Features

Manga the Week of 2/6

January 31, 2013 by Sean Gaffney, Michelle Smith, MJ and Anna N 6 Comments

SEAN: I knew there would be a pile this week, and indeed there is a pile. I already talked about the Kodansha stuff last week, as I anticipated this, so to sum up: Fairy Tail 23, the third and final Genshiken omnibus, the last Miles Edgeworth: Ace Attorney Investigations, the penultimate Negima, and a new and fantastic Sailor Moon.

Meanwhile, that still leaves a lot. Dark Horse has Vol. 26 of Gantz, which no doubt is filled with latex, boobs, and blood-soaked gore. I like one of the author’s other works a whole lot, but this series just never grabbed me.

MICHELLE: I was kept away from this one by reviews, and will probably be staying away.

MJ: Same here. It’s sad, too, because I generally like to support Dark Horse manga. I wish I thought I could like it.

SEAN: Udon has a title that is not via Capcom (to my knowledge), but still seems to be video-game based: Sengoku Basara: Samurai Legends Vol. 2. It’s like Son Goku, only with an e! And… probably not a lot like the shoujo manga Basara at all.

MICHELLE: Probably not.

MJ: Heh.

SEAN: Vertical has Vol. 7 of GTO: 14 Days in Shonan, which is now in its last third. The twins arc may be wrapped up here, but that doesn’t mean things are back to normal. In fact, we may be getting even more serious than before.

MICHELLE: I am several volumes behind on this now. Bad me.

MJ: My eyes are filled with little hearts as I read this. Oh, GTO: 14 Days in Shonan, how I love thee! Thankfully, my crush on Eikichi Onizuka is slightly less embarrassing than the one I had on Morimoto Rockstar.

SEAN: And the rest is GIANT PILE O’ VIZ. First off, Vol. 8 of Ai Ore!. The series apparently doesn’t end here, but as Mayu Shinjo is busy with many other projects, it’s on hold right now, so this will be the last for a while.

MICHELLE: Oh, really? Crap. I was hoping I could be finished with it once and for all.

MJ: Some nightmares never end.

ANNA: I feel like the lone apologist for Ai Ore!, but really the later volumes of the series that I’ve read have been pretty funny. And Demon Love Spell is a hoot. I seriously wish more Mayu Shinjo titles were translated over here. Oh! Maybe Viz will put Sensual Phrase on the iPad, that would be awesome.

SEAN: I generally like Ai Ore more the more that it comically abuses its hero. As for Sensual Phrase, I suspect it’d get M-rated off the tablet devices, unfortunately.

Bleach has an omnibus of Vols. 10-12, which if I recall are right in the middle of the Soul Society arc, so should be a lot of fun.

MJ: Oh, I really miss those days!

SEAN: Bleach also has Vol. 55 of its current run, which is the start of this current arc, I think. Kubo said a while back this would be the last arc, but that doesn’t mean he’s not taking his own sweet time about it as always.

Dawn of the Arcana hits Vol. 8, meaning I’m farther and farther behind. Ah well. At least digital manga doesn’t go out of print. (Yet – I don’t want that thrilling new trend anytime soon.)

MICHELLE: I’m planning to get caught up on Dawn of the Arcana this week, as a matter of fact.

MJ: I’ve suddenly gotten hooked on this series, so I’m quite happy about this!

ANNA: I like the way Dawn of the Arcana seems to be a bit more concerned with world building and geopolitics than romance, it makes it a little different from the average shoujo title.

SEAN: Devil and Her Love Song 7 its right in the exact middle of the series, and so things are clearly only going to get worse for our heroine. I do hope Anna sticks around, though, as I know there’s a good friendship with Maria buried somewhere deep deep DEEP down in there.

MJ: This is also a shoujo series I can’t seem to get enough of, though of course it’s very different.

ANNA: Always good to see another volume of this quirky series!

SEAN: Kamisama Kiss hits a dozen volumes, twice that of Karakuri Odette! This one’s still going strong, though, and apparently features cutie Himemiko, who finds dating is even harder when you’re a yokai.

MICHELLE: Here are a couple more shoujo series that I like but am behind on.

ANNA: Yay! Kamisama Kiss is one of my never-fail feel good shojo reads.

SEAN: Naruto also has a 3-in-1 with Vols. 10-12, which I’m sure I will catch up with ANY DAY NOW.

And as for Naruto 60, well, Sasuke’s back. That pretty much sums it up. Talk amongst yourselves.

Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan left a lot of things hanging last time, and this volume… at least gets a little closer to them. Don’t expect the arc to end here, though. Shiibashi is no Kubo, but he’s still slow.

One Piece is one omnibus ahead of its fellows, as we get Vol. 13-15, which is starting the Baroque Works arc. These volumes have Mr. 3 and Miss Golden Week, two of my favorites from that group of villains. As well as Vivi, of course.

Pokemon Diamond and Pearl Platinum has hit 7 volumes, and I still know nothing about it.

And Skip Beat! has hit Vol. 30! Does this make it the longest running shoujo series from Viz? Red River was only 28… In any case, the danger of method acting rears its ugly head again.

MICHELLE: Nope. Boys Over Flowers was 37 (including Jewelry Box).

MJ: I can’t believe I read the whole thing…

ANNA: I do not regret reading 37 volumes of Boys Over Flowers and I will not regret reading 30+ volumes of Skip Beat!

SEAN: Do you realize there are only 6 more volumes of Slam Dunk to go? How has this snuck up on us all?

MICHELLE: I am all too aware of it! I like to save the series up and read it in chunks, so when I finished volume 26 for last week’s briefs I realized that the next chunk would also likely be the last chunk! I’m already going through withdrawal.

SEAN: Stepping on Roses has come to a close with Vol. 9. One day I will get an awesome shoujo manga series about a girl who is forced to chose between two men and shogi, and chooses shogi. This is not that day.

MICHELLE: Oh, I forgot about this one! It’s pretty dumb, but I might as well finish it.

MJ: I gave this series up ages ago, and I don’t regret a thing! I am sad to hear, however, that it never turned into a shogi manga.

ANNA: I am sad that Stepping on Roses wasn’t as good as Tail of the Moon, because I love that series so much.

SEAN: Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee adds Volume 12 to its arsenal, and I add another shonen series I never really kept up with to my long, long list.

MICHELLE: I have a bunch of volumes I intend to read one of these days.

SEAN: Tenjo Tenge hits is final omnibus with Vol. 11, meaning it’s finally completely out uncensored. Though I suspect most of the guys who complained about CMX are merely clutching their scanlations to their bosoms and muttering “But the font wasn’t the right type! BOYCOTT!”

MJ: This seems certain.

SEAN: Lastly, Vol. 14 of Toriko introduces a new pretty boy into the cast – one who’s really good with knives! There’s something a bit strange about this pretty boy, though…

MICHELLE: …. aaaaand the same thing I said about Tegami Bachi applies to Toriko as well.

SEAN: Isn’t that a lot of manga? What’s in your pile?

It Came from the Sinosphere: The Sword Stained with Royal Blood (2007)

January 29, 2013 by Sara K. 2 Comments

It’s a Jin Yong double whammy. Last week, I discussed a manhua adaptation of The Laughing Proud Wanderer, Jin Yong’s penultimate novel. Now, I’m discussing the 2007 TV adaptation of Sword Stained with Royal Blood, one of Jin Yong’s earliest novels.

The Story

Yuan Chonghuan was a patriotic general, and the emperor rewarded him with assassination (what a nice emperor). His son, Yuan Chengzhi, is rescued, and reared at Mount Hua, where he learns some martial arts. Yuan Chengzhi, as a young man, decides to leave Mount Hua to embark on adventure, and eventually finds the martial arts manual, “Golden Serpent Sword,” and bones of Xia Xueyi, a mysterious man who had incredible martial arts skills. By studying the manual, and wielding the Golden Serpent Sword, Yuan Chengzhi inherits Xia Xueyi’s awesome abilities.

Yuan Chengzhi wants to avenge his father’s death. That’s a tall order when the target of your revenge is the *emperor of China*. During his adventures, Yuan Chengzhi discovers that the world is not quite as simple as he thought.

Background

If you don’t know/remember who Jin Yong is, a search can help you.

This is a TV series produced by Zhang Jizhong, who is China’s star TV producer. He’s known for big-budget TV productions in which local governments often fund the construction of the lavish sets … but the local government gets its money back when tourism drastically rises after the TV series is aired (in some places, I’ve read, Zhang Jizhong’s TV productions have caused tourism to increase ten fold). He has taken much more control over artistic decisions than earlier Chinese TV producers, which is why his name is more strongly associated with the TV series than the director’s.

By Zhang Jizhong standards, this series is a bit modest.

The Songs

The opening song really grew on me. In particular, I love the lyrics – they have a nice, bold rhythm and punch to them (unfortunately, this is the kind of thing which is almost always lost in translation). I think the song’s baroque tone suits the story quite well.

Of course, people who prefer sappy wuxia tunes (and hey, I like some of them) can enjoy the ending song. However, one of my favorite wuxia TV theme songs for sappiness value is not this one, but the song for the 1985 version of Sword Stained with Royal Blood, “Passions Cold, Passions Hot”.

The Fighting

Overall, the fighting is excellent, particularly in the first half of the series.

There is a conscious effort to be specific with the moves, and to show them clearly so that the audience can follow the fights and notice how the balance between the fighters change (fights which cannot be easily followed are boring). There’s also variety – it’s not the same fight repeated over and over again.

The strange Xia Xueyi

Most importantly, the fighting styles – by which I mean the actually choreography – are tied to the characters. Most distinctive, of course, are the strange techniques of Xia Xueyi and his strange Golden Serpent Sword. When Yuan Chengzhi picks it up, we can see the resemblance. Meanwhile, Princess Changping’s style – with her incredible flexibility – is also distinctive.

A high kick from Princess Changping

And some of it is straight-out creative. For example, there’s a scene where characters fight over a bunch of treasure chests. Yuan Chengzhi first tries to defend the chests, then the chests get used as weapons, then Yuan Chengzhi knocks the chests into the air, creates a single-stacked column of chests, and then has a precarious duel on top.

The boy can keep his balance!

The Lighting and Colors

Look at these pictures:

Notice how it looks like all of the characters have a halo effect around their heads, in particular, their hair gets turned white by the backlight? The back-lighting forms a white silhouette of their bodies, particularly their heads.

I don’t know about your life, but in my life this type of lighting is very, very rare. So the fact that this type of lighting is the default in this TV series gives the entire show a feeling of being grander than life. Specifically, it makes the characters feel grander than life, since it is they who are highlighted by the white-silhouette effect.

Of course, by making this the default lighting scheme, deviations do stand out, which can be put to good artistic use (the best example of this I can think of is a spoiler, so I’m not going to point it out).

To get this particular lighting effect, you need to keep lots of stuff in the shadows, which explains why this series is more heavily weighted towards darkness.

Different kinds of scenes have different palettes – for example, the scenes at the palace tend to use a lot of yellow, orange, and red. However, when I look back on my impressions of the show, it seems to me that the palette was emeralds in the background, and lavender in the foreground. That palette feels just right for the story (then again, if somebody did a good job filming the story with a different palette, I might then feel that that other palette is just right for the story). These screen shots show what I mean:

I do notice a lot of the screen shots I’m using in the post are heavy on the electric blues.

A Note about Qingqing

Jin Yong’s early novels are full of tomboyish heroines who often try to pass as male. Li Yuanzhi in The Book and the Sword even asks a woman to marry her (albeit not seriously). However, I think Qingqing merits special mention because she is, if I recall correctly, the only Jin Yong female protagonist who hires (female) prostitutes to entertain her (actually, I can’t of any male protagonists who hire prostitutes either).

Yuan Chengzhi and Xia Qingqing in the red light district (Qingqing has a lot more fun).

And I love the way Qingqing is dressed in this TV series, but since I’ve already gotten into a digressions about the lighting, I don’t want to get into a digression about costumes too.

