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License request day: Glass Mask

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Looking back on my most recent license requests, I notice an unfortunate trend: none of them run to the outlandish end of the spectrum. It’s all well and good to ask for things that you may actually receive, but it’s also important to pull out the stops from time to time… to ask for something massive, something commercially suspect, something old… something like Suzue Miuchi’s Glass Mask.

This is the sprawling tale of an ambitious, would-be stage actress named Maya Kitajima who responds to her mother’s dismissal and criticism with a burning desire for fame. (As Roxie Hart sagely noted in Chicago, “And that’s because none of us got enough love in our childhood. And that’s showbiz, folks.” Okay, Renée Zellweger’s Roxie may not have said that, but Gwen Verdon’s did, and Verdon’s is the one that matters.) Maya apparently endorses the Method, throwing herself into rehearsals and performances with reckless disregard for her own health.

And she has a rival, Ayumi Himekawa, who takes a more learned approach to acting and thinks she’d be much better in Maya’s dream role, the lead in The Crimson Goddess. And she has a mentor, Chigusa Tsukikage, whose own very promising acting career was prematurely ended by a disfiguring accident. And she has at least one love interest, entertainment entrepreneur Masumi Hayami, who can only reveal his feelings for Maya through gestures as an anonymous fan.

It sounds like the acting version of Kyoko Ariyoshi’s Swan (CMX), and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Both series launched in 1976, with Swan in Shueisha’s Margaret and Glass Mask in Hakusensha’s twice-monthly Hana to Yume. Swan concluded in 1981 with its 21st volume. Glass Mask is still running, though it did move to Hakusensha’s monthly Bessatsu Hana to Yume. The 46th volume of Glass Mask came out in October of 2010. The series has enjoyed to anime adaptations, one of which has been released in North America.

Dauntingly long? Check! (Miuchi indicated in 2009 that the end of the series was near, though.) Vintage, difficult-to-market shôjo style? Double check! (Hakusensha is somewhat skimpy with preview pages, but if you click on the red button with the open-book icon on the third entry down in the right-hand column, you can see a bit of Glass Mask and gape.) Do I want to read it like Maya wants to play the lead in The Crimson Goddess? Triple check!

What ridiculously long, commercially questionable series would you like to see licensed? Or do you just want the chance to read the rest of Swan, From Eroica with Love, and Oishinbo?

 

Wandering Son 1 by Shimura Takako: A

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Book description:
The fifth grade. The threshold to puberty, and the beginning of the end of childhood innocence. Shuichi Nitori and his new friend Yoshino Takatsuki have happy homes, loving families, and are well-liked by their classmates. But they share a secret that further complicates a time of life that is awkward for anyone: Shuichi is a boy who wants to be a girl, and Yoshino is a girl who wants to be a boy. Written and drawn by one of today’s most critically acclaimed creators of manga, Shimura portrays Shuishi and Yoshino’s very private journey with affection, sensitivity, gentle humor, and unmistakable flair and grace. Volume one introduces our two protagonists and the friends and family whose lives intersect with their own. Yoshino is rudely reminded of her sex by immature boys whose budding interest in girls takes clumsily cruel forms. Shuichi’s secret is discovered by Saori, a perceptive and eccentric classmate. And it is Saori who suggests that the fifth graders put on a production of The Rose of Versailles for the farewell ceremony for the sixth graders—with boys playing the roles of women, and girls playing the roles of men.

Wandering Son is a sophisticated work of literary manga translated with rare skill and sensitivity by veteran translator and comics scholar Matt Thorn.

Review:
The main thing I kept thinking about while reading Wandering Son—beyond the continuous undercurrent of general squee—is how things that seem insignificant to one person can be secretly, intensely significant to someone else.

Wandering Son begins simply. Nitori Shuichi (the translation retains Japanese name order) is an extremely shy fifth-grade boy, and as the volume opens, he and his sixth-grade sister, Maho, are preparing for their first day at a new school. Upon arrival, Shuichi is instructed to sit next to Takatsuki Yoshino, a girl so tall and handsome that she’s called Takatsuki-kun by her classmates. They become friends.

One day, when Shuichi goes to Takatsuki’s house to work on some homework, he spies a frilly dress hanging in her room. Perhaps Takatsuki didn’t mean much of anything when she suggested that Shuichi should wear it, but it’s an idea that refuses to leave his head, despite his protests that he isn’t interested. He ends up taking the dress home and giving it to Maho, but its presence in their shared bedroom taunts him.

At this point, Shuichi isn’t thinking about things like gender identity. He’s ten! Instead, he’s dealing with processing the new idea that he could wear a dress and that he might even want to. Slowly, and bolstered by interactions with another encouraging classmate, he begins experimenting. First, he buys a headband. Then he tries dressing as a girl while no one else is home. Finally, when Takatsuki reveals her own treasured possession—her elder brother’s cast-off junior high uniform—he tries going out as a girl in public, with Takatsuki (as a boy) at his side.

One wonders what would’ve happened to Shuichi without Takatsuki to set the example. Would he have become aware of these feelings within himself eventually or been somehow unfulfilled forever? Her comments and her acceptance mean more to him than she knows, as he has a habit of internalizing things that are said to him. After an adorable turn in a female role in a drag version of The Rose of Versailles at school, for example, Maho conversationally notes, “You should have been born a girl.” Again, this is a concept that’s new to Shuichi, but one he gradually comes to believe is true. When his grandmother promises to buy him a present, he visualizes his female form and realizes it’s what he most wants. “Even grandma can’t buy me this.”

I had no problem seeing Takatsuki as a boy throughout, because of her inner certainty and obviously boyish appearance, but Shuichi was more problematic. The moment he confronts the mental vision of what he feels he should be, however, and realizes that he truly wants to be a girl, he starts to become one for the reader. By contrast, it’s shocking when the onset of her first period reminds readers that Takatsuki is biologically female. Though she mostly projects a confident air, her anguish at the undeniable truth that she is not really a boy is intense.

The story is subtle, simple, poignant, and innocent. The tone is matched by Shimura’s uncluttered artwork, which features big panels, little screentone, and extremely minimal backgrounds. These factors combine to make the volume go by quickly, and all too soon it’s over. While waiting for volume two, in which Shuichi and Takatsuki will progress to the sixth grade, I suspect I will have to console myself with the anime adaptation, currently available on Crunchyroll.

The first volume of Wandering Son—published in English by Fantagraphics—will be available in June 2011. The series is still ongoing in Japan, where it is currently up to eleven volumes.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

3 Things Thursday: Down the Aisle

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Today is my tenth wedding anniversary, so I’ve got marriage on the brain. And I was surprised to realize, when I thought about it, just how seldom I encounter weddings or even marriage in the manga I read, despite my heavy leanings towards romance.

