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From the stack: Ai Ore! vol. 1

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Who could have predicted that the comic I read this week that really made my skin crawl wasn’t Usumaru Furuya’s Lychee Light Club (Vertical)? No, that dubious honor goes to Mayu Shinja’s Ai Ore! (Viz). It manifests the kind of dreadful sexual politics I secretly hoped for from The Beautiful Skies of Hou Ou High, providing a handy reminder that one should always be careful about the wishes one makes.

It begins with an all-girl rock band losing its lead singer and the subsequent application of a boy for the vacant spot in the line-up. The band members are all sexy and androgynous, and they’re idols at their all-girl high school. The would-be singer is delicate and feminine, and his classmates have declared him the princess of their all-boy academy. Mizuki, the de facto leader of Blaue Rosen, is reluctant to admit Akira to the band. She doesn’t think she’s particularly fond of guys, but Akira is persistent. In fact, he’s creepily persistent. One might even say he doesn’t take no for an answer.

His desire to join the band is driven mostly by his obsession with Mizuki, and her repeatedly expressed disinterest doesn’t really penetrate Akira’s disconcerting determination. He’s one of those “just a matter of time” love interests who keeps acting like the girl’s already fallen for him (or that she doesn’t have a say in the matter). In spite of her formidable demeanor, Mizuki can’t seem to effectively fend off Mizuki’s persistent advances. Worse still, and obviously, she doesn’t really want to.

This is the part where I start ranting like an old prude, but dynamics like this really bother me. I hate the whole “I know what you want better than you do” précis, and I think it sends a horrible message. I really hate unwanted physical affection being presented as romantic or, even worse, cute. I hate when female characters are repeatedly put in peril so their stalker love interests can save them and look marginally better by comparison. And I hate Akira.

I find him repulsive. Part of this is due to the way that Shinja draws him. She’ll give Akira close-ups, narrated by Mizuki talking about how cute or ardent he looks. I think he looks demented in these panels, but maybe I’m just projecting my interpretation of his behavior on his appearance. It’s certainly partly because of the horrible lines he uses on Mizuki. (“Instead of singing about love, drown yourself in me.” “I came to take advantage of… your sadness, Mizuki-Chan.” “Don’t  you like me licking you?”) But mostly it’s just his obnoxious, menacing behavior. His final acts of the volume go so far beyond the pale that the second should begin with him being sent to jail.

Listen, I’m not naive enough to think that this kind of thing doesn’t have its audience, and I certainly don’t think that I’m going to make any difference by bitching about it. But when my primary response to a romantic narrative is “Nobody who actually loves you would treat you that way,” then it seems worth noting, at least for the record.

(Based on a review copy provided by the publisher.)

 

Blind date May 2011

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We have three candidates for this month’s boys’-love blind date, all courtesy of Digital Manga (a publisher I feel kind of owes me one). You can check out last month’s inaugural attempt for the parameters of my taste in this category and some disclaimers. Now, let’s check out the gents!

Sky Link, written and illustrated by Shiro Yamada: Ban Ritsuki was looking forward to his university life. Then, on his very first day, he bumps into a strange man on campus who tells him that he has the sort of face that he likes. Reacting badly, he tells the man he is disgusting. Unfortunately, that was not the end of the matter, as the stranger turns out to be one of his lecturers, Takagi Shoutaro. Ban finds this irritating enough, but Takagi can’t seem to get the message that he wants him to just leave him alone as much as possible. To be honest, Takagi just really pushes Ban’s rage buttons. That is, until one unguarded moment when Ban catches sight of Takagi sky gazing, with a look of intense melancholy upon his face. Finding his heart unexpectedly moved, Ban discovers that sometimes irritation can be a symptom of something besides anger, but what is it?

You get three guesses, Ban, and the first two don’t count. On the plus side, I like manga set in universities. On the down side, I’m getting a “no means yes” vibe from this. Yamada seems to have done a lot of Gin Tama doujinshi, which is a mitigating factor, as it seems like relatively intriguing slash fodder. Sky Link originally ran in Taiyo Tosho’s HertZ.