Beijing strikes back at Hollywood

Since I had read the novel, I knew that there were some minor Portuguese characters, but I was quite surprised when I watching the TV series and suddenly heard … English???

At first I thought that maybe they had changed the nationality of the European characters, but nope, they are still Portuguese. Then I was puzzled why Portuguese people in 17th century China would speak English.

However, I would have put this issue out of my mind quickly and gotten back into the story if the Portuguese characters’ acting was good. It was not. It was terrible.

Considering that one of the readers of this column is a fluent Portuguese speaker who has experience in the film industry and lived in China for years—not to mention that there are still thousands of Portuguese speakers living in Macao—I think it probably would not have been so hard to bring in native Portuguese speakers (if you are that reader, I am interested in your take on this). And there are white men who establish entire acting careers in China. However, if getting decent Portuguese-or-English-speaking actors really was not feasible, I would have preferred it if the TV series had just let the Portuguese characters speak Chinese, with their lines dubbed in by good actors. That would not have broken the flow of the story.

That said, this is less than nothing compared to what Hollywood does to Chinese/Chinese-American people and culture (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, this website offers some clues).

And finally, as far as the story is concerned, I think the treatment of the Portuguese characters is quite kind considering the history of China-Portugal relations.

The Xia-Wen Drama

I was surprised by how caught up I got in the opera between the Xia and the Wen families. Like other reviewers, I found this arc to be the most engaging in the series.

Wen Yi and Xia Xueyi on the swing

I think this is partially thanks to the beautiful way that the choreography, cinematography, and Vincent Jiao’s acting all come together. The images of Wen Yi and Xia Xueyi on the swing are particularly memorable. This music video shows much of the footage I’m talking about.

Now, why is this more engaging than the main story, which is about somebody who wants to get revenge on the emperor, and then wants to help the peasantry, but things keep getting more complicated? After all, that is definitely more epic than a mere family vendetta.

I think it might be because the pain of the Xia and Wen families is simply more visceral. For all that Yuan Chengzhi is determined to get revenge, we actually don’t get to experience much of his pain over the loss of his father. By contrast, Xia Xueyi blaming himself for the fact that a man from the Wen family raped and murdered his sister makes his pain very apparent.

The story of Yuan Chengzhi/the Chongzhen emperor/Princess Changping is still interesting and has its moving moments, and towards the end there is certainly pain … but perhaps not enough. Even though he experiences a lot of internal conflict, Yuan Chengzhi doesn’t get thrust deeply enough into the fire to have his world burn down.

Availability in English

This TV series is available on DVD with English subtitles. Click here to be notified when it becomes available at DramaFever.

Conclusion

I liked the original novel – as a Jin Yong fan. Many of the ideas developed in later novels, particularly the Condor Trilogy, are present here. For example, Yuan Chengzhi’s own personality is basically a combination of Guo Jing, a little Yang Guo, and more than a little Zhang Wuji. Yet Yuan Chengzhi is much more boring than any of those three, which to me is evidence that more specifically defined characters are generally much more engaging. If, however, I weren’t a Jin Yong fan, I probably would have gotten a lot less out of the novel.

I think this TV adaptation is more fun than the original novel. Some parts are extremely entertaining, which is the main reason I’m glad I watched this series. Some parts are less entertaining, which is the main reason I’m not enthusiastically recommending it.

This TV series is superior to A Deadly Secret in every way except one: the basic story. The story of A Deadly Secret haunts me. While Sword Stained with Royal Blood is more fun, it had not made nearly as deep an impression.

Next time: Hokkien Hollywood and Anime Amoy (fandom)

Sara K. has taken a lighting design class. It changed her understanding of the world, particularly visual art, much more than she expected. She had underestimated just how much light affects people’s feelings.

On a completely different note, can you match up the theme songs of the 80s versions of Jin Yong stories with the 90s versions (i.e. figure out which songs are for the same story)? It’s pretty easy if you know the stories and/or understand Chinese, but I wonder about people who don’t know Chinese/the stories.

The CMX Project: Land of the Blindfolded

January 27, 2013 by Michelle Smith and Karen Peck

MICHELLE: Welcome to the first installment of a new feature called The CMX Project. Back in October, Karen Peck and I talked about the CMX series Canon for that month’s Manga Moveable Feast, and had such fun that we decided to start a recurring feature focusing on some of the other series they released during their all-too-brief time with us. For the most part these will be shoujo works, but not exclusively so.

Hi, Karen! Do you want to introduce our featured title for this month, or shall I?

KAREN: I’ll go!

Land of the Blindfolded, or Mekakushi no Kuni, is a nine-volume shoujo manga series by Sakura Tsukuba. It was one of CMX’s debut titles back in 2004, along with some classic titles like Swan and From Eroica with Love. Land of the Blindfolded originally ran in Hakusensha’s LaLa and LaLa DX magazines, and CMX would later go on to pick up another one of her series, Penguin Revolution. Besides these two works, her other series is the Christmas-themed Yoroshiku Master. The rest seems to have been mostly one-shots in different Hakusensha magazines—too bad I missed the two she did in Melody!

Kanade Outsuka sees a world full of people wearing “blindfolds.” But every once in a while, for her, that blindfold “slips” and she gets to see what others can’t—in her case, she can see a person’s future. Having a big heart and a determined spirit (as any good Hakusensha heroine should), Kanade will try to intervene if the future she sees will cause someone harm—even if the person she helps thinks that she’s just being weird. Two boys come into her life—Arou, who can see the past and carries around the heavy burden of his own past—and Namiki, who can also see the future but has a very different attitude about it than Kanade does. A sweet romance develops between Kanade and Arou… and I wouldn’t say “hijiinks ensue;” this title is entirely too gentle for much of that.

Michelle, what were your impressions?

MICHELLE: Initially, I was torn. There were certain elements of the story that I liked—the fact that Kanade and Arou become a couple with minimum fuss, Kanade’s spunky best friend (Eri), the neat side abilities that Arou’s power gives him…—but the first few volumes are very episodic and feature chapters with plots like “a plucky abandoned puppy is rescued from his doom during a rainstorm by an angsty boy affected by the protagonist’s shoujo heroine powers.”

The stories begin to take a more interesting turn in volume five, when Arou first uses his power in a new, freaky way to track Kanade after she’s swept away at the beach. And then shortly thereafter, he’s reunited with a classmate from junior high who wants him to use his powers to benefit society by helping to solve murders.

The rest of the volumes are all pretty good, though I’m most fond of volumes six and seven. I note, though, that Kanade really gets the short shrift after a while. She truly is the least interesting character of the bunch, and there is much more time devoted to the traumatic pasts suffered by Arou and Namiki than anything involving Kanade (excepting her decision to come clean to Eri about her ability).

KAREN: It is very episodic, and for me that’s what lead to my assessment of this as being very “gentle”—when stories wrap up each chapter, nothing really seems that dire. Instead, we get a series of ordinary events—the school festival. A clash with student government. The class trip. Hot springs hijinks (okay, so there is a little hijink-ing). The summer festival. And so on.

However, the banality of these events is contrasted with the very unordinary main characters. Here we have a girl who can see the future, but like any other girl her age, she worries about the very ordinary things—will people like the real me? Will I fit in? Can I tell my best friend all of my secrets? It’s this relatability that I think really speaks to the reader. Everyone has insecurities, even these “special” kids.

The “plot” really does pick up later on. I was kinda hoping that Arou’s uncle would be more of a revolutionary character—he seems to have some rather dark intentions—but that fizzled out. I’m not sure if that was a red herring or Tsukuba sending off signals that she didn’t mean to.

I do agree with you, Michelle—Kanade seems to downright disappear in some of the stories, and I wish she had more of a presence. I also like that the coupling happens without a lot of drama—and while the back cover tries to play up the triangle, Kanade and Arou only have eyes for each other. Poor Namiki. At least he got a puppy.

MICHELLE: And possibly the world’s most adorable turtle!

I did find it interesting that although Land of the Blindfolded does include some stock shoujo scenarios—in addition to the ones you named there’s a trip to the amusement park, a trip to the beach, Christmas—they didn’t really annoy me as much as they do in series like, say, Ai Ore! Probably the likeable characters are responsible for that.

And yes, it’s largely the disclosure of the leads’ insecurities that make later volumes more compelling. Learning about Arou’s painful past wherein he was feared and shunned for his abilities makes the present where he is warmly liked and trusted by his classmates that much more significant. Now we can see how much it really means to him. And, too, we learn how scarred Namiki was by his mother’s timidity, and how this contributed to his rather jaded attitude when we first meet him. My absolute favorite scene in the whole series occurs between Namiki and Kanade’s mother, in which she tells him he’s a good boy and he starts to cry. I’m getting a little sniffly just thinking about it, actually.

Yeah, the Sou thing did rather fizzle out, but it all played in to the warm and fuzzy “you are not alone” ending, so maybe that was all Tsukuba intended.

KAREN: That turtle was cute. And the pet-sitter bonus chapter was very cute.

I think it’s because Arou and Namiki had those much heavier pasts that Kanade gets lost. Well, she did see a vision of her grandfather’s death, but she’s from such a kind and accepting family that it becomes something to be overcome rather than something creepy that results in her ostracism. I agree with you, Michelle, about how affecting that one scene with Namiki and Kanade’s mother is—it’s really a moment when this story works. It’s a message that would work for any child that was rejected—that you are good. However, if every chapter/story in Land of the Blindfold was this emotionally wrenching, we wouldn’t be able to get through this review!

Of the secondary characters, I also liked Kaicho-san, the student council president. Her attraction to Arou was handled well, and I’m glad that it didn’t devolve into a Marmalade Boy-style Love Dodecahedron. I did like that it was hinting that Kaicho and Namiki might perhaps hook up, but it that was played well, and I think realistically. They would be good together, but for now they still have their hearts somewhere else. By not rushing them together, Tsukuba didn’t compromise their characters and what they had been about.

The other beta couple, Eri and Ezawa, were presented as the Doomed Couple, but turned into something else, and so much of it was done in the background, as their story would pop in and out, showing their evolution as a couple.

I did want to say one thing about CMX’s presentation—I remember comments at the time about the tightness of the bindings, and wow, the first three volumes were very hard to read. I’m glad that they worked that out for later volumes so I didn’t have to worry about ruining the book when I opened it. The art… works, if that’s a way of putting it. Sakura Tsukuba isn’t one of the great shoujo artists, but her work is expressive and the humorous moments were very cute.

MICHELLE: I liked Kaicho a lot, too (though we eventually learn her last name, we never learn her first one), and was totally bracing for an eventual pairing off with Namiki. I think she could’ve been the heroine of her own manga series, actually.

We don’t learn too much about the inner workings of Eri and Ezawa’s relationship, but I definitely like that he became more interested in her once she showed she wasn’t going to fawn over him mindlessly like everyone else. She basically learns quickly that attempting to change yourself for someone never works, and then they turn out to be a stable couple from then on. Also, Tsukuba makes a few suggestions that they’re doing more than kissing while still keeping the content within an “E for Everyone” rating.

And yes, those fiendish bindings! I actually have the first five in that style and was desperately sick of them and so relieved when volume six came around. I hadn’t realized it, but I guess I hadn’t read any of the really early CMX volumes before this, so I didn’t know how terrible they were.

I don’t seem to have too much to say about Tsukuba’s art, actually. There were a few sequences that I quite liked, but that was more about what was happening in the scene than her skills. She does mention repeatedly how much she loves drawing animals, and adorable critters did seem to be her strong suit.

KAREN: I caught that too with Eri and Ezawa. And how it totally flew over Kanade’s head.

Like most CMX series, Land of the Blindfolded is long out-of-print but easily and inexpensively obtainable on the secondary market. The infamous tight bindings vary—Michelle’s go up to volume five, mine only up to three, but they’re still readable. It’s a good title for the younger YA reader, because there’s nothing objectionable and it is such a sweet story—no questionable misogyny, for example. This is the sort of title that CMX did so well—and something that’s very much missed in the current market. (I’m sure there’s many YA librarians who agree!) Thankfully, though, they did manage to get so many titles out during their time—I’m looking forward to the next title we’re going to cover!

