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Breaking Down Banana Fish, Vols. 3-4

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Welcome to the second installment of the Banana Fish roundtable!

This month, we discuss volumes three and four of this classic shojo series, in which Ash gets out of jail, Eiji and Ibe overstay their visas, and everyone ends up on an ill-considered road trip to L.A., just in time to fall into the hands of a Chinese mafia family’s secret weapon. Topics this round include what makes a shojo manga, thoughts on the series’ few female characters, and everyone’s take on new bad guy, Yut-Lung.

Once again, I’m joined by Michelle Smith (Soliloquy in Blue), Khursten Santos (Otaku Champloo), Connie (Slightly Biased Manga), Eva Volin (Good Comics For Kids), Robin Brenner (No Flying, No Tights), and Katherine Dacey (The Manga Critic), all of whom graciously found time in their incredibly cramped schedules to indulge me in this discussion. …

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Manhwa Monday: Scanlation wars reach manhwa?

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Welcome to another Manhwa Monday! This week, a fannish battle that has been raging in the manga blogosphere for ages may be ready to brew amongst manhwa fans, thanks to fan frustration and some unpleasant statistics.

First, from the fannish side, manhwa summarizer Comic Seoul has had enough of readers requesting links to scanlations. It’s a worthy rant, pointing out that even the detailed summaries posted there violate copyright law.

And from the industry side, later in the week, JoongAng Daily (the English-language version of Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo) published this article by Sung So-young, naming illegal downloads as a major culprit in the decline of manhwa sales in South Korea while film and television based on manhwa properties thrive. …

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An Introduction to Keiko Takemiya’s To Terra

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Welcome to the May Manga Movable Feast! On the menu: Keiko Takemiya’s award-winning sci-fi epic To Terra. If you’ve never dined with us before, here’s how the MMF works: every month, the manga blogging community holds a week-long virtual book club in which we discuss a particular series or one-shot. Each day, the host shares links to new blog entries focusing on that work, while building an archive for the entire week’s discussion. At the end of the week, the group then selects a new host and a new “menu” for the following month.

Our “feast” has two goals. The first is to promote intelligent, in-depth analysis of manga we love (or, in some cases, hate). Previous contributions have run the gamut from straightforward reviews to an interview with Sexy Voice and Robo editor Eric Searleman, a guided tour through Kaoru Mori’s “Emmaverse,” and an essay contrasting Urushibara’s Mushishi with Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. The second goal is to foster a sense of community among avid manga readers. Everyone is invited to take part in the MMF, regardless of whether you’ve participated before. If you have your own blog, simply send me the link to your To Terra-themed post, whether it’s a brand new essay written expressly for the MMF or an older review that you’d like the share with the community, and I’ll include it in my daily round-up. If you don’t have a blog, send me your text and I’ll post your ideas here. (Click here for my email.) Discussion begins today and will run through the week until Sunday, May 30th.

Below, I’ve provided an overview of the series’ publication history, plot, and place in the manga canon. You can follow the discussion by checking the daily blog posts, clicking on the Manga Movable Feast tag, or visiting the MMF archive: http://mangacritic.com/?page_id=4766.

TO TERRA: THE PUBLICATION HISTORY

To Terra debuted in 1977 in Gekkan Manga Shonen. During its three-year run, To Terra nabbed two honors: the Shogakukan Manga Award and the Seiun Award, an annual prize for the best new science fiction published in Japan. (To Terra was the first manga to receive a Seiun Award; later winners would include Appleseed, Domu: A Child’s Dream, Urusei Yatsura, Cardcaptor Sakura, Planetes, and 20th Century Boys.)  The series was originally issued in tankubon format in 1980 by Asahi Sonorama, and reissued again in 2007 by Square Enix, around the same time Vertical, Inc. released the first English-language edition.

To Terra has enjoyed considerable popularity in Japan, thanks, in part, to several adaptations: a 1979 NHK radio drama; a 1980 movie, produced by Toei Animation; and a 2007 animated television series, produced by Aniplex.

TO TERRA: THE STORY

toterra2To Terra unfolds in a distant future characterized by environmental devastation. To salvage their dying planet, humans have evacuated Terra (Earth) and, with the aid of a supercomputer named Mother, formed a new government to restore Terra and its people to health. The most striking feature of this era of Superior Domination (S.D.) is the segregation of children from adults. Born in laboratories, raised by foster parents on Ataraxia, a planet far from Terra, children are groomed from infancy to become model citizens. At the age of 14, Mother subjects each child to a grueling battery of psychological tests euphemistically called Maturity Checks. Those who pass are sorted by intelligence, then dispatched to various corners of the galaxy for further training; those who fail are removed from society.

The real purpose of these checks is to weed out an unwanted by-product of S.D.-era genetic engineering: the Mu, a race of telepathic mutants. After decades of persecution, the Mu fled Terra, seeking refuge beneath the surface of Ataraxia. Under the leadership of Soldier Blue, they escaped detection by humans. But Soldier Blue is frail and dying (though he has chosen to project a youthful, sparkly-eyed appearance), and seeks a successor in Jomy Marcus Shin, a 14-year-old who possesses both the telepathic ability of a Mu and the hardier constitution of a human. As the series unfolds, we watch Jomy develop into a formidable leader, capable of inspiring passion, loyalty, and sacrifice among the Mu as they struggle to return to their homeworld. Running in counterpoint to Jomy’s story is that of Keith Anyan, an elite solider-in-training and future Terran leader. Keith enjoys a privileged position in human society. Yet he is plagued by doubt: why doesn’t he remember his childhood? Or his foster parents? And why does Mother refuse to eradicate the Mu when the state has deemed them a threat to mankind?

