Eroicaverse: Plus Ultra
Posted: May 26, 2012 Filed under: Eroicaverse Leave a comment »This is yet another article looking at From Eroica With Love supplemental material. For the index, go here.
Since I made it through all of the From Eroica With Love spinoffs and the series still hasn’t been license rescued, I’m going to move on to the artbooks and supplementary volumes. I could do this for years. Someone had better step in and stop me.
Plus Ultra is more or less the Yasuko Aoike artbook. As you will find out, there are dozens of others, but this is the coffee table book, the largest one with the most pages, covering the largest number of series and the longest time period. Two editions of this book exist. The earlier one features a cover image of a rainy BMW hood, and comes with a CD-ROM with the images on it. The one here is a later edition issued a little less than 10 years later, and as far as I know the only difference is the cover and CD-ROM.
Thieves in Manga
Posted: May 12, 2012 Filed under: Miscellaney 2 Comments »Japan loves heroic thieves. This is one of the few cases I prefer the Japanese term, “kaitou,” as the English term “phantom thief” is a bit of a misnomer. I’m not actually certain what the genre encompasses in Japan, but for the purposes of this article, I’m going to go ahead and use the term “kaitou” to refer to any thief portrayed heroically.
Lupin III is the earliest example I’ve seen of this character type, and Lupin III is, interestingly, massively western-influenced. Monkey Punch’s style is informed heavily by the work of Sergio Aragones, a Spanish artist who gained popularity in the pages of Mad Magazine. The character of Lupin, however, is the grandson of the French thief Arsene Lupin, from the pages of a French novel series by Maurice Leblanc. The western roots are a little strange in this case because this type of character seems to come up a lot in manga, and nowhere else that I’ve read. There are examples, of course (Robin Hood, or maybe Han Solo at a stretch) but it seems like Japan loves this character a whole lot more than the rest of the world.
The kaitou is interesting to me as an example of a heroic villain, or maybe rooting for the underdog. In the case of Lupin, he’s not terribly heroic. He acts on whims, does as he pleases, and is constantly jumping in bed with women. He outwits police and criminals alike. He’s charming and goofy, which is why he’s fun to read about, but the key is that he’s not greedy. That’s true of all these characters. They aren’t actually thieves who steal for profit. And that’s the catch in manga, where a shoujo or shounen heroine would never be allowed to steal if it was actually for nefarious intent. Lupin is different than the others, but you’ll notice that many of the kaitou I list below only steal things if they are haunted or demonically possessed.
In particular though, I’m fond of the “gentlemen thief” archetype. I’ve listed all the kaitou I could think of here, but really, my heart belongs to the flashy gentlemen like Noir from Gorgeous Carat and Eroica in From Eroica With Love. And Lupin, in his way. There’s a bit more trickery in those types of stories, so they tend to lend themselves well to both good action and excellent humor. Plus, with an emphasis on the “gentlemen,” those usually have a touch of romance to them without actually being a love story. Except for Lupin III, which is totally about sweeping women off their feet.
Artbook Spotlight: Nostalgia
Posted: May 4, 2012 Filed under: Artbooks 2 Comments »Nao Tsukiji – Shinshokan – 2011 – ISBN 9784403650499
JManga beat me to the punch! I logged on to the internet to write this article (it’s Thursday, so I’m doing it early), and JManga announced they’d be releasing a digital edition of this on their site next week. If I’m not mistaken, this is the first artbook they’ve offered. And it’s totally worth it.
I’m beginning to have a hard time introducing these artbook articles, because most of them start off with “this is one of the prettiest books I own.” Well, I only buy them if I think I’m really going to enjoy them, and I only cover my absolute favorites here, so this is going to be true every time. But Nostalgia is special. Nostalgia really is jaw-dropping gorgeous. I might like this better than some, or almost all, of the CLAMP books I own.
Tsukiji Nao writes Adekan, the first volume of which is available on
JManga. It’s set in Taisho-era Japan (1910s or so), and stars a police officer, an umbrella maker who is also a hidden weapons expert, and the skeevie crimes that are committed around them. As that, it is pretty great, but the more intriguing thing about Adekan is its ability to be one of the smuttiest manga I’ve ever read without actually having sex or naked bodies in it. The art is incredibly, incredibly erotic. Uniform and foot fetishists will be well-pleased, and the umbrella maker has a habit of contorting through the air half-clothed quite a bit. The two main characters are male, but it is not at all BL, though if I were reading it without a translation I would be positive that it was.
