Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

David Welsh

Previews review March 2011

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The March 2011 edition of the Previews catalog is packed with noteworthy items, so let’s get right down to it.

My pick of the month would be Kaoru (Emma, Shirley) Mori’s A Bride’s Story (Yen Press), page 355:

The newest series from the critically acclaimed creator of Emma, A Bride’s Story tells the tale of a beautiful young bride in nineteenth-century Asia. At the age of twenty, Amir is sent to a neighboring town to be wed. But her surprise at learning her new husband, Karluk, is eight years younger than her is quickly replaced by a deep affection for the boy and his family. Though she hails from just beyond the mountains, Amir’s clan had very different customs, foods, and clothes from what Karluk is used to. As the two of them learn more about each other through their day-to-day lives, the bond of respect and love grows stronger.

Yen Press is proudly publishing Kaori Mori’s beautifully-illustrated tale in a deluxe hardcover edition.

If you’re like me, you would have been sold at “Kaoru Mori.” The series is ongoing in Enterbrain’s fellows!

CLAMP fans will be pleased with the arrival of another handsome omnibus treatment of one of their series, Magic Knight Rayearth, from Dark Horse (page 56). It originally ran in Kodansha’s Nakayoshi and was originally published in English by Tokyopop. Dark Horse’s version will be done-in-one, collecting all three volumes.

DC’s Vertigo imprint offers a new paperback printing of Howard Cruse’s Stuck Rubber Baby, a semi-autobiographical tale of a young gay man coming of age in the turbulent American south of the 1960s (page 130). Monkey See’s Glen Weldon provided a lovely overview of the book.

A new release from Fanfare/Ponent Mon is always worth noting, even if you’ve never heard of the book before. This month, they solicit Farm 54, written by Galit Seliktar and illustrated by Gilad Sliktar:

Farm 54 is a collection of semi-autobiographical stories that address three important periods in the life of the protagonist, Naga, growing up in Israel’s rural periphery… While these Israeli childhood stories take place in the shadow of war an occupation, they also reflect universal feelings, passions, and experiences.

Kodansha Comics lists new volumes of several of the series it picked up from Del Rey (pages 296 and 297):

  • Fairy Tail vol. 13, written and illustrated by Hiro Mashima
  • Rave Master volumes 33-35, written and illustrated by Hiro Mashima
  • Shugo Charai vol. 10, written and illustrated by Peach-Pit
  • Arisa vol. 2, written and illustrated by Natsumi Ando
  • Negima! vol. 29, written and illustrated by Ken Akamatsu
  • Ninja Girls vol. 5, written and illustrated by Hosana Tanaka

Speaking of comebacks, if the recent Manga Moveable Feast piqued your interest in Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen, Last Gasp rolls out new printings of the first two volumes (page 297).

If you’re interested in seeing people do amazing things with the form of comics (and don’t care much about story or character), Picturebox unleashes more work by Yuichi (Travel, New Engineering) Yokoyama in the form of Garden (page 308). Being of somewhat more conventional tastes, I think I’ll hold off on this one.

Update: Over at Robot 6, Sean T. Collins interviews Yokoyama and shares several preview pages of Garden.

I may not be able to show suck restraint with Gajo Sakamoto’s Tank Tankuro from Presspop, Inc. (page 308):

The roots of Astro Boy – Tank Tankuro pioneered robot manga during the pre-World War II period in Japan. First published in 1934, Tank Tankuro was one of the most famous manga characters of the era. Tankuro is said to be the first robot ever to appear in Japanese comics. He and his villain, Kuro Kabuto, famous among Japanese SF fans for his resemblance to Darth Vader, laid the foundations for such manga greats as Tezuka, Sugiura, and Fujiko.

Christopher (Comics212) Butcher is very excited about this, which is almost always a good sign.

And, because someone who is not me but clearly has every right for their dreams to come true demanded it, Viz releases a new edition of Oh!great’s Tenjo Tenge which, they promise, is “Finally UNCENSORED!” It’s about dorks who like to fight, with plenty of fan service to help keep your interest (page 333). I wish I could find a copy of the cover image, because it positively screams “Not for me.”

