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Lifting Our Heads for a Little Kiss

November 19, 2011 by Erica Friedman 4 Comments

Kiss magazine, published by Kodansha, has star power. If for no other reason than that one of the most popular and successful Josei franchises of recent years, Ninomiya Tomoko’s Nodame Cantabile, called Kiss home until the series and supplementary chapters came to an end in 2010.

Kiss magazine began publication in 1992 as Monthly Kiss, it is now released on the 10th and 25th of every month. It weighs in at approximately 350 pages an issue, for 450 yen (5.53 USD at time of writing) and pulls in a very respectable 127,962 monthly circulation, according the the JMPA’s 2010 numbers.

Kiss magazine has a website on Kodansha’s Comic Plus system, which offers current volumes for sale, a community on which to share thoughts about one’s favorite series, and a way to send messages to the creators, sample chapters, special sites with interviews, contests for new artists and more.

Series from Kiss are not high on the list for either translation into English as manga or transition to anime. Nodame Cantabile was a notable exception, as it spawned anime, manga, live-action dramas and even documentaries. Currently the series Kuragehime, by Higashimura Akiko, has created some noise as a popular anime.

There is little experimental art in Kiss. The style runs to clean, realistic rendering, even in explicitly fantastic stories like QB Karin – Keishichou Tokushu SP-ban.

Overwhelmingly, the feeling of stories that run in Kiss are stories for adult women. “Kiss and Never Cry,” “Gin no Spoon,” “SatoShio,” “Maison de Nagaya-san,” all are focused on relationships – life, family, career and romance. In fact, if there’s one strong theme running through Kiss, it’s the drive towards life-work balance…a topic that will be of interest to just about any working woman.

Kiss is a gentle magazine. There’s going to be no surprises here, no violence, no sex; fan service comes in the form of adult male characters who treat their women well. Kiss magazine is a familiar touch, a gentle peck on the cheek from a dear friend.

Kiss Magazine, from Kodansha: http://kc.kodansha.co.jp/magazine/index.php/02292

This article was originally published on Mangacast.net.

(Sincere apologies for my extended absence here…work has been “interesting.” ^_^;;)

Dawn of the Arcana, Vol. 1

November 19, 2011 by Katherine Dacey

“Today, I belong to the enemy” — so begins Dawn of the Arcana, a medieval fantasy in which a feisty princess marries into a neighboring country’s royal family. Nakaba characterizes herself as “a lamb,” sacrificed by her people to help two warring kingdoms maintain a fragile peace. Her husband, the handsome but insolent Prince Caesar, initially snubs his new wife; not only does she have red hair — a commoner’s color — but she also flouts palace conventions, wearing the traditional dress of her homeland, employing a male Ajin (humanoid) as her valet, and excoriating Caesar in front of his servants.

Adding fuel to this combustible situation are Caesar’s mother, a Lady Macbeth figure who urges her son to seek the throne; King Guran, her husband; Cain, Caesar’s half-brother; and Louise, Cain’s flirty fiancee. Nakaba is keenly aware of their contempt for her, and struggles to maintain her composure as they openly mock her and threaten her faithful servant Loki. Though Loki is devoted to his mistress, he, too, poses a danger to Nakaba, as he quickly antagonizes Caesar and Guran with his impulsive behavior.

As predictable as the plot may be — would you be surprised to learn that Caesar soon becomes smitten with his ginger-haired bride? — Dawn of the Arcana proves engaging nonetheless, a heady mixture of palace intrigue and romance. Nakaba, in particular, is a winning heroine: she’s tough and principled, but savvy enough to appease Caesar and his family when it suits her own agenda. (Early in volume one, for example, Nakaba slaps Loki after a tense stand-off between the prince and the valet, telling Loki, “Disciplining my husband is my duty!”) Nakaba’s enemies are two-dimensional at best, but each displays a Joan Collinesque flair for making Nakaba’s life miserable, spitting out their lines with gusto. (“You look wretched!” the queen exclaims upon seeing Nakaba in her people’s native costume. “Typical red-hair!”)

