Peepo Choo 3
Posted: July 9, 2011 Filed under: Peepo Choo Leave a comment »Felipe Smith – Vertical – 2011 – 3 volumes
I knew that we would get to see Morimoto Rockstar act out his ultimate gangster fantasies before the end of the series. He meets up with Jody and takes him along for the ride, using his looks to decide that he is a “real American gangster.” Jody is both amused and confused by Morimoto Rockstar, and there are some truly choice scenes in their brief, but beautiful, friendship.
The youtube dance videos.
The gang signs that Jody is slightly horrified by.
The tattoos. Jody’s tattoo, sure, but Morimoto Rockstar’s tattoos are a thing of beauty. Seriously. There will never be better yakuza tattoos.
Morimoto Rockstar is a terrible person, but I love his character.
That was really the highlight of this volume for me. The plot of the series… felt slightly wrong, given that all the best parts were based on cultural misconceptions. Gill is still on the killing spree, and we find out what his eventual target is, which is a little expected, and a bit of a surprise given his… roundabout way of getting there. As much as I liked Morimoto Rockstar, this part of the plot, the reason for everyone being in Japan, just felt wrong to me. Though it does fit in with the extreme nature of the rest of the series.
The bigger theme in this book is finding out who you are and being yourself, I suppose. I loved that it got this theme across without being too cheesy about it, and as much fun was made of geek tendencies, even in a yakuza kingpin… well, Morimoto Rockstar has no problem being himself. And Reiko’s transformation from being unhappy with life to finding her niche was a really nice story, as was the way she ultimately got along with Milton. Even Gill got to be himself, in the end, and that was unexpected and awesome, even with a scary guy like Gill.
The series does have its downsides… it’s a little loud and obnoxious, especially through the Peepo Choo cartoon parts. That is the point, but all the same, sometimes it can be hard to read. As I said earlier, the yakuza killings are a strange thing to have mixed into the plot. That never quite washed the way the rest of the random connections did.
But still. It’s social commentary is very funny and probably spot on (though I have to take it with a grain of salt since one of the messages here is don’t get your cultural literacy from comic books). The sense of humor was perfectly suited to the characters and everything else that was going on, and in the end, I liked a lot more of the loud, obnoxious characters than I thought I would. Even Reiko, who I was very much against when I first laid eyes on her, wound up being one of my favorites.
I think there are quite a few people who could read the first volume and miss the point a little, and I think there are a lot of people that would be put off by the “loudness” and the way the characters and plot are rather disconnected at first. And that’s a shame, because this is a nice little series, and I think it might have some trouble finding its way into the right hands. I loved it though, and Morimoto Rockstar will probably always be one of my favorites.
Deeply Loving a Maniac
Posted: July 9, 2011 Filed under: Deeply Loving a Maniac | Tags: BL Leave a comment »You Higashino – 801 Media – 2010 – 1 volume
So… this was the filthest book I’ve read in a long time. It takes a lot to shock me, and this juuuust about did it.
I picked this up because I had read a couple other BL volumes by You Higashino (Gay’s Anatomy, Sense and Sexuality), and wound up really liking her. Normally I don’t go for “geeky boyfriend”-type stories like this, but Higashino’s Sense and Sexuality was good enough that I’ll pretty much try anything from her from now on.
I normally do make an attempt to discuss the plot of these books, but this time… hm. Well, Morita is an otaku, who (apparently in an earlier installment of the series) reformed himself, and is now smoking hot with his otaku nature banished only to his imagination and his apartment. He’s dating Sakura, who seems somewhat insecure. Both are completely devoted to one another, but there’s usually wiggle room in relationships like that when it comes to BL one-shots like this. The first story is about how Morita gets so carried away with sexual fantasies whenever he sees Sakura that Sakura thinks his quiet and standoffish nature is because he isn’t interested anymore. This story is actually pretty good, and I loved that one of the points of contention is that Sakura took an unfortunate silence from Morita as a sign that he had no interest in Sakura’s personality, when in actuality Morita paused to debate how much to tell Sakura, as his knowledge extended well into creepy stalker territory.
This is, of course, resolved with lots and lots of sex.
