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We Were There, Vol. 10

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saturn Apartments, Vol. 1

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

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

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

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

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

saturn_earth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Ode to Kirihito, Part One

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Hikaru no Go, Vol. 19

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Hikaru no Go, Vol. 19
By Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata
Published by Viz Media
Rated All Ages


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With Hikaru’s pro career now in full swing, he’s anxious to begin competing with high-level players, but his early string of forfeits has put him behind. When an 18-and-under international team tournament is announced, Hikaru is determined to earn a place on the Japanese team. With Akira already selected, only two spots remain. Can Hikaru live up to his own expectations?

Though the end of volume seventeen felt very much like a series climax, volume nineteen demonstrates the series’ true strength as it takes Hikaru and Akira past the consummation of their epic rivalry and on to the rest of their lives as professional Go players. This volume’s lesson is that life is a string of new beginnings–that the completion of each challenge naturally leads to the next one. “I’ll take it one step at a time and keep advancing until I attain the divine move,” Hikaru says, in the heat of a typical battle with Akira. This is not just Hikaru’s lesson, however. Akira, Waya, Isumi, the Haze Junior High Go Club–even the older, more jaded players have no choice but to move on from challenge to challenge.

This may seem like a heavy-handed lesson, but careful detail and subtlety keep all potential preaching in check. As always, Hotta’s characterizations are wonderfully nuanced, and it’s the small moments that do the real heavy lifting. Even as Hikaru makes grand declarations in true shonen style, it’s his mother’s late-evening excursion to to replace the bathroom light bulb that somehow brings the message home. Life moves on for all of us, and so we must move with it.

On an unrelated note, with the senior members of the Haze Go Club moving on to cram school and high school entrance exams, this seems the time to mention just how many Manga Bookshelf Brownie Points this series has earned for having a non-skinny, non-conventionally attractive young female character who is portrayed as smart, athletic, and generally to be admired. Though Kaneko is likely to fade from this story as Hikaru moves further and further from his former middle-school life, she’s provided a real breath of fresh air as a decidedly stocky teenaged girl in a medium (and genre) heavily influenced by the same narrow standards for female beauty that pervade most First World popular culture.

With four volumes left to go, this series shows no sign of losing momentum. More importantly, it retains the unexpected elegance that has long made it a standout in its genre. Highly recommended.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

My Girlfriend’s a Geek, Vol. 1

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The prince who turns out to be a toad is a staple figure in romantic comedies: what Jane Austen novel didn’t feature a handsome, wealthy suitor who, in the final pages of the story, turned out to be ethically challenged, penniless, or engaged to someone else? My Girlfriend’s a Geek offers a more up-to-the-minute version of Mr. Willoughby, this time in the form of a nice young woman who looks like a dream and holds down a responsible job, but has some rather unsavory habits of mind.

The hapless protagonist of My Girlfriend’s a Geek is Taiga Motou, a perpetually broke, somewhat flaky college student who aspires to be a novelist. Taiga is on a quest to find the perfect job, one that “pays big” and is “close to college and easy to do and not too sweaty”; bonus points if the staff includes “a beautiful, hard-working big sis-type chick.” When he stumbles across a clothing company with a “Help Wanted” sign in the window and an attractive manager in the office, he jumps at the chance. Once employed, Taiga does his best to flirt with the beautiful Yuiko, though his opportunities are few and far between: a chance encounter in the lunch room, an after-hours search for missing inventory. Yuiko’s signals are hard to decode — she blows hot and cold, and ditches him to fiddle with her VCR — but she eventually agrees to go on a proper date with him.

Taiga doesn’t have much opportunity to savor his conquest, however, as Yuiko makes a startling confession at the end of dinner: she’s a geek. But not a run-of-the-mill geek; she’s a self-proclaimed fujoshi with a butler fetish and a tendency the slash the hell out of every shonen manga she reads. Taiga tries to play along with her interests for a while, but quickly finds her exasperating, with only Yuiko’s cougarness to keep him invested in their relationship. (The author never states their age difference, though we’re clearly meant to see her as a few years Taiga’s senior.)

