Features & Reviews

Pepita by Takehiko Inoue

May 6, 2013 by Anna N

Pepita: Takehiko Inoue Meets Gaudi

This has been a very good year for fancy hardcover editions of manga materials. There’s Gundam: The Origin, Wandering Son is still coming out, Heart of Thomas, and the Nausicaa box set was great. This book, about Takehiko Inoue’s architectural tour of Spain and specifically Gaudi works isn’t filled with enough drawings to be an art book, and it doesn’t have enough biographical or written content about Gaudi to be a true study of the man. Instead, we get an interesting travel sketchbook that reveals as much about Inoue’s artistic process as it does about the subject he’s exploring.

I started reading this without much knowledge of Gaudi other than the fact that he was an architect who explored form in an innovative manner. Inoue travels to Spain to get a sense of the man and his approach to designing with nature. Inoue’s reflections come in the form of written thoughts and some exuberant drawings, as he comes up with his own interpretations of Gaudi’s trademark mosaic salamander. Throughout the book we get impressions of Gaudi’s life and some of his most significant work. Inoue’s illustrations are sometimes superimposed on photos, which creates an interesting effect. Inoue’s questions and struggle to understand Gaudi show the reader a great deal about Inoue’s artistic process and artistic approach. There’s enough information about Gaudi in the book that I felt I came away from it slightly better informed, but I thought I’d have to do even more study to really grasp the topic.

In the end, this hybrid art book gives the reader a feeling as if they’ve just spent a little bit of time on an architectural tour of Spain with Takehiko Inoue as their tour guide. This is a pretty good feeling to have! Serious students of architecture might not find the book very informative, but to a casual reader with an interest in Gaudi, this book is worth checking out. I always think that any book by Inoue is worth reading, and I did enjoy this very much.

Off the Shelf: Black Butler, Pepita, Gundam

May 4, 2013 by MJ and Michelle Smith 2 Comments

MJ: Good morning, Michelle! It’s a gorgeous morning here on Free Comic Book Day. Perfect for reading comics in the park. Do you have any comics-related plans for the day?

MICHELLE: Not in regards to Western comics, no, but I am looking forward to reading some Psyren later today!

MJ: I’ve got a nice stack of manga waiting for me as well. So I guess this is our cue to start talking about our comics-related activities earlier this week! What have you been reading?

MICHELLE: Well, one thing I’ve been doing lately is revisiting some of the series that I first talked about in the early days of Off the Shelf. Of course, there aren’t many that are still running—they’ve either finished or the publisher has disappeared—but there are a few, and one of them is Black Butler. Here’s my initial summary from back in January 2011:

In this series, a thirteen-year-old named Ciel Phantomhive is the head of his family after a fire claimed the lives of his parents. To assist him in his plans for revenge he has entered into a contract with a devil who is serving him in the guise of his butler, Sebastian. The Earls of Phantomhive have always served as a “watch dog” for the crown, a duty Ciel is now expected to perform for Queen Victoria.

At the time, I said that the emphasis on solving mysteries was pretty fun, but does that still hold true in volume thirteen? Well, sort of. Up until the previous arc, which involved a series of murders at Phantomhive Manor and the inspiration they provided a young Arthur Conan Doyle, the answer was yes. This current arc, though—which can pretty much be summarized as “zombies on the Titanic“—seems to be more about mass carnage than detection, even though Ciel got involved in the first place because he thought the Queen would want to know what was behind news reports of the dead being reanimated. The one bright spot is that Elizabeth, Ciel’s betrothed, turns out to be a secret badass with swords.

I was actually planning to talk about Black Butler even before you posted your 3 Things Thursday column about how you just couldn’t like it, and now your post has made me wonder why I’m still reading it. I like Sebastian, and sometimes there are amusing bits, but overall, I don’t feel connected to any of these characters or invested in their fate. Ciel could get devoured by a zombie at this point and I would not be affected in the least. So why am I reading? Unfortunately, I think the answer is… because Yen Press is still sending this to me. It’s an easy and uncomplicated read for me, and I don’t hate it, and so I read it. If I had to fork over $12 for each volume, though, I suspect I would’ve dropped it some time ago. It’s just not a satisfying enough read to justify that kind of price tag.

MJ: Discussion of Black Butler seems especially timely for me right now, not only because of that 3 Things Thursday post, but because my recent obsession with Yun Kouga’s Loveless has forced me to confront the question of why I can tolerate certain problematic fanservice in that series when I’m unwilling to stick with Black Butler. And by “forced to confront” I mean that I’ve been asked the question directly, and justifiably so! And the only answer I really have is that, well… Black Butler bored me—at least as far in as I was willing to go—well, and that I have pretty specific reasons for liking the relationships in Loveless that don’t really apply to Black Butler. But in any case, I’ve been asking myself a lot of questions about it, and pondering yet again whether I should give Black Butler another go. Given your reaction here, though, I’m thinking… no, not really.

MICHELLE: There really isn’t much fanservice of that kind in Black Butler, anyway. I mean, very occasionally there are pages where I think Toboso-sensei is throwing fans a juicy little tidbit, but on a straightforward reading, I am personally not seeing the overt, emotional subtext there like one gets in Loveless. Although… can something be simultaneously “overt” and “subtext”? Perhaps I need a better word…

MJ: I think subtext can be incredibly overt. Perhaps you could go for “generous.” Though I think there’s an argument to be made that part of the difference is that Loveless moves the subtext pretty well into the text, which means that Kouga actually forces us to deal with it instead of just giving us a nod & a wink.

MICHELLE: I think you’re right. I never take the “nod and a wink” stuff seriously.

Anyway, what have you been reading this week?

MJ: Well, on a very different note, my main solo read this week is not actually manga, though it’s of great interest to both of us (and, I expect, many of our readers). That read would be Pepita: Inoue Meets Gaudí , a sort of art book/travelogue released last month by Viz. The book combines prose, drawings, and photographs to chronicle the travels of Takahiko Inoue (Slam Dunk, Real, Vagabond) as he traces the life and work of Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí.

The book opens with a heartfelt introduction in which Inoue describes his first encounter with Gaudí’s work and how his detached view of Gaudí as a tourist in Barcelona differed from what he experienced in his quest to really know the man behind the work. It’s a passionate little piece that perfectly sets the tone for the book itself, which is informational and (of course) beautiful, but above all, personal.

Through Inoue’s quest to understand Gaudí, I felt that I was also given an opportunity to understand Inoue—and in a very different way than what I’ve learned about him through his own work. There’s a sense of wisdom and confidence in a series like Real, for instance, that makes me, the reader, feel that I’m the student; I’m learning about humanity through the eyes of a master. Here, Inoue is the one seeking wisdom from a master, and that alone gives us a very different glimpse of him as an artist and a person than what we’d ever see otherwise.

Though I don’t know that Inoue gets the answers he was looking for on his quest (he gets answers, but it’s complicated, I think), the journey itself is glorious to behold. The book is filled with Inoue’s detailed, inspired scribblings alongside (and sometimes inserted into) breathtaking photographs of both Gaudí’s work and the Spanish region he grew up in. It’s a visual treat of the very best kind. It also offers a wealth of information about the life and work of Gaudí through bits of researched history, interviews with artisans and Gaudí scholars, and Inoue’s personal observations.

I’m sure very little of the information offered will be new for serious students of Gaudí, but I am kind of thrilled at the thought that it might serve as an introduction to Inoue (and perhaps manga artists in general) for lovers of architecture, just as it might open up a new world of architectural beauty for fans of Inoue. It certainly did for me.

MICHELLE: That sounds glorious. Now, I have to ask… how detailed were the pictures of Gaudí’s work? Did Inoue attempt to draw any of them? Building geek that I am, I would love that most ardently.

MJ: The pictures are plentiful, though there isn’t a particular focus on the detail, if that makes sense. And though Inoue does sketch them occasionally, I’ll admit that he spends the bulk of his time drawing Gaudí’s surroundings—the streets, people, countryside, mountains—the things that he felt must have most deeply influenced Gaudí’s work, rather than the work itself. He ponders for quite a while Gaudí’s relationship with nature and how some of his buildings were designed to become part of the natural landscape—it’s fascinating, really. I think you’d enjoy it quite a lot.

So, to take a fairly drastic turn once again, would you like to introduce our mutual read for the week?

MICHELLE: Sure! This week, MJand I decided to venture out of our comfort zone and into the realm of… mecha.

Back in late March, Vertical, Inc. released a deluxe hardcover edition of the first volume of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin. Vertical has licensed the aizouban edition of the series, rather than the 23-volume tankouban version, so this first release (subtitled “Activation”) is quite substantial and contains some bonus essays. Mobile Suit Gundam is a relatively recent manga adaptation of the first Gundam anime, and was originally serialized in a magazine called Gundam A, which sounds like it’s for hardcore Gundam enthusiasts. I’d never actually read or seen anything Gundam-related before, so I wasn’t sure how I’d make out, but it turned out to be newcomer-friendly.

In Earth’s distant future, a large chunk of the population is living in gigantic, orbiting colonies. War breaks out when some of the colonies declare themselves the independent Republic of Zeon. A nicely ominous color introduction informs us that the resulting battles wiped out half of the population. “All men grew to fear their own deeds. The war entered a stalemate, and eight months went by…” Fighting resumes when a Zeon mecha force infiltrates a Federation colony where a new mobile suit is being developed.