What gives Dawn of the Arcana its real dramatic juice, however, is the way in which Rei Toma draws parallels between Nakaba’s situation and everyday teenage experience. Anyone who’s ever transferred to a new school, run the gauntlet of a junior high school cafeteria, or been hassled for wearing the “wrong” clothes will immediately recognize herself in Nakaba’s shoes. Sitting at a royal banquet, for example, Nakaba squirms under the withering stares of her new subjects. “I can feel it,” she thinks. “The hatred. The curiosity. The sneers.” In an added note of realism, Toma depicts Caesar as two-faced, the sort of fair-weather friend who openly mocks Nakaba in public — where nasty comments score points with his family —while privately acknowledging her sincerity and courage.

If I had any criticism of Arcana, it’s that the artwork is unimaginative. The character designs are attractive, with careful attention to costumes and hairstyles, but lack personality; I’d have difficulty distinguishing Rei Toma’s work from other popular shojo manga artists’. The minimalist backgrounds are likewise disappointing, doing little to situate the story in a particular time or place. Perhaps that’s a deliberate decision on Toma’s part, an attempt to make Nakaba’s story seem more universal. Given the sloppiness with which the establishing shots are rendered, however, it seems more likely that architectural details and landscapes aren’t her forte.

Still, that’s a minor criticism of an engaging story — one that benefits from a terrific premise, an intelligent heroine, and a supporting cast that wouldn’t be out of place in a juicy historical soap opera like Rome or The Tudors. Recommended.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

DAWN OF THE ARCANA, VOL. 1 • BY REI TOMA • VIZ • 192 pp. • RATED: TEEN (13+)

Dawn of the Arcana, Vol. 1

November 19, 2011 by Katherine Dacey 15 Comments

Tesoro

November 18, 2011 by Sean Gaffney

By Natsume Ono. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Ikki and in various doujinshi. Released in North America by Viz.

It’s time for another Manga Movable Feast, this one timed for the release of Tesoro, a collection of short stories by Natsume Ono. It’s a good collection to discuss, as I think it contains most of her strengths and weaknesses in one convenient package. Plus it has a bear on the cover. Everything’s better with bears.

The strengths of the book are mostly all at the front, as she’s put her later work first. This is good, as by 2003-2006 (the period we see here), she’s already developed and honed her style and type of dialogue. There’s some Italian stuff here, as you’d expect (it’s almost inevitable by this point, Ono simply loves Italy – and no doubt finds the constant conversation she does easier to justify with Italian men). But there’s some excellent stuff that takes place in Japan as well, including what is probably my favorite of the collection, a story about a couple who are both very thin, and tend to have gossip floating around them. “Quiet stubbornness” is possibly the most defining trait of Ono’s men, and it’s in full flower here.

The other story that really captures the attention here is Eva’s Memory, about an orphan girl with a tendency to call various men her father and how that gets a man running for election into a bit of controversy. It’s told through the point of view of her friend, who has just the right amount of exasperation and sympathy. Which is good, as Eva also rides the line here between liking her and wanting to smack her. It’s a good thing that the politician in question is so nice… and there’s also a question of who her real parents actually are, something our hero finds out as he tries to help Eva and also regain his sense of optimism about anything good in the world.

The second half of the book contains doujinshi that were written in the late nineties and early 2000s, and it shows – they’re far messier, and not just in the art. There’s a story about a young man getting out of a 5-year prison stint (he killed someone while drunk driving) that cries out to be rewritten now that she’s at the height of her powers, but instead comes across as… well, here’s the thing. When Ono is on, you can read 800 pages of her characters sitting in one room talking and you don’t care a lick. When she isn’t, it’s all just so much verbosity that you want to scream at people to “get on with it!”. Likewise, her characters ride a fine line, as I noted above in the Eva story. In a later story involving a girl named Monica and her bad luck with men, she came across as the villain to me, so I never got into the story.

