It’s antithetical to my usual way of thinking, but I’m happy the weekend is over. It was pretty crappy all in all, a stream of irritating, energy-sapping chores that couldn’t be avoided. Fortunately, the ick was mitigated with some really interesting manga reading. And gin, but that’s a different post.
Given my usual aversion to violent and shocking comics, you’d think I would have hated Battle Royale. That wasn’t the case, and I found this grisly, twist-a-minute comic really compelling. As with Planetes, it’s not hard to imagine how the particular future portrayed in this story might come to pass. As a result, the violence is justified by the narrative circumstances, and the sociological implications are much more interesting. (I guess I’m going to have to qualify my previous thinking: I don’t mind violence and shock when they actually serve the story instead of try to distract you from how empty it is.) I definitely want to read more of this, though it doesn’t seem like it should be consumed in large doses.
I did consume a large dose of Iron Wok Jan! over the weekend, thanks to a sale at DollarManga. I’m quite smitten with Celine Yang, the Asian-French upstart from Kobe who brings her Nouvelle Chinoise stylings into the mix. I think it’s really smart of creator Shinji Saijyo to keep a balance between volatile, obnoxious Jan and dutiful, customer-focused Kiriko. Their rivalry is still engaging because their philosophies are so different. (Jan may be more inspired and technically proficient than Kiriko, but that doesn’t help if everyone hates you.) One point of concern extends to both Celine and Kiriko: these girls are stacked, and if they’re going to spend their working lives standing at a stove, they are facing a world of back problems beyond the litany of physical ailments that typically plague professional chefs.
Othello is an engrossing shojo title that demonstrates what can happen when a teen sticks too closely to societal norms. Protagonist Yaya has struggled so hard to fit in that she’s repressed almost every natural impulse she has. Her desire to avoid conflict has left her stuck with two venomous bitches as “best friends,” too, which compounds her problems. Enter Nana, Yaya’s aggressive split personality, who emerges to right the wrongs committed against her other self. A question lurks around the story’s edges: is Nana’s aggression really any better than Yaya’s passivity? This manga seems to be heading in a fairly complex direction, not just as wish-fulfillment or revenge fantasy.
Junji Ito’s Tomie is another unsettling offering from this creator. In Uzumaki, Ito presented a fairly sympathetic cast of protagonists stuck in circumstances beyond their control. In Tomie, everyone’s a little bit guilty of something. It adds a nice edge to the proceedings and creates an interesting level of reader ambivalence. I can’t really say much more about this manga without giving away too many unpleasant surprises, but I can say that it demonstrates Ito’s ability to find profoundly creepy imagery in the mundane.