 

Blood, brains, or brawn

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The new Previews catalog is here, so it’s time once again for me to throw myself at the mercy of you, my readers, to help me pick from three questionable manga prospects. Let’s begin!

Moon and Blood vol. 1, written and illustrated by Nao Yazawa, Digital Manga Publishing, page 281:

When high schooler Sayaka awoke one morning, to her surprise, she found an unexpected guest at the family kitchen table – Kai. A cool, handsome and aloof character, a so-called family friend of Sayaka’s father, his temporary stay in her household and attendance to Sayaka’s school, is more than she’s bargained for. But what secrets does Kai hold and what are his true intentions for his sudden appearance into Sayaka’s life? Why does he excel so well in school but sleep through every class? Here does he disappear every night? Will Sayaka find her answers? Or will her curiosity get her into trouble? And what is up with that black cat?

This generic-sounding title from the creator of Wedding Peach (Viz) originally ran in some magazine from some publisher that I cannot unearth in any of the usual sources. It almost certainly involves vampires. I almost always hate vampires.

A Certain Scientific Railgun vol. 1, written by Kazuma Kamachi and illustrated by Motoi Fuyukawa, Seven Seas, page 314:

Welcome to a world where mysticism and science collide, and supernatural powers are derived from either science or religion. In Academy City, an advanced metropolis populated by scholars, the majority of students are enrolled in the city’s “Power Curriculum Program,” where they must learn to master their latent psychic powers. Out of several million students, only seven are deemed powerful enough to have Level 5 status. Mikoto Misaka, the third most powerful Level 5 esper in Academy City, delves deep into the dark heart of the scientific sprawl she calls home – and uncovers secrets she wishes she hadn’t!

Aside from an awkward title and (again) generic premise, this series came to be in Media Works’ Dengeki Daioh, which has produced some great manga but has an uncomfortable fixation on little girls. Also, use of the word “esper” bugs me.

Kampfer vol. 1, written and illustrated by Yu Tachibana, Tokyopop, page 318:

Senou Natsuru is an everyday school boy, who wakes up one day to discover that he’s been chosen to be a Kampfer (fighters) whose objective is to fight other Kampfer. There’s just one catch: In order to fight others, he must turn into a girl!

Seeing as Tokyopop couldn’t be bothered to spell the name properly in its catalog listing, I don’t know why I should be expected to feign enthusiasm. Kampfer originally ran in Media Factory’s Comic Alive, which foisted Maria Holic on the world.

Those are your choices for the month. I’ll take a much more optimistic look at catalog on Monday. For now, please vote in the comments!

 

License request day: Jin

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Anime News Network passed along the announcement of the manga nominees for the 15th Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize. You all know what that means, right? We’ve struck a vein of license request ore! It’s an interesting and diverse slate, and I’m sure it will fuel future license requests, but there’s one title that has an unshakable grasp on my imagination and curiosity.

That would be Jin, written and illustrated by Motoka Murakami and serialized in Shueisha’s Super Jump for a total of 20 volumes. Any manga that launches with a modern-day doctor finding a carcinogenic fetus in a patient’s skull, followed by that fetus then sending said doctor back in time is a manga I want to read very, very badly.

It’s being published in French by Tonkam, which makes it much easier for me to figure out details about the book. I’m guessing that the fetus is just a MacGuffin to send our hero, 30-something doctor Jin Minakata, back to the Edo period. He adapts to his new/old world and begins applying his modern medical knowledge to bygone problems.

A cholera epidemic in Yokohama… communicable diseases among the courtesans of the red-light district… “discovering” penicillin centuries ahead of time… a geisha with breast cancer… If you want to be a busy doctor and seem like a miraculous genius whether you are one or not, it seems like all you have to do is go back in time. (How you get there is your own problem. My suggestion would be to randomly x-ray the skulls of your patients for mysterious fetuses. Of course, any fetus you find in someone’s skull is bound to count as “mysterious.”)

Judging by the sample pages from the first volume that Tonkam has shared, the art looks very clean, detailed, and attractive in a seinen sort of way that won’t be unfamiliar to fans of creators like Jiro Taniguchi. And while it’s perhaps a little soon after asking for Zipang to dip into the well of rewritten history, I think Jin sounds different enough in era and focus that they wouldn’t cannibalize each other’s audience, should we see a day when they’re simultaneously published in English.

