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The first Italian edition of Ushio and Tora dates back to the final days of Granata Press, so it's been ages. I think I am one of the few who bought it back then. The manga was a bit of a disappointment. It started off well, with macabre self-contained stories, somewhat in “The Ring” style, somewhat like Midori but less extreme.
The drawing style of the artist, Kazuhiro Fujita, from a strictly aesthetic point of view is not particularly beautiful, but it has something interesting. In creating faces and expressions, there is something childlike and unsettling at the same time, quite effective for maintaining a bit of dark tension… if only he didn’t cram every two-by-two page with super deformed humor that ruins everything.
This is what I had in mind to write a couple of things about the manga on DB.
This plus some basic information about the story: the son of a Buddhist monk (Ushio) finds in the temple basement a demon with tiger-like features (hence the name Tora) nailed to a wall by a sacred spear (the beast spear). The arrival of other demons leads Ushio to decide to free Tora, and by wielding the spear, he transforms into a warrior … etc…
A bit scant, in short.
And so on Sunday morning, I went to exhume a dozen booklets that are still rotting in my basement to come up with more things to write about, and a pleasant smell of mold spread through the house.
But my intentions for a pleasant morning dedicated to complete idle time went to hell because I had to endure quite a lecture from my invisible friend, Onofrio Coregoni. For some strange reason, he decided it was time to convince me that he is not the kind of invisible friend… let's say "conventional", one of those you understand is seen by children with particularly vivid imaginations or adults with thoroughly spoiled brains.
This went on for a while. The crux of the argument was that he actually is the ghost of a real person who died after trying the legendary coke and aspirin mix.
The key point of his reasoning was this: “think about it, I don’t know if you’ve noticed but they are the two symbols par excellence of post-war consumerism…” a brief pause and upward and downward head movements with wide-open eyes as if to say "you get it, right? ... you’re seeing the light, aren't you?"
And this, according to him, should have convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was telling the truth and he was not a figment of my imagination.
“Give it a rest, if it were as you say, you wouldn't always be trailing after me, I’m the most boring person in the universe.”
“True. The reason I do it is to muddy the waters... to hide.”
I grabbed the first Ushio and Tora booklet from the stack I had placed on the table and pointed out to him that he and his bullshit could go to hell, and for a while there was silence. As I flipped through the booklet, out of the corner of my eye I saw Onofrio peering through the French door and staring outside. Then he started talking again.
“Do you hear it?”
“What”
“The rustle of the argan grass. Why don't you go for a walk outside instead of reading that crap?”
“There’s the virus, you bastard”
“I remember the time when you were buying those comics. You would read them and complain about how stupid the story of the sleeping monster on whose tails the whole earth rests was. You’d complain and keep buying them. You really went through them all in the end. But you were younger then, now you’re at an age where you should be burning them to make space in the basement, not rereading them…”
How many times had I thought of making a nice bonfire of that and other comics I had bought a bit compulsively from the hall. But I've never been able to burn books and comics.
“I’m waiting for the Fahrenheit 451 firemen…”
“Even then, how could you read that stuff full of super deformed scenes? The dark evil of Japanese comics…”
“I don’t know, despite the scenes you’re talking about, the early issues grabbed me well. Then the story of the monster with tails began and everything definitely went downhill.”
“Wait… I understand. You want to write a couple of bullshit about the manga on that site: 44 thousand and pushing reviews but not a single one on The World Is a Ghetto by War and Going Blank Again by Ride, right?”
“Yeah… but I do it also because Tora reminds me a bit of you…”
“Go to hell. You’re so sure that between the two of us, I’m the invisible friend and not you Miskey? Why don’t we call your better half, or better, the one you believe to be your better half, and see to whom he/she speaks?”
“Forget it, I can’t handle the truth if the test goes badly.”
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