Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Manga Critic

Kobato, Vol. 1

by

kobato1Kobato Hanato has a job to do: if she can fill a magic bottle with the pain and suffering of people whose lives she’s improved, she’ll have her dearest wish come true. There’s just one problem: Kobato is completely mystified by urban life, and has no idea how to identify folks in need of her help. Lucky for her, Ioryogi, a blue dog with a foul mouth and fierce temper, has been appointed her sensei and guardian angel, tasked with helping Kobato develop the the street smarts necessary for completing her mission.

It’s perfectly possible to read Kobato as a story about a sweet, clueless girl who teams up with a gruff but lovable animal to collect wounded hearts. That book is beautifully drawn, but isn’t terribly interesting; most of the stories follow the same template so, well, doggedly, that even the most committed fan of cute would find Kobato too repetitive to be much fun. A more productive way to understand Kobato is as a moe parody, a gleeful skewering of an entire genre in which the cute, underage heroine’s primary role is to endear herself to readers with her mixture of enthusiasm, naivete, and sensitivity.

…

Read More

Your & My Secret, Vols. 1-5

by

If you ever wondered what Freaky Friday might have been like if Jodie Foster had switched bodies with Leif Garrett instead of Barbara Harris, well, Ai Morinaga’s Your & My Secret provides a pretty good idea of the gender-bending weirdness that would have ensued. The story focuses on Nanako, a swaggering tomboy who lives with her mad scientist grandfather, and Akira, an effeminate boy who adores her. Though Akira’s classmates find him “cute and delicate,” they declare him a timid bore — “a waste of a man,” one girl snipes — while Nanako’s peers call her “the beast” for her aggressive personality and uncouth behavior, even as the boys concede that Nanako is “hotter than anyone.” Akira becomes the unwitting test subject for the grandfather’s latest invention, a gizmo designed to transfer personalities from one body to another. With the flick of a switch, Akira finds himself trapped in Nanako’s body (and vice versa).

The joke, of course, is that Nanako and Akira have found the ideal vessels for their gender-atypical personalities. Nanako revels in her new-found freedom as a boy, enjoying sudden popularity among classmates, earning the respect of Akira’s contemptuous little sister, and discovering the physical strength to dunk a basketball. Akira, on the other hand, finds his situation a mixed bag: for the first time in his life, his sensitive personality endears him to both male and female peers, but many of the things his maleness had previously exempted him from — housework and cooking, menstrual cycles, unwanted advances from boys — turn out to be much worse than he’d imagined. He struggles to feel comfortable in Nanako’s skin, insulted by the grandfather’s refusal to do chores and bewildered by his old buddy Senbongi’s growing attraction to him.

Much of the humor in Your & My Secret stems from the war between head and hormones. Akira still identifies as a boy, lusting after Nanako’s sweetly feminine friend Shiina and suffering volcanic nosebleeds in the girls’ locker room, yet his body is drawn to Senbongi; after Senbongi makes a pass at him, the flustered Akira wonders how Senbongi “got to be such a good kisser.” Nanako, who is quick to embrace her new male identity, struggles as well; though she asks Shiina out, she’s reluctant to consummate their relationship, and shows an all-too-prurient interest in Senbongi’s, um, equipment. Making things even more complicated for Akira is that he’s trapped in the body of the girl he adores. He’s both disgusted and aroused by the sight of himself, and filled with conflicting emotions about the growing relationship between Nanako and Shiina.

Perhaps the most interesting wrinkle in Your & My Secret is that Nanako’s experiences transform her into a sexist pig. She rebuffs Akira’s pleas to reverse the experiment, belittling his gentle, conciliatory personality and asserting her right to have fun in his body. At the same time, she insists that Akira refrain from dating, having sex, or exploring her body; she repeatedly describes her body as a sacred temple that must remain “unpolluted” before her wedding day, and threatens Akira with humiliation if he acts on his conflicted feelings for Senbongi — or Shiina. (Apparently, Nanako is a bit of a homophobe, too.)

While the gender-swapping hijinks provide most of the comedic fodder for Your & My Secret, Morinaga also has a ball poking fun at manga tropes from incestuous infatuation to cultural festivals. The best of these gags revolves around the school’s manga club: in a sly nod to Tezuka, the group is helmed by a beret-wearing artist who transforms Akira and Senbongi’s friendship into a steamy boys’ love comic in which Akira is the seme and Senbongi is the uke. (“It’s not that I like guys,” Akira’s avatar tells Senbongi’s. “The person I fell in love with just happened to be a guy.”) Morinaga also wrings laughs from her characters’ desperate behavior; the grandfather, for example, thinks nothing of blackmailing Akira to get closer to Shiina (he dreams of having a pretty teenage girl sit in his lap and clean his ears), while Senbongi hatches up a love-hotel scheme to drive a wedge between Akira and Nanako.

Yet for all the black comedy, Morinaga still allows her characters moments of vulnerability and decency, preventing the humor from curdling into pure meanness. She wisely avoids the trap of making her characters too dumb to notice the transformations in Akira and Nanako, allowing her to sustain the body-swapping premise without straining credulity or testing the reader’s patience. Morinaga avoids another trap as well: that of making her leads so repellent the reader wishes for their comeuppance. (Even Nanako — she of the karate chops and withering put-downs — demonstrates a capacity for kindness and selflessness when wooing Shiina.) The artwork supports Morinaga’s characterizations, showing us both their nastier and nicer sides. When Akira assumes ownership of Nanako’s body, for example, there’s a visible softening of Nanako’s features, her lips becoming moistly inviting, her chin turning ever-so-slightly upward, and her eyes shining like a proper shojo heroine’s. If provoked, however, Akira’s body language and gestures revert back to Nanako’s coarse, tomboy persona, right down to the maniacal gleam in his eye; the gap between the two personalities proves smaller than either would like the admit.

No, it isn’t Taming of the Shrew, but Your & My Secret manages to make some worthwhile points about gender roles (and gender norms) while serving up plenty of dopey slapstick and risque jokes. Frankly, I’d take a big helping of Morinaga’s un-PC humor over an earnest, socially responsible “girls’ comic” any day of the week. Highly recommended.

This is an expanded version of a review that originally appeared at PopCultureShock on 3/12/08. The original review can be read by clicking here.

Your & My Secret, Vols. 1-5

by

secret5If you ever wondered what Freaky Friday might have been like if Jodie Foster had switched bodies with Leif Garrett instead of Barbara Harris, well, Ai Morinaga’s Your & My Secret provides a pretty good idea of the gender-bending weirdness that would have ensued. The story focuses on Nanako, a swaggering tomboy who lives with her mad scientist grandfather, and Akira, an effeminate boy who adores her. Though Akira’s classmates find him “cute and delicate,” they declare him a timid bore — “a waste of a man,” one girl snipes — while Nanako’s peers call her “the beast” for her aggressive personality and uncouth behavior, even as the boys concede that Nanako is “hotter than anyone.” Akira becomes the unwitting test subject for the grandfather’s latest invention, a gizmo designed to transfer personalities from one body to another. With the flick of a switch, Akira finds himself trapped in Nanako’s body (and vice versa).

