Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Katherine Dacey

Hetalia: Axis Powers, Vol. 1

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To say that Hetalia: Axis Powers has a devoted fanbase is like saying that Cookie Monster is partial to Oreos; it’s the kind of series that inspires fans to write their own Hetalia stories by the truckload (there are over 14,000 posted at FanFiction.net), dress up as their favorite countries, and debate the virtues of various characters with quasi-religious intensity.

Part of Hetalia‘s appeal lies with the artwork: manga-ka Hidekaz Himeyura populates his stories with cute, attractive young men in lavishly detailed military costumes that are tailor-made for cosplay. The other part of Hetalia‘s appeal lies with its cheerfully subversive premise: all the major participants in World War II are represented as petulant bishies whose behavior mimics the way these countries interacted in the 1930s, and whose personalities conform to well-rehearsed national stereotypes. Whether or not you cotton to Hetalia will depend largely on whether you find the underlying concept a stellar example of the Japanese ability to kawaii-ify anything or proof that Japan’s younger generation doesn’t grasp just how terrible World War II really was.

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Hetalia: Axis Powers, Vol. 1

by

To say that Hetalia: Axis Powers has a devoted fanbase is like saying that Cookie Monster is partial to Oreos; it’s the kind of series that inspires fans to write their own Hetalia stories by the truckload (there are over 14,000 posted at FanFiction.net), dress up as their favorite countries, and debate the virtues of various characters with quasi-religious intensity.

Part of Hetalia‘s appeal lies with the artwork: manga-ka Hidekaz Himeyura populates his stories with cute, attractive young men in lavishly detailed military costumes that are tailor-made for cosplay. The other part of Hetalia‘s appeal lies with its cheerfully subversive premise: all the major participants in World War II are represented as petulant bishies whose behavior mimics the way these countries interacted in the 1930s, and whose personalities conform to well-rehearsed national stereotypes. Whether or not you cotton to Hetalia will depend largely on whether you find the underlying concept a stellar example of the Japanese ability to kawaii-ify anything or proof that Japan’s younger generation doesn’t grasp just how terrible World War II really was.

I fall somewhere in the middle of the continuum: I’m not offended by Hetalia, but I’m not amused, either. Himaruya has certainly done his homework, seeding the dialogue with salacious historical tidbits and inserting flashbacks to major European wars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, yet he never challenges the basic stereotypes that guide all the characterizations: Japan is prissy and horrified by European cuisine, England views America as his ill-behaved offspring, America loves hamburgers and talks with his mouth full, Germany is efficient and belligerent, and Northern Italy adores pasta and shirks responsibility. The endless stream of nationality-as-destiny jokes grows tiresome quickly; imagine spending an afternoon with someone who insists on referring to the French as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” every time you mention a recent trip to Paris, and you have some idea of how stale the better gags become on their third or tenth repetition.

From time to time, Himaruya inserts the kind of pointed, tasteless joke that suggests at true subversion. In one scene, for example, Germany finds himself at a supermarket check-out, fuming because Korea is holding up the line, demanding reparations and an apology for how he’s been treated. A more skilled writer could have done something with this moment, perhaps using it as a jumping off point for exploring the complicated relationship between Japan and Korea. Instead, Himaruya treats this moment as just another wacky example of a country behaving according to national character, as if Korea’s legitimate protests over Japanese occupation were akin to Italians loving red wine or Russians placing ineffectual curses on their enemies. I’m mildly horrified to contemplate how Himaruya will treat German anti-Semitism — a personal quirk?

Which brings me to my biggest criticism of Hetalia: Axis Powers: there’s a strong whiff of pointlessness about the whole enterprise. Himaruya goes to great pains to get the history right, but it’s never clear what the series’ underlying message really is; why depict one of the ugliest, most brutal periods in human history as a cute, interpersonal drama if you’re not trying to make some greater point about the folly of international alliances, or the dangers of aggressive nationalism? I have no doubt that Trey Parker and Matt Stone could run with the Hetalia premise and turn it into something genuinely funny, rude, and intelligent, but Himaruya just doesn’t have the historical insight or the courage to do much with the material except make all the participants look very pretty.

Review copy provided by Tokyopop. Volume one of Hetalia: Axis Powers will be released on September 21, 2010.

HETALIA: AXIS POWERS, VOL. 1 • BY HIDEKAZ HIMARUYA • TOKYOPOP • 152 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Toto! The Wonderful Adventure, Vols. 1-5

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If you’ve ever been to Canal Street in New York City — the Counterfeit Capital of North America — you know that there are two types of goods for sale there. The first are inept knock-offs: the “Cooch” purse with plastic handles, the “Rollex” with cubic zirconia insets and a flimsy metal band. The second are just as fake as the first, but are executed with enough panache that style-conscious women get a secret thrill in owning them: the plastic “Birkin” bag that looks like the real thing but costs $30, the canvas “Louis Vuitton” wallet that comes in prettier colors than the original.

The same principles apply to manga as well: there are series which shamelessly imitate a best-selling title like Dragonball or InuYasha, rehearsing the same plot without capturing the original’s charm, and there are copycats which bear a strong resemblance to the original but nonetheless work well on their own terms. Toto! The Wonderful Adventure falls into the latter category, a good-natured rip-off of One Piece and Rave Master that accomplishes in five volumes what many shonen series need twenty or thirty to pull off.

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Toto! The Wonderful Adventure, Vols. 1-5

by

If you’ve ever been to Canal Street in New York City — the Counterfeit Capital of North America — you know that there are two types of goods for sale there. The first are inept knock-offs: the “Cooch” purse with plastic handles, the “Rollex” with cubic zirconia insets and a flimsy metal band. The second are just as fake as the first, but are executed with enough panache that style-conscious women get a secret thrill in owning them: the plastic “Birkin” bag that looks like the real thing but costs $30, the canvas “Louis Vuitton” wallet that comes in prettier colors than the original.

