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Dengeki Daisy 1 by Kyousuke Motomi: B+

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From the back cover:
After orphan Teru Kurebayashi loses her beloved older brother, she finds solace in the messages she exchanges with DAISY, an enigmatic figure who can only be reached through the cell phone her brother left her. Meanwhile, mysterious Tasuku Kurosaki always seems to be around whenever Teru needs help. Could DAISY be a lot closer than Teru thinks?

One day at school, Teru accidentally breaks a window and agrees to pay for it by helping Kurosaki with chores around school. Kurosaki is an impossible taskmaster, though, and he also seems to be hiding something important from Teru…

Review:
Dengeki Daisy, from the creator of the charming Beast Master, is the latest series to debut under VIZ’s Shojo Beat imprint. It’s the story of orphan Teru Kurebayashi, whose older brother recently passed away, but not before giving her a cell phone that will enable her to contact “Daisy,” who will always be there to protect Teru in her brother’s place.

Due to her status as a scholarship student, Teru faces bullying at school, but pretends like everything is fine when text messaging Daisy. Little does she know that Tasuku Kurosaki, the delinquent school custodian, is actually Daisy and has been watching over her all this time. When Teru accidentally breaks a window at school, Kurosaki uses it as an excuse to keep an eye on her while he plays mahjong on his laptop and she does all the work.

There are definitely some familiar elements to this story. You’ve got the impoverished heroine being called a pauper, the all-powerful student council, and the somewhat-jerky-but-really-kind male lead. What makes Dengeki Daisy stand out from the pack are the original twists Kyousuke Motomi employs. Student-teacher romances are fairly common, but I’ve never seen a student-custodian one before. I like that Kurosaki is in love, but Teru is oblivious (though she does suspect right away that he might be Daisy, which he denies). And I genuinely like the characters and the way they interact, especially Teru’s group of misfit friends and the scene in which Kurosaki wields an edger as a weapon!

I really don’t have any complaints about this volume—it’s light, cute fun—but I can see how Kurosaki’s protectiveness and occasional dispeasure with Teru’s actions could possibly be viewed as patronizing. It honestly didn’t come across this way to me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if others took issue with it.

All in all, I really enjoyed this debut and am looking forward to continuing the series. Thanks, VIZ, for bringing us something else from this talented mangaka!

Volume one of Dengeki Daisy is available now. The series is still ongoing in Japan—volume seven will be coming out there in a couple of weeks.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Off the Shelf: Not Loafing

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Welcome to another edition of Off the Shelf with MJ & Michelle! I’m joined once again by Soliloquy in Blue‘s Michelle Smith.

This week, we pull a few shojo titles off the shelf from Viz Media and Tokyopop, mixed in with shonen and seinen favorites from Viz, Del Rey Manga, and Vertical, Inc.

MICHELLE: It was a dark and stormy blog. Intrepid manga reviewer MJ was braving the elements in order to get home in time to read some books! Did she make it? Oh God, did she?!?!

MJ: Never fear, because she did! And quite joyfully, too! This was actually an incredibly pleasurable week for me, because I spent my time with the latest volumes of three of my favorite series.

First, I finally sat down with the second volume of Twin Spica, my favorite new manga series so far this year. The story is about a teenaged girl, Asumi, who vies to be part of Japan’s re-emerging space program, just fourteen years after a deadly accident stopped the program in its tracks. The first volume was fairly stunning (you can read my review here), setting the bar for the second impossibly high, or so one would think. With an introduction so strong, I was quite surprised to find that I liked the second volume even better.

The first volume spent a lot of time setting up the universe of the story and introducing its main players, including Asumi, her “imaginary” friend Lion-san (which I’ve put in quotes because I simply don’t know), her widowed father, and two girls entering the space program at the same time. This was all done beautifully, leaving readers full of warmth and wonder. …

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SDCC, Otaku tour & more!

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The stream of San Diego Comic-Con press releases has begun (with more to come over the next week). So far, my inbox has mainly had word from Viz Media, who are mostly touting anime and game-related items, with just a couple bits of manga news in the mix.

First of all, they’ve got Stan Lee lined up to sign copies of volume two of Ultimo, his co-creation with Hiroyuki Takai, on Saturday the 24th, 2pm at the Viz booth. I had difficulty getting into the series’ first volume, but I’ve got the second in line for a look soon. Mr. Lee will also appear on Viz’s Shonen Jump panel earlier that day.

