Features & Reviews

The thing that frequently strikes me about Osamu Tezuka’s comics is how fresh they feel, no matter when they were created. I suspect this is because, while he was as solid and conscientious an entertainer as has probably ever worked in the medium, he was also always pushing to bring new ideas to manga and to infuse new levels of ambition into comics. This isn’t always true, and there are some Tezuka works that feel locked in the time of their birth (Swallowing the Earth, Ayako), but it happens with a frequency that just about any creator of any kind of entertainment would envy.

Princess Knight (Vertical) exhibits that lively timelessness that I associate with Tezuka at his best. I have no idea if he sat down one day and decided that he wanted to take comics for girls in an entirely new direction or if it just happened because he wanted to take all comics in entirely new directions, but the comic exudes that feeling of opportunity and transformation.

It’s hard not to think of the princesses of Walt Disney’s motion pictures, mostly because Tezuka references them so often. Disney was an influence and inspiration to Tezuka, but Tezuka didn’t seem content to merely mimic Disney. Princess Knight seems like the best example of that. While Disney’s princesses were titular, they were never the heroine of their own story, at least with Disney at the rudder. Tezuka’s Sapphire may be pulling plot points out of a Disney grab bag, but she’s nothing like her American sisters.

Before Sapphire is born, a mischievous angel named Tink gives her the heart of a boy shortly before she receives her assigned girl’s heart. Beyond the supernatural complications, her earthly parents are hoping for a son, or rule of the kingdom will pass to a craven moron. The king and queen love their daughter, but archaic tradition forces them to raise her as a boy. Sapphire’s extra heart makes this easier than it might have been otherwise.

She’s great with a sword, and she stands up for what’s right. She’s smart, tough, and good-hearted, though she keenly feels the call of her feminine side. She falls for the prince of a neighboring kingdom, but she can never act on those feelings. And she’s constantly wary of her unscrupulous, ambitious uncle, who would love to expose her and open up the throne for his idiot son.

Things go from difficult to impossible when her charade is exposed. Loss piles upon loss and peril upon peril, and she’s imprisoned and exiled. Fortunately, adversity brings out the best in her, and she takes steps to reclaim her kingdom, not because of any air of entitlement but because it’s right and the best thing for her people. She’s not passive and she doesn’t want a prince to save her; you can’t come close to saying that about any of her Disney princess contemporaries.

That’s not to say her adventures don’t draw on familiar princess tropes. Like Cinderella, she gets to don glamorous disguise to connect with her handsome prince. Like Snow White, she’s targeted by an evil and ambitious witch. Like Ariel, she loses her ability to communicate. Beyond that, there are pirates and assassins, scheming courtiers and incompetent angels, magic and monsters. Sapphire faces more difficulties than the entire coterie of Disney princesses combined, which makes for an insanely lively narrative flow.

Of course, another fascinating aspect of Tezuka’s work was the way his well-intentioned thinking regarding women’s roles was betrayed by execution that wasn’t quite as involved. Sapphire’s agency is entirely connected to her boy’s heart. In moments when she loses that heart, she becomes as passive a victim as Snow White and Sleeping Beauty ever were. And it’s not entirely clear what Tezuka is trying to say in those moments. Is it just another form of peril to keep things moving, or did Tezuka wholeheartedly own those gender roles, even if he regretted them? It also makes me wonder about likely outcomes in the next volume – will a happy ending for Sapphire constitute a satisfying conclusion for me as a reader?

Jarring as those considerations are, they do give the reader an extra layer to ponder. You don’t really need to think about Princess Knight in the context of its time too often, since Tezuka the entertainer is in such fine form here. But the chance to consider Tezuka the figure of his era, no matter how progressive he may have been in relative terms, is always intriguing to me. It’s kind of like how you can ride along with the madly entertaining antics in Dororo (Vertical) only to be occasionally slapped with how genuinely bleak Tezuka’s world view must have been.

Speaking of aspects that could date the work, I have to take issue with the packaging here. Vertical has an admirable history of crafting vibrant covers for classic titles, so why does Princess Knight look like a paperback textbook from the 1970s? The washed-out palette and the minimalist cover design aren’t up to Vertical’s usual standard, and the design does nothing to communicate the excitement contained within. Vintage manga is always a tough sell, so why make the book look so blah? It wouldn’t look out of place in a book stack at a suburban garage sale.

