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MMF: Wild Adapter Roundup the Third

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Hey, have you noticed there’s a Wild Adapter MMF going on? Just thought I’d mention it…

The fun continues this morning with five new entries! First up is David Welsh at the Manga Curmudgeon, who has devoted his Friday License Request column to “more Minekura,” specifically the two-volume Executive Committee, which features the protagonists from Wild Adapter in a school comedy. Also, did you know Minekura’s one-volume Bus Gamer was published in English? I did not! A copy is now on its way to me, which means David has convinced me to spend money yet again.

Next, in her Fanservice Friday column, Manga Bookshelf’s MJ takes a look at how the casual yet intimate touching in Wild Adapter embodies the fan service that most appeals to her. Her post includes many lovely and loving images, including the one shown here.

Over at Manga Xanadu, Lori Henderson revisits the first three volumes of another Kazuya Minekura series, Saiyuki, and concludes “It’s really just a lot of fun, which is exactly how I want my manga to be.”

At Experiments in Manga, Ash Brown makes her second contribution to the MMF, this time in the form of a review for volume one.

Lastly, Chou Jones contributes a special feature to Manga Bookshelf about the themes present in Wild Adapter. I particularly like this segment, which is just more evidence of Minekura subverting expectations:

But contrary to common genre tropes, Wild Adapter isn’t a story about how Tokito’s innocence and decency save Kubota from himself. Kubota is himself from start to finish. If there’s saving going on, it’s mostly the kind couples do for each other in real life: providing each other support, making up for each other’s weaknesses, having a place to come home to. Amidst the trappings of action-adventure, Kubota and Tokito’s relationship is reassuringly slice-of-life.

If you’d like to participate in the Manga Moveable Feast, see this post for instructions. If you haven’t got a blog of your own, let us know and we’ll post it for you. A complete archive for the Wild Adapter MMF can be found here.

Fanservice Friday: The Human Touch

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A few months ago, I dedicated this column to something I called “intimacy porn,” a kind of emotionally grounded writing that creates a strong sense of intimacy between characters. One of the examples of “intimacy porn” I cited at the time was Kazuya Minekura’s Wild Adapter, the subject of this month’s Manga Moveable Feast, hosted right here at Manga Bookshelf.

As it happens, Kazuya Minekura is a master of this type of writing, and as a result, Wild Adapter is lousy with intimacy porn. Really, it’s just all over the place. Minekura has number of ways she achieves this, but my favorite is probably the simplest: the casual touch.

You know the kind of touch I mean—that little nothing of a touch that somehow means everything, the brush of the hand, the tug on the sleeve that so clearly signals protectiveness, intimacy, and a strong hint of possession. While this is often used in romantic manga to indicate a controlling party—usually the male in a heterosexual romantic relationship—Minekura makes her characters each equally possessive of the other, creating a universe of two that is glorious to behold.

In Wild Adapter the casual touch is almost exclusively the territory of its protagonists, Kubota and Tokito, whose relationship is in some ways fairly ambiguous, but in one way perfectly clear. Whatever they are precisely to each other, they are with their whole hearts, and nobody else is even remotely a factor.

In volume two, a woman observes to Kubota, “Since the first time I met you two, I thought Tokito was weird. I wondered why he was so possessive of Kubota-san. But the truth is… you’re the one who is.”

As it turns out, she was right both times. Both Kubota and Tokito see their relationship in this way, and it’s obvious even in the simplest of touches. Even a humorous scene is filled with these moments, and it’s interesting to note that there isn’t much difference between casual leaning and a kick to the head in terms of effect. Both these movements reveal intimacy.

Sometimes the touch is less casual, but still private, creating intimacy in an unlikely setting. In this scene for instance, Kubota and Tokito aren’t particularly casual at all, to start. Kubota’s displaying protectiveness, sure, but there’s a sense of urgency with Tokito not at his best, and that’s the tone the scene opens with. Just a bit later, though, our attention is drawn to just their hands—one gloved, one not—and emotional the core of the scene becomes centered there, on fingers squeezing fingers, a tiny thing that nobody would take notice of in the cold, vast environment of the hospital. Kubota’s possessive arm around the shoulder later doesn’t hurt either.


What’s perhaps most interesting about the casual touches in this manga, is that though Minekura uses them liberally throughout the first four volumes, when the story flashes back to Kubota and Tokito’s first year together, we discover that for a long, long time Kubota would not touch Tokito at all (their earlier moments notwithstanding). Of course what this really facilitates is the opportunity for a beautifully intimate scene like this near the end of the chapter, when Tokito finally offers his hand to Kubota and insists that he take it.

