Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews
Before I begin this review, I want to point you all to the fantastic first volume review of Wild Adapter written by guest reviewer Deanna Gauthier, which explains the series’ premise. I will begin here where she left off.
Wild Adapter, Vols 2-6
By Kazuya Minekura
Published by Tokyopop
…
By Satoko Kiyuduki
Yen Press, 120 pp.
Rating: Teen
GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class is a four-panel manga featuring a group of five moe-style girls enrolled in a graphic design course, possessing unique personalities that are used at one point in the comic to illustrate different tones of a single color. The characters are motherly Namiko, tomboyish Tomokane, serious Miyabi (aka “Professor”), glasses-wearing Kisaragi, and fashion-plate Nodamiki. As the five girls go through their studies, learning about color, technique, and tools of design (from paints to computers), they also have a lot of fun, both with their tools (painting the linings of their school uniforms, for example, which brings about unintended consequences) and with the trappings of ordinary school life.
Though the author claims, “… regarding the art information in this manga: You shouldn’t really trust it,” there is still a lot to learn for those of us with no knowledge of color or techniques at all, and that’s actually the greatest draw of this manga for English-speaking readers. Though the comic strip is obviously humorous, as with many four-panels, the translated jokes are very much hit or miss, with more misses than hits in this particular case. The characters are a fun and whimsical mix and the volume is enjoyable, but outside of the genuinely interesting artistic instruction and related jokes (about mold growing in the poster paint, for example), there isn’t any other element that consistently succeeds.
The artwork is standard moe fare–tiny girls with giant eyes, generally indistinguishable from each other aside from their hair and accessories–and as such, rather bland. The book’s frequent color pages fare better, both in general expression and in their ability to convey ideas about art.
Though GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class is not stunningly humorous or emotionally engaging, it has some fun moments and a wealth of interesting information for those curious about art.
Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at PopCultureShock.
From the back cover:
When Tsukushi is left homeless, she has no choice but to become a maid in the mansion of her on-and-off boyfriend, Tsukasa. Not only that, but she becomes his own personal maid! Her duties include the dreaded task of waking him up in the morning, a job normally left to three people. Then Tsukasa orders her to come to his room unseen at midnight, causing Tsukushi to panic. Will this pull them closer together or push them further apart?!
Review:
This volume gets off to somewhat of a slow start, with Tsukushi freaking out about being Tsukasa’s personal servant, convinced that he’s going to use the position to take advantage of her. Of course, this doesn’t happen, and they end up having a midnight stargazing date instead that culminates with a pretty straightforward conversation about the state of their feelings. The final outcome is that they begin dating on a trial basis to allow Tsukushi two months to figure out if she loves Tsukasa or not.
It was a little odd seeing Tsukasa being so patient at the beginning of the volume, and I’m not sure where that came from. The experience with breaking things off with Shigeru? Knowing that Tsukushi had defied his mother and believing that it was for his sake? I’m not sure, but when he returns to his canankerous ways later in the volume, it was almost a relief.
The last few chapters, after they’re officially a couple, really are the best. Tsukushi and Tsukasa double-date with Yuki and her new boyfriend and Tsukasa does an admirable job at keeping his temper in check even though the boyfriend is a real git. It’s great! Also, I like seeing Tsukushi talking to Yuki and Tsukasa talking to his friends about the relationship. I always like it when both members of a couple have some support from their friends.
In short, I think this two month trial dating period is going to be awesome.
Night of the Beasts may not be Chika Shiomi’s best work, but it’s certainly her most ambitious, a sweeping horror-fantasy with detailed artwork and nakedly emotional dialogue reminiscent of CLAMP’s Tokyo Babylon and X/1999 .
When we first meet Aria, Night’s tough-talking, high-kicking heroine, she’s engaged in her favorite activity: beating up boys. Nasty boys, to be precise—Aria has a reputation for defending other girls from perverts, bullies, and overzealous flirts, both at school and on the streets of Tokyo. A self-professed man-hater, Aria blames her mother’s untimely death on her ne’er-do-well father—who abandoned the family shortly after Aria’s birth—and on her mother’s lecherous co-workers—who hassled the poor woman into an early grave. (What, exactly, Aria’s mom did for a living is never spelled out, and by volume two, Shiomi seems to have forgotten about the character altogether.)
