Features

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.

Manga the Week of 6/13

June 6, 2012 by Sean Gaffney

Despite my irritation at Diamond for not shipping half of Viz’s releases this week (at least I got Ouran 18…), I am here to tell you about next week.

Dark Horse has the 11th volume of the Evangelion spinoff Shinji Ikari Raising Project. At the rate it’s going it should pass its original source soon in length. I’m sure it will have far more heartwarming romantic comedy moments as well – the original Evangelion manga really doesn’t have time for that these days.

Digital Manga Publishing debuts a new BL office romance, Same Difference. It looks like it might be lighthearted, always nice to see. There’s also the 4th volume of Bad Teacher’s Equation, and the 6th volume of the fancy Deluxe version of Kizuna.

Seven Seas has the first of a new spinoff series from Alice in the Country of Hearts, as this time she ends up in the Country of Clover. The cast seems to be similar, though, and I’m sure it will share the reverse harem datesim genre that its parent series had. There’s also the 12th volume of Dance in the Vampire Bund, which sadly does not seem to feature a cameo from Christie High Tension. :)

There’s also two new titles from Viz’s BL line Sublime. Honey Darling and Three Wolves Mountain come out with covers that make me immediately wary, but perhaps the cute boys are slightly less cat-eared inside the volume. In any case, it’s great to see Viz dipping its toes into the BL genre.

Anything that interests you this week? Or, like me, are you still waiting for half your Viz order?

It Came From the Sinosphere: The Outsiders 1 & 2

June 5, 2012 by Sara K. 9 Comments

Hi everyone. This is a new column on comics, novels, TV shows, films, and who knows what else from the Chinese-speaking world. As a resident of Taiwan, I’m going to put a disproportionate emphasis on Ilha Formosa, but I’m not going to restrict myself to it. For this first post, I am looking at a Taiwanese idol drama: The Outsiders.

Even though The Outsiders is not based on the S.E. Hinton novel, like the novel, it is a story of gang youth getting into more trouble than they bargained for.

The Story

Three orphans, Ah Hao, Shanzi, and Ah Qi, are sworn brothers and have taken care of each other (with the guidance of a sympathetic police officer) since they were children. Ah Hao and another student at their senior high school, Xiao Yanzi, fall in love with each other. The problem is that Ah Hao, along with his sworn brothers, are poor and “delinquent,” whereas Xiao Yanzi is a sheltered piano student from a nice upper-middle-class family.

Things go downhill from there. Hong Dou, a tough girl with a crush on Ah Hao, threatens violence if Xiao Yanzi gets too close to him. Xiao Yanzi’s parents do not approve of Ah Hao, and put a lot of effort into keeping them apart. Shanzi eventually also finds himself in love with Xiao Yanzi. And we’re not even halfway through the plot.

Ah Hao is unusual in that he is a male lead in an idol drama who is poor. For real. He’s not secretly the son of the CEO of some large corporation or otherwise high-ranking man. Even male leads who are merely upper-middle class are not too common in idol dramas. But this is not the only way in which The Outsiders is an atypical idol drama.

In most idol dramas, the main couple runs into a problem and they overcome it and become closer, then there’s a bigger problem and they overcome that and become even closer, and so forth. At first, it looks like The Outsiders is following the same pattern—Ah Hao and Xiao Yanzi run into problems and deal with them. But instead of gaining strength, resilience, and confidence, the very opposite happens. They bond with each other and their faith in themselves becomes more and more precarious. It eventually dawns on the viewer that this might not end well.

So, is The Outsiders a tragedy, or is this a setup for a grand climatic recovery where Ah Hao and Xiao Yanzi’s love for each other conquer all? The answer to that question, of course, is a spoiler. But regardless of the outcome, the mere fact that The Outsiders goes so far into dark territory makes it stand out from other idol dramas.

Acting

The actor who stands out the most, to me, is Ady An as Xiao Yanzi. It’s not because of her acting—though I think her acting is alright in this drama—it’s her looks. It’s not so much that she is pretty (she is, of course, pretty) as that she is blessed with looks which light up on camera. She is also blessed with the best role. Out of all of the characters in the drama, it is Xiao Yanzi who grows and changes the most. Come to think of it, her acting in this drama actually is pretty good since I found Xiao Yanzi’s character change convincing.

The actor who I admire the most based on ability is Xie Chengjun as Ah Bao, the main villain. Ah Bao’s dialogue is more like the way TV villains talk than real people, and his sidekick, Laoshu, is quite irritating because of the writing. However, Xie Chengjun managed to make Ah Bao a bit more like a human being with his performance. He sometimes downplays the role, making Ah Bao seem all the more chilling, while punctuating his performance with violent bursts of energy. I think the intensity and believability Xie Chenghun brings to the role saves the character from mediocre writing.

The acting in The Outsiders does not excel as much as the acting in, say, Mars. Still, I think most of the actors generally perform adequately.

