Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews
Deb Aoki has launched the 2011 About.com Manga Readers’ Choice Awards:
The nominees were selected by About.com readers in January 2011. The top five nominees in 10 categories were chosen as finalists, and now it’s your turn to vote for the winner. The voting period runs from Friday, February 11 through Tuesday, March 8, 2011.
You can probably guess where my votes went. Go cast yours!
Continuing with Manga Bookshelf’s Valentine’s Day theme, today’s Follow Friday will focus on bloggers who prioritize romance manga. In my limited circle, at least, this amounts to shoujo manga blogs, boys’ love blogs, and yuri blogs, though I’m hoping you readers might have more to share! Here are a few of my particular favorites:
I’ve linked to yuri super-blogger Erica Friedman here before, of course, but another less-known yuri blogger well worth following is Yuri no Boke‘s Katherine Hanson. I first met Katherine at my local college nerd convention, Smith College’s Conbust, where her fantastic little yuri panel was nearly the only manga-related offering of the whole weekend. Her blog is another must-read for yuri fans. You can follow Katherine on Twitter @yuriboke.
For BL fans, I recommend Alex Woolfson’s Yaoi 911, where he not only reviews yaoi manga, but also offers up his own BL comics, as well as advice for young writers and artists interested in creating BL comics of their own! Also very valuable is his post on finding English-language bara manga, which we’ve seen very little of over here. Bonus? He’s also just a really nice guy. Follow Alex on Twitter @alexwoolfson.
Fans of shoujo manga should be reading Emily’s Random Shoujo Manga Page, the best source around for reviews and information about untranslated shoujo, divided up into useful categories like “romance,” “smutty romance,” “teacher-student,” and so on. Find Emily on Twitter @MagicalEmi. And if it’s new English-language releases you’re eager to hear about, check out Laura’s Heart of Manga for all shoujo, all the time. Follow Laura on Twitter @Ellesensei.
These are, of course, just a few great bloggers to follow for all your romance needs. Readers, who are your favorites?
With Valentine’s Day around the corner, I should request something in a romantic vein, but I’m just not in the right groove. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’ve spent most of the week catching up on Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack (Vertical) and reading Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen (Last Gasp) for next week’s Manga Moveable Feast. Gory, often cynical fiction and autobiographical despair don’t suggest chocolates and flowers.
It’s also possible that I’m still a little fixated on mountain men and prize-winning manga. Fortunately, Shogakukan provides the right crossover property in the form of Gaku: Minna no Yama, or Peak: Everyone’s Mountain, written and illustrated by Shin’ichi Ishizuka, currently being serialized in Big Comic Original. Gaku won the inaugural Manga Taisho Award in 2008, and it won the Shogakukan Manga Award in 2009.
Gaku seems to track more with my expectations of what happens when you try and scramble up the side of a tall and forbidding peak: you get in trouble. And when you get in trouble, you need someone like protagonist Shimazaki Sanpo to rescue you. Sanpo helps out with a volunteer rescue team that helps climbers in trouble in the Japanese Alps.
It seems to be fairly episodic, with various character stumbling into danger and being saved (or not) by our hero. It also seems to be very beautifully drawn. Shogakukan has a number of preview pages available for several volumes. If you click on the button under the cover image on this listing for the first volume, you’ll open up another window that offers a sneak peak… er… peek. I always like when creators combine stylized character work with realistic backgrounds.
Okay, so it’s possibly not the ideal time of year for rugged, outdoor adventure or stories set in wintry landscapes, given how sick most of us are of the wintry landscapes outside our front doors. But Gaku sounds like fun, and just look how excited Sanpo is about the prospect!
Kurozakuro, Vol. 2 by Yoshinori Natsume
The second volume of Kurozakuro seems a little more conventional than the first. I wasn’t terribly impressed by the first volume, but I did like the way Natsume blended horror with ogre fighting action. For me, the most compelling parts of Kurozakuro came when human turned ogre Sakurai was forced to confront his bestial nature as he attempted to quash his urges to kill and eat the humans around him. He can’t even really stay with his family anymore if his condition starts to progress. The second volume of the series for the most part leaves these moments of internal agony alone and focuses on setting up a more standard shonen adventure quest. Sakurai meets again with ogre hunters Kugai and Asami and makes the decision to help them, claiming that he can keep his urge to eat human flesh under control. Sakurai ends up revealing his new identity to his sister and asks her to intercede with his parents when they discover that he’s missing.
The mystical being Zakuro is dismayed at Sakurai’s unwillingness to embrace the ogre within him, warning Sakurai that he might die. Zakuro seems to be unnaturally attached to Sakurai’s continued existence for some reason. I expect that more about Sakurai and Zakuro will be revealed in future volumes, but after reading the second volume it still felt to me like the story was still being set up. I was disappointed that relentless teen vampire hunter Asami appeared to be left behind, because she was one of the few characters that I found interesting. Sakurai and Kugai join forces to hunt down a nearby super ogre. I think with the second volume Natsume’s blocky art style grew on me a bit. It is a tad simple but the heavy use of blacks and the simplistic, often screaming in horror faces of the characters does give the manga a unique if slightly static feel. There’s still not enough in the series to pique my interest, and I usually give up on manga after trying two volumes and finding that it doesn’t really appeal to me.
Review copy provided by the publisher.
With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, a shoujo manga fan’s mind tends to wander toward an image of a thousand shy (but optimistic!) Japanese schoolgirls presenting handmade chocolate to the boys of their dreams.