Long story short… the civilian colonists end up escaping on a rather unwieldy ship, fleeing from their enemy who fight with red-eyed metallic soldier things, and… anyone else here getting some serious Battlestar Galactica flashbacks?

MJ: Heh, well I’d say yes and no. I mean, yes, of course I see where you’re going with that. And I’d say that the plight of the civilians on the ship is the thing that interests me most in Gundam so far. Several of the civilians find themselves sort of spontaneously becoming part of the military operation—in particular Amuro, a civilian teen who accidentally finds himself the pilot of a new mechanical suit prototype, Gundam, and Sayla, who begins as part of the volunteer medical team. The conflict among the military command over the assimilation of the civilians is compelling, but as I struggle to describe any of it here, I think I’m actually hitting upon the thing that least reminds me of something like BSG and is also the source of my own difficulties with the book as a reader. The thing is, unlike BSG or even most of the other Japanese mecha-based series I’ve been able to get into (Evangelion, of course, or more recently, Knights of Sidonia), Gundam is for me, at least so far, a bit too much about the mecha.

As I say this, I’m aware that I’ll probably be criticized for it—and perhaps justly. As one of the two or three manga fans left in the world who has never seen even a second of this very famous anime series, I’m a total novice. I think my nervousness in approaching a series as iconic as this one is pretty similar to Phillip’s trepidation when he decided to read and talk publicly about Sailor Moon. I’m out of my depth and I know it. But as I read through this volume, gorgeous as it is (and it really, really is—seriously, it’s visually epic), I found that I had difficulty remembering characters’ names or really identifying with their story. And I felt pretty detached from the suit itself, which really seemed like the thing I was supposed to be appreciating the most. Is it just me?

MICHELLE: It is not just you at all. As you say, the manga is visually epic, and the overall atmosphere carries the story along even more than the plot does. (There were things about the plot that confused me, for example. Like why is civilian teen Amuro suddenly the pilot of the mecha, when there was an officer slated for that role? Did I miss his demise or something?) But the characterization is where things really fall flat. I don’t feel like we know Amuro even a little teensy bit, other than he seems to have some natural aptitude for piloting a big fighting suit. And where this might put him in direct comparison to Nagate of Knights of Sidonia, at least I have a sense with the latter that it’s Tsutomu Nihei’s intent that his lead be inscrutable. That’s just his style. With Mobile Suit Gundam it feels more like characterization was deemed unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

MJ: I’m grateful to hear you say this, because I really feared that my reaction was a case of reader failure more than anything else, which is to say that it quite surprised me—and saddened me, actually. Not because I feel like loving Gundam a grave necessity in my life, but because the book is so, so stunning to look at, and so obviously created out of a deep love for the source material. One doesn’t even need to read any of the heartfelt essays in the back of the book to feel the sense of reverence and devoted fandom that went into the making of this manga. And Vertical takes that fandom seriously in their production of the book as well. From the bright semi-gloss paper to the gorgeous color pages, Vertical made sure that this labor of love was presented in the most reverent light possible. If I was a fan of the franchise, I’d feel that this was a tremendous gift, I’m sure. And honestly, I could look at the artwork all day long.

MICHELLE: The artwork really sells it for me, and I was especially impressed that the space battles are drawn with such clarity. True, I did weary of the space battles by the end, but at least they weren’t incomprehensible, as could easily have been the case. Too, I never got the sense with this that I was reading an adaptation. I wonder how it reads to those who have actually seen the anime.

Ultimately, though I get the sense that you’re not planning to continue with the series, I think I will. While I might not care about the characters much—though several of the female ones seem to have potential for awesomeness—I still like the story and the sheer scope of what mankind is facing.

MJ: I can see how you’d draw that conclusion, but actually I suspect I will continue with it. Despite my feelings of detachment at this point, the artwork alone is enough to carry me on, at least long enough to see if the characters might begin to really grab me. I like to give any series at least three volumes or so to pull me in, and Gundam surely merits that much. Who knows what might happen?

Note: MJ & Michelle will be taking a break from this column for the next two weeks, in order to prepare for the upcoming Yumi Tamura Manga Moveable Feast. Can you guess what they’ll be reading?

Fanservice Friday: Lovesick over Loveless

May 3, 2013 by MJ 17 Comments

By 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.

The 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.

Two 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)

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.

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)

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.

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.

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)

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)

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)

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)

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.

Manga the Week of 5/8

May 2, 2013 by Sean Gaffney, Michelle Smith and MJ 11 Comments

SEAN: This week gives us a variety of titles to choose from. Let’s delve right into them.

Midtown’s list said that they’re getting in Fantagraphics’ Wandering Son Vol. 4 right as Fantagraphics solicited 5 (for August) noting that 4 was running a bit late. I’ve no idea who is correct, but I’ll lean towards Midtown, as Fantagraphics tends to ship to comic shops long before Amazon and other related stores. It’s a must buy whenever it comes out.

MICHELLE: Yeah, it’s too bad releases of this one aren’t more reliable. I’ve fallen somewhat behind because of that.

MJ: I’ve had this volume on preorder for a very long time, so I’ll be very happy when it finally turns up. I’ll believe it when I actually see it, though.

SEAN: For those who enjoyed Negima from Kodansha Comics but felt that it would be even better if all the girls were 5 years old and Negi was their preschool teacher, well, Negiho! is the title for you! For the rest of us, I’m hoping it comes across as amusing and cute rather than, as I fear, creepy and vaguely illegal.

MICHELLE: Ugh.

MJ: What she said.

SEAN: Seven Seas has another huge omnibus, this one containing the first three volumes of Zero’s Familiar. All I know about this series is that the lead girl is worse than Shana, Taiga and Nagi combined, and there’s a lot of ‘comedic violence’. If you write ‘xxxxx gets a spine’ fics, then, this may be your kryptonite.

MICHELLE: See above re: ugh.

MJ: Indeed.

SEAN: Viz, naturally, has a giant pile of stuff. Bakuman is almost done, which means that he must be close to hooking up with that girl, right? At least that was the plot back when I was still reading Bakuman… In any case, Vol. 19 is filled with Jump goodness.

MICHELLE: At this point, I’m just stockpiling Bakuman until the final volume comes out, then I’m gonna marathon it. I think that might be fun.

MJ: I’ve been keeping up so my anticipation is high!

SEAN: I fear that I’m sounding cranky all of a sudden in these descriptions, and unfortunately Black Bird 16 will not change that. Man, it sells great, though. I like to think its sales help pay for all the poor-selling stuff I like.

MICHELLE: That’s a good way of looking at it.

MJ: If one must look at it.

SEAN: Bleach has its 5th omnibus, which is right in the middle of its strongest arc. Anyone who wonders why everyone is still paying attention to (and complaining about) such a slow-paced behemoth needs to check out these pacey, funny and heartwarming volumes.

MJ: You’re really making me want to go back and re-read Bleach!

SEAN: Claymore has gotten much praise from friends I trust, and I keep meaning to go back and grab it. Till then, here’s Vol. 22 for said friends.

MJ: I’m looking forward to this, too! I have a couple of volumes to catch up on, so I plan to read them all together.

SEAN: Dengeki Daisy has gotten much praise from me, and I can’t wait to see Vol. 12. This is the anti-Black Bird, being a shoujo thriller that respects its female characters and kicks eight kinds of ass. May I note that it and Black Bird run in the SAME DAMN MAGAZINE? Now that’s variety.

MICHELLE: I’m behind on this one, too, but intend to catch up in the coming weeks.

SEAN: How did Hunter x Hunter get to 30 volumes? Does that mean it’s also had 30 hiatuses? Still, its ability to return from long breaks over and over again must mean it’s a damn fine series, and so here we are, Vol. 30.

Ah, the final volume of La Corda D’oro! Sadly, it fell victim to “the sales suck, but we’re not allowed to cancel it, so let’s put it out as slow as possible instead.” A quiet, sometimes overly frustrating reverse harem about a girl and her violin, this LaLa series already has a sequel in Japan. Don’t expect that. Enjoy this, though.

MICHELLE: Someday I will read this. I own practically the whole thing.

MJ: I’ve enjoyed this series consistently, despite its flaws, so you can count me in here.

SEAN: Naruto also has Vol. 5 of its omnibuses releases, and I think it’s towards the end – at last – of the exam stories. This is also Naruto towards the height of its powers, I believe, so definitely recommended.

And we also get Naruto 61, which has Sasuke and Itachi’s tearful, loving reunion. D’aww…

Otomen 15 looks to focus on Tomomine, at least to start, and his being torn between what his parents want and his love of makeup. I am still basking in my love of Vol. 13, so as long as Ryo still appears once or twice, I’m fine with it.

Psyren has made it to 10 volumes, and I believe is at the point where he finally get some mysteries solved in addition to all the angst and action.

MICHELLE: Otomen and Psyren are two more I’m aiming to catch up with soon.

SEAN: Strobe Edge continues to try to work with its love polygon and make it realistic, keeping everyone sympathetic. Will that keep lasting with Vol. 4? Let’s find out…

MICHELLE: I hearts it.

SEAN: Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee delivers its 13th series of letters. Sorry, I got nothing on this series. Anyone want to chime in who reads it?

MICHELLE: I’m pretty behind on it. I like the world and the art, but sometimes the humor is very… shounen.

SEAN: Speaking of final volumes, We Were There has run out of manga, therefore I assume Vol. 16 must run out of ways to make everyone as sad as possible and comes up with a happy ending. Yay!

MICHELLE: It’s a great ending!

