Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

David Welsh

Here and there, mostly there

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It’s Monday! More specifically, it’s the Monday following the conclusion of the Fruits Basket Manga Moveable Feast! I’m going to use that as an excuse to be a bit lazy and just point your attention elsewhere.

I did muster a couple of Bookshelf Briefs this week: Kikuko Kikuya’s Entangled Circumstances (Digital Manga) and the sixth volume of Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ôoku: The Inner Chambers (Viz). I won’t spoil the suspense by telling you which one I liked better, though I can’t imagine it will come as an earth-shattering surprise.

Nor will I rob you of the sense of discovery involved with clicking through to my Pick of the Week! Let’s just say that I was a little resentful that I couldn’t find it at Barnes & Noble this weekend and leave it at that.

So, since I’m abdicating any responsibility to provide original content here, where might you turn for such things? Well, The Hooded Utilitarian is unveiling the results of its ambitious International Best Comics Poll. It should make for interesting reading.

And I wasn’t surprised to see Tom Spurgeon be the first person I noticed draw the comparison between DC’s delayed reaction to bad PR for the paucity of female creators in its upcoming re-launch and the flack Fantagraphics got when it re-launched The Comics Journal with an apparent paucity of female contributors. I’m a little confused by Tom’s assertion that the latter issue has actually been entirely rectified. The Cartoonist’s Diary feature as certainly put women in the spotlight, but only one of the Journal’s 13 regular columns is written by a woman. The site does have women among their roster of reviewers, which is nice, and editorial coordinator Kristi Valenti is developing content in a variety of areas. Still, it’s not exactly parity. I can totally agree that it’s better than DC’s 1%, though.

Update: Seconds after I posted this, I noticed that Deb Aoki had posted a summary of the Best and Worst Manga Panel from this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. Go, look, and see how their picks track with yours!

 

PotW: Kaze Hikaru, Gintama, Saiunkoku, Cardcaptor

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It’s another strong week at Midtown Comics! Check out the Manga Bookshelf bloggers’ picks below!

KATE: After last week’s meager offerings, this week’s new arrival list has something for everyone: robots, magical girls, hoop fanatics, mad surgeons, cross-dressing samurai. Though I’m looking forward to reading Tank Tankuro: The Pre-War Years, 1934-1935, my heart belongs to Kaze Hikaru, which returns to the VIZ publishing schedule after a one-year hiatus. Volume nineteen unfolds against the backdrop of Commodore Perry’s arrival in Tokyo Bay. Taeko Watanabe milks this political crisis for all its dramatic potential, but never loses sight of her story’s core: the relationship between Sei and Soji. Crisp artwork, memorable characters, and a sophisticated treatment of Edo-era history are the frosting on this delicious cake.

MICHELLE: There’s much on this week’s Midtown list that I will personally be buying—especially Cardcaptor Sakura and Slam Dunk—but nothing that I want more or care about more than volume nineteen of Kaze Hikaru, so I’m going to have to piggyback on Kate’s pick this week. The fact that the heroine is cross-dressing throughout may give one the impression that the series is a comedy, and certainly there are humorous elements, but mostly it’s an emotional story of one girl’s attempts to understand the other samurai and their notions about honor. It’s been a full year since the release of volume eighteen, which leaves me pretty worried for the fate of the series. This is not a case where releases have slowed down because we’ve caught up to Japan—volume 30 just came out there—but simply due to low sales. So, please check out Kaze Hikaru! Even if you think you don’t like shoujo.

SEAN: This saddens me, but I too must pick a doomed series as my Pick of the Week. The final volume of Gintama from Viz is not, of course, the final volume in Japan. There, the series is quite popular, and in no danger of ending soon. Sadly, that may be *why* Viz is ending it – mediocre sales don’t justify its constant release. A shame, as it’s not only one of Jump‘s funniest series, but also highly dramatic and battle-heavy at times, with great female characters to boot.

