The Manga Curmudgeon

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

His young mafia

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I saw something on Twitter this morning that made so little sense to me that I figured it had to be an anagram, so I went over to the handy Internet Anagram Server. I must have stopped caring about my earlier confusion in the time it took for the page to load, because I ended up typing in Fumi Yoshinaga’s name instead. In addition to all of the other ways Yoshinaga rules, which are legion, her name is also awesome anagram fodder. My favorite:

Hi, infamous gay!

I took the liberty of punctuating it.

I’m clearly very driven and focused today.

But not least

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You know, it would be just plain rude if I didn’t take a look at the last two nominees for the Manga Taisho Awards. I’ve covered the other yet-to-be-licensed contenders in two previous posts, and I’m sure plenty of people will be talking about Bakuman, seeing as it’s by the creators of Death Note and has been picked up by Viz. But I keep thinking back on that scene in Brideshead Revisited when Charles and his ex-boyfriend’s married sister have hooked up on a cruise ship and she wistfully notes that they’re “orphans of the storm,” or some other quasi-romantic rationalization that adulterers indulge in during the afterglow, and I thought, “No… I will leave no Manga Taisho nominee behind.”

So, what’s left?

Well, there’s Chûya Koyama’s Uchû Kyôdai, which can be translated as “Space Brothers,” currently serialized by Kodansha in Morning. It’s about a pair of brothers who decide to become astronauts. As near as I can figure, one succeeds, and the other tries to shake off his mundane, earthbound life to join his sibling. I’m getting a (forgive me) down-to-earth comedy vibe off of it, though I could be wrong. It’s up to nine volumes so far, and it sounds like it would be a great companion read for Kou Yaginuma’s Twin Spica, due in May from Vertical. Space travel is just a dream for the young, is it? You can see some sample pages here.

And lastly, we have Kengo Hanazawa’s I Am Hero, currently serialized by Shogakukan in Big Comic Spirits. There are times when Babel Fish is incredibly unhelpful, but I’m thinking what we have here is psychological horror about a 35-year-old cartoonist’s assistant, maybe like Taxi Driver but with a manga-ka? Here are some preview pages from the first volume. Since it’s from Shogakukan, it could either slide into Viz’s Signature line, or it could go to Fantagraphics, who might see the appeal in a heavily armed, emotionally unstable comic creator.

Now, with the last of those Taisho titles out of the way, things can get back to normal. I’m thinking of looking into some yaoi about normal guys with jobs that’s still pleasantly smutty. Any suggestions?

Role-playing exercise

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One theme that’s come up a lot in recent discussion of scanlations is that publishers need to do something to concoct a widespread alternative that provides similar access to the material but with the consent of creators and, one assumes, the potential to turn the portion of the scanlation audience that aren’t currently paying customers into buyers, at least to some degree. One potential obstacle to that that particularly interests me are the creators themselves. I’ve heard that there’s a fair amount of resistance to digital distribution among manga-ka, either because they conceived their comics to be read on paper or because they’re concerned about unlimited reproduction of digital versions of their work. (Who left this barn door open?)

Now, I’ve only heard about this reluctance from a few people, but they strike me as people who are in a position to know. Still, it’s anecdotal, and I recognize that. But, running with the premise that this resistance exists to varying degrees, I’d like to ask you to engage in a little role playing. What argument (preferably diplomatic) would you make to a manga-ka to convince them of the benefits of more timely, less immediately profitable, digital delivery of their work? The obvious one is that it’s already happening without their participation or consent, and they might as well control it to whatever degree possible, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on the subject.

Updated: Simon Jones of the possibly not-safe-for-work Icarus Publishing blog cuts to the chase and asks “Why should publishers pay for digital rights?”

Updated: Jake Forbes, manga author, adapter and aficionado, stops by MangaBlog and takes everybody to the woodshed.

From the stack: Bokurano: Ours

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Mohiro Kitoh’s Bokurano: Ours (Viz) is one of those comics that apply grimly serious coats of paint to popular fantasy architecture. In this case, it’s about a group of kids climbing into a giant robot to save the world. The twist is that the kids are realistic, or “realistic,” in that some of them are understandably frightened or emotionally disturbed or just plain awful instead of sunny and dedicated. There’s also some play with what would actually happen if giant robots battled in a populated area.

