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Two years later

October 5, 2010 by

Lots of people have posted interesting and valuable reactions to yesterday’s news about Kodansha and Del Rey, particularly Christopher (Comics212) Butcher and Kate (The Manga Critic) Dacey, and I only have a couple of things to add.

First, I’d like to thank Del Rey for publishing some really interesting manga and doing a very nice job of it. I always appreciated the level of care they took with translation, adaptation and annotation of their translation choices. All of those elements really added value to the reading experience, and I hope that Kodansha continues to uphold those production values.

Some of my favorite manga came from the Del Rey imprint: Minoru Toyoda’s Love Roma, Fuyumi Soryo’s ES: Eternal Sabbath, Yuki Urushibara’s Mushishi, Kio Shimoku’s Genshiken, Natsumi Ando and Miyuki Kobayashi’s Kitchen Princess, and Satomi Ikezawa’s Othello, among many others. I hope that this excellent back catalog stays in print, regardless of how things ultimately shake out between Kodansha and Random House. We have enough excellent, orphaned series already.

Some of my current favorite series and titles I’ve hoped to catch up on were also on Del Rey’s slate: Clamp’s xxxHOLic, Tomoko Ninomiya’s Nodame Cantabile, Koji Kumeta’s Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, and Ishikawa Masayuki’s Moyasimon. I hope that Kodansha doesn’t dawdle in the continued publication of these interesting and satisfying works.

But I would be lying if I said I was optimistic. It’s been over two years since word first leaked that Kodansha was taking its English-language distribution into its own hands, and the results have been rather pathetic. The net result has been that significantly less of Kodansha’s catalog is available in print than before. I understand that the economy isn’t friendly to new initiatives, but results thus far have been miserable, especially for a publisher of Kodansha’s size and stature. I hope that this development indicates that Kodansha is going to finally get in gear in terms of shoring up its existing catalog and increasing the number of titles licensed for English publication and that we aren’t asking the same rueful questions in 2012.

Filed under: Del Rey, Kodansha Comics, Linkblogging 2 Comments

Monday musgings

October 4, 2010 by

Over at The Hooded Utilitarian, Erica (Okazu) Friedman talks about the Bechdel Test as it relates to manga. It’s an interesting piece, and it introduces (as far as I know) the concept of the spirit of the test as opposed to its mechanics. Erica goes right to the source (Alison Bechdel) to confirm that her beliefs about the spirit of the test are correct, and it’s probably self-serving of me to insist that the test has value without that qualitative, secret-handshake dimension, but I would argue that all the same.

I would argue it for the reason that I think that books that pass the letter but not the spirit (like Kaoru Mori’s Emma) are more interesting as, say, romantic fiction for the fact that they pass the letter of the test, and that by passing the letter they come closer to the spirit. Erica’s argument – “All romance stories are, by their nature about the relationship and therefore have discussion centered around that.” – strikes me as kind of a blunt axe, to be honest. It’s obviously a fair argument, especially given Bechdel’s view, but it isn’t one that I find personally useful, since I enjoy a lot of romantic fiction and enjoy it more when two women characters talk about things other than their relationships, as in Karuho Shiina’s Kimi Ni Todoke. (But I also like romantic fiction that I suspect miserably fails the Bechdel Test.)

Looking at a title that Erica suggests passes the test “with flying colors,” Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece, I agree that it passes with no problem, especially with the spirit that Erica has overlain. Nami and Robin, the female main characters, talk to each other about things other than men, and they serve no romantic function in the series, largely because there’s no romantic function to be served in the series. (Well, they are worship objects for Sanji, one of the male leads, but they’re generally immune to his adoration.)

If anything, Nami and Robin remind me of the Scarlet Witch and the Wasp at the various points when they both served as Avengers at the same time. Like Nami and Robin, Wanda and Jan never really talked much, but when they did, it wasn’t about their romantic predicaments. Of course, their romantic predicaments were otherwise often central to their respective narrative functions, so perhaps they didn’t pass the spirit of the test as Erica sees it. More likely to pass would be the sequence of Avengers stories that featured the Wasp and She-Hulk, who talked about a lot of stuff but rarely, if ever, relationships.

But, on the whole, I think I’ll stick with the “letter of” definition of the test, just because I think it’s a more useful measure of whether or not I’ll particularly like a series of the sort I’m inclined to like in the first place. (How’s that for selective application of a fairly rigid standard?) And I wouldn’t suggest that only series that pass the Bechdel Test are good series. I love a lot of comics by Naoki Urasawa, but I can’t think of one off hand where two female characters talk to each other about something other than men. I’m actually having a hard time thinking of an exchange in an Urasawa series where two women talk to each other about anything or even appear in the same substantial scene together, with the possible exception of 20th Century Boys, and they only really talk about a man who’s absent from their lives. This isn’t to say that Urasawa hasn’t crafted interesting women characters or that they don’t play key roles in his narratives, just that their interaction with each other is negligible.

And all of this reminds me that I really do need to sit down and try and cobble together a litmus test, or at least a checklist of appealing qualities, for yaoi and boys’-love manga that makes it enjoyable for me as an old gay man.

Filed under: Linkblogging 25 Comments

It gets better

October 3, 2010 by

I’m not really very good at self-evaluation or at giving advice (and I’m certainly not going to capture myself trying to do either on video, as that wouldn’t make anyone feel better), but I really admire Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” project, so I thought I’d write something up. Because in my experience, it really does get better.

Now, I don’t want to dwell too much on the parts that sucked, because young gay people are keenly aware of those, and rehashing them feels kind of like talking about how, in my day, we had to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow. And since I’m reluctant to make any sweeping generalizations about how my life is emblematic of anything except my life, I’ll just kind of describe the weekend so far with my partner of 17 years.

This was a really long work week, and we were both kind of exhausted, so we were really glad that there was leftover lasagna in the freezer to have for dinner on Friday. We were also glad that we had all of the ingredients for bourbon and cokes. (Okay, that’s just bourbon, coke and ice, but still…)

On Saturday, we dawdled around the house in the morning, and then we went to the Buckwheat Festival in Preston County, which is even more rural than where we live, but it’s mountainous and beautiful, and we were feeling like we don’t do enough local stuff. The Buckwheat Festival is basically just a county fair, but it’s always fun to go somewhere, eat junky midway food, look at 4H exhibits and livestock, and listen to the local high school marching band play “Poker Face” without a trace of irony or self-consciousness. Seriously, listening to a rural high school marching band play a song about ambiguous sexuality by the gay-friendliest pop star to emerge in the last decade while sharing a funnel cake with your partner of 17 years? That’s a great Saturday.

