Features & Reviews

Off the Shelf: ParaChara!

July 28, 2010 by MJ and Michelle Smith 8 Comments

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

Once again, the Manga Moveable Feast is upon us, this month focusing on Ai Yazawa’s short josei series, Paradise Kiss (see Michelle’s introductory post here). As has become our habit (if, in fact, twice constitutes a habit), Michelle and I took the opportunity to discuss the series together, here in this week’s column!

MJ: As you might imagine, I’m quite thrilled with this month’s choice for the Manga Moveable Feast. Since we’ve each reviewed this series as a whole (me almost a year ago and you just this week), perhaps for today’s discussion we can take a moment to explore each of its main characters in-depth. I know I could talk about them for hours, and I’m curious to see how our impressions match up (or not). I certainly have my favorites and I bet you do too. Perhaps I’ll ask you to begin with yours?

MICHELLE: I think with Ai Yazawa there’s always a distinction to be made between characters who are excellently developed, three-dimensional people with fascinating flaws and characters who are one’s favorites by virtue of being just plain likeable. In the latter category, for example, I would place Isabella. She’s warm and nurturing, and completely devoted to George for accepting her as she is. If I had a problem, I’d like to pour my heart out to her while she made me some tasty stew.

But in terms of a character that one could simply talk about for days, I think I’d have to go with George. He’s maddening and unpredictable, but man, those moments when he looks hurt and vulnerable really pull at one’s heartstrings. It’s easy to see why Yukari fell for him….

Apollo 23 by Justin Richards: B

July 26, 2010 by Michelle Smith

From the back cover:
An astronaut in full spacesuit appears out of thin air in a busy shopping centre. Maybe it’s a publicity stunt.

A photo shows a well-dressed woman in a red coat lying dead at the edge of a crater on the dark side of the moon—beside her beloved dog ‘Poochie.’ Maybe it’s a hoax.

But as the Doctor and Amy find out, these are just minor events in a sinister plan to take over every human being on Earth. The plot centres on a secret military base on the moon—that’s where Amy and the TARDIS are.

The Doctor is back on Earth, and without the TARDIS there’s no way he can get to the moon to save Amy and defeat the aliens.

Or is there? The Doctor discovers one last great secret that could save humanity: Apollo 23.

Review:
In the run of the Doctor Who: New Series Adventures books, this one comes in at number 37. At some point I’ll go back and read the earlier ones, but I’m really enjoying the new season with the eleventh doctor and couldn’t resist the temptation to check out the first book to feature him and his spunky Scottish companion, Amy.

I’m used to media tie-in books being fairly crappy, so Apollo 23 was a pleasant surprise. Oh, it’s not great literature or anything, but the characterization of Eleven and Amy is very solid, with dialogue that I can easily hear the actors delivering and several lines that elicit a grin. The basic plot is somewhat reminiscent of Dollhouse: there’s a secret base on the moon where experiments are being carried out on prisoners. The goal of the experiment is ostensibly to remove memories of bad experiences that led to criminal activity, but the technology winds up being used to create “Blanks” whose personalities are stored elsewhere while alien minds are imprinted upon them.

There’s more involving quantum links between Earth and the moon, but it’s really a sort of alien invasion/body snatchers story. The Doctor gets to zip around impressing people with his brilliance while Amy does a lot of snooping about. If this were an episode of the show, I’m sure it would be a disappointment, but in this format, it’s a quick and enjoyable read that might help ease the pain of the long wait ’til the Christmas special. I’ll be reading more!

Manhwa Monday: Welcome, Hana!

July 26, 2010 by MJ 1 Comment

Welcome to another Manhwa Monday! Today, I’m very pleased to introduce a new contributor to Manhwa Bookshelf, Hana Lee. Hana will be providing reviews of untranslated Korean manhwa as well as manhwa news from Korea. She’s begun today with An introduction to Korean webcomics, where she discusses Korean webcomics as a whole–their scope and origins–and provides short reviews for two popular comics as well. It’s a wonderful post that you all must take a look at.

Speaking of origins, here’s a short bio for Hana that will soon appear on our “About” page:

Hana Lee is a biology graduate student living in California. By day, she experiments with yeast; by night, she spends her time knitting and eating good food. She is also a longtime fan of anime and manga, as well as an avid reader of books. Hana is proud to call herself Korean-American and maintains her fluency in Korean by watching K-dramas, reading manhwa …

An introduction to Korean webcomics

July 26, 2010 by Hana Lee 15 Comments

What are webtoons?

