I hardly know what else to say.
As you know, I love Please Save My Earth with the fire of a thousand suns. Now VIZ is giving the series a second chance to show everyone why.
Enjoy, my friends, enjoy!
Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews
by MJ 5 Comments
I hardly know what else to say.
As you know, I love Please Save My Earth with the fire of a thousand suns. Now VIZ is giving the series a second chance to show everyone why.
Enjoy, my friends, enjoy!
It’s a Jin Yong double whammy. Last week, I discussed a manhua adaptation of The Laughing Proud Wanderer, Jin Yong’s penultimate novel. Now, I’m discussing the 2007 TV adaptation of Sword Stained with Royal Blood, one of Jin Yong’s earliest novels.
The Story
Yuan Chonghuan was a patriotic general, and the emperor rewarded him with assassination (what a nice emperor). His son, Yuan Chengzhi, is rescued, and reared at Mount Hua, where he learns some martial arts. Yuan Chengzhi, as a young man, decides to leave Mount Hua to embark on adventure, and eventually finds the martial arts manual, “Golden Serpent Sword,” and bones of Xia Xueyi, a mysterious man who had incredible martial arts skills. By studying the manual, and wielding the Golden Serpent Sword, Yuan Chengzhi inherits Xia Xueyi’s awesome abilities.
Yuan Chengzhi wants to avenge his father’s death. That’s a tall order when the target of your revenge is the *emperor of China*. During his adventures, Yuan Chengzhi discovers that the world is not quite as simple as he thought.
Background
If you don’t know/remember who Jin Yong is, a search can help you.
This is a TV series produced by Zhang Jizhong, who is China’s star TV producer. He’s known for big-budget TV productions in which local governments often fund the construction of the lavish sets … but the local government gets its money back when tourism drastically rises after the TV series is aired (in some places, I’ve read, Zhang Jizhong’s TV productions have caused tourism to increase ten fold). He has taken much more control over artistic decisions than earlier Chinese TV producers, which is why his name is more strongly associated with the TV series than the director’s.
By Zhang Jizhong standards, this series is a bit modest.
The Songs
The opening song really grew on me. In particular, I love the lyrics – they have a nice, bold rhythm and punch to them (unfortunately, this is the kind of thing which is almost always lost in translation). I think the song’s baroque tone suits the story quite well.
Of course, people who prefer sappy wuxia tunes (and hey, I like some of them) can enjoy the ending song. However, one of my favorite wuxia TV theme songs for sappiness value is not this one, but the song for the 1985 version of Sword Stained with Royal Blood, “Passions Cold, Passions Hot”.
The Fighting
Overall, the fighting is excellent, particularly in the first half of the series.
There is a conscious effort to be specific with the moves, and to show them clearly so that the audience can follow the fights and notice how the balance between the fighters change (fights which cannot be easily followed are boring). There’s also variety – it’s not the same fight repeated over and over again.
Most importantly, the fighting styles – by which I mean the actually choreography – are tied to the characters. Most distinctive, of course, are the strange techniques of Xia Xueyi and his strange Golden Serpent Sword. When Yuan Chengzhi picks it up, we can see the resemblance. Meanwhile, Princess Changping’s style – with her incredible flexibility – is also distinctive.
And some of it is straight-out creative. For example, there’s a scene where characters fight over a bunch of treasure chests. Yuan Chengzhi first tries to defend the chests, then the chests get used as weapons, then Yuan Chengzhi knocks the chests into the air, creates a single-stacked column of chests, and then has a precarious duel on top.
The Lighting and Colors
Look at these pictures:
Notice how it looks like all of the characters have a halo effect around their heads, in particular, their hair gets turned white by the backlight? The back-lighting forms a white silhouette of their bodies, particularly their heads.
I don’t know about your life, but in my life this type of lighting is very, very rare. So the fact that this type of lighting is the default in this TV series gives the entire show a feeling of being grander than life. Specifically, it makes the characters feel grander than life, since it is they who are highlighted by the white-silhouette effect.
Of course, by making this the default lighting scheme, deviations do stand out, which can be put to good artistic use (the best example of this I can think of is a spoiler, so I’m not going to point it out).
To get this particular lighting effect, you need to keep lots of stuff in the shadows, which explains why this series is more heavily weighted towards darkness.
Different kinds of scenes have different palettes – for example, the scenes at the palace tend to use a lot of yellow, orange, and red. However, when I look back on my impressions of the show, it seems to me that the palette was emeralds in the background, and lavender in the foreground. That palette feels just right for the story (then again, if somebody did a good job filming the story with a different palette, I might then feel that that other palette is just right for the story). These screen shots show what I mean:
I do notice a lot of the screen shots I’m using in the post are heavy on the electric blues.
A Note about Qingqing
Jin Yong’s early novels are full of tomboyish heroines who often try to pass as male. Li Yuanzhi in The Book and the Sword even asks a woman to marry her (albeit not seriously). However, I think Qingqing merits special mention because she is, if I recall correctly, the only Jin Yong female protagonist who hires (female) prostitutes to entertain her (actually, I can’t of any male protagonists who hire prostitutes either).
And I love the way Qingqing is dressed in this TV series, but since I’ve already gotten into a digressions about the lighting, I don’t want to get into a digression about costumes too.
Beijing strikes back at Hollywood
Since I had read the novel, I knew that there were some minor Portuguese characters, but I was quite surprised when I watching the TV series and suddenly heard … English???
At first I thought that maybe they had changed the nationality of the European characters, but nope, they are still Portuguese. Then I was puzzled why Portuguese people in 17th century China would speak English.
