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From the stack: Bakuman vol. 3

February 24, 2011 by

I probably wouldn’t have picked up Bakuman (Viz) on my own. I can’t remember the exact reasons for that decision, but I’m sure they had something to do with the notion of people who make comics making a comic about people who make comics. It’s not a favorite subject unless the people who make those comics happen to be French.  But Viz sent me a review copy of the third volume, so I figured, “Why not?” Now, in spite of the fact that Bakuman has few of the elements I usually look for in a comic I’m likely to enjoy, I have to go find the first two volumes.

So what are those things that I usually like that are absent here? For one, I like engaging protagonists. Writer Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated Takeshi Obata (you may recall them from Death Note, also from Viz) tell the tale of would-be mangaka, writer Akito Takagi and illustrator Moritaka Mashiro as they try and build their careers. They’re in high school, but that’s not improbable on its face, and they seem to be making some traction. Unfortunately, they’re boring people. Neither displays the quirky passion that makes for a great shônen hero with a dream.

For another, I like a story with stakes. While the stakes are enormous for Takagi and Mashiro, I didn’t share their urgency at all. Maybe I’ll be better able to invest in their dreams after reading the first two volumes, but that still leaves the fact that these boys don’t have much going for them. On the subplot front, each has a girlfriend of sorts. Mashiro’s wants to be a voice actress in anime, and Takagi’s is the sporty, outgoing type. If either girl ever went an inch beyond type, I can’t remember it. And I also like interesting female characters, so there’s another strike.

And while I generally have no problem with dialogue-driven storytelling (hi, Fumi Yoshinaga!), Bakuman indulges in this approach to a ridiculous extreme. I remember thinking that the final volume of Death Note was just one big word bubble, and Bakuman shares that tendency to natter. It’s all tell, and virtually no show.

So why do I feel compelled to pick up the previous and future volumes? It’s because I suspect that Bakuman’s failings as shônen are entirely the point. Why else would Ohba and Obata go to such lengths to have their characters articulate what makes great shônen manga, to fully explore its key elements, only to willfully avoid incorporating them into their own actual manga? I’m casting my vote with “intentionally postmodern.”

Ohba an Obata talk a lot about manga, not simply as a creative process but as a profession. They talk about the vagaries of popularity, the self-perpetuating structure of magazines like Shônen Jump, the tyranny of reader polls, the weird formula of creative inspiration and commercial instinct, and so on. It’s not quite cynical, but it’s certainly frank, especially when you consider the fact that it actually runs in Shônen Jump, the very magazine it routinely criticizes. Of course, the criticism is generally reasoned and sounds fair, but still.

Without the almost clinical self-examination of the manga industry, there really wouldn’t be anything to take away from Bakuman. But the examination is there, and it’s undeniably compelling. I don’t really care if Takagi and Mashiro become big successes or fail miserably, but I don’t think I’m supposed to care. I think I’m supposed to enjoy the fact that Ohba and Obata are peeling back the curtain and showing that the creation of thrilling fantasy can be very dull indeed.

Update: Deb (About.Com) Aoki spreads the word about Viz’s Bakuman Fan Art Contest.

Filed under: Contests and giveaways, From the stack, Linkblogging, REVIEWS, Viz 22 Comments

From the stack: A Single Match

February 21, 2011 by

If I had to pick a favorite boutique comics publisher, it would probably be Drawn & Quarterly, simply for the volume of work they’ve released that I really, really enjoy. If I isolate the portion of their catalog devoted to Japanese comics, their success rate is somewhat lower. I appreciate their efforts to bring avant-garde manga to English-reading audiences, but I don’t always particularly enjoy the individual works.

I like the work of Yoshihiro Tatsumi, particularly his autobiography, A Drifting Life., and his early genre work, Black Blizzard. I found Seiichi Hayashi’s Red Colored Elegy more of its time than enduring. Susumu Katsumata’s Red Snow was pure pleasure, but Imiri Sakabashira’s The Box Man struck me as a fleeting, flashy fever dream. I’m happy to report that Oji Suzuki’s collection of short stories, A Single Match, wound up on the positive end of the spectrum, though that wasn’t an instantaneous verdict.