What makes this unabashedly Romantic mash-up of Star Trek, Star Wars, and 2001 both entertaining and moving is the richness of Keiko Takemiya’s universe. On the surface, To Terra is a beautifully illustrated soap opera, the kind of manga in which the heroes have terrific hair, wear smart jumpsuits, and keep psychic squirrels as pets. But To Terra can also be read a cautionary tale about mankind’s poor custodianship of the Earth; a scathing critique of eugenics and social engineering; a meditation on the relationship between memory and identity; and, most significantly, a critique of adult hypocrisy. It’s this multivalent quality that elevates To Terra from a mere allegory to an epic space opera as engaging, beautiful, and thought-provoking as Tezuka’s best work. (This review originally appeared at PopCultureShock on July 16, 2007.)

TO TERRA: ITS PLACE IN THE CANON

As anyone with a passing familiarity with the Magnificent 49ers knows, the 1970s were a watershed in the development of shojo manga. Not that shojo manga was an invention of the 1970s, of course; shojo manga traces its roots back to the 1910s, when girls’ magazines began running short, one-page gag strips, and underwent several major stages of development before evolving into the medium we know today. Until the mid-1960s, however, shojo manga was written by men for pre-teen girls; the stories were sweet, sentimental, and chaste, often revolving around family, class, and identity in the manner of a Frances Hodgson Burnett story. In an interview with manga scholar Matt Thorn, Keiko Takemiya’s former roommate Moto Hagio remembers the manga from this period:

In the girls’ comics, you would have stories in which the woman you thought was the mother turns not to be the mother, and the real mother is actually somewhere else. There was a variety of settings. For example, the poor child in the story turns out to actually come from a rich family, or the child of a rich family turns to have been adopted from a poor family. And one of the standard device was amnesia… It appeared so often, it makes me think that what with the war and the harsh social conditions, people had an unconscious desire to forget everything. So the heroine goes off in search of her real mother, but along the way she develops amnesia, and ends up being taken care of by a string of kind strangers.

Another popular motif was ballet. There was quite a boom in girls’ comics about ballet for a while. For example, the heroine would be a girl from a poor family who’s really good at ballet, but she loses the lead to an untalented girl from a rich family. In the standard story, there would be a mean girl and a kind-hearted heroine, and there would be a very clear-cut struggle between good and evil.

maryloubunkoIn the mid-1960s, pioneering female artist Yoshiko Nishitani began writing stories aimed at a slightly older audience. Nishitani’s Mary Lou, which made its debut in Weekly Margaret in 1965, was one of the very first shojo manga to document the romantic longings of a teenage girl. (As Thorn notes in “The Multi-Faceted World of Shoujo Manga,” the heroines of early shojo stories were too young for crushes and dates, so romance was the provenance of older, secondary characters.) Though tame by contemporary standards, Mary Lou’s emphasis on the heroine’s emotional life and relationships proved highly influential, paving the way for other artists to write stories that focused on the everyday concerns of teenagers, rather than the melodramatic travails of poor little rich girls.

Nishitani was a pioneer in another sense as well: she inspired dozens of women to enter what had been an overwhelmingly male profession. Those artists who followed Nishitani into the field in the 1970s — women like Takemiya, Hagio, and Ryoko “Rose of Versailles” Ikeda — built on her legacy, helping complete the transformation of shojo manga from staid stories about good girls to a multi-faceted storytelling medium capable of dramatizing the characters’ inner thoughts as forcefully as their physical actions. The 49ers embraced genres such as science fiction and fantasy, and developed new ones as well: the entire boys’ love industry owes a debt to Hagio and Takemiya for ground-breaking stories such as “The Heart of Thomas” and The Song of the Wind in the Trees. Whatever the subject matter, however, the 49ers used the comics medium to explore fundamental questions about identity — what constitutes family? what does it mean to be female? what distinguishes the child from the adult? — and love in all its manifestations, from maternal to carnal.

To Terra, which addresses many of the themes found in Takemiya’s other works, is significant precisely because it isn’t shojo; Takemiya was one of the first female artists to write for a boys’ magazine, bringing a distinctly shojo sensibility to her portrayal of Keith and Jomy’s emotional lives. The popular success of To Terra created opportunities for other manga-ka to cross over as well, a trend important enough for Frederick Schodt to make note of it in Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics (1983). Contemporary artists such Rumiko Takahashi, CLAMP, Yellow Tanabe, and Hiromu Arakawa owe a debt to Takemiya, as she helped demonstrate what seems patently obvious to us now: that women are just as capable of writing for male audiences as men are. Oh, and we can draw a pretty bitchin’ space ship if the story calls for one.

FOR FURTHER READING

Aoki, Deb. “Interview: Keiko Takemiya, Creator of To Terra and Andromeda Stories.” About.com: Manga. January 22, 2008. (Accessed 5/23/10.)

Thorn, Matt. “The Moto Hagio Interview.” The Comics Journal 269 (July/August 2005). (Accessed 5/23/10.)

Thorn, Matt. “The Multi-Facted Universe of Shoujo Manga.” Conference paper. 2008. (Accessed 5/23/10.)

AX, Vol. 1: A Collection of Alternative Manga

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The next time someone dismisses manga as a “style” characterized by youthful-looking, big-eyed characters with button noses, I’m going to hand them a copy of AX, a rude, gleeful, and sometimes disturbing rebuke to the homogenized artwork and storylines found in mainstream manga publications. No one will confuse AX for Young Jump or even Big Comic Spirits; the stories in AX run the gamut from the grotesquely detailed to the playfully abstract, often flaunting their ugliness with the cheerful insistence of a ten-year-old boy waving a dead animal at squeamish classmates. Nor will anyone confuse Yoshihiro Tatsumi or Einosuke’s outlook with the humanism of Osamu Tezuka or Keiji Nakazawa; the stories in AX revel in the darker side of human nature, the part of us that’s fascinated with pain, death, sex, and bodily functions.

