Beat’s Bizarre Adventure: REEDS all about it

With more people reading manga and Webtoons (aka vertical scroll comics) than ever before, Beat’s Bizarre Adventure gives three writers an opportunity each week to recommend some of their favorite books and series from Japan, Korea, and elsewhere. This week we have old people, magical school war stories, and, of course, culture.

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Dementia 21

Writer/Artist: Shintaro Kago
Translator: Rachel Thorn
Designer: Jacob Covey
Publisher: Fantagraphics

Illustrator and cartoonist Shintaro Kago benefited greatly from that briefest of moments that was Tumblr’s Golden Age. A moment where any artist, if they got enough likes or re-blogs, could make a career. Or in Kago’s case, make an impact on an international audience. Kago’s hyper-dense brand of ero-guro rewired your brain in the best way whenever it crossed your dashboard. Yes, his work is gross, but it’s also funny and weird, the product of a singular mind.

His most accessible work in the English speaking world is his two volume series Dementia 21. The premise is simple. Home help Yukie Sakai is sent by her agency to assist various old people in Tokyo. While she was once the pride of her agency, a jealous co-worker made sure that Yukie now only sees the most difficult clients. Every senior who needs her help puts her through increasingly surreal situations. All the while, poor Yukie just wants a good rating so that she can go back to much easier clients.

Dementia 21 takes advantage of Kago’s fertile imagination and warped sense of humor. If he can pack the page, he will. There are evil dentures, a woman who causes people to explode when she forgets them, and a doddering Santa Claus. In one story, the poor heroine is trapped in a loop where she must live out the plot of a self-published manga. Yet none of it feels overwhelming. The series is always played for absurdity.

Once Kago ditches the rating subplot, he really hits his stride. The more bizarre the series gets, the more playful he becomes as an artist and storyteller. Dementia 21 reminds that comics (and comedies) are a realm of endless and strange possibilities. — D. Morris

I Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day

Writer/Artist: Aono Nachi
Translation: Irene Nakano (piyo)
Lettering: Dietrich Premier
Editing: Tomoko Nagano
Publisher: Kodansha

Sheena Totsuki is a young orphan attending a school for magic. That sounds like any teenage girl’s dream, but it’s really a nightmare. Her school is in fact a training ground for magical soldiers. She or her classmates might be drafted at any time to fight in an ongoing war. Nobody knows who or what they are fighting, only that you’re lucky to make it back alive. There’s only one exception: Mimi, a mysterious bloodstained girl able to survive any fight no matter how badly they hurt her. Mimi, who becomes Sheena’s closest friend. But a girl like Mimi should not exist. What will Sheena do?

Like its young protagonists, I Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day operates in dangerous territory. It’s a yuri series that evokes the spectre of Class S; old-fashioned tales of innocent young girls forming close (if not romantic) relationships in exclusive schools. Yet it’s also a series about death, and that’s a tough sell for some LGBTQ+ folks today who have seen so much of it already.

What I find most interesting about I Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day is how it re-frames its themes of life and death as change and stasis. It’s terrible to witness Sheena’s friends die horribly on the battlefield. Yet there’s also something cursed about Mimi, who can heal from any injury and yet is somehow stuck, unable to grow from what she has experienced. Is an immortal, unchangeable love really so great? What about mortal love, which flourishes in the moment but is doomed to wither?

Aono Nachi keeps this dark and heavy narrative light with fluffy, whimsical backgrounds and cute characters. Despite the specter of war hanging over the series, we only rarely see battles play out. Perhaps this will change when the upcoming anime adaptation airs. But I think the lack of action is a considered part of the whole. This is not really a series about watching magical girls suffer in combat. It’s about the small moments of comfort these girls find for themselves in a world that would otherwise deny them that comfort forever. — Adam Wescott

REEDS

Writer/Artist: ZZSleeps
Platform: WEBTOON

Funny story: I ended up writing for the Beat after this comic’s artist shared Deb’s hiring post years back. Having read this Webtoon long before that, though, it holds a special place in my heart and is worth yapping about.

REEDS is a young adult WEBTOON written and illustrated by Izy/ZZsleeps and published on WEBTOON Canvas. Its protagonists are Keng, a traveller with a magical reed pipe, and Shu, the fourth prince of the blossom dynasty from the Joua Empire. The two meet each other by chance and journey to return Shu to the capital city. Along the way they battle various threats that oppose them or endanger the lives of the people they come across. The two of them also develop a romantic (and quite steamy) relationship with one another.

ZZsleep’s art style is inspired heavily by anime and manga. But as the series continues, his unique points become apparent as the art improves. Characters are illustrated via thick lines with basic details and shapes to create visual differences with the hair in a quick and simple manner. While the character designs initially suffer from “same face syndrome,” the artist puts in noticeable effort in later episodes to distinguish them via unique eye and facial shapes as well as facial hair. The paneling and lettering is rough in earlier episodes, but later ones use larger panels spaced apart which help in the more action-focused set-pieces.

The background art is simple, straight to the point, and is Izy’s weakest point as an artist. Gradient colors are used as a base with solid silhouettes of forests or architecture to add some depth. Some backgrounds have oddities, where it is hard to tell (for example) whether a dirt road is actually a bridge. This happens when foreground elements don’t match the perspective of background elements, creating an odd perception of depth. That said, backgrounds are hard; I know this from experience. Even if they aren’t Izy’s strong suit, they also slowly improve with later episodes.

What really sets REEDS apart is that it is is a queer love story set in a fantasy world inspired by Hmong culture. As someone who loves learning about other cultures and histories, I’m glad to have this series as an introduction. The clothing as well, which draws inspiration from that culture, is rich and visually interesting. You can see the artist’s love for the material in every stroke and choice of color.

The relationship between Keng the wandering magical traveler and Shu the prince is at the heart of the story. I do not have extensive knowledge on how the Hmong view same-sex relationships, but the steamier episodes of this series will have some reader’s hearts flutter. The idea of blending a boys’ love romance with fantasy adventures and a vibrant cultural identity is just why I love independently published works so much. Comics like this, which come from the creator’s heart without apology, are so unique whether or not the art is fantastic. You want to know where these two characters will go, who they will meet, and how the world might change them but also be changed by them. There’s a reason this webtoon has earned almost 60,000 subscribers over its 5 year run on the platform.

If this interests you, you can REED it (get it) on WEBTOON Canvas. The series currently has 166 episodes and updates on the first of each month. As always, if you’d like to support ZZsleeps, you can become a patron of their Patreon as well. Let’s see what other cool stories await next time, birb nerds! — Justin Guerrero

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