Next, there’s another short story where Sakura mistakes Morita’s wandering attention for lack of interest, when in fact Morita is again getting carried away with dirty fantasies about Sakura. Sakura tries to capture Morita’s interest by inviting him over and playing out just about every naughty anime cliche there is (clumsy cooking, wardrobe malfunctions, glasses, shyness, et cetera).
This conflict is also resolved in sex. Also, stolen underwear.
The final story is about an anime character that really, really resembles Sakura. Morita lets his otaku nature get carried away about Rushu collectibles, and it drives Sakura away once again. This time, Rushu’s creator intervenes, and fixates on Sakura. Sakura is kidnapped and dressed as Rushu, which sets the stage for both a heroic rescue by Morita and a lengthy sex scene with Sakura tied up in a devil costume.
And yeah, there was a lot of sex.
The final story is very short, and is merely a lengthy fantasy that Morita has about having sex with Sakura under a kotatsu.
One of the things that makes the sex so much more shocking in this volume is that Morita and Sakura really do make a good couple (there’s no shy teasing, no testing the waters, and most importantly, no non-con). When a BL book can pull off a good couple, it makes the intimacy that much more… well, intimate, even if it is just sex without a whole lot of romance. And there is a LOT of sex in this book, most of it is quite… exotic, due to Morita’s otaku interests. There’s also Morita’s frequent fantasies, that engage in a lot of things that would otherwise be impossible. That he really does love Sakura THAT much makes these horrible fantasies, again, less terrible and more shocking in a horribly dirty sex way. That it’s also slightly tongue-in-cheek much of the time, and mixes is a little humor in, also makes it a lot more fun and way more readable than page after page of sex might be otherwise.
And… wow. Flipping through this book to write the review, I’m still a little shocked by how much sex is in here. It’s been an awful long time since I’ve read one of these that actually has page after page of sex. It’s usually not my thing, but again, I’m a sucker for good couples, and it’s great in this book. Also, no non-con at all! Not even the last story, kidnapping and all, crosses the non-con line.
About the only complaint I have is that Higashino’s character designs… they have really long faces, with eyes close to the top of their heads. It’s slightly off-putting.
I still think I prefer Sense and Sexuality to this book, but this just made me an even bigger Higashino fan. I’m really, really on the fence about an upcoming book in English, A Fallen Saint’s Kiss (it sounds like it goes into uncomfortable territory), but I’m more than willing to give it a try after this one.
There’s more Sakura/Morita stories out there if you have an iPad or eReader, a followup volume called Hyper Loving a Maniac available on Amazon. I’m dying to read a print edition.
Case Closed 35
Posted: July 6, 2011 Filed under: Case Closed Leave a comment »Gosho Aoyama – Viz – 2010 – 72+ volumes
It’s been so long since I read a volume of this series! This was a bad place to step back in. It’s good, but a little ridiculous. It’s a flashback to a trip that Jimmy and Rachael take to New York with Jimmy’s mom, and the mysteries just keep piling up one right after the other. After dealing with the plane ride stuff last volume, Jimmy meets with his mom and rides with her to a theater, where he gets to solve a murder. While taking a taxi to the hotel after that, he and Rachael run into an escaped serial killer. It’s easy to take these coincidences when there’s a break in the timeline, I suppose, but one right after the other? I’m not sure why that was triggering my “unlikely” meter so badly here. I suspend my disbelief about a lot of other things.
Anyway, the theater mystery was quite good. A handsome lead actor with at least four lovers is murdered as he is performing on-stage with all four women. Is it a sniper, or one of the women? The sniper seems like a red herring, but then again, it’s impossible for the women to have shot him, since the bullet trajectory was pointing down, and he’s such a tall man. The solution is a clever one, as always, and I liked the attention to the details of the stage and the work that went into describing the plot of the play they were performing, as well as the myth behind it.
The serial murder thing… the less said, the better.
The flashback was pretty great, too, since we got to see Jimmy as himself rather than the diminutive Conan. I took it for granted at the beginning of the volume, but stories like that only make the humiliation of Jimmy having to act Conan all the sweeter.
The next mystery was a good one too, where Conan, Rachael, and Detective Moore travel to a haunted house for no adequately explained reason, then listen to the ghost story from the point of view of the four residents of the building. There are symptoms of a haunting, all right. Surprisingly, the story wasn’t about Conan tackling the haunting events logically, but more about the different points of view from the people in the building. It was a pretty interesting take on this type of story. And the haunting symptoms were great, too. Especially the blood in the filthy toilet.
