Features

Manga the Week of 7/18

July 11, 2012 by Sean Gaffney

Diamond may still be shorting me on manga every single week, but despite that I continue to bring you this list of what’s out next week. This week I combine Midtown’s list (missing a title arriving at my store) and my own comic shop’s (missing one on Midtown’s list). Both, ironically, from the same publisher.

Kodansha has its usual list of titles Diamond gets one week later than everyone else, for some reason. We have Fairy Tail 20, which wraps up one arc only to send us barreling directly into another. Negima 35 continues to feature the giant final battle to save the magic world, with lots of posturing and counter-posturing. Sailor Moon 6 kicks off the S arc, and you know what that means… fans complaining about the romanization of the Outers’ last names, that’s right. (I’m joking, please don’t actually do so.) And Shugo Chara-chan 4 are no doubt more wacky and hilarious 4-koma adventures of the cast of Shugo Chara. (It’s harder to do these for titles I don’t read, I admit.)

Sublime has two new yaoi titles. Awkward Silence is by Hinako Takanaga, who has had everything in the world licensed over here. Honestly, this summary reads like it could be a generic shoujo manga, were the leads not both men. There’s also Punch Up! by Shiuko Kano, whose premise at least features grouchy construction workers. I’d go for the latter over the former (what with all my experience in reading BL, of course.)

In Viz’s regular line, we’re up to Vol. 21 of 20th Century Boys, as things pound relentlessly towards a climax.

And there’s July’s pile of stuff from Yen Press. Midtown doesn’t show The Disappearance of Nagato-Yuki-chan, but my shop’s getting it in, so I’m counting it here. For all those who want a kinder, gentler Haruhi series with less world saving and more adorable, this is for you. There’s also Durarara!! Vol. 3, which Midtown lists but my store does not. The striking covers of DRRR always appeal, but the manga artist has shown a deft touch with the plotting as well.

In other Yen series, Book Girl and The Wayfarer’s Lamentation is the 5th in the series, and may actually finally get into the mysterious past of Konoha’s in greater detail. 13th Boy hits Vol. 12, which dovetails nicely with 20th Century Boys hitting Vol. 21. Black Butler is up to double digits for this satanically popular series (see what I did there? I should write ad copy). There’s new High School of the Dead and Pandora Hearts, and the 2nd volume of Is This A Zombie? is there for those not driven off by Vol. 1. The other big debut this week is Vol. 1 of spinoff series Soul Eater Not!, which is serialized day-date by Yen Press as part of their Yen Plus online magazine. Should be fun. (Twilight Vol. 2 is also listed, but as this came out in October everywhere else, I’m not sure why.)

That’s a lot of great stuff! What are you getting?

It Came From the Sinosphere: Cheerful Wind

July 10, 2012 by Sara K. 3 Comments

About the Title

This film has quite a few titles in English. Cheerful Wind is the title used by the IMDB, yet Play While You Play is the English title on my DVD. The Mandarin title is Fēnger Tītà Cǎi (風兒踢踏踩) which roughly means ‘The Wind Tip-Tap Steps’.

Three People

I picked this film because it brings together three of the most important people in Taiwanese pop culture: Chiung Yao, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Fong Fei-fei.

*****

Chiung Yao

Chiung Yao is the most popular writer of Chinese-language romance novels ever. I think she’s also Taiwan’s most popular female novelist ever. Many of her works have been adapted for TV, some of which are available on DVD even though they are over 30 years old. It is rare for a 30+ year old Taiwanese TV series to be available on DVD, which demonstrates just how popular Chiung Yao is. Furthermore, the 1998-2003 Chinese TV series adapted from her novel Princess Pearl, aka My Fair Princess, is the most popular Chinese-language TV series ever.

I’ll be honest; I haven’t read any of the novels or watched any of the TV series. Yet. But Chiung Yao’s position in Chinese-language pop culture is so important that I have to read at least a few of the novels and watch a few of the TV series if this column is to have any credibility. So I assure you, I WILL read some novels / watch some of the TV shows, and write about it here.

Naturally, none of her novels are available in English, because publishers apparently think there is no commercial potential in translating the works of the most popular romance writer in the Chinese-speaking world into English.

I am not clear what Chiung Yao’s involvement with this film is. The DVD claims that she is the original creator and that she ‘supervised’ the film, but this is not adapted from any of her novels, nor did she write the screenplay. Maybe she created the plot, or maybe she just let the film use her name to sell more tickets.

*****

Hou Hsiao-hsien

Out of all of the people involved with this film, Hou Hsiao-hsien is the best known outside of Asia. He is one of Taiwan’s most famous filmmakers. His best-known work is City of Sadness, set in the town of Jiufen (Jiufen also inspired Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, and thanks to City of Sadness and Spirited Away Jiufen is constantly packed with Taiwanese and Japanese tourists). Hou Hsiao-hsien’s films get discussed in film schools around the world, put on “films to see before you die” lists, and played at international film festivals.

This film was made very early in his career—it’s only his second feature-length film. Nonetheless, his distinctive, low-key style is already apparent.

*****

Fong Fei-fei

If you created a list of “Five Most Important Taiwanese Singers of All Time,” Fong Fei-fei would definitely make the list. Frankly, I think she would belong on the “Three Most Important Taiwanese Singers of All Time” list too. She also happens to be one of my favorite Chinese-language singers. It was a big deal in Taiwan when she died earlier this year, and I wrote my own blog post about it.

Unlike Chiung Yao and Hou Hsiao-hsien, whose families fled China after WWII, Fong Fei-fei’s family had been in Taiwan for centuries, and she herself had been born in Taoyuan county (hey, I live in Taoyuan county!). Even after becoming a star, she stayed in touch with her working-class roots, and that is part of why she is so beloved.

Even though she is best known as a singer, she got her big break in show business as an actress, not a singer. That break was being cast in the TV show A Pair of Swallows Fly (燕雙飛), for which she sang the theme song. Even after establishing her singing career, she continued to accept acting roles, including the leading role in this film.

The Story

Xinghui is a photographer. She lives with her boss/boyfriend, Luozi, a producer of TV commercials from Hong Kong. However, her feelings for him a bit … lacking. While on a trip to Penghu to shoot a commercial, Xinghui meets Jintai, a flute-playing medic who lost his eyesight in a car crash while driving an ambulance. The two establish a rapport which only deepens when they happen to run into each other in Taipei. After an operation, Jintai can see again, and follows Xinghui to the countryside when she has to act as a substitute teacher for her brother. There, Jintai asks Xinghui to marry him. Meanwhile, Luozi plans a trip to Europe with Xinghui—knowing that travelling in Europe has been Xinghui’s dream.

So, does Xinghui run off to Europe with Luozi, or does she stay with Jintai in Taiwan?

The Theme Song

I really like the theme song for this film (which, by the way, was sung by Pauline Yeung and Kenny Bee, NOT by Fong Fei-fei herself). There are several other songs in the film, but the theme song is the clear winner. In fact, I like this song so much I translated the lyrics into English:

The wind blows and blows,
The clouds float and float,
The branches climb outside the window,
The little orioles are all adorable.

The wind steps on by,
The clouds step on by,
Knocking on the doors, asking,
‘Is my friend there?’

Spring’s footsteps come leisurely,
Yet quickly will be tip-tap stepping,
Young friends are tip-tap stepping,
And the world brims with love.

Charm

This film excels at charm. The story moves quite slowly and quietly, focusing more on highlighting how playful life can be instead of driving a plot forward.

For example, in the opening scene, they are shooting a commercial at a place where it is written “TAKING PICTURES IS FORBIDDEN.”

Xinghui and some men by a wall which says 'Taking Pictures is Forbidden'

The writing on the left side of the picture says “Taking pictures is forbidden.”

This is actually quite common in Taiwan—there are many places where the use of cameras is restricted for military reasons. I imagine these places would be especially common in Penghu, where this scene is set, because it is one of the most fortified places in Taiwan.

Speaking of military locations, one of my favorite scenes is where Xinghui, Jintai, and some children are playing hide-and-seek in an abandoned fortification (I am guessing that it is from the Japanese era, but I’m not sure).

Right at the beginning of the film, there are children who are setting up a dung bomb as a prank to play on a passerby.

However, the kids get the timing wrong, so the dung bomb explodes on them instead.

This boy is a victim of his own dung bomb.

Then, it is revealed that this is actually being filmed for a laundry detergent commercial. And because there was something wrong with this shot, they have to look for a cow so they can get more cow dung for more shots.

The dung bomb scene turns out to just be a film set.

It’s all just a film in the process of being shot.

I also cannot help notice that Xinghui wears at least five different hats during the film. Fong Fei-fei is known as the “Queen of Hats,” and I am pretty sure that is why Xinghui is wearing so many stylish hats during the film.

On Blindness

I am not comfortable talking about this because a) I have been sighted my entire life and b) I do not know much about the experience of blind people in Taiwan, but I am also not comfortable ignoring this.

There are times in the film when people treat blind!Jintai as an object instead of as a person with agency. I find it plausible that some Taiwanese people treat blind people this way (there is a reason why Taiwan has disability rights activists), so I do not fault the film for showing this. However, the film depicts this as being cute … and I do not think it’s cute.

There is also, of course, the fact that Jintai regains his sight during the film. On the one hand, the film depicts Jintai being fairly content as a blind man, which is an improvement over stories where blindness is depicted as being TEH MOST TRAGIC THING EVAAAAR!!!! On the other hand, the film does not explain why Jintai decided to have the operation, since the underlying assumption is that all blind people want to be sighted. I have no objection to people having operations to restore their eyesight, or to having this happen in stories, but I do object to the underlying assumption that this is the only way to address blindness.

Speaking of blind people and movies … Tommy Edison is a good film critic.

Nostalgia

This film was made in 1981, so it gives me a chance to see how much Taiwan has (not) changed.

The scenes set in Taipei in particular brought feelings out of me. The Taipei scenes are set in and around Taipei Main Station, which is the same area I lived in when I lived in Taipei. The train station itself has been completely rebuilt since the movie was filmed … yet some of the trains are still the same! Yep, some train cars from the 1980s are still in service today in Taiwan.

Taipei Train Station does not look like this AT ALL today.

I was also impressed by how little February 28 Peace Park has changed since the 1980s, even though the name of the park itself changed (in the film, it is called “New Park”).

That bridge, on the other hand, looks just the same today as it did in the 1980s.

Availability

I have this film on DVD. My DVD does not have English subtitles. I suspect there is no DVD with English subtitles. That said, this is a Hou Hsiao-hsien film, so there may very well be a film society out there which has a copy of this film with English subtitles.

Conclusion

Is it a great film? No. Is it a good film? Yes. I enjoyed watching it. Part of my pleasure came from recognizing different parts of Taiwan and Taiwanese culture, but even if I couldn’t tell Taiwan from Thailand I think I would have still enjoyed this quiet, whimsical film.

Next Time: CCC Manhua Anthology

Sara K. rather enjoys going to abandoned military sites in Taiwan. Recently she visited the coastal town of Shenao where she went to an area formerly restricted by the military—and saw cool-looking network of tunnels left by the military within the unusually-shaped rocks (she did not go inside because the entrance to the tunnels said “Danger: Do Not Enter”).

It Came From the Sinosphere: Passionate Wastrel, Infatuated Hero (Part 2)

July 6, 2012 by Sara K. 6 Comments

On Tuesday, I introduced Passionate Wastrel, Infatuated Hero. Because there is very little information about the novel available in English, I split this post into two parts. This is part two.

The Style

First of all, this is a novel that MOVES. Before the reader is five pages into the novel, an innocent girl witnesses a murder. From that point on, the story does not slow down very much, and generally only when it needs to slow down. There are a few sections where the plot loses a little momentum—particularly when focusing on Ling Haotian’s moping over Zheng Baoan—but just when I think the plot might actually drag, a new plot twist bursts in with a BAM!