Tesoro is therefore an excellent sampler of Ono’s work, but not something that should be a beginning for anyone who wants to try her. They’re better off with Ristorante Paradiso, in my opinion. For the seasoned Ono fan, however, there’s several gems in here. And even the sketchy ones have something to pick out – the story involving the chef who wants to see a movie is almost incoherent at times, but the punchline is fantastic. (And yes, he’s right – it *is* OK if it’s The Sting).

Off the Shelf: Natsume Ono

November 17, 2011 by MJ and Michelle Smith 5 Comments

MJ: Well, hello, Michelle! Is it really time for another Manga Moveable Feast?

MICHELLE: It seems like every time I turn around there’s a new one!

MJ: Agreed! But when that Feast revolves around the likes of Natsume Ono, I’m not going to complain. So, we’ve each read some Ono this week in preparation for the Feast. Michelle, would you like to begin?

MICHELLE: Sure! It’s been a pretty busy time for me lately and while my tired brain balked at the daunting prospect of getting into Ono’s longer works, her collections of short stories presented an option that I can only describe as “undemanding,” and I mean that in the nicest way.

First, I read La Quinta Camera, which is a series of linked short stories revolving around an apartment in Italy. Four of its rooms are occupied by middle-aged men of incredibly “singular” personalities—Massimo, the landlord, who is nurturing and kind; Luca, the small hippy busker, who is sweet and child-like; Celestino, the short and mustachioed guy, who is annoying yet much-loved; and Al, the truck driver who is either asleep or at work. Massimo routinely takes in exchange students to let the fifth room and, as the story opens, Danish language student Charlotte arrives.

It’s a bit of a surprise when, in chapter two, Charlotte has moved out and been replaced by Alessandro, but this introduces the central gimmick of the book: in each chapter, there’s a new tenant. In a sort of… gentle and vague way, focus shifts amongst the residents during the course of six chapters, during which time Luca finds and loses love, Charlotte offers to have Al’s babies, and Massimo’s girlfriend announces that she’s pregnant, which means everyone must move out.

Objectively, I realize that works like House of Five Leaves are better than La Quinta Camera, but I have to say that I liked it a lot. I just simply like stories where people are nice to each other… where they remember to leave Christmas messages for the lonely Japanese kid left alone in their apartment over the holiday. With its light touch and pleasant feeling, his is the kind of brain balm I sometimes require.

MJ: There’s a real warmth to Ono’s short stories that indeed serve as kind of a healing balm, in my view. I don’t see this as being a lesser type of storytelling (even if I tend to prefer something a bit more epic), and it’s especially lovely in Ono’s hands. Sure, love something powerful, but a light touch can often be just what’s needed.

MICHELLE: I think I’m probably just not in the mood for something powerful as often as you are, hence my fondness for less-than-awesome media tie-in fiction. There’s some pressure to be profound when responding to Great Works that one just doesn’t feel when reading a book about Buffy. And so La Quinta Camera performed a similar function for me.

Anyhow, I suspect you have read something a bit more epic this week.

MJ: Well, I’m not sure if “epic” is an appropriate word for House of Five Leaves, though it’s long-form storytelling of course. But it’s rather leisurely, really, much like Ono’s shorter works but with expanded opportunity for exploration.

I tried to read volume four a while back, and somehow couldn’t latch on to it. I know now that it must have been me, because there’s a whole lot going on in this volume, and it clicked immediately with me on my second try.

Much of the volume revolves around Ginta, a new sort-of-member taken on reluctantly by the Five Leaves. He’s the cast-off son of a wealthy family who tricks his way into the Leaves, but not without revealing a whole lot more of himself than he intended. We also learn new things about the Leaves’ leader, Yaichi, in this volume, and it’s definitely not pretty.

What makes House of Five Leaves so consistently intriguing, though, is the failed samurai that provides the series’ heart. With Masa at its core, there’s always an odd mingling of warmth and unease running through the story. These feelings are where Masa lives, and one has the sense that this has always been the case. There’s a heartbreaking flashback in this volume, in which we see Masa being basically thrown out of his home for being so ill-suited as a samurai. Yet it’s hard to imagine exactly what he should be. He’s all ambiguity (and a little self-loathing), and certainly not a hero, yet it’s impossible not to care for him, and it’s obvious that Ono does.

