Katherine Dacey

My Favorite Shojo Manga: Kaze Hikaru

July 7, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

In Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics, author Paul Gravett argues that female mangaka from Riyoko Ikeda to CLAMP have often used “the fluidity of gender boundaries and forbidden love” to “address issues of deep importance to their readers.” Taeko Watanabe is no exception to the rule, employing cross-dressing and shonen-ai elements to tell a story depicting the “pressures and pleasures of individuals living life in their own way and, for better or worse, not always as society expects.”

Kaze Hikaru begins in 1863, a period of immense political and social upheaval in Japan, as the ruling class divided into factions loyal to the emperor (whose seat was in Kyoto), and factions loyal to the shogun (whose government was housed in Edo, or present-day Tokyo). Exacerbating the tension between these groups was the looming question of sakoku, or isolationism, a centuries-old policy that was crumbling in the face of military and economic pressure from the West, an unstable currency, and the dawning realization that certain Western technologies might have a role to play in the modernization of Japan. Taeko Watanabe draws on the events of the Bakumatsu (or late shogunate era, 1863 – 1867) for Kaze Hikaru, incorporating real historical figures into the story and dramatizing some of the major and minor conflicts of the period, from the Ikedaya Affair of 1864 to the Shinsengumi’s ambivalence about adopting rifles and canons into the samurai arsenal.

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My Favorite Shojo Manga: Kaze Hikaru

July 7, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

In the opening pages of Kaze Hikaru, Sei Tominaga, the heroine, lives a sheltered existence under the watchful eye of her father and older brother. Local rabble-rousers accuse the Tominagas of harboring spies at the medical clinic they operate and burn it to the ground, leaving Sei homeless and orphaned. Determined to avenge her family, Sei disguises herself as a boy, adopts the name Kamiya Seizaburo, and joins the Mibu-Roshi, a band of ronin who are fiercely loyal to the Tokugawa Shogunate. (The Mibu-Roshi would come to be known as the Shinsengumi, or “newly chosen corps.” At the height of their power, their ranks numbered around 300, and included a few members who were not born into the samurai caste.) Sei finds a mentor in the slightly older Okita Soji, an accomplished swordsman who acts as a den mother for new recruits. He accidentally discovers Sei’s identity, agreeing to keep her secret if she can demonstrate her worth as bushi, or an honorable warrior.

Watanabe’s art is clean and crisp, conveying enough period detail to firmly establish the setting without overwhelming the eye. A similar attention to facial features and body shapes also informs her nuanced and varied character designs, a godsend for a such a densely populated series. The action sequences are staged simply but effectively, conveying the skill and physical strength necessary to best an opponent in hand-to-hand combat, or suggesting the dangers of a night-time raid. But it’s in the everyday moments that Watanabe’s artistry really shines, as she has a talent for depicting the energy and activity of an urban marketplace, a soliders’ encampment, or a red-light district. We see the Shinsengumi recruits train, squabble, drink, gamble, and abuse their power with innkeepers and merchants, with careful attention paid to the objects they handle, the clothing they wear, and the posture they adopt as they interact with people of higher and lower social status.

Much of the drama — as well as the humor — in Kaze Hikaru stems from Sei’s attempts to fit in with her fellow soldiers by proving her worth as a man — no mean feat, given her small size, feminine appearance, and cultivated upbringing. (This is one of the few cross-dressing stories in which characters routinely ask the question on readers’ minds: “Aren’t you a little too pretty to be a guy?” Not surprisingly, some of the men desire Sei as an exceptionally handsome boy, further confusing our protagonist.) Sei’s greatest challenge, however, is concealing her deep love for Okita as both a mentor and a man. She wants Okita to respect her as a warrior, yet fears that her gender-bending transgression may prevent him from reciprocating her romantic feelings. It’s a classic shojo predicament — think of Lady Oscar and her manservant Andre — that simultaneously reveals Sei’s vulnerability and resolve. Her fierce commitment to the Shinsengumi, however, eventually prevails over her desire to reclaim her feminine identity, as she decides to honor Okita’s wish that she be Seizaburo and not Sei.

When contrasted with other Shojo Beat titles, Kaze Hikaru seems a little old-fashioned. Watanabe tends to favor neat grids and clearly-defined panels over the freer, more expressive layouts used in series like We Were There, Sand Chronicles, and Vampire Knight. The pace, too, is more stately, demanding a higher level of attention from the reader than most Shojo Beat titles; Watanabe’s characters discuss political matters, clan rivalries, and military strategy in considerable detail, giving some scenes the feeling of a Kurosawa movie. Even Sei and Okita’s friendship, rooted as it is in mutual warrior regard, seems out of step with the racier romances depicted in Absolute Boyfriend and B.O.D.Y.: would a school council president or magical girl swoon when she received a customized katana from the object of her affection, even if it was a sincere expression of his respect for her skill and courage?

