Katherine Dacey

20th Century Boys, Vols. 1-6

January 9, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

20thcentury1 Do you remember those first, glorious seasons of Heroes and Lost? Both shows promised to reinvigorate the sci-fi thriller with complex, flawed characters and plots that moved freely between past, present, and future. By the middle of their second seasons, however, it was clear that neither shows’ writers knew how to successfully resolve the conflicts and mysteries introduced in the first, as the writers resorted to cheap tricks — the out-of-left-field personality reversal, the all-too-convenient coincidence, and the arbitrary let’s-kill-off-a-character plot twist — to keep the myriad plot lines afloat, alienating thousands of viewers in the process. Heroes and Lost seemed proof that even the scariest doomsday scenario would fall flat if saddled with too many subplots and secondary characters.

Reading Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys, however, convinced me that it is possible to tell a twisty, layered story about ordinary people saving the world from annihilation without succumbing to cliche or unduly testing the audience’s patience. The key to Urasawa’s success? A strong script with vivid characters and a clear sense of purpose, reassuring the reader that all the plot strands are just that: strands, not loose threads.

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20th Century Boys, Vols. 1-6

January 9, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

Do you remember those first, glorious seasons of Heroes and Lost? Both shows promised to reinvigorate the sci-fi thriller with complex, flawed characters and plots that moved freely between past, present, and future. By the middle of their second seasons, however, it was clear that neither shows’ writers knew how to successfully resolve the conflicts and mysteries introduced in the first, as the writers resorted to cheap tricks — the out-of-left-field personality reversal, the all-too-convenient coincidence, and the arbitrary let’s-kill-off-a-character plot twist — to keep the myriad plot lines afloat, alienating thousands of viewers in the process. Heroes and Lost seemed proof that even the scariest doomsday scenario would fall flat if saddled with too many subplots and secondary characters.

In 20th Century Boys, humanity’s future rests in the hands of an unpromising lot. There’s Kenji, a college dropout who runs a convenience store; Maruo, a cheerful, plump soul who owns a shop down the street from Kenji; Yoshitune, a shy, bespectacled office man; Otcho, a scruffy renegade who’s been living off the grid in Thailand; and Yukiji, a K-9 officer who can’t control her drug-sniffing dog. All five were childhood friends, members of a secret club that wrote The Book of Prophecy, an elaborate doomsday scenario involving superheroes and giant robots. Now in their thirties, the gang has disbanded — that is, until their pal Donkey, a high-school science teacher, leaps to his death off a building.

Or did he? As Kenji begins pushing for answers, he discovers that Donkey was investigating a mysterious cult, known only as The Friends, that had appropriated the club’s “official” symbol. The more Kenji probes, the more parallels he discovers between The Friends’ clandestine activities and the Book of Prophecy, parallels that suggest the cult is headed by one of Kenji’s old schoolmates. Terrified that The Friends will attempt to recreate the story’s climatic battle, Kenji tracks down his clubmates one by one, assembling a small army to oppose the cult.

20thcentury4 From the very first pages of volume one, Urasawa demonstrates an uncommon ability to move back and forth in time, juxtaposing scenes from Kenji’s past with brief glimpses of the future. The success of these scenes is attributable, in part, to Urasawa’s superb draftsmanship, as he does a fine job of aging his characters from their long-limbed, baby-faced, ten-year-old selves into thirty-somethings weighed down by adult responsibilities.

The integrity of Urasawa’s characterizations also contribute to the success of these temporal leaps; his characters’ adult behavior jives with what we know about them from childhood flashbacks. Otcho, for example, was the club’s most worldly member, the kid who introduced his pals to rock-n-roll and gave them the lowdown on Woodstock; it’s not surprising to see him reincarnated as a long-haired thug-for-hire who despises authority. Ditto for Yanbo and Mabo, twins who terrorized Kenji and friends back in the day. When Yanbo and Mabo resurface in volume five, Urasawa gives them a more pleasing appearance and demeanor than we might have expected, luring us into a false sense that they’ve outgrown their bullying ways. Urasawa then slaps us on the wrist for not trusting our original assessment of the twins, uncorking a fiendish plot twist that’s in keeping with what we already knew about them.

Urasawa uses these flashbacks and flash-forwards to build a dense network of connections among his characters, gradually revealing how and why Kenji’s childhood fantasies are providing the blueprint for a real-life apocalyptic scenario. Heroes and Lost attempted to do the same thing, but neither show succeeded in convincing us that those connections were lying just below the surface waiting for us to discover them; those connections had an arbitrary, bolt-from-the-blue quality. With 20th Century Boys, however, Urasawa makes us feel that we might have unearthed these links without any editorial guidance, as even the most surprising developments still make sense within the story’s elaborate framework.

What gives the story its sense of urgency is Urasawa’s ability to create and sustain a strong sense of fear and anticipation. Six volumes into 20th Century Boys, we’ve had a few tantalizing glimpses of the robot that menaces Tokyo on the eve of the millennium, but we still don’t know what it looks like or what it can do. Urasawa has only shown us the enemy in silhouette:

20thcentury_robot

It’s a point I’ve raised in other reviews: an unseen menace is much scarier than one that’s routinely trotted out of the shadows to spook us. Consider the difference between Jaws and its sequels. In the original, Steven Spielberg hinted at the shark’s presence, showing us a dorsal fin or a dark outline moving rapidly beneath the water’s surface, but withholding the “money” shot (“tooth” shot, perhaps?) until the third reel. The few times that we see Jaws attack are genuinely scary because they finally put us face-to-face with those terrible teeth and dead eyes, confirming just how deadly the shark really is. In the sequels, however, the shark is featured prominently; we see it dine on boaters and swimmers in lurid detail. We may marvel at the stupidity of the shark’s victims, or feel disgusted by the gallons of fake blood, but we never feel scared, as we know what we’re up against from the very first scenes.

