Manga Recon, September 2006

The focus this month is highly intellectual books that will not only make you feel smarter, they’ll make you look smarter when other people go through your comics collection. Each of the titles below (except The Push Man) are must-buy stand-alone volumes that you can loan safely to non-manga fans and impress them. This is what the Comics Journal staff dreams about at night. That said, these titles are not really for younger readers. A lot of issues in them are complex and probably too challenging for high school readers. By challenging I might me “controversial and explicit”. I definitely wouldn’t recommend these books for junior high kids or younger. All of these books are larger than normal manga - around 10″ X 7″, or a little smaller.

How to “Read” Manga: Gloom Party

By Yoshio Kawashima
Digital Manga Publishing

Who would like this book: People who like having jokes explained to them.
Who would hate this book: Hate is such a strong word, isn’t it?

Gloom Party was originally published as a 4-panel or “4-koma” comic strips and published in a collection by Shonen Champion comics. I wish this volume had contained some kind of introduction about where the Gloom Party strips originally appeared - and some preface with an explanation of the format of this book - but none is given beyond the description on the back.

The How to “Read” Manga part of the title is a bit misleading. Notice that “read” is in quotes on the cover. The “How to” refers to the bilingual presentation of the Gloom Party strips. Each strip is presented in the original Japanese with a translation written off to one side. Underneath each strip are footnotes full of cultural explanation.

I enjoy having bizarre or esoteric jokes explained to me. I also enjoy long cultural translation notes in anime and manga. But Gloom Party is full of translation notes and cultural facts that I have never seen before. It has an exhaustive explanation of every joke, in every strip, page after page for 182 pages. It is enough to try anyone’s patience.

One thing that drew me to anime and manga in the first place was an element of inscrutability. I could not understand what was going on in Sailor Moon when I first watched it because it followed a visual language that I was unfamiliar with. The foreign elements of the show of the show made it more appealing. The foreign-ness of Gloom Party, however, is completely isolating. No matter how deeply the translator explains each gag, most of the strips are completely incomprehensible. Even after reading the footnotes, I still have a lot of questions about each joke.

Imagine if you read a version of Gary Larson’s The Far Side written by Martians, and you’ve got Gloom Party.

The only other 4-koma comics I’ve read are Azumanga Daioh, Tori Koro, and some works collected in Secret Comics Japan. Gloom Party is not drawn in the “anime” style like Azumanga Daioh or Tori Koro. Instead, it more closely resembles an underground comic style closer to Secret Comics Japan or the brilliant Short Cuts by Usamaru Furuya.

I recommend Short Cuts and Secret Comics Japan over Gloom Party.

Gloom Party is unquestionably for readers age 18 and up. There are lots of sexually explicit jokes, naked breasts, panty shots, etc. Gloom Party proves that “explicit” is not the same as “sexy”. The only place you will find panty shots that are less sexy than Gloom Party’s is in the Air Master anime series.

Nevertheless, I would still recommend buying Gloom Party - perhaps on sale. It’s an excellent volume to pull off your shelf and confuse your friends with in the middle of a conversation about crazy crap coming out of Japan.

A Patch of Dreams

By Hideji Oda
Fanfare/Ponent Mon

Who would like this book: Intellectual fans of indy comics.
Who would hate this book: Younger readers looking for casual violence and sexy drawings. Anti-intellectuals.

A Patch of Dreams is a little hard to find, but well worth the effort if you like the intellectual stuff. It is a spin-off of Coo’s World (sometimes spelled Ku’s or Koo’s), a title that is not available in English. After the immediate opening it doesn’t matter that A Patch of Dreams is a spin-off.

Renei is a fine arts major about to graduate from college. Her senior art show is coming up, and she’s under pressure because of it. She doesn’t appear to have many friends at college, her parents are nonexistent, and the only person she’s really close to is the professor she’s having an affair with. Renei is slipping into a deep depression, and is worried she might be going insane.

Renei is having recurring dreams of Ku’s World, a continuation of a dream she had years ago, where every night when she went to sleep she would continue the adventure of the night before. She hasn’t revisited Ku’s World in a long time, but now the dreams are starting again. In Ku’s World Renei is accompanied by her estranged brother and her best friend who committed suicide years ago. There are other bizarre creatures and cute monsters, and a little thing that calls itself God. Creatures from Ku’s World have started turning up in Renei’s real-world life.

