Manga: Reviews of Vérité #1 and Cutie Honey: The Classic Collection

The Comics Alternative

Time Codes:

• 00:00:28 - Introduction
• 00:02:35 - September in October
• 00:04:17 - Vérité #1
• 00:49:17 - Cutie Honey: The Classic Collection
• 01:23:32 - Wrap up
• 01:24:34 - Contact us

Shea and Derek are back for their September manga episode. (Yeah, yeah. We know it's the beginning of October, but the guys were a little late getting last month's show recorded.) This time they discuss two intriguing titles, each quite different one from the other. They begin with the inaugural issue of Vérité, a new anthology series out of India featuring classic alternative manga as well as contributions from contemporary Indian artists that have a gekiga feel to them. The guys were glad to see work from Tadao Tsuge, Susumu Katsumata, and Youji Tsuneyama, but they were also taken by fresh Indian voices such as those of Anpu Varkey, Shaunak Samvatsar, Nandita Basu, and Bharath Murthy, Vérité's editor. After that, Shea and Derek discuss Cutie Honey: The Classic Collection, by Go Nagai. This is another one of Seven Seas Entertainment's nice hardbound collections of classic 1970s manga, other titles including Captain Harlockand Devilman. The guys emphasize Cutie Honeyas a representative kind of shonen manga for its time, but they spend most of the time discussing the, at times discomforting, sexual or erotic nature of Go Nagai's creation. What was written for a particular audience back in the 1970s may come across as gratuitous or even offensive to more contemporary readers. But both Derek and Shea point out that, despite the erotic weirdness apparent at times, the story is engaging and worth revisiting.