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One-Punch Man, Vols. 1-2

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In a scene that would surely please Jack Kirby, One-Punch Man opens with a pow! splat! and boom!, as Saitama, the eponymous hero, goes mano-a-mano with the powerful Vaccine Man, a three-story menace with razor-sharp claws. Though Vaccine Man is formidable, he has a pronounced Achilles’ heel: chattiness. “I exist because of humankind’s constant pollution of the environment!” he tells Saitama. “The Earth is a single living organism! And you humans are the disease-causing germs killing it! The will of the earth gave birth to me so that I may destroy humanity and their insidious civilization!” Vaccine Man is so stunned that Saitama lacks an equally dramatic origin story that he lets down his guard, allowing Saitama to land a deadly right hook.

And so it goes with the other villains in One-Punch Man: Saitama’s unassuming appearance and matter-of-fact demeanor give him a strategic advantage over the preening scientists, cyborg gorillas, were-lions, and giant crabmen who terrorize City Z. Saitama’s sangfroid comes at a cost, however: the media never credit his alter ego with saving the day, instead attributing these victories to more improbable heroes such as Mumen Rider, a timid, helmet-wearing cyclist. Even the acquisition of a sidekick, Genos, does little to boost Saitama’s visibility in a city crawling with would-be heroes and monsters.

If it sounds as if One-Punch Man is shooting fish in a barrel, it is; supermen and shonen heroes, by definition, are a self-parodying lot. (See: capes, spandex, “Wind Scar.”) What inoculates One-Punch Man against snarky superiority is its ability to toe the line between straightforward action and affectionate spoof. It’s jokey and sincere, a combination that proves infectious.

Saitama is key to ONE’s strategy for bridging the action/satire divide: the character dutifully acknowledges tokusatsu cliches while refusing to capitulate to the ones he deems most ridiculous. (In one scene, Saitama counters an opponent’s “Lion Slash: Meteor Power Shower” attack with a burst of “Consecutive Normal Punches.”) ONE’s script is complemented by bold, polished artwork; even if the outcome of a battle is never in question, artist Yusuke Murata dreams up imaginative obstacles to prevent Saitama from defeating his opponents too quickly, or rehashing an earlier confrontation.

Is One-Punch Man worthy of its Eisner nomination? Based on what I’ve read so far, I’d say yes: it’s brisk, breezy, and executed with consummate skill. It may not be the “best” title in the bunch–I’d give the honor to Moyocco Anno’s In Clothes Called Fat–but it’s a lot more fun than either volume of Showa: A History of Japan… Scout’s honor.

The verdict:  Highly recommended.

One-Punch Man, Vols. 1-2
Story by ONE, Art by Yusuke Murata
Rated T, for teens
VIZ Media, $6.99 (digital)

This review originally appeared at MangaBlog on June 12, 2015.

Short Takes: Food Wars, Manga Dogs, and Yukarism

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Did you receive an Amazon or RightStuf gift certificate this holiday? If so, this post is for you! Below, I’ve reviewed the first volumes of three series that debuted in 2014, offering a quick-and-dirty assessment of each. Already read Food Wars? Fear not—I’ve also tackled Manga Dogs, a comedy about a teen manga artist, and Yukarism, a time-traveling, gender-bendering manga from Chika Shiomi (Canon, Yurara).

thumb-10857-FDW_01_webFood Wars, Vol. 1
Story by Yuto Tsukada, Art by Shun Saeki
Rated T+, for Older Teens
VIZ Manga, $9.99

Food Wars begins with an only-in-manga scenario: Soma Yukihira’s dad shutters the family’s greasy spoon restaurant and lights out for America, leaving his son behind. With no place to go, Soma enrolls at Totsuki Culinary Academy, a hoity-toity cooking school that prides itself on its wealthy alumnae, rigorous curriculum, and high attrition rate. Soma’s working-class background is a major handicap in this environment, but his can-do attitude and culinary instincts allow him to triumph in difficult situations, whether he’s salvaging an over-salted pot roast or wowing an unscrupulous developer with a simple potato dish.

In theory, I ought to hate Food Wars for its cartoonish characters and abundant cheesecake, two qualities I generally despise in a manga. But here’s the thing: it’s fun. Soma repeatedly shows up bullies and snobs with his ability to transform everyday dishes into haute cuisine, proving that good food doesn’t need to be fancy. Though Soma’s foes are stock types—the Busty Bitch, the Rich Mean Boy, the Teacher With Impossibly High Standards—Shun Sakei’s crisp caricatures make them seem like fresh creations. I wish I could say the same for Sakei’s abundant fanservice, which quickly wears out its welcome with porny images of women enjoying Soma’s cooking. These pin-up moments are supposed to be funny, I guess, but the heavy emphasis on heaving cleavage and bare skin seems more like a concession to teenage male taste than an organic part of the story.

The verdict: I can’t decide if Food Wars is a guilty pleasure or a hate read, but I’ve just purchased volumes 2-4.

Manga Dogs 1Manga Dogs, Vol. 1
By Ema Toyama
Rated T, for Teens
Kodansha Comics, $10.99

Manga Dogs has a terrific premise: a teenage artist decides to enroll in her school’s manga program, only to discover that her teacher is inept, and her classmates are pretty-boy otakus with no skill or work ethic. When Kanna’s classmates discover that she’s actually a published artist, Fumio, Fujio, and Shota glom onto her in hopes of breaking into the business—even though her debut series is on the verge of being cancelled.

With such a ripe set-up, it’s a pity that Manga Dogs is DOA. Part of the problem is that the script panders to the reader at every turn, whether it’s poking fun at reverse-harem tropes or saddling the characters with pun-tastic names inspired by famous manga creators. The author spends too much time patting the reader on the back for “getting” the jokes and not enough time writing genuinely funny scenarios or imbuing her characters with more than one personality trait each. The other issue is pacing: the story and artwork are both frenetic, with characters screaming, jumping, and flapping their arms on almost every page. By the end of the third chapter, I felt as if someone had beaten me up for my lunch money while asking me, “Do you think I’m funny? No? Now do you think I’m funny?”

The verdict: Just say no.

1421575906Yukarism, Vol. 1
By Chika Shiomi
Rated T, for Teen
VIZ Media, $9.99

Yukarism combines the supernatural elements of Rasetsu with the historical drama of Sakuran, then adds a dash of gender-bending weirdness for good measure. The story revolves around Yukari, a best-selling author whose novels explore the history of Edo’s red-light district. Though fans attribute the abundant details in his writing to research, Yukari has an even better strategy for learning about the past: he visits it! When he returns to the 1800s, however, Yukari becomes Yumurasaki, a top-earning oiran (or courtesan) enmeshed in a web of political intrigue, lust, and violence.

