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Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Keiko Takemiya

7 Short Series Worth Adding to Your Manga Bookshelf

February 23, 2011 by Katherine Dacey 37 Comments

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.

Filed Under: Manga Critic Tagged With: Dark Horse, del rey, DMP, fumi yoshinaga, Historical Drama, Horror/Supernatural, Kazuo Koike, Kazuo Umezu, Keiko Takemiya, Osamu Tezuka, Romance/Romantic Comedy, Rumiko Takahashi, Sci-Fi, Seinen, shojo, Shonen, Tokyopop, vertical, VIZ, Yaoi

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.

Filed Under: Classic Manga Critic, Manga, Manga Critic, Recommended Reading Tagged With: Dark Horse, del rey, DMP, fumi yoshinaga, Historical Drama, Horror/Supernatural, Kazuo Koike, Kazuo Umezu, Keiko Takemiya, Osamu Tezuka, Romance/Romantic Comedy, Rumiko Takahashi, Sci-Fi, Seinen, shojo, Shonen, Tokyopop, vertical, VIZ, Yaoi

Andromeda Stories, Vols. 1-3

May 26, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

andromeda_stories1Ah, Keiko Takemiya, how I love your sci-fi extravaganzas! The psychic twins. The giant spiderbots. The evil, omniscient computers. The sand dragons. The fantastic hairdos. Just think how much more entertaining The Matrix might have been if you’d been at the helm instead of the dour, self-indulgent Wachowski Brothers! But wait… you did create your very own version of The Matrix: Andromeda Stories. Your version may not be as slickly presented as the Wachowski Brothers’, but you and collaborator Ryu Mitsuse engage the mind and heart with your tragic tale of doomed love, lost siblings, and machines so insidious that they’ll remake anything in their image—including the fish.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Mitsuse and Takemiya invert the normal order of events in a classical drama and begin Andromeda Stories with a wedding. A royal wedding, to be exact, forging an alliance between Cosmoralia and Ayoyoda, two kingdoms on the planet Astria. On the eve of the ceremony, newlyweds Prince Ithaca and Princess Lilia spot a mysterious blue star pulsating in the night sky. Shortly after the star’s appearance, a meteorite crashes through Astria’s atmosphere with a deadly cargo: an army of nanobots seeking human hosts. Only Il, a fierce female warrior, and Prince Milan, Lilia’s devoted brother, realize that these cyber-critters are rapidly transforming Cosmoralia’s population into a Borg-like race of automatons. Il and Milan set out to liberate Cosmoralia from the grips of this cyber-invasion force before the contagion of violence and fear spreads to Ayoyoda.

…

Read More

Filed Under: Manga Critic Tagged With: Classic, Keiko Takemiya, Shonen, vertical

Andromeda Stories, Vols. 1-3

May 26, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

Ah, Keiko Takemiya, how I love your sci-fi extravaganzas! The psychic twins. The giant spiderbots. The evil, omniscient computers. The sand dragons. The fantastic hairdos. Just think how much more entertaining The Matrix might have been if you’d been at the helm instead of the dour, self-indulgent Wachowski Brothers! But wait… you did create your very own version of The Matrix — Andromeda Stories. Your version may not be as slickly presented as the Wachowski Brothers’, but you and collaborator Ryu Mitsuse engage the mind and heart with your tragic tale of doomed love, lost siblings, and machines so insidious that they’ll remake anything in their image—including the fish.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Mitsuse and Takemiya invert the normal order of events in a classical drama and begin Andromeda Stories with a wedding — a royal wedding, to be exact, forging an alliance between Cosmoralia and Ayoyoda, two kingdoms on the planet Astria. On the eve of the ceremony, newlyweds Prince Ithaca and Princess Lilia spot a mysterious blue star pulsating in the night sky. Shortly after the star’s appearance, a meteorite crashes through Astria’s atmosphere with a deadly cargo: an army of nanobots seeking human hosts. Only Il, a fierce female warrior, and Prince Milan, Lilia’s devoted brother, realize that these cyber-critters are rapidly transforming Cosmoralia’s population into a Borg-like race of automatons. Il and Milan set out to liberate Cosmoralia from the grips of this cyber-invasion force before the contagion of violence and fear spreads to Ayoyoda.

As Il soon discovers, there’s a small resistance movement led by the Murat, an alien race who lost their homeworld to the same invading force eight generations earlier. The survivors settled on Astria and married into Ayoyoda’s royal family with the goal of preventing the Astrians from becoming technologically sophisticated enough to attract the nanobots’ attention — and if that effort failed, doing whatever they could to defeat the machines. The Murat’s secret weapon against the nanobots are Jimsa and Affle, twins born to Princess Lilia and kept apart for over twelve years to escape detection by the new regime. Jimsa and Affle both possess the power to kill with a thought, a power amplified when the two fight side by side. Of course, there’s a drawback to so much empathetic energy: if one is injured, the other feels his pain, just like the Corsican Brothers. Then, too, there’s that pesky issue of trust: will Jimsa and Affle ever see themselves as sibilings, or have their separate upbringings driven a permanent wedge between them, thus thwarting the Murats’ hope?

