Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Katherine Dacey

Manga Artifacts: Pineapple Army

by

pineapple_glenatAbout two years ago, I reached a tipping point in my manga consumption: I’d read enough just enough stories about teen mediums, masterless samurai, yakuza hit men, pirates, ninjas, robots, and magical girls to feel like I’d exhausted just about everything worth reading in English. Then I bought the first volume of Taiyo Matsumoto’s No. 5. A sci-fi tale rendered in a stark, primitivist style, Matsumoto’s artwork reminded me of Paul Gauguin’s with its mixture of fine, naturalistic observation and abstraction. I couldn’t tell you what the series was about (and after reading the second volume, still can’t), but Matsumoto’s precise yet energetic line work and wild, imaginative landscapes filled with me the same giddy excitement I felt when I first discovered the art of Rumiko Takahashi, CLAMP, and Goseki Kojima.

In a rush of enthusiasm to see what else was out there, I began trawling eBay for forgotten treasures, using Jason Thompson’s Manga: The Complete Guide as my map. What I found were an eclectic assortment of titles released in a variety of formats: Katsuhiro Otomo’s Memories, Leiji Matsumoto’s Galaxy Express 999, Jiro Taniguchi’s Hotel Harbor View, Keiko Nishi’s Love Song. Some proved exciting, others abysmal, but all were interesting as artifacts of English-language manga’s pre-history, of the days before Fruits Basket and Naruto were ubiquitous in chain stores and malls. As I’ve been assembling a collection of older titles, I’ve found myself wondering why some of these books were originally licensed and whether there’s a place for them in the current market. To explore these questions, I decided to dedicate more space at my website to examining out-of-print titles, from the undiscovered gems to the unmitigated disasters.

goshiPINEAPPLE ARMY

For my inaugural Manga Artifacts column, I chose one of my happiest discoveries: Pineapple Army (VIZ), a collaboration between writer Kazuya Kudo (Mai the Psychic Girl) and artist Naoki Urasawa. Reading Pineapple Army is like opening a time capsule from the mid-1980s, when wars were Cold, American cities were crime-ridden, and Central America was as important a theater of operations as the Middle East. Jed Goshi, the reluctant hero of Pineapple Army, is an ex-Marine who hasn’t quite managed to re-integrate himself into civilian life after two tours of duty in ‘Nam. Goshi now works for a mysterious agency that helps people who can’t or won’t turn to the proper authorities for help. Though Goshi doggedly insists he’s an instructor, not a bodyguard — “I turn people into combat-ready soldiers in a short amount of time,” he informs one client — he always becomes embroiled in the action, rescuing an inexperienced fighter after a costly bungle or coaching a client out of a tight corner.

Pineapple Army is positively steeped in Reagan-era politics and paranoia. In “The Selva Game,” for example, Goshi runs afoul of the Sandinistas — remember that foreign policy fiasco? — while on a mission along the Honduran/Nicaraguan border, while “The Man From the Past” chronicles his experiences in Zaire, where he tried to teach US-backed troops to resist Communist guerillas. Other stories portray New York City as a kind of urban selva, filled with unscrupulous law enforcement officials, gangsters, and vigilantes; anyone who’s read Banana Fish will immediately recognize the milieu. These stories have the same ripped-from-the-headlines quality of the very earliest Law & Order episodes, borrowing elements of well-known criminal cases and putting a fictional spin on them: “The False Hero,” for example, pits a young female detective against a Curtis Sliwa-esque figure who treats the IRT as his own fiefdom, while “Goshi: The Preceptor” culminates in a showdown between a corrupt cop’s family and the gangster he swindled.

The artwork, like the stories, dates Pineapple Army to the decade of big hair and hair metal. Naoki Urasawa’s style was heavily influenced by Katsuhiro Otomo’s; the characters have the kind of well-fed look — stubby bodies, round faces, sturdy limbs — that Otomo popularized in the 1980s with AKIRA and Domu: A Child’s Dream. A few villains’ faces hint at the distinctive character designs that Urasawa would cultivate in later hits Master Keaton and Monster, but an unpracticed eye might reasonably attribute Pineapple Army to any number of competent artists. Urasawa’s trademark attention to detail, however, is evident throughout the series; he meticulously establishes the setting for each story, whether it’s an overgrown Mayan ruin, a Honduran hacienda, the grubby subway platforms of the IRT, or The Limelight, a church-cum-nightclub that was a Sixth Avenue fixture throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

The original series, which ran in Shogakukan’s Big Comic Original from 1986-88, was collected in several different tankubon editions in Japan, each comprised of about 1,000 pages of material. For the US edition, VIZ cherry-picked ten stories, releasing them first as 32-page floppies, then as a single trade paperback. Though each story works reasonably well as a self-contained adventure, Pineapple Army suffers from some of the same continuity problems as Oishinbo, another longer series that was pared down and repackaged for Western readers. Two of the stories, for example, feature another agent named Janet, who spends most of her time trying to buttonhole Goshi for a date. We never learn much about her or how she knows Goshi, though it’s obvious the pair have some kind of history, perhaps related to their line of work. There’s also a reporter who trails Goshi from Africa to the US, hell-bent on exposing Goshi as a murderer; from their pulpy, melodramatic exchanges, one might infer they have a Jean Valjean-Inspector Javert relationship, but the VIZ edition doesn’t even bother to give the reporter a name. (No, really: Goshi and Janet both refer to him as “Mr. Reporter.”) Such small narrative hiccups are irritating but hardly fatal; the stories and crackling dialogue are strong enough to carry the reader past such interruptions.

Would VIZ ever re-issue Pineapple Army, perhaps in its entirety? I’m tempted to say no, as the artwork would strike most manga fans as passe. Urasawa’s tracings and screentone application sometimes look crude by contemporary standards, and his unfortunate tendency to draw black characters with thick, light-colored lips might necessitate revisions for a new American edition. (In Urasawa’s defense, the characters are not drawn in the grossly exaggerated style that Osamu Tezuka or Shotaro Ishinomori used in Swallowing the Earth or Cyborg 009, respectively, but for many American readers, a long history of nasty racial caricatures makes it difficult to excuse the practice.) Then, too, the stories have the same rhythm and sensibility of a 1980s TV show; one could be forgiven for comparing Pineapple Army with such period gems as The Equalizer, both for Pineapple Army‘s dogged adherence to formula and its deep suspicion of authority.

Yet it’s easy to overlook Pineapple Army‘s flaws, thanks to the strong script and dynamic layouts. Kudo and Urasawa create tough, memorable female characters; dream up creative ways to integrate current events into the storylines; and stage the kind of action scenes that were de rigeur on The A-Team and MacGuyver, complete with car chases, gun battles, and jerry-rigged explosive devices. The stories may be as predictable as taxes, but they’re still entertaining, especially for those of us with vivid memories of “Frankie Says Relax!” t-shirts and Bernhard Goetz’s subway vigilantism.

NOTE TO THE INTREPID BUYER

The comics are much easier to find than the trade paperback, and generally cheaper to boot; I picked up all ten issues for about $9 on eBay. Scanning the web, I’ve found almost no copies of the TPB available, although a few Amazon sellers appear to be offering it for non-usurious prices. French and Spanish speakers, see below for more information about European editions of Pineapple Army. (Hat tip to reader Althalus for information about both series’ availability.)

PINEAPPLE ARMY • STORY BY KAZUYA KUDO, ART BY NAOKI URASAWA • VIZ COMMMUNICATIONS

Manga Artifacts: Pineapple Army

by

About two years ago, I reached a tipping point in my manga consumption: I’d read enough just enough stories about teen mediums, masterless samurai, yakuza hit men, pirates, ninjas, robots, and magical girls to feel like I’d exhausted just about everything worth reading in English. Then I bought the first volume of Taiyo Matsumoto’s No. 5. A sci-fi tale rendered in a stark, primitivist style, Matsumoto’s artwork reminded me of Paul Gauguin’s with its mixture of fine, naturalistic observation and abstraction. I couldn’t tell you what the series was about (and after reading the second volume, still can’t), but Matsumoto’s precise yet energetic line work and wild, imaginative landscapes filled with me the same giddy excitement I felt when I first discovered the art of Rumiko Takahashi, CLAMP, and Goseki Kojima.

