Off the Shelf with MJ & Michelle

Off the Shelf: A bit of a mess?

March 8, 2012 by MJ and Michelle Smith 11 Comments

MICHELLE: Hey, MJ! What did 0 say to 8?

MJ: I don’t know, what did 0 say to 8?

MICHELLE: Nice belt!

MJ: Buh dum dum *chick*

MICHELLE: Now that the obligatory bad joke is out of the way… read any good manga this week?

MJ: Well, yes… though not exclusively. I started the week with The Earl & the Fairy, a new shoujo title from Viz, based on a light novel series by Mizue Tani, with story and art by the single-named Ayuko.

Our heroine, Lydia, is a “fairy doctor,” which we don’t know much about yet, except that they seem to be humans who can see and communicate with fairies. Thanks to modern (Victorian England) skepticism, fairy doctors are a dying breed, but Lydia learned the craft from her mother and is determined to carry on the tradition, skeptics be damned.

On her way to London to visit her father, Lydia is kidnapped by two questionable personages in rapid succession—first, a good-looking man who may be a killer and whose name may or may not be Gotham (Or “Huxley,” depending on who you ask), and then a good-looking young man who may be a killer and whose name may or may not be Edgar (or “John,” depending on who you ask). Everyone wants Lydia to find a valuable fairy jewel for them, though supposedly nobody believes in fairies in the first place. And also, there have been some murders. Probably.

If this sounds like a bit of a mess… well, it is. And though I’ve never been opposed to messy manga, so far, Lydia is too generic a heroine to draw me in on just her own strength. Still, the art is pretty and Lydia’s fairy companion (who looks like a cat) is both cute and grumpy—irresistible qualities in a supernatural pet. So I’ll likely forge on.

MICHELLE: Oh, that’s disappointing. I always hate it when stories seem to have nothing better to do than employ multiple kidnappings. I’m reading a YA series right now with that same problem. But still, a cute and grumpy kitty pretty much guarantees I’ll at least give it a look.

MJ: Yeah, the “kitty” really is a pretty great hook, and I suspect you’ll have difficulty resisting it as well.

So, what have you been reading this week?

MICHELLE: Well, like you, I suppose I will start with a title I’ll probably continue with, even though I’m not particularly enthused by it.

This week, I read volumes one and two of Gate 7, the newest series from manga powerhouse team CLAMP. In a nutshell, meek, spazzy, and Kyoto-obsessed high school student Chikahito Takamoto travels to his favorite city, where he runs into an androgynous kid named Hana and Hana’s two intimidating attendants, who are doing… something in a shrine. Ridding it of evil spirits, perhaps? This is all fairly straightforward so far, but then we find out that they’re employed by a guy who is the reincarnation (maybe?) of an important figure from Japan’s history, that other reincarnations exist, that they all have a blood contract with an oni whose powers they borrow, and that Nobunaga Oda had the most powerful oni and everyone else in the present is trying to get it.

Again, like The Earl & the Fairy, if this sounds like a bit of a mess… that’s because it is. Many elements of the plot are vague. Plus, I feel like I’ve seen so much of it before. Young, androgynous-looking character possessed of great power? Check! Spazzy student who moves in with supernaturally gifted people and proceeds to cook for them? Check! There’s even another nursery school/kindergarten. And the things that make the series somewhat different—all the historical references—just zoom right over my head. More than once they’ll be talking to someone and then there’ll be a full-page close-up during which the person’s identity as a reincarnated historical personage is dramatically revealed. Maybe I’m a dumb American, but I just don’t know who Yukimura Sanada is and it doesn’t mean anything to me when he makes his appearance.

That said, the art is very pretty. I am especially intrigued by Iemitsu Tokugawa, a very lovely bad guy who visually reminds me a bit of Nokoru from CLAMP Campus Detectives. I hate the idea of abandoning a CLAMP series, but this one may have just one more volume to start making more sense.

MJ: I’ll admit I have a soft spot for exactly this kind of CLAMP, and you probably recall that Gate 7‘s first volume lured me in pretty well, but by the end of the second volume, I was certainly feeling skeptical. I’ll probably give it a few more volumes (I did say I had a soft spot), but I can’t blame you for feeing discouraged at this point.

MICHELLE: I will say that the notes do a great job of explaining who these people are and their significance both historically and in pop culture, but feeling baffled by dramatic twists is not really much fun.

Anyways, I hope your second read served you better!

MJ: It most certainly did, and I know you’ll be happy to hear it!

I also spent some time this week with the new Skip Beat! omnibus. It’s a series I’ve been interested in for a while, but the idea of trying to collect it from the beginning so many volumes in just seemed too daunting. Obviously, these new editions are a great opportunity for readers like me to start from scratch. And honestly, I think it was a far more compelling read for me in a three-volume chunk than it ever could have been otherwise.

As pretty much everyone already knows, Skip Beat! tells the story of Kyoko, a sweet, devoted teen who thinks nothing at all of following her childhood crush, Shotaro, to Tokyo (at his behest!), to work her butt off supporting him as he shoots for stardom as a pop singer. Kyoko gives up her own schooling to work multiple jobs in order to pay for Sho’s food and housing, enduring his moodiness and cold demeanor all the way. When she overhears Sho badmouthing her to his (apparently) real show-biz girlfriend, she’s understandably heartbroken. She’s also consumed by the desire for revenge—a motivation that fuels her every action from that point forward. In a bit of cracktastic shoujo plotting, Kyoko inexplicably decides that her only shot at revenge is to become a greater star than Sho is, thus beginning a tireless pursuit of show business success worthy of the likes of Stage Door or 42nd Street. Yes, “the calla lilies are in bloom again…”

I mentioned before that I think this was a better read for me three at a time, and I really think that’s true. Despite Kyoko’s awesomely fierce personality, I’m not sure I would have had the will to move beyond the first (or perhaps second) volume if I’d had to purchase them one at a time. And I think there are probably a couple of reasons for this. First, as a former actor, I deeply disagree with the author’s thoughts on what makes good acting (rather than a desire to be loved by an audience of strangers, I’d argue that it’s actually a willingness to let those strangers see the parts of you that they really might not love, which is much, much harder). Secondly, I really do hate seeing a heroine devote her entire existence to a man, and obviously that’s what Kyoko is doing, at least at this point in the manga.

Fortunately, three volumes was pretty much exactly the amount of time I needed to be completely drawn in by her, so in the end, I’m definitely hooked. I get the idea that she’s going to discover that she’s got real talent of her own, and that there’s more to life than chasing after a dream guy. Bring it on!

MICHELLE: I’m glad you liked it! I don’t want to tell you too much of what’s coming, but you’re absolutely correct: Kyoko will discover she’s got prodigious talent and will start to pursue acting for her own sake and not for revenge. And I, too, had issues with the whole “you have to want to be loved” thing, but I choose to think of it as just another peculiarity of Lory’s and not any big statement. In time, the story will focus more on Kyoko’s jobs with only an occasional return to the Love-Me Section plot line. In fact, Nakamura-sensei starts to use it as a springboard for more crackaliciousness, so it turns out to be handy.

MJ: So as to not make too much of my issues with the “love me” thing, I will say that regardless of all that, I really do appreciate the story’s thoughtfulness regarding the extensive damage done to Kyoko’s ability to trust by Sho’s heartless betrayal, and I do think that’s something she’d need to work through in order to be really vulnerable to an audience. So the acting stuff isn’t all a sham. And of course I’m all for crackaliciousness when it’s done right, so I will definitely look forward to that!

So, what else do you have for us this week?

MICHELLE: The third volume of Psyren, a Shonen Jump series from Toshiaki Iwashiro.

At first, I was fairly underwhelmed by this series, in which typical Shonen Jump protagonist Ageha Yoshina becomes involved in a game wherein he and various (and often unwilling) others battle in a harsh realm called Psyren for the sake of the world’s future. In particular, I objected to the haphazard effort Iwashiro had put forth to develop a consistent personality for the female lead, Sakurako.

Happily, by the third volume, the depiction of Sakurako has evened out (and she even gets a couple of major badass moments) and the mystery of Psyren has ramped up. I am a sucker for dystopic science fiction, and I can’t help but love the fact that the third volume is comprised almost entirely of Ageha’s second trip to Psyren and his attempts to navigate the game now that he knows more about it, while simultaneously burdened with a crew of newbies, scarcely developed psionic powers, and a foe that used to be the friend of one of his companions. It feels like a real problem-solving series this way, and the pace at which answers are forthcoming is really satisfying.

I still get a little bit of a Bokurano: Ours vibe from it, but with a real shounen flare that makes it exciting rather than gloomy. I’m actually a little surprised by how much I enjoyed this volume and how avidly I’m looking forward to volume four. If you were turned off by the execution of volume one but at least a little intrigued by the premise, you might want to give the series another chance. I’m glad I did.

MJ: I’ll be honest, I haven’t had the slightest interest in this series, but you’re making it sound kind of intriguing. Hmm.

MICHELLE: Well, maybe it’ll eventually make its way to VIZManga.com (where so many of its Shonen Jump brethren are available) and you’ll be able to check it out for half the price.

MJ: That would be great!

Off the Shelf: GTO, Twilight, Soulless

March 1, 2012 by MJ and Michelle Smith 9 Comments

MJ: Well, hello there, my friend!

MICHELLE: For some reason I am inclined to respond to that with, “‘Allo, poppet!”

MJ: Well. That’s interesting indeed. I’ll admit I’m not quite sure how to respond to that. Perhaps, instead, I’ll change the subject. Read any good manga this week?

MICHELLE: I did. Kind of unexpectedly good, in both cases!

One of the things I read was the first volume of GTO: 14 Days in Shonan by Toru Fujisawa (published by Vertical, Inc.). I knew absolute nothing about the GTO franchise going into it, and therefore had no idea what to expect. The initial setup, which explains how ex-delinquent-now-teacher Eikichi Onizuka has to lay low for a while and decides to do so in his hometown of Shonan, caused me a bit of concern, since it involves the hapless protagonist getting into all sorts of trouble and a comedic sensibility that put me in mind of Detroit Metal City, which, as you know, was not my cup of tea.

Once Eikichi gets to Shonan, however, things begin looking up. He meets up with an attractive young woman named Ayame Shiratori, who was classmates with one of his coworkers. She’s heard that Onizuka has done wonders with his students and wonders if he’d help out at White Swan Children’s Home for a bit. Since he has no place else to go—and since he would like to roger Ayame—he agrees. Although the hostility of one of the students, Katsuragi, is immediate and rather over-the-top, I warmed to the series once Onizuka showed a real flair for getting through to miserable teens, each the victim of selfish parents.

He does it so naturally that it doesn’t feel like Fujisawa is imparting some Important Moral Lesson. Essentially, he treats them like people and instinctively understands how to draw them out. And he’s willing to put his money where his mouth is and defend them with everything he’s got when they are threatened. For kids who’ve come to distrust the sincerity of adults, an idiot—but a genuinely honest idiot—like him may be exactly what they need.

I’m not sure if I’m ready to track down the other GTO volumes that have come out in English, but I am at least looking forward to volume two!

MJ: Well, as Detroit Metal City decidedly was my cup of tea, I’m intrigued all-around! Like you, I knew almost nothing about GTO before Vertical announced this license, and I’ll admit I was initially hesitant, thinking it might be hard for a newcomer to jump in at this point. But it sounds like this is really not an obstacle.

MICHELLE: Not at all. Aside from a couple of brief appearances in the beginning, 14 Days in Shonan features an entirely new cast of characters. It’s interesting, too, that it’s kind of slipped into a two-week period of the main story during which most people assumed Onizuka was recuperating in the hospital.

So, what’ve you been reading this week?

MJ: Well, I didn’t fare quite as well as you, though ultimately it was a good week. I began with the second volume of Young Kim’s graphic novel adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight. And while my reaction to the first volume was something along the lines of, “This was more readable than expected,” I’m afraid the second volume didn’t go down quite so easily.

To be clear from the get-go, none of my issues are Young Kim’s fault, and I expect I’m ultimately grateful to be reading this series in a less prose-heavy format than the original. And really, my biggest qualms about this volume aren’t even about the weirdly overt racism or the less-than-subtle lessons in sexual abstinence. What really made this volume so difficult for me to get through was my increasing anger over the fact that Stephenie Meyer did not see fit to grant her heroine even a single personal interest outside of her creepy, undead boyfriend.

Bella has no thoughts or desires that don’t revolve around Edward. She has no apparent interests in school. She doesn’t even have a hobby. Her entire existence—her very identity revolves around her feelings for a boy. And though there may have been times as a teenager when I felt utterly consumed by my feelings for whatever boy I was crushing on, those were just isolated (if intense) moments, scattered amongst the hours upon hours I spent reading, writing, playing music, arguing about politics, and thinking about the multitude of things that interested and/or enchanted me in the great wide world.

Honestly, even if this didn’t make me angry as an adult woman and a feminist, who longs to see a world filled with great, empowering fiction for girls, it makes me utterly unable to identify with Twilight‘s protagonist, even from the point of view of my distant teenaged self. Though I never like hearing female readers say they “hate” a female protagonist (because, seriously, it’s not the character’s fault she was so gravely shortchanged by her creator, is it?), I have to admit that Bella is the greatest obstacle standing between me and enjoyment of Twilight, even as a guilty pleasure. And that’s really a shame.

MICHELLE: I had a similar reaction when I read the book, in which Bella demonstrates some alarming passivity when she learns about the various creepy things Edward has been doing, including breaking into her house to watch her sleep. When I learned that a friend’s daughter was reading the series, I felt I needed to warn her parents so they’d be sure to give her the “if any boy ever does this to you, please know that it is not romantic” speech.

To address an issue specific to the graphic novel release… some folks were critical of the typeface in the first volume, I believe, as well as the placement of speech bubbles. Did you notice any discernable change in those areas?

MJ: The style of the second volume is the same as the first, in that it uses very non-comics-y fonts, and the way the speech bubbles look is also not what I’m used to in the comics I read. However, I never found this to be as problematic as a lot of critics did, and I rather like Kim’s art style, so I’m good with it. If anything, the artwork is one of the things I was able to enjoy in the book.

So, since we’re on the topic of Yen Press “manga” adaptations, shall we move on to a title we both read this week?

MICHELLE: Let’s do!

MJ: Well, when I read Kate’s review of REM’s new adaptation of Gail Carriger’s Soulless, I thought suddenly that it would be a great choice to read alongside Twilight. Both are OEL adaptations of popular novels, and both revolve around a heroine who lives in a world alongside vampires and werewolves. Unlike Twilight, I had very little knowledge of the details of Soulless, and though I expected I might like it more than Twilight, I was not really prepared for how much more.

Alexia Tarabotti is a 26-year-old “spinster” in Victorian London, a life complicated even more by the fact that she’s also a “preternatural,” a person without a soul whose purpose is to bridge the gap between the supernatural and natural worlds. Alexia’s London is filled with vampires and werewolves, most of whom are highly regarded (and highly organized) members of society. As the story opens, Alexia accidentally kills a vampire who attacks her at a party—an event that throws supernatural society into a bit of a tizzy. Fortunately, the tizzy also rather hurries along Alexia’s long-time flirtation with Lord Conall Maccon, a well-regarded werewolf who may actually be a match for her.

MICHELLE: I too knew nothing about Soulless going in and was pleasantly surprised by REM’s adaptation. Although I think I would probably enjoy the novel even more—while the relationship between Alexia and Lord Maccon is a lot of fun, the mystery plot involving missing and unaffiliated werewolves and vampires gets short shrift—the graphic novel is still tremendously enjoyable, with plenty of witty dialogue (seriously, all you need do to amuse me is mention hedgehogs), lovely supporting characters (Lord Akeldama and Ayame Sohma… separated at birth?), and a pair of strong leads whom I like and sincerely root for as a couple. I also enjoyed how enthusiastic Alexia was to make out with him once she had the chance.

MJ: Yes, it really is a treat to kind of adore both members of the story’s primary couple, isn’t it? I really do adore them both. And oh, Lord Akeldama… first of all, you’re on the nose with the Ayame Sohma (though Akeldama has the benefit of not being quite as self-absorbed), and secondly, I think one of my favorite moments in the entire volume was when Alexia, whose soulless nature allows her to render vampires and werewolves to their form closest to human with only her touch, grants his request to accompany him outside so that he can view the sunset.

I’ll also agree that reading this made me quite anxious to try the novel, and I’ll confess I’ve already bought the e-book to read on my iPad.

MICHELLE: And I’m going to buy the audiobook next time I get a new Audible credit!

There are a couple of key things that make Alexia a better protagonist than Bella. For one, to directly contrast what you said before, she actually has a life outside her love interest. We don’t see much of her hobbies, true, but she visits with a couple of friends and attends social events with her family. For another, she desperately wants to be useful, and suggests several times that she be allowed to help Conall with his work for the Bureau of Unnatural Registry. One gets the impression she’d be a rather kickass demon hunter if she weren’t living in Victorian England.

MJ: Yes, exactly, there’s a constant sense that Alexia is desperately oppressed by the constraints forced upon her, both by her place in society and her gender, and that she longs for opportunities to use her brains to really do something in the world. One of the things that makes her fiery relationship with Conall so appealing, is that they’re both characters who possess exceptionally strong will.

If there’s one issue I have with the graphic novel adaptation, aside from the lack of page time available for its non-romantic plotline, it’s that Alexia is repeatedly referred to as plain, yet is drawn by REM as a voluptuous beauty. Now, I’m not exactly complaining (she’s a voluptuous beauty that even female readers can appreciate), but it might have been a nice touch if she looked just a tad less like a comic book heroine, and more like an average woman. She’s an awesome enough character to be irresistibly attractive with or without being so conventionally gorgeous on the outside, and actually “plain” women are tragically underrepresented in comics.

MICHELLE: Yes, REM’s rendering of Alexia takes heaving bosoms to a whole new level. I was wondering how someone could remain a spinster so long with attributes like that! It’s almost like drawing Elizabeth Bennet with giant knockers, in that it makes the hero just a little less special for seeing in her what others don’t.

MJ: I think I could totally buy the heaving bosoms (let’s face it, in a corset, any woman not shaped like a stick is subject to heaving bosoms) if she’d been just a little chunkier and less dazzling otherwise. But overall, it’s a small complaint. This is the first of Yen Press’ novel adaptations that has grabbed me so immediately, and I’m not only looking forward to reading the novel, but to reading the second volume of the adaptation.

MICHELLE: Same here. And though it may be insanely early to call it, I have a feeling this will turn out to be the best novel-to-manga adaptation of 2012!

MJ: I suspect you may be right!

Off the Shelf: Princess Knight

February 23, 2012 by MJ and Michelle Smith 15 Comments

MICHELLE: As we occasionally do when the Manga Moveable Feast rolls around, MJand I have opted to dedicate this week’s Off the Shelf column to the topic at hand, which this month is the works of Osamu Tezuka. Specifically for our case, we’re going to be talking about Princess Knight, Tezuka’s shoujo manga about Sapphire, a princess who accidentally receives both a boy’s heart and a girl’s heart at the time of her birth, and who, when we pick up her story as an adolescent, has somewhat of an identity crisis while undergoing many wacky hardships/hijinks.

