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Sci-Fi

Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace

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As The Rise of Skywalker brings the Star Wars saga to its official close, now seems like the right time to revisit the very first chapter in the series, The Phantom Menace. Episode I debuted in 1999, making the leap from screen to print the following year with Kia Asamiya providing the illustrations. Readers familiar with Asamiya’s Silent Möbius will immediately understand why he was tapped for this project: he has a penchant for drawing detailed space ships and cityscapes, two important qualifications for translating George Lucas’ vision into a compelling comic.

Alas, Asamiya was also saddled with Lucas’ original script, leaving him little room to make the story more interesting on the page than it was on the screen. Asamiya faithfully preserves the film’s most frustrating elements—the tin-eared dialogue, the unfortunate minstrelsy of JarJar Binks—as well as its surfeit of plot points, secondary characters, and clumsy discussions of Federation trade policy. To his credit, Asamiya’s version is brisk and streamlined in contrast with Lucas’, marching from one scene to the next with a sense of urgency that’s often lacking from the film. Some of the film’s most tedious scenes—the blockade of Naboo, the first interactions between Padme and Anakin, the Imperial Senate’s deliberations—have been telescoped, giving Asamiya room for more detailed treatments of chases, light saber fights, and space battles.

The artwork, on the other hand, is a hit-or-miss affair. Asamiya’s skill at drawing aliens, robots, space craft, and futuristic cities is unquestionable; his evocation of Otoh Gunga and Coruscant do justice to the complexity and specificity of Lucas’ original designs, while Asamiya’s establishing shots of Naboo convincingly evoke the planet’s lush jungles and Greco-Roman palaces without the added benefit of color. His ability to compress lengthy action sequences is likewise impressive; in just a few artfully constructed pages, for example, he captures the excitement and danger of Anakin Skywalker’s pod race, using panels-within-panels to juxtapose the racers’ progress with the crowd’s ecstatic reaction to the event:

Asamiya’s human characters, by contrast, are as expressionless as their big-screen counterparts—a key failing, as the characters register as pawns, not people, dutifully shuttled from one scenario to the next with almost no sense of how the violence and chaos they’ve encountered has affected them. Only the two principle non-human characters—JarJar Binks and C3PO—are drawn in an animated fashion, providing the series’ few moments of genuine emotion and surprise.

And that, in a nutshell, is why Asamiya’s take on The Phantom Menace is so frustrating: it improves on certain aspects of the source material while emphasizing its fatal flaws, making for an efficient but affectless gloss on Lucas’ original story that reads a lot like Cliff Notes. Not recommended.

STAR WARS: EPISODE I – THE PHANTOM MENACE, VOLS. 1-2 • ART BY KIA ASAMIYA • MARVEL COMICS • NO RATING (SUITABLE FOR READERS 10 AND UP)

Short Takes: No Guns Life and Ryuko

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This month’s Short Takes column checks in with two previously-reviewed series: No Guns Life, a sci-fi thriller whose principled hero sounds like Sam Spade and looks like a Remington; and Ryuko, a thriller starring a yakuza assassin who’s hell-bent on avenging her mother’s kidnapping.

No Guns Life, Vol. 2
Story and Art by Tasuku Karasuma
Translation by Joe Yamazaki; Adaptation by Stan!
VIZ Media, 224 pp.
Rated T+ (Older Teens)

After a decent, if predictable, first volume, Tasuku Karasuma finds his groove in volume two of No Guns Life, maintaining a brisk pace while allowing his characters’ personalities to emerge more fully. Though the action occasionally pauses for the characters to expound on important plot developments, these dialogues are less of a drag on the story than they were in volume one; here, they add badly needed layers of  complexity to a familiar noir plot line. Better still, Karasuma introduces several new characters who push the narrative in a more interesting direction, hinting at the power and secrecy of the Berühen Corporation, as well as the general public’s mixed feelings about living alongside cyborgs. If Karasuma engages in a little too much fanservice, or relies too heavily on speedlines and sound effects to enliven his fight scenes, No Guns Life is still entertaining enough to make all but the most discriminating reader root for Juzo to succeed. Recommended.

VIZ Media provided a review copy. Click here to read my review of volume one.

Ryuko, Vol. 2
Story and Art by Eldo Yoshimizu
Translation by Motoko Tamamuro and Jonathan Clements
Titan Comics, 226 pp.
No rating (Best suited for older teen and adult readers)

Paging the exposition police! The second volume of Ryuko has all the swagger of the first, but leans more heavily into Talking Points Conversation to help expedite its resolution. In some respects, these exchanges are a welcome development, as they clearly—one might say baldly—delineate the various factions’ interest in the Golden Seal, an object whose significance was glossed over in volume one. These passages also help the reader untangle the complex web of relationships among the characters, making it easier to grasp why Ryuko forges an alliance with an avowed enemy and why US military forces are trying to manipulate the outcome of her feud with the Sheqing-Ban. These conversations would feel less forced if the pacing were more even, but the two-volume format is too compressed for such an ambitious, labyrinthine plot to unfold at a reader-friendly pace.

Volume two’s chief attraction is the same as volume one’s: the artwork. Eldo Yoshimizu has a flair for staging car chases, fist fights, gun battles, and dramatic escapes, immersing the reader in the action with his creative use of perspective and fastidious attention to detail; Ryuko’s leopard-print catsuit is practically a character in its own right. In less capable hands, this maximalist approach might be overwhelming, but Yoshimizu’s layouts have a strong narrative pull that leads the eye across the page at the speed of the action, creating an almost cinematic experience. The final confrontation between Ryuko and evil American operatives is a show-stopper involving a motorcycle stunt so outrageous that even Jackie Chan would be impressed with its audacity. None of the story makes much sense, but Yoshimizu’s energetic, bold, and—yes—sexy artwork is cool enough to carry the day. Recommended.

Click here to read my review of volume one. 

Shojo & Tell: Moto Hagio Edition

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To celebrate the release of Moto Hagio’s The Poe Clan, Shojo & Tell host Ashley MacDonald invited me to join her for an in-depth conversation about three of my all-time favorite manga: A, A’, They Were Eleven, and A Drunken Dream and Other Stories. We mulled over plot developments, discussed problematic passages, and agreed that “Iguana Girl” may be the biggest tear-jerker in the Hagio canon. (Seriously–I can’t read it without getting the sniffles.) Ashley just posted the episode, which you can check out here:

For more insight into the manga that we discussed, I recommend the following essays and reviews from The Manga Critic vault:

I want to thank Ashley for the opportunity to chat about Hagio, and for doing such a terrific job of editing our conversation! If you’re not regularly following Shojo & Tell, I encourage you to check out the archive, as Ashley is a thoughtful host with a knack for choosing great manga and great guests. Recent contributors include Aisha Soleil and Rose Bridges discussing Bisco Hatori’s Ouran High School Host Club, Asher Sofman discussing CLAMP’s Tokyo Bablyon, and Manga Bookshelf’s own Anna Neatrour discussing Meca Tanaka’s The Young Master’s Revenge. Go, listen!

 

No Guns Life, Vol. 1

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No Guns Life is a textbook example of  “robo noir,” a story that borrows tropes from Double Indemnity and The Maltese Falcon and transplants them to a not-too-distant future where old and new technologies rub shoulders, and damsels in distress might, in fact, be androids. The hero is Juzo Inui, a bodyguard-for-hire who has a strong moral code and an aversion to “humidity and kids.” Like the cyborg clientele he serves, Juzo’s body has been cybernetically enhanced, his head replaced with a giant revolver. Yes—you read that right. Juzo’s head can fire a round of ammunition, a creative decision that skirts the line between funny and horrific; only Juzo’s strong moral code makes the gun-as-head concept palatable.

