Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Archives for February 2012

Manga The Week of 3/7

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First week of the month, which means it’s a landslide. As always.

Midtown lists Zetsubou-sensei 13 from Kodansha, which I got today. It also has Cage of Eden 4, which I didn’t get today, and Air Gear 22, which I simply don’t get. In many ways. (Two very fanservicey titles, and Zetsubou-sensei. Which I suppose has service this volume as well, but… it’s not really the same.)

Vertical has the 3nd and final volume of Usamaru Furuya’s manga adaptation of No Longer Human, which promises to bring things to an appropriate finish. That means no picket-fence and two-car garage, I’m reckoning. You may have a better chance of getting that in Chi’s Sweet Home 8, which is not drawn by Furuya. (Though the mind reels at how he’d draw a chapter of it…)

Then there is the terrifying pile of Viz. Let’s start with shoujo, as we have another debut this month. The fantasy romance The Earl And the Fairy, based on a series of light novels, debuts. It looks very pretty, but I’ve heard good things about it anyway. There’s a new Black Bird, which is apparently wrapping up soon, having possibly run out of new ways to appall me. Dengeki Daisy should wrap up this current arc with an epic finish (I think… maybe? Long arc, anyway.) Kimi ni Todoke is almost caught up with Japan, but not quite, as we get lucky Vol. 13 here. La Corda D’Oro hits Vol. 15 with a new release (perhaps it’s speeding up now that it’s over in its home country). Oresama Teacher is apparently still not satisfying everyone, but I still adore it. Stepping on Roses is STILL NOT ABOUT SHOGI. And we get some re-releases of two of Viz’s most popular series, with 3-in-1 omnibuses of Hana-Kimi and Skip Beat!.

As for shonen? Bleach has a 2nd character book, showing that its fans are devoted enough to actually make a character book sell – quite a rarity in North America. There’s new Naruto and One Piece to slam into the bestseller charts. And new Psyren, which… well, probably won’t, but is still interesting. In Sunday manga, there’s new Rin-Ne and Arata. (Speaking of which, what ever happened to Sunday’s digital initiative? Did the weekly chapters die for the non-Takahashi stuff now as well?)

Lastly, there’s a new Volume of Fluffy Fluffy Cinammonroll, which just makes me hungry.

That’s a lot of manga. Is there anything you can’t live without?

JManga goes global

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Erica Friedman trumpets the good news at Okazu: After a week of Tweets and Facebook comments from readers and would-be readers, the powers that be at JManga have acceded to the will of the public and gone global. No longer will manga fans outside the U.S. and Canada be faced with an unfriendly blue screen; now they, too, can spend $10 per month to read Anesthesiologist Hana and Poor Poor Lips. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some individual titles are blocked (boo!) but overall, this is a great step forward for the manga biz, and kudos to the manga folks (and hard-working business manager Robert Newman, who led the charge) for taking it.

Animemiz reports in on MangaNEXT as well as the yuri panel, the Vertical panel, and the GEN Manga panel.

Viz’s SuBLime imprint announced two new titles yesterday, Yaya Sakuragi’s Bond of Dreams, Bond of Love and Makoto Tateno’s How’s Your Ex?

Previews kicks off its Manga Month with an interview with Dark Horse editor extraordinaire Carl Horn.

Naru has an interesting post on what it feels like to lose your interest in manga—along with three possible cures—at What is this “Culture” you speak of? (Yes, that’s the name of the blog.) (Via Justin.)

It’s Toriko vs. the robot in Derek Bown’s latest Combat Commentary at Manga Bookshelf.

Reviews: Carlo Santos makes some hard choices and tells some harsh truths in his latest Right Turn Only!! column at ANN.

Shannon Fay on About Love (Kuriousity)
Kristin on vol. 5 of Bokurano: Ours (Comic Attack)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 17 of Higurashi When They Cry (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Ken Haley on vol. 2 of Sailor Moon (Sequential Ink)
Justin on vol. 1 of When I’m With You (Organization Anti-Social Geniuses)
Lori Henderson on vols. 12-13 of Zombie Loan (Manga Village)

Combat Commentary: Toriko Vol. 4, Ch. 26-28

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What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of food manga? Is it shounen fighter series? I didn’t think so…

Huh. I guess it would be kind of up there. Surprisingly enough, food is actually a major part of many shounen fighter series. Take for example Goku, Luffy, and Natsu, who are well known for consuming insane amounts of food. Or Naruto, who has a ravenous hunger for ramen. Or Yoshimori (from Kekkaishi) whose hobby is baking cakes. In some way or another, many shounen protagonists are connected to food, to the point where the big eating hero has become something of a trope. Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro took that trope and based an entire series around it, giving us Toriko.

The majority of Toriko features the titular character defeating and eating a large variety of exotic beasts. But in Vol. 4 he faces off against a human opponent for the first time. Or, rather, he faces off against a robot being controlled by a human. Nevertheless, this battle was the first one in which he found himself facing off against an intelligent opponent in a more traditional kind of fight.

What Happened?
Toriko and Komatsu visit Biotope 1, a place where rare gourmet ingredients are kept and studied, at the request of the International Gourmet Organization (IGO). While there, they discover an gladiatorial ring that pits rare and powerful creatures against each other as the rich and famous bet on the outcomes of the matches. When a pregnant Battle Wolf is pitted against four of the most vicious creatures in the world, Toriko steps in to protect the wolf while it gives birth. In the panic caused by Toriko breaking open the protective dome around the coliseum, a strange individual calmly remains sitting. Director Mansam confronts him, but he is attacked by the stranger, who reveals himself to be a GT Robot.

(click images to enlarge)

While Toriko and the Battle Wolf deal with an enraged Devil Python, the Battle Wolf finishes the beast off immediately after giving birth, only to be struck down by the GT Robot’s laser.

What Happens?
Toriko, enraged by the GT Robot’s sneak attack on the Battle Wolf, faces off against the machine. None of his attacks do any damage, as the robot is made of a Titanium alloy—even its joints are reinforced. Toriko, after taking some gruesome damage, goads the robot’s controller into using his most powerful attack. Doing this exposes his only weak point, the laser array inside his head, and Toriko takes advantage of that moment of weakness with his most powerful concentrated five fold spiked punch.

What Does it Mean?
This early on in the manga, Shimabukuro is still exploring the extent of Toriko’s power. He manages to create a fight that not only is a legitimate challenge for his hero, but also allows him to expand his strength. Toriko has three basic attacks available to him; Knife, which allows him to use the edge of his palm to cut through almost anything; Fork, an attack that uses the tips of his fingers to give him great penetrative strength; and the Spiked Punch, which comes in scatter and concentrated varieties, and has a power level that can be adjusted depending on how many times he punches.

As far as fights go, this one is surprisingly short. The GT Robot is shown as being indestructible, and then Toriko finds a way to enjoy it. Sometimes brevity is best, in this case it most certainly was. Toriko is still in the early stages of his development, but he is also still in the stage where he can take care of most opponents with relative ease. The fight is almost elegant in its execution. It uses the basic elements of a shounen battle: an overwhelming opponent appears who apparently cannot be beaten, the hero takes some damage, and finally the hero discovers the power within himself to overcome his opponent. Toriko takes that framework, which usually spans several chapters in most series, and condenses it down to barely two chapters. It’s shounen battle at its most basic.

While it isn’t uncommon for the hero to defeat his opponent by discovering a new power, Toriko instead adapts his already established attacks, modifies his fork attack into a more penetrative icepick, and uses what he already has to defeat his enemy. He shows intelligence in how he fights, taking his ability to absorb incredible amounts of damage and marrying it to an intelligent mind, making him one of the tougher shounen heroes around.

The framework by which all shounen battles work, shown so elegantly in this example, is crucial to a good fight. The way in which it is executed determines the enjoyment of the fight. Fights that don’t follow this basic framework tend to suffer pacing issues. Because a good fight is like a good mystery, the method in which the hero overcomes his foe is crucial. And sometimes it can be something as simple as using the tools they are given that provides the reader with the most satisfaction.

