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Naruto Volumes 4-6

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By Masashi Kishimoto. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz.

And this is why everyone should give Jump series about 5-6 volumes before they give up on them. This omnibus is definitely a big step up from the first, with the leads being slightly more likeable, lots of interesting new characters introduced, and a new arc that promises to be much more thrilling – and possibly more deadly.

First, however, we have to finish up the cliffhanger from last time, with Naruto and company defending the bridge and its creator from the evil ninja and the mob boss who hired him. Once again, we are reminded that small, petty villains are always MUCH WORSE than noble yet evil guys in the Shonen Jump world, and while Zabuza spends a lot of time showing us what a horrible person he is, he does manage to get some redemption, as does his gender-malleable assistant. I was rather startled at the death of Haku here – it’s quite gory, and from a blow by Kakashi, no less (if accidentally). Clearly ‘nobody dies in Naruto’ is not a meme that’s going to take hold. Well, not yet anyway.

Once that’s over with, we head back to the village and begin our next big arc – the exams are coming up for journeyman ninja, and despite only having worked together for a short time, Kakashi recommends that they all do it. This is a huge exam with over a hundred ninja apprentices from all walks of life, most of whom we meet in this book. I have no idea who will be important later or not – the only ones that really stuck with me are Hinata, who clearly has a crush on Naruto that’s a mile wide; Ino, who has some sort of rivalry/friendship with Sakura; and Gaara, who gives off the appearance of being one of the next big villains, so must not be one.

And then there’s Rock Lee, who really deserves a paragraph of his own. Even though I’d never read Naruto before this, I still knew of Rock Lee – how could I not? Amazingly, he’s exactly as I anticipated, being a larger than life Sylvester Stallone type bruiser in the midst of all these tricky ninjas. His master Guy looking pretty much like him only older also amuses me, and I was rather startled to note that Guy can apparently hold his own with Kakashi – even the comedy characters here are tough cookies.

As for the exam itself, it’s a ninja exam, so naturally there’s lots of secret cheating, given they all assume the point of the exam is to see how good they are at not getting caught. The final question is psychological, something that works on many of the exam takers but not on Naruto, who is far too stubborn for such tactics. (Note: not dense – Naruto seems to fully understand what he’s sacrificing. It’s the principle of the thing that bothers him.) And then we get Round 2, featuring a survival match through a deadly forest – one that has been infiltrated by one of the villains, Orochimaru.

This last third of the omnibus is far more serious than the volume before it, and once again shows that the author is not afraid to laughter its minor cast members in the way of drama. There’s lots of good stuff here – Sasuke shows that he’s not all smug jerk, though unfortunately seems to get infected (possessed?) by the enemy anyway. Even better is Sakura, who while she doesn’t accomplish much does show a plucky streak that’s very endearing, and is at least clever enough to not fall for the minor mook’s traps. The three leads are all coming along, and I’m interested in seeing how they get out of all this.

This still hasn’t reached the heights of One Piece for me – the battles still have trouble keeping my attention, for one, and introducing 25-30 new cast members in 2 volumes is over the top even if you *aren’t* meant to remember who they all are. But it’s definitely come along from the first omnibus, and this new Exam Arc is indeed as exciting as people said it would be. I’m looking forward to seeing how things go from here on.

Going Digital: Viz Media & Square Enix

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It’s the weekend of San Diego Comic Con, which for manga fans generally means a flurry of excitement over new license announcements (Sean has the lowdown over at his blog, if you haven’t been there already). The announcements that excited me most this weekend, however, were those to do with various publishers’ digital initiatives, including some pretty impressive-sounding details about Jmanga, a massive web-based project involving most of Japan’s major manga publishers, expected to launch in August.

The cry for browser-based manga portals (as opposed to device-specific mobile apps) has been loud and clear from much of the manga blogosphere, and nearly everyone can agree that providing legal digital manga on the platform most easily available to the largest number of people is the best chance publishers have of fighting against widespread piracy. Though it’ll be a while before we’ll see what Jmanga really has to offer, I thought I’d take the chance to check out a couple of newer web-based initiatives available now, from Japanese publisher Square Enix and American publisher Viz Media.

Square Enix Manga Store

One of Jmanga’s Japanese holdouts, of course, is Square Enix, who launched their own digital manga website back in December with mostly negative reviews from the manga blogging community, who felt that the prices were too high and the interface too cluttered and difficult to navigate. I’m a huge fan of many Square Enix manga, but with first volumes of older series going for $5.99 apiece, there wasn’t much impetus for checking out Square Enix’s manga store when it first launched. This week, however, a Comic-Con special offering a free volume of selected manga just for clicking “Like” on their Facebook page was enough to finally lure me in.

After doing my duty on Facebook, I clicked over to the main site to get my free manga, and encountered possibly the most maddening registration/login process I’ve dealt with in years. Though I’d apparently created an account back when they first launched (which I discovered when my chosen username was already in use), even after going through their process to recover my password, I then had to log in at least three times, on three different pages, before even getting to the page where I could actually pick out my free manga.

