License Requests

This week’s radio programming has me curious about the work of a relatively unknown-to-me member of the Year 24 Group, Yumiko Ôshima, so let’s take a look at some of her works!

It seems like her best-known is The Star of Cottonland, which ran for seven volumes in Hakusensha’s LaLa. It’s about a kitten who falls in love with the human who cares for her and assumes that she’ll grow up into a human at some point so they can be together. When this dream is derailed, she hears of Cottonland, a place where dreams come true, and she sets off to find it. It’s credited with popularizing the cat-girl aesthetic (the kitten is rendered as a human with cat-ears), and it won the Kodansha Award. It was also adapted into an animated motion picture. My limited experience with manga pets falling in love with their owners has left me a bit unenthusiastic about that particular trope, but it’s a classic, and it’s from a Year 24 Group member, so I must support its eventual publication in English and hope for the best.

The title alone is enough to make me want someone to publish Banana Bread no Pudding, which ran for one volume in Shueisha’s Monthly Seventeen. Who doesn’t like banana bread? And pudding? This one’s about a young woman who feels adrift as her beloved older sister plans to marry. The younger sister becomes involved with an older, closeted gay man. I don’t need to tell you that this isn’t the solution for anything, except possibly a deportation threat, but I’d still read about it.

Ôshima seems to pack a lot into one volume with Tanjou!, which ran in Shueisha’s Margaret. A high-school girl gets pregnant to escape her strict home life, which (and I cannot stress this enough) isn’t the solution for anything, but props to Ôshima for addressing it way back in 1970. The pregnancy ends up being the least of the girl’s woes, or it at least seems to trigger a whole bunch of new woes, which is certainly more realistic than Teen Mom seems to be.

We’re back to cats, though in a vastly different context, with Guuguu Datte Neko de Aru, an autobiographical series that’s running in Kadokawa Shoten’s Hon no Tabibito. It’s about the loss of Ôshima’s beloved cat, subsequent writers block and illness, and the healing power of the new kitten she welcomes into her life. I think I must have something in my eye. Excuse me.

While composing this week’s final installment of The Josei Alphabet, I was shocked to realize that I’ve never formally requested Yumi Tamura’s 7 Seeds. This is one of those situations that must be rectified as quickly as possible.

The series launched in Shogakukan’s Betsucomi, a shôjo magazine, before moving to josei anthology Flowers at some point during its still-ongoing run. Betsucomi has always seemed like it skews a little older than the average shôjo magazine, so this was probably a fairly easy transition. Flowers is one of those anthologies that seems positively fecund with license-request fodder. It’s home to the much-loved Kaze Hikaru (in glacial current release courtesy of Viz’s Shojo Beat line), and it had the privilege of publishing Moto Hagio’s “Iguana Girl,” one of the many highlights of A Drunken Dream and Other Stories. It was also the serialization home of Hagio’s much-praised, much-wanted Otherworld Barbara. So basically, if psychologically complex fantasy is published in Flowers, chances are good that the I-want-now factor will be high.

And 7 Seeds certainly sounds like Tamura isn’t stinting on the psychological complexity. It’s about Japanese youth who were placed in cryogenic suspension by the government as they prepared for the imminent, potentially apocalyptic collision of a meteor. Groups of teen-sicles were planted up and down Japan to ensure that the population would be able to rebuilt when the Earth’s environment was once again fit for habitation.

But, you know, humans in general and teens in particular rarely behave in ways we might expect, especially when we leave them a to-do list that we aren’t around to enforce. Our survivors, or “seeds,” have dramatically new circumstances to manage and old baggage to tote, which is bound to make survival and repopulation fairly complicated, wouldn’t you think? (The series is at the 20-volume point, so I’d hope things would be complicated.) The cast seems fairly huge, which is always a good sign, and the general nature of the series seems to be dramatic-episodic, combining lots of emotional nuance with neat, speculative world-building.