However, I would have put this issue out of my mind quickly and gotten back into the story if the Portuguese characters’ acting was good. It was not. It was terrible.
Considering that one of the readers of this column is a fluent Portuguese speaker who has experience in the film industry and lived in China for years—not to mention that there are still thousands of Portuguese speakers living in Macao—I think it probably would not have been so hard to bring in native Portuguese speakers (if you are that reader, I am interested in your take on this). And there are white men who establish entire acting careers in China. However, if getting decent Portuguese-or-English-speaking actors really was not feasible, I would have preferred it if the TV series had just let the Portuguese characters speak Chinese, with their lines dubbed in by good actors. That would not have broken the flow of the story.
That said, this is less than nothing compared to what Hollywood does to Chinese/Chinese-American people and culture (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, this website offers some clues).
And finally, as far as the story is concerned, I think the treatment of the Portuguese characters is quite kind considering the history of China-Portugal relations.
The Xia-Wen Drama
I was surprised by how caught up I got in the opera between the Xia and the Wen families. Like other reviewers, I found this arc to be the most engaging in the series.
I think this is partially thanks to the beautiful way that the choreography, cinematography, and Vincent Jiao’s acting all come together. The images of Wen Yi and Xia Xueyi on the swing are particularly memorable. This music video shows much of the footage I’m talking about.
Now, why is this more engaging than the main story, which is about somebody who wants to get revenge on the emperor, and then wants to help the peasantry, but things keep getting more complicated? After all, that is definitely more epic than a mere family vendetta.
I think it might be because the pain of the Xia and Wen families is simply more visceral. For all that Yuan Chengzhi is determined to get revenge, we actually don’t get to experience much of his pain over the loss of his father. By contrast, Xia Xueyi blaming himself for the fact that a man from the Wen family raped and murdered his sister makes his pain very apparent.
The story of Yuan Chengzhi/the Chongzhen emperor/Princess Changping is still interesting and has its moving moments, and towards the end there is certainly pain … but perhaps not enough. Even though he experiences a lot of internal conflict, Yuan Chengzhi doesn’t get thrust deeply enough into the fire to have his world burn down.
Availability in English
This TV series is available on DVD with English subtitles. Click here to be notified when it becomes available at DramaFever.
Conclusion
I liked the original novel – as a Jin Yong fan. Many of the ideas developed in later novels, particularly the Condor Trilogy, are present here. For example, Yuan Chengzhi’s own personality is basically a combination of Guo Jing, a little Yang Guo, and more than a little Zhang Wuji. Yet Yuan Chengzhi is much more boring than any of those three, which to me is evidence that more specifically defined characters are generally much more engaging. If, however, I weren’t a Jin Yong fan, I probably would have gotten a lot less out of the novel.
I think this TV adaptation is more fun than the original novel. Some parts are extremely entertaining, which is the main reason I’m glad I watched this series. Some parts are less entertaining, which is the main reason I’m not enthusiastically recommending it.
This TV series is superior to A Deadly Secret in every way except one: the basic story. The story of A Deadly Secret haunts me. While Sword Stained with Royal Blood is more fun, it had not made nearly as deep an impression.
Next time: Hokkien Hollywood and Anime Amoy (fandom)
Sara K. has taken a lighting design class. It changed her understanding of the world, particularly visual art, much more than she expected. She had underestimated just how much light affects people’s feelings.
On a completely different note, can you match up the theme songs of the 80s versions of Jin Yong stories with the 90s versions (i.e. figure out which songs are for the same story)? It’s pretty easy if you know the stories and/or understand Chinese, but I wonder about people who don’t know Chinese/the stories.
by MJ, Michelle Smith, Sean Gaffney and Anna N Leave a Comment
MJ: Midtown’s list this week includes a mix of genuinely new releases and a few Yen Press titles that most stores received a while ago, and I’m going to use that as an excuse to once again take up the call for Kaoru Mori’s A Bride’s Story, volume four of which is hitting Midtown’s shelves this week. This is a particularly fun volume, featuring two new characters who contribute considerable pep to this generally quiet series, without compromising any of its wistful charm. As a result, this is probably the series’ warmest volume so far—which is always a draw for me. And of course, it’s beautiful to look at as always.
MICHELLE: Because I am a terrible person and haven’t even started A Bride’s Story, I’m going to go off-list and note that Amazon lists volume nine of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon as coming out this week. And can I ever resist the chance to pick Sailor Moon? No, I cannot.
SEAN: Yeah, given that this and Vol. 10 are my favorite parts of the Sailor Moon manga entirely, there’s no way I’m not picking it. It has chapter focuses for each of the Inners, and tops it off with a chapter devoted to the Outers that is flawless and perfect (it was so perfect the anime had to put it in the Stars anime sort of retroactively as it was simply impossible to not adapt). And it has the Amazoness Quartet, some of my favorite mini-villains. It is simply fabulous, you will all buy it.
ANNA: I’ll just go with Limit #3. Since volume two ended on a bit of a cliffhanger I am particularly anxious to see what is going to happen next to the schoolgirl bush crash victims.
Readers, what looks good to you this week?
I took a peek at last week’s new releases, including Yoshitaka Amano’s novel Deva Zan, at MTV Geek.
The Manga Bookshelf team looks at this week’s new titles on JManga.
Lissa Pattillo highlights a new Digital license and notes that Viz has licensed the Pokemon Adventures: Heart Gold & Soul Silver manga as well.