In Joseph Campbell’s theory of storytelling, the hero ultimately faces the void alone. This happens in volume 4 of the Nausicaa manga, but it happens in the first chapter of A Patch of Dreams. The creatures in Renei’s dream adventure encourage her to leap into the void after having a conversation about the nature of God.

A Patch of Dreams is heavily intellectual - at times overbearingly so. Readers who appreciate stories about characters facing the void and having conversations about the nature of the universe will enjoy the book, but it will leave many comic readers in the dark. The only comparable graphic novel I’ve read is the Sandman volume A Game of You.

A Patch of Dreams is flipped to read left-to-right, but I didn’t find this distracting. The art is a strange and sketchy style that reminds me more of a traditional artist’s sketchbook than manga. The characters are all very realistic looking (except the monsters).

A Patch of Dreams might appeal more to indy comic fans than traditional manga fans, as many black and white indy comics (Optic Nerve, Jimmy Corrigan) are incredibly depressing. As an indy comics fan I quickly became frustrated at the sad tales the American authors had to tell. A Patch of Dreams takes the reader through the darkest of depressing tales (there may be an abortion or two involved) but eventually it pulls together for a surprisingly happy ending.

The Push Man & Other Stories

By Yoshihiro Tatsumi
Drawn and Quarterly

Who would like this book: Mostly Adrian Tomine.
Who would hate this book: I didn’t like it, but I did learn something from it.

This intellectual round-up would be incomplete without a mention of The Push Man. The Push Man is a collection of very short 3 to 4 page stories by Yoshihiro Tatsumi collected into one volume. Each story centers on a different character, more like a literary collection of short stories than any manga I’ve ever read. The title story focuses on a young man who’s job is to push people into already-crowded trains so that the doors will close.

Tatsumi’s art is amazing - in simple ink drawings he captures a Tokyo in the 1960’s the likes of which you’ve never seen and may not see anywhere else. There is very little dialog but the stories are very clear and often profound. You might want to flip through The Push Man just for the art.

There is a long afterward by Adrian Tomine, the author of Optic Nerve. Tomine describes reading some bootlegged comics by Tatsumi in his youth - and having read The Push Man and some early works by Tomine you can see the huge influence Tatsumi has had on Tomine’s work.

From the above, you might think that The Push Man is an awesome book that you should buy immediately. But consider this: The Push Man has more dead babies per page (on average) than any other book I have ever read. The number of abandoned baby corpses per page is staggering. The majority of the dead babies are in one story about men working to keep the sewers unclogged. Tiny bundles float by and one worker collects silver crosses from them. He explains to his coworker that women put these crosses on their babies to help them along in the afterlife. A wide shot in the next panel shows a dozen bundles floating by. Afterwards I read A Patch of Dreams, wherein abortion is legal in Japan, and I couldn’t help but consider how much cleaner their sewers must be.

There is only one word to describe The Push Man, and that word is maudlin. Every story is so stark and depressing that it goes through depressing and back into humorous again. I found I had to laugh at the end of each chapter, and I felt bad for laughing, kind of like my experience watching Todd Solond’z film Happiness, except it was harder to tell where The Push Man was supposed to be funny.

Although The Push Man is an excellent book, it is not a book I can recommend to anyone. I’m still haunted and disturbed by some of the short stories. A sequel, called Abandon the Old in Tokyo recently came out. I don’t know if I can bring myself to read it.

Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea

By Guy Delisle
Drawn and Quarterly

Who would like this book: Everyone.
Who would hate this book: Communists and fascists.

Alright, so this isn’t manga. It’s not even “Global Manga” or OEL. But Pyongyang is the most important book I’ve read this year. It’s a book everyone should read. Besides, I’m reviewing one or two other Drawn & Quarterly titles here, so I might as well throw this in.