In other words, it’s Star Trek by way of Anne McCaffrey, with a dash of Wagner and a little Arthur C. Clarke for good measure.

One of the things I love most about Takemiya’s work is the way she freely commingles sci-fi and fantasy elements in an effort to suggest the setting: a long time ago, in a galaxy far away. Her characters carry swords and wear togas, and live in castles with turrets, yet employ the kind of gadgetry—mind-reading computers, laser guns—that wouldn’t be out of place on the Death Star. Art-wise, the spirit of Osamu Tezuka lingers over many pages in Andromeda Stories, especially in its busier scenes. The Cosmoralian marketplace, for example, comes alive thanks to Takemiya’s vivid caricatures of merchants, wrestlers, farmers, dancing girls, snakes, and sloe-eyed dinosaurs, while many of the full-page cityscapes suggest the future worlds of Phoenix and Apollo’s Song, with their abundant towers and tubular skywalks. Though Takemiya’s principal characters clearly belong to the world of 1970s shojo with their flowing manes, gypsy outfits, and sparkling eyes, some of her supporting characters — especially Balga, a Bluto-esque bodyguard — look like refugees from Buddha or Dororo. (In a sly nod to the kind of anachronistic humor that Tezuka loved, Takemiya depicts Balga playing with a Rubix’s cube while standing watch outside Princess Lilia’s chambers. 1980, you are so busted!)

Takemiya also demonstrates a Tezukian flair for staging short, effective action sequences that make creative use of panel shapes to convey movement, speed, and distance. Midway through volume one, for example, Il leaps through the canopy of a forest in an effort to investigate a mysterious crater not far outside the Cosmoralian walls:

andromeda_page

In just four panels, we can gauge how far she’s traveled and how high off the ground she is — a point underscored by the tapered edge of the top row’s middle panel. The diagonal border amplifies the effect of the vertical speedlines, drawing the eye downwards in an rapid fashion that mimics Il’s motion. As Derik Badman observes in a concise analysis of this same page, Takemiya uses a number of tricks — drawing two iterations of the same character in one panel, using panel shape to direct the reader’s eye through the sequence, allowing sound effects to bleed outside the panels — to help us trace Il’s path through the tree tops, showing us, in compressed form, how many jumps it takes for her to reach a secure perch. It’s a technique that Tezuka perfected in works like MW, Ode to Kirihito, and Swallowing the Earth, where he gooses very basic components of the layout — especially panel shapes — to evoke the speed and energy of, say, a sword fight or a car chase.

At times, the richness of Takemiya’s visual imagination camouflages the more pedestrian aspects of the story, such as its one-dimensional principals. Lilia, in particular, is the kind of beautiful, virtuous, and long-suffering creature that seems to exist only in old-school Disney movies, while Il is a classic lone wolf, answering to no one, even when it might benefit her cause; the only real novelty here is that Mitsuse and Takemiya assign a stereotypically male role to a female character. The plot is simpler and more transparently allegorical than To Terra‘s, touching on a variety of standard science fiction themes, from the dangers of relegating too much responsibility to machines to the evils of totalitarianism. None of these themes are developed with the same level of sophistication as they are in To Terra, as the characters are generally too busy dodging death rays and mechanized piranha to wax poetic about their inner lives.

If Andromeda Stories never reaches the grand, operatic heights of To Terra, it nonetheless proves entertaining, building steady momentum over its 600+ page run, pausing occasionally to meditate on the nature of free will, creation, and individual responsibility. And c’mon… what’s not to like about a manga that looks like a 1979 cover of Heavy Metal magazine?!

This review is a synthesis of two shorter reviews that originally appeared at PopCultureShock on 10/3/07 and 1/31/08, respectively.

Filed Under: Manga, Manga Critic, REVIEWS Tagged With: Classic, Keiko Takemiya, Magnificent 49ers, Sci-Fi, Vertical Comics

MMF: An Introduction to Keiko Takemiya’s To Terra

May 23, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

Welcome to the May Manga Movable Feast! On the menu: Keiko Takemiya’s award-winning sci-fi epic To Terra. If you’ve never dined with us before, here’s how the MMF works: every month, the manga blogging community holds a week-long virtual book club in which we discuss a particular series or one-shot. Each day, the host shares links to new blog entries focusing on that work, while building an archive for the entire week’s discussion. At the end of the week, the group then selects a new host and a new “menu” for the following month.