MICHELLE: Which is… drumroll please… Cipher, by Minako Narita! I’ve been meaning to read this for ages, so I’m really excited about next month’s column.

Thanks for joining us this month, and we hope you’ll be back next time!

JManga the Week of 1/31

January 25, 2013 by Sean Gaffney, MJ and Michelle Smith Leave a Comment

SEAN: No new series on the last day of January, but we do get a new volume of a series I adore, even if I am seeing it for a 2nd time.

Joshi Kosei, aka High School Girls, hits Vol. 5. Given that I’m reading more and more manga digitally these days, I am very pleased to see this series come out in that format. It’s big doofy fun, always prepared to sacrifice what little dignity the characters have for comedy, and reveling in female friendships.

MJ: I really should check this out, shouldn’t I?

SEAN: Yes. :)

Elemental Gelade hits Vol. 3 on JManga, which reminds me that Elemental Gelade has also hit Vol. 12 on Comixology. I guess they’re digitalizing the Tokyopop license? Different translations, I assume, but it’s quite weird to see the first digital vs. digital competition.

MJ: The Digital Manga Guild also has this, and I’m not sure if they’re all the same or not!

SEAN: Madame Joker, another in a long line of ‘Manga JManga is putting out that I should read as I’d love it but don’t have the freaking time as they’re putting out piles’, has hit Vol. 4. Madame Joker, AIALLO’MJMIPOTISRAILIBIDHTFTATPOP’ for short.

MICHELLE: I have benevolent feelings towards Madame Joker but I too haven’t found the time to read it. I feel bad having such a lackluster response to next week’s offerings, when I found so much this week to be grateful for, but that’s how it is, I’m afraid.

SEAN: And we also have Vol. 4 of Recorder and Ransell, which I’m sure is adorable and cute and moe, but I simply can’t get past the fact that its premise creeps me out.

So what’ll you have? (Pabst Blue Ribbon: The Manga.)

Manga the Week of 1/30

January 24, 2013 by Sean Gaffney, Michelle Smith, Anna N and MJ Leave a Comment

SEAN: Let’s see if I can sort out this week, given my recent habit of taking Midtown’s list and then ignoring it horribly.

First of all, they’re finally getting in the Yen Press books that most of us got last week or this week. I’ve gone over those already, but FYI they are Black Butler 12, Black God 18, Book Girl and the Undine Who Bore a Moonflower, A Bride’s Story 4, The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan 3, and Soul Eater 12.

Udon has a Super Street Fighter series debuting, with what seems to be Korean artists and American writers. Um… a must for Street Fighter fans? I dunno, I got nothing. How Do I Capcom?

MICHELLE: Yeah, sorry Udon, but this just doesn’t appeal to me.

MJ: I always want to like things with Korean artists, just on principle, but… meh.

SEAN: Vertical has the 3rd volume of Limit, their shoujo experiment that is not selling all that hot so MORE PEOPLE should buy it as it’s excellent. Come on, doesn’t that cute young thing on the cover scream adorable shoujo? I bet there are some wacky misunderstandings in this volume!

MICHELLE: And probably it is Valentine’s Day!

ANNA: I like to think of Limit as a lovely violently cynical sorbet that cleanses the palate of manga readers who have been reading too much shoujo with wacky misunderstandings.

MJ: Mostly I’m just entertained here by all your commentary, but I’ll also note that I’m really looking forward to volume three of Limit.

SEAN: Meanwhile, Kodansha is releasing a lot of stuff next week via Amazon that’s not hitting comic shops till February or later. Given next week also has a pile of Viz, why don’t we run down Kodansha now? If nothing else, it will broaden the Pick of the Week a bit.

First off, Bloody Monday was out this week. It’s up to Volume 9 of about 11, which wraps up the ‘First Season’. I think, when asked about the Second and Third Seasons of the series, Kodansha made ‘well, buy more’ noises. So buy more if you want to read more of ’24: Japan’.

MICHELLE: I really do mean to read this one of these days.

MJ: I enjoyed the first volume, but I guess not enough to propel me further on. Should I feel regretful?

SEAN: Fairy Tail is starting to get ready to speed up, which means more volumes online on its digital Apple-only thing that I don’t use as I don’t have Apple (this grump brought to you by Android), but also print volumes about once a month or so. It hadn’t sped up quite yet, though. In the meantime, we’re still in Edolas, though we may be about to wrap that arc up.

MICHELLE: I occasionally forget that Fairy Tail exists, even though I’ve read 14 volumes of it.

MJ: I’ve never had any interest in Fairy Tail, yet I’d really like to develop some, if only because Hiro Mashima was so incredibly charming at NYCC a couple of years ago. Convince me?

SEAN: Um… it’s good solid shonen, and has finally, I think, stopped trying to be One Piece only for Kodansha. It has a few good female characters, though it waffles quite a bit on how strong they get to be (but that’s typical for most Japanese shonen). It’s quite funny at times, and not in a “boobs!” way. (That said, there are many, many stacked girls here.)

Mostly, though, I think it’s the sort of title that you start of hoping gets better and really improves by the time you’re 16 volumes in and invested in the world. It rewards long-term investment. Which can be a pain, I know.

MJ: Actually, that’s pretty persuasive. Thank you!

SEAN: Genshiken finishes off its Omnibus Releases with the 3rd, covering Vol. 7-9. Nice timing, as I suspect the new anime of Genshiken 2nd Season coming up may spark interest in the first again.

Another series bites the dust, as Vol. 4 wraps up Miles Edgeworth: Ace Attorney Investigations. Barring the appearance of an Apollo Justice manga (don’t hold your breath), this may be it for this franchise for the time being – at least in manga form.

Speaking of series almost being finished, 37 is the 2nd to last volume of Negima. I’ll have a lot to say about this volume and the next. A whole lot. That said, if you like an overabundance of fanservice in the best old-fashioned Akamatsu ways, this is the volume for you.

MICHELLE: Pass!

MJ: Thank goodness we have Sean to care about Akamatsu on our behalf.

SEAN: Aheh. Let’s just say that my comment that Negima should have ended with Vol. 36 will be followed up on. My *least* favorite part of Negima is the naked antics.

SEAN: Lastly, Pluto graces the cover of Sailor Moon Vol. 9, and I think she actually even shows up in this, though not till the end. In the meantime, we’re really delving into the Super S arc now, which means dreams, and mirrors, and unicorns, and lots of Chibi-Usa (though less than you’d expect).

MICHELLE: Yay, Sailor Moon! I might’ve said this last time—probably I did—but the manga version of Super S differs from the anime in that the outer senshi are in it, so it’s worth reading even if that season of the anime wasn’t your favorite. The next volume of the series also includes something nifty that was missing from the anime.

ANNA: More volumes of Sailor Moon are always a thing to celebrate!

MJ: Agreed!

SEAN: There you go, that’s plenty of manga to chew over. What’ve you got?

It Came from the Sinosphere: Lee Chi-Ching’s The Laughing Proud Wanderer

January 22, 2013 by Sara K. 11 Comments

An Example Scene

Linghu Chong notices that the young woman whom he is still very sweet on, Yue Lingshan, is unhappy.

Furthermore, he notices that her father and husband don’t care that she’s unhappy. He tries to think of a socially appropriate way to cheer her up.

Linghu Chong remembers that, when he was a part of Yue Lingshan’s family, he could always cheer her up by losing to her in a sword fight (without letting her know that he lost on purpose). Therefore, he figures the best way to cheer her up is to challenge her to duel.

Notice how the artwork first shows Linghu Chong and Yue Lingshan’s intense gazes, then goes back to show how the fight looks to the crowd – i.e. Linghu Chong and Yue Lingshan have now entered their own world, oblivious to everyone else.

The crowd notices that, while the fight is intense, the feeling is not of intense enmity, but a feeling of intense love. Somebody even remarks that it seems like they are dancing rather than fighting (ha, I am *not* the only person to consider the fights in Chinese martial arts fiction to be a kind of dancing).

I love those flowers. Methinks the artist has been exposed to shoujo manga.

This fight is bringing back Linghu Chong and Yue Lingshan’s memories of practising swordplay at Mount Hua, which was the happiest period in both of their lives. In fact, they are using the sword technique that they themselves made up together.

And this is why Jin Yong writes the best fights. Anyone who invests the time it takes to be a good martial artist has pretty strong feelings about it, and in Jin Yong stories, the fights are a key means by which characters express their feelings, grow, and mature. I have yet to encounter another storyteller who so thoroughly integrates combat and the characters’ emotional journeys.

Yue Lingshan’s husband is jealous. Personally, since he doesn’t care about his wife’s happiness (or lack thereof), I think he has forfeited his prerogative to feel jealous.

A sword has been launched into the air!

And it lands on Linghu Chong’s back (Linghu Chong let this happen so that Yue Lingshan would win).

Everyone, especially Yue Lingshan herself, is shocked that she injured Linghu Chong, except Linghu Chong, who is busy enduring the pain of having a sword in his back.

The reader knows that purposefully losing this duel is a potential disaster for Linghu Chong and the people he is responsible for, but it would take at least a paragraph to explain the context, so I’ll just say that the reader should feel an impending sense of doom at this point.

Background

The Laughing Proud Wanderer is, of course, one of Jin Yong’s more famous novels. It should not come as a surprise to anyone who read my post about Lee Chi-Ching’s The Eagle-Shooting Heroes that I would eventually review the other manhua adaptation of a Jin Yong novel. This novel is also special to me for a personal reason, but I plan to discuss that in a future post.

The Laughing Proud Wanderer was written during the Cultural Revolution in China, and it’s pretty obvious that Cold War politics strongly influenced the novel. Some people even go so far as to say that it’s a political allegory. I prefer not to interpret it as an allegory, but allegories are fun, so I’m going to describe the story in allegorical terms using the most common interpretation (Five Mountain Sword Sects = Soviet Union, etc.)

Story

Linghu Chong is a disciple of the Hua Mountain Sect, which is part of the Soviet Union. He a bit of a loose cannon. He tries to do the right thing, but this sometimes gets him in trouble. Furthermore, in situations when most Jin Yong heroes would run away, he says, “Bwa ha ha ha ha ha, I am Linghu Chong, I’m NOT SCARED OF YOU! HA HA HA HA HA!” even when he is clearly no match for whatever he’s facing, which leads to him getting bashed up a lot and spending at least half of the story recovering from injuries he could have avoided by running away. It’s a bit astonishing that he manages to survive all this.

Anyway, the Soviet Union is sworn enemies with the Chinese Communist Party, led by Mao Zedong, and has a … tense relationship with Shaolin, Wudang, and Emei, which belong to NATO.

Linghu Chong gets kicked out of the Hua Mountain Sect, which causes him much angst because he has been brainwashed by the Soviet Union, and is in love with his shifu’s daughter, Yue Lingshan. During his wanderings, he encounters another young woman, Ren Yingying, and slowly develops a relationship with her, but then it’s revealed that she is part of the Chinese Communist Party. which, according to the Soviet Union, is totally evil.

Of course, the intrigue gets thicker. Joseph Stalin, who already leads the most powerful sect in the Soviet Union, wants to bring the entire Soviet Union under his control, and Mao Zedong has imprisoned Ren Yingying’s father and taken over the Chinese Communist Party. Linghu Chong does not want to deal with this, but he has a clue of what’s at stake and, unfortunately for him, NATO, the Chinese Communist Party, and especially the Soviet Union want to deal with him.

Artwork

Many of the comments I made about the artwork in Lee Chi Ching’s The Eagle-Shooting Heroes also apply to this manhua, though there aren’t nearly as many tears in this one. Linghu Chong is the *laughing/smiling* proud wanderer, not the weepy proud wanderer.