This week, I got to thinking… what dreamy manga boys would I have given my chocolate to, had I been a Japanese schoolgirl?
Behold today’s 3 Things!
3 manga Dream Boys for teen MJ:
1. Shinichi Chiaki | Nodame Cantabile | Tomoko Ninomiya | Del Rey Manga – Yes, yes, he’s stubborn, arrogant, and completely unable to express his feelings through any means other than music. But damn, with that beautiful talent and unstoppable confidence, I would have fallen for him in a heartbeat. You know. In high school. Or college. Not like I sit around dreaming about fictional musicians now or anything. Because that would be totally insane.
Totally.
2. Shizuka Doumeki | xxxHolic | CLAMP | Del Rey Manga – So, would I want a guy who’d give up most of his blood and half an eye for me, while quietly putting up with my clumsy emotions and constant flailing? Yes. Yes, I really would. Okay, I hate to cook, so it’s not exactly a match made in heaven, but a girl can dream. Though in real life, I’ve prefered the clumsy, flailing type (opposites attract, my ass), there’s a daydreaming teen still hidden away somewhere, admiring the tall, quiet guy who’s kinder than he looks.
Do you think he’d eat my store-bought chocolate?
3. Nobuo Terashima | NANA | Ai Yazawa | Viz Media – Given how strongly I identify with one of this series’ protagonists, Nana Komatsu, it should come as no surprise that, out of all the dream boys here on this page, it’s Nobu who most strongly resembles the kind of guy I’ve typically gone for in my non-fictional life. Short and a bit geeky, with his heart on his sleeve, Nobu is the very picture of my perfect dream boy, in manga or anywhere else. Though he lacks the obvious confidence of either Chiaki or Doumeki, he’s definitely a gem in my book.
Bet he’d eat that chocolate, too.
And what of my beloved Eiji Okamura, you ask? My bullet-proof character type if there ever was one? He’s upset not to be included, too. Should I have made it Four Things Friday?
Poor Eiji. *snif*
So, readers, who are three of your manga dream boys? Inquiring minds want to know!
We adopted a dog not too long ago. Her previous owner had passed away, and she was being fostered by a kind family in a neighboring town. She’s about two years old and small, apparently some kind of hybrid of Chihuahua and Dachshund, and yes, she looks as odd as that combination suggests. (We’ve unofficially labeled the hybrid “Gummi Weasel,” but we have yet to hear back from the AKC.)
She’s adorable and quirky and we love her very much. Of course, introducing an animal into a new house never goes flawlessly, at least in my experience, but we’re doing our best to convince her that our home is her home and that we’ll always have her best interests at heart, while reassuring our preexisting brood that they’re loved every bit as much as they were before this little alien moved in.
During this gradual and pleasurable process, I’m reminded of the many things Kanata Konami gets exactly right in creating Chi’s Sweet Home (Vertical). I say “reminded,” because I’m sure we relearned all this the last time we welcomed a new animal, but I guess it’s a much milder version of what some people say about childbirth: you forget the negatives, and you just remember the outcome.
The beauty of Chi’s Sweet Home isn’t in its narrative sweep but in the way that Konami captures specific beats in the process of being a pet owner. Yes, there are plenty of kittenish antics from the titular feline, but the spine of the series is her human family adapting to their shared responsibility for this furry little creature. They shift things around in their household to make sure Chi is both safer and less prone to mischief. They take her to the veterinarian. They figure out what kind of food she likes. They trim her nails. They make choices and sacrifices that responsible people make when they add an animal to their family.
If the book was simply about a cute kitten doing cute things, I don’t believe it would be nearly as successful as it is. Powerful a force as cuteness is, care-giving isn’t all romping with plush toys and blissful naps. It’s sometimes messy, sometimes expensive, and sometimes inconvenient. The cuteness is the reward, as is the affection and the gradually strengthening bond between pet and owner. (This is one of the reasons that I think Chi’s Sweet Home would be a great comic for a kid, since the work end of the equation isn’t neglected.)
Over at Comics Alliance, David Brothers gives a persuasive summary of the book’s strong points, noting that Konami has a good grasp of feline behavior. This is absolutely true, and she doesn’t over-anthropomorphize Chi’s antics. She doesn’t need to, because she finds all of these telling moments in the warmly everyday relationship between humans and pet.
Brothers also notes Konami’s willingness to fold sadness into the narrative, which is also entirely correct. I knew it was dramatically successful when I originally read the sequences Brothers describes. But I know it’s accurate from watching our new dog have moments when she seems to remember that our house hasn’t always been her house, that she’s had other, meaningful people in her life, and that something inside her amounts to unfinished business. And if you ignore those moments or reject them, you miss the fullness of the experience that Konami is describing. I never thought I’d use the phrase “mono no aware” to describe a manga about a kitten, but I guess that’s what you get when it’s a seinen manga about a kitten.
So, as we continue to welcome our new little citizen to the household, I’ll certainly keep up with Chi’s immersion in her new home. And I’ll probably have a Gummi Weasel on my lap as I do so.
(This review is based on complimentary copies provided by the publisher.)
Welcome to another edition of Off the Shelf with MJ & Michelle! I’m joined, as always, by Soliloquy in Blue‘s Michelle Smith.
This week, we take a look at some recent releases from Viz Media and Tokyopop.
