Koji Aihara

An off-beat parody of manga "how-to" books, and the manga industry in general, Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga skewers the insipid cliches and formulas that govern the latter with great wit and panache. Their style is hilariously over-the-top but trenchant at the same time. The book covers all the basics of figure drawing and character expression, but my favorite parts were the sections on genres, both popular and obscure. In lesser hands Aihara and Takekuma's bricolage of slapstick humor and critiques of ideology might have ended up off-kilter, but they maintain a manic energy that makes it work.… (mehr)