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A Bouquet of Manga, Flowers Magazine

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61v9hCWPLDL._SL500_AA300_Flowers,  a Josei manga magazine from Shogakukan, is a veritable showcase of talent. Regardless of which series are running in the magazine at any given time, the list of authors is practically a checklist of manga history. Names that were publishing top-notch manga in the pages of Flowers magazine more than a decade ago are still publishing top-notch manga in the same magazine now.

In the current volume of Flowers, the award-winning, essential manga Heart of Thomas creator, Moto Hagio, contributes a brand new Sci-fi series Away. Saito Chiho, best known here for the manga version of Revolutionary Girl Utena, is working on a manga retelling of the classic Japanese tale of gender-switching, Torikaebaya. Tamura Yumi’s 7 Seeds was begun on the pages of Betsucomi in 2001, but continues in the pages of Flowers, since 2002. Also notable for western fans, Higa Aloha’s Shirokuma Cafe, which was given an anime adaption and streamed as Polar Bear Cafe, runs in this magazine.

Ancient Japan, the modern world and futurescapes live side by side in Flowers. Stories of alternate histories, such as Akaishi Michiyo’s Amakusa 1637 – which completely rewrote Japanese history – and Moto Hagio’s science fiction Barbara Ikai, will sit comfortably next to Yuu Watase’s  Fushigi Yugi Genbu Kaiden. Japan’s past, present  and future, talking animals, alternate states of being…this Josei magazine, while showcasing grace and beauty, is not at all afraid to ask, “What if it all goes wrong?” The predominant art style is one I’d like to call “Timeless” without irony. These artists have been working for decades and, in some cases, have been genre-defining. One can see the influences of decades of manga and centuries of visual references from Fine Art in the pages of Flowers.

Flowers magazine comes in at just over 500 pages for 570 yen ($6.04 at time of writing). The magazine has a website,  which contains interviews with, messages from and profiles of the creators, chapters of new stories for preview, and publishing schedules. (If you want to be sobered by the sheer mass of work by some of the women who publish in Flowers, click on a few bios and looks at the lists of books in print. Akaishi-sensei has something like 50+ books *in print* right now.) Flowers has a 2011 – 2012 monthly circulation of 33,000.

Looking at the cover above, it would be easy to dismiss Flowers as a repository of girlish fantasy but, if one did so, one would miss the crucible of talent that makes the Flowers stable some of the longest-running, most-popular and most-talented group of creators in manga today.

Flowers Monthly Magazine, from Shogakukan: http://flowers.shogakukan.co.jp/

BL Bookrack: June 2013

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Welcome to the June installment of BL Bookrack! This month, MJand Michelle take a look at two debut series from SuBLime Manga, Blue Morning and Sleeping Moon. In Brief: Help! God of Love and KINE IN! (DMG).


bluemorning1Blue Morning, Vol. 1 | By Shoko Hidaka | SuBLime | Rated M (Mature) – One word that I keep seeing used regarding Blue Morning is “psychological,” and much as I would like to say something new about the work, this label really is inescapable.

Akihito Kuze is the son of a viscount, but spent the early years of his childhood living away from Tokyo with his sickly mother. When his parents die six months apart, ten-year-old Akihito inherits the title and moves to the Kuze estate, where everything is capably managed by a cold young man named Tomoyuki Katsuragi. Akihito is instantly in awe of Katsuragi, but the latter shows the child neither warmth nor sympathy, but instead piles on the studies and repeatedly informs Akihito that he must be perfect in order to carry on the Kuze line. Akihito does his best to comply, and, as he grows, eventually develops an obsession to make Katsuragi notice and approve of him.

There’s a lot of really complicated and interesting character work going on here. Akihito’s early fascination with Katsuragi makes sense, given that he seemingly lived his early life mostly among women, as does the eventual evolution of his feelings. Katsuragi’s treatment of the boy makes sense, as well, once readers learn how the man came to be in the Kuze household in the first place, and the lengths to which he went to emulate his former master, while Akihito is going about, being his own person without a care. My one complaint is that a conversation about Katsuragi’s true parentage doesn’t make much sense, but perhaps it was meant to be cryptic and will be clarified in future volumes.

Complex, dark, and a bit twisted, Blue Morning is the best BL I’ve read so far this year. And, as if that weren’t reason enough to celebrate, this is a continuing series, with volume two due out in August!

– Review by Michelle Smith


sleepingmoon1Sleeping Moon, Vol. 1 | By Kano Miyamoto | Published by SuBLime | Rated Mature – Akihiko’s life has been long haunted by a curse said to kill his family’s male descendants at an early age. Though his own father unsuccessfully attempted to escape his fate by leaving home, the curse brings Akihiko, now nearing thirty, back to his roots to search for answers.

Using his research in comparative religion as an excuse to visit his family’s ancestral home, Akihiko is confronted both by the awakening of his inherited paranormal abilities and the awakening of his heart, as he finds himself drawn to two very different men. The first of these is Ren, Akihiko’s free-spirited but lonely cousin who shares his ability to see ghosts and other supernatural beings. The second is Eitaro, a young man living 100 years in the past, whom Akihiko visits in his dreams, and who bears a striking physical resemblance to Ren.

The premise I just described could so easily be the worst kind of supernatural romance, filled with overblown psychic powers and cross-generational mistaken identity. Fortunately, in Miyamoto-sensei’s capable hands, it is instead the best kind.

Akihiko’s reception in his family’s home is the kind one encounters only in stories of old, well-to-do families—an odd mix of unquestioned acceptance and extreme discomfort. That, together with his supernaturally-based connection to his cousin reminds me of nothing more than Mary Stewart’s Touch Not the Cat, a favorite novel from my teens.

This sort of strained (but undeniable) intimacy between people who’ve met only at distant family functions creates an immediate sense of history and makes relationships that spring up too quickly feel somehow perfectly natural—a decided advantage in this kind of romance. In particular, Ren’s desperate need to connect with someone, anyone, who shares his fate feels urgent and genuine, helping to ground the series despite its supernatural premise. Miyamoto’s artwork is a highlight as well, nicely capturing the sense of both past and present haunting Akihiko’s every move.

The second (and last) volume of this series is due out in September, and I admit I’m quite anxious for its arrival. Highly recommended.

– Review by MJ

In Brief:


helpHelp! God of Love | By Tsukiko Kurebayashi | Digital Manga Guild | Rated Mature (18+) – One of the great things about the Digital Manga Guild is that it’s in a position to make available a lot of manga that would otherwise never see any kind of English release. This has resulted in the discovery of hidden gems like Climb On To My Shoulders, and expanded the English-language catalogues of talented authors like est em (KINE IN!) and Keiko Kinoshita (You & Tonight). Unfortunately, there are untranslated manga that would be better left alone. This is one of those manga. Between its ultra-contrived melodrama and underdeveloped relationships, Help! God of Love is one of the most poorly constructed BL manga I’ve read to date, a circumstance not at all helped by its occasionally awkward English adaptation. Not recommended. – MJ


kineinKINE IN! | By est em | Digital Manga Guild | Rated Young adult (16+) – I’m always up for anything by est em, and even though the first thing I read by her—Seduce Me After the Show—remains my favorite, there is always something worthwhile to be found in her other works. I’ll admit that my faith was a little shaken by the opening chapters of KINE IN!, which revolve around a high school love triangle, but est em returns to form with the unrelated short stories that round out the volume. My particular favorites are “The Scenery of That Summer,” which is about a pair of step-brothers that meet for the first time for a funeral, and “The Salvia and the Barber,” in which a pair of sixty-year-olds decide to live together as family. Both stories are poignant and offer only a suggestion of romantic feeling. In fact, this entire volume is very chaste indeed, probably due to a recurring theme of love postponed. Definitely recommended. – Michelle Smith

Review copies provided by the publishers.

Disclosure: MJ is currently under contract with Digital Manga Publishing’s Digital Manga Guild, as necessitated for her ongoing report Inside the DMG. Any compensation earned by MJin her role as an editor with the DMG will be donated to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

Other recent BL reviews from MJ & Michelle: Blue Morning (SuBLime)

Manga the Week of 6/19

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SEAN: Sometimes the images we feature with this post work out perfectly. And sometimes we have weeks like this. Where the images I want to use are all in a row next to one another. Sigh. By the way, my shop’s getting in Yen early, so WE ARE AS WELL!

Kodansha has the final volume of their Kitchen Princess omnibus. If you hadn’t picked this up earlier, it’s now available in 4 handy volumes! And there are recipes!

MICHELLE: I regret to say that I still haven’t managed to read Kitchen Princess, despite owning the original edition in its entirety. I wonder how it compares to Arisa… is it less ridiculous?

MJ: This is one of those series I planned to catch up with in omnibus form, but have yet to pick up. Someone want to tell me how foolish I’ve been?

ANNA: Kitchen Princess is cute and sweet and a little bit weird. I need to finish the series too.

SEAN: And there’s the 28th volume of Air Gear. Which is a whole lot of Air Gear.

utsuboraVertical has a done-in-one series coming out. Utsubora: the Story of a Novelist is a psychological drama that comes from the pages of Manga Erotics F, a magazine that has given us more polarizing titles than any other, I believe. Will this one also divide readers who love it and hate it? Find out by reading it!

MICHELLE: Looks interesting!

MJ: I will usually try anything Vertical thinks I should–their track record is pretty good. So I will definitely check it out.

SEAN: Viz has the final volume of Children of the Sea, which was one of its first Ikki titles but ran up against the dreaded “the final volume isn’t out in Japan yet”. It’s been two and a half years, and honestly I think I may have to re-read. But I do recall being very fond of this series about love, loss and the sea.

MICHELLE: I have actually been hoarding Children of the Sea, so now I’m glad of a chance to read the series all in one go.

MJ: I have missed this series! Though, like Sean, I may have to start from the beginning again at this point.

ANNA: I’ve read a couple volumes of this and it is lovely.

SEAN: And the rest is all Yen. I am very fond of GA Art Design Class, which has a very entertaining cast of moe stereotypes, but more importantly, due to this series I have learned SO MUCH MORE about art. Vol. 5 is out. (And yes, it is still not Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro.)

Higurashi22At least, what we’ve been waiting for: the home stretch of the main Higurashi Storyline. Not to spoil or anything, but this is, finally, the one with the Good End. Festival Accompanying Arc starts with this omnibus, which gives us Miyo Takano’s backstory, and needs a giant TRIGGER WARNING: ABUSE applied to it. But still good stuff.

MICHELLE: I just can’t make myself read Higurashi. It’s like you said in your recent Umineko review, Sean. We’re not supposed to like these people or care what happens to them personally; we’re just supposed to care about the mystery. But I guess I can’t simply stick around for that if I don’t like the protagonists at least a little.

SEAN: I’d argue that the big difference between Higurashi and Umineko is, in fact, that the characters ARE more likeable in Higurashi. Sure, they can be horribly screwed up, particularly in the earlier arcs, but we get to see them learn from past iterations and grow as people. Umineko is more about trying to figure out what’s going on and solving the mystery, and the development of a bunch of gold-happy adults is quite secondary. (The kids fare a bit better.)

MICHELLE: That does sound more like something I’d enjoy.

SEAN: Kingdom Hearts has a new volume out, called Chain of Memories. I still don’t know much about this except it has Donald and Goofy in a fantasy game world setting.

Pandora Hearts 16! MJ? Tag!

MICHELLE: How have I gotten so far behind on this one?! I’ve only read through twelve!

MJ: I’m sure nobody will be surprised to hear that I CAN’T WAIT. Seriously, though, things have really gotten intense. Every volume at this point is a source of great anticipation. So. Y’know. GIMME.

spicewolf8SEAN: For those who enjoyed the mindscrew that was Madoka Magica and want more, here’s the first of two spinoff manga licensed by Yen. Kazumi Magica features a different lead, but no doubt will still have the same old Kyuubey lurking around.

MJ: I found the manga to be a little disappointing, but I’ll probably give this spinoff a shot.

SEAN: Soul Eater has a big artbook coming out. Considering that one of the top three reasons I read Soul Eater is the amazing art, this is a pretty big deal. Even casual fans should give this one a look.

