Mecha Tofu no Fukushuu comments
Saturday, March 25, 2017
(All rights belong to their owners. Images used here for review purposes only.)
Meka Tofu no Fukushuu, by Tori Miki, 2016, Grade: A
The Revenge of the Mecha Tofu.
When I finished reading the manga volume on Plinius, I got to wondering what else Tori Miki had been up to recently. I've reviewed his "Anywhere But Here," "Daihonya" and "Frozen Food Agent" books some years ago, but I hadn't seen anything else from him since then. So, I went to Amazon, which showed a couple recent books, then I went to Junkudo to look at them directly. But, except for Plinius, everything else was sold out. The computer system showed one copy of Meka Tofu on the miscellaneous adult men's shelves, but I couldn't find it there. Then I went to Junkudo's sister shop, Maruzen, a couple blocks away. Their computer also showed only the one copy, but no location code. I asked a salesclerk for help, and she had to call someone else because she had no idea where to look. The second clerk arrived a few minutes later, with the book. It's a bit expensive, at 1080 yen plus tax ($10 USD), but it's a large paperback and has 240 pages, so the price isn't that bad.
(Attack of the giant mecha tofu, against Tokyo. Again.)
Essentially, this is a collection of about 50 short stories and illustrated essays that have appeared in a variety of magazines (COM, TV Bros., SF Magazine, etc.) from 1991 to fairly recently. The book is broken up into the A Side and the B Side. A side is dedicated to gag and SF manga parodying other anime and manga, while B side is SF related. The title story has a villainous teddy bear attempting to destroy Tokyo again, this time inside a giant block of tofu, which is impervious to bullet and missile attacks, but not to being flash-frozen. Most of the stories are jokes, relying heavily on sight gags, slapstick, and Tori's trademark silly characters. Although, there are quite a few more serious essays, where he reminisces on meeting Hideo Azuma (one of his idols), starting out as a manga artist, and on the works of people like science fiction writer Sakyo Komatsu (Japan Sinks, and Bye Bye Jupiter). The essays occasionally use a handwritten font that is really hard to read, so I basically skimmed over those.
(The secret behind the Lake Isshi monster.)
The gag and SF manga are a lot of fun, though. There are representative samples from Anywhere But Here, and a full reprint of the commemorative story for Kuru Kuru Kurin (which I love) that ran for the 50th anniversary of Weekly Shonen Champion magazine. One SF-related tale follows the adventures of the Hayabusa satellite project out to an asteroid and back to Earth. There are two stories tied to the Fukushima reactor melt down in 2011, one which has a variant of Astroboy cleaning up the waste from the meltdown, then being vilified for having a nuclear core as a power source. The second is a more serious story, where there are two parallel worlds following the earthquake and tidal wave that wiped out the northeastern coast. In one, the reactor was halted before the meltdown and release of radioactive gas, and our world is in the other. The story follows two versions of the same character as he lives in both worlds, and accidentally crosses the boundary between them.
(Lupinus Kid, Pursuit to Orion.)
One of the chapters has Tori and some friends visiting mystery sites around Japan, and uncovering the truth behind their secrets. In the above pages, he talks about a volcanic lake in southern Kyuushu, near mount Kaimondake (which I climbed last year), and the sightings of Japan's version of the Loch Ness monster - Isshi. Then, in "Lupinus Kid", we have what starts out as a parody of the Roadrunner and Loony Toons cartoons, with a shootout between the hero, Lupinus Kid, and the villain, Wolf. However, after Wolf goes over the edge of the cliff and apparently dies in an explosion, life takes a turn for the worse for Kid as well. Years later, he returns to the town, and everyone is now drawn as hyper-realistic anthro animals. The artwork is fantastic on this. Eventually, Kid locates Wolf, who survived the explosion, but was horribly mangled and turned crazy, and things return more-or-less to normal.
(The Characters of Sakyo Komatsu.)
In the Sakyo Komatsu section, Tori talks about a magazine Sakyo published that included works from many of Japan's leading manga artists, such as Leiji Matsumoto and Monkey Punch. It's worth buying Revenge of the Mecha Tofu just for the history lesson in this chapter.
Summary: Tori is a great gag artist, and a good SF story teller. The manga in this book represents a lot of his life's work. It is a bit hit-or-miss, especially with some of the essays, but on the whole, it's worth the money. Highly recommended.