities missed, I've been out of the comics loop long enough that I completely missed that Faith Erin Hicks has started a webcomic (or rather the online version of a comic that runs in a weekly Halifax newspaper) called The Adventures of Superhero Girl.  I love Hicks' art, and this is a super fun, cute example of her work.  Plus, it's free!  Webcomics!

And one more: Doug TenNapel's new webcomic, Ratfist, started today.  Some sort of superhero thing, but since it's TenNapel, I'll read it.

Now for more manga dabblings:

"A Well-Dressed Corpse"
By Yuichi Kiriyama

This is another story about how terrible the world is, but it's pretty effective in its depiction of a harsh, ugly modern existence, spending only six pages jumping between loosely-connected, urban dwellers but managing to include rape, murder, abortion, and a general sense of society's lost soul, people who only interact long enough to do terrible things to each other, or to ignore each other completely.  Lots of heavy blacks, downcast expressions, and shadowed visages; this world is a pretty terrible place.  Good times!

"Arizona Sizzler"
By Saito Yunasuke

Shifting gears once again, here's a much lighter story, although it's still kind of ugly, at least in its crude art style.  It's also pretty pointless, seeming existing only to shock with a close up depiction of a banana-shaped penis and some spherical testicles, looming over a girl wandering through a desert.  It's kind of funny, a bit of deadpan weirdness as this naked man (who is either gigantic or just shown in extreme close-up, only visible from below and behind) keeps showing up and horrifying her, but there's nothing going on aside from that.  Kind of a waste of pages for a joke that could have been told in one panel.

"The Rainy Day Blouse" and "The First Umbrella"
By Akino Kondo

These two short pieces are also fairly uninteresting, although they at least seem to be attempting to capture some poetic imagery, following a schoolgirl wondering over how it never rains when she carries a certain umbrella.  Maybe it's prettier in the original Japanese, but it's not exactly evocative in this form, and the fairly plain art doesn't add much either.  Compared to most everything else in the volume, this is pretty eminently skippable.

"Stand By Me"
By Tomohiro Koizumi

Another school tale, although this one is about boys, and does feature at least a little bit of conflict.  One kid has a crush on a girl, and is spying on her in the bath, but his friend is the one who gets caught, leading to a falling out between them.  It's all about the intense emotions of youth, but it's nothing too special, especially considering the awkwardly-proportioned art, which gives everyone tiny heads and huge hands.  I don't know how much teen drama I'll be able to take after this book.

"My Old Man" and "Me"
By Shin'ichi Abe

The focus in these two short stories is all about normal people and their dreams, which, according to the author bio in the back of the book, is sort of a theme of Abe's work.  Kind of boring, but interesting in their simple depiction of regular people living in their houses, realistically shown going about their lives.  That's worth something, but it's not really interesting to make one stop and take note in a varied anthology like this; it would fit better in a longer book by the author, or a similarly-themed anthology.  Here, it's kind of just a short pause before another bit of weirdness comes along.

"Up & Over"
By Seiko Erisawa

Hmm, this section of the book seems to be all about "normal life"; this is another story about regular schoolchildren, a boy and a girl, with the boy telling the story of a broken piece of a marble that falls out of his pocket.  It's slight, but cute, due to effective facial expressions and some nice timing.  Inessential, but still memorable, at least for me.

"The Song of Mr. H"
By Shigeyuki Fukumitsu

Another story about people making their way in the modern world?  Sure, but this one has flair and life; I dig it.  There's a middle-aged salaryman whose life sucks, and after the positive feelings he gets from punching out a guy harassing a woman, he decides to become a boxer.  It's kind of amusing, in a deadpan way, but other than the cartoonishly deformed art, it's played completely straight, and it doesn't end up being the expected story of redemption, but still somehow manages to seem like a feel-good story, at least giving the character a feeling of peace.  It's kind of goofy, but it totally works; I would love to read more of Fukumitsu's manga.

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Looks like there will be one more post to go for this book.  Hopefully I'll get to it before too long...

