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Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Manga Moveable Feast

Basara, Vols 13-16

May 25, 2013 by Anna N

Whenever I pick up and read a few volumes of Basara, I’m always struck by how much story and emotion Yumi Tamura is able to pack into a few pages. I’d started rereading Basara last year, but got distracted by having too many volumes of shiny new manga. The Manga Moveable Feast seemed like a great excuse to dig up these volumes again. These volumes cover Sarasa’s journey as she escapes from prison and wages war on the desert city of Suo, only to encounter the Red King. The battle doesn’t go the way either of them planned.

Sarasa is able to escape Abashiri prison with her comrades, but she doesn’t have time to settle back and appreciate freedom again. It is time to head south and take up the struggle to determine the fate of Japan. Ageha leaves Sarasa, saying that he can’t become a crutch to make things easier for her. She has to execute her plans on her own, based on her convictions. Shuri heads to his precious desert city of Suo, but things have changed there for the worse as the administrator there Momonoi attempts to remake it in the image of Kyoto by displacing the poor and blowing up buildings. Asagi prevents a reunion between Sarasa and Shuri in a southern market, because he thinks if they each find out the truth about each other now, it would be “too dull.” Sarasa and Shuri both head to Suo with drastically different purposes.

The struggle in Suo is portrayed in mental as well as physical terms. Sarasa meets up with Hozumi, Momonoi’s son who his a non-violent artist. His girlfriend Renko runs an underground newspaper in the city. Sarasa starts unsettling the city by plastering notices that “Tatara was here” on the walls, and even flying the message from a kite. Sarasa starts to reflect a bit about what it means to be both a strong and feminine woman after spending some time with Renko. Hozumi stages his own form of protest by painting elaborate pictures on the walls of buildings slated for destruction, so people hesitate to blow them apart.

When Shuri sees the wreckage of Suo, he’s angry at what it has become. Momonoi brutalizes both Hozumi and Renko. Sarasa and Shuri both go after Momonoi for different reasons. Sarasa is nervous about being in close proximity to the Red King, the man who destroyed her village. Shuri sees that he’s not welcomed as a savior in his treasured city, and begins to reflect that his previous philosophy about a good leader inspiring fear was mistaken. Sarasa’s reinforcements come, but her plan to use Momonoi’s own explosives to cut off the palace kills the water supply for the city. The Red King’s army executes a tricky sneak attack, and the star-crossed lovers seem like they are headed towards mutual destruction. Sarasa is devastated when she realizes that she’s bring more destruction to the people of Suo. A horrible sandstorm prevents the battle from progressing further, but rather than regroup with her comrades, Sarasa runs off and finds Shuri in the chaos.

It is a little unbelievable that Sarasa and Shuri have managed to keep their identities from each other for so long, especially considering the way they both tend to show up and meet each other right around the time that Tatara and the Red King have a skirmish. It is clear now that part of reason is that they honestly don’t care, and they are both blinded by love for each other so much that they aren’t going to stop and ask inconvenient questions when they could just enjoy each other’s company. This idyll is very short, and the Red King and Tatara’s army clash the next day and Shuri and Sarasa finally get a glimpse of each other from across the battlefield.

What follows is one of the most emotionally devastating scenes in the series, as Sarasa and Shuri react to this newfound knowledge in different ways. Sarasa slips into a fugue state, forcing out commands to kill the Red King, while Shuri mechanically tries to kill himself at the suggestion of his followers because his group is so clearly outnumbered by the rebel forces. Both armies flee the battle as King Ukon’s army approaches and Ageha takes Sarasa away in an attempt to bring back Tatara. Ageha thinks “Was he…that good? Why not just take me instead?” Ageha concludes that Sarasa isn’t his “woman worth dying for” and decides to leave. Sarasa ends up finding shelter with a local priest and his family, but her destiny isn’t going to let her sit back and do nothing.

Sarasa strikes up an odd friendship with Kikune, one of the White King’s spies. Sarasa and Kikune end up befriending Lady Purple, the Black King’s estranged wife. Lady Purple ends up being another type of mentor to Sarasa, but Sarasa’s emotional healing really begins when she’s reunited with her mother. In a very nurturing way, Sarasa’s mother asks her some pointed questions about the reasons why she was fighting and what she wants the future of Japan to be.

There’s some funny yet poignant exchanges happening as Asagi has rescued Shuri, who is undergoing his own emotional rehabilitation. Asagi is all but twirling his non-existent evil mustache in an attempt to get Shuri to have some sort of emotional reaction to him, but Shuri calmly accepts the prospect of being sold into slavery by his half-brother.

Overall, these volumes server as a great emotional climax to the first half of the series. The central mystery about what would happen if Sarasa and Shuri would find out about each other has been answered, and now they have to pick up the pieces of their lives yet again. While Ageha might have given up on Sarasa, it is clear that her destiny as Tatara will not allow her to just retire into the countryside and life out the rest of her life peacefully. Shuri has his own set of trials ahead, and it will be interesting to see how both of these powerful leaders manage to build a new Japan with such strong and well-connected enemies lining up against them. One of the strengths of Basara is the way Tamura will intersperse shorter, more personal adventures into the larger struggle with the extended cast. Having Sarasa and Shuri both on their own a little bit, without their customary support systems allows them to grow more as individuals, making the battles much more human. I’m glad I set aside the time to get back with my Basara rereading program, and I’ll likely finish up rereading the rest of the series outside of this week’s manga moveable feast.

Filed Under: REVIEWS Tagged With: basara, Manga Moveable Feast, shoujo

Off the Shelf: Basara, MMF Edition

May 25, 2013 by Anna N, MJ, Michelle Smith and Karen Peck 17 Comments


MJ: It’s time once again for the Manga Moveable Feast, this month featuring the works of Yumi Tamura and hosted at Tokyo Jupiter. Though three of her manga have been published in English by Viz Media, Tamura-sensei is best known to English-speaking fans for her 27-volume fantasy series Basara, published by Viz in its entirety between 2003 and 2008. The story—about a fifteen-year-old girl in post-apocalyptic Japan who assumes the identity of her murdered twin brother in order to free her people from the tyrannical grip of a corrupt monarchy— offers up a familiar mix of sword-fighting, military strategy, political intrigue, drama, humor, and romance along with themes less common in high fantasy, like feminism and (I’d argue) social anarchism.

Since Michelle has been a vocal fan of Basara for a long, long time, it seemed only natural that we’d dedicate this week’s Off the Shelf to a discussion of the series. We’ve also invited Anna to join in on the festivities, along with Karen Peck, Michelle’s collaborator on The CMX Project. Welcome, Anna and Karen!

Though Basara was one of the very first series recommended to me when I first began reading manga in 2007, I missed the opportunity to buy most of Viz’s editions when they were actually in print, and it took me years to acquire some of the rarer middle volumes. As a result, though I eventually did find them all, I’d only read through the first ten volumes before planning this roundtable. I suspect I’m the only one coming to the discussion as a (mostly) new reader of the series. Can you each tell me a bit about how you were first introduced to Basara?

ANNA: I think I actually stumbled across Basara fairly close to when it was first coming out. I think I picked up the first half-dozen volumes and then started buying each volume as it was released. One thing I remember was that the manga looked a bit different from the other Viz releases at the time, which definitely piqued my interest.

MICHELLE: Honestly, I’m not sure how I first encountered Basara. In my early days of manga enthusiasm, one of my goals was Buy All the Shoujo, so it’s possible I just snagged it because of its imprint. I also, however, have a distinct memory of reading about the Basara anime, thinking it sounded awesome, and acquiring some fansubs of that. I just can’t remember which came first. What I do have documented is that I read the first volume of the Basara manga in September 2004 and the last in 2008. Although merciless upon my wallet, the Buy All the Shoujo approach did save me some anguish, as I bought each volume as it came out and didn’t have to track anything down.

KAREN: I am a latecomer to Basara, having just finished reading it this weekend. I don’t know why I skipped out on it when it first came out, as I was in a similar BUY ALL THE SHOUJO mode as Michelle was. Years later, I kept hearing how awesome it was—but the idea of collecting it was daunting, as some of the volumes were out of print and fetching crazy prices online.

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What really prodded me was reading 7SEEDS, Tamura’s current work, in French, which was one of the best things I’ve ever read. So I decided to go ahead and start buying up all the Basara I could, and import the French-language editions as placeholders, with the hope that prices would one day came down to something reasonable. I was lucky that a generous friend found volumes 19 through 21 for me at a used bookstore and passed them along – thanks Michelle!

MJ: So I’m not the only newcomer! That makes me happy, I admit—mainly because I found the series so exciting that I was worried my n00b squee would be so loud and obnoxious as to drown out all reasonable discussion. I mean, this thing pings pretty much everything I’ve ever loved in manga, beginning with its truly awesome heroine all the way to the simple fact of its length. Which is not to say that I love all long-running series, but I absolutely love a long-running series that is so obviously well-planned as this one was. There isn’t a single extraneous scene in Basara—absolutely everything that happens is essential to its plot line and the growth of its characters. That’s my take on it, at least. Is it just me?

scan0003MICHELLE: It isn’t just you. (But first let me express my gladness that you love this series. Maybe this is what you felt like when I was the newcomer to your beloved Fullmetal Alchemist!) Basara is incredibly well planned—though upon this reread I picked up on one subtle, possible mid-story change that I missed the first time, more on this later—and Tamura-sensei juggles the various elements with consummate skill. That’s not to say that there isn’t time for levity, for there surely is, but she’s able to combine some lighter moments with action in a way I really like. Too, there are scenes between supporting characters that are absolutely fascinating. I definitely have more to say about this later, too, but I don’t want to rush ahead before we’ve actually talked about our main characters!

KAREN: I just want to throw in my appreciation of a well-plotted series – she’s juggling a lot of balls, but she keeps the focus primarily on Sarasa and Shuri. There’s room for secondary and tertiary character development, but it never sidetracks the story. Wisely, she leaves longer stories of those characters to the extra chapters – and avoids any of those other characters from taking over in the main story. What is important is how they serve the story and relate to either Sarasa and/or Shuri – they still have their importance but they have their place, too.

I’m glad someone else will be a oh-so-excited newbie over this with me! There’s something about reading these epic series in a compressed amount of time, the drama of the story is more intense because there is no wait – having to go to sleep/work made me downright resentful, I wanted to be back in that world and see what happened.

MJ: Yes, yes, exactly, Karen! I’m a big fan of total immersion when it comes to fiction (or anything, really) and my experience with Basara was a perfect illustration of why. I read it all through in just a few days, and during that time, I really lived there. It was an awesome place to live, that’s for sure.

And that is exactly how I felt when you were the newcomer, Michelle, so I figured it would be a point of personal gratification for you! And speaking of our main characters, why don’t we jump right in? I have a lot of highfalutin thoughts regarding the series’ feminism and so on, but to get to that, we have to begin with Sarasa. Michelle, would you like to start us off?

MICHELLE: Sure!

When Sarasa and her twin brother Tatara were born, Nagi, the prophet of Byakko village, proclaimed, “This is the child of destiny.” ** The assumption was made that the prophecy would obviously pertain to the male child, and so Tatara was celebrated and fêted while Sarasa saw herself as unwanted scraps. After the Red Army attacks her village and Tatara is beheaded by General Kazan, the most loyal of the Red King’s soldiers, the people of the village are confusedly milling about. Knowing that something needs to be done to give them hope so that they might make it to safety, Sarasa transforms herself into Tatara.

(Click images to enlarge. Read right-to-left.)

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She continues to live in that guise most of the time, intent on personal vengeance at first but gradually developing a desire to transform the entire country. She’s only able to be Sarasa in stolen moments with Shuri, a handsome but arrogant fellow whom she believes is a dumpling merchant but who is actually the Red King. (Hello, textbook example of dramatic irony!) Eventually, however, she does come clean about her gender to her followers, who all do not care. “You’re the leader we believe in,” they tell her.

And why believe in her? Because she’s not just idealistic about how the world should be, she acts. It’s this that earns her Shuri’s respect, too. She doesn’t just speak up about injustice, she does something about it. And not something histrionic, but typically something downright clever (though her plans are not immune to failure). One of her followers, Hijiri, puts it this way: “I think I’m starting to understand, Tatara. People don’t come worshipping you as the savior. They don’t come together under you looking for guidance… They can’t bear just to stand back and watch as you run ahead on unsteady feet, bawling your eyes out.”

** Originally, Tamura-sensei depicted Nagi as unaware of which of the children was actually the subject of the prophecy. “Now… I see what I could not,” he says. “Tatara was the sacrifice. Sarasa. You are the one…” Later, though, there’s a very small bit in volume eight where Chigusa, Sarasa’s mother, suggests that Sarasa was specifically the subject and that her parents treated her the way they did for her protection. Which basically means Tatara’s parents were setting him up to be a decoy from the start. I never caught that change the first time around.

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KAREN: What I enjoyed about Sarasa is her growth – and she does make mistakes, as Michelle points out. She’s not some Child of Destiny savant, she has a lot to learn and the reader gets to see this happening. And she has to learn it while secretly coming of age as a young woman – no wonder she opens her heart to the one person who only knows Sarasa.

And as she grows, so does the revolution. Avenge her family. Rescue the sword. Each step leads to another, more challenges, more allies. Which all leads to… making a new Japan. And it turns out, as Michelle noted, the revolution was able to go on, even if it was lead by a woman – maybe it could only happen because it was led by a woman.

ANNA: I think the “Child of Destiny” aspect of Sarasa’s life is handled in a very realistic and nuanced manner. Too often, a protagonist with this type of fate ends up serving as a bit of a narrative crutch for the author. In Sarasa’s case while she is clearly destined for great things, she ends up struggling so much and sometimes being aided by random chance so that her destiny feels like it is earned through time, rather than something that was just handed to her.

Shuri, the other star-crossed lover in this equation, ends up being a great foil for Sarasa simply because he is so very different from her. He starts off as extremely arrogant and entitled, but he still cares for his people. His brutality in battle contrasts with his gentleness with Sarasa, as he doesn’t realize that she’s the leader of the rebellion.

MJ: I agree with what all of you have said, and I think what I also really appreciate about the way Sarasa is written is that regardless of whether she’s using her brother’s name or her own, she’s all Sarasa all the time. Though she clearly recognizes that as “Tatara” she has enormous responsibility on her shoulders, it’s not like the Tatara persona gives her anything she doesn’t already possess. When she eventually longs for the opportunity to just be “Sarasa,” it’s not that she isn’t able to be herself or isn’t able to be a woman when she’s calling herself Tatara. It’s that she, like any leader, occasionally longs for the chance to be selfish. She longs to be able to make decisions for her own sake only—just now and then—without having to be responsible for the lives and happiness of everyone else in Japan at the same time. She’s the girl “Sarasa” all the time, but sometimes she wishes to be only that.

Her feelings ring very true to me, and stand in stark contrast to something like Princess Knight, in which the heroine is reduced to a delicate flower anytime her “boy’s heart” is taken away from her. Sarasa couldn’t be anyone else if she tried.

