I’m fresh out of snappy intros this week, so I won’t mince words: you won’t find much on the new arrivals spinner rack at your LCS or Borders this Thursday. But if you didn’t bankrupt yourself buying all three installments of Naruto last week, you’ll find a few manga worth your hard-earned money.
Your best bet is the final volume of Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix. Deftly interweaving sci-fi episodes with period drama, Tezuka’s unfinished masterpiece inspires an SAT-worthy set of adjectives to describe its superb artwork and pointed commentary on human nature. If Tezuka isn’t your cup of tea, you might want to investigate Go! Comi’s newest series: Kanna, a seinen action title in which ferocious monsters pursue an adorable moppet across multiple dimensions, and The Devil Within, a shojo romance about a girl forced to choose a husband from a handsome trio of demon bachelors. (Sort of like Love Connection without Chuck Woolery.) For those who fancy a bit of the ultraviolence, Dark Horse offers the second installment of MPD Psycho. And for those facing PSATs this fall, Kaplan introduces an alternative to flash cards and vocabulary lists: test prep manga. Part OEL, part study aid, these enhanced graphic novels feature over three hundred of the most common words from the verbal section of the SAT in context. (Or should that read “in action”?) I’m curious to read the revised scripts for the three Tokyopop titles that got the “score boosting” treatment, as I’m having trouble imagining the Van Von Hunter crew uttering “aesthetic” or “syberite” under any circumstances.
REVIEWED THIS WEEK:
- Walkin’ Butterfly, Vol. 1 (Aurora)
SHIPPING THIS WEEK:
- Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, Vol. 9 (Viz)
- Devil Within, Vol. 1 (Go! Comi)
- Excel Saga, Vol. 16 (Viz)
- FLCL, Vol. 1 (Tokyopop)
- Go Go Heaven, Vol. 3 (CMX)
- Great Adventure of the The Dirty Pair (Dark Horse)
- Gunsmith Cats Revised Edition, Vol. 3 (Dark Horse)
- Hunter X Hunter, Vol. 16 (Viz)
- Kanna, Vol. 1 (Go! Comi)
- Kaplan SAT ACT Psycomm, Vol. 1 (Kaplan/Tokyopop)
- Kaplan SAT ACT Van Von Hunter, Vol. 1 (Kaplan/Tokyopop)
- Kaplan SAT ACT Warcraft: The Sunwell Trology, Vol. 1 (Kaplan/Tokyopop)
- Lovers’ Flat (DMP)
- MAR, Vol. 15 (Viz)
- MPD Psycho, Vol. 2 (Dark Horse)
- Ninja High School Yearbook 2007 (Antarctic Press)
- Oh My Goddess, Vol. 6 (Dark Horse)
- Outcast, Vol. 1 (Seven Seas)
- Phoenix, Vol. 11 (Viz)
- Pieces of a Spiral, Vol. 9 (CMX)
- Project Arms, Vol. 17 (Viz)
- Shonen Jump (October 2007)
- Togari, Vol. 2 (Viz)
- XS Hybrid, Vol. 2 (Dark Horse; click here to read a review of volume one)
- Yakitate!! Japan, Vol. 7 (Viz; click here to read a review of volume four)
Walkin’ Butterfly, Vol. 1
By Chihiro Tamaki
Aurora, 154 pp.
Rating: OT 16+ (Older Teen)
When we first meet Michiko, she’s a foul-mouthed, foul-tempered nineteen-year-old with no career prospects, no friends, no money and, thanks to her reckless driving, no ride. A brief stint at a pizza parlor, however, proves life-changing. While making a delivery, Michiko finds herself backstage at a showing by Mihara, the enfant terrible of Tokyo fashion. Mistaken for one of Mihara’s models, the six-foot-tall Michiko is dolled up, decked out, and sent down the runway in a tight dress and a feather boa. The experience is humiliating, as both Mihara and the audience receive Michiko’s wobbling performance with jeers: can this ungainly creature really be a model? Yet after fleeing the stage in tears (and crashing the pizza parlor’s moped), Michiko finds new resolve: she’ll become a model and demonstrate to Mihara that she possesses the grace, confidence, and self-knowledge to dominate the catwalk. More importantly, she’ll transform herself into the kind of independent yet feminine woman that will wow her long-time crush Nishikino.
I’ll be honest: fashion seems like a disastrous career choice for the vulnerable Michiko, who hopes to redeem her poor self-image by becoming Japan’s Next Top Model. (Perhaps she didn’t get the memo about eating disorders and body dysphoria?) I also found it improbable that she’d never considered modeling before that fateful pepperoni order; in a country where the average woman just clears five feet, surely someone would have suggested to Michiko that she was tall enough to grace the runway. If you’re willing to overlook these minor details, however, Walkin’ Butterfly has much to offer the josei reader: a heroine who’s a believable mixture of public bravado and private anguish, a worthy love interest, a terrific villain, and a memorable cast of supporting players. (My personal favorite is Ryo Tago, the chain-smoking, hard-drinking agent who dispenses wisdom with the same lethal accuracy as some countries deploy missiles.) The artwork is also a big plus. Chihiro Tamaki has an energetic, sketch-like style that reminded me of Yayoi Ogawa’s. Like Ogawa, Tamaki favors characters with huge, expressive eyes and mouths; Michiko might be a distant relation of Sumire Iwaya, the long-suffering salarywoman of Tramps Like Us.
A few folks may grumble about production values—e.g. the unattractive font used for voice-overs and interior monologues—but most readers will be pleased to see the care with which Walkin’ Butterfly was packaged, from the high-quality paper stock to the appealing omake. My only bone to pick with the publisher is the inconsistent approach to pop-culture references; some are preserved from the original, sans explanation, while others are replaced with American equivalents. I would have preferred celebrity names, song lyrics, and movie titles to be left intact with footnotes or a glossary to explain more obscure references. That said, Walkin’ Butterfly has the hallmarks of a great guilty pleasure, provided our uncouth heroine doesn’t lose too many edges in the process.
Volume one of Walkin’ Butterfly is now available.
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