Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Katherine Dacey

Toto! The Wonderful Adventure, Vols. 1-5

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If you’ve ever been to Canal Street in New York City — the Counterfeit Capital of North America — you know that there are two types of goods for sale there. The first are inept knock-offs: the “Cooch” purse with plastic handles, the “Rollex” with cubic zirconia insets and a flimsy metal band. The second are just as fake as the first, but are executed with enough panache that style-conscious women get a secret thrill in owning them: the plastic “Birkin” bag that looks like the real thing but costs $30, the canvas “Louis Vuitton” wallet that comes in prettier colors than the original.

The same principles apply to manga as well: there are series which shamelessly imitate a best-selling title like Dragonball or InuYasha, rehearsing the same plot without capturing the original’s charm, and there are copycats which bear a strong resemblance to the original but nonetheless work well on their own terms. Toto! The Wonderful Adventure falls into the latter category, a good-natured rip-off of One Piece and Rave Master that accomplishes in five volumes what many shonen series need twenty or thirty to pull off.

As one might guess from the title, Yuko Osada dresses up his swashbuckling treasure hunt with frequent allusions to Frank L. Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The hero, Kakashi (literally, “scarecrow”), is an orphan who dreams of leaving his small island home for grand adventures, but lacks the brains to realize his ambition. When a zeppelin makes an unscheduled stop on the island, he stows away, thus beginning an odyssey that loosely mirrors the plot of Baum’s novel. Kakashi finds a puppy in the ship’s cargo hold, then meets a feisty teen named Dorothy who attends St. Kansas Academy, practices “tornado” senjutsu (a martial art involving spinning kicks), and plans to visit Emerald City. As Kakashi and Dorothy follow the Yellow Brick Road — here played by an old railway line — they acquire traveling companions, each modeled on one of Baum’s iconic characters: Noil, a kind but cowardly soldier who aspires to be a comedian; Dam, a big, blustering army officer with a metal arm; and Paisley, the Northern Investigator for the W.I.T.C.H. organization.

Central to the story is the relationship between Kakashi and Toto, the puppy he rescues in volume one. Though Toto initially appears benign, he has a big secret: his collar grants him the kind of amazing, destructive powers that make him of special interest to the military. It doesn’t take long before Kakashi and Dorothy find the Western army bearing down on them, anxious to reclaim their lost weapon.

Though the story’s Oz jokes add novelty value, Toto! barks like a typical wacky shonen adventure, with lengthy set-pieces that follow the same basic formula: Kakashi et al. arrive in a town, befriend one of the locals, and narrowly evade capture by the army. Some of these story arcs are genuinely delightful; in volumes two and three, for example, Kakashi and Dorothy stumble into the once-glorious Dego City, a former railroad hub that’s been stripped bare by the Imperial Army in its never-ending quest for scrap metal. The heroes’ getaway is executed with a perfect mixture of suspense and humor, culminating in a scene that Miyazaki would be proud to include in one of his films. Other storylines feel more labored. In volumes four and five, for example, Kakashi and friends get swept up in a feud between rival gangs: Alice and the Wonder Family in one camp, the Uchiyaka (literally, “rabbit gun”) in the other. Osada piles on the Lewis Carroll references, double- and triple-crosses, and crazy shoot-outs, but the frenzied pace and frequent jump cuts render these chapters almost incoherent.

At times, Osada’s dogged capitulation to shonen formula invites not-so-flattering comparisons between Toto! and more popular series. He populates his story with a dim but determined hero (with a dead explorer father, no less), a feisty female sidekick, a comic-relief character with an outsized Afro, and a posse of villains-turned-allies — in this case, a group of sky pirates called the Man Chicken Family. Osada even provides a complex mythology to explain Toto’s power — something involving twelve directions and twelve “accessories” — that feels like a complete afterthought, an editor’s attempt to make Toto! behave more like One Piece or Rave Master.

Yet for all Kakashi’s earnest declarations about “family” and “adventure,” and all the wacky villains, epic battles, and amazing artifacts pilfered from One Piece and Rave Master, Toto! has undeniable charm. The characters have great rapport, for one thing; though their interactions follow the standard shonen model of friendly antagonism, their obvious loyalty to and affection for one another is contagious. The girls are on equal footing with the boys, for another; Dorothy and Paisley prove stalwart and resourceful, getting significant butt-kicking turns in the spotlight. The art is terrific, too; Osada’s crisp linework and vivid caricatures evoke Eiichiro Oda and Hiro Mashima’s styles without feeling slavishly derivative of either.

Best of all, Toto! is brief. By the time the series concludes, Kakashi has realized his life’s greatest goal: to see the world with friends. It’s not clear whether volume five was intended to be the final installment, or if the editors at Weekly Shonen Magazine canceled it prematurely; either way, Toto! The Wonderful Adventure is proof that a hero’s journey from ignorance to enlightenment needn’t take fifty volumes to convincingly achieve.

TOTO! THE WONDERFUL ADVENTURE, VOLS. 1-5 • BY YUKO OSADA • DEL REY • RATING: TEEN (13+)

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation

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Modern governments from the Bolshevik regime to the Bush presidency have sought simple, appealing ways to present complex information to their citizens, from “Red Pinkerton” novels (think politically correct Communist detective stories) to televised public service announcements. Ernie Colon and Sid Jacobson’s The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation is one such effort, produced with the full cooperation of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The goal: to summarize the Commission’s findings in a concise, visually arresting format that would appeal to readers reluctant to tackle the full 500-page document. Unfortunately, the final product falls well short of the mark, offering a dense, confusing gloss on the Commission’s work that I found harder to read than the actual prose report.

One can’t fault Colon and Jacobson for their fidelity to the original material. Their book follows the report closely, down to the chapters and subheadings, and uses the Commission’s own words to explain the events that precipitated the 9/11 attacks. In their efforts to mimic the structure of the original document, however, Colon and Jacobson seldom find the right balance between text and image; most of the artwork feels more like an afterthought than a clarification of the prose. More frustrating is the book’s choppy visual flow; Colon and Jacobson’s panel placement often seems poorly chosen, making it difficult to read the images and text boxes in the correct sequence.

The artwork, too, is a disappointment, an eclectic assortment of traced elements, computer-generated graphics, maps, photo-realistic drawings, and Silver Age character designs that never mesh into a seamless whole. (It’s particularly odd to see some real-life figures get the cartoon treatment, while others are rendered in a naturalistic fashion; as depicted in The 9/11 Report, Condolezza Rice bears a striking resemblance to Lucy van Pelt.) Though Colon and Jacobson generally avoid visual stereotyping, there are a few unfortunate images sprinkled throughout the book. On page 115, for example, there’s a chart outlining strategies for combating Muslim extremism in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The chart is embellished with several images of hook-nosed, squinty-eyed, turban-wearing terrorists, one of whom grins menacingly at the reader, rocket launcher perched on his shoulder; surely the problem of global terrorism deserves a more sophisticated treatment than cartoonish, racist typecasting.

