Bradherley’s Coach
Update: Released the final two chapters of Bradherley’s Coach. Two more heartbreaking stories and an ending that, while it doesn’t provide the catharsis many of us might have hoped for, still brings the story to a somewhat satisfying close. I’d like to thank zzled and Jinchi for their, as always, excellent translation and lettering work respectively.
Over the last few years, it has become something of an annual tradition for Kotonoha to do a joint with Omanga. Last year, we gave you A Revolutionist in the Afternoon. The year before that, it was Keep on Vibrating and then Kilico. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we are back together this year to bring you another great manga. Having said that, I have to warn you that this year’s book is not something you’ll want to read unprepared.
Bradherley’s Coach is Hiroaki Samura’s latest outing as a short story teller. Those of you who read his entertaining rom-com soap Ohikkoshi (published in the US by Dark Horse) already know that Samura is capable of drawing more than just samurai and kimono. But stop! Don’t even think of going into his latest book expecting the same reading experience. Bradherley’s Coach is, frankly, the polar opposite of Ohikkoshi. It’s dark, disturbing, shocking, and totally humorless. And that’s exactly why it’s so, so much more compelling.
Reading the synopsis, you probably have a vague idea of what to expect. But believe me, nothing could prepare you for what Samura has conjured up. There are a few scenes in the manga that even I found hard to stomach, and I’m sure many of you will be repulsed by them as well. Fortunately, the author never dwells on those extreme scenes (which are in no way gratuitous). Instead, he focuses on the characters, giving us time to know them, showing us their hopes and dreams. Therein lies the manga’s emotional power. To know who those girls are, what they think and what they care about is all the more devastating as you are exactly aware of the horrible fate that awaits them at the end of each chapter.
It’s safe to say that Bradherley’s Coach is not a manga for everyone. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’ll polarize our readers as much as it did the Japanese. But whether you end up loving or hating it, this is a story that none of you will likely forget very soon.
Jumping from one serious manga to another, I’m proud to present you the “little surprise” for all Hitoshi Iwaaki fans that I was talking about a while ago. Look Me in the Eyes When You Talk is an intense horror short story about an apathetic man who’s afraid of looking other people in the eyes. After getting severely beaten up by a bunch of thugs, he wakes up in the hospital, only to discover that he literally can’t see other people’s eyes. Iwaaki threw some super scary pictures in there, so you’re advised to read this one in a well-lit room. Big thanks to Arkard for his superb translation. Hopefully, he’ll provide us with more scripts in the future.
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About Kotonoha
Since the group's inception in 2004, Kotonoha has established itself as the premier source of off-beat, sophisticated manga scanlations aimed at both the seinen and josei demographics. Among our most influential titles are Soil by Atsushi Kaneko, The Hour of the Mice by Kei Tōme, The Music of Marie by Usamaru Furuya, and the works from Inio Asano.
Contact: kotonoha (at) gmx (dot) net
Latest Releases
- All-Rounder Meguru v2 ch9-10
- Garden ch1
- Soil v5 ch37-40
- The Music of Marie v2 ch11
- Memories of Emanon (complete)
- All-Rounder Meguru v1
- Soil v5 ch36
- Soil v5 ch36
- The Music of Marie v2 ch10
- The Hour of the Mice v3
- Soil v5 ch35
- Shoujo Nemu (complete)
- Soil v5 ch34
- Before Dawn and the End of the World (complete)
- Soil v5 ch33
- Owari to Hajimari no Miles ch11
- The Music of Marie v2 ch9
- Owari to Hajimari no Miles ch10
- Kaikisen (complete)
Magnificent! Fabulous work, as usual!!!
A Hiroaki Samura manga, excellent. Thank you so much. Amazing work like normal, thanks once again.
Great works, both. Thank you.
As a fan of both Blade of the Immortal and Parasyte (though I haven’t read either of them in years, sadly), I was delighted to see they were by Samura and Iwaaki.
Wow. Read both releases, and — wow. Even though it was meant to refer to boredom, the quote “My mind is a f*cked-apart dead thing” seems appropriate; it’s going to take me a bit of time to process these stories.
What really gets me about Bradherley’s Coach was, as mentioned, the non-gratuitousness of the storytelling despite the subject matter. Look Me in the Eyes is also creepy, but in contrast to Bradherley, it’s divorced enough from reality that it leaves me tempted to set random pages as the desktop wallpaper on friends’ computers… (28-29 and 43, especially.)
Excellent work and interesting choices, like always. Thanks!
Just in case some of you are wondering, there are still 2 chapters left of “Bradherley’s Coach.” We decided to go ahead and release the first 6 chapters because chapter 7 is taking quite longer to letter. We’ll release the remaining two chapters as soon as they’re done.
Thanks a lot!
Haven’t read Bradherley just yet, but that Iwaaki one-shot was fucking awesome. Thank you guys.
just read all of Bradherley’s Coach.
it’s stories are indeed not for everyone, it’s just so bleak, any hope that is build up just gets crushed at the end.
it’s really sad
Holy shizznit, Hiroaki Samura is an amazing storyteller.
Bradherley’s Coach not only made me depressed, but also made me feel such wrath.
The amazing thing is how believable and realistic Hiroaki presented this storyline.
While it is fiction, somehow you have a hunch somewhere in the back of your neck, that humans have committed far worse atrocities than this.
This manga is quite the traumatic experience for me – never have I felt so much wrath from reading something. Again, that just goes to show how far Hiroaki has developed as a storyteller.
Woah.
Normally I am a shy leecher, but this time I really had to thank you guys.
