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Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Morning Manga Spotlight

Morning Manga Spotlight: They Were Eleven

November 18, 2014 by MJ Leave a Comment

they-were-eleven-floppiesI’ll admit that it’s been tough trying to curb my “classic” inclinations when it comes to recommending manga for my teen students, and there are days when it becomes impossible. Today is one of those days, as I find myself irresistibly drawn to the work of Moto Hagio, specifically her early short series, They Were Eleven.

Originally serialized over three issues in Shojo Comic in 1975, They Were Eleven follows a young student named Tada through the final stage of his entrance exam to the elite Galactic University. From my write-up of the series at Comics Should Be Good:

“Sometime in the distant future, hopeful students from all over the galaxy gather for the difficult entrance exams at the elite Galactic University. For the final test, [the students] are divided into computer-generated groups of ten students each and sent off to various locations where they must survive as a group for fifty-three days without pushing the provided emergency button, which immediately summons a rescue team, resulting in automatic failure of the entire group. One group is deposited on a derelict ship, devoid of engine power and filled with dangerous explosives, which they must safely maintain in orbit for the length of the test. As the group arrives on the ship, however, it becomes apparent that there are eleven students rather than the assigned ten, indicating that one of them must be an impostor. Potential disasters pile up quickly, including an unstable orbit and the presence of a deadly disease, and in the midst of it all the group begins to suspect Tada, a young Terran (Earth descendent) with intuitive powers and uncanny knowledge of the ship’s layout, of being the eleventh member.

With the ship’s mechanical problems and deadly health threat driving things forward, it is young Tada’s story that takes focus, as he struggles to understand his relationship with the decrepit ship while also attempting to clear himself of the other students’ rapidly-mounting suspicion. Despite the fact that his intuition saves the group early on, it also becomes the greatest point of contention amongst the group, and as more about Tada’s own history comes to light, each revelation seems to point more clearly to his potential guilt.”

fssAs a psychological drama wrapped in a sci-fi package, They Were Eleven is glorious, and benefits particularly from Hagio’s clear, expressive artwork and her minor obsession with gender identification. On the flip side, like a lot of older manga, the gender discussion can be problematic. Again from my write-up:

“Two of the characters in the story are species whose gender is not determined until adulthood. One of these, Frol, who is decidedly feminine in appearance (referred to hereafter as “her” and “she”), is taking the test because she will be allowed to become male if she passes, a privilege otherwise only granted to a family’s oldest child. On Frol’s planet, “men govern and women work,” and becoming a woman would mean relinquishing all autonomy and joining the harem of the neighboring lord (eighteen years her senior), so it is understandable why she would want to instead take advantage of her society’s male privilege and collect a harem of her own. Still, it’s a little bit jarring that when the story finally reaches a point where it becomes clear that they may very well not pass the test, the only other alternative presented to Frol is for her to leave her own people, become a woman, and marry someone else.

The fact that in every scenario her future as a woman leads directly to marriage is not a fantastic message for today’s young girls (nor is the fact that Frol, the story’s only obviously “feminine” character, is depicted as capricious and “simple”) and it is this that dates the series more than anything else.”

This attitude towards femininity is perhaps best reflected in the tagline of Viz’s Four Shoujo Stories, in which They Were Eleven appeared alongside works by Keiko Nishi and Shio Sato. “It’s Not Just Girls’ Stuff Anymore” the cover proudly proclaims, assuring us in advance that its content is smarter and better than that (“It’s for girls, but it’s still good, I swear!”)

So why am I recommending this to teens, you’re asking? I’m recommending it because it’s beautifully-drawn, fantastic storytelling. I’m recommending it because it was part of a female-led revolution in girls’ comics, which had previously been drawn mostly by men. I’m recommending it because, despite its issues, it presents us with a very stark view of Hagio’s own struggles as a woman and an artist in a time not so far removed from the present, and the hopelessness of a world in which the only imaginable destination for a woman is marriage (also not so far removed from the present). Most of all, though, I’m recommending it, because it’s a great comic.

They Were Eleven was published twice by Viz, first as a series of four floppies in 1995, and then later in Four Shoujo Stories. Both are out of print (though the floppies show up often on eBay, which is how I acquired mine). Fortunately for my students, I own the series in both formats, so they have a couple of options to choose from. Fortunately, too, some of Hagio’s other works are available in English now as well, thankfully in print, thanks to Matt Thorn and Fantagraphics (students: these are available from the MJLibrary as well). I hope we’ll see a lot more!