So that’s my first choice from the current Tezuka nominees. I’ve only chosen one cover image, because they’re all pretty similar, featuring a strangely blank Jin standing with a beautiful woman. I used to work at a local newspaper, and so many submitted wedding photos looked kind of like these covers, with the woman actively engaging the camera and the man staring out of the frame at something shiny.

Which of the Tezuka nominees would you most like to see licensed?

More Ono due from Viz

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Viz just sent out a press release detailing its new titles due in the second half of 2011, and I’m sure someone will post it in its entirety, but I’m single-minded in my interest in one title above all others:

TESORO · Rated ‘T’ for Teens · MSRP: $12.99 US / $14.99 CAN ·

Available November 2011

This is an engrossing manga treasure trove containing 14 charming stories about family, friends, couples and unexpected bonds. Written by Natsume Ono over ten years, here is the long-awaited collection of her early work, including numerous illustrations and previously unpublished stories!

As a reminder, if you’re lucky enough to attend this year’s Toronto Comic Arts Festival, you can meet Ono in person. And, if you can’t wait until November for a new Ono title from Viz, there’s always La Quinta Camera, due in July.

 

 

From the stack: Kimi ni Todoke vol. 5

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My recent brush with Bakuman (Viz) helped me realize something (probably after everyone else already got there) about Karuho Shiina’s Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You (also Viz). Shiina is deconstructing shôjo manga as surely as Ohba and Obata are dissecting shônen. Of course, Shiina is telling a proper story with engaging characters at the same time, so she wins.

This became blazingly evident in the fifth volume. It begins with our heroine, socially inept Sawako, deep in conversation with Kurumi, who likes the same boy Sawako does and is trying to manipulate Sawako into stepping aside. In spite of her almost complete innocence in matters interpersonal, Sawako is incredibly hard to manipulate, and she’s just so damned nice. Kurumi is infuriated, at least partly because some part of her recognizes that Sawako is possibly more worthy of kindly Kazehaya’s affection than Kurumi is.

This isn’t an uncommon emotional beat for shôjo manga, but it rarely gets the degree of articulation it receives here. Kurumi must not only admit her resentment of Sawako, she must also explain to this foreign exchange student from Mars exactly why she resents her. And while the experience provides some kind of catharsis for the duplicitous Kurumi, it doesn’t entirely soften her feelings for Sawako. It does clarify them, for both Kurumi and Sawako, and they culminate in a glorious moment when Kurumi, pretense abandoned, beams at Sawako and declares them rivals.

It’s not just Kurumi being argumentative. It’s Kurumi being generous, helping Sawako understand. And it’s Kurumi liberating herself from a stifling public persona. Most of all, it’s Shiina celebrating the construct, the pairing of people who want the same limited resource (a title, a prize, a love interest) who both understand the other’s desire and respect their right to want it but realize that their ultimate happiness is mutually exclusive.

This is what I mean by deconstruction. Most mangaka would just go through the beats of this realization without underlining it so baldly, but the baldness is what makes Shiina’s approach soar. It’s like you’re Sawako, discovering all of these new things, except you already knew them, and yet the rediscovery is as thrilling as the first time you grasped them.

There’s lots of other stuff that happens in this volume, and all of it is charming and good, because Shiina wrote and drew it. But the definition of rivalry, old as shôjo and fresh as now, is the kind of emotional peak that represents the best of this excellent series. Bakuman is most intriguing as an instruction manual, and it’s savvy (but joyless) about what works in a certain type of manga. Kimi ni Todoke both defines and celebrates its own category’s building blocks.

 

Mid-week must-reads

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I’ve pretty much given up on manga industry analysis as a pastime. I found it had started to taint the hobby for me. But I always enjoy sinking my teeth into a great piece of writing from this category. Today’s comes from Brigid (MangaBlog) Alverson over at Robot 6, in which she reacts to the recent round of layoffs at Tokyopop:

It’s just sad to see people who took their work seriously being treated so badly by a company that seems to put more value on a direct-to-Hulu reality series than on their core product, a solid line of manga that really did change the graphic novel market and the reading habits of millions of readers—myself included.