You knew without me having to tell you that it’s being published in French, right? Pika has slowly made its way to the 10^th volume, and while a slow release schedule isn’t ideal, I always feel it’s better than not getting a series at all, which is where we are right now. And Pika allows you to see gorgeous sample pages from the first eight volumes.

Tamura is hardly unknown to English-reading audiences. Viz published her 27-volume Basara. That series is frequently described with dreamy fondness by its partisans, and I’m sure 7 Seeds would engender the same kind of fondness and loyalty if someone is kind enough to publish it already.

I’ve taken a shine to this week’s license request precisely because it doesn’t really resemble any of my recent wish-list items. It’s also part of an under-a-cloud subcategory, manga that explores the life of the delinquent. A wee handful of the 25 volumes of Hiroshi Takahashi’s Worst ever saw publication in English from Digital Manga. Beloved though it may be by tastemakers, Eiji Nonaka’s Cromartie High School still hasn’t found a new home since the shuttering of ADV.

So what makes me think the commercial prospects are any better for Norifusa Mita’s Dragon Zakura? I actually don’t think it would sell like gangbusters, and I can’t even clearly articulate why I’m eager to read it. All I can say is that I like its magazine provenance – Kodansha’s Morning – and that I find the covers ugly in kind of a mesmerizing way.

But what’s this 21-volume series about? It follows a former motorcycle gang leader turned lawyer decide to turn teacher. He joins the faculty at an on-the-brink-of-bankruptcy school and declares that he will lead at least five of its students to the academic Promised Land: admission to Tokyo University. That the kids are kind of stupid and downtrodden apparently doesn’t bother this academically inclined opportunist.

I can’t quite tell if this is a comedy or a drama, though it seems to lean on the serious side. This is probably a good thing, as the comedic stories of this stripe tend to be things like School of Rock, while the dramas are more like To Sir, with Love, and I can tell you which one I’d rather watch without even a soupcon of hesitation. And Dragon Zakura has won a couple of major manga awards: the Kodansha and the Japan Media Arts Festival Excellence Prize, both in 2005.

While I like throwing a license request into the mix with every Manga Moveable Feast, it does occasionally feel like preaching to the choir. I mean, nobody needs me to remind them that, hey, it might be a good idea to publish more of Natsuki Takaya’s work because, hey, that crazy kid really seems to be on to something.

Since Fruits Basket, Takaya completed an 11-volume series called Hoshi wa Utau, which ran in Hakusensha’s Hana to Yume. It’s about a lonely orphan who finds solace in stargazing. Her life is complicated by the new boy in town. That doesn’t sound especially complicated, but brief descriptions of Takaya’s works rarely do them justice, so I think it’s safe to assume that she makes time to break readers’ hearts over and over again in the course of the story.

Takaya’s current series is also in Hana to Yume, and it’s called Liselotte to Majo no Mori. It’s about a girl who moves to a forest full of witches. She apparently does this on purpose. You can look at some sample pages here.

So that’s what’s lurking out there. I have to admit that I continue to wonder why Hakusensha doesn’t stake its own claim to the English-language market rather than relying on other licensors. I think we’re pretty much down to Viz in terms of Hakusensha publishing partners, what with CMX and Tokyopop gone.  Given how many popular-in-English series the publisher has generated over the years, you’d think they’d be interested in taking the commercial wheel.

[Update: Ed Chavez informs me that the source material isn’t a light novel, but a novel that was serialized in one of Japan’s premiere literary magazines. There’s just not enough strike-through in the world to tidy up the post below, so I’ll let it stand, but I wanted to note the correction in a prominent way. Apologies all around!]

You all know how much I love The Story of Saiunkoku (Viz), Kairi Yura’s spirited adaptation of Sai Yukino’s light novels. You all probably also know that I never let a body of experience get in the way of a recent enthusiasm, so I’m on the lookout for other excellent manga adaptations of light novel series, even though I’m sure they vary wildly in terms of quality. I think I’ve found a winner, though.

