Whenever I think of maids in terms of manga, I first think of Kaoru Mori’s Emma.

It is unavoidable to associate Kaoru Mori with the maid fetish. Shirley and Emma were created at a time when maid cafes were emerging in Japan. Her popularity was at its peak when the maid phenomenon hit its boom. I could assume that Emma became influential in establishing (in the most informal manner) a standard of maid aesthetics and behavior in terms of the maid fetish that was prevalent in Japanese society.

Despite this, I cannot say that Kaoru Mori is the kind who builds her story on a fetish alone. Unlike the thousands of maids that emerged in manga, Emma and Shirley felt like the real deal. In reading the manga, I realize that Kaoru Mori’s not the kind who cares for fanfare. She’s a lady who loves the world of her characters enough to make them alive as she draws every single detail with her nib. After all, she did write A Bride’s Story as well.

There’s something in the details

From A Bride's Story vol. 01

I am forever impressed with Kaoru Mori’s knack for details. While it seems that I have placed a spotlight on authors who have knack for the “negative” details in their scribbles (chicken scratch to others), Kaoru Mori is probably one of the few that I admire for their meticulous knack for detail.

The artistic density Kaoru Mori can place in a panel is astounding. I often have a fall out with artists who do “too much” in a panel, but Mori manages to strike a balance and draws only what needs to be seen. And there’s a lot to be seen. She draws tons of frills, laces, beads, and patterns but when you take the context of the manga, everything just fits into place.

Mori has an eye for context. I believe I have sang praises for the historical richness of Emma without her divulging too much into historical detail, and by this detail I meant the countless names and individuals that we often memorize in our high school history classes (if your teacher’s that kind of history teacher.)

Mori has a grasp of social history, a historical discipline that’s dedicated in understanding society at a particular time. The beauty of social history lies in its ability to capture the spirit of a culture at that particular point. Forget Queen Victoria. Forget Kublai Khan. It’s all about those nameless and “forgettable” people that are never captured by history. Nameless as they were, they have changed the world as a whole and has shaped our beliefs in many ways. We may think that in this day and age we have the choice about falling in love with any one. Imagine the bravery Emma and William had in admitting their love in a society that disproved of it. Mori captured this effortlessly without overloading us with the politics of their history.

I’m not exactly sure if the US editions had this, but in Japan, they released an Emma Victorian Guide which basically details life in Victorian England. Reading through this Victorian Guide is fascinating and one can appreciate the effort that Mori places in researching Victorian England just to properly contextualize Emma and Shirley. Not only does she talk about the overview of Victorian society, but she also illustrates the complexity of social life in Victorian England. It’s a wonderful book that I hope is sold as a companion someday to the Emma series. That said, it’s probably one of the most well illustrated and researched manga that I’ve read in recent years.

Of course, now, we’re looking at 19th Century Mongolia/Central Asia with A Bride’s Story. I’m quite sure that I’m not alone in amazement over her elaborate illustration of women’s clothing. More so that wicked horse riding, arrow shooting bride. In A Bride’s Story, Mori has proven that she is a consistent hardworker. She does her research well and she’s dedicated in capturing what she wishes to illustrate. I feel that Mori has graduated from just a maid fetishist to a woman who has the passion and determination to bring her story forward. I mean, she even studied how to cook Mongolian food just so she would know how it’s made. These little details, menial as they appear, actually adds richness to her story, immersing us deeper into her world.

There’s something about women

As I read through Mori’s works, I realized that she deeply loves women.

And I’m not referring to the kind of fan love or blind admiration of women. If that was the case, then Emma would have been caught in Hakim’s harem.

In reading her work, I feel that Mori has a beautiful, at times whimsical, admiration for the women she draws. Her women are often multi-faceted. Simple yet deeply layered. They’re not just characters who were drawn to live but more like living women who have been drawn. I don’t know if that makes sense but it takes a lot of love to create such lively women.

Some might think that she’s probably quite a feminist as she allows her women to rise above their challenges and yet when I read A Bride’s Story and see Amira faithfully stay with her 12 yr. old husband, I don’t see the feminist struggle. Her women are brave for their own sake but they’re not the kind that challenges a cause. At any perspective, I don’t feel like her heroines are fighting a cause.

If anything, their challenge is to fight for their happiness. And isn’t that enough? Isn’t it enough that they’re happy?

I think Mori believes that it’s more than enough. As such, her heroines will always have a happy ending.

