Random Manga Roulette -- Dan Da Dan

BRUH. 

From several sources now, I have been hearing about one of the newer Shonen Jump + titles: Of course, that would be the one we're talking about today, Dan Da Dan. 

As much as I grow tired with some of the titles from Shonen Jump, my overwhelming love of manga, paired with a deep appreciation for the magazine (that mostly came from Bakuman) has me trying most of the new series it produces each year anyway, so long as they're brought to the states in print form. Part of the hobby for me is a haul and subsequently reading what I get, keeping what I liked, and selling what I didn't. Don't ask me, it's just what I do. Gotta get that dopamine somehow, in this nutty world. 

Thankfully, there are titles like Dan Da Dan that present to us an even nuttier world that we can escape to, a world that really pulls us -- no -- drags us away from it all. And holy fuck do I mean that for real. By the hair, man, my roots are sore. 

Before I explain anything about this manga LOOK AT THIS-- 

Yeah. 

Here's the premise: 

Momo is a girl who believes in ghosts, and is awaiting her movie-star savior. 

Ken is a recluse of a boy who believes in aliens, and spends his days reading conspiracy magazines.

Neither of them believe in what the other does. For all of one chapter. 

You can guess what happens next. 

After crossing paths and encountering each of the things they hadn't believed in, the two find their lives entangled through something of an awkward friendship where they clearly want something more -- full of hilarious misunderstandings and, afterward, some nuggets of progression toward romance. While Momo is still hung up over Ken Takakura (that movie star she loves) and can't bear hearing his name without swooning, our nerdy occult-loving boy "Okarun," whose real name is... Ken... Takakura...

~~ Oh boy, our male protagonist has the same name as the movie star! ~~

...is a self proclaimed "awkward fellow," who has no friends and no social skills. This dynamic lends to some repetitive hijinks, but it works. It's kept in line with the fact that they, having now awakened psychic powers from their experiences (in Ken's case, he's cursed by the ghost of a very horny granny), the two of them have to unravel the mystery of the relationship between the extraterrestrial and the paranormal.

It has been years since I've been this excited about a new title. YEARS. You can see it now: Momo will gradually realize her ideal of a movie-star man is just unrealistic, and Ken will learn that all he has to do to make friends, or take that further, is put himself out there. I usually do not like will-they won't they's, but like all rules of writing, some rules can be broken. Dan Da Dan doesn't just make this aspect of the manga bearable, but it makes it funny too, and takes conventional plot-writing and throws it completely out the window (which is also something I don't typically like, but I'll explain why it works in a moment). The first volume is a barrel-roll of one wacky and wild thing after the next, building on itself with a consistent tone and an inconsistent story. 

I get the impression that Yukinobu Tatsu (previously an assistant to Tatsuki Fujimoto, creator of Chainsaw Man) has literally no idea where the story is going. The most random shit possible happens incessantly, but the relationship of the characters, the immaculate, stunning artwork, and the humor make it very enjoyable to watch the mangaka come up with something new in every chapter. Now, listen. I'm someone who almost always prizes coherency over insanity. But manga has a specific element of craftsmanship, both visual and emotional, that has me appreciating titles with lackluster stories for reasons outside of the plot alone. In Dan Da Dan's case, the author probably not knowing what's going to happen next actually makes it compulsively readable, because instead of amateurism, the manga seems more like it's all intentional. Whether it is or not is an afterthought to me.

 

The horror in this manga is perfectly fused with action and humor, utilizing the Junji Ito-esque "page turn" only comics can achieve, while then sprinting headlong into a battle of powers I can only conjure in my dreams. When I say the art is immaculate, it is unflinchingly so.

There's a lot more to say about this manga, but I shan't do so without revealing I have read far beyond the first volume friends, so I'll wrap it up here with a glowing recommendation. Go pick this up. Seriously. It's fucking bonkers, in the best way.

   - Austin

Random Manga Roulette - Witch's Printing Office

 

BOOK CLUB RETURNS WITH ANOTHER RANDOM MANGA ROULETTE!!!!

And today, we have a manga known as Witch's Printing Office. 

Witch's Printing Office is one of the titles I picked up at a huge Barnes & Noble on my trip to Boise this January. A fantasy setting with a niche premise like publishing seemed quite unique to me, very up my alley. There were many, many titles in that Barnes and Noble, but the art and concept had me gravitating toward this one. 

The premise is simple; a girl by the name of Mika is hosting something called "Magiket," which is a convention for people of this world to share their various magic spells, so she and her publishing company can publish them as books. Magiket is a play on "Comiket," which is a Japanese doujinshi convention that the protagonist is implied to be a big fan of...

Wait a minute...

Mika, on the cover, has a Splatoon pin on her bag! And she named something after a comic book convention in a fantasy world with elves and goblins and dragons and magic...

Oh no, oh SHIT!