What this means, then, is that she’s an amazing illustrator that has a strangely erotic edge to her images. Adekan is the only series she’s worked on, and there are some Adekan illustrations in here, but more interesting is the fact that the majority of the content in Nostalgia is commercial illustrations for other things. And all of the illustrations are so pretty.
English, Please!: Gunjo
Posted: April 27, 2012 Filed under: English, Please! 1 Comment »I was a bit torn this week on which series to license request. But then I remembered suddenly that this was the week of the Manga Moveable Feast, Viz Signature edition, hosted by Kate over at the Manga Critic. This doesn’t really count, since it hasn’t been translated into English. But it did run in Ikki magazine in Japan, so the SigIkki line is the most likely place for it were it to be licensed. And it’s an excuse to talk about it, too. It’s very good.
I’ve said before that I enjoy melodramatic romance titles. This… falls under that umbrella, but honestly, it’s better than that. It transcends that, and is almost uncomfortable to read because of it. The relationship is extremely desperate. The melodrama is completely serious in the context of the series, too. Unlike countless car accidents the characters simply recover from whenever the plot needs some spice, Gunjo starts out with a murder, and both the main characters flee, and constantly waver back and forth about whether to deal with the real-world consequences of their actions. They’re really, really no good for each other. It’s not a romance in the sense that the two will end up together. Because they probably won’t. But the story is about their relationship anyway.
The Eroicaverse: Z
Posted: April 20, 2012 Filed under: Eroicaverse 4 Comments »This is fifth in a series of articles exploring From Eroica With Love and its spinoffs. For the index, go here.
I’ve already talked about The Marksman, which was a hard-boiled spy thriller starring Klaus. I mentioned I thought it came before this work, because The Marksman is basically just like the Z stories here, only moreso. More serious, beautifully drawn, plotted more tightly, and it shows off the professional life of the Major the same way Z does for Agent Z. It was Z that came first, though, and I suppose that makes sense, because everything in these stories went into the Marksman later.
Agent Z is introduced in the From Eroica With Love Story Insha’Allah in volume 3 of the series. Prior to that story, much like Agent G, he was introduced in another series, in this case one named for him. Z is a series of six stories that cover six different missions, each showing a different aspect of what it’s like to train as a rookie agent under Major Eberbach.
The first Z story ran in the August 1979 issue of LaLa Magazine, a Hakusensha magazine. Again, it’s interesting to me that Aoike was allowed to share her characters among different publishers, since Z never pretends to be anything but a From Eroica With Love spinoff, and Eroica was being printed at Akita Shoten at the time. Z appeared in LaLa one month before he made his debut in From Eroica With Love, so all the heavy commentary about him being the new agent makes more sense when you realize another series is being promoted.
Manga Moveable Feast: Viz Signature Imprint Top 10
Posted: April 13, 2012 Filed under: Manga Moveable Feast Leave a comment »Alas, I’m more than a week early, but today is the day I’m going to talk about the Manga Moveable Feast topic for this month. Hosted by Kate over at the Manga Critic, this month’s discussion focuses on the Viz Signature imprint.
Kate posted a helpful list at the link above, but there’s another over at the Viz website. Interestingly, I noticed that some of those titles are from the old Editor’s Choice imprint. Editor’s Choice was simply the precursor to Signature, but the theme of the imprints are probably about the same. They both encompass the most awesome manga titles you can find in English. Take it from someone who knows. I just now realized I own every manga title on that list except Biomega. I’m not sure what that says about me, but it does mean I know my way around the titles rather intimately. And I can say they really are that good.
