Book Review: Manga: The Complete Guide
Posted by: Erin F. on October 11, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Manga: The Complete Guide
By Jason Thompson
Del Rey, 592 pp.
Jason Thompson claims to have read every manga title available in the English language. Thompson, a former editor of Shonen Jump magazine, is the author of Manga: The Complete Guide, a definitive Leonard-Maltin-style book. Every manga title published up through early 2007 is included in the book, complete with publication information, an age rating, a plot summary, a brief review, and a star rating. The book is also stuffed with essays about every manga genre (including “Cooking” and “Phantom Thieves”), a brief history of manga, a brief history of Japan (with manga examples from each time period) and a briefing on the Japanese language complete with a kana guide. The book also includes a section of mini-essays on manga-related issues that may concern parents, such as “Racism” and “Occult and Religion”.
Thompson set out to write a book for everyone, from fans of obscure manga to total n00b-Narutards, and from screaming yaoi fangirls to concerned members of the P.T.A. Yaoi and hentai (ero-manga) sections are regulated to the back of the book–Thompson suggested at MangaNext, “If you’re concerned about giving the book to your kid cousin you can just rip out the sections in the back.”
Some of the reviews and essays are not written by Thompson himself, but by industry professionals and trusted friends. Otaku USA magazine editor Patrick Macias contributes gekiga reviews; Overlooked Manga Festival’s Shaenon Garrity reviews the magical girl titles, and Carl Gustav Horn contributes to the book (look for his review of Gainax’s “Mega Comics”). Thompson claims that although he farmed out some of the reviews in order to be less biased (he just doesn’t like Saint Tail), he still read the series and edited or rewrote any reviews he felt were too far off the mark.
The star system was not Thompson’s idea, but suggested by Del Rey. Every manga series in the book is given a rating between zero and four stars. I found the star system to be extremely useful; it’s a quick way to avoid bottom-of-the-barrel manga junk and an easy way to pick out good titles. But are Thompson’s rating accurate? As soon as I picked up the book I started looking up my favorite and least favorite titles to see how my person rating system compares to Thompson’s:
| Some of My Favorite Manga | |
| Title | MtCG Stars |
| Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga | 4 |
| Genshiken | 3 |
| Nausicaa | 4 |
| Secret Comics Japan | 3.5 |
| Swan | 4 |
I’m disappointed that Genshiken only receives three stars, but but I can live with that. How do Thompson’s rating compared to some of PopCultureShock’s reviews?
| Top PCS Reviews | ||
| Title | MtCG | PCS |
| Club 9 | 3.5 | A- |
| High School Girls | 2.5 | B+ |
| Lady Snowblood | 3.5 | A- |
| Love Roma | 3 | A |
| A Patch of Dreams | 3.5 | A |
| Project X Series | 1.5 | NR |
| Sexy Voice & Robo | 3.5 | A+ |
| Tekkon Kinkreet | 3.5 | A+ |
| To Terra | 4 | A+ |
| Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms | 4 | A+ |
I also had to know what ratings Thompson gave to some of my least favorite titles:
| Some of My Least Favorite Manga | |||
| Title | MtCG | PCS | |
| Cipher | 3 | C+ | |
| The Devil Does Exist | 2 | C+ | |
| Pastel | 1.5 | C+ | |
| Peach Girl Sae’s Story | 2.5 | C | |
| Pieces of a Spiral | 1.5 | C- | |
Katherine wanted to know why Innocent W only got 3 stars. My podcast co-host Noah and I had our own conflicts with some of Thompson’s ratings: Both Happy Mania and Akira get four stars–does that mean Happy Mania is the Akira of josei? Thompson clarified with us in his interview that his ratings are accurate to within a half-star. He began writing the book with a five star system but cut back when he discovered he was giving five stars to classical manga such as Osama Tezuka’s works. Four stars evened the playing field for more recent titles.
Noah and I scoured the book for the lowest rated titles, some of which have been featured a two part series over at the Overlooked Manga Festival recently. There are only six titles given the lowest possible rating of zero stars:
Zero Star Manga
Eiken
Central City
Dark Angel
High School Agent
Night Warriors Dark Stalkers Revenge
New Vampire Miyu
Fourteen titles receive only a half-star rating, among them: Girls Bravo, Onegai Twins, Junk Force, and Kage Tora, the last of these featuring “…badly drawn cleavage.”
Many titles receive the prestigious four-star rating, among them:
Four Star Manga
Banana Fish
Berserk
Cromartie High School
Crying Freeman
Cyborg 009
Death Note
Eyeshield 21
From Eroica with Love
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
Phoenix
Wounded Man
The difference between four and three stars is the quality jump between the original Battle Angle Alita (four strars) and Battle Angel Alita Last Order (three stars). The anthology Japan by 17 Creators receives four stars, but Secret Comics Japan receives only three stars (I think these two ratings should be flipped). I’m annoyed that Tekkon Kinkreet (listed as Black & White in the guide) receives 3.5 stars and is good throughout, while Death Note gets four stars but it turns into a river of vomit sometime around volume seven.
