Archives for April 2010

Viz Releases Kingyo Used Books

April 16, 2010 by MJ Leave a Comment

Press Release: VIZ MEDIA TRANSPORTS READERS TO
KINGYO USED BOOKS – A FANTASTIC PLACE WHERE READERS FIND THEIR DREAMS IN MANGA

A Charming Bookshop with a Special Inventory Becomes a Place Where Lives Are Changed Through Manga

San Francisco, CA, April 15, 2010 – VIZ Media, LLC (VIZ Media), one of the entertainment industry’s most innovative and comprehensive publishing, animation and licensing companies, transports readers to an unassuming store that stocks all the manga a fan could ever desire with the release of KINGYO USED BOOKS on April 20th. The new series, by Seimu Yoshizaki, will be published under the VIZ Signature imprint, is rated ‘T+’ for Older Teens, and will carry an MSRP of $12.99 U.S. / $16.99 CAN.

In KINGYO USED BOOKS, a businessman discovers how his childhood memories …

Diamond Girl, Vol. 1

April 15, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

Part Bad News Bears, part Boys of Summer, Diamond Girl follows a time-honored sports-comedy formula in which a team of losers have their pennant dreams rekindled after an unlikely but undeniable talent joins their ranks. In Diamond Girl, those hard-luck athletes are Baba, Seto, and Takagi, the heart and soul of the Ryukafuchi High School baseball club. The trio discovers, by accident, that the new transfer student has the throwing arm of a youthful Roger Clemens, capable of nailing a moving object hundreds of feet away or throwing a shotput with the ease and precision of a softball. The catch: Tsubara is a girl, making her ineligible to play.

Actually, there’s another obstacle to Tsubara joining the team: she doesn’t want to. At first, Tsubara vehemently denies her skills, feigning bewilderment at her ability to snatch a line drive from the air, bare-handed. When Tsubara’s classmates remain unpersuaded, Tsubara finally concedes her athletic prowess, but rebuffs Baba and Takagi’s suggestion that she play baseball in drag. (“We hide her chest by wrapping it up in bandages,” Takagi confidently asserts. “I see no problem.”) How Tsubara came by her skills, and why she refuses to play, are the central mysteries of volume one, and provide most of the series’ comedic — and dramatic — juice.

Anyone expecting a baseball version of Crimson Hero will be in for a rude shock with Diamond Girl. There’s fan service a-plenty, from a “whoops, I didn’t mean to collide with your chest!” gag to a bath scene that seems calculated to reassure readers that Tsubara is 100% girl, even if she could beat the snot out of her teammates, on or off the field. (The author annotates one panel with the cheerful admission that “Today, we bring you more fan service than usual.”) Aside from a truly distasteful scene in which the team pervert assesses Tsubara’s panty preferences — he bemoans her tendency to wear “little kid underpants” — the fan service is easy enough to overlook, even for an old feminist curmudgeon like me.

The real joy of Diamond Girl is watching Tsubara lose herself in the moment. Midway through volume one, for example, a monkey steals Tsubara’s treasured purse, ripping it open and fleeing to the safety of the school roof to examine its contents. Tsubara doesn’t hesitate; she transforms herself into a human pitching machine, lobbing balls and rocks at the culprit until one well-timed throw knocks the purse of the monkey’s hands. A similar sense of joyful abandon informs a scene in which Tsubara plays fetch with her dog Hachi, who shares his mistress’s talent for fielding extreme fly balls — as well as her ability to tune out her surroundings. (He crash-lands on top of Tsubara’s classmate, ball in mouth.) Tsubara runs their game with the intensity of a drill sargeant or big league coach, treating Hachi as if he’s a star right fielder.