One reason the novel moves so well is its accessible writing style. I would not go so far as to call it a plain writing style, but the literary flourishes are generally playful in nature. For example, there is a scene where Zhao Guan and Ling Haotian seem to be in a competition to spit out the most chengyu. However, when Zheng Feng is not having fun with words, the language is very direct and to the point.

Fighting

The most enjoyable set of fights for me was the poisoners’ tournament. It has novelty—the contestants duel by trying to out-poison each other instead of using direct combat. It has all of the classic psychological appeals—our protagonist is the underdog (Zhao Guan is the least experienced of all of the contestants) and the stakes for him are really high. And because he is the least experienced of the poisoners, he needs to rely on his wits to win, which is a lot of fun for the reader.

Fighting is a central part of Ling Haotian’s development as a character. Training is how he (tries to) take his mind off of his problems, and as a wanderer he needs to fight to defend himself. It is when he wins a tournament—not of poisoners, but of the finest fighters in the martial arts world—that everybody, including himself, finally realises that he is himself and not merely the son or brother of so-and-so.

Feminism?

One of the reasons I was so interested in reading this novel was, being written by a female, I hoped it would be less patriarchal than other wuxia novels I’ve read. Is it feminist? On the surface, no. But there are some very interesting things beneath the surface…

The two main characters are male, and they both get lots of attention from beautiful women, which makes it seem like a typical harem fantasy wuxia aimed at straight males. However, the standard wuxia-harem-fantasy-for-straight-males tends to feature a man who, while strong, is not particularly handsome, and the women who fling themselves at him tend to be young chaste maidens (please note that I use the word “tend”—of course there are exceptions). Zhao Guan, on the other hand, is so gorgeous that the novel specifically states that 80% of the young women he encounters gets a crush on him. I have come to the conclusion that he probably looks like Hu Ge.

Two pictues showing off Hu Ge's prettiness.

Hu Ge, Chinese bishonen

Even with his looks, he still has to work at getting so many women, unlike the typical wuxia hero who basically has women fall into his lap. And, much as he does not like it, he often has to refrain from pursuing certain women for pragmatic reasons. Most wuxia heroes do not put so much thought into which women to pursue or not pursue—when they do refrain, it’s usually because of sexist cultural programming, not because they actually considered what might be in his or her best interests. Of course, if they actually thought about it before entering into certain problematic relationships, there would be less dramatic conflict, whereas making decisions based on sexist programming tends to increase, not decrease, dramatic conflict.

Zhao Guan of course prefers women who a pretty and not evil, but he does not care about their prior sexual history, or even if they have other sexual or romantic relationships (well, he does care about their other relationships … but in a “I won’t let him hurt her” sense and not a “how dare she have another man” sense). This lack of double standard is rather refreshing. He even takes a woman who had kidnapped and tortured him as one of his lovers. And while he does care about looks, the most beautiful women in the story are immune to his charms for some reason (*cough* the Ling brothers *cough*). This does not look so much like a fantasy for straight males to me. This looks like a fantasy for straight fangirls who want a hot guy who won’t turn them down.

What about straight fangirls who are not physically pretty? They have Ling Haotian. The most beautiful women in the story all fall for him or one of his brothers, not Zhao Guan. Meanwhile, Zheng Baoan, while not ugly, is said to be the plainest-looking young woman in the story. Yet she is the only woman that both Ling Biyi and Ling Haotian want. Even though they can get women who are far, far more beautiful. And they are both hot dudes. This is unambiguously a fantasy aimed at straight female readers.

Speaking of Zheng Baoan, she’s a cool character herself; she’s sweet, reserved, feminine, and tough as nails. Ling Haotian says she is far braver than he (I agree). Whereas Ling Haotian generally runs away from problems, Zheng Baoan confronts them. And while he’s busy angsting over his feelings for her, Zheng Baoan is too busy saving his life to indulge in angst. I like characters like this because they illustrate that courage is just as compatible with femininity as with masculinity.

And then there’s the gender-reversal in Zhao Guan’s story. First of all, instead of being a girl who has heard her parents say they wished she were a boy, Zhao Guan hears his mother wishing she had a daughter, and the other people who take care of him as a child keep on saying it is such a pity he is not a girl. Wuxia novels have no shortage of women who, for various reasons, dress and try to pass as male. No woman does that in this novel. Instead, it is Zhao Guan who sometimes tries to pass as female. His reason is very practical—he needs to hide from his enemies, and it is sometimes safer for him to present himself as female than male. However, he feels no shame in dressing as a woman. This reflects that he really, really does think females are equal to males—he has no reason to be ashamed of being perceived as female. Now count the number of straight men in your life who would not experience any shame or embarrassment if they had to dress up and pass as women.

And speaking of gender reversal, there’s Zhao Guan’s mother herself. She basically lives the live of a male wuxia hero without being male. She overcame childhood tragedy, mastered various martial arts skills, rescues the weak and innocent, punishes wrongdoers, became the leader of a martial arts faction, drinks alcohol, and has her own (reverse) harem. It’s a pity that she has to die so early in the novel … I’d be willing to read a novel which features her as the main character.

How the Novel Made Me Feel

Back in the later years of elementary school and in middle school, I voraciously gobbled up whatever decent-or-better fantasy novels came my way. I did it because it went beyond fun. I lived the exciting adventures of those characters.

Reading this novel brought that feeling back for me. I read this novel at a steady clip of about 145 pages per day—which may not seem like that much until you realize a) I didn’t start studying Chinese until I was in my 20s and b) I often had to put the book down to savor some bit which had captured my imagination. This novel dominated my life while I was reading it, and the story is still ringing through my mindspace.

And … CURSE YOU ZHANG FENG FOR WRITING THAT ENDING! YOU MADE ME CRY!

Availability

The only part of this novel that is available in English (or any other non-Asian language) is the excerpt I translated for this review. There is not even an unfinished fan translation.

I know the handful of wuxia novels which have been published into English or French have not been best-sellers (if any wuxia novels have been published into any non-Asian languages other than English or French, please comment—I want to keep track of all wuxia novels published in non-Asian languages). However, just as contemporary manga tends to be more commercially successful in English translation than classic manga, I suspect contemporary wuxia might be more commercially successful than classic wuxia in the English-speaking world. I think a publisher could make money bringing out this novel in English if they marketed it properly. Now, once enough people in the English speaking world are hooked on wuxia, the classic novels could come out, heh heh heh…

At the very least, it is available in both simplified and traditional characters. For those learning Chinese as a foreign language, I think this novel is a good pick because it has such an accessible style. Is it the easiest novel to read on linguistic grounds? No. But it is entertaining and fast-paced, which in my opinion is more important than whether the grammar or vocabulary are easy. And compared to many other wuxia novels, the vocabulary and grammar are not hard.

Conclusion

I think it’s pretty obvious at this point that I love this novel. It is a monumental artistic work that a literature professor would approve of? No. But much as I love high-brow culture, sometimes I want a story which will just suck me in. This story did that. If you can, you should give it a chance to suck you in too.

Sara K. used to be really into fantasy novels. Looking back, she wonders how she found time to read all those novels considering that she also had to go school, do homework, sleep, and so forth. It gives her hope that she might be able to actually find time to read many of the wuxia novels on her reading list. And she definitely plans to read Zheng Feng’s other novels.

Manga the Week of 7/11

July 4, 2012 by Sean Gaffney

As one would expect after this week’s huge stack of manga after manga, next week is slightly quieter. But there are still a few new manga out there to please everyone.

Digital Manga Publishing starts us off with a new volume of the ever popular Finder. It’s a big title with yaoi fans, despite reviews tending to use the word “sexplosion” when describing it. There is also Flutter, whose cover features two really depressed-looking guys. And they have Secretary’s Job as well, which does not seem to be a sexplosion, but at least the cover doesn’t feature leads who want to kill themselves. So it’s a nice balance.

Fanfare/Ponent Mon has Vol. 3 of mountain climbing epic Summit of the Gods. Even if it wasn’t illustrated by Jiro Taniguchi (which it is), you should get this anyway as one should always support any Business Jump manga that actually gets brought over here.

Kodansha has the 5th volume of Tarzan-ish shonen manga Animal Land, which should appeal to anyone who liked Zatch Bell, the author’s other imported series.

Despite the cover, which looks remarkably like Seven Seas’ other OEL titles, Angel Para Bellum is in fact Japanese. It’s from the artist who does Dance in the Vampire Bund, and runs in Softbank Creative’s Flex Comics! Remember them? That’s right, CMX’s old buddies. And now Seven Seas has them! They also have the start of a new Alice spinoff, this one featuring Boris. At 7+ volumes, it promises to be longer than the original series. There’s also some Korean titles: Jack the Ripper/Hell Blade, and an omnibus of Vol. 5-6 of My Boyfriend Is A Vampire, which I presume is one of those titles that is also the plot.

Lastly, Viz has Vol. 4 of the adorable Fluffy Fluffy Cinnamoroll, which I always misspell. But not this time! Ha!

Be patriotic, Americans! Buy Japanese manga! Which one are you getting?

It Came From the Sinosphere: Passionate Wastrel, Infatuated Hero (Part 1)

July 3, 2012 by Sara K. 9 Comments

There is not much information available about this novel in English, so I am giving it a more thorough treatment than usual, and making this a two-parter.

First, I think it’s better to show instead of describe the feel of the novel. So, before continuing, please read this short excerpt – click here to read it in English, click here to read it in Chinese.

Now that you’ve read that, you should have some idea what the novel is like, so you are ready to read this review.

Background Information

In China, this novel is titled Duōqíng Làngzǐ Chīqíng Xiá (多情浪子痴情侠), which roughly means Passionate Wastrel, Infatuated Hero. In Taiwan it is titled (天觀雙俠) Tiān Guān Shuāng Xiá. Even though I prefer the title Tiān Guān Shuāng Xiá, it’s difficult to translate into English, so I will stick with Passionate Wastrel, Infatuated Hero.

Wuxia has historically been dominated by male writers. To this day, if you ask somebody who is familiar with wuxia to name five writers, there is a good chance that that person will name five male writers. Fortunately, times are changing. Zheng Feng (the pen name of Chen Yu-hui) is, at least in Taiwan, the most popular contemporary wuxia novelist … and she’s not male. Passionate Wastrel, Infatuated Hero is the novel which put her on the map.

To learn more about Zheng Feng, read this interview (English translation available here).

Passionate Wastrel, Infatuated Hero is a sweeping wuxia novel set in China, Korea, and Mongolia. It includes naughty children and dying elders, Tibetan monks and Japanese pirates, princesses and prostitutes, Catholic missionaries and desert bandits, doctors and assassins, decadent cities and secluded mountains, desperate fugitives and frightened leaders. As the title implies, this tale revolves around two main characters.

The Passionate Wastrel

Zhao Guan loves drinking alcohol, and he loves having sex with pretty women even more … so he’s built up a reputation as a bad boy. Much of the plot of the novel follows this pattern: Zhao Guan meets a pretty woman, the pretty woman is in trouble, Zhao Guan gets her out of trouble, something happens between them (whether it’s sex, a kiss, or merely lustful fantasies on Zhao Guan’s part), and the plot moves on.

Even though he’s promiscuous, Zhao Guan does not come across as a creep because he cares a lot about what women think and how they feel. When he gets pretty women out of trouble, he does it because he does not like seeing people in trouble, not because he is trying to get sex—nor does he think they owe him sex if he does rescue them. Of course, if they do decide to have sex with him anyway, it certainly makes him happy. Furthermore, he really gets off making women happy. Of course, because he is such a good-looking young man, he makes many women happy (at least in the short term) by letting them into his bed. He often looks to the women in his life, whether or not he’s having sex with them, for advice when he has a problem of his own. And finally, he’s honest with all of his love interests—he tells them that he sleeps around, and that he is not going to stop.

