House of Five Leaves 4

Natsume Ono – Viz – 2011 – 8 volumes

Somehow, the beginning of volume four had me a little lost, and I was hoping that reading it so soon after volume three would help me get into the story a little more. The problem is that it starts in the middle of a kidnapping negotiation, with a disguised Yaichi and Masanosuke talking with a character we haven’t met yet. Since I didn’t recognize any of the characters, I thought it was somehow supposed to relate to Yaichi’s past, then I was disoriented when characters that looked like Yaichi and Masa appeared… I don’t know if that’s my fault or the story’s fault, though.

This volume is all about a negotiator named Ginta. Ginta begins to hire himself out as a kidnapping negotiator, mostly dealing with the high-profile kidnappings of the other organization that tends to slay its victims. But the Five Leaves crosses paths with Ginta, and through a set of coincidences, Ginta winds up learning their identities, about their organization, and where their hideout is. So then he has to become one of them, except nobody accepts or trusts him.

The story takes its time about introducing him. It’s not clear whether he’s going to turn on Five Leaves, and this ambiguity makes learning about him a little daunting, since you’re not sure whether you should sympathize with him, or if he’s lying to gain the trust of Five Leaves. Masa does his usual act, where he’s nosy and makes Ginta spill all his secrets. Unusuallly, Ginta turns the table, and we finally find out all the details of Masa’s trip to the capital, too. I wasn’t expecting any more details about that, so I enjoyed that little bit of story.

We are also still dancing around some of the uglier issues surrounding Yaichi. Ginta walks in on a brutal scene between Yaichi and someone from his past, and Yaichi seems to have given up on Masa and the Five Leaves by the end of the book as his past catches up to him.

As interesting as the story was here, I’m still having problems with flashbacks and distinguishing the characters from one another. I was a little less enamored this time around. Maybe reading the volumes back to back was too much of a good thing, then? I’m curious to see how the next volume will go for me.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.

House of Five Leaves 3

Natsume Ono – Viz – 2011 – 8 volumes

This month’s Manga Moveable Feast is Natsume Ono-centric, and the host is Alex Hoffman over at Manga Widget. Check out the archive, because there’s a lot to say about Natsume Ono and her rather diverse body of work available in English.

I’ve had good and bad experiences with Natsume Ono, but House of Five Leaves does endear me to her quite a bit. I enjoy the series as a sort of strange period piece. Not quite a drama, not quite noir, not quite crime, maybe a little bit of a slice-of-life story… it’s a lot of things, and it’s very easy to enjoy.

In this volume, things get a little more serious and story-centric when the most important agent of the Five Leaves, Matsu, disappears. Turns out that he heard something important was stolen to a man he was indebted to. Matsu went unasked to get the item back, botched the robbery attempt, and was captured. Masa enlists the help of his new acquaintance, Yagi, to free Matsu and set things right.

Yaichi is somber the entire volume, sliding into a foul mood after he lays eyes on Yagi. The end of the volume suggests a connection between the two, and the story begins to fill in some of the details of Yaichi’s past. Things are still pretty confusing by the end, but we’ve only heard half the story, so I imagine the next volume will be more clear. Yaichi also suggests that Yagi, despite his aid in the Matsu situation, is a bad friend to have after several members of the Five Leaves confirm he’s a Magistrate, or some sort of law figure. Masa can’t help who he is, though, and his attempts to try and shut out Yagi meet with a kind of sly knowing, since Yagi can tell he’s been told to stay away. Then again, Yagi doesn’t seem like he’s trying to track down the Five Leaves, or really trying to crack down on crime at all. Yaichi’s the one that discourages Masa, so the link between Yaichi and Yagi might actually be the main factor in staying away from Yagi, rather than the fact he could arrest the kidnapping group.

Later, Masa’s sister shows up in Edo and gets to know the members of the Five Leaves. She helps bring the story back around to its slightly voyeuristic, slice-of-life roots, and her chapters are charming ones. After she leaves, the last chapter in the book takes a darker turn when another kidnapping group is up to more sinister activities than the Five Leaves.

One thing that bugged me a little in this volume was the faces of the characters. Ono uses a very nice sumi-e style of inking that suits this series well, but lends a rough quality to the drawings. Unfortunately, the rough quality makes it difficult to tell the character’s faces apart (they lack distinctive details), and I began to get confused in some of the flashbacks and sudden changes of scene. Unfortunately, none of the characters wear very distinctive clothing, either, so I can’t use that to help me follow along. Going back over certain parts of the story and trying to contextualize them usually helped me identify the characters, but the fact that I had to frequently re-read segments to figure out what was going on doesn’t really bode well.

But overall, I’m still enjoying the series quite a bit. I’ve got volume four with me, and I might try to read these volumes back-to-back to see if immersing myself in a bigger part of the story makes it easier to distinguish the characters for me.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.

House of Five Leaves 2

Natsume Ono – Viz – 2010 – 8 volumes

This series is why I like Natsume Ono. I found that I was not as fond of her storytelling technique in a relatively modern setting, but here, her roundabout way of revealing facts by having the characters strike up conversations with each other works much better since the setting is pre-Meji Japan. But that technique is used less in this volume. Rather than having Masanosuke slowly prod information out of the characters via his quiet curiosity, or overhear bits and pieces of sensitive information, this volume actually has Ume opening up at telling Masa everything about his past. Others do the same.