The same principles apply to manga as well: there are series which shamelessly imitate a best-selling title like Dragonball or InuYasha, rehearsing the same plot without capturing the original’s charm, and there are copycats which bear a strong resemblance to the original but nonetheless work well on their own terms. Toto! The Wonderful Adventure falls into the latter category, a good-natured rip-off of One Piece and Rave Master that accomplishes in five volumes what many shonen series need twenty or thirty to pull off.

As one might guess from the title, Yuko Osada dresses up his swashbuckling treasure hunt with frequent allusions to Frank L. Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The hero, Kakashi (literally, “scarecrow”), is an orphan who dreams of leaving his small island home for grand adventures, but lacks the brains to realize his ambition. When a zeppelin makes an unscheduled stop on the island, he stows away, thus beginning an odyssey that loosely mirrors the plot of Baum’s novel. Kakashi finds a puppy in the ship’s cargo hold, then meets a feisty teen named Dorothy who attends St. Kansas Academy, practices “tornado” senjutsu (a martial art involving spinning kicks), and plans to visit Emerald City. As Kakashi and Dorothy follow the Yellow Brick Road — here played by an old railway line — they acquire traveling companions, each modeled on one of Baum’s iconic characters: Noil, a kind but cowardly soldier who aspires to be a comedian; Dam, a big, blustering army officer with a metal arm; and Paisley, the Northern Investigator for the W.I.T.C.H. organization.

Central to the story is the relationship between Kakashi and Toto, the puppy he rescues in volume one. Though Toto initially appears benign, he has a big secret: his collar grants him the kind of amazing, destructive powers that make him of special interest to the military. It doesn’t take long before Kakashi and Dorothy find the Western army bearing down on them, anxious to reclaim their lost weapon.

Though the story’s Oz jokes add novelty value, Toto! barks like a typical wacky shonen adventure, with lengthy set-pieces that follow the same basic formula: Kakashi et al. arrive in a town, befriend one of the locals, and narrowly evade capture by the army. Some of these story arcs are genuinely delightful; in volumes two and three, for example, Kakashi and Dorothy stumble into the once-glorious Dego City, a former railroad hub that’s been stripped bare by the Imperial Army in its never-ending quest for scrap metal. The heroes’ getaway is executed with a perfect mixture of suspense and humor, culminating in a scene that Miyazaki would be proud to include in one of his films. Other storylines feel more labored. In volumes four and five, for example, Kakashi and friends get swept up in a feud between rival gangs: Alice and the Wonder Family in one camp, the Uchiyaka (literally, “rabbit gun”) in the other. Osada piles on the Lewis Carroll references, double- and triple-crosses, and crazy shoot-outs, but the frenzied pace and frequent jump cuts render these chapters almost incoherent.

At times, Osada’s dogged capitulation to shonen formula invites not-so-flattering comparisons between Toto! and more popular series. He populates his story with a dim but determined hero (with a dead explorer father, no less), a feisty female sidekick, a comic-relief character with an outsized Afro, and a posse of villains-turned-allies — in this case, a group of sky pirates called the Man Chicken Family. Osada even provides a complex mythology to explain Toto’s power — something involving twelve directions and twelve “accessories” — that feels like a complete afterthought, an editor’s attempt to make Toto! behave more like One Piece or Rave Master.

Yet for all Kakashi’s earnest declarations about “family” and “adventure,” and all the wacky villains, epic battles, and amazing artifacts pilfered from One Piece and Rave Master, Toto! has undeniable charm. The characters have great rapport, for one thing; though their interactions follow the standard shonen model of friendly antagonism, their obvious loyalty to and affection for one another is contagious. The girls are on equal footing with the boys, for another; Dorothy and Paisley prove stalwart and resourceful, getting significant butt-kicking turns in the spotlight. The art is terrific, too; Osada’s crisp linework and vivid caricatures evoke Eiichiro Oda and Hiro Mashima’s styles without feeling slavishly derivative of either.

Best of all, Toto! is brief. By the time the series concludes, Kakashi has realized his life’s greatest goal: to see the world with friends. It’s not clear whether volume five was intended to be the final installment, or if the editors at Weekly Shonen Magazine canceled it prematurely; either way, Toto! The Wonderful Adventure is proof that a hero’s journey from ignorance to enlightenment needn’t take fifty volumes to convincingly achieve.

TOTO! THE WONDERFUL ADVENTURE, VOLS. 1-5 • BY YUKO OSADA • DEL REY • RATING: TEEN (13+)

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation

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Modern governments from the Bolshevik regime to the Bush presidency have sought simple, appealing ways to present complex information to their citizens, from “Red Pinkerton” novels (think politically correct Communist detective stories) to televised public service announcements. Ernie Colon and Sid Jacobson’s The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation is one such effort, produced with the full cooperation of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The goal: to summarize the Commission’s findings in a concise, visually arresting format that would appeal to readers reluctant to tackle the full 500-page document. Unfortunately, the final product falls well short of the mark, offering a dense, confusing gloss on the Commission’s work that I found harder to read than the actual prose report.

One can’t fault Colon and Jacobson for their fidelity to the original material. Their book follows the report closely, down to the chapters and subheadings, and uses the Commission’s own words to explain the events that precipitated the 9/11 attacks. In their efforts to mimic the structure of the original document, however, Colon and Jacobson seldom find the right balance between text and image; most of the artwork feels more like an afterthought than a clarification of the prose. More frustrating is the book’s choppy visual flow; Colon and Jacobson’s panel placement often seems poorly chosen, making it difficult to read the images and text boxes in the correct sequence.