Perhaps it’s more appropriate to say that Mori’s a romantic.

There’s something about Mori

From her debut work, Shirley. Not as detailed, but Mori will get there.

There’s a funny irony with Kaoru Mori. While she invests so much in drawing the elaborate world of her characters, I find it amusing that she draws herself like a woman out of a jungle. In fact, when I first saw an illustration of herself, I honestly thought she was a guy.

I find it surprising that Mori is a woman. It doesn’t help that she has such an asexual name but I rarely encounter female mangaka who would slave so much for her details. It’s usually one or the other. A female mangaka would often draw something really detailed but compromise the authenticity of her story and take her own liberties as a creator, for example, Ueda Rinko or Clamp. Then there are others who would probably choose a more laidback art style but has intense understanding of the complexities of their society, for example, Est Em. But Mori’s quite exceptional to a degree that she reminds me of the laborious research and style of Makoto Yukimura for Vinland Saga and Hitoshi Iiwaki for Historie. The focus and the intensity in capturing the world of old seemed closer to a manly trait for me. Now that I think about, this same artistic and historical intensity can also be seen in Ikeda Riyoko. Still, if you think of the entire population of female mangaka out there, Mori and Ikeda are probably few.

That said, it’s hard to say that Mori is a masculine writer. In fact, I feel bad even engendering Mori when in all honesty, I just think she’s just a brilliant writer. I admire her hardwork. I admire her artistic restraint. I admire the depth of her writing. And she’s only released 3 titles. Fascinating, isn’t it? One could only wonder what other story can she write about after A Bride’s Story. Will she dabble with 1920s Japan? How about Imperial China? Africa? Explorers? India? (oh wait! She’s done a bit of that in Emma!) Will she present us another impossible love story? Will she cross boundaries to sway our hearts over and over again?

From A Bride's Story by Kaoru Mori

I honestly don’t know but if it will be as brilliant as the works she has already released, then I look forward to seeing more of her works.

I realize that Mori is actually someone who finds it fun doing her work. At times I read mangaka grumble over making the deadline or losing track of their story. I sometimes read them feeling “obligated” to continue their story to make the fans happy. However, I don’t exactly feel the same with Mori. She’s very enthusiastic

In fact, I find her a bit selfish for choosing to write about complicated worlds we can hardly relate to and yet… I find it admirable how she manages to write a story that we can connect to.

The Reading List

All of these titles are available in English hence there’s no excuse that you can’t read or get them.

• Emma
• Shirley
• A Bride’s Story

Extra! Extra!

I’m probably doing a feature on this someday but I realized that I didn’t have the spices to make them. ;_;

Anyway, Comic Natalie did a feature on the food cooked in A Bride’s Story, with Mori-sensei demonstrating how to cook the dishes featured in Volume Three. They also did a feature on the research and drawing process of Mori-sensei A Bride’s Story. It’s a fascinating look at her discipline.

Post Script

Dear world, I didn’t think I would actually live through 6 spotlights for this year. I was aiming for a monthly thing but doing it halfway is a lot better with just one. I’m very grateful that I managed to do something than nothing. Here’s to writing 12 next year! >w<)9

As some of you know, there was a level of concern during the Toronto Comic Arts Forum (TCAF) when a programmer was caught in the Canadian border for having Madoka doujinshi in his laptop. Many people have raised valid concerns over the injustice of this arrest and a couple of others that were caught in the borders because of their “graphic” novels,  but the news has also brought enough paranoia to make some otaku travelers like myself worried when I cross international borders.

While I find the cultural defense logic of Roland Kelts in CNN GO flawed (please, using ukiyo-e as a cultural stand when lolimanga is already a far deviation of ukiyo-e), I find that the article was strong enough to remind me of my mild paranoia during my recent visit to the United States.

I recently traveled to the United States to present in the International Comic Arts Forum where I spoke on the topic of scanlations. And while my topic lies in a safe space, the material I held in my hard drive was something that could probably get me arrested. I’m not speaking of materials exactly similar to those arrested  (although I think I had some of those stuff), but this fujoshi would have some materials in her hard drive that does contain underage boys, boys who are younger than 18 who are getting laid with men over 30 or 40.  I know for a fact that such topics already taps pedophilia but hey… this fujoshi likes her May-December BL affairs. Most of those who have been apprehended for carrying these materials were male so… will I ever get caught in an airport for my BL?

