Manga 66
Moriarty the Patriot
By Jeannette Ng. Moriarty the Patriot by Ryosuke Takeuchi and Hikaru Miyoshi is a manga that presents Professor James Moriarty (nemesis of Sherlock Holmes, here “William James Moriarty”) as a ruthless anti-hero battling class inequality, evil aristocrats and the British Empire itself. He does so through the medium of intricately plotted perfect crimes, all the […]
Books: Erotic Comics in Japan
By Jonathan Clements. This review is definitely Not Suitable For Work. Kaoru Nagayama’s Erotic Comics in Japan: An Introduction to Eromanga, in fact, comes loaded with so many explicit images, often of a frankly triggering nature, that I am unsurprised it is not only published at a weeb-scaringly high price, but by a university press […]
Books: Manga in Arts Education
By Jonathan Clements. Masami Toku and Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase’s newly published Manga! Visual Pop-Culture in Arts Education is one of the most pleasant surprises of 2020, sneaked out mid-pandemic by a Portuguese foundation that is literally giving it away. It is by no means the first publication to grapple with the joys and miseries of […]
Books: Manga & Disability
By Jonathan Clements. Reframing Disability in Manga by Yoshiko Okuyama is a well-timed integration of the study of Japanese comics and portrayals of the disabled, powerfully conceived as an off-the-peg classroom text. It could readily function as a textbook on a dedicated course, but is formatted in a smart topical manner throughout that would lend […]
Books: Manga Cultures & the Female Gaze
By Shelley Pallis. Kathryn Hemmann’s new book, Manga Cultures and the Female Gaze, quotes an incident oft-cited in discussions of fandom – Anne Rice’s complaint that critics of her vampire novels were “interrogating the text from the wrong perspective.” Rice was famously furious that many of her readers disapproved of the direction her books were […]