Manga-ka Takanori Yamazaki demonstrates a genuine knack for caricature, neatly encapsulating each character’s personality in a few gestures: a mohawk for the slightly chubby, irreverent Takagi; a row of earrings and a maniacal gleam for the more energetic Baba; a pair of ratty pigtails and a scowl for Tsubara. Though Yamazaki makes a game effort to immerse us in the action, his fondness for dramatic camera angles and freeze-frames occasionally results in an awkwardly composed drawing; in more than one scene, he foreshortens characters to such a degree that they look a bit squashed. Yamazaki also relies on tracing just a little too often, as the monkey scene attests; all of the monkeys have a straight-off-the-lightbox quality that suggests a National Geographic spread on the hot-tubbing macaque of Honshu. Even with such obvious limitations, however, the artwork suits the story’s broad comedic tone without becoming too frantic.

If the one-note characters and suggestive situations prevent Diamond Girl from scoring a homerun, it’s certainly a solid base hit, offering an enjoyable mixture of game play and humor that should appeal to baseball enthusiasts, manga lovers, and female athletes of all stripes. Recommended.

DIAMOND GIRL, VOL. 1 • BY TAKANORI YAMAZAKI • CMX MANGA • RATING: TEEN (13+) • 160 pp.

Diamond Girl, Vol. 1

April 15, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

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You’re So Cool, Vols. 1-6

April 15, 2010 by MJ Leave a Comment

My big news for the afternoon is the event of my guest review of YoungHee Lee’s You’re So Cool (full series) over at Brigid Alverson’s MangaBlog. This is a series that began on weak footing with me, setting itself up to be another Hot Gimmick or Black Bird or any number of other girls’ comic series dedicated to romanticizing smug, controlling men.

Fortunately, by the time I got around to this series, there was enough of it released for me to avoid being turned off by just the first couple of volumes. It’s not a perfect series by any means, but the romantic content is surprisingly satisfying (thanks mainly to the series’ secondary romance) and its heroine is the most endearing little tomboy you’ll ever meet. The artist doesn’t go crazy prettying her up in the later volumes, either, which is a refreshing choice indeed.

This is also my very first guest review at MangaBlog, so if you like it, be sure to say so! Click here for more!

Libre Books Available on Kindle

April 13, 2010 by MJ 1 Comment

Here’s an interesting press release that made it into my inbox today, from Japanese BL publisher Libre (via Animate U.S.A.), who are releasing English versions of several of their titles for the Kindle. See the full press release below:

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Oh! My Brother 2 by Ken Saito: B-

April 12, 2010 by Michelle Smith

It’s been one month since Masago Kamoguchi’s brilliant older brother, Shiro, died and began possessing her. With all of this going on, Masago hasn’t been studying, so when exam time comes around, she allows Shiro to take the tests for her and ends up with a perfect score. Her impressive performance prompts a teacher to encourage her to run for student council, a decision she waffles about for a little while until gaining some confidence. Meanwhile, Shiro debates the wisdom of lingering in his sister’s body while his friend, Kurouma, deals with the knowledge that Masago likes him but views him as utterly unattainable.

I really want to like Oh! My Brother, and sometimes I manage to do so. I like Kurouma a lot, for example—it’s so refreshing that he actually notices Masago’s feelings!—and also the way Shiro’s possession is portrayed as a double-edged sword. True, his presence lends Masago strength in crucial moments, particularly in dealing with a bullying older girl, but her reliance on him is also holding her back in certain areas; although Shiro is willing to let go, it’s Masago who desperately makes him promise to stay with her forever.

On the other hand, there is a lot of extranneous material here that detracts from what’s good about this series. Some of the comedy feels out of place, and there are a few too many Shiro-obsessed characters floating around, from the aforementioned bully, to a former soccer rival, to a cool and competent member of the student council. If the focus had been more on the drama of Masago’s situation, coupled with the need to let go of Shiro in order to become open to other kinds of love, I’d like it so much more. As it is, I must be content with the occasional glimmer of what could have been.

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

Manhwa Monday: Go West!