An Even More Beautiful Lie, written and illustrated by Kei Kanai: When art student Kurosu Keiichiro notices a young man leaving his umbrella on the train, he runs after him to return it. In so doing, he ends up missing his last train home. Feeling responsible, the young man offers his place for the night. Turns out he is a fellow student at Keiichiro’s university, one Yukari Yohito who has already garnered considerable attention for his artwork. Yukari may be a genius with paints and a canvas, but is completely hopeless at everything else as Keiichiro discovers. Striking up a friendship, Keiichiro begins coming by to take care of things for Yukari. The more he involves himself in Yukari’s life, however, the deeper Keiichiro’s feelings begin to run. It’s no longer mere friendship or even admiration that moves him, but just what should he do about it?

Bus stop, wet day, he’s there, I say, “Please share my umbrella.”

You guys, I seriously hate that song, but this comic sounds like it could be pretty good. This is obviously not qualitatively relevant, but it makes me smile that it’s right next to All Nippon Air Line in DMP’s title roster. An Even More Beautiful Lie also ran in HertZ.

Warning! Whispers of Love, written and illustrated by Puku Okuyama: The beginning of high school is a time of dreams, which are all too soon broken. So while one may fall in love at first sight, the other may run. But love and romance are a hard dream to kill off. Running prey simply have to be chased in order to be caught, right? And in the classroom, there is no real escape from whispered words and subtle actions. Comedy ensues when two classmates play cat and mouse, with their hearts at stake!

Since it features high-school boys, it would take some enormously persuasive argument to get me to seriously consider reading this comic. It would have to be really funny and surprising, and I’m already totally picturing the trite stuck-on-cleaning-duty-with-him scene. Warning! Whispers of Love ran in Taiyo Tosho’s Craft.

So, there are our mystery men. Thoughts?

 

New Let’s Get Visual: Funny Pages

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After taking March off, Michelle and I are back with a new installment of Let’s Get Visual, our monthly discussion of manga artwork.

For this month’s theme, to quote Michelle, “We examined intensely emotional moments in our last column, so this time we’re going in the opposite direction by highlighting pages that make us laugh.” Michelle begins first, bringing us a charming scene featuring Koh, the talking snake from Shiho Sugiura’s quasi-BL series, Silver Diamond (TOKYOPOP). I take my own selection from Kiyohiko Azuma’s Yotsuba&!.

As always, the point of the column is to help us develop our ability as manga critics, so please join the discussion, especially if you have something new to teach us!

Find the column here at Michelle’s blog, Soliloquy in Blue.

Previews review May 2011

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After a couple of months of fairly jam-packed Previews catalogs, I suppose it could seem petty to complain that the current listings seem a little slender. There aren’t even enough debuts to manage a dubious manga poll for the month. Fortunately, there are some highlights worth noting.

Book of Human Insects, written and illustrated by Osamu Tezuka, Vertical, item code MAY 11 1268: How can one complain about a month that offers the English-language debut of crazy Tezuka seinen? This one originally ran in Akita Shoten’s Play Comic and has been published in French by Casterman as La femme insecte. It’s a mystery about an unscrupulous and manipulative woman. Vertical promises “more twists and turns than MW,” which hardly seems possible.

Veronica #208: Veronica Presents Kevin Keller #2: written and illustrated by Dan Parent, colored by Rich Koslowski, Archie Comics, item code MAY 11 0836: Okay, I missed mentioning the first issue of this, but Kevin (Robot 6) Melrose’s preview of part two of the mini-series about Riverdale’s newest resident, who happens to be gay, reminded me to be excited. (And just as a side note, who would have predicted that Archie would have proven to be the nimblest and most risk-friendly of pamphlet publishers? Not me, that’s for sure.)

Until the Full Moon, written and illustrated by Sanami Matoh, Kodansha Comics, item code MAY 11 1129: This isn’t a debut, per se, as the series was previously published by Broccoli Books. I thought the first volume was kind of dull back then, but I’m among the many who hold a special place in my heart for Matoh’s Fake (Tokyopop), so I thought this book’s return was worth mentioning.

That’s pretty much it as far as debuts go. Here are some particularly enticing new volumes of ongoing series.