Then again, I think it’s only a rare kind of story that wants to delve beyond the early rush of romance and into what happens next. I remember as a child, getting to Laura Ingalls’ wedding in the Little House series, and feeling just as bewildered as she seemed to be, suddenly separated from the place and people she’d lived with all her life until then. The heart-pounding romance that had brought us both to this point had taken a too-realistic turn that neither she nor I was even remotely prepared for. I had a similar feeling when Betsy finally married Joe near the end of Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy-Tacy series. As much as Betsy struggled with the reality of domestic life, I struggled with the loss of her romantic adventure.

Still, there are a few manga weddings that spring to mind as I ponder, though not all of them are marriages I personally endorse!

3 manga weddings for MJ’s anniversary:

1. The Moon and the Sandals | Fumi Yoshinaga | Hashizume & Ida

Probably the favorite of my manga marriages is not actually a legal one, at least not in Japan. But when Hashizume turns up with the adoption forms, showing Ida that he really does love him, and has wanted to marry him for long time, I honestly got teary. Oh, Fumi. *snif* You really are the best of all.

2. Fruits Basket | Natsuki Takaya | Tohru & Kyo

Okay, so they don’t actually show Tohru’s marriage to Kyo, but after 23 volumes of pounding in the message that a girl’s most important dream is marriage, Takaya at least provides us with proof that it happened after all. It’s a pretty sweet little moment too, even if it gets her out of having to deal with any of the hard stuff.

3. NANA | Ai Yazawa | Hachi & Takumi

Though Hachi and Takumi’s wedding is possibly the least romantic thing to ever hit the page as far as I’m concerned, its business-like manner reminds us all that marriage is really just a contract, for good or for ill, and that it can’t create or replace love and emotional partnership. Will we ever find out how this marriage really turns out? I dearly hope so.

A list of manga weddings was difficult for me to muster, I have to admit. Readers, can you do better?

Playing for the Ashes by Elizabeth George: A-

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Book description:
When country milkman Martin Snell makes his usual delivery to fifteenth-century Celandine Cottage one fine spring morning in Kent, he expects to be greeted by the cottage’s seductive tenant, Gabriella Patten, not the ugly remains of a fire pointing to murder.

As all of England, as well as the magnetic world of national cricket, discovers itself reeling from the shock of this particular crime, Lynley and Havers find themselves working on the most frustrating case of their careers: the perfect crime. When in an act of desperation Lynley breaks department rules to flush out the killer, he risks being pulled from the case and jeopardizes his career with New Scotland Yard.

In Playing for the Ashes, a deft study of human nature and a crime with too much evidence result in a powerful work of fiction that pulls the reader into a fully created world to explore the dark side of passion and self-delusion.

Review:
I would normally never dream of naming the culprit in a review of a mystery novel. But your average mystery novel usually doesn’t have themes, which this one does, and exploring those requires me to divulge some essential details. Major spoilers ahead.

When Kenneth Fleming, a renowned batsman for England’s cricket team, is found dead in his lover’s rented cottage in Kent, a media frenzy ensues. Scotland Yard is called in to assist in the investigation, and Inspector Lynley and Sergeant Havers must get the truth out of various recalcitrant witnesses before their lack of results sees them ousted from the case. The principal cast includes Jean Cooper, Fleming’s soon-to-be ex-wife; Jimmy Cooper, his grungy and rebellious teenage son; Miriam Whitelaw, Fleming’s former teacher and current roommate and patron; Olivia Whitelaw, Miriam’s estranged daughter and frequent narrator; and Chris Farraday, animal activist and Olivia’s bargemate.

I mentioned above that this work has themes, and the central one seems to be: choices. Everyone in the story is either faced with a choice or dealing with the repercussions of a choice they made in the past. While teenagers, Fleming and Jean chose to have unprotected sex, then chose to marry and keep the baby, putting an end to his scholastic ambitions, much to Miriam Whitelaw’s dismay. Olivia Whitelaw chose to break free of her privileged life and pursue a path of debauchery and drugs.

In the present, Lynley has still not received a response to his marriage proposal to Lady Helen, and he finally insists that she decide one way or the other. Fleming chooses not to reveal that he has decided to cancel a fishing trip with his son to go to Kent and end his relationship with a promiscuous girlfriend, an omission which leads to his death, as Miriam chooses that moment to get rid of the problem girlfriend on his behalf. Jimmy chooses to follow his dad and to later confess to the crime, believing that the person he saw at the cottage that night was his mother.

Despite the objections of his superiors, Lynley chooses to bring media scrutiny down upon Jimmy to exert pressure on Olivia, who must choose whether to reveal admissions of guilt made by her mother, just when the two had achieved some measure of reconciliation brought on by Olivia’s request for help in dealing with her illness, ALS. This choice affects Farraday’s life, as well, since Olivia being in her mother’s care will allow him to spend more time with the woman he loves. Heck, even Havers faces a choice regarding whether to befriend an eight-year-old neighbor!

Another prominent theme is the comparison of platonic love and physical love. Both Olivia and her mother are living with men they love who, though they care for the Whitelaw women, don’t return their feelings in the same degree. Actually loving a man is painful for Olivia, for whom sex has always been a casual thing, since the one person she really wants to be with in that respect sees her only as a friend. Physical relationships are portrayed as fleeting and lust-driven, and George goes a bit overboard in depicting some of these, especially an awful scene occurring between a hostile young Olivia and her father. In fact, much of Olivia’s early narration is frustrating, because she is so insolent as to be borderline intolerable, but by the end of the novel she does become a sympathetic character.

On the whole, despite some unpleasant and unnecessary bits, I liked Playing for the Ashes a lot. I thought it was cleverly constructed and well written, and was impressed that it managed to convey just how much the victim would be missed by those he left behind, something many mysteries fail to do. It made me care about the characters more than the solution, and I actually got sniffly when Lady Helen (who has the best line of the novel in “I’m very nearly frivolity personified”) finally made her decision. Happily, I still have ten more books in this series to go!

From the stack: House of Five Leaves vol. 2

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Of all of the series in Viz’s SigIKKI initiative, I think Natsume Ono’s House of Five Leaves is probably my favorite. It’s intriguing in a very delicate, oblique way, and it’s rare to be able to say that about… well… just about any kind of entertainment.

It’s about an out-of-work samurai called Masa who falls in with a gang of kidnappers. Masa isn’t a bad person, but he lacks confidence, and he doesn’t inspire it. He looks physically frail, and whatever good intentions he may have are outweighed by the harsh realities of his jobless existence.

Beyond necessity, the gang, the Five Leaves, have a kind of lazy allure. They aren’t violent, and they plan carefully to make sure they profit from their illegal activities. There’s Matsukichi, the spy who prefers to keep his own counsel. In the rest of his life, Ume owns a bar and looks after his daughter who’s just entering adulthood. Sexy, mature Otake views life with a wry curiosity. And Yaichi, their ringleader, has a shady glamour and a strange kind of affection for, or at least profound interest in, Masa.