MJ: So, here we are again, ready for our usual column. Is it just me who’s thinking, “How can we ever top the boobs episode?”
MICHELLE: Actually, it’s a relief to me that this week’s column is boob-free! Not that I refuse to consider the notion of a sequel at some point down the line.
MJ: So, what boob-free fare have you been gratefully consuming this week? :D
MICHELLE: Completely at random, both manga I plan to talk about are written by someone named Yuuki! First up is the debut volume of Itsuwaribito, by Yuuki Iinuma and published under VIZ’s Shonen Sunday imprint.
As a child, Utsuho Azako was so trusting that he innocently divulged all the details about the layout and defenses of his home to a group of bandits, which resulted in mass slaughter. Now in his adolescence, he’s being cared for by a monk in the “Valley of Orphans” and maintains that it’s better to be an itsuwaribito—one skilled in sneaking, tricking, beating, and stealing—than to be an honest fool. When the valley is the target of still more bandits and everyone except Utsuho is killed, he resolves to use his gift for lying for good and to save a thousand people in the kindly monk’s stead.
Utsuho heads out on his journey and quickly encounters a talking tanuki caught in a trap. The tanuki, whom Utsuho christens “Pochi,” is positively adorable. Trusting to a fault, he keeps falling for the trick of a hunter who claims he will return Pochi’s mother if Pochi will meet him at a certain time and place, which provides Utusho his first chance to help someone by lying. Afterwards, he and Pochi help a reluctant bandit leave his gang and a young doctor to save his patient from the sway of a charlatan.
Aside from one particularly nice moment—when Utsuho invites Pochi to travel with him, he says, “We’re not related by blood so it’s not true. It’s a lie, but I’ll be your family”—Itsuwaribito is pretty uninspiring. The villains are as superficial as they come, and there’s no suspense at all as to whether Utsuho will best them. In a bizarre juxtaposition, these silly, tongue-lolling foes are also apt to dispense some fairly graphic violence. It’s very strange because this feels so much like a teen-rated title, until the top of someone’s head is being sliced off.
I haven’t completely given up on Itsuwaribito, but I would say this is probably something to investigate via the library before committing to purchase.
MJ: Well, I think teens generally appreciate things like heads being sliced and so on. :D I admit this title looked uninspiring to me, even on a surface level. I’m sorry to hear there’s not much more to dig for.
MJ: Ah, no. Definitely no woodland creatures, and the only joke I can think of to follow that up with is dirty, so I’ll refrain. I do have a Yuki, though! First off this week, I made good on one of my promised second chances by reading volume five of Yuki Yoshihara’s Butterflies, Flowers. Though I’d really enjoyed the first volume of this series, things went rapidly downhill for me as I became unable to stomach some of the story’s sexual politics. Still, after having privately decided to dump the series, continued praise from some folks whose taste I usually share made me wonder what I was missing.
After promising to give it a second chance, I picked up volume four, and was shocked by how easily it won me back to the series. That volume completely charmed me by being made up of mostly the same smart, over-the-top comedy that wooed me in the first place. So when Viz sent me volume five for review, I was actually looking forward to digging in.
Surprisingly, the volume launched itself from pretty shaky ground, beginning with a couple of chapters devoted to Choko and Masayuki’s collective angst over whether or not to live together. Though there were a few laughs sprinkled throughout these chapters, the storyline veered a bit too much into serious romance mode for me to fully enjoy them. Fortunately, the story’s next chapters (revolving around Masayuki’s sudden onset of impotence) jumped right back into comedy, which is definitely my preferred tone for this series.
Though Yoshihara continues to push my limits with regards to controlling men as romantic leads, she really satisfies my sense of humor, and that’s difficult to beat. All told, I’m glad I gave this series a second chance, and I’m genuinely looking forward to more.
MICHELLE: This is excellent news! I’ve been planning to catch up on this series myself, and now I’m even more motivated to do so. One of the things I particularly remember from the earlier volumes is Masayuki’s abrupt changes in character between domineering jerk and solicitous sweetie. It was hard to get a handle on his personality. Any progress in that arena in recent volumes?
MJ: He’s still both of those things, definitely, but Yoshihara is dealing with him pretty well by making fun of his vulnerabilities pretty mercilessly. That definitely helps to put the domineering jerk in his place. :D
So, what else have you got for us this week? More woodland creatures?
MICHELLE: No, no woodland creatures, but no shortage of cuteness despite their absence! My second pick is the second volume of The Stellar Six of Gingacho, by my second Yuuki, Yuuki Fujimoto.
As you know, this is a slice-of-life story about six friends who grew up helping out at their parents’ shops along the Gingacho Street Market. In the second volume, we fast forward a little so that everyone has now just entered high school. Structurally, this volume is very similar to the first, including a couple of chapters in which the friends band together to help out a neighbor in need, first at a flower shop being victimized by a vandal and then at a short-handed bento shop that’s swamped at its grand opening.
These are lighthearted stories, saved from becoming repetitive by awesome scenes like child-like Mike taking the bento shop’s elementary-aged daughter—who’s upset at having moved away from all her friends—around the market and pointing out everything that makes it awesome. Mike naturally knows just what to say to make a kid feel comfortable and interested, and by the end of their journey, a layer of subtle screentoned sparkles conveys how thoroughly Mike has brought the magic of the place to life for this unwilling transplant. It kind of made me verklempt.