Within five minutes of opening Manga The Complete Guide I began a list of obscure, bizarre, and more often than not out-of-print titles I would like to read:
Erin’s Wish List
A,A1 – by Moto Hagio, early shojo artist and author of They Were Eleven
Bass Master Ranmaru – a fishing manga e-book
Bow Wow Watta – veterinary manga by a prolific veterinarian
Bride of Deimos – by the artist of swan
Comics Underground Japan – 4 stars, contains “Cat Soup” short story
Dame Dame Saito Nikki – the author explains American culture in vignettes
Division Chief Kosaku Shima – salaryman manga
The Four Immigrants Manga – oldest title available in translation
This is just the A through F section of my general list. I also quickly wrote down all the four star erotic titles and four star yaoi titles, such as:
Four Star Ero-Manga and Yaoi Titles
Co-Ed Sexxtasy
Domin-8 Me
Embracing Love
Gerard and Jacques
Japanese Eroticism: A Language Guide to Current Comics
Pink Snipper
Shout Out Loud
Wild Rock
I’m not going to tell you which ones are yaoi.
Manga: The Complete Guide is an indispensable resource for aspiring and established manga fans. It’s an obvious purchase for librarians, a great resource for parents, and a great gift for the manga fan in your life. At only $20, it’s incredibly affordable. You can’t get two volumes of Lone Wolf and Cub (four stars) for $20!
I would like to see future editions of Manga: The Complete Guide, and maybe a hard cover collector’s edition of the book. Look for my interview with Jason Thompson and his MangaNext panel audio on this site and on ninjaconsultant.com in the near future.
15 Responses to "Book Review: Manga: The Complete Guide"
Ack! I didn’t wonder why Innocent W “only” earned three stars; I wanted to know why it earned that many! Panty shots, dismemberments, paint-by-numbers plotting… it was a catalog of things I dislike. I thought it was a shoo-in for the half-star hall of fame.
On a more positive note, you should definitely check out A, A’ and The Four Immigrants Manga. Both are worth owning and re-reading many times.
3 | John Jakala
I’m baffled by the four-star rating for Berserk. I know it has its rabid fans, but I never understood the appeal of the series. (Granted, I only read a couple of the early volumes, but it all seemed like generic battles-with-big-swords stuff.)
And, yeah, anything by Kazuo Koike and Ryoichi Ikegami can be good, pulpy fun, but four stars??? Really???? (I thought it was amusing that Wounded Man, with its mondo-trashy plot (meet GPX, the All-Powerful Porn Company that secretly controls the world!), currently has a one-star rating on Amazon.)
Bow Wow Wata was serialized in Gutsoon’s Raijin Comics anthology. It was cute, but hardly something I’d track down. If you must have it, you’d better hurry! Amazon only has one copy left in stock!
4 | Jason Thompson
Thanks for the writeup, you guys! Next time we meet up let’s play a RPG!
BERSERK takes a few volumes to really stand out from the pack of oldschool Fist of the North Star, Riki-Oh style manly manga. The opening chapter, indeed the opening volume, might seem like just another blood-and-breasts story. But once the flashback sequence starts, it is INCREDIBLE. Beautifully detailed yet individualistic art, awesome fight scenes, and a very epic, unforced plot. It works as either fantasy or horror. I have gotten a few volumes behind so I can’t guarantee that it doesn’t start to go astray in volumes 20+ or something, but the more of it I read, the more I like it.
As for the four-star rating for WOUNDED MAN, you will have to take that up with Patrick Macias. But I do think it is a jaw-droppingly insane manga. “Insane” may not sound like the highest tribute, but perhaps words fail me on this one. There’s admittedly a fine line on “is this genius, or is this total garbage?” for works like EIKEN and WOUNDED MAN. I did love Dean Blackburn’s “Wounded Man Interview” in the last issue of PULP, though.
5 | John Jakala
October 12th, 2007 at 12:18 am
I’ve heard that before about Berserk (in fact, I still get fans showing up in the comments of my almost four-year-old review to tell me how wrong I am for giving the first book a negative review), but I just don’t have any interest in going back to it based on how hackneyed the first few volumes were.
With Wounded Man, it probably depends in part on one’s philosophy of reviewing. Yeah, a work should be judged according to what it set out to attain; but if it set its sights super-low, does it deserve to be rewarded for its low ambition?
It now looks like my copy of Manga: The Complete Guide won’t arrive til next week, so in the meantime I’m bracing myself for low scores for my favorite manga (Sgt. Frog, Bleach, Emma, Yotsuba). I mean, if Love Roma, with its perfect charm and clever tweaks on the romantic comedy genre, only got three stars, what hope do any other series have?
6 | Erin F.
October 12th, 2007 at 12:50 am
Have you tried watching the Berserk anime? After the first two or three episodes it really picks up, and is gripping until the last DVD, which is horrifying. The first volume of the manga does read like a heavy metal album cover.