In a rush of enthusiasm to see what else was out there, I began trawling eBay for forgotten treasures, using Jason Thompson’s Manga: The Complete Guide as my map. What I found were an eclectic assortment of titles released in a variety of formats: Katsuhiro Otomo’s Memories, Leiji Matsumoto’s Galaxy Express 999, Jiro Taniguchi’s Hotel Harbor View, Keiko Nishi’s Love Song. Some proved exciting, others abysmal, but all were interesting as artifacts of English-language manga’s pre-history, of the days before Fruits Basket and Naruto were ubiquitous in chain stores and malls. As I’ve been assembling a collection of older titles, I’ve found myself wondering why some of these books were originally licensed and whether there’s a place for them in the current market. To explore these questions, I decided to dedicate more space at my website to examining out-of-print titles, from the undiscovered gems to the unmitigated disasters.

goshiPINEAPPLE ARMY

For my inaugural Manga Artifacts column, I chose one of my happiest discoveries: Pineapple Army (VIZ), a collaboration between writer Kazuya Kudo (Mai the Psychic Girl) and artist Naoki Urasawa. Reading Pineapple Army is like opening a time capsule from the mid-1980s, when wars were Cold, American cities were crime-ridden, and Central America was as important a theater of operations as the Middle East. Jed Goshi, the reluctant hero of Pineapple Army, is an ex-Marine who hasn’t quite managed to re-integrate himself into civilian life after two tours of duty in ‘Nam. Goshi now works for a mysterious agency that helps people who can’t or won’t turn to the proper authorities for help. Though Goshi doggedly insists he’s an instructor, not a bodyguard — “I turn people into combat-ready soldiers in a short amount of time,” he informs one client — he always becomes embroiled in the action, rescuing an inexperienced fighter after a costly bungle or coaching a client out of a tight corner.

Pineapple Army is positively steeped in Reagan-era politics and paranoia. In “The Selva Game,” for example, Goshi runs afoul of the Sandinistas — remember that foreign policy fiasco? — while on a mission along the Honduran/Nicaraguan border, while “The Man From the Past” chronicles his experiences in Zaire, where he tried to teach US-backed troops to resist Communist guerillas. Other stories portray New York City as a kind of urban selva, filled with unscrupulous law enforcement officials, gangsters, and vigilantes; anyone who’s read Banana Fish will immediately recognize the milieu. These stories have the same ripped-from-the-headlines quality of the very earliest Law & Order episodes, borrowing elements of well-known criminal cases and putting a fictional spin on them: “The False Hero,” for example, pits a young female detective against a Curtis Sliwa-esque figure who treats the IRT as his own fiefdom, while “Goshi: The Preceptor” culminates in a showdown between a corrupt cop’s family and the gangster he swindled.

The artwork, like the stories, dates Pineapple Army to the decade of big hair and hair metal. Naoki Urasawa’s style was heavily influenced by Katsuhiro Otomo’s; the characters have the kind of well-fed look — stubby bodies, round faces, sturdy limbs — that Otomo popularized in the 1980s with AKIRA and Domu: A Child’s Dream. A few villains’ faces hint at the distinctive character designs that Urasawa would cultivate in later hits Master Keaton and Monster, but an unpracticed eye might reasonably attribute Pineapple Army to any number of competent artists. Urasawa’s trademark attention to detail, however, is evident throughout the series; he meticulously establishes the setting for each story, whether it’s an overgrown Mayan ruin, a Honduran hacienda, the grubby subway platforms of the IRT, or The Limelight, a church-cum-nightclub that was a Sixth Avenue fixture throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

The original series, which ran in Shogakukan’s Big Comic Original from 1986-88, was collected in several different tankubon editions in Japan, each comprised of about 1,000 pages of material. For the US edition, VIZ cherry-picked ten stories, releasing them first as 32-page floppies, then as a single trade paperback. Though each story works reasonably well as a self-contained adventure, Pineapple Army suffers from some of the same continuity problems as Oishinbo, another longer series that was pared down and repackaged for Western readers. Two of the stories, for example, feature another agent named Janet, who spends most of her time trying to buttonhole Goshi for a date. We never learn much about her or how she knows Goshi, though it’s obvious the pair have some kind of history, perhaps related to their line of work. There’s also a reporter who trails Goshi from Africa to the US, hell-bent on exposing Goshi as a murderer; from their pulpy, melodramatic exchanges, one might infer they have a Jean Valjean-Inspector Javert relationship, but the VIZ edition doesn’t even bother to give the reporter a name. (No, really: Goshi and Janet both refer to him as “Mr. Reporter.”) Such small narrative hiccups are irritating but hardly fatal; the stories and crackling dialogue are strong enough to carry the reader past such interruptions.

Would VIZ ever re-issue Pineapple Army, perhaps in its entirety? I’m tempted to say no, as the artwork would strike most manga fans as passe. Urasawa’s tracings and screentone application sometimes look crude by contemporary standards, and his unfortunate tendency to draw black characters with thick, light-colored lips might necessitate revisions for a new American edition. (In Urasawa’s defense, the characters are not drawn in the grossly exaggerated style that Osamu Tezuka or Shotaro Ishinomori used in Swallowing the Earth or Cyborg 009, respectively, but for many American readers, a long history of nasty racial caricatures makes it difficult to excuse the practice.) Then, too, the stories have the same rhythm and sensibility of a 1980s TV show; one could be forgiven for comparing Pineapple Army with such period gems as The Equalizer, both for Pineapple Army‘s dogged adherence to formula and its deep suspicion of authority.

Yet it’s easy to overlook Pineapple Army‘s flaws, thanks to the strong script and dynamic layouts. Kudo and Urasawa create tough, memorable female characters; dream up creative ways to integrate current events into the storylines; and stage the kind of action scenes that were de rigeur on The A-Team and MacGuyver, complete with car chases, gun battles, and jerry-rigged explosive devices. The stories may be as predictable as taxes, but they’re still entertaining, especially for those of us with vivid memories of “Frankie Says Relax!” t-shirts and Bernhard Goetz’s subway vigilantism.

NOTE TO THE INTREPID BUYER

The comics are much easier to find than the trade paperback, and generally cheaper to boot; I picked up all ten issues for about $9 on eBay. Scanning the web, I’ve found almost no copies of the TPB available, although a few Amazon sellers appear to be offering it for non-usurious prices. French and Spanish speakers, see below for more information about European editions of Pineapple Army. (Hat tip to reader Althalus for information about both series’ availability.)

PINEAPPLE ARMY • STORY BY KAZUYA KUDO, ART BY NAOKI URASAWA • VIZ COMMMUNICATIONS

Solanin

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solanin_coverThe characters in Solanin are suffering from what I call a “pre-life crisis”—that moment in your twenties when you realize that it’s time to join the world of adult responsibility, but you aren’t quite ready to abandon dreams of indie-rock stardom, literary genius, or artistic greatness. From a dramatic standpoint, the pre-life crisis doesn’t make the best material for a novel, graphic or otherwise, as twenty-something angst can seem trivial when compared with the vicissitudes of middle and old age. Yet Asano Inio almost pulls it off on the strength of his appealing characters and astute observations.

Solanin focuses on a quartet of twenty-somethings, each struggling to shed their collegiate persona and forge adult identities. To be sure, these characters are familiar types, working dead-end jobs, remaining in relationships out of habit, and clinging to unrealistic dreams. Yet Inio never dismisses or romanticizes their pseudo-bohemian aspirations, instead viewing these angstful young adults with a parental mixture of frankness and affection.

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Solanin

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The characters in Solanin are suffering from what I call a “pre-life crisis”—that moment in your twenties when you realize that it’s time to join the world of adult responsibility, but you aren’t quite ready to abandon dreams of indie-rock stardom, literary genius, or artistic greatness. From a dramatic standpoint, the pre-life crisis doesn’t make the best material for a novel, graphic or otherwise, as twenty-something angst can seem trivial when compared with the vicissitudes of middle and old age. Yet Asano Inio almost pulls it off on the strength of his appealing characters and astute observations.

