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Adventures in the Key of Shoujo: Sailor Moon, Vol.2

March 20, 2012 by Phillip Anthony Leave a Comment

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Vol. 2 | By Naoko Takeuchi | Published by Kodansha Comics USA | Rated: T, Ages 13+

“Pretty Guardian of Love and Justice in a Sailor Suit! Sailor Moon has arrived!!”

I would be lying if i said I haven’t been looking forward to this review. Specifically, because around fifty pages into this volume we are introduced (reintroduced?) to Sailor Venus, aka Minako Aino, the first Sailor Senshi. Her adventures are chronicled in two volumes of Codename: Sailor V. When she popped up, I had only started on the first volume of Sailor V, so on the advice of a friend, I stopped reading Sailor Moon until such time as I finished Sailor V. Well, I’m glad I did, but I would caution that you don’t need to do the same in order to enjoy the second volume of Sailor Moon. Returning to my original point, the reason I’m looking forward to this volume is that the team building is over, the villains are known, and now we are ready for the real fights to begin.

This volume explores the concept of pre-destiny, particularly in regards to the finding of the Princess and the Legendary Crystal. Turns out that our heroes have done this sort of work before. I will endeavour to explain without ripping the lid off the plot. Usagi finally understands why she’s been thinking the way that she has about Tuxedo Mask, and her worldview is shattered as a result. The team is in the middle of a battle with the Dark Kingdom’s latest flunky, Zoisite, when one of their allies is injured. This causes the Moon Kingdom’s Princess Serenity to appear at which time she displays an enormous amount of energy. When the dust has settled, the team is changed forever and only a trip to the moon with Luna’s and Artemis’ (Sailor Venus’ familiar) help will answer their questions. But even after that clarification, the team is still fighting above their weight. I like how they stay together inside and outside the battlefield. They might be reeling from the blows, but they’re still standing. I can’t help feeling that this is a different fight they face due to Sailor V’s warnings and her emphatic statement that this evil must be destroyed for good. This theory is backed up by what the team learns on the moon. It’s a lot to take in, but Takeuchi keeps things moving fast. About two-thirds into the book there’s a brief respite, but it’s short-lived.

Looking at this from a guy perspective, I would say that I feel for Usagi and Mamoru so badly. They are tentatively trying to find their way toward how they feel about one another, but their intertwined destines keep being thwarted. I get now why people used to say to me that I was too dismissive of the series. For me, as someone who likes to write creatively, I think I understand where Takeuchi might be going with this. The path to true love is never easy in real life, harder in the realm of fiction, and almost impossible when it involves the fate of the world in the balance. So is Mamoru and Usagi’s love doomed to the void? Possibly, but I think the idea behind this volume might be that true love cannot be stopped, merely diverted. Also, if I’m going for broke, I would say the idea behind the first volume would be that big things start with something small and/or you are not as unimportant as you believe yourself to be. But, returning to the story, Takeuchi seems to be saying in this volume that not only are the Senshi going to have to deal with setbacks but also, potentially, casualties as well.

I wonder, though, how meaningful it is for me to write about Sailor Moon, given that I’ve been aware of the title for ten plus years but never really got into it. I am trying to imagine how young girls (and indeed guys) reading this in Japan at the time might have felt. Add to that my differing cultural heritage and the gulf gets wider by the minute. But my quest is not in vain, I hope. Alexandre Dumas wrote more than 150 years ago of the value of friendship with comrades in arms, Gandhi wrote and spoke of the fact that tyrants, while invincible for a time, always fall, and a Canadian filmmaker once commented that there is no fate but what we make for ourselves. The Sailor Senshi face a difficult task but the battles they face are universal and common. They have happened before in reality and fiction, they are happening now, and they will happen again.

Nearly seventy years ago, my grandfather’s brother stood on the beaches of France. He was fighting in a foreign army for a cause he believed in. When the ramps dropped and his squad ran onto the beach, he did so knowing what was asked of him. At a critical moment, however, the enemy directed a heavy machine gun at his squad mates. Without any thought for himself, he stood and took the hail of bullets. I presume that afterwards his squad returned fire. As to how accurate that account is, I have to trust the report my grandfather’s family received. In Sailor Moon, Usagi stands in front of the enemy protecting Tuxedo and her friends and laying down a burst of energy at her opponent. She does so because the thought of losing her friends and the one she loves is too much to bear. It is there that she discovers her inner light and does what it is her heart requires—much like a soldier taking the brunt for his team because the thought of losing his friends and failing his loved ones is too much for him to bear.

It’s funny how 200 pages of printed paper with drawings and letters can stir things in you that you had never considered. The weaknesses of this volume, such as the massive amounts of exposition, the somewhat Jason and the Argonauts-esque level of “Kill! Kill! Kill them all!!” of Queen Beryl and the Dark Kingdom, and the fact we still haven’t seen much character development for the other girls can be negated by the fact this is (or feels like) the opening salvo for the war that’s coming. I suspect it will be fought with the population being unaware, and that makes me appreciate Takeuchi even more as a writer. To fight for people and have them know of your achievement is one thing. It is another to do so without the issuing or request of acknowledgement. The question I pose myself is: would I do the save if the situation called for it? Would you?

As I’ve said, I love the artwork and I can’t fault it. If these pages were pastels or watercolours, I would happily have them on my wall. Just as the first volume has a lot of serene moments this one does too, but now they are happening within the story-building moments and the action scenes. It’s a hard act to follow. The Internet continues to punish me for not discovering Sailor Moon sooner, as original art books by Takeuchi-sensei command higher than normal prices. Even if I weren’t broke, I would still be unable to afford some of them.

There aren’t as many liner notes from the translator this time around. I chalk this up to the pace of the story. Thanks for the crisp job, Kodansha. This volume maintains my high opinion of the series and moves into a new direction. If proof is required of my enjoyment of the series, I start volume three tonight and have ordered volumes four and five. So far my experiment at this shoujo malarkey seems to be working.

Adventures in the Key of Shoujo: Codename: Sailor V, Vol.1

March 9, 2012 by Phillip Anthony 1 Comment

Codename: Sailor V, Vol. 1 | By Naoko Takeuchi | Published by Kodansha Comics USA | Rated: T, Ages 13+

“Champion of Justice! The Pretty Guardian in a Sailor Suit! Sailor Venus has arrived!!”

