Ore to Akuma no Blues
Me and the Devil Blues: The Unreal Life of Robert Johnson

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The mangaka/author is definitely knowledgeable when it comes to Robert Johnson and the myths surrounding him. But this is by no means a manga biography of Johnson. Given that there is very little verifiable information on the bluesman, the book takes a lot of liberties and, in my opinion, gets a bit far-fetched at times.
The book' depictions of 30's blues clubs and the like seem relatively authentic, and compared to a lot of other manga, the book has a very 'western' feel.
The artwork is one of the book's strong points, with a lot of attention of detail. Most is gritty-looking and fleshed out ... with lots of cross-hatching and doesn't seem a bit cartoony.

** spoiler alert ** "Me and the Devil Blues," a horror tale and retelling of American South mythologies, stars RJ, a man who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for the devil teaching him how to play the blues. The story includes many elements that are common to American readers but are hardly ever seen in Japanese comics, such as lynching and sharp racial differences in the south. According to what I've learned about the blues from both the manga and my reading, it's necessary to embrace and deal with emotion in order to play the blues. It's all about pouring your heart ... and soul into your instrument and allowing it to represent your tears, blood, and sweat. When I read it I could feel those tears and sweat, because this manga is full of emotion. Although it's safe to say that in real life, Robert Johnson didn't sell his soul to the devil in order to gain such fame, the manga by Hiramoto Akira has done an excellent job of weaving the "devil's" presence into a timeline of Johnson's life. However, in addition to portraying Johnson's life, the manga is also a serious drama in that it introduces the viewer to a world rife with institutionalized racism. Racism is a touchy subject to bring up in real life, but Hiramoto tackles it head on and manages to be remarkably down to earth and honest in his portrayal of the subject. He has taken care not to include stereotypes, but rather realistic characters that represent the impoverished minority. I really enjoyed reading the vibrant Southern lingo and slang; although this may be due in part to the translator's excellent work, the language effectively conveys the atmosphere. Its art also was very amazing with a much more realistic feel to it than other manga I've read. Sometimes it was almost too scary to look at. The scene where RJ's friend had a knife centimeters away from his eyes after bragging about how good RJ was at playing made me want to run away from my screen. With depictions of death from racial hate and even showing weakness to a woman in the first chapter, the artwork was top class. An amazing story and definitely something that someone should read in their lifetime.

To give a broad, spoiler free overview: This manga is about RJ, a famous African Blues musician from Depression Era America, wanting to pursue blues (for no reason), selling his soul to the devil for the skills to play the blues (again, for no reason. The fantastical elements are deliberately depicted as potentially merely mundane misunderstandings, though not really since everyone can see his bedeviled hand (I've looked up RJ's music, it's quite slow paced so I've no idea why there are historical claims he played fast enough for 2 people)), struggling with racism and being unable to safely refuse the orders of the white ... gangster thief Clyde (of the famous Bonnie & Clyde), spent on the run from racists trying to catch them. Occasional extremely repetitive images of man holding guitar to show blues is being played. That's all.

A visual medium is the worst possible choice for depicting a story about music. The mangaka should've known better. Instead that music mostly falls into incidental background for the actual plot which is mostly a horror-lite display of racism/immorality in an action/drama of very little action or substance and a whole lot of closeups of faces and filler dialogue for masturbatory edging anything actually happening as mostly nothing happens until a bunch of nobodies die and/or the plot armor pair run off in story-long chase sequences interspersed with breaks.

Very slow paced, RJ's introductory premise stretches what should be the 1st ch into 4 chs with vapid, self-indulgent, artistically boring/pointless/repetitive panels to waste everyone's time. Then continues onto ch 5 with a main character introduction through pointless flashforward to the death of a main character betrayed by RJ removing any suspense about where the entire story so far will go for the only 2 main characters (hello plot armor, and the flashforward does nothing to demonstrate artistic skill since it's just the most predictable ending based on what everyone who knows anything of Bonnie & Clyde already knows), who aside from the occasional cartoonishly evil villain are the only actual characters of any consequence/stay-time in the entire story so far.

The mood is also bizarrely all over the place from extremely pretentiously artsy, to childishly tropey slapstick (humorless) comedy (the author is very good at comedy/ecchi however there's none of that here). It is nonetheless surprisingly an accurate enough representation of the unsightly ignorant consequences of systematic racism of America at the time, especially for a modern Japanese individual's depiction, and of course the mangaka is quite skilled at drawing art.

I really don't recommend this boring manga, 3/10 (where 5/10 is average).