Secondly, there’s quite a bit of fuss being made around the Vampire Knight anime series, which is not something I’d normally mention here, except that Nancy Thistlethwaite, editor of the manga translation, will be appearing alongside the Vampire Knight voice actors on a panel …

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Interview at Osmosis Online

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Recently, I was asked by Jeremy Nisen at Osmosis Online if I’d be willing to be interviewed about my life as a manga blogger. I said, “sure!” so he sent me a few questions to answer, which have been posted to the site today!

Jeremy asked lots of interesting questions, beginning with a request for recommendations for non-comics-readers (and non-manga-fans), and moving on things like how I got into manga, how I became a critic, and the unavoidable topic of scanlations. My responses aren’t what you’d call brief, but hopefully it’s all readable and maybe even fun!

If nothing else, it provided an opportunity for me to give a shout out to some of my favorite manga, and to encourage newcomers to pick up Chi’s Sweet Home, my source of sunshine and happiness for the week.

Many thanks to Jeremy for inviting me to chat with him. …

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus 1 by Joss Whedon, et al.: B

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From the back cover:
The definitive collection of the first Buffy comics series starts here. This volume begins at the beginning—”The Origin,” a faithful adaptation of creator Joss Whedon’s original Buffy screenplay. The newly chosen Slayer’s road to Sunnydale continues by way of Vegas and a mental institution, and scenes of high school, the early Scoobies, and an English librarian lead the way into Season One—and The Goon creator Eric Powell gives a look at Spike and Drusilla causing havoc at the 1933 World’s Fair.

This omnibus series is the ultimate compilation of Dark Horse’s original Buffy comics and runs chronologically along the TV series’ timeline. A fitting companion to Whedon’s comics-based relaunch of the Buffy mythos.

Review:
Because this omnibus collects a variety of arcs from different points in the comic’s run—and created by various teams of people—I think it’ll be easiest to address each one separately.

“All’s Fair” by Christopher Golden, et al.
A short, murky story about the family of the Chinese Slayer Spike killed seeking vengeance at the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. The dialogue is decent, though Drusilla’s tendency to speak nonsense is overused, but the character likenesses are pretty bad and the story’s boring, to boot. Thankfully, this one’s quite short.

“Buffy: The Origin” by Joss Whedon, et al.
This purports to be “a faithful adaptation” of Whedon’s original screenplay for the Buffy movie. If so, apparently Joss originally envisioned vampires as cheesy green creatures! Still, this is much better than the movie as I remember it, doing a good job at depicting Buffy’s growing distance from her materialistic friends and setting up her conflicting desires/destinies of “normal girl” versus “chosen one.” I also liked that the scene of Buffy meeting her watcher, Merrick, for the first time seems to have been lifted wholesale from the movie script for use in season two’s “Becoming, Part 1.”

“Viva Las Buffy!” by Scott Lobdell, et al.
After Buffy gets expelled from Hemery High for burning down the gym (full of vampires), she and Pike head off to Las Vegas to investigate a casino catering to vampires. The story itself is not very exciting—despite involving time travel, half-vampire Siamese twins, and Angel doing his own poking around—but it’s narrated by Pike and provides an explanation for his absence from Buffy’s life in the series. It is rather weird to see Buffy being all proactive in her duties to vanquish vamps here, when she starts season one of the series so keen to avoid her calling.

“Dawn & Hoopy the Bear” by Paul Lee
This short story takes place while Buffy is in Vegas. In an attempt to kill Buffy, a demon imbues a teddy bear with the spirit of a djinn, but the delivery guy mistakenly gives it to Dawn instead. Instead of killing her, the bear takes a liking to her and becomes her defender. It’s a little weird to read a solo Dawn story like this, since we know it didn’t really happen, but I presume this is supposed to be one of the false memories Dawn has of her childhood. It’s actually really cute and I liked it a lot.

“Slayer, Interrupted” by Scott Lobdell, et al.
In the season six episode, “Normal Again,” Buffy reveals that she was once sent to a mental institution after telling her parents about vampires. While I don’t think that works with the continuity established in season two, in which Joyce appears to learn about Buffy’s Slayerhood for the first time, it’s still interesting to see what supposedly happened there. (Intriguingly, in this comic, it’s Dawn who’s responsible for the secret getting out. I wonder if Lobdell intended to propose a solution that would allow Joyce’s original reaction and Buffy’s memories—altered after Dawn was inserted into her life—to coexist.)

Unfortunately, it’s just too much like the season three opener, “Anne.” Buffy doesn’t want to be the Slayer; she’s stuck somewhere with a lot of helpless teens being victimized by a demon; she finally accepts who she is, and comes to everyone’s rescue. The story ends with a newly confident Buffy heading home, but again, this doesn’t really match with the Buffy we first meet in the beginning of the TV series.

