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Fri Sep 26, 2008 — by Andrew Wheeler
Manga Friday: The Old In-Out In-Out
Shamelessly pandering by reviewing three books about sex
I haven’t reviewed books about sex in close to a month, so it must be time again, right? (As always, I’m reviewing what I have on hand, so, if you publish manga and want me to
cover it, contact me at the e-mail address far below.If you don’t publish manga, but want me to review something in particular, just leave a comment with a suggestion. If you don’t publish manga, and have no suggestions…then I think you’re good the way you are.)
Sundome, Vol. 3
By Kazuto Okada
Yen Press, September 2008, $12.99
I liked the first volume of Sundome, but wasn’t entirely comfortable with how focused on leering at teenage girls it was. (I have no problems with teenage boys leering at teenage girls – in any case, they’ll do it no matter what I think – but I don’t think it’s really appropriate for me to do so. And that can bother me, even in fictional form.) The second volume made me even more uneasy, because the “games” that teenage cutie Kurumi played on utterly-gaga-about-her Hideo were getting dangerous and cruel.
Their relationship is still shifting in this third volume; Hideo’s devotion to Kurumi is showing some positive results (he’s gotten stronger from all of his bike riding-cum-sublimation, and Kurumi’s teasing is turning more girlfriend-ish than purely mean), and the more dangerous or kinky moments are part of obvious sex-play between the two. Oh, she’s still insisting that she’ll never have sex with him…but she isn’t acting as if that’s true.
Even given the cultural differences, Sundome is one of the most raw and realistic depictions of adolescent sexuality I’ve ever seen. Sure, it’s exaggerated for fictional effect, with the usual manga shorthand, but these kids are both horny and confused in a way that fiction rarely shows. And, of course, since there’s some moderately explicit sexuality in this book – more that the previous books, I think – it’s rated “M” for adults only, and teenagers are officially not supposed to read it. That’s irony for you: because it’s so true about teenagers, teenagers aren’t supposed to read it.
Fri Sep 19, 2008 — by Andrew Wheeler
Manga Friday: Yen Plus Magazine
The first three issues of a new phonebook-sized manga monthly
Yen Press launched a new manga magazine last month called Yen+ (or maybe Yen Plus), to compete directly with those twin 800-pound gorillas of manga in America, Shonen Jump and Shojo Beat. I now have the first three issues here in my hands, so let’s take a look at Yen+ and see what’s in it.
Yen+, August to October 2008 issues
By various
Yen Press, Aug-Oct 2008, $8.99 ea.
All three issues have the same eleven serials in them, so it would be silly of me to review each issue separately and come back again and again to the same stories. (I’m not saying that I never do anything silly – just that I’m not choosing to do so this time.) So I’ll talk about Yen+ in general first, then cover the serials, and finish up with particular points in the separate issues.
The first thing a savvy reader notices about Yen+ is that it has two front covers, and a quick glance inside shows that it’s not just the covers – the whole magazine is divided in half. Japanese manga start at the “back” and run right-to-left for two hundred and some-odd pages, while Korean manwha and Western-originated comics go the opposite way for about the same number of pages. The Korean/Western side is the “front,” with the table of contents, editor’s letter, masthead, and the other usual “front-of-the-book” materials. But the two sides are close in length – the Japanese side has five serials (with generally longer page counts), and the Korean side six (plus the editorial matter). So Yen+, if I may be impertinent for a moment, is perfectly happy swinging both ways…
Yen+, if I may continue to torture a metaphor, doesn’t aim at one sex or the other, unlike the Japanese magazines that are its model – or like Shonen Jump and Shojo Beat in the US. (So it’s bisexual as well as swinging both ways – no wonder it comes in its own plastic bag!) The editor’s letter in the first issue explains that – since the audience for manga, and for manga magazines, in the US is not huge yet, trying to please both boys and girls will, they hope, allow them to reach an audience large enough to survive. (The other possibility is that it will fall between two stools, with too much mushy stuff for the boys and too many severed heads for the girls.)
