Walking along the streets of Yangon, Myanmar (formerly Burma), you can find sellers with tarps laid out covered in tattered paperback books. Most are in Burmese, but there are a fair number of antique books in English as well. I’ve found everything from maps to computer programming manuals to cookbooks. Once I even found a book from the 1950′s that featured illustrated instructions for performing rectal examinations.

The treasures of these displays are really in the artwork on Burmese paperbacks. Illustrators play with a wide variety of styles, but I’m most drawn to those that mix classical painting with motifs popular in the 70′s and 80′s. These are photos I took of the books collected at Pansodan Gallery in Yangon.

Born: 1971

Genre: Youth (青年)

Language complexity: Light

I was first drawn to Iou Kuroda’s work by his art.  I’m tempted to think of Suehiro Maruo and Iou Kuroda’s styles as opposite ends of a spectrum. Maruo’s work parrots retro graphic design in clean lines and gradient screentones. Kuroda, in contrast, relies on powerful brush strokes and cross hatching to bring his drawings to life. His style has an unstable quality that reminds me of gesture drawing. It is well suited to the moments of frenetic energy that punctuate his work, like in the bike race above.

In drawing as in content, Kuroda’s strength is his versatility. The first Kuroda manga I picked up was Nasu (literally “Eggplant”). It’s an omnibus containing stories ranging from contemporary drama to historical drama to science fiction, all of them deal tangentially with eggplants. Here Kuroda is able to flex his story telling muscle, moving across genres and tempos. The first piece in book 1 is about two runaways who drop in unexpectedly on a rural farmer. The farmer takes things in stride, welcoming them into his home. I translated the following page, which should be read right to left.

The teenagers seem lost as to where to go in their life, marking a sharp contrast to the farmer who is grounded in the calm rhythms of a simple life. Even when the young couple’s uncertainty crashes against him, he is a rock.

I am drawn to manga as a medium because of it often plays with the line between real and unreal, and Kuroda is no exception. Robots and elephants are recurring characters in his work, but never in a way that seems ridiculous or unnecessary. Again, Kuroda’s strength is his versatility, shown here in his ability to move from the mundane to the fantastic while maintaining a consistently engaging story.

Kuroda’s most famous work is probably Sexy Voice and Robo. You can read it online in translation here if you like. There have been several anime and live action adaptations of Kuroda’s work, the most famous of which is the anime Nasu: Summer in Andalusia, which was tangentially connected with Studio Ghibli.

Katsuhiro spends most of his time directing now, only occassionally dabbling in design. Just before leaving Tokyo I found Kabu, a recent Katsuhiro art book, at my favorite used book store. I’ve scanned The Watermelon Messiah, a wordless story of redemption that was reprinted in Kabu. Enjoy.

Born: 1956

Genre: Erotic Grotesque (エログロ)

Recommended work: The Strange Tale of Panorama Island (パノラマ島綺譚)

Language complexity: Very difficult.

Suehiro Maruo’s art is stunning. Self-trained after dropping out of high school, Maruo draws in bold style that references retro graphic design. Unlike many contemporaries, Maruo uses dynamic framing including silhouettes and transposed imagery. He has gained significant recognition in international art circles and publishes large art book-style works.

Unfortunately, the content of his work is rarely in line with his artistic abilities. Many of his most famous works revolve around grotesque money shots. They have plots like, “magician turns school girls into sex zombies for leper orgy,” or “family explores BDSM together.”

The great exception to this rule is Maruo’s adaptations of Edogawa Ranpo stories. Ranpo was a mystery writer in early 20th century Japan. Maruo has done two adaptions of his work, my favorite of which is The Strange Tale of Panorama Island. Here’s a page. It should be read right to left.

Panorama Island is the story of a struggling writer Hitomi, who is obsessed with Utopian fantasies. When he learns that wealthy industrialist Komoda has died, Hitomi decides to fake his death and steal Komoda’s identity. Once he does, he sets to work using Komoda’s fortune to build the utopia he has always dreamed of. Although he looks very similar to the dead magnate, he is possessed by fear that Komoda’s wife will discover his true identity. In the following page, he has a nightmare that she exposes him. Read right to left.

The book does an amazing job building the tension as Hitomi assumes more and more of Komoda’s life. The ending, it must be said, is insane. You have to read it for yourself.

