On the nightstand...

 ...is my palate-cleanser from the turgid prose of Rick Atkinson's The British Are Coming; perhaps the most peculiar, wonderful, bizarre, and intriguing train-wreck of a manga adaptation of an anime I've ever come across: Gate: Where The JSDF Fought.

I dunno, but this may possibly be the most manga-y manga I've every read.

(And to out myself as an otaku, I kinda love manga; I've read every tankobon volume of Kimetsu no Yaiba (鬼滅の刃) and everything from the hardcore old-school mecha stories like Shin Seki Evangelion (新世紀エヴァンゲリオン ) to fluffy romances like Our Teachers Are Dating...)

But this one is...reeeeeally special.

Start with the worked-out premise of an interdimensional gate between worlds.

But then add a bizarre mashup of Tolkiensque fantasy - dragons and trolls? - with Romans (sorta...) and a buxom imperial princess called - I shit you not - "Pina Co Lada". 

Have these mooks invade Tokyo and tear the living hell out of a bunch of innocent Japanese civilians...

(Don't forget to pitch in a whole bunch of gratuitous violence and nudity...)

 ...and then respond to all this with a sort of Japanese Army (sorry..."Self Defense Force") fanservice where the JGSDF proceeds to send an expeditionary force into this fantasy world so we can enjoy antitank weapons against fire-breathing dragons and Japanese recon infantry against Roman legionaries and the boys and girls of the Rikujō Jieitai as heroes...

...plus Rory Mercury, who is so beyond the rest of this weird shit that I leave you to the mercy of Wikipedia.

The whole thing is an absolute hoot, and I hope the outfit that's publishing this thing will continue to put out these in tankobon formate all the way to the end of the original anime run.

If only Atkinson had found a way to write in a loli-goth death goddess into the Battle of Long Island his stuff might work better. I'm just gonna have to call that a serious failure of imagination.