Suzuki has a very distinct rhythm and sensibility, and it isn’t immediately accessible. His stories have a quality that’s both dreamlike and naturalistic, and it took a few stories for me to yield to the style. In dreams, you find yourself recognizing people and places you’ve never been before, accepting circumstances that are totally alien to your experience and constructing memories that you claim as your own, even though you know that they aren’t. It’s a bit unsettling to see that illogically coherent frame of reference captured so precisely on paper, and since the experience of dreams isn’t an entirely comfortable one to begin with, the feeling of unease can be magnified.

“Tale of Remembrance” is an extraordinary example of this real-but-not approach. Narrative perspective seems to shift before you realize it. Inky blackness frames indelible images like a forlorn, faceless girl floating in the sky. Specific impressions that seem like memory are transformed into unsettling visual metaphors. Emotional undercurrents run from tender to suggestively menacing. It’s quite a reading experience, and it’s certainly not the only one of its kind in this collection.

Even the more ostensibly straightforward stories like “Mountain Town” keep you on uncertain footing. In this piece, a boy accompanies his father to return a scooter that he’d used for a part-time job. The journey is fraught with tension, unspoken and verbalized. The boy seesaws between uncomplicated comfort in his father’s company and painful awareness of the man’s shortcomings. Suzuki’s illustrations here are generally fairly concrete, though there are flashes of abstraction, like a memory is being filled in with a raw, emotional conceptualization.

As much as I ended up enjoying this collection, I have to admit to initial unease and impatience. It’s not a work that grabs you from the first page, and I’m not even sure the works are best appreciated as a single reading experience. They were published in Seirindo’s legendary alternative anthology, Garo, and I found myself wondering how they would have read in that context. The notion of getting a small dose of Suzuki’s work in the midst of a variety of other styles and subjects was appealing to me. When I read the stories again, I’ll sprinkle them in between other works to see if my theory is correct.

And I certainly will read them again. It’s nice to be challenged by a work, especially when the work rewards you for rising to that challenge. And I would happily read any of Suzuki’s work that Drawn & Quarterly chooses to publish, though maybe not all at once.

Filed under: Drawn & Quarterly, From the stack, REVIEWS 3 Comments

Two on friendship

February 17, 2011 by

Weird as it may be to say for someone who reads a fair amount of shônen manga, I think friendship is an under-examined subject in comics. There are some great ones that offer insights into unromantic bonds among unrelated people, but new examples are always welcome. I’ve recently enjoyed two relative newcomers to this genre, both of which address the shifting fortunes of friendship. They’re very different, but each is well worth a read.

Sarah Oleksyk’s Ivy (Oni Press) is about as frank an examination of emotional growing pains as you’re likely to find. Its titular heroine is suffering through the restrictions of high-school life in a small town, trying to make decisions about her future that she knows her mother would oppose, and wondering why her closest friends seem to be distancing themselves from her. Readers won’t wonder, as Ivy doesn’t seem like an easy person to be around. To be perfectly honest, she’s kind of awful, but she’s awful in achingly specific, recognizable ways.

Oleksyk doesn’t seem to be doing that thing where a creator will trick you into loving her unsympathetic protagonist. She seems more hopeful that you won’t judge Ivy too harshly and that you’ll see the bits of her that track with the bits of you that you may not care to remember. That was my experience with the book. I could identify with both the friends who find Ivy increasingly hard to take (“She makes fun of everything I say!”) and the spikes of temper and feelings of ill use and jealousy that seem to bubble out of Ivy before she even realizes it. There are tons of moments that acutely express feelings I’ve had in the past, even if I haven’t shared the identical experience that triggered them.

That kind of pungent, “I’ve felt that before” specificity informs the entire book, even when “I’ve felt that before” is accompanied by the less flattering sensation that I’ve read some of this before. While Oleksyk’s characters never feel less than uniquely alive, some of their experiences cover very well-traveled ground. Oleksyk brings freshness to Ivy’s first serious romantic relationship (which you will probably watch through spread fingers with some bad ex’s face floating unbidden in your memory), but her conflict with her mother and troubles with a teacher felt very predictable. It’s not that these threads aren’t executed well or aren’t true to the character; it’s that these specific arcs have been portrayed so often and so well that it’s hard not to feel that you’ve been there and done that.