Ash Brown wraps up the Moyoco Anno Manga Moveable Feast with the day three roundup and a final farewell. MJ post a Moyoco Anno-centric episode of My Week in Manga at Manga Bookshelf, and at All About Manga, Daniella Orihuela-Gruber looks at how Anno portrays feisty women.
Erica Friedman posts a fresh episode of Yuri Network News at Okazu.
Michelle Smith and Karen Peck kick off their new column, The CMX Project, with a discussion Land of the Blindfolded at Soliloquy in Blue.
Matt Blind posts the 2012 quarterly best-seller lists, with considerable explanation and commentary.
Robot 6’s regular Shelf Porn feature highlights the collection of a 17-year-old manga fan.
Reviews
Marsha Reid on vol. 1 of Aron’s Absurd Armada (Kuriousity)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 11 of Dengeki Daisy (I Reads You)
Sean Gaffney on Don’t Disturb Me and Him, Please (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Anna N on vols. 1-5 of Happy Mania (Manga Report)
Katherine Hanson on Haru Natsu Aki Fuyu (Yuri no Boke)
Helen on vol. 1 of Heroman (Narrative Investigations)
Ash Brown on Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators (Experiments in Manga)
Sakura Eries on vol. 9 of Sakura Hime: The Legend of Princess Sakura (The Fandom Post)
A Library Girl on vol. 1 of Strobe Edge (A Library Girl’s Familiar Diversions)
Ash Brown on vol. 1 of Sugar Sugar Rune (Experiments in Manga)
by Michelle Smith and Karen Peck
MICHELLE: Welcome to the first installment of a new feature called The CMX Project. Back in October, Karen Peck and I talked about the CMX series Canon for that month’s Manga Moveable Feast, and had such fun that we decided to start a recurring feature focusing on some of the other series they released during their all-too-brief time with us. For the most part these will be shoujo works, but not exclusively so.
Hi, Karen! Do you want to introduce our featured title for this month, or shall I?
KAREN: I’ll go!
Land of the Blindfolded, or Mekakushi no Kuni, is a nine-volume shoujo manga series by Sakura Tsukuba. It was one of CMX’s debut titles back in 2004, along with some classic titles like Swan and From Eroica with Love. Land of the Blindfolded originally ran in Hakusensha’s LaLa and LaLa DX magazines, and CMX would later go on to pick up another one of her series, Penguin Revolution. Besides these two works, her other series is the Christmas-themed Yoroshiku Master. The rest seems to have been mostly one-shots in different Hakusensha magazines—too bad I missed the two she did in Melody!
Kanade Outsuka sees a world full of people wearing “blindfolds.” But every once in a while, for her, that blindfold “slips” and she gets to see what others can’t—in her case, she can see a person’s future. Having a big heart and a determined spirit (as any good Hakusensha heroine should), Kanade will try to intervene if the future she sees will cause someone harm—even if the person she helps thinks that she’s just being weird. Two boys come into her life—Arou, who can see the past and carries around the heavy burden of his own past—and Namiki, who can also see the future but has a very different attitude about it than Kanade does. A sweet romance develops between Kanade and Arou… and I wouldn’t say “hijiinks ensue;” this title is entirely too gentle for much of that.
Michelle, what were your impressions?
MICHELLE: Initially, I was torn. There were certain elements of the story that I liked—the fact that Kanade and Arou become a couple with minimum fuss, Kanade’s spunky best friend (Eri), the neat side abilities that Arou’s power gives him…—but the first few volumes are very episodic and feature chapters with plots like “a plucky abandoned puppy is rescued from his doom during a rainstorm by an angsty boy affected by the protagonist’s shoujo heroine powers.”
The stories begin to take a more interesting turn in volume five, when Arou first uses his power in a new, freaky way to track Kanade after she’s swept away at the beach. And then shortly thereafter, he’s reunited with a classmate from junior high who wants him to use his powers to benefit society by helping to solve murders.
The rest of the volumes are all pretty good, though I’m most fond of volumes six and seven. I note, though, that Kanade really gets the short shrift after a while. She truly is the least interesting character of the bunch, and there is much more time devoted to the traumatic pasts suffered by Arou and Namiki than anything involving Kanade (excepting her decision to come clean to Eri about her ability).
KAREN: It is very episodic, and for me that’s what lead to my assessment of this as being very “gentle”—when stories wrap up each chapter, nothing really seems that dire. Instead, we get a series of ordinary events—the school festival. A clash with student government. The class trip. Hot springs hijinks (okay, so there is a little hijink-ing). The summer festival. And so on.
However, the banality of these events is contrasted with the very unordinary main characters. Here we have a girl who can see the future, but like any other girl her age, she worries about the very ordinary things—will people like the real me? Will I fit in? Can I tell my best friend all of my secrets? It’s this relatability that I think really speaks to the reader. Everyone has insecurities, even these “special” kids.
The “plot” really does pick up later on. I was kinda hoping that Arou’s uncle would be more of a revolutionary character—he seems to have some rather dark intentions—but that fizzled out. I’m not sure if that was a red herring or Tsukuba sending off signals that she didn’t mean to.
I do agree with you, Michelle—Kanade seems to downright disappear in some of the stories, and I wish she had more of a presence. I also like that the coupling happens without a lot of drama—and while the back cover tries to play up the triangle, Kanade and Arou only have eyes for each other. Poor Namiki. At least he got a puppy.
MICHELLE: And possibly the world’s most adorable turtle!
