Manga Bookshelf

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Books

Mangasia: The Definitive Guide to Asian Comics

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The strengths and weaknesses of Paul Gravett’s latest book are neatly encapsulated in its title. Though the book purports to be a “definitive guide to Asian comics,” Gravett’s true aim is to trace the influence of the Japanese manga industry on comic book traditions across the Asian continent, from China and South Korea to Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Malayasia, Mongolia, and Vietnam.

Gravett’s thesis rests on two core assumptions. First, he argues that manga is Asia’s dominant comic book tradition, as evidenced by its “cultural influence and its extraordinary sales figures” (24); even Japan’s dojinshi (amateur) scene, he observes, “has more participants and publications than entire national markets” (31). Second, Gravett argues that colonialism played an essential role in extending manga’s reach beyond Japanese borders. The first wave of colonization was physical: as Japan invaded and occupied neighboring countries, manga proved “an ideal medium for spreading propaganda about the benefits of Japan’s leadership” and painting the Japanese as liberators, freeing Asia from Europe’s tyrannical grasp. The second wave of colonization was virtual: in the years following World War II, a demilitarized Japan reinvented itself as an industrial powerhouse, exporting consumer goods and pop-cultural products — manga, anime, and video games — in what Gravett characterizes as a “soft cultural invasion” of Asia and the West (14-15).

Gravett eschews a strictly chronological or geographical approach to the material, instead grouping his examples under six suggestive headings: “Mapping Mangasia,” “Fable and Folklore,” “Recreating and Revising the Past,” “Stories and Storytellers,” “Censorship and Sensibility,” and “Multimedia Mangasia.” This thematic approach gives him the freedom to explore parallels between manga and other Asian comic traditions in a creative — if sometimes non-linear — fashion. In his introductory chapter, for example, he traces the influence of Western comic strips across East Asia, showing how syndicated cartoons such as George McManus’ Bringing Up Father (1913-2000) and Oscar Jacobsson’s Adamsson (1920-1953) helped popularize the comic strip format with artists in Japan, Korea, China, and the Philippines, inspiring them to develop their own characters who were wrestling with “the allure of affluence, the desire for upward social mobility, and the nostalgia… for simpler past pleasures,” just as McManus’ Jiggs and Maggie did (28).

Two later chapters — “Recreating and Revising the Past” and “Censorship and Sensibility” — offer Gravett an opportunity to examine the complex dynamic between nationalism, censorship, and comics. Using the Phillippines as an example, Gravett explores the changing way in which Filipino artists depicted Japanese colonialism. His analysis focuses on three series: The Kalibapi Family, a wartime comic strip created at the behest of the Japanese Propaganda Corps; Kalawang sa Bakal (Corrosion of Steel), one of the first postwar comics to grapple with the horrors of Japan’s invasion of the Philippines; and Suicide Susy, a long-running series that pitted a spunky Filipina saboteur against Japanese soldiers. Over the course of forty years, Gravett observes, Japanese characters evolved from benign overlords to symbols of foreign oppression, reminders of Filipino collaboration, and — in the Marcos era — bumbling villains whose foolish antics distracted from the Marcos’ ruthless treatment of their own people.

“Censorship and Sensibility” also delves into gender politics. As one might expect, Gravett addresses genres such as yaoi, recognizing them as both pornography and resistance. “Manga about male-male romance,” he argues, “offer women an expressive playground in which to question and customize the alternatives to the oppressive heteronormativity of the powerful male and the weak female” (217). Gravett examines the legal complexities of obscenity laws as well, using Rokudenashiko’s protracted battle with the Japanese government to expose the inherent misogyny in many such regulations. He notes that she was convicted of distributing digital pictures of her vagina, but not for hanging manko (pussy) art in a gallery that only admitted women. “In the Japanese court’s eyes,” Gravett drily notes, “only men can be aroused by a vagina” (218-19).

