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Why Manga?

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When I was struggling earlier today to begin a post, something that kept coming to me was how much my feelings for music seemed related–or at least similar–to my feelings for manga, both in depth and breadth. This led me to think about why I love both, and then to why I love manga. But to start, I think the question I must begin with is:

Why Fiction?

Something I’ve always had difficulty relating to is the concept of “real life” as being something different than a person’s online life. I mean, I get it kind of, but it’s not like I become imaginary when I sit down at my computer, and every person I deal with online is just as real as I am regardless of whether or not they are being honest about who they are. Just as in “real life,” my words and actions have the power to affect other people, for good or ill. So how is this not a part of my real life? Similarly, I’ve always been at odds with the idea that imagining, writing, reading, or interacting with fiction is somehow less a part of what’s real in this world (and in our lives) than anything else. Fiction is our greatest tool for sharing ideas with each other as a species, in a way that touches and inspires not just our logical minds, but our hearts and even that intangible thing we like to call our “souls.”

Nearly everything important I have learned about life, people, and the world around me has come from one of two places: my own personal experience or fiction; and I have a feeling that if it was possible to sit down and write out every one of those things, fiction would come out on top. After all, the potential human experience available to one forty-year-old woman is miniscule compared to the volume of fictional works written since the dawn of man, or even just since the dawn of modern language.

Fiction is the the place of dreams, yes, but also the foundation of reality–how we perceive it and how we express that to others. Even the most escapist works tell us something about ourselves, both as individuals and as a society, and I can personally vouch for the fact that even these works are capable of inspiring deep thinking and emotion, whether their authors ever intended that or not. Each person’s experience with a fictional work is wholly unique to that person, and yet it is a connection between one person’s ideas and another’s that gives it its power. This, to me, is the most awesome thing in all the world.

My personal devotion to the products of human imagination–for me, fiction and music in particular–has always been what makes me feel most connected to other human beings, and the only thing capable of successfully bridging my very rich inner life with my more troublesome outer life. As such, I feel these things are inextricable from my life and who I am, and I’m very comfortable with that.

Why Comics?

The one particular product of human imagination it took me until recent years to truly connect with and appreciate is visual art. Outside of a childhood obsession with attempting (unsuccessfully) to draw all the characters out of my own imagined fiction and one year at college during which I would repeatedly visit a particular Pierre Bonnard painting at the Carnegie Museum of Art–earnestly seeking the answer as to why it affected me in a strong, emotional way that other art generally did not–I was never a person who connected deeply with visual representations of life.

The simple explanation for this may actually be that, unlike music, prose fiction, or theater, visual art was not something I could successfully experience as a creator (or at least a participant)–something that those who know me well can recognize as an important part of how I interact with art. How it happened to be comics that finally achieved this is somewhat of a mystery to me, though perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the art is acting as part of a narrative, which is something I can personally connect to more easily than an isolated image.

Yet it was not western comics that actually pulled me in, but manga. Which brings me to…

Why Manga?

The fact that comics are part of mainstream popular fiction and therefore serve a much broader audience in Japan than they do here is, I’m sure, largely responsible for many of the elements that draw me most to manga–epic (but finite), single-creator stories in a huge variety of genres and styles, offering me the same variety and breadth of human experience and emotion as I’d find in prose fiction, movies, or television in this country. Whether this is connected to the sudden and profound realization that I could glean something new about the human experience from hand-drawn black lines on white paper, I am not certain, but I do know that my first encounter with manga was life-changing. It’s as though I was experiencing sight for the first time. For years, my imagination had subsisted (and very heartily) on written, and oral (including musical) language, either brought to life entirely by my imagination (as with print) or by other live humans (theater, television, film)–the closest thing to a visual element I was really in touch with. I can say honestly that up to the point I first read a manga, I really had no concept of how powerful and real a drawing could be or how strongly I could connect with such a thing.