Next was a story about Conan’s elementary school classmates and Anita. I tend not to like these types of stories, but this one was about Mitch wandering off by himself and going to great lengths to get lost in the woods with a murderer on the loose. The murderer’s story, his reaction to Mitch, and Mitch’s reason for being there, were all fairly interesting.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t too much character-driven story in this volume. Case Closed is definitely not a series that exercises those muscles very often, but I enjoy it when it does. There’s a hint of it at the end of the New York flashback, but it doesn’t last for more than a few panels. I really like the characters though, especially the hilariously surly and apathetic Detective Moore. Any story where he’s left to his own devices, like the ghost story here, is bound to be entertaining.
Next volume starts with a language riddle. These always fall a little flat in translation, unfortunately, but I doubt it will keep me away for very long.
Also, the detective profile in the back of the volume was on Ellery Queen’s Drury Lane. I need to find a collection of those stories immediately.
Black Butler 5
Posted: July 6, 2011 Filed under: Black Butler Leave a comment »Yana Toboso – Yen Press – 2011 – 10+ volumes
I have grown slowly addicted to this series since the rough start in volume one, but I wasn’t a big fan of the “curry battle” story that started last volume. The characters were a little too silly, and the comedy elements of this series are definitely not my favorite thing. Plus, the premise, how Sebastian desperately needs to make good curry, was also too light for my taste, where Sebastian’s skills are traditionally used to solve murders, rather than find missing persons indirectly by shaming them in a cooking battle.
On the other hand, seeing Sebastian work so hard at something he knows nothing about is wonderful. Soma’s zaniness is dialed down quite a bit in this volume, and Soma helps Sebastian on the hopeless task of beating Agni in a straight-up battle of curry mastery to gain a royal warrant. Sebastian knows nothing about curry, but of course he needs to come up with a way to beat someone with the “hands of God,” a master at the task.
You know, maybe what bothers me is that this is straying into Yakitate Japan territory, but is doing so with a sinister demon instead of a cheerful kid, and isn’t as funny.
Anyway. It’s still pretty great. Sebastian is obviously not used to failure, so he uses his special speed and knowledge-gathering capabilities to make Soma eat bowl after bowl of curry to perfect his seasonings, the body, et cetera. Seeing him pretend to be humble as he dishes up serving after serving of curry, mastering one thing right after the other without really getting the hang of what makes it good, was fantastic. As was Ciel’s smug comments on the sidelines, hoping to see Sebastian fail at something.
While most of the humor falls flat, everything about Sebastian is executed perfectly. I’m not quite sure how to describe it, but he’s just a little too perfect without being smug, completely humble while doing extraordinary things, and really knows how to quell disaster handily. I’m not sure how he does it. It is funny, but it’s also more than a little unsettling, and I think that’s what pushes it over the edge for me.
Sadly, there really isn’t a whole lot of Ciel in this volume, and it’s the Sebastian/Ciel interactions, Ciel’s bitterness paired with Sebastian’s bizarrely evil caregiving, that really make this series enjoyable for me. This volume was pretty good, but not quite as good as the stories before it.
Thankfully, I read volume six before this one (I lost my copy of this one and didn’t realize it until I had read six), so I know that Ciel and Sebastian both come back with a vengeance in the guise of circus performers next volume. Maybe that was part of why I didn’t enjoy this one as much, too. The circus story is really fantastic, much better than the curry story.
Sensual Phrase 16
Posted: July 6, 2011 Filed under: Sensual Phrase Leave a comment »Mayu Shinjo – Viz – 2006 – 18 volumes
Santa’s got a pretty boss tattoo on the cover of this book. Just sayin’.
So a lot of the damage from last volume was mitigated. One of the issues was completely ignored (much to my disappointment), but the most important one was dealt with. Slowly. I did appreciate the way things were handled here. Again, I don’t want to spoil what happens, so I can’t go into too much detail. But the focus of this book was mostly Sakuya and Aine having a good time and living like any regular couple would. There’s also an issue with Sakuya and Lucifer. That’s dealt with by the end of the book, too.
