Vertical Comics

Bookmarked: Satoshi Kon-a-thon

December 3, 2014 by Katherine Dacey

It’s not every day that an American publisher releases a manga by the late, great Satoshi Kon, so Brigid and I decided to mark the occasion with a roundtable discussion. Joining us is David Brothers, one our favorite comics journalists. David has written for Comics Alliance, Pop Culture Shock, Publisher’s Weekly, Wired, and The Atlantic Monthly, and currently works in the comics industry.

On our plate: Tropic of the Sea, which was published by Vertical Comics in 2013, and OPUS, which arrives in comic book stores today courtesy of Dark Horse. Both works date to an early stage of Satoshi Kon’s career, but explore themes present in such films as Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, and Paprika–most notably the boundary between reality and imagination.

KATE: Let’s start the conversation with a basic question: which did you enjoy more, OPUS or Tropic of the Sea, and why?

DAVID: I definitely liked OPUS a lot more than Tropic of the Sea, I think owing to the fact that while both are stories in well-worn genres, OPUS is way more up my alley in general, since it was at least partly about storytelling as a creator. Tropic of the Sea felt fairly pat, with precious few surprises all the way down to the last panel. OPUS follows the blueprint of other stories in its genre, but it’s also funnier and warmer somehow, I suppose because it’s about the nature of free will and humanity, and to tackle those points you kinda have to have characters that are entertaining to watch.

I actually read these books back-to-back the first time I read both, Tropic of the Sea and then OPUS, with a break for cooking and dinner in-between. OPUS did a great job of sparking my imagination. I think it’s cool that the story works as both how we read it, as the story of a creator in his creation, and also a crazy deus ex machina ending for the manga Resonance. Tropic of the Sea sorta is what it is, which is a well-executed story to be sure, but OPUS goes places I really enjoy.

I’m focusing on OPUS, but I didn’t dislike Tropic of the Sea. It’s good, but it’s just not quite my bag. How was it for you two?

BRIGID: Wow, I’m actually feeling the opposite: I really liked Tropic of the Sea because I thought that it was very well done, even if the story had been done before. I’m finding OPUS much harder to follow, though. Maybe I’m just not good with action stories, but it seems like things are constantly exploding and flying apart without any visible cause. And right at the end of chapter 1 there’s this weird non-sequitur where Satoko’s leg is trapped under a stone column and then, without anything changing in the panel that I could see, she just pushed it off and jumped up. On the one hand, this manga has a pretty sophisticated sense of space, but on the other hand, I’m having a lot of trouble following the motion of people and things within that space, and in particular, why things are blowing up. As I write this, I haven’t finished the manga, so maybe there’s a resolution or explanation I’m not seeing yet, but right now it’s pulling me out of the story to have to stop and figure out what just happened. It’s weird, too, because you would expect an animator to be tighter about that kind of thing.

KATE: My experience tracks with yours, David: I liked OPUS more than Tropic of the Sea. I found the premise of Tropic of the Sea a little too familiar, in large part because the characters were all such obvious types–the skeptic, the unscrupulous developer, the wise old-timer–that none registered as individuals. The story’s length was also a contributing factor, as Kon didn’t have enough space to flesh out the cast beyond their specific plot functions. It’s a shame that the script wasn’t better, as the illustrations create a palpable sense of place.

As for OPUS, it irresistibly reminded me of the a-ha video for “Take on Me” and the Will Farrell/Emma Thompson flick Stranger Than Fiction, with a pinch of AKIRA for seasoning. I normally find these kind of meta-exercises tedious, but Kon infuses the story with a sense of playful urgency that thwarts the urge to deconstruct every page. (For me, at least; your mileage may vary.)

DAVID: Oh, I’m definitely knee-deep in that urge to deconstruct. Resonance feels like the anime and manga that was around when I was getting into this stuff, something halfway between Ryoichi Ikegami’s ’80s realism and Masamune Shirow’s willingness to blend weird tangents into his hard sci-fi worldbuilding. The haircuts, the fashion, the motivations, the poorly thought-out backstories, and somehow even the fourth wall breaking action are all my bag. Which I think is a big part of why I share the constant feeling of Things Are Happening All Over with you, Brigid, but have a different response to it. The story-in-the-story is something I know well and have read often (the cop mentor, the thug friend, the weird way the heroine keeps getting rescued instead of rescuing!), so I buy into that, and through that the rest of the story, maybe a little harder than others would. This feels a lot like a lost chapter of a comic I never read as a kid, from late enough in the story that doing a daring metafictional “let’s talk about comics stories by way of being in a comics story!” tale was not just feasible, but something you could dedicate 300+ pages to.

KATE: I agree with Brigid that the draftsmanship in Tropic of the Sea is crisper–in fact, I think that’s part of the reason that I’m so focused on the creakier aspects of the story. The illustrations are almost… well, “invisible” isn’t quite the right word, but they don’t call attention to themselves in the same way that the illustrations in OPUS do. I don’t always respond well to flashy artwork, but I found OPUS engaging enough that I didn’t linger on the busier images.

As for the story, I’m with you, David: OPUS is a fun throwback to the kind of manga that Dark Horse and VIZ were publishing in the 1990s, right before the Sailor Moon/InuYasha revolution. OPUS isn’t as gonzo as some of the Koike/Ikegami manga from that era, but it still has that same breathless, hyperbolic quality. I’m kind of surprised that I liked it better than Tropic of the Sea, actually, as Tropic seems like it would be more in my wheelhouse. But I thought the script was too on-the-nose–a little ambiguity would have made the ending more satisfying, and more in keeping with Kon’s mature work. (An aside: I wondered what Rumiko Takahashi could have done with the premise of Tropic of the Sea… sigh.)

Switching gears, how did you react to the ending? Was Dark Horse right to include Kon’s unfinished sketches, or should the manga have been left incomplete?

DAVID: I came into OPUS cold, not even knowing it was unfinished, so I was both surprised, disappointed, and glad to see them. Surprised at the lack of an ending, disappointed at the same, but glad there was some kind of resolution, even if it’s just a metafictional one. For a story about stories to end with “Welp, and I guess I just didn’t finish this one, but I might one day!” is the kind of serendipity you can’t plan for, but is sometimes thematically correct for the work. It worked here, and I especially liked to see the pages Kon did with no faces. I thought that was a cool and creepy touch, and when combined with the rest of the backmatter, it made for a satisfying, though not all the way satisfying, ending.

Bookmarked! 11/12/14

November 12, 2014 by Brigid Alverson

Welcome to another edition of Bookmarked! This week, Johanna Draper Carlson of Comics Worth Reading joins Kate and I as we talk about what’s on the top of our reading stacks this week. I’ll start:

Brigid: I have been reading CLAMP’s Legal Drug a few pages at a time, which is really not the way to read it. I know this manga was a big deal back in the 2000s, but I have to confess I don’t always get CLAMP, and I’m finding this story somewhat tiresome because the characters all seem like types. The lead character, Kazahaya Kudo, was dying in the snow (for reasons that aren’t at all clear) when he was rescued by Rikuo, a young man who is as sullen as he is handsome. Now they live together and work for a pharmacy, but they spend a lot of time doing side jobs for the overly winsome owner of the business. The tasks they are assigned seem impossible—catch an invisible firefly—and they are given no direction, although they do have special psychic powers to fall back on. The puzzle part of it is interesting, and the art is lovely, but I just can’t warm up to any of these characters. It is nice, though, that Dark Horse has collected it into a single, thick omnibus, and that makes it easy for me to keep on plowing through it.

Anomal, by contrast, is a slim volume filled with lots of interesting characters. It’s a collection of short stories about the interactions between humans and yokai, and although they are all by the same creator, they vary quite a bit in tone. The character on the cover is a hyaku-me, or “hundred-eyes,” and he only figures in the first story, which is a shame as he’s a striking character. Some of the tales touch on deep emotions such as love, loss, and indebtedness, but there are a couple of semi-humorous ones, too. Unfortunately, the longest story is also the most annoying, about a schoolgirl who wants to become a yokai master because she loves to hug yokai. Nukuharu has an interesting way of drawing yokai, but like the stories, the art is uneven. I would love to see a more polished work from this creator, but Anomal is an interesting work and very different from the usual run of yokai tales.

Kate: I read Legal Drug about eight years ago. Though I loved it then, I’m not sure I’d be as enthusiastic about Legal Drug now. I still find CLAMP’s artwork elegant, but I agree with your assessment of the characters: they’re paper-thin collections of tics and mannerisms that grow tiresome quickly.

My nightstand is overflowing with new Vertical Comics. First up for me is volume one of Witchcraft Works, a series that falls squarely under the heading of Manga for Teenage Boys. The story focuses on Honoka Takamiya, a nebbishy high school student who has inexplicably attracted the attention of the class queen, Ayaka Kagari. After Ayaka rescues Honoka from an army of vicious stuffed rabbits — yes, it’s that kind of manga — we learn that Ayaka has been tasked with protecting Honoka from her fellow witches.