Spice & Wolf! Did you know it had a manga as well, to go along with the light novels? It does! It’s also caught up to Japan, so be prepared to wait a bit.

And lastly, there’s volume 3 of Triage X. If you like BTOOOM! but wanted more motorcycles, try this series.

MICHELLE: Ugh. I am very tempted to christen BTOOOM! “the-manga-that-must-not-be-named,” that’s how little I’d like to think about it in the future.

MJ: Heh.

SEAN: What manga are you getting for your father? (Please don’t say Triage X.)

It Came from the Sinosphere: The Lady Hermit

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Wow. A Hong Kong martial arts movie which puts a female-female relationship at the heart of the story.

The Story

A servant called Leng Yushang observes talented young woman called Cui Ping comes to town. Cui Ping is embarking on a career of helping innocent people and kicking butt. She is searching for “Zhong Kui Niang” (who I will henceforth refer to as “the Lady Hermit”) so she can become her disciple and learn how to kick butt even harder. The catch is that nobody knows where ‘the Lady Hermit’ is. The ‘Lady Hermit’ had been badly injured by the ‘Black Demon’, and hasn’t been seen since. Little does Cui Ping know that Leng Yushang is, in fact, the ‘Lady Hermit’ living incognito.

Of course, while Cui Ping tries to uphold justice, she gets into a lot of trouble (criminals generally are not amused when their activities are discrupted), so Leng Yushang has to interfere, and eventually, break her cover.

Background

Zhong Kui is a figure from Chinese mythology who fights and surppresses demons. “Zhong Kui Niang” means “Lady Zhong Kui,” implying the Leng Yushang, like Zhong Kui, is a mysterious vanquisher of evil.

This film stars the legendary martial arts actress Cheng Peipei as the “Lady Hermit.” You know how I always like to compare martial arts to dancing? Before starring in martial arts movies, Cheng Peipei studied ballet for six years. This is also the first film which casts Shi Szu in a leading role as “Cui Ping,” and thus put her on the map. I’ve read that Shaw Brothers intentionally wanted to make Shi Szu “the next Cheng Peipei,” so the purpose of the film was probably to transfer the aura of Cheng Peipei onto Shi Szu. Not that I’m complaining.

The Fighting

Since this was made during the golden era of the Shaw Brothers, of course all of the fighting is good from a technical standpoint. However, it was a bit difficult for me to get really involved in the action because the Lady Hermit and Cui Ping mow down their opponents too quickly. Instead of making the Lady Hermit and Cui Ping seem awesome, it just makes their opponents look terribly incompetent. The heroes really should struggle a bit more when vanquishing their foes.

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Of course, I do like the fight at the suspension bridge, simply because it integrates great scenery and action so beautifully.

Cui Ping next to a suspension bridge.

Checkov’s Bridge: If there is a suspension bridge in an action scene, it will collapse while our protagonist is on it.

Which brings me to the topic of …

The Scenery

I love the scenery in this film!

A temple at night with hills and a harbor in the background.

First of all, it is beautiful scenery, but it’s not just that it’s beautiful – I love the way the characters really seem to live in the scenery.

Leng Yushang at sunset

Leng Yushang at sunset

In some movies, the scenery simply stuns the audience with its beauty. And I like that too. But in this movie, rather than stunning the audience, it naturally blends into the movie as a whole.

Even the bad guys are part of the scenery.

Even the bad guys are part of the scenery.

I think this might be partially because it is not isolated from the characters/actors. When filmmakers really want to emphasis the scenery, they place the scenery alone, without the characters.

A shot showing mountains.

This was the only scenic shot I found without any humans.

But this film does not do that often, and when it does, it chooses relatively soft scenery which blends smoothly with the preceeding and following shots. Often, the actors are incorporated into the overall visual image presented.

Cui Ping looks isolated and alone amid the trees and mountains.

Cui Ping looks isolated and alone amid the trees and mountains.

And I like the trick where characters are often introduced by reflections in the water.

This is the first sign that the Lady Hermit is on the scene!

This is the first sign that the Lady Hermit is on the scene!

And it’s also nice that there is variety in the scenic shots: grassy mountains, bamboo forests, temples at night…

Leng Yushang and Changchun walk through a misty bamboo forest.

You know how I like to compare martial arts flicks to dance musicals…

Doesn’t this screenshot feel a bit Busby Berkeley?

Six beautifully dressed women dance in a circle around a flower bush in a shot from overhead.

Female-Female Relationship For the Win

Since almost every wuxia story has a variety of female characters, it is not hard to find stories which pass the letter of the Bechdel test. But wuxia stories which depict deep female-female relationships are rare. The only other wuxia story I know about which puts female-female relationships front and center (rather than as an aside to the Much More Important Male-Female Relationships) is The Celestial Zone.

lady18

By the way, when I say male-female relationships tend to get more weight than female-female realtionships, I’m not just talking about the romantic relationships. For some reason, more weight gets put on daughter-father and sister-brother relationships than daughter-mother and sister-sister relationships.

The development of the relationship is what sucked me into the movie, as Cui Ping and Leng Yushang slowly reveal themselves to each other. The moment when Leng Yushang finally accepts Cui Ping as her student is sweet indeed.

lady13

Of course, the relationship is so compelling because both Leng Yushang and Cui Ping are individually interesting characters. Leng Yushang is collected, experienced, calm, quiet, grounded … and slowly healing old wounds. However, while she’s very discreet, she is not the least bit cold – she’s quite warm, friendly, and open when she is not being the ‘Lady Hermit’ or trying to hide her identity.

lady12

Meanwhile Cui Ping is young, energetic, brash, bold, and naive. She has very strong feelings about almost everything, which is what drives her to try to uphold justice, constantly improve her martial arts, and try so hard to find the “Lady Hermit.”

You might notice that these two are a bit like opposites, and I find their relationship compelling in the same way that good ‘opposites attract’ romances are compelling.

lady15

I really have to applaud both Cheng Peipei and Shi Szu’s performances, as I feel that their acting is what made the teacher-student relationship between the Leng Yushang and Cui Ping feel so intense.

… But There’s Something Which Irritated Me

And that is Changchun.

Well, not Changchun himself. As a character, he is so empty that there’s not much about him personally which can irritate me. It’s his position in the story which irritates me.

lady16

First of all, I don’t understand why the female characters are so attracted to him. There is nothing in the script which explains this, so the only explanation I can think of is that he is physically handsome, in which case they should have cast a better-looking actor.

Now, I do actually like the scenes between Changchun and Leng Yushang, since they seem genuinely tender without being over-the-top. Okay, maybe I can understand why Leng Yushang likes him.

What really irritates me is that a) Cui Ping gets a crush on Changchun and b) when Cui Ping discovers how sweet and tender Changchun and Leng Yushang are, even though she is not in a committed exclusive relationship with Changchun, she decides to break off her relationship with Leng Yushang.

WHAT!

Cui Ping went to great lengths to become Leng Yushang’s disciple, and her actions indicate that Leng Yushang is the most important person in the world to her. It’s understandable that she would be upset to see Leng Yushang and Changchun touching each other lovingly … but to break up with Leng Yushang over a mere crush seems to indicate that the teacher-student bond was not as important to her as the audience was led to believe.

Disclosure Time.

I will admit that, as an aromantic, I am particularly sensistive to this sort of thing (if you do not know much about aromantic people, here’s a primer). I have nothing against romance – I even like well-written fictional romances – but to me, full-blown romance is like sisterhood – very common, frequently interesting, but something I will probably never personally experience. That’s okay, because sibling relationships and romantic relationships are not the only kinds of relationships which can be psychologically fulfilling.

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I do not like being told that romantic relationships are so special that it’s only natural that any other relationships – no matter how deep – can be dumped for romance – regardless of how shallow the romance is. If individual people want to only value romantic relationships, that’s their business (though I think they should inform their friends, families, and colleagues that they do not value non-romantic relationships). But to see such a wonderful teacher-student relationship disrupted over such an empty romance is heartbreaking.

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Then again, Chang Yushang herself is hurt by Cui Ping’s actions, and it seems that Cui Ping is so upset not because her feelings for Changchun are so deep, but because her feelings for Leng Yushang are do deep.

And this brings us back to culture.

One of the reasons I enjoy Chinese-language fiction as much as I do is that, compared to mainstream English-language fiction, the value of romantic relationships is more balanced with other kinds of relationships. And ultimately, the movie does vindicate me, and show that the relationship between Leng Yushang and Cui Ping is far more important than anything going on with Changchun. In an American movie … I think that vindication would have been less likely.

Even son … sigh … I wish they had chosen a different plot device to acheive the same effect.

Availability in English

This movie is available on Region 3 DVD with English subtitles.

Conclusion

A beautiful movie about a beautiful relationship between two vivid characters. What more can I say?

This column will go on hiatus for two weeks.

The Dragon Boat Festival is happening on June 12th! Time for Sara to go watch some dragon boat races and eat some rice dumplings. She also finally has an excuse to visit the town of Longtan.

Manga the Week of 6/12

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SEAN: Between Amazon and Diamond, I’ll sort out this release date schedule yet! (cries) So confusing…

Dark Horse has a 3rd Trigun Maximum omnibus. This was, I seem to recall, right around the point where the art during the fight scenes made me jump ship, but maybe it reads better in a 600-page shot.

ANNA: I couldn’t get into more than three volumes or so of Trigun as a manga, but I did enjoy the anime.

SEAN: Digital Manga Publishing has the 2nd of their Tezuka 3-fer with the done in one Atomcat! It combines Astro Boy and cats. What more is there to say?

number6

Kodansha Comics has two debuts this week. The first, No. 6, looks fairly serious and science-fiction oriented, and invokes the popular plot of “nice, popular guy discovers the secret facade behind everything he’s ever known”. I suspect his popularity will not last long.

MICHELLE: Possibly interesting!

MJ: Count me in! I haven’t loved many of Kodansha Comics’ debuts, but this one sounds genuinely interesting.

ANNA: That does sounds interesting. If Michelle and MJlike it, I might check it out!

SEAN: There’s also Vol. 1 of Sankarea: Undying Love. I reviewed this title already here, but suffice it to say this should please fans of both romantic comedies AND zombie films, and shows some promise that it won’t be just another harem series.

MICHELLE: I have to say, I am really weary of zombies.

MJ: And I am weary of harem series, but I’ll give it a chance to follow through on that promise.

ANNA: I am also weary of harem series. Not reverse harem though, that will always entertain me.

hisfavorite4

SEAN: His Favorite 4… I can’t with you. Seriously, that cover. That face. Those eyes. This is the best BL series ever. Based just on how the covers make me laugh. Also because it’s Luffy and Rule 63 Robin getting it on. >_>

MICHELLE: *snerk* I haven’t actually read any of this one yet.

MJ: I have read *all* of this series so far, and it is exactly as charming as it looks. It is one of my favorite SuBLime releases so far.

ANNA: That does look hilarious.

SEAN: There’s also a new BL series, Sleeping Moon. The cover is far more serious and broody, which likely suits its time-traveling angst shenanigans. The author had 3 one-shots come out from Deux back in 2008, so this is a grand return!

MICHELLE: I liked the oneshots, as I recall, so I’m looking forward to this one!

MJ: I am optimistic as well!

ANNA: Huh, this was not on my radar at all, but it looks intriguing.

SEAN: Arata: The Legend hits Vol. 14, which means it only has a few to go before it passes the original Fushigi Yuugi. I understand there are god swords.

MICHELLE: I enjoy Arata in a very Shonen Sunday kind of way.

ANNA: It is very well executed, I just really like Watase’s other series more.

SEAN: And oh look, I bet this gets some Pick of the Week. Loveless has Vol. 11 coming out, in which Seimei reveals that this has all been a wacky scheme to buy Ritsuka the perfect birthday present. Or something.

MICHELLE: Hooray! Except… I can’t read this (or volumes nine and ten) until the omnibus of seven and eight comes out next month. But I’m still happy about it. But perhaps not as happy as *somebody* in this post…

MJ: Aaaaaand that would be me. Like Michelle, I won’t be able to catch up to this volume until the fourth omnibus edition comes out next month, but I am pretty much DYING over that.