Yet for all its squareness — or perhaps because of it — Kaze Hikaru remains my all-time favorite shojo manga. What makes Kaze Hikaru so compelling is the way in which Watanabe appropriates a very tired story — samurai seeks revenge in a time of social and political turbulence — and infuses it with a fresh, feminine sensibility. I might call it Satsuma Gishiden for Girls, but I think that downplays Watanabe’s achievement. She’s created an action-filled drama in the vein of The Rose of Versailles or They Were Eleven but transplanted the setting from the relatively safe, romanticized worlds of the French Revolution and outer space to a period in Japanese history in which the male-identified virtues of courage, discipline, and patriotism dominated public discourse. She may not have intended it as a bold political statement, but Watanabe has done something extraordinary: she’s given girls the freedom to project themselves into Japan’s past without gender constraints. American artists looking to connect with female readers would do well to read Kaze Hikaru for inspiration — there’s a great graphic novel to be written about a cross-dressing Minuteman or Union solider, and Sei would make a terrific prototype for its spunky heroine.

Review copies of volumes 17 and 18 provided by VIZ Media, LLC. This is an expanded version of a review that appeared at PopCultureShock on 5/17/07.

KAZE HIKARU, VOLS. 1-18 • BY TAEKO WATANABE • VIZ • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

The Best Manga You’re Not Reading

July 2, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

On Saturday, June 26th, Brigid Alverson, Robin Brenner, Martha Cornog, and I gave a presentation at the American Library Association’s annual conference called “The Best Manga You’re Not Reading.” The goal of our talk was to remind librarians about all the weird, wonderful, and diverse offerings for older teens and adults. Recommendations ran the gamut from Junko Mizuno’s Cinderalla (one of Martha’s picks) to ES: Eternal Sabbath (one of Brigid’s), with an emphasis placed on titles that are in-print and appealing to readers who self-identify as manga fans — and those who don’t. Below are my four picks, plus a “mulligan” (to borrow a term from Brigid).

THE FOUR IMMIGRANTS MANGA: A JAPANESE EXPERIENCE IN SAN FRANCISCO, 1904 – 1924

Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama • Stone Bridge Press • 1 volume

In 1904, aspiring artist Henry Kiyama sailed from Japan to the United States in search of economic opportunity. After living in San Francisco for nearly twenty years, Kiyama documented his experiences in the form of 52 short comics. His memoir — one of the very first examples of a graphic novel — examines the racism and economic hardships that he and his friends encountered on a daily basis. Kiyama also addresses major events of the day, critiquing several Congressional acts designed to curtail Asian immigration, and remembering what it was like to live through the Great Earthquake of 1906, attend the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915, and survive the flu pandemic of 1918.

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The Best Manga You’re Not Reading

July 2, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

fourimmigrants The Four Immigrants Manga
Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama • Stone Bridge Press • 1 volume
In 1904, aspiring artist Henry Kiyama sailed from Japan to the United States in search of economic opportunity. After living in San Francisco for nearly twenty years, Kiyama documented his experiences in the form of 52 short comics. His memoir — one of the very first examples of a graphic novel — examines the racism and economic hardships that he and his friends encountered on a daily basis. Kiyama also addresses major events of the day, critiquing several Congressional acts designed to curtail Asian immigration, and remembering what it was like to live through the Great Earthquake of 1906, attend the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915, and survive the flu pandemic of 1918.

What makes these autobiographical comics truly extraordinary, however, was that they were originally published in 1931 in a bilingual edition right here in America. As Frederik Schodt explains in his introductory essay, Kiyama’s work was aimed at other first-generation immigrants who, like him, were caught between two worlds, trying to make sense of their place in both. The visual style and subject matter may not strike contemporary readers as manga-esque (Schodt notes the influence of American cartoonist George McManus on Kiyama), but the intimate quality of the stories will leave as lasting an impression as graphic memoirs such as Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home.