April 12, 2010 by MJ 7 Comments

Welcome to another Manhwa Monday! I type this column from my sickbed, where I’m feeling weary and, frankly, old as I realize that to me, that title is a Marx Brothers reference, but to the rest of you… probably not.

On to the topic at hand: as if answering a call from the depths of my heart, Manga Critic Kate Dacey recently visited the “Korean Comics: A Society Through Small Frames” exhibit at the San Francisco Public Library and wrote up a detailed report in her blog, including footnotes and suggested reading.

Something Kate notes in her article, which has been pointed out previously by readers familiar with the manhwa scene in Korea, is just how little the English-translated manhwa we see here represents Korean manhwa as a whole. As a fan of what’s currently being translated, I’m not necessarily complaining, but it would be exciting to see a broader spectrum of work being offered in English. …

10 Must-Read Manhwa

April 11, 2010 by Katherine Dacey 26 Comments

After visiting “Korean Comics: A Society Through Small Frames” last weekend, I was struck by the homogeneity of titles on the exhibit’s suggested reading list. The list isn’t bad by any means, but it places heavy emphasis on recent, teen-oriented titles such as The Antique Gift Shop, Chocolat, Click, Moon Boy, and Snow Drop while overlooking some less popular choices such as Buja’s Diary. As a supplement to my write-up of the “Korean Comics” show, therefore, I’ve compiled my own list of must-read manhwa. Though my goal is to direct readers to works in a variety of styles and genres, I freely admit that this list reflects my own tastes and biases. I’d love to hear from you about what you think belongs on a must-read manhwa list and why. And if you’d like a copy of the SFPL’s Korean Comics bibliography, let me know — I’d be happy to mail one to you.

10. DEJA-VU: SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER

YOUN IN-WAN • TOKYOPOP • 1 VOLUME

Déjà vu is a manhwa smorgasbord, pairing writer Youn In-Wan with six artists with distinctly different styles. The first four stories follow the same basic template: two lovers find themselves drawn together by mysterious forces, only to be separated by a moment of terrible violence. The settings and circumstances range from the vaguely folkloric — a warrior and a fox demon fall in love after he frees her from a hunter’s snare — to the contemporary — a blind Korean-American girl and an up-and-coming pop singer meet cute on the streets of San Francisco. The best stories, “Spring” and “Winter,” deftly interlace the fates of the warrior and the fox with the survivors of a twenty-third century apocalypse, bringing to mind Sun, the final installment of Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix. Though the stories aren’t uniformly excellent, Deja-vu still makes a fine introduction to the contemporary Korean comics scene in general and the writing of Youn In-Wan in particular; look for his series March Story in October 2010. (Reviewed at PopCultureShock on 1/30/08.)

9. NARRATION OF LOVE AT 17

KYONGOK KANG • NETCOMICS • 4 VOLUMES

Seyoung, the heroine of Narration of Love at 17, is bright, but not exceptional; pretty, but not a head-turner; and talented, but not outstanding. For several years, Seyoung has been a member of the drama club, relegated to backstage roles while the beautiful Hyemi lands the plum parts. When Hyemi becomes involved with Hyunwoo, Seyoung’s friend and first crush, Seyoung faces a tough choice: will she wait for Hyunwoo to reciprocate her feelings, or will she move on? Backstage rivalries and first loves are standard manhwa fare, but Narration of Love at 17 proves deeper and more heartfelt than most coming-of-age stories in this vein, thanks to Kyongok Kang’s believable, appealing characters; their quicksilver moods, intense passions, deep insecurities, and ever-changing social allegiances make them seem like real teenagers and not an adult’s idea of what teenagers are like. Though the art is, at times, a little clumsy, Kang’s fondness for 1970s shojo is evident in her linework and character designs, and in her emotionally resilient protagonist. (Reviewed at PopCultureShock on 9/12/07. Click here to read a preview chapter at NETCOMICS.)

