Archives for May 2009

Gakuen Alice 2 by Tachibana Higuchi: B

May 23, 2009 by Michelle Smith

gakuen2 From the back cover:
Young Mikan is the newest student at the mysterious and prestigious Alice Academy, where the most talented and powerful students in the country are united, but for what purpose…?

Mikan is officially admitted into Alice Academy, but things still aren’t exactly going smoothly. Natsume still bullies her, her class ranking couldn’t be lower, some of the teachers are outright hostile, and she has been forbidden to contact anyone outside of the school! Will she be able to find true friends at the academy?

Review:
Quite a lot happens in this volume and nearly all of it is interesting. Aside from getting more information about the organization of the school—including the importance of star rankings and ability-type classes (which are totally like Hogwarts’ Houses, by the way)—there are more indications that the adults at the Alice Academy are not to be trusted and that for Mikan to come there of her own free will might’ve been a huge mistake, particularly since she’s being watched because of the Alice of Nullification that she possesses.

Mikan is also improving in the likability department. She still has her annoying moments, but she’s at least trying to be more mature. Hotaru helps, too, chastising Mikan when she’s whining about not being able to see her grandfather and reminding her that everyone else there is enduring the same sort of isolation from their families.

My favorite characters are Natsume and Luca at this point, even though the former is almost always behaving violently. I love Luca because he’s conflicted between loyalty to his friend and his attraction to the more upbeat world-view that Mikan offers. Natsume is appealing because he’s been denied any chance at real camaraderie by being labelled “special” and “dangerous” by the school. What’s more, while everyone’s relaxing after a game of dodgeball that Mikan organized, Natsume is tapped by a professor to go out on an “urgent mission,” further denying him any of the simple joys of childhood.

So, yes, it’s getting better and darker, too. Definitely don’t stop with volume one if you’re interested in this series.

Gakuen Alice 1 by Tachibana Higuchi: B-

May 23, 2009 by Michelle Smith

gakuen1 From the back cover:
Young Mikan runs away to Tokyo following her best friend, Hotaru, who has been enrolled in an exclusive, secretive private school for geniuses. But it turns out that Alice Acdemy is a lot more than meets the eye. Whether it’s Hotaru’s gift for inventing gadgets, the cranky Natsume’s firecasting ability, or Professor Narumi’s control of human pheromones, everyone at the school has some sort of special talent. But what ability, if any, does Mikan possess? Mikan is going to have to rely on her courage and spunk if she’s going to stay in school, or even stay alive!

Review:
I watched a little bit of the Gakuen Alice anime several years ago, so was familiar with the general premise as well as the events that take place in this volume. I’m not sure why I didn’t go farther with the anime, but I think I might’ve had difficulty with some hurdles that also present themselves in the manga: unlikable characters and too many gags.

Our main character, Mikan, is spazzy and selfish. I might’ve liked her more to start with if Higuchi had resisted the temptation to draw many outlandish reaction gags as Mikan learns more about the Alice Academy and its peculiar occupants. In the second half of the book, while traversing a dangerous patch of woods on campus, Hotaru finally tells Mikan that she needs to stop behaving so childishly. Probably I was supposed to sympathize with the heroine there, but really all I could think was, “Thank you, Hotaru!” Thankfully, Mikan does get more tolerable around that point, as well.

Hotaru has some problems with likability at first, too. We are told that she agreed to go to Alice Academy in exchange for money that she then used to keep the school where she met Mikan financially afloat. She also was cold to Mikan on her last day in an attempt to cause Mikan to forget about her rather than nurture sad memories. That’s well and good, but the problem is that we are told these things and not shown them. It’s not until the second half of the volume that Hotaru actually exhibits some real warmth towards Mikan, even deigning to smile a little when Mikan’s Alice is finally revealed. So far, though, she does seem friendlier in the manga version.

Something that I didn’t pick up on very much in the anime is the hint of something more sinister going on at the school. Natsume is being caused agony by something, though whether it’s the dangerous nature of his powers or something else is not yet revealed, and both he and his friend Luca seem to sport mysterious scars. This is definitely the most intriguing aspect of the story right now.

Gakuen Alice is published in English by TOKYOPOP and seven volumes have been released so far. The series is still ongoing in Japan and eighteen collected volumes have been released as of March 2009.