Urasawa takes a page from Spielberg’s book, showing us just enough of the robot’s form to engage our imagination. The robot’s silhouette hints at its size and strength; if anything, it looks like an enormous man-o-war lumbering through Tokyo. But what stays with us are those fierce, penetrating headlights, so evocative of a prison searchlight or a pair of eyes. As David Ford observes at Are You a Serious Comic Book Reader?, we feel a palpable sense of despair when we see the robot: how can Kenji hope to escape its all-seeing gaze? (By the way, I highly encourage you to read Ford’s essay, though spoiler-phobes should stay away until they’ve finished volume five.)

With more than ten volumes left in 20th Century Boys, I have no idea how Urasawa plans to tie all of the stories’ threads together. I’m confident, however, that he’ll do so with the skill of a master weaver, seamlessly incorporating all of the relationships, plot twists, and motives into an intricate, beautiful tapestry.

Review copies provided by VIZ Media, LLC. Volume seven will be released on February 10, 2010.

20TH CENTURY BOYS, VOLS. 1-6 • BY NAOKI URASAWA • VIZ • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms

January 4, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

In The Idea of History, author R. G. Collingwood argues that nineteenth-century historians viewed their task in a different spirit than their predecessors. While previous generations of scholars treated history as a simple chain of events, the Romantics wanted to recreate the past through their writings. The Romantic historian, Collingwood explained, “entered sympathetically into the actions which he described; unlike the scientist who studied nature, he did not stand over the facts as mere objects for cognition; on the contrary, he threw himself into them and felt them imaginatively as experiences of his own.”

I found myself revisiting The Idea of History as I read Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, a project that might well have resonated with Collingwood’s pioneering nineteenth-century historians in its efforts to “enter sympathetically” into the lives of Hiroshima’s survivors, the hibakusha, a group both pitied and shunned by their fellow Japanese in the years following the 1945 bombing. In the introduction to Town of Evening Calm, manga-ka Fumiyo Kouno explains her approach to the subject in terms that are strikingly similar to Collingwood’s:

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Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms

January 4, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

I always thought all I needed to know about the bomb was that it was a terrifying thing that happened once upon a time, and a subject best avoided. After living in Tokyo for a while, however, I came to realize that people outside of Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t really know all that much about the ravages of the atomic bomb. Unlike me, they weren’t avoiding the subject—they never had the opportunity to learn about it even if they wanted to… I hadn’t experienced the war or the bomb first-hand, but I could still draw on the words of a different time and place to reflect on peace and express my thoughts.

Kouno’s decision to focus on the hibakusha and their descendants makes Town of Evening Calm an immediate, accessible work, one less concerned with recreating a specific historical moment than in imagining what it would be like to rebuild one’s life in the aftermath of that event. It’s a wise strategy, I think, given how difficult it is to convey the horror of war without relying on dramatic devices that can trivialize survivors’ experiences.

Kouno’s approach is not without pitfalls, however. In her review of Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, Casey Brienza argues that Kouno portrays her characters as victims of American aggression without acknowledging Japan’s role in precipitating the bombing, a tactic that could be interpreted as a “myopic… preoccupation with [Japan’s] wartime suffering” that “allow[s] the Japanese to forget that they started the war.” At the end of the first story, for example, a woman dying of radiation sickness wonders “if the people who dropped the bomb are pleased with themselves: ‘Yes! Got another one!'” It’s a powerful moment; the character’s comment is shocking in its raw honesty, especially for American readers. It’s an ambiguous moment, too; one could certainly read a note of national self-pity into the character’s words, as she never mentions the war itself, only the suffering caused by the bomb. Yet I think this passage invites a second reading as well, as a very human attempt to make sense of tragedy, to express the character’s understandable need to know why she — a civilian — was subjected to such unimaginable horror, rather than a denial of the suffering caused by the Japanese occupation of Korea, Manchuria, and the Philippines.

In less skillful hands, scenes like these might be mawkish, but Kouno crafts an emotionally authentic story from survivor narratives, deftly moving between present and past to show us how her characters hear the echoes of August 6th in their everyday lives. The first story, “Town of Evening Calm,” focuses on Minami, a young seamstress living in Hiroshima ten years after the atomic blast. Superficially, the city seems to be healing: its downtown is bustling with activity, as is the dressmaker’s shop where Minami works. Yet subtle signs of the devastation remain, from the ramshackle houses of the residential district to the scarcity of everyday goods. (In a particularly effective scene, we see Minami walk home barefoot so as to preserve her only pair of shoes.) Minami herself bears psychic wounds from the day, as is evident in her brusque demeanor with outsiders and her staunch refusal to leave her ailing mother’s side. Underneath her bravado, we see a fearful, guilt-ridden young woman who wonders when she will succumb to the long-term effects of the radiation, who cannot escape her horrifying memories, and who mourns the disintegration of her family. (Her father and sister perished in the blast; her brother was sent to live in Mito, and had yet to return to Hiroshima.)

town_interior1

The second story, “Country of Cherry Blossoms,” takes place nearly twenty years later in Tokyo. We first meet Nanami, a baseball-addled tomboy, as an eleven-year-old girl. Through a few telling details–Nanami’s dirty baseball uniform, Nanami’s interactions with classmates–we see that she suffers acutely from her mother’s absence. (Her mother, a hibakusha, succumbed to cancer.) Lacking a female role model, she latches onto Toko, a classmate who epitomizes girly grace. Kouno depicts a few ordinary moments from this odd pair’s childhood: a playground discussion of a homework assignment, a baseball game, a trip to the hospital where Nagio, Nanami’s younger brother, is hospitalized with severe asthma.

