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Pick of the Week: Takahashi Edition

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With this month’s Rumiko Takahashi-centered Manga Moveable Feast now underway, the Manga Bookshelf crew discusses their recommendations for some Takahashi first reads.

KATE: If someone asked me, “Which Rumiko Takahashi title should I read first?”, I’d direct them to Mermaid Saga, one of Takahashi’s shortest — and best — series. Mermaid Saga focuses on Yuta, a four-hundred-year-old fisherman on a quest to restore his mortality. Yuta crisscrosses Japan in search of a mermaid who can grant his wish, along the way encountering thieves, murderers, and immortal beings, all of whom seek mermaid flesh for their own purposes. As I noted back in October, Mermaid Saga is one of Takahashi’s most accessible works. “Takahashi’s writing is brisk and assured, propelled by snappy dialogue and genuinely creepy scenarios,” I explained. “[Though] the imagery is tame by horror standards, Takahashi doesn’t shy away from the occasional grotesque or gory image, using them to underscore the ugly consequences of seeking immortality.” Best of all, Mermaid Saga stands up to multiple readings; I revisited the series last year, and was just as engrossed on my third pass through the material as I had been on my first.

MICHELLE: If someone asked me the same question, I think my answer would be InuYasha. Despite its sprawl (56 volumes!) and its penchant for repetition, InuYasha is deservedly a shounen classic. When I reviewed volumes 36 and 37 for Manga Recon two years ago, I attempted to explain why the series remains so endearing to me despite its flaws.

“The answer lies in the series’ characters. Like any good sitcom, InuYasha boasts a cast of likable leads. Everyone has their own subplot—Miroku is cursed with a “wind tunnel” in his hand that is slowly killing him, Sango’s late brother has been reanimated by a Shikon shard and forced to serve Naraku—and genuinely cares for the others. For every storyline that pans out exactly as one expects, there are nice scenes like the one near the end of volume 36, where Kagome and Inuyasha share a quiet, peaceful moment in a tree, musing upon how happy they are to have the other by their side.”

MJ: As the least Takahashi-literate of the lot, I’m not sure my recommendation is really the best for a first read, though it’s certainly my favorite. Though I’ve finally begun to catch up on her lengthy catalogue, my heart still belongs to Maison Ikkoku, my own first Takahashi series. I’m a real sucker for grown-up romantic comedy and Maison Ikkoku hits the spot just as perfectly as can be. Warm, funny, and just over-the-top enough to make its rare, quiet moments really ring true, Maison Ikkoku is a veritable buffet of raw humanity, presented with true affection by its immensely skillful author.

Though I have never written coherently on the subject, I’ll point you to some who have, particularly Johanna Draper Carlson and our own Cathy Yan.

DAVID: Would it be perverse of me to pick an out-of-print title as an introduction to Takahashi? Probably, but I hope I can be excused, because Rumic Theater should be in print at all times, possibly in hardcover with informative biographical pieces added. As I noted in my very old review, the short stories are “vintage Takahashi… The shorts are a great showcase for her trademark wit and warmth. As always, her characters are stylized but look real and human, even in the extremities of comic distress.” If you can’t find a copy, you’re certainly welcome to wag your finger in my direction, but you could also write a cordial but forceful email to Viz to get this back on the shelves. Since some of her series are dauntingly long, it would be a great snack pack to hand to the wary.

MMF: Discovering Ranma and Ranma

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In every art form, it seems like there are chameleons and specialists. You can appreciate a particular actor for the way he or she vanishes into a role, or you can welcome the presence of a performer who has a narrower range but nails it every time. A novelist may embrace a variety of tones, subjects and styles over the course of their career, or they may choose to excel in a certain type of story told in a certain way.

I admire creative types from both categories, though I’ll admit to a slight preference for specialists, partly for the comforting familiarity they present. I know Meryl Streep is an extraordinary actress, but I feel no particular need to see everything she’s ever done. I also know that I’ll probably never mistake Eve Arden for any other performer or not be completely aware of her specific presence, but I go out of my way to watch any movie she’s ever done to bask in her brilliantly executed if more limited palette. The fun is in seeing the specialists find variations on their distinctive themes.