Last night was kind of uneventful, though our elderly dog got us up in the middle of the night. She’s fine, but she’s old, so we figure she’s entitled to some occasionally freaky behavior. And one of the cats had scared the unholy crap out of her while she was napping, so that might have factored into her sleeplessness. (The vet called her “a dinosaur” the last time she had a check-up.) This morning, we cleaned the house, ran errands, clipped the other dog’s toenails (no blood!), and now are waiting for cinnamon rolls to finish rising so we can bake them. I posted some pictures on Facebook from the festival, and I checked up on my nephew and his partner to see how they’re doing.

So while none of that is particularly exciting or transformative, and it certainly isn’t the life I imagined for myself as a traumatized teenager (which involved penthouses and, for no particular reason, grand pianos), it’s pretty great. Life got much, much better.

Filed under: Uncategorized 5 Comments

License Request Day: The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese

October 1, 2010 by

When a Manga Moveable Feast comes around, I sometimes like to request another title from the creator of the featured book, and I have no compunctions about asking for more work by Setona (After School Nightmare, X-Day) Mizushiro. I’ve asked for another of her unlicensed works (Diamond Head), and I would also love for someone to publish The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese.

Here’s what a commenter had to say about the book:

“It’s a pity no one licensed Mizushiro-sensei’s josei/BL work, Kyūso wa Cheese no Yume wo Miru (The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese) and its sequel… it is easily her masterwork; truly the mangaka at her storytelling and characterization best.”

I think Mizushiro’s licensed work is pretty impressive, so this is quite a thing to say. I mean… After School Nightmare isn’t Mizushiro at her best? Bring it.

The story was originally serialized in Shogakukan’s apparently defunct Judy josei magazine. It’s about a serial adulterer who gets blackmailed into sex by the male private investigator hired by his wife, which sounds potentially creepy, but Mizushiro has a way with creepy, so I’m totally game for it.

It’s been published in French in two volumes by Asuka as Le jeu du chat et de la souris. It’s also been published in German and Italian, so we’re just about last in line again. Viz is partly owned by Shogakukan, but Viz has displayed a general disinterest in books with a pronouncedly yaoi characteristic. Fantagraphics has formed a partnership with Shogakukan, and this sounds like it could be up Matt Thorn’s alley, so perhaps they’d be the better home for the story.

Filed under: License requests, Linkblogging, Manga Moveable Feast 20 Comments

MMF: After School Nightmare

September 30, 2010 by

Sean (A Case Suitable for Treatment) Gaffney is hosting the current Manga Moveable Feast, which is focusing on Setona Mizushiro’s After School Nightmare. Looking back on this column I wrote for The Comics Reporter, I realize I don’t really have anything to add, so I will lazily reprint the column here.

*

In a lot of manga aimed at an adolescent audience, the characters’ objectives are sunny and straightforward. Do your best! Be true to yourself! Learn! Grow! Befriend! Love! You can dress those objectives up however you like and contextualize them in sports or sorcery or pop stardom, but the bottom line is basically the pursuit of happiness.

What makes a book like Setona Mizushiro’s After School Nightmare (Go! Comi) so alluring is that it’s about the aversion of unhappiness. The objectives here are just as straightforward, but they’re bleaker and probably more honest. Keep your secrets. Hide your flaws. Try not to hurt anyone more than you can avoid, but a teen’s got to do what a teen’s got to do.

Mizushiro’s introduction to the English-reading audience came courtesy of Tokyopop in the form of the two-volume X-Day. It’s not a bad little book, but it suffers from inflated expectations. The synopsis promises a plot by moody loners to blow up their school, but the reality is much more subdued. It’s a dysfunctional character study, and it has its moments, but it ends up feeling like an old After School Special. Everyone learns a valuable lesson, which is rather disappointing.

But in X-Day, Mizushiro did demonstrate the will to go to dark places, and the book’s promise is fulfilled in After School Nightmare. Go! Comi tagged the ten-volume series with the line, “This dream draws blood!” It does, both figuratively and literally.

Mashiro Ichijo is an upstanding student. He works hard, he’s polite to his classmates, and he’s in the kendo club. He also has a vagina, but that’s a well-kept secret. It may not stay that way after Mashiro is enrolled in a special class by the school nurse. One day a week, Mashiro reports to the infirmary to drowse into a dream world where he must battle his classmates for a mysterious key that leads to an even more mysterious graduation.

Mashiro’s paranoid protectiveness of his public persona becomes heightened as he tries to determine which of his classmates are joining him on the subconscious battlefield. An aggressive kendo team-mate, Sou Mizuhashi, claims he knows Mashiro’s secret. Mashiro is simultaneously attracted and repulsed by what he perceives to be Sou’s uncomplicated masculinity, and Sou demonstrates a kind of unsentimental attraction for Mashiro in return.

Mashiro’s feelings for sweet, sunny Kureha Fujishima are no less complicated. He knows Kureha’s in the class, frozen in a traumatic moment from her childhood, and he wants to protect her. (It’s what a real man would do, after all.) Mashiro’s ambiguous gender allows Kureha to return his feelings; he’s not entirely male, so he’s not the object of terror she finds most men to be. But are Mashiro’s feelings sincere, or is he just role-playing, trying to meet ingrained expectations? That’s a question you could ask of any of the principle characters.

Mizushiro gets terrific mileage out of the question, spinning the love triangle over most of the ten-volume series. Mashiro, Kureha and Sou are all trying to reconcile their respective damage, and to varying degrees they do that by modulating to meet the expectations of others. But Mizushiro doesn’t romanticize that; secrecy and denial are the obstacles to the characters’ forward motion towards whatever graduation entails. They have to accept what they don’t like or what they fear about themselves. They have to stop caring how others see them.

