Mars 9

Fuyumi Soryo – Tokyopop – 2003 – 15 volumes

The House of 1,000 Manga column this week covers Mars, courtesy of Shaenon Garrity. It’s an awesome series, and that article pretty much sums up why better than I ever could. It reminded me I hadn’t written it up here in awhile. I finished it some time ago, but was having trouble tackling the volumes after the fact (one of the reasons I tend to write things up as I read them… but Mars was so good). I figured now was as good a time as any to try and finish it up here.

So, this volume. Parent issues. Kira’s issues figure largely in this volume, though Rei’s stepmother shows up at the end of the volume, promising us his time will come. Which is fairly obvious, considering he lives in a run-down apartment and supports himself. But Kira’s are enough to occupy us for the time being.

Again, I strenuously disagree with the decision made by Kira’s parents last volume. For me, this series is fairly realistic, and does a good job of portraying Rei and Kira’s feelings extremely vividly through well-written, well-considered conversation, facial expressions, actions, and the sensitive artwork in general. It blew my mind when the secondary characters seemed okay with an extraordinary violation of Kira’s well-being. It’s annoying that, by this volume, Kira is trying to be okay with it too, because she really shouldn’t be. It was even more annoying that the justification was that her mother was too sick, and needed the support. She really shouldn’t have to self-sacrifice in that situation. She should be able to get the hell out.

That’s not even really the main issue in this volume, though. The main issue is that Rei can’t deal with not having a physical relationship with Kira. From his perspective, if their relationship can’t progress any further, why bother? As callous as this sounds, the story actually treats it with quite a bit of respect. Rei is genuinely hurt by the fact he can’t get close to Kira, and he goes through quite a bit trying to separate himself from her. Kira is worse off, however, since she has put herself in a bad situation that she was relying on emotional support from Rei to get through. Plus, she doesn’t want to break up with Rei. You know.

This volume is actually painful to read, since it goes through quite a bit from Rei’s perspective without offering his thoughts. He goes through the motions of being with women, trying to find a date, et cetera, all without telling anyone how he really feels. Again, while it seems rather harsh to sympathize with Rei in this situation, the volume does a good job of showing his side, and the fact that I did speaks a lot towards the writing. And again, it’s not really belittling Kira at all. Rei’s just doing more while she’s playing a waiting and regretting game.

Basically, this series is still an amazing read, and I’m glad we’re slowly getting through the rather distasteful section of story. That the plot will inevitably shift back to Rei’s family after this is something I’m not really looking forward to, but all the same, it will still be an amazing drama that will be worth the read.

Mars 8

Fuyumi Soryo – Tokyopop – 2003 – 15 volumes

Ugh. I was hoping Mars wasn’t going to go down the sexual abuse by a parent road. But here it is. It’s dealt with in a fairly realistic way, in terms of how the character acts, reacts, and has help moving past it… except for the end of the volume, which was so terrible that it completely undid all the good story and character development and made me want to throw the volume in the trash.

Seriously! What parent would do that? What parent could forgive and forget, and ask their child to do the same? I was more than a little offended by that. It goes way beyond the usual suspension of disbelief in shoujo manga. I was really upset that Mars would do something like this. Then again, it is the most drama-filled path, so maybe I shouldn’t be that surprised.

Sigh. I don’t want to spoil this part of the story. The first half of the volume really does treat the subject of sexual abuse fairly realistically, and I was surprised by that. It wasn’t something to just be forgotten and completely ignored, and the characters really sit and look at it, and what it means to them. How it brings out inner violence, fear, et cetera.

But… ugh. That second half. I hated it. I just can’t believe that a story with character relationships and interactions this good would do that. The magic of Mars is that it is so believable, and it’s easy to get lost in its world. But not this time.

Mars 7

Fuyumi Soryo – Tokyopop – 2002 – 15 volumes

I do love good shoujo melodrama when it’s done right, and Mars balances just about everything perfectly.

Masao is just the thing the story needs at this point. Rei is looking better and better due to Kira’s influence and his sympathetic role in the story, so it’s easy to forget he’s a bit of a dark loner. This volume sets up a lot more emotional abuse from Rei care of Masao, who is a complete psychopath that always manages to push Rei into things he regrets. Masao’s point is that Rei is a lot like him, a guy that likes violence for the sake of it and has a hard time empathizing with people. The story we’ve read so far seems to have a lot of evidence against that viewpoint, but Masao’s scenes always seem to end with Rei just about to kill him.

Though he’s great at pushing Rei’s buttons, Masao realizes that Rei cares for Kira, and she’s what stands between the two of them in terms of personality. If Rei didn’t have Kira, he’d be the same kind of really disturbed guy Masao is. I’m not sure how true that is, but both Masao and Rei seem to think so. So Masao decides to kill Kira in order to turn Rei into someone he can look up to.