8. PRIEST

MIN-WOO HYUNG • TOKYOPOP • 16 VOLUMES

This sprawling, religio-horror epic comes saddled with enough convoluted backstory for a J.R.R. Tolkein trilogy or a George Lucas franchise, yet proves surprisingly fast-paced and fun. Skipping between the present, the Crusades, and the American West — or, more accurately, a manhwa artist’s cinematically influenced notion of the West — Priest tells the story of Ivan Isaacs, a man of the cloth who renounces his faith after evil researchers use his sister as a human sacrifice. Over the span of sixteen volumes, Ivan battles fallen angels and zombies in an effort to avenge Gena’s death, restore order, and redeem his sinner’s soul. The artwork is bold and stark, with spiky lines and attitude to spare; if you adored the over-the-top action sequences and pistol-packing clergymen of Hellsing, Min-woo Hyung’s elaborate shoot-em-up will be your cup of tea. (Click here to read the first volume at Tokyopop.)

7. RUN, BONG-GU, RUN!

BYUN BYUNG-JUN • NBM/COMICS LIT • 1 VOLUME

Run, Bong-Gu, Run! tells a simple story: Bong-Gu and his mother leave their rural village to find Bong-Gu’s father, who has gone to Seoul in search of work. As they retrace his steps through the capital, a chance encounter with a beggar yields an important clue to the father’s whereabouts, offering hope that the family will be reunited. The author never explicitly states what prompted the father to leave, how long he’s been away, or why Bong-Gu’s mother waited so long to track him down. In leaving these characters’ personal histories mysterious, Byun Byung-Jun comes dangerously close to romanticizing them: Bongu-Gu’s parents and the old beggar often register as poor but dignified archetypes rather than flesh-and-blood people. But Byun’s spare, restrained artwork mitigates against the story’s sentimentality, offering readers a haunting cityscape that’s as much a character as Bong-Gu or his mother. Rendered in rough, energetic brushstrokes and muted watercolors, Byun’s street scenes are among the most beautiful images I’ve seen in any manhwa translated for English-speaking audiences. (Reviewed at PopCultureShock on 7/11/07. Click here to read a preview at NBM/Comics Lit.)

6. 10, 20, AND 30

MORIM KANG • NETCOMICS • 7 VOLUMES

The ten, twenty, and thirty of the title refer to Rok, a sixteen-year-old girl; Belle, her twenty-six-year old cousin; and Krumb, Rok’s mother, who at age thirty-two finds herself a widow. Through a series of interlocking vignettes, 10, 20, and 30 documents the trio’s fumbling efforts to find themselves — and Mr. Right. If the naive, cartoonish art is a take-it-or-leave-it affair, Kang’s heroines are winning, at once complex and sympathetic. They make mistakes; they overreact; they misjudge the men in their lives; they sometimes hurt loved ones with selfish behavior. To be sure, similar characters abound in Bridget Jones’ Diary and Sex and the City, but there’s a qualitative difference between Bridget and the ladies of 10, 20, and 30: Rok, Belle, and Krumb aren’t neurotic. Beneath their quirks and anxieties, all three women display genuine strength and self-determination, even if they don’t always make smart choices about the men in their lives. (Reviewed at PopCultureShock on 5/10/07. Click here to read a preview chapter at NETCOMICS.)

5. GOONG: THE ROYAL PALACE

PARK SOO-HEE • ICE KUNION • 10+ VOLUMES (ongoing)

Goong: The Royal Palace focuses on commoner Chae-Kyung, a high school student who marries the next in line to the (fictional) Korean throne. Just as Diana Spence did in real life, Chae-Kyung discovers that being a princess isn’t glamorous, as her day-to-day life is filled with palace intrigue, onerous civic responsibilities, jealous classmates, and an indifferent husband who’s in love with someone else. Though the plot is an amalgam of familiar soap-opera conventions — romantic triangles! hot younger siblings! disapproving mother-in-laws! — the story has surprising depth, showing us the emotional toll that public life exacts on the young couple. Another plus is the artwork: it’s flat-out gorgeous, with considerable attention devoted to ancient ceremonial costumes and au-courant fashions. Pair those beautiful images with a compelling plot and boatloads of romantic tension, and you have a recipe for manhwa crack. (Reviewed at PopCultureShock on 8/29/08.)