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MICHELLE: Very well put! This puts me in mind of a scene from the Okinawa arc in which Sarasa is dressed like Tatara, carrying his sword, and doing something heroic—trying to keep a presidential candidate from attacking a ship carrying his own brother—but all Shuri sees when he looks her way is Sarasa.

Speaking of Sarasa and her growth, one thing I really liked was that her flaws don’t go away automatically. She has a tendency to keep things from her followers, not because she doesn’t trust them but because she doesn’t want to burden them. This happens several times until Asagi (I assume we’ll have a great deal to say about him!) exploits the situation and creates the first serious discord the group experiences. Later, though, Sarasa becomes more assured when issuing commands and is able to put her comrades to use because she finally understands that contributing is important to them.

MJ: I know that Sarasa’s stubborn autonomy is one of her flaws, but I admit that it’s one I find particularly endearing—not so much when it comes to her comrades, who really need her to be willing to share her burdens, but in general as just part of her personality. People’s best and worst traits are usually flip-sides of the same thing, and Sarasa’s instinct to take care of difficult things on her own is, I think, the flip-side of her ability to take care of others when it most counts.

There’s a scene in volume five, when Sarasa and Shuri have been forced into participating in a sick “race” (actually a hunt, where humans—mostly slaves—are the hunted) for the entertainment of the Blue King, in which Shuri offers Sarasa his comfort and protection. “It’s all right. I’m here,” he says, and for a moment Sarasa thinks about how nice it must be to feel protected. “But…” she thinks, “I’m Tatara. If I were alone, I’d have to do something on my own.” At which point, she takes charge of the situation and organizes the group in building what they need to make it to the next part of the race. And y’know, she says, “I’m Tatara,” but that’s the way she is all the time. She puts herself on the front line in any situation, and that includes those that (she thinks) only affect her.

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ANNA: One of the things I like about the series is how leadership is explored throughout the story. As Sarasa travels she encounters a variety of leaders in different locations as she seeks to find allies to aid her rebellion. I’m thinking of the brash style of the Pirate Queen Chacha in particular, as she provides an example of what it is like for a female to lead without disguising her gender.

MJ: Oh, I absolutely love Chacha—so much so that I wouldn’t mind at all skipping over Shuri right now and coming back to him later.

MICHELLE: That would be okay with me!

MJ: Chacha is one of those characters who grabbed me in about two seconds. I loved that fact that she was respected and revered by her crew and that there was no fuss made whatsoever about the fact that she was a woman. It was just a matter of fact.

MICHELLE: We glimpse some of her and Zaki’s shared backstory in volume seven, and even from childhood she’s challenging the notion that she won’t be able to take over leadership of the pirate crew because of her gender. She simply proceeded to get stronger than everyone, defeat them publicly, and then she was accepted. And she is definitely womanly, and passionate about her pleasures, etc.

KAREN: Chacha is indeed awesome – but there’s a number of the women of Basara I could say that about. Tamura is one of those writers who shows that women have ways to develop and display their power, in a variety of ways. Kikune, one of the Four Nobles, is the only girl in that group and feels like she has to work harder to measure up – even when she has skills beyond the others and her gender helps her with one of her assignments (such as being a lady-in-waiting to the Purple Queen). Despite her ties to the White King, she seems to be able to be helpful wherever needed – and provides Sarasa a friend her own age.

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Then there’s women such as Princess Senju, Shido’s (briefly) wife and later widow, who represents the letting go of the cycle of vengeance that could undermine everything that Tatara is fighting for. Another woman who breaks that cycle is Sarasa’s mother, who devotes herself to tending the wounded of either side of the battlefield, which seems to lead to a larger “Nightingale” movement, which is significant to the healing of a united Japan as well.

MICHELLE: Definitely an impressive list! I’m also fond of Yuna, Dr. Basho’s apprentice, who becomes Shuri’s friend yet doesn’t take any of his crap and talks plainly to him, which is what he needs.

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MJ: Since we’re talking about female characters, I can’t help but bring up Tara, a character who appears in one of the many side stories that populate the series’ last couple of volumes. She’s someone we eventually find out is sort of an ancestor to Sarasa, philosophically speaking—and in more ways than one! She’s living a nomadic warrior lifestyle with three men, one of whom she’s very close to (and probably in love with, but that’s a whole other thing). At one point, she’s confronted by the girlfriend of that guy who tries to appeal to her as a woman, “Please… give him back. You’re a woman, too. You must understand. A woman is happiest with the one she loves, having his children, having a family. I hope you can find that life, too.” Tara answers, absolutely befuddled, “I don’t understand. Even an animal can do that. I want to do something only I can do.”

Tamura spends a lot of time rejecting traditional ideas about what it means to be a woman, but I think even more than that, what it means to be a person. She treasures the individuality and autonomy of her characters more than anything else, but not in a self-obsessed Ayn Rand kind of way. Rather, she seems to place the greatest value on an individual’s capacity for unbridled compassion—an ability to do great things in the service of others.

ANNA: I agree, Sarasa starts out as a decent human being and manages to grow in both her capabilities and her compassion as she’s exposed to more people during her travels through post-apocalyptic Japan.

MJ: To bring this back to your discussion of leadership, Anna, one way in which Sarasa grows especially is in her ability as a leader, and it’s this that really caused me to identify Basara as a social anarchist narrative. Sarasa becomes more skilled as a warrior and as a military strategist as the story goes on, and she certainly learns the importance of trusting her comrades. But the place that trust eventually comes from—and what Tamura characterizes as her greatest strength as a leader—is in her ability to take her own ego entirely out of the equation. It’s stated several times throughout the story that the rebellion wouldn’t end if Tatara were to die, because each of Tatara’s followers is personally driven and capable of continuing the fight on his or her own. Sarasa’s a natural leader, and she’s used those skills along with the legend of “the child of destiny” to empower people to rise up against their oppressors, but the secret to her success is in knowing when not to lead—or perhaps in the fact that she leads by example rather than by rule. “Tatara’s army is a marvel,” someone observes late in the series. “Each man moves at his own discretion, but they don’t fragment into chaos.”

And while there is certainly a sense throughout the series that Tamura believes this kind of vision could only have been realized because “Tatara” is a woman, I think the message goes beyond feminism. It’s significant to me that though Tamura portrays certain forms of government in a more positive light than others, Sarasa never tries to establish any government at all. And when, in a later side story, we hear more about the government that did spring up after the rebellion, it’s already begun to sink into corruption.

MICHELLE: I actually have some geekbumps now, thinking of the first time “Tatara” specifically addresses the masses about the type of world she wants to create. It comes during volume thirteen when Renko (another strong woman!) is being persecuted for operating a newspaper critical of Momonoi, the governor of Suo City who’s been appointed by King Ukon in the Red King’s absence. In a very stirring scene, Tatara cinematically stands upon a rooftop and, for the first time, specifically orates about her vision for the future. Killing Momonoi is not the way, she insists, because a new leader will only be appointed in his place and nothing will change.

(Click images to enlarge. Read right-to-left.)

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MJ: And perhaps this is the time to finally come back to Shuri, the Red King, because though Sarasa grows immensely throughout the series, it’s Shuri whose entire worldview must be torn down and rebuilt from scratch.

Our first glimpse of the Red King is as the worst kind of tyrant. When a young Sarasa accidentally runs out in front of his marching army, he—just a child himself—orders her to be killed. Thanks to intervention from Ageha (oh, so much to say about him here at some point), Sarasa’s life is spared, but the king returns just a few years later to remove the potential threat of “the child of destiny,” killing Tatara and pretty much wiping out Sarasa’s entire village.

Sarasa’s next encounter with him is at a remote hot spring, where she’s gone to soothe herself after suffering a wound in her escape as “Tatara.” There, Shuri’s just a guy, a bit too sure of himself, but still just a guy. Sarasa is put off by his arrogance, but after a second encounter, the two start to open up to each other—Sarasa about her plans to avenge her loved ones and Shuri about his plans to take control of his screwed-up family. On one hand, it’s set up as a classic tale of star-crossed lovers, but what Tamura really uses this for is to allow Sarasa to reach Shuri and introduce him to a new way of thinking without her blind hatred for the Red King getting in the way. And while this ultimately forces Sarasa to confront her own hatred, it’s Shuri whose ideas must be completely transformed, not only to be worthy of Sarasa, but also to become worthy of the people of Japan.

(Click images to enlarge. Read right-to-left.)

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I’ll be the first to admit that I really disliked Shuri in those early scenes in the hot springs, and I worried initially that he was going to be just another controlling shoujo love interest I’d be expected to adore. Fortunately, that wasn’t Tamura’s agenda in the slightest.

ANNA: Shuri really changes and evolves. It is a tricky thing to pull off, showing someone so unsympathetic at the beginning only to be completely transformed through their experiences, but Tamura pulls it off. And just as Sarasa manages to surround herself with loyal followers Shuri gradually puts together his own supporters as well.

MICHELLE: Like Sarasa’s, Shuri’s evolution is so well done because it’s hard-earned and gradual. His first chance to spend some significant time with Sarasa occurs when they travel to Seiran (home of the Blue King) together, each secretly thinking to use the other as cover. They end up participating in the sick race MJ mentioned earlier, and during it, they have their first clash about how to treat people. Though Shuri dismissed her views at the time, Sarasa’s words come back to him later, even though he is still unable to admit he’s made any mistakes.

And even after he’s seen Okinawa and been inspired, Shuri really only sees the flaws in Japan and how it could be different, but still nothing wrong about himself or anything he’s done. There’s a telling scene in volume nine where he’s talking about being reborn and one starts to expect some kind of big turning point… except on the next page he reveals that instead of being a king, he’s decided to become an absolute dictator.

(Click images to enlarge. Read right-to-left.)

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It’s clear that while some new thoughts are beginning to percolate in his brain, he still doesn’t truly get it. And really, his overall goals—a united Japan that is peaceful, prosperous, and green—aren’t so very different from Tatara’s. It’s just that his own ego is FULLY in the equation. Dominating the equation, in fact.

ANNA: Shuri’s arrogance is a defining characteristic. I’ve often thought that if he were transplanted into the current times, he’d be an effective CEO of a company. While he has more than enough ego to spare, he also has an uncanny ability to find people who will be loyal to him, and he uses their abilities to further his goals. In addition, Shuri’s confidence may contribute to him being a bit reckless, but his recklessness often leads to success as he often exhibits a certain kind of calculated ruthlessness when making his decisions. It is easy to see how other people would be drawn to him, because his potential for greatness is obvious.

scan0002KAREN: Shuri’s growth was exciting to watch because despite its harshness, it really, really took a long time for him to really and truly change. Where Sarasa was The Child of Destiny who was meant to change the world, Shuri really had to overcome his birthright and his destiny to become a better person, and worthy of Sarasa. But wow, how he was broken – his best friend dead, his capital burnt, deposed, forced into death race, sold into slavery – he’s hard to break and even harder to change. The reader roots for him to be a better person because there are glimpses and glimmers of a better person underneath, and what all of that intelligence and charisma could do, if used for good. The relationship between simply Shuri and simply Sarasa was important not just for the sake of romance, but to show a different side to the rebel leader and the Red King.

Sarasa and Shuri really have to learn to trust others – Sarasa’s worry is that she’s burdening others, a trait probably having to do with feeling like the left-behind sister of the Child of Destiny – while Shuri’s is a matter of pride. He is the son of the king, he is the Red King – as Michelle, said, ego – he clings to that to a point where it could have destroyed him. When he’s deposed and the common folk try to offer their help, he angrily brushes it aside. For this reason I enjoyed seeing his friendships with Nakijin and Yuna develop, although the Shuri/Nakijin bromance wasn’t the most intense one in the series (I would give the Cipher award for Best Bromance to Nachi and Hijiri, although I’m open to other nominations).

Now that we’re into Shuri, how about the other two major players from the royal family – the mercurial Asagi/Blue King and the scheming, deeply damaged Ginko/White King?

MJ: Oh, Asagi… Asagi. I e-mailed Michelle partway through the series to express my surprise that Tamura had made me half-fall for a character like Asagi. Then later, I fell the rest of the way. Kinda pathetic, really, but wow did I find him relatable later on. You could boil his entire character down to the one simple desire: to have someone—anyone—just one person love him best. And seriously, who can’t relate to that?

scan0004MICHELLE: I love the notion of Asagi as parasite—that’s the name of the chapter in which he first comes aboard Tatara’s ship, even—because he’s so cold and calculating yet really depends on others more than anyone. At first, his presence among Tatara’s followers really stressed me out because I just hated watching everyone being controlled by him so easily, but once Sarasa gains confidence as a leader she’s able to shut down some of his schemes and manages him more effectively. Of course, by this time he’s begun to be changed by proximity to her, as was the White King’s concern.

ANNA: Asagi is a fully realized character, but he’s also a bit of a plot contrivance, just because he actively prevents Sarasa and Shuri from finding out the truth about each other.

MJ: It’s interesting that you say that, Anna, because that idea hadn’t really crossed my mind at all. I mean, yes, he deliberately withholds the truth from both of them after he’s figured it out, but his motivations make so much sense, it hadn’t occurred to me to think of him as a contrivance. He’s so jealous of Shuri, and has been for so long (for very relatable reasons, if not good ones) that it seems perfectly natural to me that he’d cling to any power he had (or could imagine he had) over Shuri’s life. And in the end, he really has none at all. Meanwhile, the meaningful friendship he develops with Sarasa (despite his protestations) is one of my favorite relationships in the series.

KAREN: There were certain points with Asagi where I wish he’d grow a mustache so he’d have something to twirl as he plots away. Okay, he wasn’t ever that cartoonish, but he seemed very impressed with his own scheming – he did learn from a master, after all. But he never could quite have the White King’s detachment – and this proves to be his undoing to furthering her plots. Despite all his plans, he liked Sarasa and her group – those friendships humanized him more than he ever intended. He may be selfish, but he’s very salvageable – he thankfully never got as twisted as his mentor/mother/sister. Parasites can sometimes be beneficial, after all.

One character I did love right away was Ageha. I think he has other fans here as well?

MJ: It’s difficult for me to imagine any reader not loving Ageha. He makes an immediate impression by standing up to the Red King on Sarasa’s behalf, and things only go uphill from there. He’s a rare kind of heroic shoujo figure who can spend a major portion of his time crossdressing for a living, and still strike fear into the heart of… well, really anyone. There’s a scene at one point late in the series, when Ageha has become a source of terror for those in King Ukon’s circles, and he passes Shuri on the street, dressed as a woman, strumming lightly on a small stringed instrument. And it’s one of the most menacing things in the world. Only Ageha could pull that off—both the grace of it and the foreboding.

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He’s also one of the series’ most sympathetic characters, and the most tragic from my point of view. I couldn’t help half-shipping him with Sarasa, just because he was so entirely worthy of her, unlike any other man in the series, really. And I honestly cried when he sat to have a smoke with the severed head of his dear friend, Taro, who had been executed for being a journalist.

