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The Josei Alphabet: Y

July 20, 2011 by

“Y” is for…

Yami no Koe, written and illustrated by Junji Ito, originally serialized in Asahi Sonorama’s Nemuki, one volume: Another collection of horror shorts from one of the genre’s masters. I love how horror is one of the most popular sub-genres of josei.

Yasha, written and illustrated by Akimi Yoshida, originally serialized in Shogakukan’s Betsucomi (shôjo) and Flowers (josei), 12 volumes: A gifted kid’s mother is murdered, and he’s subsequently kidnapped. He returns to his home town, a small island off of Okinawa, six years later with a title (doctor), an entourage of bodyguards, and a whole lot of secrets. More presumably sexy mystery from the creator of Banana Fish, this won a Shogakukan prize in 2002.

Yoru Café, written and illustrated by Maki Enjouji, originally serialized in Shogakukan’s Petit Comic, three volumes: A widow inherits a café and its harem of handsome male employees. Manga about eateries with hunky staff members is almost always made of more win than lose.

Yukan Kurabu, written and illustrated by Yukari Ichijo, originally serialized in Shueisha’s Ribon (shôjo) and Chorus (josei), 19 volumes: The quirky offspring of three famous men (a police commissioner, an ambassador, and a painter) solve crimes to pass the time. There are few things I love more than quirky people solving crimes because they’re bored.

Yuru Koi, written and illustrated by Aki Yoshino, originally serialized in Shogakukan’s Petit Comic, one volume: This meet-cute romance is about a woman who moves back home after quitting her job and a guy who seems to be jerky but probably isn’t. I just love the cover. It glows.

Josei magazines:

  • You, published by Shueisha
  • Young You, published by Shueisha

What starts with “Y” in your josei alphabet?

Filed under: FEATURES, The Josei Alphabet 1 Comment

Upcoming 7/20/2011

July 19, 2011 by

There isn’t a ton of material shipping via Diamond this week. Highlights are Natsume Ono’s professional debut, La Quinta Camera (Viz), which I reviewed here, and my current Pick of the Week, the sixth volume of Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ôoku: The Inner Chambers (also from Viz).

Another book on my radar is the third volume of Natsumi (Kitchen Princess) Ando’s Arisa from Kodansha. I quite enjoyed the first volume of this mystery series back when Del Rey released it, and it’s always been my intention to continue with it, but I haven’t had any luck finding it on bookstore shelves, so I guess I’m just going to have to buck up and order the second and third online. (I sometimes get fixated on the notion that I should be able to find a given series in a brick-and-mortar shop. I should probably never assume that about anything, should I?)

Speaking of books that aren’t all that easy to find, this week also sees release of the sixth and final volume of Time and Again by JiUn Yun (Yen Press). I really wish Yen would add this series to its iPad application, as I would happily pay to read it by those means.

I did read the ninth volume of Kiyohiko Azuma’s Yotsuba&! via the app, and I found the experience entirely equivalent in terms of delight to the dead-tree approach, with the slight advantage that I didn’t have to kill any trees to do so. I wrote a (belated) blurb about the book for this week’s Bookshelf Briefs, also discussing the fourth book in Viz’s release of Mitsuru Adachi’s Cross Game, which collects the eighth and ninth volumes of the series. Someone else sharing the Adachi love this week is Christopher (Comics212) Butcher for Robot 6’s latest round of What Are You Reading?

Elsewhere in the world, The Japan Times unveils a rich vein of Osamu Tezuka manga made available to iPad users.

And for those of you wondering what Bryan Lee O’Malley would do next now that Scott Pilgrim (Oni) has reached its conclusion, we at least know (courtesy of Publishers Weekly Comics Week) that he’ll be publishing it through Villard.

Filed under: ComicList, DAILY CHATTER, Kodansha Comics, Linkblogging, Viz, Yen Press 2 Comments

The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes

July 18, 2011 by

As much as I’ve loved super-hero comics, I’ve never really enjoyed super-hero cartoons. (Don’t even get me started on super-hero movies. I haven’t liked one since the second Tim Burton Batman movie.) The cartoons tended to seem overly simplified and overblown to me. They either didn’t have any character continuity at all, which made them suffer in comparison to the ongoing comics, or they handled it so baldly that I felt like I was getting a history lesson.