(click images to enlarge)



To a random onlooker, this might appear so casual as to not even register at all. Offering a hand to help someone up is a gesture of friendliness, certainly, but not usually one of intimacy. In reality, this hand offered is as far from casual as it could possibly be, and perhaps more intimate than a kiss in that moment.

Of course, sometimes the best touching is not remotely casual. In romantic manga, even one as ambiguous about it as this one, there’s really nothing that can top that heart-stopping moment of intimacy that bursts from something casual into something profound. In this kind of moment, with this kind of touch, the whole world falls away for that long, long moment—their world, our world, the entire universe even—stunned into an endless second of suspended animation by the power of human touch.

When I started this column, “Fanservice Friday,” I wasn’t really sure what I planned to do with it. “Fanservice” is a term generally imbued with negative connotations, used mainly as an expression of derision or at least complaint over elements inserted into a work for the sole purpose of titillation. “Fanservice” is most commonly used to describe something exploitative, pandering, and possibly offensive. At best it’s a term infused with self-mocking.

Over time, what the term has come to mean for me however, is something a bit broader.

As someone whose attention is grabbed more often by emotional hooks than visual ones (despite my slight obsession with coats and sleeves) I’ve discovered the reality behind what services me as a fan.

For me, a single image like the one to the right is about a thousand times more titillating than a chapter full of suggestively clad hotties or even outright pornography. The hunch of the shoulder, the protectively placed hand, the comfort and familiarity filling the frame—this intimate atmosphere is what fills me with longing and a desire to see my fantasy played out on the page.

This is my fanservice. Thanks, Wild Adapter.

No Us and Them: Theme in Wild Adapter

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I admit it—I’m a theme geek. I like a tight plot, complex characters, gorgeous art, an immersive atmosphere and all the other elements that make up a good manga as much as the next fan. But what really makes or breaks a story for me is how well the author handles her theme.

Kazuya Minekura is a theme-heavy writer, so I always enjoy her manga. But Wild Adapter is special—a mature, beautifully-crafted series where each individual volume is both a unique whole and a reiteration of the same thematic elements woven from a different character’s perspective but held together using similar threads.

The basic pattern for each volume is simple. Minekura introduces us to the ex-yakuza Makoto Kubota, one of the story’s two protagonists. She lets us know he’s obtrusively not one of us—a stylishly cool, taciturn, amoral killer with almost no connection to the world of humanity or the vast majority of the people who live in it.

And then through the perspective of the secondary characters, she makes him “us” after all—supported and supporting, interdependent, forgivable. And in doing so, she makes the secondary characters—drug addicts, teenage mothers, lonely kids, semi-corrupt cops—all of them stand-ins for the audience in our vast array of imperfection, into a comfortingly forgivable common mass of “us” too.

(click images to enlarge)

 

Wild Adapter is especially beautiful because Minekura is strong enough to not make compromises with her theme. She never minimizes Kubota’s violence, never pretends he has values he doesn’t, never makes him suddenly and unrealistically “good.” And yet she never distances herself from him either. You can tell how much she likes him, and how much, in general, the other characters like and trust him too—not in spite of his faults, but because in being with him, they recognize themselves.


 

 

Genre-straddling notwithstanding, Wild Adapter is a love story. So the places Kubota is most convincingly “us” are in relation to Minoru Tokito, the amnesic “stray cat” he picks up off the street. As is often the case in manga about love, Tokito is Kubota’s compliment—comparatively innocent, easily engaged, outspoken, sincere—basically a nice if somewhat troubled kid.

But contrary to common genre tropes, Wild Adapter isn’t a story about how Tokito’s innocence and decency save Kubota from himself. Kubota is himself from start to finish. If there’s saving going on, it’s mostly the kind couples do for each other in real life; providing each other support, making up for each other’s weaknesses, having a place to come home to. Amidst the trappings of action-adventure, Kubota and Tokito’s relationship is reassuringly slice-of-life.


 

Where the saving is more than just the usual things everyone does for each other though, both Tokito and Kubota are smart enough to understand it’s mutual. In a genre that notoriously splits partners into unrealistic, stiffly-defined roles, Tokito is refreshingly insistent on their joint responsibility for the relationship. True, there is some “I’m this and you’re that.” Tokito is not afraid to complain. But when push comes to shove, there’s only “we’re this together.”

