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Posts Tagged Yoshihiro Tatsumi

Fallen Words Picked Up By Drawn & Quarterly

By Lissa Pattillo on Tuesday, December 13, 2011

AnimeNewsNetwork has confirmed with Drawn & Quarterly that the company will be releasing a new Yoshihiro Tatsumi collection of short stories titled Fallen Words. A listing for the book originally popped up on Amazon.ca, followed shortly there-after by Amazon.com.

“In Fallen Words, Yoshihiro Tatsumi takes up the oral tradition of rakugo and breathes new life into it by shifting the format from spoken word to manga. Each of the eight stories in the collection is lifted from the Edo-era Japanese storytelling form. As Tatsumi notes in the afterword, the world of rakugo, filled with mystery, emotion, revenge, hope, and, of course, love, overlaps perfectly with the world of Gekiga that he has spent the better part of his life developing.”

News of a fresh Yoshihiro Tatsumi license comes with perfect timing for me – I just finished his one-shot Black Blizzard and revisited his sprawling and wonderful, A Drifting Life. Both are different kinds of stories but each left me wanting more of the creator’s work. You can expect I’ll be picking up this new book when it’s released this Spring.

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Categories: Licensing, News
Tags: Drawn and Quarterly, Yoshihiro Tatsumi

Review: Black Blizzard

By Shannon Fay on Friday, August 27, 2010

3 Comments »

Reviewer: Shannon Fay

Manga-ka: Yoshiro Tatsumi
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Rating: Older Teen (16+)
Release Date: March 2010

Synopsis: “Susumu Yamaji, a 24-year-old pianist, is arrested for murder and ends up handcuffed to a career criminal on the train that will take them to prison. An avalanche derails the train and the criminal takes the opportunity to escape, dragging a reluctant Susumu with him into the blizzard raging outside. They flee into the mountains to an abandoned ranger station where they take shelter from the storm. As they sit around the fire they built Susumu relates how love drove him to murder.”

Black Blizzard is an important work in manga cannon, but luckily it’s more than just a dusty piece of history. Even today it is still an engaging thriller worth reading. Susumu is a piano player who’s down on his luck. When he falls in love with a circus performer named Saeko, it leads to a series of events which end with Susumu killing a man while in a drunken rage. When the manga starts he has been arrested by the police and is on a train, handcuffed to a fellow prisoner.

Manga About Manga: Learning Process Via Plot

By Lissa Pattillo on Wednesday, April 14, 2010

15 Comments »

Viz Media’s recent press release about the manga series Bakuman got me thinking – there are a bunch of manga series out there about making manga. What a fun concept! I know I always love it, it’s such a neat experience – both the slight irony of it and the educational factor too.

I’ve learned a lot about making comics in general from manga – neat little so-thats-how-they-do-its – and while ideas and inspiration are always a given when reading something, having someone else’s trials, experiences and knowledge laid out for you in the very format they’re in relation to is just a good combination.

So I got to thinking about the different series that are about making manga – so I compiled a list. Have another licensed title to add? By all means let me know in the comments so I can check it out!