The most effective section of The 9/11 Report is the very beginning, in which Colon and Jacobson meticulously recreate the morning of September 11, 2001. They present the sequence of events twice, first depicting what happened aboard the four hijacked airplanes, then reconstructing the official response to these same events, documenting the jurisdictional confusion and poor communication that prevented the government from taking more decisive action. Both passages consist of four horizontal timelines that allow the reader to see, at a glance, what was happening aboard all four planes on a minute-to-minute basis. (In the hardbound edition, these timelines are printed on a single piece of paper which readers can unfold to view the entire sequence of events.) Here, the comics medium seems uniquely suited to showing these events simultaneously, giving the reader a much better appreciation of just how quickly the day’s events unfolded, and how difficult it was for anyone — military commanders, aviation authorities, police and fire officials — to know how to proceed.

It’s a shame that the rest of The 9/11 Report doesn’t utilize the format as effectively as these early pages, where image and text function as co-equal partners. Whatever the flaws of the original report — and, depending on your political inclinations, those flaws are either minor factual errors or egregious omissions of evidence implicating the CIA in bringing down the World Trade Center — it is a more effective, compelling narrative than the one Colon and Jacobson fashioned from it.

THE 9/11 REPORT: A GRAPHIC ADAPTATION • BY SID JACOBSON AND ERNIE COLON, BASED UPON THE FINAL REPORT OF THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES • HILL & WANG • 134 pp.

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation

by

Modern governments from the Bolshevik regime to the Bush presidency have sought simple, appealing ways to present complex information to their citizens, from “Red Pinkerton” novels (think politically correct Communist detective stories) to televised public service announcements. Ernie Colon and Sid Jacobson’s The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation is one such effort, produced with the full cooperation of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The goal: to summarize the Commission’s findings in a concise, visually arresting format that would appeal to readers reluctant to tackle the full 500-page document. Unfortunately, the final product falls well short of the mark, offering a dense, confusing gloss on the Commission’s work that I found harder to read than the actual prose report.

One can’t fault Colon and Jacobson for their fidelity to the original material. Their book follows the report closely, down to the chapters and subheadings, and uses the Commission’s own words to explain the events that precipitated the 9/11 attacks. In their efforts to mimic the structure of the original document, however, Colon and Jacobson seldom find the right balance between text and image; most of the artwork feels more like an afterthought than a clarification of the prose. More frustrating is the book’s choppy visual flow; Colon and Jacobson’s panel placement often seems poorly chosen, making it difficult to read the images and text boxes in the correct sequence.

The artwork, too, is a disappointment, an eclectic assortment of traced elements, computer-generated graphics, maps, photo-realistic drawings, and Silver Age character designs that never mesh into a seamless whole. (It’s particularly odd to see some real-life figures get the cartoon treatment, while others are rendered in a naturalistic fashion; as depicted in The 9/11 Report, Condolezza Rice bears a striking resemblance to Lucy van Pelt.) Though Colon and Jacobson generally avoid visual stereotyping, there are a few unfortunate images sprinkled throughout the book. On page 115, for example, there’s a chart outlining strategies for combating Muslim extremism in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The chart is embellished with several images of hook-nosed, squinty-eyed, turban-wearing terrorists, one of whom grins menacingly at the reader, rocket launcher perched on his shoulder; surely the problem of global terrorism deserves a more sophisticated treatment than cartoonish, racist typecasting.

The most effective section of The 9/11 Report is the very beginning, in which Colon and Jacobson meticulously recreate the morning of September 11, 2001. They present the sequence of events twice, first depicting what happened aboard the four hijacked airplanes, then reconstructing the official response to these same events, documenting the jurisdictional confusion and poor communication that prevented the government from taking more decisive action. Both passages consist of four horizontal timelines that allow the reader to see, at a glance, what was happening aboard all four planes on a minute-to-minute basis. (In the hardbound edition, these timelines are printed on a single piece of paper which readers can unfold to view the entire sequence of events.) Here, the comics medium seems uniquely suited to showing these events simultaneously, giving the reader a much better appreciation of just how quickly the day’s events unfolded, and how difficult it was for anyone — military commanders, aviation authorities, police and fire officials — to know how to proceed.

It’s a shame that the rest of The 9/11 Report doesn’t utilize the format as effectively as these early pages, where image and text function as co-equal partners. Whatever the flaws of the original report — and, depending on your political inclinations, those flaws are either minor factual errors or egregious omissions of evidence implicating the CIA in bringing down the World Trade Center — it is a more effective, compelling narrative than the one Colon and Jacobson fashioned from it.

THE 9/11 REPORT: A GRAPHIC ADAPTATION • BY SID JACOBSON AND ERNIE COLON, BASED UPON THE FINAL REPORT OF THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES • HILL & WANG • 134 pp.

Black Blizzard

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First published in 1956, Black Blizzard is a juicy pulp thriller that will irresistibly remind Western readers of The 39 Steps, The Defiant Ones, and The Fugitive. The hero is twenty-five-year-old Susumu Yamaji, a down-on-his-luck pianist who stands accused of murdering the ringmaster of a traveling circus. The circumstantial evidence against him is so compelling that even Susumu — who was in a drunken stupor at the time — believes he did it. After surrendering to authorities, Susumu is handcuffed to hardened criminal Shinpei Konta, a middle-aged man who’s spent most of his adult life drifting in and out of jail. (When Susumu admits to his crime, Shinpei sniffs, “Just one? Tch! That’s nothing! I’ve been convicted five times. Twice for murder.”) An avalanche provides the shackled pair an opportunity to escape into a raging snowstorm, police hot on their trail.

Written in just twenty days, Black Blizzard unfolds at a furious clip, pausing only to allow Susumu a chance to tell Shinpei about his involvement with the circus. The two principals are more archetypes than characters, drawn in bold strokes, but the interaction between them crackles with antagonistic energy — they’re as much enemies as partners, roles that they constantly renegotiate during their time on the lam. Only in the final, rushed pages does manga-ka Yoshihiro Tatsumi falter, tidily resolving the story through an all-too-convenient plot twist that hinges on coincidence.

The plot may be pilfered from Manhunt — Tatsumi claims Mickey Spillane as an influence — but the art leaves a fresh impression. Tatsumi already had a substantial amount of work under his belt at the time he wrote Blizzard — seventeen novel-length stories, as well as several volumes’ worth of short ones — but was moving in the direction of what he called “manga that isn’t manga,” stories that exploited the medium’s capacity for representing action in a more dynamic, cinematic fashion. Black Blizzard is filled with slashing diagonal lines, dramatic camera angles, and images of speeding trains; it’s as if Giacomo Balla decided to try his hand at sequential art, filling the pages with as many signifiers of motion as he could muster without lapsing into abstraction:

This kineticism extends to even the smallest gestures; in the very first panels, for example, we see a pair of hands banging out notes on a keyboard:

The composition couldn’t be simpler — just a few speedlines and sound effects convey the action — but these details, when coupled with the claw-like position of the hands, suggest the pianist’s extreme agitation, an impression confirmed just a few panels later when we first see Susumu’s sweat-drenched face.