For sheer visual beauty, Mangasia‘s stand-out chapter of  is “Fables and Folklore,” which focuses on comic-book adaptations of such important national texts as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms (China) and the Ramayana (India). The imagery runs the gamut from the merely functional to the photorealistic, with some genuinely striking selections. Zhang Guangyu’s wordless treatment of Journey to the West (1945), for example, is a unique synthesis of Chinese, Persian and Mexican influences, yielding a series of images that are at once playful and somber, rendered in a muted palette similar to Diego Rivera’s most famous murals, while Anant Pai and Ram Waeerkar’s Hanuman (1971) strikes an elegant balance between classical Hindu depictions of the popular deity and contemporary portrayals of superheroes and martial artists.

As one might expect from such a wide-ranging book, Mangasia‘s chief fault is its ambition: Gravett discusses examples from nineteen countries over a 100-year period, a tall order for a single volume. Important texts and artists get a few sentences each, making it difficult to fully appreciate their impact on the comics medium in their own countries or elsewhere. Likewise, historical contexts are rendered in broad strokes, through timelines and generalizations. In “Stories and Storytellers,” for example, Gravett asserts that “In the aftermath of World War II, the next generation in Japan strived to make their lives better,” a sentence that only hints at the incredible devastation caused by American bombing, or the economic hardships faced by ordinary Japanese citizens in the 1950s (164).

The title itself points to another drawback of Gravett’s approach: some of the examples in Mangasia bear only a tenuous visual connection to manga. In the absence of a clear, specific discussion of how manga influenced comics outside the immediate sphere of Japanese colonization, the reader is left to wonder whether a comic book retelling of the Mahabharata owes a debt to Shotaro Ishimonori, or if the story borrows more heavily from Indian sources. Some attempt to demonstrate the size of the international manga market, identify the countries where manga is most popular with readers, discuss the global piracy of manga, or examine manga fandoms across the Asian continent would have provided useful context for understanding how manga has insinuated itself into such a diverse array of comic traditions.

Whatever the limitations of a pan-Asian survey, Gravett recognizes the enormous cultural, religious, and historical differences that separate Muslim Indonesia from Hindu India, Buddhist Tibet, and the Catholic Philippines. If these differences are sometimes glossed over in service to his thesis, Gravett nonetheless does an admirable job of balancing discussion of Asian comics as a singular phenomenon and Asian comics as a set of discrete but overlapping traditions. The book’s design complements Gravett’s curatorial approach with evocative juxtapositions that reveal how certain themes and storytelling techniques manifest themselves across cultural lines.

The real stars of the show, however, are the 1,000 images that grace Mangasia‘s pages, allowing readers to see the transformation of a rough pencil sketch into a finished page, savor the richly saturated color palette and dynamic flow of a martial-arts adventure, and note the growing influence of digital technology on comic art. Whether you’re a manga reader or a comics scholar, the best way to tackle Mangasia is to follow Park Chan-wook’s advice, which appears at the very beginning of the text. “There’s the joy of simply taking in the art,” he observes (13), an apt assessment of this fascinating, flawed book’s appeal. Recommended.

Thames & Hudson provided a review copy.

Gravett, Paul. Mangasia: The Definitive Guide to Asian Comics, foreword by Park Chan-wook, Thames & Hudson, 2017.

Manga in Theory and Practice: The Craft of Creating Manga

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Part manifesto, part how-to manual, Hirohiko Araki’s Manga in Theory and Practice: The Craft of Creating Manga is as idiosyncratic as the series that made him a household name in Japan. Araki characterizes his book as both a map, guiding the aspiring artist along the “golden way” of manga, and a tool kit for developing one’s storytelling chops. “If you were to go hiking on an unfamiliar mountain, you’d bring a map, right?” he states. “If you also have with you a foundation of mountaineering skill, you could wander onto side paths and discover unexpected scenery, and if you were to come across any dangers, you could find your way around them and still reach the summit” (12-13).