Yes, we’ve been to this well before with series like Fujoshi Rumi in which a “normal” person tries to make sense of an otaku’s ecstatic and excessive behavior, and indeed, some of Geek‘s jokes have a been-there, done-that quality to them: is it really news that fujoshi like butler cafes? Other gags, however, hit the mark. In one scene, for example, Yuiko manipulates Taiga into writing fanfic by appealing to his authorial ambition — “I was really hoping I could read a novel written by you,” she tells Taiga — while in another, an innocent conversation between Taiga and his studly pal Kouji leaves Yuiko trembling in anticipation, as she hears their exchange as a prelude to a steamy make-out session.

Though the source material for My Girlfriend’s a Geek is told from a male point of view — Pentabu, the original novel’s author, writes about his girlfriend with a mixture of awe, fear, and confusion — the manga has a decidedly more feminine tone. The artwork has a strong shojo flavor, with pretty male characters, close-ups of blushing faces, and flowery and starry backdrops galore. Artist Rize Shinba pulls off the neat trick of showing us events from both the regular-guy and fujoshi perspectives: when Taiga puts on his glasses, for example, Shinba represents him first as a college student in corrective lenses, then as a handsome seme superimposed on a bed of sparkles and roses. The humor, like the artwork, is a little gentler and cleaner than the original novel’s (to judge from the excerpt that appears at the end of volume one, at least), though it’s clear Yuiko harbors some disturbing fantasies; if you wondered what sort of person would squee over Ciel Phantomhive, Yuiko’s behavior provides an important clue.

From what I’ve been able to glean from web sources, it looks like My Girlfriend’s A Geek is a two-volume series, which seems just right for its fujoshi-say-the-darndest-things premise: long enough for us to develop an interest in the leads and chuckle at Taiga’s folly, but short enough to avoid repeating the same jokes with minor variations. I can’t say it’s the funniest or most original thing I’ve encountered, but it’s a quick, entertaining read, perfect for the beach or a plane trip.

Review copy provided by Yen Press. Volume one will be released on May 18, 2010.

MY GIRLFRIEND’S A GEEK, VOL. 1 • ART BY RIZE SHINBA, STORY BY PENTABU • YEN PRESS • 192 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Twin Spica, Vol. 1

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Asumi Kamogawa is a small girl with a big dream: to be an astronaut on Japan’s first manned space flight. Though she passes the entrance exam for Tokyo Space School, she faces several additional hurdles to realizing her goal, from her child-like stature — she’s thirteen going on eight — to her family’s precarious financial position. Then, too, Asumi is haunted by memories of a terrible fire that consumed her hometown and killed her mother, a fire caused by a failed rocket launch. Yet for all the pain in her young life, Asumi proves resilient, a gentle girl who perseveres in difficult situations, offers friendship in lieu of judgment, and demonstrates a preternatural awareness of life’s fragility.

If Asumi sounds like a stereotypically optimistic manga character, a can-do kid who maintains a positive attitude through every set-back, the first volume of Twin Spica reveals her to be more complex and damaged than her firm resolve might suggest. Mr. Lion, her imaginary friend, is proof of the wounds she carries: she “met” him when she was six, never quite outgrowing the need for his counsel or company. When Asumi suffers a traumatic flashback to the Yuigahama disaster, for example, she calls out Mr. Lion’s name; when her father responds angrily to the news that she passed the space academy’s placement test, she asks Mr. Lion if she should enroll or abandon her dream of becoming “a driver on a rocket.”

Though Asumi’s story ran in Comic Flapper, a seinen magazine, Twin Spica works surprisingly well for both adults and teens. The storytelling is direct and simple without being didactic, filled with the kind of characters that younger readers will recognize and embrace as true to their own experiences. At the same time, however, Twin Spica‘s subtexts are rich enough to sustain an adult’s interest, as the supplemental stories “2015: Fireworks” and “Asumi” attest. Both explore Asumi’s response to her mother’s death, acknowledging and validating Asumi’s curiosity about her mother’s appearance (Mom suffered disfiguring burns) and about dying itself. (Six-year-old Asumi scandalizes funeral-goers by leaning over her mother’s casket to see what death “smells like.”) Without a trace of mawkishness, Yaginuma shows us how Asumi makes sense of what happened to her mother, recognizing his young heroine’s keen emotional intelligence in the way she chooses to honor her mother’s memory. Tween and teen readers may well find these passages moving, as they touch on one of childhood’s most primal fears, but adult readers will find them more unsettling, as they remind us of our inability to protect children from painful experiences, and of the moment when we first grasped death’s finality.