They’re appealing individually and as a quintet. Ono has assembled the kind of cast I could happily read about if they just sat around and drank and gossiped (which they do a lot). But she finds surprising depths in all of them, and she shifts their relationships around in measured but heartfelt ways.

The second volume digs into Umezo’s criminal past as it encroaches on his present. Masa is recuperating with Ume’s former boss, Goinkyo. Two of Goinkyo’s former underlings are stirring up trouble, one reluctantly and one maliciously. There’s blackmail involved, and violence, but they’re secondary to the dynamics that fuel them. Fatherly Goinkyo seems to have a sense for people who aren’t cut out for a life of crime, and his observations resonate through the events and revelations of the volume. And, of course, there’s Yaichi, guarding his secrets and managing the state of his colleagues at the same time, while wanting to not seem like he’s trying very hard.

In that, he’s representative of the series itself. It kind of glides along, casting sideways glances at its characters that mask the sharpness of its observations. It’s sly, but it’s also very sincere. With an apparent absence of effort, Ono has crafted a cast and a set of circumstances that are deeply involving, even at a very low volume. Ono leaves you wanting to know everything there is to know about these intensely private people, even as you understand she probably won’t spill everything. As low-key as House of Five Leaves is, it’s also cumulatively stunning. I can’t get enough of its hidden depths.

 

Off the Shelf: Business as usual

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MJ: So here we are, back to our regular programming after a few “special” weeks in a row. Feels a little strange, doesn’t it?

MICHELLE: It feels totally strange! Where are all the babies and girls living in cellars?!

MJ: Hm, when you put it that way, I’m grateful for a return to normalcy! So what have you got for us, now that we’re comfortably ordinary again?

MICHELLE: A love story between two not-so-ordinary teens!

I’m talking about Portrait of M & N, by Gakuen Alice creator Tachibana Higuchi. I read its third and fourth volumes this week, and I have to say I am pretty frustrated. It’s like that old saying, “The opposite of love is not hate but indifference.” If I didn’t think Portrait was worth getting angry at, I wouldn’t bother, but it really could be so much better than it is and reading it can be a wearying experience because of that fact.

Mitsuru Abe is an elegant-looking, if rather awkward, girl who has been belittled by her mother to the point that she has developed masochistic tendencies. The solitude arising from a sickly childhood, meanwhile, has led Natsuhiko Amakusa to develop a narcissistic fixation on his own beauty. The two meet, bond over their respective secret eccentricities, and eventually fall in love. If the story were solely about two people, different from others, who find love and acceptance with each other, I would probably like it a lot more. And, it’s true, sometimes the story does go in this direction, particularly in these volumes, where Mitsuru and Natsuhiko officially begin dating and immediately have to defend their relationship against Mitsuru’s disapproving family.

Unfortunately, this series has a gimmick, and one that Higuchi cannot resist beating into the ground. When Mitsuru feels pain, a different personality takes over and she pretty much glomps whoever inflicted it. And whenever Natsuhiko spies his reflection in a mirror, he goes off on rhapsodies of self-adoration. I was tired of this by volume two, and the fact that it’s still the punchline in volume four leaves me shaking my head. And as if everyone is morons and can’t figure out what’s going on despite abundant visual clues and the fact that we’ve seen it many times before, Higuchi also adds helpful narration, like, “He sees himself reflected in the goggles.” I also don’t like Hijiri, an obnoxious classmate who likes Mitsuru, or the frequent breakage of the fourth wall.

And yet, I wouldn’t say I dislike Portrait of M & N. It’s disappointing. It’s maddeningly frustrating. But sometimes, it’s kind of good. And it’s because of those glimmers that it’s worth reading.

MJ: Oh, ugh! I was thinking, “Wow, this actually sounds really good, what kind of crack is she smoking?” all the way up until you got to the part about the gimmicks. I mean. WHY? It’s as though the mangaka thinks that the characters’ issues need to be exaggerated in order to be interesting, when actually the opposite is the case. They’d be much more interesting if they were allowed to just be real, and we could watch the two of them learn to deal with each other and themselves. Ugh.

MICHELLE: Exactly. Sometimes, I feel like I come down too hard on comedies, but there’s a difference between injecting humor into a story that feels like it’s going somewhere—Silver Diamond consistently makes me giggle, for example—and substituting hijinks in place of actual plot momentum and character growth. This manga is much better when focusing on how the leads have changed because of their relationship rather than how they contend with the irksome antics of Hijiri.

Annnnnyway, what ordinary things have you been reading lately?

MJ: Oh, you know, the usual. Ghosts. Curses. Lots of cake. Yes, I’ve indulged myself over the last few days with my latest Pick of the Week, volume eight of Chika Shiomi’s Rasetsu.

Though Rasetu’s actually found true love, it would seem, just in time to save her from the demon who claimed her as his own however many years ago, it also seems likely that the whole thing was a ruse from the start. Not even true love can save Rasetsu from her fate, especially when one of her allies may not be as he seems.

The truth behind one of Rasetu’s ghost-hunting colleagues is finally revealed, and though it’s something I guessed on my own quite a long while ago, Chika throws in some twists that are stunning just the same. And that’s really the secret to this entire manga.

Though the surface elements are very much standard for supernatural shoujo (and romantic shoujo as well, of course), the execution is so fresh and charming, it feels anything but standard. It’s got the comfortable familiarity of a tried-and-true formula, but without the usual pitfalls, which in my mind, is what makes a really good genre series.

Interestingly, too, though we’ve finally hit the best bits of romance here in the series’ penultimate volume, what really shines here is the larger conflict between Rasetsu and her demon predator. For a romance junkie like me, that the rest of the plot would even register at this point is a pretty big deal, so for it to actually grab my focus for the bulk of the volume is significant.

I really enjoy this series, and I’m on the edge of my seat waiting for its final volume.

MICHELLE: I really appreciate how you’ve stoked my desire read this series but have almost entirely avoided spoilers at the same time. It almost sounds like Buffy, in that you’ve got these supernatural things going on, and some of them are dire, but the focus is always on the characters, their relationships, and how they are personally affected by whatever the spooky plot happens to be.

MJ: Well, I would say it stops short of the full greatness of Buffy, primarily because it isn’t long enough for the kind of character development that series was able to accomplish, but it’s definitely character-driven and also quite a bit of fun when it’s not in its deepest moments of angst. Well, actually, sometimes it’s fun then, too. I always feel like I need to mention that it gets a slow start, because really the first volume is nothing to get excited over. But it has definitely become a favorite for me over time.

