The Manga Curmudgeon

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From the stack: Kimi ni Todoke

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This week’s ComicList is kind of lean, so I’ll focus on one particular release. It’s Karuho Shiina’s Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You (Viz), and it’s hilarious and delightful.

kiminitodokeYou remember that girl who crawled out of the well in The Ring, right? Sawako Kuronuma bears an uncanny resemblance to that creepy character, and the coincidence hasn’t escaped her classmates’ notice. Sawako is a sweet, optimistic girl, but her spooky, slump-shouldered bearing is completely at odds with what’s inside. Remember that bit in Addams Family Values when Wednesday tried to smile? It’s like that, except that Sawako is really trying to be genial.

As high-school students are a cowardly and superstitious lot, rumors fly about Sawako. They think she communes with ghosts and can curse those around her. Even the teachers are wary of her. Hell, even puppies get skittish in her presence. It probably doesn’t help that the kanji that constitute her family name also translate into “black swamp.”

So Sawako takes it upon herself to try and clear up what she believes to be simple misunderstandings. She meets with limited success until Kazehaya, the most popular boy in class, starts treating her with the same cheerful courtesy he extends to everyone. The tide begins to turn for Sawako, and she starts making other friends. And while she still looks and acts like she crawled out of a well, she’s sparkling with happiness on the inside.

It’s that disconnect – Sawako’s frightening mien wrapped around the open heart of a true shôjo princess – that makes the book so funny and endearing. Also delightful is the fact that Sawako never once entertains the notion of changing her appearance; she just wants to introduce her classmates to the girl on the inside. Shiina has a real gift for constructing scenarios that allow you can to root for Sawako and still giggle at the ways her efforts can backfire. Shiina’s illustrations hit all the right notes, from funny-creepy to sparkly-sweet, sometimes in the same panel.

Kimi ni Todoke is off to a wonderful start. It’s a great look at an offbeat kid trying to find happiness on her terms. Sawako is undeniably naïve, but she’s naïve in the best possible way. She believes the best of people, that they’ll accept truth and overlook appearance. And Shiina lets her be right often enough to balance out the laughs that come from the moments when Sawako is wrong.

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

From the stack: Johnny Hiro

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For me, the cake of Fred Chao’s Johnny Hiro (AdHouse Books) is the relationship between the titular protagonist and his fetching girlfriend, Mayumi. As a bonus, Chao slathers plenty of icing on the cake.

untitledJohnny and Mayumi are young, in love, and living in New York City. That means they work too hard, live in a kind of crappy apartment, and never seem to have enough money at the end of the month. But they have each other and all of the affection, support and loyalty one could hope for; they also have cats. Those things go a long way to compensate for the overworked, underpaid grind.

They also have distractions. Johnny is sort of a mayhem magnet. Simple errands can thrust him into the thick of a swarm of knife-wielding kitchen ninjas. A night at the opera can end at sword-point, surrounded by laid-off IT guys who’ve taken up the way of the samurai to avenge their failed dot-com. Peaceful slumber can be disturbed by a hauntingly familiar, dauntingly large lizard that’s eye-level with their walk-up.

Other similarities to Spider-Man aside – he’s got the beautiful girlfriend, the Manhattan setting, and the struggling 20-something thing down – Johnny isn’t exceptional or adventuresome. He’s tenacious, though, and he’s developed a resigned acceptance to the nuttiness. (He’s a little more prone to being starstruck, though, as evidenced by the eclectic celebrity cameos Chao throws into the mix.) I’m crazy about Mayumi; as Chao draws her, she’s lovely in the way real people are lovely as opposed to more conventional comic-book arm candy.

So basically, what we’re dealing with here is a loving, functional couple dealing with the occasional outburst of genre mash-up, based on whatever Chao pulls out of the pop-culture junk drawer. The results are generally terrifically entertaining, and I don’t think there are nearly enough loving, functional couples at the center of popular entertainments. It doesn’t always work perfectly; some of Chao’s pet pop culture isn’t always mine, and some of the celebrity cameos end up feeling a little strained. Overall, though, it’s crisp, warm-hearted, smart entertainment.

