Historical Drama

My Dear Detective: Mitsuko’s Case Files, Vol. 1

August 31, 2023 by Katherine Dacey

Have you seen The Law According to Lidia Poët? It’s a period drama that’s loosely based on a real-life woman who was the first in Italy to pass the bar exam. Though the series explores the real-life Poët’s long, lonely battle for professional recognition, it also makes plenty of room for romance and adventure, portraying her as a free spirit who solves mysteries with the aid of a handsome male journalist. The show’s breezy tone is more Remington Steele than Masterpiece Theater, but it never shies away from acknowledging that nineteenth-century Italy was truly a man’s, man’s world.

If Lidia Poët sounds like something you’d watch, you might like My Dear Detective, which also features a plucky heroine in a male-dominated field. The setting is Taisho-era Japan, where twenty-something Mitsuko Hoshino works for the Ginza Detective Agency as an investigator. Though Mitsuko is a natural, she faces skepticism and condescension in her day-to-day work that sometimes shades into outright hostility; early in volume one, for example, local hooligans vandalize the agency with slogans accusing her of “stealing men’s jobs.” Her boss is unfazed, however, and remains quietly but kindly supportive of her desire to be, in her words, “a working woman.”

Through one of those only-in-manga contrivances, Mitsuko crosses paths with Satou Yoshida, a handsome young man who turns out to be the scion of a prominent family. (The Yoshidas own one of the poshest department stores in Tokyo.) He soon joins the agency as Mitsuko’s assistant, chauffeur, and bodyguard, dropping the Yoshida name whenever it expedites their investigation, and swooping in to save Mitsuko whenever she’s in danger. Mitsuko—ever the consummate professional—won’t admit to herself that she likes Satou, and puts up a blustery front any time he flirts with her.

Though the script is lively, and the pacing brisk, the artwork is a little plain. The costumes, hairstyles, and props are just detailed enough to give a sense of the period, though the backgrounds are a little sterile. More appealing are the character designs: Natsumi Ito does an effective job of conveying each cast member’s age, social standing, and personality through small but meaningful details. Mitsuko, for example, sports a sleek, modern bob and knee-length skirts, while the older women she interacts with favor Nihongami and kimono, evoking the transitional spirit of the Taisho era.

Taken as a whole, however, My Dear Detective is the manga equivalent of The Law According to Lidia Poët. One the one hand, it’s a fizzy, fun series that offers solid mysteries with interesting twists solved by impossibly good-looking people. On the other hand, My Dear Detective gently reminds the reader how many practical barriers professional women faced a century ago, acknowledging the degree to which misogyny made it all but impossible for smart, ambitious women to chart a course for themselves outside of traditional gender roles. These two sensibilities don’t always mesh harmoniously, but most of the time My Dear Detective toes the line between escapism and didacticism in a highly entertaining fashion. Lidia Poët would undoubtedly approve. Recommended.

MY DEAR DETECTIVE: MITSUKO’S CASE FILES, VOL. 1 • BY NATSUMI ITO • TRANSLATED BY SAMUEL R. MESSNER • LETTERING BY BARRI SHRAGER • COVER DESIGN BY GLEN ISIP • AZUKI • 183 pp. • NO RATING

7 Short Series Worth Adding to Your Manga Bookshelf

February 23, 2011 by Katherine Dacey

I like getting lost in a long, twisty story as much as the next person, but I often lose interest in a manga around the five- or ten-volume mark. As a service to other people afflicted with Manga ADHD, therefore, I’ve compiled a list of seven shorter series that enjoy pride of place on my shelves.

There were a few ground rules that guided my list-making. First, the series needed to be complete in five volumes or fewer. Second, every volume of the series needed to be readily available through a major retailer like Amazon. Third, the list needed to be diverse, covering a range of genres and demographics. Had I expanded the list to include out-of-print favorites — Antique Bakery, Apocalypse Meow, Club 9, Domu: A Child’s Dream, The Name of the Flower, Planetes — it would have been an unwieldy beast, and one sure to disappoint: why recommend a book that’s selling for $100 on eBay?

So without further ado… here are seven short series worth adding to your manga bookshelf.

A DISTANT NEIGHBORHOOD

JIRO TANIGUCHI • FANFARE/PONENT MON • 2 VOLUMES

A Distant Neighborhood is a wry, wistful take on a tried-and-true premise: a salaryman is transported back in time to his high school days, and must decide whether to act on his knowledge of the past or let events unfold as they did before. We’ve seen this story many times at the multiplex — Back to the Future, Peggy Sue Got Married — but Taniguchi doesn’t play the set-up for laughs; rather, he uses Hiroshi’s predicament to underscore the challenges of family life and the awkwardness of adolescence. (Hiroshi is the same chronological age as his parents, giving him special insight into the vicissitudes of marriage, as well as the confidence to cope with teenage tribulations.) Easily one of the most emotional, most intimate stories Taniguchi’s ever told. (A Distant Neighborhood was one of my picks for Best Manga of 2009; click here for the full list.)

ICHIGENME… THE FIRST CLASS IS CIVIL LAW

FUMI YOSHINAGA • DMP • 2 VOLUMES

One of the things that distinguishes Fumi Yoshinaga’s work from that of other yaoi artists is her love of dialogue. In works like Antique Bakery and Solfege, she reminds us that conversation can be an aphrodisiac, especially when two people are analyzing a favorite book or confessing a mutually-shared passion for art, cooking, or manga. True to form, the sexiest scenes in Ichigenme: The First Class Is Civil Law are conversations between law professors and their students. We feel the erotic charge of more experienced scholars engaging their proteges in intense debates over legal procedure and philosophy, even when the topics themselves are rather dry. Not that Yoshinaga skimps on the smut: there’s plenty of bedroom action as the carefree Tohdou helps his uptight, closeted classmate Tamiya explore his sexuality, but the series’ best moments are fully clothed. An entertaining manga that gets better with each reading. (Reviewed at PopCultureShock on 3/14/08.)

ODE TO KIRIHITO

OSAMU TEZUKA • VERTICAL, INC. • 2 VOLUMES

While investigating an outbreak of a mysterious disease, an earnest young doctor contracts it himself, becoming a hideous dog-man who craves raw meat. Kirihito’s search for the cause — and the cure — is the backbone of this globe-trotting adventure, but Kirihito’s quest to reclaim his humanity is its heart and soul; his travels bring him into contact with hustlers, racists, and superstitious villagers, each of whom greets him with a mixture of suspicion and fear. As its dog-man premise suggests, Ode to Kirihito is Tezuka at his bat-shit craziest: in one storyline, for example, Kirihito befriends a nymphomaniac circus performer who transforms herself into human tempura. But for all its over-the-top characters and plot developments (see “nympho human tempura,” above), Ode to Kirihito is one of Tezuka’s most moving stories, a thoughtful meditation on the the fluid boundaries between man and animal, sanity and insanity, good and evil. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 4/7/10.)

THE SECRET NOTES OF LADY KANOKO

RIRIKO TSUJITA • TOKYOPOP • 3 VOLUMES

Kanoko, the sardonic heroine of The Secret Notes of Lady Kanoko, is a student of human behavior, gleefully filling her notebooks with detailed observations about her classmates. Though Kanoko would like nothing more than to remain on the sidelines, she frequently becomes embroiled in her peers’ problems; they value her independent perspective, as Kanoko isn’t the least bit interested in dating, running for student council, or currying favor with the alpha clique. Kanoko’s sharp tongue and cool demeanor might make her the mean-girl villain in another shojo manga, but Ririko Tsujita embraces her heroine’s prickly, opinionated nature and makes it fundamental to Kanoko’s appeal. The perfect antidote to shojo stories about timid good girls and boy-crazy spazzes. UPDATE 4/16/11: TOKYOPOP announced that it would be shutting down its US publishing operations on May 31, 2011. Unfortunately, that means that Lady Kanoko will likely remain incomplete at two volumes. The stories are largely self-contained, so it is still possible to enjoy Lady Kanoko without reading the last volume.