But, though it all, Oleksyk remains true to the fact that her heroine isn’t a particularly nice person. Ivy is worthy of interest and sympathy, but she has a lot of growing up to do. That clear-eyed understanding, combined with a note-perfect facility for teen turmoil (along with splendid, expressive art), make Ivy a standout.

(Comments based on a digital review copy provided by the publisher. I haven’t seen the physical book, so I can’t comment on its production values.)

In a much lighter vein is the first volume of Yuuki Fujimoto’s The Stellar Six of Gingacho (Tokyopop), which follows six friends who are all children of various vendors in a small market street. Mike, the green grocer’s daughter, has noticed that the group has been drifting apart as they’ve gotten older and split off into different classes at school. She’s made new friends and developed new interests herself, but she doesn’t want to lose the special bond that she’s formed with this neighborhood pack. So she comes up with things they can do as a group, particularly when they’re tied to their shared identity as vendors’ kids.

The best parts of this book are tied to Market Street. Perhaps it reveals too much in the way of postmodern hippie leanings on my part, but I love stories that feature small businesses and independent entrepreneurs. Fujimoto seems to share my admiration, and the bustle of Market Street, the interactions between various shop owners and their collective efforts, play an important role beyond just giving the ensemble cast a commonality. Market Street has a warm sense of place, and it’s easy to see why Mike wants to nourish the parts of her that are spring from it.

Not unexpectedly, things tend to sag when events move away from the neighborhood. The slow-building subplot of Mike’s dawning romantic feelings for longtime friend Kuro (the fishmonger’s son) is nice enough, but it feels generic compared to the ensemble elements. When the kids are at school, the book resembles any number of competent middle-school romances. If Fujimoto figures out how to ground Mike and Kuro’s developing relationship in the atmosphere and events of Market Street, my concerns will be nullified. (I’ll also be happy if she devotes more individual attention to the other members of the ensemble.)

Fujimoto does end the volume on a wonderful high note. Its final story introduces Market Street’s curmudgeonly granny of a candy shop owner. I’ve expressed my fondness for this type of character before, and I love this specimen’s playfully combative relationship with the kids and her abiding loyalty to her neighborhood, no matter how often she carps about details. Her loyalty is returned in just the right proportion in a lovely story about neighbors doing right by each other and generations finding unexpected ways to connect.

If I were to complain about anything about the book, it would be the positively miniscule type size of the many conversational asides Fujimoto gives her characters. It’s hard to see how they could be any larger, but they’re an absolute chore to decipher, and the affection the book earns overall makes me not want to miss a word.

(The Stellar Six of Gingacho originally ran in Hakusensha’s Hana to Yume and The Hana to Yume for a total of ten volumes.)

Filed under: From the stack, Oni, REVIEWS, Tokyopop 2 Comments

MMF: Barefoot Gen 1 and 2

February 14, 2011 by

Before preparing for the current Manga Moveable Feast, I’d only read about a chapter of Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen (Last Gasp), the one reprinted in the back of Frederik Schodt’s Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics.

This wasn’t because I was unimpressed with that sample or thought it was in some way unworthy. I mean, you can’t spend any time talking with people who love manga and not have Barefoot Gen come up in the most enthusiastic, even reverent, terms.

No, the reason is that I tend to compartmentalize things. I generally read comics to be entertained on some level, to distract myself from reality. This doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy comics that address dark themes or tragedy. I just prefer a level of distance from the truly hurtful, tragic aspects of life. So an autobiographical comic about the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima… well, it’s a lot, you know?

In the first volume, we meet the Nakaokas, the close stand-ins for Nakazawa’s own family. Beyond the deprivations of being average citizens during wartime, the Nakaokas are enduring persecution from their neighbors. Daikichi, the father, is morally opposed to the war, and he’s becoming increasingly frank about it as the conflict drags on. But he’s got a pregnant wife, Kirie, and five children to support, in spite of efforts of their pro-war acquaintances to isolate them and make their lives difficult.

Second-youngest son Gen doesn’t fully understand the source of his family’s woes, though he tries to ameliorate them in kid-like ways. He schemes to find them food and other comforts, and he resorts to violence when the insults against his father and the persecution of his parents and siblings become too much to stand. In the space of a volume, he does gain a better understanding of his parents’ principles and their cost, and he learns to sacrifice for others. That last skill will be essential, as the atomic bomb is dropped on his home town at the end of the first volume.

