The Manga Curmudgeon

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

Finally

by

I’m ridiculously excited by the news that MTV will release a DVD collection of Daria: The Complete Animated Series in May 2010. It’s the best thing MTV ever did. It’s also quite possibly my favorite animated series of all time.

That’s not because it had terrific production values. It was a spin-off of Beavis and Butt-head, for pity’s sake, so what could you expect? But maybe it was less of a spin-off than a refugee, with its titular heroine escaping the moronic orbit of her former hosts to find new morons to observe.

I was going to write a long appreciation of the series in anticipation of the DVD’s glorious arrival until I remembered that I’d already written one a couple of years ago for Martin Kretschmer’s blog. I don’t have a whole lot to add to what I wrote then, to be honest.

The only addition I might make is that the thing I most admire about the character is her sincere indifference to the shifting sands of adolescent popularity. She’s not blind to the benefits of being sociable or outgoing, and there’s always the sense that she could work within that system if she wanted to do so. She’s certainly smart enough, but her principles and dignity keep her from it. She’s a conscientious objector, and an uncommonly funny and intelligent one at that. She’s the kind of teen-ager I wish I’d had the resources to be when I was that age, which is probably a little sad to admit, but it’s true.

Okay, one other addition would be that Daria also contains one of my very favorite constructs in fiction: when two women who are very temperamentally different manage to form a meaningful friendship from an adversarial starting point. In the case of Daria and her popularity-obsessed sister Quinn (vice-president of the Fashion Club), it’s a series-long evolution, and it doesn’t really pick up momentum until the last few seasons, but it provided some of my most lasting fond memories of the show.

Filed Under: TV

Birthday book: Ohikkoshi

by

Hiroaki Samura may be best known for Blade of the Immortal (Dark Horse), but if you want an easier (and less expensive) way to observe his birthday, I strongly recommend his one-volume Ohikkoshi (also from Dark Horse). It’s a unique collection that includes the titular novella and some appealing short stories. But don’t just take my word for it. Let’s see what some other reviewers have to say:

Brigid Alverson of MangaBlog:

“Samura doesn’t give us clever plot twists or neat endings. His characters are messy, and the stories are as illogical as real life. This work is full of caricature, exaggeration, and just plain ridiculousness, but in a way, it also feels more real than other manga.”

John Thomas of Comics Village:

“A romance comedy by the writer of Blade of the Immortal with cover art based on a Thin Lizzy album cover…translated into English? Yes, yes, (the album ‘Fighting’) and an enthusiastic yes! Welcome to the unique and rarely explored modern world of Hiroaki Samura’s Ohikkoshi.”

Jarred Pine of Mania:

“I definitely applaud Dark Horse for not only supporting one of their top artists and rewarding fans of Samura’s, but also for releasing a manga that while still niche, is also something off the normal beaten path of dudes and swords.”

Jog:

“So this is a turbulent, endearing work. I think it’s very flawed, but also very interesting in the way that only a real talent’s hazardous steps toward something not entirely familiar can be. Surely there’s no self-delusion: in that Afterward, Samura himself deems the works collected here as ‘just another average achievement.’ He’s both right and wrong, but his honesty will take him places, with the skills he obviously has.”

If you’re looking for something a little unexpected, particularly from Samura, give Ohikkoshi a try.

Upcoming 2/17/2010

by

Now that the Sexy Voice and Robo Manga Moveable Feast has pretty much wound down, things can return to what passes for normal here at The Manga Curmudgeon. (Though if you want to add your thoughts on Kuroda’s book, I’ll happily add them to the roster.) So let’s take a look at this week’s ComicList along with a quick recap on last week’s neglected offerings.

If a week’s shipping list includes a new volume of Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys, then that volume will very likely be the book of the week. It’s just that simple. Here are some thoughts on the seventh volume from Johanna Draper Carlson at Manga Worth Reading:

“Urasawa’s use of standard action manga elements demonstrates that it’s not the raw material, it’s what you do with it. He draws so well and he’s so clearly thought through what he’s doing with these elements that cliched scenes, such as a prison escape chase, become interesting all over again.”

This is easily one of the most enjoyable series of any provenance that you’re likely to find in a comic shop or bookstore.

Also out from Viz is the first volume of one of their IKKI series, Bokurano: Ours, written and illustrated by Mohiro Kitoh. It’s about a group of classmates who end up piloting a giant robot. I’m not going to lie. This one runs at about the middle of the pack for me of the titles serialized at the IKKI site, but perhaps reading it in book form will leave me with a more enthusiastic impression. It just feels kind of standard to me next to all of the other series on offer.

CMX offers new volumes of two series from a category that’s a particular strength for the imprint, endearing shôjo. I preferred Natsuna Kawase’s The Lapis Lazuli Crown to A Tale of an Unknown Country, but the latter is charming enough that I’ll certainly snag the second volume. I am seriously behind on Yuki Nakaji’s Venus in Love, so I’ll likely have to do a big catch-up order at some point before I can commit to buying the eighth volume. It’s an endearing college love triangle-quadrangle-pentagram, so I’ll definitely make the effort.