That sounds harsh, but I’ve got a protective bent for this book. I’ve wanted someone to republish it in English for ages, and I think I imagined it being perfect. And it is almost perfect – wonderful characters, a terrific story, and Tezuka’s wonderful illustrative style, packed with action and humor and feeling. Vertical has done a marvelous job making a range of Tezuka’s work available in English, though it generally falls in his seinen vein. That’s great and entirely welcome, but I feel like it’s equally important to showcase Tezuka’s work as an entertainer for a wider, younger audience. Because even those pieces feel fresh and ambitious, just like Princess Knight.

By Yoshinobu Yamada. Released in Japan as “Eden no Ori” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

As we head into the second volume of our survival story, we’re starting to see a few more familiar trappings. The airplane homebase is rendered uninhabitable, they try making a raft, and we get a lot more survivors, some of whom are likeable and some of whom aren’t. We also get to see our hero Akira develop increasing leadership qualities, and Kanako start to prove she is more than just a walking fanservice poster. Things aren’t getting more original, but they’re staying interesting.

As you would expect when you get a bunch of emotional Japanese teenagers and toss them into the middle of an island with prehistoric monsters on it, not everyone is handling it the same way. Akira and company are trying to band together and be a team. One guy with a Jason mask names himself Hades and seems to go off the deep end at the earliest opportunity. Akira’s friend Arita is seemingly doing the same thing, but is in reality barely holding it together because of guilt over a previous impulsive action. And then there’s Yarai, who seems to be leading a third group simply by virtue of being so badass people instinctively want to follow him.

The action here is well-done and exciting. The animals are suitably dangerous, while remaining just realistic enough that our heroes managing to defeat them only feels a little ludicrous. The power politics also feels realistic, though I could do without everyone lampshading how Akira is becoming a great leader. We already see it, no need to hammer it home. Likewise, while the deaths of two classmates was done well, and was suitably gruesome, I think a true test of the series will be to see what happens when likeable people start getting killed.

And then there’s the fanservice. Look, I can take a lot of fanservice with no qualms. I read Negima, after all. But I honestly would not blame anyone who wants to drop the series here, because man, the sheer obsession with panty shots and breasts is over the top even for a Shonen Magazine manga. I realize that this is a magazine for young teens, and they are pubertylicious. Still, after a while I was flicking through them faster, trying to get past it. “Yes, the two girls fall on top of each other. Yes, squoosh. OK, let’s watch them climb down a ladder from the bottom. I GET IT, they’re sexy!” It can be very taxing.

I will admit that the cliffhanger makes me quite eager to see what happens next. I’m fairly certain that Akira and Yarai will disagree, but seeing the groups lock horns should be fun. And we still really have no idea why this island is filled with long-dead creatures. Is it a plot point, or is this just an excuse for carnage? Oh, and no doubt we will meet more female characters, and their breasts as well. Cage of Eden remains good candy, even if you sometimes feel a bit sick after eating too much of it.

I promise to use only one wine metaphor in this review of the first volume of The Drops of God (Vertical): it gets better after it has a chance to breathe. The first few chapters of Tadashi Agi and Shu Okimoto’s tale of wine aficionados are kind of a slog.

There’s a behavior known as “mansplaining,” and I certainly think there’s a variation of it, “fansplaining.” You’ve all been engaged in conversation with someone who’s passionate about a particular entertainment who proceeds to bury you under unsolicited detail delivered with an unsettling degree of authority. (I’ve been both victim and perpetrator; I have no illusions about that.)

And Drops of God is absolutely fansplaining manga as only a certain type of seinen can be. Even though its protagonist is a novice to the world of wine, he’s surrounded by people who aren’t, and he’s thrust into a situation where he has to join their informed ranks. And the audience must gauge their tolerance for the level of detail they can endure regarding varietals, vineyards, rankings, price, and so on. There’s a lot of that, and the world of wine is often viewed as kind of byzantine and elitist and twee to begin with.

Personally, I can deal with a lot of fictional fansplaining if the characters are engaging. That’s why the first couple of chapters of this volume worried me. The leads came off as fairly flat, cookie-cutter versions of types you can see in literally a hundred different licensed manga: the brash, ignorant hero who happens to be enough of a savant to unsettle his highly trained, elitist rival, especially with the help of a book-smart rookie. Agi and Okimoto almost literally drown them in exposition in the early going, and I was kind of anxious that this eagerly anticipated title would turn into a charmless, didactic experience.

