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Deception on His Mind by Elizabeth George

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From the front flap:
Balford-le-Nez is a dying seatown on the coast of Essex. But when a member of the town’s small but growing Asian* community is found dead on its beach, his neck broken, sleepy Balford-le-Nez ignites. Working solo, without her long-time partner Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley, Sergeant Barbara Havers must probe not only the mind of a murderer and a case very close to her own heart, but the terrible price people pay for deceiving others… and themselves.

* Evidently, Brits use the term “Asian” to apply to people whom Americans would call “Middle Eastern.”

Review:
As a fan of Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, I was chuffed to discover that Deception on His Mind features Barbara in the role of main protagonist, as her superior officer, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley, is away on his honeymoon. While I like Barbara even more after this outing, especially after she gives voice to one long-overdue “sod you” in the book’s final pages, I unexpectedly found myself missing Lynley.

This isn’t Barbara’s fault at all, however. Instead, I lay the blame at Detective Inspector Emily Barlow, an acquaintance of Barbara’s who is the lead investigator of the murder of Haytham Querashi, a Pakistani immigrant who has come to England to marry Sahlah Malik, daughter of a local businessman, and work in her father’s factory. Barbara gets involved in the case when her neighbor, Taymullah Azhar, is summoned by his cousin (Sahlah’s brother Mohannad) to help advise the family. She wants to help him out and when she discovers that Barlow is heading up the case, she offers to assist. It soon becomes apparent that Barlow harbors racist attitudes, as she spends the entire book focused on pinning the crime on Mohannad and balking any time Barbara finds evidence that suggests a white person might have been involved.

This, as you might imagine, gets incredibly frustrating. In fact, I think the whole theme of the book must be “people seeing only what they want to see,” because there are several characters who exhibit this quality. Sahlah’s friend, Rachel, is deluded that pregnant Sahlah will be able to have a happy-ever-after romance with rich and white Theo Shaw. And, failing that, that Sahlah would be content to spend her days living with her in a cozy flat by the sea. She and Sahlah have several tedious conversations about the unlikelihood of these events occurring, but Rachel never seems to get it. Meanwhile, Rachel’s mum, fit and attractive Connie, refuses to see facially deformed Rachel as anything but lovely and Yumn, Mohannad’s odious wife, sees herself as Allah’s gift to humanity for her ability to bear sons for her husband and abuses her position to order Sahlah about imperiously. (She also seems to have an unhealthy fixation with her children’s nether regions.)

Icky and irritating characters aside, the investigation into Querashi’s death is fairly interesting. I learned a new bit of British slang—cottaging—and really enjoyed the trust that develops between Barbara and Azhar. They’re an unlikely match, but now I totally want them to get together, especially since Azhar’s ray-of-sunshine daughter, Hadiyyah, loves Barbara so much and is loved in return. Events culminate in a rather exciting boat chase, and I liked that Barlow’s instinctive suspicions aren’t entirely wrong, after all. I was confused by a couple of things, however, and especially disappointed when Barbara failed to mention a bit of evidence that would prove Querashi’s good intentions when Barlow got it into her head that he’d been blackmailing Mohannad. I think George dropped the ball there.

Overall, this is not my favorite Lynley mystery, but it shows Barbara in a good light and offers interesting ramifications for her in the future. I’ve just discovered there’s a new Lynley mystery due in January, and my goal is to get caught up by then, so expect more reviews of this series in the months to come.

Flower of Life, Vols. 1-4

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By Fumi Yoshinaga | Published by Digital Manga Publishing

When Fumi Yoshinaga sets a series in high school, you just know that she’s not going to do it like anybody else.

Harutaro Hanazono is beginning his first year of high school thirteen months behind schedule due to a bout of leukemia. The manga begins as he introduces himself to his new classmates in a manner that communicates much about his character. He’s an honest, simple, and idealistic soul, so is very forthright with his classmates about his illness because he doesn’t like the prospect of keeping secrets from all of them or having to explain multiple times. What he fails to consider, however, is how this information will affect his classmates’ interactions with him, since they all treat him with more consideration than they might otherwise have done.

Harutaro quickly becomes friends with Shota Mikuni, a gentle, smart, and adorable overweight boy whose main flaw is his timidity. Mikuni is also friends with Kai Majima, an arrogant otaku who is such a fascinating character that he’s going to get his own paragraph later. Harutaro and Majima don’t get along very well, but this doesn’t stop Harutaro from joining Mikuni and Majima in the manga club, where he collaborates with Mikuni and gradually develops the ambition to become a professional manga artist.

Meanwhile, readers become acquainted with the rest of the class in the same organic way any new student would. The homeroom teacher is Shigeru Saito, who at first appears to be an effeminate gay man but who is actually a woman. (Yoshinaga fooled me there, I must admit.) Other classmates include Yamane, a mature student with a love for books; Sakai, a perpetually tardy girl with a knack for English; Aizawa, a girl sensitive to the feelings of others; Jinnai and Isonishi, close friends and nice, normal girls; Ozaki, a rather boisterous fellow; and Tsuji, a guy who looks so much like Ono from Antique Bakery that it’s disconcerting to see him nurturing feelings for a woman.