So, what other mundane item have you got in store tonight?

MICHELLE: The thoroughly humdrum tale of a bunch of kids who take turns piloting a giant robot in battles against alien invaders!

I’m talking about Bokurano: Ours, specifically its third volume. Sometimes I feel like I’m alone in my interest in this title. It’s true that it has issues. Most fundamental for some will likely be the fact that “Zearth,” the robot, is powered by the life force of its pilot, which means that kids die. If one can get past this, there’s also the problem that we seldom learn anything about a given kid until it’s their turn to pilot, which means there are a lot of characters sitting around observing the action without really participating much in it.

However, there are some aspects of this series I simply find fascinating, and which keep me reading despite its grim formula. For example… are these alien invaders even real? It’s convenient that the mysterious fellow who tricked the kids into signing contracts knew that exactly fifteen of them would appear, and some elements of the story make me wonder if this isn’t just a game for some alien race’s amusement. The emissary to the kids, for example, is this creepy, pointy-toothed, plushie-like creature named Koyemshi, but he’s much less inclined to dispense helpful advice than to torment them about their impending deaths. In one especially bizarre scene, he addresses a room of empty chairs and explains his approach, saying “Oh? You think I went too far? Oh, come on. I want to see them break down in snotty fits of tears.”

Besides all this, the military has now gotten involved, and their assistance initially gives the current pilot—a neurotic kid named Kako—hope that he might not have to die. When this hope is quickly dashed, he goes berserk, but if he fails to complete the battle in the allotted time frame, Earth will be destroyed! Dun dun dun….

Basically, the main appeal of Bokurano: Ours can be boiled down to, “What the hell is going on?!” Some series that try this approach lose me along the way, but here, I am genuinely interested. My only lament is that volumes do not come out faster, so it will take ages for us to get to the eleventh and final volume where, presumably, concrete answers await.

MJ: Well, hmmmm. I must say this does sound pretty interesting. Now, I tend to appreciate grim stories, so not even the child deaths deter me here, and I admit I’m a little fascinated by the horror that poor kid Kako must be going through. How do they muster the will to keep going when they know they are doomed? I would find that so difficult. I’d go berserk in a second. I’m kind of intrigued.

MICHELLE: That’s dealt with in an earlier volume, when Koyemshi tells them that if they refuse to fight or lose on purpose, Earth will be destroyed. So, either way, they’re going to die. They can either die while protecting the people they care about or they can or they can die alongside them. No pressure, kid! For those who are intrigued, a few chapters are available online at VIZ’s SigIKKI site.

MJ: That’s horrifying! And kind of awesome. I’m definitely intrigued.

MICHELLE: There’s even more horrifying stuff going on, but I can’t reveal everything!

What else have you got?

MJ: Well, actually, I read the first volume of TOKYOPOP’s new series, Yu Aikawa’s Butterfly, which I have to say is one of the oddest little manga I’ve ever read. And I mean that in the best way possible.

Ginji Ishikawa is a high school student who sees the vision of his dead brother every night in bed. Since Ginji’s primary method of dealing with upsetting things is denial, this means that he bases his entire life on the premise that ghosts can’t exist–or anything that smacks of the occult, for that matter.

This belief, in fact, is the biggest factor behind his failure with girls, since he absolutely rejects anyone with even the mildest interest in the supernatural, from haunted houses to horoscopes. It’s strange then, when finds he’s being followed by an elementary school girl who insists that he become part of her ghost-busting business.

Sounds pretty standard, right? I mean, it’s quirky, sure, with the ghost busting and all that, but nothing really strange so far. But that’s only because we haven’t covered yet that the little girl isn’t actually chasing ghosts, but rather living hallucinations she’s able to create out of other people’s thoughts, which she uses to con unsuspecting folks into hiring her as an exorcist. And that the reason she needs Ginji is that his stubborn denial makes him capable of actually destroying her creations (like seriously, by fighting them in one-on-one combat), something she can’t do herself.

And have I mentioned that one of the hallucinations is cute little game character called “Squeakears” (see below), apparently loved by all Japan? And that the little girl is not even a little girl?

(Click for larger view)

As weird as this series is, it’s also really interesting. The characters are all filled with dark little nooks and crannies they’re struggling to hide from everyone else. And the story behind Ginji’s brother’s death is more than spooky. Even Ginji’s odd James Spader-type best friend has some kind of mystery lurking beneath. It’s just the strangest little story, but I really can’t wait to read more.

MICHELLE: Oh, I’m so happy to hear good things about this! Sometimes it can be hard to tell whether a new TOKYOPOP series is going to be good or bad, and this is one that I had some trepidations about. What a delight to instead be reassured!

MJ: It’s strange, it really is, so it may be an acquired taste, but man, have I acquired it. I was really thoroughly charmed.

MICHELLE: That’s the plus side of low expectations—you can really fall in love in a surprising way. TOKYOPOP has done that to me several times.

MJ: Is that actually a good thing? :D

MICHELLE: It’s always a good thing to find a series to love!

MJ: True, indeed!

Amazon.com Widgets

The Josei Alphabet: F

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“F” is for…

Falling in Love Even if I Wake from the Dream, written and illustrated by Saika (Future Lovers) Kunieda, originally serialized in Akita Shoten’s Miu, one volume. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: someone needs to license more work by Kunieda. This one’s about an impulsive young woman and the various men in her life.

Free Soul, written and illustrated by Ebine Yamaji, originally serialized in Shodensha’s Feel Young, one volume. A young cartoonist falls in love with a jazz musician, so I can’t honestly say who’s in for a worse time of it. I can say that Erica (Okazu) Friedman gave it a rating of 9 out of a possible 10 and described Yamaji’s Love My Life as “The Perfect Yuri Manga,” so it stands to reason that any licensed work by Yamaji would be a good start. It’s been published in French by Kazé and in Italian by Kappa.

Fuku-Fuku Funyan, written and illustrated by Konami (Chi’s Sweet Home) Kanata, variously serialized in Kodansha’s Be Love and Me and Shueisha’s You, 12 volumes. You know what would be better than being able to read one series about cats by Kanata? Being able to read two series about cats by Kanata. Sounds like more appealing slice-of-life kitty comedy.

Fukuyadou Honpo, written and illustrated by Yayomi Yuchi, originally serialized in Shueisha’s Bouquet, 11 volumes. I can’t resist manga about people who make desserts. This one’s about the three daughters of a venerable Kyoto confectionary shop. It seems to be as much about the people of Kyoto as it is about the confectioners, which is just fine by me.

Futari Ecchi for Ladies, written and illustrated by Aki (Manga Sutra) Katsu, originally serialized in Hakusensha’s Silky, two volumes. If it’s as boring as Manga Sutra, no amount of demographic tailoring can save it, but it’s certainly worth mentioning as a franchise oddity.