For my money, Rumiko Takihashi is one of our most treasured specialists. There are certain consistent elements in her work, whether it’s a nuts-and-bolts romantic comedy like Maison Ikkoku or a time-traveling fantasy epic like InuYasha. These recurring elements are always entirely welcome, in my opinion. They make reading a Takahashi title feel like catching up with an old friend whose life may have changed a bit in her absence but who is still comfortingly, reliably, charmingly herself.

To confirm this opinion, I decided to use the occasion of the Rumiko Takahashi Manga Moveable Feast to dive into a series I hadn’t yet read, Ranma 1/2. I know this is the series that not only introduced a lot of her admirers to Takahashi’s work and sometimes to manga itself, but I’d never gotten around to reading it. Part of this is due to the length of the series, which is a little daunting. But, while the selection of graphic novels at my local library isn’t comprehensive, they do have a robust supply of Takahashi’s work, including a full run of Ranma 1/2.

It’s about a highly skilled young martial artist named Ranma Saotome who has a bit of a problem. During rigorous training with his father, he fell into a cursed spring. Now, whenever he’s hit with cold water, he turns into a female version of himself. (Hot water reverses the transformation.) He and his father become guests of the Tendo family and their “School of Indiscriminate Grappling.” Fathers Tendo and Saotome have arranged a marriage between Ranma and one of the three Tendo daughters, Akane. She’s a tough cookie, and she’s not thrilled that this key component of her future has been decided for her. And she doesn’t seem to like Ranma that much.

I say “seem” because one of the most recognizable aspects of Takahashi manga is the ambivalent romantic relationship. Takahashi doesn’t waste any time twigging readers to the fact that Ranma and Akane are ideally suited to one another, but she doesn’t make Ranma and Akane seem stupid for not instantly realizing it themselves. The trick with this kind of drawn-out courtship is to create honest obstacles to the eventual union, and Takahashi is very, very good at that kind of slow burn. Novelist Charles Reade is credited with instructing storytellers to “Make ‘em laugh; make ‘em cry; make ‘em wait,” and Takahashi has successfully embraced this mantra.

In Ranma 1/2, she does this mostly by making us laugh. Few activities seem to give her as much pleasure as humiliating her protagonists, and Ranma’s boy-to-girl transformations give Takahashi plenty of opportunities. When a bucket of cold water can drastically alter the direction of a story arc, your narrative opportunities expand, and Takahashi makes excellent use of this device. It’s solid, secret-identity farce that offers quick sight gags and more complex complications.

This brings us to another Takahashi specialty, the idiot rival. In the three volumes I’ve read so far, there has been a delightful variety of this type of character, and Ranma’s dual nature makes their attentions even more potentially awkward. There’s school kendo star Kuno, who wants Akane for himself and detests male Ranma as a result. But he’s instantly smitten with scrappy, adorable female Ranma. His smug, conniving sister shows up, as does an old rival of Ranma’s with his own humiliating curse.

While all of these romantic complications force Ranma and Akane’s relationship to shift and evolve, they also result in yet another Takahashi motif, the ridiculous battle sequence. In her universe, nothing seems to say “I love you” quite as much as a completely over-the-top combat challenge. That neither Akane nor Ranma seem in the least inclined to accept the romantic terms of defeat in these tourneys matters very little; they like to kick ass. Cementing or protecting their relationship is generally just gravy, and they keep whatever savor they derive from that to themselves.

So they combine martial arts with rhythm gymnastics in one memorable sequence. As I read this, the possibilities offered by Takahashi’s shamelessness immediately sprang to mind. “They could fight people on ice skates!” A few chapters later, my theory was realized. If it sounds formulaic, it’s not, because Takahashi is a versatile specialist. As comfortable as she is with her style, she doesn’t seem inclined to repeat herself. Good comedy comes partly from the ability of the storyteller to surprise, to find new corners in a familiar, heightened universe. It’s why television sitcoms can run for a decade on the same premise and still be welcome.