I’m not exactly sure if I’m lucky or if dressing up quite decently for my trip gave the immigration and custom officers the impression that I was a decent person and there’s no way I would hold such questionable material in my person. But the fact of the matter is I did, and in fact I even brought home some more of that questionable material (Book Off New York had some treasures!).  And these were hard copies!

I haven’t done this only in the US but pretty much in every country in Asia where I know there are BL and doujins being sold. I’ve brought home countless of questionable material, and my Denden town swag was strong enough to make any guy weep on how naughty my tastes are but somehow I’ve been lucky enough to be out of their moral radar. Don’t even ask me of what I’m capable of lugging out of Singapore. They have a treasure trove of Gintama BL Anthologies in a quiet nook in Kinokuniya.

As a fujoshi, I have not been caught or questioned for the questionable materials that I’ve bought. I wondered if I didn’t have the face of a pervert or these immigration folks just didn’t sense my strong fujoshi aura. Maybe they haven’t added the “fujoshi” profile in people they have to watch out for. Maybe it pays to brush my hair and look clean when travelling. Or maybe it’s the fact that I’m a girl and that already sets a double standard that I’m not just capable of holding such material. They didn’t sense that I like reading manga about young boys taming old men nor did they think that I was even capable of enjoying old men torturing young boys until they weep. Will I ever be apprehended for carrying a Naono Bohra or Chitose Piyoko title? If I brought a Haruka Minami or CJ Michalski title, will I face deportation and be kicked out of any country? If I brought home Kaze to Ki no Uta, will they interrogate me for enjoying Auguste’s torture of Gilbert? Will I ever be arrested in my own country for ordering my favorite brand of BL online?

I’m not sure for other countries. But I’d definitely get arrested in Canada.

In 2006, Elizabeth McClung was searched thoroughly in Canadian borders because she simply carried manga which has a “high potential” of displaying pornographic material. When I found out about this, I had a good laugh because I remember that a lot of the translated ero manga that I read when I was younger, depicting pornography of all examples, were published in Canada.  Seeing Elizabeth’s story made me mildly scared, and the idea that my carry-on bag had a Kumota Haruko title made me wonder if her mildly childish and whimsical BL style would make the Chinese immigration in Shanghai seize all of my belongings because it’s a threat to Communist China.

It’s scary isn’t it? But it’s a reality.  I’ve been fortunate that I haven’t randomly searched and that other countries seem to not care, but I still worry about that day when I do get randomly searched and I will have to explain to some uptight moralistic customs official why I am not a sexual predator and why I happen to hold this material. I will definitely have a hard time convincing them of the subtleties of the material.

To be honest, I feel torn and still quite paranoid on the possibility of my arrest for lugging BL across borders. Right now, I think that being a woman makes things a whole lot safer for me but if these people were dumber, there’s a great chance I could get arrested as well.

Can I do something about it? The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) has some handy tips for you. They can get wordy, so these are the best of that lot, just in case something does happen. I will add in some tips from my own travelling experiences of lugging BL across borders.

• Bring as little information with you as you travel
• While I think this is IMPOSSIBLE for most travellers, it does pay to clean your HD of any questionable material before your trip. For airport travelers, there’s also a greater chance that your carry-ons will be inspected at almost every corner, especially in the Philippines and in the US. Just check-in your laptop and any manga that you have.  Just make sure you’ve secured them so they don’t get damaged while in transit. If you want reading material, find some other thing to read other than your BL.
• Mail your material rather than lugging it around
• An awesome tip especially when you went on an all out BL shopping spree in Japan. There are door to door delivery services that you can hire to ship your stuff straight to your doorstep. They’re not exactly like Fed Ex as these guys are willing to mail you things by the box. These boxes are hardly inspected in customs and it would save you tons instead of having an overweight luggage. Japan post is a good start. The Philippines has their own door to door service and it varies from country to country.
• Choose your titles wisely
• You can’t bring home everything. So make smart choices on the titles you wish to bring home and see if these are titles that you won’t have any trouble with. If what you love gets really risky, mail it. If that is a hassle for you, then put it at the bottom of your check-in luggage and forget about wanting to read it so bad until you get home in your bedroom. Checked-in luggage at airports is hardly inspected open unless you really have a weirdly shaped material that looks exactly like a gun or there’s liquid oozing out of your luggage or if the dogs sniff something funny in it.
• Dress smart
• This may be difficult for long travels, but it pays to look like as if you’re a decent person. Smile and answer them appropriately and give them no reason to stop you just by your looks. I think it really helps.
• Travel light
• One check-in luggage and one-carry on. Don’t make it look like you’re bringing home the entire store of Animate.