Did you ever have that dream with the sensation that you’re falling, but you’re just not sure in which direction, and yet you’re perfectly safe doing so? The is the feeling I get from Codename: Sailor V, coupled with a curious feeling that I’m being led somewhere familiar, yet I’ve never been there. After diving into Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, I also picked up Codename: Sailor V as well, as I had heard it was a prequel to Sailor Moon. But while it was published at roughly the same time as Sailor Moon and it IS set in the same universe, tonally, this is a different tempo.

First of all, while it does have a girl becoming a magical champion of justice, the difference here is that Minako Aino is on her own. She has a familiar (a male cat named Artemis) and she answers to someone called “Boss.” However, there is no team to help her, so Mina must face all the agents of evil alone. In many ways, that makes this first outing both flat and exciting. It’s flat because if you didn’t like the formula of “Girl gains magical powers, fights a villain every chapter, overcomes and adapts, then triumphs” espoused by Sailor Moon, this is more of the same. So we are there for all the blundering Mina does, every goofy joke, every stock bad guy, and every cliché. While this might be bad for some, I’m glad of it, as it means I don’t have to keep remembering every chapter and can focus on the narrative (Confession: as I recently came into Sailor Moon, a lot of characters’ names and faces didn’t stick right away, thus I have to keep rereading to imprint the important stuff).

Secondly, I don’t get a sense of an impending apocalypse with Codename: Sailor V that I got with Sailor Moon. In that, there’s a goal: finding the princess, finding the crystal. In Codename: Sailor V, there are the main villains (the Dark Agency) but we don’t know what they want, save to take over the world. And while we know the agency is being controlled by a higher intelligence, we’re just not told who that is. This fog is either Takeuchi being sly or she really doesn’t know what she’s doing. Now, I could buy that last point except both Sailor Moon and Codename: Sailor V were published at around the same time. I’d like to know what the frequency of the chapters for both were, but I don’t have that information. Since there are only two volumes of Codename: Sailor V and there are twelve plus volumes of Sailor Moon, I am curious to say the least.

Using Sailor Moon as a guide, while there are much the same types of characters, as there’s not such a large cast, I can focus on the them better. Mina’s relationship with Artemis is much more antagonistic than Usagi’s and Luna’s, but this is borne for the most part out of the fact that Mina is a complete slacker who does well in athletics but is poor at academics. Even her mother can’t stand the fact that she bunks off her responsibilities whenever she feels like it! Equally her friends, including her bezzie mate Hikaru, just roll with it. Though the background characters in this are so-so, I do like the police Inspector General who is in love with “V-Chan,” as she keeps calling her. If I had a gripe, it would be that the villains get whipped senseless in this. Unlike Sailor Moon, here the villains just turn up, take over and then get belted by Sailor V, who usually gets shoujo-medieval on their rump. Full marks every time Mina turns them into crispy critters.

Mina is even more of a girly-girl (is there such a thing, really?) than Usagi. She has all the problems that go with being a pubescent, amplified due to her identity as Sailor V. She wants her first love, first kiss, first crush, first holiday, and so on to be just so. But sometimes, I feel that she could do with someone like Tuxedo Mask in her life. Tuxedo gives Sailor Moon something to look forward to as a goal. And Mamoru gives Usagi’s heart a fluttery feeling whenever he’s around. Mina has no such person in her life. It would be interesting to see what she would do if such was the case. But that doesn’t detract from her character—far from it. It makes me wonder if she’s holding back her potential because she doesn’t seem to feel the same peril that Usagi and Co. get into. Would this make her a more flawed character, and therefore more sympathetic to us? Maybe, but I have a hunch that there’s enough of this coming down the pipeline for Sailor Moon, and if it happened to Mina in the same way, I would feel a cloning issue arise.

Artwork-wise, Takeuchi gives her characters an energy that is hard to define. If I had to place a finger on it, I would say they look alive in the sense that they are animated, lively and effervescent. Mina has a smile that goes through different stages. Her carefree one (used mostly for her friends), her dreamy one when she’s thinking about a boy, and finally her smile that only the readers get to see. This is a special kind of smile—one that shows the confidence of someone who could, literally, move mountains if she tried. The smile I refer to is the one she wears when she defends the characters and us, the audience, from all the nasties in the world, whether it be a sexist git who doesn’t want girls in his electronic man-cave or the Iago-like Dark Agency who would steal our lifeforce energy for its own nefarious uses. This smile will protect anyone or anything standing behind it. This smile would die rather than admit defeat. It’s amazing how much enjoyment you can derive from a smile. Maybe I’ve uncovered another of Takeuchi’s talents? Or is it one of Sailor Venus’?

Translation-wise, William Flanagan keeps it quick, coherent and easy to read. I’ve never read any scanlations or the first TOKYOPOP versions, so I will withdraw from speaking as to their accuracy. All I will say is Mr. Flanagan has a lot of text to deal with and manages to make sense of it and put it into a kind of literary tempo. He and Kodansha have their usual liner notes at the back of the book. Thanks are extended for the explanations.

As an aside, since I keep bringing up Sailor Moon in this review, I’ve got one or two wee problems. You see, in Codename: Sailor V, Mina runs by—is drawn running by or whatever—next to Usagi and Ami, leading us to believe that the events of Sailor Moon can’t be far behind. My confusion is that I don’t know within what time frame this story takes place. Is it at the same time as Sailor Moon? Before or after it? This perplexes me and I can only hope there’s some clarification soon. Another thing I’ve noticed is that the characters that Mina is friends with don’t get nearly enough time to develop on their own. I realise that Mina is the focus, but still I can’t help feel that I’m running out of time to get to know them. Other than that, this is a great first volume, and if you are wary of getting into Sailor Moon because of its length, there are only two volumes of this, so you should be fine.

This last point is also a source of sadness for me. In this single volume I’ve grown to like Mina, Artemis and even the Inspector General and the fact that the next volume will be the last that focuses on these characters is an unhappy one for me. Don’t get me wrong, I know that Mina plays a part in Sailor Moon but still, I’m going to miss them. Oh well, one more volume to go, I suppose. But knowing Takeuchi-sensei, she’ll have them go out in a blast. Oh, I cannot wait!