It’s actually a literal winner, having won the grand prize for manga at the Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prizes in 2001. I’m referring to Reiko Okano’s adaptation of Baku Yumemakura’s Onmyôji, which ran for 13 volumes in Hakusensha’s Melody. This creates a sort of compound endorsement. The roster of Tezuka Prize winners could also substitute for a list of some of my favorite manga to be published in English with a subset of series I desperately want to see licensed. Melody runs Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ôoku: The Inner Chambers (Viz), another Tezuka Prize winner, so I’m naturally inclined in favor of anything they publish.

The series is currently being published in French by Delcourt’s Akata line. The covers for the volumes released so far are insanely gorgeous. The story follows the work of an imperial magician in the Heian Era who deals with pesky supernatural phenomena like demons and possessed objects. Frankly, it sounds right up my alley: sophisticated supernatural storytelling rich with lots of period detail, plus loads of pretty.

What are some of your favorite light novels? Or manga adaptations of light novels? Or light novel adaptations of manga?

You’ve all asked yourself this question, don’t deny it. “What,” you’ve wondered, “would happen if a blond-haired, blue-eyed American teen-ager was inadvertently sent back in time to Ancient Egypt?” As with so many unanswered questions in this life, manga can help you. Specifically, Chieko Hosokawa can help you with Crest of the Royal Family, which has been in serialization in Akita Shoten’s Princess Magazine since 1976.

“Tell me more!” you plead. Well, I’ll let Wikipedia do the initial heavy lifting, because if anyone’s going to be accused of making crazy stuff up, at least Wikipedia is used to those charges:

The main character is Carol, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed American teenager from a wealthy family with an interest in Egyptology studying in Cairo. When her mentor discovers the tomb of a young pharaoh, a curse is put on the excavation team and Carol. The curse sends her back in time to ancient Egypt, where she becomes embroiled in the affairs of Egypt and other ancient countries such as Assyria and Babylonia. Carol meets Memphis, a handsome young pharaoh whose tomb she excavated in modern times. Despite his headstrong and at first violent nature, they fall deeply in love. This angers Memphis’s half-sister, the Priestess Isis, who has longed to marry him. Carol, due to her exotic looks and curious ability to tell the future, becomes a major player in ancient history.

Now I ask you, what sane person could resist thousands of pages of glittery political intrigue set in the cradle of civilization? (Don’t answer that. Seriously. If you’ve started to type a rueful, knowing comment to the effect that there’s simply no market for this kind of thing, I beg you to stop, because that is decidedly not in The Spirit of the Thing.)

From what I can gather, Carol gets kidnapped a lot. Blond hair and a knack for Egyptology only carry one so far in this life, or past lives, and her seemingly eerie prescience gets her in a lot of trouble.

This may be the longest shôjo series I’ve ever seen. The 55^th volume was published a little over a year ago, and most sources indicate that it’s ongoing, but I’m not sure. As near as I can tell, it’s never been adapted into an anime series, which makes its enduring presence in Princess even more intriguing. I’m sure things slog along the way, and most sources indicate that Carol can be a victim with a capital “V,” not to mention the fact that the whole “Let’s listen to the white lady, she must know things” notion could get deeply offensive.

But really, over 50 volumes of ancient Egyptian faux-history glazed over with shôjo sparkle? I know it will probably never happen, but I’d totally read it if it did.

There isn’t really a shortage of Kazuya Minekura manga available in English. In addition to the six existing volumes of Wild Adapter, Tokyopop also published the one-volume Bus Gamer, the nine-volume Saiyuki and nine of the ten volumes of Saiyuki Reload. While everyone’s first concern for Minekura is obviously a complete recovery from what sounds like a terrifying illness, greed is part and parcel of fandom, especially when you find out things like this exist.