All this Yoshinaga talk around mangadom through this month’s Manga Moveable Feast has honestly left me hungry. We all know how much Yoshinaga Fumi loves her food and many of us often suffer from all the lovely food that she features in her manga. If you read Antique Bakery, I’m quite sure you’ll be craving for cakes. If you read Not Love But Food, you’d wish you were in Japan to try out all the fun restaurants they ate in. What’s frustrating is how the food she features in her manga is inaccessible unless you’re a genius baker like Ono.

Well, not any more. At least if you can read Kinou Nani Tabeta. 

My favorite non-BL Yoshinaga is her domestic story between a lawyer and a hairdresser and their laidback dinners. They’re an odd couple of sorts but they share a passion for food and love for sharing meals. While some would think that reading into their dinners can get one hungry, the ease they show in preparing the dishes make you think that maybe… just maybe… you can cook it at home.

Starving for some Yoshinaga dishes, I thought I’d share with you two easy meals I learned from Kinou Nani Tabeta. These ingredients can be easily found in a Japanese grocery. I’ll also point in some alternatives just in case you want a taste of these dishes but can’t find the ingredients.

Tuna and tomato soumen (ツナとトマトのぶっかけそうめん)

This is a relatively easy dish featured in volume 1 after Shiro-san meets a lady in a grocery who seems to share his knack for making a bargain. It was a hilarious chapter that involves Shiro’s need to confess his homosexuality. Needless to say, all’s well end’s well and they had this dish to cap the night.

Instructions:
Prepare the sauce
1. Mix the mentsuyu, water, and ginger together

Prepare the tuna
1. Drain the can of tuna.
2. Add the mayonnaise and mix it to a desired consistency. By this I mean that you place enough for the tuna to stick together but not too much at that the tuna’s dripping in mayonnaise.
3. Salt and pepper to taste.

Prepare the soumen
1. Cook the soumen as instructed in the packet. This is a cold soba so please drain the noodles as soon as it’s cooked and wash it with cold water.
2. Lay the noodles down on a shallow dish and start assembling the cucumber, tomato, shiso, and tuna on top of the noodle.
3. “Splash” the sauce over the dish and serve cold.

I personally loved this because it’s a fairly light yet filling dish. It’s very easy to do too! I recommend adding the shiso in this dish because it gives a very refreshing taste to this soumen.

Miso Butter Ankake Ramen

This was a hilarious recipe that Kenji managed to do only when Shiro-san went home for the New Years. Shiro is and advocate for eating healthy hence eating instant ramen or any junk food was totally out of the question. Somehow, Kenji managed to make a compromise with this ramen.

Instructions:
1. Cut up all the vegetables and set aside
2. In a hot pan, add salad oil and once that’s hot, add the pork
3. Stir fry the pork until cooked and then add the cabbage and carrot. Stir fry until it has changed color then add butter.
4. Add 500cc (250 ml) of water into the hot pan and cover the vegetables and wait for it to boil.
5. Once the water’s boiling, add the noodles and let it steep in the broth for 2 minutes. ONLY FOR TWO MINUTES. Sapporo Ichiban can get soggy really fast so this two minute count is important.
6. Crack an egg in a microwave dish and cover it. Poke the yolk once just so steam can cook it a little. Then microwave it for 20 secs. or until the white area is cooked. Make sure that the yolk part is not overly cooked unless that’s how you like your eggs. Kenji and I like it runny so I made sure my yolk wasn’t fully cooked.
7. In a bowl, add the seasonings of the miso ramen.
8. Once the 2 minutes is over, take the noodles off the heat and add the moyashi. Mix it for a bit to heat the moyashi.
9. Carefully pour the ingredients into the bowl with the miso seasonings and top it off with a sprinkle of sesame seeds, spring onions, and the microwaved egg.

There are more dishes in Kinou Nani Tabeta but some of them can get complicated. I have managed to make these two dishes, a strawberry jam, some crepes, and some of their awesome nimono and stir fries. While all of us dream of expensive dishes, somehow Shiro’s stinginess and his creativity in mixing ingredients based on what’s available makes Fumi’s dishes quite accessible.