However, while he seems carefree on the outside, he is haunted by the brutal murder of his mother. Years later he can still describe the scene in gruesome detail. He was lucky to survive himself. He wishes to find the killers and get revenge … but the killers left no clues, and he knows that even if he knew who the killers were, he is not match for them. Furthermore, he is almost certain that they are pursuing him in order to “finish the job”—in fact, he has numerous close calls. Thus, he often travels incognito and goes by false names lest he suffer his mother’s fate.

The Infatuated Hero

Ling Haotian is the son of Ling Xiao and Qin Yanlong (two of the most highly respected martial artists and doctors of the era) and is the younger brother of Ling Biyi and Ling Shuangfei (twin brothers who are the most promising and respected young martial artists of the generation). Ling Haotian feels it is impossible for him to live up to such high standards. He often withdraws himself, lest he disappoint somebody by not being as awesome as the rest of his family. He is very close emotionally to Zheng Baoan, his mother’s apprentice, and eventually gets a major crush on her. However he cannot bring himself to tell her how he feels.

Then the bombshell falls. Ling Haotian’s older brother Ling Biyi—who everybody claims is the most wonderful young man in the world—confesses his love for Zheng Baoan, and asks for her hand in marriage. Everybody says that Zheng Baoan is really lucky. For example, Zhao Guan says that if he were into men he would definitely fall in love with Ling Biyi. It is inconceivable to everybody—including Ling Haotian—that Zheng Baoan would not return Ling Biyi’s love. Ling Haotian cannot stand to see his brother and Zheng Baoan together … so he runs away from home.

This, of course, is the beginning of his adventures. He wanders Jianghu without any particular goal, other than trying to forget about Zheng Baoan and his brother (he fails, of course). During the course of his travels, he has to fight a lot, and also ends up learning a lot of martial arts. Gradually, he gets better and better. He is so preoccupied with his unrequited love that he does not notice it when his abilities surpass that of his celebrated brothers. A couple of women hand Ling Haotian their hearts, yet the only woman in his heart is Zheng Baoan.

Trouble, of course, has a way of finding him. In fact, really, really, really big trouble finds him. If you can read Chinese, I do not want to spoil it, but if you cannot read Chinese, then I might as well say that …

[BIG SPOILER WARNING]

Ling Haotian watches his brother, Ling Biyi, die in his arms, murdered. This makes it seem even more impossible to Ling Haotian that he could ever be with Zheng Baoan. He feels he cannot love her without wronging his deceased brother (in traditional Chinese culture, marrying your brother’s widow is considered a major taboo). When Ling Haotian brings his brother’s body back home, his parents treat him as a monster. It turns out that his other brother, Ling Shuangfei, had accused Ling Haotian of committing the murder out of jealousy over Zheng Baoan. Furthermore, Ling Haotian is framed for many other murders, meaning there are many, many martial artists seeking to get their revenge. Ling Haotian wants to avenge his brother’s death and clear his name—until he finds out that the man who murdered Ling Biyi is none other than his other brother, Ling Shuangfei!

Does he murder Ling Shuangfei (his own brother), or leave the death of Ling Biyi (who is also his brother) unavenged? Should he tell everybody the truth about the murder? Would anybody believe him?

Of course, with almost everybody in Jianghu trying to kill him, Ling Haotian will not live long without help. It just so happens that one of the only people who believes in Ling Haotian’s innocence is Zhao Guan … and Zhao Guan knows a thing or two about hiding from people trying to kill him.

It turns out that not only is Ling Xiao not Ling Biyi and Ling Shuangfei’s biological father, but that he killed their biological father. Ling Shuangfei murdered Ling Biyi because Ling Biyi refused to work with him to get revenge for their biological father. It turns out that Ling Shuangfei and Ling Biyi’s half-sister, trying to avenge their father’s death, is the one framing Ling Haotian for so many murders … and is also responsible for the murder of Zhao Guan’s mother!

[END SPOILER WARNING]

Yep, in Ling Haotian’s life, when it rains, it pours.

So that is a basic overview of the novel. In Part II, which will appear on Friday, I will express my opinion. Until then…

What is your impression of this novel based on this overview?

UPDATE: Part II is up!

There is no question about it now … Sara K. is now officially a wuxia fan. The more she learns about wuxia, the more novels she wants to read, and her reading list is growing faster than she can actually read them. And she still wants to read other things. Maybe she will one day grow tired of wuxia novels, but she thinks that will take a while.

Let’s Get Visual: Takehiko Inoue

June 30, 2012 by Michelle Smith and Anna N

MICHELLE: It’s been a while, but Let’s Get Visual has awoken from its hibernation in time to celebrate the Takehiko Inoue Manga Moveable Feast. Joining me for this occasion is special guest host Anna Neatrour, who is also co-hosting the MMF with me! Welcome, Anna!

ANNA: Thank you! I am excited to join in on a Let’s Get Visual post for Takehiko Inoue, because I think he is one of the top contemporary manga artists. He has an incredibly detailed and realistic style that really sets his manga apart from other series.

MICHELLE: I just started reading Vagabond the other day, and there was one close-up picture of Takezo drawn with extreme care and obvious skill, and I thought, “Y’know, this should be the image that all manga fans carry around to immediately dispel the misconceived notion that all manga looks alike and/or involves big, sparkly eyes.”

ANNA: I think that Inoue’s style (particularly in Real and Vagabond) is probably more reader-friendly to Western comics fans who haven’t read much manga before.

MICHELLE: Yeah, probably so. I’ve often thought that Western comic fans would probably like a bunch of seinen manga if they’d give it a chance.

Anyways, I suppose we should proceed to get visual! The images I’ve chosen are the very first pages in the very first volume of Real.

Real, Vol. 1 (VIZ Media)

I chose these images because they demonstrate how well Inoue is able to communicate Togawa’s character here without needing any words at all. Okay, sure, this guy is in a wheelchair, but he’s clearly driven. He’s pushing himself, possibly to the point of pain (if that’s what that one black panel represents). He has bulging muscles, so he’s clearly been at this a while. He’s moving fast. He may have a disability, but it doesn’t mean that he can’t take being an athlete seriously.

And then you turn the page and see that he is all alone. Inoue pulls back to show the entirety of the gym to emphasize Togawa’s solitude, and if that wasn’t enough, we get a glimpse of the empty school campus, as well. This sets the stage for what we later learn (which you mention in your review)—that Togawa’s attitude toward his wheelchair basketball team does not mesh well with his hobbyist teammates. Here’s a guy who is giving it his all, and he is the only one.

There’s just so much we can tell from this elegant introduction that it kind of blows me away.

ANNA: I agree that one of the things I like best about Inoue’s art is how much the images are able to contribute to the storytelling of his manga without overtly telling the audience anything. The themes touched on in the images you showed are addressed again later in the manga. Togawa’s ego and isolation contribute to his central struggle in the manga, and at the same time his willingness to practice all by himself shows just how dedicated he is to his sport.

MICHELLE: I will always, always be a big fan of nonverbal storytelling, so Inoue really wins my heart here by going above and beyond impressive art.

Want to tell us about the images you picked?

ANNA: The panels I chose were from Volume 26 of Vagabond, collected in the ninth VIZBIG edition of the series.

Vagabond, Vol. 26 (VIZ Media)

One of the reasons why I love Vagabond so much is that the fight scenes are never merely about two people fighting. There’s always a psychological or philosophical element involved. We see Miyamoto Musashi in a midst of battle against 70 members of the Yoshioka sword school, an ambush he willingly walked into. As he battles, he’s focused on centering himself and living in the moment. The close-up panels of his face show the process of self-reflection even as he is mowing down his opponents.

MICHELLE: That’s a really striking sequence. I like how he seems to be looking off into the horizon as he tells himself to have no aspirations for the future, as if to acknowledge the existence of other paths that he’s not allowing himself to take. Granted, I’ve not read the series that far—I’m barely on volume two—but it almost seems to me like he could walk away from this fight if he wanted to, but he’s not letting himself do it. Is that anywhere near the case?

ANNA: I don’t think Musashi is capable mentally of walking away from a fight like this. There are a lot of things that lead up to this sequence of many chapters where Musashi takes on the entire sword school, but one thing that struck me about the battle as a whole is that while you see Musashi getting beaten down and injured, towards the end Inoue almost has the reader concluding that it was really unfair to the 70 men who were planning on ambushing and attacking Musashi from behind that they had to go up against this one particular single opponent. Vagabond’s
fight scenes are always interesting, even when they stretch on for hundreds of pages, simply because the exquisitely rendered battles are contrasted with the internal struggles of the people who are fighting. Battle is as much of a mental exercise as it is a physical one.

MICHELLE: That’s an interesting point! So far I’ve only seen a few fights, and there hasn’t been much on Takezo’s (as Musashi is known at that point in the story) mental state yet. But I definitely admired the pacing and structure of Inoue’s artistic approach to battle—even watching Takezo just turn around and notice one opponent still standing becomes something frankly terrifying.

ANNA: One the things I enjoy about Vagabond is seeing the way Musashi changes over time. The man fighting the sword school in these panels has a measured sense of self and an inner stillness as he fights opponent after opponent. This is totally different from the way Takezo is portrayed in the earlier volumes, where he is more arrogant and animalistic.

MICHELLE: I definitely look forward to seeing how he gets from point A to point B. I admit, I still prefer Inoue’s sports-related series, but there’s just no denying that Vagabond is a masterpiece.

Thanks to everyone for reading, and we hope we’ve inspired you to check out some Inoue!

Manga the Week of 7/4

June 27, 2012 by Sean Gaffney

A few things before we begin:

1) There was no post last week as Midtown had no manga this week. not a scrap. Sorry. They’re making up for it next week.

2) Diamond is shipping on time, so comic shops open on 7/4 should have your manga right on time.

3) Diamond has been doing weird things with Viz deliveries the last two months. They’re staggering them, shipping a few at a time. I can’t say if this is deliberate or not. All I know is of the Viz I’m listing below, I’m not getting several of them till later. And I *still* don’t have Toriko 10 from last month. Diamond, why?

Now, onward.

Fantagraphics has the 3rd volume of outstanding seinen masterpiece Wandering Son, which will continue our story of its two leads and their ongoing exploration of gender, puberty, and life. This should be on everybody’s pull list.

Kodansha delivers to Midtown a bunch of stuff that’s been out in bookstores for a bit. Ongoing volumes of Air Gear, Bloody Monday, and Mardock Scramble. A new reissue of Gon. And an omnibus edition of one of their biggest shoujo sellers, Kitchen Princess. The big one for this week, though, is the debut of their new shonen series, Attack on Titan. Part apocalyptic horror, part military bonding, and part action thriller, Vol. 1 of this manga start fast out of the gate and doesn’t let up. Kudos to Kodansha for getting this award-winning series.

Penguin is releasing Gandhi: A Manga Biography. Note that it is only ‘A’ manga biography, which I can only assume is just in case they decide to add Gandhi to the cast of Legend of Koizumi.

Vertical is releasing the 4th volume of Drops of God, which wraps up the first ‘arc’ of this series, and reveals the 2nd Apostle! They’re also putting out a Five Centimeters Per Second, which is a poignant and thoughtful look at friendships, love, and the unrelenting passing of time. It’s worth checking out, and is complete over here in one collected volume.