South Korea is widely known as being the most wired nation in the world. The majority of Koreans have near-constant access to high-speed Internet. Consequently, the Internet has become a vehicle for new artists to make themselves known to a wide audience. Bestselling novels often originate in online serials, top actors can be discovered through personal blogs—and many of the latest hit manhwa make their start as webcomics.

In Korean, webcomics are called “webtoons” (a portmanteau of “web” and “cartoons”) and are available for free viewing on major portal sites, who pay the manhwa-ga to update once or twice a week until the storyline reaches completion. Some are professional manhwa-ga who have already made their name in the industry, such as Huh Young-man, who published his latest series, Kkol, online.*

Others are unknowns with separate day jobs who create manhwa in their spare time. For example, Shin Eui-cheol’s popular webcomic, Schoolholic was based on his daily experiences as a teacher.

Korean webcomics have grown immensely popular in recent years. Several series have garnered sequels or spin-off series due to their success with online audiences; others have subsequently been published in print or adapted for the screen as Korean dramas or movies.

New form creates new function

Korean webcomics cover a diversity of genres—anywhere from science fiction to horror to humor—and push the boundaries of the medium in many ways. Typically, each chapter is published as one long continuous vertical strip, extending beyond the dimensions of a print page. Some series use traditional panelling but others have taken advantage of the scrolling navigation to experiment with different layouts.

For example, as the viewer moves down the page, the blue background in the prologue to Mt. Hyeon Arari begins as an underwater scene with fish and becomes a cloudless sky with birds.** The scrolling allows the manhwa-ga to imitate a camera panning effect as the viewer’s eye descends through the sky to end with a view of a mountainous island, toward which a boat is sailing.

Moreover, since webcomics are usually drawn by tablet and colored with computer graphics software, the range of artistic styles can range from black-and-white line art to photorealistic paintings. Most series are available in full color for every chapter. The online format also permits manhwa-ga to insert multimedia features to accompany their art, such as the background music in the prologue to Monsoon.***

Popular series gain large fan followings, and the online format allows manhwa-ga to read their viewer’s reactions and even interact with their fans through the forums. Series that are ongoing at the same time will occasionally hold mock competitions for viewer ratings or showcase cameos from characters in other series.

Where to find webcomics

Webcomics can be viewed for free on almost all the major Korean portal sites. The two largest portals boast the widest collection:

Webcomics are also available at these portals:

However, not many webcomics have been translated into English yet. Among the English-language manhwa publishers, only NETCOMICS has published webcomics:

The Great Catsby (originally serialized at Daum under the Korean title 위대한 캣츠비)
X Diary (originally serialized at Paran under the Korean title 남자친9)
Almost Highly Classified (originally serialized at Ecomix under the Korean title 2급비밀)

The start-up company iSeeToon plans on releasing Korean webcomics in English as iPhone/iPod apps. (They are also on Twitter at @iSeeToon.) The first series they’ve licensed will be made available in late August.

Reviews

Sunjeong Manhwa, by Kang Pool

The release of this series in late 2003 made it one of the first Korean webcomics. Its popularity is largely responsible for setting off the webcomic boom on the Korean Internet. As one can guess from the title, the series focuses on the love story of two couples, featuring slice-of-life moments from their romance. The protagonists are a second-year high school girl and an older salaryman who lives in the same apartment building, as well as another high school student who is similarly in love with a much older woman.

Although I originally felt dubious about the large age gap in both couples, the manhwa soon won me over. The age difference is not brushed aside but features as one of the main sources of conflict in the series. One of my favorite scenes occurs when Suk calls out Ha-yeong to go walk in the first snow. Ha-yeong wants to discourage Suk’s determined attempts to woo her since he is much younger than her in age. She tries to squelch the romantic mood by saying that she doesn’t like it because the snow is too thin. She tells Suk that she prefers snow that piles up and crunches under her feet.

Undaunted, Suk reaches down and starts making small mounds of snow with his bare hands. He tells her to walk on the mounds so that it will feel as if the snow has piled up thickly beneath her feet. Ha-yeong reluctantly walks forward and hears the snow crunching at her footsteps. The perspective switches to Suk, who watches Ha-yeong walking towards him and feels incredibly happy.

