Features

50 Shades of Morally Unambiguous, Part 1

March 24, 2012 by Aja Romano 7 Comments

Hello, MB! First off, in response to requests to expand on a few of the terms I’ve been using in these posts (and thank you all so much for your comments!), I’ve created a glossary here! I will update it as new terms come up, and I will try to give more clarity in posts where concepts may not be clear. :D

Also! I have to say thank you to everybody for giving me such a warm welcome and providing such great comments! I really, really appreciate it and I hope that the gargantuan post I’m about to drop in your lap isn’t enough to permanently put you off this column. IF IT HELPS I am also subliminally recruiting for my cult.

Welcome to the second (or, really third) in a series of posts rebutting this week’s Dear Author series on fanfiction. The post I’m going to address today is a doozie: “Fanfiction: A Tale of Fandom and Morality.”

so i told melinda i would only write for MB if i could also recruit for my own cult.

Not gonna lie, this panda is me writing this commentary. I am this panda.
It’s been a few days of oh god please let the horror end / oh god how is this still not done

The entire Dear Author series on fic was prompted by the success of the novel 50 Shades of Grey, which began its life as a Twilight fic called “Masters of the Universe.” This novel is not the first Twilight fanfic to “go pro”—there are in fact a shitload of other ones. I have a more general post about the Twilight pro-fic phenomenon over at The Mary Sue today, so in this post I won’t focus on it so much as the argument around it. Fanfiction has for a long time existed as the elephant in the editorial room, and the wild success of 50 Shades is finally, for better or worse, forcing the conversation about whether or not fanfic is legitimate to move foward after a steady decade and a half of rapidly advancing the argument in fanfic’s favor. Suffice it to say that people on both sides of the argument, within fandom and outside of it, are up in arms about the fact that Twilight pro-fics have the audacity to openly link to their fannish origins and then sell different, “original” versions of themselves.

Things I’m Happy About (A Brief List):

that the author of the DA post, Has, is someone on my end of the spectrum of perspectives about fanfiction.

I’m happy that finally!!!! there is a NEW ARGUMENT about fanfiction! :D

I’m happy because Has’ argument illustrates how overwhelming remix culture is, how it’s confusing everyone, how it’s rapidly calling for paradigm shifts in the way we think about intellectual property, property law, copyright, publishing in the age of digital media, and collaborative creative culture.

I’m happy because this whole discussion can be seen as as a call to renegotiate copyright in the age of remix culture.

Things I’m Not Happy About (A Slightly Longer List):
Has makes a wide-ranging argument that for-profit fic converted from fanfiction is immoral. These are all direct quotes from the source post but I’m going to bullet-point them in the interest of simplicity. Has argues that “Taking an entire fanfiction story and turning that into a published book is:”

ethically wrong

a cynical ploy to market books… an easy way to cash in because there’s already a built-in fanbase that is able to market the book via word of mouth

[an indication] that the author does not believe what they wrote is strong enough to stand on its own merits but decided to publish it so they could profit by exploiting their fanbase

disappointing

might start off an ever-crazier circle of fanfiction based on fanfiction.

very detrimental to fandom and fanfiction

Okay, so. We have a number of different arguments being made here about why specifically profiting from fanfiction is dangerous, unoriginal, and immoral. There’s also another argument that’s not explicit, but which gets discussed repeatedly by fans in comments: that profiting off fanfiction is a violation of the code of ethics of the fan community. As commenter “S” articulates: “It’s an unwritten contract – fanworks are not to be made for profit.” Has herself is an active, proud member of fandom. She says that “Fanfiction is a great medium where fans can enrich and be a part of the world that they love.” Then she notes that, “historically, however, fandom has not been about making money, and any attempts to do so by fans were frowned upon.”

I want to start by examining this code of conduct in relationship to copyright. Then, in Part 2, I’ll talk directly about the value-added status of works published for profit under Fair Use, and then in Part 3 we’ll discuss the fears that all of this could hurt fandom. And finally we will cycle back around to morality. But first I’m going to give you a gif which illustrates your horror at realizing how involved this argument will be:

you won’t see the copyright infringement coming til it strikes

Which Came First, the Fandom or the Fic?

Fandom developed in the margins of pop culture; western media fanfiction in particular is tied to a sense of illegitimate production, subversive content, and bootlegged distribution. As U.S. and European fans have grown more open about what we do, we all insist that we do what we do for love and not for profit. And it’s true, we absolutely do, and will keep on doing so. But what gets forgotten is that this tacit ethical code grew out of the need to protect ourselves against the stigma of being thought of as “plagiarists;” as “unoriginal,” “untalented,” “only interested in porn,” “immoral.”

In other words, it was a code of ethics that grew out of marginalization, shame, and fear. Keep silent about what we do. Don’t give the creators/rightsholders any reason to care that you exist. Stay underground. KEEP IT SECRET. KEEP IT SAFE.

But all of this was before the age of the internet; before music sampling became commonplace; before Henry Jenkins published Textual Poachers, the first seminal academic work to argue that fanfiction was actually amazing; before Comic-Con became cool and creators started routinely interacting with fans; before fans started creating a discourse around what they did which challenged the pre-existing idea of fandom as shameful; before Youtube made fan response to a previous work literally just a click away; before it became clear to many of us that we are currently living in the middle of a remix culture where the gatekeepers of creative works are being more or less obliterated by the nature of global connectivity and the spirit of communal collaboration. And many fans, having grown up in this culture, naturally don’t see why they should keep fanwork secret and safe. It’s not hurting anyone, and it arguably is helping to create a more diverse world and inject multiple perspectives into discourse about creative works. What’s there to be ashamed of? This is a drastically different view of fandom than many people, fans included, hold even now, because the stigma of shame attached to geek culture is so high. But for a rapidly growing number of fans, what we do isn’t subversive at all. It’s creative, inventive, time-consuming, fulfilling, and cool.

I’m relieved that I don’t have to disagree with Has over the legitimacy of fanfiction; but I think we disagree about the source of this legitimacy. Has seems to feel fanfiction is legitimate because of the fact that it has a culture and community around it, because it has lots of people involved in creating an active thriving subculture. In other words, since lots of people are doing this thing, it’s okay.

I think this is completely backwards; and I feel like this is the crux of why so many arguments about fanfiction seem to many fans as though they’re being framed all wrong.

In my experience, most arguments about whether fanfiction is okay begin by examining the relationship of fanfics to copyright law. From this perspective, the Fannish Code of Conduct is always going to be front and center, because when we, as fans, are constantly seeing our activities framed with a view towards establishing their illegality, of course our first line of defense is always going to be “but we’re not doing it for profit!” and also “but look how many of us there are! You can’t sue all of us!” So endlessly the debate about fanfic cycles back around to the fact that since so many fans are doing it but they aren’t trying to profit from it, it’s okay to let them keep doing it.

But the impulse to expand on other people’s stories occurs on an individual level. It is a fundamental part of creativity. It happens whether or not you realize that it’s happening. I still remember reading an interview with Meg Cabot from years ago where she talked about how she wrote fanfiction on her own, privately, without ever realizing it was fanfiction. And Cory Doctorow claims to have written his first story at age 6—Star Wars fanfic. You cannot tell me, you will never be able to tell me that there are not millions of authors throughout the centuries who have not created books/stories/songs/movies/comics/art/parody in just this way. We don’t do it because we make a conscious decision to imitate other people’s styles, characters, voices; we do it because it comes naturally to us. We do it because we yearn to know more about what would happen if characters we love encountered new situations. We do it because imitation is how we learn to find our own voices. We do it because we want to see ourselves participate in something we love. And sometimes we do it because we get paid to do it.

You don’t have to have a community around fanfic to legitimize it. The community, as I talked about in the last post, just makes it that much more vibrant and wonderful, but the community doesn’t control or cause the flow of ideas. Stimulate, yes. Hamper, lol, often, as anyone who’s ever gotten sucked into Tumblr or TV Tropes and subsequently lost hours of their life will tell you. But the ideas exist apart from the community. Fanfiction will exist even if you take fans away from their fandoms. The fannish code of conduct—that we don’t do this for profit—was developed by our subculture to protect itself. It should not be taken as being some kind of literal restriction on the nature of creating fanfiction, because it can’t be. It is physically impossible to place a barrier between you and an idea simply because the idea might be linked to someone else’s.

Most people in the publishing industry know this, because, let’s face it, everyone knows about novels that began as fanfics, of authors who filed off the serial numbers, of fans who stopped writing in the middle of a work in progress to convert their fic into a novel because they realized they wanted to do something different with it. Some of us even know of editors and agents who explicitly seek out authors of fanfic and request that they convert those fics into originals. I have had editors approach me about existing fic; I have had friends approached by editors about their existing fic, as well as to request new fiction from them on the strength of having read their fanfic. These incidents have been happening for decades, and the only difference is that now a few fans are emboldened enough by the openness of the times we live in to actually claim their novels’ heritage as fanfics. They are actually attempting to give credit to the authors who inspired them, instead of changing names and contexts in secret and shame the way fans have had to do for years, all with the tacit complicity of the publishing industry.