The Music

Considering that one of the main characters is a piano student, it should no come as no surprise that music is an important part of this drama. In fact, The Outsiders has the most eclectic selection of music of any idol drama I’ve seen. Naturally, there are many piano pieces throughout the show, well-chosen to contribute to the atmosphere of the drama. Furthermore, the drama includes a Tsai Chin song (Tsai Chin was a very popular Taiwanese singer in the 1980s). I am not a Tsai Chin fan, but I appreciate that the song fits the mood, and I appreciate that they decided to include some older pop music.

The best known song in this drama is most likely the ending song, “Lydia.” It is a song by FIR, one of Taiwan’s most popular pop bands. You can hear what kind of song it is in the first few seconds, where the opening strings are joined by an underlying rock beat. The song breathlessly ascends in pitch … at least the lyrics seem breathless due to the creative use of Mandarin. For example, here’s a part of the lyrics:

He left (you still) bear, not having left, your own heaven
After the wind-drying there can remain rainbow tear light

If the translation does not make sense, it’s because the lyrics in Chinese do not entirely make sense to me and I tried to keep the translation as literal as possible. For people who are really interested in the song, there is a gloss of the lyrics into English at Chinese Tools.

The song fits the story, as it expresses passion rising, without pause, pushed by a strong beat, just as Xiao Yanzi and Ah Hao are pushed forward at a pace faster than they can handle.

Fighting

I really like the violence in The Outsiders. Yes, romance comes before action, but the action is still pretty good. First of all, I like the free, raw, unrestrained energy. It really feels like violence. One reviewer claimed that the fights were not choreographed. As someone who knows a few things about fight choreography, I know the fights actually are choreographed, but they feel like they are not. I also like the atmosphere—broken windows, dark alleys, abandoned buildings. The best thing, of course, is that the characters are vulnerable. Many action flicks forget to include the vulnerability. The fighting in The Outsiders is short and to the point, but a short fight in which Xiao Yanzi (the piano student) gets hit by a baton makes a deeper impression on the viewer than 30 minutes of inconclusive fighting by invincible heroes.

If you want to get a feel for the fighting, watch the opening to Outsiders 2 – it shows quite a bit of fighting.

And, of course, people who cannot watch brutal violence on screen should avoid this drama.

Outsiders 2

Much of what I have to say about The Outsiders also applies to The Outsiders 2, so I will stick to comments which only apply to Outsiders 2.

The problem with making a sequel to The Outsiders is that the ending does not lend itself to a sequel. The writers get around this problem by setting The Outsiders 2 during the 5-year gap in The Outsiders. However, this setup limits what they can do with the story since they have to keep things consistent with the first drama. For example, they cannot do much to get the characters from the first drama to grow and change beyond what is shown in the first drama. Because of these limitations, The Outsiders 2 largely revolves around some new characters. Because I know the new characters do not show up in The Outsiders, I figured out pretty quickly that things do not end well for them.

In a way, the constraints are good, because they forced the writers to be more subtle about how they handled the characters. Considering the constraints in place, I am impressed that the main characters had as much development in The Outsiders 2 as they do. Nonetheless, Outsiders 2 does not manage to have the resonance of the first drama.

Huīsè Kōngjiān (“Gray Space”) is one of my favorite idol drama theme songs. It’s the song I linked to in the “Fighting” section. It is not so much the song itself as the way it fits the clips chosen for the opening and the way it fits the overall atmosphere of The Outsiders. The ending song, Nǐ Shuō (“You Say”), is also lovely. Whereas “Lydia” is the more popular song, I like that these two songs are quieter and feel more melancholy.

Overall

For all its flaws, The Outsiders is one of the most memorable idol dramas I have seen. I think what makes it stick out more than anything else is that it has some truth. I am not saying that it is realistic—it is most certainly not—and I’m not saying all of it is true (the villains in particular are not true to life). But there is enough truth to make an impression.

First of all, The Outsiders is almost entirely filmed in humble, ordinary neighborhoods (even the neighborhood of Xiao Yanzi’s faimly feels very ordinary). Many idol dramas are set in posh houses or tourist destinations. That’s not a bad thing—I have a lot of fun trying to identify locations—but it reflects fantasy, not the way most people in Taiwan live.

Most idol dramas are a retelling of Cinderella—humble girl gets swept up by wealthy guy and he takes care of her problems. However, most women, Taiwanese or not, are not going to get swept up by princes, let alone have their problems solved by them. This does not stop Ah Hao from trying to be Xiao Yanzi’s prince.

And that is the core conflict in their relationship. Ah Hao wants to be Xiao Yanzi’s prince, but Xiao Yanzi wants to be his partner. Their relationship gets even more strained when it becomes apparent that Shanzi wishes to be Xiao Yanzi’s partner, and a girl who really wants Ah Hao to be her prince appears. This is a problem that happens in real life, and it is this aspect of the story which stays with me the most.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to legally watch The Outsiders with English subtitles. Somebody ought to license this drama.

Next time: The Book and the Sword (novel)

Sara K. is not sure whether or not she will be able to make witty remarks about her life every week, but she will try. Since she is recovering from a cold, she certainly does not feel very witty right now.