The joke, of course, is that Nanako and Akira have found the ideal vessels for their gender-atypical personalities. Nanako revels in her new-found freedom as a boy, enjoying sudden popularity among classmates, earning the respect of Akira’s contemptuous little sister, and discovering the physical strength to dunk a basketball. Akira, on the other hand, finds his situation a mixed bag: for the first time in his life, his sensitive personality endears him to both male and female peers, but many of the things his maleness had previously exempted him from — housework and cooking, menstrual cycles, unwanted advances from boys — turn out to be much worse than he’d imagined. He struggles to feel comfortable in Nanako’s skin, insulted by the grandfather’s refusal to do chores and bewildered by his old buddy Senbongi’s growing attraction to him.

…

Read More

Kingyo Used Books, Vol. 1

by

Kingyo Used Books starts from a simple premise: an eccentric group of people run a second-hand bookstore in an out-of-the-way location. Various customers stumble upon the shop — usually by accident — and, in the process of browsing, find a manga that helps them reconnect with a part of themselves that’s been suppressed, whether it be a youthful capacity for romantic infatuation or a desire to paint expressively.

Is there such thing as agit-manga? Because Kingyo Used Books seems like the brainchild of an editor who’s desperately trying to convince adults that one never outgrows manga. In the first story, for example, a salaryman tries to unload his collection at the store, telling the owner, “I’m not a kid anymore. Besides, it’s kind of pathetic to keep reading manga forever.” He gets a gentle comeuppance at a class reunion, where his friends’ fond memories of Dr. Slump remind him what an important role manga played in their young lives. The story is pleasant and enjoyable, but suffers from a bad case of predictability; as soon as the salaryman sees his friends engaged in tearful, rhapsodic discussions of their childhood reading habits, he’s overcome with emotion and — natch — a strong desire to keep the manga he’d previously hoped to sell.

<!—more—>

Other stories in volume one follow the same basic template. In “Far Away,” for example, an archery champion discovers that laughter and downtime are as essential to winning as practice, thanks to a pair of Kingyo employees whose snot-rolling-down-the-face, tears-in-eyes response to Moretsu Ataru inspires the archer to pick up a manga instead of his bow and quiver. “Fujiomi-kun,” another chapter that adheres to this formula, focuses on a frustrated housewife who makes some small but important changes in her life after rediscovering Chizumi and Fujiomi-kun, a romance about a handsome athlete who falls in love with a clumsy but kind-hearted girl.

The series’ episodic structure cuts both ways, see-sawing between a fun exercise in formula — which manga will feature prominently in this story? who will be drawn into the store? — and a frustratingly obvious collection of beats culminating in a character’s decision to make a change in her life. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit the appeal of a series that highlights some famous (and, sadly, untranslated) manga, or that validates my own experiences as an adult manga reader; like many of the characters in Kingyo Used Books, I, too, have found titles as different as Suppli, Phoenix, and Night of the Beasts an outlet for emotions that don’t always find expression in my daily life. In settling for such a tidy approach to dramatizing manga’s transformative power, however, author Seimu Yoshizaki misses an opportunity to really move readers, instead treating us to sentimental, sometimes mawkish, scenes in which adults recover childhood memories of favorite books. Yoshizaki never acknowledges the messiness or risk that her characters take when acting on their epiphanies or experiencing personal growth, choosing instead to end every story on a positive note.

The artwork is clean, conveying the characters’ interior lives with directness and simplicity. Though her style isn’t particularly distinctive, Yoshizaki does a fine job evoking other artists’ styles, recreating images from famous series and altering one of her own characters to look like the hero of his favorite manga. The most striking image in the book is just such a recreation: it’s Hokusai’s iconic wave print, drawn in the sand by two students who then watch the incoming tide erase it. In the story’s final panels, the two reflect on their emotions as they watch their work vanish. One is pensive and wishes the work was permanent; the other responds by noting that permanence can be its own trap. “I’ve seen the pictures Hokusai drew when he was our age,” he says. “They really sucked.” Here’s hoping that volume two has more of these frank, funny, and true-to-life moments and fewer scenes of tearful housewives and salarymen reliving their childhoods through manga.

KINGYO USED BOOKS, VOL. 1 • BY SEIMU YOSHIZAKI • VIZ • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+) • 208 pp.

Kingyo Used Books, Vol. 1

by

kingyo_coverKingyo Used Books starts from a simple premise: an eccentric group of people run a second-hand bookstore in an out-of-the-way location. Various customers stumble upon the shop — usually by accident — and, in the process of browsing, find a manga that helps them reconnect with a part of themselves that’s been suppressed, whether it be a youthful capacity for romantic infatuation or a desire to paint expressively.

Is there such thing as agit-manga? I ask this because Kingyo Used Books seems like the brainchild of an editor who’s desperately trying to convince adults that one never outgrows manga. In the first story, for example, a salaryman tries to unload his collection at the store, telling the owner, “I’m not a kid anymore. Besides, it’s kind of pathetic to keep reading manga forever.” He gets a gentle comeuppance at a class reunion, where his friends’ fond memories of Dr. Slump remind him what an important role manga played in their young lives. The story is pleasant and enjoyable, but suffers from a bad case of predictability; as soon as the salaryman sees his friends engaged in tearful, rhapsodic discussions of their childhood reading habits, he’s overcome with emotion and — natch — a strong desire to keep the manga he’d previously hoped to sell.

…

Read More

Diamond Girl, Vol. 1

by

Part Bad News Bears, part Boys of Summer, Diamond Girl follows a time-honored sports-comedy formula in which a team of losers have their pennant dreams rekindled after an unlikely but undeniable talent joins their ranks. In Diamond Girl, those hard-luck athletes are Baba, Seto, and Takagi, the heart and soul of the Ryukafuchi High School baseball club. The trio discovers, by accident, that the new transfer student has the throwing arm of a youthful Roger Clemens, capable of nailing a moving object hundreds of feet away or throwing a shotput with the ease and precision of a softball. The catch: Tsubara is a girl, making her ineligible to play.

Actually, there’s another obstacle to Tsubara joining the team: she doesn’t want to. At first, Tsubara vehemently denies her skills, feigning bewilderment at her ability to snatch a line drive from the air, bare-handed. When Tsubara’s classmates remain unpersuaded, Tsubara finally concedes her athletic prowess, but rebuffs Baba and Takagi’s suggestion that she play baseball in drag. (“We hide her chest by wrapping it up in bandages,” Takagi confidently asserts. “I see no problem.”) How Tsubara came by her skills, and why she refuses to play, are the central mysteries of volume one, and provide most of the series’ comedic — and dramatic — juice.

Anyone expecting a baseball version of Crimson Hero will be in for a rude shock with Diamond Girl. There’s fan service a-plenty, from a “whoops, I didn’t mean to collide with your chest!” gag to a bath scene that seems calculated to reassure readers that Tsubara is 100% girl, even if she could beat the snot out of her teammates, on or off the field. (The author annotates one panel with the cheerful admission that “Today, we bring you more fan service than usual.”) Aside from a truly distasteful scene in which the team pervert assesses Tsubara’s panty preferences — he bemoans her tendency to wear “little kid underpants” — the fan service is easy enough to overlook, even for an old feminist curmudgeon like me.