The artwork, like the narrative, has a direct, expressive quality that keeps the focus on the characters’ interactions, rather than the gizmos and laboratories where their training takes place. Yaginuma draws his tyro astronauts in a simple, stylized fashion that treats them as collection of distinctive geometric shapes: Fuchuya, one of Asumi’s classmates, sports a ‘do evocative of Eero Saarinen’s iconic TWA terminal, while Asumi resembles a kokeshi doll with her exaggerated round head and tiny body. The characters’ slightly awkward proportions register as a deliberate artistic choice — call it studied naivete or primitivism — though at times the art seems a little clumsy and flat; readers will be forgiven for thinking Yusinuma’s storytelling skills outstrip his draftsmanship.

Whatever conclusions the reader reaches about Yusinuma’s style, it’s impossible to deny the emotional power of Twin Spica as a coming-of-age story about one girl’s journey from childhood to adulthood, and one nation’s journey from terrestrial power to space race competitor. A beautiful, thought-provoking book for star gazers of all ages.

Review copy provided by Vertical, Inc. Volume one of Twin Spica will be released on May 4, 2010.

TWIN SPICA, VOL. 1 • BY KOU YAGINUMA • VERTICAL, INC. • 192 pp. • NO RATING

Bokurano: Ours, Vol. 1

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Among the most discussed scenes in the new Kick-Ass film is one that pits a tweenage assassin against a roomful of grown men. To the strains of The Banana Splits theme song, thirteen-year-old Hit Girl dispatches a dozen gangsters with a gory zest that has divided critics into two camps: those, like Richard Corliss, who found the scene shocking yet exhilarating, a purposeful, subversive commentary on superhero violence, and those, like Roger Ebert, who found it morally reprehensible, a kind of kiddie porn that exploits the character’s age for cheap thrills. What’s at issue here is not children’s capacity for violence; anyone who’s run the gauntlet of a junior high cafeteria or cranked out an essay on Lord of the Flies is painfully aware that kids can be beastly when the grown-ups aren’t looking. The real issue is that Hit Girl seems to be enjoying herself, raising the far more uncomfortable question of how children understand and wield power.

Mohiro Kitoh, creator of Shadow Star and Bokurano: Ours, likes to muck around in this uncomfortable space. In Shadow Star, for example, Kitoh pairs teens with powerful supernatural allies — in this case, “shadow dragons” — who become instruments not for fighting evil but for exacting revenge on their masters’ peers and asserting their masters’ primacy in the school pecking order. Shadow Star‘s graphic violence and sex scenes clearly made some folks uneasy, as a few of the later chapters were censored here in the US. (Dark Horse dropped the series before completing it.) Bokurano: Ours hasn’t crossed that line — at least not yet — but once again finds Kitoh subverting a familiar manga trope to suggest the darkness of the underage psyche. This time, he takes a stock shonen formula — kids piloting giant robots to save Earth from aliens — and gives it a nasty twist: the pilot of a successful sortie dies after completing his mission.

The first volume of Bokurano: Ours is neatly divided into three acts, the first explaining how Kokopelli, a mysterious computer programmer, dupes fifteen kids into “playing” this lethal game; the second profiling Waku, a brash jock who pilots the first mission; and third profiling Kodama, a ruthless loner who leads the second. In just a handful of pages, Kitoh establishes both boys’ personal histories and personalities with efficiency and nuance. Waku, for example, views his mission in the same light as a soccer match, as something to be won, while Kodama views his sortie with calculated detachment: by stomping flat an entire neighborhood, he hopes to create work for his father’s construction business. (He’s a youthful Donald Trump, minus the comb-over.)