Because Yoshinaga introduces the cast of students in such a natural-feeling way, I found myself caring about them much more than I ordinarily do in a series set in high school. For one thing, I’m not sure there is any other series where I could rattle off the names and personality traits of seven supporting classmates. It doesn’t matter that these characters may not get tons of page time; they’re still fully realized people with their own problems and passions. I’ve written before about my weariness regarding school cultural festivals, but in Yoshinaga’s hands, the festival in the second volume of the series is the best I have ever read, hands down. For the first time, I really engaged with the excitement the characters were experiencing. The same holds true for the Christmas party they hold in volume three. (Plus, that dinky tree was genuinely amusing.)

One of the major things I love about Flower of Life is how Yoshinaga works in some subtle lessons on friendship into the story. Sumiko Takeda is not in Harutaro’s class but becomes friendly with them when her original shoujo manga is circulated around and becomes a hit. Takeda doesn’t care about fashion or clothes, and she’s at a loss when her mother gives her some money to buy an outfit for herself. While shopping, she runs into Jinnai and Isonishi, who decide to come along as consultants. Their first shopping experience is kind of a drag, as Takeda is unenthused by the clothes shopping and Jinnai and Isonishi are bored when Takeda geeks out in an art supply store, but on a second attempt, they’re able to work out an arrangement where everyone can pursue their individual interests and yet still have a good time together. This seems to say “You can like different things and still be friends.” Other lessons that crop up later include “You don’t need to try to impress your friends,” “There can be one-sided feelings even in friendship,” and “You might think it’s nice to be coddled, but is it really good for you?”

Another lesson, “You can disagree and still be friends,” is vitally important to Mikuni. He begins the series a timid guy, unwilling to stand out by expressing his opinion. When he gets passionate enough about something, though—and it’s usually manga—he will speak out. The first time this happens with Harutaro, Mikuni is worried that he’s damaged their friendship, but Harutaro is actually thrilled that Mikuni was able to express himself so honestly and their friendship deepens as a result. By the end of the series, Mikuni has gained enough confidence to express his vision to Takayama, the manga editor who gives their work a harsh critique, and rebound from criticism with a zeal to improve.

I’ve talked quite a lot about the student characters, but the adults figure into the story in big ways, as well. The manga club members discover early on that Saito-sensei is carrying on an affair with the very married Koyanagi-sensei, who used to be her teacher when she was a student ten years ago. Their troubled relationship dominates her thoughts until she finally calls it off in volume three, saying that she loved him because he was such a good father, and it pains her to see him sneaking around and betraying his family. Koyanagi’s unexpected successor is Majima, whose solution to Saito’s woes is to give her something else to be “moeh” about.

And now we come to Majima. I love that in painting this portrait of an otaku, Yoshinaga didn’t just give us a heavy-breathing perv with a penchant for maid costumes, but really shows us how he thinks and attempts to process the world. He is arrogant and a little creepy, with a large quantity of disdain for his fellow students. He seems to prefer 2-D representations of women with specific physical qualities over real women, whom he appears to resent. And yet… although initially detached and unfeeling in his relationship with Saito, he eventually comes a bit unhinged when her behavior—saying she loves him yet sleeping with Koyanagi—does not follow logical patterns. I don’t think he loves her, or is capable of really loving anyone, but he expected her feelings for him to stay the same—the only thing he knows about relationships he’s learned from manga and dating sims, where you win the girl and then she loves you always—and is completely thrown when this doesn’t turn out to be the case. I think the experience makes him a tiny bit more empathetic to others, and maybe it’ll be what he needs to become a better person, but man, how thoroughly unfair of Saito to embroil this poor kid in an adult love triangle that he was not remotely equipped to participate in. My opinion of her suffered a great deal as a result.

The plight of Harutaro’s homebound sister, Sakura, also plays a major role in the story, furnishing some surprisingly dark moments and eventually culminating in the revelation that Harutaro is not, as he had believed, fully cured. He takes the news hard, but once he’s had the chance to process it, he returns to school for his second year a changed man. For, you see, he has learned to lie. He has learned to consider the feelings of others before he speaks. Gone is the Harutaro that can’t abide secrets. Now we see that he has learned discretion—he might want to tell Mikuni the truth, but he will wait for a time when his friend is ready to hear it. He can keep it to himself for as long as it takes. He has grown up.

Lastly, I wanted to touch upon the art in the story, especially the nonverbal storytelling that Yoshinaga employs with such aplomb. The page below is from volume three, when Harutaro has gone to the hospital for his monthly exam. He speaks with the nurse about a fellow patient who has since died, and when he emerges from the hospital, he pauses to look up at the sky for a moment then continues on his way. He doesn’t say a thing, but it his thoughts are absolutely clear: “She will never see this sky again.”

Another trait of Yoshinaga’s art is the repetition of similar panels to highlight the evolution of a facial expression (see MJ’s example from Antique Bakery in a Let’s Get Visual column from last October) or situation. In the example below, from volume four, she not only uses this technique to show Majima as someone not fully invested in the drama of the moment, but also for simple humorous effect.


Flower of Life is really an extraordinary series. When Harutaro and Mikuni are working on their manga, they express the desire to include some universal truths about friendship and growing up in their story, and that is precisely what Fumi Yoshinaga has done. It’s funny, it’s touching, and it’s a classic. Go read it.

