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A Drunken Dream and Other Stories

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The 1970s marked a turning point in the development of shojo manga, as the first time in the medium’s history that a significant number of women were working in the field. These “founding mothers” weren’t the first female manga artists; Machiko Hasegawa was an early pioneer with Sazae-san,[1] a comic strip that first appeared in her hometown newspaper in 1946, followed in the 1950s by such artists as Masako Watanabe, who debuted in 1952 with Suama-chan, Hideko Mizuno, who debuted in 1956 with Akakke Pony (Red-Haired Pony),[2] and Miyako Maki, who debuted in 1957 with Hahakoi Waltz (Mother’s Love Waltz). Beginning in the mid-1960s and continuing throughout the 1970s, more female creators entered the profession, thus beginning the quiet transformation of shojo manga from sentimental stories for very young readers to a vibrant medium that spoke directly to the concerns and desires of teenage girls.

Several figures played an important role in affecting this transformation. One was Osamu Tezuka, whose Princess Knight (1954)[3] is often erroneously described as “the first shojo manga.” (Shojo manga, in fact, dates to the beginning of the twentieth century, when magazines such as Shojo Sekai, or Girls’ World, featured comics alongside stories, articles, and illustrations.) An affectionate pastiche of Walt Disney, Zorro, and Takarazuka plays, Tezuka’s gender-bending story focused on a princess with two hearts — one female, one male — who becomes a masked crusader to save her kingdom from falling into the hands of a wicked nobleman. However conventional the ending seems now — Princess Sapphire eventually marries the prince of her dreams and hangs up her sword — the story was a rare example of a long-form adventure for girls; well into the 1950s, most shojo manga featured plotlines reminiscent of Victorian children’s literature, filled with young, imperiled heroines buffeted by fate until happily reunited with their families.

Another major influence was Yoshiko Nishitani, whose ground-breaking series Mary Lou appeared in Weekly Margaret in 1965. Mary Lou was among the very first shojo manga to feature an ordinary teenager as both the protagonist and romantic lead; its eponymous heroine suffered from the kind of everyday problems — a beautiful older sister, a boy who sends confusing signals — that invited readers to identify with her. Like Princess Knight, the gender politics of Mary Lou may strike contemporary Western readers as nostalgic at best, retrograde at worst, but Nishitani’s ability to make a compelling story out of ordinary adolescent experience struck a chord with Japanese girls, providing an important model for subsequent generations of shojo artists.

Moto Hagio and The “Founding Mothers” of Modern Shojo

In the hands of the Magnificent Forty-Niners and the other women who entered the field in the 1970s,  shojo manga underwent a profound transformation, giving rise to a new kind of storytelling that emphasized the importance of relationships and introspection, even when the stories took place in eighteenth-century France (The Rose of Versailles), Taisho-era Japan (Haikara-san ga Toru, or, Here Comes Miss Modern), or the distant future (They Were Eleven!). Inspired by Tezuka’s cinematic approach to storytelling, they sought to dramatize their characters’ inner lives with the same dynamism that Tezuka brought to car chases, fist fights, and heated conversations. Hagio and her peers placed a premium on subjectivity, trying their utmost to help readers see the world through the characters’ point of view, eschewing tidy grids for fluid, expressionist layouts, and employing an elaborate code of visual signifiers to represent emotions from love to anxiety — symbols still in widespread use today.

Moto Hagio was one of these shojo trailblazers, making her professional debut in 1969 with “Lulu to Mimi,” a short story that appeared in the girls’ magazine Nakayoshi. In the years that followed, she proved enormously versatile, working in a variety of genres: “November Gymnasium” (1971) explores a romantic relationship between two young men, for example, while The Poe Family (1972-76) focuses on a vampire doomed to live out his existence in a teenage boy’s body. Hagio is perhaps best known to Western readers for her science fiction’s unique blend of social commentary and lyrical imagery. A, A’, for example, examines the relationship between memory and identity, while They Were Eleven tackles the thorny question of whether gender determines destiny.

A Drunken Dream and Other Stories

The ten stories that comprise A Drunken Dream span the entire length of Hagio’s career, from “Bianca” (1970), one of her first published works, to “A Drunken Dream” (1985), a sci-fi fantasy written around the same time as the stories in A, A’, to “The Willow Tree” (2007), an entry in her recent anthology Anywhere But Here.

What A Drunken Dream reveals is an author whose childhood passion for Frances Hodgson Burnett, L.M. Montgomery, and Isaac Asimov profoundly influenced the kind of stories she chose to tell as an adult. “Bianca,” for example, is a unabashedly Romantic story about artistic expression. The main narrative is framed by a discussion between Clara, a middle-aged woman, and an art collector curious about the “dryad” who appears in Clara’s paintings. As a teenager, Clara secretly witnessed her younger cousin Bianca dancing with great abandon in a wooded glen, a child’s way of coping with the pain of her parents’ tumultuous relationship. Bianca’s dance haunted Clara for years, even though their acquaintance was brief. “The way [Bianca] danced… the way it made me feel… I can’t describe it in words,” the middle-aged Clara explains to her guest. “But the thrill of that moment still shines today, and still shakes me to my core. And it was my irresistible need to draw that which led me to become a painter.”

Other stories explore the complexity of familial relationships. “Hanshin: Half-God,” for example, depicts conjoined twins with a rare medical condition that leaves one brilliant but physically deformed and the other simple but radiantly beautiful. When a life-threatening condition necessitates an operation to separate them, Yudy, the “big sister,” imagines it will liberate her from the responsibility of caring for and about Yucy, never considering the degree to which she and Yucy are emotionally interdependent. In “The Child Who Comes Home,” the emphasis is on parent-child relationships, exploring how a mother and her son cope with the death of the family’s youngest member. Throughout the story, the deceased Yuu appears in many of the panels, though we are never sure if Yuu’s ghost is real, or if his family’s lingering attachment to him is making his memory palpable.

iguanagirlThe emotional core of A Drunken Dream — for me, at least — is Hagio’s 1991 story “Iguana Girl.” Rika, the heroine, is a truly grotesque figure — not in the everyday sense of being ugly or unpleasant, but in the Romantic sense, as a person whose bizarre affliction arouses empathy in readers. Born to a woman who appears human but is, in fact, an enchanted lizard, Rika is immediately rejected by her mother, who sees only a repulsive likeness of herself. Yuriko’s disgust for her daughter manifests itself in myriad ways: withering put-downs, slaps and shouts, blatant displays of favoritism for Rika’s younger sister Mami. As Rika matures, Hagio gives us tantalizing glimpses of Rika not as an iguana, but as the rest of the world sees her: a lovely but reserved young woman. As with “The Child Who Comes Home,” the heroine’s appearance could be interpreted literally, as evidence of magical realism, or figuratively, as a metaphor for the way in which children mirror their parents’ own flaws and disappointments; either way, Rika’s quest to heal her childhood wounds is easily one of the most moving stories I’ve read in comic form, a testament to Hagio’s ability to make Rika’s fraught relationship with her mother seem both terribly specific and utterly universal.