I did find it interesting that although Land of the Blindfolded does include some stock shoujo scenarios—in addition to the ones you named there’s a trip to the amusement park, a trip to the beach, Christmas—they didn’t really annoy me as much as they do in series like, say, Ai Ore! Probably the likeable characters are responsible for that.
And yes, it’s largely the disclosure of the leads’ insecurities that make later volumes more compelling. Learning about Arou’s painful past wherein he was feared and shunned for his abilities makes the present where he is warmly liked and trusted by his classmates that much more significant. Now we can see how much it really means to him. And, too, we learn how scarred Namiki was by his mother’s timidity, and how this contributed to his rather jaded attitude when we first meet him. My absolute favorite scene in the whole series occurs between Namiki and Kanade’s mother, in which she tells him he’s a good boy and he starts to cry. I’m getting a little sniffly just thinking about it, actually.
Yeah, the Sou thing did rather fizzle out, but it all played in to the warm and fuzzy “you are not alone” ending, so maybe that was all Tsukuba intended.
KAREN: That turtle was cute. And the pet-sitter bonus chapter was very cute.
I think it’s because Arou and Namiki had those much heavier pasts that Kanade gets lost. Well, she did see a vision of her grandfather’s death, but she’s from such a kind and accepting family that it becomes something to be overcome rather than something creepy that results in her ostracism. I agree with you, Michelle, about how affecting that one scene with Namiki and Kanade’s mother is—it’s really a moment when this story works. It’s a message that would work for any child that was rejected—that you are good. However, if every chapter/story in Land of the Blindfold was this emotionally wrenching, we wouldn’t be able to get through this review!
Of the secondary characters, I also liked Kaicho-san, the student council president. Her attraction to Arou was handled well, and I’m glad that it didn’t devolve into a Marmalade Boy-style Love Dodecahedron. I did like that it was hinting that Kaicho and Namiki might perhaps hook up, but it that was played well, and I think realistically. They would be good together, but for now they still have their hearts somewhere else. By not rushing them together, Tsukuba didn’t compromise their characters and what they had been about.
The other beta couple, Eri and Ezawa, were presented as the Doomed Couple, but turned into something else, and so much of it was done in the background, as their story would pop in and out, showing their evolution as a couple.
I did want to say one thing about CMX’s presentation—I remember comments at the time about the tightness of the bindings, and wow, the first three volumes were very hard to read. I’m glad that they worked that out for later volumes so I didn’t have to worry about ruining the book when I opened it. The art… works, if that’s a way of putting it. Sakura Tsukuba isn’t one of the great shoujo artists, but her work is expressive and the humorous moments were very cute.
MICHELLE: I liked Kaicho a lot, too (though we eventually learn her last name, we never learn her first one), and was totally bracing for an eventual pairing off with Namiki. I think she could’ve been the heroine of her own manga series, actually.
We don’t learn too much about the inner workings of Eri and Ezawa’s relationship, but I definitely like that he became more interested in her once she showed she wasn’t going to fawn over him mindlessly like everyone else. She basically learns quickly that attempting to change yourself for someone never works, and then they turn out to be a stable couple from then on. Also, Tsukuba makes a few suggestions that they’re doing more than kissing while still keeping the content within an “E for Everyone” rating.
And yes, those fiendish bindings! I actually have the first five in that style and was desperately sick of them and so relieved when volume six came around. I hadn’t realized it, but I guess I hadn’t read any of the really early CMX volumes before this, so I didn’t know how terrible they were.
I don’t seem to have too much to say about Tsukuba’s art, actually. There were a few sequences that I quite liked, but that was more about what was happening in the scene than her skills. She does mention repeatedly how much she loves drawing animals, and adorable critters did seem to be her strong suit.
KAREN: I caught that too with Eri and Ezawa. And how it totally flew over Kanade’s head.
Like most CMX series, Land of the Blindfolded is long out-of-print but easily and inexpensively obtainable on the secondary market. The infamous tight bindings vary—Michelle’s go up to volume five, mine only up to three, but they’re still readable. It’s a good title for the younger YA reader, because there’s nothing objectionable and it is such a sweet story—no questionable misogyny, for example. This is the sort of title that CMX did so well—and something that’s very much missed in the current market. (I’m sure there’s many YA librarians who agree!) Thankfully, though, they did manage to get so many titles out during their time—I’m looking forward to the next title we’re going to cover!
MICHELLE: Which is… drumroll please… Cipher, by Minako Narita! I’ve been meaning to read this for ages, so I’m really excited about next month’s column.
Thanks for joining us this month, and we hope you’ll be back next time!
Yesterday evening, thanks to this comment from Kanda Kun over at The Hooded Utilitarian, I finally saw an ANN article from the day before, indicating that Ai Yazawa is drawing manga again. Though I hate to pile on expectations when an artist has been ill—or to get my own hopes up too high—I think we can all agree that there is reason to rejoice!
In related news, I was contacted recently for permission to reprint excerpts from my “Persuasion Post” Why you should read NANA in the upcoming NANA fanzine, Strawberry. I happily agreed, and I’m excited to see what else might be in store when the fanzine is completed!
Submissions for Strawberry are being accepted until February 28th (I believe the year is a misprint in the tumblr post). Check out the related tumblr for more information, and some clarifications on submission procedures. It’s a great time to be spreading the NANA love!
For more NANA discussion, it’s never too late to join us in comments at The NANA Project!
by Anna N
This is a post for the Moyoco Anno Manga Moveable Feast.