Founded in 1997, AX was a direct descendant of Garo (1964-2002), Katsuichi Nagai’s seminal avant garde manga magazine. As historian Paul Gravett explains in his introduction to A Collection of Alternative Manga, both publications served an essential purpose, providing artists a place to break free of the influence of commercial manga publishing — its rigid house styles, tight deadlines, strong editorial presence, and reader polls — and find more idiosyncratic forms of expression. At the same time, Gravett argues, Garo and AX gave artists a platform for speaking out against the dominant culture, to loudly question the truth that everyone can and should be “doing one’s best” while trying hard to fit in.

The thirty-three stories in A Collection of Alternative Manga nicely illustrate Gravett’s thesis, encompassing a true diversity of styles and subject-matters. At one end of the spectrum are artists such as Yuka Goto, whose work reflects a heta-uma, or “bad-good” aesthetic, with crudely-drawn figures in absurd situations (her feuding neighbors resolve their differences with a judo match), while at the other are artists such as Takato Yamato, whose intricate, naturalistic style becomes a vehicle for juxtaposing pornographically beautiful human bodies with explicit images of decay and rot. Most of the work in AX falls somewhere in between: the magical realism of Akina Kondo (“Rainy Day Blouse and The Umbrella”); the primitivist abstraction of Otoya Mitsusashi (“Sacred Light”); the horror-comedy of Kazuichi Hanawa (“Six Paths of Wealth”); the kawaii-grotesque of Mimyo Tomozawa (“300 Years”). Then there are stories which are parodies in the truest sense, borrowing the visual language of shonen manga for dark farce: Namie Fujieda’s “The Brilliant Ones,” in which an earnest group of students tries to help the class loser find a way to shine — even after his body has exploded into a thousand small parasites — and Tomohiro Koizumi’s “Stand By Me,” a story about a pair of peeping teens caught in the act.

For me, the biggest obstacle to enjoying the collection — as opposed to appreciating it — is that for every story like Ayuke Akiyama’s lovely, folkloric “In the Gourd” or Toranasuke Shimada’s historical phantasmagoria “Enrique Kobayashi’s El Dorado,” there are two that read like stunts, deliberate attempts to provoke, and maybe even disgust, the audience by rubbing its nose in taboo subjects and uncomfortable truths. Such confrontational art can be thought-provoking, to be sure, making us reconsider socially determined categories such as “parent,” “teacher,” and “child”: Yusaku Hanakuma’s “Puppy Love” is one such example, a bizarre, funny, upsetting story in which a woman gives birth to a litter of puppies and resolves to raise them as normal children. The struggles she and her “sons” face remind us of how difficult it is for anyone to raise a child whose behavior or appearance makes others uncomfortable; it’s With the Light, minus the easy sentiment (and with a dollop of David Cronenberg’s perverse sense of humor).

The need to elicit a strong, visceral response from the reader can also inspire puerile excess. Shigiheru Okada (“Me”), Saito Yunosuke (“Arizona Sizzler”), Kataoko Toyo (“The Ballad of Non-Stop Farting”), and Takashi Nemoto’s (“Black Sushi Party Piece”) repeated depictions of body parts and bodily fluids reminded me of sixth graders testing out every permutation of a new swearword to see which ones had the greatest shock value. Other stories, such as Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s “Lover’s Bride,” inspire an immediate ewwwww, and maybe a chuckle, but not much else: what deeper truths could possibly be gleaned from a sad-sack character’s decision to woo a primate instead of a human?

My other stumbling block to fully embracing AX is the way in which female characters are depicted in stories such as Yuichi Kiriyama’s “A Well-Dressed Corpse,” Hiroji Tani’s “Alraune Fatale,” and Osamu Kanna’s “The Watcher.” The female characters often seem more like receptacles for male anger, sexual aggression, or disappointment than they do actual human beings. I suppose one could argue that these artists are simply exaggerating a tendency found in manga across the spectrum, making explicit what’s normally implicit in a lot of material directed at male audiences. Yet none of these artists seem to be critiquing the male gaze in any meaningful way; they cast a pitiless, often lascivious eye on their female subjects, reducing them to a monstrous assortment of breasts and mouths and legs. It’s to editor Sean Michael Wilson’s great credit that he includes so many distinctive female voices in the anthology as well, preventing AX from becoming too dourly macho or grossly juvenile.

Yet for all my discomfort and distance from the material, I can’t look away. As a historian, AX excites me, providing a meticulously curated introduction to Japan’s underground comics scene. As a reader, AX challenges me to move beyond my notion of what constitutes manga, helping me understand what artists like Yoshihiro Tatsumi and Yoshiharu Tsuge were trying to do in the 1950s and 1960s with their “manga that isn’t manga”: to push the medium outside its comfort zone, to show us ugly truths, to make us laugh with recognition and discomfort, and to encourage artistic expression that, in Gravett’s words, is “as personalized as handwriting or a signature.” Recommended.

Review copy provided by Top Shelf. AX, Vol. 1: A Collection of Alternative Manga will be released on July 15, 2010.

AX, VOL. 1: A COLLECTION OF ALTERNATIVE MANGA • EDITED BY SEAN MICHAEL WILSON, WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY PAUL GRAVETT • TOP SHELF • NO RATING • 400 pp.

