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Toriko, Vol. 1

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Imagine, if you can, an extreme sports edition of Iron Chef, one in which the contestants have to catch and cook the show’s theme ingredient. That’s essentially what Toriko is: an over-the-top food manga in which a hunter and a chef find — and eat — the world’s rarest delicacies.

Toriko, the titular character, is a peculiar mix of id and super-ego. On the one hand, he’s pure instinct: he hunts with his nose, uses brute strength to overwhelm his opponents, and gobbles every meal with animalistic gusto. On the other, he’s a hunter-philosopher who disdains slaughter for sport; Toriko may wrestle six-armed gorillas into submission, but he only kills creatures for food.

His sidekick, Komatsu, is a small, nervous chef who plays Chester to Toriko’s Spike, twitching and talking up a storm whenever they embark on a new mission or face danger. Komatsu is initially assigned to supervise Toriko; Komatsu’s boss, head of the International Gourmet Organization (IGO), wants to make sure that Toriko successfully fulfills an order for garara gator, an eight-legged, bus-sized monster prized for its delicate meat. Though Komatsu spends most of their expedition screaming, cowering, and clinging to Toriko, Komatsu is moved by Toriko’s passion. “When I saw you on the hunt close up,” Komatsu tells Toriko, “I decided it’s worth risking my life to follow you.” He elaborates:

I want to understand where those ingredients come from and what they look like in their natural habitat. By the time the high-level prey are shipped to us, they’re already slaughtered and just pieces of meat.

I never thought I’d see a Shonen Jump character extol the value of slow foods, but that’s a big part of Toriko‘s appeal: the concept screams Ted Nugent, but the underlying philosophy says Michael Pollan. Toriko still barks like a shonen manga, of course, with lengthy fight scenes, colorful opponents, and jokes a-plenty. But there’s a more thoughtful dimension to the story than is warranted by the material; many of the characters’ soliloquies wouldn’t be out of place in Oishinbo or The Omnivore’s Dilemma, as Toriko and Komatsu wax poetic about the flavor and succulence of freshly-caught meat.

Toriko‘s other strength is the artwork; look past that god-awful cover, and what you’ll find is some excellent cartooning. The monsters are fierce and slightly repulsive but plausibly edible, while the humans run the gamut from ridiculously virile — Toriko looks like a youthful Sylvester Stallone — to thoroughly decadent — the IGO’s Bureau Chief wears a leisure suit, aviator shades, and an ill-advised shag. Artist Mitsutoshi Shimabukaro renders each setting with enough detail to make it feel like a distinctive habitat; his mangrove swamp, where the garara gator lives, looks just pre-historic enough to harbor a pterodactyl or two. Not all of the visual gambits work: Toriko lives in a candy house, for example, a choice that seems out of character for a manly meat-eater, while a rainbow fruit tree falls flat in grayscale. Shimabukaro never belabors a sight gag, however, nimbly moving to the next set-piece before the failures even register.

I’d be the first to admit that Toriko won’t be every locavore’s idea of fun. I nearly lost my appetite watching Toriko lay waste to an entire banquet’s worth of food, and found some of the hunting scenes too protracted. If you’ve got a hearty constitution and a deep, abiding love of cooking competitions, however, this macho food-fest might just tickle your taste buds.

TORIKO, VOL. 1 • BY MITSUTOSHI SHIMABUKARO • VIZ MEDIA • 207 pp. • RATING: TEEN (13+)

From the stack: Kamisama Kiss vol. 1

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One of the bonuses of the most recent Manga Moveable Feast was being introduced to a series I really liked (as opposed to the pleasure of talking about a series I already appreciated), Julietta Suzuki’s Karakuri Odette (Tokyopop). For more points, the feast convinced me to pick up a copy of Suzuki’s Kamisama Kiss (Viz), so now I have two new series that I enjoy. I also have a creator added to my “try automatically” list in Suzuki.

I’ve read good manga about supernatural boys sparking with human girls, and I’ve read some fairly icky manga about the same subject. Kamisama Kiss is decidedly on the good end of the spectrum; it’s endearingly familiar, but it has the same evidence of a quirky, distinct sensibility that Suzuki displayed in Karakuri Odette.

Nanami, a high-school girl, finds herself orphaned and homeless when her irresponsible father flees his gambling debts. Even in distress, she’s good hearted, and she helps a stranger she meets in the park where she’s planning to sleep. In return, he offers her shelter. Unfortunately, it turns out to be a dilapidated shrine, and the free rent is balanced by some heavy responsibilities.

One of those is riding herd over the supernatural staff, which includes a snide (but cute) fox demon named Tomoe. He dislikes Nanami and is reluctant to serve under her. Nanami finds him obnoxious, but she’s a responsible person, and she wants to fulfill her duties to the shrine (and not die at the hands of some rival demon). Disgruntled protagonists are nothing new, but Suzuki makes an important choice in her portrayal of them. She makes them equally matched.

Much as Tomoe would like to bully and deride Nanami for her human incompetence, Suzuki gives the girl an edge over the fox. He still has the advantage of his knowledge and powers, but Nanami gets just enough of the right kind of authority to hold her own. She approaches her responsibilities at the shrine differently, which Tomoe finds both irritating and intriguing. Suzuki finds small, surprising ways to indicate that their relationship may evolve further.

The art is appealing. After the appropriate restraint exhibited in Karakuri Odette, it’s nice to see Suzuki get a little goofy, even over the top at times. Her designs for the supernatural characters are great fun, particularly a visiting demonic dignitary Nanami tries to help. She’s a catfish priestess, of sorts, and Suzuki goes to town making her aristocratic, unnerving, and strangely adorable.

Kamisama Kiss is off to a very promising start. It’s got grumpy, likeable leads, a solid premise, and an endearing look to it.

Eensy Weensy Monster 1 by Masami Tsuda: B

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From the back cover:
Nanoha Satsuki, an average, plain-Jane high school student, comfortably spends her time in the shadow of her two beautiful, popular friends. But new guy Hazuki Tokiwa, with his snobbish, arrogant demeanor, has a way of getting under Nanoha’s skin, and releasing her inner monster!

Is this the beginning of an ugly relationship, or does Hazuki have his own hidden qualities?

Review:
I feel a little guilty that I’ve started another Masami Tsuda series rather than actually finish Kare Kano, but this one is so short and cute and I really will finish the other one this year, I swear!

Nanoha Satsuki is normally a calm, friendly girl. Even the attention paid to her childhood friends—princely Nobara, dubbed the “Lady Oscar” of the school, and genius Renge—doesn’t get her down. For some reason, though, a superficial boy named Hazuki and his snobby ways really get her goat. Nanoha attributes these mysterious feelings of anger to a “little parasite” and does her best to keep a lid on them, but one day she’s had enough and lays into Hazuki for being arrogant and narrow-minded.