parasyte-v2 Parasyte
Hitoshi Iwaaki • Del Rey • 8 volumes, complete
Imagine, if you can, a manga that combined elements of My Left Foot, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and The Defiant Ones with the witty banter of a good buddy cop picture, and you have some idea of what Hitoshi Iwaaki’s Parasyte is all about. The story focuses on Shin, a high school student who wakes up one night to find a worm-like alien tunneling up his right arm towards his brain. In a moment of panic, Shin applies a tourniquet, arresting the creature’s progress but creating a brand-new problem in the process: the parasite takes up residence in his right hand, manifesting itself as a snail-like entity with googly eyes, a mouth, and the ability to transform itself into an astonishing array of shapes. Recognizing that their bodies are becoming interdependent, Shin and Migi (as he decides to call the parasite) agree to an uneasy truce. It isn’t long before other aliens are alert to Shin and Migi’s presence, forcing Shin and Migi to flee when it becomes apparent that the other parasites won’t tolerate their symbiotic existence. Shin and Migi can’t go to the human authorities, either, without risking imprisonment, quarantine, or worse.

Like a good B-movie, Parasyte uses elements of science fiction and horror to explore Big Questions about human nature while scaring the hell out of readers; the series is filled with nail-biting scenes of Shin and Migi trying to escape detection or fight other parasites. The violence is graphic but not sadistic; most of the action takes place between panels, with only the grisly aftermath represented in pictorial form. (Read: no torture scenes, no female characters being sexually assaulted before becoming an alien’s dinner.) The script is clever and funny, as Shin and Migi trade barbs with the antagonistic affection of Ernie and Bert, Oscar Madison and Felix Unger, or Detectives Mike Logan and Lenny Briscoe. Their relationship is one of Parasyte‘s greatest strengths, adding an element of novelty to a familiar story while deftly critiquing the idea that human beings’ intellect and emotional attachments place them squarely atop the food chain.

satsuma Satsuma Gishiden
Hiroshi Hirata • Dark Horse • 3 volumes, suspended
With its heady mix of social commentary, political intrigue, and battlefield action, Hiroshi Hirata’s Satsuma Gishiden reads like Kagemusha as told by Sam Peckinpah. Hirata dramatizes the plight of a powerful southern province that rebelled against the shogunate in the late eighteenth century (and would again, more famously, in the nineteenth). The story unfolds in a kaleidoscopic fashion, introducing us to the the sanpin and goshi, low-born samurai who eked out a living as farmers and laborers between military engagements; the daimyo, the leaders of Satsuma’s ruling Shimazu clan; and the administrators, spies, and chonin swept up in the violent conflict.

In the wrong hands, this material would be horribly dull; the initial showdown between Satsuma and shogunate stems from a public works project. (Makes you wonder: was Satsuma Gishiden the favorite manga of Robert Moses?) But Hirata successfully balances historical narrative and dramatic action. He explains the caste system and politics of the Edo period, the ritual of hiemontori, the concept of nise — even the type of water works found in eighteenth-century Japan — tossing in some jokey panels of winged ryo and money-grubbing donjon to illustrate the shogunate’s corruption. Some readers may find these passages didactic, but they provide an essential foundation for grasping nuances of plot and character. Lest the tone become too pedantic, Hirata liberally sprinkles the story with passages of bawdy humor and baroque violence. In one gruesomely funny scene, for example, a dying character uses his own broken rib to puncture an opponent’s skull. Top that, Mr. Peckinpah!

The chief attraction of Satsuma Gishiden, however, is its distinctive visuals. Hirata’s layouts evoke the films of mid-century masters such as Kurosawa, Kobayashi, and Ozu, blending cinematic realism with the rough-hewn aesthetic of woodblock prints. The characters, costumes, and horses are rendered in meticulous detail, yet the artwork is never static; through creative use of perspective, Hirata immerses the reader in vivid battle scenes, lively clan meetings, and ocean voyages. (Just a thought: Satsuma Gishiden would be awesome in 3-D. Maybe Dark Horse could repackage future editions with goggles to enhance the effect?) Recommended for samurai movie buffs, amateur Japanese historians, and readers who’ve exhausted the Kazuo Koike canon. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 2/16/07.)

town_cover Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms
Fumiyo Kouno • Last Gasp • 1 volume
If Barefoot Gen shows readers what it was like to live through the Hiroshima bombing and its horrific aftermath, Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms shows readers what it was like to live with the memories of that day ten, twenty, and forty years later. Fumiyo Kouno’s book is divided into two stories. The first, “Town of Evening Calm,” is set in 1955, and focuses on one young woman’s attempt to preserve the remnants of her family, while the second, “Country of Cherry Blossoms,” is set in the 1990s, and focuses on the strained relationship between a survivor and his adult daughter. Both stories are simply but beautifully illustrated, avoiding the kind of visual tropes (big eyes, tiny noses, super-cute deformations) that many Western readers find jarring when reading Serious Manga.