His town is destroyed, countless lives are lost, and his family is decimated before his eyes. The trauma triggers Kirie’s labor, so Gen is left with terrible grief, horror everywhere, and a mother and infant sister to support and protect. And he’s just a kid. And he’s a kid wading through a sea of horror and death the likes of which no one on Earth had ever experienced before it happened to these people. The struggle to survive goes from difficult to seemingly impossible, and maybe it’s only Gen’s youth and relative innocence that help him through it. He’s not immune to horror and despair, but his father so forcefully conveyed the importance of survival to Gen that he has at least some functional armor, something to keep him plodding along through the sea of bodies, the stench, and the deprivation.

I thought I had grown accustomed to the juxtaposition of cartoon stylization with serious subject matter during my exposure to the work of Osamu Tezuka. Nakazawa was a great admirer of Tezuka’s work, and you can see the influence. That said, I sometimes found the relationship between content and style uncomfortable. Early chapters are sprinkled with Gen’s more innocent antics, juxtaposed with their father’s simmering rage, his bruised and battered face. That rage infects Gen from time to time, and his physical response to injustices is shocking, even grotesque. There’s casual cartoon violence that escalates into sincere, unsettling violence, and I found it challenging to adjust to the shifts.

Either Nakazawa found surer footing in the second volume (or I did) after relative trivialities are literally blown away. Gen still behaves like a child sometimes, but he is a child, and it’s a relief that those responses still live in him somewhere. Even in the midst of all this horror  and with all of these terrible responsibilities, Gen can still be distracted and follow a generous or curious impulse. The weight of circumstances always reasserts itself, but an innocent part of his nature has survived along with his body.

And he’s not a conventional shônen boy hero: friendship and victory aren’t options; the hard work of living a bit longer and making sure the people he loves and still has do as well is the only thing he has left. Beyond the mechanics of moment-to-moment life, like food and water, there’s still injustice aplenty, and there’s the despair of strangers on all sides.

It’s bleak, and at times it’s exhausting to read, though I don’t mean either of those as a criticism. Much as I hate catchphrases like “sharing his truth,” that’s what Nakazawa is doing here, and the force and specificity of it is overwhelming.

I wish I could claim that these volumes have changed my view on comics that speak these kinds of harsh truths, but I can’t. My interest in them is still the exception rather than the rule and probably always will be. But I will finish Barefoot Gen, if only because I feel like I should for reasons that go beyond merely wanting to because it’s a comic I admire. As I said, it’s a lot.

Filed under: From the stack, Last Gasp, Manga Moveable Feast, REVIEWS 10 Comments

From the stack: Chi’s Sweet Home

February 10, 2011 by

We adopted a dog not too long ago. Her previous owner had passed away, and she was being fostered by a kind family in a neighboring town. She’s about two years old and small, apparently some kind of hybrid of Chihuahua and Dachshund, and yes, she looks as odd as that combination suggests. (We’ve unofficially labeled the hybrid “Gummi Weasel,” but we have yet to hear back from the AKC.)

She’s adorable and quirky and we love her very much. Of course, introducing an animal into a new house never goes flawlessly, at least in my experience, but we’re doing our best to convince her that our home is her home and that we’ll always have her best interests at heart, while reassuring our preexisting brood that they’re loved every bit as much as they were before this little alien moved in.

During this gradual and pleasurable process, I’m reminded of the many things Kanata Konami gets exactly right in creating Chi’s Sweet Home (Vertical). I say “reminded,” because I’m sure we relearned all this the last time we welcomed a new animal, but I guess it’s a much milder version of what some people say about childbirth: you forget the negatives, and you just remember the outcome.

The beauty of Chi’s Sweet Home isn’t in its narrative sweep but in the way that Konami captures specific beats in the process of being a pet owner. Yes, there are plenty of kittenish antics from the titular feline, but the spine of the series is her human family adapting to their shared responsibility for this furry little creature. They shift things around in their household to make sure Chi is both safer and less prone to mischief. They take her to the veterinarian. They figure out what kind of food she likes. They trim her nails. They make choices and sacrifices that responsible people make when they add an animal to their family.

