Super Mystery Magazine MU

As some of you might (but probably most of you don't) know, I am quite the fan of the paranormal - an interest that used to be a bit more intense a few years back, when I was one of those people who actually read through the 'original' UFO documents with a magnifying glass, searching for the truth. Of course, while I hardly vouch for the belief that UFOs are having a snack among us, or that the Mothman might how up at my doorstep for a coffee, I happen to particularly enjoy the paraphernalia that comes along with the paranormal research culture. Mash that up with my interest in Japanese culture and media (which is not itself stranger to the weird, from Mishima's Utsukushii Hoshi to Aum Shinrikyo), and you get, along with my usual dōjin fare, Super Mystery Magazine MU.

And it's a vintage one, too. April 1987, to be exact. The magazine itself is a bulky, disposable manga-style monthly; printed, save for a few advertisements, on cheap telephone book-like paper. The cover hits a certain aesthetics, though from a design point of view it's a veritable disaster. At first glance I thought it was an instruction manual...

For the most part the contents are, as you would expect, pure madness. We run the gamut from occult WWII alternate history, instructions on hand reading, an article on feral children, and a whole lot of those airbrushy illustrations that used to grace the covers of stuff like Omni in the west. There is also a cute 'reader submitted drawings' page...

As I mentioned, most advertisements are in color, and they are ridiculous. Ever wanted your own Bio-Pit Alpha / Theta waves generator? now you got it, and in the cleverly new-age pyramid format. How about a Hiranya-brand UFO detector (a company that, by the way, seems to have tanked decades ago)? Mind-reading glasses? Craziness abunds, usually accompanied by creepy imagery right out of the Eighties book of tricks. Curiously, the magazine also holds a 'literature' section - which, in the issue I have, is dedicated to H.P. Lovecraft. There is a bio, a dossier, and even a full translation of 'The Statement of Randolph Carter'.

So, yet another oddity for the vault. Some of the Japanese is still above my grasp, but the visuals and aesthetics alone probably warrant publishing a few more issues.

#Hot Coffee by Yume No Kakera

It's kind of difficult to gauge what constitutes an 'oldie' in the dōjin world. The thing I'm reviewing today, for example, date from 2005 - which is more than thirteen years ago, a whole era in the typical life cycle of a dōjin circle. Sure, when I was over in Japan there was stuff from the Ninetie and even the Eighties on display - with an appropriate price tag. On the other hand, my personal experience tells me that, when it comes to dōjinshi shopping, unless I get lucky anything older than two or three years is pretty much lost to history. Long story short, I like digging up old stuff - and, if you are like me, you might want to keep an eye for the next review, which will feature a funny little thing from 1987 (!).

Today, however, we're reviewing Hot Coffee, a very short dōjinshi by circle ユメノカケラ. It's a one-person circle, behind which hides a certain 藤田秀俊 (Fujita Hidetoshi), who is still active as of 2018, although with a very different visual style and... umm, let's say 'themes'. I'll let you figure it out by his current Pixiv page. Hot Coffee is a charming, black and white manga which tells, in a mere twelve pages, a cute little love story between a boy and a girl, who happen to bond over a shared love of... hot coffee. Yup, that terrible tasting Boss cans that you get from vending machines all over Japan. Could never stomach that thing, I was always more of a Melon Soda type of guy.

Unrequited love.

Story wise, we're in entirely familiar territory, that kind of flimsy yet timeless manga fare that is the sefest bet when it comes to capturing the soft-hearted reader like I am. There are fruitless waits by the vending machine; desperation when finding out the significant other might have a different crush; kissing and making up while guzzling hot coffee. Nothing new, really.
Visually, well... you can tell, especially comparing with what the artist is up to now, that Hot Coffee is an early work. Still, while the graphic style and tract are a bit rickety at times, they go a long way making the characters charming and apt to convey their emotions even without speech. Backgrounds are understandably kept to a minimum, anatomy is mostly spot-on, and there a are a couple more daring visual choice to spice it all up. By the way, in case you're wondering, the text pattern on the cover is an entirely unrelated lorem ipsum, about Trump and hi yacht. Yeah...

All in all, a nice and little amateur work that doesn't break new ground mostly because it doesn't mean to. Good stuff.

British by MANAT

I hate isekai. I really, really do. It's probably my least favorite genre in contemporary Japanese fiction: from the absurdly overhyped  Sword Art Online, to the slew of 'guy dies then ends up in a fantasy world' shlock published nowadays by Ascii and friends, there isn't a single work - be it anime, manga or novels, that managed to convince me. It's wish fulfillment fantasies made bare, usually carried by a vehicle of horrid, second-rate fantasy that makes Ryo Mizuno look like avantgarde.

You can imagine my disappointment when I found out that British, a dōjinshi I bought solely on its lolita-toting cover, was actually an isekai. Actually a single, slim episode of an isekai. And not a very good one either. Yeah. The cheap price was pretty much the only upside - I think I paid 200 yen or something like that.

So no gothic lolita babes in this brochure by MANAT (actually the circle name of illustrator Tomozo Kaoru), but the premises the genre has gotten us so used to. Some guy is in love with a girl on the swimming team, but then he dies (surprise surprise) and his spirit ends up in some kind of parallel dimension, where a bimbo dressed like Alice in Wonderland has to fight chibi monsters and... attend school.

Aaand that's it. British is slim even by dōjin standards: twelve black and white pages, plus a three-lines postscript. Apparently it's part of a series, which doesn't really address the main issue: why endlessly fraction already weak stories in bite-sized slices that can't stand on their own?
Things are a bit better on the visual side. Tomozo Kaoru is a competent draftsman, so proportions are usually spot-on and the paneling clear and readable. Nothing stellar, as contemporary manga has set pretty high standards for visuals and graphic design, but it' serviceable.

Aside for a handful of  dōjinshi, Tomozo Kaoru has illustrated one of Eiji Otsuka's weakest works, as well as their own 'group fo people hunts down monster borne out of humans' series which I'm never going to read, as that's probably my second least favorite genre after isekai. All in all an unfortunate purchase from a circle I'm unlikely to keep following.