Quotes November 2012, part 2

Connie on Swallowing the Earth: "I may be one of the few people that appreciated that work for the absurd and supremely sublime crazy it pumped out, so I was thrilled to get another taste."

est em on influences to her art: "I think that’s an effect of having watched Western films since forever. People who read a lot of manga draw manga-like manga, people who read novels, I think they probably draw things that have a lot of monologues or dialogue. My biggest influence is the Western films I’ve been going to see since junior high school, mostly American films, but also French films, Italian films, Russian films."

Katherine Dacey on Barabara: "Like most of Osamu Tezuka’s mature fiction of the 1970s, it’s equally fascinating and infuriating, with passages of sublime beauty and passages of sheer, WTF?! ridiculousness."

Sean Gaffney on titles beloved by bloggers: "They also have a new Case Closed and the penultimate volume (did I really use penultimate twice in one post?) of Kekkaishi, which is beloved by bloggers (and hence has mediocre sales, the usual fate of titles beloved by bloggers)."

Jason Thompson on Flowers & Bees: "In Moyoco Anno's manga, you don't wish that you were the main character; you thank God that you're not the main character.. . .  This is a very unique love-com manga, but there is one way that Komatsu is like other love-com manga protagonists: he's such a dork that almost any reader will be grateful they're not like him."

Ben Applegate on Barbara: "(Tezuka himself would never condone violence and misogynism of the kind depicted in the book, and simply because it's in there doesn't imply any kind of moral judgment one way or the other.)"