The artwork, too, is a disappointment, an eclectic assortment of traced elements, computer-generated graphics, maps, photo-realistic drawings, and Silver Age character designs that never mesh into a seamless whole. (It’s particularly odd to see some real-life figures get the cartoon treatment, while others are rendered in a naturalistic fashion; as depicted in The 9/11 Report, Condolezza Rice bears a striking resemblance to Lucy van Pelt.) Though Colon and Jacobson generally avoid visual stereotyping, there are a few unfortunate images sprinkled throughout the book. On page 115, for example, there’s a chart outlining strategies for combating Muslim extremism in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The chart is embellished with several images of hook-nosed, squinty-eyed, turban-wearing terrorists, one of whom grins menacingly at the reader, rocket launcher perched on his shoulder; surely the problem of global terrorism deserves a more sophisticated treatment than cartoonish, racist typecasting.

The most effective section of The 9/11 Report is the very beginning, in which Colon and Jacobson meticulously recreate the morning of September 11, 2001. They present the sequence of events twice, first depicting what happened aboard the four hijacked airplanes, then reconstructing the official response to these same events, documenting the jurisdictional confusion and poor communication that prevented the government from taking more decisive action. Both passages consist of four horizontal timelines that allow the reader to see, at a glance, what was happening aboard all four planes on a minute-to-minute basis. (In the hardbound edition, these timelines are printed on a single piece of paper which readers can unfold to view the entire sequence of events.) Here, the comics medium seems uniquely suited to showing these events simultaneously, giving the reader a much better appreciation of just how quickly the day’s events unfolded, and how difficult it was for anyone — military commanders, aviation authorities, police and fire officials — to know how to proceed.

It’s a shame that the rest of The 9/11 Report doesn’t utilize the format as effectively as these early pages, where image and text function as co-equal partners. Whatever the flaws of the original report — and, depending on your political inclinations, those flaws are either minor factual errors or egregious omissions of evidence implicating the CIA in bringing down the World Trade Center — it is a more effective, compelling narrative than the one Colon and Jacobson fashioned from it.

THE 9/11 REPORT: A GRAPHIC ADAPTATION • BY SID JACOBSON AND ERNIE COLON, BASED UPON THE FINAL REPORT OF THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES • HILL & WANG • 134 pp.

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation

by

Modern governments from the Bolshevik regime to the Bush presidency have sought simple, appealing ways to present complex information to their citizens, from “Red Pinkerton” novels (think politically correct Communist detective stories) to televised public service announcements. Ernie Colon and Sid Jacobson’s The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation is one such effort, produced with the full cooperation of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The goal: to summarize the Commission’s findings in a concise, visually arresting format that would appeal to readers reluctant to tackle the full 500-page document. Unfortunately, the final product falls well short of the mark, offering a dense, confusing gloss on the Commission’s work that I found harder to read than the actual prose report.

One can’t fault Colon and Jacobson for their fidelity to the original material. Their book follows the report closely, down to the chapters and subheadings, and uses the Commission’s own words to explain the events that precipitated the 9/11 attacks. In their efforts to mimic the structure of the original document, however, Colon and Jacobson seldom find the right balance between text and image; most of the artwork feels more like an afterthought than a clarification of the prose. More frustrating is the book’s choppy visual flow; Colon and Jacobson’s panel placement often seems poorly chosen, making it difficult to read the images and text boxes in the correct sequence.

The artwork, too, is a disappointment, an eclectic assortment of traced elements, computer-generated graphics, maps, photo-realistic drawings, and Silver Age character designs that never mesh into a seamless whole. (It’s particularly odd to see some real-life figures get the cartoon treatment, while others are rendered in a naturalistic fashion; as depicted in The 9/11 Report, Condolezza Rice bears a striking resemblance to Lucy van Pelt.) Though Colon and Jacobson generally avoid visual stereotyping, there are a few unfortunate images sprinkled throughout the book. On page 115, for example, there’s a chart outlining strategies for combating Muslim extremism in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The chart is embellished with several images of hook-nosed, squinty-eyed, turban-wearing terrorists, one of whom grins menacingly at the reader, rocket launcher perched on his shoulder; surely the problem of global terrorism deserves a more sophisticated treatment than cartoonish, racist typecasting.

The most effective section of The 9/11 Report is the very beginning, in which Colon and Jacobson meticulously recreate the morning of September 11, 2001. They present the sequence of events twice, first depicting what happened aboard the four hijacked airplanes, then reconstructing the official response to these same events, documenting the jurisdictional confusion and poor communication that prevented the government from taking more decisive action. Both passages consist of four horizontal timelines that allow the reader to see, at a glance, what was happening aboard all four planes on a minute-to-minute basis. (In the hardbound edition, these timelines are printed on a single piece of paper which readers can unfold to view the entire sequence of events.) Here, the comics medium seems uniquely suited to showing these events simultaneously, giving the reader a much better appreciation of just how quickly the day’s events unfolded, and how difficult it was for anyone — military commanders, aviation authorities, police and fire officials — to know how to proceed.

It’s a shame that the rest of The 9/11 Report doesn’t utilize the format as effectively as these early pages, where image and text function as co-equal partners. Whatever the flaws of the original report — and, depending on your political inclinations, those flaws are either minor factual errors or egregious omissions of evidence implicating the CIA in bringing down the World Trade Center — it is a more effective, compelling narrative than the one Colon and Jacobson fashioned from it.

THE 9/11 REPORT: A GRAPHIC ADAPTATION • BY SID JACOBSON AND ERNIE COLON, BASED UPON THE FINAL REPORT OF THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES • HILL & WANG • 134 pp.

Black Blizzard

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First published in 1956, Black Blizzard is a juicy pulp thriller that will irresistibly remind Western readers of The 39 Steps, The Defiant Ones, and The Fugitive. The hero is twenty-five-year-old Susumu Yamaji, a down-on-his-luck pianist who stands accused of murdering the ringmaster of a traveling circus. The circumstantial evidence against him is so compelling that even Susumu — who was in a drunken stupor at the time — believes he did it. After surrendering to authorities, Susumu is handcuffed to hardened criminal Shinpei Konta, a middle-aged man who’s spent most of his adult life drifting in and out of jail. (When Susumu admits to his crime, Shinpei sniffs, “Just one? Tch! That’s nothing! I’ve been convicted five times. Twice for murder.”) An avalanche provides the shackled pair an opportunity to escape into a raging snowstorm, police hot on their trail.