As these first two sorties suggest, Kitoh seems intent on laying bare the unspoken truth about the giant-robot genre, that kids’ power fantasies are seldom as heroic and self-abnegating as we’d like to think; given the opportunity to control an enormous, destructive piece of machinery, many kids would just as soon turn it on others as save the day. His point is well-taken, but is driven home with such grim determination that it feels more punitive than insightful. The same could be said for his fight scenes, in which he meticulously documents the destructive effects of the children’s behavior. Kitoh’s robots look more like flesh-and-blood creatures than machines, making every body blow and puncture as viscerally real as a wound. The fights aren’t exciting; they’re exhausting, grim spectacles with terrible consequences for everyone caught in the crossfire.

Which brings me back to Kick-Ass: if a story’s tone is serious and dour, rather than cheeky and excessive, how are we to process the sight of young children committing terrible acts of violence? I wouldn’t go as far as Ebert and pronounce Bokurano: Ours morally reprehensible, as I think Kitoh recognizes that a child’s capacity for inflicting — and enjoying the sight of — pain comes from a different place than an adult’s, something that’s less self-evident in the Kick-Ass movie. At the same time, however, there’s something undeniably exploitative about Kitoh’s fondness for depicting children in peril; he seems to take pleasure in stomping all over the idea that children are more innocent and pure than adults, even though he’s devised an unfair scenario for testing that hypothesis. (As I note above, the kids are tricked into “playing” what they believe is a game, with no way to renege on their contract.) I’m not sure if his aim is to shock or simply tell unpleasant truths, but either way, his relentlessly pessimistic view of human nature wears thin fast.

BOKURANO: OURS, VOL. 1 • BY MOHIRO KITOH • VIZ • 200 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN

Crown of Love, Vol. 2

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Crown of Love, Vol. 2
By Yun Kouga
Published by Viz Media
Rated T+ (Older Teen)

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With Hisayoshi’s help, Rima crams for the Hakuo High entrance exam. Terrified of losing the opportunity to spend time with her, Hisayoshi attempts to suppress his true intentions but is thrown off-guard by unwelcome attention from another idol with whom he’s been cast in a commercial. With the spotlight narrowing decidedly on Hisayoshi, can Rima ever see him as anything but a hated rival?

This series’ hero, Hisayoshi, continues to be both intensely creepy and surprisingly relatable. It’s a combination guaranteed to make most readers uncomfortable, but it’s also one of the series’ greatest strengths. Watching Hisayoshi perilously straddle the line between crushing teenager and bona fide stalker quickly becomes a rather terrifying series of “There, but for the grace of God,” moments for anyone who has experienced unrequited love (in other words, roughly everyone). His inner thoughts echo the kind of late-night self-confessions that rarely see the light of day, tucked firmly away in those dark, hidden corners where shame and denial conveniently coexist.

Meanwhile, Rima remains full of contradiction. Certain at every moment that the entertainment world is poised to chew her up and spit her out, she feels threatened by everyone. She is also desperate for approval, even from those she fears most. Her own obsessive crush reads closer to poignant than creepy, but even there she’s filled with resentment more than anything else.

Kouga’s art really shines in this series, putting her knack for pretty faces to great use, while maintaining a subversive undertone. With the unevenness of the series’ first volume behind her, Kouga continues on with a lot of clean paneling, breaking into more free-form shojo-stylings only in the story’s most dramatic moments.

It’s truly a pleasure to see a new shojo series making good on the promises of its first volume. For teenage romance with a dark, cynical bite, check out Crown of Love.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Kobato, Vol. 1

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Kobato Hanato has a job to do: if she can fill a magic bottle with the pain and suffering of people whose lives she’s improved, she’ll have her dearest wish come true. There’s just one problem: Kobato is completely mystified by urban life, and has no idea how to identify folks in need of her help. Lucky for her, Ioryogi, a blue dog with a foul mouth and fierce temper, has been appointed her sensei and guardian angel, tasked with helping Kobato develop the the street smarts necessary for completing her mission.