While the stories are all drawn by different people, they have some artistic commonalities. First of all, many of them have problems with eye color. The earlier pieces in the collection depict vampires with red eyes, though this is corrected later. I’m more annoyed by Giles and Wesley having brown eyes and Buffy and Willow having blue ones. Eye color aside, though, Buffy in these comics looks more consistently like Sarah Michelle Gellar than she does in the Season Eight series.

Also, it’s not just Buffy whose pre-Sunnydale life we glimpse. The stories by Scott Lobdell contain scenes of the Watchers Council deciding which candidate will best serve as Buffy’s new watcher (this is where Wesley comes in), the gradual dissolution of Joyce and Hank’s marriage, and one brief sighting of a lonely Willow being sneered at by Cordelia and her cronies. Although there are a few minor inconsistencies, these arcs also flow quite well in chronological order, even though they weren’t originally published that way.

I actually own all seven of these omnibi, so expect more reviews to come!

Manhwa Monday: Mid-Season Poll

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Welcome to another Manhwa Monday!

It’s a slow week in the manhwa blogosphere, with only three reviews for me to pass along. First, at Good Comics for Kids, Lori Henderson reviews volume one of One Fine Day (Yen Press). At Manga Life, Charles Webb gives us a first-timer’s look at volume nine of Black God (Yen Press). Lastly, at TangognaT, Anna talks about the first four volumes of Goong (Yen Press).

With such a small bounty to share this week, it seems like a good time to check out the (nearly) equally short list of this year’s new manhwa series. Though we’ve seen quite a few new volumes of continuing series this year, new series have been scarce–just four by my count as of the end of June.

Yen Press is this year’s overachiever so far, with two (count ’em, two) new series since January began, One Fine Day and Laon. …

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The Name of the Flower, Vols. 1-4

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Given the sheer number of nineteenth-century Brit-lit tropes that appear in The Name of the Flower — neglected gardens, orphans struck dumb by tragedy, brooding male guardians — one might reasonably conclude that Ken Saito was paying homage to Charlotte Brontë and Frances Hodgson Burnett with her story about a fragile young woman who falls in love with an older novelist. And while that manga would undoubtedly be awesome — think of the costumes! — The Name of the Flower is, in fact, far more nuanced and restrained than its surface details might suggest.

The story starts from an old-as-the-hills premise: the orphan who grows up to marry — or, in this case, pine for — her guardian. In The Name of the Flower, the orphan role is fulfilled by Chouko, who, at the age of sixteen, lost her parents in a car accident. Overwhelmed by grief, Chouko stopped speaking or showing emotion until a distant relative took her into his home, admonished her for being silent, and suggested that she revive the house’s lifeless garden. Flash forward two years, and Chouko has emerged from her shell, still quiet but full of calm purpose and warm feelings for Kei, her guardian. Kei, however, is a troubled soul, a successful novelist who achieved notoriety for a string of nihilistic books written while he was in his early twenties. His eccentric garb (he wears a yukata just about everywhere) and brusque demeanor suggest a man in full flight from the outside world — or at least some painful memories.

The real drama begins when Chouko graduates from high school. Though Kei harbors feelings for Chouko, he worries about the gap in age and experience that separates them — he’s thirty, she’s eighteen — reluctantly acknowledging that it would be selfish to deny her a chance at independence. Despite Kei’s gruff prodding, however, Chouko can’t quite strike out on her own; her profound fear of abandonment keeps her tethered to Kei, even though she attends college and cultivates a small but supportive circle of friends. In short, the two are locked in a complicated, co-dependent relationship that’s about as healthy as Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester’s, though less sensational. (Kei doesn’t have a mad wife stashed in a remote corner of the house or a failed relationship with a French dancer in his past.) Only the intervention of other people — Akiyama, Kei’s sole friend, and Yousuke, Chouko’s classmate and not-so-secret admirer — prevents Kei and Chouko from sinking into a destructive cycle of clinging to and withdrawing from one another.

Throughout the series, Ken Saito walks a fine line between romanticizing Kei and Chouko’s relationship and recognizing its less savory aspects, generally erring on the side of sympathetic frankness. The series’ ending may be predictable, but the feelings it evokes in the reader are not, as we’re left to wonder whether Kei and Chouko can finally let go of their tragic pasts to embrace the present. At the same time, however, the story’s lighter moments — especially some wonderful comic business with Chouko’s friends, a group of hyper-verbal bibliophiles — suggest that Chouko, at least, is capable of feeling great joy and connecting with other people, a suggestion borne out by her relationship with the salty neighborhood septuagenarians, who stop by to trade gardening tips and upbraid Kei for his reclusive, sullen behavior.