Hinako Takanaga at Yaoi-Con 2010

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The big news in the yaoi corner today is last night’s announcement from DMP that Hinako Takanaga will be appearing as their special guest at this year’s Yaoi-Con.

I’ll admit I’m ambivalent on Takanaga. Though I enjoyed You Will Fall in Love (sequel You Will Drown in Love somewhat less so), my greatest criticism of it was the same as the first work of hers I read, Little Butterfly. I know everyone loves Little Butterfly, but my impression of it when I first read it (when I had not yet read a lot of yaoi) was that the main relationship was too rushed to be truly believable. Though Kate Dacey’s recent review has inspired me to put Little Butterfly back on my list for another try, I can’t help but wish that I could experience Takanaga over the course of a much longer series.

As you know, I have a few chronic complaints about yaoi in general, but the one that frustrates me most often is the fact that the genre (and I don’t know who to attribute this to… publishers? fans? both?) doesn’t take romance seriously enough. It is hard to write good romance, with the right balance of careful pacing and giddy excitement, and there are not all that many instances in which this can be accomplished in under five volumes.

People have done it. Fumi Yoshinaga manages better than most (Ichigenme… The First Class is Civil Law is one of my favorite short yaoi series) and Korean manhwa-ga Rakun (aka Yeri Na) even managed it in a single volume with U Don’t Know Me. But these successes are rare, at least in my experience reviewing yaoi manga over the past couple of years.

The point I’m slowly coming around to here, is that I’ll soon get my wish! Hinako Takanaga’s The Tyrant Falls in Love stands at five volumes (and counting?) and though there are things I’ve read about it that suggest it may not be quite my kind of story in other ways, I’m pretty interested in seeing what Takanaga does with something longer than three volumes. (Question to fans: do I need to read Challengers first?)

Check out my post at Examiner.com for the official word on Takanaga’s appearance at Yaoi-Con. Here’s the info from DMP on The Tyrant Falls in Love:

THE TYRANT FALLS IN LOVE, VOL. 1, Rated M+ (for ages 18+), MSRP: $12.95, Available: August 18, 2010, B6 Size, June’ Imprint

University study Tetsuhiro Morinaga has been in love with his homophobic, violent and tyrannical sempai Souichi Tatsumi for more than four years now. Even though he’s told Tatsumi how he feels and even managed to steal a kiss, expecting anything more seems like nothing more than the stuff of dreams… That is until the long-oppressed Morinaga gets his biggest chance ever. Might his unendingly unrequited love finally be returned?

The Times of Botchan, Vols. 1-4

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Reading The Times of Botchan reminded me of watching Alexander Sakurov’s cryptic 2002 film Russian Ark. Both employ a similar gambit: a literary figure from the country’s past wanders through a landscape populated by real people who played pivotal roles in its modernization. In Russian Ark, the author/protagonist role is filled by the Marquis de Custine, a French aristocrat who published Empire of the Czar: Journey Through Eternal Russia in 1839, while in The Times of Botchan the role is fulfilled by Soseki Natsume (1867-1916), the defining novelist of the Meiji Restoration. Neither Ark nor Botchan employs a clear, linear narrative; both works are episodic — even, at times, picaresque — in nature as their principle characters rub shoulders with poets, composers, czars, and politicians.

When we first meet Natsume, he is writing a novel called Botchan, a short, satirical work about a energetic young man who suffers from a Holden Caufield-esque desire to expose phoniness wherever he goes. Nastume hopes Botchan will help him achieve catharsis from a vague but nagging sense of anxiety brought on by the period’s social, political, and economic upheavals, from the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement to the first murmurs of suffragism.1 Though we occasionally see Natsume in his study drafting chapters, or admiring the inky paw prints left behind by his cat, much of the manga is devoted to Natsume’s travels through Tokyo, which brings him into contact with historical figures from An Jung-Geun, an activist who assassinated the Korean governor in 1909, to Hiruko Haratsuka, a feminist active in the Seito suffrage movement of the 1910s, to Lafcadio Hearn, a Western journalist whose fascination with old Japan inspired him to write Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things.

Some of these encounters are the jumping off point for vignettes about Westerners living in Japan, or the state of Japanese literature, while others are mere coincidence and treated in just one or two panels. The resulting manga feels like a tableau, or the Japanese equivalent of a guided tour through Colonial Williamsburg, as our unseen narrator identifies the sprawling cast of characters and mentions key events in Meiji-era history.

Despite its historical ambitions, The Times of Botchan is best read for its quieter moments. Jiro Taniguchi creates intimate scenes that require little or no dialogue to convey their nuance: two acquaintances walking silently through a snowing streetscape, Natsume working in his study. Small details capture the transitional nature of the period, and speak volumes about the characters’ ambivalent relationship with the West, with some embracing European dress, others flatly rejecting it, and most, like Natsume, striking a compromise, combining a yukata with a button-down shirt and bowler hat.

Sekikawa’s script, however, is less artful than Taniguchi’s visuals, as the omniscient narrator often supplies the reader with information that can be readily inferred from the pictures. In one scene, for example, the writer Rintaro “Ogai” Mori2 returns to his family after a prolonged stay in Europe. He intends to tell his parents that he loves — and plans to marry — a young German dancer named Elise Weigert, but cannot bring himself to do so now that he is back on Japanese soil. Taniguchi’s illustrations instill in us a powerful sense of Mori’s estrangement from his roots, using his characters’ body language and placement within the picture plane to convey the emotional distance between Mori and his parents, but Sekikawa’s narrator intrudes on the scene:

At that moment, Ogai felt, for the first time, that he was back in Japan. In this country, individualism was not regarded as a personal virtue, the ‘family’ had to be considered. Ogai was unable to speak the words he had prepared and became mute as a fish.

