Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

David Welsh

From the stack: Set to Sea

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After the announcement of one of my favorite annual award programs, the Great Graphic Novels for Teens, I decided it might be fun to look at all of the books in the top ten this year. Since the list is always interesting and varied, it’s less of a homework assignment than a usefully structured pleasure.

I wish I could claim some metaphorical design in my first choice, but it was made at random. There’s nothing random about Drew Weing’s Set to Sea, though, which publisher Fantagraphics describes as “part rollicking adventure, part maritime ballad told in visual rhyme.” If that last part sounds a little pretentious, don’t worry. Fantagraphics’ solicitations always sound a little pretentious, even when they’re absolutely true.

Weing’s story does have the shapeliness of a poem, and it has the careful structure of a three-act play. It follows a would-be poet as he becomes an unwilling participant in the kind of seafaring adventures he tries to set to verse. In spite of his imposing size, he’s a tentative sort, and the brutality of life at sea takes a while to penetrate. When it does, he still maintains his artist’s viewpoint, and Weing neatly persuades us that art of any sort is better with some life experience to inform it.

That may seem to be a little ironic, given that Set to Sea is Weing’s debut graphic novel. He’s an experienced creator of webcomics, though, and that’s where this book was born. Consequently, each page is a single panel, but each of those panels is so attractively detailed and evocative that the storytelling structure never feels rigid. Instead, it comes across as economical and precise while still filled with event and emotion. It’s a quick read, but it’s very satisfying, and it just invites you to revisit the story again.

You could read it online, obviously, but the physical package is very handsome and worth the investment. In dimension, it’s like a diary or sketchbook that a traveler would carry, appropriately enough. Kevin (Robot 6) Melrose listed its cover as one of the best of 2010, and he’s quite right. The book itself wound up on a number of Best of 2010 lists, including Andrew Salmond’s and Martin Steenton’s at Forbidden Planet International, Brigid Alverson’s at Robot 6, and the Vulture blog of New York Magazine, and Glen Weldon of NPR’s Monkey See counted it among his most memorable comics and graphic novels of the year.

Set to Sea offers a wonderful beginning to this little project of mine. It’s artistically successful on every front, but Weing’s substantial craftsmanship never overwhelms the simple, heartfelt story he’s telling.

Other reviews in this intermittent series:

You can nominate titles for the next Great Graphic Novel for Teen List, and you can take a look at the current batch of contenders.

 

Random Sunday question: josei to Z

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I’ve just polished off the Seinen Alphabet, and I finished the Shôjo-Sunjeong Alphabet ages ago, so I’m gearing up for the next, and I would appreciate some advice as I map out the Josei Alphabet in my head. Since the category is taking a while to establish itself in English, I’m inclined to focus on unlicensed properties, maybe about three per letter. Of course, I’d also like to at least list josei titles that have been published in English, just so people know what’s commercially available. I’m always curious about Japanese manga magazines, so I’ll probably at least list those as well.

But I’d love to hear what you’d like out of the Josei Alphabet. Any thoughts or preferences come to mind? (A big part of the fun of doing these alphabets is reading comments about things I’ve omitted in the comments, so I’m not going to kill myself in the name of thoroughness.)

Revisiting Kinderbook

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Alexander (Manga Widget) Hoffman mentioned in a comment that one of the obstacles to the release of Kan Takahama’s Awabi (Fanfare/Ponent Mon) is the relatively weak sales of Takahama’s Kinderbook. This is unfortunate, partly for the resulting delay of Awabi, but mostly because Kinderbook is a really, really good collection of short stories from a very intriguing creator.

I thought it would be a good reason to revisit my very old Flipped column on the title, which ran at Comic World News in December of 2005.

Take Kan Takahama’s Kinderbook, a sublime collection of short stories about love, sex, aging, connection, and loss. More specifically, look at the story that opens the volume, “Women Who Survive.”

In it, an elderly woman has decided to retire to the country. She’s handing over management of her art gallery to her son-in-law and is cheerfully contemplating a future of drawing, decline, and death. Blunt and crusty, the woman also possesses an understated generosity of spirit. She moves through her day meeting with one of the artists who exhibits at her gallery, a young student, and her daughter’s family. Each exchange is filled with casually revealing moments, drawing the reader further into the woman’s world and giving a sense of the magnitude of her decision.