Tatsumi’s regard for anatomy is, at times, careless; Susumu has Rachmaninoff-sized mitts, to judge from the awkward way in which his hands are drawn, while other cast members look stumpy, with grossly foreshortened legs. Yet for all the obvious flaws in his draftmanship, Tatsumi’s gestural approach to characterization proves well-suited to the material’s relentless pace, efficiently communicating each cast member’s personality, age, and plot function with a few artfully rendered lines and shapes. Shinpei, in particular, is a terrific creation, with a broad, sagging jaw and two thick, diagonal lines for eyebrows, making him a dead ringer for a jack-o-lantern.

Drawn & Quarterly has done a fine job of adapting Black Blizzard for Western readers, thanks, in large part, to a crisp translation by Akemi Wegmuller that captures the unique cadences of mid-century noir; one can almost imagine Shinpei referring to an attractive woman as a “tomato.” The volume also includes an interview with Tatsumi; read in tandem with “The Joy of Creation,” one of the later chapters in A Drifting Life, the interview sheds light on Tatsumi’s creative process as well as the work’s initial reception. Editor and designer Adrian Tomine has given Black Blizzard a retro-chic makeover, dying the trim yellow and boldly announcing the book’s price in the manner of a dime-store novel. It’s an attractive design (see above), but I can’t help wishing that Drawn and Quarterly had used Masami Kuroda’s original painting:

It’s a minor complaint, to be sure, but the original cover — to my mind, at least — is a closer expression of the story’s pulpy roots and futurism-tinged artwork.

That said, Black Blizzard is a welcome addition to the growing body of mid-century manga now available in English, providing an all-too-rare glimpse into the early stages of the gekiga movement. And while it lacks the visual and narrative polish of Tatsumi’s mature work, I’ll take the sweaty hyperbole of Black Blizzard over the dour verismo of The Push Man any day; Black Blizzard has a vital, improvisatory energy missing from Tatsumi’s later period, even though his command of the medium was clearly more assured in the 1960s and 1970s.

BLACK BLIZZARD • BY YOSHIHIRO TATSUMI • DRAWN & QUARTERLY • 132 pp. • NO RATING

Black Blizzard

by

First published in 1956, Black Blizzard is a juicy pulp thriller that will irresistibly remind Western readers of The 39 Steps, The Defiant Ones, and The Fugitive. The hero is twenty-five-year-old Susumu Yamaji, a down-on-his-luck pianist who stands accused of murdering the ringmaster of a traveling circus. The circumstantial evidence against him is so compelling that even Susumu — who was in a drunken stupor at the time — believes he did it. After surrendering to authorities, Susumu is handcuffed to hardened criminal Shinpei Konta, a middle-aged man who’s spent most of his adult life drifting in and out of jail. (When Susumu admits to his crime, Shinpei sniffs, “Just one? Tch! That’s nothing! I’ve been convicted five times. Twice for murder.”) An avalanche provides the shackled pair an opportunity to escape into a raging snowstorm, police hot on their trail.

Written in just twenty days, Black Blizzard unfolds at a furious clip, pausing only to allow Susumu a chance to tell Shinpei about his involvement with the circus. The two principals are more archetypes than characters, drawn in bold strokes, but the interaction between them crackles with antagonistic energy — they’re as much enemies as partners, roles that they constantly renegotiate during their time on the lam. Only in the final, rushed pages does manga-ka Yoshihiro Tatsumi falter, tidily resolving the story through an all-too-convenient plot twist that hinges on coincidence.

The plot may be pilfered from Manhunt — Tatsumi claims Mickey Spillane as an influence — but the art leaves a fresh impression. Tatsumi already had a substantial amount of work under his belt at the time he wrote Blizzard — seventeen novel-length stories, as well as several volumes’ worth of short ones — but was moving in the direction of what he called “manga that isn’t manga,” stories that exploited the medium’s capacity for representing action in a more dynamic, cinematic fashion. Black Blizzard is filled with slashing diagonal lines, dramatic camera angles, and images of speeding trains; it’s as if Giacomo Balla decided to try his hand at sequential art, filling the pages with as many signifiers of motion as he could muster without lapsing into abstraction:

This kineticism extends to even the smallest gestures; in the very first panels, for example, we see a pair of hands banging out notes on a keyboard:

The composition couldn’t be simpler — just a few speedlines and sound effects convey the action — but these details, when coupled with the claw-like position of the hands, suggest the pianist’s extreme agitation, an impression confirmed just a few panels later when we first see Susumu’s sweat-drenched face.

Tatsumi’s regard for anatomy is, at times, careless; Susumu has Rachmaninoff-sized mitts, to judge from the awkward way in which his hands are drawn, while other cast members look stumpy, with grossly foreshortened legs. Yet for all the obvious flaws in his draftmanship, Tatsumi’s gestural approach to characterization proves well-suited to the material’s relentless pace, efficiently communicating each cast member’s personality, age, and plot function with a few artfully rendered lines and shapes. Shinpei, in particular, is a terrific creation, with a broad, sagging jaw and two thick, diagonal lines for eyebrows, making him a dead ringer for a jack-o-lantern.

Drawn & Quarterly has done a fine job of adapting Black Blizzard for Western readers, thanks, in large part, to a crisp translation by Akemi Wegmuller that captures the unique cadences of mid-century noir; one can almost imagine Shinpei referring to an attractive woman as a “tomato.” The volume also includes an interview with Tatsumi; read in tandem with “The Joy of Creation,” one of the later chapters in A Drifting Life, the interview sheds light on Tatsumi’s creative process as well as the work’s initial reception. Editor and designer Adrian Tomine has given Black Blizzard a retro-chic makeover, dying the trim yellow and boldly announcing the book’s price in the manner of a dime-store novel. It’s an attractive design (see above), but I can’t help wishing that Drawn and Quarterly had used Masami Kuroda’s original painting:

It’s a minor complaint, to be sure, but the original cover — to my mind, at least — is a closer expression of the story’s pulpy roots and futurism-tinged artwork.

That said, Black Blizzard is a welcome addition to the growing body of mid-century manga now available in English, providing an all-too-rare glimpse into the early stages of the gekiga movement. And while it lacks the visual and narrative polish of Tatsumi’s mature work, I’ll take the sweaty hyperbole of Black Blizzard over the dour verismo of The Push Man any day; Black Blizzard has a vital, improvisatory energy missing from Tatsumi’s later period, even though his command of the medium was clearly more assured in the 1960s and 1970s.

BLACK BLIZZARD • BY YOSHIHIRO TATSUMI • DRAWN & QUARTERLY • 132 pp. • NO RATING

Short Takes: The Art of Osamu Tezuka and Korea As Viewed by 12 Creators

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I’m taking a break from shojo romances and seinen shoot-em-ups in favor of two books aimed squarely at older comics connoisseurs. The first is Helen McCarthy’s The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga (Abrams Comics), an award-winning biography of Japan’s best-known manga-ka. (Her book just nabbed a Harvey in the Best American Edition of Foreign Material category, a category normally reserved for translated comics such as Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s Abandon the Old in Tokyo.) The second is Korea As Viewed by 12 Creators (Fanfare/Ponent Mon), a much-anticipated follow-up to the critically acclaimed anthology Japan As Viewed By 17 Creators. Which ones deserve a place on your bookshelf? Read on for details.