And speaking of that moral code, volume one focuses on Juzo’s efforts to honor a contract with a fellow cyborg. That cyborg shows up at Juzo’s office with a 12-year-old boy in tow and a request: hide the boy from the Berühen Corporation, a powerful organization that manufactures top-secret weapons. With the police and Berühen’s goons on his trail, Juzo stashes Tetsuro with his friend Mary, a back-alley surgeon, and sets out to discover why Tetsuro is such a hot commodity.

While Juzo’s exploits are entertaining, No Guns Life is a mixed bag. On the plus side, the story is briskly paced and well drawn; Tasuku Karasuma creates a strong sense of place in his establishing shots, drawing a sprawling modern city that still has hole-in-the-wall office buildings, dingy basements, and crowded tenements, all populated by characters with memorable mugs. On the minus side, the story traffics in cliches, from the beautiful assassin who carries out her duties in a skimpy costume to the villains who deliver lengthy, exposition-dense monologues before pulling the trigger. The fight scenes, too, leave something to be desired; there are too many flash-boom panels that bury the action under sound effects and speed lines, leaving the reader to guess what’s happening. None of these shortcomings are fatal, but they emphasize the fact that No Guns Life is chiefly memorable because the protagonist looks like a Second Amendment poster boy, not because the story has something new to say about the boundaries between man and machine, or the ethics of human experimentation.

The bottom line: Fans of the anime will probably enjoy No Guns Life, but readers versed in sci-fi and noir conventions may find it too pedestrian to make a lasting impression.

A review copy was provided by VIZ Media, LLC. Volume one will be released on September 17, 2019. Read a free preview here.

NO GUNS LIFE, VOL. 1 • STORY AND ART BY TASUKU KARASUMA • TRANSLATED BY JOE YAMAZAKI • VIZ MEDIA • RATED T+, FOR OLDER TEENS (VIOLENCE, SCANTILY CLAD WOMEN) • 248 pp.

Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction, Vols. 1-2

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What if the world ended not with a bang or a whimper, but a shrug of the shoulders and a TL;DR? That’s the question at the heart of Inio Asano’s Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction, a dark comedy about alien invasion.

Asano buries the lede, however, initially framing his story as a coming-of-age drama about Kadode and Oran, two girls on the cusp of adulthood. We learn about the aliens’ arrival in bits and pieces, through a 2-chan thread, a news bulletin, a string of text messages, and a sign tallying the day’s casualties. We also learn that Kadode’s father — a journalist — disappeared in the immediate aftermath of the attack, an event that has pushed Kadode’s mother to the brink of insanity.

The dramatic impact of these revelations is muted by Asano’s attention to the mundane rhythms of Kadode and Oran’s life: they study for tests, shoot the shit with friends, horse around with Oran’s older brother, and play video games until the wee hours of the morning, marking time until they graduate from high school. Like most teenagers, Kadode and Oran are morbidly curious about sex, fixating on a young teacher who does a poor job of establishing professional boundaries with his students. In private conversations, the girls tease each other about seducing Mr. Watarase, but when Kadode finds herself alone with him, she’s awkward and nervous, unable to carry out her plan. It’s to Asano’s credit that nothing happens between teacher and student, as he recognizes that Kadode’s interest is not in having sex with her teacher but in speculating what it would be like — in essence, she’s trying on the idea of an adult relationship, not actively seeking one.

A similar tension between maturity and inexperience plays out in other aspects of Asano’s narrative. Kadode, for example, is deeply invested in Isobeyan, a manga starring a dim-witted girl and a time-traveling Mushroomian with an “interdimensional pouchette” that yields amazing inventions: a brain bulb, a pair of skeleton specs. Though this manga-within-a-manga offers Asano an opportunity to showcase his technical virtuosity — Isobeyan looks like a Fujiko F. Fujio original — Isobeyan also highlights Asano’s knack for creating convincing teen characters, sympathetically portraying Kadode’s interest in kiddie manga as a survival tactic; she clings to Isobeyan because its jokes and stories offer her the consistency that’s otherwise missing from her chaotic home life.

Running in tandem with these domestic interludes are scenes of the media, government, and big business co-opting the invasion through incessant television coverage, carefully orchestrated public memorials, and merchandise, all promoting the idea that Tokyo should “never forget” about the tragedy while simultaneously encouraging residents to move on with their lives. Both volumes of Dead Dead Demon thrum with the activity of radio and television newscasts; through voice-overs and field reports, we learn the official version of events, but not what really happened on the ground. That same element of hollow reassurance informs a rally celebrating the successful demonstration of a new weapon. As people begin gathering, a chant of “Nippon!” ripples through the crowd. “Why are they all yelling ‘Nippon’?” one girl asked. “I dunno,” her friend replies, “But this is fun, so who cares?”

Asano’s art plays a vital role in suggesting the way in which the ordinary and extraordinary can coexist side-by-side. In this particular image, for example, Asano draws the undercarriage of the mother ship — its cannons, landing gear, and exhaust ports — with the same shapes and lines as he uses for the city below; it’s as if we’re viewing Tokyo on the surface of a pond, upside down and slightly murky:

Then, too, there’s a tension between the hard, industrial precision of such imagery and the soft vulnerability of the principal characters, as is conveyed by this panel in which Kadode and Oran’s view of the sky is completely blocked by the mother ship:

Though Asano’s character designs are naturalistic, capturing that liminal state between adolescence and adulthood with physical accuracy, Kadode and Oran’s faces are preternatually elastic, registering the full gamut of teenage emotions with outsized intensity. Many of the adults, by contrast, resemble Noh characters with impassive, mask-like faces that make them look… well, cartoonish, emphasizing the degree to which deception and denial have robbed them of their ability to express the fear, uncertainty, and hopelessness that the invasion has undoubtedly stirred in them. It’s a technique that Asano has used in other series — most notably Goodnight, Pun-Pun — and it works beautifully here, underscoring the absurdity of the characters’ situation.

What makes Dead Dead Demon more than just a stylish exercise in nihilism is the way in which Asano recognizes the lengths to which people will go to preserve their routines and personal comforts. Asano doesn’t frame that act as heroic resistance or conscious choice, but an atavistic need for order, especially in the aftermath of a catastrophe. For Kadode and her friends, though, that quest for normalcy takes a slightly different form, as they’re not yet old enough to have their own homes, jobs, and families; the things they cling to — like pop music and video games — offer only temporary comfort, pushing them to seek deeper answers about the alien invasion.

Lest Dead Dead Demon sound like a Terribly Serious Manga, it’s worth noting that Asano never falls into the misery porn trap that made Goodnight, Punpun such a punishing experience. Dead Dead Demon is nimble, funny, and sad, buoyed by a vivid cast of characters and a densely layered plot that allows Asano to explore weighty questions without casting a pall over the reader. For my money, it’s his best work to date, the ideal showcase for his phenomenal artistry and mordant wit. Highly recommended.

DEAD DEAD DEMON’S DEDEDEDE DESTRUCTION, VOLS. 1-2 • STORY & ART BY INIO ASANO • TRANSLATION BY JOHN WERRY • VIZ MEDIA • RATED M, FOR MATURE AUDIENCES (VIOLENCE AND SEXUALITY)

Star Wars: Lost Stars, Vol. 1

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Remember the good ol’ days when a new Star Wars movie took three years to make, and no one was certain that George Lucas was going to get around to Episodes I, II, and III? I miss those days; new installments felt like a cause for celebration and not a dutiful obligation, and the films were an irresistible mixture of bad acting, thrilling space battles, and earnest conversations about the Force. When I’ve felt a twinge of nostalgia for my childhood Star Wars experience, I’ve found the manga adaptations of the original trilogy much more satisfying than the current batch of Disneyfied films. So I was curious to see what an original Star Wars manga might look like: would it explore new territory, or simply recycle the same plot points, a la The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and The Last Jedi?