Blood+ Adagio, Vol. 1

May 23, 2009 by Katherine Dacey

Forget what you know about the Russian Revolution. The real cause of the Romanov’s demise wasn’t growing unrest among the proletariat, or the high cost of World War I, or the famines of 1906 and 1911, but something far more sinister: vampires. At least, that’s the central thesis of Blood+ Adagio, a prequel to the popular anime/manga series about an immortal, vampire-slaying schoolgirl and her handsome, enigmatic handler. The first volume of Adagio transplants Saya and Hagi from the steamy jungles of present-day Okinawa and Vietnam — where they’ve battled US military forces and the myserious Cinq Flèches Group — to the chilly halls of Nicholas II’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg — where they discover a nest of Chiropterans as well as a host of schemers, sycophants, and crazy folk in the tsar’s orbit.

Russophiles will balk at the liberties that artist/author Kumiko Suekane has taken with historical fact, such as transforming Rasputin from a bearded monstrosity into a clean-shaven hottie and introducing Sergei Shupukin, a fictional general who supposedly rose from peasant stock to become Nicholas II’s most trusted military advisor. As preposterous as some of these decisions may seem, however, they work surprisingly well, creating a delirious atmosphere that captures the Romanov’s desperate, semi-debauched state in 1916. One could almost — almost — believe that vampires prowled the halls of the Winter Palace under Rasputin’s protection.

What doesn’t work so well is the actual story. Few characters receive a proper introduction; we’re simply thrown into the action and left to our own devices to decide which ones are central to the drama and which ones are peripheral, a process unnecessarily complicated by some unfunny comic business in the opening pages. More frustrating is how poorly the historical elements are incorporated into the storyline, as two rooted-in-fact subplots — the tsarevich’s hemophilia and Rasputin’s cult following — receive only cursory treatment, never rising beyond the level of period window dressing.

Frustrating as the story may be, Kumiko Suekane’s artwork is clean and stylish, capturing the opulence of the Romanov lifestyle through elaborate costumes, hairstyles, and personal affects. Her character designs closely resemble Chizu Hashii’s originals, though they’re a little softer and more sensuous than the angular figures from the Blood+ anime — a good thing, in my opinion, as the characters’ faces are less mask-like and more expressive. Suekane stages the fight scenes competently, if not imaginatively, relying heavily on speedlines and close-ups of contorted faces to convey the intensity of the violence, sometimes obscuring where, exactly, her characters are standing in relation to one another.

Readers unfamiliar with the Blood+ series may find Adagio a confusing place to begin their journey, as the author presumes her audience is well-versed in the characters’ elaborate histories. Long-time fans, however, will find this an entertaining, if unevenly executed, story that should satisfy their urge to see Saya and Hagi’s slow-simmering romance continued.

BLOOD+ ADAGIO, VOL. 1 • STORY AND ART BY KUMIKO SUEKANE • DARK HORSE • 200 pp. • RATING: TEEN

Blood+ Adagio, Vol. 1

May 23, 2009 by Katherine Dacey

adagio1 Forget what you know about the Russian Revolution. The real cause of the Romanov’s demise wasn’t growing unrest among the proletariat, the intelligentsia, or the military; nor the high cost of World War I; nor the famines of 1906 and 1911, but something far more sinister: vampires. At least, that’s the central thesis of Blood+ Adagio, a prequel to the popular anime/manga series about an immortal, vampire-slaying schoolgirl and her handsome, enigmatic handler. The first volume of Adagio transplants Saya and Hagi from the steamy jungles of present-day Okinawa and Vietnam — where they’ve battled US military forces and the myserious Cinq Flèches Group — to the chilly halls of Nicholas II’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg — where they discover a nest of Chiropterans (a.k.a vampires who are more beast than bishie) as well as a host of schemers, sycophants, and crazy folk in the tsar’s orbit. Let the slayage begin!