The way it’s dealt with… is pretty serious. But I couldn’t stop laughing. Why, you may ask? Well, a car accident is involved. A car accident as the high point in melodrama has made me laugh ever since I read Zetsuai/Bronze. That series is the most melodramatic manga ever written, and there are no less than three devastating car accidents, if I remember correctly. I just… can’t take it seriously ever again after that.
Also, my question about what was up between Lucifer’s manager and Aine was answered. I thought it was pretty classy, actually, and Sensual Phrase isn’t really known for its class.
But the car accident? Mayu Shinjo was a true artist with that. The way it was laid out on the page made it look much, much different than what actually happened. That made me laugh a little bit too, honestly, though the action itself was no laughing matter.
There’s a very short story in the back about Towa, one of the only members of Lucifer that hasn’t been spotlighted yet. Honestly, I think most of us forgot that Santa and Towa existed, but his story is still pretty cute.
The essay in the back from Kelly Sue DeConnick is about how the end is nigh. Luckily, I didn’t have to wait this one out. Honestly, I read about 11 volumes of this series in one sitting. Had I read it as it was released? I’d have desperately wanted to talk it up with just about everybody. I still do, as you might be able to tell by the fact I’ve written all 11 volumes up as I write them. The internet is indeed a beautiful thing.
Gen 1
Posted: July 5, 2011 Filed under: Gen Leave a comment »Shige Nakamura / Yu Suzuki / Gunya Mihara / Arisa Karino – Gen Manga Entertainment – 2011 – 1+ volumes
Okay guys, I’m pretty excited about this. Gen is a new digital anthology that publishes underground-type manga short stories from Japan. All of them are previously unpublished, I believe, so in a sense, it’s something like a doujinshi magazine in English. Check it out at genmanga.com. There’s a generous sample available right now, the entire first issue, and you can subscribe and receive the monthly updates for issues 2 and further. The usual subscription price is $3 per issue, but you can get a discounted subscription by following this link, and get the second issue for only $2. That is a pretty sweet deal.
The issue I’m reviewing here is the one that’s available for free on their front page, so feel free to check it out if you’re at all interested. I’m going to do a follow-up next week with issue two, where all four of the stories are continued.
I think this is quite interesting, since this isn’t a format we often see in English. The underground manga that we normally see is usually from tried-and-true artists and their best stories. That’s fair, considering that printing is an investment and going off the beaten path is very risky. I’m glad that digital publication opens the way for more unusual, less proven work however, and I’m very thrilled that this collection exists.
This first issue has about 80 pages of content, and I’ll just go ahead and start with the first story, Wolf by Nakamura Shige. The art is very, very reminiscent of Yoshihiro Tatsumi and what I’ve seen of the late 60s gekiga/underground scene, too. The content isn’t that far off, either. The story starts with a young man boarding a train to the city. We find out that he’s traveling to become a professional sumo wrestler, and he meets another, very aggressive boy on the train. Naoto, the aggressive boy, picks some fights on the train, and later goes to a boxing dojo to engage more people in fights.
The storytelling technique is a little rough around the edges (some of the transitions are abrupt, and the flow of time is a little strange), but the narrative is sophisticated in the way that some of the best gekiga stories are. We aren’t shown the thoughts of the characters, and only know as much about them as they decide to tell others. It’s a technique I’m quite fond of, and it’s not often you get to see “show, don’t tell” in a manga. I also like that one of the boys was studying to become a sumo wrestler (though Naoto seems to be the focus of the story), and that the story seems to be moving in the direction of being about actual, professional training for sports.
The second story is VS Aliens, by Suzuki Yu. This is a bizarre story told in three chapters, about a group of three high school students. Aya approaches Kitaro out of the blue to help her with a problem: one of the students in their school is an alien. Of course, only Aya sees her that way. Kitaro approaches this student, Sana, and asks her point blank about it. Sana is confused, but approaches Kitaro the next day worried that she might really be an alien.
It’s less comedic than it sounds. As bizarre as the premise is, the focus of the story is on the character dynamics. Kitaro is a nice guy, and genuinely wants to help Aya out. Aya really, truly does think that Sana is an alien. Sana has a normal reaction to being asked if she is an alien, rather than over-the-top comedic. And, bizarrely, she takes it under advisement. These are all normal people being run through a weird situation. I’m not quite sure where it’s going, but it was my favorite in the magazine, and after the bizarre cliffhanger, I’m curious to see where it’s going.