As to last week, here are some of the retrospective highlights:

  • Little Nothings vol. 3: Uneasy Happiness, written and illustrated by Lewis Trondheim, NBM: Funny, smart observational comics available for your perusal at NBM’s blog.
  • Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit vol. 4, written and illustrated by Motoro Mase, Viz: Mase has got your death panels right here, Palin. I like this series. I don’t think it’s one for the ages or anything, but I always pick up new volumes in a timely fashion, which has to mean something.
  • Juné’s Reversible anthology, which I reviewed yesterday.

    • Sexy Voice and Robo MMF: Matt Blind

    by

    Matt (Rocket Bomber) Blind not only reviews Sexy Voice and Robo…

    “It’s a great mix of art and story and character, and I can only imagine what it’s reception would have been if Kuroda had been an American comicker in 2008 rather than a manga-ka in Japan in 2001.”

    … he demystifies the “Moveable Feast” as it applies here:

    “So our adaptation and use of the term ‘A Manga Moveable Feast’ could be considered as both a celebration with no fixed date (or location) and also a collection of voices and perspectives that may have no other common associations past the fact that they happen to cohabit the same space at the same point in time, and that they engage each other for so long as all inhabit the same moment. (But, of course, with manga.) (and trying to catch a little bit of that Paris magic.)”

    Click here for a running list of entries to this edition of the Manga Moveable Feast.

    Sexy Voice and Robo MMF: Ed Sizemore

    by

    At Manga Worth Reading, Ed Sizemore draws some interesting comparisons between Sexy Voice and Robo and the work one of the defining creators of gekiga:

    “Gegika chronicled the new social realities of the post-World War II industrial revolution in Japan. In particular, gegika focused on the underbelly of Japanese society that emerged as a result of Japan’s swift transformation from a rural and agrarian economic base to an urban and industrial one. By contrast, Sexy Voice and Robo’s neo-gegika explores the unseemly side of Japanese society that emerges in the wake of the computer revolution in the 1990s and 2000s. Japan is now shifting from an industrial economic base to a computerized one.”

    Click here for a running list of entries to this edition of the Manga Moveable Feast.

    From the stack: Reversible vol. 1

    by

    Reversible (Juné) is a collection of short boys’-love stories by new-ish creators. It sounded ideal for a picky boys’-love reader like me, a chance to speed-date different manga-ka without having to commit to 200 pages of work that didn’t click. Unfortunately, a lot of the work feels like an audition, demonstrating a boys’-love skill set rather than exhibiting a specific voice or point of view.

    That isn’t to say that the work contained here is ever particularly bad. The stories are polished for the most part. They’re also kind of generic.

    Things start well with Saki Takari’s “Tell Me You Like Me,” a cheerfully smutty tale of salarymen at an awkward, early stage in their relationship. Takari’s pages have a lot of energy and a nice sense of composition, plus a sprinkling of character-driven humor.

    Next up is an unremarkable story about an unrequited schoolboy crush, Goroh’s “Perfect Age.” Haruki Fujimoto’s “Boyfriend” covers the same territory later with equally unremarkable results. This trend of bland treatment of identical subjects recurs with Saito’s “Catch” and Kometa Yonekura’s “Caged Bird,” both of which feature curious bottoms and the aggressive tops who go a little faster than they’d like. (Just a little, though, and these stories are about as close as the volume comes to the “no… no… yes” stuff that leaves me cold.)

    There are some fun bits in the mix. One is Neiri Koizumi’s “Sakuragawa University Cheer Squad,” which has the benefit of a quirky, ill-tempered protagonist. His crush on his nephew’s teacher is repeatedly undone by circumstances. Even more odd is the lead of Tomoko Takakura’s “Office Mermaid,” a tropical-fish-loving, germ-fearing salaryman who falls for the ethereal new guy in the server farm. “I’ll bet he doesn’t sweat at all,” swoons the fussbudget. Neither of these stories hews too closely to genre tropes, and both seem to indicate a level of personality and idiosyncrasy on the creators’ part. I’d read more by either of them.

    Of the rest, I liked Shiori Ikezawa’s “It Falls at Night” about a pair of high-school boys trying to salvage some romantic time at the end of a too-busy summer vacation. There’s some awkwardness to the narrative, but the characters have nice chemistry and I liked the twist on the abandoned-school dare.

    Misora Hatori’s “Dear Boys” is the most like a try-out first chapter of a longer series and, coincidentally, the one I’d be least likely to read in longer form. It seems to be about one of those weirdly coercive student councils that hopefully only exist in manga, an awkward mash-up of Ouran High School Host Club and Gakuen Prince with a little of Setona Mizushiro’s visual flourish. And it may not say anything about the empirical quality of the material, but there are few subjects less interesting to me than romantic relationships between humans and angels, no matter the gender mix, so Midori Nishiogi’s “Happiness, Fun, Kindness” lost me at the gate.

    Is “I don’t regret buying this book” a positive review? I guess it must be in some sense, and I did like about a third of the work here and didn’t find the remainder offensive. There’s just a lot of competent porridge collected here, and it needed more spice.

    Sexy Voice and Robo MMF: Brigid Alverson

    by

    Brigid (MangaBlog) Alverson weighs in on Sexy Voice and Robo and finds that the ingredients don’t quite come together:

    “And yet, I feel like it could be so much better. This manga has a half-baked feeling, as if Kuroda realized what a good idea he had and started running with it before he was completely ready.”

    Click here for a running list of entries to this edition of the Manga Moveable Feast.