ANNA: Ageha is so larger than life and fascinating! He’s one of my favorite supporting characters in manga of all time. In addition to Basara, I would have happily read a 20+ volume series just about him. I think with Ageha as an example, Sarasa starts to get a sense of how important Tatara is as a symbol, and her use of theatricality in addition to military tactics helps her win confrontations. Ageha is in many ways the perfect mentor, showing up just when Sarasa needs him, and disappearing when it seems like she might rely on him too much.

MICHELLE: I love Ageha very, very much. One thing I was particularly struck by this reread is how he initially keeps some distance in his relationship with Tatara and still acts friendly with some of the people she opposes. It’s not emblazoned brightly, but Tamura does show this how this came to be in a conversation Ageha has with Senju in volume nine. Senju asks, “So now whose side are you on?” Ageha replies, “Now? I can’t say.” His thoughts continue with, “I haven’t heard from Tatara yet. What kind of country do you want to build? How will you change things? I still haven’t heard…”

When Sarasa returns from Okinawa, inspired, she addresses her followers with specific goals for the country’s future for the first time. Ageha looks on, impressed, and from then on suddenly becomes a much more committed ally. Has he chosen his side at last? He’s there for her in a huge way all throughout the Abashiri Prison arc—we must talk about this, which boasts several very painful scenes—and one eventually comes to realize that he’s been hoping this whole time. Hoping she was the one who’d change things, and helping her in any way he could, but maintaining some distance just in case she ended up a disappointment.

MJ: He also manages to be respected by pretty much everyone, including those who oppose Tatara the most. Besides his complicated history with Shuri’s most trusted ally, Shido, one scene that also springs to mind is in the Blue King’s castle, where he’s able to speak plainly, insulting the Blue King (the fake one, not Asagi—that’s a whole thing) who is begging Ageha to become his personal entertainer and somehow getting away with it—in part thanks to Asagi’s intervention, but also just because that’s who Ageha is. He’s not someone who can be dismissed, even in anger.

basara-taroMICHELLE: I did wonder how he got to be so influential. Perhaps it’s due to his career as Kicho, which allowed him access to people in positions of power, who he was then able to charm with his beguiling dance.

MJ: I think that’s got to be a major factor—much is made of the fact that he is beguiling to everyone—and I also think it’s his presence. As a former slave, Ageha went through a lot to recover himself as a person (with the help of the troupe that took him in), and as a result, I think he’s more certain of who he is and who other people really are than anyone else in the story. That alone is a real source of power.

MICHELLE: I can see that. Hence the lack of kowtowing to authority figures.

KAREN: Michelle, I wondered that too! He must be a great dancer.

I loved him most when he took a despondent Sarasa, who was heartbroken over finding out that Shuri was the Red King, away from her supportive cocoon (which also has some less-than-supportive elements) to try to make her deal with everything. I think only Ageha could have done that; she knows that he’s been through much, much worse and I think he’s the one who loves her enough to essentially abandon her when she needs it.

And then he cuts his hair. That devastated me, because his support seemed to be the most important – he seemed to be the only one that got Sarasa and the rebel leader Tarata.

I wondered at that point if he had really given up on her being “the one”. His destiny – that he would one day meet a woman worth dying for – is even heavier than Sarasa’s. Did he know when he sacrificed his eye for her when she was a child? Then he’s in Kyoto, and is it Taro’s death that drives him to his endgame? Or is he realizing, like Sarasa, that he can’t outrun his destiny?

MJ: I love that you brought all this up, Karen, and especially the cutting of his hair, because it seemed so… final. I’m grateful that it wasn’t, and that he came back to Sarasa in the end, but his story is the most painful for me, ultimately, because I have the same questions as you do, and I wonder if he was really sure, even in the end, that she was that “woman worth dying for.”

ANNA: Ageha’s status as a person apart also serves as a contrast to the familial bonds that develop between Sarasa and her companions. It is easy to see that Ageha has plenty of friends, but something about him always remains solitary.

MJ: You know, Anna, I think maybe that’s why the scene where he brings a smoke for Taro’s severed head affected me so strongly. It’s such an intimate moment, really, even though Taro’s gone. We don’t see Ageha showing that kind of personal vulnerability that often.

ANNA: He isn’t often shown that vulnerable, although he does seem to have an immense capacity to endure suffering in addition to his almost super-human personal magnetism. I think it all contributes to his mystique and the way everyone around Ageha responds to him as a larger than life character.

MICHELLE: This reminds me of something he thinks while incarcerated at Abashiri Prison. In order to protect Sarasa, he gives his body to the leader of the cell in which they’re placed. Sarasa is absolutely anguished about this. Ageha tells her to close her eyes and cover her ears, and then narrates, “From birth.. my tarot has been the “hanged man.” It is the card of sacrifice, ordeals, and unrequited love. Yeah, it’s dull. But you know what? You are worth it.”

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MJ: Even with all that tremendous mystique, I’ll admit that Ageha’s strong presence in Sarasa’s life actually came as a bit of a surprise to me. It’s Nagi who is the most influential early on, and it’s not that he’s exactly replaced by Ageha, but somehow Ageha comes to understand Sarasa the most thoroughly. In fact, the only person who I think comes close to the same level of understanding is Sarasa’s mother, who isn’t even with her for the bulk of the series.

I have a favorite scene between Sarasa’s mother and Shuri, in which she’s clearly figured out who Shuri is and tells him about her daughter. And it’s amazing how well she knows Sarasa, even though they’ve been separated for so long and though it seemed that Tatara was the focus of their parents’ attention before that. Her honest assessment of Sarasa in that scene reminds me of Ageha somehow, as though Ageha is in some way fulfilling her role in Sarasa’s life in her absence.

Well, her role, but with more killing. And maiming. Much more maiming.

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MICHELLE: Sarasa does liken him to a parent at one point!

ANNA: I feel like the discussion of maiming is a good jumping off point to discuss the great action scenes and set pieces in Basara. One of the reasons why I enjoy this series so much is because it invests a ton of emotion in action scenes.

MICHELLE: You’re so right, Anna. What springs to mind immediately is the incredibly intense battle in volume three between Chacha’s crew and the Red King’s forces, who appear to have them surrounded. A desperate yet determined Sarasa stealthily swims through the king’s fleet (using a shark for camouflage at one point), boards a third party’s ship, and then uses their cannon to blow the fleet to smithereens. This is all very exciting, and a huge victory for Tatara, but amidst the carnage, Sarasa spots the silhouettes of soldiers suffering and dying in flames. “Those are red demons,” she tries telling herself. “The red demons that destroyed my village.” But that doesn’t stop her tears from flowing, and from this point on, she’s always cognizant that even her enemies have loved ones that will mourn their passing.

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MJ: That’s one of my favorite battle scenes as well, Michelle. Another pretty spectacular sea battle is later in volume nineteen, in which Tatara’s army has reached such a desperate point that they have no choice but to blow up their own ship—one which has become home to so many of their people. It’s an incredibly tense battle, involving enemy armies and a group of assassins who have been sent to kill Tatara. I’m not always big on manga battles, because I often find them difficult to follow, but even with so much going on, Tamura leads us through so expertly. As a result, it’s both exciting and extremely moving on a number of levels. The sinking of the Suzaku flagship feels both tragic and somehow freeing—like it was one last comfort necessary to cast off in order for Tatara’s comrades to be free.

ANNA: I think Tamura always does a great job at making the battles emotionally meaningful and a demonstration of character development. Sarasa learns with each confrontation, and how people fight tells the reader something essential about their personalities.

MJ: At first when you brought up the action scenes in particular, Anna, I thought I would have trouble coming up with favorites, because I’m such an emotionally-driven reader. But as you say, the battles in Basara are so emotionally meaningful, they are really completely essential to my experience with the series and so many of the things about it I hold dear.

Do you have a favorite scene of your own? Or a favorite set piece?

ANNA: There are so many great action scenes that the favorites that come to mind are likely to just be centered around whatever volumes I’ve read recently. That being said, I think the scenes when Sarasa is trapped in prison in volumes 11-12 are particularly harrowing and claustrophobic. I’ve just finished rereading volumes 13-16, and the battle in volume 14 where Sarasa and Shuri confront each other as Tatara and the Red King is particularly devastating emotionally. You can see them work through the psychological blocks they inadvertantly inacted about each other’s identity, and they are both just utterly destroyed by their new knowledge finding out that the person they love is their hated enemy. Seeing Sarasa slip into a fugue state as she forces out the commands to kill the Red King made me wonder if this was a blow she’d be able to recover from.

Also, my favorite action scenes would also be anything featuring Ageha, since he is so fabulous.

KAREN: Tamura has the sort of art that works so well for action scenes – its very fluid and lively, but she still manages to make it all personal. These are the characters we’ve grown to care about, after all. The action scene in particular that stands out to me is the battle where Sarasa and Shuri realize who the other is – the battle is rising and then there’s this stunning, shattering confrontation in the middle of it. So much action, but there’s an amazing, emotional heart to it all.

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MJ: Anna and Karen, I’m so glad you brought that particular scene up, because I thought of it as well, and I just wasn’t sure how to talk about it. Because what’s so stunning about it is that confrontation you mention—the sudden inaction in the middle of all this action. Everything comes to a complete halt, with the on-screen action matching perfectly the emotional state of the two leads. There, in the midst of their passionate rage, they see each other and their worlds just… stop.

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This is something we encounter often in romantic fiction, where two lovers (or soon-to-be lovers) spot each other across a crowded room and their hearts stop and everything else suddenly falls away. Except that convention is nearly always used to illustrate something wonderful—that heart-stopping recognition of true love, the spontaneous creation of a slow-motion universe of two. But in this case, Tamura does something very similar to illustrate two hearts shattering to pieces over that recognition. Everything else falls away, but the universe they’re left with—that universe of two—is the worst thing they can imagine.

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MICHELLE: One thing I especially love about the way Tamura has structured her story is that we are privy to how painful this is for both of them. It’s not just the heroine realizing that the one she loves is her enemy, who has dealt her many personal blows. She has also dealt him many personal blows, killing Shido and putting the final nail in the coffin for Suo, the city he and Shido planned together and loved so much.

MJ: Well said, Michelle! I was thinking in particular about that scene that I really appreciated that they were *both* completely ruined by the realization of who they really were. I half expected one of them to attack anyway—to be enraged by the revelation rather than ruined. That they both broke down so completely not only felt entirely refreshing, but it also added depth to the love scene earlier in the volume. It made it clear that their love was real to both of them, and not something that even hate could overcome.

ANNA: I also loved the aftermath of the scene where Asagi is saving Shuri for further torment and he becomes more and more frustrated with Shuri’s utter indifference to him. It was a small moment of comedy after some very emotional events.

basara-pineappleMICHELLE: Tamura is positively wonderful at including small moments of levity amidst serious goings-on! I adore the little background reunions between Kagero (Ageha’s owl) and his son, Shinbashi, every time their two humans meet up, for example.

And there’s another memorable gag in volume fourteen right in the middle of Nachi’s tense espionage mission. Not only is he attempting to recover someone’s body so that he may be buried alongside the woman he loved, but he’s also been tasked with sabotaging the palace’s well. While skulking about he comes across Nakijin, Shuri’s Okinawan ally, and they both immediately are stricken by the resemblance of the other’s hair to a pineapple. This is funny enough on its own, but it happens again in a few pages and still elicits giggles.

I also love the sidebar profile for King Ukon where someone off-panel is hurling a rock at him. I think Tamura-sensei and I must be on the same wavelength, humor-wise.

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ANNA: I think the little flashes of humor is one thing that keeps the series from seeming long or tedious, even though it stretches across many volumes.

KAREN: I really like Shinbashi – and sometimes his bits are taking place in the background, as if Shinbashi is having his own epic adventure as well. Tamura also does some great side-panels and her “Tam-Tam Time” is really wacky stuff. The extra gag stories are also worth reading – she clearly loves her characters but also loves to mess with them – the high-school and singing contest re-imaginations were a lot of fun.

The other running gag I liked was Shuri’s “bird mouth” moments, which his daughter seems to have inherited.

MJ: I’ll admit that I often skip gag strips in series like these, because I’m usually anxious to get to the next volume and I hardly ever find them funny anyway. But like Hiromu Arakawa (again? I really didn’t expect Fullmetal Alchemist to come up at all in this roundtable, let alone twice—heh) Yumi Tamura is actually funny.

KAREN: MJ, I got a very Hiromu Arakawa vibe in her off-story panels/pages as well. I tended not to skip because unlike other extra stories, I needed the palate-cleanser of offbeat humor some of the dramatic and heart-breaking places where each volume left off.

MICHELLE: I think this may be my cue to unleash the torrent of squee I’ve been holding in: I freaking love Shinbashi SO MUCH. Even though there’s been plenty of horrible things happening since the beginning of the series, the first scene to truly make me bawl happens in volume eleven. Sarasa, Ageha, and Asagi are on their way to Abashiri Prison and when Shinbashi objects to the treatment they receive, he gets thrown out of the cart just as it’s beginning to snow. He can’t fly yet, and we get several just awful pages of Sarasa’s anguish as she pleads for the driver to stop.

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Ageha attempts to bolster her spirits, but we don’t see Shinbashi again for a couple of volumes.

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When we do, he can fly and has a new home. Sarasa acknowledges that it would probably be better for him to stay there, but he rejoins her and her reaction of pure unadulterated joy at his return is quite literally making me tear up right now just thinking about it.

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MJ: Oh, Michelle, YES. I kind of lost my mind with grief when Shinbashi was lost in that volume, even though I felt that it was very likely we’d see him again. And his eventual reunion with Sarasa… GAH. I think you and I had very similar reactions to all of this. In general, I love that fact that Shinbashi is so much a part of everything—even in the love scene I mentioned earlier, he’s around, barely avoiding getting smushed in all the excitement. It means a lot to me that he’s so important.

MICHELLE: Me, too. I mean, in a way, it’s like he didn’t just return to/for Sarasa but chose to be part of the rebellion rather than seize his chance at a cushy life. Like Karen says, he’s having his own epic adventure, too! There’s a great page in volume fourteen too, where he’s just returned from his first solo messenger assignment, then flies back to Sarasa’s side wearing the most adorably determined expression.

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ANNA: I think that Shinbashi is the most fully realized animal sidekick that I’ve seen in manga, in terms of him having a distinct personality and adding an essential layer to the story.

KAREN: Anna, I agree with you about how nice it is to have a useful animal sidekick. For communication purposes alone that’s a great contribution – like all of Sarasa’s other allies he’s very useful and, as Michelle pointed out, chose to be there.

MJ: This may sound a bit random, but you know I’ve had Harry Potter on the brain lately, and in some way having Shinbashi around, being so wonderfully written, has helped me get over my seemingly never-ending grief over the death of Hedwig. I never knew I had such a thing for owls, but there it is.