Such heavy-handed interjections suggest that Sekikawa doesn’t trust us to decode moments of mystery, poetry, or ambiguity on our own; at least the Marquis de Custine never bothered to explain why Nicholas II and victims of the Kursk disaster haunted the same wing of the Hermitage.

The Times of Botchan‘s other great flaw is its deadly serious tone. The two novels that Natsume wrote during the period portrayed in the manga, I Am a Cat and Botchan, are both satirical, filled with wry observations about human nature and sharp critiques of pomposity, greed, toadyism, and empty-minded embrace of Western mores.3 Though the manga is filled with visual signifiers for both works — cats, in particular, are a recurring motif throughout the first two volumes — the manga lacks the delicate touch of either novel; one might reasonably conclude from Sekikawa’s narration that Botchan was a Zola-esque expose on the evils of Westernization, rather than a comedy about a young teacher coping with the inept faculty at a podunk boys’ boarding school.

From time to time, however, the narrative snaps out of its staid, vaguely pompous tone. In one genuinely funny scene, for example, Japan’s leading literary figures gather in the home of a prominent politician for a meeting of “The Perpetual and Immutable Literary Circle.” Two are asked to compose a poem on the spot. The first, intoned by the host, is greeted with respectful, if vague praise (“It reminds one of the tranquility and beauty of Turner’s paintings,” one opines):

The great canon is heard from afar
On the left diagonal of the hands that hold the horse’s reins.

The second stuns them into uncomfortable silence:

When the cowherd makes a poem
A new air rises in the world.

A lively debate follows, with some detecting a whiff of socialism in the cowherd’s profession, and others praising it for its direct simplicity; not until the group’s acknowledged expert interprets both poems does the group reach consensus on their quality. The punchline comes in the final panel, when one member acknowledges that the first poem made no sense. In that brief scene, Sekikawa and Taniguchi capture the spirit of Botchan without slavishly recreating a scene from it; one could almost imagine the savage nicknames that a younger, less pretentious member of the circle might lavish on his elders as they debated the merits of both poems.

In another rare moment of levity, Natsume witnesses a young suffragette making out with her paramour in a restaurant, noting the length — three and a half minutes — and intensity of their kiss. Taniguichi draws that kiss in almost pornographic detail, with panel after panel of the two lovers’ mouths drenched in saliva, in essence showing us how Natsume views their contact, with a mixture of prurient fascination and revulsion. Sesikawa and Taniguchi then takes things a step further, borrowing a page from Milos Foreman’s Amadeus to suggest how this brief, everyday experience found its way into the pages of Botchan, with the suffragette morphing neatly into the Madonna, a social-climbing temptress who switches romantic allegiances when it suits her interest.

Given the didactic tone and frequent allusions to unfamiliar historical figures, I’m hesitant to give The Times of Botchan an unequivocal endorsement. Some readers will find the book long-winded, confusing, and perhaps even a little boring. But for those already enamored of Taniguchi’s superb draftsmanship or well-versed in Japanese culture, The Times of Botchan offers readers a lovely reward: a window into one of the most fascinating periods in Japanese history, and the creative process of one its most important voices.

NOTES

1. The Freedom and People’s Rights Movement in Japan began in the 1870s. Building on the reforms established in the Charter Oath of 1868 (which abolished Japan’s rigid class structure, among other provisions), urban intellectuals lobbied for the drafting of a constitution and the creation of a parliament.

2. Ogai Mori is best known to Western audiences for his novels The Wild Geese and Sansho the Bailiff, the latter being the basis of Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1954 film.

3. As translator Joel Cohn notes, Botchan (the novel) occupies a similar place in the Japanese canon as Catcher in the Rye and Huckleberry Finn, and is a standard text in most high schools. See the introduction to Natsume Soseki, Botchan, Translated by J. Cohn (New York: Kodandsha International, 2005).

Review copy of volume four provided by the publisher. This is an expanded version of a review that appeared at PopCultureShock on 6/5/2007. The original review focused on volumes 1-3 of the series.

Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers: B+

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From the back cover:
Murder is hardly the best way for Lord Peter and his bride, the famous mystery writer Harriet Vane, to start their honeymoon. It all begins when the former owner of their newly acquired estate is found quite nastily dead in the cellar. And what Lord Peter had hoped would be a very private and romantic stay in the country soon turns into a most baffling case, what with the misspelled “notise” to the milkman and the intriguing condition of the dead man—not a spot of blood on his smashed skull and not a pence less than six hundred pounds in his pocket.

Review:
Busman’s Honeymoon is the final Lord Peter novel written exclusively by Dorothy L. Sayers. (Two collections of short stories follow, as well as a pair of novels completed by Jill Paton Walsh based on material written by Sayers.) Therefore, while there is a case to be solved, the real focus of the book is on giving beloved characters Peter and Harriet a fitting send-off.

After six years of struggle, Peter and Harriet have finally managed to get married and have gone off to Talboys, a country cottage in the village Harriet lived in as a child, for their honeymoon. Concerns about safely transporting Peter’s stock of port or unclogging some terribly sooty chimneys give way to investigation when the body of the former owner is discovered in the cellar.

There’s not actually a lot of emphasis on the case. Investigation mostly consists of some interviews, a few theories, and then sudden inspiration that leads to the reconstruction of the crime and a ready confession. At one point I was surprised to realize I was 75% of the way through the book and so little had actually happened on the detecting front. Instead, more attention is paid to Peter and Harriet as they make peace with being so happy, an emotion that actually produces some unease, and it’s a testament to the likability of these characters that reading about their contentment is actually interesting.