Turns out that Lost Stars is to Star Wars what Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is to Hamlet, a retelling of an iconic story from the perspective of two peripheral characters. Many of the most famous moments from George Lucas’ original trilogy appear in Lost Stars — the capture of Princess Leia, the annihilation of Alderaan, the ice battle on Hoth — though the framing of these events is new, seen through the eyes of two young Imperial pilots: Thane Kyrell and Ciena Ree, both of whom enrolled in the Imperial Academy hoping for adventure and a better way of life.

The inclusion of these famous scenes is a double-edged sword; they provide a handy point of reference for the Star Wars greenhorn while simultaneously pandering to the hardcore fan by faithfully recreating iconic images, characters, and dialogue from A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. There’s a dot-the-i quality to them that suggests that Yusaku Komiyuma was more concerned with nailing down the original details than imagining how Thane or Ciena would perceive — or participate — in these events. The other problem with these scenes is that they’re more dramatically interesting than Komiyuma’s brisk but flavorless adaptation of Claudia Gray’s novel. The most thoughtful elements of Gray’s work — particularly the class politics on Thane and Ciena’s home planet Jelucan — are presented in a bald fashion that reads more like CliffNotes than honest-to-goodness fiction, while important scenes of character development are too compressed to give us a sense of who these star-crossed lovers really are. The net result is a comic that successfully bridges the aesthetic worlds of Shonen Jump and Star Wars without achieving its own distinct identity as a manga or a Star Wars story. Your mileage may vary.

Star Wars: Lost Stars, Vol. 1
Original Story by Claudia Gray
Art and Adaptation by Yusaku Komiyuma
Yen Press, 192 pp.
Rated T, for teens

A First Look at Starving Anonymous

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Have you been checking out Kodansha Comics’ digital-only and digital-first releases? I have, and I love this initiative: it lets me sample dozens of series that might otherwise never see the light of day in North America. Rugby manga. Karuta manga. Really weird horror manga. Medical drama. Josei. As you might expect, there’s a good reason why no one was clamoring to bring out print editions of, say, Deathtopia, but lurking among the pedestrian, the awful, and the amateurish are gems such as Dragon Head, PTSD Radio, Shojo FIGHT! and Tokyo Tarareba Girls. This week, I previewed one of Kodansha’s most recent digital offerings, Starving Anonymous, which, according to Kodansha’s editorial staff, is “an intense dystopian horror thriller in the apocalyptic vein of Dragon Head and Attack on Titan, from the team that brought you zombie actioner Fort of Apocalypse.”

That’s not a bad description of Starving Anonymous; if you can imagine an Eli Roth remake of Soylent Green in all its gory, sadistic intensity, you’ll have some idea of what it’s like to read Yuu Kuraishi and Kazu Inabe’s latest effort. Like the 1973 Charlton Heston film, Starving Anonymous takes place in a heat-ravaged future where supplies are scarce, birth rates are plummeting, and people are crowded into fewer and fewer cities. The series’ protagonist is I’e, a normal high school student whose life is violently upended when he’s snatched off a bus and deposited at an enormous industrial facility where the main product is — you guessed it — people.

A concept this potentially repulsive lives or dies by the thoughtfulness of the execution, and it’s here where Kuraishi and Inabe stumble. The writing is efficient but artless, establishing the direness of the world’s condition through news flashes and pointed conversations but revealing little about I’e; he’s more a placeholder than a character, a collection of reaction shots in search of a personality. The artwork, by contrast, varies from slickly generic — Tokyo apparently looks the same 50 years from now — to willfully ugly; once inside the factory, Inabe draws rooms and conveyor belts filled with distended bodies, rendering every roll of fat and bulging eye in fetishistic detail. If Kuraishi and Inabe were trying to make a point about the ethics of factory farming, or the evils of overconsumption, that message is quickly shoved aside in favor of a more conventional escape-from-prison plot in which I’e and a group of young, healthy rebels fight their way to the outside. Nothing in the first chapter suggested that Starving Anonymous has anything on its mind other than characters doing and seeing horrible stuff, so I’ll be passing on this one.

Starving Anonymous, Chapter 1
Story by Yuu Kuraishi, Art by Kazu Inabe, Original Concept by Kengo Mizutani
Kodansha Comics
Rating: OT (Older teen)

Voices of a Distant Star

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What would it be like to embark on a deep space voyage, knowing that when you returned, nothing on Earth would be as you remembered it? That’s the question at the heart of Makoto Shinkai and Mizu Sahara’s Voices of a Distant Star, a thoughtful — if sometimes clumsy — rumination on the human toll of interstellar travel.

The story begins in 2046, as sixteen-year-old Noboru Terao anxiously awaits text messages from his childhood friend Mikako Nagamine, who’s enlisted in the military. As we learn through snippets of conversation and text, Nagamine isn’t at a conventional boot camp: she’s been deployed to Mars, where humanity is preparing for a lengthy campaign against an alien race known as the Tharsians. Her early exchanges with Noboru arrive in a matter of days or weeks, but when she’s transferred to the front lines, she realizes that it may be years before Noboru receives her next text; as she ruefully observes, “By the time this message reaches you, everyone will be growing up into people I don’t know.”

The emotional honesty of their epistolary romance is the best reason to read Voices of a Distant Star. Through their brief exchanges, we grasp that Noboru and Nagamine are torn between the desire for a normal relationship and the dawning realization that they may be better off pursuing their own destinies — a realization made more poignant by the sharp contrast between Noboru’s ordinary school life and Nagamine’s extraterrestrial mission. Their dilemma would be more moving, however, if the artwork wasn’t executed in such a desultory fashion. The characters are utterly generic, lacking any semblance of individuality, while the space combat lacks any sense of place; the story could just as easily be unfolding in Phoenix, AZ as on a planet eight light years from Earth. I know — the story is supposed to give me the feels, not the chills — but a little more attention to the dangerous aspects Nagamine’s mission would have raised the emotional temperature of Voices of a Distant Star from mild to muy caliente. In spite of these artistic shortcomings, Noboru and Nagamine’s plight remains powerful, reminding us that our greatest obstacle to space travel isn’t distance — it’s time. Recommended.

Voices of a Distant Star
Story by Makoto Shinkai, Art by Mizu Sahara
Translated by Melissa Tanaka
Vertical Comics, 238 pp.

Astra Lost in Space, Vol. 1

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While the US manga market has plenty to offer teen readers, there’s a dearth of titles for kids who have aged out of Yokai Watch but aren’t quite ready for Bleach or Soul Eater. Astra Lost in Space, a new addition to the VIZ catalog, is a perfect transitional title for ten, eleven, and twelve-year-olds who want to read “real” manga: its slick illustrations and adventure-driven plot feel just edgy enough for this group, while the content falls safely within the boundaries of what’s appropriate for the middle school crowd.

The plot of Astra Lost in Space may remind older fans of Moto Hagio’s sci-fi classic “They Were Eleven”: nine high school students find themselves stranded aboard a spaceship whose communication system has been disabled. With only a few days’ supply of water and food on board, the group is forced to improvise a plan for making the five-month journey home. Their solution: hopscotching between planets — let’s call them “Class M” for the sake of convenience — where an abundant supply of water, plants, and animals await harvesting.

As you might guess, the planet-of-the-week formula provides artist Kenta Shinohara (Sket Dance) ample opportunity to draw menacing fauna and flora, and stage imaginative action sequences. In the volume’s best scene, for example, team captain Kanata Hoshijima leap-frogs across a field of sky-high lily pads to rescue the group’s youngest member from a flying, six-legged monster. Shinohara lavishes more attention to detail on Kanata’s long jump technique than on the turgon itself, breaking down each of Kanata’s jumps into discrete steps recognizable to any track-and-field fan: the approach, the takeoff, the hang, and the landing. In a further nod to realism, Shinohara shows us the physical toll that each jump exacts from Kanata; we can practically hear Kanata’s heaving breaths as he readies himself for the next one, an effective gambit for casting doubt on Kanata’s ability to reach Funicia.