 

That’s Akimi Yoshida‘s Banana Fish on the right-hand side of the picture above, but I pick on it only because I read it fairly recently and so can still remember which volume the example I wanted was in. There are equally good examples in plenty of other manga too. From shounen to BL, it’s one of manga’s most common tropes: You’re bad but I care about you anyway.

Tokito, and through him Minekura, never engage in it. Japanese tends to encourage inclusion through vagueness, but Tokito is outspoken and concrete: “We’re monsters,” “We killed so many people,” “Everything that belongs to Kubo-chan also belongs to me.” Even their names include each other. Kubota’s name has protect and field in it; Tokito’s includes assignment/charge and ripen.

And Kobota’s name includes everyone else as well; his personal name, Makoto, is made up of truth and person, “what people really are.”

Reviews often note that Wild Adapter is a deceptively light read. It feels like a guilty pleasure, and you only notice afterwards that it’s actually skillful, well-crafted writing. There are no doubt many reasons the series functions that way; after all, it really is just plain good writing.

But I think in the end, one of the major reasons is how perfectly integrated every piece of the story is to its theme. It truly does feel light to have a few hours in which no judgment is necessary or expected, truly is a pleasure to have someone assure us we’re all in it together.

 

MMF: More Minekura

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There isn’t really a shortage of Kazuya Minekura manga available in English. In addition to the six existing volumes of Wild Adapter, Tokyopop also published the one-volume Bus Gamer, the nine-volume Saiyuki and nine of the ten volumes of Saiyuki Reload. While everyone’s first concern for Minekura is obviously a complete recovery from what sounds like a terrifying illness, greed is part and parcel of fandom, especially when you find out things like this exist.

That is the cover from the first volume of Shiritsu Araiso Koutou Gakkou Seitokai Shikkoubu, or Araiso Private School Student Council Executive Committee, a two-volume series published in Tokuma Shoten’s Chara. Fans of Wild Adapter will recognize the twosome on the cover.

Yes, this series features an alternate-universe version of the boys who keep the peace at their school by what sound like any means necessary. It cannot possibly be as good as Wild Adapter, I don’t think, but seeing Kubota and Tokito under any circumstances would be a total delight. And they’re pretty damned funny in Wild Adapter, so seeing them play pure comedy is a very enticing prospect.

And these covers rock hard.

 

 

March on Earth 1-2 by Mikase Hayashi

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Man, I miss CMX. They had an awful lot of cute, short shoujo series, most of which were thankfully published in their entirety before the company’s tragic demise. One of these is the two-volume March on Earth by Mikase Hayashi. It’s a quiet little story and worth checking out, especially if you’ve burnt out on action or angst and just want to read about people being kind and helping each other out for a while.

The basic premise is somewhat implausible. Fifteen-year-old Yuzu Takamiya was raised by her teenage sister Tsubaki after their parents passed away, and now that Tsubaki has died in a car accident, it’s up to Yuzu to raise her two-year-old nephew, Shou. The city welfare guy has paid them a visit, but has allowed Shou to remain in Yuzu’s care, largely because their friendly landlady, Mrs. Kusano, is around in a supervisory capacity.

Yuzu goes to school while Shou is in daycare, but she’s never able to participate in any clubs or go on class trips. “Sometimes I’m vaguely jealous of their carefree lives,” she notes. “Even though I chose this path myself.” The chapters are largely episodic, as Yuzu must overcome her fear of cars to get Shou to a doctor, or contend with budget constraints while still providing Shou with a happy Christmas. Even though it’s tough for her to manage all of this, Shou’s adorableness—and the final picture book her sister completed prior to her death—helps remind her what she’s doing it all for.

Eventually, she meets Shou’s father, Takatoh, and together they begin to develop a sense of family. Yuzu also comes to rely more and more on Seita, the neighbor who has long had feelings for her (she’s one of those romantically obtuse heroines) and who is always there when he’s needed, like when Yuzu feels trapped and unable to pursue her dream of becoming a lawyer. In fact, one of the overall themes of the story is that people are fundamentally good and will be there to help you, whether it’s nice ladies in the supermarket who will buy the strawberries (or “stwawbewwies,” as Shou calls them) your nephew supposedly damaged or the schemey girl in class who will nonetheless look after Shou when he gets lost on a camping trip. Yuzu certainly wants to repay the kindness of others, but she’s not too proud to accept help.