It’s less her story than Mashiro and Sou’s, but I found Kureha mesmerizing from beginning to end. She represents a number of overly familiar character types — the pony-tailed princess, the unwitting beard, and the victim who’s never healed properly — but she doesn’t embody any of them. She’s too sturdy, surprising, and strange. And while Mashiro and Sou waffle and flail (entertainingly, I should add), Kureha evolves. And she does so without losing any of her radiance. If anything, she gains in radiance, especially in the dream sequences.

As to those subconscious throw-downs, do you remember those occasional sequences where the X-Men’s Danger Room would malfunction, plunging one or more mutants into a personally resonant horror? It’s like that, except every Thursday. Mizushiro is playing with allegories throughout the series, but she doesn’t shy away from brutality. After School Nightmare is one of the few shôjo series I’ve seen with sequences that could be scored with a Pat Benetar song.

Even with ten volumes at her disposal, Mizushiro finds room for so much. In addition to the emotional and metaphysical violence, there’s a lot of tenderness here. Not much sentiment, but that’s welcome. All she needs are three messed-up people trying to survive.

Filed under: From the stack, Go! Comi, Manga Moveable Feast 21 Comments

Birthday book: The War at Ellsmere

September 29, 2010 by

I learned via Twitter that today is the birthday of one Faith Erin Hicks, so I would suggest you celebrate this occasion by picking up a copy of her fun look at clique warfare, The War at Ellsmere (SLG). Here’s a bit of my review of the book:

“For all of the book’s easy charm, it’s very tightly written. Hicks finds a solid, compelling plot in Jun’s first year at Ellsmere. She fleshes it out nicely with well-developed characters and, more importantly, chemistry among those characters. That’s a really important next step, and I think some creators may neglect it. There also seems to be more confidence in terms of voicing characters here than in Zombies Calling; there’s a similarly metatextual quality to the dialogue, but it’s dedicated more to the characters’ feelings than the shifting rules of zombie combat.”

Just for the record, I’d still happily read a sequel to this.

Filed under: Birthday books, Slave Labor Graphics 1 Comment

The Seinen Alphabet: K

September 29, 2010 by

“K” is for an awful lot of stuff, so I’ll try and be representative rather than comprehensive.

Kodansha! Where to even start with Kodansha? They used to work with a number of stateside publishers to license their properties, even going so far as to sharing a first-look agreement with in-limbo Del Rey, but then they ended that, yanked their licenses back from Tokyopop, and started a fairly tepid stateside publishing project of their own. They’ve got a panel scheduled at this year’s New York Anime Festival, so maybe they’re ready to kick things off properly. They’ve got a lot of great seinen magazines and properties, though.

Viz is serializing Kingyo Used Books, written and illustrated by Seimu Yoshizaki, on its SigIKKI site. It’s about the power of manga nostalgia. Other SigIKKI contributors include Mohiro Kitoh of Bokurano: Ours fame and Puncho Kondoh of Bob and His Funky Crew “fame.”

Yen Press will publish Kakiffy’s K-On! It’s a four-panel gag manga about a school music club. It originally ran in Houbunsha’s Manga Time Kiara, and I know a few people who really like the anime.

Speaking of four-panel manga published in English by Yen Press, they’ve got two from Satoko Kiyuduki. There’s the excellent Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro and GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class. I don’t know anything about GA, as I haven’t read it, as I resent it for being the apparent cause of Kiyuduki suspending work on Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro.

The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (Dark Horse), written by Eiji Otsuka and illustrated by Housui Yamazaki, originally started in a shônen magazine but currently runs in a seinen publication, Kadokawa Shoten’s Young Ace.

Kujibiki Unbalance (Del Rey) has kind of an odd provenance. It was the manga obsession of the characters in Kio Shimoku’s Genshiken (also Del Rey), and the popularity of Genshiken led Shimoku to collaborate with Keito Koume on an actual version of the fictional comic. It ran in Kodansha’s Afternoon.

Yuji Iwahara’s King of Thorn (Tokyopop) isn’t as good as his Chikyu Misaki (CMX), but he’s an amazing artist. King of Thorn ran in Enterbrain’s Comic Beam.

Kazuo Koike has written one of the most famous manga to be made available in English, Lone Wolf and Cub (Dark Horse), which was drawn by Goseki Kajima. Koike and Kajima also collaborated on Samurai Executioner and Path of the Assassin, both available in English from Dark Horse. Koike collaborated with Kazuo Kamimura on Lady Snowblood (Dark Horse) and Ryoichi Ikegami on Crying Freeman (Dark Horse). Koike also taught a college course in how to be a manga-ka.

Someone really needs to license Fumi Yoshinaga’s Kinô Nani Tabeta? It’s Yoshinaga’s first time writing for a seinen magazine (Kodansha’s Morning), and she’s writing about food again.

Filed under: The Seinen Alphabet 5 Comments

Upcoming 9/29/2010

September 28, 2010 by

Only one item really pops out at me from this week’s Comic List:

Did you like Hitoshi Iwaaki’s Parasyte (Del Rey) but wish it had more contemporary art? Vertical can accommodate you in the form of Nobuaki Tadano’s 7 Billion Needles. It isn’t as smart as Parasyte, but it has a number of elements working in its favor.

I like the protagonist, for one thing. Hikaru is a high-school girl who, for reasons yet to be fully articulated, isolates herself from her fellow students via headphones and a media player of some sort. This state continues until her body is invaded by an interstellar entity on the hunt for a vicious killer. Hikaru and her uninvited guest must engage with people to find the poor soul who’s hosting this monster, known as Maelstrom.

As I suggested earlier, I also like the art. It’s clean and imaginative, packed with detail. The best way I can describe it is to ask you to suggest a muted combination of Yuji (Cat Paradise) Iwahara’s imagination and Kio (Genshiken) Shimoku’s obsessive-compulsive streak. Tadano doesn’t quite reach Iwaaki’s gory heights of imagination, but Tadano is also more persuasive in rendering the quieter moments.

The first volume is equal parts introduction to Hikaru and the concept and ensuing mayhem. It’s a solid starting point, and I’m looking forward to seeing her develop as a heroine and person. 7 Billion Needles was originally serialized in Media Factory’s Comic Flapper and was collected in four volumes. Comments above are based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.