For all the skill with which this rescue is staged, Shinohara can’t disguise the fact his characters feel like they’re the products of a Shonen Jump reader’s poll, rather than original creations. Kanata, for example, is a walking, talking checklist of shonen hero traits: he’s strong, friendly, over-confident, and burdened with a tragic backstory that gives him the will to persevere in any situation, no matter how dire. He also happens to be a decathlete, a fact that’s revealed as he rescues Funicia from the turgon’s grip. (At least that explains his javelin-throwing skills.) The other characters are less developed than Kanata, but will seem familiar to anyone who’s read three or four Shonen Jump titles: there’s Quittierre, a pretty rich girl whose tantrums conceal a good heart; Aries, a cute spaz who makes Edith Bunker look like a genius; Zack, a calm, smart boy who speaks in complete paragraphs; Charce, a boy who’s so handsome he sparkles; and a handful of less-defined characters who — according to the Third Law of Manga Plot Dynamics — will either be monster fodder or directly responsible for their classmates’ terrible predicament.

Manga novitiates, however, will be less troubled by these nods to convention, thanks to the story’s brisk pacing, smart-looking layouts, and game attempts at humor. Though there’s a mild bit of fanservice and “fantasy violence” (VIZ’s term, not mine), parents, teachers, and librarians should feel comfortable allowing middle school students to read Astra.

N.B. The first 45 chapters are currently available through the VIZ website for anyone wishing to screen the story for younger readers. Volume one of Astra is also available in a Kindle edition, and will be available in a print edition that’s slated for a December 5th release.

ASTRA LOST IN SPACE, VOL. 1 • STORY AND ART BY KENTO SHINOHARA • TRANSLATED BY ADRIENNE BECK • VIZ • 204 pp. • RATED T for TEEN

Land of the Lustrous, Vol. 1

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Land of the Lustrous is a gorgeous trainwreck, the kind of manga that doesn’t make sense on a panel-by-panel basis, but ravishes you with artwork so beautiful and strange it’s hard to look away.

I’ll be honest: I read the first volume three times, and found it almost impenetrable. As best I could tell, Land of the Lustrous depicts an interplanetary war between two races: the Gems, whose androgynous, humanoid appearance belies their true, rock-like nature, and the Lunarians, who frequently raid Earth, hoping to capture Gems for decorative purposes. (What kind of decorations remains a mystery; my vote is for bedazzled jeans and hoodies.) Since there are only 28 Gems, they’ve organized themselves into “fighter-medic” pairs to defend Earth from the Lunarians. One Gem — Phosphophyllite, who registers only 3.5 on the Mohs scale — is too weak to perform either task, so the group’s leader pronounces Phos their official naturalist, and tasks Phos with writing a history of Earth.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Land of the Lustrous was a satire on the dissertation-writing process, given how much time Phos spends procrastinating and grumbling about the book, but these scenes are interspersed with awkward flirtations, violent combat, and a brief episode in which Phos turns into a cute, sentient space slug. These abrupt shifts in tone frustrate the reader’s ability to get a handle on what, if anything, Land of the Lustrous is trying to say — a problem compounded by the dialogue, which is sometimes so windy that it’s a drag on the story, and sometimes so burdened with exposition that it barely passes for conversation.

When the characters stop talking and start doing things, however, Land of the Lustrous is a show-stopper, a testament to the richness of Haruko Ichikawa’s imagination. The Lunarians’ first appearance, for example, establishes them as an inscrutable menace. Their soldiers glide silently above the ground, led by an enormous, stone-faced Bodhissattva who’s flanked by undulating lines of archers with bows drawn, their arms and arrows criss-crossing the horizon to form a graceful lattice. (Busby Berkeley would have approved of the Lunarians’ formation.)

What happens next is even more astonishing:

In this sequence, a Gem slices through the general’s head, only to reveal a lotus pod filled with lethal “seeds” — a beautiful but unsettling moment reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley’s work in its commingling of the sensual and the grotesque; we’re not certain if the Lunarians are animal, vegetable, or mineral. Making this sequence even more disorienting is the dramatic shift in perspective: we see the impending attack from the general’s point of view, then shift to the attackers’ for the moment of contact and its aftermath. The eerie stillness of the final two panels reveals the extent to which the Lunarian general’s transformation has confounded the Gems, who are transfixed by the viscous flow of blood — or is that sap? — from his head.

Looking at these images, I wonder what a more assertive editor might have done to reign in Ichikawa’s worst storytelling tendencies: would the tone and pacing have been more even? The world-building more coherent? The dialogue more revelatory? In the absence of such editorial interventions, however, the most original aspects of Ichikawa’s work sink beneath a torrent of banal conversation and stale comic bits that pass for character development. A few moments of unnerving imagery interrupt the tedium long enough to make an impression on the reader, but are too brief and scattered to yield a truly satisfying experience.

LAND OF THE LUSTROUS, VOL. 1 • BY HARUKO ICHIKAWA • TRANSLATED BY ALETHEA AND ATHENA NIBLEY • KODANSHA COMICS • RATED: TEEN (13+) • 192 pp.

Short Takes: Deadman Wonderland and Livingstone

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The November release of Jinsei Kataoka and Tomohiro Maekawa’s Livingstone provided me a nifty excuse to try Deadman Wonderland, an earlier series written and illustrated by Katoaka. Fans of Deadman Wonderland may know its complex licensing history here in the US: Tokyopop was its first publisher, releasing five volumes before going bankrupt in 2011. VIZ acquired the series in 2013, and is now just two volumes shy of the series’ grand finale, which arrives in February 2016.

deadman_wonderland1Deadman Wonderland, Vol. 1
Story & Art by Jinsei Kataoka and Kazuma Kondou
Rated T+, for Older Teens
VIZ Media, $9.99

In the not-so-distant future, visitors flock to Deadman Wonderland, a prison-cum-theme park in Tokyo Bay where inmates fight to the death in front of paying crowds. Our guide to this Roman circus is newly minted prisoner Ganta Igarashi, an ordinary fourteen-year-old who’s been wrongfully convicted of murdering his classmates. Ganta’s fundamental decency is challenged at every turn; try as he might to cling to his humanity and clear his name, the prison’s arbitrary rules and roving gangs make it hard to be principled.

From my thumbnail description, you might conclude that Deadman Wonderland was cobbled together from parts of Judge Dredd, Rollerball, and Escape from New York–and you wouldn’t be wrong. What prevents Deadman Wonderland from reading like Rollerball 2: The Revenge is imaginative artwork. Jinsei Kataoka and Kazuma Kondou have created a Bizarro World Disneyland with rides, concessions, grinning animal mascots, and attractions like the Happy Dog Run, a lethal obstacle course featuring swinging blades and spike-filled pits. The characters who inhabit this landscape are a motley crew: though some telegraph their bad-guy status with tattoos and goofy haircuts, there are enough ordinary-looking prisoners that it’s impossible to judge who’s trustworthy. That uncertainty creates a strong undercurrent of tension in every scene, making Ganta’s routine activities–a conversation in the bathroom, a trip to the cafeteria–as fraught with peril as an actual contest.

The manga’s other great strength is pacing. Kataoka and Kondou resist the temptation to dole out too much information in the first volume; we’re never more than a clue or two ahead of Ganta, though perceptive readers may finish volume one with some notion of the prison’s true purpose. The authors’ expert timing also prevents us from dwelling on the story’s most shopworn elements, instead focusing our attention on how Ganta responds to new characters and new challenges.

All of which is to say: Deadman Wonderland is more fun than it has any right to be, considering the high body count and recycled plot points. Count me in for the next twelve volumes!