Little Nothings volume 4: My Shadow in the Distance, written and illustrated by Lewis Trondheim, NBM, item code MAY 11 1142: These are smart, charming, observational-autobiographical comics from an incredibly talented creator, and they’re incredibly easy on the eye. You can check out a bunch of them at Trondheim’s blog for NBM.

And here’s a by-no-means complete list of new volumes of ongoing series that I’m looking forward to reading:

  • 20th Century Boys vol. 16, written and illustrated by Naoki Urasawa, Viz Media, item code MAY 11 1241
  • Arisa vol. 3, written and illustrated by Natsumi (Kitchen Princess) Ando, Kodansha Comics, item code MAY 11 1122
  • Black Jack vol. 17, written and illustrated by Osamu Tezuka, Vertical, item code MAY 11 1269
  • Book Girl and the Captive Fool, written by Mizuki Nomura, Yen Press, item code MAY 11 1281

I’ll post another blind date experiment with the current batch of boys’-love candidates tomorrow.

 

5 Reasons to Read InuYasha

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InuYasha was the first comic that I actively collected, the manga that introduced me to the Wednesday comic-buying ritual and the very notion of self-identifying as a fan. Though I followed it religiously for years, trading in my older editions for new ones, watching the anime, and speculating about the finale, my interest in the series gradually waned as I was exposed to new artists and new genres. Still, InuYasha held a special place in my heart; reading it was one of my seminal experiences as a comic fan, making me reluctant to re-visit InuYasha for fear of sullying those precious first-manga memories. VIZ’s recent decision to re-issue InuYasha in an omnibus edition, however, inspired me to pick it up again. I made a shocking discovery in the process of re-reading the first chapters: InuYasha is good. Really good, in fact, and deserving of more respect than it gets from many critics.

What makes InuYasha work? I can think of five reasons:

1. The story arcs are long enough to be complex and engaging, but not so long as to test the patience.

There’s a Zen quality to Rumiko Takahashi’s storytelling that might not be obvious at first glance; after all, she loves a pratfall or a sword fight as much as the next shonen manga-ka. Don’t let that surface activity fool you, however: Takahashi has a terrific sense of balance, staging a romantic interlude between a demon-of-the-week episode and a longer storyline involving Naraku’s minions, thus preventing the series from devolving into a punishing string of battle arcs. The other great advantage of this approach is that Takashi carves out more space for her characters to interact as people, not just combatants; as a result, InuYasha is one of the few shonen manga in which the characters’ relationships evolve over time.

2. Takahashi knows how to stage a fight scene that’s dramatic, tense, and mercifully short.

‘Nuff said.

3. InuYasha‘s villains are powerful and strange, not strawmen.

Though we know our heroes will prevail — it’s shonen, for Pete’s sake — Takahashi throws creative obstacles in their way that makes their eventual triumph more satisfying. Consider Naraku. In many respects, he’s a standard-issue bad guy: he’s omnipotent, charismatic, and manipulative, capable of finding the darkness and vulnerability in the purest soul. (He also has fabulous hair, another reliable indication of his villainy.) Yet the way in which Naraku wields power is genuinely unsettling, as he fashions warriors from pieces of himself, then reabsorbs them into his body when they outlive their usefulness. Naraku’s manifestations are peculiar, too. Some are female, some are children, some have monstrous bodies, and some have the power to create their own demonic offspring, but few look like the sort of golem I’d create if I wanted to wreak havoc. And therein lies Naraku’s true power: his opponents never know what form he’ll take next, or whether he’s already among them.

Sesshomaru, too, is another villain who proves more interesting than he first appears. In the very earliest chapters of the manga, he’s a bored sociopath who has no qualms about using InuYasha’s mama trauma to trick his younger brother into revealing the Tetsusaiga’s location. As the story progresses, however, Sesshomaru begins tolerating the company of a cheerful eight-year-old girl who, in a neat inversion of the usual human-canine relationship, is dependent on her dog-demon master for protection, food, and companionship. Takahashi resists the urge to fully “humanize” Sesshomaru, however; he remains InuYasha’s scornful adversary for most of the series, largely unchanged by his peculiar fixation with Rin.

And did I mention that Sesshomaru has awesome hair? Oh, to be a villain in a Takahashi manga!

