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Magic Knight Rayearth, Vol. 1

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Shonen manga in drag — that’s my quick-and-dirty assessment of CLAMP’s Magic Knight Rayearth, a fantasy-adventure that adheres so closely to the friendship-effort-victory template that it’s easy to forget it ran in the pages of Nakayoshi. A closer examination reveals that Rayearth is, in fact, a complex, unique fusion of shojo and shonen storytelling practices.

If you missed Rayearth when it was first released by Tokyopop, the story goes something like this: three schoolgirls are summoned to defend the kingdom of Cefiro from the wicked priest Zagato, who’s imprisoned Cefiro’s regent, Princess Emeraude, in a watery dungeon. In order to rescue Emeraude, Fuu, Umi, and Hikaru must endure a series of trials that will reveal whether the girls are equal to the task. As the girls advance towards their goal of becoming Magic Knights, however, they begin to realize that Clef Guru, their guide and protector, has misrepresented the true nature of their assignment.

On a moment-to-moment basis, Rayearth reads like shojo. The girls bicker and complain about school; they chibify whenever they’re flustered or frustrated; they cluck and fuss over cute animals; and they share a collective swoon over the series’ one and only cute boy. (He makes a brief but memorable cameo early in the story, as the girls struggle to escape The Forest of Silence.) The girls’ fights, too, are tempered by shojo sentiment; “heart” and compassion play as important a role in defeating many of their enemies as strength and speed.

What sets Rayearth apart from so many other shojo fantasies, however, are the lengthy battle scenes. Fuu, Umi, and Hikaru prove just as adept at repelling surprise attacks and killing monsters as their shonen manga counterparts; though all three girls experience pangs of self-doubt, they show the same steely resolve in combat that Naruto, Ichigo, and InuYasha do. Equally striking is their fierce loyalty to one another; each girl is willing to sacrifice herself so that her friends might live to complete their mission. Though shojo manga can and does stress the importance of female friendship, Rayearth places unusual emphasis on the girls’ shared sense of purpose and commitment to one another. From the very earliest pages of the story, Fuu, Umi, and Hikaru characterize their bond as “sisterhood,” and believe that their love for one another is crucial to their success — a belief that’s systematically tested and proven throughout their journey.

And if you need further proof of Rayearth‘s shonen manga influence, look no further than the Mashins, a trio of anthropomorphic battle robots that Fuu, Umi, and Hikaru awaken in their quest to become Magic Knights. The Mashin are towering, sleek, and lupine, reminiscent of Yoshiyuki Tamino’s iconic mecha designs. Most importantly, the Mashin are fundamental to the story; they’re not an afterthought, but an essential element of the third act, providing the girls with the firepower necessary to combat Zagato.

Yet for all its shonen swagger, Rayearth has some of the most graceful, feminine artwork in the CLAMP canon. The girls’ physical transformations have the same sensual quality as Bernini’s The Ecstasy of St. Theresa, while their magical spells are depicted as undulating waves of energy that envelop their enemies, rather than jagged bolts of light that pierce and slice. Even small, seemingly inconsequential details — Princess Emeraude’s hair, Zagato’s robes — are infused with this same graceful sensibility — the visual antithesis of the spiky, angular aesthetic that prevails in shonen manga.

I only wish Rayearth was as satisfying to read as it is to critique. For all its genre-bending bravado, the script is so painfully earnest that it verges on self-parody. (Sample: “In Cefiro, the heart controls everything. The power of my belief can change the future!”) The girls, too, lack distinctive personalities. Fuu, Umi, and Hikaru are defined primarily by their magical powers and hairstyles, with only superficial differences in behavior and attitude to help readers distinguish them from one another. Perhaps most disappointing is the conclusion, in which we finally grasp the true cause of Emeraude’s imprisonment. For a brief moment, Emeraude seems poised to break free of an onerous responsibility that demands her complete self-abnegation to fulfill. Yet CLAMP’s desire for a dramatic ending demands that Emeraude be punished for even desiring her freedom, making Emeraude the umpteenth female character to be taken out to the woodshed for resisting such a fate.

That said, Magic Knight Rayearth‘s historical importance can’t be denied. Not only was it CLAMP’s first big commercial hit, it was also the title that demonstrated just how effortlessly they could cross genre boundaries. The resulting hybrid of shonen and shojo, sci-fi and fantasy, RPG and classic adventure story is as unique today as it was when it first appeared in the pages of Nakayoshi eighteen years ago, even if some of the visual details and dialogue haven’t aged well. Recommended.

MAGIC KNIGHT RAYEARTH, VOL. 1 • BY CLAMP • DARK HORSE • 640 pp. • RATING: TEEN (13+)

Magazine no Mori

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Welcome to the newly named Magazine no Mori, where I will try to guide you through the dark tangled forest of Japanese Manga magazines and, hopefully, we’ll discover some wondrous manga truffles along the way. (Was that pushing the metaphor a little too far? I think it might have been.)

As much as I consume a ridiculous amount of manga and of manga magazines, my tastes run to the fringes of all typical categories of manga. Of shounen, shoujo, seinen and josei, the manga I read the least is the most popular – the shounen.

So it was some suprise to me that Shounen Sunday really is all that and a bag of chips.^_^

Of course I had heard of Shounen Sunday. I just hadn’t ever given it any thought. When I finally cracked the covers, I was instantly greeted by series that I, and you, will be familiar with.

First published in 1959, Shounen Sunday has a 2010 monthly circulation of 678,917. At a cover price of 260 yen per volume ($3.31 at the time of writing) for more than 450 pages, you’re getting a page and a half of manga per cent spent.

And, oh, what you are spending those cents on! The names that write for Shounen Sunday are, well, legendary. Prominent among them are Adachi Mitsuru (Asaoka Kouko Yakyuubu Nisshi), Takahashi Rumiko (Rinne), Watase Yuu (Arata Kangatari ~Engaku Kougatari~). These run alongside series that are probably better known over here by title than by their creators’ names, such as Takashi Shiina’s Zettai Karen Children, Hata Kenjiro’s Hayate no Gotoku (known in the west as Hayate the Combat Butler), Wakaki Tamiki’s Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai (known as The World Only God Knows) and Aoyama Gosho’s Detective Conan (known here as Case Closed).

Weekly Shounen Sunday has a website in Japanese with news, interviews and “backstage” with the manga artists, links to collected volumes, and other typical magazine “stuff.” In addition, Viz has an English-language site for “Shonen Sunday” where you can find downloads, creator profiles and series synopses.

Despite the somewhat irksome persistence of misogynistic “service” (breast groping, nipples visible under clothes and crotch shots), this magazine is undoubtedly targeted to boys who plan on becoming immature man-boys in the future. I’d love to love Sunday, but it’s hard to see past the “Boys Only, Girlz Stay Away” sign on the treehouse door.

This is particularly frustrating, as Sunday’s pages are replete with very cool baseball, soccer and other non-dating sim-esque manga inside. If the service was notched back a few degrees, I might add this to my monthly rotation. As it is, I think I’ll pass.

As a box of chocolates, while there are a whole lot of caramel and peanut treats inside, there’s just a few too many yucky jellies for my taste. But your taste may vary. ^_^

Weekly Shounen Sunday, by Shogakukan

BL Bookrack: July 2011

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Welcome to the July installment of BL Bookrack! This month, MJand Michelle take a look at three offerings from Digital Manga Publishing’s Juné imprint, including two from mangaka Kazuma Kodaka—the debut volume of Border and volume three of the Kizuna deluxe editions—as well as the first volume of Akira Honma’s Rabbit Man, Tiger Man. Michelle also checks out Shushushu Sakurai’s JUNK! from DramaQueen.