It’s perfectly possible to read Kobato as a story about a sweet, clueless girl who teams up with a gruff but lovable animal to collect wounded hearts. That book is beautifully drawn, but isn’t terribly interesting; most of the stories follow the same template so, well, doggedly, that even the most committed fan of cute would find Kobato too repetitive to be much fun. A more productive way to understand Kobato is as a moe parody, a gleeful skewering of an entire genre in which the cute, underage heroine’s primary role is to endear herself to readers with her mixture of enthusiasm, naivete, and sensitivity.

Exhibit A in the case for moe parody: CLAMP has provided Kobato with a name and a mission, but no history that would explain her bizarre behavior. (Is she an amnesiac? An alien? A simpleton?) Nor does CLAMP reveal Kobato’s deeper motivation for collecting wounded souls. “There’s a place I want to go!” she cheerfully tells Ioryogi without elaborating on the why and where. Exhibit B: Kobato’s behavior seldom endears her to anyone. When Ioryogi instructs her to “do the things that are appropriate for Christmas,” for example, Kobato casually asks a stranger to spend the night with her in a hotel, to the consternation of his girlfriend, while an old man interprets her request to “heal his heart” as a solicitation for sex. Exhibit C: Ioryogi has a sadistic streak that far outstrips the basic demands of the plot. Though his comments are shockingly abrasive at first, it doesn’t take long for the reader to realize that Ioryogi’s assessment of Kobato is spot-on; in effect, he gives the audience permission to dislike Kobato, despite her sweet face and Holly Hobbie outfit.

CLAMP has performed this sleight of hand before with Chobits, another series that can be read as a straightforward genre exercise or a parody. In the case of Chobits, CLAMP starts from the basic nebbishy-guy-meets-magical-girl premise, adding some perverse ruffles and flourishes that call attention to the genre’s more unsavory aspects. (Chi, the magical girl/robot/love interest, behaves like a horny frat guy’s idea of the perfect girlfriend, eschewing underwear, hanging on her owner’s every word, and buying him porn magazines as a gift.) The complexity of the story and the size of the cast eventually overwhelm the satire, however, making it hard for the reader to know how, exactly, she’s supposed to react to Chi and Hideki’s relationship. In Kobato, on the other hand, CLAMP strips things down to the bare essentials, putting the focus squarely on the darkly comic hijinks.

Lest I make Kobato sound unbearably mean-spirited, the manga equivalent of kicking a puppy, let me assure you that it’s actually good fun. Ioryogi, the unquestionable star of the series, is a hoot; CLAMP wrings considerable laughs from the cognitive dissonance between his cute, doll-like appearance and his destructive rages, martial arts moves, and unsavory habits. (Like Mokona Modoki, Ioryogi is always jonesing after beer or sake.) Long-time CLAMP fans will enjoy the cameos sprinkled throughout the book, as characters from Chobits, Suki, and xxxHolic cross paths with Kobato in subtle, unexpected ways — think Where’s Waldo for the Card Captor Sakura crowd. (Bonus points if you can identify the characters without consulting the translation notes.) As one might expect, the artwork is clean and elegant, filled with beautiful costumes, lovely title pages, and crisply executed action sequences in the manner of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles.

A quick glance at the Wikipedia entry suggests that future volumes of Kobato may cant more towards romance than satire. So long as Ioryogi is along for the ride, however, I’m confident that Kobato will remain edgy enough for readers, like me, who have a limited tolerance for insipid heroines. Recommended.

Review copy provided by Yen Press. Volumes one and two of Kobato will be released simultaneously on May 18, 2010.

KOBATO, VOL. 1  • CLAMP • YEN PRESS • 160 pp. • RATING: TEEN (13+)

Twin Spica, Vol. 1

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Twin Spica, Vol. 1
By Kou Yaginuma
Published by Vertical, Inc.
Rated 13+


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Fourteen years after a catastrophic space shuttle accident that was responsible for numerous civilian casualties, Japan’s space program is finally getting back on its feet, beginning with the establishment of Tokyo Space School’s Astronaut Training Course. There, fourteen-year-old Asumi competes with other prospective students, hoping to be accepted into the program and perhaps one day join Japan’s first successful manned excursion into space.