This is my first time reading the series. Whenever Ed Chavez from Vertical would solicit suggestions for Tezuka titles to license, I would always request Princess Knight. I wanted the series so much I even bought a few of the bilingual Kodansha editions. However, when I finally had both parts of the series in hand, I was content for a while to merely gaze upon them, content. And now that I have finally gotten around to reading it, I must say… I’m a little disappointed.

MJ: Well, as you may recall, I certainly had my issues with volume one, and these didn’t disappear when I read volume two. In some ways, I’d even say they became more pronounced. On the other hand, there were things I liked about it, so though I could characterize my experience as disappointing as well, I’m still glad I read it.

Should we get the least pleasant subjects out of the way straight off?

MICHELLE: Might as well. I guess my big problem with it is that it’s supposed to be so groundbreaking in terms of gender identities, but it actually does very little in this regard. When Sapphire has only a boy heart, she’s swaggering and brave. When she has only her girl heart, she’s weak and fragile. True, some of the growl-inducing comments do come from the villains or from those attempting to fool villains by approximating girlish behavior (“I suddenly want to take up cross-stitching and play the piano.”) but I do have to wonder how much of it Tezuka really believes, since he creates a swordswoman character, only to bedeck her armor with hearts and have her proudly admit that she’s entered a tournament to find a husband.

MJ: Yes, this was definitely the biggest hurdle for me as well. While I might have found it interesting to watch a character struggle with her gender identity in a society where clearly what you describe is set up as the standard for femininity vs. masculinity, that’s not really what Tezuka does here at all. Even when he has his chances to challenge these roles, he passes them up. For instance, the big female revolt that happens during the second volume seems to hinge mainly on the threat of the country’s men being left without anyone to clean their homes or look after their children. Even after it’s over, the only comment made by one of the defeated men is relief that his wife will come home and take care of the laundry that’s piled up.

I completely understand that both Tezuka and Princess Knight are a product of their time, but I’m genuinely confused as to why this seems to be held up as a great example of shoujo manga challenging gender roles.

MICHELLE: It seems very likely that Tezuka never intended it to be so, since so much of it takes a Loony Tunes approach to storytelling. Why, indeed, take a female revolt seriously? Instead, let’s play it for comedy by making the men out to be henpecked morons! That’s not to say there aren’t some darker aspects that I did like and wish could’ve been expounded upon. For example, while I don’t care about or believe in the “true love” that suddenly springs up between Sapphire and Prince Franz Charming, the characters set up as romantic rivals are actually interesting and meet tragic fates. It makes me wonder what kind of story Tezuka could’ve fashioned with Hecate and Captain Blood (aka Heinrich) as the leads!

MJ: Yes! Though I actually quite liked Sapphire, at least until she became completely consumed by her weirdly passive pursuit of Prince Franz, my favorite characters were Captain Blood and Hecate. I would have happily read entire books about them. I rather wished that Sapphire would ditch Franz and fall for Blood, but I suppose it was never meant to be.

MICHELLE: And, really, Hecate is probably the best example of a character who defies gender roles, since she’s perfectly happy defining herself for herself and has no wish to consume Sapphire’s girl heart (which her witch mother, Madame Hell, keeps trying to steal on her behalf) and take up some passive, “feminine” identity. She’s independent, level-headed, and one of the few truly good characters in the story. Plus, she can turn herself into a goat!

MJ: Speaking of all the heart-exchanging business, I’d say that probably the only time I actually appreciated it, was when Plastic ingests Sapphire’s boy’s heart, and suddenly becomes a decent man, instead of a selfish, sniveling boob.

MICHELLE: Oh yes, I quite agree! And he promptly begins championing women’s rights! This makes him the second character in the series (after Hecate) to go his own way and oppose the evil schemes of a parent. I wonder if this is Tezuka’s way of saying that the younger generation is going to get things right regarding equality whereas their parents are hopeless.

MJ: That may be a generous assumption, but I’ll give it to him if you will. You know, I think what’s most disappointing to me about Princess Knight is that I feel like I really could have liked it. Tezuka’s artwork is so much fun here, and so full of life. And I’m really fine with the “Looney Tunes approach,” as you so brilliantly put it. I think this manga could have been a lot of fun. But the gender issues are so profound, they kinda take over the whole thing for me.

MICHELLE: I’m not sure I could’ve liked it even without the gender issues giving me fits. The plotting is just so random sometimes. Early on, there’s a scene where Sapphire is letting herself be collected by Duke Duralumin’s men as a potential consort for his then-still-feeble-minded son, Plastic. And Franz rides in from, like, the next kingdom over to rescue her, and then rides back home again a few panels later. Or then there’s my favorite spot of wtf, the scene where Blood quickly escapes slavery by coercing a nearby beetle into chewing through some ropes. Everything’s so fast, furious, and madcap that poignant things aren’t given time to sink in.

MJ: Hee hee, yeah, it’s like that. Is it wrong that I find that fun? Or maybe I find it fun, because the poignant stuff doesn’t sit right. I can enjoy something that’s silly and madcap for that alone, and Princess Knight works better as that for me. Overall, I’d say I liked the silly, unbelievable parts the most. Also, I love every scene that Blood is in. Heh.

MICHELLE: It’s not wrong for anyone to like what they like! :) I’m just hard to please, comedy-wise, so many of the gags just left me blinking impassively at the page. I feel bad for being so down on Princess Knight, because now that it’s over I find myself growing fond of the idea of it again. And though it may not have lived up to its reputation for me, I nonetheless wonder if it wasn’t the origin of certain shoujo tropes, like, say, all of the guys instantly falling in love with the passive heroine, or the contingent of jealous fangirls.

MJ: As disappointed as I might have been with it, I really am grateful to have had the opportunity to read it. It may not be my favorite of Tezuka’s works (or really even close), but I’m quite enamored of his artwork, as always, and even now as I’m just flipping through, I’m struck by the beauty and flow of what’s on the page.

MICHELLE: Oh, I am definitely exceedingly grateful to the folks at Vertical for licensing the work and producing such a beautiful edition. I’m also pleased to note that I didn’t spot a single typo in their text, and found that the translation actually included some rather sophisticated words without any hint of awkwardness.

MJ: So thanks, Vertical, for giving us the chance to experience Princess Knight!

For more of this week’s MMF bounty, please visit the Osamu Tezuka MMF Archive, hosted by Kate Dacey at The Manga Critic!

More full-series discussions with MJ & Michelle:

Full-series multi-guest roundtables: Hikaru no Go | Banana Fish | Gerard & Jacques | Flower of Life

Off the Shelf: Shoujo staples & other stories

February 2, 2012 by MJ and Michelle Smith 16 Comments

MJ: Well, hi.

MICHELLE: Howdy!

MJ: It’s been a while since we did a regular column. I’m not sure what to say.

MICHELLE: Yeah, I was looking back at those today. Our last two columns have seen us both talking about the same series, and fairly epic ones at that! Oh no! Will our regular column measure up?!

MJ: I guess we’ll just have to try it and see! So, what have you been reading this week?

MICHELLE: Some very enjoyable things! First up is the third volume of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, which came out a couple of weeks ago.

For those who were put off by some of the silliness in Codename: Sailor V or by Usagi’s crybaby ways earlier on in this series, volume three should quell any doubts you may possess that Takeuchi can really bring out the big dramatic guns. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere previously, the pacing of the manga is approaching breakneck speed, so here we are in volume three and the first arc is already drawing to a close. But first, this occurs, and actually I am going to frame it in such a way that it’s as Buffy-esque as possible, ‘cos that’s what I do:

Usagi’s boyfriend, Mamoru, suddenly starts acting like a different person. He’s cold and cruel and is now working with the enemy! “Is this man somebody else now?!” she wonders. “Do I have to defeat him?! Kill him?!” A terrible evil is about to be unleashed upon the world and the only way to seal it up is to defeat the man she loves! But she does it. There’s a sweet kiss, and then there’s a sword.

Some fairly significant similarities to the end of Buffy‘s second season, I think! Anyway, I don’t want to spoil too much of it, but it’s pretty great. The second arc launches very quickly with the introduction of Chibi-Usa, a young girl who literally falls from the sky and starts observing Usagi and those around her. I was pleasantly surprised by how sympathetic Chibi-Usa is in the manga. She comes across more as lonely and frightened than bratty, and certainly more intriguing than the gemstone-named band of siblings who are facing off against our heroes.

Also pleasantly surprising was the copy editing this time. Typos have been a major problem with this title, and I’m happy to say I didn’t see a single one here. So, kudos on that, Kodansha. However, my fangirl heart just about broke when I saw Jupiter’s attack, “Sparkling Wide Pressure,” interpreted as “Spark Ring Wide Pressure.” Ordinarily I wouldn’t comment on translation choices, but man. This one really hurt.

MJ: I have to say, I can’t wait to read this. Seriously. I have it on my shelf and I WANT TO READ IT NOW. And I don’t have any fangirl preconceptions, which I’m gathering might be a plus for this series.

MICHELLE: I’d say so. There are many things I love about the anime, but there are definitely areas in which the manga is superior. One is, of course, Takeuchi’s lovely artwork, which is very flexible in terms of depicting Usagi as someone goofy and as someone elegant and mature. She frequently looks graceful in the manga in a way that she does not in the anime.

Still, it makes me sad that first-time readers might’ve thought that was really Jupiter’s attack phrase. I’ll have to be vigilant about pointing out things like that for their benefit!

Anyways, what’ve you been reading this week?

MJ: My first selection for the evening is a very different brand of shoujo than Sailor Moon, though also quite enjoyable. I’m speaking of the first volume of Miyoshi Tomori’s A Devil and her Love Song, just recently released by Viz.

I know you’ve read it, Michelle, but for the uninitiated, our heroine is Maria Kawai, a transfer student recently expelled from an elite Catholic school. She’s a girl who has always had difficulty making (and keeping friends), mainly because of her inability to control her harsh (if truthful) tongue. Maria is unusually perceptive, but most of what she has to say is decidedly not what people want to hear, and she gets off on the wrong foot pretty much immediately at her new school. On some level, Maria wants to fit in, but she’s just not cut out for the spirited shoujo sunshine role, and she’s pretty well aware of it.

Thanks, perhaps, to her very good looks (and a lovely singing voice), she is sort of befriended by two boys in her class, happy-go-lucky Yusuke Kanda and surly Shin Meguro. The two boys are, on the surface, typical shoujo love interests, and it feels immediately obvious that Maria will end up with cranky guy with a heart of gold, but just as Maria does not quite fit any of the standard heroine molds, neither do these two, who each have their own ways of dealing with the pressures of classroom socialization. So who she’ll ultimately end up with (if she ends up with someone at all) is anyone’s guess.

Like another of my favorite recent shoujo series, We Were There, this volume succeeds in part by taking familiar shoujo stereotypes and making them into real people, and I appreciate that very much.

I was pretty enthralled with this debut volume, and I’m looking forward to seeing where things go. My one small fear is that all the other girls in school (who so far have only really bullied Maria) will continue to be vilified to the end. I really dislike girl-hating stories for girls. But the first volume is written with such a sure hand, I feel confident that we’re in for something better than that. It’s the kind of manga that (so far) is continuously surprising.

MICHELLE: You’ve hit upon so much of what I loved about the volume! I like the boys, but Maria herself is the most compelling at this point, as she clings to her faith that things eventually will work out, that they will someday understand her if she just keeps trying. It’s pretty moving, actually!

As for the other girls, a comment left on my review suggests you’ll be pleased with their development, saying, “all the peer enemies are eventually shown to be more than their stereotypes.”

MJ: That is very heartening to hear! Though, again, I had high hopes, given nuanced the main characters have been so far. I’m happy to hear that my faith isn’t misplaced!

So, what else do you have for us this week?

MICHELLE: Well, speaking of nuanced characters… I read volume two of Wandering Son by Shimura Takako, presented in a gorgeous hardcover edition by Fantagraphics.

This is the story of two transgendered children, Shuichi Nitori and Yoshino Takatsuki, and their struggles to express their true selves. Lately, Shuichi and Yoshino have been going out in public dressed as a girl and a boy, respectively, and have befriended an adult woman named Yuki. They also go on a class trip and decide to start an exchange diary.

Okay, plot-wise, that may not sound like much, but it’s what Takako does with it that’s so special. Where volume one largely focused on how the characters themselves perceive their differences from other kids, this volume shows some ways in which others perceive those differences. Some responses are negative, like Shuichi’s seatmate on the school trip, who accuses him of squealing like a girl and calls him a “faggot” before Shuichi actually musters the strength to tell him off.

Some responses are neutral, like when Shuichi’s sister Maho discovers his secret. She’s not horrified, but she’s puzzled. At least she’s making an honest effort to understand as best a junior-high girl can. And then some responses are overwhelmingly positive, like when Shuichi and Yoshino’s friend Chiba AWESOMELY channels Anne of Green Gables as a means to dealing with taunting. I really love her.

Because this gamut of reactions is presented, and because daily life continues to transpire, the characters’ struggles seem even more sincere and realistic. Knowing that the misunderstanding they face now will only get greater the older and more certain they become, we realize just how fabulously lucky they are to have each other, even if they have to be careful not to exclude their other friends.

My one complaint is that a volume seems to go by so quickly that I am soon left bereft, pining for the next one!

MJ: This is another volume staring at me from the shelf that I’m simply dying to read. I need to take a month’s vacation and just read, read, read! I loved the first volume, as you know, and I’m thrilled (if not remotely surprised) to hear that it continues on in an equally lovely fashion. I admit I’m made even more anxious to read it based on that Anne of Green Gables thing. OH, MY HEART.

MICHELLE: I knew that part would please you!

I do have to ding Fantagraphics for the wording of their “story so far” section, though, which contains the sentence “The two spend their days going on somewhat perverse dates.” Now, true, certain dictionary definitions of “perverse” might reasonably apply in this situation, like “disposed to go counter to what is ordinary,” but that word also comes with connotations like “wicked” and “sinful” that should best be avoided. Surely they could’ve found a suitable synonym! Grumble grumble.

MJ: I’ve been pretty unhappy with the language they’ve used while marketing this series, so that doesn’t surprise me, I guess, but it’s still regrettable.

MICHELLE: What’s your second topic of the evening?

MJ: My second read this week is the perfect example of everything Wandering Son is not. That would be Hisaya Nakajo’s Hana-Kimi, a shoujo staple now being re-released in omnibus format by Viz. It’s a popular series I’ve never read, so definitely I’m the target audience for a release like this.

Unfortunately, I’d say my reaction to it was pretty mixed. While Wandering Son tackles gender identity with tender realism, like most other manga I’ve read with themes revolving around gender-bending, Hana-Kimi plays it for laughs, making sure to keep all the confusion safely on the outside. This isn’t unexpected, by any means, but it suffers gravely in comparison to a more thoughtful work.

So, Mizuki is a teen athlete who so deeply admires a young Japanese high jump champion, Izumi Sano, that she leaves America (where she lives abroad with her family) to come back to Japan and enroll in the all-boys boarding school Sano attends. Of course she must disguise herself as a boy, and of course she ends up being Sano’s roommate, because what good would a gender-bending romp be without lots of shower and clothing snafus?

Things progress pretty much as you might expect, with many of the boys finding themselves attracted to Mizuki and and one in particular questioning his sexuality based on these feelings. Meanwhile, Sano doesn’t know what he wants, and Mizuki isn’t even quite clear on the fact that she’s got the hots for him, despite her obsessive behavior. The school doctor, Hokuto, is a breath of fresh air, genuinely funny in a wonderfully wry way. Otherwise, though, it’s all distressingly… standard, I guess would be the term.

Oh, Michelle. I think that twenty years ago, I might have eaten this series up with a spoon, but I admit I was finding all the misunderstandings and hijinks fairly wearying. On the upside, spunky Mizuki doesn’t spend too much time being a shy wallflower, and Sano figures out her secret pretty early on (unbeknownst to her), so there isn’t quite as much blushing and farce-like door-slamming as there might have been otherwise. Still, if I’m looking for cross-dressing silliness, I think I’d just rather watch You’re Beautiful.

MICHELLE: Sometimes you come up with some absolutely perfect turns of phrase. “Making sure to keep all the confusion safely on the outside” is an example, encapsulating everything Hana-Kimi is in a nutshell.

Where you are the target for this reissue, I am not, because I have actually read it all before. In fact, one of the first reviews I ever wrote was of a volume of Hana-Kimi. So believe me when I tell you… it kind of gets worse. Oh, there are certainly some terrific volumes near the end, but there’s a lot of filler before then, and then the end completely and utterly fizzles to the extent where, though I did finish it for the sake of completeness, once I’d done that I promptly sold it. “Not a keeper!” There are aspects I kind of miss—Sano sure is pretty, especially early on—but I just can’t forget how dissatisfied it left me.

All that said, I hasten to add that I applaud any slightly older shoujo title coming back into the market in a fresh way, and hope that Basara, Please Save My Earth, and Boys Over Flowers will find their way to new audiences in the near future.

MJ: Sano is pretty, indeed, though I find I keep mentally comparing him to another depressed, recovering athlete, Eiji Okamura (Banana Fish), and you realize of course he has no chance with me in that comparison.

So, do you think we’ve lived up to the glory of our last two columns? We did discuss some pretty wonderful series tonight!

MICHELLE: I think we did! And it was pretty shoujo-licious, as well, which is a nice change of pace.

MJ: Agreed! Well… I guess this is goodnight!

MICHELLE: Until next week!

Off the Shelf: No Longer Human

January 27, 2012 by MJ and Michelle Smith 10 Comments

MICHELLE: This month’s Manga Moveable Feast, currently in progress, is devoted to the works of Usamaru Furuya, prompting MJand me to devote this week’s column to the most recent of his series to see publication in English, No Longer Human.

Based on a book by Osamu Dazai that’s described as “a decadent novelist’s autobiographical masterpiece,” No Longer Human depicts the story of Yozo Oba, a young man with no comprehension of what it feels like or how to be an ordinary person. We first meet him as a high school student, where he has learned that being the class clown is the one thing that enables him to connect to his classmates.

Soon he falls in with a group of misfits plotting political rebellion, but he’s more comforted by being among outsiders than he is honestly devoted to their cause. There, he meets the first of several women who will be drawn to him and agree to feed and care for him. This becomes his pattern in life. By the middle of the second volume, he’s twenty and living with a much older woman while drawing a gag manga and helping out at the bar she owns. He realizes that he’s “a genius parasite on women,” but sees that as his only option left to survive.

MJ: As in most “decadent masterpieces,” Oba’s excesses drive him deeper and deeper into tragedy, as he drinks and sleeps his way from one safe haven to another, usually leaving the women who care for him in significantly worse condition than he found them (and in one case, even dead). The narrative lets us know that things are only going to continue to get worse, yet it’s impossible to look away.