It’s possible that a great deal of why I easily connect with manga in this way after failing to do so with western comics, is the tendency of manga to let the art take the lead in telling the story, which I think is less often the case in comics here. Odd that this would be the key, considering my previous attachment to prose; or perhaps not odd at all, since one of my problems with reading western comics had been that I kept feeling that the pictures were in the way as I tried to read the story. This is not a judgement on western comics, but really a suggestion that until I read manga, I was actually kind of impaired, and it took manga to fix that.

I think what is special about manga and why I have immersed myself so deeply in it in such a short time (aside from the fact that this is just how I do things) is that it offers a unique opportunity for the reader’s imagination. Something I used to talk about regarding art song, which was my favorite form of music to work on as a classical voice student, was that it offered an experience for interpretation that was different than anything else. Unlike opera, in which the music and libretto were working together to tell a single story, art song usually began as a poem–a form that invites greater personal interpretation than narrative fiction –to which the composer would add his/her personal interpretation through music–another form that invites great personal interpretation. The singer is then in the position to draw upon both these potentially disparate elements to create a third interpretation–one that is likely to be unique to each singer (ditto with the pianist, lest this be forgotten). By the time the art song reaches the listener–the final collaborator–the possibilities for interpretation are so richly layered that each person will take away with them something not only unique in itself, but uniquely guided by all who touched the piece before it reached them.

Now you’re saying, “Whoooa, crazy music lady, the manga is more like opera,” (unless you’re just saying, “Whoa, crazy lady you lost me three paragraphs back”) and you’d be right. Except not exactly. Plays, movies, and television are like the opera. Manga is something in between. Though the pictures and the words are working together to tell the same story, the fact that it is black-and-white drawn, still images providing the more specific interpretation of the text actually leaves much more for the reader’s imagination to fill in, which to me is closer to the art song, though perhaps close enough to the opera too to provide the best of both worlds. While the skilled mangaka has the power to inject true, specific human emotion into something as small as a single line on a character’s face, it is still up to the reader’s imagination to actually translate that into the face of a real human–a face that will inevitably be a little different one for each person who imagines it. Aside from the element of color, this is true of western comics as well, but it is the combination of all these things at once–the epic, finite works; variety of genres; visual storytelling style; and the crazy music lady stuff–that makes manga special, or at least makes it special for me.

~o~

If you’ve made it this far, you probably deserve a drink. Since I can’t offer that across cyberspace (is this proof of the whole “real life” business??) I will instead thank you for reading and ask for your thoughts. :)

Sumomomo, Momomo: The Strongest Bride on Earth, Volume 1

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Sumomomo, Momomo: The Strongest Bride on Earth, Vol. 1
By Shimobu Ohtaka
Published by Yen Press

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Momoko is the only child of one of the most powerful martial arts families in Japan. Since her father does not believe that she, as a woman, is capable of mastering the arts of their clan, she has been trained her whole life to become strong enough to be worthy as the wife of the world’s strongest man (deemed to be Koushi Inuzuka, son of another clan), with whom she must bear super-strong progeny. …

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Anime Feature: Natsu no Arashi

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I rarely post about anime here, but there is one new series I’m enjoying so much, I really can’t help myself. So here goes!

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Based on the manga by Jin Kobayashi (School Rumble) and available for streaming at Crunchyroll, Natsu no Arashi is about a middle-school student named Hajime Yasaka who moves from the country into a new town where he will live with a relative. Exhausted by the summer heat, he stops in a small cafe to cool off where he meets Sayaka, the owner of the shop who is actually a notorious con artist, Jun, another middle school boy with a secret I will not give away here, and Arashi, a beautiful young waitress with whom Hajime is immediately enamored. When a strange man bursts into the shop and demands to take Arashi back to her “family,” Hajime surprises himself by stepping in to defend her (though it isn’t long before he needs defending himself), but it is when his hand touches Arashi’s that his whole world gets turned upside down.