MJ: This really is a tough week, isn’t it? With new volumes of Black Jack and Cardcaptor Sakura shipping this week, not to mention a whole host of terrific options from Viz’s Shonen Jump and Shojo Beat lines, it’s incredibly difficult to choose just one. In the end, I think I’ll cast my vote for volume four of The Story of Saiunkoku, one of my favorite new shoujo titles from the past year. Quite a number of us have written glowingly about this series, and particularly about its smart, spunky, civic-minded heroine, but I think one of my favorite observations about her comes from Cathy Yan’s recent installment of Don’t Fear the Adaptation, ” Shoujo heroines often pay lip service to a life framed around something other than romance, but Shurei actually lives that life.” Yes, that. Definitely a must-buy.


DAVID: Good grief, it is an embarrassment of riches this week. I could easily pick Tezuka’s Black Jack or Saiunkoku, or I could branch out for Gajo Sakamoto’s Tank Tankuro. All of the reasonable arguments for these books are deafened by how much I loved Dark Horse’s first omnibus of CLAMP’s Cardcaptor Sakura. Adorable, sly, funny, exciting, and beautifully produced, I’ve been counting the days to this release since about the minute I finished reading the first volume.

Readers, what looks good to you this week?

Bookshelf Briefs 8/1/11

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This week, Michelle, MJ, & David check out recent releases from Digital Manga Publishing, Viz Media, & Yen Press.

Entangled Circumstances | By Kikuko Kikuya | Published by Digital Manga – Actually, this stand-alone yaoi tale could use a few more tangles. College acquaintances are reunited in the workplace, and the renewed acquaintance is not a welcome one for Shibui, who seems to despise the flattering attentions of handsome, quirky Himeko. If you’ve read more than, say, five yaoi stories, you’ve probably run across this type of tale at least once, with a character’s reactions and behaviors having more complex origins than the reader is initially led to suspect. Of course, those complex origins don’t vary a lot from version to version, and Kikuya doesn’t do much to break the mold. On the bright side, she draws well, and she’s got a lively sense of pacing. If the characters were just a bit more specific – if they really popped – Kikuya could successfully transcend formula. As things stand, this book is more predictable than likable. – David Welsh

K-ON!, Vol. 3 | By Kakifly | Published by Yen Press – I never thought I would be saying this, but this volume of K-ON! is actually pretty good. The flow of the four-panel strips has improved considerably, and though there are fewer punchlines, it doesn’t really matter, since they were never funny to begin with. Instead, the volume reads in a more linear fashion, and episodes wherein the group tries to accustom Mio (the reserved one) to performing in public by randomly getting hired at a maid café actually turn out to have some bearing on things that happen later. Even the overreliance on seasonal high notes like Valentine’s Day and the class trip doesn’t annoy me as much as it might’ve, though I’m seriously weary of the boob-grabbing gags. – Michelle Smith

Nabari No Ou, Vol. 7 | By Yuhki Kamatani | Published by Yen Press – It’s hard to believe that I ever described this series as “extremely dull,” but it’s true that it took a few volumes to win me over. Thankfully, it just keeps on getting better. Volume seven marks the halfway point of the series, with Miharu, the living embodiment of a secret ninja art, rebelling against his former comrades, making new alliances, and shedding his indifference where the life of his friend, Yoite, is concerned. Add in some rival shinobi hoping to harvest human “ingredients” in order to concoct the only medicine with a chance at saving their chief as well as some pretty significant revelations about a major character, and you end up with a pretty terrific volume. – Michelle Smith

Ôoku: The Inner Chambers, Vol. 6 | By Fumi Yoshinaga | Published by Viz Media – I know it isn’t much in the way of critical analysis, but I always feel the need to remind people that this series exists, licensed and in English, and that they should really be reading it if they’ve ever publicly expressed a yearning for mature and challenging Japanese comics. This volume of Yoshinaga’s alternate-universe look at Japan’s feudal era addresses complex issues of succession and loyalty, which gives the creator plenty of meaty emotional raw material to twist in her hands. The driving notion of this series – a world where the male population has been decimated by disease – is more than just an attention-grabbing gimmick. It allows Yoshinaga to dig into gender roles and notions of personal power in ways that few creators bother to attempt. It’s also as gorgeous and sexy as it is smart and complicated, which is pretty much everything you could ever want from a mature manga. – David Welsh