Should it be a surprise to anyone that these two will eventually end up together? No, but how they get there is actually pretty interesting. After the outburst, Nanoha lives in fear of some kind of retribution, but her words have actually shocked Hazuki out of his reverie. Bratty vanity, as it turns out, is his little monster to overcome. He realizes he has no real friends or goals and comes to appreciate her hard-working qualities. In time, Nanoha is able to relax when he’s around, and by the end of the first volume—after the passage of several months—they’ve become friends.

Tsuda is very good at depicting the opening stages of a couple’s relationship—the first two volumes of Kare Kano are still my favorite part—and puts those skills to good use here. One technique she’s fond of is putting the girl’s perspective of events on the right-side page, and the boy’s on the left, and it works nicely here. For all of the moments when Nanoha catches Hazuki looking at her and thinks he’s plotting something dastardly or contemplating her lack of academic prowess, we see that he’s usually thinking things like, “If I want to be a better person, I should learn from someone like her.”

The overall tone is lighthearted, but one does come to like the leads a good deal by the end. Nanoha’s friends are quirky, too, and I’d like to know more about them, but if the couple gets together in the first two volumes and then we spend loads of time on their friends, I guess this would just turn into a clone of Tsuda’s more famous series.

As a final note, I must mention how much I love what Tsuda does with Hazuki’s fangirls. Immediately after being told off by Nanoha, Hazuki goes to them for sympathy. Instead, they all laugh in his face. “She sees right through you! I mean, we all like you, but we wouldn’t go out with you or anything.” Later, when Hazuki and Nanoha have gotten friendly, a few girls decide that they ought to bully her, but they’re rotten at it. At one point a cluster of girls follows Nanoha after school with the intention of threatening her, only to instinctively end up rallying to her defense when it looks like she’s been accosted by a creepy dude. Then they all find a new prince to swoon over. The end.

In the end, Eensy Weensy Monster is a totally cute and sweet shoujo romance. It probably won’t convert anyone to either the demographic or the genre, but it will provide an afternoon’s pleasant amusement to existing fans of both.

Salvatore

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It doesn’t take a village to write a review, but darned if it isn’t more fun when you tackle a challenging book with a neighbor. That’s exactly what David Welsh and I did this month: we both read Nicolas de Crécy’s latest work, Salvatore, then spent a couple of weeks comparing notes on the book. The results are less a formal critique than an animated and open-ended conversation. We hope you’ll keep the discussion going with your own thoughts about this odd, fascinating story.

David: To start, I thought I’d describe my admittedly limited background with Nicolas de Crécy’s work. The first time I encountered him was in Fanfare/Ponent Mon’s anthology, Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators. He contributed a piece called “The New Gods” which is about commercial design and the prevalence of cartoon mascots in Japanese culture, and it’s a neat, uneasy little piece. The only other work of his that I’ve read is Glacial Period, created in conjunction with the Louvre to celebrate that great museum and published in English by NBM, also the publishers of Salvatore. Glacial Period is about a group of archeologists who use these hybrid dog-pigs to sniff out history. It’s whimsical and smart and a little on the creepy side. Salvatore has a number of narrative threads working through it, including a dog who’s an auto mechanic and is trying to reunite with his childhood love, a myopic sow who’s lost one of her enormous litter of piglets, and a goth cat who can’t seem to offend her liberal parents.

I think my strongest impression of Salvatore is that it makes me a little anxious, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Most of Joann Sfar’s work – Klezmer, The Rabbi’s Cat, Vampire Loves – and Taiyo Matsumoto’s comics – TekkonKinkreet and Gogo Monster – also have that effect. I suspect the anxiety partly comes from how visually dense de Crécy’s comics tend to be, sort of dragging your eye in a bunch of different directions at once, and how morally vague his characters and their situations are. What’s your initial, ink-blot response to Salvatore and to de Crécy in general?

Kate: I’m glad you used the word “anxious” to describe your reaction to de Crécy’s work, as I also find his stories unsettling. Some of it I attribute to his animal protagonists; they’re not the least bit disarming, but endowed with the kind of flaws, eccentricities, and inconsistencies that we associate with literary realism. Usually authors endow their animal characters with human traits in an effort to close the species gap, to suggest parallels between human and animal behavior, but in de Crécy’s work, the effect is very different: his animals seem less like walking metaphors and more like individuals. The animals’ physical appearance, too, is unsettling; no one will ever accuse de Crécy of pandering to the Daily Squee crowd. I found the sow in Salvatore, for example, a vaguely grotesque figure, with her squinty eyes and parasitic brood of piglets, while Salvatore himself looks more like a pig or a hamster than a dog.

I also find de Crécy’s artwork a little unsettling. Like you, David, I admire the clarity of his vision, and his incredible attention to detail, yet I find de Crécy’s linework pulses with a strange energy; it’s as if a nervous little dog were drawing the images. Almost every adjective I could come up with to describe the lines sounds very unflattering (e.g. “spidery,” “shaky”), but I actually find de Crécy’s work quite beautiful in its idiosyncracies.

David: His style is very organic in exactly the way you describe which, for me, is an unusual use of the word. In this case, it’s more that the illustrations have a slightly arhythmic, unsettling pulse, which means that things can feel both very stylized and very “real” at the same time. I’m thinking in particular of the sow, as you mentioned, with her unnerving squint and rolls of flesh. Another example might be the cow who crops up later in the narrative, who is both menacing and unpleasant in the ways an entirely human character might be but also in ways that are sort of bovine-specific. It’s a kind of anthropomorphism that’s both restrained in terms of the rules the artist sets for himself, but it’s also demonstrative of a very creepy, unhampered imagination.

de Crécy seems very, very aware of the imposition of bits of human culture that he’s superimposed on what might be called animal culture. A sow can take her car to get repaired, but a pig can still wind up in the butcher’s window, you know? Those contradictions don’t seem entirely offhanded to me, but I’m darned if I can pinpoint exactly what de Crécy’s formula is. That might be another source of anxiety for me as a reader.

Kate: That’s a good point: I’m not sure if de Crécy is aiming for magical realism or something else. There’s plenty of whimsy and imagination in Salvatore, but it’s tempered with a very frank sensibility. Tonally, it sits somewhere between the kind of fantasy where talking animals signify the supernatural and the kind of satire in which animals are used to make human behavior look absurd or cruel.