Magazines:

What starts with “F” in your josei alphabet?

Reader recommendations and reminders:

The Manga Hall of Shame: Wounded Man

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Nicholas Cage, I have a swell idea for your next project: option the rights to Wounded Man. This mid-eighties schlockfest is tailor made for you. It has a hero with extravagantly bad hair, bad guys so charismatic they beg for Christopher Walken or Sharon Stone to play them, and copious amounts of acrobatic sex and violence. And while it lacks the evil Nazis and mad scientists of Offered, another Kazuo Koike gem set in South America, Wounded Man does Offered one better: the series’ main villain is a pornographer. But not the sleazy, sad-sack type who might be the prime suspect on a Law & Order: SVU episode — no, the chief villain in Wounded Man runs a studio called God’s Pornographic X-Rated Films, a.k.a. GPX. She also wears a caftan and carries a parasol.

You know she’s evil.

Wounded Man begins in Brazil, where Yuko Kusaka, an ambitious young NHK reporter, is pursuing a story about a modern-day gold rush in the Amazon basin. Yuko is intent on finding “Rio Baraki,” a prospector who’s rumored to be Japanese. Baraki finds her first, however, savagely attacking her in a city park. “You’d better thank me because this could be much worse!” he tells Yuko. “Go back to Japan if you don’t want anymore trouble!” (He also talks to her at great length about the unsavory eating habits of Amazonian fish, dialogue that’s so unsafe for work I’ll do the honorable thing and not reprint it here.)

What Baraki doesn’t count on is that Yuko falls madly in love with him, following him deep into the jungle in spite of his dire warnings. She and her camera crew are ambushed by bandits, tied up, and sexually tortured; Baraki rescues them. She then jettisons her crew and tags along with Baraki. Once again, she’s ambushed, tied up, and sexually tortured; once again, Baraki rescues her. Baraki and Yuko then fight; they have sex; and Baraki tells Yuko his sad story, a story even more screwed up than all crazy, non-con antics that preceded it.

Baraki, it turns out, was once Keisuke Ibaraki, star quarterback at USC. After a big game, a group of thugs kidnapped him and his high school sweetheart, threatening them with death if Baraki refused to make an X-rated film with a famous female tennis player. Baraki turned GPX down; his heart belonged to Natsuko, and no amount of money would compromise his resolve. Not even the prospect of starvation undermined his commitment to Natsuko — naked and locked in a dungeon, the two survived by drinking each other’s urine before Natsuko finally died. Baraki lived, and has been plotting his revenge ever since he escaped GPX’s clutches.

I’m not making this up.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that a couple of porn-addled teenagers were responsible for the script, however; the whole story feels like something concocted by Dirk Diggler in one of his pitiful bids for movie-actor legitimacy. Though the ostensible genre is action/adventure, the story’s epic sex scenes take up more than half the first volume alone, with only the occasional fist-fight or manly swim through piranha-infested waters to relieve the tedium. The most reprehensible aspect of all the fornicating, however, is how little of it is genuinely consensual. Yuko is molested by Baraki, by random smugglers and poachers, even by members of her own television crew in a scene unpleasantly reminiscent of Deliverance, yet Koike and artist Ryochi Ikegami play these episodes for maximum titillation, trotting out one of the hoariest, most offensive cliches from the rape culture playbook: the victim who falls for her attacker because the sex is so amazing.

I wish I were making this up.

Koike and Ryoichi Ikegami find other ways to offend as well. The Brazilian characters are drawn as crude caricatures, with hulking physiques, gap-toothed smiles, and leering eyes; their primary role in the story is menacing Yuko. The few female characters are equally ridiculous, shunning clothing the way six-year-olds shun brussell sprouts; I’ve never seen so much laughably gratuitous nudity in a manga before. (The naked tennis player is kind of disconcerting, however, as she looks an awful lot like Martina Navratilova.)

The series’ greatest offense, however, is the way Yuko is portrayed. She may be a judo champ, capable of delivering a high-flying kick, and a rising star at the NHK, scoring high ratings with her investigative journalism, but her behavior is so petulant, so dumb, and so completely contradictory that Koike undermines her identity as a competent, strong woman. “That’s right, I hate you,” she tells Baraki during one of their numerous fights. “But at the same time, I love you so much! I’m so in love with you and I get so weak just being touched by you.” Her frequent hysterical outbursts would be comical if they didn’t serve to infantilize and diminish her, robbing her of any meaningful agency or identity outside of sex object.

Really, I wish I were making this up.

I’d be the first to admit that Wounded Man is luridly fascinating. It’s hard to imagine who thought any of it was a good idea, though it unfolds in such a fast, furious, and utterly unironic fashion that readers may be swept up in the story despite their better judgment. In short, Wounded Man is perfect fodder for a Nick Cage movie. Agents, are you listening?

WOUNDED MAN, VOLS. 1-9 • STORY BY KAZUO KOIKE, ART BY RYOICHI IKEGAMI • COMICSONE • RATING: MATURE (COPIOUS NUDITY AND VIOLENCE, VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN, STRONG LANGUAGE, INANE PLOT TWISTS)

Manhwa Monday: March Preview

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Welcome to another Manhwa Monday!

With March upon us, it’s time to take a look at the month’s upcoming manhwa releases. First off, we have volume five of Time and Again (Yen Press), JiUn Yun’s story of a pair of ghost hunters in Tang Dynasty-era China. This is the series’ penultimate volume, so it’s likely to be pretty dramatic. Also from Yen Press, we’ll see volume twelve of Japanese-published Korean-created Black God.

From NETCOMICS, March promises volume two of There’s Something About SunYool, one of last year’s few standout new releases.

In this week’s news, Korea JoongAng Daily reports about Korean manhwa making waves in Japan, particularly The Survival series, an educational comic series that “has taken the competitive Japanese comic book market by storm.”

At Seoul Graphics, Managing Director Dr. Jeeyeon Kim and Comic Bits’ Terry Hooper offer to answer your questions about manhwa.

And at Manga Xanadu, Lori Henderson takes us through the latest issue of Yen Plus, including new chapters of manhwa series Aron’s Absurd Armada and Milkyway Hitchhiking.

In a bit of blog news, given the slow nature of the US manhwa industry lately, I’m considering moving Manhwa Monday from a weekly column to bi-weekly or even monthly. It grows increasingly difficult to find enough news to report each week, and less frequent columns could mean those that do get made are a bit more substantial. What say you, readers?

That’s all for this week!

Is there something I’ve missed? Leave your manhwa-related links in comments!

From the stack: Dorohedoro vols. 1-3

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It’s probably silly, but I always feel guilty that I don’t like Q Hayashida’s Dorohedoro (Viz) more than I do. I find it difficult to pinpoint exactly what the barrier is for me, since there are so many things to admire about the comic.

