Manga Chapter of the Week: Natsu no Zenjitsu Chapter 16 (Being Touched)

Yoshida Motoi is an irregular manga artist who makes up for his bi-quarterly release pace with the best aesthetic concepts this side of Yusuke Murata and a detail-fixated, thorough art style.* It’s fitting, then, that the manga he’s currently drawing, Natsu no Zenjitsu, deals with art itself.

As the title suggests, this particular chapter focuses on the male lead’s sense of touch, and aims to convey how it factors into both his life and his paintings to the readers. Part of that goal is accomplished in conventional means via the script, but the chapter also provides a clinic of how to incorporate the sense of touch into seemingly flat pages of manga. Nor does it just run an art clinic; these depictions are intimately related to a growing and somewhat contradictory set of emotions in the manga’s male lead.

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Introducing Unnecessary Terminology: The Takeaway and The Moment

Different anime and manga, and really all works of entertainment, have different ways of captivating their audiences. Some of them create mental mementos so strong that they last forever whether you want them to or not, and others leave light footprints that disappear with the first snowfall, but are no less beautiful.

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Manga Slaparound: Overthrow the Corrupt Regime!

In the first installment of what we hope will be a semi-regular affair, Sam and I sit down to discuss a pair of manga centered around corrupt governments. The first is the absurd quiz-show-governed society of National Quiz (Tabata Yoshiaki and Yugo Yuugi), under threat from a rebellion led by its most popular quiz-show host. The second is the facsimile of modern Japan, vis-a-vis Akumetsu (Sugimoto Reiichi and Katou Shinkichi), which is being threatened by the series’ titular masked terrorist.

Note: This segment is spoiler-heavy, so if you don’t want to be spoiled on the plots of two great manga, read them first!

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