In light of our conversation, I’m wondering what you thought of Salvatore himself: could he have been a cat or a raccoon? Or is his dog-ness somehow fundamental to the story?

David: That’s a question that goes to one of the sources of interesting tension in the book for me. I have a dog, and I love dogs, and Salvatore doesn’t have many of the core qualities that I would ascribe to that species, which would be loyalty and a desire for companionship, a pack. But the animal characters generally don’t line up entirely with traditional perceptions of their species, except maybe for the cat, who’s kind of capricious and contrary. (At the same time, she’s also the animal character who looks most human to me, a girl in a cat suit rather than an animal that just behaves in human ways.)

On one hand, I think that Salvatore could have been any creature with the same essential nature — secretive, determined, somewhat amoral. But I do wonder if the creator wasn’t trying to create a tension between what we expect of dogs and the kind of character he wanted to write. Salvatore is a dog because he doesn’t act like one. If anything, his poor little human companion is more like a dog to me than Salvatore. It’s like the Grinch and Max switched bodies.

Kate: Exactly! I thought the scene in which Salvatore debated whether to leave his human companion behind was surprisingly effective, touching on all the emotions that dog owners experience when they’re worried about subjecting a pet to physical or emotional discomfort. In switching the dog-human roles, though, de Crécy lays bare the essence of that dog-human compact; there are no pleading eyes or whimpers to prompt us into feeling sorry for Salvatore’s pet, just Salvatore’s deep concern for his welfare.

What did you think of the supporting characters (e.g. the raging bull couple, the cat girl)? Did you find them as persuasive as Salvatore? And what about the numerous subplots introduced in the second half of the book: do they feel essential to moving the story along, or do they register more as tangents?

David: I found them persuasive as characters, but I felt that their animal identities were much less of a factor in their persuasiveness or their interest than they were with Salvatore. It seemed as though de de Crécy may have spent all of his energy creating that anti-dog dissonance and had that be the fulcrum of what we think of as animals acting against what we think of as their natures.

Basically, that leaves me to evaluate the rest of the characters just as characters, so my reactions are mixed. I liked the cows because they’re so awful and shallow. They were refreshing, because I didn’t really experience any ambivalence when reading about them. The cat was less successful, because she feels so cliché to me. Brief as those scenes were, they dragged for me.

On the whole, I appreciate the attempt to expand the narrative. It’s a tricky thing to attempt, creating these antic, concurrent threads that still all have a sadness to them, and trying to make them all hold together into a single, dark farce. I don’t know if the attempt is entirely successful yet. What did you think of those sequences?

Kate: For me, the most successful subplot involved the sow bonding with her piglets. She’s an awful mom at first: distracted, foolish, and disconnected from her babies. But then she begins to see her husband’s face in her litter, and the tenor of their relationship changes. She’s more affectionate and more solicitous of her piglets’ needs, even though she misses her partner and feels overwhelmed by the sheer size of her new family. I thought that was a lovely and subtle development in a storyline that initially repelled me.

As for the other subplots, I have to agree that the business with the cat-girl was the least dramatically persuasive, in large part because it seemed so random. But not in a “hey, life can be arbitrary” sort of way, but in a contrived, French arthouse movie sort of way; those scenes felt like something from an early draft of the Amelie screenplay. The cows were a more successful addition to the story; they were believably cosmopolitan and crass, the kind of folks you might find in sitting in a cafe in Paris or New York, conducting their personal business in public.

David: Yes, the pig’s story is definitely the most resonant of the subplots, to the point that I’d almost call it a co-plot. I like the way you describe her evolution, and it just about makes me change my mind on my earlier position regarding the amount of conceptualization the author did with various animal archetypes. She starts out very barnyard, very domesticated in assuming that her needs will be met without much thought or effort, but as her arc progresses, she becomes more conscious of survival. She’s not quite feral, but she’s certainly more active in achieving her desired ends.

In fact, I’d say it’s for her story as much as Salvatore’s that I’ll stick with this fascinating but slightly vexing series. What about you? In for the haul?

Kate: I’m on the fence about Salvatore, in part because I find it a little over-scripted; de Crécy has a very strong urge to narrate, even though he’s a terrific visual storyteller. The scene in which the sow catapults down the snowy mountain, lands on top of a plane, then sails back down to Earth is just the sort of wordless (or largely wordless) sequence that I wish de Crécy did more of; it’s a gorgeous bit of visual choreography that nicely underscores what a space cadet Amandine really is.

I also feel ambivalent about Salvatore’s predicament; it’s so ridiculously French that I hear accordions every time he looks sorrowfully at Julie’s picture. But the pig’s story has grown on me, and the cows amuse me, so I’ll give Salvatore one more volume before I throw in the towel.

David: So we both come down to a ruling of “ambivalent but still engaged.” Shall we resume this conversation when the second volume arrives to alternately charm, confound and distress us?

Kate: It’s a date!

SALVATORE, VOL. 1: TRANSPORTS OF LOVE • BY NICOLAS DE CRÉCY • NBM/COMICSLIT • 104 pp.

The Best Manga You’re Not Reading: Shoulder-a-Coffin, Kuro

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Don’t be fooled by the kawaii covers: Shoulder-a-Coffin, Kuro is a melancholy little manga. The story focuses on an androgynous young woman on a pilgrimage. Kuro’s goal: to find the witch who inflicted a mysterious curse on her. Everywhere she goes, Kuro cuts a dramatic figure, wearing heavy black clothing, a Pilgrim hat, and a custom-sized coffin, which she straps to her back. Though she begins her journey with only a talking bat for a companion, she soon adds two members to her traveling “family”: Nijuku and Sanju, a pair of genetically engineered nekomimi whose creator was brutally murdered.

Kuro’s story is told primarily through four-panel, black-and-white strips, with full-color pages marking the beginning of each chapter. The format imposes a certain rhythm on the material that occasionally makes Shoulder-a-Coffin, Kuro a little too talky; I found myself wishing that Satoko Kiyuduki had allowed her spiky, expressive artwork to play a more prominent role in the storytelling. But the format also frees her from the constraints of a linear narrative, allowing the story to unfold in a less schematic, more relaxed fashion. The predominant mood is wistful bordering on elegiac; Kuro is always mindful that Nijuku and Sanju are too naive to understand what befell their creator, and worries what will happen to them at the end of their journey. Kuro, too, faces an uncertain future, as her body is slowly consumed by a deadly illness.

