You are here: Home / Archives for From the stack

Upcoming 2/3/2010

February 2, 2010 by

I was surprised to discover that Tsutomu Nihei’s Biomega (Viz) isn’t an adaptation of an existing video game. Its set-up and execution are exactly like a good first-person shooter, with a well-armed guy on a tricked-out motorcycle entering hostile territory with a mission and a subset of shifting objectives. There’s melee combat with a horde of shambling zombies, timed vehicle rescues, and malicious opponents in the form of a shadowy government conspiracy. There’s even a holographic wrangler providing useful information and reminding the protagonist of pending tasks. A more suggestible person might try and turn the book’s pages with their Xbox controller. (It doesn’t work.)

With its fast pace and progressively escalating stakes, Biomega actually does a better job capturing the experience of playing a video game than comics that are actually adaptations of existing franchises. As a result of that, the characters are thin and serviceable and their consequence is a distant second to event and spectacle, but there’s rarely a shortage of either of those ingredients. It’s also drawn extremely well, with clear, kinetic staging and some inventive bits of design (but not too many, because if you stare at how neat things are, the zombies will get you). There’s also a talking bear with a rifle for reasons that are probably no more complex than “just because,” but he’s welcome, as he keeps things from being entirely functional.

Biomega isn’t a book that inspires any contemplation, and it only takes itself as seriously as it absolutely must. There’s nothing wrong with that, though, any more than there is spending a few hours shooting digital zombies in the head and making a last-minute motorcycle jump from a burning building. It’s a time-waster executed with style and craft. (Review based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.)

Now, let’s move on to the rest of this week’s ComicList, which offers a bounty of potentially appealing books for young adults:

I picked up Raina Telgemeier’s mini-comics at a Small Press Expo a few years ago and really liked them a lot. It was no surprise that publishers asked her to work on adaptations franchise properties like Ann M. Martin’s The Baby-Sitters Club (Graphix) and X-Men: Misfits (Del Rey). But it’s especially nice to see that Graphix is giving her original work such lovely treatment with Wednesday’s release of Smile. It heightens the average obstacles of life in middle school with a big bout of dental drama.

I expressed my enthusiasm for Chris Schweizer’s Crogan’s March (Oni) over the weekend, so I won’t repeat myself.

Collections of Jimmy Gownley’s terrific Amelia Rules! have been available for a while now, but they’ve found a new home at Simon & Schuster. One of those trade paperbacks, Superheroes, is due out Wednesday, and if you haven’t sampled the series yet, this is a perfectly good opportunity.

It’s also time for Viz’s monthly mangalanche, and the emphasis is on titles from their Shojo Beat and Shonen Jump lines. There’s lots of good stuff on the way, but I find myself unproductively fixated on the first volume of Ultimo, a collaboration between Stan Lee and Hiroyuki (Shaman King) Takei, with assists from inker Daigo and painter Bob. With that many credits, it’s easy to suspect that Lee has already been a bad influence. To be honest, I’m not quite ready to issue a verdict on the book, but please do go read thoughtful reviews from Erica (Okazu) Friedman and Kate (The Manga Critic) Dacey. In the meantime, I’ll continue my fruitless stare-fight with the book as I try and figure out what it is about it that irritates me so.

Filed under: ComicList, Debuting this week, From the stack, Graphix, Linkblogging, Oni, Simon and Schuster, Viz 3 Comments

From the stack: Oishinbo: Izakaya: Pub Food

February 1, 2010 by

I’m really going to miss Viz’s A la Carte collections of classic culinary manga Oishinbo, written by Tetsu Kariya and illustrated by Akira Hanasaki. The last installment (I’ll say “for now” because hope springs eternal) focuses kind of loosely on Izakaya, or Pub Food, and it covers a lot of the territory that’s become so endearingly familiar over the course of the series. For instance…

That doesn’t strike me as a compliment, but the characters’ raptures over various dishes often don’t. They say things like, “Oh, the bones of the fish give it a nice crunch!” or “The muskiness is so refreshing!” But there’s absolute sincerity in these exclamations, and that’s part of the charm. I’m not saying I’m ever going to echo the sentiments based on anything I eat, but they do keep things lively and they help paint a taste picture.

