The Manga Curmudgeon

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

Death Kitty!

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National Public Radio’s Morning Edition takes a look at the two-day, 300-screen run of the live-action Death Note movie. It will definitely be interesting to see the results of this programming experiment. (Here’s Viz’s press release on the event, and here’s the event site from Fathom, which will shout at you if you let it.)

Now, if Sex and the City does well at the box office and film executives decide that women like going to movies, what are the chances of a similar blitz for the live-action adaptation of Nana? (In all seriousness, I really hate these obnoxious “can women drive commercial success at the cinema” think pieces that crop up every time a Sex and the City or Devil Wears Prada or Enchanted promises to make more than a dollar, because the answer has been a resounding yes every time. The only summer movie I’m excited about is Mamma Mia, because what healthy person with the capacity for joy doesn’t want to see Meryl Streep sing ABBA songs?)

Oh, and just because someone at NPR likely wanted to unnerve me on the way into work, they also ran a short piece about Hello Kitty’s new role as tourism ambassador.

If Hello Kitty is unable to complete her term as tourism ambassador, she will be replaced by her runner-up.

From the stack: Disappearance Diary

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I’m not quite sure where I got my predisposition against autobiographical comics, as I’ve enjoyed most of the ones I’ve read. But somewhere in my brain lurks the suspicion that the ones I haven’t read are littered with self-aggrandizing self-indulgence and cartoonists turning an unreturned text message into tragedy.

If I’m that anxious about autobiographical comics created by people who don’t really have that much to complain about, imagine my reluctance to dive into Hideo Azuma’s Disappearance Diary, due from Fanfare/Ponent Mon in the late summer of this year. It’s a detailed account of the manga-ka’s bouts with homelessness, abandonment of all responsibility, and alcoholism. Would this be a warts-and-all confessional where the reader is invited to admire how much character the warts actually give an otherwise undistinguished countenance?

Surprisingly, Disappearance Diary is one of the most cheerful portrayals of dispossession and substance abuse you’re ever likely to encounter. Azuma focuses on three periods in his life. In the first, he abandons a family and successful career and becomes homeless, collecting partially smoked cigarettes off the sidewalk and food from the trash. In the second, he abandons family and career again to become a pipe fitter for a gas company. In the third, he’s committed to a psychiatric hospital for treatment of his profound, life-threatening alcoholism.

It seems inconceivable that the mere facts of the book aren’t enough to render Azuma utterly unsympathetic. I think it’s the fact that Azuma never tries to justify his actions; he just portrays them. The book is very much a diary, skirting the shape of dramatic arcs in favor of an anecdotal approach. Azuma figures out how to build a stove out of trash. He deals with irritating co-workers at the gas company. He draws quick sketches of the other oddballs in the alcoholics’ ward.

The book’s absence of narrative arc works very much in its favor. I think that any attempt on Azuma’s part to cast his disappearances as some kind of protagonist’s journey would have failed to some degree, probably disastrously. In portraying them via a series of off-handed observations, Azuma has largely spared the reader (or at least this one) the chore of judging his behavior. Since he never apologizes, there’s no onus to forgive. The reader just travels along with him through experiences that are mundane, unexpected, and distressing.

I never quite reached the point of chuckling, “Oh, Azuma, you scamp,” but I found myself coming uncomfortably close. Part of this is undoubtedly due to his crisp cartooning and cherubic character designs. It has the aesthetic qualities of a charmingly conceived comic strip, along with some of the same rhythms. Chapters are short and focused in comic-strip (and diary) fashion, and the book bustles along from event to observation.

For as much of a prig as I can be about the behavior and morality of fictional characters, I found myself unexpectedly complicit with the Azuma portrayed in Disappearance Diary. I certainly can’t support the choices that yielded these experiences, but I got quite a bit of reading pleasure out of watching Azuma chronicle them. Perhaps he viewed his failures as such a given that it would have been redundant to dwell on them. Perhaps he really isn’t contrite in the least.

Whatever the rationale behind it, the decision yielded an immensely readable comic. The counterpoint between style and content is absorbing enough on its own, and Azuma’s blunt-but-coy choices never fail to engage.

(This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher, with special thanks to Deb Aoki at About.Com.)

Wish list

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Tom Spurgeon ran an interesting Five for Friday query this week: “Name Five Archival/Translation Projects That Aren’t Happening Right Now (As Far As You Know) That You’d Love To See.” There are lots of interesting projects in the responses, but there isn’t much in the way of comics from Japan, so I thought I’d try and open a manga-specific version of the conversation here.

My picks:

  • Japan Tengu Party Illustrated by Iou Kuroda (of Sexy Voice and Robo fame)
  • Moyashimon: Tales of Agriculture by Masayuki Ishikawa (winner of this year’s Best General Manga award in the Kodansha Manga Awards)
  • The Music of Marie by Usamu Furuya (brought onto my radar by Adam Stephanides)
  • Otherworld Barbara by Moto Hagio (another entry inspired by Jog’s list from 2005)
  • Princess Knight by Osamu Tezuka (because an excerpt in Shojo Beat is not enough)

    • What are yours? (This isn’t a demand or anything, but I’d love for people to go with blind optimism instead of dwelling on the commercial realities that make such potential licenses doomed to failure.)

