Faeries’ Landing
Posted: September 7, 2011 Filed under: Faeries' Landing 2 Comments »You Hyun – Tokyopop – 2004 – 20+ volumes
I impulse-bought the first volume of this series after I found out the artist was the same person who wrote Laon. Unfortunately, I forgot that there were two people involved with the creation of Laon, and the artist was different. The art in Laon is quite good, whereas the art in Faeries’ Landing is… not quite as good. Mostly it’s just dated, with dated clothing, hairstyles, and character designs. That’s not its fault. But the layouts are a little too chaotic for my taste, too. That might just be a symptom of the age, though. I think the first volume of this series is fairly old, and the newer volumes still come out to this day. I’m willing to bet the art evolves quite a bit over the run of the series, so I don’t want to judge it too harshly on this first volume.
There are… other things, too. On one hand, I really like the main character. Ryang is a pretty great guy. He’s tough without being a punk, he can stand up for himself without being mean, and he’s even a little bit of a ladies’ man without being a creep or romancer. Basically, he’s a better-than-average guy that’s normal in every way. It’s rare to see a character like him without any exaggerated characteristics.
The faeries are a different story, though. There’s Goodfellow, a mischievous deer-man that likes stealing panties and leads Ryang to the Faeries’ Landing as a reward for helping him get away from the police. There’s Fanta, who is a fairly bland spunky girl and the main female character. There’s her loud, obnoxious, annoying rival, that enters at the end of the book. There’s a couple female classmates that are just about the stereotypical bully and nerd (their bonding over a video game character and a grumpy boyfriend saves them from being complete stereotypes, though). So far, none of these characters are a good match for Ryang, or even that interesting. Ryang’s too much a regular guy to hold everything together himself, so I was disappointed that even Fanta wasn’t more fleshed out by the end of the first volume.
The plot… is also not great. After Ryang tears Fanta’s dress at Faeries’ Landing, she’s “stuck” in the human world (something she’d been hoping for) and goes everywhere with Ryang. Turns out that since she’s stuck her nose in his life, Ryang is now doomed to have 108 failed relationships that border on dangerous. But these don’t become dangerous until Fanta’s rival enters the picture and curses Ryang. Now every girl that sees Ryang falls desperately in love with him, so that he has to fight off girls fighting amongst themselves as well as said girls’ boyfriends.
It’s mostly comedy so far, but hasn’t really found a good voice. The humor, like the art, is dated, and most of the jokes are over-the-top reactions that fall completely flat. It does have a strange charm to it, though, and the jokes that aren’t falling flat are measuring instead on some sort of bizarre-o-meter.
I should also mention that the Tokyopop translation is also… a little dated. Ryang calls Fanta “shorty,” and keeps making references to furries and other buzzwords of the late 90s-early 00s. It’s got a really, really punchy adaptation. Normally I like it when so much work goes into the adaptation, but this is a little over-the-top for my taste. I’m guessing it’ll probably tone itself down as the series progresses, though. This literally came out right up until Tokyopop closed down this year, so there’s several years worth of evolution to go here.
But having said all that, I still want to read more. As I said, Ryang’s a really great character, and a non-lame male main character can go a long way in shounen comedy. The series biggest sin seems to be that it came out too long ago (interesting that even Korean series share some of the same elements that date other comics), and I suspect that it will get significantly better as the volumes keep going. It also seems to have a small but very devoted set of fans, and I like to think that there has to be something later that inspires that devotion. Plus, I have a soft spot for fantasy series set in modern times, which this is.
The first volume was a rough start, but I think I’m going to keep reading. I suspect patience will be rewarded in this case.
Korea as Viewed by 12 Creators
Posted: September 7, 2011 Filed under: Korea as Viewed by 12 Creators Leave a comment »various – Fanfare/Ponent Mon – 2010 – 1 volume
Korean artists include: Choi Kyu-Sok, Lee Doo-Hoo, Park Heung-Yong, Byun Ki-Hyun, Lee Hee-Jae, and Chaemin
European artists include: Catel, Vanyda, Mathieu Sapin, Igort, Herve Tanquerelle, and Guillaume Bouzard
I had been looking forward to this book for quite some time. I liked the previous volume, Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators, quite a bit. This book had the potential to be even more interesting, because I don’t know very much about Korea, and I was hoping this would offer some interesting insight into Korean culture from both an inside and outside perspective.