I was a super picky eater as a kid, so I have what might be a misplaced level of empathy for the characters featured in Oishinbo’s food peril stories. Let me explain what those are: every now and then, the regulars run across a friend or acquaintance or co-worker who absolutely must learn to like a food they despise. If they don’t, their professional, educational or romantic prospects will go right down the drain. Now, I’ll try any food once at this point, and I’m pretty good at expressing honest dislike of this or that food without judgment or apology, but there’s that nagging anxiety of the picky child. So while the stakes in these stories can be a little ridiculous, I feel the characters’ pain.

Not liking potatoes, though… dude needs to get over that.

Preach it, sister. The panel above is from a story that embodies two big Oishinbo themes: booze is awesome, and kids these days don’t know squat. The latter is generally expressed in the lead’s rivalry with his horrible father, but I’m pleased to report that there are no scarring father-son showdowns in this volume. Instead, a young actor fears for his career because he can’t drink sake properly. Our heroes take him out of town to snack and drink and snack and drink some more until he racks up the right sense memories to really look like that sake hits the spot. Along the way, he learns to hold his liquor and to pace himself so he can drink and snack with the best of them. And that, my friends, is valuable information no matter where you live or how old you are.

Filed under: From the stack, Viz 3 Comments

From the stack: The Unwritten vol. 1

January 28, 2010 by

The Unwritten (Vertigo) is entirely about stories within stories, or at least about stories that break the boundaries of the page to influence the real world. It centers its attention on the adult son of a revered author of fantasy fiction, specifically a series of novels about a young wizard and his two friends who battle evil. Tom Taylor shares a first name with his father’s protagonist, Tommy, and Tommy shares just about every meaningful quality with that other boy wizard. It’s an appropriation that strikes me as more functional than resonant, and it could verge on seeming at least a little envious of the critical and commercial success of the Harry Potter franchise, but the creators manage to avoid that.

Tom’s author father disappeared years ago, and Tom is making a living off of being the son of the creator of Tommy. Tom treats Tommy’s fans with warm cordiality that evaporates into sullen discontent as soon as they’re out of earshot. Writer Mike Carey does a nice job playing up the awkwardness of unearned celebrity. Tom would rather make his way on his own merits, presuming those merits ever assert themselves, but he’s got to eat (and drink), and his father’s estate is tied up in litigation. Tom’s situation deteriorates when a mysterious young woman casts his entire identity into question in front of an auditorium full of fervent Tommy admirers. Is he Tom Taylor, son of a famous author, or is he just a prop acquired by that author to inspire his fictional child? Or is he actually that fictional child, bled into the real world?

So Tom is thrust into a strange, mystical conspiracy about stories and their power and begins what seems likely to be a world tour of fiction, starting at the birthplace of Milton’s Satan (possibly not really, as some sources claim the villa was built after Milton’s death, but the story works better if he had) and Shelley’s monster. As if that weren’t name-dropping literary import enough, Carey sprinkles in references to Agatha Christie, Kevin Williamson, Laurell K. Hamilton, and others, all while launching Tom on a metaphysical quest right out of a Dan Brown novel. It’s like a best-seller list with a plot.

And honestly, it’s pretty good. Artist Peter Gross does a nice job with the material, aided by colorists Chris Chukry and Jeanne McGee and letterer Todd Klein. My problem with the series is that I don’t care much about Tom or Tommy. Tom is a hapless whiner at this point, hampered by people who may be his allies and menaced by mysterious forces that are more postures than characters at this point. Even Tom seems to know that he’s irritating and largely superfluous. As for Tommy, well, I’ve already got Harry Potter.

