Two vertically challenged manga protagonists go in. One comes out. Okay, it’s not that dramatic, but it is the topic for this week’s Flipped.
Seeing the sites
Quick comic comments: CMX samplers
During my weekly trip to the comic shop, I picked up the new CMX 2007 Preview giveaways, with samples of three titles in each. One features “Teen Plus” titles, and the other focuses on “Mature” series. They’re attractive packages, so if you’re at a con and DC or CMX has a table, or your local comic shop got a stack, do grab one.
My reactions to the sampled series are mixed, but some look like winners.
Kanako Inuki’s Presents is extremely odd, as one might expect from the Queen of Horror Manga. I don’t know if a sample this short shows the series off to its best advantage. The story is self-contained, introducing the “gifts gone wrong” premise of the series, but it feels kind of pat. I’m quite taken with the art, even though I kind of think it isn’t very good. It’s somewhere between Archie and Richie Rich, but with the occasional dangling entrails. If that description speaks to you, look it up.
Neither of the other series in the “Mature” sampler makes that much of an impression. Iqura Sugimoto’s Variante is about a teen girl with a horrible arm grafted onto her after the mysterious death of her parents. The art is attractive, but if I had to pick an evil-arm manga, I’d probably stick with Parasyte, even though it isn’t as pretty. (Again, it’s hard to tell with so few pages.)
Kitsune Tennouji’s Orfina is one of two “girl soldier” stories excerpted in the samplers, and I found it tough to get past the cover image featuring the heroine’s breast-hugging chest plate. (Not much room to buffer the impact of a cudgel there, if you ask me.) Cuvie’s Dorothea (shown in the “Teen Plus” book) seems a lot more interesting. The title character is an albino in one of the few communities where such people aren’t viewed as dangerous witches. She takes up arms to protect her home from unfriendly neighbors. It’s got nice art, and it seems to make more interesting use of the “girl soldier” premise.
Speaking of premises, Kyoko Shitou’s Key to the Kingdom has a great one. A bunch of potential rulers are racing for a sacred object that will give them the throne. The excerpt itself isn’t great shakes. It’s got pretty shôjo art, but the pages shown here don’t do much to throw readers into the story.
And maybe it’s all the recent chat about seinen, but Samurai Commando: Mission 1549 (by Ark Performance and Harutoshi Fukui, original idea by Ryo Hanmura) really made a great impression. It’s nothing I would have glanced at if I’d just heard the description (modern-day soldiers go back in time to Japan’s feudal past and decide to take over, necessitating another group of modern-day soldiers to follow them and set things straight), but even I got swept up in the pure testosterone. Tanks versus samurai? That’s got to be worth at least one volume. “FIIIRE!!!” Indeed!
Geezers
One of the extensions of the recent discussions about the commercial viability of manga for adult men – seinen – is similar disappointment with the state of josei – comics for grown-up women. Blogless Simon Jones notes:
“Though, looking at it, I’ve noticed that, while selling better than Senin, Josei doesn’t sell particuarly well either. While it’s obvious that females are the dominant manga demographic, I suspect it tends more towards girls rather than women and so the far more…chick lit-ish Josei or the arty stuff or the just plain older stuff just doesn’t sell as well. And in many respects, that’s a terrible, terrible shame.”
I’d add that one of the mildly annoying trends of manga publishing is that the price often goes up with the age of the target audience.
Over at MangaBlog, ALC’s Erica says:
“ALC Publishing works very hard at keeping the schoolgirlyness of our yuri to a minimum in order to reach a more adult audience. It’s harder than you might think.”
So is audience age as much or more of a factor than its gender? It’s certainly possible. There’s always talk about giving the current majority of manga readers – kids – someplace to go next when their taste for shôjo and shônen gives way to a desire for something sturdier. And there’s certainly sturdier stuff available, if you know where to look which, in my experience, generally isn’t on the shelves of Borders or Barnes and Noble in the U.S.
I wonder how many of the 87 titles scheduled for Fall release are aimed at older audiences, excluding the yaoi niche (which gobbles up 32 of those 87 slots)? Yen Press has With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child, and Fanfare/Ponent Mon offers Awabi. Aurora’s parent publisher has an extensive josei catalog, though their early announcements don’t necessarily reflect that. And one could always surmise that Viz’s Shojo Beat imprint is pushing things in a josei-ish direction with Nana and Honey and Clover. (Nana is technically shôjo, but Honey and Clover is full-on josei, right? At least in terms of its publishing history?)
Paradise lost?
Is Hiroki Endo’s Eden: It’s an Endless World! (Dark Horse) looking at a hiatus? That’s the word from Ed Chavez at MangaCast, who thinks this would be a big loss for fans of manga in general. He also notes how unusual it is for a manga publisher to leak this kind of news:
“I have never heard a comment like that made at a panel before, so for a fan like myself it really sent a message as to how much DH loves that title and how much it needs help, as well. I never want to see a title discontinued or put on hiatus and generally when they do suffer such fate fans of the series are often the last to know.”
