Back to RASTATROK's Profile RASTATROK's Profile

I read this stuff two years ago, and I thought it was one of the worst things I ve ever read, but after all this time I'm still here thinking about it, so this must mean something, right?

Alien 9 is a cornerstone of the underground manga culture, and despite all the crazy stuff that happens in that manga you can easily follow the plot and it makes overall sense as a coming-of-age story. Unfortunately, after reading lots of other Tomizawa works (including the sequels) I think that Alien 9 was kinda a happy accident.
Milk Closet had the potential to come close to Alien 9 ... if only it just took some time to let its characters breath and have something to say, but really after few chapters we start to lose focus on the characters and weird stuff just happens so rapidly that I had no idea about what was going on in the second half of the manga. It kinda reminds me of nightmares where scenes are interchained without any logic but when you're in the dream you dont really put too much attention on it. In fact, i would say that this dream-like quality is probably one of the most remarkable attribute of the manga, and its best to approach it as almost pure abstract art. The other quality is its astounishing ruthlessness. Like, Tomizawa's imagery turns torturing little children in actual art.

I think that the artist is imaginative, but if he wants to do a comeback he REALLY needs to be coupled with a good writer with the same level of madness to make it work.