The book runs on affection – Johnny and Mayumi’s affection for each other, Chao’s affection for New York, and Chao’s affection for the sci-fi and fantasy tropes he folds into his stories. I’m still surprised (and disappointed) that this book didn’t survive in pamphlet form, but I’m thrilled that Chao and AdHouse provided a handsome collection of the published and unpublished issues of what was supposed to be a six-issue series.

(I periodically nominate something I’ve read for the Young Adult Library Services Association’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens list, and I did that with Johnny Hiro. Anyone can nominate a title here, provided they aren’t nominating their own work or something published by their employer.)

From the stack: Dogs Prelude Vol. 0

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dogsa

I suspect that Shirow Miwa is as much of a fan of Cowboy Bebop as I am. Miwa’s Dogs Prelude Vol. 0 shares a lot of that anime’s best qualities – vivid characters, an engaging look, and a lightness of touch that keeps the noir elements from going overboard. If anything, Miwa does a slightly better job on that last front.

dogs0That isn’t to suggest that Miwa’s milieu is a pleasant one. The book’s linked short stories are set in a futuristic dystopia full of sometimes terrible people doing what they need to do to get by. Like all good noir casts, the characters all have dark and painful secrets to tote around as they navigate these murky waters. Fortunately, Miwa doesn’t seem inclined to dwell. He doesn’t exactly minimize the suffering on display, but he doesn’t put it on a pedestal either.

I felt for Mihai, the aged killer looking for a quieter dotage. I enjoyed laughing at the misfortunes of Badou, the one-eyed snoop who can’t seem to make it through a day without inspiring gun-toting thugs to chase him down. Resilient, rough-trade Heine’s attempts to rescue an innocent prostitute offered a nice mix of mayhem and sentiment.

dogsbI was largely unmoved by the tale of Naoto, the young girl raised to be a killer by the man she believes murdered her parents. It’s in that segment that Miwa comes closest to flat, straight-faced noir, and while it’s executed well, it lacks the dollops of quirky, what-the-hell humor that characterize the rest of the book.

The most consistent and engaging quality of the book comes from Miwa’s illustrations. He’s prodigiously gifted with action sequences and character design, and it’s in drawing that his light touch really shines. He favors thin, elegant line work instead of the thick marker of despair so many cartoonists bust out when crafting a noir tale. Miwa isn’t afraid to go over the top with both violence and comedy, but it’s all anchored with subdued, dilapidated settings that don’t feel ostentatiously dystopian and, of course, the well-written, likeable cast. The look of the book is sleek, stylish, and frequently silly; it’s a great mix.

As the rather complicated title indicates, this volume of Dogs serves as a precursor to the evidently more structured ongoing series that launches in August. I’ll definitely check in if only to bask in Miwa’s gorgeous drawings, and I’m guessing I’ll stay for the quirky characters and cleverly conceived scenarios.

Sing… sing a song…

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clovercoverI can’t bring myself to skim when I’m reading for pleasure. If the book is awful enough, I’ll abandon it entirely, but if it doesn’t hit that threshold, I feel compelled to read every word. This can be a problem. It certainly was when I was reading CLAMP’s Clover (Dark Horse). The book is beautifully drawn, economically plotted, often moving, and includes some of the worst poetry I’ve ever read. It includes that awful poetry dozens of times, and, masochistic completist that I am, I felt obliged to read them every time.

“a bird in a gilded cage,
a bird bereft of flight,
a bird that cannot cry,
a bird all by itself”

cloverblackThese are the lyrics of one of the lynchpin characters, a chanteuse whose untimely death did not, unfortunately, take her songs with her. They’re portrayed as so moving that even isolated psychics can be stricken by their beauty, but I was reminded of the reject pile from my high-school literary magazine.

