Velveteen & Mandala

It happens again. I think that I’ve already read enough of Jiro Matsumoto and I am completely desensitized, then I pick something by him up and it gets to me. Damn you, Jiro Matsumoto, I am disturbed and impressed again! Surprisingly, what you see here is one of his deeper manga, one, which is especially interesting in the context of his other works. And I wouldn’t recommend it as an entry point for those unfamiliar. I didn’t want to bother with this text, and I hate to be the person who argues with the way others read, but the reviews here bug me a bit. I’veseen the same complaints about Freesia, and yet again I don’t understand some of them. The first being that the manga lacks plot, the second is the lack of social commentary. While I agree that many plotlines here stay unresolved (namely the plotlines of individual characters remain tangles of hints and suppressed memories until and past the end), the main progression is pretty clear and is, more importantly, explained by the characters themselves. What we see here is sort of a shift change in the local purgatory – the place where the dead transition to the otherworld. Perhaps the main storyline can even be considered simple, though it is loaded with psychological complications, non-linear episodes and surreal trips. And Becchin and Mandara is not centered about social stuff, nor did it ever intend to be, from what I see, although it does contain some jabs on current society. Yeah, there is war, but a background war is present in most of Jiro Matsumoto’s works. Nor only do the events take place in the crossing place and some of the characters cross lines, it seems to me that this manga is sort of transitory for the mangaka too – a brief feverish return to Freesia and the subsequent shift to the warring shoolgirls period simultaneously. After all we see a character, that looks and acts like Hiroshi Kano (the protagonist of Freesia, who, here, talks about the author directly as if he had an experience of playing his part before), passing the relay baton to the mad schoolgirl Becchin. I wonder, if Jiro Matsumoto’s worlds altogether moved closer to hell after this, since the warring schoolgirls settings (in Houkago no Hiroko, Zenryou naru Itan no Machi, Joshi Kouhei) are so inhuman and bloody, and he is working on “Alice in Hell”… For some reason I find Bacchin to Mandara heart-wrenchingly sad. Oh, and btw, the 4th wall is broken a lot in this series – it’s filled to the brim with references to anime culture, mainly Gundam and Ghibly. I don’t think I overanalyze it. When reading, mind it (if you don’t already) that Jiro Matsumoto’s manga tends to be built like a good literary work – besides the layer of the characters’ actions there’re motifs, composition, imagery that add an additional level. What character do isn’t necessary the very point of the work they inhabit. Things that seem random at first return and play important parts. But, yeah, sometimes its’ not easy to keep track, and not everything is connected in the end, unfortunately. Personally I felt a sense of conclusion, even though I couldn't understand everything. The art is the usual gritty, graphical and overdetailed mess. The characteristic pitch-black humor is there. The gore is overabundant – if somebody isn’t raped, then somebody is killed or people talk nuts, usually all of this happens at once. Though in the end I ponder not why I read a manga with a schoolgirl shitting and retching at once, but the ecology of death. It was interesting to have a glimpse in Jiro Matsumoto’s cosmology too, he doesn’t focus on it often. It’s a fine read for anyone familiar or ready for Jiro Matsumoto’s storytelling (forgive me for mentioning his name so many times, but it’s all so typical), but it may take effort to parse. If you fit these criteria, don’t be discouraged by the low rating. It’s rough but impactful.

Becchin to Mandara is a story about two girls living in an abandoned battle tank at a dry Riverbed that spend their days exterminating zombies along-side a pantless man that lives in a small house nearby. There isn't much to it other than that, though Becchin to Mandara does the whole zombie thing quite differently from what people are used to seeing, zombies actually talk and think, almost as normally, to the story's standards, as any other character there, so much so that it often feels like they are just slaughtering humans rather than zombies. Other than killing zombies, the story focuses on the maincharacters state of mind, their relationship, and how they met. Story: 5/10 Unfortunately, the manga is a bit confusing, you'll often wonder what the characters are talking about since there are various sudden changes of subject, and most of the main points of the story are badly covered, with little to no backstory to help understand how stuff turned out how it is, stuff such as the origin of the zombies, the strange skull kids, the pantless man, and other supposedly important aspects, they are all left almost unspoken of, almost assuming the reader already knows what and how everything is. It doesn't help that the dialog is often confusing or sometimes completely unnecessary, which makes it quite tedious to read through. You'll also find some somewhat disturbing scenes in later chapters, such as characters "taking a dumb" outdoors, the pantless mans penis, and a zombie raping scene, each of these quite explicitly illustrated, so be careful if you dislike that kind of thing, and to be honest, they don't really add anything to the manga, they seem added just for the sake of shock. Characters: 3/10 There aren't much characters in Becchin to Mandara, you could say there are only three of them in total, and each character has a far-from-believable personality, Becchin may seem inhuman at times and Mandara is just plain stupid at times. Another aspect in their personalities are that none are very well established, Becchin is as often nice as she is incredibly mean, and Mandara is also as often stupid as she is not-as stupid. Art: 4/10 The artwork has a very sketchy look to it, at first you may enjoy it if you're into sketchy looks, but it'll quickly wear-off on you and you'll realize it's just actually poorly drawn. The artwork is very inconsistent though, at times the backgrounds don't look too bad, and in others they look extremely cluttered and poorly drawn. The characters faces look very awkward more times than not, though they're not extremely bad. Enjoyment: 3/10 Becchin to Mandara ends up being a quite tedious read and you might have to force yourself to read through the whole thing. That added with the subpar artwork, really leaves little to get out of reading it. Overall: 4/10