I would only add that, in my admittedly limited experience talking to industry figures, I can think of few professionals who were better equipped and more willing to be passionate advocates for good manga than Lillian Diaz-Pryzybl and Asako Suzuki. Any publisher possessing any sense at all would hire them at their absolute earliest convenience.

(Okay, I would also add that, in addition to being a passionate advocate for manga, Brigid is also one of its must astute, clear-eyed observers.)

Moving to a much more benign subject, another astute advocate, Erica (Okazu) Friedman, succumbs to my pestering and writes about what describes as “the fifth genre” of manga magazines in her latest column for The Hooded Utilitarian:

The pressure to conform to the four basic categories is industry-wide. The Japanese Magazine Publishers Association puts out circulation data for top selling manga magazines every year. These ratings are listed by; For girls, For boys, For men and For women. And yet, there is some leaking around the edges, as more alternative magazines seek out both male and female artists,  and male and female readers. These magazines focus less on who is buying and more on telling stories to people who want to read them.

A synonym for “fifth genre” might be “magazines with which David is unhealthily obsessed.”

 

The Josei Alphabet: E

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“E” is for…

Easy Writer, written and illustrated by Mari Ozawa, originally published by Kodansha, three volumes. It’s about a young woman starting her career as an undercover reporter.

Ebisu-san to Hotei-san, written by Nanki Satou and illustrated by Akira Kizuki (of impending Maid Shokun fame), originally serialized in Houbunsha’s Tsubomi, one volume. It’s about the budding romance between two office ladies that starts from a place of antagonism. It sounds charming, but alas, Erica (Okazu) Friedman doesn’t think very much of it.

Eki Kara Gofun, written and illustrated by Fusako Kuramochi, currently serialized in Shueisha’s Chorus, three volumes so far. Kuramochi seems to be quite prolific, and I like the cover of this one very much. It seems to be an episodic drama about people who live around or pass through Hanazono Station and its surrounding town.

Eve no Nemuri, written and illustrated by Akimi (Banana Fish) Yoshida, originally serialized in Shogakukan’s Flowers, five volumes. Can you feel the fervent gaze of the Banana Fish fans? I certainly can. This one is a supernatural mystery that seems to be perfectly steeped with byzantine family secrets.

Eve no Yuuwaku, written and illustrated by Misao Hoshiai, based on a novel by Candace Schuler, originally published by Ohzora Shuppan, one volume. A conniving soap star and a cynical movie mogul embark on a tumultuous relationship and may or may not accidentally fall in love while promoting their agendas.

Magazines:

Licensed josei:

  • The Embalmer, written and illustrated by Mitsukazu Mihara, originally serialized in Shodensha’s Feel Young, six volumes, four of which have been published in English by Tokyopop.

What starts with “E” in your josei alphabet?

 

Upcoming 3/2/2011

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This week’s ComicList isn’t as loaded as the Midtown Comics version, the source of my current Pick of the Week. Thankfully, Vertical finds a way to make the trip to the comic shop worthwhile.

Redemption comes in the form of the fifth volume of Konami Kanata’s excellent Chi’s Sweet Home (Vertical). In this volume, Chi discovers that she doesn’t need to leave the house to have an adventure. Along the way, she also grasps the importance of being able to feign innocence. Anyone who’s ever lived with a cat will nod in rueful recognition at this development.

Of course, Chi also manages to spend some time in the great, suburban outdoors, making a new friend and relying on some old ones when she wanders well beyond her familiar boundaries. Fun as Chi’s adventures are, and lovely as it is to think about a protective community keeping her safe, I’m very much a partisan of the indoor-only feline experience. It makes me reflexively uncomfortable to see a kitten given that much liberty, no matter how charming the fictional results. Of course, this is why I would be a terrible parent to a human child; they’d never know a moment’s unsupervised peace.

As is usual, Kanata sneaks in some extremely moving moments where hints of Chi’s past life intrude on the way she lives now. These interludes really balance out the sweet charm of the more antic, observational sequences, and they make the book work better than it might have without them. In slice-of-life storytelling like this, a variety of experiences and emotions are always welcome, even for a kitten.

(Remarks are based on a review copy provided by the publisher.)

What looks good to you?