MICHELLE: You are not alone. I thought of Hedwig, too. Of course, now you’re making me ponder which characters in Basara match to which characters in Harry Potter, but while some fit, I think most probably don’t.

MJ: Ha! Well, I’ve already talked at length about Asagi and Draco Malfoy, but I hadn’t really thought further about anyone else. Well, maybe the White King as Voldemort? Though she’s a lot more sympathetic than Voldemort ever is.

MICHELLE: Hayato as Ron? Ageha as Lupin? These are just off the top of my head, but maybe. I guess Nagi and Kaku could be Dumbledore and Hagrid? Hee.

MJ: Ageha’s such a badass, maybe he’s Remus and Sirius all rolled up into one.

KAREN: off-topic, but when mentioning other fantasy franchises, every time Masunaga popped up I totally got a Lee Pace-as-Thranduil-in-The Hobbit image going on, and now I can’t shake it – I think it’s the eyebrows combined with an odd headdress that did that to me.

MJ: I love that imagery, Karen! I don’t know that I had many major fantasy references spring to mind while reading (other than what I mentioned already) though I did at one point mentally compare the fake Blue King to Joffrey Baratheon.

MICHELLE: I guess we ought to try to wrest ourselves back on to Basara itself. One question I wanted to put to the group is pretty broad… do you personally have any favorite scenes that have not been mentioned so far?

MJ: There are a thousand moments in the series proper that I love with my whole heart—too many to even sift through, really. But for some reason, my mind keeps bringing me back to one of the side stories in the final volume called “Black Story: Cherry.” It’s a bit of backstory involving Masunaga and Tamon, two of the characters we first met in the Abashiri Prison arc. Both were among four boys chosen as potential wielders of the Genbu sword—one of the four swords passed down through generations that become central to Sarasa’s quest for allies to join her rebellion.

The four are sent into ceremonial test to see which of them is worthy to inherit the sword. Masunaga is frustrated that Tamon—by far the best sword fighter among them—lacks the aggression required for a warrior, but when the get into the test, it’s only Tamon who is able to see that “foes” they are fighting are actually each other. In the end, he is given the Genbu sword, which as it turns out, is made of bamboo.

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Partly, I like this story because I like gentle Tamon, who wants nothing more than to spend his days fishing. But I also like the Genbu sword as a symbol—as a warning against the thirst for blood that consumed the original sword and its wielder.

ANNA: For me really most of the scenes in volume 25 that concluded the story were incredibly effective. The last time we see Ageha, Sarasa’s final choice, all of it added up to a tremendously satisfying ending.

MICHELLE: I mentioned before about scenes between supporting characters being fascinating, and one relationship that I just could not get enough of was the one that developed between General Kazan and Chigusa, Sarasa’s mother. Shortly after Chigusa was captured (and subsequently abused by the Red King’s men), she comes under Kazan’s protection. He’s clearly in awe of her beauty and dignity, and she lives for a time as his guest, unbeknownst to the Red King. Asagi sees to it that this secret eventually comes out, and though Shuri gives Kazan several chances to claim that this apparent treachery was all a clever ruse, loyal Kazan refuses to take the offered way out, because doing so would sully his feelings for Chigusa. Chigusa is stunned. Despite what Kazan did to her son, he’s still clearly an honorable man. I just love that so much.

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I’m also haunted by a particularly indelible sequence of pages at the end of volume 22, but I’m not going to spoil them!

KAREN: It’s hard to pick just one! But if I must… it would be from volume 16, where Sarasa finally meets with her mother again after so long. I’m glad that Michelle mentioned Chigusa and Kazan, I think that experience gave her some of the wisdom that she was able to use to counsel her daughter. “I can’t do it… I can’t hate anyone anymore.”

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It took other people to bring Sarasa back from the shock of finding out that Shuri was the Red King – as I mentioned before, Ageha, but her mother is able to bring her some peace yet gives her permission to feel the pain she’s been carrying. Only after she lets go of the pain and guilt that she bears, Sarasa is not just functional again – she is able to articulate her vision of the Japan she’s fighting for – and she’s also able to want to see Shuri again, to see what his dreams are for Japan. It’s the first step in reconciling Shuri as the Red King, her lover and her enemy, which will all lead up to the final battle and its outcome, as we will see in volume 25. That ending couldn’t have been as satisfying and justified without the groundwork being laid – in this case, with simple acts of compassion to dying men on a frozen mountain.

MJ: Another scene that springs to mind comes near the end of the series. Tatara has brought her army into a final battle with the Red King, who appears to be fighting on behalf of the royal family. She’s been confused the entire time, though, because Shuri’s been fighting in an oddly extravagant manner—with showy effects, expensive equipment—even a freaking elephant. Finally, as the battle reaches its climax, Shuri reveals that he’s deliberately collected all the wealth and old relics of the royal regime to be destroyed in battle.

What’s spectacular to me about this scene, is that it simultaneously demonstrates Shuri’s new commitment to a different way of life for the people of Japan, while also showcasing his still-enormous pride. Shuri’s so proud of himself for pulling this off right under the noses of the aristocracy, he practically radiates it. I just love the fact that Tamura was careful not to change his personality regardless of his shift in political philosophy.

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Thank you so much, Anna and Karen, for joining us in this discussion! And thank you, Michelle, for inspiring me to working to collect all these volumes. I expected to love Basara, but I’m not sure I was prepared for just how much I’d love it. I finished the last volume just a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve wanted nothing more than to start from the beginning and read it all again.

I dearly hope that Viz will be able to offer this series digitally someday soon, but I simply have to say that if you’re a manga fan, a fantasy fan, a or even just a fan of extraordinary storytelling, it’s worth trying to hunt down all 27 print volumes. It’s that good.


All images © Yumi Tamura/Shogakukan, Inc. New and adapted artwork and text © Viz Media. Color images from the Basara Postcard Calendar Book. This article was written for the Yumi Tamura Manga Moveable Feast. Check out Tokyo Jupiter for more!


More full-series discussions with MJ & Michelle:

Moon Child | Fullmetal Alchemist | Paradise Kiss
The “Color of…” Trilogy | One Thousand and One Nights | Please Save My Earth
Princess Knight | Fruits Basket | Chocolat
Wild Adapter (with guest David Welsh) | Tokyo Babylon (with guest Danielle Leigh)

Full-series multi-guest roundtables: Hikaru no Go | Banana Fish | Gerard & Jacques | Flower of Life

Filed Under: OFF THE SHELF Tagged With: basara, Manga Moveable Feast, MMF, Yumi Tamura

Fanservice Friday: Draco Malfoy & the Blue King

May 24, 2013 by MJ 18 Comments

(Warning: This article contains major spoilers for Yumi Tamura’s Basara and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.)


Confession time: Some of you may have gleaned this from our fanfiction roundtable a couple of years ago, but I’ll admit it plainly now. I was a fan of Draco Malfoy—not so much the Draco Malfoy that J.K. Rowling actually ended up writing, but the Draco Malfoy I thought she was writing, all the way up until the final book in the series.

It was all incredibly clear, you see. This spoiled, fair-haired, delicate flower whose life of privilege had turned him into a bigoted, arrogant bully was the polar opposite of hero Harry—slick on the outside and twisted within, smart and talented, but taught to lie and cheat and cry to daddy whenever anything went wrong. He was Harry’s negative image. When, early on in volume five, the highly revered (but generally reticent) Sorting Hat chose to sing a song to the Hogwarts student body, warning them that the four houses of Hogwarts must unite or crumble from within, that meant that somehow the brave Gryffindors and ambitious Slytherins must learn to work together, and who better to serve as the catalyst for that but Draco Malfoy?

Obsessed with Harry from the beginning and eternally offended by Harry’s refusal to take his hand, it seemed obvious that Draco Malfoy was the key to heeding the Hat’s warning. And when, in the sixth book, Draco came face-to-face with the real terror of the Dark Lord—reduced to crying in a haunted bathroom over his horrifying plight—finally humanized in his darkest moments—Rowling’s plan seemed to be firmly underway. (I once wrote that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was my favorite Harry/Draco fanfic of 2005, and I wasn’t really joking.) As a result, not only would Hogwarts and the entire wizarding world be saved, but both Draco and Harry would have learned to be better people—people who could tolerate and even embrace their differences and use them to their best advantage.

Except that wasn’t Rowling’s plan. At all. Because apparently what the Hat really meant was “the four houses except Slytherin,” so in the brave students’ moment of glory, the Slytherins were sent to the dungeons and Draco Malfoy slunk off in a cowardly, shameful fashion with his cowardly, shameful parents to live a cowardly, shameful life.

I was devastated, honestly. I mean, I’d managed to weather the senseless death of a favorite character, the cruel murder of an owl, and some of the worst romantic dialogue ever written, but I just couldn’t believe that Rowling had squandered a character she seemed to have put so much work into. And was the Hat just singing for its health? WTF, J.K. Rowling? My Draco, he was gone.

Then, I met Asagi.

(Read right-to-left.)

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It’s important to note that Asagi is actually talking about himself in this panel. Though known to the public (and even to the so-called Blue King himself) as the leader of the Blue King’s guard, it’s Asagi—first introduced in volume four of Yumi Tamura’s epic shoujo fantasy, Basara—who is actually the Blue King, pulling all the strings from behind the scenes. He’s proud of himself and his cunning, and extraordinarily arrogant, but when, after the false Blue King’s fall, he joins up with rebel leader Tatara (with the intention to ruin both Tatara and their mutual enemy, the Red King) the cracks in his shiny, shiny armor begin to show.

basara-cackle2Thanks to his proximity to the story’s heroine, Sarasa, and her love interest, Shuri, during the Blue King’s horrifying “race,” along with a little inside knowledge (the Red King is his younger brother, after all), Asagi is the first person in the story to become aware that Sarasa and Shuri are, in fact, Tatara and the Red King—sworn enemies in love with each other—so his initial plans revolve around trying to control the circumstances under which they will discover this (and be discovered) in order to ensure maximum damage to both sides.

In the meantime, he connives and wheedles. He plots to create conflicts within Tatara’s camp. He sexually harasses Sarasa by skulking around her bedroom and stealing a kiss from her when she’s lost her eyesight. He’s a hateful menace in every way. He even cackles with glee like a freaking supervillain.

No, seriously. Check it out. —>

There’s no romanticizing Asagi. He’s a vicious brat whose lifelong jealousy of his hotshot little brother has consumed him to the point that, not only is he intent on being hurtful to others, he’s simultaneously hurting himself by letting his own issues render him a pawn in the game of someone who doesn’t even really care about him all that much. He’s acting on the White King’s orders, but to his own peril, as she’s really only using him to achieve her own revenge.

Any of this sounding familiar?

It was just a few days ago, while working on our upcoming Basara roundtable, that I realized… Asagi is the Draco Malfoy I thought J.K. Rowling was writing. And wow am I glad to see him at long last.

I said there’s no romanticizing Asagi, and I meant it. He’s not a romantic figure at all. Unlike Ageha, whose dignity and good faith in the face of great suffering frame him as a truly heroic and romantic supporting character, Asagi is small and petty and difficult to care about. But, like most of us, it’s Asagi’s weakness that is ultimately his undoing, and fortunately it’s undoing that Asagi needs most.

I said in the Basara roundtable that Asagi’s whole character could be essentially boiled down to a single desire: “to have someone—anyone—just one person love him best.” I do think that’s true, but it’s probably oversimplified. Yes, Asagi wants someone to love him, but perhaps more specifically, he wants someone to believe that he’s worthwhile. For all his arrogance, Asagi’s greatest weakness is his own self-esteem, which is so low and so twisted up by years of outside manipulation that when Sarasa does something really wacky like trust him with something important, it throws him completely for a loop.

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Sarasa, of course, has no idea what she’s done, but the results speak for themselves.

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That’s how you write a hero—in this case, Sarasa—and how you write a Draco Malfoy (or, in this case, Asagi). Let the hero take a freaking chance on him, in genuine good faith, and give him the thing he most needs in order to begin to believe in himself.

Asagi muses above on the fact that the fake Blue King (the “Serpent King”) had trusted him and wonders why this feels different. The difference of course, is that what he had with the Serpent King wasn’t trust at all. It was dependence, for sure, and perhaps some sense of loyalty, but the Serpent King didn’t so much trust him as need him, and that’s not the same thing. Like love, trust is something given freely and in good faith, and counting on someone because they’re bound to serve and protect you isn’t actually the same thing.

As the story goes on, Sarasa proves that her trust also comes with attentive care and affection. And I kinda love the fact that, here, she pretty much acknowledges straight out that he’s a delicate flower.

(Click images to enlarge. Read right-to-left.)

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Asagi is nothing if not a master of self-deception, and he spends most of the series after he joins up with Tatara explaining carefully to anyone connected to the White King that he is definitely not starting to believe in Tatara or care about her or her cause. Meanwhile, he’s pretty definitely falling in love with her (or something that looks a hell of a lot like love) and learning what it’s like to actually have someone to protect whom he can trust to protect him in return.

(Click images to enlarge. Read right-to-left.)

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It’s starting to sound a lot like I ‘ship Asagi with Sarasa (Tatara), isn’t it? And I’d be lying if I said it had never crossed my mind. After all, I ‘shipped Draco with Harry all those years, and that’s where I’ve been going with this entire post, haven’t I? The truth is, though, seeing where Asagi and Tatara’s relationship goes in Basara actually makes me think that I’d rather have seen Harry and Draco become real friends more than anything else. Because even if I occasionally harbored thoughts of Sarasa throwing over Shuri (who, let’s face it, isn’t all that much better a catch, at least not early on, and if she’s not going to fall for Ageha… well, there’s no helping her) for Asagi, and certainly that’s what Asagi would like to have happen, I think what Asagi needs more than anything is a friend—someone who won’t fall out of love with him or become complicated in any way—just a friend who can teach him what that even means. And Sarasa is so beautifully, perfectly that, I think it’s ultimately best for both of them.

The following is one of my favorite scenes in the entire series. It’s emotionally riveting, intense, and one of the best examples of why Tamura-sensei’s realization of this character is so much better than anything J.K. Rowling’s ever done. So much so, that I’m blown away every time I read it as though I’ve never seen it before in my life.

(Click images to enlarge. Read right-to-left.)

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The emotional impact of that scene is only topped by this one, in which Tamura shows us Sarasa’s face and only the back of Asagi’s head for the entire exchange. And that back of the head says everything. It’s brilliantly drawn and precisely in tune with both their characters. Obviously there’s a lot more going on in an epic series like Basara besides a whole slew of intimacy porn between the heroine and one supporting character, but if you know me, you know that’s my fanservice.

(Click images to enlarge. Read right-to-left.)

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I could go on and on. I would go on and on, but the truth is that I so hope that Viz will eventually be able to give this series a digital release, and I don’t want to give everything away (the scene leading up to the last few pages I shared here is one of the most intense and emotionally resonant of the series—and with this series, that’s saying a lot). Suffice it to say that with a character like Asagi, written by someone as thoughtful and brilliant as Yumi Tamura, things are going to be complicated all the way through the end.