THE ART OF OSAMU TEZUKA: GOD OF MANGA

BY HELEN MCCARTHY • ABRAMS COMIC ART • 272 pp.

In the introduction to The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga, author Helen McCarthy argues that Tezuka’s work merits scholarly attention, but also deserves a more accessible treatment as well, one that acknowledges that Tezuka “was first and foremost a maker of popular entertainment.” Her desire to bring Tezuka’s work to a wider audience of anime and manga fans is reflected in every aspect of the book’s execution, from its organization — she divides her chapters into short, one-to-three page subsections, each generously illustrated with full-color plates — to its coffee-table book packaging.

As one might expect from such an ambitious undertaking, the results are a little uneven. The strongest chapters focus on the unique aspects of Tezuka’s work, exploring a variety of creative issues in straightforward, jargon-free language. McCarthy provides a helpful overview of Tezuka’s “star system” (a.k.a. recurring figures such as Acetylene Lamp and Zephyrus) and traces the evolution of his storytelling technique through dozens of series, debunking the notion that he “invented” cinematic comics while carefully spelling out what was innovative about his manga. McCarthy also makes a persuasive case for Astro Boy as one of the most important works in the Tezuka canon, the series that most clearly anticipated his mature style.

As a biography, however, The Art of Osamu Tezuka offers little insight into Tezuka’s personality beyond his relentless perfectionism and strong work ethic. McCarthy’s attempts to situate Tezuka’s work within the context of his life and times feel glib — a pity, as she makes some thought-provoking observations about Tezuka’s recurring use of certain motifs — especially androgyny, childhood, and disguise — that beg further elucidation.

That said, The Art of Osamu Tezuka largely succeeds in its mission to educate fans about Tezuka’s work process and artistic legacy, clarifying his place in Japanese popular culture, exploring his animated oeuvre, and introducing readers to dozens of untranslated — and sometimes obscure — series. A worthwhile addition to any serious manga reader’s library.

KOREA AS VIEWED BY 12 CREATORS

VARIOUS ARTISTS, EDITED BY NICOLAS FINET • FANFARE/PONENT MON • 222 pp. • NO RATING

This anthology of twelve short stories, six by Korean artists and six by French, follows the same basic template as Japan As Viewed by 17 Creators, offering brief, impressionistic scenes of contemporary Korean life. Though 17 Creators is a uniformly excellent work, its companion volume is not; the stories run the gamut from pedestrian to brilliant, with the Korean artists making the strongest contributions.

The unevenness of the collection is attributable, in part, to a home field advantage. Artists such as Choi Kyu-sok and Byun Ki-hyun tackle deeper, more penetrating topics than their French counterparts, exploring homelessness (“The Fake Dove”), sexual discrimination and violence (“The Rabbit”), and the decay of traditional social networks (“The Rain That Goes Away Comes Back”). Though the artists’ ambition sometimes outstrips their allocated space, all three stories boast beautiful, detailed artwork that suggests the rhythm and feeling of modern urban life. The French contributions, by contrast, are travelogues of one sort or another: in “Beondegi,” for example, Mathieu Sapin imagines what it would be like for a French-Korean woman to return to her parents’ home country, while in “Letters From Korea,” Igort offers brief descriptions of places he visited in Seoul. The weakest of the collection is Catel’s “Dul Lucie,” an uneventful travel diary filled with observations about “doll-like” and “sensual” Koreans that — in English, at least — leave a bad aftertaste of exoticism. Though the other French artists are not as patronizing, the stories feel shallow; imagine an essay about New York City written by someone who only visited Times Square, and you have some idea of how superficial these artists’ appreciation of Korea seems to be.

Two stories make this collection a worthwhile investment. The first is “Solgeo’s Tree,” by Lee Doo-hoo, in which a monk paints a mural so life-like that birds attempt to perch in its branches. Told with almost no dialogue, the story relies heavily on Lee’s exquisite pen-and-ink drawings to impart its Buddhist moral. The second is “A Rat in the Country of Yong,” Herve Tanquerelle’s playful, wordless story about a mouse visiting Seoul. The surrealistic imagery — skies full of dragon transports, streets filled with animal-eared people, pools inhabited by monstrous carp — and Chaplin-esque physical comedy evoke the strangeness and excitement of visiting a new city without falling into the trap of essentializing its people. Both comics attest to the vitality and richness of the “as viewed by” concept, and suggest what might have emerged from this sometimes insightful, sometimes banal French-Korean collaboration.

The Art of Osamu Tezuka

by

In the introduction to The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga, author Helen McCarthy argues that Tezuka’s work merits scholarly attention, but also deserves a more accessible treatment as well, one that acknowledges that Tezuka “was first and foremost a maker of popular entertainment.” Her desire to bring Tezuka’s work to a wider audience of anime and manga fans is reflected in every aspect of the book’s execution, from its organization — she divides her chapters into short, one-to-three page subsections, each generously illustrated with full-color plates — to its coffee-table book packaging.

As one might expect from such an ambitious undertaking, the results are a little uneven. The strongest chapters focus on the unique aspects of Tezuka’s work, exploring a variety of creative issues in straightforward, jargon-free language. McCarthy provides a helpful overview of Tezuka’s “star system” (a.k.a. recurring figures such as Acetylene Lamp and Zephyrus) and traces the evolution of his storytelling technique through dozens of series, debunking the notion that he “invented” cinematic comics while carefully spelling out what was innovative about his manga. McCarthy also makes a persuasive case for Astro Boy as one of the most important works in the Tezuka canon, the series that most clearly anticipated his mature style.

As a biography, however, The Art of Osamu Tezuka offers little insight into Tezuka’s personality beyond his relentless perfectionism and strong work ethic. McCarthy’s attempts to situate Tezuka’s work within the context of his life and times feel glib — a pity, as she makes some thought-provoking observations about Tezuka’s recurring use of certain motifs — especially androgyny, childhood, and disguise — that beg further elucidation.

That said, The Art of Osamu Tezuka largely succeeds in its mission to educate fans about Tezuka’s work process and artistic legacy, clarifying his place in Japanese popular culture, exploring his animated oeuvre, and introducing readers to dozens of untranslated — and sometimes obscure — series. A worthwhile addition to any serious manga reader’s library.

The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga
By Helen McCarthy
Abrams Comic Art, 272 pp.

Harmony

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In 2009, VIZ launched its Haikasoru imprint with the goal of bringing Japan’s best speculative fiction to the US. Haikasoru’s debut titles — All You Need Is Kill and The Lord of the Sands of Time — introduced Americans to two award-winning sci-fi authors whose work had previously been unavailable in English. As the line as grown, so, too, has the diversity of its offerings, which run the gamut from horror to teen-friendly fantasy and science fiction. Harmony, the newest Haikasoru title, falls on the softer end of the sci-fi continuum, depicting a world in which “admedistrative” societies are the new empire-builders.