Border, Vol. 1 | By Kazuma Kodaka | Published by Juné | Rated Mature (18+) | Buy at Akadot – Yamato heads a private detective agency staffed by handsome men who will stop at nothing for their clients, even if it means consistently usurping the police. They’ll also stop at nothing to get into bed with Yamato, some in a platonic way, some not so much. Yamato is a playboy who will sleep with nearly any guy once, but he’s haunted by the memory of someone he lost. Also, Yamato was once some kind of secret agent, when he wasn’t taking care of a group of boys he grew up with back at the orphanage.

If that intro sounds disjointed, it’s for a reason. There’s a lot going on in Border, and it doesn’t all mesh as well as one might hope. Is it a smart, sexy story about gay male detectives? Is it a character-driven exploration of love and loss? Is it a heartwarming tale of self-made families and brotherly love? Yes and no, for though this volume tries very hard to be all three of these things at some point or another, ultimately it fails to succeed fully at any of them.

That’s not to say that Border isn’t worthwhile. Rather, it feels like a work-in-progress, still feeling around for its place. Yamato is an intriguing and well-developed character, and his history and dynamic with his coworkers is by far the most compelling aspect of the series, and though it is frustrating that we get so little of it in this volume, that bodes well for the series continuing forward. Even the story’s mild case of everyone-is-gay (or at least gay for Yamato) doesn’t feel like a problem here, with Yamato’s detective agency basically functioning as a group of close friends in need of an excuse to spend all their time together in order to ignore most of the rest of the world. Kodaka’s artwork, too, is a highlight, expressive and carefully skirting the line between pretty and too pretty.

The only potential deal-breaker here is Kodaka’s treatment of her female characters. The series begins with a case involving women who are basically being raped in the name of porn. Women in refrigerators is never a great way to begin a story, and Kodaka takes things one step further by making the villain in that case a (jealous) woman as well. Hopefully this is not an indicator of things to come.

-Review by MJ

JUNK! | By Shushushu Sakurai | Published by DramaQueen | Rated Mature (18+) | Buy from DramaQueen – “Junk,” as the opening pages tell us, refers to ambiguous DNA whose purpose is as yet undiscovered. It’s also the name of our inscrutable and rugged protagonist, a “free agent” who has been contacted by the mysterious X, who threatens to blow up an upcoming international symposium unless Junk agrees to lead him to a heretical religious leader called Nagil.

Junk agrees to work with X, and when his employers betray him by crashing the rendez-vous and attempting to take X—actually a wanted criminal named Cross—into custody, Junk whisks him away to a safe house, where things quickly turn sexual between them. After bonding (again, quickly) over similar pasts as subjects of genetic experimentation, Cross and Junk work together to take out Nagil.

This is quite a lot of plot for a BL one-shot, and Sakurai scores points for sheer ambition. Ultimately, though, JUNK! reads a lot like one of those Harlequin manga adaptations, where many plot details are skimmed over and everything happens so fast that it’s hard to really buy into any of it. Cross doesn’t have much expression or personality, so when he abruptly decides that he wants Junk, readers have no idea why. Love declarations are likewise sudden, and the fact that they happen while one of the characters is dangling over the edge of a cavern doesn’t really help with the believability.

Insubstantial and a bit cheesy, yes, and rather too detailed in certain areas for my personal preference, but JUNK! really isn’t a bad read. If you’re interested, do check it out—DramaQueen could certainly use the revenue!

-Review by Michelle Smith

Kizuna Deluxe Edition, Vol. 3 | By Kazuma Kodaka | Published by Juné | Rated Mature (18+) | Buy at Akadot – I am so glad I continued beyond that first, uneven volume of Kizuna, because it improved so drastically that I now eagerly anticipate each new, double-sized release.

What makes Kizuna so special is that it is a shining example of BL that is more than just a romance. There can be no doubt that long-time couple Kei Enjouji—illegitimate son of a yakuza who wants nothing to do with his father or his organization—and Ranmaru Samejima—a former kendo champ injured during an attempt on Kei’s life—are seriously in love, but there is also quite a lot of genuine suspense as yakuza drama keeps intruding upon their life together.

In this volume, Kei has been captured and badly beaten by yakuza with a grudge against his family, and a desperately worried Ranmaru teams up with Kei’s half-brother, Kai, to find him. The situation is milked for every bit of possible melodrama, but in the best possible way, culminating in a tense standoff between Ranmaru—who shows that his kendo prowess is still very much intact—and the guilty party. Once Kei has been taken to a hospital, the tone shifts to something more light-hearted, with a frankly adorable marriage proposal.

Aside from the storytelling, another thing that sets Kizuna apart is the way it’s drawn. It’s not particularly pretty, and features simple page layouts with multiple small panels. Although characters occasionally comment on Ranmaru’s loveliness, he is certainly no willowy bishounen, and other character designs include massive and stern Masa, Kai’s protector and unrequited/not really unrequited love interest, and Jack, a middle-aged, beak-nosed, hairy-chested assassin.

Kizuna is clearly a classic for a reason. If you’re a BL fan, I’d go so far as to call this required reading.

-Review by Michelle Smith

Rabbit Man, Tiger Man, Vol. 1 | By Akira Honma | Published by Juné | Rated YA (16+) | Buy at Akadot – Young surgeon Uzuki gets more than he bargains for when he chooses to treat the gunshot wound of a gangster in the street. The yakuza, up-and-coming boss Nonami, delirious from blood loss, remembers little detail about the incident afterwards, but has developed a case of Florence Nightingale syndrome regarding his rescuer, whom he believes to have been female. What happens when he finds out the truth?

On one hand, the first volume of Rabbit Man, Tiger Man feels like a collection of some of the genre’s most tired clichés. A brilliant, manly, totally heterosexual hunk accidentally falls for a timid, pretty, totally heterosexual little guy, who of course is quickly smitten back, to the point that he basically manipulates the hunk into ravishing him (only semi-consensually, at least on the surface) so that he doesn’t have to admit that he’s turned on. Pretty much everything I dislike most about typical seme/uke tropes is featured prominently in this manga, which should be enough to send me running far, far away as quickly as possible.

On the other hand, this manga isn’t quite the sum of its clichés. Even within their rigidly defined roles, both Uzuki and Nonami display glimmers of actual complexity, especially Uzuki, whose frustration with the treatment he receives as a young resident suggests that his job may be more that simply a shallow plot device. Unfortunately, like so many BL tankobon, a full quarter of the volume is given over to an unrelated secondary story (in this case featuring both rape and the vilification of its female characters—not exactly a winning combo for this reviewer), leaving its title tale sadly underdeveloped.

Can this series overcome its tired beginnings? We’ll have to wait for the next volume to find out.

-Review by MJ

Review copies provided by the publisher.

Disclosure: MJ is currently under contract with Digital Manga Publishing’s Digital Manga Guild, as necessitated for her ongoing report Inside the DMG. Any compensation earned by MJin her role as an editor with the DMG will be donated to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

Kekkaishi Volumes 4-6

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By Yellow Tanabe. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Shonen Sunday. Released in North America by Viz.

