When I start to read Barefoot Gen, I knew very few things about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. I knew a little about Manhattan project, I learned in school that the B-29 plane that carried the bomb was named Elona Gay and that somehow the two bombs helped to end the war; I saw on TV that a nuclear explosion causes a huge mushroom cloud, that radiations are terribly bad for all live forms. That was about it.

Barefoot Gen is not always totally accurate when it comes to History; however it’s an incredible and unique testimony of what faced people who lived in Hiroshima at that time. Hopefully, the graphic novel form made it somehow lighter; otherwise it would be impossible to bear it.

What also stroked me, it is how difficult it was for Gen to make his way. As we always want to bury the dark part of our history or we try to ignore it. 20 years after his first publication in Japan, only the first 4 volumes were so far translated in English.

Gen grabbed me and I can’t get ride of him until I finished his whole story. Today however he is still haunting me.

Gen Barefoot is a masterpiece that anyone should read, at least to keep in mind what War and Nuclear bombing mean.

Lost Girl is a slow pace graphic novel, slow as summer vacation in camping near by the sea with your parents and little sister. There are no super-heroes in this novel, just a 15 years old teenage girl, shared between an attraction for the world of adults and her comfortable dream world of childhood. It is difficult to know what is dream and what is reality, but Beth met a mysterious girl who is all she is not. This unusual girl is very independent and seems do to what she wants and to follow her instinct without thinking of tomorrow. Beth, a probably too well behaved girl, is really attracted to her, looking for some kind of freedom.
This strange atmosphere is very well translated by the artwork, quiet original, without any unnecessary elements, a strong but minimal illustration.

Uzumaki Naruto is with One piece, one of the two more popular manga and even graphic stories in the world.
Since its first publication in 1999, there are approximately 6 new volumes of Naruto each year. So even if I am great fan and I read the whole adventures so far, I will not review every single volume, but do a more general critic.

According to me, Naruto took the succession of the extremely successful in 90’s, Dragon Ball of Akira Toriyama and it became even more popular. Naruto is initially a manga published in the Weekly Shonen Jump, the first Japanese manga magazine, with a circulation of 3 million copies a week. Now, with the anime version and video game adaptations, it is a global cultural phenomenon in Japan and also in the World.

Naruto is quiet conventional in many ways with the manga culture. The main character is a quiet complex innocent troublesome kid that has the ability to build strong relations with his friends but also his enemies. He has the quiet traditional qualities of a manga hero, an unusual intelligence that allows him to find surprising solutions to problems, extraordinary abilities that he keeps developing, an unbreakable determination to fulfill a destiny, a capacity to mobilize every single piece of his energy to achieve a goal, a sensibility, a strong desire for a real justice and a will to always do what is best.

However in my opinion what contributes to Naruto huge success is his deep connections with some traditional Japanese religions and myths. The manga is revising the Shinobi / Ninja culture and the martial arts by building something that is closed to a mythology. In the Masashi Kishmoto work, there is also a strong influence of the two main Japanese religions, Shinto and Buddhism. These influences are illustrated notably through the place of five elements (Fire, Wind, Earth, Sky and Water), the presence of demons, the Chakra energies and a kind of Awakening.
Naruto contains also key elements of the Japanese society and popular culture, the well-known Ramen soup, the Onsen (traditional hot spring public bath), a kind of erotic touch and also a slight horror dimension.
All these elements contribute to do a very accessible, but quiet rich manga that is definitely worth reading!

First published in Japan in the 80’s, the 6 volumes of Akira are a masterpiece of the manga culture and have influence many popular manga authors. The animated film version encountered a huge worldwide success. Akira is often compared to the Blade Runner of Ridley Scott, notably because of his futuristic vision of the city.

The story takes place in 2030, 30 years after the complete destruction of Tokyo by an unidentified explosion and after the World War III. In this future, the situation is far to be under control and we wonder if things can get any better.
With Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo built an original cyber-punk post apocalypse world, made by an oppressive military government managing a very futuristic Neo Tokyo and conducting strange experiments, violent teenage gangs driving high-speed new generation motorbikes, new drugs, anarchist terrorist groups, warlords that reign of ruined sections of Tokyo and kids with strange powers.

When it comes to Japanese horror culture, I am always tempted to make connection. Why is that?
I remember some years ago, having read an interview of Shinji Mikami, the creator of the Resident Evil videogame series, and he was telling that he was really inspired by the work of a middle of the 20th century writer, Edogawa Rampo. Edogawa Rampo wrote some great fantastic and horror stories and was inspired on his side by Edgar Allan Poe and also Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
So, I wonder if Masashi Kishimoto, the creator of Uzumaki Naruto was eventually influenced by Junji Ito. The dark part of Naruto is for me definitely related to this Japanese horror culture.

Uzumaki on his side could be easily connected to Japanese horror movies like the Ring or Kairo. It is a succession of short stories about a small town, Kurozu-cho where people get infected by strange syndromes related to spirals. Quiet scary, don’t you think?

Enid and Rebecca are two cynical teenage girls, living in an unmanned American working-class neighborhood in 1990’s. In this post high school graduation period, there is not much to do around for these smart two girls beside criticize everything, the people, their sick interests, the culture …
There is something very scientific in their way to analyze their feelings and the World, but above all it is an interrogation on what they are going to do with their lives.
These two best friends are at turning point of their existences, when you start to become adult and you can prevent yourself to think that nothing can last for ever.

Daniel Clowes sign a very strong and personal work on what growing up mean. I should also mention the great artwork.
People could find these two girls and their universe quiet weird, but are-they really?
Who didn’t try to look different and to explore the limits to build his identity?

His bibliography includes the Eightball series, great satires of the American culture and societies, and Ghost World, a graphic novel about two sarcastic teenage girls that became really popular through a movie adaptation.

Some recurrent topics appear in his works, such as beauty, long hair and beautiful girls.
Among his bibliography, I particularly know the Uzumaki (spiral) trilogy that had been adapted to movie and according me contributed to enlarge his audience, particularly abroad.

JetLag is composed of five short graphic novels by Actus Tragicus comics group and based on stories by Etgar Keret. Actus Tragicus is a very creative Israeli comic book collective composed by five international acclaim artists: Mira Friednam, Yirmi Pinkus, Itzik Rennert, Rutu Mordan, Batia Kolton.

Each artist has a very distinctive style and the overall quality is good, even if I find some of the novels a little more obscure. According to me, the novel from Yirmi Pinkus is definitely a 5 stars. It basically tells the story of a kid that wants a Bart Simpson skateboard, we all do, but is dad is not ok. Instead he got a porcelain pig to put coins he will get every morning if he manages to finish his hot chocolate with the associate dirty skin he hates …

Among the other stories, I have to mention the magician that loses control of his magic tricks and a woman who lives next to the Hell Gate.