Given the complexity of the plot, it’s not surprising that the first volume of Yukarism is a bumpy ride. The tone see-saws between broad physical comedy and brooding melodrama, making it difficult to know if Yukari’s plight is being played for laughs or sniffles. The script, on the other hand, is too pointed; manga-ka Chika Shiomi is so intent on telling us what Yukari is thinking and seeing that she forgets the old dictum about showing, not telling. The same kind of editorial interventions result in at least one character waxing profusely about how handsome and cool Yukari is, just in case we haven’t realized that he’s supposed to be handsome and cool. Now that the basic parameters of the story have been established, however, Shiomi can dispense with the heavy-handed dialogue and do what she does best: write sudsy supernatural romances with beautiful characters in beautiful costumes.

The verdict: Volume two should be a pure guilty pleasure.

These reviews originally appeared at MangaBlog on January 2, 2015.

Assassination Classroom, Vol. 1

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Americans steadfastly believe that all students need to succeed are a few good teachers—think of how many movies you’ve seen about an unorthodox educator who helps a group of misfits, losers, or underachievers realize their full potential against all odds. Perhaps that’s why American publishers hesitated before licensing Assassination Classroom, a comedy that outwardly conforms to the tenets of the genre while poking fun at its hoariest cliches.

Assassination Classroom‘s star teacher is Koro-sensei, a super-powered alien who can wipe out an army with a swish of a tentacle. His students are class 3-E, the troublemakers and flunkies of Kunugigaoka Junior High School. Instead of studying calculus or Shakespeare, however, Koro-sensei’s charges are learning how to kill him and save Earth in the process—in other words, it’s To Sir With Lethal Force.

If the script isn’t quite as edgy as my summary suggests, Assassination Classroom scores points for the sheer ridiculousness of the premise. Koro-sensei’s relentless enthusiasm and high standards match those of other fictional educators—Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds, Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society—but are applied to such activities as shooting and stabbing. He gives the same kind of inspirational speeches that you’d find in those movies, too, reminding his charges that he specifically requested the job because he knows the students’ true potential.

In one scene, for example, timid student Okuda presents Koro-sensei with three deadly potions, imploring him to sample them. “I’m not good at surprise attacks!” she tells him. “But I love chemistry! And I really put my heart and soul into this!” Koro-sensei cheerfully obliges, offering to help Okuda “research a poison that can kill me.” When Okuda proves more skillful at mixing chemicals than persuading her target to drink them, Koro-sensei reminds her that “in order to kill someone, you need to understand how they feel,” skills that she can cultivate through—what else?—reading and writing.

The exchange between Okuda and Koro-sensei is complemented by some of the best visual gags in volume one. One of the poisons, for example, neutralizes Koro-sensei’s Cheshire grin into a flat line, prompting a student to exclaim, “You look like an emoticon!” Although Koro-sensei’s face is the essence of simplicity—a circle with pin-dot eyes and a toothy smile—this subtle tweak of his appearance yields a big pay-off laugh-wise.

At the same time, however, the poison episode illustrates Assassination Classroom‘s biggest flaw: Yusei Matsui wants to have his cake and eat it, too, soft-pedaling the humor with an uplifting, awwww-worthy moment in almost every chapter. Students unironically vow to do their best after Koro-sensei points out the flaws in their technique, saves them from harm, or gives them a pep talk. None of the students harbor a grudge against him—at least not for very long—or question the value of Koro-sensei’s lessons. (Makes you wonder: is Koro-sensei guilty of grade inflation?)

Still, I enjoyed volume one enough to continue with the series, even if Matsui’s efforts to express the Shonen Jump dictum of “friendship, effort, victory” sometimes blunt the edge of his satire.

ASSASSINATION CLASSROOM, VOL. 1 • BY YUSEI MATSUI • RATED T+, FOR OLDER TEENS • VIZ MEDIA

This review originally appeared at MangaBlog on December 18, 2014.

Barakamon, Vol. 1

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Barakamon is a textbook fish-out-of-water story: an impatient city slicker finds himself in the country where life is slower, folks are simpler, and meaningful lessons abound. Its hero, Seishuu Handa, is a calligrapher whose fiery temper and skillful but unimaginative work have made him a pariah in Tokyo. His foils are the farmers and fishermen of Gotou, a small island on the southwestern tip of Japan that’s inhabited by an assortment of eccentrics, codgers, and naifs.

If this all sounds a little too familiar, it is; you’ve seen variations on this story at the multiplex, on television, and yes, in manga. (I think I liked it better when it was called Cold Comfort Farm, and starred Kate Beckinsale and Rufus Sewell.) Satsuki Yoshino does her best to infuse the story with enough humor and warmth to camouflage its shopworn elements, throwing in jokes about internet pornography, dead frogs, and bad report cards whenever the story teeters on the brink of sentimentality. The mandates of the genre, however, demand that Handa endure humiliations and have epiphanies with astonishing regularity—1.5 times per chapter, by my calculations.

From time to time, however, Yoshino finds fresh ways to show us Handa’s slow and fitful progress towards redemption. The first chapter provides an instructive example: Handa angrily dismisses his six-year-old neighbor Naru when she declares his calligraphy “just like teachers write.” After seeing Naru’s wounded expression, Handa chastises himself for lashing out at a kid. Handa never musters an apology to Naru, but makes restitution by joining her for a series of small adventures. The experience of swimming in the ocean, scrambling over a wall, and watching a sunset prove liberating, leading Handa to an explosive outburst of creativity punctuated by a few high-flying kicks. (Now that’s what I call action painting.) The results are messy, but the message is clear: Handa has the potential to be a genuine artist if he can connect with his playful side.

Like the story, the artwork is serviceable if not particularly distinctive. Yoshino creates enough variety in her character designs that the reader can easily distinguish one islander from another—an important asset in a story with many supporting players. Yoshino’s grasp of anatomy, however, is less assured. When viewed from the side, for example, Handa’s Tokyo nemesis has a cranium like a gorilla’s and a chest to match; when viewed from above, however, the Director appears small and wizened. Other characters suffer from similar bodily distortions that exaggerate their necks, arms, and torsos, especially when Yoshino attempts to draw them from an unusual vantage point.

Yoshino is more successful at creating a sense of place. Through a few simple but evocative images of the harbor and coastline, she firmly establishes the seaside location. She also uses architectural details to suggest how old the village is; though locals enjoy such modern conveniences as television, their homes look otherwise untouched by modernity. Yoshino is less successful in creating a sense of space, however. It’s unclear, for example, if Naru lives a stone’s throw from Handa’s house—hence her frequent intrusions—or if she lives a mile down the road.

The dialogue, too, plays an important role in establishing the setting. Faced with the difficult task of rendering the Gotou dialect, translators Krista and Karie Shipley chose a broad Southern accent for the local population. That decision neatly illustrates the cultural divide between Handa and his neighbors, but at the cost of nuance; a few jokes that hinge on vocabulary simply can’t be conveyed by this particular adaptation strategy. (The Shipleys’ translation notes are helpful in demystifying these exchanges.) Most of the punchlines, however, need no such editorial interventions to enjoy; certain elements of city slicker/country bumpkin humor transcend culture.