Unfortunately… that wasn’t the case. I was a little disappointed with this volume. Most of my issues were with the European stories, the bulk of which were simple travel stories about the artist’s trip to Korea. The problem was that they may as well have been about any country on Earth. Mostly they were about the artists being confused and overwhelmed, or the artists themselves, rather than Korea. To be fair, one of my favorite stories from Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators was the diary-style comic by Fabrice Neaud, but I admire him for his wonderful art and near-pornographic detail about both his surroundings and personal life. The stories here aren’t quite as good, though. Dul Lucie and Oh Pilsung Korea! are almost literally the same thing, the artist talking about their trip, what they thought it would be, and what it wasn’t. Beondegi is slightly different, using a character in place of the artist and an eccentric guide through the city, but is still “stranger in a strange land” fare. Operation Captain Zidane is another story about the artist traveling to Korea, but this one is more of a comedy, where Guillaume Bouzard makes his trip into a secret government mission relating to the World Cup. It’s funny, and definitely better than the other travel stories, but it also comes at the end of the volume, so I was tired of this type of story by then. Beondegi falls into the same trap, where it’s a better story, but since it comes after Dul Lucie and Oh Pilsung Korea!, it suffers a bit for being similar.
A Rat in the Country of Yong, however, is a travel tale that’s completely different. Herve Tanquerelle turns the trip into a wordless allegory with animals. It’s a very traditional and very French cartoon comic. It’s adorable, and a wonderfully different adaptation of the subject matter. But again… a travel comic.
Igort, who I believe is the only Italian artist in the volume, does something completely different with his story, Letters from Korea. He interviews residents of Korea, who tell their stories, and he puts them together in little page-long vignettes. On one hand, it’s Korea from an inside perspective since it’s all first-hand accounts, but the subject matter is scattered and the interviews do read like an outsider wrote them, so in that it succeeds. And the stories are interesting, to boot. Everything from a young man who makes the perfect handmade notebooks to a man that still misses his family in North Korea.
The Korean stories are varying degrees of interesting, too. One thing that made me uncomfortable was a theme of women’s place in society, which was the central story in The Rabbit, with a rabbit in place of a female. But other stories touch on this as well, both directly and indirectly.
Sogelo’s Tree, by Le Doo-Hoo, is this volume’s equivalent to the beautiful Moyoco Anno story in Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators. It’s beautifully drawn, and a simple story with a touching ending that manages to capture something of Korean culture wonderfully.
I liked the memories from childhood, or the look into rural life, offered in Cinderella and The Pine Tree. The former is a story about young boys stealing melons from a rural field, and the latter is a detailed description of a funeral involving a large rural family. Cinderella is a simple story that has a surprisingly complicated message at the end, whereas The Pine Tree is simply an interesting look at the grieving period, the ceremony itself, the traditions, and personal reactions to the funeral.
All in all, I liked the Japan volume better. This has more interesting content, especially among the Korean-centric stories, and I wanted to like it more since it had more to teach me. But the travelogues on the European side hurt it quite a bit. It’s still a wonderful book though, and it’s more than worth having for the beautiful stories that do make the cut.
One thing that disappointed me a little was that all the Korean artists chosen were on the “art” side of the sequential art equation. None of them were artists I’d heard of, and while we don’t see very much Korean work over here, I’m reasonably familiar with some familiar faces in manhwa and have still never heard of any of these artists or their works. I think it would have been interesting to include at least one or two artists that work directly with the type of Manhwa series we have seen over here… the type of stuff that get turned into dramas and things like that. Artists that work directly with Korean pop culture.