Filed under: ComicList, From the stack, Vertical 5 Comments

AXed transcript, part two

September 27, 2010 by

Here’s the second part of a transcript of a Twitter discussion on Top Shelf’s AX anthology of alternative manga held Friday, Sept. 24 and tracked by the hashtag #AXed.

Participants are:

  • MangaCur: Me
  • Debaoki: Deb (About.Com) Aoki
  • Snubpollard: Jog (Jog – the Blog) Mack
  • aicnanime: Scott (Ain’t it Cool News Anime) Green
  • remoteryan: Ryan (Same Hat!) Sands

    • And some pop-ins along the way. Thanks to Deb for assembling this transcript and for rounding up some AX-related links.

    I’m going to put this after the jump, because it’s really long and there are many spoilers along the way. So be warned! Also, be warned that I didn’t clean this transcript up, because it’s a Twitter conversation and I’m too lazy. I think it reads just fine as is. I did add some images, as I think it gives you a sense of the book’s scale and range.

    debaoki fair warning peeps: i’ll be tweeting w/ the #AXed hashtag soon, as part of a discussion ’bout AX: Alternative Manga v. 1 fr. @topshelfcomix, if you’d like to follow along w/ the #AXed discussion, this is the book we’ll be talking about http://bit.ly/9h8BW5

    MangaCur So who’s all up for some additional #AXed conversation?

    snubpollard @MangaCur I just really hope nobody craps on anyone’s head in these comics. That would be really psychologically damaging to me.

    MangaCur @snubpollard We all have our “clutch the pearls” threshold, which, I’m guessing, was not crossed by “Haiku Manga: Robo and Pyuta,” by Shinbo Minami.

    debaoki @snubpollard @Mangacur I think we already passed my gag reflex barrier with the p*nis-headed sushi chef a few stories back.

    “Haiku Manga – Robo & Pyuta” by Shinbo Minami

    debaoki “Robo & Pyuta” is actually kind of light and sweet — the child asks the kind of questions kids ask about God. Robo & Pyuta is a nice continuation of the zen theme of the story that immediately preceded it — but was more approachable.

    MangaCur Regarding “Robo and Pyuta,” I think every indie anthology needs a story or two like this… minimalist, gentle…

    snubpollard “Haiku Manga” – Hm, already I’m at risk of maybe overthinking, but I wonder if there’s some linguistic technique at work here? Like, perhaps some formal connection between the pages/images and the composition of haiku, which likely won’t register translated?

    MangaCur @snubpollard How so? If so, I’m glad they didn’t try to favor syllable structure rather than content of whatever was in haiku form.

    aicnanime his work came in at the tail of coverage, but did Minami Shinbo get any coverage in the “Garo Manga: First Decade” exhibition?

    snubpollard @MangaCur It’s just something I wonder about when poetry is displayed on the page, with the comic itself deemed poetry, as here.

    debaoki it’s hard to translate haiku, especially one as simple as the ones in this story, so I think they didn’t try to match 5-7-5 syllables. However, i think the tone and mood comes through, and that was probably the better choice in this circumstance.

    snubpollard @debaoki There is one 5-7-5 haiku (translated) per story; I imagine the comic is built up from that poem, with added text elsewhere.

    “Mushroom Garden” by Shinya Komatsu

    MangaCur Moving on to “Mushroom Garden,” by Shinya Komatsu, or as I like to think of it, the origin of the Smurf Village.

    debaoki “Mushroom Garden” has a whimsical Little Nemo-like feel to me. Very charming art, even as mushrooms are taking over this boy’s world. Given how the prior stories in AX has conditioned us to expect some dark, demented twist at the end, this was quite gentle. “Mushroom Garden” could’ve ended with the mushroom possessing the boy & leading to mass mayhem. The matter-of-fact ending was a surprise.

    snubpollard “Mushroom Garden” – This is pretty great; I love how even the ‘cute’ stories have this itchy, gnarled texture. It’s a little Brian Ralph, in that it’s very slick, very ‘good’-looking, but sorta unkempt where it counts. Also, I think the kid’s friend is totally gonna turn him over to the zoning board once he puzzles this mystery out.

    MangaCur I almost wish “Mushroom Garden” had gone a little darker. It was just slightly off, and I wanted it to really derail. But the character designs in “Mushroom Garden” are so durable. You can see them used for ten years of comics.

    snubpollard Oh, of course it’s about obsessions, creative compulsions, earworms, desires… rather healthy outlook, compared to some entries.

    aicnanime for those who want to see a bit of Shinya Komatsu’s work: http://www.izigensya.com/

    after a while away from Ax, I got Shinya Komatsu and Hideyasu Moto conflated in my head. thought it was SK who wrote for Ikki

    MangaCur @aicnanime If Komatsu has any full-length works out there, someone should license them soon. They have a very salable look to me.

    snubpollard @MangaCur This is probably the one AX artist (here) I can totally see popping up in MOME one season.

    aicnanime “Mushroom Garden” is more than superficially tied to Miyazaki’s Nausicaa. Peppered with specific nods

    debaoki @aicnanime yah — the details in “Mushroom Garden” did remind me a bit of the natural world gone haywire of Nausicaa.

    “Home Drama: The Sugawaras” by Einosuke

    MangaCur Moving on to “Home Drama: The Sugawara Family,” by Einosuke.

    snubpollard “Home Drama” – Ha ha ha, I loved this, but I’m a sucker for extremely mundane subjects drawn with WAY over-the-top visual drama. Like, in a way it’s not too far off from what Yuichi Yokoyama does, but vastly more direct, less ‘sophisticated’ in concept.

    debaoki Ha – “The Sugawaras” was pretty good. The obsessive detail of flying noodles being slurped up is great.

    MangaCur The execution of “Home Drama” was its saving grace for me. Mundane point (conventional society is soul-crushing) lifted up.

    snubpollard This is just supper as horror manga; it’s sheer visceral impact.

    MangaCur @snubpollard And it works on that level. And it’s the right length. Gross, but not grinding.

    snubpollard The start-stop effect of BOOMING sfx and WHOOSHING noodles mixing with close-ups of the protagonist’s face: really beautiful. It’s like a Zach Snyder fast-fast-slooooow-fast-fast rhythm, except the sloooow is freezing on the father’s efforts to enjoy himself.

    aicnanime if “Home Drama” were animated 15 years ago, it’d be liable to be seen on (MTV’s) Liquid Television. Today, it might end up in Anime Hell.

