Genkaku Picasso 3
Posted: April 30, 2011 Filed under: Genkaku Picasso Leave a comment »Usamaru Furuya – Viz – 2011 – 3 volumes
Honestly? I wasn’t sure where this was going. The episodic stories can be appreciated for their artwork and surrealism, but the characters that each chapter introduces wind up accumulating without much purpose, and there hasn’t been much in terms of ongoing plot. Hikari just meets new people and solves problems in every chapter. And as amazing as the art and some of the situations were, the stories themselves are a little weak.
Turns out everything was building up to this volume. The conclusion to this series was unexpectedly touching, and unlike the rest of the chapters.
There are three stories in this volume, all multi-part. The first story introduces the last of the incidental characters, a boy named Yuto who has withdrawn from society. He shows up at the school festival escorted by his mom, and the incidental characters go out of their way to make him feel welcome. Hikari winds up solving his problems (Yuto’s “heart image” was a drawing of himself as Ashura, destroying a city), with everyone apologizing for his awkward and erratic behavior. Unfortunately, Yuto’s problems wind up being very simple and easily solved, which is my problem with most of these stories, but some of the issues that the story brings up are still interesting, and it’s always fun to watch Hikari being misanthropic.
Now, the next story acts as a bridge between the episodic stories and the multi-part conclusion. Hikari winds up helping Sugiura again, the first boy he helped and the one that has been the best friend to him throughout the series. Sugiura confesses his feelings to Akane, is dumped, and then tries to rebound with another girl. The problem is a complex one, and not entirely solved by the resolution to the story. But more interesting is the fact that Sugiura recognizes the pencil drawing that Hikari does, and forces Hikari to admit to his strange powers and reluctant quest to make people’s lives better.
The surprisingly dark ending to that story leads into the conclusion, where Hikari winds up drawing and entering his own heart. To give you an idea, this story addresses the helicopter crash that happened in the first chapter of the series, the trauma that was abruptly brushed aside and never really mentioned again. Seeing poor, misanthropic Hikari laid bare is most heartbreaking, and it’s surprising to see just how sensitive the story can be after I spent most of the time oogling the art and glossing over the somewhat shallow characters.
I can’t really give too many details without spoiling the ending, but it’s fair to say that it’s well worth the three-volume trip through the series. And the artwork is still just as unique and amazing as it was in volume one. Granted, the one-shot stories can wear on you a bit, but they do get more interesting as the series progresses, I promise (though the conclusions are never really anything to write home about). And what saves them from being too boring or formulaic are the extended sequences, drawn in pencil, where Hikari and Chiaki navigate the surreal landscapes of people’s hearts. That never really gets old, largely because Furuya is such a wonderful artist.
There’s a bonus essay in the back where Furuya talks about writing the series that is also fairly interesting. He mentions that this was originally supposed to be a 2-volume work, but that he had to extend it to three very thick volumes. In other words, it wasn’t prematurely cancelled or anything, it was just meant to be a short work.
I literally just finished the volume, and promptly wrote this article. Maybe I’m getting a little carried away, but yeah, I really liked this series, and the ending is terriffic. I would dearly love to read more of Usamaru Furuya’s work in English. That is all.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
ES: Eternal Sabbath 2
Posted: April 30, 2011 Filed under: ES: Eternal Sabbath Leave a comment »Fuyumi Soryo – Del Rey – 2006 – 8 volumes
Wow. I was a little worried that all the good feelings I had for volume one of this series were based on the excellent short story introduction. I tend not to like stories about psychic powers and psychics running amok, so I suspected that when the plot got underway, I would be less interested in everybody hunting Isaac down.
I was wrong, and that’s because Fuyumi Soryo is really great at writing interesting characters. Isaac, Shuro, and Mine are all fascinating, and Soryo leaves enough to the reader’s imagination that seeing what makes them tick and how they react to certain situations never gets old. Shuro and Isaac in particular are wild cards, since they don’t share the same moral values as the rest of society. Isaac is “evil,” and a killer, but a little girl helps Mine see what he’s doing in a different light. And Shuro is supposed to be a good guy, but he doesn’t seem fully aware of what “good” and “bad” is, and why he should help Mine.