Visually, the story has elegance, precision, and warmth. Takahama’s rendering of her central figure is both unflinching in its portrayal of the marks and lines of age and radiant in the happiness and humor that enliven the woman’s countenance. Snippets of overheard conversation provide backdrop and counterpoint, and the visual focus wanders, as if you’re seeing the world out of the corner of the old woman’s eye.

Then, just when the reader expects a gentle closure, Takahama overturns things with a blissful surprise. In spite of her careful plans for its remainder, life is not quite done with the protagonist. It’s tart, ironic, and heartwarming at the same time, and you can’t help but marvel at Takahama’s mastery of tone and bask in the pleasure of a manga-ka at the peak of her powers.

Then, if you’re like me, you read the biography in the back flap and learn that the exquisite “Women Who Survive” was Takahama’s debut story. Starting from that position of strength, you can’t help but wonder if Takahama can pull off that kind of gemlike storytelling again. She does, over and over, until you reach the end of Kinderbook and are left hungry for more.

Honestly, if a collection had only one story as good as “Women Who Survive,” it would be well worth the cost. But Kinderbook is filled with distinctly wonderful stories, from the ironic bite of the title story to the lyrical sensuality of “Red Candles, Futile Love,” to the gentle humor of “Minanogawa Blues.”

Rereading the book is always a pleasure, as it reminds you of the range of characters living inside of Takahama’s head. She has a particular facility with worldly but not yet mature young women, demonstrated in stories “Kinderbook: A Picture Story for Melancholic Girls” and “Highway, Motel, Skyline.” The latter features graduation day at a girls’ school, and the milestone generates some wonderfully frank, cynical conversation. These young women aren’t cheerfully imagining careers or romance; they’re focused on an earthier kind of freedom – the parties, the opportunity to ditch boyfriend baggage, a new environment full of the possibilities of the moment.

In a bleaker vein, there’s “Over There, Beautiful Binary Suns,” exploring a problematic, emotionally unbalanced sexual affair. Takahama is unsparing in just about every way in this piece, from the clumsy, almost embarrassingly intense seaside tryst to the melodramatic exchange that narrates it to the undeniable vein of ridicule and role play that inform the whole piece. She’s both distanced herself from the material and chosen to present it with uncommon frankness, and the results are awkward and amazing. I love stories that balance seemingly oppositional tonal elements, and this is a fine example.

All of these stories came from Seirindo’s legendary Garo magazine, which did a nice job of overturning my expectations of the material from that anthology. Those were really more biases and assumptions, to be honest, and having seen the range of material in Top Shelf’s AX collection reminded me that “experimental” or “independent” need not always mean “gritty” or “edgy.” Those terms can also refer to graceful works that still manage to be sharp.

I don’t really have any illusions about how much of a difference I can make in sales of a book that’s been out for over a decade, and I recognize the distribution difficulties that can make Fanfare’s books hard to find, but I hope you’ll reconsider Kinderbook if you haven’t already read it. And if you have written about it, please send me a link so I can add it to this post.

License request day: Umimachi Diary

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It’s award season, and while I should theoretically devote the next few license requests to some of the current honorees and nominees, I find myself distracted by the first set of nominees for the Manga Taisho Awards. I’m not distracted because of the bounty of titles yet to be licensed; it’s the volume of nominees we already have at our fingertips, and what fine comics they are.

Ôoku: The Inner Chambers, Kimi Ni Todoke: From Me to You, Natsume’s Book of Friends, Flower of Life, Moyasimon, Yotsuba&! … We can go into a store and buy all of these, and they’re terrific, terrific books. I’ve already mentioned another of the nominees in this feature (Fumi Yoshinaga’s What Did You Eat Yesterday?, and how fabulous is an awards program that nominates Yoshinaga three times in one year?), but I felt I had to dig deeper into the other contenders.

Oh, geez, you guys, the creator of Banana Fish is doing a josei series.

It’s called Umimachi (Sea Town) Diary, written and illustrated by Akimi Yoshida, and it’s running in Shogakukan’s Monthly Flowers. It’s about three sisters who learn of the death of their long-absent father and the existence of a fourth sister. From what I can determine, the publisher describes it as “ardent” and “raw,” and I have no resistance to those adjectives. Or those covers. It basically sounds like an observant drama about complicated women dealing with stressful new circumstances and old family issues. And it’s set in a town by the sea.