ISEKAI SPOTTED!!!

RED ALERT!!!

WORST SUBGENRE KNOWN TO MAN INCOMING!!!

I avoid isekai media like the plague, and though I try to recognize the integrity of every genre and all mediums, I cannot get over how utterly vapid it almost always is. The premise of being whisked away to a magical fantasy setting is not an issue within itself (The Wizard of Oz, The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, etc, are examples of decent stories in this topic), but the hollow wish-fulfillment fetishism that pervades Japanese isekai is just inane to me. One-note, clueless, "badass" everyman protagonists that are constantly getting attention from female characters that are barely written as more than archetypes, and the worst of all, a video game power/leveling system. The fantasy in these works is devoid of life, of color. It has nothing to do with mythology, or folklore, or spiritualism. It has nothing to do with vast, complex settings, metaphor, allegory, or speculative ideas. It's nothing but these authors writing out the kind of world they want to live in, all creativity stuck in the world of MMO's and JRPG's. Sword Art Online, The Rising of the Shield Hero, That Time I Got Reincarnated As a Slime, How Not to Summon a Demon Lord, Reincarnated as Sword, Reincarnated as Dragon Hatchling, Drugstore in Another World, the list literally goes on and on and on. It's probably the worst genre-trend in anime and manga. It takes up so much space on bookstore shelves that manga classics of yesteryear are none to be found. I know things fall out of style, but if THIS is what we're getting instead, then I'd rather be a boomer weeb, quite frankly.

Even when the setting of media like this is brutalist, like Overlord or The Saga of Tanya the Evil, the worldbuilding is still dull as hell (in Tanya's case it's just full on wehraboo bait). There are a few exceptions to this -- The Devil is a Part Timer is a funny flip of the premise, wherein the main antagonist of the fantasy world ends up getting stuck in our world, and working a McDonald's job -- Konosuba, which has similar issues as other isekai, but takes every chance it can to poke fun of these things -- and Re: Zero, which is not exactly a complex work, but makes use of the "born into another world" topic in very interesting ways, building characters and conflict with each of the protagonist's successive resurrections, compounding his problems, and making us actually care about what happens.

All my opinion, of course, but I wanted to explain where I stand with this subgenre. There are standouts, but by and large I just absolutely detest it.

So when I turned the page and realized Mika, the protagonist of Witch's Printing Office (yes, we're still talking about that, sorry) was from our world, and ended up in a fantasy one, I just balked. I nearly put it down right there. I was tricked. Had I known I would never have picked it up. HOWEVER, this caveat is on the back, which I didn't bother to read, so it's on me. Either way, I did spin the wheel for Random Manga Roulette, and thus, I must see it through. 

But biases aside, unfortunately this manga still lives up to the reputation of isekai having pretty bland worldbuilding. It's just a D&D world, but lacking the complexities that make D&D worlds fun to explore (if you have a competent Dungeon Master, that is - *slides you my card*). There's some clever wordplay in the names of things here: a faction of knights in this world are called "Akivalhalla" knights, which as the translation notes explain, is a play on "Akihabara" (a Tokyo shopping hub known for electronics and nerd merch -- weeb central, essentially) and "Valhalla," the warrior afterlife in Norse myth. (in Japanese this would be akibahara, so it's a little cleverer in the native tongue here).  There's a few things like that, and I always appreciate wordplay, but as far as making the work stand out with the world, that is all we get. 

Thankfully, the manga is held together by its lovely art: 

 

 

Crisp black colorings, great linework, and appealing character designs, male and female alike. I have no complaints here. People, magic, and the backgrounds are all fantastic. 

This is quite a wordy manga, however, which has almost no justification for how average the setting is. Like many "specific one-topic manga" that exist (as I described in my Blue Period post. I would consider this sub-sub genre different from iyashikei, but it's close), the story involves quite a lot of just talking about publishing, printing, and the various spells people bring to Mika's magic convention. The story frames some of them as interesting, and in this setting (where everyone can cast at least one spell), I suppose they would be. Unfortunately, the few we get to see are either gags (such as a pervy guy summoning a succubus with his spell) or, uh, an underappreciated necromancer bringing an old guy who just randomly died back to life. 

The last two chapters of this manga introduce something of physical conflict into the story, which I didn't expect, but they were also such a slog that I book the book down and shook my head. For all it had that was interesting, Witch's Printing Office has pretty lukewarm attempts at humor, unearned wordiness, and a sorta-fumbled premise. By the end, I didn't care whether Mika found that one spell that would let her travel back to our world or not (which is the whole reason she organized the company and convention). I just wanted to be done with it so I could write this post and move on to something, hopefully, more interesting.

Also it's an isekai so it gets a -999/10 from me. 

I don't hate it, but I will not be reading any more. 

ONTO THE NEXT TITLE, READERS!!!

            

            -  Austin