I’ll give creator Ryu Mizunagi credit: he wastes no time on exposition, diving into the action in the very first pages. Later chapters are denser in explanation, but generally read like conversations, rather than convenient exchanges of information for the reader’s benefit. I’m a little “meh” on the art, as it’s been calculated to appeal to the male gaze; most of the female characters are comically well endowed. (Several would topple over in real life, given their otherwise slender proportions.) There’s a fair amount of mammary-oriented fanservice and silly outfits, as well as an element of male wish fulfillment that just doesn’t resonate with an older female reader like me.

More promising is Ajin: Demi-Human, a supernatural thriller that starts slowly but builds momentum quickly. The first ten or so pages are a chore to read, as author Tsuina Miura provides a detailed explanation of what demi-humans are–they’re immortal–and how many walk the earth. (Hint: not many.) After this clumsy intro, however, the author delivers a nasty jolt: seemingly ordinary teen Kei Nagai learns the hard way that he’s immortal when he survives a hit-and-run accident with a truck. The intense media interest in this discovery forces Kei to go on the lam to avoid bounty hunters, government agents, and evil scientists.

A story likes Ajin lives or dies by its artwork, and manga-ka Gamon Sakurai proves he’s up to the task of bring Miura’s script to life. Kei’s accident, for example, is suitably icky and unsettling, leaving the reader as dumbfounded as the characters who witnessed it. Sakurai’s action scenes are crisply rendered, too–a big plus, considering how many pages of volume one are devoted to high-speed chases and hand-to-hand combat. My only nit-picky criticism is the character designs: although the adults look good, some of the teenagers have serious Manga Hair. That’s a minor complaint, however, considering how much I enjoyed volume one.

Also on my nightstand are volumes three and four of Fumi Yoshinaga’s What Did You Eat Yesterday? I admit that I began this series fully expecting to love it, but have been mildly disappointed thus far. The issue, for me, is the ratio of drama to shop talk. The vignettes exploring the relationship between Shiro, an uptight lawyer, and his partner Kenji, a cheerful hairdresser, are lovely, capturing the normal rhythms of a middle-aged couple’s life. We also get glimpses of each man’s work situation, and how they interact with peers and clients—another winning touch. The food talk, however, is less compelling. Though some of the dishes sound appetizing, I found these passages as tedious as listening to someone give a blow-by-blow account of an expensive meal. Your mileage may vary; if you live to eat, you may find these stove-side rhapsodies more engaging than I have.

Johanna: It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to read any manga—too much life stuff getting in the way—but the bright side of that is lots of volumes to catch up on over the holidays from series I expect to enjoy. I did manage to dive into a few books recently, plus try a new one-shot.

Let’s start with one of my current favorites, What Did You Eat Yesterday? Volume 5 is just out, and every new book for me is a reminder that I’m thrilled that we’re getting this series in English. I adore Fumi Yoshinaga’s art, and her combination of recipe how-tos and small moments of daily life for a gay couple works well. I keep thinking I’m going to try one of the dishes Shiro prepares, but they’re too domestic. They use short-cut bottled sauces and whatever he gets at the local grocery, which is realistic (someone who has to get dinner on the table every day doesn’t spend a lot of time making fancy dishes) and a great insight into his personality, but that makes them difficult to replicate in the U.S. Yet that cultural authenticity adds another level of enjoyment. I need to learn to mimic how he thinks about meals, with easy but balanced side dishes included, instead of getting caught up in the details. I’m not sure I could filet my own whole fish in my kitchen, the way Shiro does, either.

Ha! I originally typoed “meals” as “males” above, which leads into the other piece of the work, the comfortable relationship between the two men. It’s not about what Shiro and Kenji say, specifically, to each other in an evening, it’s that they’re sharing the details of their experiences. Some of them are dramatic, as when Kenji explains how his father abandoned his family. There’s a good deal of humor, too. Early on, a friendly housewife’s husband tries to make Shiro friends with the other gay guy he knows just because they’re both gay. Anyone who’s been matched up on a superficiality can ruefully relate to that. Overall, I never know what a new chapter will bring, which I like a lot.

Reaching further back, I also read Volume 5 of Genshiken: Second Season. I don’t always know exactly what’s going on with the characters, since they’re so fannish and detailed about media I’m unfamiliar with, but I can appreciate their dedication to their hobbies, even if this go-round for the series is a lot about cosplay and yaoi.

The one character I remember best from the previous series, the terminally nerdy Madarame, is still hanging around the college club, although he’s graduated. The younger club members have decided to do him a favor by orchestrating him being in the club room with the girl he’s had a crush on for four years. The encounter plays out in a way I found totally unexpected, but quietly charming and good-hearted. That’s why I’m still “hanging around” with these wackos—it’s like being part of your own group of fans, virtually. The details may vary, but the underlying love and dedication, even when taken to extremes, is similar. I also like the way each chapter is followed up by four 4-koma strips that comment on the events we’ve just seen.

In my own burst of fannish trivia, it’s part of the cosplay girl’s (I don’t know any character names beyond “Sue”) character that she’s very large-breasted, in contrast to her sweet, unassuming personality (when she’s not dressing up). In some of the outfits she wears here (and the chapter where she’s topless), I was reminded of what they used to say about Wally Wood drawing Power Girl, that he told his assistants that he was going to keep drawing her bigger and bigger until they made him stop … and they never did.

From sex to violence. I also read Judge, volume 5, although I am embarrassed to admit it. I only keep up with it because I’m lucky enough to get review copies. (If not, I’d be getting it out of the library, because I only want to buy series I expect to reread, and once the final villain is revealed, I suspect my interest will disappear entirely.) Next volume is supposedly the last, and I’m glad, the same way I’m glad when they cancel a TV show I should have stopped watching several episodes before but couldn’t quite break the habit on.

It’s one of those “a bunch of random people are told to kill each other one by one” stories—and why did Japan develop that genre?—that’s gone on too long. There are a couple of revelations in this book that I think are supposed to be interesting and provide twists, but I just want it to be over. Especially since it’s turned into a mini-harem, with our nice-ish guy protagonist mostly dealing with three girls. I expected more from it, with the original theme of the seven deadly sins, but I can’t keep up with who had which animal head which was what sin. Really bad pacing, this series has.

My one new read was The Garden of Words, which I failed. Remember when I said things had been really busy lately? As a result, I’ve been in a super-charged mood of “let’s get more stuff done,” and I want what I’m reading to keep up. This book is the exact opposite. It’s about an older woman and school-age boy who meet at a gazebo when it rains. It requires leisurely reflection and an awareness of connections in life and pondering how someone can affect our lives temporarily but then we move on.

I was in totally the wrong mood for it. I’m going to try reading it again when I can better calm myself and approach it on its terms before I decide whether it’s too much like other things I’ve read or has its own special qualities.

Miyazaki Talks Manga; Ninja Overload

November 10, 2014 by Katherine Dacey

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, legendary director Hayao Miyazaki discusses his current project: a manga about samurai warriors. Don’t hold your breath, however; Miyazaki told Variety that he doubts he’ll finish it. “I wanted to put a lot of effort into it, ignoring costs, like a hobby,” he tells the magazine. “I thought I’d have free time, but I keep getting project offers.”

As Naruto draws to a close, Jason Thompson attempts the impossible: he’s reading the entire series in 48 hours, recording his impressions as he goes. The first installment is now live, and covers volumes 1-27.

Speaking of everyone’s favorite spiky-haired ninja, worldwide sales figures for Naruto have topped 200 million volumes. Though the lion’s share of books were sold in Japan, fans in 35 countries around the world have purchased a whopping 75 million volumes during the series’ fifteen-year run.

Masashi Kishimoto chats with The Asahi Shimbun about the phenomenal success of Naruto.

The latest installments of Attack on Titan and Black Butler top this week’s New York Times Manga Bestseller list.

Good news for anyone who missed Ode to Kirihito the first time around: Vertical Comics will be re-issuing ten classic Tezuka titles in ebook form.

In other licensing news, Seven Seas announced two more Alice in the Country of… manga, while VIZ added two new titles to its Shojo Beat line-up: Hiro Fujiwara’s Maid-Sama! (formerly published by Tokyopop) and Maki Minami’s Komomo Confiserie.

News from Japan: Io Sakisaka’s Blue Spring Ride is winding down, as is Yukinori Kitajima and Yuki Kodama’s detective series Hamatora.

Reviews: Alexander Hoffman reviews Monokuro Kinderbook, an oldie but goodie from the Fanfare/Ponet Mon catalog. Over at the Infinite Rainy Day, Jonathan Kaharl shares a list of his favorite horror manga, from xxxHolic to Franken Fran.