The jacket copy promises “all the whimsy of the most memorable fairy tales,” but I think that misses the point — if anything, Shoulder-a-Coffin, Kuro eschews whimsy in favor of dark complexity; anger and fear inform the behavior of many people Kuro meets in her travels, the threat of violence lurking just below the surface of their interactions. To be sure, the somber mood is lightened by plenty of broad comedy as various characters mistake Kuro for a vampire, a demon, a gravedigger, or — quelle horreur! — a boy. But even these comic moments are tinged with sadness: Kuro often finds herself cast out of towns, branded a witch, a weirdo, or worse, even though the residents are happy to profit from her skills.

Ultimately, it’s this mixture of melancholy and humor that makes Shoulder-a-Coffin, Kuro such a compelling read. The story never succumbs to mawkishness or easy sentiment, yet at the same time, it dares to tug a little at the heartstrings. Not everyone will find the series’ odd tone to their liking, especially those in search of a breezy riff on Western fairy tales. But for those looking something more thought-provoking — the kind of story that lingers in your mind after you’ve finished reading it — I highly recommend Kuro.

This is a revised version of a review that originally appeared at PopCultureShock on 4/29/08.

SHOULDER-A-COFFIN, KURO, VOLS. 1-2 • BY SATOKO KIYUDUKI • YEN PRESS • RATING: TEEN (13+)

From the stack: The Story of Saiunkoku vol. 1

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It’s been a while since I felt that a comic was actively flirting with me. There are certainly plenty that I’ve liked, but most of them have stopped somewhere short of actively… well… luring me with just about every quality they possess.

I admit that I initially judged The Story of Saiunkoku (Viz), adapted by Kairi Yura from Sai Yukino’s novels, on a surface level. The cover is bland, and I’m drawn more by weird compositions than pretty faces of people in elaborate costumes. But when Kate Dacey noted that the book “makes [her] feel thirteen years old again” in a good way, I had to reconsider.

While reading the first volume of The Story of Saiunkoku, it bought me drinks from across the bar. It sent me funny and thoughtful text messages. It put its best foot forward, and it became more and more attractive as the encounter progressed. We’re dating now, and I hope you can be happy for us.

I should state up front that there’s almost no way I could resist a comic that features a smart, spirited heroine, a hot, gay emperor, lavish costumes and appointments, and grumpy old men scheming in the background. That comic would have to be actively awful for me not to be at least a little drawn to it, even if I knew the relationship would be… well… conflicted. But The Story of Saiunkoku is miles and miles from actively awful. To channel my thirteen-year-old self, it’s really dreamy.

The Story of Saiunkoku is a period piece about the imperial court of Saiunkoku. It follows a penniless but diligent young noblewoman named Shurei Hong, who enters into the service of the nation’s unmotivated, mildly scandalous young emperor as his consort. Up to this point, Shurei had been scrambling to keep body and soul together, teaching and taking odd jobs to put food on the table of her crumbling family manor. She’d always hoped to enter civil service to help her struggling country, but the men-only strictures of that career blocked her ambition. Now, she can use her considerable intelligence and work ethic to better the country right from the top.

Shurei isn’t just a goody-two-shoes optimist. Yura and Yukino make it clear from the outset that their heroine has a temper and a sharp tongue. In spite of her high status, she isn’t a delicate, sheltered lady. She’s known real deprivation and anxiety, and, when she talks about poverty, she’s not talking about the genteel, abstract variety. Immersion into the rarefied air of the imperial court doesn’t eliminate her instinct to scrimp, the constant rattle of the abacus in her head that tallies how much things cost and what they’re worth. But she isn’t judgmental about it; she isn’t averse to comfort or elegance, just more cognizant of its price tag than those around her.

The emperor she’s meant to serve, Ryuki, is agreed to be a disappointment on every level. He has no interest in governance, and he’d rather bed men, so there isn’t even a chance of him creating a more malleable, promising heir. He won’t even interact with Shurei or his other advisors initially, and it’s only Shurei’s unassuming charm (slyly applied) that leads him to engage with his responsibilities.

This is the point where The Story of Saiunkoku really kicks in, when we see what kind of person the emperor seems to be and glimpses of what kind of person he may actually become. As one would assume, there’s more than meets the eye to him, but the ambiguity remains, and his motivations and ambitions are still deliciously unclear. And Ryuki’s façade is a treat – handsome, lazy, dim, selfish, and more than a little weird. While the glimpses of his inner depths that the creators provide are welcome, his public face is quirky and intriguing in its own right. One of the smartest things a storyteller can do is to create natural, temperamental conflict between protagonists, and the similarities and differences between Shurei and Ryuki are promising in the ways they may evolve and comfortingly familiar in their initial highs and lows.

Also comforting are Yura’s illustrations. Her detailed renderings of court life are appropriately sumptuous, and her page compositions are often very lovely. I also like her knack for facial expressions; she conveys a fine range of emotions in close-up, and her faces can be very funny without seeming rubbery. Yura does lapse into a fairly common failing found in stories that feature a number of attractive men; some of the character designs can be a little repetitive, which can lead to some confusing moments. Overall, though, her drawings are heartfelt eye candy.

It may seem weird, but I find myself comparing The Story of Saiunkoku to Hiroshi Hitara’s Satsuma Gishiden (Dark Horse). That gorgeously violent drama also frames its primary narrative aims in a clearly defined social context that’s concerned with issues of governance, justice, and class. While Yura and Yukino obviously have gentler priorities, the cultural context elevates those intentions in the same way they do for Hitara’s muscular hack-and-slash. Absorbing characters and a well-crafted plot are important, but placing those elements in a world that lives and breathes on its own is a tremendous asset.

And Saiunkoku’s royal court does live and breathe, with its factions and fashions and secrets. Most of all, it breathes thanks to its cast of passionate, distinct characters and the ways they hope to better their lives and their world. I’m hopelessly smitten. I admit it.

(The manga adaptation of The Story of Saiunkoku is running in Kadokawa Shoten’s Monthly Asuka. I’m not sure how many light novels are in Yukino’s series, and they haven’t been published in English, to my knowledge. The first season of the anime adaptation is available from Funimation.)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight 6 by Jane Espenson: B-

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From the back cover:
Twilight and his gainfully employed military units are hot on Buffy’s magical trail—forcing her and Slayers across the globe into hiding. Buffy retreats into the Tibetan mountains to seek aid from the only person she knows who can suppress his true nature—Oz. Since Oz left Sunnydale he’s gained control over the magic that transforms him with the phases of the moon from man to werewolf. If Buffy, Willow, and the legion of Slayers give up their magic, Twilight might lose their scent, granting them a moment of peace, quiet, and tranquility.

Review:
Before I reread the “Retreat” arc, my memories of it went like this: Buffy and friends go see Oz in Tibet; some huge, brightly colored goddesses are involved; and Buffy discovers that she can fly. Weary of unnecessary cameos—although I genuinely do love Oz—and wary of Buffy’s new ability, I didn’t like this much the first time around.