This is helped by Takahashi’s ability to build sprawling, likable casts. Ranma an Akane’s fathers don’t play huge roles in the story, but they’re fun examples of the kind of parental figures that are both smarter and more experienced than the heroes but still goofy and quirky. Akane’s sisters get a few good bits, as does the family doctor whose romantic inclinations tend to overcome his professional detachment. I mentioned the rivals earlier, and I certainly look forward to meeting more of these clueless, narcissistic fools, because Takahashi tends to knock that character type out of the park.

But what about the “make ‘em cry” edict? Nobody’s ever going to mistake Ranma 1/2 for a three-hanky drama, but it is invested with genuine feeling. (Great farce always is.) This is almost entirely confined to Ranma and Akane’s underlying feelings for each other and the obstacles they face, but Takahashi does sprinkle a number of honest, moving moments here and there. The series wouldn’t work as well without them; it’s the difference between liking characters and just being amused by them.

Ranma 1/2 has all of the expected qualities of a Takahashi manga: the charm, the slapstick, the warmth, the durability. It also has that last alchemical property, Takahashi’s ability to surprise even when she’s traveling familiar territory. It’s that last quality that makes her the best kind of specialist in the world of comics.

Excel Saga Volume 22

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By Rikdo Koshi. Released in Japan by Shonen Gahosha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young King OURS. Released in North America by Viz.

Yes, at last, we are CAUGHT UP with Viz’s serialization of Excel Saga! Do you know what this means? It means you won’t get to see me talk about it till April 2012, as Excel Saga is down to a yearly release. Ah well. In the meantime, we have the action-packed Volume 22! And I’m not joking, after the seeming stasis of the Teriha arc and its aftermath, things all seem to be coming together here, and everyone clashes against each other.

First off, to resolve the minor cliffhanger from last volume, Il Palazzo appears on Excel’s homebrew computer to tell her and Elgala to keep doing what they’re doing and do not attempt contact. Excel finds this suspicious, but sends Hyatt (who is not ‘on individual assignment’ back to him while she and Elgala reconnoiter. Excel is really dealing with a lot here – she’s slowly getting her Teriha memories back, she’s realizing that Il Palazzo has been compromised and can’t necessarily be trusted, and she knows that telling Elgala this would be a mistake. So she puts a straw dummy of herself at the riverbank, and goes off on her own to sneak into Professor Shiouji’s home base. Honestly, throughout this volume Excel shows impressive ability to think and plan. After everything she’s been through, it’s nice to see her get focused.

Of course, that’s not to say she’s suddenly competent. She does get into the base, through a combination of luck and her repressed memories. Once there she runs into Iwata, who is somewhat taken aback to find that Teriha is now attacking him. The two of them get into a fight as Misaki, Watanabe and Sumiyoshi also appear. Sadly, Iwata then recalls fighting Excel’s doppelganger last volume and tries to use robot strength to knock Excel out. It works all too well, and now they have to deal with a captured fugitive.

Excel being Excel, she goes back and forth between berating her captors and demanding food. Well, she has been living as a fugitive for a while. They bring her food, and she eats about 12 bento boxes worth. Misaki even notes that she’s not worried that it’s poisoned, which Excel responds to with “You couldn’t put enough in here to kill me.” Probably true, but it’s rare for Excel to be aware of her own superhuman attributes. She then gets into a long discussion with Misaki about their respective organizations, which ends up telling us more about Misaki than it does Excel. Excel is in her ‘for the greater glory of ACROSS’ mode, while Misaki is at her cynical best, noting she doesn’t care who rules the world as long as she is left alone. Her image on Page 53 is actually rather scary in its combination of threat and disinterest.