My verdict: Barakamon has enough charm and energy to engage the reader, even if the story isn’t executed with enough precision or subtlety to transcend the basic requirements of the fish-out-of-water genre.

BARAKAMON, VOL. 1 • BY SATSUKI YOSHINO • RATED T, FOR TEENS • YEN PRESS

This review originally appeared at MangaBlog on November 19, 2014.

The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window, Vols. 1-3

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By Tomoko Yamashita | Published digitally by SuBLime

tricornered1Until Olivia mentioned it over in the comments on Manga Bookshelf, I had no idea this series existed, let alone that it was being released in English! Having loved Yamashita’s Dining Bar Akira and Black-Winged Love, I immediately purchased all extant volumes.

Kosuke Mikado has been able to see spirits since he was a child, but any time he tried to talk to his friends about it, they thought he was weird, so he has been keeping his distance from other people and has begun to doubt his own sanity. When the manager of the bookshop where Mikado works hires Rihito Hiyakawa to deal with a pesky spirit—and after Hikayawa recognizes Mikado’s powers and uses them to boost his own—Mikado finally finds someone who lives in the same world he does. Although he begins the series frightened and clinging to skepticism, through Hiyakawa’s assurances, Mikado gradually accepts the things he sees as reality and begins to combat them independently.

tricornered2I love series like this, where the leads have episodic disturbances that they investigate (via the partnership they strike up as a sort of supernatural cleaning crew and frequently assisting a non-believing cop named Hanzawa) plus an ongoing mystery (involving curses cast by someone named Erika Hiura) and yet the most important and fascinating aspect is the relationship between the leads themselves. There are the fun, suggestive moments where the guys are combining their powers for one reason or another and end up using dialogue like, “Do you want me to touch it?” or “Take me all the way in.” But where Yamashita-sensei really excels is at teasing out threads of darkness.

We first get an inkling that something is amiss when the guys visit a potentially fraudulent fortune-teller. Mikado is the one who physically sits for the session while Hiyakawa, bodily still in the waiting room, casually inhabits Mikado’s body to see for himself. The fortune-teller warns Mikado that the way Hiyakawa reaches into him so easily is dangerous, a warning neither Mikado nor I take seriously. And yet, after an encounter with Erika Hiura shows Mikado’s vulnerability to being accessed in this way, Hiyakawa makes Mikado enter into a contract he doesn’t remember, and we get this awesomely creepy full-page panel.

After this point, more and more potentially disturbing things about Hiyakawa are revealed. “I don’t have parents or friends,” he says at one point. Later, he seems baffled by the concepts of beauty and evil. As troubling indications mount, Mikado knows that he should be thinking seriously about what is happening between them. Other characters certainly question it, but Mikado is strangely reluctant. Is it because Hiyakawa is somehow keeping him quiescent, or is Mikado willfully maintaining his ignorance because he does not want to go back to being alone?

tricornered3It’s only at the end of volume three, wherein Hiyakawa nonchalantly suggests that it’d be good if they could work the other side of the business, too, that Mikado realizes he has no idea what kind of person he’s working with. As a reader, I too was lulled into believing that of course the protagonist of a series about fighting the supernatural is a good guy. Turns out, he’s more of an empty-inside opportunist. At this point, even I just want to say, “Run away, Mikado! Run away and don’t look back!” Is there any hope that he can help heal and humanize Hiyakawa, or will he only end up destroyed? How soon until volume four comes out?!

Lest my focus on the relationship suggest otherwise, the plot of The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window is also excellent. In fact, I sincerely owe Olivia a debt of gratitude. And SuBLime, too, in fact. I hope print editions are available at some point in the future, because this is a series I need to have on my shelves.

The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window is available on Kindle and at sublimemanga.com. The series is ongoing in Japan, where the fourth volume has just been released.

That Wolf-boy Is Mine!, Vols. 1-2

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By Yoko Nogiri | Published by Kodansha Comics

wolfboy1After making a social blunder at school that results in being shunned by her female classmates, Komugi Kusunoki is glad of the chance to start over in Hokkaido when the demands of her mother’s job mean Komugi will need to live with her father instead. At Maruyama High School, she quickly befriends a couple of nice girls (Kana and Keiko) and learns about the small clique of hotties over whom many girls swoon but who keep to themselves. One day, she surprises one of the boys (Yu Ogami) while he is napping and he turns into a wolf who promptly boops her on the nose.

Adorable as that was, he was actually trying to erase her memory of the incident. When repeated attempts to hypnotize her fail, she promises to keep their secret and thus becomes the first person to surmount the wall the boys have erected around themselves. It turns out they’re animal ayakashi who have learned to transform and who live in the human world for its entertainment. In addition to Ogami, the next most prominent character is Rin Fushimi the fox, though there’s also a troublemaking tanuki boy and an aloof cat boy.

wolfboy2As Komugi gets to know them better, she learns that Ogami is half human and was abandoned in the woods by his human mother. Although he doesn’t hate humans as Fushimi claims to do, and is in fact kind and sweet, he’s still determined that he is going to be the last of his line and that he won’t fall in love with anyone, which is a problem because it doesn’t take long for Komugi to fall for him. Meanwhile, Fushimi witnesses this happening and tries to spare her hurt, and when she’s later trying to acclimate to just being friends with Ogami, he’s the one who’s there for her to talk to, sparking some jealous feelings on Ogami’s part.

Whenever something claims to be “perfect for fans of _______,” I am dubious. Just because a book features a petite blonde who fights demons doesn’t mean that it resembles Buffy the Vampire Slayer in any truly meaningful way. So, when a back cover blurb claimed that That Wolf-boy Is Mine! is perfect for fans of Fruits Basket, I uncharitably thought that they must mean it’s because hot guys transform into animals.

Now, it’s certainly true that hot guys do transform into animals, but the real emphasis here is on someone finding out a secret, proving themselves trustworthy, and helping damaged boys presumably learn to accept themselves. Nogiri-sensei has also done a great job in developing the three lead characters—I especially like level-headed Komugi and wary Fushimi—and it’s been a very long time since I’ve found a love triangle as compelling as this one. Any doubts I had about this series have been firmly dispelled, and I’m not only eagerly looking forward to volume three, I’m also bummed that the series is only four volumes long.

That Wolf-Boy Is Mine! is complete in four volumes. Two volumes have been released in English so far.

Strobe Edge, Vol. 1

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One of the most maddening aspects of shojo manga is that it can take 100 or 200 pages for a character to realize what she’s feeling, and another 200 or 300 before she actually tells someone; only the British period drama wrings more tension from its characters’ inability to say what they’re thinking. Strobe Edge, the newest addition to VIZ’s Shojo Beat imprint, isn’t quite as drawn out as Parade’s End or The Remains of the Day, but there are enough meaningful glances, lip quivers, and moist eyes for an entire BBC mini-series.