WHY CAN I NOT BUY THIS NOW? THE WANT… IT BURNS US!

Sorry. I lost the thread there for a minute. I’m better now.

It was nominated for the 2008 Taisho (losing to Shinichi Ichizuka’s Gaku, which I’ll get to later) and the Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize twice, losing to Moyasimon in 2008 and Ôoku in 2009, which is perfectly respectable, and it received an Excellence Prize in the 2007 Japan Media Arts Festival. Three volumes have been released so far.

Beyond the fact that it sounds like a lovely series, there’s the not inconsiderable fondness for Yoshida’s Banana Fish to factor into the equation. For starters, the inimitable Shaenon Garrity featured it in her Overlooked Manga Festival, which is definitely a badge of honor. MJ(Manga Bookshelf) has assembled a murderer’s row of manga critics to break down the series volume by volume. And Banana Fish is over 30 years old. Can you imagine what Yoshida is capable of now?

Yes, this has been a great week for license announcements. Yes, one should occasionally take a moment to bask in what they have or will soon have rather than what’s not yet within their grasp. Neither of those things alters the fact that I want Umimachi Diaries, and I want it soon. Viz… Fantagraphics… it’s in your court.

Onwards and upwards with Vertical

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There’s some fabulous news from Vertical via Anime News Network. They’ve announced three new licenses, two of which are some of the most eagerly awaited of them all. (Coincidentally, both of those are license requests.)

First up is Osamu Tezuka’s Princess Knight, originally published in Kodansha’s Shôjo Club and to be released in two volumes here. Kodansha published bilingual editions ages ago, though they’re long out of print and very expensive. Viz published a sample chapter in its defunct Shojo Beat magazine, which raised hopes that a license might be imminent, but it took Tezuka specialists Vertical to make it happen. It was published in French by Soleil. (Update: It’s been suggested to me that Vertical is most likely to publish Tezuka’s second take on the series, which ran in Kodansha’s Nakayoshi roughly a decade after the original.) (Update 2: But they aren’t, and are, in fact, going with the original version. I’m delighted either way.)

Next is Drops of God, or Kami no Shizuku, written by Tadashi Agi (the pseudonym for wine-loving siblings Yuko and Shin Kibayashi) and illustrated by Shu Okimoto and serialized in Kodansha’s Weekly Morning. I don’t think there’s ever been a Japanese comic that’s received as much ink in English-language media, in spite of the fact that it had yet to be published in English. There was some indication in April of 2010 that the book’s licensing was imminent. It’s being published in French by Glénat.

Last up is No Longer Human, Usumaru Furuya’s adaptation of Osamu Dazai’s novel of the same name. It’s currently running in Shinchosha’s Comic Bunch. It’s about a troubled man who hides his true nature from the people around him.

Aside from a perfectly understandable level of excitement about these titles for their own merits, it’s nice to see that Kodansha is still working with other publishers to release titles that help express the breadth of their catalog, and it’s great that they chose Vertical, a company with a strong track record of publishing both classic and unique contemporary titles.

From the stack: The Story of Saiunkoku vol. 1

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It’s been a while since I felt that a comic was actively flirting with me. There are certainly plenty that I’ve liked, but most of them have stopped somewhere short of actively… well… luring me with just about every quality they possess.

I admit that I initially judged The Story of Saiunkoku (Viz), adapted by Kairi Yura from Sai Yukino’s novels, on a surface level. The cover is bland, and I’m drawn more by weird compositions than pretty faces of people in elaborate costumes. But when Kate Dacey noted that the book “makes [her] feel thirteen years old again” in a good way, I had to reconsider.

While reading the first volume of The Story of Saiunkoku, it bought me drinks from across the bar. It sent me funny and thoughtful text messages. It put its best foot forward, and it became more and more attractive as the encounter progressed. We’re dating now, and I hope you can be happy for us.

I should state up front that there’s almost no way I could resist a comic that features a smart, spirited heroine, a hot, gay emperor, lavish costumes and appointments, and grumpy old men scheming in the background. That comic would have to be actively awful for me not to be at least a little drawn to it, even if I knew the relationship would be… well… conflicted. But The Story of Saiunkoku is miles and miles from actively awful. To channel my thirteen-year-old self, it’s really dreamy.