He goes on to suggest that fans pick up a copy of Eden at their local bookstore and give the title a chance, which highlights what might be one of the problems the series is facing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it (or a lot of my favorite Dark Horse manga titles) in a bookstore. I’ve seen Banya, the Explosive Delivery Man with some regularity, and a handful of others, but their seinen stuff is generally confined to the Direct Market. That might be a regional thing, and larger urban areas may be blessed with stores that carry full runs of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service and Mail.
Even if it did find a home at your local Barnes & Noble or Borders, would it fly off the shelves? Kethylia isn’t convinced:
“This is not new news. The overaged fanboys can lament the demise of Raijin Comics and the failure of DMP to follow through with the seinen side of their initial “mandate” all they want. It just doesn’t change anything. They might be the ones to protesteth loudest on the Internet, and they might be the ones in control of the manga industry, but they’re not the ones with the buying power. And if it’s not clear to you by now who IS the demographic with the buying power, I’ll spell it out for you—Girls and Women. Who do not, surprise surprise, flock to Blood and Breasts in satisfyingly large numbers.”
It’s a persuasive argument, and seinen junkie Tina Anderson expands on it in the comments:
“Shonen does well for VIZ largely due to the fact that there are just as many women reading those damn titles from JUMP as their are men; I’m a fan of seinen, but damn if I always fail at trying to convert my (female) friends and get them to try it.”
It’s not hard to conclude that the seinen fan’s life is one of recurring disappointment and loss. DMP has abandoned titles like Worst and Bambi and Her Pink Gun, and even Dark Horse seems to be testing the shôjo (or at least shôjo-friendly) waters with books like Translucent and Red String.
For an extremely well-written qualitative look at Eden, check out Katherine Dacey-Tsuei’s review at Manga Recon:
“More importantly, Endo makes us care about the outcome of these battles by creating characters that the reader… well, I won’t say ‘identifies with’ in the sense that these characters inspire empathy. They don’t. Most are violent, misanthropic, and flawed, with little regard for others. Yet their fierce determination to survive and their desire to find dignity in dehumanizing circumstances make them compelling and believable, even when Endo’s narrative is not.”
Update: MangaBlog’s Brigid learns that reports of Eden‘s potentially imminent demise may have been exaggerated.
Upcoming 7/5
I’m planning to spend Independence Day in the traditional fashion – drinking vodka lemonade and reading comics. (In spite of the holiday delay, I still somehow have plenty to read.) It’s just as well, as it’s a bit of a slow week.
Okay, so no week with a new volume of Dragon Head (Tokyopop) can actually be called “slow.” Even if I like them, there are some series that sit around for a while before I get around to reading them. This is one of the books I read as soon as I bring it into the house.
There’s a whole heap of stuff coming from Seven Seas. Since I have a demonstrated weakness for people-who-see-dead-people manga, I think I’ll have no choice but to give Venus Versus Virus a look.
For other perspectives on the week in comics, here are some links:
God (of manga) complex
Before getting on to regular Right Turn Only business, Carlo Santos ponders the publishing fate of Osamu Tezuka in the world of licensed manga:
“How is it that the most dependable producer of Tezuka’s work (in America) is a boutique literary publisher that’s targeted way above the heads of the kids who SHOULD be reading his stuff?”
It’s a reasonable question, and it leads Chloe at Schuchaku East to suggest the following:
“Granted, Princess Knight, Pheonix, Kimba- these are classics, why aren’t they making it to the masses? Well, for one, they’re a bit aged, and second, as thrilled as manga commentators would be to get their hands on a copy, manga remains a mass market industry aimed largely at preteens and teens.”
It is a weird conundrum. On the one hand, Tezuka was constantly exploring different genres and reaching out to different audiences, so his stuff for older audiences is as much a part of his legacy as his stuff for kids. I don’t think it necessarily does a disservice to his legacy to make the mature-audience stuff available and package it for that audience. Tezuka was all about comics for people at every stage of life, and I don’t think that means he was all about grandparents reading manga for kids.
At the same time, I’d like someone to pick up Princess Knight because the snippet Viz published was a lot of fun. (Would it be more accurate to call it a suspicion or a hope to say that I think Viz published that excerpt to test the waters and see what kind of demand for more they got from the Shojo Beat audience?) I honestly don’t think his work has aged all that badly, and I wonder if its original target audience – kids – would actually find it dated or kind of weird and cool. (I wouldn’t necessarily want to see it given the ivory tower treatment, though. Just put it in the customary paperback form with the rest of the Shojo Beat line, if it’s going to be done at all.)
It leads me to wonder who these high-end collections of stuff like Peanuts and Moomin and Dennis the Menace are supposed to reach. Obviously, comics connoisseurs enjoy them, but I certainly hope that kids are spending rainy afternoons with them too. I don’t know any kids to ask, and they may look at those tomes and roll their eyes. (Well, I can’t let myself believe they’d do that with Moomin.)
Tiny carbon footprints on my brain
There won’t be a new Flipped column this week. Between work and life and other activities, I just couldn’t find the right combination of time, energy and inspiration. I would like some feedback for another topic I’m planning to explore, if you have a few minutes.