On a personal note, I wanted to say thanks to everyone who emailed me or left comments on Manga Bookshelf in regards to the column. I really appreicate the thoughts and suggestions and while I can’t say I will pick up all the titles suggested, I enjoyed getting such an enthusiastic response. Also, I wanted to thank MJ, Kate Dacey and all the people on their own blogs and on Twitter who mentioned the column.

Review copy bought by reviewer

Adventures in the Key of Shoujo: Sailor Moon, Vol.1

January 19, 2012 by Phillip Anthony 4 Comments

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Vol. 1 | By Naoko Takeuchi | Published by Kodansha Comics USA | Rated: T, Ages 13+

“I’m… the pretty guardian in a sailor suit! Guardian of love and justice! Sailor Moon!”

Working on a simple premise… (Follow my logic, would you?) If you took a squad of girls, magical powers, tokusatsu-style fighting, and a viciously unassuming story arc and threw them into a blender, what would you get? My-Hime, that’s what. But before My-Hime—before all that—there was Sailor Moon, an archetypal series that influenced the entire genre of magical girls within manga and anime. To this day, Fred Patten states that it introduced the idea of the magical girl team into the medium’s subconscious. The brainchild of artist Naoko Takeuchi, the sheer weight of its importance leans heavily on everything that came after it.

Simply put, the Great Ruler of the Dark Kingdom wants energy leeched from humans and the Legendary Silver Crystal that goes with it. With that, they can rule the world. All that stands between them and success is a small, black cat called Luna (who can talk and has a mark on her head in the shape of a crescent moon) and a team of fourteen-year-old girls who wear exaggerated versions of Japanese school sailor outfits and have magical powers, and whose code names are taken from the names of the planets in the solar system. Leading the team is a complete klutz named Usagi Tsukino who takes on the persona of Sailor Moon. Also into the mix goes Tuxedo Mask, a young man who dresses in a gentleman’s evening attire and wears (you guessed it) a mask. He likes to help Sailor Moon, but he has his own reasons as well. The girls are soldiers (or senshi) in a war against the enemies of love, truth and justice. And so the board is set, the players are moving, and the game can begin.

So why has it taken this long to write the review, seeing as I received the manga over two weeks ago? I think it’s the awe in which the series is held. Sailor Moon has a fanbase that rivals even Dragonball or Evangelion. Dragonball is an interesting title to compare, in terms of its Western audience. For the most part, the perception is that Dragonball found a large male audience and Sailor Moon, a large female audience. I say “perception” because market analysis can only tell you so much. But it’s unfair to label Sailor Moon as Dragonball for girls, as I once did. The two series are worlds apart in their execution, tone and setting. Yet, I cannot discount the idea that each gender can find something in both stories that resonates with them.

My failing was that I decided that girls could like Dragonball but boys couldn’t like Sailor Moon, because there was nothing there for them to latch onto. I think what set me on that foolish path was the God-awful treatment that Sailor Moon received at the hands of DIC Entertainment when the animated version of the story came to European English-speaking shores. DIC made it sound like the most girly of enterprises (something no self-respecting angsty teenager would be caught dead liking), where the girls were all airheads and the villains were dead simple. The show was never going to attract a boy who had grown up with He-Man. It was not going to happen for me. And so, I ignored it.

But the fanbase, as I’ve said, is relentless. Every time you look at cosplayers, someone is dressed as Sailor Moon. So I would speak with people who talked about the story as if it was manna from Heaven. They ranged from cosplayers who said the series was their gateway into anime, to those who had been reading the manga since the 1990s TOKYOPOP editions. Interestingly, the anime breaking into North America is credited by many as the event that destroyed the grip the male, 15-25 demographic had on driving anime sales in America since the 1980s. Today, the market leans more heavily toward female fans than male fans of anime, manga, and J-Culture, so it’s a testament to the series that it had and still has that effect on the fans.

Still, I’m confused about Sailor Moon. Mostly because I cannot figure out where Takeuchi is going with it in this first volume, or indeed if she’s got some kind of plan going even here in the opening act. On the surface, Usagi is a airhead more concerned with being a girly girl, hanging out with her friends, and playing video games at the local arcade than entertaining the notion that she should be doing anything to save the world. Even when she accepts being Sailor Moon, she still doesn’t want to be put into scary situations by Luna. It makes for a nice intro to the character for whom we will ostensibly be rooting for the next however many volumes. The spoken-diary entries that Usagi has are something to behold. She tells us every single time a new chapter starts who she is, where she is from, what recently happened, and what is happening now. I know that this is because of the fact that Sailor Moon was serialized in Nakayoshi Magazine—to keep new readers in the loop, Takeuchi wrote those in—but the aftereffect is that Usagi comes across as even more bubbly, and this is a good thing.

The tone of the fight that the Sailors are in and the opposition that the author sets is one of innocence that can only be derived from a teenager’s perspective. When I was 14, the people who had it in for me in school wanted to beat me up and throw water over me, but they didn’t want me dead. For all the Dark Kingdom’s mwah-ha-ha-ha and general evilness, I cannot take them seriously. They are defeated by a dunderhead every single time. Then the dunderhead gets her own team of crack commandos and the bad guys get trounced, again and again, by a bunch of fourteen-year-olds who only got their powers recently. Even when they are vanquished, the villains treat it like “Bah! Another setback!”

Some people would argue that Sailor Moon has a lot of evidence of plot conveniences for the sake of convenience; I counter the argument because the same evidence is rather exculpatory in nature. To explain, while I want to say that the whole “You are destined to become a team of magical fighting girls!” thing is a little too convenient, the truth is that’s how all good quest stories start and since I don’t really have a problem with them, I don’t have a really big problem with Sailor Moon doing it, either. So the girls are destined to be a team of superheroes not because they were destined to be so, but because Luna had been keeping an eye on all of them. The same can be said for the items that the senshi use to defeat the forces of darkness. Usagi, we have established, plays video games at the arcade. She gets prizes every time she gets a high score. These items look very suspicious and don’t look like the usual tat, if you get my meaning. However, throughout this smoke-and-mirrors routine I can see a kind of epic gathering of heroes (the girls being recruited) and figures of cruelty and infamy (Dark Kingdom’s minions) moving around and cannot wait to see what happens next.