Flower of Life was published in English by Digital Manga Publishing and is complete in four volumes. I reviewed it as part of the Fumi Yoshinaga Manga Moveable Feast, the archive of which can be found here.

Review copy for volume four provided by the publisher.

Flower of Life, Vol. 1

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By Fumi Yoshinaga. Released in Japan by Shinshokan, serialized in the magazine Wings. Released in North America by Digital Manga Publishing.

This has been on my to-read list for some time. I found a copy at World’s Biggest Bookstore in Toronto this May and picked it up, mostly as it’s quite hard to find these days. I had both this title and Antique Bakery in the back of my head, as they had been the subject of a debate regarding the casual use of the word ‘yaoi’ in fandom to refer to anything with the suggestion of gay men in it, even titles that did not necessarily have any romance or sex in them. So I had a certain set of expectations about the content going in. I wasn’t too worried about the quality – this is a Yoshinaga manga, I knew it would be enjoyable.

after the first few pages, which deal with a new pretty boy transfer student running into his flamboyantly swishy teacher, I remained unsurprised. After all, this is a series that ran in Wings, a magazine that seems to specialize in the very debate I mentioned earlier. It rarely has explicit BL, but its shoujo fantasy content skirts the edges a lot. Wings is not a magazine for your typical hot-blooded heterosexual Love Hina reader. So I sat back and enjoyed the otherwise amusing slice-of-life school comedy. This is why the payoff of the teacher’s real gender was possibly my favorite moment of the series. I love a good fakeout, and Yoshinaga handles it perfectly.

The characters in the series are, in fact, the main reason to get it. This is a lot of fun. It doesn’t have much of an actual plot, to be sure. Essentially it’s about Harutaro, a young man returning to school after a long battle with leukemia, and his trying to fit in among a close-knit class of eccentrics. He seemingly does very well, but much of the series examines how people treat others when they know what’s expected of them, and Harutaro finds that everything doesn’t quite go as easily as it would in your typical shoujo manga.

Harutaro bonds immediately with the boy sitting next to him, Shota. Shota’s another example of Yoshinaga writing a seemingly ‘typical’ school comedy, but adding her own eccentricities. He’s not your typical pretty boy, being short and rather portly – several characters call him cute/adorable, and one of the chapters deals with the other classmates casually calling him fat, and how upset that gets Harutaro. If there’s any hitn of BL in the series, it would be here, and clearly it can be read as such, but doesn’t have to be – it’s the perfect Wings-style plausible deniability. These two read just as well if they’re merely a budding friendship.

And then there’s Majima, who was the character in the end I think I found the most fascinating. It’s entirely possible that in later volumes he will open up to someone and show a hidden, vulnerable side, but I hope not, because my god, he’s such an amazingly appalling asshole. And he’s so good at it! He hits all those buttons that would make anyone back away – he’s a giant otaku who unashamedly reads artbooks in the middle of class, and will talk your ear off about it with no thought to whether you care. He’s brusque and rude when you try to interject your own problems and issues. And he gets angry at slights, even when the intent is clearly to apologize to him. He’s a horrible person, and I love that the two leads try to deal with him ANYWAY. His presence enriches the book.

There’s a lot of discussion of manga here, and it gets fairly metatextual. Harutaro has a definite talent for art – he was holed up in his recovery room with only manga and drawing paper, so is mostly self-taught – and once the class finds out about it, they’re quick to ask him to create something for them. This is also a great scene in the book, as everyone asks for their own fetishes, and Harutaro is quick to reject any that offend his sensibilities (incest, intergenerational yaoi), while still showing he’s a pervy guy at heart (yuri is OK). Later volumes apparently take the drawing aspect of this further, which is good to hear.

Also, his parents are chicken sexers. Words can’t describe how awesome that is.

There’s a lot of Yoshinaga out there, ranging from the more explicit yaoi titles that DMP has released to the currently running alternate universe political drama Ooku. But if you’re new to Yoshinaga, and have access to a copy, the first volume of Flower of Life is a good place to start. It has fun characters, a relaxed pace, and lots of humor. It proved to be quite refreshing.

Kicking the Tires at Jmanga.com

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Jmanga.com launched today, an online site that promises to deliver digital content from a variety of publishers. When I saw the site I was delighted to see that they were making some more obscure manga available, but as I investigated further I found myself a little disappointed by their payment model and pricing.

The site is organized by genre, making it easy to browse shonen, shoujo, seinen, and josei manga. The titles available range from manga already available in English (I spotted titles from Viz, Dark Horse, and CMX) to material that hasn’t been translated before. One of the things I was hoping for from Jmanga before it launched was that it would be a good source of josei manga titles. Unfortunately the josei selection is tilted heavily towards the boys love end of the spectrum, without featuring the office lady or paranormal romances I was wishing to read. The seinen section of the site seemed to have the most interesting possibilities for me as a reader. I was absolutely delighted to see that Jmanga had a translation of Ekiben Hitoritabi available. I’d heard about this manga featuring people riding trains and eating bento before, but I’d never expected to be able to read it. It was this title more than anything else that prompted me to sign up as a Jmanga user.