Nic Wilcox on vols. 1-4 of Alice in the Country of Jokers (No Flying No Tights)
Leroy Douresseaux on All You Need Is Kill (Comic Book Bin)
Alice Vernon on vol. 1 of Barakamon (Girls Read Comics)
Matthew Warner on vol. 4 of Bloody Cross (The Fandom Post)
Lesley Aeschliman on vol. 12 of Blue Exorcist (Lesley’s Musings on Anime & Manga)
Ken H. on vols. 40-41 of Fairy Tail (Sequential Ink)
Megan R. on Hetalia: Axis Powers (Manga Test Drive)
Kristin on vol. 1 of Kiss of the Rose Princess (Comic Attack)
Lesley Aeschliman on vol. 1 of Kiss of the Rose Princess (Lesley’s Musings on Anime & Manga)
Lesley Aeschliman on vol. 23 of Naruto (Lesley’s Musings on Anime & Manga)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 16 of Rin-ne (Comic Book Bin)
Khursten Santos on Sono Otoko Amatou nitsuki (Otaku Champloo)
Kate O’Neil on vol. 7 of Until Death Do Us Part (The Fandom Post)
Lesley Aeschliman on vol. 1 of Voice Over! Seiyu Academy (Lesley’s Musings on Anime & Manga)

The Best Manga of 2011: The Manga Critic’s Picks

December 31, 2011 by Katherine Dacey

The usual gambit for introducing a year-end list is to remark on the abundance of good titles, acknowledge the difficulty in choosing just ten (or five, or three), and comment on the overall state of the industry. And while I certainly debated what to include on my list, I’ll be honest: 2011 yielded fewer contenders for Best Manga than any other year I’ve covered. The dearth of new titles was attributable to publishers’ financial prudence; companies released fewer books, licensed fewer series, and focused on repackaging older content for budget-conscious consumers. And though I selfishly wish that more new material had been released this year, I think manga publishers have done an excellent job of responding to their biggest challenges: a sluggish economy, digital piracy, and Borders’ bankruptcy.

So what titles made my 2011 list? My top ten are below, along with my list of favorite continuing series, favorite finales, and favorite guilty pleasures.

10. Breathe Deeply
By Yamaaki Doton • One Peace Books
Part sci-fi thriller, part coming-of-age story, this engrossing drama examines the relationship between two young men: Sei, who grew up in a world of privilege, and Oishi, a boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Both Sei and Oishi fall in love with Yuko, a sickly girl whose incurable illness inspires her suitors to become medical researchers. In less capable hands, Breathe Deeply might have been a mawkish paean to the purity of young love, but the husband-and-wife team of Yamaaki Doton have a keen ear for dialogue; the interactions between Yuko and her two suitors are tinged with an authentic mixture of adolescent anxiety, sexual longing, and braggadocio. Clean, expressive artwork and well-rounded characters help sell the story, especially in its final pages. One of 2011’s best surprises.

9. The Secret Notes of Lady Kanako
By Ririko Tsujita • Tokyopop
Kanoko, the sardonic heroine of The Secret Notes of Lady Kanoko, is a student of human behavior, gleefully filling her notebooks with detailed observations about her classmates. Though Kanoko would like nothing more than to remain on the sidelines, she frequently becomes embroiled in her peers’ problems; they value her independent perspective, as Kanoko isn’t the least bit interested in dating, running for student council, or currying favor with the alpha clique. Kanoko’s sharp tongue and cool demeanor might make her the mean-girl villain in another shojo manga, but Ririko Tsujita embraces her heroine’s prickly, opinionated nature and makes it fundamental to Kanoko’s appeal. It’s a pity TOKYOPOP didn’t survive long enough to finish this three-volume series, as it’s one of the best shojo titles in recent memory.

8. Wandering Son
By Takako Shimura • Fantagraphics
In her thoughtful review of volume one, Michelle Smith praised Takako Shimura’s deft use of perspective: “The main thing I kept thinking about while reading Wandering Son… is how things that seem insignificant to one person can be secretly, intensely significant to someone else.” Shimura’s ability to dramatize each character’s unique point of view is one of the reasons Wandering Son never feels preachy, even though the topic suggests an Afterschool Special; we are always exquisitely aware of the subtle but important changes in the way each character views herself, as well as her fears and hopes.

7. Princess Knight
By Osamu Tezuka • Vertical, Inc.
What Osamu Tezuka’s New Treasure Island (1946) was to shonen, his Princess Knight (1953-56) was to shojo: both were long-form adventure stories with cinematic flair. Neither could be said to be the “first” shonen or shojo manga, but both had a profound influence on the artists who came of age in the 1940s and 1950s, offering a new storytelling model for them to emulate. Viewed through a contemporary lens, Princess Knight hasn’t aged quite as well as New Treasure Island, as it’s saddled with some woefully antiquated notions of gender. At the same time, however, it’s easy to see why this story appealed to several generations of Japanese girls: Sapphire gets to eat her cake and have it too, having swashbuckling adventures *and* winning the hand of Prince Charming. —Reviewed at Manga Bookshelf on 11/21/11 and The Manga Critic on 12/19/10

6. Tank Tankuro: Gajo Sakamoto, Manga’s Pre-War Master, 1934-35
By Gajo Sakamoto • Press Pop
Almost twenty years before Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy took flight in the pages of Shonen Kobunsha magazine, Gajo Sakamoto’s Tank Tankuro enchanted Japanese youngsters with his monster-fighting exploits and cool gadgets. Though the series’ propaganda intent is impossible for contemporary readers to ignore — Tank fights the Chinese, who are portrayed in less-than-flattering terms — Presspop’s new anthology demonstrates that Sakamoto’s artistry has aged more gracefully than his storylines. Sakamoto’s work is packaged in a handsome, hardcover edition that includes thoughtful extras: a contextual essay by translator Sunsuke Nakazawa, an interview with Sakamoto’s son, and an article by Sakamoto himself, discussing the character’s origin.

5. Stargazing Dog
By Takashi Murakami • NBM/Comics Lit
Consider yourself warned: Stargazing Dog is a five-hanky affair. The two interconnecting vignettes that comprise this slim volume explore the bond between Happie, a shiba inu, and Daddy, his owner. When Daddy loses his job, his home, and his family, he and Happie hit the road in search of a new life. Though the outcome of Happie and Daddy’s journey is never in doubt — we learn their fate in the opening pages of the book — Murakami draws the reader into their story with an honest and unsparing look at the human-dog compact that may remind cinephiles of Vittorio de Sica’s Umberto D. —Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 12/23/11

4. Onwards Towards Our Noble Deaths
By Shigeru Mizuki • Drawn & Quarterly
In this blistering indictment of Japanese militarism, Shigeru Mizuki draws on his own experiences during World War II to tell the story of a platoon stationed in Papua New Guinea. The soldiers face a terrible choice: fight a hopeless battle, or face execution for treason. Like many war stories, Onwards Toward Our Noble Deaths documents the tremendous human sacrifice of modern armed conflict: gruesome injuries, senseless deaths, devastated landscapes. What lends Mizuki’s narrative its special potency is his depiction of the senior officers; their perverse dedication to their mission turns them into tyrants, more concerned with saving face than saving their own soldiers’ skins. Essential reading for anyone interested in World War II.

3. The Drops of God
By Tadashi Agi and Shu Okimoto • Vertical, Inc
As Oishinbo handily demonstrated, a skilled writer can fold a considerable amount of educational detail into a story without reducing it to a textbook. The Drops of God follows a similar template, imparting highly specialized information about wine with the same natural ease that Law & Order illustrates the inner workings of a crime investigation. At the same time, however, Drops is a delicious soap opera, filled with domineering fathers, mustache-twirling villains, evil beauties, eccentric oenophiles, and down-on-their-luck restauranteurs. Even if the reader isn’t the least bit interested in wine, he’ll find the drama as irresistible as an episode of Dynasty. —Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 12/16/11

2. A Zoo in Winter
By Jiro Taniguchi • Fanfare/Ponent Mon
Drawing on his own experiences, Jiro Taniguchi spins an engaging tale about a young man who abandons a promising career in textile design for the opportunity to become a manga artist. Though the basic plot invites comparison with Bakuman, Taniguchi does more than just document important milestones in Hamaguchi’s career: he shows us how Hamaguchi’s emotional maturation informs every aspect of his artistry — something that’s missing from many other portrait-of-an-artist-as-a-young-man sagas, which place much greater emphasis on the pleasure of professional recognition than on the satisfaction of mastering one’s craft. Lovely, moody artwork and an appealing cast of supporting characters complete this very satisfying package. —Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 5/28/11