Grinding the AX: The shift from adult to kiddie is whiplash-inducing

This is the third part of a continuous blog through the first (and hopefully not the last, no sir) volume of the AX anthology:

"The Brilliant Ones"
By Namie Fujieda

In a book like this, it's kind of stating the obvious to say a story is weird, but this one is odd in a different sort of way, in tone as well as subject matter.  It seems to be a parody/satire of school-set manga full of idealistic teachers and friendly students.  The teacher exhorts his students to "shine" and hold on to their dreams, but it's a pointless encouragement, a "do your best" with no basis in reality.  This is brought home (sort of) when a student disagrees with the teacher, stating that he'll never have a chance to shine, since he has a terminal illness, and then promptly explodes into thousands of maggots (in a non-gory fashion, as if he simply transformed into a bunch of little blobs).  The teacher won't give up on him though, and he gets the students to collect as many of the worms as they can in a box, but after doing so, the box gets shelved in the back of the class and forgotten, until one day, the narrator of the story, some girl, looks inside and sees the worms all eating each other and getting bigger, then transforming into some sort of moth creature and flying out the window, giving the teacher the chance to claim that the dead kid got his chance to shine after all.  The end.



So, what the hell, am I right?  I can't say for sure, but this all seems to be a spoof of that sort of "you can do it!" cheerleading that adults give kids that's little more than lip service.  The teacher here is a perfect example, all strenuous statements with no substance, more interested in possibility than actuality.  He wants statistics to prove his success, not caring about the kids once they leave his class, so even with a lost cause like the dead kid, he's trying to find some way to prove that he's right.  But once the kids he supposedly wants to succeed are out of his sight, he forgets about them, as does everyone else, unless they do something newsworthy that allows him to once again claim success.  Is that all a stretch?  Probably, but there's still something in the weird mood of the story, the pointless excitement of the teacher and the blase attitude of the kids when such shocking things happen to their classmate.  It's gotta be representative of something, right?  Maybe it's just a statement about the vapidity of school manga, but it's still really arresting and unique.

"The Tortoise and the Hare"
By Mitsuhiko Yoshida

This story marks something of a left turn for the volume, a shift to more all-ages fare from the wacky adult hijinx.  It's a retelling of the classic fable, or actually a sequel, starring the grandsons of the original racers.  The rabbit is sure he won't get lazy and make the same mistakes, so the tortoise comes up with a way to outwit his competitor and win anyway.  It's an odd lesson for the kids (who probably aren't reading this anyway), that lesser-talented people need to resort to trickery to get ahead, but it's still applicable.  Plus, Yoshida's art is lovely and lively, full of nicely anthropomorphosized animals and rich natural backgrounds.  It's an interesting break from the format of the volume, but an understandable one given the talent on display.



"The Twin Adults"
By Kotobuki Shiriagari

And it's back to strange goofiness, with two entries in what appears to be a series of minimalistic stories starring two naked bald guys who sit in a bare room/landscape and fuck with each other.  In the first one, one of them sculpts an idol and decides that it's a god for him to worship, leading to pointless conflict between the two of them.  In the other, one contemplates the nature of existence, wondering if he or anything around him actually exists, allowing the other to play disgusting jokes on him regarding the nature of reality.  It's all quite silly, but funny nonetheless, and the art is interesting, reduced to basic calligraphic brushstrokes and a little bit of greytone shading.  I would love to read more of this series; it's pretty nuts.

"Haiku Manga"
By Shinbo Minami

Two more minimalist stories, although they're more gentle and poetic (hence the title), starring a father who teaches elliptical lessons to his son, with a haiku featured in each.  They seem nice, and cute, but there's not much to them.  As a four-page interlude in each issue of a magazine, it might be a nice series, or it might just be forgettable.  Certainly not terrible though.

"Mushroom Garden"
By Shinya Komatsu

This is another kiddie/all-ages story, but a beautifully realized one, following a young boy who causes an infestation of huge mushrooms to engulf his entire medieval-ish town, but in a non-threatening way, more of a bit of fantastical wonder than anything scary.  There might be an intended bit of symbolism of some sort, or it could just be a flight of fancy, but it's a beautiful story either way, full of densely-detailed pastoral imagery and a rich world of cobblestones, gears, and machinery, all ready to be consumed by fungi.  I don't know if this is part of a longer series, but if it is, I would love to read more.