Some series I take to right away, and other manga series end up being second chance reads. Happy Mania is one of those series that is better the second time around for me. I read the first couple volumes several years ago and didn’t really get into it because I found the main character incredibly annoying. Since then I’ve read several other manga by Moyoco Anno and have long suspected that I needed to give Happy Mania a second shot. I’ve pieced together the out of print series from paperbackswap.com and some good bargain manga outlets. I was hoping to read the entire series for the Manga Moveable Feast, but I wasn’t able to start reading it until much later than I planned. I was able to read a decent chunk of it though!
The heroine as a ditsy, hopeless woman who decides to “live for love” is quite the stereotype in shoujo and josei manga. Her life gets romanticized and she ends up getting saved by her ideal man. Anno’s approach is to show just how horrible a life someone like this would actually lead. Shigeta is a young woman who works in a bookstore. Her career’s nonexistent, but she’s fixated on the idea of meeting a man who will save her from the drudgery of her daily life. Unfortunately Shigeta’s main method of dealing with men is to fixate on someone totally unsuitable, sleep with him extremely quickly, and then wonder why he’s suddenly not interested in her. While she chases bad boys, her hapless co-worker Takahashi is pining for her. He is usually drawn with tears streaming down his face, sighing Shigeta’s name.
Shigeta goes through jobs and men in quick succession, hooking up with a womanizing younger DJ, the son of a cult leader who rapidly turns psychotic, a stoic ceramics artist, and a married man. Whenever Shigeta’s in crisis, Takahashi is there for her, and even though he goes overseas to study their relationship gradually progresses into a semi-dysfunctional engagement. If Shigeta exhibited absolutely no personal growth through these volumes the series would be a bit tedious, but she does gradually realize that her goals and behavior are not making her happy. This isn’t really enough to prevent her from seeking her self worth in the knowledge that a man might be interested in her, but she isn’t entirely without self awareness. When she pauses to think about a couple of the men pursuing her, she thinks “What’s wrong with these guys? If they like me that much…there must be something wrong with them!”
Shigeta is always pursuing the next unattainable man. Being stuck in a behavioral pattern like Shigeta’s seems refreshingly realistic for a manga heroine, and Anno certainly doesn’t shy away from the more sordid aspects of her life. Happy Mania isn’t romanticized at all.
Anno’s art is distinct and fluid. She has a unique ability to draw characters that are simultaneously attractive and slightly grotesque. Shigeta looks like a limpid-eyed, slightly crazed goblin half of the time. Takahashi shifts from being slight and nerdy to being more attractive as Shigeta’s view of him changes. There always seems to be a metatextual element to Anno’s manga. Happy Mania might be a manga about a love-starved twentysomething woman, but it is also a cynical commentary about manga about love-starved twentysomething women at the same time.
I’m glad that I gave this series a second chance. Shigeta’s antics didn’t really sit very well with me the first time I tried this series, but in the intervening years I’ve read a bunch more manga, and right now I find a manga about a woman finding unhappiness through her pursuit of men much more interesting than a more typical manga that is going to head towards a happy ending after a series of wacky misunderstandings.
by MJ 4 Comments
This week’s episode is a special edition created for this month’s Manga Moveable Feast, the subject of which is mangaka Moyoco Anno. MJ discusses Anno’s work, including a review of the first two volumes of “Sugar Sugar Rune.”
This week’s manga:
Flowers & Bees (VIZ Media)
Happy Mania (Tokyopop)
Sakuran (Vertical, Inc.)
Sugar Sugar Rune, Vols. 1-2 (Del Rey Manga)
Links:
Moyoco Anno Manga Moveable Feast archive
MJ’s interview with Moyoco Anno at New York Comic Con 2012 (The Beat)
Off the Shelf: Sakuran
Edited by MJ
Music (“Stickybee,” “20/20,” “Insomnia,” & “Swansong”) by Josh Woodward
For those who must know, compiling my data for all of 2012, Sailor Moon volume 3 barely edged out the other Sailor Moon books to be the #1 ranked title. Volumes 1-4 are close enough that they are statistically tied for the top spot, followed by Sailor Moon volume 5, then Maximum Ride volume 5. The next books of note would be Black Butler volume 1 (ranked at #12 for the year), some of Viz’s box sets (Death Note, Zelda, and Fullmetal Alchemist), and Naruto, which starting at #17 and very closely grouped, managed to put vols 53, 54, 55, and 56 all into the top 25.
Why am I posting the 2012 Combined Bestseller List this way? Several reasons: First, many readers have asked me for context, not just the long, long lists. Second, my “bestsellers” are relative and my sources kind of iffy: The paragraph above gives you the flavor of the chart without devolving into arguments over why one book beat another. And finally: I hate the arbitrary year-end chart anyway. But I’ll get into all of that.
Out of convenience and for the sake of simplicity, I’ve always called the list a “bestseller” chart — which is perhaps what misleads some people. If you have access to sales numbers, the top 10 books on any given list should always be the same: after all, if Magical Romance Kingdom sells 1200 copies and Ecchi Omnimanga Robot only sells 1100, then the one will always outrank the other.
If we’re both compiling ‘bestseller’ lists, why are my results always different from The New York Times?
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There is a lot of data available to the right people, but much of it is never released as both publishers and retailers consider the data proprietary. Neilsen BookScan is the gold standard, and with the recent addition of sales data from Wal-Mart BookScan tracks 80% of all retail book sales, including sales through Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Obviously this would be great data to know, but subscriptions are so expensive you won’t even see prices listed on their website. If you have to ask: you can’t afford it.