More from MangaNEXT, Tezukafest winds up

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I’m still processing everything that happened at MangaNEXT. Check out my con report at PWCW and my interview with Tomo Maeda, the creator of Black Sun, Silver Moon and Beyond My Touch, at MTV Geek, and don’t miss Erica Friedman’s very thorough con report at Okazu–she was on the industry panel, which I missed, but reading her account makes me feel like I was there.

Kate Dacey wraps up the Manga Moveable Feast with part 2 of her essay on Tezuka, Sex, and Gender and a final day’s worth of links. Khursten Santos takes a look at three of Tezuka’s female characters at Otaku Champloo.

The Manga Bookshelf team discusses our Picks of the Week.

Corinna Lawson of Wired’s GeekDad blog takes the Viz iPad app for a spin and likes it better than paper.

The Calcutta Telegraph profiles manga artist Yukichi Yamamatsu, whose Stupid Man Goes to India chronicles his stay in that county.

News from Japan: Kare Kano creator Masami Tsuda will launch a new fantasy series, Hinoko, in the May issue of Hakusensha’s LaLa magazine. That’s the issue to get, apparently, as it will also feature a one-shot by Bisco Hatori (of Ouran High School Host Club fame). The Dengeki Online website is running Oshiete! Mordin-sensei! (Teach me! Professor Mordin!), a webcomic that explains the setting of the Mass Effect 3 game and introduces some of the characters. And Puyo, the artist behind The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi-chan, is working on an Itsuki Koizumi spinoff to run in Altima Ace.

Reviews: For those in a hurry, the Manga Bookshelf team has a brand-new set of Bookshelf Briefs. Ash Brown lays out a week’s worth of manga reading at Experiments in Manga.

Lesley Aeschliman on vol. 2 of Honey Hunt (Blogcritics)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 8 of Rin-ne (The Comic Book Bin)
Dave Ferraro on vol. 1 of Soulless (Comics-and-More)

Higurashi: When They Cry, Vol. 17

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Story by Ryukishi07; Art by Karin Suzuragi. Released in Japan as “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Tsumihoroboshi-hen” by Square Enix, serialized in the magazine Gangan Powered. Released in North America by Yen Press.

I will admit, very little happens in this volume of Higurashi, at least in terms of actual events. Rena’s paranoia grows, the others realize just how far she’s gone, and they resolve to save her. That’s about it, along with one other revelation. But that said, this was a fantastic volume of Higurashi, mostly as it rewards the readers who have been following along with the first volume.

We haven’t quite seen Higurashi get as ‘conspiracy happy’ as it does here, and that’s mostly due to the choice of protagonists. Keiichi was the newcomer, so his paranoia was stemming from not knowing his new friends well enough. As for Shion, everything about her revolved around Satoshi, making her manipulable in that sense. Rena, though, has already killed and is well on her way to the madness we’ve seen before. So it’s time to break out the silly guns. Yes, we get ‘aliens are causing it all’, along with ‘it’s a parasite burrowing into people’ and ‘my dead friends have been replaced with exact duplicates’ as well. Sadly, not only are many of those actual common diagnoses with folks who have paranoia, but several of them might be true. We’re still not sure what’s actually causing everything. And now we find that one of the series’ perennial corpses – Takano Miyo, the sleepy-eyed nurse – may have been dead 24 hours before she was supposed to have died.

So Rena’s not doing very well, and Keiichi, the one person she can trust, immediately goes and tells Moin about this. From Rena’s perspective, it’s the worst kind of betrayal. From *our* perspective, we’re cheering. At last, we’ve stopped distrusting our best friends! And true to form, Mion is able to put his mind at ease and also help start a search for Rena, who’s gone missing. Rena is, of course, hiding from everyone who is plotting to kill her – i.e. everyone. And unfortunately, the one to run into her first is Rika. We’ve gradually become aware that Rika can remember the previous iterations of this manga, and would appear to be very different from the small child she appears to be. She’s never been quite so bleak and uncaring as she is here, though. Some of what we see is clearly Rena’s ‘paranoia-vision’, but some of it is clearly a person who is exhausted and has just given up – and who has seen a bit too much of the nasty side of humanity. Rika’s cynicism here is the opposite of what we want to see in Higurashi, which makes it heartbreaking.

(She’s also drinking wine as well, which can’t be good for her. And talking to an offscreen voice we can’t see.)

After this, Keiichi tracks down Rena, but she’s prepared for him. She reveals Keiichi’s past to us. Given that everyone else in the manga has a tortured, tragic past, it makes sense that Keiichi would have one as well – it’s not as bad as the others, but it definitely shows us why he might be the way he is, and why he’s so tolerable of the girl’s goofy antics at his expense. And given that, like Keiichi, Rena has also shown signs of being very intelligent but hiding it under a mask of goofy, it helps to connect them even closer. If Rena wasn’t driving him away, that is.

So a guilt-ridden Keiichi confesses what he did before he moved to Hinamizawa to his other friends. And they’re OK with it, forgiving him, noting they were all little brats as well, and pointing out that being friends doesn’t mean telling everyone every aspect of your lives. It was good to hear that, especially from a comedy-horror manga. Then, just as Keiichi is coming to accept their forgiveness… he remembers the events of Book 2. Remember Book 2? The first arc? Seeing a shot of Mion’s head getting beaten in with a bat, especially as we weren’t expecting the flashback, is very startling. and now Keiichi’s in even worse shape. He thought he just had to be forgiven for his own past – now he has to atone for the other Keiichis as well!

Rika’s the one to notice the big thing, though – Keiichi REMEMBERS ANOTHER ARC! She even calls this an impossible miracle, noting that she’s the only one who remembers them. That said, it’s to Keiichi’s credit that this doesn’t turn him into a gibbering heap – remembering Rena desperately trying to save him (and it was terrific, if horrifying, seeing the events of the first arc as they actually happened – with Keiichi’s paranoia fueling his murders) makes him even more determined to avoid her going through the same thing. Even better, this actually galvanizes Rika. She notes that this world is beyond saving – this isn’t the last arc – but decides to help Keiichi anyway, as Rena is her friend and it’s the right thing to do.

So everyone’s forgiven everyone – except for Rena, who’s scratching at her bloody throat and getting out her billhook to prepare to kill everyone in the village in order to save them. (Something, notably, she and Keiichi had regarded as ridiculously stupid at the very start of this volume.) Will Keiichi be able to stop her madness? The previous evidence suggests the answer is no, but who knows? One more volume to go to find out.

Bookshelf Briefs 2/27/12

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This week, Michelle, MJ, Sean take a look at new releases from the Digital Manga Guild, Viz Media, Dark Horse Manga, and Vertical, Inc., while Kate offers up an unusual Tezuka find as she wraps up this month’s Manga Moveable Feast!

Ata | By Tamaki Fuji | Digital Manga Guild – I’ve reviewed quite a few books now from various groups in the Digital Manga Guild and most have been pretty good. And then there was Ata. It’s an absolute mess, with lousy art and mistakes galore. Releasing a book with an error on practically every page just goes to show that passing DMP’s proficiency tests is not sufficient to guarantee a quality product. But maybe it’s “rediculous” to expect them to be able to spell “speical” words like “fufilling,” especially when it’s “hard to breath” near the tree when it “bares” its fruit. You’ll note that I haven’t said anything yet about Ata‘s story, and that’s because I was so overwhelmed and distracted by the dozens upon dozens of easily preventable mistakes that I was unable to become invested in it. The shoddy work of this group ruined the manga for me. Avoid at all costs. – Michelle Smith

Bleach, Vol. 38 | By Tite Kubo | Viz Media – If there’s one thing Bleach seems determined to remind me, it’s that I’m not its target audience. And while this may seem like an obvious conclusion for a 40-something woman reading a shounen battle manga, the thing about Bleach is that originally I was. Tite Kubo won me over easily in the series’ early volumes, with well-developed relationships, a terrific sense of humor, and an ability to make readers care about a large cast of characters, both friend and foe. Though later volumes have devolved into increasingly tedious fight sequences featuring increasingly disinteresting enemies, he’s won me back, time and again, as recently as volume 36. Sadly, with this volume, he’s lost me again. Despite one short, dramatic scene revolving around the defeat of Ikkaku, the volume overall hinges on the reader’s interest in fights for their own sake. Unfortunately, that’s just not enough for me. – MJ