7 BILLION NEEDLES

NOBUAKI TADANO • VERTICAL, INC. • 4 VOLUMES

Nobuaki Tadano gives Hal Clement’s Needle a manga makeover, moving the action from a remote island in the South Seas to Japan, and replacing Clement’s wholesome, Hardy Boy protagonist with a sullen teenage girl who’s none too pleased to discover that an alien bounty hunter has taken control of her body. The decision to make Hikaru a troubled loner with a difficult past is a stroke of genius; her social isolation proves almost as formidable an obstacle for her to overcome as the monster that she and Horizon (as the bounty hunter is known) are pursuing. Her personal struggles also add a level of raw, emotional authenticity to the story — something that was largely absent from the fascinating, though clinically detached, original. Oh, and the monster? It’s a doozy. (7 Billion Needles was one of my picks for Best Teen-Friendly Comic of 2010; see Good Comics for Kids for the full list. Volumes one and two were reviewed at The Manga Critic on 11/21/10; volume three was reviewed on 2/17/11. The fourth and final volume will arrive in stores on April 26, 2011.)

TO TERRA

KEIKO TAKEMIYA • VERTICAL, INC. • 3 VOLUMES

If Richard Wagner wrote space operas, he might have composed something like Keiko Takemiya’s To Terra, an inter-generational drama about a race of telepathic mutants who’ve been exiled from their home world. Under the leadership of the charismatic Jomy Marcus Shin, the Mu embark on a grueling voyage back to Terra to be reunited with their human creators. Their principle foe: an evil supercomputer named Mother. Takemiya’s richly detailed artwork makes To Terra an almost cinematic experience, suggestive of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars. But don’t be fooled by those blinking computers and blazing starships: To Terra is an unabashedly Romantic saga about two ubermensch locked in a struggle of cosmic proportions. No doubt Richard would approve. (To Terra was one of my picks for Best Manga of 2007; read the full list at PopCultureShock. For more information on To Terra‘s history, click here.)

TOTO! THE WONDERFUL ADVENTURE

YUKO OSADA • DEL REY • 5 VOLUMES

Shonen series often run to 10, 20, or 40 volumes, but Toto! The Wonderful Adventure proves that good stories come in shorter packages, too. Yuko Osada brazenly steals ideas from dozens of other sources — Castle in the Sky, One Piece, Last Exile, The Wizard of Oz — to produce a boisterous, fast-paced story about a tyro explorer who crosses paths with sky pirates, military warlords, and a high-kicking senjutsu expert named Dorothy. Though the jokes are hit-or-miss, Toto! boasts crisp artwork, strong female characters, and an infectious sense of bonhomie among the series’ protagonists; Kakashi and his traveling companions are impossible to dislike. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 9/16/10.)

HONORABLE MENTIONS

CAT-EYED BOY (Kazuo Umezu • VIZ • 2 volumes): Readers looking for an introduction to Kazuo Umezu’s work could do a lot worse than this two-volume collection of stories about a strange little boy who’s half-human, half-demon. Umezu gives free reign to his imagination, conjuring some of the most bizarre monsters in the J-horror canon. The results aren’t always as shocking as they might be, but Cat-Eyed Boy is by turns funny, scary, and sad. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 10/3/10.)

LADY SNOWBLOOD (Kazuo Koike and Kazuo Kimimura • Dark Horse • 4 volumes): Now that everyone’s forgotten Kill Bill, the epic mess “inspired” by Kazuo Koike’s Lady Snowblood, it’s possible to read this series for what it is: a deliciously trashy story about a beautiful assassin who manipulates, cajoles, seduces, and stabs her way through Meiji-era Japan. Expect copious nudity, buckets of blood, and fight scenes so outrageous they have to be seen to be believed.

ONE POUND GOSPEL (Rumiko Takahashi • VIZ • 4 volumes): In this charming sports comedy, a struggling boxer is torn between his love for food and his love for a pretty young nun who wants him to lay down his fork, lose some weight, and win a few matches. The series is a little episodic (Takahashi published new chapters sporadically), but the dialogue and slapstick humor have a characteristically Takahashian zing.

For additional suggestions, see:

5 Underrated Shojo Manga, which includes Setona Mizushiro’s X-Day;
My 10 Favorite CMX Titles, which includes such short series as Astral Project, Chikyu Misaki, Kiichi and the Magic Books, The Name of the Flower, and Presents. Note that many of these series are out of print and may be hard to find through retailers like Amazon;
My 10 Favorite Spooky Manga, which includes such short series as Dororo, Gyo, Mail, and School Zone.

7 Short Series Worth Adding to Your Manga Bookshelf

February 23, 2011 by Katherine Dacey 37 Comments

So without further ado… here are seven short series worth adding to your manga bookshelf.

A DISTANT NEIGHBORHOOD

JIRO TANIGUCHI • FANFARE/PONENT MON • 2 VOLUMES

ICHIGENME… THE FIRST CLASS IS CIVIL LAW

FUMI YOSHINAGA • DMP • 2 VOLUMES

ODE TO KIRIHITO

OSAMU TEZUKA • VERTICAL, INC. • 2 VOLUMES

THE SECRET NOTES OF LADY KANOKO

RIRIKO TSUJITA • TOKYOPOP • 3 VOLUMES

7 BILLION NEEDLES

NOBUAKI TADANO • VERTICAL, INC. • 4 VOLUMES

TO TERRA

KEIKO TAKEMIYA • VERTICAL, INC. • 3 VOLUMES

TOTO! THE WONDERFUL ADVENTURE

YUKO OSADA • DEL REY • 5 VOLUMES

HONORABLE MENTIONS

For additional suggestions, see:

5 Underrated Shojo Manga, which includes Setona Mizushiro’s X-Day;
My 10 Favorite CMX Titles, which includes such short series as Astral Project, Chikyu Misaki, Kiichi and the Magic Books, The Name of the Flower, and Presents. Note that many of these series are out of print and may be hard to find through retailers like Amazon;
My 10 Favorite Spooky Manga, which includes such short series as Dororo, Gyo, Mail, and School Zone.

The Manga Hall of Shame: Color of Rage

August 12, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

When reading historical manga, I grant the artist creative license to tell a story that evokes the spirit of an age rather than its details. What rankles my inner historian, however, are the kind of anachronisms that result from sheer laziness or paucity of imagination: modern slang, gross disregard for well-established fact. Alas, Color of Rage is filled with the kind of historical howlers that would make C. Vann Woodward or Leon Litwack gnash their teeth in despair.

The story begins in 1783. Off the coast of Japan, a whaling ship sinks in turbulent seas, claiming the lives of all but two crew members: George, a Japanese man, and King, an African-American slave. The two wash ashore, cut away their shackles, and set out in search of a community where they can live peacefully — no small challenge, given how conspicuous King is among such a homogenous population. Of course, this being a manga by Kazuo Koike, George and King’s journey is anything but picaresque, as they bump up against the vigorous defenders of Edo-era status quo: ruthless daimyo, yakuza thugs, samurai-for-hire.

For such a far-fetched premise to work, its principal characters’ thoughts, words, and actions need to make sense in historical context, yet George and King behave like modern action heroes deposited in feudal Japan, not products of the eighteenth century. During scenes of limb-severing carnage, for example, they banter with the consummate skill of Harrison Ford and Will Smith, pausing occasionally to deliver speeches about finding a place where “color doesn’t matter” — a noble sentiment, to be sure, but one cribbed from a Civil Rights speech circa 1964, not an eighteenth century abolitionist’s tract. A similar sense of historical amnesia informs another scene in which King declares that conditions are worse for Japanese peasants than for slaves in the American South, leaving me to wonder how a slave working on a colonial plantation would have any comparative basis for making such an assertion or, frankly, any notion of the “American South,” given that the Revolutionary War was still in full swing at the time King was gang-pressed into whaling. Other historical oversights abound: how did a Japanese man end up in the galley of an American whaling ship? Where did George learn to speak fluent English? Who taught King to handle a sword? And so forth.

colorofrageinterior The bigger problem, however, is that King entertains notions of race, class, and gender that would have been as alien to American colonists as they were to Japanese farmers and overlords. His blind commitment to addressing inequality wherever he encounters it — on the road, at a brothel — leads him to do and say incredibly reckless things that require George’s boffo swordsmanship and insider knowledge of the culture to rectify. If anything, King’s idealism makes him seem simple-minded in comparison with George, who comes across as far more worldly, pragmatic, and clever. I’m guessing that Koike thought he’d created an honorable character in King without realizing the degree to which stereotypes, good and bad, informed the portrayal. In fairness to Koike, it’s a trap that’s ensnared plenty of American authors and screenwriters who ought to know that the saintly black character is as clichéd and potentially offensive a stereotype as the most craven fool in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. By relying on American popular entertainment for his information on slavery, however, Koike falls into the very same trap, inadvertently resurrecting some hoary racial and sexual tropes in the process.