Once I’d chosen my volume, I then was told I had to download special software to view it, called “Keyring FLASH.” This is not a concept I’m particularly fond of, since it requires that the user always be on their own home computer in order to view the manga they’ve purchased. Even if someone has already paid for manga from Square Enix, if they are accessing the internet from a library/school/work/public computer or a shared computer where they don’t have administrator privileges, they will be unable to access what they’ve bought. The application isn’t exactly lightweight either, downloading as a 40 MB disc image for installation. By the time I’d finally managed to jump through Square Enix’s registration hoops, picked up my manga, and installed the software to view it, I was so tired of the whole thing, I decided to leave the reading for later. This was a mistake.

Picking up later, the most immediately troublesome thing about the Square Enix manga storefront, is that, from the front page, there’s no obvious way to log in to your account. In fact, it seems you have to click into the store first, not the most intuitive setup, at which point a “Log In” button finally appears. Clicking on the “Members” button on the front page, which might seem like the obvious choice, is a grave error, as it actually takes you back to the Square Enix main site, where a “Members” login button in the middle of the page leads only to confusion and chaos, as being a “Member” apparently has nothing at all to do with the manga store. Use only the “Log In” button above the navigation bar. Just trust me on this.

If you’ve managed to log in to the manga store, you’ll see a page with your “bookshelf” on it, and images of the series you’ve purchased volumes of. Clicking on the icon for the series will take you away from your bookshelf and onto the main page for that item in the store, so you must click on the icon for the volume number you want to read instead.

Once in the site’s manga viewer, there are two size choices for reading your manga. On my 1920 x 1080-resolution screen, those choices worked out to be either “way too small to read” or “twice as tall as my maximum browser window,” the latter with the option of using the mouse to pan up and down each page in order to read it all, which reverts back to the too-small size every time a page is turned, requiring a click on the toolbar to magnify the page each time. I would have taken a screen shot of this, just to display the basic layout, but an attempt to do so resulted in an angry popup informing me that a capture application had been “ditected,” [sic] turning the page blank. Even an attempt to screencap the error just generated another error, demonstrating the real purpose of the Keyring FLASH application as nothing more than clunky DRM.

In the end, I came away feeling blind, exhausted, technologically frustrated, and pretty sure that Square Enix believes I am a thief, none of which gave me much inspiration to continue on. I possibly wanted to die, definitely wanted to get that software off my computer, and ultimately did not read the free volume of manga I’d gone through so much to obtain. I doubt very much I’ll be using their manga store again, and I’m afraid I can’t recommend it.

Vizmanga.com

After my experience with Square Enix, the idea of trying to navigate yet another online manga portal was difficult to stomach, but Viz Manga’s new initiative, Vizmanga.com, was a bit too enticing to ignore. Working in sync with Viz’s mobile apps, Vizmanga.com offers the opportunity to buy volumes of digital manga via any one of its available portals, and then read those volumes using any of them, with the user’s purchased manga always available for download on any supported device.

I already had an account through Viz’s iPad app, so I was able to log in on the website (from the front page, natch) using that pre-existing account. From there, though, I immediately feared another Square Enix nightmare. Though my account name was definitely correct, and I’d logged in successfully, on the page where the manga I’d purchased previously on the iPad should have appeared, I simply received a message letting me know I hadn’t yet purchased any.

My heart sank. I grasped around for any kind of help, and at first all I could find was a “Feedback” button on the left-hand side. I sent off a quick message using that button, but since it appeared to be intended for general customer feedback kind rather than support, I didn’t expect (nor did I receive) a response. Then I clicked around to this page, linked from the storefront’s “Buy it once, read it anywhere” image. At the bottom of that page was an e-mail address for the app’s technical support, so I sent off an e-mail to that address as well. After doing that, I received a response very quickly from Viz’s VP of Digital Publishing, Brian Piech, directly addressing my problem (no automated help desk response here), confirming what I’d said already and asking for a few more details. And though it took the better part of a day to fix whatever was wrong with my account, I received frequent updates on the situation from Brian, who stayed on the case with Viz’s engineers until the issue was resolved. Similarly, an inquiry about a pricing error in Viz’s iPad app, sent to the same address, elicited an immediate response from Digital Marketing Director, Candice Uyloan, who apologized for the problem and e-mailed me back within an hour to let me know it had been fixed.

Though encountering technical difficulty with something newly launched is not particularly rare in the digital world, in my experience, swift, attentive tech support is, and I can’t possibly praise Viz’s digital team enough for the way they addressed my problems. My one complaint is that the app support e-mail address should be more clearly visible, ideally from any page on the site, but at least on the site’s front page.

Now, finally to the manga! Though Viz wasn’t giving away any manga, they’ve put everything on sale for 40% off until the end of the month, which gave me a great excuse to finally pick up the first double-sized edition of Mitsuru Adachi’s Cross Game, which I haven’t yet purchased in print, but has been loudly recommended by all of my favorite critics. After making the purchase on my iPad and calling up Cross Game from my “My Manga” page on Vizmanga.com (which I’ve only had to log into once, by the way, over the past three days), there was no special software to download, just a clean, easy-to-navigate viewer that loads quickly on the page. The fact that this viewer comes without any built-in accusations of piracy is definitely a bonus.