That is the cover from the first volume of Shiritsu Araiso Koutou Gakkou Seitokai Shikkoubu, or Araiso Private School Student Council Executive Committee, a two-volume series published in Tokuma Shoten’s Chara. Fans of Wild Adapter will recognize the twosome on the cover.

Yes, this series features an alternate-universe version of the boys who keep the peace at their school by what sound like any means necessary. It cannot possibly be as good as Wild Adapter, I don’t think, but seeing Kubota and Tokito under any circumstances would be a total delight. And they’re pretty damned funny in Wild Adapter, so seeing them play pure comedy is a very enticing prospect.

And these covers rock hard.

Looking at the major French awards programs that honor comics from Japan, it’s not hard to conclude that there’s a bit of bias in favor of male creators. All of the current Prix Asie nominees were created by men, as were this year’s manga honorees at Angoulême.

On the plus side, the actual commercial market for comics in France seems just as enthusiastic for Japanese comics by women as you’d expect. As you also might predict, they’re well ahead of us in terms of josei offerings. Just look at Sakka’s selection. Since I’m still in the throes of The Josei Alphabet, I thought I’d pick among Sakka’s josei titles for this week’s license request.

I’m quite taken with the description of Mlle Ôishi, titled Sukana Hitona by original publisher Shodensha for its four-volume run in Feel Young. It’s about a 30-ish woman who becomes engaged to a divorced man and the various difficulties that relationship presents. It follows protagonist Kon from 28 to 32 years old and considers the plight of the Japanese woman in search of her soul mate.

Minami has quite a body of work, a fair amount of which explores yuri themes. She also recently launched a series (Hirake Koma!) in Kodansha’s always-reliable Morning. I’d be very interested to see some of her work in English.

You all know I can’t resist an awards program as fodder for a license request, so I’ve greeted the announcement of the Tezuka Cultural Prize (written up by Asahi Shimbun) with predictable eagerness. Unfortunately, I’ve already requested that someone publish the winning title (Motoka Murakami’s Jin). Fortunately, this year resulted in a not-uncommon tie for first place. (Yoshihiro Tatsumi and Fumi Yoshinaga tied in 2009.) Even more fortunately, Taiyo Matsumoto is involved.

The gifted Matsumoto, of TekkonKinkreet and GoGo Monster fame, has done illustration duties on the other winning title, Takemitsu Zamurai, which was written by Issei Eifuku. The esteemed panel of judges noted that the book was “the most advanced work in terms of the level of illustration techniques.” That shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s looked at Matsumoto’s pages.

It’s about an out-of-work samurai who retires to teach in one of the tenements of Edo-era Japan. Apparently, it’s not a peaceful retirement for a swordsman-turned-educator. In spite of his efforts to leave violence behind, he’s a suspect in a murder, and an investigator starts digging into his past. His presence brings unwelcome visitors to the neighborhood, along with a number of other complications. It sounds like a more muscular House of Five Leaves, and anything that I can favorably compare to House of Five Leaves piques my interest about as much as anything with Matsumoto’s name on the cover.

The eight volume-series was originally published in Shogakukan’s Big Comic Spirits. As you might expect, it’s being published in French (by Kana, in this case). While I’m inclined to take the word of judges like Keiko Takemiya and Go Nagai, I’m drooling to see some of the interior pages, because the covers are sickeningly gorgeous.

Seriously, Viz, you have like one month to announce this title. It’s only eight volumes long, it’s finished, it won the most prestigious manga prize Japan has to offer, and it was practically minted for your Signature imprint. Do your part to liven up San Diego for manga fans.

I love a lot of shônen created by women. There’s Hiromu Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist and Rumiko Takahashi’s Ranma ½. Yumi Hotta’s script for Hikaru no Go goes just as far to make the series a favorite as Takeshi Obta’s art does. There’s a lot to like in Yuu Watase’s Arata: The Legend, and Kazue Kato’s Blue Exorcist shows a lot of promise. I’m probably deep into the three-volume collection of Yellow Tanabe’s critically acclaimed Kekkaishi as you read this.