Solanin focuses on a quartet of twenty-somethings, each struggling to shed their collegiate persona and forge adult identities. To be sure, these characters are familiar types, working dead-end jobs, remaining in relationships out of habit, and clinging to unrealistic dreams. Yet Inio never dismisses or romanticizes their pseudo-bohemian aspirations, instead viewing these angstful young adults with a parental mixture of frankness and affection.

Early in the book, for example, a young woman (Meiko) introduces her boyfriend (Naruo) to her mother while trying to conceal the fact they live together. Inio might have milked the scene for its dramatic potential, staging a confrontation between Meiko and her mother. Yet he opts for something quieter and, frankly, truer to life: Meiko’s mother calls her daughter’s bluff, then offers the couple practical advice and encouragement. Instead of being pleased, however, Meiko is dumbfounded and embarrassed, leaving Naruo to stumble alone through an awkward conversation with her mother. What makes this scene work is Inio’s even-handedness; though we feel sympathy for Meiko — she’s genuinely afraid of upsetting her parents — we also realize that she’s disappointed that her decision to move in with Naruo hasn’t caused a scandal, a symptom of her not-quite-adult-relationship with her mother.

Solanin flounders, however, when Inio injects some drama into the proceedings. His big plot twist wouldn’t seem out of place in a deliciously overripe soap opera like NANA, but it feels too contrived for a low-key, slice-of-life story like Solanin; more frustrating still, Inio telegraphs what’s going to happen more than a chapter before that Big, Life-Changing Event, blunting its emotional impact. The book never quite regains its footing, culminating in a concert scene that’s as hokey as anything in The Commitments. Granted, that scene is beautifully executed, using wordless panels to convey the blood, sweat, and tears needed to pull off a live performance, but it feels too pat to be a satisfactory resolution to what is, in essence, a detailed character study.

I also felt ambivalent about the artwork. On the one hand, Inio draws his characters in a refreshingly soft and realistic fashion; as David Welsh noted in his 2008 review, Inio captures the transitional nature of their age through small but important visual cues: gangly limbs, baby fat still evident in their cheeks and tummies, soul patches and other “unpersuasive” attempts to grow beards and mustaches. Inio nails their body language, too, evoking his characters’ emotional and physical awkwardness as they try to forge connections. In this scene, for example, Inio’s characters can barely look one another in the eye, even though it’s evident from their conversation that each has a deep personal investment in music that s/he wants to share with the other:

solanin_interior

On the other hand, the backgrounds sometimes look like poorly retouched clip art. Such shortcuts are common in manga, but when done poorly (as they are in a few sequences in Solanin), the resulting images look more like dioramas or collages than organic compositions. In several key scenes, the characters appear to be pasted into the picture frame, floating above their surroundings instead of actually inhabiting them, spoiling the mood and pulling me out of the moment.

Artistic and narrative shortcuts aside, I’d still recommend Solanin. Inio’s book is funny, rueful, and honest, filled with beautifully observed moments and conversations that ring true, even if it occasionally succumbs to Brat Pack cliche.

SOLANIN • BY INIO ASANO • VIZ MEDIA • 432 pp • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

This is a revised version of a review that appeared at PopCultureShock on 11/19/2008.

Chi’s Sweet Home, Vol. 1

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chi_coverCome for the cat, stay for the cartooning — that’s how I’d summarize the appeal of Chi’s Sweet Home, a deceptively simple story about a family that adopts a wayward kitten. Chi certainly works as an all-ages comic, as the clean, simple layouts do a good job of telling the story, even without the addition of dialogue or voice-overs. But Chi is more than just cute kitty antics; it’s a thoughtful reflection on the joys and difficulties of pet ownership, one that invites readers of all ages to see the world through their cat or dog’s eyes and imagine how an animal adapts to life among humans.

Though Kanata Konami accomplishes some of this by revealing Chi’s thoughts in the form of a simple monologue, delivered — or should that be “dewivered”? — in a child-like voice, it’s the artwork that really drives home the point that Chi is bewildered and intrigued by her new environment. Early in the volume, for example, the newly-rescued Chi awakes in a panicked state: she doesn’t know where she is, and she’s desperate to find her mother. Konami first gives us an overhead view of the living room, tracing Chi’s frantic attempt to find the door, then cuts to a panel of Chi trapped against a wall, two pieces of furniture looming over her. Konami employs a similar tactic when Mr. Yamada takes Chi to the veterinarian for her first check-up, again using an overhead shot of the waiting room to establish the human scale of the space before offering a cat’s eye perspective; as Chi sees things, the vet’s office is filled with enormous, Godzilla-sized dogs who seemed poised to eat her. In both sequences, the quick shift in perspective gives the reader a clear sense of Chi’s disorientation by reminding us how small she is, and how alien the environment seems to her.

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Chi’s Sweet Home, Vol. 1

by

Come for the cat, stay for the cartooning — that’s how I’d summarize the appeal of Chi’s Sweet Home, a deceptively simple story about a family that adopts a wayward kitten. Chi certainly works as an all-ages comic, as the clean, simple layouts do a good job of telling the story, even without the addition of dialogue or voice-overs. But Chi is more than just cute kitty antics; it’s a thoughtful reflection on the joys and difficulties of pet ownership, one that invites readers of all ages to see the world through their cat or dog’s eyes and imagine how an animal adapts to life among humans.

Though Kanata Konami accomplishes some of this by revealing Chi’s thoughts in the form of a simple monologue, delivered — or should that be “dewivered”? — in a child-like voice, it’s the artwork that really drives home the point that Chi is bewildered and intrigued by her new environment. Early in the volume, for example, the newly-rescued Chi awakes in a panicked state: she doesn’t know where she is, and she’s desperate to find her mother. Konami first gives us an overhead view of the living room, tracing Chi’s frantic attempt to find the door, then cuts to a panel of Chi trapped against a wall, two pieces of furniture looming over her. Konami employs a similar tactic when Mr. Yamada takes Chi to the veterinarian for her first check-up, again using an overhead shot of the waiting room to establish the human scale of the space before offering a cat’s eye perspective; as Chi sees things, the vet’s office is filled with enormous, Godzilla-sized dogs who seemed poised to eat her. In both sequences, the quick shift in perspective gives the reader a clear sense of Chi’s disorientation by reminding us how small she is, and how alien the environment seems to her.

The other secret to Konami’s success are her character designs. Though Chi is clearly a cat, Konami draws her face as a round, moon-like shape with two enormous eyes — if anything, Chi resembles the heroine of Kiyohiko Azuma’s Yotsuba&! more than, say, Neko Ramen‘s cat cook or Cat Paradise‘s feline warriors. Like Azuma, Konami demonstrates that it’s possible to contort and bend these simple, circular shapes into an enormous range of expressions, from wide-eyed wonder to fear, sadness, and, for want of a better term, hunterly attentiveness. (Chi considers all of her cat toys a form of prey.) Even the very youngest reader will immediately understand how Chi is feeling, even if he isn’t able to parse the accompanying text or make sense of other imagery. (To wit: there’s a marvelous, trippy dream sequence in which Chi is pursued by what could best be described as a canine matryoshka, a chain of barking dogs, each a smaller imitation of the one before it. I don’t know what a four-year-old would make of it, but Chi’s reaction is priceless.)

Given the strength of Konami’s artwork, I would have liked Chi’s Sweet Home even better without the voice-overs. Most of Chi’s comments seem obvious — cats usually fear dogs and vets — or deliberately calculated to tug at the heartstrings. Interior monologues of this kind are generally more effective when they ascribe uniquely human sentiments to an animal: think of Snoopy’s Walter Mitty-esque fascination with the Red Baron, or Garfield’s contempt for Jon Arbuckle, which stems less from a general disdain of humans and more from Garfield’s embarrassment that his owner is a loser. Chi’s voice-overs aren’t a deal-breaker by any means; at times, they prove quite effective, especially in illustrating Chi’s gradual transference of affection from her feline mother to her human family. Moreover, Konami wisely avoids putting words into Chi’s mouth that suggest an unnatural awareness of human behavior or language, allowing Chi to remain completely oblivious to the Yamadas’ numerous attempts to find her a new home. (Their apartment complex doesn’t allow pets.)