The real joy of Diamond Girl is watching Tsubara lose herself in the moment. Midway through volume one, for example, a monkey steals Tsubara’s treasured purse, ripping it open and fleeing to the safety of the school roof to examine its contents. Tsubara doesn’t hesitate; she transforms herself into a human pitching machine, lobbing balls and rocks at the culprit until one well-timed throw knocks the purse of the monkey’s hands. A similar sense of joyful abandon informs a scene in which Tsubara plays fetch with her dog Hachi, who shares his mistress’s talent for fielding extreme fly balls — as well as her ability to tune out her surroundings. (He crash-lands on top of Tsubara’s classmate, ball in mouth.) Tsubara runs their game with the intensity of a drill sargeant or big league coach, treating Hachi as if he’s a star right fielder.

Manga-ka Takanori Yamazaki demonstrates a genuine knack for caricature, neatly encapsulating each character’s personality in a few gestures: a mohawk for the slightly chubby, irreverent Takagi; a row of earrings and a maniacal gleam for the more energetic Baba; a pair of ratty pigtails and a scowl for Tsubara. Though Yamazaki makes a game effort to immerse us in the action, his fondness for dramatic camera angles and freeze-frames occasionally results in an awkwardly composed drawing; in more than one scene, he foreshortens characters to such a degree that they look a bit squashed. Yamazaki also relies on tracing just a little too often, as the monkey scene attests; all of the monkeys have a straight-off-the-lightbox quality that suggests a National Geographic spread on the hot-tubbing macaque of Honshu. Even with such obvious limitations, however, the artwork suits the story’s broad comedic tone without becoming too frantic.

If the one-note characters and suggestive situations prevent Diamond Girl from scoring a homerun, it’s certainly a solid base hit, offering an enjoyable mixture of game play and humor that should appeal to baseball enthusiasts, manga lovers, and female athletes of all stripes. Recommended.

DIAMOND GIRL, VOL. 1 • BY TAKANORI YAMAZAKI • CMX MANGA • RATING: TEEN (13+) • 160 pp.

Diamond Girl, Vol. 1

by

diamond_girl_coverPart Bad News Bears, part Boys of Summer, Diamond Girl follows a time-honored sports-comedy formula in which a team of losers have their pennant dreams rekindled after an unlikely but undeniable talent joins their ranks. In Diamond Girl, those hard-luck athletes are Baba, Seto, and Takagi, the heart and soul of the Ryukafuchi High School baseball club. The trio discovers, by accident, that the new transfer student has the throwing arm of a youthful Roger Clemens, capable of nailing a moving object hundreds of feet away or throwing a shotput with the ease and precision of a softball. The catch: Tsubara is a girl, making her ineligible to play.

Actually, there’s another obstacle to Tsubara joining the team: she doesn’t want to. At first, Tsubara vehemently denies her skills, feigning bewilderment at her ability to snatch a line drive from the air, bare-handed. When Tsubara’s classmates remain unpersuaded, Tsubara finally concedes her athletic prowess, but rebuffs Baba and Takagi’s suggestion that she play baseball in drag. (“We hide her chest by wrapping it up in bandages,” Takagi confidently asserts. “I see no problem.”) How Tsubara came by her skills, and why she refuses to play, are the central mysteries of volume one, and provide most of the series’ comedic — and dramatic — juice.

…

Read More

10 Must-Read Manhwa

by 26 Comments

After visiting “Korean Comics: A Society Through Small Frames” last weekend, I was struck by the homogeneity of titles on the exhibit’s suggested reading list. The list isn’t bad by any means, but it places heavy emphasis on recent, teen-oriented titles such as The Antique Gift Shop, Chocolat, Click, Moon Boy, and Snow Drop while overlooking some less popular choices such as Buja’s Diary. As a supplement to my write-up of the “Korean Comics” show, therefore, I’ve compiled my own list of must-read manhwa. Though my goal is to direct readers to works in a variety of styles and genres, I freely admit that this list reflects my own tastes and biases. I’d love to hear from you about what you think belongs on a must-read manhwa list and why. And if you’d like a copy of the SFPL’s Korean Comics bibliography, let me know — I’d be happy to mail one to you.

dejavu10. DEJA-VU: SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER

YOUN IN-WAN • TOKYOPOP • 1 VOLUME

Déjà vu is a manhwa smorgasbord, pairing writer Youn In-Wan with six artists with distinctly different styles. The first four stories follow the same basic template: two lovers find themselves drawn together by mysterious forces, only to be separated by a moment of terrible violence. The settings and circumstances range from the vaguely folkloric — a warrior and a fox demon fall in love after he frees her from a hunter’s snare — to the contemporary — a blind Korean-American girl and an up-and-coming pop singer meet cute on the streets of San Francisco. The best stories, “Spring” and “Winter,” deftly interlace the fates of the warrior and the fox with the survivors of a twenty-third century apocalypse, bringing to mind Sun, the final installment of Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix. Though the stories aren’t uniformly excellent, Deja-vu still makes a fine introduction to the contemporary Korean comics scene in general and the writing of Youn In-Wan in particular; look for his series March Story in October 2010. (Reviewed at PopCultureShock on 1/30/08.)

narration9. NARRATION OF LOVE AT 17

KYONGOK KANG • NETCOMICS • 4 VOLUMES

Seyoung, the heroine of Narration of Love at 17, is bright, but not exceptional; pretty, but not a head-turner; and talented, but not outstanding. For several years, Seyoung has been a member of the drama club, relegated to backstage roles while the beautiful Hyemi lands the plum parts. When Hyemi becomes involved with Hyunwoo, Seyoung’s friend and first crush, Seyoung faces a tough choice: will she wait for Hyunwoo to reciprocate her feelings, or will she move on? Backstage rivalries and first loves are standard manhwa fare, but Narration of Love at 17 proves deeper and more heartfelt than most coming-of-age stories in this vein, thanks to Kyongok Kang’s believable, appealing characters; their quicksilver moods, intense passions, deep insecurities, and ever-changing social allegiances make them seem like real teenagers and not an adult’s idea of what teenagers are like. Though the art is, at times, a little clumsy, Kang’s fondness for 1970s shojo is evident in her linework and character designs, and in her emotionally resilient protagonist. (Reviewed at PopCultureShock on 9/12/07. Click here to read a preview chapter at NETCOMICS.)

priest18. PRIEST

MIN-WOO HYUNG • TOKYOPOP • 16 VOLUMES

This sprawling, religio-horror epic comes saddled with enough convoluted backstory for a J.R.R. Tolkein trilogy or a George Lucas franchise, yet proves surprisingly fast-paced and fun. Skipping between the present, the Crusades, and the American West — or, more accurately, a manhwa artist’s cinematically influenced notion of the West — Priest tells the story of Ivan Isaacs, a man of the cloth who renounces his faith after evil researchers use his sister as a human sacrifice. Over the span of sixteen volumes, Ivan battles fallen angels and zombies in an effort to avenge Gena’s death, restore order, and redeem his sinner’s soul. The artwork is bold and stark, with spiky lines and attitude to spare; if you adored the over-the-top action sequences and pistol-packing clergymen of Hellsing, Min-woo Hyung’s elaborate shoot-em-up will be your cup of tea. (Click here to read the first volume at Tokyopop.)

bongsmallcov7. RUN, BONG-GU, RUN!