The pricing is one of the most problematic aspects of the site. Jmanga requires you to sign up for a $10 subscription, giving you 1000 points to buy manga with. Initial subscribers get a bonus of 500 points, but 1500 points doesn’t go very far on the site. As a monthly subscriber, you can purchase additional points when you’ve used up what you have. Individual chapters are as much as 290 points and single volumes are 899 points. This is problematic and I think not very sustainable pricing for digital comics. Emanga has single volumes for around $5, and so does the Viz iPad app. I tend to go for bargains when buying digital content. I’m perfectly happy to watch my k-dramas on streaming sites with commercials, without paying for a premium subscription. I tend to buy ebooks for the kindle when there’s a special sale. I buy digital comics through Comixology when they have items on sale. I buy manga on the Viz iPad app when it is discounted, but I do pay full digital price when I’m missing a volume. I would much rather have a “pay as you go” system on Jmanga.com. Being forced into a subscriber model annoys me. I also just do not enjoy reading manga on a web browser all that much, and view the iPad as an ideal method of reading digital comics. I hope an iPad version of Jmanga is going to be developed soon.

I ran through most of my 1500 points in an evening. This is what I read:

Ekiben Hitoritabi

This seinen manga will appeal to anyone who wants to feel like they’re taking a leisurely trip around Japan. Daisuke’s wife sends him on a slow train tour of Japan for an anniversary present. He loves the unique train station bentos he can get at each station that reflect the unique food culture of the area he’s traveling through. Daisuke is a genial guide to this aspect of Japan. He’s a large bearded man with a perpetual smile on his face. He meets a travel companion named Nana. She’s a journalist who is working on an article, and she enjoys eating almost as much as Daisuke does. There’s no real romance here, although Daisuke enjoys spending time exploring bento with Nana. Like many foodie manga, Ekiben Hitoritabi will make you want to eat. Each regional bento is lavishly illustrated, with diagrams pointing out all the different types of food packed into a small rectangular container.

Ekiben Hitoritabi is an exercise in notalgia as a slower, more rural Japan is showcased. Daisuke is riding in sleeper cars and slow trains, making stops along the way to visit hot springs or to buy the best locally made bento. No shinkansens here! Along the way we also get stories Daisuke tells of the unique models of trains he’s riding, local stories about how the railway was constructed, and illustrations of different types of engines. I have to admit, the bento descriptions appealed to me much more than the train history aspects of the manga.
The translation quality for the manga was fine, I didn’t notice any major typos or glitches other than the occasional odd turn of phrase. As with most foodie manga, the art excels in depicting food but Daisuke and Nana had much more fluid facial expressions than I was expecting, with Oishinbo as the main foodie manga I’ve read before. After reading this manga I know that one image will stick in my mind – Daisuke almost in tears hugging a prized bento to his face and Nana laughing at him. Ekiben Hitoritabi is the best type of foodie/travel manga because after reading it I really wanted to duplicate the type of trip Daisuke was on for myself. If you can endure the inevitable craving for bento and longing for Japanese scenery that Ekiben Hitoritabi will inspire, it is well worth the read.

My Sadistic Boyfriend

Switching to one of the few shoujo titles that looked interesting that hasn’t already come out in English, I decided to try out My Sadistic Boyfriend. This is a pretty typical shoujo title with attractive art that I think would appeal to fans of Miki Aihara. Chiaki enrolls in a prestigious school only to be told on the first day that she’s won a lottery and is going to be roommates with the “Prince” of the school, Katsuho. Does he immediatly start putting the moves on Chiaki? Does he have a Jeckyll and Hyde type personality? Is she bewildered yet strangely excited by his unwanted attentions? If you have to ask questions like these, you haven’t read a shoujo manga before! So there is not much new in My Sadistic Boyfriend, but it seems fine for what it is. I just liked the title.

The Larceny Log of Zampei the Cloud Snatcher

If you are a fan of Golgo 13’s Takao Saito, Jmanga is the site for you because it hosts a ton of his titles. The Larceny Log of Zampei the Cloud Snatcher is exactly what you’d expect from a Saito title set in historic Japan about the greatest womanizing thief ever. Zampei meets with a female client who wants him to steal a sword in a hot springs. Being a Saito hero, the details about the job and an incredible amount of exposition are spread over several pages while Zampei abruptly has sex with his client. I was truly amazed at the amount of backstory and details about the sword she wanted Zampei to steal the woman was able to convey considering the variety of positions she was contorted into. Even though Zampei is an awesome thief, he does have a fear of snakes which causes some complications when he goes out on the job. This title had by far the worst translation of the three titles I sampled. There were misspellings and word transpositions (faminine for feminine) that were really obvious.

The flash-based manga reader functioned ok, but sometimes lagged a bit when loading pages. I enjoyed the way I could toggle between English and Japanese in the reader. This seems like a potentially useful tool for Japanese language students.

After trying Jmanga out these are my hopes for the future:

  • More variety available for shoujo and josei titles. I would also like to see authorized translations for some of the many orphan series we have that were left untranslated in the US. I would like to pay to read many of the unfinished series that were previously licensed by CMX.
  • A better, more reasonable pricing scheme and subscription model. I signed up, but I’m not going to continue to subscribe for many months unless my points go further. They need to either lower prices or have some crazy sales for additional points in order to match what other manga companies are currently offering.
  • Development of an iPad app

    • As a first try, there are aspects of Jmanga that are very promising. Being able to get series online from so many different publishers is certainly something to be excited about. I hope that in the next few months they work on some of the issues they had at the launch.