4. InuYasha‘s female characters kick ass.

Back in 2008, Shaenon Garrity wrote a devastatingly funny article about the seven types of female characters in shonen manga, from The Tomboy to The Little Girl to The Experienced Older Woman. I’m pleased to report that none of these types appear in InuYasha; in fact, InuYasha boasts one of the smartest, toughest, and most appealing set of female characters in shonen manga. And by “tough,” I don’t mean that Kagome, Kikyo, and Sango brandish weapons while wearing provocative outfits; I mean they persist in the face of adversity, even if their own lives are at stake. They’re strong enough to hold their own against demons, ghosts, and heavily armed bandits, and wise enough to know when words are more effective than weapons. They’re not adverse to the idea of romance, but recovering the Shikon Jewel takes precedence over dating. And they’re woman enough to cry if something awful happens, though they’d rather shed their tears in private than show their pain to others.

5. The horror! The horror!

Takahashi may have the coolest resume of anyone working in manga today; not only did she study script writing with Kazuo Koike, she also worked as an assistant to Kazuo Umezu — an apprenticeship that’s evident in the early chapters of InuYasha. In between Kagome and InuYasha’s first encounters with Naraku are a handful of short but spooky stories in which seemingly benign objects — a noh mask, a peach tree — are transformed by Shikon Jewel shards into instruments of torture and killing. Takahashi’s horror stories are less florid than Umezu’s, with fewer detours into WTF? territory, but like Umezu, Takahashi has a vivid imagination that yields some decidedly scary images. Here, for example, is the demonic peach tree from chapter 79, “The Fruits of Evil”:

Takahashi doesn’t just use these images to shock; she uses them to illustrate the consequences of ugly emotions, impulsive actions, and violent behavior, to show us how these choices slowly corrode the soul and transform us into the most monstrous version of ourselves. (Also to show us the consequences of substituting human bones and blood for Miracle Gro. Kids, don’t try this at home.)

What Takahashi does better than almost anyone is walk the fine line between terror and horror. Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe, author of The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and The Italian (1797), was one of the first writers to argue that terror and horror were different states of arousal. “Terror and Horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes and nearly annihilates them,” she wrote in an 1826 essay, “On the Supernatural in Poetry.” Critiquing Radcliffe’s work in 1966, Devendra P. Varma explained that difference more concretely: “The difference between Terror and Horror is the difference between awful apprehension and sickening realization: between the smell of death and stumbling against a corpse.” And that’s exactly where Takahashi operates: she gives us tantalizing, suggestive glimpses of scary things, then keeps them obscured until the denouement of the story, allowing our imaginations to supply most of the grisly details. We read her work in a heightened state of awareness, which only intensifies our pleasure — and revulsion — when the true nature of Kagome and InuYasha’s foes are revealed.

* * * * *

If you haven’t looked at InuYasha in a while, or missed it during the height of its popularity, now is a great time to give it a try. Each volume of the VIZBIG edition collects three issues, allowing readers to more fully immerse themselves in the story. And if you’re a purist about packaging, you’ll be happy to know that VIZ is finally issuing InuYasha in an unflipped format — a first in the series’ US history.

5 Reasons to Read InuYasha

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InuYasha was the first comic that I actively collected, the manga that introduced me to the Wednesday comic-buying ritual and the very notion of self-identifying as a fan. Though I followed it religiously for years, trading in my older editions for new ones, watching the anime, and speculating about the finale, my interest in the series gradually waned as I was exposed to new artists and new genres. Still, InuYasha held a special place in my heart; reading it was one of my seminal experiences as a comic fan, making me reluctant to re-visit InuYasha for fear of sullying those precious first-manga memories. VIZ’s recent decision to re-issue InuYasha in an omnibus edition, however, inspired me to pick it up again. I made a shocking discovery in the process of re-reading the first chapters: InuYasha is good. Really good, in fact, and deserving of more respect than it gets from many critics.