…
High School Debut, Vols. 1-10
By Kazune Kawahara
Published by Viz Media
Haruna Nagashima is a former middle-school softball champ, determined to start off her freshman year of high school on a brand new foot by becoming attractive to boys and finding her first boyfriend. Despite her exceedingly diligent research of current styles and trends, her efforts to attract a boy seem hopeless until she meets Yoh Komiyama, a popular, good-looking upperclassman with an unusual eye for what makes girls look their best. Though initially reluctant, Yoh finally agrees to act as Haruna’s “coach” to teach her how to make herself attractive to boys–his sole condition being that she promise not to fall for him. Of course she eventually does fall in love with him, finally confessing after a chapter or two of anguish, certain she’ll be rejected.
…
When I was struggling earlier today to begin a post, something that kept coming to me was how much my feelings for music seemed related–or at least similar–to my feelings for manga, both in depth and breadth. This led me to think about why I love both, and then to why I love manga. But to start, I think the question I must begin with is:
Something I’ve always had difficulty relating to is the concept of “real life” as being something different than a person’s online life. I mean, I get it kind of, but it’s not like I become imaginary when I sit down at my computer, and every person I deal with online is just as real as I am regardless of whether or not they are being honest about who they are. Just as in “real life,” my words and actions have the power to affect other people, for good or ill. So how is this not a part of my real life? Similarly, I’ve always been at odds with the idea that imagining, writing, reading, or interacting with fiction is somehow less a part of what’s real in this world (and in our lives) than anything else. Fiction is our greatest tool for sharing ideas with each other as a species, in a way that touches and inspires not just our logical minds, but our hearts and even that intangible thing we like to call our “souls.”
Nearly everything important I have learned about life, people, and the world around me has come from one of two places: my own personal experience or fiction; and I have a feeling that if it was possible to sit down and write out every one of those things, fiction would come out on top. After all, the potential human experience available to one forty-year-old woman is miniscule compared to the volume of fictional works written since the dawn of man, or even just since the dawn of modern language.
Fiction is the the place of dreams, yes, but also the foundation of reality–how we perceive it and how we express that to others. Even the most escapist works tell us something about ourselves, both as individuals and as a society, and I can personally vouch for the fact that even these works are capable of inspiring deep thinking and emotion, whether their authors ever intended that or not. Each person’s experience with a fictional work is wholly unique to that person, and yet it is a connection between one person’s ideas and another’s that gives it its power. This, to me, is the most awesome thing in all the world.
My personal devotion to the products of human imagination–for me, fiction and music in particular–has always been what makes me feel most connected to other human beings, and the only thing capable of successfully bridging my very rich inner life with my more troublesome outer life. As such, I feel these things are inextricable from my life and who I am, and I’m very comfortable with that.
Why Comics?
The one particular product of human imagination it took me until recent years to truly connect with and appreciate is visual art. Outside of a childhood obsession with attempting (unsuccessfully) to draw all the characters out of my own imagined fiction and one year at college during which I would repeatedly visit a particular Pierre Bonnard painting at the Carnegie Museum of Art–earnestly seeking the answer as to why it affected me in a strong, emotional way that other art generally did not–I was never a person who connected deeply with visual representations of life.
The simple explanation for this may actually be that, unlike music, prose fiction, or theater, visual art was not something I could successfully experience as a creator (or at least a participant)–something that those who know me well can recognize as an important part of how I interact with art. How it happened to be comics that finally achieved this is somewhat of a mystery to me, though perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the art is acting as part of a narrative, which is something I can personally connect to more easily than an isolated image.
Yet it was not western comics that actually pulled me in, but manga. Which brings me to…
Why Manga?
The fact that comics are part of mainstream popular fiction and therefore serve a much broader audience in Japan than they do here is, I’m sure, largely responsible for many of the elements that draw me most to manga–epic (but finite), single-creator stories in a huge variety of genres and styles, offering me the same variety and breadth of human experience and emotion as I’d find in prose fiction, movies, or television in this country. Whether this is connected to the sudden and profound realization that I could glean something new about the human experience from hand-drawn black lines on white paper, I am not certain, but I do know that my first encounter with manga was life-changing. It’s as though I was experiencing sight for the first time. For years, my imagination had subsisted (and very heartily) on written, and oral (including musical) language, either brought to life entirely by my imagination (as with print) or by other live humans (theater, television, film)–the closest thing to a visual element I was really in touch with. I can say honestly that up to the point I first read a manga, I really had no concept of how powerful and real a drawing could be or how strongly I could connect with such a thing.