Otomen, Vol. 11 | Aya Kanno | Viz Media – As with most comedic manga, I’ve run hot and cold with Otomen over the course of its run. Though the series consistently offers smart, funny commentary on traditional gender roles, this is a trait that doesn’t necessarily lend itself to long-form storytelling. A single joke—even a really great joke—is not infinitely sustainable, and the ability of Otomen‘s core satire to single-handedly carry the series ran out about six or seven volumes ago. Fortunately, mangaka Aya Kanno seems to have realized this as well, as she’s attempted to deepen her message and finally explore her characters as full-fledged people over the past few volumes, both with more success than I might have expected. Though on the surface, a competition between two men over their respective accumulation of Valentine’s Day chocolate may sound like an unlikely vehicle for effective characterization, Kanno somehow makes it work. Still recommended. – MJ

The Story of Saiunkoku, Vol. 4 | Art by Kairi Yura, Story by Sai Yukino | Viz Media – There’s no denying that The Story of Saiunkoku is a very pretty manga. Filled with dreamy bishounen, period costuming, and long, luxurious hairstyles, it would be easy for a manga like this to glide along on looks alone. Fortunately, much like its smart, resourceful heroine, The Story of Saiunkoku would never consider taking the easy way out. Text-heavy but never tedious, The Story of Saiunkoku provides all the best elements of epic shoujo romance with almost no focus on romance at all, while somehow making the minutiae of ancient Chinese government appear more fascinating than a thousand love scenes combined. Though this volume strays a bit from the main storyline to touch on the history of the Hongs’ bearded houseguest, Ensei, it provides readers with a major payoff near the end, as Emperor Ryuki takes steps to make it possible for Shurei achieve her lifelong career goals. Highly recommended. – MJ

Fruits Basket MMF: Sunday wrap-up

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We have a couple more pieces before we officially close up this installment of the Manga Moveable Feast!

At Otaku Ohana, Jason Yadao takes a retrospective look at his relationship with Fruits Basket:

Readers loved Fruits Basket. So much so, in fact, that the hyperbole on the books’ covers gradually built over the series’ run.  Need to be reminded that Fruits Basket was “The #1 selling shojo manga in America!”? There was a blurb for that, starting from volume 5 …

And at All About Manga, Daniela Orihuela-Gruber admits that she came to Fruits Basket later than some of her peers, but she fell hard:

In short, I really could have used Fruits Basket and its complex drama about a number of well-meaning souls tormented by a restrictive and isolated society, then freed by great friendship and love. I would have loved to learn that I didn’t need to be trapped into being “friends” anyone in that school in order to have the life I wanted.

You can see a listing of all of the Feast posts here. Thanks so much to everyone who weighed in with such insightful posts. You made the week a treat!

Next up in Manga Moveable Feasts is an in-depth look at the gifted and awesome Fumi Yoshinaga, to be hosted by Kristin (Comic Attack!) Bomba an Linda (Animemiz) Yao. Kate (The Manga Critic) Dacey has the full roster of upcoming events.

 

Fruits Basket MMF: Saturday links

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Tons of great reading today! And it’s not even over! (That’s my way of saying I’ll do one more round-up tomorrow.)

First of all, Laura (Heart of Manga) Mucciarone takes a particularly apt approach to character examination:

Along with the character analyses I’ve seen other bloggers post, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how the characters align with their equivalent zodiac personalities. I did some research to find information on Chinese astrology and over-arching personality traits that are supposedly observable in anyone born within a particular year of the zodiac. I thought I’d post them here and let you see if you agree with them matching Takaya’s characters.

Adam (Completely Futile) Stephanides has some questions about Tohru’s idealized mother, Kyoko:

There’s one discordant element from the start, though: Tohru’s constant self-denigration. Even as she’s unselfishly helping everyone, she feels guilty for not being unselfish enough. My favorite example is the time when, after visiting Rin (who doesn’t even like her) in the hospital, she condemns herself for having forgotten for a moment about her goal of lifting the curse. If Kyoko was so wonderful, why was Tohru so bent on punishing herself?