They would like Excel to just go home, but the trouble is they aren’t sure how she got in – and neither is she, since she did it mostly on instinct. She does decide to escape from the bed they currently have her handcuffed to, and gets out of her room by simply ripping out the computer lock with her bare hands. Sadly, this also sets off the big alarms all over the base, and gets Dr. Kabapu down there – who most certainly is NOT for letting her go. As all this is happening, Il Palazzo (or more likely Miwa) sends RopponExcel (called Isshiki throughout, aka ‘First’) to capture our Excel. Everyone converges in a hallway, and the two Excels, now that there isn’t a bomb about to go off, have the big confrontation Elgala expected in Volume 20. Excel has mad kung-fu skills. Isshiki has a hand laser that can sedate into unconsciousness. Round 1 goes to Isshiki.

Isshiki, before this, also managed to break Iwata (yes, again) in two. This does not, however, prevent Kabapu from using his body as a puppet to attack Teriha. Given that Iwata is unconscious and therefore can’t actually be stupid, this fight is far more even than many other fights involving Isshiki. Kabapu destroys her hand laser; Isshiki then destroys his control (and it is revealed that yes, it’s Miwa rahter than Il Palazzo who’s calling the shots for Isshiki). Intriguingly, Kabapu notes that Isshiki is EQUAL to Iwata in power, not surpassing him. Then the fight is promptly finished by Excel herself, who is still groggy but is awake, kung-fu fighting, fast as lightning, and REALLY REALLY ANGRY. She kicks Iwata (controlled by Kabapu) into a pile, grabs Isshiki, and screams into her face, demanding to know where Il Palazzo is. There’s a short crackle, and just like in Volume 9 (remember Volume 9?), Isshiki shorts out in contact with Excel and folds like a ton of bricks. Excel, while noting that she’s still really heavy, then PICKS HER UP OVER ONE SHOULDER and asks Misaki where the exit is. And then exits, as security’s basically completely shot anyway. I merely note once more that when Excel is not paying attention to her limitations, she is astounding, given Isshiki weighs about one ton.

So now Excel is back on the riverbank, with Elgala. But as a bonus, she also has Isshiki, who is following Excel’s orders, although Excel still can’t get any information out of her. Elgala is hopelessly lost when having to deal with two Excels, and one of my favorite lines has her asking Isshiki to say “I am an imposter” after everything she says. Excel, though, is not just standing there having Isshiki catch fish and cook for them because she’s good at it (though she is). She’s trying to draw the enemy out. And when this happens, she sends Elgala out to deal with them. Sadly, it’s only Professor Shiouji, who is totally unimpressed with Elgala’s supposed stick-fighting skills. He asks Elgala to tell Excel that he, like Misaki, is not her enemy, but not her ally either – and that Umi is totally innocent in all of this.

As this is going on, Hyatt’s corpse floats down the river, leaving a red tide in its wake. Upon revival, she notes that the ACROSS base was deserted. So our heroines are all back together again. (We also have the funniest part of the volume here, when Elgala is overexcited and Excel hands her what she thinks is water – only to find it’s a cup of Hyatt’s blood. She promptly hallucinates the Sanzu River, with her dead form crossing it in a small boat to get to the afterlife. Upon returning to reality, she notes “Senior Hyatt, yours is a dark eucharist.”) (Oh, Happy Easter, by the way!)

Now Excel is positive that Miwa is their enemy, but needs more information. So after ‘pretending’ to have a fight to throw off their observers (which just causes Hyatt to collapse in a bloody heap in confusion), she and Elgala proceed to ambush Misaki, hogtie her, and toss her into their wheelbarrow (wow, it’s REALLY been a while since we’ve seen the wheelbarrow). Misaki is very angry about this, for several reasons: 1) She would have talked to them anyway, no need for kidnapping; 2) not knowing what was going on, she set off her alarm so that Iwata and the others are coming for her, and 3) she doesn’t have much to tell them anyway. She says Miwa’s a free-agent, and more self-centered than evil. Iwata then comes to get her… in the body of Nishiki, as he’s now body-hopped again. While Excel and Elgala escape, Misaki deals with this new crisis. Shiouji has no idea how he jumps bodies, his own body is slowly dying without his consciousness in it, and he doesn’t know how to fix it. Last time Misaki punched him – this time, she tries kissing him (in Nishiki’s body – Ropponmatsu 2, for those playing at home), a full page-and-a-half kiss of awesome. It works, though Misaki is starting to fray at the edges a bit with everything going on.