Manga the Week of 6/6

May 30, 2012 by Sean Gaffney

That’s a whole lotta Viz, that is.

Mind you, there is a Vertical title as well. In fact, it came out everywhere but Diamond this week. Vol. 3 of 14 Days in Shonan puts the series at 1/3 complete, but Onizuka’s work has barely begun! He has kids to inspire and adults to castigate! And old… friends?… to reunite with! Who knows, he may even get lucky! (OK, no, that will never happen.)

The big release from Viz, meanwhile, is the final volume of Ouran High School Host Club. And for those who are curious, unlike most harem manga, this one resolves its pairing. Fans have loved the story of Haruhi, Tamaki and the others – enough to bring the anime over here as well – and now we finally have closure. Thanks to Bisco Hatori for so much great romantic comedy.

There are other releases as well. More shoujo! Black Bird 14, which will no doubt continue to sell like hotcakes. Dawn of the Arcana 4, which I am horribly behind on. Devil and Her Love Song 3, which I am greatly looking forward to, as I love snark. Earl & The Fairy 2, which hopefully will improve a bit on its first volume. Kamisama Kiss 9 and Kimi ni Todoke 14, for you romantics out there. And Sakura Hime, for the Tanemura addicts.

This does not mean there is not a giant pile of shonen as well. Bakuman 11, now in its 2nd half! Not one, but two Bleach volumes, which I believe have some great stuff for IchiHime fans! A new Nura and Toriko, which don’t get to speed up as much as Bleach, but have less to catch up on. Slam Dunk 22, in case your daily basketball quotient needed filling. And Yu-Gi-Oh Zexal, the nth sequel to the popular franchise.

That’s a whole lot. An exhausting amount, in fact. Anything for you?

BL Bookrack: May 2012

May 28, 2012 by MJ and Michelle Smith 7 Comments

Welcome to the May installment of BL Bookrack! This month, Michelle takes a look at est em’s Apartments of Calle Feliz (JManga) and the first volume of The Scent of Apple Blossoms (SuBLime), while MJchecks out western BL webcomic Honeydew Syndrome. In Brief: Doukyusei from JManga, and My Sweet Home from the Digital Manga Guild.

Apartments of Calle Feliz | By est em | Published by JManga – It seems that every time I turn around I am thanking JManga for something these days, and this quirky set of interconnected short stories from est em can now be added to the list!

Life’s not going well for aspiring novelist Luca. His editor is dissatisfied with his work, and he’s just been kicked out of his home because his boyfriend found a new guy. When he responds to a flyer advertising a room for rent, he ends up living with the landlord, Javi, instead. Luca’s intrigued by Javi, but keeps telling himself not to care about him, because it seems obvious that Javi has ousted a past lover from his apartment and Luca knows what that feels like.

Still, Javi is an inspiration, and his suggestion that Luca write stories with happy endings for the tenants of the apartment building—located on Calle Feliz (or “happy street”)—results in the tales included here. Residents include Dino and Salvator (a fashion designer and his nudist recluse boyfriend), Noe and the Twins (a man unable to decide which of a pair of twins he prefers), Matias and Pepe (a boy who reminds a puppetmaker of his lost love), and Jose and Eva (a hard-of-hearing guy and a crossdresser with a bunch of noisy roommates). A story about Javi and Luca and Javi’s past rounds out the collection.

The stories themselves are generally fun and charming—though I was disappointed that the Jose and Eva story seemed to end so abruptly—but what’s even more intriguing is wondering how much of this actually happened and how much is Luca’s imagination. Did Pepe’s lover really return to him? Did the designer and the nudist resolve their problems and live happily ever after? It’s nice to imagine they did, but est em floats the possibility that maybe things didn’t actually turn out so well, which is a narrative trick I just love.

This may not be as dramatic a collection as something like Seduce Me After the Show or Red Blinds the Foolish, but it is definitely worth reading all the same.

– Review by Michelle Smith

Honeydew Syndrome, Vol. 1 | By New Shoe | Rated Teen – A while back, I got an e-mail asking if I’d be willing to take a look at a North American comic called Two Keys from the creative team New Shoe (Chloe Chan and Aliena Shoemaker). I agreed. Included in the package when it arrived was the first print volume of the duo’s older BL webcomic Honeydew Syndrome, which immediately stole my attention with its sparse, melancholy cover art and manga-influenced character designs. I couldn’t help but read it, and though its promising first impression was marred somewhat by a small rash of typos and lettering mishaps, the truth is, I found myself rushing to my computer the moment I finished in order to read the rest (and I’ve just purchased volume two, which promises a bonus chapter and some prose stories). It’s just that charming.

So here’s the setup: High school student and emo-in-denial Metis (yes, like Athena’s mother, for those of you who are into Greek mythology) accidentally witnesses popular jock Josh being dumped by his cheerleader girlfriend, which somehow lands him in the way of Josh’s angry fist. To make things worse, he then gets paired up with Josh for a major school project. Though Metis is initially afraid for his well-being, fear soon turns to anger as he realizes that Josh has no idea who he even is, let alone that he recently punched him. Since this is BL, we know that teen angst and misunderstanding ultimately lead to love, but in romance, of course, it’s all about the journey, and this one is pretty delightful all-around.