Lee Chi-Ching is still a master of depicting movements of the human body.

Lee Chi-Ching’s style, of course, is heavily influenced by Japanese manga, but he also draws upon the long history of Chinese brush-ink paintings, which makes the manhua feel more distinctively Chinese (this was, if I remember correctly, one of the reasons Jin Yong was interested in having Lee Chi-Ching adapt and illustrate his novels).

Additionally, this manhua has a few color pages, like the ones below.

The palette is quite muted, unlike the palettes seen in most Hong Kong manhua, or Japanese manga (or American comics for that matter). It most resembles the color palettes found in traditional Chinese paintings. Since the color is used to highlight particular moments, I wouldn’t want the entire manhua to be in color, but I would have definitely liked more color pages (perhaps having the manhua be 10% in color).

Two characters who I think Lee Chi-ching did a particularly good job of depicting are Yue Lingshan and Yue Buqun.

Yue Lingshan is upset

Lee Chi-Ching says Yue Buqun is one of his favorite characters, and I can see that in the artwork (one of the color examples above shows Yue Buqun). I also think he got Yue Lingshan just right. This manhua deepened my appreciation of both of these characters.

However, comparing this to The Eagle-Shooting Heroes, I find that the art in The Eagle-Shooting Heroes is ultimately more striking. I think this mainly due to the differences in the stories. The Eagle-Shooting Heroes is a story where characters are constantly wearing their hearts on their sleeves and feels like an epic folk tale, whereas The Laughing Proud Wanderer is a more intellectual story in which characters do a lot of thinking and often don’t reveal their true feelings, and the plot is much more complicated, so it simply does not lend itself as well to striking artwork (unless one wishes to distort the story).

Adaptation

This time, I read the novel before reading the manhua.

On the one hand, I’m a bit disappointed that it removed one of my favorite scenes. On the other hand, I recognize that this story is so long that Lee Chi-ching almost had to abridge it, and that the scene is not essential to the main story.

Impressively, Lee Chi-ching did manage to keep most scenes from the novel, but he often slimmed them down—I often notice that specific bits of dialogue I remembered were not present in the manhua. It is a compliment to Jin Yong’s writing skill that I was able to remember so many bits of dialogue more than six months after having read the novel, yet at the same time I think slimming down the dialogue was the right choice; having too many words would have bogged down the manhua’s pacing, and people who really want that should read the bloody novel.

While it’s not identical to the novel, I feel this is faithful to the spirit of the novel, and while it’s always possible to find something to complain about, I still think this is, overall, an excellent adaptation, and I don’t think anybody else would have done it better.

Dongfang Bubai

Dongfang Bubai and his/her lover

It would take an entire post for me to describe what I think about the depiction of Dongfang Bubai and certain other characters, so let’s just say that I think it’s transphobic, homophobic, and sexist.

Given the source material, I think Lee Chi-ching’s depiction was as inoffensive as it could be while staying faithful to the original … with one exception.

In both the novel and the manhua, Linghu Chong says that it’s laughable that a sect leader would dress as a woman. First of all, there’s Huang Rong in The Eagle Shooting-Heroes who is a sect leader and usually dresses like a woman, but maybe she doesn’t count because she’s cis-female. And for some reason, people don’t think it’s shameful for women to dress as men (which happens quite often in Jin Yong stories).

However, in the novel, Linghu Chong later on ends up dressing like a woman himself, demonstrating that masculine heroes are just as capable of dressing like women as anybody else. This is one of the things which ameliorates the transphobia in the story. Unfortunately, this scene is cut in the manhua. I am almost certain this was in order to make the story move faster, but I still wish it had been kept, if only to counteract the transphobia/sexism.

Lee Chi-ching’s Afterwords

Each volume of this manhua ends with an afterword from Lee Chi-ching, and these were actually quite interesting. Almost all of them contain a sketch of himself, like this one:

He sometimes talks about Hong Kong current events (such as the transfer to People’s Republic of China rule and the SARS epidemic), he sometimes talks about the personal meaning The Laughing Proud Wanderer has for him (it’s his favorite Jin Yong novel, which is why he was so stoked when Jin Yong asked him to adapt it), and he talks about his artistic ambitions, as well as the other projects he’s working on (such as illustrating all of Jin Yong’s novels for the large-print edition).

Of particular interest to Manga Bookshelf readers are his comments about Korean manhwa. I knew one reason Jin Yong licensed manhua adaptations of his novels was to counter the influence of Japanese manga, but I hadn’t realized that the Hong Kong manga industry also feels invaded by Korean manhwa. Lee Chi-ching tries to see the competition with Korean manhwa as an inspiration to try harder.

Availability in English

I wish.

Conclusion

Whenever I return to an artist I love, I always wonder if the artist is as great as I recall, or whether a given work will fail to meet my high expectations. Sometimes I am disappointed, but this time I was not. Instead, this manhua reminded me why Lee Chi-ching is one of my favorite comic book artists in any language.

Next Time: Sword Stained with Royal Blood (TV series) (yes, it’s a Jin Yong double whammy)

When you like going outside and live in Northern Taiwan, that means the weather has a great deal of control over your schedule. The weather has been unusually good lately (by local standards), so Sara K. barely finished this post on time.

BL Bookrack: The Heart of Thomas

January 19, 2013 by MJ and Michelle Smith 7 Comments

MICHELLE: Thanks for joining us for the first BL Bookrack column of the new year. This time we’re doing something a bit different and devoting this month’s column to Moto Hagio’s The Heart of Thomas, which is one of the most historically significant works influencing the boys’ love genre in Japan, and the most historically significant one currently available in print in English.

But, y’know, I feel like bestowing this weighty mantle upon the work could overshadow the fact that it’s very dramatic, emotional, and romantic. It seems best to me to take it on its own terms.

MJ: I agree, Michelle—which isn’t to say that The Heart of Thomas doesn’t earn its historical weightiness! Its influence is significant for good reason. But perhaps what I found most striking about it is just how much it has to offer without any knowledge of its significance at all. And though understanding its context is important and worthy discussion, there are plenty of critics on hand to do just that. Here in our column, I’m personally more interested in discussing it… well, as itself. If that makes sense.

MICHELLE: My thoughts exactly!

I suppose we ought to start with a summary, which is gonna be a toughie, but here goes…

The Heart of Thomas begins with the suicide of thirteen-year-old Thomas Werner. In love with his classmate, Juli, Thomas sees this act as a way to “bring him back to life.” The two had been classmates at a German boarding school called Schlotterbach, and we meet Juli on the morning the students have reconvened after Easter vacation, where news of Thomas’ death spreads quickly. After a letter from Thomas lets Juli know the death was not an accident, he’s plunged into turmoil, which only worsens when a transfer student named Erich—who bears a strong physical resemblance to Thomas, though with a much pricklier personality—arrives on the scene.

(click images to enlarge)

The three primary characters—in addition to Juli and Erich, there’s also Oskar, Juli’s roommate—have all been broken in some way, and the story revolves around their intertwining relationships and the secrets each keeps hidden. Each one is complex, and each one becomes completely beloved to the reader by the end.

MJ: I think for a story like this, that’s a perfectly good summary! And by “a story like this,” I mean a story that is almost entirely focused on its characters’ feelings and their relationships to each other—and themselves—with very little investment in plot, outside of a few significant events. That these few events are almost entirely deaths (including Thomas’ opening suicide) and other tragedies might make the book sound rather melodramatic, and I suppose on the surface it is. But in the story’s boarding school setting, this is somehow completely appropriate. In this highly structured environment, largely removed from their families and the rest of the outside world, the boys at Schlotterbach thrive on those big moments—the few sensational events that make their way in from the world—and without enough of those, they must create whatever else they can on their own.

MICHELLE: In his introduction, translator Matt Thorn writes that Hagio at one point had attempted to remake the series with female characters (to appeal to female readers), but found pressure to make things more realistic and plausible and it just didn’t work. There had to be a feeling of “other” about the characters and the setting in order for her to be able to tell the story she wanted. And once I read the manga, I had to agree that it would not have worked otherwise.

Too, while on the surface it might seem/be melodramatic, when you get down to it… it’s really all about Juli’s ability to accept forgiveness and forgive himself. And that’s not melodramatic at all.

MJ: Also, the idea that the story’s emphasis on dramatic events makes it unrealistic I think deliberately ignores what it is to be an adolescent. Even teens and pre-teens who go to regular, modern public schools essentially live in their own society that is very much separate from the rest of the world, and it’s a society that is, frankly, terrifying. I think adults often willfully forget this (and who can blame them?) but it’s true. The public tragedies are real (one of my high school teachers killed himself in the middle of our senior year—and doesn’t everyone have some kind of tragic story like this that affected their entire school?) and the private ones are even more so. Regardless of the precise circumstances, is Juli’s struggle to accept himself as a whole person really alien to any teen?

MICHELLE: Now you’re making me remember the public tragedies of my youth, some of which I’d forgotten about!

This seems like a good time to focus on Juli for a bit, since he’s really quite interesting. We don’t get all the details, but Juli’s German mother seems to have married a German citizen of Greek heritage. Juli looks a lot like his father and his unusual black hair generates a lot of commentary, from admiring classmates to his hateful grandmother, who still clings to ideals about German purity. (I did wonder what year this was supposed to be, but I believe West Germany is referenced at one point, so it’s got to be after 1949 and, thus, World War II.)

Grandma also bears a grudge because she had to take on the debts left behind when Juli’s father passed away. This fills Juli with the desire to change her attitude by becoming as successful as possible and paying her back. To this end, he attempts to become the perfect student. And for a while, he does quite well. He’s admired, he’s loved by Thomas, he loves Thomas in return, but there’s a darkness in him that leads him to accept the invitation of a creepy older student to meet him in a certain room on campus. The secret of what went on there is the last to be revealed in the story, so I won’t divulge it here, but the end result is that he’s utterly filled with self-loathing and cannot accept that Thomas really means it when he says that he loves him and coldly rejects him in public.

Oskar alone among the students knows what has happened, and has been assigned to share a room with Juli and watch over him. He’s therefore privy to the facade Juli struggles so hard to maintain and the cracks that form when Juli learns that Thomas sacrificed his angelic self for him. It takes a long time before Erich’s emotional frankness and Oskar’s example of forgiveness combine to allow him to finally admit the truth of his love for Thomas and to understand that Thomas would forgive him anything. Now he can forgive himself.

MJ: Related to this, I have to just make a comment here regarding Thomas vs. Erich, because while Erich’s ability to express his feelings openly is part of what ultimately saves Juli from his own self-loathing, Thomas was just as open about his feelings with Juli—yet his way of trying to save Juli I think only broke him more. In the end, I think it’s Erich’s rebellious, combative nature that makes the difference. After Juli’s horrible experience, he can’t believe that Thomas would love him, and he feels the same disbelief about Erich’s open confessions of love. But where Thomas’ solution was to sacrifice himself, Erich’s is to fight (and fight hard), and it’s this that finally gets through to Juli.

I bring this up specifically because this is a column about BL, and there’s a (much-deserved) stigma around older works involving same-sex relationships that end in suicide. But (aside from the fact that this story actually begins with the suicide) where The Heart of Thomas really stands out here is that, from my perspective, it views that kind of sacrifice as… well, ultimately pointless. Throughout the story, even to the end when Oskar persuades Erich to remain at school rather than retreating to his stepfather’s house, Hagio makes it clear that running away is not the answer. We’re given the romantic option of viewing Thomas’ sacrifice as beautiful and selfless, but we’re clearly shown that Erich’s instinct to fight against that sacrifice is the way to really bring Juli back to life.

MICHELLE: Very well said! I also wonder if part of it is that Erich, playing the part of Thomas surrogate (a role which he tries hard to escape, but which might actually help Juli in the end) represents someone who can love Juli and not be hurt by the sins and darkness Juli is burdened by. Erich is strong, smart, and feisty. He believes in love and in God, and despite his pretty looks, he’s not fragile but instead resilient. That’s why, in the end, Juli can confess what happened to Erich and yet feel absolved, in a way, by Thomas.