It’s a competent comic, but it isn’t particularly interesting to me. I’m not a fan of un-deconstructed giant-robot stories in the first place, and I’ve never yearned to see anyone expose their seedy underbellies. And it isn’t as though there’s a shortage of bleak versions of kid-friendly concepts, so I can pick and choose from the best of them. (Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto, also from Viz, is a great example. Come to think of it, there’s some great giant-robot nonsense in Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys which treats the concept with the degree of seriousness I feel like it deserves, which is just about none at all.)

I’d read the first few chapters of Bokurano on Viz’s SigIKKI site, but it didn’t hold my attention in the way that site’s weirder, more imaginative series have. I thought it might read better in a larger chunk, but I found myself even less attentive. You can’t win them all.

(This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher. You can read a bunch of free chapters of Bokurano: Ours here.)

The Shôjo-Sunjeong Alphabet: W

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“W” is for…

And on the josei front…

And just because it’s one of the very best boys’-love titles I’ve ever read, and one of the most addictive comics of any category…

What are some of your favorite shôjo and sunjeong titles that start with the letter “W”?

Adapt this now

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Over at the BBC News web site, Stuart Nicolson looks at a totally fascinating bit of history that involves… well… see for yourself:

“Hundreds of children aged from four to 14, some of them armed with knives and sharpened sticks, were patrolling inside the historic graveyard.”

Adding to the fascination is the fact that the incident was used to clamp down on 1950s horror comics.

Someone needs to turn this story into a graphic novel at his or her earliest convenience. My initial recommendations would go to Rick Geary if we’re talking about a straight-up historical retelling or Ted Naifeh if you wanted to fold in some actual supernatural elements.

Update: Tom Spurgeon points to this piece at The Horrors of It All that offers evidence that the urban legend about the iron-toothed vampire may well have had its origins in comics after all.

Upcoming 3/24/2010

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Depending on your tastes, it’s a relatively lean week for comics arrivals, but there are still some appealing options.

NBM releases the third in a series of graphic novels created in collaboration with the Louvre in Paris. It’s On the Odd Hours by Eric Liberge, and the preview pages are quite striking. Johanna (Comics Worth Reading) Draper Carlson has posted a favorable early review. NBM is offering a bargain if you purchase On the Odd Hours along with Nicolas De Crécy’s gorgeous Glacial Period.

Those of us who’ve been itching to see some of Eisner Hall of Fame nominee Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s early, pulpy dramas will have our itch scratched when Drawn and Quarterly releases Black Blizzard. D&Q doesn’t seem to have a permalink for the book yet, but scroll down a bit on this page and you can see some preview pages.

I’m much more interested in Dark Horse’s omnibus editions of CLAMP’s Cardcaptor Sakura, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that the first volume of the manga super-group’s Chobits is due on Wednesday. It’s about a struggling nerd who finds a computer shaped like a beautiful girl. It was originally licensed for English publication by Tokyopop until original publisher Kodansha withdrew its titles from Tokyopop and handed the relevant CLAMP titles over to Dark Horse, perhaps as a consolation prize for the fact that Kodansha yanked Akira and Ghost in the Shell from Dark Horse to sort-of launch its own comics-in-translation imprint. Next week on All My Licenses…

Speaking of properties that used to call Tokyopop home, Image releases the sixth issue of Brandon Graham’s King City. I’m not going to bother trying to link to this one, but I’ve been enjoying this series very much in pamphlet form, and the individual packages are very handsome things.

Viz has only one book to offer, and I bought it a couple of weeks ago at a bookstore. It’s the third omnibus edition of Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece, collecting volumes seven, eight and nine. I’m of the opinion that all of Oda’s gifts as a creator really, truly come together in the ninth volume, but I’ll get into that in more detail at a later date, possibly Sunday, since that’s the day I seem to devote to my pitiful One Piece geek-outs. We now enter an unfortunate fallow period before the release of new volumes and the fourth omnibus. I may have to pick up the tenth, eleventh and twelfth volumes individually, though I may maintain my resolve to stick with the cheaper omnibuses.

Daddies dearest

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Congratulations to Michelle (Soliloquy in Blue) Smith on winning a copy of Yumi Unita’s Bunny Drop (Yen Press)! Michelle described her favorite fictional father figure, Captain Kondo from Kaze Hikaru (Viz) thusly:

“He doesn’t have the elite background some of the samurai have, and might be argued to be a simple man, but he’s also an extremely good man with a profound devotion to his cause that inspires incredible loyalty in the men he commands. He was a strong father figure to Okita Soji when he first encountered the little boy, and Okita loves him so deeply that he’s sworn to follow Kondo into death and completely avoids any ties in the world that might prevent him from carrying through his wish. I challenge readers not to love Kondo, too, after they meet him.”