I like Yuzu and Seita, but the real star of March on Earth is Shou. Now, I admit that he is a totally idealized version of a toddler. He does have a few flare-ups of disobedience, but for the most part he’s simply sweet and loving all the time. He has a speech impediment, gets dressed in cute outfits, and is impossibly delighted with a miniature version of the toy he really, really wanted for Christmas. No real kid could possibly be this angelic. But who cares? This is warm-fuzzy manga; relax.

Is March on Earth going to rock your world? No. But it might put a smile on your face.

March on Earth was published in English by CMX and is complete in two volumes.

Review copies provided by the publisher.

Unwind by Neal Shusterman

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From the front flap:
In a society where unwanted teens are salvaged for their body parts, three runaways fight the system that would “unwind” them.

Connor’s parents want to be rid of him because he’s a troublemaker. Risa has no parents and is being unwound to cut orphanage costs. Lev’s unwinding has been planned since his birth, as pat of his family’s strict religion. Brought together by chance, and kept together by desperation, these three unlikely companions make a harrowing cross-country journey, knowing their lives hang in the balance. If they can survive until their eighteenth birthday, they can’t be harmed—but when every piece of them, from their hands to their hearts, [is] wanted by a world gone mad, eighteen seems far, far away.

Review:
At some time in America’s future, the second civil war is fought over the issue of abortion. In the end, a compromise is reached. Known as the “bill of life,” the law says that life cannot be touched between birth and age thirteen, but between thirteen and eighteen parents can choose to retroactively abort a child in a process known as “unwinding,” by which the child does not technically die but is instead used for organ donation. Unwinding has now become a common and accepted practice in society.

This is a lot to swallow. One wonders why on earth anyone would agree to such a compromise, and I admit I struggled with the concept. After a while, though, one just accepts it and moves on, enjoying the story Shusterman lays out.

Unwind features three kids who are due to undergo the unwinding process. Connor Lassiter has trouble thinking through his actions and controlling his temper, causing his fed-up parents to decide to have him unwound. Risa Ward is a ward of the state. She’s been living in a state home, working hard to distinguish herself as a pianist, but she’s just not flawless enough to be worth saving, and is scheduled to be sent off to “harvest camp” in order to keep orphanage costs low. Lev Calder is a “tithe,” who was brought up by his parents and church to believe that his eventual unwinding is somehow a holy thing. Circumstances bring the three together, tear them apart, and bring them together again, with no one remaining unchanged.

While the plot of Unwind is certainly fast-paced and frequently surprising, the best thing about it is the way in which the characters are developed. At first, Connor’s lack of foresight and impulse control is maddening. He runs away to avoid being sent to harvest camp, but leaves his cell phone on, making him easy to track. He reacts to a baby left on a doorstep without thinking, saddling him and his companions with an infant they don’t have the resources to care for. In short, he’s more like a typical teen than a typical hero. Very gradually, and with the help from the more logical Risa, Connor evolves. He learns to keep his cool and discovers a talent for fixing things, be they mechanical or societal in nature. He becomes a leader, a genuine hero, and his progress is entirely believable.

Lev also changes a great deal. The youngest of the three, he’s only thirteen, and has spent his whole life being indoctrinated in certain beliefs. When Connor impulsively saves him from his “glorious fate,” Lev is not grateful at all, and turns Connor and Risa in at the first available opportunity. When he realizes that not even his pastor believes that what his family is doing is right, Lev’s world is thrown into turmoil. Separated now from Connor and Risa, he travels on his own, quickly becoming street-wise and meeting up with CyFi, a smart but troubled teen who once received a partial brain transplant from an unwind and is now contending with strange impulses from that other kid. Thrust into the harsh world with no preparation, Lev hardens quickly and learns to think for himself. Through learning of sin and evil, he becomes a much better person than he ever was before.

Risa doesn’t change as dramatically as the others, since she was always level-headed and cognizant of her possible fate. With her, the fact that she’s begun to allow herself to finally hope is what’s significant. I’m fond of her characterization in general, though, especially that she’s capable, competent, and so frequently the voice of reason. Her ability to keep a cool head during medical emergencies is also welcome.