If you’re the kind of person who unironically refers to children and housepets as “social parasites,” Chi’s Sweet Home is not the manga for you. But if you’re ever lived with a cat or a dog or any other animal whose companionship you enjoyed, then you’ll find a lot to like about Chi, from its frank treatment of housebreaking and separation anxiety to the numerous scenes of Chi exploring her surroundings, transforming ordinary household items into “prey.” You don’t need to be a manga lover, either, to find Chi’s Sweet Home accessible; the simple artwork and flipped layout (Chi reads left to right, like an English-language book) make this a great place for newbies to begin their exploration of the medium. Highly recommended for readers of all ages.

Volume one will be released on June 29, 2010. Review copy provided by Vertical, Inc.

CHI’S SWEET HOME, VOL. 1 • BY KONAMI KANATA • VERTICAL, INC. • 162 pp. • NO RATING

Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo, Vols. 1-3

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The Count of Monte Cristo, arguably Alexander Dumas’ best novel, is a big, sprawling beast, stuffed to the gills with characters, subplots, secret identities, suicides, and dramatic confrontations; small wonder that GONZO felt it would provide a solid foundation for a twenty-four episode anime. The series debuted to critical acclaim in 2004, thanks largely to its arresting visuals (designer Anna Sui had a hand in creating the characters’ elaborate costumes) and its dramatic soundtrack, which employed key musical themes from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (the gold standard for operatic madness scenes) and Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony (a piece of program music inspired by Byron’s poem of the same name).

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Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo, Vols. 1-3

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The Count of Monte Cristo, arguably Alexander Dumas’ best novel, is a big, sprawling beast, stuffed to the gills with characters, subplots, secret identities, suicides, and dramatic confrontations; small wonder that GONZO felt it would provide a solid foundation for a twenty-four episode anime. The series debuted to critical acclaim in 2004, thanks largely to its arresting visuals (designer Anna Sui had a hand in creating the characters’ elaborate costumes) and its dramatic soundtrack, which employed key musical themes from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (the gold standard for operatic madness scenes) and Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony (a piece of program music inspired by Byron’s poem of the same name).

The three-volume manga offers a darker, more focused presentation of the anime’s main plot while taking greater liberties with the source material. Like the anime, the manga follows the basic contours of Dumas’ novel: Edmond Dantes, an honest, hardworking sailor, is falsely imprisoned for treason, serving nearly fourteen years at the remote Chateau d’If before escaping and reinventing himself as the Count of Monte Cristo, a dashing aristocrat who uses his social standing, good looks, and vast fortune to exact revenge on the three friends who betrayed him. Though Dumas tells the story in a chronological fashion, Mahiro Maeda begins Gankutsuou at the novel’s midpoint, relating the circumstances of Dantes’ trial and punishment in several extensive flashbacks. Maeda adds a few ruffles and flourishes of his own, moving the action to the year 5053, transforming the Count into a space vampire — hard time will do that to a man, I’m told — and adding a faintly homoerotic element to the relationship between the Count and Albert de Morcerf, the son of Edmond’s former fiancee Mercedes.

As anime-to-manga adaptations go, Gankutsuou is better than average. Maeda wins points for employing a visual style that evokes the look of the anime without slavishly copying it, and for wisely limiting the scope of the story to the Count’s take-down of Gerard de Villefort, the ambitious prosecutor responsible for framing him. Volume one follows the anime closely, depicting the first meeting between the Count and Albert, and documenting how the Count insinuates himself into Parisian society. From there, however, the manga follows a somewhat different track, revealing both the full extent of Villefort’s duplicity and the true nature of Gankutsuou, the demon who possessed Edmon Dantes’ body while he was still imprisoned at the Chateau d’If (here played by a remote, unmanned space station).

The flashbacks to Dantes’ imprisonment are rendered in sensual, swirling lines suggestive of a Van Gogh painting; many panels verge on the abstract, taking the story out of the realm of the literal into a feverish dream world that effectively dramatizes Dantes’ emotional anguish without resorting to cliche imagery. Though these scenes are an inspired addition to the story (nothing like them appears in the anime), the manga’s big denouement is not. Maeda greatly simplifies the Count’s elaborate revenge on Villefort, trimming several key players from the drama and contriving a ludicrous love scene between Villefort’s second wife and his daughter Valentine that has as much to do with real Sapphic desire as a Budweiser commercial starring blond twins. It’s a shame that Maeda diverged so greatly from the original, as the Count’s revenge on Villefort is one of the novel’s most gripping subplots, filled with double-crosses, estrangements, murders (by poison, no less), and a secret love child who plays an instrumental role in destroying the trust between Villefort and Danglars, another key player in the original conspiracy against Dantes.

Folks who haven’t seen the anime or read The Count of Monte Cristo are probably the best audience for this series, as they won’t be encumbered with expectations about how events should unfold. Anyone with a strong investment in the anime or the novel, however, is likely to find this chamber piece an unsatisfying effort to represent the full complexity and drama of Dumas’ seminal work.

GANKUTSUOU, VOLS. 1-3 • BY MAHIRO MAEDA AND YURI ARIWARA • DEL REY • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Honey Hunt, Vols. 1-4

by

HoneyHunt1If someone had told me a week ago that I’d be praising Honey Hunt, I’d have scoffed at them; I’ve never been a big fan of Miki Aihara’s work, thanks to the icky sexual politics of Hot Gimmick!, but her story about a poor little rich girl who seeks revenge on her celebrity parents turned out to be shockingly readable. It isn’t terribly original — the plot mirrors Skip Beat! in its basic outline — nor is its heroine a paradigm of strength and self-sufficiency — she weeps at least once every other chapter — but Honey Hunt is slick, fast-paced, and perfectly calibrated to appeal to a sixteen-year-old’s idea of the glamorous life.

Honey Hunt reads like a Jackie Collins novel, shorn of the racy bits: high school student Yura Onasuka is the sadly neglected daughter of two hot-shot celebrities, one a beautiful, award-winning actress, the other an internationally renown composer. When her parents announce their intention to divorce, Yura is stunned; she had no idea that her parents’ relationship was a sham, nor did she realize that both had been actively pursuing extramarital affairs. Worse still, her mother has been sleeping with Shin, Yura’s hunky next-door neighbor and sole confidante. (I hate it when that happens.) The normally timid Yura condemns her parents’ behavior in an impromptu press conference, an outburst so dramatic and moving that her father’s former manager Keichi Mizorogi makes her an offer she can’t refuse: he’ll help her become an actress of her mother’s stature if she’ll agree to be his client.

…

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My 10 Favorite CMX Titles

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CMX may not have had the biggest titles or the biggest sales, but its catalog had a pleasing eclecticism:  who else would license series as utterly different as Moon Child, Madara, and Go West? I didn’t always love what they published, but I appreciated their efforts to bring important artists and off-beat series to American audiences’ attention. I also appreciated the care and consistency with which they edited books; it’s a sad irony that many fans will remember them for the Tenjo Tenghe fiasco and not for the fine job they did with Emma and Shirley. Below are the ten CMX titles I plan to keep in my permanent collection. (Click here for a kid-friendly list of CMX manga.)

astral110. ASTRAL PROJECT

MARGINAL AND SUYUJI TAKEDA • 4 VOLUMES (complete)

Astral Project might have been an indigestible stew of pseudo-science and Deep Thoughts About Jazz, thanks to its far-out premise: a young man discovers a connection between his sister’s disappearance and an Albert Ayler recording that helps facilitate out-of-body experiences. Marginal spins a ripping yarn, however, grounding the story’s more fantastic elements in the gritty realism of Tokyo’s red light district. He immerses us in the story to such a degree, in fact, that we learn things as Masahiko does; we’re never one step ahead of our protagonist, a common problem in thrillers. Syuji Takeya’s artwork won’t appeal to everyone, as it sometimes has a rough, sketchy quality that doesn’t mesh well with the dark, Photoshopped backgrounds, but Takeya creates a memorable assortment of faces and bodies that suggest the seediness of Masahiko’s world more readily than dialog could. Quite possibly Ornette Coleman’s favorite manga. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 10/27/08. )

chikyu19. CHIKYU MISAKI

YUJI IWAHARA • 3 VOLUMES (complete)