“Letting me forget with your voice and your touch;
Breaking off the chains that bind my heart and feet”

Now I’m not going to say that my taste in lyrics is impeccable. Sure, I think Stephen Sondheim is a god, but I also liked Air Supply back in the day. But I could hear Air Supply’s awful, awful lyrics being sung, backed by lushly cheesy orchestrations with achingly sincere vocals. In Clover, I have nothing but the words over and over again. I wish there was an advanced version of that greeting-card technology that would allow me to actually hear a song rather than just read its maudlin lyrics. While Dark Horse has done a beautiful and generous job producing this collection, it doesn’t sing when you open it.

cloverwhiteWell, okay, it kind of sings when you open it, because the illustrations are very, very beautiful. The four members of CLAMP trade duties, and Clover was drawn by Mokona with assistance from Tsubaki Nekoi and Satsuki Igarashi, with story by Nanase Ohkawa. What’s most striking to me is the use of negative space. Backgrounds are rather scant; panels float on fields of white and black, creating a precision of emotional effect. It also highlights the elegance, verging on sensuality, of the juxtaposition of the panels.

Lyrics aside, it’s got a story that’s economical and moving, as I said earlier. It’s about immensely powerful psychics identified by the government for possible intelligence and military use who turned out to be a little too powerful for that government’s comfort. The psychics try to find comfort and peace within the restrictions of their daily lives, and some are more successful than others. The collection is less a beginning-to-end narrative than a timeline-jumping look at a group of interconnected characters, a core event, and the things that led up to it. There are some nicely understated moments and many lushly angst-y ones.

“Now, come close to me,
I’ll sing an endless song,
God, please tell me,
Redder than red, the truest love.”

But, god, those lyrics.

cloverspread

From the stack: V.B. Rose

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Tokyopop had the good sense to package a manga preview with the final volume of Natsuki Takaya’s Fruits Basket, introducing four series to readers of its most popular series. For me, the results were mixed.

Ten pages weren’t nearly enough to have any idea what Taro Shinome’s KimiKiss is about, if anything, though the cover with the busty girl pulling her shirt off makes me wonder exactly the nature of the crossover audience might be. Kazuko Furumiya’s Bloody Kiss is about hot vampires and has an awful title, so I feel safe in assuming it’s not for me. The first line of the sample of Princess Ai: The Prism of Midnight Dawn (created by Courtney Love and Stuart “D.J. Milky” Levy, story by Stuart “D.J. Milky” Levy, written by Christine Boylan, art by Misaho Kujiradou) is “Mama! Who pays the birds to sing?” which made me both snicker and cringe, and I really want the time back that I spent typing that sentence probably as much as you want the time back that you spent reading it.

vbroseFortunately, the sampler also includes some pages of Banri Hidaka’s V.B. Rose, which I liked enough to head out and buy the first volume. Having read the first volume, I plan to buy more. So, marketing has yielded at least some return.

The things that grabbed me about the sample were that the heroine did stuff – designing and sewing handbags – and had a personality – not a great one, but a plausible and interesting one. Her name is Ageha, and she’s a high-school student. As the story begins, her older sister, Hibari, announces that she’s pregnant and going to be married. Hibari and her parents are delighted; her boyfriend is a good guy, and they’d planned to marry anyway, so it’s just an acceleration of the inevitable with the bonus of a grandchild.

Ageha is less pleased; in fact, she’s furious. She resents anything that she perceives as taking her sister away, and a new husband and baby feel like the final straw. This makes Ageha sound unbearably selfish, and she kind of is, but she’s aware that she’s being unreasonable. She makes concerted efforts to support Hibari, but her adolescent temper bubbles to the surface as often as she’s able to suppress it.

She accompanies Hibari to an appointment with her dressmakers, a handsome pair of young men who run the titular design shop. To Ageha’s surprise, Ageha’s already met them, and they know her by reputation; Hibari has proudly shown them Ageha’s accessories. Mitsuya, the pattern maker, thinks Ageha is adorable. Yukari, the designer-owner, thinks she’s an insufferable brat, though talented. The beauty part is that they’re both right. After some predictable but well-executed twists, Ageha ends up helping the boys make Hibari’s dress, partly to atone for her bad attitude and partly to prove her promise as a designer.

I really like the way Hidaka handles Ageha’s shifting moods. Her outbursts aren’t predictable, but they’re realistic. I like that Ageha is working to be less of a brat and that she doesn’t experience some instant epiphany that turns her into a bland, shôjo princess. The rest of the cast is fun, too. Hibari has a sweet, unflappable serenity of someone whose life has come together. Yukari may be a bit of a lite version of George from Paradise Kiss, but V.B. Rose is kinder and gentler, so it makes sense. And it’s fun to see how Yukari has got Ageha’s number.

