Tag: sci-fi

Lost World manga review

Another day, another Osamu Tsuka work. I declined to read MW after seeing the trashy blurb and opted to try the more reader-friendly (I thought) Lost World instead. It was pretty bad. Apparently it’s one of his earliest works, and it shows. He claims he didn’t steal the idea from Arthur Conan Doyle’s work of the same name, but I highly doubt he wasn’t at least influenced by what he’d heard of Doyle’s work. But leaving matters of copying or otherwise aside, what’s Lost World about?

Summary: From the creator of Astro Boy comes Lost World, the first of Osamu Tezuka’s cycle of groundbreaking science-fiction graphic novels – including Metropolis and Future World – published in the late 1940s and early 1950s. When a rogue planet approaches Earth, a team of scientists voyages to the world and discovered a land out of the ancient past – a planet populated by dinosaurs! But a group of crooks has stowed away aboard the spacecraft, and the scientists must fight for their survival against both mobsters and monsters!

First off, all the stuff in the description only happens in the second half of the book. The first half is some Tintin-esque hijinks involving energy stones, a gang of thieves in a secret hideout and a plucky old detective who just won’t quit. That part actually wasn’t too bad, though it did read like something cobbled together by a high-school boy who has read too many newspaper comics (which is exactly what Osamu Tezuka was when he wrote that stuff).

Lost_World_p183The second half is where he really hits his stride – Tezuka being Tezuka, the scientists nonsensically find their way into space, people good and bad drop like flies all over the pages and then he adds one of his usual downer endings and boom, instant “classic.” Except not really. It most likely got published in the 40s and 50s in Japan because there wasn’t much better out there. And I dare say it only got a western release because of this author, because Lost World is so mediocre no publisher in his right mind would publish such a violent, schizophrenic, poorly-drawn and poorly-written manga if the author wasn’t famous already.

The sole consolation is that 1) it was written by a young man who later went on to write better things (or so we are told, but I have yet to see it) and 2) Tezuka does offer some explanation for the uneven nature of the manga in his afterword. So at least you aren’t left guessing why the mood changes so rapidly from childish humor to unpleasant violence and back again several times within the same chapter, or why the hero has a love interest who is actually an edible plant, etc.

As an aside, this “romantic” relationship is cleared up by having the two character declare that they’re actually like brother and sister. Unfortunately anyone who has read Ayako and has thus seen some of Tezuka’s depictions of a brother-sister relationship will derive very little comfort from this revelation. Especially when the commentary goes on to suggest that the two characters are going to have lots of little plant-man babies in future. Oh, Tezuka.

If you’re a Tezuka fan or maybe you’re interested in very early manga Lost World might be worth a read from a historical point of view. Despite the cute cover it’s not very kid-friendly, so I wouldn’t get it for anyone very young. Readable but not actually good, that’s about it.

Level E manga review

Did you know that once upon a time Yoshihiro Togashi could actually draw? Or maybe I should say “Yoshihiro Togashi would actually draw.” The potential is still there, but you wouldn’t know it to look at current chapters of Hunter x Hunter (a.k.a. Hiatus x Hiatus). You would know it if you read Level E, though, a short but enjoyable 3-volume manga Togashi started in 1995 after finishing Yu Yu Hakusho. The summary goes like:

Tsutsui Yukitaka is a freshman entering high school who hopes to become a good baseball player. However, when he walks into his new apartment, there is a man in the room who claims that he is an alien who lost his memory. He is in fact the first prince of Planet Dogra, known to have the best brain but the worst nature.

But the whole story is really about Ouji the prince of Dogra and the high school freshman is reduced to a rarely-appearing side character pretty quickly. And it’s not just him but the most of the rest of the cast only appear sparingly to be used and discarded and then reappear again when you least expect them. That has the disadvantage of leaving all the characters paper-thin, but on the plus side it keeps every chapter fresh because you just never know who’s going to show up.

LevelE_ch14p01There’s no real overarching story besides “Ouji toys with everyone for his amusement” but most chapters deal with some alien or another coming to/being on Earth and some drama occurring. Some stories are outright hilarious, but they also just as likely to be serious and even tragic. The best chapters are the ones that don’t feature Ouji at all or have very little of him, but while he can be an irritating jerk sometimes (all the time), other characters agree with the reader on his hateability and frequently band together to try and defeat him, making it fun to root for their usually futile attempts to get rid of him.

As with most Togashi series the art isn’t 100% consistent and gets worse as the series draws to a close, but like in the nursery rhyme “When it was good, it was very very good, but when it was bad it was horrid!” Thus I wouldn’t recommend trying Level E for the art alone but rather for the art + the characters + the great stories within.

There’s only one story that was boring and difficult to follow – some rubbish about a baseball team that got lost in a dream. It’s ironic because I picked Level E in the first place because it had baseball in the description, but the baseball parts turned to be the worst things about it. In fact nobody ever even plays baseball, they just talk about it. So you can basically ignore that bit… wait, you didn’t care in the first place, did you? Don’t mind me and my baseball manga fetish ^.^;;

Get Level E if: you like sci-fi, especially aliens. You like comedy. You like short-story/anthology formats. You like drama/tragedy that doesn’t get too depressing. Don’t get Level E if: You hate sadistic characters that get away with their bad behavior. You prefer a consistent, well-developed cast. Btw, I hear an anime came out recently, so if you’d rather watch than read, you can give the Level E anime a try instead.