Though there have since been at least two other graphic novel adaptations of Dazai’s original, where Furuya goes very much right, in my opinion, is in his decision to move the pre-WWII story into the present, which I think is at least partially responsible for his ability to present such a self-indulgent tragedy in a way that makes it genuinely readable. I realize the original is a classic, but I feel like the novel might suffer more from a contemporary reading than Furuya’s adaptation does.

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Note: No Longer Human reads from left-to-right

MICHELLE: I was surprised by just how readable it was, actually. Just looking at the plot, you’d expect it to be depressing, but it’s so skillfully done that I enjoyed it very much! But yes, you’re absolutely right that updating the story was a smart choice, especially as it enabled a bit of self-insertion on Furuya’s part. Ordinarily, I’m kind of annoyed when mangaka break the fourth wall—particularly if they do so in a silly way—but here, Furuya’s interludes of discovering and being transfixed by Oba’s story are absolutely essential in setting the mood. We feel like he’s captivated right along with us.

MJ: Yes, he’s sort of sharing it with us like a guilty pleasure, and it really works as one. I think the story benefits greatly from being presented as an outrageous internet diary that’s impossible to stop reading. There’s something about this story that makes me feel like I’ve stayed up all night reading, strung out on caffeine and cheese puffs, and, frankly, that really suits it. I kind of wish I’d read it like that for real, actually.

Talking about it like this, it would be easy to gloss over Furuya’s artistry, though, which is put to pretty spectacular use in this series, wouldn’t you agree?

MICHELLE: I can imagine the back cover blurb now. “It had me craving cheese puffs.” – MJ, Manga Bookshelf

As for Furuya’s artistry, I whole-heartedly agree. His talent was on prodigious display in Genkaku Picasso, the only other series of his that I’ve read, but it really suits a darker story like this one.

I was particularly struck by the depictions of Oba as a marionette controlled by his father’s money and/or putting on a show for his peers. It’s such a vivid symbol of someone going through the motions of trying to be normal! And even though Furuya occasionally uses some symbolism that might seem overly obvious—like the surfeit of bugs lurking beneath the petals of the flowers Oba admires with his fiancée (we must return to this point)—it’s done with such finesse that it doesn’t seem trite.

MJ: My previous experience with Furuya has consisted only of Lychee Light Club, which I found visually striking on a nearly theatrical level, but juvenile and kind of emotionally empty. It’s nice to see his gifts utilized so differently here. There was a lot of sexually-charged violence in Lychee Light Club, and certainly there’s no lack of sexual themes in No Longer Human, but it’s approached so differently… it really feels like a much more mature work.

MICHELLE: I did wonder how this compared to Lychee, which I still need to read.

I wanted to ask… did you find the sexual content as supremely unsexy as I did? Beyond not being idealized at all, there are some closeups of things like twirling tongues that look downright disgusting, almost like something drawn by Junji Ito! I wonder if this is Furuya’s way of depicting the impure motives of Oba in these situations. It would be completely out of place to portray what he’s doing as titillating, let alone dreamy.

MJ: I don’t know if I’d say that I found it supremely unsexy, but it definitely does not read as something that’s supposed to be titillating. It’s interesting, too, even though the character confesses early on that his frequent, semi-anonymous sexual encounters are the only things that make him feel good (“When I’m here seems like the only time the smile on my face in genuine”), from the reader’s perspective, he seems just as detached during those trysts as he is the rest of the time. I almost feel like he’s fooling himself when he says that, and that this is reflected in Furuya’s artwork.

MICHELLE: There’s definitely a lot of emphasis on what makes Oba comfortable in a relationship. With the ladies in the “massage parlors,” it’s because he doesn’t have to use any subterfuge. With the members of the political group, it’s because everyone is a misfit in some way. And the two loving/honestly affectionate relationships he has are with women who exhibit a sort of elegant melancholy. Outsiders themselves, in a way.

But speaking of fooling himself, what on earth is going on with the abrupt change in the end of volume two?! Oba has maintained all along that he has no interest in and cannot fathom embarking upon ordinary relationships, and yet here he is, falling in love with and ultimately proposing to a virginal girl who works in a smoke shop. I’m sure he’s got an idealized version of her, but man, I just wanted to shake her and go, “Yoshino, no!” That poor girl is in for a very rude awakening. What will be her price for associating with Oba?

MJ: Yes, disaster is clearly just around the corner, in the same sure way as you’d expect in, say, a Dickens novel. Yoshino is doomed just as it seems Oba is truly doomed, and nobody’s even trying to hide it. Furuya makes the most of this, too. I’m glad you mentioned that last page in the volume, with a swarm of insects seemingly prepared to devour a flower. It’s a melodramatic image, I suppose, but so perfect for the tone of the story.

MICHELLE: Exactly! He just seems so much like a different person here from his behavior, which is emphasized by the drastic haircut Furuya has given him. It really comes out of nowhere, narratively speaking, but I have faith that Furuya is going to make it all make sense in the end. I suppose it helps knowing that, theoretically, all of this did happen to the same protagonist in the original novel (and in the life that it’s based upon?).

MJ: Well, I don’t know if I’d say he feels like a different person, but definitely a different version of a person who keeps reinventing himself over and over, in order to survive. Or perhaps I should say, “in order to survive without having to ever put himself out or curb his own desires,” because really, that’s what his survival is about. So here he is, seemingly falling in love for real for the first time ever, yet in a way, what I see is a guy who has finally figured out how to reinvent himself on the inside–enough to fool even himself. And really, that can’t go well.

MICHELLE: Maybe it’s all the drinking he’s doing that’s enabling him to fool himself to such an extent, to actually believe in one of these personas he’s crafted for himself. And I think there’s a line in there, too, about how living with Mama (do we ever learn her real name?) is so peaceful and great that he starts to believe that all the world is the same. But ultimately, he’s still pursuing the kind of parasite arrangement that’s been sustaining him the past few years, but viewing it through the illusion of love.

MJ: And in a way, maybe that’s the only direction he could really go at this point. After having finally become too disgusted even with himself in his usual arrangements, he’s gotten by with Mama (no, I don’t think we know her real name) because she lets him off the hook so completely. He’s able to be a child, a lover, an employee, whatever, but ultimately she’s just letting him play at those roles without expecting him to be any of them.

He can’t go back to what he was exactly, so what else would he do but move on to something he could play at wholeheartedly with someone who is unlikely to notice? Yoshino’s lack of experience makes her the perfect fit for this phase, because she won’t burst his bubble, at least not for a while.

MICHELLE: And I’m sure she’ll temporarily inspire him to clean up his act—stop drinking, stop blowing the income he makes from his manga—but it just can’t last long. And maybe one could look at that like a good thing, but I kind of hate him for inflicting himself on her. It’s like, what he sees as the best thing that’s ever happened to him, I see as the worst thing he’s ever done.

MJ: Yeah, I agree. Not that the other women have deserved him or anything, but to some extent they’ve enabled him by giving in to their own issues and insecurities. They’ve knowingly let him manipulate them (even if they hid it from themselves as best they could), but Yoshina isn’t worldly enough to grasp what’s happening or what kind of guy he is. And on some level, he knows that, and is taking advantage of it.

I feel almost cruel, not giving him any benefit of the doubt here, but the guy hasn’t given me anything else to work with!

MICHELLE: Whereas I don’t feel cruel at all! He’s been very frank about his own shortcomings and survival tactics throughout.

I rather wish I knew more about the source material or the other adaptations, so as to pinpoint which elements have been introduced by or presented best by Furuya, but on the other hand, I don’t want to muddy my mind with other versions of the story when I like this one so much.

MJ: I admit I suspect I wouldn’t have much patience for the novel at this point in my life. There was a time when I really loved self-indulgent tragedy, but those days are long past. I think Furuya’s wry adaptation may be exactly the thing for me now, and I feel content to leave it at that, at least for the moment. Perhaps I’ll change my mind after I’ve read the end. I’m pretty anxious to read volume three at this point.

MICHELLE: So am I! And I think I’m going to go back and read Lychee soon, too. I was unsure about it, but now I feel confident I could admire it, even if it doesn’t reach the heights of No Longer Human. Too bad CMX folded before they could release any of 51 Ways to Save Her.

MJ: I’m regretful about that now, too. Let’s hope someone else picks it up soon!

For more Furuya talk, be sure to check out this month’s Manga Moveable Feast, hosted by Ash Brown at Experiments in Manga.

Off the Shelf: Fullmetal Alchemist

January 4, 2012 by MJ and Michelle Smith 25 Comments

(Warning: contains minor spoilers for the full series.)

MJ: As most of you probably know, December saw the end of one of my very favorite manga series, Hiromu Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist. This is a series I’ve praised at length, and one of just two long-running shounen series to make my personal top ten list.

For the uninitiated, Fullmetal Alchemist is a 27-volume shounen fantasy epic set in a world not unlike industrial revolution-era Europe. In this universe, the quasi-science of alchemy is actually the world’s real science, bordering on magical power. Its practitioners acquire the ability to transmute physical objects into other objects by breaking them down into their elemental forms and rearranging them from the core. The science operates on the principle of “equivalent exchange,” demanding that nothing can be created without the sacrifice of something of equal value.

The story centers on two young brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric, who follow their absent father’s footsteps into the study of alchemy, eventually attempting to use it to resurrect their dead mother, a practice made virtually impossible by the requirements of equivalent exchange and forbidden by alchemic law. Their attempt results in the loss of Ed’s arm and leg, and Al’s entire body, forcing him to live as a disembodied soul attached to a suit of armor. Inspired by the legend of the Philospher’s Stone—a gem capable of amplifying an alchemist’s powers and defying the law of equivalent exchange—the two embark on a quest to find it in order to become whole again.

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MICHELLE: Their first significant lead is Dr. Marcoh, a man responsible for creating philosopher’s stones at one of the military’s secret laboratories. He tips them off about his research notes, and after some difficulty in finding them followed by significant trouble deciphering them, the boys learn the horrifying truth: philosopher’s stones are made by sacrificing living human beings.

From there, they begin to unravel the truth about not just the military but about the very founding of their homeland, Amestris, all while continuing to pursue their personal goal of regaining their original bodies. Loss of life and loss of innocence ensue.

MJ: As a point of interest, while it might seem obvious that the title of the series references Al’s metal body, this is actually not the case at all. In order for the boys to gain access to the country’s alchemic research, Ed (the only one of them with a passable human form) must join the Amestrian military as a State Alchemist, each of whom is given an official title appropriate to his person and special skills. It is Ed who is given the title, “Fullmetal Alchemist,” referring not so much to his automail (metal) limbs, but his stubborn personality.

MICHELLE: This, in turn, makes him a target of an assassin named Scar, who has sworn vengeance against State Alchemists, whom the military employed as human weapons in the civil war against his people, the Ishbalans. Little by little, the scope of the story widens until, in the best nature of fantasy epics, the entire world is in peril.

MJ: At the time that Michelle and I decided to feature Fullmetal Alchemist for Off the Shelf, she’d only read a few volumes, so while I could go on and on here about why I think it’s so great, I’d actually rather listen to her talk first. Where would you like to start, Michelle?

MICHELLE: I hardly know where to begin. I’m still digesting the details of the story so haven’t had much opportunity to sit back and evaluate it as a whole. One thing I did realize fairly early on, though, is that Fullmetal Alchemist shares two qualities with another fabulous shounen series, One Piece—namely, a carefully considered storyline and indelible, endearing characters. Although there are a few moments in the story that made me go “Huh?” the tale builds logically while making time for the sure-handed characterization that really ties the story together. All of the supporting characters are memorable, and readers are trusted to remember small details—Kimblee’s opinion of Winry’s parents, for example—and recall them when they inform the character’s future actions. Too, I love that significant events that occurred early on continue to be referenced and motivate characters to the very end. I’m big on continuity, and FMA has it in spades.

MJ: You’ve immediately hit upon some of the points I think best illustrate what is special about Fullmetal Alchemist. I don’t know what kind of editorial process this series went through, but unlike many long-running series, it has the feeling of having been plotted out as a whole from the very beginning. There are no wasted details in this story, or wasted characters for that matter. The series’ supporting characters are as integral to its plot as its leads, and I don’t think I’ve ever read any series (manga or otherwise) as successful at fleshing out multitudes of supporting characters without duplicating or cluttering things up. These characters are so precisely and lovingly created, not even one feels superfluous, nor do we need to be reintroduced to anyone if they’ve been absent from the story a while. Each of them feels as real as if we’re remembering them from our own lives.

And the plotting… just wow. Everything in this story is important to the plot, and it all comes together so seamlessly… I kind of want to send a copy of the series to, say, JK Rowling, as an example of how effective storytelling is done, without skimping or becoming sloppy. Hiromu Arakawa is an incredibly disciplined storyteller, with the imagination and depth to back it up. Her sense of humor doesn’t hurt either.

MICHELLE: It was pretty early on, when Brosh and Ross were assigned as Ed’s bodyguards, that I suddenly realized how distinct the supporting cast was shaping up to be. I have no idea how Arakawa instantly makes these characters so memorable, but she does. Towards the end, there are various illustrations with upwards of twenty people in them, and I found that I could name them all, even when their only appearance was a hand holding a cigarette. And I like that some stick around for a really long time, like Yoki, the corrupt officer whom Ed ousts as the owner of a mine back in volume one. Heck, he even gets a moment to be cool way down the road!

MJ: Maria Ross is one of my favorite characters in the series, and that’s saying quite a bit. She’s also one of a fairly spectacular number of genuinely awesome female characters in the series, which is not something one generally counts on from manga for boys. I’ve meant for a while to do some kind of “Women of Fullmetal Alchemist” feature for Manga Bookshelf, but what’s held me back, really, is that there are so many terrific characters, I fear I’d never be able to do them all justice.

MICHELLE: There really are a ton of them. In addition to Maria, who very stoically bears her exile after near execution for a murder she didn’t commit, there’s Riza Hawkeye, the devoted sharpshooter dedicated to protecting Colonel Mustang; Izumi Curtis, the incredibly intimidating housewife; Major General Olivier Armstrong, who inspires the devotion of her men at Ft. Briggs; Lanfan, the kickass bodyguard for Prince Lin; and of course Winry, who doesn’t have super abilities but who is very strong in her own right and who, by her example, inspires Scar to set aside his hatred of the Amestrians which really, in a way, makes saving the world possible. And still I feel like I’m forgetting someone important.

MJ: A few more spring to my mind immediately, like the young alchemist from Xing, May (and her adorable pet, whose expression when she was wounded in volume 26 actually made me cry). Also, I’m extremely fond of Winry’s grandmother, Pinako, who trained her as an automail engineer. I kind of love that the best engineers, the most impressive marksman, and the most feared military commander are all women. Arakawa doesn’t let traditional gender roles push her around. I like the smaller characters, too, like Sheska and Rose. Hell, even the homunculous Lust is kinda kick-ass. She’s the closest thing we see to the typical voluptuous fanservice, too, which speaks well for the series, considering that she’s dressed in a long gown all the time.

MICHELLE: I love Xiao Mei (May’s pet panda) unreservedly.

And yes, you’re right about Lust being the extent of the fanservice in the series. Most of the women are realistically proportioned. I was particularly happy with Major General Armstrong’s figure—she looks tough yet feminine—and distinctly remember a little mini comic about Arakawa assuring her assistants that Hawkeye doesn’t actually have a skinny waist, it’s just that her broad shoulders and hips of a certain age make it seem so.

This reminds me that I was also delighted to discover that Hawkeye’s motivation for protecting Roy doesn’t seem to be romantic in nature. Okay, yes, sure, I think there is something there, but it’s more like a kind of atonement for her. She’s responsible, ultimately, for him learning the flame alchemist skills that took so many lives in Ishbal, and now wants to see to it that he is able to fulfill his goal of protecting as many people as possible. I love that Arakawa doesn’t take the easy route here.

And, in fact, she does this again many times. I’m thinking about General Graman now, who gets to be president ultimately and whom most series would present as a good guy, but we see his scheming, “let Roy take all the risks” side, as well. Arakawa is not afraid of presenting young readers with complex ideas and flawed people.

MJ: And I couldn’t be more grateful for that. So many authors underestimate children, as though they aren’t living in the same world as adults. I remember years ago when I worked with Maurice Sendak, he was adamant that children understood and were interested in the darker parts of their world often more than the adults in their lives. The stories I remember best from my youth were those that treated me as an equal.

MICHELLE: I think Fullmetal Alchemist definitely does that. That said, I felt there were a few cases where the explanation for what was happening just wasn’t sufficient. Like, say, when Ed is fighting Pride in volume 26 and there’s a line like “he turned himself into a Philosopher’s Stone.” I was like, “Um, what? Did I miss something?” And then it’s not mentioned again so I have no idea what happened. Eventually I just had to go, “Well, whatever, Ed got some sort of advantage there, obviously. Let’s move on.” Maybe there just weren’t enough pages for every little detail to make it in.

MJ: I don’t remember feeling confused at that point, but you know I’m less detail-oriented than you are, so perhaps I glossed over something. I don’t actually remember being confused at any point in the series, which is pretty incredible for me, since I can almost never follow the fights in shounen manga, and generally end up kind of mentally checking out during them. That never happened to me while reading Fullmetal Alchemist, which I always considered to be a minor miracle. Heh. It’s actually this series that first helped me draw the conclusion that I have an easier time following fights in shounen manga when they are drawn by female artists. This is a fact! A weird fact!

MICHELLE: Arakawa is great at drawing fight scenes. I remember that first fight scene with Ed and Greed just blowing me away with how easy she made it all look. I suppose I was less confused by other things and more “Oh, whatever” like some hypothetical musings about alchemy and Al’s situation that were eventually sort of accepted as fact. Unimportant things, really, but yeah, I’m kind of anal. (You don’t want to know how many pages of notes I took while reading this series.)

So. I said it. I said the most heartbreaking and wonderful part of the series. “Al’s situation.” I think the time has come to talk about Al. Do you love Al as much as I do?

MJ: I would have to have a heart of *stone* not to love Al. It’s Al. I mean, okay, I love Ed with the fire of a thousand suns. It’s possible I love him more than Al (if we’re measuring these things, which is a little pointless) because he’s more of a flawed person, and I tend to find flawed things more beautiful than perfect things. But there’s a purity about Al that is just… luminous. And here he’s paid the cruelest price ever just for wanting his mom back too much. Really, nobody has paid as heavily as Al, and it’s just heartbreaking.

MICHELLE: “Luminous” is the perfect word to describe Al.

I found Ed a little hard to like at first, but I thought Arakawa did an excellent job at gradually revealing the more noble sides to his character. At first, for example, Al is the “smoother” in many situations while Ed is more prickly, perhaps trying not to feel softer emotions lest they undermine what he is trying to accomplish. Gradually, though one realizes the soul-crushing depth of responsibility that he feels for what has happened to Alphonse, and this in turn makes Ed very lovable.