I’ve loved this series from the beginning, and it’s only become more dear to me over time. It’s probably my favorite of Ono’s work, and that’s saying quite a lot. I look forward to the next volume.

MICHELLE: I read and loved the first volume, but when I recently attempted to read volume two (with a goal of catching up on the series) I had a similar experience in which it just failed to engage me somehow. With Ono’s short stories I found that having a dedicated amount of time to just sit and consume them in one sitting was ideal, so perhaps that’s where I went wrong with Five Leaves. I’ve definitely not given up on the series.

MJ: I’m glad you haven’t given up. It really is one of my favorite currently-running series.

So, speaking of Ono’s short stories, we both read Tesoro this week, just released from Viz. Want to talk about that a bit?

MICHELLE: Sure!

Tesoro (the Italian word for “treasure”) is a collection of fourteen stories by Natsume Ono. The earliest works were published as doujinshi, while more recent stories appeared in IKKI. Unlike La Quinta Camera, the stories here are not overtly serialized, though there are some recurring characters and common themes (like curmudgeonly guys who really love their wives).

For the most part, though, the stories seem to be short expressions of ideas that don’t go very far in developing the characters. Some stories are whimsical—the introductory piece, for example, consists entirely of a bear taking the bus to get some donuts then going home again—while some are more serious, like the story of an orphaned girl who sees a potential father in every famous man of whom she becomes aware. It’s an intriguing concept, and one can definitely see seeds of Ono’s eventual storytelling abilities, but it’s lacking the warmth that imbued even the loose-limbed La Quinta Camera with touching moments.

I definitely enjoyed it, don’t get me wrong. But I think it would be more enjoyable to those already familiar with Ono rather than for those who are wondering who she is and what the fuss is all about.

MJ: I agree, though, like you, I certainly enjoyed Tesoro. One of my favorite stories in the volume was “senzo titolo #3,” about a father taking his young son to see his estranged father for the first time. There’s a lot packed into this little story–apprehension, excitement, some lingering resentment–all without ever actually seeing the grandfather ourselves. It’s a little glimpse of Ono at her best. There are a lot of moments like that here.

I think you’re absolutely right, though. This is a collection for fans to linger over, rather than an effective introduction to the author.

Did you have a favorite story?

MICHELLE: Oh, I loved “senzo titolo #3” because I loved how the dad started singing the Coke jingle in public and the kid was embarrassed. :) I thought that was a nice little true-to-life moment.

I think my favorite is “Moyashi Couple” (or “bean sprout” couple), because the husband is seen as a grouch by the neighbors but once he learns the neighbors think he and his wife don’t get along, he makes sure that they go out and about in public to disprove that notion. There’s a really nice line in it about the neighbors being able to tell that he’s actually kind because, though he usually walks in an impatient swagger, when he’s with his wife he automatically assumes a more leisurely pace so as to be able to walk beside her. Maybe I’m just a sucker for crusty guys with hearts of gold, but I think that’s the story I won’t forget from this collection.

MJ: I liked that too, and probably for similar reasons. I was also fond of “The Frooms,” about a boy with two domineering older sisters, whose dad tries (and fails miserably) to equalize things. It’s funny and poignant all at once. Poor dad!

MICHELLE: Oh yes, I love how that poor dad is just flabbergasted that his big plan to give his son a dazzling gift is derailed.

It occurs to me that these are like drabbles. Little ideas that suggest what a longer extrapolation on the theme could be like without actually, y’know, extrapolating.

MJ: That’s an excellent point, Michelle! They do indeed have the same, wispy quality. This is what a real “slice of life” looks like.

MICHELLE: Exactly! Perhaps the term has never been more literally applied!

MJ: So while I’d be more likely to hand a new reader something like Ristorante Paradiso, Tesoro really is a treat for Ono’s existing fans.