Maruo has since gone on to do another Ranpo adaptation, The Catepillar (芋虫). it focuses on the relationship between a young beautiful woman and her limbless, disfigured husband who has just returned from war. It sounds like a return to traditional Maruo themes, but I haven’t had a chance to read it.

The writers of Same Hat are apparently working on a translation of Panorama Island for publisher Last Gasp. I’m so excited.

Born: 1963

Genre: Gag (ギャグ), Comedy (笑い）

Language complexity: Light to medium. Sensha relies heavily on images to move the plot of his story.

By blind luck, Yoshida Sensha’s classic manga The Steel Man (鋼の人) was one of the first manga that I purchased upon arriving in Japan. The first story in the collection is about a middle school girl who shoots her foster father (who happens to be a whale) with a harpoon gun.

Sensha writes comedy manga, usually in the format of four panel strips or short pieces. He’s famous for a style of comedy in which you can’t logically explain to someone why it’s funny. Here’s a translation I did from うつるんです (1990). It should be read right to left.

Yoshida Sensha

Indeed some of his strips don’t seem funny to me at all. I sometimes think of him as reversing the normal writer-reader relationship. Sensha isn’t trying to make me laugh, I’m trying to understand Sensha. Take the next strip for example.

Huh?

This strip is part of series about this female character and her secret devices. I find it more perplexing than funny. It’s like a workout for my brain trying to understand Sensha’s sense of humor.

Although he has a following in Japan, Sensha remains unknown in the US. The exception is an excellent manga blog named Same Hat. The blog, which apparently takes its name from a classic Sensha strip, does a great job of covering the obscure manga scene for American readers. They also have a huge archive of Yoshida Sensha scanlations.

And for those of you who read Japanese, Yoshida Sensha is astoundingly prolific on his twitter.

Genre: Grotesque (グロ), Erotic (エロ)

Language complexity: Light. Kago’s work is chirpy and easy to read once you get past the kanji.

Shintaro Kago draws some really disgusting manga. Most of his work is published in a genre of magazines known as “Erotic Groteque.” Scatology, amputation, and mutilation are common topics. Some of his work makes me cringe.

But among the vast ocean of Erotic Grotesque manga, Kago stands out as an exemplary artist for two reasons. First, he has a stunning ability to pursue an idea further than it should ever be pursued. Second, his manga all involve strong themes of social commentary.

Heres a page from the collection Bride in Front of the Station（駅前花嫁). It should be read right to left, top to bottom.

Shintaro Kago

In this story, everything in the world is bolted down. In the above frames, we see a housewife who is bolted to the kitchen floor. She serves food on plates that are bolted to the table. I think of the bolts as visible manifestations of societal pressures.

Kago said in an interview that he’s actually not excited by the Grotesque Erotic manga that is his trademark. “I’m really just trying to establish a voice within the confines of the rules and principles that I’ve been handed.”

Part 1: Taiyo Matsumoto (松本大洋)

Born: 1967

Genre: Young Men (青年), Sports

Language complexity: Medium to difficult. Matsumoto uses obscure words that add a rich flavor to the dialogue but don’t necessarily come in handy for every day use.

Famous works: Tekkon Kinkreet (鉄コン筋クリート), Five (ナンバーファイブ吾), Ping Pong (ピンポン)

One look at Taiyo Matsumoto’s art and you will recognize that it rejects typical manga conventions. Embracing influence from Western artists, Matsumoto uses a sketchy style which lends itself to his exhaustively imaginative subjects. He has written sports dramas, sci-fi adventures and portraits of youth in decay. Not quite a household name in Japan, he seems to be gaining popularity in the US with several English translations of his work.

Here’s a page from one of my favorite manga, Tekkon Kinkreet. The panels should be read left to right, top to bottom. I did the translation.

Tekkon Kinkreet, Page 19 of Volume 3

Tekkon Kinkreet is the story of two homeless boys and their city, Takara Machi. The boys, named Kuro and Shiro, live off the money that they beat out of strangers. Kuro (featured in the page above) takes it upon himself to fight off the shady characters who begin to move into Takara Machi while Shiro loses himself in his imagination. The story explores the ways in which fighting to hold things in place can warp the reality you live in.

Tekkon Kinkreet was also made into a fantastic anime.

For more about Matsumoto, check out the profile at Comics212.