Though it improves upon a second read, it straddles that line between “what I will agree to consider as canon” and “just somebody’s convoluted fanfic.” Obviously, I know that I am just one opinionated fan among many, but what I’m getting at is that some stuff happens that I genuinely like, and some stuff happens that I’m not crazy about.

After their castle in Scotland was destroyed by a magical bomb, courtesy of Twilight’s minions, Amy and Skinless Warren, the Slayers have been looking for new digs. Public opinion is against them, thanks to Harmony’s current popularity, so they find a secluded sort of bunker, shielded by a woodsy magical illusion. Alas, Twilight hones in on this magic and attacks again, causing them to teleport to the one person they know who has successfully divested himself of magic: Oz.

It’s good to see Oz again, don’t get me wrong, but I’d be happier about it if his return hadn’t come after lesser characters like Ethan Rayne and Dracula. He’s settled down with a “mate” and has a child, and one of the saddest things about this arc is how Buffy descends upon his peaceful life, bringing war and death along with her once Twilight tracks them down yet again.

But before that happens, there’s a peaceful lull during which the Slayers and Willow participate in various chants and physical chores designed to direct their magical powers into the Earth. This allows plenty of time for character-building moments and amusing dialogue, my favorite being the interaction between Giles and the baby. Like so:

Baby: Ga!
Giles: Yes, hello, baby.

and

Baby: (steals Giles’ glasses) Gaha!
Giles: Oh dear.

On a more serious note, Buffy finally tells her friends about her encounter with Dark Willow in the future, which prompts some interesting reactions. Willow confidently swears it couldn’t possibly have been her, but meanwhile, Giles and Andrew are suspicious—especially given Willow’s dark methods of obtaining intel—and begin watching her. Also, just as Buffy begins to ponder wanting to connect with someone, and begins to think Xander might just fit the bill, he and Dawn finally get around to smooching. I might be in the minority here, but I like this pairing, especially since they’ve been shown to have developed a very solid friendship. Given her track record, it’s hard to say whether Buffy’s feelings are genuine or if she’s just lonely.

And speaking of Buffy and decision-making, it’s her choices that have ultimately led to a terrible massacre. True, there were no good alternatives, but she’s entirely responsible for bringing ruin to Oz’s tranquil existence, first by making his home a target for Twilight and his minions, then turning its environs into a battlefield, and finally by summoning some local goddesses—those to whom all that poured-into-the-earth magic was actually going—who kill indiscriminately. As with the Xander situation, this is not out of character for Buffy at all—part of why she’s lovable is that, even though she’s special, hers is an extremely tough role that nobody would envy—but it’s pretty depressing all the same.

I also have trouble believing that anyone thought getting rid of magical defenses—which includes the Slayers’ strength—would be a good idea when they are the target of a massive military operation. I suppose there was the chance that it would keep them hidden, but it doesn’t seem like they bothered to fully investigate the ramifications. A scene in which automatic weapons and grenades are passed out is just really weird, given Whedon’s stance on guns throughout the series.

Although I have issues with it, this arc is ultimately better than I remembered. Most of the fallout from Xander and Dawn and Buffy’s superpowers will come in the next volume, which is a plus, but there will be much crack, as well.

From the stack: Arisa vol. 1

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I wasn’t particularly kind to the work of Natsumi Ando the other day. While I don’t retract anything I said about Wild @ Heart (Del Rey), I’m happy to be able to express a different opinion about Ando’s Arisa. The first volume introduces a tense, observant mystery, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ando’s art look better.

Much as I love shôjo that traffics in comedy, romance, and fantasy, I have a weakness for detective fiction, particularly when it features an amateur sleuth. In Arisa, a young girl investigates the attempted suicide of her twin sister by assuming her identity, and she quickly finds that her twin’s seemingly perfect life had some decidedly dark undertones.

Spunky tomboy Tsubasa and demure princess Arisa have been separated for years by their parents’ divorce. They’ve kept in touch through letters, and they arrange a secret meeting to catch up in person. Tsubasa, whose quick temper and loose tongue have limited her social circle, admires Arisa’s femininity and popularity. Arisa gives Tsubasa the chance to live her perfect life for a day – class president, tons of friends, cute boyfriend, the works. Arisa is brokenhearted when Tsubasa doesn’t see through the façade, and Tsubasa is devastated when Arisa tries to end her own life.

Tsubasa decides to continue the impersonation to try and find out what could have driven Arisa to this desperate act. She begins to unravel the creepy secrets of Arisa’s seemingly cheerful, friendly class, putting herself in danger but charging forward because it’s the right thing to do. The students’ secrets are genuinely unnerving, but Tsubasa seems up to the challenge of deciphering them. She faces real danger, even in the seemingly benign school setting, but she’s tough and a quick thinker.

The script has the kind of darkness and ambition that I found lacking in Wild @ Heart, really digging into the ways that kids can have dark sides but finding a fresh, contemporary take on the subject. Better still, Ando’s illustrations are stripped down for the occasion. If your experience with her drawing is limited to Kitchen Princess, you might be surprised that Arisa is by the same artist. Character design is sleeker and less aggressively endearing. The angles in the page compositions are sharper and more challenging. Even the application of screen tone, while still lavish, is more targeted and restrained in terms of choices.

It’s always nice to see a creator stretch her muscles and try something different, and it’s even better to see her succeed in the attempt. Arisa really seems like a great coalescence of Ando’s evident raw talent into something stronger and more balanced, and the fact that it’s a promising, emotionally complex mystery is a welcome bonus. I’m eager to see what happens next.

(These comments are based on a review copy provided by the publisher. Del Rey released the first volume in 2010, and Kodansha will pick up the series in May of this year. It’s currently running in Kodansha’s Nakayoshi.)

Meh manga

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Earlier this week, Kate Dacey examined the concept of “meh” as it relates to critical discourse. Conveniently enough, I’ve just finished trudging through two titles that fall squarely in the “meh” range. Neither is especially bad, but neither transcends competence or adds any secret ingredient that makes them linger in the memory or heart.

Both are shôjo titles from Del Rey’s defunct manga line, so it may seem a little harsh to dissect them, but I liked Kate’s piece and the ensuing discussion so much that my mind is stuck in “meh” mode, and I need to push these books out of my system by taking quick looks at their respective – and admittedly routine — failures.