Read more about the work of Natsume Ono at this month’s Manga Moveable Feast, hosted by Manga Widget’s Alex Hoffman.

Undiscovered Ono

November 17, 2011 by David Welsh

I keep meaning to write up a license request for two of the comics that Natsume Ono has created for Kodansha’s Morning 2, Danza, which ran for one volume, and Coppers, which is ongoing. They’re dramas about police officers in New York, which is certainly unexpected subject matter for this particular creator, and I’ve enjoyed lots of comics that were originally published in Morning magazines. The thing is that, by most accounts, they aren’t very good, at least by Ono’s standards.

Here’s what Khursten Santos said about them in her marvelous overview of Ono’s work:

Danza is a collection of stories although she eventually focused on two NYPD detectives before eventually dedicating Coppers to an entire squad. Her venture into this copland ain’t no NYPD blues. It’s simpler, if not, less dramatic than that. I would have to admit that these two are the weakest of her works as her brand of storytelling kills the excitement in police stories. It’s still a good read. Just not as great as the others. If you sincerely love her sense of melodrama, then you might find some fun in Danza and Coppers.

Personally, I’ll read anything by Ono, and even lower-tier Ono is still pretty awesome. But if I’m going to devote my energies to begging for more of her work in English, I’d be more inclined to bend my energies towards her Basso work.

She started a new series in Shogakukan’s IKKI called Futugashira, but there’s next to no information available on that one. I’m quite intrigued by what little I’ve seen of her other ongoing, an historical drama called Tsuratsura Waraji that’s another Morning 2 title. But if I were to pick one non-yaoi Ono title that I really, really want to see, it would be Nigeru Otoko.

It ran for a single volume in Ohta Shuppan’s Manga Erotics F, which is a constant source of surprises, mostly in the “I can’t believe this comic ran in the same magazine as that comic” vein that makes me love a magazine. (Hi, Comic Beam!) The description makes it sound like a moody, grown-up fantasy, which is very much in my comfort zone. And it reinforces Ono’s standing as the queen of the Fifth Genre prom, so it’s hard to see how something could go really badly wrong in a single volume.

Seiho Boys’ High School, Vol. 8

November 17, 2011 by Sean Gaffney

By Kaneyoshi Izumi. Released in Japan as “Men’s Kou” by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Bessatsu Comic (“Betsucomi”). Released in North America by Viz.

I’d put off reviewing this final volume for a while. I’m a romantic sop at heart, and it has to be said that much of what we see here is bittersweet. But then Seiho hasn’t really been about the happy warm fuzzy moments of relationships in any case. This is realistic, and that’s not always pretty.

First off, Nogami and his nurse girlfriend don’t even get a mention. I guess we should assume they live happily ever… nah, I can’t. Presumably at some point Nogami says something colossally stupid and they break up. That leaves our two main couples, who have struggled with a) communication and b) how others see them since the start of this series, and it’s no different here. Miyabi has split up with Kamiki as she feels that she’s not cool enough to be seen beside him as his boyfriend. She also thinks of herself as stupid, which is questionable given how she shows easy flashes of understanding others in here. Kamiki is stubborn and understanding, though, and things eventually work out. Mostly, as it’s noted how fragile their relationship is.

Maki and Erika is another story. Having spent their entire time together talking around each other, it’s unsurprising to see their neither really knows how to read the other and see what the other one is thinking. And due to circumstances, Erika is leaving soon anyway. A lot of things come together here. The fact that they know little about each other; Maki jumping to conclusions; Erika having figured out that Maki is still in love with someone else (but not who it is)… and so they break up. (And the moment where Erika finds out about the other Erika, which I’d been waiting for for about 6 volumes, is actually very understated and quiet.) It’s very bittersweet, and though Maki indicates that he will definitely ask her out if he ever meets her again, it’s melancholy as well.