Then, a few chapters in, the creators start to relax a bit. The hero, Shizuku, reveals himself to be kind of an endearing dork. Yes, he’s suspiciously astute in terms of his ability to evaluate wine by taste, even though he tastes it for the first time in this comic, but he’s a pretty funny guy. Trainee sommelier Shinohara doesn’t quite transcend the thanklessness of her role as “girl who knows things but has no real personal stakes,” but I like her well enough.

The ostensible plot is a contest between Shizuku and a snooty wine critic to see who’s worthy of inheriting the legendary wine collection of Shizuku’s late father, a snooty wine critic in his own right. But the series really seems to be more about teaching readers about wine by showing the ways it can influence people’s character. Agi and Okimoto prove themselves to be pretty deft with that sort of thing, and, lectures aside, it’s the sort of thing I really enjoy in a manga.

It’s about hooch, it’s got amiable stars, and you can learn stuff about a subject that may be new to you while occasionally enjoying the comfortable structure of competition manga. I’m in for the duration.

By CLAMP. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Jump Square. Released in North America by Dark Horse.

It’s been a busy fall for CLAMP here in North America. xxxHOLIC is finishing out its run at Del Rey, The re-release of X is out this week from Viz, and their new series, Gate 7, has come out from Dark Horse. This one runs in Shueisha’s Jump Square, which is still shonen but is well known for experimentation. And, like its parent magazine Weekly Shonen Jump, also has a large female readership. Which plays right into what CLAMP does best.

The trouble with giving the audience what they want, of course, is that they do not particularly want originality, or experimentation, or new things. What an audience typically wants is the same story told over and over, only with the names changed so we can pretend that they’re different characters. Heck, sometimes CLAMP even bypasses that, relying on using tried and tested characters in new situations (Tsubasa, X…). Of course, the problem with this is that reading the first volume of a new work of theirs can feel a bit like making ticks on a list.

Let’s see, straight man hero who seems to exist to be exasperated, befuddled, and ask questions: check. With a supernatural secret: check. Meets up with two complementary hot, long-legged and tall guys who may or may not be lovers but the fandom will have decided they are from panel one: check. And a mysterious person of ambiguous gender to hook up with the hero, again giving a frisson of BL while still having an out if the creators do decide they need them female for some reason: check. And the entire plot, about a war between two sides to see who can gain the powers of demons.

So I think we’ve established that this is The Pick Of The Best Of Some Recently Repeated CLAMP Hits Again, Vol. 2. That said, CLAMP would have to work much harder than they are to tell a boring story, and the whole thing ends up being interesting and a page-turner almost despite itself. Working in the Edo period history is not only a good way to ground everything, but quite timely given how many Edo period manga are coming out here these days. The lead is nice enough, even if his “history buff” trait screams of a plot device. I wish he’d have more personality, but I suspect if he got upset he’d be a complete Watanuki clone, instead of just half of one. Hana is Hina from Suki with added powers: still having that same sense of childlike naivete that everyone wants to protect. Tachibana and Sakura are any number of types, but in this volume I was most reminded of Kurogane and Fai.

See how I try to talk about how I still found the manga enjoyable, but ended up drifting off into how everything reminded me of something else again? Yeah, I think I’ll have to go with that. CLAMP are now marketing nostalgia for CLAMP. And this title is for everyone who liked X and Tokyo Babylon and RG Veda and Tsubasa and wants to set their empty glass down on CLAMP’s bar and say “Another, please!” And y’know, it’s still pretty tasty, even if you know exactly what you’re getting.

By Izumi Tsubaki. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Viz.

In the last volume of Oresama Techer, it was non-stop wall-to-wall delinquency. Here we get a change of pace, and we see a few chapters of Mafuyu managing to deal with life as herself. Although, being who she is, delinquency is never all that far away…

The cliffhanger kiss from last volume is rightly tossed away quickly. Despite a bit of tease, this is not particularly a romance manga. Instead, we start off with our two leads showing us once again that they completely fail at anything resembling normal in their life. Mafuyu’s idea of beach couple fun is straight out of shoujo manga (old-school shoujo, not the modern HtY-style), and Takaomi is far more interested in working off steam and starting fights. He’s always been menacing in a comedic way in the prior volumes, now we get another glimpse of the sort of beast lurking within – Mafuyu is awestruck, and she should be.