Story of Saiunkoku 4
Posted: September 3, 2011 Filed under: Story of Saiunkoku Leave a comment »Kairi Yura / Sai Yukino – Viz – 2011 – 7+ volumes
This story continues on its way pleasantly, with the right balance of light plot movement and character development. It’s more of a… romance, I suppose, at this point than it is a fantasy series, since the setting is somewhat secondary compared to the characters. But the romance is fairly secondary at this point, too. Mostly, it’s just about the characters and their motivations, and I feel like I’ll never get tired of the little stories that keep unfolding. I’m not even annoyed by the ever-increasing cast, which is unusual for me.
There are a few bombshells dropped in this volume, so it’s not quite as it sounds when I say there’s light plot movement. The true identity of Ensei is revealed, and I was fairly surprised by it. He’s not at all who I thought he was, and I loved that the identity that was essentially the exact opposite of what I expected worked that well. I can’t say too much about this, since I’d spoil the volume, but I liked that he surreptitiously guided people into position all the way to the end of the volume, and the climax of his story was a lot of fun.
There’s also a lot more information on Kijin Ko, the Minister of Finance that Shurei has been working for. We get to see under the mask. I was wrong about this too, but in this case I’m a little disappointed since I feel the real reason he wears the mask is exaggerated for comic relief. Whatever. He’s an interesting guy, though, and I enjoyed all the political conversations he had with various characters here.
There’s also a little side story about Shurei and her mother, a side story about the two sons of an old friend of Shoka’s, more information about the new law allowing women to take the civil service exam, and yet another meandering story about the Emperor’s growing feelings for Shurei, and what he’s doing to try and win her over. All of these stories are interesting, and this is what I mean when I say the plot moves slowly. They’re all fairly important storylines, and it’s interesting that they all seem to resolve themselves in one way or another before the plot moves on to something else. I never found myself frustrated when the story focused too much on a side character rather than Shurei, though admittedly that’s because all the stories still involve Shurei. I think the origin of the series as a novel is most apparent here, but it’s interesting to me that the adaptation is well-written enough that all of this still comes across rather seamlessly, and with not a whole lot of talking heads, in the manga.
The huge cast doesn’t bother me as much as it normally does, but I do begin to forget character names after awhile (especially those of the Emperor’s two aides, I can never remember them), and I was beginning to get antsy when Shoka began talking about his old friend out of nowhere, then the story introduced his sons. They don’t really have much bearing on the plot, so I’m not quite sure why they were included at all. But they were still pretty charming, and I loved the way they eventually made the whole storyline here wrap around Shurei, so maybe they were necessary.
It felt like one of the novels “concluded” in the second-to-last chapter of this volume. The original novel series was 18 volumes long, and I’ve only noticed two of these “conclusions” so far. Are we really only at the beginning of the third novel, in terms of the plot of The Story of Saiunkoku? I’m definitely still interested in all that’s going on, but that… seems so long. And I almost feel like I might begin to lose my grasp on things if many more characters or complicated politics are introduced. That’s definitely its charm, and it makes me happy that I can still pick up volumes randomly and am able to jump right in, but… again, there’s only so much of that I can personally take.
But right now, this was another enjoyable volume, and I love that this is simultaneously an easy, enjoyable read, but also has a lot of “meat” on it in terms of plot. It’s definitely worth looking at if you like more substance to your shoujo manga, and I’m happy that it’s maintained its quality through the first four volumes.
But I do wonder: the “conclusion” to the first novel ended the first part of the story, which was essentially a romantic comedy. This story segment had a lot of character and setting development. I wonder if the next part will also be completely different, in terms of tone? I’m very curious.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Book Girl 02: Book Girl and the Famished Spirit
Posted: September 3, 2011 Filed under: Book Girl 2 Comments »Mizuki Nomura – Yen Press – 2011 – 16 volumes
this is a novel
I’ve really been getting into these light novels lately. I hope that Yen’s been doing okay with them, I know they’re notoriously hard to market. Hopefully they’ve been finding their way into the right hands.
I liked the first novel in this series well enough, but not enough to rush out and buy the second novel. I thought I’d give it another try, though, just to see if the second volume grabbed me any harder.
