Having dumped Shojo Beat just days previous, manga publisher VIZ has launched a really cool, online, English language version of IKKI magazine, with the intention of publishing new chapters of certain manga every month, for free! This is a really cool thing because IKKI makes a point of serialising ground-breaking, challenging seinen manga series, not least of all Mohiro Kitoh’s disturbing sci-fi Bokurano.
The first edition of this English IKKI begins with the first chapter of Children of the Sea, as well as an interview with mangaka Daisuke Igarashi (check-out his work-space). Having caught glimpse of its oddly mesmerising cover-art a few months back, I’ve long been intending to read this series, so now’s as good a time as any to give it a shot. Much of IKKI’s output is subversive in the sense that, despite featuring serene backgrounds and innocent-seeming characters, a grotesque, hairy violence lurks just beneath the surface; ready to disgust the morally sound at any given moment.
A full list of IKKI’s Japanese serialisations can be found on Wikipedia. I’d absolutely love to see them publish something by Taiyo Matsumoto, but regardless, I can’t wait to see how this develops in the future.