In the few panels alluding to the actual events of August 6, 1945, Kouno’s art becomes more primitive and stylized, suggesting the horrific effects of the blast by depicting the victims as stick figures with swollen faces. The child-like simplicity and directness of these images are startling yet effective, a powerful representation of the radiation’s devastating ability to rob its victims of their identities by destroying their hair, hands, and faces. These scenes are notable as well for the skillful way in which present and past co-exist within the same panels; we see the landscape as the survivors do, alive with vivid memories of the blast. None of these images are graphic, though they are an unsettling reminder of the characters’ deep emotional scars.

The book’s strong anti-war message is balanced by the story’s emphasis on quiet, everyday moments, preventing Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms from succumbing to didacticism or sensationalism. Though Kouno did not grow up in Hiroshima, her meticulous research and careful reading of survivor memoirs lends her work a kind of emotional authenticity that a more dramatic story might have lacked. The result is a moving work that challenges readers to imagine how they might rebuild their lives in the aftermath of incomprehensible tragedy. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 1/4/10.)

phoenix7 BONUS PICK: Phoenix: Civil War
Osamu Tezuka • VIZ • 2 volumes
A quick glance through Phoenix: Civil War might not suggest that this is the stuff of high art. The characters bear an uncanny resemblance to the denizens of Popeye and jokey anachronisms abound. (Although the story ostensibly takes place in twelfth-century Japan, one character receives a telephone call and chows down on a bucket of KFC.) But flip to the back pages, where VIZ has included a brief statement from the manga-ka explaining the origins and meaning of Phoenix, and you’ll learn that Tezuka claimed Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird as the inspiration for Phoenix. Tezuka saw parallels between Stravinsky’s firebird and a similar creature from Japanese legend, Hou-ou. The phoenix, Tezuka decided, was a powerful symbol of “man’s attachment to life and the complications that arise from greed.” Using the phoenix as a touchstone, Tezuka constructed an elaborate, twelve-volume series exploring Japan’s historic past and possible future. He planned a final volume set in present-day Japan (“where past and future converge”), but passed away without completing his epic.

One of the best things about Phoenix is that readers can enjoy it as a series or a collection of stand-alone stories. Though I love Sun (the series’ epic, two-volume conclusion) and Karma (the fourth volume of the English edition), I think the two-volume Civil War (the seventh and eight volumes of the English edition) make the best introduction to Tezuka’s masterpiece. Civil War is set in Heian-era Kyoto, where several powerful families vie for control of the city. We experience the conflict through myriad perspectives: a lowly woodcutter and his fiancee, a ragtag band of samurai, an apolitical sage, and two powerful clan leaders, both of whom seek the phoenix in an effort to consolidate their political victories and perpetuate their bloodlines. The story may remind readers of The Hidden Fortress as it moves between epic battles and domestic drama, romance, and earthy comedy. While Tezuka isn’t above a little flatulence humor, he never condescends to his characters, using such lowbrow moments to demonstrate the common humanity of his entire cast. The character designs may be too cartoonish for some tastes, but Tezuka’s artwork is never short of spectacular; his imaginative layouts and flair for caricature are as distinctive as Igor Stravinsky’s brilliant orchestrations, churning rhythms, and pungent octatonic harmonies. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 10/26/06.)

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Click here to read Brigid and Martha’s recommendations; click here to read Robin’s. Have a title you’d like to suggest? Let me know in the comments — we’re hoping to do this panel again at another convention, and would welcome your feedback.

Manga Artifacts: Pineapple Army

June 30, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

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.

PINEAPPLE 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

June 30, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

PINEAPPLE ARMY

NOTE TO THE INTREPID BUYER

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

Solanin

June 26, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

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.

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Solanin

June 26, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

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

June 24, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

chi_cover 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.

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Chi’s Sweet Home, Vol. 1

June 24, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

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.

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

June 18, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

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

June 18, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

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

June 16, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

HoneyHunt1 If 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

June 14, 2010 by Katherine Dacey 20 Comments

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.)

10. 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. )

9. 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.

8. 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.

7. 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.)

6. 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.)

5. 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.

4. 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.)

3. 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.

2. 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.

1. 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.)

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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

June 14, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

astral1 10. 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. )

chikyu1 9. 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.

nameflower2 8. 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_Cover 7. 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.)

kiichi2 6. 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.)

presents1 5. 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.

gon4 4. 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.)

eroica15 3. 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.

swan3 2. 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.

emma4 1. 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.)

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