Sometimes, it takes a village to address a book. That’s the approach the citizens of Manga Village took with their roundtable:

Connie: Too many!  Way too many!  I hate hate hate series with a huge cast of characters like this, especially characters that are introduced to fulfill a role (in this case, because there needs to be 14 Sohma family members) and then don’t figure into the story at all later.  Ritsuka is the best example in this series, but that was the worst case scenario.  Takaya does do a good job of juggling all the other characters, but the side effect is that the main story seems to drag on forever.

MJ and Michelle Smith take another bite at the apple with their latest Let’s Get Visual discussion:

MICHELLE: So, we’ve been talking about Fruits Basket all week, but I’m certainly not yet weary of the topic. How about you, MJ?

MJ: I suspect I could discuss Fruits Basket for weeks on end!

I could certainly read their discussions of the series for weeks on end. So it’s nice that MJlooks back on Michelle’s examination of Takaya’s Twinkle Stars.

Again, thanks to everyone who’s linked to or tweeted about this iteration of the Manga Moveable Feast! If you’ve got a link you’d like to share, email me at DavidPWelsh at Yahoo dot Com or post a link in the comments.

 

Fruits Basket MMF: Friday links

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Lori (Manga Xanadu) Henderson looks at the first four volumes of Fruits Basket. Her verdict?

Fruits Basket is slow to build up, but once you get past them whole “OMG! They turn into animals!” and the “Which zodiac animal will Tohru meet this time?” parts of the story, it really start to have something to say.  The themes of being alone and finding a place to fit in and call home are ones that strike a chord with teens, which is probably one of the reasons it sold so well. This is another series that the MMF has convinced me I want to read, but since it’s OOP, that going to be kind of hard. Wouldn’t it be nice if another company could rescue it and make it available in Omnibuses (3 not 2 volumes) or better yet, digitally?

Oh, man, whoever scores the digital distribution rights to Fruits Basket won’t even need to print money.

Zoe (Manga Kaleidoscope) Alexander takes a good long look at one of her favorite series of all time:

I’m not even going to try to come across as unbiased during this review, because I’m not. I’m totally, completely 100% biased, and I make no apologies for that, because Fruits Basket is just that awesome.

Much as I enjoy a spectrum of opinion on a given work, I fully endorse this sentiment.

Again, thanks to everyone who’s linked to or tweeted about this iteration of the Manga Moveable Feast! If you’ve got a link you’d like to share, email me at DavidPWelsh at Yahoo dot Com or post a link in the comments.

 

 

Fruits Basket MMF: Takaya et cetera

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While I like throwing a license request into the mix with every Manga Moveable Feast, it does occasionally feel like preaching to the choir. I mean, nobody needs me to remind them that, hey, it might be a good idea to publish more of Natsuki Takaya’s work because, hey, that crazy kid really seems to be on to something.

Since Fruits Basket, Takaya completed an 11-volume series called Hoshi wa Utau, which ran in Hakusensha’s Hana to Yume. It’s about a lonely orphan who finds solace in stargazing. Her life is complicated by the new boy in town. That doesn’t sound especially complicated, but brief descriptions of Takaya’s works rarely do them justice, so I think it’s safe to assume that she makes time to break readers’ hearts over and over again in the course of the story.

Takaya’s current series is also in Hana to Yume, and it’s called Liselotte to Majo no Mori. It’s about a girl who moves to a forest full of witches. She apparently does this on purpose. You can look at some sample pages here.

So that’s what’s lurking out there. I have to admit that I continue to wonder why Hakusensha doesn’t stake its own claim to the English-language market rather than relying on other licensors. I think we’re pretty much down to Viz in terms of Hakusensha publishing partners, what with CMX and Tokyopop gone.  Given how many popular-in-English series the publisher has generated over the years, you’d think they’d be interested in taking the commercial wheel.

