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Arata: The Legend, Vols. 1-6

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By Yuu Watase | Published by VIZ Media

As a fan of Yuu Watase’s shoujo classic, Fushigi Yûgi, I expected that I would like Arata: The Legend, her first shounen series. Turns out, I had underestimated my enjoyment: I really like it!

The story begins in a world known as Amawakuni, where the child-like princess is preparing to yield the thrown to her successor after reigning for 60 years. There are no suitable females in the royal (Hime) clan to take her place, however, and so a fifteen-year-old boy named Arata is coerced into passing himself off as a girl until another suitable candidate can be found. During the ceremony, the twelve retainers of the princess—known as the shinsho, because they are masters of powerful sword-gods known as hayagami—revolt and the princess is cut down before Arata’s eyes. The shinsho pin the deed on him and his flight to evade capture takes him to the mysterious Kando Forest, where he is swallowed up and exchanged with his counterpart from another world: Arata Hinohara.

Hinohara has been having a tough time lately. In middle school, he was bullied so much that he eventually stopped going altogether. Now it’s his first year of high school, and at first everything seems to be going okay. He purposefully chose a school far away, where no one would know his old self, and is able to make friends quickly, thanks to his quick actions in capturing a train groper. After a month, however, his former nemesis Kadowaki arrives and the torment starts anew, capped off by the betrayal of Arata’s closest new friend, Suguru.

When he arrives in Amawakuni—and is taken for Arata by everyone he meets—Hinohara is thrust into Arata’s role as a wanted criminal. When his touch awakens a slumbering family artifact—what turns out to be a legendary hayagami known as Tsukuyo—he is suddenly recognized as a sho, which means he’s part of the battle for the the throne. The shinsho overthrew the princess because they were tired of the control she exerted over their powers, but now they must battle and dominate each other until one stands supreme. Like it or not, as a sho, Arata is swept up in the conflict and has two choices: submit himself (this essentially means death) or force others to submit. (Meanwhile, Arata contends with life in modern Japan, including going to school and eventually beating up Kadowaki.)

I really love how Watase fleshes out Hinohara’s complex character here, because everything he does makes sense based on what he’s been through. When he first arrives, he refuses to trust anyone, but when Arata’s childhood friend, Kotoha, makes good on her promises to stick by him no matter what, it has a profound effect on him. Too, the prospect of forcing others to submit reminds him too much of the domination he suffered.

Because of his experiences—and because of the unique property that allows Tsukuyo to safeguard the souls of other sho without actually causing their death—he is gradually able to win over a few sho by sympathizing with their own suffering, whether it be betrayal, isolation, or loneliness. In a conversation with the princess—courtesy of the special necklace that also occasionally allows him to converse with Arata—he promises to unite the hayagami under Tsukuyo and return to her before she dies completely. He’s got a long road ahead, and it’s one that can only be won by changing the hearts of others.

It is this mission of Hinohara’s—not unlike those usually assigned to magical girls—that makes me want to apply the demographic label “jounen” to this series. It’s definitely shounen in scope and feel, but it’s also attuned to its shoujo side. The slowly developing romance between Hinohara and Kotoha is very well done, for example, with Hinohara cognizant of Kotoha’s love for the real Arata and Kotoha confused because “Arata” is responding to her in a way he never did before. I also like that Kadowaki eventually arrives in Amawakuni because a) that is so very Yuu Watase, for two outsiders to come into a fantasy world and immediately assume powerful destinies and b) the ultimate test of Hinohara’s newfound bravery and purpose is for him to be able to sustain it in the face of Kadowaki’s unrelenting hostility.

The pacing of the series is also outstanding. There’s just enough foreshadowing of significant things—the gravestone that connects one of the shinsho, Kannagi, with his reasons for rebelling against the princess—to make the eventual reveal more significant, but one never has to wait too long for the answer to a question. Similarly, Hinohara frequently actually comes out and says what he’s thinking, so misunderstandings are not allowed to perpetuate for long. In fact, revealing the truth behind things—like when Hinohara finally convinces Kotoha that he is not her beloved Arata—gives the story more places to go rather than reducing all dramatic options.

My one complaint about the series is largely rectified by Kadowaki’s entrance into Amawakuni, and that’s that Arata is given very little to do. At first, there’s only a chapter or two from his point of view every once in a while, but once he meets an intriguing girl named Oribe—who can tell he’s an entirely different person than Hinohara—things begin looking up, especially when one of the shinsho is transplanted to Japan in Kadowaki’s place. Suddenly, Arata is in genuine peril, which is bad for him but good for the story!

In the end, while there’s a lot going on in Arata, it never feels like too much, always makes sense, and yet always leaves one wondering what is going to happen next. Not only am I genuinely excited about continuing the series, it has also rekindled my determination to read Fushigi Yûgi: Genbu Kaiden, of which I have heard good things.

Arata: The Legend is still in serialization in Japan; the twelfth collected volume was released there in August 2011.

Review copies for volumes one, two, four, and five provided by the publisher.

The Goon Show Compendium, Vol. 6

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As readers of this blog know, I don’t always talk about manga. Sometimes I’m discussing other comics, sometimes I’m droning on for hours about Frank Zappa, and sometimes I’m going into great detail about which previously censored Looney Tunes blackface gags are now uncut on the new DVDs. And then there’s British Comedy, which I have had a great love for for years. I started with Python, and of course devoured all the interviews with the cast, where they discussed the influence of Spike Milligan. I then watched The Goodies, where the cast ALSO discussed Spike’s influence. And heck, even the Beatles have a song (You Know My Name, Look Up The Number) directly influenced by the Goons. I had to find out more.

And I did. The Goon Show scripts book was in my local library. That was it for a while, as importing from the UK was not as easy in those days. But then the BBC started releasing cassettes and CDs of old Goon Shows, and I quickly grew even more obsessed. Then a few years back, the BBC decided to do things properly. No more CDs of 4 randomly selected shows plonked down for a few bob. Now we got all the shows from Series 5 onwards (the earliest series that completely survives) in giant CD box sets, restored from the best materials by Ted Kendall, with previously censored jokes put back in, all with copious liner notes and annotations by Radio and TV scholar Andrew Pixley. This is the 6th such box, containing the 2nd half of series 7 (which ran in 1957).

The Goon Show was a radio comedy on the BBC from 1951 to 1960. The scripts were primarily by Spike Milligan, but he usually had helpers at various points in the series, either for reasons of time or for reasons of mental stability (Spike was bipolar, a diagnosis unknown to everyone, including him, until the 1970s). The shows in this box are co-written by Larry Stephens, a friend of Spike’s and another BBC radio scriptwriter.

The cast was Spike Milligan (known to North Americans for his Muppet Show appearance, where he debated Sam the Eagle and sang It’s a Small World), Harry Secombe (known to North Americans as Mr. Bumble in the movie Oliver!, and for the song If I Ruled The World, which he debuted), and Peter Sellers (known to North Americans). Each week Spike and Peter would take on a variety of roles, all of which would revolve around Secombe’s well-meaning but dim oaf Neddie Seagoon, who Harry always described as “myself, only more so”. Generally speaking, there was no continuity except the characters; the plot resets every week and starts on another venue.

The plots varied, but tended to rely on a fixed form. Neddie was the main character, and would be approached by unscrupulous con-men Hercules Grytpype-Thynne (Sellers) and Jim Moriarty (Milligan) to do something incredibly stupid and/or impossible for money. Neddie would start on the task, usually with the help of fellow idiots Bluebottle (Sellers), a crack-voiced Boy Scout, and Eccles (Milligan), a cheerfully idiotic simpleton (Spike based Eccles’ voice partially off Goofy from the Disney cartoons, which many Americans will note immediately). He’ll also run into Major Dennis Bloodnok (Sellers), a retired Army officer and filthy lying coward. I’m not being mean – Bloodnok admits it himself. Events would spiral out of control, and usually the show ended with one or more (or all) of the cast dead – only to be resurrected the following week.

This set is a particularly good time for the series. The cast know their roles well, and the shows have a deft combination of surrealist humor, old vaudeville gags, and a wafer-thin plot to hang it all on. The set contains a few of the best known Goon Shows, including The Mysterious Punch-Up-The-Conker, which has the skit ‘What time is it, Eccles?’, a legendary classic showing off the way Eccles’ brain worked. It’s particularly fun as Spike enjoyed savagely mocking the brain power of these characters, but also felt a great affection for them – Harry and Peter both noted Spike was closest to Eccles in real life, not for the idiocy but for the skewed view of absolutely everything that is displayed.