Saito’s artwork is simple but lovely. Though her figures and faces aren’t especially distinctive, each of the principle characters’ appearance has been given careful consideration. Aspiring author Yousuke, for example, plays his part to the hilt, sporting a jacket with elbow patches and a tousled mop, while Chouko’s numerous experiments with hairstyles reveal a young woman just beginning to discover her own beauty. (I vacillated between ascribing Kei’s fondness for traditional garb to the author’s theory of the character and her desire to draw handsome men in period costume.) As one would imagine from a manga with the word “flower” in the title, floral imagery plays an important role in illustrating the characters’ inner lives, both in a conventional sense (e.g. faces superimposed atop images of roses) and in a more subtle fashion as well, with the plants’ own natural cycle of growth, death, and rebirth serving as a visual metaphor for the ebb and flow of Kei and Chouko’s relationship. Saito reserves her most detailed panels for Chouko’s garden, however, showing us not only what she planted, but also the physical space itself, from the trellises and vines to the rock formations — a gentle reminder that planting and tending flowers played a key role in Chouko’s emotional rehabilitation, just as it did for Mary Lennox in Burnett’s The Secret Garden.

At four volumes, The Name of the Flower is just the right length for the story that Saito wants to tell, allowing her enough space to explore Kei and Chouko’s relationship without resorting to false drama to delay its resolution. The prevailing mood is wistful and, at times, dark, but never melodramatic; Saito’s restraint is key to preventing The Name of the Flower from devolving into tawdry theatrics. It’s a surprisingly thoughtful character study that proves that shojo can be just as grown-up and sophisticated as its big sister josei. Highly recommended.

THE NAME OF THE FLOWER, VOLS. 1-4 • BY KEN SAITO • CMX • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

The Name of the Flower, Vols. 1-4

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nameflower2Given the sheer number of nineteenth-century Brit-lit tropes that appear in The Name of the Flower — neglected gardens, orphans struck dumb by tragedy, brooding male guardians — one might reasonably conclude that Ken Saito was paying homage to Charlotte Brontë and Frances Hodgson Burnett with her story about a fragile young woman who falls in love with an older novelist. And while that manga would undoubtedly be awesome — think of the costumes! — The Name of the Flower is, in fact, far more nuanced and restrained than its surface details might suggest.

The story starts from an old-as-the-hills premise: the orphan who grows up to marry — or, in this case, pine for — her guardian. In The Name of the Flower, the orphan role is fulfilled by Chouko, who, at the age of sixteen, lost her parents in a car accident. Overwhelmed by grief, Chouko stopped speaking or showing emotion until a distant relative took her into his home, admonished her for being silent, and suggested that she revive the house’s lifeless garden. Flash forward two years, and Chouko has emerged from her shell, still quiet but full of calm purpose and warm feelings for Kei, her guardian. Kei, however, is a troubled soul, a successful novelist who achieved notoriety for a string of nihilistic books written while he was in his early twenties. His eccentric garb (he wears a yukata just about everywhere) and brusque demeanor suggest a man in full flight from the outside world — or at least some painful memories.

…

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5 Underrated Shojo Manga

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Earlier in the week, I sang the praises of Kaze Hikaru, my all-time favorite shojo manga (and one of my all-time favorite manga, period). Today I shine the spotlight on five great titles that haven’t garnered as much favorable notice as they deserve. Sadly, all but one are officially out of print or will be soon, owing to publisher closings, lapsed licenses, and so-so sales. If you can’t find them through retailers such as Amazon, Buy.com, or Right Stuf!, you might wish to cast your net wider to include sites like Robert’s Anime Corner Store (a good source for older titles) and eBay, or try your local library for copies.