Artwork-wise, I cannot say enough good things about it. From Usagi’s transformation sequence to Luna’s little interstitial at the start of one of the chapters telling us who’s in the team, its biographical details and any allies and enemies, the art is really sweet and genuine to look at. Graceful and elegant, it still has its quick thumbnail drawings of our heroes and heroines to speed us through a page. There are real examples in the pages that Takeuchi is using mise-en-scène* to build a colorful and coherent stage that her actors are moving around. The whirling fog that surrounds our heroes when the enemy has the upper hand or when the senshi reveal to the villain (and, by extension, the audience) their power and become light-filled are but two such examples. The moments of tranquility when Tuxedo Mask dances with and around Sailor Moon are wonderful. Even as a battle-hardened, knowledgeable young man of 30, I can understand the feeling of falling for someone and feeling like the whole world stopped for that moment. Takeuchi gives her leads a distinctive look and you’d never confuse one Sailor Senshi for another, even in their uniforms. Plus, she never makes the fact that they dress in sailor outfits into something crass. With the supporting cast it’s a little more difficult to keep an eye on who’s who but I don’t mind that so much at this point, as they don’t contribute much.

It’s interesting, both in terms of storytelling and, of course, artwork, to see the different types of girls who get recruited into being Sailor Senshi become staples of magical girl stereotypes. There’s the ditzy girl, the smart girl, and the girl who works at the shrine. I don’t doubt that I’ll see even more types emerge as the series goes on. While Sailor Moon didn’t invent these types for the most part, it perfected them. The chief bad guys are also designed this way: they have been around before but never in this context and setting. The more I reread this volume, the more I wonder if I’ve been wrong about a great number of shows and manga that I’ve passed by simply by having a prejudiced opinion. As an aside, the translation by William Flanagan is spot-on and I’m, as always, grateful for the liner notes at the back to make sense of the nuances within Japanese culture.

Ultimately, Sailor Moon works because you get swept up by the story. The idea of battling evil-doers over rooftops or in exotic locations with brave allies and with nothing more than the power you have inside of you is something we know from when we were little and read fairy tales. Later we dismiss such stories as mere whimsy. Usagi and her friends are living in a fairy tale and I can and will wholeheartedly continue to embrace this whimsy for as long as it lasts.

* Mise-en-scène is a French term which literally means “placing on stage” and refers to the art of placing elements (actors, props, sets, lighting) in front of the viewer in order to immerse them in the story. Where the actors are placed within a scene and how they move in the scene are also elements within mise-en-scène.

Review copy bought by reviewer

Yakuza Moon: The True Story of a Gangster’s Daughter

January 11, 2012 by Katherine Dacey 6 Comments

In the popular imagination, the yakuza are modern-day samurai, observing a rigid code of honor, decorating their bodies with elaborate tattoos, and meting out swift punishments to anyone who encroaches on their territory. When women appear in yakuza stories, they are usually unwitting victims of clan warfare or temptresses whose sexual allure threatens the established order; they are seldom leaders or soldiers in their own right.

Small wonder, then, that Shoko Tendo’s Yakuza Moon: Memoirs of a Gangster’s Daughter (2007) caused a mild sensation in Japan when it was first published, as Tendo gave a voice to all the women who had been relegated to the margins of yakuza stories. In direct, unembellished prose, she described the devastating impact of her father’s criminal activities on his family. She cataloged her father’s drunken rages and dalliances with hostesses; recounted his subordinates’ unwanted sexual advances; and recalled the taunts and gossip that swirled around her family after her father’s incarceration.

Tendo turned an equally unsparing eye on herself, documenting her increasingly self-destructive behavior. At twelve, she joined a gang and skipped school; by her sixteenth birthday, she’d been arrested and imprisoned for fighting, and by her nineteenth birthday, she’d become addicted to speed and enmeshed in several violent relationships with married men. Only after a string of near-death experiences was Tendo able to break the cycle of abuse and addiction that had reduced her to a eighty-seven pound skeleton with scars and false teeth.

From this blunt, vivid narrative, Sean Michael Wilson and Michiru Morikawa have fashioned a curiously flat graphic memoir, Yakuza Moon: The True Story of a Gangster’s Daughter. Wilson, the script writer, hews closely to the structure of Tendo’s book, preserving the chapters and the major events of Tendo’s narrative. Yet for all his fidelity to the original, the results are uneven. Most of Tendo’s siblings and lovers, for example, are reduced from major characters to walk-on roles. To judge from Wilson and Morikawa’s adaptation, for example, Tendo’s older sister Maki was a casual acquaintance, yet in Tendo’s memoir, Maki occupied an important place in her sister’s life: first as an idol, someone Tendo emulated, then as a cautionary tale, someone Tendo feared becoming. Tendo’s other family members fare worse than Maki; readers could be excused for wondering how many siblings Tendo has, as her older brother and younger sister are mentioned only in passing late in the book, with little discussion of how their father’s lifestyle affected them.

Equally frustrating are the layouts: Yakuza Moon looks more like an illustrated novel than comics, with words carrying the burden of the storytelling and pictures playing an ancillary role. Only in Tendo’s sexual encounters does the artwork take a more prominent role; through nuanced facial expressions and body language, Morikawa speaks volumes about Tendo’s complicated relationships with men. We immediately sense which partners were bullies, and which were kind; which used physical intimidation to control Tendo, and which used emotional manipulation; and which she feared, and which she loved. There’s a frankness to these scenes that’s missing elsewhere in the book; Morikawa never shies away from depicting ugly or uncomfortable moments, but shows us what’s happening from Tendo’s point of view, rather than her partner’s.

And that, perhaps, is this graphic novel’s greatest strength: whatever compromises Wilson and Morikawa made in translating Tendo’s prose into images, the focus of the story remains squarely on Tendo. Yakuza activities — drug dealing, loansharking, beatings — take place off camera; we only see the terrible consequences, reminding us that no matter how elaborate the yakuza code of conduct may be, there’s no real honor among thieves.