Gate 7, Vol. 2 | By CLAMP | Dark Horse Manga – Back in December, I described Gate 7 as “my kind of CLAMP,” and while I believe this still may well be the case, the series’ second volume doesn’t put in much effort to prove it. Volume one’s greatest weakness was a glut of exposition, and that trend continues here, as CLAMP introduces us to a whole slew of brand new characters before we’ve had a chance to fall for the ones we already have. The result is shaky pacing and glassy-eyed confusion, exacerbated by an onslaught of historical information likely to send most western readers thumbing their way repeatedly to the book’s (thankfully extensive) endnotes in the hopes of reaching solid ground. Though as a long-time CLAMP fan, I’m willing to grant the artists a few more volumes to create some emotional stakes worthy of my investment, many readers may find their patience waning by the end of this volume, and I’m not yet confident enough to urge them on. Not quite recommended. – MJ

Kamisama Kiss, Vol. 7 | By Julietta Suzuki | Viz Media – There’s a lot of manga cliches going on here, honestly. Which is not always bad, but when I saw Nanami telling Tomoe that he had to stay behind while she went to the meeting of the Gods, I knew it was a classic “if only she’d explained” moment. Sigh. Other than that, this volume introduces a lot of new kami, as we delve into just how much prejudice Nanami has to fight to be accepted as a god herself. Of course, for those who want romance, there’s Chapter 38, which is almost a perfect ‘date’ chapter, and sure to warm the heart. Overall, though, this felt like a transitional volume of Kamisama Kiss, setting up the plots that will be taken care of in the next volume. Still good stuff, though. – Sean Gaffney

No Longer Human, Vol. 3 | By Usamaru Furuya | Vertical, Inc. – After enjoying the first two volumes of No Longer Human more than I’d expected to, I was really looking forward to the final volume, which seems an odd thing to say, given the extent of the extremely grim things that tend to happen in this series. We begin one year into Yozo Oba’s marriage to cheerful and innocent Yoshino. They’re happy together, but shortly after a friend points out that Yozo must eventually pay for his past crimes, something terrible happens to strip Yoshino of her trusting personality, and the change in her destroys Yozo’s happy fantasy. Forced to confront the awfulness of humanity, he spirals into drug abuse and madness. Furuya depicts Yozo’s descent into ruin with creative, effective imagery, which results in some odd moments where readers are admiring the art whilst something profoundly unsettling is actually happening in the panel. Dark and strange, No Longer Human may not be for everyone, but I still recommend it. – Michelle Smith

Nura: Rise Of The Yokai Clan, Vol. 7 | By Hiroshi Shiibashi | Viz Media – This volume of Nura is neatly divided into two parts. The first deals with Yura, who is finding herself confused as to the true nature of the yokai… and is suspecting that Rikuo is involved somehow. What’s worse, her two older brothers show up, and explicitly state that there is no such thing as a good yokai. Anyone who says they see the world only in black and white morality is never going to be a good guy in manga, but these two are surprisingly well handled. And Yura gets some nice bonding with Rikuo (another potential romance? This isn’t getting harem-ey, is it?). The second half is mostly a flashback to how Nura’s grandfather met his grandmother, and interested me mostly for seeing Tsurara’s grandmother, a lot less perky and a lot more sultry in the Yuki-Onna department. As always, recommended for Jump fans. – Sean Gaffney

Otomen, Vol. 12 | By Aya Kanno | Viz Media – The best part of this volume, to me, was seeing the flashback to Asuka’s mother in school, which strikes me as an amazing story… which we don’t see. Indeed, Aya Konno explicitly says she wanted to draw more of it, but didn’t. Oh Otomen, why do you always sidestep my expectations? Instead, we get the expected resolution between Asuka and his father (if you hadn’;t guessed who it was, you weren’t reading hard enough), which is nice and sentimental but not as deep as I’d have liked. I hope we get more of his mother in future. The best part of the book was the final chapter, a terrific side story with Amakashi and a rather stoic high school girl, which did what I wanted the main story to do. Otomen seems to be heading into its endgame, so I hope we’ll see some better resolution of the main plotline. And more Ryo! – Sean Gaffney

Tezuka: The Marvel of Manga | By Philip Brophy | National Gallery of Victoria – This slim, handsomely packaged book is, in fact, the catalog for an exhibition mounted by the National Gallery of Victoria back in 2006. As such, it has all the virtues and faults of a museum product. On the plus side, the book contains immaculate reproductions of Tezuka’s work, from his very earliest stories — Metropolis, Crime and Punishment — to his final manga, Ludwig B. Editor Philip Brophy has paired these images with numerous statements by Tezuka about his characters and creative process — an impressionistic but effective strategy for helping the reader understand Tezuka’s artistry. On the minus side, the contextual essays run the gamut from very good to hopelessly vague; readers looking for biographical information will find Helen McCarthy’s The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga a more comprehensive introduction to the master’s life and work. – Katherine Dacey

Pick of the Week: Picks & anti-Picks

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This week’s haul at Midtown Comics inspires both some enthusiastic picks (and a couple of emphatic anti-picks) from the Battle Robot. Check them out below!

SEAN: Can I make xxxHOLIC my anti-Pick of the Week? :) Seriously, though, even though Midtown isn’t listing it, my store is getting in the 13th volume of Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei. Over the last several volumes, the manga has found its way, almost ceasing to be about any of the characters at all. I can’t even recall the last time Nozomu tried to kill himself. Instead, it devotes itself to a typical cliched behavior every chapter, and then picks it apart until it explodes. And if that means less attention to character development, well, the characters are exaggerations to begin with, so it’s less about deepening them and more about honing them into sharp, cutting blades. Which is why, in this volume, they proceed to butcher an entire prison full of guards. Want to learn why? Read the book!

BRIGID: Although GTO tempts me, I’m going with vol. 2 of Gate 7 as my first choice. Although the first volume had its flaws—storytelling that managed to be both unclear and repetitive, to be specific—the art is beautiful, and by the end of the book CLAMP had me firmly in their grip with the promise of a historical/supernatural story set in old Kyoto. CLAMP can be really terrible or really good, and I’m hoping that after a stuttering start, this book will fall into the latter group.

MJ: Well, Sean, I’m going to cancel out your anti-Pick by picking it! Yes, I’ve heard the same disheartening things about the ending of xxxHolic as everyone else has (well, without explicit spoilers—so please don’t spoil me now!) but I’ve loved this series for 18 volumes, and I’m longing to read its conclusion for myself. Unlike many readers, I’ve actually quite enjoyed the series’ post-Young coda (see my thoughts on volume 18 here). Watanuki was my reason for reading from the very beginning, and he remains so to this day. I just have to see how his story ends, for better or worse.

MICHELLE: Don’t spoil me on xxxHOLiC, either! I still need to finish Tsubasa! Anyway, I’ve probably picked this series before, and I’ll probably pick it again, but I must cast my vote this week for the seventh volume of Itazura Na Kiss. This series has its ups and downs, with moments both delightful and infuriating, but I still look forward to each double-sized volume. I’m especially keen to see whether Naoki gets any nicer or Kotoko any more competent, but somehow I doubt that will happen any time soon.

KATE: My pick is Tenjo Tenge…. NOT! (I chalk up that feeble joke to the lingering effects of Vicks Vapo-Rub and cough syrup.) While I second Michelle’s enthusiastic endorsement of Itazura na Kiss, I’m casting my vote for volume three of Border. Technically speaking, Border is yaoi, but it reads more like The A-Team than Bad Teacher’s Equation — well, if Murdock occasionally made out with Mr. T. I guess that doesn’t make Border seem very entertaining, but I really enjoyed the first two volumes’ mixture of melodrama, suspense, and teamwork. This is yaoi for readers who like a big dose of plot with their smut. Oh, and lots of handsome men in camouflage.

Readers, what looks good to you this week?