If the book was simply about a cute kitten doing cute things, I don’t believe it would be nearly as successful as it is. Powerful a force as cuteness is, care-giving isn’t all romping with plush toys and blissful naps. It’s sometimes messy, sometimes expensive, and sometimes inconvenient. The cuteness is the reward, as is the affection and the gradually strengthening bond between pet and owner. (This is one of the reasons that I think Chi’s Sweet Home would be a great comic for a kid, since the work end of the equation isn’t neglected.)

Over at Comics Alliance, David Brothers gives a persuasive summary of the book’s strong points, noting that Konami has a good grasp of feline behavior. This is absolutely true, and she doesn’t over-anthropomorphize Chi’s antics. She doesn’t need to, because she finds all of these telling moments in the warmly everyday relationship between humans and pet.

Brothers also notes Konami’s willingness to fold sadness into the narrative, which is also entirely correct. I knew it was dramatically successful when I originally read the sequences Brothers describes. But I know it’s accurate from watching our new dog have moments when she seems to remember that our house hasn’t always been her house, that she’s had other, meaningful people in her life, and that something inside her amounts to unfinished business. And if you ignore those moments or reject them, you miss the fullness of the experience that Konami is describing. I never thought I’d use the phrase “mono no aware” to describe a manga about a kitten, but I guess that’s what you get when it’s a seinen manga about a kitten.

So, as we continue to welcome our new little citizen to the household, I’ll certainly keep up with Chi’s immersion in her new home. And I’ll probably have a Gummi Weasel on my lap as I do so.

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

Filed under: From the stack, Linkblogging, REVIEWS, Vertical 6 Comments

From the stack: The Summit of the Gods vol. 2

February 7, 2011 by

The second volume of The Summit of the Gods (Fanfare/Ponent Mon), written by Yumemakura Baku and illustrated by Jiro Taniguchi, delves deeply into both the psychology and behavior of its characters, though one particular aspect of their psychology and the behavior it inspires remains utterly baffling to me. I can think of few things I’d rather do less than dangle from an icy mountain by a rope. Since that’s almost all these characters think about, one might anticipate some remoteness on my part as a reader.

This reaction is averted by the sheer density of the work – the madly detailed illustrations, the tense technicalities of climbing, and the oblique revelation of small aspects of the characters. I say small aspects because Baku and Taniguchi make virtually no attempt to answer the big question of how people can dedicate their lives to an activity that’s almost entirely perilous, no matter how prepared you may be.

There’s a lot of dialogue, but there’s very little in the way of speech-making. Nobody really gazes off into the middle distance and talks about the nobility of the climb or anything of that sort. That, to my way of thinking, would have been insufferable, not to mention unpersuasive. The point-of-view character, Fukamachi, has specific interests instead of theses to prove. His attempts to understand things that have happened are different than grasping at reasons or creating context.

Most of the time in this volume is spent with Fukamachi talking to people who know legendary, troubled climber Habu. He learns of an ill-fated climb in Europe and another in Tibet. He digs into the life story of one of Habu’s rivals, finding new ways that their respective careers intersected and ran parallel. Fukamachi has an ultimate goal and mysteries to solve, but he has no specific urgency in his efforts. He’s hearing too many interesting stories to want to bring the process to a speedy conclusion.

The same can be said of the book itself. It doesn’t really have an overwhelming momentum to it, though individual sequences are often very exciting. There’s a level of remove, an analytical quality even to the nail-biting moments that suggests the perspective of a detached (but not entirely unmoved) observer. It’s a very intellectual, meticulous approach to very visceral material, and a big part of the appeal of the series is that counterpoint.

Another part is Taniguchi’s undeniably beautiful illustrations. He exhibits great restraint and fidelity in the way he renders people, keeping them on the unglamorous side. They look average, if robust, instead of heroic, which raises the stakes when they risk their lives. And his breathtaking vistas are a marvelous substitute for seeing these peaks in person.

I’m not really sure where The Summit of the Gods fits in the seinen universe, with its cerebral muscularity. With the possible exception of Hiroshi Hirata’s Satsuma Gishiden (Dark Horse), it’s unlike just about anything else I’ve read, even from Taniguchi. It’s just a tremendously confident work, and it’s rare to feel that quality come through so clearly, yet so modestly at the same time.

