Serdar | Genji Press

Back at the end of last year a friend of mine bought me Coffin: The Art of Vampire Hunter D, a massive collection of Yoshitaka Amano’s illustrations for Hideyuki Kikuchi’s long-running novel series. I’m not using the word “massive” figuratively here: the book is big enough to cover most of my desk, and could probably stop a .22 when sheathed in its slipcase. Since I’m a massive fan of all three topics — D, Kikuchi and Amano — this was about as perfect a gift as I could ask for. It’s now enshrined in the little permanent collection of artbooks, about three feet to the right of me where I sit typing this.

Yoshitaka Amano: The Collected Art of Vampire Hunter D is probably going to get filed right next to it. It’s not as physically imposing a volume — it’s roughly trade paperback size — but it runs to just south of four hundred pages, and more than makes up in scope what it doesn’t have in dimensions. It’s a gorgeous survey of the remarkable body of artwork that’s been created for this franchise — one which we’re only just now beginning to see here in English-speaking territories. Granted, Amano’s artbooks have been long available before as imports — I had a few of them myself at one point, but stupidly let them go when money got tight; what was I thinking? — but a whole surfeit of them have been showing up as domestic pressings. And now everyone who didn’t haunt bookstores like Kinokuniya or Sasuga can find out what all the screaming has been about.

Comedy’s hard to get right. Science fiction as comedy is no less difficult, either — but when done properly, it’s also a hoot.

The Dirty Pair Strike Again is a mix of pulp SF tropes, slam-bang action, and broad comedy, in about equal proportions. Yes, it’s about as deep as a pie plate and as intellectually nutritious as an afternoon of A-Team reruns, but it’s darn funny, and with me funny goes a long way.

If the name Dirty Pair rings bells, it should. Haruka Takachiho’s novel was the basis for the animated TV series, OVAs, theatrical film, and English-language comic series (courtesy of Studio Proteus). This is actually the second book in the series — I’ll most likely double back to look at the first one — but from what I can tell you scarcely need to have read the first one to get up to speed.

The heroines, Kei and Yuri, may call themselves the “Lovely Angels” after their signature spaceship — but their superiors on the Worlds Welfare Work Association (and their hapless victims, er, clients) have another name for them: the Dirty Pair. If the other troubleshooters on the WWWA’s staff are surgical instruments, these two are a wrecking ball. On their last mission, they torched the bad guys — and the good guys, and everyone else who just happened to be lying around in the vicinity. But hey, omelet, broken eggs, you know the drill.

Japan’s Taishō era, so named for its emperor then, lasted from 1910 to 1925 — a time obsessed with death and downfall. Suicide pacts, madness, and perversity filled the popular culture of the era, as documented in places like Edogawa Rampo’s mystery novels, and real-life disasters like the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 only further hammered home the darkness of the age. The era also sported a distinct and lush visual aesthetic all its own, and modern-day cultural cultivations like Lolita-Goth and visual kei arguably have their roots in the Taishō-era look (and its decadence) as well. It’s one of the most criminally underused periods in manga and anime, if only because it bursts with endless visual tropes and thematic undercurrents that fairly cry out to be put to use.

You now know one of the biggest reasons I was immediately enthralled by Nightmare Inspector: the atmosphere. It’s set in a gorgeously manga-fied Taishō-era Tokyo, where streetcars rattle dismally up and down the steamy avenues, mercury-vapor lamps barely cut through the haze and street signs and movie posters are all written in the same elegantly spidery script. In a rundown, out-of-the-way teahouse, an improbably handsome young man named Hiruko holds court, with only the maidservant as his occasional company. Hiruko is a baku, a “dream-eater” in human form, and those who come to him for aid are plagued by nightmares that only he can dispel. He can do away with the nightmares, but at a cost … and typically that cost is the torment of having to relive the nightmare and discover its true, often soul-jarring meaning.