Mask, by Mihara Gunya, is third in line. It’s set in pseudo-feudal Japan, and the chapter offers a very brief setup. A man wakes up with a talking mask on his face. An army that’s taking prisoners is on the march. Said army finds the man, and engage him in battle. The mask may… offer some sort of power, but it’s unclear whether the man will decide to take advantage of it. It’s interesting so far, but I need to read more to decide whether I like it or not. That it’s taking its time to set things up is promising.
The fourth and final story is Souls, by Karino Arisa. Of the four, this one was the most confusing. A woman invites a traveler out of the rain, only to be verbally abused by her mother. We then find out that the woman… may be dead, and that the traveler might have come to help the mother grieve, or to help the soul pass on? I was having a hard time understanding this one, but again, I’d like to read more before I pass judgment. The storytelling is a little rough around the edges (I had a hard time figuring out if the woman was dead or not, or whether we were seeing flashbacks, or whether there was some second sight involved, et cetera), but some of the confusion might be intentional, a mystery to be solved in a later installment.
Overall, I was very pleased with the content offered in the first issue. The stories were actually more polished than I thought they would be going into the collection, and all the art is very professional-looking. I was also very surprised by how much I liked VS Aliens, and I’m curious about the continuations of Wolf and Mask. I’m a big manga fan, obviously, and am probably more than a little biased, but I think there are plenty of people who would be interested in stories like these, stuff than comes from a non-commercial outlet. Again, you can check out the first issue for free, and if you like what you see, follow this link to get the next issue for $2.
This was a review copy provided by the publisher.
La Quinta Camera
Posted: July 5, 2011 Filed under: La Quinta Camera 2 Comments »Natsume Ono – Viz – 2011 – 1 volume
This is more like what I wanted from Natsume Ono! I really like the type of series she writes, but Ristorante Paradiso rubbed me the wrong way for some reason. I thought it was a little too mundane, the lives of the characters just a little too average to support a book that contained nothing but conversation about their lives. La Quinta Camera is an earlier work, but it still appealed to me more than the later book.
The plot… well, it’s all about the lives of the people in a single apartment in Italy. It’s a five-room apartment, and four men live there on a permanent basis, while the fifth room (the title of the series, in Italian) is rented to a student that has come to Italy to learn Italian. We are introduced to the men in the first story through the eyes of one of the Italian students. We learn that one runs a cafe, one is an artist, one… sleeps, and one is a street musician. After the first story, the student becomes less a part of the story (though a different one is always a member of the apartment, of course), but each short story focuses on the lives of one of the men in the apartment. For instance, one is about the musician falling in love, a little bit, with the girlfriend of one of the students. One is about the sleeping man’s ex-wife and how he deals with the separation. One is about how everyone loves and hates the artist. And one is about marriage and changes of life.
The stories meander nicely, and as I’ve said of Natsume Ono before, you are only shown what the characters wish to tell others about themselves. There are no internal monologues, no narration. It’s all about conversation and getting to know everyone as naturally as reality, if that makes sense. And it’s true that it’s only about the lives of the characters, and there’s some element of humdrum to that. But their lives are far enough removed from my own, and different from one another, that reading it is more interesting than the somewhat mundane experience I had with Ristorante Paradiso. Ono’s narrative technique is the most unique and interesting thing about her books, and while I can easily see how it isn’t for everyone, it’s wonderful when it works as well as it does here.
The one downside to this book is the art. Ono’s artwork is a little different than the usual manga style, even as far as Ikki series go. She has a very loose way of drawing, and her character designs are more cartoony than they are manga-styled. Large heads, elongated limbs, and just a completely different visual shorthand all together. La Quinta Camera is even farther removed than the other books I’ve read by her, and in addition to the different visual style, the line work is also a lot more loose, and there’s a lot more white space around. It looks like an early book, for sure, but her style is so unusual it’s hard for me to call it rough or unpolished. It strikes me as intentional.