 

Fruits Basket MMF: Thursday links

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MJ and Michelle Smith devote this week’s Off the Shelf column to Fruits Basket, much to my delight:

MJ: I think it is pretty early on that the wacky transformations disappear, and by the time we’re getting around to discovering things like Kyo’s true form, if they’d still been happening I think they would have seriously damaged the story. Though some of the later, softer transformations are favorite moments for me. Pretty much every time Momiji hugs Tohru, it’s the sweetest thing in the world (even when it’s very sad), and Tohru’s reaction to Hatori’s transformation will always be hilarious and charming.

MICHELLE: Momiji’s hugs are indeed both adorable and heartbreaking. He just wants to hug her so bad, he doesn’t even care what will happen as a result. I think, though, that I probably prefer older Momiji, whose method of choice for breaking hearts is his sad smile.

CRYING BUNNY! CRYING BUNNY! Must… maintain… composure…

Michelle and MJalso use 3 Things Thursday to contemplate their favorite Fruits Basket characters. I support all of their choices, but I’m increasingly suspicious that MJand I were possibly separated at birth.

Going solo, Michelle reviews the final three volumes of the series at Soliloquy in Blue.

Sean Gaffney gives Fruits Basket fan extraordinaire Ysabet MacFarlane the keys to A Case Suitable for Treatment so she can ponder the relationship between Rin and Hiro:

As a reader, what I look for in a series is great characters, and Fruits Basket has them in spades. I’m generally happy to talk about any of them, including the few I dislike, but when I’m starting a conversation it almost always starts or ends with Rin, and usually has a lot to do with her relationship with one of the other characters.

Over at Manga Therapy, Tony Yao looks at Rin from another angle:

The fact that Rin was able to go through so much physical & emotional abuse from her parents (who faked their happiness around her when she was a child) & Akito and still comes out with a lot of determination says a lot about her.

Again, thanks to everyone who’s linked to or tweeted about this iteration of the Manga Moveable Feast! If you’ve got a link you’d like to share, email me at DavidPWelsh at Yahoo dot Com or post a link in the comments.

 

 

Fruits Basket MMF: Harry and Tom and Tohru and Akito

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While it’s never a bad time to consider Natsuki Takaya’s Fruits Basket (Tokyopop), the fact that this feast has fallen on the calendar shortly after the opening of the final movie in the Harry Potter series offers some other possibilities for thought. J.K. Rowling’s novels are at least partly about breaking traditional and abusive cycles, as is Fruits Basket. Rowling builds that around a rivalry between a naïve outsider (Harry) and the person who represents the worst extremes of a flawed system (Tom Riddle). Takaya does the same, positioning Tohru against Akito.

Tohru goes fairly quickly from knowing nothing about the curse to recognizing its profound destructiveness. This gives her something of an advantage over Harry, who takes roughly forever to consider the larger implications of his grudge with Voldermort. It could be argued that Tohru displays an improbable degree of altruism, and that argument isn’t automatically wrong, but most of Tohru’s qualities appear to an improbable degree – her maternal concern, her optimism, her faith in the essential goodness of others, and her belief that things and people can change for the better.

With a few exceptions, I found Tom Riddle to be a very boring antagonist. His behaviors were certainly frightening, but I very rarely recognized anything in his point of view. In this sense, Akito has the advantage as a “villain.” The leader of the Sohma family is certainly unpredictable, powerful, and frightening, but there’s a very evident level of emotional damage. Akito isn’t the progenitor of the cycle of abuse so much as just another partial victim of it.

This highlights another interesting contrast between the two properties. Harry may briefly feel stabs of sympathy for the young Tom Riddle when he learns of his circumstances, but that never translates to an attempt to save the adult Voldermort from himself or to stop him through reformation. As Rowling constructs things, that’s a ludicrous notion. It isn’t in Takaya’s narrative, and it’s entirely credible that, in spite of Akito’s cruelties, Tohru can see Akito as a victim in need of rescue.