As it turns out, Arashi is the ghost of a sixteen-year-old girl who died during the US bombings of Japanese cities in WWII. It is unknown exactly why she has remained in this world, but when she meets the right kind of boy, she can “connect” with him and travel backwards in time. After discovering that she connects with Hajime, she pretty much takes over his life (not that he minds in the slightest). She moves into his uncle’s house, and repeatedly takes Hajime back to her own time where she seeks out those she know will die in the bombings to try to save them from their fate. Just a a few episodes in, a second ghost, Kaya, is also introduced. She was Arashi’s school chum during the war and though she is far more aware of the dangers and potential implications of changing the past, her resolve not to do so is broken when she discovers she can connect with Jun.

The anime series starts off a bit confusingly, jumping right into a later point in the story with no explanation, and though I liked it immediately, it took several episodes for me to feel about it the way I do now. I usually give any anime series five episodes before I make up my mind about it, and I’d recommend anyone interested in this series to do the same. The series is definitely a slow burn. Straddling the line between a gag series and a supernatural drama, Natsu no Arashi delivers surprisingly well on both counts. Though it is the time-traveling ghost story that most draws me to the series, I can’t deny the success of the humor, and there is an early episode in which Hajime and Arashi encounter a claw machine at an arcade that had me laughing until I was in pain. Even the standard put-the-boys-in-girls’-clothing and body-switching episodes have an unusual twist in this series, rendering them funny once again, regardless of their overuse. The series starts off showcasing its humor and though I probably would have continued to watch it casually even if that’s all it ever was, the ghost story makes it into something I cannot do without.

Though Kaya is sensitive to the potential disasters of time travel from the start, it is only Hajime’s heavy scientific interest that is able to affect Arashi’s carefree attitude, something which has only really begun with the most recently aired episode (episode nine). Faced a second time with Sayaka’s insistence that they take spoiled food back in time to a point before its expiration date so that she can eat it before it has gone bad (logic that only makes sense in her own head and, interestingly, Arashi’s) Hajime attempts to explain the concept of a paradox to her, which leads to a question of whether or not he and Arashi have been creating multiple parallel worlds every time they change the past. He points out that, because of them, people have lived, been born, and possibly died who otherwise would not have, something that shakes Arashi to the core, though she tries to hide it. What’s most interesting about this, however, is not the plot or the scientific questions themselves (though these things are interesting), but the characters, and even more so their relationships with each other.

I think it’s clear that compatibility is the main component determining whom the ghosts can connect with, and it’s obvious that Hajime and Arashi make a great pair. Whether they can ever be romantically involved as Hajime would wish is certainly in question (what with one of them being a sixtysomething ghost) but they both have good (if impulsive) hearts and a fine adventurous spirit. Something that’s particularly refreshing is that Hajime’s crush on Arashi, while being unavoidably based on lust–he’s a teenaged boy after all–actually manifests itself for the most part in very sweet ways, and at no time is this more evident than in episode nine. Though he requires Sayaka (in an unusual moment of true insight) to let him know that he’s shaken Arashi with his excited scientific musings on time-travel, he actually figures out what to do about it on his own and the result is seriously touching. Kaya and Jun are quite wonderfully compatible as well and though it’s hard to go into that too deeply without giving away some early spoilers, I can say that though their relationship is very different from Hajime and Arashi’s, it is no less touching.

While maintaining its frequent gags, this series continues to become deeper and more interesting as it goes along with its poignant characters and observations on war, which do not shy away from being very specific to WWII and the United States’ firebombing of Japanese civilian areas. Arashi returns to the cafe every summer because it is the only place that escaped the bombings and is therefore unchanged since the time when she was alive, and the effects of the bombings are seen frequently in both Arashi and Kaya’s travels back. The question of how harmful it is for Arashi to indiscriminately raise people from the dead who were indiscriminately killed in the first place is obviously something the series is not going to let go, and it goes a long way towards forming the characters that make the series so intriguing. There is obviously something sinister coming, which has begun to take shape in the most recent episode, and I can’t help but wonder if it is something caused unintentionally by Arashi. Time will tell!