All the entries were great, and they ran a wide range of comic-book dads. Johanna (Comics Worth Reading) Draper Carlson cited Batman as “Grim and remote but reveals deep emotion at key moments.” Gosha Shtashel honored “Louis, father from Three Shadows [First Second] by Cyril Pedrosa, “ adding that the book itself is “the best comic I’ve ever read.”

Laurianne Uy likes Van Hohenheim from Fullmetal Alchemist (Viz): “For all his talk about being a failure as a father, he managed to raise kids like Ed and Al who are strong, intelligent and morally upright. His absence for most of their lives is horrible but the fact that he feels regret about abandoning is family is still something I can empathize with.” Rijomu Sedai concurs that Hohenheim is kind of cool, but gives full props to FMA’s “Father,” “The big bad, ‘father’ to a bunch of inhuman monsters, not a shred of humanity in him.”

Sean (Kleefeld on Comics) Kleefeld cited Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four:

“But not the version that zapped his son into a coma back in the ’70s, or the current version who’s just kind of a rat bastard, but the version who actually tried to be a good father and uses his intellect to make life better for his kid. Even if he didn’t always quite ‘get’ the whole how-to-be-a-good-dad thing.”

Eric Rupe likes Yotsuba’s dad, and he’s seconded by Shelly in the comments on the call-for-entries post:

“I love his mix of bewilderment, playfulness, sternness, and above all acceptance and love of his strange daughter. I love how he encourages her to be herself, and how he eggs her on with blank-faced fabrications, and how he’s got a side of real exasperated ‘dad’ in him that we’d all have dealing with a child like her. I think perhaps he reminds me of what I love about my dad.”

Back in the Marvel universe, Lorena (I ♥ Manga) Nava Ruggero favors Professor X: “I loved X-Men in high school and [he] always seemed like an interesting guardian for all the wayward mutants under his care.”

2terrible2kiss goes into the realms of unlicensed boys’ love for her picks:

“Y’know, I just love dads in yaoi. I dunno how many you’ve read, but aside from being the ultimate form of ‘man domestication’, there’s actually a lot of variety there too. I think you’d like Nobara by Kumota Haruko (he’s a ball of middle-aged moe. Affectionate but has been abandoned, along with his daughter, by his wife for being gay, he’s just trying to work hard and make a better life for her :D) and Tsubaki Biyori (her dad is so cool-faced, falling easily into his role as responsible parent, even though he’s a bit overwhelmed..since she keeps trying to run off when he’s not looking XD He wants to connect with old friends but acknowledes that he has different priorities now and has to put his daughter first.)“

Gifted cartoonist Faith Erin Hicks is admirably honest in her nomination:

“Okay, just wanted an excuse to talk about Urasawa actually, because I love love love Kenji and Kanna’s relationship in 20th Century Boys. Kenji’s commitment to Kanna proves to me that he’s a hero underneath the loser facade, so he doesn’t need to go off fighting giant robots to prove it. God I’m not going to make it through 24 volumes of this… Seriously, the part where Kanna takes a bowl of udon to the Friends’ monument and wishes an absent Kenji happy birthday… why must you play so with my emotions, Urasawa?”

It’s hard not to find an intriguing family member in Fruits Basket, isn’t it? Shannon Weary cites “the subtly abusive Akira Sohma.

“Even though he is remembered by his daughter, Akito, as her ‘good father’, the reader can see how his seeing her less as a person but more as a label- ‘his special child’, a confirmation that his relationship with her mother was special, has damaged her. Her attempts to hold on to his memory were ultimately damaging- as she couldn’t move forward being obsessed with his belief that no one would leave her.

“Of course, perhaps this was due to his own fear of death, and loneliness. Since he’s a character that others talk about, but never speaks on his own, the reader can only conjecture, but told he was going to die young, he seems to fear dying alone. He begins a codependent relationship, which warns the readers of the pitfalls of the obsessive focus of love that is often pushed in manga.”

Back in the aforementioned comments thread, Matthew (Warren Peace Sings the Blues) Brady looked to Ogami Itto from Lone Wolf and Cub (Dark Horse): “Probably not the best father, but quite possibly the awesomest.”

Margaret cited Kippei Katakura in Yoko Maki’s Aishiteruze Baby (Viz).