It’s been a while since I’ve read super-hero comics regularly, mostly because they’ve become mope-y and insular beyond even my ability to tolerate. I do have a super-hero cartoon that I love, love, love. It’s The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, which airs on Disney XD (though I’ve been catching up on it on Netflix). Here are some of the reasons why I’m so smitten:

  1. The episodes can be very funny. Part of the fun of the comics is the banter and bickering among the heroes, and writer Christopher Yost does a great job with that. The banter is character-driven rather than writer-specific. The Hulk is a riot. I always thought that character’s addition into the Avengers’ comics canon was a mistake that was hastily and appropriately rectified. He just didn’t work as a part of a team, what with his portrayal elsewhere in Marvel’s shared universe. Here, there’s no other portrayal to consider, so he can be cranky and troublesome, but you still believe he wants to do good with this group. He’s smart in an instinctive way, and he likes to needle people, which yields some great lines. There are also some fun, subtle jokes. I thought it was terrific that the Avengers ended up fighting an alien robot in a drive-in movie theatre, since the tone of the episode was very much in keeping with the kind of creature flicks that ran there.
  2. The episodes that I’ve watched (about half of the first season) are very exciting. The Avengers face big stakes – massive prison break-outs, the Masters of Evil, alien invasion, a takeover by gamma monsters, etc. Even more importantly, those stakes tend to be external to the fact that the Avengers exist. (At a certain point with any super-hero property, a lot of what they do consists of reacting to villains who want revenge.)
  3. There’s a good division of attention among the characters. Someone clearly cares enough to track the way the characters interact and to make sure everyone gets time in the spotlight. There’s a consistent team dynamic that consists of specific individual relationships, which is something the comics don’t manage all of the time, so the show certainly gets extra points for that. And nobody gets marginalized because of power levels: Thor and Hulk are the best at hitting things, but everyone believably brings something to the table – Hawkeye’s skill, Wasp’s energy and speed, and so on.
  4. The gang’s all here. Aside from the horde of villains that crash in and out of the narrative, there are tongs of supporting characters to add spice. You can’t seem to do an adaptation without Nick Fury lurking on the periphery, obviously, but it’s nice to see Jane Foster driving an ambulance, Pepper Potts rolling her eyes at Iron Man, Doc Samson helping out with gamma-related issues, and so on.
  5. There’s good subplot management. The act of teasing to the next big thing while in the midst of the current big thing was always essential to my enjoyment of super-hero comics. That element is very much in place here. Yost is very good at suggesting the current adventure is part of a larger threat, adding a level of excitement and interest.

Now, the series isn’t perfect. The team’s roster needs more women. Wasp is a terrific character, an enthusiastic adventurer who holds her own rather than the dingbat girlfriend she was for so long in the comics. But, as much fun as it is to see the closing team shot at the end of the credits, it’s always sad to see Wasp doing solo duty when it comes to representing women. This might be rectified; Carol Danvers has appeared and taken steps toward her super-hero destiny. In the episodes I’ve watched, the Black Widow has played a significant (though morally ambiguous) role, and Mockingbird made a great impression as a SHIELD agent. But I want to see another super-heroine in the credits, if not more than one.

Also, the theme song is kind of terrible. Rhyming “one” with “won” always grates on my nerves; some couplings only work in print. And yes, that’s picky of me, but I’m a Sondheim devotee, so my expectations of lyrics are very high.

But if you’re like me, and have fond memories of when super-hero adventures were fun to follow, then you really should give this series a try. It’s terrific.

 

Filed under: Marvel, REVIEWS, TV Leave a Comment

Random weekend question: critical condition

July 17, 2011 by

As I prepare for the Manga Moveable Feast featuring Natsuki Takaya’s Fruits Basket (Tokyopop), one nagging thought keeps slightly tinging the pleasure of revisiting the series. I always felt that Fruits Basket was critically under-appreciated. Sure, the series always had its partisans who approached it with the seriousness I felt it deserved, but, on the whole, it seemed like it got dismissed as cute romance, which it stopped being about halfway through the third volume. That critical response might have been because of its demographic, and it might also have been because of its commercial success. (I think there’s a natural and often correct implication to look at an entertainment that makes a lot of money and be suspect of its likely quality. Still, there are plenty of examples of things that are both wildly popular and really good.)