"Home Drama: The Sugawaras"
By Einosuke

And we're back to the weirdness, with a scene of a family eating dinner, the patriarch looking on ecstatically as his feral children rapidly consume noodles like monstrous beasts.  It's hilarious and horrifying all at once, with close up, fish-eye views of the father's laughing face as his family ignores his conversation and messily wolfs down everything in sight.  The art is full of stipply detail, but almost completely background-free, drawing the focus directly on the man's face as he feigns pride to cover up his horror at where he life has led.  It's a striking portrait of modern life, beautiful in its ugliness.


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And that seems to be it for this installment; more to come before too long, one hopes.

Grinding the AX: I'll take motorcycles over random nonsense, please

Continuing with the (ir)regular looks at Top Shelf's AX anthology (the first part is here):

"Enrique Kobayashi's Eldorado"
By Toranusuke Shimada

This is a different sort of thing than the previous stories in the volume, but it's certainly welcome.  It's an apparent bit of nonfiction (except, wait, a word balloon in the first panel reveals that it is fiction, so it fakes the truth well), as author Shimada relates how he was enlisted to translate a book about motorcycles for a friend who owned a Brazilian Eldorado NRA.  Shimada then relates the story from the book, taking him and his friend on a journey to post-WWII Brazil and describing how a motorcycle shop owner received assistance from two German engineers as they designed and began to release a line of motorcycles, until it turned out that they had a terrible secret (which probably isn't too hard to guess, given the date).  It's a fascinating story, and one that I thought was true until I tried to look up information about the brand of bike and found nothing, then spotted that easily-forgotten word balloon.  Shimada tells it well, revealing details at the right pace, throwing in recurring gags, adding some meta-humor as he and his friend interact with the scenes that they are observing, and detailing everything in a consistently thick, cartoony line.  This story might be different from the tales of urban ennui and trippy freakouts in the rest of the book, but that doesn't make it any less good.

"The Neighbor"
By Yuka Goto

This story about a couple of antagonistic housewives goes back to the heta-uma or "bad-good" style, using crude, fairly ugly drawings to make a point about the ridiculousness of its plot, or something.  There's a woman who is annoyed with her neighbor, and they have an escalating conflict that eventually erupts in a ridiculous fight scene, although that ridiculousness mostly comes from the awkward, stiff art, making their shoves and flying kicks looks hilariously silly.  That has to be on purpose, and it's amusing for it, but that's about all there is to it, unless one wants to extrapolate some sort of statement on society from the intensity of what is a pretty dumb conflict.  It's probably best to just chuckle and move on though.

"300 Years"
By Mimiyo Tomozawa

Aaand, it's back to the incomprehensible, with a nonsensical "story" about a girl who goes to the eye doctor, who diagnoses her as cross-eyed and treats her by having her do a "sit on this and spin" for the length of the title.  It seems like it's supposed to be funny, although it also seems like it just doesn't translate; a line like the doctor's "it's like 'crossed eyes=masturbation, googly eyes=free sex', maybe" might be some sort of pun in Japanese, but it just doesn't make sense in English.  There is a kind of funny bit in which we see that she sees the pudgy, bald doctor as handsome through one eye, a dog through the other, and a scribbly mish-mash together, but other than a head-scratching, "huh?", that's about all there is to get out of this story.

"Black Sushi Party Piece"
By Takashi Nemoto

I haven't read Takashi Nemoto's other Western release, Monster Men Bureiko Lullaby, but if this story is any indication (and judging by the descriptions I've read), I doubt I would enjoy it.  The somewhat crude art, which alternates between simplistic figures and detailed, messy bodily functions, is sometimes interesting, but the "story" is sort of a stream of consciousness litany of sex and weirdness, with nothing really holding it together except Nemoto's desire to draw as many penises as he can.  There's one bit that reminds me of a Shintaro Kago concept, in which a character says, "If you shag too much with one partner, cock can spread to the woman apparently", with Nemoto going on to depict women with penises growing in various horrific configurations from their bodies, but then moving on to some other nastiness a few pages later.  This is gross, transgressive material, but it's not really interesting, just tiring.  The best part of the story is the title page, which contains an organic intricacy and detail that hints at much more than the story actually holds:

