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Fanservice Friday

Fanservice Friday: Pandora Hearts Art Preview

November 7, 2014 by Melinda Beasi 2 Comments

This year at New York Comic Con, publisher Yen Press gave out copies of their upcoming Pandora Hearts art book, Pandora Hearts ~Odds and Ends~, as prizes during their panel presentation. I was unable to attend this year, but fortunately for me, Sean is not a fan of the series, so he generously offered me his prize!

As you probably know, I am a big fan of Pandora Hearts, and the series has been featured in this column pretty heavily in the past, most notably in discussion of female-aimed fanservice in shounen manga and delectable manga costuming. So for a treat this week, I thought I’d share a few snapshots as a taste of what’s inside. If you were worried about a potential lack of fanservice, the very first image should quell your concerns immediately. Enjoy!

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Look for Pandora Hearts ~Odds and Ends~ in bookstores later this month!

Filed Under: Fanservice Friday Tagged With: pandora hearts

Fanservice Friday: Draco Malfoy & the Blue King

May 24, 2013 by Melinda Beasi 18 Comments

(Warning: This article contains major spoilers for Yumi Tamura’s Basara and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.)


Confession time: Some of you may have gleaned this from our fanfiction roundtable a couple of years ago, but I’ll admit it plainly now. I was a fan of Draco Malfoy—not so much the Draco Malfoy that J.K. Rowling actually ended up writing, but the Draco Malfoy I thought she was writing, all the way up until the final book in the series.

It was all incredibly clear, you see. This spoiled, fair-haired, delicate flower whose life of privilege had turned him into a bigoted, arrogant bully was the polar opposite of hero Harry—slick on the outside and twisted within, smart and talented, but taught to lie and cheat and cry to daddy whenever anything went wrong. He was Harry’s negative image. When, early on in volume five, the highly revered (but generally reticent) Sorting Hat chose to sing a song to the Hogwarts student body, warning them that the four houses of Hogwarts must unite or crumble from within, that meant that somehow the brave Gryffindors and ambitious Slytherins must learn to work together, and who better to serve as the catalyst for that but Draco Malfoy?

Obsessed with Harry from the beginning and eternally offended by Harry’s refusal to take his hand, it seemed obvious that Draco Malfoy was the key to heeding the Hat’s warning. And when, in the sixth book, Draco came face-to-face with the real terror of the Dark Lord—reduced to crying in a haunted bathroom over his horrifying plight—finally humanized in his darkest moments—Rowling’s plan seemed to be firmly underway. (I once wrote that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was my favorite Harry/Draco fanfic of 2005, and I wasn’t really joking.) As a result, not only would Hogwarts and the entire wizarding world be saved, but both Draco and Harry would have learned to be better people—people who could tolerate and even embrace their differences and use them to their best advantage.

Except that wasn’t Rowling’s plan. At all. Because apparently what the Hat really meant was “the four houses except Slytherin,” so in the brave students’ moment of glory, the Slytherins were sent to the dungeons and Draco Malfoy slunk off in a cowardly, shameful fashion with his cowardly, shameful parents to live a cowardly, shameful life.

I was devastated, honestly. I mean, I’d managed to weather the senseless death of a favorite character, the cruel murder of an owl, and some of the worst romantic dialogue ever written, but I just couldn’t believe that Rowling had squandered a character she seemed to have put so much work into. And was the Hat just singing for its health? WTF, J.K. Rowling? My Draco, he was gone.

Then, I met Asagi.

(Read right-to-left.)

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It’s important to note that Asagi is actually talking about himself in this panel. Though known to the public (and even to the so-called Blue King himself) as the leader of the Blue King’s guard, it’s Asagi—first introduced in volume four of Yumi Tamura’s epic shoujo fantasy, Basara—who is actually the Blue King, pulling all the strings from behind the scenes. He’s proud of himself and his cunning, and extraordinarily arrogant, but when, after the false Blue King’s fall, he joins up with rebel leader Tatara (with the intention to ruin both Tatara and their mutual enemy, the Red King) the cracks in his shiny, shiny armor begin to show.

basara-cackle2Thanks to his proximity to the story’s heroine, Sarasa, and her love interest, Shuri, during the Blue King’s horrifying “race,” along with a little inside knowledge (the Red King is his younger brother, after all), Asagi is the first person in the story to become aware that Sarasa and Shuri are, in fact, Tatara and the Red King—sworn enemies in love with each other—so his initial plans revolve around trying to control the circumstances under which they will discover this (and be discovered) in order to ensure maximum damage to both sides.

In the meantime, he connives and wheedles. He plots to create conflicts within Tatara’s camp. He sexually harasses Sarasa by skulking around her bedroom and stealing a kiss from her when she’s lost her eyesight. He’s a hateful menace in every way. He even cackles with glee like a freaking supervillain.

No, seriously. Check it out. —>

There’s no romanticizing Asagi. He’s a vicious brat whose lifelong jealousy of his hotshot little brother has consumed him to the point that, not only is he intent on being hurtful to others, he’s simultaneously hurting himself by letting his own issues render him a pawn in the game of someone who doesn’t even really care about him all that much. He’s acting on the White King’s orders, but to his own peril, as she’s really only using him to achieve her own revenge.

Any of this sounding familiar?

It was just a few days ago, while working on our upcoming Basara roundtable, that I realized… Asagi is the Draco Malfoy I thought J.K. Rowling was writing. And wow am I glad to see him at long last.

I said there’s no romanticizing Asagi, and I meant it. He’s not a romantic figure at all. Unlike Ageha, whose dignity and good faith in the face of great suffering frame him as a truly heroic and romantic supporting character, Asagi is small and petty and difficult to care about. But, like most of us, it’s Asagi’s weakness that is ultimately his undoing, and fortunately it’s undoing that Asagi needs most.

I said in the Basara roundtable that Asagi’s whole character could be essentially boiled down to a single desire: “to have someone—anyone—just one person love him best.” I do think that’s true, but it’s probably oversimplified. Yes, Asagi wants someone to love him, but perhaps more specifically, he wants someone to believe that he’s worthwhile. For all his arrogance, Asagi’s greatest weakness is his own self-esteem, which is so low and so twisted up by years of outside manipulation that when Sarasa does something really wacky like trust him with something important, it throws him completely for a loop.

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Sarasa, of course, has no idea what she’s done, but the results speak for themselves.

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That’s how you write a hero—in this case, Sarasa—and how you write a Draco Malfoy (or, in this case, Asagi). Let the hero take a freaking chance on him, in genuine good faith, and give him the thing he most needs in order to begin to believe in himself.

Asagi muses above on the fact that the fake Blue King (the “Serpent King”) had trusted him and wonders why this feels different. The difference of course, is that what he had with the Serpent King wasn’t trust at all. It was dependence, for sure, and perhaps some sense of loyalty, but the Serpent King didn’t so much trust him as need him, and that’s not the same thing. Like love, trust is something given freely and in good faith, and counting on someone because they’re bound to serve and protect you isn’t actually the same thing.

As the story goes on, Sarasa proves that her trust also comes with attentive care and affection. And I kinda love the fact that, here, she pretty much acknowledges straight out that he’s a delicate flower.

(Click images to enlarge. Read right-to-left.)

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Asagi is nothing if not a master of self-deception, and he spends most of the series after he joins up with Tatara explaining carefully to anyone connected to the White King that he is definitely not starting to believe in Tatara or care about her or her cause. Meanwhile, he’s pretty definitely falling in love with her (or something that looks a hell of a lot like love) and learning what it’s like to actually have someone to protect whom he can trust to protect him in return.

(Click images to enlarge. Read right-to-left.)