Perhaps the best compliment I can pay Hagio is praising her ability to make the ineffable speak through pictures, whether she’s documenting the grief that a young woman feels after aborting her baby (“Angel Mimic”) or the intense longing a middle-aged man feels for the college friends who abandoned him (“Marie, Ten Years Later”). Nowhere is this more evident than in the final story, “The Willow Tree.” At first glance, the layout is simple: each page consists of just two large, rectangular panels in which a woman stands beneath a tree, watching a parade of people — a doleful man and a little boy, a group of rambunctious grade-schoolers, a teenager wooing a classmate — as they stroll on the embankment above her. A careful reading of the images, however, reveals a complex story spanning many years. Hagio uses subtle cues — light, weather, and the principal character’s body language — to suggest the woman’s relationship to the people who walk past the tree. The last ten panels are beautifully executed; though the woman never utters a word, her face suddenly registers all the pain, joy, and anxiety she experienced during her decades-long vigil.

For those new to Hagio’s work, Fantagraphics has prefaced A Drunken Dream with two indispensable articles by noted manga scholar Matt Thorn.[4] The first, “The Magnificent Forty-Niners,” places Hagio in context, introducing her peers and providing an overview of her major publications. The second, “The Moto Hagio Interview,” is a lengthy conversation between scholar and artist about Hagio’s formative reading experiences, first jobs, and recurring use of certain motifs. Both reveal Hagio to be as complex as her stories, at once thoughtful about her own work and surprised by her success. Taken together with the stories in A Drunken Dream, these essays make an excellent introduction to one of the most literary and original voices working in comics today. Highly recommended.

A DRUNKEN DREAM AND OTHER STORIES • BY MOTO HAGIO, TRANSLATED BY MATT THORN • FANTAGRAPHICS • 288 pp.

NOTES

1. The Wonderful World of Sazae-San ran in newspapers from 1946 to 1974. The collected strips, comprising 45 volumes in all, have been perennial best-sellers in Japan, with over 60 million books sold. It’s imporant to note that Sazae-san is not shojo manga; the story focuses on a resourceful, strong-willed housewife and her family, a kind of Mother Knows Best story. Nonetheless, Machiko Hasegawa is an important figure in the history of the medium, both for the influence of her strip and her trailblazing role as a female creator.

2. For more information about Hideko Mizuno, see Marc Bernabe’s recent profile and interview at Masters of Manga.

3. Princess Knight has a long and complex publishing history. The original story appeared in Shojo Club from 1953 to 1956, was continued in Nakayoshi in 1958, and revived again for Nakayoshi in 1963. The third version is generally considered to be the definitive one; Tezuka re-worked a few details from the original version and re-drew the series. In 2001, Kodansha released a bilingual edition of the 1963 version which is now out of print.

4. Both essays originally appeared in issue no. 269 of The Comics Journal (July 2005).

FOR FURTHER READING

Bernabe, Marc. “What is the ‘Year 24 Group’?” Interview with Moto Hagio. [http://mastersofmanga.com/2010/06/hagioyear24] [Accessed 7/22/10.]

Gravett, Paul. Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics. New York: Collins Design, 2004.

Randall, Bill. “Three By Moto Hagio.” The Comics Journal 252 (April 2003). (Full text available online at The Comics Journal Archives.)

Shamoon, Deborah. “Revolutionary Romance: The Rose of Versailles and the Transformation of Shojo Manga.” Mechademia 2 (2007): 3-18.

Schodt, Frederick. Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. New York: Kodansha International, 1983.

Thorn, Matt. “The Multi-Faceted Universe of Shoujo Manga.” [http://www.matt-thorn.com/shoujo_manga/colloque/index.php] (Accessed 7/21/10.)

Thorn, Matt. “What Japanese Girls Do With Manga and Why.” [http://www.matt-thorn.com/shoujo_manga/jaws/index.php] (Accessed 7/21/10/)

Toku, Masaki, ed. Shojo Manga! Girl Power! Chico, CA: Flume Press, 2005.

Vollmar, Rob. “X+X.” The Comics Journal 269 (July 2005): 134-36.

WORKS BY MOTO HAGIO AND HER PEERS (IN ENGLISH)

Aoike, Yasuko. From Eroica With Love. La Jolla, CA: CMX Manga/Wildstorm Productions, 2004 – 2010. 15 volumes (incomplete).

Ariyoshi, Kyoko. Swan. La Jolla, CA: CMX Manga/Wildstorm Productions, 2005 – 2010. 15 volumes (incomplete).

Hagio, Moto. A, A’ [A, A Prime]. Translated by Matt Thorn. San Francisco: Viz Communications, 1997. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 5/31/10.)

Hagio, Moto, Keiko Nishi, and Shio Sato. Four Shojo Stories. Translated by Matt Thorn. San Francisco: Viz Communications, 1996. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 5/31/10.)

Mitsuse, Ryu and Keiko Takemiya. Andromeda Stories. New York: Vertical, Inc., 2007. 3 volumes. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 5/26/10.)

Takemiya, Keiko. To Terra. New York: Vertical, Inc., 2007. 3 volumes. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 5/23/10.)

Ooku, Vols. 1-3

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Ooku, Vols. 1-3 | By Fumi Yoshinaga | Published by Viz Media | Rated M (Mature)

In this alternate history of Edo-period Japan, an incurable disease has wiped out much of the nation’s male population, leaving women to take up traditional men’s roles, including that of shogun.

As this series is structured, its first volume begins eighty years after the disease’s initial outbreak, at which point the male population has declined by 75% and women have become firmly fixed in their new roles. The second and third volumes then return to the beginning of the outbreak, which finds the nation in a panic–desperate to maintain male rule, even to the point of delusion, if that is what is required.

This structural choice is, frankly, brilliant. By removing any real question about the outcome of events that occur during the second and third volumes, Yoshinaga allows herself (and the reader) to focus on the process, which really shows her off to her greatest advantage. Though the universe is dense and the language even more so (needlessly, to some extent, thanks to an unfortunate choice in its English adaptation), this arrangement allows for a great deal of slow, masterful character development and an emphasis on human relationships and the psychology of political theory.

The story revolves around the workings of the Ooku, the harem of Edo Castle, in which the shogun’s wife, servants, and concubines reside. Traditionally inhabited by thousands of women, this number is shown to have been shifted to men in the first volume of this series, each bound into service of the shogun–an especially decadent arrangement in a nation with a male-female ratio of 1:4.

Though each of the series’ first three volumes focuses heavily on the lives of young men entering the Ooku (some of whom are there of their own free will, others… not so much) the overarching story is that of the evolution of a powerful female shogunate.

Volume one, the story of Mizuno, whose understated appearance catches the eye of the new, no-nonsense shogun, exhibits a rather fascinating society in which this is already firmly in place. Yet it is even more compelling to watch this society emerge, slowly and painfully, from its deep, patriarchal roots over the course of the following volumes.

It is here that Yoshinaga displays a new talent for creating cold, self-serving, and even cruel characters who are complex enough to be, not just interesting, but actually relatable. And she does it just about as far out of her comfort zone as possible.

There is nothing warm or quirky about Ooku. Life inside the shogun’s chambers is nowhere near casual or even remotely lighthearted. Even Yoshinaga’s earlier stabs at period pieces (such as Gerard & Jacques or Garden Dreams) are inappropriate for comparison, so great is the difference in weight and complexity.

With the preservation of the Tokugawa shogunate as paramount within the Inner Chambers, even the nation’s appalling health crisis can be seen in a positive light, so long as it weakens families that might otherwise represent a threat to the current government. When impoverished farmers must abandon their fields to dodge tithes they can no longer afford, make a law that binds them to the land for life. Should famine strike, offer several days of free gruel, not with the purpose of relieving hunger, but to quell the seeds of rebellion. Above all, nothing is more important than producing appropriate progeny to keep the Tokugawa family safely in power.