Written in just twenty days, Black Blizzard unfolds at a furious clip, pausing only to allow Susumu a chance to tell Shinpei about his involvement with the circus. The two principals are more archetypes than characters, drawn in bold strokes, but the interaction between them crackles with antagonistic energy — they’re as much enemies as partners, roles that they constantly renegotiate during their time on the lam. Only in the final, rushed pages does manga-ka Yoshihiro Tatsumi falter, tidily resolving the story through an all-too-convenient plot twist that hinges on coincidence.

The plot may be pilfered from Manhunt — Tatsumi claims Mickey Spillane as an influence — but the art leaves a fresh impression. Tatsumi already had a substantial amount of work under his belt at the time he wrote Blizzard — seventeen novel-length stories, as well as several volumes’ worth of short ones — but was moving in the direction of what he called “manga that isn’t manga,” stories that exploited the medium’s capacity for representing action in a more dynamic, cinematic fashion. Black Blizzard is filled with slashing diagonal lines, dramatic camera angles, and images of speeding trains; it’s as if Giacomo Balla decided to try his hand at sequential art, filling the pages with as many signifiers of motion as he could muster without lapsing into abstraction:

This kineticism extends to even the smallest gestures; in the very first panels, for example, we see a pair of hands banging out notes on a keyboard:

The composition couldn’t be simpler — just a few speedlines and sound effects convey the action — but these details, when coupled with the claw-like position of the hands, suggest the pianist’s extreme agitation, an impression confirmed just a few panels later when we first see Susumu’s sweat-drenched face.

Tatsumi’s regard for anatomy is, at times, careless; Susumu has Rachmaninoff-sized mitts, to judge from the awkward way in which his hands are drawn, while other cast members look stumpy, with grossly foreshortened legs. Yet for all the obvious flaws in his draftmanship, Tatsumi’s gestural approach to characterization proves well-suited to the material’s relentless pace, efficiently communicating each cast member’s personality, age, and plot function with a few artfully rendered lines and shapes. Shinpei, in particular, is a terrific creation, with a broad, sagging jaw and two thick, diagonal lines for eyebrows, making him a dead ringer for a jack-o-lantern.

Drawn & Quarterly has done a fine job of adapting Black Blizzard for Western readers, thanks, in large part, to a crisp translation by Akemi Wegmuller that captures the unique cadences of mid-century noir; one can almost imagine Shinpei referring to an attractive woman as a “tomato.” The volume also includes an interview with Tatsumi; read in tandem with “The Joy of Creation,” one of the later chapters in A Drifting Life, the interview sheds light on Tatsumi’s creative process as well as the work’s initial reception. Editor and designer Adrian Tomine has given Black Blizzard a retro-chic makeover, dying the trim yellow and boldly announcing the book’s price in the manner of a dime-store novel. It’s an attractive design (see above), but I can’t help wishing that Drawn and Quarterly had used Masami Kuroda’s original painting:

It’s a minor complaint, to be sure, but the original cover — to my mind, at least — is a closer expression of the story’s pulpy roots and futurism-tinged artwork.

That said, Black Blizzard is a welcome addition to the growing body of mid-century manga now available in English, providing an all-too-rare glimpse into the early stages of the gekiga movement. And while it lacks the visual and narrative polish of Tatsumi’s mature work, I’ll take the sweaty hyperbole of Black Blizzard over the dour verismo of The Push Man any day; Black Blizzard has a vital, improvisatory energy missing from Tatsumi’s later period, even though his command of the medium was clearly more assured in the 1960s and 1970s.

BLACK BLIZZARD • BY YOSHIHIRO TATSUMI • DRAWN & QUARTERLY • 132 pp. • NO RATING

Black Blizzard

by

First published in 1956, Black Blizzard is a juicy pulp thriller that will irresistibly remind Western readers of The 39 Steps, The Defiant Ones, and The Fugitive. The hero is twenty-five-year-old Susumu Yamaji, a down-on-his-luck pianist who stands accused of murdering the ringmaster of a traveling circus. The circumstantial evidence against him is so compelling that even Susumu — who was in a drunken stupor at the time — believes he did it. After surrendering to authorities, Susumu is handcuffed to hardened criminal Shinpei Konta, a middle-aged man who’s spent most of his adult life drifting in and out of jail. (When Susumu admits to his crime, Shinpei sniffs, “Just one? Tch! That’s nothing! I’ve been convicted five times. Twice for murder.”) An avalanche provides the shackled pair an opportunity to escape into a raging snowstorm, police hot on their trail.

Written in just twenty days, Black Blizzard unfolds at a furious clip, pausing only to allow Susumu a chance to tell Shinpei about his involvement with the circus. The two principals are more archetypes than characters, drawn in bold strokes, but the interaction between them crackles with antagonistic energy — they’re as much enemies as partners, roles that they constantly renegotiate during their time on the lam. Only in the final, rushed pages does manga-ka Yoshihiro Tatsumi falter, tidily resolving the story through an all-too-convenient plot twist that hinges on coincidence.

The plot may be pilfered from Manhunt — Tatsumi claims Mickey Spillane as an influence — but the art leaves a fresh impression. Tatsumi already had a substantial amount of work under his belt at the time he wrote Blizzard — seventeen novel-length stories, as well as several volumes’ worth of short ones — but was moving in the direction of what he called “manga that isn’t manga,” stories that exploited the medium’s capacity for representing action in a more dynamic, cinematic fashion. Black Blizzard is filled with slashing diagonal lines, dramatic camera angles, and images of speeding trains; it’s as if Giacomo Balla decided to try his hand at sequential art, filling the pages with as many signifiers of motion as he could muster without lapsing into abstraction:

This kineticism extends to even the smallest gestures; in the very first panels, for example, we see a pair of hands banging out notes on a keyboard:

The composition couldn’t be simpler — just a few speedlines and sound effects convey the action — but these details, when coupled with the claw-like position of the hands, suggest the pianist’s extreme agitation, an impression confirmed just a few panels later when we first see Susumu’s sweat-drenched face.

