The Manga Curmudgeon

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

Sigh

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While we all have to wait until tomorrow morning to find out which movies that I haven’t seen will be nominated for Oscars, you can see which comics GLAAD feels represent the most fair, accurate and inclusive depictions of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered individuals.

Those comics apparently don’t include 12 Days, Off*Beat, or Shout Out Loud!

Buck up, Tokyopop. Maybe someday you’ll be mainstream enough.

Nice package

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This week’s Flipped kind of follows the five stages of the death of nerd outrage. Denial! (“Oh, no, he didn’t!”) Anger! (“Says you!”) Bargaining! (“That does look kind of nice.”) Depression! (“I’m such a hypocrite.”) And acceptance. (Provided the price is right.)

Humiliated grapes

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I’m not generally an advocate of raisins in candy or other sweet treats. If they really are nature’s candy, then nature isn’t trying very hard, in my opinion.

But dark-chocolate Raisinets may force me to soften my position. But am I warming up towards raisins, or am I just a sucker for anything with dark chocolate in it?

From the wintry north

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I’m usually at a loss to figure out how Amazon’s recommendation system works, because it seems like many of my purchases indicate I would enjoy books I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. An entertaining “Six Degrees of Separation” game could probably be developed to try and figure out how my purchase of, say, the ninth volume of Bleach leads Amazon to believe that I’d like the latest crappy thriller from James Patterson.

The latest suggestion to wind up in my in-box actually sounds pretty promising. It was for Mechademia: An Annual Forum for Anime, Manga and the Fan Arts, published by the University of Minnesota Press. There are only so many times you can re-read Schodt and Gravett (though I haven’t found the number yet), and more academic (or even quasi-academic) writing on the subject is always welcome.

Between this and the exhibition catalog for the Shojo Manga! Girl Power! show that Dirk Deppey reviewed the other day, it looks like I’ve got a couple of interesting books about manga to add to the pile of actual manga waiting to be read.

Tezuka on demand

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There are so many intriguing things about this item at ComiPress that it’s hard to pick where to start.

  • I think on-line, user-compiled anthologies are a great idea. As Chloe noted at Shuchaku East, “Let’s be honest, when was the last time you picked up a copy of Bleach and thought that hey, Bleach was good , so I’ll probably like and subsequently buy the 23 other series in this label too!” Imagine if readers could build their own anthology out of Shonen Jump or Shojo Beat or Shonen Jump Advanced?
  • It’s interesting to see rival publishers collaborating on this kind of initiative, but maybe it’s just the power of Osamu Tezuka. (And by the way, I’d never seen Kodansha’s English site before. It seems to have been designed almost specifically for potential licensing entitites.)
  • It’s nice to see that, even almost 20 years after his death, Tezuka is still driving innovation in the manga industry. (It could be argued that the Netcomics site already essentially offers an on-demand, online anthology.)
  • I’d love to know more about how the serials are packaged and delivered — if there are any bells and whistles or supplementary content that come with the selected serials.
  • I hope this is just the first in a wave and that it becomes popular enough that a U.S. publisher picks up the idea. Somebody pick up the Magnificent ’49ers next! I swear I’ll try and learn Japanese if you do!

    • Multitasking

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    I always like it when my pet interests intersect. Lately I’ve been running through the library’s selection of audio books by Nevada Barr, which allows me to indulge in reasonably well-written mysteries, National Park settings, and readings by Barbara Rosenblat all at the same time.

    National Parks are some of my favorite places on Earth (particularly Zion in southern Utah), and Barr does a nice job evoking the settings and their majestic qualities without descending too deep into purple prose. As an added benefit, I haven’t yet been to any of the parks she’s used as a setting in the books I’ve listened to (Yosemite, Rocky Mountain and Dry Tortugas), so it’s like getting a preview. (I’m assuming any trip I make to these destinations won’t include the quantity of violent mayhem ranger-sleuth Anna Pigeon encounters.)

    Pigeon is a very solid protagonist. She’s tough and intelligent, but not to any super-heroic degree. Barr is fairly generous in sharing Pigeon’s process of deduction, which allows the reader to play along. And since that process generally consists of rumination and speculation instead of lab results and Internet searches, the reader gets to know her pretty well. I like that she’s a little antisocial, preferring the quiet, natural spaces to developed, populated ones. I like that she’s older, too, and that she relies on experience as much as instinct.