Coming from the other side, in 2011 the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group combined their respective efforts on tracking publishers’ data and established BookStats. The BookStats reports are industry overviews, though, tracking performance by subject, genre, and format, as opposed to weekly sales of any one given book. It makes a nice complement to the Neilsen data, or so I assume as both sets are well outside of my price range.
The New York Times and the numerous variations of their ubiquitous bestseller lists [they’re up to 20 different lists at the moment] don’t use reports from either: the Times conducts a survey of some small sub-set of retailers and then weights their survey results by a secret arcane formula and then they post the results as a ranking without ever telling us a number. How many more books did Patterson sell over Grisham? No telling.
I can’t say I hate the NYT Bestseller list, or that it’s ‘wrong’ as my methodology is essentially the same as theirs — I’m just much more open as to what my sources are and I always include the weighted score in my rankings. (Not that anyone has really expressed an interest but it’s there for folks to check if they want — When Sailor Moon is ranked higher than Naruto on my list, we can all see why, and proportionally by how much, to the limits of my methods)
Since I don’t have the point-of-sale retail numbers or even a second-hand version like the Times, just what am I tracking?
Simply put: it’s the web.
With so much under lockdown and behind paywalls, I turned to the one source of manga sales data that is readily available to everyone: online sales sites. Load up Amazon and click just a couple of links and you’ll soon see for yourself, as in the course of their normal business Amazon gives you a list of manga. They’ve moved away from calling this a bestseller list at the category level (current terminology is “new and popular”) but they certainly use their own sales history data to determine what to push to the top.
However, we can’t treat sources like Amazon (or any sales site) as an impartial, authoritative source for even a comparative ranking: does Amazon have a legitimate financial interest in making sure folks searching for Death Note see a 13 volume box set [list price $99.99, selling for about $58 at the moment] before the customer sees the more affordable ‘black’ omnibus editions, or even the single volumes for sale, used, starting at prices as low as a dollar each? Of course they want to make the most off of a sale.
“While the Amazon Best Sellers list is a good indicator of how well a product is selling overall, it doesn’t always indicate how well an item is selling among other similar items. Category and subcategory best seller lists were created to highlight an item’s rank in the categories or subcategories where it really stands out.” … “For competitive reasons, Amazon.com generally does not publish this [Actual Sales] information to the public.” Straight from the source: Amazon’s help page for Best Seller Rank
Does Amazon have any obligation — expressed, implicit, or as part of their retail mission — to be an objective source for either journalistic reporting or literary criticism? Of course the answer is no.
Further reading, for the interested:
Inside the Amazon Sales Rank : Rampant TechPress, undated article.
How Amazon.com Sales Rank is Calculated : Timothy Fish, 30 March 2007
What You Need to Know about Amazon’s Sales Rank System : Bill Stephens, 7 July 2008
It Doesn’t Take Many E-Book Sales to Make a Kindle Bestseller : Sarah Weinman, 30 December 2009
Amazon Sales Rank Explained : Lindsay Buroker, 1 March 2011
Bestseller Lists and Other Thoughts : Kristine Kathryn Rusch, 18 January 2012
Just How Do Those $&%*# Amazon Algos Work Anyway? : Phoenix Sullivan, 6 August 2012
A Rare Glimpse Into What It Takes To Be An Amazon.com Best Seller : Paulo Santos, SeekingAlpha, 27 August 2012
##
What does one do when presented with an unreliable source that may be lying for its own benefit?
Get more sources. Also, whenever possible, “re-interrogate” the source to see if it comes up with different versions of the same story (trying to catch it out in a lie, metaphorically speaking).
I do both. My core data is a version of Amazon’s list that takes into account their “ranking” but also samples heavily from parallel data pulled from numerous Hourly Bestseller lists, set alongside a similar data pull from Barnes & Noble, and for my “third source” I combine data from Buy.Com, Chapters, Books-a-Million, and Powell’s — each of which, separately, are idiosyncratic to say the least. However, when 3-out-of-4 agree on a number one, I feel fairly confident about the choice. By combining the smaller sites I reinforce what I like to think is ‘good’ data and discount any high-ranking outliers that might otherwise crop up.
Outliers creep into the data anyway, because I don’t have the sales numbers. I can only see what the online retailers Are Trying To Sell To Me: you could consider my chart a list of online sales efforts rather than tracking actual completed sales.
After choosing sources and procuring data and (where applicable) assigning weights to data based either on assumed veracity or assumed sales volume: at that point it’s simple arithmetic. Add up the scores and award first place. In practice, I call this a best seller list, though if you’ve seen the posts, you know this is almost always followed by the sub-title, “Comparative Rankings Based on Consolidated Online Sales”. And while some might want to see clarity and truth in such a list, as someone who mucks around in the data on a weekly basis, I know the limits of the method as-well-or-better than anyone.
##
There has been a disconnect:
I like data. I do independent research, look for original sources, always question any cited statistic, and would rather ‘drink from the firehose’ if that option is available.
My readers don’t want to drink from the firehose. Stretching the metaphor: most casual manga enthusiasts would like a nice cup of tea, maybe with a scone.
Even the most wonkish of industry insiders don’t want the full treatment either. If I turn the firehose on them, rather than being cautiously curious and willing to look through it all, or enthusiastic about being given access, or being grateful that I’m willing to share so much with everyone, the feedback I get is that the manga bestseller lists are ‘unclear’, ‘confusing’, and ‘overwhelming’.
I get it. It’s not that the list is confusing (a numbered list, starting with #1…) but rather: readers lack the deep background to see the lists the same way I see them. Hell, I live in spreadsheets half the week, and my ‘free time’ is spent working a 40+hr-a-week job – front-line retail selling books and running a big-box bookstore. My viewpoint is skewed and my approach to sales figures is, unique.