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It’s starting to sound a lot like I ‘ship Asagi with Sarasa (Tatara), isn’t it? And I’d be lying if I said it had never crossed my mind. After all, I ‘shipped Draco with Harry all those years, and that’s where I’ve been going with this entire post, haven’t I? The truth is, though, seeing where Asagi and Tatara’s relationship goes in Basara actually makes me think that I’d rather have seen Harry and Draco become real friends more than anything else. Because even if I occasionally harbored thoughts of Sarasa throwing over Shuri (who, let’s face it, isn’t all that much better a catch, at least not early on, and if she’s not going to fall for Ageha… well, there’s no helping her) for Asagi, and certainly that’s what Asagi would like to have happen, I think what Asagi needs more than anything is a friend—someone who won’t fall out of love with him or become complicated in any way—just a friend who can teach him what that even means. And Sarasa is so beautifully, perfectly that, I think it’s ultimately best for both of them.

The following is one of my favorite scenes in the entire series. It’s emotionally riveting, intense, and one of the best examples of why Tamura-sensei’s realization of this character is so much better than anything J.K. Rowling’s ever done. So much so, that I’m blown away every time I read it as though I’ve never seen it before in my life.

(Click images to enlarge. Read right-to-left.)

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The emotional impact of that scene is only topped by this one, in which Tamura shows us Sarasa’s face and only the back of Asagi’s head for the entire exchange. And that back of the head says everything. It’s brilliantly drawn and precisely in tune with both their characters. Obviously there’s a lot more going on in an epic series like Basara besides a whole slew of intimacy porn between the heroine and one supporting character, but if you know me, you know that’s my fanservice.

(Click images to enlarge. Read right-to-left.)

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I could go on and on. I would go on and on, but the truth is that I so hope that Viz will eventually be able to give this series a digital release, and I don’t want to give everything away (the scene leading up to the last few pages I shared here is one of the most intense and emotionally resonant of the series—and with this series, that’s saying a lot). Suffice it to say that with a character like Asagi, written by someone as thoughtful and brilliant as Yumi Tamura, things are going to be complicated all the way through the end.

Some part of me still wishes that J.K. Rowling had followed through on her promises for Draco. Another realizes that she never could have written him as well as did Yumi Tamura.


All images © Yumi Tamura/Shogakukan, Inc. New and adapted artwork and text © Viz Media. This article was written for the Yumi Tamura Manga Moveable Feast. Check out Tokyo Jupiter for more!

Filed Under: Fanservice Friday Tagged With: basara, Manga Moveable Feast, MMF, Yumi Tamura

Fanservice Friday: Lovesick over Loveless

May 3, 2013 by Melinda Beasi 17 Comments

loveless1-2By now I’m sure that every regular Manga Bookshelf reader is aware that I’ve fallen for Loveless, Yun Kouga’s supernatural fantasy series currently running in Ichijinsha’s Comic Zero Sum—a magazine known for action-heavy and often BL-tinged titles for female readers, like 07-Ghost, Saiyuki Reload, and the upcoming reboot of Wild Adapter. It’s notable that both Naked Ape’s Switch and Yun Kouga’s Gestalt moved to Comic Zero Sum after their original runs in Square Enix’s GFantasy, a shounen magazine known for its generous female-aimed fanservice.

Given my well-established fondness for both girl-friendly action series and Yun Kouga, it’s no surprise that I fell for Loveless (if a bit late). Even so, as I make my way through Viz’s new omnibus editions, I can’t help but be startled by the intensity of my own feelings. I threw myself into the latest omnibus just as soon as I’d acquired it—reading not at my usual breakneck speed, but at a deliberate, luxurious pace intended to truly savor each page. I even stopped from time-to-time to scan in pages that felt particularly meaningful, as if to assemble some sort of visual database of my own emotional responses.

loveless3-4The truth is, Yun Kouga’s work (and Loveless in particular) hits so many of my personal storytelling kinks in so many instances, it would be prohibitively time-consuming to catalogue them all. But perhaps more significantly, she manages to address several of my usual turn-offs (and at least one known deal-breaker) in a way that makes them somehow palatable, even to me. As a result, my reaction to Loveless has begun to resemble nothing more than a kind of romantic longing, characterized by ever-wandering thoughts and a persistent love-struck haze. in short, I’m lovesick over Loveless.

Of course, when you’re lovesick over something, the most satisfying thing in the world is to talk, talk, talk about it—generally up to (or even well past) the point at which all your friends wish to throttle you. Fortunately, it’s my job in this column to obsess over what I like, so let’s dig right in!

Yun Kouga’s greatest strength as a storyteller, in my opinion, is her ability to delve deep into her characters’ weakest, messiest personality traits and present them honestly and without apology. As I discussed at length in episode six of My Week in Manga, it’s clear that she not only loves her characters despite their flaws, but often because of them, and since I also tend to find people’s flaws to be as beautiful or even more beautiful than their strengths (both in fiction and in real life), this is an approach that works especially well for me.

loveless5-6Two characters who fit into this discussion particularly well are the series’ main leads—Ritsuka, a 12-year old boy who is thrust into a strange, supernatural underworld after the death of his older brother, Seimei, and art college student Soubi, whom Seimei bequeathed to Ritsuka at the time of his death. In this underground world, Soubi is a “fighter” in a two-person team that fights with the power of words, while Ritsuka (like his older brother before him) is a “sacrifice.” The sacrifice takes all the damage for the team, but this is not a passive role by any means, as the sacrifice directs the entire fight by giving orders to the fighter. Though each fighting team we’ve seen in the series so far handles that relationship a bit differently, it’s generally understood that the sacrifice is in charge.

Ritsuka and Soubi have a particularly complicated relationship, partly because Soubi was Seimei’s fighter first and is still bound to his orders from the past (the full nature of these we do not yet know) and partly because, though Soubi is trained to accept (and actually require) total domination by his sacrifice, Ritsuka is opposed to violence in general, leaving Soubi with a fairly serious conflict to contend with when confronted by dangerous enemies, especially early on. There is also the matter of their age difference, but let’s leave that discussion for a bit later.

Previously in this column, I’ve discussed two particular storytelling/characterization kinks of mine, one of which I referred to as “intimacy porn” (which is of course about emotional intimacy, and not porn at all), and the other as “the human touch”, referring to non-sexual or casual touches that reveal the intimacy in people’s relationships. Yun Kouga manages to ping both of these simultaneously in this scene between Ritsuka and Soubi, in which Soubi confronts Ritsuka regarding the fact of Seimei’s death, which has been challenged by Seimsei’s former colleagues—a group called “Septimal Moon.” Note Soubi’s body language—the way he desperately grasps Ritsuka’s arms—and the way Ritsuka lets him despite his verbal protests, betraying their closeness and their reliance on one another even under stress.

(read right-to-left)

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Ritsuka’s inner monologue here is a great example of another of Kouga-sensei’s strong points—her willingness to reveal her characters’ weaknesses and doubts in nearly any situation. It’s not only these things that she focuses on, though. I’m also a big fan of her characters’ discussions regarding the nature of love (or “like” in some instances). Case in point: this scene between fighter Mei and sacrifice Mimuro.

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Their relationship is complicated in its own way, as Mei clearly has a crush on much older Mimuro, and even tries to appear more boyish because she believes that he is gay. Also, I am surprised to note that this is now the second manga series I’ve read involving a defensive attack with rubber duckies. Who knew?

(click images to enlarge — read right-to-left)

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Do I need to point out how adorable that is? I hope not. But it’s not even the most significant aspect of this scene for me. I’m struck more strongly by Soubi’s attack and the rare glimpse of his neck, revealing Seimei’s brand carved into it. Have I mentioned that Seimei’s “true name” was “Beloved” while Ritsuka’s is “Loveless”? I think little more needs to be said about how much it sucks to be Ritsuka, though I will actually say more, since it relates to one of the major aspects of the story that normally would be a real obstacle for me.