It’s possible that a great deal of why I easily connect with manga in this way after failing to do so with western comics, is the tendency of manga to let the art take the lead in telling the story, which I think is less often the case in comics here. Odd that this would be the key, considering my previous attachment to prose; or perhaps not odd at all, since one of my problems with reading western comics had been that I kept feeling that the pictures were in the way as I tried to read the story. This is not a judgement on western comics, but really a suggestion that until I read manga, I was actually kind of impaired, and it took manga to fix that.
I think what is special about manga and why I have immersed myself so deeply in it in such a short time (aside from the fact that this is just how I do things) is that it offers a unique opportunity for the reader’s imagination. Something I used to talk about regarding art song, which was my favorite form of music to work on as a classical voice student, was that it offered an experience for interpretation that was different than anything else. Unlike opera, in which the music and libretto were working together to tell a single story, art song usually began as a poem–a form that invites greater personal interpretation than narrative fiction –to which the composer would add his/her personal interpretation through music–another form that invites great personal interpretation. The singer is then in the position to draw upon both these potentially disparate elements to create a third interpretation–one that is likely to be unique to each singer (ditto with the pianist, lest this be forgotten). By the time the art song reaches the listener–the final collaborator–the possibilities for interpretation are so richly layered that each person will take away with them something not only unique in itself, but uniquely guided by all who touched the piece before it reached them.
Now you’re saying, “Whoooa, crazy music lady, the manga is more like opera,” (unless you’re just saying, “Whoa, crazy lady you lost me three paragraphs back”) and you’d be right. Except not exactly. Plays, movies, and television are like the opera. Manga is something in between. Though the pictures and the words are working together to tell the same story, the fact that it is black-and-white drawn, still images providing the more specific interpretation of the text actually leaves much more for the reader’s imagination to fill in, which to me is closer to the art song, though perhaps close enough to the opera too to provide the best of both worlds. While the skilled mangaka has the power to inject true, specific human emotion into something as small as a single line on a character’s face, it is still up to the reader’s imagination to actually translate that into the face of a real human–a face that will inevitably be a little different one for each person who imagines it. Aside from the element of color, this is true of western comics as well, but it is the combination of all these things at once–the epic, finite works; variety of genres; visual storytelling style; and the crazy music lady stuff–that makes manga special, or at least makes it special for me.
~o~
If you’ve made it this far, you probably deserve a drink. Since I can’t offer that across cyberspace (is this proof of the whole “real life” business??) I will instead thank you for reading and ask for your thoughts. :)
The eponymous heroine of Canon is a smart, tough-talking vigilante who’s saving the world, one vampire at a time. For most of her life, Canon was a sickly but otherwise unremarkable human — that is, until a nosferatu decided to make Lunchables™ of her high school class. Canon, the sole survivor of the attack, was transformed into a vampire whose blood has an amazing property: it can restore other victims to their former human selves. She’s determined to rescue as many human-vampire converts as she can, prowling the streets of Tokyo in search of others like her. She’s also resolved to find and kill Rod, the handsome blonde vampire whom she believes murdered her friends. Joining her are two vampires with agendas of their own: Fuui, a talking crow who’s always scavenging for blood, and Sakaki, a half-vamp who harbors an even deeper grudge against Rod for killing his family.
By the middle of volume two, however, nothing is quite how it initially seemed. Canon finds herself embroiled in an all-out war between full-blooded vampires and half-breeds like Sakaki (he had a human mother and vampire father), as well as an internal power struggle among the undead’s elite. Though she’s drawn to Sakaki — he’s handsome in a broad-shouldered, Seishiro Sakurazawa kind of way — she questions his truthfulness: was Rod really responsible for slaughtering her friends, or does Sakaki know more than he’s telling?
…
Though some authors get it right on their very first try – say, Ralph Ellison or Harper Lee – most take a few books to develop their voice and storytelling chops. Chika Shiomi is no exception to this rule, as Queen of Ragtonia, an early series, demonstrates.