We then jump forward seventeen years. Nanami and Toko are estranged; Nagio, now healthy, is training to be a doctor; and Asahi, their elderly father, has been behaving oddly. Fearful that Asahi is losing his faculties, Nanami tails him through the streets of Tokyo, where she bumps into Toko. Their initial conversation is awkward and forced; seeing Toko dredges up some of Nanami’s most painful childhood memories. Toko, undeterred by Nanami’s rudeness, furnishes Nanami with a disguise, and the two set off for Hiroshima, where Asahi seems intent on completing a mysterious errand. As Nanami and Toko follow Asahi, we realize that Asahi is the link between the first and second stories; he is Minami’s “lost” brother, the one who was living with relatives when the Americans bombed Hiroshima, returning only after the death of his sister in 1955.

Kouno’s meticulously detailed illustrations create a strong sense of place, underscoring the contrast between Hiroshima’s orderly new business district and the crowded Aioi Doori neighborhood where the hibakusha live. 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 reminder both of Minami’s youth at the time of the attack and of the radiation’s devastating ability to rob its victims of their identities by destroying their hair, hands, and faces — in short, the very parts of their bodies that give them their individual appearance. 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 Minami does, alive with vivid, horrific memories of surviving the blast.

town_interior2

Kouno’s character designs exhibit a similar attention to detail and mood as her landscapes. Nanami, for example, bears a striking resemblance to her aunt Minami, not just in her behavior (Minami shared Nanami’s love of baseball and her brusque demeanor) but also in her facial expressions and carriage; she’s a subtle visual echo of the previous generation. Like all of Kouno’s characters, Nanami and Minami have a slightly rough, clumsy quality to them, with heads and hands that seem just a little too big for their wiry bodies. Yet these awkward proportions don’t detract from the beauty of the work; if anything, the illustrations make Kouno’s characters seem more vulnerable, more imperfect, more fragile—in short, more human and more believable. And that honest vulnerability, in turn, makes it possible for readers from all walks of life to enter sympathetically into Kouno’s haunting yet life-affirming story, to look past the politics of suffering and representation to understand the price that civilians pay in every war.

This is a revised version of a review posted at PopCultureShock on March 23, 2007. Click here for the original text; click here for a Japanese translation of the original review.

The 2009 Manga Hall of Shame Inductees

December 22, 2009 by Katherine Dacey

I’m pleased to report that 2009 yielded fewer jaw-droppingly bad manga in the vein of Eiken, J-Pop Idol, or Shiki Tsukai — surely the most confusing manga ever written about weather — though it wasn’t devoid of clunkers. Below are my top five nominees for Worst Manga of 2009. Some earned demerits for lousy art or writing; others for gross sexism; and others for insulting my intelligence as a reader. Keep in mind that while I try to read widely, there are definitely titles I’ve missed or avoided — Tantric Stripfighter Trina, anyone? — so I encourage you to share you own nominees for The Manga Hall of Shame, as well as your reactions to this year’s dishonorees.

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The 2009 Manga Hall of Shame Inductees

December 22, 2009 by Katherine Dacey

pigbride 5. Pig Bride
By Huh Kook-hwa • Yen Press
Si-Joon, scion of a powerful family, has a strange experience as a child: while lost in the woods, he accidentally becomes engaged to a girl cursed with a pig’s face. Mu-Jeon, she of porcine features, remains a hazy memory for Si-Joon until his sixteenth birthday, when she returns to claim him, demanding that they consummate their marriage right now. There’s just one problem: Si-Joon has his eye on Doe-Doe, a beauty who terrorizes her female classmates but makes nice with the boys. Lest Pig Bride sound like a wacky romantic comedy, let me say that there are few, if any, laffs to be found. The author’s contempt for women her female characters is palpable: the female characters girls are either hysterics (Mu-Jeon pursues Si-Joon with abandon, dignity or common sense be damned) or ice queens (Doe-Doe seems more interested in collecting hearts than actually being with anyone). The hyper-stylized art is similarly awful, with characters sporting grossly distended necks and chins so pointy that they’d made a razor bleed. I love manhwa as much as the next gal, but Pig Bride isn’t doing much for the cause of Korean comics in translation. (Text revised 12/24/09; see end of article for further commentary.)

zone00cvr_01.indd 4. Zone-00
By Kiyo QJO • Tokyopop
Zone-00 is easily one of the most confusing and unappealing books I’ve read this year, a fever dream of decapitations, impalements, and half-naked bodies. The layout is dark and busy — overstuffed, really — looking more like a Tokidoki handbag pattern than sequential art, with images and word balloons filling every inch of the page. From time to time, Kiyo Qjo’s rich, weird imagination shines through, as when she introduces a pair of possessed Harley Davidsons, or stages a hilarious conversation between a cat and a dog about the merits of fanservice. (The cat is pro-panty shot; the dog is more modest.) Too often, however, Zone-00 seems like a grab bag of half-baked ideas and pin-up drawings in search of a story; about the best I can say for Zone-00 is that the fanservice is equal opportunity, as almost every page features ladies with gravity-defying H-cups and men with granite six-packs. If your vision of the future includes stripper nuns armed to the teeth and shirtless motorcycle gangs, Zone-00 might be your cup of tea; all others are advised to stay away. (Reviewed 9/3/09.)

blackbird1 3. Black Bird
By Kanoko Sakurakouji • VIZ Media
“You can be eaten, or you can sleep with me and become my bride.” So declares Kyo, a handsome demon who’s been waiting for years to make Misao his wife and secure his position as Head Tengu. (Or something along those lines; drinking her blood is key to becoming the World’s Most Powerful Supernatural Being, hence the scores of demons interested in sampling Misao’s goodies.) Kyo’s declaration underscores the main problem with Black Bird: the entire story revolves around its heroine’s repeated degradation, making a fetish of her injuries and her helplessness. Demons slash her throat, poison her, push her off rooftops, and slam her against walls, yet she never defends herself or runs away, relying instead on Kyo to save her. Kyo’s “rescues” are as icky as the attacks themselves, as Kyo licks Misao’s wounds (he says he’s healing her; I say, ewwwwwwww), pins her down, and browbeats her for not sticking close to him. Some readers may find him sexy, but grouchy old feminists like me will see him for what he is: a wolf in knight’s clothing, posing as Misao’s savior while manipulating her for his own selfish interests. (Reviewed 7/21/09.)