Velveteen & Mandala is absolutely messed up to it's core but in the right way. It feels like a B Grade Japanese Psychological Experimental film more than a conventional seinen manga. The art is a bit hazy and the manga has a tendency of using weird angles to focus on the characters. This adds to the whole vibe of how the main characters are messed up in the head due to their upbringing in this dystopian Tokyo that is midst of a war. The story centers around two highschool girls, Velveteen and Mandala who lives inside a tank on the riverside just outside the city.They are tasked by a certain powerful group to exterminate Zombie like creatures that are being dropped by huge airplanes on the riverside where they live. The main two characters aren't friends, they are not really enemies either. For the most part Velveteen loves to hate Mandala but they seem to always fall back to this weird state where they keep on working and living together. This manga isn't for everyone. I mean it's filled with every messed up shenanigans you can think of. I mean this manga has gore, profanity, necrophilia, attempted gangrape?.....I don't know what you can call that. so you get that you need a strong stomach to digest these. This manga is laced with quirky and sharp dark humor with inappropriate but chuckle generating comments on our lifestyle and the downward spiral of humanity under such conditions of dystopia. This manga is pretty pretentious and for the most part the themes are all over the place when put into a context of a complete story but it's the type of pretentiousness that actually helps the manga to standout. One of the things that I genuinely love about this manga is how brilliantly this manga can change it's tone from inappropriate jokes to such messed up reality with sharp turns that makes you go like that's quite funny to Fu** that's messed up! It's not a manga that's perfect and a lot of it is up for interpretation so definitely people will have different opinions. If someone comes out and says that it's a pretentious gibberish dumpster fire, I won't really complain. It's upto the individual reader to decide what they take from this manga. I myself absolutely loved the entire thing despite it's shortcoming and although the themes individually can be very intriguing, they start falling apart when placed under a larger picture. Reading the manga made me feel the same feelings as I did when I had first watched Eraserhead and it's a damn good feeling atleast for me. It's only one volume that's just 14 chapters so maybe give it a shot.

I love a story that will make me think. I love to question reality, even the reality of a fictional universe. If I need to watch or read something several times to understand it, then it is almost a guarantee that it will go in my closet full of wonderfully strange and complicated things. Velveteen & Mandala is not such a thing. It had the potential to be, but the presentation or lack of information and sheer intense strangeness of the story muddles this up. The art is different, to say the least. It is very sketchy, while remaining quite detailed. I think this adds tothe story considerably, almost speaking to state of the title character’s minds. This being said, I am not familiar with Jiro Matsumoto’s work, and as such don’t know if this is intentional or a fluke. I was able to see the emotions on every character’s face quite plainly, though, from the variety of annoyances that cross Velveteen to the sheer emptiness of Mandala’s head, everything is quite clear. The book itself does not know what it wants to be. It jumps from a cute black comedy focusing on the relationship between two mentally disturbed girls to disgusting rape/scat porn with the change of a chapter. This is interesting when handled well, but this was not handled well. Everything seems to come together in the end, but is too scattered in the beginning for that to really matter. I believe that Matsumoto had a concept in mind and just did not know where to start or how to get his points across. Velveteen & Mandala is not nearly everything it could be. I was thoroughly intrigued by the world the characters lived in, but I feel as though it required a considerably larger amount of thought and story before it would have been able to reach its full potential. For more of my reviews, go to tuesdaysdusk.tumblr.com/tagged/review