I still like the basic set-up: Tohko, the book girl, consumes books instead of food, the stories provide the sorts of rich flavors that food does not. The narrator is the only other member of the literature club, a boy named Konoha. Konoha wrote a best-selling novel when he was in junior high, but the experience was so emotionally scarring that he vows never to write another novel. Konoha and Tohko solve mysteries as the literature club. It’s a cute set-up.
Unfortunately, it’s the mysteries I tend to have trouble with. This time around, Tohko fears a ghost is putting notes in the Book Club’s “problems” box, and a stake-out one night reveals a very mysterious girl in an old-style school uniform is the culprit. But the problem is, this girl swears she’s dead. Except she also attends the school as an emaciated upperclassman. The story goes in many different directions… that the girl is abused by her uncle, that the girl has multiple personality disorder, and that the girl is possessed by the spirit of her dead mother. It’s not until the final pages that the whole thing becomes clear, and it’s Wuthering Heights that puts everything in perspective this time, the way No Longer Human did last time.
I admit, I love the way that the mysteries follow the structure of famous works of literature, and yet that doesn’t give anything away about the mysteries presented in Book Girl.
The problem for me is that… hmm. Part of it is that the tone is a little mixed. On one hand, the scenes involving Konoha at school with Tohko and other classmates are just like a regular shounen rom-com. There’s some humor, and he interacts with everyone just as normal. But then the mysteries are usually unbearably dark tragedies, and it’s hard for me to reconcile the two, even if it’s not Konoha and Tohko that are directly involved in the tragedies.
The other problem is that the tragedy seems a little forced. I was disappointed when I got to the end of this book. I give the writing a lot of credit. For some reason, I accepted the fact that this emaciated girl lived with her uncle in an otherwise deserted mansion. It wasn’t easy to forgive it the fact that none of the characters seemed alarmed when it became obvious that her uncle abused and starved her, or made any sort of move to put her into protective custody. But the ending. The ending just went completely off the deep end. Her uncle’s true role. What he hoped to accomplish. What the girl wanted from her uncle. The convenient way her father and aunt died. The convoluted lengths it went to in order to stick close to the structure of Wuthering Heights. The fact that all of it was spelled out in the end, and almost impossible to pick up on throughout the course of the novel.
I really liked this book, and I thought it was better than that.
One other problem I had was that the parts with Konoha were the most interesting for me, but he’s a minor character in his own story. He plays almost no role save that of observer. The way he keeps stepping into this stuff also becomes increasingly unlikely.
Having said that, I liked it. I thought it was an interesting book. Again though, it didn’t grab me, but I’ll probably keep reading other books in the series. They do have an interesting structure, and most of the annoyances are minor, despite my complaints.
I’m hoping that the next volume will bring something a little different, or maybe more about Tohko and Konoha. I do like that a little bit more about each is revealed in every novel, though.
And after that, I will leave you with a true story: In case you are unfamiliar, one of the main characters in this series is a girl who can’t taste regular food, but eats books instead, saying that each story has its own rich flavor. So, I work at a used bookstore. The day after I started this novel, I was at work and fighting off a migraine. I started thinking about the plot of this series, and the thought of eating the books that our customers bring in repulsed me so much that I finally threw up and just went home.
Moral: Don’t let your cats pee on your books, then make me touch them.
And there’s your TMI for the day.
Yellow 2 (omnibus ed.)
Posted: September 3, 2011 Filed under: Yellow | Tags: BL Leave a comment »Makoto Tateno – June – 2010 – 4 volumes
this is an omnibus containing vols 3-4
Yellow episode 2 #3 just came out, and in that spirit, I thought I should finish off the first series. I liked the first omnibus well enough. It was a nice mix of action and romance, and that’s more or less what I’m looking for when I pick up a book like this.
Yellow’s a little better than the average book, though. The characters are fleshed out a little more, and Taki’s constant rejection of Goh only serves to heighten the romance. And it truly is 50/50 on action and romance. There are better love stories, and there are better crime-themed stories, but rarely are the two mixed as well as they are in Yellow.