Araki’s own map to the summit was Hitchcock/Truffaut. First published in 1967, the book traced Hitchcock’s journey from title boy at Paramount’s Famous Players to director of Rear Window, analyzed Hitchcock’s signature techniques, and considered Hitchcock’s contributions to the development of film. It’s not hard to imagine why Truffaut and Hitchcock’s words beguiled Araki; they provided Araki practical tips for creating memorable characters and surprising plot twists while reassuring him that a popular medium like film or comics could, in fact, be a high art form.

That fancy pedigree helps explain what differentiates Manga in Theory and Practice from hundreds of other books aimed at the manga novice. Instead of tutorials on choosing pen nibs or drawing “manga” eyes, Araki offers a chatty, first-person treatise on writing a hit series, explaining the techniques he uses to sustain to a long-form story with examples from his favorite movies, manga, and novels. Araki also uses his own manga to illustrate how his ideas work in practice, narrating scenes from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Poker Under Arms, and Cool Shock B.T. By choosing material from every stage of his career, he allows the reader to appreciate just how much his own style has evolved through years of study, practice, and editorial critique — a valuable example for any aspiring manga artist.

The book’s core chapters — “Designing Characters,” “How to Write a Story,” “Art Expresses Everything,” “What Setting Is to Manga,” and “All Elements Connect to the Theme” — outline Araki’s process for creating characters and settings, offering sound advice about which genres are best suited to serialization. Though Araki’s techniques are highly individual, the thoroughness with which he approaches world building is a useful model for less experienced writers. Araki even includes a detailed chart for capturing “sixty facts for fleshing out your characters,” from the obvious — age, gender, size — to the mundane — handedness, favorite brands.

Another recurring theme of Manga in Theory and Practice is that art is a means to an end, not an end in itself. “What your readers will see is the artwork,” Araki observes, “but behind those drawings exist the interconnected elements of character, story, setting, and theme” (41). To illustrate this point, Araki devotes several pages to explaining the difference between signification and realism, suggesting when one technique is more effective than the other. Using Jiro Taniguchi’s Solitary Gourmet (Kodoku no Gourmet) as an example, Araki notes that the hero “is drawn as an everyday salaryman, but the food is drawn with complete realism.” By drawing Goro in less detail than the food, Araki argues, Taniguchi directs the reader’s eye to the presentation, texture, and ingredients of every dish, rather than Goro’s reaction to the meal — a subtle but effective way to highlight the uniqueness of each restaurant Goro visits (45).

Araki returns to this idea later in the book, noting that the artist’s credibility lies, in part, with his ability to convince the reader that the story is taking place in a real world where characters walk, drive, text, cook, shop, and go to school. Under the provocative heading “How to Draw Guns,” Araki explains that hands-on experience with “machinery and tools” is essential to creating a realistic setting. “If you are drawing a motorcycle or bicycle, and you don’t understand how the wheels are attached or where the handlebars are placed, the result will be unsuitable for riding upon, and your setting will become incoherent,” he notes (131-32).

As pragmatic as Araki’s advice is, the book sometimes sags under the weight of Araki’s pedantic tone; it’s a little like reading a how-to book written by Polonius or your pompous Uncle Frank. In a section titled “The Difference Between Drawing Men and Women,” for example, Araki counsels the aspiring manga-ka that “nowadays, both men and women can become heroes.” And if that advice seems self-evident, what follows is even less useful. “If anything sets apart male and female characters, it’s only visual,” he elaborates. The decision to include female characters “is purely a matter of your own taste,” he continues, “as long as your characters are appealing, you could get away with a world of all men” (58-59). Small wonder so many male comic artists have no idea how to write female characters.