I’m also a big fan of his relationship with Winry. He’s such a typical boy, the way he’s kind of a git to her face sometimes, yet is fiercely proud of her abilities when discussing her with others. And though he wants to protect her from some of the terrible things she might see or learn from association with him, it’s never out of a sense that she’s too frail to cope but more like… she’s got a purity that is better unsullied. If that makes sense. It’s not a chauvinistic impulse, which I applaud. And that awkward promise scene in the final volume is so wonderful.

MJ: I absolutely adore Winry, and I adore her with Ed, for all the reasons you mention. There’s never any question that Winry can take care of herself, and she’s at least as protective of him as he is of her, so it’s more like mutual concern than anything else, and sometimes they’re both wrong when it comes to wanting to protect the other, for both flawed reasons and great ones. Their relationship feels very genuine to me. And I think I always identify easily with characters like Ed who kind of spaz their way through emotional difficulty, so I loved him right away.

Al, though, is just a gem, and it’s clear that in many ways, he’s the strong one, and that his big brother would be pretty much lost without him. Probably what I love most about Al, though, is his wealth of compassion. He’s naturally empathetic, and it’s something he’s able to hang on to, despite the fact that he’s been more physically damaged than nearly anyone they meet. Of course, I say “nearly” anyone, because that level of damage is not uncommon in this series. I’m pretty sure the fate of Nina Tucker scarred me for life.

MICHELLE: I think the fate of Nina Tucker scarred a lot of people. But it scarred the brothers too, and I’m glad that Nina gets a mention in one of the final scenes of the series.

You’re right about Al’s empathy and strength, and when he does have moments of weakness, it’s pretty jarring. There are a couple of times when Number 66 (aka “Barry the Chopper”) says something that gets into Al’s brain and won’t let go. Perhaps, since Number 66 (whom I suprisingly came to enjoy quite a lot) is in a similar situation, Al is inclined to take his comments to heart, and when he gets into his dark moods about whether he’s actually really Al at all, or whether his body will soon reject him, it’s genuinely distressing.

And I love love love Al at the end of the series. So clear-eyed and full of purpose.

MJ: I really, really agree. I hesitate to say much more, lest we give away the big stuff to potential readers, but yes.

Al’s identity is so emotionally complicated, much of which is really brought into focus for us by his interactions with Number 66, and actually thinking about that leads me to thinking about how much everyone’s identities are complicated by alchemy in some way, from all the victims of Amestris’ horrific human experiments to the alchemists themselves. I was rereading some of the Ishbalan war sections yesterday, which reminded me just how much even the regular Amestrian soldiers feared the State Alchemists (and for good reason, given what they were witnessing), including characters we’re originally introduced to in much lighter ways, like Roy Mustang. And Arakawa never comes down clearly on one side or another on the subject of being a “dog of the military,” preferring to leave it as a murky gray area, like many of the series’ moral issues (which I love her for).

MICHELLE: I’d say redemption is probably the hugest theme in the series, and I definitely love Arakawa for allowing her characters to have done such dreadful things, to regret them bitterly, and to take action to make up for it in some way. Roy enters the series with this ambition, and Hawkeye with the resolve to support him, but it’s something that Dr. Marcoh and Scar eventually come to seek as well. Very few people in the series are without some sort of sin or great failing, but they’ve got to consciously let go of the bitterness towards each other—which at one point Envy, I believe, attempts to resuscitate to no avail—in order to work together effectively. Victory couldn’t have been achieved without everyone doing their part.

MJ: You’re right, redemption is this series’ main theme, and it’s interesting that I like it so much, since that’s not usually a theme I care for. But I think what makes it really work for me here, is that Arakawa’s idea of redemption is all about taking personal responsibility for your own actions. She’s not suggesting that you can (or should) be forgiven for your sins, or that it’s necessarily possible to really make up for them, but she’s pretty adamant that we have to own them, which is something too many philosophies gloss over, in my opinion.

MICHELLE: Definitely. It’s like with Scar… you’d think that after turning himself around and embarking upon a path to making the world a more positive place, as his brother wanted, that he might reclaim his name and go from there. But by continuing to remain nameless, it’s like he’s saying, “All those things I did are still there. I can work toward making things better now, but I can’t forget.”

MJ: Oh, well said, Michelle! Yes, that’s exactly the kind of thing I mean.

I have a lot of issues about the way our society views the concept of “morality,” and this series actually stands as a great example there, too. I remember a few years back, there was a kerfuffle involving a statement Patrick Macias made to a reporter about manga being a kind of “moral-free zone.” He was taken out of context and the article the reporter wrote was awful on a lot of fronts, so it wasn’t something to take seriously. But the whole thing just highlighted the fact that our culture thinks of morality almost purely in terms of sexual desire, which personally I see as fairly trivial. Certainly there are times when matters of sexual desire can become real moral problems, but in general there are much more pressing issues at hand when it comes to how we discuss and think about morality.

For my money, Fullmetal Alchemist addresses questions of morality with more thoughtfulness and honesty than much of the entertainment I see coming out of our culture, and it gets to the stuff that really matters.

MICHELLE: I agree. In addition to being full of characters who have questioned whether it was right to follow orders that they knew in their heart to be reprehensible, you’ve also got the Elric brothers who are adamant about not using a philosopher’s stone to rectify their own mistake, despite being given several opportunities to do so. It was simply something they’d promised each other never to do, and they upheld that vow.

This makes me think of Major Armstrong, who torpedoed his career advancement opportunities when he questioned the validity of the Ishbalan war. He alone could not put his duty to follow orders above personal feeling. When the time comes later to engage an enemy that is unquestionably evil, however, he gives it his all.

MJ: Major Armstrong is a really interesting case to look at, I think, because on one hand he’s used for a lot of comic relief, with all his overblown emotions and his sparkly physique, but he’s actually a fairly dramatic figure when you look at him over the course of the series. I’m really glad that Arakawa makes it clear that there are often genuinely negative consequences for doing the right thing. You know, I remember when David Welsh listed Armstrong as one of his Valentine’s Day manga crushes and at the time I found that kind of hilarious. But really, it’s the best choice ever, now that I think about it.

MICHELLE: I ended up liking him quite a lot, too! Despite his bulk, he’s really a softie, and perhaps the next most compassionate-toward-others character after Al. Plus, his silly posturing becomes endearing and I love the instantaneous rapport he develops with Izumi’s hulking husband, Sig, and how they communicate through manly handclasps.

MJ: Another character whose moral dilemmas helped me to get to like him is Lin Yao, the prince of Xing who initially really rubbed me the wrong way. Characters whose top objective is achieving immortality tend to really grate on me. But during the period when he shares his body with the homunculous Greed, I actually got to really like him, which helped me develop real respect for Lan Fan too.

MICHELLE: Same here. I felt that he acquired more depth once we saw what he was really willing to do to achieve his goal, and also gave us an “in” to the personality of the most fascinating (to me) homunculus, Greed. I hadn’t found the “fainting from hunger” Lin Yao to be much of an addition to the story, but after he melded with Greed, I looked forward to his appearances.

I wish Lan Fan got more screen time, but I like her a lot, too. And, again, the way in which Winry led Scar by her example to set aside his hatred, Dr. Knox inspires Lan Fan to beseech the prince to protect all the clans, not just his own, probably not realizing that she also gave back to Dr. Knox by showing him that he needn’t be a coroner forever, but still had the right to treat living patients after the atrocities he committed for the military.

MJ: I feel like with all our enthusiasm over things like “redemption” and “morality” we’re making the series sound like one big after school special, but it really couldn’t be further from it. It’s also a really exciting adventure story, a gripping fantasy, a moving tale of brotherly devotion, an often scathing political commentary, and really, really funny.

MICHELLE: The first time I tried to read the series, I was surprised by how funny it was, so I definitely had gotten an impression of it as being something serious and epic. Which, of course, it is. But then you have characters like Armstrong, and the wonderful four-panel strips at the back, and chibified super-deformed Al, which never fails to elicit a giggle from me.

On the topic of scathing political commentary, another thing I liked is that even the good guys use spin to their advantage. One of Roy’s subordinates, Breda (who looks like a grunt but who is actually extremely clever), concocts a way to portray the big battle at the end to the public, making one realize that even our heroes are having to play the public relations game to some extent. They have to take public opinion into consideration, if they ever hope to have the power to steer the government and country into a better direction, which makes the whole story feel more complicated and realistic.

MJ: Heh, yes, definitely. And there’s really no sense that politicians, even the “good” ones, are necessarily upright people. Roy, for instance, who is set up as an ally pretty early on, is portrayed pretty consistently as a super-ambitious womanizer. And though he mellows over the course of the series (and certainly we’re made aware of his deeper, more virtuous motivations), it’s not like he changes into a different person. He’s still that guy, and I feel like it’s made clear that “that guy” is the kind of person who goes into politics. Even if some of his motivations are genuinely righteous, he’s also in it for himself.

MICHELLE: Yeah, there’s a certain amount of ego involved in seeking public office, methinks. I do wonder, though, how much of the womanizing was actually genuine. I was under the impression that the ladies are his personal information network, and the lothario reputation is a ruse to cover his meetings with them.

MJ: Well, I kind of got the impression that it was a little bit of both. :D Perhaps I’m being unduly influenced by the omake strip in which he declares that female officers should be required to wear miniskirts.

MICHELLE: Ha! Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was both!

So, this is kind of abrupt, but one character we’ve not really talked about yet is King Bradley. Arakawa handles his introduction so brilliantly, because I could just feel the creepy waves coming off of him even before his origins were revealed. It was telling that Al was more terrified of him than Greed, for example, and even shielded one of Greed’s minions from him during the raid on Devil’s Nest. But like the best villains, he does have a past that one can sympathize with, and is a victim of “Father” in his own way.

MJ: Oh, good call, Michelle. He really is a great villain, because he’s so complex, and honestly he surprised me to the end. His final words in the series actually made me tear up, and that just shocked me. I wouldn’t have thought that could happen, yet it felt completely natural and real in the moment.

MICHELLE: I think I’ll remember best the scene where he’s talking to Hawkeye about how his life has been planned out for him, and how the only thing he ever chose for himself was his wife. Maybe he’s the embodiment of someone who follows orders without question, because he could’ve rebelled like Greed, but instead walked the path he was assigned, with only really one connection that he had forged himself.

MJ: And he chose well, too. I really liked his wife.

MICHELLE: Me, too. I kind of wish we could’ve seen at least one unguarded demonstration of his love for her, but perhaps that would’ve made him too sympathetic.

Another character who loved his wife dearly but had an odd way of showing it was Von Hohenheim. His story was handled somewhat opposite to King Bradley’s, in that he is presented at first as someone suspicious, especially considering his resemblance to “Father,” but who is revealed to be the one person who knew what was coming and sacrificed his personal relationships in an effort to do something about it. He kind of reminds me of Wesley from Angel in that respect, actually. He’ll do the right thing and be hated for it because it’s what he believes must be done.

MJ: And he’ll even do the right thing while also doing the wrong thing, which makes him more interesting. I mean, yeah, you can look at him as someone willing to sacrifice his personal relationships for the good of all, but he’s also making that choice for his family. He’s deciding that it’s okay for them to have to sacrifice having a husband and father so that he can do the right thing. It’s not actually wrong of Ed to hate his father for abandoning them, after all. He really did that, and it really hurt them, to the point that his sons were so desperate to get back their only parent that they’d cross a line and destroy themselves to do it. His choice isn’t simple in any way, and Arakawa doesn’t let him off the hook for it either. I love that.

(click images to enlarge)

MICHELLE: Yes, exactly. That’s why I likened him to Wesley, whose “I’m the only one who can save them” complex led him to take actions on his own that were ultimately ill-considered. Though it’s clear that Trisha understood Hohenheim’s decision, communicating this to the boys would’ve been meaningless because it still meant their dad had chosen to do something else besides be with them. Only his sincere regret later on allows Ed to want to get to know him.

And while we’re on the subject of Whedon shows, am I the only one to get an occasional yet strong Firefly vibe from the series? At first it was all the trains. Trains coupled with dusty towns and advanced human experimentation by the military. And then you’ve got the relationship between Roy and Hawkeye, which reminds me a lot of Mal and Zoe. Especially when you’ve got Roy saying things like, “In the end, the people who understand and support us the most seem to always be the comrades we once fought alongside.”

MJ: Heh, I hadn’t thought of that! I know people have speculated about Firefly being influenced by things like Cowboy Bebop. I wonder if Fullmetal Alchemist was an influence as well. Is Whedon a manga fan?

MICHELLE: Not that I’m aware of, but I suppose it’s possible!

Anyway, once I hit upon the Mal and Zoe parallel then of course it made sense that Hawkeye and Roy were devoted to one another, an incredible team, but not destined to be together romantically. Considering how thorough the ending was otherwise in terms of letting one know what happened to everyone, if they had gotten together, I feel like Arakawa would’ve included that. Maybe Hawkeye just needs to meet a guy who bothers her. :)

MJ: Well, part of me ‘ships them desperately, and another part of me declares, “She doesn’t need a man! She has a dog!”

MICHELLE: He is an awesome dog.

MJ: So, thank you, Michelle, for indulging me in marathoning this series! I hope the experience was rewarding.

MICHELLE: Oh, definitely! Though now I’ve got one more day of vacation left and I’m somewhat at a loss with what to do with myself, since I’ve been so absorbed in FMA for the rest of it!

MJ: Well, you could always watch the anime!

MICHELLE: Believe me, I plan to!

More full-series discussions with MJ & Michelle:

Full-series multi-guest roundtables: Hikaru no Go | Banana Fish | Gerard & Jacques | Flower of Life

Off the Shelf: Beer, cheese, & a bit of fluff

December 15, 2011 by MJ and Michelle Smith 12 Comments

MJ: Hi! Hi. Um… hi. I had a beer.

MICHELLE: I had string cheese!

MJ: Have you had manga?

MICHELLE: I have had! Relatively “fluffy” manga, comparatively, but manga all the same!

MJ: Tell me more!

MICHELLE: Well, one thing I read was the fourth volume of Kakifly’s moe comedy, K-ON!, which is about as fluffy as it gets.

I’m not sure how it happened, but K-ON! has gradually won me over. When I read the first volume of this four-koma series about a group of girls who form a pop music club at their high school, I was not impressed, finding the fanservice awkward and some of the characters gratingly stupid. Now, true, some of the characters are still gratingly stupid, but I seem to have become more accepting of the less-than-perfect aspects of this manga. Or perhaps I’ve simply lowered my expectations. In any case, I have finally come around.

This volume finds the four original band members studying for college entrance exams in an effort to attend the same school. For two of the girls, this isn’t a challenge—in fact, the wealthy girl is never actually seen studying and there’s a subtle implication that she might have a secret “in” on account of her status—but the other two are not very good students, so there is a lot of focus on their comical failures. Meanwhile, the youngest member of the group, Azusa, drops her stoic demeanor and gets weepy at the thought of being alone but is joined by a couple of new bandmates right at the end of the volume.

Okay, you know what? This isn’t the most original stuff out there. There’s also a high school festival involving a performance of Romeo and Juliet, and another instance of the girls giving a concert that happens entirely off-panel. But I kind of don’t care anymore. I like Azusa and I like “seemingly cool yet easily flustered” Mio and, Heaven help me, I even like the slashy potential in this series. (There must be mad troves of K-ON! fanfic!) Reading it cheered me up, and that’s what a comedy is supposed to do.

I guess what I’m saying is that I’ve done a 180º on this series.

MJ: I’m actually pretty glad to hear you say that! I’ll admit that I haven’t yet gotten into the manga (I missed the first volume, and never caught up after that), but I was pretty well enamored with the anime series, so I come to it all with a pro-K-ON! bias. I’m probably still more in touch with my young teenaged self than a lot of women my age (this is likely not a good thing), so I can still relate to these girls, and I suspect I wasn’t much less stupid, even if I was more school-smart than most of them. In any case, I’m happy this has turned into something enjoyable for you!

MICHELLE: Me, too. I’m still sad that we never actually see them playing anything, but a segment in which various members try their hand at writing song lyrics was pretty amusing. I’m not sure whether there’s more of the series or not—I’d originally thought it was complete in four volumes, but it doesn’t seem like it from how this volume ends.

Anyhoo, what’ve you been reading?

MJ: Well, I suppose you could classify my first read as “fluff” as well, but it’s classic fluff, so it has a very different feel. I’m talking about volume one of Osamu Tezuka’s Princess Knight, finally released in this country by Vertical, much to the delight of us here at Manga Bookshelf. I had a good idea of what to expect from this series, especially after Kate’s Manga Artifacts tribute last year, but my own reaction to it was still a bit of a surprise.

As Kate’s article makes clear, this is a lively, swashbuckling fantasy, and it’s very enjoyable as such. She covered the premise too, in which Princess Sapphire is born as a girl being raised as a boy, thanks to a pre-birth snafu that gave her both a girl’s and boy’s heart. I’ll admit, I wasn’t quite prepared for my own reaction to this.

I’m perfectly capable of viewing this manga in the context of its time, yet I’m still jarred by the notion that Sapphire’s strength and bravery are due only to her accidental ownership of a boy’s heart. I get that this may have been the only way Tezuka (or his readers) could deal with the idea of a swashbuckling heroine, but I wish he didn’t feel the need to keep bringing it up. There’s even a fight scene in this volume where Sapphire’s boy’s heart is momentarily removed, rendering her suddenly weak and afraid. Then her bravery and skill returns as soon as she gets the heart back again. That really bothered me, I have to admit.

Fortunately, the issues I’m having with the manga’s discussion of gender roles are largely overshadowed by the likeableness of its lead character. I really like Sapphire, and though she dislikes having to live as boy while her girl’s heart longs for everything she’s not allowed to have, she doesn’t reject the qualities that make her able to pass as male. She wants to wear dresses and she wishes she could crush on the neighboring prince a little more openly, but it’s hard to imagine her enjoying a life without the adventure her “male” role offers her.

Things take an interesting turn in the last few chapters of this volume, and I expect I might enjoy the second volume more than the first, if those chapters are any indication. But even if the premise continues to bother me, I suspect I’ll continue to enjoy this series. Sapphire is just too much fun to let go of.

MICHELLE: Oh man, that fight scene you speak of seems guaranteed to make steam come out of my ears. But still, this is a title I long wished for, despite not knowing very much about it aside from its premise. (I’ve been waiting for the release of volume two so I could read the whole series at once.) I suppose I will try to overlook this aspect, or at least consider it a sign of the times.

MJ: It really is worth making the attempt, and honestly I’m looking forward to volume two. I hope your experience is the same!

So what else have you been reading this week?

MICHELLE: Well…. it’s something I have to be in the mood for, but when I am, it can really hit the spot!