Though Viz’s default page size is larger than Square Enix’s, there is no tool built-in at all for enlarging the page, which is its only downside (See note at the end of the paragraph for correction on this). Both DMP’s eManga and Yen Press’ Yen Plus web viewers do a better job with viewing size than Square Enix or Viz. Fortunately, Viz’s standard size is fairly readable on my 1920 x 1080-resolution desktop monitor. My 1280 x 800-resolution laptop screen fares slightly less well, simply because the reader is taller than my maximum browser size, requiring me to scroll to see the full page, though of course this is at least consistent, page-to-page. Unlike Viz’s i0S apps, a two-page spread is the only reading option, which makes good sense on increasingly-dominant widescreen monitors, but may require horizontal scrolling on older CRTs or smaller netbooks. Edited to add: I’ve been informed by a commenter than if you hover over the top of the manga you will see an option to make the manga full-screen, and it appears to be true! I suggest that it might be a good idea to make this more obvious, since my curser never had occasion to hover there on its own, and this is not indicated anywhere on the page.

The best feature of all this, of course, is that my purchased manga is available for me to read on every digital device I own—my iPad, iPhone, and computer—allowing me to read it however I want. My device of choice will probably remain my iPad, which is more ideally suited to reading comics than either of my other devices, thanks to its size, screen resolution, touch screen, and rotating interface (see my earlier review for more details), but cross-platform availability is a boon for fans without iOS devices, and does remove some of the pinch from Viz’s regular pricing for those of us with multiple points of access. That said, I do hope that Viz might be able to see their way toward lowering those prices on a permanent basis, should the new web platform really take off.

All-in-all, Vizmanga.com appears to provide a well-supported, well-designed platform for digital manga, and an answer to many manga fans’ most earnest digital requests. Recommended.

MMF: Why Fruits Basket?

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With almost every installment of the Manga Moveable Feast, we tend to ask the question, “Why this particular title?” In the case of Natsuki Takaya’s Fruits Basket, published in English over the course of 23 volumes by Tokyopop, I think the answer is complex.

First of all, it’s almost always interesting to dig into a cultural phenomenon. In the period between the initial English-language publication of Sailor Moon by Tokyopop and its upcoming republication by Kodansha, Fruits Basket was the most commercially successful shôjo manga and one of the most commercially successful manga, period.

Many people have made the argument that romantic fantasy for a female audience tends to be critically undervalued. Commercially successful romantic fantasy for a female audience adds another potential disclaimer for a book’s artistic value. Fruits Basket wasn’t just primarily for girls, but girls liked it a lot. And they bought as many copies of it as boys did of manga they liked. What’s that about? Or, at least that sometimes seems like the psychological subtext.

And Fruits Basket, which originally ran in Hakusensha’s Hana to Yume, is difficult to quantify. It’s shares a number of qualities with more generic manga of its category – an optimistic but kind of dingbat heroine, two hunky boys engaged in a rivalry for her attentions, a seemingly cutesy curse, and so on. But Takaya approaches that material with quite a bit of craft and emotional ruthlessness. She doesn’t brutalize her characters (or her readers), but she doesn’t spare them much. It’s not a creepy, “suffering and terror are hot” kind of approach; it’s more of a fluid, applied grasp of the nature of tragedy. Fruits Basket has scale. If the aesthetic were less contemporary-casual, the Takarazuka Revue could operetta up this sprawling epic.

It takes a while for things to fall into place, to be honest. Initially, the series seems like what its cover blurb describes: a story about a plucky orphan who moves in with a family of hot guys who are living under a curse! They turn into animals represented in the Chinese Zodiac when they’re hugged by someone of the opposite sex! Eventually, though, the cutesy sheen of the curse gives way to the profound dysfunction and deep, deep pain of the Sohma family. And the ditsy charm of Tohru Honda, the outsider in the tearstained zoo, resolves into resolve and force and generosity of spirit.

I hope you’ll give a few volumes a try. My plan for the week is to focus on some of my favorite moments from the series and to keep a running tally of each day’s posts, if posts there are. I’m looking forward to the contributions of anyone who cares to do so.

Previous Manga Moveable Feasts:

 

Saturday Spotlight

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Though maintaining a blog is all about producing new content, day after day, sometimes it’s nice to reach into the archives and revisit something a bit older. An article’s shelf life can be tragically brief in the fast-paced comics blogosphere, despite its ongoing relevance.

With that in mind, welcome to Saturday Spotlight, a new weekly feature here at Manga Bookshelf dedicated to digging up these treasures from the gloomy depths of our database and bringing them back into the light.

Before I get to this week’s spotlight, however, a bit of sad news. With the English-language manhwa market having slowed to something slightly more lethargic than a crawl, I’ve decided to fold Manhwa Bookshelf back into the main site. This is heartbreaking for me, given that my intent in creating Manhwa Bookshelf was to help establish English-translated manhwa as a distinct entity. But with too little going on to provide regular content on even a monthly basis, whatever manhwa content Hana and I are able to muster in this climate is more likely to receive the attention it deserves in a higher-traffic venue. All existing Manhwa Bookshelf posts have now been redirected here to Manga Bookshelf, and can be accessed as a category here.

That said, it should be no surprise that this week’s subject of our Saturday Spotlight comes originally from Manhwa Bookshelf, now reformatted for and reposted here at the main blog.