Manga the week of 8/24

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Um… yeah.

That’s it. The third of DMP’s small releases of Yellow 2, its yaoi title featuring two ‘snatchers’ who go up against the mafia.

And… nothing else. No Viz, no Yen. Not even Kodansha, who seem to be absent from my comic shop as well as Midtown. Just… Yellow 2.

With that in mind, why not get some titles from the new JManga initiative?

Ooku Volume 6

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Fumi Yoshinaga is the topic of the Manga Moveable Feast for August. Ooku is by far her most artistically ambitious work, and while I enjoy and appreciate it very much, it doesn’t conjure up in me the same feelings of fondness as some of her other series like Antique Bakery and Flower of Life. Ooku’s more complex alternate history framework ensures that the series moves around telling different stories, without the leisurely time devoted to the slice of life character-based interaction that Yoshinaga excels at.

The sixth volume of Ooku focuses on the Shogun Tsunayoshi. Her unrealistic edicts of compassion for animals make her unpopular with her subjects, and she struggles with naming a successor. Even though she’s caught up in the machinery of government, it is the small human considerations that drive her decisions. Though her father is senile, she doesn’t want to name an heir who he opposes. After an assassination attempt, Tsunayoshi is strangely unmoved, not wanting to make an effort to live anymore. She finds brief comfort in the arms of Senior Chamberlin Emonnosuke. The tension between the official history of the shogunate and the events that actually happened is always present, as the third person narration hints at rumors the reader is shown to be true.

The second story in this volume introduces Sayko, a man so desperate to get away from his abusive mother that he clutches at the possibility of entering the service of the next Shogun Ienobu. He regards the Valet of the Chamber Akifusa as his savior, falling in love with her. One of the underlying themes of Ooku is the way power twists and changes normal human relationships. Akifusa has Sayko trained in all the gentlemanly arts of the samurai, and then tells him that she’s been grooming him for the role of the Shogun’s concubine. When Sakyo sees Ienobu sitting with her official consort, he thinks “These two people should have grown older in happy harmony, with nothing to come between them. Instead, because as Shogun she must produce an heir, her highness must lie with the likes of me…’Tis a wretched thing…”

The constraints posed on the characters by the structure of society and the office of the Shogun ensure that the best anyone can hope for is a moment of fleeting happiness. I put this volume down wondering if the most recent shogun Yoshimune will be able to enact some reforms after spending so much time learning about her predecessors.

Review copy provided by the publisher

MMF: Yoshinaga top five

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I suppose that, since I asked others to pick their favorite Fumi Yoshinaga title, I should be willing to make the same impossible choice. It’s a thankless process, to be honest, since almost all of her works that have been published in English (which is almost all of them) assert their worth so forcefully. But, since I feel forced to do so, here are my five favorite works by Yoshinaga, in order:

  1. Antique Bakery, Digital Manga Publishing, four volumes, originally published in Shinkoshan’s Wings: As with many who left comments, this was my introduction to Yoshinaga, and it’s hard to get over your first time. A handsome straight guy opens a bakery and hires an irresistible gay guy to be his pastry chef. Additional employees of varying individual adorability hare subsequently hired, and Yoshinaga gives a glimpse into their complicated lives and those of their customers, friends, and families.
  2. Flower of Life, Digital Manga Publishing, four volumes, originally published in Shinkoshan’s Wings and later republished by Hakusensha: Yoshinaga dissects the milestones and tropes of school comedy with such precision and warmth that this series could easily have taken first place, though Antique Bakery gains an additional, slight edge by being about grown-ups. We follow a group of classmates and their teacher as they get to know outgoing (and blunt) Harutaro, a new student who missed a year due to leukemia treatment.
  3. Ichigenme: The First Class Is Civil Law, 801 Media, two volumes, originally published by Biblos: As I wrote in greater detail earlier this week, Ichigenme is at the very top of my list of favorite yaoi, tied with Saika Kunieda’s Future Lovers (Deux Press). What Yoshinaga has here is a fully fleshed-out tale of evolving love between grown-ups, funny, smart, and sexy as you could hope.
  4. All My Darling Daughters, Viz Signature, one volume, originally published in Hakusensha’s Melody: This is quite possibly my favorite fictional examination of a mother-daughter relationship, an all-too-often neglected dynamic. This collection of interconnected short stories isn’t limited to that topic, and Yoshinaga does a marvelous job throughout, but the best moments involve a grown woman whose relationship with her mother changes when the mother begins a new relationship with a much-younger man.
  5. Ôoku: The Inner Chambers, Viz Signature, currently serialized in Hakusensha’s Melody: It’s probably strange, if not blasphemous, to put Yoshinaga’s most critically acclaimed series last on this list, but it’s hard not to favor completed works over one that’s still ongoing, good as that series may be. And, don’t get me wrong, Ôoku is very, very good. This history-with-a-spoke-in-the-wheels saga looks at a feudal Japan where the male population was decimated by disease, leaving the women to assume power, with all of the intrigue, drama, and conflicted emotions that prospect suggests.