So, what makes a Viz Signature book? In general, it seems like it’s simply the best of the best. In reality, it’s probably more like… titles that are not Shounen Sunday, Shounen Jump, or shoujo titles. But if Viz sees fit to license a title that does not fit into one of those three safe categories, chances are it’s worth reading. They tend to be for an older audience, seinen or josei-flavored, and somewhat more literary than your usual manga title. But not always! For every Phoenix, there’s a Detroit Metal City. Ooku is balanced out with Black Lagoon. All of them are well-written and entertaining, in their way, though some take more convincing than others. There’s also a lot of genres represented. Horror, action, romance, sci-fi, historical, high school, professionals, sports, music… if you like it, there’s probably a manga title for you in the Viz Signature imprint. And odds are, it’s actually going to be pretty great.
So let me talk about some of my favorites! I didn’t realize until I began writing the article how essential the Viz Signature line was to my reading habits, nor that I actually had all of them, so it turns out I’m fond of quite a few of them. So… how about a top ten of my favorites? Not the best ones, mind you, but my favorites. Keep in mind I sometimes like some pretty awful manga, and what I like isn’t always the best. But I do like all these to pieces, and I can vouch for the fact the Signature imprint has never printed an awful book, so all of these are at least worth some of your time.
Artist Spotlight: Toko Kawai
Posted: April 6, 2012 Filed under: Artist Spotlight | Tags: BL 6 Comments »My recent very thorough foray into English-language BL has netted me several new artist to keep an eye on. Previously, I was a huge fan of est em, Fumi Yoshinaga, and Hinako Takanaga. Now, I also keep an eye out for anything by Satoru Ishihara, Keiko Kinoshita, You Higashino, and a few others. But my great loves now are Yugi Yamada and Toko Kawai. Truth be told, I think I might like Yugi Yamada a smidge more, because her stories frequently feature very funny bickering couples, and I never get tired of that. But Yugi Yamada has done about 30 titles and Toko Kawai has done eight, all of which have been translated into English. That’s a rare thing, as I’ve mentioned before, and she’s so good it’s worth taking a look at it all.
One of the reasons I like BL romance so much is that the genre is inherently biased, taste-wise. Most titles are only one or two volumes, and if you don’t like, say, younger couples, most books aren’t going to try hard to win you over. And you know what? That’s okay, because there’s something else for you out there. Even more interesting than reader bias is when the preferences of the artist creep into their body of work. Sometimes it can be a TMI kind of experience, like when I tried to read a bunch of Hinako Takanaga one-shots and found out that her ukes generally creep me out. Reading the afterword of many BL books, you find that the authors often profess a weakness for the type of story or characters they’ve just written about, and they can fall into a pattern where they write the same type of story over and over again. There’s nothing wrong with this, and I like that the authors seem to be allowed to go with what they know, so to speak. Also, it’s more than a little funny to me.
Toko Kawai is interesting because her books are all slightly different, taste-wise. This doesn’t sound like much, but it’s almost mind-blowing in the BL genre, based on my own reading experiences. Cut is a story about two abused teens who help each other out of their respective situations. Loveholic is about old friends in a photographer-salesman environment that hesitate to grow closer. In the Walnut features an established adult couple that more-or-less works at an art gallery and a story that is more mystery-of-the-week than it is romance. Each one is a little different. While none are exactly groundbreaking (though In the Walnut is very unique), in a genre where it seems like you can read hundreds of volumes of the same thing, even by artists you really like, a little variety is something special.
The real treat for me, however, is that she takes those different situations and uses them to her advantage as different environments where she can really develop her characters. I love character-centric BL books the best. All the sex in the world isn’t terribly romantic unless I can believe the two are in a relationship. And the more believable, the better. Some of her books are better than others character-wise, but one thing I do like is that many of them take established couples and investigate how a relationship grows after the consummation. That can be good or bad depending on the writer, but it’s unusual enough that it’s worth looking at here.
Artbook Spotlight: RG Veda – Hiten Muma
Posted: March 30, 2012 Filed under: Artbooks Leave a comment »CLAMP – Shinshokan – 1991 – ISBN 4403612601
I own a few dozen artbooks, and among them, I’ve made a point to pick up every single CLAMP artbook over the years. There are a lot. I’ve covered the X Zero artbook before, but I thought this week I’d take a look at this particular RG Veda collection, which is the first collecting Mokona’s color artwork.
This book came out two years and three volumes into the serialization of RG Veda, which strikes me as almost hilariously unlikely for a new artist’s debut work. Then again, this is CLAMP.