One of the story’s plot points that has yet to be resolved (at least where I am in the series—please don’t spoil me!) is that Ritsuka has suffered memory loss so great that he essentially became a completely different person at the age of ten, with no memory of the boy he’d been before that. While there are many questions one could ask regarding how this happened (my money’s on Seimei, but we’ll get to that in a moment), the most dire consequence for Ritsuka is that his mother has been unable to get over what she perceives as the “loss” of her son. While she, on some level, knows that Ritsuka is still her child, she has suffered some kind of mental break that has left her convinced that he’s also a stranger. She often abuses Ritsuka when he betrays himself as not “her Ritsuka” and because of this, he’s always injured (something that’s really finally noticed and acted upon by an actual adult with authority in this volume).

Whether deliberately or not, physical abuse of all kinds is often romanticized in manga—especially BL manga and other genres for girls—and for that reason, I’m generally leery of it as a plot point. Yun Kouga, however, manages to portray this abuse and even give us a taste of the mother’s own internal conflict over it, without romanticizing Ritsuka’s suffering or sympathizing with his abuser.

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We are witness to his mother’s turmoil and her declining mental condition, but we’re not asked to excuse her or to identify with her own suffering. Instead, the focus is on Ritsuka’s desperate refusal to blame her and his determination to maintain her love, through the eyes of Soubi, who finds it all pretty horrifying.

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Of course, Soubi has his own issues, and Kouga doesn’t let him off the hook for them, even here, betraying his secret desire to see Ritsuka cry in the midst of it all.

So, about Seimei… it’s pretty impossible to talk about him without revealing the fact that, in this volume, we find out for sure that he is, indeed, still alive. This discovery has a number of consequences (particularly for Soubi, and surely for Ritsuka, though he hasn’t yet been told). Meanwhile, we’re finding out a lot about the kind of person he really is, and especially how different he appears to be, contrasted with Ritsuka’s memories of him. I can’t help but wonder if Ritsuka’s memory loss has something to do with concealing Seimei’s true personality, but in any case, Ritsuka’s impressions of Seimei as a devoted, affectionate older brother don’t jive at all with anyone else’s—nor with ours as we see him in this volume do things like sending enemies after Ritsuka and trying to convince Ritsuka’s mother to kill him.

Here’s a bit of insight on Seimei from Seimei himself:

(click images to enlarge — read right-to-left)

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Again, Yun Kouga gets right to the heart of the matter, revealing the truth of both his weakness and his ruthlessness in one short bit of dialogue.

Despite the cruelty displayed by his efforts to get his own mother to try to murder his brother and his other behavior in general (aside from his apparent brotherly relationship with Ritsuka back before he staged his death), the most obvious victim of his machinations so far is Soubi, who is devastated to learn that, not only has Seimei been living on without him, but that he’s even gotten himself a new fighter, which really cuts Soubi to the core. Before the scene in which Soubi found out that Seimei was still alive, it seemed like he might have known something about that himself, and that he was lying to Ritsuka about it. But Soubi’s raw reaction to this discovery makes clear that it was a surprise to him, too, and there is really nothing that could have hurt him more.

Though I suspect that there are still many truths—both about Soubi’s relationship with Seimei and Soubi’s past in general that have yet to be revealed (at least in the volumes I’ve read), at this moment, it’s impossible not to feel for Soubi, whose apparently fragile ego is absolutely shattered in this volume.

(click images to enlarge — read right-to-left)

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This new truth affects Soubi so strongly that he goes to beg Ritsuka (who has been bound up and kept prisoner in his home by his increasingly unstable mother) to run away with him. It’s a pathetic and touching scene. What strikes me most strongly about it is the weight of Ritsuka’s realization that usually-flippant Soubi is actually being serious and how hard he struggles to formulate an appropriate response.

(click images to enlarge — read right-to-left)

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And here we arrive at the ‘shippy fanservice that would normally be a deal-breaker for me. Minors in romantic/sexual relationships with adults is a pretty common trope in manga, and particularly in BL manga (which this is not, though I was surprised recently to find it shelved as such when I bought it at Boston’s awesome, manga-friendly comic shop, Comicopia) from which Kouga borrows many of the series’ tropes. Previously, there have been maybe two or three examples of manga that haven’t seriously skeeved me out with this kind of content (notably Alice/Rin in Please Save My Earth and Amu/Ikuto in Shugo Chara!—though in both cases the older characters are high school students and the relationships are very chaste), and I was pretty concerned going into Loveless, given what I’d heard. And though Ritsuka’s relationship with Soubi is currently relatively chaste as well (the most we’ve seen is some kissing), it’s made very, very clear that Soubi’s idea of being “dominated” by his sacrifice/master extends to physical domination as well.

What’s astonishing to me is the way Kouga is able to make this palatable by giving all the power in the relationship to the minor, Ritsuka. Thanks to the universe Kouga has set up here and the way she’s written the fighting teams—Soubi’s character in particular—the adult (Soubi) is actually incapable of taking any action towards Ritsuka that Ritsuka does not explicitly command, which puts all the power in Ritsuka’s hands. Soubi simply can’t make him do anything he doesn’t want to. I was surprised how dramatically this affected my view of their relationship, but then I thought about the reasons why I would consider that kind of relationship to be objectionable in the first place, and it has entirely to do with the sense that an adult in that situation is abusing his/her power over the minor, which is obviously reprehensible.

Kouga has managed to remove that issue from the picture, leaving us with something that is still unsettling but oddly relatable. Soubi’s anguish over Ritsuka’s denying him the total domination he seeks is strangely sympathetic, and not so far removed from unrequited feelings of all kinds—something we’ve all experienced at some point or another. (It seems significant that the only requited love in this series so far has been between the two Zero girls, Kouya and Yamato, who defy their leader and choose to “die” as Zeroes and be reborn in order to stay together, but I am not sure yet exactly how.)

Still, she doesn’t let us off the hook. We find ourselves sympathizing with and caring deeply for both Ritsuka and Soubi, and even rooting for them somehow, on some level, but it’s decidedly… uncomfortable. And Kouga just leaves us like that.

(click images to enlarge — read right-to-left)

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Incidentally, I think it’s notable, too, that Seimei apparently still has his cat ears and tail (which characters in this universe lose along with their virginity), suggesting that he never offered Soubi total domination when he was Soubi’s master, either. So that’s an interesting character note.

Going back to Soubi’s “Beloved” brand for a moment, another thing that struck me particularly in this volume was how completely the fighters submit to their sacrifices’ identities. The way Soubi announces their team when entering a fight, “We are Loveless,” hit me hard in this volume, but not exactly in a bad way. While I admit to being horrified by Beloved’s name etched into Soubi’s neck, there’s also some part of me that is fascinated by and drawn to the idea of a two-person unit so completely bonded that they become a single identity. I’ll admit, also, to being pretty uncomfortable with my own fascination, and again, Kouga just leaves me like that. There are no warm fuzzies to soften the blow.

Later, when Ritsuka wants to ask Soubi to take him to Septimal Moon, Soubi tells him, “Then don’t ask. Order me. Don’t treat me like a human being. I want to be treated like an object.” Ritsuka gives him the order, but I can’t help worrying about where this ultimately goes. So far, Ritsuka has resisted treating Soubi the way he wants to be treated, but he’s a kid with a strong will. How long before that power goes to his head? How long before he becomes like Seimei? Whatever the answers to these questions turn out to be, I bet they’ll be messy—and that’s the way I like ’em.

More than anything, though, I’m just blown away by how compelling Kouga-sensei’s characters are, and how completely they’ve engaged me. I read this volume nearly a week ago, and I’m still thinking about them now. Kouga’s characters lie to each other (and sometimes, themselves), they tell the truth, or often something in between. But whatever they do, they do it with a core of emotional truth that is simply stunning to behold. That’s Yun Kouga—and that’s Loveless.