ANNA: This is another series I need to try – I have the first omnibus somewhere in my house.

SEAN: What’s your June Manga Bride?

It Came from the Sinosphere: The Duke of Mount Deer (Part 2)

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First, a Song!

I’ve never seen any of the TV adaptations of The Duke of Mount Deer, but I do like the opening song of the version starring Tony Leung and Michael Miu.

Hey, I Know That Place!

I have never been to China. While I know where places like ‘Beijing’ are, a lot of the action in these stories takes place in rural areas I’ve never heard of. Likewise, my knowledge of Chinese history is very, very basic, so when certain prominent historical figures pop up I know little, if anything, about them.

But while I’ve never been to China, I have most definitely been in Taiwan (I’m in Taiwan now).

This novel has many references to Taiwanese history and places in Taiwan, and eventually our protagonist even goes to Taiwan.

Furthermore, I read part of the novel in Penghu, which was a stronghold of Shi Lang, one of the characters in the novel. So, while I was reading about the fictional Shi Lang, I was learning about the historical Shi Lang by wandering around his old stomping ground.

A view of an old village in Wangan, Penghu County.

This village in Penghu was around when the events of this novel took place.

So, for once, not only did I understand a lot of the historical references being dropped and know quite a few of the places being mentioned, they were mentioning places which I have physically visited and have vivid memories of. For example, at one point Wei Xiaobao thinks about five concubines of King Ningjing. I have visited the temple dedicated to the five concubines, and seen the very wooden rafter where they hung themselves.

I had not expected to see places I’ve been to in my travel around Taiwan to pop up in a Jin Yong novel. It’s exciting to see a bit of one’s life represented in fiction, and it made my reading experience even richer.

The Island

Something that comes up again and again in Jin Yong stories is 2-8 characters going to an island where they live together in isolation from the rest of humanity. Or maybe they go to a remote mountain instead. This is the happiest part of the characters’ lives, and if/when they leave the island/mountain, they suffer.

In other words, happiness is setting up one’s own isolated micro-society, while people living within a huge, hierarchal society are doomed to suffer. There, I’ve just summarized about 5000 pages of fiction.

(this section contains some spoilers for this novel)

But there is one protagonist who is not happy with living on his own island, namely Wei Xiaobao.

He thinks the greatest pleasures in life are watching theatre shows, gambling, and having sex with beautiful women. But on the island, only the ‘sex with beautiful women’ is an option, which is why Wei Xiaobao doesn’t want to be on the island in the first place. He does try to gamble with the beautiful women, but since they are not really into gambling, it’s not much fun. Then some gamblers come to the island, so Wei Xiaobao gets sex with beautiful women and gambling. But he’s still unhappy. Then a theatre troupe comes to the island … no, I’m making that one up, but I bet even if a theatre group had come to the island and performed for Wei Xiaobao every day, he would still be unhappy.

It is then said that Wei Xiaobao can only be happy in a bustling city, such as Yangzhou or Beijing. But I wonder, is that really it? He seems happiest when he’s with his friends. If his friends were on the island with him, would he be so unhappy?

In any case, I find it interesting that Jin Yong subverts his own island/mountain fantasy.

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Not a Good Person

Jin Yong has received many complaints from readers about the novel because the protagonist is … not a good person. Jin Yong’s response is that protagonists don’t have to be ‘good’, his novels are not supposed to be morality textbooks, and nobody is completely ‘good’ anyway. He does say to any impressionable people who may read the novel that Wei Xiaobao’s loyalty to his friends is a virtue, but aside from that, his behavior should not be imitated.

I like to pride myself in being someone who wants complex characters with shades of grey and all that … yet Wei Xiaobao also frustrated me. Which makes me realize that I also like to sort characters into ‘good people’ and ‘bad people’, much as I don’t like to admit it.

Wei Xiaobao simply does not fit in the ‘good person/bad person’ dichotomy. He some some horrible things in the story, and never regrets them, let alone apologize for them. He also does some good things at personal cost to himself. At times I would be cheering him on, and then think ‘wait a minute, I’m cheering on the guy who did [horrible thing].’ And then there were times when Wei Xiaobao was suffering, and I would think ‘that’s not fair.’

Many of Wei Xiaobao’s ‘bad’ features are actually him living out fantasies we are not comfortable to admitting we have. For example, he is too lazy to study, and always finds clever workarounds for actual work. Many of use would love to have the benefit of work being done without doing the work ourselves. And while I personally do not have fantasies about having sex with a harem of beautiful women, based on some of the search results I’ve gotten, this seems to be some people’s favorite part of the story.

I have Asagi from Basara on my mind lately (thanks, MJ) and even he fits in the good person / bad person dichotomy. He’s a bad, broken person who becomes a good, healed person. Wei Xiaobao, however, is not broken – in fact, he is the least angst-ridden of all Jin Yong characters. While he does grow up over the course of the story, whether he becomes a ‘better’ person is open to debate.

To a large extent, Wei Xiaobao is just adapting to his environment. He often gets rewarded for lying and cheating, so he lies and he cheats. He grew up around people who treat young women as sex objects instead of as people, so he treats young women as sex objects instead of as people (though he gets a little better about this towards the end of the story). Older women tend to shower affection on him when he flatters and papmers them, so guess what, he flatters and pampers older women. His friends express their gratitude when he tries to help them, so he tries to help his friends. While Wei Xiaobao is individually repsonsible for his actions (especially since it is demonstrated that he CAN resist his social conditioning), to a large extent, his virtues and flaws are reflections of the society he lives in.

What a vexing character.

Wei Xiaobao and His Mother

(this is mildly spoilerific)

For most of the novel, Wei Xiaobao hardly thinks about his mother at all, and he certainly does not wonder how she’s doing. Finally, he returns to Yangzhou and sees her. From her point of view, her young son had disappeared years ago, and no matter how hard she searched for him, she couldn’t even find a clue about his whereabouts. She is understandably extremely upset about his long absence, and makes sures Wei Xiaobao knows it. At the same time, she is overjoyed to know that her son is alive and well. Wei Xiaobao also observes that she is getting older, and that some day she will need somebody to take care of her.

At first, this encounter doesn’t seem to change Wei Xiaobao, but looking back, that was a major turning point in his development. Before their reunion, Wei Xiaobao has a very self-centered lifestyle – everything is about making himself safe, comfortable, and happy. After being separated from her again, Wei Xiaobao actually misses his mother, and worries about how she is doing. And it’s not just his mother – Wei Xiaobao starts considering how his actions affect other people, not to manipulate them, but because he starts to care about their well-being. He realizes that there are people who depend on him. And thus his carefree existence is finished.

This is actually not unlike my own life. I haven’t seen my own mother in years, unless you count the *one* conversation we had over Skype last year, which incidently was the only time I talked to her in all of 2012. She would probably count that, for she said was that it was so wonderful to see her daughter’s face moving and smiling again after having not seen me for so long. Though I don’t think my behavior is nearly as harmful as Wei Xiaobao’s, I am currently living a self-centered life myself. I am only taking care of myself, and though Wei Xiaobao and I do very different things for fun (well, we do have ONE passion in common – live theatre), we are both trying to please ourselves to the greatest extent feasible.

I consider my eventual reunion with my parents to be the end of my carefree existence, for I see that, between my parents and myself, the direction of the caregiving is going to reverse. One reason I value my current self-centered lifestyle is that, by my reckoning, I will never be able to live like this ever again.

Availability in English

This novel has been published in English as The Deer and the Cauldron by John Minford. I haven’t read any of it myself, but this translation gets very, very mixed reviews. Currently, it’s out of print and expensive, so I suggest borrowing it from a library.

The cover of the third volume of the English language edition.

There is also an incomplete fan translation by ‘Foxs’. I’ve looked at it, and it’s very literal (on purpose, according to Foxs). It’s not the smoothest reading experience in English, but it’s close to the original Chinese. Some people say that the best way to read The Deer and the Cauldron in English is to read the Minford and the Foxs translations side-by-side.

Conclusion

A lot of people say this is Jin Yong’s best novel, and dammit, they are right, this is Jin Yong’s best novel.

If you can get the Minford translation from a library, or get the novel in a language you understand by some other means, then this novel needs to be on your reading list now (caveat: I am not going to blame people who avoid the novel because of the sexual abuse it depicts).

I am a bit sad to finish this novel. I had held off on reading this for a long time because it is the last Jin Yong novel. Now, I will never read a fresh Jin Yong novel ever again. Re-reads are not the same. That said, this was the right novel to save for last.

Thanks, Jin Yong. It was a great ride.

What does it say about Sara K.’s life that she saw some Beijing opera, learned how to open up encrypted filesystems with a liveCD, and was bitten by wild leeches in the same week?

Manga the Week of 6/5

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SEAN: Can’t talk, too much manga!

The 2nd Blood-C from Dark Horse. CLAMP’s character designs surrounding another storyline. I was bored to tears by Vol. 1. Does it improve?

MICHELLE: No clue.

ANNA: I cannot bring myself to care about this, and as someone who read a bunch of CLAMP back in the day, that makes me a little sad.

MJ: I think that doesn’t actually compromise you as a CLAMP fan, Anna, because it’s not really CLAMP… just someone else’s storytelling with CLAMP-looking characters in it. And. Yeah. I can’t get into it either.

lonewolf

SEAN: Lone Wolf and Cub has been a quiet perennial for Dark Horse over the years, and it’s getting an omnibus release to introduce it to those who missed it the first time round. Which would include me.

MICHELLE: Oh, interesting! I was unaware of this.

ANNA: Yay! I read the first 6 or so volumes of this, and I’m happy it is getting a rerelease.

MJ: I’m definitely excited about this. It’s one of those series that has intimidated me with its length, so I’m thrilled to have a second shot at it!

SEAN: Kodansha has Vol. 5 of Attack on Titan, which is now officially Huge In Japan, and with the appearance of the anime I suspect will get even bigger in America. Get in on the ground floor now, kids, this is a keeper.

MJ: I’ve seen this series getting incredible buzz on Twitter, Tumblr, and other fannish spaces, that’s for sure.

SEAN: Seven Seas has another (another!) Alice in the Country of _____ spinoff. Well, given they’ve all hit the bestseller lists, you can’t fault their logic. This one stars Ace (the “of Hearts” in the title), who is possibly the most unhinged character in the series. Mmmm, can’t wait.

MICHELLE: The Ace pairing is the hardest for me to imagine, but we shall see!

ANNA: Ace is my favorite Alice character just because of the ever growing body count that piles up wherever he goes (I’m sure that says something about me but I’m not going to speculate what that means). I’m sure I’ll be buying this.

MJ: I’m really lukewarm on this series, yet even I am intrigued by the thought of an Ace-centric spinoff.

SEAN: I’ve been surprisingly entertained by Haganai, the best of Seven Seas’ ‘Moe Fall of 2012’ series, which digs deeper for both its comedy and sympathy, and is not afraid to make its horrible people deeply lonely and somewhat broken. That said, it still is a bit creepy. Fair warning.

kissessighs_vol1_full

If you want to talk about the touchstones of Yuri Fandom in North America, among the Maria-sama Ga Miterus and Utenas of the world, Kisses, Sighs and Cherry Blossom Pink was the first big hit from Ichijinsha’s “Yuri Hime” magazine. It’s actually an anthology of stories based around a high school, and the various girls’ love passions within. This was the precursor to Girl Friends, which came out over here first. Everyone I know read the scans. Now buy the manga, dammit. :)

MICHELLE: Ooh, somehow I missed this one, too!

MJ: I did too! Count me in!

SEAN: Vertical has the third volume of Knights of Sidonia, which surely has run out of ways to make everything bleak. Of course, I look forward to it proving me wrong.

MICHELLE: I don’t normally go for bleak, but Tsutomu Nihei has got my number.

ANNA: Another “yay!” from me for bleak mecha manga!

MJ: Yes, yes, YES. I’m all about this series.

SEAN: And then there’s Viz. Dawn of the Arcana has hit the big 1-0. And leaves me even further behind.