The Story of Saiunkoku is a period piece about the imperial court of Saiunkoku. It follows a penniless but diligent young noblewoman named Shurei Hong, who enters into the service of the nation’s unmotivated, mildly scandalous young emperor as his consort. Up to this point, Shurei had been scrambling to keep body and soul together, teaching and taking odd jobs to put food on the table of her crumbling family manor. She’d always hoped to enter civil service to help her struggling country, but the men-only strictures of that career blocked her ambition. Now, she can use her considerable intelligence and work ethic to better the country right from the top.

Shurei isn’t just a goody-two-shoes optimist. Yura and Yukino make it clear from the outset that their heroine has a temper and a sharp tongue. In spite of her high status, she isn’t a delicate, sheltered lady. She’s known real deprivation and anxiety, and, when she talks about poverty, she’s not talking about the genteel, abstract variety. Immersion into the rarefied air of the imperial court doesn’t eliminate her instinct to scrimp, the constant rattle of the abacus in her head that tallies how much things cost and what they’re worth. But she isn’t judgmental about it; she isn’t averse to comfort or elegance, just more cognizant of its price tag than those around her.

The emperor she’s meant to serve, Ryuki, is agreed to be a disappointment on every level. He has no interest in governance, and he’d rather bed men, so there isn’t even a chance of him creating a more malleable, promising heir. He won’t even interact with Shurei or his other advisors initially, and it’s only Shurei’s unassuming charm (slyly applied) that leads him to engage with his responsibilities.

This is the point where The Story of Saiunkoku really kicks in, when we see what kind of person the emperor seems to be and glimpses of what kind of person he may actually become. As one would assume, there’s more than meets the eye to him, but the ambiguity remains, and his motivations and ambitions are still deliciously unclear. And Ryuki’s façade is a treat – handsome, lazy, dim, selfish, and more than a little weird. While the glimpses of his inner depths that the creators provide are welcome, his public face is quirky and intriguing in its own right. One of the smartest things a storyteller can do is to create natural, temperamental conflict between protagonists, and the similarities and differences between Shurei and Ryuki are promising in the ways they may evolve and comfortingly familiar in their initial highs and lows.

Also comforting are Yura’s illustrations. Her detailed renderings of court life are appropriately sumptuous, and her page compositions are often very lovely. I also like her knack for facial expressions; she conveys a fine range of emotions in close-up, and her faces can be very funny without seeming rubbery. Yura does lapse into a fairly common failing found in stories that feature a number of attractive men; some of the character designs can be a little repetitive, which can lead to some confusing moments. Overall, though, her drawings are heartfelt eye candy.

It may seem weird, but I find myself comparing The Story of Saiunkoku to Hiroshi Hitara’s Satsuma Gishiden (Dark Horse). That gorgeously violent drama also frames its primary narrative aims in a clearly defined social context that’s concerned with issues of governance, justice, and class. While Yura and Yukino obviously have gentler priorities, the cultural context elevates those intentions in the same way they do for Hitara’s muscular hack-and-slash. Absorbing characters and a well-crafted plot are important, but placing those elements in a world that lives and breathes on its own is a tremendous asset.

And Saiunkoku’s royal court does live and breathe, with its factions and fashions and secrets. Most of all, it breathes thanks to its cast of passionate, distinct characters and the ways they hope to better their lives and their world. I’m hopelessly smitten. I admit it.

(The manga adaptation of The Story of Saiunkoku is running in Kadokawa Shoten’s Monthly Asuka. I’m not sure how many light novels are in Yukino’s series, and they haven’t been published in English, to my knowledge. The first season of the anime adaptation is available from Funimation.)

Snowductivity

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The horrible weather and terrifying prospect of driving in it have left me with some unexpected leisure time, so I’ve been playing around with some minor navigation issues, mostly in response to people’s excellent suggestions. If you’ll look at the top of the sidebar on the right of the page, you’ll see a new “Features” header with three pages under it:

I’m definitely open to tweaking those pages and have already, so if you have thoughts on how these could be better organized or more useful, please pass them along.

It also struck me that I almost never explore a blog through its Archives function, just because I’m usually searching by subject rather than date. So I moved the Archive widget to the bottom, just in case there are people who find it useful.

And if you’d like to offer your two cents to the Manga Bookshelf empire as a whole, click here and toss them into the fountain.