I did like one of these collected chapters very much. In it, Carey uses the career trajectory of Rudyard Kipling to tease out the underlying conspiracy that plagues his contemporary protagonist. It succeeds in being sly and even moving in ways that the other chapters probably intend to be but don’t quite achieve. Kipling’s story and the way it reflected the colonial impulses of his time is re-framed, and though it doesn’t say anything meaningful about the plight of the colonized, it’s very useful to the ongoing narrative. And it gives the reader the chance to speculate over which other authors owe their success to diabolical agreements.

Filed under: From the stack, Vertigo Leave a Comment

From the stack: All My Darling Daughters

January 18, 2010 by

Is All My Darling Daughters (due this week from Viz Media) the best comic Fumi Yoshinaga has ever created? Of course it isn’t. It’s not as ambitious as Ôoku: The Inner Chambers, as funny as Flower of Life, or as sexy as Ichigenme… The First Class Is Civil Law.

Should you buy All My Darling Daughters? Of course you should. It’s by Yoshinaga, so it’s still funnier, smarter and warmer than most comics you’re likely to encounter.

The book collects interconnected short stories that spoke out from an adult daughter and her mother. They live together until the mother remarries a much younger man she met in a host club. Your automatic assumption might be that the mother is in the midst of a mid-life crisis or that the husband is looking for a meal ticket, and the daughter would agree with you. I remind you that this is Yoshinaga, so it’s more complicated than that.

Everything is more complicated than it seems in Yoshinaga’s narrative universe. People are both nicer and meaner than they initially seem, and relationships are more quietly satisfying and functional than an observer might assume. Yoshinaga is deeply interested in the grace notes of interpersonal interaction, even in her slighter works. That’s the source of a lot of the pleasure for me – the apparently minor, digressive moments that get to the heart of her characters.

I enjoyed all of the pieces collected here, but my favorite was a two-part look at a beautiful, selfless young woman who decides to pursue an arranged marriage. It works very nicely as a comedy of nightmare dating, but it evolves into a much richer character study. It’s sweet, funny and, by the end, surprisingly sad, but sad in a way I can absolutely support.

While she’s not in every story, Mari, the mother, is a treasure. She’s a survivor, but she’s got self-esteem issues. She can be abrasive, but her honesty never fails to be refreshing and sometimes even useful. I smiled a little every time she showed up, knowing she’d provide some withering observation on the endearing flakes around her, a flash of unexpected tenderness, or both. Of all the men and women portrayed here, she best embodies the aspects of life that interest Yoshinaga – work, family, love, and the resentment and solace they can provide.

All My Darling Daughters ran in Hakusensha’s Melody magazine, an older-skewing shôjo magazine that’s home to Ôoku. I’m not all that familiar with the magazine’s output, but Yoshinaga’s participation is certainly enough to put it on my radar.

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

Filed under: From the stack, Viz 13 Comments

From the stack: Time and Again vol. 1

January 11, 2010 by

I’m not going to argue that JiUn Yun’s Time and Again (Yen Press) will have the same cultural durability, but the book kind of reminds me of a character played by the young Barbara Stanwyck: sexy, funny, moving and often ruthless. It’s about an exorcist-for-hire who seems more inclined to give his clients what they deserve than what they request.

The malicious charm elevates the book from the already strong pack of ghost-hunter comics. Baek-On, the exorcist, is a lazy drunk. The delicate elegance of his wardrobe is undone almost entirely by the bags under his eyes from last night’s bender. And his skills with the unquiet dead are virtually moot in balance with his indifference towards the unquiet living. For Baek-On, exorcism isn’t a calling; it’s a job, and barely that. Dignity is a paycheck.

Ho-Yeon, Baek-On’s assistant and bodyguard, may view things a little differently. He’s certainly fresher than Baek-On, and he seems more compassionate than his employer, but he’s not quite forceful enough to make Baek-On do anything Baek-On doesn’t care to do. That’s all to the good, because a sober, diligent Baek-On would be no fun at all.