There. I’ve committed my list to blog. I actually feel liberated. And it should probably be noted that all of these titles are among my favorite manga published in English, period.

Higurashi: When They Cry, Vols. 13-14

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Story by Ryukishi07; Art by Yutori Houjyou. Released in Japan as “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Meakashi-hen” by Square Enix, serialized in the magazine Gangan Wing. Released in North America by Yen Press.

Sorry for the numbering confusion. Initial solicits from Yen noted that the omnibus ‘Demon Exposing Arc’ was Volume 13, but I went with that. But they’ve apparently now decided that it’s a special one-off, and 13 and 14 are the rest of the Eye-Opening Arc proper. So we’ll go with that. In the meantime, let’s take a look at Shion! When we last left her, she’d locked Mion in the Sonozaki family torture chamber and was laughing maniacally. Where can we go from here?

Oh, there’s always somewhere further down you can go! Shoin still has to figure out what happened to her beloved Satoshi, after all. So she disguises herself as Mion and starts an odd double life, using Keiichi and the others to try to further her own agenda. Or at least what she thinks her agenda is. In doing so, she also runs afoul of the Village’s Council of Elders. Honestly, some of their reaction to hearing there were intruders in the shrine might be Shion’s paranoia, but I doubt it. They’re simply reactionary people in power, and not pleasant at all.

Of course, this isn’t comparing them to Shion, who outstrips everyone else in this arc for pure evil, even if it’s in the name of a misplaced love and revenge. She kidnaps the head of the village and sets him up in a slow hanging torture device that, well, slowly hangs him. (Shots of his feet danging in the backgrounds in Volume 4 are chilling, especially as they’re never the actual focus of the scene.) And unfortunately, Shion is still no closer to finding anything out, as the head of the village doesn’t know anything, and her grandmother is dead.

Shion has been attempting to be crafty, but it’s not particularly working well except against overly trusting people like Keiichi. So it’s no surprise that when Rika comes over to ‘borrow some soy sauce’, it seems to be a ruse in order to inject Shion with something. We think. This is the trouble with trying to trust a viewpoint in Higurashi. It makes for a good cliffhanger, though.

Then we get to Volume 4. It’s the final volume of the arc, and by far the bloodiest to date. Shion manages to defeat Rika from injecting her, and decides to take her off to be tortured like she did with the village elder and her sister. Rika, oddly, does not really want to be tortured, and decides that since it’s clear Shion is too far gone, she will commit suicide instead. By stabbing herself in the neck with a knife. Repeatedly. It’s a horrific scene to see, and even Shion seems briefly horrified by it.

But at least she avoided what’s coming next, after Shion invites Satoko over for some tea and torture. Given that Satoko is Satoshi’s brother, this is the grimmest scene in the whole arc (and that’s saying a lot). Shion is filled with misplaced blame and anger, and as it turns out so is Satoko, who has been blaming herself for her brother’s disappearance, and is convinced that if she’s a good girl and doesn’t cry that she can see him again. This is the only scene in the manga where Shion threatens to slowly torture someone to death and actually does it, as she stabs Satoko (who she has already crucified – no vague symbolism here) repeatedly in the arms until she dies from blood loss.

This is followed by an epiphany that would be rather touching if it wasn’t far too late – Shion, going over all her memories, finally recalls Satoshi asking her, right before he disappeared, to take care of Satoko for him. And I’m pretty sure he did not mean ‘take care’ as in torture. Shion’s anguish as she realizes that not only did she not do this but in fact has failed at everything she wanted to do to get closer to him is equal parts heartbreaking and amusing (there’s a wonderful shot of her thinking about Satoko and Satoshi, beloved brother and sister, keeping their promise to each other, and them slowly swiveling her head over to the crucifix where Satoko still hangs.), but in the end it’s a mere illusion, as Shion decides she is ‘possessed by the demon’ and goes off to kill Keiichi (who she still seems to blame for not being Satoshi.)

What follows is the end of the Cotton Drifting Arc, only from Shion’s perspective, now that we know it was actually her and not Mion. My favorite part of these two arcs occurs here, as Shion has basically made an unspoken bet with her sister to see if Keiichi is able to discover that she’s really Shion. He doesn’t, so she gleefully starts to torture him – only to have him beg the ‘demon’ inside her to release Mion, and Shion realizes that he not only can’t believe that his good friend Mion would be capable of such things, but ALSO can’t suspect Shion. Keiichi is simply too nice.

So she knocks him out with her taser, and goes to have a final heart to heart with Mion. We do actually get a few answers here, this being the first of the answer arcs – but not too many. It’s made clear that the Sonozakis don’t really have anything to do with Satoshi’s disappearance – they’re just really good at bluffing and looking evil. The whole twin switching thing is also given its last twist, as it turns out that when they were kids they switched so that Shion could attend a meeting and Mion could go to the amusement park. The only problem was this was when the elders of the family tattooed ‘Mion’ with the mark that branded her as the next head of the family. So Shion was actually born Mion, and fell into disfavor. Yet another reason she’s so screwed up. Unfortunately, this does not help the Mion we know, who Shion allows to fall into the pit in their basement and break her neck.