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A Distant Neighborhood 1 by Jiro Taniguchi: A

May 22, 2009 by Michelle Smith

distant-125 Forty-eight-year-old Hiroshi Nakahara is a businessman with a love of alcohol and little time for his family. One day, in 1998, as he is returning home (hungover) from a business trip to Kyoko, he accidentally boards the wrong train and ends up traveling to Kurayoshi, the town in which he grew up and which he hasn’t visited for many years. With some time to kill before the next train to Tokyo, he wanders around, checking out the building that used to be his family’s shop and paying a visit to his mother’s grave. As he’s asking his mother, “Were you happy?” something mysterious occurs and Hiroshi wakes to discover that he’s back in his fourteen-year-old body but with all of his adult knowledge and wisdom intact. Not only that, the family shop and neighborhood has returned to its previous condition, his deceased mother and grandmother are alive, and the date is still four months before his father’s sudden disappearance.

At first, Hiroshi acts merely as an observer, attending classes and making mental notes on the eventual fates of some of the friends he encounters there. In time, he begins to feel a zeal for learning and exercise that he’d not possessed the first time through his adolescence and relishes a feeling of liberation from his various adult responsibilities. His accomplishments in sports and academics attract the notice of Tomoko Nagase, the prettiest girl in his class, another difference from his past. Nagase has big dreams and it’s in deciding to help her that Hiroshi begins to take a more active part in this second chance he’s been given, resolving too to prevent his father’s disappearance.

Hiroshi doesn’t have an easy time passing as a fourteen-year-old. Aside from his drastic scholastic improvement, he’s singularly unimpressed by some things adolescent boys tend to be keen on (like nudie mags and cigarettes), occasionally lets slip details that he shouldn’t yet know, and demonstrates far more perceptiveness about the adults in his family than he originally did, as we can see in flashbacks of his oblivious past self. His emotional reaction to being scolded by his mother again is very touching and there’s also a particularly nice scene toward the end of the volume where Hiroshi is given the opportunity to ask his grandmother how his parents met, information he’d evidently never thought to inquire about before.

It also seems as if Hiroshi’s experiences reliving his past are going to help him become a better person in the future. When Nagase confesses her feelings for him, he accepts, but it’s abundantly clear that he sees her as a daughter and is still thinking only of how he might help her. After their first date, during which they see a movie involving Men Having Grand Adventures, he insists that women can do the same, and reassures her that a time will soon come when women can be “wonderfully independent.” This is in marked contrast to his treatment of his real daughters; in one of the odd moments where Hiroshi experiences a disembodied glimpse of what’s going on in 1998, his sees his wife and eldest daughter, Ayako, discussing a boyfriend he knows nothing about and declaring that Hiroshi will never consent to let Ayako move into an apartment. “Obviously! A single girl your age can’t go living alone!” he thinks.

Jiro Taniguchi’s art is never anything short of gorgeous, and A Distant Neighborhood is like his other works in that it offers plenty of beautiful landscapes, detailed illustrations of buildings, and a middle-aged protagonist (at least at first). Facial expressions can be a little stiff at times, but I felt that emotion was better conveyed here than in The Quest for the Missing Girl.

The overall feel of the story is initially similar to The Walking Man in that Hiroshi is merely taking in his surroundings without interacting much. Eventually, though, it becomes the most emotional work by Taniguchi that I’ve read. It’s also seriously engrossing; I could’ve read another 200 pages easily.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.

U Don’t Know Me

May 21, 2009 by MJ 7 Comments

U Don’t Know Me
By Rakun
Published by NETCOMICS

Buy This Book

“I realized that the reason the two of us couldn’t stand forever in the same place wasn’t just because I couldn’t keep up with his height–a height, by the way, which began outgrowing my own little by little.” – Prologue, U Don’t Know Me

Seyun and Yoojin have been close since childhood, raised like brothers by their parents who were best friends–so much so that when Seyun’s father made the decision to take on the debt left by his own father, Yoojin’s parents offered to take Seyun in as their own child to ease his burden. Though Seyun’s father refused the offer and moved his family to a cheaper neighborhood to tough it out, Seyun and Yoojin remained friends, despite the distance and their ever-shifting lives. …

Otomen, Vols. 1-2

May 19, 2009 by Katherine Dacey

To a casual observer, Asuka Masamune epitomizes masculinity. Not only is he the captain of the kendo team and a star student, he’s also tall, handsome, and quick to defend weaker students from bullies — the kind of stoic, principled guy that boys and girls admire. That macho exterior belies Asuka’s true nature as a sensitive young man with girly hobbies such as making elaborate bento boxes, sewing stuffed animals (the cuter, the better), and reading Love Chick, a shojo manga serialized in his favorite magazine, Hana to Mame (literally, “Flowers and Beans,” a pun on Hana to Yume, or “Flowers and Dreams”).