I am talking about Gosho Aoyama’s long-running shounen mystery, Case Closed. This series is pretty unique because its Shonen Sunday stylings—by which I mean largely episodic but with a story-spanning arc that will only really be resolved at the conclusion of the series—make it an ideal candidate for “popping in to see what’s going on.” The first volume I ever read of Case Closed was volume 25, then I went back and read some of the beginning, and then this week was inspired to check out the current happenings in volume 41.

Immediately, one can drop right in and figure out what’s going on. The basic premise of the series is that hotshot teen detective Jimmy Kudo had a run-in with some mysterious “men in black” and is now trapped in the body of a first grader who goes by the name Conan Edogawa. He’s not as able to help the bumbling local police force in this form, but with the help of some handy gadgets, he makes do.

As the volume begins, Conan’s mom (a famous actress) has been sent by her husband to help solve the case of a wealthy widower who’s been receiving threatening letters under his pillow. The culprit is revealed within a few chapters and, as is usual for Case Closed, used an incredibly elaborate murder method. Next, some dude is stabbed. After that, some dude is garroted in a Porsche. Conan always happens to be nearby and always manages to use an adult as mouthpiece for the solution he devised.

If you’re looking for a gritty, compelling murder mystery, you’re not going to find it here. Go read some Elizabeth George or something. Case Closed consistently treats death like a puzzle, and no one is ever too distraught about what has befallen their loved ones. It’s a game, and usually not one that the reader has any chance of figuring out on their own. But man, I really had fun with this volume! I liked that the cases were short and that the volume was nicely seasoned with some stalking courtesy of the “men in black.” Because the series is up to volume 73 in Japan and still ongoing, I don’t really believe anything big will happen with them soon, but that doesn’t prevent me from being really keen to read volume 42!

MJ: I’m not often a huge fan of truly episodic storytelling, but I admit this does sound kind of fun!

MICHELLE: Like I said, it’s all about being in the right mood for it. Really, it’s another manifestation of the “everything is simple” brain-balm effect that I enjoy from some shounen manga.

Anyhoo! Thus concludes my fluff. What else have you got?

MJ: My second selection can’t rightly be called “fluff,” though it does have a slow, gentle quality to it that is perhaps a completely different kind of brain balm. This week, I read the second volume of Kaoru Mori’s A Bride’s Story, beautifully produced and packaged in hardcover by Yen Press. I know I brought up Yen’s production values when I discussed the series’ first volume, but it just has to be mentioned again. This is a gorgeous book, and that alone gives it an air of gravity. Still, there is a lightheartedness here that makes this a really smooth read.

Things take a dramatic turn in this volume, when Amir’s clan returns again to take her back with them in order to remarry her into another tribe. It’s an ugly scene, and not lacking tragedy, but the real outcome of all of it is that Amir begins to view her very young husband as a man, which, interestingly, is more uncomfortable for her than it is for the reader.

Despite the characters’ jarring age difference, the author is clearly allowing them a romance, and is executing it so deftly, it actually doesn’t feel jarring at all. Amir’s new feelings for her husband are really… sweet. It’s quite lovely to watch their relationship grow, and I found that surprising.

The author also has a real gift for teaching us about the story’s setting without becoming didactic or distracting from the story in any way. There is a lovely section in this volume that is entirely about the importance of cloth and embroidery in the lives of the tribe’s women, and it may even be my favorite part of series so far.

Though we’re not allowed into the mind of any one character, there’s an intimacy with the tribe as a whole that reveals the author’s affection for them and helps to draw us in to their lives. Despite the distance in our POV, this is probably one of the warmest comics I’ve read, and more compelling in its quietness than I would ever expect.

Really, I love this series.

MICHELLE: That sounds so lovely. Maybe over Christmas break I’ll actually have the opportunity to read these two volumes, which have been sitting here beside me for ages now. And I definitely think it’s worth mentioning when a publisher has excellent production values; they should be praised for doing something well that other entities (*cough*Kodansha*cough*) can’t seem to manage.

MJ: It’s nice when a beautiful package like this is just as beautiful inside as well. A Bride’s Story was the perfect choice for this kind of treatment.

MICHELLE: Indeed!

Off the Shelf: Grown-up grumbling

December 8, 2011 by MJ and Michelle Smith 5 Comments

MICHELLE: This being a grown-up thing is for the birds; I take it back.

MJ: I am so there with you. Revolt against adulthood! Irresponsibility now!

MICHELLE: Clean none of the things!

MJ: Hallelujah!

MICHELLE: Oh, but if we abjure all responsibility, Off the Shelf won’t get done.

MJ: Oh. Crap.

MICHELLE: Maybe we can clean *one* thing.

MJ: *sigh* I guess so.

MICHELLE: You go first. I’ll provide moral support.

MJ: Hmph. Fine. Well, I finally got a chance to read the latest from CLAMP, volume one of Gate 7, out recently from Dark Horse.

CLAMP is, perhaps, an acquired taste. Most people I talk with either love them dearly or roll their eyes heavily at the mention of their name. I’d classify myself in the “love them” category, though I certainly have preferences among their titles. I love Tokyo Babylon more than X. I love xxxHolic more than Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle. I love Legal Drug, but I’m lukewarm on Kobato. Most of the series I like best share quite a bit in common, and fortunately for me, Gate 7 falls very much in line with the titles I most enjoy.

Chikahito is a high school student with a keen interest in Japanese history and folklore. On a solo trip to Kyoto—something he’s dreamed of since he was a child—a chance encounter with three supernaturally-talented personages brings him in touch with an aspect of ancient history he definitely wasn’t looking for. There’s a lot of plot here that I won’t get into, but suffice it to say that it’s all very, very…CLAMP.

The Kyoto group features a number of CLAMP staples, including two beautiful young men with an ambiguous relationship and an adorable, androgynous youth who can’t get enough of Chikahito, whom (s)he manipulates into becoming part of their daily lives. Chikahito is eerily similar to xxxHolic‘s Watanuki, in both looks and personality, but with Watanuki’s spastic tendencies drastically dialed down. It’s as though CLAMP was simply not done with Watanuki, and found themselves embracing the opportunity to recreate him in a new and improved form. As always, there is a lot of ominous-sounding language and pretty, pretty artwork.

Frankly, this works really well for me. I’m not inclined to object to being given too much of a good thing, nor am I repelled by familiarity in such a cozy form as this. For me, Gate 7 is the sequential art equivalent of a grilled cheese sandwich with a bowl of tomato soup—unsurprising but deeply comforting and delicious.

There are definitely weaknesses in this series’ first volume. Like most of CLAMP’s supernaturally-enhanced universes, this one requires quite a lot of exposition, and the pace and plot suffer for it, especially early on. But after all this time, CLAMP’s style is undeniably solid, and it’s hard not to feel that the story is in good hands, even in its uneven first chapters. I know my kind of CLAMP when I see it, and Gate 7 is unquestionably my kind of CLAMP.

MICHELLE: I’m happy that you liked it so much! I haven’t closely read other reviews, since I still need to read it myself, but I had the distinct impression that folks were unenthused by it. It’s good to know that’s not a universal reaction.

I must ask… if there’s a Watanuki stand-in, is there someone else who functions as his Doumeki?

MJ: No, at least not yet. Interestingly, Hana (the character who clings to him from the start), latches on to him because of their similarities, not their differences. So he doesn’t yet have someone who serves as his complement in that way. I’ll be interested to see if that remains the case.

I realize I’m an easy target for a series like this, since it caters to some of my particular tastes in CLAMP, but I’m sure I’m not alone!

So what have you been reading?

MICHELLE: A couple of very different things!

First up is the debut volume of Shugo Chara Chan!, a four-koma series starring the guardian characters from Shugo Chara!. I misspoke on a recent Pick of the Week, in which I stated that this manga is by Peach-Pit, because it actually isn’t. It turns out that various other shoujo mangaka at Kodansha have contributed to it, including Ema Toyama, whose I Am Here! has been mentioned in this space before.

Like Shugo Chara! before it, Shugo Chara Chan! is rated teen (13+), which is even more inexplicable in its case because all of the material in would be fit for—and perhaps best enjoyed by—a seven-year-old. Sample plots include:

* Su discovers a secret box containing photos of Amu’s crush.
* Amu threatens to boil the guardian eggs for oversleeping.
* Ran eats all the bread at the picnic.
* Miki makes an ice statue of Amu for her birthday and then it melts in gross fashion.

Hilarious, no? Lest it seem as if I read all of this with a curmudgeonly grimace plastered on my face, there actually were a couple of things that made me smile, but they’re completely random and may appeal to only me, like, “The guardian characters meet a cute slug.” It’s certainly not brilliant fare, but it was kind of fun and I will probably keep reading it.

One thing I did want to point out is that while the main body of the volume is mostly immune from Kodansha’s questionable editing practices, the notes in the back of the book are oddly messed up. There are loads of missing letters, resulting in sentences like:

“The person in the last panel is AI O STA UST, also known simply as AI O. He is the vocalist for the rock band “B EAK .” Gee, how helpful!

MJ: My. Well. I admit I’ve been iffy on whether to spend my money on this series. I’m a huge fan of Shugo Chara! as you know, but I wasn’t sure that a 4-koma for little girls would resonate with me as well as a series for little girls apparently still does.

MICHELLE: Yeah, if you’ve got a choice between spending your money on this short little volume or, say, picking up the second volume of Princess Knight, I’d say the choice is clear.

What else have you been reading?

MJ: My second read this week was volume one of Rei Toma’s Dawn of the Arcana, the latest from Viz’s Shojo Beat imprint.

As the volume opens, red-headed Princess Nakaba is being introduced to the kingdom of her new husband, Prince Caesar, an arrogant, possessive ass, to whom she’s been married in order to maintain the tense peace between their societies. Always devalued, even amongst her own, for the color of her hair, Nakaba is pretty much resigned to an early death, finding comfort only in the company of her longtime servant, Loki, who was born to a race even more reviled than redheads. Is the devoted Loki her one true love, or can she find happiness with her hard-hearted prince?

Like Gate 7, much of this will sound familiar to even occasional fans of shoujo manga. The setup is so standard, in fact, that there is hardly any question at all that we’ll soon discover the soft side of Nakaba’s husband, who is almost undoubtedly her ultimately destined love interest. And did I mention that she’s got a secret, supernatural power? Seriously. On the surface, this thing reads like paint-by-numbers pseudo-romantic shoujo, along the lines of dubious current titles like Stepping on Roses. Fortunately, there’s some real freshness to the series that isn’t immediately apparent from a snarky plot summary.

Though the first volume’s focus on Nakaba’s “power” is not the author’s strongest choice, there are some nuances to the characterizations (particularly that of asshole prince Caesar) that keep things from sinking into pure cliché. Princess Nakaba is fearless and coldly stoic, without an ounce of typical shoujo optimism. And the political aspects of the story offer the potential for some heroine bad-assery and possibly civil war, which is always welcome in my book.

Despite its surface familiarity, there’s a real spark of life in Dawn of the Arcana. I’m looking forward to more!

MICHELLE: I always love political scheming in a fantasy series, so I look forward to seeing what Toma is able to make of it. Too, I especially look forward to a “coldly stoic” heroine. There aren’t enough of those!

MJ: Agreed! We see both spunky and ditzy in many variations, but “stoic” is rare indeed!

So what else have you got for us?

MICHELLE: An odd yet interesting one shot from One Peace Books! Breathe Deeply, by husband-and-wife manga team Yamaaki Doton, promises on its back cover to “force you to forget what you know about manga.” That’s not exactly true for the widely read manga fan, but the story does have a general-audience appeal and could help dispel the notion that manga is all big eyes and spiky hair.

Yuko Kazama is a very sick girl with two boys in love with her. To one, Sei, she has confided that, when her health fails, she doesn’t want a transplant (believing it would cause suffering to the donor) and would prefer to simply disappear. To the other, Oishi, she has revealed her desire to live and her fear that Sei will think poorly of her if she changes her mind. When Yuko passes away, Sei insures that her wishes are carried out, only to have Oishi blame him for her death.

Fast forward fifteen years, and now both men are scientists with different approaches to curing heart ailments. Sei has developed a synthetic gel that mimics heart functions while Oishi has made stem-cell discoveries. There is much talk about the validity of each approach (ethics versus progress), and quite a few shady hospital administrators who are depicted as fudging the line between “brain dead” and “could recover” in an effort to harvest organs for donation. In addition, both men have their moment as the genius in the spotlight, and we see how quickly such status can be lost due to personal conflicts.

Because of the pace of the story and the obsessive focus of the leads, it’s a bit difficult to get to know the characters and as a result the story is less emotionally affecting than it might otherwise be. Revelations that could be shocking are taken in stride, and readers never really feel the anguish in certain key moments. It’s like the story’s being told from a distance.

I do have to mention an irksome flaw in the script: it’s full of run-on sentences. When a speech bubble contains a complete thought, it’s not really noticeable that it’s lacking a period. But when two sentences collide without warning the results can be jarring. Here’s an example:

True success relies not only on intelligence, but on our humanity as well we can expect great things from you, Takano.

Ultimately, Breathe Deeply is likely to leave an impression, but not liable to leave you sniffling.

MJ: The run-on sentences sound truly irksome, but I admit the story sounds interesting. I enjoyed One Peace Books’ earlier release, Tenken, and it’s nice to see them putting out more manga, even if it’s not quite the game-changing release the back cover promises.

MICHELLE: I’d be curious to see what you’d think of it. I’m sure you could explain its appeal more eloquently than I can. :)

Off the Shelf: Natsume Ono

November 17, 2011 by MJ and Michelle Smith 5 Comments

MJ: Well, hello, Michelle! Is it really time for another Manga Moveable Feast?

MICHELLE: It seems like every time I turn around there’s a new one!

MJ: Agreed! But when that Feast revolves around the likes of Natsume Ono, I’m not going to complain. So, we’ve each read some Ono this week in preparation for the Feast. Michelle, would you like to begin?

MICHELLE: Sure! It’s been a pretty busy time for me lately and while my tired brain balked at the daunting prospect of getting into Ono’s longer works, her collections of short stories presented an option that I can only describe as “undemanding,” and I mean that in the nicest way.

First, I read La Quinta Camera, which is a series of linked short stories revolving around an apartment in Italy. Four of its rooms are occupied by middle-aged men of incredibly “singular” personalities—Massimo, the landlord, who is nurturing and kind; Luca, the small hippy busker, who is sweet and child-like; Celestino, the short and mustachioed guy, who is annoying yet much-loved; and Al, the truck driver who is either asleep or at work. Massimo routinely takes in exchange students to let the fifth room and, as the story opens, Danish language student Charlotte arrives.

It’s a bit of a surprise when, in chapter two, Charlotte has moved out and been replaced by Alessandro, but this introduces the central gimmick of the book: in each chapter, there’s a new tenant. In a sort of… gentle and vague way, focus shifts amongst the residents during the course of six chapters, during which time Luca finds and loses love, Charlotte offers to have Al’s babies, and Massimo’s girlfriend announces that she’s pregnant, which means everyone must move out.

Objectively, I realize that works like House of Five Leaves are better than La Quinta Camera, but I have to say that I liked it a lot. I just simply like stories where people are nice to each other… where they remember to leave Christmas messages for the lonely Japanese kid left alone in their apartment over the holiday. With its light touch and pleasant feeling, his is the kind of brain balm I sometimes require.

MJ: There’s a real warmth to Ono’s short stories that indeed serve as kind of a healing balm, in my view. I don’t see this as being a lesser type of storytelling (even if I tend to prefer something a bit more epic), and it’s especially lovely in Ono’s hands. Sure, love something powerful, but a light touch can often be just what’s needed.

MICHELLE: I think I’m probably just not in the mood for something powerful as often as you are, hence my fondness for less-than-awesome media tie-in fiction. There’s some pressure to be profound when responding to Great Works that one just doesn’t feel when reading a book about Buffy. And so La Quinta Camera performed a similar function for me.

Anyhow, I suspect you have read something a bit more epic this week.

MJ: Well, I’m not sure if “epic” is an appropriate word for House of Five Leaves, though it’s long-form storytelling of course. But it’s rather leisurely, really, much like Ono’s shorter works but with expanded opportunity for exploration.

I tried to read volume four a while back, and somehow couldn’t latch on to it. I know now that it must have been me, because there’s a whole lot going on in this volume, and it clicked immediately with me on my second try.

Much of the volume revolves around Ginta, a new sort-of-member taken on reluctantly by the Five Leaves. He’s the cast-off son of a wealthy family who tricks his way into the Leaves, but not without revealing a whole lot more of himself than he intended. We also learn new things about the Leaves’ leader, Yaichi, in this volume, and it’s definitely not pretty.

What makes House of Five Leaves so consistently intriguing, though, is the failed samurai that provides the series’ heart. With Masa at its core, there’s always an odd mingling of warmth and unease running through the story. These feelings are where Masa lives, and one has the sense that this has always been the case. There’s a heartbreaking flashback in this volume, in which we see Masa being basically thrown out of his home for being so ill-suited as a samurai. Yet it’s hard to imagine exactly what he should be. He’s all ambiguity (and a little self-loathing), and certainly not a hero, yet it’s impossible not to care for him, and it’s obvious that Ono does.

I’ve loved this series from the beginning, and it’s only become more dear to me over time. It’s probably my favorite of Ono’s work, and that’s saying quite a lot. I look forward to the next volume.

MICHELLE: I read and loved the first volume, but when I recently attempted to read volume two (with a goal of catching up on the series) I had a similar experience in which it just failed to engage me somehow. With Ono’s short stories I found that having a dedicated amount of time to just sit and consume them in one sitting was ideal, so perhaps that’s where I went wrong with Five Leaves. I’ve definitely not given up on the series.

MJ: I’m glad you haven’t given up. It really is one of my favorite currently-running series.

So, speaking of Ono’s short stories, we both read Tesoro this week, just released from Viz. Want to talk about that a bit?

MICHELLE: Sure!

Tesoro (the Italian word for “treasure”) is a collection of fourteen stories by Natsume Ono. The earliest works were published as doujinshi, while more recent stories appeared in IKKI. Unlike La Quinta Camera, the stories here are not overtly serialized, though there are some recurring characters and common themes (like curmudgeonly guys who really love their wives).

For the most part, though, the stories seem to be short expressions of ideas that don’t go very far in developing the characters. Some stories are whimsical—the introductory piece, for example, consists entirely of a bear taking the bus to get some donuts then going home again—while some are more serious, like the story of an orphaned girl who sees a potential father in every famous man of whom she becomes aware. It’s an intriguing concept, and one can definitely see seeds of Ono’s eventual storytelling abilities, but it’s lacking the warmth that imbued even the loose-limbed La Quinta Camera with touching moments.

I definitely enjoyed it, don’t get me wrong. But I think it would be more enjoyable to those already familiar with Ono rather than for those who are wondering who she is and what the fuss is all about.

MJ: I agree, though, like you, I certainly enjoyed Tesoro. One of my favorite stories in the volume was “senzo titolo #3,” about a father taking his young son to see his estranged father for the first time. There’s a lot packed into this little story–apprehension, excitement, some lingering resentment–all without ever actually seeing the grandfather ourselves. It’s a little glimpse of Ono at her best. There are a lot of moments like that here.