First is Natsumi Ando’s Wild @ Heart, a done-in-one collection of a three-volume series from Kodansha’s Nakayoshi. I was a big fan of Kitchen Princess, Ando’s collaboration with Miyuki Kobayashi, but the primary strength of that series is the often surprisingly dark writing. Wild @ Heart is on the fluffy end of the spectrum, an innocent romance with a reasonably promising sitcom premise. It’s about an average junior high school girl whose explorer father brings home a feral boy he met on his travels. Will Chino be able to look past Hyo’s uncivilized behavior to form a friendship, or perhaps even more? The answer to this question, and to all questions Ando poses in this series, is unfortunately “Of course.”

Maybe it’s the result of reading the whole thing at once rather than bit by bit, but Hyo’s civilization seems to happen too quickly. The earlier chapters, with Hyo bouncing around in his school uniform (when he can be bothered to keep it on) have some funny bits, but things level out too quickly, and he becomes an only slightly off-kilter cute boy. Even before he settles down, he’s so good-hearted that Chino’s resistance seems perfunctory and even snobbish.

But the ultimate failing here is that the ending is telegraphed. There’s no suspense in the evolution of the relationship, moving from beat to beat in predictable, almost plodding rhythm. Ando’s art has always struck me as a more coherent version of Arina Tanemura’s. The coherence is welcome, even if the volume of screen tone is equivalent, but Ando’s kind of visual cuteness badly needs some narrative darkness or edge for counterpoint. It reinforces the bland sweetness of the story rather than subverting it, and vice versa.

Ema Toyama’s I Am Here! at least has its heart in the wrong place. In it, we meet an overlooked, isolated girl who’s encouraged to make real-world friends and assert herself by the readers of her blog. Hikage falls into a category of character that Mitch of Blogfonte winningly described as “Asperger Sue.” The efforts of socially inept characters to engage can result in manga that’s funny or moving or both, but I Am Here! is hobbled by the work’s flat sincerity.

Hikage is just so blandly sweet and earnest that it’s hard to invest much interest in her plight. I found myself reaching the uncharitable conclusion that she’s not more popular because she’s kind of a bore. Neither her desire to connect with people nor the obstacles to that goal feel very specific; she’s just a person who fades into the background, and that doesn’t even feel particularly unfair. She’s less of an underdog than a charity case — a nice, nondescript girl who can’t quite do the heavy lifting of a protagonist.

Complicating things is the fact that her rivals seem just plain mean. The notion of someone being threatened enough by this homeless kitten reduces them to overreacting, insecure caricatures. This is always a tricky balance, crafting nuanced foes for an openhearted innocent, and Toyama doesn’t manage to strike it.

Toyama is scrupulous in mapping out Hikage’s steps out of the shadows. She’s trying to do the hard work of building investment in Hikage’s evolution, but the formula of this kind of story overwhelms any spark that might be generated by quirky characters or scenarios. It ends up reading more like a “How to Be Popular” manual than an organic story.

This book collects the first two volumes of the five of the series, which ran in Kodansha’s Nakayoshi. The remaining volumes are on Kodansha’s publishing schedule for this year.

(These comments are based on review copies provided by the publisher.)

LIVES, Vol. 1

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Everything you need to know about LIVES is summed up by the following category tags: “big breasts,” “meteor,” “stranded,” “strategically torn clothing,” and “survival.” (Kudos to the Baka-Updates moderator who felt the need to give “strategically torn clothing” its due as a category. But what, no “hungry predators”?)

Plot-wise, LIVES resembles Battle Royale, Gantz, and King of Thorn in using a catastrophic event — in this case, a meteor shower — to deposit normal people into a hostile environment — here, a dense jungle inhabited by carnivorous monsters. It doesn’t take long for the refugees to discover the particularly nasty secret behind these beasties: they were originally human beings as well, and some can still transform back into their bipedal selves, with no memory of terrorizing their fellow survivors.

Art-wise, Taguchi delivers the goods, with scene after scene of expertly staged carnage. His monsters are perhaps a little too neat, lightbox chimaeras that originated in the pages of National Geographic, but they’re agile and vicious enough to be convincing. His humans also offer balm for tired eyes: the hero, Shingo, has abs that would shame The Situation’s, and the harem of doe-eyed, big-bosomed ladies wear just enough clothing to prevent the story from shading into pornography. (In a hilarious touch, all of the women’s shoes are in immaculate condition, even though their tops and skirts have been reduced to scraps. Paging Imelda Marcos!)

What’s missing is subtext. LIVES is the umpteenth manga to suggest when man lives in a “state of nature” — no rulers, no rules of law — that a “war of all against all” prevails, creating an environment where lives are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” While other manga-ka have attempted to explore what happens to the human psyche when all social constraints disappear, Masayuki Taguchi focuses exclusively on those consequences that Thomas Hobbes forget to mention in The Leviathan: costume failures, near-rapes, faintly incestuous relationships, and hyper-violent showdowns between monsters and would-be meals. There’s nothing wrong with carnage and cheesecake; I’m all for brainless fun. But when the narrative falls into an all-too-predictable pattern of grope-chase-chomp-regroup in the very first volume, a little subtext goes a lot farther than a cool monster or a torn shirt in making things interesting.

Review copy provided by Tokyopop. Volume one will be released on February 1, 2011.

LIVES, VOL. 1 • BY MASAYUKI TAGUCHI • TOKYOPOP • 196 pp. • RATING: MATURE (18+)

From the stack: Sand Chronicles vols. 9 and 10

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If Hinako Ashihara had contented herself with the conclusion of the main story of Sand Chronicles (Viz) in the eighth volume, I don’t think most fans of the series could have reasonably complained. We’ve seen our heroine, Ann Uekusa, grow from pre-teen to woman, through a stormy adolescence packed with setbacks, disappointments, and rewarding steps forward toward maturity. Ann’s is a fully realized character arc, one of the most complete you’re likely to find in comics.

I’m a bit of a glutton, and I’m a sucker for side stories, so I was thrilled to learn that there were two more volumes of material, checking in with supporting characters and giving readers a look at Ann’s life after “happily ever after.”

In the ninth volume, Ashihara gives us a glimpse into the troubled adolescence of Ann’s mother, whose beauty and gentleness make her the object of jealousy and the subject of rumor in her very small town. As tricky as the core conceit of the story can be – she’s too pretty and fragile for this world – Ashihara grounds it with surprising skill. It highlights the underlying emotional brutality that bubbles up in Ashihara’s work, and while it doesn’t fully excuse Ann’s mother’s later choices, it does give those choices additional context.