The second omnibus edition of Kekkaishi continues the demon hunting plotline of the first, and adds such popular shonen tropes as the elite older brother who the hero looks up to but is also jealous of, as well as the grumpy new guy who insists he can do everything himself. Both are in the ‘I will not be nice to you as you are TOO WEAK’ school of characters, so Yoshimori is having an especially difficult time.

Of course, Yoshimori is NOT actually too weak, he’s simply too inexperienced and too eager to use his power as a blunt object. Many times throughout the volume, characters are impressed with how long he can keep his kekkai going, and how powerful they are. Of course, Masamori, his elder brother, really is pretty awesome in his own right, and demonstrates several times in this omnibus his coolness under fire. Judging by how he deals with both his little brother and Yomi, the minor villain from an earlier arc, he seems to favor the carrot and stick approach to learning.

One thing that intrigued me greatly throughout these three volumes was Yoshimori’s decision to seal off the Karasumori site. Given it’s what’s attracting all the demons they have to keep fighting, it’s a good idea at its core, but the 87 billion things wrong with it also make themselves known. To his credit, Yoshimori knows this, and spends a lot of the next couple of volumes trying to figure out the secrets of the site and how he can possibly accomplish such a thing. Seeing him deep in thought is also quite amusing, as he tends to squat down with this constipated look on his face – it’s no wonder Tokine figures out he’s hiding something right off the bat.

And then there’s Gen, who would appear to be the new regular character. He has ties with Yoshimori’s brother, and would appear to be there to be the ‘darker’ version of the hero, especially as we see the classic ‘he’s a wastrel who’s absolutely nothing like me – oh wait, except that we’re a lot alike after all’. I liked what his fighting revealed about Yoshimori, and how he’s the sort who thunders ahead without thinking, but as the battle rages gets craftier and more tactical. As for Gen’s own issues, briefly seen here, clearly they’re going to become more important in future arcs.

There’s more to talk about, like all the politics and rivalries going on around the land, and Tokine, who is a presence throughout the book, even if I don’t have as much to say about her this time. But as with Volume 1, Kekkaishi is a good example of solid, well-written shonen manga. It’s not breaking any new ground, but it’s exciting and fun to read. It also features one of the creepiest ‘retired professor’ types I’ve ever seen. He’s probably evil. (Remember, kids, always judge by appearances!)

Manga the week of 7/27

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Right, Midtown is really starting to irritate me. I don’t know where their distributor has wandered off to, but the Kodansha titles are just passing them by. With that in mind…

Stuff that’s come out from Kodansha but hasn’t hit Midtown in the last 2 months: Well, we have (deep breath) Air Gear 18 (back to single volumes), The Wallflower 25 (ditto), Negima Neo 7 (the final volume, and thank God for that), and Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei 9. Reviews of Zetsubou and Wallflower are already on my site. That’s June.

From July, we have out already the 14th volume of Fairy Tail, the 3rd of the blogger favorite Arisa, the final volume of Shugo Chara proper (the last volume is a collection of the sequel, Shugo Chara Encore), and a new Ninja Girls, which is… not a blogger favorite. Those came out today.

Next week, from Diamond but not Midtown, we have the 30th volume of Mahou Sensei Negima!. It’s in the middle of a kickass arc that doesn’t let up. And while I can’t confirm this (as I didn’t order it), we may see the new Deltora Quest as well. Hey, Midtown! Fix this!

Rant over, so what *is* Midtown getting in? Well, there’s the 6th volume of Gurren Lagann, from Dengeki Daioh. There’s also a large stack of stuff from Digital Manga Publishing, who apparently finished a bunch of Taiyo Tosho stuff at once. All one-volume sets, with such suggestive titles as I Give To You, This Night’s Everything, and Entangled Circumstances. All these come from their two yaoi magazines, Hertz and Craft.

(Side note to DMP: If you license one more yaoi manga where a seme has one hand cupping the chin of his lover while the uke is staring back at him with this sort of tortured ‘do what you will, you callous ruffian of my heart’ look, I shall be very cross with you indeed.)

And that’s it. What appeals to you this week?

The Josei Alphabet: Y

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“Y” is for…

Yami no Koe, written and illustrated by Junji Ito, originally serialized in Asahi Sonorama’s Nemuki, one volume: Another collection of horror shorts from one of the genre’s masters. I love how horror is one of the most popular sub-genres of josei.

Yasha, written and illustrated by Akimi Yoshida, originally serialized in Shogakukan’s Betsucomi (shôjo) and Flowers (josei), 12 volumes: A gifted kid’s mother is murdered, and he’s subsequently kidnapped. He returns to his home town, a small island off of Okinawa, six years later with a title (doctor), an entourage of bodyguards, and a whole lot of secrets. More presumably sexy mystery from the creator of Banana Fish, this won a Shogakukan prize in 2002.

Yoru Café, written and illustrated by Maki Enjouji, originally serialized in Shogakukan’s Petit Comic, three volumes: A widow inherits a café and its harem of handsome male employees. Manga about eateries with hunky staff members is almost always made of more win than lose.

Yukan Kurabu, written and illustrated by Yukari Ichijo, originally serialized in Shueisha’s Ribon (shôjo) and Chorus (josei), 19 volumes: The quirky offspring of three famous men (a police commissioner, an ambassador, and a painter) solve crimes to pass the time. There are few things I love more than quirky people solving crimes because they’re bored.

Yuru Koi, written and illustrated by Aki Yoshino, originally serialized in Shogakukan’s Petit Comic, one volume: This meet-cute romance is about a woman who moves back home after quitting her job and a guy who seems to be jerky but probably isn’t. I just love the cover. It glows.

Josei magazines:

  • You, published by Shueisha
  • Young You, published by Shueisha

What starts with “Y” in your josei alphabet?

Wandering Son Volume 1

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By Shimura Takako. Released in Japan by Enterbrain, serialization ongoing in the magazine Comic Beam. Released in North America by Fantagraphics.

I will admit I sometimes get intimidated by manga that are ‘important’ or ‘worthy’ in some way. Given a choice between discussing the latest gegika masterpiece from Drawn and Quarterly and the seventeenth volume of shoujo series X, I’m going to take the easy route every time. It’s the sort of book that reminds you that you’re actually meant to be reviewing, not just rambling on. And I felt a bit like this while seeing Wandering Son’s fancy, well put-together hardback sitting on my pile. Which is amusing, of course, as the manga itself is quite unassuming and easy to read.

Wandering Son is about a time in life when every single interaction with anyone is fraught with awkwardness. Especially for a shy kid like Nitori. Things are in flux, and you start to get a sense that even though you really want to do something, that doesn’t necessarily solve the problem if it will just lead to laughter and being thought of as ‘weird’. Yoshino is more self-confident, both in her general personality and in her feelings regarding how she wants to be seen, but her own body is the one reminding her that things aren’t simply cut and dry.

And then there’s Saori, who winds up driving much of the plot in this first volume. Saori interested me quite a bit, if only as she made my skin crawl at times with her trying to force things onto people. The combination of the dress and suggesting the play was interesting enough, but then there’s her reaction after Nitori returns the dress. Christianity is growing in Japan, but I think for a young girl such as herself, the appeal of penance and forgiveness is what’s drawing her more than the faith itself. I’ll be interested to see how this pans out.