    MangaCur @aicnanime But Liquid Television would have beaten it into the ground.

    “A Well-Dressed Corpse” by Yuichi Kiriyama

    MangaCur Okay, time for “A Well-Dressed Corpse,” by Yuichi Kiriyama.

    debaoki “A Well-Dressed Corpse” – grim and interesting as it is, this one could’ve used some translation notes. I know a decent amount of Japanese, but what is “Gurisu?” and what is a “Jaguar Sigma sneakers fan” ? I skimmed over these things because this is a very impressionistic rather than straight narrative, but it would’ve been helpful to have some context here.

    snubpollard “A Well-Dressed Corpse” – Elliptical slice-of-vivified-dirty life. Kinda old-time gekiga, ‘fuck hope, fuck society, fuck progress.’ Maybe a teeny bit like a Koji Wakamatsu movie too? Feels ‘old,’ like Kiriyama is a participant in a genre tradition. Not that the Garo artists weren’t cognizant of aesthetic/literary tradition, but this feels ‘gekiga’ like ‘sci-fi,’ y’know?

    MangaCur It’s strange, but most of the thug stories I’ve read in manga are either satire or comedy, so this doesn’t seem very alternative.

    aicnanime @MangaCur Kind of like magic girls — the genre has preserved past its expiration date in the form of satire. In a way, “Well Dressed Corpse” reminds me of the sukeban section in Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno. attention to threat tied to aesthetic

    MangaCur @aicnanime Very much so. I liked the rigid page compositions a lot, though. Like I was watching a slide show on thugs.

    debaoki @mangacur — hm. slideshow? maybe it was meant to be a modern kamishibai story? (paper theater)

    MangaCur @debaoki Could be! I’m just remembering the comportment/demeanor slide shows from my childhood.

    “Arizona Sizzler” by Saito Yunosuke

    MangaCur Okay, time for “Arizona Sizzler,” by Saito Yunosuke.

    snubpollard “Arizona Sizzler” – Excellent title’s the best thing about it. Not bad or anything, but not as good as other visual exercises.

    MangaCur Aside from wondering how the artist got past the prohibition on drawing genitalia, it didn’t make much of an impression on me. I think I recognize that mountain. It’s northeast of Flagstaff. Beautiful country. (I’ve got nothing. Sorry.)

    snubpollard The twinkling undercarriage splash was well-done, though.

    debaoki “Arizona Sizzler”… makes one realize — if the Jolly Green Giant was nekkid, would he seem as jolly? yikes. The thing is, the giant guy, he could care less about the girl! he seems completely unaware of how he’s grossing her out.

    MangaCur @debaoki That’s because a supreme being is an inherently phallocentric construct. Or something.

    debaoki there aren’t *that* many penis-centric stories in AX — but there were enough that by the time i got to this story, I thot “Enough already.”

    “The Rainy Day Blouse” and “The First Umbrella” by Akino Kondoh

    MangaCur I can wait no longer. It’s time for “The Rainy Day Blouse & the First Umbrella,” by Akino Kondo.

    snubpollard “[Two by Akino Kondo]” – Nice art, very low-key. Wistful. Great facial expressions.

    debaoki so yes, after the giant penis in “Arizona Sizzler,” it was a relief to have a female creator’s touch in the next story, “The Rainy Day Blouse” by Akino Kondo.

    snubpollard I think the facing pages at 268 & 269 form an effective transition, eh? The stories after are a bit more… sensitive?

    MangaCur @snubpollard Maybe so! I will note that the remaining stretch of my stories are among my favorites. But I love the observational nature of this and the internal logic of the narrator. It’s true slice of life.

    debaoki Kondoh has a delicate touch with strong blacks/white compositions — similar to Jaime Hernandez. (albeit different mood/style).

    Akino Kondoh is more of a fine artist than a comix artist nowadays & perhaps rightly so. http://akinokondoh.sakura.ne.jp/

    Check out this lovely animation by Akino Kondoh: Ladybird’s Requiem. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFqAc9kRP8g

    btw – @vcinemashow sent a reminder that Akino Kondoh is on Twitter: @AkinoKondoh – she’ll also be a guest @MangaNEXT.

    snubpollard Yeah, I liked these. It’s hard to pull off something this delicate in tone, as I think the next entry demonstrates.

    “Stand by Me” by Tomohiro Koizumi

    MangaCur @snubpollard Which brings us to “Stand By Me,” by Tomohiro Koizumi. While I didn’t think “Stand By Me” was successful, I would be interested to see some of Koizumi’s more current works.

    snubpollard “Stand By Me” – This is awful. From the blunt title to the overstated message to the stilted, digital-toned art. And if I never see another anime/manga scenario about horny losers peeping at classmates, it’ll be too soon.

    debaoki i’d have to agree. “Stand by Me” didn’t do much for me either. art is awkward, story is mundane.

    aicnanime Tomohiro Koizumi’s “Life is Dead”, from Young Champion, about a zombie causing STD, seems like it would work in North America. Then again, zombies and manga haven’t sold like vampires and manga (see Reiko the Zombie Shop) (published in the US by Dark Horse: http://www.darkhorse.com/Books/10-931/Reiko-the-Zombie-Shop-Vol-1-TPB)

    Tomohiro Koizumi at Mangaka Band Wars via Tokyo Scum Brigade http://is.gd/fuOI0

    “My Old Man” and “Me” by Shin’ichi Abe

    MangaCur We could all use little “My Old Man & Me,” by Shin’ichi Abe, at this point.

    debaoki “My Old Man and Me” and “Me” offered a counterpoint to the “being a manga artist is awesome!” idealism of Bakuman. It’s a matter-of-fact reminder that a lot of manga artists just get by – they aren’t rich, super-successful, hugely-respected artistes.

    snubpollard “[Two by Shin’ichi Abe]” – I’ll defer to Ryan Holmberg’s Garo exhibition catalog that Abe’s primary traits are: (1) A rather self-aggrandizing presentation of bohemian romanticism and (2) a fairly hands-off portrayal of often brutal sexism. Given that, this diptych is kind of a curatorial response – er, maybe not intended as such!