Viz. Oi. Time for the bulleted list:
— Afterschool Charisma 6, an Ikki title hitting a week early. Clones!
— Bakuman 12. Manga writing!
— Bleach, Vols. 42 and 43. Speedup!
— Case Closed, Vol. 43. Not actually in Shonen Jump. Still called Jimmy!
— Claymore, Vol. 20. Youma!
— D.Gray-Man, Vol. 22. Gothic!
— Dengeki Daisy, Vol. 10. Go bald!
— Hana-Kimi, Vols. 7-8-9. Go buy the rest individually!
— Mameshiba: We Could Be Heroes. Adorable tie-in!
— Naruto, Vol. 57. Epic ninja battles!
— Natsume’s Book of Friends, Vol. 12. Yokai! And no threesomes, sorry, fandom.
— One Piece, Vol. 63. Pirates! Fishmen! Together, they fight… well, each other.
— Ooku: The Inner Chambers Vol. 7. Shogun! (Not by James Clavell, honest.)
— Oresama Teacher, Vol. 9. Comedy! And banchos!
— Pokemon Black & White, Vol. 8. Um… Pokemon?!? (shrugs)
— Psyren, Vol. 5. Powerups!
— Rin-Ne, Vol. 9. Sakura not getting angry!
— Rosario + Vampire Season II, Vol. 9. Fairy Tale! but not Fairy Tail? … wait, now I’m confused.
— Skip Beat!, Vols. 7-8-9. Go buy the rest individually!
— Skip Beat!, Vol.. 28. Just kiss already!
— Vampire Knight, Vol. 14. Vampires! Angst! Prettiness! And you CAN’T STOP READING IT!
— WINX Club, Vols. 1 & 2. More tie-ins!

The debut from Viz this week is Jiu Jiu, which is a new Hakusensha title (woo hoo!) which began in Hama to Yume and now runs in spinoff The Hana. It’s from the author of Clean Freak: Fully Equipped, for those who recall that cut short Tokyopop series (hey, why not ask Stu about it at AX this weekend?), and is about a girl and her werewolf bodyguards. As with many Hana to Yume series, it’s better than it sounds. Looking forward to this one.

Lastly, Yen has Olympos, which I mentioned already a post or two ago, but which Midtown is getting in next week for some reason.

So, out of that nightmarish pile, what suits you?

It Came from the Sinosphere: My Queen

June 26, 2012 by Sara K. 5 Comments

My Queen is a 2009 idol drama. For an explanation of the meaning of the Mandarin title Bài Quǎn Nǚwáng check out Jade’s post at Wai-Taiwan.

Story Overview

So, Shan Wushuang is a hard-working journalist who, at the age of 33, is … single. Actually, “Shan” can also be read as “dan,” which means single, and “wushuang” means “not in a couple,” so her name pretty much means “SINGLE!!!!!!” in Mandarin. At work, she overhears her co-wokers make snide remarks about how men don’t want her because she is so career-oriented. Meanwhile, there is a handsome man, Lucas, who works odd jobs. Through a series of ridiculous events related to her job, Shan causes Lucas to lose the pay for one of his gigs, which means that Lucas can’t pay his rent. Understandably, Lucas is pissed off at Shan.

Shan feels bad about causing Lucas to lose the money he needs to pay rent, so she lets him stay at her place. She sees having a handsome man in her apartment as an opportunity, so she puts on her sexiest dress and tells him that she won’t let him refuse her. He does not, in fact, refuse her, but being a responsible person, he wants to fetch a condom before things go too far. While he’s searching for his condom, Shan sees the birthdate on his ID card … and realizes that he is 8 years younger than she is! That’s it for her—she does not want to get in bed with a man 8 years younger than she—which is pretty frustrating to Lucas.

Oh, and then Lucas get a new job … at Shan’s company.

This is of course just the beginning of the story (and I didn’t even talk about Shan’s big scoop), but it should be pretty clear that this is a romance between Shan and Lucas, and that the major obstacles are a) Shan’s reluctance to date a younger man and b) Lucas’ propensity to get irritated by Shan (often due to misunderstandings).

Location

My father enjoys watching re-runs of The Streets of San Francisco. It is not a show noted for great storytelling. However, unlike some TV shows “set in San Francisco,” The Streets of San Francisco actually was shot in San Francisco. The main reason he watches so much of it is that he enjoys trying to identify the various locations in the episode, and comparing 1970s San Francisco with present day San Francisco. Location-spotting is also one of the reasons I enjoy watching idol dramas (though the storytelling tends to be much better in idol dramas than in The Streets of San Francisco, thank goodness).

The idol drama and Taiwanese tourism industries are aware of their symbiotic relationship. Idol dramas are mostly shot in Taiwan*mdash;filming abroad is rather expensive—but since idol dramas are mostly escapist, they try to find locations which allow viewers to get their minds off of their everyday lives. Sometimes they even try to sell a drama based on the location. For example, there is an idol drama called Love in Alishan (Alishan is one of the most visited tourist spots in Taiwan). Likewise, tourism companies try to use idol dramas for their own benefit. A tour operator I talked to said that they try to get the places where they offer tours shown on TV so that “everybody knows how beautiful Taiwan is” (and of course to get more business). Taiwanese tourism bureaus offer brochures based on idol dramas, and I have seen one travel book dedicated entirely to locations shown in idol dramas.

To me, the most notable locations in My Queen are the ones close to home—quite literally. A few scenes in My Queen were shot in Taoyuan City, where I live. The first episode in My Queen has a scene shot in Hutoushan Park, which I can walk to from my apartment in under and hour. There is also a scene shot in the Taoyuan City Night Market, which I can also walk to in under an hour. For the record, I like the Taoyuan City Night Market more than most of the famous night markets (Shilin Night Market and Liouhe Night Market, this means you). The Taoyuan City Night Market has a chill, relaxed atmosphere, and has a nice, humble, neighborly feeling. While they don’t show it in My Queen, there is a nice comic book rental shop right next to the Taoyuan City Night Market. If somebody out there is wondering how I got ahold of some of the out-of-print manhua I reviewed in my The Condor Trilogy in Manhua posts, there’s your answer. I used to think that I would never see Taoyuan City shown in an idol drama, so it was nice of My Queen to prove me wrong.

There are also some scenes shot in what I think is Miyuewan (Honeymoon Bay) in Yilan County, though I have not confirmed this. Miyuewan is one of the most popular spots for surfing in Taiwan. One of my guidebooks claims that Miyuewan has a nickname among the locals, “Killer Bay.” This is supposedly because some fatal accidents happened there. In the story of My Queen, somebody does die there.

What I Liked and Disliked

These are the parts of the story I liked the most 1) whenever Shan used sneaky tricks for the sake of her job 2) whenever Shan and Lucas engaged in silly activities or witty banter with each other. In short, I liked My Queen when it acted like a romantic comedy.

As a romantic comedy, it works quite well—Shan and Lucas are very good foils for each other. Shan is overall a very serious person, but she lengths she goes to in order to fulfill her journalistic duties are quite funny. Her boss’ attitude—that she is the jewel of the company who must be protected so she can keep on getting the best scoops—is also amusing. Lucas, on the other hand, has a sense of humor, and while Shan’s attention is often very focused, Lucas is more broad-minded. This turns out to be pretty fertile ground for friction and sparks between the two. At the same time, it’s clear that they are good for each other. Lucas helps Shan chill out and make work just one part of her life instead of the overwhelming totality her life, whereas Shan helps Lucas focus on getting his own life together.

What did I dislike? Mainly, I disliked most of the parts where it did not act like a romantic comedy.

For example, one of my least favorite scenes is (trigger warning) the attempted rape scene. This was not because it was an attempted rape scene per se. For example, The Outsiders has a rape scene. But The Outsiders is a dark drama which, among other things, has women who are kidnapped, pushed into sexual slavery, and forced to take strong recreational drugs so they are dependent on their captors for their next fix. A rape scene fits thematically in The Outsiders. A rape scene—even just an attempted rape scene—does not fit thematically in My Queen. What’s worse, shortly after the scene happens, the victim recovers very quickly and it does not seem to affect her very much. The scene was so brutal that it should have had some tangible effect on her for the duration of the drama. But really, the scene just should not have been there in the first place.

I also generally disliked the subplot around Shan’s fiancé. I recognize that the drama needed to let Shan show some vulnerability, that the story needs some gravitas, and that, this being an idol drama, she needs to have a romantic alternative to Lucas. But for some reason, this subplot rubbed me the wrong way. I’m not sure why. Maybe I just did not like the fiancé.

That said, I did not always dislike it when My Queen played it straight. After all, the best comedies have some seriousness. However, I liked the serious parts best when they were well-connected to Shan and Lucas’ relationship and foibles. For example, I liked the arc where Lucas is accused of a committing murder and Shan has to use her journalistic prowess to clear his name.

Feminism?

One of the reasons I was interested in this drama is that it supposedly discusses feminism. In the first draft of this post, I talked about how the show failed to meet my expectations on this matter. But I was disappointed because I had forgotten this is an idol drama.

This is escapist entertainment shown late at night on TV when people are tired. This is not where cultural attitudes get challenged. This is where you see how the culture has already changed.

Even though the age gap felt more like a gimmick to me than a launching point for serious examination of Taiwanese notions of age, gender, and romance … the fact that an idol show would have the main couple be a woman and a man 8 years her junior shows that Taiwanese culture is changing. And Shan’s mother gets to pursue romance herself—it’s played for laughs, but it is still very unusual to see a woman her age to find new romance in an idol drama. And while Lucas does turn out to be the son of a man with a lot of power and influence, at least Shan is not economically dependent on his family and she does not play his Cinderella.

Of course, one could also look at this drama and see how far Taiwanese culture has to go when it comes to gender equity. Ultimately, it does not question the attitudes held by Taiwanese people 30 or younger, it just shows that that the attitudes of the young people are in fact different from the attitudes of their elders.

Availability in English

Dramafever offers My Queen with English subtitles for streaming in North and South America. If you don’t live in North or South America, if it’s any consolation to you, I don’t live in North or South America either.

Conclusion

My feelings about this drama are mixed. Some parts are very entertaining … and some parts fell flat for me. I think I would have had a better attitude about this drama if I had entered it with lower expectations. However, people in North and South America can try this drama for free. If that is you, I recommend trying this drama to see if it hits your spot.

Next week: Special Tuesday-Friday Double Feature about a Really Popular Wuxia Novel That Was Not Written by Jin Yong

Sara K. has a love-hate relationship with idol dramas. On the one hand, they have jaded her by recycling the same plot over and over again. On the other hand, they still make her laugh, and, when she’s caught off guard, make her cry. She keeps on telling herself that she’ll quit idol dramas after she has finished drama X, or at least take a long hiatus … and then she picks up another one at the DVD rental shop.

BL Bookrack: June 2012

June 23, 2012 by MJ and Michelle Smith 7 Comments

Welcome to the June installment of BL Bookrack! This month, Michelle takes a look at Honey Darling, a rare print release from SuBLime Manga, while MJchecks out Juné’s recent reprinting of fan favorite Only the Ring Finger Knows. In Brief: Kaoru Kun from the Digital Manga Guild, and an early look at The Young Protectors from Yaoi 911.

Honey Darling | By Norikazu Akira | Published by SuBLime | Rated Mature – In a word, Honey Darling is “adorable.” So adorable, in fact, that I am perfectly willing to forget the few minor quibbles I have with it.

Chihiro Takahashi is a young man “just drifting through life.” He doesn’t have any goals or aspirations, and he’s never had a serious relationship. When he happens past an abandoned kitten, however, he can’t just ignore her, and ends up becoming a well-intentioned, if uninformed, pet owner. When the kitty (Shiro) develops a cold, a frantic Chihiro takes to the streets where he conveniently runs into Daisuke Kumazawa, gruff but kind veterinarian. Kumazawa gives Chihiro a stern lecture about the responsibilities of pet ownership, and after Chihiro tears up at the enormity of his error, offers him a job as a live-in housekeeper, saying, “You’d be like… my wife.”

I was fully prepared for Chihiro to be incompetent at the tasks assigned, but he actually does a good job and works hard. Over time, he decides that he’d like to become a veterinary nurse. And really, it’s the amount of weight given to this plot point that really makes me love Honey Darling. Sure, a romance is slowly developing between Chihiro and Kumazawa, but the story reads like the main point of it all is Chihiro finding a place where he belongs, and discovering something to be passionate about. And that will always, always be my favorite plot ever, no matter how many times I read it.

