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Saturday Spotlight: Working

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As has often been the case lately, this week was all about work for me. And by “work,” I don’t mean the self-assigned variety like running Manga Bookshelf. I’m talking about the work that forces me out of the house daily, actually pays my bills, and occasionally stretches my mind and body to the limit.

Whenever I ponder “work” and manga at the same time, my thoughts tend to wander to David and his particular love for workplace manga. They also wanders to Suppli, one of the few manga about a woman in the workplace I can think of that’s been translated (partially) into English. So for this week’s Saturday Spotlight, I shall combine the two together, by pointing you to David’s article on Suppli, originally published for his “Flipped” column at The Comics Reporter, and later reprinted at The Manga Curmudgeon.

Fellow office ladies everywhere, please enjoy David’s thoughts on Suppli.

The Goon Show Compendium, Vol. 6

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As readers of this blog know, I don’t always talk about manga. Sometimes I’m discussing other comics, sometimes I’m droning on for hours about Frank Zappa, and sometimes I’m going into great detail about which previously censored Looney Tunes blackface gags are now uncut on the new DVDs. And then there’s British Comedy, which I have had a great love for for years. I started with Python, and of course devoured all the interviews with the cast, where they discussed the influence of Spike Milligan. I then watched The Goodies, where the cast ALSO discussed Spike’s influence. And heck, even the Beatles have a song (You Know My Name, Look Up The Number) directly influenced by the Goons. I had to find out more.

And I did. The Goon Show scripts book was in my local library. That was it for a while, as importing from the UK was not as easy in those days. But then the BBC started releasing cassettes and CDs of old Goon Shows, and I quickly grew even more obsessed. Then a few years back, the BBC decided to do things properly. No more CDs of 4 randomly selected shows plonked down for a few bob. Now we got all the shows from Series 5 onwards (the earliest series that completely survives) in giant CD box sets, restored from the best materials by Ted Kendall, with previously censored jokes put back in, all with copious liner notes and annotations by Radio and TV scholar Andrew Pixley. This is the 6th such box, containing the 2nd half of series 7 (which ran in 1957).

The Goon Show was a radio comedy on the BBC from 1951 to 1960. The scripts were primarily by Spike Milligan, but he usually had helpers at various points in the series, either for reasons of time or for reasons of mental stability (Spike was bipolar, a diagnosis unknown to everyone, including him, until the 1970s). The shows in this box are co-written by Larry Stephens, a friend of Spike’s and another BBC radio scriptwriter.

The cast was Spike Milligan (known to North Americans for his Muppet Show appearance, where he debated Sam the Eagle and sang It’s a Small World), Harry Secombe (known to North Americans as Mr. Bumble in the movie Oliver!, and for the song If I Ruled The World, which he debuted), and Peter Sellers (known to North Americans). Each week Spike and Peter would take on a variety of roles, all of which would revolve around Secombe’s well-meaning but dim oaf Neddie Seagoon, who Harry always described as “myself, only more so”. Generally speaking, there was no continuity except the characters; the plot resets every week and starts on another venue.

The plots varied, but tended to rely on a fixed form. Neddie was the main character, and would be approached by unscrupulous con-men Hercules Grytpype-Thynne (Sellers) and Jim Moriarty (Milligan) to do something incredibly stupid and/or impossible for money. Neddie would start on the task, usually with the help of fellow idiots Bluebottle (Sellers), a crack-voiced Boy Scout, and Eccles (Milligan), a cheerfully idiotic simpleton (Spike based Eccles’ voice partially off Goofy from the Disney cartoons, which many Americans will note immediately). He’ll also run into Major Dennis Bloodnok (Sellers), a retired Army officer and filthy lying coward. I’m not being mean – Bloodnok admits it himself. Events would spiral out of control, and usually the show ended with one or more (or all) of the cast dead – only to be resurrected the following week.

This set is a particularly good time for the series. The cast know their roles well, and the shows have a deft combination of surrealist humor, old vaudeville gags, and a wafer-thin plot to hang it all on. The set contains a few of the best known Goon Shows, including The Mysterious Punch-Up-The-Conker, which has the skit ‘What time is it, Eccles?’, a legendary classic showing off the way Eccles’ brain worked. It’s particularly fun as Spike enjoyed savagely mocking the brain power of these characters, but also felt a great affection for them – Harry and Peter both noted Spike was closest to Eccles in real life, not for the idiocy but for the skewed view of absolutely everything that is displayed.