LuckyStar 2. Lucky Star
By Kagami Yoshimizu • Bandai Entertainment
Dear Manga Publishers: Please stop licensing 4-koma titles. Most of the translated material in this format is at best dull — wait, was that a joke? — and at worst incomprehensible — wait, the heroine has a semi-romantic relationship with her cat-eared clone? Lucky Star is a prime example of why 4-koma manga don’t work well in English: the punchlines aren’t funny, and the characters are so one-dimensional that their daily travails aren’t interesting enough to hold our attention. (If the only “personality trait” a character manifests is a preference for watching anime over doing homework, I’d say the manga-ka needs to flesh her out just a little bit more.) Add to the mix a translation that, in Melinda Beasi‘s words, “strips the characters of any recognizable voice” and kills the jokes, and you have a recipe for one seriously dull read.

mariaholic 1. Maria Holic
By Minaru Endou • Tokyopop
In a more charitable mood, I might characterize this mean-spirited comedy as a lame attempt at satirizing yuri manga. The jokes aren’t smart enough, however, to qualify as satire; most of them involve humiliating the series’ naive heroine, whose lesbianism is held up to constant ridicule. Author Minaru Endou beats a single joke into the ground, with poor Kanako developing crushes on all of her classmates and suffering nosebleeds whenever she catches sight of them changing, wearing gym clothes, tossing their hair, talking to friends… you get the idea. (Did I mention that Maria Holic runs in Monthly Comic Alive, a magazine aimed at men?) Mariya, Kanako’s cross-dressing nemesis, is a truly repellent character, threatening to expose Kanako and mocking her interest in women. I think we’re supposed to find Mariya deliciously evil — and gee, nothin’ says eeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil like cross-dressing — but he comes across as sadistic, homophobic, and desperate; I spent most of volume one wishing for a great big foot to drop from the sky and squash him, a la Monty Python’s Flying Circus. (Reviewed 9/23/09.)

UPDATE, 12/24/09: Kurt Hasseler of Yen Press posted an eloquent and thoughtful rebuttal to my assessment of Pig Bride, which you can read by clicking here. His comments prompted me to revise my review to make it clear that I’m not accusing the author of being a misogynist, but am critiquing the way in which she depicts her female characters. I want to thank Kurt for a spirited and intelligent debate, even if I remain unpersuaded about Pig Bride‘s merits.

The Best Manga of 2009

December 17, 2009 by Katherine Dacey

I pity the poor critic who panned Up — it’s not fun to buck the tide of critical approbation, especially when it seems like everyone else is wholeheartedly embracing the film or book in question. I say this because my best-of-2009 list is missing two titles that I’ve seen on many others: Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life and Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ooku: The Inner Chambers. The first, I’ll admit, is a beautifully crafted book, proof that manga can be a great medium for biography. Yet for all its artistry, I found A Drifting Life oddly uninvolving; too many chapters read more like historical pageants than personal drama. The second title I found more problematic. Yoshinaga starts from a humdinger of a premise, inverting the social order of Tokugawa Japan by placing women in charge of everything. Yoshinaga never fulfills the promise of her idea, however, saddling her narrative with long-winded conversations that are both tin-eared and dull, two adjectives I never thought I’d be applying to Yoshinaga’s work.

So what manga *did *I like this year? Read on for the full list.

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The Best Manga of 2009: The Manga Critic’s Picks

December 17, 2009 by Katherine Dacey

So what manga *did *I like this year? Read on for the full list.

oishinbo1 10. Oishinbo a la Carte
Story by Tetsu Kariya • Art by Akira Hanasaki • VIZ Media
Equal parts Iron Wok Jan, Mostly Martha, and The Manga Cookbook, this educational, entertaining series explores Japanese cuisine at its most refined — sake, seabream sashimi — and its most basic — rice, pub food. The stories fall into two categories: stories celebrating the important role of food in creating community, and stories celebrating the culinary expertise of its principal characters, newspaperman Yamaoka Shiro and his curmudgeonly father Kaibara Yuzan. (Fun fact: Yuzan is such a food snob that he drove Yamaoka’s mother to an early grave, causing an irreparable break between father and son.) Though the competition between Yamaoka and Yuzan yields some elegant, mouth-watering dishes, Oishinbo is at its best when it focuses on everyday food in everyday settings, shedding light on how the Japanese prepare everything from bean sprouts to ramen. Warning: never read on an empty stomach! (Click here for my review of Oishinbo A la Carte: Japanese Cuisine; click here for my review of Oishinbo A la Carte: Vegetables.)