All images © 2005-2006 Yun Kouga · Original Japanese edition published by ICHIJINSHA, INC., Tokyo. · English translation rights arranged with ICHIJINSHA, INC.

Filed Under: Fanservice Friday, FEATURES & REVIEWS Tagged With: loveless, Yun Kouga

Fanservice Friday: The Fujoshi Heart of CLAMP

July 27, 2012 by Melinda Beasi 8 Comments

Welcome back to Fanservice Friday!

For those of you who may be wandering over from less manga-obsessed corners of the internet, the term “fujoshi” (“rotton girl”) is used in Japan to describe fans of BL or “boys’ love” (also known as “yaoi”) manga, which is to say women and girls who enjoy stories featuring male characters in romantic and/or sexual relationships with each other, created for a female audience, usually by female writers and artists.

You can find a lot of internet speculation (and a few academic studies) regarding why many women and girls like stories about two men falling in love and/or making out (and so forth), but there’s little doubt that they do like them, and that “they” includes me. I’m a romance junkie and, to hear some tell it, perhaps a perv. (Though for what it’s worth, I get the same enjoyment out of stories featuring a man and a woman or two women making out, so I’m at last an equal opportunity perv.)

Anyhow, given that CLAMP spent some time creating yaoi doujinshi (kinda like slash fanfiction, but comics) before they went pro, it’s likely that they may have once considered themselves fujoshi, And whether they ever did or not, that sensibility is certainly present in their professional work, regardless of its intended demographic.

So now that we’ve gotten all that exposition over with, let’s talk about….

The Fujoshi Heart of CLAMP

(click images to enlarge)


Legal Drug, Vol. 3 © 2003 CLAMP, English text © 2005 TOKYOPOP

Scenes such as the one above from Legal Drug fall into a type of female-aimed fanservice pretty common in shoujo (and even shounen) manga these days. I like to call this type of fanservice “the tease.” A scene like this is a tease, because it features two male characters caught in a compromising position that ultimately turns out not to be at all what it seems. In this scene, for instance, Kazahaya and Rikuo are posing as clandestine student lovers to facilitate their investigation of a supernatural event at a secluded all-boys’ school, and Rikuo gets mushy for a moment when he realizes they are being watched. Often, this kind of tease is used for comedic effect, like in these pages from Black Butler, but in this scene, CLAMP avoids going for the easy laugh, keeping the mood heavy to intensify the readers’ already-established interest in these characters as a potential couple (and believe me, there’s interest).

Fortunately, humorous BL fanservice is not CLAMP’s specialty… well, fortunately for me, anyway, as it’s by far my least favorite type—both as shoujo fanservice and in actual BL manga as well. Legal Drug is particularly generous with its BL overtones, and it’s also one of the group’s few series to pull some of those overtones out of the subtext and right into the text. It’s made pretty clear throughout the series’ first three volumes, that shop owner Kakei has something going on with his hulky companion, Saiga.


Legal Drug, Vol. 2 © 2001 CLAMP, English text @2004 TOKYOPOP

Though anything other than come-hither looks and suggestive embraces is kept pretty much off-screen, I’ve read manga published as BL (Wild Adapter, for instance), that treats its relationships more ambiguously.

Another of CLAMP’s shoujo series to contain a canon romance between two male characters is, of course, Cardcaptor Sakura, and though Toya and Yukito’s relationship is even more chaste on-screen than Kakei and Saiga’s, it’s still notable given the young age of Nakayoshi’s core audience. And frankly, you’d have to have a heart of stone not to melt just a little in the presence of romantic sweetness like this.


Cardcaptor Sakura: Master of the Clow, Vol. 4 © 1999 CLAMP, English text © 2004 TOKYOPOP

This kind of pure-hearted devotion is at the core of most of CLAMP’s best romances, even those that remain ambiguous throughout their entire runs, and I admit that’s part of what works so well for me. Even in a relationship steeped in rivalry or dry humor, I like to be able to see that sincerity at its core, and this is one of CLAMP’s greatest strengths. It also lends itself to some very touching moments, often with a serious tone.

Even in Tokyo Babylon, where the initially jokey relationship between 16-year-old Subaru and veterinarian Seishiro takes a decidedly dark turn, our hero’s feelings are very innocent and undeniably sincere.


Tokyo Babylon, Vol. 6 © 1992 CLAMP, English text @ 2005 TOKYOPOP

Which is not to say that CLAMP doesn’t ever go for the laugh.


xxxHolic, Vol. 6 © 2005 CLAMP, English edition published by Del Rey Manga

Oh, Watanuki and Doumeki… *sigh*. Probably my favorite of CLAMP’s subtextual BL couples, Watanuki and Doumeki spend most of their time visibly at odds, with Watanuki flailing in protest every time the two of them are paired up (which is often), and Doumeki making dry comments about Watanuki in the background. Much is made of their supernatural compatibility—Doumeki’s pure spirit is constantly necessary for keeping Watanuki safe, while Watanuki’s cooking provides Doumeki with nearly the only food pure-intentioned enough for him to enjoy eating. There’s also the fact that by halfway through the series, the two of them basically share both blood and an eye. It’s a CLAMP staple, of course, but man, it always works for me.

I’ve used this scene as an example before, but really nothing beats it for the perfect combination of prickly banter, dry humor, and undeniable personal intimacy. These characters know each other so well, and even though most of their outward behavior is designed to conceal that as thoroughly as possible, it still shines through, clear as day.

(click images to enlarge)



Perhaps the snarky nature of Watanuki and Doumeki’s BL-heavy relationship is due at least in part to xxxHolic‘s demographic (seinen), though they take a much different tack with the shounen-aimed series Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, in which the characters Fai and Kurogane—though beginning as fairly reluctant comrades—eventually develop a deep loyalty and warm friendship that reads very much like romantic love. I once referred to them as something like “the most obvious couple since Remus Lupin and Sirius Black,” but I think they may be even more obvious (or perhaps obvious to more people) than that.

Here’s another quote from my fannish journal when I first began reading Tsubasa: “Oh. Kurogane. If anyone tries to tell me that CLAMP does not ‘ship Fai/Kurogane, I will laugh harder than I have ever laughed in my life. I really will. They might as well put it on a billboard. Almost makes me wish it was a shoujo manga instead, but then there would probably be more flowers and fewer fights, and I admit I kind of like the fights.”

Having read a lot more shoujo manga since then—and particularly shoujo manga by CLAMP (*cough* X *cough*)—I’d have to take back my assertion that a shoujo version of Tsubasa would necessarily contain fewer fights, but I’d still bet money on CLAMP ‘shipping Fai/Kurogane, whether they’ve ever admitted it or not.

Though Tsubasa‘s shounen sensibility lends itself more toward heroic demonstrations of affection (Kurogane gives up his blood and an arm for Fai over the course of the series) than meaningful touches and stolen glances, it does have its moments.


Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, Vol. 22 © 2008 CLAMP, English edition published by Del Rey Manga

For the record, Fai punches Kurogane on the next page (good-naturedly, of course), ’cause, y’know, that’s how they roll.

I’ve often wished that CLAMP would just go ahead and publish a BL manga—not because I’m dissatisfied with what they’ve already offered up in both canon and less-explicitly-canon male/male romance, but because I think they’d write it very well, and that they’d be likely to give me the kind of epic, plotty BL manga I so wish there were more of—in the English-language market anyway. In the meantime, I’ll take what I can get.

Readers, what are your favorite CLAMP BL pairings?