And so Shion, tormented by now by absolutely anything and everything she’s ever done in her life, goes to the hospital to stab Keiichi, convinced by now that she has to kill everyone to gain forgiveness. And then she falls off a roof trying to escape. Bad end. REALLY bad end. There’s a brief shot of a dying Shion regretting all the decisions she made, and imagining what would have happened if she’d ,listened to Satoshi and become a big sister figure to Satoko. Sadly, it’s just a fantasy, and the final shot is of her corpse staring up at the reader.

This was gripping stuff, but not exactly what I would call feel-good material. What’s more, we have yet another arc with a singularly unsympathetic protagonist, as despite all attempts to make Shion likeable, you really can’t get past the paranoia and madness. Luckily, this arc is over. In October we begin the ‘Atonement’ arc, which stars Rena (remember Rena? The supposed star of the series?), and is the ‘answer arc’ to the very first Higurashi manga. Hopefully it will be as well-told as this arc was… and perhaps a little lighter in tone? I know I can’t get a good end yet, but…

Upcoming 8/17/2011

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If your comic shop is of the Diamond dependent stripe, you may be disappointed by this week’s ComicList, as there’s next to no manga in evidence. Never fear, though! There is one exciting arrival to please the discerning comics reader.

That would be the fourth volume of Lewis Trondheim’s Little Nothings: My Shadow in the Distance (NBM). Trondheim’s self-deprecating, autobiographical comics are always funny and observant in just the right ways. I reviewed the third volume, Uneasy Happiness, for the inaugural Not By Manga Alone column.

Of course, for those served by more diversely sourced comic shops, you can take a look at the Manga Bookshelf Pick of the Week roundup, and you can peruse this week’s Bookshelf Briefs for our takes on a variety of recent releases.

By the way, a new alphabet begins this week, but I think I’ll keep the theme a surprise. I’m sneaky that way!

 

Guest Feature: Why You Should Read Evyione, Part II

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Why You Should Read (and Want More) Evyione: Ocean Fantasy
Part II

Evyione: Ocean Fantasy, loosely based on “The Little Mermaid,” is a wonderful manhwa which is on indefinite hiatus in English. Here I present the case for continuing Evyione in English.

In Part I I described the merits of the artwork in Evyione: Ocean Fantasy. The artwork was the main draw for me – in the beginning. However, if I only cared about the art, I would advocate bypassing the Udon Entertainment edition and going straight for the original, Korean-language edition. It is because of the story’s impact on me that I am encouraging people to try the Udon Entertainment English-language edition.

What about the story engrosses me so much? The answer, while simple to name, is complex to describe: the connections between the characters.

Character Crystals

The characters are like crystals. At first, the characters seem to be simple yet warmly rendered examples of standard archetypes, just like the characters in well-told fairy tales. Being a comic based on Hans Christian Andersen, this feels appropriate, and it feels even more appropriate because it fits the artistic aesthetic I described in part I. Crystals, too, can appear beautiful yet simple upon a glance. And like crystals, at first the characters seem like they will never change or show depth – just as fairy-tale characters generally do not change or show depth.

Of course, crystals do change and can have hidden complexity, and the same is true of the characters in Evyione: Ocean Fantasy. Kim Young-Hee reveals the humanity in the characters just as a jeweler might reveal the gem in a crystal – by rubbing the characters against each other to gradually uncover an underlying layer, or by striking them against each other to expose a new facet. Different characters pull out different qualities from each other. Watching the characters rub, strike, and connect with each other, slowly exposing themselves, is exactly why I love the story.

This dynamic is not apparent in the first volume. It takes time to reveal the characters and to weave the complex web of their relationships. In volume one, Yaxin pretty much only interacts with the sea witch, Evyione and Fidelis are mostly interacting with each other, and Owain only interacts with Evyione, and not for very long. Fidelis – the less I say about him, the better, because it is hard to talk about him without blowing a significant bombshell. Owain might be my favorite character (aside from my other favorite characters – it is tough to pick just one), and based on the artist commentary section, he seems to be the most popular character among Korean readers too. And of course, Yaxin and Evyione’s relationship is the beating heart of the story. The connections – and potential connections between the characters – drive much of the suspense, and as it takes a few volumes to build things up, it means that it is much harder to be left hanging at the end of volume 6 than at the end of volume 1.

An Example

To really show how engrossing the connections between the characters are requires an in-depth example.

I do not want to use Yaxin and Evyione’s relationship as that example; it is difficult to have a meaningful discussion of their relationship without spoilers. Though if you want a taste of that, the summary would be: the connections between Evyione and Owain, Yaxin and Owain, Evyione and Fidelis, and Evyione and the king’s brother are all worthy reading in their own right – and they all help Evyione and Yaxin’s relationship attain that special something which makes me tear through the volumes, difficult Chinese phrases be damned, to finally get to the scenes between the two.

Anyway instead, I will describe the relationships around the Queen, Evyione’s stepmother.

The Queen

The queen is a very refreshing take on the fairy-tale stepmother. For starters, she is not evil. This grants the queen the freedom to act like a human being instead of a stock villain.

The problem stems from her marriage. The king and the queen do like each other, though ‘love’ is probably too strong a word. However, the queen thinks that when she is no longer young and beautiful, the king will discard her. She thinks that the only way to protect herself is to bear the king’s children … yet after three years of marriage, she still doesn’t have any children. And this kicks off a chain of events.

