MANGA: Search and Destroy Chapter 04, by Atsushi Kaneko

In which we learn the name of our mysterious protagonist, and some of their history.

Hello everyone, welcome to chapter four of Atsushi Kaneko’s Search and Destroy, based on Dororo by Osamu Tezuka. This week’s chapter is paywalled for paid subscribers to MSX: Mangasplaining Extra. You can catch up with chapter one here and see the index for all of our manga series’ here. If you just want this week’s chapter of Search and Destroy and to skip the essay below, scroll down to the title.

Read Chapter: 00-01 | 02 | 03

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We’re riding high on good news here at MSX Central today, as we just heard that our first title, Okinawa by Susumu Higa, has been longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, a very prestigious award administered by the American Library Association. More to say on that in a newsletter later this week, but for now, we’re so honored, and grateful, on behalf of Higa-san, Jocelyne, Andrew, the crew at Fantagraphics, and all the folks who worked to make this book a success.

Meanwhile, in Search and Destroy news, we’re so thrilled to announce that the great manga journalist and curator Frederico Anzalone has agreed to write a short piece for us here on MSX about Search and Destroy! We just got the first draft in, and we can share just a tiny bit with you here.

"You'll be the first ones to see this, apart from my publisher," Kaneko says, as he turns on his tablet. The year is 2018 and we're waiting for our drinks in a café. Outside, blazing rays of spring sunlight glide over the glass towers of Tokyo. The exact opposite of the wintry landscape now displayed on the LCD screen. We're diving into Search and Destroy's first chapter, to be published a few months later in the inaugural issue of Tezucomi magazine. I'm astonished by the level of detail unfolding before my eyes: this is undoubtedly the Atsushi Kaneko's graphic pinnacle to date.

• Frederico Anzalone, from the forthcoming short essay Pretty Hate Machine

If Frederico’s name sounds familiar to you readers, it’s because we actually just mentioned him in our episode on Goodbye, Eri by Tatsuki Fujimoto last week, as he curated the absolutely bonkers exhibit of Fujimoto’s work at Angouleme a few years back and we shared some pictures. You might also have seen him interview Kaneko-sensei a few months back in this special event that was doing the rounds on Youtube. In French, but the auto-generated subtitle translation might help you out?

We’re thrilled to be getting this piece from Frederico, and we hope to be working more with him in future.

So yeah, good news all around today. And it continues now too, as paid subscribers get to read another chapter of Search and Destroy!

• Christopher

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Search and Destroy - Chapter 04

By Atsushi Kaneko, based on the story by Osamu Tezuka
Translated by Ben Applegate. Lettered by Phil Christie.