Fri Sep 12, 2008 — by Andrew Wheeler
Manga Friday: The New Number Two
Three more chances to jump into the middle of something
I haven’t done a week of jumping-into-the-middle in a while, so I thought it was about time to try that out again. This time, I have three books from Yen Press, all second volumes in series that I haven’t read before. So let’s see if they make any sense to me…
Goong, Vol. 2
By Park SoHee
Yen Press, July 2008, $10.99
Goong is an alternate history series, in which the last Emperor of Korea (Soon-Jong) wasn’t actually the last Emperor, and that Korea got its independence from Japan (as it actually did) and stayed unified (as, of course, it hasn’t). Park has a short comics afterword in this volume to explain the set-up – and something of why she chose to make the royal family in her series Kings rather than Emperors.
That’s the background: Korea is unified, and has a King. That king has a disinterested, self-centered teenage son, Prince Shin. And, in the way of royal families through the ages, Shin had an arranged marriage to a teenage girl, Chae-Kyung (our viewpoint character). Their marriage takes place at the very beginning of this book – we know that Shin and Chae-Kyung don’t love each other, and barely know each other, but we don’t see (in this volume) all of the machinations that led to the wedding. (Presumably, though, it has something to do with the fact that Chae-Kyung’s family is poor.)
Chae-Kyung has somewhat more interior life than the usual run of girls’ manga heroines, and Shin isn’t the standard spoiled brat, but something more nuanced. So Goong has a lot of generic elements, but assembles them into something more substantial and interesting. I’m also finding that Korean comics have less of the over-exaggeration of Japanese comics, which works better for my eye. Goong might not be groundbreaking, but it’s quite good for what it is.
Fri Sep 5, 2008 — by Andrew Wheeler
Manga Friday: Swords and Psychics
There's gonna be a whole lot of fighting in the old town tonight
This week was going to be Samurai Week, but I threw in a book about psychics for spice – just to keep it interesting.
Dororo, Vol. 3
By Osamu Tezuka
Vertical, August 2008, $13.95
This is the third and final book in a samurai saga from Tezuka, the “godfather of manga.” (I’ve previously reviewed volume 1 and volume 2 for ComicMix.) I’ve seen references that say this series was truncated rather than continuing to its expected end, and that’s plausible from the book itself.
It does have something like an ending; the swordsman Hyakkimaru confronts and defeats his evil father, and parts from the young thief Dororo (whose secret he’s recently learned). But the stories of these main characters aren’t actually done – Hyakkimaru is not finished with his quest to become human again, and Dororo needs to grow up (and probably to battle some evil feudal lords on behalf of downtrodden farmers).
So this isn’t really the ending one would hope for – it doesn’t cut off, uncompleted, but there clearly were more stories to be told. (On the other hand, Tezuka left off work on Dororo in 1971, and lived for nearly twenty years afterward, which probably means something.) But the individual stories are still exceptionally well-told, in Tezuka’s characteristic clean lines, and the thematic undertones remain under, and deepen rather than threatening to sink the narrative.
Fri Aug 29, 2008 — by Andrew Wheeler
Manga Friday: As Different As Possible
Three books with nothing at all in common
I’ve generally tried to organize the weekly columns around some sort of theme, but sometimes themes just serve to hide the variety and depth of the comics world (whatever country it might be from). So, this week, I picked three books with nothing at all in common (except a Japanese origin), just because:
Nightmares for Sale, Vol. 1
By Kaoru Ohashi
Aurora, November 2007, $10.95
Nightmares for Sale is an old-fashioned kind of horror story, with two enigmatic characters – they appear to be a grown man (Shadow) and a young girl (Maria), but she’s older than he is – who run a store that’s usually a pawnshop. Nothing at all good can happen when they enter your life, though they usually don’t seem to be directly responsible.
Each story in this volume has a different set of characters – usually teenage girls, or the kind of adults that teenage girls want to become – who meet the pawnshop owners, and then come to nasty ends. A bullied girl triggers a curse on the friendship rings her tormentors made her buy for all of them, and nastiness follows. A model wants to appear beautiful in photographs, and gets exactly what she asked for…but no more and no less. A young woman meets an abused boy in the street, and learns that their connection is much deeper than she imagined. A young boy tries to pawn his baby sister. And so on.