The animated series’ success I think is due to a great extent by the fact that it is produced by Shaft (Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, Ef: A Tale of Memories), a studio known for its gag series but also for its unmistakable style. The series’ ever-shifting opening sequence, its mysterious bookends featuring characters that are finally beginning to be introduced, its stylish handling of both gags and dramatic beauty–these things are all extremely characteristic of the studio and really give the series a consistent, cohesive feel. Though the series does not shy away from being sexy, there is limited fan service, which is definitely refreshing as well, and what is there is handled with good humor and great style.

Though it may not be for everyone, Natsu no Arashi provides a terrific blend of gag humor, drama, romance, and even suspense–a combination I find completely intoxicating. Now if someone would just license the manga!

Bleach, Vol. 27

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By Tite Kubo
Viz Media, 200 pp.
Rating: Teen

Volume 26 ended with Arrancars invading Karakura Town and everyone rushing in to protect it, including Orihime, who was forced to take her own human-friendly route back from Soul Society instead of traveling with Rukia. As it turns out, the attack was waged with the sole purpose of isolating Orihime whose unusual healing power has caught Aizen’s interest, so that she can be abducted away to his headquarters at Hueco Mundo. Orihime is given twelve hours (and an invisibility bracelet) to put her life in order before she must acquiesce, with her friends’ lives on the line. She is also allowed to say goodbye to one person, provided she is undetected, and the scene in which she does that is one of the best and most touching in the series so far. Meanwhile, Soul Society must regroup in order to face the threat of the Arrancars—which is more immediate than they’d calculated—and Ichigo and his friends are ordered to abandon Orihime, who has been labeled as a traitor, and join them in their preparation.

This really is one of the strongest sections of this entire series, and the fact that it comes so far in demonstrates more storytelling skill than Tite Kubo is generally given credit for. This volume contains even fewer outright battle scenes than the previous, but the atmosphere is fraught with tension throughout and quite a few of the main characters are given the opportunity to shine, particularly Orihime, Rukia, and Ichigo. That there are numerous (perhaps endless) battles to come over the next few volumes seems inevitable, but the stakes are high enough to promise a major dramatic payoff for those who see this arc through to the end.

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

Gestalt, Volume 1

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Gestalt, Vol. 1
By Yun Kouga
Published by Viz Media

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Father Olivier is a young priest with low-level magical powers who leaves his order to seek out an island called “G,” where it is said that any explorer’s wish may be granted by the exiled God who sleeps there. As he begins his journey, Olivier ends up performing a miracle for an innkeeper who welcomes him as a guest. It’s a small miracle, which Olivier considers payment for his room, but the innkeeper insists he accept a thank-you gift in return. The “gift” turns out to be a pretty, young slave woman named Ouri, who has had a spell cast on her to keep her from speaking. Initially refusing to take a human as a gift, Olivier is eventually persuaded by the slave herself, who does not want to be sold off to the highest bidder. …

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Future Lovers, Volume 2

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Future Lovers, Vol. 2
By Saika Kunieda
Published by Deux Press

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It’s been a year since the events of volume one and Kento and Akira have become comfortable in their relationship, though there are still a few surprises in store, beginning with a visit from Akira’s mother, a pampering, ostentatious multiple divorcée with a somewhat scandalous past. New revelations about Akira’s background cause some turmoil in his relationship with Kento but as with most everything in this story, the conflict gives each of them a deeper understanding of the other, ultimately strengthening their relationship. As the volume continues, the two of them confront coming out to friends and colleagues, Kento’s jealousy of a former teacher of Akira’s, and the complicated question of same-sex marriage in Japan.

