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Keyaki no Ki is a collection of eight stories, selected from nearly two hundred of the great storyteller Ryuchiro Utsumi, these are the solid rock on which Taniguchi builds a deep, complex and mature reflection on daily life in Japanese society that has always been dominated by very strict schemes. Another masterpiece by Taniguchi, an author too huge to not be read.
Acclaimed manga artist Jiro Taniguchi provides the latest entry in the Louvre collection of graphic novels. After a group trip to Europe, a Japanese artist stops in Paris alone, intent on visiting the museums of the capital. But, bedridden in his hotel room with fever, he faces the absolute solitude of one suffering in a foreign land, deprived of any immediate or familiar recourse. When the fever breaks somewhat, he sets out on his visit and promptly gets lost in the crowded halls of the Louvre. Very soon, he discovers many unsuspected facets to this world in a museum in a journey oscillating between feverish hallucination and reality, actually able to speak with famous painters from various periods of history, led to crossroads between human and personal history by... the Guardians of the Louvre. (Source: Potent Mon)
From the pages of history comes the legend of the Samurai Jubei and the book he was pledged to protect. Now that book has been stolen and Jubei must retrieve it before Japan descends into bloody civil war. (Source: Anime News Network)
Exiled from Japan during the Boshin War in 1868 as the new Meiji government took hold, two defeated samurai, Hikosaburô and Manzô, eventually settle in Crow territory in North America. One day out hunting, Hikosaburô encounters a young native female who has just given birth hidden in the scrub. Called Running Deer, she tells of how she escaped from white traders who had ‘bought’ her. They soon come looking for their possession! Saved from the murderous deceit of the traders by the chief of the Oglalas, Crazy Horse, they soon form a profound friendship and respect for each other’s cultures to the extent of Hikosaburô and Manzô being renamed ‘Sky Hawk’ and ‘Winds Wolf’ and fighting alongside their new brothers in their struggle against the invaders. Taniguchi gives an accurate portrayal of the Indian Wars of the period culminating in the infamous Little Bighorn encounter. (Source: Ponent Mon)
Manga doesn't get much more noir than this. Benkei is just another expatriate Japanese arist living in the Big Apple. Or so it appears. As there "diabolical hard-boiled stories" show, surfaces aren't always what they seem. Flashbacks delve into sordid, secret past lives, and old scored, long festering, emerge without warning, asking to be settled. And Benkei's secret? Maybe it's just that he's the only artist in town who isn't having fantasies of being a hitman-for-hire. He is one.
The Meiji Era (1868-1912) was probably the most defining period in Japanese history. It was a time of massive change from the more traditional; Tokugawa era to a positioning of Japan in the modern world. Contemporary writer, Soseki Natsume, suffered due to all the social and cultural changes and expressed his feelings through his character Botchan, a classic in the vein of Mark Twain or Charles Dickens. This massive work over 10 volumes could, in other hands, have been but an informed text book. However, the solid script by Sekigawa explores the period through an adult story whilst the art by Taniguchi portrays the material with exquisite and elegant detail. (Source: Ponent Mon)
Slowly but surely he takes a promenade through Edo. “Furari” could be translated as ‘aimlessly’, ‘at random’, ‘bend with the wind’ or ‘go with the flow’. But our stroller this time leaves nothing to chance. Jiro Taniguchi returns with this delightful and insightful tale of life in a Japan long forgotten. Inspired by an historical figure, Tadataka Ino (1745 – 1818), Taniguchi invites us to join this unnamed but appealing and picturesque figure as he strolls through the various districts of Edo, the ancient Tokyo, with its thousand little pleasures. Now retired from business he surveys, measures, draws and takes notes whilst giving free rein to his taste for simple poetry and his inexhaustible capacity for wonder. As he did in The times of Botchan with lead character the writer Soseki, Taniguchi slips easily into the heart and mind of this early cartographer and reveals his world to us in full graphic detail so we may fully perceive and understand. (Source: Ponent Mon)
It is set in an alternate history in 1853 with new characters. Britannia's Black Ships appear in the harbor of Uraga. Some years later, Lelouch Lamperouge — brother to a young blind girl named Nunnally — is the commander of the military counterinsurgence brigade known as the Shinsengumi, formed under the orders of the Shogunate to fight the Black Revolutionaries, a rebel group led by a mysterious masked individual known as Rei. In fact, these two organizations are one and the same, and they seek to combat in influences of Britannia. Geass is the ability to call upon and summon the armored entities referred to as Knightmares; Lancelot is one such Knightmare. (Source: Wikipedia)
Short stories by Jiro Taniguchi. Five short stories. The first one tells the death of an old dog, hence the title. The last one is a bit similar to a later work of the author, Kamigami no Itadaki.
Summer. Around Tokyo. A terrible accident between a motorcyclist and a van. Ten days later, the van's driver, Kazuhiro Kubota, 42 years old, dies. At the same moment, though, the motorcyclist, Takuya Onodera, 17 years old, begins showing signs of life. In just a few days, he regained consciousness: a true miracle. However, the one which awakens in Takuya's body is Kazuhiro. After a moment of surprise, he understands that a second chance was granted to him: he was allowed to borrow Takuya's body to do what he had to do before his death, i.e. tell his wife and his 8 years old daughter that he deeply loved them and that he regrets that his job couldn't allow him to spend much time with them. Who will believe, however, that he is but Kazuhiro Kubota in another body ?
