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New NANA Project! Vols. 15-16

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After a short hiatus, the NANA Project is back! This time around, we look at volumes 15 and 16, focusing especially on (in Danielle’s words), “Yazawa’s view of popular art, Nana and Ren’s disintegrating relationship, and loving Nana in the past, present and future.”

For my part, I go on quite a bit over the virtues of “blind love:”

“MJ: I think this is absolutely true, and maybe makes it clear that *understanding* is not necessarily the key to… well, anything. I’m reminded of one of the stories from Kino no Tabi, “Land of Visible Pain.” In the story, Kino encounters a country of technologically-advanced people who had, at some point, come to the conclusion that if only they could truly understand each other’s pain, they’d be able to live together in perfect harmony. With this in mind, their scientists develop a way for them to all be able to hear each other’s thoughts. What happens ultimately, of course, is that they soon discover that understanding each other’s pain actually makes it *harder* for them to live together, and they eventually all end up isolated in their own homes, unable to stand being even within sight of one another.

I think to a great extent, Ren’s understanding of Nana’s deepest desires may actually make it more difficult for them to stay together. If anything, it may just make it easier for them to hurt each other, as I think he hurts Nana with his stunningly accurate assessment of her ugliest thoughts and feelings. I’m not suggesting that love is best maintained through rose-colored glasses, but I’m not sure that this level of brutal understanding is always a good thing. We all need someone in our lives who is biased in our favor, and this is most often the role of a romantic partner. I think it’s okay, and even *desirable*, for love to be just a little bit blind.”

Disagree? Tell me so in comments! :D

What a pleasure it is to be back, discussing this series with such wonderful women. Speaking for myself, I’d have to say that I probably enjoy The NANA Project more than nearly anything else I do as a manga blogger. It’s a bit heartbreaking to think about how near we are to the end of the series’ available volumes.

On a lighter note, Danielle asks at the end of the roundtable for suggestions from readers on what title the three of us should tackle next! Visit this month’s roundtable to weigh in!

For those just arriving, you can find the entire NANA Project archive at CBR’s Comics Should Be Good!

Pick of the Week: Not Love But Delicious Foods

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There’s quite a wealth of new manga and manhwa releases this week, according to Midtown Comics, but despite my love for things like Yotsuba&!, Goong, and Seiho Boys High School!, my vote must absolutely go to Fumi Yoshinaga’s Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy!, released in English by Yen Press.

From my recent discussion at Off the Shelf:

The book is essentially a tour of several of the author’s favorite Tokyo restaurants, highlighting each establishment’s specialties, and including details ranging all the way from atmosphere to parking recommendations. What makes it especially rewarding for Yoshinaga fans, however, is that Yoshinaga herself stars as the main character, surrounded by her circle of friends. How much of this is fictionalized, of course we can’t know, but it feels so authentic, the overwhelming sense for readers is that we’re getting a peek into Yoshinaga’s private world, with a delightful view of her real-life quirks, hopes, desires, and of course, her obsessive love of food.

Yoshinaga portrays herself as an aging, neurotic slacker who eats like a horse, routinely spills food on her clothing, and has a thing for cute, chubby men, all of which makes her even more appealing to an older female reader like me. She strikes exactly the right balance between self-deprecation and self-love, warding off any danger of approaching either desperation or narcissism. She’s neurotic, sure, but also keenly self-aware, and her affection for her friends (be they real or fictional) is palpable …

And then there’s the food. Oh, the food, Michelle. It took about five pages of this book to get my mouth watering, and it didn’t stop until the end. Even things like “liver sashimi” and “stewed beef tendon” manage to sound appetizing in this context.

You can also find it featured in my 2010 Gift Guide.

This single-volume manga could not possibly be more charming. Go pick one up for yourself!

From the stack: Genkaku Picasso vol. 1

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Between my fondness for Usumaru Furuya’s “Palepoli” strips in Viz’s Secret Comics Japan and my abiding love of episodic “psychic helper” manga, Genkaku Picasso (also from Viz) seemed likely to be a slam dunk. It’s not.

It’s about a high-school student who suffers a near-death experience and resumes life with the ability to see traumatic auras around his classmates, then capture their distress on his sketch pad. If he wants to continue to fend off premature death, he has to help these shrouded people with their issues. He’s the self-isolating type, so this isn’t a natural set of responsibilities for him, but at least he’s got the nagging, tiny ghost of a dead friend to prod him into doing the right thing.