    MangaCur @snubpollard The bohemian romanticism really worked for me. Sexist, yes, but those were really jazzy little shorts.

    snubpollard The rocker narrator of story #1 is eager to try and understand his father, while the mother of story #2 is sensitively characterized. Particularly if you read her as the mother in story #1, which contrasts her personal sacrifices with her ‘family’ face to her son.

    MangaCur @snubpollard That’s how I read her.

    snubpollard @MangaCur Oh no, I think it’s actually not sexist here! The woman gets two perspectives, an omniscient nod toward her struggle. Particularly given that the rocker son clearly has only a partial insight into her life. Anyway, I really liked these/this – one of my favorites.

    MangaCur @snubpollard Ah, okay. I misunderstood. I am relieved! I liked them a lot.

    “Up and Over” by Seiko Erisawa

    snubpollard “Up & Over” – The lighter side of scatology. It’s cute. [FIN]

    MangaCur And I liked “Up and Over,” which shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows my tastes. Sweetly observed nostalgia. Not sugary, but nice.

    debaoki “Up and Over” – it’s the kind of story someone would really tell, and the girl’s response at the end of the story? Hilarious!

    MangaCur @debaoki It was a particularly terrific ending.

    debaoki I totally love that panel on the top right of p. 296 where the mom is holding her son upside down while yakking to the doctor!

    MangaCur @debaoki Another creator whose sensibility I’d like to see applied to a longer story. Reminded me of Raina Telgemeier.

    aicnanime Seiko Erisawa is ok at http://erisawa.com/ – I did the look of her stuff. covers are adorable

    “The Song of Mr. H” by Shigeyuki Fukumitsu

    snubpollard “The Song of Mr. H” – I liked this a bunch, even if it’s a big ol’ Christmas sack of cliches. Perfect execution counts for something.

    MangaCur “The Song of Mr. H.,” by Shigeyuki Fukumitsu. The first rule of Fight Club is that it would have been better with an old guy.

    snubpollard For all the talk of Ax as experimental and avant-garde, this is totally something a depressed salaryman would read on the train home.

    MangaCur @snubpollard Oh, it counts for a ton, and it’s a relief to see this in play in an alternative magazine.

    debaoki I rather preferred this “salaryman in despair” story to the prior one, “Rooftop Elegy.” maybe because the ending was more satisfying?

    MangaCur @debaoki I think it just conceived better. It had a fresher idea, or at least a more grounded rendering of it.

    remoteryan @debaoki super late to the party but oh well, gonna jump in! I didn’t love “Song of Mr. H” but i’m a fan of Fukumitsu generally.

    debaoki @remoteryan what is Fukumitsu’s other work like? i haven’t seen his work before…

    remoteryan @debaoki he uses weird stand-in wimpy male characters & fierce big-boobed girls but peppers in enough suburban violence 2 make it work

    aicnanime Shigeyuki Fukumitsu – The Most Emo Man in Japan http://is.gd/fuPXT

    MangaCur @aicnanime More emo than Inio Asano? You LIE, sir.

    aicnanime @MangaCur take the superlative enough with Mr. Manga: The Complete Guide (Jason Thompson)

    aicnanime “at least once in every man’s life, he wonders if he could be the strongest” – Grappler Baki As much as “The Song of Mr. H.” is fight club, strikes me as a bit Densha Otoko in that it’s driven by happenstance.

    I do a bit of fight sport activity and found The Song of Mr. H. to be a relatable, slightly amusing fantasy.

    remoteryan I have Fukumitsu’s book “A LIFE” and it’s about street urchins and a wimp dude fighting back a la KICK ASS. also an old man & hot girl

    MangaCur @remoteryan Again, I’d love to see more of his work in English. I really like the look of it and the tone.

    And now, a moment to recognize Ian Sharman, the letterer of AX Vol. 1

    davidwynne Hey #AXed readers, you should totally follow @idsharman, the poor bastard who had to letter that breeze block of a book

    debaoki @davidwynne man! how long did it take @idsharman to letter AX? this is one brick of a book.

    idsharman @debaoki I was working on it, on and off, for just over a year.

    davidwynne @debaoki really amazing thing is he managed to write a GN & 3 issues of another book, & edit a whole line of Indy comics at the same time.

    MangaCur @idsharman Very much enjoyed it! Amazed by all your hard work!

    idsharman @MangaCur Glad you’re enjoying it. Was a lot of work but fascinating to work on as manga’s not really my thing.

    idsharman Hey, #AXed people, just so you know, we’re currently working on a follow up project. 😀

    Kataoka Toyo Pathos Theater – “The Ballad of Non-Stop Farting” and “I Can’t Stand Pain” by Kataoka Toyo

    MangaCur Are we ready for “Kataoka Toyo Pathos Theater,” by Kataoka Toyo?

    snubpollard “Kataoka Tokyo Pathos Theater” – First part was pretty funny. The second was a bit talkative for my taste.

    MangaCur Having been to SPX (Small Press Expo) a couple of times, “Kataoka Toyo Pathos Theater” feels very familiar to me.

    remoteryan @MangaCur This one is typical Kataoka- very wordy & dense, focusing on blue-collar Tokyoites & their physical/base/ironic daily lives.

    MangaCur @remoteryan It’s also kind of cheeky and funny. It gives off the same kind of vibe as a bunch of mini-comics I’ve enjoyed.

    snubpollard Nice looking art, but the blocking on the second story made it kinda tough to discern who’s talking. Or exactly what the end was. Still, I’m never not up for a serene double-page farting splash.

    debaoki I don’t know why, but Kataoka Toyo’s art reminds me of Peter Bagge’s style. maybe his obsessive line-work, the rubbery facial expressions? Also reminded me of Kazmir Strzepek (the Mourning Star)

    remoteryan @debaoki @MangaCur definitely! the comparison to strzepek’s lines is really apt! when talking about the down & out, humor is the only weapon

    “Kosuke Okada and His 50 Sons” by Hideyasu Moto

    MangaCur Time to move on to “Kosuke Okada and his 50 Sons,” by Hideyasu Moto? There was absolutely nothing about “Kosuke Okada and his 50 Sons” that I did not love. Maybe my favorite thing in “AX.”

    snubpollard “Kosuke Okada & His 50 Sons” – Those were the least necessary last three pages in the history of comics in excess of three pages.