Most notable is Hayashida’s sensibility, which she has in abundance. While stories about magic are usually filled with sparkle, she’s set-dressed hers in convincing grime and clutter. Her main setting is a world called The Hole, and the name isn’t ironic. It’s a filthy, often frightening place where average humans live and try and protect themselves from magic-using sorcerers who like to experiment on the non-gifted. But it’s also a strangely homey place. Sure, violence is routine, and you’re living at the whim of powerful beings with next to no conscience, but you can find good dumplings.

Hayashida applies the same gritty-but-not approach to her characters. Our hero, Caiman, is an amnesiac with the head of a lizard. He’s terrifying to look at, but he’s goofy and kind of sweet when he isn’t chomping his jaws down on the heads of sorcerers to see if they’re the one who left him with no memory and a reptilian noggin. He’s very solicitous of Nikaido, the tough girl who makes the dumplings and helps him with his various projects (like the head chomping). They have an appealing rapport, and they’re very protective of each other.

Even the villains have their virtues, mostly because they aren’t entirely focused on villainy. Sorcerer mobster En seems to have a dozen different agendas at once, any of which can be set aside for an adorable (but creepy) new pet. His enforcers, Shin and Noi, are kind of the cloudy, mirror version of Caiman and Nikaido, but with an added level of blithe certainty. They’re endearingly amoral, not even bothering to justify they’re actions. They like their lives, whether they’re eating lunch or slicing and dicing hapless humans.

So, with an interesting cast and a distinct vibe, what’s the problem? I think it’s in the storytelling, which can feel not fully realized. I find it difficult to invest in Caiman’s quest to find out what happened to him. Aside from a general (and justified) sense of being badly used, there isn’t much in the way of specific urgency to Caiman’s search for answers and vengeance. He’s certainly likeable, but his aims seem strangely small. They could represent the overall injustices visited on the denizens of The Hole at the hands of the sorcerers, but Hayashida doesn’t really go there. Keeping things relatively light is an interesting choice that works in a lot of ways, but I keep wishing she’d raise the overall stakes a bit.

On another storytelling front, the staging of certain sequences can be rather confusing, especially when a lot is happening at once. I love the look of the book overall – the environments, the character design, some of the witty ways Hayashida plays around with pacing – but I wish there was a more consistent level of clarity.

Since you can do so for free, at least with chapters that haven’t seen print yet, I’d certainly encourage people to read Dorohedoro. And I certainly wouldn’t recommend a whole lot of things that you can read for free, because time has value. But this series has a lot of strengths, and Hayashida seems to be a remarkable creator in a number of significant ways. Dorohedoro just isn’t as tight as I would hope, and it feels like it could be without losing any of its quirky appeal.

Fanservice Friday: Intimacy porn

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I’ve had fanservice on the brain quite a bit lately, most recently thanks to this article by comics creator Michael Arthur at The Hooded Utilitarian. In it, Michael discussed his perspective on BL manga as a gay man and an artist, and though reception was mixed (for the record, I have pretty much equal appreciation for both his points and much of the criticism he received from female BL fans) what it really got me thinking about is fanservice for women, which inevitably led to thoughts about fanservice for me.

Pretty guys in shoujo and BL? Sure, I like ’em. I like them (maybe even more) in Korean manhwa as well, where “blond and willowy” also tends to equal “kick-ass,” at least in the stuff we’ve seen imported over here. It’s well established that girls frequently like their male idols to be pretty as, well, girls, and that taste doesn’t necessarily vanish with age, at least when it comes to fiction. The muscle-bound hunk has never done much for me, and while that may lend itself in “real life” to a preference for nerdy guys, I’m perfectly happy with the rail-thin pretty boys offered up to me in girls’ comics.

Pretty boys aren’t my real hook, though, not even if we’re talking porn–and when I use the term “porn” here, it’s in the broadest sense of the word, the sense that includes things like “food porn” and “shelf porn” or basically anything that feeds our inner obsessions with powerful visual stimuli. My real “porn,” what services me as a fan the way eye candy does for many, is emotional porn. Intimacy porn, if we’re going to get specific.

What’s great about intimacy porn, is that it is able to manifest itself in a number of different ways, none of which is exclusive to girls’ and women’s comics, though you’ll find it there in abundance. Some of it is clearly romantic in nature, like this scene from Ai Yazawa’s Paradise Kiss.

Read right-to-left. Click for larger image

The scene takes place in the first volume of the manga, when these characters, George and Yukari, are just barely beginning to explore their attraction. It’s the small bits of physical intimacy that really work for me here… George’s fingers circling Yukari’s, the soft kiss on the back of her hand, the tilt of his head as he leans in to kiss her–not the kiss itself (which doesn’t happen here, as you may know), but the anticipation of it, the electricity in the air between two bodies so clearly attracted to one another. The moment feels intensely intimate, though they’re standing outside where anyone could see them. That’s what I’m talking about here. That’s the way to service me as a fan.

With this in mind, I took another look at this scene from Jeon JinSeok and Han SeungHee’s One Thousand and One Nights. I’d mentioned in my discussion with Michelle that it was a ridiculously obvious image, and that its success in context was a testament to the artists’ skill with romance, but I think its success with me goes even further than that.

Read left-to-right. Click for larger image

Where indeed skill comes into play, is that the characters’ intimacy has been so well-established before this point, without the use of such blatantly erotic imagery, that when this stunning show of emotional and sexual intimacy is played out right in front of enemy Crusaders and the sultan’s court, it actually feels real. Sehera’s expression of devotion here is so honest, so utterly without embarrassment, its public intimacy feels not only appropriate, but genuinely romantic.

Intimacy porn doesn’t have to be romantic, though, and often the best of it isn’t. This scene from Kazuya Minekura’s Wild Adapter for instance:

Read right-to-left. Click for larger images

   

   

Though Wild Adapter is serialized in a BL magazine, the relationship between its two protagonists, Kubota and Tokito, is only subtly romantic. What the two really have is intimacy, and that’s what draws me so strongly to them and to their story. This scene has plenty of elements that might be typically used as fanservice–a shower, slouchy skinny guys, even nudity–but there’s no service here, not unless you count my kind, of which there’s service aplenty. This kind of intimacy–Tokito’s pain, unspoken, but acknowledged and understood between just the two of them–that’s my kind of porn, there.