Strobe Edge focuses on Ninako, a classic shojo everygirl: she’s cute but not gorgeous, bright but not brilliant, liked but not popular. Through a twist of fate, Ninako meets and befriends Ren, her school’s Designated Dreamboat. Ninako is initially happy to be Ren’s pal, but soon finds herself consumed with thoughts about  him: should she tell him how she feels and risk alienating him, or silently resign herself to being his friend?

Author Io Sakisaka certainly evokes the mixture of excitement and fear that grips anyone in the throes of a crush, but she’s less successful at expressing those ideas in a distinctive voice; Ninako is so utterly lacking in personality that everything she thinks and says sounds like a lyric from a Selena Gomez song. (“For some reason, my chest kinda aches,” she muses after one encounter with Ren.) That same blandly polished quality extends to the artwork. Though Sakisaka exercises restraint in her layouts, giving Ninako room to breathe and reflect, her character designs are too ordinary to make much of an impression; I swear I’ve seen this cover before.

Perhaps that’s the point — Sakisaka has created a story and heroine so generic that almost any young teenager could see parallels between her own life and Ninako’s. While that kind of reading experience can be enormously comforting at twelve or thirteen, it’s awfully dull for older readers who need a little more than thousand-mile stares and cryptic conversations to hold our attention; a little subtext or, frankly, context, would make all that angstful withholding more dramatically compelling.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media. Volume one will arrive in stores on November 6, 2012.

STROBE EDGE, VOL. 1 • BY IO SAKISAKA • VIZ MEDIA • 200 pp. • RATING: TEEN (13+)

The Best Manga You’re Not Reading: Mail

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Have spirit gun, will travel — that’s the basic plot of Mail, a three-volume collection of ghost stories penned by Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service illustrator Housui Yamazaki. Like Kurosagi, Mail follows a spook-of-the-week formula, pausing occasionally to fill us in on the personal life of its chief exorcist, Detective Reiji Akiba. Akiba initially presents as a Columbo-esque figure, disarming clients with his rumpled coat and penchant for napping on the job, but his true nature is soon revealed in the first story: he’s handy with Kagutsuchi, his trusty pistol, and unflappable in the presence of the undead.

As we learn over the course of the series, Akiba was born blind. Medicine restored his sight, but with a side effect: he began seeing dead people. After years of living in fear of ghosts, Akiba learned to perform exorcisms with Kagutsuchi, a skill he parlayed into a career as a modern-day onmyoji.

If Akiba’s strategies for assisting his clients are decidedly hi-tech — websites, cellphones, GPS devices, bullets — the stories have a pleasantly old-fashioned quality to them. Some are morality plays; in “The Doll,” for example, a toy becomes the vessel for a hit-and-run victim to bring her killer to justice. Others read more like good campfire tales; in “Suppressed,” for example, a young woman begins receiving mysterious calls from a “friend” who’s en route to her home, the last of which appear to be originating from inside her apartment. Still others draw on urban legend for inspiration; “Ka-tsu-mi,” the fifth chapter in the series, focuses on a girl who dies after accidentally photographing a ghost.

I’d be the first to admit that Yamazaki is not a master of suspense. Though Mail is filled with suitably gruesome imagery and creative variations on oft-told ghost stories, the reader is never in doubt about Akiba’s ability to save his clients. The endings have a sameness that becomes more apparent when reading them back-to-back, as Akiba’s only method for banishing the undead is to fire Kagutsuchi. And while Akiba demonstrates remarkable sangfroid when confronting murdered babies, vengeful lovers, and drowning victims, his undeniable coolness doesn’t quite compensate for the predictability of the denounements.

What Mail lacks in suspense it makes up in atmosphere. Yamazaki shows considerable flair for turning ordinary urban environments into unbearably scary places, whether he’s depicting an empty public bathroom or a high-rise building. In one of Mail‘s best stories, for example, a woman receives a letter urging her to move out of her apartment right away. Shortly after reading the letter, she catches glimpse of something moving along the ceiling of the adjacent room:

Though we’re outside the picture plane, viewing the action from a different angle than the hapless apartment dweller, we don’t have any more information about what’s lurking in the other room than she does; Yamazaki is relying on the reader to guess what might be crawling along the ceiling by planting one suggestive detail.

The other thing that makes this image so unsettling is the very mundaneness of the setting. With its square rooms and bland furnishings, this scene could be unfolding in almost any Tokyo neighborhood, in almost any modern apartment complex. (Add a parquet floor, and it could just as easily be taking place in any postwar building in Manhattan.) More unsettling still is that this scene is taking place in broad daylight, not at night; whatever is haunting the apartment isn’t relying on the camouflage of darkness, but is sallying forth at a time of day when spirits are supposed to be hidden and, more importantly, impotent.

Not all of the stories take place in Tokyo; several unfold in the countryside. Mail is at its best in urban settings, however, as the very nature of city living gives Yamazaki ample material to work with, whether he’s spinning a cautionary tale about the anonymity of modern life or simply reflecting on the myriad layers of history buried underneath new roadways and buildings. As a life-long city-dweller, I found stories such as “The Drive” — which takes place on an urban freeway — “The Elevator” — which takes place in a stalled elevator car — and “Hide-and-Seek” — which takes place in a haunted apartment — among the spookiest in the collection, as they tapped into a deep well of fear that all urban folk share: that cities harbor something even bigger and scarier than crime, high property taxes, or gridlock.

MAIL, VOLS. 1-3 • BY HOUSUI YAMAZAKI • DARK HORSE • RATING: OLDER TEEN/MATURE

A First Look at Cross Manage

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For a series whose plot hinges on a mammary collision, Cross Manage is better than it has any right to be: it’s interesting, funny, and populated with appealing characters who rise above type. The collider and the collidee are, respectively, Sakurai, an aimless second-year student, and Misora, captain of the girls’ lacrosse team. Though Sakurai has joined and quit twelve clubs, he has yet to discover an activity at which he excels; he scoffs at the idea that anyone would play a sport or pursue a hobby simply for enjoyment. Misora is his diametric opposite, an enthusiast who can describe the history of lacrosse in voluminous detail, but can’t make a shot to save her life. When Sakurai accidentally grabs Misora’s chest during an impromptu coaching session, she offers him a choice: become the manager of the girls’ lacrosse team, or risk public humiliation.

Yikes! The “whoops-I-touched-your-boob!” gag is one of the most overused and least amusing “comic” bits in shonen manga, not least because it portrays boys as the victims of mammary collisions, rather than the other way around. I admit that my heart sank a little when I read that scene: surely Kaito could have found a more creative way to set the plot in motion, perhaps one that didn’t scream Love Hina: The Lacrosse Years. But I soldiered on for another chapter, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that Cross Manage wasn’t evolving into a panty-fest or a string of lecherous, Benny Hill-style gags, but an amusing character study of two charmingly screwed-up teens.