There’s no crazy, out-of-left-field drama in Honey Darling. Sure, it’s not the most realistic thing ever, but it’s sweet and cute and cheery. I’m not fond of Daisuke referring to menial labor as the wifely role, true, and the character designs are a little bland, but I enjoyed this oneshot very much and honestly wish there were more of it.

– Review by Michelle Smith

Only the Ring Finger Knows | By Satoru Kannagi & Hotaru Odagiri | Published by Juné | Rated YA – What makes a romance story work? This was the question most on my mind as I breathlessly finished Only the Ring Finger Knows, a sort of neo-classic BL manga (based on a popular light novel series) which was originally released in English in 2004—three full years before I began reading manga, and long before I started reading in the boys’ love genre. It’s been out of print for some time, but with the final volume of the light novel series due for release this fall, DMP has reprinted the manga, allowing latecomers like me to finally join the party. And what a lovely party it is.

The setup is typical of standard high school romance. There’s a fad sweeping through Wataru’s high school, in which students indicate their relationship status by the placement of (sometimes matching) rings on their fingers. Various configurations indicate friendship, availability, or (of course) love. When Wataru discovers that his own ring (bought on a whim) matches that of a popular upperclassman, Yuichi Kazuki, the situation is primarily annoying, as every girl in school wants to know where he got his ring. Furthermore, Kazuki himself is inexplicably hostile to Wataru, though he seems to be kind to everyone else.

Of course this is BL, so we know that all signs point to love, but as with all romance, the story’s success depends on its execution, and here’s where my opening question comes up again. What makes a romance story work? I’ve stated many criteria in the past, including compelling characters, believable relationship development, emotional truth, blah blah blah, but what is it really that makes the difference between a perfectly pleasant tale of romance and the kind that sweeps us away completely, filling our hearts with joy and a sweet, sweet anxiety that lingers long after we’ve turned the last page?

I tend to be a big-picture thinker, but in this case, I suspect that the devil is in the details. Within this questionably original setup, it’s the little things that matter. The tilt of a chin, a hurried glance, the tentative movement of a hand—these are the details that accent the story’s most significant emotional beats. With these perfect details, the tension between Wataru and Kazuki is thick and volatile from the start, far ahead of Wataru’s own understanding of what’s happening in his own heart and mind. The combination of intense interest and awkwardness between the two main characters seems so real, to continue reading almost feels like an intrusion. It’s painfully delicate and honestly breathtaking in a way that only romance can be, and to a great extent, it’s reminded me why I like the genre so much in the first place.

Satoru Kannagi’s original light novel is no longer in print in English, but as much as I’d like to read it, I must admit that Hotaru Odagiri’s expressive artwork does so much of the heavy lifting here, it’s difficult to imagine the story playing out so gracefully in prose. If, like me, you missed Only the Ring Finger Knows the first time around, don’t let this reprinting pass you by. Joyfully recommended.

– Review by MJ

In Brief:

Kaoru Kun | By Suguro Chayamachi | Digital Manga Guild | Rated YA – Most regular readers of Manga Bookshelf are by now pretty familiar with my personal tastes in BL, including a penchant for what I once described as “quiet/ideosyncratic character studies.” Kaoru Kun fits that description to a T, while also proving that this alone is not enough—or perhaps that not enough is not enough. The volume starts strong as mangaka Suguro Chayamichi introduces Kaoru, an abused, neglected child desperately searching for affection wherever he can find it. Later chapters check in with Kaoru as his life improves and he learns to let his naturally gentle nature heal the wounds of others. Unfortunately, just three chapters in, Chayamachi (or her publisher) drops the ball, abandoning the character we’ve learned to care so much for in favor of several unrelated stories that fail to fill the gap left by his absence. Though the result is ultimately unsatisfying, Kaoru’s unfinished story is still worth reading. Hesitantly recommended. – MJ

The Young Protectors | By Alex Woolfson, Adam DeKraker, & Veronica Gandini | Yaoi 911 – Probably the greatest weakness in Alex Woolfson’s otherwise terrific sci-fi webcomic Artifice is the author’s decision to shortchange his characters’ relationship development in order to get to the juicy bits. In his new comic, The Young Protectors, Woolfson accelerates this further by putting one of those bits right up front, but perhaps with better results. As the series opens, a young superhero is caught emerging from his first trip to a gay bar by a hunky supervillain, leading fairly quickly into a semi-coerced makeout session that *just* manages to avoid feeling unforgiveably creepy by the fact that it reads more like the boy’s fantasy than anything else. In another author’s hands, starting with that kind of hormone-heavy fantasy might read like an intro to plotless porn, but in this case it seems likely that we’re in for something deeper, and perhaps by getting some of this out of the way from the get-go, Woolfson will feel at leisure to take more time with the good stuff. I’m optimistic, and you should be too. Check it out. – MJ

Review copies provided by the publishers.

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

Other recent BL reviews from MJ & Michelle: Honey Darling (SuBLime)

TV Will Break Your Heart

June 21, 2012 by Aja Romano 5 Comments

My very favorite thing in all the world is a bowl of raw blackberries on a hot July day, but a very close second to blackberries (never cooked, straight off the vine) is a good Stephen Sondheim musical. And my very favorite quote about Stephen Sondheim is a quote from Frank Rich, who, writing in the NY Times of the flop that was Merrily We Roll Along, said:

“To be a Sondheim fan is to have one’s heart broken at regular intervals.”

I’ve held this quote close to my heart, but I never equated it to the actual act of being a fan until a month ago, when I was reading about creator Dan Harmon’s exit from NBC’s Community, scrolling past endless wailing and wearing of sackcloth on Tumblr (read: gifs of Abed and Troy having freakouts).

If you’ve never watched Community, then you’ve probably still heard from Community fans talking about how great it is. The diverse cast includes PHDs, Oscar-winners, rap stars, Betty White, and Omar from The Wire, and if that isn’t enough to sell you, it’s also an ongoing geek dream in meta-riffic serial narrative form. It’s every bit as good a show as you’ve heard it is, but what’s most important to its ultimate success or failure as a tv product is that its tailor-made for you. Yes, you, the person reading this article. You like smart, savvy stories that are steeped in meta-awareness of their own conventions but still have a deep emotional core. You access shows via all kinds of methods, and you never pay attention to ads on the rare occasion you’re accidentally suckered into watching one. At any given time, you’re probably mainlining 2 or 3 shows at once. Community knows this about you, and it loves you just as you are.

Which, of course, is the problem.

Tumblr has a large swathe of die-hard Community fans who’ve only recently gotten over the trauma of cancellation rumors, and the eleventh-hour notice that Community would return for at least a final half-season, and perhaps more. In the middle of celebrating a truly flawless 3-ep season finale that many feared would be a series finale, fans learned that Harmon, the show’s creator and show runner, who exerts a huge influence over the show and its direction, had been fired and replaced by two dudes from another statistically “quirky” show called Happy Endings. The immediate fan feeling was that the departure of Harmon, who’s spoken in the past of his incredibly hands-on relationship with the show, would kill everything that makes it special and unique. Writing bitterly on his Tumblr Saturday morning after the season finale, Harmon said, “I’m not saying you can’t make a good version of Community without me, but I am definitely saying that you can’t make my version of it unless I have the option of saying “it has to be like this or I quit” roughly 8 times a day.”

NBC and Sony view Harmon’s forced departure as a chance to “broaden” the show’s appeal to a “wider” audience.

“Wider Audience” is a Lie

These are words that will send every Community fan into a blind panic, because if you’ve ever been on the internet, you know that Community already has a huge audience. On May 17 during the finale, two show references trended worldwide on Twitter; Saturday during the outcry over Harmon’s departure, “Dan Harmon” trended for hours in the USA and even worldwide.

The internet tells me that even though Twitter has roughly half a billion users, it only takes somewhere between 1200-1500 people tweeting about a topic for it within a short period of time to become a “trend,” and that specifically the topic has to reach people who haven’t normally tweeted about it before. So the famous Community hashtag #sixseasonsandamovie can only become a worldwide trend if it starts reaching a new segment of Twitter’s active population. Presumably, all of this makes a “trend” in roughly the same way that a Nielsen rating makes up a quantifiable percentage of America’s tv-watching population: that is, if 1500 people are tweeting about watching Community, then presumably at least that many millions of people are watching Community.

The problem with this analogy is that the people tweeting about Community are not the same group of people Nielsen is tracking. There are 115 million tv owners in the US, but that doesn’t mean that all of us actually watch tv. In fact, recently released Nielsen data reveals that 17% of Americans never watch tv at all. I’ll be the first to admit that my own ambivalent relationship to my tv has created a bit of a cultural gap for me, but that gap shrinks all the time, because with the advent of the internet there’s been a huge generational shift in how people use a tv set. It’s become just another tool for many people. It’s one of many ways in which we control access to what we want to watch, and how/when we watch it:

People use television sets for watching tv, screening films, for surfing the web, recording things, listening to music, and for gaming.

People get access to television shows from Hulu, from iTunes, from Netflix, from their Roku, from the dvd-rs their friend burnt, from TIVO, from live streaming sites, from tv sets, from the box sets they bought at Best Buy, from Amazon, from torrenting and file-sharing hubs, from Youtube, from network websites, from Crunchyroll, from other sources that are probably being invented as I type this.

How many of these avenues make it into Nielsen ratings? Two–Live + Same Day: the viewing from your actual tv set, and the TIVO, or “time-shifted” view (but only if the time-shifted viewing occurs before 3am the day the show airs). According to the Nielsen website, it has an “extended screen rating” that allows it to track certain streaming sites, but this is a dubious claim with very little affect on ratings numbers. So 115 million people owning a tv set no longer means that 115 million people are going to be using it as their primary source of access to shows, but even though Nielsen hasn’t figured out how to quantify this huge cultural behavior change, Nielsen ratings are the only things networks care about.

The reason for this, of course, is advertising.

Advertising and Content Control.

Along with the huge disconnect that goes along with the assumption that means of access haven’t changed is that the means of control over content hasn’t changed. A TIVO-less or DVR-less television set gives you no control over when you view the show. While I have fond memories of college Thursday nights when my BFF & I would convene for Will & Grace come hell or high water, it’s no longer possible for everyone to carve out weekly, regularly scheduled time for sessions with their favorite TV shows. And what’s more, the number of people I want to watch tv with is also expanding. For the last several months a few of my online friends and I have been gathering in Campfire chat to watch Avatar, Korra, and Due South whenever we have free moments. It’s harried, irregular, and tv-set free. Of these three shows, only Legend of Korra is currently airing. We streamed Avatar from Netflix, and bought DVDs of Due South. Each of the networks who provide these shows has profited from our consumption of them; but none of these modes of access are part of an advertiser’s business model.

It’s not as if any of us made a conscious choice to reject exposure to ads in these shows when we got together to watch them. But we are located, respectively, in Philadelphia, Indiana, and Glasgow. We’re not going to prioritize company ad revenue over our ability to watch shows easily together–to form a community and have amazing bonding experiences around those shows. A Nielsen-compliant, advertising-friendly distribution model literally can’t give us that. We are part of the generation of people who, along with rejecting corporate-controlled content, are also rejecting advertiser-dictated content, as well as the ads themselves.

On the rare occasions I find myself watching tv–usually when I’m home visiting–I always mute commercials. This actually has caused fights with family members before, because even though turning the radio dial when commercials come on is something they don’t question, they don’t understand why I don’t want to watch the ads. The reason for me is that advertising is sexist, homophobic, gendered, ethnically profiled and stereotypical. When I watch tv, I have control over what I listen to and am exposed to, in a way that I don’t when bombarded with highway billboards, wall flyers, pamphlets on my car, and other advertisements in public spaces. And I have no problem with making the choice to filter the kinds of ads and harmful messages I’m exposed to. Why not? I make it in every other area of my life.