MICHELLE: I continue to enjoy this one.

ANNA: This is one of those series that gets better as it goes along, for sure.

MJ: Indeed.

SEAN: Demon Love Spell continues to be the Mayu Shinjo book of choice for those not fond of her Sensual Phrase/Ai Ore types of heroes and heroines. I want more fun, more cute romance, and perhaps more hot semi-consensual dream sex, because Shinjo has to have SOME kinks in there.

ANNA: I really enjoy Demon Love Spell! This volume was fun.

MJ: I’m definitely looking forward to more of this! It’s pretty adorable.

SEAN: A Devil And Her Love Song 9 is spinning out its new subplot, and rapidly running out of ways to break up its hero and heroine. Will we get more love triangles? Will Maria be snarky? Will that irritating teacher finally get his comeuppance? My guess is yes, yes, and no.

MICHELLE: I recently got caught up with this one, so I’m looking forward to staying current. Surely that teacher must get his due eventually!

MJ: We can only hope.

SEAN: For those who missed Dragon Ball, and the Dragon Ball VizBIG editions, there is now a Dragon Ball 3-in-1. There are ALWAYS new fans of Dragon Ball.

Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan 15 is STILL. IN. KYOTO.

One Piece 67 means we are 2/3 of the way to 100 volumes. And we’re also starting the Punk Hazard arc in earnest. There is some comedy gold in this volume I don’t want to spoil.

MICHELLE: Yay, One Piece!

SEAN: There’s also an omnibus of One Piece, featuring Chopper’s introduction.

There’s two Pokemon books, which I usually ignore here despite them selling very well indeed. So: Black and White 10 and Diamond and Pearl 8.

kenshin1

And there’s Rurouni Kenshin: Restoration’s debut, which I am… not optimistic about (my favorite Kenshin character is Kaoru, so I’m used to disappointment) but will give a shot.

MICHELLE: I read the first few chapters for a Going Digital column a while back. It’s not horrible, but I am rather afraid of what will become of the glorious Kyoto Arc.

ANNA: This is OK, but reading it made me want to reread the original series more than it made me interested in this revised parallel series. I need to unearth it from my storage closet.

SEAN: Sakura Hime is edging towards a conclusion, but Vol. 10 is not it. Tanemura fans are sure to love it.

ANNA: I need to fill in the gaps in my collection and just mainline this series sometime. Tanemura is fun when you are in the mood for super-girly shoujo.

SEAN: Skip Beat! 31 continues to edge closer to Ren and Kyoko’s inner demons. This volume is still mostly Ren’s, as Cain Heel’s persona, as well as BJ’s, continue to distance him from his current ‘role’ as Ren Tsuruga.

ANNA: The Heel siblings storyline in this series fills me with glee.

SEAN: Slam Dunk is basketball! 28 volumes of it! (Must catch up one of these days…)

MICHELLE: Slam Dunk and Skip Beat! are two of my absolute favorites. I will definitely be procuring them both.

ANNA: A new volume of Slam Dunk is always an excuse to celebrate.

SEAN: The last Toriko split Komatsu off from Toriko and Zebra, and rescue seems a very long way away. Since Komatsu has become the main reason I read the series, I’m intrigued to see how he manages to survive this.

And lastly, there is Yu-Gi-Oh Zexal 3, whose title is so representational of its content that to summarize would only seem vulgar.

Does anything in this huge pile interest you?

It Came from the Sinosphere: The Duke of Mount Deer (Part 1)

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The_Deer_and_the_Cauldron_(鹿鼎記)

I’m going with the title “The Duke of Mount Deer” because a) it seems to be the most common title for this story in English and b) I like it more than the other titles for this in English. It’s also known as The Deer and the Cauldron and Royal Tramp. If I had to come up with a title for this story, I would pick What the **** Are You Doing, Wei Xiaobao?, which I think better conveys the spirit of the story than any other title.

The Story

Wei Xiaobao is a teenage brat from Yangzhou who goes on an adventure to Beijing. There, he gets captured, taken in to the Forbidden City, and has to pretend to be a eunuch called “Xiaojiazi” to keep his head attached to his shoulders. He’s instructed to go looking for the “Sutra of Forty-Two Chapters,” and becomes friends with another boy in the palace called Xiaoxuanzi. Why are they friends? Because Xiaoxuanzi likes to beat Wei Xiaobao up.

I’m going to stop there, because I really don’t want to spoil the next twist in the plot. Let’s just say that Wei Xiaobao has an interesting life.

Background

This is Jin Yong’s final novel. If you don’t know or don’t remember who Jin Yong is, you may consult the archives.

The Jin Yong Anti-Hero

The Jin Yong TV Tropes page puts this very succinctly:

Wouldn’t Hit a Girl: Most of his protagonists except for Wei Xiaobao.

The typical Jin Yong protagonist is:

– hardworking / dedicated to improving his martial arts techniques
– is chaste (or at least wants to be chaste)
– feel a sense of Han Chinese nationalism (though some feel it more strongly than others, and their feelings about this are often complicated)
– is willing to die for the people he loves and/or his principles
– actully want to make the world a better place, or at least do the just thing

By contrast, Wei Xiaobao

– is too lazy to become a real martial artist (he won’t practice because it’s boring)
– is way less sexually inhibited than other Jin Yong protagonists
– does not give a shit about Han Chinese national (he doesn’t care whether or not somebody is Han Chinese, nor does he care whether or not the Han Chinese control China)
– is not willing to die for anything, though he is willing to fake his own death
– does not care about making the world a better place

Wei Xiaobao is not just an anti-hero. He’s an anti-Jin-Yong-hero. You really have to read several Jin Yong stories and then read this one really appreciate it.

And quite frankly, it’s refreshing to read about a protagonist who does not have the typical Jin-Yong-protagonist hangups.

That said, Wei Xiaobao is not a complete opposite of other Jin Yong protagonists. Most Jin Yong protagonists are child-like/immature/naive (pretty much the only exception to this is Qiao Feng, though Chen Jialuo is arguably neither child-like nor immature), and Wei Xiaobao is … child-like, immature, and naive. I think that the child-like quality is actually more essential to Jin Yong protagonists than, say, their sexual philosophies. What is at the heart of the stories is a sense of wonder while exploring the world, which is a child-like approach (though mature adults can do it too). To me, this is a key signature of Jin Yong’s style which sets apart his stories from most other wuxia.

Qing Dynasty Curio Box

Much of the imperial collections of the Qing Dynasty court are in Taipei, and a fraction is on display at the National Palace Museum.

A photograph of a Qing dynasty sandalwood curio box full of various little trinkets.

This image comes from Qing Dynasty Treasures on Pineterest

The Qing Dynasty court loved curio boxes. First of all, the boxes had creative designs, often to show off the contents in unusual ways, or with secret compartments. The contents could be artifacts from thousands of years ago, weird baubbles imported from Europe, or the fine work of the imperial artisans (and many other things beside – it could be anything that would fit into a box and delight the viewer).

To me, this novel feels like a Qing Dynasty court curio box, which is appropriate, since most of the novel does take place in the Qing dynasty court. There are lots of secrets to be uncovered, and lots of plot twists to delight the reader.

I want to give examples, but every single example would be a spoiler, so instead I am going to make something up – Wei Xiaobao notices that a middle-aged man always appears at a gambling house in Beijing on the 7th day of the month, that this mysterious man is an excellent martial artist, and that this man wants to hide, not find, the “Sutra of 42 Chapters.” Wei Xiaobao eventully finds out that this “man” is actually a woman – specficially Qingqing from The Sword Stained with Royal Blood. After Wei Xiaobao discovers her true identity, Qingqing captures him and takes him all the way to Brunei, where she has a beautiful daughter who decides that Wei Xiaobao is an excellent punching bag.

This doesn’t actually happen in the novel, but it’s like the things which do happen in the novel.

Language

This novel is very playful with it’s language, which I’m sure gives the translators painful headaches a wonderful challenge.

Wei Xiaobao himself is illiterate, and is too lazy to even learn the Cyrillic alphabet (Wei Xiaobao knows some Russian), let alone the Chinese writing sytem.

However, because he needs to pick up imperial etiquette mighty quickly to keep his head attached to his shoulders, he ends up learning this formal imperial language quite well.

What he does not learn, however, is how to speak as an educated person. Or rather, he learns it, but incorrectly. For example, there is a phrase – ‘it’s hard to chase four horses’. Wei Xiaobao always says it as ‘it’s hard to chase a dead horse’ (the Chinese word for ‘four’ sounds like the word for ‘death’), and furthermore often uses the phrase for totally inappropriate situations.

Of course, while Wei Xiaobao cannot use proper formal Chinese, he is a poet of gutter Chinese. This novel is full of foul language, and some of the humor comes from Wei Xiaobao using foul laguange inside the Forbidden City. At one point, Wei Xiaobao says something like ‘[character] is wearing a hat of fine emerald’. People who are familiar with the Chinese language can figure out that this is a very salacious comment. And then, some members of the imperial family pick up some foul language from Wei Xiaobao…

The contrast of the stiff, formal imperial Chinese with gutter Chinese is yet another level of fun in the novel. The prose in this novel may not be as beautiful as in some of Jin Yong’s other novels but, well, beautiful prose would miss the point.

I read this edition.

I read this edition.

Sexual Abuse

At one point in the story, Wei Xiaobao overhears some people forcing a girl (probably around 10 years old) to drink something. Wei Xiaobao assumes that the drink is drugged, or at least is alcholic, and that they plan to rape her. He is totally indifferent to this.

We then learn that, where Wei Xiaobao grew up, this happened all of the time, and that all of the adults around him went along with this. In other words, he was taught that raping 10-year-old girls is OK.

This explains at LOT.

The parts of the novel which I enjoyed least were the sections where Wei Xiaobao was persistently sexually harassing people. On the one hand, yes, Wei Xiaobao is a very clever prankster. If he were, say, finding clever ways to pee all over his enemies’ beds (like a certain other Jin Yong protagonist), I would have had a blast.

But while I think pranking is fun, sexual harassment is not fun. I’m not saying this to be politically correct, I mean that, in my guts, sexual harassment feels bad.

So here I was, with long sections of this novel which would have been a lot of fun if Wei Xiaobao’s pranks had not been a form of sexual harassment. It was a drag.

(the rest of this section has spoilers)

Of course, Wei Xiaobao wouldn’t actually rape anybody, would he? He’s so cute and adorable, and most of the beautiful female characters could easily beat him to a pulp.

One of the most common defences of rapists is “but he’s such a charming guy – he can’t be a rapist” (or variations of this defence). Also, when people mention that they are being sexually harassed (for example, female bloggers receiving rape threats from anonymous commenters), they’re often told that there’s no danger, and that they should just ignore it. There’s also this myth that most rapes could be prevented by potential victims being armed, or learning self-defence, when in fact this would only prevent a minority of rapes.

Well, I have to give Jin Yong points for realism. Wei Xiaobao was raised to think that rape is OK, and nobody expelled this notion out of his head. When one of his victims complain about the sexual harassment, other chracters explain it away by saying that Wei Xiaobao doesn’t have any bad intentions, and that she shouldn’t take him too seriously. And the physical capabilities of his targets is irrelevant if he drugs their drinks.

The one thing which I cannot buy is that two of his victims start liking him after Wei Xiaobao rapes them. I’m not going to say this is absolutely impossible, but as a reader, I need a damn good explanation in order to believe this (even in a work of fiction). I do not get any explanation. Therefore, I had to edit my headcanon to keep the story functioning inside my headspace. It is simply not in human nature to start liking your rapist (unless there are a hell of lot of interfering factors at work).

Wei Xiaobao himself is also a victim.

At the very minimum, he’s the victim of non-consensual BDSM. It is also possible that he is a rape victim himself. The novel does not state whether or not he consented to sex with that specific character, but given a) his previous experience of non-consensual BDSM b) the fact that she often uses threats to make Wei Xiaobao do what she wants and c) Wei Xiaobao tries to avoid her precisely because he’s scared that she will cause him physical harm, I have my doubts.