    Full frontal

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    It’s been interesting to watch the evolution of the graphic novel section at the local Barnes & Noble. Not too long ago, it cut the space for the game guides in half, giving manga another bank of shelves. (It has four of the eight.) Now, one of the graphic novel banks has been converted to a face-out display with a big “DC Comics” header.

    It displayed nothing but trades of DC’s super-hero properties, which struck me as a little odd considering how well some Vertigo books do in bookstores and how much they’d apparently like some of their other imprints to do well there. That seems like an impressive investment on DC’s part. I wonder if Barnes & Noble tried anything resembling a bidding war among publishers in offering that kind of real estate.

    Has anyone else seen a DC-centric shelf bank at a Barnes & Noble?

    From the stack: Tōnoharu

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    One of my favorite stories by David Sedaris describes an adolescent trip to a summer camp in Greece he took with his sister. There’s the hope that the journey will lead to reinvention and that the anxious, twisted geek he is will give way to someone sophisticated and comfortable in his skin. While his sister accomplishes this without apparent effort or consequence, Sedaris becomes more intensely himself. It’s a funny, poignant look at the tyranny of expectations.

    Lars Martinson’s Tōnoharu (Pliant Press and Top Shelf) covers similar territory in graphic fashion. Daniel Wells has begun a year as a teaching assistant at a junior high school in rural Japan, and he has clear visions of what the outcomes will be… “Fluency in Japanese, adoring students and colleagues, a revolutionized curriculum…” It doesn’t work out that way, and no reasonable person could expect it would, but Daniel’s optimism is understandable. Who doesn’t harbor fantasies about the possibility of change in a new setting?

    But even if Daniel was a different kind of person, more outgoing or visionary, the village of Tōnoharu isn’t fertile ground for adventure or transformation. It’s an average community, and its residents are courteous, but they have their own lives and needs. This leaves Daniel with the responsibility of adapting, and he’s not very good at that. Martinson is conscientious about keeping the onus on his protagonist; Daniel could embrace the experience and engage the people around him if he chose to do so.

    At the same time, I like Daniel and can understand his perspective. He has just enough ambition to embark on this kind of adventure, but he doesn’t have to tools to take full advantage of it. Maybe I’m revealing too much about myself, but I never found his awkwardness that extreme; I found it funny, sure, but not out of scale.

    Visually speaking, Martinson uses a fairly rigid grid pattern of panels that ends up looking like a well-organized photo album. It’s a good choice for this kind of material. He keeps his character designs loose and simple and their settings richly detailed and textured. I like that counterpoint a lot, and I always appreciate a strong sense of place in a comic.

    One thing I did find odd about Tōnoharu was the overall packaging, which struck me as a little too handsome. The content here is the first part of a longer story. Engaging as it is page by page, it’s necessarily incomplete and doesn’t really take shape as an individual entertainment. The book’s hardcover treatment implies something complete to me; I might have chosen to release the individual chapters in a simpler format and saved the high-end production for an eventual collection. But really, excessive packaging is barely even a flaw, just a bit of contradicted expectations.

    Martinson has delivered a fine first chapter to an engrossing, character-driven story. I’m looking forward to the next installment.

    Easy(going) reading

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    I can’t resist list-making. Over at MangaBlog, Brigid Alverson shares a request from a reader for “slice-of-life” manga. Excellent recommendations ensue, so I thought I would compile the titles that got multiple nods from the folks leaving comments.

  • Antique Bakery, by Fumi Yoshinaga (DMP)
  • Emma, by Kaoru Mori (CMX)
  • Flower of Life, by Fumi Yoshinaga (DMP)
  • Honey and Clover, by Chica Umino (Viz)
  • Japan, as Viewed by 17 Creators, by various gifted people (Fanfare/Ponent Mon)
  • Love Roma, by Minoru Toyoda (Del Rey)
  • Sand Chronicles, by Hinako Ashihara (Viz)
  • Suppli, by Mari Okazaki (Tokyopop)
  • The Voices of a Distant Star, by Mizu Sahara and Makoto Shinkai (Tokyopo)
  • The Walking Man, by Jiro Taniguichi (Fanfare/Ponent Mon)
  • The Day I Become a Butterfly, by Yumeka Sumomo (Juné)
  • Same Cell Organism, by Yumeka Sumomo (Juné)

    • There are plenty of great recommendations in the MangaBlog comments thread, both of slice-of-life series and good reads in general. If I missed a slice-of-life title that got multiple mentions, let me know, and I’ll update the list.