Other episodes of note on the set include Shifting Sands, set in India around 1900 (as many Goon Shows were – Spike grew up there, and was fascinated with the ragged edges of the British Empire holding on despite everything) with special guest star Jack Train from an even earlier BBC radio comedy, It’s That Man Again; Ill Met By Goonlight, a World War II parody involving the capture of a suspected German spy (and one of the best-times awful puns in the entire series); and The Histories of Pliny the Elder, a Roman parody. There’s a few duffers in here, inevitable when you’re trying to write a half-hour of comedy every week. Emperor of the Universe is a parody of Bulldog Drummond that doesn’t quite savagely attack its subject enough to really work. The set also contains The Reason Why, a one-off comedy written without an audience about the moving of Cleopatra’s Needle to Britain. It’s a very odd duck, with Seagoon playing a different character that nevertheless has Neddie written all over him, and Bloodnok popping in as well. Goon Show once removed, shall we say.

The set comes, as I noted, with a long series of production notes detailing what was going on behind the scenes as these shows were being aired. They’re a nice look at what show-business Britain was like in the 50s – Harry and Peter were constantly off doing other shows and performances, and the BBC at one point told off Peter’s agent for booking him so much that he was unable to do the Goons easily. There is also a short guide to some of the more obscure jokes – Britain in the late 50s is a while ago, and not many would recall who Hughie Green or Field Marshal Alan Brooke are these days.

A word of warning to those who buy the set – there are some jokes that were made in 1950s British radio that would not be made today, particularly as regards racial stereotypes. The show had musical interludes, and the singer of the 2nd interlude, Ray Ellington, was frequently employed in the show to play African tribesman, servants, etc. – usually with a Rochester-type voice (Ray’s own voice, smooth and BBC English-sounding, was also heard in his songs.) There’s also several Chinese stereotypes in Emperor of the Universe, which, being a Bulldog Drummond parody, is all about the fiendish Chinese and how they are destroying our lovely Britain. Spike was quite progressive in many ways, but his jokes are a product of their time, and it’s best we view them the same way we view Bugs Bunny doing Al Jolson impressions in blackface to sell war bonds – as a slice of history.

The Goon Show has dated somewhat, especially as so much of modern British comedy is influenced by it. Some people may listen to the shows and wonder why they rely so much on old, hoary gags (you should have heard the other comedies on the radio at the time!). But even they will then listen in disbelief at the sheer surrealistic nonsense that then pours out the speaker. Spike could take gibberish and work magic with it, so that the cast could hold each other hostage with boa constrictors, bribe each other with receipts of a photo of a five-pound note, or have the time written down for them on a piece of paper. I could listen to these shows over and over again and still get new things out of them. Priceless.

Wandering Son Volume 1

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Wandering Son Volume 1 by Shimura Takako

I’d procrastinated reading Wandering Son when it first came out. I figured it would be good, just from reading other bloggers’ reviews, but I was wondering if the manga’s premise of a boy who wants to be a girl meeting a girl who wants to be a boy would be a bit ABC Afterschool Special in execution. Fortunately Shimura Takako is a master at portraying subtle events in a slice of life story about adolescence that never feels didactic.

Nitori’s shyness and manners cause him to be mistaken for a girl. He stars the school year by befriending the tomboyish girl Takatsuki. He visits her at her house and she notices his reaction to a dress she has hanging on her closet. She holds the dress up to him and says “It looks good on you. Your face says you want to wear it.” Nitori isn’t able to articulate what he wants and he makes a vague protest that the idea is crazy. Takatsuki says “Don’t you think buying your kid stuff she hates is some kind of harassment?” Nitori takes the dress home to his sister, but he’s left with a heightened awareness of feminine clothing and an idea in his head that he’s afraid to articulate.

One of the things I like about Wandering Son is the way many of the events in the book are simultaneously safe and filled with dramatic tension. As Nitori begins to take tentative steps to express himself, he’s met with acceptance for the most part. His parents seem supportive, but he’s being pushed to experiment with gender before he’s ready. A girl in his class named Chiba figures out Nitori’s attraction to feminine things and gives him an outfit he decides he can’t accept. She arranges for their class to do a gender-swapped class play. Weather she’s trying to help Nitori or merely attempting to collect and manage him as a curiosity is unclear. Takatsuki’s brash behavior causes her to be more bold with experiments as she attempts to pass as a boy in public, and she forces Nitori to go along with her. This might be a good thing, as he wouldn’t necessarily take steps like this on his own.

Like the storyline, Shimura’s art is simple but nuanced. Objects like a headband or a dress take on a symbolic weight for Nitori. His reserved but embarrassed body language portrays the way he’s not comfortable in his own skin, while Takatsuki’s more forthright mannerisms are the posturing of a girl who has to portray herself as outwardly self-assured no matter what she might be feeling on the inside. There’s a great scene of Nitori and Takatsuki getting haircuts together, which is one of the more memorable episodes of the book. He only wants a slight trim so his hair stays long, and Takatsuki demands a haircut as short as his. They end up with almost identical hair and the style that is slightly girlish on Nitori reads as manly on Takatsuki.