I thought this was a wonderful little story, all about the interesting lives of fairly average guys living in Italy and sharing an apartment as friends do. There’s looks at culture, how people enter and exit each other’s routines, and even a little bit about friendship in general. It all works, and I love the meandering way that everything is told. It’s different, and definitely a little calmer and slower than what most people may be looking for, but I still think it’s worth a read. It should also appeal to a lot of people outside manga fandom especially, since it has a lot in common with American “indie” comics, especially the biography-style ones. In fact, I think it does that technique one better by not getting bogged down in too much detail.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Ristorante Paradiso
Posted: July 5, 2011 Filed under: Ristorante Paradiso 2 Comments »Natsume Ono – Viz – 2010 – 1 volume
Natsume Ono has a pretty good track record for me. I loved not simple, and I thought that House of Five Leaves was pretty great even after I went in dreading it. So when I picked up Ristorante Paradiso, I was ready to fall in love.
The story is about a girl named Nicoletta traveling to Rome to be reunited with her mother. Her mother, Olga, abandoned her after hooking up with a guy who apparently hated children. Nicoletta finds her mother in Rome at the restaurant owned by Olga’s husband, Ristorante Casetta Dell’orso. The restaurant is staffed entirely by older men in glasses. While Nicoletta gets her bearings and tries to decide whether she wants to reveal that Olga is her mother, she slowly falls in step with life at the restaurant and learns a little about all the men that work there.
The book’s charm lies in the way it tells a story without telling a story. Nicoletta hears personal histories and all sorts of gossip, little by little, as she stays at the restaurant and eventually becomes part of the family there. There’s little overarching plot, instead we are treated to a slice-of-life story full of anecdotes that flesh out the characters with little else happening.
These sorts of stories can be enjoyable, and it’s rare that we see them in English. Watching things unfold is fun, and I love the storytelling technique where the characters are simply real people, and Nicoletta is hearing their stories not because of traumatic events, but because she asks. It’s a great concept, and Ono pulls it off really well.
Then what’s my problem? These characters are so damn mundane. You know what I could do instead of reading this book? Go to work and talk to my own coworkers. Their lives are actually far more interesting than anything that happened in Ristorante Paradiso.
And therein lies the problem. Why am I reading this, then? What does this book have to offer me that going out and talking to real people can’t? I’d be hard pressed to find people who are less interesting than the characters in this book.
I think I may be the only person who didn’t like this. I suppose it’s just a matter of taste. It does a good job of simulating reality without actually being real. I don’t mind reality-based stories (I’ll read pretty much anything, honestly), but within that, there still has to be a story to tell. The men here just weren’t interesting enough for my taste.
I’m still going to read Gente, the follow-up series with the same characters. Perhaps a deeper look into the lives of the characters will reveal more interesting stories to tell than their day-to-day affairs. And Natsume Ono is still a great writer, so I’m sure there’ll be something to like there.
I don’t know. Maybe I just read this on the wrong day or something.
Sensual Phrase 15
Posted: July 5, 2011 Filed under: Sensual Phrase 2 Comments »Mayu Shinjo – Viz – 2006 – 18 volumes
So, remember when I said I was waiting for the series to tackle big issues? I’ve been saying that for the last ten volumes or so. Well, it finally made good on its promise to do something serious. It… it was hard to take, honestly. It was a terrible thing that happened, and unusually, the series does not brush it off. It takes every part of it seriously. While it was happening, I kept waiting for something to stop it, too. I didn’t really believe that it was what it looked like. It was.
I don’t want to spoil it, so I’ll leave it at that. But… wow. I didn’t really think Sensual Phrase had the capacity to surprise me in any way, shape, or form. I was warned the ending was a little shocking, but I wasn’t quite prepared for this.
After the first bad thing, things go downhill. Just about everything terrible that could happen does, and all of it is pretty serious. The book ends with an attempted murder.
I was just… shocked. Really, really shocked.
And then I read Kelly Sue DeConnick’s essay at the back of the book. And was even more shocked. Remember how I mentioned I had stopped reading the sidebar commentary from Shinjo several volumes back, since it was mostly endless J-Pop gushing and commentary about the anime? Kelly Sue DeConnick made me go back and read the ones in this volume.
It… somehow made the volume much worse. Thank you, Kelly Sue DeConnick. You really did make me throw up a little in the back of my mouth.
No cheesy fun to be had in this volume, friends. There were no lines at all to bring me great joy. I’m sorry.