This is the world of the shogunate, illustrated here without nostalgia or apology, yet populated with characters Yoshinaga is able to make her readers care about and occasionally even like.

The greatest downside to this series is its English adaptation which, in an effort to create formal-sounding speech, utilizes an awkward, quasi-17th-century style (referred to among critics as “Fakespeare”).

Though I personally was able to acclimate just a few pages in, even for me this has the disadvantage of dampening what is typically my greatest joy in Yoshinaga’s writing–her glorious abundance of dialogue. As a result, though Yoshinaga is as talky as ever, much of her delightful spark is gone.

While this may be an inevitability in such a politically dense story, the characters’ stilted manner of speech makes it difficult to know for sure. That said, there is not a single moment in this series so far that has not engaged me fully–quite a feat under the circumstances.

On the other hand, Yoshinaga’s artwork is more stunning than ever, employing a level of detail in costuming and background unusual for her work, yet retaining the elegant simplicity characteristic of her clean, expressive style. Her visual storytelling here is sophisticated and straightforward, with restrained panel layouts that suit the period and setting.

As a fan of Fumi Yoshinaga, josei manga, and the Viz Signature imprint, there is no question that a series like this, even just in theory, is a very exciting work. Fortunately, this truth extends beyond the theoretical and into the actual. Ooku is beautiful, engaging, and a very exciting work indeed. It is also challenging and ambitious enough to garner some real respect for josei manga in western fandom at last. And for that, I’m truly grateful.

Review copies provided by the publisher.

BL Bookrack: Yoshinaga Special

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Welcome to the first edition of BL Bookrack, a new, monthly feature co-written with Soliloquy in Blue‘s Michelle Smith. Once a month, in place of our weekly Off the Shelf column, we’ll be presenting reviews of a handful of boys’ love titles, both old and new. It is our particular pleasure to launch this feature with a focus on the works of Fumi Yoshinaga as part of Manga Bookshelf’s week-long tribute to one of our favorite mangaka.

In this month’s column, Michelle starts us off with a look at Don’t Say Any More, Darling, deeming it enjoyable, if not quite the best of Yoshinaga’s work. I follow up with two favorites, Ichigenme… The First Class is Civil Law and The Moon and the Sandals. Michelle then wraps things up with a thoughtful take on Solfege.

We hope you’ll enjoy this special Yoshinaga edition of BL Bookrack. We’ll return next week with another Off the Shelf!

Don’t Say Any More, Darling | By Fumi Yoshinaga | Published by Juné (DMP) | Rated M (Mature 18+) | Buy this book –

Don’t Say Any More, Darling is a collection of five stories by Fumi Yoshinaga—two of them not actually BL—that show glimmers of her future greatness but which are, at least in several cases, pretty durn weird.

The title story is the most straightforward boys’ love offering in the group. Kouhei and Tadashi have been friends since their school days, but the former has gone on to be a successful doctor while the latter is an impoverished lyricist who would probably starve if Kouhei didn’t stop by every once in a while. Kouhei’s parents are after him to meet a prospective bride—there’s a very amusing scene where they harangue him for being a “parasite single”—but when he meets his date, she only reminds him of Tadashi! Like most cheerful BL stories, this one ends with the boys in bed, but Yoshinaga gives this outcome a little twist by depicting Kouhei as comically traumatized by the experience.

“My Eternal Sweetheart” is the first of the weirder stories in the collection. Initially, it appears to be the story of an ailing teenager named Arthur whose immune deficiency syndrome prevents him from going outside and whose brother has built him a maternal android for a caretaker. It takes a turn when Arthur requests a male “sexaroid” to relieve his boredom, and a few other surprising twists follow. While I admire the plot of this story, it does contain an underaged sexaroid and quasi-incest, so things get a little creepy.

The two non-BL stories in the collection both have to do with making and then losing a connection with another person. In “Fairyland,” a bullied boy named Kaoru seems to have successfully wished all of humanity away. This gets rid of his tormentors, but also his family. When Kaoru meets another rare survivor, Ryohei, it seems he’s finally found someone who can understand and forgive his actions. In “One May Day,” a widower finds new love with a restaurant proprietor, only to quickly tire of her subservience and constant apologizing. This one is particularly short and odd.

My very favorite story in the collection is the last one, “The Pianist.” As a younger, haughtier man, Takayuki Date had some moderate success as a pianist and songwriter, but was never able to make it big. At the time, he never lacked for men, but now that he is older he’s having a hard time finding handsome younger guys willing to sleep with him. One day, he’s approached by a friendly college student and must figure out whether the young man is actually interested in him. The whole vibe of this story is wonderful—I really love how Yoshinaga handles the revelation that Date is not really the “debauched fallen genius” he pretends to be but rather simply lacked the talent necessary to achieve lasting success—and feels the most like Yoshinaga’s later works to me.

While Don’t Say Any More, Darling is not the best Yoshinaga manga available, it’s still intriguing and definitely worth a read.

– Review by Michelle Smith.

Ichigenme… The First Class is Civil Law, Vols. 1-2 | By Fumi Yoshinaga | Published by 801 Media (DMP) | Rated 18+ (Mature Content) | Buy volumes one & two –

Kensuke Tamiya is a serious law student who finds himself in a zemi (a small, professor-led seminar) filled entirely with lazy rich kids who have come up through the university’s affiliated schools. It is there he meets Taka-aki Tohdou, the playboy son of a politician who kisses Tamiya at their zemi‘s drunken welcome party.

Later, when Tohdou makes a serious attempt to pursue him, Tamiya protests adamantly that he’s not gay, while secretly suppressing the truth he’s known for years. As Tamiya slowly comes to terms with his sexuality, his classmates struggle with school, scandal, and the often ugly workings of the social hierarchy set up for them by their elders.

Though advertised as a “campus love story,” Ichigenme is really so much more. It is, at once, a thoughtful take on a young man’s struggle with his sexuality, an idiosyncratic romance, a jaded commentary on sexual double-standards applied to female students in Japan, and a fairly scathing look at the Japanese affiliate school system.

One of the most gratifying elements of Yoshinaga’s yaoi works is the fact that she is not afraid to write about characters who identify as gay. With Ichigenme…, she takes that one step further by actually exploring what that means for her protagonist, who, even after admitting that he could never have sex with a woman, is reluctant to accept the truth of it. Tamiya’s anxieties follow him even into the bedroom, where, though he learns to discuss what he’s doing with surprising frankness, he is unable to be open about his feelings.

With Tamiya, Yoshinaga turns two yaoi tropes on their heads–the shy, reluctant uke and the genre’s resistance to the word “gay”– transforming them from myopic clichés into realistic neuroses that actually add dimension to the character. As a result, Tamiya and Tohdou’s relationship is wonderfully awkward and slow to develop, with its sexual and romantic progression never quite in the same place.

This is particularly significant to the series’ second volume, which might otherwise be just a series of increasingly explicit sex scenes. Thankfully, the complexity of both these men and their relationship drives the story all the way through to the end. Though a second couple is introduced halfway through the second volume, presumably to add fresh romantic momentum, this diversion is hardly necessary.