When I say that framing fanfiction in the context of its relationship to copyright law is all backwards, I mean that the framework implies a causal relationship: copyright law exists, therefore fanfic is illegitimate. The opposing argument to this view has always been “but the fans are all right so let them keep doing it!” But transformative literature exists whether or not copyright exists, and the impulse to rework pre-existing stories is upheld and reinforced constantly in our society, be it through Pride and Prejudice and Monster Trucks or through endless revisions and retconnings of superhero myths and other comics universes, constant exploiting and profiting off works in the public domain, and literally innumerable examples of historical RPF which no one can copyright.

All of the agency, all of the sociohistorical evolution of narrative, all the power of creative impulse, stands behind the fanfic writer. It does not stand behind copyright. Just as you can’t place a code of conduct around the act of writing down an idea, copyright can never completely rein in the creative impulse to rework stories, because frankly that impulse is mightier than copyright law and will always be. You can’t order the entire of fandom to cease and desist, because even if you did, those works would all continue to be written. Only they would all be written a) in the privacy of their own homes, shared with no one, b) written and passed around via bootleg methods which would probably be impossible to control, and/or c) written and turned into “original” fic, exactly as they have been for centuries.

The code of conduct—fanfic is not for profit—is a lie. (Lol, THE CoC IS A LIE, GET IT /terriblepuns) It doesn’t suddenly erase an entire cultural history of reworking previous sources, or the publishing industry’s perpetuation of the practice, and it absolutely never has kept, never will keep, fans from turning fanfic into novels for profit. All it does is keep fans from admitting that they’re doing it, and it keeps the authors of the original work from receiving any kind of credit or residual benefit for having inspired the succeeding work.

OKAY I NEED A DRINK HOW ABOUT YOU GUYS.

Next up: looking at fair use works that make a profit and still fit within copyright. On to Part 2: Copyright, Transformative Fiction, and Value

BL Bookrack: March 2012

March 22, 2012 by MJ and Michelle Smith 13 Comments

Welcome to the March installment of BL Bookrack! This month, MJand Michelle take a look at two debut volumes from the Digital Manga Guild, Tweeting Love Birds and You & Tonight. In Brief: About Love from Digital Manga Publishing’s Juné imprint, and volume one of My Darling Kitten Hair from JManga.

Tweeting Love Birds, Vol. 1 (Kindle) | By Kotetsuko Yamamoto | Digital Manga Guild | Rated YA (16+) – Thanks to a back cover summary that made one of the characters sound intensely annoying, I wasn’t expecting much from Tweeting Love Birds. I ended up being pleasantly surprised, but that’s not to say that the book is riveting or unique.

Daisuki Ohtaka started playing baseball because his grandfather was a fan, and even goes so far as to enroll in his grandpa’s alma mater. He doesn’t seem to have much personal love of the game, however, and once he arrives and discovers the shabby state of the team, he immediately wants to leave. After the small and cute captain, Suzume Morino (aka “Tweetie,” a nickname derived from the fact that his name means “sparrow”), blackmails Daisuke (whom he promptly christens “Taka”) into staying, he finds himself becoming more intrigued by Tweetie and experiencing jealousy when others give him attention, even while maintaining that he is straight.

Yes, this might be another “only gay for you” story, but so far it’s kind of charming. It has a slice-of-life feel that I appreciate, with any baseball action firmly in the background, and sometimes it’s even funny. I snickered out loud, for example, when a drunk Tweetie proclaims, “Taka touched my boobies.” There’s nothing much original about the plot or its execution, but neither is there anything glaringly offensive. The adaptation by DMG group Boys’ Love Bang Bang is also flawless, with no errors or awkwardness to detract from one’s reading experience.

I’m a little surprised that Yamamoto-sensei was able to squeeze enough material out of this setup for a second volume, but there is indeed one more installment to go before the series is complete. Despite first impressions, I’ll be coming back for more.

– Review by Michelle Smith

You and Tonight, Vol. 1 (Kindle) | By Keiko Kinoshita | Digital Manga Guild | Rated YA (16+) – Rikuro has spent ten long years hiding his feelings for his straight best friend, Yasutaka, only to discover that Yasutaka gave in and slept with a male coworker after he begged and cried. Though the news gives him sudden hope, it also makes him begin to panic that his time is running out. But can his friendship with Yasutaka really survive the truth?

I’ve developed a bit of a love affair with Keiko Kinoshita’s work as of late, and this series has only deepened my feelings. Written in the same vein as her earlier two-volume series Kiss Blue, You and Tonight is a thoughtful, quiet manga about the delicate balance between love and friendship, and how two lifelong friends deal with the complications that arise when that balance is disturbed. Also like Kiss Blue, You and Tonight lets its characters process this sloooowly, which is one of the things that makes Kinoshita’s romance work so well. She isn’t afraid to let her characters wallow in uncertainty, and she certainly takes her time, but there’s never a sense that the story is dragging. On the contrary, there is tension in each moment, even the quietest ones.

Kinoshita’s artwork has always been on the understated side, but her expressiveness really shines here in this volume. She makes the most of her characters’ body language and subtle facial cues, working as much emotion into them as she does into her equally understated dialogue. Both Rikuro and Yasutaka process most everything on the inside, making their moments of visible weakness even more powerful. A single panel of Rikuro breaking down, alone in an elevator, springs immediately to mind. It’s an image that’s stuck with me for days after reading this volume. Digital Manga Guild localizing group Cynical Pink does a lovely job, too, providing a clean, lyrical adaptation that suits Kinoshita’s tone perfectly.

For fans of Keiko Kinoshita, this series is a must-read. For everyone else… it’s a must-read too. Highly recommended.

– Review by MJ

In Brief:

About Love (Kindle) | By Narise Konohara | Digital Manga Publishing/Juné | Rated YA (16+) – I’m late to the party on this title, and I can only say that with the deepest regret. With its complicated characters and slow-building romance, About Love is absolutely my type of BL. Mangaka Narise Konohara weaves an unlikely love story between two seemingly unremarkable characters—a fresh-faced newlywed and the insecure young wedding planner who discovers the truth behind his smile—and she does it with the utmost subtlety and care. From its expressive, melancholy cover to the very last page, About Love is thoughtful, moody, and stunningly poignant. The only downside is that this title is not yet available digitally, but if any recent BL title is worth the shelf space, this is it. Highly recommended. – MJ

My Darling Kitten Hair, Vol. 1 | By Haruko Kumota | JManga/Libre Publishing | Rated Mature – This title came to my attention by way of JManga’s ABC of BL/yaoi and I could not be more grateful for the introduction. This adorable manga follows the romance between a slovenly young writer and his salaryman boyfriend who has just come to live with him (in a charming, Maison Ikkoku-like setting) after maintaining a rather chaste, long-distance relationship for six years. It’s not often we see a romance manga that begins in the middle of the relationship, and even less often that the main pairing is surrounded by convincingly queer characters who feel authentic as part of the story and not just as glorified set pieces. Even more encouraging, the series is still ongoing in Japan, which means there is some hope of us having a good, long time with it. Honestly surprising and highly recommended. – MJ

Some 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: Ata (Digital Manga Guild)

A Comic Beam of Light

March 22, 2012 by Erica Friedman Leave a Comment

“Monthly Comic Beam A Magazine for the Comic Freaks!” reads the tagline of Enterbrain’s Comic Beam magazine.(コミックビーム)

At a mere 25,000 copies sold every month, Comic Beam is not a contender in sales in any category of manga magazine, but that’s not a concern for the creators and editors of Beam – instead, they are playing to the small, but hardcore comics-reading audience,people who don’t care what category a manga is but just want to read good stories. Nominally listed as “seinen” (for young men,) along with Kodansha’s Morning 2, Shogakukan’s IKKI and Hakusensha’s Rakuen Le Paradis, Ohta’s Manga Erotics F, Comic Beam can easily be considered part of a small, but slowly growing genre of manga not limitedby gender or age, but is targeted to “whoever reads it.” I have taken to referring to these magazines in my head as the “fifth column” (i.e., not shoujo, shounen, josei or seinen.)