Tatsumi’s regard for anatomy is, at times, careless; Susumu has Rachmaninoff-sized mitts, to judge from the awkward way in which his hands are drawn, while other cast members look stumpy, with grossly foreshortened legs. Yet for all the obvious flaws in his draftmanship, Tatsumi’s gestural approach to characterization proves well-suited to the material’s relentless pace, efficiently communicating each cast member’s personality, age, and plot function with a few artfully rendered lines and shapes. Shinpei, in particular, is a terrific creation, with a broad, sagging jaw and two thick, diagonal lines for eyebrows, making him a dead ringer for a jack-o-lantern.

Drawn & Quarterly has done a fine job of adapting Black Blizzard for Western readers, thanks, in large part, to a crisp translation by Akemi Wegmuller that captures the unique cadences of mid-century noir; one can almost imagine Shinpei referring to an attractive woman as a “tomato.” The volume also includes an interview with Tatsumi; read in tandem with “The Joy of Creation,” one of the later chapters in A Drifting Life, the interview sheds light on Tatsumi’s creative process as well as the work’s initial reception. Editor and designer Adrian Tomine has given Black Blizzard a retro-chic makeover, dying the trim yellow and boldly announcing the book’s price in the manner of a dime-store novel. It’s an attractive design (see above), but I can’t help wishing that Drawn and Quarterly had used Masami Kuroda’s original painting:

It’s a minor complaint, to be sure, but the original cover — to my mind, at least — is a closer expression of the story’s pulpy roots and futurism-tinged artwork.

That said, Black Blizzard is a welcome addition to the growing body of mid-century manga now available in English, providing an all-too-rare glimpse into the early stages of the gekiga movement. And while it lacks the visual and narrative polish of Tatsumi’s mature work, I’ll take the sweaty hyperbole of Black Blizzard over the dour verismo of The Push Man any day; Black Blizzard has a vital, improvisatory energy missing from Tatsumi’s later period, even though his command of the medium was clearly more assured in the 1960s and 1970s.

BLACK BLIZZARD • BY YOSHIHIRO TATSUMI • DRAWN & QUARTERLY • 132 pp. • NO RATING

Short Takes: The Art of Osamu Tezuka and Korea As Viewed by 12 Creators

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I’m taking a break from shojo romances and seinen shoot-em-ups in favor of two books aimed squarely at older comics connoisseurs. The first is Helen McCarthy’s The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga (Abrams Comics), an award-winning biography of Japan’s best-known manga-ka. (Her book just nabbed a Harvey in the Best American Edition of Foreign Material category, a category normally reserved for translated comics such as Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s Abandon the Old in Tokyo.) The second is Korea As Viewed by 12 Creators (Fanfare/Ponent Mon), a much-anticipated follow-up to the critically acclaimed anthology Japan As Viewed By 17 Creators. Which ones deserve a place on your bookshelf? Read on for details.

THE ART OF OSAMU TEZUKA: GOD OF MANGA

BY HELEN MCCARTHY • ABRAMS COMIC ART • 272 pp.

In the introduction to The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga, author Helen McCarthy argues that Tezuka’s work merits scholarly attention, but also deserves a more accessible treatment as well, one that acknowledges that Tezuka “was first and foremost a maker of popular entertainment.” Her desire to bring Tezuka’s work to a wider audience of anime and manga fans is reflected in every aspect of the book’s execution, from its organization — she divides her chapters into short, one-to-three page subsections, each generously illustrated with full-color plates — to its coffee-table book packaging.

As one might expect from such an ambitious undertaking, the results are a little uneven. The strongest chapters focus on the unique aspects of Tezuka’s work, exploring a variety of creative issues in straightforward, jargon-free language. McCarthy provides a helpful overview of Tezuka’s “star system” (a.k.a. recurring figures such as Acetylene Lamp and Zephyrus) and traces the evolution of his storytelling technique through dozens of series, debunking the notion that he “invented” cinematic comics while carefully spelling out what was innovative about his manga. McCarthy also makes a persuasive case for Astro Boy as one of the most important works in the Tezuka canon, the series that most clearly anticipated his mature style.

As a biography, however, The Art of Osamu Tezuka offers little insight into Tezuka’s personality beyond his relentless perfectionism and strong work ethic. McCarthy’s attempts to situate Tezuka’s work within the context of his life and times feel glib — a pity, as she makes some thought-provoking observations about Tezuka’s recurring use of certain motifs — especially androgyny, childhood, and disguise — that beg further elucidation.

That said, The Art of Osamu Tezuka largely succeeds in its mission to educate fans about Tezuka’s work process and artistic legacy, clarifying his place in Japanese popular culture, exploring his animated oeuvre, and introducing readers to dozens of untranslated — and sometimes obscure — series. A worthwhile addition to any serious manga reader’s library.

KOREA AS VIEWED BY 12 CREATORS

VARIOUS ARTISTS, EDITED BY NICOLAS FINET • FANFARE/PONENT MON • 222 pp. • NO RATING

This anthology of twelve short stories, six by Korean artists and six by French, follows the same basic template as Japan As Viewed by 17 Creators, offering brief, impressionistic scenes of contemporary Korean life. Though 17 Creators is a uniformly excellent work, its companion volume is not; the stories run the gamut from pedestrian to brilliant, with the Korean artists making the strongest contributions.