This fight family members and I keep having over my refusal to listen to advertisements is directly relevant to why Dan Harmon was fired. The networks and the advertisers who sponsor their shows want my mom to believe the only content she can have is the content that’s filtered through the box in her living room. But the price of accepting that content is that it comes with regular advertising that reinforces all kinds of harmful heteronormative shit about the world we live in–that girls like pink and baking and boys like action figures and building things; that women want to lose weight and find a better laundry detergent and wear makeup, and men want to objectify women, drink beer, bulk up, and live charmingly privileged lives. That queer characters don’t exist except as comic relief, and genderqueer and disabled people don’t exist at all.

It’s a bit wondrous that shows that actively question these types of stereotypes are able to sell to advertisers at all. (Mad Men is undoubtedly genius in this regard, with real-world companies lining up for ad space and major product placement on a show that’s actively critiquing everything their marketing companies are meant to do to begin with.) It’s possible that Community‘s ability to exist at all in these circumstances is a modern miracle, because as a show it sits at the crux of an entire generational and cultural gap. People who’ve killed our figurative television sets have also rejected the world advertisers try to sell us, because it doesn’t line up with reality, and because we actively operate within this culture of questioning and scrutinizing the content we intake–ads included. This description definitely applies to the audience of Community, which is a show that is 100% built around the concept that pop-culture-savviness and a pervasive rejection of outdated sociocultural values go hand in hand. As hard as NBC tries to make Community fit the mold that will allow advertisers to reach its audience in real time on ~~Thursday~~ Friday nights, it’s never going to happen.

To put it bluntly, you can get TV-set-controlled culture to watch bland, unironic, problematic shows like Whitney and Big Bang Theory, and you can get those shows to land significant advertising revenue, because the vast majority of people who still watch tv, much like the vast majority of people who use Facebook, are not a part of the culture of consumer-controlled content, genre savviness, remix culture, talking back, and active participation that makes up the rest of internet culture, the culture of fans who watch Community. Producer-controlled, ad-controlled-media is only as sustainable as the unreflective, unthinking, passive “couch potato” mentality people have about the act of media consumption, and that culture that is fast eroding. Community represents a paradigm shift. Community‘s success lies with an entire generation of people who don’t even register on Nielsen ratings because they don’t intake shows in ways that expose themselves to advertisers.

In order to make sure their message gets across to this “invisible” group of people, advertisers are demanding product placements directly within shows. When Community had to do this, it lampshaded the whole thing by naming a character “Subway,” turning him into a villain, and promptly disposing of him. The show that NBC wants Community to become is a more broad, bland, “mainstreamed” comedy, one that the Facebook set, the passive box-in-living-room-watching audience, can enjoy. That show is dying. That show is unsustainable. That show is dreck.

That show looks like this.

TV Shows Will Break Your Heart

I was watching the incredible outpouring of grief on Tumblr over the loss of Dan Harmon to Community, and thinking about how one of my internet friends has this tag for the media posts she makes on her journal, and it’s called “tv shows will break your heart.” For years this tag has puzzled me, because my own tv-less background has left me extremely disconnected from the culture built around following and investing in a tv series. In addition to Avatar, the only other Western television series I’ve watched until the end of their runs are Buffy and Gilmore Girls, and I discovered both series late in their runs and caught up after the fact. For a long time, it was just so utterly foreign to me, this concept that you could invest so heavily in a serial tv storyline that it could impact you this way. That tag made me want to understand what television had to offer that I’d somehow missed all my life. I’ve watched a lot of tv shows since in an attempt to plug into that feeling.

Then I watched Community. And then I spent most of April and all of May in a frenzy of dvd-buying, reading about Nielsen ratings, trying to understand why this show that’s so popular isn’t popular at all, trying to race home from work on Thursday nights to make sure my measly little tv set is turned on at 8pm, ready to mute commercials, but mostly just wanting to be counted.

And I understand, now, that it’s not the serial storytelling that breaks your heart. It’s the mode of storytelling. It’s the knowledge that a story being packaged and produced this way is only as good as the advertisers who support it and the execs who allow it to have its own voice without stifling it because of their fears that it won’t appeal to the “mainstream.”

It’s the knowledge that you aren’t who they think they’re making this show for. It’s the knowledge that your active, questioning, challenging, critique-filled, collectively-tuned-in fannishness are all qualities that the show’s producers don’t want you to have, because they’re the same qualities that drive you to want control over your own content, that drive you to reject shitty advertising, that drive you to seek alternative avenues of content consumption. “Being a fan of Community is so emotionally draining,” one frustrated fan said the night after the season finale. And I’m remembering all the outrage that still exists over shows like Beauty and the Beast, Firefly, Stargate: Atlantis–how it’s not just that the storylines were killed, but that the fanbase wasn’t the right fanbase–too female, too geeky, too old, too all of the above.

And maybe this gets at the heart of what being a fan is about, ultimately: holding your heart in your hands and investing in something that’s ultimately out of your control–with trepidation, because maybe your faith is totally misplaced, maybe the thing you’re allowing yourself to love will let you down, maybe the creator will go on a bender or fuck off for 6 years mid-series *cough* or quit halfway through the best arc, or die before it’s done; and maybe, perhaps even more likely, the people on the other side of that ugly consumer/production wall will let you down by refusing to see your value, or even refusing to acknowledge that you exist, that you matter.

________

MB, I have a confession to make: you could have had this post 5 weeks ago when I originally wrote it if I hadn’t been angstily sitting on it all this time, as if I hoped the circumstances would change and Dan Harmon would magically return to Community, and television networks would realize that the way to get people to watch tv again is to stop treating tv like it’s still a cultural source and start treating it like it’s just another tool for people to access media they want to watch.

But we live in a world where constant innovations in technology and an increasingly savvy, selective consumer culture are constantly battling corporate interests who are just trying to get the shows you love in front of your dad’s football buddies and your stay-at-home grandma–i.e., the only people who still watch tv like tv is the only thing they have to watch.

Several times during the furor over Dan Harmon’s firing, fans only-half-jokingly suggested, “Can we start a Kickstarter for Community?” Oddly enough, that’s what this conflict may boil down to: will fans of creative projects be able to directly support those projects financially in the future? Or will they continue to see the artistic and cultural merits of shows they love pitted against the priorities of advertisers who want “brand-safe content”?

The positives here may be that when push comes to shove, we can start a Kickstarter for Community–or, at the very least, for shows like it. (There actually already is a Kickstarter for a Community spinoff, the adorable Dr Who parody Inspector Spacetime.) The nature of creative consumption and production/distribution/profit from creative works is shifting so quickly that it’s difficult to say what the limits are. In fact, let’s just go ahead and assume there are no limits. As bleak as the current outlook for Community‘s future as a network television franchise may be, the outlook for consumer-generated content is brighter than ever.

And although the outlook for television and advertising companies is arguably bleaker than ever, this is the kind of cultural paradigm shift that can pave the way for a whole new kind of marketing, based on entirely new ways of reaching people where they live. And maybe the simple solution is for television networks to stop asking shows to conform to an idea of what’s “mainstream,” and instead start thinking of all streams of human contact, creativity, identity; to stop insisting that consumers of shows be advertiser-ready and start insisting that advertisers be consumer-ready: ready to deliver products for all people and speak to all people, without attempting to fit them into binaries, stereotypes, and socio-cultural pigeon-holes.

Maybe then advertisers would understand exactly how valuable a show like Community, with its ability to embrace diversity and still deliver a quality narrative product that everyone loves, can be.

It Came from the Sinosphere: Divine Melody

June 19, 2012 by Sara K. 4 Comments

Overview

This is going to seem weird and complicated, but take my word for it, this all makes sense when you read the manhua itself.

The story starts with a tribe of húli jīng, which means “fox spirits.” These fox spirits were born as ordinary foxes, but by magic they had been transformed into yāoguài. If that seems similar to the word ‘yōkai’, it’s because the Japanese borrowed the word from Chinese. The fox spirits now have the shape of beautiful human maidens and a lifespan of 500 years. But after 500 years, they will disappear. For this reason, they want to have children so that their tribe will last forever. Yet … they are all female, which makes reproduction a little tricky. If they use human males as studs, their children will only have a human lifespan. However, they have a special child in their care—Qin Caisheng, a fox spirit with xiān blood (xiān, is usually translated into English as “fairy” or “celestial,” but since this manhua is based on Chinese, not European, mythology, I am going to stick with the word “xiān“). Qin Caisheng is currently a girl, but in 200 years will have the ability to change between female and male forms (from this point forward, I am going to refer to Qin Caisheng with the pronouns “ze” and “hir”). The fox spirits looks forward to having Caisheng’s babies so that their tribe can last into perpetuity.

Caisheng, however, at the beginning of the story is just a young child. Caisheng feels that the only fox spirit who actually loves hir and does not see hir as just a future stud is Huiniang, who practically raises Caisheng. Huiniang is one of the tribe leader’s favorites, along with Yuniang. Yuniang is determined to be the one to bear Caisheng’s babies. Caisheng sees and talks to some of the human boys Yuniang captured, and decides to leave the fox spirits’ mountain to see the places the boys talked about. While in the human village, Caisheng meets a human boy and girl and plays with them. When a wolf attacks, the boy and girl bravely defend Caisheng’s life. When Huiniang comes to rescue Caisheng, she recognizes their service and puts a mark on the boy and girl so that they can later repay the kindness. Yuniang, meanwhile, is expelled from the tribe.

Two hundred years later, Caisheng finally has the ability to turn into a male, yet ze is hiding the truth from all but Huiniang. Caisheng only wants to have children with hir one true love, and ze is not in love with the fox spirits. Huiniang, meanwhile, fell in love with a human, and left the tribe to marry him and have his children. Caisheng figures that Huiniang is the person ze loves the most, so Caisheng wants to have hir children with Huiniang once Huiniang’s husband has died. Huiniang, on the other hand, wants to become human so that she can grow old with her husband.

On a trip to visit Huiniang in the human village, Caisheng meets the reincarnations of the boy and girl who saved hir from the world two hundred years ago. One of them, Han Yunshi, is an apprentice to a Daoist priest who tracks down and kills yāoguài (hmmm, is there some potential conflict there?). The other, Su Pinger, is a girl from a noble family who is afflicted by some kind of yāoguài. Caisheng expels the yāoguài and discovers it is a cat spirit called Gu Mao.

A xiān called Wei Ziqiu comes looking for Caisheng. His task is to bring hir back to the place where the xiān live to make hir a full xiān. Wei Ziqiu was originally human, but transformed into an immortal after suffering great tragedy. If Caisheng has children with the fox spirits or with a human, ze would be unable to ever become a xiān.

It also turns out that Gu Mao is in the service of none other than Yuniang, the outcast fox spirit who has since turned into a yāomó (which is like a yāoguài but more evil).

This is only the beginning of the story, but it is actually not that hard to keep track of what it going on.

Background

This is a 9-volume work by Yi Huan, one of Taiwan’s most delightful manhua artists. It ran in Star Girls, Taiwan’s girls’ manhua anthology, from 2003 to 2009.

Star Girls is a manhua anthology which is heavily, heavily influenced by shoujo manga. Even though I generally have little trouble distinguishing from Korean sunjeong from Japanese shoujo, I cannot distinguish between Star Girls manhua and Japanese shoujo until I recognize a specific artist’s style (for example, Yi Huan’s style is very distinct). Taiwan’s local manhua tradition was pretty much killed by censorship (by “censorship,” I mean “people did not dare create/publish manhua because they were afraid of going to prison”). After the democratization of Taiwan, Taiwanese manhua experienced a revival, but the new generation’s role models are from Japan, not from the golden age of Taiwanese manhua. Some artists are trying to piece together a new distinctly Taiwanese tradition of manhua, but those artists are not the artists who get published in Star Girls.