To stray even further from romance, you can find this kind of intimacy porn far, far outside shoujo, josei, or BL. CLAMP’s xxxHolic, for example, was originally published in Young Magazine, a men’s publication, typically featuring bikini-clad women on its cover. Still, it’s filled with my kind of porn, including this scene:

Read right-to-left. Click for larger images



Here, Watanuki and Doumeki discuss the events of the day, while Doumeki makes his demands regarding the contents of rice balls. Their intimacy is apparent from the start… the verbal shorthand, the way the rice ball conversation weaves itself out of habit around the real issues at hand. At page 139 their surface banter comes to a halt, as Watanuki makes a rare, open statement revealing the true value of their relationship. It’s a gorgeously thick moment–you can just feel the weight of emotion in the air, all the unspoken trust and gratitude that Watanuki is usually unable to express–suspended just briefly in time, before Doumeki quickly swings things back into their comfort zone. The banter continues, no less intimately, but comfortable again for both of them. I probably read this scene ten times when I first picked up the volume. It’s exactly my kind of porn.

Intimacy porn doesn’t have to be between two characters, though. Sometimes an author is able to create this between a character and his/her readers. Going back to Yazawa for a moment, this time with NANA, note here how she’s used narrow close-ups of her characters’ eyes to open them up to the audience.

Read right-to-left. Click for larger image

Though the scene takes place between Reira and Shin, their circumstances make it difficult for them to connect with each other honestly. Instead, though they hide their feelings from each other, they’re sharing them with the reader, as openly and intimately as possible. This kind of intimacy has the effect of not breaking the fourth wall, but expanding it to include the reader, and can be even more powerful than something that’s established between characters. It’s difficult to do well, but Yazawa’s a master, and it most certainly contributes to my love of her work.

Is it fanservice? Maybe not, strictly speaking. But it services me better than a thousand pretty faces ever could on their own.

So, readers… what’s your porn?

License request day: Jin

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Anime News Network passed along the announcement of the manga nominees for the 15th Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize. You all know what that means, right? We’ve struck a vein of license request ore! It’s an interesting and diverse slate, and I’m sure it will fuel future license requests, but there’s one title that has an unshakable grasp on my imagination and curiosity.

That would be Jin, written and illustrated by Motoka Murakami and serialized in Shueisha’s Super Jump for a total of 20 volumes. Any manga that launches with a modern-day doctor finding a carcinogenic fetus in a patient’s skull, followed by that fetus then sending said doctor back in time is a manga I want to read very, very badly.

It’s being published in French by Tonkam, which makes it much easier for me to figure out details about the book. I’m guessing that the fetus is just a MacGuffin to send our hero, 30-something doctor Jin Minakata, back to the Edo period. He adapts to his new/old world and begins applying his modern medical knowledge to bygone problems.

A cholera epidemic in Yokohama… communicable diseases among the courtesans of the red-light district… “discovering” penicillin centuries ahead of time… a geisha with breast cancer… If you want to be a busy doctor and seem like a miraculous genius whether you are one or not, it seems like all you have to do is go back in time. (How you get there is your own problem. My suggestion would be to randomly x-ray the skulls of your patients for mysterious fetuses. Of course, any fetus you find in someone’s skull is bound to count as “mysterious.”)

Judging by the sample pages from the first volume that Tonkam has shared, the art looks very clean, detailed, and attractive in a seinen sort of way that won’t be unfamiliar to fans of creators like Jiro Taniguchi. And while it’s perhaps a little soon after asking for Zipang to dip into the well of rewritten history, I think Jin sounds different enough in era and focus that they wouldn’t cannibalize each other’s audience, should we see a day when they’re simultaneously published in English.

So that’s my first choice from the current Tezuka nominees. I’ve only chosen one cover image, because they’re all pretty similar, featuring a strangely blank Jin standing with a beautiful woman. I used to work at a local newspaper, and so many submitted wedding photos looked kind of like these covers, with the woman actively engaging the camera and the man staring out of the frame at something shiny.

Which of the Tezuka nominees would you most like to see licensed?

3 Things Thursday: TOKYOPOP

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It’s been a rough week in the blogosphere for TOKYOPOP, whose latest round of layoffs has inspired quite a bit of talk about the company’s less positive history, including this frank commentary from Brigid Alverson at Robot 6 and this ongoing round-up from Johanna Draper Carlson at Manga Worth Reading. My own history as a reader has been sketchy at times. Though TOKYOPOP’s titles have inspired some of my most passionate fangirling over the years, they’ve occasionally left me baffled, and some of their unfinished business has rendered me truly heartbroken.

For today’s 3 Things, let’s examine that a bit more closely.

3 faces of TOKYOPOP:

1. The Fangirling – From Paradise Kiss to Fruits Basket, from Tokyo Babylon to Wild Adapter, TOKYOPOP has offered up to me some of the most beloved series in my manga library. Read any of those linked reviews, and you’ll understand what I love about manga–that’s how well these series represent my personal feelings about the best of the medium, particularly when it comes to manga written and published for women and girls. Some of their newer shoujo acquisitions (like Demon Sacred and The Secret Notes of Lady Kanoko) look to be joining their ranks someday as well.

What can we expect now from a company whose owner has seemingly given up on books? It’s hard to say.

2. The Bafflement – Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I’m baffled why a series like KimiKiss (pictured to the right) was published, or even why it might be popular. A buxom teen removing her blouse on the cover is, I expect, money in the bank! What was baffling to me in particular about this release, was that it was apparently being marketed as shoujo, according to a little pamphlet I received along with one of the later volumes of Fruits Basket.

From my review summary at the time: “Kouchi and Mao have been friends since childhood, but now that they are in high school, Kouchi is depressed that he hasn’t managed to attract a girlfriend. Mao offers to help him become a “real stud” by teaching him how to be attractive to girls, beginning with lessons in kissing. The lessons start to get a bit steamy, especially after Mao is invited to sleep over with Kouchi’s little sister, resulting in a late-night tryst in Kouchi’s bed.” Sound like shoujo to you?

3. The Heartbreak – Everyone’s got their own tale of woe over a series that TOKYOPOP has canceled, but my broken heart belongs to Off*Beat, an almost finished series by OEL creator Jen Lee Quick. With just one volume remaining of its original 3-volume commission, fans like me were left to weep and weep, never knowing what finally happens to sweet Tory and his revealing obsession.

From my review: “Everything about this comic is a winner–the intriguing plot line, the wonderfully rich characters, the unique, expressive artwork, the subtle treatment of a gay teen’s sexual awakening that is refreshingly not played up or made “sexy” to please its female audience–and the fact that it languishes in cancellation limbo is honestly heartbreaking. This is a comic I would wholeheartedly recommend to anyone. It truly deserves to be read.” *snif*

So readers, what are your 3 faces of TOKYOPOP?