See what I mean by the dark melodrama? With all this bad stuff going around, there’s still plenty of Rei and Kira moments, where Kira reassures Rei that he’s not like that, Rei realizing again just what Kira means to him, and the two of them getting each other through the dark teenage times. I like this plenty now, but I would have adored it had I read this in high school. Fuyumi Soryo really has a way of bringing Kira and Rei to life, and really making you feel for them.

By the end of the volume, it’s clear that the Masao storyline is complete (it ends in an appropriately depressing way, though nothing that affects either Kira or Rei), and the next volume looks like it will address what appears to be some issues that Kira has with sex. This isn’t going to be pretty, I expect.

Mars 6

Fuyumi Soryo – Tokyopop – 2003 – 15 volumes

This volume is all about Yuji, the new guy. Here, we really see how good Soryo is at character development. She comes at it from all sides, not just developing Yuji, but slowly developing and changing Yuji’s relationships with Rei and Kira as more and more is revealed about him. It’s great stuff.

Yuji starts out as a rather sympathetic character. A new student, he comes out of the closet and admits he has feelings for Rei. Rei takes this badly, and Kira gets upset until all three of them begin hanging out. But slowly, very slowly, we find out that Yuji acts and reacts in order to garner maximum sympathy, especially in Kira. By the end of the book, we find out that Yuji is a bonafide psychopath, and his interest in Rei isn’t romantic, but rather because he sees the same type of unsympathetic, cruel personality as himself in Rei.

His disturbing personality is revealed slowly. Both Rei and Kira begin to suspect something is up with him when they begin to suspect the sincerity of his words. It becomes obvious Yuji is playing both Rei and Kira fairly early on, and he reveals himself to Rei before Kira. Kira goes from feeling sorry for him, to genuinely liking him as a friend, to sympathizing with him over a trauma in his past, to almost being frightened of him when he reveals to her again and again bad aspects of Rei’s personality. And Rei parries Yuji’s direct challenges a few times in this volume, whether it’s an admission or two about Yuji’s terrible past, direct comparisons to Rei’s own behavior, and other things.

Again, this is a wonderful bit of storytelling, and throwing a disturbing and unpredictable character like Yuji into the mix is an interesting move, plot-wise. He’s got no link romantically with either character, so I like that his presence will inevitably involve a very different kind of danger for Rei and Kira.

Mars 5

Fuyumi Soryo – Tokyopop – 2002 – 15 volumes

Oh man, whenever Soryu draws a kissing scene, it makes me want to cry. The scenes between Rei and Kira are probably some of the best kisses in shoujo manga. In the early part of this volume, after a lengthy conversation about how Kira always wants them to be friends, no matter what, she slowly asks Rei for a kiss. Rei gives her one. It lasts four pages, and has a double-page spread to die for, depicting the kiss on a crowded street, as a moment frozen in time. It’s amazing.

This volume continues to analyze Rei and Sei’s relationship, this time with some in-depth personal analysis from Rei. The story about Sei is interesting because all of this takes place in the present. There’s no flashback to tell us the “real story.” We are just getting many different accounts of what those around Sei suspect the cause of his death are. Rei is blameless and completely at fault in various versions of this, and Kira’s interpretation of the stories lend yet another layer onto the problem. But I do like that the problem of Sei and his suicide is one that can never, ever be solved, and is handled as such.

I also still can’t get over how well facial expressions are utilized in this series. When talking about a difficult topic, always we will see the face of the character react first, then they will say their piece. It’s so important, and the faces say a lot that the text never could. It really feels like this is a worthwhile story to read in manga format for that reason. Without touches like that, I may as well be reading a romance novel.

The relationship issues go back and forth here as well. Shiori comes back to haunt Rei and Kira, and gives Kira reason to try and give up on her relationship with Rei, to “just be friends.” There’s another issue at the very end of the volume, when we find out that Kira is not comfortable having sex, and it’s beginning to make things difficult between she and Rei. Driving a wedge further between them is a new student that has a crush on Rei.

While it’s obvious to the reader that Rei and Kira will never split up because they trust each other completely (as opposed to the usual shoujo manga logic that they’re both the main characters), I like that these things still come up, and that Rei and Kira deal with them realistically, together, as opposed to one over-reacting, one acting like a jerk, and one apologizing for whatever reasons. It’s just one more reason that Mars is really, really a cut above.

Mars 4

Fuyumi Soryo – Tokyopop – 2002 – 15 volumes

Mars only gets better and better with every volume. More dramatic, more sad, and more of everything I love in a really good shoujo romance. There’s a good reason why this is a classic, and I’m so glad I’m reading it.

This volume goes more in depth to Rei’s past, and we gain another perspective on the Sei incident, as well as two people who knew both Rei and Sei that enter the story here. We learn a lot more about Sei, too, and a little bit about the relationship between Rei and Sei.

Shiori is one of the new characters that shows up shows up. She immediately gets on the reader’s bad side when she begins to work hard at stealing Rei away from Kira. Rei doesn’t fall for it, but he’s obligated to go out on a date with her and give her a present meant for Kira. Shiori makes her feelings towards Rei known, and also talks down to Kira. Rei basically ignores her, but she does get a small reward in that her showing up suddenly from Rei’s past makes Kira uneasy.