As always, Yoshinaga’s gift for dialogue creates a uniquely intimate feel, bringing life and complexity even to the story’s minor characters, especially Miho Terada, a smart, studious female classmate whose place at the university is called into question after her boyfriend sends a nude photo of her to a magazine. Despite the fact that this is essentially a romance manga, one of its most affecting scenes takes place between Terada and Tamiya, in which he reveals his naiveté regarding her circumstances.

“You’re the victim here, Terada-san … it’s the guy who’s in the wrong,” Tamiya protests, to which she responds, “You’re the only one who would say that, Tamiya-chan. My father said that it was more shameful than being raped. And hearing that felt worse than being raped.”

Though Ichigenme… was released under DMP’s more explicit 801 Media imprint (and rightfully so), its sex scenes are so artful and so essential to the characters’ emotional journey, I’d consider it suitable for any adult reader, male or female, fan or non-fan.

If any of this sounds like over-praise, I promise you it’s not. Ichigenme… is a true favorite, and I recommend it with pleasure.

-Review by MJ

The Moon and the Sandals, Vols. 1-2 | By Fumi Yoshinaga | Published by Juné (DMP) | Rated M (Mature 18+) | Buy volumes one & two –

Kobayashi has a massive crush on his history teacher, Mr. Ida, but just as he’s about to confess, he discovers that Mr. Ida is embroiled in a stormy love affair of his own. As Ida pursues a future with his long-time lover, Hashizume, Kobayashi is left to find new love on his own.

When Kobayashi’s good friend and English studies savior, Rikuko, is injured in a traffic accident, she convinces her older brother, Toyo, to replace her as Kobayashi’s English tutor.

Toyo is arrogant and demanding, but working with Kobayashi seems to soften him, and in no time at all, Kobayashi has transferred his crush on Mr. Ida to his new English tutor. But can Toyo return his feelings? And what about Rikuko, who harbors the same feelings for Kobayashi?

Though this was her debut manga, Yoshinaga was already playing around with standard yaoi fantasies (in this case, the teacher/student relationship), working them ’round until they become genuinely true-to-life. As a result, Kobayashi’s crush on his teacher, Mr. Ida, reads as a poignant tale of unrequited first love rather than romantic fantasy.

This relationship rings true throughout the series, especially in a scene late in the first volume, when Kobayashi seeks out his teacher, the only gay adult he knows, to ask for information on gay sex. Ida’s discomfort with the question leaves Kobayashi pretty much to fend for himself, but it’s the reaction from Ida’s lover that makes the whole thing worthwhile.

“You’re clearly the one in the wrong here,” Hashizume says. “Homosexuals are a social minority. There aren’t many with whom we can discuss our problems, either … If he can’t ask you, who else can he ask?”

Another area where Yoshinaga really shines here is in her treatment of Kobayashi’s friend, Rikuko. One of several general complaints that can be made about yaoi as a whole is a lack of female characters in a genre written largely by women, for women. Though it wouldn’t be reasonable to expect female characters in the lead in a genre specifically portraying romance between males, it’s rather depressing to note just how often women and girls are dismissed entirely as people of worth in yaoi manga, occasionally to the point of outright misogyny. Fortunately, Yoshinaga frequently writes women into her yaoi, and she writes them well.

Not only is Rikuko a rich, nuanced character with real hopes and dreams (including a promising future as a doctor, as shown in volume two), but her confession to (and rejection by) Kobayashi is written with a level of subtlety and understanding that speaks honestly to generations of high school girls (past and present) who have had the misfortune to fall in love with their gay best friends.

Click each to enlarge, right-to-left.

Images © Fumi Yoshinaga. English translation © Digital Manga Publishing.

The series’ second volume, a series of vignettes designed primarily to accommodate sex scenes, lacks the cohesion and depth of the first. Yet even these scenes are emotionally driven and rooted firmly in the rich character development established during the first volume. Though the first volume can be enjoyed entirely on its own, readers who seek out the second volume will find some real gems scattered within, such as a scene late in the volume regarding Toyo’s plans to come out to his parents.

Simply put, The Moon and the Sandals is utterly charming, recommended for any fan of smart, romantic manga.

– Review by MJ

Solfege | By Fumi Yoshinaga | Published by Juné (DMP) | Rated YA (16+) | Buy this book –

The important thing to remember about Solfege is that it’s not actually a love story. Instead, it’s the portrait of an unsympathetic music teacher named Kugayama who is a wretched human being but is still capable of bringing something positive into the world by fostering a life-long love of music in his students.

The story begins with Kugayama imparting the basics of music unto Tanaka, a youth who looks like a delinquent but loves singing and dreams of attending a music high school. Kugayama doesn’t have very high hopes for Tanaka’s chances, but is surprised when his student ends up exceeding his expectations. When Tanaka’s mother collapses and ends up spending over a year in the hospital, Kugayama allows the boy to stay with him and pays for Tanaka to study voice with another teacher named Gotoh.

Once Tanaka’s mother recovers, he moves back home, but she promptly begins bringing men home and he turns up at Kugayama’s house again just when his former teacher is drunk and feeling horny. Kugayama proceeds to use his position as the most-admired person in Tanaka’s life to seduce his impressionable young student, and this is where I really started to hate the guy. I wished for Yoshinaga to accurately portray how traumatized a physically mature but emotionally vulnerable kid like Tanaka would be by this experience. Instead, he’s completely okay with the arrangement and the two continue to sleep together. I was disappointed.

I should’ve had faith in Yoshinaga, though, because once Gotoh finds out what’s going on, he takes immediate steps to remove Tanaka from Kugayama’s clutches. While Tanaka heads abroad to study music in Italy—and eventually becomes a success—Kugayama starts up a relationship with a Tanaka lookalike named Jun and, again, gets what’s coming to him for being such a screwed-up jerk. Scandal ensues, and it’s up to a grown-up Tanaka to meet with Kugayama again—as equals this time—and remind him of what it is that he does best.

I did not find Solfege to be in the least little bit romantic—and I’m honestly not sure how anyone could—but I did find it a complex and fascinating character study as well as a refreshing alternative to student-teacher romances that carry no repercussions for persons in a position of authority.

– Review by Michelle Smith

Garden Dreams

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Garden Dreams | By Fumi Yoshinaga | Published by Digital Manga Publishing | Rated T (Teens 13+)

Garden Dreams tells the story of Farhad, a young boy orphaned by the Crusades, who is rescued from the desert by Saud, one of his own people who has lost his family as well. The two make a living as traveling musicians, which eventually brings them to the estate of a foreign baron.

This visit will transform both of their lives, reuniting Saud with a loved one he thought long gone and providing Farhad with a new family and a place to call home.

Though Farhad’s story is the thread holding this manga together, the volume is actually a series of short tales, including a substantial look into the baron’s tragic past. This structure reads like a bit of a tease, with everything folding into a story-within-the-story by the end.

Though this isn’t exactly a bad thing, it does create a sense of distance between the reader and the characters unusual in Yoshinaga’s work. Absent is the intimacy offered up by series like Flower of Life, Antique Bakery, or Ichigemne…, replaced instead by the detached feel of an external narrator.

With this in mind, it’s no surprise that Yoshinaga’s normally chatty dialogue is subdued here as well, though this may be due to the period setting as much as anything else. Her style shines best with casual conversation, and there is little of that in this volume. That said, each of the stories has a classic, fairy-tale quality that is a pleasure in itself. There’s no lack of touching moments here, either, beginning from the manga’s opening pages.