So, for this random weekend question, which comics do you think are critically under-appreciated? What books do you think don’t get the admiration they deserve?

(As a reminder, the Fruits Basket Manga Moveable Feast will run from Sunday, July 24, 2011, through Saturday, July 30, 2011. If you’d like for me to host a piece here, I’d be more than happy to do so.)

 

Filed under: DAILY CHATTER, Manga Moveable Feast, Random weekend question, Tokyopop 21 Comments

License request day: Onmyôji

July 15, 2011 by

[Update: Ed Chavez informs me that the source material isn’t a light novel, but a novel that was serialized in one of Japan’s premiere literary magazines. There’s just not enough strike-through in the world to tidy up the post below, so I’ll let it stand, but I wanted to note the correction in a prominent way. Apologies all around!]

You all know how much I love The Story of Saiunkoku (Viz), Kairi Yura’s spirited adaptation of Sai Yukino’s light novels. You all probably also know that I never let a body of experience get in the way of a recent enthusiasm, so I’m on the lookout for other excellent manga adaptations of light novel series, even though I’m sure they vary wildly in terms of quality. I think I’ve found a winner, though.

It’s actually a literal winner, having won the grand prize for manga at the Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prizes in 2001. I’m referring to Reiko Okano’s adaptation of Baku Yumemakura’s Onmyôji, which ran for 13 volumes in Hakusensha’s Melody. This creates a sort of compound endorsement. The roster of Tezuka Prize winners could also substitute for a list of some of my favorite manga to be published in English with a subset of series I desperately want to see licensed. Melody runs Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ôoku: The Inner Chambers (Viz), another Tezuka Prize winner, so I’m naturally inclined in favor of anything they publish.

The series is currently being published in French by Delcourt’s Akata line. The covers for the volumes released so far are insanely gorgeous. The story follows the work of an imperial magician in the Heian Era who deals with pesky supernatural phenomena like demons and possessed objects. Frankly, it sounds right up my alley: sophisticated supernatural storytelling rich with lots of period detail, plus loads of pretty.

What are some of your favorite light novels? Or manga adaptations of light novels? Or light novel adaptations of manga?

Filed under: License requests, LICENSE REQUESTS 16 Comments

From the stack: Wandering Son vol. 1

July 14, 2011 by

This phenomenon may have been before your time, but do you remember those movies of the week that dealt with social issues? Recognizable small-screen stars would grapple with family strife, illness, and other bits of contemporary malaise, ultimately (though conditionally) triumphing by the end of two hours, where we’d often see Michele Lee or Lindsay Wagner walking serenely on a beach or joyously pushing a child in a swing. Freeze frame.

As with any subset of entertainment, the quality of these outings varied widely. There’s only so much you can do with a big issue in two hours (minus commercials), which tended to necessitate a lack of nuance and a reliance on the star’s charisma to carry the audience through all the exposition. My favorite of these has to be The Last, Best Year, where Mary Tyler Moore helps Bernadette Peters make end-of-life choices after Peters learns she has a terminal illness. It’s great because it forgoes lessons about living wills and detailed diagnosis in favor of what’s going on inside the characters’ heads and hearts. I mist up just thinking about it.

I mention this genre because it does tenuously relate to Takako Shimura’s Wandering Son, which recently debuted from Fantagraphics. It’s kind of a big-issue manga, as it deals with transgendered people, but it’s the best kind of big-issue anything, because it’s so measured and tender and treats its characters with so much respect. Since Shimura doesn’t need to confine her story to 120 minutes or 120 pages, she has the leisure to explore the issue entirely through the characters immersed in it. The time it takes to tell their story is dependent entirely on Shimura’s commitment and the interest of her audience. (The story has been running in Enterbrain’s fifth-genre marvel, Comic Beam, since 2002, so both the commitment and the interest must be substantial.)

Her protagonists are fifth graders in the same class. Shuichi Nitori has transferred to a new school, and he immediately bonds with Yoshino Takatsuki, the girl at the next desk. Both respond to activities and aesthetics that are typically assigned to the other’s gender. Nitori likes to bake. Takatsuki cuts her hair short and covets her father’s old school uniform. Shimura gently shows Nitori and Takatsuki noticing these resonances and starting to recognize what they might imply.