As is Watanabe, as the cliffhanger has him power up his suit when he sees Hyatt, his one true love, lying dead in the arms of “Excel”, aka Isshiki. Watanabe’s been ‘dissolutely evil’ for some time now, but it appears his feeling for “Miss Ayasugi” have not dimmed. Cliffhanger!

This volume was fantastic, showcasing Excel at her finest, giving Misaki and company lots to do, and having Elgala carry the bulk of the humor at her expense. All this and liner notes by Carl Horn! Do yourself a favor and buy Excel Saga. It’ll make many folks very happy.

Random Sunday question: Takahashi

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The next round of the Manga Moveable Feast begins this week, hosted by Rob (Panel Patter) McMonigal and focusing on the works of the wonderful Rumiko Takahashi. Rob has been conducting ongoing examination of her work with his Year of Takahashi project.

For today’s question, what’s your favorite work by Takahashi? There are lots to choose from, though some are sadly out of print. Is there an unlicensed work you’d like to read?

 

Blue Exorcist, Vol. 1

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Have you ever seen the pilot episode of Law & Order? Most of the regular characters are present, and the script follows the three-act structure familiar to anyone who’s watched an episode of any Law & Order series, but the pacing is slack; the dialogue fizzles where it should crackle; and the actors struggle to create believable relationships between the characters, even as the script demands that they explain things to one another that, presumably, they’d already know from working together. Small wonder that “Everybody’s Favorite Bagman” languished for nearly a year before NBC rescued the show from limbo and ordered a full season of episodes.

So it is with Blue Exorcist, which has a first chapter that might charitably be described as a “pilot episode.” In these opening thirty pages, Kato introduces orphan Rin Okimura, a hot-tempered young man; Yukio, Rin’s snot-nosed fraternal twin; and Father Fujimoto, their guardian. Rin, we learn, is a direct descendant of Satan, and is in imminent danger of going over to the dark side. Father Fujimoto, however, has kept this information from his young charge, seeing fit only to explain the complexities of Rin’s lineage when Satan’s minions try to spirit Rin back to Gehenna, the demon realm. (Like all manga priests, Father Fujimoto spends more time fighting demons than preparing Sunday sermons or ministering to the sick, hungry, and bereaved.) An epic confrontation between Satan and Father Fujimoto leaves Rin’s mentor dead, forcing the boy to decide whether to cast his lot with Satan or with humanity.

There’s no reason why this opening prelude has to be such a bumpy, predictable ride, but Kato seems so intent on relating Rin’s entire Tragic Past in one installment that she trades naturalism for economy. (Sample: “I see you’ve returned. An overnight trip to the job center? How diligent of you.” And how helpful of Father Fujimoto to ask Rin a question to which he already knows the answer!) In the second chapter, however, Kato finds her stride with the material: the dialogue is looser and funnier; the characters’ relationships are more firmly and plausibly established; and she introduces her first genuinely memorable character, Mephisto Pheles. The plot is stock, with Rin vowing to avenge Father Fujimoto by enrolling in an exorcism “cram school,” but Kato enlivens the proceedings with humorous twists and nifty artwork.

And oh, the artwork! It’s crisp and expressive, filled with small but suggestive details. Mephisto, for example, carries a patched umbrella and wears a polka-dot cravat — two minor flourishes that help establish him as a slightly decadent figure, elegant but down at the heels. The not-very-imaginatively named True Cross Town provides another instructive example of Kato’s meticulous and thoughtful draftsmanship: she lavishes considerable attention on architectural details and infrastructure, stacking layers of houses and buildings on top of one another to form a giant urban ziggeraut:

In short, Kato has created an imaginary urban landscape that seems to have evolved naturally over time, with old and new buildings side-by-side and modern modes of transport straddling canals and rivers. That kind of thoroughness may not serve much purpose in the context of a manga about demon fighters, but it lends Blue Exorcist a temporal and geographic specificity that’s sometimes missing in other areas of the story — like the religious bits.