Anyone who’s read more than two shonen rom-coms will recognize Sakurai and Misora as familiar types, but artist/author Kaito has invested them with more personality than is called for by the genre. Misora, for example, is a classic Shonen Spaz Dream Girl, but she’s an interesting variation on the type; though she’s utterly incompetent at everything, she’s clearly knowledgeable about lacrosse. She freely admits that she’s terrible, but she doesn’t care because playing the game gives her a sense of accomplishment and purpose.

Sakurai embodies another classic type, the Cool Reader Surrogate. As portrayed in the first two chapters of Cross Manage, Sakurai is a natural at everything — photography, shogi, sports — even though he never practices. Sakurai is a sympathetic character nonetheless, one who’s both moved and puzzled by Misora’s dedication to a sport at which she… well, sucks. And while Misora has a lot to learn from Sakurai about how to handle the stick and pass the ball, Sakurai clearly has a lot to learn from Misora as well — not the least of which is how to enjoy doing things at which he’s not an expert. (Also how to comport himself around girls, of whom he has a deep, unnatural phobia that’s sure to be explained in a future chapter.)

As with many Shonen Jump titles, the artwork is crisp if not terribly distinctive; I’d have a hard time picking Sakurai and Misora out of a line-up of recent Jump characters, though both are memorable enough within the context of the story. Kaito has the artistic chops to populate Cross Manage with a diverse supporting cast — a key skill in a series that promises to have a bumper crop of comic relief characters. Though he hasn’t had many opportunities to showcase this skill just yet, a throwaway scene involving the “prince” of the shogi club hints at Kaito’s ability to establish personality through a few well-chosen details.

If Kaito can steer clear of excessive fanservice, and provide both Sakurai and Misora room for personal growth, I could see myself following Cross Manage; if not, it will join the large pile of shonen romantic comedies that I’ve abandoned after the fifth — or fifteenth — “misunderstanding” involving groping, nudity, or panties. Stay tuned.

CROSS MANAGE, CHAPTERS 1-2 • BY KAITO • VIZ MEDIA • CURRENTLY RUNNING IN WEEKLY SHONEN JUMP ALPHA

Give My Regards to Black Jack, Vols. 1-2

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Give My Regards to Black Jack tells a familiar story: a newly-minted professional enters his field, convinced that he has chosen the True Path. He soon discovers, however, that many of his colleagues have chosen profit over passion, forcing him to decide whether to follow their example or fight the system.

Eijiro Saito, the hero, is a graduate of a top medical school, brimming with energy and enthusiasm. Though Saito lands a plum internship at Eiroku University’s teaching hospital, his pay is meager; he supplements his income by moonlighting at a woefully understaffed emergency room. At both institutions, Saito encounters crooked doctors who demand bribes from patients; arrogant doctors who belittle poor patients; and money-minded doctors who care only about the hospital’s bottom line. For all the challenges to Saito’s idealism, however, he clings tenaciously to the belief that candor and sincerity are a doctor’s greatest assets.

As agit-prop, Give My Regards to Black Jack succeeds. Author Shuho Sato makes a convincing case that billing practices encourage Japanese hospitals to treat patients as cash cows, rather than people in need of medical care. Sato also offers a blistering critique of doctor training, showing us the toll that long hours, poor pay, and workplace bullying exact on residents.

As drama, however, Give My Regards to Black Jack is too tidy to be moving. True, Saito’s despair at his own futility seems genuine. Early in volume one, for example, Saito finds himself alone in the operating room with a motorcycle accident victim. Fearful of killing the patient, Saito does nothing; only the last-minute intervention of a more experienced surgeon prevents the victim from dying on the table. In a moment of self-hatred, Saito dissolves into tears, castigating himself for his paralysis — a scene that intuitively and emotionally feels right, given where he is in his residency.

Where the story falters is in its portrayal of the senior doctors at Eiroku Hospital: they’re haughty and deceitful, primarily concerned with asserting their authority over patients and junior staff members. Even when their words ring with truth, their advice is framed as a cynical and self-serving pose. Not all of the doctors fit this mold: the repulsively drawn Ushida, who toils in the Seido emergency room, is a wiser and more compassionate soul than his wolfish face or feral demeanor might suggest. So is Saburo Kita, a maverick heart surgeon who loves karaoke and paisley shirts; Kita cuts a flamboyant figure, but is humble when discussing his work. These characters are few and far between, however, with many more doctors acting like graduates of the Snidely Whiplash School of Medical Malpractice.

The series’ other shortcoming is the artwork. Though Sato shows a Tezukian flair for close-ups of mangled flesh and pulsating organs, his character designs lack Tezuka’s finesse. Tezuka’s Black Jack might be a cartoonish figure with his cloak and Frankensutures, but those design elements are fundamental to establishing Black Jack’s personality; a reader could dive into any Black Jack story and immediately understand who he is. Moreover, all of the characters in Black Jack are crafted with similar care, each assigned a few simple but telling details that communicate their role in the drama.

By contrast, Ushida looks like he stepped out of Toriko, with his bug eyes, lantern-jaw, and perma-sneer. Since none of the other characters are rendered in such a grotesque fashion, one could make the argument that Ushida’s ugliness must serve a dramatic purpose, symbolizing the corrosive effect of his working conditions. We never spend enough time with Ushida, however, to know how much he sacrificed his ideals for a steady career, nor do we see enough of his behavior with patients to rationalize his appearance. It seems perverse to draw only one character in such a distorted fashion; say what you will about Tezuka’s caricatures, but there was always a unifying aesthetic in Black Jack that made it possible for the reader to view Dr. Kiriko, Pinoko, and Biwamaru as inhabitants of the same universe.

What Sato’s work has in common with Tezuka’s is a fierce conviction that the Japanese medical establishment is bloated, ineffective, and indifferent to real human suffering. Sato addresses these shortcomings in a more explicit fashion than Tezuka did in Black Jack — or Ode to Kirihito, for that matter — using real medical procedures and real administrative dilemmas as plot fodder. Yet Sato’s stories are often unmoving, as his hero’s idealism compels him to take simplistic stands on complex issues. Tezuka, on the other hand, focused more on entertaining audiences than on educating them about Japanese health care, building his stories around a character whose subversive, self-interested behavior never prevented him from treating the genuinely deserving. Tezuka’s stories might be more formulaic and absurd than Sato’s, but they’re never so earnestly dull that they read like anti-JMA propaganda. Call me crazy, but I’ll take killer whale surgery and teratoid cystomas over a hectoring medical procedural any day.