Still, the boys all move up to being third years, and Maki gets stuck with the RA job (which he’s perfect for, admittedly). All seems well. This means, like the first volume in this series, we have to end with a sleazy shoujo smut story complet4ely unrelated to Seiho itself. Reverse Guilt is about a former ‘princess’ whose grades weren’t good enough for an elite school and so is now shunned. She tries to hide from life, but has trouble with this as the hottest, jerkiest guy in school is in love with her. He used to be a poor, abused child. He isn’t anymore. More communication misunderstandings here, but this time it makes you yearn for the relative niceness of the Seiho cast. Even Nogami wouldn’t be quite as bad as the guy is in this short. There’s also some explicit sexual situations here, for those who note this is still rated OT.

Overall, despite that, the main series was a great pickup for Viz. I know it didn’t sell quite as well as their other licenses of this period, but then it’s not big or flashy. It’s a series about a bunch of goofy guys who remind us of ourselves, and their ephemeral high school years. Definitely a keeper.

Hey, Takano never found out that Maki’s old girlfriend had the same name! Grr…

Manga the Week of 11/23

November 16, 2011 by Sean Gaffney

Sometimes these lists are long and involved. And then there are weeks like this. There’s 3 titles coming out via Diamond, all from Kodansha. Let’s see what they are.

First off, only one week late this time, it’s Volume 2 of Sailor Moon, and the 2nd and final volume of Sailor V. Both volumes are fantastic and worth a buy… and both are also more serious than their predecessors.

If Sailor Moon strikes you as too girly, or perhaps doesn’t have enough boobies for your tastes, may I recommend Volume 8 of Ninja Girls. I believe it’s the 2nd to last volume, which means I’d better work on my ‘Hosana in Excelcis’ pun to make it workable by the time Vol. 9 rolls around.

Since it’s so light, why not buy some non-manga? How about the new Pogo, which I keep shilling? Or the new Carl Barks volume, which has some fantastic storytelling? Or IDW’s Best of Samm Schwartz, which should have lots of Jughead stories? Or even Vol. 1 of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hardcover, also out next week?

After you’ve bought Sailor Moon and Sailor V, of course.

Re-flipped: not simple

November 16, 2011 by David Welsh

I’m digging into the Flipped archives again. This one came out just as Natsume Ono’s work was starting to be licensed in English. It focuses primarily on her first licensed work, which generated some mixed reaction, though I loved it.

I’ve given up on prognostication. Experience has demonstrated that I’m usually too optimistic, and looking back at my predictions makes me realize that they’re more in the line of affirmations than realistic expectations. I will indulge in one, though: by the end of 2010, a lot more people will be aware of the work of Natsume Ono than they were when the year began.

To be honest, I’d never heard her name at the beginning of 2009. My first glimpse of her work came through a random copy of Kodansha’s Morning 2, which is serializing Ono’s Coppers. I remember thinking that those pages didn’t look much like anything else in the magazine. It took me a while to connect the creator of Coppers with my next encounter with Ono.

That happened at Viz Media’s online IKKI anthology, which serializes chapters of Ono’s House of Five Leaves. It’s one of those series that on first glance leave you not quite sure what you just read, though in a very pleasant way. The opening chapters leave the doors of possibility wide open, and subsequent installments don’t so much shut them as fill in the details of those possibilities.

It’s about an out-of-work samurai, Akitsu, who becomes entangled with a gang of kidnappers. Akitsu doesn’t resemble the standard manga samurai in physicality or disposition, lithe and diffident instead of sturdy and aggressive. It’s easy to see why he’s unemployed, but it’s enticingly unclear why gangster Yaichi lures Akitsu into his circle. It could be that Akitsu is easy to manipulate and the last person you’d expect of ulterior motives, or it could be simple, unexpected fondness. Yaichi might merely like to have Akitsu around.

Ono seems entirely comfortable with leaving readers to guess where things might be headed in terms of event and even intent, though I always have the sense that things are moving in interesting directions. Her work seems both confident and restrained. It also seems just slightly askew of what one might expect when one considers demographics like seinen (comics for adult men), josei (for adult women) or yaoi (male-male romance, which Ono has created under the name “Basso”). So it makes sense that the magazines that have featured her work – Morning 2, Shogakukan’s IKKI, the late Penguin Shobou’s Comic SEED! – seem less designed to cater to a specific demographic than to simply publish an interesting variety of comics by accomplished creators.