Perhaps the most moving of these tales is the least like a proper story at all. In the volume’s final chapter, a letter is received from the baron’s adopted daughter, who earlier in the book had fled into the night with Farhad’s “brother” Saud. Weary of his inability to accept loss, the baron asks Farhad to commit suicide with him. Though this may sound horrid to the extreme, it’s actually quite poignant and so delicately drawn, it actually brought tears to my eyes.

Yoshinaga’s artwork brings out the best in these stories, which might otherwise fade quickly from memory. Her use of panel layouts to convey emotion in these particularly reserved characters is, frankly, quite stunning. Though I might miss the easy expressiveness of her talky, modern-day tales, it is a pleasure to watch the way in which she is able to bring forward strong feeling using other means.

Garden Dreams is by no means Yoshinaga’s best work, but its quiet meandering displays some true charms of its own.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Manhwa Monday: Poll, Part II

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Welcome to another Manhwa Monday!

It’s another slow week in the manhwa blogosphere, so following up on last week’s poll, we’ll take a moment to ponder this year’s continuing manhwa series. But first, a look at the week in reviews.

Raiders (Yen Press) gets the most attention this week, with reviews of volume one from Liz Reed at Manga Life and volume three from Kate Dacey at The Manga Critic. At Comics Village, Lori Henderson takes a look at volume eight of Goong (Yen Press). And at the Tompkins County Public Library’s In My Opinion (IMO) Teen Book Blog, reviewer Emme talks about volume one of The Tarot Cafe (Tokyopop).

Far in the lead in last week’s poll for best new manhwa series of the year (so far) is Sirial’s One Fine Day (Yen Press). This week, let’s take a vote on continuing series. …

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All My Darling Daughters

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All My Darling Daughters | By Fumi Yoshinaga | Published by Viz Media | Rated T+ (Older Teen)

Yukiko, nearly thirty and still living at home, is shocked when her widowed mother announces her sudden marriage to a young actor she met at a host club. Suspicious and resentful, Yukiko struggles to hold on to her place in her mother’s life as her entire world shifts around her.

Through a series of interconnected short stories, mangaka Fumi Yoshinaga explores the lives of Yukiko, her friends, her mother, and her grandmother, and how they all relate to one another. Though the stories extend to women in various circumstances–planning their careers as young girls, seeking a husband through arranged marriage, even carrying on an affair with a college professor–what most strikes a personal chord with me is Yoshinaga’s reflections on mothers and daughters as portrayed within three generations of Yukiko’s own family.

The first story begins with a short scene between a teenaged Yukiko and her mother, in which her mother, Mari, rails at her for slovenly habits and general lack of consideration. When Yukiko protests, “You’re just taking your frustration out on me!” her mother replies, “You’re right. That’s exactly what I’m doing! And what’s wrong with that? Parents are human. Sometimes they have bad moods!” Though the truth of that is not something Yukiko wants to hear, when all is said and done, she comes to the realization that all her mother really wants is to be served a cup of tea.

What’s so effective about this scene, is that despite being told from Yukiko’s point of view, Yoshinaga easily reveals the frustrations and vulnerabilities of both characters, as well as their core affection for each other.

Later, when Mari’s new husband, Ohashi, moves in, all of these vulnerabilities become even more prominent, as Yukiko stubbornly refuses to like him (which even she can admit is out of pure resentment). This story’s final image, after Yukiko has announced that she will move in with her coworker boyfriend, is a beautiful representation of the relationship between mother and daughter and all the complexity that entails.

Near the end of the volume, Yukiko gains further insight into her mother’s character through some conversation with both her grandmother and her new, young stepfather. What she discovers, of course, is the terrifying truth behind all parenting, which is that the greatest damage is often inflicted with the best intentions.

Having recently discussed another story of mothers and daughters, Kim Dong Hwa’s The Color of… trilogy, I’m struck by the contrast in how they are portrayed. That these stories are very different is certainly to be expected. After all, Kim’s story is set at least a hundred years earlier in an entirely different culture. What’s a bit stunning, however, is how much of this is due to simply to a difference in perspective.

While Kim views the relationship between mother and daughter from the outside, through a lens of reverent nostalgia, Yoshinaga explores the same relationship from a place of intimate understanding. Without the veil of nostalgia as an obstacle, Yoshinaga is able to create fully-realized characters who exist together, not just as mother and daughter, but also as roommates, friends, enemies, nagging burdens, and pillars of support. Though so much of their complicated relationship remains unspoken, it is all there–some lurking just beneath the dialogue, and even more within Yoshinaga’s spare, expressive artwork.

Perhaps it isn’t fair to expect such deep insight into the mother-daughter relationship from a male writer, but I’ll admit it is the lack of complexity in Kim’s portrayal that keeps me from enjoying his series as much as I might. If nothing else, this highlights what makes Yoshinaga’s work so strong, and prompts me to hope that she’ll continue to write more stories about women.

Though I’ve spent most of my time here focusing on the overarching story of Yukiko and Mari, the volume’s other stories are effective as well, particularly one that traces the path of one of Mari’s junior high friends from her youthful ambitions to the adult life she ultimately settles for.

Only one story feels slightly out of place–that of a college professor friend of Ohashi’s who finds himself wrapped up in a relationship with a masochistic student–mainly because it is the only story in the book not told from the perspective of a female character. Yet even this manages to fall into place by the end, as Yoshinaga muses on the value of imperfection and personal idiosyncrasy.

To say that this manga speaks to me on a very personal level seems like a fairly obvious understatement, but I’ll say it anyway. All My Darling Daughters is a must-read for grown-up women everywhere.

Images © Fumi Yoshinaga. Review copy provided by the publisher.

Peepo Choo, Vol. 1

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When I was fifteen and in the throes of my mope-rock obsession, I fantasized a lot about England, home to my favorite bands. I imagined London, in particular, to be a place where everyone appreciated the sartorial genius of Mary Quant, fashionable ladies accessorized every outfit with a pair of shit kickers, regular moviegoers recognized Eat the Rich as brilliant satire, and — most important of all — teenage boys appreciated girls with dry, sarcastic wits and gloomy taste in music. You can guess my disappointment when I finally visited England for the first time; not only was London dirty, expensive, and filled with tweedy-looking people who found my taste in clothing odd, many of the teenagers I met were fascinated by American pop culture, pumping me and my companions for information about — quelle horror! — LL Cool J. I could have died. Though I’ve gone through similar phases since then — Russophilia, Woody Allenomania — I’ve never been able to abandon myself to those passions in quite the same way, knowing somewhere in the back of my mind that all Muscovites weren’t soulful admirers of Shostakovich and that most book editors didn’t live in pre-war sixes on the Upper East Side.

When we first meet Milton, the loser-hero of Felipe Smith’s visually dazzling Peepo Choo, he’s still innocent enough to believe that his love for anime makes him an honorary Japanese citizen. Milton proudly declares himself an otaku, viewing Japan as his spiritual home, a place where “everyone is nice,” “everyone cosplays,” and “everyone watches anime and reads manga.” “If I lived in Japan,” he tells himself, “I could be de me. The real Milton!” Looking at Milton’s life, it’s easy to see why Japan looms large in his imagination; when contrasted with his chaotic home — he shares a bedroom with eight rambunctious siblings — and crime-plagued Chicago neighborhood, Tokyo appears to be a model of order, a place where cuteness and civility prevail. What Milton discovers is that his Japan is nothing like the reality, a place populated by drunken salarymen, violent criminals, hairy cross-dressers, and puzzled commuters who wonder why he’s cosplaying on the subway. “There’s hostility in the air,” a deflated Milton observes upon spending his first day in Japan. “I know this feeling too well. I just never thought I’d feel it in Tokyo.”