The verdict: Great art, smart pacing, and an appealing lead character make Deadman Wonderland a winner. (A note to parents, teachers, and librarians: this manga’s rating is justified.)

livingstoneLivingstone, Vol. 1
Story  by Tomohiro Maekawa, Art by Jinsei Kataoka
Rated 16+
Kodansha Comics, $10.99

Livingstone is a handsomely illustrated bore, the kind of manga in which the writer has dressed up a simple concept with a profusion of fussy details that don’t add depth or interest to the story. The title refers to human souls–or, more accurately, the rock-like form that human souls take after a person dies. Sakurai and Amano, the manga’s protagonists, work together to harvest livingstones, thus ensuring that a soul is properly passed from one person to the next. If a person dies before his appointed time, however, his soul curdles into a gooey blob of bad juju.

The manga has the rhythm of a cop show: in each chapter, Sakurai and Amano solve or prevent one unscheduled death, usually by negotiating with someone who’s planning to kill himself. Livingstone‘s intense fixation on suicide is off-putting; none of the would-be victims are particularly sympathetic, and Sakurai and Amano’s ministrations are so tone-deaf that it’s hard to know what message author Tomohiro Maekawa is hoping to impart to readers. Sakurai and Amano’s antagonistic bickering is supposed to inject a note of levity into the proceedings, I think, but the timing of the jokes and the staleness of the characterizations do little to offset the dour tone. By the end of volume one, I found myself feeling bummed out and irritated–never a good sign for a series that’s exploring a subject as serious as death.

The verdict: Nice art, lousy script; I liked this story better when it was called The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service.

These reviews originally appeared at MangaBlog on November 27, 2015.

7 Essential VIZ Signature Manga

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Are you an adult reader new to manga? Or a librarian who’s looking to add more graphic novels to your adult collection? Then this list is for you! The VIZ Signature imprint is one of the best resources for adults who read — or are curious about — manga. All of the Signature titles originally appeared in Japanese magazines that cater to grown-up tastes. As a result, the Signature line has broader appeal than many of VIZ’s other imprints, offering something for manga lovers who have “aged out” of Naruto as well as general interest readers who are more likely to discover a graphic novel through The New York Times than The Comics Journal.

Below, I’ve compiled a list of seven titles that best represent the VIZ Signature catalog. In choosing manga for this list, I was less concerned about identifying the “best” titles and more concerned with steering readers towards stories that resonate with their taste in movies, television, and comics. I’ve also focused on more recent series, as some of the line’s older titles — Monster, Sexy Voice and Robo, Phoenix — are out of print. Manga fans are strongly encouraged to add their recommendations in the comments section!

ALL MY DARLING DAUGHTERS

FUMI YOSHINAGA • 1 VOLUME

The five vignettes in All My Darling Daughters depict women negotiating difficult personal relationships: a daughter confronts her mother about mom’s new, much younger husband; a college student seduces her professor, only to dump him when he tries to court her properly; a beautiful young woman contemplates an arranged marriage. Like all of Yoshinaga’s work, the characters in All My Darling Daughters love to talk. That chattiness isn’t always an asset to Yoshinaga’s storytelling, but here the dialogue is perfectly calibrated to reveal just how complex and ambivalent these relationships really are. Yoshinaga’s artwork is understated but effective, as she uses small details — how a character stands or carries her shoulders — to offer a more complete and nuanced portrait of each woman. (One of my picks for Best New Manga of 2010.)

Recommended for: Readers who liked Drinking at the Movies, Dykes to Watch Out For, Make Me a Woman, and other graphic novels exploring the everyday lives of women; readers who are reluctant to commit to a multi-volume series.

BIOMEGA

TSUTOMU NIHEI • 6 VOLUMES

In this sci-fi/horror hybrid, an outbreak of a mysterious virus turns all but one resident of an island colony into zombies. Zoichi Kanoe, a corporate bounty hunter, is sent to retrieve that survivor, only to discover that she’s being guarded by a talking, gun-toting bear. Tsutomu Nihei has the artistic chops to pull off some outlandish stuff, including a rooftop chase scene that borrows a few pages from Bullitt and a spooky Martian prologue that would do John Carpenter proud. Nihei also has the good sense to exercise restraint — if one can describe an apocalyptic zombie scenario with pistol-packing grizzlies as “restrained” — revealing key bits of information only as the characters learn them. The result is a lean, fast-paced shoot-em-up that has just enough thought behind it to make it plausible but not so much that it seems ham-fistedly allegorical. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 2/14/10.)

Recommended for: Readers who like science fiction with elements of horror (e.g. Alien, John Carpenter’s The Thing); readers who like zombie fiction, comics, and movies.

DETROIT METAL CITY

KIMINORI WAKASUHI • 10 VOLUMES

Satirizing death metal is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel: how hard can it be to parody a style associated with bands named Cannibal Corpse or Necrophagia? Poking fun at death metal while respecting the sincerity of its followers, however, is a much more difficult trick to pull off, yet Kiminori Wakasugi does just that in Detroit Metal City, ridiculing the music — the violent lyrics, the crudely sexual theatrics — while recognizing the depth of DMC fans’ commitment to the metal lifestyle. Though the musical parodies are hilarious, the series’ funniest moments arise from classic fish-out-of-water situations: Negishi driving a tractor on his parent’s farm while dressed as alter ego Lord Krauser (complete with makeup, fright wig, and platform boots), Negishi bringing a fruit basket to a hospitalized DMC fan while dressed as Krauser… you get the idea. The series begins to run out of gas around volume six, but has the decency not to overstay its welcome. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 5/28/09.)

Recommended for: Readers who love musical parodies (e.g. This Is Spinal Tap, South Park, Flight of the Conchords); readers who have fond memories of attending KISS or GWAR concerts back in the day.

HOUSE OF FIVE LEAVES

NATSUME ONO • 7 VOLUMES, ONGOING (8 TOTAL)

Timid ronin Akitsu Masanosuke can’t hold a steady job, despite his formidable swordsmanship. When a businessman approaches him with work, Masanosuke readily accepts, not realizing that his new employer, Yaichi, runs a crime syndicate that specializes in kidnapping. Masanosuke’s unwitting participation in a blackmailing scheme prevents him from severing his ties to Yaichi; Masanosuke must then decide if he will join the House of Five Leaves or bide his time until he can escape. Though Toshiro Mifune and Hiroyuki Sanada have made entire careers out of playing characters like Masanosuke, Natsume Ono makes a persuasive case that you don’t need a flesh-and-blood actor to tell this kind of story with heartbreaking intensity; she can do the slow-burn on the printed page with the same skill as Masaki Kobayashi (Hara Kiri, Samurai Rebellion) and Yoji Yamada (The Twilight Samurai) did on the big screen. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 8/20/10.)

Recommended for: Kurosawa junkies; readers who like costume dramas; readers with an interest in Japanese history.

OISHINBO A LA CARTE

STORY BY TETSY KARIYA, ART BY HANASAKI AKIRA • 7 VOLUMES

Equal parts Iron Wok Jan, Mostly Martha, and The Manga Cookbook, this educational, entertaining series explores Japanese cuisine at its most refined — sake, seabream sashimi — and its most basic — rice, pub food. The stories fall into two categories: stories celebrating the important role of food in creating community, and stories celebrating the culinary expertise of its principal characters, newspaperman Yamaoka Shiro and his curmudgeonly father Kaibara Yuzan. (Fun fact: Yuzan is such a food snob that he drove Yamaoka’s mother to an early grave, causing an irreparable break between father and son.) Though the competition between Yamaoka and Yuzan yields some elegant, mouth-watering dishes, Oishinbo is at its best when it focuses on everyday food in everyday settings, shedding light on how the Japanese prepare everything from bean sprouts to ramen. Warning: never read on an empty stomach! (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 6/24/09.)

Recommended for: Foodies, gourmets, and other people who like to watch the Food Network (or have daydreamed about becoming a restaurant critic); readers who enjoy The Drops of God.