BYUN BYUNG-JUN • NBM/COMICS LIT • 1 VOLUME

Run, Bong-Gu, Run! tells a simple story: Bong-Gu and his mother leave their rural village to find Bong-Gu’s father, who has gone to Seoul in search of work. As they retrace his steps through the capital, a chance encounter with a beggar yields an important clue to the father’s whereabouts, offering hope that the family will be reunited. The author never explicitly states what prompted the father to leave, how long he’s been away, or why Bong-Gu’s mother waited so long to track him down. In leaving these characters’ personal histories mysterious, Byun Byung-Jun comes dangerously close to romanticizing them: Bongu-Gu’s parents and the old beggar often register as poor but dignified archetypes rather than flesh-and-blood people. But Byun’s spare, restrained artwork mitigates against the story’s sentimentality, offering readers a haunting cityscape that’s as much a character as Bong-Gu or his mother. Rendered in rough, energetic brushstrokes and muted watercolors, Byun’s street scenes are among the most beautiful images I’ve seen in any manhwa translated for English-speaking audiences. (Reviewed at PopCultureShock on 7/11/07. Click here to read a preview at NBM/Comics Lit.)

1020306. 10, 20, AND 30

MORIM KANG • NETCOMICS • 7 VOLUMES

The ten, twenty, and thirty of the title refer to Rok, a sixteen-year-old girl; Belle, her twenty-six-year old cousin; and Krumb, Rok’s mother, who at age thirty-two finds herself a widow. Through a series of interlocking vignettes, 10, 20, and 30 documents the trio’s fumbling efforts to find themselves — and Mr. Right. If the naive, cartoonish art is a take-it-or-leave-it affair, Kang’s heroines are winning, at once complex and sympathetic. They make mistakes; they overreact; they misjudge the men in their lives; they sometimes hurt loved ones with selfish behavior. To be sure, similar characters abound in Bridget Jones’ Diary and Sex and the City, but there’s a qualitative difference between Bridget and the ladies of 10, 20, and 30: Rok, Belle, and Krumb aren’t neurotic. Beneath their quirks and anxieties, all three women display genuine strength and self-determination, even if they don’t always make smart choices about the men in their lives.  (Reviewed at PopCultureShock on 5/10/07. Click here to read a preview chapter at NETCOMICS.)

goong75. GOONG: THE ROYAL PALACE

PARK SOO-HEE • ICE KUNION • 10+ VOLUMES (ongoing)

Goong: The Royal Palace focuses on commoner Chae-Kyung, a high school student who marries the next in line to the (fictional) Korean throne. Just as Diana Spence did in real life, Chae-Kyung discovers that being a princess isn’t glamorous, as her day-to-day life is filled with palace intrigue, onerous civic responsibilities, jealous classmates, and an indifferent husband who’s in love with someone else. Though the plot is an amalgam of familiar soap-opera conventions — romantic triangles! hot younger siblings! disapproving mother-in-laws! — the story has surprising depth, showing us the emotional toll that public life exacts on the young couple. Another plus is the artwork: it’s flat-out gorgeous, with considerable attention devoted to ancient ceremonial costumes and au-courant fashions. Pair those beautiful images with a compelling plot and boatloads of romantic tension, and you have a recipe for manhwa crack. (Reviewed at PopCultureShock on 8/29/08.)

forestgray24. FOREST OF GRAY CITY

JUNG-HYUN UHM • ICE KUNION/YEN PRESS • 2 VOLUMES

Struggling artist Yun-Ook and bartender Bum-Moo decide to room together after a series of drunken misunderstandings that wouldn’t be out of place in a Meg Ryan movie. Though Yun-Ook is horrified to discover their age difference — she’s in her twenties, he’s seventeen — Bum-Moo begins courting her in a confused, low-key fashion. The story would be pure Harlequin fodder if Jung-Hyun Uhm’s heroine wasn’t such a strong, appealing character. Yun-Ook is impetuous, insecure, and quick to take offense, but she’s also focused on her career, protective of Bum-Moo, and determined not to sacrifice her sense of self just to land a husband. There’s a level of emotional authenticity about her character that will resonate with female readers in their twenties and thirties, even if her story seems more firmly rooted in romance novel convention than reality. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 4/27/09.)

shaman33. SHAMAN WARRIOR

PARK JOONG-KI • DARK HORSE • 9 VOLUMES

Shaman Warrior serves up generous portions of pow! splat! thmp! and gyaaaa! with heaping sides of political intrigue and supernatural hoo-ha. The story is, at heart, an inter-generational revenge fantasy about a young woman who spends her childhood preparing to confront her father’s assassin and lay bare the double-crosses and unsavory alliances that led to his demise — in short, it’s a grrrl power theme-and-variation on the Epigoni. What it lacks in complexity Shaman Warrior makes up in beauty and bravado: Park Joong-Ki is a superb draftsman, populating his story with an astonishing variety of faces and body-types. His fight scenes are artfully choreographed, if a little heavy on the speedlines, immersing readers in the action in the manner of a contemporary wuxia film. (Reviewed at PopCultureShock on 1/24/07. Click here to read a preview at Dark Horse.)

dokebi22. DOKEBI BRIDE

MARLEY • NETCOMICS • 6 VOLUMES (on hiatus in Korea)

After losing her mother to mental illness and her grandmother to old age, Sunbi’s long-absent father returns to claim her. Their reunion proves an awkward and unhappy one, however: his new wife and daughter resent Sunbi’s presence, while Sunbi’s classmates shun her for her “freakish” behavior, none of them realizing that her aloof, abrasive demeanor helps protect her from demons and spirits. Familiar as Dokebi Bride‘s “I see demons!” premise may be, Marley uses Sunbi’s affliction as a jumping-off point for exploring issues such as fitting in, blending families, and answering that most basic of questions, who am I? Sunbi is an all-too-rare character in comics, a smart, resourceful girl who’s palpably — and justifiably, I might add — angry. Long after you’ve forgotten the basic storyline, the memory of Marley’s fierce, real heroine will stay with you. N.B. Dokebi Bride has been on hiatus for over a year; NETCOMICS has released the six volumes that were published in Korea. No word on when — or if — Dokebi Bride will resume. (Click here to read a preview chapter at NETCOMICS.)

bujacovsmall1. BUJA’S DIARY

SEYOUNG O • NBM/COMICS LIT • 1 VOLUME

Among the manhwa featured in “Korean Comics: A Society Through Small Frames” was “The Picture Diary of Puja,” a short, poignant story about a rural family’s efforts to make a home in Seoul. “Puja’s Diary” (translated by NBM as “Buja’s Diary”) juxtaposes wordless scenes, illustrated in a naturalistic style, with a young girl’s description of the same events: a robbery, a shakedown, a child being injured at a construction site. The effect is simple yet devastating, a Dickensian critique of industrialization and poverty in modern-day Korea. As the other stories in Buja’s Diary attest, displacement, change, and encroaching urbanization are important themes in Seyoung O’s work, though he proves equally adept at humor (“Observe,” which tracks a vain gum-chewer through the streets of Seoul) and surrealism (“Escape,” which depicts one bored man’s nightmarish daydream about his office mates). The artwork varies according to the tone of the story; some of the more somber tales are rendered in charcoal wash and ink, while others employ more exaggerated linework reminiscent of Daumier. One of the most thought-provoking and beautiful manhwa available in English. (Click here to read a preview at NBM/Comics Lit.)