New licenses from Vertical, Tezuka-fest continues

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I’m back from an incredible weekend at MangaNEXT; watch for news, interviews, and all sorts of interesting features in the next couple of days. I posted the big license news at Robot 6 already: Vertical announced two new licenses, The Limit, by Life creator Keiko Suenobu, and Heroman, which is based on a plot by Stan Lee.

Also: I reviewed Viz manga on the Nook at MTV Geek.

Lissa Pattillo takes a look at the past week’s new manga in her latest On the Shelf column at Otaku USA.


Kate Dacey rounds up the Day 5 links for the Tezuka-flavored Manga Moveable Feast at The Manga Critic, and she also posts a transcript of a fascinating discussion about sex and gender in Tezuka’s manga. Connie posts her own Tezuka Index at Slightly Biased Manga. Vertical marketing director Ed Chavez joins Ed Sizemore and Johanna Draper Carlson for a discussion of “Tezuka for adults” on the latest Manga Out Loud podcast. At All About Manga, Daniella Orihuela-Gruber talks about her dream of someday publishing Tezuka’s Rainbow Parakeet, and at PLAYBACK:stl, Jason Green channels his Tezuka-lovin’ 18-year-old self.

MJ and Michelle Smith discuss Princess Knight in their latest Off the Shelf column at Manga Bookshelf.

Cast your vote for the best new manga, shoujo manga, and shonen manga in Deb Aoki’s Readers Choice Awards at About.com.

Daniel BT looks at Encounter, a series that was advertised in the pages of Raijin magazine but never ran there.

Digital Manga rounds up the past week’s new digital releases.

Translator Tomo Kimura has some notes on vol. 7 of Kamisama Kiss.

News from Japan: The French site Manganews reports that Kaiji Kawaguchi and journalist Osamu Eya will collaborate on Ore Shika Inai – Kuroi Nami wo Norikoete, about last year’s earthquake in Japan. It will run in Big Comic. Mashashi Tanaka will start drawing Gon again after ten years away from it. Three Steps Over Japan looks at a fairly new magazine AltimaA. And this could be big news: The president of Kodansha announced that the company would begin some same-day print/digital releases, although it is not clear from any of the news reports I saw that he was talking specifically about manga. Perhaps someone who can read Japanese could add some clarity to this?

Reviews

Lori Henderson on Apollo’s Song (Manga Xanadu)
Matthew Warner on vol. 38 of Bleach (The Fandom Post)
Connie on vol. 4 of Blue Exorcist (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 5 of Bokurano: Ours (Slightly Biased Manga)
Justin on The Book of Human Insects (Organization Anti-Social Geniuses)
Connie on vol. 11 of Cipher (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 2 of Close the Last Door (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on Cold Trilogy 01: Cold Sleep (Slightly Biased Manga)
Carlo Santos on vol. 6 of Cross Game (ANN)
Lori Henderson on vols. 1-5 of Dazzle (Manga Xanadu)
Connie on vol. 8 of Dengeki Daisy (Slightly Biased Manga)
Ash Brown on vol. 1 of Dororo (Experiments in Manga)
AstroNerdBoy on vol. 17 of Fairy Tail (AstroNerdBoy’s Anime and Manga Blog)
Connie on vol. 2 of Gravitation (Slightly Biased Manga)
Kristin on vol. 8 of Jormungand and vol. 19 of 20th Century Boys (Comic Attack)
Voitachewski on Junji Ito’s La Maison de Poupées (in French) (du9)
Connie on vol. 11 of Mars (Slightly Biased Manga)
Sweetpea616 on MW (Organization Anti-Social Geniuses)
Connie on vol. 7 of Natsume’s Book of Friends (Slightly Biased Manga)
AstroNerdBoy on vol. 33 of Negima! (AstroNerdBoy’s Anime and Manga Blog)
Kristin on vol. 3 of No Longer Human (Comic Attack)
Joy Kim on vols. 56-60 of One Piece (Joy Kim)
Danica Davidson on vol. 1 of Only Serious About You (Otaku USA)
Lori Henderson on vols. 1 and 2 of Princess Knight (Manga Xanadu)
Anna on vol. 2 of Princess Knight
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 3 of Psyren (The Comic Book Bin)
Erica Friedman on vol. 6 of Pure Yuri Anthology Hirari (Okazu)
Kate O’Neil on vol. 12 of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei (The Fandom Post)
Lesley Aeschliman on vol. 1 of Sugar Sugar Rune (Blogcritics)
Matthew Warner on vol. 11 of Twin Spica (The Fandom Post)
Connie on Want to Depend on You (Slightly Biased Manga)

Death Comes to Pemberley by P. D. James

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From the back cover:
P. D. James draws the characters of Jane Austen’s beloved novel Pride and Prejudice into a tale of murder and emotional mayhem.

It is 1803, six years since Elizabeth and Darcy embarked on their life together at Pemberley, Darcy’s magnificent estate. Elizabeth has found her footing as the chatelaine of the great house. Elizabeth’s sister Jane and her husband, Bingley, live nearby; her father visits often; there is optimistic talk about the prospects of marriage for Darcy’s sister Georgiana. And preparations are under way for their much-anticipated annual autumn ball.

Then, on the eve of the ball, the patrician idyll is shattered. A coach careens up to the drive carrying Lydia, Elizabeth’s disgraced sister, who with her husband, the very dubious Wickham, has been banned from Pemberley. She stumbles out of the carriage, hysterical, shrieking that Wickham has been murdered. With shocking suddenness, Pemberley is plunged into a frightening mystery.

Review:
When I learned about this book on NPR, I was torn between trepidation and mad curiosity. The latter, as you can see, won out, mostly because I am a huge fan of P. D. James and if figured that if anyone could treat Austen’s material with respect, she could. And, indeed, her treatment of these beloved characters did not give any offense, but neither did it give anything near the delight inspired by Austen’s original work.

First, a brief summary of the plot. It is Autumn 1803. Elizabeth and Darcy have been happily married for six years and have two sons. On the eve of the annual ball at Pemberley, Elizabeth’s willful sister Lydia shows up unannounced (and uninvited), freaking out because she and the coachman heard gunshots soon after her no-good husband Wickham went into the woods after his friend, Captain Denny. A search party finds a drunken Wickham with Denny’s body, at which point he utters words to the effect of, “It’s my fault. He was my only friend, and I have killed him.” The local magistrate conducts his inquiries, there is a formal inquest, there is a trial, and then the full story is revealed.

As a Pride and Prejudice continuation, the book is not odious. It is, however, lacking any of Austen’s sparkle. Events leave Elizabeth and Darcy little time to be alone together, except at the very end, where James tacks on an epilogue in which Darcy, after six years, suddenly apologizes for some of his conduct in the original novel. It makes me wonder whether James believes readers could not surmise that Darcy would feel regret over his more snooty actions without spelling it out. Gone too are Austen’s sly and thoughtful observations upon society, except for one brief instance wherein chronic invalids are suddenly recovered sufficiently to attend church in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the Pemberley residents.

The result, therefore, is a book that is dreadfully dull. I was relieved to see that Elizabeth and Darcy do not suddenly become sleuths, but found the revelation of what really happened in the woodland to be rather vague and unsatisfying. While I cannot condemn the book for any particular sin, about the only praise I can muster is that James does provide some interesting fates for various characters and proposes an intriguing complication regarding Wickham’s attempted elopement with Georgiana Darcy.

Is it worth reading? No, not really. But I doubt anyone will feel the urge to hurl the book across the room in disgust, either.

Food and feasting

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I’m heading out to New Jersey today for MangaNEXT—if you’re going to be there, be sure to say hi! In the meantime, check out my review of Viz manga on the Nook at MTV Geek. And I hope you saw my interview with Robert Newman of JManga right here at MangaBlog.

Jason Thompson writes about foodie manga, including Jiro Taniguchi’s Kodoku no Gourmet, Fumi Yoshinaga’s Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy!, and the train station bento-box manga Ekiben Hitoritabi, in his latest House of 1000 Manga column at ANN.

