Dreading the thought of Lent—of giving up chocolate cake, Project Runway re-runs, or martinis for forty days? Then celebrate Shrove Tuesday by going on a manga-buying binge! This week’s shipping list is among the strongest I’ve seen in months, with an assortment of long-running favorites, critical darlings, and much-anticipated debuts. My top picks include volume six of After School Nightmare (Go! Comi), a trippy series that might have appealed to Carl Gustav Jung, had he lived to see the manga revolution; volume four of Black Sun Silver Moon (Go! Comi), a zombie story with heart; volume one of Blood+ (Dark Horse), an intelligent, stylish adaptation of the popular anime; volume two of Bride of the Water God (Dark Horse), a lushly illustrated romance with a folkloric bent; and volume twelve of Swan (CMX), a vintage shojo manga that my colleague Erin F. described as “so girly it goes all the way around the circle and into the realm of manliness. If Dark Horse had a ballet title, it would Swan.”
The book with the strongest claim on my affections, however, is the final volume of Yayoi Ogawa’s Tramps Like Us (Tokyopop). No matter how preposterous some of the storylines were—remember Sumire’s undercover assignment at a Tokyo amusement park?—Ogawa’s entertaining dramedy remained squarely focused on Sumire’s difficult journey from repressed salary lady to phenomenal woman. If you haven’t yet tried Tramps Like Us, I encourage you to pick up the first volume. It’s the perfect introduction to josei, demonstrating that chick lit doesn’t need to be self-deprecating or male-disparaging to be funny and compelling.
On a personal note, I wanted to express my sadness that David Welsh just posted his final Flipped! column at Comic World News, which will be shutting down operations in the next few weeks. David is one of the best reviewers I know. He’s consistently fair, funny, and wise, couching his criticisms in prose that’s always elegant but never flashy. Case in point: his final essay on Osamu Tezuka’s entertaining potboiler MW, in which he thoughtfully deconstructs Tezuka’s humane approach to batshit crazy material. The review is filled with sentences I’d wish I’d written, including this eloquent defense of Tezuka against charges of being the Japanese Walt Disney:
Tezuka is often described as Japan’s answer to Walt Disney, which implies that he’s a canny purveyor of stodgy, rather saccharine family fare. But while Disney was dedicated to producing wholesome family entertainment, Tezuka wanted to prove that comics could be for everyone. Even in his work specifically for kids, there are seeds – challenging themes and deep questions. When you get to Tezuka’s work for adults, those seeds have become a virtual forest as he tears into sex, religion, politics, media, environmentalism, and just about any other subject that crosses his mind. They’re no less humane, though, even in a melodrama as outré as MW. The cultural is fueled by the personal – lust, greed, hope, fear, ambition, faith, love… all that good stuff.
You can find more of David’s excellent comic book commentary—as well as pop culture musings and the occasional recipe—at his blog Precocious Curmudgeon.
REVIEWED LAST WEEK:
Andromeda Stories, Vol. 2 (Vertical, Inc.); Appleseed I/D (Dark Horse); La Corda d’Oro, Vol. 6 (Viz); NOiSE (Tokyopop); Short Sunzen!, Vol. 1 (Tokyopop); Uzumaki, Vol. 3 (Viz)
REVIEWED THIS WEEK:
I Wish, Vol. 1 (Tokyopop); Love Master A, Vol. 1 (Go! Comi); Red String, Vol. 2 (Dark Horse); Tail of the Moon, Vol. 9 (Viz)
SHIPPING THIS WEEK:
After School Nightmare, Vol. 6 (Go! Comi)
Aqua, Vol. 2 (Tokyopop)
Black God, Vol. 2 (Yen Press)
Black Sun Silver Moon, Vol. 4 (Go! Comi)
Blood+, Vol. 1 (Dark Horse)
Blood Sucker: Legend of Zipangu, Vol. 6 (Tokyopop)
Boys Be, Vol. 16 (Tokyopop)
