• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Comment Policy
    • Disclosures & Disclaimers
  • Resources
    • Links, Essays & Articles
    • Fandomology!
    • CLAMP Directory
    • BlogRoll
  • Features & Columns
    • 3 Things Thursday
    • Adventures in the Key of Shoujo
    • Bit & Blips (game reviews)
    • BL BOOKRACK
    • Bookshelf Briefs
    • Bringing the Drama
    • Comic Conversion
    • Fanservice Friday
    • Going Digital
    • It Came From the Sinosphere
    • License This!
    • Magazine no Mori
    • My Week in Manga
    • OFF THE SHELF
    • Not By Manga Alone
    • PICK OF THE WEEK
    • Subtitles & Sensibility
    • Weekly Shonen Jump Recaps
  • Manga Moveable Feast
    • MMF Full Archive
    • Yun Kouga
    • CLAMP
    • Shojo Beat
    • Osamu Tezuka
    • Sailor Moon
    • Fruits Basket
    • Takehiko Inoue
    • Wild Adapter
    • One Piece
    • After School Nightmare
    • Karakuri Odette
    • Paradise Kiss
    • The Color Trilogy
    • To Terra…
    • Sexy Voice & Robo
  • Browse by Author
    • Sean Gaffney
    • Anna Neatrour
    • Michelle Smith
    • Katherine Dacey
    • MJ
    • Brigid Alverson
    • Travis Anderson
    • Phillip Anthony
    • Derek Bown
    • Jaci Dahlvang
    • Angela Eastman
    • Erica Friedman
    • Sara K.
    • Megan Purdy
    • Emily Snodgrass
    • Nancy Thistlethwaite
    • Eva Volin
    • David Welsh
  • MB Blogs
    • A Case Suitable For Treatment
    • Experiments in Manga
    • MangaBlog
    • The Manga Critic
    • Manga Report
    • Soliloquy in Blue
    • Manga Curmudgeon (archive)

Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

October 14, 2014 by MJ 2 Comments

Morning Manga Spotlight: Basara

basara-dreams-smI’ve recently offered up my personal manga/manhwa library (completely with photos & titles on Facebook) as a resource for my teen students who might wish to begin reading manga, or to dig into older/rarer series that they may never have heard of. This is my second attempt at such a thing, but now that I actually have a couple of students who already read manga, I’m feeling more hopeful about spreading the love for Japanese and Korean comics. And to help things along, I thought I’d try spotlighting some of these series that may be new to young fans. I intended this as a series of Facebook posts, since that’s where I most commonly interact with my students via social media, but I thought I’d also duplicate it here, particularly for newer and/or younger manga readers, who may not be familiar with titles we’ve all talked about in the past.

To that end, my first spotlight will shine on Yumi Tamura’s BASARA, a 27-volume shoujo manga that ran in Japan from 1990-1998. Friends in the industry will know that there is pretty much nothing I love more than late 1980s – early 1990s shoujo, and Basara is a particularly precious gem from this period. Basara is an epic fantasy set in a post-apocalyptic world, in which Japan has been divided into several regions, each ruled by a king from the same cruel and corrupt royal clan. The story revolves around Sarasa, a 15-year-old girl from the poorest of these regions, whose twin brother, Tatara, is prophesied to be the “child of destiny” who can free their people from tyranny. When Sarasa’s village is destroyed and her brother murdered by the Red King, Sarasa takes on the identity of “Tatara” in order to keep the prophecy alive and seek revenge on the Red King. The series chronicles her journey through her ravaged country toward her final battle with the Red King, but more importantly, it chronicles her journey as a young woman in a world where she’s valued primarily for her identity as a man.

While I was initially dismayed by what I perceived as an unfortunate focus on romance in this series, I eventually came to view it not only as a decidedly feminist tale, but also an anarchist narrative that was more compelling than I ever expected. Here, I’ll let my articles here on Manga Bookshelf do the talking. (Yes, there are spoilers. But for a story like this, the plot itself is less the point than how it plays out. Decide for yourself how you feel about that.)

Personalizing Feminism in Basara

More than this, though (or perhaps *because* of this), Basara is engaging, beautiful, and incredibly moving as an epic fantasy. If you doubt at all the emotional power of this series, I should mention that I’m tearing up just *skimming* that article I wrote over a year ago. For more reading (and even more spoilers), here is the 10,000-world roundtable I participated in during last year’s Yumi Tamura Manga Moveable Feast.

Or for something a little more fannish: try this essay on why Basara’s Blue King demonstrates what JK Rowling could have (and *should have*) done with Draco Malfoy,

Even if you don’t want to read the spoilers, go look at some of the beautiful artwork. It is undeniably drawn in an older shoujo style, but I’ll take this over current art trends any day. I mean, seriously. THE EMOTIONS.

If you like epic fantasy with a fantastic female protagonist, Basara is for you. But, honestly, I think it’s something everyone should read. I’m totally serious. BASARA IS THE BEST. Your life will be made richer by it, on multiple levels.

This has been today’s Manga Spotlight! Enjoy!

Share this:

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Reddit
  • Tumblr
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest

Filed Under: Morning Manga Spotlight, UNSHELVED

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. AshLynx says

    October 14, 2014 at 12:38 pm

    I’m actually re-reading this right now! On vol 19 in fact. I next plan to re-read Afterschool Nightmare.
    Whatever happen to 3 things thursday column?

    Reply
    • Melinda Beasi says

      October 14, 2014 at 1:07 pm

      That makes me SO HAPPY! :D

      Hmmm, well, life happened. I’m hoping this little thing here will help get me back into blogging, and then we’ll see what comes out of that.

      Reply


Before leaving a comment at Manga Bookshelf, please read our Comment Policy.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

 | Log in
Copyright © 2010 Manga Bookshelf | Powered by WordPress & the Genesis Framework
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.