There are other points of comparison. Like Harry, Tohru has some untrustworthy mentors. Shigure is a weird fusion of Severus Snape and Sirius Black. He manipulates Tohru for his own ends, but he cares for her as an individual, not unlike Dumbledore does with Harry. Those ends will benefit all, but Shigure has no way of knowing how Tohru will end up when his aims are met. Tohru’s allies sometimes find her as frustratingly naïve as Harry’s companions do him. And both Harry and Tohru are fixated on absent parents.

I couldn’t possibly pick a favorite of the two sagas. Fruits Basket has a more nuanced villain, but Harry Potter conducts a volume of world-building that’s almost impossible to match. Takaya really nails a lot of complex emotional truths, perhaps at the expense of chapter-by-chapter momentum. Rowling excels at building things to a crescendo, but she’ll blunt emotional nuance along the way. Basically, I’m just glad I live in a world where I can enjoy both of them, over and over.

 

Fruits Basket MMF: Wednesday links

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As I continue to examine the popularity-contest finalists, Sean (A Case Suitable for Treatment) Gaffney continues to delve into the Sohmas who inspire a mixed reaction. Today’s subject is snarky little smartypants Hiro:

A lot of characters get introductions in Fruits Basket that don’t show off their best side – Kyo, Kagura, Rin – but Hiro’s entire introductory chapter seems to be designed to get the audience to really take a dislike to him. Which is fine, only Takaya did not reckon on the power of Western fans to grab that first impression and encase it in amber, FOREVER. Hiro’s past, in comparison to the other Zodiac, is not as traumatic, he’s a male tsundere (which usually gets you a severe backlash in North America), and worst of all, he’s too young to be a sexy bishonen, and thus have all his sins forgiven because OH SO HOT. Therefore Hiro tends to get some flack.

I’m tempted to stretch out the feast just to inspire Sean to go through the whole Zodiac.

Again, thanks to everyone who’s linked to or tweeted about this iteration of the Manga Moveable Feast! If you’ve got a link you’d like to share, email me at DavidPWelsh at Yahoo dot Com or post a link in the comments.

 

Fruits Basket MMF: Poor old Yuki

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As I pondered this week’s Manga Moveable Feast, my thoughts naturally turned to poor old Yuki Sohma, one of the lead characters of Natsuki Takaya’s Fruits Basket (Tokyopop). I can’t help but think of him as “poor old Yuki,” even though he has as nice an outcome as just about anyone in the manga. So why is that?

Well, it’s partly Takaya’s fault. For roughly the first half of the series, Yuki is enmeshed in a fairly intense love triangle with his outcast cousin, Kyo, and Tohru, the good-hearted orphan who’s changing the family’s dark destiny. At the midway point of the series, it becomes clear to readers (and Yuki) that he’s out of the running in that particular contest.

Of course, Takaya loves her characters, no matter how vile they may be, and, since Yuki is about as far from vile as any Sohma gets, Takaya uses the remainder of the series to present a series of consolation prizes. Yuki isn’t really central to the breaking of the family curse, but he can live his life in ways that support the value of breaking that curse. As I mentioned in comments on a previous post, there are two subsets of anti-curse folk in Fruits Basket. There are the aggressive, special-ops types like Tohru, Rin, and Shigure who actually take steps to end the damned thing.

Then there’s the “lead by example” type, the “live your lives, go to Disneyland, buy a new car” breed, embodied by Yuki. He may suspect that the rest of his life will be dominated by Sohma sorrow, but for now, he’s going to live as much on his own terms as he can. This is perfectly admirable, though it removes Yuki from the most emotionally resonant part of the narrative. And it forces him into frequent contact with his school’s student council. I get the point of this group, I really do; they’re “real” people outside of the Sohma bubble who have things to teach Yuki. I don’t even dislike them, except for Kimi, who refers to herself in the third person and hence must be destroyed.

And when you learn about Yuki’s specific pain, you want him to keep walking and never look back, no matter how many Kimis he stumbles across along the way.

Now, just about everyone in the series aside from Tohru had parents, particularly mothers, who couldn’t hold it together. They were either too weak to deal with their children’s tragedies, or they were too craven to care. Yuki’s mother falls into the latter category, and, Ren excluded, she’s probably as horrible as a parent gets in Takaya’s fictional universe. The worst thing about her is that her values are the exact opposite of what her sons need to be happy.