Filed Under: Fanservice Friday, FEATURES Tagged With: clamp, Manga Moveable Feast, MMF

Fanservice Friday: The Human Touch

June 24, 2011 by Melinda Beasi 11 Comments

A few months ago, I dedicated this column to something I called “intimacy porn,” a kind of emotionally grounded writing that creates a strong sense of intimacy between characters. One of the examples of “intimacy porn” I cited at the time was Kazuya Minekura’s Wild Adapter, the subject of this month’s Manga Moveable Feast, hosted right here at Manga Bookshelf.

As it happens, Kazuya Minekura is a master of this type of writing, and as a result, Wild Adapter is lousy with intimacy porn. Really, it’s just all over the place. Minekura has number of ways she achieves this, but my favorite is probably the simplest: the casual touch.

You know the kind of touch I mean—that little nothing of a touch that somehow means everything, the brush of the hand, the tug on the sleeve that so clearly signals protectiveness, intimacy, and a strong hint of possession. While this is often used in romantic manga to indicate a controlling party—usually the male in a heterosexual romantic relationship—Minekura makes her characters each equally possessive of the other, creating a universe of two that is glorious to behold.

In Wild Adapter the casual touch is almost exclusively the territory of its protagonists, Kubota and Tokito, whose relationship is in some ways fairly ambiguous, but in one way perfectly clear. Whatever they are precisely to each other, they are with their whole hearts, and nobody else is even remotely a factor.

In volume two, a woman observes to Kubota, “Since the first time I met you two, I thought Tokito was weird. I wondered why he was so possessive of Kubota-san. But the truth is… you’re the one who is.”

As it turns out, she was right both times. Both Kubota and Tokito see their relationship in this way, and it’s obvious even in the simplest of touches. Even a humorous scene is filled with these moments, and it’s interesting to note that there isn’t much difference between casual leaning and a kick to the head in terms of effect. Both these movements reveal intimacy.

Sometimes the touch is less casual, but still private, creating intimacy in an unlikely setting. In this scene for instance, Kubota and Tokito aren’t particularly casual at all, to start. Kubota’s displaying protectiveness, sure, but there’s a sense of urgency with Tokito not at his best, and that’s the tone the scene opens with. Just a bit later, though, our attention is drawn to just their hands—one gloved, one not—and emotional the core of the scene becomes centered there, on fingers squeezing fingers, a tiny thing that nobody would take notice of in the cold, vast environment of the hospital. Kubota’s possessive arm around the shoulder later doesn’t hurt either.


What’s perhaps most interesting about the casual touches in this manga, is that though Minekura uses them liberally throughout the first four volumes, when the story flashes back to Kubota and Tokito’s first year together, we discover that for a long, long time Kubota would not touch Tokito at all (their earlier moments notwithstanding). Of course what this really facilitates is the opportunity for a beautifully intimate scene like this near the end of the chapter, when Tokito finally offers his hand to Kubota and insists that he take it.

(click images to enlarge)



To a random onlooker, this might appear so casual as to not even register at all. Offering a hand to help someone up is a gesture of friendliness, certainly, but not usually one of intimacy. In reality, this hand offered is as far from casual as it could possibly be, and perhaps more intimate than a kiss in that moment.

Of course, sometimes the best touching is not remotely casual. In romantic manga, even one as ambiguous about it as this one, there’s really nothing that can top that heart-stopping moment of intimacy that bursts from something casual into something profound. In this kind of moment, with this kind of touch, the whole world falls away for that long, long moment—their world, our world, the entire universe even—stunned into an endless second of suspended animation by the power of human touch.

When I started this column, “Fanservice Friday,” I wasn’t really sure what I planned to do with it. “Fanservice” is a term generally imbued with negative connotations, used mainly as an expression of derision or at least complaint over elements inserted into a work for the sole purpose of titillation. “Fanservice” is most commonly used to describe something exploitative, pandering, and possibly offensive. At best it’s a term infused with self-mocking.

Over time, what the term has come to mean for me however, is something a bit broader.

As someone whose attention is grabbed more often by emotional hooks than visual ones (despite my slight obsession with coats and sleeves) I’ve discovered the reality behind what services me as a fan.

For me, a single image like the one to the right is about a thousand times more titillating than a chapter full of suggestively clad hotties or even outright pornography. The hunch of the shoulder, the protectively placed hand, the comfort and familiarity filling the frame—this intimate atmosphere is what fills me with longing and a desire to see my fantasy played out on the page.

This is my fanservice. Thanks, Wild Adapter.

Filed Under: Fanservice Friday, UNSHELVED Tagged With: Manga Moveable Feast, MMF, wild adapter

Fanservice Friday: Hikaru no Go edition

May 6, 2011 by Melinda Beasi 7 Comments

Not so long ago on Twitter, Deb Aoki asked, is Shounen Jump manga the gateway drug for yaoi? I expect that’s true for quite a number of people, and as you know, fanservice for girls in shounen manga is kind of a pet interest of mine.

As it so happens, my path was roughly the opposite. It was slash fandom that introduced me to Shounen Jump manga, by way of the series Hikaru no Go. In fact, it was a specific slash fanfic, carefully selected and presented to me with the purpose of selling me on a specific romantic pairing, that piqued my interest in the series. As a result, I first began reading Hikaru no Go not just as a ready target for this particular type of fanservice, but actually expecting it, and to some extent, already embracing it as canon.

Epic male rivalry is classic slash fodder, so it’s not like this is anything new, but I’ve rarely seen it done with the same level of intimacy that is generally inherent to the love-you-like-a-brother flavor of male bonding in fiction. The deep obsession is there, but it’s alongside deep trust, genuine warmth, and a overwhelming acknowledgement between the characters that nobody understands them as well as they understand each other.

It’s not all obsessive rivalry and closer-than-brothers soul bonding, of course, We’re also offered up out-and-out jealousy and emotional insecurity of the “but you’re only thinking of him!” variety. It’s kind of stunning, really.

Theirs is an eager, emotionally fraught rivalry, with as many shades as such a thing could possibly have. Furthermore, it’s been going on for quite some time.

Not that rival-slash fodder is the only service Hikaru no Go has to offer up to girls. Takeshi Obata draws some of the prettiest and most distinctively detailed male characters in shounen manga, with carefully chosen clothing, hairstyles, and attitude to match. For my money, most shoujo manga can’t compare to Obata when it comes to drawing men in clothes. This isn’t the kind of fantasy-based outfitting I’ve raved about before. These costumes are crisp, modern, and carefully suited to the nuances of each character. And does anyone draw prettier faces?

With all this in place, it’s not incredibly surprising to note that my entire experience with Hikaru no Go fandom has been heavily female-dominated (as is, I expect, the comment section of this post), even outside slash fandom circles. And though I once sent my nephew the first disk of the anime series as a gift, I admit it’s his little sister I expect will eventually latch on to it, sometime down the line.

So talk to me, readers. What’s your favorite example of fanservice in Hikaru no Go?


Filed Under: Fanservice Friday, UNSHELVED Tagged With: hikaru no go

Fanservice Friday: The sleeve’s the thing

April 8, 2011 by Melinda Beasi 39 Comments

Earlier this week in our Off the Shelf column, Michelle and I reviewed Kazue Kato’s Blue Exorcist, at which time the following exchange occurred:

MICHELLE: … While I do like the art style, particularly the looks of Rin and Yukio, I must say that the quirky-just-to-be-quirky garb of the academy’s president puts me off quite a bit. Usually I take characters with a bizarre sense of fashion in stride, but this guy’s outfit just seems extra pointless to me.

MELINDA: I’m on the fence regarding the president’s odd outfit. It’s definitely “quirky-just-to-be-quirky,” just as you say, but it contains a particular element that tends to be bullet-proof costuming for me (giant cuffs on sleeves), which is almost enough to win me over all by itself. There’s a reason I’m obsessed with the artwork in Pandora Hearts.