What makes InuYasha work? I can think of five reasons:

1. The story arcs are long enough to be complex and engaging, but not so long as to test the patience.

There’s a Zen quality to Rumiko Takahashi’s storytelling that might not be obvious at first glance; after all, she loves a pratfall or a sword fight as much as the next shonen manga-ka. Don’t let that surface activity fool you, however: Takahashi has a terrific sense of balance, staging a romantic interlude between a demon-of-the-week episode and a longer storyline involving Naraku’s minions, thus preventing the series from devolving into a punishing string of battle arcs. The other great advantage of this approach is that Takashi carves out more space for her characters to interact as people, not just combatants; as a result, InuYasha is one of the few shonen manga in which the characters’ relationships evolve over time.

2. Takahashi knows how to stage a fight scene that’s dramatic, tense, and mercifully short.

‘Nuff said.

3. InuYasha‘s villains are powerful and strange, not strawmen.

Though we know our heroes will prevail — it’s shonen, for Pete’s sake — Takahashi throws creative obstacles in their way that makes their eventual triumph more satisfying. Consider Naraku. In many respects, he’s a standard-issue bad guy: he’s omnipotent, charismatic, and manipulative, capable of finding the darkness and vulnerability in the purest soul. (He also has fabulous hair, another reliable indication of his villainy.) Yet the way in which Naraku wields power is genuinely unsettling, as he fashions warriors from pieces of himself, then reabsorbs them into his body when they outlive their usefulness. Naraku’s manifestations are peculiar, too. Some are female, some are children, some have monstrous bodies, and some have the power to create their own demonic offspring, but few look like the sort of golem I’d create if I wanted to wreak havoc. And therein lies Naraku’s true power: his opponents never know what form he’ll take next, or whether he’s already among them.

Sesshomaru, too, is another villain who proves more interesting than he first appears. In the very earliest chapters of the manga, he’s a bored sociopath who has no qualms about using InuYasha’s mama trauma to trick his younger brother into revealing the Tetsusaiga’s location. As the story progresses, however, Sesshomaru begins tolerating the company of a cheerful eight-year-old girl who, in a neat inversion of the usual human-canine relationship, is dependent on her dog-demon master for protection, food, and companionship. Takahashi resists the urge to fully “humanize” Sesshomaru, however; he remains InuYasha’s scornful adversary for most of the series, largely unchanged by his peculiar fixation with Rin.

And did I mention that Sesshomaru has awesome hair? Oh, to be a villain in a Takahashi manga!

4. InuYasha‘s female characters kick ass.

Back in 2008, Shaenon Garrity wrote a devastatingly funny article about the seven types of female characters in shonen manga, from The Tomboy to The Little Girl to The Experienced Older Woman. I’m pleased to report that none of these types appear in InuYasha; in fact, InuYasha boasts one of the smartest, toughest, and most appealing set of female characters in shonen manga. And by “tough,” I don’t mean that Kagome, Kikyo, and Sango brandish weapons while wearing provocative outfits; I mean they persist in the face of adversity, even if their own lives are at stake. They’re strong enough to hold their own against demons, ghosts, and heavily armed bandits, and wise enough to know when words are more effective than weapons. They’re not adverse to the idea of romance, but recovering the Shikon Jewel takes precedence over dating. And they’re woman enough to cry if something awful happens, though they’d rather shed their tears in private than show their pain to others.

5. The horror! The horror!

Takahashi may have the coolest resume of anyone working in manga today; not only did she study script writing with Kazuo Koike, she also worked as an assistant to Kazuo Umezu — an apprenticeship that’s evident in the early chapters of InuYasha. In between Kagome and InuYasha’s first encounters with Naraku are a handful of short but spooky stories in which seemingly benign objects — a noh mask, a peach tree — are transformed by Shikon Jewel shards into instruments of torture and killing. Takahashi’s horror stories are less florid than Umezu’s, with fewer detours into WTF? territory, but like Umezu, Takahashi has a vivid imagination that yields some decidedly scary images. Here, for example, is the demonic peach tree from chapter 79, “The Fruits of Evil”:

Takahashi doesn’t just use these images to shock; she uses them to illustrate the consequences of ugly emotions, impulsive actions, and violent behavior, to show us how these choices slowly corrode the soul and transform us into the most monstrous version of ourselves. (Also to show us the consequences of substituting human bones and blood for Miracle Gro. Kids, don’t try this at home.)