"Puppy Love"
By Yusaku Hanakuma

This is another weird one, but it's got a goofy, deadpan sense of humor that saves it, which is probably a good  indication that Yusaku Hanakuma's other comic available in English, Tokyo Zombie, is one worth checking out.  This story sees the wife of a character sporting Hanakuma's signature Afro design bear children that turn out to be dogs.  That's right, plain old dogs.  Being animals, they don't survive as well as humans, whether because their mother doesn't have enough breasts, or being murdered horribly as society turns a blind eye.  It's silly, and definitely meant to be so, but there's something poignant about the way the man cares for his children and treats them like people while everyone else doesn't care.  There might be a societal analogy to be read into the story here, something about people's uncaring, self-centered nature, but that's probably too much of a stretch.  It's probably best to think of this as a goof, and it's a pretty good one.
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And that's part two.  More coming before too long, if we all clap our hands loud enough.

Grinding the AX: Too much to take in all at once

I may be late to most of the discussion that has occurred around Top Shelf's AX anthology of "alternative manga" (notably the great tweet-fest that happened back in September, which I would have loved to participate in if I had gotten to the book by then), but it's still something that begs to be written about, even if just to point out all the neat stuff contained within.  I'm finding it too overwhelming to do all at once though, so it looks like this will be the first of several posts, covering a few stories at a time.  Take that, coherent structure!

"The Watcher"
By Osamu Kanno

This first story certainly kicks things off with the weirdness, seeing a couple watching from their house as a drunk/homeless guy with a knife stuck in his head gets pissed on by a dog.  She then proceeds to strip naked and dance while the man acts as an announcer, or something.  It's kind of hard to tell, since the art, which might be "bad-good" or just plain bad, consists mostly of their oversized heads wobbling atop stiff bodies as they stand around and don't do anything.  There's probably some sort of message here about Japanese society and people's tendency to ignore the bad things going on in the world in favor of their own dumb interests, but it's just strange and kind of gross, without being very appealing.  Not the best way to start off this anthology, but luckily, things get better pretty much immediately.

"Love's Bride"
By Yoshihiro Tatsumi

Now this is more like it.  Tatsumi has kind of become the leading art-manga personality on this side of the Pacific, so a collection like this wouldn't be complete without him.  This story is kind of typical for him, if a bit less bleak than he can get, seeing a guy heartbroken after a breakup, with the only comfort being his weird relationship with a monkey in the local zoo.  The usual inability to communicate leads to some awkwardness and a humorously profane implied ending, with the best scene being the one where the guy tries to show his feelings for his girlfriend by imitating the monkey's mating call:



Like most Tatsumi, this can be really depressing stuff if you let it, all about the grind of modern life (or Modern Times, a reference seen in the guy working in a factory filled with gears) reducing people to unhappiness and isolation, our very progress de-evolving us back into animals.  But really, it's a funny bit of deadpan humor, with our hero finding happiness in the only person who will accept him, who just happens to be non-human.  Heartwarming!

"Conch of the Sky"
By Imiri Sakabashira

And we're back to the weird and surreal.  This seems to be a dream scene (or possibly a drug trip) in which a narrator describes people aging, nightmares and tentacles infecting the denizens of a house, a train running through different parts of his body, and people and creatures running around in chaos, all illustrated with plenty of strange imagery surrounded by lots of black.  There's some pretty striking stuff going on here, like an opening image of, well, read the caption:



Or a train emerging from a tunnel of guts and innards, or monsters intermingling with people and modern technology, or, you know, any panel in the story.  There seems to be a feeling of anger at old people, perhaps showing an antipathy toward an older generation, or just authority in general, but it's mostly just a bunch of strangeness that is, nonetheless, kind of arresting in its unique freakiness.  These early stories seem to be setting the mood for the bizarre, along with the somewhat mundane.  It's apparent that this anthology can contain all manner of stories; you never know what's going to come next.

