Inspired by the To Terra… Manga Moveable Feast this month, I’m looking at some more modern stories of young people in space. Twin Spica, which originally began serialization in 2001, is the story of Asumi, a plucky young girl who wants to make it into space school so she can become an astronaut. She’s got an uphill climb ahead of her — no money, her tiny size, and her lack of family support. Her mother’s dead and her father, a […]

I tried to read To Terra… once before, three years ago, just after it came out. I didn’t make it through. It was so old-fashioned in both look and story — as the copyright page notes, it was originally serialized from 1977-1980. It’s also got what I call the 2001 problem, after the movie. I am told that Keiko Takemiya was an originator, that her work here inspired so many others that what was then innovative quickly became cliché as […]

Now that I’m no longer astounded by the sheer medical craziness of this classic series about a rogue doctor, I’m reevaluating why I read these stories by Osamu Tezuka. They do, at times, bear signs of age (especially in the treatment of female characters and women’s roles; I found volume 4 particularly bad in this respect). And the stories have started making winking allusions to being comics — early in this book, characters left at the end of a long […]

I’m astounded that this second book contains even more far-out stories than Volume 1. I didn’t think there could be such a thing. The first, “Needle”, shows one of the rare occurrences when the rogue doctor Black Jack is defeated. We get a hint that this might happen on the first page, where a wise older doctor (with a huge fluffy beard) cautions the rogue to humility: Don’t underestimate the human body, or else. … When you’re trying to treat […]

I like this Osamu Tezuka manga for its entertaining medical craziness. Behind stories of insane, unbelievable surgeries lies a strong sense of morality and justice. (Big thanks to David Welsh, whose contest got these books to me for free.) Black Jack is a rogue surgeon, an unlicensed doctor who refuses to kowtow to the medical establishment. He requests immense fees to accomplish the impossible, such as treating sores that form faces and talk or transplanting a brain to a new […]

Paradise Kiss brings a heavy dose of fashion to a manga coming-of-age romance by Ai Yazawa. Yukari is a student cramming for her upcoming college entrance exams. A group of fashion students pick her up on the street because of her moody look and rename her Caroline. They’ve created a studio in the hopes of merchandising their fashions, and they need a model for their creations. Influenced by the glam movie Velvet Goldmine, each of them has their own look. […]