The Tezuka-based Manga Moveable Feast continues with host Kate Dacey rounding up the Day Three and Day Four links, as well as a review of Tezuka’s Lost World, at The Manga Critic. MJ and Michelle Smith discuss Princess Knight in their latest Off the Shelf column at Manga Bookshelf.

Sean Gaffney takes a look at next week’s new manga releases.

Congratulations to Tony Yao on two years of blogging at Manga Therapy.

News from Japan: Details are emerging of the “darker” R.O.D. Rehabilitation, a R.O.D. side story that will start running in Shueisha’s Super Dash & Go! magazine this weekend. Manga Therapy features a manga that is hot in Japan right now, Crimsons, which is about… salmon.

Reviews: Omar reviews a handful of recent releases at About Heroes.

Ash Brown on The Art of Osamu Tezuka: The God of Manga (Experiments in Manga)
Lori Henderson on vols. 16 and 17 of Black Jack (Manga Village)
Connie on vol. 1 of Buddha (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 1 of Claymore (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 1 of Close the Last Door (Slightly Biased Manga)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 15 of La Corda D’Oro (The Comic Book Bin)
Connie on Faraway Places (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 1 of Gravitation (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 10 of Mars (Slightly Biased Manga)
David Gromer on vol. 1 of Ninja Girls (Graphic Novel Reporter)
Anna on vol. 1 of Princess Knight (Manga Report)
David Gromer on vol. 3 of Sailor Moon (Graphic Novel Reporter)
Connie on Stargazing Dog (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 6 of Tegami Bachi (Slightly Biased Manga)
Leroy Douresseaux on Uglies: Shay’s Story (I Reads You)

Off the Shelf: Princess Knight

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MICHELLE: As we occasionally do when the Manga Moveable Feast rolls around, MJand I have opted to dedicate this week’s Off the Shelf column to the topic at hand, which this month is the works of Osamu Tezuka. Specifically for our case, we’re going to be talking about Princess Knight, Tezuka’s shoujo manga about Sapphire, a princess who accidentally receives both a boy’s heart and a girl’s heart at the time of her birth, and who, when we pick up her story as an adolescent, has somewhat of an identity crisis while undergoing many wacky hardships/hijinks.

This is my first time reading the series. Whenever Ed Chavez from Vertical would solicit suggestions for Tezuka titles to license, I would always request Princess Knight. I wanted the series so much I even bought a few of the bilingual Kodansha editions. However, when I finally had both parts of the series in hand, I was content for a while to merely gaze upon them, content. And now that I have finally gotten around to reading it, I must say… I’m a little disappointed.

MJ: Well, as you may recall, I certainly had my issues with volume one, and these didn’t disappear when I read volume two. In some ways, I’d even say they became more pronounced. On the other hand, there were things I liked about it, so though I could characterize my experience as disappointing as well, I’m still glad I read it.

Should we get the least pleasant subjects out of the way straight off?

MICHELLE: Might as well. I guess my big problem with it is that it’s supposed to be so groundbreaking in terms of gender identities, but it actually does very little in this regard. When Sapphire has only a boy heart, she’s swaggering and brave. When she has only her girl heart, she’s weak and fragile. True, some of the growl-inducing comments do come from the villains or from those attempting to fool villains by approximating girlish behavior (“I suddenly want to take up cross-stitching and play the piano.”) but I do have to wonder how much of it Tezuka really believes, since he creates a swordswoman character, only to bedeck her armor with hearts and have her proudly admit that she’s entered a tournament to find a husband.

MJ: Yes, this was definitely the biggest hurdle for me as well. While I might have found it interesting to watch a character struggle with her gender identity in a society where clearly what you describe is set up as the standard for femininity vs. masculinity, that’s not really what Tezuka does here at all. Even when he has his chances to challenge these roles, he passes them up. For instance, the big female revolt that happens during the second volume seems to hinge mainly on the threat of the country’s men being left without anyone to clean their homes or look after their children. Even after it’s over, the only comment made by one of the defeated men is relief that his wife will come home and take care of the laundry that’s piled up.

I completely understand that both Tezuka and Princess Knight are a product of their time, but I’m genuinely confused as to why this seems to be held up as a great example of shoujo manga challenging gender roles.

MICHELLE: It seems very likely that Tezuka never intended it to be so, since so much of it takes a Loony Tunes approach to storytelling. Why, indeed, take a female revolt seriously? Instead, let’s play it for comedy by making the men out to be henpecked morons! That’s not to say there aren’t some darker aspects that I did like and wish could’ve been expounded upon. For example, while I don’t care about or believe in the “true love” that suddenly springs up between Sapphire and Prince Franz Charming, the characters set up as romantic rivals are actually interesting and meet tragic fates. It makes me wonder what kind of story Tezuka could’ve fashioned with Hecate and Captain Blood (aka Heinrich) as the leads!

MJ: Yes! Though I actually quite liked Sapphire, at least until she became completely consumed by her weirdly passive pursuit of Prince Franz, my favorite characters were Captain Blood and Hecate. I would have happily read entire books about them. I rather wished that Sapphire would ditch Franz and fall for Blood, but I suppose it was never meant to be.

MICHELLE: And, really, Hecate is probably the best example of a character who defies gender roles, since she’s perfectly happy defining herself for herself and has no wish to consume Sapphire’s girl heart (which her witch mother, Madame Hell, keeps trying to steal on her behalf) and take up some passive, “feminine” identity. She’s independent, level-headed, and one of the few truly good characters in the story. Plus, she can turn herself into a goat!

MJ: Speaking of all the heart-exchanging business, I’d say that probably the only time I actually appreciated it, was when Plastic ingests Sapphire’s boy’s heart, and suddenly becomes a decent man, instead of a selfish, sniveling boob.

MICHELLE: Oh yes, I quite agree! And he promptly begins championing women’s rights! This makes him the second character in the series (after Hecate) to go his own way and oppose the evil schemes of a parent. I wonder if this is Tezuka’s way of saying that the younger generation is going to get things right regarding equality whereas their parents are hopeless.

MJ: That may be a generous assumption, but I’ll give it to him if you will. You know, I think what’s most disappointing to me about Princess Knight is that I feel like I really could have liked it. Tezuka’s artwork is so much fun here, and so full of life. And I’m really fine with the “Looney Tunes approach,” as you so brilliantly put it. I think this manga could have been a lot of fun. But the gender issues are so profound, they kinda take over the whole thing for me.

MICHELLE: I’m not sure I could’ve liked it even without the gender issues giving me fits. The plotting is just so random sometimes. Early on, there’s a scene where Sapphire is letting herself be collected by Duke Duralumin’s men as a potential consort for his then-still-feeble-minded son, Plastic. And Franz rides in from, like, the next kingdom over to rescue her, and then rides back home again a few panels later. Or then there’s my favorite spot of wtf, the scene where Blood quickly escapes slavery by coercing a nearby beetle into chewing through some ropes. Everything’s so fast, furious, and madcap that poignant things aren’t given time to sink in.

MJ: Hee hee, yeah, it’s like that. Is it wrong that I find that fun? Or maybe I find it fun, because the poignant stuff doesn’t sit right. I can enjoy something that’s silly and madcap for that alone, and Princess Knight works better as that for me. Overall, I’d say I liked the silly, unbelievable parts the most. Also, I love every scene that Blood is in. Heh.

MICHELLE: It’s not wrong for anyone to like what they like! :) I’m just hard to please, comedy-wise, so many of the gags just left me blinking impassively at the page. I feel bad for being so down on Princess Knight, because now that it’s over I find myself growing fond of the idea of it again. And though it may not have lived up to its reputation for me, I nonetheless wonder if it wasn’t the origin of certain shoujo tropes, like, say, all of the guys instantly falling in love with the passive heroine, or the contingent of jealous fangirls.

MJ: As disappointed as I might have been with it, I really am grateful to have had the opportunity to read it. It may not be my favorite of Tezuka’s works (or really even close), but I’m quite enamored of his artwork, as always, and even now as I’m just flipping through, I’m struck by the beauty and flow of what’s on the page.