Artwork

I’ll start with the obvious—THIS MANHUA IS PRETTY!!!

The style is defined by long, vertical, slightly curved, lithe lines. Long flowing dresses, long flowing hair, long flowing flourishes, and so forth. The artwork consists of fine lines without much screentone—which means it is really hard to take good pictures of it with my cheap camera, but on paper it looks really nice. I dig it. I can even forgive it for having jewel-eyes (note: I am not a fan of jewel-eyes).

The costumes are one of the most detailed parts of the artwork. Yi Huan clearly has fun with the clothing. Of course, just as clothing is a way humans express themselves, costumes done right ought to express the characters. Yi Huan does costumes right.

Look at the dresses of the fox spirits. Notice how the waistlines are so high. When a woman wears clothing with a high waistline, it makes her look a bit pregnant. Considering that the fox spirits are obsessed with making babies, it is appropriate that their attire would have such a high waistline (it’s also appropriate that Caisheng has such attire, since throughout much of the story ze is wondering who to make babies with). Of course there is more that could be said about this, but this is comic book criticism, not a discussion of costume theory.

I actually did not realize that the later volumes were so crowded with talking heads and reaction shots until I actually started thinking about the artwork from a critical point of view. But the later part of the story is pretty much an angstfest, and angstfests tend to look pretty busy, artwork-wise.

The manhua is punctuated with pages like this which show off the characters’ graceful figures.

These pages are meant to make the reader sigh. And it works. I am trying to come up with more insightful observations about the artwork, but as I’m flipping through the pages, all I am thinking is “pretty … pretty.”

More On the Story

The story sets up a world based on Chinese mythology. I bought into the alternative logic. Indeed, I got caught up in the love polygons and the drama and all that angst.

This story is ultimately about choosing between love and longevity. If Caisheng gets the fox spirits pregnant, the tribe will live on forever. But Caisheng does not love the fox spirits. Huiniang does not want to live without her beloved husband, so she seeks to become human so they will die together. Wei Ziqiu has become immortal, yet he is losing the passionate feelings he had as human, and trying to hold onto them might cost him his immortality. Caisheng wants both love and longevity, but having both is impossible—either the lovers will change so much that they will no longer be the people they fell in love with, or they will stay the same forever, and that would merely be death of a different kind.

When I put it that way, it makes the story seem really deep. So I am wondering why I didn’t have a deeper experience.

Hmmm.

I think it’s because the second half of the manhua is too rushed. I sometimes do not understand why characters make certain choices because their motivations have not been sufficiently illustrated for me. And I think that’s it—the second half of the story needs more supporting plots to illustrate its points. While the point of Huiniang’s subplot in the early part of the manhua is quite clear, the point of the subplot around Huiniang’s clone is not. So while I understood the plot … understanding the plot is not the same as being moved by the plot. The last part of the manhua is less moving than the first part.

That said, the story overall is still good. My main complaint is that, even though it could have been a masterpiece, it is not.

Availability in English

The first 5 volumes were published in English by Dr Master. While it is a pity they did not publish the full run, at least the volumes they did publish are the better volumes.

They can be obtained for low prices at many websites. At the Cubic Mall Manga Outlet, they can be obtained at 2 USD per volume. At that price, it’s worth buying just for the artwork alone. Buyers can also pick up some volumes of The Legendary Couple at the same time, which was previously reviewed here.

Conclusion

Good artwork and good story. What more can one ask for?

Okay, I ask for great stories and great artwork. On the other hand, I’ve read Divine Melody twice, and enjoyed it both times. It held up well on the second reading, something which cannot be said of many comics.

The most important thing is Yi Huan’s distinctive style, both the drawing and the storytelling. I have not read any other comics quite like hers. That is why you should read Divine Melody.

Next Time: My Queen (idol drama)

Sara K. is listening to birds right now. Yes, even in the heart of a industrialized Taiwanese city, there are songbirds, though it is remarkable that she can hear them more clearly than the scooters. Sara K. is impressed with how few pigeons there are in Taiwan – possibly because Taiwan has a zillion birds, so there is not much room for pigeons. Some people come to Taiwan just for bird-watching. Taiwan also has the world’s prettiest butterflies (well, at least the prettiest butterflies Sara K. has ever seen).

Manga the Week of 6/20

June 13, 2012 by Sean Gaffney

Eep. You may look at what’s coming out next week and think it’s a first week of the month. There is a giant PILE of stuff from several publishers. Let’s break it down.

Dark Horse has the 23rd volume of Gantz. It’s been mentioned that Dark Horse’s manga licenses (Berserk, Gunsmith Cats, Gantz) tend to cater more for the Western Comics sort of fan, and I can sort of see their point. These may not hit any bookstore bestseller lists, but rest assured they do well with Diamond folks.

Kodansha has a few titles that are already out via bookstores but are trickling into Diamond, because Diamond knows the Kodansha buyer is willing to wait those extra weeks. (sarcasm mode off) There’s Volume 19 of Fairy Tail, continuing the long protracted battle against… um… those guys, you know. The latest villains. Also, Jellal. We also have the 3rd volume of the Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex manga, which apparently has an ongoing plot here regarding a serial killer. I think Bloody Monday 6 and Gon 6 are also out, though they vanished from Midtown’s list between 1pm and now. Midtown does this to me sometimes. I think they vanished Mickey Mouse to spite me last week as well.

Viz has their usual slate of non-Jump releases. (Though my shop still has yet to get Toriko and Kamisama Kiss from 2 weeks ago, Bless you, Diamond. Bliamond.) New Arata the Legend and Kekkaishi from Shonen Sunday. New Bokurano and House Of Five Leaves from the diminished but still plugging away Ikki line. New Jormungand from Sunday GX, which is sort of the Shogakukan equivalent to Ultra Jump. And a new Tenjo Tenge omnibus from Ultra Jump, which, well, is sort of a Shueisha version of Sunday GX.

And then there’s Yen’s huge June lineup. No Higurashi, which is taking the summer off (ironically, given it takes place in a June that never ends). But we have tons of other stuff to whet your appetites. As you see, Olympos is coming out. (OK, it’s not on Midtown’s list either, but my store is getting it in.) This is a done-in-one fantasy manga from Ichijinsha’s sorta josei magazine Comic Zero-Sum, and as you can imagine deals with gods and mythology. Two volumes in Japanese, it’s out as an omnibus here. Speaking of omnibuses, remember Alice in the Country of Hearts and its 5 of 6 completed volumes? Well, Yen has rescued it, and is redoing the whole shebang in 3 big omnibuses, including the as-yet-unseen ending volume. I enjoyed this dark and twisted otome game world, and look forward to seeing how it wraps up… or, being a harem game, *if* it wraps up.

Other titles from Yen include the 6th Kobato manga from CLAMP, which I believe is the final one, and which will no doubt be adorable as all get out. Also in the adorable category is Sunshine Sketch 6. I have a soft spot for this 4-koma series, which has gotten some flak for its lack of plot and its even-more-superdeformed-than-usual designs. I do wonder if it will get more readers in this post-Madoka Magica world? In the OEL category, there’s the 2nd volume of James Patterson’s Witch & Wizard, by Nightschool artist Svetlana Chmakova. And lastly, though it’s not Yen, the 7th Haruhi Suzumiya novel is out from their corporate parents. This one is a full complete novel rather than a short story collection, and has enough time-travel to shake a TPDD at. Go get it.

It Came From the Sinosphere: The Book and the Sword

June 12, 2012 by Sara K. 4 Comments

Opening

To kick off this review, I will go over the first three pages of the novel. Here’s a summary:

Page One: Li Yuanzhi, a 14-year-old girl, sees her school teacher, Lu Feiqing, kill flies by shooting golden needles at them. She begs him to teach her how to do it.

Page Two: Lu Feiqing accepts Li Yuanzhi as his kung-fu disciple.

Page Three: Li Yuanzhi eagerly awaits her first lesson. Lu Feiqing arrives late, injured, soaked with blood, and he tells Li Yuanzhi to close the door and be quiet.

Right there, on the first page of the novel, we get the first glimpse of the writer’s imagination. He does not merely kill the flies, he kills them by SHOOTING GOLDEN NEEDLES AT THEM!!! Li Yuanzhi seems to be a spunky girl, which is always a good sign. And of course, page three sets up some suspense and promises a fast-moving story with plenty of action.

With an opening like this, I was pretty excited to read this novel.

Background

The Book and the Sword is Jin Yong’s first novel. Jin Yong (English name: Louis Cha) is the most popular Chinese-language novelist of the 20th century. He is one of the most popular novelists of the 20th century period. The Book and the Sword was a sensation when it was first published in 1955-1956, and to this day it is still adapted for television (the most recent TV adaptation was made in 2008).

Brief Plot Overview

The story is set during the reign of Emperor Qianlong of the Manchu dynasty. The Red Flower Society is a secret society of sword and kung-fu fighters who want to restore rule by Han Chinese. I think the conflict here is really obvious.

One of the members of the Red Flower Society, Wen Tailai, discovers Emperor Qianlong’s greatest secret, so he is captured in order to silence him and the Red Flower Society has to rescue him.

Meanwhile, an Uyghur tribe is trying to recover their copy of the Quran (the “book” referenced in the title). Chen Jialuo, a Red Flower Society member and the chief protagonist, helps them, and in return the leader’s daughter Huotongqing gives him a sword (the “sword” referenced in the title).

As the plot gets thicker, things get messier, especially after the emperor’s secret gets spilled and Kasili (aka Princess Fragrance) gets involved.

The Bad

Chen Jialuo is the most boring of Jin Yong’s main characters. He is virtuous, a good fighter … and that’s pretty much it. Almost all other Jin Yong leads are also virtuous and good fighters, but they generally have personalities too. Chen Jialuo does not, or at least his personality is so flimsy it does not count.

The worst is that he almost never experiences doubt or inner conflict, or questions himself, not even in a “Do I kill the man who caused my father’s death or do I marry his daughter instead?” kind of way. This is especially bad because he is put in situations where 99% of the human population would experience inner conflict, yet he does not. For example, towards the end of the novel, he has to choose between keeping something precious to him, or doing what he thinks is in the interest of the greater good. He goes ahead and does what he thinks is in the interest of the greater good without hesitation or even suffering. The explanation is that he thinks he is going to paradise after he dies, so it does not really matter if he has want he wants in life. Not only is this less interesting than actual conflict, it also rings false. Even people who believe in paradise, believe they are going there, and use that thought to console themselves would experience some reluctance and pain when they give up something precious. The fact that Chen Jialuo does not experience this makes me think that either this thing is not actually precious to him, or that he’s not human.

And then there is keeping track of the cast. There are other Jin Yong novels with a far larger cast of characters (Yǐ Tiān Tú Lóng Jì and Tiān Lóng Bā Bù come to mind), yet this is the only Jin Yong novel where I had serious trouble keeping track of who was who—particularly the various members of the Red Flower Society. I was able to keep track of Li Yuanzhi and Lu Feiqing pretty well because of the memorable opening of the novel, but most characters did not get such a memorable opening, so it was hard to sort out who is just a minor character and who is somebody I should actually remember, especially when a bunch of characters are introduced at the same time. In later novels, Jin Yong handles this much better. Significant characters generally get a memorable introduction, and are generally introduced one by one instead of in a batch.

And there are the fights. Many of the sword fights are just good guys and bad guys finding themselves in the same place at the same time, therefore they fight. All of the sword techniques are generic. It gets pretty monotonous. To contrast this with an excellent Jin Yong fight where the sword techniques are well described and interesting to follow, as well as having psychological depth, read my post The Condor Trilogy in Manhua: Fighting. To be fair, the fights in the second part of the novel are better, with more variety and human interest, but they still do not measure up to the fights in later Jin Yong novels.