There aren’t many surprises in the various adolescent traumas that our hero must confront, so the book’s interest is reliant on Furuya’s ability to layer compelling weirdness onto things like eating disorders, over-identification with pop idols, and daddy issues. There are some intermittent flourishes, some dollops of lurking nastiness, but the kids are on the dull side, and their woes need more verve than Furuya seems inclined to provide.

In fact, I sometimes found myself wondering if Furuya hadn’t determined on creating a satire without having any particularly novel observations on his subject other than “these are things that routinely happen in these stores.” The chapters sort of ramble through a set number of pages, not in an idiosyncratic, arrhythmic way, but in a “I have 20 pages of story to fill 50 pages of magazine” manner. I invariably lost interest before each tale’s conclusion, and I ended up concluding that, with Furuya, less may be more. He seems at his strongest when he’s being concise.

Part of the book’s problem might be that the protagonist, Hikari “Picasso” Hamura, isn’t especially pleasant company. He’s crabby when engaged, which can be a fun quality in a fictional character, and I wanted to like the fact that he doesn’t yearn for his classmates’ approval like so many of his shônen peers. But Hamura needs to be dragged into things too much, and he carps too much about how difficult his lot is. Beyond being annoying, it doesn’t read as organic. It feels more like a vamp, and a routine one at that.

The apparent time-killing gives me occasion to actively look for things that annoy me, even though I find Genkaku Picasso to be drawn very well. By volume’s end, I was improbably put out with Hamura’s pouty, blush-bruised lips. I know that the lips should barely have registered, that I had been given time to fixate on something minor and off-putting while so little was actually happening, and that it was less about the lips themselves than the fact that I’d had so little else to fill in the gaps of a rather lazy satire of a familiar formula.

I’m still looking forward to Furuya’s Lychee Light Club, due out from Vertical in April. It promises a much higher degree of adolescent perversion without any filter necessitated by placement in a shônen magazine while still being able to twist shonen conventions into knots. Maybe it was overly optimistic to expect that from Genkaku Picasso?

Papillon Volume 5/6

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Papillon Volume 5/6 by Miwa Ueda

I was happy to see signs of life in Kodansha’s North American arm with the recent summer lineup, but I was a little disappointed that the only ongoing Kodansha title that I actively purchase was left off the list. I’ve slacked off on getting Tsubasa and xxxHolic just because they seem to have gotten so weighed down by continuity. Wallflower is so episodic that I don’t feel like I’m missing much if I skip volumes, and while I enjoyed the first few volumes of Nodame Cantible, I haven’t gotten back into collecting that series. Papillon is pure trashy fun.

As I was reading this omnibus volume I was struck with how addicting Ueda makes this series despite the fact that none of her characters are sympathetic. Nice girl Ageha may be the heroine, but she’s essentially spineless and prone to collapsing under the weight of her own drama. Ageha’s twin Hana has a myriad of psychological issues that lead her to dress up as her sister to see if her boyfriends will fall for her twin, and she’s now trying to steal Ageha’s boyfriend away. Ageha’s boyfriend Ichijiku is a guidance counselor in training who somehow finds it appropriate to date a high schooler even though he might be trying to help build up her self-confidence. If the ending of Papillon involved the main characters dying in a fiery bus crash, I would not be all that disappointed. Yet Ueda’s soap opera makes me want to keep reading.

Ageha starts a part-time summer job at a restaurant where Hana’s ex-boyfriend Shinobu Shindo happens to be working. Shinobu used to have a crush on Ageha too, but when he told her about his feelings she thought he was teasing her. Hana confesses her feelings to Ichijiku and he rejects her. Then Ageha talks to Ichikiku in guidance counselor mode, telling him all about Shinobu without realizing that her new co-worker might inspire feelings of jealousy in her boyfriend. Angst and misunderstandings abound, and Hana start to act even more reprehensible than before when she disguises herself as Ageha and attempts to seduce Ichijiku. Meanwhile, a woman from Ichijiku’s past makes a sudden return, bringing yet another set of psychological problems for him and Ageha to deal with.

Ageha begins to show vague signs of self-awareness as she begins to analyze her own behavior. She actually helps Ichijiku with some of his problems, instead of being her usual flailing and helpless self. Hana keeps acting out so much, I am really hoping that she gets hit by a meteorite and dies. I hope that Kodansha decides to wrap up this series because even though I doubt my hopes of fiery death will be satisfied, I do want to see what happens next.