A sober, diligent Time and Again wouldn’t be nearly as much fun either. Rather than telling the specific story of her spiritual mercenaries, Yun seems more interested in the mechanics and possibilities of the ghost story itself. Half of the chapters in this volume require no participation from Baek-On or Ho-Yeon, wandering off to other realms of supernatural despair. While the protagonists may vanish, the tone remains the same. Yun has a real knack for blending heartbreak and horror.

The other running thread is how lanky and gorgeous the illustrations are. While Yun favors long, lean figures, there’s a satisfying variety of body type and facial expression on display. Yun doesn’t shy away from low comedy or gruesome imagery, either. It’s just the right kind of toolbox for this kind of work.

I would have been eager to read the second volume in any case, but Yun ups the ante with an off-kilter cliffhanger. What kind of parent, you may wonder, could unleash a Baek-On onto the world? Yun teases an answer to that question, and it involves a bouffant that might be the most ominous image in the book. I can’t wait to find out more about Baek-On’s mother.

Filed under: From the stack, Yen Press 4 Comments

From the stack: Yôkaiden vol. 2

December 30, 2009 by

“I’ll never understand you optimists,” mutters sentient paper lantern Lumi in the second volume of Nina Matsumoto’s Yôkaiden (Del Rey). “Sure you will!” beams protagonist Hamachi. I think that’s a great joke, sunny and a little sneaky, and it captures just what I like so much about this book.

Hamachi and Lumi are making their way through the dimension of yôkai, spirit creatures that range from mischievous to menacing. Hamachi is searching for a water demon he believes murdered his grandmother, and Lumi is along for the ride. This time around, Hamachi turns to a ninetails, a venerable fox demon, for information and, as you might expect, the ninetails wants a little something in return. Three somethings, in fact.

Simple soul Hamachi takes Christina, the 999-year-old yôkai, at face value, and why wouldn’t he? She’s prosperous, huge, warmly maternal, and only sly around the edges. Lumi’s certain she has a hidden agenda, and of course she does. Yôkaiden doesn’t run on surprising twists but on witty embellishments of familiar material. You can always be reasonably certain that Hamachi’s sunny disposition and cup-half-full approach will see him through, but you don’t know exactly how. That’s the charm.

Well, that’s part of the charm. There are also the fresh variations on classic yôkai, the nervy insertion of urban legends of more recent vintage, excerpts from Inukai Mizuki’s “Field Guide to Yôkai,” sharp dialogue, and vivid characters, human and otherwise. There are references aplenty, both in the text and the art.

Matsumoto seems to be having particular fun with yôkai hunter Zaigô, who has followed Hamachi to the yôkai dimension to bring the boy safely home. A couple of steps behind Hamachi, Zaigô has his own misadventures, and Matsumoto frames him in endearingly familiar ways, calling to mind books like Lone Wolf and Cub to Vagabond. Those are just flashes, of course, and the bulk of the book bears Matsumoto’s quirky visual style – energetic, endearing, and just the right degree of gruesome.

It’s always nice to see a creator with a real facility for wit, and Matsumoto’s manifests itself in words and pictures. There are plenty of comics about yôkai, and many of them are very good. Bright, breezy Yôkaiden is right up there with the best of them.

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

Filed under: Del Rey, From the stack Leave a Comment

From the stack: Nightschool vol. 2

December 29, 2009 by

Yen Press has been doing well in terms of series that sell well and by catching attention with adaptations of popular properties. For my money, they also made one of their smartest choices was hiring Svetlana Chmakova to create a new series, Nightschool, for their magazine, Yen Plus. It’s as poised a supernatural adventure as you’re likely to find on the manga shelves.

