Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Blog

Perfect by Sara Shepard

by

From the front flap:
In a town where gossip thrives like the ivy that clings to its mansions, where mysteries lie behind manicured hedges and skeletons hide in every walk-in closet, four perfect-looking girls aren’t nearly as perfect as they seem.

Spencer, Aria, Emily, Hanna, and the best friend Alison were once the girls at Rosewood Day School. They were the girls everyone loved but secretly hated—especially Alison. So when Alison mysteriously vanished, the girls’ grief was tinged with… relief. And when Alison’s body was later discovered in her own backyard, the girls were forced to unearth some ugly memories of their old friend, too. Could there have been more to Alison’s death than anyone realizes?

Now someone named A, someone who seems to know everything, is pointing the finger at one of them for Alison’s murder. As their secrets get darker and their scandals turn deadly, A is poised to ruin their perfect little lives forever.

Review:
Shit just gets so much worse in this installment of the Pretty Little Liars series that all I can do is shake my head. And still, I continue to read and eagerly await the answers promised in the fourth volume (originally intended to be the end of the series), so make of that what you will.

Anyway, some fairly awful things happen to the titular liars in this book, set three weeks after Flawless, the majority of them courtesy of A. Aria is ousted from her home because her mom can’t stand to look at her since Aria has known about her father’s infidelity for three years without ever mentioning it. Emily is outed at a school swim meet, and her parents threaten to send her to live with puritanical relations in Iowa unless she attends de-gaying therapy. Hanna still hasn’t heard from her father and now her best friend Mona is pissed at her too, culminating in a cringeworthy moment at Mona’s big birthday party followed by Hanna getting hit by a car.

You might think this couldn’t be topped for dramatic potential, but Spencer (who spends most of the book angsting about an essay contest) discovers a personal history of blackouts and gradually begins to recall what happened the night Ali disappeared. Meanwhile, A gives out lots of clues and hints about the murder, though their veracity is suspect.

I think I may be running out of things to say about this series, so perhaps it will suffice to say “the whirlwind of cray-cray continues.” It’s hard to feel much sympathy for Aria’s plight—not so much the getting kicked out of her house thing, but what follows—or Spencer’s, because both are very much “you’ve made your bed, now you’ve got to lie in it” types of situations. Emily seems to have fewer chapters devoted to her this time, which makes me wonder whether Shepard realized the endless on-again, off-again relationship with Maya was getting boring.

As in the TV show, Hanna continues to be my favorite. While it’s absolutely awful reading about her utter humiliation at Mona’s party, it does seem to cause her to question what her quest for perfection has really been about. Maybe she’ll learn to embrace her dorky side and will stick with Lucas, the sweet-but-uncool boy who thinks she’s wonderful just the way she is. But then again, with this series, hoping for a happy ending for anyone is probably futile.

Urameshiya, Vol. 1

by

By Makiko. Released in Japan by Futabasha, serialized in the magazine Women’s Comic Jour. Released in the United States by Futabasha on the JManga website.

Well, JManga is finally open, and there was no way that I wasn’t going to get a title or two to test out, even if the prices are currently ludicrous, and the flash reader content means you are essentially paying for the right to read rather than buying an actual manga. That said, my goal was to find titles that I would never otherwise see here. The two companies who debuted with the most unseen manga were Futabasha and Kadokawa Shoten. Sadly, Kadokawa was all hype but no delivery as of yet, with no previews or chapters. Futabasha (who are clearly one of the big powers behind this site) had real content, and not just stuff already out in the US. So I picked two titles, one seinen and one josei, and began to read.

I will note that this manga is listed under the ‘seinen’ tag on JManga, but I’m pretty sure this is incorrect: it runs in Futabasha’s ‘Women’s Comic Jour’, a mystery-themed magazine whose covers and content definitely look like josei. The author, Makiko, has been drawing it since 1998, and it’s still running, with 14 volumes.

The story takes place sometime in the Edo period of Japan. We meet a young woman, Oyou, who’s trying to drink sake in a local bar. Unfortunately, she’s got a reputation as creepy and terrifying, and the bar owners beg her to leave as she’s driving away their business. (They also beg her not to curse them.) On her way out, she runs into a young man – literally. She knows a pickpocket when she sees one, though, and grabs him before he can get away. Though Saji, the thief, finds her weird, he’s also attracted to her, and offers to take her back to his place for some sake – and maybe get lucky, he thinks.

However, this isn’t just a romance. It’s a supernatural mystery title, and the mood overall is that of unease. Young men have been found frozen to death in greater numbers than usual this winter, and there’s a very good reason for this. And when Saji’s old childhood friend winds up the latest victim, he’s determined to get to the bottom of things. Luckily for him, Oyou is the titular Urameshiya, a woman who can see and, to some extent, control ghosts, spirits and monsters. And while this has made her a hated loner and outcast in the village, it also makes her a powerful spiritual detective.

There’s only 3 chapters available in this volume, but don’t worry, they add up to a full 200 pages – each story is lengthy and goes into detail. I wouldn’t call the stories horror, necessarily. This is a supernatural mystery with tinges of romance. I was actually rather surprised at the latter, as I was expecting this to be more along the lines of a ghost of the week type of story, with Oyou and Saji mostly being sounding boards to figure out the mystery. But the mysteries aren’t very mysterious. What works best throughout the volume is the prickly relationship that develops between Oyou and Saji, two lonely people used to being shunned by society who can’t quite have a normal romance. Oyou in particular is quick to act uncaring and cool around Saji, despite her obvious growing feelings. The two become lovers almost immediately – another sure sign this is josei – but Saji is going to have to get used to his lover being from the ‘show, don’t tell’ school of affection.

