A fun little tribute to the wives who ensured their husbands' legacies.

Hanger was a holiday impulse buy. While I don’t usually go for police stories, I was excited to find a BL manga that didn’t have a school setting. What I found is a new comfort read!!! This review covers Volumes 1 to 4.

Hanger by Kisaragi Hirotaka-san is a science fiction, buddy cop-but-it’s-actually-gay tale set 100 years from now. After a pandemic decimated the global population, Japan’s medical research turned to nano-machines to boost everyone’s immune systems. Adding nano-machines to the bloodstream worked incredibly well, and there’s a new age of health for the pandemic survivors. People can heal from previously lethal injuries and illnesses, and modify their bodies how they want. Nano-machines can work miracles–but there’s nothing more heavy than a miracle. People can become addicted to nano-machines and the body modifications. If you’ve played Bioshock, basically splicers exist. People can become desperate for the next nano-machine-induced “high,” and quickly find themselves on the wrong side of the law. A special police force, Squad 4, acts as bounty hunters to bring sufferers in for trial, detox, and rehab. “Hangers” are splicers who have agreed to (a) manage their addiction and (b) help catch the domestic terrorists in return for a reduced sentence. Each Hanger is paired with a “Keeper,” who is their handler and mobile jail warden. This world-building is explained in the first pages, so it’s not a spoiler. Plus, it’s all backdrop for the love story of rookie Keeper Tsukumo Hajime and amnesiac Hanger Zeroichi.

The absolute worst thing about Hanger is that the story is unfinished. Volumes 1 to 3 were published from 2015 to 2019, and Volume 4 surprised everyone with its publication in March 2024. Kisaragi-san has long moved on to other projects, but us English-speakers still don’t know Zeroichi and Hajime’s happy ending. My other quibbles are very small against my delight with the book. The plot and science are secondary to the characters, and only the most careful of readings can attempt to fill the holes. Obviously, I wasn’t in the room with Gentosha Comics or TokyoPop, but it seems like Kisaragi-san was told to construct a much smaller story and then encouraged to make the story longer.

But I don’t care! What’s more important is a giant of man falling to his knees after a single kind touch from another human. Zeroichi has the skin hunger, and under a steady rain of kindness, his character flowers in the most rewarding way. Tsukumo is earnest, hard-working, and the least traumatized of the cast. He treats his new colleagues like people with emotions and needs. This respectful treatment blows the other Hangers and Keepers’ minds. No one has been nice to them, ever. They’re not even nice to themselves. Tsukumo doesn’t have all the answers, but always tries his best. At the start of the series, his ideas about addiction are regressive and dehumanizing, but as he learns and loves Zeroichi, his ideas transform too. Through Tsukumo, Kisaragi-san digs into discrimination against people with addiction and the total failure of the criminalization approach. That’s the good shit! Other Hanger-Keeper pairs are given lots of page time as well. On paper, characters like lusty bisexual Hashima and self-harming trans woman Byakuran veer into harmful stereotypes. I kept on reading though, and was rewarded with development and complication. 

What keeps me returning to this series, the constant source of serotonin, is how these super tough, buff people are given space to be so tender. Kisaragi-san’s characters and clothes are thick lines and angles, with sharp, even harsh, color contrasts. Then the panels show soft domesticity, like morning coffee, bed sharing, and kisses. I burn, I die; I perish.

I don’t normally get my hair this frazzled over science fiction. Despite its flaws, the story is plain good. The characters are especially compelling. Another part is the genre. A lot of the BL and GL I’ve read lately are set in high school or university, and the lovers don’t get together until the very end. In Hanger, they are all working adults. They kiss and get together pretty quickly, and the rewards stack up from there. If you can get your hands on a copy, give Hanger a spin. 

The Whole of Humanity Has Gone Yuri Except For Me was a total impulse purchase at the bookstore. The silly, descriptive title, the promised sapphic characters, and the sci-fi premise captivated me.

Uruuno Marika is determined to be a normal girl and live a normal life, with a job, husband, and kids. Accidentally traveling to an alternate, all-woman universe puts a serious wrench in her plans!

The short, sweet premise hides some surprisingly serious grappling with the global loss of one gender. Marika misses her father, her male friends, and her boyfriend. She’s shocked to see how they’ve been “replaced” in the alternate world, and she’s no substitute for the original Marika. Thanks to parthenogensis, humanity’s isn’t doomed, so the manga never gets too dark, but I was surprised and pleased. While the characters are high schoolers, the narrative quickly veers off from typical slice-of-life fare. Top that off with a soft, round art style, sci-fi shenanigans, a slow-burn romance, a discussion of normality/queerness, and I’m a very happy reader. The Whole of Humanity Has Gone Yuri Except For Me is a refreshing, complex story that I definitely recommend. 

Whoo boy, this sure is a manga. 

After blowing out everyone’s tear ducts with Devilman, Go Nagai-san began Violence Jack. Formatted into clear, sectioned-off plot arcs, the story is credited with kickstarting the post-apocalyptic genre. Before Mad Max, before those millions of movies like it, Nagai-san wrote about a lone man wandering a desert wasteland, dodging biker gangs and (sometimes) saving more honest folks. Our indifferent hero is Violence Jack, who is built like a brick shithouse and named himself after his jacknife. After a huge earthquake flattens and splits off the Kanto region, the Japanese government swears off the place, letting any survivors fend for themselves. Self-styled warlords form gangs, fight over Kanto’s remaining resources, carve up territory, and commit whatever atrocities they want. The worst of the warlords is the Slum King. In each plot section, Jack trundles upon a new kerfuffle, and people ask him for help. As the manga goes on, Jack and the King seem destined for a conflagration of a confrontation.

While usually I review manga after I’ve read the entire series, I have little idea of when I’ll be able to read the remainder of Violence Jack. This manga is so incredibly violent that very, very few licensing agreements have been successful, despite the historical significance of the work. I read as much as I could find. Thank you, fan translators, for your hard work!

Since I read Devilman Lady, the other sequel to Devilman, right before Violence Jack, I compared the two a lot. While Devilman Lady struggled with plot and character cohesion, Violence Jack is very clear about these storytelling elements. On each page I knew who is who, what they’re doing, and why. Each arc has a beginning, middle, and end. I understood why Nagai-san returned to this universe multiple times over decades. There’s a great sense of adventure and villainous drama, with no limit or horizon. The setting and its aesthetics have a big, heavy presence, and I had no doubts as to why they’re the manga’s legacy.

However, I struggled to figure out what the fuck it all meant. The violence, the destruction, and cruelty is so over the top that it seemed to lose purpose. What thematic messaging does this 100th panel of rape convey, that the other 99 didn’t? Nagai-san seems to delight in the brutality depicted on page, to the point it’s brutality for brutality’s sake. If pressed, I could conclude that Violence Jack comments that survival at any cost, is not a survival worth having. Sticking to your principles is a heroic act, especially at the end of the world. But I’m really stretching here. My own brain got in the way of my enjoyment too.  I kept trying to figure out how Jack and his allies connected back to Devilman and its established metaphysics. This tact only resulted in frustration. The lack of answers isn’t because something especially clever is happening in the background. I wasn’t missing clues. There are no clues. Readers will have to wait until the ending for Nagai-san to explain what’s going on. 

Violence Jack is a Manga with a capital M. My experience is so uneven I struggle to rate it. As a story with great historical importance, I hope one day it’s fully translated for the English-speaking audience. If you have a strong stomach and adore Mad Max, read where it all began.