Korean Comics: A Society Through Small Frames

by

Last weekend, I had an opportunity to visit the San Francisco Public Library, which is mounting a small but meticulously curated exhibit exploring the relationship between politics, censorship, and manhwa in post-war Korea. Called “Korean Comics: A Society Through Small Frames,” the exhibit features twenty-one of Korea’s best-known cartoonists, from Kim Won Bin, creator of Fist Boss, to Hwang Mina, a sunjong (girls’) pioneer. For a Western reader whose primary knowledge of manhwa comes from titles such as Goong: The Royal Palace, the exhibit will be revelatory, as almost none of the series on display look like the Korean comics that have been licensed for the US market; if anything, the curators have gone out of their way to choose titles that challenge the commonly-held Western notion that manhwa is simply the “Korean form” of manga.[1] Styles range from the cartoonish (Baby Dinosaur Tuli, Madame Vicious) to the  naturalistic (The Picture Diary of Puja), while the story lines explore topics as varied as ancient Korean history (Kojudo: Three Kingdoms), homelessness in Seoul (We Saw a Pity Bird Who Lost Its Way), Korean involvement in the Vietnam War (Yellow Bullets), and sumo champion Rikidozan, who is credited with introducing Japanese and Korean audiences to modern professional wrestling.[2]

Throughout the exhibit, curators have gone to great pains to illustrate the complex relationship between cartoonists and the Korean government, noting when a particular title elicited criticism from officials or earned praise for its depiction of Korean life. Visitors unfamiliar with recent Korean history may be surprised to discover the degree to which propaganda and censorship shaped the development of manhwa in South Korea. Hwang Mina’s We Saw a Pity Bird, for example, caused a stir when Seoul was preparing to host the 1986 Pan-Asian Games; the government attempted to ban the work for depicting poverty and homelessness in urban settings, fearing that Pity Bird would make South Korea look economically backwards. Other works, such as Kim Seong Hwan’s Koban, a long-running newspaper strip, ran afoul of Park Chung Hee’s censors for depicting student unrest and changing social mores in the 1960s.[3]

fistboss

Not surprisingly, the exhibit’s most dramatic illustration of the relationship between comics and politics comes from North Korea. The Great General Mighty Wing debuted in 1994, shortly after Kim Jong Il succeeded his father. Like Soviet novels of the 1920s and 1930s, and Chinese model operas of the 1960s, The Great General Mighty Wing is intended both as entertainment and education, employing a popular medium to teach Communist values, assert the importance of the collective, and reassure readers of their leader’s benign, parental authority. Using the metaphors of the garden and the hive (both Communist staples), the story depicts a conflict between honeybees and wasps for control of two vital resources: water and flowers. The full-color artwork is a synthesis of mid-1950s Korean and Japanese styles (Fist Boss is cited as one important influence), while the script is pure agit-prop, with characters speaking in Communist slogans and heroic, selfless pronouncements.

One of the subtler affects of censorship — artistic isolation and stagnation — is addressed briefly but effectively in the few examples of sunjong manhwa on display. Korea experienced a brief shojo manga boom in the 1970s, when pirates flooded the Korean market with unauthorized versions of popular Japanese titles. The Magnificent 49ers’s style, in particular, had a profound influence on artists writing for the girls’ market. After the government cracked down on Japanese imports, however, Korean artists who had drawn inspiration from the 49ers no longer had access to current shojo manga; as a result, variations on the starry-eyed heroines and long-haired princes of The Rose of Versailles flourished in Korean manhwa long after they’d fallen out of fashion in Japan.[4]

If I had one complaint about the exhibit, it’s that visitors whose entire knowledge of Korea is rooted in the present may not appreciate the degree to which the displayed comics reflect the social and political upheaval of the past eighty years. A small timeline of major events, or even a pamphlet providing a brief overview of Korean history from 1939 to the present, would have been a valuable asset to the exhibit. (A quick glance at the Wikipedia articles on Korea, North Korea, and South Korea are strongly suggested if you don’t know much about the region.) That said, “Korean Comics” is a thoughtful and thought-provoking show that will challenge readers’ notions of what manhwa is, offer them a window into Korean society during some of its most turbulent periods, and introduce them to twenty-one brilliant artists, all of whom deserve greater recognition outside their home country.

“Korean Comics: A Society Through Small Frames” runs now through June 13, 2010 at the Main Branch of the San Francisco Public Library. Admission is free. For hours and directions to the library, click here. The exhibit is a joint effort by the San Francisco Public Library and the Korea Society.

Suggested Reading

“100 Years of Korean Manhwa,” Park In-Ha. List: Books from Korea (Vol. 4, Summer 2009). (Accessed April 9, 2010.)

“Great General Mighty Wing,” Cho Pyong Kwan; translated by Heinz Insu Fenkl. Words Without Borders: The Online Magazine for International Literature (February 2, 2008). (Accessed April 8, 2010.)

Manhwa 100: The New Era for Korean Comics. NETCOMICS (2008). Available through Amazon and other retailers.

A Study of the Development of Sunjong Manhwa by Hwang Mina, Kim Hyerin, and Choi In-sun, Yeewon Yoon. Master’s thesis, University of British Columbia (2002). Available through the UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/]. (Accessed April 9, 2010.)

Notes

1.This disparity is reflected in the library’s suggested reading list, which features a number of contemporary works such as The Antique Gift Shop, Honey Mustard, Moon Boy, and Priest but none of the works feature in the show. The SFPL’s collection does include a few Korean-language titles, which are listed in the bibliography.

2. Rikidozan is mentioned in Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life (2009; Drawn & Quarterly), in which Rikidozan is presented as a Japanese hero for defeating American wrestlers in the ring. See pages 261-63.

3. Kim Seong Hwan produced 14,319 Koban strips over its 50+ year run in Korean newspapers.

4. NETCOMICS, a Korean publisher which has been translating manhwa for the American market, has released a number of sunjong titles from the 1980s and early 1990s that suggest the continued influence of 1970s shojo styles on Korean artists. The early work of Kyungok Kang provides an instructive example. See In the Starlight and Narration of Love at 17 for two such examples; her later work, such as Two Will Come, has a distinctly different look.