Koike’s treatment of female characters, like his handling of racial issues, can be downright ugly. In a valiant effort to head off feminists at the pass, the editors acknowledge Koike’s propensity for writing “samurai-era yarns with a certain sense of chauvinist violence and pulpy sexiness.” Now I’m all for “pulpy sexiness” — doesn’t that sound like fun? But the casual mingling of sex and violence in Color of Rage crosses the line from mere chauvinism to outright misogyny. The nadir is a scene in which King strips a woman naked and crams dirt into her mouth until she chokes. Her crime: being turned on by the sight of King’s big, strapping body (which, I might add, artist Seisaku Kano treats as a kind of fetish-object throughout the book). Richard Wright might have known how to make the moment horrific, tragic, and peculiarly just, but someone as ill-versed in American history as Koike does not. The result is an uncomfortable mixture of kink and racism that hints at the story’s 1970s roots; one wonders what, exactly, Koike had read or seen to inspire such a florid racial fantasy.

The artwork is a hodgepodge of styles and techniques. The best pages appear to be done in charcoal or pastels, and have the soft edges and expressionist lighting I associate with fin-de-siecle modernists such as Käthe Kollwitz. The opening scene, in particular, is beautifully rendered, a harrowing sequence of wordless, slightly abstract panels that reveals how George and King survived their maritime ordeal:

corv2

Most of the art, however, looks like homage to Goseki Kojima’s work on Lone Wolf and Cub, Samurai Executioner, and Path of the Assassin — not a bad thing, given Kojima’s superb draftsmanship and penchant for drawing memorable mugs. Seisaku Kano’s character designs are fine, but his fight scenes are poorly composed, a riot of swords, guts, and bodies in motion that fail to give the reader a clear picture of what’s happening. That might be an OK artistic choice once in a while, perhaps to suggest the chaos of hand-to-hand combat, but as the dominant mode of depicting action it soon grows tiresome, leaving the reader feeling more pummeled than entertained.

Though some of these criticisms could be leveled at Koike’s other work — Lady Snowblood, Crying Freeman and, yes, Lone Wolf and Cub — Color of Rage lacks something common to the aforementioned manga: a sense of play. Koike never takes himself too seriously in these other works, even when the plot takes a dark turn or two. In Color of Rage, however, his sincerity proves his undoing, as he tries to insert a noble black character into a world of vicious overlords and amoral samurai. King’s high-minded speeches and interventions clash violently with the story’s “pulpy sexiness” (for want of a better term), producing something that’s neither dramatically compelling nor fun to read. Die-hard Koike fans may feel the completist’s urge to buy Color of Rage — especially since Dark Horse has given it such a deluxe treatment — but casual readers will find much less here to love.

This is a revised version of a review that originally appeared at PopCultureShock on 5/14/2008.

COLOR OF RAGE • BY KAZUO KOIKE AND SEISAKU KANO • DARK HORSE • 414 pp. • RATING: MATURE (18+)

5 Underrated Shojo Manga

July 10, 2010 by Katherine Dacey 7 Comments

Earlier in the week, I sang the praises of Kaze Hikaru, my all-time favorite shojo manga (and one of my all-time favorite manga, period). Today I shine the spotlight on five great titles that haven’t garnered as much favorable notice as they deserve. Sadly, all but one are officially out of print or will be soon, owing to publisher closings, lapsed licenses, and so-so sales. If you can’t find them through retailers such as Amazon, Buy.com, or Right Stuf!, you might wish to cast your net wider to include sites like Robert’s Anime Corner Store (a good source for older titles) and eBay, or try your local library for copies.

5. PHOENIX, VOL. 12: EARLY WORKS

OSAMU TEZUKA • VIZ • 1 VOLUME (complete)

A better subtitle for volume twelve of Phoenix would be I Lost It At the Movies, as these four stories reveal just how passionately Osamu Tezuka loved American cinema. In a 1980 essay, Tezuka explained that “watching American big-screen spectacle movies such as Helen of Troy and Land of the Pharaohs made me want to create a similar sort of romantic epic for young girls’ comics.” Looking at this collection, the sword-and-sandal influence manifests itself in almost every aspect of Tezuka’s storytelling, from the costumes and settings to the dialogue, which the characters declaim as if it were of Biblical consequence. (Paging Charlton Heston!) What makes this Hollywood pomposity bearable — even charming — is the tempering influence of Walt Disney. The character designs owe an obvious debt to Snow White, while the supporting cast could easily belong to Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty’s entourage of chatty animal friends.

Anyone looking for the moral complexity of later Phoenix stories will be disappointed in volume twelve, as Tezuka’s villains are cartoonishly evil and his heroes (and heroine) chastely noble. If one approaches this collection in the spirit of, say, a musicologist flipping through Beethoven’s pre-Eroica manuscripts, however, the rewards are more palpable. In these early stories we see Tezuka developing his comedic chops with pop culture references and physical slapstick; we see him experimenting with layout, as he renders the battlefields of Troy and Rome in sweeping, full-page panels; and we see him creating his first cycle of interconnected stories, introducing some of the themes that would unify the entire Phoenix saga. In short, we see Tezuka’s first attempts to find his own voice as he pays tribute to the artists who influenced him, learning more about his exuberant, unique artistry in the process. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 3/19/08.)

4. X-DAY

SETONA MIZUSHIRO • TOKYOPOP • 2 VOLUMES (complete)

When star high jumper Rika injures her leg and loses her boyfriend to a teammate, she becomes profoundly depressed. She soon discovers an online community of similarly disaffected students, however, all of whom share her desire to “make the school disappear.” Their internet chats soon give way to in-person meetings, where Rika comes face-to-face with three very different people: “Polaris,” a shy teen who dresses like a Goth off campus, “Mr. Money,” a friendly underclassman, and “Janglarian,” a young biology teacher who wants to dynamite the school. Setona Mizushiro’s dark story could easily spiral into melodrama, but she does a fine job of showing us how the normal tribulations of being a teenager — fighting with parents, enduring harassment from peers, feeling overwhelmed by anxiety — have led these four fragile people to hatch such a radical plan for coping with their pain. The second volume lacks the dramatic urgency of the first, as the students’ plot begins to come unraveled, but X-Day remains persuasive until its final pages, thanks to Mizushiro’s vivid characterizations and nuanced artwork.

3. A.I. REVOLUTION

YUU ASAMI• GO! COMI • 5 VOLUMES (incomplete; 17 volumes in Japan)

A.I. Revolution starts from a premise familiar to legions of Isaac Asimov fans: a human builds a robot, only to discover his creation has a mind and feelings of its own. Sui, the story’s human protagonist, initially views robots as household appliances, not unlike toasters or vaccuum cleaners. When her father presents her with an android companion, however, Sui develops a strong bond with it, discovering that Vermillion has a capacity for emotion that far outstrips her expectations.

A.I. Revolution may sound like I, Robot Hottie, but Yuu Asami puts a thoughtful spin on the material, filtering familiar sci-fi themes through a shojo lens. Though she weaves evil scientists and corporate espionage into the narrative, the story is at its best when focusing on Vermillion’s interactions with his human family; Sui’s father, for example, has modeled Vermillion in the image of a colleague that he admired, leading to a few funny, awkward moments of human-robot flirtation, while Sui seesaws between sisterly protectiveness and romantic attachment to her handsome companion. (Really, is there any other kind of robot in shojo manga?) Asami’s art reminds me of Akimi Yoshida’s with its elongated character designs, delicate linework, and sparing use of screentone. It’s a little dated perhaps, but a welcome change of pace from the slicker, busier layouts characteristic of the titles licensed by Tokyopop and VIZ. Highly recommended for fans of old-school shojo. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 3/4/08.)