Other episodes of note on the set include Shifting Sands, set in India around 1900 (as many Goon Shows were – Spike grew up there, and was fascinated with the ragged edges of the British Empire holding on despite everything) with special guest star Jack Train from an even earlier BBC radio comedy, It’s That Man Again; Ill Met By Goonlight, a World War II parody involving the capture of a suspected German spy (and one of the best-times awful puns in the entire series); and The Histories of Pliny the Elder, a Roman parody. There’s a few duffers in here, inevitable when you’re trying to write a half-hour of comedy every week. Emperor of the Universe is a parody of Bulldog Drummond that doesn’t quite savagely attack its subject enough to really work. The set also contains The Reason Why, a one-off comedy written without an audience about the moving of Cleopatra’s Needle to Britain. It’s a very odd duck, with Seagoon playing a different character that nevertheless has Neddie written all over him, and Bloodnok popping in as well. Goon Show once removed, shall we say.

The set comes, as I noted, with a long series of production notes detailing what was going on behind the scenes as these shows were being aired. They’re a nice look at what show-business Britain was like in the 50s – Harry and Peter were constantly off doing other shows and performances, and the BBC at one point told off Peter’s agent for booking him so much that he was unable to do the Goons easily. There is also a short guide to some of the more obscure jokes – Britain in the late 50s is a while ago, and not many would recall who Hughie Green or Field Marshal Alan Brooke are these days.

A word of warning to those who buy the set – there are some jokes that were made in 1950s British radio that would not be made today, particularly as regards racial stereotypes. The show had musical interludes, and the singer of the 2nd interlude, Ray Ellington, was frequently employed in the show to play African tribesman, servants, etc. – usually with a Rochester-type voice (Ray’s own voice, smooth and BBC English-sounding, was also heard in his songs.) There’s also several Chinese stereotypes in Emperor of the Universe, which, being a Bulldog Drummond parody, is all about the fiendish Chinese and how they are destroying our lovely Britain. Spike was quite progressive in many ways, but his jokes are a product of their time, and it’s best we view them the same way we view Bugs Bunny doing Al Jolson impressions in blackface to sell war bonds – as a slice of history.

The Goon Show has dated somewhat, especially as so much of modern British comedy is influenced by it. Some people may listen to the shows and wonder why they rely so much on old, hoary gags (you should have heard the other comedies on the radio at the time!). But even they will then listen in disbelief at the sheer surrealistic nonsense that then pours out the speaker. Spike could take gibberish and work magic with it, so that the cast could hold each other hostage with boa constrictors, bribe each other with receipts of a photo of a five-pound note, or have the time written down for them on a piece of paper. I could listen to these shows over and over again and still get new things out of them. Priceless.

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

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From the back cover:
In America’s Gulf Coast region, where grounded oil tankers are being broken down for parts, Nailer, a teenage boy, works the light crew, scavenging for copper wiring just to make quota—and hopefully live to see another day. But when, by luck or by chance, he discovers an exquisite ship beached during a recent hurricane, Nailer faces the most important decision of his life: strip the ship for all it’s worth or rescue its lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl who could lead him to a better life…

In this powerful novel, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi delivers a thrilling, fast-paced adventure set in a vivid and raw, uncertain future.

Review:
Ship Breaker won the Printz Award this year, and I must say I think it deserved it! It took a little while to grow on me, but I liked it a lot by the end.

At some unspecified point in the future, a community of people has sprung up on Bright Sands Beach (on the Gulf Coast) where the best work to be found is on crews breaking down giant, rusting wrecks of oil tankers. Everyone toils away to meet their quota, all the while dreaming of the lucky strike—oil or other scarce commodities—that could make them rich. Nailer Lopez is fifteen years old and works on the light crew, where his job is scuttling through pipes to scavenge copper, aluminum, and nickel.

After a near-death experience during which his wits and luck save him from drowning in a pocket of oil, Nailer is christened Lucky Boy by his friends. This moniker seems apt when he and his friend Pima discover a valuable wreck left behind in the wake of a hurricane. They set to work stripping it but are stunned to discover a survivor—a very wealthy girl named Nita Chaudhury, who promises her father will reward them for saving her life. When Nailer’s drunken and dangerous father Richard discovers the wreck, however, he opts to trade Nita to her father’s enemies, which forces Nailer to make a whole bunch of difficult decisions.

When he and Pima find the wreck, she urges Nailer to be smart about it. In her eyes, “smart” seems to involve profiting enough to obtain a position of power on Bright Sands Beach. Nailer is aiming higher, however, and makes Nita promise to take him and Pima away and into a better life. The choices he makes from that point on are partly in pursuit of this goal, but also out of a growing sense of loyalty towards Nita, who proves herself capable and quickly loses her prejudices towards those less cultured than she. There are many times where he could have walked away and abandoned Nita to her fate but doesn’t, and ultimately, his concern for her works out in his own favor.

The story ranges over a few different settings, from the beach to the drowned docks of “Orleans” to a clipper ship crewed by people loyal to Nita’s father. As a big fan of the Hornblower series, I liked the ship the best. I hadn’t realized how much I missed depictions of naval battles until the awesome sequence wherein Nailer’s familiarity with the coastline results in a surprise advantage over a superior foe. In fact, the whole final sequence of the book was quite exciting, and makes me think this would make a good movie.

I also found it interesting that the main villain of the work is Nailer’s father, Richard, because Nailer harbors such conflicted feelings about him. He remembers the man his father used to be before his mother died, and though Richard’s now more likely to be high and abusive than relaxed and kind, Nailer feels obliged to care about him and give him chances to be a better person. After many disappointments, he finally realizes that Pima and her nurturing mother, Sadna, are his true family and is able to muster the strength to stop believing that his father is capable of turning over a new leaf at this point. Essentially, he’s a victim of domestic abuse who finally achieves the strength to say, “I’m not going to let you hurt me anymore.”

Lastly, Ship Breaker is commendable for its effortless portrayal of characters of many ethnicities. None of the lead characters is Caucasian. Their skin color is mentioned as part of their physical description, but doesn’t factor in to their relationships at all. Characters are judged purely based on their individual actions. If anything, the only real prejudice left in the world seems to be between the rich (or “swanks”) and the poor, but Nailer’s actions convince Nita, at least, of the errors of her ways, especially since he proves fully capable of functioning in her world if given half a chance.

Although initially a little frustrating—despite my love for dystopic YA, I still get a little frustrated with crappy situations that just seem to be getting crappier—Ship Breaker turns out to be a well-crafted and riveting tale.

License request day: Fashion Fade

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We’re in the midst of another season of Project Runway, one of my favorite reality competitions, even though I hate Josh C. M. to an absolutely unreasonable degree. So I thought I might take a look into the annals of fashion shôjo for today’s license request. (Note: We’re also into a new season of Top Chef: Just Desserts, but I’ve already requested a bunch of pastry manga, so I thought I’d branch out.) As is my way, I looked around for the oldest example I could find.

This led me to Tomoko Naka’s Fashion Fade, which debuted in Shogakukan’s Sho-Comi in 1977. Now, going by my history with the aforementioned rag-off, I’m not naturally inclined to like designers with stupid names (Suede, for example), but I also intensely dislike some designers with perfectly everyday monikers (like Gretchen). So perhaps I shouldn’t judge the heroine of this series too quickly, even though her name is, in fact, “Fade.”

Fade, it seems, grew up in Africa but ended up moving to France to live with her uncle. (Given that this is shôjo of a certain vintage, just about anything could have led to this development. My money is on a car accident that took place while rushing an important serum to a remote village, but my secret heart hopes a pride of lions were involved.) Fade and her uncle don’t hit it off. (Perhaps he prejudges her based on her name.) But she manages by becoming involved in the fashion industry, making friends, and building a career.

It ran for eight volumes originally and was subsequently republished in four thicker volumes. I honestly don’t know if it’s any good, as Naka seems to still be relatively off the radar of English-language readers. She doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, even though she’s worked steadily since the 1970s. She hasn’t even been published in French. But the covers are pretty in a “Who would ever wear that?” way, aren’t they? The covers have sort of an Erté vibe to them.

Drifters, Vol. 1

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By Kohta Hirano. Released in Japan by Shonen Gahosha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young King OURS. Released in North America by Dark Horse.