As you’d expect from Fantagraphics, the production quality for Wandering Son is excellent. I hope that more manga is on the horizon from them. While I’ll happily read more cheaply produced manga, it is nice to have a variety of options. Carefully curated manga like Wandering Son is a treat.

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

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From the back cover:
In America’s Gulf Coast region, where grounded oil tankers are being broken down for parts, Nailer, a teenage boy, works the light crew, scavenging for copper wiring just to make quota—and hopefully live to see another day. But when, by luck or by chance, he discovers an exquisite ship beached during a recent hurricane, Nailer faces the most important decision of his life: strip the ship for all it’s worth or rescue its lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl who could lead him to a better life…

In this powerful novel, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi delivers a thrilling, fast-paced adventure set in a vivid and raw, uncertain future.

Review:
Ship Breaker won the Printz Award this year, and I must say I think it deserved it! It took a little while to grow on me, but I liked it a lot by the end.

At some unspecified point in the future, a community of people has sprung up on Bright Sands Beach (on the Gulf Coast) where the best work to be found is on crews breaking down giant, rusting wrecks of oil tankers. Everyone toils away to meet their quota, all the while dreaming of the lucky strike—oil or other scarce commodities—that could make them rich. Nailer Lopez is fifteen years old and works on the light crew, where his job is scuttling through pipes to scavenge copper, aluminum, and nickel.

After a near-death experience during which his wits and luck save him from drowning in a pocket of oil, Nailer is christened Lucky Boy by his friends. This moniker seems apt when he and his friend Pima discover a valuable wreck left behind in the wake of a hurricane. They set to work stripping it but are stunned to discover a survivor—a very wealthy girl named Nita Chaudhury, who promises her father will reward them for saving her life. When Nailer’s drunken and dangerous father Richard discovers the wreck, however, he opts to trade Nita to her father’s enemies, which forces Nailer to make a whole bunch of difficult decisions.

When he and Pima find the wreck, she urges Nailer to be smart about it. In her eyes, “smart” seems to involve profiting enough to obtain a position of power on Bright Sands Beach. Nailer is aiming higher, however, and makes Nita promise to take him and Pima away and into a better life. The choices he makes from that point on are partly in pursuit of this goal, but also out of a growing sense of loyalty towards Nita, who proves herself capable and quickly loses her prejudices towards those less cultured than she. There are many times where he could have walked away and abandoned Nita to her fate but doesn’t, and ultimately, his concern for her works out in his own favor.

The story ranges over a few different settings, from the beach to the drowned docks of “Orleans” to a clipper ship crewed by people loyal to Nita’s father. As a big fan of the Hornblower series, I liked the ship the best. I hadn’t realized how much I missed depictions of naval battles until the awesome sequence wherein Nailer’s familiarity with the coastline results in a surprise advantage over a superior foe. In fact, the whole final sequence of the book was quite exciting, and makes me think this would make a good movie.

I also found it interesting that the main villain of the work is Nailer’s father, Richard, because Nailer harbors such conflicted feelings about him. He remembers the man his father used to be before his mother died, and though Richard’s now more likely to be high and abusive than relaxed and kind, Nailer feels obliged to care about him and give him chances to be a better person. After many disappointments, he finally realizes that Pima and her nurturing mother, Sadna, are his true family and is able to muster the strength to stop believing that his father is capable of turning over a new leaf at this point. Essentially, he’s a victim of domestic abuse who finally achieves the strength to say, “I’m not going to let you hurt me anymore.”

Lastly, Ship Breaker is commendable for its effortless portrayal of characters of many ethnicities. None of the lead characters is Caucasian. Their skin color is mentioned as part of their physical description, but doesn’t factor in to their relationships at all. Characters are judged purely based on their individual actions. If anything, the only real prejudice left in the world seems to be between the rich (or “swanks”) and the poor, but Nailer’s actions convince Nita, at least, of the errors of her ways, especially since he proves fully capable of functioning in her world if given half a chance.

Although initially a little frustrating—despite my love for dystopic YA, I still get a little frustrated with crappy situations that just seem to be getting crappier—Ship Breaker turns out to be a well-crafted and riveting tale.

License request day: Fashion Fade

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We’re in the midst of another season of Project Runway, one of my favorite reality competitions, even though I hate Josh C. M. to an absolutely unreasonable degree. So I thought I might take a look into the annals of fashion shôjo for today’s license request. (Note: We’re also into a new season of Top Chef: Just Desserts, but I’ve already requested a bunch of pastry manga, so I thought I’d branch out.) As is my way, I looked around for the oldest example I could find.