The first Ono title to see print in translation, not simple from Viz, arrives this week, and the publisher has posted the first chapter online. Comics creator, editor and critic Shaenon K. Garrity has described the book as “scary good,” and I’m in complete agreement. I think it compares favorably to one of the most acclaimed books of 2009, David Small’s Stitches: A Memoir (W.W. Norton). Like Small’s autobiography, not simple explores the hideous consequences of parental cowardice and cruelty, and, like Stitches, it’s constructed and paced with admirable precision and craft. As was the case in Stitches, I’m reluctant to describe the plot in too much detail, as a great deal of pleasure is derived in the timing with which Ono reveals the underlying facts of her characters’ lives.

The book follows a young Australian man named Ian, barely more than a boy, really, as he searches for his older sister, the only bright point in his grim experience with family life. Along the way, he meets a writer, Jim, who’s taken with Ian’s story both for its inherent pathos and for its narrative possibilities – he wants to know how Ian’s story comes out at least partly because he wants to tell it. Ian’s life and Jim’s novel intersect and overlap, and the story-within-a-story elements aren’t always entirely successful, but Jim’s mixture of sympathy and self-interest give Ian’s tragedies a needed edge and the possibility of at least a little remove on the part of the reader. One of the recurring criticisms I saw for Stitches was that it was just so depressing, a quality compounded by the fact that the events it portrayed actually happened. In not simple, Ono is playing with the idea of tragedy as an entertainment beyond merely presenting a tragic series of events. It’s an intriguing extra element, even if it isn’t seamlessly applied.

Ono doesn’t engage in the kind of experimental illustration that’s sprinkled throughout Small’s work, but her drawings are striking, characterized with a kind of crude fragility that supports the tone and content of her story. Like everything else about not simple, its look is deceptively… well… simple. Fans of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Lost at Sea (Oni Press) would feel very much at ease with a cartoonish style invested with emotional depth and urgency.

People who have sampled House of Five Leaves, which is scheduled for print release in April of this year, might be surprised that not simple was drawn by the same creator. The former has a lean elegance that’s really in contrast to the more stylized look of the latter. I’m fond of both styles for their individual virtues and for the fact that they both come from the same pen. It’s exciting to see that Ono’s versatility in terms of content and tone extends to her work as an illustrator.

There’s just so much to admire about Ono’s work – its variety, its uniqueness, the level of talent it suggests. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to hope that she becomes one of those creators whose popularity transcends the audience specifically interested in comics from Japan and those who are interested in well-made comics in general. Her work seems to have transcended any specific demographic in Japan, and I believe it will here.

Upcoming 11/16/2011

November 15, 2011 by David Welsh

I feel vaguely like Tom Sawyer, sitting back and watching other people do my work for me, at least in terms of an evaluation of this week’s ComicList. Instead of hacking out my own rundown of the new arrivals, I’ll simply point out this week’s Manga Bookshelf Pick of the Week post. By now, you all know how I feel about Manga Moveable Feast star Natsume Ono’s Tesoro (Viz), and you’re only a click away from seeing why MJ and Kate Dacey share my enthusiasm for new volumes of Takehiko Inoue’s Real and Hisae Iwaoka’s Saturn Apartments.

You’re also only a click away from this week’s round of Bookshelf Briefs. This week’s theme, at least for me, is finding that I quite enjoyed two books in spite of their clear intent to pander to specific audiences that don’t generally include me. (Those would be the second volume of A Certain Scientific Railgun from Seven Seas and the first volume of Mr. Tiger and Mr. Wolf from Digital Manga.)

But wait! There’s more! The Manga Bookshelf Battle Robot also assembled for a new installment of Going Digital, in which I beg iPad users to give Oishinbo a chance.