Ultimately, while I could not completely suspend my disbelief in order to buy into the premise of this dystopic future world, I still liked Unwind a great deal. Even though Shusterman makes some Important Points, his approach is still balanced, as he questions whether it’s fair to bring unwanted children into the world in the first place even while his characters struggle so very hard for the right to live. Lastly, I must commend him for a positively chilling depiction of the unwinding process. That will seriously stick with me for a long time.

In conclusion, Unwind is good. Go read it. And Shusterman, get cracking on that sequel (Unwholly, TBA).

MMF: Wild Adapter Roundup the Second

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The celebration of Kazuya Minekura’s brilliant Wild Adapter continues!

At Experiments in Manga, Ash Brown considers how Kubota’s skill at majhong reflects his overall personality. Here’s a particularly insightful quote:

While on the surface mahjong may at first appear to be mostly about luck, there is actually a huge amount of strategy involved, especially as players become more skilled. In many ways, you have to make your own luck. Mahjong requires mental flexibility, the willingness to change strategies, quick thinking, and the ability to make accurate deductions from limited information.

Sounds like Kubota to me!

At The Manga Curmudgeon, David Welsh reposts a Flipped column on Wild Adapter that, unlike other old reviews, does not inspire the urge for a rewrite.

And here at home, MJ devotes her Three Things Thursday column to guilty pleasures in Wild Adapter that aren’t so guilty after all. I’m quite fond of her closing comment:

So while I am certainly adamant that non-fans of BL should give Wild Adapter a try, that’s not because the story isn’t BL. They should read it because it’s really good BL, and people should know what that looks like.

If you’d like to participate in the Manga Moveable Feast, see this post for instructions. If you haven’t got a blog of your own, let us know and we’ll post it for you. A complete archive for the Wild Adapter MMF can be found here.

MMF: Likeability

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Note: This is the first thing I wrote about Wild Adapter from way back when I was doing Flipped columns for Comic World News. Usually I look at these old things and am visited with an urge to rewrite them from top to bottom, but I stand by every word of this one.

When storytellers devote a lot of narrative space to supporting characters extolling the virtues of their protagonists, it’s reasonable to suspect there isn’t a lot there. That kind of cheerleading can come across an unconvincing hard sell by a creator who suspects on some level that they haven’t provided enough reasons for the audience to reach a favorable opinion on their own.

Most of the cast of Kazuya Minekura’s Wild Adapter pause to muse on the intriguing qualities of Makoto Kubota, the mahjong-loving weirdo at the story’s center. In this case, they have reason, because he’s fascinating. But, then, fictional sociopaths generally are.

Kubota isn’t an especially malevolent sociopath; he’s not a Hannibal Lecter. But he views humankind with blithe, self-serving curiosity rather than empathy. He seems susceptible to neither anger nor warmth, and his interactions are driven by either self-preservation or their potential for amusement. He neatly sums up his worldview in an early chapter after he’s won a leadership position with the yakuza equivalent of Junior Achievement: “It was him or me, and I always choose me.”

So why is he engrossing rather than loathsome? It’s partly due to his imperviousness to opinion, which comes across as genuine as opposed to a constructed posture to win approval. It’s indifference without malice or ulterior motive; he has his interests and his needs, and they really don’t involve other people.

He’s also funny. Even surrounded by a central-casting crowd of mobsters and whores, he doesn’t modulate his behavior in the slightest. He’s quirky, blunt and unpredictable. With the macho posturing and calculating seduction that are part and parcel of the yakuza milieu, it’s not surprising that Kubota makes an impression. He’s refreshing.

I know I’m going on and on about Kubota, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a creator pull off this kind of character as well as Minekura has here. I’ve seen plenty of storytellers try to invest an essentially unsympathetic character with charisma, and some even succeed, but Minekura absolutely nails it.

And liking Kubota, or at least being drawn to him, is absolutely central to liking Wild Adapter. As Minekura says in her closing notes, the first volume is essentially a prologue, allowing the reader to get to know Kubota and his world. There are hints of a plot (something involving a mysterious drug with the kind of side effects that don’t lend themselves to repeated use, so you know it isn’t a product of organized crime), but the volume’s primary function is introductory.

For me, it’s entirely successful. I’m sufficiently engrossed in Kubota to be fairly relaxed about where the plot might go. In a lot of manga I really like, I’ve noticed a high level of symbiosis between characters and the series they inhabit. Carefully crafting protagonists and taking pains to introduce them properly gives a narrative more weight than clever plot construction or instant momentum. (Look at Emma and Nana.) I get the sense that Wild Adapter is going to fit into that mold.