Some part of me still wishes that J.K. Rowling had followed through on her promises for Draco. Another realizes that she never could have written him as well as did Yumi Tamura.


All images © Yumi Tamura/Shogakukan, Inc. New and adapted artwork and text © Viz Media. This article was written for the Yumi Tamura Manga Moveable Feast. Check out Tokyo Jupiter for more!

Filed Under: Fanservice Friday Tagged With: basara, Manga Moveable Feast, MMF, Yumi Tamura

Off the Shelf: Angel Sanctuary, MMF Edition

April 21, 2013 by MJ and Michelle Smith 8 Comments

thumb-6169-AGS_01_webMICHELLE: Hey, MJ! When two angels meet, what do they say to each other?

MJ: Well, judging from the title we’re reading this week, something like, “Die, die, DIE!”?

MICHELLE: The punchline is technically “Halo!,” but I admit that your suggestion is much more appropriate!

I can’t remember whose turn it is to summarize, but I have a feeling you’ll do a great job with Angel Sanctuary, so want to give it a go?

MJ: I’ll do my best!

So, this month’s Manga Moveable Feast is dedicated to the works of Kaori Yuki, an artist whose work I’d had essentially no exposure to at all before the past few days. Though most of her existing work in English was published before I became a manga fan, Viz Media’s new practice of re-releasing older shoujo series in digital form has suddenly made one of them easily available. As Michelle has already indicated, that series is Angel Sanctuary, currently being released at VizManga.com.

Angel Sanctuary begins with the story of Setsuna Mudo, a scrappy high school student with a reputation for fighting, though his weakness as a fighter is that he falls asleep at the sight of blood. His other, greater weakness is that he harbors strong feelings of romantic love for his younger sister, Sara—feelings that she unfortunately returns in kind, which is a source of deep shame for them both.

As it turns out, Setsuna is actually the reincarnation of Alexiel, a powerful angel who long ago rebelled against the growing cruelty of the angelic realm, following the disappearance of God. Alexiel was ultimately defeated and sentenced to be reincarnated into misery, over and over again, but not before sealing away her twin brother, Rosiel, who had led the fight against her.

Though Alexiel has never retained memories from one reincarnation to the next, she’s been protected through all of them by a demon-like personage who makes agreements with humans to carry out their deepest wishes in return for taking control of their mortal bodies to keep himself in Alexiel’s company. In Setsuna’s lifetime, this demon lives in the body of Sakuya Kira, Setsuna’s oldest friend and protector.

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Meanwhile, Rosiel’s faithful seek to awaken him from exile by way of a video game called “Angel Sanctuary,” which sacrifices the lives of the humans who play it in order to gather the power required to return Rosiel to corporeal form. This quest is led by Katan, a former lower being who was elevated to angelic status by Rosiel back during the height of his power.

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MICHELLE: Nicely done! (Of course, the backstory doesn’t come out nearly as cleanly or clearly in the actual manga, but after a first volume that is, frankly, somewhat of a mess, the pacing for these revelations improves a good deal.)

After tainting himself by taking innocent human life, Katan is dismayed to find that Rosiel, whom he had hoped would end an ongoing power struggle in Heaven, is insane (and probably always has been) and obsessed with tormenting Setsuna to the point that Alexiel awakens, so that he might kill her.

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Meanwhile, Kurai and Arachne—two demon survivors formerly protected by Alexiel—also seek the awakening, but for different reasons. This is complicated when Kurai falls in love with Setsuna, since he would cease to exist if Alexiel were to return.

MJ: I’d actually like to return to your parenthetical point up there, because this is really a pretty big deal. After all, I think we both originally thought we’d simply stop after the first excruciating volume, and it was only duty that pushed me on further, at which point I discovered that the story really does get going at long last. Before that, Angel Sanctuary is, to use your words at the time, “quite the slog.”

Unfortunately, some fairly crucial revelations (in terms of making this story work at all) are withheld until the third volume—I’m thinking particularly of the truth about Alexiel’s painful reincarnations. Up until that point, Setsuna and Sara’s agonizing love story feels more like some kind of authorial fetish rather than a meaningful plot point, and given that this is one of the most important relationships in the series, I think this contributed greatly to the “slog” impression, at least on my part. Admittedly, I’m also vastly more interested in the relationships and general character development than I am in the series’ complicated angel mythology, so perhaps this affected me more strongly than it might others, but damn. A little explanation earlier on would have gone a long way towards compelling me forward with something approaching enthusiasm. As it is, I crawled my way to volume three with hands and knees increasingly bloodied. It was not pleasant.

MICHELLE: My experience was quite the same. I don’t have exact quotes to hand, but something about Yuki-sensei’s author-talk columns gave me the feeling that she was congratulating herself for her audaciousness for tackling the subject of incest, so that put me off somewhat. And I have almost no interest in angel power struggles at any time, so hard-to-decipher angel power struggles are even less compelling. This ties in with what I think is the chief flaw of Angel Sanctuary in the early chapters—information overload, before we’ve had time to get to know or care about these characters.

There’s a telling note at the end of volume two, actually, where Yuki-sensei writes:

When someone says, “If you take this part slowly, there’ll be more feeling.” I have to reply, “But this chapter needs to go up to this part of the storyline.” And so, I cut out some, but it’s not enough, so I end up taking out sappy dialogue.

I think she should’ve listened to those people a bit more! Not that I necessarily want more sappy dialogue, but taking things more slowly might’ve, for example, allowed readers to be able to see Sara as her own person—someone who turns out to be stronger and more interesting than I initially expected—before focusing on how she and Setsuna are in love with each other.

MJ: Yes, exactly. I was surprised to find that, by the end of the third volume, I was actually beginning to care about their relationship. And that in itself should be surprising, because it’s the kind of relationship I normally would find compelling from the start, if I cared about the characters in the slightest. It’s worth noting that amidst the recent spate of fanservice-laden, incest-themed moe titles we’ve been seeing, Satsuna and Sara’s plight reads as particularly poignant. It’s never played for laughs, it’s genuinely heartbreaking—it’s got classic romantic tragedy written all over it. It’s more Flowers in the Attic than I Don’t Like You At All, Big Brother!! and I’ll admit I ate that series up with a spoon when I was a teen.

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MICHELLE: And though it may be tragic, it’s not as if the characters are playing at a bit of drama. One of the first scenes that got me interested in Sara occurs early in volume two, when Rosiel’s flunky has distributed pictures that look as if Setsuna and Sara are kissing, and she’s been called in to the office at her school. The nun lectures, “Feelings of love between brother and sister belong only to silly, spoiled girls who have fantasies of being some tragic heroine.” Sara’s internal denials of this were what, for the first time, made me realize that she truly was equally serious in her love for Setsuna.

And thankfully, despite the shaky start, I did come to care about other relationships in the series, too. I have a great deal of sympathy for Katan, for example, who sacrificed much for Rosiel’s sake, only to be cast aside for not being obedient enough. And then there’s Kira, who was the one bright spot early on and who continues to be fascinating, as he at first denies that he could possess any affection for Setsuna the “mere human,” but eventually must acknowledge that the merger with his human host has rendered him capable of love.

MJ: I agree—both the relationships you mention here end up being very compelling, and I’d like to discuss them both, too. Let’s start with Katan and Rosiel, because it’s one that gets fleshed out a bit earlier than the others, I think. What I find most heartbreaking here are Katan’s realizations over the course of the first few volumes, because he really is so loyal. He sees Rosiel as a true savior, and is utterly devastated when he finally realizes that, with the exception of himself, Rosiel has acquired all his devoted followers by using some kind of magic capsule to turn them into mind-controlled puppets. I found it particularly interesting that it wasn’t just the discovery of Rosiel’s means that horrified Katan, but specifically that Rosiel resorted to this method when many of his puppets actually had been truly loyal to Rosiel before they were turned. The fact that Rosiel was unwilling to trust that he could lead by appealing to others’ free will seemed to be what really upset Katan.

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Then, of course, when Rosiel reveals that he’s not even willing to trust Katan‘s long-proven loyalty, it’s like a dagger to the heart.

MICHELLE: I genuinely loved that reveal about Rosiel’s army, both for the emotional impact on Katan but because it also sparked a tiny glimmer of interest in the angel power struggle. Katan’s dismissal made me wonder—and you’ve read farther than I have, so you might know the answer to this—whether he might eventually defect to the other side and help to defeat Rosiel.

MJ: You are *so* right. After endless pages of wordy exposition filled with names like “Raziel,” “Zaphikel,” and “Sandalphon,” and who’s who in the angelic hierarchy, having a little genuine intrigue and, for lack of a better word, humanity thrown in the mix was a lifesaver. I think this whole thing, including the realization that Rosiel has genuinely gone mad, also helps to make all the characters sympathetic in some way, which is a big deal for me, honestly. I’ve never really been interested in epic stories of good vs. evil (because I don’t really believe in the purity of either one), so the more Yuki grays things up, the better. I like things messy, in every way possible.

It’s this kind of nuance that really makes Kira’s story shine as well. We’re only just beginning to understand his true nature, but one thing that has become central to the story in volumes three and four is his own realization that he’s developed human attachments, and what that means for everyone involved. I was incredibly moved by scenes featuring Kira’s human father, who could not learn to hate his son, even after finding out that the Kira he’d raised from age eleven on wasn’t even his son at all. Some of this may come after the point you’ve read to, but oh, Michelle, it’s some of the best writing in the whole series so far.

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MICHELLE: I agree entirely about the scenes between Kira and his father, in which we learn that Kira has been behaving awfully in an attempt to cause this man to abandon his love for his son in preparation of a time when Kira no longer needs that body, and he ends up dying for real, this time. (All of which is at the request of the original Sakuya, with whom demon!Kira is seemingly able to hold conversations.)

Honestly, with supporting characters like Katan and Kira around, I pretty much don’t give a flying flip about Rosiel and Alexiel’s conflict and drama. Perhaps Yuki-sensei will be able to make me care about that, as she was eventually able to do with some other plot elements.

MJ: It’s true, the whole Rosiel vs. Alexiel story is the least interesting thing to me in this entire series, at least by the end of volume four. Which is not to say that I have no interest in them as characters, but despite the fact that they are holding on to this old rivalry so tightly, it’s really their relationships with the other characters that make them who they are in the present. I suppose this is the real tragedy that only the reader can see, and perhaps that’s even something Yuki-sensei is trying to show us—that if Rosiel, especially, could put aside the thirst for power that drove him mad in the first place, and actually recognize the real love and loyalty available to him, vengeance might lose its urgency. I suppose this really is just a lesson for Rosiel, as it seems clear that Alexiel actually prefers to be Setsuna than herself. An early scene that caught my attention is one between Alexiel and Kurai, in which Alexiel admits she’d like to be reborn as a man.

Actually, gender, and particularly unhappiness with one’s biological gender, is an ongoing theme in this series. And while there are some fairly problematic elements in Yuki’s discussion of the subject, there’s so much discussion that it’s difficult to dismiss it all as the usual heteronormative manga gender-bending. It’s difficult to smash the gender binary in English, because we’re so dependent on gender-specific pronouns, but at least one character refers to herself as a “third gender,” and Kurai, for example, manages to be much more nuanced than the typical “tom boy” characterization. So as weary as I get with the endless statements about women only needing to be beautiful and to be protected, there seems to be some deeper thought behind it all.

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MICHELLE: Oh, yes, I meant to bring up those statements. I thought it was interesting that most of the lines like “A girl needs to be protected; only then will she be beautiful and gentle” and “Find yourself a guy who’ll protect you” come from one character: Alexiel. That made them a little easier to stomach, like these are her opinions for some reason—she also implies that if she had a man’s love, she might never have conflicted with the other angels—and not necessarily the mangaka’s. True, Setsuna idealizes Sara and believes she must be protected, but then Yuki-sensei shows us that Sara’s not so weak or oblivious, after all. So, I wasn’t as irked by those comments as I otherwise might have been. (But, y’know, still a little irked.)

thumb-6433-AGS_4_webMJ: I’ll be interested to see where that line of thinking goes as the series continues. I’d like to think that these are beliefs that Yuki-sensei is interested in proving wrong, but it would be foolish to get my hopes up too high on that point.

As I flip through the first few volumes, looking for accompanying artwork, I realize that there are a whole host of characters we haven’t brought up at all, and I have to believe that this is mainly because, so far, they’re really just a part of the whole angelic political turmoil, in which neither of us has the slightest interest. I think it’s quite telling that the characters we have discussed are the ones who have become important in other ways.

MICHELLE: I feel like probably we should talk about Ruri, Sara’s friend, but I really don’t have much to say about her, since we see her as her actual self only briefly. Really, her fate just falls under the “Rosiel schemes to torment Setsuna” heading. And we haven’t even mentioned the super supreme angelic being everyone’s so in awe of, because he simply has no impact on the story as a character. He just appears once and, like, reattaches Setsuna’s arm. (Sidebar: there is a fair amount of arm reattachment in this series.)

MJ: I’d actually be interested in reconvening our discussion sometime after you’ve read volume four, because that’s when the “super supreme angelic being” (aka “Adam Kadamon”) finally becomes something truly significant in the story. The beginning of volume four offers up revelations on most of the topics we have discussed as well, including Kira and his father, Rosiel and Katan, and even Setsuna and Sara, whose story only becomes more poignant as Setsuna finds that he must force himself awake from a dreamworld in which he and Sara are a run-of-the-mill high school boyfriend and girlfriend (no familial ties at all), coexisting happily with all of their friends. Everything comes to a head in the beginning of volume four, leading to the beginning of a new arc just a chapter or so in that I’m hoping will finally make the story’s supernatural politics into something meaningful.

MICHELLE: For all its stumbling at the beginning, I think I’m invested in Angel Sanctuary enough to continue with it, so I am amenable to that suggestion!

MJ: I look forward to it!


Volumes 1-5 of Angel Sanctuary are currently available at VizManga.com. For more of the Kaori Yuki Manga Moveable Feast, keep your eyes on The Beautiful World!

Filed Under: OFF THE SHELF Tagged With: angel sanctuary, Kaori Yuki, Manga Moveable Feast, MMF

Happy Mania, Vols. 1-5

January 27, 2013 by Anna N

This is a post for the Moyoco Anno Manga Moveable Feast.

Some series I take to right away, and other manga series end up being second chance reads. Happy Mania is one of those series that is better the second time around for me. I read the first couple volumes several years ago and didn’t really get into it because I found the main character incredibly annoying. Since then I’ve read several other manga by Moyoco Anno and have long suspected that I needed to give Happy Mania a second shot. I’ve pieced together the out of print series from paperbackswap.com and some good bargain manga outlets. I was hoping to read the entire series for the Manga Moveable Feast, but I wasn’t able to start reading it until much later than I planned. I was able to read a decent chunk of it though!