Comic Beam is the home of a number of stories that have been published in English. Kaoru Mori’s story about love between different classes in Victorian England, Emma, wasthe first to make its way here, through CMX’s beloved but unfortunately unsuccessful edition. Astral Project (Marginal and Syuji Takeya), Bambi and Her Pink Gun (Atsushi Kaneko), King of Thorn (Yuji Iwahara), and Fancy Gigolo Peru (Junko Mizuno) have allbeen released in English. Eagerly received, and from Fantagraphics is Takako Shimura’s award-nominated tale of tweens dealing with gender transitioning, Wandering Son. Currently running (and adorning the cover of the image above) is Mari Yamazaki’s award-winning Thermae Romae, a story that whimsicallycombines modern Japan and ancient Rome through their shared cultures of bathing. (This series is about to be launched as a a live-action drama and anime in Japan.) I was both surprised and pleased to find Izumi Takemoto contributing a charming little Heidi-esque romp, Akane Kono Mahou, to the current lineup. Kaneko Atsusuhi’s dark speculative fiction manga Soil has generated some press on both sides of the ocean as well.

Enterbrain has a website, mostly to provide information for potential contributors.There are no chapter previews and currently no downloads. It’s a sparse, somewhat depressing site. Given the “experimental” nature of the work in Comic Beam, it would probably be a good choice to offer example chapters, but then, the audience already knows what it likes.

Taken as a whole, it’s easy to label Comic Beam an “art house” comic magazine. There’s room for the sweet, the grim, the wacky, the serious, real and fantastic, all with room to explore artistic stylings and story telling techniques. Comic Beam is indeed a comic for comic freaks. People who prefer their stories formulaic and predictable need not bother. The light from Comic Beam will appeal to few, but for those few, it will be a beacon illuminating the world of manga magazines.

Comic Beam from Enterbrain and Kadokawa Group Publishing: http://www.enterbrain.co..jp/ad/html/media14.html

*Originally published on Mangacast.

Fannish Inquisitions: Countering Assumptions About Fandom

March 21, 2012 by Aja Romano 24 Comments

Happy 6th anniversay, KAT-TUN! Thank you for providing us this useful visual metaphor for what often happens when other communities and fandom, er, collide!

Hi, MB! This is the first of a series of posts about fandom being written in response to a series of posts about fandom. The romance review site Dear Author is holding a week-long examination of fandom and fanfic—with somewhat confusing results. It’s my goal, through these posts, to argue for a more contemporary view of fandom and fanwork that falls more closely in line with a) how fans actually act in fandom, b) how fanwork actually operates and what it actually does, and c) the actual status of fanwork under the law.

Starting with the first post in the DA series, we have “How I Came to Appreciate Fan Fiction.” This is, overall, a fairly positive post, but it has a lot of outdated assumptions about fandom that I’d like to unpack.

To give Sunita D, today’s contributor, credit where it’s due, there’s probably always a moment of shock upon a first encounter with fanfiction, or doujinshi or yaoi, just like there is with any new concept. Like sporks! Or literal cloud computing! We might think of this first encounter as a moment of simple culture shock. Sunita even describes hers:

Of course I’ve hated certain books’ endings, I’ve wished for sequels, and I’ve thought about the off-page lives of favorite characters. But I’ve never written to authors to ask them to keep writing about a particularly loved protagonist. And I’ve never wanted to write my own versions of books. Not because I thought doing so would be wrong, but because it just never occurred to me.

Whoa, hold on a tic. Already we’ve run into the first of what will be many false assumptions about fandom and especially fanfiction in general throughout the Dear Author series on fanfic.

False assumption #1: All fans long to interact with creators.

“I’ve never written to authors to ask them to keep writing about a particularly loved protagonist.”

Okay, but most fans haven’t either. Most fans don’t need to, because our interaction with a canon has very little to do with what’s going on in the author’s head. This is a key aspect of fandom that many people outside of fandom get wrong. Many fans get very nervous and gunshy when the prospect of interacting with creators comes up, because those fans prefer as little contact with the makers of their canons as possible. Please note that this impulse is often not, not, NOT out of shame or embarrassment or fear of reprisals, but rather from a desire not to have the gatekeepers poking their noses in our business. There are exceptions, of course, especially in RPF fandoms; we are seeing something of a cultural shift happen as Twitter puts celebrities and fans in touch with each other on a daily basis. But for the most part, fans go about their business with little regard for TPTB (The Powers That Be). Which brings me to the next mistaken assumption:

False assumption #2: Fanfiction = Do-Over.

“I’ve never wanted to write my own versions of books. Not because I thought doing so would be wrong, but because it just never occurred to me.”

Most fans don’t want to write their own versions of books either. That’s not what fanfic is. Many people think of fanfiction as the practice of trying to prove a creator got it wrong. Not at all. For most fans, most of the time, fanfiction is not about rewriting canon.

Sure, a fan can write fix-it fic—but then they’ll turn write around and write something completely different. Fans explore their canons and play around with the worlds they’re engaging with in order to do something completely new. Take, for example, what may be the most popular narrative genre of all: the post-canon fic. The canon ends—you write about what happens after. But that’s a story that can be told and retold forever, because the possibilities are endless.

In general terms, fanworks are about expansion, not re-creation.

Happily, this is also the conclusion Sunita arrives at: This path isn’t just about creating new romantic relationships or changing unhappy endings to happy ones. What if you think the most interesting character in the Harry Potter novels is Luna Lovegood and you want to read more about her?…. Even if you adhere strictly to canon, there’s plenty of scope for your imagination.

From this point on, Sunita’s post is a plain, fair and positive view of fanfiction; but it’s a simplistic one. It justifies rather than celebrates. Which leads me to…

False Assumption #3: Fanfiction is just a simple, fun creative exercise that has no serious repercussions!

My main problem with all of this justification/explanation of fanfic is that it’s just SO DATED. I have been hearing people “defend” fanfic or try to “explain” fanfic in exactly this way for the last ten years. Two thousand-fracking-two, folks (and incidentally those defenses were on the front page of the NY Times, hardly out of mainstream cultural earshot).

And yes, everyone’s experiences are different, and I’m sure Sunita’s explanation is helpful for many people. But REALLY. TEN YEARS, GUYS. COME ON. CAN WE MOVE THIS DISCUSSION FORWARD A LITTLE? How’s this for an advancement:

Fanwork is dangerous because it challenges your worldview and makes you think critically about pop culture, literature, art, and the world you live in.

Fanwork has serious repercussions because it operates outside of traditional modes of access to ideas, and it is predicated entirely on a culture of free exchange and non-monetary systems of value.

Fanwork is complex and diverse. It opens minds, educates, and introduces new cultural experiences to the fan participant. It is anything but shallow.

SHIT JUST GOT REAL AKA THIS IS THE COOL PART OF THIS POST

In lit-crit terms, fandom is the living, breathing embodiment of Bakhtin’s ideas about dialogic imagination. Canon is monologic, expressing a single worldview, because usually canons have single or very few creators with one narrative goal in mind. But fandom? Fandom creates fics within communities, fics that are partly meta-commentaries, fics that arise out of passionate debates, fics that get reworked and turned into original fic, fics that offer serious literary critique, fics that seek to actively engage other fans in responding to them. Fandom is dialogic imagination.

Canon has to stick to the narrative parameters that define its medium. (Unless you are Homestuck and you are your own medium. Yeah, yeah, we know.) But fandom has no defined parameters and expresses itself any way it wants. Fics written in fictional languages? Have several! Fanart? totally and 100% canon compliant! Fanvids? How much is that geisha in the window, Joss?

Fandom constantly critiques privileged narratives, challenges established sociocultural ways of thinking, and expands the parameters of a particular established worldview. Have some of my favorite examples of fics that critique canonical narratives:

a fic in which the character of Mary Poppins is reworked as an Indian ayah in order to offer an important critique of British colonialism.
A fic written around Avatar: the Last Airbender which tells a post-canonical story of struggles for equality through a simple description of museum artifacts from various cultures within the Four Nations.
A Hikaru no Go fic that realistically portrays Hikaru coming to terms with his sexuality despite his best efforts.
An Inception fic that redeems the character of Mal (the protagonist’s dead wife) by imagining she was right all along.

WTF is this b.s. about fanwork being derivative? To quote Lev Grossman in his amazing Time magazine article, which you don’t get a link to because you have to SLOG YOUR WAY THROUGH THIS MESS WITH ME FIRST, these works “talk back to canon.” And they show their teeth.

We could have ended this post here (and I could have saved you 500 words, look, I tried, guys), because Sunita was on the right track! We could have worked with this! ugh, we were doing so good, Sunita. we could have been pals.

Except then we arrive at the money quote:

“Whether the changes authors introduce to these characters are sufficient to make the jump from derivative to transformative is not something we can usually predict in advance, but I think it’s important to have a conversation about what such a transformation entails and think about conditions in which authors might succeed or fall short.”

what. I mean. WHAT.

lsjdfksadjklad you don’t suddenly GAIN TRANSFORMATIVITY BY BEING THE SPARKLIEST OF ALL THE FANFIC PONIES IN DERIVATIVELAND, WTF.

(this is one of the results I got when I googled “fanfic pony.” Looks legit.)