…

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Bigotry as bad business

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As I’ve poked around the manga blogosphere over the past few days, I’ve found myself developing a number of Opinions (with a capital “O”). Whether this is a good thing or not remains to be seen, but it is the kind of thing that compels me to blog and so here I am. Opinion, the first:

This morning I followed a link from Brigid Alverson’s mangablog to an article on the Yaoi Press blog regarding an issue they had experienced recently with a printer, Docucopies, who refused to print their Yaoi Coloring Book due to images they found “disturbing.” …

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Detroit Metal City, Vol. 1

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Detroit Metal City is a rude, raunchy comedy that’s both a satire of death metal culture and a loving portrait of the folks who labor in its trenches. When we first meet the series’ hero, twenty-three-year-old Soichi Negishi, he’s wearing a fright wig, kabuki makeup, fangs, and a pair of knee-high platform boots that look like they were swiped from Paul Stanley’s closet. Soichi is the lead singer and guitarist for Detroit Metal City (DMC), an “evil core death metal band with a huge following.” Onstage, Soichi adopts the persona of Krauser II, Lord of Hell, spitting lyrics about rape, torture, and mutilation; offstage, however, Soichi is a sweetly metrosexual young man who loves Swedish pop music, Audrey Tatou movies, and shopping for stylish clothing in the Daikanyama district. How, exactly, Soichi ended up singing in DMC is something of a mystery; by his own admission, he left his parents’ farm hoping to start a “hip indie pop band.” Five years later, however, Soichi is living in Tokyo and performing in DMC while doing his utmost to conceal that fact. Try as he might, however, he can’t quite limit his loud, violent persona to the stage, as Krauser has an unfortunate tendency to manifest himself whenever Soichi is depressed, angry, intoxicated, or feeling rejected by Yuri, a pretty young magazine editor who shares Soichi’s passion for perky tunes.

The tension between Soichi’s two musical personae turns out to be a brilliant framing device for the story, allowing manga-ka Kiminori Wakasugi to have his cake and eat it, too. As Krauser II, Soichi can sing the kind of crudely misogynistic lyrics that might otherwise offend because we, the readers, know that DMC epitomizes everything Soichi disdains in real life — in effect, Soichi is our surrogate, expressing indignation for us so that we might laugh freely at the risque jokes. At the same time, however, DMC gives Soichi an outlet for expressing the darker side of his personality—for de-wussifying him, if you will—and acknowledging his deep disappointment that no one appreciates his gentle, sensitive side.

Nowhere is the tension between the Swedish pop star and the Japanese metal god more evident than in chapter twelve. While hanging out in a trendy boutique with Yuri, Soichi lands an opportunity to play a small, intimate gig in the store. Soichi jumps at the chance, performing a saccharine tune called “Sweet Lover”:

When I wake up in the morning
You’re there making cheese tarts.
Sweet baby, that’s what you are.
My sweet, sweet lover
Let’s go
Let’s dress up and go to town.
With cheese tarts in one hand,
You’re romping around.
Cut through the crowds
Let’s go to that store we love.
To buy those matching rings
I promised you.
Sweet sweet sweet sweet lover…

The song’s god-awful lyrics, however, meet with indifference, prompting the boutique owner to eject Soichi from the store. Dazed and wounded, Soichi goes on a drinking binge, his embarrassment slowly curdling into rage. He then dons his DMC outfit and performs “Bad, Bad Lover,” a darkly humorous re-working of his much-reviled love song:

When I wake up in the morning
You’re there frying your parents up!
Let’s go
Kill everyone dressed up in town.
With chainsaw in one hand
You’re slashing around.
Slaughter the crowds
Let’s go to that store we love.
To get those matching weapons
I promised you.

As one might imagine, there are only so many scenarios in which Soichi can transform into Krauser (and vice versa). Mid-way through volume one, I worried that the joke was beginning to wear thin, as Soichi once again found himself trying to explain to Yuri why, exactly, he’d suddenly started acting like a loud, foul-mouthed boor. Thankfully, Wakasugi finds some odd and marvelous ways to spin the story—none of which I’ll spoil for you—including a contest between DMC and an Ozzy Osbourne-esque rocker, and a visit to Soichi’s hometown, where his cheerful, clueless parents grow mushrooms and raise livestock.

