Posted on June 3, 2025
edogawa ranpo’s shonen tanteidan/boy detective club book covers
透明怪人 – Invisible Fiend (1951)
怪奇四十面相 –
The Fiend with Forty Faces (1952)
サーカスの怪人 –
Fiend of the Circus (1957)
a whole lotta fiends round these parts…
during the pandemic, I took it upon myself to start reading as many japanese mystery novels as I could get my hands on – I won’t go into any of the details on authors or genre distinctions here (for now!!! another time!) but something I’ve become fascinated with is edogawa ranpo‘s era of juvenile literature. for a guy mainly known (particularly in the west) for his ero guro nonsense genre books, I am obsessed with the chunk of time where he churned out 26+ of these shonen tanteidan (boy detective club) mystery thrillers for middle grade readers. what gives!! why is no one talking about this!!! but more importantly – the covers I’ve found so far are amazing. read more to check em out!!
Read MorePosted on January 11, 2025
I finally finished Xabungle!
it only took me… two years. my stamina for 50 ep anime is so low I kept having to pause, phew! it’s definitely unrelentingly sexist – and the way they incorporate/deal with indigenous populations early on stinks – but I’m not all that surprised, given that it’s a show from 1982. caveats aside, I did still enjoy it – the animation was such a constant barrage of playful kineticism that I couldn’t look away for fear of missing something. I did come to like the characters a lot (I’m especially fond of the character designs!), though that did make the general treatment of the gals that much more frustrating.
I haven’t watched much other anime by Yoshiyuki Tomino (perhaps in avoidance/fear of the ‘greats’), but I think I might take a gander at some of his less famed works after seeing this one!