False Assumption #4 & #5: Fanwork is Derivative / Fanfiction May Or May Not Be Legal.

I hope that at the end of the week Rebecca Tushnet will come along with her shining orb of Transformative Justice and articulate this idea as part of the DA series much better than I ever could (ETA: YESSSS she has!), but in her stead: There are absolutely no court rulings on whether a work of not-for-profit fanfiction is legal or not. None. That means all fanfiction is legal under the fair use clause of U.S. copyright law, safe and legal until proven otherwise. This protection will most likely last as long as the Fair Use clause exists. To quote the OTW, “current copyright law already supports our understanding of fanfiction as fair use.” And as long as current copyright law supports fanfiction, fanfiction is legally transformative.

It’s dishonest to talk about fanworks as if they pussyfoot around the law when they don’t. The ‘sliding scale’ train of thought implies that “transformative” fics have narrowly succeeded in evading the clutches of copyright law while “derivative” fics are just hanging around waiting to be slapped with a Cease & Desist. This train of thought implies shame, illicitness, wrongdoing, and flat-out genre snobbery and elitism. Most importantly, since presumably all fanfics (in the U.S.) currently enjoy legal protection, many fans don’t act as though they’re engaged in something that’s illegal. So the “sliding scale” perspective doesn’t even apply to us.

For comparison, look at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. You don’t see them going “Manga is not a crime! Except for the really, really dirty yaoi, and the shota, and okay, maybe we could really really do without the vore and the bukkake because honestly, people.” Their argument is simple: either all licensed manga, in all its forms, is legal and deserves protection, or none of it does.

By the same token, fanwork does not “succeed” or “fall short” by managing or failing to qualify as transformative.

And here’s the ultimate kicker—a concept that this series of DA posts sadly seems to completely miss: the meaning of ‘transformative’ creative work extends beyond purely legal contexts. It involves the power of creative expression to change the creator and the audience. To many fans, the act of conceiving and creating fanwork is a transforming act, before you ever write the first word. They are transformative because they transform the reader. You and me.

Fanworks Cited:

arboretum. “A Resolution of Territory.” Livejournal. May 5, 2008.

Dhobi ki Kutti. “Promise of the पुरवाई.” An Archive Of Our Own. June 30, 2010.

electrumqueen. “i am the hero of this story (i don’t need to be saved).” Livejournal. August 14, 2010.

eruthros. “Ephemera from the Avatar Collection at Republic City University with notes and commentary by the archivists.” An Archive Of Our Own. February 7, 2012.

Glock. “one last thing about Supernatural fanwork” and “Sam and Dean Winchestgopal.” Dreamwidth. June 15, 2010 and July 1, 2010.

Lierduoma. “How Much is the Geisha in the Window? (Firefly).” Youtube. July 24, 2009. (Fanlore listing.)

Shirozora. “So if Castiel was Zoe Saldana…” Dreamwidth. June 10, 2010.

Various authors. “Victorsverse Art and Artifacts. including the Ars Atlantiadae as well as Earth documents.” trickster.org. February 16, 2011.

Manga the Week of 3/28

March 21, 2012 by Sean Gaffney

A nice array of stuff this week, as… wait, what… could this be?

Legend speaks of an ancient and mysterious manga series, that detailed the exploits of a team of heroes whose job it was to embrace the dead and take on their causes for the betterment of all. Long thought to be a mere myth, the volumes were passed down from generation to generation in hopes that one day… ONE DAY their children’s children might someday see it. And now, that day is here! From Dark Horse, you thought it was gone, you thought it was sitting next to Translucent Vols. 4 and 5, YOU WERE WRONG!

Assuming that you are all buying this (You *are* all buying this, right?), there is actually SOME other stuff coming out next week. Gen Manga has Vs. Aliens, a collection of this series in complete form, and a great way to check out the alternative manga publisher if you haven’t already.

Kodansha has a trio of series. There’s Volume 4 of Animal Land, Vol. 5 of Deltora Quest, and the 3rd volume of cute 4-koma adventures of Shugo Chara-chan! None of which I follow. So, um, insert witty quip here!

When I looked at Midtown’s list about 1:30pm, they had listed the re-releases of Drawn & Quarterly’s three Tatsumi books: The Push Man, Abandon the Old in Tokyo, and Goodbye. Now that I look at it at 7pm, those releases were removed. So perhaps they are getting re-released next week… or not.

Lastly, Vertical gives comic shops its new re-release of Dororo, now in giant-sized brick format. Impress your girlfriends with how well you can bench press Dororo! To really show off, put A Drifting Life in your other hand!

So that’s it. Aside from Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service 12, what appeals to you?

Lofty idealism? Bitter rants? Might as well just call it “fangirling.”

March 20, 2012 by Aja Romano 20 Comments

Hi, MB! I’m Aja! I’m your newest columnist and I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’ve been brought on board primarily to give a pan-fandom perspective to the work being done on this site, and to regularly infuriate you all with my hastily conceived opinions! So let’s just dive right in, shall we? :D

This is F(X)! This is going to be a long post, HERE, HAVE SOMETHING FUN TO LOOK AT.

I’ve been in fandom for 14 years. I’ve been active in lit, media, RPF, and Asian fandoms, writing het, slash, and femslash. If this is all fangirl Japanese to you, please let me know, guys, because I am going to be spending a lot of time talking about fandom in this column (which is why it’s called FANBATTE! is that not the greatest name ever) and I want to make sure I start from the same place as the rest of you! I feel comfortable claiming a general acquaintance with fandom history and culture regarding literary fandoms, “western media” fandoms, comics fandom, sci-fi/fantasy fandoms, anime/manga fandoms, and Asian pop fandoms. I don’t claim that my knowledge is universal (lol what is gaming fandom, what is Vocaloid, what is Homestuck*), but I’m here and this is my column, dammit, so it’s enough to be going on with!

My mission statement, in a nutshell:

♥´¨`♥ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Fanfic is okay. Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ ♥´¨`♥

Not just okay, but amazing. I believe that participating in fandom is a way of engaging in critical discourse about something you love, and I also believe that fanfiction is part of a huge, centuries-old cultural tradition of recursive literature. Fandom is so cool, and I hope you’ll stick around to talk about it with me, because I’m still learning so much and I hope ! :)

The focus of this column will most likely shift between general topics and discussions of specific canons. I have no idea what those topics and canons will be yet, so if there’s something you’d like me to discuss, please let me know, because I would love to!

* lol j/k no one can explain Homestuck

Now. Let’s talk for a second about Fandom Perspectives. oh wait hang on MJ said this should be a header

Fandom Perspectives~

This week, the respected romance review site Dear Author is doing a series on fandom and fanfiction. Unfortunately, they’re doing it wrong. So, so wrong, you guys. It’s like they’re trying to have peace talks while hemmed in on all sides by barbed wire. FACEPALM.

In most of the posts so far, the panelists’ starting assumptions and their conclusions actually highlight many of the problems you run into when you generalize about fandom. And since part of what I will do in this column is generalize about fandom based on my personal experiences, I want to start by talking about why such generalization is tricky.

Dear Author has obviously tried to round up differing perspectives and different topics related to fanfiction, so kudos to them for that, really. However, they have not secured a plurality of experience or even knowledgeability about fandom, so their discussions are proving very unsatisfying to many actual fans I’ve talked to who’ve followed along.

There are 3 main reasons for this disconnect between us (as fans) and the representations of fan experience in the DA posts:

So far, all of Dear Author’s assumptions seem to be built around the idea that fanfiction has to defend itself, that by way of existing it is encroaching on someone else’s space. This is not only a false dichotomy but completely antithetical to the way most fans do fandom and think about their fanfic.
I can’t say this enough. To most fans, what they do is not shameful, it’s natural. And why shouldn’t it be? People have been reworking their favorite stories for centuries. Why is fanfic somehow any different? But if you start your deliberation of fanfic from the perspective that fans have something to be ashamed of, then you color the entire discussion with all kinds of icky assumptions and negative stereotypes. What I will be doing, in my first week here at MB, is unpacking some of these assumptions and attempting to offer a more balanced and nuanced examination of what fandom is and how it operates in various cultural corners of the internet.
There are no fans from non-western fandoms represented in DA’s list, nor are there any queer fans (at least none I saw representing themselves as queer fans) or femslash fans. If the only voices you hear coming from fandom are from people who are culturally closest to you, then you won’t ever have a well-rounded discussion on what fandom is.
The majority of the DA discussion about fandom is being had by people who come either from outside of fandom, or from within primarily het fandoms. By “primarily het,” I mean fandoms for which major emphasis is given to canon heterosexual ships within the source pairing, and whose discourse encourage their fans to adhere to canon relationships. (This doesn’t mean that there aren’t subsets of alternate pairing fans within those fandoms, but those other fans don’t typically interact with the rest of the fandom.)
Among these primarily het fandoms, the major ones claimed by the panelists tend to be isolated pockets of fandom that don’t have any interaction with other fandom communities. Fandom, like every other corner of the internet, is as diverse as the people who are in it. So you can have whole communities within fandom that never talk to other communities, and then you can have whole corners of fandom that are focused around being multi-fandom hubs and pan-fandom hubs (like Livejournal or formerly Delicious), that also have their own limitations and cultural expectations that don’t translate out to the “satellite” communities of fandom. And that can become a problem because you can wind up with people who have drastically different conceptions of: a) what fandom looks like; b) what fans are doing fandom for; c) who is in fandom; and d) what kind of fanworks are produced by fandom.