This led me to Tomoko Naka’s Fashion Fade, which debuted in Shogakukan’s Sho-Comi in 1977. Now, going by my history with the aforementioned rag-off, I’m not naturally inclined to like designers with stupid names (Suede, for example), but I also intensely dislike some designers with perfectly everyday monikers (like Gretchen). So perhaps I shouldn’t judge the heroine of this series too quickly, even though her name is, in fact, “Fade.”

Fade, it seems, grew up in Africa but ended up moving to France to live with her uncle. (Given that this is shôjo of a certain vintage, just about anything could have led to this development. My money is on a car accident that took place while rushing an important serum to a remote village, but my secret heart hopes a pride of lions were involved.) Fade and her uncle don’t hit it off. (Perhaps he prejudges her based on her name.) But she manages by becoming involved in the fashion industry, making friends, and building a career.

It ran for eight volumes originally and was subsequently republished in four thicker volumes. I honestly don’t know if it’s any good, as Naka seems to still be relatively off the radar of English-language readers. She doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, even though she’s worked steadily since the 1970s. She hasn’t even been published in French. But the covers are pretty in a “Who would ever wear that?” way, aren’t they? The covers have sort of an Erté vibe to them.

Drifters, Vol. 1

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By Kohta Hirano. Released in Japan by Shonen Gahosha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young King OURS. Released in North America by Dark Horse.

Drifters is the newest title from the author of Hellsing and is spanking brand new – even Japan doesn’t quite have Volume 2 yet. That said, it does *not* have vampires. Which means it loses a lot of North America’s strong “I will buy anything with vampires in it” market. Can it get past this obvious handicap and manage to find its own voice?

Yes indeed it can, even though that voice most of the time is a big guy with a sword going “FUCK YEAH!!” Drifters is not particularly a manga for those who want subtle, intricate displays of emotion or great attention to historical detail. It takes famous soldiers from all over earth’s history and plants them in a fantasy world with elves, then watches them simply roll up and start to do battle. And the battle is the main draw of the manga. If you’ve seen Hellsing, you know how much Hirano loves to draw melee combat. This is all about that.

There is, of course, a bit of a plot. Our hero is Shimazu Toyohisa, who is real life was believed to have died in the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600. In this manga, he wanders off the battlefield, wounded, and ends up in a modern-looking hallway, where a mysterious man signs his name onto a sheet and teleports him through a gate to another world, where he’s found by some very Lodoss Wars-looking teens. He’s apparently not the first stranger to be found in these parts, so they dutifully take him off to a ruined castle, where he meets Oda Nobunaga, the Sengoku warlord, and Nasu Yoichi, a famous samurai from 400 years earlier.

They have apparently been brought there to try to stop a great evil from destroying the land (which appears to be controlled by a woman with the amusing name of Easy, who confronts Hallway Guy in a brief scene). What’s more, it would appear they will be joining up with Hannibal and Scipio, both seen here at a different castle that is being laid siege to, as well as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Opposing them? Oh, just Hijitaka Toshizo, Joan of Arc, and Anastasia Romanov, all of whom are on the side of the bad guys, and also seem to have supernatural powers.

As you can see, this reads like a fanfiction written by a 12-year-old boy. Luckily, Hirano is mature and has a number of manga series under his best, so the execution is far more interesting. Provided you just turn off your brain and roll with events, this is a hell of a lot of fun. Shimazu makes a good “Who wants strategy, just point me at the enemy!” type hero, and the Black King, although seemingly a straight rip from Lord of the Rings, is a satisfyingly scary villain. And there’s sword fights, and battles, and people saying “Who can possibly save us now?” It is essentially Hirano having a ball every week, drawing whatever the hell he wants. And oddly, it works.

Admittedly, it has anime-style elves, who I normally avoid like the plague. But if you can get past the fantasy setting, what we have here is a bunch of historical soldiers fighting each other wile laughing and making trash talk. It almost reads like something Marvel or DC would put out. Definitely recommended to anyone who likes this sort of thing.

Off the Shelf: Hungry?

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MICHELLE: Mmm… Leftover pad thai.

MJ: Um. Macaroni & cheese from a box? I’m not sure I can *quite* say “yum.”

MICHELLE: We put diced tomatoes in ours. It’s definitely yum. :)

So, what have you been reading this week?

MJ: Well, first I checked out the first two volumes of Eri Takenashi’s Kannagi. The second volume isn’t due out from Bandai Entertainment until October, but the first has been out for a while, and I’m just now catching up with it.