MJ: Agreed! I plan to talk about this shortly on the site.

SEAN: Lastly, not technically manga, but Yen Press has the first New Moon Graphic Novel, which will sell well enough to let them pick up some more series similar to Thermae Romae. I hope.

MICHELLE: Me, I’m hoping for manhwa.

MJ: I’m with Michelle. I’m also steeling myself to read New Moon. I’ve never been able to get up the gumption to read the novels, but these at least move quickly.

SEAN: So what titles give you feels this week? (Is this Tumblr?)

Weekly Shonen Jump Recap: April 29, 2013

April 30, 2013 by Derek Bown Leave a Comment

This was an amazingly strong week for Weekly Shonen Jump. The majority of the chapters were all excellent, with two exceptions, and once again One Piece has somehow managed not to be the top chapter this week. In fact, in my personal rankings, it’s actually just number three. How did this happen? Keep reading and find out. And as always, let me know in the comments how wrong I am.

One Piece Ch. 707
One Piece was excellent this week. Don’t think that it was any weakness of Oda’s that made this week’s chapter fall in my own personal rankings. We actually get a really good look at the fights and all the different characters. I’ve been loving the design for the Fighting King Elizabello II. There’s just something about that goofy boxing pose of his that is charming. Though, the idea that his punch can take down a wall would be more impressive if it didn’t take him an hour to charge it up and there weren’t characters who could do the same without charging their punches.

I love how Oda manages to include new plot lines in an almost flippant kind of way. Former Gladiator Ricky clearly has an important story, but not more than a couple of pages is spent on him. My best guess would be that it’s somehow connected to Rebecca’s developing plot. Oda also uses this chapter to make Bellamy appear much more formidable than he was. Even his at first goofy power is actually kind of badass. His punch is like one of Luffy’s punches, only he doesn’t have to stretch his arm back first.

Naruto Ch. 628
I could go on a long rant about this chapter. Not even because the chapter itself is bad, but because the last chapter was the final blow for me. This series has constantly moved from being good to bad to good to bad to decent to bad to boring to bad to screw-this-I’m-out. The bad moments on their own aren’t that terrible, but they keep getting worse, and after years of putting up with this pattern, the latest batch of stupidity was the last straw. I was almost ready to give this series up after the Kage summit. After the last chapter, and then realizing how much I don’t care about this series anymore, I would give it up. Except that I write a review for it every week, and I cover it on a podcast.

If you want to know the biggest problem I have with the series now, it’s that every time I see any of the characters I remember all the stupid, terrible writing decisions Kishimoto has made in the past. The worst part of it all is that from what I’ve seen of interviews of him, Kishimoto seems like a pretty humble kind of guy. So I feel bad ragging on his series so much. But the fact remains that Naruto should have ended years ago. And a good chunk of the cast should have been excised from the series well before then.

Like I said, I could go on a long rant. Instead I’ll keep it to a medium rant.

Mario One-Shot Prelude
After the intense bad feelings Naruto left with me this week, I actually found myself enjoying the few pages of this prelude we got. I really think Kishimoto would do quite well if he just started a new series. Drop all the baggage Naruto has accumulated and just try again. It’s outlived its welcome and I wouldn’t mind seeing a completely new series.

World Trigger Ch. 012
The best I can say about this series is that it’s boring. It doesn’t have any pizzaz and the characters aren’t exactly memorable. It didn’t bother me before, but Yuma’s default face is really getting on my nerves. Sadly I can’t even build up any kind of vitriol to make my commentary about this series entertaining. It’s just boring.

Bleach Ch. 535
Bleach manages to remain adequate once again. I do find it a bit annoying that there needed to be some kind of convoluted reason for Isshin to stay with Masaki. Is it too difficult to just have him fall in love with her and leave Soul Society for her? That would certainly be a better love story and is pretty much the story readers have been telling themselves for years. Is it really necessary to complicate that? It does provide a good explanation for where Ichigo’s hollow powers come from though. And I do appreciate that Isshin’s “Well duh” answer fits the overall attitude readers have had. Of course he’s going to stay, after all how else would he have three kids with her. But overall the story has been interesting enough that I don’t mind already knowing the ending.

Nisekoi Ch. 072
You wanted to know what my number two was for this week? Nisekoi continues its strong streak with another comedy-heavy chapter. It dips in quality when things get too serious, something One Piece does not suffer from. But at its strongest Nisekoi can trump even One Piece, at least where I am concerned. And this is no mean feat. Nisekoi was just beyond funny this week, and the comedy stretches on to the next chapter. What more could I, as a comedy fan, possibly ask for?

One-Punch Man Ch. 015
One-Punch Man is back in form after a few lackluster chapters. They were entertaining at the time, but it isn’t until now that I see how they were relatively duller than what this series can be at its strongest. And they did it with a punch to the balls joke. How does that happen?

Dragon Ball Z Ch. 013
I’m sorry, but I can’t think about this series without thinking of the corresponding episodes of Dragon Ball Z Abridged. This was definitely a step upwards from the first few chapters. Seeing the focus on the wilderness of Dragon Ball does make me regret that later on in the series it will become a lot more urbanized, which is a real shame since Toriyama is great at designing and drawing monsters. Fewer cities, more dinosaurs please.

Toriko Ch. 231
This. Chapter. Was. Amazing! And yet it was only my number four this week. In any other manga I’d call OP shenanigans on Zebra. But his presence and balls-out badness transcends literary criticism and touches the depths of my primal macho drive, bypassing any argument that isn’t expressed as a gutural roar of badassitude. I don’t need any kind of balance or logical progression of strength, I just need Zebra messing even the biggest baddie up.

And yet, Setsuno is even more awesome than that hulking pile of muscles. Toriko is a very unusual series.

Cross Manage Ch. 031
I’ll probably get calls of “Traitor!” from the One Piece fandom for this one. But Cross Manage was the best chapter this week. We actually get to see a proper lacrosse game for what feels like the first time since the series started. And the game isn’t finished in a single chapter—that’s completely unheard of in this series. And boy does it pay off. After not seeing any games in so long, spending all the time on character development, we finally get to see how good Kato actually is at drawing a suspenseful game. Sure the final twist was easily called, but it was so well portrayed that I didn’t mind. Having gotten to know all these characters really helps this first actual game stand out. I would have liked to see more of the other characters—that would have helped certain moments—but I think this was a strong enough showing that Cross Manage should survive the next wave of cancellations and allow us to spend even more time getting to know the underdeveloped characters. This series has been underperforming at first, but slowly it has risen in my estimation and if it gets canned I will be calling bloody murder.

Did I explain my choices for this week’s rankings well enough? Or are you even more convinced that I’ve lost my mind? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to argue with you about it.

If you want to hear more, check out the Manga^3 Podcast Archives. Or go directly to last week’s episode, Episode 045 – April 22, 2013 – The Naruto Conundrum: Why Do People Like Side Characters More? | Cooking Papa

It Came from the Sinosphere: Datang Shuanglong Zhuan

April 30, 2013 by Sara K. 1 Comment

The best English translation of the title I recall encountering is Tang Dynasty Dragon Duo, but it just sounds better is Chinese, which is why many people use the Chinese title even when discussing the book in English.

The Story

The story is set at the end of the Sui dynasty, which is on the verge of collapse. Everybody sees this as an opportunity to grab power.

Xu Ziling

Enter two orphans living on the street, Kou Zhong and Xu Ziling. They only have their wits and each other. They just happen to get the precious martial arts manual Changsheng Jue, which makes them targets. They are rescued by Fu Junzhuo, a martial artist from Koguryo (Korea), and they accept her as their mother … then she dies.

Kou Zhong

Kou Zhong and Xu Ziling study the Changsheng Jue, and become martial artists themselves – but more dangerous than their martial arts are their cleverness and capacity for strategic thinking. Xu Ziling ambition is to merely get revenge for their mother (Fu Junzhuo), take care of their sister Susu, and have fun wandering around. Kou Zhong, on the other hand, wants to … how can I say it in English … “take over the world”?

And therein lies conflict. Kou Zhong and Xu Ziling, closer than brothers, are the most important people to each other in the world. Xu Ziling wants to do what’s right for the common people of China, and deep down, he suspects that Kou Zhong’s ambitions are not in the common people’s best interests. In the medium term, they are united by their desire to get revenge for Fu Junzhuo and care for Susu. Yet Kou Zhong does not want to give up his dream of demonstrating his might to the world, Xu Ziling does not want to let Kou Zhong cause suffering to the common people, and neither wants to destroy their relationship. In the long run … something has to give.

Background

This is Huang Yi’s longest and most popular novel, in fact, it’s probably the most popular wuxia novel of the 1990s. Right around the time that wuxia was ‘dying’, Huang Yi’s fiction appeared, and became very popular in Hong Kong and Taiwan. For an interesting take on Huang Yi, go to the Science Fiction Encyclopedia.

Datang Shuanglong Zhuan has been adapted into two TV shows, Twin of Brothers (2004/Cantonese) and Twin of Brothers (2011/Mandarin), and there are more planned. There is also a manhua adaptation by Tony Wong.

This novel is so popular that, when I mention that I’ve read it to Taiwanese men, the most common reaction is ‘oh, that’s a good book, I’ve read it too’. The fact that almost every general bookstore in Taiwan has a copy on hand speaks literally volumes – (the Taiwanese revised edition contains twenty volumes, which takes quite a bit of shelf space).

