The Manga Curmudgeon

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

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Upcoming 2/27/2008

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Man, the storm is following the calm this week. Tons of stuff is arriving in comic shops this week (that’s probably already in bookstores) that’s worth a look.

(Dear Borders: Please open a concept store in my area. The area is virtually free of pesky zoning regulations, and big box chains are welcomed with unnerving fervor and gratitude that’s almost pathetic. Just look at the parking lot of the Olive Garden if you don’t believe me. Failing that, please offer a “buy blank for the price of blank minus one,” as I will be in the vicinity of one of your non-concept outlets later in the week and would appreciate a bargain.)

It almost never happens that I come to a manga via the anime, but I’ve seen some episodes of Crayon Shinchan on Cartoon Network and found them hilarious. CMX has picked up the manga, once published by ComicsOne, and will be releasing it in all of its vulgar, adorable glory.

I’ve already gone on about the fifth volume of Kitchen Princess (Del Rey). It shows up in comic shops Wednesday.

Aside from the cheerful bad taste of the acronym you can form from part of its title, I’ve actually heard good things about Kei Azumaya’s All Nippon Airline: Paradise 3000 Feet (Juné).

The tenor has obviously been different, but I’ve also heard really good things about Ulf K.’s Hieronymus B. (Top Shelf). It looks like it should make for a nice change of pace.

And Viz has decided against pacing themselves this week, churning out manga I really like in a great flood. The situation is so serious that I have to resort to the bulleted list.

  • Beauty Pop vol. 6, by Kiyoko Arai: ACK! Get that horrible child off of the cover!
  • Gin Tama vol. 5, by Hiroaki Sorachi: Really, really smart comedy about really, really dumb characters. Many try to pull this kind of thing off, but few succeed.
  • High School Debut vol. 2, by Kazune Kawahara: I thought the first volume had tons of potential, and I’m assured that Kawahara realizes that potential in really interesting ways.
  • Honey and Clover vol. 1, by Chica Umino: Sweet and hilarious stuff about a group of art students.
  • Nana vol. 9, by Ai Yazawa: I’m a selfish ass, so I’m just glad that this book is coming out more often. It looks as though things get even more uncomfortable in this volume, which is just as it should be in soap opera.
  • Naruto vol. 28, by Masashi Kishimoto: I’m pretty much a Naruto newbie, so when Viz sent this volume my way, I was curious to see how it functioned as a starting point for someone who was basically ignorant of everything that went before. It works well, and it’s a very entertaining comic in its own right. Also, Sakura splits the earth open with her fist and does a variety of other impressive things, and I am instantly smitten.

    • But seriously, was that level of quantity and quality strictly necessary?

    It's summer there now

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    Viz is marching on Australia and New Zealand with the help of Madman Entertainment, according to the press release below. Glancing through the catalog at Madman’s web site, I see a couple of Viz properties there already, though not from Shueisha. Madman already has a similar distribution deal with Tokyopop. But this bulks up Madman’s manga offerings rather substantially, given that a bunch of Viz’s best-selling titles are part of the package.

    VIZ MEDIA TEAMS WITH MADMAN ENTERTAINMENT TO BRING HOT MANGA TITLES TO AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

    Country’s Mix Of Western And Asian Culture Creates A Growing Demand For Diverse Titles

    San Francisco, CA, February 22, 2008 – VIZ Media, LLC (VIZ Media), one of the entertainment industry’s most innovative and comprehensive publishing, animation and licensing companies, has announced its continued global expansion with a new distribution agreement with Madman Entertainment to offer a wide variety of Shueisha manga (graphic novel) series to the burgeoning market in Australia and New Zealand. Shueisha Inc., is one of Japan’s largest publishers and is a parent company of VIZ Media.

    Some initial VIZ Media titles to be published will include smash hit properties like NARUTO, set to debut in March, BLEACH, scheduled to launch in April, and DEATH NOTE, which will be introduced in May. Several popular shojo series such as THE GENTLEMEN’S ALLIANCE †, FULL MOON, LOVE*COM and NANA are also set for publication this year along with action favorites that include ONE PIECE, D. GRAY MAN, BLACK CAT and CLAYMORE.