Asuka’s charade is threated by classmate Juta Tachibana, a tousle-haired player who discovers Asuka’s big secret: an unrequited crush on transfer student Ryo Miyakozuka. Ryo is yin to Asuka’s yang, a pretty young woman who can deliver a mean karate chop but can’t bake a cake or sew a button onto a blouse. They may seem like a match made in shojo heaven, but there’s a catch: Ryo disdains “girly” guys. Her initial impression of Asuka is favorable, but that encounter unleashes a torrent of emotion inside Asuka that makes it increasingly difficult for him to play the cool, macho customer. Juta pledges to help Asuka win Ryo — a gesture that initially seems out of character for such a transparent opportunist and womanizer. As we begin to learn more about Juta, however, we discover that he is, in fact, the manga-ka behind Love Chick (he uses the pseudonym “Jewel Tachibana”) and that Asuka is the inspiration for the series’ graceful heroine. Whether Juta empathizes with his subject, or is hoping to manipulate Asuka’s life for literary fodder, isn’t yet clear, though Juta embraces his matchmaking role with gusto.

The set-up is ripe with possibility, but I wasn’t entirely sold on Otomen after reading the first volume. Aya Kanno earned points for her sensitive portrayal of Asuka and gentle digs at shojo cliche, yet the story lacked the necessary edge to be a true satire. Her characters expressed disdain for various shojo conventions while engaged in stereotypical shojo behaviors — meeting on rooftops, exchanging bento boxes, visiting amusement parks. Kanno enlivened these stock scenarios with a generous helping of slapstick, but they never quite rose to the delirious, gender-bending heights of Your and My Secret or My Heavenly Hockey Club.

Volume two suffers from the same have-cake-and-eat-it-too problem, as Kanno trots out more subplots from the shojo playbook: a Christmas date, a surprise fiancee. As with the amusement park trip in volume one, Kanno pokes fun at these familiar scenarios by piling on the misunderstandings and the fist-fights. When Asuka meets his fiancee, for example, he’s initially enchanted by her girly clothing and Disney-fied living quarters. He sticks to his guns, however, and declares his love for Ryo, setting off a chain of events that culminates in a daring rescue by Ryo and Asuka. Yet aside from inverting the usual rescuer/rescuee roles, this scene feels like it could have been lifted from almost any wacky shojo romance; Kanno can’t quite bring herself to skewer this very creaky plot device even as she paints a ridiculous scene.

Otomen is at its best when tackling gender identity head-on. In volume two, for example, Kanno introduces a character named Yamato Ariake, an underclassman who suffers from the opposite problem as Asuka: his petite, pretty appearance leads many folks to assume he’s a girl, even though Yamato has conventionally masculine tastes. He “apprentices” himself to Asuka to learn how to be more manly, gushing about Asuka’s height, gait, and reserved demeanor with infatuated abandon. Yet Yamato expresses disgust when he discovers Asuka’s affinity for cute bento boxes and “girly” activities: how could someone as cool as Asuka be so feminine? On one level, the Yamato-Asuka relationship is a send-up of the “sempai” crush so prevalent in shojo manga; as Yamato catalogues Asuka’s best features, for example, Yamato’s saucer eyes sparkle with the intensity of a Moto Hagio character’s. On another level, however, Yamato’s plight helps underscore just how difficult it is to find a niche when your appearance or personality deviate from established gender norms.

Kanno drives the point home by showing us the degree to which Asuka’s thoughts and feelings reflect his feminine avocations. Using shojo manga tropes — flowery backgrounds, sparkling screentones, close-ups — she demonstrates that Love Chick has profoundly influenced the way in which Asuka fantasizes about Ryo, as he imagines an ideal Christmas Eve date that involves a tender exchange of words and a chaste kiss — hardly the stuff of harem comedies. She also uses these time-honored techniques to help us understand Asuka’s ambivalent feelings about his father, who abandoned the family to have a sex change operation. As we learn in volume one, his dad harbored a similar interest in girly things; his departure inspired Asuka’s mother to purge the cute and sparkly from Asuka’s life, lest he also turn out to be a woman in a man’s body. Though the flashbacks to Asuka’s childhood border on melodrama, the way in which they’re drawn gives them a poignancy and immediacy that mitigates against camp.