Though this series finished its run in seinen magazine Comic Flapper just last year, its simple artwork and wistful tone make its first volume read like an instant classic. Even the volume’s cover art, with its innocent imagery and sepia-like warmth, evokes feelings of nostalgia. Also, though the story’s foundation is set firmly in hard sci-fi, it is its heroine’s poignant and occasionally whimsical inner life that really defines its voice. Asumi provides the heart of this story, and it is a strange and wonderful heart indeed.

With her mother gone and her father often working, Asumi’s only confidante is a self-proclaimed ghost with a lion mask covering his head, whom she refers to as “Lion-san.” Even as Asumi begins her teen years, Lion-san remains a constant in her life, serving as a source of insight into a world she’s never truly felt a part of. He also provides a walking, talking symbol of the disaster that took her mother from her–a memory that she has safely locked away in the depths of her subconscious. That the volume opens with a spirited conversation between Asumi and her ghostly friend establishes the series’ supernatural/psychological focus from the start.

Asumi is both idiosyncratic and relatable. As a child, she is quiet and baffling to others–leaning into her mother’s corpse to find out how it smells and later stealing the ashes in order to give her mother a better view of the sea she so loved. As a teen, her concerns are more typical, focusing on dreams for her future and her ability to make friends, but the lonely little girl is still there, seeking comfort and advice from her supernatural friend.

All that said, Twin Spica is hardly a one-woman show. Supporting characters shine in this volume, from Asumi’s lonely teacher (whose first love was also killed fourteen years ago) to the girls with whom Asumi completes her astronaut exam. Even Asumi’s mother, seen mainly in a coma, bandaged from head to toe, is a compelling figure. One particularly complicated character is Asumi’s father. Though he obviously loves his daughter and supports her dreams, he is somewhat lost as a single parent and too often expresses himself through violence.

Yagimuna’s artwork is utterly charming. Simple, clean, and full of heartfelt emotion, it flows easily from panel to panel. Again here, there is a persistent air of nostalgia to the series, enhanced even by Vertical’s choice of font.

This volume feels short–just 124 pages of main story, followed by two short comics that provide a good chunk of backstory (written by Yagimuna before the series proper)–though that perception could just as easily be attributed to its overall delightfulness. Though the series was published as seinen in Japan, it provides substantial appeal for teen girls as well, especially those with their own dreams of space travel.

Hopeful, charming, and tinged with sadness, Twin Spica leaves us wanting more. Highly recommended.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Your & My Secret, Vols. 1-5

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If you ever wondered what Freaky Friday might have been like if Jodie Foster had switched bodies with Leif Garrett instead of Barbara Harris, well, Ai Morinaga’s Your & My Secret provides a pretty good idea of the gender-bending weirdness that would have ensued. The story focuses on Nanako, a swaggering tomboy who lives with her mad scientist grandfather, and Akira, an effeminate boy who adores her. Though Akira’s classmates find him “cute and delicate,” they declare him a timid bore — “a waste of a man,” one girl snipes — while Nanako’s peers call her “the beast” for her aggressive personality and uncouth behavior, even as the boys concede that Nanako is “hotter than anyone.” Akira becomes the unwitting test subject for the grandfather’s latest invention, a gizmo designed to transfer personalities from one body to another. With the flick of a switch, Akira finds himself trapped in Nanako’s body (and vice versa).

The joke, of course, is that Nanako and Akira have found the ideal vessels for their gender-atypical personalities. Nanako revels in her new-found freedom as a boy, enjoying sudden popularity among classmates, earning the respect of Akira’s contemptuous little sister, and discovering the physical strength to dunk a basketball. Akira, on the other hand, finds his situation a mixed bag: for the first time in his life, his sensitive personality endears him to both male and female peers, but many of the things his maleness had previously exempted him from — housework and cooking, menstrual cycles, unwanted advances from boys — turn out to be much worse than he’d imagined. He struggles to feel comfortable in Nanako’s skin, insulted by the grandfather’s refusal to do chores and bewildered by his old buddy Senbongi’s growing attraction to him.