Kannagi tells the story of Jin, a spiritually gifted high school student who pays tribute to his town’s recently cut-down sacred tree by carving a statue of its spirit from the leftover wood. Having met the spirit of the tree as a child, his likeness is close enough to the real thing to actually bring the tree’s guardian deity to life in the form of a human girl. With her tree now gone, the deity, Nagi, has lost some of her power, and must rely on Jin to help her cleanse “impurities” that lurk around looking like insects and snakes. Meanwhile, newly-human Nagi wreaks havoc on Jin’s life, both at home and school.

As a premise, this all works pretty well. Foisting a pretty, domineering, otherworldly girl into the life of a young everyman may not be the most original shounen plot ever, but in-between boob jokes, Takenashi throws in some genuinely quirky stuff. For instance, after watching a magical girl anime on television, Nagi soberly builds her own magical staff out of plastic toys and paper, believing it will help her stamp out the impurities. The book’s early chapters are filled with small bits of humor like this, and even when the first volume beings to drift into harem territory, it retains most of its charm.

Unfortunately, things slide quickly downhill in volume two, when much of the series’ original premise is abandoned in favor of an increasingly obvious harem setup, complete with maid cafes, random swimsuits, and an endless supply of breast/otaku jokes (rotating on a regular schedule). By the end of the volume, in fact, pretty much everything I found charming about the series initially was gone, and it’s hard to say whether I’ll be sticking around to see if it ever returns.

MICHELLE: Oh, that’s too bad. For a while there it seemed like a shounen romantic comedy that any audience could enjoy. I guess it was too good to last.

MJ: Well, maybe I’ve given up too soon. But I’ll admit to being pretty disappointed, after such a promising start.

So what have you got for us this week?

MICHELLE: Like you, I read the first two volumes of a series whose second volume came out recently and its first some time ago (2009, in this case). I’m talking about Angelic Runes, a josei supernatural/fantasy series from Makoto Tateno, better known here for her BL work.

Sowil is a young man possessed of a unique brand of magic who is looking for his father and some answers. Shortly into his quest he comes upon a village where the people are preparing to bury two children alive, believing them to be the source of a curse. Sowil intervenes and ends up taking the kids—a girl named Allueh and a boy named Erudite—with him on his journey. Very quickly he realizes that they’re oracles; Allu can hear the divine voices of demons and Eru the voices of angels. These celestial beings provide Sowil advice on his travels and generally steer him in the direction of people needing his help.

As the trio travels, Sowil ends up helping an ocean-dwelling spirit return home and identifies the being responsible for a series of killings. Both have a connection to the father he is seeking, and gradually Sowil begins to break through the seal that has been placed over his memories and those of the people where he grew up. The angels and demons observing through Eru and Allu are concerned, as well, and through them we see even more investigation of Sowil’s past. Tateno mixes quite a lot of mythologies here, but it’s all in good fun.

What this results in is a kind of low-key story with some genuinely likeable characters, which is definitely my cup of tea. Sowil is really nice—his propensity to help random townspeople reminds me of Rakan from Silver Diamond—but his unique runic magic also makes him somewhat of a badass, so that’s an interesting juxtaposition. I’m also really interested in Allu and Eru, who seemingly have no personalities of their own and simply function as vessels for higher powers. That’s either mysterious or incredibly sad. Perhaps both.

Anyway, there is at least one more volume of this. I hope it won’t be another two years before we see it.

MJ: That does sound like a tasty cup of tea. Why have I been ignoring this series?

MICHELLE: Well, when the first volume comes out and then nothing happens for two years, I think one is justified in thinking, “Hm, perhaps this series has been discontinued.” I like Tateno in general, though, and remembered that Connie (of Slightly Biased Manga) liked the first volume back when we were all part of Manga Recon, so I never forgot about it. It probably doesn’t sell too well, alas, but I hope DMP makes enough through their BL catalog to finance a third volume someday.

What’s your second manga du jour?

MJ: My second read this week was volume one of Bloody Monday, one of Kodansha Comics’ many recent debut series over the past month or so. It’s a thriller about a teen hacker named Fujimaru aka “Falcon.” Though Fujimaru’s skills are often sought out by his special agent dad, he also uses them to do things like liberate his private school from the influence of a harassing faculty member.

When his dad stumbles onto something that gets him framed for murder and puts his family in jeopardy, Fujimaru takes matters into his own hands and, with the help of his high school newspaper crew, continues his dad’s investigation regardless of the danger. Though the series’ super-smart-teen shares some of the more over-the-top qualities of Death Note‘s Light Yagami, he’s at least not a sociopath, which certainly helps in terms of likability, if not in believability. Opening boob and panty shots would suggest that this series shares some other attitudes in common with Death Note-style boys’ comics as well, but at least it seems to feature at least a couple of potentially competent female team members. I suppose time will tell.