This fast-paced adventure plays like best live-action film Disney never made, mixing comedy, family drama, and fantasy elements to tell the story of fourteen-year-old Misaki, who discovers that the local lake is inhabited by a pint-sized Loch Ness Monster. The twist? Little Neo transforms into a cute little boy on land — a nifty trick when a band of kidnappers-cum-poachers get wind of his existence. Chikyu Misaki has a kind of fierce kid logic to it: who but a ten-year-old would dream up a story in which a dinosaur, a downed airplane, a lost suitcase filled with gold, and a potential stepmother all get a turn in the spotlight? Yuji Iwahara’s artwork is also a big plus: his character designs do a fine job of delineating each cast member’s personality and role in the drama, while his action scenes are crisp and fluid. Only a few odd, squicky moments of sexual humor prevent this from being a slam-dunk recommendation for the under-twelve crowd.

nameflower28. THE NAME OF THE FLOWER

KEN SAITO • 4 VOLUMES (complete)

Did Ken Saito have Charlotte Brontë on the brain when she dreamed up the plot for The Name of the Flower? I ask because Flower‘s storyline seems like pure Masterpiece Theater fodder: Chouko, a young orphan left mute and despondent by her parents’ death, is sent to live with a male guardian who  endured a similarly tragic past. Over time, the two form a deep attachment that neither dares admit, an attachment tested by Chouko’s decision to enroll in college and Kei’s general reclusiveness. If the set-up is ripe for melodrama, Saito manages to craft a story that’s rooted in everyday experience; her characters’ journey to self-awareness and romance is complicated by real-life obstacles, not mad wives in the attic. Lovely art cements the bittersweet mood of this borderline josei title. One of my nominees for Best New Manga of 2009.

Shirley_Cover7. SHIRLEY

KAORU MORI • 1 VOLUME (complete)

At first glance, Shirley looks like a practice run for Emma, a collection of pleasant, straightforward maid stories featuring prototype versions of Emma‘s main characters. A closer examination, however, reveals that Shirley is, in fact, a series of detailed character sketches exploring the relationships between three maids and their respective employers. While some of these sketches aren’t entirely successful — Kaoru Mori cheerfully describes one as “an extremely cheap story about a boy and an animal” and attributes the inspiration for another to The A-Team (no, really) — the five chapters focusing on thirteen-year-old Shirley Madison and her independent, headstrong employer are as good as any passage in Emma. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 3/9/10.)

kiichi26. KIICHI AND THE MAGIC BOOKS

TAKA AMANO • 5 VOLUMES (complete)

This poignant coming-of-age story focuses on Kiichi, a young oni whose lonely existence is transformed by a chance encounter with a traveling librarian. Inspired by the information in one of Mototaro’s books, Kiichi decides to leave his village in search of others like himself. Kiichi’s journey brings him into contact with a variety of people, many of whom seek to harm or profit from his unique abilities, or who simply fear his appearance. Though Taka Amano never shies away from the darker implications of her story, showing us just how unscrupulous, ignorant, and venal people of all ages can be, Kiichi and the Magic Books is never mawkish or didactic; the fantasy elements add considerable interest and charm, while Kiichi proves emotionally resilient in the face of prejudice and mistrust. Readers more accustomed to the look and feel of Naruto may not initially respond to Amano’s starkly beautiful pen-and-ink drawings. Encourage them to try Kiichi anyway, as this series offers the same degree of complexity, imagination, and emotional authenticity as an Ursula LeGuin or Phillip Pullman novel. CMX’s best title for readers under the age of twelve. (Originally reviewed at Good Comics for Kids on 1/23/09.)

presents15. PRESENTS

KANAKO INUKI • 3 VOLUMES (complete)

Any series that prompted John Jakala to coin a phrase as useful and catchy as “comeuppance theater” deserves a place on a top ten list of some kind; the fact that Kanako Inuki’s horror-comedy is fiendishly entertaining earns it a spot on this particular countdown. Presents reads a lot like Tales of the Crypt, with each story adhering to the same formula: creepy child-woman Karumi offers an enticing present to an unsuspecting person, a present that quickly reveals itself to be an instrument of punishment for the recipient’s bad behavior or poor character. (Hence Jakala’s term “comeuppance theater.”) Though she loves drawing bugs and hideously deformed faces, Inuki is less interested in scaring us than making us laugh and squirm with recognition at our own folly; Inuki’s creepiest stories are also her funniest, satirizing commercial culture and female vanity with aplomb. A must for fans of Kazuo Umezu and Hideshi Hino.

gon44. GON

MASASHI TANAKA • 7 VOLUMES (complete)

Billed as “the pint-sized terror from the Jurassic era,” Gon is a small orange dinosaur who runs amok in present-day forests, oceans, and arctic tundras, terrorizing predators, defending small animals, and doing whatever else suits his mood. Masashi Tanaka’s artwork is old school in the best sense, employing cross-hatching and delicate lines in lieu of screentone to create volume and depth. His panels are astonishingly detailed yet never fussy or poorly composed — if anything, Tanaka’s technique yields sharper images than the contemporary practice of mixing computer-generated fill with hand-drawn lines. Though Tanaka endows his creatures with unusually expressive faces, he resists the urge to fully anthropomorphize them; their behavior seems species-appropriate even if their expressions occasional verge on human. (Read: the elephants don’t wear spats or drive automobiles, the dogs don’t pretend to be World War I flying aces.) His restraint inoculates Gon against a terminal case of the cutes, resulting in a sometimes funny, sometimes violent, sometimes heartbreaking look at the natural world. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 2/20/08.)

eroica153. FROM EROICA WITH LOVE

YASUKO AOIKE • 15 VOLUMES (incomplete)

What begins as an unsatisfying story about a trio of telepathic teens quickly takes a turn for the awesome with the introduction of Dorian Red, an openly gay British earl who dresses like a rock star and crisscrosses the globe to steal priceless works of art. Eroica eventually settles into an entertaining cat-and-mouse game between Dorian and uptight NATO intelligence officer Klaus Heinz von dem Eberbach, a stoic homophobe who detests the winking, flirtatious Dorian. Though they travel separately, their paths frequently converge in hilarious and explosive ways: hijackings, kidnappings, car chases. The frosting on the cake is Yasuko Aoike’s vintage seventies character designs: Dorian is the spitting image of Robert Plant, right down to the ridiculously tight pants and flowing scarves, while Klaus wears a ‘do as severe and straight as he is. The result is a delirious, over-the-top action-adventure that brings rock-n-roll swagger to a James Bond premise.

swan32. SWAN

KYOKO ARIYOSHI • 15 VOLUMES (incomplete)

Swan captures a particular moment in ballet history when the best Russian troupes commanded large, enthusiastic audiences on both sides of the Iron Curtain; when every developed nation had a ballet company of its own (even if the form was imported from elsewhere); and when dancers like Nuryev and Fonteyn were bonafide international celebrities. Into this glamorous world comes sixteen-year-old Masumi, a Japanese girl from the sticks who has passion and raw talent, but lacks refinement. She wins a spot at a national academy for dance, and begins clawing her way up the ranks, learning the repertoire (cue the Tchaikovsky!), making friends and enemies, and eventually finding her way to New York for immersion in new styles and techniques. As compelling as the drama may be, the real star of Swan is the art: the dance choreography is beautifully rendered, capturing both the heroine’s graceful intensity and the music’s lyricism. A few aspects of Swan haven’t aged well — the heroine falls victim to bouts of hysterical deafness, for example — but the strong visuals, historically accurate details, and sports manga vibe keep this marvelous series buoyant throughout.

emma41. EMMA

KAORU MORI • 10 VOLUMES (complete)

If Emma‘s rich-boy-loves-poor-maid storyline suggests a lost volume of The Forsyte Saga, the expert way in which William and Emma’s courtship is told more than compensates for a few moments of narrative cliche. Kaoru Mori immerses us in the very different worlds of her lead characters, from the elaborate dinner parties and country outings of William’s circle to the scut work and boozy revelry of Emma’s fellow servants. Mori occasionally fumbles small details (pssst… Tosca didn’t debut until 1900!), but most of the time she convincingly recreates the period through her exquisite pen-and-ink drawings of intricate costumes, ornate furnishings, and fussy architecture. That keen sense of observation extends to her cast as well: Emma bursts at the seams with memorable supporting players, from Kelly Stowner, William’s crusty but kind-hearted former governess, to Hakim Atawari, an Eton-educated raj and friend of the Jones family. The main story concludes with volume seven; volumes eight, nine, and ten feature stories about some of the secondary characters, as well as a resolution for Emma and William’s long and tortured romance. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 9/19/07.)

