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Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

shojo

Short Takes: Genghis Khan and Venus Capriccio

May 7, 2009 by Katherine Dacey

Much as I love composing in-depth reviews, the sheer number of new releases makes it impossible for even the most ambitious critic to give every interesting series the 800-word treatment. In an effort to stay abreast of current titles, therefore, I’ll be posting a regular column that offers more concise assessments of new and noteworthy books — manga tapas, if you will. This week, I look at two recent releases: Genghis Khan: To the Ends of the Earth and Sea (CMX), a done-in-one biography of the famous warrior; and volume one of Venus Capriccio (CMX), a romantic comedy about a tomboy and the piano prodigy who loves her.

genghis_khanGENGHIS KHAN: TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH AND SEA

BY NAKABA HIGURASHI AND SEIICHI MORIMURA • CMX • 178 pp. • RATING: TEEN PLUS (13+)

Cecile B. DeMille never made a movie about Genghis Khan, but if he had, it might have resembled To the Ends of the Earth and Sea, a beautiful but turgid biography of the great warrior. All of the requisite elements are there: sweeping vistas, epic battles, blood oaths, and feuding brothers. The only thing missing is camels.

To the Ends of the Earth follows Genghis Khan at two critical stages in his life: his early adolescence, when his father was grooming him to become the new head of the Borjigin clan (a powerful Monoglian tribe); and his mid-life, when he was systematically conquering the rest of Mongolia. In the first chapter of the story, we learn that Khan’s tribesmen questioned his parentage, suggesting that he was, in fact, the scion of a rival clan. We also see Khan’s fateful meeting with Jamuqua, the future leader of another powerful tribe, the Jadirat. These two scenes provide the subtext for later chapters, implying that Khan needed to conquer Mongolia to prove himself his father’s heir, and to settle an old score with Jamuqua, to whom he’d sworn a blood oath of allegiance as a child. Unfortunately, this effort to bring psychological nuance to Khan’s character falls flat; at 178 pages, the book isn’t long enough to accommodate quiet scenes of character development and epic battles without skimping on both. That leaves the dialogue with the primary responsibility of advancing the narrative, yielding passages that sound more like exposition than conversation: when was the last time you heard one of your siblings identify himself by birth order?

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Filed Under: Manga Critic Tagged With: cmx, Seinen, shojo

St. Dragon Girl, Volume 2

April 23, 2009 by MJ 1 Comment

St. Dragon Girl, Vol. 2
By Natsumi Matsumoto
Published by Viz Media

stdragon
…

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Filed Under: MANGA REVIEWS Tagged With: manga, shojo

They Were Eleven, Web Comics Weekend!

March 20, 2009 by MJ 2 Comments

Thanks to Brigid Alverson’s recent interview with Matt Thorn, I got inspired to read some Moto Hagio, beginning with her short science fiction manga from 1975, They Were Eleven. Last night I wrote up a review, which you can find below! I’m afraid my lack of background in manga shows terribly in this review, despite my ongoing quest to become more knowledgeable, so for further reading, I’d recommend going through Matt Thorn’s website, where he has many articles and resources chronicling the history of shojo manga, all of which are much smarter than anything I could write. My review, however, does include some nice images I scanned in from my copies of the manga so it’s worth checking out if you’ve never read it! They Were Eleven is unfortunately out of print here, but the Viz pamphlets can be picked up very reasonably on ebay, which is how I got them. Don’t even think about trying to get Four Shojo Stories, though, unless you’re a lot richer than I!

Over the next couple of days, I’ll be pretty much occupied at the New England Web Comics Weekend, which is conveniently located just a couple small towns over! My husband is a huge fan of webcomics, and I keep up on a number of them myself, so it should be an enjoyable event all around. There are quite a few interesting panels being presented, and you know I’ll be at the print vs. web discussion, right? :D I’ll try to report in at some point with any interesting news.

A million thanks to those who have chimed in with recommendations over at my Let’s Talk About Manhwa post! I’m so excited to find new things to read! Please stop by if you have anything further to add!


They Were Eleven by Moto Hagio Published by Viz Media

Sometime in the distant future, hopeful students from all over the galaxy gather for the difficult entrance exams at the elite Galactic University. For the final test, they are divided into computer-generated groups of ten students each and sent off to various locations where they must survive as a group for fifty-three days without pushing the provided emergency button, which immediately summons a rescue team, resulting in automatic failure of the entire group. One group is deposited on a derelict ship, devoid of engine power and filled with dangerous explosives, which they must safely maintain in orbit for the length of the test. As the group arrives on the ship, however, it becomes apparent that there are eleven students rather than the assigned ten, indicating that one of them must be an impostor. Potential disasters pile up quickly, including an unstable orbit and the presence of a deadly disease, and in the midst of it all the group begins to suspect Tada, a young Terran (Earth descendent) with intuitive powers and uncanny knowledge of the ship’s layout, of being the eleventh member.