Back in June of last year, Manhwa Bookshelf contributor Hana Lee wrote a wonderful article, An Introduction to Korean Webcomics. With Korean publisher iSeeToon (who adapt Korean webcomics for the iPhone) emerging as the most active publisher of new manhwa series in the English-language market, it seems especially appropriate to bring Hana’s article into the spotlight once more.

So please enjoy An Introduction to Korean Webcomics!

SDCC Round-Up

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Yes, it may still have two days to go, but for most manga fans, the news is done now due to a heavily overbalanced schedule. And who better to give you a breakdown of all of it than me, a person who wasn’t there and mostly followed everything on Twitter! Onward!

First up we have Kodansha, who sadly did not have any new announcements. A bit worrying, given that they have really announced one new title since their debut – Code Name: Sailor V. Sailor Moon, Love Hina and Tokyo Mew Mew are all new editions of previously issued stuff, though I suspect Sailor Moon’s differences between Tokyopop and Kodansha will be large enough that it will seem new.

They did announce that the Negima omnibuses will continue “till they catch up with the new volumes”, which I presume means catching up to where the Nibleys began translating/adapting it. They also showed off the cover (as yet not online) for the first Love Hina omnibus, which will be 5 volumes, each containing 3 of the original (the last will have 2).

The other unsurprising but disappointing news is that they indicated that, due to poor sales and a poor economy, there are currently no plans to go back and grab other Del Rey series left hanging that aren’t already coming out. Yozakura Quartet and Pumpkin Scissors were mentioned specifically, but I expect this also includes titles such as Nodame Cantabile, Moyasimon, and School Rumble. They also indicated they have no digital plans at this time. Most likely as they’re still concentrating on getting back up to speed book-wise.

The big news of the weekend was the J-Manga panel, which debuts in North America in August. It’s a collective between 39 manga companies (basically everyone you can think of which the exceptions of Square Enix (who have their own initiative) and Mag Garden (no Aria for you!) to have their manga available here. To my surprise and happiness, this is *not* an Apple-only iPad app, but web-based. The price point will be determined by publisher, but they’re also trying to get a wider variety of content than just ‘Jump/Hana to Yume’ licenses that tend to come out over here. The readers can apparently message the authors, and there will be exclusive content, including videos. And yes, some brave soul did ask why we should care when we have scanlations. Brave soul. :) It’s web-only right now, but they’re working on mobile apps.

The site hasn’t debuted yet, but this was much more than I was expecting, so I am greatly pleased. There are still some unanswered questions (who’s doing the translation work? How are they being paid?), but I am now greatly looking forward to the opening of the site.

Speaking of online manga, Viz debuted their new web-based manga site Thursday evening. I have not yet had a chance to try it out, though I will do so this weekend, but all signs point to it being exactly what we asked them for – a non-iPad way to pay to read their manga online. The titles are mostly what you’d expect, being their best-sellers, along with a few Signature titles for ‘cool’ readers. I wonder in future if they might use it as a way to access volumes that are out of print and don’t sell well enough to justify a reprint (yes, I am thinking of Excel Saga). In any case, kudos to Viz!

Viz had two new manga licenses, both in the Shojo Beat line. The first I’m very excited about, and have been hoping Viz would pick it up. January sees the debut of Devil and Her Love Song, which is about a blunt, no-nonsense girl who was expelled from her classy all-girls’ academy and is now attending a public school. Her ‘devil’ personality causes her no end of problems, but does attract the attention of two guys – one cheery, one grumpy. No, it’s not the most original thing ever, but it’s great fun, and I can’t wait to see it in English.

The other one is Earl and Fairy, based on a very long (25 volumes and counting – don’t expect it to be licensed) light novel series about a woman who is attuned to fairies, and her interaction with a roguishly handsome young man seeking a legendary sword. It’s Victorian Fantasy, so no doubt will appeal to Black Butler fans, and its general feel should also draw in the Vampire Knight crowd.

And given the success of the shonen ‘omnibus’ formats (which, word of warning, will likely all end about 9-12 volumes in – these are teasers to make you buy, not full re-releases), Viz is now doing two popular shojo series in the 3-in-1 style: Hana-Kimi and Skip Beat! I never got a chance to take in Hana-Kimi back in the day, so will be looking forward to this.

The Shonen Jump panel following did announce a new chapter of a just-begun-in-Japan Jump title available in English – St&rs, which can be accessed from their website – but did not announce any new licenses. This is possibly as the one they announced last year, Psyren, still has yet to debut in graphic novel form. It’s also possibly due to the fact that the other ‘mid-range’ Jump titles running right now all have potential difficulties with NA sales. Sket Dance is a Gintama clone, and Viz just cancelled that. Beelzebub has a lot of Satanic backstory, and also has a naked baby and his naked penis in many, many chapters – Viz has already censored this sort of thing in titles like Dr. Slump. Kuroko no Basket is a basketball manga, at a time when they’re still putting out Slam Dunk. And Medaka Box… is Medaka Box. They may wait to see if the Gainax anime takes off to do something about that. :)

Onward to the Yen panel! They win the prize for total number of new licenses, piling up three. The first one was spoiled a bit ahead of time for some, but is not a surprise given the anime got a TV deal: Durarara!!, the manga adaptation of the light novel series about a group of Ikebukuro residents and their interactions and misadventures, centering around several rival gangs and a young woman searching for a missing past – and her missing head. It’s from Square Enix, and runs in their female-oriented shonen magazine GFantasy, home of Black Butler and Pandora Hearts. It just finished ‘Stage one’ in 4 volumes, but will be restarting a second arc soon.