The first story deals with a vengeful ‘snow woman’ type, but the second one gets a lot more explicit, and reminds me to warn folks that this is not a title for anyone under 18. It deals with a girl who has a ‘vagina dentata’, so to speak – or “a nice set of chompers”, as Oyou points out in one of the few actual funny bits in a mostly serious book. Oyou’s solution to the problem is also fairly explicit, but works quite well. Unfortunately, solving the girl’s own personality is a much harder task, and not one Oyou particularly wants to try. The third story introduces a new male into the mix, a bratty fox spirit who goes to great lengths to make Oyou his – even if it means killing Saji off. This is the longest story of the book, and probably also the best – there’s no mystery here, so the romance is allowed to develop more, and the ending is fantastic. Best of all, no cliffhanger ending here, which is good, as only Volume 1 is available at this time.

The art is fairly typical ‘pointy chin’ style, being neither exceptional nor distracting. Oyou is conveyed very well, giving the impression of a woman wise beyond her years, one who’s been hurt a few too many times. As for the translation, I’ve heard that others have found titles that are more unsuccessful in that regard, but this one was just fine – no obvious awkward spots, and despite being in the Edo period it did not attempt to use anything other than modern speech. It’s very serviceable.

Overall, this wasn’t completely amazing, but was pretty much exactly what I wanted from JManga anyway. A title I’d never even heard of before, in a genre that hasn’t generally knocked it out of the park over here (mystery romance for young women). And the result was quite satisfying, and left me wanting to get the next volume to see if Saji can get Oyou to open up to him any more – and also to see what sorts of yokai might show up next. Anyone wanting to get a good look at what Futabasha is offering for US readers would be advised to check this out, even if JManga is still clearly a work in progress.

Me, Me, Me!

by

Just a quick post this morning with a couple of links about me, me, me!

First, Justin Stroman interviewed me for his site, Organization Anti-Social Geniuses.

Second, the list of my votes for Hooded Utilitarian’s Best Comics Poll has now been published. I am left with a quandary, though, because I have since discovered that Fumi Yoshinaga’s Flower of Life is completely worthy to be among my top ten, but what should come off? Maybe I can emulate Spinal Tap and have a list that goes to eleven…

Ichigenme: The First Class is Civil Law

by

Ichigenme: The First Class is Civil Law Volumes 1 and 2 by Fumi Yoshinaga

For the Manga Moveable Feast I wanted to read something I hadn’t read before by Yoshinaga, and since I’ve read most of her other series already, the only thing left was some of her yaoi titles. I decided to go with Ichigenme: The First Class is Civil Law.

Tamiya joins a new zemi (seminar group) for law school. Although he’s a hard-working student, he’s ended up in a peer group full of rich kids who devote their time to goofing off. As part of a hazing ritual for third year students Toudou, a long-haired spoiled son of a politician performs an elaborate striptease for his fellow classmates. He winds up by giving Tamiya a kiss in order to distract everyone from making Tamiya strip too. Tamiya’s classmates make casual plans to go to Hokkaido to ski for the weekend. When they invite him along and offer to pay for him, he says that he’ll go along with them if it is something he can pay for but “I don’t want anyone paying for something I can’t pay them back for.” Tamiya’s seriousness and integrity provide a stark contrast to the attitudes of his classmates, and Toudou decides that Tamiya is “pretty cool.”

The first volume centers on the growing friendship between Tamiya and Toudou. When his father is caught up in a political scandal, Toudou is ostracized by all of his classmates except Tamiya. While Toudou is comfortable with his sexuality, Tamiya isn’t quite willing to admit that he’s gay even though he’s never been attracted to women. This manga is one of Yoshinaga’s earlier works, but her facility for creating compelling slice of life stories is in full effect. The students get drunk, avoid studying, have unfortunate run-ins with faculty, and in some cases slowly grow up. Toudou and Tamiya’s relationship progresses slowly, and while they do get physical Toudou is left wondering if Tamiya only wants him to stay over due to the elaborate breakfasts he prepares the next morning. When Tamiya turns down a classmate’s advances saying that he doesn’t think he could ever be with a woman. She says “I’ll…have to tell people, okay?” Tamiya replies that he doesn’t care, and his expression switches from blank to peaceful. He says to himself “Somehow…I feel much better.”

The second volume shows Tamiya and Toudou in a more established relationship. Toudou is breaking away from his family’s expectations and working at a games development company and Tamiya has become a teacher. They struggle with having enough time to spend with each other. Toudou’s younger brother is also the focus of some of the stories in this volume, as he takes up with a professor. The first volume of Ichigenme had a few sex scenes, but was more focused on character interaction. The second volume flips the formula, with sex scenes punctuated by occasional glimpses of the characters going out to dinner, struggling with pressure from work, or dealing with the aftermath of a new haircut.

As a whole, I liked Ichigenme more than most of the yaoi I’ve tried. It doesn’t have some of the problematic genre elements that tend to annoy me in many yaoi titles, like a reliance on rape scenarios or the insistence that the men in the story aren’t really gay, they’re just “truly in love.” Instead Yoshinaga creates stories about believable people who fall in love with each other.

Deception on His Mind by Elizabeth George

by

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

by

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

by

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

by

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

by

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

by

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