My first attempt to translate from spreadsheet-to-English is “successful” in its own way, but it only gets us a third of the way there. Or less.
The lesson everyone should take from the amazing success Nate Silver enjoyed in 2012 is *not* that Nate was right. It is no longer enough to merely be correct: you have to sell it. You have to be able to put data into a narrative, you have to tell the story.
This takes longer. It takes a lot longer. And I was initially hesitant to do so because I don’t want to be accused of pre-digesting and ‘skewing’ the reported result to serve my own bias. But, in order to reach more readers and make it clear why I spend so much time compiling these reports, I’ll make the effort.
##
If it seems like I’m giving you too many numbers on a weekly basis, things get even worse at the end of the year.
First: The calendar is arbitrary. New manga volumes come out each week. They’re ‘new’ for a few months, and depending on the life-cycle and release schedule of the series, they’ll be in demand for six-months-to-a-year and then they descend into the forgotten basement of both bookstores and fan consciousness. A single snap-shot might catch a title at the very beginning, or the very end of its arc. Volume seven of a seven volume series will be considered very differently than volume seven of Naruto, Bleach, or One Piece. Merely looking at the bright, shiny “#1 Manga For 2012!” will blind you to what is actually going on underneath.
Quarterly charts that track each season are not only more accurate, they get closer to the actual ‘heartbeat’ of our beloved manga industry than a single, massive annual bestseller list ever will. In addition, a series of charts allows us to track titles over time rather than burying the data in a single year-end midden.
We all like year-end “Best of” lists, but that should really be the province of the critics, not of data. Good and Popular are not synonyms, after all, though there is often (but not always!) a strong correlation
I do have the consolidated 2012 data; I have plans to do quite a bit with that, including graphs and pie charts (we all like pie charts) over the next month. I’m also working on changes to the weekly reports – for once the posts aren’t late because I fell behind, but rather because I’m working on analysis. The weekly bestsellers are complete, but not ready to be unveiled yet.
Anyway, You’ve survived my thousand-word lecture so I suppose I should just get on with the posting of the lists, and the links.
2012 Q1 Winter
1. ↑7 (8) : Sailor Moon 3 – Kodansha Comics, Jan 2012 [6,693.2] ::
2. ↓-1 (1) : Sailor Moon 1 – Kodansha Comics, Sep 2011 [6,355.3] ::
3. ↓-1 (2) : Sailor Moon 2 – Kodansha Comics, Nov 2011 [6,347.6] ::
4. ↑12 (16) : Maximum Ride 5 – Yen Press, Dec 2011 [5,648.2] ::
5. ↑13 (18) : Sailor Moon 4 – Kodansha Comics, Mar 2012 [5,502.3] ::
6. ↓-3 (3) : Sailor Moon Codename: Sailor V 2 – Kodansha Comics, Nov 2011 [5,378.3] ::
7. ↑15 (22) : Naruto 53 – Viz Shonen Jump, Dec 2011 [5,250.3] ::
8. ↓-3 (5) : Sailor Moon Codename: Sailor V 1 – Kodansha Comics, Sep 2011 [4,952.7] ::
9. ↑38 (47) : Fullmetal Alchemist 27 – Viz, Dec 2011 [4,781.8] ::
10. ↑126 (136) : Naruto 54 – Viz Shonen Jump, Mar 2012 [4,528.7] ::
[more]
[Publishers’ Scorecard]
[Top Series/Properties]
[New Releases]
[Preorders]
[Manhwa]
[BL/Yaoi]
[Ebooks]
2012 Q2 Spring
1. ↑4 (5) : Sailor Moon 4 – Kodansha Comics, Mar 2012 [6,601.7] ::
2. ↓-1 (1) : Sailor Moon 3 – Kodansha Comics, Jan 2012 [6,405.8] ::
3. ↑9 (12) : Sailor Moon 5 – Kodansha Comics, Apr 2012 [6,222.2] ::
4. ↓-2 (2) : Sailor Moon 1 – Kodansha Comics, Sep 2011 [5,893.0] ::
5. ↓-2 (3) : Sailor Moon 2 – Kodansha Comics, Nov 2011 [5,855.9] ::
6. ↑20 (26) : Naruto 55 – Viz Shonen Jump, Mar 2012 [5,081.5] ::
7. ↓-3 (4) : Maximum Ride 5 – Yen Press, Dec 2011 [4,480.8] ::
8. ↑163 (171) : Naruto 56 – Viz Shonen Jump, May 2012 [4,317.0] ::
9. ↓-3 (6) : Sailor Moon Codename: Sailor V 2 – Kodansha Comics, Nov 2011 [4,265.9] ::
10. ↓-2 (8) : Sailor Moon Codename: Sailor V 1 – Kodansha Comics, Sep 2011 [4,147.5] ::
[more]
[Publishers’ Scorecard]
[Top Series/Properties]
[New Releases]
[Preorders]
[Manhwa]
[BL/Yaoi]
[Ebooks]
2012 Q3 Summer
1. ↑1 (2) : Sailor Moon 3 – Kodansha Comics, Jan 2012 [5,900.0] ::
2. ↓-1 (1) : Sailor Moon 4 – Kodansha Comics, Mar 2012 [5,872.2] ::
3. ↑1 (4) : Sailor Moon 1 – Kodansha Comics, Sep 2011 [5,727.4] ::
4. ↑1 (5) : Sailor Moon 2 – Kodansha Comics, Nov 2011 [5,656.9] ::
5. ↑61 (66) : Naruto 57 – Viz Shonen Jump, Jul 2012 [4,636.8] ::
6. ↑7 (13) : Sailor Moon 6 – Kodansha Comics, Jun 2012 [4,603.0] ::
7. ↑10 (17) : Death Note vols 1-13 box set – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced, Oct 2008 [4,487.9] ::
8. ↓-5 (3) : Sailor Moon 5 – Kodansha Comics, Apr 2012 [4,220.0] ::
9. ↑147 (156) : Vampire Knight 14 – Viz Shojo Beat, Jul 2012 [4,219.7] ::