The unevenness of the collection is attributable, in part, to a home field advantage. Artists such as Choi Kyu-sok and Byun Ki-hyun tackle deeper, more penetrating topics than their French counterparts, exploring homelessness (“The Fake Dove”), sexual discrimination and violence (“The Rabbit”), and the decay of traditional social networks (“The Rain That Goes Away Comes Back”). Though the artists’ ambition sometimes outstrips their allocated space, all three stories boast beautiful, detailed artwork that suggests the rhythm and feeling of modern urban life. The French contributions, by contrast, are travelogues of one sort or another: in “Beondegi,” for example, Mathieu Sapin imagines what it would be like for a French-Korean woman to return to her parents’ home country, while in “Letters From Korea,” Igort offers brief descriptions of places he visited in Seoul. The weakest of the collection is Catel’s “Dul Lucie,” an uneventful travel diary filled with observations about “doll-like” and “sensual” Koreans that — in English, at least — leave a bad aftertaste of exoticism. Though the other French artists are not as patronizing, the stories feel shallow; imagine an essay about New York City written by someone who only visited Times Square, and you have some idea of how superficial these artists’ appreciation of Korea seems to be.

Two stories make this collection a worthwhile investment. The first is “Solgeo’s Tree,” by Lee Doo-hoo, in which a monk paints a mural so life-like that birds attempt to perch in its branches. Told with almost no dialogue, the story relies heavily on Lee’s exquisite pen-and-ink drawings to impart its Buddhist moral. The second is “A Rat in the Country of Yong,” Herve Tanquerelle’s playful, wordless story about a mouse visiting Seoul. The surrealistic imagery — skies full of dragon transports, streets filled with animal-eared people, pools inhabited by monstrous carp — and Chaplin-esque physical comedy evoke the strangeness and excitement of visiting a new city without falling into the trap of essentializing its people. Both comics attest to the vitality and richness of the “as viewed by” concept, and suggest what might have emerged from this sometimes insightful, sometimes banal French-Korean collaboration.

The Art of Osamu Tezuka

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In the introduction to The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga, author Helen McCarthy argues that Tezuka’s work merits scholarly attention, but also deserves a more accessible treatment as well, one that acknowledges that Tezuka “was first and foremost a maker of popular entertainment.” Her desire to bring Tezuka’s work to a wider audience of anime and manga fans is reflected in every aspect of the book’s execution, from its organization — she divides her chapters into short, one-to-three page subsections, each generously illustrated with full-color plates — to its coffee-table book packaging.

As one might expect from such an ambitious undertaking, the results are a little uneven. The strongest chapters focus on the unique aspects of Tezuka’s work, exploring a variety of creative issues in straightforward, jargon-free language. McCarthy provides a helpful overview of Tezuka’s “star system” (a.k.a. recurring figures such as Acetylene Lamp and Zephyrus) and traces the evolution of his storytelling technique through dozens of series, debunking the notion that he “invented” cinematic comics while carefully spelling out what was innovative about his manga. McCarthy also makes a persuasive case for Astro Boy as one of the most important works in the Tezuka canon, the series that most clearly anticipated his mature style.

As a biography, however, The Art of Osamu Tezuka offers little insight into Tezuka’s personality beyond his relentless perfectionism and strong work ethic. McCarthy’s attempts to situate Tezuka’s work within the context of his life and times feel glib — a pity, as she makes some thought-provoking observations about Tezuka’s recurring use of certain motifs — especially androgyny, childhood, and disguise — that beg further elucidation.

That said, The Art of Osamu Tezuka largely succeeds in its mission to educate fans about Tezuka’s work process and artistic legacy, clarifying his place in Japanese popular culture, exploring his animated oeuvre, and introducing readers to dozens of untranslated — and sometimes obscure — series. A worthwhile addition to any serious manga reader’s library.

The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga
By Helen McCarthy
Abrams Comic Art, 272 pp.

Harmony

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In 2009, VIZ launched its Haikasoru imprint with the goal of bringing Japan’s best speculative fiction to the US. Haikasoru’s debut titles — All You Need Is Kill and The Lord of the Sands of Time — introduced Americans to two award-winning sci-fi authors whose work had previously been unavailable in English. As the line as grown, so, too, has the diversity of its offerings, which run the gamut from horror to teen-friendly fantasy and science fiction. Harmony, the newest Haikasoru title, falls on the softer end of the sci-fi continuum, depicting a world in which “admedistrative” societies are the new empire-builders.

Harmony takes place in the late twenty-first century, fifty years after a nuclear holocaust destroys North America. Countries which successfully developed a cure for radiation sickness have supplanted the old superpowers, while less scientifically advanced societies have descended into a perpetual state of guerilla warfare. Keeping the peace is the World Health Organization (WHO), which is tasked with monitoring world’s well-being. Their mission sounds benign, but WHO’s “peacekeeping” efforts smack of Big Brother: they use WatchMe, an elaborate system that keeps tabs on what people eat, do, and say while providing the government a steady stream of data about a person’s medical condition.

Harmony is told through the point of view of Tuan Kirie, a twenty-eight-year-old WHO agent tasked with solving the mystery behind an “outbreak” of suicide — an action that, in theory, should be impossible under the WatchMe system. Tuan is an appealing narrator, at once tough and funny, a natural contrarian who smokes and drinks and defies authority yet nonetheless treats her mission with the utmost seriousness. The story moves fluidly between past and present, using Tuan’s childhood memories to shed light on her conflicted, often subversive, behavior.

Until the third act, the pacing is brisk and the dialogue crisp. As Tuan draws closer to finding out what prompted the wave of suicides, however, the story begins to sag under the weight of turgid conversations about free will and psychology, a flaw that the frequent changes of setting can’t conceal. It’s a shame these discussions are so pedestrian, as author Keikaku “Project” Itoh has devised a nifty set-up for examining the boundaries between public and private life, imagining a world in which the government’s desire to collect data and enforce civility goes well beyond speech, belief, and association — all manifestations of conscious thought — to the level of neural transmissions and body chemistry. Though Tuan yearns for the physical and social freedom less technologically advanced societies enjoy, the persistence of armed conflict in the developing world is a potent reminder of why so many people willingly submit to the benevolent totalitarianism of the WatchMe system.