More amusing is a passage in which Araki castigates Francis Ford Coppola for extending the storyline of The Godfather beyond Michael Corleone’s promotion to family don. As Araki sees it, the plot developments that follow Michael’s ascent — Fredo’s betrayal, his divorce from Kay — violate Araki’s dictum that “protagonists are always rising.” “In the sequels,” Araki opines, “Michael is beset by troubles and family betrayals in a series of realistic scenes that are brilliantly rendered, but from the point of view of the audience, are unwanted and depressing” (100). Araki does praise Coppola’s commitment to this dreary vision of mob life, but it’s hard to escape the idea that Araki is dissing Coppola for the The Godfather II‘s downbeat ending.

And while I’m tickled by Araki’s assessment of The Godfather II, these odd digressions are part of Manga in Theory and Practice‘s charm. It’s one of the few how-to manuals that seems to have been written by a flesh-and-blood person working in the industry, rather than a manga illustration bot. More importantly, Manga in Theory and Practice is a valuable reference work, filling a niche that most manga manuals ignore: how to unify images and words into a dynamic story. Recommended.

VIZ Media provided a review copy.

Works Cited

Araki, Hirohito. Manga in Theory and Practice: The Craft of Creating Manga, translated by Nathan A. Collins, VIZ Media, 2017.

A Brief History of Manga

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A Brief History of Manga is an odd duck: it’s too short and impressionistic to be a reference work, but too focused on historically significant titles to appeal to a casual Attack on Titan fan. That’s a pity, because Helen McCarthy’s generously illustrated book provides an accessible introduction to manga, from its prehistory to the present.

A Brief History of Manga begins with Toba Sojo’s famous Choju-jinbutsue-giga, a twelfth century scroll depicting frogs, rabbits, and monkeys engaged in human activities, then jumps ahead to the nineteenth century, when European ex-pats helped popularize new cartooning styles via influential publications such as The Japan Punch (1862). The rest of the book explores the emergence of longer-form storytelling, from the newspaper-style comics of Rakuten Kitazawa (1876-1955) to the cyberpunk manga of Masamune Shirow (b. 1961). Sprinkled throughout the book are callouts highlighting specific artists’ contributions to the medium, as well as summaries of famous series, thumbnail histories of important magazines, and milestones in the globalization of manga.

For a reader familiar with Frederick Schodt’s venerable Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics (1983), many of McCarthy’s insights are old news. Schodt covered the early history of Japanese print culture in considerably more detail, painstakingly connecting the dots between Sojo’s frolicking animals, the birth of the Japanese publishing industry, and the emergence of the post-war manga market, bringing his narrative up to the 1980s. The final section of McCarthy’s book is a useful coda to Manga! Manga!, however, offering insights into more recent trends and titles, some well known–Boys Over Flowers, Death Note, Hetalia: Axis Powers–others less so–51 Ways to Save Her, Field of Cole, XX.

A Brief History of Manga has a more fundamental problem, however: its layout. Although the book’s designer has taken great pains to group images thematically, and link each entry with a timeline, the visual presentation is sometimes misleading. The 1931 entry, for example, pairs images of “manga pup” Norakuro with robot cat Doraemon without acknowledging the forty-year gap that separates the two characters. (Norakuro’s first story appeared in Shonen Club in 1931, while Doraemon debuted in 1969.) A caption informs the reader that Doraemon creator Hiroshi Fujimoto was born in 1933, but the main text never explicitly establishes the influence of Suiho Tagawa’s series on Fujimoto’s; even a simple, declarative sentence stating that Fujimoto had grown up reading Norakuro would have made this entry more valuable by demonstrating the role of pre-war children’s magazines in popularizing certain character types and storylines.