MICHELLE: That is an oddly specific costuming kink! I haven’t paused to consider whether I have anything similar. Maybe I like long coats, because I really like the outfit Yukio wears while teaching his class.

MELINDA: Long coats are delicious. I can completely get behind that!

With this in mind, I’d like to dedicate this month’s Fanservice Friday to my bullet-proof costuming kink, CUFFED SLEEVES. Oh, the beauty of it all!

Since I mentioned Pandora Hearts specifically in the conversation with Michelle, I’ll use that manga as my prime example here. Clearly, Jun Mochizuki understands the power of the cuffed sleeve, as she’s filled up her manga with it. Furthermore, most of these sleeves occur on long coats, combining the deliciousness of both to substantial effect.

Raven does particularly well in the coat department, as you can see from the illustrations below. This is a long, flowing coat with a kind of bad-ass vibe, enhanced by the boots and hat. Note how Mochizuki accents the length and fullness of the cuffed sleeves with her choice of camera angle and poses. These illustrations are absolutely gorgeous, and they’re exactly the thing to satisfy my personal costuming desires. For the life of me, I can’t understand why anyone wants to see attractive manga characters nude or scantily clad, when they could be seeing them in a scrumptious coat. Everyone looks beautiful in a coat like this.

Break is also a winner in Mochizuki’s cuffed sleeve department, with a special feature that seems to belong only to him. In the scene below, you’ll see that Break’s overcoat is designed to sit perpetually off his shoulders (I’m not even sure it’s a separate piece of clothing). This has the effect of giving him over-long sleeves (another personal kink of mine), but it also actually creates the illusion of his sleeves being cuffed at the top as well as the bottom, for extra cuff-a-licious goodness.

Though this is an action scene with plenty of important stuff going on, I can’t help it, I’m looking at the sleeves.

On the left below, you’ll see a particularly nice example of Break’s behavior as concerns his over-long sleeves (Mochizuki obviously has a thing for this, and so do I), but it’s not just the men who get good sleeve action in this manga. Sharon’s lacy cuff reveals another just below it, an interestingly dainty look for a character who’s really only dainty on the outside. Echo gets cuffs on the top of her sleeves (similar to Break’s), and even on her boots, attractively framing the thigh area for those who are into that. But the best cuffs really belong to Alice, based on sheer size alone, gracefully matching in scale the large bow at the front of her coat.

Not that Mochizuki is alone in her appreciation of the cuffed sleeve.

Though the look is most common in manga set in the west or in heavy fantasy settings like Blue Exorcist, mangaka like CLAMP, for instance, have demonstrated some love for large, lovely cuffs. In xxxHolic, Watanuki and Doumeki’s winter uniform includes a long, slim coat (nicely matched to CLAMP’s long, slim character designs) with elegant buttons and a substantial cuffed sleeve. And in Tokyo Babylon, doting sister Hokuto is seen dressing up twin brother Subaru in some beautifully cuffed outfits, including this flowing shirt from volume three. Here again we have a large cuff that extends slightly past the wrist, which is a favorite look for me.

The allure of the cuffed sleeve is not limited to fantasy manga, either, nor to manga set in any particular period. Even modern gag series can be found sporting substantial cuffs, as seen here in Kōji Kumeta’s Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei. While Nozomu’s no-nonsense shirtsleeves provide a humorous contrast, peeking out from under his otherwise traditional garb (though of course, I wish they were wider!), student Kafuka’s coat is simply pretty and timeless. And no, those aren’t cuffs, of course, but they create a similar look that I’m very fond of, accenting the end of the sleeve by making it wider just before the wrist.

Why do I like this effect so much? I simply have no idea. I only know that it pleases my eye immediately, improving my impression of the outfit as a whole.

And though large, wide cuffs can often be used to accentuate the delicacy of smaller hands, they aren’t any less attractive when paired with large hands. Nor do I associate over-long sleeves with infantilizing characters, though I suspect they may sometimes be used specifically for this effect.

Looking for magical girl manga featuring cuffed sleeves? Look no further than Shugo Chara!‘s Amu Hinamori, cool and spicy, and sporting fantastic cuffs!


So, readers, do you have your own bullet-proof costuming elements? What piece of clothing makes you feel serviced as a fan?


All illustrations from English-language releases of Pandora Hearts (Yen Press), xxxHolic (Del Rey Manga), Tokyo Babylon (TOKYOPOP), Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei (Del Rey Manga), & Shugo Chara! (Del Rey Manga). Buy these books for more beautiful cuff action!

Filed Under: Fanservice Friday, UNSHELVED Tagged With: costuming, pandora hearts

Fanservice Friday: Intimacy porn

March 4, 2011 by Melinda Beasi 42 Comments

I’ve had fanservice on the brain quite a bit lately, most recently thanks to this article by comics creator Michael Arthur at The Hooded Utilitarian. In it, Michael discussed his perspective on BL manga as a gay man and an artist, and though reception was mixed (for the record, I have pretty much equal appreciation for both his points and much of the criticism he received from female BL fans) what it really got me thinking about is fanservice for women, which inevitably led to thoughts about fanservice for me.

Pretty guys in shoujo and BL? Sure, I like ’em. I like them (maybe even more) in Korean manhwa as well, where “blond and willowy” also tends to equal “kick-ass,” at least in the stuff we’ve seen imported over here. It’s well established that girls frequently like their male idols to be pretty as, well, girls, and that taste doesn’t necessarily vanish with age, at least when it comes to fiction. The muscle-bound hunk has never done much for me, and while that may lend itself in “real life” to a preference for nerdy guys, I’m perfectly happy with the rail-thin pretty boys offered up to me in girls’ comics.

Pretty boys aren’t my real hook, though, not even if we’re talking porn–and when I use the term “porn” here, it’s in the broadest sense of the word, the sense that includes things like “food porn” and “shelf porn” or basically anything that feeds our inner obsessions with powerful visual stimuli. My real “porn,” what services me as a fan the way eye candy does for many, is emotional porn. Intimacy porn, if we’re going to get specific.

What’s great about intimacy porn, is that it is able to manifest itself in a number of different ways, none of which is exclusive to girls’ and women’s comics, though you’ll find it there in abundance. Some of it is clearly romantic in nature, like this scene from Ai Yazawa’s Paradise Kiss.

Read right-to-left. Click for larger image

The scene takes place in the first volume of the manga, when these characters, George and Yukari, are just barely beginning to explore their attraction. It’s the small bits of physical intimacy that really work for me here… George’s fingers circling Yukari’s, the soft kiss on the back of her hand, the tilt of his head as he leans in to kiss her–not the kiss itself (which doesn’t happen here, as you may know), but the anticipation of it, the electricity in the air between two bodies so clearly attracted to one another. The moment feels intensely intimate, though they’re standing outside where anyone could see them. That’s what I’m talking about here. That’s the way to service me as a fan.

With this in mind, I took another look at this scene from Jeon JinSeok and Han SeungHee’s One Thousand and One Nights. I’d mentioned in my discussion with Michelle that it was a ridiculously obvious image, and that its success in context was a testament to the artists’ skill with romance, but I think its success with me goes even further than that.

Read left-to-right. Click for larger image

Where indeed skill comes into play, is that the characters’ intimacy has been so well-established before this point, without the use of such blatantly erotic imagery, that when this stunning show of emotional and sexual intimacy is played out right in front of enemy Crusaders and the sultan’s court, it actually feels real. Sehera’s expression of devotion here is so honest, so utterly without embarrassment, its public intimacy feels not only appropriate, but genuinely romantic.

