CategoriesFEATURES

Introducing Let’s Get Visual!

August 28, 2010 · by Melinda Beasi · Leave a Comment

A bit of news on this Saturday evening: It’s time to head over to Soliloquy in Blue where Michelle Smith and I have posted the first installment of our new monthly feature, Let’s Get Visual!

Inspired by our own lack of background and training in the visual arts, Michelle and I decided to take some time each month to choose a few panels from our favorite manga to analyze and discuss.

Are we really just embarrassing ourselves by revealing our ignorance in public? Perhaps. But by making ourselves think harder about how to express what we see in the manga we read every day (and with, hopefully, some gentle guidance from more knowledgeable readers) we hope we’ll become better manga critics!

My choice for our inaugural column is four pages from volume fifteen of Hikaru no Go, one of my favorite series, drawn by an artist I admire quite a bit. [Read more...]

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Roundtable: Gerard & Jacques

July 23, 2010 · by Melinda Beasi · 9 Comments

Fumi Yoshinaga’s Gerard & Jacques is a two-volume boys’ love manga that tells the story of Jacques, a young aristocrat swept into a new, terrifying world following the death of his father, and Gerard, the unlikely man who eventually becomes his new family.

Published in English by BLU Manga (Tokyopop’s BL imprint) Gerard & Jacques was recommended highly to me when I first began reading yaoi, but I’ll admit I had some difficulty with it my first time around, due to some specific content in the manga’s opening chapter which kept me from enjoying it at all at the time.

When I began to make plans for this special week of Yoshinaga, I decided to give Gerard & Jacques another try. I was also interested to hear what some of my favorite critics (and BL fans) thought of the work, so I invited a few of them along for the ride.

Joining me in discussion are [Read more...]

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Flower of Life: A Love Story

July 18, 2010 · by Melinda Beasi · 12 Comments

Flower of Life, Vols. 1-4 | By Fumi Yoshinaga | Published by Digital Manga Publishing | Rated YA (Young Adults 16+)

“A love story?”

Yes, I know. This is what you’re all thinking. But, “a love story” is truly the way I view this series, though perhaps not in the usual way. It’s not a tale of romance (though there is a bit to be found) or even a story of deep friendship (though it’s got that, too).

The thing is, this love story is not between any of the story’s characters at all, but rather between its author, Fumi Yoshinaga, and humanity itself. Though there are many distinctive elements to Yoshinaga’s work–her character designs, her rambling dialogue, her mild fujoshi sensibility–what is most distinctive about her work is her deep and abiding love for this world [Read more...]

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Breaking Down Banana Fish, Vols. 5-6

July 10, 2010 · by Melinda Beasi · 20 Comments

Welcome to the third installment of the Banana Fish roundtable!

This month, we tackle volumes five and six. With Yut-Lung conniving behind the scenes and Shorter’s loyalties stretched to the limit, everyone ends up in Papa Dino’s hands over the course of these volumes, and not all can survive. Ash orchestrates an elaborate escape, but his allegiance with the Chinatown gang may be lost forever.

I’m joined this round by Michelle Smith (Soliloquy in Blue), Khursten Santos (Otaku Champloo), Connie C. (Slightly Biased Manga), Eva Volin (Good Comics For Kids), and Robin Brenner (No Flying, No Tights).

Read our roundtable on volumes one and two here, and volumes three and four here.

On to part three! [Read more...]

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Breaking Down Banana Fish, Vols. 3-4

May 25, 2010 · by Melinda Beasi · 19 Comments

Welcome to the second installment of the Banana Fish roundtable!

This month, we discuss volumes three and four of this classic shojo series, in which Ash gets out of jail, Eiji and Ibe overstay their visas, and everyone ends up on an ill-considered road trip to L.A., just in time to fall into the hands of a Chinese mafia family’s secret weapon. Topics this round include what makes a shojo manga, thoughts on the series’ few female characters, and everyone’s take on new bad guy, Yut-Lung.

Once again, I’m joined by Michelle Smith (Soliloquy in Blue), Khursten Santos (Otaku Champloo), Connie (Slightly Biased Manga), Eva Volin (Good Comics For Kids), Robin Brenner (No Flying, No Tights), and Katherine Dacey (The Manga Critic), all of whom graciously found time in their incredibly cramped schedules to indulge me in this discussion. [Read more...]