The Best Manga You’re Not Reading: Qwan

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I have a bad habit of falling in love with commercially doomed series. Satsuma Gishiden was my first great disappointment: Dark Horse published three volumes of this manly-man samurai manga, only to put the series on ice in 2007. Duck Prince was another, with Ai Morinaga’s awesomely weird comedy getting the axe midway through its run, a victim of CPM’s perpetual cash flow problems. But the cancellation that really broke my heart was Qwan, a fantasy-adventure that drew heavily on Chinese history and folklore for its inspiration. Between 2005 and 2007, Tokyopop released four volumes before putting the series on hiatus, leaving Qwan‘s few die-hard fans stranded in the middle of a crucial story arc.

While I’d be the first to admit that reading an unfinished story can be an exercise in frustration, I’m going to recommend Qwan anyway because the four volumes that were published are awesome — Scout’s honor.

The story focuses on Qwan, a child-like figure whose naivete and enthusiasm belie super-human strength and speed. Though Qwan realizes he isn’t human, he’s never questioned his origins or abilities — that is, until he meets Shaga, a courtesan who urges him to seek the Essential Arts of Peace, a sutra that will reveal where Qwan came from and why he was sent to live among humans. He’s not the only one who wants the sutra, however; various political factions vie for the scrolls, hoping to unlock the scrolls’ power and hasten the Han Dynasty’s demise.

Questing boys and magical scrolls are de rigeur in fantasy-adventure stories, but Qwan distinguishes itself in two crucial areas. The first is well-rounded characters. Qwan isn’t a classic Shonen Jump hero, kind-hearted and dedicated to self-improvement, but a more ambiguous figure; he’s guileless and self-centered in the manner of a nine- or ten-year-old, unable to feel genuine sympathy for others. Early in volume one, for example, Qwan encounters a mysterious girl traveling in the company of a demon. Daki proves more a formidable opponent than Qwan anticipates, successfully countering his attack with powerful insect magic. Though it’s clear to the reader that Daki, like Qwan, is a supernatural being, caught between the human and demon worlds, Qwan himself never sees the parallels between their situations, repeatedly attacking Daki until he resigns himself to the futility of his efforts.

The second distinguishing feature of Qwan is Aki Shimizu’s gorgeous artwork, which draws on anime, guo hua (classical Chinese painting), and wuxia films for its aesthetic. Though Shimizu usually blends these different styles into a seamless whole, she occasionally makes explicit, almost self-conscious quotations of her influences. In this panel, which appears in the very first chapter, she gracefully echoes the undulating lines and shapes of Chinese landscape paintings, even adding a delicately stylized pine tree in the foreground:

Her fight scenes, too, are steeped in Chinese influences. Using dramatic angles, she makes her characters look as weightless as the wire-fu acrobats in Curse of the Golden Flower and House of Flying Daggers; her fight scenes are balletic, beautifully choreographed sequences of tumbling bodies and arcing swords. In this sequence, for example, Qwan goes mano-a-mano with a tiger demon, eventually gaining the upper hand by vaulting onto the monster’s back:

Qwan then consumes the demon at the end of their protracted battle, the demon’s body dissolving into an inky swirl:

Oh, and Shimizu draws some pretty nifty monsters, too. This one suggests a Maltese-water buffalo hybrid with prehensile toes:

So why wasn’t Qwan a bigger hit? I think narrative complexity was a factor. Though the story is a rich tapestry of political history and myth, Shimizu refuses to spoon feed information to the reader; we’re just as confused and disoriented as Qwan himself is. That kind of reading experience can be quite rewarding, but the absence of an omniscient narrator demands more of the audience, forcing us to pore over the text and make connections on our own. Shimizu’s artwork and characterizations are up to the task, but impatient readers will easily miss crucial details in their haste to get to the fight scenes.

I also think timing was a factor in Qwan’s cancellation, as Qwan‘s fourth volume appeared in 2007 at the height of the manga boom. If you remember that heady period, publishers were releasing more than 1,200 new volumes of manga per year. Titles that didn’t have an obvious hook — say, a popular anime adaptation or a cast of hot male vampires — faced an uphill battle, with bookstores unwilling to stock series whose first or second volumes sold poorly. With little support from the publisher, and few fans blogging about it, Qwan was all but consigned to the remainder bin.

I’m under no illusion that my paean to Qwan will save it from licensing purgatory; for every Yotsuba&!, there are two Tactics, manga that didn’t gain much traction even after a well-publicized rescue. But Qwan is so good that I can’t help but wish that someone will complete the series. It’s a manga for people who love great stories and vivid characters, who care more about the quality of the storytelling than the coolness of the concepts and costumes.

QWAN, VOLS. 1-4 • BY AKI SHIMIZU • TOKYOPOP • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

From the stack: Kimi ni Todoke vol. 5

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My recent brush with Bakuman (Viz) helped me realize something (probably after everyone else already got there) about Karuho Shiina’s Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You (also Viz). Shiina is deconstructing shôjo manga as surely as Ohba and Obata are dissecting shônen. Of course, Shiina is telling a proper story with engaging characters at the same time, so she wins.

This became blazingly evident in the fifth volume. It begins with our heroine, socially inept Sawako, deep in conversation with Kurumi, who likes the same boy Sawako does and is trying to manipulate Sawako into stepping aside. In spite of her almost complete innocence in matters interpersonal, Sawako is incredibly hard to manipulate, and she’s just so damned nice. Kurumi is infuriated, at least partly because some part of her recognizes that Sawako is possibly more worthy of kindly Kazehaya’s affection than Kurumi is.

This isn’t an uncommon emotional beat for shôjo manga, but it rarely gets the degree of articulation it receives here. Kurumi must not only admit her resentment of Sawako, she must also explain to this foreign exchange student from Mars exactly why she resents her. And while the experience provides some kind of catharsis for the duplicitous Kurumi, it doesn’t entirely soften her feelings for Sawako. It does clarify them, for both Kurumi and Sawako, and they culminate in a glorious moment when Kurumi, pretense abandoned, beams at Sawako and declares them rivals.

It’s not just Kurumi being argumentative. It’s Kurumi being generous, helping Sawako understand. And it’s Kurumi liberating herself from a stifling public persona. Most of all, it’s Shiina celebrating the construct, the pairing of people who want the same limited resource (a title, a prize, a love interest) who both understand the other’s desire and respect their right to want it but realize that their ultimate happiness is mutually exclusive.

This is what I mean by deconstruction. Most mangaka would just go through the beats of this realization without underlining it so baldly, but the baldness is what makes Shiina’s approach soar. It’s like you’re Sawako, discovering all of these new things, except you already knew them, and yet the rediscovery is as thrilling as the first time you grasped them.

There’s lots of other stuff that happens in this volume, and all of it is charming and good, because Shiina wrote and drew it. But the definition of rivalry, old as shôjo and fresh as now, is the kind of emotional peak that represents the best of this excellent series. Bakuman is most intriguing as an instruction manual, and it’s savvy (but joyless) about what works in a certain type of manga. Kimi ni Todoke both defines and celebrates its own category’s building blocks.