Drifters is the newest title from the author of Hellsing and is spanking brand new – even Japan doesn’t quite have Volume 2 yet. That said, it does *not* have vampires. Which means it loses a lot of North America’s strong “I will buy anything with vampires in it” market. Can it get past this obvious handicap and manage to find its own voice?

Yes indeed it can, even though that voice most of the time is a big guy with a sword going “FUCK YEAH!!” Drifters is not particularly a manga for those who want subtle, intricate displays of emotion or great attention to historical detail. It takes famous soldiers from all over earth’s history and plants them in a fantasy world with elves, then watches them simply roll up and start to do battle. And the battle is the main draw of the manga. If you’ve seen Hellsing, you know how much Hirano loves to draw melee combat. This is all about that.

There is, of course, a bit of a plot. Our hero is Shimazu Toyohisa, who is real life was believed to have died in the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600. In this manga, he wanders off the battlefield, wounded, and ends up in a modern-looking hallway, where a mysterious man signs his name onto a sheet and teleports him through a gate to another world, where he’s found by some very Lodoss Wars-looking teens. He’s apparently not the first stranger to be found in these parts, so they dutifully take him off to a ruined castle, where he meets Oda Nobunaga, the Sengoku warlord, and Nasu Yoichi, a famous samurai from 400 years earlier.

They have apparently been brought there to try to stop a great evil from destroying the land (which appears to be controlled by a woman with the amusing name of Easy, who confronts Hallway Guy in a brief scene). What’s more, it would appear they will be joining up with Hannibal and Scipio, both seen here at a different castle that is being laid siege to, as well as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Opposing them? Oh, just Hijitaka Toshizo, Joan of Arc, and Anastasia Romanov, all of whom are on the side of the bad guys, and also seem to have supernatural powers.

As you can see, this reads like a fanfiction written by a 12-year-old boy. Luckily, Hirano is mature and has a number of manga series under his best, so the execution is far more interesting. Provided you just turn off your brain and roll with events, this is a hell of a lot of fun. Shimazu makes a good “Who wants strategy, just point me at the enemy!” type hero, and the Black King, although seemingly a straight rip from Lord of the Rings, is a satisfyingly scary villain. And there’s sword fights, and battles, and people saying “Who can possibly save us now?” It is essentially Hirano having a ball every week, drawing whatever the hell he wants. And oddly, it works.

Admittedly, it has anime-style elves, who I normally avoid like the plague. But if you can get past the fantasy setting, what we have here is a bunch of historical soldiers fighting each other wile laughing and making trash talk. It almost reads like something Marvel or DC would put out. Definitely recommended to anyone who likes this sort of thing.

Off the Shelf: Hungry?

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MICHELLE: Mmm… Leftover pad thai.

MJ: Um. Macaroni & cheese from a box? I’m not sure I can *quite* say “yum.”

MICHELLE: We put diced tomatoes in ours. It’s definitely yum. :)

So, what have you been reading this week?

MJ: Well, first I checked out the first two volumes of Eri Takenashi’s Kannagi. The second volume isn’t due out from Bandai Entertainment until October, but the first has been out for a while, and I’m just now catching up with it.

Kannagi tells the story of Jin, a spiritually gifted high school student who pays tribute to his town’s recently cut-down sacred tree by carving a statue of its spirit from the leftover wood. Having met the spirit of the tree as a child, his likeness is close enough to the real thing to actually bring the tree’s guardian deity to life in the form of a human girl. With her tree now gone, the deity, Nagi, has lost some of her power, and must rely on Jin to help her cleanse “impurities” that lurk around looking like insects and snakes. Meanwhile, newly-human Nagi wreaks havoc on Jin’s life, both at home and school.

As a premise, this all works pretty well. Foisting a pretty, domineering, otherworldly girl into the life of a young everyman may not be the most original shounen plot ever, but in-between boob jokes, Takenashi throws in some genuinely quirky stuff. For instance, after watching a magical girl anime on television, Nagi soberly builds her own magical staff out of plastic toys and paper, believing it will help her stamp out the impurities. The book’s early chapters are filled with small bits of humor like this, and even when the first volume beings to drift into harem territory, it retains most of its charm.

Unfortunately, things slide quickly downhill in volume two, when much of the series’ original premise is abandoned in favor of an increasingly obvious harem setup, complete with maid cafes, random swimsuits, and an endless supply of breast/otaku jokes (rotating on a regular schedule). By the end of the volume, in fact, pretty much everything I found charming about the series initially was gone, and it’s hard to say whether I’ll be sticking around to see if it ever returns.

MICHELLE: Oh, that’s too bad. For a while there it seemed like a shounen romantic comedy that any audience could enjoy. I guess it was too good to last.

MJ: Well, maybe I’ve given up too soon. But I’ll admit to being pretty disappointed, after such a promising start.

So what have you got for us this week?

MICHELLE: Like you, I read the first two volumes of a series whose second volume came out recently and its first some time ago (2009, in this case). I’m talking about Angelic Runes, a josei supernatural/fantasy series from Makoto Tateno, better known here for her BL work.

Sowil is a young man possessed of a unique brand of magic who is looking for his father and some answers. Shortly into his quest he comes upon a village where the people are preparing to bury two children alive, believing them to be the source of a curse. Sowil intervenes and ends up taking the kids—a girl named Allueh and a boy named Erudite—with him on his journey. Very quickly he realizes that they’re oracles; Allu can hear the divine voices of demons and Eru the voices of angels. These celestial beings provide Sowil advice on his travels and generally steer him in the direction of people needing his help.

As the trio travels, Sowil ends up helping an ocean-dwelling spirit return home and identifies the being responsible for a series of killings. Both have a connection to the father he is seeking, and gradually Sowil begins to break through the seal that has been placed over his memories and those of the people where he grew up. The angels and demons observing through Eru and Allu are concerned, as well, and through them we see even more investigation of Sowil’s past. Tateno mixes quite a lot of mythologies here, but it’s all in good fun.

What this results in is a kind of low-key story with some genuinely likeable characters, which is definitely my cup of tea. Sowil is really nice—his propensity to help random townspeople reminds me of Rakan from Silver Diamond—but his unique runic magic also makes him somewhat of a badass, so that’s an interesting juxtaposition. I’m also really interested in Allu and Eru, who seemingly have no personalities of their own and simply function as vessels for higher powers. That’s either mysterious or incredibly sad. Perhaps both.

Anyway, there is at least one more volume of this. I hope it won’t be another two years before we see it.

MJ: That does sound like a tasty cup of tea. Why have I been ignoring this series?

MICHELLE: Well, when the first volume comes out and then nothing happens for two years, I think one is justified in thinking, “Hm, perhaps this series has been discontinued.” I like Tateno in general, though, and remembered that Connie (of Slightly Biased Manga) liked the first volume back when we were all part of Manga Recon, so I never forgot about it. It probably doesn’t sell too well, alas, but I hope DMP makes enough through their BL catalog to finance a third volume someday.

What’s your second manga du jour?

MJ: My second read this week was volume one of Bloody Monday, one of Kodansha Comics’ many recent debut series over the past month or so. It’s a thriller about a teen hacker named Fujimaru aka “Falcon.” Though Fujimaru’s skills are often sought out by his special agent dad, he also uses them to do things like liberate his private school from the influence of a harassing faculty member.

When his dad stumbles onto something that gets him framed for murder and puts his family in jeopardy, Fujimaru takes matters into his own hands and, with the help of his high school newspaper crew, continues his dad’s investigation regardless of the danger. Though the series’ super-smart-teen shares some of the more over-the-top qualities of Death Note‘s Light Yagami, he’s at least not a sociopath, which certainly helps in terms of likability, if not in believability. Opening boob and panty shots would suggest that this series shares some other attitudes in common with Death Note-style boys’ comics as well, but at least it seems to feature at least a couple of potentially competent female team members. I suppose time will tell.

Comparisons to Death Note might suggest that I found little to like in Bloody Monday, but actually I enjoyed it more than I expected. Though it’s obviously intended to appeal to fans of the former, I have to admit that its kinder tone goes a long way with me. Despite its highly derivative premise, I expect I’ll continue on with it.

On the petty side, I did notice something early on, Michelle, that made me think of you. There’s a panel in the first chapter that is so poorly laid out in terms of speech bubble placement, that one bit of dialogue looks like it’s being spoken by a character’s hand, or maybe the canister she’s holding. Once I figured out what was really supposed to be going on, I thought, “Michelle would have a field day with this!”