Filed Under: Morning Manga Spotlight

Morning Manga Spotlight: After School Nightmare

November 11, 2014 by MJ 1 Comment

afterschoolnightmare1Setona Mizushiro’s After School Nightmare has loomed in the back of my mind ever since I began this series of manga recommendations for my teen students, and there is really no good reason that it has taken this long to actually come to the fore. I suppose I thought maybe I’d reread it myself first—it has been years now—so that I could talk about it with the particular verve and passion that only accompanies a fresh read. Maybe I thought I’d wait until I had lots of pretty pictures to share, or more articles to point to besides my one lonely review of the first volume.

In the past, I’ve expressed regret at missing out on the Manga Moveable Feast dedicated to this series, and yes, I was really busy at the time, and that was a real factor. But if I’m really being honest with myself and with you, the reason I’ve written less than I’d like about After School Nightmare, is that it nails so many of my personal storytelling kinks and hits upon so many of my own secrets and anxieties, I actually find it difficult to talk about out loud. You know, with other people. Like Please Save My Earth, it weaves dreamworlds in a way that feels written especially for me. Unlike Please Save My Earth, it also scares the bejeezus out of me.

I’ve often said that what I find most powerful about fiction in general is that it lets us explore other people’s inner lives and compare them to our own. I’ve even said that this is, for me (as I suspect it is for many introverts), the most effective way of connecting with other people. And this absolutely applies to me and After School Nightmare (or me and Setona Mizushiro, depending on how you look at it). But there are some stories that feel so close and so private, they are best explored in silence. For my students’ sake, I’ll try to break that silence, just a little.

After School Nightmare is a 10-volume shoujo manga, originally serialized in Princess magazine, home of such legendary manga as Yasuko Aoike’s From Eroica with Love and Moto Hagio’s A, A Prime. The story revolves around Ichijo, a student at an elite high school, whose induction into an unusual after-hours class sends him into a dream world where he must battle other students for a mysterious key necessary for graduation. Furthermore, in the dream world, the students appear as physical manifestations of the things they most fear revealing about themselves. From my review:

Everybody has some kind of secret, though Ichijo Mashiro’s is bigger than most: he was born with a male upper body and a female lower body, something he has successfully kept from his peers for his entire life … In the nightmare, the students are reduced to their “true forms,” revealing their worst fears and deepest wounds to each other. One student, for instance, appears in the dreams with gaping holes in place of her face and chest, while another appears in a full suit of armor. Yet another appears as a pair of endless, disembodied arms. Unlike the others, Ichijo’s true form looks exactly like himself, only dressed in a girl’s school uniform.

As Ichijo soon learns, the battles in the nightmare are only the beginning, for though some students’ daytime identities are pretty well-concealed by their nightmare “true forms,” more (like Ichijo’s) are not, and the dynamics the develop during the after school class soon begin affecting people’s waking relationships as well. Throw in lots of beautiful artwork, some gender confusion, a little romance, and a genuinely surprising plot twist, and you have the recipe for a perfectly MJ-pleasing manga.

The story is well-told and compact (for manga), and though the series has now been out of print for several years, and its North American publisher is no longer), copies can frequently be found used. I originally borrowed the series from a friend, and then picked up my own copies (mostly used) shortly afterwards, so my local students can borrow the series from me in its entirety. The line starts here!

Filed Under: Morning Manga Spotlight

Morning Manga Spotlight: Paradise Kiss

October 28, 2014 by MJ 1 Comment

I pondered for a blatantly ridiculous amount of time over this week’s manga recommendation for my teen students. I considered another classic epic (Please Save My Earth), a couple of overlooked romances (Rasetsu, Crown of Love), or perhaps something for my pre-teens (Shugo Chara!). My most serious consideration, however, went to Ai Yazawa’s yet-unfinished (but totally glorious) romance/friendship epic NANA. As the subject of my first, and still most famous, “persuasion post,” Why You Should Read NANA, it’s pretty obvious that I’m a long-time fan, and recommending it seems like a no-brainer—at least for my older teens. But the more I thought about it, the more I found myself thinking about the things it lacks. NANA has a great deal to offer of interest to my teens… beautifully written characters (many of whom are pursuing an artistic field), complicated relationships, career angst, epic friendship, and (of course) gorgeous, gorgeous artwork. Things it doesn’t have, however, include genuine interaction/conflict with parental figures, anxiety over education, or queer characters of any kind—stuff that is important and relevant, particularly to my older teens.

parakiss2-vertFortunately, I don’t even have to stray outside the same artist’s catalogue to find all that, and more. Which brings us to Yazawa’s much-celebrated (at least here at Manga Bookshelf) josei series, Paradise Kiss. Originally serialized in the women’s fashion magazine Zipper, Paradise Kiss tells the story of a high school senior named Yukari, who finds herself recruited by a a group of college fashion design students to model for their senior project. The encounter is life-altering for Yukari, as it not only forces her to face some hard truths about her own future and academic prospects, but also sweeps her into a tumultuous romance with George, the group’s charismatic, mercurial designer.