The first mention of gekiga–“1959: Manga’s Punk Movement Takes Root”–is similarly confusing. Although the text introduces gekiga pioneers Takao Saito (b. 1936) and Yoshihiro Tatsumi (1935-2015), the featured images are drawn from Fukushima Masami (b. 1948) and Kai Takizawa’s ultra-violent Prince Shotoku, a fascinating oddity from the late 1970s. While these images are among the most striking in the entire volume, they are not representative of early gekiga; it’s as if someone saw the word “punk” in the manuscript and set out to find the most visually outlandish artwork to emphasize McCarthy’s word choice. Complicating matters further is that the text never mentions Fukushima or Takizawa, or explains how their work built on the legacy of Saito and Tatsumi–no small oversight, given the pronounced differences between Prince Shotuko and Baron Air (1955) and Black Blizzard (1956), Saito and Tatsumi’s debut works.

I’m less bothered by McCarthy’s omissions than earlier reviewers were*; though it’s easy to cavil about missing works, McCarthy has chosen a representative sample of titles and authors across a wide spectrum of genres, demographics, and time periods. A manga newbie would find enough here to pique her interest, and perhaps steer her towards more comprehensive treatments of manga’s history. Knowledgable readers may find the quasi-encyclopedic format and emphasis on familiar material more frustrating, though they may be pleasantly surprised to discover new names and series through a careful scrutiny of the timeline. I did.

The verdict: A Brief History of Manga would make a swell gift for a new reader looking for information about the P.N.E. (that’s the Pre-Naruto Era).

* It’s worth noting that I heartily agree with Prof. Kathryn Hemmann’s concerns about the dearth of female creators in A Brief History of Manga. As Hemmann persuasively argues, this omission effectively silences some of the medium’s most influential and interesting voices. Click here to read Hemmann’s thoughts on the subject.

A Brief History of Manga
By Helen McCarthy
Ilex Press, $12.95

This review originally appeared at MangaBlog on August 14, 2015.

The Art of The Secret World of Arrietty

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Among the many books I read as a child, few left as indelible an impression as Mary Norton’s The Borrowers (1952). The book featured the Clocks, a family of mouse-sized people who lived unseen in the floorboards and walls of an old English house, stealing small objects and transforming them into furniture, cookware, and decorations. Norton’s rapturous descriptions of the Borrowers’ home so enchanted me that I still view thimbles and buttons not as human tools, but as tea-cozies and dinner plates for tiny folk.

The Borrowers made a similarly powerful impression on legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki, who saw in the Clocks’ resourceful gathering a metaphor for the way ordinary people were living through “chaotic, unsure times.” In 2007, he teamed up with Keiko Niwa to adapt Norton’s story into a screenplay. He then hired Hiromasa Yonebayashi to direct the film version, The Borrower Arrietty, which took nearly three years to complete. (N.B. For the North American release, the film has been re-titled The Secret World of Arrietty.)

Through concept sketches, movie stills, and interviews with Yonebayashi, The Art of The Secret World of Arrietty walks readers through the three-year process of making the movie. We see numerous sketches of Arrietty — sometimes as fierce warrior figure, other times as a round, soft-faced girl — as well as Miyazaki’s first sketches of the Clocks’ tiny home. In every chapter, these rough sketches are juxtaposed with finished images, allowing the reader to appreciate the important role that art directors Noboru Yoshida and Yoji Takeshige played in translating Miyazaki’s ideas into animated sequences. No where is this more evident than in their rendering of the Borrowers’ habitat: the rich color saturation, palpable textures, and intricate patterns make the Borrowers’ world seem utterly real.

Readers should note that the book covers the entire movie, revealing several important plot points. The book also reproduces the complete script — again, something that spoiler-phobes should consider in timing their purchase of The Art of The Secret World of Arrietty. (The film arrives in North American theaters on February 17.) For anyone who’s been impatient to see the film since it was first announced in 2009, or who read and loved Mary Norton’s novel, however, the lush, lovely images in Arrietty are the perfect “trailer” for this much-anticipated film. Recommended.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media LLC. The Art of The Secret World of Arrietty will be released on February 7, 2012.

THE ART OF THE SECRET WORLD OF ARRIETTY • BY HIROMASA YONEBAYASHI • VIZ MEDIA • 200 pp.

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.

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.