With the ship’s mechanical problems and deadly health threat driving things forward, it is young Tada’s story that takes focus, as he struggles to understand his relationship with the decrepit ship while also attempting to clear himself of the other students’ rapidly-mounting suspicion. Despite the fact that his intuition saves the group early on, it also becomes the greatest point of contention amongst the group, and as more about Tada’s own history comes to light, each revelation seems to point more clearly to his potential guilt.

They Were Eleven ran over three issues in the Japanese magazine Shojo Comic in 1975. It was written and drawn by pioneering mangaka Moto Hagio, one of the famous “Year 24 Group” of female manga artists who revolutionized shojo manga, which up to that point had been mainly written by men. In the U.S. it was released in four “flipped” pamphlet-style issues from Viz Media in 1995, as well as in the compilation, Four Shojo Stories, both of which are now out of print (though the pamphlets are easily found on ebay). Lovingly adapted by Matt Thorn, They Were Eleven is an intriguing science fiction comic, featuring several of Hagio’s most prevalent themes, including childhood trauma and gender identification.

Two of the characters in the story are species whose gender is not determined until adulthood. One of these, Frol, who is decidedly feminine in appearance (referred to hereafter as “her” and “she”), is taking the test because she will be allowed to become male if she passes, a privilege otherwise only granted to a family’s oldest child. On Frol’s planet, “men govern and women work,” and becoming a woman would mean relinquishing all autonomy and joining the harem of the neighboring lord (eighteen years her senior), so it is understandable why she would want to instead take advantage of her society’s male privilege and collect a harem of her own. Still, it’s a little bit jarring that when the story finally reaches a point where it becomes clear that they may very well not pass the test, the only other alternative presented to Frol is for her to leave her own people, become a woman, and marry someone else. The fact that in every scenario her future as a woman leads directly to marriage is not a fantastic message for today’s young girls (nor is the fact that Frol, the story’s only obviously “feminine” character, is depicted as capricious and “simple”) and it is this that dates the series more than anything else.

That said, in the midst of today’s shojo offerings, it is refreshing to read a comic for girls in which a science fiction/mystery plot so markedly overshadows the story’s minimal romance. The atmosphere of the story is extremely tense throughout, and the level of complexity packed into four short issues is seriously impressive.

One of the most interesting aspects of the story is the various backgrounds of the students on the voyage, and what brings each of them to Galactic University. One student is the newly-crowned king of his planet-nation, who is taking the exam only to test his own abilities with no intention whatsoever of entering the university. Another is a half-cyborg, whose body was created to test out a potential cure for his planet’s deadly disease–one which kills every person on the planet by the age of thirty. Tada, whose parents both died when he was very young, seeks to make a way for himself out of the care of the Elder who adopted him. Each of the students has a rich backstory, some of which are only hinted at in this very short series, and each has his own personal determination to pass the final test. As the ship’s trajectory pulls them further towards certain death, it is the prospect of failure that terrifies and energizes most of these students rather than the growing risk to their lives, pushing the stakes to a place much higher than mere survival.

What is difficult to appreciate now is just how revolutionary Hagio’s art (and that of the others in the Year 24 Group) was at the time, as she eschewed the standard rectangle panel layouts of the day for innovative designs that were as vital to the tone and emotion of the story as the characters’ dialogue and facial expressions. This kind of drawing is common today, not just in shojo manga, and it’s difficult to imagine otherwise. Perhaps what is easier to note is that the art itself does not seem at all dated, and that alone is quite telling.

Something this manga brings to mind is the question of how much significance there is today in Japanese demographic categories, at least when importing manga to the west. In the case of They Were Eleven, for instance, it is difficult to determine just who wouldn’t be interested in the story in terms of gender demographics. Its science fiction setting, mystery plot, and even the very small glimmer of romance seem very much in line with works enjoyed by girls, boys, women, and men alike, and even for western comics fans only the characters’ oversized eyes are evidence of anything stereotypically Japanese. Reminiscent of the short stories of Ray Bradbury or Zenna Henderson, this comic uses the thrilling mysteries of space fantasy to provide food for thought about humanity and how we relate to and survive with each other.

For a glimpse into classic manga that is fast-paced, wrought with tension, emotionally compelling, and a pleasure to look at, Moto Hagio’s They Were Eleven offers the perfect, bite-sized package.