9. Detroit Metal City
By Kiminori Wakasugi • VIZ Media
Satirizing death metal is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel: how hard can it be to parody a style associated with bands named Cannibal Corpse or Necrophagia? Poking fun at death metal while respecting the sincerity of its followers, however, is a much more difficult trick to pull off. Yet Kiminori Wakasugi does just that in Detroit Metal City, ridiculing the music — the violent lyrics, the crudely sexual theatrics — while recognizing the depth of DMC fans’ commitment to the metal lifestyle. Though the musical parodies are hilarious, the series’ funniest moments arise from classic fish-out-of-water situations: Negishi driving a tractor on his parent’s farm while dressed as alter ego Lord Krauser (complete with make-up, fright wig, and platform boots), Negishi bringing a fruit basket to a hospitalized DMC fan while dressed as Krauser… you get the idea. Rude, raunchy, and quite possibly the funniest title VIZ has licensed since Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga. (Click here for my review of volume one; click here for my review of volumes two and three.)

8. Itazura Na Kiss
By Kaoru Tada • Digital Manga Publishing
In the twenty years since Itazura Na Kiss first appeared in Margaret, Kaoru Tada’s breezy romantic comedy has been widely imitated, but seldom surpassed. The story is as basic as they come: an airhead falls in love with a genius, is rebuffed by him, and is eventually pursued by him when he realizes just how sincere and kind she is. Tada manufactures a ridiculous situation to bring her characters together under the same roof — earthquake ahoy! — yet the story never devolves into brainless sitcom territory, thanks to her large supporting cast of characters, brisk comic timing, and strategic use of humor to reveal the characters’ true natures. Pure shojo bliss. (Click here for my review of volume one.)

7. Gogo Monster (VIZ Media)
By Taiyō Matsumoto • VIZ Media
Every elementary school has a kid like Yuki, a smart, odd student who says things that unsettle classmates and teachers alike. In Yuki’s case, it’s the matter-of-fact way he reports seeing monsters that leads to his social isolation. Newcomer Makoto doesn’t share Yuki’s vision, but he admires Yuki’s nonchalant attitude, and struggles mightily to understand what makes his friend tick. It’s to Taiyo Matsumoto’s credit that we’re never entirely sure what aspects of the story are intended to be real, and which ones might be unfolding in the characters’ heads; Yuki’s monsters remain largely unseen, though their presence is felt throughout the story. Matsumoto’s stark, primitive style suits the material perfectly, inoculating Gogo Monster against the sentimentality that imaginary friends and childhood fears inspire in so many authors.

6. The Name of the Flower
By Ken Saito • CMX Manga
Had the Bronte sisters been born in twentieth-century Japan instead of nineteenth-century England, they might have penned something along the lines of The Name of the Flower, a tear-jerker about a young woman who falls in love with her guardian. Ken Saito employs many favorite Victorian tropes — muteness, garden imagery, orphans — in service of the plot, creating an atmosphere of palpable yearning that will be familiar to anyone who’s read Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights. For all of its Victorian window-dressing, however, The Name of the Flower favors a slice-of-life approach over crazy-wives-in-the-attic melodrama. (Well, almost; the main love interest is a misanthropic — but hot! — novelist who favors yukatas over jeans, is prone to fits of anger, and writes dark, pessimistic fiction.) Saito’s elegant, understated art is the perfect complement to this delicate drama, making good use of floral imagery to underscore the heroine’s emotional state. For my money, the best new shojo manga of 2009.

5. A Distant Neighborhood
By Jiro Taniguchi • Fanfare/Ponent Mon
A Distant Neighborhood is a wry, wistful take on a tried-and-true premise: a salaryman is transported back in time to his high school days, and must decide whether to act on his knowledge of the past or let events unfold as they did before. We’ve seen this story many times at the multiplex — Back to the Future, Peggy Sue Got Married — but Taniguchi doesn’t play the set-up for laughs; rather, he uses Hiroshi’s predicament to underscore the challenges of family life and the awkwardness of adolescence. (Hiroshi is the same chronological age as his parents, giving him special insight into the vicissitudes of marriage, as well as the confidence to cope with teenage tribulations.) Easily one of the most emotional, most intimate stories Taniguchi’s ever told.

4. Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka
By Naoki Urasawa • VIZ Media
What amazes me the most about Naoki Urasawa is his ability to transform a tried-and-true genre like the whodunnit into a vehicle for exploring deeper questions about human nature, morality, and identity. As he did with the equally compelling Monster, Urasawa starts in familiar territory — in this case, a murder investigation — but quickly takes the story in unexpected directions, pausing to fill us in on the interior lives of both the principal and secondary characters — no mean feat, given that many cast members are, in fact, robots. Though Pluto takes its inspiration from “The Greatest Robot on Earth,” a short story within Osamu Tezuka’s long-running Astro Boy series, you don’t need to know anything about the original to appreciate the smart pacing, crisp artwork, or intelligent dialogue. In almost any other year, Pluto would have been my #1 pick; it’s a testament to the depth and breadth of 2009’s new releases that it isn’t.

3. Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu
By Junko Mizuno • Last Gasp
Poignant is a word I seldom use to describe Junko Mizuno’s work, given the frequency with which her characters pop pills, wield chainsaws, and whip each other. But Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu is poignant, a perversely sweet and sad meditation on one small, sheep-like alien’s efforts to find his place in the universe. In richly detailed images — if one can use the phrase “richly detailed” to describe artwork that draws its inspiration from Hello Kitty, My Little Pony, and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! — Mizuno offers one of the most bizarre, most original variations on that chick-lit staple, the quest to find a mate before one’s biological clock runs out. It’s not entirely clear how Mizuno expects her audience to react to Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu — as a social satire? a tragedy? a Sanrio promotion? — but the clarity and appeal of her vision is undeniable. (Click here for my review of volume one.)

