The Best Manga You’re Not Reading: Benkei in New York

Originally serialized in Big Comic Original, Benkei in New York (1991-96) is a collaboration between Taniguchi and writer Jinpachi Mori, best known in Japan for Kasai no Hito, a long-running manga about an eccentric but wise judge. The seven stories focus on a Japanese ex-pat living in New York. Like many New Yorkers, Benkei’s career is best characterized by slashes and hyphens: he’s a bartender-art forger-hitman who can paint a Millet from memory or assassinate a thug using a swordfish. (No, really.) Benkei’s primary job, however, is seeking poetic justice for murder victims’ families, whether he’s borrowing a page from the Titus Andronicus playbook or using a grappling hook to wound an unscrupulous dockworker…

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The Week in Reviews, 5/23 - 5/29

Here’s a quick run-down of reviews at Manga Bookshelf for the week of May 23rd.

I reviewed Kaoru Mori’s A Bride’s Story and Jiro Taniguchi’s A Zoo in Winter, while my colleague David Welsh posted his contribution to the May Manga Movable feast, Ten Things I Love About Cross Game.

Also at Manga Bookshelf:

Bookshelf Briefs: 13th Boy (vol. 7), Afterschool Charisma (vol. 3), Detroit Metal City (vol. 9), Gente: The People of Ristorante Paradiso (vol. 3), Saturn Apartments (vol. 3), and Vampire Knight (vol. 12);

Off the Shelf: Arisa (vol. 2), 7 Billion Needles (vol. 4), Shugo Chara! (vol. 10), and Lychee Light Club.