After reading the second issue of Shojo Beat, I’ve decided I like the idea of the magazine better than the magazine itself.
That isn’t to say that I think Shojo Beat is bad. On the contrary, I think it has a lot of strengths in terms of concept and content, and I hope it fares as well in the market as Shonen Jump. But the second issue helped me realize that anthologies just aren’t my favorite manga delivery system.
I like the big, meaty chunks of story that come in tankoubons. And I think the titles I enjoy in Shojo Beat (like Ai Yazawa’s Nana and Mitsuba Takanashi’s Crimson Hero) would read better in that format. So far, Yû Watase’s Absolute Boyfriend seems to work well in monthly doses, but I don’t think it will lose anything in collection.
The other benefit of sticking to digests is to limit my exposure to manga I really don’t like. I don’t know about you, but what little capacity for frugality I have usually results in some weird kind of entertainment masochism. I can very rarely pay for a comic, book, or movie ticket and give up halfway through, no matter how awful I think it is. If I buy an anthology, I feel compelled to read all of it in service of the abstract notion of “getting my money’s worth.”
So that means I forced myself to read the second chapters of Taeko Watanabe’s Kaze Hikaru and Kaori Yuki’s Godchild. Kaze Hikaru makes a bit more sense this time around, but I still don’t find it very interesting. (It actually had a narcoleptic effect.) Godchild is pretty to look at, but the dialogue is agonizing:
“How many times do I have to tell you that I would never give my precious little sister to a guy whose parents disowned him, even though he’s the eldest son of the Gabriel Baroncy?! Do you have a Lolita complex?”
Since I haven’t found the plots to be great shakes, the clunky, anachronistic chatter is even more of an irritant.
I’m not really sure where Marimo Ragawa’s Baby & Me is going, though I do know that it’s shamelessly manipulative. That isn’t a criticism on its own, but the manipulation here is kind of crude. I worry about the toddler wandering into an elevator shaft, worry about the kid spending decades in therapy, and puzzle at the grown-ups who don’t seem to find the situation problematic. If it were a dark comedy, it might hold together for me. As it is, I don’t know what to make of it (and I’m not inclined to watch it too closely to find out).
I do love the concept of targeted anthologies, though. If the market could sustain them, I’d like to see more, especially if they were genre-based. It’s probably impractical (and would certainly be a huge investment), but what about anthologies focusing on science fiction, fantasy, mystery, sports, and other story types, or audience-focused collections of josei or yaoi? And since I’m clearly in a fantasy world at the moment, why not mix in some avant-garde stories and genre classics along with the popular, contemporary titles, just to test demand for translations of these neglected works?
Okay, that’s a weird request coming after my claim that I really don’t like reading manga in an anthology format. But with anthologies come the possibility of more digests, which I do like, so it’s a self-serving suggestion. So in summary, I would like for manga publishers to continue spending millions of dollars on publishing experiments that may or may not result in me buying a few more paperbacks. Yes, I’m just that narcissistic.