All of these scenes are rendered in a crude yet energetic style; if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say Wakusagi didn’t do very well in life drawing, as his bow-legged figures sit awkwardly in the picture plane. Yet the very clumsiness of the art works perfectly with the story’s over-the-top premise, capturing both the intensity of DMC’s performances and the sheer stupidity of their on-stage antics. Were the art any slicker, many of Detroit Metal City’s most outrageous moments just wouldn’t work, as their verisimilitude would elicit a “That couldn’t happen in real life!” response from the reader.

Fans worried that Viz would sanitize Detroit Metal City for English-speaking audiences can breathe a sigh of relief. The script abounds in f-bombs, anatomical slang, and crude sexual humor, suggesting that Viz made every effort to preserve the tone and content of the original script. Translator Anne Ichii deserves special mention, as she did a terrific job of making the song lyrics funny in English, a task akin to translating “Big Bottom” or “Stonehenge” into, say, Czech or Chinese. (Just how does one say “mud flaps” in Czech?) The production team merits praise as well, both for their snazzy cover design and for their inclusion of 2009’s coolest extra: temporary DMC tattoos.

If you find South Park offensive, it’s a safe bet that Detroit Metal City won’t be your cup of tea. But if you can look past the swear words and lewd behavior, you’ll find a surprisingly funny, touching story about a musician on a quest to discover his true voice — crank up Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to eleven, and you have a pretty good idea how this crude, goofy story reads. Highly recommended.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

DETROIT METAL CITY, VOL. 1 • BY KIMINORI WAKASUGI • VIZ • 200 pp.  RATING: MATURE (18+)

We Were There, Volume 4

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We Were There, Vol. 4
By Yuki Obata
Published by Viz Media

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“Why do people make promises they can’t keep?”

After hastily announcing that she was ready to have sex with Yano at the end of volume three, this volume opens with Nana in a state of abject terror as she’s faced with actually doing the deed. Reassured by Yano’s unexpected sweetness, she shakily plunges in only to be interrupted by the return of Yano’s mom before anything can really happen. Though this is somewhat of a relief for Nana, Yano immediately begins trying to raise money for a love hotel which Nana manages to stall by suggesting they save up for something nicer. The volume’s charmingly awkward beginning becomes more troubled in later chapters when Nana finally persuades Yano to tell her the truth about his association with his ex-girlfriend’s sister, Yamamoto. Yano’s past with Yamamoto, however, is not nearly as difficult for Nana as the discovery of his lingering feelings for his deceased ex, revealed in a stunningly poignant scene at the end of the volume.

…

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Kindred by Octavia E. Butler: A-

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kindredFrom the back cover:
Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum Maryland. After saving a drowning white boy there, she finds herself staring into the barrel of a shotgun and is transported back to the present just in time to save her life. During numerous such time-defying episodes with the same young man, she realizes the challenge she’s been given: to protect this young slaveholder until he can father her own great-grandmother.

Review:
This is the third book that I’ve read by Butler, and like the others it tells a gripping story about a strong black woman protecting herself amidst dangerous circumstances.

The crux of the book hinges on the relationship between Dana and her white ancestor, Rufus Weylin. When she first travels back in time, Rufus is about five years old and Dana takes advantage of his age to encourage him to form enlightened opinions about the treatment of black people. In any other book, she would’ve succeeded in cultivating Rufus into a kind-hearted abolitionist. It’s far more intriguing, then, that Rufus instead turns into such a complicated man. He can be loving and generous, but his love is an extremely possessive variety, and he’s often blaming others for making him hurt them. It would’ve been so much easier if they’d just complied, you see. Dana finds herself forgiving him for his various misdeeds, and their relationship goes into some uncomfortable but wonderfully unpredictable places.

Secondarily, Dana gets to know the other slaves on the Weylin plantation, most of whom are subjected to sorrows and degradations at the hands of their white masters. Dana is initially disdainful of their acceptance of this life of slavery, but gradually learns—through bitter experience—just how difficult it is to break free. She herself must constantly be on guard for her own personal liberty and towards the end of one of her later stays, finds herself acquiescing to the whims of white folks with alarming ease.