Though romance is definitely the destination, what makes this series’ journey so worthwhile is its focus on friendship—specifically that between Metis and his collection of outsider friends, and especially his long-time best friend, Charles. Metis and Charles, with their impenetrable universe of two, embody all the best parts of teenage outcast friendship, including all the conversational shorthand, unspoken loyalty, and weirdly casual sexual tension that so often comes with the package. Other standouts include quietly colorful Jay and witheringly honest Sarah (who appears in later chapters).

New Shoe’s artwork lacks polish (at least in this early work), but it’s also unfailingly expressive, and the visual storytelling is solid. The characters’ emotional trajectory is crystal clear, panel-to-panel, even in the artwork’s most uneven moments. If I had the opportunity to register only one complaint regarding Honeydew Syndrome, it would be that there simply is not enough of it. The series ended abruptly in 2009 amid discontent on the part of both fans and creators, as evidenced by comments posted to its fan community at the time. But whatever controversy the series once generated, the existing work is well worth reading.

With its character-driven approach and thoughtful storytelling, Honeydew Syndrome holds its own alongside my small collection of Japanese and Korean favorites. Recommended.

– Review by MJ

The Scent of Apple Blossoms, Vol. 1 | By Toko Kawai | Published by SuBLime – I have yet to meet a Toko Kawai manga I didn’t like, and The Scent of Apple Blossoms proves to be no exception.

Born in America, salesman Haruna Mutsuki is a little more uninhibited than most, and when he meets the intriguing grandson of a sake brewery master during the course of business, he’s pretty forthright with his interest. The grandsom, known for most of the volume only as Nakagawa, presents a cold demeanor, but proves to be kindly in certain situations. I swear, never has the act of remaining sober so as to drive someone else home had so much sweet, romantic significance.

While this is definitely a romance, Kawai gives the story space to breathe and allows her characters ample time and opportunity to establish their personalities. While Haruna looks like the stereotypical uke, for example, and requires a bit of nursing on several occasions, he’s actually a pretty confident guy who’s very capable at his work. Nakagawa, meanwhile, is a ringer for the stereotypical gruff but sweet type who will come around eventually, but he’s actually got some legitimate reasons for shying away from Haruna’s romantic advances.

When the two eventaully get together (not really a spoiler in this sort of story), it’s a big leap for both of them that Kawai’s storytelling has allowed readers to really understand and appreciate. Although I get the sense that she was fine where the story ended in this first volume, The Scent of Apple Blossoms is actually a continuing series. The third volume was just released in Japan earlier this month, and though SuBLime’s digital release calendar doesn’t show volume two yet, I am hoping the wait won’t be too long.

– Review by Michelle Smith

In Brief:

Doukyusei | By Asumiko Nakamura | JManga | Rated Teen Plus – As far as I’m concerned, when it comes to romance, the more awkward the better, and that goes double if the characters are teens. Fortunately, Doukyusei gets this exactly right, and really so much more. Emotionally offbeat in the vein of Rihito Takarai & Venio Tachibana’s Seven Days series (but without the contrived setup), Asumiko Nakamura delicately explores the awkwardness of first love with a kind of frank delicacy, aided greatly by her unique art style and gangly character designs. The story’s themes and school-based situations may be standard genre fare, but Nakamura’s storytelling is decidedly not. Highly recommended. – MJ

My Sweet Home | By Kai Nanase | Digital Manga Guild | Rated Mature – This BL one-shot about a young real estate agent who finds himself showing luxurious apartments to an ex-lover sounds promising to start. (Adults with jobs? Check. Workplace awkwardness? Check.) Unfortunately, the book’s summary is its highlight, leading quickly to rushed, unsatisfying romance, incoherent plotting, and artwork so generic that only the change in main character names really distinguishes the book’s title story from the shorter one-shots that follow. Digital Manga Guild localizing team Kaedama Translations does their job, but there’s only so much that can be done with a clunker like My Sweet Home. With so much BL manga now flooding the market by way of the DMG, mediocre fare like this holds very little appeal. – 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 at Manga Bookshelf: Apartments of Calle Feliz (JManga), Working Kentauros (JManga), Devil’s Honey (Sublime), The Boyfriend Next Door (Digital Manga Guild)

Convention report: TCAF 2012

May 24, 2012 by Megan Purdy 5 Comments

Guys, I really like TCAF. Which might sound strange, as this is the latest con report in the history of time, but there it is.

The Toronto Comic Arts Festival is a week long comics festival held all over Toronto’s downtown. It culminates in a weekend mini-convention hosted by the (not so) secretly awesome Toronto Public Library. Christopher Butcher, TCAF’s founder and director, didn’t want it to be your typical comic con, so he modelled it on literary festivals and conferences. There are none of the giant screens, booth babes, or pricey giveaways that you’ll find at most major North American comic cons, and you won’t hear much about the latest Marvel and DC releases. Instead, you’ll hear from Scholastic, First Second, Oni Press and Archaia, and mainly, comics creators themselves. You’ll get the chance to meet lots of up and coming and independent creators, from all over the world. You’ll get to participate in workshops, play indie games, indulge in kidstuff and check out great panel discussions, and you’ll do all of this mostly for free—only a few of TCAF’s events are ticketed.