phoenix125. Phoenix: Early Years, Vol. 12
By Osamu Tezuka • VIZ Media • 1 volume (complete)
A better subtitle for volume twelve of Phoenix would be I Lost It At the Movies, as these four stories reveal just how passionately Osamu Tezuka loved American cinema. In a 1980 essay, Tezuka explained that “watching American big-screen spectacle movies such as Helen of Troy and Land of the Pharaohs made me want to create a similar sort of romantic epic for young girls’ comics.” Looking at this collection, the sword-and-sandal influence manifests itself in almost every aspect of Tezuka’s storytelling, from the costumes and settings to the dialogue, which the characters declaim as if it were of Biblical consequence. (Paging Charlton Heston!) What makes this Hollywood pomposity bearable — even charming — is the tempering influence of Walt Disney. The character designs owe an obvious debt to Snow White, while the supporting cast could easily belong to Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty’s entourage of chatty animal friends.Anyone looking for the moral complexity of later Phoenix stories will be disappointed in volume twelve, as Tezuka’s villains are cartoonishly evil and his heroes (and heroine) chastely noble. If one approaches this collection in the spirit of, say, a musicologist flipping through Beethoven’s pre-Eroica manuscripts, however, the rewards are more palpable. In these early stories we see Tezuka developing his comedic chops with pop culture references and physical slapstick; we see him experimenting with layout, as he renders the battlefields of Troy and Rome in sweeping, full-page panels; and we see him creating his first cycle of interconnected stories, introducing some of the themes that would unify the entire Phoenix saga. In short, we see Tezuka’s first attempts to find his own voice as he pays tribute to the artists who influenced him, learning more about his exuberant, unique artistry in the process. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 3/19/08.)

xday14. X-Day
By Setona Mizushiro • Tokyopop • 2 volumes (complete)
When star high jumper Rika injures her leg and loses her boyfriend to a teammate, she becomes profoundly depressed. She soon discovers an online community of similarly disaffected students, however, all of whom share her desire to “make the school disappear.” Their internet chats soon give way to in-person meetings, where Rika comes face-to-face with three very different people: “Polaris,” a shy teen who dresses like a Goth off campus, “Mr. Money,” a friendly underclassman, and “Janglarian,” a young biology teacher who wants to dynamite the school. Setona Mizushiro’s dark story could easily spiral into melodrama, but she does a fine job of showing us how the normal tribulations of being a teenager — fighting with parents, enduring harassment from peers, feeling overwhelmed by anxiety — have led these four fragile people to hatch such a radical plan for coping with their pain. The second volume lacks the dramatic urgency of the first, as the students’ plot begins to come unraveled, but X-Day remains persuasive until its final pages, thanks to Mizushiro’s vivid characterizations and nuanced artwork.

airevolution13. A.I. Revolution
By Yuu Asami • Go! Comi • 5 volumes (incomplete; 17 volumes in Japan)
A.I. Revolution starts from a premise familiar to legions of Isaac Asimov fans: a human builds a robot, only to discover his creation has a mind and feelings of its own. Sui, the story’s human protagonist, initially views robots as household appliances, not unlike toasters or vaccuum cleaners. When her father presents her with an android companion, however, Sui develops a strong bond with it, discovering that Vermillion has a capacity for emotion that far outstrips her expectations.

A.I. Revolution may sound like I, Robot Hottie, but Yuu Asami puts a thoughtful spin on the material, filtering familiar sci-fi themes through a shojo lens. Though she weaves evil scientists and corporate espionage into the narrative, the story is at its best when focusing on Vermillion’s interactions with his human family; Sui’s father, for example, has modeled Vermillion in the image of a colleague that he admired, leading to a few funny, awkward moments of human-robot flirtation, while Sui seesaws between sisterly protectiveness and romantic attachment to her handsome companion. (Really, is there any other kind of robot in shojo manga?) Asami’s art reminds me of Akimi Yoshida’s with its elongated character designs, delicate linework, and sparing use of screentone. It’s a little dated perhaps, but a welcome change of pace from the slicker, busier layouts characteristic of the titles licensed by Tokyopop and VIZ. Highly recommended for fans of old-school shojo. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 3/4/08.)

gals12. GALS!
By Mihona Fuji • CMX Manga • 10 volumes (complete)
This wacky comedy is one of the better shojo licenses in the CMX catalog, a rude, raunchy, and oddly moral tale about a feisty kogal named Ran Kotobuki. Though Ran and her pals are primarily interested in shopping for outrageous outfits, visiting the tanning salon, and stealing book bags from students at rival schools, Ran’s upbringing in a household full of police officers (dad, mom, and big brother are all cops) has taught her to adhere to a strict code of conduct: no sex for favors, and no tolerance for anyone who disrespects her friends.