The first volume focused primarily on Mike and her best friend, Kuro, and while I like both of them a lot, I was hoping future volumes would spend more time with their friends. Alas, that is not to be, as there’s a fair amount of material here about Mike and Kuro’s relationship and how Mike is utterly oblivious to the fact that Kuro is in love with her. Although she would say she knows nothing about love, she still refuses to lose Kuro to anything, be it another school, another sports team, or another girl. It’s a little frustrating that Kuro doesn’t just tell her already, but perhaps he’s waiting for her to be not quite so dense first.
Another aspect of the story that is both good and bad is the propensity of adults to comment on the kids’ friendship. When Kei-san, the owner of the flower shop, tells Mike, “There’s nothing that doesn’t change,” it works. I am a sucker for bittersweet nostalgia, and moments like these imply that perhaps the kids will drift apart despite their pledges not to let that happen. However, when even random passerby feel the need to call out, “Just how long do you think it’s gonna last? Forever?” then it becomes a bit much.
In the end, The Stellar Six of Gingacho is a series that may look a little generic on the surface, but has a special charm all its own.
MJ: I *really* enjoyed the first volume of this series and I’m quite excited to read this one, even taking into account your few caveats. I, too, had hoped that we’d see more of Mike’s other friends in future volumes, though it certainly helps that I really *like* both Mike and Kuro, so it’s not like I’ll be sad to see more of them. And the scene you describe with Mike and the little new girl sounds absolutely delightful.
Has your enthusiasm for the series waned at all after this volume?
MICHELLE: Not a bit! At first I might’ve been a little, “Oh, here we go again” regarding the neighbor-helping, but when I later ended up a mite sniffly I put aside all my doubts. This one’s a keeper.
Can you say the same for your next book?
MJ: You know, I think I can. This week, I checked out the third volume of Bakuman, Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata’s tale of aspiring teen mangaka. This series has taken a beating from bloggers (occasionally including me) for things like sexism, lazy romance, and an unrealistic setup for the teens’ entry into the industry. Still, I named it one of my top two new shounen series for 2010, and this volume actually cements that decision in my mind.
Though Mashiro and Takagi have now experienced some success with a third-place one-shot in Akamaru Jump, their next step brings them mostly frustration, and even puts them at odds with their editor, who doesn’t believe that trying to create something mainstream is the right move for them at all. Personally, things are becoming strained as well, as Takagi starts spending more time with his girlfriend and Mashiro takes a position as an assistant to a rival artist.
Usually my favorite part of a story is where everything goes wrong, and this is where we are now (at least for the moment) in Bakuman. I’m especially pleased that Ohba and Obata are able to balance the typical shounen perseverance with some real doubt and bitterness as well. Though it seems unlikely that our heroes will remain apart for long, their separation doesn’t feel forced at all, and there are some hard realities for both of them to face here.
Reduced presence of Mashiro’s awkward romance is definitely a plus in this volume, with extra points for the prevalence of Takagi’s, which is actually pretty interesting to watch. One of this volume’s strong points, too, is some extended screen time for their eccentric rival, Eiji Nizuma, who is possibly my favorite character in the series at this point.
Most of all, however, I’m still really enjoying this look at the fairly calculated world of Jump, alternately inspiring and chilling, whether that was the authors’ intention or not.
MICHELLE: I really like Bakuman, even though I have totally complained about the things you mentioned, so the developments in this volume sound quite welcome. Like you, I find the insight into the workings of Jump to be the very best thing about this series. I suppose it’s too much to hope that Mashiro realizes that his arrangement with his sort of girlfriend is really stupid.
MJ: Probably, though I’m finding it much less distracting at this point, so perhaps we can hope that it might actually become interesting?
MICHELLE: I suppose there is at least a small chance that might happen!
MJ: We live in hope.
MICHELLE: Hey, is that a Rutles reference?!
MJ: Not deliberately, but it could have been! :D
Tune in next week for this month’s BL Bookrack, and then again the week after for an all new Off the Shelf!
My latest experiment in crowd-sourced Previews ordering has come to an unexpected conclusion. I feel compelled to order both of them.
This is primarily because Tsuta Suzuki’s Your Story I’ve Known (DMP) has been revealed to not be the kind of comic I’d like to include in these experiments. Enough people who should know have spoken highly of Suzuki’s work to the point that I actually just want to order it because I’d like to read it. Basically, a known quantity that may have qualities I enjoy a lot has crept into the roster of candidates due to my failure of due diligence. This cannot stand.
So, that means the winner by default is Maid Shokun, written by Nanki Satou and illustrated by Akira Kiduki (Tokyopop). Disqualification aside, I was much moved by Erica (Okazu) Friedman’s eloquent plea, and I was frankly unnerved by Tokyopop editor Lillian Diaz-Przybyl’s favorable comparison of the book to Chica Umino’s Honey and Clover (Viz). In my experience, Lillian is completely reliable and further evidence that Tokyopop should let its editors write its marketing text.
This one’s backfired rather badly on me. Fun, though.
“B” is for…
Body and Soul, written and illustrated by Erica Sakurazawa with Takumi Terakado, originally serialized in Shodensha’s Feel Young, two volumes. This is described as half wellness guide, half romance, which sounds very intriguing. It’s been published in French by Asuka.
Barbara Ikai, written and illustrated by Moto Hagio, originally serialized in Shogakukan’s flowers, four volumes. I’ve already covered this series as Otherworld Barbara in a license request, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I may be able to list it under licensed josei when I reach the letter “O.” There’s nothing wrong with optimism, is there?
