I’m extremely excited about this month’s Manga Moveable Feast topic – Viz’s Signature imprint. I’ve been so excited in fact, that I haven’t been able to come up with a coherent topic for the Feast all week, despite racking my brain. What makes it even more difficult is that, in preparation for the Feast, I counted all the series from the imprint that I have at least one volume of. I came out in the neighborhood of 20.
I suppose that speaks volumes (ha!) in and of itself. The imprint is really just that awesome. Since an MMF post with just the sentence “THIS IS AWESOME!” written over and over again isn’t especially compelling, I racked my brain a little harder for some reasoning behind my love affair with the line. I came up with three.
3. The Horror
While some of Junji Ito’s work is published elsewhere (Dark Horse has Tomie) Viz has two great series of his in the line: namely, Uzumaki and Gyo. Uzumaki (literally “spiral”) deals with seemingly random spirals appearing all over a small town and slowing driving the inhabitants mad. Uzumaki deals with… fish with legs running amok. Initially the concepts seem silly and supremely unscary, but what Ito seems to do best is make the mundane unsettling. A man is so tormented by spirals he becomes one, while a woman is so afraid of spirals she gouges out her ears. And I’ll admit to already thinking fish are icky (tasty when cooked, though), but give them mechanical legs and the ability to burst through walls and I’m wishing I hadn’t read the book at work. At the end of both series I found myself thinking, “Could something like this really happen?” (Note: I couldn’t help but wonder if this was infinitely scarier to the Japanese population with fish seemingly a popular food. Your food is growing legs and killing you!)
Are you listening Viz (or any publisher for that matter)? I WANT MORE HORROR MANGA. (Or at least more Ito…)
2. The Diversity
A quick wiki of most of the Signature series I own lists the demographic as overwhelmingly seinen. Still, the range of subject matter is so wide – wheelchair basketball in Real, a school filled with historical clones in Afterschool Charisma, a role reversed take on Japanese history in Ooku, or a retelling of an old Tezuka favorite in Pluto – that there’s something in the gigantic catalogue for everyone. If I get sick of reading one title, I can pick up another series from the same imprint that has an entirely different feel. Sometimes you can’t get this with Shounen Jump or Shojo Beat.
1. Urasawa, Urasawa, and more Urasawa
Besides Naoko Takeuchi, Naoki Urasawa of Monster fame is the only other manga creator I hope to one day meet. Years ago, I stumbled across some scanlations of Monster, read a little, and then pushed it out of my mind. Years after that, I picked up the first volume in the store and flipped through it. Realizing it was the manga I randomly stumbled upon years earlier (and shocked that it was licensed), I snagged all the volumes they had. I LOVE this manga. I think it’s important to say here that I am no history buff by any means, so I missed a lot of the deeper layers and allusions to real events. Even lacking a honed critic’s eye and knowledge of the context, I loved this manga to pieces. While the ending fizzled a little for me, it was the tension, the ride Urasawa took us on over the course of 18 volumes that forever cemented this manga in my heart.
Urasawa’s tension-building was at its best though in Pluto, an eight volume retelling of one of the “Godfather of Manga’s” Astroboy stories. Not only was that manga one of the few to make me tear up, it was also one of the few that made my heart race at the cliff hangers. I remember telling someone, “It feels like I’m watching a movie!” Again, I lacked any sense of context, having not read the original Tezuka story Pluto was based on, and I still loved this manga. Once I catch on my 20th Century Boys backlog, I expect to be as enthralled by that as well.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the Viz Signature Line made me love manga again. It came at an in-between stage as a manga fan; not in high school anymore, out of my teens, what’s there for me to read? Editor’s Choice, Signature, IKKI all wrapped in one brought me back to the hobby I loved again. That’s why I’m sad to see the line slightly neglected nowadays, especially the IKKI variety. Viz! You have readers! We’ve grown up, and while Blue Exorcist and Bakuman sit happily on my shelves, Monster is nestled right next to them. We will gladly take more if you give it to us.
This piece is a part of the April 2012 Manga Moveable Feast, hosted by The Manga Critic.
The post Love, an Incoherent Fan (or “Three Reasons Why I Love The Viz Signature Line”) appeared first on Manga Connection.