As a source of comfort and support – or, perhaps not – comes Marie-Anne, the queen’s old lover from France. While the queen is married to the king, Marie-Anne is clearly her real partner. The queen, insecure as she is about her marriage, avoids openly disagreeing with the king, and in the one scene where she does, in fact, say to the king that she disagrees with him, she immediately tries to diffuse the situation. However, when she disagrees with Marie-Anne, she never hesitates to call her out on it. In other words, unlike from her husband, the queen insists on respect from Marie-Anne. If they could have, the queen and Marie-Anne would have probably married each other long ago. Which makes me wonder – is the ultimate cause of the queen’s problems the fact that her society doesn’t accept queer relationships?

However, Marie-Anne’s presence is not exactly beneficial. Her attempts to intervene in the queen’s problems only make them worse. And Marie-Anne has ulterior motives for coming to Emvonia. The queen is partially aware of this. While the queen does not seem to like it, she is not trying to stop Marie-Anne – so far. But when the queen figures out the full extent of Marie-Anne’s activities … to be honest, I do not know what is going to happen, but it will not be good. And there is the question of how Marie-Anne will respond. Marie-Anne really does seem to love the queen. If she had to choose between the queen and her goals — and she probably will have to choose eventually — I am not sure which one she would pick.

While the queen’s sub-plot at first is confined to a few characters, one by one, others get dragged into the mess. Each new character adds to the fray of course adds a whole new set of complications. And each additional character draws out a different part of the queen, making her an ever richer character.

What really breaks my heart is the toll these events are having on the queen’s self-esteem. She really is a good person. However, desperation causes her to do some less than ethical things. That makes her think that she is a bad person. And she is blaming herself even for things which are not her fault. While this tragedy started because the she thinks that her husband does not see any worth in her beyond her beauty, it seems that she now thinks that her husband is right. And that is definitely not true.

Spectacular Moments

When I think of Evyione: Ocean Fantasy, my mind often drifts to specific spectacular moments, the culmination of everything good in this comic. For all that I tried to break the discussion of the art and the story into different sections, the two cannot be completely separated. The artwork provides the potential to be striking; the plot provides the potential to be surprising; the character development provides the potential to be moving; when even two of these things come together, the result is spectacular.

An example I should have used in part 1 – but which also fits here, because it is important for both the artwork and the story – is a scene in which one character wakes up in chains, and then sees another character, wearing a mask, approaching. It is a bizarre scene. Both of the characters have ingested drugs, and it comes through in the drawings. This a wonderful example of how the story supplies a great subject for the artwork. Indeed, this scene is mostly told through what is seen, not what is said. This scene is unexpected, yet so visually imaginative, and yet has seriously scary implications for the characters involved. The first time I read this scene, I was so stunned that I temporarily stopped thinking. Heck, re-reading this scene for the purpose of writing this paragraph made my neck tense up. This particular moment marks the shift of the story into a much darker direction, and was one of the turning points which made me fall for Evyione: Ocean Fantasy that much harder.

Read Evyione: Ocean Fantasy! And Talk about It!

If you think you might like Evyione: Ocean Fantasy, please, please, PLEASE buy volume 1 of the Udon Entertainment edition. It is still available for sale. And if you do, in fact, like it, please tell people about it. Blog about it, if you have a blog. Volume 2 is never going to come out in English without sales and buzz. And volume 2 really should come out in English.

Finale

This review covers a lot. To wrap it all up, I wish to share one of my favorite moments. Enjoy.

*

Yaxin is bathing by the rocky sea shore. Hearing footsteps, he hides.

It is Evyione.

She is wearing a black robe à la polonaise. The area from the top of her stomacher to the bottom of her chin is completely covered in black lace. The engageants (sleeve extensions) are made from a matching set of black lace, yet her sleeves short enough to leave her fair skin exposed between the engageants and her black gloves. And her black hat comes with an elegant set of ribbons. While it is a very fine dress, it is actually plainer than most of the dresses she wears. It is a dress for mourning.

Evyione starts crying.

In many other comics aimed at a female audience, Evyione would have struck a dramatic pose as she cried, artistic flourishes would spill out onto the page, and/or the panels themselves would contort to share in Evyione’s grief. However the artwork of Evyione: Ocean Fantasy, simple and natural as ever, just lets Evyione stand and sob her heart out.

As Yaxin watches, he narrates [quote translated from Chinese] “I do not know why she came to these deserted rocks by the sea, but she looks like she is extremely sad … The sound of the never-ending waves crashing on the rocks seem to be trying to cover the sound of her weeping … The sound of her sobs is gradually ebbing … The sound of her breath is also gradually becoming slower … Now her footsteps sound like they belong to a completely different person … She has straight away turned her body, climbing the stairs, having completely recovered her normal calm self, seeming as if she had never wept.”

I love this moment because this is one of the very few times that Evyione freely expresses her feelings. And after her release, the reader watches her put back on the social mask that almost always wears to cover up her unhappiness.

Evyione is weeping because she believes that Yaxin is gone forever.

Sara K. has spent almost all of her life in San Francisco, California. She got tired of living in San Francisco, so one day she boarded a plane bound for Haneda Airport, and has never been back to San Francisco ever since. She currently lives in an Asian city you have never heard of.