4. FOREST OF GRAY CITY

JUNG-HYUN UHM • ICE KUNION/YEN PRESS • 2 VOLUMES

Struggling artist Yun-Ook and bartender Bum-Moo decide to room together after a series of drunken misunderstandings that wouldn’t be out of place in a Meg Ryan movie. Though Yun-Ook is horrified to discover their age difference — she’s in her twenties, he’s seventeen — Bum-Moo begins courting her in a confused, low-key fashion. The story would be pure Harlequin fodder if Jung-Hyun Uhm’s heroine wasn’t such a strong, appealing character. Yun-Ook is impetuous, insecure, and quick to take offense, but she’s also focused on her career, protective of Bum-Moo, and determined not to sacrifice her sense of self just to land a husband. There’s a level of emotional authenticity about her character that will resonate with female readers in their twenties and thirties, even if her story seems more firmly rooted in romance novel convention than reality. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 4/27/09.)

3. SHAMAN WARRIOR

PARK JOONG-KI • DARK HORSE • 9 VOLUMES

Shaman Warrior serves up generous portions of pow! splat! thmp! and gyaaaa! with heaping sides of political intrigue and supernatural hoo-ha. The story is, at heart, an inter-generational revenge fantasy about a young woman who spends her childhood preparing to confront her father’s assassin and lay bare the double-crosses and unsavory alliances that led to his demise — in short, it’s a grrrl power theme-and-variation on the Epigoni. What it lacks in complexity Shaman Warrior makes up in beauty and bravado: Park Joong-Ki is a superb draftsman, populating his story with an astonishing variety of faces and body-types. His fight scenes are artfully choreographed, if a little heavy on the speedlines, immersing readers in the action in the manner of a contemporary wuxia film. (Reviewed at PopCultureShock on 1/24/07. Click here to read a preview at Dark Horse.)

2. DOKEBI BRIDE

MARLEY • NETCOMICS • 6 VOLUMES (on hiatus in Korea)

After losing her mother to mental illness and her grandmother to old age, Sunbi’s long-absent father returns to claim her. Their reunion proves an awkward and unhappy one, however: his new wife and daughter resent Sunbi’s presence, while Sunbi’s classmates shun her for her “freakish” behavior, none of them realizing that her aloof, abrasive demeanor helps protect her from demons and spirits. Familiar as Dokebi Bride‘s “I see demons!” premise may be, Marley uses Sunbi’s affliction as a jumping-off point for exploring issues such as fitting in, blending families, and answering that most basic of questions, who am I? Sunbi is an all-too-rare character in comics, a smart, resourceful girl who’s palpably — and justifiably, I might add — angry. Long after you’ve forgotten the basic storyline, the memory of Marley’s fierce, real heroine will stay with you. N.B. Dokebi Bride has been on hiatus for over a year; NETCOMICS has released the six volumes that were published in Korea. No word on when — or if — Dokebi Bride will resume. (Click here to read a preview chapter at NETCOMICS.)

1. BUJA’S DIARY

SEYOUNG O • NBM/COMICS LIT • 1 VOLUME

Among the manhwa featured in “Korean Comics: A Society Through Small Frames” was “The Picture Diary of Puja,” a short, poignant story about a rural family’s efforts to make a home in Seoul. “Puja’s Diary” (translated by NBM as “Buja’s Diary”) juxtaposes wordless scenes, illustrated in a naturalistic style, with a young girl’s description of the same events: a robbery, a shakedown, a child being injured at a construction site. The effect is simple yet devastating, a Dickensian critique of industrialization and poverty in modern-day Korea. As the other stories in Buja’s Diary attest, displacement, change, and encroaching urbanization are important themes in Seyoung O’s work, though he proves equally adept at humor (“Observe,” which tracks a vain gum-chewer through the streets of Seoul) and surrealism (“Escape,” which depicts one bored man’s nightmarish daydream about his office mates). The artwork varies according to the tone of the story; some of the more somber tales are rendered in charcoal wash and ink, while others employ more exaggerated linework reminiscent of Daumier. One of the most thought-provoking and beautiful manhwa available in English. (Click here to read a preview at NBM/Comics Lit.)