Whatever my reservations about the first chapter, I freely admit that I’d fallen head-over-heels for Blue Exorcist by the end of the second. The brisk pacing, sharp artwork, and cheeky tone of these later chapters convinced me that Kazue Kato is in firm control of her story, and has successfully laid the foundation for the series’ first major story arc. Bring it on, I say!

BLUE EXORCIST, VOL. 1 • BY KAZUE KATO • VIZ MEDIA • 198 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Blue Exorcist, Vol. 1

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Have you ever seen the pilot episode of Law & Order? Most of the regular characters are present, and the script follows the three-act structure familiar to anyone who’s watched an episode of any Law & Order series, but the pacing is slack; the dialogue fizzles where it should crackle; and the actors struggle to create believable relationships between the characters, even as the script demands that they explain things to one another that, presumably, they’d already know from working together. Small wonder that “Everybody’s Favorite Bagman” languished for nearly a year before NBC rescued the show from limbo and ordered a full season of episodes.

So it is with Blue Exorcist, which has a first chapter that might charitably be described as a “pilot episode.” In these opening thirty pages, Kato introduces orphan Rin Okimura, a hot-tempered young man; Yukio, Rin’s snot-nosed fraternal twin; and Father Fujimoto, their guardian. Rin, we learn, is a direct descendant of Satan, and is in imminent danger of going over to the dark side. Father Fujimoto, however, has kept this information from his young charge, seeing fit only to explain the complexities of Rin’s lineage when Satan’s minions try to spirit Rin back to Gehenna, the demon realm. (Like all manga priests, Father Fujimoto spends more time fighting demons than preparing Sunday sermons or ministering to the sick, hungry, and bereaved.) An epic confrontation between Satan and Father Fujimoto leaves Rin’s mentor dead, forcing the boy to decide whether to cast his lot with Satan or with humanity.

There’s no reason why this opening prelude has to be such a bumpy, predictable ride, but Kato seems so intent on relating Rin’s entire Tragic Past in one installment that she trades naturalism for economy. (Sample: “I see you’ve returned. An overnight trip to the job center? How diligent of you.” And how helpful of Father Fujimoto to ask Rin a question to which he already knows the answer!) In the second chapter, however, Kato finds her stride with the material: the dialogue is looser and funnier; the characters’ relationships are more firmly and plausibly established; and she introduces her first genuinely memorable character, Mephisto Pheles. The plot is stock, with Rin vowing to avenge Father Fujimoto by enrolling in an exorcism “cram school,” but Kato enlivens the proceedings with humorous twists and nifty artwork.

And oh, the artwork! It’s crisp and expressive, filled with small but suggestive details. Mephisto, for example, carries a patched umbrella and wears a polka-dot cravat — two minor flourishes that help establish him as a slightly decadent figure, elegant but down at the heels. The not-very-imaginatively named True Cross Town provides another instructive example of Kato’s meticulous and thoughtful draftsmanship: she lavishes considerable attention on architectural details and infrastructure, stacking layers of houses and buildings on top of one another to form a giant urban ziggeraut:

In short, Kato has created an imaginary urban landscape that seems to have evolved naturally over time, with old and new buildings side-by-side and modern modes of transport straddling canals and rivers. That kind of thoroughness may not serve much purpose in the context of a manga about demon fighters, but it lends Blue Exorcist a temporal and geographic specificity that’s sometimes missing in other areas of the story — like the religious bits.

Whatever my reservations about the first chapter, I freely admit that I’d fallen head-over-heels for Blue Exorcist by the end of the second. The brisk pacing, sharp artwork, and cheeky tone of these later chapters convinced me that Kazue Kato is in firm control of her story, and has successfully laid the foundation for the series’ first major story arc. Bring it on, I say!