Manhwa Monday: Enter the Dae-Bon-So

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Welcome to another Manhwa Monday! Our featured article this week comes from the iSeeToon blog, where Jeong-Woo Seon (aka “mirugi”) continues to explain the Korean manhwa industry to its English-speaking audience, this time delving into manhwa created for the Dae-Bon-So, an old school manhwa rental system.

The article goes on to name some series that were specifically created for the Dae-Bon-So, including one of my personal favorites, Kyungok Kang’s sci-fi girls’ manhwa, In the Starlight, available in English from NETCOMICS.

From the article: “History of ‘Dae-Bon-So Manhwa’ was not clear exactly, however it begun after Korean War in 1950’s. ‘Dae-Bon-Son Manhwa’ was welcomed in 1960’s, while Korean culture is improving. There were very few TVs at then, ‘Dae-Bon-So’ was only 1 place to enjoy culture content with cheap price. ”

As with their earlier articles, iSeeToon has promised a future rewrite with more polished English, but what’s there now still makes for an interesting and informative read. Read the full article here!

This week in reviews, at Manga Maniac Cafe, Julie takes a look at volumes four and five of Goong and volume four of Jack Frost (all from Yen Press). At Mania.com, Kate O’Neil reviews volume four of Time and Again (Yen Press). Michelle Smith discusses that volume as well over at Soliloquy in Blue, along with the final volume of Moon Boy (Yen Press). Over at LiveJournal, user driftingsong talks about an untranslated series, My Lovable Fatty. And last week at Manga Bookshelf, I take a look at Korean-created March Story in our latest Off the Shelf column.

That’s all for this week!

Is there something I’ve missed? Leave your manhwa-related links in comments!

Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy!

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My Dinner With Fumi: that’s what I would have called the English-language edition of Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy! The fifteen stories contained within this slim volume celebrate good food and good conversation, documenting Yoshinaga’s interactions with friends, assistants, and fellow artists at real restaurants around Tokyo. No culinary stone goes unturned, as Yoshinaga — or, as her fictional alter ego is called, Y-naga — visits a Korean restaurant, a French bistro, an Italian trattoria, a sushi joint, an all-you-can-eat dim sum buffet, and a bakery famous for its bagels. (Bagels in Tokyo? Call me a recovering New Yorker, but that sounds horribly wrong, especially since Y-naga views the absence of a hole in a the middle as a sign of quality.)

I can think of few mediums less suited to showcasing food than manga, but Yoshinaga’s drawings of steaming dumplings, seafood stews, and sashimi are convincing, despite the absence of color. She renders the food’s textures and shapes in meticulous detail, in the process suggesting the care with which each item was prepared. Her characters’ obvious enjoyment of the meals also helps sell the conceit; watching them rhapsodize over rare ingredients or extol the virtues of dessert makes the reader feel like another member of the party.

Much as I enjoyed the foodie shop-talk, what really sold me on Not Love But Delicious Foods was Yoshinaga’s willingness to poke fun at herself. Y-naga is a sartorial disaster, wearing a frumpy headband, thick glasses, and a scowl as she toils over her comics; only the prospect of a restaurant meal can persuade her to trade her sweatpants for a dress and to comb her hair. Once transformed, however, Y-naga is just as uncouth as her work attire would suggest, spilling copious amounts of food and wine on herself, talking with her mouth full, and flirting aggressively with a handsome dinner companion after drinking too much wine. Yet Y-naga’s dinner conversations reveal that she isn’t a buffoon; she’s surprisingly self-aware, rejecting one potential boyfriend because he’s indifferent to food (he doesn’t like to talk about it the way she does), farming out an incompetent assistant to other artists so that he can improve his skills, and apologizing profusely to a gay friend for “paying my rent by drawing manga with gay themes,” even though her books contain “no real gay themes.”

And that, I think, is the real strength of Not Love But Delicious Foods: the people remain central to the story, even though the Tokyo restaurant scene is the ostensible subject of the manga. As the characters chatter enthusiastically about what they’re eating, we realize that Yoshinaga’s real objective is showing us the important role that food plays in bringing people together, drawing them out, and cementing friendships. It’s a sentiment that’s expressed throughout the manga, as characters find common ground in their mutual enthusiasm for creme brulee and osso bucco. One contentious conversation even prompts the omniscient narrator to praise good food for its diplomatic value; in Yoshinaga’s world, detente is just a dish away. “But through the power of skirt steak, their hearts resumed beating as one,” the narrator observes. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Review copy provided by Yen Press. Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy! will be released on December 21, 2010.