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Filed Under: Manga Critic Tagged With: Classic, Keiko Takemiya, Magnificent 49ers, Sci-Fi, Shonen, vertical

An Introduction to Keiko Takemiya’s To Terra

May 23, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

 

Welcome to the May Manga Movable Feast! On the menu: Keiko Takemiya’s award-winning sci-fi epic To Terra. If you’ve never dined with us before, here’s how the MMF works: every month, the manga blogging community holds a week-long virtual book club in which we discuss a particular series or one-shot. Each day, the host shares links to new blog entries focusing on that work, while building an archive for the entire week’s discussion. At the end of the week, the group then selects a new host and a new “menu” for the following month.

Our “feast” has two goals. The first is to promote intelligent, in-depth analysis of manga we love (or, in some cases, hate). Previous contributions have run the gamut from straightforward reviews to an interview with Sexy Voice and Robo editor Eric Searleman, a guided tour through Kaoru Mori’s “Emmaverse,” and an essay contrasting Urushibara’s Mushishi with Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. The second goal is to foster a sense of community among avid manga readers. Everyone is invited to take part in the MMF, regardless of whether you’ve participated before. If you have your own blog, simply send me the link to your To Terra-themed post, whether it’s a brand new essay written expressly for the MMF or an older review that you’d like the share with the community, and I’ll include it in my daily round-up. If you don’t have a blog, send me your text and I’ll post your ideas here. (Click here for my email.) Discussion begins today and will run through the week until Sunday, May 30th.

Below, I’ve provided an overview of the series’ publication history, plot, and place in the manga canon. You can follow the discussion by checking the daily blog posts, clicking on the Manga Movable Feast tag, or visiting the MMF archive: http://mangacritic.com/?page_id=4766.

TO TERRA: THE PUBLICATION HISTORY

To Terra debuted in 1977 in Gekkan Manga Shonen. During its three-year run, To Terra nabbed two honors: the Shogakukan Manga Award and the Seiun Award, an annual prize for the best new science fiction published in Japan. (To Terra was the first manga to receive a Seiun Award; later winners would include Appleseed, Domu: A Child’s Dream, Urusei Yatsura, Cardcaptor Sakura, Planetes, and 20th Century Boys.)  The series was originally issued in tankubon format in 1980 by Asahi Sonorama, and reissued again in 2007 by Square Enix, around the same time Vertical, Inc. released the first English-language edition.

To Terra has enjoyed considerable popularity in Japan, thanks, in part, to several adaptations: a 1979 NHK radio drama; a 1980 movie, produced by Toei Animation; and a 2007 animated television series, produced by Aniplex.

TO TERRA: THE STORY

toterra2To Terra unfolds in a distant future characterized by environmental devastation. To salvage their dying planet, humans have evacuated Terra (Earth) and, with the aid of a supercomputer named Mother, formed a new government to restore Terra and its people to health. The most striking feature of this era of Superior Domination (S.D.) is the segregation of children from adults. Born in laboratories, raised by foster parents on Ataraxia, a planet far from Terra, children are groomed from infancy to become model citizens. At the age of 14, Mother subjects each child to a grueling battery of psychological tests euphemistically called Maturity Checks. Those who pass are sorted by intelligence, then dispatched to various corners of the galaxy for further training; those who fail are removed from society.

The real purpose of these checks is to weed out an unwanted by-product of S.D.-era genetic engineering: the Mu, a race of telepathic mutants. After decades of persecution, the Mu fled Terra, seeking refuge beneath the surface of Ataraxia. Under the leadership of Soldier Blue, they escaped detection by humans. But Soldier Blue is frail and dying (though he has chosen to project a youthful, sparkly-eyed appearance), and seeks a successor in Jomy Marcus Shin, a 14-year-old who possesses both the telepathic ability of a Mu and the hardier constitution of a human. As the series unfolds, we watch Jomy develop into a formidable leader, capable of inspiring passion, loyalty, and sacrifice among the Mu as they struggle to return to their homeworld. Running in counterpoint to Jomy’s story is that of Keith Anyan, an elite solider-in-training and future Terran leader. Keith enjoys a privileged position in human society. Yet he is plagued by doubt: why doesn’t he remember his childhood? Or his foster parents? And why does Mother refuse to eradicate the Mu when the state has deemed them a threat to mankind?

What makes this unabashedly Romantic mash-up of Star Trek, Star Wars, and 2001 both entertaining and moving is the richness of Keiko Takemiya’s universe. On the surface, To Terra is a beautifully illustrated soap opera, the kind of manga in which the heroes have terrific hair, wear smart jumpsuits, and keep psychic squirrels as pets. But To Terra can also be read a cautionary tale about mankind’s poor custodianship of the Earth; a scathing critique of eugenics and social engineering; a meditation on the relationship between memory and identity; and, most significantly, a critique of adult hypocrisy. It’s this multivalent quality that elevates To Terra from a mere allegory to an epic space opera as engaging, beautiful, and thought-provoking as Tezuka’s best work. (This review originally appeared at PopCultureShock on July 16, 2007.)