Pyongyang is an autobiographical story of an animator who is sent to North Korea to be the overseas supervisor on a low-budget French cartoon. This is a topic I can identify with, as I work in animation, and I recently visited South Korea and met the overseas supervisor of the cartoon show that I work on. Most American cartoons (Spongebob, the Simpsons, everything on Cartoon Network) are animated in Seoul, South Korea. But in recent years South Korea has become more expensive to outsource to, leaving companies reaching out to even cheaper labor forces in India and China. It’s worth noting that most Japanese anime is primarily animated in China. I can only imagine the show’s budget that gets shipped off to North Korea for completion! The French needed to find a place cheaper than Inia or China?

Guy Delisle smuggles a copy of George Orwell’s 1984 and a radio into North Korea - both illegal in a country where all forms of media are heavily censored by the government. I highly suggest reading 1984 before or in conjunction with Pyongyang, because if you haven’t read 1984 you will miss the terrific parallels between Orwell’s predictions and the stark reality of North Korea.

I can’t emphasize enough how Pyongyang is funny, and not at all preachy, and although there are politics, it doesn’t hit you over the head with a political message. Although the situation in North Korea is very depressing, Delisle’s portrait of it is not depressing to read. If the book were preachy or depressing, I wouldn’t have been able to finish it.

In one scene, Delisle is listening to music while he does his work in the animation studio. One of his coworkers closes the door to his office several times. Finally he explains angrily to Delisle, “Your music could influence people!”

The only music played on the three radio stations in Pyongyang are propaganda nationalistic anthems about Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il. Delisle asks his coworkers if they have ever heard of reggae or disco or rap or rock - they have not. A “rave” is something that North Koreans cannot imagine. It’s a simple scene and it is handled humorously, but it had a profound effect on me. For weeks afterwards I considered the simple freedom of being able to listen to the music of my choice.

As soon as I finished reading Pyongyang I began loaning it to my coworkers in the animation studio where I work. Everyone loved it. I cannot recommend this book enough.

Sexy Voice and Robo

By Iou Koroda
Viz

Who would like this book: Almost anyone.
Who would hate this book: Readers who missed the underlying theme because they were looking for a little less talk and a lot more action.

Nico (codename “Sexy Voice”) is a phone sex operator, although most of the people who call her tele-club are just lonely men looking to talk to someone. Although Nico seems much older, the back cover claims that she is 14. Nico’s part time job has given her several skills, including the ability to recognize a voice in a crowd and a talent for manipulating lonely men.

Nico meets a nerdy 20-something whom she nicknames Robo after his robot toy collection. Not exactly friends, and definitely not lovers, Nico and Robo’s relationship is in a state of flux throughout the story. Is Robo Nico’s employee? Her henchman? Her bodyguard? He’s not really sure and he’s too embarrassed to ask.

Nico is resourceful, energetic, talented, and intelligent. She’s as spunky and fiercely independent as any female protagonist you could hope for. Robo is there for contrast - he is drifting aimlessly through life while Nico sails ahead. When asked what she wants to do with her life, Nico responds that she’d like to be a secret agent, a spy, or a fortuneteller.

She sets herself onto this career path during the course of the book when she starts getting work from a mob boss. Nico becomes an unlikely junior detective, completing missions with Robo’s help. At the climax of the book Nico meets an old woman who was once a spy. They exchange the following dialog:

Nico: Why did you become a spy?
Old Woman: I was good with languages and I wasn’t very pretty.
Nico: No, I mean, did you want to be a spy?
Old Woman: I heard from a classmate that they needed translators… I did it because I could.
Nico: But was it something you wanted? Are you glad you did it?
Old Woman: Well… Sometimes it’s your skills… and not your will, that sets you on your path.

This last line is as good career advice as any I have ever heard, and it has certainly proved true in my own career so far. The line is devoted an entire splash page of Nico’s face, in a book where splash pages are rare.

The art of Sexy Voice and Robo is very different from normal manga. The line strength is very dark and sketchy. It almost looks as if the book was drawn with a brush-pen in thick strokes.

In Japan Sexy Voice and Robo was released as two volumes, but Viz has collected both tankoban into one oversized volume. The cover price is $20, but it is well worth the cost. The print quality is good but the paper stock is not the highest quality. Sexy Voice and Robo won the Grand Prize from Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs’ Media Arts Festival in 2002, and the MangaCast nominated it for the first ever annual Yomi award in 2005 for Best Short.