Ran is a terrific, memorable character — impetuous, loud, funny, and tough, the kind of person who would literally smack sense into another girl if she thought it would work. Better still, she’s not easily swayed by boys; her relationship with the sweet but dim Tatsuki is surprisingly chaste, limited primarily to hand-holding and awkward discussions about feelings. (Ran won’t deign to say, “I love you,” as it compromises her tough-girl image.) As befits a manga that was serialized in Ribon, all of the characters have enormous, doll-like eyes in the Arina Tanemura style, and fabulous outfits that shame the Gossip Girls. The backgrounds are surprisingly detailed, conveying the look and feel of the Shibuya district with a specificity that’s all too rare in shojo manga. In sum, Gals! is the kind of good-natured gang comedy that I hoped My Darling! Miss Bancho would be: full of humor and heart, but with fewer capitulations to shojo convention.

lovesong1. Love Song
Keiko Nishi • VIZ Media • 1 volume (complete)
Back in the 1990s, Matt Thorn labored hard to make Keiko Nishi a household name among American manga readers, translating six of her stories for VIZ; two appeared in Four Shojo Stories alongside work by Moto Hagio and Shio Sato, and four appeared in a stand-alone volume called Love Song. Though Nishi didn’t catch on with Western shojo fans, it’s easy to see why Thorn championed her work: she’s a terrific, versatile storyteller, equally capable of writing light-hearted fantasies and character studies of deeply damaged people.

Of the four stories that appear in Love Song, two are standouts: “Jewels of the Seaside,” a black comedy about three sisters who compete for the same man’s affection, with disastrous results, and “The Skin of Her Heart,” a quiet sci-fi tale about a young woman torn between what she wants and what her mother wants for her. (Readers who enjoyed A, A’ or Twin Spica are a natural audience for “Skin of Her Heart,” though it works equally well for folks who aren’t big sci-fi buffs.) Nishi’s artwork is an acquired taste, at times precise, elegant, and naturalistic, and at times loose and sketchy, with the white of the page playing an important role in underscoring the emotional distance between her characters. Her minimalist approach won’t be to every shojo fan’s liking, but she demonstrates that it’s perfectly possible to convey the interior lives of her characters without resorting to the kind of visual shorthands — flowers, sweatdrops, nosebleeds — that have been overused in contemporary shojo manga. Love Song is out of print, but unlike Four Shojo Stories and A, A’, is still relatively easy to obtain through online retailers like Amazon. Highly recommended.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

duckprince1Duck Prince
By Ai Morinaga • CMP • 3 volumes (suspended)
Morinaga’s battle-of-the-sexes comedy takes a standard shojo plot — homely gal gets makeover to win the guy of her dream — and turns it on its head, substituting a sweet, helmet-haired nerd for the customary plain Jane, and adding a novel twist: Reiichi appears to most girls as a smokin’ hottie, but in the presence of his beloved Yumiko, he reverts to his original form. As in all her work, Morinaga uses humor to make deeper points about gender roles and physical beauty, though Duck Prince is too rude and risque to be mistaken for an Afterschool Special. Central Park Media released three of the five volumes before suspending Duck Prince; of all the titles left homeless by CPM’s demise, it seems like one of the strongest candidates for a license rescue, though middling sales of Your & My Secret and My Heavenly Hockey Club may have scared American publishers away from Morinaga’s distinctive comedies.

shirahimesyoShirahime-Syo: Snow Goddess Tales
By CLAMP • Tokyopop • 1 volume
This lovely anthology is a radical departure for CLAMP. Gone are the super-detailed costumes and fussy character designs of their early, post-doujinshi work; in their place are spare, simply-drawn figures that seem consciously modeled on examples from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scroll paintings. The stories themselves are told directly without embellishment, though CLAMP infuses each tale with genuine pathos, showing us how the characters’ anger and doubt lead to profound despair. As a result, the prevailing tone and spirit are reminiscent of Masaki Kobayashi’s 1964 film Kwaidan, both in the stories’ fidelity to the conventions of Japanese folklore and in their lyrical restraint. And if my description didn’t sell you on Shirahime-Syo, let this beautiful image, taken from the final story of the collection, persuade you to give this out-of-print gem a try:

snowgoddess2

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So what titles top your list of underrated shojo manga? Inquiring minds want to know!