Just because Wei Xiaobao himself is a perpertrator does not mean it is okay to sexually abuse him. Two wrongs do not make a right, especially when it comes to sexual abuse. I admit there were times when I wished someone would kick Wei Xiaobao in the nuts, but even that would only be okay in certain circumstances (such as self-defence).

Does Wei Xiaobao take his feelings of being on the receiving end of sexual abuse, and connect it to the way that he is making his victims feel? Of course not – Wei Xiaobao is terrible at empathy.

I’m Not Done!

Next week, I will continue to discuss this novel. If you can’t wait for the conclusion, it’s “READ THIS NOVEL!”

***

Sara K. is dealing with major technical difficulties right now. If you liked this post, you should thank Sara K.’s father, for if he hadn’t impressed on her that she should always be prepared to run a computer without using a hard drive, there is no way this post would have been finished on time. Right now, she is running the computer off a Class 10 SDHC card, which is thanks to her uncle’s suggestion.

Yumi Tamura: Two Artbooks

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For this month’s MMF, I wanted to review something a little different—two new artbooks by Yumi Tamura. While they’re not available in English, they are fairly easy to find, and Tamura’s beautiful art doesn’t need to be read to be enjoyed.

Edge of Emotions front cover

Edge of Emotions front cover

Natsu, a high school girl who is so shy that her only friend is her cat, sits down to a meal with her family and, oddly enough, it’s every one of her favorite foods. When she wakes up, she’s on a small boat, in the middle of the sea with six other teenagers and an adult. The adult later reveals to the group that they weren’t kidnapped or the victims of some accident—they are some of the few survivors from a catastrophe that has devastated the world and Japan. The leaders of Japan, knowing this was coming, devised a project where five groups of specially chosen young people would be cryogenically frozen, only to awake when the world was stable enough again for human life. 7SEEDS is the story of Natsu and Team Summer B, but also the others that have awoken in a terrible world. There are also glimpses of humanity’s last days in a survival shelter, and the brutal, stark story of how Team Summer A came to be. While there’s only a handful of people left, the story still has an epic scope as they try to build their lives among the ruins.

7SEEDS is one of the best series being published in Japan right now, running in Shogakukan’s FLOWERS magazine, which runs other older-skewing shojo series like Kaze Hikaru. While it would fit in with current trends in YA publishing (dystopias ahoy!), the fact that it is currently in volume 24 goes against the current realities of the manga market.

Edge of Emotions dustjacket reverse - there are more people on the flaps!

Edge of Emotions dustjacket reverse – there are more people on the flaps!

This is a problem for the manga reader who doesn’t read Japanese. 7SEEDS had ten volumes published in France, which is somewhat readable if you still have a decent memory of high school French. Sadly, though, for unknown reasons the publisher no longer has the license (cancellations are rare in the French market) and the volumes are out of print, which makes them difficult and expensive to import.

One way to enjoy titles that you can’t read is to enjoy the art. Artbooks have long been available in the US market through various importers, and the books for the bigger titles can be had (for an inflated price, of course) at your favorite local anime convention. So, having a bit of an artbook addiction, when I saw two new releases from Yumi Tamura, one for 7SEEDS and the other focusing on her whole body of work, I had to have them!

Edge of Emotions - Natsu and Hana

Edge of Emotions – Natsu and Hana

7SEEDS: Edge of Emotions was released in 2012 and is more of a guide/character book than a straight-up artbook, so there is a significant amount of text. However, this is a very attractive presentation—the back of the dustjacket is a poster with many of the main characters, and the book opens with a poster in the front—one side is Natsu, the other side is a rundown of all of the “seeds” and their adult guides, included the deceased ones. Then there’s multiple pages of beautiful color artwork from the series—mostly from cover/splash pages—and also from furoku items. The paper is good quality but not glossy, like you’d see in regular artbooks.

Edge of Emotions - Aramaki <3

Edge of Emotions – Aramaki <3

Being a character guide, the focus is on providing profiles of the 35 “seeds” and the guides, along with the handful of other pre-disaster characters. For a handful of characters who didn’t make it long, there’s more about them here than was ever in the series itself. There is also an extensive interview with Tamura-sensei at the end. One of the most interesting parts is an extra manga at the end, which is a short story of how many of the characters’ paths were crossing before the disaster, but they didn’t even know it.

Edge of Emotions - Profile page for Hana

Edge of Emotions – Profile page for Hana

The other book is one of a series of special releases for Shogakukan’s 90th anniversary, titled Flowers Comics Masterpieces, featuring “five comics legends”: Taeko Watanabe (Kaze Hikaru), Chie Shinoara (Red River), Moto Hagio (Heart of Thomas, They Were 11), Akimi Yoshida (Banana Fish) and Yumi Tamura.

Heat of Life - slipcase box and book presentation

Heat of Life – slipcase box and book presentation

生命の熱量 , or roughly, Heat of Life, is firstly a beautiful presentation. The hardcover and bonus book (more on that later!) are in a very nice, heavy-duty carboard slipcase. The slipcase is embossed with gold foil and it’s really well made. The hardcover book runs over 400 pages, consisting primarily of one-shots. Perhaps some of these are the titles she kept mentioning in her Basara notes! Most stories open with a color page as well. There’s also a selection of colored work from titles that -aren’t- 7SEEDS or Basara—but there is stuff that a Western fan would recognize, like Chicago. It’s all on high-quality paper so the illustrations are reproduced beautifully.

Heat of Life - poster from the reverse side of the Basara/7SEEDS book dustjacket

Heat of Life – poster from the reverse side of the Basara/7SEEDS book dustjacket

What will be of most interest to fans would be the second book—a smaller, thin paperback. It has the same nice paper, and the dustjacket reverses and folds out into a Basara poster. Not having those artbooks I can’t immediately tell if it is new art or not. Half of the book is about Basara, and it’s basically an illustrated summary of the story. The second half is for 7SEEDS, and provides some information on post-disaster Japan, since a lot of the character information was already covered in Edge of Emotion. Both halves have fantastic artwork, and there is some overlap on the 7SEEDS artwork.

Heat of Life - Beautiful art from the Basara book

Heat of Life – Beautiful art from the Basara book

If you have to get just one, Heat of Life is a much more comprehensive take on Tamura’s 30-year career, but it is a special edition, and priced like one. Edge of Emotions is a third of the price but entirely focused on 7SEEDS. Although, if you want to know more about it while you pen letters/prepare bribes for the folks at VIZ, it’s a great resource. Either way, you’re supporting Yumi Tamura!

Heat of Life - Interior art from the main book for one of the one-shot stories

Heat of Life – Interior art from the main book for one of the one-shot stories

So now that I have you wanting these, yes? :) Here are my sources:

-Kinokuniya online, or, if you’re lucky and live near one, at one of their stores. To order online, it’s best to use ISBNs unless you can input Japanese text. Reasonable shipping costs.

-YesAsia online – again, having the ISBNs is a plus. They convert the titles into English text but the romanization leaves a lot to be desired. On YesAsia, also always be careful that you’re buying the Japanese editions—they also sell Chinese-language editions as well. They offer free shipping if you order over a certain amount but it’s rather slow.

Heat of Life - Interior art from Chicago

Heat of Life – Interior art from Chicago

-Amazon Japan – the biggest and best source, but you’ll be paying for overseas shipping. Still, investigate and compare—YesAsia and Kinokuniya’s pricing may still reflect when the dollar was stronger against the yen, so even with shipping it may not be a terrible deal since through Amazon you will get current rates. Amazon will also convert your payment themselves, so you don’t get hit with a foreign currency charge if you pay by credit card.

-eBay – There’s usually a significant markup by the majority of the “anime” sellers, so I prefer to use eBay for out-of-print titles that I can’t find elsewhere; Amazon Japan does have a marketplace comparable to the US site but few if any sellers will ship internationally. You can get lucky, sometimes, when someone is downsizing a collection and find a fair deal.

Heat of Life - Last page! A little Tam-Tam Time and a little Shinbashi

Heat of Life – Last page! A little Tam-Tam Time and a little Shinbashi

7SEEDS: Edge of Emotions (7SEEDS 公式ファンブック) ISBN 978-4091342577, 980 JPY

Yumi Tamura: Heat of Life (田村由美-生命の熱量) ISBN 978-4091791436 2,730 JPY

License This! 7 Seeds by Tamura Yumi

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Well, since everyone’s talking about Tamura Yumi and I just recently finished reading the newest volume of 7 Seeds, I think I will talk today about how some US company really, really, REALLY needs to license this awesome manga!

7seeds 22I’m sure many of you have read Basara, so you know Tamura Yumi can write amazing long-form post-apocalyptic adventure series. The cool thing about 7 Seeds is that it is also a long-form post-apocalyptic adventure series, but at the same time is completely different from Basara. Basara is set sometime long after humanity has recovered from their apocalypse and has regressed to a sort of feudal society. The actual apocalypse and aftermath don’t play any role in the story and to be honest, it could be set in a fantasy feudal Japan and not really feel any different.

7 Seeds, on the other hand, tells the story of five groups of young people who were cryogenically frozen in a government plan to assure humanity’s survival after Earth’s collision with a giant meteor. It’s a survival story and the apocalypse and the affect it had on Japan is constantly felt. There’s also lots of intrigue as we learn more about the 7 Seeds Project and what happened to everyone else on Earth after the meteor hit.

The manga starts off with Natsu’s POV, as she wakes up in an unfamiliar world with a bunch of strangers. No one told her or the other people in her group that they were chosen to be part of this project. The only person who knows anything is their guide, Botan. Later the POV switches to Hana, a girl on a different team, who also had no knowledge of the project, but is far more prepared than anyone else, having had a lot of wilderness training from her father. Occasionally the POV switches to other characters (like when we meet Aramaki, the sole survivor of his group, who thawed out fifteen years earlier than Hana and Natsu’s groups, in the icy wilderness of Hokkaido, or when Hana finds the journal of Mark, a guy who lived in a doomed shelter directly after the meteor hit, or when we meet the team whose members trained their entire life in order to be sent to the future as humanity’s great hope but who ended up being emotionally and mentally scarred by the experience), but for the most part it’s shared between Hana and Natsu.

This series has so many angles of appeal. Do you like adventure? Do you like post-apocalyptic stories? Do you like large casts with lots of great female characters? Do you like found/chosen family? Do you like intrigue and mystery? There is romance, too, as these are (for the most part) teenagers with lots of emotions and hormones and all that jazz. But romance plays even less of a role than it does in Basara, so if that was your main interest in a story then this probably wouldn’t be the story for you (but then again, it might, since there are loads of people to ship and at least one pairing that’s set up as the “main romance”). (I do love shoujo romance, but I’m also always really happy to find good shoujo series that aren’t primarily romance, because while there’s more of them in Japan than available in English, even in Japan it’s still a minority compared to romance-focused manga.)

One thing that really hit me in reading the most recent volume is that the theme of 7 Seeds seems to be “don’t look back.” No one knows how long it’s been since the meteor hit. Even the guides, who were prepared for this, know only that they were set to thaw when the computers sensed that the world was once again able to sustain human life. The flora and fauna and even the landscape of Japan, everything is alien. But the lesson seems to be that it’s humans who are the intruders, and in order to survive, they have to adapt to this new world, rather than clinging to the past. This is really driven home every time they encounter one of the abandoned shelters where those few survivors who weren’t part of the 7 Seeds project lived after the meteor hit.

I know some people don’t like her art and feel it’s dated (personally I think it’s unique and helps it stand out from the crowd), but she’s such a great storyteller that even if it had the worst art ever, I would still recommend this series to everyone because it’s that great. I don’t want it to end, so when it seemed like the groups were getting closer to finally all coming together (which will surely be the beginning of the end) in this most recent volume, I found myself cheering when they were separated even further as that meant the series wasn’t as close to the end as I’d feared. (There’s still so much to discover! So much I want to know!)

The longer this series goes on without being licensed (the most recent volume was #24 and it’s been running for over ten years now), the more I worry it never will be, since publishers are always more hesitant about picking up a long series (especially when it’s not shounen), but I really, really hope that someone will take a chance on it. As much as I loved Basara, I love this many times more and I want more people to be able to enjoy it!