Harmony takes place in the late twenty-first century, fifty years after a nuclear holocaust destroys North America. Countries which successfully developed a cure for radiation sickness have supplanted the old superpowers, while less scientifically advanced societies have descended into a perpetual state of guerilla warfare. Keeping the peace is the World Health Organization (WHO), which is tasked with monitoring world’s well-being. Their mission sounds benign, but WHO’s “peacekeeping” efforts smack of Big Brother: they use WatchMe, an elaborate system that keeps tabs on what people eat, do, and say while providing the government a steady stream of data about a person’s medical condition.

Harmony is told through the point of view of Tuan Kirie, a twenty-eight-year-old WHO agent tasked with solving the mystery behind an “outbreak” of suicide — an action that, in theory, should be impossible under the WatchMe system. Tuan is an appealing narrator, at once tough and funny, a natural contrarian who smokes and drinks and defies authority yet nonetheless treats her mission with the utmost seriousness. The story moves fluidly between past and present, using Tuan’s childhood memories to shed light on her conflicted, often subversive, behavior.

Until the third act, the pacing is brisk and the dialogue crisp. As Tuan draws closer to finding out what prompted the wave of suicides, however, the story begins to sag under the weight of turgid conversations about free will and psychology, a flaw that the frequent changes of setting can’t conceal. It’s a shame these discussions are so pedestrian, as author Keikaku “Project” Itoh has devised a nifty set-up for examining the boundaries between public and private life, imagining a world in which the government’s desire to collect data and enforce civility goes well beyond speech, belief, and association — all manifestations of conscious thought — to the level of neural transmissions and body chemistry. Though Tuan yearns for the physical and social freedom less technologically advanced societies enjoy, the persistence of armed conflict in the developing world is a potent reminder of why so many people willingly submit to the benevolent totalitarianism of the WatchMe system.

VIZ has done an excellent job of adapting Harmony for English-speaking audiences. Translator Alexander O. Smith, in particular, deserves praise for the smooth, idiomatic voicing of Tuan’s thoughts in language that captures the heroine’s fierce personality. Smith also navigates passages of scientific shoptalk and historical description with ease, producing a highly readable text that lacks any of the tell-tale signs of translation: awkward turns of phrase, confusing use of pronouns.

Aside from a few third-act hiccups, Harmony is a solidly entertaining book, offering a judicious mixture of globe-trotting action, social commentary, and suspense to engage all but the hardest science fiction fans, and a surprise ending that neatly resolves the main plot while raising new, thought-provoking questions. Recommended.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

HARMONY • BY PROJECT ITOH, TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER O. SMITH • VIZ • 252 pp.

Harmony

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VIZ launched its Haikasoru imprint in 2009, with the goal of bringing Japan’s best speculative fiction to the US. Haikasoru’s debut titles — All You Need Is Kill and The Lord of the Sands of Time — introduced Americans to two award-winning sci-fi authors whose work had previously been unavailable in English. As the line as grown, so, too, has the diversity of its offerings, which run the gamut from horror (e.g. Otsuichi’s ZOO) to teen-friendly fantasy (e.g. Miyuki Miyabe’s Brave Story and The Book of Heroes) to science fiction (e.g. Issui Ogawa’s The Next Continent and Hosume Nojia’s Usurper of the Sun). Harmony, the newest Haikasoru title, falls on the softer end of the sci-fi continuum, depicting a world in which “admedistrative” societies — that is, countries that operate by rule of medicine, rather than rule of law — are the new empire-builders.

Harmony takes place in the late twenty-first century, fifty years after nuclear holocaust destroyed North America and destabilized the international balance of power by flooding the Third World with an abundant supply of nuclear weapons. In the chaos that ensued, countries which successfully developed the medical technology to treat radiation sickness supplanted the old superpowers, while less scientifically advanced nations descended into guerilla warfare. The new admedistrative powers transformed the World Health Organization (WHO) into a global peacekeeping force tasked with monitoring other nations’ ability to “ensure their populace a lifestyle that [is] sufficiently healthy and human.” The key to that lifestyle is WatchMe, an elaborate system that keeps close watch over individuals’ health, guiding them away from potentially harmful choices — fatty food, alcohol, cigarettes, distressing literature — repairing cellular damage, and providing the government a steady stream of data about a person’s behavior and current medical condition.

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Harmony is told through the point of view of Tuan Kirie, a twenty-eight-year-old WHO agent tasked with solving the mystery behind an “outbreak” of suicide — an action that, in theory, should be impossible under the WatchMe system. Tuan is an appealing narrator, at once tough and funny, a natural contrarian who smokes and drinks and defies authority yet nonetheless treats her mission with the utmost seriousness. The story moves fluidly between past and present, using Tuan’s childhood memories to shed light on her conflicted, often subversive, behavior. Until the third act, the pacing is brisk and the dialogue crisp; as Tuan draws closer to finding out what prompted the wave of suicides, however, the story begins to sag under the weight of turgid conversations about free will and psychology, a flaw that the frequent changes of setting can’t conceal.

It’s a shame these third-act discussions are so pedestrian, as author Keikaku “Project” Itoh has devised a nifty set-up for examining the boundaries between public and private life, imagining a world in which the government’s desire to collect data and enforce civility goes well beyond speech, belief, and association — all manifestations of conscious thought — to the level of neural transmissions and body chemistry. For most of the book, Itoh manages to dramatize the conflict between public and private without speechifying or shortcuts, using Tuan’s role as a WHO agent to explore the nature of admedistrative rule. Though Tuan yearns for the physical and social freedom less technologically advanced societies enjoy, the persistence of armed conflict in the developing world is a potent reminder of why so many people willingly submit to the benevolent totalitarianism of the WatchMe system.

VIZ has done an excellent job of adapting Harmony for English-speaking audiences. Translator Alexander O. Smith, in particular, deserves praise for the smooth, idiomatic voicing of Tuan’s thoughts in language that captures the heroine’s fierce personality. Smith also navigates passages of scientific shoptalk and historical description with ease, producing a highly readable text that lacks any of the tell-tale signs of translation: awkward turns of phrase, confusing use of pronouns.

Aside from a few third-act hiccups, Harmony is a solidly entertaining book, offering a judicious mixture of globe-trotting action, social commentary, and suspense to engage all but the hardest science fiction fans, and a surprise ending that neatly resolves the main plot while raising new, thought-provoking questions. Recommended.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

HARMONY • BY PROJECT ITOH, TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER O. SMITH • VIZ • 252 pp.

Apollo’s Song, Vols. 1-2

by

Apollo’s Song may be one of the strangest sex ed manuals ever written.

It begins with a textbook Tezuka scene, at once lyrical and goofy: millions of anthropomorphic sperm race towards a comely egg. After one lucky soul pants and claws his way to the front of the scrum, the sperm and egg dissolve into a passionate embrace. In the following panel, we see the result of their union, an embryo, presiding over a veritable sperm graveyard. This juxtaposition of life and death — or, perhaps more accurately, sex and death — foreshadows the dialectic that will play out in the following chapters.