    I’m not crazy about some of the protracted, violent set pieces that Barr inserts in her novels. They verge on sadism, and while none of the events described are particularly outlandish (at least in the context of the stories), they are outlined in what strikes me as needless detail. And the length of them tends to undermine the suspense generated. I understand the need to put a protagonist in peril, but Barr sometimes crosses the line from scary into icky.

    I always enjoy Rosenblat’s readings. Her best work is in the Amelia Peabody books by Elizabeth Peters, but her other performances are solid as well. (It’s not her fault that I want to strangle Goldy Schulz, and I often suspect that Rosenblat shares my point of view.)

    From the stack: Shout Out Loud! Vol. 3

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    I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it lately, but I really, really like Satosumi Takaguchi’s Shout Out Loud! (Blu). The first volume made a pleasant enough impression, but the subsequent two have really won me over.

    It’s a workplace comedy about voice-over actors in boys’-love dramas, which gives Takaguchi lots of room to play. After a successful stint doing voice work in kids’ videos, Shino has made a career change, quickly becoming a go-to bottom in the industry and attracting the romantic interest and professional jealousy of his cast mates. He’s also learned that he’s the father of a 17-year-old son resulting from a brief, early marriage.

    In other words, Shino has a lot going on in his life, and he’s a worrier. He wonders whether he’s a good enough parent to moody, hockey-loving Nakaya, and about the course of his career. He’s also baffled by the new range of romantic possibilities that have cropped up. His failed marriage left him something of a loner, and now he isn’t sure if he’s ready to start over, much less with a man. (Handsome acting partner Tenryu is providing plenty of inducement to get ready, though.)

    Nakaya is struggling with his own confusion, finding himself unexpectedly attracted to a young hockey coach, Fuse. Is it curiosity or just intense admiration? Nakaya isn’t sure, and Fuse is keeping him at arm’s length until Nakaya figures it out. (And of course, it all gives Shino another reason to worry.)

    Takaguchi doesn’t spare any effort in developing her cast, and she doesn’t shy away from their sexual identities. Some are gay, some are bisexual, and some are straight but very, very curious. But they aren’t defined exclusively by their sexuality; they work, squabble, gossip, visit with family, hang out, and basically just live their lives as best they can. It’s not all smoldering glances and tortured, inner monologues.

    In other words, it’s very lifelike — sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and always engagingly believable.

    Wednesday again

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    It’s a short trip through this week’s ComicList, though there are some choice items on offer.

    Fantagraphics delivers the fourth issue of the second volume of Linda Medley’s Castle Waiting. The stories are delightful and the characters engaging, though I find myself starting to wonder if the reading experience wouldn’t be more satisfying in a big, collected chunk than in individual floppies.

    Netcomics offers the fourth volume of Marley’s Dokebi Bride, one of my favorite series. (Marley will be attending this year’s New York Comic-Con, along with Doha of The Great Casby fame.)

    With all of the understandable excitement over To Terra…, it might be easy to forget that Vertical is still releasing beautifully produced paperback versions of Buddha. The fifth volume arrives in comic shops tomorrow.

    Shaman Warrior, the other title in Dark Horse’s manhwa line, makes a belated arrival to keep Banya company.

    And Tokyopop’s only offering for the week is a re-issue of the second volume of Fruits Basket, which must mean the series is still drawing new readers in addition to the legion who are already enjoying it.

    Fruits nuts

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    I should really just add a Fruits Basket category, shouldn’t I?

    At Coffee & Ink, Mely has named her favorite ongoing manga series for 2006, and Fruits Basket is among them, along with a bunch of other titles I really enjoy and some I’m going to have to try. Mely offers the usual cornucopia of great observations, but this is probably my favorite:

    “You know, every time I read the jacket copy for Fruits Basket I’m amazed at how it manages to sound so bright and cheery and inane, despite being a factually correct description of the plot. And now I see it is just an unavoidable consequence of writing about Fruits Basket.”

    Exactly.

    In other news, the fifteenth volume of Fruits Basket owns the top slot for manga sales in the Direct Market, and comes close to owning the whole graphic novel category, landing in second place on ICv2’s December chart. (Okay, it isn’t exactly a photo finish, with the considerably more expensive Fables trade moving about 3,000 more units.)