The Manga Curmudgeon

Spending too much on comics, then talking too much about them

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Upcoming 6/11/2008

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Some noteworthy items from this week’s ComicList:

I should be over this by now, but I still think of Dark Horse as the blood-and-guts comics publisher with all of the widescreen licensed properties and seinen shootouts. This is narrow-minded of me, but it leads me to pay more attention when something counter-intuitive arrives. This week, it’s Simone Lia’s Fluffy, about an adorable bunny and his human father, and it looks super, super cute.

One of my favorite trashy, stupid movies of all time is Change of Habit, because describing it makes you sound like you’re inventing it while stoned. It stars Mary Tyler Moore as an undercover nun who moves to the ghetto to do good works and meets a doctor played by Elvis Presley. Any part of that sentence is insane enough to make you doubt its veracity, so I won’t even mention all of the other plot twists. Anyway, my love of that film and my fondness for the work of Rumiko Takahashi pushes me towards One Pound Gospel (Viz).

Sometimes all it takes is a kind word or two from Kate Dacey to make me want a book very much. This week, that book is Ume Aoki’s Sunshine Sketch (Yen Press). To be honest, calling it “a gentle, slice-of-life comedy” is enough to catch my interest.

Upcoming 5/4/2008

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The rhythmic sound of the ocean has turned my brain to pudding, so I haven’t delved as carefully as I might otherwise through this week’s ComicList. And while they always say you should do something you wouldn’t do normally while on vacation, that’s been covered by “not stepping on dead jellyfish,” so I’ll stick with the old favorites.

This week’s highlights come from Viz. The first is the eighth volume of Kiyoko Arai’s very funny Beauty Pop, about a high-school club full of makeover artists. Its anchored by one of the surliest, most disinterested shôjo heroines I’ve ever seen, so naturally I love it.

The second is the second volume of Chica Umino’s also very funny Honey and Clover. If I’d been better prepared, I would have rented the live-action movie version to watch on the road. (Speaking of movies, I would recommend Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull if only for the pleasures of watching Cate Blanchett glare and Karen Allen making you wonder why they didn’t just call the movie Indiana Jones and We’re Really Sorry About Kate Capshaw.)

And holy crap, you guys, it came out a while ago, but the highlight of the big stack of wallow manga I brought with me is clearly the second volume of Hinako Ashihara’s Sand Chronicles. It’s funny and sad and beautiful and perfect, and everyone should read it.

The game changes

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I always enjoy new volumes of Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata’s Hikaru no Go (Viz), but I think the twelfth is the best of the series so far. After budding go player Hikaru achieves a significant milestone, he and his mentor, Sai, are forced to reevaluate their relationship.

Sai is the ghost of a go expert who died before he could achieve his full potential. When Hikaru found his grandfather’s antique go board, Sai latched onto him as an earthly vessel, a way to play. Over the course of the series, Hikaru has developed a passion for the game that’s entirely independent of Sai’s influence. Hikaru has his own goals as a player, and they’re at odds with Sai’s ambitions.

It’s a sad and rather lovely portrayal of the mentor-student relationship that seems perfectly natural but is rather fresh for this kind of comic. It’s inevitable that the protégé should outgrow his or her teacher, but that moment is usually greeted with tearful pride and a feeling of inevitability. The development between Hikaru and Sai is much more complicated and, in my opinion, more rewarding.

I’m looking forward to seeing how the dynamic between Hikaru and Sai develops from this difficult point. It gives weight to Hikaru’s increasingly challenging matches and adds depth of feeling to the narrative as a whole.

Particles

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Kate Dacey has more of her always-terrific reviews up at Manga Recon, looking at some recent shôjo releases. She saves me the trouble of thinking too deeply about Arina Tanemura’s I.O.N. (Viz).

As Kate points out, it’s very much a debut work, but it helped me crystallize my thinking about Tanemura’s work. She’s undeniably talented (and very popular), but here’s the thing: whenever I read her work, I feel like I’m watching an audition for a musical-theatre repertory where someone has to prove that they can sing, act and dance without the requirement of making those qualities come together into something larger. I always feel like there’s some guiding principle missing from the mix in her manga.

I’m almost always fond of the freakish supporting characters that haunt the fringes of Tanemura’s stories. It’s just the leads and what happens to them that don’t hold my attention. (Of course, I haven’t sampled Full Moon yet.)

Upcoming 5/7/2008

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Record gas prices? Check! Skyrocketing food costs? Double-check! Humongous list of new comic book releases for the week? Triple-check!

Some of these series have been running for some time now, so it might be useful to provide some introductions. Also, I really like Manga Recon’s new Weekly Recon format, so I’m going to swipe it.