Much of the humor in Your & My Secret stems from the war between head and hormones. Akira still identifies as a boy, lusting after Nanako’s sweetly feminine friend Shiina and suffering volcanic nosebleeds in the girls’ locker room, yet his body is drawn to Senbongi; after Senbongi makes a pass at him, the flustered Akira wonders how Senbongi “got to be such a good kisser.” Nanako, who is quick to embrace her new male identity, struggles as well; though she asks Shiina out, she’s reluctant to consummate their relationship, and shows an all-too-prurient interest in Senbongi’s, um, equipment. Making things even more complicated for Akira is that he’s trapped in the body of the girl he adores. He’s both disgusted and aroused by the sight of himself, and filled with conflicting emotions about the growing relationship between Nanako and Shiina.

Perhaps the most interesting wrinkle in Your & My Secret is that Nanako’s experiences transform her into a sexist pig. She rebuffs Akira’s pleas to reverse the experiment, belittling his gentle, conciliatory personality and asserting her right to have fun in his body. At the same time, she insists that Akira refrain from dating, having sex, or exploring her body; she repeatedly describes her body as a sacred temple that must remain “unpolluted” before her wedding day, and threatens Akira with humiliation if he acts on his conflicted feelings for Senbongi — or Shiina. (Apparently, Nanako is a bit of a homophobe, too.)

While the gender-swapping hijinks provide most of the comedic fodder for Your & My Secret, Morinaga also has a ball poking fun at manga tropes from incestuous infatuation to cultural festivals. The best of these gags revolves around the school’s manga club: in a sly nod to Tezuka, the group is helmed by a beret-wearing artist who transforms Akira and Senbongi’s friendship into a steamy boys’ love comic in which Akira is the seme and Senbongi is the uke. (“It’s not that I like guys,” Akira’s avatar tells Senbongi’s. “The person I fell in love with just happened to be a guy.”) Morinaga also wrings laughs from her characters’ desperate behavior; the grandfather, for example, thinks nothing of blackmailing Akira to get closer to Shiina (he dreams of having a pretty teenage girl sit in his lap and clean his ears), while Senbongi hatches up a love-hotel scheme to drive a wedge between Akira and Nanako.

Yet for all the black comedy, Morinaga still allows her characters moments of vulnerability and decency, preventing the humor from curdling into pure meanness. She wisely avoids the trap of making her characters too dumb to notice the transformations in Akira and Nanako, allowing her to sustain the body-swapping premise without straining credulity or testing the reader’s patience. Morinaga avoids another trap as well: that of making her leads so repellent the reader wishes for their comeuppance. (Even Nanako — she of the karate chops and withering put-downs — demonstrates a capacity for kindness and selflessness when wooing Shiina.) The artwork supports Morinaga’s characterizations, showing us both their nastier and nicer sides. When Akira assumes ownership of Nanako’s body, for example, there’s a visible softening of Nanako’s features, her lips becoming moistly inviting, her chin turning ever-so-slightly upward, and her eyes shining like a proper shojo heroine’s. If provoked, however, Akira’s body language and gestures revert back to Nanako’s coarse, tomboy persona, right down to the maniacal gleam in his eye; the gap between the two personalities proves smaller than either would like the admit.

No, it isn’t Taming of the Shrew, but Your & My Secret manages to make some worthwhile points about gender roles (and gender norms) while serving up plenty of dopey slapstick and risque jokes. Frankly, I’d take a big helping of Morinaga’s un-PC humor over an earnest, socially responsible “girls’ comic” any day of the week. Highly recommended.

This is an expanded version of a review that originally appeared at PopCultureShock on 3/12/08. The original review can be read by clicking here.

Kingyo Used Books, Vol. 1

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Kingyo Used Books starts from a simple premise: an eccentric group of people run a second-hand bookstore in an out-of-the-way location. Various customers stumble upon the shop — usually by accident — and, in the process of browsing, find a manga that helps them reconnect with a part of themselves that’s been suppressed, whether it be a youthful capacity for romantic infatuation or a desire to paint expressively.