About the one complaint I could make about Kindred is that it gets a little repetitive, with the countless trips to Rufus’ time and back to 1976, especially toward the end when only a few months have elapsed between visits. Also, and this is specific to the unabridged audiobook read by Kim Staunton, the fact that the voice used for Rufus doesn’t substantively alter between childhood and adulthood really takes one out of the story. He would’ve come across as far more menacing if he had sounded properly like a man.

This book was recommended by Margaret, who said, “I think it will be a book that stays with me for a long time.” I concur.

Awaken Forest

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By Yuna Aoi
Digital Manga Publishing, 200 pp.
Rating: M (18+)

Awaken Forest is a collection of three boys’ love stories, each featuring men who use lying and manipulation to get what they want. The title story is a tale of two brothers—an author who was injured as a child and his older brother who is bound to serve him for life in order to atone for injuring him. When he realizes that his brother has fallen for a young editor from his publishing house, the author (who has been faking his ongoing injury for quite some time) decides to release him from service, but even then he uses cruelty and manipulation to do so, going so far as to order his brother to molest the editor in front of him.

The most blatantly manipulative character, however, is in the collection’s second story, “Loose Bonds,” which features a man named Ren who hires a former school bully to steal his best friend’s girlfriend, leaving the friend with nowhere else to turn but to him. This story is easily the darkest of the three, as it is the only one in which the victim remains unknowing to the end. “If you don’t want him to go outside, then make him never want to,” Ren says as he pricks his pet bird with a sharp pin to keep it from leaving its cage, providing a deeper glimpse into his true pathology.

This manga provides the beginnings of what could be an interesting exploration of the darker sides of human nature, but its stories’ scenarios are too neatly contrived to be believed, making it impossible for any of them to rise above pure romantic fantasy. Most of the boys’ love staples are present—rape, incest, pretty straight men lured into a web of “forbidden” love—and though the author manages to pull off these fantasies more delicately than some, there is no sense of anything richer lurking below the surface. The art, too, is very typical of the genre, featuring generically pretty, interchangeable men over dull, sparse backgrounds.

Though its stories’ themes suggest the potential for something deeper, in the end, Awaken Forest is just another disposable yaoi title to be consumed and quickly forgotten.

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

Gakuen Alice 7 by Tachibana Higuchi: B

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gakuen7For the most part, Gakuen Alice is a fairly episodic series about the adventures of spunky ten-year-old Mikan as she acclimates to attending a mysterious school whose students all have special powers known as Alices. Beginning in volume six, however, its first multi-volume arc, involving an organization that’s opposed to the Alice Academy and is responsible for infecting Mikan’s best friend, Hotaru, with a virus, gets underway. In volume seven, Mikan and friends are pursuing the organization responsible through a forest beset with dangerous traps.

The strong point of Gakuen Alice is the way it mixes darker revelations about the nature of the Academy and the uses to which it puts certain students with warmer scenes of Mikan and her friends. In this volume, this balance is somewhat thrust aside due to the “we’re journeying along a spooky trail, watch out for that laser beam” action that’s going on, but occasional nice moments shine through, mostly involving the sweet romantic triangle going on between Mikan, gentle animal-loving Luca, and Luca’s best friend Natsume. Natsume’s one of those tortured, self-denying characters who, rather than seek his own happiness, instead nudges Luca and Mikan together, because Luca being happy “is enough.” In other words, just the kind to win a shoujo fan’s heart.

While all of the journeying gets a little tiresome, the cliffhanger ending suggests that we might soon get some facts about Mikan’s mysterious origins, which would certainly be nice after all of the cryptic hinting that’s been going on. I’m looking forward to it.

Review originally published at Manga Recon.