Now, CLAMP’s origins are murky and mired in folklore, and I’ve heard several different stories about their doujinshi circle days in the 80s. I’m dubious about any info I read on the internet about what happened before RG Veda. Apparently, series like Cluster and Derayed officially predate RG Veda, and initial printings of the first volumes of both credit CLAMP (though perhaps the initial volumes were amateur printings). I mention this because it’s possible that the CLAMP name was somewhat popular and/or exposed even at the beginning of RG Veda’s life. Otherwise, the explanation for this book is that RG Veda was a raging success, and its popularity merited a book of illustrations immediately. It’s also important to keep in mind that CLAMP had already serialized, or was serializing, all three of the CLAMP School series by the time this book came out, but that was at a different publisher. Perhaps that also contributed to their popularity.
Or maybe it was just that Mokona draws very, very pretty illustrations. The character designs are a little rough and very 90s, but man, is this still a gorgeous book. This is the first of two RG Veda artbooks. The second, Tenmagouka, came out in 2001, several years after the series ended. Tenmagouka is a more complete collection of all the color art from RG Veda, and is quite a massive tome. As pretty as Hiten Muma is, Tenmagouka is jaw-dropping amazing, and is up with the X Infinity artbook as one of the most gorgeous I own.
English, Please!: Heartbroken Chocolatier
Posted: March 23, 2012 Filed under: English, Please! 3 Comments »I have a confession to make: I think I like Setona Mizushiro better than Fumi Yoshinaga. While Yoshinaga is a master at portraying the small moments of life in the most entertaining way possible… I seem to connect to Mizushiro’s stories more. Their stories rarely overlap (Mizushiro has done a lot of more fantasy-oriented work and more blatant BL), but the ones that do, like Heartbroken Chocolatier and Antique Bakery… well, while both of them are really great, and very much worth reading, I prefer the slightly demented twist to Heartbroken Chocolatier, and Mizushiro’s stories in general.
On a different note, it’s difficult to convey just how impressed I was by After School Nightmare. Not only was it a fun and completely addictive ride all the way through, it subverted my expectations and had one of the most mind-blowing and cosmic endings to any shoujo manga I’ve ever read. I’ve read it three times, and I’m still not sure I like the ending, but I’m impressed by the masterful twist every time.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of Setona Mizushiro’s work remains untranslated. After School Nightmare is tragically out of print, and the only other series available in English is X-Day, a very strange 2-volume story about people that want to blow up their school. That nothing else has appeared in English is absolutely criminal, because her knack for crafting strange and interesting stories with believable characters seems a cut above most other shoujo and josei mangaka. Be they vampire princesses or Chinese gang members, her characters are always believable, and she writes some of the most sincere romances I’ve ever read, even while the weirdness pervades them.
I’d read anything in English by her, honestly. She’s written dozens of series, and all of them sound wonderful, be they for young or old audiences. The one I want the most is actually something else, but that’s a special story for another day. But for a classy lady with mature taste like me, Heartbroken Chocolatier is an absolute must.
The Eroicaverse: Der Freischütz
Posted: March 16, 2012 Filed under: Eroicaverse 3 Comments »This is the sixth in a series of articles discussing From Eroica With Love and its spinoffs. For the index, go here.
I’m cheating a bit this time around, since I’ve skipped the next sequel chronologically. It reads like a longer, more polished version of this story, so I assumed this came first and the other followed. Not so, but the stories are similar, and I can talk about the other next time.
Der Freischütz (or The Marksman, or Madan no Shashu, or 魔弾の射手) appeared in Princess Magazine in 1982, in the August-September issues. It interrupted the regular serialization of From Eroica With Love, and comes between Seven Days in September and The Laughing Cardinals. The Marksman is a 100-page story about one of Major Eberbach’s missions, completely free of the usual humor found in the main series. It is, quite literally, a hard-boiled spy thriller starring Klaus. I was initially a little confused as to why a non-tankoubon-length story wasn’t simply included in one of the From Eroica With Love volumes as part of the main series, especially since it has everything to do with one of the main characters, but… it really is quite different in tone, and I can see why it’s considered a separate story.