Female Characters

First, look at the illustrations of the Dramatis Personae throughout this post. Do you notice a pattern?

I do. The female characters are all showing off skin and/or their figures, in other words, there is an emphasis on their sex appeal. None of the male characters are showing off their skin or figures, so while they are not unattractive, they are not primarily being shown as sex objects.

I find it particularly implausible that Li Xiuning, who as a princess has to follow lots of rules about social propriety, would ever been found in a pose like this (except maybe in the private company of her husband)

To some extent, this reflects how the novel depicts the characters. Female characters are frequently noted for their beauty, so much so that I sometimes had trouble distinguishing Super-Beautiful-Woman 1 from Super-Beautiful-Woman 2. Meanwhile, there is little to no comment on male beauty. Yes, I know this is typical in wuxia, but this novel takes it further than most.

That said, women aren’t just considered romance/sex objects. Kou Zhong and Xu Ziling want to get revenge for their mother because she cared for them, not because of her romance/sex appeal. Then their is their sister, Susu, who they value simply for being herself (and she is one of the few young women who is not described as being super-beautiful).

The female characters, of course, to the greatest extent they can, are active agents, organizing attacks and manipulating the situation to further their own goals … but that goes without saying. While wuxia fiction has plenty of sexism, at least it’s taken for granted that female characters will set their own agendas, and do what they can to make their agendas happen, and that if they have tools, they can do a lot. The same is, alas, not a given in English-language speculative fiction.

Kou Zhong and Xu Ziling’s Relationship

90% of what kept me flipping the pages is the relationship between Kou Zhong and Xu Ziling, in other words, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

In particular, watching Kou Zhong was fascinating. He wishes he were light Light Yagami in Death Note so he could pursue his ambitions without his feelings getting in the way … but unfortunately (fortunately?) for him, he’s got a big, squishy, sentimental heart.

To Kou Zhong’s credit, when he falls in love, instead of trying to kill his feelings, he makes himself vulnerable and makes a sincere effort to be a good lover. That’s why it’s so heartbreaking when he fails, and concludes that he must redouble his efforts to take over China since he cannot find any other meaning in his life.

For much of the novel, I thought it was a bit like Death Note, but with casting Light Yagami and L as brothers who are closer to each other than anyone else in the world. Both stories focus a lot on tactics and strategies for outsmarting one another (though Kou Zhong and Xu Ziling usually work together, not against each other). Towards the end, though, I realized that this story is actually more in the spirit of Basara than Death Note. Kou Zhong and Xu Ziling have a brotherly, not romantic, relationship, and they know each others’ identities, but their fundamental struggle is similar to Sarasa and Shuri’s.

It is a beautiful, deep relationship, and though Kou Zhong and Xu Ziling make friends, lovers, and even gain a mother and sister, it’s clear that nothing can replace the experience of relying on each other for survival as children in the street when everybody else ignored or abused them. That’s why the possibility of the relationship being shattered is so … dramatic.

One of the most moving parts of the story is when Kou Zhong says something to Xu Ziling. I don’t remember what Kou Zhong literally says, but I remember how Xu Ziling understands what Kou Zhong means: Kou Zhong’s love for Xu Ziling is so deep that, even if Xu Ziling betrays him, Kou Zhong would still love him.

The Length of the Novel

After I told someone how long this novel he, he replied ‘it’s like War and Peace‘. I replied ‘No, it’s not like War and Peace. War and Peace is less than 2000 pages long. The Taiwanese revised edition of Datang Shuanglong Zhuan is about 7000 pages long.’

Yes, this is the longest novel I have ever read.

I don’t think I could have marathoned it. Instead, I would read a few hundred pages, then read something else, then pick this up again and read another few hundred pages. I did, however, marathon the last 1500 pages or so.

Most readers know that a story which is only 7 pages long feels very different from a story which is 70 pages long. While they may have the same plot structure, a 70 page story can pack in a lot more detail and nuance. Furthermore, a 700 page story feels very different from a 70 page story.

Now, I can say, that the difference between a 700 and 7000 page story is just as great at between a 70 and 700 page story. I am not even sure the label ‘novel’ still applies to a 7000 page story. There is simply much more richness, depth, and subtlety possible with those extra pages.

As such, I feel like I’m misrepresenting this novel. Even though I’m focusing on Kou Zhong and Xu Ziling, who are the core of the novel, I still feel that I’m oversimplifying them because they evolve so much and show so many different facets of themselves during the course of the story.

And this feels woefully incomplete without saying more about the complex web of relationships that Kou Zhong and Xu Ziling are in (they sure don’t live in a vacuum). For example, I’ve managed to get this far in this post without mentioning Li Shimin, one of the most important characters.

Li Shimin

However … the whole point of writing something 7000 pages long is that the story does not lend itself to brevity.

This work feels very different from anything else I’ve read, and I think I’d either need to read another super-long novel, or read a series of novels with the same characters which was as long as a super-long novel, to have this kind of experience again.

My Take on the Ending (spoiler-free version)

First of all, it was not the ending I expected. Okay, even I know enough about Chinese history that I knew who was going to end up emperor of China, but otherwise … not what I was expecting.

And I was disappointed.

After reflecting on it, it’s not the ending itself which disappointed me. It actually could have been a great ending. What let me down was the execution of the ending. And that’s about as much as I can say without spoilers.

Availability in English

The novel: ha Ha ha hA HA HA HA Ha ha ha HA!

The TV shows: The 2004 TV show is available on region-free DVD with English subtitles (for sale at YesAsia.com). The 2011 TV show, as far as I know, is not available anywhere with English subtitles. I haven’t seen either show, so I cannot comment on the quality.

The manhua: As far as I know, it’s also completely unavailable in English..

Conclusion

Well, though the ending was a let-down for me, this novel was still worth it for the journey. I’d like to read another super-long novel some day, though finding the time to do so is a challenge…

For me, at least, this was a novel about how to set one’s priorities for life. Do you just try to have fun? Do you try to make the world a better place? Should you dream big? Who should be the important people in your life, and how important should they be? Should you abandon your ambition for the sake of personal relationships, and just how much wrong would the important people in your life have to commit before you would turn your back on them?

The novel makes the point that, if you have to ruin your relationships with the people closest to you to make your grand dream come true, your dream will become a nightmare.

Next Time: Hear Me (movie)

Last week, Sara K. hiked up Syueshan Main Peak, which is the second highest mountain in East Asia (aside from the Kamchatka peninsula).

Bunny Drop, Vol. 8

April 30, 2013 by Sean Gaffney

By Yumi Unita. Released in Japan as “Usagi Drop” by Shodensha, serialized in the magazine Feel Young. Released in North America by Yen Press.

This review contains spoilers for this volume. Please avoid discussing future Bunny Drop volumes in the comments.

So, right around the time Bunny Drop 3 was released in North America, you may have noticed a very quiet panic on the part of those following the Japanese release, as many fans tried to freak out while simultaneously not spoiling anything. Which is sort of impossible. I mean, what do you say? “You know that series on heartwarming parenting you read? Aaaaagh! But I can’t say why.” You know, the mind can only go to a few obvious places. I haven’t seen Vol. 9 yet, which should be out here in late summer, but I have a sneaking suspicion I know how things are going to turn out. Let’s delve.

When we last left Rin, she was pondering her future. And more importantly, pondering a future without Daikichi in it. Meanwhile, the two relationships that the reader had maybe hoped might happen – Rin and Kouki, and Daikichi and Kouki’s mom – are both torpedoed big time, and indeed Kouki’s mother is getting remarried to someone else in this volume. Kouki is trying to handle this with aplomb, but only partly succeeding – this time, rather than throw a fit, he simply flees to Rin’s house. But this is the typical reaction of a son. Rin doesn’t have to deal with something like that – Daikichi’s social life is still as empty as ever – but she’s still pondering her future.

She’s also getting into fights with Daikichi, and chafing rather uncomfortably at his continued parenting of her. It’s clear that she wants to be free of that role. They get into a fight regarding her contact with her mother (which is quietly resolved here, with Rin basically settling things in her heart) and her mother’s new baby, something she kept from Daikichi as she knew he’d freak out. Which he does. These two still clearly love each other deeply, but Rin is growing up, and they are moving into previously untouched arenas.

Which brings us to Rin’s own love life. Honestly, Rin’s realization of who she loves isn’t as interesting to me as Rin’s complete horror when trying to date someone else. Her attempted date with Yasuhara is the best part of the book to me, a trainwreck that she doesn’t want but can’t quite get out of. Rin is so passive much of the time that it’s great to see her struggling, and her facial expressions here are a stitch. But of course, Rin has realized who she’s in love with. And is dealing with that fact that it’s, well, impossible. And by the end of the volume, Kouki is pretty sure about it too, and (confronted once again with a problem he can’t really do much about) he flees.

The topic is being handled maturely, and it’s not meant to be saucy or titillating. But with all its ups and downs, what the reader takes away from Bunny Drop 8 is “Oh crap, Rin’s in love with her adopted father!” (Anna Russell voice) She’s his aunt, by the way. A story that began with an unconventional family forming looks like it may end (Vol. 9 is the final ‘story’ volume, though there is a Vol. 10 with short stories from across Rin’s life) with yet another unconventional family. And I’m pretty sure we all feel more uncomfortable about it than the author intended. But let’s see what the next book brings.

Bookshelf Briefs 4/29/13

April 29, 2013 by MJ, Michelle Smith and Sean Gaffney Leave a Comment

This week, MJ, Michelle, and Sean look at recent releases from Yen Press, Viz Media, Dark Horse Comics, Kodansha Comics, and Vertical, Inc.