The mood of the manga itself is sort of ‘slice-of-life’, but the plot really doesn’t follow the same format as your typical school 4-koma. The basis of this story is transgender issues, and that’s what you get for these first eight chapters. It just so happens that the issues are part of Nitori and Yoshino’s lives, so they aren’t presented with a huge amount of heft the way they would in an after school special. The other classmates have not made much of a name for themselves (indeed, the author admits she hasn’t yet come up with a name for Nitori’s perky friend yet), but I expect that will change.

As for the art style, it’s handled with an amazing deftness. The characters are subdued much of the time, but not in a way that, say, Adachi’s Cross Game characters are. We do see a lot of emotion here, particularly towards the end where Yoshino’s growing up gets thrown back in her face by the class troublemaker (via a proxy, another thing I found quite true to life). But what I liked best was seeing the looks on Nitori’s and Yoshino’s faces when they did try to dress as the other gender. Nitori’s look of bashful happiness as he wears the hairband. Yoshino’s stunned joy and pride after she’s ‘hit on’ by a woman at a fast-food place. They’re expressions you remember, and make for a stronger work.

Fantagraphics has done a great job with this. It’s a handsome volume, well-bound and with sturdy paper. Matt Thorn’s translation and adaptation are seamless, and his essay on the use of honorifics is both enlightening and amusing, inasmuch as he wouldn’t want to use them for most titles, but this is an exception.

So intimidation aside, in the end this is simply a well-crafted story, well-told. You want to read Volume 2 right away to find out how Nitori, Yoshino and Saori continue to deal with these feelings as they grow older. I’m very pleased that it was brought over here, and hope that it sells well enough so that we might see other titles in a similar vein. Not necessarily transgender, but handling difficult issues with such a light touch.

Bookshelf Briefs 7/18/11

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This week, Michelle, MJ, David, Kate, & Sean check out recent releases from Kodansha Comics, Viz Media, Yen Press, & Vertical, Inc.

Arisa, Vol. 3 | By Natsumi Ando | Kodansha Comics – With the help of classmate Manabe, Tsubasa continues to look for the identity of the “king,” an unknown person who grants wishes and made her twin sister Arisa his target. In this volume, suspicion falls on Midori, Arisa’s boyfriend, who is nearby after a nicely creepy fun-house mirror King sighting, and who is also one of the chosen five, an elite group of students allowed to submit their wishes to the king. Tsubasa can’t believe he’s involved, though, as his friendliness seems too genuine, but she may have to do some untrustworthy things herself if she wants to help her sister. Fast-paced, spooky, and yet thoroughly shoujo, Arisa is a great deal of fun to read. Each time I finish a volume I lament that I do not already have the next in hand. – Michelle Smith

Black Butler, Vol. 6 | By Yana Toboso | Yen Press – The sixth volume of Yana Toboso’s Black Butler finds young aristocrat Ciel Phantomhive and his devilish (literally) butler Sebastian infiltrating a circus upon Queen Victoria’s orders. They’ve been assigned to investigate a string of missing children whose last-known whereabouts coincide with the troupe’s itinerary, and the bulk of the volume sees them first qualifying to join and then attempting to find an opportunity to do some poking around while contending with chores and the appearance of an unfriendly grim reaper. It’s not a bad volume by any means—certainly better than the recent silliness involving a curry competition—but suffers some from being only the first half of the story. Still, the creepy atmosphere Toboso creates for the circus is fun, and there’s a certain satisfaction to be derived from watching imperious Ciel peel potatoes. – Michelle Smith

Black Jack, Vol. 15 | By Osamu Tezuka | Vertical, Inc. – Readers who love Tezuka in his crazy, kitchen-sink mode will find plenty of over-the-top stories in volume fifteen. Black Jack performs a full-body skin graft on a porphyria patient, saves a boy who’s begun sprouting leaves from his body, and gets trapped not once but twice in caves with critically injured people. Entertaining as these stories are, the real highpoint of volume fifteen is “A Surgeon Lives for Music,” in which a famous doctor finds an ingenuous way to circumvent a totalitarian regime’s ban on “decadent” music. “A Surgeon” may not be Tezuka’s best work, but it’s a deeply personal story, touching on two of the most important things in his life: his medical training, and his passion for Ludwig van Beethoven. Highly recommended. – Katherine Dacey

Cross Game, Vol. 4 | By Mitsuru Adachi | Viz Media – Due to an error on Viz’s Facebook page, some of us were afraid that this was the final volume that Viz would publish. Unpleasant as those hours of uncertainty were, they served as a reminder that this series should be praised as often as decency allows, if not somewhat more frequently. The most consistently amazing thing about Adachi’s tale of high-school baseball players is that there’s absolutely no contrivance to it – not in the evolution of the team, not in the prickly relationship between star pitcher Ko and childhood frenemy Aoba, not even in the endearing bits of fourth-wall demolition that Adachi occasionally indulges in. I can think of few manga where the reader is invited to know the characters so well and like them so much, and even fewer examples where that was accomplished with this kind of gentle understatement. Just read it. You won’t be sorry. – David Welsh

Eyeshield 21, Vol. 36 | By Riichiro Inagaki and Yusuke Murata | Viz Media – This is the penultimate volume of Eyeshield 21, and like the volume before it there is a sense that it should have ended with the Christmas Bowl. Much as it’s nice to see Sena take on Panther one last time, this feels more like a victory lap than an actual plot point. Still, it’s a fun victory lap, as we see lots of what make shonen sports manga so great – thinking you’re the strongest and then finding guys who are even stronger, faster, and smarter than you. The second half is the football game, and it’s great seeing all the Japanese stars on the same team. But the highlight is earlier in the book, watching Hiruma and Clifford in a high-stakes poker game, where both parties come out feeling like they’ve lost. Tense stuff. – Sean Gaffney

Seiho Boys’ High School!, Vol. 6 | By Kaneyoshi Izumi | Viz Media – For shoujo manga veterans, the fact that this volume begins with preparations for a school festival (one that involves slapstick humor mixed with cross-dressing, no less) does not bode particularly well. Fortunately, the real purpose of the festival plotline is to explore further one of the series’ most unconventional relationships—that between crude student Nogami and school nurse Fukuhara. The fact taht Izumi is the first creator since Fumi Yoshinaga to make me even remotely interested in a high school student/faculty affair is noteworthy on its own, and if Izumi doesn’t quite have Yoshinaga’s genius, her work still stands out, and in a decidedly positive way. This volume remains true to the tone of the series so far, with its refreshing mix of thoughtful drama and boy-centric humor. Still recommended. – MJ

Skip Beat!, Vol. 24 | By Yoshiki Nakamura | Viz Media – From the creator of Tokyo Crazy Paradise, still unlicensed! (Yes, it never gets old.) After the method acting controversy of the last volume (which apparently bothered me a lot more than it did everyone else), we move on to romance again for this Skip Beat!, as Kyoko is dealing with Valentine’s Day attacks on three fronts: she’s missed Ren’s birthday, and is debating a Valentine gift for him; the loathsome Reino blackmailing her into chocolates; and Sho’s jealousy becoming almost its own separate character. Misunderstandings fuel that last one, but it’s a reminder that it’s not all the Ren and Kyoko show yet. Sho still has a hold of her heart, and isn’t about to give it up easily, as we find out in a gripping cliffhanger. Sho and Kyoko are far more alike than either is really comfortable with. – Sean Gaffney

