Ginga Doujinshi x2

Let's take a closer look at the two Ginga doujinshi I bought in Japan. I'm aware that it is frowned upon to make scanlations of fan mangas and that's why I'm only showing a few pictures that showcases the drawing style and humor of these comics respectively (I hope).

I can't read Japanese, so I'm completely clueless to what is actually being said in these comics. I just like to look at the drawings.

Let's take a look at the black and white covered first. I fell in love with the cover the minute I saw it. It's so cute! I paid 1650 yen for it, which is about 13€. It was printed in 2001 and is 42 pages long. According to the (un)reliable Google Translate app I have on my phone, the name of this comic is "ice attack"  or "dance of water" was also briefly suggested. I'm inclined to believe that "ice attack" is the correct one. I checked the old fashioned way, from my Finnish-Japanese dictionary and the first kanji is definitely the one for "ice", and you know, there are snowflakes on the cover too, which just confirms it.

When I saw the cover, my mind immediately jumped to this moment in the official manga (Vol 10.)

Ben's and Cross' puppies are born and as Chibi/Tesshin is watching the newborns nurse, he starts to crave milk, but Akame tells him not to drink, he will teach Chibi how to hunt instead. And the two leave the pack briefly.

So based on the cover I assumed this was going to be a story about Akame teaching Chibi to hunt or other life lessons. I shouldn’t have made assumptions like that, because of course I was wrong! 

The majority of it takes place in the Ginga Densetsu Weed era. There doesn’t seem to be an overarching story here, just a selection of self contained mini stories, a few gag comics, some text heavy pages with illustrations and then some text heavy comics where the author’s self insert character is talking about the Ginga series (I’m guessing).

I have absolutely no idea what the text heavy pages or the “author’s comment” comics are about,so I don’t have much to say about them, because 99% of it is unfortunately lost on me. But every page has at least one Ginga character present in the illustrations, which is why I’m deducting they are either discussing the character or events related to the character. Or just generally fangirling over the character in question.

Out of the 42 pages, only 19 pages of the comics are without the author insert character. 

The first few pages are about Hougen. Next is eight pages about Ken and Jerome. A single page of Kurotora and his nephews. A single page about Tesshin. A single page with Kurojaki and Wilson. Lastly, five pages of Tesshin.

With the exception of the Ken & Jerome story and the last Tesshin story,  which are serious/somber in tone, the rest are humorous in nature, or I interpreted them as so.

I like the art here. The characters are all recognizable. The art has a bit of sketchy feel to it, but consistent, which I like. It helps the characters pop out by making the pages look less sterile, because the backgrounds are used to the very minimum.

I guess my personal favorite page would be the one about Kurotora and his nephews. I always found it frustrating that Takahashi never gave a proper answer to what exactly happened to Chutora in the original manga. I never knew before this that I wanted to see more of Kurotora raising his nephews.

"St. Helena Ginga Special"

Printed in 2006, 98 pages long divided into five chapters.Cost 4950 yen, about 38€

I’m glad this comic had such a bold red cover that caught my eye, I might have missed it otherwise when I walked by the glass cabinet it was in.

This is all humor as far as I can tell. No overarching story, just various scenarios of different lengths. Some are only one page long and others four pages.

About the art inside. The characters are really expressive and recognizable (except the Iga dogs in some panels). I’m having a real hard time figuring out if this comic is done by one or more persons. The art is really inconsistent, which would hint that maybe multiple people worked on it. Then again, the art style doesn’t differentiate enough from chapter to chapter that I would find it hard to believe for one person to have done it. Then again (again) if everybody is doing their best impression of the same art style, it’s natural there would be only minor differences if everybody has the same level of skills. I have to call it inconclusive, I can’t figure this out.

Anyway, here and there are some inconsistencies in how the faces are drawn, but the worst offenders are how the dog’s bodies contort. I don’t mean the way they do sometimes for comedic effect. Sometimes they just are really blocky and stiff while other times they are completely fine, as far as I expect from a dog drawn in Takahashi’s style. It doesn’t take away from the humor, but sometimes the inconsistencies were a bit distracting.

This was pure comic from start to finish, no walls of text. There was a short author’s comment at the beginning of each chapter. I bet those would have clued me in (about this being one person's project or not), if I knew how to read Japanese.

Also, this was also pure Ginga Nagareboshi Gin, no characters from the sequel. What really surprised me was the appearance of a few of the wolf characters from the infamous GNG wolf-saga, which usually get completely forgotten.

It would be unfair to try picking a favorite out of these two, they both have their pros and cons. I’m happy that I found them and now can have them as a part of my Ginga collection. <3