Tank Tankuro

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Not Applicable/10
Only leaving a score so it can be submitted. Reflects my enjoyment of the art.

First off, I refuse to rate this manga for two reasons. The first being that it was written for children in 1934 Japan. I am an American adult in 2019. I am too far separated from this product's origin. This is not to say you cannot judge series separated from you, but you need other products with which to compare and a bit of context for the culture. This is my first manga from the 1930s I've read and only 1930s Japanese media piece I've consumed. I have ... nothing with which to form a valuable opinion on this art form except through a modern lens and some untranslated newspaper manga strips from the late 1800s I looked through for art purposes.

Now with that out of the way, this work will bore the fuck out of you. The story is straight forward with Tankuro beating up a few bad guys at the start and then a story arc of him fighting some general over seas. Think of very old cartoons with simplistic, but creative fight scenes. They used a cannon to fire a stream of octopuses at Tankuro lol. Tankuro and co fell into a frozen body of water and the bad guy thought he won until a giant catfish popped out with Tankuro and co inside who survived by accident. Really dumb stuff. The dialogue is simple and nothing is complex. It's a children's manga. That said the story goes by very fast which I'm thankful for. A single volume is more digestible then if this was longer.

The art is childish. It felt like a 10 year old whose decent at drawing drew this. The monkey barely looks like a monkey. if a non-Asian person drew this then some might find a few of its portrayals of Japanese people is racist because that's how simple it is. Despite this there's a certain charm to it. It's not great art and its not supposed to be. Seeing how everything is depicted to be foolishly designed is nice. And the manga is fully colored by Sakamoto the mangaka. And I will say the color adds so much value. I can't stress enough through words how good the coloring is. It's brilliant. I don't like the story, but I'll admit I'm a sucker for this art. There's some really nice double spreads across this manga that I'd honestly like to hang up.

I also want to add the artwork here isn't wholly unique. I mentioned above I have looked through late 1800s newspaper manga strips and you can see the resemblance a bit. The artwork is also some what related to The Four Immigrants Manga which was published in 1924-1927. So I'm going to safely assume this type of artwork was the norm before more advanced and realistic styles took over.

The physical book itself is a 10/10. One of the best bound manga I've had the pleasure to feel and flip through. The slipcase is thick and hard and not some cheap flimsy material. Chris Ware designed the slipcase cover and while it's unique and interesting some people had a problem with it because Chris Ware's design makes the book look like a Chris Ware book. Tankuro is nothing like a Ware book. That said the book has a sleek pink (hard)cover and a nifty spine that's very sturdy. The pages are not typical cheap paper. They have a very smooth feel, and are slightly hued to greyer so its not white. Provides a nice rustic and old look for this very old manga. The paper does have the problem almost all manga have with light showing the other side, but its far far less here. You'd have to move the page to purposely and look to see it unlike with a regular Viz volume where you don't try and see the other side super easily. Press Pop did not cheap out for the printing of this book and I'd tell you to buy it just to feel it.

One thing that haunts me about this book though is that it's essentially propaganda for the Japanese army to children even if the mangaka wasn't doing it on purpose. The themes of nationalism are here and slightly disturbing if you focus on it.

[ ----- Short ----- ]
Tank Tankuro is historically important as a 1930s pre-war "manga", an early pioneer of story-driven manga, and an inspiration for Astro Boy and Doraemon, but the medium has come a long, long way since then. Pick this up for historical interest and the insightful essays bundled with the English print version, because the comic itself has little entertainment value.

[ ----- A bit longer ----- ]
Tank Tankuro is a "superhero" of sorts, but is basically just a weird guy in a ball who fights weird enemies... like a sumo wrestler in a tree and a big monk with a bell. Tankuro initially ... goes around fighting a bunch of different characters, but eventually the stories coalesce into one long, war-themed imperialist plot with a talking monkey.

Tank Tankuro feels a lot like its inspiration, older Sunday comics from the West. Each story is squished and condensed into very few panels/pages, with little room to tell a complete story. At the same time, it tries to pull off more action-y scenes typical to manga, with much less dialogue than Western Sunday comics. But combining these two makes a total disaster: there aren't enough panels to fully describe a manga-like action sequence, and there's not enough dialogue to make it interesting. Ultimately it comes off as... boring.

This series was directed specifically at children in 1930s Japan, so it's a bit unfair for a Western adult in 2019 to be dumping all over it. But from the choppy story to the un-endearing main character, Tank Tankuro is a series that doesn't even hold up to its Western counterparts at the time (Popeye and Little Nemo, for example), much less modern-day manga. Pass on this one.