Of course, the characters are 11 years old, so Shimura keeps their evolving feelings and knowledge on the abstract side. One of the most impressive things about this debut volume is how age-appropriate the protagonists’ thinking is. Shimuri isn’t writing about transgendered people issues; she’s writing about two kids and the way they feel. It’s mesmerizing how she can do so with such simplicity and directness while still giving the content often heartbreaking weight.

As Nitori and Takatsuki inch towards a more complex understanding of a part of their identities (and back away from it from time to time), we meet their families and friends. Most fascinating to me is Saori Chiba, who seems to have a precocious understanding of her classmates’ states of mind. Of course, she’s also 11, so understanding a part of a concept doesn’t give her any guidance on how to act on that knowledge. She’s a great catalyst character, interesting in her own right, invested with contradictory feelings and motivations.

It’s often argued that the key element to any successful manga is a relatable protagonist. Shimura has crafted hers so meticulously and is revealing their natures so carefully that it’s virtually impossible not to be deeply invested in them. In part, it’s the actual portrayal in this volume, but it’s also the tremendous potential they have. I want to see them age and mature, struggle and succeed, and find their ways to lives that give them happiness and peace. I don’t think there’s any more a reasonable person could ask of a story like this.

Filed under: Fantagraphics, From the stack, REVIEWS 6 Comments

Wandering, not lost

July 13, 2011 by

I had a great time discussing the first volume of Takako Shimura’s Wandering Son (Fantagraphics) for the latest Manga Out Loud podcast, though I bailed before the talk switched to the anime, as I’m avoiding spoilers. Speaking of that marvelous book, Glen Weldon includes it on his list of “Five Recent Graphic Novels You Really Shouldn’t Miss” for NPR’s Monkey See blog.

In other news, Viz triggered mild panic when it listed the fourth volume of Mitsuru Adachi’s Cross Game as the final volume on its Facebook page. After panicked inquiries from overly invested geeks like me, a Viz rep hastened to reassure us that it was a typo and that they will publish the series in its entirety. PHEW!

 

Filed under: DAILY CHATTER, Fantagraphics, Linkblogging, Viz 1 Comment

The Josei Alphabet: X

July 13, 2011 by

“X” is for…

Xenosaga Episode 1, written and illustrated by Atsushi Baba, based on a video game series developed by NAMCO, originally serialized in Ichijinsha’s Comic Zero-Sum, three volumes: No one really expected the letter “X” to be a treasure trove, did they? But it does give us reassurance that josei magazines can be just as much a part of the anime-manga-game-other sausage factory as any other demographic. If asked to identify a josei publisher that seems intent on reaching a wider audience, I would have to point at Ichijinsha, with its Comic Zero-Sum and Zero-Sum Ward. I could fairly be accused of neglecting Ichijinsha properties in this alphabet; I tend to skim over them because so many of their covers look the same to me, and so many of their plots sound the same to me. (I always feel like I’m reading solicitations from an alternate-universe Image Comics from late 1990s.) That said, it’s awesome that there are at least two comic magazines aimed at adult women that focus on fantasy, adventure, and science fiction. I would assume that Xenosaga Episode 1 follows the plot of the game, which involves a bunch of different factions trying to control a mysterious and powerful artifact called the Zohar on a version of Earth called “Lost Jerusalem.”

What starts with “X” in your josei alphabet?

 

Filed under: FEATURES, The Josei Alphabet 1 Comment

Upcoming 7/13/11

July 12, 2011 by

I generally like to highlight different titles in the Manga Bookshelf Pick of the Week and in these trawls through the ComicList, but sometimes I just have to repeat myself.

Even if this week didn’t mark the inaugural Pick of the Week contribution of Sean (A Case Suitable for Treatment) Gaffney, I’d still be in lockstep with his choice, the fourth collection (containing the eighth and ninth volumes) of Mitsuru Adachi’s Cross Game from Viz Media. Viz is publishing some other perfectly likeable manga this week, but it’s hard for anything not to pale in comparison to Cross Game. To avoid repeating myself, I’ll simply link to myself: here are my reviews of the first, second, and third collections, and here’s my contribution to the Cross Game Manga Moveable Feast.