What Takahashi does better than almost anyone is walk the fine line between terror and horror. Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe, author of The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and The Italian (1797), was one of the first writers to argue that terror and horror were different states of arousal. “Terror and Horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes and nearly annihilates them,” she wrote in an 1826 essay, “On the Supernatural in Poetry.” Critiquing Radcliffe’s work in 1966, Devendra P. Varma explained that difference more concretely: “The difference between Terror and Horror is the difference between awful apprehension and sickening realization: between the smell of death and stumbling against a corpse.” And that’s exactly where Takahashi operates: she gives us tantalizing, suggestive glimpses of scary things, then keeps them obscured until the denouement of the story, allowing our imaginations to supply most of the grisly details. We read her work in a heightened state of awareness, which only intensifies our pleasure — and revulsion — when the true nature of Kagome and InuYasha’s foes are revealed.

* * * * *

If you haven’t looked at InuYasha in a while, or missed it during the height of its popularity, now is a great time to give it a try. Each volume of the VIZBIG edition collects three issues, allowing readers to more fully immerse themselves in the story. And if you’re a purist about packaging, you’ll be happy to know that VIZ is finally issuing InuYasha in an unflipped format — a first in the series’ US history.

Manga Moveable Feast: Rumic World Trilogy Volumes 2 and 3

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Rumiko Takahashi is one of those manga artists whose influence it is impossible to overstate, but the prolific nature of her manga series might make her works seem a bit daunting to the average reader who might not feel like picking up 56 volumes of Inuyasha or 36 volumes of Ranma 1/2. Many manga bloggers are choosing to focus on shorter series and her short stories this week, and I’m no exception as I decided to finally read a couple volumes of the Rumic World Trilogy that I’ve been hoarding for just such an occasion. Somewhere in a closet I have stashed a few single issues of Uresei Yatsura and one of my favorite Takahashi stories, Firetripper, which appears in collected format in the Rumic World Trilogy Volume 1. Firetripper is probably a contributing factor to why I like Shinobi Life so much, as it features a time traveling romance about a girl from modern times who ends up meeting a warrior from the past.

The second volume of the Rumic World Trilogy is almost a self-contained volume, as it features five stories with the same characters bookended by two short stories, “The Golden Gods of Poverty” about an unfortunate boy who is used by his rapacious parents to summon the lucky gods who don’t seem to be very lucky anymore, and “The Entrepreneurial Spirit” about fundraising seances in high school.

“Wasted Minds” are the five linked stories in this volume, which are a comedic adventure story about two spies with special powers. Yura Enjoji functions as the team’s strongman, and she is fiercely protective of her long hair. Tamuro Gomi’s last name (trash in Japanese) is a reflection of his skills because he is a teleporter who can only teleport from trash heap to trash heap. They start investigating a rival spy agency along with their hapless handler. They run into pigs that transform machines into trash, sea monsters, and a school for teen juvenile delinquents. As they flit from garbage dump to trashcan, there’s plenty of adventures and a little bit of romance. Whenever I pick up a Takahashi title, I’m struck by the simplicity of her illustrations and clear action sequences of her art. It seems like many manga titles today rely on an abundance of screen tone and occasionally confusing panel composition, so it is a relief to my eyes to pick up a title like this that is so easy to read.

The third volume of this series features a nice selection of short stories. I enjoyed the first one, “Wedded Bliss” about a new couple who happily fights all the time to the detriment of their neighbors. “War Council” was an amusing take on the “evil student council” type story that so often pops up in manga, as an ordinary boy who agrees to serve as student council president because he has a crush on the vice president is caught between the warring factions of the jock student organization and the nerd student organization. “When my Eyes Got Wings” shows more of a horror influence as a sick boy with a scary pet bird develops a crush on a high school girl, and strange things begin happening around her boyfriend. “Sleep and Forget” is a dramatic romance that resembled “Firetripper” in plot and tone. A girl and boy with a connection to dogs relive and reenact events from their past lives, as they struggle with the vicious spirits of a dog and the old woman that was its master. “The Face Pack” is a goofy story about a group of students dedicated to the art of disguise. Also included is an autobiographical sketch of what happened to Takahashi when she suddenly found herself cat-sitting. Out of all of the stories in this volume, I found “Sleep and Forget” the most memorable, just because tend to enjoy Takahashi when she turns her hand to more serious stories that blend action and romance.