TO TERRA: ITS PLACE IN THE CANON

As anyone with a passing familiarity with the Magnificent 49ers knows, the 1970s were a watershed in the development of shojo manga. Not that shojo manga was an invention of the 1970s, of course; shojo manga traces its roots back to the 1910s, when girls’ magazines began running short, one-page gag strips, and underwent several major stages of development before evolving into the medium we know today. Until the mid-1960s, however, shojo manga was written by men for pre-teen girls; the stories were sweet, sentimental, and chaste, often revolving around family, class, and identity in the manner of a Frances Hodgson Burnett story. In an interview with manga scholar Matt Thorn, Keiko Takemiya’s former roommate Moto Hagio remembers the manga from this period:

In the girls’ comics, you would have stories in which the woman you thought was the mother turns not to be the mother, and the real mother is actually somewhere else. There was a variety of settings. For example, the poor child in the story turns out to actually come from a rich family, or the child of a rich family turns to have been adopted from a poor family. And one of the standard device was amnesia… It appeared so often, it makes me think that what with the war and the harsh social conditions, people had an unconscious desire to forget everything. So the heroine goes off in search of her real mother, but along the way she develops amnesia, and ends up being taken care of by a string of kind strangers.

Another popular motif was ballet. There was quite a boom in girls’ comics about ballet for a while. For example, the heroine would be a girl from a poor family who’s really good at ballet, but she loses the lead to an untalented girl from a rich family. In the standard story, there would be a mean girl and a kind-hearted heroine, and there would be a very clear-cut struggle between good and evil.

maryloubunkoIn the mid-1960s, pioneering female artist Yoshiko Nishitani began writing stories aimed at a slightly older audience. Nishitani’s Mary Lou, which made its debut in Weekly Margaret in 1965, was one of the very first shojo manga to document the romantic longings of a teenage girl. (As Thorn notes in “The Multi-Faceted World of Shoujo Manga,” the heroines of early shojo stories were too young for crushes and dates, so romance was the provenance of older, secondary characters.) Though tame by contemporary standards, Mary Lou’s emphasis on the heroine’s emotional life and relationships proved highly influential, paving the way for other artists to write stories that focused on the everyday concerns of teenagers, rather than the melodramatic travails of poor little rich girls.

Nishitani was a pioneer in another sense as well: she inspired dozens of women to enter what had been an overwhelmingly male profession. Those artists who followed Nishitani into the field in the 1970s — women like Takemiya, Hagio, and Ryoko “Rose of Versailles” Ikeda — built on her legacy, helping complete the transformation of shojo manga from staid stories about good girls to a multi-faceted storytelling medium capable of dramatizing the characters’ inner thoughts as forcefully as their physical actions. The 49ers embraced genres such as science fiction and fantasy, and developed new ones as well: the entire boys’ love industry owes a debt to Hagio and Takemiya for ground-breaking stories such as “The Heart of Thomas” and The Song of the Wind in the Trees. Whatever the subject matter, however, the 49ers used the comics medium to explore fundamental questions about identity — what constitutes family? what does it mean to be female? what distinguishes the child from the adult? — and love in all its manifestations, from maternal to carnal.

To Terra, which addresses many of the themes found in Takemiya’s other works, is significant precisely because it isn’t shojo; Takemiya was one of the first female artists to write for a boys’ magazine, bringing a distinctly shojo sensibility to her portrayal of Keith and Jomy’s emotional lives. The popular success of To Terra created opportunities for other manga-ka to cross over as well, a trend important enough for Frederick Schodt to make note of it in Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics (1983). Contemporary artists such Rumiko Takahashi, CLAMP, Yellow Tanabe, and Hiromu Arakawa owe a debt to Takemiya, as she helped demonstrate what seems patently obvious to us now: that women are just as capable of writing for male audiences as men are. Oh, and we can draw a pretty bitchin’ space ship if the story calls for one.

FOR FURTHER READING

Aoki, Deb. “Interview: Keiko Takemiya, Creator of To Terra and Andromeda Stories.” About.com: Manga. January 22, 2008. (Accessed 5/23/10.)

Thorn, Matt. “The Moto Hagio Interview.” The Comics Journal 269 (July/August 2005). (Accessed 5/23/10.)

Thorn, Matt. “The Multi-Facted Universe of Shoujo Manga.” Conference paper. 2008. (Accessed 5/23/10.)

Filed Under: Classic Manga Critic, Manga, Manga Critic, REVIEWS Tagged With: Classic, Keiko Takemiya, Magnificent 49ers, Sci-Fi, Shonen, vertical

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