BLUE EXORCIST, VOL. 1 • BY KAZUE KATO • VIZ MEDIA • 198 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

PR: Viz offers summer reading

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I’m always happy to see publishers offer inexpensive entry points to long-running series, and Viz will be offering four of those this summer. They’re collecting early volumes of three of their most popular series — Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto, Tite Kubo’s Bleach, and Hiromu Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist — and a critically acclaimed title that could probably benefit from the omnibus treatment — Yello Tanabe’s Kekkaishi. In addition to being on Kate Dacey’s list of The Best Manga You’re Not Reading, the series has received the 2006 Shogakukan Manga Award for shônen and enjoys pride of place on the 2008 Great Graphic Novels for Teens list.

The full press release is after the jump.

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License request day: Aoi Hana

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The impetus for a license request can be very simple, but it can also come from a variety of triggers. For instance, someone might casually mention a Japanese magazine that interests me like Ohta Shuppan’s Manga Erotics F. (Any magazine that can host both Natsume Ono’s Ristorante Paradiso and Usumaru Furuya’s Lychee Light Club is bound to catch and hold my attention.) It might also be a week when The Josei Alphabet featured a number of intriguing-sounding titles that featured romances between women. And one might add to that the happy anticipation of the first volume of Takako Shumira’s Wandering Son, to be translated by Matt Thorn, who always has interesting things to say on the subject.

So, with these guideposts, we arrive quite naturally at Takako’s Aoi Hana, a complex yuri romance which is running in Manga Erotics F and has five collected volumes at this point. It’s about the web of friendships and romance among the members of a high-school drama club. For me, commentary on the quality of yuri romance doesn’t get more reliable than that provided by Erica (Okazu) Friedman, so let’s see what she has to say about the series, which she’s read in Japanese.

She’s described the first volume as “both cute and sweet – and I liked it quite a bit. Which is pretty surprising, as it is both genuinely cute and sweet.” (Erica often likes her heroines to carry powerful automatic weapons, as do we all, and it doesn’t seem like there’s much ordinance in Aoi Hana.) The second volume leads Erica to conclude that, “when I read any book, part of what goes on in my mind is ‘Would I want to hang out with any of these people? Would I let anyone in this story come over for lunch?’ No one, not one character in Life would be allowed in my house – while just about everyone in Aoi Hana would.”

Erica finds the third volume “emotional without being histrionic.” The fourth reveals inner strengths of some of the characters. The fifth earns praise for the careful rendering of the heroine’s gradual move towards accepting her sexual orientation. Erica has also reviewed the anime, which ran on Crunchyroll, and hosted a guest review of the first volume of the French edition, Fleurs Bleues, which is being published in Kazé’s Asuka imprint. Asuka offers extensive preview pages from each of the four volumes they’ve published so far, so you can get a look at Shimura’s spare, elegant visual style.

While my initial interest in Aoi Hana sprang from a convergence of whims, further investigation has led me to conclude that it’s the kind of series I always really enjoy: a sensitive examination of adolescence featuring kids pursuing an interesting hobby. It’s also got attractive art and an intelligent look at same-sex relationships. Why hasn’t someone published this already?

Hanasakeru Seishonen – Helping me through Demon Sacred withdrawal

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One of the unfinished series from Tokyopop that I’ll miss the most is Demon Sacred. It had a total commitment to shoujo insanity, and I’m sad that I won’t be able to see the end of this story about trans-dimensional unicorns, teen idol doppelganger demons, and reverse aging teens. Michelle pointed out to me that Crunchyroll is streaming Hanasakeru Seishonen, an anime based on another Natsumi Itsuki manga. After watching the first few episodes, it seems like Hanasakeru Seishonen isn’t quite as crazy as Demon Sacred (I’m not sure what could be) but the reverse harem scenario and off the wall plot elements will serve as compensation for the lack of new Itsuki manga in my life.