The end of the book is also fairly intriguing, though a bit odd. Peter catches the culprit, and that’s usually where these things end. This time, there’s a random visit to the Wimsey family home—complete with matter-of-fact discussion about ghostly residents—followed by a depiction of Peter’s descent into guilty despair because he has, through his efforts, sent someone to the gallows. We’ve heard about his dark moods before, but never really seen him in the throes of one. Harriet must learn how to deal with these episodes in a way that doesn’t belittle Peter and, indeed, much of the process of getting used to one another involves recognizing temptations to exert influence and forcing oneself to allow the other to remain fully independent.

As a final installment, it works pretty well. That said, though I had originally been on the fence as to whether to read the Sayers/Walsh novels, I now think that I won’t be able to resist getting another glimpse at the Wimseys. Heck, I don’t even need there to be a mystery, really. As Busman’s Honeymoon proved, with these characters, a case is not necessary for the result to be enjoyable.

Mourning CMX

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It’s a sad day in manga fandom when the publisher brave enough to bring us Reiko Shimizu’s Moon Child is forced to close its doors.

Does that seem like a strange reaction to today’s unfortunate news? Perhaps it is. It was, however, my very first thought when first heard of DC Comics’ plans to shutter CMX in just over a month.

I was first introduced to CMX Manga via Shaenon Garrity’s fantastic Overlooked Manga Festival, where she talked about (you guessed it) Moon Child. This was not only my first exposure to a CMX title, but also my first real insight into just how gorgeously cracktastic classic shojo can be.

It was a revelation. It was as though someone had rifled through the leftovers of my rusty, once-teenaged mind, delighted in the sci-fi-laced weirdness it found there …

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Future Lovers Available on Kindle

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One press release that got pushed to the bottom of my inbox during last week’s manga industry shakeup came from Animate USA, announcing two more Libre Publishing yaoi titles for the Kindle. Libre’s jump to Kindle is not news and it’s been reported here before, but what is news is the inclusion of one of my all-time favorite yaoi titles, Saika Kunieda’s Future Lovers.

Future Lovers is one of those few yaoi titles fans of the genre can feel confident recommending to non-fans, standing alongside works by est em and Fumi Yoshinaga. It’s a rare brand of yaoi, featuring a couple of schoolteachers who fall in love and must deal with what that means for them at home, at work, and in the bedroom. It’s both sexy and down-to-earth, a combination not at all easy to come by. Not convinced? Check out my reviews of volumes one and two, or better yet, this fantastic review by Manga Curmudgeon David Welsh. …

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Manhwa Monday: Anticipating 12 Creators

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Welcome to another Manhwa Monday! A bit of recent news comes from the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, where British publisher Fanfare/Potent Mon debuted Korea As Viewed By 12 Creators, their long-awaited follow-up to 2006’s Japan As Viewed By 17 Creators. The book’s official PR describes it as, “Twelve insightful short graphic stories into the ‘Hermit Kingdom’, six by European and six by indigenous creators, including award winning Park Heung-yong and ‘Best Manga 2006’ artist Vanyda.”

Originally listed as a winter release in Fanfare’s 2007 catalogue (and again in 2009‘s), this has been a highly-anticipated title for quite some time. A quick check-in with About.com‘s Deb Aoki confirms that the book did indeed appear on the convention floor!

Due for full release in July, word on the cyber-street suggests that this collection …

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We Were There, Vol. 10

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By Yuki Obata
Viz, 200 pp.
Rating: T+ (Older Teen)

After volume nine’s jump to the future, We Were There returns again to the past. This volume follows Yano in his first year away from Nanami as seen through the eyes of a classmate, Sengenji. While things continue to decline for Yano’s mother, Yano strives desperately to cling to his long-distance relationship with Nanami, even if this means shutting her out of everything he’s going through. Meanwhile, Yamamoto enters the picture once again and Sengenji battles her own feelings for Yano.

So much of this series revolves around questions of trust, and once again Yano falls short–not in terms of his own trustworthiness, but rather in his inability to trust Nanami with the things she most needs to know. Though he tries to justify this as concern for her, it’s obvious that what he’s really protecting is himself. “Even if wounds heal, scars are left behind,” he says to Takeuchi over the phone, following a labored metaphor about broken plants created to justify shielding Nanami from further truth. “So it’s better not to experience hardship if you don’t have to.”

Even watching Yano stumble, however, it’s impossible not to feel for him, and it’s exactly this kind of emotional ambiguity that this series handles so well. Every poor choice and heartfelt miscalculation is perfectly in-character, forcing readers to examine their own reactions just as in real life.

With its thoughtful tone and exceptional insight into the human mind and heart, We Were There continues to be a must-read for fans of mature shojo.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at PopCultureShock.

Saturn Apartments, Vol. 1

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If I’ve learned anything from my long love affair with science fiction, it’s this: there’s no place like home. You can boldly go where no man has gone before, you can explore new worlds and new civilizations, and you can colonize the farthest reaches of space, but you risk losing your way if you can’t go back to Earth again.

In Saturn Apartments, the physical distance between us and our terrestrial home is small, but the emotional distance is great. The story takes place in a future where environmental devastation has prompted humans to decamp the Earth’s surface for its atmosphere, where they build an elaborate structure that encircles the planet. That floating city resembles Victorian London in its rigid class system and physical organization: the poorest people live in its bowels, in an artificially lit environment, while the richest live on the uppermost levels, enjoying natural light and unspoiled views of Earth.