Takaomi actually gets a bit of backstory here, though its presentation is fairly elliptical. Given the author’s style, both here and in The Magic Touch, her previous series, I’d say it’s 50-50 whether the subtlety is deliberate or accidental. Tsubaki-san is fantastic at basic gag comedy – even more here than in her prior series – and her pacing has improved monumentally. But plotting is still a weakness, and it’s noticeable even in this volume, which is a collection of ‘breather’ anecdotes. No one is reading this series to discover Takaomi’s past, or to see which guy Mafuyu will hook up with. (Contrast this with The Wallflower, another gag manga, where people *are* reading it for the romance – and thus are far more annoyed.)

Still, you can get away with this as long as the book is funny. And it’s funny. I read this while I was depressed over having no power this week, and it managed to buoy me right up. There’s facial expression comedy – the entire sequence with the ninja boy, and the contrast between his stolid expression and his actions, capped by Mafuyu and Takaomi’s stares. There’s character-based comedy – the entire sequence with the rich girl and her butler, typing in with Takaomi’s past and featuring him being both brutal (he carries the heiress around like a sack, as he’s used to doing with Mafuyu) and touching (his yelling at the butler to step up and not be satisfied with what little he has). And there’s the purely random “what the hell” style Osaka comedy (the entire sequence with the flower arranging club, or Sakurada imagining Mafuyu revealing that she’s really an alpaca wearing a human skin).

This volume was not as strong as previous ones – the extended 4-koma series at the end reeked of filler – but it’s still great fun. And now that Hayasaka has managed to tick off another villain with his sheer denseness, I expect things to get even worse for the public morals committee. Perhaps we may even need to see the return in Volume 6 of… SUPER BUN!

By Mitsuru Adachi. Released in Japan in 2 separate volumes by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Shonen Sunday. Released in North America by Viz.

At last, we can now talk about the big secret that comes halfway through Cross Game. Well, after we finish up the big game, of course. It’s an 8-volume series, and we’ve still got four to go. Will our team manage to defeat their rivals and go to the Koshien in their second year, and first with Ko and Azuma?

Hi, spoiler on the cover, thanks for ruining everything as always. In any case, no, of course they don’t. Sports manga have to follow a certain pattern, after all. Ko and Azuma and company have no had to experience the harsh realities of competition nearly enough. And Ryuou is a very good team. We really know that they’re going to win when we’re introduced to the likeable players they have behind the two supposed “superstars” – calm and patient Mishima to contrast with overhyped slugger Shimano, and cocky yet analytical phenom Oikawa replacing the cool – perhaps too cool ace pitcher Matsushima. It’s no coincidence that both replacements mirror Seishu’s own Ko and Azuma.

So yes, Ryuou wins and goes to the Koshien, and Ko and Azuma get a reminder that they’re not perfect yet – but also that they have another year to go. There’s lots of the usual Adachi touches here. Ko’s apology to the third years who will be graduating, and their hug. Ko’s fatigue and injuries, and his pitching through them. Aoba, once again, asking what Wakaba would be like were she there. (Her sister’s reply is both accurate and eerie foreshadowing.) Half the enjoyment of this manga is re-reading it and picking out little subtle bits you missed the first time around.

As for what Wakaba would be like were she around, well, one merely needs to look at the cover, which clearly shows Aoba standing next to a teenage Wakaba… oh, wait, no it isn’t. Instead, it’s Adachi using one of the hoarier cliches in fiction – the lookalike of the dead romantic interest. There’s a new soba shop in town, and their daughter, Akane (come on, he HAS to be trolling Takahashi here, even if it is a common Japanese name) is a dead ringer for a 17-year-old Wakaba… well, at least that’s what everyone isn’t saying. There’s a lot of stunned gazes, a few muttered asides, and some discussion of “ghosts growing older”, but mostly what we see here is Ko and Aoba trying to deal with her mere presence. They both, typically, share the same reaction – they’ve no idea if she looks like Wakaba as a teen or not, as Wakaba is still 12 in their heads.