2. Red Snow
By Susumu Katsumata • Drawn & Quarterly
Through a series of ten vignettes, Red Snow depicts life in pre-industrial Japan, when men depended on the sea, the forest, and the field for their survival. Kappa and kitsune mingle freely with humans in Susumu Katsumata’s world, their presence treated as a matter of fact, rather than something extraordinary — a reflection of man’s close relationship with the natural world. Though Katsumata employs a self-consciously primitive style, the stories are neither bleak nor condescending towards their subjects; if anything, Katsumata’s drawings of farmers, woodcutters, and drunken monks have a rude vigor that reflects the resilience of his characters.

1. Children of the Sea
By Daisuke Igarashi • VIZ Media
Children of the Sea defies easy categorization; it’s a high-seas adventure, an exploration of pan-Asian mythology, a cautionary tale about the environment, and a meditation on the ocean as a life-giving force. Though Children of the Sea could easily devolve into mystical hoo-ha — two of its characters were raised by dugongs, for Pete’s sake — Igarashi embeds a coming-of-age story within the main narrative that grounds Children of the Sea in everyday experience, even as the plot takes a turn for the fantastic. (See “raised by dugongs,” above.) Igarashi’s naturalistic art captures the beauty and strangeness of the ocean settings, as well as the sheer diversity of undersea life; you won’t soon forget the site of a sea turtle leaving a starry trail in its wake or the image of a young boy hitching a ride on a humpback whale. Eerie and poetic. (Click here for my review of volume one.)

HONORABLE MENTIONS
Done because there are too menny… great manga, that is, to confine myself to a traditional top ten list. With apologies to Thomas Hardy, here are some of the other manga that tickled my fancy in 2009:

Best Continuing Series: Black Jack (Vertical, Inc.) and Real (VIZ Media)
Best Dressed Characters: The History of the West Wing (Yen Press)
Best Final Volume: Emma (CMX)
Best Guilty Pleasure: Cat Paradise (Yen Press)
Best Kid-Friendly Title: Dinosaur Hour (VIZ) and Leave it to PET! The Misadventures of a Recycled Super-Robot (VIZ)
Best License Rescue: Yotsuba&! (Yen Press)
Best Manhwa: Small-Minded Schoolgirls (NETCOMICS)
Best New Manga That’s Already on Hiatus: The Manzai Comics (Aurora)
Best Prose Novel Released by a Manga Publisher: The Cat in the Coffin (Vertical, Inc.)
Best Reprint Edition: Clover (Dark Horse)
Best Substitute for Television: Fire Investigator Nanase (CMX)
Best Translation of a Dense, Culturally-Specific Text: Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei: The Power of Negative Thinking (Del Rey)
Best Use of Wagner in a Manga: Ludwig II (DMP)
Best Yaoi: Future Lovers (Aurora/Deux)

Oishinbo A la Carte: Vegetables

December 14, 2009 by Katherine Dacey

oishinbo_veggies I mean no disrespect to Tetsu Kariya or Akira Hanasaki when I say that the Vegetables volume of Oishinbo A la Carte irresistibly reminded me of 1970s television. Back in the day when there were only three networks, hour-long dramas doggedly followed the same formula: they dramatized a problem — say, drinking and driving, or falling in with a bad crowd — then resolved it with a little action and a lot of talking, culminating in a freeze-frame shot of the entire cast laughing at corny situational humor. Oishinbo follows this template to a tee, using hot-button issues such as bullying and pollution to preach the healing power of vegetables. The stories are as hokey and predictable as an episode of CHiPs or Little House on the Prairie, but entertaining in their sincerity.

Take “The Joy of a New Potato,” for example. The story begins with big-shot executive Misaki Hacho treating the Ultimate Menu team to an expensive meal. Shortly afterwards, Yamaoka discovers that Misaki has fallen on hard times, selling his business interests and trading his lavish home for a two-room flat. Kurita and Yamaoka invite Misaki’s family on a country outing, teaching his children how to harvest and cook potatoes. Though the denouement of the story is predictable and a little credulity-straining — Misaki’s son declares the potato outing “a hundred times better” than the extravagant birthday party that dad threw him the previous year — the message is heartfelt: doing things with your children is more important than doing things for them. Other stories in this vein include “The Bean Sprout Kid,” in which Yamaoka defends a quiet, frail boy from his classmates; “Good Eggplant, Bad Eggplant,” in which Tomio’s son overcomes his lifelong hatred of aubergines; “The Story of Vegetables, Now and Then,” in which a wealthy industrialist learns an important lesson about pesticides; “The Breath of Spring,” in which a cook woos her estranged lover with an asparagus dish; and “The Taste of Chicken, The Taste of Carrots,” in which a grandmother’s homemade chicken soup inspires a picky eater to add veggies to her diet.

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Oishinbo A la Carte: Vegetables

December 14, 2009 by Katherine Dacey

I mean no disrespect to Tetsu Kariya or Akira Hanasaki when I say that the Vegetables volume of Oishinbo A la Carte irresistibly reminded me of 1970s television. Back in the day when there were only three networks, hour-long dramas doggedly followed the same formula: they dramatized a problem — say, drinking and driving, or falling in with a bad crowd — then resolved it with a little action and a lot of talking, culminating in a freeze-frame shot of the entire cast laughing at corny situational humor. Oishinbo follows this template to a tee, using hot-button issues such as bullying and pollution to preach the healing power of vegetables. The stories are as hokey and predictable as an episode of CHiPs or Little House on the Prairie, but entertaining in their sincerity.

No volume of Oishinbo would be complete with at least one epic food battle, and Vegetables opens with a doozy: a three-part contest revolving around cabbage and turnips. For most of the showdown, Yuzan appears to have the upper hand, preparing simple dishes that emphasize the unique flavors of the star ingredients. Yamaoka’s fortunes change, however, when Arakawa’s mother comes to the city for a visit, bringing wild grape juice and walnuts with her. The bold flavors of the grapes and walnuts inspire Yamaoka to take a page from his father’s book, trading elaborate preparations for straightforward ones that enhance the “muddiness” of the turnip.

