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I managed to get through the three volumes that have been translated and published by TokyoPop, but I don't feel even a mild compulsion to seek out more of this series.

Voyeurs Inc. (Shin Nozokiya) picks up from the earlier single volume (Nozokiya) and brings in a whole new cast of characters in the same business--watching people for clients and filing reports about their activities. The only real difference here is that the cases seem to get increasingly perverse, starting with a teenage girl being naughty, then a study of her degenerate father, and finally a glorious love triangle featuring an elevator girl, a bumpkin ... store employee, and a cockroach fetishist.

Just an aside - I'll take Yamamoto's S&M stuff from other works over roaches any day of the week.

The good guys (such as they are) always win and the bad guys are punished. Along the way, the people being watched are knocked off whatever pedestal they may have been placed on by the client.

Voyeurs Inc. is, I think, still immature work for Yamamoto and doesn't have the quality or frantic intensity of later stuff like Ichi the Killer or Homunculos. The stories aren't great and the artwork is far less impressive than his later stuff. There are more than a few cringe-worthy scenes and bits of dialogue here.

Still, reading some of this work is worthwhile if watching Yamamoto's work grow and change is your thing.

This is a pretty tame and lightweight early volume from Hideo Yamamoto, a writer known for pushing boundaries. In terms of story and art quality, everything is just ok.

A once happy enough fella has his safety zone of trust and love polluted by a voyeur - another guy who watches lovers and tries to understand them. The pair become unlikely allies and, eventually go into business together as "professional" voyeurs.

There is a villain and a damsel in distress in the second half of the volume and everything flows along fairly predictably.

Though the characters don't continue, the business of Voyeurs Inc carries ... on in a new series where Yamamoto begins to spice things up a little and both his art and his storytelling are more mature.

Spending an hour with the single-volume Voyeurs is a good introduction to the later series and worthwhile if you want to follow Yamamoto's evolution.

Hotel Harbour View is set firmly in the noir world of the Fatal Woman. The two stories that make up the book read like cliches from an also-ran hard-boiled novelist - the kind of script Jim Thompson might dash off in 20 minutes in exchange for a shot, a beer, and a pack of cigarettes.

The artwork, too, is very western. I'm not faulting it for that. I quite like it. It's just that in pretty much every way - except that the story and art were provided by a couple Japanese guys - this is a western genre comic.

I'm curious about ... Netsuo Sekikawa, the story writer. He wasn't prolific and it appears he tended to focus on this type of noir-ish style. But on the back cover where the bios of artist and writer are shown, it says that he didn't want his profile attached with this work. Wonder why. It's not a bad work. It's just not particularly unique or interesting.

After zipping through my main course of Ichi the Killer, I figured that the single-volume "Stop the Bitch Campaign" might be nice for dessert. I'm not sure it was the wisest choice.

This manga isn't truly awful, but it also isn't particularly good. It's a little meditation on comeuppances in contemporary society. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, as the saying goes.

On the one side there are high school girls exploring prostitution or "compensated dating." Among them is a sociopath who rolls her dates in brutal ways. On the other side is a pair of incels who decide to dine and ... dash on the girls. One of them, it turns out, is a brutal, S&M loving psychopath.

You can see where this is going - the inevitable clash between the forces of evil and evil.

I'm a Yamamoto fan, but I found his common S&M motifs a little tiresome here. There really isn't much of redeeming quality here other than the length of the piece. It's short and you can zip through this piece in an hour.

Finished it. Showered off all those body fluids that were flying off the pages. Held my johnson for a few minutes, just because. Took a deeeeep breath.

I found Ichi ridiculous, vile, disgusting, and wonderful all at the same time. The violence, perversions, and neuroses are off the charts, but the artwork and unique characterizations are saving graces. Yamamoto is a brilliant artist with a real ability to draw unique characters and pretty quickly give them a backstory that informs what they do in the tale. The occasional urban scenes are excellent, too.

I can't say that I loved how it ... ended and I want to know a whole lot more about the master manipulator, but I'm happy as a clam that Ichi exists and I got to read it.