I also like that there’s a relationship that’s beginning to develop between Shuro and Mine. Between the two, Mine is the more obtuse one, and I’m curious to see how Shuro will handle the delicate situation.
There’s also plenty of action in this book, which is fitting for a story about psychics running amok. We get detailed death accounts for a couple of Isaac’s victims, including an elementary school student and a teacher. After Mine and one of the former researchers that worked with Isaac track him down and corner him, there’s a rather intense shootout where Isaac turns the police on Mine and the researcher, making them think that they are child murderers. Where I would normally coast through action scenes like this, Soryo is, again, quite skilled at pacing it and putting just enough of her characters at stake to make things interesting. Neither of the protagonists can really fight in a situation like that anyway, so it’s all about the reactions and quick escape.
I’m loving ES so far. I’m actually writing this review simply so that I can finally pick up volume 3 and read it. It’s great stuff.
Manga Village Rountable: Tokyopop – A Long Goodbye
Posted: April 30, 2011 Filed under: Articles on Other Sites Leave a comment »It’s been an eventful couple of weeks in the world of manga news, and we take a look at what will likely be one of the biggest stories this year, the shutdown of Tokyopop’s US publishing division, over at Manga Village.
As always, it’s interesting to see personal opinions and views of a company and its titles, and the roundtable is a really good format for this. Check it out over at Manga Village.
Blade of the Immortal 16
Posted: April 30, 2011 Filed under: Blade of the Immortal Leave a comment »Hiroaki Samura – Dark Horse – 2006 – 27+ volumes
Here’s another series I just can’t get enough of. Again, I find myself writing this volume up so that I can finally get on with the next one.
I was hesitant to read about Manji getting tortured in prison. Some of that happens here. But there is at least some purpose to it. Rather than just killing him over and over to get him to agree to something, he’s being experimented on to find a method to transfer his immortality to another. The things they do are excruciating, sure, but nothing like what Manji has to put up with in battle. Of course, Manji’s not helpless, either. He comes up with a rather devious escape plan with the help of the man that’s being used as his immortal guinea pig. It’s great stuff, and not quite as brutal as I thought it would be. At least, not yet.
Interestingly, Manji isn’t the one that cracks under pressure. The task of turning a man immortal drives one of the doctors insane first.
Elsewhere, Rin is frustrated with not being able to find Manji, and returns to her family home. But she is soon… ambushed by travelers, a quiet man and a vicious and very selfish little girl. Rin tries to rationalize the guests and get along with them. This is… very strange so far.
I don’t have that much to say, but I tore through this volume pretty fast. I have a feeling that will happen for a lot of these volumes to come. I’ve become pretty fanatical about this series.
MMF: Rumiko Takahashi Roundtable at Manga Village
Posted: April 30, 2011 Filed under: Articles on Other Sites, Manga Moveable Feast Leave a comment »To celebrate the Rumiko Takahashi-centric Manga Moveable Feast this month, hosted by Rob over at Panel Patter, we took the opportunity to do a roundtable over at Manga Village that looks at Takahashi as a gateway into manga fandom for us. Check it out over at Manga Village.
I talked about it a little bit here already, but I go into more detail during the roundtable, plus I get to talk about Mermaid Saga some more, which is never a bad thing. Also, Rin-ne makes for a good point of contention.
Rumic World Trilogy 2
Posted: April 30, 2011 Filed under: Rumic World Trilogy Leave a comment »Rumiko Takahashi – Viz – 1996 – 3 volumes
When we got in volumes of the Rumic World short stories at work a couple weeks ago, I held onto them, thinking they’d be perfect for the upcoming Manga Moveable Feast focusing on Takahashi, hosted by Rob over at Panel Patter. Turns out a lot of other people had the same idea, and there are many other takes floating around this week that are better than mine (that last one is very old, but I like David Welsh, and it came up this week, so go read it). Still though, I read it, so I’ll write it up here like the OCD blogger that I am.