MICHELLE: Probably I would! I kind of relish skewering things like that. I am glad you enjoyed this, though, because it’s written by the same guy behind GetBackers, which is a series I liked a good bit. If GetBackers is any indication, Bloody Monday may well be able to balance the fanservice and competent female characters to your liking.

Now this makes me sigh ‘cos I wish Kodansha would pick up GetBackers, but it’s really been so long…

MJ: I’m definitely interested to see where this goes! I feel a little weird about enjoying something that’s so obviously derivative of a series I was fairly wishy-washy on, but I’m going to just go with it.

So what’s your second offering for the evening?

MICHELLE: I seem to be mirroring you this week, since I also checked out another Kodansha debut. Gon may not be new to American audiences, but it was new to me. I’d seen it praised quite a bit, but never before been compelled to check it out. Now that I have… well… I’m not entirely sure whether I’ll keep reading it.

The premise and execution are certainly unique. Gon is the last remaining dinosaur, and is only a year old. This doesn’t stop him from challenging animals many times his size, however, as this volume finds him facing off against a bear whom he later uses for a bed, convincing a lion to serve as his steed and later eating alongside him as equals, and protecting a nest of eagles from a prowling bobcat. The art is incredibly detailed and entirely nonverbal. So, in that respect, I must say that Gon is really something special.

The thing is… I just don’t like Gon. While I commend mangaka Masashi Tanaka for not making him cute and endearing—he’s fierce and intimidating, even if diminutive—how can I like a critter who basically floods out an entire forest habitat making a dam that makes it easier for him to catch fish? So, on the one hand I’m like “Heh, what a little bastard”—and it is kind of cool how one can so easily invent dialog for all the displaced animals along the lines of “I hate that guy”—but on the other hand I’m like, “Man, what a little bastard!” Can I enjoy bastardly doings for six more volumes? I’m not sure.

One last thing puzzles me. This volume is quite slim. The material has previously been released in the US. And, being without words as it is, is a very quick read, even for a notorious slowpoke like me. These three factors seem to suggest this would be an ideal candidate for omnibus treatment—something Kodansha has shown a willingness to undertake for series like Love Hina and Tokyo Mew Mew—so why not Gon?

MJ: Well, huh. I’m intrigued for sure, though I suspect I may have a similar reaction overall. I find it really difficult to enjoy a series whose protagonist I dislike, especially if there isn’t some other character for me to really latch on to. Your omnibus question is interesting as well. I wonder if it has to do with licensing?

MICHELLE: Probably it does. Or else they’re keeping the volumes small so they’re not intimidating for kids.

MJ: Ah yes, could be.

MICHELLE: So. Um. Good night, then. :)

MJ: And to you, my friend!

Manga the Week of 9/14

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Given that next week is all about Yen Press, let’s start with them. (Yes, I know Sailor Moon and Sailor V come out 9/13. Did you really expect Diamond to ship it on the same day it hits bookstores? Have you been reading my posts at all this year?) There’s lots of stuff from Yen that deserves mention, but I want to focus on one title in particular first.

With the Light, a manga about a young mother struggling to raise her autistic child, was one of Yen’s first manga series announced, and their most exciting. A josei manga that clearly was intended to be marketed to a much broader audience than anime fans, it was a sign of great things to come. And it turned out to be even better when you read it, heartwarming and inspiring. Sadly, the author passed away before she could finish the series. Yen has worked with Akita Shoten to make the final volume, out next week, as complete as it is possible to be. Everyone who loves manga that goes outside the boundaries of ‘fight, train, laugh’ should pick up this series.

Of course, Yen has other stuff too. There’s Bamboo Blade 10, which is about to start up its next big arc. There’s Bunny Drop 4, which is a big turning point in the series. My Girlfriend’s a Geek 4 will no doubt feature more knowing humor about the fujoshi lifestyle. Zombie Loan… I’ve never read, I admit. I presume it’s about a library where you borrow zombies for things they’d be useful for? And the cute moe librarians who run Zombie Loan? No?

And though I don’t cover manwha, I suspect I would be filleted by my fellow Manga Bookshelf colleagues if I did not mention the new Goong and Raiders manga. And for fans of OEL, there’s Svetlana Chmakova’s new series Witch and Wizard, which is written by some other guy… oh right, James Patterson.

Viz also has titles! Albeit not many. But one is the 18th volume of Hayate the Combat Butler! Yes, it’s down to twice a year, and it seems to only garner bad reviews online these days (that will change when I get a hold of it), but this one resolves the ‘End of the World’ arc in a dramatic way, then kicks back to the comedy. And another final volume, as Detroit Metal City comes to a close. I kind of lost track of the series after the first couple of volumes, but I have a lot of friends who love it.

And Dark Horse is putting out the first volume of Yasuhiro Nightow’s new series, Blood Blockade Battlefront, no doubt meant to appeal to Trigun fans the same way Drifters is clearly designed to appeal to Hellsing fans. Sadly, on advice from my doctor, I can’t actually look at Nightow’s artwork anymore without a 24-hour nurse by my side, so I did not preorder it. But I’m sure hardier people than I will be willing to read it and try to figure out what the hell is happening in the panels.

(Apologies to Dark Horse… if it helps, I’ll be praising Drifters soon.)

So what intrigues you this week?

The Favorites Alphabet: B

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Welcome to another installment of the Favorites Alphabet, where the Manga Bookshelf battle robot gingerly approaches our meticulously organized collections to pick a favorite manga title from each letter of the alphabet, whenever possible. We’re trying to stick with books that have been licensed and published in English, but we recognize that the alphabet is long, so we’re keeping a little wiggle room in reserve. And sometimes you can’t pick just one.

“B” is for…

Banana Fish | By Akimi Yoshida | VIZ Media — Given my frequent posts on the subject, this choice likely comes as no surprise. Yet even after all that verbiage, I think I’ve talked very little about one of the main reasons I so love this series. Yes, it’s got fast-paced action, well-developed characters, and an almost-BL vibe to die for, and watching Yoshida’s artistry develop over the course of 19 volumes is truly a pleasure. But one of the series’ greatest draws for me is very simply its sincerity. I recently described another manga as reading like “a bad teen-penned novel,” and while Banana Fish shares some of the same over-the-top sentimentality and naive fancy that tends to characterize stories written by teens, like S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, Banana Fish reads like a great one. Yoshida offers up genuine intrigue and compelling action sequences, but her most winning quality as a writer is how sincerely she loves her characters, even when she’s putting them through hell.  This is a series I’ve read and re-read, and will likely read many times more before my eyes finally give out on me. Melodrama and all, it’s one of my favorite manga of all time. – MJ

Basara | By Yumi Tamura | VIZ Media — I hardly know where to start in extolling the virtues of Basara, Yumi Tamura’s epic 27-volume shôjo manga about a girl named Sarasa who assumes the identity of her twin brother Tatara (the so-called “child of destiny”) after his death and leads her people in revolt against a tyrannical king. Sarasa is highly competent and inspires the admiration and loyalty of people from all walks of life, but Tamura never lets us forget that this strong leader is also just a girl who experiences feelings she doesn’t understand and who denies herself a lot in order to be who the people need her to be. Just thinking about the reveal that it’s actually Sarasa who’s been the “child of destiny” all along literally gives me goosebumps. I’d urge everyone to read Basara, even though some volumes are notoriously hard to come by. It really is worth the effort. — Michelle Smith


Black Blizzard | By Yoshihiro Tatsumi | Drawn & Quarterly — I’ve found most of Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s work too bleak, too macho, or too bleakly macho to appeal to my own sensibilities, but Black Blizzard is a notable exception. Dating from the late 1950s, it’s thoroughly enjoyable pulp: a young murder suspect and a jaded criminal escape from custody into a raging snowstorm, police hot (cold?) on their heels. The story’s weaknesses are easy to catalog: the plot developments can be seen coming from a mile away, the characters are little more than types, and the ending is too compressed to be truly satisfactory. Black Blizzard leaves a fresh impression nonetheless, thanks to Tatsumi’s rough, energetic artwork; with all the slashing lines and images of trains in motion, you’d be forgiven for thinking that an Italian futurist had taken a stab at writing a comic book. — Kate Dacey