GIVE MY REGARDS TO BLACK JACK, VOLS. 1-2 • BY SHUHO SATO • SELF-PUBLISHED (AVAILABLE THROUGH AMAZON’S KINDLE STORE)

Limit, Vol. 1

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“The world doesn’t suffer fools or fugly people” — so says Sakura, the most popular student in class 2-4. Sakura is a classic Alpha Girl: pretty, manipulative, and confident that at fifteen, she’s discovered the secret to being successful. (“Both studies and make-up. They’re real important for enjoying life, you know?” she informs her pal Konno.) Though Sakura’s friends may not like her, they recognize her power and follow her example; when Sakura declares that the awkward, quiet Arisa Morishige should “die,” Sakura’s friends are all too quick to agree.

The dynamic between Sakura’s clique and Morishige is dramatically reversed, however, on an annual school trip to “exchange camp,” where second-year students spend a week roughing it in a rural setting. En route to camp, a bus accident kills most of the class, leaving a handful of survivors stranded in the wilderness. The remaining members of Sakura’s clique soon discover that their nasty antics have demoted them from the A-list to the D — a demotion that, in their new, desperate circumstances, has potentially deadly consequences.

In a more cynical frame of mind, I might describe Limit as “Lord of the Flies with chicks,” but that cheeky brush-off doesn’t quite do justice to Keiko Suenobo’s story. Her principal characters are just as concerned with survival as William Golding’s private-school boys were, but the girls’ internal power struggles are less a exploration of Hobbesian philosophy than an extreme dramatization of the cliquish behavior found in Japanese high schools. In other words, it’s Mean Girls… with weapons.

Entertaining as that sounds, Limit suffers from a crucial flaw: Konno, the narrator, isn’t very interesting, as her primary role is to be an inoffensive reader surrogate. Konno is pretty and smart enough to be a member of Sakura’s clique, but passive enough that her behavior won’t elicit criticism from most readers; Konno is never portrayed as a ringleader or enthusiastic participant in Morishige’s degradation, though she clearly joined Sakura in harassing Morishige. That’s a mistake, I think, because it permits the reader to side too readily with Konno when the tables are turned, ignoring the fact that Morishige’s rage stems from being bullied on a daily basis by Sakura and Konno.

The other survivors are a more compelling lot, even if each neatly slots into a well-established role: The Principled Outsider, The Timid Girl, The Frenemy. That Suenobo endows each of these girls with more humanity than those roles require is testament to her skill as a writer. Volume one’s most moving scene, for example, belongs to Ichinose, Sakura’s best friend. Though she and Konno have moved in the same social circles, the bus accident reveals that Ichinose views Konno as a rival for Sakura’s friendship. Ichinose’s desperation at being “traded in” for the smarter, prettier Konno is palpable, and the rawness of her angry confession is one of the few moments in the script that doesn’t feel like a rote portrayal of mean-girl politics.

Perhaps the strongest element of Limit is the artwork. Suenobo’s meticulous efforts to dramatize her characters’ inner turmoil reminds the reader that Limit ran in Bessatsu Friend, not Weekly Shonen Magazine. Konno and Ichinose scream and cry as lustily as any character in Cage of Eden, but Limit‘s characters register a much fuller range of emotions than just fear of being lost or eaten; Konno and her fellow survivors are by turns angry, jealous, gleeful, miserable, spiteful, bitter, remorseful, and fearful — of one another. By far the most dramatic example is Morishige, who morphs from cringing, sweaty scapegoat to demonic avenger; her once dull, shark-like eyes are suddenly animated with a fierce, nasty sense of purpose, and she moves with a speed and deliberation that surprise her classmates.

Suenobo also demonstrates a flair for staging action scenes. The bus accident is depicted in a brief but effective sequence that makes creative use of camera angles to suggest the severity of the crash. Likewise, Suenobo firmly establishes how desperate the girls’ situation really is; in a few carefully drawn panels, the reader readily grasps the geographic obstacles to rescue, from sheer cliff walls to impenetrable woods. That no one’s cell phone works feels like an unnecessary touch, given the care with which Suenobo sketches out the crash site and its environs.

If the story is, at times, a little uneven, or ungenerous to Morishige, Limit still shows considerable promise. Suenobo makes good use of her teen-survivor premise to explore the politics of bullying without being too mawkish. At the same time, however, Suenobo manages to write a scary thriller that’s sophisticated and suspenseful enough to sustain an adult’s interest; the story’s occasional Grand Guignol touches add a welcome dash of camp, preventing the story from sinking under the weight of its Very Important Message. I can’t imagine what will happen in volume two, but I’m looking forward to reading it… with the lights on. Recommended.

Review copy provided by Vertical, Inc. Volume one will be released on October 9, 2012.

LIMIT, VOL. 1 • BY KEIKO SUENOBO • VERTICAL, INC. • 176 pp.

A Devil and Her Love Song, Vol. 4

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A Devil and Her Love Song has been one of 2012’s best surprises. Though the series uneven — and sometimes a little silly — its heroine is one of the most memorable in the Shojo Beat canon. Maria Kawai looks like a mean girl on the surface: she’s pretty and unsparingly blunt, pointing out her classmates’ insecurities with all the delicacy of Dr. Phil. Yet Maria’s bull-in-a-china-shop demeanor reflects her own uncertainty about how to be the kind of person who’s liked for who she is, not the kind of person who’s admired for telling unpleasant truths. And that makes her interesting.

Early in volume four, for example, Maria confronts queen bee Ayu in the bathroom, where she finds Ayu primping for the television cameras. When Maria questions Ayu’s behavior — “But you look the same,” she tells Ayu — Ayu is furious. Maria, however, persists — not because she wants the embarrass a rival, but because she wants to share a hard-won piece of advice. “If someone likes you, or wants to get to know you, it’s not because of how you look,” she tells Ayu. “It’s because you show them how you feel.”

Ayu’s subsequent behavior, however, points to one of the series’ weaknesses: characters have epiphanies with whiplash-inducing frequency. (Saul would never have made it to Damascus if he fell off his donkey as many times as Maria’s classmates do.) Though some of these epiphanies feel genuine, many are contrived: would an alpha girl suddenly confess her feelings to a cute boy in front of all her friends, risking public rejection? Or the class darling admit that she’s actually a nasty manipulator, risking her popularity? Those are nice fantasies, but not very plausible ones; Tomori is working too hard to convince us that Maria’s classmates secretly wish they could be more like her, and not giving group-think and fear enough due.

The series also relies heavily on shopworn gimmicks to advance the plot. The arrival of a television crew in volume three, for example, serves no useful purpose; they disappear for long stretches at a home, only to materialize when the plot demands that someone bear witness to the class’ antics. Maria’s long-running feud with her teacher, too, feels more like an editor’s suggestion than an original idea. To be sure, a student as outspoken as Maria might infuriate a certain kind of adult, but her teacher’s cartoonish behavior renders him ineffective; his actions seem too obvious, too ripe for exposure, for him to pose a real threat to Maria.