Moon Child, Volume 1

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Moon Child, Vol. 1
By Reiko Shimizu
Published by CMX

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Art is an aspiring Broadway dancer, struggling to live up to the expectations set for him by family and friends who viewed him as a child prodigy. Deep in the middle of a slump, things are made worse when he ends up in a car accident that injures him. Also involved in the accident was a young boy who, while otherwise uninjured, appears to have lost his memory. Feeling responsible for the boy’s condition, Art takes him in, but it soon becomes clear that the boy (named “Jimmy” by Art) is not normal. Jimmy can move objects around with his mind, frequently involuntarily, and his presence sometimes causes people to see strange apparitions.

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Gakuen Alice 6 by Tachibana Higuchi: B+

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gakuen6From the back cover:
A series of mysterious incidents in which Alices lose their powers strikes close to home when Prez’s abilities suddenly disappear! As if that isn’t bad enough, an encounter with “Z,” the Anti-Academy organization (who might be behind the missing Alices), leaves Hotaru sorely wounded. A cure may lie outside the school, but how will Mikan and her friends get past campus security?

Review:
Well, this is certainly an action-packed volume and more Potter-like than ever, involving several instances of students defying rules and taking matters into their own hands (and sometimes making things worse).

We’re probably supposed to admire the plucky bravery that makes Mikan declare she’s going to fight Z and help Hotaru, but seriously, how?! Still, I liked the reasons that made both Luca and Natsume decide to help her. Too, I like learning more about Hotaru—turns out she’s the kind of seemingly detached person who secretly relies a lot on the steady happiness of those around her, a personality with which I can completely identify.

While the plot to thwart the invaders and save Hotaru is the main focus, there are a lot of other questions and tidbits floating around, too. Things like Natsume overhearing some faculty talking about Mikan and also shirking an assignment from headquarters in order to help her, some mysterious girl who once lived with Luca and Natsume, Hotaru resolving to investigate the Academy’s treatment of Mikan, some possible recognition of the invaders from Z, and the fact that one of them may’ve recognized Mikan… At times, it can actually get to be rather too much, and part of why I’ve ennumerated all those things here is to help me keep track of them and see whether they’re adequately resolved in the future.

So far, this series has been pretty episodic, though there’ve always been some continuing threads woven throughout. Are we finally coming to the start of something more epic, or will this all be resolved tidily in a volume or so and we’ll be back to watching Luca frolic with woodland creatures?

Gakuen Alice 5 by Tachibana Higuchi: B+

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gakuen5From the back cover:
The Alice Festival is coming to a close, but the surprises and fun aren’t over for Mikan and her friends yet! Things get a little crazy for Narumi’s musical when an accident takes out some of the performers and Mikan has to step in as the star of the show. But what will happen when she and Luca have to kiss on stage?! And as if that’s not enough, as soon as the kids are back in class, it’s time for exams, and Mikan is in for some bad news when the scores come back!

Review:
I wonder how it is that this series is able to use common manga clichés without annoying me. First there was the genuinely entertaining school festival, and now there’s the tried and true “school play wherein the princess is played by a boy in drag” bit. I think it’s because Higuchi-sensei is able to use each scenario to both show the uniqueness of the school and bring about some nice moments for the characters. The play is totally goofy, for example, but Natsume ends up being kind to a super-cute little kid as well as thwarting a smooch between Mikan and Luca, so how could I not like that?

I also like that one’s expectations are subverted. Like, of course whenever a group works really hard like Mikan’s Special class did on their festival attraction, they’ll get the big medal at the end! Except they don’t, though they do get recognition of a sort. And, of course, when our plucky heroine buckles down to study for her exams (cue studying montage!) so that she can earn a visit to her grandpa, she’s going to win! Except Mikan gets the lowest grade in the class.

In addition to this, some of the mystery has returned with this volume, with some more details about Mikan’s parentage coming to light and more notice of her presence, and affect on Natsume, by the headmasters, which is definitely not a good thing. So far, at least, I get the impression that Higuchi knows where she’s going with this story, which is always something I appreciate.