The short stories are divided up into two sets of collections in English. There’s the Rumic World Trilogy, which is numbered 1-3, and then two “Rumic Theater” volumes, called Rumic Theater and One or Double. I believe the difference between Rumic Theater and Rumic World is the “genre” of the stories, or the place they originally appeared. Rumic World stories seem to have run in Shounen Sunday (and are thus shounen stories), whereas Rumic Theater stories are from Big Comic Spirits, Big Comic Original, Petit Comic, and maybe one or two others, making them seinen (and occasionally josei) stories. Then again, the title story in One or Double ran in Shounen Sunday, so that’s more of a guideline.
Now that I’ve bored the pants off of most people, on to the actual book! There’s really only three stories in this volume. “The Golden Gods of Poverty” and “The Entrepreneurial Spirit” are at the beginning and end of the book. Both are mostly silly stories. The first is about a boy who thinks his parents only value him as a science experiment. Their latest scientific efforts somehow generate a ship with the seven lucky gods from his blood, and the boy robs a bank with them. The last story is about an attractive girl who can summon ghosts for a price. Both stories are decent, and both contain a few laughs, but I’ve read better material from Takahashi, and neither impressed me.
But the bulk of the book is a multi-part story called “Wasted Minds.” It’s the story of two psychics named Yura and Tamuro who work for the Japan CIA and are actively trying to stop an organization called “The Giant Brotherhood of the Supersonic Pig.” This organization is the main focus of the first story, but it’s more of a device in the rest of the stories, simply a desired outcome that usually isn’t reached, but is somehow marginally involved with the plot. The organization is bumbling and cheap, to be sure, and there’s a lot of slapstick in their actions.
Yura and Tamura more than steal the show, though. They aren’t so much psychics as they are… gifted. Yura is super-strong, and Tamura can teleport. Except he can only use his power if he’s in a pile of garbage, and can only teleport to another pile of garbage anywhere he wants. He can also use a whip for some reason, and is often seen carrying around a bulldog.
The two of them are the usual high-spirited Takahashi main characters: They argue a lot, and are pretty good at what they do, but they always seem to fail at their tasks because of incompetence or outlandish situations. The first story is about the Pig organization causing destruction by making a toy pig whose oink is calibrated at an exact destructive frequency. The second one finds Yura and Tamura at a disturbing school where delinquency is encouraged. Another is about the two of them getting lost in a Bermuda Triangle-like forest adjacent to Mt. Fuji. another is about a King Kong monster rising up from the sea and vomiting garbage into boats.
The Wasted Minds stories are extremely funny and entertaining. They were written very early in Takahashi’s career (1979, just a year after Urusei Yatsura began its run), and some of the plots are a little slow-moving, but it’s amazing how her comic timing is still perfect, and she still has a knack for coming up with quirky and interesting story ideas. I loved the running trash teleportation gag, and Yura and Tamura’s reactions to their bizarre and unsatisfying missions was always priceless. Unfortunately, Takahashi loaded up a lot of her early work with puns, and those jokes fall very flat in the translations. But hey, maybe they were lousy jokes in the original, too, but they don’t work as puns in English. The double meaning of Wasted Minds is much appreciated, though (in that Yura and Tamura’s talents are wasted on their idiotic foes, and also that Yura and Tamura also do a fair amount of wasting their talents themselves).
It’s a shame it took me so long to check out these collections. I did like Wasted Minds, but it’s obvious that the stories in this book are not as polished as Takahashi’s wonderful later work, so I’m not as eager to see volumes 1 and 3. I am, however, very curious to read the stories aimed at more mature audiences in the Rumic Theater volumes.
Maoh: Juvenile Remix 3
Posted: April 25, 2011 Filed under: Maoh: Juvenile Remix Leave a comment »Kotaro Isaka / Megumi Osuga – Viz – 2010 – 10 volumes
On one hand, this series is pretty fatalistic. We’ve got the characters talking about how they are destined to save the world, and pondering how they could possibly make a difference, and one of the themes is that Inukai is either a kind of god or devil, and Ando isn’t sure why he has a special power and why he should or shoudn’t use it to stop Inukai’s goals of… bettering the run-down suburb they live in.
Of course, Inukai is going about it in a nefarious way… but still. This seems like the outcome at the moment, to drive crime out of the neighborhood and stop it from becoming the commercial center the city leaders are planning.