The Seinen Alphabet: Z

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“Z” is for…

Zipang, written and illustrated by Kaiji Kawaguchi, serialized in Kodansha’s Weekly Morning for 42 volumes. This series is about a modern Japanese defense vessel that gets thrown back in time to the Battle of Midway of World War II. The revision of history ensues. It won the Kodansha Manga Award in 2002. Kawaguchi’s A Spirit in the Sun tied for the Shogakukan Manga Award in 2006, so Kawaguchi is clearly a big deal in terms of yet-to-be licensed mangaka. Zipang is being released in French by Kana, and I want to say it’s made the finalist list either at Angoulême or in the Prix d’Asie, though I can’t find a reference to confirm that.

Zetman, written and illustrated by Masakazu (Video Girl Ai) Katsura, originally serialized in Shueisha’s Weekly Shônen Jump, then moved to Young Jump. It’s about rival heroes who fight monsters, and it ran for a total of 14 volumes. Tony (Manga Therapy) Yao said on Twitter that it has a Dark Knight kind of feel, which is certainly an improvement on the Ultimo vibe I get off of the cover.

Zenyasi, written and illustrated by Tobira Oda, serialized in Kodansha’s Morning Two. It’s about a sculpting competition at a grade school that ends in tragedy, and it ran for a single volume.

Zero, written and illustrated by Kei (Lament of the Lamb) Toume, serialized in Gentosha’s Comic Birz. It’s about a middle-school girl who wants revenge against everyone, and it ran for a single volume.

Zashiki Onna, written and illustrated by Minetaro (Dragon Head) Mochizuki, serialized in Kodansha’s Young Magazine. It’s about a college student who gets stalked by a creepy woman with horror-appropriate long hair. It ran for a single volume.

Zansho, written and illustrated by Mohiro (Bokurano: Ours) Kitoh, serialized in Shogakukan’s IKKI. This is a single-volume collection of short stories from a 20-year span in Kitoh’s career.

Zôkan Young GanGan is a seinen magazine published by Square Enix.

What starts with “Z” in your seinen alphabet?

Update:

Taiyo (Gogo Monster) Matsumoto is one of those creators who fall into the “I’ll read anything by this person” category, even if the comic is about a subject that doesn’t interest me even a little bit. So thanks to Matthew (365 zines a year) Murray for mentioning Zero, a two-volume tale about a boxer that originally ran in Shogakukan’s Big Comic Spirits. The title refers not to the protagonist’s aptitude but to his loss record; he’s at the top of his game, but he’s getting older.

Upcoming 1/26/2011

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There are some truly terrifying titles on this week’s ComicList, though I think I found a promising Pick of the Week. My home blog choice is probably a result of weird shipping schedules, but for whatever reason, the second volume of Jiro Taniguchi’s The Summit of the Gods (Fanfare/Ponent Mon) is arriving at the local comic shop, and I’m delighted. Here’s a bit of my review of the first volume:

“Taniguchi is the ideal illustrator for this kind of material that has both epic scale and intimacy. If the crux of your story is the estimation of landscapes and people, it behooves you to find an artist that can capture the menace and nuance of both, and a writer is unlikely to find anyone better at that than Taniguchi. (As absent as women are from the narrative, it’s nice to read in a text piece that a woman made the collaboration possible, playing matchmaker for Baku and Taniguchi.) Taniguchi is probably the foremost renderer of the middle-aged man that I can think of. They wear their experiences, which is even more evident in a story like this that tracks Habu through the years. Just watching the ways that Habu ages is fascinating. And as far as landscapes and the physicality they demand of puny humans, do I even need to bother praising Taniguchi on that front? Icy cliff faces, Nepalese back alleys, Tokyo urbanity, leafy mountain trails… there’s no setting Taniguchi can’t conquer.”

Other than that, I’m intrigued by a light novel from Yen Press, Mizuki Nomura’s Book Girl and the Famished Spirit. I’m not a big follower of light novels, but Erica (Okazu) Friedman made a very persuasive case for Book Girl and the Suicidal Mime in her guest review.

What looks good to you?

PotW: Great reads for a wintery week

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It’s a pretty full week for manga, according to Midtown Comics. So bundle up, pour some cocoa, and take a look at this week’s Picks from the Manga Bookshelf bloggers and special guest Michelle Smith!