REAL

TAKEHIKO INOUE • 10 VOLUMES, ONGOING

In lesser hands, REAL might have been an Afterschool Special in manga form, an earnest, uplifting story about disabled teens who find a new sense of purpose on the basketball court. Takehiko Inoue, however, steers clear of easy sentiment; his characters are tough, competitive, and profane, occasionally self-pitying, and fiercely determined to create a space for themselves that’s theirs—and theirs alone. Though the court scenes are brief (at least by shonen sports manga standards, where matches can take several volumes to unfold), Inoue captures the speed and energy of his athletes with consummate skill. A funny, honest, and sometimes rueful series that works equally well for teens and adults. (My choice for Best New Manga of 2008 at PopCultureShock; reviewed at The Manga Critic on 5/3/09.)

Recommended for: Basketball enthusiasts; readers who enjoy sports stories with a human interest angle.

20TH CENTURY BOYS

NAOKI URASAWA • 20 VOLUMES, ONGOING (24 TOTAL)

Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys tells a twisty, layered story about ordinary people saving the world from annihilation. Other auteurs have explore similar turf — Tim Kring’s Heroes comes to mind — but Urasawa manages to sustain the reader’s interest without succumbing to cliche or unduly testing our patience. The key to Urasawa’s success is strong script with vivid characters and a clear sense of purpose, reassuring the reader that all the plot strands are just that: strands, not loose threads. Crisp, detailed artwork helps sell the more ludicrous aspects of the story, and distinguish the sprawling cast from one another. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 1/9/10.)

Recommended for: Conspiracy theory buffs; readers who enjoy television programs that blend elements of science fiction, suspense, and paranoia (e.g. Alcatraz, Heroes, Lost).

7 Essential VIZ Signature Manga

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Are you an adult reader new to manga? Or a librarian who’s looking to add more graphic novels to your adult collection? Then this list is for you! The VIZ Signature imprint is one of the best resources for adults who read — or are curious about — manga. All of the Signature titles originally appeared in Japanese magazines that cater to grown-up tastes. As a result, the Signature line has broader appeal than many of VIZ’s other imprints, offering something for manga lovers who have “aged out” of Naruto as well as general interest readers who are more likely to discover a graphic novel through The New York Times than The Comics Journal.

Below, I’ve compiled a list of seven titles that best represent the VIZ Signature catalog. In choosing manga for this list, I was less concerned about identifying the “best” titles and more concerned with steering readers towards stories that resonate with their taste in movies, television, and comics. I’ve also focused on more recent series, as some of the line’s older titles — Monster, Sexy Voice and Robo, Phoenix — are out of print. Manga fans are strongly encouraged to add their recommendations in the comments section!

All My Darling Daughters
By Fumi Yoshinaga • 1 volume
The five vignettes in All My Darling Daughters depict women negotiating difficult personal relationships: a daughter confronts her mother about mom’s new, much younger husband; a college student seduces her professor, only to dump him when he tries to court her properly; a beautiful young woman contemplates an arranged marriage. Like all of Yoshinaga’s work, the characters in All My Darling Daughters love to talk. That chattiness isn’t always an asset to Yoshinaga’s storytelling, but here the dialogue is perfectly calibrated to reveal just how complex and ambivalent these relationships really are. Yoshinaga’s artwork is understated but effective, as she uses small details — how a character stands or carries her shoulders — to offer a more complete and nuanced portrait of each woman. (One of my picks for Best New Manga of 2010.)

Recommended for: Readers who liked Drinking at the Movies, Dykes to Watch Out For, Make Me a Woman, and other graphic novels exploring the everyday lives of women; readers who are reluctant to commit to a multi-volume series.

Biomega
By Tsutomu Nihei • 6 volumes
In this sci-fi/horror hybrid, an outbreak of a mysterious virus turns all but one resident of an island colony into zombies. Zoichi Kanoe, a corporate bounty hunter, is sent to retrieve that survivor, only to discover that she’s being guarded by a talking, gun-toting bear. Tsutomu Nihei has the artistic chops to pull off some outlandish stuff, including a rooftop chase scene that borrows a few pages from Bullitt and a spooky Martian prologue that would do John Carpenter proud. Nihei also has the good sense to exercise restraint — if one can describe an apocalyptic zombie scenario with pistol-packing grizzlies as “restrained” — revealing key bits of information only as the characters learn them. The result is a lean, fast-paced shoot-em-up that has just enough thought behind it to make it plausible but not so much that it seems ham-fistedly allegorical. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 2/14/10.)

Recommended for: Readers who like science fiction with elements of horror (e.g. Alien, John Carpenter’s The Thing); readers who like zombie fiction, comics, and movies.

Detroit Metal City
By Kiminori Wakasuhi • 10 volumes
Satirizing death metal is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel: how hard can it be to parody a style associated with bands named Cannibal Corpse or Necrophagia? Poking fun at death metal while respecting the sincerity of its followers, however, is a much more difficult trick to pull off, yet Kiminori Wakasugi does just that in Detroit Metal City, ridiculing the music — the violent lyrics, the crudely sexual theatrics — while recognizing the depth of DMC fans’ commitment to the metal lifestyle. Though the musical parodies are hilarious, the series’ funniest moments arise from classic fish-out-of-water situations: Negishi driving a tractor on his parent’s farm while dressed as alter ego Lord Krauser (complete with makeup, fright wig, and platform boots), Negishi bringing a fruit basket to a hospitalized DMC fan while dressed as Krauser… you get the idea. The series begins to run out of gas around volume six, but has the decency not to overstay its welcome. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 5/28/09.)

Recommended for: Readers who love musical parodies (e.g. This Is Spinal Tap, South Park, Flight of the Conchords); readers who have fond memories of attending KISS or GWAR concerts back in the day.

House of Five Leaves
By Natsume Ono • 8 volumes
Timid ronin Akitsu Masanosuke can’t hold a steady job, despite his formidable swordsmanship. When a businessman approaches him with work, Masanosuke readily accepts, not realizing that his new employer, Yaichi, runs a crime syndicate that specializes in kidnapping. Masanosuke’s unwitting participation in a blackmailing scheme prevents him from severing his ties to Yaichi; Masanosuke must then decide if he will join the House of Five Leaves or bide his time until he can escape. Though Toshiro Mifune and Hiroyuki Sanada have made entire careers out of playing characters like Masanosuke, Natsume Ono makes a persuasive case that you don’t need a flesh-and-blood actor to tell this kind of story with heartbreaking intensity; she can do the slow-burn on the printed page with the same skill as Masaki Kobayashi (Hara Kiri, Samurai Rebellion) and Yoji Yamada (The Twilight Samurai) did on the big screen. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 8/20/10.)

Recommended for: Kurosawa junkies; readers who like costume dramas; readers with an interest in Japanese history.

Oishinbo a la Carte
Story by Tetsy Kariya, Art by Hanasaki Akira • 7 volumes
Equal parts Iron Wok Jan, Mostly Martha, and The Manga Cookbook, this educational, entertaining series explores Japanese cuisine at its most refined — sake, seabream sashimi — and its most basic — rice, pub food. The stories fall into two categories: stories celebrating the important role of food in creating community, and stories celebrating the culinary expertise of its principal characters, newspaperman Yamaoka Shiro and his curmudgeonly father Kaibara Yuzan. (Fun fact: Yuzan is such a food snob that he drove Yamaoka’s mother to an early grave, causing an irreparable break between father and son.) Though the competition between Yamaoka and Yuzan yields some elegant, mouth-watering dishes, Oishinbo is at its best when it focuses on everyday food in everyday settings, shedding light on how the Japanese prepare everything from bean sprouts to ramen. Warning: never read on an empty stomach! (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 6/24/09.)

Recommended for: Foodies, gourmets, and other people who like to watch the Food Network (or have daydreamed about becoming a restaurant critic); readers who enjoy The Drops of God.

