Tanpenshu Volume 2 (v. 2)
The second volume of shorter pieces Endo created before the sf-gangster epic Eden matches the first in quality. Three of its four stories have teen and early-twenties protagonists, and sex is important, if not explicit, in all. In the sf excursion "Hang," Megumi loves Shokichi, who loves her, too, but she's tetchy about her big brother, who exists, after the loss of his body, in an artificial head equipped with recording capabilities; big bro wants the two to make love, but for whose pleasure, exactly? There's dodgier sex in the two-part "Platform," about a younger son's vengeance on his gangster father for exploiting the girl he loves, but it feels essential to the affecting Godfather-ish story's development. Sex remains important in the other two stories, but bodies keep covered in "High School Girl 2000," in which irritating cartoonist "Endo," 29, rants and pants over lost youth, and in "Boys Don't Cry," in which boy and girl classmates, both gay, surprise themselves. Since manga boasts no better realist artist than Endo, every panel is eye candy. Olson, Ray