I mention all of this not to boost the festival (it’s not without its flaws), but because TCAF is designed to cultivate a certain kind of festival experience for creators and fans, and overall, it’s a pretty good one. The festival is hosted by the downtown Reference Library and surrounding businesses, all of which maintain regular operating hours during the two-day explosion of comics love. While you’re collapsing into a lump of fannish bliss at Kate Beaton’s feet, someone’s studying for an exam, or enjoying an afternoon meal. And so, the festival is less an awesome assault on the senses, and more kicking comics book fair. Also, it’s on a smaller scale than the other two major dates on the Toronto comics scene’s calendar, Fan Expo and Anime North, and the character of the festival is just more relaxed, less overheated, and far more oriented to discussion of comic arts, than to promotion by publishers. If you’re a fan of indie, small press, or kids books, it’s a good show, is what I’m saying.

My usual con and festival buddy is my girl Maddy (of When Fangirls Attack). We’ve been attending local conventions for a couple of years now, and have it down to a special kind of socially awkward, anti-science. This time, while we were impeded by a forgotten cell phone, crowd aversion (Saturday was packed!), a general lack of proper hydration and nutrition, we managed to meet up with friends, hit most of the panels we were interested in, and with the help of a third friend and a Starbucks full of regretful witnesses, get into an hours-long argument about J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek. It’s why I missed the presentation of Allison Bechdel’s new book, and while I’m sore about it, I also can’t turn down a chance to complain about Kirk’s poor character development (Chris Pine, saved that script, ok?). Basically we had a great time, and we talked to all kinds of incredible people.

The Festival

Maddy and I are both Toronto locals, so we started our festival experience early, with a University of Toronto symposium that took advantage of TCAF, to bring in Kate Beaton (Hark A Vagrant) and Bryan Lee O’Malley (Scott Pilgrim). I can’t speak for the rest of the Bodies and Cities series, but this discussion was about art and place. Does art depend on where you are, or who you’re with? Is the internet making it harder for artists to make a living? These were questions the never entirely serious Beaton and O’Malley answered, with weird and funny anecdotes, and plenty of shade for North American Big Comics.

After the talk, we had mediteranian food and cake, and hit up BMV Books (quite possibly the best place to pick up cheap, used comics in Toronto) and The Beguiling (the festival’s mothership), where we got our festival guides, and started to plan our itineraries. We’re both panel people, so it was akin to shopping for a Christmas siege of the Reference Library, The Pilot Tavern and other TCAF venues. There may also have been an extended email chain involved. It was a whole thing.

O’Malley and Beaton both had interesting things to say about creation, ownership and the whys and wherefores of comic art, which set the tone for the weekend. The opening night talk with Jeff Smith (Bone), Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba (Daytripper) picked up on these themes—perhaps a consequence of bringing together so many indie and small press creators. Smith, Moon and Ba have a bit of a mutual admiration society going on; their rapport makes it well worth checking out the talk, which has been posted in full by the library. It also reminds you of just how small a world comics is, that creators and fans from all over the world have such close personal and creative connections. This, it turns out, was another of the themes of the festival. Butcher and the rest of the TCAF staff worked hard to bring in an impressive slate of international guests. With everything from workshops, to exhibits (Gabriella Giandelli!) to panel discussions, TCAF celebrated the hell out of the international comics scene this year, and particularly, international comic art (double emphasis on art). Toronto is one of the most multicultural cities in the world, so it seemed a pretty natural fit, to be having this discussion here.

After the opening night talk, we headed over to the opening night party at The Pilot. We missed whatever festival activity resulted in all the cool kids having Hello My Name Is tags, but were in good time for its devolution into a nerdier version of any other bar in the world. There was a lot of comics talk over beers, is what I’m saying, and although that’s increasingly common, in these halcyon post-Dark Knight, post-Avengers days, the collective knowledge of the Summers-Grey family tree was still impressive. Unlike the big cons, TCAF doesn’t attract cosplay (did you catch the Homestuck/TCAF cosplay blowup?), so the bars around the festival aren’t filled with visible displays of nerdy enthusiasm. The bar scene is not mine though, even with an above average number of Green Lantern t-shirts in attendance, so we left after a few beers, without any awkward fan-creator stories to share.

Saturday and Sunday were a haze of panels, shopping, and arguing about Star Trek. A lot of panels and talks, you guys. I attended: Comics and Mental Health, Guy Delisle Spotlight, Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba Spotlight, Kate Beaton Spotlight, Graphic Narrative, Writer’s Craft, and, hell, some other stuff that I can’t clearly remember. Maddy and I split up, so between the two of us, we covered about 70% of the festival’s programming. I’m a sucker for smart, passionate people, saying smart, passionate things, but I’m picky—TCAF’s programming though, was really quite good. Overwhelmingly, the conversation at TCAF is analytical (what are the boundaries of comic art? what does the future look like for small publishers and independent creators?) and informative (how to manage life as a self-employed creator, how to construct a page for maximum impact).