Filed Under: FEATURES, MANGA REVIEWS Tagged With: digital distribution, manga, shojo, tokiday, web comics

Free time? What?

February 24, 2009 by MJ 17 Comments

With my review schedule finally under control, I actually have some time to read some things to talk about here, but I’m having a hard time deciding what to start with. I have volume 1 of Two Flowers for the Dragon sitting here looking at me, as well as a number of other things. It’s been so long since I had time to read something just for pleasure, I hardly know what to do! :)

In the meantime, I’ve been looking around online, and I have a couple of links to share. First of all, Ed Sizemore posted a review today of the most recent Mechadamia journal, and I though it sounded really interesting. His review is good reading on its own, so I recommend checking it out.

Also, Gia reported at Anime Vice about Crunchyroll’s participation in the upcoming Global Shinkai Day, including the fact that they’ll be streaming (among several of his films) 5 Centimeters Per Second which is a film I love very, very much. It is the kind of fiction that makes me long to create something that could affect other people the way it affects me. If you’ve never had a chance to see it, do yourself a favor and go watch for free at Crunchyroll on February 28th!

Lastly, I think I mentioned somewhere around the New Year that I decided to let my Shonen Jump subscription expire and pick up Shojo Beat instead. I got my first issue a little while back and… I’m so glad! Not only am I enjoying more of the comics, but I also really appreciated some of the other features in the magazine. So, Bakuman aside, it seems my early shonen manga obsession really is over! I guess I really am a girl after all! ;D

Watch for a review from me in the upcoming Otaku Bookshelf column at Manga Recon. Until then, goodnight!

Filed Under: FEATURES Tagged With: 5 centimeters per second, anime, makoto shinkai, manga, shojo, shojo beat

Idle thoughts in no particular order

February 19, 2009 by MJ 13 Comments

I’m enjoying a much-needed idle evening here at home. I have reviews I probably should be working on, and maybe I will as the evening goes on, but for now I’m feeling the need for random surfing and maybe a blog commenting spree.

Speaking of blog commenting, I drove by Danielle Leigh’s reading diary today, but didn’t actually read it, because she has a review there for the first volume of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei: The Power of Negative Thinking just released by Del Ray, and though I’m eagerly anticipating reading it myself, I already know I’ll be reviewing it for Manga Recon, so for now, other reviews are off-limits. I have found that I am easily intimidated by someone else’s fantastic review, so after one such experience, I decided to force myself to keep away until I’ve completed my own review. Now I’m wondering, you who review manga (or anything else for that matter), do you do the same?

In other news, I really enjoyed Brigid Alverson’s interview with Matt Thorn, whose translation of est em’s Red Blinds the Foolish (reviewed by me here) I found pretty spectacular. After I read the interview, I did some searching around, and discovered this essay on shojo manga that Matt Thorn published back in 2001. It was a pretty great read, so I thought I’d share that here.

Lastly, Lianne Sentar asked me for further elaboration on my accusations of misogyny in Let Dai, and I’m embarrassed to be unable to respond with any kind of credibility, because I don’t have print copies of the series. Can anyone help me out? I think some specific examples of the language used by Dai would help me, but unfortunately, I’m not good at remembering exact words, especially when I’ve consumed a series as rapidly as I did Let Dai. If you’ve got some handy, let me know! ETA: I think these are no longer necessary! Conversation progressing without them. :)

Filed Under: FEATURES Tagged With: let dai, manga, manhwa, red blinds the foolish, reviewing, shojo, writing, yaoi/boys' love

Maud Hart Lovelace still owns my soul.

August 2, 2008 by MJ 2 Comments

It’s a sleepy Saturday morning here in western Massachusetts, at least at our house. I’ve had a slow start, and the most productive thing I’ve managed so far is updating my manga needs spreadsheet. Yes, that’s right, I keep a spreadsheet of the manga I want to buy online so I can access it anywhere (for instance, from my phone while standing in a comic shop). I truly am a dork. Anyway, included on the list are series I am currently buying, as well as series I would like to start buying, including a few I’ve already read but wish to own. The reason I’m mentioning that here, is that I’m always looking for recommendations, and I find it helps for people to know what I already read and enjoy. I do spend quite a bit of time poring over Jason Thompson’s Manga, The Complete Guide, but even with his wonderful write-ups to go on, I’m not always certain if I’ll like a series or not. If anyone has recommendations, particularly of shojo manga (which I always want to read more of, but find so little to my taste), I’d be very grateful!

Segue into a ramble about shojo manga: …

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Filed Under: FEATURES Tagged With: manga, shojo, ya

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