YAKUZA MOON: THE TRUE STORY OF A GANGSTER’S DAUGHTER • BASED ON THE BOOK BY SHOKO TENDO, ADAPTED BY SEAN MICHAEL WILSON, ILLUSTRATED BY MICHIRO MORIKAWA • KODANSHA USA • 192 pp. • RATING: MATURE

Lifting Our Heads for a Little Kiss

November 19, 2011 by Erica Friedman 4 Comments

Kiss magazine, published by Kodansha, has star power. If for no other reason than that one of the most popular and successful Josei franchises of recent years, Ninomiya Tomoko’s Nodame Cantabile, called Kiss home until the series and supplementary chapters came to an end in 2010.

Kiss magazine began publication in 1992 as Monthly Kiss, it is now released on the 10th and 25th of every month. It weighs in at approximately 350 pages an issue, for 450 yen (5.53 USD at time of writing) and pulls in a very respectable 127,962 monthly circulation, according the the JMPA’s 2010 numbers.

Kiss magazine has a website on Kodansha’s Comic Plus system, which offers current volumes for sale, a community on which to share thoughts about one’s favorite series, and a way to send messages to the creators, sample chapters, special sites with interviews, contests for new artists and more.

Series from Kiss are not high on the list for either translation into English as manga or transition to anime. Nodame Cantabile was a notable exception, as it spawned anime, manga, live-action dramas and even documentaries. Currently the series Kuragehime, by Higashimura Akiko, has created some noise as a popular anime.

There is little experimental art in Kiss. The style runs to clean, realistic rendering, even in explicitly fantastic stories like QB Karin – Keishichou Tokushu SP-ban.

Overwhelmingly, the feeling of stories that run in Kiss are stories for adult women. “Kiss and Never Cry,” “Gin no Spoon,” “SatoShio,” “Maison de Nagaya-san,” all are focused on relationships – life, family, career and romance. In fact, if there’s one strong theme running through Kiss, it’s the drive towards life-work balance…a topic that will be of interest to just about any working woman.

Kiss is a gentle magazine. There’s going to be no surprises here, no violence, no sex; fan service comes in the form of adult male characters who treat their women well. Kiss magazine is a familiar touch, a gentle peck on the cheek from a dear friend.

Kiss Magazine, from Kodansha: http://kc.kodansha.co.jp/magazine/index.php/02292

This article was originally published on Mangacast.net.

(Sincere apologies for my extended absence here…work has been “interesting.” ^_^;;)

Codename: Sailor V, Vol. 1

October 13, 2011 by Katherine Dacey 4 Comments

Do you remember Wonder Woman? From an adult perspective, the show was dreadful, marred by ham-fisted scripts, low-budget special effects, campy plotlines, and wooden performances. From a child’s perspective, however, Wonder Woman was magical: the heroine had a secret identity, wore a cool crime-fighting outfit complete with nifty, crime-fighting accessories, and fought bad buys. Better still, she could transform from civilian to superhero by extending her arms and twirling a few times, a transformation made even more dramatic by a blinding flash of light and a musical flourish on the soundtrack.

Codename: Sailor V irresistibly reminded me of the old Wonder Woman show. Judged by adult standards, it’s repetitive, hokey, and poorly drawn; judged by a child’s standards, however, it’s an appealing fantasy in which an ordinary girl can assume a new, powerful identity in order to defeat bullies, robbers, and aliens who like to impersonate idols. (More on that in a minute.)

Sailor V follows a well-established shojo template in which a seemingly ordinary girl discovers her true identity as a soldier, priestess, or princess. For perky tomboy Minako Aino, her alter ego is Sailor Venus, a glamorous, sailor-suited warrior tasked with protecting the Earth from the Dark Agency, a nefarious band of aliens using the entertainment industry to enslave humanity. With the aid of Artemis, a talking cat, Minako begins mastering her two secret weapons: a magical pen and a crescent-shaped compact, both of which enable her to overwhelm opponents with the light of truth….

Codename: Sailor V, Vol. 1

October 13, 2011 by Katherine Dacey

What distinguishes Sailor V from other magical girl manga is Minako’s can-do spirit. Minako may flunk math quizzes and miss homeroom, but when the fate of the Earth hangs in the balance, she embraces her responsibility with cheerful resolve. “I feel liberated! I’m overflowing with power!” she declares after her first successful mission. Even when the missions fall into a predictable pattern, Minako’s enthusiasm and competence prove irresistible: she delivers high-flying kicks with graceful precision, discovers new powers in the heat of battle, scolds evil-doers for evading the tax code (no, really), and experiments with different personae. (In one story, she transforms into a handsome male idol; in another, she poses as a military commando.)

Put simply, Minako kicks butt and has fun doing it.

I’m less enthusiastic about the artwork, which is a riot of busy screentones, arm-flapping chibis, and noseless characters. The visual flow is often choppy, with abrupt shifts in perspective and setting that can disorient the reader. The character designs, too, leave something to be desired, as the villains all have blank, doll-like faces and enormous foreheads, while Minako and her friends have saucer-shaped eyes. Only the fight scenes are well executed; using undulating lines and balletic poses, Takeuchi does a fine job of distinguishing Minako from Sailor V, showing us how a plucky teen transforms into a strong young woman.

And therein lies the key Codename: Sailor V‘s appeal: the series allows young girls to try on a grown-up persona, to imagine what it might be to like to be a strong, smart, and capable woman who’s free to realize her full potential. At the same time, however, Sailor V honors a young girl’s ideas of femininity, recognizing that it’s perfectly possible to save the day while wearing a cute outfit. Small wonder, then, that the Sailor Moon franchise proved so popular among young girls on both sides of the Pacific: who wouldn’t want to be a princess and a warrior?

CODENAME: SAILOR V, VOL. 1 • BY NAOKO TAKEUCHI • KODANSHA COMICS USA • 272 pp. • RATING: TEEN (13+)

Bloody Monday, Vol. 1

August 30, 2011 by Katherine Dacey 10 Comments

To judge from all the shonen manga I’ve read, the fate of the world rests in teenage boys’ hands: not only do they have the power to kill demons and thwart alien invasions, they’re also blessed with the kind of superior intelligence that makes them natural partners with law enforcement.