Milton isn’t alone in his delusions; most of the characters in Peepo Choo are engaged in one form or another of culture shopping, trying on personae like so many pairs of jeans. There’s Jody, the jaded comic-store employee who adopts a street-thug pose and brags about his bedroom conquests, when, in fact, his sexploits amount to watching a lot of porn; there’s Takeshi, a wimp who reinvents himself as Morimoto Rockstar, a pimped-out yakuza whose greatest ambition is to emulate the Brick Side thugs (an imaginary Chicago gang); there’s Reiko, a voluptuous teen model who also cops a ghetto style and attitude, wearing enormous hoops and tiny shorts and backing up her demands for respect with foul language, middle fingers, and fisticuffs; and then there are the regulars at Enyo’s Collectibles, an anime-addled group of misfits who share Milton’s utopian vision of Japan.

To show us the unique lens through which each character views the world, Smith borrows a page from the William Faulkner playbook, switching “voices” as he moves from subplot to subplot. Milton’s story, for example, is punctuated by fantasy sequences that resemble a Takashi Murakami canvas; in Milton’s mind, even Japan’s landscapes have a pleasingly domesticated look, with smiling mountains and beaming suns presiding over a Noah’s Ark of anthropomorphic birds, cats, and hamsters. When Smith cuts to Gill, the hitman who runs Enyo’s Collectibles, the artwork becomes dark, ugly, and claustrophobic, evocative of such torture-porn films as Hostel and Saw. Smith shows us every blood splatter and cracked skull in gruesome, almost fetishistic detail, as Gill dispatches roomfuls of gangsters with gory abandon. (Gill even gets into character for his work, trading his suit and glasses for skull rings, a mohawk, and a Hannibal Lechter mask.)

Yet for all its technical virtuosity, there’s a hole at the center of Peepo Choo where its heart should be. Smith positively brutalizes his characters; in one scene, for example, two alpha girls dangle a bloody tampon in a classmate’s face, while in another, Takeshi disembowels a victim, carving a nonsense “Engrish” phrase into the man’s torso. The satirical intent of both scenes is obvious, but the crudeness of the satire feels more like provocation than actual commentary on manga cliches or Japanese fascination with American street life. The same goes for several sexually explicit passages in which Smith draws lusty women with watermelon breasts; it doesn’t take much imagination to see that he’s aping the visual language of Hustler and Playboy, but the scenes are too faithful to the source material to be anything more than affectionate parody.

Great satire is seldom generous or polite, but it shouldn’t be punitive, either, and that’s Peepo Choo‘s greatest shortcoming. Smith seems more intent on cranking up the sex and violence to eleven than making a real point about the ubiquity of either in seinen manga. I’m guessing — perhaps wrongly — that he’s hoping to implicate the audience in the characters’ rude behavior, to point out that it’s our own prurient interest in blood and boobs that drives creators to excess, but the point seems rather hollow when the artist himself seems to revel in his own ability to draw such mayhem. I wish I enjoyed Peepo Choo, as it’s obvious that Felipe Smith has the imagination and artistry to be a penetrating satirist; what Smith really needs is a little more empathy.

Review copy provided by Vertical, Inc.

PEEPO CHOO, VOL. 1 • BY FELIPE SMITH • VERTICAL, INC. • 252 pp. • RATING: MATURE (18+)

Flower of Life: A Love Story

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Flower of Life, Vols. 1-4 | By Fumi Yoshinaga | Published by Digital Manga Publishing | Rated YA (Young Adults 16+)

“A love story?”

Yes, I know. This is what you’re all thinking. But “a love story” is truly the way I view this series, though perhaps not in the usual way. It’s not a tale of romance (though there is a bit to be found) or even a story of deep friendship (though it’s got that, too).

The thing is, this love story is not between any of the story’s characters at all, but rather between its author, Fumi Yoshinaga, and humanity itself. Though there are many distinctive elements to Yoshinaga’s work—her character designs, her rambling dialogue, her mild fujoshi sensibility—what is most consistently recognizable in her work is her deep and abiding love for this world …

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Off the Shelf: Not Loafing

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Welcome to another edition of Off the Shelf with MJ & Michelle! I’m joined once again by Soliloquy in Blue‘s Michelle Smith.

This week, we pull a few shojo titles off the shelf from Viz Media and Tokyopop, mixed in with shonen and seinen favorites from Viz, Del Rey Manga, and Vertical, Inc.

MICHELLE: It was a dark and stormy blog. Intrepid manga reviewer MJ was braving the elements in order to get home in time to read some books! Did she make it? Oh God, did she?!?!

MJ: Never fear, because she did! And quite joyfully, too! This was actually an incredibly pleasurable week for me, because I spent my time with the latest volumes of three of my favorite series.

First, I finally sat down with the second volume of Twin Spica, my favorite new manga series so far this year. The story is about a teenaged girl, Asumi, who vies to be part of Japan’s re-emerging space program, just fourteen years after a deadly accident stopped the program in its tracks. The first volume was fairly stunning (you can read my review here), setting the bar for the second impossibly high, or so one would think. With an introduction so strong, I was quite surprised to find that I liked the second volume even better.

The first volume spent a lot of time setting up the universe of the story and introducing its main players, including Asumi, her “imaginary” friend Lion-san (which I’ve put in quotes because I simply don’t know), her widowed father, and two girls entering the space program at the same time. This was all done beautifully, leaving readers full of warmth and wonder. …

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Manhwa Monday: Mid-Season Poll

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Welcome to another Manhwa Monday!

It’s a slow week in the manhwa blogosphere, with only three reviews for me to pass along. First, at Good Comics for Kids, Lori Henderson reviews volume one of One Fine Day (Yen Press). At Manga Life, Charles Webb gives us a first-timer’s look at volume nine of Black God (Yen Press). Lastly, at TangognaT, Anna talks about the first four volumes of Goong (Yen Press).

With such a small bounty to share this week, it seems like a good time to check out the (nearly) equally short list of this year’s new manhwa series. Though we’ve seen quite a few new volumes of continuing series this year, new series have been scarce–just four by my count as of the end of June.

Yen Press is this year’s overachiever so far, with two (count ’em, two) new series since January began, One Fine Day and Laon. …

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The Name of the Flower, Vols. 1-4

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Given the sheer number of nineteenth-century Brit-lit tropes that appear in The Name of the Flower — neglected gardens, orphans struck dumb by tragedy, brooding male guardians — one might reasonably conclude that Ken Saito was paying homage to Charlotte Brontë and Frances Hodgson Burnett with her story about a fragile young woman who falls in love with an older novelist. And while that manga would undoubtedly be awesome — think of the costumes! — The Name of the Flower is, in fact, far more nuanced and restrained than its surface details might suggest.