Skip Beat!, Vol. 24 | By Yoshiki Nakamura | VIZ Media – Valentine’s Day is a staple of shoujo manga, but never has it been so awesome as in volume 24 of Skip Beat!. Just about every male character is hyper-interested in who Kyoko is giving chocolates to and why, from first love and current enemy Sho, who mistakes the “go to hell” chocolates Kyoko makes under duress for Reino (his musical rival) for the real thing, to Ren, who already receives a plethora of chocolates that he never eats but who would still secretly like to receive something romantic from Kyoko. There’s so much misunderstanding—of the justifiable, non-annoying variety, thank goodness—that I’m almost reminded of a Shakespearean comedy. And if that isn’t high praise, I don’t know what is! – Michelle Smith

The Story of Saiunkoku, Vol. 4 | Art by Kairi Yura, Story by Sai Yukino | Viz Media – The latest volume of Saiunkoku focuses on masked Minister Ko, revealing the real reason he hides his face from all but a few close associates. Though these passages have a delicious, soap opera quality to them, volume four feels a little pokey whenever the spotlight shifts to one of the other supporting cast members. The script often bogs down in expository dialogue and voice-overs; a little judicious pruning of subplots and minor characters would do wonders for improving the story’s pace. On the whole, however, Saiunkoku remains an engaging read, thanks to its smart, capable heroine and her dedication to becoming the first woman to take Saiunkoku’s civil service exam — think Yentl with bishies. – Katherine Dacey

Yotsuba&!, Vol. 9 | By Kiyohiko Azuma | Yen Press – I was listening to a podcast in which the participants were discussing some of the pop culture artifacts that they particularly missed. One that came up was Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes, that marvelous ten-year look into the mind of a rambunctious little boy and his stuffed tiger. This volume of Yotsuba&! reminded me forcefully of Watterson’s strip, and not just because the title tot gets her own teddy bear. Like Watterson, Azuma absolutely respects the inner life and logic of the kid at the center of his storytelling. Azuma’s approach may be less fanciful than Watterson’s, but it has the same combination of raucous humor and emotional truth. Highlights here include an extended trip to a hot air balloon festival and dinner out for grilled meat. Lovely and spot-on as the balloon outing proved to be, few things delight me as much as seeing Yotsuba hang out with her father and his friends. – David Welsh

The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes

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As much as I’ve loved super-hero comics, I’ve never really enjoyed super-hero cartoons. (Don’t even get me started on super-hero movies. I haven’t liked one since the second Tim Burton Batman movie.) The cartoons tended to seem overly simplified and overblown to me. They either didn’t have any character continuity at all, which made them suffer in comparison to the ongoing comics, or they handled it so baldly that I felt like I was getting a history lesson.

It’s been a while since I’ve read super-hero comics regularly, mostly because they’ve become mope-y and insular beyond even my ability to tolerate. I do have a super-hero cartoon that I love, love, love. It’s The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, which airs on Disney XD (though I’ve been catching up on it on Netflix). Here are some of the reasons why I’m so smitten:

  1. The episodes can be very funny. Part of the fun of the comics is the banter and bickering among the heroes, and writer Christopher Yost does a great job with that. The banter is character-driven rather than writer-specific. The Hulk is a riot. I always thought that character’s addition into the Avengers’ comics canon was a mistake that was hastily and appropriately rectified. He just didn’t work as a part of a team, what with his portrayal elsewhere in Marvel’s shared universe. Here, there’s no other portrayal to consider, so he can be cranky and troublesome, but you still believe he wants to do good with this group. He’s smart in an instinctive way, and he likes to needle people, which yields some great lines. There are also some fun, subtle jokes. I thought it was terrific that the Avengers ended up fighting an alien robot in a drive-in movie theatre, since the tone of the episode was very much in keeping with the kind of creature flicks that ran there.
  2. The episodes that I’ve watched (about half of the first season) are very exciting. The Avengers face big stakes – massive prison break-outs, the Masters of Evil, alien invasion, a takeover by gamma monsters, etc. Even more importantly, those stakes tend to be external to the fact that the Avengers exist. (At a certain point with any super-hero property, a lot of what they do consists of reacting to villains who want revenge.)
  3. There’s a good division of attention among the characters. Someone clearly cares enough to track the way the characters interact and to make sure everyone gets time in the spotlight. There’s a consistent team dynamic that consists of specific individual relationships, which is something the comics don’t manage all of the time, so the show certainly gets extra points for that. And nobody gets marginalized because of power levels: Thor and Hulk are the best at hitting things, but everyone believably brings something to the table – Hawkeye’s skill, Wasp’s energy and speed, and so on.
  4. The gang’s all here. Aside from the horde of villains that crash in and out of the narrative, there are tongs of supporting characters to add spice. You can’t seem to do an adaptation without Nick Fury lurking on the periphery, obviously, but it’s nice to see Jane Foster driving an ambulance, Pepper Potts rolling her eyes at Iron Man, Doc Samson helping out with gamma-related issues, and so on.
  5. There’s good subplot management. The act of teasing to the next big thing while in the midst of the current big thing was always essential to my enjoyment of super-hero comics. That element is very much in place here. Yost is very good at suggesting the current adventure is part of a larger threat, adding a level of excitement and interest.

Now, the series isn’t perfect. The team’s roster needs more women. Wasp is a terrific character, an enthusiastic adventurer who holds her own rather than the dingbat girlfriend she was for so long in the comics. But, as much fun as it is to see the closing team shot at the end of the credits, it’s always sad to see Wasp doing solo duty when it comes to representing women. This might be rectified; Carol Danvers has appeared and taken steps toward her super-hero destiny. In the episodes I’ve watched, the Black Widow has played a significant (though morally ambiguous) role, and Mockingbird made a great impression as a SHIELD agent. But I want to see another super-heroine in the credits, if not more than one.

Also, the theme song is kind of terrible. Rhyming “one” with “won” always grates on my nerves; some couplings only work in print. And yes, that’s picky of me, but I’m a Sondheim devotee, so my expectations of lyrics are very high.

But if you’re like me, and have fond memories of when super-hero adventures were fun to follow, then you really should give this series a try. It’s terrific.

 

Cross Game Volume 4

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

Summer is here, and that means it’s time for another volume of Cross Game, which Viz has cleverly set up to be released one per season for the next 2 years. (OK, that may be coincidence, but it’s nice to think about.) There’s lots of baseball here, as well as lots of Ko and Aoba. It’s just what we want in an Adachi manga.

For starters, we meet the guy who showed up at the end of last volume, Mizuki. He’s clearly nuts about Aoba, ad just as clearly is not going to get anywhere. This is played with nicely – Aoba has to change the way she gallivants around the house with a boy living there now, and Momiji is quick to pick up on this and tease her for it. Moreover, he manages to kill the rumors that Ko and Aoba are dating – which admittedly doesn’t lead to much yet, but that’s likely as the focus of the last half of this omnibus is baseball. For the most part, though, as a rival Mizuki fails. But since he was never intended to be serious, that’s not all that bad a thing.

(And yes, as noted, you can marry your first cousin in Japan, though it’s done far less frequently than it once was. Hence the need to make the belabored joke here.)