Bloody Monday is a textbook example of the teen-genius genre: high school student Fujimaru Takagi dabbles in crime-solving, hacking into secure networks and decoding encrypted files on behalf of the Public Security Intelligence Agency. (Naturally, he works for the PSIA’s super-secret “Third-I” division, which is “comprised solely of elites.”) Fujimaru’s deductive skills are put to the ultimate test when his father is falsely implicated in a murder. To find the real killer, Fujimaru must uncover the connection between his father and the “Christmas Massacre,” a terrorist attack that left thousands of Russian civilians dead, their bodies covered in boils.

In the right hands, Bloody Monday might have been good, silly fun, 24 for the under-twenty-four crowd. The script, however, is pointed and obvious, explaining hacker culture and internet technology to an audience that has grown up on the world-wide web: are there any fifteen-year-olds who don’t grasp the basics of computer viruses? The characters, too, seem impossibly dim, thinking out loud, missing obvious connections, and reminding each other how they’re related, whether they’re fellow reporters for the school newspaper or siblings. Small wonder they don’t realize that their school has been infiltrated by an enemy agent.

The art is more skillful than the script, with polished character designs and detailed backgrounds. The adults actually look like adults, not teenagers with unfortunate laugh lines, while the scenes aboard the Transsiberian Railroad convey the harshness of the Russian landscape. Though artist Kouji Megumi nevers misses an opportunity to show us an attractive woman in her underwear — and really, what well-trained assassin doesn’t snuff a target or two while wearing only a matching bra-and-panty set? — the fanservice never overwhelms the plot. The action sequences, too, are well-staged, using swift cross-cuts and imaginative camera angles to heighten the suspense.

In the end, however, the slick visuals aren’t enough to compensate for the flat-footed storytelling. A plot as potentially interesting and complex as Bloody Monday‘s should challenge the reader to arrive the solution independently, not spoon-feed it; too often, the story seems to have been written in boldface, depriving the reader of an opportunity to guess the outcome of the story for herself.

BLOODY MONDAY, VOL. 1 • STORY BY RYOU RYUMON, ART BY KOUJI MEGUMI • KODANSHA COMICS USA • 200 pp. • RATING: TEEN (13+)

Cage of Eden, Vol. 1

August 25, 2011 by Katherine Dacey 10 Comments

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a trans-Pacific flight encounters turbulence, and before any of the passengers can shout “J.J. Abrams!” — or “William Golding!” for that matter — the plane crash-lands an uninhabited tropical island, far from civilization’s reach. In some variations of the story, the island itself poses the greatest danger to survivors, harboring monsters or malevolent spirits. In other versions, the survivors’ own fear and narcissism proves more deadly than any jungle-dwelling creatures, as the rude wilderness strips away the survivors’ veneer of humanity.

In Cage of Eden, Yoshinobu Yamada combines these two survival narratives to tell the story of a high school holiday gone horribly wrong. Cage’s teen heroes crash-land in a prehistoric forest populated by long-extinct animals: saber-toothed tigers, horse-sized birds. These big, hungry predators aren’t the only threat to the students’ safety, however. Yarai, the class delinquent, seizes the opportunity to act on his darkest impulses, terrorizing his peers and the doomed flight’s captain. Only Akira, a small, self-described loser, and Mariya, a bespectacled, anti-social genius, have the skills and the smarts to outwit both enemies.

Though the story unfurls at a good clip, the execution is a little creaky. The opening chapter is a choppy information dump, as Yamada introduces the principal characters, delineates their relationships, and reveals the purpose of their plane trip. Once on the island, Mariya’s computer proves shockingly durable — it boots up without protest, despite plunging 35,000 feet — and helpfully equipped with a searchable database of extinct animals. (“Even without internet, I can still access program files,” Mariya solemnly informs an incredulous Akira.) The characters speak fluent exposition, frequently explaining things to one another that are readily obvious from Yamada’s crisply executed drawings. Worse still, the intelligent dialogue is reserved for the male characters; the few female characters’ primary role is to be menaced, rescued, and ogled, though not necessarily in that order.

However obvious the script or ubiquitous the cheesecake — and yes, the fanservice is executed with all the subtlety of a tap-dancing hippopotamus — Cage of Eden has a cheerful, B-movie vibe that’s hard to resist. The monsters are rendered in loving detail, down to their sinews and feathers and claws; as they tear across the page, it’s not hard to imagine how terrified the characters must be, or how fast they need to run in order to escape. The setting, too, is a boon, offering Yamada numerous places to conceal a dangerous animal or booby trap. Even the characters are effective. Though drawn in broad strokes, Akira is a sympathetic lead; he’s prone to self-doubt after years of being a bench warmer, an academic failure, a mama’s boy, and a second banana to the most popular student in his class. That the island provides him a chance to prove his worth isn’t surprising — that’s de rigeur for the genre — but Akira’s mixture of humility and bravery is refreshing, helping distract the reader from the absurdity of his action-movie heroics.

I won’t make any grand claims for Cage of Eden: on many levels, it’s dumber than a peroxide blonde, with characters doing and saying things that defy common sense. Yet Yoshinobu Yamada demonstrates a genuine flair for writing popcorn-movie manga, populating the island with scary-looking monsters and staging thrilling action sequences that temporarily erase the memory of the clumsy dialogue and panty shots. Cage of Eden is the perfect beach read for the final days of August: it’s fun and fast-paced, placing few demands on the sun-addled reader.

CAGE OF EDEN, VOL. 1 • BY YOSHINOBU YAMADA • KODANSHA COMICS USA • 200 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Monster Hunter Orage, Vol. 1

July 4, 2011 by Katherine Dacey 11 Comments

As a critic, few words fill me with more trepidation than “inspired by the popular video game.” I’ve read my share of video game manga, most of which were thin on plot and characterization but heavy on explanation. Every so often, however, I run across a series like Monster Hunter Orage, which manages to stay true to its roots while offering something to readers who’ve never played the game.

What makes Monster Hunter work is Hiro Mashima’s script, which does a solid job of translating game play into genuine plot. In the original game, players answered to a town guild, accepting orders to hunt or capture a variety of monsters. Players could fly solo or team up with one, two, or three other gamers to bring down bigger monsters and boost their skill rating. (The ultimate object of the game was to attain the highest skill level, rather than accumulate the greatest number of points.)