    Upcoming 5/14/2008

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    This week’s shipping list isn’t as terrifyingly huge as last’s, which is a welcome development. There are still plenty of items of interest, though. (I’ll appreciate the distraction, because the phone has been ringing off the hook with enthusiastic college students trying to sing the praises of presidential candidates. I’m not used to West Virginia mattering during primary season. While it’s a nice change to be in the national spotlight for reasons not involving a deadly mine collapse or the annual legislative pork report, it’s hard not to by cynical about the intensive wooing underway. Anyway…)

    There’s a long-ish wait between new volumes of Hitoshi Awaaki’s Parasyte (Del Rey), a retro-cool horror series about a boy and his murderous, sentient hand. It’s worth it, though, as this is a smart, twisty horror story. The art isn’t great, but even that shortcoming adds a certain charm to the proceedings. If your appetite for shape-shifting aliens plotting our downfall has been whetted, give it a look.

    As Del Rey goes, I tend to favor their less easily categorized offerings like Love Roma, Genshiken and Mushishi to stuff that’s more in the mainstream shônen or shôjo veins. There have been a couple of recent releases that buck the trend, though. I thought Hiro Mashima’s Fairy Tail was charming, and I’ve really liked what I’ve read of Yuko Osada’s Toto! Brigid Alverson has a review of the first volume.

    It didn’t exactly change my life, but I really enjoyed Takako Shigematsu’s Tenshi Ja Nai!! (Go! Comi). It was a great example of a certain kind of highly polished, amiably trashy, slightly mean-spirited romantic comedy that hit the spot. Shigematsu’s King of the Lamp (Go! Comi) struck me as a throw-away, but the manga-ka’s credit is still good with me. Hence, I’m looking forward to the arrival of the first volume of Ultimate Venus (again, Go! Comi). Bring the trashy, mean polish, Shigematsu.

    Kamisama Kazoku (Go! Comi), by Yoshizaku Kuwashima and Tapari, sounds like it will be neither trashy nor mean, but I’m intrigued all the same. It’s about a boy who just wants a normal life, even though he’s the offspring of a pair of over-protective gods.

    A four-panel comic about a tomboy who carries a coffin around and has a bat for a best friend? What kind of stone need I be made to resist such a thing? Yen Press offers the first volume of Satoko Kiyuduki’s Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro, and it will be mine.

    From the stack: Life Sucks

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    I experienced a mounting sense of unease as I read Life Sucks (First Second), and it was only partly due to the increasing menace of the book’s events. Things do get tense as it goes along, but my discomfort stemmed from the fact that an amiable comic was becoming, if not precisely the kind of story it mocked, something I found equally deserving of disdain.

    I should admit that I’m a hard sell for vampire stories to begin with, for many of the reasons creators Jessica Abel, Gabe Soria and Warren Pleece cite in the early going. I find the gloomy, self-pitying romanticism of many of them off-putting and outright dull, so anything that promises to take the wind out of those particular sails is generally welcome. (Joann Sfar’s Vampire Loves, also from First Second, is a winning example.)

    Life Sucks starts well. Dave has been turned into a vampire because his sire needed someone to work the night shift at his convenience store, sticking Dave with a lifestyle he never chose and its depressing mechanics of servitude. He’s nauseated by blood, so he subsists on plasma, which leaves him without any of the physiological benefits vampirism can offer to the aggressive. He wasn’t exactly on the fast track before he was made, but now he faces a long, lonely lifetime of changing the dates on the milk and restocking the beef jerky display.

    I’m fairly sure I could have read an entire graphic novel about Dave carping about his circumstances, hanging out with his friends, and getting badgered by his boss, Radu. (Radu has traded in capes and castles for track suits and entrepreneurship, abandoning Transylvania for California.) Dave is mopey, but at least he has reason to complain, and his friends are endearing.

    Unfortunately, Abel and company decided at some point that a plot was necessary. And here’s where I encounter a problem with evaluating the book objectively, because it hinges on two devices that I always find particularly objectionable. One is when two characters place a bet on which of them can win the heart of a third. Once that element comes into play and a person is treated like a trophy, you’ve generally lost me, no matter how deservedly miserable the outcome is for the wagerers.

    The second element that chafes is when a character lies or withholds information that could protect another character, especially if that kind of dishonesty serves no meaningful purpose. Mileage on whether the dishonesty in Life Sucks was necessary or at least in balance with the alternative will obviously vary, but it struck me as a choice made because there would have been no more story if it hadn’t been.

    So I can’t say for sure if the presence of two driving bits of narrative that I can’t stand under just about any circumstances makes Life Sucks bad, or just bad for me. I do think the conclusion is bizarrely staged, with significant events described after the fact instead of actually rendered for readers (not that I yearned for it to be longer). And I do think Rosa, Dave’s inamorata, starts promisingly but ends up behaving in ways that drive plot instead of making sense. And I do think “I can barely stand to look at you” is an appallingly bad line of dialogue anywhere outside of a Barbara Stanwyck movie.

    But overall, I just don’t know. Part of me feels that this book simply, empirically doesn’t work, but another part wonders if my personal biases are overtaking my judgment.

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

    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.)