Fri Sep 4, 2009 — by Andrew Wheeler

Manga Friday: Young and Special -- 'X-Men: Misfits', 'Cat Paradise', 'Ninja Girls'

All young comics protagonists are special, even if they don’t know it yet. In manga in particular, they’re likely to protest loudly that they’re just “a normal kid” and to squirm at the thought of being separable from the vast thundering herd of undifferentiated humanity in the slightest way. But it doesn’t matter what they say; we see that they’re all uniquely wonderful -- maybe special snowflakes, maybe purple children. Maybe wizards! Maybe mutants! Maybe the feudal lord! Maybe the rightful ruler of the entire world, and the dashing fated love of that gorgeous other character, and, and, and EVERYTHING!

This week, I have three books like that, with young people who are deeply, utterly special.

X-Men: Misfits, Vol. 1
Story by Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman; art by Anzu
Del Rey Manga, August 2009, $12.99

Telgemeier and Roman take the standard X-Men set-up – which is already, in its full Claremontian flowering, completely full of adolescent longing, fear, and obsession – and twist it about 90 degrees into the world of shojo. The characters come from all over the X-men universe, with a plot germ from mid-Claremont Era: Kitty Pryde, young and conflicted about her powers, is given a scholarship to Professor Xavier’s Academy for Gifted Youngsters in Westchester.

And she finds herself the only female student there. (Even the female professors are absent for most of this volume, to intensify the reverse-harem feeling.) The other X-Men characters are all familiar names, though they’re arbitrarily divided into teachers (Colossus, Magneto, Storm, Marvel Girl, Beast) and oh-so-pretty boys (Iceman, Angel, Forge, Havok, Cyclops, and so on). There’s the usual clique of privileged kids, who are allowed to do what they want and essentially run the school, and of course they are the prettiest boys and of course they are called The Hellfire Club. (And of course Magneto is their mentor; Telgemeier and Roman are hitting all of the X-Men/shojo parallels they can as hard as they can.)

Kitty is torn between the fast heartless boys and the outcasts – in particular between Pyro (who becomes her boyfriend) and Iceman (who is unfailingly cold to her, natch). Does she make a big choice at the end of this book? Does she learn what really matters in life? Is the Pope Catholic?

X-Men: Misfits is a solid reverse-harem shojo story, but I can’t help but believe that it’s true audience is men and women of around my age – comics readers of long-standing who know enough of the X-Men mythology (and I barely do) to appreciate the changes that are being made to it. Anzu’s art is exactly what you’d expect for this kind of story, though she does differentiate a large cast (of mainly pretty, pretty boys – all the same kind of prettiness, too) clearly and easily, which is not simple.

Cat Paradise, Vol. 1
By Yuji Iwahara
Yen+, July 2009, $10.99

Matabi Academy is another one of those oddball secondary schools so common in manga – I’m waiting for one entirely dedicated to Moopsball, perhaps, or run according to the secret instructions of God as encoded in the errors in an eternally weaving loom – which, also as is often required, secretly has the job of preventing an evil demon from returning to Earth, enslaving and/or eating everyone, and generally making mayhem.

Matabi’s particular oddity is that it allows – one might even say requires – each student to have one cat on campus. And our story opens, as is traditional, with young and dewy-eyed Yumi Hayakami arriving late for the opening ceremony of her first year at Matabi, with her cat Kansuke.

That demon soon appears, and – also as per the usual way of things – the student council assembles to battle it, since they are the keepers of ancient magic. (I shudder to think of what would have happened if ancient evil threatened my high school when I was that age; I’m pretty sure the student council of Wayne Valley would very quickly have been no more than a greasy spot on the floor…which probably means it was a good thing that I lost my bid for class president. But I digress.)

Yumi does indeed discover that she has special powers as well (though they amusingly involve the yarn she’s always knitting), and her help – not to mention that of Kansuke, since we can’t forget the cats – will be needed to stop the cat demon Kaen.

Iwahara tells this story with lively dialogue and crisp art, with a particularly good eye for expressions. Cat Paradise has absolutely nothing new at all, but it has a lot of fun with its standard furniture, and it’s very enjoyable.

Ninja Girls, Vol. 1
By Hosana Tanaka
Del Rey Manga, August 2009, $10.99

It is traditional in lost-heir stories that the heir have some physical feature that instantly places him – something that cannot be faked, and proves beyond a doubt that he is the true heir to whatever-it-is. The standard feature for this is the birthmark – in extreme cases, it may even be in the shape of his demesne, with mountains picked out as moles, deep blue veins representing rivers, and the capital a rosy red carbuncle – but it can encompass extra fingers or toes, extraneous nipples, a particularly unlikely eye color, or any other bodily part that the creator has a fondness for.

Until today, though, I had never seen the inevitable physical feature be a little pointy white horn growing out of the middle of the teenage hero’s head. But such is Raizo’s disfigurement, and it’s brought him only misery so far, as he grew up in a little village somewhere in rural medieval Japan. Even worse, it’s the Warring States era, and various factions have overrun the countryside, leaving this particular fief leaderless. And, sadly, Raizo doesn’t even know the significance of his little horn.

But there’s a secret band of female ninja out to find him and restore his lands to prosperity, and one finds Raizo. From there, it’s a tangle of semi-obligatory elements: the lazy transvestite “female” ninja, the superpowerful fighting technique with really tight requirements, the girls battling in unlikely ways for the love of a nebbishy young man, lots and lots of supposed comic relief, and plenty of violence.

Ninja Girls is too much in so many ways that I can’t begin to even list them. If there’s a reader who needs a crash course in manga tropes, this is an excellent choice – not only is it full of them, they all stand out from the plot to make identifying them that much easier. I will say, though, that there aren’t nearly as many panty shots as I was expecting – perhaps that particular obsession is beginning to die down. But it is a manga titled “Ninja Girls,” so there’s no point in faulting it for being exactly what it says it is on the box.

Andrew Wheeler has been a publishing professional for nearly twenty years, with a long stint as a Senior Editor at the Science Fiction Book Club and a current position at John Wiley & Sons. He’s been reading comics for longer than he cares to mention, and maintains a personal, mostly book-oriented blog at antickmusings.blogspot.com.

Publishers who would like to submit books for review should contact ComicMix through the usual channels or email Andrew Wheeler directly at acwheele (at) optonline (dot) net.

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