What immediately strikes me about the series is how sure-footed it is. Chmakova has assembled a crowded cast and a host of subplots, but nothing feels extraneous or self-indulgent. It’s indicative of just how memorable her characters are that I never felt the need to flip back through the first volume and remind myself of any particular details or developments while reading the second. She doesn’t burden the book with exposition or reminders, and things move at a clip, but Chmakova doesn’t leave readers behind in the process.

In spite of the crowd and the bustle, Chmakova has also managed to keep her protagonist front and center, at least in terms of reader perception. Alex, a young witch searching for her missing sister, is just right. She’s smart, resourceful and funny, and she’s also a little frightening. The second volume doesn’t go much further to revealing what her dark secret might be, but it reinforces just how formidable Alex is. As a nice bonus, Alex is such a force to reckon with because she’s worked hard to become so.

She’s not so formidable that she doesn’t seem at risk, though. Chmakova has arrayed a variety of forces in opposition to Alex, from snotty, secretive classmates to rival supernatural clans to self-appointed anti-monster vigilantes. Add that to the search for her missing sister and you have a young woman with a very full plate. Alex’s agenda doesn’t keep her from engaging with the world around her, though; there are some terrific, revealing scenes of Alex’s enrollment in the school where her sister taught that are sprinkled with comedy and menace, along with the introduction of even more new characters.

It’s just a very entertaining book, certainly for its skillful execution and partly for the pleasure of watching Chamkova juggle. Nightschool is drawn very well, and the dialogue is snappy, but the spectacle of Chamkova piling on this and that without ever letting things crush under the weight is as engaging as the story and presentation.

Filed under: From the stack, Yen Press 4 Comments

From the stack: The Summit of the Gods vol. 1

December 24, 2009 by

The overwhelming impression I took away from the first volume of The Summit of the Gods (Fanfare/Ponent Mon) is of maleness. I’m not talking about machismo or swagger, which would be tiresome, but of certain qualities that, fairly or not, are often assigned to a Y chromosome. Author Yumemakura Baku and illustrator Jiro Taniguchi aren’t so much making an argument for that kind of assignment as simply presenting it as a given.

It’s about mountain climbers living and dead and the impulses that drive them to risk everything in pursuit of peaks. I will readily confess that those impulses are utterly beyond my comprehension. I enjoy the outdoors, I really do, but when I’ve been in a magnificent natural setting and seen occupied sleeping bags dangling from the face of a cliff, my powers of empathy fail completely. It’s an activity that combines perilous heights, continuous effort and self-imposed discomfort, none of which track with my concept of recreation.

This notion of conquering something that dwarfs oneself is one I ascribe primarily to heterosexual males, which I know is neither fair nor accurate. I’ve known plenty of women who consider a vacation squandered if it doesn’t include the risk of injury and exposure and the onus of carrying out their own waste, but “Because it’s there” will always be the original domain of the straight guy to me. Nothing in Summit of the Gods shakes this association, but nothing in it makes me roll my eyes at the characters that embrace the “Because it’s there” mentality.

Part of this is because Baku and Taniguchi resolutely establish mountaineering as a subculture. The true believers, the ones who live for the peaks, are not normal people. Habu, the climber who consumes the bulk of the creators’ attention, is almost afflicted with a kind of cliff-face Asperger’s Syndrome. He’s so fixated on the idea of climbing peaks that others haven’t or doing so in ways they haven’t that there’s no room for anything else. He quits jobs if they interfere with his climbing, and he alienates other climbers with his bluntness and obsession. Habu is intuitive and gifted, but he’s reckless and he dismisses the contributions of his partners. It’s telling that you can’t quite figure out which quality rankles his fellow mountaineers more, the danger or the snubbing.