The result is that we get a fairly long flashback about the entertaining roots of the Five Leaves gang. We also learn about the roots of Ume’s gang-related activities before Five Leaves, why he’s doing what he does now, and what his relation to Goinkyo is and was. It’s a sweet, touching story though it involves criminal activity. I also have a soft spot for these types of stories about criminals that try to escape gang activity but can’t. There’s some drama in the retelling, and it ties into present events. This climaxes into a situation where Ume’s past comes back to threaten him in a very real way, and Masanosuke gets to prove just how brave he can be. Nothing big, but I did like the show of bravery in a pinch.

This is immediately cancelled out by a duel that Masa is engaged in when he returns to Edo. I like this aspect of his character quite a bit. He’s just not a hero. He’s… well, he’s a regular shy, timid person. He also happens to be a samurai, and a bodyguard for a gang of thieves. Immediately after this soul-crushing scene, Masa meets up with another samurai worth looking up to, and I think he plans on training with him. I wonder how far his desire to better himself will go. On one hand, scenes like the one at the end of the volume can’t keep happening. On the other hand, I like him the way he is.

Earlier in the volume, Masa is quite ill and needs to stay with Goinkyo while his body flushes the toxins from Edo from his system. There’s a funny thread where the characters all try and convince Ichi to go visit Masa, telling him that Masa is dying. We find out later that love of Edo isn’t really the reason Ichi refuses to visit Masa, but Ichi’s story is one for the future.

This is a very slow-paced, quiet, conversation-heavy manga series. One could argue it would also work as a novel, but I find that the character expressions, the subtle body language, adds quite a bit to the narrative. It’s not for everybody, and I think that many might be daunted by the slow pace and the historic setting. But I’m enjoying it quite a bit, and with volume four out this month, I’m looking forward to catching myself up.

House of Five Leaves 1

Natsume Ono – Viz – 2010 – 8+ volumes

I usually don’t like period manga, and despite the handful of period titles I rave about on a daily basis (I just ordered five volumes of Blade of the Immortal, like, thirty seconds ago), I try to avoid them. This is the Ikki title that seems to get the most praise, but I have such a hard time with period stuff that I avoided it. We kept getting the first volume at work, though, and when I ran across it unclaimed in the dollar bin, I figured I’d give it a try. Natsume Ono’s 50/50 with me right now, since I liked Not/Simple but not so much Ristorante Paradiso.

And… yeah, I really liked House of Five Leaves. It made me happy. I disliked Ristorante Paradiso, because it was so freaking mundane it was like listening to one of those boring people that can only talk about themselves, but it was good at putting focus on the characters, even if I didn’t think those characters were very interesting. House of Five Leaves takes that knack for making a story out of character quirks and applies it to an out-of-work yojimbo and the band of “honorable thieves” he winds up working with, which is inherently more interesting than a girl with a bad relationship with her mother and a restaurant full of cranky old men, a situation I could walk in on and be bored with right now if I wanted.

Masa makes for a sad samurai, slouching and timid and afraid of people in general. He is constantly fired from bodyguard positions for not being intimidating enough. Eventually, he meets Yaichi, a man who is looking for a “bodyguard” in name only. Yaichi takes a liking to Masa, who is actually a decent samurai who is only trying to get over a fear of people, and invites him to join him on various odd jobs. The problem is that Masa is an honorable samurai, and Yaichi is a kidnapper and blackmailer. Masa finds himself in the middle of Yaichi’s situations with a moral dilemma on his hands, since he agreed to do the job and must carry through on his promise as a samurai, but he wants no part of blackmailing. Yaichi seems to only blackmail people who deserve it, a fact that doesn’t ease Masa’s mind much at all. Even so, Yaichi makes a friend out of Masa, and Masa quickly falls in with several other characters who are all somehow connected to Yaichi’s blackmailing organization, the “Five Leaves.”

It is a very character-driven story, and its interesting how the plot progresses based not on character actions, but on how Masa finds out about things. Frequently a character will be chatting Masa up, and will drop a bit of evil on his conscience while making him feel welcome, needed, or appealing to his skill as a samurai (it’s the last that frequently lands Masa in trouble). While Masa objects to what the Five Leaves is doing, all the members make him feel welcome, and he can’t help but be attracted to his new friends, their questionable deeds revealed to him only a little at a time.

All the characters have just a little bit of a story in this volume. No mysterious pasts, no “something terrible will happen later on” complications, they just have jobs and a little bit of personality that comes out while they are simply doing what they do. It’s well-written, and I have to say I’m very interested in seeing how these good people and their kidnappings will be justified both to Masa and the reader.

See? This is what happens when you don’t at least try all the free stuff on the Ikki website. Good stuff slips through the cracks. I have to say, I have yet to read Saturn Apartments, the other series I always hear good things about. It doesn’t sound like my flavor, but this was even less so, and House of Five Leaves is a great series so far.