Seinen Discommunication by Ueshiba Riichi

[Kaiten]

Discommunication
By: Ueshiba Riichi
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Serialized In: Afternoon
Publisher: Kodansha
Mangaupdates

"Why do people fall in love?" Arika Togawa doesn't understand why she has fallen in love with her classmate, Takaomi Matsubue, as she hardly knows him. Together they decide to find out how two strangers can fall in love, encountering other wonderful but strange love stories along the way. Religious, occult, and popular iconography figure prominently in this "Truly Mysterious Love Manga."

By the Mangaka of Mysterious Girlfriend X

 

[Josef]

Similar scenario to Mysterious Girlfriend X? I mean even the girl sort of looks like her? Anything different apart form the "quirkness" of the main characters to be different?

 

[Kaiten]

Discommunication is 15 years older than Mysterious Girlfriend X, if one is to be found lacking for new ideas should it not be the newer series? That aside I am not prepared to make any broad assertions based on a single translated chapter. It does seem clear that both series have different perspectives on love and romance. Like many authors Ueshiba likes to use recurring plot devices to illustrate different variations on a theme. By developing one theme across multiple work he allows himself the opportunity to further explore that theme and allows the audience multiple perspectives on the theme. Again, very common in literature and in manga.

 

[Josef]

So one release and it just stopped? o_O

Well, I get where you are coming from, I really enjoyed MGX, though was a bit iffy going into this one due to similarity, but it is sad that only one chapter was released, love at first site gets a good psychological backing to the story. Again, very sad it stopped.

 

[senile seinen]

I have gotten all the raws for this and would love to start putting it out on a regular (say 1/month) basis. I just don't have the TL chops for it. It's weirder than MGX, and the art style is even thicker and denser as well. There's a lot of Japanese cultural debris in the backgrounds (like the dream scenes in MGX only moreso) that would benefit from annotation/TL notes if somebody wanted to go to the effort - I suspect there's a lot of cultural subtext that isn't carried in the dialog.

The art style suggests a deliberate effort to mimic early postwar manga. The settings and clothing all look vintage.

Back when Hiyoko no GAO was still operating, wrook and I did some work on releasing chapter 1. It never got quite done, although it was close. Wrook was busy with RL and so just wasn't up for translating something this dense. I'm kind of dubious about TKtranslate starting with Korean raws - I had bad luck with translations from a second language once and would do a lot to avoid it again - you have twice as many ways to get things horribly wrong. Even worse, something like Discommunication is all about Japanese cultural references (kind of like Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei), so going across another language is just another way to lose meaning.

 

[haet]

I read most of the original Discommunication series a few months back, and my sentiment was basically that Ueshiba needs to go back to drawing cluttered, busy backgrounds with doing trippy weird mystical stories. Those were the two things he was best at, but he seems to have distanced himself from it after the initial Nazo no Kanojo X story became a series.

Even then, though, I think I only kind of liked this manga

 

[Josef]

The dream like double panels are indeed the highlight of his works. Romance is a key thing in his work, but I loved the non-traditional way it was delivered all in all. It's really a strife for the uncommon stuff that gets me to sit back an enjoy a manga.

 

[senile seinen]

I enjoy the quirky romance aspect of Ueshiba's work (and yes, I've probably spent an hour of my life looking at those huge set-piece drawings), but then I liked Gekkou as well...

That said, Discommunication looks like more fun to me because it's his first shot at getting this idea (that he is obviously stuck on) out of his head. Nazo no Kanojo X is, by comparison, watered down and derivative for all that I enjoy it.

 

[Fierrary]

senile seinen

Please, translate it. That should be perfect manga. I'd love to help but i don't know what i can help you with

 

[senile seinen]

That's just the problem: I don't read Japanese well enough to be able to translate a seinen manga, particularly not something as dense as this is. If I could find a translator I would be happy to put the rest of the team together or even do all the production work myself if necessary.