Black Jack | Osamu Tezuka | Vertical, Inc. — Part House MD, part globe-trotting adventure, Black Jack is easily Osamu Tezuka’s most accessible work. The stories often flirt with the outrageous: Black Jack performs a brain transplant, treats an extraterrestrial, and operates on himself while fending off dingoes in the outback. Yet the human dimensions of every story are never overwhelmed by the questionable medical diagnoses; at their best, the stories are parables about the importance of humility, responsibility, patience, and loyalty, using illness and injury to show us the best — and worst — of human nature. (Also: to show us that Black Jack is a complete bad-ass with a scalpel.) The series’ popularity meant that Tezuka cranked out more Black Jack tales than he probably should have (see “treats an extraterrestrial,” above), but even the weakest entries in the collection are still a lot of fun. — Kate Dacey

Black Jack | Osamu Tezuka | Vertical, Inc. — I’m going to second Kate’s endorsement of Black Jack for a very specific, possibly irrational reason. Sometimes a title becomes a favorite simply by virtue of the presence of a supporting character. In the case of this series, that character is Pinoko. She’s surly old Black Jack’s adorable kid assistant, except she’s actually a parasitic tumor that gestated for years in her twin sister’s abdomen until the good-bad doctor cut her out and gave her a twee little plastic body and took her in as his ward. Pinoko is wrong on every conceivable level – an 18-year-old woman with no meaningful life experience trapped in the body of an artificial child. On some subliminal level, I think every adorable kid sidekick is creepy, but Tezuka just goes there, and Pinoko’s every appearance is an unsettling, mildly heartbreaking, inappropriately funny treat. There are certainly Tezuka titles I like better than Black Jack, but there’s probably no Tezuka character who haunts me quite like Pinoko. – David Welsh

Bleach | By Tite Kubo | VIZ Media — In general, I enjoy talking about manga because I love it. I love finding underrated series I can promote the hell out of, I love reading the romantic ups and downs of a couple that grow and learn at a snail’s pace because it’s funnier that way, and I enjoy watching big guys hit each other. But sometimes you get obsessed with manga that you like… and hate as well.  It can be so good…  and so frustrating. No title currently being released over here does this to me more than Bleach, the second of Viz’s ‘Big Three’ Shonen Jump titles. Bleach has a fantastic cast of characters… who it abandons for years at a time to focus on other new characters. It has emotional resonance… which can sometimes get incredibly ham-fisted.  And while some manga work better in weekly installments, or in volumes, Bleach is one that works best by reading 5 volumes at a time then ignoring it for 6 months. Oh, and the shipping. God, the shipping. Love it or hate it, folks can’t stop talking about Bleach. Which, honestly, is even more valuable in a manga than a title that’s merely liked by everyone. — Sean Gaffney

What starts with “B” in your Favorites Alphabet?

 

Book Girl and the Captive Fool

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By Mizuki Nomura. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen Press.

By now I’ve grown somewhat used to how a Book Girl novel will feel. It will be based around a book of some sort (in this case, Saneatsu Mushanokoji’s 1919 novel Friendship) and the mystery plot will parallel the book in some way. It will flesh out the backstory of one of the minor characters we’ve met in the previous books. There will be dark, emotional themes that will connect with Konoha’s own thoughts and emotions. And in the end, Konoha will have grown a little bit more and moved on a bit from the girl in his past he can’t let go of.

But in general, the plot and mystery is not why anyone reads Book Girl. There were a few mystery aspects in this book, but I guessed at the most important one straight away, so they didn’t matter as much. However, it’s the characterization, style and prose that keep you coming back here, and in that respect Captive Fool is a worthy successor to the first two books.

This volume focuses on Konoha’s stoic and calm friend Akutagawa, and the discovery that much of his personality is a mask he puts on to conceal his past tragedies – both from others and from himself. Of course, this sounds a lot like what Konoha is doing now, and the irony is not lost on him. What’s more, the girl who was the focus of the first novel, Takeda, shows Konoha that being ‘cured’ of crushing emotional despair is not something that can happen over the course of a few weeks.

Much of the impetus of this book revolves around being unable to move on from a past tragedy, to the point where self-doubt and pressure make it impossible for you to do anything. Again, these novels are written for 15-17 year old readers, and I think these emotions would resonate well with them. How do you talk with someone after “ruining their life”? What if you make the exact same mistakes? What if one kind action turns out to be absolutely the wrong thing to do?

The author also manages to convey this to Konoha, the one who really needs to hear these words, in a way that doesn’t sound like everyone is acting as his therapist. The book Friendship mentioned above is being performed by the Book Club (and their assorted hangers-on) as a play, and so we see similar doubts and feelings play themselves out on three levels – elementary school (Akutagawa’s past), high school (Konoha’s present), and adulthood (the events of the novel/play). Growing up doesn’t always solve the problem.

Then there’s the ending to the book. I had discussed this with another reader, and it was felt that the revelation (which was a bit of a surprise, but not the complete shocker it was meant to be) was somewhat underwhelming, especially given that we’re only 3 volumes into what promises to be an 8-book “main story”. It seems a bit early for this particular plot gun to be fired off, in my opinion. But if nothing else, t shows us that when you are somebody’s mirror, you take on the same qualities as the person you are mirroring. Even if it’s unintentional.

Again, what I love most about this series is how much it makes me think about human nature. We see the growth of the characters, and even though it’s through artificial “what’s the mysterious tragic past of the novel?” means, that doesn’t make it less valid. And yeah, given the arc, I suspect the next book will focus on whatever demons Kotobuki has. But the writing and characters really make me want to find out what happens next. A great page turner, highly recommended.

Bookshelf Briefs pointer

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For those who read my reviews by category (like me), I have reviews of Deltora Quest 1, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya 9 and The Story of Saiunkoku 4 in this week’s Bookshelf Briefs.

I also review the first volume of Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru in this month’s Going Digital.

Bookshelf Briefs 9/5/11

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This week, Sean, Kate, David, MJ, & Michelle look at recent releases from Yen Press, Kodansha Comics, Viz Media, and Digital Manga Publishing.

Black Bird, Vol. 10 | By Kanoko Sakurakoji | Viz Media – Dear Black Bird: I’ve nearly defeated you. After allowing you to work me into a state of blind fury over the course of nine volumes, I’ve finally become indifferent to your crimes. The constant belittlement of your heroine, her permanently flushed face—even the way your beloved hero always manages to blame her for his most abusive behavior no longer has the power to affect me. Wait, what am I saying? Okay, I admit I lied. You did get to me by the end of the volume, you sneaky devil. Sorry about those pages I ripped up and burned, but you have to admit you were asking for it. After all, I think you said it best. “There are times I want to treat you really well … and times when I want to treat you mean and make you cry … Which way I lean all depends on you. So don’t blame it all on me.” – MJ

Bleach, Vol. 36 | By Tite Kubo | Viz Media – It’s easy to become jaded as a manga reviewer, especially when it comes to long-running shounen manga. Though some series manage to transcend formula, others just seem to settle in, churning out pages of endless battles, increasingly generic foes, or whatever popular staples their genres require. Bleach has long walked the line between the two, just barely balancing compelling drama with mind-numbing repetition. After volume 35‘s strict conformity to this pattern, nothing could be more surprising than volume 36. Completely abandoning (for the moment) the battle set up in the volume before, Bleach 36 dives back into the past, promising new and exciting revelations about characters we already care about, including the enigmatic Kisuke Urahara and the entire lot of Visored. Though future tedium undoubtedly awaits, for the moment, Kubo gives us his very best. Unexpectedly recommended. – MJ

Deltora Quest, Vol. 1 | By Emily Rodda and Makoto Niwano | Yen Press –As a reviewer, sometimes you have to try to avoid the easy way out and grind through why you couldn’t really enjoy a title. It’s tempting, especially with a title as dull as Deltora Quest was, to simply wrote “No.” as a review and be done with it. But it’s my own fault, as I ordered the book even knowing that sword-and-sorcery fantasy is one of my least favorite genres, because it was part of a big pile of Kodansha Vol. 1s. And I have not even read the original novels by Emily Rodda either. Oh, and I’m not a 9-year-old boy. So, honestly, it should come as no surprise that I found this manga a tedious slog, with two-dimensional characters, action scenes where I kept flipping the pages faster and faster, and tortured exposition. Best of all, a time skip at the end shows us that the entire volume was mere prologue for the real story, which begins with the son of our protagonist next time. Also, kings should know better than to have grand viziers by now. It’s just asking for trouble. Skip this.– Sean Gaffney