I’m not sure on which side of the drama/satire divide Otomen will settle, but I certainly plan to continue reading this odd, funny, and sometimes moving tribute to a character who’s man enough to excel at kendo and like shojo and stuffed animals.

Review copies provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

OTOMEN, VOLS. 1-2 • BY AYA KANNO • VIZ • RATING: TEEN

Otomen, Vols. 1-2

May 19, 2009 by Katherine Dacey

otomen1 To a casual observer, Asuka Masamune epitomizes masculinity. Not only is he the captain of the kendo team and a star student, he’s also tall, handsome, and quick to defend weaker students from bullies — the kind of stoic, principled guy that boys and girls admire. That macho exterior belies Asuka’s true nature as a sensitive young man with girly hobbies such as making elaborate bento boxes, sewing stuffed animals (the cuter, the better), and reading Love Chick, a shojo manga serialized in his favorite magazine, Hana to Mame (literally, “Flowers and Beans,” a pun on Hana to Yume, or “Flowers and Dreams”).

…

Kindle Blogs & Anime Boston

May 19, 2009 by MJ 6 Comments

A little bit of news I keep forgetting to share here is that this blog is now available for subscription on the Kindle! If you’re a Kindle user and reading this blog for free online is just not convenient enough for you, check it out. Subscriptions are cheap ($1.99/month with a 14-day free trial period to start) and while you’re there, check out the other manga-centric blogs that are turning up! Lori Henderson has a list at Manga Xanadu here.

I was waiting to talk about Anime Boston here until the panel schedule was up, but since the con is just a few days away with no schedule in sight, I’ll just keep it general. I’ll be at Anime Boston for all three days (schedule pending) and though I tend to be a bit of a shy loner at cons, I’d love to say hello to any of you who might be there! The one place I you can be sure I’ll be is sitting on our PCS panel, “Please Save My Manga,” at 10:00 am on Friday. Other than that, it’s all TBA. Feel free to stop me for a hello if you see me (here’s a photo with my current hair–please note that head tops a roly-poly body) or drop me an e-mail if you want to be more formal about it. Hope to see you there!

Manhwa 100: Centenary of Korean Comics

May 18, 2009 by MJ 2 Comments

I received an e-mail this morning to let me know about an event I very much wish I could attend– an exhibition entitled “Manhwa 100: Centenary of Korean Comics” presented by London’s Korean Cultural Centre from May 21st through June 24th. If you’re reading this blog from across the pond, take note! From their press release:

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Goong: The Royal Palace 5 by Park SoHee: B+

May 18, 2009 by Michelle Smith

goong5 With Shin off on an extended visit to England, Chae-Kyung is left alone in the palace with no allies except Prince Yul, whose interactions with her are half manipulative, half sincere. Her maids are concerned because she’s losing weight and refusing their herbal remedies; Chae-Kyung is more concerned about Shin’s coldness than her health, since he hasn’t returned any of her phone calls or e-mails. When Shin returns from England with scandal at his heels, their relationship is in for another rocky patch.

The strength of Goong continues to be the relationship between Shin and Chae-Kyung; their scenes together are riveting and Shin’s tentative steps toward more gentle treatment of Chae-Kyung are wonderful to see. Unfortunately, this means that the scenes in which they are separated are not as interesting in comparison, especially the more comedic parts, like some strange pages detailing the visiting Prince William’s friendship with the wizened palace eunuch. One notable exception is the wonderful moment in which we see Chae-Kyung’s parents, whose visit with their daughter has been cancelled by Yul’s mother, watching her on television and marveling at her new composure and confidence while simultaneously finding it somehow sad.

Goong really is a terrific series. Each time I finish a volume I wish I had the next.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.

CUT by Toko Kawai: A

May 18, 2009 by Michelle Smith

“Life is kind of a pain,” thinks Chiaki Sakaguchi at the outset of this exceptional one-shot. Chiaki is bored with school; it seems so trivial compared to the painful secret guilt he carries over his father’s death. In an attempt to dull that pain, Chiaki seeks out new pain, getting involved in an abusive incestuous relationship with his stepfather and resorting to cutting himself as a way to relieve his anxiety. When he meets Eiji Yukimura, a young man with his own dark secret, he finally has found someone who might understand.