Meanwhile, we continue to see Ko and Aoba’s similarities, which are almost eerie at times. It’s shown time and time again how they think almost exactly alike, and can read each other better than anyone else out there. This can be a plus – neither of them can hide a minor injury form each other for long – but is also serving to keep things distant between the two, as Aoba is quick to note that Ko and Wakaba weren’t just hanging out all the time, they were a genuine couple – even if Ko wouldn’t admit it. At least we get to see Aoba actually get flustered by Ko for once, when he gets right in her face trying to show what the cameras at Koshien will be like.

I mentioned Wakaba, and her presence is still felt here. Aside form the aforementioned discussion, we see a nice scene of Ichiyo, the oldest sister, trying to show Ko that it’s possible to move on and find new love. Ko, of course, remains reticent on the subject. There’s also a lovely montage of Momiji’s memories of playing with Wakaba and Ko when she was a little girl, and her realization that time will eventually move on. But not yet – Ko buys Wakaba a sparkly pendant for her 17th birthday, just as her list asked.

And of course there is baseball. We meet Mishima, a player on the rival Ryuou team, and you know that he’s meant to be a feature of the series because Azuma remembers his name. He’s good too, with Ko noting that he’s the one batter that he’s really worried about. Of course, he’s not actually PLAYING due to another slugger wanting all the glory and convincing the coach to leave him on the bench. It’s been rather startling how much power politics has been in these volumes – and how it’s nice to see Ko’s team as the one who’s there to play the game, with everyone contributing.

The volume ends on a cliffhanger, of course, so the outcome of the game isn’t known. Still, at this halfway point, the series shows no signs of flagging or getting boring. I will admit that we have had it hammered home a great deal how alike Ko and Aoba are, and indeed they seem to be slowly inching towards a realization. The male rival didn’t do anything to sway Aoba’s heart at all. Hrm… perhaps a distaff counterpart?

The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger

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From the back cover:
Meet Dwight, a sixth-grade oddball. Dwight does a lot of weird things, like wearing the same t-shirt for a month or telling people to call him “Captain Dwight.” This is embarrassing, particularly for Tommy, who sits with him at lunch every day.

But Dwight does one cool thing. He makes origami. One day he makes an origami finger puppet of Yoda. And that’s when things get mysterious. Origami Yoda can predict the future and suggest the best way to deal with a tricky situation. His advice actually works, and soon most of the sixth grade is lining up with questions.

Tommy wants to know how Origami Yoda can be so smart when Dwight himself is so clueless. Is Yoda tapping into the Force? It’s crucial that Tommy figure out the mystery before he takes Yoda’s advice about something VERY IMPORTANT that has to do with a girl.

This is Tommy’s case file of his investigation into “The Strange Case of Origami Yoda.”

Review:
If you had asked me to sum up The Strange Case of Origami Yoda in one word, my initial answer would have simply been “cute.” When I first finished it, I was left with a pleasant impression but wasn’t sure I had too much to say about it. After a period of mulling, however, I realized that, even if the story itself is fairly straightforward, Angleberger does some interesting things with the way he tells it.

“The big question,” protagonist Tommy begins, “is Origami Yoda real?” The weirdest kid in sixth grade, Dwight, has made an origami Yoda finger puppet, which seems to dispense good advice even though Dwight himself is a big spaz. Tommy compiles a case file of students’ interactions with Yoda in an effort to determine if he’s for real and, therefore, if his advice concerning the girl that Tommy likes should be followed or if it will lead to total humiliation. He allows his friends to add comments and doodles, giving the book a bit of flair.

Origami Yoda offers advice on various topics, like helping a boy not burst into angry tears whenever he strikes out in softball, or helping another kid live down an unwelcome nickname (“Cheeto Hog”). Each chapter recounts a different incident, and though they are nominally written by different students, there is no discernible difference in narrative voice, except in the case of Harvey, Tommy’s obnoxious friend.

Angleberger doesn’t spell out the answer concerning Yoda’s authenticity in detail, but he does show that Tommy gradually gets fed up of Harvey “criticizing everything and everybody all the time” and realizes that he would rather be friends with Dwight, even if he is an oddball. Everyone probably has a toxic friend like Harvey at some point and must make the difficult decision to stop associating with them, and I thought Angleberger handled Tommy’s revelation in this regard rather well.

He also incorporates themes of inclusion and tolerance with subtlety. At no point, for example, is a racial characteristic ever assigned for any of these characters. We know that Tommy is short with unruly hair, Harvey is perpetually smirking, and Kellen is thin, but that’s it. Too, one of the female characters is described as “cute and cool” before it’s revealed a few paragraphs later that she also happens to be deaf. True, characterization doesn’t go much deeper than this for anyone, but I still appreciated the lack of preachiness.

Again, I come back to the idea that The Strange Case of Origami Yoda is a cute read, but I reckon late elementary Star Wars fans would have fun with it. A sequel, Darth Paper Strikes Back (in which Harvey is out for revenge), is due out next month.

Additional reviews of The Strange Case of Origami Yoda can be found at Triple Take.

License request day: Onmyôji

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

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

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

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

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

Sasameke Volume 2

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By Ryuji x Gotsubo. Released in Japan by Kadokawa Shoten, serialized in the magazine Shonen Ace. Released in North America by Yen Press.

Having just read through my review of the first volume of this manga, I did not particularly like it at all. So it may be somewhat of a surprise to see me reviewing the 2nd volume. I’m a stubborn guy, though, and one feature of that review was that I was defending the second volume’s right to exist, saying that it should not be cancelled based on bad word of mouth, even if it was a horrible manga. Well, Yen has now put out the second volume, and I thank them for that.

That will be the last word of praise you hear in this review. This volume actually managed to be worse than the first. MUCH worse.

On the somewhat bright side, there is a lot more soccer in this volume than there was in the first. Given this is a soccer manga, that can only be a good thing. Sadly, we continue to follow the exploits of the most annoying team ever, so the soccer does not rise to the occasion. We meet new players who hadn’t appeared (or barely) in Volume 1, such as Antonio. We then meet his four older brothers, who are playing for the other team, and who are all better than him. We have another team where the two stars are brothers, and the younger one tries to sabotage our heroes by kidnapping Inae because he loves his brother so much. Oh, and Rakuichi meets his archrival who he knew in Italy.

But wait, I hear you cry. What happened to the large amount of plot in Volume 1 regarding Maiko’s mother? Well, it was totally abandoned. She doesn’t appear in this volume. Hell, Maiko barely appears in this volume, mostly showing up as a comedic foil for whatever foolishness is going on and to provide the book’s climax. Indeed, every time we seem to be getting any plot development, it simply ends. Matsuri rescues a child, and proceeds to flirt with the kid’s mother, who is the wife of the opposing coach… except that’s it. Done just so the opposing coach can cry.

Then there’s Rakuichi, who spends this volume much like he did the last one, whining and bitching. He gets no chance to score a goal or justify everyone calling him talented (OK, he can run downfield with the ball well), and still has no desire for teamwork whatsoever. The author admitted in a note that he wanted to try drawing a team where the heroes were all lazy slackers, but he ended up with this instead. I’ve got news for him – he succeeded. There are precisely zero characters that you feel any empathy towards or want to see succeed.

Despite all of this, they manage to get through the qualifying rounds and end up in the final tournament in Tokyo. I was rather leery at this point, as I saw we only had about 40 pages left in the book. And then we get the ending. Oh my god. I’ve seen endings where the author was told “you’re cancelled next issue, wrap it up” before, but this really takes the cake. The team gets disqualified due to its president’s financial irregularities (which was lampshaded a bit earlier, somewhat incoherently, but lampshaded), and the school forces the team to disband.