On the other hand, it’s pretty flashy about what it does, and watching Inukai and Ando butt heads is fascinating so far. Inukai has some cheesy lines, but he delivers them so forcefully it’s hard not to be impressed. Their relationship isn’t exactly that of predator/prey, or hero/enemy, either. Inukai sees Ando as an obstacle sent by fate, and takes an almost… carefree attitude on his abilities. I’m very curious as to how far Inukai is willing to back off Ando.
There’s also clearly more to the story than meets the eye… and yet, we aren’t offered a whole lot of insight into what that could be. Is Inukai really going through all this trouble to save his neighborhood? Is that just the first step? Is he the devil that Ando thinks he is? And why is everybody agreeing to help Inukai? Is he really that charismatic? And why do these “special powers” play so small a role in what’s going on? I’m glad they’re downplayed, and at this point, it’s mostly just a device used so that Ando can meddle, and yet it doesn’t give him enough power to really make a difference in things. No, Ando has to draw that strength from MacGuyver.
Later in the book, a bee-girl assassin is introduced, making her the second psycho assassin we’ve seen. It makes me think that will be an ongoing… thing, too, and I wonder how that will tie into whatever is going on here.
This is definitely not a series for everyone, and it hasn’t knocked my socks off yet, but at the same time… it’s pretty engrossing. It’s also interesting that I have literally no idea where the plot is going next, but I’m curious all the same. I’m hooked.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Rose of the Rhine
Posted: April 25, 2011 Filed under: Rose of the Rhine | Tags: BL Leave a comment »Megumu Minami – Kitty Media – 2007 – 1 volume
As I’ve said before, my luck with Kitty Media has been fairly hit-and-miss over the years, and I decided some time ago that they just didn’t publish my flavor of BL. But I picked up Sense and Sexuality recently, which is good enough to forgive them almost anything, and I went back through their catalog to see if I’d missed other great books.
This jumped out at me. It’s set in Europe, and is based on the legends in the Niebelungenlied. Fantasy-themed middle-age Europe is not a setting you see often in manga, unfortunately, and to have the Germanic legends as a theme is very intriguing. So how do you turn the legends of Lord Dietrich (separate from the Niebelungenlied, but with some of the same characters) into a BL plot? Well, how about you make Dietrich and Hildebrand, his adviser, lovers?
As awesome as that sounds, and as well-researched as this mangaka obviously is on the subject (she has lengthy summaries in the back about the plots of the legends and how she used the characters), it’s unfortunately a dull book. Mostly because it’s clear that these characters have pre-established personalities that aren’t well-explained in the stories themselves, plus they are being forced to do things that don’t really seem to come naturally to them… namely, the relationship between Dietrich and Hildebrand. The love between them is a little forced, and Hildebrand makes for an awful, awful submissive character. It’s clearly a BL book, with an emphasis on romance, but the romance isn’t very good, and the best thing about it is all the neat fights and situations that Dietrich finds himself in (particularly the second story, which has a really fun fight scene and shows off just how powerful he is). And we just don’t really get to see enough of those fights. But then I find myself in the position of wishing a more complex plot on a BL book, and that’s not really the point of these, is it?
There’s an unrelated story in the back which has a better plot and characters. It’s not nearly as flashy and unique as the Germanic legend stories that dominate the book, and its not an outstanding story in itself (it’s about a master/servant relationship where the two fall in love, but it’s revealed that the servant carries a grudge against the master’s family), but it’s a really solid story with a well-developed relationship.
While I didn’t enjoy it that much, taking in the book as a whole make me realize that Megumu Minami is probably a really good mangaka, but her ideas just aren’t gelling here. She’s also a decent artist, with a lot more detail than what you usually see in a BL book. She’s got one other book available in English, Pleasure Dome, also published by Kitty Media. I think most people will want to give this book a pass, but I’m willing to bet her later work is pretty fantastic.