Is there such thing as agit-manga? Because Kingyo Used Books seems like the brainchild of an editor who’s desperately trying to convince adults that one never outgrows manga. In the first story, for example, a salaryman tries to unload his collection at the store, telling the owner, “I’m not a kid anymore. Besides, it’s kind of pathetic to keep reading manga forever.” He gets a gentle comeuppance at a class reunion, where his friends’ fond memories of Dr. Slump remind him what an important role manga played in their young lives. The story is pleasant and enjoyable, but suffers from a bad case of predictability; as soon as the salaryman sees his friends engaged in tearful, rhapsodic discussions of their childhood reading habits, he’s overcome with emotion and — natch — a strong desire to keep the manga he’d previously hoped to sell.

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Other stories in volume one follow the same basic template. In “Far Away,” for example, an archery champion discovers that laughter and downtime are as essential to winning as practice, thanks to a pair of Kingyo employees whose snot-rolling-down-the-face, tears-in-eyes response to Moretsu Ataru inspires the archer to pick up a manga instead of his bow and quiver. “Fujiomi-kun,” another chapter that adheres to this formula, focuses on a frustrated housewife who makes some small but important changes in her life after rediscovering Chizumi and Fujiomi-kun, a romance about a handsome athlete who falls in love with a clumsy but kind-hearted girl.

The series’ episodic structure cuts both ways, see-sawing between a fun exercise in formula — which manga will feature prominently in this story? who will be drawn into the store? — and a frustratingly obvious collection of beats culminating in a character’s decision to make a change in her life. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit the appeal of a series that highlights some famous (and, sadly, untranslated) manga, or that validates my own experiences as an adult manga reader; like many of the characters in Kingyo Used Books, I, too, have found titles as different as Suppli, Phoenix, and Night of the Beasts an outlet for emotions that don’t always find expression in my daily life. In settling for such a tidy approach to dramatizing manga’s transformative power, however, author Seimu Yoshizaki misses an opportunity to really move readers, instead treating us to sentimental, sometimes mawkish, scenes in which adults recover childhood memories of favorite books. Yoshizaki never acknowledges the messiness or risk that her characters take when acting on their epiphanies or experiencing personal growth, choosing instead to end every story on a positive note.

The artwork is clean, conveying the characters’ interior lives with directness and simplicity. Though her style isn’t particularly distinctive, Yoshizaki does a fine job evoking other artists’ styles, recreating images from famous series and altering one of her own characters to look like the hero of his favorite manga. The most striking image in the book is just such a recreation: it’s Hokusai’s iconic wave print, drawn in the sand by two students who then watch the incoming tide erase it. In the story’s final panels, the two reflect on their emotions as they watch their work vanish. One is pensive and wishes the work was permanent; the other responds by noting that permanence can be its own trap. “I’ve seen the pictures Hokusai drew when he was our age,” he says. “They really sucked.” Here’s hoping that volume two has more of these frank, funny, and true-to-life moments and fewer scenes of tearful housewives and salarymen reliving their childhoods through manga.

KINGYO USED BOOKS, VOL. 1 • BY SEIMU YOSHIZAKI • VIZ • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+) • 208 pp.

Wild Ones, Vol. 9

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By Kiyo Fujiwara
Viz, 200 pp.
Rating: Teen

Having finally agreed to speak to the father who abandoned him so many years ago, Rakuto is confronted with the possibility that he may eventually have to leave Sachie’s side in order to make peace with his own past. Meanwhile, Azuma is determined to let Sachie know how he feels, whether Rakuto is ready to play his part or not. Who does Sachie truly love? Has this ever been in question? If so, this volume provides an answer at long last!

Finally the series’ romantic tension is resolved, exactly as it was certain to be from the beginning. Some formulaic romances are enjoyable to read simply because they are so predictable. With these stories, the charm is in the writing, and watching their familiar scenarios play out is, frankly, comforting and downright delightful. Unfortunately, this is not one of those series. Though the couple in question are undeniably sweet, their relationship is so labored and so painfully drawn out, one finds oneself wishing something truly shocking would happen (a deadly plague? an alien invasion? ) just to break up the monotony. With its unbelievable premise and its terminally clueless lovers, this series seems determined to remain lifeless until the end.

Well, almost, anyway. To be fair, this volume’s final pages are honestly sweet, and may even evoke tears from desperate readers grateful for a bit of romantic satisfaction. It may not be an alien invasion, but long-time readers are at least assured some payoff.

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