Korean Comics: A Society Through Small Frames

by

Last weekend, I had an opportunity to visit the San Francisco Public Library, which is mounting a small but meticulously curated exhibit exploring the relationship between politics, censorship, and manhwa in post-war Korea. Called “Korean Comics: A Society Through Small Frames,” the exhibit features twenty-one of Korea’s best-known cartoonists, from Kim Won Bin, creator of Fist Boss, to Hwang Mina, a sunjong (girls’) pioneer. For a Western reader whose primary knowledge of manhwa comes from titles such as Goong: The Royal Palace, the exhibit will be revelatory, as almost none of the series on display look like the Korean comics that have been licensed for the US market; if anything, the curators have gone out of their way to choose titles that challenge the commonly-held Western notion that manhwa is simply the “Korean form” of manga.[1] Styles range from the cartoonish (Baby Dinosaur Tuli, Madame Vicious) to the  naturalistic (The Picture Diary of Puja), while the story lines explore topics as varied as ancient Korean history (Kojudo: Three Kingdoms), homelessness in Seoul (We Saw a Pity Bird Who Lost Its Way), Korean involvement in the Vietnam War (Yellow Bullets), and sumo champion Rikidozan, who is credited with introducing Japanese and Korean audiences to modern professional wrestling.[2]

…

Read More

Ode to Kirihito, Vols. 1-2

by

“When he heard his cry for help, it wasn’t human” — so went the tagline for Ken Russell’s Altered States (1980), a bizarre fever-dream of Nietzchean philosophy, horror, and mystical hoo-ha in which a scientist’s experiments result in his spontaneous devolution. That same tagline would work equally well for Osamu Tezuka’s Ode to Kirihito (1970-71), a globe-trotting medical mystery about a doctor who takes a similar step down the evolutionary ladder from man to beast. In less capable hands, Kirihito would be pure, B-movie camp with delusions of grandeur — as Altered States is — but Tezuka synthesizes these disparate elements into a gripping story that explores meaty themes: the porous boundaries between man and animal, sanity and insanity, godliness and godlessness; the arrogance of scientists; and the corruption of the Japanese medical establishment.

At its most basic level, Ode to Kirihito is a beat-the-clock thriller in which a charismatic young doctor named Kirihito Osanai tries to discover the cause of Monmow, a mysterious condition that reduces its victims to hairy, misshapen creatures with dog-like snouts. Kirihito’s superior, the ambitious Dr. Tatsugaura, dispatches Kirihito to Doggodale, a remote mountain village where hundreds of residents have developed suggestive symptoms. Once in Doggodale, Kirihito contracts Monmow himself, thus beginning a hellish odyssey to escape the village, arrest the disease’s progress, and share his findings with the medical community.

kirihito2At a deeper level, however, Ode to Kirihito is an extended meditation on what distinguishes man from animal. Kirihito’s physical transformation forces him to the very margins of society; he terrifies and fascinates the people he encounters, as they alternately shun him and exploit him for his dog-like appearance. (In one of the manga’s most engrossing subplots, an eccentric millionaire kidnaps Kirihito for display in a private freak show.) The discrimination that Kirihito faces — coupled with Monmow’s dramatic symptoms, such as irrational aggression and raw meat cravings — lead him to question whether he is, in fact, still human. Throughout the story, he wrestles with a strong desire to abandon reason and morality for instinct; only his medical training — and the ethics thus inculcated — prevent him from embracing the beast within.

Tezuka explores the boundaries between the rational and the instinctual in other ways as well. Running in tandem with Kirihito’s metamorphosis is another devolution of sorts: Kirihito’s colleague Dr. Urabe, who descends into madness after uncovering a sinister plot within the administration of M University Hospital. When we first meet Urabe, he’s a self-interested cad who lusts after Kirihito’s fiancee Izumi, views Kirihito as more rival than friend, and lacks the will to challenge Tatsugaura, even when data suggests Tatsugaura’s hypothesis about Monmow is flat-out wrong. The slow dawning of Urabe’s conscience, however, precipitates a dramatic change; his psyche splits in two, with one half striving after truth and the other succumbing to base impulse. Even as Urabe begins to redeem himself, collaborating with Izumi to reveal Tatsugaura’s dishonesty, he frequently lapses into savage, sexual aggression.

Other characters’ reactions to these transformations — especially characters in positions of authority or power — provide Tezuka with ample opportunity to engage in one of his favorite activities: exposing institutional hypocrisy. The scandal surrounding Tatsugaura’s Monmow hypothesis, for example, lays bare the corruption within the barely fictional Japanese Medical Association. In his relentless quest to become head of the organization, Tatsugaura seeks to establish an international reputation as an infectious disease expert, even going so far as to suppress evidence that contradicts his thesis. Yet the revelation of Tatsugaura’s deceit does little to jeopardize his position among his peers; only the young doctors find his behavior objectionable, yet they cannot dislodge him from his powerful position.

One of the key figures in revealing Tatsugaura’s treachery, Sister Helen, also provides Tezuka a chance to tear away the veil of hypocrisy from another institution — in this case, the Catholic Church. Midway through the first volume, a priest attempts to murder Sister Helen after she contracts Monmow disease. When confronted with his act, he acknowledges his intent but denies his purpose was evil; he insists on protecting the Church’s reputation at all costs, fearing that news of Helen’s condition would bring a scandal, as the received wisdom about Monmow disease held that Caucasians were immune to it.

sisterhelen

At the same time, however, Tezuka uses his characters’ metamorphoses to reveal the human capacity for selflessness and spirituality. Sister Helen provides the most obvious example; after entertaining thoughts of suicide, she has an epiphany — literally, as the cross imagery above suggests — and begins emulating Christ’s example, eventually finding her place ministering to the residents of an impoverished industrial town. Other characters demonstrate a similar capacity for selfless behavior: Urabe, for example, devotes himself to finding Kirihito, while Reika, a circus performer, helps Kirihito escape from captivity and reassert his humanity by practicing medicine.

One could certainly view Ode to Kirihito as heavy-handed allegory; there’s nothing subtle about its Christian imagery or Elephant Man storyline. Yet Tezuka’s fondness for Baroque subplots, over-the-top action sequences, and larger-than-life villains demands an equally bold approach for exploring the story’s greater themes. After all, Kirihito features dog men, sideshow freaks, an evil millionaire who hosts his own private circus, a German geneticist sporting a monocle, and an acrobat who risks life and limb to become human tempura; had Tezuka played things straight, or tried to state his man-vs-inner-beast conflict in less obvious terms, the story would seem preposterous and arty, a surreal experiment devoid of genuine human feeling.

As he would do in MW (1976-78), Tezuka pushes the boundaries of the comics medium in Ode to Kirihito, aiming for a cinematic style capable of immersing us not only in the action but in the characters’ own thought processes. Though Kirihito has its share of artfully staged chases, fights, and dramatic confrontations, the most visually arresting sequences depict Urabe’s fragile mental state:

urabe_breakdown2urabe_breakdown

The panel shapes alone are a brilliant stroke; not only do they suggest his fractured and chaotic thought process, they also have a hint of the insect about them, as if we’re viewing Urabe’s consciousness through a fly’s eye. The knife and blood imagery are cliche, to be sure, but the shattered glasses are a novel and unsettling gesture open to multiple interpretations. Even the more conventional sequence on the left, in which Urabe leaves a hospital in a murderous rage, employs its share of neat visual tricks: Tezuka dramatizes Urabe’s personality shift by rotating the character’s image until he appears to be walking through an upside-down hall of mirrors. Amplifying the effect is the ambiguous way in which Tezuka draws Urabe’s legs in the bottom panel; as Matthew Brady observed in his review of Ode to Kirihito, the image simultaneously evokes dripping blood and moving limbs.