It’s an attractive book with lots of visual sparkle and style, which is only appropriate given its subject matter. Hidaka is also up for low comedy, which keeps the shimmer in check. My only complaint about the book is the singular blandness of its cover, which does nothing to communicate its energetic charms.

From the stack: Astral Project vol. 3

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ap3The thing I like best about Astral Project (CMX) is that it’s only kind of about any of the things it’s purportedly about. The first two volumes introduced the mystery of the death of the protagonist’s sister, the protagonist’s newfound ability to leave his body behind to float above the city, the fellow astral travelers he meets there, and his budding romance with one of them. In the third volume, author marginal (also known as Garon Tsuchiya of Old Boy fame) sustains all of those elements while adding new ones in the form of deeply cynical conspiracy theories and, better still, deeply cynical conspiracies.

This addition might lead you to suspect that the series is building in momentum. I’m happy to report that Astral Project has maintained its feeling of apparent aimlessness. It’s one of the least aggressive stories I’ve read, particularly in the suspense genre. It’s more absorbing than arresting, and the pleasure of it is in seeing marginal drop a new bit of absurdity or outrage without really raising the narrative’s volume. That’s an awfully neat trick.

Though we learn a bit more about the characters, they still aren’t especially sympathetic. Mashiko, the lead, is still no closer to figuring out the cause of his sister’s death. His romance with another young traveler garners investment without that visceral feeling of wanting them to be happy together so much as the vague sense that it would be nice if they could be less unhappy. And while astral travel may have been the story’s trigger, it’s telling and a little perverse that Mashiko’s most trusted astral advisers encourage him to give it up to focus on his equally aimless earthbound existence.

Writing about Astral Project is strange. The things I want to praise about it – its ambling storytelling, increasingly bleak world view, and generally flat emotional affect – aren’t things I’d automatically consider praise-worthy. They cohere into something very intriguing here, though, and I’d really recommend this odd, offbeat series.

From the stack: Empowered vol. 5

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emp5Trying to review a new installment of Adam Warren’s Empowered series (Dark Horse) is exactly like trying to review a new installment of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series (Oni). The fifth volume of Warren’s saga of a (sometimes literally) struggling super-heroine is good in exactly the same ways as the previous four, but with a slightly higher level of poise and complexity. It’s meatier and moodier, but it achieves those effects without sacrificing the core charm and wit of the series.

Basically, a review of the fifth Empowered book would constitute an attempt to get new readers to pick up the first volume of the book. I figure that people who have read the first volume either gave up on the book for its salacious content (which is perfectly fair), stuck around for more of that same content (also dandy), or stuck around like I did for the endearing characters, great jokes, and slowly building subplots. Providing a summary of events of the fifth volume would be meaningless to people who’ve never read the series at all while irritating readers who’ve stuck around and haven’t yet read book five.
All that said, it’s such a terrific book that I can’t pass up the opportunity to sing its praises, even if I’ve sung them so often that you know the lyrics by heart.

What need to know: Empowered, the book, is about Empowered, the heroine, who has the best of intentions and the most unreliable of super-suits. It’s embarrassingly form-fitting and shreds at the slightest provocation, often leaving her at the mercy of bondage-happy opponents. Her fellow super-heroes (an obnoxious and entitled herd) treat her with undisguised contempt, but she keeps trying to make a difference, scoring small victories amidst all of the humiliation. Her greatest sources of comfort and confidence come from her smoking hot, super-supportive boyfriend, a reformed super-villain minion known as Thugboy, and her best friend, the hard-partying, ass-kicking Ninjette. When things get crappy, they’ve got her back.

How the series has evolved: Earlier volumes traded in short, astutely satirical pieces mocking everything from spandex tropes to the bizarre idiosyncrasies of fandom to whatever else crossed Warren’s field of vision as he worked on the comics. As the series has progressed, Warren has incrementally developed all of the characters, revealing their back stories and allowing them and their relationships to evolve. Individual chapters have become longer, and subplots have become more intricate and moved closer to the surface. The level of menace and the feeling of consequence have risen over time, but Warren has maintained the sweetness and sense of humor of the series, which is quite an accomplishment.

