Ayu Watanabe

My News and Reviews

I posted a couple of different things at Experiments in Manga last week in addition to the usual My Week in Manga feature. Having recently read and enjoyed Yukito Ayatsuji’s debut novel The Decagon House Murders, I made a point to finally get around to reading and reviewing his first novel released in English, Another. Though I felt a little cheated by one of the plot twists, overall the novel is a great mix of horror and mystery. I enjoyed the story so much that I plan on checking out the manga and anime versions, too. (Seems like a good candidate for an Adaptation Adventures feature.) My other post last week was some random musings on A Moment of Respite in Kohske’s Gangsta. Basically, a single scene from the sixth volume of the manga (more specifically, a sequence of three panels from that scene), inspired me to write more than a thousand words about some of the things that I particularly appreciate and love about the series.

A few things of interest found online last week: First of all, the most recent entry in Ryan Holmberg’s What Was Alternative Manga? column, Gottfredson’s Illegitimate Heirs: Tezuka Osamu and the Great Wall of 1945, was posted at The Comics Journal. Speaking of Tezuka, Stone Bridge Press will be publishing the manga The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime in a single, massive volume. In other licensing news, NBM Publishing continues to release graphic novels in the Louvre Collection. Hirohiko Araki was the first Japanese creator to contribute to the series with the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure spinoff Rohan at the Louvre, but In 2016, Jiro Taniguchi’s full-color Guardians of the Louvre will be translated.

Quick Takes

A Centaur’s Life, Volumes 4-5 by Kei Murayama. I love the world that Murayama has created for A Centaur’s Life. A fair amount of the worldbuilding can be found within the series’ narrative, but there’s also a ton of supplementary material between chapters—lessons in history and biology and such. The full introduction of a new character in these volumes, a transfer student who’s also an Antarctic snake person, allows for even more worldbuilding to be incorporated directly into the manga as she is learning about cultures outside of her own while the other students are learning about hers. The issues of race and discrimination that come up fairly frequently in A Centaur’s Life can sometimes be a little heavy-handed or simplistic, but the lessons learned are good ones. The series does tend to be fairly episodic, and even the individual stories and chapters can be fairly fragmented. They give glimpses into the characters and their lives without there necessarily being much of a plot. Generally, A Centaur’s Life is fairly charming and sweet though it has moments that, for one reason or another, are vaguely disturbing, too.

LDK, Volume 1 by Ayu Watanabe. I’ve largely enjoyed most of Kodansha Comics’ recent shoujo series (or at least found something about them that I’ve liked even if as a whole they didn’t work for me), so I was looking forward to giving LDK a try. I believe that LDK is Watanabe’s first manga to be released in English. I’m not especially familiar with her or her series, but she seems to primarily work in shoujo romance. LDK falls squarely into that category. However, after only one volume, I remain completely unconvinced by the supposed romantic chemistry between who will obviously become the lead couple after they end up living together. Part of my difficulty probably stems from the fact that I don’t particularly like either of the characters involved. Shusei is frankly a jerk with apparently no sense of how to express his interest in another person without being an absolute creep. And sadly Aoi is so concerned about doing right by her best friend that she doesn’t actually listen to what she says or needs. On top of that, so far LDK is just a little too generic in both its story and artwork for me to feel truly engaged with the series.

Passion, Volumes 1-4 written by Shinobu Gotoh and illustrated by Shoko Takaku. I actually read the first volume of Passion several years ago, but the series begins so unpleasantly (opening with what appears to be a rape scene) that it took me this long to get around to finishing it. I gave it a second chance for two reasons: I was assured by others that the series improves and I’m loving the artist’s more recent series I’ve Seen It All. While it’s still not a favorite of mine, Passion does get significantly better. That opening scene which was so awful has repercussions for everyone involved and ends up being handled rather well by the creators. Hikaru is a high school student who is desperately in love with Shima, one of the teachers at his school. He forces himself on Shima and, after a peculiar turn of events, the two initially pretend to be lovers. But then their relationship continues to deepen. It turns out Shima is terribly manipulative, but he does recognize that about himself and is extremely troubled by it. Passion takes place over the course of multiple years. It’s interesting to see how the characters grow and evolve while dealing with their bad decisions.