Crayon Shinchan Vol. 2, by Yoshito Usui, CMX: I can’t really put it any better than Matthew Brady: “Also: kids are horrible, awful creatures. Good times!” Exactly. If I’m going to be completely truthful, I’ll admit that I prefer the anime to the manga, but the second half of the first volume of the manga, when the setting shifted from home to school, was laugh-out-loud funny. Great. Now the infectious theme song is running through my head again.

Eden: It’s an Endless World! Vol. 10, by Hiroki Endo, Dark Horse: A bizarre virus has decimated the population, leaving all kinds of power struggles in play. Corporate moguls, political bigwigs, and terrorists fight for the future of a world that may not be worth the trouble. It’s beautifully drawn and often quite gripping as it combines the personal with the political.

King of Thorn Vol. 4, by Yuji Iwahara, Tokyopop: Another post-viral-apocalypse comic that’s much more conventional in its structure. Think The Poseidon Adventure set in a cryogenic research facility. A group of disease carriers wake up to find themselves abandoned in said facility, which is overrun with bizarre monsters. The demographically familiar band struggles to find a way out and, honesty compels me to admit, to display distinct personalities beyond their character types. But Iwahara’s art is a treat.

Kitchen Princess Vol. 6, by Natsumi Ando and Miyuki Kobayashi, Del Rey: The orphan child of two gifted pastry chefs bakes her way into a snooty private school to track down the boy of her dreams. That sounds awfully saccharine and formulaic, and the series started off in that vein, but the creators have taken off the oven mitts and started delivering some serious emotional punches as the series has progressed. The previous volume ended on a cliffhanger rather more perilous than is usual for school-romance manga, and I’m eager to see what happens next.

High School Debut Vol. 3, by Kazune Kawahara, Viz – Shojo Beat: This imprint has three crack-tastic releases this week. The premise of this series – a sporty girl enters high school and decides she wants a boyfriend, securing a hunky male mentor to advise her on issues of dateability – is extremely formulaic and blissfully irrelevant in light of its other charms. Those include terrific characters and emotionally specific writing that can really make you catch your breath. I’m perfectly happy to see a familiar formula executed with panache, but I think I’m even happier to see one subverted so feelingly.

Hikaru No Go Vol. 12, by Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata, Viz – Shonen Jump: I went on about this title at some length in yesterday’s Flipped column, so I’ll just summarize its selling points: likeable characters, terrific art, and a surprisingly intriguing and flexible premise about a board game.

Nana Vol. 10, by Ai Yazawa, Viz – Shojo Beat: Two young women named Nana meet on a train to Tokyo and strike up an unlikely but enduring friendship. The series consistently provides sexy urban soap opera, and it’s currently in the midst of a perfect storm of personal and professional conflicts.

Salt Water Taffy Vol. 1, by Matthew Loux, Oni Press: This is delightful, as I mentioned in a review last week. Loux introduces his protagonist brothers to the weird and wonderful charms of a coastal town in Maine.

Sand Chronicles Vol. 2, by Hinako Ashihara, Viz – Shojo Beat: Ashihara doesn’t ask for much; she merely wants to rip your heart out with her pitch-perfect episodes from a girl’s coming of age. Like High School Debut, there’s a shocking quantity of recognizable human behavior here. Unlike that worthy book, Sand Chronicles doesn’t even pretend to follow a formula as it cherry-picks key moments from the adolescence of its engaging heroine, Ann Uekusa. Extremely absorbing, grounded storytelling, and beautiful art.

Tangled webs

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At Manga Xanadu, Lori Henderson looks at some of the ways manga publishers can use online resources to promote their material, and she makes a number of good points. The piece is framed at least partly around a certain kind of title that needs the help:

“Even if most of the sales of titles come from brick and mortar retail, getting the word out about titles shouldn’t be such an issue in the internet age. If manga publishers would make better use of their online resources, C list titles would have a better chance.”

Coincidentally, Viz has redesigned its online store, and it does seem like an improvement. Viz’s press release promises easier navigability and better search functionality, and a couple of quick tests seem to confirm those claims. Viz’s manga titles are listed by imprint on the store’s front page, which is handy, and there are some web-only discounts running down the sidebar.

There are a few odd things going on. Clicking randomly through series, it seems like some volumes from some series aren’t available. (Just at a glance, some with only partial runs available are Kekkashi, Aishiteruze Baby, and Maison Ikkoku. Poor Inubaka: Crazy for Dogs and Yakitate!! Japan aren’t there at all yet.) Maybe Viz is still finishing up its listings, but that seems like something that should be corrected as quickly as possible. If a publisher is going to have an online store, which is never a bad idea if it isn’t going to be too burdensome to manage, then the publisher should have its entire catalogue available for purchase.

That seems particularly important for the C list titles. If a book is having trouble finding space on bookstore shelves, then it’s not unreasonable for a customer to seek it out online. The publisher’s online store might not be the first place they look, but a certain percentage of them will wind up there sooner or later, and it would be best not to discourage them in their inquiries.