Attractive art never hurts, and Minekura provides. Unsurprisingly, I’m particularly taken with her character designs. There are strong shônen-ai elements to the story, but a cast of ridiculously beautiful boys isn’t one of them.

Minekura’s work is stylized, but her characters still look like people. Kubota’s coolness is more internal than aesthetic; he actually bears more than a passing resemblance to Madarame from Genshiken. Komiya, Kubota’s second-in-command, looks like a kid trying to appear tough, achieving an effect that’s an odd mixture of creepy and vulnerable. The supporting cast is delineated with similar care, even characters that are only around for a handful of pages.

Tokyopop seems to have spared less expense than usual with production. The book opens with some elegant plates with spot-color, and the paper quality is nice. Even better, the translation by Alexis Kirsch and adaptation by Christine Boylan make for very fluid reading. The attention to individual character voices is particularly welcome; it gives the world of the story extra layers.

I admit that when I first heard Wild Adapter described as a teen gangster drama with shônen-ai and science fiction overtones, I wasn’t particularly intrigued. Having read it repeatedly, with no diminishing returns in terms of enjoyment, I’m eager for more. Minekura has brought potentially outlandish story elements into service of a surprisingly nuanced, character-driven drama.

 

3 Things Thursday: Wild Adapter

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One of my favorite quotes so far from this month’s Manga Moveable Feast comes from David Welsh, as he describes why Wild Adapter is, in his words, “bathtub manga.” “Well,” he says, “it’s partly because, empirically good and ambitious as Wild Adapter is, it doesn’t wear its quality on its sleeve. It gives you the opportunity to believe that you’re indulging in a guilty pleasure, even though you’re actually seeing a spectacular piece of craftsmanship.”

David has a habit of writing brilliant things I wish I’d come up with myself, and this observation definitely belongs in that category. He’s absolutely right. One of the things that makes Wild Adapter so enjoyable to read is that it creates a sense of decadent self-indulgence while actually delivering Damn Good Comics. As a result, the experience is completely satisfying, even after the initial glow of frivolity has passed.

With this in mind, I give you this week’s 3 Things…

3 guilty pleasures in Wild Adapter that aren’t so “guilty” after all:

1. Cracktastic plotting. An emotionally detached youth is drawn into the yakuza, only to become unintentionally involved with a mysterious drug that turns its users into mad, hairy beasts, ultimately leading him to adopt a part-man, part-beast to whom he becomes deeply (but ambiguously) attached. Later, the two of them accidentally fight crime. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? And yeah, it totally is. Thing is, all the craziness is so firmly rooted in emotional truth that it somehow actually works. What should be completely unbelievable becomes fantastically believable, leaving readers free to ride high on the adrenaline created by its outrageous, violent adventure, without worrying about a painful crash later on. Minekura writes crazy, but she’s solid to the core, and so is Wild Adapter.

2. Stunning sensuality. Despite this series’ fairly minimal sexual content, it is one seriously sexy manga. I mean, really, really sexy, and that’s not a characteristic I’d attribute to many series, including those that contain a lot of nudity and/or sex. Most deliberately sexy manga are hardly sexy at all, at least in my experience. Of course, what’s sexy about Wild Adapter isn’t actually the sex at all, most of which amounts to small-time crooks getting it on with women they had to pay, or skeevy yakuza bosses coercing their underlings into special service. None of that is what makes this series so sexy, and that’s part why its sensuality maintains itself so well. Minekura creates her manga’s super-sexy aura with superb characterization and an incredible sense of style, without having to rely on less reliable elements like revealing clothing or heavy bedroom action.

3. Boys’ love. Good romance is incredibly difficult to write (with or without explicit sex involved), and though there is plenty of good romance available in the English-language BL market, it’s also full to overflowing with examples of all the ways in which romantic fiction can fail. As a result, it’s a genre that gets little respect among critics, even those who recognize the the real worth of romantic fiction. It’s telling, I think, that TOKYOPOP chose to release Wild Adapter as part of their mainstream line of manga, rather than on their BL imprint, BLU. On one hand, this decision makes good business sense and reflects Wild Adapter‘s wide appeal. On the other, it clearly demonstrates that while TOKYOPOP may have believed that non-BL fans might buy Wild Adapter, they did not for a moment believe that they would buy it with a BL label.