"Rooftop Elegy"
By Takao Kawasaki

See, here's something completely different.  This one sees two hapless fellows stumble upon one another on a rooftop, one being a suicidal salaryman and the other a Golgo-13-style hitman.  When the latter indicates that he'll kill the former, he suddenly gains a new appreciation for life.  But there are several more twists and turns to be had in a short space, such that it all seems like a parody of hard-boiled tough-guy stories, with the art that combines shadowed realism with awkward proportions, wacky faces, and goofy poses only exacerbating this feeling.  Whether this was meant to be the case, or if it is just a bit of off-kilter badassery crammed into a few pages, it's pretty entertaining stuff.  And, you know, there's the usual commentary about the meaningless of modern life and whatnot; that seems to be a developing theme here...

"Inside the Gourd"
By Ayako Akiyama

This one is kind of hard to parse, possibly being a magical-realist love story, or a fable of some sort, but it's interesting either way, and there's something romantic and poetic about the tale of a lonely guy who watches a caterpillar grow inside a gourd, seeing it as a girl growing up in a little house, and eventually being led to the actual house to meet the girl he had been viewing.  What does it mean? Anything?  Or is it just a neat little cyclical tale of love (and voyeurism)?  One suspects that it might be another comment about the inability to connect to people, forcing worried mothers to rely on magical ends to find wives for their sons, but it's a pretty gentle version of that trope, rather than a savage satire.  I'll keep an eye out for the Disney movie.

"Me"
By Shigehiro Okada

Ah, more about the disaffection caused by today's society, or something.  This one is still comedy though, with a weird guy wearing women's clothing (as an attempt to "embody how the existence of the self is lost", or possibly just due to mental illness) wandering the streets and being mistaken for a performance artist by another strangely-dressed young girl, who proceeds to seduce him and then totally get skeeved out when he spouts a bunch of philosophical nonsense afterward.  It's pretty funny, with some art that's reminiscent of mainstream manga style but just a little bit dirtier and grimier.  But damn, these stories about modern life grinding people down to nothing are starting to run together already; it's probably best to not read these all at once to keep from getting either suicidal or contemptuous of those whining Japanese.

"Push Pin Woman"
By Katsuo Kawai

This one might be my favorite story of the volume so far, or at least the one that has stuck in my mind through its simple way of combining symbolism and plot.  The story is about a woman whose boyfriend left her for someone else, so to punish him, she pushes a series of push pins into his back, eventually making it look "like the scales of a beautiful snake".



He takes it, saying that the pain is "nothing compared to how I've hurt you", and then he leaves, his new lover removing the pins and leaving them scattered across the space between them, preventing the push pin woman from ever trying to reconnect with him.  I don't know why this resonates with me, but I love the way the plot is presented as if it is a real incident, but everything is symbolic, even her symbol of the push pins.  He may regret hurting her, but his new love can ease the pain, and that same purposely-inflicted lesson is what prevents the push pin woman from trying to win him back.  That's all there is to it, but it's so exquisitely simple (due, in large part, to the thin-lined, backgroundless art) that it becomes sort of profound.  To those of us who are easily impressed, anyway.

"A Broken Soul"
By Nishioka Brosis

I don't mean to be a broken record, but this certainly seems like another "modern life is soulless" sort of story, about a guy whose soul has broken, leading him to install a crank in his head as some sort of fix.  It doesn't make much sense, although the point seems to be that even though he is fundamentally damaged, he continues with his life, going through the motions as if nothing is different, and he continues to do so without any change after he has been "fixed".  You know the routine by now, right?  Eat, work, fuck, repeat, life is meaninless, etc.  There's not really anything new to say here, but the art is pretty fascinating, long, thin-limbed people holding the same poses, defined by stippled textures.  It might not be an interesting message, but it looks quite pretty.



"Into Darkness"
By Takato Yamamoto

And we're back to the "freaky dreamscape" template of story, this one seeming to be an erotic-grotesque thing about a young woman being tied up and possibly raped, or at least fantasizing about it happening to her. But the thing that sets it apart is the art, which consists of intensely-detailed swirls of mossily organic, slimy  imagery, demon faces and skulls peeking out from amidst the chaotic tendrils caressing her body, flowers and symbols of life mixing with death and decay, all wrapping around the core of orgasmic ecstasy.  Yikes.  Like a lot of this sort of story, I don't know what it means, but it's pretty amazing to behold, and it certainly leaves an impression.


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And that's it for this session.  Back for more soon, hopefully.  Like I said, this is too much to handle in one go, so we'll see how much I can process for next time.