From Michelle: Wow, there’s quite a lot coming out this week! I’ll be buying several items on the list—I’ve been waiting for the second volume of Close the Last Door for a long time, and hoarding volumes of Gakuen Alice for probably about as long—but the release that most excites me is the second volume of Yuuki Fujimoto’s The Stellar Six of Gingacho. The first volume was surprisingly charming, and actually made me verklempt in its portrayal of six friends who drifted apart in middle school but reunite to help a neighbor in need. Bonus points for its positive depiction of an overweight character! I’ve been eagerly awaiting this second volume, so its purchase is a no-brainer!

From MJ: I have to agree with Michelle, there’s a lot worth buying this week! Big draws for me include new volumes of Bride of the Water God (Dark Horse), Pandora Hearts (Yen Press), and Michelle’s Pick, The Stellar Six of Gingacho (TOKYOPOP). I think this week, though, my Pick will have to be one that doesn’t appear on Midtown Comics’ list, but whose arrival was announced by the publisher via Twitter, volume thirteen of Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack from Vertical, Inc. I got into Black Jack later than most. After receiving a copy of volume ten, I marathoned the series from the beginning to catch up, and I’ve been hooked ever since. Black Jack (like Dororo) is rare among what I’ve read of Tezuka’s work as a series I’d feel comfortable recommending to nearly anyone (teen or older), even as a first comic. It’s immediately compelling, easy to jump into at nearly any point, and though the story and its protagonist can both get quite dark, its episodic structure allows that to be consumed in small doses, to taste.

From David: I’m going to step out of my usual wheelhouse, whatever that is, and pick a yaoi title this week. It’s not that there isn’t a lot of manga in this category that I enjoy; it’s more a case that I tend to have to put titles through a fairly careful vetting process to make sure they eschew some popular plot elements that can sour a yaoi title for me. But based on some Twitter chatter from reliable sources like Kristin Bomba and Danielle Leigh, I’m going to make a point of seeking out Kou Yoneda’s No Touching At All (Digital Manga). According to Danielle, this one can be summarized thusly: “Adults acting like adults fall in love.” And that is pretty much exactly my yaoi wheelhouse. I’m very favorably inclined toward salaryman yaoi.

From Kate: For me, this week’s must-buy title is the eighth volume of Pet Shop of Horrors Tokyo (Tokyopop). The premise is pure comeuppance theater: troubled people seek out the eccentric Count D, who furnishes them with exotic “pets” — usually, a demon or magical creature with shape-shifting abilities — that are always more than the buyer bargained for. What makes these little morality plays work so well is that Matsuri Hino doesn’t just punish her characters for being weak, vain, or foolish; she explores what drove them to seek Count D’s help in the first place. The results are much more nuanced and unpredictable than most stories in the wish-granting-emporium genre, and can be genuinely moving. Best of all, you don’t need any background on Count D to fully appreciate what’s happening; aside from a few perfunctory scenes documenting his run-ins with local authorities, the stories are self-contained.

So readers, what are your picks this week?

A look at the Shogakukan winners

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Anime News Network lists the winners of the 56th Shogakukan Manga Awards. Only one of the slate is available in English, Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ôoku: The Inner Chambers (Viz), which won in the Girls’ Category and has also previously shared the Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize with Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life (Drawn & Quarteroy), won the Tiptree Award, and made the top 10 in 2010’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens list.

Natsumi Matsumoto’s Yumeiro Pâtissière won in the Children’s Category. It’s about an enthusiastic young baker who enters an elite pastry school in spite of her clumsiness. She meets cute boys and is helped by a magical spirit named Vanilla. You can’t make a good dessert without a little Vanilla. It’s running in Shueisha’s Ribon. Viz has published Matsumoto’s St. Dragon Girl.

Takeshi Sasaki’s King Golf won in the Boys’ Category. It’s about a delinquent whose life changes when he takes up golf. I’m now picturing its chances for commercial success in the United States, which conjures images of middle-aged white men discussing the latest volume over highballs at the country club. Yeah. It’s being serialized in Shogakukan’s Shonen Sunday.

The General Category is split between two titles, the first being Shohei Manabe’s Ushijima the Loan Shark. Unsurprisingly, it’s a manga about the seedy criminal underbelly of loan sharks, the black market, and other unsavory activities, and I’d guess that it’s somewhat episodic in nature. It’s running in Shogakukan’s Big Comic Spirits. Tokyopop published some of Manabe’s Smuggler and all of Dead End, though it lost the licenses when Kodansha reclaimed their properties.