We are then introduced to Shogo, a young man who has just arrived at a psychiatric hospital. Shogo is a sociopath: unemotional, cruel to animals, scornful of society, and deeply misogynist. While undergoing electroshock therapy, Shogo has a vivid hallucination in which a stern goddess chastises him for renouncing all forms of love. As punishment for his cruelty, she condemns him to a fate straight out of Dante’s Inferno: Shogo will love and lose the same woman over and over again for eternity. Thus begins a series of romantic and sexual encounters between Shogo and various incarnations of his ill-fated partner.

…

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Apollo’s Song, Vols. 1-2

by

Apollo’s Song may be one of the strangest sex ed manuals ever written. It begins with a textbook Tezuka scene, at once lyrical and goofy: millions of anthropomorphic sperm race towards a comely egg. After one lucky soul pants and claws his way to the front of the scrum, the sperm and egg dissolve into a passionate embrace. In the following panel, we see the result of their union, an embryo, presiding over a veritable sperm graveyard. This juxtaposition of life and death — or, perhaps more accurately, sex and death — foreshadows the dialectic that will play out in the following chapters.

We are then introduced to Shogo, a young man who has just arrived at a psychiatric hospital. Shogo is a sociopath: unemotional, cruel to animals, scornful of society, and deeply misogynist. While undergoing electroshock therapy, Shogo has a vivid hallucination in which a stern goddess chastises him for renouncing all forms of love. As punishment for his cruelty, she condemns him to a fate straight out of Dante’s Inferno: Shogo will love and lose the same woman over and over again for eternity. Thus begins a series of romantic and sexual encounters between Shogo and various incarnations of his ill-fated partner.

Though the story begins and ends in the present day, the individual episodes unfold in both the past and future, reminding the reader that Shogo cannot escape his fate. Certain recurring motifs suggest that these scenarios are, in fact, manifestations of Shogo’s subconscious as he struggles to reconcile his hatred of women with his need to be loved. In each scenario, for example, Shogo adopts a hyper-masculine guise — Nazi foot soldier, fugitive, hunter, terrorist — that he must ultimately renounce in his quest for spiritual and sexual fulfillment. We’re never entirely certain which of these episodes are unfolding in Shogo’s mind and which, if any, are unfolding in the real world.

Though Apollo’s Song aspires to universality, Tezuka’s characters remain firmly rooted in the time and place of their creation. Tezuka blames Shogo’s mother — whose crimes include an inability to lactate, promiscuity, and emotional detachment — for her son’s pathology, even treating us to a scene of the youthful Shogo walking in on his mother and a lover. While no one would deny the deleterious effects of parental neglect, Shogo’s mother seems less like a character than a casebook study out of the 1952 DSM. Other characters, such as an “artsy-fartsy,” “self-centered” career woman who defends her chastity with hysterical fury, seem like the morbidly sexual figments of a Freudian imagination.

Tezuka’s moralizing, too, has a curiously alienating effect. In the first episode, for example, Shogo imagines that he is a German soldier aboard a train bound for an unnamed concentration camp. Through the slats of a cattle car, he spots Elise, whose beauty and modesty awakens his sense of moral outrage. He rescues her first from the wreckage of the train (which is bombed by Allied forces), then from German rapists, earning her love through his selflessness. This scenario is clearly meant to teach readers that love can transcend ethnic, racial, and religious divisions, yet this epiphany is of a shallow nature, as Shogo fails to grasp the true horror of the situation or appreciate Elise’s grief at losing her entire family – in essence, the Holocaust has been reduced to a colorful backdrop for yet another of Shogo’s doomed romances.

However problematic the story may be, the artwork in Apollo’s Song ranks among Tezuka’s best, filled with arresting landscapes and surprisingly carnal imagery. In chapter two, for example, Shogo finds himself stranded on a lush tropical island. Peering through a dense frame of vegetation, he spies a secluded glen where deer, panthers, and leopards embrace their mates in sexual congress. The sensuality of the moment is accentuated by their bodies’ curved lines and beatific expressions, infusing a potentially silly scene with a graceful spirituality. Later chapters also abound in vivid images; as Tezuka imagines the Tokyo of the future, the city has been transformed from a glass-and-concrete forest into an Art Deco monstrosity reminiscent of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis or a Soviet Bloc city. Its inhabitants, a race of sexless, synthetic beings that store their faces in jars, preside over a haunted landscape of tombs, forgotten infrastructure, and empty plazas; the very barrenness of the place brings the intensity of Shogo’s yearning and anger into sharp relief.

Revisiting Apollo’s Song three years after its initial release, I find myself torn. On the one hand, Tezuka’s artwork is a feast for the eyes, featuring some of the most erotic images he committed to paper. On the other hand, it’s a deeply flawed work that, in its attitudes towards women and finger-wagging tone, shows its age. Vertical has done an admirable job of fashioning a silk purse from a sow’s ear with the handsomely produced new edition, but even the knockout cover designs can’t conceal the fact that Apollo’s Song is a sour, heavy-handed tale that lacks the essential humanism – and humor – of Buddha and Phoenix.

This is a revised version of a review that appeared at PopCultureShock on 6/22/2007.

APOLLO’S SONG, VOLS. 1-2 • BY OSAMU TEZUKA • VERTICAL, INC. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Gente and House of Five Leaves

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I find Natsume Ono’s work rewarding and maddening in equal measure. On the plus side, I love her idiosyncratic style; her panels are spare and elegantly composed, with just enough detail to convey the story’s time and place. Her character designs, too, are a welcome departure from the youthful, homogenized look of mainstream shojo and shonen manga. Her people have sharp features and rangy bodies, yet inhabit their skins as comfortably as the proverbial pair of old shoes; it’s rare to see middle age depicted so gracefully. And speaking of middle age, her characters’ maturity is another plus, as they grapple with the kind of real-world problems — failed marriages, aging parents, child-rearing — that are almost never addressed in manga licensed for the US market.

On the minus side, Ono’s artwork is an acquired taste; the reader sometimes has to take it on faith that a particular character is handsome or pretty, as Ono’s children and twenty-somethings are less persuasively realized than her older characters. Then, too, Ono’s fondness for depicting everyday moments can rob her stories of any meaningful dramatic shape, creating long, meandering stretches where very little happens and even less is revealed about the characters. More frustrating still is her tendency to vacillate between allowing readers to interpret events for themselves and slapping readers across the face with a pointed observation, as if she doesn’t trust the audience to read the scene properly without a little authorial intervention.

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Gente and House of Five Leaves

by

I find Natsume Ono’s work rewarding and maddening in equal measure. On the plus side, I love her idiosyncratic style; her panels are spare and elegantly composed, with just enough detail to convey the story’s time and place. Her character designs, too, are a welcome departure from the youthful, homogenized look of mainstream shojo and shonen manga. Her people have sharp features and rangy bodies, yet inhabit their skins as comfortably as the proverbial pair of old shoes; it’s rare to see middle age depicted so gracefully. And speaking of middle age, her characters’ maturity is another plus, as they grapple with the kind of real-world problems — failed marriages, aging parents, child-rearing — that are almost never addressed in manga licensed for the US market.