 

Pick of the Week: Kiss, Taro, Teacher

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It’s a Viz-centric week according to Midtown:

From David: My pick this week is the second volume of Julietta Suzuki’s Kamisama Kiss (Viz). I wasn’t very inspired by the notion of this book until I read some of Suzuki’s Karakuri Odette (Tokyopop) for a recent Manga Moveable Feast and was very taken with Suzuki’s quirky, thoughtful writing. As I noted about the first volume, “It’s got grumpy, likeable leads, a solid premise, and an endearing look to it.” And Kate noted something very central to the appeal of the series and its protagonists in her review of the first two volumes: “Making those tart exchanges more entertaining is the fact that Nanami and Tomoe are equally matched.”

From Kate: Once again, I’m going to wear my Good Comics for Kids hat and recommend a title for the under-ten crowd: Taro and the Terror of Eats Street, which is published by VIZKids. The series focuses on Taro, a young cartoonist, who creates the fictional world of Doodledom. When an eraser-wielding maniac threatens Taro’s characters, he uses a magic pencil to leap into the page and join the fight, drawing weapons and cool getaway vehicles whenever he’s in a pinch. The first volume of the series, Taro and the Magic Pencil, was so imaginative, funny, and fast-paced that I’m willing to bet that Eats Street will be a winner, too. Like the Panda Man books, Taro and the Terror of Eats Street also includes games and puzzles. The fun part: those activities are actually part of the story, not an afterthought, making for a more interactive reading experience for elementary school readers.

From Michelle: Although I am very keen to read the second volume of Kamisama Kiss, I am going to go with Oresama Teacher for my pick this week. It’s a new Shojo Beat series about a girl with a delinquent past who’s been given a chance to start over at a new school. Best of all, she seems inclined to seize the opportunity to change, which reminds me of Very! Very! Sweet, a manhwa I enjoy a lot. Of course, this is by the same author of Magic Touch, about which I heard mixed opinions, but I’m hopeful that it will be as fun as it looks.

From MJ: I’m going to bring this mini-roundtable full circle and agree with David. Volume two of Kamisama Kiss is my Pick of the Week. Here’s a bit from my review of the first volume: “What I especially appreciate about this series, is that regardless of Tomoe’s tremendous superiority complex, he’s far too lazy to be controlling like so many shoujo love interests, and even his surliness is kept staunchly at bay thanks to Nanami’s power of kotodama, which forces him to do her bidding whether he wants to or not. In a way, Kamisama Kiss is everything that Black Bird could have been if not for its heavy misogynist overtones. Like Misao, Nanami’s surrounded by yokai who would just as soon eat her if they had the chance, but unlike Misao, Nanami has agency, and that makes all the difference in the world.”

So, readers, what are your Picks this week?

From the stack: Gunslinger Girl vols. 1-3

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Long ago, in his pre-Vertical days, Ed Chavez helped me out with a roundtable on underrated comics. One of his choices was Yu Aida’s Gunslinger Girl, originally published in English by ADV and recently re-launched in three-book anthologies by Seven Seas. I’m just going to have to repeat Ed’s assessment in full (though I’ll add some links where appropriate):

In a similar way to how the word otaku has a negative connotation in Japan, but is almost embraced in America. Moe has been frowned upon by American otaku while it is clearly the foundation of everything otaku in Japan. Gunslinger Girl fulfills three different unique passions/fetishes:

1- A passion for anything Italian. After the Korean wave came a huge Italy boom, partially supported by Bambino (an Italian cooking manga), the handful of wine manga that are all over the international press, and Sarto Finito – the original Italian suit manga.

2- A Sonoda Kenichi-style obsession with guns. Where building and firing guns take on an almost sexual feel.

3- And the need to raise soulless emotionally damaged bishôjo that so many otaku have.

Gunslinger Girl… Well drawn primer to pop-culture perversion.

The beauty of this is that it could serve as an endorsement or the direst of warnings, depending on your taste. And even after all this time, it’s left me curious about the book, at least enough to invest about $16 for three volumes worth of content. I’m largely immune to the fetishes described above, but I enjoyed Gunslinger Girl.