Perhaps the best compliment I can pay Ode to Kirihito is to say that Tezuka achieves on paper what John Frankenheimer achieved on film with The Train, Seven Days in May, and The Manchurian Candidate, transforming the humble thriller into a vehicle for telling thought-provoking, challenging stories that enlighten as they entertain. Kirihito may not surpass the narrative sophistication or visual poetry of Phoenix, but it comes awfully close. A must-read for serious manga lovers.

Review copies provided by Vertical, Inc.

ODE TO KIRIHITO, VOLS. 1-2 • BY OSAMU TEZUKA • VERTICAL, INC. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Ode to Kirihito, Vols. 1-2

by

kirihito1“When he heard his cry for help, it wasn’t human” — so went the tagline for Ken Russell’s Altered States (1980), a bizarre fever-dream of Nietzchean philosophy, horror, and mystical hoo-ha in which a scientist’s experiments result in his spontaneous devolution. That same tagline would work equally well for Osamu Tezuka’s Ode to Kirihito (1970-71), a globe-trotting medical mystery about a doctor who takes a similar step down the evolutionary ladder from man to beast. In less capable hands, Kirihito would be pure, B-movie camp with delusions of grandeur — as Altered States is — but Tezuka synthesizes these disparate elements into a gripping story that explores meaty themes: the porous boundaries between man and animal, sanity and insanity, godliness and godlessness; the arrogance of scientists; and the corruption of the Japanese medical establishment.

At its most basic level, Ode to Kirihito is a beat-the-clock thriller in which a charismatic young doctor named Kirihito Osanai tries to discover the cause of Monmow, a mysterious condition that reduces its victims to hairy, misshapen creatures with dog-like snouts. Kirihito’s superior, the ambitious Dr. Tatsugaura, dispatches Kirihito to Doggodale, a remote mountain village where hundreds of residents have developed suggestive symptoms. Once in Doggodale, Kirihito contracts Monmow himself, thus beginning a hellish odyssey to escape the village, arrest the disease’s progress, and share his findings with the medical community.

…

Read More

Little Butterfly Omnibus

by

As a feminist, yaoi puts me in a difficult position. On the one hand, I love the idea of women creating erotica for other women, of creating a safe and fun space where female readers can explore their sexual fantasies. (I don’t know about you, but Ron Jeremy has never factored into any of mine.) On the other hand, I’m often uncomfortable by the way in which rape is conflated with extreme romantic desire in yaoi; it’s disappointing to see the “you’re so irresistible, I couldn’t help myself!” defense trotted out as a justification for sexual violation. To be sure, the rape-as-love trope abounds in romance novels and mainstream pornography as well, but as a feminist, it makes me just as uncomfortable to encounter it in yaoi as it does to encounter it in an episode of General Hospital. Then, too, there’s the issue of the characters’ homosexuality, which is sometimes trivialized (i.e., they’re not gay, they’re just so good-looking they couldn’t help themselves!), ignored, or “explained” by a character’s tragic past, as if sexual orientation were a simple, situational decision.

Still, I’d be remiss in my manga critic duties if I ignored such an important publishing category. With a little encouragement from readers, therefore, I decided to take a chance on Hinako Takanaga’s Little Butterfly (DMP), a title I’ve heard praised by folks whose interest in yaoi fell everywhere on the spectrum between Can’t Get Enough to Not My Cup of Tea. And you know what? I liked it. So much, in fact, that I would recommend Little Butterfly to just about any manga fan as a first-rate character study about two teens exploring the boundary between friendship and love.

Those teens are Kojima, a popular, cheerful student, and Nakahara, brooding loner with a troubled home life. (Dad is abusive; mom is mentally ill.) Kojima finds Nakahara intriguing and makes a concerted effort to befriend him — overtures that Nakahara ignores or rebuffs until circumstances (namely, a class field trip) throw them together. To his great surprise, Nakahara discovers that Kojima is kind and sympathetic, while Kojima discovers that Nakahara is intelligent and mature for his years, qualities that Kojima greatly admires. (In a genuinely funny and revealing scene, Nakahara names an NHK newscaster as his “favorite celebrity.”) As the teens spend time together, Nakahara develops an intense, romantic attachment to Kojima that leaves Kojima bewitched, bothered, and bewildered: is he falling for Nakahara? Is he gay? And is he ready for a sexual relationship?

What makes Little Butterfly work is Hinako Takanaga’s ability to capture the ebb and flow of close, same-sex friendships; anyone who’s ever felt a strong attachment to a high school friend will recognize the dynamic between Kojima and Nakahara as it vacillates between intense candor and intense self-consciousness. As their friendship shades into romance, Takanga shows us, through her characters’ awkward body language and behavior, how uncertain both boys are about what to do next. In one chapter, for example, Kojima frets that his lack of sexual experience will be a turn-off for Nakahara (who, in reality, isn’t much more experienced than Kojima is), nearly derailing their relationship in the process. That realism carries over to their actual encounters, which are clumsy, start-and-stop affairs, characterized by miscommunication and fumbling as each boy tries to figure out what he feels comfortable doing. These scenes feel real enough, in fact, that they aren’t sexy; anyone reading this book out of prurient interest will be sorely disappointed.

Though Takanaga handles the boys’ friendship with great sensitivity, Little Butterfly has some dramatically unpersuasive moments. In one unintentionally comic scene, for example, Kojima throws his arms around a friend to gauge his interest in other men, concluding that he only has eyes for Nakahara. (Presumably he didn’t get the memo that being gay doesn’t mean you’re attracted to every member of the same sex.) Takanaga also lays it on thick with Nakahara’s home life; not only is Nakahara’s father violent and emotionally distant, he’s also willing to use his wife and son as a bargaining chip for a loan, while Nakahara’s mother is such a perfectionist that she suffered a psychotic break after Nakahara failed to gain admission to an elite elementary school. I suppose these things happen — undoubtedly, New York Magazine has published a trend piece about Upper East Side moms afflicted with the same condition — but these touches register as melodramatic excess, as if having an abusive father and a crazy mother wasn’t quite enough to explain why Nakahara sought an emotional and physical connection with Kojima.

Still, it’s impossible not to read Little Butterfly without growing attached to the characters; their sincerity and awkwardness are genuinely endearing. I can’t say that Little Butterfly worked for me as yaoi, but I certainly enjoyed it as a coming-of-age story (no pun intended) that captured the difficulties and joys of teenage relationships in an engaging, emotionally honest manner. Recommended.

LITTLE BUTTERFLY: OMNIBUS • BY HINAKO TAKANAGA • DMP • RATING: MATURE (18+) • 560 pp.