If you have a chance to read Kinou Nani Tabeta, then go right ahead and try some of the dishes featured in her manga. If not, then these are two of the recipes that I can share. I can’t cook all of them at the same time, since these two were more than enough to fill me up yesterday.

So what did you eat yesterday? Maybe you can have these dishes for tomorrow.

I love eating things I know. I love eating things I don’t know.

Some call it for science, but for me, it’s closer to epicurean curiosity. There’s a lot of things we stuff in our mouths and we hardly even question how these things are made or where they came from. Somehow, we have reduced ourselves to eating whatever tastes great and somehow that makes the eating experience half as fun as it should.

Moyashimon is a manga I grew to love not only because of the cute bacterias (that seems to be a great hit among most fans) but because the series unravels the mystery of the food we eat, particularly strange fermented food that we’d rather not touch with a ten-foot pole.

The leader of this ragtag crew is none other than Itsuki-sensei, a culinary explorer, the kind that would possibly dive in underground caves just to taste what bats eat at night. Well, not really. But seeing him glug down a kiviak’s blood on the first chapter only shows his enthusiasm for anything fermented. The man is a connoisseur when it comes to his food and whether he sees the bacteria or not, he will definitely have a taste for food.

And Itsuki-sensei’s love for food is nothing but admirable. I’ve seen him lead the boys down crazy roads of wine making and cheese making just to teach them the intricate machinery of balancing bacteria and food. Odd, isn’t it? Who knew that we need the very germs that we hate to make food taste a lot better.

And reading through the pages of Moyashimon has left me wondering if those food really tasted great. What was the difference between a Bulgarian yogurt from a Japanese yogurt? Just how can the natto bacteria really change a soybean?

The countless of products featured in Moyashimon eventually led me to a strange trip towards our local Japanese Grocer. I found myself standing in front of rows of natto and tried to sum up the courage to try this culinary curiosity. Strange things entered my head, one of which was hearing a soft whisper from Itsuki-sensei, egging me to give it a try. It didn’t help that prior to that day, I had been watching Iron Chef and saw this epic natto battle. Just… what exactly does this bean have for the Japanese folks to consume it so much. And after ten other people picked up a pack of natto before me, I eventually got the courage to have some natto. I eventually chose the packet that had a happy family drawn on it. I thought, if they looked happy, then I’d probably be happy too.

What came after was a total surprise. Not only did the natto not kill me but I also ended up loving natto.

I’m quite sure I’m not alone when it comes to trying out some food because of manga. Whether it’s strawberry shortcake or even pizza hut, I’m confident in saying that there’s a number of you who tried out something because of a subtle product placement in manga.

I’d like to hear your story and I’d love to hear what manga encouraged you to try something new to eat! It doesn’t have to be as crazy as what I did but it’s definitely a taste that you definitely owe to a manga~!

As an incentive, I’m giving away Volume 2 of Moyashimon for one of our epicurean readers! It’s one of my favorite food/agriculture manga and I’m quite sure you’ll find the epic fermentation journey of Itsuki-sensei interesting!

This giveaway open to all of my readers from Manila, to Japan, to Poland, and even in the US. Just leave a comment about your culinary manga journey and you might have a chance of winning Moyashimon! And yes, it’s theEnglish version.

Winners will be selected at 6 a.m., August 12, 2011, Hong Kong Standard Time. That’d be 6:00 p.m. EST for those who live in New York, noon for those who live in London, and 5 a.m. for those in Japan.

Note: The Moyashimon bento above is from Anna the Red! She makes fantastic character bentou. You guys should check out her ghibli bento too!

I wish I had a reason for my delinquency, but work and research is no excuse for my great delay in terms of handling my spotlight. While I promised to do this every month, sickness and sudden workload kept me from opening my manga for months. Then again, I tasked myself in putting down gargantuan authors for those months and perhaps I’ll just make it up to all of you when I make up for those lost spotlights by the end of the year.

But for now, before everyone thinks I just spotlight BL authors, I present to you the man who captured my heart with an eggplant, Iou Kuroda.

I love eggplants

I’m quite sure that most readers would not associate Iou Kuroda with food or an eggplant for that matter. His only English release is Sexy Voice and Robo and that hardly has any eggplants in it. Truth be told, I didn’t see a glimpse of Iou Kuroda in a manga first. I first saw it through an anime called Nasu: Summer in Andalusia.