2. GALS!

MIHONA FUJI • CMX • 10 VOLUMES (complete)

This wacky comedy is one of the better shojo licenses in the CMX catalog, a rude, raunchy, and oddly moral tale about a feisty kogal named Ran Kotobuki. Though Ran and her pals are primarily interested in shopping for outrageous outfits, visiting the tanning salon, and stealing book bags from students at rival schools, Ran’s upbringing in a household full of police officers (dad, mom, and big brother are all cops) has taught her to adhere to a strict code of conduct: no sex for favors, and no tolerance for anyone who disrespects her friends.

Ran is a terrific, memorable character — impetuous, loud, funny, and tough, the kind of person who would literally smack sense into another girl if she thought it would work. Better still, she’s not easily swayed by boys; her relationship with the sweet but dim Tatsuki is surprisingly chaste, limited primarily to hand-holding and awkward discussions about feelings. (Ran won’t deign to say, “I love you,” as it compromises her tough-girl image.) As befits a manga that was serialized in Ribon, all of the characters have enormous, doll-like eyes in the Arina Tanemura style, and fabulous outfits that shame the Gossip Girls. The backgrounds are surprisingly detailed, conveying the look and feel of the Shibuya district with a specificity that’s all too rare in shojo manga. In sum, Gals! is the kind of good-natured gang comedy that I hoped My Darling! Miss Bancho would be: full of humor and heart, but with fewer capitulations to shojo convention.

1. LOVE SONG

KEIKO NISHI • VIZ • 1 VOLUME (complete)

Back in the 1990s, Matt Thorn labored hard to make Keiko Nishi a household name among American manga readers, translating six of her stories for VIZ; two appeared in Four Shojo Stories alongside work by Moto Hagio and Shio Sato, and four appeared in a stand-alone volume called Love Song. Though Nishi didn’t catch on with Western shojo fans, it’s easy to see why Thorn championed her work: she’s a terrific, versatile storyteller, equally capable of writing light-hearted fantasies and character studies of deeply damaged people.

Of the four stories that appear in Love Song, two are standouts: “Jewels of the Seaside,” a black comedy about three sisters who compete for the same man’s affection, with disastrous results, and “The Skin of Her Heart,” a quiet sci-fi tale about a young woman torn between what she wants and what her mother wants for her. (Readers who enjoyed A, A’ or Twin Spica are a natural audience for “Skin of Her Heart,” though it works equally well for folks who aren’t big sci-fi buffs.) Nishi’s artwork is an acquired taste, at times precise, elegant, and naturalistic, and at times loose and sketchy, with the white of the page playing an important role in underscoring the emotional distance between her characters. Her minimalist approach won’t be to every shojo fan’s liking, but she demonstrates that it’s perfectly possible to convey the interior lives of her characters without resorting to the kind of visual shorthands — flowers, sweatdrops, nosebleeds — that have been overused in contemporary shojo manga. Love Song is out of print, but unlike Four Shojo Stories and A, A’, is still relatively easy to obtain through online retailers like Amazon. Highly recommended.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

duckprince1 DUCK PRINCE (Ai Morinaga • CMP • 3 volumes, suspended)
Morinaga’s battle-of-the-sexes comedy takes a standard shojo plot — homely gal gets makeover to win the guy of her dream — and turns it on its head, substituting a sweet, helmet-haired nerd for the customary plain Jane, and adding a novel twist: Reiichi appears to most girls as a smokin’ hottie, but in the presence of his beloved Yumiko, he reverts to his original form. As in all her work, Morinaga uses humor to make deeper points about gender roles and physical beauty, though Duck Prince is too rude and risque to be mistaken for an Afterschool Special. Central Park Media released three of the five volumes before suspending Duck Prince; of all the titles left homeless by CPM’s demise, it seems like one of the strongest candidates for a license rescue, though middling sales of Your & My Secret and My Heavenly Hockey Club may have scared American publishers away from Morinaga’s distinctive comedies.

shirahimesyo SHIRAHIME-SYO: SNOW GODDESS TALES (CLAMP • Tokyopop • 1 volume)
This lovely anthology is a radical departure for CLAMP. Gone are the super-detailed costumes and fussy character designs of their early, post-doujinshi work; in their place are spare, simply-drawn figures that seem consciously modeled on examples from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scroll paintings. The stories themselves are told directly without embellishment, though CLAMP infuses each tale with genuine pathos, showing us how the characters’ anger and doubt lead to profound despair. As a result, the prevailing tone and spirit are reminiscent of Masaki Kobayashi’s 1964 film Kwaidan, both in the stories’ fidelity to the conventions of Japanese folklore and in their lyrical restraint. And if my description didn’t sell you on Shirahime-Syo, let this beautiful image, taken from the final story of the collection, persuade you to give this out-of-print gem a try:

snowgoddess2

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So what titles top your list of underrated shojo manga? Inquiring minds want to know!

5 Underrated Shojo Manga

July 10, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

5. PHOENIX, VOL. 12: EARLY WORKS

OSAMU TEZUKA • VIZ • 1 VOLUME (complete)

4. X-DAY

SETONA MIZUSHIRO • TOKYOPOP • 2 VOLUMES (complete)

3. A.I. REVOLUTION

YUU ASAMI• GO! COMI • 5 VOLUMES (incomplete; 17 volumes in Japan)

2. GALS!

MIHONA FUJI • CMX • 10 VOLUMES (complete)

1. LOVE SONG

KEIKO NISHI • VIZ • 1 VOLUME (complete)

HONORABLE MENTIONS

snowgoddess2

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So what titles top your list of underrated shojo manga? Inquiring minds want to know!

My 10 Favorite CMX Titles

June 14, 2010 by Katherine Dacey 20 Comments

CMX may not have had the biggest titles or the biggest sales, but its catalog had a pleasing eclecticism: who else would license series as utterly different as Moon Child, Madara, and Go West? I didn’t always love what they published, but I appreciated their efforts to bring important artists and off-beat series to American audiences’ attention. I also appreciated the care and consistency with which they edited books; it’s a sad irony that many fans will remember them for the Tenjo Tenghe fiasco and not for the fine job they did with Emma and Shirley. Below are the ten CMX titles I plan to keep in my permanent collection. (Click here for a kid-friendly list of CMX manga.)

10. ASTRAL PROJECT

MARGINAL AND SUYUJI TAKEDA • 4 VOLUMES (complete)

Astral Project might have been an indigestible stew of pseudo-science and Deep Thoughts About Jazz, thanks to its far-out premise: a young man discovers a connection between his sister’s disappearance and an Albert Ayler recording that helps facilitate out-of-body experiences. Marginal spins a ripping yarn, however, grounding the story’s more fantastic elements in the gritty realism of Tokyo’s red light district. He immerses us in the story to such a degree, in fact, that we learn things as Masahiko does; we’re never one step ahead of our protagonist, a common problem in thrillers. Syuji Takeya’s artwork won’t appeal to everyone, as it sometimes has a rough, sketchy quality that doesn’t mesh well with the dark, Photoshopped backgrounds, but Takeya creates a memorable assortment of faces and bodies that suggest the seediness of Masahiko’s world more readily than dialog could. Quite possibly Ornette Coleman’s favorite manga. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 10/27/08. )

9. CHIKYU MISAKI

YUJI IWAHARA • 3 VOLUMES (complete)

This fast-paced adventure plays like best live-action film Disney never made, mixing comedy, family drama, and fantasy elements to tell the story of fourteen-year-old Misaki, who discovers that the local lake is inhabited by a pint-sized Loch Ness Monster. The twist? Little Neo transforms into a cute little boy on land — a nifty trick when a band of kidnappers-cum-poachers get wind of his existence. Chikyu Misaki has a kind of fierce kid logic to it: who but a ten-year-old would dream up a story in which a dinosaur, a downed airplane, a lost suitcase filled with gold, and a potential stepmother all get a turn in the spotlight? Yuji Iwahara’s artwork is also a big plus: his character designs do a fine job of delineating each cast member’s personality and role in the drama, while his action scenes are crisp and fluid. Only a few odd, squicky moments of sexual humor prevent this from being a slam-dunk recommendation for the under-twelve crowd.