MJ: Speaking of that connection, there’s a fairly creepy scene late in the manga where Erich has been invited to visit Thomas’ family whom he discovers wish to adopt him. Erich wisely declines the Werners’ offer to become a stand-in for their dead son, but afterwards he regrets turning down the opportunity to see Thomas’ old room as he discovers more and more the feelings and philosophies they shared in common. It’s an important realization, because it’s this that allows Erich to put aside his resentment towards Thomas for looking so much like him and dragging him into so much drama, in order to be able to help Juli, and also himself. Understanding that the emotional honesty that made fitting in at Schlotterbach so difficult could actually be an asset I think is pretty huge for Erich.

MICHELLE: Definitely. In general, it’s a treat watching Erich mature over the course of the series. Another important moment comes when his mother passes away and he suddenly and viciously regrets his own selfishness in opposing her marriage. It would’ve made her happy, but he clung to her and held her back. Later, when he’s able to finally see the good in his stepfather and accept a home with him, it’s a very touching moment. Knowing he has this secure future (where he’s wanted for himself, not for any resemblance to Thomas) gives him the strength to not only commit more fully to studying at school, but to be forthcoming with his feelings for Juli.

MJ: I agree, it’s a real treat watching him grow up, especially as early on he seems the least likely character to be helping anyone else heal.

So, let’s talk about Oskar a bit. He’s actually my favorite character in the book, probably because he’s the least like me. Heh. Oskar is a terrible student who smokes, skips class, and is generally considered to be a screw-up, but he’s also utterly confident, incredibly insightful and fantastic in a crisis. He’s the guy you want in your corner because you know he can handle anything life throws at him with elegant competence, up to and including things like discovering that his father murdered his mother (or that he’s not actually his father at all). If I wrote Heart of Thomas fanfiction, it would all be about Oskar.

MICHELLE: Oskar is my favorite too, and became so pretty much immediately. He’s just got this air of… languid sorrow about him. He reminds me of someone from Fruits Basket, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe it’s Momiji. He’s popular and has charisma to spare, but he’s also known tremendous family grief. When he came to the school (around age ten, I think), he’s described as having grown-up eyes and speaking with grown-up words. He’d seen and experienced so much that he was really no longer on the same level as his classmates. Recognizing the “difference” in Juli was something that drew them together.

Did you know that Hagio actually wrote a one-shot about Oskar’s life prior to entering school? It’s called “Houmonsha.” Hope we get that in English at some point!

MJ: I did not! Oh, how I want to read that!

I can see the Momiji comparison (especially older Momiji—Oskar is by no means cuddly), though I’d also suggest that I think Oskar is the most overtly sexualized of the main characters in the story. Hagio writes him and (especially) draws him as a sexual being, with an attractive swagger and abundant bangs, and I’m pretty sure he even gets the most action of anyone in the story (which has, overall, not much action by modern BL standards). While both Thomas’ and Erich’s love for Juli is portrayed in a very pure, innocent light, Oskar’s feelings are allowed to display a bit more ambiguity, and though nothing actually sexual ever happens between them (despite a rumor spread at one point by a jealous younger student), he’s the only one of all Juli’s admirers with whom one could imagine that it might.

MICHELLE: I hadn’t thought about that before in those terms, but maybe some of that sensuality is what I was picking up on with the term “languid.” It also probably has something to do with being a year older than the others; he’s also interested in girls (well, at least enough to flirt with the ones in town) where some of the others aren’t yet.

Talking about the action or lack thereof… are there really any honest-to-goodness on-the-lips kisses in this series that are not brought on by anger or extortion? Ante witnesses Oskar performing mouth-to-mouth and names a kiss as the price for his silence, Erich wrangles a kiss from Juli later, too, and comments upon its bitterness. The only real kiss Juli ever bestows is one on Erich’s cheek right at the very end of the series.

MJ: The closest I can remember to anything like that is actually not on the lips. There’s a really interesting moment on the day that Oskar takes Erich in to town to learn about girls. The two get into some heated discussion about Thomas that ends with Oskar warmly embracing Erich, kissing him, and holding him in a way that really does not feel platonic while comparing Thomas to Amor, the god of love. It’s a strangely intimate little moment.

Modern BL, of course, tends to include much, much more sexual content than can be found in The Heart of Thomas, but very little of it can hold a candle to Hagio’s work when it comes to musing on the value of love.

MICHELLE: Oh yes, I’d forgotten about that moment. If you were to write an epilogue starring Oskar, what do you think the chances are of he and Erich ultimately ending up together? For Erich, it’d mean another important relationship in his life that began on the basis of a shared love for someone else, but it seems at least possible to me.

MJ: Yeah, actually, that’s the likeliest actual couple in the story as far as I’m concerned, though I’d see it as something a ways in the future, for sure. I might write some sort of awkward future meeting between Oskar and Juli, after Juli has left seminary, but for romance? I’d go Oskar/Erich all the way. In a way, I think the relationship you describe is the one they already sort of have, and what’s kind of surprising about it, is that it feels healthier than one might expect. During that final scene where Oskar is convincing Erich to stay with him (and all of them) at school, there’s an unexpected sense of joy on the page—unexpected by me, anyway. Juli’s leaving, but it’s not the end of the world for anyone, including Oskar and Erich, and that sort of real optimism about their futures without him just took me by surprise. It was kind of awesome, really.

MICHELLE: I felt that, too. It is a new beginning, for everyone involved. You know, it was probably very wise of Hagio to never write a sequel wherein Oskar and Erich do get together—I mean, there must have been some sort of fan demand for this!—because she might’ve had to address the “what happens when school ends?” question. Now we can simply imagine them together instead of knowing they ended up moving on and marrying, et cetera, however poignant that may be.

MJ: Yes, given the time and place, Oskar and Erich’s story as a couple probably ends much less romantically than we’d like. We’re better off with fanfiction, I’m guessing. Which I now want to write. Oops?

Speaking of joy, I feel like we need to spend at least a few minutes here just talking about Hagio’s artwork because… oh, the glory of her artwork! You know I’m a sucker for classic shoujo in general, but Heart of Thomas is just exquisite in every way.

MICHELLE: It really is, and I definitely kept thinking throughout, “Oh, I bet MJlikes this page!”

There were quite a few pages I liked and made note of along the way. Page 157, with that top panel of the memory of Thomas haunting Juli and then in panel three morphing into Erich. Page 201, a color page wherein Juli looks dapper and elegant and Erich looks a little Bohemian or something with his interesting cross-legged pose. Page 241, where Thomas’ outline dominates the page while Juli narrates about how loving Thomas filled him with terror…. I could go on and on.

MJ: Yes, yes! What’s hardest here is trying to choose! I have particular love for a sequence early on—which I almost hate to bring up, because I know the panels leading into it are a source of pain for Matt Thorn, who surely loves this book more than anyone—but there’s an incredible scene on pages 29-31, in which Juli is dreaming about Thomas throwing himself off the bridge into his arms, that is just spectacularly eerie and expressive. Hagio’s emotional imagery is so clear throughout—she truly shows us her characters’ hearts through the artwork.

MICHELLE: I also really admired that, even though you’ve got all these kids in identical uniforms, some of whom have similar hairstyles, I was still never confused as to who I was looking at. (This also goes for Erich and Thomas, who share the same face!) And she didn’t achieve this distinction through wild appearances—though a couple of the older boys do look very unique—but just sheer drawing technique.

MJ: Yes, she pours so much characterization into body language and facial expression! It’s exactly the sort of work I long to point out to manga detractors who complain about big-eyed generic illustrations, in part because the characters indeed do have big eyes, which Hagio uses to great advantage. I could look at this book forever, and it’s possible I might.

In case it isn’t obvious to anyone reading this, I loved this manga with my whole heart. And I’ll admit that’s not exactly what I expected. I expected to find it visually beautiful and worthy as a classic, but I also expected it to be very dated and I thought the story might not appeal to my tastes as a modern fan. Instead, I found it to be both beautiful and emotionally resonant to an extent I’ve rarely experienced—especially in BL manga. This is a book I’d wholeheartedly recommend to any comics fan, without reservation. It’s an absolute treasure.

MICHELLE: After experiencing some disappointment with the story of Princess Knight, another historically significant work whose English release I had long desired, I was a little worried myself, but I needn’t have been. The Heart of Thomas was even better than I’d hoped. I hope it does well for Fantagraphics!

MJ: I hope so, too! Thank you, Moto Hagio, Matt Thorn, and Fantagraphics, for giving us the opportunity to read this gorgeous work.

More full-series discussions with MJ & Michelle:

Full-series multi-guest roundtables: Hikaru no Go | Banana Fish | Gerard & Jacques | Flower of Life

Feelin’ (Big Comic) Superior

January 19, 2013 by Erica Friedman 2 Comments

One of the tropiest tropes about manga culture in Japan is the old chestnut about salarymen reading manga on the train while commuting. While I have seen this only rarely in my times in Tokyo, it is still quite true that salarymen read manga. Just not so much on trains. You can find them after work hours, avoiding going home, clustered in front of the manga magazine racks in just about any convenience store. If they are reading manga (as opposed to just plain old men’s magazines) the magazines you are likely to see them reading are not the oversize phonebook-like magazines like CompAce or Ultra Jump, but thinner, staple-bound books like Biweekly Comic Magazine Big Comic Superior (ビッグコミックスペリオール).

While magazines like Big Comics Superior fill magazine racks at every corner store, you’re unlikely to have heard of many series from its pages. Ohtagaki Yasuo’s Moonlight Mile may have been made into an anime, while Team Medical Dragon by Nagai Akira and Koyasu Tamayo’s Aibo have been made into popular TV shows, and Okuribito by Sasou Akira has been turned into a movie, these were “popular” in only Japan and not outside. If there is any one series that westerners are likely to know, it is because it is a staple of Japanese manga stores everywhere, Azumi by Koyama Yu. Oh yeah, and Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt might ring a few bells, as well. ^_^

The Superior website, has the usual volume release info, and information on series being transformed into other media, but surprisingly, a great number of the series have chapters online. This offers readers a way to try out various series before buying the magazine. It’s nice to see a Japanese publisher moving sample chapters online.

Biweekly Superior began life as a twice-monthly special issue of Big Comic Original, but when the sales equaled Original‘s, Superior was split off as a separate magazine in 1987. JMPA’s 2011 stats put monthly circulation at 186K, down significantly from 2010 when it was selling 246K a month. Still for 300 yen, ($3.33 at time of writing,) the magazine is chock full of science fiction, adventure, drama and sports.

If you want to know what the office workers of Japan read, take a stab at being Superior for a day.

Biweekly Comic Magazine Big Comic Superior by Shogakukan: http://big-3.jp/bigsuperior/comic/index.html

JManga the Week of 1/24

January 18, 2013 by Sean Gaffney, Anna N and Michelle Smith 3 Comments

SEAN: It’s getting harder, I admit, to find things to say every week, mostly as JManga’s really sped up some releases ridiculously. As such, there’s new Crazy for You and Pride! Excited, but I’ve talked about those so much already.

ANNA: I can’t believe I’m two volumes behind with Crazy For You now! Crazy for You and Pride are for sure the titles I’m most excited about this week. I really really hope that they are doing well enough that we’ll see some similar titles coming out soon.

SEAN: There’s also a new Ekiben Hitoritabi manga, where the ongoing question has been “which cute young thing will he travel around with this time around?”

MICHELLE: I’ll definitely be reading the latest volumes of Crazy for You, Pride, and Ekiben Hitoritabi, but I admit I’ve kind of run out of new ways to say “Yay!” about them, too. Definitely glad to see them continuing to come out, and this’ll be the penultimate volume of Crazy for You, as well, which is pretty insane in terms of getting the whole series out in record time!