* * * * *

Here’s a friendly challenge to everyone who’s still mourning the loss of a favorite CMX title: if I didn’t include your favorite on this list, add your suggestion(s) to the comments thread. I’ll compile everyone’s recommendations into a poll and let you choose one for me to review next month.

My 10 Favorite CMX Titles

by

CMX may not have had the biggest titles or the biggest sales, but its catalog had a pleasing eclecticism:  who else would license series as utterly different as Moon Child, Madara, and Go West? I didn’t always love what they published, but I appreciated their efforts to bring important artists and off-beat series to American audiences’ attention. I also appreciated the care and consistency with which they edited books; it’s a sad irony that many fans will remember them for the Tenjo Tenghe fiasco and not for the fine job they did with Emma and Shirley. Below are the ten CMX titles I plan to keep in my permanent collection. (Click here for a kid-friendly list of CMX manga.)

astral110. Astral Project
By Marginal and Suyuji Takeda • 4 volumes (complete)
Astral Project might have been an indigestible stew of pseudo-science and Deep Thoughts About Jazz, as it focuses on a young man discovers a connection between his sister’s disappearance and an Albert Ayler recording that helps facilitate out-of-body experiences. Marginal spins a ripping yarn, however, grounding the story’s more fantastic elements in the gritty realism of Tokyo’s red light district. He immerses us in the story to such a degree, in fact, that we learn things as Masahiko does; we’re never one step ahead of our protagonist, a common problem in thrillers. Syuji Takeya’s artwork won’t appeal to everyone, as it sometimes has a rough, sketchy quality that doesn’t mesh well with the dark, Photoshopped backgrounds, but Takeya creates a memorable assortment of faces and bodies that suggest the seediness of Masahiko’s world more readily than dialog could. Quite possibly Ornette Coleman’s favorite manga. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 10/27/08. )

chikyu19. Chikyu Misaki
By Yuji Iwahara • 3 volumes (complete)
This fast-paced adventure plays like best live-action film Disney never made, mixing comedy, family drama, and fantasy elements to tell the story of fourteen-year-old Misaki, who discovers that the local lake is inhabited by a pint-sized Loch Ness Monster. The twist? Little Neo transforms into a cute little boy on land — a nifty trick when a band of kidnappers-cum-poachers get wind of his existence. Chikyu Misaki has a kind of fierce kid logic to it: who but a ten-year-old would dream up a story in which a dinosaur, a downed airplane, a lost suitcase filled with gold, and a potential stepmother all get a turn in the spotlight? Yuji Iwahara’s artwork is also a big plus: his character designs do a fine job of delineating each cast member’s personality and role in the drama, while his action scenes are crisp and fluid. Only a few odd, squicky moments of sexual humor prevent this from being a slam-dunk recommendation for the under-twelve crowd.

nameflower28. The Name of the Flower
By Ken Seito • 4 volumes (complete)
Did Ken Saito have Charlotte Brontë on the brain when she dreamed up the plot for The Name of the Flower? I ask because Flower‘s storyline seems like pure Masterpiece Theater fodder: Chouko, a young orphan left mute and despondent by her parents’ death, is sent to live with a male guardian who  endured a similarly tragic past. Over time, the two form a deep attachment that neither dares admit, an attachment tested by Chouko’s decision to enroll in college and Kei’s general reclusiveness. If the set-up is ripe for melodrama, Saito manages to craft a story that’s rooted in everyday experience; her characters’ journey to self-awareness and romance is complicated by real-life obstacles, not mad wives in the attic. Lovely art cements the bittersweet mood of this borderline josei title. One of my nominees for Best New Manga of 2009.

Shirley_Cover7. Shirley
By Kaoru Mori • 1 volume (complete)
At first glance, Shirley looks like a practice run for Emma, a collection of pleasant, straightforward maid stories featuring prototype versions of Emma‘s main characters. A closer examination, however, reveals that Shirley is, in fact, a series of detailed character sketches exploring the relationships between three maids and their respective employers. While some of these sketches aren’t entirely successful — Kaoru Mori cheerfully describes one as “an extremely cheap story about a boy and an animal” and attributes the inspiration for another to The A-Team — the five chapters focusing on thirteen-year-old Shirley Madison and her independent, headstrong employer are as good as any passage in Emma. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 3/9/10.)

kiichi26. Kiichi and the Magic Books
By Taka Amano • 5 volumes (complete)
This poignant coming-of-age story focuses on Kiichi, a young oni whose lonely existence is transformed by a chance encounter with a traveling librarian. Inspired by the information in one of Mototaro’s books, Kiichi decides to leave his village in search of others like himself. Kiichi’s journey brings him into contact with a variety of people, many of whom seek to harm him or profit from his unique abilities, or who simply fear his appearance. Though Taka Amano never shies away from the darker implications of her story, showing us just how unscrupulous, ignorant, and venal people of all ages can be, Kiichi and the Magic Books is never mawkish or didactic; the fantasy elements add considerable interest and charm, while Kiichi proves emotionally resilient in the face of prejudice and mistrust. Readers more accustomed to the look and feel of Naruto may not initially respond to Amano’s starkly beautiful pen-and-ink drawings. Encourage them to try Kiichi anyway, as this series offers the same degree of complexity, imagination, and emotional authenticity as an Ursula LeGuin or Phillip Pullman novel. CMX’s best title for readers under the age of twelve. (Originally reviewed at Good Comics for Kids on 1/23/09.)

presents15. Presents
By Kanako Inuki • 3 volumes (complete)
Any series that prompted John Jakala to coin a phrase as useful and catchy as “comeuppance theater” deserves a place on a top ten list of some kind; the fact that Kanako Inuki’s horror-comedy is fiendishly entertaining earns it a spot on this particular countdown. Presents reads a lot like Tales of the Crypt, with each story adhering to the same formula: creepy child-woman Karumi offers an enticing present to an unsuspecting person, a present that quickly reveals itself to be an instrument of punishment for the recipient’s bad behavior or poor character. (Hence Jakala’s term “comeuppance theater.”) Though she loves drawing bugs and hideously deformed faces, Inuki is less interested in scaring us than making us laugh and squirm with recognition at our own folly; Inuki’s creepiest stories are also her funniest, satirizing commercial culture and female vanity with aplomb. A must for fans of Kazuo Umezu and Hideshi Hino.

gon44. Gon
By Masashi Tanaka • 7 volumes (complete)
Billed as “the pint-sized terror from the Jurassic era,” Gon is a small orange dinosaur who runs amok in present-day forests, oceans, and arctic tundras, terrorizing predators, defending small animals, and doing whatever else suits his mood. Masashi Tanaka’s artwork is old school in the best sense, employing cross-hatching and delicate lines in lieu of screentone to create volume and depth. His panels are astonishingly detailed yet never fussy or poorly composed — if anything, Tanaka’s technique yields sharper images than the contemporary practice of mixing computer-generated fill with hand-drawn lines. Though Tanaka endows his creatures with unusually expressive faces, he resists the urge to fully anthropomorphize them; their behavior seems species-appropriate even if their expressions occasional verge on human. (Read: the elephants don’t wear spats or drive automobiles, the dogs don’t pretend to be World War I flying aces.) His restraint inoculates Gon against a terminal case of the cutes, resulting in a sometimes funny, sometimes violent, sometimes heartbreaking look at the natural world. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 2/20/08.)