VIZ has done an excellent job of adapting Harmony for English-speaking audiences. Translator Alexander O. Smith, in particular, deserves praise for the smooth, idiomatic voicing of Tuan’s thoughts in language that captures the heroine’s fierce personality. Smith also navigates passages of scientific shoptalk and historical description with ease, producing a highly readable text that lacks any of the tell-tale signs of translation: awkward turns of phrase, confusing use of pronouns.

Aside from a few third-act hiccups, Harmony is a solidly entertaining book, offering a judicious mixture of globe-trotting action, social commentary, and suspense to engage all but the hardest science fiction fans, and a surprise ending that neatly resolves the main plot while raising new, thought-provoking questions. Recommended.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

HARMONY • BY PROJECT ITOH, TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER O. SMITH • VIZ • 252 pp.

Harmony

by

VIZ launched its Haikasoru imprint in 2009, with the goal of bringing Japan’s best speculative fiction to the US. Haikasoru’s debut titles — All You Need Is Kill and The Lord of the Sands of Time — introduced Americans to two award-winning sci-fi authors whose work had previously been unavailable in English. As the line as grown, so, too, has the diversity of its offerings, which run the gamut from horror (e.g. Otsuichi’s ZOO) to teen-friendly fantasy (e.g. Miyuki Miyabe’s Brave Story and The Book of Heroes) to science fiction (e.g. Issui Ogawa’s The Next Continent and Hosume Nojia’s Usurper of the Sun). Harmony, the newest Haikasoru title, falls on the softer end of the sci-fi continuum, depicting a world in which “admedistrative” societies — that is, countries that operate by rule of medicine, rather than rule of law — are the new empire-builders.

Harmony takes place in the late twenty-first century, fifty years after nuclear holocaust destroyed North America and destabilized the international balance of power by flooding the Third World with an abundant supply of nuclear weapons. In the chaos that ensued, countries which successfully developed the medical technology to treat radiation sickness supplanted the old superpowers, while less scientifically advanced nations descended into guerilla warfare. The new admedistrative powers transformed the World Health Organization (WHO) into a global peacekeeping force tasked with monitoring other nations’ ability to “ensure their populace a lifestyle that [is] sufficiently healthy and human.” The key to that lifestyle is WatchMe, an elaborate system that keeps close watch over individuals’ health, guiding them away from potentially harmful choices — fatty food, alcohol, cigarettes, distressing literature — repairing cellular damage, and providing the government a steady stream of data about a person’s behavior and current medical condition.

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Harmony is told through the point of view of Tuan Kirie, a twenty-eight-year-old WHO agent tasked with solving the mystery behind an “outbreak” of suicide — an action that, in theory, should be impossible under the WatchMe system. Tuan is an appealing narrator, at once tough and funny, a natural contrarian who smokes and drinks and defies authority yet nonetheless treats her mission with the utmost seriousness. The story moves fluidly between past and present, using Tuan’s childhood memories to shed light on her conflicted, often subversive, behavior. Until the third act, the pacing is brisk and the dialogue crisp; as Tuan draws closer to finding out what prompted the wave of suicides, however, the story begins to sag under the weight of turgid conversations about free will and psychology, a flaw that the frequent changes of setting can’t conceal.

It’s a shame these third-act discussions are so pedestrian, as author Keikaku “Project” Itoh has devised a nifty set-up for examining the boundaries between public and private life, imagining a world in which the government’s desire to collect data and enforce civility goes well beyond speech, belief, and association — all manifestations of conscious thought — to the level of neural transmissions and body chemistry. For most of the book, Itoh manages to dramatize the conflict between public and private without speechifying or shortcuts, using Tuan’s role as a WHO agent to explore the nature of admedistrative rule. Though Tuan yearns for the physical and social freedom less technologically advanced societies enjoy, the persistence of armed conflict in the developing world is a potent reminder of why so many people willingly submit to the benevolent totalitarianism of the WatchMe system.

VIZ has done an excellent job of adapting Harmony for English-speaking audiences. Translator Alexander O. Smith, in particular, deserves praise for the smooth, idiomatic voicing of Tuan’s thoughts in language that captures the heroine’s fierce personality. Smith also navigates passages of scientific shoptalk and historical description with ease, producing a highly readable text that lacks any of the tell-tale signs of translation: awkward turns of phrase, confusing use of pronouns.

Aside from a few third-act hiccups, Harmony is a solidly entertaining book, offering a judicious mixture of globe-trotting action, social commentary, and suspense to engage all but the hardest science fiction fans, and a surprise ending that neatly resolves the main plot while raising new, thought-provoking questions. Recommended.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

HARMONY • BY PROJECT ITOH, TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER O. SMITH • VIZ • 252 pp.

Apollo’s Song, Vols. 1-2

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Apollo’s Song may be one of the strangest sex ed manuals ever written.

It begins with a textbook Tezuka scene, at once lyrical and goofy: millions of anthropomorphic sperm race towards a comely egg. After one lucky soul pants and claws his way to the front of the scrum, the sperm and egg dissolve into a passionate embrace. In the following panel, we see the result of their union, an embryo, presiding over a veritable sperm graveyard. This juxtaposition of life and death — or, perhaps more accurately, sex and death — foreshadows the dialectic that will play out in the following chapters.

We are then introduced to Shogo, a young man who has just arrived at a psychiatric hospital. Shogo is a sociopath: unemotional, cruel to animals, scornful of society, and deeply misogynist. While undergoing electroshock therapy, Shogo has a vivid hallucination in which a stern goddess chastises him for renouncing all forms of love. As punishment for his cruelty, she condemns him to a fate straight out of Dante’s Inferno: Shogo will love and lose the same woman over and over again for eternity. Thus begins a series of romantic and sexual encounters between Shogo and various incarnations of his ill-fated partner.