My jaw dropped. This isn’t just ‘we only got to the second round, but next year we’ll be the champions’ ending you see in so many sports mangas, this is an active ‘screw you’ to everyone who has been reading this. It reminded me of the final episode of Seinfeld in the way that it seemed to show a total antipathy to its readers. Then it spends the last 10 pages showing everyone but Rakuichi is now successful, and dissolves into incoherence. No really, the last page is merely shonen one-liners spouted off, even the author notes it’s incoherent.

I haven’t mentioned the art, I notice. Suffice to say that it didn’t improve from Volume 1, and has the same issues. It reads like the author put out his first draft every week due to time constraints, without bothering to fix anything. Heck, the plot reads like that too, not only dropping things from chapter to chapter, but sometimes form page to page!

Apparently this manga did succeed fairly well when it first came out. The author mentions merchandise for sale a few times, and it doesn’t seem to read like a put on. There’s also some fanart on deviantart that seems to date from 2007, so some folks must have enjoyed it. And there’s a 4-volume sequel, god help us all. But to be honest, I spent most of my time reading this wondering what possessed Yen Press to license it in the first place? It being a sports manga doesn’t seem to be a big selling point, and it’s not a parody of sports manga or a gag manga, despite flirting with both of those slots unsuccessfully. It’s just a formless shapeless mess.

I did note, on Googling, that the author is known for one other thing besides his manga (which apparently continue in Shonen Ace to this day). When Twilight came out in Japan, they added illustrations and manga covers to the books, to make it more like a ‘light novel’. And Ryuji Gotsubo did those illustrations. Now, this is mere baseless speculation, but I wonder if, upon Yen getting the rights to the Twilight graphic novels they’re doing, there was a rider indicating they had to put out some of this author’s work? After all there have been weirder contracts.

I worry that some people, on reading this review, might think that Sasameke is one of those ‘fun’ bad manga, something to enjoy along the lines of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Let me tell you straight out, it isn’t. It is one of the most frustrating, irritating, and annoying manga ever put out in North America, and you will be grinding your teeth by the end if you even manage to get through it. Yen put out Volume 2, and good for them, but I beg them now: don’t license the sequel. Please?

Off the Shelf: the good & the great

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MICHELLE: Hey, MJ. How is a majestic field different from a gaudy shrimp?

MJ: Hmmm, I don’t know, how *is* a majestic field different from a gaudy shrimp?

MICHELLE: One’s a proud lawn and the other is a loud prawn!

MJ: Ba-dum-dum *chick*

MICHELLE: That one can be blamed on Stephen Fry. Now that I’ve done my obligatory bad joke, want to get on with the real reason why we’re here?

MJ: Sure! My turn?? Me, me, me??

MICHELLE: You, you, you.

MJ: Okay! I’m actually pretty excited to talk about both of my selections this week (in case you couldn’t quite tell), as both of them really embody the beauty and power of the medium.

I’ll begin with Kaoru Mori’s A Bride’s Story, published in hardcover splendor by Yen Press. The story is set in nineteenth-century Central Asia, along the Silk Road, where 20-year-old Amir, daughter of the semi-nomadic Halgal tribe is meeting her betrothed, twelve-year-old Karluk, for the first time. Karluk is the oldest son of the Eihon tribe who are settled near the Caspian Sea, and whose culture differs significantly from that of the Halgal. Though the age difference is a shock for both of them, the greater challenge for Amir is finding her place in her new tribe and proving her worth to Karluk’s family.

So much about this manga is beautiful and refreshing, it’s difficult to know where to begin. Though there is some tribal drama here in the background, with Amir’s tribe determined to take her back from the Eihon in order to marry her more advantageously, the story’s focus is much more on the day-to-day, as Amir and Karluk adjust to their marriage and to each other—a much more compelling subject in my view.

Though Amir is clearly the center of things (she is the title character, after all), the story’s narrative remains staunchly objective, with no particular insight into anyone’s inner thoughts or feelings. While a lesser writer might easily lose the thread without a clear point of view to cling to, Mori uses the opportunity to focus on detail. No expression or bit of dialogue is wasted. Every moment is deliberate and carefully crafted to eke out these characters and their burgeoning relationships. As a result, we feel that we’re getting to know the characters just as slowly as they are becoming comfortable with each other, something I found to be incredibly effective as a reader.

This is a quiet, slow-moving manga, with an emphasis on character development, yet it also has some of the most thrilling moments I’ve experienced in my comics reading to date. Perhaps most spectacular is a scene early on, in which Amir has gone off to catch the ingredients for rabbit stew (something her new family has never eaten). Concerned for her welfare, Karluk follows after her, only to witness her deftly hunting rabbits from horseback with a bow and arrow, a skill his tribe has long forgotten. Amir is full of moments like these, quietly winning Karluk’s heart (and ours) with her knowledge and ability, so different from anything he’s grown up with. More tentative are her efforts towards consummating her marriage, which obviously requires some patience and delicacy.

And “delicacy” is the key word here. While there are any number of things that could be either completely creepy or played for laughs in a story about a 20-year-old bride and her child groom, there is absolutely no trace of either in this manga.

Have I mentioned, too, that it’s just completely gorgeous? From the meticulous period details to the truly adorable livestock, this series is a feast for the eyes. It’s really just a treat in every possible way.

MICHELLE: That sounds wonderful indeed. I love stories where the introduction to the world and its people feels completely organic, especially when you’re able to see how the way they’ve lived has influenced the person they are now. My copy is literally six inches from my left arm, so I will definitely be reading this soon.

MJ: It’s really the loveliest thing, Michelle. I think you will love it. I should also note that I am one of the two manga bloggers still in existence who hasn’t yet read Emma, but seeing this, I feel I have to rectify that immediately.

MICHELLE: I’ve only read part of Emma, though I own all of it.

MJ: So what have you got for us tonight?

MICHELLE: I’ve also got a story about a skilled and awe-inspiring young woman making her way in a new environment, though this one is played for laughs. Oresama Teacher is up to its third volume now, and though I can’t honestly call it the greatest thing I’ve ever read, it definitely makes me giggle.

As you’re aware, Oresama Teacher revolves around the struggle of Mafuyu Kurosaki, a former gang leader expelled from her old school for fighting, to stay out of trouble at her new school and make the best of her second chance. This isn’t easy, since she doesn’t feel at ease around girls (they just seem too fragile) and so instead develops a friendship with the class delinquent in addition to reuniting with her childhood love, the guy who basically groomed her for gang life in the first place, who is now her homeroom teacher.

In volume three, Mafuyu laments the state of her larder and decides to go home for the weekend, where she immediately finds herself in the middle of gang strife once again. But, y’know, funny gang strife. A rival gang sets a trap for her by staging various crimes—knowing that Mafuyu will rush to the rescue—and she ends up tied up in some building with two of her former underlings.

One of my favorite things about the series is mangaka Izumi Tsubaki’s impeccable comic timing, as illustrated by the following scene:

Mafuyu: *discovers similarly bound underlings*
Underling #1: Oh.
Underling #2: Oh.
Nice big pause emphasized by a large airy panel.
Underling #2: Did you cut your hair?

End of chapter.

I can totally imagine this happening in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In fact, it probably did.