CUT is a moving story of two very broken people connecting and finding, through each other, the strength to move forward. There are some disturbing elements involving incest and masochism, but such scenes are not played for titillation, since it’s clear Chiaki is merely doing these things in an attempt to forget his unbearable pain. Later on, when Chiaki turns his stepfather away and tells him, “You made me forget something horrible by doing something worse,” it’s truly a moment of triumph.

The relationship between Chiaki and Eiji is both sweet and sad and made me teary a few times (I never knew a knee nudge could be so poignant!). By the end, neither is completely healed, but they’ve both come to a place where they’re able to live with their wounds and trust that, with time and love, they will fade.

You don’t have to be a boys’ love fan to appreciate CUT. Like the works of est em, I think what it has to offer could appeal to anyone.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.

Age Called Blue

May 17, 2009 by MJ 1 Comment

By est em
Published by NETCOMICS
Rating: Mature (18+)

One of the most intriguing stories in est em’s earlier collection Seduce Me After the Show was “Rockin’ In My Head,” featuring a young guitarist named Billy who drinks himself into a stupor over the death of a personal idol and the sudden disappearance of his bandmate, Nick (who took off with Billy’s cash and guitar). Billy is escorted home by another patron in the bar who turns out to be Joe Coxon, the former guitarist of Billy’s favorite band, The Rebels–the same band whose vocalist, Pete Brian, has just died. With Nick still missing, Billy convinces Joe, now in his fifties and with his last performance far in the past, to step into his band for a single show, reminding Joe what it means to be needed on stage. Age Called Blue expands on this story, focusing on the complicated relationship between Billy and Nick (introduced “onscreen” here for the first time) and how it mirrors the relationship of Pete and Joe, whose chance for reconciliation after years of estrangement is destroyed by Pete’s untimely death.

The story begins just after the events in the original short, with Nick turning up unexpectedly in the supermarket after his disappearance. Billy is initially furious, but isn’t able to hold on to his anger long in the presence of Nick’s badly beaten face. Billy takes Nick back home to get him cleaned up, and becomes enraged again when he finds out that Nick had prostituted himself for cash to their idol, Pete, the day before he died. Nick tries to kiss Billy and is forcefully rejected, but it’s obvious that the emotions between them run deep and the rest of the story explores just what that means for both of them and for the future of their band.

What’s really effective in this story is how est em weaves together the lives of all four men, retracing the days just before and after Pete died and interspersing them with present-day events. Although Joe and Pete ultimately fail to get what they need from each other, thanks to pride and the cruelty of fate, it is their music that brings Billy and Nick together in the first place and their influence that helps the two younger men realize what is most important to them and just how fragile that can be. “I don’t know complicated things well,” Joe says to Billy one night over drinks, “but I suggest you secure the things that you don’t want to lose. Maybe that’s music, or maybe it’s that boy.” Watching Joe coming to terms with his own regret enough to actually try to help someone else avoid the same mistakes is quite moving all on its own, and when Billy finally makes his choice (“Nick is my music.”) the effect is stunning. The fact that, in Joe’s mind, there can only be one choice–music or love–is a heartbreaking example of why he lost what Billy will give everything to keep.

Nothing comes easy in Age Called Blue, which is one of its greatest strengths. Even after Billy makes the decision to stick with Nick, things get harder, though this only further illustrates the truth of Billy’s choice. Though he is eventually forced to give up the band to be with Nick, the question of giving up music never even comes into play, not with Nick still in his life. Nick is a piece of work, that’s certain–childish, unreliable, and self-destructive–but he really is Billy’s music, both its source and its vessel.