The second half is given to a chance encounter between Ann’s friend and rival, Shika, and one of Ann’s exes as they build lives for themselves in New York City. Given the tendency of some shôjo mangaka to exile the ostensible bad girl to a faraway land where she can build a new and better life – you generally see her in a panel, reading a letter from the heroine, who has graciously forgiven her – it’s nice to see that new life in detail. It’s a generous impulse, and it results in a sweet, redemptive encounter for the characters involved.

The tenth volume returns us to our heroine, Ann, and her true love. I’m reluctant to go into too much detail, since who that true love turns out to be is a significant plot point through the series, but the volume-length story shows us the satisfying adult relationship that evolved from turbulent, youthful love. We see Ann’s partner adapt to adult responsibilities, and we see her as a supportive, functioning person, which is a lovely gift to longtime readers.

Aside from being gracefully written and beautifully drawn, these volumes repay patience and investment that resulted not from flash but from sincerity and craft. It’s like a sumptuous brunch the morning after the wedding of a couple you rooted for but were never quite certain would make it to “I do.” They’re essential reading for fans of Sand Chronicles, and they’re additional inducement to read the series from beginning to end if you haven’t already.

MMF: Karakuri Odette vols. 1-3

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The genre of stories about robots who want to learn what it is to be human is large, so it’s only reasonable that I would have a spectrum of reactions to its various examples. I’ve read exactly as much of Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy (Dark Horse) as I feel like I need to read, in spite of the fact that it’s by Tezuka. Naoki Urasawa’s revamp of Astro Boy and his robot associates in Pluto (Viz) was a pleasure to read from beginning to end, in spite of my general aversion to dark retellings of more innocent properties.

The Vision was always one of my favorite members of the Avengers (Marvel), but I always found the Justice League’s Red Tornado (DC) to be kind of ridiculous and whiny. I was pleasantly surprised by the gentle intelligence of Yuu Asami’s A.I. Revolution (Go! Comi), or at least what circumstances allowed me to read of it, but I could barely manage to sit through Steven Spielberg’s A.I. I’ve never been able to finish either CLAMP’S Chobits (Dark Horse) or Yuu Watase’s Absolute Boyfriend (Viz), since “built to love you” stories make me a little queasy.

To make a long story short, the genre isn’t a slam dunk for me like some others are. Julietta Suzuki’s Karakuri Odette (Tokyopop), the subject of the current Manga Moveable Feast being hosted by Anna at Manga Report, lands comfortably in the pro column of this kind of tale. It’s gentle, smart, and funny. I’ve read the first three volumes, and I’ll certainly read the rest.

It begins with Odette, a highly lifelike robot, telling her creator that she’d like to go to school like humans do. There isn’t anything mawkish or aspirational about her decision, and her rather blank bluntness is instantly winning. She never declares that she wants to be a real girl, and she doesn’t really make much of an effort to pass as one. Odette isn’t about pretense; she’s more focused on gaining experience and understanding, which is a promising starting point.

Her athletic prettiness works in her favor as a character. She’s not some robot-girl bombshell, looking instead like an averagely attractive teen-ager. It negates the possibility that she’s a grosser kind of toy, cutting off some of the more unsavory possibilities of this kind of story. You can be reasonably certain that she was created in the pursuit of a scientific exercise rather than to fit the maid’s costume, if that makes sense. And she’s perfectly capable of defending herself; she’s an innocent, but she’s unlikely to ever be a victim.

With an engaging protagonist in place, Suzuki surrounds Odette with interesting, in-scale people. The professor who made her is generally benevolent though not fully parental in his relationship with Odette. Her classmates ostensibly don’t know that she’s a robot, but they certainly know she’s different from the average student, and their general reaction is to find things that they like about her differences rather than viewing her as an object of pity or ridicule. They’re willing teachers, even if they don’t realize that’s what they’re doing.

Without knowing she’s doing it, Odette sets off a sort of mutating romantic geometry. Her frail best friend, Yoko, likes a boy who seems to kind of like her in return, but Yoko is admired by bad-boy Asao. He forms a brotherly relationship with Odette, whose blanket approval of and interest in Asao cause people to question their assessments of his character. Other characters phase in and out of the romantic undercurrents without Odette ever really realizing what’s going on, though she’s trying. (A sweet recurring joke involves people trying to explain the difference between liking someone and liking someone.)

None of the specific plot developments are very novel or surprising. If you’re at all familiar with robot-in-school or just plain innocent-abroad stories, you’ll be able to see what’s coming with a good degree of reliability. Suzuki distinguishes her version through style and tone, tending to find the just-right balance of funny and thoughtful, handling her characters with consistency and compassion and looking at their circumstances with straightforward warmth. I was quite surprised that Karakuri Odette was Suzuki’s first ongoing series, since her writing is so restrained and self-assured.

I think the art actually does reflect someone in the early stages of a career, though. The best parts tend to involve faces, particularly Odette’s coolly curious expressions. Suzuki seems more at ease with stillness than movement, though. On the plus side, it seems like a distinct and interesting style is in the process of cohering as the series progresses. I’m very curious to see Suzuki’s later works to watch that process continue.

And I’m definitely eager to read the last half of Karakuri Odette, which runs a total of six volumes. It’s not ambitious or innovative, but it’s got the kind of gentle, quirky likability that’s always a pleasure to experience. Suzuki has an engaging, slightly off-kilter sensibility that helps make the predictable become winning.

Random Sunday question: sidebar

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In the interests of improving my blogroll, what are some of your favorite comics or pop culture blogs that I haven’t already linked? It seems greedy to ask for more great reading, but… well… I am greedy.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight 5 by Jane Espenson, et al.: C+

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From the back cover:
When Buffy’s former classmate-turned-vampire Harmony Kendall lands her own reality TV show, vampires are bolstered into the mainstream. Humans fall in line; they want a piece of the glitz, glam, and eternal youth bestowed upon these mysterious creatures of the night. What’s a Slayer to do when vampires are the trendiest thing in the world? While humans donate their blood to the vampire cause, Slayers—through a series of missteps, misfortunes, and anti-Slayer propaganda driven by the mysterious Twilight—are forced into hiding.

Review:
The fifth collected volume of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight comics is comprised of five one-shots, four of which are written by writers from the show. You might think that’s a good thing, but it doesn’t always turn out to be the case.

Issue 21, “Harmonic Divergence,” is written by Jane Espenson. Captured on film one evening while snacking on Andy Dick, Harmony becomes an instant celebrity. A reality show—with Clem for a sidekick!—on MTV follows. The show portrays Harmony sympathetically, as someone who drinks from humans but doesn’t do them any harm, and when a Slayer decides to take Harmony out on-camera, it spawns a tide of anti-Slayer sentiment.