There is something about manga, and comics on the whole- the medium tends towards the outrageous. Insane tales that wouldn’t come off in prose or be believable on film come off the comic page as viable. Wounded Man succeeds on the level that all comics are outrageous, but still, 3.5 stars, tops.
Meanwhile:
Sgt. Frog 3
Bleach 3
Emma 3.5
Yotsuba 3
And yes, let’s play an RPG! We had Ed Chavez play an NPC in our D&D game when he was in town last. He’d never played before!
7 | John Jakala
October 12th, 2007 at 11:25 am
I haven’t watched the Berserk anime and don’t really have any interest in doing so. In fact, other than the Sgt. Frog anime, I’m not a big anime viewer, especially of storylines I’ve already read. I’ve been thinking of checking out later episodes of the Bleach anime, though. (I watched the first disc thanks to David Welsh.)
I’m also wondering if the high scores for trashy pulp manga like Wounded Man are due in part to the “reverence for historical manga” factor that Thompson mentioned. It’s just odd to me to see Wounded Man get a perfect score while a hilarious manga like Sgt. Frog only gets three stars. But, again, I don’t have my copy of the book yet, so I’ll wait until I read the review to see what their reasoning was. (I know many others who started out liking Sgt. Frog started to feel that the jokes were wearing thin as the series progressed, so perhaps that influenced the rating.)
Also, if I protest too strongly, I’m going to start sounding like those rabid Berserk fans who drive me crazy. HOW DARE U ONLY GIVE BLEACH 3 STARS ICHIGO IS AWESOME U R STUPID U NOT FIT TO STITCH KONS STUFFING!!!1!
8 | Patrick Macias
I don’t think Wounded Man has any other ambitions but to entertain it’s intended audience…who aren’t necessarily the same people who would enjoy Sgt. Frog. They might be, but the critical standards for what makes a great hardboiled gekiga are not the same for a SF comedy about a frog from space who like pla-mo.
I gave Wounded Man four stars, because having read all the crazed manly gekiga I could get my hands on in English, I felt it truly deserved such a rating. I’m willing to bet that anyone else who enjoys the form would agree.
In the meantime, LOLZ I LIKED SOMETHIN YOU DIDNTS!
9 | John Jakala
October 15th, 2007 at 10:58 am
I may have been assuming something about the book’s rating methodology that isn’t there: In a book purporting to offer an overview of an entire class of comics, I would expected it to reserve perfect scores for those works that are cross-category classics, not just the best within their narrow sub-sub-sub-subgenre.
But my copy of the book just arrived today, so I’ll actually sit down and read it before I judge any further. And if I do have any further gripes, comments, challenges, embarrassing attempts at lolspeak — perhaps it’ll be good fodder for a blog entry.
10 | tollie01
October 15th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Perhaps he should have left the rating system out as it is such a personal thing. What you hate somebody else loves. and visa versa.
I never read Berserk but i have seen the anime and i have to agree with you there. i must add to that the series ending screams for a second season.
I love both Alita series but right now the Last Order series has got to be my favorite of the two. The rason for that is the quality of the art and more recently the story of Cearula. I was a bit annoyed when this story arc popped up but i’m very glad it got put in as it is a truly great story.
I don’t mind the ratings–if nothing else, they prompt a lot of water cooler conversation (or the electronic equivalent thereof) about the merits of various manga. (Three stars for Innocent W?! I’m still mystified by that one.)
That said, I’m with you, John, when it comes to Berserk. I’ve been trying to put my finger on why I disliked it so much, and I think Erin’s description of volume one as “reading like a heavy metal album cover” pretty much says it all.
12 | Connie
October 16th, 2007 at 11:04 am
Bride of Deimos is fantastic, and I think everyone should read it, but it was definitely not drawn by Kyoko Ariyoshi. The art is far worse than hers, unfortunately, but it doesn’t make the series any less amazing. I’m so sad it never finished up in English. Or in Japan, for that matter.
13 | tollie01
October 16th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Well that is true, KDT. To be honest i prefer different opinions to mine. It gives other people reading the review a different view/opinion of the work.
I rather have one person commenting that s/he disagrees with me than 10 commenting their agreement.
I must add to this that they must say why they disagree. I hate when people say that my review sucks without saying what about it sucked.
14 | Ryan
I got my copy from Del Rey in the mail this week, after traveling for about 8 days for work… it’s been such a great, relaxing piece of work to troll through and even though I had heard a lot about it from Jason along the way, I was still surprised by how much I enjoyed it.
I definitely found some quibbles looking back (even with my own reviews… I gave a 3 star to something that should have been 2.5, etc.)… also, octopus girl only gets 3? I guess that’s fair but I had fun scowling when I read the review, haha. etc.etc.
Oh and Erin— I still have the ebook PDF of bass-master that I reviewed… if you actually want to check it out :B
Again… congrats to Jason! This thing turned out so damn well :) I’m gonna recommend it to everyone!
Ryan!
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