    Madman is Australia’s number one distributor of manga (graphic novels), with a wide range of popular titles already available, including some of the industry’s biggest licenses. In late 2006-early 2007, Madman was a key sponsor of the Tezuka – The Marvel of Manga exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria and the Gallery of New South Wales, and also launched a dedicated manga section on its website, www.madman.com.au.

    “Madman is honored to be working with VIZ Media and their incredible range of manga brands, and thrilled at the prospect of introducing these to a wide range of readers in our territories,” says Tim Anderson, Managing Director of Madman Entertainment. “Australian and New Zealand readers have developed a real thirst for manga and based on similar agreements forged in other rising markets, Madman looks forward to combining efforts with VIZ Media to offer the most comprehensive catalogue to date in these countries.”

    “Madman Entertainment has become a dominant player in the emerging Australian and New Zealand manga scene and we are excited to partner with them to bring some of the hottest titles to readers there.” says Hyoe Narita, Executive Vice President, VIZ Media. “Manga has become a truly global entertainment medium and agreements like this will continue to provide innovative means to develop and establish international markets offering a range of compelling content.”

    About MADMAN ENTERTAINMENT

    THE MADMAN ENTERTAINMENT GROUP proudly showcases the best in Japanese anime, world cinema, art house film, Australian independent features and animation. Madman is Australia’s leading distributor of home entertainment and an industry innovator with a sought-after interactive and DVD authoring studio; printing division; film production involvement; and a range of DVD and video labels. Madman was recently awarded exclusive DVD distribution rights to the Cartoon Network and SBS home entertainment labels. Web site: www.madman.com.au

    About VIZ Media, LLC

    Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, VIZ Media, LLC (VIZ Media), is one of the most comprehensive and innovative companies in the field of manga (graphic novel) publishing, animation and entertainment licensing of Japanese content. Owned by three of Japan’s largest creators and licensors of manga and animation, Shueisha Inc., Shogakukan Inc., and Shogakukan Production Co., Ltd. (ShoPro Japan), VIZ Media is a leader in the publishing and distribution of Japanese manga for English speaking audiences in North America and a global licensor of Japanese manga and animation. The company offers an integrated product line including, magazines such as SHONEN JUMP and SHOJO BEAT, graphic novels, videos, DVDs and audio soundtracks and develops and markets animated entertainment from initial production, television placement and distribution, to merchandise licensing and promotions for audiences and consumers of all ages.

    Upcoming 2/20/2008

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    Some picks from the ComicList for Wednesday, Feb. 20:

    Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá’s very entertaining mini-series, The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite (Dark Horse), concludes with its sixth issue. If you’re coming in late and are curious, the trade paperback is available for pre-order.

    A new volume of Eiji Otsuka and Housui Yamazaki’s The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (Dark Horse) is always cause for celebration. The sixth tankoubon arrives tomorrow, promising new business rivals for the afterlife entrepreneurs.

    I really need to catch up on Tomomi Yamashita’s Apothecarius Argentum (CMX), which is already up to its fourth volume. It’s very attractive, features appealing leads, and offers fun bits of trivia about medicinal and/or lethal substances.

    After four volumes of dealing with the somewhat generic machinations of snotty classmates, the orphan heroine of Natsumi Ando and Miyuki Kobayashi’s Kitchen Princess (Del Rey) gets slapped right in the face with actual adult duplicity in the fifth installment, and holy crap, is it good.

    If you’re craving tales of weird, malevolent, otherworldly organisms turning humans into death machines but find Hitoshi Iwaaki’s Parasyte (Del Rey) a little too old-school, the publisher also offers a more modern take on the same subject matter with Tadashi Kawashima and Adachitoka’s Alive. I like both, but Alive is the one with a new volume arriving tomorrow.

    It’s Signature week from Viz, which is always exciting, but I find myself distracted by the latest issue of Shojo Beat, infused as it is with lots of Bryan Lee O’Malley.

    Still, it’s hard to get too distracted to note that Naoki Urasawa’s Monster, now in its thirteenth volume, has become a really spectacular thriller. Watching Urasawa keep his multiple narrative threads from becoming a hopeless tangle is quite breathtaking.