Bunny Drop, Vol. 8 | By Yumi Unita | Yen Press – This volume has been greatly anticipated and feared by fans—me included. And though I had faith that Unita-sensei would execute the much-feared plot twist—Rin’s developing romantic feelings for her guardian, Daikichi—in a thoughtful and inoffensive way, my reaction was mixed at best. While I’m happy to report that this volume is, indeed, inoffensive, it’s also hard to swallow—not because of any breach of propriety, but because it just doesn’t quite ring true. Rin’s inner monologue about her awakening feelings is written sensitively, and on the surface it makes some sense. For a girl who craves consistency above all else, Daikichi’s steadfast loyalty can’t be beat. But even as I read Rin’s careful dissection of her own feelings, I’m just not buying it. The words are there, but the attraction is… not. That said, I’m invested enough to stick around for more. Recommendation pending. – MJ

Bunny Drop, Vol. 8 | By Yumi Unita | Yen Press – (Look away to avoid spoilers!) My primary reaction upon completing this volume can best be summed up as a sort of grudging respect. MJalways had faith that Unita could get readers to accept the romantic pairing of Rin and her much-older guardian, Daikichi, but I had remained dubious. Still, it’s hard to maintain such a feeling when Rin is so absolutely clear about her feelings and what she wants to do with her life. It’s worth noting, too, that so far Rin is convinced that getting what she wants is impossible, and that trying to achieve it would destroy what they have now. Is this Unita’s clever ploy to actually get me to root for them as a couple? And could it actually be working?! In any case, I’m not as leery of the final volume as I once was. – Michelle Smith

Knights of Sidonia, Vol. 2 | By Tsutomu Nihei | Vertical, Inc. – This is absolutely riveting stuff, with your hands turning the pages as fast as your eyes can process. The battles are tense and visually clear, and you feel for the hero even though he, like most of the cast, tends to be fairly unemotional. Actually, that’s probably for the best – if everyone in this cast started crying when bad things happened, there would literally be nothing but 100 pages of sobs Bad things happen constantly in this story, and even when you get a happy, redeeming moment, it’s merely setup for an even more crushing blow later. And we’re still wondering what’s so special about Tanikaze that everyone is going out of their way to accommodate him. Whatever it is, I’m sure it will be a really depressing backstory. That will once again make me want to turn the pages even faster. – Sean Gaffney

Loveless, Vol. 3: 2-in-1 | By Yun Kouga | Viz Media – Everyone should know by now that I’ve fallen in love with Loveless, so a positive review of Viz’s latest omnibus edition is surely no surprise. Despite that, I must continue to register my surprise over Kouga-sensei’s ability to portray complex emotions and moral ambiguity with a combination of thoughtfulness, humor, and razor-sharp honesty. Over and over again as I read this omnibus volume, I was struck by bits of complicated emotional truth that most writers would carefully avoid—especially in the sort of deceptively fluffy genre tale that Kouga weaves here. Kouga’s insight into the human heart seems boundless, resulting in a story that is occasionally shocking, often dark, and always brilliant. Oh, Soubi… poor Soubi. Look for further discussion of this volume as the week goes on. Highly recommended. – MJ

Missions of Love, Vol. 3 | By Ema Toyama | Kodansha Comics – I know that I sometimes read shoujo manga for different reasons than everyone else. This is probably why I’m still enjoying the really, really problematic Missions of Love, which is apparently trying to spice up Nakayoshi in a way I’m not used to from this company (what is this, ShoComi or something?). Yukina is horrible much of the time, which is only somewhat excused by her complete ignorance of love and the emotions of other people. Akira does indeed step up his game, as predicted, and comes across as obsessed. And we also meet Shigure’s old friend (and past love, according to everyone but him) Mami, who I am sort of desperately hoping does not become the standard evil rival bitch character or many shoujo manga but I know she will be. In short, this is a fun little trainwreck, and if the lead female were weak or whiny, I’d drop it like a stone. But she’s a horrible person too. So I like it. Go figure. -Sean Gaffney

Oh My Goddess!, Vol. 44 | By Kosuke Fujishima | Dark Horse – The most interesting part of this volume actually won’t have its real impact until Vol. 45, which is the dissolution and then reconnection of their contract. Keiichi, who goes along with this because he trusts Belldandy, immediately notices one big difference – Belldandy looks much sexier to him, and indeed he’s reacting in ways we haven’t seen in years. But the meat of this particular volume is the sisterly bond between Urd and Skuld, and how strong it has to be given the control Urd has – or doesn’t have – over her demon side. Urd loves and trusts Skuld enough to kill her if she gets out of hand, and Skuld loves and trusts Urd enough to find a way out that doesn’t involve that. So now everyone’s coming together again, including Hild, whose arrival will make Vol. 45 even more fun than you’d expect. -Sean Gaffney

We Were There, Vol. 16 | By Yuuki Obata | Viz Media – Now that is one satisfying and well-earned ending. Yano begins reaching out to Takahashi, but because she’s so busy at work, they play phone tag for a while, and right after they reach each other, she ends up in the hospital. In the hands of a lesser mangaka, such a plotline would be rife with melodrama, but here it’s urgent and scary and the catalyst for putting things in crystal-clear perspective. Truly, this is a splendid ending that goes beyond what one would expect, taking the time to acknowledge how important Takeuchi has been to both Yano and Takahashi and bringing the series full circle with a return to the peaceful countryside of Hokkaido. Have I gushed sufficiently? It’s wonderful. If you like shoujo manga even a little, you need to read We Were There. I’m already looking forward to rereading it, that’s how good it is. – Michelle Smith

Tiger & Bunny, Vol. 1

April 28, 2013 by Anna N

I watched the first episode or so of the Tiger & Bunny anime when it seemed like Tiger & Bunny fever was gripping the nation (or at least the percentage of the nation that I follow on twitter). I thought the premise of the series was clever and it was well-executed, but while I found the show entertaining I didn’t follow up and watch the series. I was curious to see if I would enjoy the manga as well.

Tiger & Bunny has an interesting take on modern-day superheroes. Superheroes of various kinds do good – but only for the sake of ratings on a reality tv show. The superheroes all have corporate sponsorships, focus-group tested costumes, and scripted catchphrases. The lone superhero with some integrity is the hopelessly old-fashioned Wild Tiger, whose power is to increase his physical abilities 100x for only five minutes. The manga opens with an action sequence intercut with reality tv production, as the producer of the show offers commentary and scoring on the real-life mayhem. The heroes all jockey for screen time, but Tiger’s attempt to help ends in humiliation as he falls out of the sky only to be saved by the pedigreed rookie Barnaby Jones Jr. Jones’ armored suit gives him the appearance of bunny ears and he is not happy that his first job onscreen is “rescuing an old man.”

Barnaby is ordered to team up with Tiger, and a super-powered Odd Couple is created. Tiger is full of idealistic advice and war stories, and Barnaby is focused on screen time. There’s a supporting cast of heroes which features gay stereotype Fire Emblem, silent and sturdy Rock Bison, tiny kung-fu girl Dragon Kid, the disgustingly heroic Sky High, and the icy Blue Rose. The look and feel of the manga mirrors the visual style of the anime, as the mangaka was also one of the animators of the tv show. Overall, I found this manga entertaining, both due to the bickering nature of the developing relationship between Tiger and Bunny, and the conflict between the commercial nature of the super hero world and Tiger’s unshakeable code of ethics. I can certainly see why the anime was so popular, and it is nice that the manga gives fans the option of experiencing the story in a different way.

Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Vol. 38

April 28, 2013 by Sean Gaffney

(This review shamelessly spoils the entire volume.)

And so Negima ends, at least for now. This volume gives me very complicated feelings. It starts off with some of the most teeth-grindingly annoying chapters we’ve had in ages. We then get possibly some of the best chapters in the entire series. And it all ends with a flashforward that answers everything we didn’t really want answered, avoids answering things we did, and undercuts the moral that it had just given several pages earlier. In short, while there’s a ton to adore here, this volume is… a bit of a mess.

Let’s start off with the end of the Battle Royale to beat Negi up for toying with girl’s hearts. Which only gets worse when the cheerleaders manage to force out of him that he does have romantic feelings for someone. The fact that Negi is way underage (as are all the girls, really, but 15 isn’t really all that underage in terms of fandom shipping, whereas ten is) has been a point of contention throughout the entire series, with many fans finding the fact that people are making jokes about seducing Negi vaguely discomfiting. As such, laying it all out in the open makes it even worse, since it’s clear from the writing (good on Akamatsu showing this) that Negi simply isn’t mature enough to handle something like this. It really makes the reader dislike characters like Yuna (who I quite like apart from this) and Haruna (who I don’t really like much at all, to be fair) who keep pressing things, especially as it’s all done just so they can have another melee chase sequence and a gratuitous last-minute pactio.

We then get the sequence with Asuna. This is the polar opposite of what I talked about above. It’s subtle, well-handled, and almost perfect. Asuna says that she’s come to terms with being a magic ‘battery’ for 100 years (which everyone thinks will erase her personality, by the way), but coming out of it in the future and discovering that yes, indeed, everyone is dead by now is absolutely devastating for her. The emotions in the scene where she reads the time capsule are amazing, and it makes the climax (and sudden appearance of the two obvious characters to suddenly appear) even more awesome.