Where A Devil and Her Love Song shines is in Maria’s one-on-one interactions with other students. These scenes remind us that everyone is wearing a mask in high school — even Maria, whose sharp comments are as much a pose as Hana’s forced cheerfulness. Though Tomori nails the mean-girl dynamic in all its exquisite awfulness, the best of these exchanges belong to Maria and Shin. Their will-they-won’t-they tension is certainly an effective narrative hook, but what makes these scenes compelling is their honesty. Tomori captures her characters’ body language and fitful conversations, which unfold in fragments, silences, and sudden bursts of feeling, rather than eloquent declarations.

I don’t know about you, but that’s how I remember high school, as a time when I had flashes of insight and bravery, but a lot more moments of cringe-inducing stupidity, cowardice, or tongue-tied helplessness. That Tomori captures adolescence in all its discomfort while still writing a romance that’s fun, readable, and sometimes endearingly silly, is proof of her skill. Now if she could just ditch the television crew and the evil teacher…

Review copy provided by VIZ Media.

A DEVIL AND HER LONG SONG • BY MIYOSHI TOMORI • VIZ MEDIA • 200 pp. • RATING: TEEN (13+)

Dawn of the Arcana, Vols. 3-5

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On the surface, Dawn of the Arcana looks like a Harlequin romance. Its flame-haired heroine is feisty and impetuous, torn between her feelings for the man who raised her and the man she was forced to marry. Both men are keen to “own” her — their word, not mine — and are willing to go to ridiculous extremes to prove their devotion, even setting aside their differences to honor her requests. And true to Harlequin form, the heroine frequently struggles to reconcile the circumstances of her marriage and her growing feelings for her jailer-husband.

Peer beneath its romance-novel trappings, however, and it quickly becomes clear that manga-ka Rei Toma is actually writing a pretty nifty fantasy-adventure as well, one with interesting moral dilemmas, parallels with contemporary geopolitics, and multi-layered characters whose behavior frequently deviates from the Harlequin playbook.

In volume three, for example, Nakaba’s mother-in-law attempts to dye her hair black, lest visiting dignitaries realize that the new Belquat princess hails from Senan. Toma might have used this scene to provide Caesar an opportunity to publicly declare his feelings for Nakaba, or demonstrate Nakaba’s ability to endure hazing with noble forbearance. Instead, Toma transforms this act of fairy-tale cruelty into a moment of self-actualization: Nakaba seizes a sword and defiantly gives herself a fabulous pixie cut — er, short, boyish locks — denying the queen the satisfaction of humiliating her in front of the royal family.

That act resonates throughout the next three volumes, as Nakaba sheds her girlish braid and girlish indignation in favor of a stronger, more active role in defeating Belquat’s royal family. Though Nakaba’s new ‘do leads to some predictable exchanges about “looking like a boy,” both Loki and Caesar admire her determination: red hair symbolizes more than just her country of origin, but also the struggles that helped define her as a person.

As appealing as such scenes may be, they highlight the series’ main drawback: the artwork is too plain and spare for a story with such vivid characters. Though the principal characters’ costumes are rendered in considerable detail, the supporting cast resemble Renfair extras, with faintly old-timey clothing and long tresses. Worse still are the backgrounds: with their perfect right angles and unvaried lines, they look like stills from an ancient Nintendo game, rather than a representation of a specific time and place. That sterility isn’t a deal-breaker, but it does reinforce the impression that Toma hasn’t quite developed the artistic chops to fully realize her vision.

Despite its artistic shortcomings, Dawn of the Arcana remains an appealing mixture of fantasy and romance, offering just enough sword fights, scenes of female empowerment, and emotional entanglements to appeal to fans of both genres.

Review copies provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

DAWN OF THE ARCANA, VOLS. 3-5 | BY REI TOMA | VIZ MEDIA | RATING: TEEN (13+)

The Best Manga You’re Not Reading: Suki

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The brilliant sociopath, the hooker with the heart of gold, and the naïf are my three least favorite character types, the first two for their tiresome ubiquity in popular culture, and the third for being tiresome: when was the last time you read a story about a sweet, innocent person that didn’t make you feel horribly manipulated or horribly jaded? Imagine my surprise, then, at discovering CLAMP’s delightfully odd series Suki: A Like Story, which revolves around a brilliant but impossibly naive teenager who trusts everyone, reads picture books, and talks to teddy bears. I thought I’d be tearing my breast in agony by the end of the first chapter; instead, I quickly succumbed to Suki‘s charms and even suppressed a sniffle or two in the final pages.

Suki succeeds, in large part, because the supporting cast has the same reaction to sixteen-year-old Hinata Asashi as the reader. Hina’s boundless enthusiasm endears her to best friends, Touko and Emi, though both roll their eyes at her inability to read social cues or grasp ulterior motives. Touko, in particular, is keen to protect her pal; as we learn in the second volume of the series, Hina has been kidnapped nine — count ’em — times over the course of her short life. (Hina’s dad is rich and willing to pay ransom for the safe return of his daughter.) Though an ordinary person might be deeply scarred by such experiences — or least more suspicious of strangers — Hina remains cheerful and oblivious to signs that a tenth abduction might be in the works.

Those signs include a string of odd coincidences: the long-vacant house next to Hina’s is suddenly occupied by a handsome young man who just happens to be Hina’s new homeroom teacher, Shiro Asou. Shiro just happens to be around whenever Hina is in need of an escort, or rescuing. And Shiro just happens to conduct clandestine meetings when the class goes on field trips. The ever-vigilant Touko quickly suspects the worst, but Hina interprets Shiro’s gruff yet solicitous behavior as concern, and develops a chaste crush on her sensei.

Watching Hina come to terms with her feelings is a painful but believable process. At first, she revels in any opportunity to spend time with Shiro, whether they’re raking leaves or walking home from school. Later, she begins to see parallels between their relationship and the relationship between two characters in a favorite picture-book series. (More on the series-within-a-series gambit in a minute.) In the final chapters of the book, Hina develops a more realistic idea of who Shiro is, eventually telling him how her feelings have evolved from youthful naivete to adult maturity. “At first, I fell in love with you because you did so many things I loved,” she confesses. “But from now on, Asou-san… whatever you do for yourself… I’ll love you for that.”

That Hina’s epiphany is facilitated, in part, by reading a children’s book may strike some readers as hopelessly twee. Suki — the name of the story-within-a-story — isn’t subtle; using bears as surrogates for Hina and Shiro, Suki charts the budding friendship between a small, chatty bear and her large, bespectacled neighbor. The parallels between the main plot and the story-within-the-story are obvious, but they serve an important purpose, reminding us that Hina is struggling to reconcile new, adult feelings with her decidedly child-like worldview.