Mardock Scramble, Vol. 1 | By Tow Ubukata and Yoshitoki Oima | Kodansha Comics – Mardock Scramble walks a fine line between dark and glum. The premise places it squarely in dark and compelling territory: a young woman gets a second chance at life — and a chance to bring her would-be killer to justice — after getting a bionic woman makeover. Rune Balot’s reluctance to embrace her new abilities, however, frequently threatens to drag Mardock into glum terrain; though it’s entirely plausible that someone as damaged as Rune isn’t ready to get all Lady Snowblood on her abuser’s ass, watching her passively resist self-actualization is a depressing and frustrating spectacle. Only the presence of Oefcoque, a cyborg mouse capable of transforming into just about anything, prevents the story from collapsing under the weight of its own grim agenda. – Katherine Dacey

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Vol. 9 | By Nagaru Tanigawa and Gaku Tsugano | Yen Press –This volume takes us through the end of Disappearance. For the most part, once again it’s simply poor when compared to the novel and the anime. I’ve no frame of reference to gauge how I’d feel about it if I hadn’t read/seen either of those, but I suspect I’d still find it wanting. I did note that Asakura is drawn far peppier and less evil/menacing than she appeared in the movie, which makes her final scene even creepier. There’s also a bonus story of the Christmas Party itself (which involves accidentally creating an ancient Egyptian hot pot), and another one set in Edo times (with Edo Haruhi being just as bad as the modern one, and wanting the perfect cup of tea), but neither add anything of note to the canon, nor are they bad enough to be entertaining on their own like the boxing story was last time. Substandard, though Vol. 10 apparently features Love at First Sight, a story as yet unanimated, so maybe it can try again there.– Sean Gaffney

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Vol. 2 | By Kenji Kuroda and Kazuo Maekawa | Kodansha Comics – I described the first volume of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney as “blah,” and I’m pleased to report that second volume is more to my liking. I’m still having issues with suspension of disbelief—ask me to believe in yokai, cyborgs, or reincarnated moon princesses and I’m fine, but ask me to believe that suspects go on trial two days after the crime, and I balk—but I’ve been (mostly) won over by the Case Closed vibe the kooky murder methods conjure. It doesn’t hurt that half of this volume is occupied with investigating the murder of an amusement park employee who was garbed in the furry mascot costume of a character named “Twinklestar” at the time of his death. Phoenix and his assistant Maya take it seriously, of course, but I enjoy the sheer absurdity of it all. – Michelle Smith

The Story of Saiunkoku, Vol. 4 | By Sai Yukino and Kairi Yura | Viz Media –First of all, I cannot emphasize enough how disappointed I am by Ensei shaving. His rough and tumble beard made him look like a man from a completely different world in this manga filled with interchangeable bishies. Now he’s just another one of them. At least he has a scar, but still, it’s the principle of the thing. In addition, we get hung up here with a classic problem adapting a prose novel to visual – someone has been described as inhumanly beautiful. The artist does their level best, but in the end, nope, just another pretty bishie. To be fair, it’s impossible to draw ‘inhumanly beautiful’, so they did their best. As for the manga itself, it’s still good, mainly focusing on court intrigue and Shurei’s learning curve, with only a brief stop at romance (I am highly amused that the emperor is doing the right thing entirely through instinct, rather than overthinking things. An excellent read.– Sean Gaffney

Warning! Whispers of Love | By Puku Okuyama | Digital Manga Publishing – This addition to the reading list was the result of one of my boys’-love polls , monthly quests where I try to find gems among the new BL and yaoi releases. Okuyama’s storytelling has its charms, but I found myself wishing for a little more genuine feeling mixed in with the antics. The title story is about a game of cat and mouse between two high-school students where both realize they enjoy the game. Logic isn’t driving the bus here, but Okuyama manages a pretty good, weird, recurring joke along the way. The middle piece, about a guy who values his solitude taking in a roommate on impulse, brings more emotional authenticity to the table, though the creator clearly has a possibly excessive fondness for flaky gamines. The last story is pretty much all antics, but at least there’s a really cute dog to distract me from the underdeveloped human characters in the story. This was pleasant enough, but I don’t think I’d rush to read more of Okuyama’s work. – David Welsh

Going Digital: September 2011

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Welcome to Going Digital, a new, monthly feature focusing on manga available for digital viewing or download. On the first weekend of each month, the Manga Bookshelf bloggers will review comics we’ve read on our computers, phones, or tablet devices, to give readers a taste of what’s out there, old and new, and how well it works in digital form.

This month, we take a look at manga published for viewing on the iPad, Kindle, and web browser. Device, OS, and browser information is included with each review as appropriate, to let you know exactly how we accessed what we read.

iPad

Lone Wolf and Cub, Vol. 1 | By Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima | Dark Horse App | iPad 2, iOS 4.3 – Reading comics on a tablet adds a whole new decision-making category. In the old days, there were simply comics you wanted to read enough to own and comics you didn’t. (I say this as someone who isn’t fortunate to live near a library with a large selection of comics.) Now, with a number of publisher-specific applications, there’s a new subset: comics one might like to read, assuming they didn’t have to kill a tree to do it, which can be purchased for less than the cost of a physical copy.

Lone Wolf and Cub is sort of the perfect inaugural for me in this category. It’s a very accomplished work, one that arguably belongs in a theoretical canon of licensed manga, but its subject matter doesn’t speak specifically to me as a reader. I enjoy reading the comic and find the variations on its episodic core – accomplished killer uses a baby in his murder-for-hire work – very clever and perversely funny, but I don’t necessarily want a whole shelf of volumes staring down at me. It’s great pulp, which isn’t something I want to read often or read repeatedly, but it’s something I can enjoy occasionally on a rainy weekend afternoon.

Koike does a splendid job coming up with scenarios that call for the specific, almost superhuman skills of his assassin protagonist. Koike also throws in some marvelous use of the assassin’s toddler companion; he’s a spooky little presence, and Koike invites the reader to wonder just how aware the kid is of how he’s being used. Kojima does absolute justice to the material, from evocative period details to energetically staged violence to ostensibly adorable little kids. Kojima makes it all happen in a seemingly effortless and fluid way, which is just what this kind of material demands.

I know a lot of people view this title as a classic, and it might be slightly sacrilegious to view it as an amusing diversion, but that’s my response, and it’s the reason I’ll keep it in mind when making manga purchases on my tablet. — David Welsh


Kindle

Hot Steamy Glasses | By Tatsumi Kaiya | Digital Manga Publishing | Kindle (3rd Generation) – Like many Americans, I got a Kindle last Christmas. One of the first purchases I made for the device was Hot Steamy Glasses, a BL title from DMP. Here is a dramatic reenactment of what happened next:

“The book downloads onto the Kindle. Michelle opens it. “Wow, this looks like crap,” she thinks. “I shall hit this button that resizes text.” Nothing. “I shall try zooming.” Teensy improvement ensues. “Well, so much for that, then.”

I never bought another manga for the Kindle after that, and I never read Hot Steamy Glasses, either, until now.

While it’s absolutely true that there is no real way to enlarge the text and that it is pretty durn small, it’s still readable and I got used to it after a while. It’s not a comfortable experience, though. It’s also impossible to offer any kind of art critique if you’re reading manga on the Kindle; as opposed to the crisp black-and-white pages you’d get at VIZManga, for example, on a Kindle everything is just sorta blurry and grey. On the plus side, at least I can sit on my couch and read.

Hot Steamy Glasses itself is oddly mediocre. It isn’t bad, but it’s pretty shallow and unconvincing in its portrayal of a determinedly straight guy (Fumiaki) who finally admits that he reciprocates the feelings that his long-time friend (Takeo) has been confessing for ages. There are some amusing things about it—once Fumiaki finally agrees to go out with Takeo, they spend their first five weekends sitting around watching anime, and it turns out that Takeo’s ideas about “going out” are incredibly pure. But I just never really bought Fumiaki’s sudden transformation, and kept expecting Takeo to end up with Fumiaki’s much nicer younger brother instead.

I guess paying $6 for a Kindle edition of a book I didn’t like very much is better than paying $13 for same, but my advice to those considering reading manga on their Kindle is simple: “Don’t.” – Michelle Smith


Web Browser

Madame Joker, Vol. 1 | By Naka Tomoko | Futubasha/JManga | OSX 10.6.7, Firefox 5.0 – As a woman of a certain age, I’m temperamentally predisposed to liking stories about women who are smart and confident but not in their first blush of youth. So when I read the description of Naka Tomoko’s Madame Joker, I knew I had to read it:

“Ranko Gekkouji; a woman, a widow, blessed with wealth, with beauty, and with adorable children. Everyone is jealous of her gorgeousness, the envy towards her countless. But, that won’t stop Ranko as she fearlessly solves cases!”