D) is especially important because the fanfic that you find on, for example, AFF, looks nothing like the fanfic you find on AO3. By the same token, someone who is in an archive-based fandom would not have the same conception of what fandom is as someone who is involved in primarily livejournal communities, or for example Tumblr, where there are natural overlaps and discourse between all kinds of fandoms and fans. The Austen and Twilight fandoms are both represented several times on the panel, probably because of their close ties to the romance industry. While these fandoms are totally different in many respects, they are both well-known for being primarily archive-based rather than pan-fandom-community based. This means that pan-fandom fans don’t talk to them, and they don’t talk to us, which leads to a huge disconnect on both sides about what fandom is for everyone involved.

As an example, for years every time rare fandom nomination came up during Yuletide, people attempted to nominate Pride & Prejudice, and every year those of us who actually knew anything about Austen fandom would have to explain that Pride & Prejudice is in no way a rare fandom; that it actually has thousands upon thousands of fanfics and hundreds more published fanfics to its name–they just were all tucked away in archives and not in spaces that the typical Yuletide participant played in. So this disconnect hurts communication on both sides of the divide.

All of this translates into a need to recognize that your experiences are not universal. I’m going to spend a lot of time counter-arguing many of Dear Author’s other posts from this week, so I’ll just point to their post “Fan fiction: a personal perspective” as an example of an open-minded post about keeping your own experience in perspective.

If only the rest of their posts took this advice! Instead, the overall impression of fandom that I and others are taking away from this series is that fandom is primarily shamefaced, defensive, and poorly attempting to justify copyright infringement.

To all of which, over the next week, I will be merrily calling bullshit.

Whew! Okay, so that’s me finished for now! What about you guys? WHO EVEN ARE YOU PEOPLE? Where do you come from? What perspectives do you bring to your corner of the internet? Are you in fandom? (Hint: are you reading this site? Then yes.) Oh my god this post is 1300 words long. HERE, HAVE ANOTHER K-POP GROUP.

Manga the Week of 3/21

March 14, 2012 by Sean Gaffney

After a somewhat sedate 2nd week, things heat up once again thanks to our friends at Kodansha, Seven Seas, Viz and Yen. And wait, could Yen have a SPOILER on their cover? (Well, yes, but I think we can blame Shodensha for that.)

First off, Kodansha has a new volume of Sailor Moon. Last we left our heroes, Mercury and Mars had been abducted by the enemy! Can Jupiter and Venus avoid the same fate? And what of Chibi-Usa? We also see what I believe is the final volume of Ninja Girls, which no doubt will end with our hero making a definitive choice of one girl and the series having a nice, definitive ending. (attempts to control laughter) Lastly, there’s another volume of Phoenix Wright, which is still only for fans of the games, but if you are a fan of the game, there’s plenty here for you to love.

It may not be there if you look under the ‘manga’ category at Midtown, but Young Miss Holmes has been misplaced under Independents! No doubt due to the title – I told Seven Seas they should keep calling it Christie High Tension! Wait, that might have been misplaced as well. In any case, the first omnibus of this Comic Flapper series collects Vols. 1 and 2 from Japan. Even if it wasn’t about Sherlock Holmes’ niece solving mysteries (which it is), it’s a Comic Flapper title, so deserves all our love. Seven Seas also has the 4th Gunslinger Girl omnibus, for those who are looking for something with a few more guns with your lolis.

Viz is down to just one Signature release a month, it seems lately. This month sees the 6th volume of House Of Five Leaves. The plot may move at the pace of a turtle who’s broken both legs, but if you can cope with that there’s some gripping drama here.

At the end of my review of Vol. 4 of Bunny Drop, I asked if Vol. 5 would bring something new to the table. And behold! Everyone’s favorite warm and fuzzy single dad series is moving onward. Will it still be able to carry the same heft with the heartstrings? Also out from Yen this week: a new Bamboo Blade (sports manga 4tw!), the 3rd volume of Bride’s Story (so pretty…), the 5th volume of wacky 4-koma antics of Haruhi Suzumiya-chan, the 9th volume of Pandora Hearts (can I take a series with the name Alice Baskerville seriously?), the 6th volume of economic dissertation Spice & Wolf, an 11th volume of Korean manwha 13th Boy for my fellow Manga Bookshelf colleagues… (sigh) and yes, the first volume of harem crossdressing comedy Is This A Zombie?, which does not get the cover pic this week as I have some self-respect left.

So what’s appealing to you?

Combat Commentary: One Piece Ch. 656

March 14, 2012 by Derek Bown 1 Comment

Warning: Spoilers follow for the more recent chapters of One Piece, published in Weekly Shounen Jump Alpha. Proceed at your own discretion.

click image to enlarge

Is there a minimum length for a fight? A character getting knocked out in one panel hardly counts, but how many panels are necessary for something to qualify as a real fight? How many pages are needed? Is a quarter of a chapter the minimum? Half a chapter? Maybe an entire chapter is the bare minimum for something to qualify as a fight. Of course this is mostly semantics, and everyone will have his or her own opinion. But opinions are nothing without evidence, so here is a piece of evidence that a fight can, in fact, be just one chapter long.

What Happened?
After leaving Fishman Island, Luffy and crew make their way to the surface of the New World to find the sea around them aflame. Through the flames, they see a burning island. Luffy picks up a distress call from the island, naming it “Punk Hazard.” The person calling for help says they are being attacked by a Samurai, and strangely complains about how cold it is. Luffy, Usopp, Zoro, and Robin draw the short straw and are chosen as the ones to go and find that person. They make their way onto the island, and after a bit of searching (somehow avoiding being set on fire) they find themselves face-to-face with a Dragon.

(click images to enlarge)

What Happens?
At first, the Dragon is too strong for Luffy and Zoro to fight it. Its scales are too thick to be cut, and too hot to even touch. The dragon’s breath keeps the two fighters at bay, and it seems like the dragon can shrug off any of Luffy’s blows. Even stranger, the dragon seems to be talking!

The dragon takes to the air, and Luffy jumps up to knock it out of the sky so that Zoro can finish it off. While on the dragon, Luffy sees that there are a pair of legs sticking out of the dragon’s back. The dragon tries to bite Luffy, but ends up biting its own wing. As the two fall, Zoro uses one of Usopp’s plants to jump into the air, and finishes off the dragon.

What Does it Mean?
First off, the appearance of an actual dragon in the manga makes the Apis Filler Arc in the anime look absolutely ridiculous now. Those dragons were feathery pussies. This dragon—now this is the real deal. Too bad for it, Luffy and Zoro are beyond overpowered now.

It's still badass, it just had the misfortune of living in a time where Skyrim taught us not to fear dragons.

Out of all the fights in shounen manga, this one stands out for not only its brevity, but for following all the required phases of a shounen fight. Just like Toriko’s battle against the GT robot, the heroes go from being unable to defeat their opponent, to figuring out how to do it and winning—the difference being that rather than changing tactics, it is just a matter of time before one of them lands a solid hit and finishes the dragon off.

The problem is, that though the first half of the fight sets the dragon up as a legitimate threat, the ease with which it is finished off ruins that. Luffy and his crew are in the strange position of essentially getting to experience the beginning of the series all over again. One Piece started off with fights that were no real challenge—that served the purpose of showing off the characters’ strength. As the series progressed, the opponents got harder and harder to beat, and the Strawhats had to struggle more and more to win. But at this point, after the two year training period, there will be fights like this one, where the opponent seems dangerous, but in reality are no match for any of the Strawhats.

Except for some.

With the exception of the ending being a disappointment, this is still a fun fight to read. Not only is there the novelty of seeing our heroes fight a mythical creature, but it bodes well for the rest of the series. If the creatures found here are so badass, what does that suggest about future villains?

That they're out of shape astronauts?

This fight currently holds the honor of being the shortest fight ever covered in this column. And yet it still works. Oda shows that he knows not only how to be entertaining, but how to fit as much entertainment value as possible into each of his pages. Unlike some creators who waste their pages with white space, Oda fills every panel with as much detail as possible. Though this may come across as cluttered for some, it provides the most content in the least space. And while this is not a column about One Piece in general, it still bears noting that out of all the manga series available weekly, this remains one of the most satisfying reads around.