Comparisons to Death Note might suggest that I found little to like in Bloody Monday, but actually I enjoyed it more than I expected. Though it’s obviously intended to appeal to fans of the former, I have to admit that its kinder tone goes a long way with me. Despite its highly derivative premise, I expect I’ll continue on with it.

On the petty side, I did notice something early on, Michelle, that made me think of you. There’s a panel in the first chapter that is so poorly laid out in terms of speech bubble placement, that one bit of dialogue looks like it’s being spoken by a character’s hand, or maybe the canister she’s holding. Once I figured out what was really supposed to be going on, I thought, “Michelle would have a field day with this!”

MICHELLE: Probably I would! I kind of relish skewering things like that. I am glad you enjoyed this, though, because it’s written by the same guy behind GetBackers, which is a series I liked a good bit. If GetBackers is any indication, Bloody Monday may well be able to balance the fanservice and competent female characters to your liking.

Now this makes me sigh ‘cos I wish Kodansha would pick up GetBackers, but it’s really been so long…

MJ: I’m definitely interested to see where this goes! I feel a little weird about enjoying something that’s so obviously derivative of a series I was fairly wishy-washy on, but I’m going to just go with it.

So what’s your second offering for the evening?

MICHELLE: I seem to be mirroring you this week, since I also checked out another Kodansha debut. Gon may not be new to American audiences, but it was new to me. I’d seen it praised quite a bit, but never before been compelled to check it out. Now that I have… well… I’m not entirely sure whether I’ll keep reading it.

The premise and execution are certainly unique. Gon is the last remaining dinosaur, and is only a year old. This doesn’t stop him from challenging animals many times his size, however, as this volume finds him facing off against a bear whom he later uses for a bed, convincing a lion to serve as his steed and later eating alongside him as equals, and protecting a nest of eagles from a prowling bobcat. The art is incredibly detailed and entirely nonverbal. So, in that respect, I must say that Gon is really something special.

The thing is… I just don’t like Gon. While I commend mangaka Masashi Tanaka for not making him cute and endearing—he’s fierce and intimidating, even if diminutive—how can I like a critter who basically floods out an entire forest habitat making a dam that makes it easier for him to catch fish? So, on the one hand I’m like “Heh, what a little bastard”—and it is kind of cool how one can so easily invent dialog for all the displaced animals along the lines of “I hate that guy”—but on the other hand I’m like, “Man, what a little bastard!” Can I enjoy bastardly doings for six more volumes? I’m not sure.

One last thing puzzles me. This volume is quite slim. The material has previously been released in the US. And, being without words as it is, is a very quick read, even for a notorious slowpoke like me. These three factors seem to suggest this would be an ideal candidate for omnibus treatment—something Kodansha has shown a willingness to undertake for series like Love Hina and Tokyo Mew Mew—so why not Gon?

MJ: Well, huh. I’m intrigued for sure, though I suspect I may have a similar reaction overall. I find it really difficult to enjoy a series whose protagonist I dislike, especially if there isn’t some other character for me to really latch on to. Your omnibus question is interesting as well. I wonder if it has to do with licensing?

MICHELLE: Probably it does. Or else they’re keeping the volumes small so they’re not intimidating for kids.

MJ: Ah yes, could be.

MICHELLE: So. Um. Good night, then. :)

MJ: And to you, my friend!

Manga the Week of 9/14

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Given that next week is all about Yen Press, let’s start with them. (Yes, I know Sailor Moon and Sailor V come out 9/13. Did you really expect Diamond to ship it on the same day it hits bookstores? Have you been reading my posts at all this year?) There’s lots of stuff from Yen that deserves mention, but I want to focus on one title in particular first.

With the Light, a manga about a young mother struggling to raise her autistic child, was one of Yen’s first manga series announced, and their most exciting. A josei manga that clearly was intended to be marketed to a much broader audience than anime fans, it was a sign of great things to come. And it turned out to be even better when you read it, heartwarming and inspiring. Sadly, the author passed away before she could finish the series. Yen has worked with Akita Shoten to make the final volume, out next week, as complete as it is possible to be. Everyone who loves manga that goes outside the boundaries of ‘fight, train, laugh’ should pick up this series.

Of course, Yen has other stuff too. There’s Bamboo Blade 10, which is about to start up its next big arc. There’s Bunny Drop 4, which is a big turning point in the series. My Girlfriend’s a Geek 4 will no doubt feature more knowing humor about the fujoshi lifestyle. Zombie Loan… I’ve never read, I admit. I presume it’s about a library where you borrow zombies for things they’d be useful for? And the cute moe librarians who run Zombie Loan? No?