I’ve only watched the first four episodes of this thirty-nine episode series, so I’m sure there are some long-running plot elements that haven’t been introduced yet. But I thought I’d give a brief overview of the series for other manga fans that might be experiencing Demon Sacred withdrawal. Kajika is a mysterious girl who has spent most of her childhood on an isolated tropical island. The first episode of Hanasakeru Seishonen shows her enrolling in a normal Japanese high school and starting to blend in with her classmates. The focus on Japanese high school life is quickly diverted as Kajika’s incredibly rich father orders her to return to him in order to play a “marriage game” where she has to somehow identify, woo, and decide who she wants to marry among the three potential son-in-laws he has picked out. Along for the journey are Kajika’s baby-faced bodyguard Toranosuke and her companion Lee-Leng, who just happens to be the heir of a rich Chinese family. While the set-up appears to be a straightforward game of mystery date, Itsuki has a way of making things more interesting than you might expect from what initially seems to be a simple reverse harem scenario.

The first candidate for Kajika’s affections is Eugene Volkan, a man with unique coloring that reminds Kajika of her long-lost leopard companion Mustafa. Kajika decides that Eugene is carrying Mustafa’s spirit and immediately is drawn to him. Little does she know that the Volkan family has a complicated history involving insanity, artificial insemination, and suicide. Eugene himself is a stone cold womanizer who seems to set up a parade of woman who fall in love with him and then decide to kill themselves when he doesn’t return their affections. Kajika immediately latches onto Eugene and starts telling him stories about his previous life as a leopard. Lee-Leng is supposed to be overseeing Kajika’s progress in the “marriage game” and he views Eugene as an entirely unsuitable candidate, I suspect because he secretly wants to marry her himself.

There was plenty of drama in the first four episodes of Hanasakeru Seishonen. While it didn’t feature the endless parade of delightfully improbable plot elements that I found fascinating in the Demon Sacred manga, I’m expecting that the story will grow more and more complex, as Itsuki tends to touch on different areas when building her characters’ worlds. I’ll be watching the next few episodes, because I figure in a series as long as this it will grow more complex and interesting as it progresses.

From the stack: Chew: Taster’s Choice

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It’s time again to look at a title from the top 10 list of the 2011 Great Graphic Novels for Teens list assembled by the Young Adult Library Services Association of the American Library Association. The exercise is providing a nice variety of reading experiences, from a gracefully rendered adventure on the high seas to a slice of adolescent life in Guadeloupe. This month’s entry is Chew: Taster’s Choice (Image), the first collection a novel and occasionally nauseating detective series written and lettered by John Layman and drawn and colored by Rob Guillory.

This volume introduces us to Tony Chu, a police detective who also happens to be “cibopathic,” which means he experiences the full history of everything he eats. You may worry about food miles, but at least you don’t have to travel every one of them with your salad. As a result, Chu isn’t a very enthusiastic eater. The gift-curse does have its uses in the course of investigations, and Chu ends up drawing the interest of a strangely sinister Food and Drug Administration. The agency hires him to help solve food-related crimes.

Chu is assigned to work with fellow cibopath Mason Savoy, who is as stout and hearty as Chu is scrawny and drawn. They investigate the death of a food inspector, and Chu becomes smitten with a writer whose unique ability is to write about food so expressively that her readers react viscerally to her prose. Before Chu can pursue this fetching raconteur, he starts to sense that there may be more to the FDA and Savoy than he suspected, and the volume ends with Chu’s life changing drastically yet again.

Layman has a great sense of pacing. The chapters generally charge along at a nice clip, but there’s plenty of space for quirky details and funny set pieces. Guillory seems ideally suited for the material, straddling the line between amusingly absurd and full-on gross. Together, they’ve assembled an interesting cast, conducted some smart world building, and established an underlying plot that seems like it could sustain the series for some time. (Why did the FDA drive the poultry industry underground?) They also create enough of a level of internal logic to make the weirder elements fit quite nicely.

The only thing they haven’t seemed to do by the end of this volume is to figure out ways for Chu to solve crimes without eating human flesh. Given the volume of evidence available at the average crime scene, it seems like cannibalism would be a last resort for someone of Chu’s abilities. There are lots of marginally edible things lying around that are bound to be at least somewhat usefully resonant before starting in on the (not chicken) fingers. Aside from being revolting, the device feels limiting. Much as I enjoyed this volume, I want to see the hero vary his diet.