Here’s my review of the first volume.

Filed under: Fanfare/Ponent Mon, From the stack, REVIEWS 4 Comments

From the stack: Kamisama Kiss vol. 1

February 3, 2011 by

One of the bonuses of the most recent Manga Moveable Feast was being introduced to a series I really liked (as opposed to the pleasure of talking about a series I already appreciated), Julietta Suzuki’s Karakuri Odette (Tokyopop). For more points, the feast convinced me to pick up a copy of Suzuki’s Kamisama Kiss (Viz), so now I have two new series that I enjoy. I also have a creator added to my “try automatically” list in Suzuki.

I’ve read good manga about supernatural boys sparking with human girls, and I’ve read some fairly icky manga about the same subject. Kamisama Kiss is decidedly on the good end of the spectrum; it’s endearingly familiar, but it has the same evidence of a quirky, distinct sensibility that Suzuki displayed in Karakuri Odette.

Nanami, a high-school girl, finds herself orphaned and homeless when her irresponsible father flees his gambling debts. Even in distress, she’s good hearted, and she helps a stranger she meets in the park where she’s planning to sleep. In return, he offers her shelter. Unfortunately, it turns out to be a dilapidated shrine, and the free rent is balanced by some heavy responsibilities.

One of those is riding herd over the supernatural staff, which includes a snide (but cute) fox demon named Tomoe. He dislikes Nanami and is reluctant to serve under her. Nanami finds him obnoxious, but she’s a responsible person, and she wants to fulfill her duties to the shrine (and not die at the hands of some rival demon). Disgruntled protagonists are nothing new, but Suzuki makes an important choice in her portrayal of them. She makes them equally matched.

Much as Tomoe would like to bully and deride Nanami for her human incompetence, Suzuki gives the girl an edge over the fox. He still has the advantage of his knowledge and powers, but Nanami gets just enough of the right kind of authority to hold her own. She approaches her responsibilities at the shrine differently, which Tomoe finds both irritating and intriguing. Suzuki finds small, surprising ways to indicate that their relationship may evolve further.

The art is appealing. After the appropriate restraint exhibited in Karakuri Odette, it’s nice to see Suzuki get a little goofy, even over the top at times. Her designs for the supernatural characters are great fun, particularly a visiting demonic dignitary Nanami tries to help. She’s a catfish priestess, of sorts, and Suzuki goes to town making her aristocratic, unnerving, and strangely adorable.

Kamisama Kiss is off to a very promising start. It’s got grumpy, likeable leads, a solid premise, and an endearing look to it.

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

From the stack: Set to Sea

January 31, 2011 by

After the announcement of one of my favorite annual award programs, the Great Graphic Novels for Teens, I decided it might be fun to look at all of the books in the top ten this year. Since the list is always interesting and varied, it’s less of a homework assignment than a usefully structured pleasure.

I wish I could claim some metaphorical design in my first choice, but it was made at random. There’s nothing random about Drew Weing’s Set to Sea, though, which publisher Fantagraphics describes as “part rollicking adventure, part maritime ballad told in visual rhyme.” If that last part sounds a little pretentious, don’t worry. Fantagraphics’ solicitations always sound a little pretentious, even when they’re absolutely true.

Weing’s story does have the shapeliness of a poem, and it has the careful structure of a three-act play. It follows a would-be poet as he becomes an unwilling participant in the kind of seafaring adventures he tries to set to verse. In spite of his imposing size, he’s a tentative sort, and the brutality of life at sea takes a while to penetrate. When it does, he still maintains his artist’s viewpoint, and Weing neatly persuades us that art of any sort is better with some life experience to inform it.

That may seem to be a little ironic, given that Set to Sea is Weing’s debut graphic novel. He’s an experienced creator of webcomics, though, and that’s where this book was born. Consequently, each page is a single panel, but each of those panels is so attractively detailed and evocative that the storytelling structure never feels rigid. Instead, it comes across as economical and precise while still filled with event and emotion. It’s a quick read, but it’s very satisfying, and it just invites you to revisit the story again.