eroica153. From Eroica with Love
By Yasuko Aoike • 15 volumes (incomplete)
What begins as an unsatisfying story about a trio of telepathic teens quickly takes a turn for the awesome with the introduction of Dorian Red, an openly gay British earl who dresses like a rock star and crisscrosses the globe to steal priceless works of art. Eroica eventually settles into an entertaining cat-and-mouse game between Dorian and uptight NATO intelligence officer Klaus Heinz von dem Eberbach, a stoic homophobe who detests the winking, flirtatious Dorian. Though they travel separately, their paths frequently converge in hilarious and explosive ways: hijackings, kidnappings, car chases. The frosting on the cake is Yasuko Aoike’s vintage seventies character designs: Dorian is the spitting image of Robert Plant, right down to the ridiculously tight pants and flowing scarves, while Klaus wears a ‘do as severe and straight as he is. The result is a delirious, over-the-top action-adventure that brings rock-n-roll swagger to a James Bond premise.

swan32. Swan
By Kyoko Ariyoshi • 15 volumes (incomplete)
Swan captures a particular moment in ballet history when the best Russian troupes commanded large, enthusiastic audiences on both sides of the Iron Curtain; when every developed nation had a ballet company of its own (even if the form was imported from elsewhere); and when dancers like Nuryev and Fonteyn were bonafide international celebrities. Into this glamorous world comes sixteen-year-old Masumi, a Japanese girl from the sticks who has passion and raw talent, but lacks refinement. She wins a spot at a national academy for dance, and begins clawing her way up the ranks, learning the repertoire (cue the Tchaikovsky!), making friends and enemies, and eventually finding her way to New York for immersion in new styles and techniques. As compelling as the drama may be, the real star of Swan is the art: the dance choreography is beautifully rendered, capturing both the heroine’s graceful intensity and the music’s lyricism. A few aspects of Swan haven’t aged well — the heroine falls victim to bouts of hysterical deafness, for example — but the strong visuals, historically accurate details, and sports manga vibe keep this marvelous series buoyant throughout.

emma41. Emma
By Kaoru Mori • 10 volume (complete)
If Emma‘s rich-boy-loves-poor-maid storyline suggests a lost volume of The Forsyte Saga, the expert way in which William and Emma’s courtship is told more than compensates for a few moments of narrative cliche. Kaoru Mori immerses us in the very different worlds of her lead characters, from the elaborate dinner parties and country outings of William’s circle to the scut work and boozy revelry of Emma’s fellow servants. Mori occasionally fumbles small details (pssst… Tosca didn’t debut until 1900!), but most of the time she convincingly recreates the period through her exquisite pen-and-ink drawings of intricate costumes, ornate furnishings, and fussy architecture. That keen sense of observation extends to her cast as well: Emma bursts at the seams with memorable supporting players, from Kelly Stowner, William’s crusty but kind-hearted former governess, to Hakim Atawari, an Eton-educated raj and friend of the Jones family. The main story concludes with volume seven; volumes eight, nine, and ten feature stories about some of the secondary characters, as well as a resolution for Emma and William’s long and tortured romance. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 9/19/07.)

* * * * *

Here’s a friendly challenge to everyone who’s still mourning the loss of a favorite CMX title: if I didn’t include your favorite on this list, add your suggestion(s) to the comments thread. I’ll compile everyone’s recommendations into a poll and let you choose one for me to review next month.

Silent Möbius, Vol. 1

by

silentmobius1I like science fiction, I really do, but I have limited tolerance for certain tropes: futures in which all the women dress like strippers — or worse, fascist strippers — futures in which giant bugs menace Earth, and futures in which magic and technology freely commingle. Small wonder, then, that Kia Asamiya’s Silent Möbius has never been on my short list of must-read manga — it’s a festival of cheesecake, gooey monsters, and pistol-packing soldiers who, in a pinch, must decide whether to cast a spell or fire a rocket launcher at the enemy. Imagine my surprise when I discovered just how entertaining Silent Möbius turned out to be, gratuitous panty shots, bugs, and all.

When shorn of its mystical mumbo-jumbo and elaborate character histories, Silent Möbius is, at heart, a classic “They came from outer space!” tale. The story begins in 2026, when the Earth is under siege from interdimensional beings known as Lucifer Hawks, fierce, shape-shifting beasties that can assume a variety of forms: dragons, humans, oversize millipedes. Only a small team of elite agents — the so-called Attacked Mystification Police Force (AMP) — are capable of killing the Hawks with a mixture of up-to-the-minute technology and good old-fashioned sorcery. Where the Hawks are coming from and why remains mysterious — at least in the very early stages of the story — though we learn that one agent’s father may be responsible for opening the floodgate between Earth and the Hawks’ home world.

If the plot is pedestrian, Asamiya’s towering cityscapes and appealing character designs aren’t. To be sure, there are plenty of other sci-fi manga from the 1980s and 1990s peddling similar visions of a dysfunctional future paved in concrete and lit by neon, but Asamiya and his helpers pull off even the busiest compositions, bringing the urban scenes to energetic life; I dare you not to compare Silent Möbius with Blade Runner. (Someone else must have thought so, too, as Asamiya was tapped to do the manga adaptation of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, yet another work that pilfered visuals from Scott’s ground-breaking film.) Then there are the character designs: each member of the AMP seems to be taking her grooming cues from the golden age of MTV, when video vixens came in two flavors: those with enormous feathered hair, and those with short, heavily lacquered locks. Better still, their uniforms consist of jackets with epaulets, neckties, and stirrup leggings. Who knew that 2026 would look suspiciously like 1986?

The other thing that won me over was the characters. I wouldn’t construe Asamiya’s decision to make the AMP a strictly female force as a nod to feminism; there are enough costume failures and half-clad characters to suggest Asamiya was as interested in satisfying the male gaze as he was in promoting the idea that women can kick ass just as well as men. At the same time, however, the ladies of AMP are tough and decisive, and don’t take guff from their male peers; in one of the series’ few nods to realism, the largely male police force resents the AMP for their ability to assume control of any investigation, grumbling about jurisdiction and occasionally baiting the women into fights.

Not that Silent Möbius doesn’t have moments of eyeball-rolling stupidity. Asamiya saddled his characters with borderline stripper names, for example: who but an adult entertainer would choose a name like “Rally Cheyenne” or “Katsumi Liqueur”? (Worse still: Katsumi’s father was Gilgelf Liqueuer, a name best suited for a drunken Hobbit.) Then, too, the series’ rather complicated mythology isn’t well explained; it’s the kind of universe where some characters kill aliens by drawing pentagrams on the ground while others use bazookas. And the cheesecake… sigh. I often had the sinking feeling that Asamiya was secretly auditioning to do a Pirelli Tire calendar with his frequent images of semi-naked women in provocative poses.

Costume failures and panty shots aside, I enjoyed the first volume of Silent Möbius well enough to continue with the series. It’s a fun, escapist romp that occasionally takes itself a little too seriously, but never bogs down in its own ridiculous mythology.

SILENT MÖBIUS: COMPLETE EDITION, VOL. 1 • BY KIA ASAMIYA • UDON ENTERTAINMENT • 200 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Silent Möbius, Vol. 1

by

I like science fiction, I really do, but I have limited tolerance for certain tropes: futures in which all the women dress like strippers — or worse, fascist strippers — futures in which giant bugs menace Earth, and futures in which magic and technology freely commingle. Small wonder, then, that Kia Asamiya’s Silent Möbius has never been on my short list of must-read manga — it’s a festival of cheesecake, gooey monsters, and pistol-packing soldiers who, in a pinch, must decide whether to cast a spell or fire a rocket launcher at the enemy. Imagine my surprise when I discovered just how entertaining Silent Möbius turned out to be, gratuitous panty shots, bugs, and all.

When shorn of its mystical mumbo-jumbo and elaborate character histories, Silent Möbius is, at heart, a classic “They came from outer space!” tale. The story begins in 2026, when the Earth is under siege from interdimensional beings known as Lucifer Hawks, fierce, shape-shifting beasties that can assume a variety of forms: dragons, humans, oversize millipedes. Only a small team of elite agents — the so-called Attacked Mystification Police Force (AMP) — are capable of killing the Hawks with a mixture of up-to-the-minute technology and good old-fashioned sorcery. Where the Hawks are coming from and why remains mysterious — at least in the very early stages of the story — though we learn that one agent’s father may be responsible for opening the floodgate between Earth and the Hawks’ home world.