Moss by Yoon Tae-ho

This horror webcomic finished last summer and developed such a large fanbase that the award-winning director, Kang Woo-suk, acquired the rights to produce a live-action movie adaptation. The movie will be released later this summer, and the trailer can be viewed at the official website.

The story starts with the death of Ryu Mok-hyeong, who left his family in Seoul to live in the country. Upon his death, his long-estranged son, Hae-guk, who has recently divorced from his wife and lost his job, decides to make a new start by moving to the village where his father spent the last years of his life. This news is not welcome to the village’s inhabitants, who try to convince him to return.

Moreover, there seems to be some mystery about his father’s death, as Ryu Mok-hyeong was only 67 and did not appear to die from any illness. The villagers, and in particular, the sinister-looking village foreman, seem bent on discouraging Hae-guk from finding out anything about his father’s life in the village or the circumstances surrounding his death.

The art is highly stylized and detailed, featuring strong lines on top of a dark and desaturated color scheme. The overall effect is gorgeous and well-suited to the horror genre. In the panel to the left, Hae-guk wakes up to find one of the villagers snooping outside his window, after he had mentioned that he had found a pile of documents belonging to his late father.

* 꼴 or kkol is a word that literally means one’s “look” or “state”. It’s often used in a negative context, e.g. “What a [pitiful] state you’re in!” or “Get out of my sight!” It’s also a pun for “goal”. (↑)
** 아라리 or arari is a Buddhist term coming from the Sanskrit alali. It’s used to mean a wide natural landscape where there is no sign of people. (↑)
*** 장마 or jangma literally translates to “long rain” and refers to the summer monsoon season in Korea. (↑)

Antique Bakery, Vols. 1-4

July 24, 2010 by MJ 15 Comments

Antique Bakery, Vols. 1-4 | By Fumi Yoshinaga | Published by Digital Manga Publishing | Rated YA (16+)

As I begin this article, I find myself struck by the impossibility of saying anything about Antique Bakery that hasn’t already been said.

Undoubtedly Fumi Yoshinaga’s most celebrated work, at least on this side of the Pacific, this story of four men working in a western-style patisserie in Tokyo first hit US shelves in 2005, three years after completing its original run in Japan’s Wings magazine. The series is a Kodansha Manga Award-winner, a 2007 Eisner nominee, and entirely deserving of both.

Yoshinaga utilizes all her greatest strengths in this manga, rich characterization, rambling dialogue, and a deep love of food. The descriptions of the bakery’s various specialties is enough to make any pastry-lover swoon (enhanced by DMP’s scratch ‘n’ sniff covers). Her gift for gab brings this corner of Tokyo alive–especially the bakery’s customers, who wander in from all walks of life. Where Yoshinaga really outdoes herself, however, is with her delightful quartet of male leads.

The first volume begins with introductions, though it jumps around quite a bit in the story’s timeline. We meet a teenaged schoolboy who confesses his love to a male classmate, only to be brutally rejected; a similarly-aged schoolgirl who admires a braver girl from afar; a brilliant young boxer whose career has abruptly ended due to a physical defect; and a weary salaryman who finds an evening’s solace in the works of J.S. Bach and a shortcake from the department store bakery.

These disparate characters are finally brought together at the bakery “Antique.” Two of them are customers (the schoolgirl and the salaryman) who find their way to their neighborhood’s new bakery with a mixture of surprise and delight.

The others are inhabitants of the bakery itself. Yusuke Ono, the boy whose heart was crushed so cruelly in junior high, is the bakery’s genius pastry chef. The boy who rejected him, Keiichiro Tachibana, is its owner. And the boxer, Eiji Kanda, is Ono’s promising apprentice.

As the series goes on, each of these characters’ histories is further revealed, including their relationships to each other and the journeys that led them to the Antique. Ono’s story is told first, which, despite its rather dramatic beginning, is by far the least tragic. As it happens, his devastation over Tachibana’s rejection serves as a springboard to a new life of self-awareness and sexual freedom that takes him to Paris and back again.

Kanda’s tale is much sadder, though his love for sweets has at least given him a chance at a new career. Tachibana’s journey, however, is both somewhat tragic and opaque, its path forever altered by his childhood experience as a kidnapping victim.