If you’re a little intimidated by the thought of tackling Takahashi, I think that these Rumic World Trilogy volumes are a worthwhile investment. While they might be out of print, they are still easy to acquire. Sometimes when reading anthology manga volumes, I put them down thinking that most of the stories were auditions for longer series that didn’t quite make the grade. I didn’t get that feeling when reading the Rumic World stories, as everything seemed nicely resolved and self-contained.


Check out the Manga Moveable Feast for more bloggers talking about Rumiko Takahashi.

Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce

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From the back cover:
“From now on I’m Alan of Trebond, the younger twin. I’ll be a knight.”

And so young Alanna of Trebond begins the journey to knighthood. Though a girl, Alanna has always craved the adventure and daring allowed only for boys; her twin brother, Thom, yearns to learn the art of magic. So one day they decide to switch places: disguised as a girl, Thom heads for the convent to learn magic; Alanna, pretending to be a boy, is on her way to the castle of King Roald to begin her training as a page.

But the road to knighthood is not an easy one. As Alanna masters the skills necessary for battle, she must also learn to control her heart and to discern her enemies from her allies.

Filled with swords and sorcery, adventure and intrigue, good and evil, Alanna’s first adventure begins—one that will lead to the fulfillment of her dreams and the magical destiny that will make her a legend in her land.

Review:
For a period of several years, I was an administrator on an online roleplaying game based on a popular series of children’s fantasy books starring a protagonist with a peculiarly shaped scar. New players to this game would frequently submit applications for characters that read very similar to this:

“Ten-year-old Alanna has red hair, purple eyes, and a twin brother. She is very smart, determined, and brave. Plus, she has a great magical gift, so great that she will one day be able to succeed in curing a deadly sickness where all other healers have failed. She also excels at becoming the best at unarmed combat and swordsmanship (albeit with quite a lot of practice), distrusting bad guys instantly, and conveniently finding ancient, powerful swords with sparkly crystals on them.”

Okay, perhaps that’s a bit better than your average newbie attempt, but there are still some striking similarities. This resulted in me snickering out loud the first time Alanna’s looks—for, yes, that paragraph is describing the protagonist of this book—were mentioned, and in rolling my eyes every time her awesomeness was further established. The action in the book covers several years, and Alanna’s plan is to divulge her secret on her eighteenth birthday, after she is made a knight. It’s certainly welcome to see a female proving herself in that environment so adeptly. I don’t mean to suggest that awesome women cannot exist, but after a while I started asking myself, “What next?”

Perhaps such a heroine appeals more to young adults, the intended audience for this book. There are some good messages here about applying oneself when the things you want to do prove challenging and not letting anyone’s idea of your limitations get in your way. It’s just that everything kind of happens too easily. Even though we know Alanna is spending hours and hours practicing, her evolution from fumbling beginner to “a matchless swordsman” doesn’t seem to take very long. The climactic battle at the end against an immortal race of evil beings living in “the black city” also seems too simple.

In the end, I liked Alanna: The First Adventure enough to continue with the rest of the quartet. It appears to be the first book Pierce published, so it’s no wonder it doesn’t match up to my favorites amongst her works.

License request day: Global Garden

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MJ and Michelle Smith took their Off the Shelf column on the road this week, discussing Saki Hiwatari’s Please Save My Earth (Viz) over at The Hooded Utilitarian. I enjoyed the discussion so much that I took a look at other works by Hiwatari. One of them features the ghost of Albert Einstein.

If you’re anything like me, this is all you need to know to want to read at least one volume of the series, because legendary theoretical physicists just don’t show up in shôjo manga as often as they should.

