A celebration by various mangaka and celebrities of the 2023 Japan Series winning Hanshin Tigers baseball team.

You’ve never seen manga like this before! No annoying speed lines or sappy, neotenic eyeballs here — just pure Japanese counterculture. This anthology of contemporary underground comics from Japan features a wide variety of styles and topics ranging from the humorous to the profound. There’s a whole world of comics out there, and it’s not all Godzilla and schoolgirls! A great introduction to the other Japanese comics featuring Asia’s answers to Robert Crumb, Dan Clowes, and Chester Brown! List of included Oneshots: "Horse Horse Tiger Tiger" by Imiri Sakabashira "A Hooker's Room" by Naoto Yamakawa "Kisses" by Kiriko Nananan "Kitty Court Drama" by Nekojiru "What a Mixed Up World!" by Yasuji Tanioka "Million Dollars" by Yoshiharu Mitsumoto "The Abalone Cat" by Naoki and Shunichi Karasawa. *Source: Fantagraphics*

Sachiko Usurai just wants an easygoing school life, and make some friends. But her head is inhabited by a strange being she refers to as "Neko-sama." A representation of her karma, in the form of a cat. These creatures that resemble animals, have been carried by humans for generations and generations and are said to influence a person's fate.

Collection of various Karasawa gag stories, each exploring a slightly different style of art and humor. Topics are super-heroes, samurai, martial arts, animals, and zombies.

Nawoki Karasawa is one of the longer-active and more prestigious names in the typically small time, lesser-known world of gag manga. In a genre where art skill is second to just about everything else, Karasawa's dialogue is hilariously sharp and witty. A gag parody of Shinji Nagashima's immortal Mangaka Zankoku Monogatari (Karasawa's title only differs by adding "Chou" (Super) to "Zankoku"), a manga about the dreams, ambitions, and suffering of a group of bright young mangaka. Karasawa brilliantly takes the piss out of just about everything involved with being a mangaka. It's lewd, raunchy, endlessly cynical and laugh-out-loud funny. Originally published in Ikki and the Big Comic Spirits special issue "Casual" from 2000 to 2003, it was collected into a single book in 2005.