BeruBara Kids, written and illustrated by Riyoko Ikeda, currently running in Asahi Shimbun, a daily newspaper. How popular is Ikeda’s The Rose of Versailles? So popular that it can spawn a successful, spin-off gag manga, decades after its original publication.
Bara no Tame ni, written and illustrated by Akemi Yoshimura, originally serialized in Shogakukan’s Petit Comic, 16 volumes. Don’t you hate it when your elderly grandmother dies, then you find out that, in spite of what you’ve been told, your mother is alive, is a famous movie actress, and has given birth to hot stepsiblings? Such is the plight of dumpy Yuri, but I suspect her new life has its bright spots.
Bathroom Guuwa, written and illustrated by Mari (Suppli, Sweat and Honey) Okazaki, originally serialized in Shueisha’s Bouquet, one volume. This seems to be a collection of slightly surreal short stories from a wonderfully sophisticated creator. It’s been published in French by Akata.
Magazines:
Licensed josei:
What starts with “B” in your josei alphabet?
Itsuwaribito Volume 1 by Yuuki Iinuma
Due to tragedy in his past, Utsuho has turned into a pathological liar. He’s grown up in a village of orphans headed by a monk. Utsuho dedicates himself to mastering the tools of trickery. He has a good working knowledge of poisons, bombs, and other dangerous compounds. Bandits come to the orphan village, causing a mass slaughter and even killing the monk that served as Utsuho’s father figure. He lies to the monk as he’s dying, saying that the rest of the children are safe and waiting for him. Utsuho vows to become an Itsuwaribito, someone who lies, cheats, and steals. Utsuho’s version of an Itsuwaribito is someone who saves other people by lying, and he’s determined to save 1000 people to make up for the death of the monk.
Itsuwaribito follows a fairly standard shonen quest formula, but Utsuho’s trickster personality and destructive nature makes him potentially a little bit more interesting than the typical shonen hero. One way of measuring how much you might like Itsuwaribito is to think about the scene in the Princess Bride when Westley faces off against the Sicilian in the Battle of Wits. Utsuho often lies, then lies about lying, then lies about lying about his lies in order to defeat evildoers who previously prided themselves on their trustworthiness. Utsuho’s catchphrases are “I was lying,” “that’s cool,” and “that’s uncool.” He does exhibit some compassion for the downtrodden, as his first rescue is a orphaned talking Tanuki, giving him the animal sidekick that seems to accompany at least thirty-five percent of all shonen heroes. His next mission is to save the brother of a girl who has joined a gang in order to support his family, challenging the gang leader to a “duel of lies.” Utsuho is a cool antihero, but his origin as an orphan haunted by tragedy is a little too conventional for me. I was amused by his fighting methods. While he sometimes gets physical, he’s more likely to bring horrible destruction on his opponent by bluffing them with a random object that sometimes might be a bomb or poison capsule, and sometimes might be something entirely different. Itsuwaribito was definitely entertaining, but I’m not quite sure if I’d want to start reading it regularly. I’d probably check out the next volume just to see if the story gets more interesting once it moves beyond the set-up stage. I did enjoy Iinuma’s art quite a bit. There’s a delicate, light aspect to the art which ends up contrasting with the violence of the action scenes, making this more interesting to look at than I was expecting. Itsuwaribito is a Shonen Sunday title and I think like the other recent release Kurozakuro, it will appeal to older readers who are ready for some moral ambiguity and cynicism in their shonen fighting manga.
Review copy provided by the publisher.
In public, Souji Kushiki leads a charmed life: he’s wealthy and handsome, popular with girls, smarter than his classmates, and faster than anyone on the track team. In private, Souji lives under a dark cloud: his older brother disappeared, a possible victim of foul play, while his sisters paw and flirt with him like Aphrodite and Hera competing for Paris’ affections. Souji’s private and public lives collide when a family emergency requires him to return home from boarding school. Souji’s new school turns out to be Murder High: the school’s top student, best athlete, and council president have all been brutally killed, and the evidence suggests that someone in the Kushiki household is responsible.
For a manga that features incest, murder, and at least one character with a split personality, Amnesia Labyrinth is awfully dull, plodding from scene to scene with little sense of urgency. Part of the problem lies with the source material; as writer Nagaru Tanigawa explains in the afterword to volume one, Amnesia Labyrinth was “based on a story that, while it didn’t have enough to become a full-fledged novel, had been kicking around in my head for years.” He admitted that he had to “dismantle” his original idea and “reinvent the characters”; small wonder that the published version was, by his own admission, filled with “lazy, phantom passages,” vestiges of an earlier story idea.
Those “phantom passages” crop up repeatedly throughout the manga, especially when Souji interacts with his sisters. In one excruciatingly pointless scene, Souji watches younger sis Harumi eat a popsicle, a wordless moment that serves no dramatic purpose other than to reinforce the idea that Harumi is more demure than sibling rivals Youko and Saki. Other scenes go on too long; in chapter one, for example, Tanigawa makes one of his female characters recite Souji’s entire CV in comic detail. (“Your grades… they’re among the top in the nation,” Sasai declares. “You put everyone to shame on Sports Day. You weren’t even on the track team, but you still cleaned up in the races.”)