Con Report: Anime Boston 2010

April 11, 2010 by MJ 4 Comments

Last weekend I attended Anime Boston–just Saturday (for the first time ever), which turned out to be the perfect way to go. AB is notoriously thin on manga content, and attending just for one day allowed me to take in most of what was there without becoming frustrated by what was not.

My day began in the best way possible: lunch with my favorite con buddies, Brigid Alverson and Robin Brenner, after which we headed over to see Roland Kelts talk about “Anime, Manga, and More,” in a panel sponsored by the Japanese consulate.

Despite its generic title, Kelts gave a riveting lecture on what makes Japanese comics unique, including a discussion on “superflat” technique (simple enough even for artistically impaired types like me to understand) and a philosophical look at the mouthless persona of Hello Kitty (“she should feel like you do”). …

One Thousand & One Nights, Vol. 10

April 10, 2010 by MJ 3 Comments

One Thousand and One Nights, Vol. 10
By Han SeungHee & Jeon JinSeok
Published by Yen Press

Buy at RightStuf | Buy at Amazon

While reading Sehara’s translation of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it becomes clear to McLeod that Sehara is leaving him, though this realization comes too late for him to stop it. Unfortunately, as Sehara rushes back to Baghdad, he is met with the news of Shahryar’s death, throwing him into a state of deep despair. Meanwhile, Shahrayr (not quite dead) finds himself in the care of the Nauar Gypsies, one of whom beseeches him to travel east to seek out his “other half,” whom Shahryar now recognizes to be Sehara.

Though Sehara and Shahryar spend the entirety of this volume apart, the volume is a gift to BL fans and anyone else who might be hoping against hope that their highly eroticized relationship actually turn to romance. Not that anything happens, of course, but there is a sense that if our story’s heroes ever manage to find their way back to each other, it will be a warm reunion indeed.

Fortunately, the romance is well-earned and should hold up nicely, even with Shahryar’s bloody past as an obvious moral obstacle. “You were already dead, drowned in a whirlpool of sin,” a gypsy tells Shahryar. “And then someone brought you back to life.” It’s a tricky business–letting a character with so much blood on his hands realize happiness–but writer Jeon JinSeok has worked hard to create a situation in which this could be palatable. Now with only one volume remaining, we’ll soon find out what Jeon really has in store for the characters he’s so carefully ~~tortured~~. Er. Nurtured.

With the stakes so high in the main story line, it might be easy at this point to dismiss Sehara’s stories-within-the-story, but fortunately The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (even in such an abridged state) is far too compelling to allow it. Part of what makes this series work so well is the fact that Sehara’s stories consistently move the primary tale forward, rather than acting as diversions. And part of the series’ charm is the fact that these stories are at least as important to their storyteller as they are to the sultan they are meant to entertain–a truth delightfully accented at the end of this volume as Shahryar sets out disguised as a bookseller in hopes of luring a distraught Sehara out of hiding.