With its intense emotional content and bohemian setting, Age Called Blue may be the most overtly romantic story in est em’s catalogue so far, and this is by no means a bad thing. It is beautifully crafted throughout, and though it is made richer by having read “Rockin’ In My Head,” enough of that story is included to allow this volume to stand on its own. Est em’s visual storytelling is exquisite as always, and though the adaptation lacks the clarity of Matt Thorn’s work on Red Blinds the Foolish, the real meaning shines through in the visuals even when the dialogue is somewhat oblique. The art itself is gorgeous–realistically portrayed adult men in est em’s usual style, which makes her work feel so much more real than most of the yaoi manga being published in English. It is important to note, too, that this realism is achieved without the crutch of explicit sex scenes or coy winks to the audience. Though the characters’ sexuality is a significant part of their lives and their relationships to each other, anything that happens between them is for the sake of characterization and moving the story forward which makes this manga a rarity in the genre, much like est em herself.

The volume ends in typical fashion with two unrelated stories, though the first of these, “I Saw Blue,” again hearkens back to a story from Seduce Me After the Show, which is a nice treat. Still, it’s hard not to wish for a full volume’s worth of the featured story, and seeing these characters return from earlier shorts only makes that desire burn more fiercely. Though est em’s quiet, melancholy style is very well suited to short vignettes–and in fact, even her longer arcs are actually series of short pieces that could each stand alone–to see that unique talent applied to something substantial in length would be truly incredible.

All whining about length aside, there is not a justifiable complaint to be made about this manga. Beautiful, gritty, emotionally resonant, and surprisingly romantic, Age Called Blue is a real treasure, both within its genre and in the medium as a whole.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally posted at PopCultureShock.

Detroit Metal City, Volume 1

May 17, 2009 by MJ 19 Comments

Detroit Metal City, Vol. 1
By Kiminori Wakasugi
Published by Viz Media

Buy This Book

Soichi Negishi is a kind, polite young man who loves his mother and dreams of being in a Swedish pop band. Unfortunately, he’s ended up as the lead singer of a Japanese evil-core death metal band called Detroit Metal City, in which he must play the part of Krauser II–a crude, angry, death metal god who claims to have murdered his own parents. Though he is exceptionally talented as a death metal god (much to his dismay), Krauser II’s impact on his everyday life is nearly unbearable for Soichi. He can’t be honest with his family (or his dream girl, Aikawa), his own musical ambitions are completely buried, and his metal-crazy manager trashes his apartment, insisting, “We’re going to make you death metal, all the way down to your balls.” Each chapter of this volume illustrates yet another way in which Soichi’s double life destroys everything he cares about, and it does so with increasing hilarity.

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Age Called Blue & the Drabble

May 17, 2009 by MJ 4 Comments

It’s been a big weekend of reviews for me so far, with three posted at Manga Recon (and one that should appear here sometime tomorrow). First of all, I review volume ten of La Corda d’Oro and volume seven of Wild Ones for the On The Shojo Beat column. The greatest treat for me, however, was reviewing est em’s new manga, Age Called Blue, which is probably my favorite work of hers so far, and that’s saying a lot.

Something that strikes me every time I read est em’s work, is how much it reminds me of a fannish form of writing I was very fond of not so long ago–a form known as the “drabble.” A drabble is a complete story told in exactly 100 words (no more, no less). Something I used to enjoy very much (both writing and reading) was a larger story made up of a series of 100-word drabbles, each complete on its own, yet contributing to the larger work. As I mention in my review, all of est em’s larger story arcs (such as “Red Blinds the Foolish” and “Age Called Blue”) are actually series of smaller stories strung together to make a whole, just like those series of drabbles I used to be so fond of, and there is a very specific feel to this kind of storytelling that is unlike anything else. Each piece feels fragile in its brevity–without a single extraneous word or gesture–remove even the tiniest piece and the entire thing shatters. This extends, too, to the larger structure, which would fall apart without its smaller pieces, for though each of them stands on its own, the series itself relies on these small stories in order to maintain its delicate thread. This is the nature of an est em manga. Every word and every panel are so important, even if you just read too quickly the whole thing crumbles from the loss.

Why do I like this kind of story? I don’t know. I know that I’m drawn to the delicate melancholy of a series of isolated moments, but I don’t know why. I also don’t know how it is that I can claim to love this when I’ve gone on and on about how much I want to read epic, multi-volume stories, and how it is these stories that got me into manga in the first place. This is undeniably true. It is indeed long stories that drew me to manga, and they are what keep me involved in the medium to this extent. Perhaps in the end it is just that the work of est em revives in me an old love–one I thought to be dead–in a form that I am still able to appreciate.

Read Age Called Blue. You won’t regret it.