1. A Bride’s Story
By Kaoru Mori • Yen Press
A Bride’s Story, which takes place on the banks of the Caspian Sea, explores the relationship between Amir Halgal, a nineteen-year-old nomad, and Karluk Eihon, the eldest son of sheep herders. Though their marriage is one of political expedience, Amir is determined to be a good wife, doing her utmost to learn her new family’s customs, befriend the members of their extended clan, and earn her new husband’s respect. Kaoru Mori is as interested in observing Amir’s everyday life as she is in documenting the growing conflict between the Halgal and Eihon clans, yet A Bride’s Story is never dull, thanks to Mori’s smart, engaging dialogue; as she demonstrated in Emma and Shirley, Mori can make even the simplest moments revealing, whether her characters are preparing a manor house for the master’s return or skinning a freshly killed deer. By allowing her story to unfold in such a naturalistic fashion, A Bride’s Story manages to be both intimate and expansive, offering readers a window into life along the Silk Road. —Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 5/24/11

HONORABLE MENTIONS
As in previous years, I had difficulty limiting myself to just ten titles, so I compiled a list of manga that didn’t quite make my best-of list, but were thoroughly enjoyable:

Other Awesome Debuts: The Book of Human Insects (Vertical, Inc.), Tesoro (VIZ)
Best Continuing Series: 20th Century Boys (VIZ), Bunny Drop (Yen Press), Chi’s Sweet Home (Vertical, Inc.), Cross Game (VIZ), Ooku: The Inner Chambers (VIZ), Twin Spica (Vertical, Inc.)
Best New Guilty Pleasure: Blue Exorcist (VIZ), Oresama Teacher (VIZ)
Best Reprint Edition: Magic Knight Rayearth (Dark Horse), Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Kodansha Comics)
Best Manga I Thought I’d Hate: Cage of Eden (Kodansha Comics)
Best Finale: Black Jack, Vol. 17 (Vertical, Inc.)

So now I turn the floor over to you, readers: what were your favorite new manga of 2011?

No Longer Human, Vol. 1

November 24, 2011 by Katherine Dacey

First published in 1948, Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human became one of the most widely read books in post-war Japan. The story, modeled on Dazai’s own life, chronicles a dissolute young man’s profound estrangement from his family and peers. The protagonist’s life follows a trajectory similar to Dazai’s: convinced that his life is an empty charade, Yozo drops out of school; joins the Communist Party; enters into a suicide pact with a virtual stranger; and woos lonely women, using them for shelter, emotional comfort, and financial support after his father, a prominent politician, disowns him.

The novel is divided into three sections, or “notebooks,” each corresponding to a period in the protagonist’s life. In the first, Yozo describes his childhood: his uneasy relationship with his father, his clownish behavior at school, and his abuse at the hands of a female servant. In the second and third sections, Yozo documents his troubled adulthood, as he abandons school for a life of drinking and illicit relationships, bouncing from one woman to the next with little regard for the harm he causes them — or himself. Framing Yozo’s story is a second narrative delivered by an unnamed author who has found three photographs of Yozo: as a child of ten, “a small boy surrounded by a great many women”; as a college student, handsome but “strangely unpleasant”; and as man in his later twenties, his hair “streaked with gray,” and his face “devoid of expression.”*

Given the novel’s enduring popularity, it’s no surprise that several manga artists have adapted Dazai’s text as a graphic novel. Their approaches have ranged from reverential — the East Press edition (2007) hews closely to the original novel — to provocative — Yasunori Ninose’s version (2010) uses tentacle-porn imagery to represent the character’s extreme emotional distress. Usamaru Furuya’s 2009 adaptation falls somewhere in between, taking liberties with the setting and structure of Dazai’s work, while preserving the original tone and events of the novel.

As these myriad approaches suggest, one of the biggest challenges of translating No Longer Human into a pictorial form is its interiority: though eventful, Yozo’s story is as much about his state of mind as his behavior. Early in the novel, for example, Yozo describes his inability to understand how other people feel and think. “I have not the remotest clue what the nature or extent of my neighbor’s woes can be,” he tells the reader. “It is almost impossible for me to converse with other people.” In a desperate attempt to camouflage his bewilderment, Yozo constructs a jovial mask, winning approval from his family members and classmates with impish behavior and remarks. “I kept my melancholy and my agitation hidden, careful lest any trace should be left exposed,” he explains. “I feigned an innocent optimism; I gradually perfected myself in the role of the farcical eccentric.”

Furuya makes a game effort to find visual analogues for Yozo’s interior states. Whenever Yozo feels emotionally disoriented, for example, Furuya obscures the other characters’ expressions, rendering their faces as blurs. Furuya extends this symbolic approach to Yozo’s social paralysis as well. “I was congenitally unable to refuse anything offered to me by another person, no matter how little it might suit my tastes,” Yozo confesses. “In other words, I hadn’t the strength even to choose between two alternatives.” In these passages, Furuya draws Yozo as a marionette, violently manipulated by an unseen puppeteer; as a drowning victim, disappearing under the water’s surface; and as a man engulfed in flames, so consumed by his fear of disappointing others that he surrenders his own agency.

Though Furuya follows the basic outline of Dazai’s novel, he makes two significant changes to the text. First, he moves the story from pre-war Japan to the present day, replacing the unnamed narrator with a character named Usamaru Furuya, a manga artist who discovers Yozo’s pictures on the internet. Second, Furuya streamlines the script, all but eliminating the first notebook; instead, he depicts Yozo’s childhood through a few brief, suggestive flashbacks.

The first decision makes good sense. By moving the setting from Taisho-era Japan to the present, Furuya sheds the novel’s period trappings in favor of a milieu that readers can intuitively appreciate — a world of blogs, cell-phones, high-rise apartment buildings, and other technologies that promote social isolation.

Less successful is Furuya’s decision to focus on Yozo’s adult life to the exclusion of his childhood. In the original novel, ten-year-old Yozo crosses paths with another outsider, a young boy who immediately detects the effort and strain behind Yozo’s clowning. Fearful that Takeichi will expose his deceit to the other students, Yozo dons “the gentle beguiling smile of the false Christian,” befriending the odd, unlikeable Takeichi in an effort to buy his silence. The episode is among the most potent and revealing in the book, an early example of Yozo’s ability to manipulate others, and a rare example of him acknowledging his own agency — something he never does in the manga.

Furuya also trims another brief but important scene from the early pages of No Longer Human, in which Yozo implies that he was molested by his wealthy family’s servants. “Already by that time I had been taught a lamentable thing by the maids and menservants; I was being corrupted,” Yozo declares. “I now think that that to perpetrate such a thing on a small child is the ugliest, vilest, cruelest crime a human being can commit.” Yozo’s indifference to others’ suffering, inability to experience romantic love, and passive-aggressive behavior, suggest a pathology rooted in this formative experience. Perhaps Furuya found this passage too neatly Freudian for his purposes, but in choosing to omit it, he makes Yozo seem like just another cad who beds and discards women, rather than a wounded soul incapable of sexual intimacy.

Yet for all its shortcomings — the omissions, the obvious symbolism — Furuya’s adaptation still captures the raw power of Dazai’s original novel. In its best passages, Furuya makes us feel as dazed and lonely as Yozo himself; we appreciate how helpless he feels, though we can see how seductive — and dangerous — he can be. Furuya also manages to document the full extent of Yozo’s debauchery without eroticizing it; we are keenly aware of the emotional distance between Yozo and his sexual conquests, making these scenes feel joyless and awkward, rather than titillating in their explicitness.

In short, Furuya has found a way to transform Dazai’s sharp critique of pre-war Japanese society into a more universal text, one that raises the question, What does it mean to be human right now?

* All quotations taken from Donald Keene’s translation (New York: Penguin Books, 1958).

Review copy provided by Vertical, Inc.

NO LONGER HUMAN, VOL. 1 • NOVEL BY OSAMU DAZAI, ADAPTATION BY USAMARU FURUYA • VERTICAL, INC. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Now You’re One of Us

August 3, 2011 by Katherine Dacey

Noriko, the young heroine of Asa Nonami’s Now You’re One of Us, initially thinks she’s hit the marriage jackpot. Not only are her in-laws wealthy and well regarded by their neighbors, they’re also quick to embrace her as a member of the family. Her husband Kazuhito is handsome and utterly devoted; her mother-in-law Kimie, generous and uncritical; and her sister-in-law Ayano, solicitous to everyone in the household, including Kazuhito’s oddly child-like brother Takehami. Even the Shito matriarch, ninety-eight-year-old Ei, welcomes Noriko to the clan by declaring her the family’s “treasure” and “future.”

Shortly after Noriko arrives at the Shitos’ Tokyo home, a strange, slightly disheveled neighbor approaches her while she works in the garden. Though Kimie is quick to dismiss him as a troubled tenant who’s fallen on hard times, Noriko can’t shake the feeling that the neighbor was about to divulge something damning — a feeling intensified by his mysterious death in a fire several days later. The Shitos’ oddly muted, impersonal response to his death further arouses Noriko’s suspicion, as do the family’s clandestine midnight meetings. Though the Shitos offer reasonable, measured responses to Noriko’s inquiries, she begins wondering if the Shitos run an illicit business… or worse.