But, as I said, Yuki doesn’t let that deter him from pursuing his own values, even in the face of romantic disappointment. It’s perhaps appropriate that he breaks the curse cycle in a number of meaningful ways before the curse itself concludes, because Yuki is the type to do things on his own. That’s poor old Yuki’s burden, but it’s also his strength.

 

Fruits Basket MMF: Tuesday links

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As I was contemplating the engrossing qualities of Momiji Sohma, Sean (A Case Suitable for Treatment) Gaffney was examining my other favorite member of that cursed clan, Shigure:

He’s the character I keep coming back to even now, the little thorn in the side of the entire storyline, trying to free people from the bonds they have with their God by cutting into their flesh until they squirm free in their agony. He’s a manipulator, and you’d swear he finds people’s emotional pain amusing. The anime, sadly, never got to the point in the story where this really comes out, so we mostly just see him there as the goofy ‘yay, high school girls!’ guy who occasionally gives Tohru sage advice. No one who finishes the manga is left with that impression.

And over at Manga Power, Aaron makes a point I can heartily second:

It’s examples like this that remind me why I read Manga when I’m feeling bummed out because I have had to suffer through some fan service harem nonsense or some blood drenched ultra violence or I find myself raging against the heavens as to why we got nine(!!) volumes of Black Bird. I pick this series up again and again my faith in Manga is restored.

Again, thanks to everyone who’s linked to or tweeted about this iteration of the Manga Moveable Feast! If you’ve got a link you’d like to share, email me at DavidPWelsh at Yahoo dot Com or post a link in the comments.

Fruits Basket MMF: The saddest Sohma

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Natsuki Takaya introduces a whole lot of Sohmas over the course of Fruits Basket (Tokyopop). They come in all different emotional flavors – vulnerable, secretive, courtly, angry, bubbly, bratty, withdrawn, demented, you name it. Takaya gives them all a chance to move the reader, and they all pretty much fulfill that promise. There is one, however, who almost always broke my heart, mostly because he was so damned sneaky about it.

Momiji Sohma represents the rabbit in the Chinese Zodiac. Instead of going with the animal’s timidity, Takaya gives Momiji the rabbit’s bounciness. He’s the oldest child of a Japanese father and a German mother, so his speech patterns can sometimes seem a little formal, even precious. He’s older than he appears, a quality he uses to the irritation of his male cousins. When we first meet him, he’s all hoppity and adorable, landing gleefully in Tohru’s loving, motherly embrace. Like most wise-beyond-their-years cutie pies, there’s something a little off about Momiji, something a little creepy.

Of course, every character in Fruits Basket is a little off, a little creepy. They have good reason to be. And while most of the narrative is dedicated to revealing those reasons, Momiji’s reveal is the first, best example of Takaya’s sucker punch. “You think you’re looking at something cute, something maybe even cuter because it’s a little bit sad? I will give you sad.”

So the fluffy little bunny not only witnessed his mother’s mental disintegration and purposeful abandonment, he subjects himself to reminders of it as often as he can. This isn’t because Momiji is a masochist; it’s because he’s an optimist. Like Tohru, he believes that things can be fixed and connections can be restored as surely as they can be broken and severed. It’s not for nothing that, when Tohru is threatened, Momiji is right there by her side. They’re kindred spirits, and they’re both tougher than their exteriors and sweet natures would suggest.

For me, Momiji is the character who best embodies the truest nature of Fruits Basket: pretty on the surface but almost unbearably damaged beneath that, yet still possessed of the resources to make things work out in the end. I love a lot of the Sohmas for their sadness and their strength, but Momiji is my very favorite.

 

Fruits Basket MMF: Monday links

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At Comic Attack, Kristin Bomba delivers a thoughtful look at the roles of Tohru Honda and Akito Sohma for the Fruits Basket Manga Moveable Feast:

I decided, rather than go all fangirl all over the place (which I could do, trust me, for HOURS), that I would take a more serious approach to the series. One of the things that really fascinated me about Fruits Basket was the relationship between Akito and Tohru, separately and together (meaning their literal relationship with each other, and how they otherwise affect each other throughout the story). While Tohru is very easy to read, Akito is a bit more complicated to understand.