    MangaCur @snubpollard But all the ones that came before them!

    snubpollard @MangaCur Eh, can’t separate them. Didn’t help that final gotcha image JUST appeared in A Drunken Dream!

    MangaCur @snubpollard Well, if you’re going to rip someone off, it might as well be Hagio.

    snubpollard Actually, Moto and Hagio (hey!) share a similar tendency to explicate their images in-story, which I find redundant.

    MangaCur Still, I was so happy to see something genuinely sad and sentimental in the mix.

    debaoki “Kosuke Okada and his 50 Sons” reminded me a bit of Hanakuma’s “Puppy Love” — albeit a more bittersweet story.

    Les Raskolinikov by Keizo Miyanishi

    MangaCur Moving on to “Les Raskolnikov,” by Keizo Miyanishi.

    snubpollard “Les Raskolnikov” – Amusingly, Miyanishi’s lone prior appearance in English was in the early ’80s anthology “Manga” – just Manga. One imagines he was selected for his rather detailed style, which (in the Manga book) tilted toward a very ‘classical’ aesthetic. It was a kind of Japanese comics look that would ease an unacclimated reader into a foreign work. This, of course, was a skewed view.

    MangaCur @snubpollard I thought you might be talking about the Taschen reference book, a mix of legends and “who the hell is that?”

    snubpollard @MangaCur No, I mean this: http://bit.ly/a8MngJ

    debaoki “Les Raskolnikov” reminded me of the Takato Yamamoto story earlier in the book – lots of style, but not much story.

    The stories in AX that I most liked found that sweet spot between having a distinctive visual style & a story worth caring about.

    MangaCur @debaoki The best ones for me had that happy slight dissonance between content and tone and visual style. Love that.

    remoteryan @debaoki not a fan of “Les Raskolnikov”. At least the T Yamamoto story’s art carries the flimsy premise. But this one bores me

    MangaCur “Les Raskolnikov” actually made me think more highly of “Into Darkness,” which is about all I can say for it.

    snubpollard Not much of a story, but that last splash is a heck of an album cover.

    Alraune Fatale by Hiroji Tani

    MangaCur Okay, ready for “Alraune Fatale,” by Hiroji Tani? “Alraune Fatale” definitely would have benefited from more daylight between it and “Six Paths of Wealth.” Very similar in approach and tone, but very different degrees of artistic success, I thought. And “Fatale” wasn’t a bad story.

    remoteryan @MangaCur I liked the art style in Fatale a lot, but it was a bit of a mix of Junji Ito’s Tomie & the movie Pretty Woman. This sort of “fear of woman” story isn’t necessarily misogynistic but it’s fairly common in indie comics (America & Japan).

    MangaCur @remoteryan That would explain my ambivalence. Loved “Tomie,” hated “Pretty Woman.”

    snubpollard “Alraune Fatale” – This also bears comparison to “Into Darkness,” I think. Very external in comparison. I love this guy’s art.

    debaoki “Alraune Fatale” — this, to me, was like the kind of stories I used to read in “Heavy Metal” in the 1980’s. But overall, i liked Alaraune Fatale — a very satisfying short story about a true sexual succubus. just the right length. But I don’t know if it was totally necessary for the man to reveal that he had nothing left to live for anyway.

    snubpollard @debaoki Even further back! It’s totally a Creepy short! Right down to the idealization/terror of women.

    MangaCur @snubpollard @debaoki Again, I have to say that I wish there were original publication dates listed here somewhere. It really tracks with both Deb’s “Heavy Metal” and Jog’s “Creepy” comparisons.

    remoteryan @snubpollard ah, you’re right! before “indie comix”,, this is straight out of EC Tales of terror shtuff

    debaoki @MangaCur yes, some of the art definitely has a “dated” / art movement of the month feel, so dates would be helpful to put in context.

    snubpollard @MangaCur @debaoki The last panel’s dated “’01” though, so that’d be the date of completion, I’d think.

    remoteryan @MangaCur the “AX RESEARCH PROJECT” might be helpful for original publication dates (artists/stories in JP/Kanji) http://bit.ly/bXrxkL

    That last story (Fatale) was in AX 22, from August 31, 2001

    “Sacred Light” by Otoya Mitsuhashi

    MangaCur Just two more: “Sacred Light,” by Otoya Mitsuhashi.

    snubpollard “Sacred Light” – Greatly enjoyed this as a buffer between Tani’s old-tyme chills and Hanawa trying to tear the roof off the place. Especially in that it’s a (male-centered, yes) celebration of sex and music as transporting, if maybe not to a cozy place. Like, there’s a tension between ecstasy and realizing you’re not an ecstatic young person anymore, which I liked a lot.

    I also enjoyed translator Spencer Fancutt’s occasional deployment of British tidbits throughout the book. “Oi!”

    remoteryan @snubpollard totally agree— the main thread through MUCH indie manga is 1970 & the ampo joyaku protest movement (& nostalgia for it). For that same thread in indie manga, see: Haruki Murakami’s novels, most leftist art from late 60s/early 70s creators

    snubpollard @remoteryan Yeah, and the early Garo guys were always a bit nostalgic too, to agrarian settings, pre-war times. You could argue a lot of ‘alternative’ Japanese comics opposed the forward, West-informed mainline trajectory of Tezuka.

    debaoki “A Broken Soul” and “Les Raskolinikov” has a real late 80’s / early 90’s art school feel to it, as does “Sacred Light.” The one thing I did like about “Sacred Light” is the non-traditional use of calligraphic brush strokes. It has a kind of beat poetry vibe to it — the words are presented in an almost percussive style.

    MangaCur I loved the scratchy angularity in “Sacred Light.” Feels like a trained artist deciding what not to do, you know?

    “Six Paths of Wealth” by Kazuichi Hanazawa

    MangaCur Are we ready to bring it home with “Six Paths of Wealth,” by Kazuichi Hanawa?

    snubpollard “Six Paths of Wealth” – An old fashioned showstopper. The ultimate showdown between devious femininity and grotesque devotion!