Thanks to a fluid translation by Michael and Mitsuko Valek, Asa Nonami’s simple, unfussy prose draws the reader into Noriko’s insular world, showing us how a simple girl from a working class family is lured into the Shitos’ web. In this passage, for example, Nonami reveals Kazuhito to be a deft manipulator, appealing to Noriko’s vanity by suggesting that Ei’s endorsement carries special significance:

“Great Granny’s been watching people for ninety-eight years — she can see through them at a glance, so lots of people in the neighborhood come to ask her for advice.” He explained how delighted he was that Great Granny had taken a liking to her; it showed that he hadn’t been blinded by attraction. He felt like the luckiest man in the world for having found someone of whom his family approved.

Unfortunately, Nonami is never content to let a passage like this one stand alone; she feels compelled to explain how Kazuhito’s words swayed Noriko by telling us exactly what Noriko is thinking at the moment he gives this speech. The obviousness of Noriko’s interior monologues is especially frustrating; Nonami does a competent job of revealing her characters’ motivations and feelings through their actions without resorting to such editorial interventions.

The other drawback to Nonami’s storytelling is that she begins telegraphing the ending just a few chapters into the book. Savvier readers will quickly figure out what the Shitos’ secret is — and it’s a doozy — though they probably won’t mind wading through another hundred pages to have their ickiest suspicions confirmed, especially since Nonami manages a few surprises in the final pages.

The bottom line: Now You’re One of Us is an entertaining, atmospheric potboiler that’s probably best read in the privacy of one’s own home.

This review originally appeared at PopCultureShock on 2/8/08.

NOW YOU’RE ONE OF US • BY ASA NONAMI, TRANSLATED BY MICHAEL AND MITSUKO VALEK • VERTICAL, INC. • 240 pp.

7 Billion Needles, Vols. 1-2

November 21, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

First published in 1950, Hal Clement’s Needle was a unique mixture of hard science fiction and police procedural. The story focused on an alien detective who crash-lands on Earth while chasing an intergalactic criminal. With his ship destroyed and his symbiant companion dead, The Hunter takes up residence inside a teenager’s body, eventually persuading his host to help him find the fugitive — no mean feat, as the fugitive can also hide, undetected, inside a human host.

The story was notable, in part, for Clement’s meticulous, detailed study of the alien’s physiology. Drawing on mid-century research on microorganisms, Clement imagined a highly intelligent, adaptable creature capable of manipulating its body to squeeze through tiny spaces and make use of its host’s sensory organs to learn more about its surroundings. Needle was also notable for the way in which Clement folded these speculative passages into an old-fashioned detective story; once The Hunter begins communicating directly with Bob, his host, the two retrace the fugitive’s steps, investigating everyone who might have come into contact with it and systematically ruling out suspects through careful observation of their behavior.

Nobuaki Tadano’s 7 Billion Needles (2008-10) draws inspiration from Clement’s novel, preserving the basic concept while tweaking the storyline to work in a graphic format. Gone are the long passages explaining how Horizon (as the alien detective is called in 7 Billion Needles) insinuates himself into his human host; in their place are more direct, dramatic scenes showing us how Horizon’s host, a sullen teenage girl named Hikaru, wrestles with the emotional and physical burden of helping him pursue Maelstrom, a shape-shifting creature so powerful he’s left a trail of dead planets in his wake.

As a result, 7 Billion Needles reads more like horror than hard science fiction, placing more emphasis on monster-hunting and raw adolescent emotion than the mechanics of Horizon and Hikaru’s symbiotic relationship. Tadano’s choices make good sense from the standpoint of pacing and visual drama; so much of the original novel took place inside Bob, it’s hard to imagine how an artist would have brought those passages to life in comic-book form. (That summary makes Needle sound impossibly dirty, but rest assured, it isn’t.) Tadano’s monster, too, is much better defined than Clement’s; Clement’s fugitive only appears in the final chapters of the book, the nature of his crime never fully explained, whereas Maelstrom, Tadano’s creation, is something out of a good B-movie, causing his host du jour to undergo grotesque transformations before going all-out alien.

The real genius of 7 Billion Needles, however, is the way Tadano uses teen angst as a key plot element. In the very first pages of volume one, we learn that Hikaru is an orphan, living with an aunt and uncle not much older than she is. As the story unfolds, Tadano seeds the conversation with nuggets of information about Hikaru’s past; in volume two, for example, we learn that Hikaru and her father had lived on a small island, where they became social pariahs, enduring threats, taunts, and vandalism from their neighbors. Not surprisingly, Hikaru is withdrawn at the beginning of 7 Billion Needles, openly defying teachers by wearing headphones in class and avoiding even the most basic interaction with her peers. Once she agrees to help Horizon, however, she must begin talking to other people — the only way Horizon can detect Malestrom’s presence is for Hikaru to interact with Maelstrom’s host. Her awkward attempts to connect with other students, and her fumbling efforts at friendship, add a raw emotional energy to 7 Billion Needles that is largely absent from Clement’s original story.

The series’ artwork is its only shortcoming. As Deb Aoki noted in her review of volume one, all the female characters have the same bland, plastic face, making them difficult to distinguish from one another. (Tadano’s rather weak efforts at creating a memorable supporting cast also contribute to the impression of sameness.) Some of the monster designs, too, lack inspiration — a key shortcoming in a genre known for its nightmarish, otherworldly imagery. When we first see Maelstrom in his true form, he looks like a tyrannosaurus rex; not until the second volume are we treated to a more terrifying and unsettling image of Malestrom as a grotesque composite of all the human beings he’s ingested. Perhaps most disappointing is Tadano’s over-reliance on the flash-boom, using big bursts of light and sound effects to indicate Horizon’s powers without really showing us what’s happening.

On the whole, however, 7 Billion Needles is an intelligent update on Needle, substituting the heat of adolescent angst and monster-slaying for the cool detachment of hard science and old-fashioned gumshoeing. Recommended.

Review copies provided by Vertical, Inc. Volume two will be released on November 23, 2010.

7 BILLION NEEDLES, VOLS. 1-2 • BY NOBUAKI TADANO • VERTICAL, INC. • RATING: 16+

Peepo Choo, Vol. 1

July 19, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

When I was fifteen and in the throes of my mope-rock obsession, I fantasized a lot about England, home to my favorite bands. I imagined London, in particular, to be a place where everyone appreciated the sartorial genius of Mary Quant, fashionable ladies accessorized every outfit with a pair of shit kickers, regular moviegoers recognized Eat the Rich as brilliant satire, and — most important of all — teenage boys appreciated girls with dry, sarcastic wits and gloomy taste in music. You can guess my disappointment when I finally visited England for the first time; not only was London dirty, expensive, and filled with tweedy-looking people who found my taste in clothing odd, many of the teenagers I met were fascinated by American pop culture, pumping me and my companions for information about — quelle horror! — LL Cool J. I could have died. Though I’ve gone through similar phases since then — Russophilia, Woody Allenomania — I’ve never been able to abandon myself to those passions in quite the same way, knowing somewhere in the back of my mind that all Muscovites weren’t soulful admirers of Shostakovich and that most book editors didn’t live in pre-war sixes on the Upper East Side.

When we first meet Milton, the loser-hero of Felipe Smith’s visually dazzling Peepo Choo, he’s still innocent enough to believe that his love for anime makes him an honorary Japanese citizen. Milton proudly declares himself an otaku, viewing Japan as his spiritual home, a place where “everyone is nice,” “everyone cosplays,” and “everyone watches anime and reads manga.” “If I lived in Japan,” he tells himself, “I could be de me. The real Milton!” Looking at Milton’s life, it’s easy to see why Japan looms large in his imagination; when contrasted with his chaotic home — he shares a bedroom with eight rambunctious siblings — and crime-plagued Chicago neighborhood, Tokyo appears to be a model of order, a place where cuteness and civility prevail. What Milton discovers is that his Japan is nothing like the reality, a place populated by drunken salarymen, violent criminals, hairy cross-dressers, and puzzled commuters who wonder why he’s cosplaying on the subway. “There’s hostility in the air,” a deflated Milton observes upon spending his first day in Japan. “I know this feeling too well. I just never thought I’d feel it in Tokyo.”

Milton isn’t alone in his delusions; most of the characters in Peepo Choo are engaged in one form or another of culture shopping, trying on personae like so many pairs of jeans. There’s Jody, the jaded comic-store employee who adopts a street-thug pose and brags about his bedroom conquests, when, in fact, his sexploits amount to watching a lot of porn; there’s Takeshi, a wimp who reinvents himself as Morimoto Rockstar, a pimped-out yakuza whose greatest ambition is to emulate the Brick Side thugs (an imaginary Chicago gang); there’s Reiko, a voluptuous teen model who also cops a ghetto style and attitude, wearing enormous hoops and tiny shorts and backing up her demands for respect with foul language, middle fingers, and fisticuffs; and then there are the regulars at Enyo’s Collectibles, an anime-addled group of misfits who share Milton’s utopian vision of Japan.