As I noted in my review of the first volume, the structure of the A la Carte edition of Oishinbo is both its strength and weakness. On the one hand, organizing each volume around a particular kind of food makes for a fun, educational introduction to Japanese cuisine; a better title for the US edition would be Oishinbo: Beyond Pocky and California Rolls, given the sheer diversity of the food described in each volume. On the other hand, the series’ thematic organization robs the series of its continuity; we never have a chance to see Kurita and Yamaoka’s relationship evolve from co-workers to spouses, as we’re constantly seeing them at different stages of their courtship, nor do we have any sense of how the Ultimate Menu vs. Supreme Menu contest is unfolding.

Still, it’s difficult to deny Oishinbo‘s appeal. Imagine Iron Chef crossed with Mostly Martha, and you have some idea of why this sincere, somewhat hokey, series is as addictive as gyoza: it reminds us that food is an essential ingredient in all human relations, the glue that binds friends, families, and lovers in times of joy and crisis alike. The best of the A la Carte series.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

OISHINBO A LA CARTE: VEGETABLES • STORY BY TETSU KARIYA, ART BY AKIRA HANASAKI • VIZ • 266 pp. • RATING: TEEN

Itazura Na Kiss, Vol. 1

December 6, 2009 by Katherine Dacey

itazura1 Seventeen-year-old Kotoko Aihara is a ditz, the kind of girl who gets easily flustered by math problems, blurts whatever she’s thinking, and burns every dish she attempts to make, be it a kettle of boiling water or beef bourguignon. Though Kotoko’s poor academic performance consigns her Class F — the so-called “dropout league” at her high school — she has her eye on Naoki Irie, the star of Class A. Rumored to be an off-the-chart genius — some peg his IQ at 180, others at 200 — Naoki is an outstanding student whose good looks and natural athletic ability make him an object of universal admiration. Kotoko finally screws up the courage to confess her feelings to him, only to be curtly dismissed; Naoki “doesn’t like stupid girls.” Furious, Kotoko resolves to forget Naoki.

This being a shojo manga, however, author Kaoru Tada contrives an only-in-the-pages-of-Margaret scenario to bring her reluctant lovebirds together: an earthquake. When a tremor flattens Kotoko’s house, she and her father don’t go to a shelter or a hotel. No, they take up residence at… the Iries! (Kotoko and Naoki’s fathers are lifelong friends, having attended the same high school thirty years prior.) Though Mr. and Mrs. Irie warmly embrace Kotoko, Naoki balks at her presence, forbidding her to acknowledge him at school or tell her friends where she’s staying. Making matters worse are Naoki’s younger brother Yuuki, a fiercely intelligent third grader who shares Naoki’s contempt for Kotoko, and Naoki’s mother, a cheerful busybody who tries engineering a relationship between Kotoko and her son; their intrusions into Kotoko’s life are a constant reminder of just how awkward her situation really is.

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Itazura Na Kiss, Vol. 1

December 6, 2009 by Katherine Dacey

Seventeen-year-old Kotoko Aihara is a ditz, the kind of girl who gets easily flustered by math problems, blurts whatever she’s thinking, and burns every dish she attempts to make, be it a kettle of boiling water or beef bourguignon. Though Kotoko’s poor academic performance consigns her Class F — the so-called “dropout league” at her high school — she has her eye on Naoki Irie, the star of Class A. Rumored to be an off-the-chart genius — some peg his IQ at 180, others at 200 — Naoki is an outstanding student whose good looks and natural athletic ability make him an object of universal admiration. Kotoko finally screws up the courage to confess her feelings to him, only to be curtly dismissed; Naoki “doesn’t like stupid girls.” Furious, Kotoko resolves to forget Naoki.

Tada’s set-up is credulity-straining — to say the least! — but she populates her story with so many fabulous supporting players it’s easy to forgive the absurd plot twists. Yuuki is my favorite character, a pint-sized terror who’s equal parts Stewie Griffin and Harriet the Spy, filling a notebook with detailed (and unflattering) descriptions of Kotoko’s daily routine. When Kotoko discovers his “observation diary,” a hilarious battle royale ensues, as she tries to persuade Yuuki that she is, in fact, smart, kind, and attractive. Kotoko’s Class F pals are another welcome source of comic relief. Though her friends are strictly one-note characters — a wiseacre, a wiseguy who carries a torch for Kotoko — they function as a kind of salty Greek chorus, alternately rooting for Kotoko and ruing her impulsive behavior.

Even Tada’s lead couple are more appealing than they initially seem. Kotoko, for example, turns out to be spunkier and smarter than one might have guessed from the opening pages, tapping into a hidden reserve of cunning when she discovers an incriminating photo of Naoki. Naoki, for his part, demonstrates a capacity for chivalrous behavior, even though he remains appalled by Kotoko’s… well, stupidity. (Spoiler alert: She doesn’t become a Nobel laureate overnight.)

Tada’s artwork is serviceable, with simple layouts and minimal attention to background detail, save for the occasional patch of screentone. Though crude, her sketchy character designs prove surprisingly effective, neatly encapsulating each cast member’s personality in just a few simple shapes and lines: Naoki’s hauteur by his sharp nose and rooster-like shock of hair, Kotoko’s naivete by her round, girlish face. The characters’ rough, unfinished look readily lends itself to the kind of facial and bodily deformations so characteristic of the shojo rom-com; I’ll take Tada’s unpolished yet soulful cartooning over the super-slick stylings of Arina Tanemura any day.