It involves the relative green-ness of the manga industry, and I’m curious about what manga consumers think about the issue. So here are some general questions:
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Would you object to lower paper quality if you knew that there was a higher percentage of recycled pulp in use?
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Would you pay a marginally higher price for manga if you could be certain that the price differential was being used for more environmentally sound production practices – non-toxic inks, recycled paper, reduced energy consumption from printers, and the like?
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How do you dispose of your unwanted manga? Do you trade it? Sell it on an auction site or to a used bookstore? Donate it to a local library or other organization? Or just pitch it in the trash?
If you’d like to offer your thoughts, you can either post them in the comments here, or e-mail me at DavidPWelsh at Yahoo dot Com or welshdav at Gmail dot com. I’m just looking for a general sense of people’s opinions on the subject and what they’d prefer as consumers. If you don’t want your comments quoted in a future column, just mention that in your e-mail. I’d still appreciate the feedback.
(Also, does anyone know of a good WordPress poll/survey widget?)
Lists are still my drug
I’m sure he would have posted the link even if he didn’t know full well I was a hopeless list junkie, but John Jakala pointed to an interesting initiative over at P.O.W.E.R., and I felt biologically compelled to chime in.
I know the West Virginia arts-and-entertainment paper has covered comics intermittently, but with a fairly heavy Marvel-DC slant, so maybe I’ll drop them a line.
Exes
Okay, I’ve finally gotten around to composing the list of manga series I’ve dumped after a fairly significant investment of volumes (inspired by John Jakala). Looking at them, the common thread seems to be novelty wearing off. And this doesn’t count the series where I tried a single volume and decided to give it a pass, because I’m terrified that any mention of them would lead to people swearing that things improved later and that I’m really cheating myself by not reading a little farther. Because I’m totally susceptible and would find my B&N member card and car keys and say, “D’or, okay!”
Absolute Boyfriend, by Yuu Watase (Viz – Shojo Beat): There’s just something depressing about the premise here. If the heroine had come out and said, “Listen, he’s hot, he’s devoted, and he’ll never cheat on me, you lowly human, and I don’t feel like working very hard on a relationship,” that might have been one thing. But the suggestion that there’s actually some kind of competition-fostering inner life to the robot guy is just something I don’t see.
Case Closed, by Gosho Aoyama (Viz): This is a perfectly pleasant mystery series with a cute premise and absolutely nothing in the way of forward momentum. What finally broke me was the knowledge that the series is still apparently going strong in Japan with some 60 volumes in print. I couldn’t see myself making that kind of commitment to something that was just reasonably entertaining.
Cromartie High School, by Eiji Nonaka (ADV): I’ll chalk this one up to too much of a good, weird thing. I just couldn’t quite keep up with the releases, as there was always something with an ongoing narrative that I wanted to read more. It’s funny and weird, and I’m fairly sure I might check in with the series again at some point when I need a disorienting laugh. But it doesn’t feel like something I need to “subscribe to,” per se. Am I spoiled? (On the bright side, it’s like the only opportunity I’ve ever had to link to ADV’s web site without it being in the context of not being able to find information on a series.)
Iron Wok Jan! by Shinji Saiyo (DrMaster): I’m really making a lot of you weep for my taste, aren’t I? I’m not doing it on purpose, I swear. And again, I like what I’ve read of the series. It just didn’t seem to be going anywhere, and I guess I need narrative momentum more than I thought. Like Cromartie, though, it’s always possible that I’ll pick up a couple of volumes on a rainy day when I need outrageous, over-the-top culinary action.
I’m trying to decide whether or not to count Shuri Shiozu’s Eerie Queerie (Tokyopop). It’s only four volumes long, and I made it through two of them. The first was really promising, the second was creepy in all the wrong ways, and I have no idea about the third and fourth and plan to keep it that way.
And just for bonus points and to give more people the opportunity to tell me how foolish I am for even considering such a reckless course of behavior, here are some series that are on the bubble:
Eden! It’s an Endless World, by Hiroki Endo (Dark Horse): Seriously, if I wanted to read about gangsters, prostitutes and illegal narcotics, there are approximately one billion choices out there in the world that didn’t bait-and-switch me with a thoughtful sci-fi introductory run. This is not what I was led to expect from the series, and I find myself irritated to a possibly unreasonable degree.
(Update: Myk speaks… from the FUTURE! Or in this case, Germany, where more Eden is available, and he confirms Huff’s assurance that the hookers-and-blow mini-arc comes to an end and things get back to abnormal. That’s good news, but I still think that wedging this story into a landscape where the vast majority of the population has been turned into crumbled Swarovsky figurines was a really, really bad, self-indulgent idea.)
Kindaichi Case Files, by Kanari Yozaburo and Sato Fumiya (Tokyopop): You know what could get me more invested in this series? A forward time-jump that gets Kindaichi out of high school and into a different setting with a different dynamic. He can still be a slacker, but I think moving him to a different stage of his life would revitalize things. I feel like there needs to be a sense of time passing that isn’t limited to references to previous cases.
(Still no Tokyopop links available, as 2.0 is still in limbo.)