Itihasa. I’m not sure where to begin with this one. Well since I’d like to avoid talking about the actual content of it, I’ll mention how I found it: by trolling around Amazon.
Amazon has a decent amount of manga that publishers we’ve never heard of have licensed. Itihasa is one of them. Created by Wakako Mizuki (part of the Post Year 24 group), it was serialized in Bouquet in 1986. Bouquet was formerly called Ribon Comic, which was a sister magazine to Ribon. Ribon happened to be related to Cookie, which is currently a bimonthly josei publication by Shueisha.
Got all that? Ok, cool. So in searching for manga, I stumbled on Itihasa. It came out sometime in January on Amazon, and is published by Creek & River Co. The site seems professional (while still dated), but I found this press release which details the company releasing some classic manga. That’s good. I think there’s some classic manga that I’d love to read today.
They will surely be better than Itihasa, which has uninteresting dialog and little usage of some fantastic artwork by Mizuki. The story is a mess. At the start, it’s simple: three humans who know the ancient magic “Mantra”, Takaya, Toko, and Aohiko left their village to get powerful, life enhancing Yang Stones when Toko sees fire around their village. When they return, the place is burned down, and everyone important to them is killed.
From there, they learn about demi-gods, gods that can be seen and can’t be seen, a group of demi-gods appear before them, lots and lots of conversations happen, and you know what? It’s not interesting in the slightest. Maybe it’s a cultural shock, since Japan and gods are important, but I feel like it should be more accessible, instead of making me fall asleep. Anyways, it’s a josei work by a Post Year 24 author, so this might be of interest to some. It’s also $3.35, or it’s first volume is. I’m not sold on reading any more.
Addendum: Itihasa definitely has more connotations than I realized.