All images from Shonen Jump Alpha, © Eiichiro Oda/SHUEISHA Inc. Chapter available in full at vizmanga.com.

Comic Conversion: Soulless

March 9, 2012 by Angela Eastman 2 Comments

Soulless | Novel: Gail Carriger / Orbit Books | Manga: REM / Yen Press

Twenty-five-year-old spinster Alexia Tarabotti has a a few problems. First, she’s a spinster, and being a half-Italian in Victorian England isn’t helping. Second, she’s a preternatural, a human without a soul. And third, a vampire has just died–and it might be her fault! Alexia finds herself in the middle of a mystery involving vampire hives, royalty, and scientists, as rove vampires and lone werewolves are disappearing. In the midst of it all, Lord Maccon, the werewolf pack leader and head of the Bureau of Unnatural Registry, is taking a decided interest in her, and not just because of her preternatural powers. It’s enough to overwhelm any lady–but Alexia is out to prove that she’s much more formidable than that.

Soulless, written by Gail Carriger, is the first novel in the Parasol Protectorate, a paranormal romance/mystery series from Orbit Books. The story takes place in a Victorian England where werewolves, vampires and ghosts are not only real, but are a part of every day society. Last July, Yen Press debuted the manga adaptation of this series in Yen Plus magazine, and has just recently released the first volume in the series, trusting the artist REM (Vampire Kisses) to bring Carrriger’s steam punk supernatural romance to life.

Two pages into the Soulless novel I found myself utterly delighted with the prose. Taking on a distinct Victorian tone, Carriger uses the slight sarcasm you get from a Jane Austen novel to describe a surprise vampire battle. This creates some hilariously fancified lines (“For his part, the vampire seemed to feel that their encounter had improved his ball experience immeasurably.”) and amusing quips (“to put the pudding in the puff”) that plastered a grin on my face from the start. Of course, it pretty quickly feels like Carriger’s laying it on too thick, but luckily she seems to find a happy medium, and the tone evens out.

Soulless is a pretty steamy book, and while like most romances the “amorous activities”, as Alexia calls them, can get out of hand (making out in a jail cell? Really?) the love story never completely overshadows the mystery. The characters themselves are a treat: Alexia is smart and sharp-tongued, and despite the historical and cultural hindrances is a pretty inspiring female character. Lord Maccon is a little more one-dimensional as a gruff werewolf with a soft spot for a certain spinster, but it’s adorable to watch him fumble with human vs. werewolf courting. Members of Alexia’s immediate family fall flat: her sisters are foolish, her step-father is disconnected, and her mother is arrogant (by the end I don’t see why she would stoop to marrying an Italian in the first place). But other side characters liven up the story, with the flamboyant-but-formidable vampire Lord Akeldama, Alexia’s mildly eccentric friend Miss Hisselpenny, and Maccon’s perceptive Beta Professor Lyall, allowing our main pair to vent their thoughts while still showing plenty enough personality to make them interesting on their own.

The characters are just as appealing in the manga, with REM’s art style helping to enhance that. Akeldama is still exceptionally flamboyant, with outfits and mannerisms just as fancy and theatrical as I imagined. His exuberant, italicized dialogue is cut down a bit, but his sly smiles and occasional shift to a super-deformed look gives him the energetic feel of a mischievous child. Lord Maccon maintains his roughness in dialogue, though REM gives him a cleaner look than I would have pictured. Still, his care and interest in Miss Tarabotti is both more amusing (an arrow leads his gaze right down Alexia’s cleavage), and more endearing. REM also seems to know enough not to let text boxes overwhelm the art. Because of this, the occasional heavy-handedness of Carriger’s Victorian prose is eliminated, leaving us only with the delightful bits (“I say!” says Alexia as a vampire tries to kill her. “We have not been introduced!”).

The pacing of the comic is generally very even, with a good balance between the supernatural mystery and the romantic plot. On a couple of occasions REM chose to cut scenes out. Much of the deletion has little affect on either the flow or understanding of the story, like when Alexia’s mother and half-sisters return from a shopping trip: while it’s interesting in that it deepens the reasons for Alexia’s dislike of her own family, all this scene does is emphasize her sisters’ frivolousness and her mother’s condescension, things we’ve picked up on well enough. This scene is not missed, but another, when pudgy scientist Mr. MacDougal takes Alexia on a carriage ride, is a little more noticeable. While the book has him taking her around town as he explains his scientific theories, the comic only shows the end of the ride, when he drops Alexia off, and she merely comments that he had some “interesting theories on the soul.” Readers may be able to guess the conversation based on the dinner from a few pages earlier, but the main problem lies in the abruptness of the scene, giving the distinct feeling of something having been hacked out.

Both versions of Soulless had a couple of missteps in pacing that momentarily jarred me out of the story, and the romance scenes didn’t always have the best timing, considering the other tensions going on. But I easily jumped right back into the flow, and the romance is sexy enough to make up for the occasional poor placement. Soulless could have gone the route of many a paranormal romance novel, making the supernatural plot nothing more than a cheap gimmick, but Carriger manages to create not only an enticing romance but also an engrossing mystery and a fleshed out, believable fantasy world. REM’s art style and sense of panel layout gives us an adaptation that’s just as enjoyable, so in this case I say pick your favorite medium – you can’t go wrong either way.

Manga the Week of 3/14

March 7, 2012 by Sean Gaffney

After an insane week this week, the manga world has decided to take pity on us. Well, mostly. Except for this giant pile of BL. Let’s start with that.

There’s a bunch of stuff from DMP out next week. There’s a volume of short stories by prolific artist Minase Masara, released under the title Ambiguous Relationship. Beast & Feast has smoking hot police officer on yakuza love (or is it the other way around?), as well as a great title. Blue Sheep Reverie hits Vol. 5. (It used to run in Betsuhana! Honest! Can you picture it next to Otomen? Well, yes, actually…) Depression of the Anti-Romanticist also has a great title, and I think that it needs to have a cage match with Beast & Feast to see who’s best. Lastly, we have another volume of the novel series Yashikiden Demon Princess, which I know little of except it’s by the Vampire Hunter D author.

Kodansha Comics wraps up a series, as we get the final volume of Monster Hunter Orage, from the Fairy Tail creator. We also get the 18th volume of Fairy Tail, which I hope to like more than the 17th.

Vertical has a final volume as well, with Vol. 12 of Twin Spica. This contains Vols. 15 and 16 of the Japanese series, and means I finally get to decide once and for all if it’s heartwarmingly uplifting or crushingly melancholy. I suspect I’m going to pick the former. If you don’t get this series, you missed out on something special.

Viz has two Pokemon volumes. I know I give these short shrift here, but… if you like Pokemon, get these! That’s about all I can say.

Lastly, in non-manga news, Fantagraphics is finally releasing the first in a series of collections of the comic strip Nancy, by Ernie Bushmiller. This isn’t the first chronologically – like Carl Barks, they’re picking and choosing what years to begin with – but that doesn’t really matter. The comic we all thought was even duller than Garfield as a kid turns out, when our parents were kids, to have a certain zen brilliance that’s hard to sum up in words. If you like classic comic strips, check this out and be amazed what one artist did with just minimalist art and vaudeville gags.

So what would Sluggo buy this week?

Combat Commentary: Fairy Tail Vol. 11, Ch. 86-87 – Lucy & Juvia vs. Vidaldus Taka

March 6, 2012 by Derek Bown 2 Comments

The good thing about writing about fight scenes in shounen manga is that I will never run out of material. The bad thing is that I have too many to chose from. When considering which battle from Fairy Tail to write about, I had to eliminate several possibilities, though chances are they will all see the light of day eventually.

Let’s be honest, women get a raw deal in shounen manga. More often than not, the female lead is one of the least appreciated characters. Her prowess is constantly being compared to that of her male counterpart. And with almost no exceptions, she is found lacking by an incredibly picky fanbase.

I could go into detail about how it’s ridiculous to judge a character’s value based on her combat ability, but that seems a little counter–productive for a column focusing on nothing but fights. Instead, let us talk about a series that puts the women on the same playing field as the men, and gives them a fair shot at being just as formidable as the boys.

Erza Scarlet is one of the rare female characters who is consistently stronger than the male lead. But she is not the female lead—that falls on Lucy Heartphilia instead. At first glance, Lucy comes across as the basic female lead in a shounen manga. More often than not, she needs saving, and she’s consistently weaker than Natsu, the male lead. The difference between her and far too many other female shounen leads is that she consistently gets at least one fight per arc in the latter parts of the manga.