You could read it online, obviously, but the physical package is very handsome and worth the investment. In dimension, it’s like a diary or sketchbook that a traveler would carry, appropriately enough. Kevin (Robot 6) Melrose listed its cover as one of the best of 2010, and he’s quite right. The book itself wound up on a number of Best of 2010 lists, including Andrew Salmond’s and Martin Steenton’s at Forbidden Planet International, Brigid Alverson’s at Robot 6, and the Vulture blog of New York Magazine, and Glen Weldon of NPR’s Monkey See counted it among his most memorable comics and graphic novels of the year.

Set to Sea offers a wonderful beginning to this little project of mine. It’s artistically successful on every front, but Weing’s substantial craftsmanship never overwhelms the simple, heartfelt story he’s telling.

Other reviews in this intermittent series:

You can nominate titles for the next Great Graphic Novel for Teen List, and you can take a look at the current batch of contenders.

 

Filed under: Awards and lists, Fantagraphics, From the stack, GGN4T, Linkblogging, REVIEWS 2 Comments

From the stack: The Story of Saiunkoku vol. 1

January 27, 2011 by

It’s been a while since I felt that a comic was actively flirting with me. There are certainly plenty that I’ve liked, but most of them have stopped somewhere short of actively… well… luring me with just about every quality they possess.

I admit that I initially judged The Story of Saiunkoku (Viz), adapted by Kairi Yura from Sai Yukino’s novels, on a surface level. The cover is bland, and I’m drawn more by weird compositions than pretty faces of people in elaborate costumes. But when Kate Dacey noted that the book “makes [her] feel thirteen years old again” in a good way, I had to reconsider.

While reading the first volume of The Story of Saiunkoku, it bought me drinks from across the bar. It sent me funny and thoughtful text messages. It put its best foot forward, and it became more and more attractive as the encounter progressed. We’re dating now, and I hope you can be happy for us.

I should state up front that there’s almost no way I could resist a comic that features a smart, spirited heroine, a hot, gay emperor, lavish costumes and appointments, and grumpy old men scheming in the background. That comic would have to be actively awful for me not to be at least a little drawn to it, even if I knew the relationship would be… well… conflicted. But The Story of Saiunkoku is miles and miles from actively awful. To channel my thirteen-year-old self, it’s really dreamy.

The Story of Saiunkoku is a period piece about the imperial court of Saiunkoku. It follows a penniless but diligent young noblewoman named Shurei Hong, who enters into the service of the nation’s unmotivated, mildly scandalous young emperor as his consort. Up to this point, Shurei had been scrambling to keep body and soul together, teaching and taking odd jobs to put food on the table of her crumbling family manor. She’d always hoped to enter civil service to help her struggling country, but the men-only strictures of that career blocked her ambition. Now, she can use her considerable intelligence and work ethic to better the country right from the top.

Shurei isn’t just a goody-two-shoes optimist. Yura and Yukino make it clear from the outset that their heroine has a temper and a sharp tongue. In spite of her high status, she isn’t a delicate, sheltered lady. She’s known real deprivation and anxiety, and, when she talks about poverty, she’s not talking about the genteel, abstract variety. Immersion into the rarefied air of the imperial court doesn’t eliminate her instinct to scrimp, the constant rattle of the abacus in her head that tallies how much things cost and what they’re worth. But she isn’t judgmental about it; she isn’t averse to comfort or elegance, just more cognizant of its price tag than those around her.

The emperor she’s meant to serve, Ryuki, is agreed to be a disappointment on every level. He has no interest in governance, and he’d rather bed men, so there isn’t even a chance of him creating a more malleable, promising heir. He won’t even interact with Shurei or his other advisors initially, and it’s only Shurei’s unassuming charm (slyly applied) that leads him to engage with his responsibilities.

This is the point where The Story of Saiunkoku really kicks in, when we see what kind of person the emperor seems to be and glimpses of what kind of person he may actually become. As one would assume, there’s more than meets the eye to him, but the ambiguity remains, and his motivations and ambitions are still deliciously unclear. And Ryuki’s façade is a treat – handsome, lazy, dim, selfish, and more than a little weird. While the glimpses of his inner depths that the creators provide are welcome, his public face is quirky and intriguing in its own right. One of the smartest things a storyteller can do is to create natural, temperamental conflict between protagonists, and the similarities and differences between Shurei and Ryuki are promising in the ways they may evolve and comfortingly familiar in their initial highs and lows.