Our guide to this stratified world is fourteen-year-old Mitsu, a professional window washer who lives on the lowest level. By virtue of his job, Mitsu has access to the entire city. For a boy who’s joined the workforce at an early age, who lives in a cramped room with few possessions, and whose neighbors suffer the ill effects of chronic light deprivation, his clients, most of whom live on the top floors, seem ridiculous and exacting. At the same time, however, they intrigue Mitsu; not only do they give him a glimpse into a more affluent way of life, they also own things — animals, machines, plants — that connect them to the Earth’s abandoned surface.

As these organisms and objects suggest, all of Saturn‘s characters suffer a strong sense of terrestrial homesickness. Midway through volume one, for example, Mitsu meets an eccentric zoologist who maintains an enormous private aquarium in his apartment. The man’s aquarium and his bizarre request that Mitsu splash water on the windows — something that’s impossible to do at an altitude of 35,000 kilometers — initially seem like a wealthy man’s whims; that is, until Mitsu learns that the zoologist is trying to create a more congenial environment for the aquarium’s prized specimen, the last surviving whale from a failed effort to reintroduce mammals into Earth’s oceans.

In other chapters, the characters’ longing to go home is more palpable. When Mitsu tackles his first assignment, for example, he finds himself at the very site where his father Akitoshi, also a window-washer, plunged to his death. Mitsu sees evidence of his father’s presence — a frayed rope, handprints on the side of the building — and though he interprets the evidence as proof of Akitoshi’s desperate struggle for survival, Mitsu is briefly seized by the thought that his father wanted to die, that Akitoshi cut the safety line so that he might fall back to Earth. Mitsu himself struggles with that same impulse; caught off guard by a strong solar wind, he finds himself dangling precariously above the Earth, mesmerized by the sight of the African continent spreading below him:

saturn_earth

Only the intervention of Jin, an experienced co-worker, snaps Mitsu out of his dangerous reverie and spurs the boy to take corrective action. Once safely tethered to a lift, however, Mitsu peers over the side for another glimpse of the surface, resolving to one day “find the spot down there where Dad landed.”

Like Planetes, Saturn Apartments is less a tale of intergalactic derring-do than of ordinary people doing extraordinarily dangerous, tedious work in extreme environments. Most of what we learn about the characters comes from observing them on the job, as they banter with co-workers, perform routine tasks, and respond to crises. In Saturn Apartments, Akitoshi’s death — an event that took place five years before the story begins — casts a long shadow over the window washer’s guild. The mystery of what happened to Akitoshi plays an important role in advancing the plot, to be sure, but most of the story explores the way in which Mitsu comes to terms with his father’s death through learning Akitoshi’s profession and befriending Akitoshi’s colleagues.

The other thing that Saturn Apartments and Planetes have in common is beautiful, detailed artwork that conveys a strong sense of place. Hisae Iwaoka’s landscapes bustle with activity, showing us how the apartment dwellers go about their daily business. Each level has its own distinctive appearance, from the basement tenements — where Mitsu and Jin live — to the middle level — a tidy grid of schools and mid-rise buildings dotted with grassy parks — to the very top — a collection of spacious lofts with enormous windows. Iwaoka renders all of these environments in gently rounded, slightly imperfect lines that make the complex look warmly inviting, rather than sterile and prefabricated; even the very lowest levels of the complex are appealing, their close yet friendly quarters reminiscent of fin-de-siecle Delancey and Mulberry Streets.

Saturn Apartments is many things — a coming-of-age story, a set of character studies, a meditation on man’s place in the greater universe — but like all good space operas, its real purpose is to affirm the truth of T.S. Eliot’s words, “We shall not cease from exploration/And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time.” Highly recommended.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC. Volume one of Saturn Apartments will be released on May 18, 2010. To read the first eight chapters online, visit the SigIKKI website.

SATURN APARTMENTS, VOL. 1 • BY HISAE IWAOKA • VIZ • 192 pp. • TEEN (13+)

Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You 4 by Karuho Shiina: A-

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When Sawako Kuronuma was ostracised by her class due to her gloomy disposition and resemblance to a character from a horror movie, she never would have guessed that there are so many nuances to interactions with other people. Because of her inexperience in this area, she hasn’t learned to be distrustful, and so accepts as genuine the friendly advances of Kurumi, a girl who wants Kazehaya-kun for herself.

Kurumi does everything within her power to convince Sawako, who is growing increasingly curious about the depth of her feeling for Kazehaya, that what she feels for him isn’t anything special, and that she ought to try chatting up some other guys for the sake of comparison (then arranges for Kazehaya to witness this, of course). Things backfire for Kurumi, though, as Sawako manages to interpret this advice in the best possible light and ends up confirming and accepting that what she feels for Kazehaya is genuine love.

This is a huge step for Sawako, and her happiness at this achievement in self-discovery is contagious. In fact, the depiction of her thought process as she works this out is simply terrific throughout, as is that of Kazehaya as he realizes that, no matter what he may personally feel, Sawako is still not ready to begin dating anyone. The skill with which nonverbal and internal storytelling convey these revelations to the reader elevates Kimi ni Todoke beyond other sweet love stories and into the realm of great manga.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.

Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You 3 by Karuho Shiina: A

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From the back cover:
Sadako finally becomes friends with her classmates, instead of scaring them off. Even Kurumi, the cutest girl in school, wants to be her friend. But will this new friendship make Sadako realize that her feelings for Kazehaya might be more than just friendly?

Review:
I was bowled over by the surfeit of cute in this volume of Kimi ni Todoke. Let us count the ways!

1. Sawako has begun doing things after school with Yano and Yoshida, and is absolutely thrilled. Her parents are also adorably excited for her.

2. Sawako is beginning to realize that Kazehaya is a boy, and that she likes him in a way that is different from how she likes her other new friends. This results in her being somewhat flustered in his presence, which leads to him being flustered right back. Seriously, when these two are together, they just glow, and the art and pacing really make these moments special.