8. THE NAME OF THE FLOWER

KEN SAITO • 4 VOLUMES (complete)

Did Ken Saito have Charlotte Brontë on the brain when she dreamed up the plot for The Name of the Flower? I ask because Flower‘s storyline seems like pure Masterpiece Theater fodder: Chouko, a young orphan left mute and despondent by her parents’ death, is sent to live with a male guardian who endured a similarly tragic past. Over time, the two form a deep attachment that neither dares admit, an attachment tested by Chouko’s decision to enroll in college and Kei’s general reclusiveness. If the set-up is ripe for melodrama, Saito manages to craft a story that’s rooted in everyday experience; her characters’ journey to self-awareness and romance is complicated by real-life obstacles, not mad wives in the attic. Lovely art cements the bittersweet mood of this borderline josei title. One of my nominees for Best New Manga of 2009.

7. SHIRLEY

KAORU MORI • 1 VOLUME (complete)

At first glance, Shirley looks like a practice run for Emma, a collection of pleasant, straightforward maid stories featuring prototype versions of Emma‘s main characters. A closer examination, however, reveals that Shirley is, in fact, a series of detailed character sketches exploring the relationships between three maids and their respective employers. While some of these sketches aren’t entirely successful — Kaoru Mori cheerfully describes one as “an extremely cheap story about a boy and an animal” and attributes the inspiration for another to The A-Team (no, really) — the five chapters focusing on thirteen-year-old Shirley Madison and her independent, headstrong employer are as good as any passage in Emma. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 3/9/10.)

6. KIICHI AND THE MAGIC BOOKS

TAKA AMANO • 5 VOLUMES (complete)

This poignant coming-of-age story focuses on Kiichi, a young oni whose lonely existence is transformed by a chance encounter with a traveling librarian. Inspired by the information in one of Mototaro’s books, Kiichi decides to leave his village in search of others like himself. Kiichi’s journey brings him into contact with a variety of people, many of whom seek to harm or profit from his unique abilities, or who simply fear his appearance. Though Taka Amano never shies away from the darker implications of her story, showing us just how unscrupulous, ignorant, and venal people of all ages can be, Kiichi and the Magic Books is never mawkish or didactic; the fantasy elements add considerable interest and charm, while Kiichi proves emotionally resilient in the face of prejudice and mistrust. Readers more accustomed to the look and feel of Naruto may not initially respond to Amano’s starkly beautiful pen-and-ink drawings. Encourage them to try Kiichi anyway, as this series offers the same degree of complexity, imagination, and emotional authenticity as an Ursula LeGuin or Phillip Pullman novel. CMX’s best title for readers under the age of twelve. (Originally reviewed at Good Comics for Kids on 1/23/09.)

5. PRESENTS

KANAKO INUKI • 3 VOLUMES (complete)

Any series that prompted John Jakala to coin a phrase as useful and catchy as “comeuppance theater” deserves a place on a top ten list of some kind; the fact that Kanako Inuki’s horror-comedy is fiendishly entertaining earns it a spot on this particular countdown. Presents reads a lot like Tales of the Crypt, with each story adhering to the same formula: creepy child-woman Karumi offers an enticing present to an unsuspecting person, a present that quickly reveals itself to be an instrument of punishment for the recipient’s bad behavior or poor character. (Hence Jakala’s term “comeuppance theater.”) Though she loves drawing bugs and hideously deformed faces, Inuki is less interested in scaring us than making us laugh and squirm with recognition at our own folly; Inuki’s creepiest stories are also her funniest, satirizing commercial culture and female vanity with aplomb. A must for fans of Kazuo Umezu and Hideshi Hino.

4. GON

MASASHI TANAKA • 7 VOLUMES (complete)

Billed as “the pint-sized terror from the Jurassic era,” Gon is a small orange dinosaur who runs amok in present-day forests, oceans, and arctic tundras, terrorizing predators, defending small animals, and doing whatever else suits his mood. Masashi Tanaka’s artwork is old school in the best sense, employing cross-hatching and delicate lines in lieu of screentone to create volume and depth. His panels are astonishingly detailed yet never fussy or poorly composed — if anything, Tanaka’s technique yields sharper images than the contemporary practice of mixing computer-generated fill with hand-drawn lines. Though Tanaka endows his creatures with unusually expressive faces, he resists the urge to fully anthropomorphize them; their behavior seems species-appropriate even if their expressions occasional verge on human. (Read: the elephants don’t wear spats or drive automobiles, the dogs don’t pretend to be World War I flying aces.) His restraint inoculates Gon against a terminal case of the cutes, resulting in a sometimes funny, sometimes violent, sometimes heartbreaking look at the natural world. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 2/20/08.)

3. FROM EROICA WITH LOVE

YASUKO AOIKE • 15 VOLUMES (incomplete)

What begins as an unsatisfying story about a trio of telepathic teens quickly takes a turn for the awesome with the introduction of Dorian Red, an openly gay British earl who dresses like a rock star and crisscrosses the globe to steal priceless works of art. Eroica eventually settles into an entertaining cat-and-mouse game between Dorian and uptight NATO intelligence officer Klaus Heinz von dem Eberbach, a stoic homophobe who detests the winking, flirtatious Dorian. Though they travel separately, their paths frequently converge in hilarious and explosive ways: hijackings, kidnappings, car chases. The frosting on the cake is Yasuko Aoike’s vintage seventies character designs: Dorian is the spitting image of Robert Plant, right down to the ridiculously tight pants and flowing scarves, while Klaus wears a ‘do as severe and straight as he is. The result is a delirious, over-the-top action-adventure that brings rock-n-roll swagger to a James Bond premise.

2. SWAN

KYOKO ARIYOSHI • 15 VOLUMES (incomplete)

Swan captures a particular moment in ballet history when the best Russian troupes commanded large, enthusiastic audiences on both sides of the Iron Curtain; when every developed nation had a ballet company of its own (even if the form was imported from elsewhere); and when dancers like Nuryev and Fonteyn were bonafide international celebrities. Into this glamorous world comes sixteen-year-old Masumi, a Japanese girl from the sticks who has passion and raw talent, but lacks refinement. She wins a spot at a national academy for dance, and begins clawing her way up the ranks, learning the repertoire (cue the Tchaikovsky!), making friends and enemies, and eventually finding her way to New York for immersion in new styles and techniques. As compelling as the drama may be, the real star of Swan is the art: the dance choreography is beautifully rendered, capturing both the heroine’s graceful intensity and the music’s lyricism. A few aspects of Swan haven’t aged well — the heroine falls victim to bouts of hysterical deafness, for example — but the strong visuals, historically accurate details, and sports manga vibe keep this marvelous series buoyant throughout.

1. EMMA

KAORU MORI • 10 VOLUMES (complete)

If Emma‘s rich-boy-loves-poor-maid storyline suggests a lost volume of The Forsyte Saga, the expert way in which William and Emma’s courtship is told more than compensates for a few moments of narrative cliche. Kaoru Mori immerses us in the very different worlds of her lead characters, from the elaborate dinner parties and country outings of William’s circle to the scut work and boozy revelry of Emma’s fellow servants. Mori occasionally fumbles small details (pssst… Tosca didn’t debut until 1900!), but most of the time she convincingly recreates the period through her exquisite pen-and-ink drawings of intricate costumes, ornate furnishings, and fussy architecture. That keen sense of observation extends to her cast as well: Emma bursts at the seams with memorable supporting players, from Kelly Stowner, William’s crusty but kind-hearted former governess, to Hakim Atawari, an Eton-educated raj and friend of the Jones family. The main story concludes with volume seven; volumes eight, nine, and ten feature stories about some of the secondary characters, as well as a resolution for Emma and William’s long and tortured romance. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 9/19/07.)

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Here’s a friendly challenge to everyone who’s still mourning the loss of a favorite CMX title: if I didn’t include your favorite on this list, add your suggestion(s) to the comments thread. I’ll compile everyone’s recommendations into a poll and let you choose one for me to review next month.