The heroine as a ditsy, hopeless woman who decides to “live for love” is quite the stereotype in shoujo and josei manga. Her life gets romanticized and she ends up getting saved by her ideal man. Anno’s approach is to show just how horrible a life someone like this would actually lead. Shigeta is a young woman who works in a bookstore. Her career’s nonexistent, but she’s fixated on the idea of meeting a man who will save her from the drudgery of her daily life. Unfortunately Shigeta’s main method of dealing with men is to fixate on someone totally unsuitable, sleep with him extremely quickly, and then wonder why he’s suddenly not interested in her. While she chases bad boys, her hapless co-worker Takahashi is pining for her. He is usually drawn with tears streaming down his face, sighing Shigeta’s name.

Shigeta goes through jobs and men in quick succession, hooking up with a womanizing younger DJ, the son of a cult leader who rapidly turns psychotic, a stoic ceramics artist, and a married man. Whenever Shigeta’s in crisis, Takahashi is there for her, and even though he goes overseas to study their relationship gradually progresses into a semi-dysfunctional engagement. If Shigeta exhibited absolutely no personal growth through these volumes the series would be a bit tedious, but she does gradually realize that her goals and behavior are not making her happy. This isn’t really enough to prevent her from seeking her self worth in the knowledge that a man might be interested in her, but she isn’t entirely without self awareness. When she pauses to think about a couple of the men pursuing her, she thinks “What’s wrong with these guys? If they like me that much…there must be something wrong with them!”
Shigeta is always pursuing the next unattainable man. Being stuck in a behavioral pattern like Shigeta’s seems refreshingly realistic for a manga heroine, and Anno certainly doesn’t shy away from the more sordid aspects of her life. Happy Mania isn’t romanticized at all.

Anno’s art is distinct and fluid. She has a unique ability to draw characters that are simultaneously attractive and slightly grotesque. Shigeta looks like a limpid-eyed, slightly crazed goblin half of the time. Takahashi shifts from being slight and nerdy to being more attractive as Shigeta’s view of him changes. There always seems to be a metatextual element to Anno’s manga. Happy Mania might be a manga about a love-starved twentysomething woman, but it is also a cynical commentary about manga about love-starved twentysomething women at the same time.

I’m glad that I gave this series a second chance. Shigeta’s antics didn’t really sit very well with me the first time I tried this series, but in the intervening years I’ve read a bunch more manga, and right now I find a manga about a woman finding unhappiness through her pursuit of men much more interesting than a more typical manga that is going to head towards a happy ending after a series of wacky misunderstandings.

Filed Under: REVIEWS Tagged With: happy mania, Manga Moveable Feast

My Week in Manga: Moyoco Anno Edition

January 26, 2013 by MJ 4 Comments

This week’s episode is a special edition created for this month’s Manga Moveable Feast, the subject of which is mangaka Moyoco Anno. MJ discusses Anno’s work, including a review of the first two volumes of “Sugar Sugar Rune.”

This week’s manga:

Flowers & Bees (VIZ Media)
Happy Mania (Tokyopop)
Sakuran (Vertical, Inc.)
Sugar Sugar Rune, Vols. 1-2 (Del Rey Manga)

Links:

Moyoco Anno Manga Moveable Feast archive
MJ’s interview with Moyoco Anno at New York Comic Con 2012 (The Beat)
Off the Shelf: Sakuran

Edited by MJ
Music (“Stickybee,” “20/20,” “Insomnia,” & “Swansong”) by Josh Woodward

Filed Under: My Week in Manga Tagged With: Manga Moveable Feast, MMF, Moyoco Anno

Guest Post: How a Non-Manga Fan Got Me Into Sakuran

January 21, 2013 by Ash Brown

As host of the Moyoco Anno Manga Moveable Feast, I am delighted to welcome Erica Friedman to Experiments in Manga as a guest writer. Thank you, Erica, for your contribution to the Feast!

Erica Friedman is the founder of Yuricon and ALC Publishing—she is devoted to bringing fans of yuri together. Erica reviews yuri and shoujo-ai manga and anime as well as other comics with lesbian themes at her blog Okazu. She can also be found on Twitter @OkazuYuri.

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“In your wanderings, can you look for this for me?”

That was the message I received on Facebook from a friend. She’s asked for me to look for random things in Japan before this message, but when I looked at the “this” I was shocked – she wanted me to look for a manga? She has no interest in manga. None whatsoever.

“I like the art,” was her reply to my question. Oh well, now *that* made sense. My friend is an artist – an exceptionally talented one, I might add. Okay, no problem, I’ll look for the book. It was clearly Anno Moyocco’s art, but I otherwise knew nothing about it. I missed out on the Happy Mania! mania when Tokyopop printed it, and although I’d certainly encountered her work in some of the Josei manga magazines I read, I’d never been a fan.

The manga, as it turned out, was well out of print. I never expected to find it for her. One day I wandered into a used manga store, turned the corner and there it was, one of the Kodansha deluxe editions, old, but still with gorgeous paper, with colored edges. I flipped through it, bought it and gave it to her without anymore thought to the contents. Anno’s art was not for me.

And then, out of the blue, Vertical licensed Sakuran. So I contacted my friend with the news, expecting her to say she wasn’t interested in the book in English. I guess I just expected her interest to end with the art, loopy as it appeared to be. But, to my surprise, she said she was interested, so I got her volume 1. And with her permission, I read it before I gave to her.

I loved it. The character was amazing, the story harsh and unsympathetic (all things I had come to expect from Anno.) But about halfway into the book there’s a series of color pages, in which the color washes away leaving only blues. It was, for me, a moment of blinding recognition of Anno’s mastery.

A few years ago, I did a lecture at the Brooklyn Museum of Art about the Ghost in the Shell: Innocence movie. At that time they were running an exhibit of Utagawa art. It was at this exhibit I learned about Prussian Blue and Ultramarine, two colors that completely changed Japanese art forever. (Incidentally, these colors helped inform my understanding of Murakami Haruki’s art which was also on exhibit at the BMA, and of Nakamura Ching’s GUNJO, the title of which means “ultramarine.”)

So there, as the color leeches out of the color pages, we are left staring at a what has to be seen as shockingly good late 19th century print. In a flash, Anno’s style made perfect sense to me. As I read the cold, calculating instructions on how to perform successful oral sex on a man, I became a fan.

I’m having a hard time summing up my feelings about Sakuran, so I turned to my friend who is completely responsible for this review. She nailed it.

“I enjoyed her nonstop and often inexplicable anger and her near-sociopathic disregard for everyone around her. On the other hand, I often wondered why she didn’t just walk out of there and go out on a world-conquering spree on her own. She certainly seemed to have enough bad-assery and blind force of will to make such a move, but I guess traditional Japanese class distinctions were too overwhelming. I also really, really liked her appalling table manners; particularly in that oh-so-proper Japanese setting.”

Yes, that was it. It was her anger that appealed to me most. That white-hot rage against the universe and all the people in it. Recently I was involved in a discussion about how tediously psychopaths were written these days in fan media. Kiyoha’s genuine hatred for every single person around her read more realistically to me than anything I’d seen in ages.

Skilled execution, combined with ferocious misanthropy. No wonder I love this book. Thanks, Meryl, for turning me into an Anno fan.

Filed Under: UNSHELVED Tagged With: manga, Manga Moveable Feast, Moyoco Anno

Moyoco Anno Manga Moveable Feast: Archive

January 1, 2013 by Ash Brown

© Moyoco Anno

The January 2013 Manga Moveable Feast (January 20-January 26), hosted right here at Experiments in Manga, features Moyoco Anno and her works. This page serves as the Feast’s archive and links to posts contributed to the Feast as well as to earlier reviews, interviews, and articles.

Call for Participation
An Introduction
Roundup One
Roundup Two
Roundup Three
A Final Farewell

Reviews:
Flowers & Bees, Volume 1 (Experiments in Manga)
Happy Mania, Volume 1 (Experiments in Manga)
Happy Mania, Volumes 1-5 (Manga Report)
Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators (Experiments in Manga)
Sakuran (Experiments in Manga)
Sakuran (Manga Xanadu)
Sakuran (Nagareboshi Reviews)
Sugar Sugar Rune, Volume 1 (Experiments in Manga)

Other contributions:
How a Non-Manga Fan Got Me Into Sakuran (Experiments in Manga)
Interview: Moyoco Anno “I really don’t like women that much!” (The Beat)
Moyoco Anno’s Study of the Bitch (All About Manga)
My Week in Manga (Experiments in Manga)
My Week in Manga: Moyoco Anno Edition (Manga Bookshelf)

From the archives (pre-Feast content):
Moyoco Anno at New York Comic Con 2012
Manga Interview: Moyoco Anno (MTV Geek)
New York Comic Con 2012: Moyoco Anno (Reverse Thieves)
Part 1: Moyoco Anno and the Madding Crowd (Sequential Tart)
Part 2: Moyoco Anno on Clueless Boys, Career Women, and Courtesans (Sequential Tart)
Vertical Inc Presents Moyoco Anno Panel (Anime News Network)

Chameleon Army (1995-1997)
Chameleon Army (Brain Vs. Book)

Happy Mania (1995-2001)
Happy Mania, Volume 1 (Manga Worth Reading)
Happy Mania, Volume 1 (Sesho’s Anime And Manga Reviews)
Happy Mania, Volume 1 (Slightly Biased Manga)
Happy Mania, Volume 2 (Manga Worth Reading)
Happy Mania, Volume 2 (Sesho’s Anime And Manga Reviews)
Happy Mania, Volume 3 (Sesho’s Anime And Manga Reviews)
Happy Mania, Volume 4 (Sesho’s Anime And Manga Reviews)
Happy Mania, Volume 8 (Manga Worth Reading)
Happy Mania, Volume 9 (Manga Worth Reading)
Happy Mania, Volume 11 (Slightly Biased Manga)
Happy Mania (Jason Thompson’s House of 1000 Manga)

Flowers & Bees (2000-2003)
Flowers & Bees, Volume 1 (Comics-and-More)
Flowers & Bees, Volume 1 (Slightly Biased Manga)
Flowers & Bees, Volume 2 (Slightly Biased Manga)
Flowers & Bees, Volume 3 (Slightly Biased Manga)
Flowers & Bees, Volume 6 (Slightly Biased Manga)
Flowers & Bees, Volume 7 (Slightly Biased Manga)
Flowers & Bees (Jason Thompson’s House of 1000 Manga)
8 Reasons Why You Should Read or Revisit Moyoco Anno’s Flowers and Bees (Uncharted Territory)

Sakuran: Blossoms Wild (2001-2003)
Sakuran (Anime News Network)
Sakuran (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Sakuran (Comic Attack)
Sakuran (Comics-and-More)
Sakuran (Genji Press)
Sakuran (Heart of Manga)
Sakuran (The Manga Critic)
Sakuran (Manga Test Drive)
Sakuran (Manga Worth Reading)
Sakuran (Matt Talks About Manga)
Sakuran (Otaku USA)
Sakuran (Slightly Biased Manga)
Moyoco Anno’s ‘Sakuran’ Tackles ‘Difficult’ Women in a Difficult Time [Exclusive Preview] (Comics Alliance)
Off the Shelf: Sakuran (Manga Bookshelf)
Sakuran – Is It Our Nature to Decieve? (Manga Therapy)

Sugar Sugar Rune (2003-2007)
Sugar Sugar Rune, Volume 1 (Sixty Minute Manga)
Sugar Sugar Rune, Volume 1 (Slightly Biased Manga)
Sugar Sugar Rune, Volume 2 (Slightly Biased Manga)
Sugar Sugar Rune, Volume 3 (Slightly Biased Manga)
Sugar Sugar Rune, Volume 4 (Slightly Biased Manga)
Sugar Sugar Rune, Volume 5 (Slightly Biased Manga)
Sugar Sugar Rune, Volume 6 (Slightly Biased Manga)
Sugar Sugar Rune, Volume 7 (Manga Maniac Cafe)
Sugar Sugar Rune, Volume 7 (Slightly Biased Manga)
Sugar Sugar Rune, Volume 8 (Slightly Biased Manga)
Sugar Sugar Rune, Volumes 1-8 (Graphic Novel Reporter)
13 Days of Halloween: Sugar Sugar Rune (Kuriousity)
Overlooked Manga Festival: Sugar Sugar Rune (Shaenon K. Garrity)

Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators (2005)
Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators (Graphic Novel Reporter)
Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators (Japan Reviewed)
Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators (Jason Thompson’s House of 1000 Manga)
Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators (The Manga Curmudgeon)
Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators (Read About Comics)
Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators (Slightly Biased Manga)

Other Feast Archives

Filed Under: UNSHELVED Tagged With: manga, Manga Moveable Feast, Moyoco Anno

CLAMP MMF: Postscript

August 20, 2012 by MJ Leave a Comment

The CLAMP Manga Moveable Feast has been officially over for nearly a month. But at the time it was still in-progress, I received an invitation from Ed Sizemore to discuss CLAMP with some folks much, much smarter and more knowledgeable than I on his podcast, Manga Out Loud. The actual discussion took place about a week after the Feast, and it was just posted this past weekend.

Link: Episode #62- CLAMP MMF with Shaenon Garrity, William Flanagan, MJ, & Kate Dacey

The conversation was lively and very illuminating for me. I hope it will be for you, too!

A full archive for the CLAMP MMF may be found here.

Filed Under: UNSHELVED Tagged With: clamp, Manga Moveable Feast, manga out loud, MMF

CLAMP MMF Links: Final Roundup!

July 30, 2012 by MJ Leave a Comment

The CLAMP MMF has finally come to a close! Here is the roundup of links for Day 7 of the CLAMP Manga Moveable Feast!

From your host: I spent the day yesterday wallowing in my newfound love of the shoujo-tastic artwork from CLAMP’s X, and comparing it to some other beloved series from the early-mid 1990s in The Shoujo Beauty of X. Come along and wallow with me!


X, Vol. 1 © 1992-1993 CLAMP, English edition published by VIZ Media

Also here at Manga Bookshelf, MMF guest contributor Brett Stockmeier offers up an essay defending Chobits, Chobits: Deconstructing the Love Story.

“I have reservations about declaring CLAMP set out with Chobits to debunk these visual novel universes and their tropes. From what I have glimpsed of the group and their unique way of creating, it’s impossible to say what their goal was in its creation. It may be that their intent was more innocent: to bring a touch of shoujo to the seinen market. Chobits just may have been the unique product spawned by this fusion. On the other hand, if they might possibly have had no involvement with the visual novel and the changes to the anime (as has been suggested to me), it could be that I have glimpsed a small part of their intentions in creating Chobits. I understand why the story might put off their traditionally female dominated audience, but I do believe plot itself (and not just the philosophical questions it brings up) has serious merit to it, and I hope that my ideas may help to redeem the series in the eyes of others.”

And on the lighter side, Brett makes his case for The Greatest Conversation CLAMP has ever written. Join him in comments to share your own favorites!

In her tumblr Tatakae Otaqueen!, Kathryn Cwynar discusses her different experiences with xxxHolic and Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle and declares, But from now on, I’m hedging my bets!