Compared to characters like Naruto‘s Sakura (who’s gotten exactly one fight over the course of years of publication), Lucy may not be the most powerful character, and her fighting style isn’t as direct as shounen audiences like. But at least she gets fights, and she usually wins them. On the other hand, she also tends to lose her clothes during the fight. You win some, you lose some.

(click images to enlarge)

What Happened?
Erza, in a rare case of damsel in distress, is kidnapped by former friends of hers. They take her to the Tower of Heaven, where she and they had been child slaves years ago. There, Erza discovers that an old friend of hers, Jellal, has almost finished the Tower of Heaven, and intends to use the R-System within it to resurrect the dark wizard Zeref.

Natsu, Gray, Lucy, and Juvia make their way to the tower and infiltrate it to save Erza. After meeting up with Erza, who had escaped captivity on her own—damsel in distress did not agree with her—they all split up to take down Jellal. Lucy and Juvia go together, and are confronted by Vidaldus Taka, a punk rocker with the ability to control his hair and make women his slaves.

Eeyup, no subtext here. Just unfortunate translations.

What Happens?
Vidaldus takes control of Juvia, and turns her against Lucy. Juvia beats on Lucy, but her real feelings manage to make their way through. Lucy then realizes she can use the water that makes up Juvia’s body to summon her strongest Celestial Spirit, Aquarius. Aquarius floods the room with water, and Lucy and Juvia combine their magic power into a unison raid to overpower Vidaldus.

What Does it Mean?
Last week’s column brought up the issue of using established abilities vs sudden power-ups in the middle of battle. This is an example of the latter. Lucy and Juvia somehow manage to combine their magic powers, an ability that is never foreshadowed, nor is it ever explained or brought up again.

Clearly, you are meant to know exactly what this prior unexplained phenomenon is!

For all of his ability to create entertaining manga, Mashima is bad at ending things. Whether it be fights, or an entire story. The reliance on a deus ex machina (sort of) power-up is lazy writing, especially when the proper groundwork hasn’t been laid. The difference between a satisfying climax and a deus ex machina is always in the preparation that has been done prior to the climax.

That being said, considering this is the eleventh volume of the series, it’s actually only Lucy’s second proper fight. Fairy Tail does an interesting thing with her character. She starts off as being the damsel in distress more than once, but as the series progresses she becomes more involved in fights and even starts to win them on her own. More or less. She never really fights on her own, much the way a pokemon trainer never really fights his own battles.

I choose you...Dewgong?

If Natsu, Gray, and Erza get the big cool moments, with epic powers clashing against mighty foes, Lucy gets the small cool moments—such as the moment she realizes she can summon Aquarius using Juvia’s unique body structure&mdashwhich makes the random power up at the end of this fight all the more a shame. Lucy is one of the characters who fights differently from the average shounen fighter. She has to use more strategy and take advantage of her surroundings and the unique abilities her Celestial Spirits give her. Generally, her fights are more interesting than most of the other characters,’ which isn’t too shabby at all for a member of a demographic too often neglected in shounen manga.

How about you? Is this shoddy writing at its worst, or an interesting start to a well-rounded character development? Best comment wins cake. Also, if you have any requests for future entries to this column, feel free to submit them here. If I’ve already read the manga, then the chances of it getting covered are much higher. Also, be sure to check out my blog at Burning Lizard Studios.

Manga The Week of 3/7

February 29, 2012 by Sean Gaffney

First week of the month, which means it’s a landslide. As always.

Midtown lists Zetsubou-sensei 13 from Kodansha, which I got today. It also has Cage of Eden 4, which I didn’t get today, and Air Gear 22, which I simply don’t get. In many ways. (Two very fanservicey titles, and Zetsubou-sensei. Which I suppose has service this volume as well, but… it’s not really the same.)

Vertical has the 3nd and final volume of Usamaru Furuya’s manga adaptation of No Longer Human, which promises to bring things to an appropriate finish. That means no picket-fence and two-car garage, I’m reckoning. You may have a better chance of getting that in Chi’s Sweet Home 8, which is not drawn by Furuya. (Though the mind reels at how he’d draw a chapter of it…)

Then there is the terrifying pile of Viz. Let’s start with shoujo, as we have another debut this month. The fantasy romance The Earl And the Fairy, based on a series of light novels, debuts. It looks very pretty, but I’ve heard good things about it anyway. There’s a new Black Bird, which is apparently wrapping up soon, having possibly run out of new ways to appall me. Dengeki Daisy should wrap up this current arc with an epic finish (I think… maybe? Long arc, anyway.) Kimi ni Todoke is almost caught up with Japan, but not quite, as we get lucky Vol. 13 here. La Corda D’Oro hits Vol. 15 with a new release (perhaps it’s speeding up now that it’s over in its home country). Oresama Teacher is apparently still not satisfying everyone, but I still adore it. Stepping on Roses is STILL NOT ABOUT SHOGI. And we get some re-releases of two of Viz’s most popular series, with 3-in-1 omnibuses of Hana-Kimi and Skip Beat!.

As for shonen? Bleach has a 2nd character book, showing that its fans are devoted enough to actually make a character book sell – quite a rarity in North America. There’s new Naruto and One Piece to slam into the bestseller charts. And new Psyren, which… well, probably won’t, but is still interesting. In Sunday manga, there’s new Rin-Ne and Arata. (Speaking of which, what ever happened to Sunday’s digital initiative? Did the weekly chapters die for the non-Takahashi stuff now as well?)

Lastly, there’s a new Volume of Fluffy Fluffy Cinammonroll, which just makes me hungry.

That’s a lot of manga. Is there anything you can’t live without?

Combat Commentary: Toriko Vol. 4, Ch. 26-28

February 28, 2012 by Derek Bown 3 Comments

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of food manga? Is it shounen fighter series? I didn’t think so…

Huh. I guess it would be kind of up there. Surprisingly enough, food is actually a major part of many shounen fighter series. Take for example Goku, Luffy, and Natsu, who are well known for consuming insane amounts of food. Or Naruto, who has a ravenous hunger for ramen. Or Yoshimori (from Kekkaishi) whose hobby is baking cakes. In some way or another, many shounen protagonists are connected to food, to the point where the big eating hero has become something of a trope. Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro took that trope and based an entire series around it, giving us Toriko.

The majority of Toriko features the titular character defeating and eating a large variety of exotic beasts. But in Vol. 4 he faces off against a human opponent for the first time. Or, rather, he faces off against a robot being controlled by a human. Nevertheless, this battle was the first one in which he found himself facing off against an intelligent opponent in a more traditional kind of fight.

What Happened?
Toriko and Komatsu visit Biotope 1, a place where rare gourmet ingredients are kept and studied, at the request of the International Gourmet Organization (IGO). While there, they discover an gladiatorial ring that pits rare and powerful creatures against each other as the rich and famous bet on the outcomes of the matches. When a pregnant Battle Wolf is pitted against four of the most vicious creatures in the world, Toriko steps in to protect the wolf while it gives birth. In the panic caused by Toriko breaking open the protective dome around the coliseum, a strange individual calmly remains sitting. Director Mansam confronts him, but he is attacked by the stranger, who reveals himself to be a GT Robot.

(click images to enlarge)

While Toriko and the Battle Wolf deal with an enraged Devil Python, the Battle Wolf finishes the beast off immediately after giving birth, only to be struck down by the GT Robot’s laser.

What Happens?
Toriko, enraged by the GT Robot’s sneak attack on the Battle Wolf, faces off against the machine. None of his attacks do any damage, as the robot is made of a Titanium alloy—even its joints are reinforced. Toriko, after taking some gruesome damage, goads the robot’s controller into using his most powerful attack. Doing this exposes his only weak point, the laser array inside his head, and Toriko takes advantage of that moment of weakness with his most powerful concentrated five fold spiked punch.

What Does it Mean?
This early on in the manga, Shimabukuro is still exploring the extent of Toriko’s power. He manages to create a fight that not only is a legitimate challenge for his hero, but also allows him to expand his strength. Toriko has three basic attacks available to him; Knife, which allows him to use the edge of his palm to cut through almost anything; Fork, an attack that uses the tips of his fingers to give him great penetrative strength; and the Spiked Punch, which comes in scatter and concentrated varieties, and has a power level that can be adjusted depending on how many times he punches.

As far as fights go, this one is surprisingly short. The GT Robot is shown as being indestructible, and then Toriko finds a way to enjoy it. Sometimes brevity is best, in this case it most certainly was. Toriko is still in the early stages of his development, but he is also still in the stage where he can take care of most opponents with relative ease. The fight is almost elegant in its execution. It uses the basic elements of a shounen battle: an overwhelming opponent appears who apparently cannot be beaten, the hero takes some damage, and finally the hero discovers the power within himself to overcome his opponent. Toriko takes that framework, which usually spans several chapters in most series, and condenses it down to barely two chapters. It’s shounen battle at its most basic.