Manga Moveable Feast: Rumiko Takahashi Ramblings
Posted: April 25, 2011 Filed under: Manga Moveable Feast 1 Comment »This month’s focus for the Manga Moveable Feast, hosted by Rob over at Panel Patter, is Rumiko Takahashi and all the wonderful things she’s written. I linked Rob’s front page because he’s got a lot of interesting Takahashi-centric content going on right now, but you should also check out his archives for his year-long focus on Takahashi.
Anyway, Takahashi. I think she’s one of those “fans of a certain age” authors, where in addition to having her entire body of work available in English (with the exception of, like, 2/3rds of Urusei Yatsura), she generates a lot of interesting conversation as a “first time” author for a lot of older fans. I’m guilty of that. Ranma 1/2 was the first graphic novel I ever picked up, and I’ve been a fan ever since. I even recall cracking open the cover when I was 14, getting a few pages in, then slamming the book shut, scandalized, when Ranma and Akane’s bare breasts appeared. Back then, I had to mail order my manga (and walk barefoot to school through five feet of snow), so I didn’t know what was in the book before I bought it. I hid it under my bed and wasn’t brave enough to look at it again for the week. But my love for the bizarre gender-swap comedy overrode my fear of nudity, and I wound up buying a lot of her other work while I was in high school. Granted, there wasn’t much available at the time for girls (and we also amused ourselves by going out and dancing the lindy hop on Fridays in the town square), but Takahashi’s quirky ideas and unique sense of humor still stand out to this day, even with thousands of volumes of alternatives.
Anyway, I’ve had this site for seven years or so, and in that time, I’ve talked about Rumiko Takahashi A LOT. I’ve got some more stuff to look at this week, but in the meantime, here’s a little list of everything I’ve taken a look at through the years.
There’s Ranma 1/2, of course. The last volume came out in 2006, and I don’t have a whole lot of Ranma content since I read most of it before I started the site. I’ve probably read the early volumes of Ranma 1/2 more than any other series, because with no alternatives as a teen, I would read them over and over again. They’re funny, and stay that way through multiple readings. This series has a couple different editions, including old large-format $14.98-or-so volumes that go through volume 21. At that point, the series switched to the smaller $9.98 format, and all the early volumes were reprinted to match. I could’ve sworn there was an unflipped VizBig edition, but alas, it does not exist. Ranma 1/2 is the perfect series for that format, though.
Similarly, my favorite of Takahashi’s series is not covered on this site because I read it before I started here. It’s the superb Mermaid Saga, where Takahashi makes the horrifying legend of immortal mermaid flesh her own and does a straight-up horror manga, with plenty of violence and none of her typical humor. It was reprinted not that long ago, but I’m fond of my older editions.
Conversely, I’m not fond of her newest series, the supernaturally-themed Rin-ne. It’s kind of like Inu-Yasha, but Rin-Ne and Sakura bust ghosts for classmates, whereas Inu-Yasha and Kagome kill demons as a survival strategy. Rin-Ne and Sakura have yet to grab my interest at all, and the goofier supernatural threats in Rin-Ne still aren’t quite up to either the gags in Ranma 1/2 or the supernatural coolness on display in Inu-Yasha. But I read it, and love it, because Rumiko Takahashi writes it.
I’m least familiar with Maison Ikkoku, her straight-up romance series. I promise I’ll read it when a customer sells them at the used bookstore I work at. I have read the beginning and the end, though. I have to say the first volume put me off with its somewhat tired jokes and tropes, but I know Takahashi has it in her to make all these characters likable. Also of note is the Hiroshi Aro series that… uh, parallels this one, called You and Me. I like Hiroshi Aro a lot, and You & Me is bizarre if nothing else. Only seven issues came out in English, and they’re uncollected.
I’ve also only read a little bit of Urusei Yatsura, her first series. I keep waiting for Viz to come back to it, and I’m hoping VizBig is the way to go for this. But the one-volume Perfect Edition is such a wonderful collection of madcap and utterly insane nonsequitors that it’s an absolute joy to read. The dated translation only adds to it, I feel. And I love that everything and anything can be explained away with aliens. Also, that Ataru is still one of the perviest manga characters of all time. I also have a soft spot for the movie adaptations of this series.