If the plot is pedestrian, Asamiya’s towering cityscapes and appealing character designs aren’t. To be sure, there are plenty of other sci-fi manga from the 1980s and 1990s peddling similar visions of a dysfunctional future paved in concrete and lit by neon, but Asamiya and his helpers pull off even the busiest compositions, bringing the urban scenes to energetic life; I dare you not to compare Silent Möbius with Blade Runner. (Someone else must have thought so, too, as Asamiya was tapped to do the manga adaptation of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, yet another work that pilfered visuals from Scott’s ground-breaking film.) Then there are the character designs: each member of the AMP seems to be taking her grooming cues from the golden age of MTV, when video vixens came in two flavors: those with enormous feathered hair, and those with short, heavily lacquered locks. Better still, their uniforms consist of jackets with epaulets, neckties, and stirrup leggings. Who knew that 2026 would look suspiciously like 1986?

The other thing that won me over was the characters. I wouldn’t construe Asamiya’s decision to make the AMP a strictly female force as a nod to feminism; there are enough costume failures and half-clad characters to suggest Asamiya was as interested in satisfying the male gaze as he was in promoting the idea that women can kick ass just as well as men. At the same time, however, the ladies of AMP are tough and decisive, and don’t take guff from their male peers; in one of the series’ few nods to realism, the largely male police force resents the AMP for their ability to assume control of any investigation, grumbling about jurisdiction and occasionally baiting the women into fights.

Not that Silent Möbius doesn’t have moments of eyeball-rolling stupidity. Asamiya saddled his characters with borderline stripper names, for example: who but an adult entertainer would choose a name like “Rally Cheyenne” or “Katsumi Liqueur”? (Worse still: Katsumi’s father was Gilgelf Liqueuer, a name best suited for a drunken Hobbit.) Then, too, the series’ rather complicated mythology isn’t well explained; it’s the kind of universe where some characters kill aliens by drawing pentagrams on the ground while others use bazookas. And the cheesecake… sigh. I often had the sinking feeling that Asamiya was secretly auditioning to do a Pirelli Tire calendar with his frequent images of semi-naked women in provocative poses.

Costume failures and panty shots aside, I enjoyed the first volume of Silent Möbius well enough to continue with the series. It’s a fun, escapist romp that occasionally takes itself a little too seriously, but never bogs down in its own ridiculous mythology.

SILENT MÖBIUS: COMPLETE EDITION, VOL. 1 • BY KIA ASAMIYA • UDON ENTERTAINMENT • 200 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

13th Boy, Vols. 1-4

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13thboy_1Like Water for Kimchi — that’s how I would describe 13th Boy, a weird, wonderful Korean comedy with a strong element of magical realism.

The plot is standard sunjong fodder: Hee-So, a teen with a flair for the dramatic, believes that the handsome Won-Jun is destined to be her twelfth and last boyfriend, the man with whom she’ll spend the rest of her life. Though Won-Jun accepts her initial confession of love — she drags him on television to ask him on a date — he dumps her just one month later, sending Hee-So into a tailspin: how could her destiny walk away from her? She then resolves to take fate into her own hands, launching an aggressive campaign to win him back: she stalks Won-Jun, looking for any opportunity to be alone with him; she joins the Girl Scouts so that she can go on a camping trip with him (he’s a Boy Scout); she even befriends her romantic rival Sae-Bom, defending Sae-Bom from bullies and risking her life to rescue Sae-Bom’s beloved stuffed rabbit from a burning building. In short: Hee-So is a girl on a mission, dignity be damned.

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13th Boy, Vols. 1-4

by

Like Water for Kimchi — that’s how I would describe 13th Boy, a weird, wonderful Korean comedy with a strong element of magical realism.

The plot is standard sunjong fodder: Hee-So, a teen with a flair for the dramatic, believes that the handsome Won-Jun is destined to be her twelfth and last boyfriend, the man with whom she’ll spend the rest of her life. Though Won-Jun accepts her initial confession of love — she drags him on television to ask him on a date — he dumps her just one month later, sending Hee-So into a tailspin: how could her destiny walk away from her? She then resolves to take fate into her own hands, launching an aggressive campaign to win him back: she stalks Won-Jun, looking for any opportunity to be alone with him; she joins the Girl Scouts so that she can go on a camping trip with him (he’s a Boy Scout); she even befriends her romantic rival Sae-Bom, defending Sae-Bom from bullies and risking her life to rescue Sae-Bom’s beloved stuffed rabbit from a burning building. In short: Hee-So is a girl on a mission, dignity be damned.

Our first clue that 13th Boy isn’t just another dreary comedy about a girl going to extremes to nab a cute boy is the introduction of Beatrice, Hee-So’s sidekick. Beatrice is a talking cactus (no, really, a talking cactus) who transforms into a handsome, if somewhat androgynous, teen whenever there’s a full moon. I don’t know too many storytellers who could make something as cracky as a lovelorn saguaro work, but SangEun Lee presents Beatrice matter-of-factly, as if every self-respecting girl had a walking, talking man-plant living in her bedroom. If anything, Beatrice functions as a nifty surrogate for the reader, voicing concern about Hee-So’s fanatical commitment to Won-Jun and urging Hee-So to focus her attention elsewhere.

Our second clue is the revelation that one of Hee-So’s classmates has magical powers: Whie-Young can change the weather, make himself invisible, walk through walls, and bring inanimate objects to life. Though Whie-Young’s mother and grandmother have warned him not to use his abilities, he persists, hoping to prove the depth of his feelings for Hee-So. (Yes, 13th Boy is one of those comedies in which every character is head-over-heels for the wrong person.) Those rescues and romantic acts come at a steep price, as each spell shortens Whie-Young’s life; if he doesn’t stop playing Hee-So’s guardian angel, he’ll die a very young man.

If the fantasy elements enliven a tepid premise, the story’s more down-to-earth aspects — especially Hee-So’s relationship with her female friends — give 13th Boy some real emotional heft. Hee-So’s best buddy, Nam-Joo, is a welcome addition to the cast, a tough tomboy who’s fiercely loyal to Hee-So yet takes a dim view of her pal’s romantic obsession. Their squabbles and pep talks have a ring of truth to them, even if Lee contrives some ridiculous scenarios for the girls to resolve their differences. (I don’t know about you, but I never settled a score with anyone by challenging them to a dodge ball game or judo match.) Sae-Bom, too, turns out to be a more interesting, complicated character than she first appears; as the story unfolds, we realize that she has the emotional IQ of a grade schooler but the physical appearance and intellect of a teenager, making her an object of scorn among the class alpha girls. If Hee-So’s motivation for defending Sae-Bom was initially less-than-pure (a fact she readily concedes), she develops a genuine sense of empathy for Won-Jun’s friend — one of our first clues that Hee-So’s boy-crazed exterior belies a more compassionate, less narcissistic nature.

Lee’s crisp layouts and cute character designs are an excellent complement to her storytelling. She uses bold, strong lines to define her characters, shying away from heavy use of screentone; the white of the page plays just as important a role in defining space and volume as the ink, making her designs pop. (Beatrice is a notable exception, as his cactus skin is toned dark grey.) Though Hee-So and Won-Jun have enormous, doll-like eyes, Lee’s grasp of anatomy is solid; her characters have the rangy, slightly awkward bodies of fifteen-year-olds, rather than the hyper-stylized physiques of the Bring It On! gang. Only the backgrounds disappoint, a mish-mash of traced architectural elements and Photoshopped images that seem a little too generic for such a whacked-out story. (Or maybe that’s the genius of the bland background art? I can’t decide.)

I’ll be honest: I went into 13th Boy knowing about Beatrice, which predisposed me to overlook some of the first volume’s groan-worthy moments. And as much as I love Beatrice — and really, what’s not to like about a chatty cactus? — what really won me over was the deft way in which SangEun Lee balanced the series’ magical elements with its more realistic ones, creating a unique story in which magical acts reveal character and everyday acts affect change.

Review copy of volume 4 provided by the publisher.

13TH BOY, VOLS. 1-4 • BY SANG-EUN LEE • YEN PRESS • RATING: TEEN