Then there is Kore Wa Zombie Desu Ka?, a comedic title that just started last year in Kadokawa Shoten’s fanservicey shonen magazine Dragon Age. Also based on a light novel that won’t come out over here (DRRR!! is a far more likely pickup, though still very unlikely), it’s about a young man who gets killed, then resurrected as a zombie by a silent young necromancer woman. Then he runs into a magical girl with a chainsaw – and accidentally steals her powers. Now he has to deal with the trials of being a zombie cross-dressing magical girl. Didn’t I read this plot on Fanfiction.net with Naruto and Usagi?

Lastly, we have what appears to be another omnibus, but a bit more high-end than Dragon Girl and Sasameke were. Olimpos is from the author of Utahime, which DMP put out over here, and is apparently based around the mythical Greek Gods. It ran for 2 volumes in Ichijinsha’s josei magazine Comic Zero-Sum (and its sister publication Zero-Sum Ward), and I suspect will be the most ‘blogger-friendly’ of the titles announced at SDCC. Yen also mentioned a 4-volume color omnibus for High School of the Dead, and noted they were working on an Android app for their stuff.

The last thing I heard about was the Best and Worst manga of 2011, which I was delighted to hear spent so much time talking about the best that they barely managed to mention the worst. Always a good thing, IMO.

That’s it for now! Otakon will be a much easier write-up, as there’s only one manga industry panel there – Vertical. And as for New York Comic Con, I will actually be present at that one. :)

Magic Knight Rayearth, Vol. 1

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Shonen manga in drag — that’s my quick-and-dirty assessment of CLAMP’s Magic Knight Rayearth, a fantasy-adventure that adheres so closely to the friendship-effort-victory template that it’s easy to forget it ran in the pages of Nakayoshi. A closer examination reveals that Rayearth is, in fact, a complex, unique fusion of shojo and shonen storytelling practices.

If you missed Rayearth when it was first released by Tokyopop, the story goes something like this: three schoolgirls are summoned to defend the kingdom of Cefiro from the wicked priest Zagato, who’s imprisoned Cefiro’s regent, Princess Emeraude, in a watery dungeon. In order to rescue Emeraude, Fuu, Umi, and Hikaru must endure a series of trials that will reveal whether the girls are equal to the task. As the girls advance towards their goal of becoming Magic Knights, however, they begin to realize that Clef Guru, their guide and protector, has misrepresented the true nature of their assignment.

On a moment-to-moment basis, Rayearth reads like shojo. The girls bicker and complain about school; they chibify whenever they’re flustered or frustrated; they cluck and fuss over cute animals; and they share a collective swoon over the series’ one and only cute boy. (He makes a brief but memorable cameo early in the story, as the girls struggle to escape The Forest of Silence.) The girls’ fights, too, are tempered by shojo sentiment; “heart” and compassion play as important a role in defeating many of their enemies as strength and speed.

What sets Rayearth apart from so many other shojo fantasies, however, are the lengthy battle scenes. Fuu, Umi, and Hikaru prove just as adept at repelling surprise attacks and killing monsters as their shonen manga counterparts; though all three girls experience pangs of self-doubt, they show the same steely resolve in combat that Naruto, Ichigo, and InuYasha do. Equally striking is their fierce loyalty to one another; each girl is willing to sacrifice herself so that her friends might live to complete their mission. Though shojo manga can and does stress the importance of female friendship, Rayearth places unusual emphasis on the girls’ shared sense of purpose and commitment to one another. From the very earliest pages of the story, Fuu, Umi, and Hikaru characterize their bond as “sisterhood,” and believe that their love for one another is crucial to their success — a belief that’s systematically tested and proven throughout their journey.

And if you need further proof of Rayearth‘s shonen manga influence, look no further than the Mashins, a trio of anthropomorphic battle robots that Fuu, Umi, and Hikaru awaken in their quest to become Magic Knights. The Mashin are towering, sleek, and lupine, reminiscent of Yoshiyuki Tamino’s iconic mecha designs. Most importantly, the Mashin are fundamental to the story; they’re not an afterthought, but an essential element of the third act, providing the girls with the firepower necessary to combat Zagato.

Yet for all its shonen swagger, Rayearth has some of the most graceful, feminine artwork in the CLAMP canon. The girls’ physical transformations have the same sensual quality as Bernini’s The Ecstasy of St. Theresa, while their magical spells are depicted as undulating waves of energy that envelop their enemies, rather than jagged bolts of light that pierce and slice. Even small, seemingly inconsequential details — Princess Emeraude’s hair, Zagato’s robes — are infused with this same graceful sensibility — the visual antithesis of the spiky, angular aesthetic that prevails in shonen manga.