Tons of ink has been spilled on compare-and-contrast between a certain boy wizard and another who apparently must not be named, and I think there’s a similar dynamic to be examined between Tohru and Akito, so thanks to Kristin for digging into that territory!

And thanks to everyone who’s thrown some links this way, like Johanna Draper Carlson of Manga Worth Reading, who has already contributed quite a bit to critical discourse on the subject of Fruits Basket.

Feel free to send me your own links via email to DavidPWelsh at Yahoo dot Com, or post them in the comments here. And thanks for reading!

 

Pick of the Week: Boys, Girls, & Ghosts

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It’s a slow but not quite dismal week at Midtown Comics. Check out the Manga Bookshelf bloggers’ picks below!

DAVID: It’s a narrow but interesting selection at Midtown Comics. In one of my experiments in crowd-sourcing, I ended up pre-ordering Kikuko Kihuya’s Entangled Circumstances, which will consequently earn my Pick of the Week status. I admit that I’m shallow enough that part of this was because I really found the cover design to be striking. It’s also about grown-ups with jobs, which makes my heart flutter, though the protagonists also share a past of some degree of awkwardness tracking back to their university days. I’m really just that easy to please, though: make it look nifty, and make your protagonists old enough to drink or sign a lease.

KATE: Them’s some slim pickings at Midtown Comics this week! But if I had to pick something from the list, I’d choose the sixth and final volume of Time and Again (Yen Press). I admit that I found the first few volumes a bumpy ride, as the script abounded in slangy phrases and anachronistic jokes that detracted from the spooky atmosphere. By volume three, however, author JiUn Yun had a better handle on the material, and the series began to evolve into something more interesting: a character study about a troubled young exorcist. The final volume explores the family curse that doomed Baek-On to a life of lonely wandering, allowing us to fully appreciate the origins of his prickly, detached personality. Oh, and that flashback? It’s a heck of a ghost story, too.

MICHELLE: You’re not kidding about the paucity of options on Midtown’s list! Still, like David, I find myself intrigued by the new batch of DMP releases. Entangled Circumstances has the prettiest cover, it’s true, but some of the others fare pretty well, too, like This Night’s Everything, which definitely doesn’t look like your typical BL. It also involves grown up with jobs—apparently a politician and his bodyguard who coldly handles dirty work—and sounds like it has potential to be an interesting story.

SEAN: I am going to rebel against the Midtown list, as they are apparently involved in some giant Kodansha boycott or something, and make my pick the thirtieth volume of Ken Akamatsu’s Negima!, which Diamond will be shipping to all non-Midtown stores this week. The manga has been in its ‘Magical World’ for about 10 volumes now, and things are finally getting to a big action-packed climax, which will take several volumes and is still ongoing as of this writing. This is the start of it, where Negi finds out the truth about his mother’s so-called treachery and the enemy makes their move against his students. Also, I believe this volume is low on fanservice, so it’s a great one to pick up if you dislike that aspect of it.

MJ: Since Kate’s already put the spotlight on what would have been my pick from Midtown, the final volume of JiUn Yun’s Time and Again, I’ll follow Sean’s lead and go rebel against the list by naming volume eleven of Peach Pit’s Shugo Chara! from Kodansha Comics, which by all appearances should be arriving this week, but isn’t. Shugo Chara! is a long-time favorite of mine, thanks to its feisty, deeply-conflicted heroine, her idiosyncratic team of friends, heart-pounding tween-fantasy romance, adorable artwork, and identity-searching themes that resonate more personally with this forty-something reader than they probably should. This is the final volume of the original series, with volume 12 picking up the published chapters of its sequel, Shugo Chara! Encore!, thankfully continued by Kodansha Comics after being pulled from Del Rey Manga. So if you’ve never tried this thoughtful magical-girl series, this is the time to start!

Readers, what looks good to you this week?