My 10 Favorite CMX Titles

June 14, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

10. ASTRAL PROJECT

MARGINAL AND SUYUJI TAKEDA • 4 VOLUMES (complete)

Astral Project might have been an indigestible stew of pseudo-science and Deep Thoughts About Jazz, as it focuses on a young man discovers a connection between his sister’s disappearance and an Albert Ayler recording that helps facilitate out-of-body experiences. Marginal spins a ripping yarn, however, grounding the story’s more fantastic elements in the gritty realism of Tokyo’s red light district. He immerses us in the story to such a degree, in fact, that we learn things as Masahiko does; we’re never one step ahead of our protagonist, a common problem in thrillers. Syuji Takeya’s artwork won’t appeal to everyone, as it sometimes has a rough, sketchy quality that doesn’t mesh well with the dark, Photoshopped backgrounds, but Takeya creates a memorable assortment of faces and bodies that suggest the seediness of Masahiko’s world more readily than dialog could. Quite possibly Ornette Coleman’s favorite manga. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 10/27/08. )

9. CHIKYU MISAKI

YUJI IWAHARA • 3 VOLUMES (complete)

8. THE NAME OF THE FLOWER

KEN SAITO • 4 VOLUMES (complete)

7. SHIRLEY

KAORU MORI • 1 VOLUME (complete)

At first glance, Shirley looks like a practice run for Emma, a collection of pleasant, straightforward maid stories featuring prototype versions of Emma‘s main characters. A closer examination, however, reveals that Shirley is, in fact, a series of detailed character sketches exploring the relationships between three maids and their respective employers. While some of these sketches aren’t entirely successful — Kaoru Mori cheerfully describes one as “an extremely cheap story about a boy and an animal” and attributes the inspiration for another to The A-Team — the five chapters focusing on thirteen-year-old Shirley Madison and her independent, headstrong employer are as good as any passage in Emma. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 3/9/10.)

6. KIICHI AND THE MAGIC BOOKS

TAKA AMANO • 5 VOLUMES (complete)

This poignant coming-of-age story focuses on Kiichi, a young oni whose lonely existence is transformed by a chance encounter with a traveling librarian. Inspired by the information in one of Mototaro’s books, Kiichi decides to leave his village in search of others like himself. Kiichi’s journey brings him into contact with a variety of people, many of whom seek to harm him or profit from his unique abilities, or who simply fear his appearance. Though Taka Amano never shies away from the darker implications of her story, showing us just how unscrupulous, ignorant, and venal people of all ages can be, Kiichi and the Magic Books is never mawkish or didactic; the fantasy elements add considerable interest and charm, while Kiichi proves emotionally resilient in the face of prejudice and mistrust. Readers more accustomed to the look and feel of Naruto may not initially respond to Amano’s starkly beautiful pen-and-ink drawings. Encourage them to try Kiichi anyway, as this series offers the same degree of complexity, imagination, and emotional authenticity as an Ursula LeGuin or Phillip Pullman novel. CMX’s best title for readers under the age of twelve. (Originally reviewed at Good Comics for Kids on 1/23/09.)

5. PRESENTS

KANAKO INUKI • 3 VOLUMES (complete)

4. GON

MASASHI TANAKA • 7 VOLUMES (complete)

3. FROM EROICA WITH LOVE

YASUKO AOIKE • 15 VOLUMES (incomplete)

2. SWAN

KYOKO ARIYOSHI • 15 VOLUMES (incomplete)

1. EMMA

KAORU MORI • 10 VOLUMES (complete)

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The Times of Botchan, Vols. 1-4

May 19, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

Reading The Times of Botchan reminded me of watching Alexander Sakurov’s cryptic 2002 film Russian Ark. Both employ a similar gambit: a literary figure from the country’s past wanders through a landscape populated by real people who played pivotal roles in its modernization. In Russian Ark, the author/protagonist role is filled by the Marquis de Custine, a French aristocrat who published Empire of the Czar: Journey Through Eternal Russia in 1839, while in The Times of Botchan the role is fulfilled by Soseki Natsume (1867-1916), the defining novelist of the Meiji Restoration. Neither Ark nor Botchan employs a clear, linear narrative; both works are episodic — even, at times, picaresque — in nature as their principle characters rub shoulders with poets, composers, czars, and politicians.

When we first meet Natsume, he is writing a novel called Botchan, a short, satirical work about a energetic young man who suffers from a Holden Caufield-esque desire to expose phoniness wherever he goes. Nastume hopes Botchan will help him achieve catharsis from a vague but nagging sense of anxiety brought on by the period’s social, political, and economic upheavals, from the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement to the first murmurs of suffragism.¹ Though we occasionally see Natsume in his study drafting chapters, or admiring the inky paw prints left behind by his cat, much of the manga is devoted to Natsume’s travels through Tokyo, which brings him into contact with historical figures from An Jung-Geun, an activist who assassinated the Korean governor in 1909, to Hiruko Haratsuka, a feminist active in the Seito suffrage movement of the 1910s, to Lafcadio Hearn, a Western journalist whose fascination with old Japan inspired him to write Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things.

Some of these encounters are the jumping off point for vignettes about Westerners living in Japan, or the state of Japanese literature, while others are mere coincidence and treated in just one or two panels. The resulting manga feels like a tableau, or the Japanese equivalent of a guided tour through Colonial Williamsburg, as our unseen narrator identifies the sprawling cast of characters and mentions key events in Meiji-era history.

Despite its historical ambitions, The Times of Botchan is best read for its quieter moments. Jiro Taniguchi creates intimate scenes that require little or no dialogue to convey their nuance: two acquaintances walking silently through a snowing streetscape, Natsume working in his study. Small details capture the transitional nature of the period, and speak volumes about the characters’ ambivalent relationship with the West, with some embracing European dress, others flatly rejecting it, and most, like Natsume, striking a compromise, combining a yukata with a button-down shirt and bowler hat.

Sekikawa’s script, however, is less artful than Taniguchi’s visuals, as the omniscient narrator often supplies the reader with information that can be readily inferred from the pictures. In one scene, for example, the writer Rintaro “Ogai” Mori² returns to his family after a prolonged stay in Europe. He intends to tell his parents that he loves — and plans to marry — a young German dancer named Elise Weigert, but cannot bring himself to do so now that he is back on Japanese soil. Taniguchi’s illustrations instill in us a powerful sense of Mori’s estrangement from his roots, using his characters’ body language and placement within the picture plane to convey the emotional distance between Mori and his parents, but Sekikawa’s narrator intrudes on the scene:

At that moment, Ogai felt, for the first time, that he was back in Japan. In this country, individualism was not regarded as a personal virtue, the ‘family’ had to be considered. Ogai was unable to speak the words he had prepared and became mute as a fish.

Such heavy-handed interjections suggest that Sekikawa doesn’t trust us to decode moments of mystery, poetry, or ambiguity on our own; at least the Marquis de Custine never bothered to explain why Nicholas II and victims of the Kursk disaster haunted the same wing of the Hermitage.

The Times of Botchan‘s other great flaw is its deadly serious tone. The two novels that Natsume wrote during the period portrayed in the manga, I Am a Cat and Botchan, are both satirical, filled with wry observations about human nature and sharp critiques of pomposity, greed, toadyism, and empty-minded embrace of Western mores.³ Though the manga is filled with visual signifiers for both works — cats, in particular, are a recurring motif throughout the first two volumes — the manga lacks the delicate touch of either novel; one might reasonably conclude from Sekikawa’s narration that Botchan was a Zola-esque expose on the evils of Westernization, rather than a comedy about a young teacher coping with the inept faculty at a podunk boys’ boarding school.

From time to time, however, the narrative snaps out of its staid, vaguely pompous tone. In one genuinely funny scene, for example, Japan’s leading literary figures gather in the home of a prominent politician for a meeting of “The Perpetual and Immutable Literary Circle.” Two are asked to compose a poem on the spot. The first, intoned by the host, is greeted with respectful, if vague praise (“It reminds one of the tranquility and beauty of Turner’s paintings,” one opines):

The great canon is heard from afar
On the left diagonal of the hands that hold the horse’s reins.

The second stuns them into uncomfortable silence:

When the cowherd makes a poem
A new air rises in the world.

A lively debate follows, with some detecting a whiff of socialism in the cowherd’s profession, and others praising it for its direct simplicity; not until the group’s acknowledged expert interprets both poems does the group reach consensus on their quality. The punchline comes in the final panel, when one member acknowledges that the first poem made no sense. In that brief scene, Sekikawa and Taniguchi capture the spirit of Botchan without slavishly recreating a scene from it; one could almost imagine the savage nicknames that a younger, less pretentious member of the circle might lavish on his elders as they debated the merits of both poems.