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Apollo’s Song, Vols. 1-2

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Apollo’s Song may be one of the strangest sex ed manuals ever written. It begins with a textbook Tezuka scene, at once lyrical and goofy: millions of anthropomorphic sperm race towards a comely egg. After one lucky soul pants and claws his way to the front of the scrum, the sperm and egg dissolve into a passionate embrace. In the following panel, we see the result of their union, an embryo, presiding over a veritable sperm graveyard. This juxtaposition of life and death — or, perhaps more accurately, sex and death — foreshadows the dialectic that will play out in the following chapters.

We are then introduced to Shogo, a young man who has just arrived at a psychiatric hospital. Shogo is a sociopath: unemotional, cruel to animals, scornful of society, and deeply misogynist. While undergoing electroshock therapy, Shogo has a vivid hallucination in which a stern goddess chastises him for renouncing all forms of love. As punishment for his cruelty, she condemns him to a fate straight out of Dante’s Inferno: Shogo will love and lose the same woman over and over again for eternity. Thus begins a series of romantic and sexual encounters between Shogo and various incarnations of his ill-fated partner.

Though the story begins and ends in the present day, the individual episodes unfold in both the past and future, reminding the reader that Shogo cannot escape his fate. Certain recurring motifs suggest that these scenarios are, in fact, manifestations of Shogo’s subconscious as he struggles to reconcile his hatred of women with his need to be loved. In each scenario, for example, Shogo adopts a hyper-masculine guise — Nazi foot soldier, fugitive, hunter, terrorist — that he must ultimately renounce in his quest for spiritual and sexual fulfillment. We’re never entirely certain which of these episodes are unfolding in Shogo’s mind and which, if any, are unfolding in the real world.

Though Apollo’s Song aspires to universality, Tezuka’s characters remain firmly rooted in the time and place of their creation. Tezuka blames Shogo’s mother — whose crimes include an inability to lactate, promiscuity, and emotional detachment — for her son’s pathology, even treating us to a scene of the youthful Shogo walking in on his mother and a lover. While no one would deny the deleterious effects of parental neglect, Shogo’s mother seems less like a character than a casebook study out of the 1952 DSM. Other characters, such as an “artsy-fartsy,” “self-centered” career woman who defends her chastity with hysterical fury, seem like the morbidly sexual figments of a Freudian imagination.

Tezuka’s moralizing, too, has a curiously alienating effect. In the first episode, for example, Shogo imagines that he is a German soldier aboard a train bound for an unnamed concentration camp. Through the slats of a cattle car, he spots Elise, whose beauty and modesty awakens his sense of moral outrage. He rescues her first from the wreckage of the train (which is bombed by Allied forces), then from German rapists, earning her love through his selflessness. This scenario is clearly meant to teach readers that love can transcend ethnic, racial, and religious divisions, yet this epiphany is of a shallow nature, as Shogo fails to grasp the true horror of the situation or appreciate Elise’s grief at losing her entire family – in essence, the Holocaust has been reduced to a colorful backdrop for yet another of Shogo’s doomed romances.

However problematic the story may be, the artwork in Apollo’s Song ranks among Tezuka’s best, filled with arresting landscapes and surprisingly carnal imagery. In chapter two, for example, Shogo finds himself stranded on a lush tropical island. Peering through a dense frame of vegetation, he spies a secluded glen where deer, panthers, and leopards embrace their mates in sexual congress. The sensuality of the moment is accentuated by their bodies’ curved lines and beatific expressions, infusing a potentially silly scene with a graceful spirituality. Later chapters also abound in vivid images; as Tezuka imagines the Tokyo of the future, the city has been transformed from a glass-and-concrete forest into an Art Deco monstrosity reminiscent of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis or a Soviet Bloc city. Its inhabitants, a race of sexless, synthetic beings that store their faces in jars, preside over a haunted landscape of tombs, forgotten infrastructure, and empty plazas; the very barrenness of the place brings the intensity of Shogo’s yearning and anger into sharp relief.

Revisiting Apollo’s Song three years after its initial release, I find myself torn. On the one hand, Tezuka’s artwork is a feast for the eyes, featuring some of the most erotic images he committed to paper. On the other hand, it’s a deeply flawed work that, in its attitudes towards women and finger-wagging tone, shows its age. Vertical has done an admirable job of fashioning a silk purse from a sow’s ear with the handsomely produced new edition, but even the knockout cover designs can’t conceal the fact that Apollo’s Song is a sour, heavy-handed tale that lacks the essential humanism – and humor – of Buddha and Phoenix.

This is a revised version of a review that appeared at PopCultureShock on 6/22/2007.

APOLLO’S SONG, VOLS. 1-2 • BY OSAMU TEZUKA • VERTICAL, INC. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Gente and House of Five Leaves

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I find Natsume Ono’s work rewarding and maddening in equal measure. On the plus side, I love her idiosyncratic style; her panels are spare and elegantly composed, with just enough detail to convey the story’s time and place. Her character designs, too, are a welcome departure from the youthful, homogenized look of mainstream shojo and shonen manga. Her people have sharp features and rangy bodies, yet inhabit their skins as comfortably as the proverbial pair of old shoes; it’s rare to see middle age depicted so gracefully. And speaking of middle age, her characters’ maturity is another plus, as they grapple with the kind of real-world problems — failed marriages, aging parents, child-rearing — that are almost never addressed in manga licensed for the US market.

On the minus side, Ono’s artwork is an acquired taste; the reader sometimes has to take it on faith that a particular character is handsome or pretty, as Ono’s children and twenty-somethings are less persuasively realized than her older characters. Then, too, Ono’s fondness for depicting everyday moments can rob her stories of any meaningful dramatic shape, creating long, meandering stretches where very little happens and even less is revealed about the characters. More frustrating still is her tendency to vacillate between allowing readers to interpret events for themselves and slapping readers across the face with a pointed observation, as if she doesn’t trust the audience to read the scene properly without a little authorial intervention.

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