It’s about a black-ops agency that brings cute girls back from the brink of death and turns them into cute assassins, each assigned to adult male handlers who display varying levels of intimacy with their charges. And no, it’s not that kind of intimacy, though it’s not like that kind of awkward possibility is never broached. It’s just part of a larger jumble of awkwardness that comes with murderous little girls being ruthlessly manipulated and used to fight terrorism and stuff.

To Aida’s credit, the Italian/weaponry/pert troika is contextualized. Even the people who participate in the process of creating these little girl killers recognize that it’s horrible on some level, especially the bits where they brainwash the girls to be loyal to their handlers and erase their memories when things get complicated. That’s undeniably awful, and only the most tone-deaf of mangaka would ignore that. Gunslinger Girl is hardly a moral treatise, but it isn’t shameless, either.

It’s very episodic, focusing on individual cyborg-handler relationships through the prism of missions, down time, medical crises, and the like. Aida gets good mileage out of the premise, at least in these three volumes. I can’t quite picture myself reading ten more, though.

As much violence as there is, and as observant as Aida can be, Gunslinger Girl doesn’t really benefit from being read in bulk. I think I would have liked it better in serialization, where its low-key moodiness would have stood out in contrast to other series. Two volumes of low-key moodiness gets to be a bit lulling, so I was relieved to see the third shift into a longer narrative. It launches a complicated, sometimes messy tale of greed, kidnapping, sabotage, and assassination, and it doesn’t always track very well with Aida’s initial themes. He does try and weave them in from time to time with relative success, but I missed the murderous little girls.

Gunslinger Girl ends up being rather contradictory for me. It was obviously at least partly conceived to pander to certain tastes that I don’t share, but it’s also not content with just successfully pandering. It can be introspective and oblique, and it’s got an impressive level of ambition, even though its ambition isn’t always realized. It’s an odd book. I’m glad I read it, but I don’t know if I really need to read any more.

 

Random weekend question: flicks

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It’s Oscar night! Can you feel the excitement? I can’t, but I’m kind of a bad gay in that respect. Still, I’ll take the occasion of the movie industry’s biggest night of self-adulation to ask the following: what comic would you like to see adapted into a film that could claim Oscar gold? Put aside your memories of Astro Boy and your fears about Akira and emphasize the positive, if you can.

I think Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ichigenme: The First Class Is Civil Law (DMP) could be made into one of those independent sleeper films that draw unexpected commercial and critical acclaim. And it has hot, smart gays getting it on and none of that maudlin, problem-movie nonsense of Brokeback Mountain. Of course, I can also imagine Makoto Yukimura’s Planetes (Tokyopop) getting turned into some overblown James Cameron thing that doesn’t really resemble the source material but still makes a ton of money.

 

The business end

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Here are some of the week’s links that focus on the business end of manga:

At Robot 6, Brigid (MangaBlog) Alverson speaks to Vertical‘s Ed Chavez about their new investors, Kodansha and Dai Nippon, and Ed reassures Vertical fans that the publisher will be better able to do the things it loves to do:

If there will be any changes, I think it’s that Vertical will hopefully eventually be the Vertical that everybody is familiar with. It wasn’t until last year that Vertical started producing more manga than anything else, and I’d like to bring us back to being the source of Japanese content in English, because as much as you know I obsess over manga, maybe too much sometimes, I enjoy their novels, I enjoy their nonfiction, I’m a huge fan of Kentaro’s cookbooks. I love the versatility, I love being able to present and be a curator to a catalog like that, and I want to get back to that.

At its blog, Tokyopop talks about some of the realities of the market, particularly as they relate to unfinished titles:

This probably comes as a surprise to a lot of manga fans, since you tend to be a very ’net-friendly bunch, but the percentage of our sales that come through Amazon.com and other online retailers is a fraction of that of the brick-and-mortar stores. There are some notable exceptions (BLU titles, mature titles, and some of our back list), but the vast majority of sales come through physical retail stores, and if something disappears from the shelves, it becomes exponentially more difficult to hit our sales targets.

One of those brick-an-mortar retailers, Christopher (Comics212) Butcher, appreciated Tokyopop’s frankness but questioned the tone:

Some of the finer points are disagreeable to me personally (particularly the enthusiasm for print-on-demand, though that at least is somewhat tempered by describing it as an ‘emerging’ technology) but at the core of the article is a very real problem; the combatative attitude between this Tokyopop employee–and really Tokyopop in general–and their fans. You don’t start off an answer to a frequently asked question on your website by complaining about your customers.