The series, Global Garden, ran for eight volumes in Hakusensha’s Hana to Yume in the early 2000s. In it, two young men share a precognitive dream that the world tree is dying because of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They foresee a young girl being able to heal the tree and save the world, so Einstein branches out into theoretical pharmacology and gives them something to slow their aging. Einstein dies, and his disembodied spirit offers these eternally youthful do-gooders guidance as they wait about 50 years for the girl who can save the world. Along the way, someone manages to make a clone that’s half psychic slow-aging guy, half Einstein. So, one of the protagonists has a baby with Einstein, basically.

Global Garden also promises several items off of the classic-sounding-shôjo menu: gender fluidity, a seriously magical girl, and complex blended-family dynamics, and mixes them in with an environmental message. Plus psychic powers. And Einstein’s ghost. Hakusensha offers some preview pages of the first volume.

It’s been published in French by Delcourt as Global Garden: Einstein’s Last Dream. I suspect this is because the French are better at marketing manga and know that, when you’ve got the shôjo Einstein card in your hand, you play it.

This isn’t Einstein’s only appearance in manga. Most obviously, there’s Edu-Manga: Albert Einstein (Digital Manga), written by Isao Himuro and illustrated by Kotaro Iwasaki. A teen Einstein clone is part of the student body of Kumiko Suekane’s Afterschool Charisma (Viz). It seems odd that he’s not a cast member of Kouta Hirano’s Drifters (Dark Horse), but perhaps the available information on that series is incomplete.

Since we’re on the subject, what are some of your favorite examples of actual people from history showing up in manga under unlikely circumstances?



Ai Ore Volume 1

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Ai Ore Volume 1 by Mayu Shinjo

I don’t think I’ve ever blogged much about Mayu Shinjo’s series Sensual Phrase, mostly because I wrote about it for Library Journal’s Xpress Reviews online a long long time ago. If you scroll down this page you can see my review of the final volume. Sensual Phrase was pure trashy soapy fun, as you might expect from a series about a virginal (but not for long) girl who inexplicably becomes recruited to be the lyricist of a popular rock band. Shinju’s series fill a niche that isn’t often explored here for translated manga – more mature shoujo. We’ve got some other examples like Butterflies, Flowers (which I consider to be josei masquerading as shoujo) but not much else.

Ai Ore deals with superficially swapping traditional gender roles and romance in a teen rock band saga format. An androgynous band named Blaue Rosen is faced with the loss of their lead singer. All the pretty boys in the band are actually girls who attend the same all female high school. A cute girl named Akira asks to audition for the part, but the stoic lead guitarist Mizuki doesn’t want anyone else singing her songs. Of course Akira turns out to be a boy, and a romance between the tall and rangy Mizuki and the short and cute Akira begins. Mizuki’s handsomeness cause her to be treated as a major crush object by all the girls at her school, and Akira’s feminine charms have given him the title of his school’s “princess”. When Mizuki and Akira are together, misunderstandings abound as Mizuki’s classmates don’t understand why she is favoring a single girl with her attention and the boys at Akira’s school are disappointed that a handsome boy is monopolizing the attention of their princess. Shenanigans!

Unfortunately the switch in outward appearances doesn’t mean that Shinjo’s characters personalities are switched as well. For all his girlish features, Akira is a fairly typical alpha male, relentlessly pursuing his goal of dating Mizuki and joining her band despite her not very convincing protestations. While Mizuki professes to hate men, and is committed to maintaining her princely outward appearance, her inexplicable feelings for Akira turn her timorous. She doesn’t project the self-confidence and cool that she’s able to maintain as part of her stage performance. Shinjo’s romantic plot devices have a striking similarity to many of the tropes that pop up in old school romance novels. Threats of rape and sexual assault are common, and I was a little bummed out yet unsurprised that the end of this volume focused on several scenarios of this type. I am generally a big fan of cross dressing manga but Ai Ore didn’t totally win me over, despite plenty of over the top pronouncements like Akira saying “Instead of singing about love, drown yourself in me!” It was a little hard for me to believe that Akira is more physically dominating than Mizuki when he’s drawn to be around a foot shorter than her.

Existing Mayu Shinjo fans will find a lot to like about Ai Ore. It is an oversized edition of 300 pages, with color pages in the front and a character gallery in the back. Even though I’m not finding this manga as immediately addicting as Sensual Phrase, I’ll want to check out the second volume.

Review copy provided by the publisher