My favourite - Japanese Manga and Books

Kuroshitsuji – Black Butler

This long running manga began on 16 September 2006 and is still running to this day. It is the hugely successful manga by Yana Toboso and has spawned many spin off media such as anime, a live film, drama CD and live stage musicals. There is a range of merch, but the manga is still the most popular version of the story.

Kuroshitsuji, or Black Butler in English and other translations, follows the tale of 13 year old Ciel Phantomhive who is head of the family and Earl to the Phantomhive Estate. Ciel is also the head of the family company, Funtom, who specialise in toys and confectionary. After his parents are killed, Ciel is kidnapped by a religious cult where he will be used alongside other children as a human sacrifice. While in captivity, Ciel makes a Faustian pact with a demon who he names Sebastian and who takes on the role of Ciel’s butler. Sebastian has to support Ciel in his capacity as the Queen’s Guard Dog, policing the underworld and also in avenging himself for his humiliations.

The manga has been serialised monthly in Monthly GFantasy and collected into 21 volumes (so far) as books. Fans see the story in terms of story arcs. The first few chapters set the scene and the relationships between the main characters but once we are introduced to Madam Red and her inept butler, Grelle Sutcliff (‘Grelle’ in the manga and ‘Grell’ in the anime) we have the ‘Jack the Ripper’ arc and then; Curry Contest; Book of Circus; Book of Murder; Campania; School/Cricket and, most recently, Witches.

Ciel and Sebastian have battled Grim Reapers (Grelle, Ronald Knox, William T Spears and Undertaker), Witches, Circus Folk (Joker, Beast, Freckle Fact, etc.), evil businessmen, Italian gangsters and zombies.

Battle Royale – Koushun Takami (1999)

Junior High students are forced to fight to the death in a program run by the authoritarian Japanese government or, as it is in the novel, ‘Republic of Greater East Asia’.

This novel has also been adapted into a manga and feature film (starring Tatsuya Fujiwara, Toro Yamamoto, Aki Maeda and BEAT Takeshi). The book sold over 1 million copies and is also hugely controversial in Japan.

Differing from the film, 50 schools (one in the film) have a grade nine class chosen each year to take part in the killing game. Results are used for battle strategy and results are announced on TV. Students from Shiroiwa Junior High in the fictional town of Shiroiwa in Kagawa Prefecture are kidnapped from their ‘study trip’, gassed and taken to a small island where they are given a survival pack and exploding metal collars. Their survival packs also contain a weapon ranging from automatic rifles to pots and pans. To make them kill each other there is a time limit of 72 hours. If there is more than one student left alive at the end of this time then all of the collars will explode leaving no survivor. The collars also track position and what people are saying so that there can be constant monitoring. If there are no killings within a day then all the collars explode and every six hours there are updates of the deaths along with danger zone warnings. The island is split into a grid and three sections become danger zones each time to push the remaining students closer together. If a student wanders into a danger zone their collar will explode. The novel ends with a shoot out between Kazuo Kiriyama (the most dangerous student on the island) and the team of Shuya Nanahara, Noriko Nakagawa and Shogo Kawada.

Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami (2002)

I could have chosen to talk about ‘Norwegian Wood’ (1987), ‘Sputnik Sweetheart’ (1999) or the ‘1Q84’ trilogy (2009 – 2010) as I love them all too, but I have chosen Murakami’s 2002 novel, ‘Kafka on the Shore’ as I love this book.

The book covers two interrelated plots on alternate chapters. The odd chapters tell of 15 year old Kafka Tamura, who runs away to avoid a prophecy that he will murder his father and sleep with his mother and sister. He soon finds out that he can run but not hide from his fate and meets two women who will come to symbolise his mother and sister even if they are not actually his family members (his mother and sister left him with his father when he was a very young child). He eventually finds himself taken in to a private library in Takamatsu run by Miss Saeki (potentially his mother) and transgender gay teen Oshima. The police begin looking for Kafka when his father is inexplicably murdered.

The even chapters deal with Mr Nakata who has memory loss after a bizarre incident during WWII but he has a strange skill in that he can speak with cats. He uses his gift to find lost cats and one case leads him to cat killer Johnnie Walker. This then leads him to Takamatsu and, as he has never been outside of Nakano Ward by himself, takes up with a young lorry driver called Hoshino.

‘Kafka on the Shore’ is a perfect showcase of Murakami’s skill with pop culture, sexuality, suspense, horror, surrealism, magic and the minutia of life. Music is used as a metaphor as it often is in Murakami’s work. In this case Beethoven features heavily. Dreams and reality, self-sufficiency and fate are dealt with, among other themes.

Many fans agree that a better understanding is gained after reading earlier works and on several re-reads of the novel.

Death Note – Tsugumi Ohba/Takeshi Obata (Dec 2003 – May 2006)

Published weekly in Weekly Shonen Jump, Death Note saw the mangaka team behind Bakuman return with a horror based manga. The story follows teen, Light Yagami, as he finds a death note dropped into the human world by a bored Shinigami called Ryuk. Light kills criminals with it and earns the media name ‘Kira’ (‘Killer’). Meanwhile, Light’s father, Soichiro Yagami, works for the National Police Agency (NPA) and joins forces with the world’s greatest detective, L. Along the way are additional Shinigami, a ‘second Kira’ called Misa Amane (who falls for Light) and L’s successors (Mello and Near).

The manga is in several collections and can be read in 12 volumes or the six volume ‘black edition’. This has also spawned an anime and live films starring Tatsuya Fujiwara (notice a pattern here?) and Ken’ichi Matsuyama.

Uzumaki – Junji Ito (1998 – 1999)

This is a horror manga that ran for over a year and in 2000 was published as a collection. The title means ‘spiral’ and a small coastal town is gradually consumed by spirals. People turn into snails, whirl winds take over the town, people die contorted and horrifying deaths and eventually the town becomes one giant spiral. This is graphic and not for the faint of stomach but it is well written and the characters are interesting. I would thoroughly recommend this graphic novel to anyone with an interest in horror. I don’t want to describe it in too much detail because I don’t want to ruin it for you but this is excellent.