Velveteen & Mandala

“Velveteen & Mandala feels wrong in the best sense of the word. It’s a creepy, gross little monster of a book, the type that is going to crawl inside your brain and throw up on your frontal lobes… The strongest scenes come from the extreme cruelty that lurks behind high school life or the way that people—and I mean regular people here, like you and me—are casually insensitive to each other in deeply cutting ways… The exact manga you need if you’re a fan of Johnny Ryan’s Prison Pit, Charles Burns’s Black Hole, or seeing some good old-fashioned gross action.”
—Comics Alliance

“It is funny, but in the black, ghastly way that something like Catch-22 or M*A*S*H (the original film, at its most embittered) was funny: you laugh, along with the storyteller, that you may not cry… The most significant development over the course of V&M is how it slowly trades the outré, non-sequitur black humor of its opening chapters for something a lot sadder and more expansive. There’s a surprising amount of emotional punch in the conclusion, enough that it invites a second reading of the book…”
—Genji Press

“Velveteen & Mandala is as disturbed as its protagonists, and maybe that’s because it manages to be both fun and sad… Just like the way Mandala obsessively shouts ‘Tape recorder!’ at the top of her lungs, Velveteen & Mandala will stay in your head and beg to be reread. Here’s hoping Vertical, or an equally gutsy publisher, pumps out more material like Matsumoto’s in the direction of an otherwise unsuspecting North American audience.”
—Otaku USA

“With [Velveteen & Mandala, Jiro Matsumoto] shatters all expectations of what it means to be manga, a zombie story, or even sane… The storytelling and pacing is brisk. It is a welcome change from the drawn-out pacing of manga where often little happens over the course of a 200-page volume… From panel to panel you will feel elation, arousal, revulsion, and fear. Nothing is too small or too taboo for him to tackle. Because of that, this book will not be for everyone… Be prepared to be challenged.”
—Stumptown Trade Review

“Matsumoto’s story is dark and uncompromising… The girls have unpleasant things happen to them, and they do unpleasant things themselves—but the reading of it is never unpleasant… This is not a book for the squeamish—but it is a creepy, gnarly, tricky book with its own thrills to deliver. Reading it is something like picking at a scab, but, if you tear it right off and accept the pain, it’s an exhilarating feeling.”
—Realms of Fantasy

“There’s plenty of pop culture evoked here, and it’s not just glib allusions… At least for people like the subjects of this manga, you have an end of days, and you don’t have the Bible or another religious structure to explain it. Instead, what you do have is RPG menu systems, Tomino anime, and other pop culture rattling around… The two girls, one volume span of Velveteen & Mandala grows its wild little garden… A great zombie work that sticks around in your head without looming like a mausoleum.”
—Ain’t It Cool News

“It isn’t for young readers and those easily offended as well as it shows scenes of rape, nudity and defecation. These scenes also seem to be the most detailed and well-drawn parts of the manga… Jiro Matsumoto does especially well when it comes to capturing the different, and sometimes crazy, expressions of characters… The translations are clear, easy to read, have a nice flow and seem to fit in each of the bubbles on the panel just right.”
—Examiner.com

“I’d postulate (having read the book) that it’s actually a metaphor for the endurance of obsessive otaku culture in the face of presumed societal decay… In the end, geek culture might be a realm of the dead, but at least it’s capable of affirming some meaning and joy for the devout ghouls among it, which circles itself around to the earliest concept of the otaku as an accumulator of knowledge useless to society, necessitating the creation of something different.”
—Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal

“People sure weren’t joking about this manga being dark and twisted… Still, this is the kind of manga that reminds you, ‘Ah, yes! This is why I still read manga!’ I’m not exaggerating too much, as it’s a really great trip reading something that is a lot different from the normal grouping of shounen and rom-com series saturating the market. I highly recommend you go pick it up.”
—The last stop on the bus.

“With a wild yet beautiful art style, dark themes, goofy comedy, crude situations, and even a little bit of fourth wall breaking, it really is all over the place... And yet that disjointed nature is one of the things that make this title so special. It’s a rather unique and twisted ride that has you questioning the sanity of the characters and perhaps even the realities of the weird wonderland they inhabit.”
—Fandom Post

“Velveteen and Mandala took me two reads. It isn’t hard to follow, it’s just very visually dense. Matsumoto’s art appears sketchy (the stunning panoramic views of the riverside are some of the most beautiful pages in the book) but the level of detail is intricate… Matsumoto also has a knack for drawing ordinary messes—eating, crying, insects gobbling trash, and leftover sukiyaki in Mandala’s hands—and making them nearly as repulsive as a face being split open on the street… Worth it? Absolutely: this is damn good stuff.”
—Colony Drop

“There’s a sense of humor in its over-the-top ridiculousness, but it’s certainly not for everybody. I’m still not quite sure how I feel about it, to be honest. I definitely enjoy Matsumoto’s gritty art, depicting this ugly world, but the story is pretty out there… I kind of don’t want to like it for many of the elements that I mentioned earlier, but in the end, I can’t help but be impressed. Definitely not for the squeamish, this will however remain one of the most interesting manga debuts of the year.”
—Comics-and-More

“From the very outset of this grim, sexy, gratuitous splatter-punk horror-show there is something decidedly ‘off’ going on: a gory mystery beyond the usual ‘how did the world end this time?’ … His controversial yet sublime narrative gifts are turned to a much more psychologically complex—and almost meta-fictional—layering of meaning upon revelation upon contention that indicates that if you have a strong enough stomach the very best is still to come.”
—Now Read This! (U.K.)