Aside from programming, there was still the festival floor to hit. Vendor and creator tables are set up on the library’s first and second floor. As with any con, space is at a premium, but because TCAF takes place in an open-for-business library, and not a convention centre, floorspace is even more precious. Attendance has been going up the last few years, but this year it was ludicrous—so well attended that Saturday was basically a wash, in terms of meaningful interaction. At one point, getting to a particular table involved five minutes of bobbing, weaving and inching forward, half a foot at a time. One of the biggest draws this year was Andrew Hussie, creator of Homestuck. His fans lined up, and lined up, and lined the hell up some more for his Q&A. There were a lot of Homestuck fans; adorable in their enthusiasm. Another big ticket was the Adventure Time creative team. A video of their panel is available here. By Sunday things tend to clear up (most locals have been and gone), and this year was no different. Finally we were able to enjoy meeting and chatting with creators, and do some shopping.

The Haul

For the last few years I’ve been doing this whole responsible adult thing, and trying to pay down my student debt at as blistering a pace as I can manage. As a result I’m perpetually cash strapped, and go into every book fair, festival and convention with the intention of not buying. Or at least, buying as little and as smartly as possible. Never has this plan survived the first engagement. When you go to a convention, you spend money. My resolve is strong… until I see Michael Cho (Back Alleys and Urban Landscapes), or Scott Chantler (Two Generals), or, or, oh god, is that Kate Beaton? OMG, I love her shoes! And then my plan to spend responsibly is revised into Operation: All The Things, Into My (not a plastic) Bag. You can probably relate.

This year I managed to avoid the admittedly adorable ephemera that sends me into fits of puzzled buyer’s remorse when I get home (five handmade felt bookmarks? really?) and double down on the things I really covet: books and prints.

Because Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba made my TCAF weekend, I stopped by their table with the intention of buying all the things. But by the time I made it there, late in the day on Sunday, most of those things were gone. I picked up De:Tales though, a book I missed when it came out a couple of years back, and I have high hopes for. They weren’t the highlight of my festival experience just because they’re lovely guys, but also because they’re engaging speakers who used their showcase spot to put on a great talk about comic art and creative influence, and seemingly spent the weekend being laid back and intelligent all over the place.

Similarly, I went into TCAF weekend with the intention of picking up Guy Delisle‘s Jerusalem, and Alison Bechdel‘s Are You My Mother?, but their generally awesome showings at the festival made the experience of handing over my hard-earned Canadian dollars that much sweeter. Like the brothers, Delisle proved that PowerPoint can be wonderful, in the hands of an experienced comics professional. He showed in-progress art from his next project, sketches and pictures from previous projects, and bits and pieces of comics art that inspired him during his travels. Thus far, Delisle’s work has been something in the vein of thoughtful, personal (and hilarious) anti-travelogues, so seeing and hearing about that stuff made me even more excited for Jerusalem. As for Allison Bechdel, well, here’s a Wall Street Journal interview with her that demonstrates her inherent interestingness. (If you don’t think the grammar of comics is a cool subject, then I don’t know what to tell you. Also, at some point in the distant future, Scott McCloud will be rolling in his grave, because of you).

I also picked up two prints and the TCAF poster by Moon and Ba, and did a whole lot of shopping for other people. Their presents are in the mail, so hopefully I’m not spoiling things by mentioning Adrian Alphona, Chad Sell, Christina Strain and Bryan Lee O’Malley. Unicorns and drag queens—that’s all I’m prepared to say at this point. The Toronto streetscape above is part of a series by the always-friendly Michael Cho, and this lovely print is by Christina Strain and Jayd Aït-Kaci, who do the web comic Fox Sister. (Have you read Fox Sister? Get on that, for real). The print is of the eponymous fox sister, and will be framed and hung below my beloved Klimt print.

Overall I think I demonstrated admirable restraint. Which, hey, is why shopping for other people is the actual best.

The Conclusion (no hilarious anecdote?)

Even with all the people (18,000!), I managed to meet up with a few friends and acquaintances, get into two arguments about Star Trek, one argument about cyperpunk, and three debates about the future of online distribution and ownership. (I talk a lot. You might have noticed). I managed, somehow, to bump into two former classmates from the Toronto Cartoonist’s Workshop (holla!), and another two Twitter friends and their friends. And most importantly, I met the world’s most adorable Brony. Fluttershy, you guys, he was stealth cosplaying Fluttershy. My only regret is that I didn’t get a chance to check out the festival’s exceptional kids programming, or collapse into a lump of fannish bliss at Kate Beaton’s feet.

Oh well, there’s always next year.

Manga the Week of 5/30

May 23, 2012 by Sean Gaffney

It’s a 5th week of the month, you know that means there’s virtually nothing. In fact, all three of these are available now… unless you order from Diamond.

