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dvo

meunierd@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 3 months ago

My wheelhouse is in fiction, especially comics. I enjoy genre fiction, and tend to lean towards horror, weird and science fiction. I enjoy reading about food, socialism, music, religions, and computing.

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Ayako (2010, Vertical) 5 stars

Opening a few years after the end of World War II and covering almost a …

Tezuka's best gekiga

5 stars

I've found most of Tezuka's hard-boiled manga suffers from some degree of tonal whiplash, or otherwise loses its grounding. Ayako on the other hand is a mature work from a steady hand.

The sense of place created with Yodoyama in the shadow of the American occupation is visceral. The Tenge family are clinging to what remains of an old way of life. They are the last rasping breaths of a dying dynasty.

Ayako is a story about Japan and its sequestration in the fallout of the second world war. Suppression is the arm of corruption and domination.

Currently this is my second favourite Tezuka manga after a Phoenix.

Gyo (Hardcover, 2015, VIZ Media LLC) 4 stars

The floating smell of death hangs over the island. What is it? A strange, legged …

Nonsensical, but vibes

4 stars

More than being propelled by a coherent plot, Gyo is driven by its action. Our protagonist is pulled from one situation to the next as the world gives way to a marine apocalypse.

It lacks a lot of what made Uzumaki so disturbing. You don't have that teleological unraveling of reality. Gyo is a lot more pedestrian in its horror, but that's also what makes it fun. It's kind of Dawn of the Dead with fish.

Magic Knight Rayearth, Vol. 1 (Paperback, 2011) 3 stars

Umi, Hikaru, and Fuu are three schoolgirls out on a field trip to Tokyo Tower, …

It's good comics, fairly weak storytelling

3 stars

Magic Knight Rayearth has a beautiful aesthetic. Cifero is a rich fantasy setting, but unfortunately you just don't get to see that much of it. Panel layouts are generally incredible. CLAMP's artwork is fantastic, although it often focuses so much on its main cast that you're wanting for a little more variety.

The storytelling is pretty formulaic. I can see exactly how this would map to the Super Famicom RPG. I suspect reading it serialized would have been less trying, where each girl's coming into their abilities wouldn't hit as quite so formulaic.

The abrupt ending is honestly one of the stronger qualities of the story, and it's enough to get me to pick up the second omnibus after some time away.

Abara (Hardcover, 2018, VIZ Media LLC) No rating

A vast city lies under the shadow of colossal, ancient tombs, the identity of their …

A better NOiSE but not a better BLAME!

No rating

I see a lot more actual storytelling happening here. Nihei's trading a lot less on pure atmospherics. Everything reads a lot more clearly but we're still in a megalithic city. He's gotten a lot better at drawing faces. Women look more moe and men are able to explore a beautiful range of facial structures.

The gauna read less clearly than Silicon Life or Safeguards do, but as we get into these giant mausoleum consuming gaunas in the second half, I appreciate the human facial features. This is something you see present through his work and H R Giger's, like with the skull barely visible inside of the Xenomorph's exoskeleton. The idea that these monstrosities are descended from our own humanity is what makes them so terrifying, the idea that we can be contorted into these forms. Generally speaking though, shit made of skeletons is cool.

There are always more questions …

Ooko (Hardcover, 2016, Tundra Books) 5 stars

Ooko has everything a fox could want: a stick, a leaf and a rock. Well, …

A funny beautiful board book about living authentically

5 stars

Content warning Includes a brief summary

reviewed Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin

Post-Scarcity Anarchism (Hardcover, 1996, Black Rose Books) 3 stars

In a series of related essays, Murray Bookchin balances his ecological and anarchist vision with …

A very faint sketch

3 stars

This book is mostly concerned with the idea that technology CAN produce a post-scarcity society, but if you're expecting a clear picture of what that looks like or what it entails, you're going to be disappointed. I read the third edition which included "Listen, Marxist!" which includes a very valuable anarchist reading of the October Revolution and how power was consolidated.

When Bookchin is rattling off all of the things his enlightened anarchist society can cast off, a lot of it is feminine. It doesn't invalidate the book but it does highlight some of his limitations as a social thinker.

I grabbed this off The Anarchist Library and fixed all of the OCR errors that were made in its production as I read through so if you're looking for a nice digital edition, I can recommend it.