I only wish Rayearth was as satisfying to read as it is to critique. For all its genre-bending bravado, the script is so painfully earnest that it verges on self-parody. (Sample: “In Cefiro, the heart controls everything. The power of my belief can change the future!”) The girls, too, lack distinctive personalities. Fuu, Umi, and Hikaru are defined primarily by their magical powers and hairstyles, with only superficial differences in behavior and attitude to help readers distinguish them from one another. Perhaps most disappointing is the conclusion, in which we finally grasp the true cause of Emeraude’s imprisonment. For a brief moment, Emeraude seems poised to break free of an onerous responsibility that demands her complete self-abnegation to fulfill. Yet CLAMP’s desire for a dramatic ending demands that Emeraude be punished for even desiring her freedom, making Emeraude the umpteenth female character to be taken out to the woodshed for resisting such a fate.

That said, Magic Knight Rayearth‘s historical importance can’t be denied. Not only was it CLAMP’s first big commercial hit, it was also the title that demonstrated just how effortlessly they could cross genre boundaries. The resulting hybrid of shonen and shojo, sci-fi and fantasy, RPG and classic adventure story is as unique today as it was when it first appeared in the pages of Nakayoshi eighteen years ago, even if some of the visual details and dialogue haven’t aged well. Recommended.

MAGIC KNIGHT RAYEARTH, VOL. 1 • BY CLAMP • DARK HORSE • 640 pp. • RATING: TEEN (13+)

Magic Knight Rayearth, Vol. 1

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Shonen manga in drag — that’s my quick-and-dirty assessment of CLAMP’s Magic Knight Rayearth, a fantasy-adventure that adheres so closely to the friendship-effort-victory template that it’s easy to forget it ran in the pages of Nakayoshi. A closer examination reveals that Rayearth is, in fact, a complex, unique fusion of shojo and shonen storytelling practices.

If you missed Rayearth when it was first released by Tokyopop, the story goes something like this: three schoolgirls are summoned to defend the kingdom of Cefiro from the wicked priest Zagato, who’s imprisoned Cefiro’s regent, Princess Emeraude, in a watery dungeon. In order to rescue Emeraude, Fuu, Umi, and Hikaru must endure a series of trials that will reveal whether the girls are equal to the task. As the girls advance towards their goal of becoming Magic Knights, however, they begin to realize that Clef Guru, their guide and protector, has misrepresented the true nature of their assignment.

On a moment-to-moment basis, Rayearth reads like shojo. The girls bicker and complain about school; they chibify whenever they’re flustered or frustrated; they cluck and fuss over cute animals; and they share a collective swoon over the series’ one and only cute boy. (He makes a brief but memorable cameo early in the story, as the girls struggle to escape The Forest of Silence.) The girls’ fights, too, are tempered by shojo sentiment; “heart” and compassion play as important a role in defeating many of their enemies as strength and speed.

What sets Rayearth apart from so many other shojo fantasies, however, are the lengthy battle scenes. Fuu, Umi, and Hikaru prove just as adept at repelling surprise attacks and killing monsters as their shonen manga counterparts; though all three girls experience pangs of self-doubt, they show the same steely resolve in combat that Naruto, Ichigo, and InuYasha do. Equally striking is their fierce loyalty to one another; each girl is willing to sacrifice herself so that her friends might live to complete their mission. Though shojo manga can and does stress the importance of female friendship, Rayearth places unusual emphasis on the girls’ shared sense of purpose and commitment to one another. From the very earliest pages of the story, Fuu, Umi, and Hikaru characterize their bond as “sisterhood,” and believe that their love for one another is crucial to their success — a belief that’s systematically tested and proven throughout their journey.

And if you need further proof of Rayearth‘s shonen manga influence, look no further than the Mashins, a trio of anthropomorphic battle robots that Fuu, Umi, and Hikaru awaken in their quest to become Magic Knights. The Mashin are towering, sleek, and lupine, reminiscent of Yoshiyuki Tamino’s iconic mecha designs. Most importantly, the Mashin are fundamental to the story; they’re not an afterthought, but an essential element of the third act, providing the girls with the firepower necessary to combat Zagato.

Yet for all its shonen swagger, Rayearth has some of the most graceful, feminine artwork in the CLAMP canon. The girls’ physical transformations have the same sensual quality as Bernini’s The Ecstasy of St. Theresa, while their magical spells are depicted as undulating waves of energy that envelop their enemies, rather than jagged bolts of light that pierce and slice. Even small, seemingly inconsequential details — Princess Emeraude’s hair, Zagato’s robes — are infused with this same graceful sensibility — the visual antithesis of the spiky, angular aesthetic that prevails in shonen manga.

I only wish Rayearth was as satisfying to read as it is to critique. For all its genre-bending bravado, the script is so painfully earnest that it verges on self-parody. (Sample: “In Cefiro, the heart controls everything. The power of my belief can change the future!”) The girls, too, lack distinctive personalities. Fuu, Umi, and Hikaru are defined primarily by their magical powers and hairstyles, with only superficial differences in behavior and attitude to help readers distinguish them from one another. Perhaps most disappointing is the conclusion, in which we finally grasp the true cause of Emeraude’s imprisonment. For a brief moment, Emeraude seems poised to break free of an onerous responsibility that demands her complete self-abnegation to fulfill. Yet CLAMP’s desire for a dramatic ending demands that Emeraude be punished for even desiring her freedom, making Emeraude the umpteenth female character to be taken out to the woodshed for resisting such a fate.

