Unshelved

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Volume One by Naoko Takeuchi

Sailor Moon is back in print! When I was reading these new editions from Kodansha I decided to start chronologically, so I read Sailor V first and Sailor Moon second. It is interesting seeing the contrasts in character present from the first few pages. In Sailor V, Mina gets in trouble for attempting a daring gymnastics move. In Sailor Moon, Usagi is running off to school with tears in her eyes from dismay at being late. Usagi is presented as the typical not very bright, somewhat ditsy shoujo heroine that most manga readers will be familiar with. But part of the reason why I like Sailor Moon so much is that Takeuchi does manage a couple subtle spins on the well-worn formula that she’s working with.

Usagi has a fateful encounter with a mysterious cat, then goes to school for a typical day. She gets punished and gossips with her classmates about Sailor V. She visits the jewelry store belonging to the family of her friend Naru. Outside, she throws one of her abysmal school papers into the face of a boy wearing a tuxedo and sunglasses. She thinks he’s a pretentious jerk for being so dressed up during the day, and he tells her to “study harder Miss bun-head!” IT IS TRUE LOVE! Later that evening the mysterious cat Luna visits Usagi and tells her that she’s been chosen to be a guardian. She gets her magical girl accessories and the phrase that triggers her transformation sequence (Moon Prism Power Make Up!) and she is off to fight the forces of evil at the jewelry store. This first chapter shows how Takeuchi’s storytelling has improved in contrast to Sailor V. By starting out with an enemy that could be directly hurting one of her friends, there’s more dramatic tension in Sailor Moon as opposed to the endless progression of pop idols that Sailor V fights. Of course, Usagi as Sailor Moon barely fights at all on her first outing. She halfway thinks that she’s dreaming and is surprised that she’s getting hurt, then she reacts to the fight by throwing a tearful temper tantrum. Fortunately her tiara boomerang vanquishes her enemy, and she finds out that she’s being watched by a mysterious man who introduces himself as Tuxedo Mask and says “Sailor Moon, I’ll certainly take note of you.”

Now that Usagi’s general situation is set up, she has to deal with Luna’s demands that she train and gather allies. There are other sailor scouts out there and Usagi has to collect them all (like Pokemon!) while struggling with her feelings for Tuxedo Mask and her own ineptitude. Usagi’s companions are generally in some way more capable than her, but you can see how their different personality traits would contribute to the formation of a good team. Sailor Mercury is a teen genius. Sailor Mars has the moral certainty of a shrine maiden. Sailor Jupiter is strong and brave. The sailor scouts are going after the “Legendary Silver Crystal”, as are their mystical enemies and Tuxedo Mask. Usagi is uncertain if Tuxedo Mask is an enemy or an ally, because while he certainly seems to appear often if she’s in the need of a rescue his motivations are unclear.

Takeuchi’s art seems to have grown a bit smoother when comparing Sailor Moon with Sailor V. The paneling is slightly more complex, although it is still a manga the focuses most on the faces of the characters without much attention paid on setting scenes or background images. The battles and team building in Sailor Moon seem to owe a lot to shonen manga, but being as girly as it is the battles involve costume changes and awesome battle cries instead of violence. While it might be pretty silly for girls to don sailor suits to fight evil, there’s a certain exuberant girl power vibe about the scenes when Sailor Moon and her allies line up to announce that their enemies are about to be punished. I do not know how it is possible not to love a manga that features a girl yelling “You will refrain from underestimating women! And with Mars Power, you will burn! These high-heeled legs will deliver your punishment!”

So Comic-Con has released their panels and events schedule, and I’ve given it an initial glance. My first thought was that the folks who scheduled SDCC also scheduled this: it’s really top heavy, with Friday being insane and Saturday and Sunday being far more normal. And I’ll be there this year as Press, covering the event for Manga Bookshelf, A Case Suitable for Treatment, and freedom.

So here is what I have scheduled, bearing in mind that I’ve no doubt missed something important, I will have to eat at some point (veal parm sub lunch with Erica!), and that a couple of these will be “Sorry, already full” turned away at the door sort of panels.