Art-wise, Suki: A Like Story is one of CLAMP’s simplest — one might even say plainest — series. Tsubaki Nekoi’s style is much less Baroque than her cohorts’; she favors ordinary street clothes over epaulets and garter belts, and more realistic physiques over exaggerated shoulders and sharp chins. By shedding the fanciful trappings, Nekoi focuses the reader’s attention on faces, allowing us to fully register how each character is feeling. Nowhere is that more evident in the way Nekoi draws Touko. Touko is by far the most mature girl at Hina’s school, and the one most attuned to signs of adult malfeasance. Though Touko voices her concerns, the sadness in her face reveals a level of understanding that might be rooted in her own experiences, not just Hina’s:

Though Hina has a much more innocent personality than Touko, Nekoi resists the temptation to draw Hina as a child; Hina is clearly meant to be a teenager, given her size and athleticism. Hina’s transparent facial expressions, wide-eyed enthusiasm, and sudden, darting movements, however, hint at the discrepancy between her chronological and emotional ages; she bounces and skips and claps her way through the story, reacting with intense glee at even the briefest exchange with Shiro:

The art isn’t perfect by any means. Shiro’s proportions, for example, often look wrong: he has a tiny head and an enormous frame, and is so much taller than the other characters that he’d be NBA draft material in real life. Suki, the book-within-a-book, is also problematic. It’s quite possibly the dullest picture book I’ve read, a series of simple drawings accompanied by large, undifferentiated blocks of text. I certainly wasn’t expecting Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (or A Kiss for Little Bear), but the flat, unimaginative illustrations make it harder for the reader to imagine why someone Hina’s age would find the story so compelling:

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Suki is that Hina’s realistic coming-of-age story is embedded within a thriller. The suspenseful elements of Suki are handled with skill and restraint, even if they are a wee bit ridiculous. (OK, a lot ridiculous: who allows their frequently kidnapped sixteen-year-old daughter to live alone with her teddy bears?!) The few action scenes are brief but crisply executed, adding some much-needed variety in tone and pacing to the story. If the ending is a little too tidy, CLAMP avoids the trap of pandering to the reader’s expectations of what should happen; there’s a note of melancholy in that final scene, joyous though Hina may be.

Readers curious about Suki: A Like Story won’t have too much difficulty tracking down used copies on eBay or Amazon; the complete series will set you back about $20-30.

SUKI: A LIKE STORY, VOLS. 1-3 • BY CLAMP • TOKYOPOP • RATING: TEEN (13+)

Sakuran

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The oiran, or Japanese courtesan, is a product of seventeenth century Japan. Like the geisha who eclipsed them in popularity, the oiran were not simply prostitutes; they were companions and performers, trained in a variety of arts — calligraphy, music, flower arranging — and prized for their ability to converse with powerful men. Though confined to the official pleasure districts of Edo, Kyoto, and Osaka, they were highly visible, formally parading through the streets in elaborate costumes, attended by a retinue of maids. As a potent symbol of the new, hedonistic culture of urban Japan, the oiran were frequent subjects of ukiyo-e, or “floating world” prints. Artists such as Suzuki Harunobou emphasized the oiran’s refinement, the rarefied world in which they operated, and, in their more explicit shunga prints, the bodily pleasures they offered.

Moyocco Anno’s Sakuran presents a less romanticized image of the oiran, documenting one girl’s rise from maid to tayuu, or head courtesan. We first meet Kiyoha as an eight-year-old child: orphaned and undisciplined, she chafes against the strict rules inside Edo’s Tamagiku House, making several unsuccessful attempts to escape. Shohi, Kiyoha’s mistress, is one of the few people to recognize Kiyoha’s potential: not only is Kiyoha quick-witted, she also boasts a porcelain complexion and delicate facial features, both highly prized assets in a courtesan. Shohi’s method for grooming Kiyoha for her new role is less tutoring than hazing, however, a mixture of slaps, insults, and mind games designed to teach Kiyoha to behave in a more dignified fashion.

Anno’s artwork is uniquely suited to the subject matter: it’s both starkly ugly and exquisitely beautiful, capable of conveying the anger and suffering beneath Kiyoha’s carefully manicured appearance. When we first meet Kiyoha, for example, Anno draws her as a “dirty little turnip” with a snot-stained face, unkempt hair, and an ill-fitting yukata. Though Kiyoha undergoes a remarkable transformation over the course of the manga, we are frequently reminded of what she looked like when she first arrived at Tamagiku. Kiyoha’s face contorts into a grotesque, child-like mask whenever she feels wronged or vulnerable, and she frequently reverts to a feral posture when eating, as if her bowl might be snatched from her hands.

In this sequence, for example, twelve-year-old Kiyoha interrupts a transaction between a shinzu (the lowest ranking courtesan of the house) and a lecherous customer. Kiyoha’s motives for intervening are unclear, since her relationship with the shinzu in question is never carefully delineated. As she tussles with the customer, however, we see Kiyoha’s childhood survival instinct emerge in full force, overriding Shohi’s etiquette lessons:

One of the things this sequence also emphasizes is the discrepancy in power between the low-ranking courtesans and the house clientele; any violation of established protocol could result in severe reprisal. Anno infuses this scene with special urgency by using blunt, contemporary speech in lieu of the archaic language that verisimilitude might demand. It’s a welcome departure from the tortured, Fakespearian dialogue that plagues the otherwise brilliant Ooku: The Inner Chambers, focusing the reader’s attention on visual signifiers of class and gender — eye contact, body language, clothing — rather than honorifics and awkward syntax.

Perhaps Anno’s greatest achievement is her ability to capture her characters’ physical beauty and sensuality without reducing them to objects. Even the most erotic images are carefully framed as business transactions: the dialogue reminds us that the oiran are performing for their customers, creating an illusion of sexual and emotional intimacy for the sake of money, while their customers’ grim expressions and sweaty bodies remind us of their determination to get the most bang for the buck (so to speak).

If Sakuran sounds like a hectoring treatise on prostitution, rest assured it’s not. Anno creates a vibrant, fascinating world, teeming with people from every walk of life. Though her female characters have limited agency, they nonetheless find opportunities to exert influence over their customers, improve their social standing, and choose their own lovers.

Kiyoha embodies all the contradictions and complexities of her environment: she’s impetuous, competitive, and unmoved by her peers’ hardships, yet she has a great capacity for feeling — and transcending — pain. That Kiyoha is, at times, a repellant figure, does not diminish her appeal as a character; we appreciate the mental toughness that her job demands, and admire her efforts to push back against its limits. It seems only fitting that the story ends not with the outcome that a modern reader might choose for this fierce woman, but with one that reflects the heroine’s own clear-eyed understanding of what she is. Highly recommended.

Review copy provided by Vertical, Inc.

SAKURAN • BY MOYOCCO ANNO • VERTICAL, INC. • 308 pp. • RATING: MATURE (VIOLENCE, LANGUAGE, AND SEXUAL NUDITY)