MICHELLE: Oh, I am definitely exceedingly grateful to the folks at Vertical for licensing the work and producing such a beautiful edition. I’m also pleased to note that I didn’t spot a single typo in their text, and found that the translation actually included some rather sophisticated words without any hint of awkwardness.

MJ: So thanks, Vertical, for giving us the chance to experience Princess Knight!

For more of this week’s MMF bounty, please visit the Osamu Tezuka MMF Archive, hosted by Kate Dacey at The Manga Critic!

More full-series discussions with MJ & Michelle:

Fullmetal Alchemist | Paradise Kiss | The “Color of…” Trilogy | One Thousand and One Nights| Please Save My Earth
Fruits Basket | Wild Adapter (with guest David Welsh)

Full-series multi-guest roundtables: Hikaru no Go | Banana Fish | Gerard & Jacques | Flower of Life

Manga Artifacts: Osamu Tezuka’s Lost World

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Reading Osamu Tezuka’s Lost World (1948) reminded me a formative graduate school experience. I was researching George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (1935), when I stumbled across a blistering review of a composition I’d never heard: Blue Monday (1922), a one-act “jazz opera” that Gershwin composed for Paul Whiteman’s Scandals of 1922. After attending its premiere, Charles Darnton, critic for the New York Tribune, pronounced the project a disaster, an ill-advised attempt to transplant the conventions of verismo opera to a Harlem setting. Blue Monday, he opined, was “the most dismal, stupid, and incredible blackface sketch that has probably ever been perpetrated. In it a dusky soprano finally killed her gambling man. She should have shot all her associates the moment they appeared and then turned the pistol on herself.” (Darnton, 11)

Ouch.

The review piqued my interest, however, prompting me to track down a recording of Blue Monday. Judged against Porgy and Bess, it was an inferior work; as Gershwin biographer Charles Schwartz observed, the music was several degrees removed from jazz and ragtime, drawing its cues from Alexander’s Ragtime Band and not The Maple Leaf Rag. (Schwartz, 61) The dramaturgy, too, was weak, conveying little of the Harlem setting. Yet in this early experiment, I could hear glimmerings of Gershwin’s mature style, a conscious effort to bring African-American music to the opera stage. And that excited me.

I had a similar reaction to Lost World, an early, problematic work in the Tezuka canon. First published in 1948, Lost World focuses on a scientific expedition to the fictional planet Mamango, a large, egg-shaped rock that, five million years earlier, had been a part of the Earth. When the scientists arrive on Mamango, they discover a Jurassic landscape carpeted in monstrous ferns, populated by hungry dinosaurs, and littered with powerful “energy stones.” The financial and scientific value of their discoveries, however, soon cause a deadly rift within the expedition party.

The execution of Lost World will come as a shock to readers familiar with Tezuka’s mature style. The profusion of subplots, minor characters, and doppelgangers makes the story hard to follow on a moment-to-moment basis; without frequent narrative interventions from the characters, large stretches of Lost World would be incomprehensible. More frustrating still is Tezuka’s over-reliance on dialogue to resolve plot points and reveal motive, even when that information is readily conveyed by the pictures. (“This is payback for you throwing me into the gorge! You get me?!” one character yells as he pummels the person who pushed him off a cliff in the previous scene.) The biggest disappointment, however, is the artwork; most of the panels consist of talking heads, with a handful of dramatic, but disjointed, action scenes interrupting the steady stream of chatter.

Writing about Lost World in the 1980s, Tezuka conceded Lost World‘s shortcomings, attributing them to his age (he was 20) and the circumstances of its publication. As he explained, the work originally ran in an Osaka newspaper, Kansai Yoron, where the target audience was young adults. The two-volume version published by Fuji Shobo, however, was aimed at the children’s market, necessitating substantial changes to the the script. What had been a romance in the original version, for example, was recast as a brother-sister relationship in the Fuji Shobo edition; anything more explicit would have been “absolutely taboo in children’s comics” of the period. (Tezuka, 248)

At the same time, Tezuka touted Lost World as an important milestone in his artistic development. “I thought that at the very least, there was no other comic book like mine, which was like a novel (albeit a very crude one), and had an unhappy ending,” Tezuka explained. (Tezuka 247) A careful inspection of Lost World supports Tezuka’s claim for its significance; whatever its shortcomings, many of the characters and themes of his mature works appear in embryonic form in Lost World.

On the most basic level, Tezuka employs several of his best-known “stars” in Lost World, arranging them in contrasting pairs. Acetylene Lamp, for example, plays an unscrupulous journalist who stows away aboard the expedition’s spaceship so that he can get an exclusive scoop on Mamango — and profit from the mysterious “energy stones” scattered across its surface. Another Tezuka favorite, Shunsaku Ban (a.k.a. Higeoyaji), plays yang to Lamp’s yin; as in many of his other incarnations, Ban is a middle-aged detective whose blustery demeanor camouflages his basic decency. Both characters are motivated by curiosity, but their curiosity compels them in opposite directions: Lamp towards profit, Ban towards truth.

From left to right: Acetylene Lamp, Shunsaku Ban/Hygeoyaji, Kenichi Shikishima

The story’s two scientists are likewise played by major “stars” from the Tezuka troupe. Kenichi Shikishima, hero of New Treasure Island, leads the Mamango expedition. Dr. Shikishima’s youthful spirit, resolve, and courage are contrasted with that of Dr. Butaru Makeru, a mustachioed villain whose cowardice and opportunism precipitate the disaster on Mamango. While Shikishima resolves to visit Mamango “for the sake of world science,” Makeru hints at his selfish motives for participating in the expedition: “If by some chance we meet with something unexpected on that planet, don’t blame me. Heh, heh, heh!” That contrast is also underscored by their terrestrial research as well: while Shikishima’s experiments are intended to help animals achieve human consciousness, Makeru’s experiments are designed for his own personal benefit, with little regard for their greater social or scientific good.

In later works, Tezuka was less schematic in his representations of good and evil, allowing characters to simultaneously embody both. Father Garai, anti-hero of MW, is a good example of this later tendency: Garai is a good man tormented by dark sexual desires, seeking grace even as he sins repeatedly. Black Jack is another, a character whose misanthropy and greed are counterbalanced by a strong reverence for life. As Helen McCarthy observes in The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga, Black Jack is “sometimes a gentle and compassionate savior, sometimes a cold and unforgiving avenger,” two opposite yet equally human responses to “the inevitability of death.” (McCarthy, 199)

Ayame

Mimio

Lost World also introduces a recurring character type found throughout Tezuka’s work: the artificial life-form. Early in the story, Tezuka introduces us to Mimio, a talking rabbit, and Ayame, a “veggie girl.” Both are the result of scientific experiments: Dr. Shikishima surgically enhanced Mimio’s brain to grant him human intelligence, while Dr. Butamo cultivated Ayame in a laboratory. (Note that Shikishima’s motives seem benevolent; he wants to help animals achieve equal status with humans, whereas Butamo is more interested in making a wife for himself.)

Mimio and Ayame’s quest for humanity is rather baldly presented. In an early chapter, for example, Mimio visits Shikishima’s lab, where a new group of surgically enhanced animals are learning how to think and act like humans. Though the animals’ struggles with language and manners are played for laughs — “Boy, all humans sure do look alike!” exclaims a dog — there’s a definite sense that these creatures’ own desires are being subordinated to Shikishima’s grander mission of animal-human detente. “You’re very being is unique,” one of Shikishima’s colleagues tells his subjects. “Therefore, you should help humans and be a guide to other animals in perpetuum.”

Unlike Mimio, Ayame looks human, even though she is composed entirely of plant material — and that makes her situation more precarious than the rabbit’s. On the one hand, Dr. Butamo wants her to become his wife, threatening to kill her if she refuses to honor his marriage proposal. On the other, some of the characters view Ayame as nothing more than a walking, talking cabbage — and thus a potential food source when the crew’s rations run out. Ayame remains committed to exploring her humanity nonetheless; late in the manga, she and Shikishima have this pointed exchange:

Shikishima: Miss Ayame, surely, you must be surprised to be having so many adventures.You see? The world of humans is full of adventure and wonder!