In the manga, Mashima builds a story around Shiki, a hunter on a quest to find Myo Galuna, a.k.a. the Thunder Dragon. Shiki is a Seal Hunter, a special category of monster-slayer who’s free to pursue game without interference from town guilds. Though he’s strong and skilled, his brash behavior and social cluelessness prove serious barriers to finding comrades — that is, until he meets Ailee, a fiercely independent hunter who shares Shiki’s desire to find the Thunder Dragon, and Sakya, a gunner who wants to avenge her father’s death.

Shiki and Ailee’s peppery rapport provides a welcome jolt of comic energy, whether they’re arguing about how to kill a monster or how to catch dinner. Like many of Mashima’s heroines, Ailee has little tolerance for teenage male foolishness, and frequently dismisses Shiki with a withering comment. (When they first meet, for example, Shiki blurts out, “Say, haven’t we met before?”, to which Ailee replies, “It’s been forever since I heard that stale pick-up line. Wait. Don’t respond. Just go somewhere else.”) Other supporting characters play a similar role in keeping the tone breezy: the Prince, a preening, foolish hunter, is font of malapropisms, while Maru, the Prince’s sidekick, provides an energetic stream of patter whenever the two appear together.

The art is as nimble as the script, relying heavily on Mashima’s crisp linework to give definition to his characters, monsters, and landscapes; he’s as sparing with screentone as Arina Tanemura is with white space. Though the characters have marvelous, elastic faces, capable of registering fifteen degrees of surprise and indignation, the monsters are unimpressive; they look a lot like dinosaurs with extra feathers and appendages. Put the men and the monsters together, however, and the results are terrific: the fights are graceful and swift, allowing the main characters to demonstrate their martial arts acumen without dragging out the conflict over three or four chapters.

If I had any complaint about Monster Hunter Orage, it’s that the story quickly falls into a predictable pattern. The outcome of the fights is never in question, nor is Shiki’s role as the hunter who will ultimately be the one to outsmart the monster. Even efforts to introduce subplots only go so far; by the end of volume one, it’s clear that the Prince will do anything to destroy Shiki, but his buffoonish behavior and general incompetence make him a less-than-credible threat to the heroes.

But if Monster Hunter isn’t as deep as it could be, it’s still a lot of fun, propelled by a goofy, anything-for-a-laugh script, appealing characters, and plenty of man-on-monster action. And at four volumes, the series won’t overstay its welcome. A good beach read.

MONSTER HUNTER ORAGE, VOL. 1 • BY HIRO MASHIMA • KODANSHA COMICS USA • 192 pp. • RATING: TEEN (13+)

Monster Hunter Orage, Vol. 1

July 4, 2011 by Katherine Dacey

MONSTER HUNTER ORAGE, VOL. 1 • BY HIRO MASHIMA • KODANSHA COMICS USA • 192 pp. • RATING: TEEN (13+)

License request day: Karechi

May 13, 2011 by David Welsh

Have I mentioned how much I prefer rail travel to the indignities of air travel? Have I mentioned how annoyed I get that there are so few rail options in my region of the country?

I’m certain I’ve mentioned how much I like comics about travel. I know there’s ample evidence that I like episodic, slice-of-life manga and would like to read more of it.

So it should come as no surprise that I’m very interested in a series called Karechi, written and illustrated by Kunihiko Ikeda and currently running in Kodansha’s Weekly Morning.

It’s set in the late 1960s and stars a conductor on the then-new high-speed rail line between Osaka and Tokyo. It’s about how Kenji Ogino helps individual passengers, and it’s also about how high-speed rail changed Japan. All evidence indicates that it’s nostalgic in tone, which is another plus for me. And you can even buy a reproduction of the lead character’s uniform.

Isn’t that dapper? I probably couldn’t walk through the club car on a moving train without it ending up looking like tie-dye, but that doesn’t diminish the uniform’s old-school elegance.

Now, I live in a country where governors actually turn down huge amounts of money to develop rail systems for reasons too baffling to credit. (My personal theory is that these governors’ oil-company overlords are petrified that people might actually use these rail systems instead of filling up their cars with gasoline.) But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a few volumes of comics about rail systems, does it?

It probably means exactly that, doesn’t it?

3 Things Thursday: Vertical x Kodansha

February 24, 2011 by MJ 18 Comments

So, any of you following manga industry news have undoubtedly already heard about Kodansha’s new investment in Vertical, Inc., a story that broke last night, but has apparently been in the works for quite some time.

As a big fan of Vertical’s non-Kodansha licenses (Twin Spica, 7 Billion Needles, most of the company’s Tezuka releases) I was grateful to hear that the news would not impact their ability to continue with those licenses. Still, this seems like an appropriate time to reflect on some of the Vertical x Kodansha goodness we’ve already seen, either in print or in the works. Though my understanding is that some of these negotiations took place directly between Vertical and the series’ authors (or their representatives), the fact remains, we have both publishers to thank for their existence in print.

3 series brought to us by Vertical and Kodansha:

1. Chi’s Sweet Home | Konami Kanata – I’ve been a big fan of this sweet (and sometimes bittersweet) tale of human/cat cohabitation since Vertical’s release of its first volume, and those feelings have only grown warmer over time. Though the series is certainly appropriate for children, the advantage of it having been published in a magazine for adults definitely gives it an edge for a reader like me. Both genuinely funny and occasionally dark, there’s a lot more to Chi than meets the eye. And when what meets the eye is as cute as this… well, there’s really no way it can go wrong. Volume 5 is available now!

2. Princess Knight | Osamu Tezuka – Though this license was likely brought forth via Tezuka Productions, we have Kodansha to thank for all of its incarnations in print so far, from Shojo Club, to Nakayoshi, to the bilingual version that up until now (or soon, at least) was the series’ only English-language edition.

In the words of David Welsh, ” It sounds really delightful. It’s only three volumes long. It’s Tezuka. More Tezuka is always better.”

Agreed on all points.

3. The Drops of God | Tadashi Agi – Another one of David’s recently-fulfilled license requests, this manga has me hooked already simply by being about wine. Though I expect it might be hard on my pocketbook (all the wines in the series are real, and can be sought out and purchased by those willing to spend the dough), I honestly can’t wait to dig in.