Every aspect of this series remains engaging–storytelling, plot, characterization, artwork–crafted into a kind of ultimate fantasy with its lush, period settings and unapologetic violence. Fans of escapist romance could hardly find an escape more delicious than One Thousand and One Nights.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Korean Comics: A Society Through Small Frames

April 9, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

Last weekend, I had an opportunity to visit the San Francisco Public Library, which is mounting a small but meticulously curated exhibit exploring the relationship between politics, censorship, and manhwa in post-war Korea. Called “Korean Comics: A Society Through Small Frames,” the exhibit features twenty-one of Korea’s best-known cartoonists, from Kim Won Bin, creator of Fist Boss, to Hwang Mina, a sunjong (girls’) pioneer. For a Western reader whose primary knowledge of manhwa comes from titles such as Goong: The Royal Palace, the exhibit will be revelatory, as almost none of the series on display look like the Korean comics that have been licensed for the US market; if anything, the curators have gone out of their way to choose titles that challenge the commonly-held Western notion that manhwa is simply the “Korean form” of manga.^[1] Styles range from the cartoonish (Baby Dinosaur Tuli, Madame Vicious) to the naturalistic (The Picture Diary of Puja), while the story lines explore topics as varied as ancient Korean history (Kojudo: Three Kingdoms), homelessness in Seoul (We Saw a Pity Bird Who Lost Its Way), Korean involvement in the Vietnam War (Yellow Bullets), and sumo champion Rikidozan, who is credited with introducing Japanese and Korean audiences to modern professional wrestling.^[2]

Throughout the exhibit, curators have gone to great pains to illustrate the complex relationship between cartoonists and the Korean government, noting when a particular title elicited criticism from officials or earned praise for its depiction of Korean life. Visitors unfamiliar with recent Korean history may be surprised to discover the degree to which propaganda and censorship shaped the development of manhwa in South Korea. Hwang Mina’s We Saw a Pity Bird, for example, caused a stir when Seoul was preparing to host the 1986 Pan-Asian Games; the government attempted to ban the work for depicting poverty and homelessness in urban settings, fearing that Pity Bird would make South Korea look economically backwards. Other works, such as Kim Seong Hwan’s Koban, a long-running newspaper strip, ran afoul of Park Chung Hee’s censors for depicting student unrest and changing social mores in the 1960s.^[3]

fistboss

Not surprisingly, the exhibit’s most dramatic illustration of the relationship between comics and politics comes from North Korea. The Great General Mighty Wing debuted in 1994, shortly after Kim Jong Il succeeded his father. Like Soviet novels of the 1920s and 1930s, and Chinese model operas of the 1960s, The Great General Mighty Wing is intended both as entertainment and education, employing a popular medium to teach Communist values, assert the importance of the collective, and reassure readers of their leader’s benign, parental authority. Using the metaphors of the garden and the hive (both Communist staples), the story depicts a conflict between honeybees and wasps for control of two vital resources: water and flowers. The full-color artwork is a synthesis of mid-1950s Korean and Japanese styles (Fist Boss is cited as one important influence), while the script is pure agit-prop, with characters speaking in Communist slogans and heroic, selfless pronouncements.

One of the subtler affects of censorship — artistic isolation and stagnation — is addressed briefly but effectively in the few examples of sunjong manhwa on display. Korea experienced a brief shojo manga boom in the 1970s, when pirates flooded the Korean market with unauthorized versions of popular Japanese titles. The Magnificent 49ers’s style, in particular, had a profound influence on artists writing for the girls’ market. After the government cracked down on Japanese imports, however, Korean artists who had drawn inspiration from the 49ers no longer had access to current shojo manga; as a result, variations on the starry-eyed heroines and long-haired princes of The Rose of Versailles flourished in Korean manhwa long after they’d fallen out of fashion in Japan.^[4]

If I had one complaint about the exhibit, it’s that visitors whose entire knowledge of Korea is rooted in the present may not appreciate the degree to which the displayed comics reflect the social and political upheaval of the past eighty years. A small timeline of major events, or even a pamphlet providing a brief overview of Korean history from 1939 to the present, would have been a valuable asset to the exhibit. (A quick glance at the Wikipedia articles on Korea, North Korea, and South Korea are strongly suggested if you don’t know much about the region.) That said, “Korean Comics” is a thoughtful and thought-provoking show that will challenge readers’ notions of what manhwa is, offer them a window into Korean society during some of its most turbulent periods, and introduce them to twenty-one brilliant artists, all of whom deserve greater recognition outside their home country.