Speaking of Manga Moveable Feasts, you all know that I’m hosting the July installment on Natsuki Takaya’s transcendent Fruits Basket (Tokyopop), right? The feast will start on Sunday, July 24, and end on Saturday, July 30. I’d be happy to host pieces here, if that would work better for you. Just drop me a line.

And, speaking of critical examination of manga, there’s a jam-packed edition of Bookshelf Briefs for your perusal. I take an look at Natsume Ono’s La Quinta Camera and a feels-belated look at the second Kekkaishi 3-in-1 collection by Yellow Tanabe. Most importantly, Kate (The Manga Critic) Dacey reads the second volume of Ai Ore! so I don’t have to. EVER.

 

Filed under: ComicList, DAILY CHATTER, Linkblogging, Manga Moveable Feast, Tokyopop, Viz 3 Comments

From the stack: Tenjo Tenge vol. 1

July 11, 2011 by

From my point of view, there are tons of reasons to dislike Oh!great’s Tenjo Tenge, which is getting a second English-language release, this time from Viz. The first source of complaint, obviously, is its disastrous first English-language release from DC’s lamented CMX imprint. CMX edited the raunchy, violent series for content, which triggered outrage among members of the most likely core audience for the book.

That decision, hardly genius, gave CMX a permanent black eye among a number of particularly enthusiastic manga fans. No matter how many excellent titles they published, they were always the greedy, tone-deaf censors who violated the purity of Tenjo Tenge. (Repeat the last part of that sentence to yourself.) Years later, when DC cynically shuttered its manga imprint, people were still crowing that they got what they deserved for the shoddy way they treated the series. Of course, some of us couldn’t muster that particular brand of schadenfreude.

And, at the time the series first dropped, some of us were too busy being mildly revolted by the content of the series that survived the editing. And, beyond a negative qualitative assessment, we were left to wonder why DC would publish the series at all if they couldn’t adhere to the style and presentation of the original, since it was hard to imagine how it could be that much more tacky and obnoxious. It was still gross and juvenile and occasionally profoundly offensive, even with the softening.

Now, Viz is presenting the series in its shrink-wrapped, Parental-Advisory glory, because Viz can get away with that sort of thing, having built up a respectable catalog of mature and/or adult manga in addition to its vast reservoir of general-audience material. Please note the “and/or” I put between mature and adult, because it’s a continuum rather than a binary.

I would define “mature manga” as dealing with complex themes in thoughtful and imaginative ways. I would define “adult manga” as including explicit sex and graphic violence. A given title can certainly be both – Felipe Smith’s Peepo Choo (Vertical), Osamu Tezuka’s MW (also Vertical), several of Fumi Yoshinaga’s yaoi works. And describing a title as simply “adult” doesn’t automatically imply that it’s no good; a book can pander all it wants as long as it does so with energy and force. Kazuo Koike defines good adult manga for me, because I don’t find his works thematically challenging, but I do find them engrossing for their structure and the ways his storytelling inspires his collaborating illustrators.

From my point of view, Tenjo Tenge is dumb, pandering trash, and the dumbness is the most unforgiveable quality. It’s about stupid boys who like to kick ass. They muck up the needlessly complex ass-kicking caste system at their new school. Neither lead is particularly likeable, nor are any of the members of the school faction that takes the boys under their wings. The structure of the series is basically “violence, violence, crude humor, violence, female nudity, violence, repeat,” with a truly egregious rape scene thrown into the mix to make the boys sad that someone touched their stuff, also serving to show how evil their nemeses are. That may be the surest way to make me hate a piece of fiction, and Oh!great makes the sequence even more distasteful than usual. (I did wonder, back in the days of CMX’s visual amendments, if that scene would be more or less offensive without the superimposed undergarments. It’s exactly as offensive.)

At some point, I should probably try and disclaim that I’m simply not the audience for this kind of things, because I’m generally not. I can’t really bemoan the fact that thug-brawl manga hasn’t hit it big here, simply because I don’t care to read it. But I really think, even factoring in matters of personal taste, this is just lowbrow and lazy and gross. I’m perfectly capable of liking adult manga. I’m just not in the market for bad adult manga.

(This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.)

Filed under: From the stack, REVIEWS, Viz 14 Comments
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