Alas, the execution isn’t quite as fabulous as the summary. Though Ranko is a brash, memorable character, the script suffers from a bad case of obviousness. Ranko’s family members spend a lot of time telling each other how they’re related and explaining Ranko’s behavior, though even the least attentive reader could deduce these things for herself. The description, too, makes Ranko sound like Jessica Fletcher’s spry, sexy daughter-in-law, when in fact Ranko is more of a clever meddler than a Miss Marple-in-training, derailing a two-timing novelist’s career and thwarting a hostess’ scheme to marry for money. And the artwork! “Hot mess” is being kind.

For all its clumsiness, however, Madame Joker scores points with its strong cast of female characters. Ranko and her mother-in-law are both appealingly frank, discussing men, sex, and money with a salty candor that’s hilarious; neither seems the least bit concerned with appearances, either, doing and saying what they please, even when it scandalizes the men of the household. It’s a stretch to call Madame Joker a female empowerment fantasy — Ranko’s power, after all, comes from being a beautiful, rich widow, not a surgeon, police officer, or mother — but it’s fun to see a forty-something women get to enjoy traditionally male privileges. – Katherine Dacey

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Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru, Vol. 1 | By Masakazu Ishiguro. | Shonen Gahosha/JManga | Windows XP, Firefox 6.0.1 – I had recommended this Young King OURS title when we were discussing JManga, mostly for the virtue of being a title that was a) available and b) not from Futabasha or Leed, as I didn’t want to be too biased towards one publisher after my prior Futabasha reviews. JManga seems to be pushing it hard as well, having it be #1 on their list of ‘100 unpublished in NA manga’ on the site. Unfortunately, the manga doesn’t quite live up to the hype.

It’s not actively bad, and certainly good for a chuckle, but seeing this comedic take on a cafe, and the life of the plucky yet dense heroine, Hotori, who works there as a maid, I was reminded that most of the slice-of-life we see here these days tends to be 4-koma style. This has regular 16-17 page chapters, and as such I think I was expecting more forward plot and character development than there ended up being. There does seem to be a bit of a plot hook in Hotori being a mystery addict; in fact, the best chapter was one where she actually got to be clever, deducing a mystery about a 4-eyed painting.

Unfortunately, most of the volume is more about watching goofy Hotori do dumb things. The translation is decent – there were a few parts that even seemed to be adapted with an English reader in mind (Hotori worries about PETA after trying to capture a tailless cat), but overall there wasn’t quite enough here to make me hungry for future volumes. — Sean Gaffney

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Tired Of Waiting For Love | By Saki Aida & Yugi Yamada | Digital Manga Guild/eManga | Mac OS 10.7.1, Safari 5.1 – Kyousuke Sawaragi has been sentenced to five years in prison for dealing drugs for his yakuza boss. There, he meets Sone, a violent yakuza from a rival group, and his prison plaything, Shuuya. Though reluctant to get mixed up with either, Sawaragi finds himself protecting Shuuya and even becoming his cellmate, though he carefully resists Shuuya’s grateful advances. Once released from prison, Sawagari sheds his former life and devotes himself to the care of his widower brother-in-law and young nephew, but his past comes back to haunt him when he discovers Shuuya collapsed on the street.

This one-shot is significant as the first release from Digital Manga Publishing’s Digital Manga Guild, a new initiative intended to harness the talent and enthusiasm of fan translators, editors, and letterers in order to publish more manga in English without the prohibitive up-front costs associated with traditional licensing. Whether the DMG system is fair to its localizing teams or healthy for the industry as a whole is a conversation for another day, but what’s clear from the initiative’s first release is that it is capable of producing work roughly on par with DMP’s more conventionally localized works.

Kimiko Kotani, the one-woman localization team behind Tired of Waiting for Love, is clearly competent, though she does have her awkward moments when it comes to English prose. Sentences like “I have always lived my life the way that I wanted to live but the water that I was led to drink that should have been sweet, was always bitter,” cry out plaintively for editorial attention to punctuation and flow. Fortunately, these instances are few, and Kotani ultimately offers up a product that is clear, readable, and vastly more professional-looking than much of DMP’s other digital-only venture—its Harlequin Manga line.

It helps, of course, that the material is strong, particularly for a BL one-shot. Author Saki Aida and artist Yugi Yamada have crafted a touching, visually expressive tale that manages to maintain emotional believability within what is essentially a fantasy setting. And though the story never strays away from familiar BL territory, it’s consistently engaging.

All-in-all, Tired of Waiting for Love is a promising debut for both Kotani and the Digital Manga Guild. – MJ

Some reviews based on digital copies provided by the publisher.

Cardcaptor Sakura Omnibus, Vol. 2

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By CLAMP. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Nakayoshi. Released in North America by Dark Horse.

The second omnibus of Cardcaptor Sakura gives us Vol. 4-6 of the original series, which was effectively the end of ‘Season One’ of the manga. As such, Sakura continues to find and capture Clow Cards one by one, gaining strength and confidence, until the climax where she is forced against the most powerful card – and a powerful enemy. Or is he?

I always have to remember to downshift my brain a bit when I read the early 90s shoujo stylings of Cardcaptor Sakura. In a modern, 21st century world where most manga, shonen and shoujo, are targeted to the largest possible market, it’s refreshing to see something that is clearly meant to primarily entertain 6 to 8-year-old girls. That said, the downside to this – although perhaps not a downside so much as simply a different way of seeing things – is that there really doesn’t seem to be much happening for the first two thirds of this book.

There’s certainly lots of entertaining things going on. Kaho Mizuki, the new teacher of Sakura’s that showed up at the end of the last book, continues to hang around, trying to guide Sakura by means of subtle hints and gentle boosts to her confidence. The relationship between Sakura’s brother Toya and his friend Yukito is subtle (well, really, everything about Toya is subtle – he’s not a man of many words or emotions), but also nice to see defined as much as it’s going to be in this sort of manga. And the chapter where Sakura and Syaoran have to put on a play is the funnest of the lot, with some classic gender reversal going on, and Yamazaki at his funniest.

That said, it does seem to meander a bit, so I was quite happy when things started to heat up towards the end. CLAMP have a lot of plot gun surprises going on, most of which they did a good job of building up to or giving hints for, and they pop out one by one – Cerebus’ true form, the final Clow Card, the Card’s other guardian, and finally Sakura, having proven that she can capture the cards, has to be judged worthy of being the cards’ leader. Of course, the outcome is not really in doubt – Sakura has spent the previous five books being awesome, after all, it’s not going to reject her right at the end – but the way that the cards end up judging her, rather than Yue, the aforementioned guardian, is excellent. As for Yue’s identity, it gives him a certain gravitas that I don’t think he’d have had as ‘just a random, last-minute character’, and adds some depth to his alter ego as well.

I missed Tomoyo, who was all over the first volume of these but appeared far less in this one. Syaoran is clearly the co-star of the series with Sakura now, and though we have not yet approached the romance stage – Sakura’s still far too young and naive – it’ clear that’s where we’re headed. I also note that people who like shaded characters and some flaws in their heroes are going to have issues with this manga – Sakura may worry and lack confidence at times, but she’s also a kickass magical girl good at sports and beloved by all her friends. As for Kaho, I like her, but I wish she was less nice and sweet. Everyone’s kind and considerate and seems to have all their ducks in a row, so to speak.

So it’s not exactly great angsty drama, but the second CCS omnibus is fun, fluffy magical girl shoujo that is perfect for a young girl wanting to read some manga. And Dark Horse’s presentation matches the first volume – crisp, sharp images, nice thick paper, oversize, and with lots of color pages. Also, despite being CLAMP, fear not – this series has an ending. Though not quite yet. Volume 3 will arrive soon, and bring with it one of the most controversial characters in the series, Eriol.

In the meantime, we have this book. Guaranteed to make you feel all floaty.

A Yumiko Ôshima sampler

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

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

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

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

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

 

Off the Shelf: Three from Kodansha Comics

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MJ: Well, howdy, stranger.

MICHELLE: Howdy. This place looks like a ghost town. Check out that well-timed tumbleweed.

MJ: Do you think we can bring it back to life?