Ayame: I feel as if I finally understand what things bring the most pleasure and happiness to the hearts of humans!

Shikishima: Well, then, when you return to the laboratory, you should have Mr. Butamo teach you even more, shouldn’t you?

In Mimio and Ayame, it’s not hard to see the inspiration for later characters such as Dororo‘s Hyakkimaru and Black Jack‘s Pinoko, both of whom struggle to reconcile the circumstances of their “birth” with their desire to be fully human.

Perhaps the most striking thing about Lost World is the final act, in which an accident permanently strands Ayame and Shikishima on Mamango. In Tezuka’s original version, Ayame and Shikishima embrace their fate as lovers, but in the Fuji Shobo edition, Tezuka portrayed them as brother and sister. Nonetheless, Tezuka left the final words of the original intact, speculating that in five million years, “when Mamango once again approaches the Earth,” mankind might find a new race of “plant animal people” descended from Ayame and Shikishima.

Similar Adam-and-Eve motifs recur throughout Tezuka’s oeuvre, finding a more sexual and spiritual expression in such mature works as Apollo’s Song and Phoenix: Nostalgia. Nostalgia is a particularly odd and fascinating variation on the theme, as the Adam figure dies early in the story, leaving his pregnant wife alone on a remote space colony. His wife then mates with her own offspring who, in turn, mate with an extraterrestrial life form whose DNA proves essential to rescuing humanity from the brink of extinction. In short, Nostalgia — like Lost World — dares to a imagine a new future for mankind in which other forms of life — terrestrial and extraterrestrial — play an important role in our evolution.

Whether these observations will make Lost World more palatable to a casual reader is debatable; I fully admit that I struggled through its 246 pages, backtracking frequently in a futile effort to understand what was happening. But if you approach Lost World in the same spirit I approached Gershwin’s Blue Monday — as a window into a major artist’s early development — you may find, as I did, a work of astonishing vibrancy, contradiction, and interest.

Works Cited
“Bet Lost on First Opera.” New York Times. 21 July 1935: II1. Print.
Darnton, Charles. “George White’s Scandals’ Lively and Gorgeous.” New York World 29 Aug. 1922: 11. Print.
McCarthy, Helen, and Osamu Tezuka. The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga. New York: Abrams ComicArts, 2009. Print.
Schwartz, Charles. Gershwin: His Life and Music. New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1973. Print.
Tezuka, Osamu, and Kumar Sivasubramanian. Lost World. Milwaukee, OR: Dark Horse, 2003. Print.

Osamu Tezuka’s Lost World

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Reading Osamu Tezuka’s Lost World (1948) reminded me a formative graduate school experience. I was researching George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (1935), when I stumbled across a blistering review of a composition I’d never heard: Blue Monday (1922), a one-act “jazz opera” that Gershwin composed for Paul Whiteman’s Scandals of 1922. After attending its premiere, Charles Darnton, critic for the New York Tribune, pronounced the project a disaster, an ill-advised attempt to transplant the conventions of verismo opera to a Harlem setting. Blue Monday, he opined, was “the most dismal, stupid, and incredible blackface sketch that has probably ever been perpetrated. In it a dusky soprano finally killed her gambling man. She should have shot all her associates the moment they appeared and then turned the pistol on herself.” (Darnton, 11)

Ouch.

The review piqued my interest, however, prompting me to track down a recording of Blue Monday. Judged against Porgy and Bess, it was an inferior work; as Gershwin biographer Charles Schwartz observed, the music was several degrees removed from jazz and ragtime, drawing its cues from Alexander’s Ragtime Band and not The Maple Leaf Rag. (Schwartz, 61) The dramaturgy, too, was weak, conveying little of the Harlem setting. Yet in this early experiment, I could hear glimmerings of Gershwin’s mature style, a conscious effort to bring African-American music to the opera stage. And that excited me.

I had a similar reaction to Lost World, an early, problematic work in the Tezuka canon. First published in 1948, Lost World focuses on a scientific expedition to the fictional planet Mamango, a large, egg-shaped rock that, five million years earlier, had been a part of the Earth. When the scientists arrive on Mamango, they discover a Jurassic landscape carpeted in monstrous ferns, populated by hungry dinosaurs, and littered with powerful “energy stones.” The financial and scientific value of their discoveries, however, soon cause a deadly rift within the expedition party.

The execution of Lost World will come as a shock to readers familiar with Tezuka’s mature style. The profusion of subplots, minor characters, and doppelgangers makes the story hard to follow on a moment-to-moment basis; without frequent narrative interventions from the characters, large stretches of Lost World would be incomprehensible. More frustrating still is Tezuka’s over-reliance on dialogue to resolve plot points and reveal motive, even when that information is readily conveyed by the pictures. (“This is payback for you throwing me into the gorge! You get me?!” one character yells as he pummels the person who pushed him off a cliff in the previous scene.) The biggest disappointment, however, is the artwork; most of the panels consist of talking heads, with a handful of dramatic, but disjointed, action scenes interrupting the steady stream of chatter.

Writing about Lost World in the 1980s, Tezuka conceded Lost World‘s shortcomings, attributing them to his age (he was 20) and the circumstances of its publication. As he explained, the work originally ran in an Osaka newspaper, Kansai Yoron, where the target audience was young adults. The two-volume version published by Fuji Shobo, however, was aimed at the children’s market, necessitating substantial changes to the the script. What had been a romance in the original version, for example, was recast as a brother-sister relationship in the Fuji Shobo edition; anything more explicit would have been “absolutely taboo in children’s comics” of the period. (Tezuka, 248)

At the same time, Tezuka touted Lost World as an important milestone in his artistic development. “I thought that at the very least, there was no other comic book like mine, which was like a novel (albeit a very crude one), and had an unhappy ending,” Tezuka explained. (Tezuka 247) A careful inspection of Lost World supports Tezuka’s claim for its significance; whatever its shortcomings, many of the characters and themes of his mature works appear in embryonic form in Lost World.

On the most basic level, Tezuka employs several of his best-known “stars” in Lost World, arranging them in contrasting pairs. Acetylene Lamp, for example, plays an unscrupulous journalist who stows away aboard the expedition’s spaceship so that he can get an exclusive scoop on Mamango — and profit from the mysterious “energy stones” scattered across its surface. Another Tezuka favorite, Shunsaku Ban (a.k.a. Higeoyaji), plays yang to Lamp’s yin; as in many of his other incarnations, Ban is a middle-aged detective whose blustery demeanor camouflages his basic decency. Both characters are motivated by curiosity, but their curiosity compels them in opposite directions: Lamp towards profit, Ban towards truth.

From left to right: Acetylene Lamp, Shunsaku Ban/Hygeoyaji, Kenichi Shikishima

The story’s two scientists are likewise played by major “stars” from the Tezuka troupe. Kenichi Shikishima, hero of New Treasure Island, leads the Mamango expedition. Dr. Shikishima’s youthful spirit, resolve, and courage are contrasted with that of Dr. Butaru Makeru, a mustachioed villain whose cowardice and opportunism precipitate the disaster on Mamango. While Shikishima resolves to visit Mamango “for the sake of world science,” Makeru hints at his selfish motives for participating in the expedition: “If by some chance we meet with something unexpected on that planet, don’t blame me. Heh, heh, heh!” That contrast is also underscored by their terrestrial research as well: while Shikishima’s experiments are intended to help animals achieve human consciousness, Makeru’s experiments are designed for his own personal benefit, with little regard for their greater social or scientific good.

In later works, Tezuka was less schematic in his representations of good and evil, allowing characters to simultaneously embody both. Father Garai, anti-hero of MW, is a good example of this later tendency: Garai is a good man tormented by dark sexual desires, seeking grace even as he sins repeatedly. Black Jack is another, a character whose misanthropy and greed are counterbalanced by a strong reverence for life. As Helen McCarthy observes in The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga, Black Jack is “sometimes a gentle and compassionate savior, sometimes a cold and unforgiving avenger,” two opposite yet equally human responses to “the inevitability of death.” (McCarthy, 199)

Ayame

Mimio

Lost World also introduces a recurring character type found throughout Tezuka’s work: the artificial life-form. Early in the story, Tezuka introduces us to Mimio, a talking rabbit, and Ayame, a “veggie girl.” Both are the result of scientific experiments: Dr. Shikishima surgically enhanced Mimio’s brain to grant him human intelligence, while Dr. Butamo cultivated Ayame in a laboratory. (Note that Shikishima’s motives seem benevolent; he wants to help animals achieve equal status with humans, whereas Butamo is more interested in making a wife for himself.)