Both of these releases were great; excellent choices.
I love Kotonoha.. <(^_^<)
Bradherly’s is hot, but it’s premise doesn’t make much sense…. why would they go out of their way to “save” life prisoners, from themselves of all things, by sacrificing the girls.
Well it’s fine as Hiroaka’s outlet for his interest in sadism and guro, but even as fap material the nonsensical premise bugged me.
“While it is fiction, somehow you have a hunch somewhere in the back of your neck, that humans have committed far worse atrocities than this.”
That is an easy one. Just replace England with eastern China, prisoners with soldiers and push the date around 40 years into the future.
@11: The reasoning behind “Plan 1-14″ was explained in detail in Ch1 pg19-20. I doubt all the casualties mentioned were prisoners.
Chapter 4 (which expands upon the reasons for executing the plans) states as much, explicitly.
@13+14
Yes I read all that, and by no stretch of the imagination could that ever make sense as a solution. Doesn’t mean I don’t like the project, but thought it was an aspect that requires an unnatural suspension of disbelief.
If they are long term and lifers troublesome enough to be such a concern they need a more secure prison system not something to keep the idea of committing a crime fresh on their minds, or to corrupt the lesser criminals by turning to a mob crime mentality, every year. In place of the jailor wouldn’t you have them in a facility that doesn’t let them interact without more than enough supervision to contain or kill them and have isolated cells for troublemakers? With the arrangement he can make you’d think he’d rather keep all the delicious flat chest to himself…
Ah well, not a big deal, I won’t bring anything further on this.
:: goes back to waiting for more Chokotto Sister and Girlfriend ::
Yes more Iwaaki! T.S. Eliot’s “the Hollow Men” anyone? It seemed to make sense that only when he took action in the end by stabbing his girlfriend that he woke up from his nightmare.
Jesus that was intense. As much as I love Blade of the Immortal’s ridiculous action-oriented volumes and the plot-heavy ones I always thought that Beasts was one of the absolute best things Samura ever did, and B.C. was just as masterfully haunting. I don’t even think the premise of the story is important; its all about the storytelling and characterizations.
And yeah, as extreme as his porn is I don’t see how anyone could consider Samura’s serious work exploitative or even really sexual. I get the feeling that because he clearly has S&M/torture fetishes he’s very careful to completely remove any hint or eroticism from that material. That combined with his attention to women’s suffering a la Kenji Mizoguchi makes for some pretty interesting contrasts. I’d love for him to do an autobiographical work…
I personally loved Bradherley’s Coach. It’s so extremely sad, but something that should be read, nevertheless, since things like those really happen, and we’re so out of those girls’ lonely world of suffer.
I don’t think thar the Bradherley family’s option to calm down the prisoners is so unreal, since it’s cheap and people can easily be quieted down with money. I can actually imagine this happening in a real prison.
Thanks for the last two Bradherley chapters. I’m looking forward to reading them.
Im having problems to download “Look Me in the Eyes When You Talk” by HTTP ,it says the fileis not found. Did you remove it?
@21: I tried to download it and it seemed to work just fine. What browser are you using? I suggest to copy the url and paste it into the address field.
Thanks, i think some XSS security add on in my firefox was troubling the download, it worked now.
Thx for the work a lot!!!
I hated the ending though… That old Bradherley geezer came out as a saint who suffered much for his ideals, but I think he was just a fucking sadist, since the Paschal festival brought much more pain and death than the prison break… As well I’m always in the opinion that in manga 1 girl worth the lives of 50 men so this ending just annoys me more^-^
Anyway, you’ve done a great job and I’ll be waiting for more!!
Samura would’ve betrayed the authenticity of the depiction if he’d gone for silly poetic justice of an ending.
Thank you. This is why I read Kotonoha. I was shocked, repulsed, saddened, angered, and all the while deeply immersed by the scenario. This is worth reading regardless of the subject matter.
-J
While otherwise enjoyable, two things in Bradherley’s Coach really grated on my nerves.
1) The European setting. I don’t know what kind of morals people have in countries like Japan, but the western (Christian?) attitude mostly calls to protect women and children, not sacrifice them in order to save the men. Just the opposite. A scheme like the one depicted in the manga wouldn’t have been accepted.
2) The connection to “Anne of Green Gables”, from which most of the names and some of the plot were deliberately stolen. The mangaka even boasts about it. I mean, WTF? That’s just disrespectful.
Both points mentioned above, detract in my opinion from the credibility and realism of this piece. The plot isn’t bad, but it just doesn’t pack the punch the way it could have.
I think you’re missing the point. 1 is moot, and 2 is frankly just your opinion.
Besides, I don’t doubt that at any time and place in history there are people capable of this regardless of what society at large lets on. In retrospect, aompare to say, genocide, this isn’t nearly as shocking.
Wow… and wow again. What an amazing (albeit disturbing) story. Thanks for another quality Kotonoha offering!
Marina,
Religious people are just fine with forgetting everything they defend when they need to. History shows that Christian churches were responsible for countless cruel actions, and they weren’t exactly all pro-women, you know.
I’m usually a silent leecher, but I need to comment.
Bradherley’s Coach made me feel sick to the stomach. I had to leave it half-read for an appointment today, during the day I couldn’t even eat I still felt so sick from reading the first half.
But when I got back I finished it.
A truly bleak story from a truly brilliant storyteller.
I may have felt some horrible scopes of emotions whilst reading, but those were strong emotions, and I felt them.
Hiroaki Samura is a genius and a master.
Fabulous work…