In another rare moment of levity, Natsume witnesses a young suffragette making out with her paramour in a restaurant, noting the length — three and a half minutes — and intensity of their kiss. Taniguichi draws that kiss in almost pornographic detail, with panel after panel of the two lovers’ mouths drenched in saliva, in essence showing us how Natsume views their contact, with a mixture of prurient fascination and revulsion. Sesikawa and Taniguchi then takes things a step further, borrowing a page from Milos Foreman’s Amadeus to suggest how this brief, everyday experience found its way into the pages of Botchan, with the suffragette morphing neatly into the Madonna, a social-climbing temptress who switches romantic allegiances when it suits her interest.

Given the didactic tone and frequent allusions to unfamiliar historical figures, I’m hesitant to give The Times of Botchan an unequivocal endorsement. Some readers will find the book long-winded, confusing, and perhaps even a little boring. But for those already enamored of Taniguchi’s superb draftsmanship or well-versed in Japanese culture, The Times of Botchan offers readers a lovely reward: a window into one of the most fascinating periods in Japanese history, and the creative process of one its most important voices.

NOTES

1. The Freedom and People’s Rights Movement in Japan began in the 1870s. Building on the reforms established in the Charter Oath of 1868 (which abolished Japan’s rigid class structure, among other provisions), urban intellectuals lobbied for the drafting of a constitution and the creation of a parliament.

2. Ogai Mori is best known to Western audiences for his novels The Wild Geese and Sansho the Bailiff, the latter being the basis of Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1954 film.

3. As translator Joel Cohn notes, Botchan (the novel) occupies a similar place in the Japanese canon as Catcher in the Rye and Huckleberry Finn, and is a standard text in most high schools. See the introduction to Natsume Soseki, Botchan, Translated by J. Cohn (New York: Kodandsha International, 2005).

Review copy of volume four provided by the publisher. This is an expanded version of a review that appeared at PopCultureShock on 6/5/2007. The original review focused on volumes 1-3 of the series.

Shirley

March 9, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

At first glance, Shirley looks like a practice run for Emma, a collection of pleasant, straightforward maid stories featuring prototype versions of William, Eleanor, and Emma. A closer examination, however, reveals that Shirley is, in fact, a series of detailed character sketches exploring the relationships between three maids and their respective employers. And while some of these sketches aren’t entirely successful — Kaoru Mori cheerfully describes one as “an extremely cheap story about a boy and an animal” — the five chapters focusing on thirteen-year-old Shirley Madison and her independent, headstrong employer are as good as any passage in Emma.

That employer is twenty-eight-year-old Bennett Cranley, a smart, resourceful beauty. Though Bennett comes from a proper Victorian family, she deflects talk of marriage, instead taking pleasure in single-handedly running her own tavern. Of course, finding time to clean house and cook meals is a challenge when you spend most of the day on the job, so Bennett does what many of us working gals wish we could do: she advertises for a maid. The sole applicant is Shirley Madison, a neat, quiet girl who has no family and no home, but does have experience dusting, sewing, and baking “tipsy cake” — the deciding factor for Bennett, who hires Shirley on the spot.

What follows are five vignettes depicting Shirley and Bennett’s day-to-day life. The best of these, “Little Marie,” begins with Bennett purchasing a porcelain doll for Shirley. At first, Bennett frets that the doll was “too childish” a gift, as Shirley’s muted reaction registers as indifference. Later that evening, however, Bennett stumbles across Shirley hard at work on a dress for her new doll. In Shirley’s violent embarrassment at being discovered, we see hints that she’s been ill-treated throughout her working life, denied the opportunity to indulge in childish pleasures, while in Bennett’s calm response, we see the gentle, motherly woman beneath her bold public persona; she refrains from criticizing Shirley, instead praising the girl for her “fashion sense” and sewing skills. The final panels of “Little Marie” are an effective coda to their exchange, showing us the degree to which Shirley idolizes her employer; a faint smile passes across the girl’s lips as she gazes at the doll, rehearsing Bennett’s words in her mind.

Not all of the stories collected in this volume are as effective as “Little Marie.” The two stand-alone chapters, “Me and Nellie One Afternoon” and “Mary Banks,” both feel unfinished, a point underscored by Mori’s own refreshingly candid postscript. She notes that a suitor introduced in the beginning of “Me and Nellie” vanishes just a few pages into the story, never to be seen again (“my brain couldn’t handle two plotlines at once,” she explains), while one of the main characters in “Mary Banks” was inspired by… The A-Team. No, really: Mori claims that Sir Burton, an ornery trickster who booby-traps his house, was modeled on “Sean Connery mixed with a little of the A-Team’s Hannibal. It’s very clear where I got the pranks from.” Clio is a peculiar muse indeed!

Like the storylines, the artwork in Shirley and Emma appears similar, right down to the character designs; in her glasses and tidy bun, Nellie is the spitting image of the bespectacled Emma. Comparing the two works side by side, however, it quickly becomes obvious just how much denser Emma‘s artwork is. Emma‘s layouts are richly detailed, conveying the Victorian passion for things — for overstuffed drawing rooms, heavily patterned drapes, and richly embroidered gowns — while Shirley‘s spare layouts draw more attention to the characters’ interior states than to the material trappings of their daily lives.

Mori certainly draws her share of parlors, libraries, and kitchens in Shirley, though she often jettisons the background details after establishing the setting, preferring instead to focus on her characters’ faces, hands, and posture. In one of the most effective sequences in the volume, for example, Shirley waits for her mistress to return from a night on the town. Though Mori depicts Shirley perching on a chair and peering out a window, most of the images focus tightly on Shirley’s face: first as she anticipates Bennett’s arrival, then as she joyfully greets her, and then as she shrinks away, uncertain of how to read Bennett’s stern demeanor. The two barely exchange a sentence, yet in Shirley’s crestfallen expression and slumped shoulders, we again see Bennett as Shirley does, as a powerful, glamorous figure whose approval she craves.

CMX obviously licensed Shirley with an eye towards pleasing Emma fans, yet Shirley also works on its own terms; if anything, folks reluctant to commit to a ten-volume series, or who roll their eyes at the prospect of a manga-fied Forsythe Saga, may find this lovely, understated collection more to their liking than the melodramatic saga of William and Emma’s forbidden romance. Highly recommended.

This essay is part of the Moveable Manga Feast, a virtual book club that examines a different manga each month. This month’s MMF is being hosted by Matt Blind of Rocket Bomber; click here to view the full list of contributions.

Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms

January 4, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

In The Idea of History, author R. G. Collingwood argues that nineteenth-century historians viewed their task in a different spirit than their predecessors. While previous generations of scholars treated history as a simple chain of events, the Romantics wanted to recreate the past through their writings. The Romantic historian, Collingwood explained, “entered sympathetically into the actions which he described; unlike the scientist who studied nature, he did not stand over the facts as mere objects for cognition; on the contrary, he threw himself into them and felt them imaginatively as experiences of his own.”

I found myself revisiting The Idea of History as I read Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, a project that might well have resonated with Collingwood’s pioneering nineteenth-century historians in its efforts to “enter sympathetically” into the lives of Hiroshima’s survivors, the hibakusha, a group both pitied and shunned by their fellow Japanese in the years following the 1945 bombing. In the introduction to Town of Evening Calm, manga-ka Fumiyo Kouno explains her approach to the subject in terms that are strikingly similar to Collingwood’s:

I always thought all I needed to know about the bomb was that it was a terrifying thing that happened once upon a time, and a subject best avoided. After living in Tokyo for a while, however, I came to realize that people outside of Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t really know all that much about the ravages of the atomic bomb. Unlike me, they weren’t avoiding the subject—they never had the opportunity to learn about it even if they wanted to… I hadn’t experienced the war or the bomb first-hand, but I could still draw on the words of a different time and place to reflect on peace and express my thoughts.

Kouno’s decision to focus on the hibakusha and their descendants makes Town of Evening Calm an immediate, accessible work, one less concerned with recreating a specific historical moment than in imagining what it would be like to rebuild one’s life in the aftermath of that event. It’s a wise strategy, I think, given how difficult it is to convey the horror of war without relying on dramatic devices that can trivialize survivors’ experiences.