It Came from the Sinosphere: Khóohái Lúsînliông

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PUPPETS!

Ever since I started this column, I’ve hoped to eventually feature a Taiwanese puppet show. Well, the time has come.

The Story

This series is a spinoff of a Taiwanese puppet saga known in English as The Scholar Swordsman. It stars one of the main characters of “The Scholar Swordsman,” called Khóohái Lúsînliông.

Khóohái Lúsînliông is being punished.

Khóohái Lúsînliông is being punished.

Khóohái Lúsînliông is a Tartar princess who has become a travelling sword fighter. She prefers drinking alcohol and kicking butt to acting like a princess. Various characters have trouble whether to treat Khóohái Lúsînliông as a friend or enemy.

She is in love with a poet called Sú Gânbûn. However, there’s a fake Sú Gânbûn running around! Where’s the real Sú Gânbûn? At one point, a ‘Sú Gânbûn’ gets rescued by a mysterious horse-rider called Tiònghuakióng. Is Tiònghuakióng the real Sú Gânbûn? Is Tiònghuakióng actually

Tiònghuakióng is caught in a spider web!

Tiònghuakióng is caught in a spider web!

Khóohái Lúsînliông in disguise? And why is there a fake Sú Gânbûn?

Anyway, the plot keeps going on an on like this. Every episode ends with a cliffhanger, usually either along the lines of “character X and Y are about to fight, who will win?” or “What is the true identity and motive of Character Z?”

I’ll be honest, and admit that I had trouble following the plot. This is not necessarily the drama’s fault. I must point out that

1) This is in Taiwanese, and my Taiwanese comprehension skills suck.
2) I am not terribly familiar with The Scholar Swordsman, so I seem to be missing out on some background.

About Taiwanese Puppets

Glove puppetry has been extremely popular for as long as Chinese speakers have lived in Taiwan. Live puppetry used to be the most popular way to entertain masses of people.

There are actually many kinds of traditional puppetry in Taiwan, and I’m not qualified to describe them, but they can be broadly divided into the “northern school” and the “southern school.” The “northern school” tended to focus on tales of magic, adventure, good vs. evil, and heroism, whereas the “southern school” focused on tales about family, love, and ordinary people. Guess which school Khóohái Lúsînliông is descended from.

Back in 19th century Taiwan, the “southern school” was considered higher-brow than the “northern school” – scholars could admit to enjoying the southern school, not so much the northern school.

Then something called “television” appeared in Taiwan.

Is that television coming to Taiwan? No, it's just Khóohái Lúsînliông going somewhere.

Is that television coming to Taiwan? No, it’s just Khóohái Lúsînliông going somewhere.

Did the puppeteers say “Oh no, television is going to take away all of our audience, we must stop it!!!!”?

Nope. They said “What a great way to reach more people.”

And that’s how the “Golden Light” puppetry style was born.

“Golden Light” first appeared around the 1950s, and is a style which has been adapted to work well both live and on the small screen, with a heavy focus on exciting special effects to dazzle viewers.

And it worked.

Throughout the 1960s, not only were many of the most popular Taiwanese TV shows puppet dramas, many of the top selling music albums were soundtracks from puppet dramas. Live puppet shows also did well.

When I talk to middle-aged Taiwanese people, if I mention puppet shows, their eyes will light up with nostalgia. 40-year-old men will become 10-year-old boys. It’s like talking about popular old Saturday-morning cartoons with Americans.

However, puppet dramas have gradually fallen out of the mainstream, and are now considered something primarily for fans. While puppet dramas used to be broadcast over the air, now they are almost only present on cable (that said, there is an ENTIRE CABLE CHANNEL dedicated just to puppet dramas). When I ask people why puppet dramas aren’t as popular as they used to be, I am told that there is too much media from Hollywood, Japan, Hong Kong, etc., crowding out the puppet dramas.

A puppet is buried in sand.

The sand represents Hollywood/Anime/Hong Kong Cinema/K-Dramas, and the puppet represents, well, Taiwanese puppetry.

Even so, there is a very active puppet fandom in Taiwan. They have conventions. The puppets themselves can become collectors’ items which demand high prices. It is not unusual to see a 7-11 advertisement featuring puppets.

Many traditional events, such as temple festivals, often feature live puppet performances. I remembering seeing one just two blocks away from my apartment. However, while some people look on curiously for a minute or two, I have never seen anybody enraptured by a live puppet performance. It seems to be there as a ritual, not as a form of entertainment.

About this Drama

The Scholar Swordsman is the magnum opus of one of Taiwan’s most celebrated “Golden Light” puppeteers, Toshio Huang, who belongs to the third generation of a noted puppeteering family. The saga has been produced multiple times for TV, and has also been performed many times live. This specific spinoff seems to be a collaboration between Toshio Huang and his son, Huang Liwang.

The themesong, of course is “Khóohái Lúsînliông.” The song had originally been popularized by The Scholar Swordsman, and become a standard of Taiwanese music. I had actually been familiar with the song before I found out that it came from a puppet drama. The Youtube video above features the song.

The Puppetry

One of the things that’s frustrating about writing this post is that stills taken from the show *completely miss the point*.

Though the puppets can move their eyes and mouths, the expressions on their face generally don’t change very much. Therefore, much of the expressive power of the puppets come from how they move. You really do have to see them in action to see just how skilled the puppeteers are in conveying personality, mood, feeling, etc., just by how the puppets move. Still images of the puppets look almost lifeless, whereas the puppets in motion feel like living people.

The show integrates both “real footage” and “puppet footage.” For example, sometimes they use shots of real deserts, forests, etc … and sometimes they have miniature puppet forests, deserts, etc.

It's a puppet waterfall.

It’s a puppet waterfall.

And I never imagined that puppet fighting could be so exciting to watch. The fights are really well done – detailed, easy to follow the flow of the action, variety, etc. And there are a lot of things you can do with puppets which cannot be done (ethically) with live performers. Cutting off their heads, for example. Also setting them on fire.

The fact that they are puppets, in a way, makes it all more magical. It’s very hard to explain. However, I also feel that special effects in live performances feel more special than special effects in Hollywood blockbusters, for that matter, I think special effects in silent cinema feel more special than special effects in Hollywood blockbusters. The fact that the technology is cruder ironically seems to make it more wonderful. The same effect it at work in this puppet drama, at least for me.

Influences

Obviously, this show is heavily influenced by wuxia, in fact, it *is* wuxia. But it’s not just based on wuxia.

A witch with a broomstick who looks like she came from Western fantasy (specifically the kind of witch you might see in Halloween festivities).

Puppets. Seriously.

American culture does not take puppets seriously. Anything involving puppets is assumed to be cute and/or funny. I bet you can count on one hand every work of American puppetry which is neither a comedy nor for kids.

I’m an American too, and so it’s also my reflex not to take puppets seriously, even though I have been an (amateur) puppeteer myself. So while watching this show, there were time when I thought, “Oh, the puppets are travelling through the desert, how cute” or “Prostitute puppets, ha ha ha” (yes, some of the characters in this story are prostitutes).

However, I know that Taiwanese culture does not have this reflex. They take puppets as seriously as they take popular cinema, particularly the older generations. Puppet dramas can be for kids and/or comedic, but they aren’t necessarily so.

Puppetry is considered “masculine,” so much so that a Taiwanese girl/woman who took great interest in puppetry might be considered a tomboy. In the United States, a boy/man who took great interest in puppetry might be considered a sissy. (Sadly, in both Taiwanese and American culture, “masculine” things are taken more seriously than “feminine” things).

Encountering things like Taiwanese puppetry drive home the point that, yes, I am culturally American.

Availability in English

Well, Khóohái Lúsînliông is not available in English.

There is a movie, Legend of the Sacred Stone, which is available on DVD with English subtitles. Weirdly, the movie is in Mandarin – most puppet dramas are in Taiwanese (they also sometimes are performed in Cantonese).

Taiwanese puppetry has also been adapted into the Cartoon Network show Wulin Warriors, which of course is available in English, but I’ve read that the Cartoon Network version is inferior to the original.

A pretty woman (puppet) with lots of pink flowers.

She works in a brothel.

Conclusion

Many Taiwanese people take a “the glass is half empty” view of puppetry because they know it’s not as wildly popular as it was a few decades ago.

I take a “the glass is half full” view because, even today, puppetry is way more popular in Taiwan than it ever has been in the United States.

What I take away from this drama is not the story, which, while somewhat entertaining, did not make much an impression on me. What I take away from it is the sheer creativity which goes into golden light glove puppetry as a medium. It feels new and fresh to me, and the special effects probably inspired a greater sense of wonder in me than the special effects of all the Hollywood movies I’ve seen in the last seven years combined.

Next Time: What the **** Are You Doing, Wei Xiaobao? The Duke of Mount Deer (novel).

One time, Sara K. was assigned the task of making bird puppets. She thought it would be really boring if they were perched, so she wanted to make it look like they were flying. It wasn’t enough for the wings to be outstretched – she wanted the wings to move as if they were flying. She found it was amazingly difficult to get information about how birds move in flight, and ended up reading a book Bird Flight about the science of how birds fly because she couldn’t find any other source. Who would have thought that taking a theatre class would lead to doing detailed research in physics and ornithology?

Manga the Week of 5/22

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SEAN: As I try to wean this list away from just what Midtown Comics says and try to take in more alternate sources (mostly Amazon), I find myself sometimes missing books I should have mentioned. Last week was Dance in the Vampire Bund, this week it’s X, which apparently showed up today and I didn’t have on the MtWo list. So, X 3-in-1 5, which presumably has Vols. 13-15. And a picnic? Came out this week.

MJ: I’ve been really enjoying the X 3-in-1 releases. I didn’t enjoy this series much the first time I read it through, but the larger trim size is giving me a fresh appreciation for the artwork, which has really transformed my experience with the series. I’d recommend this new version to anyone who enjoys dramatic shoujo in all its glory.

SEAN: Meanwhile, in stuff coming out NEXT week, Kodansha has a trio of releases. I continue to buy and be entertained by Cage of Eden, even as it hits double digits. Honestly, its faults are the faults of almost have the titles that run in Shonen Magazine – the plot rambles on like a season of Lost without giving much info, and its female characters are all large-breasted nymphs for the males (and reader) to ogle. But – it’s fun snack food manga.

There’s also Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 4, which, I would imagine, stands alone. Robert Cormier’s Ghost in the Shell, coming soon.

sailormoon11

And Sailor Moon is in the home stretch, as Vol. 11 brings us the start of the final arc, Stars. Chibi Chibi is on the cover, and if you’re wondering who the hell she is, well, read on and find out!

MICHELLE: I continue to be sad that the Starlights never got a cover of their own.

SEAN: Seven Seas has a new debut in The Sacred Blacksmith, another title I vaguely recall was adapted into an anime a while back, and is no doubt based on a light novel, as that’s how Seven Seas rolls these days. It seems to feature a female swordswoman, which is a good start, and is fantasy-ish? And I hear this is another one where the anime takes great liberties with the heroine – not for the better. Let’s see if it impresses me like Zero’s Familiar did.

ANNA: This seems potentially interesting to me, but I think I’m going to wait until a few people I know read it.

MJ: I’ve become so skittish about Seven Seas. I’m with Anna on this one.

SEAN: Alice in the Country of Joker: Circus and Liar’s Game was one of the most psychological yet, and also took us closer to Alice finding out about her sister than ever before, so I really want to read Vol. 2.

ANNA: I did enjoy the first volume of this series and I plan on reading volume 2 as well. The first volume was not quite as good as Hearts, but not as bad as Clover, so I’m interested to see where this goes.

SEAN: Vertical has Vol. 5 of Limit, which features – shock and horror – a male on the cover. No doubt this is the volume where everything starts to turn around and go great. Aheh.

ANNA: I am feeling guilty that I am three volumes behind with this series! I plan to catch up though. It is always such a nice change of pace, if a Lord of the Flies type scenario featuring stranded schoolgirls could be described as “nice.”