“Korean Comics: A Society Through Small Frames” runs now through June 13, 2010 at the Main Branch of the San Francisco Public Library. Admission is free. For hours and directions to the library, click here. The exhibit is a joint effort by the San Francisco Public Library and the Korea Society.

Notes

1.This disparity is reflected in the library’s suggested reading list, which features a number of contemporary works such as The Antique Gift Shop, Honey Mustard, Moon Boy, and Priest but none of the works feature in the show. The SFPL’s collection does include a few Korean-language titles, which are listed in the bibliography.

2. Rikidozan is mentioned in Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life (2009; Drawn & Quarterly), in which Rikidozan is presented as a Japanese hero for defeating American wrestlers in the ring. See pages 261-63.

3. Kim Seong Hwan produced 14,319 Koban strips over its 50+ year run in Korean newspapers.

4. NETCOMICS, a Korean publisher which has been translating manhwa for the American market, has released a number of sunjong titles from the 1980s and early 1990s that suggest the continued influence of 1970s shojo styles on Korean artists. The early work of Kyungok Kang provides an instructive example. See In the Starlight and Narration of Love at 17 for two such examples; her later work, such as Two Will Come, has a distinctly different look.

Korean Comics: A Society Through Small Frames

April 9, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

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Vanish with the Rose by Barbara Michaels: B+

April 7, 2010 by Michelle Smith

From the back cover:
Diana Reed has much to hide when she arrives at the Nicholsons’ 18th-century estate. Masquerading as a landscape architect specializing in “ancient” roses, she’s hired by the eccentric couple to restore the gardens, but her real interest lies in the manor’s more recent history.

Sinister scenarios ensue at the Nicholsons’ estate. Ghostly music echoes in the halls. The smell of roses haunts empty rooms. Diana must hurry if she is to solve her highly personal mystery before she becomes another of the garden’s well-kept secrets.

Review:
While I definitely enjoyed reading Vanish with the Rose, it was quite a slow read for me. At first, all we know about Diana Reed is that she’s pretending to be an expert on roses in order to gain access to property newly acquired by a pair of lottery winners, Emily and Charles Nicholson. Her true agenda is not mentioned for some time, but it eventually comes out after she befriends the Nicholsons’ housekeeper, Mary Jo, and all of a sudden things change quite a bit.

As it turns out, Diana is there investigating the disappearance of her brother, Brad, who had worked for the previous owner, an old woman notorious for her ornery disposition. The handling of this revelation is interesting in that several members of the cast, whom we’ve already met without suspicion, are suddenly revealed as potential suspects. Meanwhile, ghostly music disturbs Diana’s sleep and she experiences several visions from what seems to be someone else’s perspective. After the Nicholsons head off on vacation while landscaping work proceeds, Diana, Mary Jo, Walt (the head landscaper), and Andy (Emily’s son) remain at the centuries-old home where they look for leads on Brad and try to avoid Mary Jo’s abusive ex-husband, Larry.

So, essentially what we have here is a supernatural cozy mystery, with a dash of romance thrown in for good measure. As I said, I enjoyed reading the book, but the narrative would meander something awful. Things do come together tidily enough at the end, with some fun misleads and twists along the way, but I can’t help but feel some liberal editing would’ve produced a tighter story.

I have no complaints at all about the characters, though, since I liked them all quite a lot. Diana has a lot of baggage from her parents, and takes some time coming out of her shell, but her new friendships help her to achieve this. Walt is gruff and sensible, Mary Jo is “determinedly rational,” and Andy is one of those fellows who appears glib and irresponsible, but is actually dependable in a pinch. The interplay between them is amusing, and while Diana has chemistry with both the guys, I’m quite happy about how things ultimately turn out in this regard.

Even though the story drags in places, Vanish with the Rose is a solidly entertaining tale, and definitely one worth reading.

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+)