FRIDAY

11am – 12 noon: Unusual Manga Genres

12:15pm – 1:15pm: Yen Press Industry Panel

1:30pm – 2:30pm: Dark Horse 25th Anniversary Panel

2:45pm – 3:45pm: Funimation Industry Panel

4:15pm – 5:15pm: Venture Brothers Panel

6:30pm – 7:30pm: Kodansha Industry Panel (with Hiro Mashima)

7:45pm – 8:45pm: XX: The Women of Queer Comics

8:45pm – 9:45pm: Vertical Industry Panel

As you can see, after this schedule I will basically be DEAD. Karaoke? Hah. I also fully expect I will be unable to get into the Venture Brothers panel. And I’ll see if I can feel out Dark Horse: if they have few to no manga announcements, I may go to Del Rey’s book panel instead. But hey, I have an hour for dinner! Bonus!

SATURDAY

10:45am – 11:45am: Bandai Industry Panel

1:30pm – 2:30pm: Archie Comics Industry Panel

5pm – 7:15pm: Fairy Tail Panel

7:30pm – 8:30pm: CBLDF: Defensing Manga

As you can see, a much saner day, with loads of free time to actually do other things. As with last year’s Durarara!! panel, if the FT panel is just cosplay and videos and squee, I may skip out. Also, I will do my best this year to avoid the hyper guy at the Bandai panel demanding moe blobs (no, I’m not exaggerating).

SUNDAY

FUNNY CARS!

10:45am – 11:45am: Viz Media Industry Panel

2pm – 3pm: Classic Warner Bros./Hanna-Barbera Cartoons Going Blu-Ray

As you can see (gotta have it in threes or it’s not jazz), this is the quietest day, which is good as I expect I will need to conserve ergs and rest my ankle which has only just healed and which no doubt I will be re-aggravating all weekend. That last panel, btw, is my one non-negotiable one.

Codename: Sailor V Volume 1 by Naoko Takeuchi

I’ve had Sailor Moon and Codename: Sailor V in my house for a week, but even though I’ve read them for some reason I am still having a hard time believing that they’re real. Since Sailor Moon has been the holy grail of out of print manga series, it just seems wonderfully surreal that this series is finally getting a decent omnibus style release with a new translation. Sailor V was the prototype series for Sailor Moon, and Sailor V appears in Sailor Moon at first as a shadowy mentor figure. So many of the storylines that are explored more fully in Sailor Moon are introduced in Codename: Sailor V, which might not have as much depth but is still fun.

Like most shoujo heroines, Mina (short for Minako) is an aggressively average student. She prefers athletics and nursing crushes on unobtainable boys to her schoolwork. Her life changes dramatically when she meets a talking cat named Artemis who informs her that she’s been chosen as a protector of Earth. Once she’s equipped with some magical accessories she announces what she has become, “Champion of Justice! The Pretty Guardian in a Sailor Suit! Sailor Venus has arrived!” One of the things that I enjoy about magical girl manga is that although there’s certainly an element of makeover fantasy in the transformations, part of story also is all about power. When Mina transforms for the first time she says “I feel liberated! I’m overflowing with power! I’m struck with the urge to act!”

Unfortunately for Mina, the action she’s presented with gets repetitive. There seems to be an unending supply of demonic idol singers who are out to enslave the Japanese populace and feed off their energy, and Sailor V must battle all of them. In this way, Codename: Sailor V resembles a very simple shonen manga, except for the battles here are always needing to involve lots of cosplay and battle cries instead of actual punching. Still, there are flashes of humor on display that make the overall experience of reading the book a lot of fun. Mina seems to be very protective of governmental regulations, as when she’s battling one of her many rounds of evil idol singers she remarks that brainwashing is bad and “these are horrendous business practices and the Japanese Tax Office will not stand for it!” Later on when she’s talking to her mysterious boss about an enemy she encounters during a vacation she flies into action after the comment “I don’t know who he is, but I do sense a deep-seated grudge regarding Hawaii.” People with grudges regarding Hawaii must be punished!