“Kippei is a seventeen-year-old high school playboy who is suddenly saddled with the role of ‘Mr. Mom’-style chief caregiver when his recently-widowed aunt simply takes off, leaving her five-year-old daughter Yuzuyu behind. The Katakuras, who have apparently never met the child before, reluctantly decide to take her in, and Kippei’s bossy older sister assigns him to take care of the kid because a) ‘you’re sweet to girls’ and b) she hopes Kippei’s having to babysit a five-year-old will have a dampening effect on his frenetic social life and tendency to attract annoying female stalkers to the house.

“This arrangement actually works out surprisingly well. Although Kippei is initially less than thrilled to be handed such a major responsibility, he likes Yuzu, and his easygoing charm enables him to bond with her almost immediately. But good intentions aren’t enough. The previously undomesticated boy quickly realizes that half-measures like hastily buying his little cousin a pre-packaged lunch at a convenience store on the way to kindergarten can have traumatic consequences in a milieu where bringing in an amateurish or non-homemade bento is perceived as a symptom of a shamefully inadequate family. Various comical and touching misadventures in lunchmaking ensue, ranging from Kippei’s well-intentioned maiden effort of a single ridiculously oversized riceball to his awkward attempt to research what little girls like to eat for lunch by consulting his secret crush Kokoro and her friends.”

Thanks to everyone who entered!

Crooks and cooks

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The Reverse Thieves recently podcast their thoughts on why Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece (originally published by Shueisha and released in English by Viz) isn’t the mega-hit here that it is in Japan. (That’s a volume sold every 1.6 seconds, basically.) As a relatively recent convert to the Cult of the Straw Hats, I’ve pondered this question, and I certainly enjoyed hearing the Thieves speculate. I enjoyed listening to them geek out over the title’s many glories even more, since I’m increasingly given to doing the exact same thing.

One observation that really caught my ear was about Oda’s world building and his willingness to plant tiny, seemingly irrelevant narrative seeds that come to full flower later, sometimes much later. Natsuki Takaya did this all the time in Fruits Basket (Tokyopop), turning seemingly oblique observations and sideways glances from volume two into searing heartbreak in, say, volume nine. It’s quite a skill, that kind of callback work, and it displays a great deal of confidence on the part of the creator that they’ll be able to tell their story according to plan.

That’s a nice element of Oda’s work, but what really make the book addictive are the moments when action, comedy and drama come together perfectly. It’s amazing to see Oda mix heartbreaking bits of character development in with a wild, sprawling brawl packed with over-the-top action and bizarre opponents. It’s what pushes One Piece from the level of very good shônen fantasy to great manga in general.

One of my side obsessions is finding the spot where that combination first really clicked. It doesn’t happen in volumes four through six, collected here. One Piece is still just very good, and Oda is kind of vamping as he assembles his core crew and introduces the kinds of adventures they’ll be having for the foreseeable future.

In this case, it’s settling the affairs of poor old Usopp, the sharpshooter and compulsive liar who’s trying to protect his seaside village from the byzantine schemes of Captain Kuro and Kuro’s bizarre henchmen. These chapters reinforce Oda’s ability to craft antagonists who are freaky and amusing and genuinely menacing at the same time. They also reinforce some of Luffy’s defining qualities, specifically his utter confidence even when he’s getting his rubber butt handed to him.

That settled, the Straw Hats then sail on to a floating restaurant staffed by brawl-happy former pirates and led by a chef with a peg leg and a moustache that’s practically a character in its own right. These chapters highlight Oda’s way with absurd scenarios and interesting settings. They also introduce us to Sanji, the assistant chef with the uzumaki eyebrows and the high-kicking fighting style. Sanji loves the ladies in that ineffectual way of supporting characters in shônen adventure stories, and he loves to feed people. He’s foul-mouthed but oddly dapper, and… wait for it… he has a dream.

Precisely what that dream is will have to wait for the next omnibus. Also on deck for that collection is the secret ingredient to One Piece’s greatness: the crushingly sad character flashback. But there is plenty to enjoy in the meantime. I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that the sprawling fight sequences are really, really good. I don’t have a whole lot of patience for incomprehensible battle techniques and drawn-out struggles, and Oda has yet to fail on those fronts. All of his combatants have specialties, but they always make sense, and there’s more than enough humor and surprise in these knock-down drag-outs to maintain my interest.

But oh, those crushingly sad character flashbacks… you don’t even know, but by volume nine, you will.