Brave Story, Vol. 3 (Tokyopop)
Bride of the Water God, Vol. 2 (Dark Horse)
Chunchu the Genocide Fiend, Vol. 3 (Dark Horse)
Divalicious, Vol. 2 (Tokyopop)
Dragon Voice, Vol. 10 (Tokyopop)
Flock of Angels, Vol. 2 (Aurora Publishing)
GTO: The Early Years Shonan Junai Gumi, Vol. 6 (Tokyopop)
Gunsmith Cats Burst, Vol. 3 (Dark Horse)
Gyakushu!, Vol. 2 (Tokyopop)
Hanami: International Love Story, Vol. 3 (Dark Horse)
I Wish, Vol. 1 (Tokyopop; reviewed below)
Id Entity, Vol. 11 (Tokyopop)
Initial D, Vol. 29 (Tokyopop)
Junjo Romantica, Vol. 5 (BLU Manga)
Kare Kano Ultimate Edition, Vol. 1 (Tokyopop)
King of Cards, Vol. 3 (CMX)
King of Thorn, Vol. 3 (Tokyopop)
Little Queen, Vol. 5 (Tokyopop)
Missile Happy, Vol. 2 (Tokyopop)
Night of the Beasts, Vol. 6 (Go! Comi)
Puri Puri, Vol. 4 (DrMaster)
Recast, Vol. 5 (Tokyopop)
Red String, Vol. 2 (Dark Horse; reviewed below)
Rure, Vol. 2 (Tokyopop)
Satisfaction Guaranteed, Vol. 6 (Tokyopop)
SNK vs. Capcom SVC Chaos, Vol. 8 (UDON)
Swan, Vol. 12 (CMX)
Threads of Time, Vol. 11 (Tokyopop)
Tough Love Baby, Vol. 1 (Aurora/Deux)
Train + Train, Vol. 5 (Go! Comi)
Tramps Like Us, Vol. 14 (Tokyopop)
Zombie Loan, Vol. 2 (Yen Press)
I Wish, Vol. 1
By Hyun-Joo Seo
Tokyopop, 192 pp.
Rating: Teen (13+)
I Wish is a series of loosely connected stories united by a common moral: be careful what you wish for, as the cost may be too steep for you to pay. The volume opens with teenager Jin Ryu sulking in her bedroom after her family has decamped to Hawaii for vacation, leaving her to fend for herself. In a moment of spite, Jin wishes that their plane would crash and presto! it explodes mid-air. Racked with guilt, Jin seeks out K, a wish-granting wizard, and pleads with him to resurrect her brother and parents, but to no avail. (“I can’t grant any wishes related to the restoring of life,” he explains. “That is God’s domain.”) K then enlists—enslaves, really—Rin as his assistant so that she might pay off her considerable moral debts. What follows are three lengthy, rather convoluted stories about the clients who patronize K’s shop: a wealthy man who disapproves of his son’s fiancée, a young woman whose boyfriend suffers acute memory loss, and a teenager whose friend is ostracized for being gay.
Part of the problem is that Seo never clarifies what, exactly, Jin is supposed to do in her capacity as K’s gal Friday. In the first story, for example, Jin stages an intervention to prevent the robber baron from destroying his son’s happiness, while in the other stories she’s reduced to grouchy factotum. Another serious shortcoming of Seo’s storytelling is that she doesn’t bother to define parameters for her universe, save for K’s “no resurrection” rule. Most of K’s clients seem like ordinary, run-of-the-mill folk, but mid-way through the second story, Seo reveals that the memory-challenged young man is, in fact, a soldier from another dimension who’s being pursued by violent memories—literally. (His experiences have a nasty way of manifesting themselves as hungry, flesh-and-blood monsters.) It’s a clever conceit, but Seo offers no rationale this detour into the Twilight Zone; it’s as if she tried to squeeze a pre-existing story into her careful-what-you-wish-for mold. The biggest problem with I Wish, however, is that Seo never really punishes her characters for their selfish wishes. Early in volume one, we’re told that customers must surrender what’s “most precious” to them in exchange for K’s services. Yet K never seems to collect anything especially dear to his clients, allowing Seo to back away from the unsavory implications of her characters’ wishes and offering happy endings to her stories—think Presents with half the calories and none of the fat.
Volume one of I Wish will be available on February 6th.
Love Master A, Vol. 1
By Kyoko Hashimoto
Go! Comi, 192 pp.