Fri Aug 22, 2008 — by Andrew Wheeler
Manga Friday: Lawless, Winged, and Unconfined
Three books about people with a little extra something on the shoulderblades
Poking through the stack of manga to be reviewed, earlier this week, I noticed several books featuring characters with wings of one kind or another. Quick to sense a theme, I dragged them together, and here they are:
Koi Cupid, Vol. 1
By Mia Ikumi
Broccoli, April 2008, $9.99
Koi Cupid is an all-ages series about cherubs-in-training – yes, cute little girls in white outfits, running around making people fall in love. It’s not quite as kawaii (cute, often cloyingly so) as it could be, though, so I came to think of Koi Cupid as actually fairly restrained.
(Of course, that’s by manga standards – recalibrate your cuteness detectors from American settings, or you’ll be instantly deafened by the alarm.)
Anyway, the story focuses on three cupids-in-training: Ai, the cheerful one; Koi, the shy one; and Ren, the way-ahead-of-the-others one. They’re taught by a full cupid named Rin, who is deferring her own promotion to Guardian Angel to continue to mentor them. Kou actually is a guardian angel who pops in for added firepower now and then; Sister Yuuri is a winged, talking cat who supervises the cupid training program, and Lizette is a sneaky demon who tries to foil their work, but whom Ai wants to be friends with.
Continue reading Manga Friday: Lawless, Winged, and Unconfined ›
Fri Aug 15, 2008 — by Andrew Wheeler
Manga Friday: The Naughty Bits
Reviews of three books about sex
It’s another one of those weeks when I have to shoo the kids away; this time, Manga Friday looks at three books about sex. (This is all fairly mainstream stuff, not hentai and without any tentacles to be seen. But there are still naked body parts doing their thing, however tastefully.)
What we have this time is three views of sex – one a general guide (in fictional form) for the young and inexperience, and two romances of different genres.
Futari H: Manga Sutra, Vol. 1: Flirtation
By Katsu Aki
Tokyopop, January 2008, $19.99
I think of this as just Manga Sutra, but the title on the cover is Futari H Manga Sutra – and, on the first page, there’s the completely different title Step Up Love Story (which also seems to be the title of the related anime series). To avoid confusion, I’ll just call it Manga Sutra, since that’s what everyone has been and will call it.
This is the story of two very, very sheltered newlyweds – Makoto and Yura Onoda – who had a semi-arranged marriage somewhere in Japan at the age of twenty-five, and who seem to have not even seriously dated anyone before they met each other. Their families, though, are heavily populated with horndogs, and Makoto and Yura are the objects of much unwanted advice. They’re virgins – in the most extreme, literal sense of the word – when they marry, and it takes them about a week to manage to consummate their marriage. Even then, the sex isn’t all that good – Yuka is embarrassed by everything and Makoto has a major problem with premature ejaculation.
Fri Aug 8, 2008 — by Andrew Wheeler
Manga Friday: Here We Go Again
Returning to the scene of previous reviews
This time around I have a volume two, a volume three, and a volume four – all in series that I’ve read at least some of the earlier books. Let’s see if I can still remember what went before – since manga often don’t have “who the heck are these people and what are they doing” pages – and whether they’re getting more or less interesting.
Kaze No Hana, Vol. 2
By Ushio Mizta and Akiyoshi Ohta
Yen Press, August 2008, $10.99
This is the series about an amnesiac teenage girl, Momoka, who is part of a family that wields magical swords to drive monsters away and protect their city. I reviewed the first volume in April, and had to admit then that there were too many characters with too few faces for me to keep them all straight.
Well, this time, we get even more characters, including another sword-wielding family that likes the monsters and wants to see them take over the earth or rampage through Tokyo or do whatever it is these particular monsters would do. Their leader is the cute girl Kurohime – and the only thing more dangerous than an old man in a Hong Kong movie is a cute girl in manga – and they have “sacred swords,” which are utterly different from the heroes’ “spiritual swords” in ways that perhaps don’t entirely translate well.
Fri Aug 1, 2008 — by Andrew Wheeler
Manga Friday: Who Are You?
Three books where things aren't who they seem
This week we’ll be looking at three books with main characters who look like one thing, but are something else.
Nephilim, Vol. 1
By Anna Hanamaki
Aurora, May 2008, $10.95
On a continent with the unlikely name of Elwestland, two political powers – with the is-it-quitting-time-on-Friday-already? names of “The Empire” and “The Federation” – are in a long cold war, having split the land right down the middle. Oh, no, wait! There’s also a nearly impassable jungle right in that middle, conveniently separating the Empire from the Federation. And in that jungle live the mysterious, nomadic Nephilim.