I think you’re absolutely right, though. This is a collection for fans to linger over, rather than an effective introduction to the author.

Did you have a favorite story?

MICHELLE: Oh, I loved “senzo titolo #3” because I loved how the dad started singing the Coke jingle in public and the kid was embarrassed. :) I thought that was a nice little true-to-life moment.

I think my favorite is “Moyashi Couple” (or “bean sprout” couple), because the husband is seen as a grouch by the neighbors but once he learns the neighbors think he and his wife don’t get along, he makes sure that they go out and about in public to disprove that notion. There’s a really nice line in it about the neighbors being able to tell that he’s actually kind because, though he usually walks in an impatient swagger, when he’s with his wife he automatically assumes a more leisurely pace so as to be able to walk beside her. Maybe I’m just a sucker for crusty guys with hearts of gold, but I think that’s the story I won’t forget from this collection.

MJ: I liked that too, and probably for similar reasons. I was also fond of “The Frooms,” about a boy with two domineering older sisters, whose dad tries (and fails miserably) to equalize things. It’s funny and poignant all at once. Poor dad!

MICHELLE: Oh yes, I love how that poor dad is just flabbergasted that his big plan to give his son a dazzling gift is derailed.

It occurs to me that these are like drabbles. Little ideas that suggest what a longer extrapolation on the theme could be like without actually, y’know, extrapolating.

MJ: That’s an excellent point, Michelle! They do indeed have the same, wispy quality. This is what a real “slice of life” looks like.

MICHELLE: Exactly! Perhaps the term has never been more literally applied!

MJ: So while I’d be more likely to hand a new reader something like Ristorante Paradiso, Tesoro really is a treat for Ono’s existing fans.

Read more about the work of Natsume Ono at this month’s Manga Moveable Feast, hosted by Manga Widget’s Alex Hoffman.

Off the Shelf: Destruction, Despair, & Other Stories

November 11, 2011 by MJ and Michelle Smith 5 Comments

MICHELLE: Hey, MJ! Did you hear about the fire at the circus?

MJ: Why, no, Michelle. What about the fire at the circus?

MICHELLE: It was in tents!

MJ: Ba-dum-dum *chick*. Wow. That one was especially painful. And I mean that in the most complimentary way possible.

MICHELLE: I take it as such!

So, read any interesting manga lately?

MJ: Indeed I have! First of all, I was finally able to dig into one of my most eagerly anticipated releases this year, Osamu Tezuka’s The Book of Human Insects, out recently from Vertical.

I chose Human Insects as a Pick of the Week just over a month ago, and at the time my expectation was that it would “be one of those books that blows me away with its artistry while simultaneously killing me with its outlook on humanity.” I’m pleased to say that the latter was actually not the case at all, which made this an even more enthralling experience than I expected.

Just barely into her twenties, Toshiko Tomura is already a revered and accomplished artist in more fields than most of us will even dabble in over the course of our lifetimes, let alone master. She’s won prestigious awards in both writing and design, after already having achieved notoriety as a dazzling stage actress. What Tezuka soon reveals, is that she’s acquired all of these accomplishments by attaching herself to brilliant mentors and absorbing their talent and creativity to the point of effectively making them her own. She’s a gorgeous, seductive monster, consuming the lives of everyone she touches and leaving them (sometimes literally) for dead.

I often have difficulty enjoying a story in which I don’t like the protagonist, so what was particularly astounding about Toshiko for me, is that Tezuka was occasionally able to make me root for her, as horrifying as that seems. There’s no thought of “redemption” here—no romantic transformation or even mercy to be found in Toshiko’s trajectory. She’s more Becky Sharp than Cordelia Chase, and Tezuka is far more brutal to his anti-heroine’s victims than Thackeray ever was. Yet she’s so full of life and the brilliant spark of desire, it’s impossible not to fall for Toshiko just a little bit, even against one’s own will.

The book is every bit as scathing as I expected, but there’s an exuberance to Tezuka’s writing here that keeps it from sinking into real darkness. You get the sense that he’s been seduced by Toshiko too, and in the end, he treats her with more respect and even affection than, say, a character like Ayako, who is (presumably) intended to evoke our sympathy. It’s complicated, and certainly not as morally straightforward, but much more compelling overall.

Coming at Tezuka’s work from a modern, feminist point of view can sometimes be difficult, but The Book of Human Insects was a true pleasure for me, from start to finish. I highly recommend it.

MICHELLE: Wow, that Becky Sharp comparison really sums up her character in a nutshell. I am immensely pleased that you enjoyed this so much because I’ve been eying it with some trepidation since Ayako proved to be so misanthropic. Maybe I’ve no need to be wary after all!

MJ: I think you’ll enjoy this, Michelle, I really do. And I find myself even more excited now to dig into Princess Knight, not because I expect it to be remotely similar, but because I’m finally convinced that I can trust Tezuka with a female protagonist.

So what have you been reading this week?

MICHELLE: Nothing so deep as Tezuka, but enjoyable reads nonetheless.

First up is the eleventh volume of Koji Kumeta’s Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei, a shounen comedy about a perpetually despairing teacher named Nozomu Itoshiki and his students, each of whom is possessed of a specific plight or personality trait (indebted housewife, fujoshi, etc.).

I know you’ve read a fair amount of this series, so you’re familiar with its pattern. Essentially, each chapter opens with the characters spending a couple of pages in a particular scene. Like, for example, going to the beach on summer holidays. Then something triggers Itoshiki and off he goes, ranting about this or the other, eventually spewing out lists of transgressors until he is interupted by Kafuka, a student with a more positive outlook on things. There are recurring visual gags as well, like how Itoshiki’s sister is always first glimpsed with her back to the reader, or the absolutely miserable-looking dog with a stick in its butt.

Zetsubou-sensei is at its best when focusing on universal issues, and there are definitely chapters in that vein in this volume. Alas, there are also quite a few that seem very Japanese-centric, with the result that I enjoyed this volume somewhat less than its immediate predecessors. Still, it’s fun and I will keep reading and hoping that someone will help that wretched dog.

MJ: It’s nice to know that you’re still enjoying this series, Michelle, even if you found this volume less accessible than some. I’m always torn when it comes to gag manga, because I find it difficult to remain engaged when nothing really changes for the characters over time. But this series weathers that issue better than most for me. I’m glad you’re having a similar experience.

MICHELLE: For me, too. I tried reading Dr. Slump, for instance, and though I liked Toriyama’s COWA! and Sand Land quite a lot, the all-gag-all-the-time nature of Dr. Slump was just too much for me. Zetsubou is somehow different. Maybe it’s because it gradually evolves a little; I always like when a face is added to another student in the class, for example. This latest school year (Itoshiki’s students are doomed to perpetually repeat their second year of high school) saw a boy transfer into the class and much has been made of his outlandish fashion sense, so that’s pretty fun. And, of course, the art is attractive and the covers are gorgeous, so there’s that in its favor as well.

What else have you been reading?

MJ: My second read this week was in a completely different vein than the first, though it’s also been a Pick of the Week. I am speaking of the latest re-release of X (formerly X/1999), CLAMP’s ambitious, action-packed follow-up to my favorite of their series, Tokyo Babylon.

Now, as I’ve mentioned previously, I’m a much bigger fan of Tokyo Babylon, which I read long before I ever started X, and I think on some level I’ve always blamed X for simply not being Tokyo Babylon. These new 3-in-1 volumes are so gorgeous to look at, though, I hoped the fresh look might grant the series a second chance to impress me on its own terms.

While I’m not sure I’ve been fully impressed by the series this time around, I’m certainly enjoying it much, much more, and not just because it looks so pretty (though it really, really does). What’s really happened for me, though, is that Viz’s bigger, better presentation has given X a level of physical grandeur that finally matches its tone. X is a sweeping, epic production in every way possible. Everything in the story—emotion, action, plot—all of it occurs on a grand scale. It’s a never-ending symphony of love, hate, creation, and destruction. There are no half-measures in X, for better or worse.

Reading Viz’s “shojo” editions (and even their slightly larger original editions), I found this level of melodrama a bit hard to take. It was dark and sweeping, sure, but I found myself rolling my eyes at much of the grander drama and becoming impatient with its slow-moving plot. The stark intimacy of Tokyo Babylon was nowhere to be found, replaced by endless philosophizing on world destruction that appeared hollow at its core, at least to my eyes.

Now, with the series’ drama laid out in a visual form at least as grand and sweeping as its multi-layered plot, the entire pace of the manga has changed for me, and with it, its heartbeat, which I could barely discern before. Suddenly I’m able to deeply immerse myself in the world CLAMP has created, and enjoy the melodrama from within, rather than watching it from above. And honestly, it’s made all the difference in the world. Suddenly I care about these characters and their epic conflict, and I’m not just waiting around for Subaru to turn up so I’d have someone to give a crap about.

X may still not be my very favorite of CLAMP’s work, but I feel that I finally understand its charm. Bravo, Viz. I look forward to more.

MICHELLE: You know, I watched the X anime and really liked it, but when it came to the manga, I never got beyond the first volume. Maybe it was physical grandeur that I was missing! The anime could capture the epic sweep but some out-sized, flipped-art manga volume just didn’t do it for me. I did buy the Shojo editions when they came out, but I am pretty sure the art in those was still flipped.

Anyway, I am really looking forward to approaching X in this new format (and I believe with a new translation or at least new adaptation, as well). One day you and I will be caught up on it and can join the lamenting masses over its unfinished status.

MJ: The translation is credited to Lillian Olsen, who is also credited in both of the earlier editions, but I haven’t compared them to see what might be different now that Leyla Aker is editing. In any case, the new edition has a much grander impact!

So what else do you have to share with us this week?

MICHELLE: After a long wait, NETCOMICS has released the third and final volume of Small-Minded Schoolgirls by toma. Having loved the first two volumes, I had to check it out.

In this online exclusive, two career women in their early thirties must balance their professional and personal lives as they seek to find “the one.” Miru Na is a novelist, and as the third volume begins she has embarked upon a casual relationship with a hairstylist named Wontae. Meanwhile, it’s obvious that her brother’s friend, Jigwan, has serious feelings for her. The other protagonist, Somi Han, is working as an editor and dealing with her attraction to a coworker, despite the fact that she has a boyfriend (who has put their relationship on hold for a year to go to art school, where he has also found someone else who interests him).

If you’re thinking this all sounds pretty complicated, you’re right, and I haven’t even mentioned the part where Miru’s brother has relationship woes or Jigwan’s former girlfriend wants to make up and get married! As I read this volume, I kept thinking that this is prime material for a k-drama. I’m honestly surprised such an adaptation doesn’t exist yet!

So, on the one hand, this is a satisfying conclusion to the series. On the other, though, I found all the back and forth a little tiring. At one point Miru and Jigwan are discussing his ex, and she says, “At our age, when two people lose something special it’s hard to get it back.” That’s kind of how I feel about this series. I just couldn’t connect with it on the same level I did before. Part of the problem may be the translation/adaptation, which is sloppier than I remember it being in the first two volumes.

Ultimately, I am thrilled to have had the chance to read this series, which is the closest thing we have in English to Korean josei. And I’d still recommend it heartily, especially since reading all three volumes at once will probably yield better results than I have personally experienced.

MJ: I really enjoyed the first two volumes of this series as well, so I admit I’m disappointed to hear that the third may not live up to the their standard. I expect you may be right in assuming that reading all three together may be more satisfying, but it’s still a bit of a blow. There are a number of other grown-up ladies’ manhwa I enjoy at NETCOMICS, though, so I don’t feel entirely lost.

MICHELLE: I hope I didn’t give the impression that it’s bad, because it isn’t, it’s just hard to get back into after all this time. And speaking of other ladies’ manhwa, NETCOMICS is planning to resume online serialization of Please, Please Me this month after a hiatus of over a year. Looks like that’ll be the final volume, too. Then maybe they’ll resume The Adventures of Young Det!

MJ: Oh, good news indeed!

MICHELLE: Forsooth! I’m so happy to have NETCOMICS back in play!

Off the Shelf: Generally Halloweenish

October 26, 2011 by MJ and Michelle Smith 4 Comments

MJ: Boo!

MICHELLE: Omigawd, you almost gave me a heart attack.

MJ: Yay?

MICHELLE: I suppose that is the spirit of the season.

MJ: So, speaking of the season, I expect you’ve been indulging in some spooky manga this week?

MICHELLE: Some spooky, others not-so-spooky, but generally Halloweenish, yes.

One thing I checked out was the debut of a new manhwa from Seven Seas (their first, I think) called My Boyfriend Is a Vampire. This series appears to be complete in fourteen volumes, and Seven Seas is releasing it in 2-in-1 omnibus editions.

I have to say, this does not get off to a very auspicious start. A girlish boy collapses on the street from a neck wound and the police are called when he is found to have no pulse. Just when the cops arrive, however, the guy sits up and takes off. When he gets home, the wound has already healed but he has inexplicably turned into a girl.

Cue flashback to a month ago, where the boy (Gene) is getting into lots of fights over the fact that he looks like a girl when he isn’t agreeing to masquerade as one. This is all fairly silly until he, in the middle of defending gang territory, ends up in the middle of a squabble between two vampire half-brothers, each with the potential to become their powerful father’s heir. Long story short, he saves one guy (Ryu) but ends up being made a vamp in the process (cue paragraph one) and of course there is some awesome legend or prophecy or something about a girl who survives being bitten and how she will be the 1337est vampire ever and also have the ability to change genders or something.

Honestly, a lot of this story is pretty ridiculous and the art is totally generic, but by the end I was looking forward to reading more. Strip away the supernatural trappings and what this reminds me of the most is Click, another manhwa which was published by NETCOMICS a few years ago. You’ve got the tough/bratty guy who becomes a girl, the best friend from childhood with whom there will now presumably be romantic tension, and the undesirable element to whom the protagonist finds him/herself drawn. The fact that vampires are involved really doesn’t matter very much at this point, since this seems poised to be a gender-bending comedy.

I believe you’ve read this one, too. What did you think of it?

MJ: Well, I’m absolutely with you on the general ridiculousness of this series so far, though I admit to enjoying it for its silliness more than I would have expected. While it lacks the cracktastic brilliance of something like Reiko Shimizu’s Moon Child or even slightly more down-to-earth treasures like SangEun Lee’s 13th Boy, it has enough of a spark to grab my interest, even in its lesser moments. I’m sad to note that there are many more of those “lesser moments” than I’d like, but I can’t help looking forward to the next volume.

MICHELLE: Same here, and though the second volume was much stronger than the first, which bodes well for things to come. It might not be a masterpiece, but it will likely be entertaining.

So, have you been reading spooky manga this week?

MJ: I have indeed, or at least partly so. My first read this week was volume seven of Yuki Midorikawa’s Natsume’s Book of Friends. Though this supernatural series tends more towards adjectives like “quiet” and “touching” than it does things like “scary,” this particular volume actually kinda hits the mark.

In this volume, Natusme finds himself relying on his uneasy friendship with flashy exorcist Natori in the face of someone much more terrifying, whose disregard for yokai puts Natsume and his friends in danger. And as it turns out, this is a really good thing. This is not a series that I generally consider suspenseful, but I was hovering on the edge of my seat for this entire volume, worried and anxious and generally creeped out.

Midorikawa’s artwork has always been a highlight of this series, creating wonderfully rich emotional moments with imagery alone. Even so, I was surprised here by how easily she was able to put me on edge with the tiniest visual details. The shade of an umbrella, a part of the hair, the shape of a lip—each of these tiny details is used in a way that stood my hair on end. It’s marvelous to behold.

Though this series was a fast favorite for me, early on, I’ll admit my interest waned during some of its middle volumes. Those days are clearly over now, and I simply can’t wait to see what comes next.

MICHELLE: I know I say this every time you mention Natsume’s Book of Friends, but I really am planning to get caught up on it soon. When you wrote about the worry and anxiety you experienced it reminded me of the similar atmosphere created by Ghost Hunt when that series was firing on all cylinders. Which, in turn, made me sad that we’ll probably never see its twelfth and final volume in English. Unless Sailor Moon makes Kodansha so much money they can afford to take on charity cases.

It seems like Midorikawa also gets that the secret to engaging your reader like this is not concocting frightening situations but creating characters that people will genuinely be concerned about. Sometimes that’s lacking in straight-up horror manga.

MJ: That’s a great point, Michelle, and definitely appropriate to this series! Yes, we’re anxious here not because Natsume has met a really creepy guy (though he has) but because of the vulnerable position Natsume and the yokai are in. It’s really quite harrowing!

So what’s your other maybe-spooky-maybe-not selection for the evening?

MICHELLE: The first volume of the Yen Press adaptation of James Patterson’s Witch & Wizard, drawn by Svetlana Chmakova, who has become somewhat of a Halloween fixture for me thanks to her Nightschool series.

Alas, I don’t like this one as much as Nightschool. At least, not yet. I can’t tell if the problem is Patterson’s original novel (which I haven’t read) or this adaptation, but I am leaning towards the latter. It’s not that it’s outright bad, but it’s extremely rushed and the juxtaposition of comedy (I use the term loosely) and drama (ditto) is jarring.

An oppressive organization known as N.O. (New Order) has taken over government and is rounding up anyone who does not conform to their ideals of law, logic, order and science. To this end, soldiers break into the home of the Allgood family and take children Whit (nearly 18) and Wisty (15) into custody. For some reason, N.O.’s representative during this encounter is some snot-nosed teen whom the Allgood siblings make fun of. Anyway, through various miscarriages of justice they end up incarcerated and facing imminent execution, until they are brought into the “Shadowland” by Celia, Whit’s deceased girlfriend.

I mean, there truly is potential here, but everything just happens so fast that many things ring false. For example, Whit pines a lot for Celia, his “soulmate” who has gone missing. When his powers have developed enough that he is able to slip through a wall and arrive in the Shadowland, she tells him that she’s been murdered. Only it’s like she’s fine one panel then in the next tears are suddenly streaming down her face as she infodumps the details of her demise. Nine pages later, Whit is making stupid quips again. That just seems so wrong to me. Where is the impact here?

MJ: Like you, I’ve never read the novel, so I can’t really make a clear call here, but what you describe seems to me to match the most common problem I’ve seen in comic adaptations of novels overall. Maybe some of it can be chalked up to some things transferring better from prose than others, but really most of the time it just seems to come down to… well, time. It takes time to tell a story well, regardless of the medium, and for some reason that’s where comic adaptations really seem to skimp.

MICHELLE: Yeah. I’ll probably give it another volume to see how it develops, at least. Maybe now that the exposition’s out of the way the story will be able to breathe a little.

So, what else have you got for us this evening?

MJ: Well, you know, “horror” can have various meanings, and in my ongoing experiment to see just how much “horror” I can take, I decided to delve into volume eleven of Kanoko Sakurakouji’s demon-centric romance, Black Bird.