I would love to read more shôjo created by men to see if that construct also applies, but there’s very little available in English. I quite enjoyed Meca Tanaka’s Omukae Desu and Pearl Pink. I’m still mourning the discontinuation of Crown, largely for its sly, snappy script by Shinji (Sukeban Deka) Wada (though the title’s attractive art by You Higuri certainly doesn’t hurt.) And I’m positively impatient about the opportunity to read Osamu Tezuka’s Princess Knight later this year.

So imagine my excitement when I discovered that Mitsuru Adachi, creator of the title featured in the current Manga Moveable Feast, has done a number of shôjo series. I’ll happily read anything he creates (and I have to track down copies of Short Program, which includes some shôjo shorts), and I’ve already requested Rough, but I’m very curious about these earlier works.

First up is Slow Step, which ran for seven volumes in Shogakukan’s Ciao. It’s about a schoolgirl who’s looking for love, is besieged by suitors, and is harassed by a pervy teacher, and it involves boxing, baseball, criminals, and disguise. Why not?

Hitari Ryoukou! (which ran for five volumes in Shogakukan’s Sho-Comi), gives us Adachi in reverse-harem mode. It’s about a girl whose aunt runs a boarding house filled with high-school boys. Our heroine tries to stay true to her overseas boyfriend, but she’s developing feelings for one of the boarders.

Ah! Seishun no Koushien, originally published by Shogakukan, seven volumes, is about kids who want to make it to the youth baseball championships! Sound familiar? Still, Adachi seems gifted at finding variety in familiar scenarios, so I’m not going to let familiarity breed contempt or anything near it.

Of all of those, I think I’m most interested in the promised slice-of-life vibe of Hitari Ryoukou! Which one looks good to you?

This week’s license request comes courtesy of Michelle (Soliloquy in Blue) Smith, frequent and always welcome Manga Bookshelf contributor.

Whenever I ponder license requests, in addition to a few classics that always make the list, I’m often drawing upon creators whose current work I enjoy. Sometimes this strategy backfires—neither Portrait of M & N nor Tsubasa: Those with Wings was as good as their creators’ more famous series—but still I persist. And that is why I would love to see Crazy for You (an earlier series by Karuho Shiina, the mangaka behind Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You) licensed for US release.

I first read about Crazy for You (complete in six volumes) on Emily’s Random Shoujo Manga Page, which is rich with license request fodder. Here’s some of what she had to say about it:

This story revolves around the tangled relationships between a group of five friends. The focus is on a a cute, naive girl named Sachi (or “Sa-chan”). Sachi is silly and innocent and friendly. She had a very “genuine” personality. What you see is what you get. Sachi doesn’t have a boyfriend, but would like one (going to an all-girls school makes finding a boyfriend difficult), so when she is asked if she would like to go to a “goukon” (a group date) she jumps at the chance. At the goukon, Sachi meets a lively and cute boy named Yuki. Sachi falls for Yuki at first sight, and they get along very well. They both have energetic personalities. Yuki thinks Sachi is cute, and seems to really like her.

Every day, Sachi finds herself falling more and more for Yuki, and her affection is very obvious to everyone around her, including Yuki. However, while Yuki does like her, there is some sort of barrier between them. Yuki is holds himself back and will only see Sachi as a friend. When a secret from Yuki’s past comes to light, and a relationship is revealed, the group of friends is thrown into turmoil. Bonds are strained or broken, betrayal is felt, and everyone must re-evaluate how they feel about each other.

Cute romance is all well and good, but cute romance coupled with secrets and turmoil? Sign me up!

Surprisingly, this appears to be one series the French don’t have yet, but the Germans do. In fact, their editions have a very familiar logo on the spine! Within about three hours of making this discovery, a German set of these books was on their way to me (Google Translate, here I come!) but I’d still much rather have a set in English.

So, how about it, VIZ?

(Guest license requests are always welcome.)