There was some controversy about the ‘easy’ resolution to Asuna’s fate when this first came out, mostly as Western shonen manga fans are always desperate for a ‘dark, unhappy’ ending for some reason I can’t quite figure out except they’re all teenagers or something. I was very happy with it, mostly as it made perfect sense given everything we’ve seen before. Negima has abused time travel shamelessly ever since Chao was introduced, why shouldn’t it resolve the entire thing by using time travel? It makes everyone happy, solves the ‘how do we get enough magical power for 100 years’ question, and is a giant emotional pile of tears. Win all around, this part of the manga was fantastic.

Right after Asuna’s return, when Negi and everyone else are asking future-Eva and Chao about what happens from now on, Eva points out that the future is a blank page, and that they don’t have to rely on knowing what will happen. And I really wish Akamatsu had taken his own advice. He says that this is ‘one possible ending’ and that ‘this world is possibly the happiest’ – though given only 7 years or so have gone by, it still has a ways to go. And, well, it ‘ship sinks’ the four main fan pairings. Now, to be fair, harem manga, especially lately, are well-known for having inconclusive endings. Authors and editors don’t want to upset fans who are invested in one particular girl, so they like to leave things vague. That said, we still don’t know who Negi ends up with when he grows up… but we know it’s not the girls he had the most character development with. Which… suck, really. I suppose it’s my fault for getting emotionally involved in the ship tease despite everything.

More annoying, however, is laying out the fates of every single main girl. The future is a blank page… now let’s write in it. If you’re going to do an open ending, leave it open! Special mention must be made of Chisame’s future, by the way. It’s absolutely, 100% in character… and all the more depressing because of it. Why would you do that? She had possibly the most character development, along with Nodoka, of the entire cast! And now, in the future, she’s a hikikomiri shut-in who helps Negi behind the scenes. We see her staring grumpily at her computer… just as we did at the start. She’s not even cosplaying anymore. Having seen the possibilities, she has chosen to stay the hell away from them. Bleah.

Oh yes, and we still have no idea what happened to Negi’s mother. Akamatsu hints that it may be left to the anime (which, given the anime’s final movie was FAR WORSE than this manga’s ending, is not something I look forward to.) We do, at least, hear that Setsuna and Konoka get married… though in typical ‘must be as vague as possible’ tradition, it’s left uncertain (but obvious) if it was to each other. The reason for this car-crash ending, by the way, is rumored to be that Akamatsu and Kodansha got into a fight about materials and he cut the manga short. They presumably patched things up, as he’s preparing a new series for them, but that doesn’t really help Negima. Maybe he’ll come back to it, but then I’m still waiting for Shirow to return to Dominion too.

So in the end I remain dissatisfied, but I will try to remember all the great fun I had reading this series. Given Ken’s goal was to avoid doing just another Love Hina-style harem comedy the way Kodansha wanted him to, I think he succeeded admirably. We grew enamored and invested enough in this world, its hero, and its many, many heroines that we are allowed to get up in arms when it all falls apart. Love it or hate it, few were indifferent to this volume of Negima.

The CMX Project: Cipher

April 26, 2013 by Michelle Smith and Karen Peck

MICHELLE: Hello, and thanks for joining us for the second installment of The CMX Project, in which we turn our attention to Cipher! (Please kindly overlook the fact that this column was promised for February; life has a nasty habit of upending one’s plans.) This month we’ll also have a special guest, but before the big reveal, how about another of your fabulous summaries, Karen? (Since you did so well with
Land of the Blindfolded!)

KAREN: Goodness, Michelle, all that praise is going to go to my head!

This month we have Cipher, by Minako Narita. Published by Hakusensha, it ran in Lala and Lala DX in the early/mid-’80s. Narita began working in the ’70s, with an eight-volume series (Alien Street) coming before Cipher. She would later go on to do a sequel to Cipher, Alexandrite, and her current work is Hana Yori Mo Hana No Gotoku, coming out very slowly in the bimonthly magazine Melody.

Cipher is the story of Anise, a girl in high school in New York City in the 1980s, and how she pursues a friendship with former child star Siva, breaking through his cool detachment with the force of her personality. Through Siva, she meets his twin brother Cipher, and discovers a mystery surrounding the brothers—that they’ve been changing places with each other for years. Which one is which? And why do they do this? I feel as if I’m not crafting a summary that does the story justice; instead, I hope our conversation will unfold just like the story—there’s a lot of layers to peel back, but I found the effort to do so very worth it.

But before I start going on and on, Michelle, please tell us about our special guest this month!

MICHELLE: Well, I have the good fortune to be Facebook friends with none other than Asako Suzuki, who was director of manga at CMX from 2006 until its untimely death! I shared our Land of the Blindfolded column with her, and when she mentioned that her favorite CMX series was Cipher, I invited her to join us!

Welcome, Asako!

ASAKO: Hi Michelle and Karen! Thank you for having me, and thank you VERY much for this wonderful project remembering CMX! I am honored and excited to be with you today to talk about my favorite manga series, Cipher!

Cipher is a very special manga series to me, and I have lost count of how many times I read it. In fact, I have just read the entire series (of course in Japanese) not long ago.

MICHELLE: Can you tell us how Cipher came to be licensed and published by CMX?

ASAKO: Actually, I inherited Cipher with some other early acquisitions when I joined CMX. That being said, before I joined CMX, I assisted the acquisition team and made some suggestions. Cipher (and [a] few other titles that were eventually published) was one of the titles I recommended, but I didn’t know if DC Comics had acquired it or not until I started my position. When I saw it on our production schedule, I was very happy!

KAREN: Wow, Asako, that must have been a great surprise to come into CMX and see Cipher there!

Now that I’m past the awesome summary-writing part, I can give my opinion—that I loved this title. I went in with preconceived notions—that this was That ’80s Manga. And while yes, it is very much set in the ’80s, it’s not done with artifice. It’s clear that Narita adored American pop culture—she even mentions doing a Thompson Twins doujinshi!—and it’s all done so lovingly. Real teens are a part of the music, movies, and current events, and it’s only in hindsight that the ’80s seem so cheesy. She also doesn’t gloss over some of the gritter aspects of the times—New York was still recovering from a terrible ’70s. Ironically, Cipher and Siva’s apartment is now in a very trendy area!

What surprised me was how the story was very much a coming of age tale—and not just for the heroine, Anise, but for the boys as well. At times, especially in the second half, she’s much more in the background, but her role seemed to be as much as a catalyst to make the bigger, darker story of the twins happen. Anise is still very childish at 16—there’s the very funny part where it’s pointed out that she really, really needs to start wearing a bra—despite her maturity and insight in some areas, she’s having a hard time seeing herself as growing up.

And then we have our former-child-star twins, Siva and Cipher (whose real names are Jake and Roy, respectively). Michelle and Asako, what’s your take on them? And do you still love the ’80s?

MICHELLE: Similar to Land of the Blindfolded, this is another case where focus drifts from the heroine and onto the two boys in her life, who each have past trauma to deal with. Anise isn’t as perpetually sunny as Kanade, but she’s still much less interesting than the twins. Or, rather, I felt like Narita-sensei was less interested in exploring her as a character. It was especially odd to me that we never learn what her focus is at the performing arts school! She narrates in volume one that “lots of people come to this school hoping to become painters, dancers, musicians, or actors.” So, which is Anise? What is her ambition for being there? As someone who actually attended a performing arts school, your “major” was vitally important.

So, that said, I feel a little grumpy that the boys got so much more love, but can’t deny that they’re pretty fascinating. I especially like when the story begins to focus more on Siva and we see events from his perspective that we later see again from Cipher’s perspective. Siva felt that Cipher’s openness made him more easy for his parents to love, while Cipher felt that Jake’s reliability made his own behavior seem childish in comparison. I also really liked how the friends they make while they’re apart affect them.

ASAKO: I am a huge fan of Anise; she was my hero! The reason why I wanted to come to the United States was because I wanted to be like, and live like her. To me, Anise was more realistic and easy to relate to compared to other manga protagonists, thanks to Narita-sensei’s amazing psychological descriptions throughout the series.

Narita-sensei is an amazing writer; I can easily tell how much she loved her characters, and she treated each differently. The way she shifted focus from one character to another was just incredible. I actually had a deep conversation with one of the manga editors in Japan (can’t say who!) about Cipher and how talented Narita-sensei is!

See, Narita-sensei introduced Cipher and Siva to us through the eyes of Anise and once we got to know the twins better with Anise, we were able to learn more about them individually through the twins’ perspectives. If Anise stayed as the center of the story the whole time, the story would have been shallow. With appearance of Dana, the focus was subtly shifted to Jake, and we got to know the secret of the twins and why Jake was protective yet envious of Roy. Then we learn more about Roy in LA… I really enjoyed the multi-dimensional story telling.

Speaking of details, have you noticed of the characters’ mix-and-match wardrobes? That’s amazing!

Also, there is something I have always wanted to know and never understood… can I ask you both a question? When you say “manga from the ’80s,” what does that mean? How do you distinguish the manga from the ’80s from the recent ones and why would you get less excited about manga from the era? That always puzzled me…

KAREN: Michelle—I wondered that too! I was really hoping she would have some great talent that drove her to commute all the way in from Queens!

I missed Anise during the second half of the series when the twins separated. She was still there, but the second half was really about the twins apart, and each making friends on their own, without having the other to hide behind. I don’t understand why some places categorize this as a shounen-ai title, the only love is friendship and the twin’s kissy-kissy… is anything but that.