One of the things that enlivens Codename: Sailor V is the supporting cast. As Sailor V grows in notoriety she is starting to get noticed by the police. The female Inspector General nurses her crush on V with giant posters in her office, and she arbitrarily orders around her more skeptical male sidekick. Mina gets an eye rolling reaction from one of her enemies to her proclaimed title of “Pretty Guardian.” I tend to grade magical girl shoujo for what it is. If there’s humor, costume changes, and a little bit of action I’m a satisfied reader. While I don’t think that Codename: Sailor V has all the elements that made Sailor Moon such a long and successful series, it was fun getting a glimpse of Sailor Moon’s origin and more of the origin of Sailor V.

A month ago, JManga debuted online, with a list of about 180 or so titles from various publishers, about 45 of which were available to purchase as volumes. Since then we’ve seen about 15 more titles added, and about 5 more available to buy, meaning we have about 200 titles both real and potential up there. I want to try to break it down by publisher, and see how each of them have handled the launch.

First off, incomplete grades are given to Akaneshinsha, ASCII Media Works, EastPress, Enterbrain, France Shoin, Fujimi Shobo, Fusosha, Gentosha, Houbunsha, Ichijinsha, Issuisya, Jitsugyo no Nihoa Sha, Kasakura, Media Factory, Nihon Bungeisha, Oakla, Ohzora Shuppan, Shinchosha, Shodensha, Takeshobo, Tatsumi, and Takuma Shoten. Clearly not everyone was going to be at the same level of readiness when the site debuted, and I can totally understand not having product ready from all 39 publishers. I’m hoping we’ll see more in the next few months from many of them.

Gakken and Magazine House (1 title each, available to purchase). I applaud these guys, who clearly are going to have a name recognition problem even among hardcore manga fans such as myself, but who were ready and waiting with something for purchase right off the bat. Gakken’s Manga Science looks like a cute educational manga, and 234 pages for $7.50 is pretty good compared to the rest of the site. As for Magazine House’s Young-kun, well, I think it depends on how much you like 4-koma. The art certainly won’t be drawing you in, so it lives and dies by its gags. Also, $5.99 for 140 pages is pretty good at this site.

Akita Shoten (6 titles, none available for purchase yet). Typical of most of the larger companies here, Akita debuts by promising a few of their already released in NA titles in a digital format. Though Tableau Gate never actually came out due to CMX’s demise.

Asahi Shimbun (7 titles, 1 partially available for purchase). An interesting josei/horror publisher, mostly known here for the series Petshop of Horrors. There’s some intriguing stuff here, and one of the more recent series, Sherlock Holmes, has a chapter available to buy. No idea if it’s a BL series or not. Knowing manga publishing, likely it’s suggestive and that’s about it. :)

Bunkasha (3 titles, none yet available for purchase). Another publisher I know very little of, and an intriguing if small variety of promised titles. One apparent sex comedy/mystery, one gag comic, and one horror. I’m quite interested in all three of these, and hope to see them eventually and learn more about the Bunkasha philosophy.

Futabasha (29 titles, all available for purchase). The big dogs here, and clearly, in my opinion, one of the major movers and shakers behind the entire site/venture. They’ve had very little play here in North America before, and are ready to make this their reminder that they have an awesome manga history too. We get 13 titles, all from within the last 5 years, from their seinen magazine Manga Action!, only one previously available here. 2 from the old-school Manga Town magazine, four from josei comic Jour, two (possibly 3, I’m not sure where Confession ran) from shoujo magazine Comic Mahou no iLand, and seven from moe and otaku-friendly Comic High! and it’s online counterpart, Web Comic High!. That’s a really nice variety, hitting most demographic areas (bar straight shonen for boys, which I think Futabasha lacks in Japan as well). As for pricing, they have decided on a uniform $8.99 for every title. While easy to remember, and handy for stuff like the 251 page Drifting Net Cafe, folks reading Crayon Shin-chan, which has half the pages but costs the same, might be a bit irked. I suspect Futabasha set the ‘standard’ price. It should be a dollar or two lower, IMO, and I suspect that may be why we haven’t seen…