And though I don’t cover manwha, I suspect I would be filleted by my fellow Manga Bookshelf colleagues if I did not mention the new Goong and Raiders manga. And for fans of OEL, there’s Svetlana Chmakova’s new series Witch and Wizard, which is written by some other guy… oh right, James Patterson.

Viz also has titles! Albeit not many. But one is the 18th volume of Hayate the Combat Butler! Yes, it’s down to twice a year, and it seems to only garner bad reviews online these days (that will change when I get a hold of it), but this one resolves the ‘End of the World’ arc in a dramatic way, then kicks back to the comedy. And another final volume, as Detroit Metal City comes to a close. I kind of lost track of the series after the first couple of volumes, but I have a lot of friends who love it.

And Dark Horse is putting out the first volume of Yasuhiro Nightow’s new series, Blood Blockade Battlefront, no doubt meant to appeal to Trigun fans the same way Drifters is clearly designed to appeal to Hellsing fans. Sadly, on advice from my doctor, I can’t actually look at Nightow’s artwork anymore without a 24-hour nurse by my side, so I did not preorder it. But I’m sure hardier people than I will be willing to read it and try to figure out what the hell is happening in the panels.

(Apologies to Dark Horse… if it helps, I’ll be praising Drifters soon.)

So what intrigues you this week?

The Favorites Alphabet: B

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Welcome to another installment of the Favorites Alphabet, where the Manga Bookshelf battle robot gingerly approaches our meticulously organized collections to pick a favorite manga title from each letter of the alphabet, whenever possible. We’re trying to stick with books that have been licensed and published in English, but we recognize that the alphabet is long, so we’re keeping a little wiggle room in reserve. And sometimes you can’t pick just one.

“B” is for…

Banana Fish | By Akimi Yoshida | VIZ Media — Given my frequent posts on the subject, this choice likely comes as no surprise. Yet even after all that verbiage, I think I’ve talked very little about one of the main reasons I so love this series. Yes, it’s got fast-paced action, well-developed characters, and an almost-BL vibe to die for, and watching Yoshida’s artistry develop over the course of 19 volumes is truly a pleasure. But one of the series’ greatest draws for me is very simply its sincerity. I recently described another manga as reading like “a bad teen-penned novel,” and while Banana Fish shares some of the same over-the-top sentimentality and naive fancy that tends to characterize stories written by teens, like S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, Banana Fish reads like a great one. Yoshida offers up genuine intrigue and compelling action sequences, but her most winning quality as a writer is how sincerely she loves her characters, even when she’s putting them through hell.  This is a series I’ve read and re-read, and will likely read many times more before my eyes finally give out on me. Melodrama and all, it’s one of my favorite manga of all time. – MJ

Basara | By Yumi Tamura | VIZ Media — I hardly know where to start in extolling the virtues of Basara, Yumi Tamura’s epic 27-volume shôjo manga about a girl named Sarasa who assumes the identity of her twin brother Tatara (the so-called “child of destiny”) after his death and leads her people in revolt against a tyrannical king. Sarasa is highly competent and inspires the admiration and loyalty of people from all walks of life, but Tamura never lets us forget that this strong leader is also just a girl who experiences feelings she doesn’t understand and who denies herself a lot in order to be who the people need her to be. Just thinking about the reveal that it’s actually Sarasa who’s been the “child of destiny” all along literally gives me goosebumps. I’d urge everyone to read Basara, even though some volumes are notoriously hard to come by. It really is worth the effort. — Michelle Smith


Black Blizzard | By Yoshihiro Tatsumi | Drawn & Quarterly — I’ve found most of Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s work too bleak, too macho, or too bleakly macho to appeal to my own sensibilities, but Black Blizzard is a notable exception. Dating from the late 1950s, it’s thoroughly enjoyable pulp: a young murder suspect and a jaded criminal escape from custody into a raging snowstorm, police hot (cold?) on their heels. The story’s weaknesses are easy to catalog: the plot developments can be seen coming from a mile away, the characters are little more than types, and the ending is too compressed to be truly satisfactory. Black Blizzard leaves a fresh impression nonetheless, thanks to Tatsumi’s rough, energetic artwork; with all the slashing lines and images of trains in motion, you’d be forgiven for thinking that an Italian futurist had taken a stab at writing a comic book. — Kate Dacey

Black Jack | Osamu Tezuka | Vertical, Inc. — Part House MD, part globe-trotting adventure, Black Jack is easily Osamu Tezuka’s most accessible work. The stories often flirt with the outrageous: Black Jack performs a brain transplant, treats an extraterrestrial, and operates on himself while fending off dingoes in the outback. Yet the human dimensions of every story are never overwhelmed by the questionable medical diagnoses; at their best, the stories are parables about the importance of humility, responsibility, patience, and loyalty, using illness and injury to show us the best — and worst — of human nature. (Also: to show us that Black Jack is a complete bad-ass with a scalpel.) The series’ popularity meant that Tezuka cranked out more Black Jack tales than he probably should have (see “treats an extraterrestrial,” above), but even the weakest entries in the collection are still a lot of fun. — Kate Dacey