That expository soliloquy points to one of Amnesia Labyrinth‘s other problems: Souji. Though we learn a lot about him from other characters, we never see Souji do anything that warrants their high esteem; it’s hard to imagine why his three sisters are so keen to bed him, as he seems like a rather ordinary teen, passive in attitude and behavior. The only moments in which we get a glimpse of his true personality are when he interacts with Sasai, a pushy classmate from his new school. She teases and flatters Souji, trying to provoke a response, and when that strategy fails, engages him in a semi-philosophical conversation about death. Their conversation might be trivial from an adult point of view, but from a teenage perspective, it feels right, two young people trying to make a terrible abstraction seem less scary.
Souji’s sisters are equally problematic. They’re a harem of types, rather than three distinctive characters: Youko, Souji’s full sister, is crazy and wears a kimono; Harumi, Souji’s stepsister, is the embodiment of moe, blushing and stammering around Souji; and Saki, Souji’s half sister, is a fetish object, cheerfully trading a maid’s outfit for a school uniform. The girls’ sexual aggression isn’t beyond the realm of possibility; one might plausibly infer that their gamesmanship and flirtation are an attempt to establish a pecking order. But the scenes lack emotion or context, registering more as cheap titillation — hey, Souji’s such a stud that even his sisters want him! — than an essential element of the plot.
The one bright spot in this otherwise lackluster affair is the art. Using clean, precise linework, Natsumi Kohane renders each setting in careful detail, drawing a sharp distinction between the Kushiki’s isolated rural home and the school’s bustling urban neighborhood. There’s a lovely — if unnecessary — sequence of panels showing us what kind of flowers grow in the Kushiki’s garden, thus establishing the time of year and suggesting the home’s claustrophobic, hothouse atmosphere. (It’s a bit like finding a tribute to Kazuo Miyagawa’s cinematography embedded in a Vin Diesel flick.) Even the fanservice is handled tastefully; the female characters have plausible, pleasing body shapes that demonstrate a firm grasp of basic anatomy. There’s some brief nudity, but we’re spared the panty shots and boob collisions typical of harem manga.
I’m hesitant to pan Amnesia Labyrinth, as I know I’m not its target audience. Souji is clearly intended to be a surrogate for teenage boys who fantasize about being brilliant, athletic, and irresistible to girls without the slightest effort. For readers outside this demographic, however, the series’ main draw — the mystery — is too underdeveloped to be interesting, and the characterizations too thin to inspire sympathy for or identification with any of the cast.
Review copy provided by Seven Seas. Volume one will be released on February 28, 2011.
In public, Souji Kushiki leads a charmed life: he’s wealthy and handsome, popular with girls, smarter than his classmates, and faster than anyone on the track team. In private, Souji lives under a dark cloud: his older brother disappeared, a possible victim of foul play, while his sisters paw and flirt with him like Aphrodite and Hera competing for Paris’ affections. Souji’s private and public lives collide when a family emergency requires him to return home from boarding school. Souji’s new school turns out to be Murder High: the school’s top student, best athlete, and council president have all been brutally killed, and the evidence suggests that someone in the Kushiki household is responsible.
For a manga that features incest, murder, and at least one character with a split personality, Amnesia Labyrinth is awfully dull, plodding from scene to scene with little sense of urgency. Part of the problem lies with the source material; as writer Nagaru Tanigawa explains in the afterword to volume one, Amnesia Labyrinth was “based on a story that, while it didn’t have enough to become a full-fledged novel, had been kicking around in my head for years.” He admitted that he had to “dismantle” his original idea and “reinvent the characters”; small wonder that the published version was, by his own admission, filled with “lazy, phantom passages,” vestiges of an earlier story idea.
Those “phantom passages” crop up repeatedly throughout the manga, especially when Souji interacts with his sisters. In one excruciatingly pointless scene, Souji watches younger sis Harumi eat a popsicle, a wordless moment that serves no dramatic purpose other than to reinforce the idea that Harumi is more demure than sibling rivals Youko and Saki. Other scenes go on too long; in chapter one, for example, Tanigawa makes one of his female characters recite Souji’s entire CV in comic detail. (“Your grades… they’re among the top in the nation,” Sasai declares. “You put everyone to shame on Sports Day. You weren’t even on the track team, but you still cleaned up in the races.”)
That expository soliloquy points to one of Amnesia Labyrinth‘s other problems: Souji. Though we learn a lot about him from other characters, we never see Souji do anything that warrants their high esteem; it’s hard to imagine why his three sisters are so keen to bed him, as he seems like a rather ordinary teen, passive in attitude and behavior. The only moments in which we get a glimpse of his true personality are when he interacts with Sasai, a pushy classmate from his new school. She teases and flatters Souji, trying to provoke a response, and when that strategy fails, engages him in a semi-philosophical conversation about death. Their conversation might be trivial from an adult point of view, but from a teenage perspective, it feels right, two young people trying to make a terrible abstraction seem less scary.
Souji’s sisters are equally problematic. They’re a harem of types, rather than three distinctive characters: Youko, Souji’s full sister, is crazy and wears a kimono; Harumi, Souji’s stepsister, is the embodiment of moe, blushing and stammering around Souji; and Saki, Souji’s half sister, is a fetish object, cheerfully trading a maid’s outfit for a school uniform. The girls’ sexual aggression isn’t beyond the realm of possibility; one might plausibly infer that their gamesmanship and flirtation are an attempt to establish a pecking order. But the scenes lack emotion or context, registering more as cheap titillation — hey, Souji’s such a stud that even his sisters want him! — than an essential element of the plot.