3. Yano and Yoshida are extremely awesome, and nudge Sawako into doing things like calling Kazehaya on the phone or dropping the -kun when she addresses him. Her reactions are cute, but Kazehaya’s are especially telling. Yano and Yoshida are kind of evil in how much they tease him, but their machinations result in a story that shows these characters’ feelings for each other rather than simply telling us about them.

4. Sawako’s friends have to inform her that she has earned the right to call them by their first names, because she’d never presume to do so otherwise. In fact, there’s a lot of emphasis on honorifics in this volume, making it a great candidate to prove why it’s necessary to retain them in translations.

I continue to love that friendship is so important to Sawako. Though she’s finally beginning to realize her romantic feelings for Kazehaya, her friends play a big part in that, encouraging her to reach out to him a little more and putting the two of them in situations where they can interact. Yano and Yoshida are at least tied with Hanajima and Uotani from Fruits Basket in the category of Best Best Friends.

A rival for Kazehaya’s affections—Kurumi, a girl he knew in junior high—also appears in this volume. I like that she’s not as over-the-top villainous as some rivals have been, but is still somewhat scheming. Happily, Sawako balks at Kurumi’s request to help her get together with Kazehaya; it’s evident that Kurumi thought Sawako was so self-effacing she’d just bend over backwards to accommodate her new friend’s request. It’s clear, too, that Kurumi knows exactly how Kazehaya feels about Sawako, thanks to some more excellent nonverbal storytelling.

In the end, this volume solidly establishes Kimi ni Todoke as one of my current shoujo favorites. I liked the first two volumes a lot, but now that Sawako and Kazehaya are hesitantly moving closer to a relationship, it has escalated to a new level of greatness.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Ode to Kirihito, Part One

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Ode To Kirihito, Part One
By Osamu Tezuka
Published by Vertical Inc.
Rated ages 16+


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Kirihito Osanai, a young doctor with a prestigious university hospital, is deeply engaged in the study of Monmow Disease, an endemic condition that has overtaken the remote village of Doggodale. The disease reshapes the skeleton of its victims until they resemble dog-like creatures, ultimately resulting in death. Though Kirihito’s superior, Dr. Tatsugaura, has banked his career on Monmow being caused by a contagious pathogen, Kirihito believes it is an organic disease–a belief shared by his old friend and colleague, Dr. Urabe.

Urged on by Dr. Tatsugaura, Kirihito reluctantly leaves home to spend a month researching the disease onsite in Doggodale–a trip from which he is not meant to return. Thanks to Dr. Tatsugaura’s machinations, not only do the villagers repeatedly attempt to kill him, Kirihito also contracts the disease. And when his research finally leads him to the truth about the condition’s origin, a frantic call home reveals that Dr. Tatsugaura has erased his identity from the hospital records, leaving him helpless in his beast-like state.

Unrecognizable and alone, Kirihito becomes caught up in a series of increasingly degrading experiences that lead him across much of Asia. Meanwhile, in an effort to discover what happened to his friend, Dr. Urabe begins to uncover the depth of Dr. Tatsugaura’s corruption, leading him to truths he’s not fully prepared to handle.

Ode to Kirihito explores man’s darkest and most primitive urges–not by way of those whose bodies have literally turned to beasts, but rather through the increasingly hideous impulses of men who remain outwardly “normal,” most of whom represent depravity in one sense or another. Even Dr. Urabe, whose professional loyalties remain untainted by ambition, is unable to rise above his ugliest desires, ultimately rendering him no more civilized than the corrupt establishment he eventually attempts to fight.

Despite its undeniably somber tone, the series’ first volume is briskly paced and well-plotted, with brutally honest characterization and razor-sharp dialogue that goes a long way towards preventing the story’s messages from becoming irretrievably heavy-handed. What really brings it all together, however, is Tezuka’s artwork, which is wildly ambitious and (thankfully) just as successful.

There are two aspects of this series’ artwork that are particularly effective on an emotional level. First, the meticulous detail in Tezuka’s landscapes and backgrounds create what can only be described as a thick emotional tapestry–not just panel by panel but panel to panel. Tazuka uses shape and texture to cast emotion over multiple pages at a time, imposing cutting rain and angry teeth over the huddled curves of human agony, and lulling his characters (and his readers) into a sense of false comfort with the orderly flow of well-kept farmland.

Second, is the power of the series’ human imagery. A scene, for instance, in which a young nun with advanced Monmow is being displayed as a specimen to an auditorium full of physicians is so striking in its portrayal of her nobility in the face of unrelenting humiliation–her lone, proud figure standing against the sneering darkness–it easily moved me to tears. Tezuka’s artwork depicts both the cruelty and vulnerability of man with a combination of stark honesty and true compassion that makes it impossible to ignore either in favor of the other. His characters are both repulsive and sympathetic, often at the same time.

If these descriptions read as hyperbole, be assured that they are not. The quality of Tezuka’s imagery is truly this stunning, so much so that it’s difficult to return to other comics afterwards without feeling that something crucial has been lost. As lovely and emotionally resonant as much manga art can be, it is rare to find such rich visual storytelling in which the artwork and the narrative are so deeply merged.

Best of all, though Ode to Kirihito is artistically ambitious, it is also completely accessible. Readers intimidated by the author’s legendary status can rest easy in the knowledge that Tezuka is revered not just as a pioneer but as a powerful storyteller, and good storytelling is good storytelling, regardless of its origins.

Newly re-released by Vertical in two digestible volumes, Ode to Kirihito is a remarkable example of the power of sequential art.

Review copy provided by the publisher.