It’s also telling that Habu becomes the object of fixation of another character. Years after Habu’s greatest accomplishments in the sport, climber-photographer Fukamachi crosses paths with Habu in Kathmandu. Fukamachi has just survived an expedition to Mount Everest that ended badly, and he encounters Habu when both are pursuing a camera Fukamachi believes belonged to George Mallory, who vanished off the mountain in 1924 during his third attempt to reach its peak. As much as Fukamachi would like to trace the provenance of the camera, he’s equally fascinated with Habu’s career as a climber and what led him to a life of obscurity in Nepal.

It’s difficult to characterize Fukamachi’s fascination with Habu. It’s neither clinical nor worshipful, and it isn’t confined to Habu’s link to the camera. There’s no homoerotic charge to it, or even envy of an alpha male. Habu doesn’t inspire unvarnished admiration; his joy in climbing is difficult to share as it’s so specific and fierce. He’s even pathetic in some ways. While the motivations of Fukamachi’s interest in Habu aren’t clear, the interest itself is credible because it mirrors the ways readers are probably engaged in Habu’s story, even as that engagement mirrors Habu’s fascination with mountains. Maybe Fukamachi wants to discover Habu’s secrets for the same reasons Habu wanted to conquer mountains – because they’re formidable and dangerous and just plain there. It’s an intriguing bit of parallel structure.

Taniguchi is the ideal illustrator for this kind of material that has both epic scale and intimacy. If the crux of your story is the estimation of landscapes and people, it behooves you to find an artist that can capture the menace and nuance of both, and a writer is unlikely to find anyone better at that than Taniguchi. (As absent as women are from the narrative, it’s nice to read in a text piece that a woman made the collaboration possible, playing matchmaker for Baku and Taniguchi.) Taniguchi is probably the foremost renderer of the middle-aged man that I can think of. They wear their experiences, which is even more evident in a story like this that tracks Habu through the years. Just watching the ways that Habu ages is fascinating. And as far as landscapes and the physicality they demand of puny humans, do I even need to bother praising Taniguchi on that front? Icy cliff faces, Nepalese back alleys, Tokyo urbanity, leafy mountain trails… there’s no setting Taniguchi can’t conquer.

The Summit of the Gods is involving on its own terms as a story of individual evolution and rigorous adventure. It’s more interesting to me in the unobtrusive but pervasive way I read it as being gendered, like a French noun. There’s no value judgment in my observation of that gendering, and I don’t believe the creators were trying to make one about the virtues of a kind of masculine spirit of conquest, but it is a fascinating characterization of a subculture that seems to have born of that kind of maleness. It’s just there.

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

Filed under: Fanfare/Ponent Mon, From the stack 3 Comments

From the stack: Natsume's Book of Friends vol. 1

December 17, 2009 by

Does the world really need another manga about the husbandry of yôkai, those mischievous, minor demons that populate Japanese folklore? Is there room for more adolescents who can see these creatures and seem fated to interact with them? Sure we do, and sure there is, if the stories are good and the adolescents are interesting and sympathetic. Both are true of Natsume’s Book of Friends (Viz), written and illustrated by Yuki Midorikawa.

Orphan Takashi Natsume has spent his whole life wondering why he can see these beings and being pegged as the weird kid, shuffled from relative to relative. There was an escalation in his yokai encounters when he moved to his late grandmother’s village. Takashi never met the lady during her short lifetime, but I’d wager he’d have some choice words for her if he did.

Takashi inherited his yôkai sensitivity from Reiko, his grandmother. She apparently had no other sensitivity to offer as a legacy, having spent her own adolescence challenging yôkai, defeating them, and ensuring their servitude by putting their names down in a book. The yôkai who are pestering Takashi so insistently want their names and independence back, and, since Reiko is unavailable, Takashi will have to do. Learning of his grandmother’s malicious hobby makes Takashi more sympathetic to the yôkai. He takes it upon himself to return their names.