There’s a lot of subtle tonal shifts in the story—the Dana storyline being one of them—a beautiful, talented young girl on the verge of falling in love and being loved is tragically, suddenly killed, and it has a way of breaking apart the entire premise of the story. The twins don’t just grow apart, they fly apart—Roy quite literally to the West Coast, leaving Anise behind. The ruse of one twin playing another will never work again, so they had to be apart, and make friends on their own terms, and the switching between coasts feels like two different stories but… they mirror each other, like Cipher and Siva did. Alexandra and Hal are different people, but they carry their own insecurities and pasts into their friendships—friendships they needed as badly as Jake and Roy did.

I didn’t notice the wardrobes, except that I loved how detailed they were. Narita-sensei must have been importing magazines! It stuns me about the accuracy of the details—reading this series sent me into a flurry of research (yes, with the extensive use of Google Maps) and it’s amazing that she did this in the pre-internet era—unless she was here herself? Asako, do you know any of that background? She did three series set in the US so it really seems she had a feel for the place.

To answer your question, Asako, and “’80s manga” generally means the style of art that I think is viewed as rather old-fashioned—not as extreme as ’70s manga, but it still looks “dated.” However, Narita-sensei’s art doesn’t suffer as much in comparison, and I think the rep that this title has for being an ’80s manga has is because it’s set in the 1980s, and references to George Michael and Hall and Oates are funny to a modern reader who looks at it all through a lens of nostalgia. I personally adore older manga, and wish there was more of it, but sadly publishers have said it doesn’t sell—that’s one thing I loved about CMX was that they brought out Swan and Cipher.

Speaking of art, I found it very well done, and I really want to hunt down one of those out-of-print artbooks now!

MICHELLE: I think there’s a general sense of affectionate amusement about most things coming out of ’80s culture, really. I love ’80s manga, personally, but yes, I did find it pretty funny when a dancing Cipher is deemed to be as cool as Michael Jackson, or when Narita-sensei professes in the comments, “The source of my strength, just like always, has been The Thompson Twins.”

Asako, you make a great point about Narita’s layered storytelling. I didn’t think of it like that—introducing us to the twins first through Anise’s eyes, then widening the story’s scope with a purposeful sequences of events. I really loved each brother’s relationship with his newfound friend. We learn that Roy felt that he behaved childishly in his past, and so perhaps he had tried to grow up too fast and hadn’t enjoyed some of the simpler pleasures that Hal makes it his mission to introduce him to. Jake felt he always had to be the reliable one—in fact, he wanted to be needed—but then he makes friends with Levine (aka Alex, Alexandra), who is sensitive but also resilient and tough.

When Jake first meets Levine, he can’t bear to think of Roy and Dana at all, but gradually he allows himself to think about them, and then to talk about them. When one of Dana’s relatives has a baby and names it after her, Jake instantly adores the girl, and ends up breaking down a barrier with his mother for her sake. It all seems to happen very naturally. Too, I love that when everyone meets up again at the end, Hal and Levine are completely baffled that anyone could’ve ever mistaken one twin for the other.

And I, too, appreciated the details that Narita-sensei got right. I was delighted to note that, in one scene, characters are eating an Old El Paso dinner kit of some sort.

ASAKO: In the first volume of the Tankobon edition, Narita-sensei talks about her trip to NYC, and she shares some pictures that she took during the trip. It sounds like she toured different neighborhoods to choose the neighborhood where twins and Anise should live. I thought it [was] funny but I was impressed at the same time that Narita-sensei even took pictures of TV commercials she watched in her hotel room. (Did you notice Cipher was watching a Betty Crocker’s new cake mix commercial?!) Very detailed artist.

Ah, thank you for explaining about the ’80s manga. To be honest, I have never thought of manga [as] “dated.” Well, in retrospect, I did notice different printing/layout techniques and art style. Maybe I am more comfortable with the ’80s manga because that’s what I grew up reading. Haha.

Back to Cipher, may I ask who is your favorite character(s) and why? I’m curious.

KAREN:That’s great to know some of the background of the creation! I think we’re all so spoiled with just being able to Google everything that people forget how hard it was to do research on such mundane topics—like cake commercials—in those days.

Asako, since you’ve had the advantage of seeing the Japanese versions, I had two questions—what is volume 12 of Cipher about? I’ve seen it listed on information sites and on Amazon.jp—is it side stories or does it add something? Also, have you read the Alexandrite sequel series—how is it in relation to Cipher?

My favorite character in Anise. She’s the entry to the world, and even when she’s in the background, she plays an important role. For all of the ways that she seems a little less mature, she shows such kindness and understanding, and that’s what breaks the shell around the twins. She can tell them apart at the end of the “challenge” but chooses not to—but she’s already opened up their world. I like her spirit, and watching her mature through the course of the series. It may not be as dramatic as what happens to Roy and Jake, but she becomes an important part to helping Jake discover his new life and gives Roy the space he needs until a reconciliation can happen.

I also like Hal—he’s so goofy at first but turns out to be so endearing.

MICHELLE: I really like Hal, too, but I’d have to say my favorite is Siva. I like his complexity in that he’s the reliable one who is secretly dependent upon being depended upon, and I like how experiencing love (for both Danas, the original and her namesake) frees him to become his own person and to begin to understand the pain of others.

ASAKO: To be honest with you, I don’t remember what was in the twelfth volume. As soon as the bunko edition came out, I gave my tanko edition to my best friend (here in the US). That was long, long time ago. I vaguely remember it was about Levine, but I am not entirely sure. I’m sorry!

Dealing with the difference between tanko edition and bunko edition was a challenge for CMX. We had to make the English edition of the original tanko edition off of the bunko edition—does that make sense?? (:D). The pagination and proportion differences required a lot of effort on our end, and what’s more, cover materials were provided in transparencies (positive films), so they had to be scanned, cleaned and color corrected before we could use on the covers. It happened many times for other CMX books, too, but some of the cover images were not available from the licensor, so we had to scan art books or whatever the resources we could find (and of course, with Licensor permission and extensive approval process) to come up with something.

KAREN: That’s great information, Asako—but I think CMX did a great job, the covers especially were very pretty. Other companies seemed to have problems reformatting the Hakusensha-style “box on the cover” design to something that works in the American market, but this was very well done. Speaking of artbooks, I’m going to have to chase down that out-of-print artbook that came out way back when.

Cipher is thankfully one of those titles that’s easy to collect—it’s all out-of-print, of course, but most volumes go for well below cover, and a couple of others are above cover but nothing crazy—it’s an easy one to collect, so that shouldn’t be a deterrent to hunting down and enjoying this title. Yeah, it’s set in the ’80s, but there’s so much more to it than that.

MICHELLE: We hope we’ve inspired you to check it out, and would also like to extend our very sincere thanks to Asako Suzuki for joining us for this conversation!

ASAKO: Thank you for having me! Looking forward to more CMX reviews in the future!

MICHELLE: You’re in luck, because Oyayubihime Infinity is up next!

Manga the Week of 5/1

April 25, 2013 by Sean Gaffney, Michelle Smith and MJ 2 Comments

SEAN: Given that most companies regard 5/1 as 4/31, it’s no surprise that there’s not a lot of stuff this week. Trust me, that giant pile of Viz will be waiting for you on 5/8. In the meantime, let’s turn our attention to other offerings.

It has to be said, the most anticipated book for this week is definitely not for the kids. That said, the buzz for The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame: The Master of ‘Bara’ Manga is really high. This is not cute BL with pretty androgynous boys manga. This is MANLY gay manga, with lots of MANLY bondage and discipline. In fact, it’s quite violent and filled with sadism, I hear. But if you want a taste of something different, and don’t mind explicit stories, Picturebox has the collection for you.

MICHELLE: Sometimes one can be glad something exists without really wanting to check it out for themselves. This is one of those times.

MJ: I might check this out, though my threshold for sadism is relatively low.

SEAN: Vertical’s lone print offering this week is Vol. 4 of the Stan Lee penned Heroman, which is a must for manga fans who also love Stan Lee.

MICHELLE: I do have to wonder how many such fans exist.

MJ: I wish I could like this, just for Vertical’s sake. I really do. Does that count for anything?

SEAN: The big news from Vertical is digital, though, as three of their series are available on Kindle and Nook as of April 30th. 7 Billion Needles is gripping sci-fi horror, Drops of God is a wine lover’s dream, but the big news for me is the now out-of-print series Twin Spica getting its first two volumes out. Twin Spica is the brilliant and heartwarming epic about a girl who yearns to be in space, and it never did as well here as I’d hoped. Here’s hoping that a digital release will give it new fans!

MICHELLE: That’s a hope I can share!

MJ: Now, this is something to cheer about. It makes the whole week, really!

SEAN: So what’s your kink this week?

Crimson Empire, Vol 1: Circumstances to Serve a Noble

April 25, 2013 by Anna N

Crimson Empire, Vol 1: Circumstances to Serve a Noble by QuinRose and Hazuki Futaba

I have a weakness for romance titles with ridiculously long titles in either manga or prose format. There’s something about the inherent ridiculousness of a title like “The Sicilian’s Ruthless Marriage Revenge” that makes me want to read it! If a romance title has five words or more, I’m usually entertained if I’m in the mood for some light reading. My decision to pick up Crimson Empire was largely due to the title, combined with the fact that it is another Quinrose title. I enjoyed the first Alice in the Country of Hearts manga adaptation well enough, so I was curious to see if I’d also like a different manga title from the brand without the literary connection.