Reading Itazura Na Kiss, it’s easy to see why the series proved so influential. Tada makes opposites-attract comedy seem effortless — just throw your leads under the same roof and presto! hilarity and romance ensue. What Tada did better than many of her admirers, however, is make the comedy count for something more than just a few laughs; her characters’ pratfalls and humiliations serve as catalysts for self-reflection and growth, making it seem plausible that Naoki and Kotoko might be right for one another… some day. (I never rule out the possibility of a deus ex-mangaka bringing them together before then, however.) Highly recommended.

ITAZURA NA KISS, VOL. 1 • BY KAORU TADA • DMP • 342 pp. • RATING: TEEN (13+)

Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu, Vol. 1

November 5, 2009 by Katherine Dacey

pelu1 Poignant — now there’s a word I never imagined I’d be using to describe one of Junko Mizuno’s works, given her fondness for disturbing images and acid-trip plotlines. But Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu is poignant, a perversely sweet and sad meditation on one small, sheep-like alien’s efforts to find his place in the universe.

The story is simple: on the “cute and pink” planet of Princess Kotobuki, Pelu lives with a beautiful race of women and a “calm but carnivorous giant space hippo.” Pelu has always been aware of how different he is from his fellow Kotobukians, but when he learns that he will never be able to have a family of his own, he falls into a terrible funk, begging the hippo to eat him. When the hippo demurs — Pelu is just too woolly to be appetizing — Pelu borrows the hippo’s magic mirror and teleports to Earth in search of others like him. What Pelu discovers, however, is that Earth women view him as an exotic pet, a companion who’s entertaining but disposable. He careens from one unhappy situation to another, meeting young women who are down on their luck: an aspiring singer with a lousy voice, a homely orphan who’s raising an ungrateful brother, a pearl diver plying her trade in the sewer.

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Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu, Vol. 1

November 5, 2009 by Katherine Dacey

Poignant — now there’s a word I never imagined I’d be using to describe one of Junko Mizuno’s works, given her fondness for disturbing images and acid-trip plotlines. But Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu is poignant, a perversely sweet and sad meditation on one small, sheep-like alien’s efforts to find his place in the universe.

Like Mizuno’s other works, Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu aims for maximum shock value by depicting cute characters engaged in degenerate behavior: popping pills, doing the nasty in nasty places. Yet Fluffy Gigolo leaves a very different aftertaste than Mizuno’s other manga. Pure Trance, for example, is far less coherent, a set of vivid, Hieronymus Bosch-meets-Hello Kitty set pieces, with doll-like girls binging and purging, brandishing chainsaws, and enduring medical procedures that might give Dr. No pause. One could argue that Pure Trance was intended to point out the absurd lengths to which women go to achieve physical perfection, though one could also argue, as Shaenon Garrity does, that Pure Trance is really a vehicle for Mizuno to draw whatever crazy-ass things popped into her head (i.e. naked, chainsaw-wielding Bratz dolls). Either way, Pure Trance feels like a stunt, its Grand Guignol excesses trumping whatever social commentary might inform the story.

By contrast, Fluffy Gigolo‘s shock tactics serve dramatic and thematic functions, inviting the reader to feel sympathy for Pelu while prompting reflection on pregnancy and motherhood — or perhaps more accurately, the way in which childlessness is dramatized in manga, movies, and soap operas, as if being childless were worse than being afflicted with a terminal disease. “I’m better off dead!” Pelu declares. “I can’t have a baby, and I’ll always be alone for life.” Whether or not Mizuno is striving for deeper social commentary is hard to gauge — after all, her story features copious nudity, drug use, and a teleporting, man-eating space hippo from the Planet of the Dolls — but in Pelu’s odyssey, many readers will recognize the way in which biology, social conditioning, and hormones can prompt us to make compromises in pursuit of motherhood.

LITTLE FLUFFY GIGOLO PELU, VOL. 1 • BY JUNKO MIZUNO • LAST GASP • 168 pp. • RATING: MATURE (NUDITY, SEXUALITY, STRONG LANGUAGE, VIOLENCE, DRUG USE — IN SHORT, THE WORKS)

Short Takes: Haunted House, Mermaid Saga, and School Zone

October 29, 2009 by Katherine Dacey

Boo! This week, I’m taking the highly imaginative step of writing about spooky manga. The twist? All three titles are penned by trailblazing female artists. First up is Mitsukazu Mihara’s Haunted House (Tokyopop), a comedy about a normal teen whose parents have clearly embraced Addams Family Values. Next on the agenda is Rumiko Takahashi’s Mermaid Saga (VIZ), an older series that mixes horror and folklore to good effect. (You can read the first chapter for free at the Shonen Sunday website.) And last but not least is Kanako Inuki’s School Zone (Dark Horse), a three-volume series about a school built atop a cemetery — always a bad idea, kids, even when the land is being offered at bargain-basement prices.

HAUNTED HOUSE

BY MITSUKAZU MIHARA • TOKYOPOP • 192 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Remember that brief but excruciating period in your adolescence in which everything your parents said, did, or wore proved horribly embarrassing? Sabato Obiga, the hero of Haunted House, is living through that very stage. The crucial difference between his experience and yours, however, is that his family is genuinely odd: they look and act like something out of a Charles Addams cartoon, from their dramatic attire — Mom dresses like Morticia Addams, Dad like an undertaker — to their penchant for ghoulish pranks. Though Sabato desperately wants to date, his family members do their best to sabotage each new relationship by staging ridiculous scenes in front of his girlfriend du jour. In the first chapter, for example, Mom blithely picks up the family cat and announces that she’ll be “cooking something special on account of our guest,” while in a later chapter, his parents don hockey masks for a visit to the video store where he works. (Note to fellow animal saps: no cats were harmed in the making of this comic.)

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