    MangaCur There’s a fabulous Heavy Metal comic retelling of the story of the Borgias, and “Six Paths” reminds me of it so much.

    debaoki I had previously only read “Doing Time,” Kazuichi Hanakawa’s obsessive prison diary (published by Fanfare – Ponent Mon – http://www.ponentmon.com/new_pages/english/prison/frame3.html) – so “Six Paths of Wealth” was a revelation.

    remoteryan @debaoki I know Hanawa more for his buddhist horror tales & bloody ukiyo-e art w/ Maruo than Doing Time;So this was just what i wanted.

    remoteryan: This is the Hanawa I know (& love): http://bit.ly/98uzgJ http://bit.ly/a7lMQL Ornate, historical and Bloody

    debaoki @remoteryan wow, that’s amazing stuff. it’s too bad that we haven’t seen more of his stuff in English yet.

    remoteryan @debaoki @aicnanime definitely agree 🙂 worth noting those pics are from a collection of “THE EARLY WORKS OF KAZUICHI HANAWA”

    remoteryan @debaoki @aicnanime Also, worth noting: http://samehat.blogspot.com/2007/03/bloody-ukiyo-e-prints-by-maruo-hanawa.html

    debaoki Six Paths of Wealth is great stuff — excellent artwork, suitably creepy horror with a sci-fi/japanese vibe. We should all thank @johnjakala for coining the term “come-uppance theater” because “Six Paths of Wealth” certainly fits the bill.

    snubpollard And Hanawa even throws in a nebbish husband figure that can only destroy the cruel women by accident, after their sexin’ ruins ’em. Yet it’s hard to argue with the sheer rip-down-the-sky abandon of pg. 387. This man OWNS his subject matter. (easy for a guy to say.)

    MangaCur @snubpollard “Six Paths” just felt so particularly of a moment and a style but was so energetic about it. Perfect finale.

    A Few Final Words About AX: Alternative Manga Vol. 1

    debaoki I will say this for Mitsuhiro Asakawa (the editor of AX) — he made the effort to show a wide range of styles & stories here. The AX collection does skew “male” to me, which surprised me because I’ve always seen Japanese manga as more inclusive of female creators.

    MangaCur @debaoki That’s interesting, because some of the stories that made the strongest impression with me were by women. Especially in terms of creators I want to know more about and see more examples of their work.

    remoteryan @debaoki I agree re: male-ness of the collection. my faves from the scene are Yuka Goto, Carol Shimoda, Yamada Hanako though 🙂

    debaoki @MangaCur I didn’t do a check until today, but many of the stories we praised for their light, sensitive touch were by females.

    snubpollard @debaoki According to Holmberg (again!), the Garo strain of alt manga was VERY male-dominated in tradition.

    Er, I should clarify that Hanawa BELONGS to that early Garo tradition, so he’s old guard here.

    debaoki Usually, i don’t glom onto the “female/male” creator thing — the art can/should speak for itself. Maybe I just got penised-out.

    MangaCur @debaoki But I can definitely see all of the sad salarymen and variations on masculinity getting tired.

    remoteryan @snubpollard @debaoki Much Japanese indie manga suffers from the same problems as US Indie Comix- men & their masturbatory fears 🙁

    debaoki AX is both a fun and frustrating read — there are some creators I wish I could see more of their work (in English), but know I probably won’t.

    snubpollard To me, Ax was an oddly cozy experience. In its passion for diversity, it basically registered as one of the old Top Shelf anthologies. Except, y’know, with an all-Japanese crew. Even given the specific Japanese subject matter, it felt very spread out, inclusive.

    MangaCur @snubpollard Exactly. It was right in keeping with what I think of as the range of Top Shelf’s publishing catalog. Maybe minus Owly.

    snubpollard I liked having so much stuff, but having finished it I’d have gone for a bit more focus. There’s too many ‘eh, nice’ stories. Like, it presented diversity, ok! Now let’s see an argument for VALUE. For the vitality of aesthetic!

    MangaCur I won’t lie. I was worried that there would be a high percentage of sketchy, incomprehensible crap.

    snubpollard But maybe an overview is necessary for now? I’d like to see more of a specialized curatorial bent in later editions.

    debaoki I appreciate that AX is very much an expression of Asakawa-san’s vision for manga that pushes past predictable tropes/styles. And with this kind of risk-taking/experimentation there was bound to be some hits, some misses & some “so what?” stories.

    MangaCur @debaoki Yup. Every anthology will have its good, bad, and meh spectrum, but this one calculated well for me.

    debaoki I find IKKI to have a much more consistently artistic vision / editorial standard than AX — AX is exuberantly messy & irregular. AX to me seems more avant-garde, more willing to go out on a limb than IKKI — but I’ve only had limited exposure to both.

    snubpollard @debaoki Ah, true. It could just be a reflection of Ax’s own editorial posture.

    aicnanime @debaoki aren’t the circulations of Ax and Ikki on very different strata? Three Steps Over Japan says never see an issue of Ax http://is.gd/fuWHj – collections of Ikki material are plentiful on Amazon.jp

    remoteryan @debaoki @aicnanime I think of Seirinkogeisha very much like Fantagraphics + Picturebox, or like REPRODUKT in Germany. Small staff, etc.

    remoteryan @snubpollard @debaoki @MangaCur If you guys are interested, I’m doing a post tonight on new manga from Seirinkogeisha (w/previews). lots of online preview via their site, including tons of AX artists + even better folks I <3

    MangaCur @remoteryan Looking forward to reading it! I’ve looked up stuff on their site before with limited success!

    debaoki also, @topshelfcomix — is there an AX: Alternative Manga Vol. 2 in the works?

    hermanos “I spoke to (AX editor) Sean Wilson at SDCC and he said that if AX is a hit/sells, v2 is almost assured.”

    Postscript: Ryan Sands found this little gem: the cover for AX: Alternative Manga Vol. 2 in the works? http://samehat.tumblr.com/post/1193161733/mock-up-on-a-designers-site-for-a-second

    Filed under: Top Shelf 2 Comments

    AXed, round two

    September 26, 2010 by

    Our Twitter discussion of Top Shelf’s AX anthology continues tonight (Sunday, Sept. 26) at 8 p.m. I’m not sure who’ll be participating this evening, but I’m sure it will be lively. We’ll be looking at the second half of the book, which has some of my favorite stories. Here’s a transcript of the first round of conversation.

    Filed under: Top Shelf Leave a Comment
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