Having said that, I didn’t enjoy this omnibus as much as the last. It’s all about Taki’s past, but the plot keeps getting increasingly improbable throughout the volume. You see, Taki’s parents are an internationally-wanted assassin duo. This is pretty bizarre, and the fact that they are apparently Golgo 13 makes it even harder to believe. But Taki left them the night he found out and they forced him to commit a terrible act.
But they re-enter Taki’s life, and he can’t even admit his past to Goh. Once they crack the first murder the duo performs, the assassins turn their guns on Goh until Taki agrees to move back in with them.
This is where it starts to get ridiculous. Taki doesn’t tell Goh what’s going on, even as he basically accepts Goh as his lover. Even in confinement, he’s able to slip Goh enough hints to thwart the duo’s next attempt. And in one of the lamest rescues ever, Goh has sex with Taki until the assassins blow the door off the room. I finally threw the book down when one of the key traumas in the plot is undone. It was ridiculous. The ending was too happy and too picture-perfect. And it started getting a little too formulaic towards the end… the romance between Taki and Goh became less believable the closer they got, which is a shame.
A couple of the one-shot chapters at the end of the book got it right, though. It was disappointing to see how well those were written in contrast to the ending of the main series.
Still, it wasn’t without its good moments. I liked it less as the volume wore on, but the romance between Taki and Goh is still pretty solid, and that was mainly what I was interested in.
There’s also an interesting plot point in that one of the assassins is a male-to-female transsexual. He fell in love with Taki after the duo took him in, and this man’s advances was another factor that made Taki flee (and it’s implied that it made Taki hate homosexuals as well). Getting rejected because he was a man broke his heart, so he got a sex change and put some time between his old self and Taki before re-appearing as a woman. It’s an interesting plot twist, but not much is done with this character, unfortunately. I feel bad for him.
Unfortunately, this was also one of the borderline NOT OKAY points of the book. The man’s age is left ambiguous, and his old self is mostly faceless, so he only looks a few years older than Taki. But the fact remains that he was a functioning assassin the entire time he was raising Taki, and Taki considers him a “parent,” though not in the biological sense, of course. Make of that what you will.
In the end, Yellow is a solid read, and definitely one of the better BL books out there. But I was disappointed with the second half, addictive as the first half was. That’s not to say it’s irredeemable, but still. If you’re a BL fan, the first omnibus is definitely worth picking up, but keep in mind that the ending is a little weak.
ARTBOOK SPOTLIGHT: Narumi Kakinouchi’s Illustration Collection
Posted: September 2, 2011 Filed under: Artbooks 2 Comments »Studio Ironcat – 2002 – 78 pages – 192909017X
While trying to pick out which artbook I wanted to talk about next, I got a shock when I found this on my shelf. I completely forgot about Narumi Kakinouchi. She was very popular about 10 years ago. Tokyopop her fighting girls manga series (Juline, Shaolin Sisters, and Shaolin Sisters Reborn), and Studio Ironcat got all the vampire stuff (Vampire Princess Miyu, New Vampire Princess Miyu, Vampire Dahlia, Vampire Yui, Yui Kanonsho, The Wanderer, and My Code Name is Charmer).
Ironcat also published this artbook, which I bought because I loved her color artwork. I’m less fond of her comic art, but maybe that’s just because I read New Vampire Miyu, which has extremely indistinct characters and backgrounds. But I deeply admire the fact she seems to have a love for the world she creates, and a lot of her series are linked and feature the same characters. The Tokyopop series are all sequels to one another, and all the Ironcat ones except Charmer are related as well.
I never have that much to say about the art in these books, so instead I’m just going to talk about Kakinouchi’s various vampire series as I post images (this was an Akita Shoten artbook originally, so none of the Kodansha Juline series are represented here). Actually, that’s not that interesting either since many of them are similar. But Kakinouchi is so rarely discussed that I’m hoping that some will find this a handy introduction.