The story starts from an old-as-the-hills premise: the orphan who grows up to marry — or, in this case, pine for — her guardian. In The Name of the Flower, the orphan role is fulfilled by Chouko, who, at the age of sixteen, lost her parents in a car accident. Overwhelmed by grief, Chouko stopped speaking or showing emotion until a distant relative took her into his home, admonished her for being silent, and suggested that she revive the house’s lifeless garden. Flash forward two years, and Chouko has emerged from her shell, still quiet but full of calm purpose and warm feelings for Kei, her guardian. Kei, however, is a troubled soul, a successful novelist who achieved notoriety for a string of nihilistic books written while he was in his early twenties. His eccentric garb (he wears a yukata just about everywhere) and brusque demeanor suggest a man in full flight from the outside world — or at least some painful memories.

The real drama begins when Chouko graduates from high school. Though Kei harbors feelings for Chouko, he worries about the gap in age and experience that separates them — he’s thirty, she’s eighteen — reluctantly acknowledging that it would be selfish to deny her a chance at independence. Despite Kei’s gruff prodding, however, Chouko can’t quite strike out on her own; her profound fear of abandonment keeps her tethered to Kei, even though she attends college and cultivates a small but supportive circle of friends. In short, the two are locked in a complicated, co-dependent relationship that’s about as healthy as Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester’s, though less sensational. (Kei doesn’t have a mad wife stashed in a remote corner of the house or a failed relationship with a French dancer in his past.) Only the intervention of other people — Akiyama, Kei’s sole friend, and Yousuke, Chouko’s classmate and not-so-secret admirer — prevents Kei and Chouko from sinking into a destructive cycle of clinging to and withdrawing from one another.

Throughout the series, Ken Saito walks a fine line between romanticizing Kei and Chouko’s relationship and recognizing its less savory aspects, generally erring on the side of sympathetic frankness. The series’ ending may be predictable, but the feelings it evokes in the reader are not, as we’re left to wonder whether Kei and Chouko can finally let go of their tragic pasts to embrace the present. At the same time, however, the story’s lighter moments — especially some wonderful comic business with Chouko’s friends, a group of hyper-verbal bibliophiles — suggest that Chouko, at least, is capable of feeling great joy and connecting with other people, a suggestion borne out by her relationship with the salty neighborhood septuagenarians, who stop by to trade gardening tips and upbraid Kei for his reclusive, sullen behavior.

Saito’s artwork is simple but lovely. Though her figures and faces aren’t especially distinctive, each of the principle characters’ appearance has been given careful consideration. Aspiring author Yousuke, for example, plays his part to the hilt, sporting a jacket with elbow patches and a tousled mop, while Chouko’s numerous experiments with hairstyles reveal a young woman just beginning to discover her own beauty. (I vacillated between ascribing Kei’s fondness for traditional garb to the author’s theory of the character and her desire to draw handsome men in period costume.) As one would imagine from a manga with the word “flower” in the title, floral imagery plays an important role in illustrating the characters’ inner lives, both in a conventional sense (e.g. faces superimposed atop images of roses) and in a more subtle fashion as well, with the plants’ own natural cycle of growth, death, and rebirth serving as a visual metaphor for the ebb and flow of Kei and Chouko’s relationship. Saito reserves her most detailed panels for Chouko’s garden, however, showing us not only what she planted, but also the physical space itself, from the trellises and vines to the rock formations — a gentle reminder that planting and tending flowers played a key role in Chouko’s emotional rehabilitation, just as it did for Mary Lennox in Burnett’s The Secret Garden.

At four volumes, The Name of the Flower is just the right length for the story that Saito wants to tell, allowing her enough space to explore Kei and Chouko’s relationship without resorting to false drama to delay its resolution. The prevailing mood is wistful and, at times, dark, but never melodramatic; Saito’s restraint is key to preventing The Name of the Flower from devolving into tawdry theatrics. It’s a surprisingly thoughtful character study that proves that shojo can be just as grown-up and sophisticated as its big sister josei. Highly recommended.

THE NAME OF THE FLOWER, VOLS. 1-4 • BY KEN SAITO • CMX • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Breaking Down Banana Fish, Vols. 5-6

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Welcome to the third installment of the Banana Fish roundtable!

This month, we tackle volumes five and six. With Yut-Lung conniving behind the scenes and Shorter’s loyalties stretched to the limit, everyone ends up in Papa Dino’s hands over the course of these volumes, and not all can survive. Ash orchestrates an elaborate escape, but his allegiance with the Chinatown gang may be lost forever.

I’m joined this round by Michelle Smith (Soliloquy in Blue), Khursten Santos (Otaku Champloo), Connie C. (Slightly Biased Manga), Eva Volin (Good Comics For Kids), and Robin Brenner (No Flying, No Tights).

Read our roundtable on volumes one and two here, and volumes three and four here.

On to part three! …

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The Sharing Knife: Horizon by Lois McMaster Bujold: B-

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From the front flap:
In a world where malices—remnants of ancient magic—can erupt with life-destroying power, only soldier-sorcerer Lakewalkers have mastered the ability to kill them. But Lakewalkers keep their uncanny secrets and themselves from the farmers they protect, so when patroller Dag Redwing Hickory rescued farmer girl Fawn Bluefield, neither expected to fall in love, join their lives in marriage, or defy both their kin to seek new solutions to the perilous split between their peoples.

Fawn and Dag see that their world is changing, and the traditional Lakewalker practices cannot hold every malice at bay forever. Yet for all the customs that the couple has challenged thus far, they will soon be confronted by a crisis exceeding their worst imaginings, one that threatens their Lakewalker and farmer followers alike. Now the pair must answer in earnest the question they’ve grappled with since they killed their first malice together: when the old traditions fail disastrously, can their untried new ways stand against their world’s deadliest foe?

Review:
If I didn’t like Dag and Fawn, The Sharing Knife: Horizon would be one of the most boring books I’ve ever read.

Having reached the end of their river voyage, Dag and Fawn pause long enough to witness the marriage of Whit and Berry before parting ways with Fawn’s brother and his new bride and heading to New Moon Cutoff, a Lakewalker camp where a renowned medicine maker, Arkady Waterbirch, lives. There, Dag finds an explanation for some of his abilities that is far more positive than the dark alternatives he’d been fearing and apprentices with the fastidious Arkady for several months.

Arkady is opposed to Dag practicing medicine on “farmers,” but when a child stricken with lockjaw needs his help, Dag goes willingly, knowing that he might be sacrificing the incredibly valuable apprenticeship as a result. The boy survives, but Dag’s actions throw New Moon camp into a tizzy so he decides to head back up north with newly pregnant Fawn rather than succumb to the restrictions the camp leader wants to oppose on him. A little way down the road, he’s joined by Arkady, staging his own protest against the leader’s decision.

Along the way they acquire various traveling companions—farmers and Lakewalkers both—until their party numbers more than two dozen. Dag fashions a trio of necklaces designed to help veil farmers’ grounds and protect them against malices. These are put to the test right at the end of the book when the party stumbles upon a particularly awful malice and Fawn (with help from Whit and Berry) proves again how resourceful and useful farmers can be if allowed to help. The implication is that the tale of this deed will spread far and wide and help foster a sense of cooperation between the two peoples.

Most of the book focuses on what Dag is learning and, true, it can be kind of interesting sometimes. Bujold has created an admirably consistent world for her characters to inhabit, so all of the detail about the healing techniques Dag is learning pretty much makes sense. It’s just that the narrative moves so slowly. I never do particularly well with a story whose whole plot is, “And then they walked a lot,” and that’s essentially what this book becomes in its second half.