Real
By Takehiko Inoue • 15 volumes (ongoing)
In lesser hands, REAL might have been an Afterschool Special in manga form, an earnest, uplifting story about disabled teens who find a new sense of purpose on the basketball court. Takehiko Inoue, however, steers clear of easy sentiment; his characters are tough, competitive, and profane, occasionally self-pitying, and fiercely determined to create a space for themselves that’s theirs—and theirs alone. Though the court scenes are brief (at least by shonen sports manga standards, where matches can take several volumes to unfold), Inoue captures the speed and energy of his athletes with consummate skill. A funny, honest, and sometimes rueful series that works equally well for teens and adults. (My choice for Best New Manga of 2008 at PopCultureShock; reviewed at The Manga Critic on 5/3/09.)

Recommended for: Basketball enthusiasts; readers who enjoy sports stories with a human interest angle.

20th Century Boys
By Naoki Urasawa • 24 vols.
Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys tells a twisty, layered story about ordinary people saving the world from annihilation. Other auteurs have explore similar turf — Tim Kring’s Heroes comes to mind — but Urasawa manages to sustain the reader’s interest without succumbing to cliche or unduly testing our patience. The key to Urasawa’s success is strong script with vivid characters and a clear sense of purpose, reassuring the reader that all the plot strands are just that: strands, not loose threads. Crisp, detailed artwork helps sell the more ludicrous aspects of the story, and distinguish the sprawling cast from one another. (Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 1/9/10.)

Recommended for: Conspiracy theory buffs; readers who enjoy television programs that blend elements of science fiction, suspense, and paranoia (e.g. Alcatraz, Heroes, Lost).

Cage of Eden, Vol. 1

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a trans-Pacific flight encounters turbulence, and before any of the passengers can shout “J.J. Abrams!” — or “William Golding!” for that matter — the plane crash-lands an uninhabited tropical island, far from civilization’s reach. In some variations of the story, the island itself poses the greatest danger to survivors, harboring monsters or malevolent spirits. In other versions, the survivors’ own fear and narcissism proves more deadly than any jungle-dwelling creatures, as the rude wilderness strips away the survivors’ veneer of humanity.

In Cage of Eden, Yoshinobu Yamada combines these two survival narratives to tell the story of a high school holiday gone horribly wrong. Cage’s teen heroes crash-land in a prehistoric forest populated by long-extinct animals: saber-toothed tigers, horse-sized birds. These big, hungry predators aren’t the only threat to the students’ safety, however. Yarai, the class delinquent, seizes the opportunity to act on his darkest impulses, terrorizing his peers and the doomed flight’s captain. Only Akira, a small, self-described loser, and Mariya, a bespectacled, anti-social genius, have the skills and the smarts to outwit both enemies.

Though the story unfurls at a good clip, the execution is a little creaky. The opening chapter is a choppy information dump, as Yamada introduces the principal characters, delineates their relationships, and reveals the purpose of their plane trip. Once on the island, Mariya’s computer proves shockingly durable — it boots up without protest, despite plunging 35,000 feet — and helpfully equipped with a searchable database of extinct animals. (“Even without internet, I can still access program files,” Mariya solemnly informs an incredulous Akira.) The characters speak fluent exposition, frequently explaining things to one another that are readily obvious from Yamada’s crisply executed drawings. Worse still, the intelligent dialogue is reserved for the male characters; the few female characters’ primary role is to be menaced, rescued, and ogled, though not necessarily in that order.

However obvious the script or ubiquitous the cheesecake — and yes, the fanservice is executed with all the subtlety of a tap-dancing hippopotamus — Cage of Eden has a cheerful, B-movie vibe that’s hard to resist. The monsters are rendered in loving detail, down to their sinews and feathers and claws; as they tear across the page, it’s not hard to imagine how terrified the characters must be, or how fast they need to run in order to escape. The setting, too, is a boon, offering Yamada numerous places to conceal a dangerous animal or booby trap. Even the characters are effective. Though drawn in broad strokes, Akira is a sympathetic lead; he’s prone to self-doubt after years of being a bench warmer, an academic failure, a mama’s boy, and a second banana to the most popular student in his class. That the island provides him a chance to prove his worth isn’t surprising — that’s de rigeur for the genre — but Akira’s mixture of humility and bravery is refreshing, helping distract the reader from the absurdity of his action-movie heroics.

I won’t make any grand claims for Cage of Eden: on many levels, it’s dumber than a peroxide blonde, with characters doing and saying things that defy common sense. Yet Yoshinobu Yamada demonstrates a genuine flair for writing popcorn-movie manga, populating the island with scary-looking monsters and staging thrilling action sequences that temporarily erase the memory of the clumsy dialogue and panty shots. Cage of Eden is the perfect beach read for the final days of August: it’s fun and fast-paced, placing few demands on the sun-addled reader.

CAGE OF EDEN, VOL. 1 • BY YOSHINOBU YAMADA • KODANSHA COMICS USA • 200 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

My 10 Favorite TOKYOPOP Titles

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Like many other readers who first discovered manga in the mid-2000s, TOKYOPOP played a major role in introducing me to to the medium. Tokyo Babylon was the first TOKYOPOP title I ever read, followed soon after by Legal Drug, The Legend of Chun-Hyang, and — God help me — Model, a manhwa about a Korean art student who lives in a crumbling mansion with two European vampires. (I should add that the vampires are male and the student is female, and both vampires appear to have bought their wardrobes at Hot Topic.) Though I’d be the first to admit that some of the manga I read were terrible, what I remember most about them was their romanticism: these were big, bold stories featuring impossibly beautiful characters in ridiculous situations, and I couldn’t get enough of them.

Over the years, my tastes have changed considerably, but I still feel a special allegiance to TOKYOPOP: its catalog is so large and diverse that I found plenty of other series to read when I outgrew my initial infatuation with overripe shojo. I had a hard time confining myself to just ten titles; I agonized about whether to include Mitsuhazu Mihara’s Doll, and Erica Sakakurazawa’s Between the Sheets, and Kenji Sonishi’s Neko Ramen, and Minetaro Mochizuki’s Dragon Head, all excellent series that still have pride of place in my manga library. In the end, however, I decided I had to put a cap on the number of titles to prevent my list from swelling to unmanageable proportions. Below are my ten favorite TOKYOPOP manga.

10. JYU-OH-SEI (Natsumi Itsuki)

After their parents are assassinated, twin brothers Rai and Thor are exiled to the penal colony of Kimaera, where they discover extreme weather, man-eating plants, and an elaborate tribal system in which women call the shots. Their only hope of escaping the planet’s inhospitable surface is for one of them to fight his way up the social ladder to become The Beast King, or supreme ruler of Kimaera. Like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and District 9, Jyu-Oh-Sei addresses social taboos and scientific issues while serving up generous portions of what audiences crave most: action, romance, monsters, and explosions. Best of all, Jyu-Oh-Sei comes in a neat, three-volume package that’s long enough to allow for world-building and character development but short enough to stay fresh and surprising until the end. –Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 8/14/09

9. PETSHOP OF HORRORS (Matsuri Akino)

You won’t mistake Count D’s emporium for PETCO—the animals he sells are, in fact, demons, demi-gods, and shape-shifters who assume various guises. (One of the series’ running jokes is that some pets take human form, arousing the landlord’s suspicions that Count D actually runs a brothel.) Count D selects a pet for each customer that will help its owner realize a long-repressed dream. Of course, Count D’s services don’t come cheap; each character suffers an unexpected and often terrible consequence for seeking a magical solution to her problems. What sets Petshop apart from other examples of comeuppance theater is the writing. The characters’ plights elicit genuine sympathy from the reader; though we want these mothers and writers and lovesick twenty-something to find happiness, we can see that their own wishes are sometimes selfish, unwise, or genuinely harmful. –Reviewed at PopCultureShock on 2/13/08

8. SHIRAHIME-SYO: SNOW GODDESS TALES (Clamp)

This lovely anthology is a radical departure for CLAMP. Gone are the super-detailed costumes and fussy character designs of their early, post-doujinshi work; in their place are spare, simply-drawn figures that seem consciously modeled on examples from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scroll paintings. The stories themselves are told directly without embellishment, though CLAMP infuses each tale with genuine pathos, showing us how the characters’ anger and doubt lead to profound despair. As a result, the prevailing tone and spirit are reminiscent of Masaki Kobayashi’s 1964 film Kwaidan, both in the stories’ fidelity to the conventions of Japanese folklore and in their lyrical restraint. My favorite work by CLAMP.

