Wanted: Cheap Manga

New chapter of DKP! Gorbachev is the main character, lovingly referred to as Gorbie. This chapter is about the concept of Glasnost, which if anyone else went through the American school system, you’re probably as ignorant as I am. Check out this Wikipedia article to get some background (not that it really matters. Kago makes Glasnost a super power).

Download Chapter 4 here!

This week’s manga is from Ebisu Yoshikazu, one weird dude. Most known for his surreal, salaryman comics, he also regularly appears on variety shows on TV. He first appeared in English in Comics Underground Japan. Later he was featured on the cover of Frederick Schodt’s Dreamland Japan, which also contained an article about his career.

‘Salaryman from Hell’ is the first in a collection of Ebisu’s stories entitled “The Man Who Saw Hell.” It’s about the day in the life of a normal Japanese salaryman. For the uninitiated, salarymen are an iconic figure in modern Japan, taking the role of everyman. Ebisu uses this generic salaryman figure in most of his stories.

Recently, it looks like people are looking at Ebisu again. I noticed on Gary Panter’s blog that he’s been reading Ebisu. Also, in unbelievably good news, it looks like Picturebox is going to be publishing something by him (the word by Same Hat!).

I also found a crazy video game that Ebisu made (?). Of all things, it’s a jet ski racing game. Click the cover below for some small pics of the game.

Anyways, enjoy the sweating, the uneasiness, and the mahjong (note: I don’t know shit about mahjong. I just made up stuff for that part. Anybody knows what was going on, feel free to comment!)

Download Salaryman from Hell here!!

Stalin is the hero in our newest installment. Not yet endowed with supernatural purging powers, Stalin shows off his bad-ass martial arts skills in protecting the values of communist farming! Totally NSFW, and maybe the most extreme chapter yet.

Download Chapter 3 here.

Anonymous K and I are still keeping up on this 1 chapter/week schedule, but in another month, there might be a slow down. School just started back up, so there’ll be less time for me to search Wikipedia to figure out what a pirogie is. Speaking of which, I’ve learned more about Russia while translating this manga than I ever did in history class. Even though most of the content is satirical, usually the theme that it’s based on is historical.

On a side note, I youtubed it, looking for some crazy vidz of Shintaro Kago right before writing this post. The only thing I came up with was the interview with him in Amsterdam that Same Hat already posted, and trailers of a video game. The game is called Mondo Agency, and its totally sweet. One of the keywords is Shintaro Kago, and the vid poster mentioned that the reason he used his name as a keyword was to attract interesting people. I played the game, and it’s really amazing. Check the video below and follow this link to go download the game and others (all the games are amazing).

The most recent chapter of DKP finds our multi-cultural Kago taking on the theme of Russian expansion. Of course, he takes it to the most logical conclusion, weird pump sex, JoJo-like stand summonings, Russian-Japanese aggression, and lots of bloated corpses. A very satisfying chapter with a little something for everyone (except for your boss. Yes, this is NSFW again. I know, right?).

Download chapter 2 here.

I finally found it! One of my earliest attempts at scanlating was Nature Boy Zoo-Ichi, a weird and wonderful manga. The editing, translating, everything is pretty low grade, but it almost fits the manga in some weird way. Anyway, here’s the rundown: a high school kid who’s a total loser throws up a lot. That’s about it. 25% of the manga is Juichi (the title is a pun on his name) throwing up or sneezing in full page spreads. It’s total madness. The manga started in 2001 in Shonen Champion, and lasted 9 volumes. I’ve only translated the 1st chapter so far, but hopefully I’ll do some more later this year. Enjoy!!

Download first chapter here.

Man Gatarou is best known in the USA for the movie Battlefield Baseball, which was based on his manga. His style is drawn from the heta-uma style made famous by King Terry, Hanakuma U-saku, and the Garo crew. Man Gatarou has his own style, though, which involves filling up the entire page with nervous lines. His art style is instantly recognizable and always insane. Here are some representational videos of the state of mind you have to be in to get his humor:

Pierre Taki is a fairly popular renaissance man. He acts in movies and TV shows, he writes books and manga, he makes music, and he even produces video games. You may have heard of his band, Denki Groove, who are big in Japan as a techno-pop band. Also, he produced a totally crazy game for the PSP called Baito Hell 2000 (released in the USA as WTF: Work Time Fun), which consists of tons of mini-games that resemble work more than games. My first impression of the game was, “this is retarded.” Here’s a music video he made, slightly in the “Zoo-ichi” theme:

Anyways, hope this doesn’t mess up your day too much!!!

Now we get into the meat of the story. In this first chapter, Kago takes the idea of Russian Roulette to its obvious conclusion. Everything in Russia works by the rules or Russian Roulette! Makes sense, doesn’t it?

This chapter is relatively safe from sex and gore, so if there is one comic from Kago that you wanted to show your Mom, this would be it. Enjoy!

Download Chapter 1 here.

Shintaro Kago is all the rage recently. The cover and feature article of Vice Magazine, a high-profile art show in Amsterdam… and a new scanlation on the internet!!!

But seriously, Kago deserves it all. Here’s the prologue of Dance! Kremlin Palace!, a very surreal, episodic manga about Russia. This entire manga is very NSFW, so beware. It contains nudity, violence, and bad taste. Read at your own risk.

This is not entirely a Cheap Manga production, but a collaboration. Anonymous K, who is responsible for a slew of other Kago scanlations hosted at Same Hat! Same Hat!, did the amazing editing for these volumes. Somehow he was able to fit my awkwardly worded sentences into really skinny word balloons. The scans came from another bloke, Caterpillar, who got these pages looking squeaky clean.

I’ll try to post one chapter a week, and see how it goes like that. Enjoy!! And also, thanks for all the comments. It’s nice to know someone’s reading. Keep it coming!!

Download the prologue here.

A quick short, as promised, zombie oldie wraps up some favorite genres of mine into one sweet package: Romance, nanpa, heroes, and zombies!! By the prolific Karasawa Nawoki, Zombie Oldie was collected in the volume, Jalapeno, published by Aspect Comix in 1996. Mangascreener recently scanlated another volume of his work here.

And now without further ado, here’s Zombie Oldie!!

The madness crescendos in this final chapter. Hope everyone enjoyed the insanity.

Human Clock is finished, Hurray!! It’s so nice to have finally finished a complete series. Next will be some comedic shorts!!! A few one shots to break it up for me. Thanks for your support everybody!!

Chapter 5 can be dled here.

Chapter four, enter more weirdness. Crazy dream sequences melding into real life. What is going on?! I don’t know either!!

Enjoy the chapter, we have one more left and the crazy journey of “Human Clock” will be over. Next up we have another chapter of Panda Love, and a few interim humor pieces from Karasawa Nawoki and Ebisu Yoshikazu (don’t worry, these are weird too). Then we will embark on another fucked-up mind trip from the sixties in the form of “The Parasite” by Saburo Tsuyuki. More on all of this later!

Download Chapter 4 here.