In yesterday’s roundtable, Michelle, David, and I spent some time discussing the ways in which Wild Adapter does and does not conform to common BL tropes. And while it’s true that the series lacks many of the elements that frequently characterize “BL,” what it doesn’t lack is actually the thing I read BL for in the first place, and that would be love between boys. Though Wild Adapter does not contain the worst of the BL genre, it does contain the best, and both Minekura and the genre deserve credit for that. So while I am certainly adamant that non-fans of BL should give Wild Adapter a try, that’s not because the story isn’t BL. They should read it because it’s really good BL, and people should know what that looks like.

Readers, got any “guilty pleasures” that really aren’t guilty at all?

Tenjo Tenge: Full Contact Edition

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Tenjo Tenge is infamous as the manga that caused anguished otakus to rage at CMX for the censored edition that was put out during the earlier days of its publishing history. I’m wondering what the economic impact would be if everybody that complained about the CMX editions were to pick up this new Viz edition of the series. I generally am not a big fan of fighting manga where female nakedness is as much of a story element as the battles, but I have an inexplicable fondness for Oh!great. He did pick as a pen name a moniker that wouldn’t be out of place in the discussions of pseudonyms in Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga. It takes a certain kind of moxie to design a pen name for yourself that incorporates an exclamation point in it. I read and enjoyed the first few volumes of Air Gear. Air Gear had plenty of great action scenes, and I enjoyed the visuals and over the top idea of rival gangs fighting it out on flying roller blades. I hadn’t read the CMX version of Tenjo Tenge, so I was curious to see what this earlier Oh!great series would be like in the uncensored edition.

Complaining about misogyny in an Oh!Great series is a bit like protesting all the skulls used to decorate female private parts in Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose or the spinelessness exhibited by Miki Aihara heroines. Certain things just go with the territory for series like this, and there are plenty of illustrations of large bosomed girls busting out of their clothes in fights, a bizarre rape, and a weird habit of staging scenes in women’s bathrooms. Todo High appears to be a school that exists mainly as a staging ground for fights, because there are never any scenes of students actually attending class. New kids Bob and Soichiro arrive and announce that they’re going to be number one, but the members of the Juken fight club think differently. Maya Natsume spends most of her time in the form of a small child, but she transforms into a robust teenage girl when she wants to take down an opponent. Aya Natsume has untapped hidden power and an unfortunate habit of falling madly in love with the first boy (Soichiro) to fall on top of her when she’s taking a shower. Masataka Takayanagi is a skilled martial artist who spends most of his time mooning over Aya. Bob and Soichiro join the Juken Club, and the Juken club has to fight the evil Executive Council. So the fighting begins!

It is probably unfair to compare a later series with an earlier work from the artist, but I did like what little I read of Air Gear more than the first couple volumes of Tenjo Tenge. In the first few volumes at least, Air Gear had less frequent nudity, better proportioned female character drawings, and much more innovative action scenes. I hadn’t read far enough into Air Gear to encounter the time one of the characters is basically dressed in string while wearing a paper bag over her head, so I understand plenty of that stuff happens in that series but it seemed to be toned down a bit at first. One of the things that annoyed me a little bit about Tenjo Tenge is that the female characters often are drawn as if they have shrunken heads on much larger bodies. I understand a certain amount of exaggeration is going to happen in a title like this, but it gets a little ridiculous if one person’s boob is three times the size of their head. I did find Tenjo Tenge’s absolute commitment to endless fighting in school to be somewhat amusing. There are a few interruptions like when someone watches porn, a minor character explains how her rape wasn’t a rape using incredibly bizarre logic, or a bowling trip goes wrong, but mostly there’s an endless parade of fights or people training to get better at fighting. For people who like plenty of action scenes in their fighting manga, Tenjo Tenge certainly delivers. The girls fight just as much as the boys, with Maya being particularly deadly.

It wasn’t until the end of this volume that I started having a bit more fun reading Tenjo Tenje. I always enjoy it when martial arts techniques like “Linking Heavenly Iron Blossom Strike!!” are incorporated into the action, but this happened far too infrequently. The endless parade of panty shots seems to be there more to distract from the lack of compelling storyline or more stylish fights. There seemed to be more exuberance on display in Air Gear, so I’m sure that as this series goes along the art improves. While I read Tenjo Tenge and concluded that it isn’t for me, I do think that the Tenjo Tenge fans who were put off by the CMX editions will like this edition. The series get the full Viz Signature treatment with an oversized edition and color pages.

Review copy provided by the publisher.