Also comforting are Yura’s illustrations. Her detailed renderings of court life are appropriately sumptuous, and her page compositions are often very lovely. I also like her knack for facial expressions; she conveys a fine range of emotions in close-up, and her faces can be very funny without seeming rubbery. Yura does lapse into a fairly common failing found in stories that feature a number of attractive men; some of the character designs can be a little repetitive, which can lead to some confusing moments. Overall, though, her drawings are heartfelt eye candy.

It may seem weird, but I find myself comparing The Story of Saiunkoku to Hiroshi Hitara’s Satsuma Gishiden (Dark Horse). That gorgeously violent drama also frames its primary narrative aims in a clearly defined social context that’s concerned with issues of governance, justice, and class. While Yura and Yukino obviously have gentler priorities, the cultural context elevates those intentions in the same way they do for Hitara’s muscular hack-and-slash. Absorbing characters and a well-crafted plot are important, but placing those elements in a world that lives and breathes on its own is a tremendous asset.

And Saiunkoku’s royal court does live and breathe, with its factions and fashions and secrets. Most of all, it breathes thanks to its cast of passionate, distinct characters and the ways they hope to better their lives and their world. I’m hopelessly smitten. I admit it.

(The manga adaptation of The Story of Saiunkoku is running in Kadokawa Shoten’s Monthly Asuka. I’m not sure how many light novels are in Yukino’s series, and they haven’t been published in English, to my knowledge. The first season of the anime adaptation is available from Funimation.)

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

From the stack: Arisa vol. 1

January 24, 2011 by

I wasn’t particularly kind to the work of Natsumi Ando the other day. While I don’t retract anything I said about Wild @ Heart (Del Rey), I’m happy to be able to express a different opinion about Ando’s Arisa. The first volume introduces a tense, observant mystery, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ando’s art look better.

Much as I love shôjo that traffics in comedy, romance, and fantasy, I have a weakness for detective fiction, particularly when it features an amateur sleuth. In Arisa, a young girl investigates the attempted suicide of her twin sister by assuming her identity, and she quickly finds that her twin’s seemingly perfect life had some decidedly dark undertones.

Spunky tomboy Tsubasa and demure princess Arisa have been separated for years by their parents’ divorce. They’ve kept in touch through letters, and they arrange a secret meeting to catch up in person. Tsubasa, whose quick temper and loose tongue have limited her social circle, admires Arisa’s femininity and popularity. Arisa gives Tsubasa the chance to live her perfect life for a day – class president, tons of friends, cute boyfriend, the works. Arisa is brokenhearted when Tsubasa doesn’t see through the façade, and Tsubasa is devastated when Arisa tries to end her own life.

Tsubasa decides to continue the impersonation to try and find out what could have driven Arisa to this desperate act. She begins to unravel the creepy secrets of Arisa’s seemingly cheerful, friendly class, putting herself in danger but charging forward because it’s the right thing to do. The students’ secrets are genuinely unnerving, but Tsubasa seems up to the challenge of deciphering them. She faces real danger, even in the seemingly benign school setting, but she’s tough and a quick thinker.

The script has the kind of darkness and ambition that I found lacking in Wild @ Heart, really digging into the ways that kids can have dark sides but finding a fresh, contemporary take on the subject. Better still, Ando’s illustrations are stripped down for the occasion. If your experience with her drawing is limited to Kitchen Princess, you might be surprised that Arisa is by the same artist. Character design is sleeker and less aggressively endearing. The angles in the page compositions are sharper and more challenging. Even the application of screen tone, while still lavish, is more targeted and restrained in terms of choices.

It’s always nice to see a creator stretch her muscles and try something different, and it’s even better to see her succeed in the attempt. Arisa really seems like a great coalescence of Ando’s evident raw talent into something stronger and more balanced, and the fact that it’s a promising, emotionally complex mystery is a welcome bonus. I’m eager to see what happens next.

(These comments are based on a review copy provided by the publisher. Del Rey released the first volume in 2010, and Kodansha will pick up the series in May of this year. It’s currently running in Kodansha’s Nakayoshi.)

Filed under: Del Rey, From the stack, Kodansha Comics, REVIEWS 1 Comment
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