Somewhere there’s a tangle of high notes, and then a voice, or a man, explaining things. You are invited to look – For Your Consideration.

The world beyond the door is a strange one. It is crumpled and surreal and funny-looking and perhaps, at times, perplexing. But that’s all right. The mystery is part of it. This is a story about creating the correct answer.

. . . There is also a monster in it. So watch out for that.

To read the whole comic from the start, click here! 

Are you okay?

Daijiro Morohoshi: The Black Ships of Manhattan

Fellow people on Tumblr, I have just had an exceptionally surreal experience, and I would like to share it with all of you, particularly other Americans.

I have seen people joke before about what it might be like if another country depicted the United States in a work of fiction with the same wild caricatures and stereotypes as we do other countries, and in some ways this is that story. Granted, I have seen other examples before, but I don't think I've seen anything quite like this.

Perhaps the weirdest part is that, aside from the translated manga itself, I can't find any additional information about it in English anywhere on the internet, at least not after an hour of furious googling. Articles exist about the author and some of his work, but none of them mention this exact story. I can't even find anyone talking about it on forums or social media. And in this particular moment of exceptional American insanity, I simply feel compelled to show it to as many people as I can.

Folks, this is going to be a long one, but I promise it's worth it.

So. This is a manga short story by Daijiro Morohoshi, who is very well known in Japan but almost completely unheard of in America. He has, however, influenced Japanese creators who are famous here, such as Hayao Miyazaki, Hideaki Anno, and Rumiko Takahashi.

The story was published in a collection called Paradise Lost in 1988, which you can read online HERE at the same place I did. It is an anthology of bizarre science fiction tales, and there are six stories that come before this one. The title story is a highly allegorical two-parter set in a post apocalyptic landscape that looks like the covers of a dozen pulp sci-fi novels come to life. Adam's Rib and Landscape of Men both have themes of "women are terrifying monsters who will drain men to empty dessicated husks, and the men kind of deserve it" and read exactly like something you'd find in Galaxy Science Fiction in the 50s. Chastity's Wreck feels like something Wally Wood might have drawn for an adult magazine, with the nubile astronauts of Project L.A.D.I. hunting the universe for hot alien hunks. Bio City is a potent body horror tale about a strange alien virus that causes all animal life and anything made of metal to melt together into one super-organism. The Call tells the story of a Japanese civil servant who is suddenly transferred to the "Earthquake Prevention Department," where he is given cushy work and a massive salary for one year, then sacrificed to a pagan god.

And that finally brings us to Black Ships of Manhattan, where things get really wild.

Presumably inspired by the "Black Ships" that brought Westerners to Japan between 1543 and 1858, the story begins sometime in the 1980s, when the United States abruptly adopts a completely isolationist policy, elects a President-For-Life, and starts their own calendar. 100 years of cultural stasis later, Japan - which, like the rest of the world, has grown far more technologically advanced - makes contact with the strange, isolated land, and attempts to bring the outside world to America.

It, uh, doesn't go well.

After first contact, the Japanese ambassadors demand a trade treaty, and the US is quickly split between Anti-Isolationists, who want to reopen contact with the outside world, and Expultionists, who oppose any foreign presence in America. We are also treated to some spectacular "American" names such as Tock Gowan, E. Common, and Kirk Cashew. An Expultionist extremist group attacks the Japanese residents (drawn in curiously racist caricature by the Japanese artist) of a trade post off the coast of San Francisco and kick off a war, in which the woefully-outmatched Americans are swiftly crushed. Anti-Isolationist support takes over in California and the treaty is signed, but it is against the President-For-Life's will, while unrest and violence continue to rage between the opposing American factions. At a protest, an Expultionist assassinates the Vice President with a grenade.

Meanwhile, a Texan Cowboy™ adopts the sole survivor of a Japanese passenger plane shot down by Californian forces, and that's where our story really begins.

Title art by me for the first ten stories on my (very humble) YouTube channel, where I read short stories as mini-audiobooks. I’ve been experimenting with drawing on a tablet and having a lot of fun!

Another short story audiobook!

In the spring of 1989, the Karvina Corporation released a curious game, whose dissemination among American students that fall was swift and furious, though its popularity was ultimately short-lived….