The one bright spot in this otherwise lackluster affair is the art. Using clean, precise linework, Natsumi Kohane renders each setting in careful detail, drawing a sharp distinction between the Kushiki’s isolated rural home and the school’s bustling urban neighborhood. There’s a lovely — if unnecessary — sequence of panels showing us what kind of flowers grow in the Kushiki’s garden, thus establishing the time of year and suggesting the home’s claustrophobic, hothouse atmosphere. (It’s a bit like finding a tribute to Kazuo Miyagawa’s cinematography embedded in a Vin Diesel flick.) Even the fanservice is handled tastefully; the female characters have plausible, pleasing body shapes that demonstrate a firm grasp of basic anatomy. There’s some brief nudity, but we’re spared the panty shots and boob collisions typical of harem manga.
I’m hesitant to pan Amnesia Labyrinth, as I know I’m not its target audience. Souji is clearly intended to be a surrogate for teenage boys who fantasize about being brilliant, athletic, and irresistible to girls without the slightest effort. For readers outside this demographic, however, the series’ main draw — the mystery — is too underdeveloped to be interesting, and the characterizations too thin to inspire sympathy for or identification with any of the cast.
Review copy provided by Seven Seas. Volume one will be released on February 28, 2011.
Tuesday means it’s time to share my weekly report on the Digital Manga Guild, Digital Manga Publishing’s new, community-based publishing experiment. As I explained in a post last week, I’ve joined the Guild as an inside reporter (with DMP’s consent) in order to give potential participants a chance to see what membership really entails before deciding whether to take the plunge.
Last week, I was notified that I passed my editor’s test and that I needed to become part of a group containing at least one officially accepted translator and typesetter in order to be able to work on any manga. I could do this by either joining up with other accepted individuals, or becoming part of an already-established group.
The DMG forums immediately began to fill up with posts from individual editors (and to a lesser extent, typesetters) seeking to form groups, at which point it became apparent that success was unlikely for a large number of newly-accepted members. With translators at a premium, the tone became pretty desperate, and the groupless began asking for assistance from DMP to help resolve their situation. A comment early on from DMP representative starlightmuse indicated that they might have some plan for addressing the situation, but aside from the creation of a new set of search threads, they’ve since made it clear in the updated FAQ that they “will not be taking part in forming groups in any way.”
At this point, it seems likely that a great many editors and typesetters are doomed to remain groupless, and it’s quite telling that of the new group-formation threads, the one entitled “Translators Looking to Join a Group” currently contains no replies at all. Some relief may arrive in the form of latecomers to the testing, as the updated FAQ indicates that there have been new applicants with yet ungraded tests, as well as a group of early applicants who will be taking a second test sometime this month. Of course, there’s every chance that the new tests will simply create more groupless editors, but only time will tell. On the upside, group participation is apparently fluid, and it’s been made clear that individuals are free to work with as many groups as they like, so translators looking to maximize their output and earning potential should find plenty of folks eager to work with them.
Given the general circumstances for individual editors, I must admit I’ve been extremely lucky. Not long after I posted my own little ad in the original group search forum, I was contacted by the leader of an already-established group, asking me to join as long as I could satisfy the group’s privacy concerns. Since I was immediately impressed by the leader’s management style and thoughtful self-expression, I eagerly agreed!
I will not be the only editor in the group, and indeed every role is covered by at least two people, which should allow us to work concurrently on a number of titles while accommodating its members’ busy schedules. Happily, too, the group has been chosen as one of the Guild’s beta groups, so we’ll be working with DMP on the first batch of titles, in order to help them identify any problems with their process. What this means for readers, of course, is that I’ll be able to report on the Guild’s inner workings from the get-go, which I hope might be enlightening for all.
Some of the questions brought up in comments to last week’s post have since been addressed (at least in part) in the Guild’s updated FAQ, particularly those about payment and taxes, though there is still quite a bit up-in-the-air there. When I have real facts to report on those issues, rest assured I will do so.
Signing out for this week! Please feel free to ask questions in comments to this post, and tune in next Tuesday for more!
It’s a huge week for Viz via Diamond, though some books have already shipped through other venues. (See my pick of last week and my pick of this week, and bask in the bafflement!) If you buy your manga shopping via Diamond-dependent comic shops, you have many, many choices, at least according to the ComicList.
Had Viz not sent me a review copy of the second volume of The Story of Saiunkoku, adapted from Sai Yukino’s light novels by Kairi Yura, I probably would have camped out at the local bookstore and repeatedly mispronounced the title as I asked if it had arrived yet. Such was the force of my reaction to the first volume. But does the second hold up? Yes, it certainly does. While not the same kind of revelation, I still ran to my computer to make sure there are more volumes to come. (There are.)
This was a concern, since the first two volumes form what must be an adaptation of Yukino’s first novel in the series. Having established the leads, seemingly feckless emperor Ryuki and his frugal, forceful tutor, Shurei, Yura and Yukino put them in danger in the form of palace intrigue. To be entirely honest, the details of the scheme are much less interesting than Ryuki and Shurei’s individual and collective responses to it. But their shifting but well-balanced relationship is still a complete treat, and the prospect of reading about their next encounter is pure, happy anticipation.
If you like stories about smart, feisty girls sparring with deeper-than-they-seem boys, this series can be injected directly into a vein for that sweet, sweet rush of shôjo romance between the very different but equally matched.