SEAN: Mythical Detective Loki has reached Vol. 3, which is also the last English release that came out back in the day via ADV. (Remember ADV?) From here on, it’s chapters new to North America…

The debut this week is another BL title from Fumiko Shusai. Ningen no Ichiban Muboubi na Bubun, aka Where a Person Is Most Vulnerable. It’s from Libre Shuppan, and I’ll be honest, its cover looks quite cute. More covers like this, please!

Anything catch your appetite?

Manga the Week of 1/23

January 17, 2013 by Sean Gaffney, MJ, Anna N and Michelle Smith 2 Comments

SEAN: It’s a quiet week at Midtown, which to my surprise still doesn’t have the Yen Press titles that I got this week and, um, apparently no one else did. This does not mean that nothing is being released there, however.

Vertical has the 4th volume of Flowers of Evil, aka Baudelaire for Shonen Manga. The covers have turned black and so has the story, with its three protagonists going to darker and darker places. Who’s for joining them?

MJ: *raises hand* Out of everything on this short list, Flowers of Evil is really the only thing that interests me.

MICHELLE: I keep saying that I’m not sure I’m going to continue with this series, but then I keep continuing with it.

SEAN: And Viz has its Signature Series, which makes this Blogger Love week. Afterschool Charisma has hit Vol. 7. I must admit I’ve lost track of it, but, um… clones!

ANNA: Oh, Afterschool Charisma! I really enjoyed the first three volumes or so. I should get caught up.

MICHELLE: I intend to get caught up soon, too. Maybe I can even manage to talk about the series on Off the Shelf, finally!

SEAN: There’s the penultimate volume of Jormungand, which is filled with action, gunplay, awesome moments and likely a huge pile of grey and grey morality amongst its cast.

MJ: I am ashamed to say that I don’t read either of these. Um.

SEAN: And just when you thought it was safe to stop buying 20th Century Boys, Viz brings us 21st Century Boys! This one’s only 2 volumes, though. Still, 21st Century Boy doesn’t scan! You’re making Marc Bolan sad!

MJ: Heh.

ANNA: I loved 20th Century Boys but just fell way behind on that series. One of these days…..

MICHELLE: I literally laughed out loud at your Marc Bolan reference, Sean! I’m a fairly serious Bolan/T. Rex fangirl, so was filled with glee when the opening pages of the manga feature the protagonist playing “20th Century Boy” over the morning announcements.

Anyway, I too fell way behind but it was kind of on purpose. I did the same with Urasawa’s Monster, reading the first couple volumes and then just waiting until all the rest of it was out before indulging in a huge marathon. Soon, I’ll do the same with this series.

SEAN: Any picks from you folks? Aaron, if you pick Gunslinger Girl for a 3rd straight week, I’m sending you to the corner…

Weekly Shonen Jump Alpha Recap: January 14, 2013

January 16, 2013 by Derek Bown 1 Comment

We’re just one week away from being up to date with Japan. And all I can say, as I sit here pondering these most recent chapters, is that I’m glad I don’t have to sit here with no new chapters, unlike those reading scanlations. My self control at not reading ahead has paid off.

The big news this week is that One Punch Man will be added to Weekly Shonen Jump (the Alpha has been dropped from the title). I haven’t read this series myself, but we did do an episode on it. I have to admit, this was not one of the series I was expecting to make it into our Jump. Still, I hear it’s a good series, and look forward to reading it. Now someone at Viz please get Beelzebub into Weekly Shounen Jump? And Sket Dance too, please.

What? Me? Demanding? Perish the thought.

Naruto Ch. 615
It’s times like these that make me glad I grew out of my shipping phase a long time ago—though not so long ago that I can’t still feel the sting of a sunken ship. That being said, I actually ran into spoilers about this chapter two weeks ago, because there is nothing in this world more vindictive than a “victorious” shipper. And they want to make sure everyone on the internet knows about it, even those of us who have been sticking to the legal release.

What? Am I sounding bitter? Huh, I wonder why that could be.

I could go into details why I don’t think this chapter is that big a deal, but that would only incite comments against me. Though, too be fair, I’m almost thinking that even those comments are better than no comments.

From a non-shipping standpoint, I feel that this chapter dragged a bit. The entire run was used to build Naruto’s confidence back up, and apparently build up the moment between him and Hinata. Frankly I would probably enjoy this more romance if Naruto weren’t so schizophrenically written. The biggest problem I find with this series is that I’m never sure exactly what Kishimoto intends to do. He rarely gives romance a focus, and when he does it seems to come out of nowhere because it’s involving characters who haven’t done anything in forever. And he seems to relish sending mixed signals, making it hard for the casual reader to really catch on to what exactly his end goal is.

The entire purpose of this chapter is giving Naruto and Hinata a moment, and since I’m not really invested in that relationship (personally, I’ve always thought Hinata was too underdeveloped to be really interesting), I can’t say this chapter did much for me.

One Piece Ch. 694
All this talk about shipping makes me appreciate Oda’s no-romance stance all the more. It’s refreshing to know that I can read this series and when I go to participate in the fandom not all of the discussion is about romantic drama.

The main thing I feel worth noting is that Baby 5’s devil fruit ability raises some interesting questions. Is she a logia or a paramecia? If she’s a paramecia then she’s an overpowered paramecia since she can reconstitute herself. If she’s a logia then does this mean that those types of fruits aren’t limited to elemental forms? None of these questions are answered, but I hope that eventually we will get an answer.

The ending, well, I won’t give it away, but I have to say I did not expect the story to go the way it’s going. Monet’s supposed fate comes as a bit of a surprise, though I doubt this is the end of her, since hints in previous chapters have suggested that there’s more to her than we’ve gotten this arc.

With the exception of a bit of deus ex machina I have to say this was a solid chapter, and I look forward to more. As always.

Cross Manage Ch. 016
Oh hey, look, they’re playing a match. A sports match in a sports manga? What a novel idea. Though, to be fair, for this series the focus on the characters rather than the sport was established early on. It’s not about learning the sport as much as it is the sport acting as a vehicle for the characters’ personal growth. While seeing them grow as a team is interesting, I personally would have preferred some more development for the team members before moving to this stage. I can’t help but feel that this fast pace is the death throe of a manga about to be cancelled. But, if it does survive I wouldn’t mind reading some more.

Bleach Ch. 522
I suggested it in my last column, and it stands confirmed in this chapter. Kubo just wants to draw lots of attractive women, preferably with big breasts as well. Or maybe Nimaiya is Kubo’s current author avatar. But, sexy antics in the first half of the chapter aside, it looks like we’re going to get to see some fighting next chapter. I do like the idea of Ichigo and Renji having to reconcile with their Zanpakuto, and look forward to seeing what Kubo does with that.

Or, if he wants, he can just keep drawing sexy women. At this point I’ll take what I can get.

Nisekoi Ch. 957
Ah Nisekoi, you and your silly antics. I didn’t think it was possible to make me like ALL the girls in this series. It’s fairly obvious, since this is the way these series work, that Raku will end up with Chitoge. And while I have my own preferences, I have to admit that Komi Naoshi does a great job of making me like all the girls fairly equally.

Which is why this chapter works for me. If I didn’t like Chitoge I wouldn’t like this chapter. Her escalating attempts to get Raku to notice the little changes she’s making to her appearance are hilarious as they get more and more obvious and everyone but Raku seems to be noticing. And again, there are some great expressions this chapter.

Toriko Ch. 217
The odd thing about Toriko is that it has a fairly large cast, but characters are constantly being introduced and then forgotten about, only to be brought back like it’s no big deal. Seeing Melk back was a fun bit of the chapter, I like that she actually came to meet Komatsu instead of just watching him from the the stands. Though it was odd that neither she nor Komatsu said anything to each other.

The other thing I have to say about this chapter is something I never thought I’d say. But, well, there’s a first for everything.

I really, really actually wanted to see the tournament play out. I know this is something nobody in his right mind would say. But I really like cooking and one of my favorite parts of Toriko is seeing the cooking. This was like an arc made just for me. And it looks like it will be cut short. Oh well, I’m sure whatever Shimabukuro does next will be interesting too.

Blue Exorcist Ch. 042
While I enjoy Blue Exorcist, it’s currently suffering from me not having the funds to buy all the volumes yet. So most of these chapters I’ve been reading don’t have a larger context for me to put them in. Sure, I enjoy the characters. Sure, the overall story, while unfocused from what I have read, is pretty good. But at the moment it doesn’t really have anything that it’s really building towards. Or at least that’s what it feels like to me. I don’t have a single goal to watch the characters progress towards, or at least they don’t seem to be actively pursuing that goal. Whenever a manga does that it ends up feeling disoriented and suffers as a consequence.

As far as this chapter is concerned, the further development that Yuki is undergoing (that he himself might be a demon as well), is pretty well-executed. The final page is especially creepy. As long as the manga does a better job than the anime did with similar material I think I’ll be satisfied.

Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan Final Chapter
I’ve been a fan of manga long enough and seen enough series end to know that not all endings are as satisfying as Fullmetal Alchemist‘s. In fact, most endings are downright disappointing. Not that I was expecting much from Nura. I enjoyed it more or less while I was reading it, but eventually I got to a point where the flaws kept sticking out far too much for me to enjoy. It was a fairly decent shounen action series, but it suffered from lack of focus and severely crowded paneling. Were I to recommend something to the author were he to try the series again, I’d say the cast needs to at least be cut in half, and the distinction between Rikuo’s human and yokai self should get some more explanation.

As for this chapter, It was an ending to the series without feeling excessively rushed. The series never really got fleshed out further after the move from Shounen Jump, but for what it’s worth I’ve seen worse endings in the series that don’t make it past twenty chapters in Jump. For those, it’s mostly “there are more adventures but we can’t show them.” With Nura, at least it’s a conclusion. Sure there’s a fair bit that needed wrapping up that never did get wrapped up, but I’ve come to believe that sometimes it’s better to have something left open-ended rather than risk having it end in a way you don’t like.

I’m not sure how I would feel about this chapter if I were more invested in the series, but as it is I can look at it from an academic standpoint. The ending wraps up the main conflict, but it does it in a way that leaves absolutely no impression. The characters—of which there are too many to really care about—end in a place that is no better or worse than where they started. I probably would have liked to see some more development, but I can’t say I was really expecting it.

And that’s it for this week, if you want to hear my expanded opinion on last week’s chapters, go over and check out my podcast, Manga^3 Episode 030 – January 7, 2013 – Character Death and Fairy Tail Vol. 3.

It Came from the Sinosphere: Night Market Hero

January 15, 2013 by Sara K. 1 Comment

This movie was Taiwan’s biggest box-office success in 2011. The top-rated review of this movie at the IMDb starts like this:

As a Taiwanese in a foreign country, this movie reminds me of my home town more than I think. With all the joys and tears, this movie is just so TAIWAN! Not exaggerated, this movie brings the way we live, we feel, we care, and we earn for life.

As a foreigner in Taiwan, I agree that this movie is “just so TAIWAN!”

The Story

Well, there’s a night market, the 888 Night Market, full of a cast of colorful characters. Ah Hua, a young man, helps manage the night market, and when he’s not dealing with the night market he takes care of his grandmother.

A screen shot of Ah Hua

He also gets into a bit of a tense (flirty?) relationship with a young journalist, Yi-nan.

A screen shot of Yi-nan

But then a corrupt local politician sells the night market’s land to developers (note: this kind of thing happens all the time in Taiwan). Can Ah Hua and Yi-nan SAVE THE 888 NIGHT MARKET????!!!!

Oh, and to make things juicier, the corrupt local politician is Ah Hua’s uncle.

Night Markets

When you ask a Taiwanese person “What is Taiwanese culture?” or “What makes Taiwan special?” there is a very high probability that they will mention night markets within the first few minutes. Almost all tourists visiting Taiwan are advised to visit night markets, for that matter, when I tell Taiwanese people “I visited [place in Taiwan]”, I’m often asked “Did you go to the [place in Taiwan] night market?”

