Beat’s Bizarre Adventure: Not the last vampire

There are two universal truths in today’s rapidly changing comics industry. The first is that Dog Man is once again the defining comic of our era. The second is that more people are reading manga and Webtoons (aka vertical scroll comics) than ever before. Therefore we at Comics Beat have chosen to embark on a new venture: Beat’s Bizarre Adventure. Every week, three writers will recommend some of their favorite books and series from Japan, Korea and elsewhere. This week we have Tokyo death games, even more vampires, and, of course, actors.

Alice in Borderland

Writer/Artist: Haro Aso
Translation and Adaptation: Jonah Mayahara-Miller
Touch-up Art and Lettering: Joanna Estep
Publisher: VIZ

Before Squid Game, there was Alice in Borderland. The live-action adaptation was one of the biggest premieres on Netflix and I was a devoted viewer from the start. After tearing through all eight episodes, I waited and waited until Viz published the English print version of the manga.

For those who weren’t swept up in the Alice in Borderland craze in 2020 when everyone was stuck at home during the pandemic, it is a death game series where players are sent to an alternate version of Tokyo. There they must play, and win, to survive. The story focuses on one particular young man named Ryohei Arisu who, in the real world, prefers to waste his days away with his friends Karube and Chota. One day, the three see fireworks and before they know it, they find themselves alone in an abandoned Tokyo. Arisu and company are entangled in a game where the difficulty is denoted by the suit and number on a playing card. If they win, they live to the next day and buy themselves enough time to find a way out or play another game to stretch their days. If they lose, it’s game over.

What I enjoyed about Alice in Borderland was its sheer creativity. The games were written to test a player’s physical strength and endurance, their mental fortitude, their emotional and psychological endurance, and their intelligence. It was thrilling to read because I could never guess what the real goal of the games were until the very end. At that point, if I was a player in the games, I’d be dead, which goes to show the strength of manga artist Haro Aso‘s writing chops. While the Netflix adaptation took liberties with some of the games to make them more exciting on a big screen, I thought they did a great job preserving the essence of the corresponding games from the manga.

Arisu begins as a lazy, good-for-nothing gamer but quickly, and almost unconsciously, rises to the occasion as a leader. (Perhaps all Arisu needed was to be thrown in a life-or-death situation for that personality trait of his to be unlocked.) His ability to remain focused and calm, especially in psychological games, made him a powerful ally to the rest of the players and a threat to the Kings and Queens.

While I have some complaints about how the story ended and the big plot twist, overall, Alice in Borderland is a comic that death game fanatics will love. — Hilary Leung

Blood: The Last Vampire 2002

Writer/Artist: Benkyo Tamaoki
English Adaptation: Carl Gustav Horn
Translation: Yuji Oniki
Touch-Up Art & Lettering: Rich Anderson
Publisher: VIZ

Blood: The Last Vampire 2002 is a sequel to the film of the same name (minus the date) which sees Saya still alive at the turn of the millennium hunting down Chiropterans. She’s disillusioned by her status as a hunting dog leashed by humans to kill vampires. But once again she must infiltrate a high school to find the link between a certain young girl and a group of Chiropterans.

Saya clearly doesn’t want to be doing this anymore. Her new handlers berate her whether she succeeds or fails in a mission. The girl she’s tracking, Akiko, isn’t doing any better; she ran from her turbulent home life to the delinquent Chiropterans. Their leader bears a strong resemblance to Saya.

It leads to a backstory for Saya that is fascinating, but probably deviates from what was originally intended in the movie. I like the original intention better, but this one isn’t bad either. We also get a well-crafted origin story for the Chiropterans.

Tamaoki instills this book with the action, blood, and gore you’d expect from this franchise. There are moments I wish we could’ve seen more than we do, but it’s fine. Tamaoki is also a porn artist so there’s quite a bit of sex and nudity as well. If that’s something you’re not comfortable with, don’t pick this up.

I do think this book could use a remastered re-release twenty years on because—and I don’t know if this was a translation issue—there are dialogue issues throughout this book. Dialogue reads as incorrect or even like some sentences are incomplete. I think an update is needed. Overall, I do like this manga. It’s a good entry in Saya’s story that is well worth checking out. — Derrick Crow

Double

Writer/Artist: Ayako Noda
Translator: Massiel Gutierrez
Copy Editor: Tina Tseng
Quality Check: Daichi Nemoto
Proofreader: Katie Kimura
Retouching and Lettering: Vibrraant Publishing Studio
Publisher: Tokyopop

Yuujin Kamoshima and Takara Takarada are acting partners with differing methodologies. Yuujin studies every detail of a scene to determine precisely how the character he is playing will behave at any given time. Takara falls so deeply into his roles that he doesn’t so much “act” as dream the inner life of his subject. Unfortunately Takara can’t tie his shoes, wash his clothes or keep a job to save his life. So Yuujin lives together with him and tends to his every need in the hope that one day, charismatic Takara will become a star.

The easy pitch for Double is “toxic codependent relationship between two talented actors.” But that doesn’t quite sum up the unique appeal of this comic. Double does not follow the typical rhythms of other manga series you may have read set in the entertainment industry. The characters bicker, get lost and go out with each other for drinks. Sometimes they lie to each other and even themselves. Artist Ayako Noda leaves it to the reader to go with the flow and decide for themselves how they feel about any one character in the moment.

That is, until those scenes where Noda locks in and turns the intensity all the way up. There’s a sequence in the second volume where Takara works on a film by a high-profile director. The director asks Takara to play a scene in a certain way, but Takara disagrees. He worked his character out with Yuujin long in advance. “Who told you to do that?” the director asks. “Did you bring something from outside in here?” Noda draws his face so that it recedes from his bulging eyes and mouth as if he was a wild animal. Yet in front of him is something even more striking: a vision of Yuujin puppeting Takara’s mouth from behind as he holds his body close.

Double is a short read at just five volumes published between 2019 and 2023. (The series has been on hiatus through 2024.) Despite this, the series has made a big impact; not only was it adapted into a well-received TV drama in 2022, but the manga won an Excellence Prize at the prestigious Japan Media Arts Festival. I’m recommending it even though it’s published in the United States by Tokyopop, a publisher whose crimes against manga artists are well documented. Only the very best could overpower my distaste for Stu Levy and his empire. For better or worse, Double is that good. — Adam Wescott

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