The plot is standard-issue fantasy. Falna, a feisty young princess, is on a quest to save her kingdom from the Necromancer, an evil sorcerer who assassinated her family and unleashed a demon horde into the Pharsian countryside. She has her work cut out for her, however, as the Necromancer stole her left eye and her legs. With the help of a muscle-bound warrior named Cadmus and a magical sword called The Igliese, Falna sets out to reclaim her missing body parts and her once-beautiful homeland.
Though the art is polished, the creaky plot mechanics and tone-deaf script are hallmarks of an amateur work. There’s almost no tension in the story, as every potentially difficult situation is neatly resolved by the sudden arrival of a new character or convenient discovery of a new weapon. Nothing is revealed in an organic fashion; characters frequently resort to explaining terms and phenomena to one another as if they were studying for a history exam, not holding a casual conversation. Worse still, many of these explanations don’t make much sense and do little to advance the story.
…
Sumomomo, Momomo: The Strongest Bride on Earth, Vol. 1
By Shimobu Ohtaka
Published by Yen Press
Momoko is the only child of one of the most powerful martial arts families in Japan. Since her father does not believe that she, as a woman, is capable of mastering the arts of their clan, she has been trained her whole life to become strong enough to be worthy as the wife of the world’s strongest man (deemed to be Koushi Inuzuka, son of another clan), with whom she must bear super-strong progeny. …
Rasetsu is a popcorn movie in manga form, a tasty mix of suspense, humor, and sexual tension with a sprinkling of supernatural elements. Though billed as a sequel to Yurara, Chika Shiomi’s five-volume series about a trio of high school students who see dead people, Rasetsu works equally well on its own terms, providing just enough background to bring newcomers up to speed without testing the patience of folks already familiar with the series’ protagonist, Yako Hoshino.
The new series catches up with Yako about eight years after the events in Yurara. Now a graduate of a prestigious university, Yako works in a library that has an unusual problem: one of its books is haunted by the spirit of its original owner, and is siphoning demonic energy from the other titles in the library’s collection. Though Yako possesses some ghost-busting powers of his own, he can’t quite exorcise the demon, so his boss dispatches him to the Hiichiro Amakwa Agency to enlist professional help. There, Yako finds a comely, if eccentric, crew of mediums: Kuryu, the kotodama specialist and resident clothes horse; Amakwa, the agency’s owner and psychic-in-chief; and Rasetsu, a smart-mouthed eighteen-year-old who bears a striking resemblance to Yako’s old flame Yurara. Through a plot contrivance that’s both amusing and ridiculous, Yako loses his gig at the library and joins the Amakawa Agency.
Enlivening the series’ demon-of-the-week plotting is the budding relationship between Yako and Rasetsu. Rasetsu, we learn, was attacked by a malicious spirit when she was fifteen. That spirit left a rose-shaped mark on her chest and vowed to return on her twentieth birthday to make her “his,” a reclamation with deadly consequences for Rasetsu. There’s an out, however: Rasetsu need only find true love before she turns twenty, a solution that’s heretofore proven elusive thanks to her abrasive personality and uncouth eating habits. It’s too early to tell if Yako will save Rasetsu from her fate, though it certainly wouldn’t be unexpected, given the strong undercurrent of sexual attraction that informs their bickering.
Of all Shiomi’s licensed works, Rasetsu boasts the best art and most accomplished storytelling. That’s hardly a surprise, given the story’s vintage; Rasetsu began serialization in Bessatsu Hana to Yume in 2006, whereas Shiomi’s other licensed titles — Canon, Night of the Beasts, Queen of Ragtonia — represent an earlier stage in her development. Though I’m partial to her High Baroque style, characterized by big shoulder pads, big hair, and unnecessarily elaborate outfits, Rasetsu has a cleaner, more contemporary feel than Canon or Night of the Beasts. The character designs are more refined, and the costumes, though stylish, no longer dominate the composition.
Shiomi’s narrative command is similarly improved. Gone are the creaky, expository passages found in Canon and Night of the Beasts, in which characters explain key plot points in excruciating detail. Instead, Shiomi shows rather than tells, using body language and wordless panels to fill us in on Rasetsu’s backstory.
Though Rasetsu covers some well-worn ground, Shiomi’s polished art and expert pacing make this series perfect summer reading, blending the unabashed romanticism of The Ghost Whisperer with the supernatural silliness of Ghostbusters to good effect. Highy recommended.
Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.
RASETSU, VOL. 1 • BY CHIKA SHIOMI • VIZ MEDIA • 192 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)