It tied with Chûya Koyama’s Uchû Kyôdai, which was nominated for a Manga Taisho Award last year. It looks very promising.

But which of the unlicensed titles look good to you?

From the stack: Arisa vol. 1

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I wasn’t particularly kind to the work of Natsumi Ando the other day. While I don’t retract anything I said about Wild @ Heart (Del Rey), I’m happy to be able to express a different opinion about Ando’s Arisa. The first volume introduces a tense, observant mystery, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ando’s art look better.

Much as I love shôjo that traffics in comedy, romance, and fantasy, I have a weakness for detective fiction, particularly when it features an amateur sleuth. In Arisa, a young girl investigates the attempted suicide of her twin sister by assuming her identity, and she quickly finds that her twin’s seemingly perfect life had some decidedly dark undertones.

Spunky tomboy Tsubasa and demure princess Arisa have been separated for years by their parents’ divorce. They’ve kept in touch through letters, and they arrange a secret meeting to catch up in person. Tsubasa, whose quick temper and loose tongue have limited her social circle, admires Arisa’s femininity and popularity. Arisa gives Tsubasa the chance to live her perfect life for a day – class president, tons of friends, cute boyfriend, the works. Arisa is brokenhearted when Tsubasa doesn’t see through the façade, and Tsubasa is devastated when Arisa tries to end her own life.

Tsubasa decides to continue the impersonation to try and find out what could have driven Arisa to this desperate act. She begins to unravel the creepy secrets of Arisa’s seemingly cheerful, friendly class, putting herself in danger but charging forward because it’s the right thing to do. The students’ secrets are genuinely unnerving, but Tsubasa seems up to the challenge of deciphering them. She faces real danger, even in the seemingly benign school setting, but she’s tough and a quick thinker.

The script has the kind of darkness and ambition that I found lacking in Wild @ Heart, really digging into the ways that kids can have dark sides but finding a fresh, contemporary take on the subject. Better still, Ando’s illustrations are stripped down for the occasion. If your experience with her drawing is limited to Kitchen Princess, you might be surprised that Arisa is by the same artist. Character design is sleeker and less aggressively endearing. The angles in the page compositions are sharper and more challenging. Even the application of screen tone, while still lavish, is more targeted and restrained in terms of choices.

It’s always nice to see a creator stretch her muscles and try something different, and it’s even better to see her succeed in the attempt. Arisa really seems like a great coalescence of Ando’s evident raw talent into something stronger and more balanced, and the fact that it’s a promising, emotionally complex mystery is a welcome bonus. I’m eager to see what happens next.

(These comments are based on a review copy provided by the publisher. Del Rey released the first volume in 2010, and Kodansha will pick up the series in May of this year. It’s currently running in Kodansha’s Nakayoshi.)

Random weekend question: blogita

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I’m thrilled to be a part of the Manga Bookshelf consortium, and just looking at the front page makes me happy. The only down side is that the nicely organized home site makes my individual blog feel kind of dowdy and difficult to navigate. It feels like I should find some better way to display regular features and new content. So for this random weekend question, I’d love to get your suggestions on how my blog can be improved from a design perspective. I’m leaning towards a magazine-style layout, but I’m absolutely open to any ideas you may offer.

Meh manga

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Earlier this week, Kate Dacey examined the concept of “meh” as it relates to critical discourse. Conveniently enough, I’ve just finished trudging through two titles that fall squarely in the “meh” range. Neither is especially bad, but neither transcends competence or adds any secret ingredient that makes them linger in the memory or heart.

Both are shôjo titles from Del Rey’s defunct manga line, so it may seem a little harsh to dissect them, but I liked Kate’s piece and the ensuing discussion so much that my mind is stuck in “meh” mode, and I need to push these books out of my system by taking quick looks at their respective – and admittedly routine — failures.

First is Natsumi Ando’s Wild @ Heart, a done-in-one collection of a three-volume series from Kodansha’s Nakayoshi. I was a big fan of Kitchen Princess, Ando’s collaboration with Miyuki Kobayashi, but the primary strength of that series is the often surprisingly dark writing. Wild @ Heart is on the fluffy end of the spectrum, an innocent romance with a reasonably promising sitcom premise. It’s about an average junior high school girl whose explorer father brings home a feral boy he met on his travels. Will Chino be able to look past Hyo’s uncivilized behavior to form a friendship, or perhaps even more? The answer to this question, and to all questions Ando poses in this series, is unfortunately “Of course.”