Why I like it: Super-hero parody has become a category unto itself, and a lot of examples aren’t any more interesting or insightful than their targets. Empowered succeeds for me because Warren manages to juggle so many elements at once – the pointed satire, the unapologetic (but sly) cheesecake, and the fact that he bothers to tell a proper story with fully realized characters in the process. That last element is what I often find lacking in meta-commentary books; they sometimes read like an Andy Rooney monologue, with lots of trite “Don’t you hate it when…” observations. Empowered is as smart and sharp as you could hope, but it’s also got a lot of heart. It manages to comment on super-hero comics while also actually being one of the better ones you’re likely to read.

From the Stack: The War at Ellsmere

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I thought Faith Erin Hicks’ Zombies Calling (SLG) was “one of those books that make you really eager to see what the creator does next.” Hicks rewards that eagerness (and proves me right) with The War at Ellsmere (also from SLG), which is superior in just about every way. And Zombies Calling was pretty good to begin with.

ellsmereZombies Calling owed a fair bit to Scream for its humor and structure, and Ellsmere seems to be similarly sourced. Like good-hearted grind Rory from the early years of The Gilmore Girls, Ellsmere’s Juniper wins enrollment into a prestigious private school (via scholarship instead of grandparental largesse, in Jun’s case) and immediately draws the threatened attention of the institution’s self-appointed queen bee. On Gilmore, that queen bee was the highly strung overachiever Paris Gellar; in Ellsmere, it’s the smirking, vicious Emily,

From those core similarities, Hicks diverges in some promising ways. Jun is nowhere near as dewy and perfect as Rory; she’s much more likely to make a preemptive verbal strike than keep her head down and her nose in a book. And while Paris was neurotically fixated on what Rory’s abilities and accomplishments said about her own, Emily is more absorbed by class differences. She has a rigid set of expectations of scholarship students and their place in Ellsmere’s elite ecosystem.

And while Paris was one of the defining “frienemies” of her era, no one should expect Jun and Emily to be sharing secrets in a stairwell any time soon. Instead, Hicks splits the frienemy egg and gives Jun an ally on the inside. Jun’s roommate, Cassie, is just as pedigreed as Emily, and she’s been at Ellsmere just as long, but Cassie’s quirks have isolated her just as effectively as Jun’s relative poverty will. Jun and Cassie bond quickly and believably. Jun inspires Cassie to raise her academic expectations, or at least to apply herself in ways that interest her. Flakiness aside, Cassie knows how Ellsmere works, and she can advise Jun on the ins and outs; she’s a good listener and she makes Jun laugh. Cassie made me laugh, too. The Jun-Emily rivalry takes up most of the narrative, but I kept turning my attention to Cassie’s evolution. It’s measured, credible and rewarding.

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.

I was sure that Hicks’ follow-up to Zombies Calling would be an improvement, and I feel the same about whatever comes after Ellsmere. And while I wouldn’t want to paint Hicks into a corner when she’s clearly got a very portable skill set as a creator, I’d love to see what happens next to Jun, Cassie and Emily.

From the stack: Fire Investigator Nanase

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I generally like episodic crime dramas and procedurals. The genre isn’t usually appointment television viewing for me, but it doesn’t need to be. There’s almost always one airing at any given hour of the day or night, so catching an episode of this or that doesn’t demand careful scheduling.

FINThe quantity of choices lets me be picky, too. I tend to avoid procedurals that make me endure a bunch of subplot drama about the investigators. I have a very “Get back to work” attitude towards forensic scientists, detectives and their ilk. (The original Law & Order is usually perfect for this. The only times we find out anything about a character’s personal life is when they’re about to leave, which only happens every couple of years. On the flip side, I haven’t read a Patricia Cornwell novel in years because of all the intolerable whining. Solve something, for pity’s sake.)