I have a confession to make.

I don’t actually like night markets.

Okay, at first there was the novelty value. That gradually wore off. What I eventually found is that, even though the food seems cheap, that’s only because it’s sold in small portions, and if you want a full meal, it’s cheaper to go to a humble restaurant than to try to fill your stomach a night market, and IMHO, the restaurant food will probably taste better. Night markets are also often crowded, and … yeah, I’m not a night market person.

It’s still common to see traditional performances at night markets, temples, and other public spaces in Taiwan.

However, I definitely prefer the night markets in the mid-size to small cities than the night markets in big cities like Taipei and Kaohsiung. When I go to big city night markets, I get the sense that most of the sellers are trying to get their buck quickly and efficiently, and they don’t have much energy left over for human bonding. I think the smaller city night markets are just as commercial, but at least the atmosphere generally feels more laid-back. If I do go to a night market, I prefer going to a night market like the Taoyuan City Night Market. It’s small, it’s usually not too crowded, there aren’t many tourists so many of the people there actually know each other, and it just feels friendlier.

The night market in this movie is definitely a small-city / town night market. You won’t find a night market like this in the big city, or at least I haven’t.

Countryside vs. Metropolis

Many contemporary Taiwanese stories revolve around a clash between small towns and rural areas, and the cosmopolitan big city. This can be seen in Fated to Love You and even in Autumn’s Concerto. Usually somebody from the countryside encounters somebody from the big city, and they have some kind of relationship. The country person often speaks Taiwanese, needs to take care of elders, has economic trouble, etc. The city person generally speaks Mandarin, and often speaks English or another foreign language too, is better dressed, is wealthier, and might not even live in Taiwan. In this movie, the country person is Ah Hua, and the city person is Yi-nan. While country-boy-has-romance-with-city-girl seems to be the most common setup, there are other setups – in Seven Days of Heaven the city girl and country boy are siblings, and in Formula 17, both the country boy and the city boy are gay.

Ah Hua and his grandmother

The fact that this story is so common and popular demonstrates that it really resonates with a Taiwanese audience. On the one hand, Taiwanese people want to learn English/Japanese/German/Korean/whatever, want to live abroad, or at least travel extensively, and want to adapt a modern, international lifestyle. On the other hand, there is a great deal of fear that they are about to lose their own culture and identity.

I think their fears are well-founded. If you ever come to Taiwan, I dare you to find somebody under 30 who is fluent in the Hakka language. I have met young Hakka speakers in Hsinchu county (where the government supports Hakka language education and, in some towns, over 90% of the population is Hakka) but even in the hills of Taoyuan county – which also has a large Hakka population – I have yet to find a single young Hakka speaker. And I’ve spent a lot more time in Taoyuan county than Hsinchu county.

Ideally, Taiwanese would be able to preserve their own traditions and embrace whatever aspects of international culture they please. However, life is not so simple. Both understanding foreign cultures and keeping one’s own heritage alive requires a great deal of time and effort (you can ask MJwhat it takes to maintain Manga Bookshelf). Therefore, Taiwanese people do have to choose what they are willing to invest their time and energy in, and that’s why there’s a debate.

Stereotypes and Zhong Xin Ling

Like the United States, Taiwan is a fat-phobic society. However, a much smaller portion of the population of Taiwan is fat, so it’s much easier to forget that there are fat people.

In spite of this, Zhong Xin Ling, who is fat, has forged a career as an actress, TV host, and media personality (she performs in both Fated to Love You and My Queen). She has done a lot to make fat people visible in Taiwanese media, and to demonstrate that fat people are, you know, people. For that, she has earned my respect.

However, when a producer wants to cast someone to play the stereotypical “fat girl,” they call her. This is not Zhong Xin Ling’s fault, it’s the producers and scriptwriters’ fault that they perpetuate the stereotypes.

Zhong Xin Ling’s brief appearance in Night Market Hero, alas, is as a stereotypical “fat girl.”

Chu Ke-liang

Chu Ke-liang is Taiwan’s most well-known living comedian and TV personality, and is by far the most famous person in the entire cast. However, even though he is famous for his humor, and this film is a comedy, his part as the corrupt politician is played completely straight.

Budaixi Puppets!

Ah Hua’s grandmother has a set of budaixi puppets – not the jinguang kind, but the old, traditional kind.

Once upon a time, there was no television in Taiwan, and most of the population was illiterate. Back in those days, glove puppet shows, known in Mandarin as budaixi were the most popular form of public entertainment. In fact, they stayed in the mainstream of Taiwanese entertainment until a generation ago, and even now they have a core group of die-hard fans. Even 7-Eleven sometimes uses budaixi in its ads.

When I ask why budaixi are not as wildly popular as they were, say, 30 years ago, I always get the same answer: there is too much competition from Hollywood, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and most recently, Seoul. People who in an earlier generation would have been puppet geeks are today anime geeks (or Hollywood geeks, or K-pop geeks … you get the idea).

Based on my observation of young Taiwanese men (which, to be fair, is entirely anecdotal), they are most likely to embrace manga and anime as their primary form of mass entertainment, with Hollywood movies coming in second place. Though I know there is a set of young puppet fans, I haven’t met them, and most of them are into jinguang budaxi, not the traditional budaixi. To see Ah Hua messing with traditional budaxi puppets instead of, say, One Piece merchandise, simply screams of Taiwanese pride. In fact, it is so unusual that stretches my suspension of disbelief, and makes me feel that the movie might be laying on the Taiwanese pride a bit too thick. On the other hand, it is sending the “this is authentic Taiwanese culture” meme pretty pretty clearly (at least to an audience that is familiar with ‘authentic’ Taiwanese culture).

Location Spotting

In some of the flashback scenes, they show Danshui, with Mount Guanyin—possibly the most recognizable of all Taiwanese scenery—in the background. Danshui, of course, is one of the most touristy places in Taiwan, and is referenced in Autumn’s Concerto, Pinoy Sunday, and in my post about Creative Comics Collection, while Mount Guanyin is also shown multiple times in It Started with a Kiss (adapted from Itazura na Kiss).

Some comments on the language

This movie is in a mix of Taiwanese and Mandarin, with a little Hakka too. I suspect they deliberately added the Hakka to show that this is a movie about Taiwan, and not just the Hoklo people (about 70% of the population of Taiwan identifies as Hoklo, while about 10-15% identify as Hakka).

In Taiwanese media, it is common practice, when people are speaking Taiwanese, to have subtitles in Mandarin. However, in this movie, I noticed that the subtitles (at least on the DVD released in Taiwan) for the dialogue in Taiwanese were not pure Mandarin, but rather a mix of Mandarin and Taiwanese, so they assumed that anybody who would use the Chinese subtitles could understand at least some Taiwanese. I notice that they did not do this with the dialogue in Hakka – those subtitles were in pure Mandarin (as were the subtitles for the Mandarin-language dialogue).

Speaking of subtitles…

Availability in English

This movie is available on DVD with English subtitles.

Conclusion

The eight generals, a staple of Taiwanese festivals, arrive on motorcycles

When seeing these guys in the street doesn’t seem remarkable, you know you’ve been living in Taiwan for a while.

I don’t think it’s possible to sum up Taiwanese culture in two hours. However, I think this movie can serve as a decent introduction to Taiwanese culture. It IS a movie – life in Taiwan is more mundane and less idealized that what is seen in Night Market Hero. At the same time, it does manage to convey a sense of what Taiwan is like, and I’m tempted to tell my friends and family to watch this movie so they have a better understanding of the environment I live in.

Next Time: The Laughing Proud Wanderer (manhua)

Sara K. is shocked, saddened, and angered by what happened to Aaron Swartz (if you don’t know what happened, read this and (trigger warning) this). If you feel the same way as Sara K., please sign this petition if you can. Aaron Swartz was one of the key organizers of the anti-SOPA/PIPA campaign in which Manga Bookshelf participated (he speaks about in this video). We should all honor, remember, and most importantly, continue the good work he has done.

JManga the Week of 1/17

January 11, 2013 by Sean Gaffney, Michelle Smith and MJ 1 Comment

SEAN: There are only 3 manga series next week from JManga, but one of them is a biggie. Let’s get the other two out of the way first.

A 6th volume of PoyoPoyo’s Observation Diary means a 6th volume of adorable and funny 4-koma slice-of-life cat manga. I approve. (I may not *read*, but I approve…)

JManga has a 4th volume of Crime and Punishment: A Falsified Romance out incredibly fast, meaning I haven’t even had time to come up with a witticism for it. Bah.

And now for one I’ve really wanted to see. Miyabi Fujieda is one of the most popular yuri artists in the West, and his Iono-sama the Fanatics had half of its two volumes released by Infinity Studios before they folded. (It also had a character romanized as Fletch, something I bring up to Erica ALL THE TIME. It is unclear if her name was actually Irwin Fletcher. Somehow I doubt it. Also, Iono-sama really needed a female Irish cop…) Anyway! Ame-iro Kochakan Kandan may be better known here as Chatting at the Amber Teahouse, and it is absolutely adorable. I cannot wait to see it come out in English!

MICHELLE: That was definitely the only one on the list that excited me at all, so I’m glad to hear it’s absolutely adorable! I’d rather read adorable yuri than any other kind.

MJ: I’m with Michelle. As I so often am.

Manga the Week of 1/16

January 10, 2013 by Sean Gaffney, MJ, Michelle Smith and Anna N 2 Comments

SEAN: I’ve noted before that Midtown doesn’t always (or even often) use Diamond Distribution to get their orders. As a result, sometimes you get weeks like this. The titles on Midtown’s list for next week arrived most places today. While Diamond is shipping Yen’s stuff to most stores (including mine) next week, but not Midtown. (Again, a reminder that I use Midtown’s list mostly as it’s first, rather than most accurate.)

With that in mind, here’s a fusion of both lists.

Kodansha has the second volume of Missions of Love, which continues to feature a hero and heroine who really aren’t very likeable, and a love rival who is headed that way. It’s fun seeing the reader having to work harder at identifying with everyone. Fun stuff.

MJ: Yeah. Fun…

MICHELLE: Sometimes my need to like characters prohibits me from enjoying shows/books that other people swear are great. This might be one of those times.

ANNA: I really have had no urge to check this out, and I suspect those feelings will continue.

SEAN: I did mean fun in a genuine and non-sarcastic sense, by the way. I quite enjoy this series.

Seven Seas has a slew of titles (most of which, as I noted, arrived today everywhere else). The one I like the best is the 2nd and final omnibus of Girl Friends, which I already praised in my Pick of the Week. Cute yuri fluff/angst.

MJ: I also adore Girl Friends, though I’ve only read it at JManga.

MICHELLE: Same here.

SEAN: Gunslinger Girl is almost finished with its run, which must mean it’s running out of people to kill off. Expect more of that in this omnibus, which contains the Japanese Vol. 13-14.

I Don’t Like You At All, Big Brother!! has an omnibus out as well. with Vols. 3-4. I can’t think of anything funny to say here that isn’t slanderous. Moving on…

MJ: Heh.

SEAN: I know nothing about Jack The Ripper: Hell Blade, a manwha series also from Seven Seas, but the covers to Vol. 1 through 3 (which is out next week) at least reassures me that it isn’t moe. Yay! (Is there a moe Jack the Ripper 4-koma series? Maybe with his sister Jill the Ripper having a tsundere crush on him? Sounds like a winner to me.)

SubLime has Vol. 3 of Punch Up!, whose cover art is complete and total win. Don’t care if it’s horribly offensive within. I can’t decide if it’s the cat with the ‘yay!’ face, or the glasses-wearing guy’s befuddled “now what was I doing again?… oh right, him” expression. It’s probably both. I do wish that SubLime provided bigger cover images, though…

MJ: From what I understand, Punch Up! is win all around! I gotta start reading this manga.

MICHELLE: I need to continue it! Loving the kitty footprint on the face, too.