Intimacy porn doesn’t have to be romantic, though, and often the best of it isn’t. This scene from Kazuya Minekura’s Wild Adapter for instance:

Read right-to-left. Click for larger images

   

   

Though Wild Adapter is serialized in a BL magazine, the relationship between its two protagonists, Kubota and Tokito, is only subtly romantic. What the two really have is intimacy, and that’s what draws me so strongly to them and to their story. This scene has plenty of elements that might be typically used as fanservice–a shower, slouchy skinny guys, even nudity–but there’s no service here, not unless you count my kind, of which there’s service aplenty. This kind of intimacy–Tokito’s pain, unspoken, but acknowledged and understood between just the two of them–that’s my kind of porn, there.

To stray even further from romance, you can find this kind of intimacy porn far, far outside shoujo, josei, or BL. CLAMP’s xxxHolic, for example, was originally published in Young Magazine, a men’s publication, typically featuring bikini-clad women on its cover. Still, it’s filled with my kind of porn, including this scene:

Read right-to-left. Click for larger images



Here, Watanuki and Doumeki discuss the events of the day, while Doumeki makes his demands regarding the contents of rice balls. Their intimacy is apparent from the start… the verbal shorthand, the way the rice ball conversation weaves itself out of habit around the real issues at hand. At page 139 their surface banter comes to a halt, as Watanuki makes a rare, open statement revealing the true value of their relationship. It’s a gorgeously thick moment–you can just feel the weight of emotion in the air, all the unspoken trust and gratitude that Watanuki is usually unable to express–suspended just briefly in time, before Doumeki quickly swings things back into their comfort zone. The banter continues, no less intimately, but comfortable again for both of them. I probably read this scene ten times when I first picked up the volume. It’s exactly my kind of porn.

Intimacy porn doesn’t have to be between two characters, though. Sometimes an author is able to create this between a character and his/her readers. Going back to Yazawa for a moment, this time with NANA, note here how she’s used narrow close-ups of her characters’ eyes to open them up to the audience.

Read right-to-left. Click for larger image

Though the scene takes place between Reira and Shin, their circumstances make it difficult for them to connect with each other honestly. Instead, though they hide their feelings from each other, they’re sharing them with the reader, as openly and intimately as possible. This kind of intimacy has the effect of not breaking the fourth wall, but expanding it to include the reader, and can be even more powerful than something that’s established between characters. It’s difficult to do well, but Yazawa’s a master, and it most certainly contributes to my love of her work.

Is it fanservice? Maybe not, strictly speaking. But it services me better than a thousand pretty faces ever could on their own.


So, readers… what’s your porn?

Filed Under: Fanservice Friday, UNSHELVED Tagged With: nana, one thousand and one nights, paradise kiss, Romance, shojo, wild adapter, xxxholic, yaoi/boys' love

Fanservice Friday: From the ladies

January 7, 2011 by Melinda Beasi 22 Comments

… or at least one lady.

There’s been quite a bit of talk already about editor Sean Michael Wilson‘s assessment of female critics’ reaction to AX: A Collection of Alternative Manga, most of it much smarter than anything I might offer up (posts from Brigid Alverson and Kate Dacey among them).

Still, as a North American lady, I feel compelled to examine Wilson’s argument, my personal reaction to it, and why I feel this is appropriate for Fanservice Friday. As I proceed, please keep in mind that I have not read AX, so my reactions are to Wilson’s theory about the tastes of North American ladies, not about those ladies’ reactions to that work in particular. This is important. Please remember it.

First, the increasingly famous words from Wilson:

Now, onto ‘AX alternative manga’ book. It has had a huge amount of reviews, and overwhelmingly positive … However, one aspect has surprised both myself and Asakawa, the Japanese editor – quite a few female American reviewers have taken issue with the large amount of scatalogical toilet humour and also the sexual content of the collection. Somehow they seem to find it offensive, or unpleasant, or immature. It was surprising to me to see this kind of reaction, as it never occurred to me at all – as a British person – that these could be seen as negative …

Now, I don’t mean that ‘I am right,they are wrong’ and certainly don’t mean to upset these reviewers – its their opinion, and I’m interested to see it. It’s been an illuminating thing for me to see such reactions. What hits me the most is that it’s perhaps an example of cultural (and gender within culture) difference on perception of such things. I say that because I noticed that all the people making such comments are North American ladies. I have not seen a single man say it, or any women from outside North America. Therefore, I presume that it MAY be something in the shared cultural values and norms of such commentators coming through that makes them react negatively to such toilet humour and sexual content – perhaps? In Britain toilet humour is one of the main types, and our attitude towards sexual content is relatively ‘liberal’, it seems. Asakawa, as a Japanese person, was also rather surprised, for perhaps similar cultural reasons.

Given that this is Fanservice Friday, I’ll leave the discussion of toilet humor to others and move on more appropriately, to sexual content, because here is where I must emphatically disagree with Sean Michael Wilson.

North American ladies don’t like sexual content? Has the man never cracked open a Harlequin romance? I can easily imagine that many men might be unaware of things like the enormous volume of sexually explicit fanfiction churned out by North American women on the internet every day, but sexual fantasy is big business in this part of the world, and there’s no shortage of demand for it from women.

Even in the (relatively small) North American manga market, we women like our fanservice just the same as anyone. Sure, some of that comes down to chaste romance and slashable bishounen, but many of the best loved and most eagerly anticipated manga among female readers in North America derive their main appeal from sexual content, ranging anywhere from coy bedroom scenes to outright pornography. Fans of yaoi in particular (me included, perhaps), have not usually been known for our delicate tastes.

What I think Mr. Wilson is more likely encountering is that we, many of us, also have other standards, at least when we’re engaging with something that believes itself to be Art. We see merit in sexual content, but we expect it to have meaning beyond shock value or pure titillation. Hell, even in our pornography, we expect some level of craft, either visual or narrative in nature.

Speaking for myself, having come from a prose background, I’ll cut the artwork quite a bit of slack, but if the sex doesn’t drive the story (at least when it’s onscreen) I’m probably going to be unimpressed. In fiction, as in life, effective sex scenes require effort, and I don’t have a lot of patience for slogging through otherwise. I’m over forty. I’ve seen it all. You can’t shock me with your content. But there’s an excellent chance that you’ll bore me if you don’t have something more to offer. And if your point is simply to be subversive, you’ll likely bore me with that as well.

Now, obviously AX is not concerned with fanservice. Nor is it, I expect, concerned with having fans. “Experimental” work is generally about social commentary, self-expression, Damning The Man, and other perfectly noble causes, none of which are guaranteed to produce art.

Having not read the collection, I’m not prepared to comment on what its contributors have produced, but if my fellow Ladies haven’t appreciated it, I’m fairly certain it’s not the sex.

Really, quite certain.

Filed Under: Fanservice Friday, FEATURES

Fanservice Friday: Sundome

December 3, 2010 by Melinda Beasi 2 Comments

Welcome to the second monthly edition of Fanservice Friday!

Today’s column is actually collaborative in a sense, and not hosted here in its entirety. Just yesterday, I appeared as a guest on the Manga Out Loud podcast, hosted by Ed Sizemore (Manga Worth Reading), where we discussed the manga series, Sundome, written by Kazuto Okada, and published in English by Yen Press.

The series mainly follows two Japanese teenagers, Hideo and Kurumi, who develop between them something very close to a classic dominant/submissive relationship (Hideo as the submissive party and Kurumi as the dom), presented in a fairly dark context of obsession and deep emotional damage (though not without some surprisingly warm moments).

For in-depth discussion of the series, please check out the podcast, though given the purpose of this column, I will take a moment to specifically mention the series’ dense volume of fanservice. There is so much of it in this series, in fact, I’m not entirely sure it can be properly categorized as “fanservice” which perhaps indicates something extraneous to the story. In the case of Sundome, “extraneous” could not be a less accurate description.