Maybe it’s the result of reading the whole thing at once rather than bit by bit, but Hyo’s civilization seems to happen too quickly. The earlier chapters, with Hyo bouncing around in his school uniform (when he can be bothered to keep it on) have some funny bits, but things level out too quickly, and he becomes an only slightly off-kilter cute boy. Even before he settles down, he’s so good-hearted that Chino’s resistance seems perfunctory and even snobbish.

But the ultimate failing here is that the ending is telegraphed. There’s no suspense in the evolution of the relationship, moving from beat to beat in predictable, almost plodding rhythm. Ando’s art has always struck me as a more coherent version of Arina Tanemura’s. The coherence is welcome, even if the volume of screen tone is equivalent, but Ando’s kind of visual cuteness badly needs some narrative darkness or edge for counterpoint. It reinforces the bland sweetness of the story rather than subverting it, and vice versa.

Ema Toyama’s I Am Here! at least has its heart in the wrong place. In it, we meet an overlooked, isolated girl who’s encouraged to make real-world friends and assert herself by the readers of her blog. Hikage falls into a category of character that Mitch of Blogfonte winningly described as “Asperger Sue.” The efforts of socially inept characters to engage can result in manga that’s funny or moving or both, but I Am Here! is hobbled by the work’s flat sincerity.

Hikage is just so blandly sweet and earnest that it’s hard to invest much interest in her plight. I found myself reaching the uncharitable conclusion that she’s not more popular because she’s kind of a bore. Neither her desire to connect with people nor the obstacles to that goal feel very specific; she’s just a person who fades into the background, and that doesn’t even feel particularly unfair. She’s less of an underdog than a charity case — a nice, nondescript girl who can’t quite do the heavy lifting of a protagonist.

Complicating things is the fact that her rivals seem just plain mean. The notion of someone being threatened enough by this homeless kitten reduces them to overreacting, insecure caricatures. This is always a tricky balance, crafting nuanced foes for an openhearted innocent, and Toyama doesn’t manage to strike it.

Toyama is scrupulous in mapping out Hikage’s steps out of the shadows. She’s trying to do the hard work of building investment in Hikage’s evolution, but the formula of this kind of story overwhelms any spark that might be generated by quirky characters or scenarios. It ends up reading more like a “How to Be Popular” manual than an organic story.

This book collects the first two volumes of the five of the series, which ran in Kodansha’s Nakayoshi. The remaining volumes are on Kodansha’s publishing schedule for this year.

(These comments are based on review copies provided by the publisher.)

License Request Day: Akuma to Dolce

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I’ll confess that I wasn’t familiar with the work of Julietta Suzuki before the announcement of the current Manga Moveable Feast. My mixed history with aspirational robotic fiction didn’t make Karakuri Odette an insta-buy, and my standoffishness towards reedy boys with more than one set of ears, while not yet the stuff of legend, is at least strong enough to make me look askance at Kamisama Kiss (Viz). But I do like what I’ve read of Karakuri Odette, and reliable sources have reassured me that Kamisama Kiss is a pleasant diversion.

As is the way of things (with me, at least), I’m disproportionately excited about a Suzuki series that has yet to be licensed. This is because Erica (Okazu) Friedman mentioned that her wife is very fond of Suzuki’s Akuma to Dolce. I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Erica’s wife, but I’ve divined the fact that our tastes in shôjo are eerily similar. (Never underestimate the bond formed by a shared love for V.B. Rose.)  Add to this the fact that I really like comics about people who bake, and my anticipation becomes more pronounced.

It’s apparently about a girl with an aptitude for both magic and cooking. She inadvertently summons a powerful demon who, conveniently enough, will do just about anything for a sweet treat. From there, I would imagine that standard but charming, slightly idiosyncratic shôjo antics ensue. And this is sometimes all I require from a series.

Akuma to Dolce is currently running in Hakusensha’s The Hana to Yume, which is not to be confused with Hana to Yume, the magazine home to all of her major works to date. There are two volumes available thus far.

Speaking of yet-to-be-licensed manga about people who make dessert, Alexander (Manga Widget) Hoffman conducts a thorough investigation of Setona Mizushiro’s Un Chocolatier de l’Amour Perdu, which was recently nominated for a Manga Taisho Award.