The bakery’s fourth personality, Chikage Kobayakawa, Tachibana’s childhood friend and bodyguard, is not introduced until the second volume, and though his status as a bumbling hulk might normally doom him to a role of perpetual comic relief, he is actually one of the most poignant characters of the bunch.

Though much of the series maintains a slice-of-life sensibility, chronicling daily business at the bakery, broken up by various events and small personal dramas, the series’ final volume takes a more dramatic turn, as a new rash of child kidnappings commands Tachibana’s involvement.

Though this is undeniably the most plot-driven section of the series by far, it is still heavily rooted in characterization, as its main purpose is to reveal more about Tachibana’s motivations and to move him along to the next stage of his life. While this shift in tone seems rather sudden, it provides some unexpected momentum for the series’ final volume, while uncovering much substance within Tachibana, ultimately to great effect. It’s quite telling that the cover art for the fourth volume is the only one in the series to portray just one character.

Praising this series may be easy, but categorizing it is not. Western readers frequently classify it as yaoi, but that label seems woefully insufficient and even misleading. Though its cast certainly contains gay characters (more who actually identify as gay, frankly, than most yaoi I’ve personally read), romance is minimal and hardly the point.

This is not coy, homoerotic fantasy, nor is it anything approaching pornography. And, “Yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi” (No climax, no point, no meaning)? Utterly inappropriate when applied to this series.

This is not a negative statement about yaoi, by the way. I’m a fan, after all. This series just seems so far removed from anything in that genre, that calling it “yaoi” makes as much sense to me as categorizing Detroit Metal City with NANA because they’ve both got characters in bands. From the evidence I’ve seen (including the stack of BL manga sitting here in front of me), yaoi sits squarely in the romance genre. Antique Bakery simply does not.

What Antique Bakery has going for it is an impressively rich cast of major and minor characters, both gay and straight, male and female, upon which it places a lens much broader than can reasonably be allowed by romance. Its strength is its lack of any particular focus, unless you count a delightful obsession with sweets.

Lack of focus, however, does not constitute a lack of specifics. Each of the characters is fully-formed, regardless of what else is going on–even the ones who appear for only a chapter or two. And the series’ main characters are beautifully fleshed-out, even those with the most comedic roles.

Yoshinaga’s artwork is as unique and expressive as usual, though she makes particularly strong use of wordless panels in this series. The nearly three full wordless pages devoted to Tachibana’s reaction to his own cruelty to Ono (from a flashback in volume four) are some of the most affecting in the series.

However you choose to classify it, one thing is clear. Like the many cakes and pastries described within its pages, Antique Bakery is a delight few can resist.

Roundtable: Gerard & Jacques

July 23, 2010 by MJ, Michelle Smith, Danielle Leigh, Eva Volin, Robin Brenner and David Welsh 14 Comments

Fumi Yoshinaga’s Gerard & Jacques is a two-volume boys’ love manga that tells the story of Jacques, a young aristocrat swept into a new, terrifying world following the death of his father, and Gerard, the unlikely man who eventually becomes his new family.

Published in English by BLU Manga (Tokyopop’s BL imprint) Gerard & Jacques was recommended highly to me when I first began reading yaoi, but I’ll admit I had some difficulty with it my first time around, due to some specific content in the manga’s opening chapter which kept me from enjoying it at all at the time.

When I began to make plans for this special week of Yoshinaga, I decided to give Gerard & Jacques another try. I was also interested to hear what some of my favorite critics (and BL fans) thought of the work, so I invited a few of them along for the ride.

Joining me in discussion are …

A Drunken Dream and Other Stories

July 22, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

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.

iguanagirl The 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

July 22, 2010 by MJ 9 Comments

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

July 21, 2010 by MJ and Michelle Smith 7 Comments

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.

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

Amazon.com Widgets

Garden Dreams

July 20, 2010 by MJ 4 Comments

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

July 19, 2010 by MJ 5 Comments

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. …

All My Darling Daughters

July 19, 2010 by MJ 8 Comments

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.

Peepo Choo, Vol. 1

July 19, 2010 by Katherine Dacey

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

July 18, 2010 by MJ 16 Comments

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 …

Off the Shelf: Not Loafing

July 14, 2010 by MJ and Michelle Smith 11 Comments

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. …