Also, there’s too many characters at the end. Some of the new ones are interesting—I’m fond of Dag’s patroller niece, Sumac, and I can see why the half-Lakewalker siblings Calla and Indigo are important as a preview of what Dag and Fawn’s own children might be like—but many are nondescript. It’s easy to forget some of them are even there; I certainly did so more than once.

Ultimately, I did enjoy The Sharing Knife series and, though it’s easy to fault it for being too long and rambly, I don’t have any particular recommendations for how it could be made shorter.

Additional reviews of The Sharing Knife: Horizon can be found at Triple Take.

Off the Shelf: Six for Six!

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Welcome to another edition of Off the Shelf with MJ & Michelle! As always, I’m joined by Soliloquy in Blue‘s Michelle Smith.

It’s hard to believe we’re already on our sixth installment! This week, we’ve finally come down from our manhwa high, ready to look at some recent releases from Yen press, Viz Media, Dark Horse Manga, and Digital Manga Publishing.

MJ: So, we’ve been wallowing in manhwa for a couple of weeks, but now it’s time to return to our original 3+3 manga format. I’ve been doing some reading this week and I bet you have too! What have you pulled off the shelf recently?

MICHELLE: Well, I’ve recently read The Clique, originally a YA novel by Lisi Harrison that’s been adapted into a graphic novel by Yishan Li (who might be best known for Shoujo Art Studio and her work for Yaoi Press). It’s essentially the story of two 7th graders—Massie, the richest and most popular girl in school, …

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My Favorite Shojo Manga: Kaze Hikaru

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In Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics, author Paul Gravett argues that female mangaka from Riyoko Ikeda to CLAMP have often used “the fluidity of gender boundaries and forbidden love” to “address issues of deep importance to their readers.” Taeko Watanabe is no exception to the rule, employing cross-dressing and shonen-ai elements to tell a story depicting the “pressures and pleasures of individuals living life in their own way and, for better or worse, not always as society expects.”

Kaze Hikaru begins in 1863, a period of immense political and social upheaval in Japan, as the ruling class divided into factions loyal to the emperor (whose seat was in Kyoto), and factions loyal to the shogun (whose government was housed in Edo, or present-day Tokyo). Exacerbating the tension between these groups was the looming question of sakoku, or isolationism, a centuries-old policy that was crumbling in the face of military and economic pressure from the West, an unstable currency, and the dawning realization that certain Western technologies might have a role to play in the modernization of Japan. Taeko Watanabe draws on the events of the Bakumatsu (or late shogunate era, 1863 – 1867) for Kaze Hikaru, incorporating real historical figures into the story and dramatizing some of the major and minor conflicts of the period, from the Ikedaya Affair of 1864 to the Shinsengumi’s ambivalence about adopting rifles and canons into the samurai arsenal.

In the opening pages of Kaze Hikaru, Sei Tominaga, the heroine, lives a sheltered existence under the watchful eye of her father and older brother. Local rabble-rousers accuse the Tominagas of harboring spies at the medical clinic they operate and burn it to the ground, leaving Sei homeless and orphaned. Determined to avenge her family, Sei disguises herself as a boy, adopts the name Kamiya Seizaburo, and joins the Mibu-Roshi, a band of ronin who are fiercely loyal to the Tokugawa Shogunate. (The Mibu-Roshi would come to be known as the Shinsengumi, or “newly chosen corps.” At the height of their power, their ranks numbered around 300, and included a few members who were not born into the samurai caste.) Sei finds a mentor in the slightly older Okita Soji, an accomplished swordsman who acts as a den mother for new recruits. He accidentally discovers Sei’s identity, agreeing to keep her secret if she can demonstrate her worth as bushi, or an honorable warrior.

Watanabe’s art is clean and crisp, conveying enough period detail to firmly establish the setting without overwhelming the eye. A similar attention to facial features and body shapes also informs her nuanced and varied character designs, a godsend for a such a densely populated series. The action sequences are staged simply but effectively, conveying the skill and physical strength necessary to best an opponent in hand-to-hand combat, or suggesting the dangers of a night-time raid. But it’s in the everyday moments that Watanabe’s artistry really shines, as she has a talent for depicting the energy and activity of an urban marketplace, a soliders’ encampment, or a red-light district. We see the Shinsengumi recruits train, squabble, drink, gamble, and abuse their power with innkeepers and merchants, with careful attention paid to the objects they handle, the clothing they wear, and the posture they adopt as they interact with people of higher and lower social status.

Much of the drama — as well as the humor — in Kaze Hikaru stems from Sei’s attempts to fit in with her fellow soldiers by proving her worth as a man — no mean feat, given her small size, feminine appearance, and cultivated upbringing. (This is one of the few cross-dressing stories in which characters routinely ask the question on readers’ minds: “Aren’t you a little too pretty to be a guy?” Not surprisingly, some of the men desire Sei as an exceptionally handsome boy, further confusing our protagonist.) Sei’s greatest challenge, however, is concealing her deep love for Okita as both a mentor and a man. She wants Okita to respect her as a warrior, yet fears that her gender-bending transgression may prevent him from reciprocating her romantic feelings. It’s a classic shojo predicament — think of Lady Oscar and her manservant Andre — that simultaneously reveals Sei’s vulnerability and resolve. Her fierce commitment to the Shinsengumi, however, eventually prevails over her desire to reclaim her feminine identity, as she decides to honor Okita’s wish that she be Seizaburo and not Sei.

When contrasted with other Shojo Beat titles, Kaze Hikaru seems a little old-fashioned. Watanabe tends to favor neat grids and clearly-defined panels over the freer, more expressive layouts used in series like We Were There, Sand Chronicles, and Vampire Knight. The pace, too, is more stately, demanding a higher level of attention from the reader than most Shojo Beat titles; Watanabe’s characters discuss political matters, clan rivalries, and military strategy in considerable detail, giving some scenes the feeling of a Kurosawa movie. Even Sei and Okita’s friendship, rooted as it is in mutual warrior regard, seems out of step with the racier romances depicted in Absolute Boyfriend and B.O.D.Y.: would a school council president or magical girl swoon when she received a customized katana from the object of her affection, even if it was a sincere expression of his respect for her skill and courage?

Yet for all its squareness — or perhaps because of it — Kaze Hikaru remains my all-time favorite shojo manga. What makes Kaze Hikaru so compelling is the way in which Watanabe appropriates a very tired story — samurai seeks revenge in a time of social and political turbulence — and infuses it with a fresh, feminine sensibility. I might call it Satsuma Gishiden for Girls, but I think that downplays Watanabe’s achievement. She’s created an action-filled drama in the vein of The Rose of Versailles or They Were Eleven but transplanted the setting from the relatively safe, romanticized worlds of the French Revolution and outer space to a period in Japanese history in which the male-identified virtues of courage, discipline, and patriotism dominated public discourse. She may not have intended it as a bold political statement, but Watanabe has done something extraordinary: she’s given girls the freedom to project themselves into Japan’s past without gender constraints. American artists looking to connect with female readers would do well to read Kaze Hikaru for inspiration — there’s a great graphic novel to be written about a cross-dressing Minuteman or Union solider, and Sei would make a terrific prototype for its spunky heroine.

Review copies of volumes 17 and 18 provided by VIZ Media, LLC. This is an expanded version of a review that appeared at PopCultureShock on 5/17/07.

KAZE HIKARU, VOLS. 1-18 • BY TAEKO WATANABE • VIZ • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)