Cipher 3
Posted: March 21, 2010 Filed under: Cipher 6 Comments »Minako Narita – CMX – 2006 – 11 volumes
It’s been a long time since I started reading this series, and there’s no real good reason why. It’s great. It’s got slow, subtle character development, and a cute, understated romance. The characters are clearly in love with each other, but don’t know how to go about expressing it. Actually, the main character, Anise, doesn’t seem to be aware that she’s completely in love with Cipher (and to a lesser extent, Siva), but I liked this volume a lot for the way it’s slowly working her from preteen tomboyishness to a more feminine adolescent state of mind, where she’s suddenly aware of boys and romance and all that.
She’s been paired pretty clearly with Cipher at this point, but the relationship between the twins has taken a turn for the worse in this volume. They’re not on the outs or anything, but they seem to be communicating less than what they’re used to. Cipher makes his feelings for Anise clear, but it’s also obvious that Siva doesn’t want to be out of the picture. He does state this outright once or twice, but he also acts out in strange ways. I wonder if losing his brother might be part of his feelings, too.
The plot takes the twins out to California on a shoot and Anise across the country on a bike trip. She doesn’t realize she wants to go out to California to be with the twins, but instead uses a visit with her grandmother as an excuse for the trip. They reunite at the very end of the volume, so I’m looking forward to where things go from there. Before the trip, there’s also some great awkward moments between Anise and Cipher where Cipher has to deal with her tomboyishness and friendliness around other boys, and also has to imply as strongly as possible that she should wear a bra.
Oh! Also. I usually don’t read the author notes in shoujo manga, because it’s normally just the authors going on and on about unfunny stories involving their assistants. But I’ll make an exception for this series. Here’s part of the best one from this volume: “In other news, WHAM! (my favorite band) broke up, and I’m sad to hear that Joey has left the Thompson Twins. A-Ha is the only band coming to Japan in July.” There is so much magic in those two sentences that I don’t even know where to begin.
I’ve got three more volumes of this series here to read. I’m very interested to see how the slow plot and character development works out.
[...] on vol. 8 of Black Lagoon (Animanga Nation) Andre on vol. 3 of Cat Paradise (Kuriousity) Connie on vol. 3 of Cipher (Slightly Biased Manga) Jaime Samms on Eat or Be Eaten (Kuriousity) Tangognat on vol. 1 of [...]
Haha! I loved her side notes about her favourite 80s bands… I hadn’t heard of most of them before, but I managed to find a couple in my dad’s iTunes library and give them a try. I want to put together a soundtrack to listen to when I get around to rereading and finishing this series (I was missing volume 7 for a while and didn’t want to skip over it, so I put the series on hold until I got it). Besides just being a really interesting series on its own, I’m fascinated by the combination of a Japanese artist’s depiction of an American setting from 20-odd years ago. It’s an awesome mixture of familiar and unfamiliar, all at once.
I hadn’t thought about it as a look at a Japanese idea of America from 20 years ago, that’s a really good point. I’m usually more amused by such things for how wrong they can be (I was just re-reading Banana Fish, which still makes me smile with its New York gangs), but Cipher seems to do a really good job with it, to the point that it’s almost seamless, so to speak.
I think it helps that the music is completely right for the time, too. I’ve never heard the Thompson Twins’ music, but I don’t think I could pick better cheesy 80s bands than Wham and A-Ha. It would have been dated ten years ago, but man, it’s such a great time capsule now, and it really does enhance everything else going on with the characters and romance.
Oh yeah, it definitely seemed like a “real” depiction of US culture, rather than a mass of crazy US stereotypes, amusing as those can sometimes be. I loved reading about Thanksgiving in the story (not sure which volume that’s in); it’s such an American holiday and it was just so neat to see in a comic (and a Japanese one at that) as a natural thing for the characters celebrate.
I’ll definitely seek out more of the music she writes about!! I think Pet Shop Boys was another she mentioned that I managed to find and listen to. I’ll embrace my 80s roots yet…
It’s a great, thoughtful, fun series; I hope you get a chance to read the rest of it, especially since she goes further into her obsession with the Thompson Twins and Terence Trent D’Arby. It’s pretty awesome. :)
lys: Ooh, Thanksgiving, that is unusual. I’m looking forward to that. I’m also kind of interested to see if the characters age and move beyond high school, just to see how the setting holds up. Well, that and I really like stories where the characters age.
Also, I am looking forward to more hardcore 80s music references. I’m breaking out the Falco as we speak and picking up the next volume.