    Schadenfreude

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    Now that I’ve got the sentimentality out of my system, it’s time to address the flip side of the Valentine’s Day equation. Some (and trust me, I’m sometimes among them) find the whole concept kind of nauseating. So if you’d really like to rip Cupid’s bow out of his hands and do some real damage, here are some comics that allow you to bask in the misery and misfortune of others.

    Bambi and Her Pink Gun, by Kaneko Atsushi (DMP): Dystopia populated by creepy, violent societal parasites? Check. Unsympathetic protagonist who cuts a giddy swath through their ranks? Double check. DMP dropped this delightfully nasty series after only two volumes, but oh, those two volumes are filled with cheerful misanthropy. I miss Bambi.

    Dragon Head, by Minetaro Mochizuki (Tokyopop): You’ve probably said it to yourself: “If I see one more school trip in a manga series, it had better end really badly.” This is the manga for you. In ten volumes of pretty much relentless terror, with occasional side trips to mere creepiness, a handful of survivors try and figure out what the heck happened to Japan while their train was passing through a tunnel.

    The Drifting Classroom, by Kazuou Umezi (Viz): If you could harvest the terrified screams of children and use them as an alternative fuel source, you could probably use this book to power the Mid-Atlantic Region for a few months, at least. I know I shouldn’t admit that watching elementary school children meet grisly and varied ends is a real hoot for me, but it is.

    MW, by Osamu Tezuka (Vertical): Tezuka is generally an optimist, but that doesn’t mean he’s naïve, or that he can’t be downright depraved when the situation calls for it. MW calls for it over and over, and Tezuka doesn’t shrink from any of the lurid possibilities of kidnapping, mass murder, blackmail, illicit sex, and so on.

    Uzumaki, by Junji Ito (Viz): “Uzumaki” means “spiral,” as in “downward.” The third volume of Viz’s re-release of this grimly imaginative horror series is probably already available in bookstores, or you can wait until next week when it’s due to show up at the comic shops.

    Rom com

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    One of the things that was confirmed for me when I started reading manga in earnest was that I’m a big sucker for romance in the comic form. I’d always been more inclined to the soap operatic elements of super-hero comics than the adventure end of things, and many manga series allowed me to forego the flying fists entirely. With the imminent arrival of Valentine’s Day, here are some of my favorites:

    Antique Bakery, by Fumi Yoshinaga (DMP): Okay, it’s more about coping with the challenges of adulthood in general than romance in particular, but I think Yoshinaga is at her funniest, sharpest, and most generous when she examines the bittersweet qualities of interpersonal relationships. It’s almost all sighs instead of swoons, but a story doesn’t have to offer anything resembling “happily ever after” to be romantic in its own way. All four volumes are available.

    Emma, by Kaoru Mori (CMX): On the other hand, this one is all swoons, all the time, and it is glorious. It follows the fraught-with-obstacles romance of a housemaid and a member of the upper class (though tellingly, not the aristocracy), rendered with breathtaking emotional precision and lush, detailed illustrations. Only one more volume is due from this series.

    Fake, by Sanami Matoh (Tokyopop): You’ve got to either embrace or ignore the wooly-headed stupidity of the police procedural aspects of this tale of detectives in lust, but it’s worth it. It’s a seven-volume pas de deux between bisexual Dee and undecided Ryo, fighting (snicker) crime and finding their way towards each other. Don’t think; just read.

    Genshiken, by Kio Shimoku (Del Rey): Like Antique Bakery, this one isn’t a romance, per se, but some of the undercurrents kill me. Shimoku plays me like a fiddle with a will-they-won’t-they-probably-not subplot that runs throughout the nine volumes of the series.

    Love Roma, by Minoru Toyoda (Del Rey): This one presents high-school romance in all of its goofy glory. This review at Sleep is for the Weak tells you everything you need to know about the book’s considerable virtues. All five volumes of its run are available.

    Maison Ikkoku, by Rumiko Takahashi (Viz): Fifteen (thanks, Jun) volumes of romantic misunderstandings and near-misses should be exhausting, but it isn’t. Takahashi keeps her options open and populates her fictional boarding house with a likeable (and likeably awful) cast of characters that keeps things hopping. It’s heartfelt and funny in equal measure, a real classic.