7. SUPPLI (Mari Okazaki)

After being dumped by a long-term boyfriend, twenty-seven-year-old ad executive Minami carves a new identity for herself, accepting more challenging work assignments, forging friendships with her office mates, and exploring her feelings for two very different men: Ishida, a blunt co-worker with bad-boy sex appeal, and Ogiwara, a Tokyo University grad who looks great on paper, but has some nasty romantic baggage of his own. Suppli vividly and humorously evokes office life, from the unproductive meetings and grueling all-nighters to the horseplay and flirtatious banter between co-workers. The denizens of Minami’s office are colorful, if one-dimensional, characters: a salty old maid, two flamboyant karaoke fiends, and a tart-tongued temp who offers sound relationship advice to her officemates while sleeping with a married man. Anyone who’s watched Ally McBeal, The Office, or Ugly Betty has encountered these types before, but Mari Okazaki breathes fresh life into her scenario with stylish artwork, sharp dialogue, and a heroine who occasionally doubts herself, but isn’t neurotic . —Reviewed at PopCultureShock on 12/5/07

6. CYBORG 009 (Shotaro Ishimontori)

Cyborg 009 was one of TOKYOPOP’s few forays into classic manga — a pity, because TOKYOPOP did a solid job translating and packaging Shotaro Ishimonori’s best-known work. For readers unfamiliar with this iconic series, the plot revolves around a group of people who have been kidnapped and brought to the lair of the Black Ghost organization, where surgeons transform them into robot-human fighting machines. The cyborgs soon turn on their creators and escape, intent on preventing armaggedon. I’d be the first to admit that Cyborg 009 is dated: the Black Ghost’s world-domination schemes have the same quaintly outdated ring as Dr. Evil’s, and several characters embody unfortunate gender and racial stereotypes. (As Shaenon Garrity dryly observes, “Cyborg 003 is a French girl with enhanced senses. Her duties are to hold the baby and occasionally hear things.”) Yet Ishimonori’s crisp cartooning, imaginatively staged battle scenes, and fundamental — if fumbling — humanism remain as arresting now as they did when the series first debuted in 1964.

5. QWAN (Aki Shimizu)

Meet Qwan, a child-like figure who possesses super-human strength and speed. Though Qwan realizes he isn’t human, he’s never questioned his origins or abilities — that is, until he meets Shaga, a courtesan who urges him to seek the Essential Arts of Peace, a sutra that will reveal where Qwan came from and why he was sent to live among humans. Questing boys and magical scrolls are de rigeur in fantasy-adventure stories, but Qwan distinguishes itself in two crucial areas: terrific characters and gorgeous artwork. Aki Shimizu’s hero is far more quirky and interesting than the typical shonen lead — Qwan never promises to do his best, or to put friends before himself — while Shimizu’s fight scenes are among the most beautifully choreographed in any licensed manga. TOKYOPOP never finished this one-of-a-kind series, but it’s still worth seeking out, if only to get acquainted with a criminally under-appreciated artist. –Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 3/3/11

4. PARADISE KISS (Ai Yazawa)

Ai Yazawa knows how to have her cake and eat it, too: though she loves to write stories about such fantasy professions as runway model and rock star, she populates those stories with characters whose relationships and values are firmly rooted in everyday life. Consider Yukari (a.k.a. “Caroline”), the heroine of Paradise Kiss: Yukari becomes the muse for a group of aspiring fashion designers, modeling their clothing at a big design-school show and inspiring their most talented member, George, to new creative heights. In most manga, Yukari and George would bicker like teenage versions of Beatrice and Benedict until they finally admitted their mutual feelings of attraction; in Paradise Kiss, however, Yukari and George’s relationship unfolds in a more haphazard, organic way that reflects the fact that George is far more worldly and romantically experienced than Yukari. For my money, Paradise Kiss is Yazawa’s best work to date.

3. YOUR & MY SECRET (Ai Morinaga)

Your & My Secret focuses on Nanako, a swaggering tomboy who lives with her mad scientist grandfather, and Akira, an effeminate boy who adores her. With the flick of a switch, Akira becomes the unwitting test subject for the grandfather’s latest invention, a gizmo designed to transfer personalities from one body to another. Nanako revels in her new-found freedom as a boy, enjoying sudden popularity among classmates, earning the respect of Akira’s contemptuous little sister, and discovering the physical strength to dunk a basketball. Akira, on the other hand, finds his situation a mixed bag: for the first time in his life, his sensitive personality endears him to both male and female peers, but many of the things his maleness had previously exempted him from turn out to be much worse than he’d imagined. There are plenty of gender-bending hijinks — and the inevitable blackmail scene in which someone threatens to reveal Akira’s secret — but Morinaga still allows her characters moments of vulnerability and decency, preventing the humor from curdling into pure meanness. –Reviewed at The Manga Critic on 4/25/10

2. TRAMPS LIKE US (Yayoi Ogawa)

Twenty-eight-year-old Sumire Iwaya is frustrated: though she’s a successful journalist with degrees from Tokyo U. and Harvard, she’s hit the glass ceiling at her job and has just been dumped by her fiance. When she discovers a cute but dissheveled young man sleeping in a box outside her apartment, Sumire “adopts” him, allowing Takeshi to stay in her apartment as her “pet.” You don’t need a PhD in manga to guess the outcome of their unusual arrangement, but romantic triangles and workplace intrigue prevent Tramps Like Us from spinning into complete silliness or offensive gender stereotyping. But what really stayed with me was the depiction of Sumire’s romance with her handsome senpai Hasumi; almost every woman I know has had a relationship like theirs — perfect on paper, but stressful and unhappy in practice — and Yayoi Ogawa captures Sumire and Hasumi’s awkward dynamic in pitch-perfect detail. Now that’s good writing.

1. PLANETES (Makoto Yukimura)

Planetes is that rarest of manga: a human interest story that just happens to have some sci-fi trappings.Planetes focuses on a motley crew of junk collectors that includes Hachimaki, a young astronaut who aspires to join a pioneering mission to Jupiter; Yuri, a Russian astronaut with a Tragic Past; Tanabe, a sensitive but emotionally resilient trainee; and Fee, the ship’s balls-to-the-wall captain. Makoto Yukimura skillfully uses of each of his principal characters’ personal histories to explore meaty issues such as eco-terrorism, space pollution, and good old-fashioned racism. I know, I know — I’m making Planetes sound like Star Trek: Deep Space Waste Removal Station, but Yukimura is a more graceful storyteller than Gene Rodenberry every was, allowing the characters’ actions to speak louder than their words. Vivid, detailed artwork brings the terrestrial and extra-terrestrial settings to life.

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So I turn the floor over to you: which titles were your favorites? Which ones deserve to be rescued and finished by another publisher? Inquiring minds want to know!

POSTSCRIPT, 4/20/11: Readers seeking a list of titles published by TOKYOPOP may wish to consult the ANN database entry on TOKYOPOP, the Comic Book DB entry on TOKYOPOP, or Wikipedia’s list of titles published by TOKYOPOP. I can’t vouch for their accuracy, but a quick glance at all three website suggests that these lists are comprehensive. Special thanks to all the folks on Twitter who pointed me towards these resources: @skleefeld, @yuriboke, @Funkgun, and @andrecomics.