On the minus side, Ono’s artwork is an acquired taste; the reader sometimes has to take it on faith that a particular character is handsome or pretty, as Ono’s children and twenty-somethings are less persuasively realized than her older characters. Then, too, Ono’s fondness for depicting everyday moments can rob her stories of any meaningful dramatic shape, creating long, meandering stretches where very little happens and even less is revealed about the characters. More frustrating still is her tendency to vacillate between allowing readers to interpret events for themselves and slapping readers across the face with a pointed observation, as if she doesn’t trust the audience to read the scene properly without a little authorial intervention.

VIZ has been lobbying hard to make Ono’s name familiar to American readers, first with not simple, a story about an abused young drifter, and then with Ristorante Paradiso, a dramedy exploring the complicated relationship between Nicoletta, a twenty-something woman, and Olga, the mother who abandoned her. This fall, VIZ will release two more works by Ono: Gente: The People of Ristorante Paradiso (August) and House of Five Lives (September). Gente, the weaker of the two, is a three-volume prequel to Ristorante Paradiso that focuses less on Nicoletta and Olga and more on the bespectacled waitstaff at Cassetta dell’Orso, the trattoria owned by Olga’s husband. House of Five Leaves is a very different beast, a historical drama reminiscent of such films as Hara Kiri and The Twilight Samurai. Its hero, Akitsu Masanosuke, is a timid ronin who can’t hang on to a job; when a businessman approaches him with work, Masanosuke readily accepts, not realizing that Yaichi, his new employer, runs a crime syndicate that specializes in kidnapping.

Though Gente can be read independently of Ristorante Paradiso, readers unfamiliar with the earlier work may feel like they’ve walked into a party that’s already in progress, as many of the stories assume that the reader will be familiar with — and therefore interested in — Cassetta dell’Orso’s employees. One of the few chapters that works well for newbies and fans alike is “Luciano,” which explores the relationship between a widower and his daughter. The story succeeds because the dynamic between them feels authentic; the daughter’s persistence and gentle needling about finding a new partner is met with equally quiet resistance from her father.

Other stories, however, preserve the rhythms of everyday life with a little too much fidelity to be interesting. “Un giornata di Vito,” for example, consists primarily of a man talking, shopping, and doing crossword puzzles with an architecture student half his age, while “Il primo anniversario” depicts a luncheon for the restaurant’s employees; in the chapter’s only dramatic moment, a waiter injures his back and retires to the kitchen to lie down. A good author doesn’t need to contrive a Big Event to enliven a slice-of-life vignette, of course, but compelling dialogue helps, and it’s here that both stories stumble. The conversation tends towards the earnest and dull, with characters occasionally stating things about themselves in a bald, unnatural fashion that seems fundamentally at odds with Ono’s desire to let us learn about her characters from watching them walk through their daily routines.

house5House of Five Leaves, too, focuses less on Big Events and more on everyday activity, but in Leaves, Ono’s restraint serves an important dramatic purpose: she’s showing us events through Masanosuke’s eyes, as he tries to reconcile the bandits’ seemingly ordinary lives with their extraordinary behavior. Making the reader‘s task more difficult is that Masanosuke isn’t very astute. He tends to focus on a kind gesture or a friendly conversation, missing many of the important aural and visual cues that might enable him to understand what’s happening — a trait that the group exploits. In one chapter, for example, Yaichi encourages Masanosuke to accept a job as a bodyguard for a merchant family while the group plans its next kidnapping. Masa befriends his new employer’s son, never realizing that his true assignment is to infiltrate the target’s household so that Yaichi’s minions can snatch the boy for ransom.

Whether Masa will harden over time or cling to his desperate belief that the Five Leaves are engaged in an honorable enterprise remains to be seen. What is apparent, however, is that this naive, self-effacing man will eventually be provoked to violence. And when that happens, we’ll appreciate the meticulous way in which Ono has been building to that moment, as we’ll at have real sense of who Masa is, and why he’s been reluctant to pick up a sword. Though Toshiro Mifune and Hiroyuki Sanada have made entire careers out of playing characters like Masanosuke, Ono makes a persuasive case that you don’t need a flesh-and-blood actor to tell this kind of story with heartbreaking intensity; she can do the slow-burn on the printed page with the same skill and intensity as Masaki Kobayashi and Yoji Yamada did on the big screen.

Review copies provided by VIZ Media, LLC. Gente is available now; volume one of House of Five Leaves will be released on September 21, 2010. House of Five Leaves is currently being serialized on the SigIKKI website.

GENTE: THE PEOPLE OF RISTORANTE PARADISO, VOL. 1 • BY NATSUME ONO • VIZ • 176 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

HOUSE OF FIVE LEAVES, VOL. 1 • BY NATSUME ONO • VIZ • 208 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Manga Artifacts: Lycanthrope Leo

by

lycanthrope1Back in the 1980s and 1990s, before publishers realized that they could sell manga to teenagers through Borders and Books-A-Million, VIZ and Dark Horse actively courted the comic-store crowd with blood, bullets, and boobs. It was a golden age for manly-man manga — think Crying Freeman and Hotel Harbor View — but it was also a period in which publishers licensed some bad stuff. And when I say “bad stuff,” I mean it: I’m talking ham-fisted dialogue, eyeball-bending artwork, and kooky storylines that defy logic. Lycanthrope Leo (1997), an oddity from the VIZ catalog, is one such manga, a horror story with a plot that might best be described as Teen Wolf meets The Island of Dr. Moreau with a dash of WTF?!

The Leo of the title is Leo Takizawa, a high school student with a cute girlfriend and a gruff father. In the days leading up to his seventeenth birthday, he surprises his track teammates with an astonishing, world-record performance in the hundred-meter dash. Dad, noticing Leo’s dramatic transformation from speedy string-bean to Carl Lewis challenger, realizes that his worst fear is coming true: Leo is on the verge of turning into a lycanthrope, a powerful shape-shifter capable of rending a man limb from limb. So Dad does what all caring, self-respecting parents in his situation would do: he lures his son into an abandoned cabin in the woods, then attempts to shoot him with a fancy crossbow — but not before he gives a long, impassioned speech explaining what Leo is and why lycanthropes are mankind’s avowed enemy. Dad’s garrulousness proves his undoing; like so many villains, he spends too much time delivering an expository monologue and not enough time getting down to business, thus providing Leo opportunity to assume his true form and take Dad out with one blow of his werelion’s paw.