MICHELLE: I reckon we can. Especially if we can rustle up some of them ladies of ill repute.

MJ: Oh, good idea! I’ll see what I can come up with on that front. In the meantime, you wanna tell us what you’ve been reading?

MICHELLE: I guess it’ll pass the time.

A whole bunch of new series from Kodansha have debuted this month, so I checked out a couple of those. The first was Animal Land by Makoto Raiku, whose Zatch Bell! was previously released by VIZ. I wasn’t sure if I’d like this and, even after having read it, I’m still not quite sure what to make of it.

Monoko the tanuki lost her parents to wildcats three months ago and is very lonely. One day, when she’s trying to catch a fish in the river, she spots a floating basket with a baby inside and is instantly smitten. She is determined to be a mother to the baby, and braves many dangers to provide milk for him and, with the help of the other tanuki, brings him back to life when he seems on the verge of death.

It soon becomes apparent that this is one unusual baby, since he’s not only able to understand tanuki speech, but can actually converse with all animals. This skill manifests most poignantly in regards to Kurokagi, a scarred, black wildcat who’s been hanging around. The tanuki all fear him, but Kurokagi has actually appointed himself their protector after a tragic incident in which he caused the death of an infant animal. It’s fairly bizarre watching this baby, who doesn’t even crawl all that well, holding a reasonably adult conversation with a giant wildcat, I must say.

So, yes, there are some nice moments here. And I like Kurokagi. But there are also some things I don’t like. The art, for one, is often unattractive. I don’t like how the tanuki are drawn at all, for example. For another, this is clearly a story for young kids, with a zany sense of humor that relies heavily on poop jokes. Seriously, characters will just randomly start pooping for no reason. It’s ironic, really, since I bet the poop is there to appeal to ten-year-old boys—I imagine Japanese manga editors calling for “More poop!”—but here in the US, its prevalence results in the book receiving a teen rating.

I’ll probably check out a second volume, but this may end up being a series that’s just not for me.

MJ: You know, even as a kid, I was pretty much immune to the charm of poop jokes. I just don’t get the appeal.

MICHELLE: I think appreciation of poop jokes resides on the Y chromosome.

So, what have you been reading this week?

MJ: Well, I decided to make it a Kodansha week too, and the results surprised me greatly. First, I read the debut volume of Mardock Scramble, which is the manga adaptation of Tow Ubukata’s novel trilogy of the same name that was released as a single volume early this year on Viz’s Haikasoru prose imprint. I hadn’t read the novel, and didn’t have high expectations for the manga adaptation, but actually I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Young Rune Balot thinks she’d be better off dead. “Rescued” from a life of abuse and prostitution by a guy named Shell, it’s only after Shell tries to kill her that Rune makes a (subconscious) choice to stay alive. She’s rescued from near-death by a techie detective, who gives her a new body and a shape-changing cyborg mouse to protect her, in the hopes that she’ll agree to testify against Shell in court.

There’s a whole bunch of stuff about Shell, who apparently kills girls and then loses his memory afterwards, and another mysterious man who’s coming after Balot, but even with so much plot and intrigue going on, the real story is in Balot, about whom we still know little, whose second chance at life could turn her into a completely different person–probably awesome, possibly terrifying. She’s the thing that really draws the reader in. Though the super-cute, badass mouse doesn’t hurt either.

Novel adaptations are hit-and-miss with me.Too often, I think they try to rush the story, or try too hard to be visually thrilling (especially in terms of fanservice) when really they just need to practice good storytelling. But I’m on the edge of my seat with this one. There’s still a lot to be revealed, and mangaka Yoshitoki Oima has left us with quite a bit of mystery (and a pretty big cliffhanger) at the end of the series’ first volume, but I’ve been given enough to be pretty well hooked.

I’m tempted to pick up the novel now, though I’d hate to risk compromising my enjoyment of the manga when I really am enjoying it so much.

MICHELLE: Wow, that sounds truly awesome. I was also somewhat wary that the prostitution backstory would mean fanservice would ensue, so I am happy to hear that’s not the case. And my inner twelve-year-old is *really* keen on that mouse!

MJ: Michelle, you would love the mouse. Truly.

Now, my second Kodansha adventure this week had a bit of the opposite effect on me, and since I know we both tried out this one, I’m anxious to hear whether your experience was similar. Care to start with a little summary?

MICHELLE: I will give it a whirl.

Until the Full Moon is a two-volume series by Sanami Matoh (Fake) that was originally published in the US by Broccoli Books. I actually owned that edition for several years and gave it away unread, but now I am finally giving it another chance.

Vampire cousins David and Marlo were extremely close growing up, but Marlo has been keeping his distance the past ten years or so while his family lived in America. Now they’re back, and have come to David’s doctor father to discuss a bizarre condition Marlo has recently developed. He’s half-werewolf, and has begun to transform into a woman on the full moon! His parents angst in over-the-top fashion until David’s father suggests that the only possible solution is that David and Marlo must get married. The date is set for a full moon a year in the future.

Various obstacles insinuate themselves between the couple, be it a family friend who mistakenly believes his sister is in love with David, or an ex-girlfriend of Marlo’s who is jealous when she realizes that David is the one to whom Marlo was referring when he confessed he loved someone else. Everything is very campy, with lots of silliness and epic kisses upon floral backgrounds. The interior artwork is possessed of retro charm and that vintage Matoh look, but the cover art is distressingly generic-looking: I found myself very distracted by my inability to tell who some of these characters were even supposed to be. They look like they’re from some other series entirely!

MJ: Yes, I never would have picked it up from the cover art, but as soon as I saw the old-school look of the inner artwork, I was determined that I would love it. On top of that, the outrageous, gender-switching werewolf premise convinced me that this would be exactly the kind of cracktastic “classic” shoujo in which I most delight. Unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed in the silly reality.

The premise is, indeed, cracktastic, but the story itself reads more like a bad teen-penned novel than brilliantly mad shoujo. The volume’s main conflicts all read as completely contrived, with no real tension or meaning of any kind. I mentioned in Monday’s Pick of the Week that I would be content simply looking at this manga, and I’m wondering if I should have left it at that after all.

MICHELLE: While I was reading it, I kept comparing it to what I’d heard about the inventive kookiness of Demon Sacred which, from all accounts, was the very epitome of “brilliantly mad shoujo.” Alas, you’ve hit the nail on the head in describing this as “contrived.” David and Marlo also keep up the standard horny!seme and reluctant!uke roles, no matter what gender Marlo happens to be at the moment. The one element of the story I do appreciate is how David makes it clear that his feelings are for Marlo the person, not Marlo the specific gender.

MJ: The comparison with Demon Sacred is very apt, and sadly brings Until the Full Moon‘s shortcomings into clear view. Demon Sacred used its super-fantasy world as a tool for enhancing the real emotions of its characters. Here, the vampire/oddly transforming werewolf stuff feels superfluous to everything, like a badly re-themed board game.

What’s particularly sad to me, is that I actually sort of like David and Marlo as a couple, even with the clichéd BL roles, and might have been quite interested in just watching the two of them deal with their own issues. But the author relies so much on the external characters to threaten their happy existence, there’s never really any time spent on the two of them as a couple.

MICHELLE: You’re absolutely right. We just know they love each other ‘cos they say it all the time, but we don’t actually know why or see any of the moments between them that led to the development of these feelings. It’s extremely shallow.

And, yes, dead horse, but can we go back to the cover for a minute? Because seriously…. who are these people? Is David the blond on the couch with the ponytail? I don’t recognize ANY of these other characters. Not one. I am truly baffled.

MJ: I can only assume it’s going for a more contemporary style in an attempt to bring in newer readers? It’s a shame, really, since the vintage artwork is the book’s best quality by far.

MICHELLE: I assume that as well, but I am at a loss as to who the female characters in particular are even supposed to be. Maybe they’ll turn up in volume two, but it’s very puzzling and, as you will note, distracted me a good deal. :)

MJ: Yeah, it’s kinda like they took characters from Pandora Hearts (or something along those lines) and randomly stuck them on the cover.

MICHELLE: Heh. Yeah. So, anyway, do you think you’ll read volume two? I probably will, since that’s also the final volume.

MJ: Yes, I probably will. Though this disappointed me, it didn’t actively offend me, and I’ll nearly always give something a few volumes to find itself. Surely I can make my way through one more.

MICHELLE: I think that’s a great note to end on. “Until the Full Moon… not actively offensive!”

MJ: Works for me! See you next week!