Kodansha gives us the first Genshiken omnibus, collecting three volumes of this otaku-loving series. I always tended to read it for Saki, but there’s something for everyone here. Unlike Negima, this does not feature any new translation, possibly as the old version was perfectly fine. We also get Vol. 34 of Negima, which I’ve already reviewed, possibly as it’s hitting Diamond a full month late. And we have Vol. 28 of The Wallflower, which I always enjoy, mostly as I expect laughs and nothing else. This volume apparently featured the obligatory Edo Period AU!

Aaaaaand that’s it. Thoughts?

Manga the Week of 5/23

May 16, 2012 by Sean Gaffney

Only publishers at the end of the alphabet are welcome in next week’s manga shipment!

Vertical features the first volume of their new shonen romantic blackmail comedy The Flowers of Evil, and I’m afraid everyone has to buy it, as otherwise the cover image will continue to stare into your soul forever. Into your SOUL. FOREVER.

Viz has the 5th volume of Saturn Apartments, which I’ve lost track of but which is from the SigIkki line, so clearly it is deserving of your praise.

And there is a huge pile of stuff from Yen. Including two big new debuts. From Square Enix’s Young Gangan, we have Until Death Do Us Part, an action/adventure/esper epic that they are releasing in omnibus format, meaning we get the first 2 volumes here in one. This is 15 volumes and still running in Japan, so should be a lot of fun. And from Houbunsha (I believe they went straight to graphic novel, a rarity in Japan), we have the first volume of Magic Girl manga Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Hey, do you want to buy a magical girl manga? Kyubei can sell one to you!

But wait, Yen has even more! The penultimate volume of Bamboo Blade; the 12th Haruhi Suzumiya manga, which starts to adapt the 7th novel; new Nabari no Ou, Omamori Himari, Pandora Hearts, and Sumomomo Momomo, which I don’t have anything clever to say about; and the 9th Soul Eater, which I would say features things spiraling out of control, except that might imply Soul Eater had control in the first place. And lastly, there’s the 3rd volume of Daniel X, which is an OEL adaptation of the James Patterson series. Who doesn’t love OEL?

So what are you devouring next week?

Combat Commentary: Bleach (The Entire Series)

May 16, 2012 by Derek Bown 1 Comment

It occured to me that in the event that I ever run out of fights to cover (HA!), I needed to think of variations on my basic theme. And then I thought, instead of focusing on individual fights, it would be worth it to look at the basic fighting style(s) of entire mangas. If the overall fighting style of the manga isn’t interesting, then no amount of individual fights can salvage it. So in the spirit of imposing my opinion on which fighting manga are worth your time, I will start this brand new variation on my old theme.

Bleach has been called Dragonball Z, with swords. And I personally have absolutely no idea where anyone ever got that idea. I mean it’s not like Bleach spends insane amounts of time on fights, has characters of world shattering power, constant powerups, and always one more enemy to overcome … okay so maybe I can see where people might get that idea. But this is not a piece comparing DBZ and Bleach, rather it’s about the fighting in Bleach as a whole.

While Bleach does fall under the category of a “sword” manga, the swords are never really focused on that much, at least not later on in the series. There is no actual swordplay that goes into the series, rather it’s about who has the higher spirit power. Essentially the swords could be removed from the equation, and absolutely nothing would change.

Where a series like Rurouni Kenshin focuses a great deal on the philosophy of swords, different sword techniques, etc, Bleach takes a different approach. Rather than taking a swordsman philosophy stance, Bleach instead takes a “warrior” stance. The characters are not seen as swordsmen, but rather as warriors. This is emphasized by the fact that several of the characters have releases that remove all semblance of swordsmanship from their fighting style.

While there are several fighting styles presented in the manga, the most basic form of combat is using Zanpakuto, which are essentially the only weapons capable of damaging spirits. Each Zanpakuto has three forms it can take. The basic form is that of a Katana, which rarely gets used during fights as the series progresses; the next form is the Shikai, which changes the form of the Zanpakuto and gives it extra powers—very few of the Zanpakuto still look like swords after this initial release; the final release is the Bankai, which enhances the basic powers given by the Shikai, and enhances the spirit powers of the wielder.

Initially the basic enemies, Hollows (fallen spirits that devour other souls), have a variety of powers, but as the series progresses they are replaced by the Arrancar, a new form of Hollow that have removed their masks to gain Soul Reaper powers. They seal their Hollow powers into Zanpakuto that they can release to unseal those powers.

Throughout the later volumes of the series, a lot of focus is put on why Ichigo fights, with a fair bit of philosophizing going on about what it means to be a warrior. The fights, early on at least, are well developed, and take advantage of the unique powers to make every conflict interesting. In a way, despite the initial focus being swords, moving away from swords is a good idea, as it provides an infinite number of possible powers. But as the series progresses, more focus is put on nothing but the fights. And without the investment required to care about the conflict, I for one was left uninterested in any of the fights, especially since many of them devolved into just sword fights, something the series had moved away from.