In other Viz news, there’s the seventh volume of the always welcome Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You, written and illustrated by Karuho Shiina. This one promises lots of holiday activity, which is always fun.
There’s also the less welcome but still potentially intriguing second volume of Genkaku Picasso, written and illustrated by Usumaru Furuya. I wasn’t especially impressed with the first volume, but I find Furuya kind of fascinating, so I’ll probably succumb at some point.
What looks good to you?
The Story of Saiunkoku Volume 2 by Sai Yukino and Kairi Yura
The manga keeps moving along at a healthy pace. I was actually surprised at some of the revelations contained in this volume about Seiran’s true nature and the background of Shurei’s father, because I thought I remembered things moving much more slowly in the anime version of the story. But there’s nothing wrong with packing in a bunch of plot into a manga when it is done right! There’s plenty of court intrigue as it looks like someone is trying to poison Shurei. Ryuki shows that he’s really quite competent with subterfuge in his own right, as he manages to confiscate tainted items and give Shurei antidotes without anyone knowing about it. The point of the plot was Lord Advisor Sa trying to push Ryuki into finally acting like the Emperor everyone knows he can be. Ryuki decides to step out from the cloak of incompetence that he hid behind and take power in order to make sure that the ones he’s closest to remain protected.
One of the main reasons why I like this series so much is because Shurei is a particularly strong heroine. She’s portrayed as being extraordinarily nice but not in a cloying way. The scene that highlighted her personality occurs early in the volume, when she’s scolding Seiran for not taking adequate care of himself. She says “…just the way I always moan and complain to you when I’m upset…I want you to be able to tell me all your frustrations too.” She puts her head down on the table wondering how she’ll ever be able to repay the debts of gratitude she owes Seiran, and he tells her that her smiling face is “his greatest remedy.” As Shurei leaves the court and prepares to return to her normal life of studying and housework, I’m eagerly waiting to see the next phase of her adventures.
Stepping on Roses Volume 4 by Rinko Ueda
I love Tail of the Moon, but I’ve steered clear of Stepping on Roses because I thought this series about a poor heroine forced into a marriage of convenience with a rich businessman during the Meiji era seemed a bit too “Perils of Pauline” for me. If I hadn’t read Tail of the Moon I’d probably enjoy Stepping on Roses more because it does have a certain level of romance novel cheesiness that I usually enjoy. It suffers a bit in comparison though because Usagi and Hanzo are much more compelling characters than Sumi and Soichiro.
Sumi and Soichiro are in the type of marriage of convenience where it is clear that they both love each other but aren’t going to admit it for several volumes. Complications ensue when Natsuki introduces a maid named Keiko into the house as a spy. She’s underhanded and sneaky, trying to pry into Sumi’s hidden poor background. She attempts to sabotage Sumi and Soichiro’s relationship, but only the trusty butler Komai really knows what’s going on. I thought that Keiko was so unsneaky, it was hard to feel sorry for Sumi and Soichiro when things started to go wrong. I can’t get away from comparing this manga to Tail of the Moon. Ueda seems to specialize in sweet, ditzy heroines, but even though Usagi was frequently portrayed as incompetent, it was due to the fact that she didn’t fit in well to her ninja clan context. She was actually a skilled herbalist and only got into trouble when she attempted to act like a ninja. Also, with Hanzo’s position as being the head of a ninja plan, he had a good reason for acting gruff and strict most of the time. Sumi and Soichiro have very similar personalities when compared with Usagi and Hanzo, but I’m not finding the Meiji era setting as compelling. It is obvious that Ueda does a ton of research for her manga, so Stepping on Roses is really just suffering in comparison for being sort of ok, while Tail of the Moon was really great.
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Natsume’s Book of Friends Volume 5 by Yuki Midorikawa
Midorikawa’s gentle book about yokai continues to combine arresting images with stories of redemption. Natsume visits a nearby hotel for a cram session with his friends, and discovers that the owner is haunted by an encounter with a mermaid many years ago. He manages to bring peace to the old woman and the mermaid, who manage to acknowledge the friendship began when the inn owner was a little girl. There were a few more scenes of Natsume interacting with normal people than I remember from previous volumes. One in particular stuck in my mind, when Natsume is walking along with his classmates and grows distracted because he’s the only one who can see an invisible giant walking through the village with his head stuck in the clouds. I was happy to see a good chunk of the volume devoted to Natsume helping a girl who can also see yokai when she draws spell circles. She’s been cursed, and she draws spell circles like graffiti all over the neighborhood in an attempt to locate the spirit who cursed her. Natsume is added to the curse when she utters his name, but he decides to help her with her problem. It was nice to see Natsume make another friend who might be able to understand what he’s going through. Another story provided the reader with more details about Natsume’s grandmother who spent all of her time imprisoning yokai with her “Book of Friends.” She’s grown up completely isolated, yet still decides to help Natsume’s uncle when he was a young boy. She enters his house and subdues the spirit saying “get out, this is the house where my favorite kid lives.” Natsume gains some understanding of his grandmother when he wonders if she was alone for so long that she forgot things, thinking “the proper term for that is my friend’s house.” Natsume’s Book of Friends seems remarkably consistent. The episodic nature of the way Natusume deals with the yokai ensures that it isn’t particularly surprising but there will usually be some interesting imagery or small episodes that illuminate human character, which makes for rewarding reading.
Review copy provided by the publisher.