At Soliloquy in Blue, Michelle Smith and guest Karen Peck do a little Chatting About CLAMP, specifically Legal Drug and Suki.

Mia Lewis shares some thoughts on Looking back at the self: Exploring the comic medium from within at her blog, Painting Worlds With Words, and also provides a link to her CLAMP-focused thesis paper (download an updated version here) and another related paper, Shojo and Shonen: Recent Trends in the Visual Codes of Manga Genres.

At The Beautiful World, Ayame discusses CLAMP’s X along with two other series in Grief and Loss in Anime: a case examination of Puella Madoka Magica Magi, Mawaru Penguindrum and X.

Jason Yadao shares some history on CLAMP’s Gate 7 at the Honolulu Star Advertiser, along with his impressions of the series so far in CLAMP’s “Gate 7”: The grand experiment that wasn’t.

In the tumblr blog Xia’s Shiny Page, Christina shares her love of Tsubasa‘s Kurogane (I’m with you all the way, Christina!), in Kurogane: A Remarkable Character.

At The Manga Report, Anna takes a look at two CLAMP series, Cardcaptor Sakura Omnibus Vol. 1 and all four volumes of Wish. Be sure to check out her Wish giveaway at that second link as well!

And finally, at Manga Xanadu, Lori Henderson reviews volumes 1-10 of RG Veda.


This has been your final roundup of links for the CLAMP MMF! Many, many thanks to everyone who participated. Late entries may be submitted by email to melinda@mangabookshelf.com or via Twitter to @mbeasi for inclusion in the archive.

For August’s installment of the Manga Moveable Feast, head over to the Eeepers Choice Podcast where Phillip will be hosting discussion on Eiji Ōtsuka and Housui Yamazaki’s The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service!


Filed Under: UNSHELVED Tagged With: clamp, Manga Moveable Feast, MMF

The Greatest Conversation CLAMP has ever written

July 30, 2012 by Brett Stockmeier 1 Comment

Okawa has long been my favorite member of CLAMP. Her stories are unlike any other I’ve read, and it’s always going to be my opinion that the great art alone (provided by the other three members of CLAMP) can only go so far. In deciding how else I could contribute to the CLAMP MMF with deadlines looming, sleep oncoming and a job awaiting me in the morning, I decided to share what is, in my opinion, the greatest single dialogue CLAMP has ever written between their characters, found in X Volume 13 (omnibus 5 at the rate Viz is releasing them; you can also see it in the X anime in “Newborn”), which challenged my perceptions of all human beings head-on in a way nothing before ever had. Also included is the follow-up conversation.

(reads left-to-right — click images to enlarge)



*****






X/1999, Vol. 13 © 1999 CLAMP, New adapted artwork and text © 2003 VIZ, LLC

So what do you think? There’s a lot that you could write about from the exchange… What do you think about Satsuki’s arguments against humanity? What about Kusanagi’s answer?

Okawa’s written lots of great dialogue through the years… is there another conversation that particularly stands out to you?

Filed Under: UNSHELVED Tagged With: clamp, Manga Moveable Feast, MMF

The Shoujo Beauty of X

July 29, 2012 by MJ 5 Comments

Those of you who have followed the evolution of the Manga Moveable Feast, and particularly the way in which subjects for the Feast are currently chosen (unlike the original democratic model, hosts now select topics on their own), have most likely assumed that, as the host of the CLAMP MMF, I’m a big fan of their work. This is a fair assumption, and it’s not exactly wrong, but the truth is a bit more nuanced. Though I count several of CLAMP’s manga among my very favorites (Tokyo Babylon, Cardcaptor Sakura, and xxxHolic are a few I’ve praised vocally over the past few years), my feelings for others range anywhere from general indifference to extreme impatience and even dislike.

One of the titles that originally registered with me somewhere between “impatience” and “dislike” is the very popular and tragically unfinished X (X/1999 when it was originally published in English), the first of CLAMP’s series to officially reach American shores. As a huge fan of Tokyo Babylon, my initial reaction can probably be chalked up to the fact that CLAMP waits several volumes before introducing Subaru into the story. But once I’d finally forgiven X for not being Tokyo Babylon II, I still found myself growing impatient with its sprawling cast, its convoluted plot lines, and its maddeningly repetitive exposition. Fortunately, VIZ’s new omnibus releases of X have not only reintroduced it into the North American market, they’ve also given me a second chance to try to grasp its charms—and grasp them I have, though they haven’t been at all what I expected.

Bloggers like my Manga Bookshelf cohort Kate Dacey have often referenced X‘s gory battles and body count as a major draw for readers. In one of her features for this month’s MMF, in fact, she likens X‘s apocalyptic imagery to the work of Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira), and goes on to conclude, “The battle scenes are kinetic and violent, executed with a gory zest that’s difficult to resist. The dream sequences, too, are suitably shocking: characters are dismembered, crucified, impaled, and engulfed in flames, often right before their loved ones’ eyes. I hesitate to suggest that X‘s body count is a victory for women, but it is a sharp and welcome rebuke to the idea that female readers strongly prefer conversation and character development to butt-kicking and carnage.”

She’s right, of course. X is filled to the brim with bloody battles that don’t shy away from gore. But I admit that my primary reaction to VIZ’s new, larger format omnibus editions has been the realization of how astoundingly, gorgeously shoujo it all is, especially in its imagery.

Here’s a sequence from X‘s first volume, in which burgeoning dreamseer Kotori receives a disturbing dream about her childhood friend, Kamui.

(click images to enlarge)





X, Vol. 1 © 1992-1993 CLAMP, English edition published by VIZ Media

When I look at a scene like this… well, first of all, I think it’s freaking beautiful. With its flowing lines and minimal use of traditional boundaries, CLAMP creates a surreal, dreamlike landscape that manages to be remarkably easy to follow while also completely immersing the reader in Kotori’s state of mind. The evolution of the spherical images in her dream from a whimsical, globe-like ball to an apocalyptic nightmare is a genuinely striking progression, enhanced by the abstract panel placement—a collection of emotional slivers mirrored by the shattering of the earth itself.

That this type of page composition is quintessentially shoujo is no revelation of course. But its emotional resonance as well as its style of imagery reminds me immediately of other shoujo series from the same period.

Kotori’s initial descent into her dream reminds me of this section from Reiko Shimizu’s Moon Child, in which Teruto slides into the depths beneath a city fountain in order to make a deal to save his sibling’s life. Though Teruto’s journey is a waking one, in both cases, there is a sense that the main character of the scene is falling into a state that is both familiar and perhaps dangerous. Teruto’s and Kotori’s bodies are completely relaxed as they descend, while the water and the scattering fish around them create a sense of otherworldliness and tension.


Moon Child, Vol. 3 © 1988 Reiko Shimizu, English edition published by Wildstorm Productions

The second spread of this sequence is dominated by the image of Kamui, holding and standing dominant over a representation of the earth, which reminded me immediately of this scene from Saki Hiwatari’s Please Save My Earth, in which Alice ponders the emotional state of Rin, whose previous incarnation, Shion, is pictured as if holding his world in thrall. Though the POV character in both series here feel love and affection for the subject of these images, there is also a sense that the person being pictured is potentially dangerous and capable of real harm.


Please Save My Earth, Vol. 20 © 1993 Saki Hiwatari, English edition published by VIZ Media

The rapid, stream-of-consiousness images in the third spread of Kotori’s dream bears a similarity to this sequence from Keiko Nishi’s short manga Promise (note: Promise reads left-to-right). I find this particularly interesting given Promise‘s real-world setting, because it demonstrates so clearly how this type of mental imagery is just as much a part of our “real” lives as it is our dreams and fantasies. In both cases, these scattered, tumbling images create a sense of panic and impending emotional danger.


Promise © 1996 Keiko Nishi/Shogakukan, Inc., English edition published by VIZ Media

Though the content of the last bit I’ve chosen from Kotori’s dream bears very little similarity (at least in terms of plot) to what is happening in this spread (again from Please Save My Earth), Kotori’s and Mokuren’s states of mind are quite similar. They’ve both had a sudden realization about a loved one that results in complete horror. Kotori has been hit with the realization that her loved one, Kamui, may destroy her world, while Mokuren has been hit with the realization that she may be taken from the world before she’s able to tell Shion that she loves him in the first place. While the Kotori’s predicament may seem more serious and vital than Mokuren’s, the artwork tells us differently. Whatever the scope of the situations’ consequences, Mokuren and Kotori are equally devastated by their respective realizations.


Please Save My Earth, Vol. 19 © 1993 Saki Hiwatari, English edition published by VIZ Media

This kind of emotional tension combined with abstract imagery is found all over in shoujo from the late 1980s and early 1990s (here’s a beautifully rendered scene from Naoko Takeuchi’s Sailor Moon)—which is part of why it’s become my favorite era for shoujo artwork.


Sailor Moon, Vol. 2 ©2003 Naoko Takeuchi, English translation © 2011 Naoko Takeuchi

Though I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the very first scene that came to mind while pondering artwork for this article came from Moto Hagio’s They Were Eleven, which was published in the 1970s (note: these pages read left-to-right). The accelerated tumbling of the elevator buttons at the top of the first page has stuck with me since I first read this manga several years ago, and I immediately associated it with Kamui’s tumbling earth. There’s something about shoujo and circles…


They Were Eleven © 1996 Moto Hagio/Shogakukan, Inc., English edition published by VIZ Media

It doesn’t get better than this, my friends.

Time will tell, of course, if my new infatuation with the shoujo spectacularness of CLAMP’s X will help me weather its narrative messiness in the long-term, but I’m certainly enjoying myself so far. Kudos to VIZ for presenting this unfinished series in a format that finally shows it off to its best advantage. I think I may speak for all fans of 1990s shoujo when I say, “Thank you. I thank you with all my heart.”

Let’s hope this becomes a trend.


To submit your contributions to the CLAMP MMF for inclusion in this month’s archive, please send your links by email to melinda@mangabookshelf.com or via Twitter to @mbeasi. If you would like your contribution(s) to be hosted at Manga Bookshelf, please email them to MJ, along with any included images.


Filed Under: FEATURES Tagged With: clamp, Manga Moveable Feast, MMF

Chobits: Deconstructing the Love Story

July 29, 2012 by Brett Stockmeier 9 Comments

Chobits is usually one of the more divisive of CLAMP’s series. Mankind’s interactions with the advanced technology of the setting has the potential to spark important philosophical (as well as moral) debate. Unfortunately, not everyone is able to appreciate the finer details of the plot as many find the story of Chobits, that is to say, the romance, distasteful. Part of this has to do with CLAMP’s target audience. Despite their often attributed ability to appeal to both genders, CLAMP has often been classified as a Shoujo manga circle, writing with the intention of appealing to girls. Chobits marked an experiment for the group with the intention that the work be classified as seinen, meant to appeal to young men. Because of this departure from their traditional market/genre, I believe many fans of the group were alienated by the content and progression of the plot, and some of the questions raised by the work may be overshadowed by the antipathy it garners.

It was only recently that I came to the realization that what first appears to be one of the most tasteless and tacky love stories can also be viewed as a commentary on the visual novel genre, harem romance stories, the mythical magical girlfriend, and seinen romance as a whole.

CLAMP themselves waste no time setting Chobits up according to standard visual novel cliches: The protagonist is a young adult male, a ronin (he failed to get accepted into college), has lived a sheltered life in the country away from such luxuries as computers and the big city of Tokyo. He has no girlfriend, and is very vocal about his sexual frustration (he’s a virgin). Basically, he’s a bit of a loser, and he fits the mold perfectly for the protagonist of most visual novels and seinen romance stories. He’s remarkable only for the fact of being unremarkable, and on paper, the only trait he has going for him is you can say he’s a nice guy (though as the manga itself is quick to point out, not the guy who gets the girl).

These are common traits for a seinen protagonist because often these stories are marketed towards users that view themselves in much the same way: as being hapless, unfortunatate or lacking redeeming qualities to put it bluntly. Such stories offer a world and a narrative where they, stepping into the shoes of a main character, can suddenly have a complete reversal of fortune, giving them the chance to experience a life different from the one they perceive in the real world. One where perhaps a chance event or encounter can enable them to be successful and have a pretty, doting girlfriend (or a selection of the to choose from). It’s a genre primarily made up of wish-fulfillment.

Okay, so we have an unremarkable protagonist, but there’s always a catalyst that sets him on the journey that changes his fortunes from bad to good. Often, this happens with the chance meeting of a magical girlfriend archetype. Maybe she’s just a spunky and free-spirited classmate he happens to run into (usually quite literally) on the way to school, maybe she’s an alien from outer space and he’s just the first native human being she happens to encounter. Or maybe she’s a discarded robot set out with the trash.

Hideki, being poor, and by this point shown to be envious of those fortunate enough to own persocoms, doesn’t let the opportunity slip by, and he hurries to take his new possession home. Possession is also a common theme in seinen romance: in the popular Ah! My Goddess!, a young college student binds a goddess to him with a wish to the goddess hotline. (Ah! My Goddess! isn’t harem romance to my knowledge, but it is wish-fulfillment.)

Hideki at this point only thinks of Chi as a machine, albeit a cute one (the one you’re destined for is never who you first suspect, is it?), and so he’s already picturing the things he can do with Chi. Email, chat, web browsing, but mostly porno websites. (and if he knew a little more about persocoms and their standard capabilities, he might have been expecting to lose his virginity as well)

He appears initially to be entirely self-serving. He gleefully thinks on his good luck and conjures up references to figures like Doraemon, a character from a popular Japanese children’s cartoon that typically starts adventures and bestows gifts to a particularly unlucky Japanese boy. “It’s like a story”, he thinks to himself. And it seems like it really might be: the persocom he picked up for free from the garbage is repeatedly hinted at being a legendary persocom… one of the Chobits series, which is rumored to have programming so advanced it faithfully recreates real human emotions, technology on a level we can only dream about today.

A magical girlfriend that can do things no ordinary human girl can do? An ageless robot body in the form of a cute young girl? Real human emotions? And you own her?! I don’t doubt that many young men don’t have to look very deep to know this situation is a dream come true in more than one aspect.

Of course a common feature, and indeed the sole distinguishing characteristic of the “harem” genre is that it features multiple women who may serve as a match for the hero, and Chobits once again has that covered in the most cliche manner CLAMP could think of, relying on handful of the most overused “types” of women common to the seinen genre. You have the bubbly high school kohai Yumi, the mature and sexy teacher Shimizu-sensei, and the cute, doting young landlady Chitose Hibiya. Upon first meeting each of these women, Hideki’s mind races with the possibilities of a life with each of them. And for their part, the girls are each suprisngly tolerant of Hideki’s perverse habits. Yumi, prompted by his staring, casually gives out her bra size without hesitation. Shimizu-sensei dismisses his pornography as him being a boy after all (I guess boys are all seen as being sex-crazed in Japan?), and Hibiya constantly overlooks his audibly perverse inner monologue.