With all that in place, if you’re expecting a standard romance, you’d be gravely mistaken. While Yukari and George’s relationship is certainly central to the story, its essential disfunction is really the point. And though it manages to heat up the pages pretty intensely at times, the story’s real stars are, to my mind, its supporting characters, particularly diminutive seamstress Miwako and trans pattern-maker Isabella, who regularly battle it out in my heart for the position of “favorite character.” I’ll admit that Isabella usually wins. From our Off the Shelf column on the series:

Isabella is my favorite character in the series by far. In fact, I even joked when this title was first chosen for the MMF that my contribution would be an essay entitled, “Why I love Isabella” (or something along those lines). Not only is she a wonderfully warm and nurturing character, as you mention here, but she’s also the one who is best able to see the truth about everyone else, unhindered by insecurity or personal bias.

Additionally, she’s just about 100% responsible for my ability to like George, which took a hell of a long time to develop, to be honest. It took me several times through the series to get over my deep intolerance of George’s refusal to take responsibility for his role in the lives of others, and it was only Isabella who was able to convince me that George’s unquestioning, immediate acceptance of her true self made him worth reconsidering.

You can read the rest of that article or my original review of the full series for more on my complicated feelings about George, but perhaps the better idea is simply to read the series yourself!

Originally published in North America by Tokyopop, the series was recently rescued by Vertical, who gave it a beautiful new visual treatment (larger trim size, high-quality paper, gorgeous new covers) and a new translation, which has some ups and downs. On the upside, Vertical’s translation removes some of Tokyopop’s mild censorship (particularly in terms of George’s sexual preferences and other similar topics). On the downside, the prose is noticeably more awkward in some spots, one of which I detailed in my review of the first volume. In any case, I own both versions of the series, so local students who are borrowing can consider these issues and choose their poison.

The truth is, no matter which print version you’re able to pick up, you’re in for a beautifully-drawn, emotionally complex story, told in a remarkably concise fashion. To quote myself, “I feel that I could go on forever and still fail to do justice to the sheer exquisiteness of this series, so I’ll wind things up here. Suffice it to say that Paradise Kiss, with its complex look at beauty, longing, and personal discovery, truly is a bit of manga paradise.”

Filed Under: Morning Manga Spotlight, UNSHELVED

Morning Manga Spotlight: Antique Bakery

October 21, 2014 by MJ 7 Comments

For those who missed this column’s introduction, this is a new, weekly spotlight featuring books from my own personal manga collection that I’ve offered up as a library to my teen students. And since talking on and on about manga series I love is my usual role here, it only made sense to adapt the column from its origins on Facebook to my true home as a manga blogger. I hope you’ll enjoy!

ab4After spending my first installment of this new column to recommend an out-of-print 27-volume epic, I’m going to take the second to make things a little easier, at least on one front. This week’s spotlight manga is also out of print and (unlike Basara) not yet enjoying new life, digital or otherwise. On the other hand, this series is regularly available for sale on eBay, and my students can be rest assured that I own no fewer than three copies of it in full, so there are plenty of books to go around. Furthermore, this series is only four volumes long, making it easily digestible for nearly any manga appetite.

And speaking of appetite, what could be more enticing than the combination of Fumi Yoshinaga and food? If you’ve enjoyed more recent of her series such as Yen Press’ Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy! or Vertical’s ongoing What Did You Eat Yesterday? I’m sure your answer must be “not much.” That’s my answer, too, and has been since the very first time I picked up a copy of Antique Bakery.

Debuting in Shinshokan’s idiosyncratic shoujo magazine Wings in 2000, this short series (about four men in Tokyo running a western-style bakery) is notable in several ways. First, it falls very close to the beginning of Yoshinaga’s departure from her BL roots (following up on the much less ambitious Garden Dreams), while still including gay characters (something still much too rare in manga). In 2002, it won the Kodansha Manga Award for shoujo (and was nominated for a 2007 Eisner award during its run here in the US). It’s been adapted into an anime series, a Japanese live-action drama, and—most successfully, in my view—a Korean feature film (students, I own this on DVD), and was for many of us our first introduction to Yoshinaga’s glorious wit, delicious dialogue, and distinctive art style.

