An English translation of Nejishiki (Screw-Style), a radically surrealistic manga by Yoshiharu Tsuge, was printed in the 250th issue of U.S. monthly The Comics Journal. It was the first time that the magazine, which usually contains only writings about comics, had carried a manga.

The Comics Journal is a long-standing periodical that has been providing information and criticism on comics for more than 20 years. The magazine is highly esteemed as a vehicle for a new aspect of U.S. journalism. For example, it carried a feature story focusing on cartoonists' reactions to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.

But this was not the first time that Tsuge's manga had been translated into English. In 1985, his Akai Hana (Red Flowers) was carried in issue No. 7 of RAW, an avant-garde comics magazine edited by New York-based cartoonist Art Spiegelman, who later won a Pulitzer Prize for his book-length comics Maus.

At that time, I acted as a go-between for the magazine and Tsuge. Spiegelman was highly impressed with Akai Hana, saying he had never seen such a sensational manga before. He went on to print Tsuge's short manga Oba Denki Tokin Kogyosho (Oba's Electroplate Factory) in the same magazine. I recall receiving a letter from an Australian reader of RAW who asked what kind of cartoonist Yoshiharu Tsuge was.

RAW has since ceased publication, but perhaps a seed sown 18 years ago bore fruit last September, when I received a letter from Milo George, managing editor of The Comics Journal. He wrote that he wished to have the honor of carrying Tsuge's masterpiece Nejishiki in English for the first time.

"He first came to my attention about 10 years ago, with the Oba Electroplate short story that ran in RAW magazine. Around the same time, a manga-animephile friend of mine showed me a Tsuge collection that had Nejishiki. I read the story, with my friend's translation on a tissue paper overlay, and it stayed with me for years and years," George wrote.

He went on to say that one of the first things he wanted to do as editor of The Comics Journal magazine was to launch a smart, literate column on manga, and apparently he was very happy that the first article the column's writer pitched to him was on Tsuge and the gekiga serious manga movement.

Nejishiki, in which a boy's experiences become increasingly curious after he is stung by a jellyfish at a beach, caused a sensation among manga readers in Japan when it first appeared in 1968. It and Akai Hana are regarded as two of Tsuge's most important works. As dream imagery is evident throughout, Nejishiki can be appreciated on various levels. That, I thought, would cause difficulties in translating it into English.

At the end of last year, George sent me a copy of the translation for check. The person who worked on the translation is well-versed in Japanese manga, but, at that stage, the translation contained mistakes such as misinterpretations of the images and the treating of the boy's spoken words as an inner voice. I told George my views, while also consulting Tsuge.

After the publication, George wrote to me: "I think Tsuge's work, at its best, transcends the limitations of the comics medium (not to mention national and cultural barriers) while (remaining) so quintessentially comics that one can't imagine it existing in any other medium."

He also informed me about readers' reaction to the manga. A few of them apparently bought complete eight-volume sets of Tsuge's works in Japanese via the Internet after seeing it. Many readers sent the magazine their own interpretations of the dream images, and it is interesting that none of them overlapped. Tsuge's controversial work, Nejishiki, has thus puzzled overseas readers in a most enjoyable way, just like it did Japanese readers.

more:
http://www.neo-anime.org/forums/showpost.php?p=51149&postcount=1
z0mg torrent plz?