Yes, you read that right: Leo is a werelion. I admit the idea has potential; it liberates the author Kengo Kaji from the conventions of Western were-lore — the silver bullets and full moons and gypsies — while allowing him to milk the human/animal dichotomy for its full dramatic potential. Alas, Kaji extends the were-concept to other, less majestic animals for a subplot involving a centuries-old conflict between carnivore and herbivore lycanthropes. (The meat-eaters favor wiping out mankind; the cud-chewers prefer peaceable co-existence.) The nadir of the anything-is-more-awesome-in-were-form, however, is Mayuko Asuka, a sexy young teacher who turns out to be… a were-flying squirrel. And an evil were-flying squirrel, I might add, one who isn’t above seducing a seventeen-year-old or attacking a lycanthrope who threatens to reveal too much of the carnivores’ world-domination plans.

Kenji Okamura’s artwork is awe-inspiring and awful simultaneously. On the one hand, he draws amazingly detailed monsters, rendering their fur and claws and muscle-bound chests with exquisite care, even when they’re ripping each other to pieces; imagine Sylvester Stallone in werewolf drag, and you have some idea of what the male lycanthropes look like in their animal forms. On the other hand, Okamura’s human characters look like they belong in a Fernand Léger painting, with their plastic, impassive faces. Okamura struggles to convey emotion convincingly; about the best he can do is depict Leo sweating profusely. (By my count, Leo loses twenty to thirty pounds of water weight over the course of the first volume.) Worse still, Okamura frames almost every scene from an odd vantage point that distorts the characters’ anatomy, making them look ridiculously stumpy or leggy; I honestly thought Leo was being bullied by a midget in several scenes, thanks to the extreme angle at which we view Leo’s tormentor.

If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard more about Lycanthrope Leo, that’s because VIZ suspended production on the series after just one volume, citing poor sales. It’s not hard to imagine why Leo didn’t connect with American readers; the art has a throwback-to-the-eighties look, while the story is so preposterous and self-serious that it doesn’t work as straight horror or camp. From a reader’s standpoint, the most disappointing thing about Leo is the abruptness with which the English edition ends; Kaji introduces a key character in the final chapters of volume one, leaving readers to wonder whether the carnivores and herbivores eventually achieve detente. Of course, you probably won’t care if they do, considering all the sweaty, frantic silliness that precedes the introduction of the wise were-buffalo; for all the howling and “unsheathing of steel claws,” Lycanthrope Leo is about as scary as a kitten.

Manga Artifacts is a monthly feature exploring older, out-of-print manga published in the 1980s and 1990s. For a fuller description of the series’ purpose, see the inaugural column.

LYCANTHROPE LEO, VOL. 1 • STORY BY KENGO KAJI, ART BY KENJI OKAMURA • VIZ COMMUNICATIONS • 224 pp. • NO RATING (GRAPHIC VIOLENCE, NUDITY, STRONG LANGUAGE)

Manga Artifacts: Lycanthrope Leo

by

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, before publishers realized that they could sell manga to teenagers through Borders and Books-A-Million, VIZ and Dark Horse actively courted the comic-store crowd with blood, bullets, and boobs. It was a golden age for manly-man manga — think Crying Freeman and Hotel Harbor View — but it was also a period in which publishers licensed some bad stuff. And when I say “bad stuff,” I mean it: I’m talking ham-fisted dialogue, eyeball-bending artwork, and kooky storylines that defy logic. Lycanthrope Leo (1997), an oddity from the VIZ catalog, is one such manga, a horror story with a plot that might best be described as Teen Wolf meets The Island of Dr. Moreau with a dash of WTF?!

The Leo of the title is Leo Takizawa, a high school student with a cute girlfriend and a gruff father. In the days leading up to his seventeenth birthday, he surprises his track teammates with an astonishing, world-record performance in the hundred-meter dash. Dad, noticing Leo’s dramatic transformation from speedy string-bean to Carl Lewis challenger, realizes that his worst fear is coming true: Leo is on the verge of turning into a lycanthrope, a powerful shape-shifter capable of rending a man limb from limb. So Dad does what all caring, self-respecting parents in his situation would do: he lures his son into an abandoned cabin in the woods, then attempts to shoot him with a fancy crossbow — but not before he gives a long, impassioned speech explaining what Leo is and why lycanthropes are mankind’s avowed enemy. Dad’s garrulousness proves his undoing; like so many villains, he spends too much time delivering an expository monologue and not enough time getting down to business, thus providing Leo opportunity to assume his true form and take Dad out with one blow of his werelion’s paw.

Yes, you read that right: Leo is a werelion. I admit the idea has potential; it liberates the author Kengo Kaji from the conventions of Western were-lore — the silver bullets and full moons and gypsies — while allowing him to milk the human/animal dichotomy for its full dramatic potential. Alas, Kaji extends the were-concept to other, less majestic animals for a subplot involving a centuries-old conflict between carnivore and herbivore lycanthropes. (The meat-eaters favor wiping out mankind; the cud-chewers prefer peaceable co-existence.) The nadir of the anything-is-more-awesome-in-were-form, however, is Mayuko Asuka, a sexy young teacher who turns out to be… a were-flying squirrel. And an evil were-flying squirrel, I might add, one who isn’t above seducing a seventeen-year-old or attacking a lycanthrope who threatens to reveal too much of the carnivores’ world-domination plans.

Kenji Okamura’s artwork is awe-inspiring and awful simultaneously. On the one hand, he draws amazingly detailed monsters, rendering their fur and claws and muscle-bound chests with exquisite care, even when they’re ripping each other to pieces; imagine Sylvester Stallone in werewolf drag, and you have some idea of what the male lycanthropes look like in their animal forms. On the other hand, Okamura’s human characters look like they belong in a Fernand Léger painting, with their plastic, impassive faces. Okamura struggles to convey emotion convincingly; about the best he can do is depict Leo sweating profusely. (By my count, Leo loses twenty to thirty pounds of water weight over the course of the first volume.) Worse still, Okamura frames almost every scene from an odd vantage point that distorts the characters’ anatomy, making them look ridiculously stumpy or leggy; I honestly thought Leo was being bullied by a midget in several scenes, thanks to the extreme angle at which we view Leo’s tormentor.

If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard more about Lycanthrope Leo, that’s because VIZ suspended production on the series after just one volume, citing poor sales. It’s not hard to imagine why Leo didn’t connect with American readers; the art has a throwback-to-the-eighties look, while the story is so preposterous and self-serious that it doesn’t work as straight horror or camp. From a reader’s standpoint, the most disappointing thing about Leo is the abruptness with which the English edition ends; Kaji introduces a key character in the final chapters of volume one, leaving readers to wonder whether the carnivores and herbivores eventually achieve detente. Of course, you probably won’t care if they do, considering all the sweaty, frantic silliness that precedes the introduction of the wise were-buffalo; for all the howling and “unsheathing of steel claws,” Lycanthrope Leo is about as scary as a kitten.

Manga Artifacts is a monthly feature exploring older, out-of-print manga published in the 1980s and 1990s. For a fuller description of the series’ purpose, see the inaugural column.

LYCANTHROPE LEO, VOL. 1 • STORY BY KENGO KAJI, ART BY KENJI OKAMURA • VIZ COMMUNICATIONS • 224 pp. • NO RATING (GRAPHIC VIOLENCE, NUDITY, STRONG LANGUAGE)