What is Rakuda Laughs?

Rakuda Ga Warau, billed in Japan as Terada Katsuya Presents, is the illustrator's turn at writing and drawing a full manga of his own: a crime story with a grin. Rakuda, a low-ranking, trigger-happy yakuza and brand-new father, gets the call every gangster dreads: dispose of a body, no questions. The body turns out to be his own gang's boss, the job reached him through a young hustler named Amazaki, and suddenly the gang and the police are both hunting the man holding the shovel.

The Japanese collection appeared from Wani Magazine in January 2003. English readers waited nearly two decades: DENPA Books published it as Rakuda Laughs! in 2022 (ISBN 9781634429702), putting Terada the manga storyteller, not just Terada the illustrator, onto Western shelves beside The Monkey King.

It is the natural companion to the illustration work: the same dense line and lived-in faces, pointed at contemporary Tokyo instead of mythic China. Readers who know him only as a cover and guide artist tend to be surprised that the man writes jokes this dry.