    Paradise Kiss, by Ai Yazawa (Tokyopop): Creative passion and young lust clash in this sexy soap about student designers and their muse, a gawky grind who discovers her inner supermodel (and lots of other stuff). If you’ve been enjoying Yazawa’s Nana (Viz), you owe it to yourself to give this one a look. (And if there was ever a series that begged for a glamorous, done-in-one omnibus treatment, it’s this one. Or maybe Antique Bakery. Or both.)

    So what are your swoon-worthy choices?

    Edited to add one more, because I can’t believe I forgot it:

    Rica ‘tte Kanji!?, by Rica Takashima (ALC): This is perhaps the most adorable backlash comic ever. After growing seriously weary of the often tragic outcomes of most manga tales of lesbian love, Takashima decided to take a more lighthearted, positive approach. The result is this charming story of the budding romance between a young innocent and the not-much-older-but-certainly-wiser woman she meets in Tokyo’s gay district.

    Pop art

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    While sharing his terrific cover for the next issue of Shojo Beat, Bryan Lee O’Malley makes me feel good about my taste in manga by saying the following:

    “As well as Nana (the best thing ever), Shojo Beat also puts out one of mine and Hope’s new favorite manga: BEAUTY POP by Kiyoko Arai! I realize these shojo titles can kind of blur together after a while… flower this, beauty that, something pop, but this is the one about the best hairdresser in Japan!! I urge you to start picking it up.”

    There are some really good manga about girls who don’t really give a damn that they’re surrounded by handsome boys. Ai Morinaga’s My Heavenly Hockey Club (Del Rey) is reliably hilarious, and I really need to read more of Bisco Hatori’s Ouran High School Host Club (Viz), but I think Beauty Pop is probably my favorite of this subgenre.

    This is in spite of the fact that I only like about a third of the large supporting cast and would welcome an incongruous serial killer plot that took out another third of it. (On the plus side, there’s snack-obsessed nail artist Kei and lanky, apologetic massage therapist Kenichiro. On the DIE, DIE NOW end of things lurk pronoun-challenged aromatherapist Iori, and particularly Chisami, the painfully shrill little sister of the lead boy. Aside from being too stupid to live, Chisami refers to herself in the third person, which I almost always find affected and hate a lot.)

    The price of admission for the book is consistently paid by lead character Kiri Koshiba, the most unsentimental shôjo heroine I’ve ever seen. As just about everyone around her panders and flails for status and attention, Kiri is all self-contained focus. She’s a doer instead of a talker, and she has a marvelous sense of perspective and justice. Her pure, effortless coolness can carry me through the most idiotic of plot arcs, and Beauty Pop certainly has its share of those.

    In the sixth volume, she runs afoul of a grasping piece of egotistical trash and, pushed to her limit, stares him down and says, “You’re despicable.” No tears or shouting, just a flat declaration of sublime disdain. Her cold fury is as imposing as the bellowing rage of a dozen other manga characters combined.

    Beaten

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    You know how you’ll be making a grilled cheese and waiting to flip it and you’ll pass the time by thinking, “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” and making a list? I’d be willing to swear this turn of events has actually been a recurring item on those lists. It’s just 31 flavors of awesome.

    On the other hand, I was just in Washington. My hotel was like three blocks from the Kennedy Center. Couldn’t they have bumped this event up a little? (By the way, the Kennedy Center has a really good cafeteria, so if you go to the exhibit and you’re hungry and need a break, it’s upstairs.)

    Upcoming 1/16/2008

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    Before I get started with this week’s comic releases, I just wanted to note that it’s Jakala Family for the Win Week over at Sporadic Sequential. (“But they don’t think that Spider-Man making a deal with the devil looks bad?”)

    Gerard Way and Gabrial Bá’s The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite (Dark Horse) nears its conclusion with the fifth issue. I’ve really been enjoying this series in single issues, which is kind of rare given my general opinions on what constitutes a satisfying chunk of comics. I still think the collection is going to sell like crazy, and I can’t imagine Dark Horse will wait too long to release it, because they seem to have missed few opportunities to wring every dollar possible out of the new franchise.