NOT LOVE BUT DELICIOUS FOODS MAKE ME SO HAPPY! • BY FUMI YOSHINAGA • YEN PRESS • 160 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy!

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My Dinner With Fumi: that’s what I would have called the English-language edition of Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy! The fifteen stories contained within this slim volume celebrate good food and good conversation, documenting Yoshinaga’s interactions with friends, assistants, and fellow artists at real restaurants around Tokyo. No culinary stone goes unturned, as Yoshinaga — or, as her fictional alter ego is called, Y-naga — visits a Korean restaurant, a French bistro, an Italian trattoria, a sushi joint, an all-you-can-eat dim sum buffet, and a bakery famous for its bagels. (Bagels in Tokyo? Call me a recovering New Yorker, but that sounds horribly wrong, especially since Y-naga views the absence of a hole in a the middle as a sign of quality.)

I can think of few mediums less suited to showcasing food than manga, but Yoshinaga’s drawings of steaming dumplings, seafood stews, and sashimi are convincing, despite the absence of color. She renders the food’s textures and shapes in meticulous detail, in the process suggesting the care with which each item was prepared. Her characters’ obvious enjoyment of the meals also helps sell the conceit; watching them rhapsodize over rare ingredients or extol the virtues of dessert makes the reader feel like another member of the party.

Much as I enjoyed the foodie shop-talk, what really sold me on Not Love But Delicious Foods was Yoshinaga’s willingness to poke fun at herself. Y-naga is a sartorial disaster, wearing a frumpy headband, thick glasses, and a scowl as she toils over her comics; only the prospect of a restaurant meal can persuade her to trade her sweatpants for a dress and to comb her hair. Once transformed, however, Y-naga is just as uncouth as her work attire would suggest, spilling copious amounts of food and wine on herself, talking with her mouth full, and flirting aggressively with a handsome dinner companion after drinking too much wine. Yet Y-naga’s dinner conversations reveal that she isn’t a buffoon; she’s surprisingly self-aware, rejecting one potential boyfriend because he’s indifferent to food (he doesn’t like to talk about it the way she does), farming out an incompetent assistant to other artists so that he can improve his skills, and apologizing profusely to a gay friend for “paying my rent by drawing manga with gay themes,” even though her books contain “no real gay themes.”

And that, I think, is the real strength of Not Love But Delicious Foods: the people remain central to the story, even though the Tokyo restaurant scene is the ostensible subject of the manga. As the characters chatter enthusiastically about what they’re eating, we realize that Yoshinaga’s real objective is showing us the important role that food plays in bringing people together, drawing them out, and cementing friendships. It’s a sentiment that’s expressed throughout the manga, as characters find common ground in their mutual enthusiasm for creme brulee and osso bucco. One contentious conversation even prompts the omniscient narrator to praise good food for its diplomatic value; in Yoshinaga’s world, detente is just a dish away. “But through the power of skirt steak, their hearts resumed beating as one,” the narrator observes. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Review copy provided by Yen Press. Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy! will be released on December 21, 2010.

NOT LOVE BUT DELICIOUS FOODS MAKE ME SO HAPPY! • BY FUMI YOSHINAGA • YEN PRESS • 160 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Follow Friday: Braaaaaains

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Some bloggers and twitterati are must-follows quite specifically for their wealth of knowledge about manga, various genres of manga, and/or the the history and workings of the Japanese manga industry. There’s a lot of range to be found here, of course, and some are more useful than others. Sure, manga luminaries like Fred Schodt can be found on Twitter, but most of the time you can be certain that a guy who follows only 31 people is unlikely to have a conversation with you.

Since, for me, the internet is about conversation, whether it be the direct back-and-forth of Twitter, or the never-ending meta discussion that carries on, blog-to-blog, I find the most delicious brains are the ones who are not only willing to engage readers, but who are driven and energized by doing so. Fortunately, there are a lot of very knowledgeable people who fall into this category. I’ll name here just a few.