Mimio and Ayame’s quest for humanity is rather baldly presented. In an early chapter, for example, Mimio visits Shikishima’s lab, where a new group of surgically enhanced animals are learning how to think and act like humans. Though the animals’ struggles with language and manners are played for laughs — “Boy, all humans sure do look alike!” exclaims a dog — there’s a definite sense that these creatures’ own desires are being subordinated to Shikishima’s grander mission of animal-human detente. “You’re very being is unique,” one of Shikishima’s colleagues tells his subjects. “Therefore, you should help humans and be a guide to other animals in perpetuum.”

Unlike Mimio, Ayame looks human, even though she is composed entirely of plant material — and that makes her situation more precarious than the rabbit’s. On the one hand, Dr. Butamo wants her to become his wife, threatening to kill her if she refuses to honor his marriage proposal. On the other, some of the characters view Ayame as nothing more than a walking, talking cabbage — and thus a potential food source when the crew’s rations run out. Ayame remains committed to exploring her humanity nonetheless; late in the manga, she and Shikishima have this pointed exchange:

Shikishima: Miss Ayame, surely, you must be surprised to be having so many adventures.You see? The world of humans is full of adventure and wonder!

Ayame: I feel as if I finally understand what things bring the most pleasure and happiness to the hearts of humans!

Shikishima: Well, then, when you return to the laboratory, you should have Mr. Butamo teach you even more, shouldn’t you?

In Mimio and Ayame, it’s not hard to see the inspiration for later characters such as Dororo‘s Hyakkimaru and Black Jack‘s Pinoko, both of whom struggle to reconcile the circumstances of their “birth” with their desire to be fully human.

Perhaps the most striking thing about Lost World is the final act, in which an accident permanently strands Ayame and Shikishima on Mamango. In Tezuka’s original version, Ayame and Shikishima embrace their fate as lovers, but in the Fuji Shobo edition, Tezuka portrayed them as brother and sister. Nonetheless, Tezuka left the final words of the original intact, speculating that in five million years, “when Mamango once again approaches the Earth,” mankind might find a new race of “plant animal people” descended from Ayame and Shikishima.

Similar Adam-and-Eve motifs recur throughout Tezuka’s oeuvre, finding a more sexual and spiritual expression in such mature works as Apollo’s Song and Phoenix: Nostalgia. Nostalgia is a particularly odd and fascinating variation on the theme, as the Adam figure dies early in the story, leaving his pregnant wife alone on a remote space colony. His wife then mates with her own offspring who, in turn, mate with an extraterrestrial life form whose DNA proves essential to rescuing humanity from the brink of extinction. In short, Nostalgia — like Lost World — dares to a imagine a new future for mankind in which other forms of life — terrestrial and extraterrestrial — play an important role in our evolution.

Whether these observations will make Lost World more palatable to a casual reader is debatable; I fully admit that I struggled through its 246 pages, backtracking frequently in a futile effort to understand what was happening. But if you approach Lost World in the same spirit I approached Gershwin’s Blue Monday — as a window into a major artist’s early development — you may find, as I did, a work of astonishing vibrancy, contradiction, and interest.

Works Cited
“Bet Lost on First Opera.” New York Times. 21 July 1935: II1. Print.
Darnton, Charles. “George White’s Scandals’ Lively and Gorgeous.” New York World 29 Aug. 1922: 11. Print.
McCarthy, Helen, and Osamu Tezuka. The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga. New York: Abrams ComicArts, 2009. Print.
Schwartz, Charles. Gershwin: His Life and Music. New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1973. Print.
Tezuka, Osamu, and Kumar Sivasubramanian. Lost World. Milwaukee, OR: Dark Horse, 2003. Print.

Special Edition: Interview with JManga’s Robert Newman

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The digital manga portal JManga got off to a slow start, but it has gained traction among manga fans for a number of reasons: Cool, quirky manga, reasonable prices (once the site owners abandoned the original price of $8.99 per volume), and good communication with fans.

We can thank Robert Newman for the latter; from the very beginning, he was out there as the public face of JManga, listening and responding to every review and snarky Tweet–and getting results, such as the price drop. As we mentioned the other day, Newman has been lobbying the 39 Japanese publishers involved in JManga for something else that a lot of people want: Global reach. Currently, JManga is available only to U.S. and Canadian readers, but the demand is worldwide, and Newman has been asking readers to respond to JManga’s Twitter and “Like” their Facebook post on opening the manga portal up to the rest of the world.

I asked Newman if he could talk a little bit about the inner workings of JManga and why they can’t just pull a switch and open it up to the world. As long as I had him, I asked some general questions as well.

Brigid: First of all, what makes you think it would benefit JManga to go global? What sort of demand have you seen from your side?

Robert: We would like to think of JManga going global as being more of a benefit to manga fans than to us as a company. We have received countless comments from manga fans worldwide who have come with high hopes to JManga.com only to be shut out by our sky blue geo-filter screen. Another major merit to manga readers worldwide is that JManga provides a legal and safe alternative to reading manga online that benefits readers, manga artists, and publishers.

Brigid: Why are the publishers reluctant to do it? Is there a general consensus or do opinions differ?

Robert: The main reason is that each publisher has their own policy regarding international development and each publisher’s licensing situation differs. So we have had to develop a system with each policy and licensing situation in mind.

Brigid: Would you consider offering the manga in languages other than English?

Robert: Our system is built to handle multiple languages. We hope to add languages following demand.

Brigid: Are there complications with taking different currencies?

Robert: This is something we gave had to consider carefully. If we can go global, we will start off as a service made for America and Canada, but that can be accessed worldwide. In short a kind if extension of our current service.

Brigid: What are the most popular manga on the site?

Robert: Though we have had a very good reception accross the board, the more niche titles, yuri and foodie titles for example, have been especially well received.

Brigid: Are you noticing any interesting patterns, such as people reading in the evening, geographic distribution, etc.?

Robert: Initially I had expected to see peak views clustered in the evening to night times, but what we have actually found is that readers are enjoying JManga pretty much all day long, from the early morning to the late night!

Another interesting point that we have found is that female readers generally spend more on manga than male readers. This is the same as readers in Japan.

Brigid: How do you see the site evolving over the next year or so?

Robert: Our main goal for the next year is to adapt and enhance our site to the needs of users worldwide and to release as much content as possible.

Manga Bookshelf looks to the screen

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You may have noticed that we’re branching out here at Manga Bookshelf, including new columns about East Asian television dramas and (as of yesterday) film!

First, a belated introduction to Bringing the Drama, a new, ongoing roundtable featuring bloggers Anna Neatrour and Emily Snodgrass, super-librarian/writer Eva Volin, and manga editor Nancy Thistlethwaite. They started off strong last week, with a discussion of Korean drama You’re Beautiful (one of my personal faves). Though I expect Korean drama will dominate the roundtable overall, discussion is open to Japanese and Taiwanese dramas legally available in English as well. They’ve already got their next topic lined up, and I can’t wait to see what they have to say!

And yesterday evening saw the debut of our new East Asian film column, Subtitles & Sensibility from my favorite film blogger, Jaci Dahlvang. When I asked Jaci if she’d be interested in writing for Manga Bookshelf, I did not believe she’d actually say “yes,” and I’m so thrilled to be able to introduce her to all of you. Her first column, Three with Ken’ichi Matsuyama should please film buffs and manga fans alike. Jaci blogs regularly at My Sock Are On Fire, and she can be found on Twitter as letterboxed.

Please take a moment to check out our new columns, and join me in welcoming all these brilliant ladies to the Manga Bookshelf family!