To show us the unique lens through which each character views the world, Smith borrows a page from the William Faulkner playbook, switching “voices” as he moves from subplot to subplot. Milton’s story, for example, is punctuated by fantasy sequences that resemble a Takashi Murakami canvas; in Milton’s mind, even Japan’s landscapes have a pleasingly domesticated look, with smiling mountains and beaming suns presiding over a Noah’s Ark of anthropomorphic birds, cats, and hamsters. When Smith cuts to Gill, the hitman who runs Enyo’s Collectibles, the artwork becomes dark, ugly, and claustrophobic, evocative of such torture-porn films as Hostel and Saw. Smith shows us every blood splatter and cracked skull in gruesome, almost fetishistic detail, as Gill dispatches roomfuls of gangsters with gory abandon. (Gill even gets into character for his work, trading his suit and glasses for skull rings, a mohawk, and a Hannibal Lechter mask.)

Yet for all its technical virtuosity, there’s a hole at the center of Peepo Choo where its heart should be. Smith positively brutalizes his characters; in one scene, for example, two alpha girls dangle a bloody tampon in a classmate’s face, while in another, Takeshi disembowels a victim, carving a nonsense “Engrish” phrase into the man’s torso. The satirical intent of both scenes is obvious, but the crudeness of the satire feels more like provocation than actual commentary on manga cliches or Japanese fascination with American street life. The same goes for several sexually explicit passages in which Smith draws lusty women with watermelon breasts; it doesn’t take much imagination to see that he’s aping the visual language of Hustler and Playboy, but the scenes are too faithful to the source material to be anything more than affectionate parody.

Great satire is seldom generous or polite, but it shouldn’t be punitive, either, and that’s Peepo Choo‘s greatest shortcoming. Smith seems more intent on cranking up the sex and violence to eleven than making a real point about the ubiquity of either in seinen manga. I’m guessing — perhaps wrongly — that he’s hoping to implicate the audience in the characters’ rude behavior, to point out that it’s our own prurient interest in blood and boobs that drives creators to excess, but the point seems rather hollow when the artist himself seems to revel in his own ability to draw such mayhem. I wish I enjoyed Peepo Choo, as it’s obvious that Felipe Smith has the imagination and artistry to be a penetrating satirist; what Smith really needs is a little more empathy.

Review copy provided by Vertical, Inc.

PEEPO CHOO, VOL. 1 • BY FELIPE SMITH • VERTICAL, INC. • 252 pp. • RATING: MATURE (18+)

Chi’s Sweet Home, Vol. 1

June 24, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

Come for the cat, stay for the cartooning — that’s how I’d summarize the appeal of Chi’s Sweet Home, a deceptively simple story about a family that adopts a wayward kitten. Chi certainly works as an all-ages comic, as the clean, simple layouts do a good job of telling the story, even without the addition of dialogue or voice-overs. But Chi is more than just cute kitty antics; it’s a thoughtful reflection on the joys and difficulties of pet ownership, one that invites readers of all ages to see the world through their cat or dog’s eyes and imagine how an animal adapts to life among humans.

Though Kanata Konami accomplishes some of this by revealing Chi’s thoughts in the form of a simple monologue, delivered — or should that be “dewivered”? — in a child-like voice, it’s the artwork that really drives home the point that Chi is bewildered and intrigued by her new environment. Early in the volume, for example, the newly-rescued Chi awakes in a panicked state: she doesn’t know where she is, and she’s desperate to find her mother. Konami first gives us an overhead view of the living room, tracing Chi’s frantic attempt to find the door, then cuts to a panel of Chi trapped against a wall, two pieces of furniture looming over her. Konami employs a similar tactic when Mr. Yamada takes Chi to the veterinarian for her first check-up, again using an overhead shot of the waiting room to establish the human scale of the space before offering a cat’s eye perspective; as Chi sees things, the vet’s office is filled with enormous, Godzilla-sized dogs who seemed poised to eat her. In both sequences, the quick shift in perspective gives the reader a clear sense of Chi’s disorientation by reminding us how small she is, and how alien the environment seems to her.

The other secret to Konami’s success are her character designs. Though Chi is clearly a cat, Konami draws her face as a round, moon-like shape with two enormous eyes — if anything, Chi resembles the heroine of Kiyohiko Azuma’s Yotsuba&! more than, say, Neko Ramen‘s cat cook or Cat Paradise‘s feline warriors. Like Azuma, Konami demonstrates that it’s possible to contort and bend these simple, circular shapes into an enormous range of expressions, from wide-eyed wonder to fear, sadness, and, for want of a better term, hunterly attentiveness. (Chi considers all of her cat toys a form of prey.) Even the very youngest reader will immediately understand how Chi is feeling, even if he isn’t able to parse the accompanying text or make sense of other imagery. (To wit: there’s a marvelous, trippy dream sequence in which Chi is pursued by what could best be described as a canine matryoshka, a chain of barking dogs, each a smaller imitation of the one before it. I don’t know what a four-year-old would make of it, but Chi’s reaction is priceless.)

Given the strength of Konami’s artwork, I would have liked Chi’s Sweet Home even better without the voice-overs. Most of Chi’s comments seem obvious — cats usually fear dogs and vets — or deliberately calculated to tug at the heartstrings. Interior monologues of this kind are generally more effective when they ascribe uniquely human sentiments to an animal: think of Snoopy’s Walter Mitty-esque fascination with the Red Baron, or Garfield’s contempt for Jon Arbuckle, which stems less from a general disdain of humans and more from Garfield’s embarrassment that his owner is a loser. Chi’s voice-overs aren’t a deal-breaker by any means; at times, they prove quite effective, especially in illustrating Chi’s gradual transference of affection from her feline mother to her human family. Moreover, Konami wisely avoids putting words into Chi’s mouth that suggest an unnatural awareness of human behavior or language, allowing Chi to remain completely oblivious to the Yamadas’ numerous attempts to find her a new home. (Their apartment complex doesn’t allow pets.)

If you’re the kind of person who unironically refers to children and housepets as “social parasites,” Chi’s Sweet Home is not the manga for you. But if you’re ever lived with a cat or a dog or any other animal whose companionship you enjoyed, then you’ll find a lot to like about Chi, from its frank treatment of housebreaking and separation anxiety to the numerous scenes of Chi exploring her surroundings, transforming ordinary household items into “prey.” You don’t need to be a manga lover, either, to find Chi’s Sweet Home accessible; the simple artwork and flipped layout (Chi reads left to right, like an English-language book) make this a great place for newbies to begin their exploration of the medium. Highly recommended for readers of all ages.

Volume one will be released on June 29, 2010. Review copy provided by Vertical, Inc.

CHI’S SWEET HOME, VOL. 1 • BY KONAMI KANATA • VERTICAL, INC. • 162 pp. • NO RATING

Andromeda Stories, Vols. 1-3

May 26, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

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

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

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

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

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

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

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

andromeda_page

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

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

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

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

Twin Spica, Vol. 1

May 3, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

Asumi Kamogawa is a small girl with a big dream: to be an astronaut on Japan’s first manned space flight. Though she passes the entrance exam for Tokyo Space School, she faces several additional hurdles to realizing her goal, from her child-like stature — she’s thirteen going on eight — to her family’s precarious financial position. Then, too, Asumi is haunted by memories of a terrible fire that consumed her hometown and killed her mother, a fire caused by a failed rocket launch. Yet for all the pain in her young life, Asumi proves resilient, a gentle girl who perseveres in difficult situations, offers friendship in lieu of judgment, and demonstrates a preternatural awareness of life’s fragility.

If Asumi sounds like a stereotypically optimistic manga character, a can-do kid who maintains a positive attitude through every set-back, the first volume of Twin Spica reveals her to be more complex and damaged than her firm resolve might suggest. Mr. Lion, her imaginary friend, is proof of the wounds she carries: she “met” him when she was six, never quite outgrowing the need for his counsel or company. When Asumi suffers a traumatic flashback to the Yuigahama disaster, for example, she calls out Mr. Lion’s name; when her father responds angrily to the news that she passed the space academy’s placement test, she asks Mr. Lion if she should enroll or abandon her dream of becoming “a driver on a rocket.”

Though Asumi’s story ran in Comic Flapper, a seinen magazine, Twin Spica works surprisingly well for both adults and teens. The storytelling is direct and simple without being didactic, filled with the kind of characters that younger readers will recognize and embrace as true to their own experiences. At the same time, however, Twin Spica‘s subtexts are rich enough to sustain an adult’s interest, as the supplemental stories “2015: Fireworks” and “Asumi” attest. Both explore Asumi’s response to her mother’s death, acknowledging and validating Asumi’s curiosity about her mother’s appearance (Mom suffered disfiguring burns) and about dying itself. (Six-year-old Asumi scandalizes funeral-goers by leaning over her mother’s casket to see what death “smells like.”) Without a trace of mawkishness, Yaginuma shows us how Asumi makes sense of what happened to her mother, recognizing his young heroine’s keen emotional intelligence in the way she chooses to honor her mother’s memory. Tween and teen readers may well find these passages moving, as they touch on one of childhood’s most primal fears, but adult readers will find them more unsettling, as they remind us of our inability to protect children from painful experiences, and of the moment when we first grasped death’s finality.