From Nasu: Summer in Andalusia

The story was about a man going through the Spanish leg of a biking circuit and at most it captured the pains that came with cycling especially the sacrifices he made to join the circuit. My world stopped and moved with Andalusia. The film made me experience those strange moments of intense concentration like as if I was Pepe pushing himself down the last mile. I forget everything that surrounded me and my mind was focused on the goal. I felt satisfaction in eating that delicious eggplant at the end, and then I wondered, “What was that all about?”

It was a surreal moment of attachment and detachment and eventually I found myself researching on the movie before finally finding myself a copy of the manga. I had thought that I will be reading four volumes about cyclists. As it turned out, Nasu was all about eggplants and more.

Eggplants are the center of the universe

Nasu turned out to be a perfect appetizer for Iou Kuroda. I realize later, of course, that Iou Kuroda’s best at samplers than grand main courses. The manga was a collection of shorts where the humble eggplant stands for a lot of things other than just a vegetable.

In Nasu we see the eggplant shared, invade cities, and come alive. And while we’d like to think that the manga is just about eggplants, Kuroda’s brilliance shone in his ability to make the eggplant the center of the universe. You will read the manga and realize that it’s hardly about the eggplants itself but what they symbolize to us. They can remind us of our home, love, happiness, fears, and dangers. And while it is but an eggplant, Kuroda showed that it could be THE eggplant that can change our lives.

Reading through Nasu opened a new world of manga for me, one that was not bound by cohesive plot but by relationships, symbols, and banality that we often forget. It was through Kuroda that I felt that if I only paid attention, then maybe the eggplant I love consuming can mean so much for me.

From Nasu

And the universe is filled with people

After Nasu, I find myself stumbling through his other works such as Dai-Nippon Tengu-to Ekotoba, Sexy Voice and Robo and a series of other shorts. While the stories contain almost mythical if not curious assumptions about life, his stories revolved around observations of people and one’s own will in responding to it.

He captures these relationships well and while I’m not a gekiga expert, I can see a bit of gekiga in the way he chose images for his panels. It’s almost cinematic in a very rough and sketchy way. At the same time, I see a bit of guro in him, although not exactly as grotesque as Suehiro Maruo. His style has a sense of darkness in him in a way that when I see those wavy lines that illustrate the walls and even the characters, you can sense their own unease, their own imperfections even. He may not win a drawing award in terms of details but he wins in capturing the heat of the moment and the reality of his story. And if it’s about people, then he captured them well. There are no polished curves or straight lines when it comes to representing people. There’s a bit of dirt in all of us and while we’d like to think we’re pure, even the purest of us aren’t.

I wonder if he had that intention in writing down a junior high school girl for Niko in Sexy Voice and Robo. It may be a loli complex at work, but at the same time, I’d like to think that this was just how Kuroda views the world. The world is steeped in complicated symbols and meanings no matter how simple or pure we present it to be. There’s good and bad in everyone and happy endings can also turn into bad endings.

His rugged cartoon style leaves his art open to interpretation. In fact it reminds me of those lovely monochrome cartoon prints of old. His art makes his story seem like a classic and yet the freshness of the story puts it in a contemporary age. I’ve seen tons of mangaka who tried this art style but failed to meld their story with their style. This makes Kuroda one of the few talented mangaka who knew how to express their thoughts well with his art.

And the universe seems to be related to Osamu Tezuka

Some endless research on Iou Kuroda eventually landed me on a short story of Metropolis. I would assume that this was in Comic Cue’s tribute to the celebration of the 50 years of Tezuka’s Metropolis.

While I haven’t read Tezuka’s Metropolis nor do I have a good memory of the film, Kuroda’s take on the plot of Metropolis was comedic, sarcastic, and meaningful. It was a young man’s take on the story and you can see the youth in Kuroda’s art but at the same understand where his story is heading. I realized that early on, Kuroda was a sentimental man and that he writes stories to remind us of things that we forget so that we can start paying attention to the people that surrounds us.

I wish I have the chance to read more of Iou Kuroda’s works. If I have only read a few and got affected by him this much, then I long to read the rest of his works and see how those can change my life.

The Reading List

Sexy Voice and Robo: The only work of Iou Kuroda that is legally available in English. Great story about a girl changing people’s lives one call at a time… among other things.

If you have a chance (with enough google-fu and Japanese skills), do try to read on his other titles as well: Nasu, Daioh, Kurofune (where Metropolis can be read), Daikinboshi, Dai-Nippon Tengu-to Ekotoba (Japan Tengu Party Illustrated).