Wacky hijinks ensue, but unlike most wacky hijinks, these are actually amusing. By the end of the volume Mafuyu has met a new nemesis, the bishounen student council chairman whose beguiling charisma makes others do his bidding. It’s not all hilarity, of course, and there are some very nice scenes as Mafuyu confronts the unpleasant fact that things have gone on pretty much unchanged without her around.

Really, I can’t recommend the series enough. And I’m finding it harder and harder to believe that Tsubaki’s previous Shojo Beat series, The Magic Touch, was really as bad as people said.

MJ: Having been a one of the people who hated The Magic Touch, I’m kinda bowled over by how hilarious this manga sounds. I enjoyed the first volume, certainly, but I hadn’t quite decided whether to carry on. That exchange you quote, though… that’s definitely my kind of funny.

MICHELLE: Do you remember what was so bad about it, or has too much time passed?

MJ: Probably too much time has passed, but I do remember feeling that it was very tedious. Which can’t possibly be said for Oresama Teacher.

MICHELLE: Hm. Well, I may need to check it out anyway, if only to appreciate how Tsubaki has improved at her craft.

So what is your second incarnation of “beauty and power”?

MJ: My second subject is actually the manga I’ve been most looking forward to discussing with you this week, and that would be Takako Shimura’s Wandering Son, also in hardcover, from Fantagraphics.

This manga tells the story of two elementary school students, Shuichi Nitori and Yoshino Takatsuki, who, besides navigating everyday pre-teen challenges like siblings and school friends, are also slowly becoming aware that they are transgender. It’s a gradual and individual process for each of them, but the two bond quickly when Shuichi is seated next to Yoshino on his first day at her school, and it isn’t too long before they begin to suspect that this is something they have in common.

There has been a lot of really eloquent discussion of this volume already (David’s review from just this morning comes immediately to mind, along with your early review), so I won’t attempt to do anything here but explain some of the reasons why I personally loved this manga, and I really do have quite a bit to say on that front.

First of all, this is a elegantly-crafted, character-driven story that lets us into its characters’ private worlds with both candor and delicacy. We are brought into their lives completely, and though we’re privy to their some of their most private thoughts and fears, there is never a sense that we’re observing them as “subjects” or invading their privacy—something I often feel when experiencing “issue”-focused fiction. the real secret to this is that they aren’t treated as though their gender is all that they are, despite how much weight that aspect of their identity is being given in their thoughts and hearts over the course of this volume.

Many of this volume’s most affecting moments are its most quiet and private—Shuichi buying himself a girl’s headband, Yoshino (more commonly referred to by her classmates as “Takatsuki-kun”) riding the train out of town in her brother’s old school uniform—with very little in the way of Big Dramatic Moments, which helps to maintain the silent tension growing in the hearts of both of its leads as they begin to let themselves think more and more about their feelings. Shuichi’s realization that he really should have been born a girl comes not as some kind of melodramatic epiphany, but rather as a private moment of honesty. And these kinds of moments—these quiet bits of realization—don’t magically fix anything or create any kind of grand determination within the characters’ hearts to be themselves or do their best. They simply add to the characters’ growing self-awareness and (to an extent) their bond with each other.

I could go on here, but actually I’m pretty eager to talk with you about this manga.

MICHELLE: It’s been four months since I read this, but so many moments remain indelibly stamped on my brain, like when Shuichi has dressed as a girl while home alone and ends up passing as a girl in an interaction with a solicitor, or the absolutely wrenching scene in which Yoshino experiences her first period. Each of these moments is quiet and understated, but so vastly important in the lives of the characters.

MJ: Oh, the scene with Yoshino and her period… it’s the ultimate betrayal of her body against her, and yet as you say, it’s not at all overstated. It doesn’t have to be, because it’s important without the author having to telegraph that to us. Even when Yoshino leaves school crying after some boys accidentally reinforce exactly what the period means for her, it’s not played for drama in the least.

MICHELLE: I also liked that the story is so completely innocent. Thus far, the children have not been concerned with sexuality; what they’re feeling has simply to do with their own personal identity, uncomplicated by any other factors.

MJ: I don’t think bringing sexuality into the picture would necessarily damage the story’s innocence. But they have plenty to think about as it is, so I’m not bothered at all that it has not come up in a major way.

Mostly, I’m just completely charmed by this story, and content to take it as it comes. I feel like I’m in very sure hands.

So Michelle, what’s our final volume for the evening?

MICHELLE: Well, as you know, I’ve spent the last week catching up on Pandora Hearts, and wanted to talk about the sixth and most recent volume.

It’s actually a lot more simple plot-wise than recent volumes have been, as Oz’s uncle, Oscar, decides to give his nephew a fun diversion by whisking him off to visit his little sister (who, thanks to the ten-year time lapse, is now older than him) at school. Much forced hilarity ensues, with Oscar pretending to be daft in order to encourage Oz to enjoy himself, and Oz playing along to avoid worrying others. Along the way he meets a couple of other students, engaging in a lengthy bickerfest with one of them, and a girl who spirits him away to a Baskerville lair.

The most interesting aspect of Pandora Hearts is its characters, and in this volume it seems that everyone—even near total strangers—is coming down on Oz for his tendency to accept things as they are. Oz makes no effort to protect himself—getting easily nabbed by the Baskervilles, for example—and so inconveniences others when they have to save him, but there’s such a solid backstory reason for his behavior that it never comes across as annoying. I don’t know if some of the words Oz hears in this volume will have a lasting effect, but it looks like some may have gotten through, at least.

Even more interesting to me is the brief snippet of background we get for Xerxes Break, the Shigure-like figure in the story who is friendly and silly but extremely capable of manipulating those closest to him for his own goals. What’s so interesting about him is how honest he is about what he’s done after the fact, and everyone just keeps on trusting him. Still, he does seem to have his own code of honor, and downplays his own actions when making a personal sacrifice to save someone he cares about. He’s extremely hard to figure out, and thus quite intriguing.

But, of course, Raven is still my favorite.

MJ: There was a point in this volume where I began to worry that it was going to let itself linger too long in school-based silliness, but I was relieved to discover that it was all really a ploy to lead us into some terrific character development for Oz. I developed an immediate fondness for the volume’s new characters too—another son of the Nightray household and his outspoken valet.

Also, I’m a pretty big Break fan, so I definitely agree on that point. Even if Raven is still the best. ;)

MICHELLE: To continue on with Fruits Basket comparisons, much like Manabe was essential for challenging Yuki and drawing him out of his shell, I think someone like Elliot is essential for Oz. Sure, I didn’t much enjoy their protracted arguing, but at least Oz was reacting passionately to something.

MJ: That’s an excellent point. Oz needs someone to make him mad, and though Alice seems pretty well-equipped to serve that purpose for just about everyone else (or maybe it’s just Raven), Oz identifies with her too strongly for her to fulfill that role in his life.

MICHELLE: Exactly. But she’s also very important in other ways, like seeing through his feigned good humor to the fear of meeting his sister again that lies beneath. Really, just about every character in this series represents something vitally important to Oz, which is pretty impressive.

MJ: Agreed! Though with a plot-heavy series like this, it would be easy to focus on all the events that are going on, I think Jun Mochizuki’s greatest strength is with characterization, and you’ve pointed out one of the reasons why.

MICHELLE: Now that I have caught up with the series, I vow never to fall behind again!

MJ: Hurrah!