Kouno’s approach is not without pitfalls, however. In her review of Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, Casey Brienza argues that Kouno portrays her characters as victims of American aggression without acknowledging Japan’s role in precipitating the bombing, a tactic that could be interpreted as a “myopic… preoccupation with [Japan’s] wartime suffering” that “allow[s] the Japanese to forget that they started the war.” At the end of the first story, for example, a woman dying of radiation sickness wonders “if the people who dropped the bomb are pleased with themselves: ‘Yes! Got another one!'” It’s a powerful moment; the character’s comment is shocking in its raw honesty, especially for American readers. It’s an ambiguous moment, too; one could certainly read a note of national self-pity into the character’s words, as she never mentions the war itself, only the suffering caused by the bomb. Yet I think this passage invites a second reading as well, as a very human attempt to make sense of tragedy, to express the character’s understandable need to know why she — a civilian — was subjected to such unimaginable horror, rather than a denial of the suffering caused by the Japanese occupation of Korea, Manchuria, and the Philippines.

In less skillful hands, scenes like these might be mawkish, but Kouno crafts an emotionally authentic story from survivor narratives, deftly moving between present and past to show us how her characters hear the echoes of August 6th in their everyday lives. The first story, “Town of Evening Calm,” focuses on Minami, a young seamstress living in Hiroshima ten years after the atomic blast. Superficially, the city seems to be healing: its downtown is bustling with activity, as is the dressmaker’s shop where Minami works. Yet subtle signs of the devastation remain, from the ramshackle houses of the residential district to the scarcity of everyday goods. (In a particularly effective scene, we see Minami walk home barefoot so as to preserve her only pair of shoes.) Minami herself bears psychic wounds from the day, as is evident in her brusque demeanor with outsiders and her staunch refusal to leave her ailing mother’s side. Underneath her bravado, we see a fearful, guilt-ridden young woman who wonders when she will succumb to the long-term effects of the radiation, who cannot escape her horrifying memories, and who mourns the disintegration of her family. (Her father and sister perished in the blast; her brother was sent to live in Mito, and had yet to return to Hiroshima.)

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The second story, “Country of Cherry Blossoms,” takes place nearly twenty years later in Tokyo. We first meet Nanami, a baseball-addled tomboy, as an eleven-year-old girl. Through a few telling details–Nanami’s dirty baseball uniform, Nanami’s interactions with classmates–we see that she suffers acutely from her mother’s absence. (Her mother, a hibakusha, succumbed to cancer.) Lacking a female role model, she latches onto Toko, a classmate who epitomizes girly grace. Kouno depicts a few ordinary moments from this odd pair’s childhood: a playground discussion of a homework assignment, a baseball game, a trip to the hospital where Nagio, Nanami’s younger brother, is hospitalized with severe asthma.

We then jump forward seventeen years. Nanami and Toko are estranged; Nagio, now healthy, is training to be a doctor; and Asahi, their elderly father, has been behaving oddly. Fearful that Asahi is losing his faculties, Nanami tails him through the streets of Tokyo, where she bumps into Toko. Their initial conversation is awkward and forced; seeing Toko dredges up some of Nanami’s most painful childhood memories. Toko, undeterred by Nanami’s rudeness, furnishes Nanami with a disguise, and the two set off for Hiroshima, where Asahi seems intent on completing a mysterious errand. As Nanami and Toko follow Asahi, we realize that Asahi is the link between the first and second stories; he is Minami’s “lost” brother, the one who was living with relatives when the Americans bombed Hiroshima, returning only after the death of his sister in 1955.

Kouno’s meticulously detailed illustrations create a strong sense of place, underscoring the contrast between Hiroshima’s orderly new business district and the crowded Aioi Doori neighborhood where the hibakusha live. In the few panels alluding to the actual events of August 6, 1945, Kouno’s art becomes more primitive and stylized, suggesting the horrific effects of the blast by depicting the victims as stick figures with swollen faces. The child-like simplicity and directness of these images are startling yet effective, a reminder both of Minami’s youth at the time of the attack and of the radiation’s devastating ability to rob its victims of their identities by destroying their hair, hands, and faces — in short, the very parts of their bodies that give them their individual appearance. These scenes are notable as well for the skillful way in which present and past co-exist within the same panels; we see the landscape as Minami does, alive with vivid, horrific memories of surviving the blast.

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Kouno’s character designs exhibit a similar attention to detail and mood as her landscapes. Nanami, for example, bears a striking resemblance to her aunt Minami, not just in her behavior (Minami shared Nanami’s love of baseball and her brusque demeanor) but also in her facial expressions and carriage; she’s a subtle visual echo of the previous generation. Like all of Kouno’s characters, Nanami and Minami have a slightly rough, clumsy quality to them, with heads and hands that seem just a little too big for their wiry bodies. Yet these awkward proportions don’t detract from the beauty of the work; if anything, the illustrations make Kouno’s characters seem more vulnerable, more imperfect, more fragile—in short, more human and more believable. And that honest vulnerability, in turn, makes it possible for readers from all walks of life to enter sympathetically into Kouno’s haunting yet life-affirming story, to look past the politics of suffering and representation to understand the price that civilians pay in every war.

This is a revised version of a review posted at PopCultureShock on March 23, 2007. Click here for the original text; click here for a Japanese translation of the original review.

Blood+ Adagio, Vol. 1

May 23, 2009 by Katherine Dacey

Forget what you know about the Russian Revolution. The real cause of the Romanov’s demise wasn’t growing unrest among the proletariat, or the high cost of World War I, or the famines of 1906 and 1911, but something far more sinister: vampires. At least, that’s the central thesis of Blood+ Adagio, a prequel to the popular anime/manga series about an immortal, vampire-slaying schoolgirl and her handsome, enigmatic handler. The first volume of Adagio transplants Saya and Hagi from the steamy jungles of present-day Okinawa and Vietnam — where they’ve battled US military forces and the myserious Cinq Flèches Group — to the chilly halls of Nicholas II’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg — where they discover a nest of Chiropterans as well as a host of schemers, sycophants, and crazy folk in the tsar’s orbit.

Russophiles will balk at the liberties that artist/author Kumiko Suekane has taken with historical fact, such as transforming Rasputin from a bearded monstrosity into a clean-shaven hottie and introducing Sergei Shupukin, a fictional general who supposedly rose from peasant stock to become Nicholas II’s most trusted military advisor. As preposterous as some of these decisions may seem, however, they work surprisingly well, creating a delirious atmosphere that captures the Romanov’s desperate, semi-debauched state in 1916. One could almost — almost — believe that vampires prowled the halls of the Winter Palace under Rasputin’s protection.

What doesn’t work so well is the actual story. Few characters receive a proper introduction; we’re simply thrown into the action and left to our own devices to decide which ones are central to the drama and which ones are peripheral, a process unnecessarily complicated by some unfunny comic business in the opening pages. More frustrating is how poorly the historical elements are incorporated into the storyline, as two rooted-in-fact subplots — the tsarevich’s hemophilia and Rasputin’s cult following — receive only cursory treatment, never rising beyond the level of period window dressing.

Frustrating as the story may be, Kumiko Suekane’s artwork is clean and stylish, capturing the opulence of the Romanov lifestyle through elaborate costumes, hairstyles, and personal affects. Her character designs closely resemble Chizu Hashii’s originals, though they’re a little softer and more sensuous than the angular figures from the Blood+ anime — a good thing, in my opinion, as the characters’ faces are less mask-like and more expressive. Suekane stages the fight scenes competently, if not imaginatively, relying heavily on speedlines and close-ups of contorted faces to convey the intensity of the violence, sometimes obscuring where, exactly, her characters are standing in relation to one another.

Readers unfamiliar with the Blood+ series may find Adagio a confusing place to begin their journey, as the author presumes her audience is well-versed in the characters’ elaborate histories. Long-time fans, however, will find this an entertaining, if unevenly executed, story that should satisfy their urge to see Saya and Hagi’s slow-simmering romance continued.

BLOOD+ ADAGIO, VOL. 1 • STORY AND ART BY KUMIKO SUEKANE • DARK HORSE • 200 pp. • RATING: TEEN