It’s possible that the most horrifying aspect of the latest volume of Black Bird is that, relatively speaking, it’s really not all that bad. Sure, Misao walks around with a permanent flush on her face and Kyo is possessive and controlling, but somewhere along the way in this volume it seems like… I can’t believe I’m going to say this… it seems like maybe he kind of learns something.

*blink*

Assuming you haven’t died of shock, I’ll continue.

Furthermore, this volume is actually kind of scary in the more traditional sense. Kyo’s brother, Sho, has returned with an ugly agenda, and for once there seems to be some real danger here. And though there is a seriously overplayed “scorned woman” in the mix (groan, why do authors do this to women?), I have to admit that the volume wraps up with some genuine suspense, and I almost-sorta-kinda want to know what happens next.

Now, before you lose all faith in reality as you know it, I’m not exactly giving a positive review of a volume of Black Bird. But finding myself in a position where I’m not inclined to give a scathing one certainly seems like a step up.

Have you died? I hope you haven’t died.

MICHELLE: I haven’t died, but I did have to fetch my smelling salts.

I’ll be interested to see whether Black Bird will ever be able to redeem itself in your eyes. I keep thinking I should read it—and, indeed, I have quite a stockpile of volumes—but I only have so much time and I always prioritize something else. So, in a way, you’re doing this for all of us who want to see what happens without investing our own time and eyeballs.

MJ: Well, time will tell whether my eyeballs are truly up to the task. But thankfully, this particular volume offered up a not-too-horrible Halloween-appropriate read.

MICHELLE: I think it’s fitting that we end our Halloween column on the topic of eyeballs.

MJ: Agreed. Happy Halloween everyone, from Off the Shelf!

Off the Shelf: Love Hina

October 12, 2011 by MJ and Michelle Smith 5 Comments

MICHELLE: We have gathered here today with special guest Kate Dacey to talk about Ken Akamatsu’s shounen romantic comedy Love Hina. In the spirit of the occasion, I feel like I should start things off by falling down a flight of stairs and ending up accidentally clutching you both upon the bosom.

MJ: Also, we should probably all be in the bath.

MICHELLE: And my pants should have fallen down somewhere along the line.

MJ: I can shriek in horror, and Kate can make pithy comments while smoking a cigarette.

KATE: That’s the perfect role for me; I’ve sounded like Bea Arthur since I was ten years old.

So what did you guys think of the book?

MICHELLE: Would you like to go first, MJ, or shall I?

MJ: Well, do you want the short version or the long one? The short version pretty much boils down to, “I guess it could have been worse,” though I’m not sure how much of a recommendation that is.

MICHELLE: How about the long version, slightly abridged?

MJ: Okay, okay. So. For those who might be unfamiliar, Love Hina tells the story of a tragically awkward and academically unremarkable young man named Keitaro who has already spent too much of his adult life trying and failing to get into the University of Tokyo (Todai) in order to fulfill a childhood promise made to a girl. Having been kicked out of his parents’ home, he heads for the safety of his grandmother’s Inn, which has (conveniently) been converted into an all-female dormitory, complete with an open bath and a cast of lively young women, each clumsier than the last. Through a series of wacky circumstances, Keitaro becomes the manager of the dormitory, allowing him the opportunity to spend yet another year studying for college entrance exams while also grasping as many bosoms as possible.

I have to admit that I nearly decided to abandon this book, when not even half a chapter in, our hero was already getting felt up in the bath by an unsuspecting girl. I looked at the three-volume omnibus in my hands and thought, “I’ll never make it through this. Never.” And I suppose it says something that I actually did.

Interestingly, I discovered what it is that I dislike about this kind of series, and it surprised me a little. While I don’t necessarily love the constant parade of nude young girls, it’s not the nudity or the sexual innuendo that really bothers me. It’s the falling. At a certain point, I just thought I would scream if I had to watch someone else fall down. Sexual situations are fine, but after a while, I could no longer tolerate their pervasively accidental nature. Really, it eventually made me angry. And I suspect that without all the falling, these three volumes could have been reduced to just one.

On the upside, the series’ primary romance has its genuinely sweet moments. They aren’t really interesting enough to make up for the book’s truly maddening qualities, but it did make it readable.

How’s that?

MICHELLE: Excellent! And interesting, because though I didn’t single out falling as the single most annoying attribute, I did get extremely annoyed at all the accidents. Any accident that can happen, will happen. Like when Keitaro attempts to fix the hole in his ceiling that communicates with Naru’s room above—and which provides much opportunity for panty-glimpsing—and an extremely unlikely series of accidents occurs that result in him glimpsing the phrase “fifteen years ago” in her diary, which makes him wonder if she could be the first love with whom he promised to make it into Tokyo University (though he fails to realize she would have been two at the time!).

MJ: For the record, I still think it will turn out to be her, through some kind of wacky circumstances. And falling.

What about you Kate?

KATE: The thing I found most grating was how inconsistent the characters were. Take Motoko: she’s fierce and principled, the sort of girl who has a very limited tolerance for foolish behavior. That she would suddenly turn into a puddle simply because she falls on top of Keitaro strained credulity, not least because Keitaro is so utterly incompetent. That the other female characters have similar moments is even more frustrating, as there’s nothing about Keitaro that ought to endear him to the Hinata dormitory residents.

I also took a pretty dim view of all the jokes about the underage girls — frankly, I found them pretty gross. There’s nothing quite like the sight of a twenty-year-old male loser ogling a young teen to really raise my feminist ire.

MICHELLE: And yet… I think I was helped by Jason’s introductory post and Sean’s review to see past all of the ridiculous fanservice and unfunny hijinks and really appreciate the sweeter moments of the series. Sure, it’s creepy that Keitaro gets turned on by a seventh grader’s undies and I can’t say that I actually like him most of the time, but get him together with Naru and let things actually go right just for a minute, and I can see the potential for them as a couple.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I sigh as I read Love Hina (and not in a dreamy way), but I don’t despise it. In fact, I find it much more readable than Mao-chan. I couldn’t even get through the first volume of that one.

MJ: I admit I was a bit stunned by the story’s abundance of underage girls, and perhaps more so that we apparently aren’t supposed to think anything of them being constantly exposed in front of Keitaro. On one hand, it seems very natural that young girls might have a crush on an older guy (maybe not this older guy, but that’s what we’ve got) but it all comes out feeling creepy when it’s being relayed by way of the male gaze.

KATE: You’re a more patient woman than I am, Michelle! The prevailing tone reminded me too much of a Benny Hill episode for me to give a fig about Keitaro; I wanted nothing more than a big foot to descend from the sky and flatten him, Monty Python style.

MICHELLE: He’s definitely extremely pathetic and I don’t feel any sympathy for him for the ludicrous and/or perverted situations he ends up in, but I guess the calm scenes won me over at least a little, though now that I stop and think about it I wonder what exactly Naru is supposed to be gaining from associating with such a loser.

KATE: I’m so glad you mentioned Naru, Michelle! She may be the only character I actually like in Love Hina (aside from Keitaro’s sardonic, chain-smoking auntie). It’s maddening to think that Ken Akamatsu will find a way for Keitaro and Naru to be together, not least because the relationship is totally unequal: Naru is brilliant and attractive, while Keitaro can barely tie his shoes, let alone solve a quadratic equation. I don’t mean to suggest that book smarts are the only measure of a man’s worth, but when the male lead is so dumb and clueless, it’s insulting to female readers to see the series’ strongest, most appealing female character positioned to become his girlfriend.

MJ: I can relate to both of you, actually. While, like Michelle, I was able to enjoy the romantic plot with Keitaro and Naru, I found it really difficult to stomach Keitaro most of the time. I really do see him as a loser, and not because he’s having trouble getting into a super-competative university, or because he’s inexperienced with girls. I see him as a loser because he is a slave to his own desperation, and it ends up making him disgusting. I think if he had some kind of personality other than just “desperate” I could like him, but he’s really given nothing, so all we’re left with is a clumsy, groping, panty-sniffing loser.

MICHELLE: Yeah, I’m trying to think of a positive quality he possesses, but I’m coming up blank. I mean, he does try hard at certain things, it’s just that this never really works out well. He’s earnest about redeeming himself in Shinobu’s eyes for letting her believe he had already gotten into university, but then he turns around and gets all excited when he believes she’s invited him to bathe with her. One step forward, two steps back.

MJ: I think it’s probably fair to point out that we’re clearly not the audience for this manga. I’ll fully admit to an intolerance for the kind of sexually-charged antics that are the life’s blood of Love Hina. I’ve had the same issue with quite a number of BL manga with this type of sensibility, so it isn’t entirely an issue with the male gaze, either. It just really isn’t my thing. I suspect it all began with a childhood hatred of Three’s Company. Yes, Jack Tripper scarred me for life.

One of the things I particularly enjoy about the Manga Moveable Feast is the opportunity to read things I might otherwise have ignored, and in that spirit, I’m happy to have tried Love Hina. But I’m afraid it falls pretty flat with me.

MICHELLE: Oh, totally. And I hope it comes through that we all tried to like it, but that it just didn’t resound with us for various reasons.

I confess that I am a little curious to see how it ends. I guess I like it enough to care about how it wraps up. But I don’t think I like it enough to read all the volumes in between, which will undoubtedly be full of boobies and pratfalls with a small sprinkling of encouragement delivered by Naru. And there is so much other brilliant manga out there that I already don’t have time to read, I feel like I shouldn’t squander any more precious moments on Love Hina.

MJ: Well said, Michelle. I feel much the same way.

Many thanks to Kate for joining us in this special edition of Off the Shelf! Be sure to check in at PLAYBACK:stl for the complete Love Hina MMF archive!

Off the Shelf: Bakuman, Seiho, Geek

October 6, 2011 by MJ and Michelle Smith 5 Comments

MJ: *Brrrrr* It’s cold up here!

MICHELLE: It is extremely nice down here! Long-sleeve-shirt weather at the most.

MJ: *whimper*

MICHELLE: Don’t feel too bad; at least you’ve got takoyaki. Fat chance of ever finding that down here!

MJ: I will cling to fried octopus as the one virtue of my region. So, read any manga this week? With or without takoyaki?

MICHELLE: I read a fair bit, but it was takoyaki-free. This included volumes six and seven of Bakuman。, a series about two boys’ quest to achieve manga stardom that I seem to enjoy more and more with each installment.

In volume six, Moritaka Mashiro and Akito Takagi are working hard on their manga series when Mashiro suddenly collapses. His ailment is treatable but requires three months in the hospital, during which time their series goes on hiatus. Pretty much this entire volume is people arguing whether Mashiro should be allowed to draw while in the hospital, then whether the terms for the series coming off hiatus are fair. Mashiro eventually regains his health, but in the beginning of volume seven, they receive the bad news that the hiatus has dealt a blow to the popularity of their series and it has been canceled. Dubious about the advice they’re getting from their editor, the boys dive into the process of getting a second series serialized. This volume is mostly full of arguments about which one they want to do, what their editor wants them to do, etc.

And you know what? It’s all awesome. I love that Bakuman。 is able to achieve such dramatic tension over concepts like “What if the series that gets the go-ahead is not the one they really want to do?” or “Is Mashiro actually right to insist on a serious story? Is their editor right? Or is he incompetent?” I suppose these might not sound like riveting plots to some, but they kept me turning pages like a mad fiend and when I finished I wished there were more, which brings Bakuman。 into the elite company of series like Slam Dunk, which leave me actively pining for another volume.

The characters have also matured a great deal, both intellectually and physically, which is something this series has in common with another title with art by Takeshi Obata, the much-loved Hikaru no Go. Their attitudes toward women are much different now, for example, and I especially like how Takagi is now so candid about how much he values his girlfriend Miyoshi’s advice and includes her in everything that’s going on. Mashiro, meanwhile, is getting somewhat feistier, and if I had a nickel for every time the antics of kooky rival/friend Eiji Nizuma made me smile fondly, I could at least afford a taco.

MJ: I really enjoyed this volume as well. I wasn’t as keen on the subplot with Aoki and possible girl complications for Takagi, but in a way this is a positive sign. It’s taken me a while to care a lot about Takagi and Mashiro’s fates as artists (instead of gravitating towards supporting characters), but that’s what I was focused on here. I love the conflict with their editor, and I can’t wait to see how their final decision pans out.

MICHELLE: Y’know, one of the critiques Eiji tosses off about their work is that the characters they create lack heart, and I think that in some respects Mashiro and Takagi did, too, at first. Now I’m beginning to see them more as fully realized characters and that makes all the difference.

MJ: Well, I started off my week with the final volume of Kaneyoshi Izumi’s Seiho Boys’ High School! This was, in fact, my pick of the week, and there are a number of reasons why.

The focus of this volume is Maki’s relationship with Erika, which is on the rocks, particularly as Maki begins to suspect that she’s seeing Kamiki on the side. This kind of thing is nothing new in shoujo (or anywhere else), but what’s really refreshing is the way it all plays out. Nothing is as simple as it seems, and love can’t possibly conquer all, especially for two kids just barely figuring out who they are. Most high school romance tends to pretend like young love is forever, and those that don’t usually lean towards either intense cynicism or melodramatic angst.

Seiho goes in none of these directions. It acknowledges the inherent transience of most teen romances while really giving the characters their due. Maki and Erika are both hurting and both wrong, but they’ve got real futures in front of them, with or without each other.

This series really has been a surprise from start to finish. Originally, it was fresh, funny, and surprisingly candid about the true personalities of teen boys. It’s still those things, but also it’s become really poignant, in the manner of some of the best recent shoujo, like Sand Chronicles and We Were There. I wish it was a bit longer, so we could see what happens when Maki gets out of school, but ending here does make this a nice, relatively short series.

The extra story included at the end of the book is less my cup of tea, so I was pretty sad to realize that it would take up a full quarter of the volume. But it’s not like I would have gotten more Seiho without it, so I can handle the disappointment.

MICHELLE: I have been terribly remiss regarding Seiho, but there just came a point where six of the eight volumes were already out and I figured, “Might as well wait.” Seeing it compared to such standouts as Sand Chronicles and We Were There makes me even more eager to experience it. I really adore strong, subtle shoujo like this that manages to transcend all those shoujo clichés without ever once sacrificing its essential shoujoness.

MJ: I do too, and I didn’t really expect that in Seiho. The series was really a surprise.

So, we’ve both read the next selection, and given your opinion of the first three volumes, which I think was a bit different than mine, I’m pretty interested to see what you think of volume four of My Girlfriend’s a Geek. Wanna hit us with a quick summary?

MICHELLE: I’ll do my best!

So, college student Taiga has been dating his fujoshi girlfriend Yuiko for a while now and has gotten to know her well enough to realize that she will immerse herself in scandalous BL fantasies if he tells her he’s begun to tutor a middle-school boy who embodies the very definition of an uke. So, he keeps this quiet, and the evasions plus his distance while he works to get into his desired program at school finally prompts some genuine response from Yuiko’s part. They have a long-overdue conversation in which Taiga is able to get some things off his chest, and finally it seems like there may be some genuine hope for their relationship.

What I most wanted from the first three volumes was to see Yuiko and Taiga really engage each other, for Yuiko to seem fully present in the real world, and we finally get that here. Her attempts to get Taiga’s attention, when all she’s doing is irritating him by distracting him from her studies, were extremely sympathetic, and I felt I was finally getting a glimpse at her perspective of their relationship. I had previously read it like she was going overboard with her fujoshi tendencies, but now I realize that she’s just been teasing him half the time, hoping to get an amusing rise out of him. Okay, this still isn’t much fun for Taiga, but it helps me to understand her.

MJ: I think I enjoyed the first three volumes more than you did, or maybe just as someone who has been heavily involved in a similar type of fandom as Yuiko, I could relate to it all on some level. What was missing for me, though, was some sense of what they really meant to each other—that they were really boyfriend and girlfriend—and I finally feel like I got that here. With both of them feeling insecure in the relationship but also anxious to save it, I finally feel like I really know where they stand with each other.

I think where we may not quite see eye-to-eye here, though, is on what Taiga gets from the relationship. I appreciated that he actually *said* in this volume that he found indulging her whims “kind of fun” because, honestly, it’s felt like that to me from the start. Sure, he complains about it all, but he gets genuinely caught up in it sometimes, and I can’t help but feel that he wouldn’t keep up with it all if he didn’t enjoy being pushed into her fantasies a bit. And I’m glad to see that in him, because it’s a lot more interesting than a story about a guy who just has what we might expect to be typical straight boy reactions to everything she does. It makes the relationship feel more real to me, too.

MICHELLE: I see that in Taiga now, but I interpreted his behavior in earlier volumes as sort of… mollifying Yuiko because he wanted to have a hot older girlfriend. He wasn’t repulsed, but he was puzzled and overwhelmed by her fervor. Now, though, it seems more like he really gets Yuiko as a person. I love the scene near the end where he’s studying and she compliments him—possibly for the first time without a personal agenda—and he reveals he’s working on the BL novel for her again. How her face lights up! It’s not as if I would ever expect her to not be herself, but it seems like she’s going to take her friend’s example to heart and really appreciate having found a guy who’s willing to actively indulge her.

What it boils down to is that they just make a lot more sense to me now as a couple. I look forward to the final volume!

MJ: I agree, I’m really looking forward to the final volume, and I may even wish there were more! I’m interested in digging into the novels as well. My original expectations for this series were very low, and it has easily exceeded them.

MICHELLE: I was originally more interested in the novels, but having seen the excerpt at the end of the first manga volume, now I’m not so sure. The Taiga equivalent seems awfully spazzy.

I should note here, too, that mangaka Rize Shinba’s BL manga is also enjoyable. You and I have reviewed Intriguing Secrets and My Bad for BL Bookrack with favorable results.

MJ: Well, you know me, I’ve never had a problem with “spazzy.” And yes, I do recall that we’ve enjoyed Shinba’s BL. I guess she’s probably got some personal insight to offer to these adaptations.

MICHELLE: Seems like!

Off the Shelf: NETCOMICS Lives!

September 28, 2011 by MJ and Michelle Smith 17 Comments

MICHELLE: Hey, MJ! What’s the best way to carve wood?

MJ: I don’t know, MIchelle. What is the best way to carve wood?

MICHELLE: Whittle by whittle!

MJ: Oooooo that one was a little painful.

MICHELLE: Sorry! I can’t help it; I love dumb jokes.

Okay, so. We should probably explain how this column is going to be a little different than most.

MJ: Yes, I suppose we should. Was it your idea? I think it might have been your idea.

MICHELLE: I can’t remember. Anyway… Before there were VIZManga.com, eManga, or JManga, there was NETCOMICS. Back when MJand I both wrote for Manga Recon, we got introduced to their site—where chapters of various series (mostly manhwa and BL) are available online for 25 cents each—and found some truly great titles just waiting to be discovered. The site remained a regular destination of mine, and I was concerned when no new releases were posted for about six months earlier this year.