And speaking C list titles and the Viz store, there seem to be some missed opportunities to give those books a push. Viz’s best-selling properties (Naruto, Death Note, Bleach, and the like) tend to eat up most of the front page’s visible real estate. I’m guessing you would have to work pretty hard to find retail markets where books and DVDs from these properties aren’t available. It’s not a bad idea for a publisher to brand itself with its successes, but why not use their rising tides to lift a few dinghies in the process?

I’m thinking about something along the lines of Amazon’s “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought…” widget, but with a more activist bent. I’m not all that crazy about suggestive selling, but I’m less bothered by it when it’s in service of underperforming but worthy books. Offering discounts on those C list books with purchase of an A list property might be a good idea as well.

Dogs and monsters

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Some picks from the ComicList for Wednesday, April 16, 2008:

Viz does all the heavy lifting this week, which is a rather lean one.

I’ve already read the fourteenth volume of Naoiki Urasawa’s Monster, and it’s pretty much superb. This series has really built into a terrific suspense story as the characters have developed.

I’m a bit behind on Kazuo Umezu’s The Drifting Classroom, which concludes with its 11th volume. I’ll have to schedule a profoundly disturbing read-a-thon at my earliest convenience.

Then I can calm my nerves with some catch-up reading of Yukia Sakuragi’s Inubaka: Crazy for Dogs, which has reached its eighth volume.

Summer reading

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Okay, so Previews order forms are due tomorrow. I never promised to be timely, and there’s good stuff available.

I’ve made my feelings about Kaoru Mori’s Emma abundantly clear, so I’m excited the follow-up, Shirley (CMX). It’s a collection of shorts about English maids, and I’m sure it will be lovely. (Page 125.)

I’m not really the audience for books about making comics, but I admire the work of Jessica (La Perdida) Abel and Matt (Odds Off or, L’Amour Foutu) Madden enormously, so I’m sure Drawing Words & Writing Pictures (First Second) will be a valuable resource. (Page 291.)

Though I’m convinced there must be many more juicy and telling crimes from the Victorian era, Rick Geary’s shift to A Treasury of 20th Century Murder won’t keep me from greedily consuming The Lindbergh Child (NBM). Geary’s true-crime comics are some of the best reads out there. (Page 317.)

A new comic from Hope Larson is always cause for celebration. Simon & Schuster offers Chiggers, a tale of summer-camp complications between two best friends. (Page 332.)

There’s something about Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball books that puts me off, but I’ve liked what I’ve read of his silly, charming Dr. Slump. Viz rolls out another all-ages adventure, Cowa!, which has the added benefit of starring baby monsters. (Page 374.)

Enticing as the prospect of a new shot at Takehiko Inoue’s Slam Dunk is, I think I’m more excited about the impending arrival of his series, Real (Viz). It’s another sports series, this time about wheelchair basketball, and it won the Excellence Prize at the 2001 Japan Media Arts Festival. (Page 379.)

They aren’t exactly debuts, but I’m happy to see new installments of former ICE Kunion titles showing up in rotation from Yen Press. I’m particularly looking forward to the second volume of Soo Hee Park’s Goong, the tale of an ordinary girl set to marry a member of the royal family. (Page 382.)

Upcoming 4/9/2008

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I’m so confused by this week’s shipping list. Things seem to have reappeared in spite of having shipped a while ago, or at least they were listed as arrivals on previous weeks. Ah well.

Surely the pick of the week will be the second volume of Joann Sfar’s The Rabbi’s Cat (Pantheon). The first collection of this series was my introduction to Sfar’s work, and it was love at first sight. I can’t wait to catch up with the philosophical feline.

Has the third volume of Yuki Urushibara’s splendid Mushishi (Del Rey) been in bookstores for a while and is just now arriving in comic shops? Possibly. I reviewed it a couple of weeks ago, and I recommend it to anyone who likes smart, heartfelt science fiction and fantasy.

While I don’t feel any urgency to run out and pick up the new volume of Kanako Inuki’s Presents (CMX) the day they come out, I always pick it up eventually. Aside from its old-school horror charms, this series is an excellent palate cleanser. The short stories of gifts gone wrong and horrible things happening to terrible people are very pleasant diversions to enjoy between chunkier series.

Speaking of pleasant diversions, Shin Mashiba’s Nightmare Inspector: Yumekui Kenbun (Viz) certainly counts. It’s certainly not the best paranormal-investigator manga you could select, but given how many entries there are in that category, that’s hardly a damning criticism. People plagued with bad dreams turn to Hiruko for help, though they shouldn’t expect any sympathy, and Mashiba turns out some amusing, generally effective episodes as a result. Mashiba’s beautiful, detailed artwork is the strongest selling point for this series.