5 Underrated Shojo Manga

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Earlier in the week, I sang the praises of Kaze Hikaru, my all-time favorite shojo manga (and one of my all-time favorite manga, period). Today I shine the spotlight on five great titles that haven’t garnered as much favorable notice as they deserve. Sadly, all but one are officially out of print or will be soon, owing to publisher closings, lapsed licenses, and so-so sales. If you can’t find them through retailers such as Amazon, Buy.com, or Right Stuf!, you might wish to cast your net wider to include sites like Robert’s Anime Corner Store (a good source for older titles) and eBay, or try your local library for copies.

phoenix125. PHOENIX, VOL. 12: EARLY WORKS

OSAMU TEZUKA • VIZ • 1 VOLUME (complete)

A better subtitle for volume twelve of Phoenix would be I Lost It At the Movies, as these four stories reveal just how passionately Osamu Tezuka loved American cinema. In a 1980 essay, Tezuka explained that “watching American big-screen spectacle movies such as Helen of Troy and Land of the Pharaohs made me want to create a similar sort of romantic epic for young girls’ comics.” Looking at this collection, the sword-and-sandal influence manifests itself in almost every aspect of Tezuka’s storytelling, from the costumes and settings to the dialogue, which the characters declaim as if it were of Biblical consequence. (Paging Charlton Heston!) What makes this Hollywood pomposity bearable — even charming — is the tempering influence of Walt Disney. The character designs owe an obvious debt to Snow White, while the supporting cast could easily belong to Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty’s entourage of chatty animal friends.

Anyone looking for the moral complexity of later Phoenix stories will be disappointed in volume twelve, as Tezuka’s villains are cartoonishly evil and his heroes (and heroine) chastely noble. If one approaches this collection in the spirit of, say, a musicologist flipping through Beethoven’s pre-Eroica manuscripts, however, the rewards are more palpable. In these early stories we see Tezuka developing his comedic chops with pop culture references and physical slapstick; we see him experimenting with layout, as he renders the battlefields of Troy and Rome in sweeping, full-page panels; and we see him creating his first cycle of interconnected stories, introducing some of the themes that would unify the entire Phoenix saga. In short, we see Tezuka’s first attempts to find his own voice as he pays tribute to the artists who influenced him, learning more about his exuberant, unique artistry in the process. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 3/19/08.)

xday14. X-DAY

SETONA MIZUSHIRO • TOKYOPOP • 2 VOLUMES (complete)

When star high jumper Rika injures her leg and loses her boyfriend to a teammate, she becomes profoundly depressed. She soon discovers an online community of similarly disaffected students, however, all of whom share her desire to “make the school disappear.” Their internet chats soon give way to in-person meetings, where Rika comes face-to-face with three very different people: “Polaris,” a shy teen who dresses like a Goth off campus, “Mr. Money,” a friendly underclassman, and “Janglarian,” a young biology teacher who wants to dynamite the school. Setona Mizushiro’s dark story could easily spiral into melodrama, but she does a fine job of showing us how the normal tribulations of being a teenager — fighting with parents, enduring harassment from peers, feeling overwhelmed by anxiety — have led these four fragile people to hatch such a radical plan for coping with their pain. The second volume lacks the dramatic urgency of the first, as the students’ plot begins to come unraveled, but X-Day remains persuasive until its final pages, thanks to Mizushiro’s vivid characterizations and nuanced artwork.

airevolution13. A.I. REVOLUTION

YUU ASAMI• GO! COMI • 5 VOLUMES (incomplete; 17 volumes in Japan)

A.I. Revolution starts from a premise familiar to legions of Isaac Asimov fans: a human builds a robot, only to discover his creation has a mind and feelings of its own. Sui, the story’s human protagonist, initially views robots as household appliances, not unlike toasters or vaccuum cleaners. When her father presents her with an android companion, however, Sui develops a strong bond with it, discovering that Vermillion has a capacity for emotion that far outstrips her expectations.

A.I. Revolution may sound like I, Robot Hottie, but Yuu Asami puts a thoughtful spin on the material, filtering familiar sci-fi themes through a shojo lens. Though she weaves evil scientists and corporate espionage into the narrative, the story is at its best when focusing on Vermillion’s interactions with his human family; Sui’s father, for example, has modeled Vermillion in the image of a colleague that he admired, leading to a few funny, awkward moments of human-robot flirtation, while Sui seesaws between sisterly protectiveness and romantic attachment to her handsome companion. (Really, is there any other kind of robot in shojo manga?) Asami’s art reminds me of Akimi Yoshida’s with its elongated character designs, delicate linework, and sparing use of screentone. It’s a little dated perhaps, but a welcome change of pace from the slicker, busier layouts characteristic of the titles licensed by Tokyopop and VIZ. Highly recommended for fans of old-school shojo. (Originally reviewed at PopCultureShock on 3/4/08.)

gals12. GALS!

MIHONA FUJI • CMX • 10 VOLUMES (complete)

This wacky comedy is one of the better shojo licenses in the CMX catalog, a rude, raunchy, and oddly moral tale about a feisty kogal named Ran Kotobuki. Though Ran and her pals are primarily interested in shopping for outrageous outfits, visiting the tanning salon, and stealing book bags from students at rival schools, Ran’s upbringing in a household full of police officers (dad, mom, and big brother are all cops) has taught her to adhere to a strict code of conduct: no sex for favors, and no tolerance for anyone who disrespects her friends.