Rating: Older Teen (16+)
Aria, the easily flustered heroine of Love Master A, is unlucky in love. Really unlucky: the poor girl has declared her undying devotion to more than sixty boys, only to be rebuffed every time. Determined to make a fresh start, she swears off romance and transfers to a new school, where she’s named president of the First Year Student Council—and on her first day, no less. Her fellow council members are a motley crew, from secretary Mizuki, “a chick who hates chicks,” to treasurer Kurusu, a fop who dresses like a member of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. When students mistakenly assume that Aria is a “love master,” her compatriots concoct schemes—some sensible, some inane—to help their classmates make romantic connections, leading to the usual assortment of misunderstandings, misplaced feelings, and wacky hijinks characteristic of shojo comedies. Despite those wacky hijinks, Love Master A fails to make a lasting impression. Few of the plot twists make sense; the story jumps from moment to moment without much regard for logic or continuity. The artwork, too, leaves something to be desired. It isn’t bad, but it isn’t memorable either; I’d have a hard time picking Aria and her pals out of a line-up, as they strongly resemble the denizens of Ouran High School Host Club. My suggestion for anyone yearning for a juicy shojo comedy is to try the sweetly raunchy King of the Lamp or the ridiculously entertaining Tenshi Ja Nai!! and skip this blandly familiar comedy.
Volume one of Love Master A is available now.
Red String, Vol. 2
By Gina Biggs
Dark Horse, 208 pp.
Rating: Teen
Reading Red String reminded me a bit of watching David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago—not because any of the characters wore ushankas or resembled the young Omar Sharif, but because it induced a similar feeling of falseness, of looking at a meticulously crafted Potemkin village in which every storefront and house was stamped with the phrase “Made in the USA.” The problem lies with the setting: American artist Gina Biggs attempts the difficult task of writing a shojo romance set in Japan, starring Japanese characters. Biggs clearly did her homework, researching everything from honorifics to school uniforms to marriage customs. Yet Red String feels like an act of cultural ventriloquism as unconvincing as Julie Christy’s attempt to portray a passionate Slav. I never believed that any of the cast were Japanese—least of all the outspoken heroine Mihara Ogawa, who delivers the kind of speeches on individualism that are de rigueur in John Hughes movies but not very common in shojo manga. Biggs’ clumsy attempts to fold information about Japanese culture into the dialogue compounds the problem, as does her awkward artwork. (Her characters look like stiffly posed paper dolls, not three-dimensional figures occupying real space.) And while I admire Biggs for taking such a big risk with her story, I wish she’d used the visual grammar of shojo to tell an American story in an American setting. The results would have been much more satisfying, showcasing Biggs’ storytelling chops to much better effect and giving her a sturdier platform for a debate pitting free will against fate.
Volume two of Red String will be available on February 6th. To read a short excerpt, click here.
Tail of the Moon, Vol. 9
By Rinko Ueda
Viz, 200 pp.
Rating: Older Teen (16+)
Tail of the Moon is perhaps the girliest manga ever written about ninjas. (Exhibit A: the cover of volume nine, which features a cute little boy, an even cuter doggie, a female ninja in a pink outfit with matching wrist-warmers, and a rainbow.) The series documents the misadventures of klutzy herbalist Usagi, whose family betroths her to an impossibly handsome ninja named Hanzo. Hanzo is less thrilled about the match than Usagi, so he sets a condition for their marriage: no nuptials until Usagi demonstrates her worth as a ninja. Frankly, I’d have done the same thing if I were in Hanzo’s getas, as Usagi is the kind of ditzy, inept character who tests the reader’s patience with her tearful outbursts, impulsive acts, and inability to remember simple instructions.
For this kind of romantic drama to succeed, the reader needs to believe the heroine worthy of her McDreamy, even if her flaws are obvious. I don’t doubt that many of Tail of the Moon’s fans sympathize with Usagi, and may even identify with her struggles. But from the standpoint of an older, more critical reader, Usagi seems far too immature for the stern, responsible Hanzo; about the best I can say for her is that she’s steadfast in her resolve to impress him. Tail of the Moon does have two things going for it, however: great artwork and crackerjack pacing. Rinko Ueda fills her manga with beautifully drawn characters, from achingly pretty men in lavish period costumes to piglets and puppies so kawaii they’d make the most curmudgeonly gekiga fan dissolve into a puddle of mero-mero joy. The story moves briskly without ever feeling hurried or choppy; it’s to Ueda’s credit that a reader could pick up any volume of the series and find it intelligible and—depending on one’s tolerance for sweetly dim shojo heroines—compelling.
Volume nine of Tail of the Moon is available now.
Related posts