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Mourning CMX

May 18, 2010 · by Melinda Beasi · 2 Comments

It’s a sad day in manga fandom when the publisher brave enough to bring us Reiko Shimizu’s Moon Child is forced to close its doors.

Does that seem like a strange reaction to today’s unfortunate news? Perhaps it is. It was, however, my very first thought when first heard of DC Comics’ plans to shutter CMX in just over a month.

I was first introduced to CMX Manga via Shaenon Garrity’s fantastic Overlooked Manga Festival, where she talked about (you guessed it) Moon Child. This was not only my first exposure to a CMX title, but also my first real insight into just how gorgeously cracktastic classic shojo can be.

It was a revelation. It was as though someone had rifled through the leftovers of my rusty, once-teenaged mind, delighted in the sci-fi-laced weirdness it found there [Read more...]

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Oh Viz, sweet Viz.

May 12, 2010 · by Melinda Beasi · 6 Comments

When I first entered the world of manga, my opinion about Viz Media was largely influenced by what I was hearing from fans at the time in the corners of cyberspace I tended to frequent. Those fans viewed the company with disdain–as some sort of corporate behemoth with no respect for their needs and little reverence for the material they produced. Armed with this skewed perspective, though I recognized that Viz had the rights to a lot of really fantastic manga, I viewed their releases as cheap and utilitarian, and the company is a sort of necessary evil.

Looking back now, I have to laugh (and cringe) at my self-righteous “Damn The Man” outlook–as though a company Viz’s size could ever constitute “The Man.” Manga is a niche market in North America no matter how you look at it, and Viz’s relative success in that market is one of the few things that keeps it viable. “Cheap” volumes of popular, epic series can be more accurately described as affordable, and whatever missteps the company has made in terms of adaptation over the years are far outweighed [Read more...]

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Female Manga Bloggers From A-Z

March 26, 2010 · by Melinda Beasi · 30 Comments

So, a friend mentioned on Twitter today that she’d been engaged in discussion with another friend on the topic of the manga blogosphere, revolving around the fact that it is a “very white male space … that seems to profoundly effect the way things are talked about.”

I was floored. All I could think was, what manga blogosphere is she talking about, because the one I’m looking at is really not that–at least not the “male” part. While I’d agree that both western comics blogging and anime blogging are male-dominated from what I’ve seen, my experience with manga blogging has been very much the opposite. Sure, there are a slew of great male manga bloggers out there (and many, many male fans) but when I look at my blogroll or RSS aggregator, women outnumber them by far. [Read more...]

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Breaking Down Banana Fish, Vols. 1-2

March 20, 2010 · by Melinda Beasi · 110 Comments

Any regular reader of this blog will know that one of my favorite manga series is Akimi Yoshida’s 1980s shojo epic, Banana Fish.

I’ve spent quite a bit of effort attempting to persuade readers to check it out, so just imagine my joy when a few of my favorite manga bloggers agreed to indulge me in an ongoing roundtable discussion of the series!

Joining me here are Michelle Smith (Soliloquy in Blue), Khursten Santos (Otaku Champloo), Connie (Slightly Biased Manga), Eva Volin (Good Comics For Kids), Robin Brenner (No Flying, No Tights), and Katherine Dacey (The Manga Critic). Each of these women writes about manga for multiple blogs and other online publications (despite the fact I’ve listed only one each here) and their combined knowledge and experience is, frankly, pretty intimidating if you let yourself ponder it for too long. [Read more...]

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Dear Fandom: Please Grow Up.

March 17, 2010 · by Melinda Beasi · 96 Comments

Yesterday saw the release of the first Twilight graphic novel adaptation, produced in all its glossy, hardcover glory by Yen Press. I haven’t had a chance to do more than a quick flip-through so far, but though I’ve never read the novels (and have little interest in doing so) I’m actually looking forward to taking a look at the series in graphic novel form, if only to see what all the hype is about.

By “hype” I’m not only talking about the series’ huge sales. I’m also interested in finding a connection with its notoriously rabid fans. I’ve found myself defending them quite a bit recently against accusations of being “crazy,” “repugnant,” and “freaks,” which has made me more curious about the source of their obsession than I might have been otherwise. After all, if obsessive fandom is the issue, there’s very little I can relate to more. [Read more...]

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