Deb Aoki has been pushing for some time for this series to be licensed. “The Drops of God tries to capture the romance, the drama, the history, and the sensual joy of drinking wine, the fascinating people who make, sell and collect wine, and the diverse places where wine is grown, bottled and enjoyed all over the world.” Read more at About.com.

An honorable mention must go to Peepo Choo, which I featured in this column just a few weeks ago!

So, readers, what are your thoughts on what we might see now from Vertical and Kodansha?

Manga Artifacts: Princess Knight

December 19, 2010 by Katherine Dacey 11 Comments

What Osamu Tezuka’s New Treasure Island (1946) was to shonen, his Princess Knight (1953-56) was to shojo. Both were long-form adventure stories that employed the kind of camera angles, reaction shots, and action sequences that suggested a movie, rather than an illustrated novel or a comic strip. Neither could be said to be the “first” shonen or shojo manga, but both had a profound influence on the artists who came of age in the 1940s and 1950s, offering a new storytelling model for them to emulate.

Princess Knight debuted in Shojo Club magazine in 1953, serialized in three-to-four page installments over a three-year period. The story proved so popular it inspired a radio play, a ballet, and a sequel, Twin Knight (1958-59), which followed the adventures of Princess Sapphire’s children. Ever the tinkerer, Tezuka revisited the story twice in the 1960s: first for Nakayoshi magazine, from 1963-66, and then for Shojo Friend, from 1967-68. Both the Nakayoshi and Shojo Friend versions re-told the original story with new artwork and subtle changes to the cast of characters. While the Nakayoshi version was a certifiable hit, and came to be regarded as the definitive edition of Princess Knight, Tezuka’s fourth go-round with the series was, by the author’s own admission, a commercial flop, an ill-conceived tie-in with an anime version that was airing on Fuji TV at the same time.

The basic outline of the 1953 and 1963 stories is the same: a mischievous angel named Tink gives the unborn Princess Sapphire an extra heart — and a boy’s heart, no less. Before Tink can recover the spare, however, Sapphire is born into the royal family of Goldland, a country in which only men can inherit the throne. Eager to avoid a crisis of succession, Sapphire’s parents raise her as a boy — a fraud that their enemy, Duke Duralmin, reveals just before Sapphire is crowned the new king. Sapphire escapes, then adopts a new, masked persona, using the skills she acquired as a king-in-training — horseback riding, swordsmanship — and the physical strength granted by her male heart to rescue her subjects from Duralmin’s tyranny.

Reading Princess Knight in 2010, it’s impossible to ignore Tezuka’s myriad borrowings. The story is an affectionate pastiche of Christianity, Greek mythology, and European fairy tales, at once utterly derivative and completely fresh in the way it appropriates plot points from “Cinderella,” Hamlet, Dracula, and “Eros and Psyche.” A Disney-esque sensibility smooths over the rough edges of this collage; resourceful mice and talking horses provide both aid to the heroine and comic relief, while the deities bear a strong resemblance to the prancing satyrs and nymphs of Fantasia‘s “Pastoral” interlude. Characters even burst into song, prompting Tezuka to draw several elaborate, full-page spreads that resemble Busby Berkeley routines.

What makes this pastiche especially interesting is the way in which Tezuka’s childhood fascination with the Takarazuka Revue informs his female characters. As Natsu Onoda Power observes in God of Comics: Osamu Tezuka and the Creation of Post-World War II Manga, Tezuka never fully camouflages Sapphire’s female identity; Sapphire adopts male speech patterns and dress, yet retains feminine attributes — a shapely waist, thin eyebrows — when in drag. Neither the reader nor the other characters doubt she is a woman; only Friebe, a beautiful female knight who falls in love with Sapphire, is convinced of Sapphire’s maleness. Like the otoko yaku (male role specialists) of Takarazuka, Sapphire doesn’t impersonate a man so much as embody a feminine ideal of masculinity. Kobayashi Ichizo, founder of the Takarazuka Revue, intuitively understood that female audiences favored such idealized portrayals over verisimilitude. “When a woman performs as a man,” he explained, “she is able to craft an image of a man that is better than a real man, from a woman’s perspective.” (Power, 118)

For young readers, however, the real draw is the story’s mixture of swashbuckling adventure and conventional romance. Sapphire scales walls, dons disguises, duels with her rivals, and escapes from prison several times, yet is still beautiful enough to win the heart of a pirate king and a Prince Charming (no, really — her primary love interest is named Franz Charming), even when she’s posing as a man. It’s an irresistible fantasy: a girl can be brave, strong, and resourceful, and still inspire the kind of devotion normally accorded more passive, conventionally feminine characters. Small wonder Princess Knight beguiled several generations of Japanese girls.

American readers interested in reading Princess Knight have two options. The first is a bilingual edition published by Kodansha in 2001, which reproduces the Nakayoshi version from 1963-66. The small trim size and occasionally colorful translation don’t do the material any favors (“Get away from me, you shitty little cherub!” an evil witch screeches), but the artwork is reproduced very cleanly, making it easy to appreciate Tezuka’s draftsmanship. A number of Japanese booksellers have been offering used copies on eBay; expect to pay anywhere from $7.00 to $30.00 per volume. (I purchased all six volumes through mkbooks2003.) The second is a brief excerpt from the Shojo Club version, which was reproduced in the July 2007 issue of Shojo Beat. For readers who don’t want to commit to buying the bilingual editon, the chapters reproduced in Shojo Beat offer a nice, representative sample of the work, and are accompanied by a helpful contextual essay. Expect to pay $6.00 to $18.00 for a back issue in good condition.

UPDATE, 1/28/11: Vertical, Inc. has just announced that it has licensed the Nakayoshi edition of Princess Knight for the North American market. The series will be published in two installments: volume one will be released on October 4, 2011 and volume two on December 6, 2011. Both volumes will retail for $13.95. Anime News Network has more details. Hat tip to CJ for breaking the news to me!

Manga Artifacts is a monthly feature exploring older, out-of-print manga published in the 1980s and 1990s. For a fuller description of the series’ purpose, see the inaugural column.

Manga Artifacts: Princess Knight

December 19, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

Manga Artifacts is a monthly feature exploring older, out-of-print manga published in the 1980s and 1990s. For a fuller description of the series’ purpose, see the inaugural column.