The artwork, like the narrative, has a direct, expressive quality that keeps the focus on the characters’ interactions, rather than the gizmos and laboratories where their training takes place. Yaginuma draws his tyro astronauts in a simple, stylized fashion that treats them as collection of distinctive geometric shapes: Fuchuya, one of Asumi’s classmates, sports a ‘do evocative of Eero Saarinen’s iconic TWA terminal, while Asumi resembles a kokeshi doll with her exaggerated round head and tiny body. The characters’ slightly awkward proportions register as a deliberate artistic choice — call it studied naivete or primitivism — though at times the art seems a little clumsy and flat; readers will be forgiven for thinking Yusinuma’s storytelling skills outstrip his draftsmanship.

Whatever conclusions the reader reaches about Yusinuma’s style, it’s impossible to deny the emotional power of Twin Spica as a coming-of-age story about one girl’s journey from childhood to adulthood, and one nation’s journey from terrestrial power to space race competitor. A beautiful, thought-provoking book for star gazers of all ages.

Review copy provided by Vertical, Inc. Volume one of Twin Spica will be released on May 4, 2010.

TWIN SPICA, VOL. 1 • BY KOU YAGINUMA • VERTICAL, INC. • 192 pp. • NO RATING

Ode to Kirihito, Vols. 1-2

April 7, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

“When he heard his cry for help, it wasn’t human” — so went the tagline for Ken Russell’s Altered States (1980), a bizarre fever-dream of Nietzchean philosophy, horror, and mystical hoo-ha in which a scientist’s experiments result in his spontaneous devolution. That same tagline would work equally well for Osamu Tezuka’s Ode to Kirihito (1970-71), a globe-trotting medical mystery about a doctor who takes a similar step down the evolutionary ladder from man to beast. In less capable hands, Kirihito would be pure, B-movie camp with delusions of grandeur — as Altered States is — but Tezuka synthesizes these disparate elements into a gripping story that explores meaty themes: the porous boundaries between man and animal, sanity and insanity, godliness and godlessness; the arrogance of scientists; and the corruption of the Japanese medical establishment.

At its most basic level, Ode to Kirihito is a beat-the-clock thriller in which a charismatic young doctor named Kirihito Osanai tries to discover the cause of Monmow, a mysterious condition that reduces its victims to hairy, misshapen creatures with dog-like snouts. Kirihito’s superior, the ambitious Dr. Tatsugaura, dispatches Kirihito to Doggodale, a remote mountain village where hundreds of residents have developed suggestive symptoms. Once in Doggodale, Kirihito contracts Monmow himself, thus beginning a hellish odyssey to escape the village, arrest the disease’s progress, and share his findings with the medical community.

kirihito2 At a deeper level, however, Ode to Kirihito is an extended meditation on what distinguishes man from animal. Kirihito’s physical transformation forces him to the very margins of society; he terrifies and fascinates the people he encounters, as they alternately shun him and exploit him for his dog-like appearance. (In one of the manga’s most engrossing subplots, an eccentric millionaire kidnaps Kirihito for display in a private freak show.) The discrimination that Kirihito faces — coupled with Monmow’s dramatic symptoms, such as irrational aggression and raw meat cravings — lead him to question whether he is, in fact, still human. Throughout the story, he wrestles with a strong desire to abandon reason and morality for instinct; only his medical training — and the ethics thus inculcated — prevent him from embracing the beast within.

Tezuka explores the boundaries between the rational and the instinctual in other ways as well. Running in tandem with Kirihito’s metamorphosis is another devolution of sorts: Kirihito’s colleague Dr. Urabe, who descends into madness after uncovering a sinister plot within the administration of M University Hospital. When we first meet Urabe, he’s a self-interested cad who lusts after Kirihito’s fiancee Izumi, views Kirihito as more rival than friend, and lacks the will to challenge Tatsugaura, even when data suggests Tatsugaura’s hypothesis about Monmow is flat-out wrong. The slow dawning of Urabe’s conscience, however, precipitates a dramatic change; his psyche splits in two, with one half striving after truth and the other succumbing to base impulse. Even as Urabe begins to redeem himself, collaborating with Izumi to reveal Tatsugaura’s dishonesty, he frequently lapses into savage, sexual aggression.

Other characters’ reactions to these transformations — especially characters in positions of authority or power — provide Tezuka with ample opportunity to engage in one of his favorite activities: exposing institutional hypocrisy. The scandal surrounding Tatsugaura’s Monmow hypothesis, for example, lays bare the corruption within the barely fictional Japanese Medical Association. In his relentless quest to become head of the organization, Tatsugaura seeks to establish an international reputation as an infectious disease expert, even going so far as to suppress evidence that contradicts his thesis. Yet the revelation of Tatsugaura’s deceit does little to jeopardize his position among his peers; only the young doctors find his behavior objectionable, yet they cannot dislodge him from his powerful position.

One of the key figures in revealing Tatsugaura’s treachery, Sister Helen, also provides Tezuka a chance to tear away the veil of hypocrisy from another institution — in this case, the Catholic Church. Midway through the first volume, a priest attempts to murder Sister Helen after she contracts Monmow disease. When confronted with his act, he acknowledges his intent but denies his purpose was evil; he insists on protecting the Church’s reputation at all costs, fearing that news of Helen’s condition would bring a scandal, as the received wisdom about Monmow disease held that Caucasians were immune to it.

sisterhelen

At the same time, however, Tezuka uses his characters’ metamorphoses to reveal the human capacity for selflessness and spirituality. Sister Helen provides the most obvious example; after entertaining thoughts of suicide, she has an epiphany — literally, as the cross imagery above suggests — and begins emulating Christ’s example, eventually finding her place ministering to the residents of an impoverished industrial town. Other characters demonstrate a similar capacity for selfless behavior: Urabe, for example, devotes himself to finding Kirihito, while Reika, a circus performer, helps Kirihito escape from captivity and reassert his humanity by practicing medicine.

One could certainly view Ode to Kirihito as heavy-handed allegory; there’s nothing subtle about its Christian imagery or Elephant Man storyline. Yet Tezuka’s fondness for Baroque subplots, over-the-top action sequences, and larger-than-life villains demands an equally bold approach for exploring the story’s greater themes. After all, Kirihito features dog men, sideshow freaks, an evil millionaire who hosts his own private circus, a German geneticist sporting a monocle, and an acrobat who risks life and limb to become human tempura; had Tezuka played things straight, or tried to state his man-vs-inner-beast conflict in less obvious terms, the story would seem preposterous and arty, a surreal experiment devoid of genuine human feeling.

As he would do in MW (1976-78), Tezuka pushes the boundaries of the comics medium in Ode to Kirihito, aiming for a cinematic style capable of immersing us not only in the action but in the characters’ own thought processes. Though Kirihito has its share of artfully staged chases, fights, and dramatic confrontations, the most visually arresting sequences depict Urabe’s fragile mental state:

urabe_breakdown2

The panel shapes alone are a brilliant stroke; not only do they suggest his fractured and chaotic thought process, they also have a hint of the insect about them, as if we’re viewing Urabe’s consciousness through a fly’s eye. The knife and blood imagery are cliche, to be sure, but the shattered glasses are a novel and unsettling gesture open to multiple interpretations. Even the more conventional sequence on the left, in which Urabe leaves a hospital in a murderous rage, employs its share of neat visual tricks: Tezuka dramatizes Urabe’s personality shift by rotating the character’s image until he appears to be walking through an upside-down hall of mirrors. Amplifying the effect is the ambiguous way in which Tezuka draws Urabe’s legs in the bottom panel; as Matthew Brady observed in his review of Ode to Kirihito, the image simultaneously evokes dripping blood and moving limbs.

Perhaps the best compliment I can pay Ode to Kirihito is to say that Tezuka achieves on paper what John Frankenheimer achieved on film with The Train, Seven Days in May, and The Manchurian Candidate, transforming the humble thriller into a vehicle for telling thought-provoking, challenging stories that enlighten as they entertain. Kirihito may not surpass the narrative sophistication or visual poetry of Phoenix, but it comes awfully close. A must-read for serious manga lovers.

Review copies provided by Vertical, Inc.