Overall, Bleach took full advantage of a large variety of powers, and made fights that were a delight to read. Unfortunately, the fights lost their luster later on, resulting in a series that focuses entirely on fights, but fails to instill them with any kind of gravitas. Considering that for a while it was one of the only series where the outcome of the fights could really get me emotionally invested (see Ichigo vs Ulquiorra), it’s a real shame to have lost that.

I hope you enjoyed this new format. I’ll still focus on individual fights, but I think it might be interesting to look at the fighting styles of a series overall. I can’t promise anything just yet, but eventually I plan to broaden my gaze even further, and compare fighting styles of different series, to really show how they compare to each other, in an attempt to really understand what makes for a good fight scene.

Feel free to check out Derek’s blog over at Burning Lizard Studios, for manga and anime, as well as general graphic novel and cartoon reviews.

Comic Conversion: The Baby-Sitters Club

May 13, 2012 by Angela Eastman 7 Comments

The Baby-Sitters Club: Kristy’s Great Idea | Novel: Ann M. Martin / Scholastic | Graphic Novel: Raina Telgemeier / Graphix

Kristy Thomas has a great idea — she and her friends can work together to give beleaguered a one-stop-shop for baby sitters. That’s how the Baby-Sitters Club is formed, with Mary-Anne, Claudia, and the new girl, Stacey. A few problems pop up—prank calls, crazy kids, and accidental dog-sitting among them—but the club can work through it all. Stacey has a secret, and Kristy’s dying to know what it is. But when she pushes her new friend too hard, she risks losing the club when it’s barely even started.

Kristy’s Great Idea, the very first book in The Baby-Sitter’s Club, was originally published in 1986. Since then there have been 131 novels (and that’s not including any of the spin-off series!), though original author Ann M. Martin only wrote the first 35 herself. In 2006, five years after the conclusion of the novel series, Scholastic’s imprint Graphix released a graphic novel adaptation by Eisner Award winner Raina Telgemeier. The books themselves went out of print in 2009, but recently, Scholastic began rereleasing the first several books for a new generation of fans.

Confession time—I was a HUGE Baby-Sitters Club fan. I owned half the novels, and continued getting the other half out of the library until I realized I was older than the characters I was reading about. I picked up the first Baby-Sitters Club book again with some trepidation. At the very least, it’s been 13 years since I last read a BSC novel, and as it tends to go with many things I loved as a child, I worried the book wouldn’t stand up today. I was wrong. Martin tells the story in simple but interesting prose, easily keeping her readers engrossed. And it’s funnier than I remembered, like when one child insists her cat, Boo-boo, has been bewitched by the creepy neighbor when the animal begins to freak out and streak across the yard. Now over 25 years old, the book has some quirks that date it in the 80’s (handwritten essays, overalls as a fashion statement), but much of the novel focuses on the girls and their relationships with both family and friends—universal problems with any preteen reader—so that the story still feels current and relatable. And although each of the characters has a particular role that she fills—the tomboy, the popular girl—within 150 pages Martin gives them enough depth so that we get realistic, fleshed-out characters instead of a group of stereotypes.

One thing I didn’t notice as a kid was the diversity in the book. A main character is Asian, many characters come from broken or mixed homes, and another deals with a disease. The Baby-Sitters Club covered a spectrum with its characters, but what’s really fantastic is how blended and natural this diversity is. Being a different race or having a non-traditional family doesn’t feel strange in this book, or forced as if Martin was trying to make a point. Instead it’s just natural—the way things simply are—a wonderful point of view for a children’s book to have.

Having now rekindled my love of Ann M. Martin’s series I went into Raina Telgemeier’s graphic novel with a decent level of excitement. From the front cover you can tell that this adaptation is crafted by a fan. The character designs are alive with personality, from Kristy’s wide grin to Mary-Anne’s perpetually nervous looks. She even manages to make Claudia look sufficiently more “grown up” than her friends while still making her believably 12-years-old. Characters’ faces carry a range of emotions that are more telling than some of the prose, like with the loaded looks Kristy gives Watson, her stepfather-to-be.

The graphic novel matches the quick pace of the novel, packing in all of the events without making the comic feel crowded and rushed. Like a lot of adaptations, Telgemeier transfers parts of the novel’s narration to the comic’s voice over, but it works better here than in most cases. The first person point of view keeps the narration sounding like Kristy’s telling the story. Also, Telgemeier is pretty wise in how she uses it, generally only inserting the narration when it would be too awkward or long-winded to put the information into dialogue or thoughts.

I was absolutely wrapped up in the world of The Baby-Sitters Club through elementary and middle school, and it’s with a glad heart that I say I can still recommend the novel today. The novel is funny and easy to relate to, and with the cute updated cover little girls might not notice that the book is three times as old as they are. Telgemeier’s graphic novel is also a great introduction to the series, so much fun and so well-crafted that I’m genuinely disappointed that only the first four BSC books received adaptations. Acknowledging my own bias, I lean more towards recommending the novel, but both are great books that I’d give to any little girl.

Have any graphic novel adaptations you think do a good job? Or a comic you want me to check out for you? Leave suggestions for future columns in the comments!