MJ: I’ve been looking forward to this volume quite a bit!

sunny1

SEAN: Viz has a debut from the author of Tekkonkinkreet, Taiyo Matsumoto. It’s called Sunny, and is the manga to give your indie comics friends who hate manga to say “No, see? See?”

ANNA: I also feel guilt that I haven’t read anything by Taiyo Matsumoto. But this is on my to-read list, so hopefully my feelings of guilt will abate when I read it.

MJ: I’ve drooled over artwork I’ve seen from Blue Spring, and I’ve longed to read it ever since I read Kate’s article on the subject, so I’m thrilled to have an opportunity to experience some new Matsumoto along with everyone else.

SEAN: They also have the final volume of Saturn Apartments, one of the quieter Ikki series, but one that had a lot of fans who appreciated just those qualities. Every Ikki series that comes out here is worth it, IMO. Yes, even Bokurano, though I won’t read that.

MICHELLE: I’m looking forward to catching up on/concluding this one.

SEAN: And there is a GIANT PILE OF YEN, which I am getting in a week early, as my shop sometimes does. They will arrive just in time for me to go to Anime North. But it’s OK, as I can bring all my new manga up to Canada! And take it through customs! Hey, wait, found the flaw in my plan.

MICHELLE: Once again, you have made me snerk.

ANNA: I don’t know why, but there isn’t much that Yen puts out that’s on my radar. I need to catch up with A Bride’s Story and want to read Thermae Romae, but that’s about it. Perhaps my problem is that I’ve already read most of their graphic novel adaptations in prose form.

MJ: I’m deeply in love with several current Yen series, so a GIANT PILE OF YEN is always good news for me!

MICHELLE: Lately they’ve released several new action-ish series that I’ve found to be enjoyable, too. I look forward to volume three of Blood Lad, for example.

SEAN: Because the two bestsellers of last year were High School of the Dead and Alice in the Country of Hearts, the most obvious license ever would combine elements of the two in some way. This we have Are You Alice?, which seems to be about characters playing Wonderland ‘roles’ (like the other Alice), and murderous violence. I’m hoping this is more ‘psychological thriller’ and not ‘Saw’ with moe kids.

The 19th volume of Black God is out, and I believe that it is the final volume. It’s a manwha, so I will tag the others here.

MJ: I’ve been collecting this series all along, and I have a marathon planned now that the final volume is out. Look for more on this coming up!

SEAN: Blood Lad has proven to be my big surprise hit of 2013, so I’m really looking forward to the 3rd omnibus, whose cover is also very purple.

MJ: Oh, Blood Lad, how I adore you. I kinda can’t believe I’m saying that, but it’s obviously true.

SEAN: And speaking of survival horror, we have the 2nd volume of BTOOOM!. The first didn’t grab me hard, but I didn’t dislike it, so I will give it a second volume.

MJ: I had moderate fun with the first volume, so I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.

I’ve spent 3 volumes watching The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan sort of play around with being cute and moe, knowing that Vol. 4 would hit and be FAR more interesting. This is Vol. 4. It’s FAR more interesting.

And the second volume of Durarara!! Saika arc should be interesting as well, and feature a lot of slashing.

Amano_KingdomHeartsFinalMix_V1

One of Yen’s stealth announcements was the rescue/relicensing of the Kingdom Hearts books, with two volumes titled Final Mix coming out this month. I never read the Tokyopop ones the first time around, but I really should check them out, if only for Donald and Goofy.

MJ: This will be my first experience with the series, too, but I’m ready to check it out.

SEAN: Omamori Himari has hit ten whole volumes, which makes it a shame I know next to nothing about it except it has ‘cat demon samurai girls’. (What, no vampires?)

Soul Eater 14 has one of the most minimal manga covers I’ve seen in a while. Love it. As for the plot, hope you’re enjoying Baba Yaga’s Castle, we’re still there.

Thermae Romae has its 2nd omnibus come out, which will no doubt continue to look gorgeous. I’m hoping the storyline can keep it up as well – things were getting dangerous when we left off for our bathing hero.

MJ: I’m certainly interested in seeing where the story goes. It’s difficult for me to imagine how it’s going to hold up over the long term, but it’s lovely to look at, and that’ll take me quite a ways.

SEAN: Lastly, Umineko: When They Cry (the ‘they’ in this case being Seagulls, not Cicadas) starts its second arc, which is where things really begin to get very, very meta, if I recall correctly. Plus you have to love that insane grin on the cover.

Anything that you’d risk exposing to Canadian Customs?

It Came from the Sinosphere: The Wushe Incident

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A Seediq warrior throws a weapon, with his cape billowing up to his right.

Practically everybody in Taiwan knows about Seediq Bale, the most expensive Taiwanese movie ever made. During my entire time in Taiwan, not a single other movie, Taiwanese or not, has made as much of a stir as that one. What few people know is that it was adapted from a manhua, The Wushe Incident (台灣第一部霧社事件歷史漫畫), which is gratefully back in print thanks to the success of the movie.

The Story

Deep in the central mountains of Taiwan, 1930, the Japanese relentlessly inflict suffering on the Seediq people. Many young Seediq men are anxious to strike back at the Japanese, but their leader, Mona Rudao, stops them, and always placates the Japanese whenever a young Seediq man loses his temper. Of course, Mona Rudao himself hates the Japanese, as they killed his father, ruined his sister’s life, and continue to exploit his people. However, Mona Rudao has also travelled to Japan, and personally witnessed just how powerful the Japanese military is, so he dares not provoke the Japanese … before there is a good opportunity.

Background

If I had to sum up Taiwan in two words, those two words would be “mountain island.” Those two words alone explain a great deal about Taiwanese culture, history, politics, geography, agriculture, economy, weather, etc.

For example, Taiwan is difficult to conquer/unify because it’s a mountain island. That’s why the indigenous peoples speak over 20 different languages – travel was so difficult that most people would never went far from their birthplace.

During my various trips to Taiwan’s mountains, when I didn’t have to deal with road closures, landslides, fog so thick that the driver can’t see more than a meter or two ahead, buses that got cancelled because the road collapsed, etc., I was lucky. To read about the condition of what until recently was one of Taiwan’s most important mountain roads, click here. Right now, I reckon at least half of the major mountain roads in Taiwan are closed or have major obstruction, and there hasn’t even been a typhoon recently. This is why Taiwan has been politically united for less than a hundred years.

Conifers and high-mountain grasses are cloaked in lots of fog.

I took this photo near Wushe, where the story takes place.

Astonishingly, some of the “Japanese” mountain trails are still intact. I’ve been on a couple sections of the former Japanese Hehuanshan trail, which is one of the trails used by the Japanese to send reinforcements to Wushe. Along the trail there are the remains of Japanese police stations, schools to teach the indigenous children how to be more Japanese, and the graves of Japanese police/soldiers who died along the trail (most of them were killed by Mother Nature). Here is a description of an epic Japanese mountain trail running through Taiwan.

The manhua starts with a set of detailed color drawings showing various scenes of Seediq life.

The manhua starts with a set of detailed color drawings showing various scenes of Seediq life.

The creator of the manhua, Qiu Ruolong, got stranded in Wushe (which is near Wuling pass, Taiwan’s highest mountain pass which is car-accessible – though I personally wouldn’t want to drive through it) when his vehicle broke down. While he was stuck in Wushe, he stayed with the local Seediq people, who gradually shared their history with him. This is how he first learned of the Wushe incident, and it fascinated him so much that he did more and more research – for example, he spent six months sewing traditional Seediq clothing. Eventually, he made this manhua.

The Wushe incident is historically significant as the last act of armed resistance to Japanese rule in Taiwan.

The Artwork

I love it.

A page depicting high-mountain scenery.

First of all, Qiu Ruolong manages to capture a bit of the majesty of Taiwan’s high mountains. Just flipping through the pages brings up memories of my trips to the mountains.

It’s not just that he draws spectacular scenery – he populates it with the characters, making both the people and the scenery look solemn and magnificent.

Seediq men carry logs on the left side, while a river flows from a high mountain on the right side.

Sometimes, I just have stop and let my eyes rest on a page for a while.

Mona Ludao walks through a forest as sunlight comes through.

I love that halo of light around Mona Ludao as he walks through the dark forest, as the diagonal rays of sunlight frame him from above.

Which brings me to another point – Qiu Ruolong is great a compostion.

wushe09

Take this page, for example. Here, Qiu Ruolong explains the way the Japanese treated Seediq women. These two pages can be split into about four parts – in the top-right, we see the Seediq women in their native village before any Japanese men bother them, in the bottom-right, we see the Seediq woman marrying the Japanese man and adopting a Japanese hairstyle (she does not look overjoyed), in the top-left we see the Japanese husband beating her, and in the bottom-left we see the Seediq woman weeping, isolated in the midst of Japanese architecture. Notice that the last section is the biggest, and the image of the weeping woman is the single biggest thing on these two pages. That makes that the center of this scene, and all of the other, smaller drawings are supports which explain the existence of this central image.

In the picture below, notice how all of the Seediq warriors with their backs facing the reader circle around Mona Rudao, whose front faces the reader.

wushe11

And in this picture (below), notice how the simple image of the stare, surrounding by black, contrasts with the detailed drawings around it.

wushe05

Qiu Rulong is a master of drawing violence. The way the Seediq warriors chop off Japanese heads is both silent and chilling.

wushe12

However, possibly the best part of the artwork is he really brings the Seediq people (and to a lesser extent the Japanese people) to life. This is partially because the drawings are so detailed, but it’s mainly because he puts a human in every figure.

Seediq people dance at a wedding.

This is How You Make a Historical Graphic Novel

One of my biggest criticisms of In the Fires of 2/28 is that it didn’t focus on any specific characters, so it didn’t make the historical events feel personal. Qiu Ruolong does not make this mistake. While he often goes into digressions about Seediq life, historical background, etc., he centers the story around Mona Rudao and his family. Watching their personal journeys makes the story that much more powerful.

wushe04

That said, I would have liked to have seen a bit more about the Seediq characters who adopted a Japanese lifestyle. The graphic novel shows just enough about them to intrigue me.

Exploited Resource vs. Sovereign Agent

While the Japanese did various bad things to the Seediq people, all of the awful behavior stems from a single root – the Japanese regarded the Seediq people as a resource to be exploited, not as agents with which one should establish mutually beneficial relationships. Some people would phrase this as “the Japanese did not see the Seediq as fully human.” which would be accurate … but I’d like to emphasize that the Japanese had the exact same attitude towards the Seediq people as they did to the other “resources” in the mountains. For example, the Japanese saw the mountain forests as a way to make money quickly (that was one of the main reasons the Japanese wanted to control the mountains), rather than as an ecosystem to steward and preserve.

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The Seediq people knew that the Japanese were treating them as objects, not as agents. They could feel it. The Japanese were constantly rubbing it in. And passively accepting it was destroying their psyche.

The graphic novel does an excellent job of getting the readers to understand why the Seediq act as they do. First, the manhua patiently describes humiliation and humiliation suffered by the Seediq at the hands of the Japanese, making the reader angry. The worst is when the Seediq have to bow their heads and plead for forgiveness from the Japanese, even when it was the Japanese whose behavior was wrong. It’s like a rubber band slowly being stretched until it … snaps.

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The Seediq knew that they were not strong enough to drive out the Japanese and restore their independence. But they felt they had to attack anyway. They had to prove to the Japanese, and to themselves, that they have some agency, and that they could not be oppressed without consequences. Suicidal action which proved they still had some power was better than powerlessly submitting to the Japanese.

Availability in English

This manhua is totally unavailable in English. And that’s a shame. This is a downright excellent graphic novel, and it’s only about 300 pages long – would somebody please publish it in English?

Conclusion

This manhua definitely exceeded my expectations. It brings out so many feelings … from relatively benign nostalgia of my trips to the mountains, to the horror of the humiliation and violence, to passionate desire of the Seediq people to assert power over their lives.

Though the Seediq did not drive out the Japanese, they did shatter the Japanese perception that they were just passive objects to be used however the Japanese pleased. And today, the Japanese are long gone, while the Seediq are still there.

