The Life of Ichabod

[MangaDex]

 

[dantziel]

well that's kind of harsh way to raise a child. It's like im seeing a side of women-who-really-hate-men perspective

 

[gothicshark]

please keep translating, it's different, but I;m game.

 

[GabrielH]

hmmm

 

[konas8]

Here's another vote for 'definitely want to see more'.
This is actually really cool.

 

[Sopu]

I am also interested to see more!

 

[Hachi015]

The story is really good but for cheesus sake thats an awful way of drawing.



Id rather read this as a book or something.

 

[mendics]

whats the genderbend tag here for again?

 

[Ketsujo]

Damn I just looked up this guy after the synopsis and the 3 chapters out, Hiroyuki Shoji seemed like a really interesting author. Sadly most of his works didn't get the international attention and translation. This series and also Gokko (which did get a live action adaption) and 10sai Kaasan seemed like really interesting stories. Will be keen to see more of his work and will like to say my condolences as well, RIP.

 

[Kirin-kun]

It's kinda surreal. I like it.

 

[me474]

if you glossed over the bad art the story is really interesting shame his stories never got an anime

 

[Luke_chase]

F I actually like the art style

 

[ikemen]

Thanks, translator senpai.
How about changing the cover page to the original one, though?

 

[Shane50844]

good

 

[Luke_chase]

One of the most interesting worlds / best story building I’ve seen

 

[mangrel]

I'd really like to see this series completed, can someone point me towards the raws for volume 3? They're mentioned in the notes, but I can't seem to find it anywhere.

 

[Cynix9]

This is actually my favorite manga of all time and I recommend it to absolutely everyone. I once saw a Japanese review that said it's like Tarantino crossed with Luc Besson and I think it's spot-on... Though the backgrounds remind me more of Jean-Pierre Jeunet than Besson.

The art takes some getting used to, especially with the quality of the raws the original scanlator was using. But the world and character designs are so awesome and imaginative that it's like it's wrestling with itself to shine through. The panels become so restrictive that you just want to break them open so the art can breathe and you can get a better view of everything. Looking at Shoji Hiroyuki's later work, this is so much more ambitious. If I can armchair psychoanalyze, I think he knew he couldn't completely get across what was in his head here and scaled back his future stories. I like many of those, too, but I really wish he had tried something like this again.

Weirdly the art even gets a little worse as it goes on, too-look at how he drew Yahweh when he introduced him compared to later on. Also yeah, his name is supposed to be "Yahweh", not "Yahabe". Fitting name for such a blasphemous guy. The German translation was so bad with names that it kind of makes me wonder about the rest of it. Obviously "Ganzu" is supposed to be "Guns", too. Interestingly there also seemed to be a pun with Elly's name. I think they changed their name to "Eli" (the name of Ichabod's grandfather in the Bible) with the sex change, and that this was missed because they're spelled the same in Japanese. I believe this to be the case because in volume 3 Ichabod has no idea who the name refers to (believing Hamamatsu means the biblical Eli), even though he does know the name of his "father".

Besides his designs, the author had an uncanny ability to pump out unique characters with bizarre but narratively interesting motivations. I really don't know how he did it so consistently. The world was deprived of an amazing storyteller with his death. He was probably a lolicon though so it's not all bad.

I'll admit that I don't completely understand the ending, since this manga doesn't play friendly with MTL at all. If someone wants to help translate this, please get in contact. I feel a bit of a duty to pick this up with how much it means to me.