ODE TO KIRIHITO, VOLS. 1-2 • BY OSAMU TEZUKA • VERTICAL, INC. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Osamu Tezuka’s MW

March 1, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

Invoke Tezuka’s name, and most readers immediately think of Astro Boy, Buddha, and Princess Knight. But there’s a darker side to Tezuka’s oeuvre that dates back to 1953, the year in which he brought Dostoevsky’s tormented Raskolnikov to life in a manga-fied version of Crime and Punishment. It’s this side of Tezuka — the side that acknowledges the human capacity for violence, greed, and deception — that’s on display in MW, a twisty thriller about a sociopath and the priest who loves him.

The central event of MW is a military cover-up. “Nation X,” which maintains a base on Okinawa Mafune, has been stockpiling a top-secret chemical weapon known as MW.¹ An explosion releases a poisonous cloud, killing everyone on the island except for two visitors, Iwao Garai and Michio Yuki. Though Garai and Yuki are equally traumatized by this holocaust, their lives diverge wildly over the next fifteen years. Garai embraces the light, becoming a Roman Catholic priest, while Yuki embraces the darkness, embarking on a spree of kidnappings, murders, and extortion schemes meant to punish the politicians, businessmen, and military officials who profited from the subsequent cover-up.

Superficially, Yuki’s plans might be understood as an eye for an eye, but Yuki is no righteous avenger. He’s a serial killer who relishes torturing his victims, who exploits the secrecy of the confessional to torment Garai with details of his crimes, who uses his androgynous sex appeal to seduce both men and women, and who impersonates his female victims with the skill of a kabuki actor. (And just in case we haven’t yet grasped the true extent of Yuki’s depravity, Tezuka suggests that Yuki has a rather intimate bond with his dog Tomoe.) Even Yuki’s motivation for exposing the MW scandal is purely selfish: Yuki is dying from its lingering effects, and wishes to take millions of people with him to the grave. Though Father Garai hopes to redeem Yuki, he lacks Yuki’s certitude, instead violating his priestly vows — especially that pesky oath of celibacy — as he tries to prevent Yuki from harming anyone else.

MW can certainly be enjoyed as a potboiler. Tezuka spins an entertaining, slightly preposterous yarn, serving up more plot twists, car chases, and gender-bending costume changes than Dressed to Kill and The Manchurian Candidate combined. But it’s also very talky. Characters frequently describe their plans at length instead of just carrying them out; voice-overs interrupt the action to educate us on the history of chemical warfare; and thought balloons reveal little about the interior lives of the characters that couldn’t be inferred from their actions.

MW can be more profitably understood as a meditation on US-Japanese relations during the Vietnam War. The gas attack takes place around 1960, the year the Japanese Diet ratified the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security², while most of the action takes place in the 1970s, as left-wing student groups were taking to the streets to protest American military presence in Japan. Though MW does include a few demonstrations, Tezuka doesn’t try to dramatize the left wing’s activities so much as the spirit of the movement: “Debunk false democracy!” The politicians in MW are greedy, foolish, and entirely too cozy with “Nation X” military brass. Yet the student radicals don’t fare so well, either; Tezuka renders them as an ineffectual lot whose agenda is riddled with inconsistencies. Only in the ambivalent Father Garai, who desperately wishes to enlighten the public about MW, does Tezuka present a decent, sympathetic figure, someone struggling mightily against hypocrisy and deceit, even as he succumbs to his own sexual demons.

Of course, there’s another level on which MW can be appreciated as well: the artwork. MW is Tezuka at his most restrained; there are no doe-eyed critters, no slapstick, no characters breaking the fourth wall to crack wise about cartooning conventions. (To be sure, there are moments of playfulness: in one memorable sequence, reminiscent of the grand parade in Cleopatra, Yuki impersonates the great gorgons of Aubrey Beardsley’s work, from Salome to the Lady in the Peacock Skirt.) Most of the pages have a surprisingly direct, clean presentation, a neat and orderly progression of squares and rectangles that run in counterpoint to the orgies, bank robberies, high-speed boat chases, and fist-fights they contain. From time to time, however, Tezuka thinks outside the grid, with dramatic results. When Gari and Yuki find themselves on Okinawa Mafune, for example, Tezuka doesn’t depict the actual gas attack. Instead, Tezuka shows us only what Garai and Yuki see after the cloud has dissipated: a mosaic of faces, each contorted into a grotesque death-mask. It’s a potent, haunting moment that suggests both the survivors’ horror upon discovering the bodies and the victims’ excruciatingly painful deaths.

As with all of Tezuka’s works, MW is sprinkled with characters and scenes that may make contemporary readers uncomfortable. The women of MW, for example, are either passive victims — one is rendered an emotional and physical invalid after Yuki rapes her — or venal shrews, with only a brief appearance by a sane lesbian newspaper editor to balance the parade of unflattering female stereotypes. Tezuka’s depiction of homosexuality is similarly frustrating. On the one hand, the newspaper editor refuses to embarrass Garai by outing him in the press, telling him that “gay love is accepted outside Japan”; on the other hand, Garai’s relationship with Yuki has a strong whiff of pedophilia — at least in the opening pages — as Garai is an adult and Yuki a boy at the time of their first encounter. Similar issues dog Apollo’s Song and Swallowing the Earth, yet in MW, Tezuka’s decision to focus exclusively on the problems of Japanese society prevents the story from spinning out of control or sinking under the weight of a few ill-informed portrayals.

Fans of Apollo’s Song, Buddha, and Ode to Kirihito won’t be surprised to learn that Vertical has done a fine job of showcasing Tezuka’s work with a crisp translation, quality binding, and signature Chip Kidd dustjacket. MW won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but if the thought of Tezuka channeling Brian DePalma and John Frankenheimer sounds appealing, you’ll want to add it to your library.

¹ MW is pronounced “moo.”
² The treaty reaffirmed the US military’s commitment to defending Japan against hostile forces, pledged to return captured territories, and extended the US occupation of Okinawa for an additional ten years.

This is a revised version of a review that appeared at PopCultureShock on October 29, 2007. Click here for the original text.

MW • BY OSAMU TEZUKA • VERTICAL, INC. • 582 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

The Cat in the Coffin

June 22, 2009 by Katherine Dacey

The year is 1955. Twenty-year-old Masayo, an aspiring painter from Hakodate, apprentices herself to Goro Kawabuko, a handsome widower who teaches at a Tokyo art college. In exchange for a weekly lesson, Masayo agrees to keep house for Goro and tutor his daughter Momoko, a strange, withdrawn child whose only companion is a regal white cat named Lala.

Masayo, who comes from a humble background, finds the Kawabuko household enchanting. Or, more accurately, she finds Goro enchanting. Goro epitomizes urban chic, hosting lavish parties, listening to jazz, and wearing the latest Western fashions. Realizing that Goro is beyond her reach, Masayo instead focuses on Momoko; if she can gain the girl’s confidance, perhaps she’ll have a claim on Goro’s heart as well. Masayo must first demonstrate her affinity for Lala, however, as the cat exerts an almost maternal power over Momoko, responding to her mistress’ quicksilver moods with an emotional intelligence that borders on human.

Masayo’s tenure is threatened by the arrival of Chinatsu, a beautiful sophisticate who seems intent on marrying Goro. Chinatsu competes with Masayo for Momoko’s affections, touching off a battle royal between the two women. Watching their struggle unfold, we begin to see through Masayo’s guileless pose: she’s as masterful a manipulator as Chinatsu, using her relationship with Momoko to drive a wedge between Goro and his fiancee:

For a wicked moment, I savored the momentary discomfiture that flickered across the faces of Goro and Chinatsu. Momoko had shown precious little interest in Chintasu; indeed, she had all but ignored her. And then she came running to me. It occurred to me then that aside from Goro, nobody was closer to Momoko than I was. That thought made me feel even more elated.

Like Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw,” The Cat in the Coffin draws its power from “the strange and sinister embroidered on the very type of the normal and easy,” presenting itself as a domestic drama about a naive young woman who falls for her worldly employer. Yet the book has an oppressive, eerie quality that lends itself to several tantalizing readings: that Lala may be possessed by Momoko’s dead mother, that Momoko herself is a bad seed. By the novel’s end, the reader may believe Masayo’s account of events — and even feel great compassion for her — while questioning her involvement in them.

It’s this level of narrative complexity that elevates The Cat in the Coffin from romantic pot boiler to literature: we’re seduced by Masayo’s modest, self-effacing comments before we recognize that she’s an unreliable witness. One can certainly read The Cat in the Coffin as an atmospheric mystery, but it works on many other levels as well: as a meditation on jealousy, as a young woman’s sexual awakening, as a portrait of life in occupied Japan, as a parody of the Victorian governess novel. I’d love to see Vertical translate more work by Mariko Koike, as she brings an uncommon level of wisdom and literary sophistication to a pulpy genre.

Review copy provided by Vertical, Inc.

THE CAT IN THE COFFIN • BY MARIKO KOIKE, TRANSLATED BY DEBORAH BOLIVER BOEHM • VERTICAL, INC. • 190 pp.