(or Torturing Children can be Ignored, but only sometimes)
This is a reply to some of Noah’s comments following his review of Lady Snowblood which can be found here. From the looks of things, this might be a manga themed week at The Hooded Utilitarian.
In his final comments, Noah writes:
“Well, there’s appalling morality and then there’s appalling morality. I don’t have any trouble with lots of things that are variously horrific, from Johnny Ryan to Female Prisoner Scorpion to slasher films.”
It’s difficult for me to mount an adequate defense of the manga of Kazuo Koike (and Lady Snowblood is somewhat typical of Koike) since I’m not really that much of a fan. In fact, I’m pretty much totally detached from his works in the same way I’m pretty detached from Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon – interested enough to recognize him as an important voice in manga but not enough to recommend him to anyone with only a peripheral interest in comics.