This manhua would not have been possible, or at least not as good, without Qiu Ruolong’s passion for the subject. I know the film Seediq Bale has been criticized for historical and cultural inaccuracies, and I cannot judge to what extent this manhua is or is not accurate. Accurate or not, it is clearly something that Qiu Ruolong cares about deeply.

Next Time: Khóohái Lúsînliông (TV show)

Sara K. has had far more fantasies about living in the mountains that living by the beach. She is upholding the San Francisco tradition of disliking beaches (the beaches in San Francisco are at best unpleasant, and at worst life-threateningly dangerous). She is no doubt also influenced by her family – her father, who was born and raised in southern Florida, also has a distaste for beaches, as does her mother, who grew up on the coast of the Mediterranean. That said, it is still good for her to go to beach instead of the mountain once in a while. Heck, last week she went *swimming* for the first time in over five years.

It Came from the Sinosphere: Hear Me

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The Story

Tiankuo, who works for his parents’ eatery, delivers some lunch boxes to a training session for a deaf swimming team. There, he meets a pretty young woman called Yangyang. Yangyang is there for her sister, Xiaopeng, who hopes to participate in the Deaflympics (note: the Deaflympics 2009 happened in Taipei, the same year the film came out). Tiankuo happens to be proficient in Taiwanese Sign Language (henceforth referred to as TSL for brevity), so he can chat with Yangyang … but will their relationship go in the direction that Tiankuo hopes for?

Some Background

This was the most popular Taiwanese film of 2009. That same year, the Deaflympics happened in Taipei.

Ivy Chen, who plays Yangyang, also starred in Black and White, and Michelle Chen, who plays Xiaopeng, starred in You Are the Apple of My Eye.

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TSL is the dominant sign language in Taiwan, and is closely related to Japanese Sign Language and Korean Sign Language (this is because the Japanese established formal Deaf education in Taiwan). TSL has also been influenced by Chinese Sign Language.

I have encountered a lot more users of sign language in Taiwan than I did in the United States. I can think of three explanations for this:

1) Sheer coincidence
2) Deafness may be more prevalent in Taiwan
3) Deaf people may be more integrated into general Taiwanese society

I don’t know which of the above explanations is correct.

Why Didn’t They Cast a Deaf Actress?

I really think they should have cast a deaf actress in this film. Okay, maybe, just maybe, there aren’t any pretty young deaf women in Taiwan with good acting skills … but I would have preferred casting a deaf actress from Korea or Japan over casting a hearing Taiwanese actress to play a deaf Taiwanese woman (actually, Xiaopeng doesn’t even have to be played by a pretty actress, but I’ll give the producers a pass on that one). And don’t tell me there isn’t a single competent pretty young deaf actress in Taiwan/South Korea/Japan combined – the population is too big for there not to be one.

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Now, I myself know almost nothing about TSL, so I can’t tell whether the actors worked so hard that in the film they pass for natives in TSL, whether they actually are natives in TSL, or whether people fluent in TSL find the actors’ TSL laughably bad. If the actors did not master TSL well enough to pass for native (well, I suppose Eddie Peng doesn’t need to pass as native since his character, Tiankuo, isn’t native in TSL), then that’s simply disrespectful to deaf people. But even if they do pass for native in the film, I think that casting a hearing actress to play Xiaopeng was wrong.

Why?

Fairness.

I bet that there there are deaf women in East Asia who love acting. This was a rare chance for one to get cast in a major East Asian film … and that chance was handed to a hearing actress who has a lot of other opportunities.

In the United States – and I suspect this is true in Taiwan too – deaf people are much poorer than their hearing counterparts, and one reason for this is employment discrimination. Casting a hearing actress to play a deaf woman is employment discrimination.

A Quiet Film

I’m not referring to the lack of spoken dialogue – though of course much of the dialogue is in TSL – but to the lack of melodrama in the film.

Nice boy meets nice girl, boy is nice to girl, girl is nice to her sister. Nice boy of course does get worked up and nervous about how nice girl feels about him, and nice boy and nice girl even get into a petty conflict at one point in the film, but it’s pretty mellow.

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The most melodramatic event is when there is a fire which causes Xiaopeng to lose consciousness, go to the hospital, and messes up her breathing, which affects her swimming ability.

And that brings me to another point – the most intense relationship in the film is not the relationship between Tiankuo and Yangyang, but between Yangyang and Xiaopeng.

Tiankuo is insecure because he doesn’t really know Yangyang that well, and it’s implied that he has little experience with romance. Yangyang and Xiaopeng, however, have spent their lives as sisters, and the love and bitterness in their relationship comes from knowing each other too well.

But while intense, it’s a quiet thing.

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Or maybe it seems quiet to me because of the sign language after all. After all, now that I’m trying to describe the events of the film, they seem more dramatic than I remembered. Since I don’t know TSL, I had to read the subtitles, which meant I was not paying the fullest attention to the actors’ bodies, and I didn’t hear any voices supplying aural emotional cues.

Then again, it could be the acting. The acting does not seem as vivid and animated as the work I’ve seen by American Deaf actors when using ASL. That might be because the actors in this film aren’t native in TSL … or maybe Taiwanese deaf culture does not encourage emotional expressiveness as American Deaf culture..

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But whatever it is which makes the film seem ‘quiet’ to me, I like the quietness. Maybe I simply read/watch too many operas of various sorts (soap operas, sword operas, etc.) but letting the character feel as they feel rather than milking the pathos feels very genuine to me right now.

And of course, I love the sense of play throughout the film, such as when we discover what Yangyang’s job is.

Respect

There are two words in Mandarin, kàn​de​qǐ​ (respect / think well of) and ​kàn​bu​qǐ (not have respect for / look down on), which are so useful that I find it frustrating that English does not have any direct equivalent for these words.

The current running under this film is that many people kàn​bu​qǐ deaf people, a fact that Yangyang, Tiankuo, and especially Xiaopeng is very sensitive to. They are always concerned about people whether or not others will kàn​bu​qǐ them. For example, Tiankuo is worried about his parents accepting Yangyang.

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[Spoiler warning for this paragraph] The core of Xiaopeng’s resentment for her sister Yangyang is that she suspects, deep down, Yangyang, who is actually a hearing person, kàn​bu​qǐs her. When Yangyang insists that she respects Xiaopeng, Xiaopeng responds that she wants to be independent, she doesn’t want Yangyang to constantly sacrifice herself to care for her ‘pitiful’ deaf sister. And finally, if Yangyang really has respect for deaf people, why won’t she go out and become Tiankuo’s girlfriend (at the time, they both thought Tiankuo was deaf).

I am not deaf, but I understand how Xiaopeng feels.

As a non-Asian, the default assumption is that I can’t understand written or spoken Chinese. I can’t blame Taiwanese people for assuming this, since most of them don’t encounter enough foreigners to figure out that foreigners who live outside of Taipei/Kaohsiung probably know some Chinese. Even I have had to train myself, when I see another non-Asian, to not immediately assume that they need language help.

However, even after I have demonstrated my degree of Chinese ability, some people still continue to act like I don’t understand Chinese, or that I don’t know what I’m doing, even in situations when it turns out I was better informed than most of the other people present. They sometimes make things harder for me, and I would have been better off if they had completely ignored me, but usually, it just feels like they kàn​bu​qǐ me. Getting away from this is one of the things I look forward to on that future day when I leave Taiwan.

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And what I’m describing is extremely minor compared to what Xiaopeng faces. I am merely irritated by various strangers. Xiaopeng is dealing with her own sister. Most importantly, my Chinese ability is not as deep into the core of my identity as being deaf is for many deaf people. Therefore, the cut goes in that much deeper.

And the irony is that Yangyang gets into a quarrel with Tiankuo when she assumes that he kàn​bu​qǐs her.

For some people, the cute love story between Tiankuo and Yangyang may be the main point of the film. But to me, the relationship between Xiaopeng and Yangyang is what stands out.

Alas, the film undermines its own point by failing to cast a deaf actress. If the film-makers really believed that deaf people are competent, capable people, wouldn’t they have cast one to play a deaf character?

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Availability in English

This movie is available on DVD with English subtitles.

Conclusion

I have mixed feelings about this film. I would love to learn something about Taiwanese deaf culture – heck, I’d like to learn more about American Deaf culture (I would like to learn some ASL if I ever get a good opportunity to do so). And it’s clear that there was some input from the deaf community, since many of the ideas presented in the film are similar to ideas expressed by deaf people. It’s also a good movie from an entertainment point of view. But ultimately … it’s a film made by hearing people, about hearing people, and for hearing people.

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I obviously don’t have a problem with movies made by, about, and for hearing people, since that describes about 100% of the movies I watch. But most movies are not supposed to represent deaf people. This movie could have been a great cultural bridge between deaf and hearing people, but to me, it feels like a lop-sided conversation with the hearing people mostly talking to each other while occasionally bothering to listen to what the deaf people say.

That includes me by the way – I did not find any opinion of the movie by any Taiwanese deaf person (if you know of one online, in Chinese or English, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE share the link), so this entire post has zero input from the Taiwanese deaf community. And I feel bad about not getting any input from Taiwanese deaf people in the writing of this post, since that means I’m doing the exact thing that I am criticizing this movie for doing – not having more deaf people directly involved.

Next Time: TBD (though I know it will be a manhua)

To learn what some people with various different disabilities think, last week was Blogging Against Disablism Day, which in previous years has included contributions from Taiwanese people (though not, IIRC, deaf Taiwanese people). On a completely different note, Sara visited the fort depicted in Cheerful Wind, which is related to why this post is so late. She met a Korean who was travelling all over the Penghu Archipelago by public ferry. She wishes she had enough spare time to do that, because she suspects that would be more fun than island-hopping by tour boat.

Manga the Week of 5/15

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SEAN: This will be a shorter post than last week, partly as there’s less manga coming out, and partly as I’m out of my brain on the 5/15.

MICHELLE: (smack)

SEAN: Ow.

bluemorningFirst of all, last week I forgot all about Dance in the Vampire Bund, which had Vol. 14 come out. I can only put that down to the fact that I just don’t read it. Does it have a Young Miss Holmes crossover yet?

A new series from SubLime, Viz’s BL imprint, Blue Morning features viscounts and butlers, and the summary sounds oddly like Black Butler with the fantasy removed and the BL actually consummated. Certainly the cover indicates this won’t be a laff riot.

MJ: I’m usually open to trying new BL. I guess we’ll see? Hm.

SEAN: As for the cover for Bond of Dreams, Bond of Love 4, I regret to say it’s not quite as laughable as Vol. 3’s cover, though we do see a return of the ever popular GIANT SEME HANDS. Now there’s a post that needs to be done for BL Bookrack: Yaoi Misproportions I Have Known.

MJ: IT SHALL BE DONE.

MICHELLE: I think there’s a tumblr dedicated to yaoi misproportions, actually.

SEAN: Reminding me they don’t just do artbooks these days, Udon has the first volume of Disgaea 3: School of Devils. I believe it’s based on a game of some sort.

The rest of our week is Viz. 07-GHOST reaches Vol. 4, and is looking angstier and bishier than ever.

MICHELLE: I’m looking forward to catching up with this series!

jormungand11ANNA: I think most people should have one angsty bishie series in rotation. 07-Ghost is more than sufficient to fill out that category, and I’m happy to overlook the occasional lapses of coherence for the pretty art.

MJ: Ditto on all counts!

SEAN: We’re still not done re-releasing Takahashi’s Inu Yasha into big omnibuses, though the fact that this is Vol. 15 means we’re well over halfway there.

MICHELLE: Yep! Entering the home stretch.

SEAN: Another seinen series bites the dust, as we have come to the 11th and final volume of Jormungand. Action-filled gun-running has never been so exhilarating, well, if you haven’t already read Black Lagoon. Now that the series is over, I should go back and catch up on it.

Lastly, Neon Genesis Evangelion releases its third omnibus, containing Vols. 7-9. Asuka’s on the cover, but if I recall correctly, it’s the arrival of someone else a little earlier than in the anime that causes the most fuss.

What manga makes you care more than you should?