Little Butterfly Omnibus

by

butterfly_omnibusAs a feminist, yaoi puts me in a difficult position. On the one hand, I love the idea of women creating erotica for other women, of creating a safe and fun space where female readers can explore their sexual fantasies. (I don’t know about you, but Ron Jeremy has never factored into any of mine.) On the other hand, I’m often uncomfortable by the way in which rape is conflated with extreme romantic desire in yaoi; it’s disappointing to see the “you’re so irresistible, I couldn’t help myself!” defense trotted out as a justification for sexual violation. To be sure, the rape-as-love trope abounds in romance novels and mainstream pornography as well, but as a feminist, it makes me just as uncomfortable to encounter it in yaoi as it does to encounter it in an episode of General Hospital. Then, too, there’s the issue of the characters’ homosexuality, which is sometimes trivialized (i.e., they’re not gay, they’re just so good-looking they couldn’t help themselves!), ignored, or “explained” by a character’s tragic past, as if sexual orientation were a simple, situational decision.

Still, I’d be remiss in my manga critic duties if I ignored such an important publishing category. With a little encouragement from readers, therefore, I decided to take a chance on Hinako Takanaga’s Little Butterfly (DMP), a title I’ve heard praised by folks whose interest in yaoi fell everywhere on the spectrum between Can’t Get Enough to Not My Cup of Tea. And you know what? I liked it. So much, in fact, that I would recommend Little Butterfly to just about any manga fan as a first-rate character study about two teens exploring the boundary between friendship and love.

Those teens are Kojima, a popular, cheerful student, and Nakahara, brooding loner with a troubled home life. (Dad is abusive; mom is mentally ill.) Kojima finds Nakahara intriguing and makes a concerted effort to befriend him — overtures that Nakahara ignores or rebuffs until circumstances (namely, a class field trip) throw them together. To his great surprise, Nakahara discovers that Kojima is kind and sympathetic, while Kojima discovers that Nakahara is intelligent and mature for his years, qualities that Kojima greatly admires. (In a genuinely funny and revealing scene, Nakahara names an NHK newscaster as his “favorite celebrity.”) As the teens spend time together, Nakahara develops an intense, romantic attachment to Kojima that leaves Kojima bewitched, bothered, and bewildered: is he falling for Nakahara? Is he gay? And is he ready for a sexual relationship?

What makes Little Butterfly work is Hinako Takanaga’s ability to capture the ebb and flow of close, same-sex friendships; anyone who’s ever felt a strong attachment to a high school friend will recognize the dynamic between Kojima and Nakahara as it vacillates between intense candor and intense self-consciousness. As their friendship shades into romance, Takanga shows us, through her characters’ awkward body language and behavior, how uncertain both boys are about what to do next. In one chapter, for example, Kojima frets that his lack of sexual experience will be a turn-off for Nakahara (who, in reality, isn’t much more experienced than Kojima is), nearly derailing their relationship in the process. That realism carries over to their actual encounters, which are clumsy, start-and-stop affairs, characterized by miscommunication and fumbling as each boy tries to figure out what he feels comfortable doing. These scenes feel real enough, in fact, that they aren’t sexy; anyone reading this book out of prurient interest will be sorely disappointed.

Though Takanaga handles the boys’ friendship with great sensitivity, Little Butterfly has some dramatically unpersuasive moments. In one unintentionally comic scene, for example, Kojima throws his arms around a friend to gauge his interest in other men, concluding that he only has eyes for Nakahara. (Presumably he didn’t get the memo that being gay doesn’t mean you’re attracted to every member of the same sex.) Takanaga also lays it on thick with Nakahara’s home life; not only is Nakahara’s father violent and emotionally distant, he’s also willing to use his wife and son as a bargaining chip for a loan, while Nakahara’s mother is such a perfectionist that she suffered a psychotic break after Nakahara failed to gain admission to an elite elementary school. I suppose these things happen — undoubtedly, New York Magazine has published a trend piece about Upper East Side moms afflicted with the same condition — but these touches register as melodramatic excess, as if having an abusive father and a crazy mother wasn’t quite enough to explain why Nakahara sought an emotional and physical connection with Kojima.

Still, it’s impossible not to read Little Butterfly without growing attached to the characters; their sincerity and awkwardness are genuinely endearing. I can’t say that Little Butterfly worked for me as yaoi, but I certainly enjoyed it as a coming-of-age story (no pun intended) that captured the difficulties and joys of teenage relationships in an engaging, emotionally honest manner. Recommended.

LITTLE BUTTERFLY: OMNIBUS • BY HINAKO TAKANAGA • DMP • RATING: MATURE (18+) • 560 pp.

Ristorante Paradiso

by

Oh, Natsume Ono, I just can’t quit you! I was not wild about not simple, but try as I might, I couldn’t dismiss you as just another overrated indie artist. I couldn’t shake the memory of how I felt when I read the first few chapters of House of Five Leaves — that incredible sensation of discovering a new voice with something fresh to say, of having my love for manga validated all over again. So I picked up Ristorante Paradiso with high hopes. I’m happy to report I felt butterflies and excitement, just like the first time, and am firmly back on Team Ono.

Not that you didn’t test my patience — those first twenty pages were a slog, filled with the kind of amateurish moments that I might expect in a freshman effort. We learn that Casetta dell’Orso is popular because a character says it is; that the waiters are handsome because a character comments on how good-looking they are; that the loyal female clientele comes for the help not the food, again, because a character states it as a fact. In short, you have a bad case of telling instead of showing, of not trusting your artwork to demonstrate the restaurant’s popularity or the studliness of the wait staff. I nearly demanded the check.

Then something wonderful happened: the characters began to interact with each other, and in their impassioned conversations, we began to appreciate who they were, what drew them into the restaurant’s orbit, and why they seem stuck in certain unhappy, unfulfilling roles. Olga, the heroine’s mother, provides an instructive example. In the first few pages of the book, we witness a tense exchange between Olga and Nicoletta, the daughter she abandoned. Nicoletta, now twenty-one, has shown up on her mother’s doorstep demanding to be acknowledged, something Olga refuses to do out of fear that her current husband will leave her. It seems like you were stacking the deck against Olga, Ms. Ono, as Olga initially comes off as a dreadful Mommie Dearest who’s so committed to protecting her own interests that she initiates an elaborate charade to conceal Nicoletta’s identity. But then you slowly reveal how other people see Olga, as a vibrant, intelligent, giving woman who radiates warmth and charm. You help us understand that Olga is both a lousy, selfish mother and a loving wife to her second husband, two roles she struggles to reconcile. That we finish the book feeling sympathy for daughter and mother is testament to your storytelling skills and your obvious affection for your characters.

Your artwork, like your grasp of character, is stronger and more assured in Ristorante Paradiso than it was in not simple. As we watch the waiters moving through Casetta dell’Orso, for example, it’s easy to see why the female clientele swoons: the male characters have strong, distinctive faces that leave a lasting impression. They’re not conventionally handsome, but those faces have a wonderful, lived-in look that’s inviting and alluring — think of Alan Rickman, William Powell, or Marcello Mastroianni, not the smoothly perfect bishonen we’re so accustomed to seeing in manga. When Olga explains her attraction to Lorenzo, her husband, the artwork supports what she says: he’s drawn not as a fantasy object, but as a rugged, bearlike man whose virility is obvious even though his body and face are beginning to soften in middle age.

Put simply, Ms. Ono, you won my heart back. I found Ristorante Paradiso an engaging story filled with complicated, true-to-life characters who I enjoyed getting to know. It was a welcome departure from the emotional torture-porn of not simple, and a promise of good things to come: Gente and House of Five Leaves.