Nephilim appear in one form by day and another by night – this may simply be swapping gender, but the text of the book doesn’t quite say that – and their night-form is the true one. (They’re fertile in that form, among other things.) But if an outsider sees a Nephilim in his/her true form – possibly only if the Nephilim is naked, but that doesn’t seem to be the important bit – The Curse declares that Nephilim must kill that outsider personally, or start to die slowly.
And our plot begins when the dashing Imperial soldier Colonel Sir Guyfeis S. Northenfield, who is also a top bounty hunter, a master of unarmed combat, and probably a deft hand at Parcheesi, too, is charging through that not-nearly-impassable-enough jungle on a mission to retrieve the fair Lady Lia, who has been kidnapped by perfidious Federal agents. He avoids or kills Federals by day, and has a quick run-in with a wandering Nephilim named Abel. (Rolling a fifteen or higher on the Random Encounter table, clearly.) That night, Abel is bathing in a stream, so Guy sneaks up to catch an eyeful – either unaware of the curse, secretly hot for the cute boy he thought Abel was, or just terminally nosy. He discovers Abel is “truly” (by night, at least) female, and she then tries, very badly, to kill him.
Fri Jul 25, 2008 — by Andrew Wheeler
Manga Friday: 'Me and the Devil Blues'
A big book about the life of Robert Johnson
It’s unofficially been Blues & Jazz week here in my reviews – and, if you’re wondering how Erotic Comics
Me and the Devil Blues, Vol. 1
By Akira Hiaramoto
Del Rey Manga, July 2008, $19.95
If you know anything about Robert Johnson – the archetypal bluesman, who came out of nowhere to record 24 songs and then die young – it’s that he sold his soul to the devil, one night at a Mississippi crossroads, to get his amazing ability to play and sing. Is it true? Well, it’s a damn good story, and that’s what matters most.
Speaking of damn good stories, Akira Hiramoto weaves one here, drawing from the legends and few known facts of Johnson’s life and bringing in careful research on the rural Mississippi of the ‘30s, plus his own speculation and fiction. In a life as full of holes and mysteries as Johnson’s, the only way to tell a story is to make it up.
Hiramoto starts his story in 1929 with a young man called RJ, who works on a plantation, dreams of becoming a bluesman (though he’s not very good at singing or guitar playing), is harried by his domineering sister Bessie, and loved by his pregnant wife Virginia. He sneaks off to the local juke joint just about every night, to drink, talk with his friends, and hear the blues. He keeps trying to play, but never gets far – he really is lousy. The traveling bluesman Son House tries to explain to RJ what the blues is, but RJ doesn’t quite get it.
Fri Jul 11, 2008 — by Andrew Wheeler
Manga Friday: Stories for Girls, But Not About Getting Boys
Four shojo comics that aren't about dating
Half by accident, I realized my manga reading this week included four shojo books – for girls – but that none of them were about dating, boys, or relationships. That’s probably not as unlikely as I think it is, but it’s my theme for the week, and I’m running with it. (Think of it as a nod to Alison Bechdel’s Movie Rule.)
Sunshine Sketch, Vol. 1
By Ume Aoki
Yen Press, June 2008, $10.99
Sunshine Sketch is mostly in 4-panel style, though it doesn’t seem to be primarily a gag strip. (Or, at least, if there were supposed to be jokes in each strip, most of them sailed over my head.) The beginning of each section is generally in a more standard page layout, though – and there’s an eight-page color section in the front, for any readers who need to ease into black and white slowly, like a cold pool.
Yuno is a first-year high school student, moving into an apartment complex near her prestigious arts-focused school and quickly becoming friends with her three housemates: Miya, Sae, and Hiro. (And once again I have to wonder – is it really common in Japan for thirteen and fourteen-year-olds to live on their own in apartments when they go to high school? Or is this an accepted fictional trope, something that happens a little bit in life – like a few Americans go to elite boarding schools like Choate – but happens a lot more in fiction?)
Continue reading Manga Friday: Stories for Girls, But Not About Getting Boys ›