I’m also not crazy about properties with big, recurring super-villains. These baddies are all geniuses, which is fair enough, but the protagonists are supposed to be geniuses too, and repeated failure makes them look dumb. (It also leads them to take things personally, which triggers my first aversion. Quit whining and get back to work.)

Fire Investigator Nanase (CMX), written by Izo Hashimoto and illustrated by Tomoshige Ichikawa, features personal drama and a big bad, but neither of these elements overwhelm the meat of the series – intriguing arson investigations.

As a young trainee, Nanase inadvertently saved a serial arsonist known as “Firebug.” Years later, the creepy killer has developed a protective streak towards Nanase and mentors her through a series of suspicious and deadly fires. Nanase lost her parents to fire, and she’s fostering a child who suffered a similar fate. She’s understandably conflicted about the guidance she’s getting from a natural enemy, but he’s helping her avenge other arson victims and expose criminals. It’s a familiar dynamic, but Hashimoto and Ichikawa execute it well. And it’s impossible not to like Nanase. She’s smart, dogged, ethical and still a bit innocent.

Ichikawa’s illustrations are competent but a bit by-the-manual shônen, but they’re energetic and they serve the story. It feels like there’s something more that could be done with the rendering of fire; those sequences get the job done, but I didn’t get the sense of fire as a destructive entity.

Overall, though, the book has all of the makings of an enjoyable procedural. The cases move quickly, and the suspects and their motivations are credibly rendered. The various elements – drama, science, investigation, and the symbiosis of Nanase and Firebug – are all nicely in balance.

From the stack: Oishinbo: Sake

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I liked the first volume of Oishinbo (Viz) very much. I flat-out loved the second, and I think this is only partly because it’s focused on booze.

oishinbo2Anyway, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the series, it’s a sort of “best of” sampler of a long-running, much-loved culinary manga. Viz is publishing the A la Carte collections, which focus on a particular aspect of cuisine. In this case, it’s sake and some lesser beverages, like champagne.

Many have noted what we might call the “hometown pride” of these stories, written by Tetsu Kariya and illustrated Akira Hanasaki. I don’t really find it problematic; I sort of expect a culture to favor its indigenous cuisine. And since Kariya reserves most of his teasing for the French, who are no slouches in the culinary pride arena themselves, it reads more to me like entertaining trash talking than anything more sinister. (I kind of wish there was a bande-dessinée response. “Oh, non, vous n’avez fait!”)

On the beverage front, Kariya seems to have a grand time smacking around the drops of god. Champagne is perfectly lovely, intrepid food journalist Yamaoka insists, unless you try and eat anything with it. Beaujolais nouveau is little more than a French prank that the Japanese have fallen for hook, line and sinker. After such flat dismissals of another culture’s beverages of choice, you’d expect sake to be swaddled in adoration, right?

Well, no, and that’s when the volume goes from amusingly snarky to downright fascinating. Yamaoka is trying to convince a co-worker of the virtues of sake, which she dismisses as booze for old men, by taking her to a small, local brewery. Sake, he insists, can be transcendent if it’s made properly. Unfortunately, profit-mongering corporations and nonexistent oversight have lined the nation’s liquor up for every manner of abuse. Alas, the small, local brewery is about to be forced to make the same kind of grocery-store swill Yamaoka abhors, unless our heroes can help the owners secure a loan.

Can the local brewery be saved from ruthless corporate forces? More importantly, can sake as it was meant to be be saved from those same forces? Never fear, for the foodie-journalist equivalent of Mystery, Inc. is on the case! They don’t quite put on a show in someone’s barn to save Japan’s national beverage, but they come hilariously close in the multi-chapter story that follows. The heightened charms of the story aside, it has really interesting things to say about the importance of preserving cultural traditions and looking to dedicated, artisanal producers to do that. It’s even reasonably fair to the money men who have their eyes fixed on the bottom line.

As someone who keeps at least one eye on the resurgence of locally grown, sustainably produced foods and the associated embrace of food quality, this volume really struck a nice chord with me. While 90% of the Food Network’s programming seems to be reaching for the can opener and dumbing down everything Julia Child hoped popular culinary education could be, it’s nice to pick up a comic that cares so passionately about food and the way it’s made.