While it isn’t uncommon for the hero to defeat his opponent by discovering a new power, Toriko instead adapts his already established attacks, modifies his fork attack into a more penetrative icepick, and uses what he already has to defeat his enemy. He shows intelligence in how he fights, taking his ability to absorb incredible amounts of damage and marrying it to an intelligent mind, making him one of the tougher shounen heroes around.

The framework by which all shounen battles work, shown so elegantly in this example, is crucial to a good fight. The way in which it is executed determines the enjoyment of the fight. Fights that don’t follow this basic framework tend to suffer pacing issues. Because a good fight is like a good mystery, the method in which the hero overcomes his foe is crucial. And sometimes it can be something as simple as using the tools they are given that provides the reader with the most satisfaction.

Special Edition: Interview with JManga’s Robert Newman

February 23, 2012 by Brigid Alverson

The digital manga portal JManga got off to a slow start, but it has gained traction among manga fans for a number of reasons: Cool, quirky manga, reasonable prices (once the site owners abandoned the original price of $8.99 per volume), and good communication with fans.

We can thank Robert Newman for the latter; from the very beginning, he was out there as the public face of JManga, listening and responding to every review and snarky Tweet–and getting results, such as the price drop. As we mentioned the other day, Newman has been lobbying the 39 Japanese publishers involved in JManga for something else that a lot of people want: Global reach. Currently, JManga is available only to U.S. and Canadian readers, but the demand is worldwide, and Newman has been asking readers to respond to JManga’s Twitter and “Like” their Facebook post on opening the manga portal up to the rest of the world.

I asked Newman if he could talk a little bit about the inner workings of JManga and why they can’t just pull a switch and open it up to the world. As long as I had him, I asked some general questions as well.

Brigid: First of all, what makes you think it would benefit JManga to go global? What sort of demand have you seen from your side?

Robert: We would like to think of JManga going global as being more of a benefit to manga fans than to us as a company. We have received countless comments from manga fans worldwide who have come with high hopes to JManga.com only to be shut out by our sky blue geo-filter screen. Another major merit to manga readers worldwide is that JManga provides a legal and safe alternative to reading manga online that benefits readers, manga artists, and publishers.

Brigid: Why are the publishers reluctant to do it? Is there a general consensus or do opinions differ?

Robert: The main reason is that each publisher has their own policy regarding international development and each publisher’s licensing situation differs. So we have had to develop a system with each policy and licensing situation in mind.

Brigid: Would you consider offering the manga in languages other than English?

Robert: Our system is built to handle multiple languages. We hope to add languages following demand.

Brigid: Are there complications with taking different currencies?

Robert: This is something we gave had to consider carefully. If we can go global, we will start off as a service made for America and Canada, but that can be accessed worldwide. In short a kind if extension of our current service.

Brigid: What are the most popular manga on the site?

Robert: Though we have had a very good reception accross the board, the more niche titles, yuri and foodie titles for example, have been especially well received.

Brigid: Are you noticing any interesting patterns, such as people reading in the evening, geographic distribution, etc.?

Robert: Initially I had expected to see peak views clustered in the evening to night times, but what we have actually found is that readers are enjoying JManga pretty much all day long, from the early morning to the late night!

Another interesting point that we have found is that female readers generally spend more on manga than male readers. This is the same as readers in Japan.

Brigid: How do you see the site evolving over the next year or so?

Robert: Our main goal for the next year is to adapt and enhance our site to the needs of users worldwide and to release as much content as possible.

Subtitles & Sensibility: Three with Ken’ichi Matsuyama

February 22, 2012 by Jaci Dahlvang 4 Comments

Last spring at the Seattle International Film Festival, I discovered Ken’ichi Matsuyama through a sold-out screening of Norwegian Wood. The film came back to Seattle this winter, so I took the opportunity to see it again and then decided to check out a few other Matsuyama films.

An adaptation of the popular Haruki Murakami novel, Norwegian Wood is an overwhelmingly sad picture which played better the second time through.

The film centers on Toru (Matsuyama), a university student who is torn between the tragedy of his past and the possibilities for his future. The past is represented by Naoko, the longtime girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. After his inexplicable suicide, Naoko and Toru try to process the devastation together. For Naoko, it is impossible to deal with, and as she sinks into depression she threatens to pull Toru down with her.

However, at university Toru meets Midori (the utterly charming Kiko Mizuhara), who gives him the opportunity to choose life.

The first time around I found the film very heavy, unsurprisingly! It is more emotionally intense than the novel, partially because the film is more present, whereas the novel was reflective. The novel left space for humor, like expanding the character of Toru’s roommate Storm Trooper, and it took us out of the potentially-claustrophobic triangle of Toru, Naoko, and Midori by allowing more space for characters like Naoko’s eventual roommate Reiko to develop.

However, I am nothing if not understanding of the limits of adaptation. Tonal departures or character embellishments which work in a novel can easily feel out of place in a film.

More importantly, Norwegian Wood is a gorgeous piece of cinema. I was better able appreciate the unique textures, both visual and aural, when I saw it the second time. Overall the film is very lush, and it was easy for me to get lost in the visuals of everything from the gorgeous landscapes of the countryside to the patterning of fabric, and the excellent sound design between the university and the woods. Toru is swept through the film on waves—waves of sorrow, waves of protesters, and waves of wind through the long grasses on his long walks with Naoko—and I was willing to be swept along with him.

I followed it up with another, rather different adaptation. Death Note, based on the manga of the same name, is the story of Light, a college student with dubious ethics who discovers a notebook. It’s the death note of the title, and it is quite a find. If you write someone’s name in it, they die.

Of course, it isn’t quite that simple. We quickly learn the many rules of the death note, and to the credit of the plot, the rules appear perfectly timed to answer audience questions.

Light (Tatsuya Fujiwara, devilishly creepy) uses the notebook to become a sort of Dexter Morgan from afar, causing the deaths of people who he thinks truly deserve it. However, he quickly begins using it in his own self-interest, killing the innocent, and manipulating the rules to manipulate people. Having not read the manga yet, I don’t know if Light is so unapologetically unpleasant in that as well. I hope so! I like the idea of a main character that the audience is so quickly turns against.

Light is accompanied in his adventures by a Shinigami named Ryuk, a sort of death god who owned the notebook before, dropped it in hopes someone interesting would pick it up, and now is just curious what shenanigans Light might get up to. Ryuk is essentially the world’s worst imaginary friend. The character, delivered via cartoonish CGI, resembles nothing so much a death metal version of the Joker, if the Joker was addicted to apples.

Ken’ichi Matsuyama, offscreen for over half of the film, plays the mysterious L, a reclusive genius detective. He’s an almost-otherworldly character, pale and compact, locked away in a hotel room and outsmarting criminals from afar. He steals the movie with his physicality alone, nearly unrecognizable between this and his role as Toru. Shoulders hunched, he hides behind eye makeup & shaggy hair, living off of sweets.

Both L and Light are childlike, existing very little in the real world and instead hiding away in their respective rooms, playing out a high-stakes game of strategy virtually. With all of the screens (television news, security footage, and the like) it’s almost a video game with real-world consequences.

Speaking of consequences, ladies do not fare well in Death Note despite my early hopes, particularly for Naomi Misora, a stellar FBI agent. One is introduced solely as a set-up for the second film, and others exist to be manipulated by Light via the notebook.

The whole structure of Death Note is frustrating because Light has absolute power with the book. He kills from afar, and after the deaths have been played out we take no pleasure in learning how the manipulations work. We’re seeing the strings of a show we didn’t enjoy the first time around, and as the film progresses and the deaths become more elaborate, I started to despair that anything will stop Light.

Thanks to the cliffhanger ending, I’m going to have to check out the second film to see if it ever happens. I’ll be sure to report back.

In contrast, Gantz was also a film based on a manga series and split into two parts, but the first film worked as a complete story on its own. Though clearly there are many unanswered questions regarding the mechanics of the plot and the fate of secondary characters, Kurono undergoes a satisfying character arc. There’s an emotional conclusion if not a technical one.

Gantz is strange, the sort of picture that would play really well with a midnight, cult-film crowd. It opens with the accidental death of two high school students, Kurono (Kazunari Ninomiya) and Kato (Matsuyama). Rather than moving on to any traditional afterlife, they find themselves in an unfurnished apartment along with a few other people and a large black sphere.

The sphere has brought them here to participate in a life-or-death game, fighting against aliens who have been living on Earth. There are some rules to the game, though it seems fewer rules than were involved in Death Note.

Gantz features nice effects, great character design on the aliens, and very stylish cinematography by Taro Kawazu.

The film definitely raised a lot of questions. Are they really dead? Are they in limbo? How are they able to return to their old lives after missions? I have a lot of questions, so I’ll definitely be checking out the second film here as well!

Review copies of Death Note and Gantz provided by New People Entertainment.