Hakusensha (8 titles, none available), Shogakukan (10 titles, none available), and Shueisha (13 titles, none available). Everything seen here is a Viz product. I’d love to see some previously unreleased stuff, or even previously cancelled stuff (UY? Banri Hidaka?), but there’s a larger issue here: almost everything with these 3 publishers is on sale at Viz’s website for about 3-4 dollars less than the ‘default’ price at JManga. If they simply port their cloud of titles to JManga, folks would likely start avoiding higher priced titles. But if they price them at $8.99… who on earth would buy them there when they’re cheaper elsewhere? I seem to recall those at the SDCC JManga panel noticed a look of discomfort when pricing was mentioned… this may be a reason why, and also why these three are sort of a token presence for now.

Kodansha (5 titles, none available). Speaking of token presences… Kodansha is busy working on getting their brand back out there after the Del Rey hiatus, and I suspect after they do they will be, as Viz and Yen have done, working on their own digital initiative. Till then, this may be all we get… 5 of their most popular titles, all previously available in NA, possibly digital soon.

June Net (10 titles, none available), Libre Shuppan (20 titles, 4 available), and Shinshokan (9 titles, 6 available for purchase). The big players in BL here, and they’ve given everyone something to wait for. There’s a lot of previously released stuff from DMP and Blu here, but all three publishers have brought out (or plan to) their heavy hitters, with lots of Nitta and Tateno sitting there. Shinshokan is especially strong, having 2/3 of their offerings now available. Not bad. Pricing seems consistently about $8.95.

LEED Publishing (10 titles, 6 available). I think LEED also came out of the gates strong, mostly as most folks know who Golgo 13 is, and a lot of these titles are extensions of that type of manga. Saito’s been trying to go digital in Japan for a while now, so likely had stuff ready to go. I like that there’s some 60s stuff from Shonen Sunday and Magazine available, as well as more recent endeavors. If we do see Golgo 13, it may be LEED’s own editions (Saito owns the company, I believe) rather than Viz. And there is one non-Saito author as well, making us hope for more hardboiled stuff from Comic RAN and Comic Ran TWINS. LEED is also fairly hardboiled about their pricing… they’re easily the most expensive publisher here, and the price goes up the more pages there are. Hawking, which is a 400-page omnibus, is about $20.00. I suspect they may find sales disappointing at first for that reason.

Shonen Gahosha (7 titles, 3 available). One of the more intriguing names here. They and LEED are the only ones to have been releasing titles after the debut. They started off with their 4 biggest titles in North America (Excel Saga, Hellsing and the two Triguns), as well as one title unavailable here but also from Young King OURS. Since then, they’ve added a second Young King OURS comedy… and a manga from their cat-oriented manga magazine, Nekopanchi. That alone gains big praise from me, as I love seeing manga genres totally unfamiliar to me. Their pricing seems in line with Futabasha’s, about $8.99 each.

Kadokawa Shoten (63 titles, none available). Well, they’ve got ambition, if nothing else. Easily the most presence on the site. And the titles they’re choosing, very much in line with their media-oriented business statement, are anime franchises, and game franchises, and very appealing to otaku. There’s even a few non-moe things here, such as Mail and Todenka, which are both in the style of Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. And yes, I’d really love to see that Higurashi book. HOWEVER, by showing us 63 titles, and delivering, to date, zero… it’s not a good way to start off. I would have tried, if they couldn’t get things out of the gate fast enough like Futabasha did, only putting up a few select titles as potential ones, and then rolling out the bigger guns when they’re available. If I had to give a grade to date for them, however, it’s all flash, no substance as of yet. I would suspect, however, that they may be the OTHER major force, besides Futabasha, behind the JManga initiative, judging by their listings.