Black Jack | Osamu Tezuka | Vertical, Inc. — I’m going to second Kate’s endorsement of Black Jack for a very specific, possibly irrational reason. Sometimes a title becomes a favorite simply by virtue of the presence of a supporting character. In the case of this series, that character is Pinoko. She’s surly old Black Jack’s adorable kid assistant, except she’s actually a parasitic tumor that gestated for years in her twin sister’s abdomen until the good-bad doctor cut her out and gave her a twee little plastic body and took her in as his ward. Pinoko is wrong on every conceivable level – an 18-year-old woman with no meaningful life experience trapped in the body of an artificial child. On some subliminal level, I think every adorable kid sidekick is creepy, but Tezuka just goes there, and Pinoko’s every appearance is an unsettling, mildly heartbreaking, inappropriately funny treat. There are certainly Tezuka titles I like better than Black Jack, but there’s probably no Tezuka character who haunts me quite like Pinoko. – David Welsh

Bleach | By Tite Kubo | VIZ Media — In general, I enjoy talking about manga because I love it. I love finding underrated series I can promote the hell out of, I love reading the romantic ups and downs of a couple that grow and learn at a snail’s pace because it’s funnier that way, and I enjoy watching big guys hit each other. But sometimes you get obsessed with manga that you like… and hate as well.  It can be so good…  and so frustrating. No title currently being released over here does this to me more than Bleach, the second of Viz’s ‘Big Three’ Shonen Jump titles. Bleach has a fantastic cast of characters… who it abandons for years at a time to focus on other new characters. It has emotional resonance… which can sometimes get incredibly ham-fisted.  And while some manga work better in weekly installments, or in volumes, Bleach is one that works best by reading 5 volumes at a time then ignoring it for 6 months. Oh, and the shipping. God, the shipping. Love it or hate it, folks can’t stop talking about Bleach. Which, honestly, is even more valuable in a manga than a title that’s merely liked by everyone. — Sean Gaffney

What starts with “B” in your Favorites Alphabet?

 

Black Bird Volumes 9 and 10

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I know Black Bird is wildly popular, but I have a hard time getting into it. I read the first couple volumes and couldn’t get into all the weird wound licking, although I suppose demonic wound licking is at least a twist on the whole vampire romance trope. My main problem with this manga is that I find both of the main characters unappealing. Misao is basically the ultimate trophy bride, since she is a human girl who gives extra powers to whichever demon claims her. The demonic Kyo is just generally unsympathetic.

In Volume 9 Misao and Kyo deal with the aftermath of her allowing herself to be “claimed” by Kyo. Now that she’s Kyo’s woman officially, all the demon clans are on the prowl after her. Kyo’s clan wants Misao for the healing properties of her blood and the other demon clans are fighting back because they don’t want to support the sudden imbalance of power in the demon world. As a result other humans are targeted in the demonic civil war. Innocent humans are possessed by demons and sent after Misao, and Kyo has to fight them off. Misao is filled with guilt, but her response to the situation is to have a nervous breakdown instead of doing something more productive. Kyo is as contradictory as ever, as he orders Misao to “choose humanity” and throws her at demon hunter Raikoh only to suddenly appear and put on a big show by asking Raikoh if he wants to watch him rape her. Now, I’m pretty forgiving of the horrible sexual politics in manga just because I’m willing to forgive a lot for a story that is either humorous (Ai Ore, Butterflies, Flowers) or has a certain over the top soap opera tone (Hot Gimmick). But Black Bird doesn’t have this lighter touch which is why I find myself utterly unengaged in the story after scenes like that.

Volume 10 starts off a little more promising as Kyo’s estranged father pops up to give Misao the lowdown on Kyo’s tragic family past. The wars between the demon clans start to get more serious and it turns out that Kyo’s evil brother is alive and wearing an eyepatch (so you know he is extra evil). Kyo continues to act weirdly schizophrenic as he brings Misao to tears by telling her that she can’t come with him on his mission to restore order to the demon village only to suddenly change his mind and say “Just kidding….silly.” Seriously, Ryoki “You are my slave!” from Hot Gimmick seems like Prince Charming compared to Kyo.

Sakurkoji’s art is fine, with distinct character designs and interesting yet easy to follow panel layouts. I actually liked her short two volume series Backstage Prince, so I just wish that she’s hit it big with a series featuring characters that aren’t acting like jerks or spineless wimps all the time.