Indeed, the story itself actually seems to endorse each of these women as a potential match for Hideki with a number of events between that seem to deepen his relationship with each of them. Yumi takes the initiative to invite Hideki out on a date, Miss Shimizu shows up out of the blue to stay the night, and Hibiya… well she’s just a doting landlady, giving Hideki perhaps more attention than is usual of her guests. It’s easy to see why Hideki might get the wrong impression.

Outside the unexceptional cast filled with Seinen romance tropes, the rest of the story remains faithful to standard form: the “comedy” of this romantic comedy comes primarily from awkward ero situations and Hideki’s over-the-top reactions. There’s plenty of fanservice and straight-up soft-core pornography. The outfits Chi and the other persocoms take on often titillate with nearly exposed panty shots and Minoru’s vast collection of persocoms exclusively wear maid uniforms. In the anime, entire filler episodes were added devoted exclusively to panties and a trip to the beach that somehow manages to include the show’s entire cast of available women (in swim suits of course), disconnected though they might be.

So CLAMP spent a good chunk of Chobits setting up a cast and characters that would fit right into any seinen romance, and I think a lot of people, especially when drawing from CLAMP’s audience would be put off by that. There’s a notable lack of any strong female characters like Sakura, Hokuto, or Misaki. (That isn’t to imply the females are necessarily weak, but all of them seem to start the series slightly broken, suffering deep emotional scars) Instead we get to see a cast of stereotypes focusing on a main character that hasn’t really earned the attention he gets. It all seems incredibly un-CLAMP and indeed the traditionally shoujo group hadn’t really tried to market itself to a male audience until that point. It seems natural to assume that their established primarily female audience might lose interest or even be offended and denounce Chobits for its the content. I might have been included with CLAMP’s alienated fan base if CLAMP didn’t work to tear down and undermine the stereotypical seinen romance narrative they had created as quickly as (and even before) they had built it.

Things get off to a rocky start for Hideki right from the first time he activates Chi, as he quickly realizes there was a reason he found her in the garbage. The magical girlfriend-figure he had pictured is disappointingly incapable of the tasks he had planned for it, and initially can only mimic his movements and speak only “chi”. This is in stark contrast to the goddesses from Ah! My Goddess! who can magically procure an empty house the size of a small mansion when the protagonist of that series is evicted from his dormitory. Chi on the other hand seems unable to even connect to the internet, and is rarely or never seen to consciously do anything remotely computer like, as you never see her being used as Hideki originally intended: as a tool, able to open the way to the wonders of the internet and computers. Instead, she behaves closer to that of an ordinary human girl, reading and learning from picture books rather than the internet, which should be readily available to any persocom. In fact, there are a lot of things Chi seems unable to do as a computer, though eventually she’s perfectly able to learn the same way any human being can, and can even achieve some level of independence from Hideki, taking on a job and responsibilities apart from him. Even there, as a human being, she is limited, and a crucial capability of both human and persocom is denied to her… that is, the ability to have sex.

It seemed as though Hideki might have gotten a dud when it came to his legendary persocom: rather than stumbling onto a super human devoted to making him happy, he instead finds himself with a burden and responsibilities he is not sure he can afford, quite litterally. Even Chi’s being a legendary Chobit turns out to be irrelevant or a disappointment in the context of human relationships: her “legendary programming” able to replicate human thought patterns and emotions on par with a real human being is nothing but a myth, and her only real magical feature, the ability to affect other persocoms has no practical applications in the realm of a relationship.

With the illusion of the powerful wish granting girlfriend shattered, CLAMP then proceeds to move through the list of other potential candidates in Hideki’s would-be harem and systematically remove them as potential matches. The cute young kohai with the big boobs that invited you out that one time in a maybe date? She’s been hung up on her old boyfriend since long before we came into the story. The sultry teacher that stayed over at your place in her underwear late that one night? A married woman having an affair running away from the pressures of her relationships. The doting land lady? Well, hooking up with Hideki was the last thing on her mind.

The side characters in Hideki’s harem may not have stood out initially as being incredibly liberated or strong (they’re actually all kind of broken really) like CLAMP’s other notable characters, but they (both the characters and CLAMP) deserve recognition for having a life/story/purpose outside of competing for the affections of Hideki, while traditionally interest in the protagonist is all consuming for the harem in seinen romance. Likewise, Hideki deserves some credit for his demeanor in the rejection of his fantasies. When he found out the truth of Yumi and Ueda’s past, he spoke up in the defense of the people he knew to be good, honest and kind. He listened without judgement to the confessions of an adulterer, and showed genuine regret that he was unable to lend his friend more support when he became involved with her. And he was happy, rather than bitter that these people found happiness, despite the fact that once he imagined himself playing a more active part. Lots of characters are described as being “nice guys”: Hideki is the only one in my opinion to ever take true ownership of that title in a story like this.

With the standard narrative built-up only to be summarily torn down, the universe seems to have delivered a grim shot of reality to Hideki. That persocom he found in the garbage really was broken, and yet it was also something that could become very special to him if he puts in the work required (which is true of anything really). The idea of a legendary persocom (the magical girlfriend stand-in) is in actuallity a myth, just as the idea is a myth in real life. The concept of a machine with real emotions is actually just wish-fulfillment, in a cold allusion to reality and the entire market of wish-fulfillment. It isn’t real, and exists only in the minds of those who desire and dream of such things.

But while Chi may not be a magical persocom, she is still a persocom: beatiful, ageless, and capable of many things an ordinary woman (or man. also could be a man) just can’t do or compete with. But CLAMP even here dismisses the magical girlfriend myth with their repeated insistence that there are just the same some things that only a real flesh-and-blood human being can do that persocom just can’t. Supporting this, persocoms, once portrayed as being almost superhuman, also have their vulnerabilities revealed and discussed in length. They can be easily manipulated through their programming, their cherished memories can be erased with a few computer commands, and just like human beings, they can break beyond repair and die. As an interesting side-note, these problems are also very real ailments that can afflict human beings, and thus by making persocoms imperfect, they are shown to be more like human beings than ever before, with the similarities running far beyond our shared humanoid features.

The women in his life he was focusing in on as it turned out all had lives of their own, and really never gave Hideki a second thought, if they gave him any thought as a potential match at all. What’s more astounding is that CLAMP perfectly mirrors real life when they reveal to both the reader and Hideki that he doesn’t necessarily know everything that’s going on around him. The story doesn’t stop being told just because Hideki isn’t around, and indeed it was being told even before he entered into the picture. Before even the first chapter of Chobits. And while the story follows Hideki, Shimbo, his best friend lucky enough to gain the eye of his teacher, is in the middle of his own story, and in contrast to standard form, doesn’t exist merely to root for Hideki on the sidelines: he has his own cares and his own concerns, and like the people around you in real life he can choose not to enlighten you to them. Chobits drives home the message perhaps the best in any of CLAMP’s work that you are not special. Your story is not the only one that his being told, and everybody is dealing with their own issues that may be every bit or more frustrating than your own.

This is the exact opposite of the message communicated by a visual novel where you can win anybody or anything based solely on the effort you put in and the knowledge you possess. Of course there is some truth to this world view as well, but a visual novel system exaggerates the amount of control a person has over his own life and the universe: there will always be some things you just can’t do. A visual novel also cannot take into account the fact that other people are living their own stories right along side you. Perhaps a true Chobits visual novel would be massively multi-player (and be called “real life, but with persocoms”, except that’s not very catchy).

The coup de grace though comes with Chobits‘ simple yet powerful ending when Hideki is confronted with the reality that there are some things Chi just can’t (and for all we know, never will be able to) do. Not just procreation, but sex itself, which has been a driving motivation throughout Chobits. While Hideki hasn’t exactly been on the prowl looking to lose his virginity through the series, it’s safe to say he’s always been self-conscious of his status as a virgin. The universe itself sees fit to remind him with the casual acceptance and reactions in the face of sexuality displayed by the people around him, and the gentle teasing Hideki endures by his friends Shimbo and Minoru (of all people! How can someone as young as Minoru be more sexually mature as someone as old as Hideki? Actually I might have some theories) More evidence is seen in the number of times pornography makes an appearance in the story. Porno websites dominates his fantasies of the advantages of owning a persocom, and it’s clear he has a sizable collection erotic magazines. And it must be a sexually liberated world when Manager Ueda can casually relay the story of his marriage to a persocom, and the fact that there are many people that, yes, have gone so far as to have sex with their persocoms.

Thus to be confronted with the reality that in order to be with Chi, he will never be able to be “with” Chi is a major revelation, especially given that human persocom relations aren’t really that unheard of at all. The very real possibility exists that Hideki will die a virgin, never getting to experience one of life’s greatest pleasures to be shared by two people in love. Sex has always played a large role in a seinen romances, and yet Hideki, the supposed protagonist of such a story, is being asked to live a life of abstinence. In my opinion it’s a marvelous way to draw a distinction between Chobits and other romantic comedies in the genre, and even Chobits‘ own early story, in order to show just how much the story has evolved.

I could not comfortably bring this essay to a proper close if I didn’t mention the inherent contradictions in my ideas, the most prominent of which come to light from two official Chobits sources (regardless of whatever input CLAMP had in their production). The first is the anime, which has a vastly different ending from the manga. In the anime, key plot details are changed, which fundamentally alter who/what Chi is, even if her personality remains the same. The anime Chi really is a legendary and powerful persocom, with programming advanced enough to faithfully recreate the complexity of human emotions. This new Chi completely undermines my theory that CLAMP intended to undermine the myth of the magical girlfriend by making their own character incredibly ordinary and even defective compared to other persocoms.

Furthermore, anime Chi and Hideki then undergo a trial where Chi has her memory erased, yet is able to recover the deleted data somehow through the power of the love she and Hideki feel for each other, with little in the way of a technical explanation given: it’s just a miracle of love! What’s more, after this, Chi proceeds to update every other persocom in existence so that they might all share the advanced programming she posesses. And so while the message of the manga seems to reinforce the complexity and complications of real life, the anime reinforces the myths and ideals of the magical girlfriends and that miracles do exist and all you need is love and everything will be happy in the end. Fluffy, traditional shoujo ideals, but something CLAMP has always shied away from (and been stronger for, in my opinion)

The other element that undermines my ideas is the existence of a licenced Chobits visual novel, completely typical for the genre. The user is free to pursue and win other women outside of Chi in exactly the way I have been alluding to throughout my essay.

I have reservations about declaring CLAMP set out with Chobits to debunk these visual novel universes and their tropes. From what I have glimpsed of the group and their unique way of creating, it’s impossible to say what their goal was in its creation. It may be that their intent was more innocent: to bring a touch of shoujo to the seinen market. Chobits just may have been the unique product spawned by this fusion. On the other hand, if they might possibly have had no involvement with the visual novel and the changes to the anime (as has been suggested to me), it could be that I have glimpsed a small part of their intentions in creating Chobits. I understand why the story might put off their traditionally female dominated audience, but I do believe plot itself (and not just the philosophical questions it brings up) has serious merit to it, and I hope that my ideas may help to redeem the series in the eyes of others.

I’d like to thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts, and unknownusername for taking the time to give me input while I was writing this.


To submit your contributions to the CLAMP MMF for inclusion in this month’s archive, please send your links by email to melinda@mangabookshelf.com or via Twitter to @mbeasi. If you would like your contribution(s) to be hosted at Manga Bookshelf, please email them to MJ, along with any included images.


Filed Under: FEATURES Tagged With: clamp, Manga Moveable Feast, MMF

CLAMP MMF Links: Day 6

July 29, 2012 by MJ Leave a Comment

Here is your roundup of links for Day 6 of the CLAMP Manga Moveable Feast!

From your host: Yesterday, Michelle and I looked at the artwork of two CLAMP series that share a similar premise, Legal Drug and xxxHolic, and discussed some of the different ways in which the group visually portrays supernatural events—especially when writing for different demographics. Check it out at Soliloquy in Blue: Let’s Get Visual: A Tale of Two Series.

Of course, Michelle and I weren’t the only limbs of the Manga Bookshelf Battle Robot to get our CLAMP on yesterday.

At A Case Suitable for Treatment, Sean Gaffney muses on some of his frustrations with CLAMP’s recent work with Some Thoughts on CLAMP.

“Yeah, it’s time to come out and say it. While there’s lots of recent CLAMP stuff I enjoy for a certain character, or a story arc, or maybe an interesting idea to start things off… when it comes to modern CLAMP I always find more problems than I really want to … As CLAMP have matured over the years, they’ve gained a depth to the quality of their storytelling. And while this is normally a thing to applaud, I think with their group it highlights that they come up with fantastic ideas and are not always so good at following through.”

And at The Manga Critic, Kate Dacey uses CLAMP’s shounen work as the jumping off point for a larger discussion about female artists creating for that demographic: Open Thread: Who’s Your Favorite Female Shonen Artist? There is already some lively discussion in the comment section—head on over and join in!

That’s all the links for Saturday! Check back tomorrow for our final roundup!


To submit your contributions to the CLAMP MMF for inclusion in this month’s archive, please send your links by email to melinda@mangabookshelf.com or via Twitter to @mbeasi. If you would like your contribution(s) to be hosted at Manga Bookshelf, please email them to MJ, along with any included images.


Filed Under: UNSHELVED Tagged With: clamp, Manga Moveable Feast, MMF

CLAMP MMF Links: Day 5

July 28, 2012 by MJ Leave a Comment

Here is your roundup of links for Day 5 of the CLAMP Manga Moveable Feast!

From your host: Yesterday, I used the CLAMP MMF as an excuse to revive one of my favorite older columns, Fanservice Friday, with Fanservice Friday: The Fujoshi Heart of CLAMP. ‘Shippers, come and talk to me!


Legal Drug, Vol. 2 © 2001 CLAMP, English text @2004 TOKYOPOP

Friday was sparse in comparison to the rest of the Feast so far, but we did have two bloggers who weighed in.

At Experiments in Manga, Ash Brown took a look at Clover.

“The most striking thing about Clover is its artwork. The style itself is similar to those used in other works by CLAMP, but what makes it stand out from other manga (and not just other CLAMP manga) is the group’s use of innovative and unusual panel layouts and page designs. The individual panels tend to focus closely in on a particular element; these fragments are then gathered together as a whole on the page in interesting and varied ways. CLAMP isn’t afraid of overlap or white space and relatively few panels are used on a page, giving the overall presentation of Clover a minimalist feel. CLAMP’s artwork revels in the small details, moments, and movements without becoming overly complicated.”

And at The Beautiful World, Ayame continues her CLAMP exploration this week with Retrospect on CLAMP: In good and bad times…

That’s all the links for Friday! Stay tuned as the Feast continues!


To submit your contributions to the CLAMP MMF for inclusion in this month’s archive, please send your links by email to melinda@mangabookshelf.com or via Twitter to @mbeasi. If you would like your contribution(s) to be hosted at Manga Bookshelf, please email them to MJ, along with any included images.


Filed Under: UNSHELVED Tagged With: clamp, Manga Moveable Feast, MMF

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