Manga Monday: Seraphim 266613336 Wings

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Manga Monday: Seraphim 266613336 Wings

02/23/2015 4:12pm

You’ve given Satoshi Kon’s OPUS a great reception, and we’re happy to see people becoming more aware of the late director’s earlier career as a manga artist. Out this week is our second manga by Satoshi Kon: Seraphim 266613336 Wings. This book is doubly special because it is a collaboration between Kon and Ghost in the Shell’s Mamoru Oshii; I can’t think of a comparative example where two such talented film directors worked together on a manga.

I’d like to take a moment to thank once again the translator of both OPUS and Seraphim, Zack Davisson. We were very fortunate to have his involvement on both these books, and I hope you’ll also look forward to his work in The Art of Satoshi Kon, coming from Dark Horse in August. Zack, by the way, has also translated works of one of the great surviving elders of manga, Shigeru Mizuki. We all know the great American comics artists who were veterans of WWII, such as Jack Kirby and Charles Schulz; Mizuki is one of the few surviving manga artists of that generation (in fact, he was born in 1922, the same year as Schulz). Mizuki’s manga series Showa: A History of Japan seeks an honest examination of Japan’s imperial era and its aftermath, drawn by one who was there (and one who was expected to carry out its orders). Mizuki is perhaps best known in Japan for his weird and spooky, yet funny and endearing horror manga that brought Japan’s old supernatural traditions alive again for generations of manga readers. Zack, an expert in Japanese folklore (his book Yurei: The Japanese Ghost is coming out this April) was just the right person to translate!

Seraphim 266613336 Wings contains two extensive afterwords, one from the editor of the original Japanese edition, and one from the editor of the English edition. With Seraphim, we wanted to go beyond simply releasing the manga itself, but also offer readers the story and context behind the manga—where it stood in Kon and Oshii’s careers, how the particular magazine from which Seraphim emerged helped shape the story (most manga on the North American market were originally serialized in a Japanese manga magazine, but Seraphim is an exception), and what the complex historical background is behind Seraphim’s story—which despite being a postapocalyptic tale is very much haunted by events in the real past. In that regard (and in its ominous Gaian overtones) I might compare Seraphim to American graphic novels like The Massive.

Satoshi Kon is the artist and co-author of Seraphim, but if you are a Mamoru Oshii fan, you’ll find that Seraphim not only deals with many of the classic Oshii film themes (he wrote Seraphim at the same time he was making Ghost in the Shell) but gets into a cultural background that hasn’t been seen before in his movies. In other words, Seraphim 266613336 Wings is new territory for both the Kon and the Oshii fan, and we hope you’ll enjoy discovering it.

—Carl Horn

Manga Editor

Dark Horse Comics

Manga Monday: Seraphim 266613336 Wings

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Manga Monday: Seraphim 266613336 Wings

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