Students who have been with our studio for a while may remember a long-ago summer session that included a class I called “Acting & Manga” in which we looked at several specific scenes from various manga series to study the way silence and physicality impact a scene. One of these scenes was from Fumi Yoshinaga’s later series Flower of Life (probably my favorite of her older works), but she uses these tools just as effectively in Antique Bakery.

As an example, Michelle and I once examined a scene for Let’s Get Visual, using scans from the Japanese original to demonstrate how clearly the artwork tells the story, even without words. Though Yoshinaga has been criticized by some for favoring similar looks in character designs, it’s impossible to deny the expressiveness of her artwork overall, and that’s always been a huge draw for me.

On the other hand, an even greater draw is her wonderfully witty, wordy dialogue—the likes of which I’ve yet to encounter from any other manga artist. Her silences may be powerful, but her words are warm and utterly delicious. And despite the drama depicted here, one of her greatest strengths is humor, which flows through the entirety of Antique Bakery, even in its darkest moments—and some moments are surprisingly dark. This is no lightweight series, yet it leaves the reader walking on air. It is a true delight.

Antique Bakery is available to any of my students 13 and up to borrow. (For non-student readers here’s at least one you could check into). But that’s not all! I own a fairly large collection of Fumi Yoshinaga’s work in English, and while some of it is definitely for older readers, there’s plenty of everything to go around. For a taste of what’s available, you can check out my 2010 Fumi Yoshinaga Week post, and she has several newer works available as well.

Filed Under: Morning Manga Spotlight, UNSHELVED

Morning Manga Spotlight: Basara

October 14, 2014 by MJ 2 Comments

basara-dreams-smI’ve recently offered up my personal manga/manhwa library (completely with photos & titles on Facebook) as a resource for my teen students who might wish to begin reading manga, or to dig into older/rarer series that they may never have heard of. This is my second attempt at such a thing, but now that I actually have a couple of students who already read manga, I’m feeling more hopeful about spreading the love for Japanese and Korean comics. And to help things along, I thought I’d try spotlighting some of these series that may be new to young fans. I intended this as a series of Facebook posts, since that’s where I most commonly interact with my students via social media, but I thought I’d also duplicate it here, particularly for newer and/or younger manga readers, who may not be familiar with titles we’ve all talked about in the past.

To that end, my first spotlight will shine on Yumi Tamura’s BASARA, a 27-volume shoujo manga that ran in Japan from 1990-1998. Friends in the industry will know that there is pretty much nothing I love more than late 1980s – early 1990s shoujo, and Basara is a particularly precious gem from this period. Basara is an epic fantasy set in a post-apocalyptic world, in which Japan has been divided into several regions, each ruled by a king from the same cruel and corrupt royal clan. The story revolves around Sarasa, a 15-year-old girl from the poorest of these regions, whose twin brother, Tatara, is prophesied to be the “child of destiny” who can free their people from tyranny. When Sarasa’s village is destroyed and her brother murdered by the Red King, Sarasa takes on the identity of “Tatara” in order to keep the prophecy alive and seek revenge on the Red King. The series chronicles her journey through her ravaged country toward her final battle with the Red King, but more importantly, it chronicles her journey as a young woman in a world where she’s valued primarily for her identity as a man.

While I was initially dismayed by what I perceived as an unfortunate focus on romance in this series, I eventually came to view it not only as a decidedly feminist tale, but also an anarchist narrative that was more compelling than I ever expected. Here, I’ll let my articles here on Manga Bookshelf do the talking. (Yes, there are spoilers. But for a story like this, the plot itself is less the point than how it plays out. Decide for yourself how you feel about that.)

Personalizing Feminism in Basara

More than this, though (or perhaps *because* of this), Basara is engaging, beautiful, and incredibly moving as an epic fantasy. If you doubt at all the emotional power of this series, I should mention that I’m tearing up just *skimming* that article I wrote over a year ago. For more reading (and even more spoilers), here is the 10,000-world roundtable I participated in during last year’s Yumi Tamura Manga Moveable Feast.

Or for something a little more fannish: try this essay on why Basara’s Blue King demonstrates what JK Rowling could have (and *should have*) done with Draco Malfoy,

Even if you don’t want to read the spoilers, go look at some of the beautiful artwork. It is undeniably drawn in an older shoujo style, but I’ll take this over current art trends any day. I mean, seriously. THE EMOTIONS.

If you like epic fantasy with a fantastic female protagonist, Basara is for you. But, honestly, I think it’s something everyone should read. I’m totally serious. BASARA IS THE BEST. Your life will be made richer by it, on multiple levels.

This has been today’s Manga Spotlight! Enjoy!

Filed Under: Morning Manga Spotlight, UNSHELVED

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