Crimson Empire has a potentially amusing protagonist in Sheila the former assassin turned royal bodyguard and head maid, but the story in the first volume isn’t all that compelling as it mostly involves Sheila meeting an endless progression of handsome men. This is only what one could expect in a manga based on an otome game, but there were enough interesting elements that I would probably check out the second volume. This manga opens in a very dark way as one of the turning points of Sheila’s childhood is portrayed when her assassin trainers tell her to kill a random man. She does fulfill her duty, but not without a lot of trepidation. Years later Sheila is ready to accept her first official assignment, and she ends up as a bodyguard to the royal Prince, instead of joining the assassin league that has served as her foster family.

Prince Edvard is blond, charming, and the target of frequent assassination attempts which Sheila foils. He also might be a bit of a sociopath, as his outward personality masks an inner emptiness and pathological self-regard. Edvard’s older brother Justin is the tall, dark, handsome, and tsundere hero of many a female protagonist’s dreams. His outward hostility towards Sheila leads her to wonder if he’s behind all the attacks on his brother, but Justin always seems to be in the right place at the right time if Sheila needs a bit of help. There’s an almost too-large cast of supporting characters that Sheila meets as she goes about her duties. While the art is capably executed, it doesn’t have much of a distinct style. Fortunately the character designs are all very good, which helps the reader distinguish a little bit between the Brainy One, the Mischievous One, the Sorcerers One, the Demonic One, the Well-Dressed One, and the always essential Guy Wearing Glasses.I’m being a bit snarky, but overall I did like reading this manga, and I would follow the series if the next volume shows signs of a more interesting plot. If any more characters are introduced I might give up on the series because I can barely remember everybody! Fans of reverse harem manga would likely enjoy Crimson Empire, Vol 1: Circumstances to Serve a Noble, and at least Sheila’s bodyguarding duties give her a more interesting background than many of the heroines of the genre.

Dorohedoro, Vol. 9

April 25, 2013 by Sean Gaffney

By Q Hayashida. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Ikki. Released in North America by Viz.

This bright pink volume of Dorohedoro feels very much like the calm before the storm, or the sort of thing that ends with the tag ‘End of Part One’. There’s not as much pulse-pounding action here, and the revelations are still mostly hinted rather than stated outright. But we’ve almost got Caiman’s past, and we’re starting to learn Nikaido’s, and it’s going to turn out SO BADLY for both of them, isn’t it?

I especially feel as if I may have seem the last of Caiman, at least as Caiman, and that’s a shame, as he’s such a big, lovable doof. With a lizard head. But he’s always wanted to retrieve his memories, and is now starting to see the downside to all of that. Unfortunately, it’s not really something he can stop doing, either. Hayashida, by the way, does a terrific job of showing just how agonizing Caiman’s ongoing headaches are – including giving us an x-ray of his brain to drive it home!

Meanwhile, Shin and Noi are also hot on the trail of the cross-eyes’ boss, despite him possibly being dead. This leads us to the funniest moment of the series, where we meet the boss’ grandfather, and react to his appearance. Even in the most horrible moments, Dorohedoro still finds a way to be completely ridiculous, and it’s a big reason why I love it as much as I do. If this series didn’t have a high level of comedy and weirdness, it would simply be too bleak to function.

Meanwhile, I can’t really feel bad for Chota – who brought it all on himself, and makes things even worse towards the end. What we do get via his character, however, is the start of Nikaido’s backstory, as she began to keep a diary while at En’s so that she didn’t lose herself. (I’ll be honest, at first I thought the diary would be a giant fakeout, but the flashbacks do seem to make it genuine.) Little Nikaido is absolutely adorable, and you know her backstory is going to be amazingly wretched, so I’m just enjoying the tiny kid messing around with time magic while I can.

And of course I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss the omake chapter at the end. Shin and Noi are my favorite characters in the series, and I also tend to ship them. So far, though, any in-series romance has been just tease. It’s clear that Noi has a crush on Shin, but his feelings for her have been more ambiguous. Now we get a flashback to Shin from ten years ago, forced to attend a masquerade ball by En where he has to dance or get poked by devils with a pitchfork. (This sounds like most of the junior high dances I attended, only everyone usually chose the pitchfork over dancing with girls.) Shin looks adorably cute here, and his dance partner even more so. I love seeing side stories like this.

All in all, another solid volume of Dorohedoro. I see in addition to Scott Pilgrim’s creator giving a blurb, the man behind King City is also praising the series. Viz should be happy. It may not generate Naruto sales, but Dorohedoro has become one of their prestige series, and needs more love. And gyoza. It always needs more gyoza.

Comic Conversion: The City of Ember

April 24, 2013 by Angela Eastman 3 Comments

The City of Ember | Novel: Jeanne DuPrau / Yearling | Graphic Novel: Dallas Middaugh & Niklas Asker / Random House Children’s Books

Over 200 years ago, the City of Ember was created by the Builders, and now the citizens exist in a perpetual darkness only broken by the electric lights in their homes and lining the streets. But the lights keep going out, and the city’s power source, an ancient generator that no one understands, is constantly failing. Twelve-year-old Doon is determined to find the solution and save the city, but keeps hitting dead ends until his friend Lina finds a strange paper inside a lock box. Thanks to her baby sister, the words—written with the strange, typed script of the Builders—are only half-legible, but she can make out one: Instructions. Certain these are instructions for an exit, Lina and Doon set to deciphering the words so they can follow the directions out of Ember. But with everyone so certain that there is no escape, they find more resistance than they bargained for.

Released in 2003, Jeanne DuPrau’s The City of Ember gave us a teen dystopian novel before The Hunger Games was even a thing. There have since been three sequels and a 2008 movie adaptation, but it wasn’t until September, 2012 that Random House published a graphic novel adaptation. Adapted by Dallas Middaugh and illustrated by Niklas Asker, the comic takes DuPrau’s deeply shadowed world and attempts to bring it to life.

The City of Ember has an immediately interesting premise: two children in a city with perpetually depleting supplies who together find a way to save their people. The characters don’t know why they are there, and they don’t even know why it is always so dark (though readers will probably make their own accurate guess about that). The characters are also much more layered than expected. Doon wants to figure out the answer and save everyone, but it’s partly because he wants the glory of being Ember’s hero so his father, a kind man, can be proud of him. He’s also plagued with a volatile temper that often hinders him. Lina has fewer of these problems—too busy taking care of her sister, a toddler, and her ill grandmother. But she is sometimes overcome with desires—the best job, a pack of colored pencils (rare), a can of pineapple (rarer)—that she momentarily loses sight of important things, like Doon’s concern or her sister. These all add up to make Doon and Lina more sympathetic, as we see pieces of ourselves in them, and even increase our anxiety and investment, as we see how they’ve gotten in their own way before they even realize.

The big problem I had with the novel was the pacing. While the opening gets us right into the story with the choosing of jobs and Doon’s concern over the power and food supply, it’s mostly a slow buildup of information until about a third of the way through the book, when Lina finally finds the Instructions. And after that things move slowly as Lina struggles over each word and tries to get others to help her, like the mayor or her flighty friend Lizzie, who obviously don’t care about her discovery. Things do pick up once Doon gets involved and they start to solve the puzzle. Also, the anxiety does build up at the end as we see how Doon and Lina messed up in their decision to wait on revealing their discovery, and find themselves on the run.

Asker did a decent job portraying the darkness of this world in the graphic novel, even filling the gutters with black, and his detailed sketchings of rooms and buildings display the drabness of everything: the cluttered rooms, and clothing and items drained of color from their multiple uses. Asker also understands the importance of silence as he draws out moments like Doon’s exploration of the Pipeworks, and seems to know that narration is entirely unnecessary if his art and panel order are clear, such as when Lina discovers her grandmother has died in the darkness of night.

Dallas Middaugh must have noticed similar issues with the pacing when he adapted the story. Very quickly we see that he cut things out to keep the story from coming too much to a pause, like Lina’s friend Clary (whose important actions are performed by Mrs. Murdo) and even Lina’s failed attempts to show the Instructions to people other than Doon. Trimming the plot helps the pace of the story, but it also alters the emotional effect many of the novel’s scenes had. One big example, which seems very small, is when Lina goes to buy colored pencils from the shop. First, because we missed the prior scene of her aching to just go look at them, we don’t get Lina’s experience of coveting something that others don’t have, which becomes important when Lizzie and then the mayor are discovered to be hoarding rare food. This also diminishes our perception of Lina’s guilt when she loses her sister, Poppy, because she’s too busy debating on whether or not to buy the pencils. So while Asker does an excellent job of showing us a stricken Lina as she watches Poppy sleep later that night, we don’t have as clear of a sense that this is her fear combining with her own extreme guilt.

Jeanne DuPrau’s original novel has a fascinating premise that is riddled with anxiety from the first pages. Its slow trek towards the point keeps it from being as immediately exciting as something like The Hunger Games, but DuPrau starts to make up for this in the faster-paced climax. Middaugh and Asker’s adaptation moves the plot along more quickly and manages to convey enough background information through invented dialogue. But certain things are lost—Lina’s guilt, Doon’s temper, and the panic of other citizens that causes some to run out into the the darkness in hope of finding light—that diminish the characters, flatten them, and turn them into people we’re just not quite that invested in. So while The City of Ember graphic novel effectively gets the story across, it just doesn’t have enough feeling to put it on par with the novel.