The entire series is steeped in erotic imagery, some of which could be characterized as quite crude, but with such a strong emotional core, it’s difficult to think of it as obscene, even in its most explicit moments. That the characters are high school students only makes the level of eroticism more disturbing, yet again, it’s so appropriate to the narrative and especially to Hideo’s point of view, it’s difficult to imagine the story working well without it. Eroticism is so much a part of the fabric of the story, anything less might just seem unbelievably coy.

One particular type of imagery, however, is used more prominently here than in any other manga I’ve personally encountered (which, in terms of this type of manga, is admittedly not all that much). That would be the constant presence of the cameltoe. Shots down the shirt or up the skirt are incredibly common, even in pretty mainstream shounen and seinen manga, but Okada’s obsession with the cameltoe is something new for me.

Observe.

Now, obviously I’m not necessarily the most appropriate judge in terms of appeal, but not only do I have difficulty finding this attractive, it mostly looks… kinda painful. Ouch.

As I mentioned in the podcast, given the sexual themes in the manga, I actually find the rather stunning wealth of male-oriented fanservice in Sundome mainly inoffensive, as it seems so integral to the series’ tone and plot. I find it quite a bit less offensive, in fact, than random, less explicit panty-shots tossed into standard fantasy or adventure manga.

What say you, readers?


Be sure to download this week’s Manga Out Loud podcast, and let us know what you think!

Filed Under: Fanservice Friday Tagged With: sundome

Fanservice Friday: A Girl’s (G)Fantasy

November 5, 2010 by Melinda Beasi 60 Comments


Many female manga fans regularly read shonen manga. This is simply a fact. Women are infinitely adaptable and generally omnivorous readers. We like romance, intrigue, action, drama, satire, comedy, tragedy, and sometimes, porn. Most of us spent our school days reading books written by men, the classroom philosophy being that girls would read books written for boys, but boys would rarely read books for girls.

Popular entertainment thrived on this principle also, ensuring that most film and television with any real money behind it would be geared to male viewers. We’d come along too, the executives figured. And sure enough, we did. In fact, in 2009, women dominated the movie-going market, though only a couple of big hits were deliberately made with us in mind.

Though the Japanese manga industry offers girls a veritable treasure chest by comparison, girls still spend a lot of time in the shonen section of the store, enough so that publishers deliberately court a female audience, even for manga created for boys.

Watching the industry from the English-language side, we’re not always privy to Japan’s subtler trends. Titles are generally chosen here with American tastes and habits in mind, and Japanese demographic categories frequently become meaningless. Casual fans rarely know or care how their favorite titles are marketed in Japan, let alone what magazines they ran in.

But for those of us who read a lot of manga, and who are likely to identify books with their publishers, certain things eventually become apparent. This entry concerns a trend that’s become particularly fascinating to me as a female reader who enjoys quite a bit of shonen manga.

All of the cover art displayed above belongs to manga series that run in the same magazine. That magazine is Square Enix’s Monthly GFantasy. Its demographic? Shonen.

So why are these shonen titles plastered with fanservice… for girls?

Some of the licensed titles that have run in GFantasy include Switch, Gestalt (both published by Viz Media), Black Butler, Pandora Hearts, Zombie Loan, and Nabari no Ou (all from Yen Press). Something all these titles share in common (besides a gallery of drool-worthy bishonen covers) is that they’re all written and drawn by female mangaka. Though women drawing shonen is hardly revolutionary, a collection of so many in a single magazine seems notable indeed. And with the kind of artwork that’s being displayed to market this manga, it seems likely that Square Enix has gathered them for a reason: to draw in a female audience.

Though each of the titles I’ve mentioned contain fanservice for girls, some of it is so subtle, you’d never know from a quick glance. Gestalt, for instance, contains as much (or more) fanservice for male readers, with its female lead, Ouri, prancing around in outfits that reveal a bouncing bosom any shonen manga would be proud to display. All the women in Gestalt are voluptuous, while most of its men are somewhat nerdy, especially glasses-wearing Father Olivier who begins as sort of the hero of the piece.

Yun Kouga’s trick is in text more than in pictures, where she reveals in the first volume that curvy Ouri is actually a man, lending new, exciting undertones to a scene like this.

Gestalt is an older manga than the others on this list, running from 1992 to 2001, which may account in part for its more traditional boobs and butts. Kouga’s artwork, too, though attractive, lacks the excessively pretty bishonen that dominate many of the magazine’s current series.

Still, the story’s gender-bending heroine provides titillation for both its male and female readers, while bringing to mind Deb Aoki’s recent question on Twitter, where she asked if Shonen Jump manga might be the gateway drug to yaoi.

Of course, some of GFantasy‘s titles are more subtle than others.


Yana Tobaso’s Black Butler, in particular, makes use of heavy BL subtext (as well as actual parody text as illustrated above) to please its female readers, particularly playing up the relationship with butler Sebastian and underaged Ciel, tapping into not just BL fans but shota fans in particular.

While that particular type of fanservice is not at all my cup of tea, elements of shotacon can be found even in my favorite GFantasy series, Jun Mochizuki’s Pandora Hearts, a serious fantasy tale that uses inter-dimensional time incongruities to create a gap of quite a few years between hero Oz and his devoted valet, Gilbert. Though the fanservice to this end is far more subtle than in Black Butler, the situation allows for lots of lingering glances and tense undercurrents.

Mochizuki’s real talent for fanservice, however, shines through in her character designs and costuming. She fills the pages of Pandora Hearts with long, tousled bangs and oversized shirt and coat sleeves, infantilizing even her creepiest characters in a spectacularly cozy way. Though this effect is used indiscriminately, both on male and female characters, the males’ top hats, long coats, and careless tendrils enhance the look significantly.

Sometimes, of course, her artwork is just very, very pretty.

In the face of all this girl-centric fanservice, the question burning in my mind has been, “Is shonen really the demographic for this magazine?” GFantasy runs other series, of course, that don’t fit the picture I’ve been painting, but even so, series like Black Butler or even Nabari no Ou seem especially crafted to please a female demographic. Yet a quick (and even not-so-quick) web search reveals no conversation on the topic whatsoever.

Unsatisfied, I turned to Twitter to seek out those more knowledgeable than I, and received some interesting responses from some folks who regularly buy and research magazines in Japan.

Sean Gaffney, in particular, had some interesting things to say. “… as the years have gone buy, and ‘comics for boys’ and ‘comics for girls’ have come more and more to mean ‘comics for people who have money to spend’, the genres have been busted down as the magazines cater to what people want to buy … And if that means pretty boys, hey, then pretty boys it is. Square Enix does not have a dedicated shoujo magazine, the way their competitors do … As a result, when they have a female friendly title, it has to go into one of those books.”

“But you’re right, no other title seems to lie about its genre more than GFantasy.”

And Tanbishugi pointed out these interesting facts: “Saiyuki and Loveless were originally serialized in GFantasy and later moved to Comic Zero-Sum which is a female-oriented magazine. Tactics also briefly ran in GF before it moved to another publisher.”

Also, regarding the BL background of some of the series’ authors, “Yana Toboso got her start writing Prince of Tennis doujinshi and Gackt RPS, and original BL under the pen name Yanao Rock. Naked Ape have also been fairly active in the doujinshi scene.”

And who do American publishers see as their primary market for these books? My request for insight from Yen Press received no response, but photos from last month’s Yaoi-Con suggest that women are good bet, at least for some titles.

So readers, male and female, do you read GFantasy titles? Manga Bookshelf wants to know!


******

Images copyright Yun Kouga, Peach-Pit, Naked Ape, Yana Tobaso, Jun Mochizuki, Square Enix, Viz Media, & Yen Press

Many thanks to David Welsh who proposed the title for this feature! Check back for more Fanservice Friday on the first Friday of every month!

Filed Under: Fanservice Friday

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