Erica Friedman of Okazu is not only the go-to blogger for yuri manga, but also quite knowledgeable about the industry as a whole, both in the US and Japan. She’s also an avid Twitterer, which means that readers have the opportunity to converse with her in a casual setting about nearly anything at all.

Sean Gaffney‘s fairly casual, under-the-radar blog can be a bit deceptive. He’s a guy who reads a lot of manga, both in English and in Japanese, and has a breadth of knowledge about the industry that I’ve certainly turned to for help from time to time. Sean, too, is very active on Twitter, where he’s always willing to share what he knows about manga.

Though professional duties take precedence nowadays, Ed Chavez the blogger is not dead. He may not have the same time to devote to keeping us up-to-date on the latest doujinshi and other news from Japan, he’s still a guy who knows more than most of the rest of us put together. Keep up with him on Twitter for whatever he’s got time to share.

For in-depth thought on the state of the American manga market, career bookseller Matt Blind is the guy you want to befriend. Though his blogging has taken a hit lately, thanks to a whoooole lot less available time, he still shows up on Twitter as often as he can.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, of course. The are a whole lot of brains out there to be tasted and enjoyed. Where do you find some of your favorite brains?

Kamisama Kiss Volume 1

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Kamisama Kiss Volume 1 by Julietta Suzuki

Karakuri Odette was such a pleasant surprise when I first started reading it, I have been eagerly waiting for another Suzuki series to be translated. I was excited to see that the Shojo Beat line was adding her series about yokai, Kamisama Kiss. Much like Karakuri Odette, Kamisama Kiss takes a premise that might initially seem to be a bit worn out and makes it absolutely charming.

Nanami is a fairly typical heroine. She’s bright and enthusiastic but she’s dealing with a horrible home life. Her father is a hopeless gambler, and in the first few pages of the manga he announces that they’re broke again and vanishes while leaving a terse note behind. The eviction people are knocking on the door and Nanami soon finds herself homeless, railing at her situation in a park. She’s distracted from her own grumbling when she sees that a dog has treed a strange man. Nanami chases off the dog and finds herself talking to a man who admits that he’s a runaway too. He says something about how she’ll be a better master for his house, kisses her on the forehead and hands her a map.

Nanami checks out her new home, which turns out to be a seemingly deserted shrine. She’s attacked by Tomoe, a fox spirit who initially mistakes her aura for his missing master. Nanami is now the god of the shrine, and she has to deal with two tiny spirit servants as well as figuring out how to make Tomoe help her with her new duties. Nanami soon finds out that being in charge of a shrine involves a backbreaking amount of work, and her human nature means that she isn’t very good at using her new mystical powers. Tomoe and Nanami quickly develop the “they are bickering because they are secretly attracted to each other” type of relationship that is fairly typical in shoujo manga. But as I expected from Suzuki, there are many quirky touches that make Kamisama Kiss interesting.

While drawing a human doesn’t necessarily give Suzuki the free range in expressing slightly strange body language that she exercises in Karakuri Odette, I’m still drawn in by the facial expressions of the characters. Suzuki seems to be able to create incredibly lively people with ease. None of her characters seem stiff or have dead eyes, which is quite an achievement when you consider that Nanami’s Onibi-warashi servant duo only appear with masks on their faces. Tomoe spends most of his time looking fiendish with occasional lapses into sympathy as he finds himself liking Nanami despite his professed intentions of not accepting her as his new master. Kamisama Kiss isn’t as purely episodic as Karakuri Odette, but it manages to cover plenty of ground for a first volume as Nanami settles in to her new life, attempts to practice magic, visits the spirit world, and attempts to help another local deity with her love life.

I enjoyed Suzuki’s character designs for her yokai, as she managed to make everyone look both creepy and cute. When a swamp goddess visits Nanami she’s drawn to look like a heavily-made up lizard with saucer eyes and tiny webbed structures taking the place of her ears. While plenty of manga show girls disappearing into a fantasy world, towards the end of the volume Nanami goes back to town and she’s struck by the contrast of the modern town with her new life. This was a detail I appreciated, since usually heroines of this type of manga don’t seem to be able to move between both worlds with ease. I also liked the way Nanami was able to stand up to Tomoe. While he kept declining to help her in order to prove a point, she managed to work around him due to the strength of her stubborn personality. I’m happy that as many of the series I’ve been following are winding down or stalled, there are some fun fantasy series like Kamisama Kiss starting up.

Review copy provided by the publisher.