10. ↑4 (14) : Sailor Moon 7 – Kodansha Comics, Sep 2012 [4,191.4] ::
[more]
[Publishers’ Scorecard]
[Top Series/Properties]
[New Releases]
[Preorders]
[Manhwa]
[BL/Yaoi]
[Ebooks]
2012 Q4 Autumn
1. ↑12 (13) : Sailor Moon 8 – Kodansha Comics, Nov 2012 [5,599.1] ::
2. ↓-1 (1) : Sailor Moon 3 – Kodansha Comics, Jan 2012 [5,086.3] ::
3. ↔0 (3) : Sailor Moon 1 – Kodansha Comics, Sep 2011 [5,045.2] ::
4. ↑3 (7) : Death Note vols 1-13 box set – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced, Oct 2008 [4,985.9] ::
5. ↓-3 (2) : Sailor Moon 4 – Kodansha Comics, Mar 2012 [4,863.6] ::
6. ↓-2 (4) : Sailor Moon 2 – Kodansha Comics, Nov 2011 [4,591.7] ::
7. ↑35 (42) : Naruto 58 – Viz Shonen Jump, Sep 2012 [4,389.7] ::
8. ↑2 (10) : Sailor Moon 7 – Kodansha Comics, Sep 2012 [4,208.6] ::
9. ↑21 (30) : Yotsuba&! 11 – Yen Press, Sep 2012 [4,110.0] ::
10. ↑200 (210) : Naruto 59 – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2012 [3,947.0] ::
[more]
[Publishers’ Scorecard]
[Top Series/Properties]
[New Releases]
[Preorders]
[Manhwa]
[BL/Yaoi]
[Ebooks]
by Sean Gaffney
By Asuka Katsura. Released in Japan as “Soko Wa Bokura No Mondai Desu Kara” by Ohta Shuppan, serialized in the magazine Manga Erotics F. Released in North America by JManga.
I… am not sure where even to begin. What the heck was this? Not since Sasameke have I been left with such a feeling of vague confusion and disgust. This one didn’t have quite the kick in the balls ending that Sasameke did, but it certainly matches it for weird gag humor out of nowhere and appalling over-the-top grotesqueries being presented as comedic. Which, to be fair, works at first, but as the manga goes on and tries to also have a real plot, the flaws inherent in the entire work become more apparent.
Given that the manga actually tries to have a plot, I suppose I should sum it up. Yaeko is a high school girl who reacts cutely whenever she’s tormented (or, more accurately, reacts in a highly amusing way), and thus has always been prey for perverts who want to dress her up, strip her, seduce her, or just rape her. Including her family. And her best friend, who in fact rapes her at knifepoint in the first chapter. While escaping said best friend by running nude through the streets at night, she’s helped by Rokuro, a gorgeous man carrying a teddy bear… who happens to match the description of a guy who’s been propositioning little kids around the neighborhood. After a series of misunderstandings, she injures his right hand, only to discover he has a high-stress job that absolutely needs doing. And so she moves in with him to be his right hand while it heals.
The reader, honestly, is meant to identify with the perverts here, as Yaeko’s reactions to everything are the best part of the manga. They are so over the top it goes beyond comedy into farce, and she frequently will be dressed as, say, a soldier or a Greek Statue for one panel only. She’s obsessed with proving that Rokuro is a lolicon, to the extent that she tries to frame him by going to a park and telling kids to pose for photos (realizing, a bit late, that this makes her a pervert – she’s even wearing the standard manga pervert outfit). Her complete lack of common sense is what drives the humor, along with her need to scream almost every line.
Sadly, Rokuro is not nearly as interesting – or indeed interesting at all. In the final chapter, we get an attempt at a backstory that explains his retiring personality and his tendency to chat up little kids, but for most of the story he’s a non-entity who exists to make Yaeko panicked and insane. He has a faux-girlfriend who (naturally) has a shotacon complex, who mostly seems to inhabit the manga so that the two of them have a third character to bounce stress off of. (Yaeko’s best friend, for obvious reasons, doesn’t fit this description. Which is a shame, as she was easily the most appalling (and therefore funny) part of this whole manga.)
I suspect this worked better serialized, but even them I think I’d be exhausted by the end of 20 pages or so. The author is better known for Blood+ and La Portrait de Petite Cosette, neither of which I believe are anything whatsoever like this. It has little to no internal logic, tries to tack on a heartwarming ending that is then ruined by both its heroine and hero, and is amazingly offensive at times (and by at times, I mean most of the volume). I will admit that I laughed at first at many of the situations, but by the time the final chapter rolled around, I was exhausted. (There were also several typos and misspellings, more than usual for a JManga release.)
I can’t possibly recommend this, as it’s bad, but if you’re in the mood to stare at your screen with your mouth open, you may want to try Chapter 1. If nothing else, it’s very different from anything else JManga has put out, and indeed any other Manga Erotics F titles I’ve seen.