“…whilst in the Beguiling, Chris Butcher worked his evil wiles upon me by offering me a “if you don’t like it, we’ll refund it†deal on the first volume of Naoki Urasawa’s Monster, presumably because he knows I don’t read much manga and wants me to buy more manga so I can personally finance his next trip to Japan. Dramatic manga – at least what I’ve read – can run very hot and cold for me, missing as often as hitting. The translated dialogue in particular often tends toward the powerfully melodramatic at the best of times, and when I have a problem with dialogue I have a problem with the whole comic more often than not. (It’s easier when the story plays the dramatic dialogue for laughs, which is why I think comedic manga tends to be more popular in the West.) Thankfully, Monster’s first volume isn’t a glaring offender in this regard, and the plot (doctor saves child’s life, child grows up to become serial killer – but it’s more complex and tense than that by half) is actually pretty compelling. I shall pick up later volumes, I believe. DAMN YOU, BUTCHER!”Â
And I got you to blog about it. Check and mate, sir.
– Chris
You might want to check out his other works, 20th century boys and pluto..Amazing awesome. And 20th century boys have been adapted into a movie trilogy, the first of which will come out in Japan this end August.
“Comedic manga tends to be more popular in the West.”
It does?