And that brings us to Inu-Yasha, her magnum opus. I’m late to the party on this one, I think the last volume just came out in English. 56 volumes is quite a formidable length, but I jumped on board with the VizBig editions, which are a great deal money-wise and make collecting less daunting (though 19 huge volumes is… still a lot). I can’t get over the fact that Takahashi has made an honest-to-goodness couple of Inu-Yasha and Kagome almost immediately, since one of her favorite devices is keeping the main couple “separate” through the end of the series. Also awesome are the constant monster fights, which would be boring in any other series (and almost are here, as well) except for the fact that Takahashi’s monster designs and knack with mythology are first rate. I also love the struggles of Inu-Yasha while he discovers new powers and tries to figure out if he likes being human or demon best, and whether he likes Kagome or Kikyo, his love of the past. It’s great stuff, and the three-volume omnibus is a necessary length when I blow through the volumes so fast.
Last, but not least, is One Pound Gospel, an easy-to-miss but still worthy gem. It was written over the span of 20 years, only finished recently. It follows the simple heart of Kosaku, an amateur boxer who falls in love with Sister Angela. She cheers for him as he struggles with weight limits for his fights and making friends and enemies of his opponents. A little bit funny and a little bit sweet, four volumes was just the right length. This also has two different English editions, but the newer 4-volume edition has the ending that the old 3-volume edition doesn’t… and I want to say the 3-volume edition is also missing some other stories.
And that’s a quick look at all of her major series, sans summaries since you can read the reviews for that. Be sure to check out more Takahashi-themed commentary at Panel Patter this week (there are literally volumes of interesting topics about Rumiko Takahashi), and I’m hoping to have some more content myself in a day or so.
Bakuman 4
Posted: April 18, 2011 Filed under: Bakuman Leave a comment »Tsugumi Ohba / Takeshi Obata – Viz – 2011 – 12+ volumes
So, I love watching the characters in this series make manga. This volume goes over the Jump editorial process with a fine-toothed comb, and looks at everything from new talent contests to reader surveys, competition among artists, talent from other magazines, the editor hierarchy, and the process the editors actually use to start a new series. Mashiro and Takagi get their chops busted by their editor as if they really did have a series running, and it was a whole lot of fun to see them doing the pseudo-drafts as they were preparing for their first serious contest for Weekly Shounen Jump.
Again, its incredibly fascinating, and this volume has been the most process-oriented part of the story yet. After seeing what all these people go through, and seeing it from the perspective of several different types of editors and artists… it made me want to be an editor really bad, despite my absolute lack of any knowledge not gleaned from a comic book.
And that is why I like that series. I couldn’t put this volume down precisely because I was learning so much, and tie that together with the anticipation of the contest and what appears to be an impending series for Mashiro and Takagi, and you have a really winning volume.
But it’s a shame that Mashiro and Takagi are both still terrible characters. Both are now motivated entirely by “achieving their dreams,” which means being together with their girlfriends (Takagi has linked his success with manga to his escalating relationship with Kaya). Mashiro can barely have a conversation with the girl he wants to date, even still, and Kaya can only cook and act goofy for Mashiro and Takagi. Bah. Also, Mashiro’s girlfriend Miho finishes the volume in some potentially skeevy territory, and I hope the series doesn’t go down that road. The relationships aren’t a huge part of what’s going on, but they’re so badly done that all the momentum crashes and burns every time it comes up, and I hate that this element is so out-of-synch in what is otherwise a pretty great series.
One of the more interesting parts was a page we saw of each of the contestants in the contest that Mashiro and Takagi compete in. The strengths and weaknesses of all four series are discussed at length, and as condensed as the story is on the one page we do see, it’s enough to give the reader an idea of exactly what each of them is like. And Obata really, REALLY nails the individual art styles for each. It’s pretty fun to see him mimicking various “shounen-looking” styles throughout, but these four series in particular are like a labor of love.
At this point, as long as I can keep reading about making manga, I’m in the Bakuman bus for the long haul. It is exceptionally interesting. The characters are… not so much, but as long as their relationships and insane goals don’t get too much page time, I can deal with that. I’m still hoping that they’ll somehow turn into likable people, but that seems unlikely at this point. Surprise me, Bakuman.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