It’s true, vampires are a big craze at the moment, but I find this whole plotline—it continues for some time—to be kind of stupid. What’s worse is that George Jeanty seriously can’t draw Mercedes McNab (the actress who portrays Harmony) to save his life. He does no better with original characters, either. At one point the nameless Slayer looks like a middle-aged man in drag.

Issue 22, “Swell,” is not much better. Written by Steven S. DeKnight, it takes place in Tokyo, where Kennedy has arrived to conduct an evaluation of newly promoted Satsu. Meanwhile, Twilight, the big bad of the season, has taken over the San(to)rio Corporation and disguised a bunch of demons as “Vampy Cat” plushies with plans to ship them to Scotland, where Buffy is. Probably this is supposed to be funny, but again, it’s just kind of stupid. Kennedy does offer Satsu some advice about pining for a straight girl, though, and the issue ends with Satsu resolved to move on.

The best story of the lot is “Predators and Prey,” by Drew Z. Greenberg. Taking advantage of the current attitude towards Slayers, rogue Slayer Simone and her gang have ousted the residents of an Italian village and taken over. Feeling responsible as Simone’s former Watcher, Andrew has taken an “ends justify the means” approach to getting intel on her whereabouts, resulting in not only an amusing roadtrip with Buffy, but a lot of growth for his character. Having never earned anyone’s trust before, he’s terrified of losing it, which makes him screw up for the right reasons. Buffy tells him to get used to it, because that’s her family’s specialty. Not only does this issue have some funny lines, it’s actually quite significant for Andrew. Gold star for Greenberg!

The one story penned by someone who never wrote for the show is “Safe,” by Jim Krueger. It stars Faith and Giles, which it earns points for immediately, as they investigate a so-called Slayer Sanctuary for girls who decide they’d rather not fight. The plot is kind of lame, but there’s some good dialogue, particularly from Faith, and some insights into her deep feelings of regret for her early failings as a Slayer. This issue is drawn by Cliff Richards, who does a much better job than Jeanty at capturing the likenesses of the actors. He also seems to have a greater repertoire of facial expressions.

Lastly, issue 25 is called “Living Doll” and is written by Doug Petrie. Dawn has gone missing and Buffy and Xander follow her hoofprinty trail while Andrew tracks down Kenny, the guy responsible for casting the spell on her in the first place. Long story short, Dawn apologizes to Kenny, becomes human again, and spends some quality time with Buffy watching Veronica Mars. (Man, I miss that show.)

While the first two stories are pretty bad, the other three offer solid character moments even though the plots themselves leave something to be desired. I’ve said before that this is something a Buffy fan simply becomes used to, so it doesn’t bother me all that much. I’d probably be happier with a series full of vignettes like these than what is coming over the next couple of arcs.

Manga Artifacts: Hotel Harbour View

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Back in 1990, before anyone had hit on the magic formula for selling manga to American readers, VIZ tried a bold experiment. They released a handful of titles in a prestige format with fancy covers, high-quality paper, and a large trim size, and called them “Viz Spectrum Editions.” Only three manga got the Viz Spectrum treatment: Yu Kinutani’s Shion: Blade of the Minstrel, Yukinobu Hoshino’s Saber Tiger, and Natsuo Sekikawa and Jiro Taniguchi’s Hotel Harbour View. While neither the imprint nor the format survived, these three titles helped pave the way for VIZ’s later efforts to establish its Signature line.

Hotel Harbour View, by far the strongest of the three, is a stylish foray into hard-boiled crime fiction. In the title story, a man patronizes a once-elegant bar in Hong Kong, telling the bartender that he’s waiting for the person who’s supposed to kill him, while in the second story, “A Brief Encounter,” an assassin returns to Paris, where his former associates — including his protege — lie in wait for him.

As editor Fred Burke observes in his afterword, both stories are as much about style and genre as they are about exploring what motivates people to kill. The characters in both stories are deeply concerned with scripting their own lives, of behaving the way hit men and high-class call girls do in the movies. None of them wear simple street clothes; all of them are in costume, wearing gloves and suits and garter belts. (In one scene, for example, an assassin asks a bystander to hand him his hat, even though he lies dying in a pool of blood. “Just don’t feel right without it,” he explains.) Their words, too, are carefully chosen; every conversation has the kind of pointed quality of a Dashiell Hammett script, with characters trading quips and telling well-rehearsed stories about their past. A brief surveillance operation, for example, yields this tersely wonderful exchange between two female assassins:

“She’s French, isn’t she? Parisienne.”
“How can you tell?”
“She looks arrogant and stubborn. The sort who ruins men.”
“He loves her. That’s why he came back to Paris.”
“And how can you tell?”
“I’m a Parisienne, too.”

[As an aside, I should note that Gerard Jones and Matt Thorn’s excellent translation brings Sekikawa’s script to life in English; each character has a distinctive voice, and the dialogue is thoroughly idiomatic.]

The violence has a cinematic flavor as well; Taniguchi’s balletic gunfights call to mind the kind of technically dazzling shoot-outs that became a staple of John Woo’s filmmaking in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Taniguchi uses many of the same tricks. He follows a bullet’s trajectory from the gun barrel to its point of impact, showing us the victim’s terrified face as the bullet closes in on its target; stages elaborate duels in which passing trains demand split-second timing from the well-armed participants; and shows us a hit gone bad from dozens of different angles. In one the book’s most stylish sequences, we see a gunman’s reflection in a shattered mirror; as the “camera” pulls back from that initial image, we realize that we’re seeing things from the killer’s point of view, not the gunman’s. A dramatic cascade of glass destroys his reflection as he slumps to the floor — a perfect movie ending for a character obsessed with orchestrating his own death.

Like Taniguchi’s other work, there’s a slightly stiff quality to the artwork. His characters are drawn with meticulous attention to detail, yet their faces remain impassive even when bullets fly and old lovers betray them. That detachment can be frustrating in other contexts, but in Hotel Harbour View it registers as sang-froid; the characters’ composure is as essential to their performances as their costumes and studied banter, as each self-consciously fulfills their role in the drama.

Though Hotel Harbour View is out of print, copies are still widely available through online retailers; I ordered mine directly from Amazon. You’ll also find a robust market for second-hand copies; expect to pay between $4.00 and $20.00 for a copy in good to excellent condition.

Manga Artifacts is a monthly feature exploring older, out-of-print manga published in the 1980s and 1990s. For a fuller description of the series’ purpose, see the inaugural column.

HOTEL HARBOUR VIEW • SCRIPT BY NATSUO SEKIKAWA, ART BY JIRO TANIGUCHI • VIZ MEDIA • 94 pp. • RATING: MATURE (18+)