That said, Magic Knight Rayearth‘s historical importance can’t be denied. Not only was it CLAMP’s first big commercial hit, it was also the title that demonstrated just how effortlessly they could cross genre boundaries. The resulting hybrid of shonen and shojo, sci-fi and fantasy, RPG and classic adventure story is as unique today as it was when it first appeared in the pages of Nakayoshi eighteen years ago, even if some of the visual details and dialogue haven’t aged well. Recommended.

MAGIC KNIGHT RAYEARTH, VOL. 1 • BY CLAMP • DARK HORSE • 640 pp. • RATING: TEEN (13+)

Talk amongst yourselves

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Between a rather frenzied real life and preparations for the upcoming Manga Moveable Feast — Sunday, July 24, to Saturday, July 30, featuring Natsuki Takaya’s Fruits Basket (Tokyopop) — I need to excuse myself from this week’s regularly scheduled license request.

But…

So Viz has thrown off the shackles of platform to launch VizManga.Com. Which treasures from Viz’s relatively vast catalog would you be interested in reading digitally? (Legally digitally, obviously. You can probably read all of them digitally at this point, but that’s not what I’m talking about in these circumstances.)

 

 

Looney Tunes Platinum Collection announced

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To go along with my post on the new Tom & Jerry Golden Collection collector’s set, Warners has announced their first Looney Tunes Blu-Ray release. Unlike Tom & Jerry, this one is Blu-Ray only. Most likely because, while the T&J set will have restorations not out on DVD yet, this first LT collection will feature a lot of cartoons previously restored on DVD. That said, Jerry Beck and company have indicated the picture quality is really incredible, as one would expect from the new medium, and this is really more ‘Warners dipping its toe into Blu-Ray’ than anything else.

The contents list reads very much like ‘what would a cartoon fan want in a ‘best ever’ Looney Tunes set, along with some lesser cartoons that star such fan favorites as the Tasmanian Devil and Marvin Martian, both of whom have popularity that far outweighs the few cartoons they were in. Some contents are apparently not announced yet, but here’s what we have. I’ll note which DVD collection the cartoon first appeared on if applicable (and when I say new to DVD, I mean new to Blu-Ray, of course, but also not on a DVD collection before):

DISC ONE
1) Hare Tonic (1945, Jones) (Golden Collection 3)
2) Baseball Bugs (1946, Freleng) (GC1)
3) Buccaneer Bunny (1948, Freleng) (GC5)
4) The Old Grey Hare (1944, Clampett) (GC5)
5) Rabbit Hood (1949, Jones) (GC4)
6) 8 Ball Bunny (1950, Jones) (GC4)
7) Rabbit of Seville (1950, Jones) (GC1)
8) What’s Opera, Doc? (1957, Jones) (GC2)
9) The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946, Clampett) (GC2)
10) A Pest in the House (1947, Jones) (GC5)
11) The Scarlet Pumpernickel (1950, Jones) (GC1)
12) Duck Amuck (1953, Jones) (GC1)
13) Robin Hood Daffy (1958, Jones) (GC3)
14) Baby Bottleneck (1946, Clampett) (GC2)
15) Kitty Kornered (1946, Clampett) (GC2)
16) Scaredy Cat (1948, Jones) (GC1)
17) Porky Chops (1949, Davis) (GC1)
18) Old Glory (1939, Jones) (GC2)
19) A Tale of Two Kitties (1942, Clampett) (GC5)
20) Tweetie Pie (1947, Freleng) (GC2)
21) Fast and Furry-ous (1949, Jones) (GC1)
22) Beep Beep (1952, Jones) (GC2)
23) Lovelorn Leghorn (1951, McKimson) NEW TO DVD
24) For Scent-I-Mental Reasons (1949, Jones) (GC1)
25) Speedy Gonzalez (1955, Freleng) (GC1)

DISC TWO
1) One Froggy Evening (1955, Jones) (GC2)
2) Three Little Bops (1957, Freleng) (GC2)
3) I Love to Singa (1936, Avery) (GC2)
4) Katnip Kollege (1938, Hardaway/Dalton) (GC2)
5) The Dover Boys (1942, Jones) (GC2)
6) Chow Hound (Jones, 1951) (GC6)
7) Haredevil Hare (1948, Jones) (GC1)
8) Hasty Hare (1952, Jones) NEW TO DVD
9) Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century (1953, Jones) (GC1)
10) Hare-Way To The Stars (1958, Jones) NEW TO DVD
11) Mad As a Mars Hare (1963, Jones) (BB:HE)
12) Devil May Hare (1954, McKimson) (GC1)
13) Bedevilled Rabbit (1957, McKimson) (BB:HE)
14) Ducking the Devil (1957, McKimson) (DD:FF)
15) Bill of Hare (1962, McKimson) NEW TO DVD
16) Dr. Devil and Mr. Hare (1964, McKimson) (BB:HE)
17) Bewitched Bunny (1954, Jones) (GC5)
18) Broom-Stick Bunny (1956, Jones) (GC2)
19) A Witch’s Tangled Hare (1959, Levitow) NEW TO DVD
20) A-Haunting We Will Go (1966, McKimson) (GC4)
21) Feed the Kitty (1952, Jones) (GC1)
22) Kiss Me Cat (1953, Jones) (GC4)
23) Feline Frame-Up (1954, Jones) NEW TO DVD
24) Fram A to Z-Z-Z-Z (1954, Jones) (Academy Award Collection)
25) Boyhood Daze (1957, Jones) (GC6, special features)