So, what did I like about the novel?

The Good

First of all, there is Emperor Qianlong’s secret. It is a good secret. I will not spoil it here.

Then there is Jin Yong’s imagination. It is evident in passages like this:

過了良久良久，陳家洛才慢慢放開了她，望著她暈紅的臉頰，忽見她身後一面破碎的鏡子，兩人互相摟抱著的人影在每片碎片中映照出來，幻作無數化身，低聲道：“你瞧，世界上就是有一千個我，這一千個我總還是抱著你。”

“After a long time passed, Chen Jialuo slowly let her free, gazing at her blushing cheeks. Suddenly he saw behind her the shattered mirror, the reflection of two people hugging each other visible in every fragment, fantastic countless incarnations of themselves. He murmured ‘You see, the world is just a thousand Chen Jialuos, these thousand Chen Jialuos all embracing you.'”

(Please forgive my English translation for not being as elegantly phrased as the Chinese original.)

His imagination sometimes manifests himself for just a moment, like above, and it sometimes manifests itself for an entire scene, such when the characters are running around in the desert city.

Of course, Jin Yong got lots of ideas from Chinese history and lore. For example, Princess Fragrance was inspired by the Fragrant Concubine, who, according to legend, was an Uyghur woman with beautiful looks and an even more beautiful smell. Jin Yong is at good at picking which ideas to borrow, and the historical background adds another layer to the story. He skillfully weaves his own ideas with other people’s ideas into a fresh narrative.

One of my favorite scenes in the novel is when Chen Jialuo goes to visit his mother. This is one of the rare times in the novels where Chen Jialuo actually seems heartbroken. He had been delaying visiting his mother because of his duties at the Red Flower Society, and when he finally does it he learns that she has just died. I can sympathize. I was actually more moved by this scene than certain scenes in other Jin Yong novels where mothers commit suicide right in front of their sons (a lot of main characters watch their mothers commit suicide in Jin Yong novels). Of course, Emperor Qianlong happens to be around when Chen Jialuo pays his respects to his late mother. This helps set up the reveal of the emperor’s secret, and foreshadows later events in the novel.

Availability in English

The Book and the Sword has been translated into English by Graham Earnshaw and published by Oxford University Press. It is supposed to include a character glossary, which I would have found really useful when I was reading the novel. Excerpts from this translation are available at Graham Earnshaw’s website, but I must note that some of the later excerpts might contain spoilers. Considering how expensive this translation is, borrowing it from the library is the most practical option.

I have only taken a brief look at the translation through Graham Earnshaw’s website, but based on what I looked at, it seems alright.

Conclusion

I really, really wanted to like this novel … but it should be apparent that my efforts to like this novel failed. In fact, this is the only Jin Yong novel I do not like.

That said, I am still glad I read it. It deepened my appreciation for Jin Yong. Some of his techniques are more obvious in this novel than in other novels. Some of the ways this novel does not work for me helps me understand how other Jin Yong novels do work for me.

And finally, I am in the minority, at least among people who have expressed in English their opinions of this novel. Most people who have reviewed the Earnshaw translation have a positive opinion of the novel.

Still, why they decided to publish this in English and not Shè Diāo Yīngxióng Zhuàn (which, in my opinion, is the best choice for people who have never read a Jin Yong novel) is beyond me.

Next Time: Divine Melody (manhua)

The Book and the Sword was technically the first novel Sara K. ever tried to read in Chinese. Of course, considering that she knew less than 800 characters at the time of her first attempt, she did not get very far (she did it more as an experiment than as a serious attempt). She did learn that it would probably be better to slide into rather then leap into Jin Yong … and then she saw Lee Chi Ching’s The Eagle Shooting Heroes in bookstores, and the rest is history.

Subtitles & Sensibility: Seattle International Film Festival 2012, Part One

June 7, 2012 by Jaci Dahlvang 4 Comments

The Seattle International Film Festival is my favorite time of year, and by far the best opprotunity to see Asian film in Seattle. In fact, within the festival there is a dedicated program, titled Asian Crossroads, which this year contains 24 features from 13 countries. I am seeing as many as humanly possible, and am excited to share them all with you!

Here are the first four, from South Korea, Cambodia, Japan, and Hong Kong.

* Countdown is the strong first feature from Huh Jung-ho. It’s a character-driven classic action film, starring Jeong Jae-young as a debt collector who learns that he has liver cancer and ten days to live. Naturally, he brings all the skills that make him an excellent debt collector to the task of finding and securing a liver donor. And when he finds her, of course she has ties to gangsters.

Throw in some drama in his past that he can’t or won’t remember, and you have the formula for a well-paced, slick & snappy feature. A side note: if you’ve never seen a South Korean action film before, don’t be surprised at the lack of gun violence. It’s realistic, due to the country’s firearm regulations, and it’s frankly refreshing for characters to have to take each other on one-on-one rather than mowing down rivals in a spray of bullets.

* Golden Slumbers is a documentary on the golden age of Cambodian cinema, which is a challenge because virtually nothing remains of the actual films. Instead, director Davy Chou (grandson of film producer Van Chann) relies on the memories of those who directed, starred in, and watched the films. Together they visit the sites where films were shot and the cinemas they were projected in, which adds another layer to the piece: life in Cambodia today.

The interview subjects are upfront about the quality of the films (or the lack thereof!)pointing out that each had essentially the same melodramatic plot. However, what I found incredibly powerful was the impact they had on the collective memory. Even though the films no longer exist, the songs are still sung and the plotlines are effortlessly recited by people who saw them over 40 years ago. Destruction of art is heartbreaking, but to be so warmly and fully remembered is beautiful.

* Rent-a-Cat is easily the most charming film I’ve seen at the festival this year, and I am not even a cat person. I am assured that if you are a cat person, this film will make you explode with glee. If you are not a cat person, it just might turn you into one.

Rent-a-Cat stars Mikako Ichikawa (who has the best face at SIFF this year) as Sayoko, a lonely young woman who, you guessed it, rents out cats. Seriously. She walks along the river calling “rentaneko neko neko” through a megaphone, and rents cats to other lonely people. As it turns out, a lot of people are in the market for a low-commitment pet.

It’s hard to not watch a movie about what is essentially a crazy cat lady without being at least a little bit concerned. Will it judge her harshly? Will it devolve into a pat romance? Luckily, Rent-a-Cat ends not too cruel, not too sweet, but just right. Don’t forget to stick with it through the ridiculously cute illustrated end credits!

* I wanted to like Romancing in Thin Air, but I found it overwrought & sentimental. The latest from Johnnie To is not his first romantic film, though he is better known for his thrillers. I do remember loving his unconventional romance Turn Left, Turn Right at a previous festival, so this was a disappointment.

It opens with film star Michael (Louis Koo) being left at the altar. He decides to drink himself to oblivion, which turns out to be the Deep Woods Hotel. There he shouts a lot and smashes things, until he slowly begins to heal with the help of the mournful proprietor Sue (Sammi Cheng). She is in pain herself over the loss of her husband Tian, who went missing in the woods seven years ago.

The film does contain some nice ideas. I liked the metaphor of Tian’s piano, which had broken keys when he disappeared that Sue still refuses to fix, plus the whole image of the quiet danger of a forest where compasses do not work is lovely. The scene where locals are creating noise to help people find their way out of the forest is beautiful and will stay with me.

Overall the high drama and the too-pat meta ending outweighed the pretty cast and the even prettier scenery.

Combat Commentary: Fullmetal Alchemist Ch. 91-96 Armstrong(s) vs. Sloth

June 6, 2012 by Derek Bown 1 Comment

I don’t often fall in love with fictional characters…okay, that’s a lie, I do it all the time. Despite what I imagine most people would think, this does not usually happen because the character is drawn with very few clothes, or has over-developed sexuality. No, my feelings are more pure and entirely based on personality (with a small heaping of looks thrown in there).

The thing is, I tend to fall for very specific type of fictional woman—the type that would utterly terrify me in real life. Olivier Armstrong is one of those women. I can’t really explain why this happens, but what I can explain is why she’s a badass, and if she were real I’d willingly be her servant for life.

PS: I was thinking this would make a perfect Valentine’s Special…but…well, it’s a little late for that. So pretend this got published back in February.

What Happened?
As the rebel forces begin their assault on central, Major General Olivier Armstrong makes her move, capturing one of the inner circle generals. The Central forces target her as a high priority target and attempt to take her down. But they are impeded by the arrival of the Homunculus Sloth.

What Happens?
Olivier’s sword does little to no damage to the behemoth, and it isn’t until the arrival of Major Alex Armstrong that they are able to do some damage to Sloth. Just after the sibling pair deal the first serious blow, Sloth reveals his true ability, supernatural speed.

Sloth’s speed turns his body into basically an obscenely heavy bullet, as he is unable to control his trajectory after launching himself. Major Armstrong is able to use this to his advantage, by placing a stone spike right in Sloth’s path. This severely injures Sloth, but not enough to finish him.

The Armstrong siblings are surrounded by Central soldiers, who try to arrest them, but are attacked by the artificial humans. As Sloth breaks free from the spike, more Central soldiers arrive, and Olivier takes command of them. She organizes them to take on the artificial humans, while Alex focuses on Sloth. With his dislocated shoulder, Alex is unable to properly fight. The soldiers urge Olivier to go help him, but she refuses, knowing Alex is tougher than the soldiers give him credit for. He uses one of Sloth’s attacks to pop his shoulder back into place, and is able to start fighting Sloth back.

Sloth still won’t go down, and he continues to target Alex and Olivier. The soldiers try to hold him back and give the Armstrongs a chance to escape, but Alex refuses. It is at this point that Izumi and her husband show up. They, along with a reinvigorated Alex, give Sloth a thrashing to the point that he finally dies.

(click image to enlarge)

What Does it Mean?
What makes Fullmetal Alchemist stand out is that Arakawa isn’t afraid to break shounen tropes here and there. Usually fights in shounen manga focus more on one on one battles. Team battles like this one tend to be more the rare side. The fight also serves as more than just a way to eliminate one of the enemies. It serves as closure for the relationship arc between the two Armstrong siblings.

While Olivier’s opinion of Alex had been low the entire series, during this fight we see how she works. She may say Alex is worthless, but when it comes down to it she trusts him enough to remain focused on her own job. An effective fight scene needs to accomplish multiple things. At the most basic it needs to be cool to look at, but it also needs to provide this kind of character growth.

In team fights like this it may be tempting to say that one member of the team did more than the other. The bulk of the fighting is done by Alex, which could be construed as downplaying Olivier’s ability as a fighter. But there is no need to pull out the sexist manga card on this one, as the Alex and Olivier both fulfill specific roles that were previously developed parts of their characters.

Alex may not be able to beat Olivier in a one-on-one fight, but he is more suited for fighting with brute strength. And while Olivier has been portrayed as an exceptional fighter, that part of her is not emphasized as much as her ability as a leader. There is no need to give her character arc closure with a one-on-one fight, because her character is much more focused on leadership. And just as Alex gets his good fight, Olivier gets to show off her chops as a leader by taking command of two platoons of soldiers sent to capture her and fully gaining their loyalty.

(click image to enlarge)

The end of the fight is a bit disappointing, because the two are unable to win without being saved by the Curtises. A better ending would have been to go the more archetypal route of having Alex and Olivier pull through to the very end and finish Sloth off. To have two outside forces aid them this far into the battle does unfortunately diminish their success. Fortunately this is a minor complaint, as the moment is executed with plenty of style and comedic callbacks with Alex and Mr. Curtis.

Ultimately the final fight against Sloth works because the bond between the two siblings is more important than their ability to defeat their enemy. They had prior victories, and in the end it did not take a final victory to cement their character arcs. The important development occurred during the fight, so the weak ending can be forgiven.