    Of all the titles coming out from Juné today, the one that interests me most is Tatsumi Kaiya’s Party, as it seems to start where many boys’-love titles end: with the relationship established and the protagonists dealing with life as a couple.

    I can’t believe I forgot to put Yu Yagami’s Hikkatsu! Strike a Blow to Vivify (Go! Comi) on my “Year in Fun” list. It’s the moving story of a young man who practices appliance repair via the martial arts and the raised-by-pigeons girl who has decided she loves him.

    It’s already the best-selling book of all time, but perhaps a manga version will help The Bible hold the top spot. Random House releases The Manga Bible: From Genesis to Revelation, adapted by Siku. I made a point of reading as little of The Bible as a Catholic upbringing would allow, so I’ll point you towards Katherine Dacey’s thoughtful review at Manga Recon.

    Do weaponized dead fish count as some kind of Biblical plague? If so, you can supplement your Manga Bible reading with the second volume of Junji Ito’s Gyo. Tremble before their smelly, skittering onslaught! (Silly as almost all of this book is, I think things are always creepier when they skitter.)

    Flipping out

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    Because it’s never too early to start thinking about next year’s “Best of…” list, I devote this week’s Flipped to two serious contenders from Viz’s Shojo Beat imprint: Hinaka Ashihara’s Sand Chronicles and Chica Umino’s Honey and Clover.

    Yes, I’ve written about them before in serialization. And yes, I’ll probably write about them again.

    (And yes, it probably is too early to be thinking about the best of 2008.)

    Random Thursday thoughts

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    I’m in one of those phases where reading comics and writing about them seem to have overtaken me a bit. There are three or four reviews I’ve got drafted in my head, two or three column ideas bouncing around up there, and feedback overload from all of the good “best of 2007” lists floating around. The best thing to do would be to just sit down with these various books and get to writing (after I read Rutu Mordan’s Exit Wounds again, because critical consensus has me feeling like I’m missing brilliance and just seeing general excellence), but I keep getting distracted by new comics that show up.

    As expected, Nextwave: I Kick Your Face (Marvel) was very, very funny, and I’d love to see more of it (collected in paperback). There was one sequence that was kind of jarring, featuring some perhaps-too-astute parodies of the kinds of spandex stylings that normally exhaust me. I recovered, obviously.

    I’m still not quite sure what to think of the preview copy of Hell Girl that Del Rey sent me. It’s shôjo comeuppance theater by Miyuki Eto where terrible things happen to horrible people after good people prone to immediate gratification consign their tormentors to hell with the help of an urban legend with a web site. I think I need to read more of this before I render any kind of verdict, but there are some really discordant things going on here.

    And a whole bunch of Viz books I really like have come out lately. I like Naoki Urasawa’s Monster so much better when it doesn’t focus on plaster saint Tenma, and I’m constantly and pleasantly surprised by Urasawa’s ability to structure a thriller in surprising but entirely coherent ways. I sense a whole lot of Tenma on the immediate horizon, but the book’s pleasures will definitely outweigh the dullness of its protagonist. More Nana more often makes me happy, even when the story itself makes me very, very sad. I love how Ai Yazawa is playing with and rebalancing the naïve/worldly dynamic between her two leads. And the handy thing about having the kind of large, well-crafted cast that has assembled in Fullmetal Alchemist is that you can do an entire volume where one lead barely appears and the other doesn’t show up at all and it will still be riveting.

    And now, some links:

  • Christopher Butcher takes a very thoughtful, well-informed, in-depth look at some of the items from my 2007 manga news round-up.
  • Johanna Draper Carlson rounds up some recent manga news items and offers her own thoughts. (Pop quiz: Does Dark Horse actually publish any shôjo, or just manga titles from other categories that people who like shôjo might enjoy?)
  • The Occasional Superheroine looks at Newsweek’s discovery of women who write comics and finds it wanting. (When I read the piece at Newsweek’s site, there was this horrible sidebar ad about some wrinkle cream showing a woman who had been retouched to look like something just this side of moldering, because physical representations of life experience are apparently to be fought with all the vigor science can muster. It seems to have been taken out of the page’s ad rotation, and while the replacements are surprisingly low-rent for an outfit like Newsweek, none seem to be actively thematically opposed to the page’s main content. Yay?)