As with the previous section, the second half of the volume is rife with fantastic character moments. Azuma’s quiet happiness at seeing his brother being cheerful, and his needling of Ko about fulfilling Wakaba’s dream – and Aoba’s, since she can’t participate. Mizuki doing his best to be nice and helpful to Aoba, but never quite getting the hang of it, mostly as he tries hard to do what Ko does naturally by being a brat towards her. Aoba’s detailed research on Akane, and Ko’s annoyance that everyone seems to assume that he’ll end up with her the moment she arrives. (Clearly they read the same big book of cliches Adachi did). And of course Akane herself, mostly still a nice, polite cipher, but her increasing puzzlement at everyone staring at her as if she’d grown a third head is apparent.

I remain ecstatically happy that Viz picked this series up. I do hope they do more Adachi in the future (digital?), but for now I will enjoy this, a release once again appropriate for the season – baseball is wrapping up, time to move on.

So, due to power outage, these aren’t on the regular Manga bookshelf site with last week’s briefs, and the MMF is actually long over. So just pretend this is still relevant.

The Manga Movable Feast dealt with horror, but most of the titles I’m about to talk about fall more under the realm of ‘supernatural’. They’re shonen and shoujo titles that deal with friendship, romance, etc., but happen to feature monsters, demons, or yokai in some way. This is, of course, not to say that they don’t all have the ability to scare in some way.

The one with the least horrific content here is likely Kamisama Kiss 5, which continues to be about a young girl who finds herself the god of a local shrine, and her vaguely romantic relationship with her familiar, sexy fox creature Tomoe. This particular volume in fact, is about removing the terror – no one goes to the shrine due to its reputation, so Nanami decides to hold a festival to entice people to notice the shrine is no longer run-down and creepy. There is a mysterious chapter where Nanami thinks that Tomoe has abandoned her and the shrine (which looks like a pit again), but it turns out to be a trick, and the majority of the volume is devoted to showing Nanami as plucky and never-say-die, and Tomoe as being aloof yet caring. The supernatural mostly is a spice here.

Much more scary, or at least with a vague tinge of unease hanging around it, is Natsume’s Book of Friends 9. The series is about a young man with the ability to see and control yokai thanks to his grandmother, and his attempts to balance out a normal school and family life with his desire to help free (and to a certain degree befriend) the yokai in his book. The stories tend to be drenched in yokai lore, and sometimes need a footnote or two, but generally dealing with monsters tends to be universal. We all know when a monster demands something or else she will do harm, and then gets what she wants, harm is going to happen anyway. There’s less school antics here and more of Natsume working with his own familiar, Nyanko-sensei. Who, thank goodness, is not a sexy fox creature. Things can get scary here, but this series gives more of a feeling of melancholy than terror.

Nura also deals with yokai, and is a Shonen Jump manga, so is not concerned so much with cute romance or finding friends as it is with awesome fights. Rikuo is still having issues with his leadership skills, and a lot of this volume continues to deal with the takeover of the town by a rival gang of yakuza… um, yokai. This volume in particular is very good at contrasting Rikuo’s caring and accepting nature, even of those who can’t stand him, with that of Tamazuki, who callously destroys his closest allies with a cruel word and a wave of his hand. It’s the difference between ruling by loyalty and ruling by fear, and this being a Jump manga, we know what will eventually win out. There are several good scary moments here, but I’d read it more for the Friendship, Training, and Victory myself. (Also, the Rikuo/Tsurara shiptease is really getting hammered on here.)

Lastly, there’s Vampire Knight 13, which despite the presence of vampires and demon hunters, is not so much horror in this volume as the political intrigue that it’s excelled in ever since Yuki came into her heritage. I’ll be honest, I think I preferred Yuki in the earlier volumes – despite trying to balance being prudent with becoming her own person, she still comes off as awfully passive here. There are a few scattered bits of action, and a scene or two of blood and gore (tastefully and sexily done, of course – this is LaLa Magazine, after all), but this is horror in the same way that Wilkie Collins was horror – romantic suspense horror with twists and turns and fitting into society turning out to be far more important than the number of people you kill. Normally I enjoy it, but I admit I found this volume a bit boring.

So, to sum up, it’s November 5th. Happy Halloween! Dress as Guy Fawkes!