SEAN: Yen Press, meanwhile, has a bevy of January releases. Black Butler has hit an even dozen, and continues to apparently be filled with supernatural antics and almost-but-not-quite-BL. But damn, it looks cool.

MJ: I think I am one of maybe three people who really can’t stand Black Butler. Sad, but true.

MICHELLE: I think it’s okay. It falls on the “worth reading” side of the scale for me, but doesn’t manage the heights of “worth rereading.”

ANNA: I did read the first volume of this and decided that was enough.

SEAN: Black God is up to Vol. 18. I know absolutely zilch about it, but now at least I have a group of people I can tag to gush about it for me. Michelle, MJ, gush away!

MJ: Well, hm. Collecting full series without reading them is usually Michelle’s MO, but I have to admit with shame that though I have the entire available run of Black God sitting in my shelf, I have yet to read any of it. This just change!

MICHELLE: Hey now, are you calling me out on my hoarding tendencies?! :) Actually, I’m doing far less of that these days, though I regret nothing when it comes to stuff from ten years ago that I’m very thankful to have snagged. Anyway, I too must admit that I have never read Black God. I do not have a good excuse. Sorry we have failed to provide the gushing you requested!

SEAN: A Bride’s Story is up to Vol. 4, and no doubt will continue to look lush and gorgeous, and feature a heroine that every other blogger in the world except me seems to connect with.

MJ: Though I do connect with the heroine, one thing I appreciated about volumes three and four, is that they are focused heavily on other characters. This is particularly poignant in volume three, but it doesn’t hurt volume four either. You might find more in it for you now?

MICHELLE: I haven’t started this one yet, though I was pondering doing so soon as there’s a new volume to discuss. So far, the only Mori I’ve read has been the first two volumes of Emma and her recent short story collection.

ANNA: I haven’t read volume 3 yet! But I did love Emma and will be catching up on this series eventually. I do love the fact that the editions are so nice.

SEAN: The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan continues to struggle with its slow start, something that is allowed in Japan but not North America, which is far more unforgiving to manga that take a while to get there. We’ve got one volume to go till the good stuff. Till then, enjoy the sweet fluff.

Soul Eater has reached a point where I can’t really divide it into arcs anymore. Disasters just pile one upon another until they seem to reach the sky. I presume the same thing will happen here. But it will look cool, the characterization will be magnificent, and the abstract art style will amaze me. (This is just a prediction, but I’m usually right.)

MICHELLE: This is the first description that’s ever made me want to read Soul Eater.

SEAN: Lastly, in the “not manga” category, Book Girl and the Undine Who Bore A Moonflower is out, the 6th in the series and the final stand-alone novel before the two-part finale. The title may be a mouthful, but this is probably the best light novel series I’ve seen brought over here to date. And for those who missed Maki in the last book, the ojou with a thing for our Book Girl heroine, she apparently features prominently in this one.

MJ: I haven’t read these either, and I really should, given that both you and Erica are fans.

MICHELLE: Now, here is an instance of a series where I’ve collected all the volumes so far without reading them. I swear I’ve got good intentions!

ANNA: I am slightly ashamed that I have not tried out any volumes of this series because usually as a librarian I would be all over any series with the phrase “Book Girl” in the title. One day I will read it!

SEAN: So what are you combining 3 different release lists to get?

It Came from the Sinosphere: The Eleventh Son

January 8, 2013 by Sara K. Leave a Comment

It is high time that I actually write a post about Gu Long, so here it is.

But First, the Story

Xiao has a reputation as a notorious bandit (even though nobody’s proven he committed any crime), and ends up rescuing Shen, who is The Most Beautiful Woman in the World (there are so many Most Beautiful Women in the World in wuxia fiction that it’s ridiculous – this gets lampshaded in Passionate Wastrel, Infatuated Hero where they keep a bloody list of the most beautiful women in the world, which Zhao Guan takes exception to). Xiao and Shen end up spending a few months together, and fall in love with other. Alas, Shen is already married, to a handsome, strong, skilled, rich, well-mannered young man no less. Oh, and she’s pregnant (with her husband’s child).

Anyway, Xiao has his own matters to deal with, being an outlaw and all. Eventually, Shen’s family is murdered and Xiao is accused. Things get pretty gnarly…

Now, I Talk about Gu Long

Gu Long, along with Jin Yong (discussed previously many times in this column) and Liang Yusheng (discussed here), is considered one of the three great writers of “new wuxia”. I actually prefer to call it “Cold War wuxia” since, you know, a new generation of wuxia writers has already emerged. Gu Long is also one of the four great (Cold War) wuxia writers of Taiwan, of which he is certainly the most popular.

What I respect about Gu Long is that he created his own personal style of wuxia, and was never content with his success – he always strove to push the wuxia genre and his own craft to the limit of his ability. As such, his works feel unique, both distinct from other wuxia writers, and distinct from each other.

Gu Long studied foreign literature in college, so it should come as no surprise that his works are heavily influenced by non-Asian literature. That isn’t to say that other wuxia writers weren’t influenced by foreign writers – Jin Yong was certainly influenced by classical Greek literature and Alexandre Dumas – but studying foreign literature is one of the things which helped Gu Long break away from the conventions of the genre and make his own kind of wuxia. Some of the foreign writers who influenced him include Ernest Hemingway, Ian Fleming, John Steinbeck, and Friedrich Nietzsche.

I’m tempted to say that Gu Long’s works are ‘wuxia noir’, except his work is so diverse that I think that is too limiting.

Writing Style

Some people say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Right now, I think thousands of words are worth taking pictures of.

Here is a random page from The Bride with White Hair.

Those paragraphs are … well-sized. Actually, these paragraphs seem a bit shorter than average for Liang Yusheng – it’s not unusually for a paragraph to take up an entire page (yes, even in this big-page format). Furthermore, Liang Yusheng uses quite a range of vocabulary.

Here is a random page from a Jin Yong novel.

That is a wall of words alright. And not just any words – the vocabulary required to read this is significantly more advanced than needed to read Liang Yusheng. I reckon it took me about 90 hours to read Shè Diāo Yīngxióng Zhuàn. It’s not just non-native readers who think Jin Yong is hard – I’ve met Taiwanese people who claim they can’t read Jin Yong novels because it’s too hard (on the other hand, I’ve also seen 10-year-olds reading Jin Yong novels).

Now what about Gu Long? Here’s a random page:

It’s heavy on dialogue, and even the non-dialogue paragraphs are awfully short, heck, most of the sentences are short too. It’s not just the paragraph/sentence length – the vocabulary is also much more basic. Granted, Gu Long occasionally uses pretty advanced vocabulary, but even so, when it comes to difficulty, he’s definitely not in the same league as Jin Yong or Liang Yusheng.

I think you now understand why some learners of Chinese interested in wuxia choose to start with Gu Long.

The fact that Gu Long chooses to write mostly dialogue and sentences which are much shorter than what is standard for Chinese literature (or even conversational Chinese) definitely affects the mood. Whereas Jin Yong will go into a loving digression about tea or something, Gu Long can be so brief it’s stark.

Gu Long and Gender

Ha, I could dedicate an entire post to this topic.

Some people say that Gu Long is the most misogynist of wuxia writers. Other people say that Gu Long wrote better and showed more respect female characters than other wuxia writers.

I partially agree with both sides.

I think Gu Long has earned reputation as a misogynist. No other wuxia writer I’m familiar with comes anywhere close to saying anything as vile as what Gu Long says about women in some of his works. To be fair, the most misogynist remarks are concentrated in the villains’ mouths, however the narrator and protagonists are also guilty, and even if it’s in the villain’s mouth, it’s not much fun to read.

Now, I don’t think there is any respect in which one could claim that Gu Long writes better female characters or is more gender-egalitarian than Zheng Feng or Liang Yusheng. There are certain respects in which I think Gu Long handles female characters in a more egalitarian manner than Jin Yong or certain other wuxia writers … but in my opinion, this is more than outweighed by the misogynist bile that Gu Long sometimes pours out. It’s my impression that a much higher percentage of Jin Yong fans than Gu Long fans are female, and I think it’s because that it’s because, overall, Jin Yong is simply friendlier to a female audience.

But it’s not the sexism which most bothers me about Gu Long. It’s the gender-rigidity. Like I said, Gu Long’s works have quite a bit of variety, and some of his works are much less misogynist than others. However, everything I’ve read by him is full of statements like “All men do X because they are men” and “Women always do X. Otherwise, they would feel bad.” First of all, this erases anybody who doesn’t conform to the gender binary While I wouldn’t call Jin Yong or Liang Yusheng champions of gender diversity, they do have some characters who are not cis-gendered. But even among cis-people, there is greater differences between people of the same gender than there are between different genders. While I think there are biological between the sexes, I think gender is a social construct, and that most of the “differences” between female and male are driven by society, not biology. I strongly take exception to Gu Long’s policing of gender roles, which is far more stringent than any other writer I’ve encountered in Chinese.

I will give credit to Gu Long for offering his characters more flexibility vis-a-vis gender in Happy Heroes (which was translated into French as Les quatre brigand du Huabei), but that seems to be the exception, not the rule, for Gu Long.

Why is Gu Long more wretched than his Chinese-speaking precedents and contemporaries? I can’t definitely answer that question … but remember how I mentioned that he was strongly influenced by foreign literature? Among other things, he was influenced by the James Bond novels … and one of the lines in The Spy Who Loved Me is (trigger warning) “All women love semi-rape. They love to be taken.”

Gu Long, to his credit, has written with sensitivity at least one female character who had experienced rape, and has never managed to make a statement quite that terrible. Nonetheless, he is the only wuxia writer I know who I could ever imagine saying anything like that. Overall, his gender-policing seems to be derived much more from European and American writers than Chinese writers.

Women in The Eleventh Son

Fortunately, The Eleventh Son is quite tolerable when it comes to gender, at least by Gu Long standards. Shen, as The Most Beautiful Woman in the World, could have easily just been a fantasy object, but she’s a fully realized character with a vibrant inner life. She tries to figure why she is not in love with her fantastic husband, she is very attached to her birth family and visits them regularly, she isn’t sure how to deal with Xiao, etc. In fact, she has so much going on that she hardly has brain space left to think about her pregnancy.

Shen’s also not always a helpless victim – she has mastered a bad-ass martial art technique courtesy of her family (and thus is heavily tied up with her feelings about her family), and ends up rescuing Xiao more than once. Eventually, she is the one who decides how to resolve the love triangle between Xiao, her husband, and herself.

Additionally, another female character ends up starting a successful new romance in her mid-to-late thirties (I don’t remember her exact age).

Availability in English

This novel has been published in English.

Ha, I bet you weren’t expecting that!

I haven’t read the translation myself, but the reviews I’ve read claim that it’s excellent.

Conclusion

I actually discussed Gu Long more than this novel specifically, didn’t I? That’s probably because I think this is less interesting than the other Gu Long novels I’ve read. It’s not that it’s a bad novel – it’s fast-moving and I got involved in the story and all – it’s just that I can’t think of much to say about it.

If you can read French, I recommend Les quatre brigands du Huabei (my favorite Gu Long novel so far) over this one. In fact, if The Eleventh Son hadn’t been translated into English, I would have probably chosen to write a post about Happy Heroes/Les quatre brigands du Huabei instead. However, if you can’t read French/Chinese/etc., then I actually highly recommend reading this novel. Gu Long is one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, and this is quite different from anything I’ve read in English. Most importantly, it is a fun read.

Next Time: Night Market Hero (film)

Sara K. sometimes wonders why she spends so my effort reading, watching, and writing about stuff in Chinese. After all, the global economy is speeding head-first into another crisis, the too-big-to-fail-banks and other oligarchical/monopolistic corporations have murdered democracy in the United States (and other countries), and if we don’t make radical changes right now, climate change will kill off at least 90% of the human population within 30 years. Shouldn’t she be spending her energy dealing with these issues instead? However, she also thinks that the power of popular culture is underestimated, and needs to be examined.