Speaking of publisher-consumer interaction, Fantagraphics shared the cover design of the first volume of Shimura Takako’s eagerly anticipated Wandering Son via their Twitter feed and said that their planned release schedule for the series was two volumes a year. This led to some discussion of the format (hardcover) and price ($19.99), which may be a barrier to entry for people used to paying around $10 for an individual volume. I’m irresistibly reminded of the time that Fantagraphics decided to package Love and Rockets reprints like manga (inexpensively and in paperback) to attract its audience to… you know… good comics.

 

License request day: Rough

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Greg (Read About Comics) McElhatton has joined the knot of fervent admirers of Mitsuru Adachi’s Cross Game (Viz). It’s a title that inspires a bit of evangelical fervor among its admirers, or at least I feel like it is, and that enthusiasm must certainly extend to Adachi himself. Whenever the subject of out-of-print manga comes up, his Short Program (Viz) is always among the bemoaned.

There are plenty more volumes of Cross Game still to come (five of the twelve seventeen have been published in Viz’s two volumes so far), but Adachi is so amazing that it’s impossible to resist wondering which treasure from his catalog might be next in line. Many people might vote for Touch, a 26-volume series from Shogakukan’s Shônen Sunday. I would have no objection to this, but it’s another baseball series, and perhaps some variety might be key in building Adachi’s reputation among English-language readers. So, for a change of pace, why not see what he can do with high-school swimmers?

Yes, I’m talking about Rough, a 12-volume series that also ran in Sunday. It’s about a boy who swims and a girl who dives from feuding families that fell out over owl-shaped cookies. Will Yamato and Ninomiya’s shared love of pool-based athletics help them overcome this great cookie schism? I have no idea, and please don’t spoil it for me. I do know that Adachi has demonstrated a real knack for portraying contentious relationships between sporty teens of the opposite sex, and he can draw anything, so I’m not seeing a down side to Rough. It’s even a reasonable length.

Did you even need to ask if Rough is available in French? Of course it is, courtesy of Glénat, who have also published Touch and Niji-Iro Togarashi. (an 11-volume fantasy series that ran in… wait for it… Sunday). The French are basically all over Adachi, and I dream of a day when the audience for manga in English catches up.

But I’m not so selfish that I’ll only accept Rough. I would love to know what tops your Adachi wish list, assuming you have one. And if you haven’t joined the forces of Adachi advancement, well… there’s this little book called Cross Game…

From the stack: Bakuman vol. 3

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I probably wouldn’t have picked up Bakuman (Viz) on my own. I can’t remember the exact reasons for that decision, but I’m sure they had something to do with the notion of people who make comics making a comic about people who make comics. It’s not a favorite subject unless the people who make those comics happen to be French.  But Viz sent me a review copy of the third volume, so I figured, “Why not?” Now, in spite of the fact that Bakuman has few of the elements I usually look for in a comic I’m likely to enjoy, I have to go find the first two volumes.

So what are those things that I usually like that are absent here? For one, I like engaging protagonists. Writer Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated Takeshi Obata (you may recall them from Death Note, also from Viz) tell the tale of would-be mangaka, writer Akito Takagi and illustrator Moritaka Mashiro as they try and build their careers. They’re in high school, but that’s not improbable on its face, and they seem to be making some traction. Unfortunately, they’re boring people. Neither displays the quirky passion that makes for a great shônen hero with a dream.

For another, I like a story with stakes. While the stakes are enormous for Takagi and Mashiro, I didn’t share their urgency at all. Maybe I’ll be better able to invest in their dreams after reading the first two volumes, but that still leaves the fact that these boys don’t have much going for them. On the subplot front, each has a girlfriend of sorts. Mashiro’s wants to be a voice actress in anime, and Takagi’s is the sporty, outgoing type. If either girl ever went an inch beyond type, I can’t remember it. And I also like interesting female characters, so there’s another strike.