Happily, NETCOMICS is now back with a vengeance and is currently actively releasing chapters from four series: Full House, Small-Minded Schoolgirls, So I Married an Anti-Fan, and Core Scramble. And it just so happened that three of those achieved a full volume’s worth of material within the past week or so, making them candidates for consideration in this week’s Off the Shelf!

MJ: Since Michelle and I are both such big fans of NETCOMICS manhwa, we decided to do mutual reads of all three of these new volumes, so while we usually each bring our own books to the table, this week, we’ve both read all of them!

MICHELLE: Indeed! So, where should we start? Perhaps with So I Married an Anti-Fan?

MJ: Excellent choice!

So I Married an Anti-Fan comes to us from the manhwa-ga Wann, author of 100% Perfect Girl, a series I liked…. really not at all. While trashy romance is certainly fine in my book, controlling love interests are not, and 100% Perfect Girl‘s Jarte was too awful for me to find romantic in the slightest. Fortunately, though I Married an Anti-Fan offers up a typically cold, arrogant male lead, our heroine is more than a match for him.

There’s a lot of plot in this first volume, but here’s the basic premise: Reporter Geunyoung Lee is drinking at a club, where she witnesses a popular male idol brutally rejecting a girl. In her stupor, she snaps a photo with her camera, but the idol, Joon Hoo, catches up to her as she flees the scene, and deletes the photo from her phone himself, at which point Geunyoung vomits on his shoes.

Thanks to the power of Joon’s agency, the incident costs Geunyoung her job and, ultimately, her apartment, which she can’t afford to keep. Enraged, she embarks on a fierce anti-fan campaign in an attempt to discredit Joon, which, through a series of wacky circumstances (in true K-drama form), results in her being chosen to basically live and work with Joon on a “reality” show called, “So I Married an Anti-Fan.”

MICHELLE: Though I never read 100% Perfect Girl myself, I definitely remembered your aversion to it, so was quite pleasantly surprised to find myself kind of loving this first volume. Part of what sold me were the modern touches—I loved seeing Geunyoung’s brawl with some Joon fangirls on YouTube, loved the sequence where she starts a blog and is immediately inundated with negative comments, and loved the whole reality series idea. How can it be that this hasn’t been the plot of a manhwa or manga before?! It’s so rife for cracktastic goodness!

I also liked that while Geunyoung is definitely fierce and a match for Joon, neither of them is exactly the archetype they may seem to be. Geunyoung, for example, is not always shrill and abrasive, but is honestly searching for what she wants to do with her life and mostly upset by the fact that she lost her job. Even though she didn’t love being a reporter, the writing was important to her. And Joon is not the arrogant celebrity, but honestly regrets what he did to Geunyoung—he had no idea she wasn’t really some ruthless paparazzi out for scandal—and finds peace in her presence because, since her opinion of him is already as low as it could get, he doesn’t have to worry about maintaining an idealistic image.

The reality show itself hasn’t started as of the first volume, but I find I am really looking forward to it! In fact, I’m tempted to read the two chapters of volume two that are now available, but figure the story will be best enjoyed in full-volume chunks.

MJ: I mentioned earlier that the plot here is in true K-drama form, and really, it reads just like a TV drama to me, which isn’t an insult in the slightest. This volume is well-paced and compelling, with a strong dose of my favorite flavor of grown-up girls’ manhwa humor. The romance is predictable, of course, but the upside of this is that I know I’m going to enjoy watching it play out. It’s a great fit for fans of something like You’re Beautiful, and actually less far-fetched. Definitely a check in the “win” column for NETCOMICS.

MICHELLE: I have yet to actually make it past the first episode of any K-drama, but if they’re like this perhaps I will have to make more of an effort. It also makes me think I should give another Wann series a chance. Perhaps not 100% Perfect Girl, but maybe Can’t Lose You, which is also available on the NETCOMICS site.

MJ: So, what’s next? Core Scramble?

MICHELLE: Sure! So, this is a boys’ love story that is actually pretty light on the romance so far. Our protagonist, Chaeun Shin, wields his magical powers in service of an organization called Clarus Orbis, which is tasked with doing away with “halls” (essentially interdimensional portals) and the “bugs” that come through them. Chaeun is devoted to his commander, Gayoon, even though Gayoon is a cold-hearted jerk who casually abandons his team mid-battle to go hang out with his girlfriend. And Chaeun’s never really tempted to leave Gayoon’s team, either, even though he’s presented with a perfectly viable alternative. Meanwhile, another group of magic users is interfering with the C.O. guys, but I never really understood what it is they’re after. In any case, their leader, Moonhoo, likes to feel Chaeun up whenever he’s presented with the opportunity.

MJ: That is a more coherent summary than I could possibly have mustered. I salute you, Michelle! That’s pretty much the story, or at least as much as we understand at this point.

Let’s face it: Core Scramble is a mess. It’s an attractive mess that has definitely caught my attention, but really, it’s a complete and utter mess. To be fair, I’m not sure this is all the author’s fault. The adaptation is sloppily executed, with some text clearly ending up in the wrong places here and there, making the story’s heavy exposition even more confusing than it has to be. Also, some of the BL elements feel a bit tacked on, as though the author was feeling pressure to get them in earlier than was natural, so that fans of the genre wouldn’t wander away before the story really got going.

There’s a lot I really want to love here. The BL market, at least here in the US, offers very little outside the standard romance genre, so I was pretty thrilled to see that Core Scramble is an all-out sci-fi/fantasy, with more plot packed into one volume than most BL series manage in their entire run. The protagonist, Chaeun, is very relatable, even when he’s inexplicably sticking by his complete ass of a boss. There’s too much going on for the volume to really gel, though, and it’s hard to say whether this will improve going forward.

What was your impression, Michelle?

MICHELLE: Much the same, I’m afraid. It seems to me that in trying to be both sci-fi and BL right out of the gate, it succeeds at neither. I really hate the “Hello, I’m Moonhoo and I’ll be your gropy seme for this book” introduction of that character, and when he randomly kisses Chaeun on their first meeting (under the guise of administering a drink or water or something) I was about ready to quit reading. And though I find Chaeun’s inexplicable loyalty to Gayoon kind of interesting, and think the C.O. organization has some potential, it’s just not defined well enough yet.

I will say, though, that I really enjoyed the kickass female soldier, Chief Song. Here’s a screenshot of her in action:

After recent internet talk this week about the so-called “sexually liberated” women of DC Comics, I thought, “Well, here’s a lady who looks simultaneously sexy and powerful. And though her clothes may be a bit skimpy, they’re really not that revealing. Her body is proportionate, and she looks absolutely confident and fearless. If you want to draw a scantily clad woman in your comic without offending female readers, this is the way to do it.

MJ: That’s a great point, Michelle! I’m completely with you on Chief Song.

And maybe this comic will recover from its early chaos, I don’t know. The introduction of Moonhoo you mention is exactly what I was thinking of when I said some of the BL felt tacked on. It’s obnoxious and doesn’t fit in with the story otherwise. On the other hand, their encounter in the last chapter of this volume was honestly intriguing and pretty sexy. If only that’s where the overt BL had started, I think it could have really worked. All the stuff earlier in the book just felt really off.

MICHELLE: I didn’t find the kiss itself at the end at all intriguing, but I like that Moonhoo is kind of amused by Chaeun’s attempts to protect him from harm (since Chaeun doesn’t know Moonhoo is affiliated with the other magic users) and I like that Chaeun interpreted the sudden smooch as a means to shock him out of his freakout mode over yet another desertion by Gayoon. It’s extra, surprising layers like that that will bring me back for volume two.

MJ: I think what I liked about it, is that in that moment, they both really just seemed like real people, enjoying a real attraction (even if their understanding of the moment doesn’t necessarily match), which is so much the opposite of the earlier groping scenes, which felt completely contrived. And yeah, despite my complaints, I’ll be back for volume two as well.

So… Full House… *happy sigh*.

MICHELLE: I have to admit I was finally and fully won over by volume five. I enjoyed it very much. It’s also worthy of note that, although Full House was previously published in English by CPM, they only got as far as volume four, so this is all-new material for us!

MJ: I am so pleased to hear that you’ve been won over! Now, I’ve discussed Full House at length before, but only the first two volumes. I hadn’t ever made it into volume three, so this was a big catch-up for me. And now having read the third and fourth volumes, I can understand better some of your complaints, as the screwball comedy bickering started to become a bit too much.

That said, volume five offers some pretty serious payoff, as Ryder’s (mistaken) anticipation of his own doom leads him to become in real life the sort of romantic hero he usually plays in films. He gives the house back to Ellie, and then when she is kidnapped, rushes in like a madman to save her. This could have been disastrous, but Sooyeon Won pulls it off so well, it really just swept me away. Ryder’s character shift feels completely real, and more importantly, Won is careful not to strip Ellie of her agency just to give Ryder his moment. Watching the two of them escape on the power of pure nerve was one of the most satisfying things I’ve seen in a while.

MICHELLE: Ryder’s shift does feel real, but I think Ellie’s does, too, since when he gives the house back to her with a minimum of fuss, she suddenly regrets having made his life so miserable up until that point. She starts to realize that, even though she’ll have the house, she may actually be losing something important. And, of course, I love that in the moment she most needs him, he is suddenly there, and reliable, and just thinking about that whole escape sequence is giving me a mild case of geekbumps because damn, they make a good team. I am really curious to see where Sooyeon Won will take the story from here.

MJ: I think I’ve always given Ellie the benefit of the doubt, mainly because I just like her, but yes, I agree that she does experience a shift here, too. And oh that moment, Michelle… I have never been a big fan of a man swooping in to save the woman, but when Ellie’s stuck, desperate and terrified, having exhausted all the options she can think of to escape her captors, and he’s just there… I admit I may have swooned.

MICHELLE: Oh, and then there’s this exchange:

Bad Guy: This rude, brash, crazy woman who doesn’t know what’s good for her. Not to mention she’s a plain-looking Asian who doesn’t stand out at all!

Ryder: You’re right!

Bad Guy: You don’t mean to say you love this girl, huh?

Ellie: What are you asking that for?

Ryder: … Probably.

I might’ve squeed (though, of course, Ryder’s comment is downplayed later). This reminds me, too, that the kidnapper’s identity completely surprised me and yet totally made sense in the context of the story. So, that made me enjoy it more than if it had just been some completely random kidnapping thrown in to manufacture some drama.

MJ: I most certainly squeed at that point. And, yes! The kidnapping made so much sense, it’s almost as if the author planned it from the beginning. If only more romantic comics really felt that way!

MICHELLE: And I don’t really want to spoil why Ryder is mistakenly anticipating his doom, but all of that makes a certain kind of sense, too. I’ve gone from being unable to comprehend there being sixteen volumes of this series (plus a sequel) to wanting all of that story to materialize right now. Happily, NETCOMICS already has the first chapter of volume six on their schedule for… today, actually, though it’s not up yet.

MJ: I expect I’ll be digging into that next chapter as soon as it’s available.

Thank you, NETCOMICS, for coming back to life. We missed you. Truly.

MICHELLE: Indeed. In just a few days, their update schedule for October will be revealed, and I hope it will be as packed as September. Of course, I’d also like to see some other series get updates (especially The Adventures of Young Det) but I am happy with the current lot, as well. And when the third volume of Small-Minded Schoolgirls is completed in a few weeks, I plan to talk about it in this space as well.

MJ: When I first realized that NETCOMICS had re-emerged, I felt some regret over having re-assimilated Manhwa Bookshelf. I hope they continue to make me regret that for a long time to come.

Off the Shelf: A Little Sunshine

September 15, 2011 by MJ and Michelle Smith Leave a Comment

MJ: *blinks* Oh. Hello Manga Bookshelf world. Wow. I’ve been far, far away from here for the past week. Michelle? Are you still here?

MICHELLE: Oh, sorry. I was just in the back room clearing out some cobwebs. It’s amazing how much time seems to pass between these weekly columns.

MJ: *cough* It’s a little dusty in here, too.

MICHELLE: It is. Shall I open the musty curtains of disuse and allow the sunshine of manga goodness to brighten our dingy surroundings?

MJ: Please do!

MICHELLE: Alrighty, then! It’s going to be a Shonen Sunday week for me, as I take a look at the latest volumes of a pair of series published by VIZ under this imprint.

The first is volume seven of Yuu Watase’s Arata: The Legend and I’m just going to state right up front: as a fan of Watase’s Fushigi Yûgi: Genbu Kaiden and as a fan of shounen series by female creators, you really must read this series. (Conveniently, the first five volumes are available on VIZManga.com!) The general premise of Arata might sound like a typical modern-kid-in-a-fantasy-world adventure, but trust me, the execution makes all the difference.

In a world known as Amawakuni, Princess Kikuri has reigned for 60 years and has maintained control over the hayagami (gods in sword form) wielded by her twelve attendants (known as shinsho). On the day of a ceremony in which she is supposed to transfer power to a successor—played by a boy in drag named Arata for reasons one needn’t go into—she is cut down by one of these shinsho, but manages to hang on to a shred of life. Meanwhile, Arata is blamed and through various plotty means changes places with a modern high-school kid named Arata Hinohara, who is promptly chosen by a super special hayagami that will enable him to save the princess, in a nutshell.

Where the story gets really interesting is with all the complications Watase imposes upon this narrative. Hinohara was tormented by a bully in middle school, and can’t be the kind of sho that goes around making others submit to him, which in this case actually involves giving up one’s life to reside in another’s hayagami. He’s experienced that sort of forced domination, and can’t inflict it on anyone else. Instead, he convinces his opponents to entrust their souls to him, and has become the target of all of those who would stop him and take the throne for themselves. Meanwhile, he’s falling in love with the other Arata’s childhood friend and now his tormentor has arrived in Amawakuni, sending a powerful shinsho to Japan in his place who starts killing off his old classmates.

It might seem like there’s a lot going on in this series and, indeed, there is, but Watase just handles it so well it never feels overwhelming for a second. The world makes sense, characterization is consistent, and she employs a sure hand in dealing out story details on a need-to-know basis. In addition to his quest to save the princess, Hinohara is also battling his own emotional trauma and it’s this (plus the bevy of attractive fellas) that gives Arata something of a shoujo flair.

I look forward to volume eight almost as much as I look forward to you reading this!

MJ: I’ve actually read the first two (maybe three?) volumes, and I agree it’s my kind of story! You’re making me feel very anxious to pick up the later volumes, though. For whatever reason, I really I do love shounen series written by women.

MICHELLE: One issue I had with the first few volumes was that Arata (the one now stuck in Japan) wasn’t given much of anything to do. Now that that’s been addressed, the series seems a bit… invigorated. The same can be said of my conviction to read Genbu Kaiden soon, durnit!

So, what had you been reading this week?

MJ: Well, I’ve been pretty well consumed with my day job over the past few days, so I haven’t read a lot. But I did find time to gobble down the latest volume of CLAMP’s xxxHolic, which was just released in (some) stores this week. I know you haven’t caught up on recent volumes, so I’ll try very hard to avoid spoiling you.

With volume seventeen, we’re now further into the portion of the series that was renamed xxxHolic Rō in Japan, following a major event in the story’s plotline. The ramifications of that event have really settled in, and this volume feels more solid than the previous because of it. It’s mesmerizing, really, to watch Watanuki, now so fully immersed in his new role. One of the things that struck me about this volume, too, is how much we’re learning about Yuuko, simply by watching Watanuki. She’s always been an enigma, and suddenly she’s someone we can truly understand. I really don’t want to spoil you, so I won’t explain further, but really, Michelle, it’s something to see.

This is my first taste of xxxHolic in quite some time, and I found I’d almost forgotten just how stunning the artwork is. I often talk about my love for Tokyo Babylon, and there are a lot of things that endear me to that series in particular. But one of its major draws for me is the artwork, and xxxHolic is the first of CLAMP’s series since then to affect me in the same way, visually. It’s all about the use of black. Now of course, Tokyo Babylon is more heavily toned, so the black isn’t necessarily as stark as it is in xxxHolic, which has such dark blacks and clean, deliberate line work it often looks like it could have been created with woodblock printing. Opening a volume of xxxHolic again was a visually spectacular experience, which I hope to be able to repeat soon.

Michelle, I hope you are able to catch up on this series soon, because I’m dying to be able to discuss it with you in more detail. I know there are people whose interest in xxxHolic waned early on, but I’ve only become more deeply involved as the series has progressed. I really can’t get enough of it.

MICHELLE: Now I feel guilty that I am restraining you from praising it to the extent that you desire! I will read it soon!

What you were saying about the artwork actually brought to mind another series that I’ve been reading lately, and that’s Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei. These two series could not be more different, and yet they treat the color black in a very similar way, with sleek and stylized results.

Art is cool.

MJ: Funny you should mention that series in particular, since Zetsubou-sensei’s character design has actually always reminded me of Watanuki!

MICHELLE: I can see that!

MJ: So, what’s your other Shonen Sunday pick this week?

MICHELLE: My second Shonen Sunday pick is volume five of Mitsuru Adachi’s Cross Game, which I recently cited as my favorite series beginning with a C for David’s latest Favorites Alphabet column. In short, this is the story of a slackery boy named Ko Kitamura who is motivated to make the most of his baseball skills by the passing of a dear friend who dreamed that he’d make it to Koshien.

I’ve talked at some length about my ardent love of sports manga, and it’s true that I avidly devoured the regional tournament match between Ko’s team and their heavily favored opponents. Adachi doesn’t just depict the action of the game, but recreates the whole experience. The crowd, the clouds, the passageways underneath the stadium that finally emerge behind a row of sunlit seats… It’s about as lovely as a baseball game can ever get, reinforced by a story that prizes sheer love of the game over pride and ego.

But there’s more to Cross Game than baseball. Even though she doesn’t survive beyond the first volume, Ko’s childhood friend Wakaba continues to make her presence felt in this volume, which comprises volumes ten and eleven of the original release. Several of Ko’s teammates are united in their goal because they want to fulfill Wakaba’s dream, and this similar feeling of unity in the face of loss is reinforced when a new girl with an uncanny resemblance to Wakaba moves into the neighborhood. The stunned reactions are conveyed poignantly, and even though Ko has been steadily growing close to Wakaba’s prickly younger sister, Aoba, it makes perfect sense why the presence of this new girl might generate some confusion.

If you like sports manga, you will like Cross Game. And if you don’t like sports manga, you will still like Cross Game.

MJ: As you know, I’ve gotten as far as actually buying the first volume with Viz’s digital app, and every time you and David talk about the series, I think about just how much I need to sit down and read it. Maybe this time I finally will. You make a compelling argument, as always.

MICHELLE: It’s really very very good. And you know I don’t say that lightly. Another great thing about it is that you’re getting at least two volumes at once. It’s hard to believe we’re already over halfway through with the series! I don’t have a clue how well it sells but I am really hoping that VIZ decides to release more Adachi in similar fashion.

MJ: I hope so, too!

Oh, this week has done me in, Michelle. Can I go to sleep now?

MICHELLE: Sure you can! But don’t forget to brush your teefs.

MJ: Cross my heart! ‘Night!