Ran is a terrific, memorable character — impetuous, loud, funny, and tough, the kind of person who would literally smack sense into another girl if she thought it would work. Better still, she’s not easily swayed by boys; her relationship with the sweet but dim Tatsuki is surprisingly chaste, limited primarily to hand-holding and awkward discussions about feelings. (Ran won’t deign to say, “I love you,” as it compromises her tough-girl image.) As befits a manga that was serialized in Ribon, all of the characters have enormous, doll-like eyes in the Arina Tanemura style, and fabulous outfits that shame the Gossip Girls. The backgrounds are surprisingly detailed, conveying the look and feel of the Shibuya district with a specificity that’s all too rare in shojo manga. In sum, Gals! is the kind of good-natured gang comedy that I hoped My Darling! Miss Bancho would be: full of humor and heart, but with fewer capitulations to shojo convention.

lovesong1. LOVE SONG

KEIKO NISHI • VIZ • 1 VOLUME (complete)

Back in the 1990s, Matt Thorn labored hard to make Keiko Nishi a household name among American manga readers, translating six of her stories for VIZ; two appeared in Four Shojo Stories alongside work by Moto Hagio and Shio Sato, and four appeared in a stand-alone volume called Love Song. Though Nishi didn’t catch on with Western shojo fans, it’s easy to see why Thorn championed her work: she’s a terrific, versatile storyteller, equally capable of writing light-hearted fantasies and character studies of deeply damaged people.

Of the four stories that appear in Love Song, two are standouts: “Jewels of the Seaside,” a black comedy about three sisters who compete for the same man’s affection, with disastrous results, and “The Skin of Her Heart,” a quiet sci-fi tale about a young woman torn between what she wants and what her mother wants for her. (Readers who enjoyed A, A’ or Twin Spica are a natural audience for “Skin of Her Heart,” though it works equally well for folks who aren’t big sci-fi buffs.) Nishi’s artwork is an acquired taste, at times precise, elegant, and naturalistic, and at times loose and sketchy, with the white of the page playing an important role in underscoring the emotional distance between her characters. Her minimalist approach won’t be to every shojo fan’s liking, but she demonstrates that it’s perfectly possible to convey the interior lives of her characters without resorting to the kind of visual shorthands — flowers, sweatdrops, nosebleeds — that have been overused in contemporary shojo manga. Love Song is out of print, but unlike Four Shojo Stories and A, A’, is still relatively easy to obtain through online retailers like Amazon. Highly recommended.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

duckprince1DUCK PRINCE (Ai Morinaga • CMP • 3 volumes, suspended)
Morinaga’s battle-of-the-sexes comedy takes a standard shojo plot — homely gal gets makeover to win the guy of her dream — and turns it on its head, substituting a sweet, helmet-haired nerd for the customary plain Jane, and adding a novel twist: Reiichi appears to most girls as a smokin’ hottie, but in the presence of his beloved Yumiko, he reverts to his original form. As in all her work, Morinaga uses humor to make deeper points about gender roles and physical beauty, though Duck Prince is too rude and risque to be mistaken for an Afterschool Special. Central Park Media released three of the five volumes before suspending Duck Prince; of all the titles left homeless by CPM’s demise, it seems like one of the strongest candidates for a license rescue, though middling sales of Your & My Secret and My Heavenly Hockey Club may have scared American publishers away from Morinaga’s distinctive comedies.

shirahimesyoSHIRAHIME-SYO: SNOW GODDESS TALES (CLAMP • Tokyopop • 1 volume)
This lovely anthology is a radical departure for CLAMP. Gone are the super-detailed costumes and fussy character designs of their early, post-doujinshi work; in their place are spare, simply-drawn figures that seem consciously modeled on examples from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scroll paintings. The stories themselves are told directly without embellishment, though CLAMP infuses each tale with genuine pathos, showing us how the characters’ anger and doubt lead to profound despair. As a result, the prevailing tone and spirit are reminiscent of Masaki Kobayashi’s 1964 film Kwaidan, both in the stories’ fidelity to the conventions of Japanese folklore and in their lyrical restraint. And if my description didn’t sell you on Shirahime-Syo, let this beautiful image, taken from the final story of the collection, persuade you to give this out-of-print gem a try:

snowgoddess2

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So what titles top your list of underrated shojo manga? Inquiring minds want to know!