As one can see, the cartoon set above has some fantastic cartoons, but it is also very conservative. Nothing in black-and-white, no cartoons with controversial ethnic gags (save Chow Hound), and a lot of Chuck Jones, whose films are here 3-1 over everyone else. The first set has the LT stars, with Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Tweety, Roadrunner, Pepe, and Speedy cartoons. The second starts with famous one-shots, and then throws in a bunch of Marvin Martian, Tasmanian Devil, Witch Hazel, Pussyfoot and Ralph Phillips cartoons to appeal, my guess is, to the casual fan. Still. Dear WB, stop appealing to the casual fan. There’s only 3 cartoons here from the 1930s, as well. At the same time, it’s hard to begrudge the set, as it’s filled with the very best WB cartoons, as you would expect from a debut Blu-Ray set. Aside from Porky Chops (which Jerry has always loved, for some weird reason) and Katnip Kollege (ditto, though I love this one too), everything before the Marvin cartoons start is a bona fide Looney Tunes masterpiece.

Are there extras? Of course there are! Behind the Tunes mini-documentaries (most likely taken from the DVD sets), Chuck Jones documentaries (ditto), the 1944 FDR propaganda cartoon Hell-Bent for Reelection (by Chuck Jones, and I believe NEW TO DVD), the 1955 Army short A Hitch in Time (Jones again, also NEW TO DVD), the antiwar WB short The Door, from 1968, directed by Ken Mundie (also NEW TO DVD), and 2 new documentaries on Marvin and Taz. Plus no doubt a few more unannounced goodies.

It can be hard to take when technology moves so quickly. Especially in a crappy economy, where the WB Golden Collections were scrapped for poor sales. Having to not-only re-buy cartoons you have but also invest in a new player to view them (I don’t have Blu-Ray myself yet, though obviously will be getting a player soon) is asking a lot of the hardcore cartoon fan. Still, it’s not surprising to see this as the debut set, and more are promised. Hopefully the set will do well, and we’ll see cartoons like Porky in Wackyland and some more unreleased to DVD stuff in the future.

Magazine no Mori

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Welcome to the newly named Magazine no Mori, where I will try to guide you through the dark tangled forest of Japanese Manga magazines and, hopefully, we’ll discover some wondrous manga truffles along the way. (Was that pushing the metaphor a little too far? I think it might have been.)

As much as I consume a ridiculous amount of manga and of manga magazines, my tastes run to the fringes of all typical categories of manga. Of shounen, shoujo, seinen and josei, the manga I read the least is the most popular – the shounen.

So it was some suprise to me that Shounen Sunday really is all that and a bag of chips.^_^

Of course I had heard of Shounen Sunday. I just hadn’t ever given it any thought. When I finally cracked the covers, I was instantly greeted by series that I, and you, will be familiar with.

First published in 1959, Shounen Sunday has a 2010 monthly circulation of 678,917. At a cover price of 260 yen per volume ($3.31 at the time of writing) for more than 450 pages, you’re getting a page and a half of manga per cent spent.

And, oh, what you are spending those cents on! The names that write for Shounen Sunday are, well, legendary. Prominent among them are Adachi Mitsuru (Asaoka Kouko Yakyuubu Nisshi), Takahashi Rumiko (Rinne), Watase Yuu (Arata Kangatari ~Engaku Kougatari~). These run alongside series that are probably better known over here by title than by their creators’ names, such as Takashi Shiina’s Zettai Karen Children, Hata Kenjiro’s Hayate no Gotoku (known in the west as Hayate the Combat Butler), Wakaki Tamiki’s Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai (known as The World Only God Knows) and Aoyama Gosho’s Detective Conan (known here as Case Closed).

Weekly Shounen Sunday has a website in Japanese with news, interviews and “backstage” with the manga artists, links to collected volumes, and other typical magazine “stuff.” In addition, Viz has an English-language site for “Shonen Sunday” where you can find downloads, creator profiles and series synopses.

Despite the somewhat irksome persistence of misogynistic “service” (breast groping, nipples visible under clothes and crotch shots), this magazine is undoubtedly targeted to boys who plan on becoming immature man-boys in the future. I’d love to love Sunday, but it’s hard to see past the “Boys Only, Girlz Stay Away” sign on the treehouse door.

This is particularly frustrating, as Sunday’s pages are replete with very cool baseball, soccer and other non-dating sim-esque manga inside. If the service was notched back a few degrees, I might add this to my monthly rotation. As it is, I think I’ll pass.

As a box of chocolates, while there are a whole lot of caramel and peanut treats inside, there’s just a few too many yucky jellies for my taste. But your taste may vary. ^_^

Weekly Shounen Sunday, by Shogakukan