And while I generally have no problem with dialogue-driven storytelling (hi, Fumi Yoshinaga!), Bakuman indulges in this approach to a ridiculous extreme. I remember thinking that the final volume of Death Note was just one big word bubble, and Bakuman shares that tendency to natter. It’s all tell, and virtually no show.

So why do I feel compelled to pick up the previous and future volumes? It’s because I suspect that Bakuman’s failings as shônen are entirely the point. Why else would Ohba and Obata go to such lengths to have their characters articulate what makes great shônen manga, to fully explore its key elements, only to willfully avoid incorporating them into their own actual manga? I’m casting my vote with “intentionally postmodern.”

Ohba an Obata talk a lot about manga, not simply as a creative process but as a profession. They talk about the vagaries of popularity, the self-perpetuating structure of magazines like Shônen Jump, the tyranny of reader polls, the weird formula of creative inspiration and commercial instinct, and so on. It’s not quite cynical, but it’s certainly frank, especially when you consider the fact that it actually runs in Shônen Jump, the very magazine it routinely criticizes. Of course, the criticism is generally reasoned and sounds fair, but still.

Without the almost clinical self-examination of the manga industry, there really wouldn’t be anything to take away from Bakuman. But the examination is there, and it’s undeniably compelling. I don’t really care if Takagi and Mashiro become big successes or fail miserably, but I don’t think I’m supposed to care. I think I’m supposed to enjoy the fact that Ohba and Obata are peeling back the curtain and showing that the creation of thrilling fantasy can be very dull indeed.

Update: Deb (About.Com) Aoki spreads the word about Viz’s Bakuman Fan Art Contest.

The Josei Alphabet: D

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“D” is for…

Daisy Luck, written and illustrated by Tsunami Umino, originally serialized in Kodansha’s Kiss, two volumes. This series follows four lifelong friends. One is a housewife, one works as a baker, one is a salarywoman, and one is unemployed.

Darling wa Nanamono ni Tsuki, written and illustrated by Yuki Yoshihara, originally serialized in Shogakukan’s Petit Comic, eight volumes. More funny smut from the prolific creator of Butterflies, Flowers (Viz), this time about the marriage of the daughter of a gay man and her attempts to keep things spicy. Published in German by Tokyopop and French by Panini.

Deka Wanko, written and illustrated by Kozeuko Morimoto, currently serialized in Shueisha’s You, seven volumes so far. This goofy detective series features a sleuth with a keen sense of smell and a fondness for frills. It’s been adapted into a live-action drama.

Doctor Lonely, adaptation of a novel by Glenda Sanders by Akiyo Izuka, originally published by Harlequin. A mail carrier finds her fantasies about an attractive doctor are muddled up by his nerdy reality.

Double House, written and illustrated by Nanae Haruno, originally serialized in Shueisha’s Young You, one volume. This story explores the complicated relationship between a young woman and a male-to-female transsexual. Erica (Okazu) Friedman has written about some of Haruno’s other works, including Pieta.

Licensed josei:

  • Dazzle, written and illustrated by Minari Endoh, published by Tokyopop, originally serialized in Ichijinsha’s Comic Zero-Sum.
  • Diabolo, written by Kaoru Ohashi, illustrated by Kei Kusunoki, published by Tokyopop, originally serialized in Shueisha’s Comic Crimson, three volumes.
  • Dolis, written and illustrated by Maki Kusumoto, published by Tokyopop, originally serialized by Shodensha, one volume.
  • Doll, written and illustrated by Mitsukazu Mihara, published by Tokyopop, originally serialized in Shodensha’s Feel Young, six volumes.
  • A Drunken Dream and Other Stories, written and illustrated by Moto Hagio, published by Fantagraphics, short stories originally serialized in various magazines, including Shogakukan’s Petit Flower, one volume.

What starts with “D” in your josei alphabet?

Reader recommendations and reminders:

  • Daite Daite Daite Darling, written and illustrated by Miwa Sakai, originally serialized in Hakusensha’s Silky, 15 volumes.
  • Do Da Dancin’!, written and illustrated by Satoru Makimura, originally serialized in Shueisha’s Young You, 9 volumes.
  • Do Da Dancin’! Venice Kokusaihen, written and illustrated by Satoru Makimura, currently serialized in Shueisha’s Office You, 8 volumes so far.