As for the site itself, the reader is fairly easy to use. I do note that it is hard to zoom in on anything except the center of the page, so if you want to read a corner or edge you’re out of luck. Also, some titles, particularly ones with night scenes (hi, Ninja Papa) have inner monologues written against backgrounds in black text – making them VERY hard to read. Notably, the corresponding Japanese text is left in – it’s also black, but has a much stronger white border. I realize that English requires more space, but I’m hoping it’s something that can be thought about, if nothing else.

No doubt there have been a few growing pains. The read online system is a good way to combat piracy, but of course means you don’t own your manga – you are merely paying for the right to read it. And it can be taken away by the publisher if issues crop up, which can’t be done with a book. A print on demand option would be fantastic. And the points system is rather confusing, especially as a point is clearly 1 cent – I didn’t bother using them when discussing pricing above. As for the pricing itself, $8.99 isn’t horrific, but when your competitors (and yes, that is including Viz, who have far more famous manga available for cheaper prices right now) are undercutting you, you’re going to have people debating if they want to pay 9 bucks to see whether that weird food manga is any good, or 6 bucks to read another volume of kickass ninjas. And I suspect the ninjas will win.

That said, this is really more than I expected when I heard about the initiative. There *is* some clear effort to make titles previously unavailable here, and not just things based on anime or games that are out over here (though they have those as well). There’s shoujo, seinen, josei and kodomo stuff I’ve never read before all waiting for me, and in a variety of genres that include supernatural mystery, salaryman fantasy, foodie, medical, and even cat detectives. I suspect we’ll have a much better idea of the site’s future, though, when we start seeing Volume 2s. Saito has some, but as I said he’s farther along in his digital initiative. If Futabasha can crank out Vol. 2s for some of the more intriguing titles by October, and Kadokawa can release some of their content, then I think JManga will be around as longer than just a flash in the pan.

And if Shonen Gahosha gets Excel Saga on there beyond a promise, I will personally fly to Japan to kiss their feet. :D

Kamisama Kiss 5 by Julietta Suzuki

I’m having a bit of a stressful week so I was happy when the fifth volume of Kamisama Kiss arrived at my house. This manga blends a mystical fish out of water story about a human girl taking on the role of shrine deity with whimsical character designs, producing a perfect comfort reading manga. Nanami is having trouble dealing with her fox spirit helper Tomoe and his new rival the white snake Mizuki. They all attend a summer festival at another shrine and Nanami gets so frustrated at the constant bickering that she squeezes the bickering spirits’ hands together and says that they have to hold hands forever unless they make up. Mizuki and Tomoe are now forced to have an actual conversation, and it is clear that Mizuki’s obnoxiousness stems from his loneliness after being stuck at an abandoned shrine for so long.

The festival at the neighboring shrine makes Nanami think that she has to do something to bring visitors to her own shrine. It has the reputation of being creepy, but she’s determined to put on her own festival to bring the worshipers back. Since it is unusual for a human to be a shrine deity, Nanami has to learn how to do the proper festival dances the hard way. Tomoe is initially discouraging of her efforts, but ultimately comes around to support her. One of things I enjoy about this manga is that minor characters keep reappearing in later chapters, making it easy to picture the odd new social circle Nanami now has surrounding her. Nanami gets help from the swamp deity Himeneko and even the tengu disguised as human idol singer Kurama stops by. Kurama is amazed to see how Nanami’s power as a shrine deity has grown even though she isn’t really aware of it. Tomoe comments to him “she doesn’t realize it herself…but she’s not an ‘ordinary girl’ anymore.”

Suzuki’s manga are always a visual treat and blending the world of shrines and modern day life give plenty of room for her to showcase wonderful costumes and quirky character designs. I liked Karakuri Odette so much that I didn’t think I’d be captured in the same way, but Kamisama Kiss is really growing on me. This manga has all the easily read episodic charm of her other series, but I’m hoping for a bit more of a romantic payoff at the end.

Review copy provided by the publisher