This obviously ends up being more complicated than you’d expect. Some of the yokai aren’t especially appreciative of Takashi’s intentions and would be more than content to take their names back by force. Others have pressing concerns beyond servitude to an angry dead woman. An opportunistic demon named Nyanko (who spends his day in the form of a stuffed cat) offers his protection and assistance with the condition that, should Takashi die during his quest, Nyanko gets whatever’s left of the book.

I like the variety that Midorikawa finds in the premise and the mix of comedy and sentiment in the individual episodes. Her view of the relationship between humans and yôkai is complex, and I particularly love the counterpoint between grandmother and grandson. Reiko turned her isolation and otherness into hostility and control. Takashi turns his into generosity of a sort, or at least into enlightened self-interest. And young Reiko is a sly hoot, even if she is nasty, or maybe because she’s nasty.

Natsume’s Book of Friends doesn’t exactly reinvent the yôkai genre, but it’s got some very promising underpinnings, and Midorikawa’s execution is rock solid.

(Review based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.)

Filed under: From the stack, Viz 7 Comments

From the stack: Butterflies, Flowers

December 10, 2009 by

Sometimes, I don’t read alone. I’ll find myself accompanied by those opinionated shoulder-dwellers, angelic and diabolical, vigorously arguing the merits of whatever I happen to have in my hands at the time. “And you pretend to care about issues of equality and social justice,” Shoulder Angel will tut at me. “What does liking this book say about you that you like this?“ “Dude, lighten up. It’s awesome,” Shoulder Devil will retort.

In my defense, I often side with Shoulder Angel. I feel like I owe him after shutting him down during the whole Hot Gimmick thing. And I vividly remember Shoulder Angel and me staring at Shoulder Devil, waiting for him to launch some defense of Gakuen Prince, but he just shrugged: “I got nothing. That’s just nasty.” Even Shoulder Devil knows when to keep mum.

The three-way discourse didn’t get particularly heated as we were considering Yuki Yoshihara’s Butterflies, Flowers (Viz), but it did get somewhat spirited. I mean, there’s some desperately inappropriate workplace behavior, and the relationship dynamic between the two protagonists is an absolute minefield, but it’s really pretty funny. Even Shoulder Angel chuckled a little bit.

It’s about a former rich girl who must enter the office grind after her family loses their fortune. The economy being what it is, she can’t be picky about which job she takes, even if she is asked if she’s a virgin during her job interview. (Tip: if that happens to you in real life, document the exchange, then sue.) The inappropriate interviewer ends up being her direct supervisor and, coincidentally, the son of one her family’s domestics. He doted on her when she was a kid, but now he’s the boss from hell.

Domoto, the ex-servant, now-boss, whiplashes between domineering and capricious and subservient and solicitous, and office newbie Kuze doesn’t know what to make of it. (Who would?) Her sudden promotion has alienated her from her co-workers, and while she’s mostly hopeless as an office lady, there’s enough of the aristocrat left in her that she can muster unexpected authority in a pinch. Her work life is complicated by the fact that, against all good sense, she’s afraid she actually might be in love with her bipolar boss.

Okay, so the overall premise is kind of gross, what with the power disparity and the hostile work environment. But moment by moment, Butterflies, Flowers is very, very funny. The supporting characters are particularly delightful. I love Kuze’s younger brother, who never got over his brief taste of the good life and talks like he’s a refugee from a costume drama. Suou, a senior member of Domoto’s department, is one of those deliciously snarky frienemies that improve just about any story. Their absurdity heightens the atmosphere and helps the reader ignore the stuff that’s creepy when stripped of Yoshihara’s context.

So it’s a guilty pleasure, but it’s undeniably pleasurable. Viz is positioning it as a bridge title for shôjo readers into the more mature realm of josei, and its rapid-fire humor, stylish look and twisted romance make it a good choice for that. It’s not the most sophisticated josei in the world, but it’s a sensible starting point for a tricky demographic, and it’s funny much more often than it’s squirmy.

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

Filed under: From the stack, Viz 9 Comments
« Previous Page
Next Page »