Actually, Shiori turns into all kinds of crazy, the perfect shoujo villainess in terms of melodrama. After Rei rejects her, she begins performing a series of self-destructive behaviors that will get her noticed and will also force Rei to intervene in her life in order to save her. But he rejects her, time and time again.

The Sei parts were a little sketchier. We get some different impressions of Sei, and different interpretations of his death as well. Was Sei’s death a “momentary adolescent impulse?” Was it not a suicide at all, and Rei pushed him? Was it something that Rei said that drove him to suicide? Was it something that Shiori said that drove him to suicide?

There are also still plenty of choice Rei and Kira moments scattered throughout the melodrama, and that’s one of the good points of Mars. There’s not a whole lot of happy times in this book, but despite that, Kira and Rei still find time to dote on each other between all the Very Serious Conversations they have. The doting isn’t quite as elaborate as some of the best scenes from the past, but all of it only serves to strengthen their relationship more and more. I also like that, by this volume, they are a firmly established couple. Shiori’s interference would normally spell disaster in a story like this, but in Mars, it merely opens the door to the past.

Wonderful, wonderful stuff. I speak of all the melodrama here lightly, but that it manages to be so dramatic and still weave such a beautiful story is what makes Mars worth reading. Really. Every volume is just amazing.

Mars 3

Fuyumi Soryo – Tokyopop – 2003 – 15 volumes

This book. The second half is a really long race that Rei is in. Kira isn’t allowed to go, so she stays at home and paints a portrait of Rei instead. The story cuts between the really intense, life-threatening racing scenes and Kira worrying about Rei while putting all he feelings into her painting.

It’s beautiful. That’s all there is to it. Beautiful, powerful stuff. I lack the words to properly describe how great it is. You just have to read it to get the idea.

There’s other things in this volume, too. I love that Kira and Rei seem to have simply fallen together naturally as a couple, and that they dote on each other in ridiculous ways. Right before his big race, Rei calls Kira and has her kiss him over the phone lines. There are plenty of little moments, like Kira jumping into Rei’s arms from the top of playground equipment, or where Rei is staring intensely at the portrait Kira painted of him. And there’s still plenty of chapters about the two of them getting to know one another. They both take the effort to find out as much as they can about the other person, and I love that their relationship gets deeper the more they learn about each other. That’s really how it should be. It’s great stuff. One of the most ridiculously romantic comics I’ve ever read.

Of course, most of the “getting to know you” parts are Rei telling Kira about himself. He’s lived in the US, of course, and we got that bomb dropped in the last volume that he had a twin brother that died. We get all the details about that. Unfortunately, the primary source is not Rei, though he doesn’t seem to mind that Kira asked around about it. It seemed strange to me that she did, but Rei apparently understands this to mean that she didn’t want to hurt his feelings by making him talk about it, since it’s obviously still a painful memory for him.

Amazing! It’s just wonderful stuff. I feel like it’s overshadowed slightly, since I’m reading it so close to Please Save My Earth. PSME is a little more ambitious, and is probably better because of it. PSME is also one of the few very ambitious shoujo manga that has characters that are as good as the ones in Mars, and interaction that’s comparable. But PSME doesn’t have the frank relationships that make Mars a wonderful read, and just because it’s simply the story of a couple doesn’t make it worse than PSME. Mars is great the way it is, and I am beside myself with the desire to read more.

Mars 2

Fuyumi Soryo – Tokyopop – 2002 – 15 volumes

In this volume, Mars started reminding me of a more subtle Let Dai, which is a very good thing indeed. I like that the main characters are moving very fast into a naturally-fitting relationship, since series about well-established couples are some of my favorites. And even with the two of them on good terms, Mars still finds plenty of drama to play out, which is another great thing about it.

The first item to come up in this volume is an issue with another artist in Kira’s studio. Rei takes issue with anyone who isn’t Kira drawing him, and he goes off on a male classmate when he catches him sketching during one of Kira’s modeling sessions. This situation escalates, and the male classmate winds up stealing Kira’s drawing of mother and child for Rei and painting it for a festival, which he then wins. The fallout leaves Kira beating up the student in the middle of school and getting suspended for it when he offers no explanation. Later, Rei is tied up and beaten in a storage shed on school grounds for beating up a senior.

Actually, a lot of the drama in this volume is about Rei’s violence. It’s not nearly as violent and sociopathic as what Dai does in Let Dai, and mostly it’s a catalyst for Kira to reach out and try to help him. Admittedly, Rei usually has a reason for beating up his victims, but he explains himself badly and tends to get in trouble for it anyway.

The second half of the volume focuses on the relationship between Kira and Rei, and develops it even further. Kira skips school to go hang out with Rei, the two go on dates, and there’s even a situation where Rei has a panic attack and nearly dies. Rei also reveals he has a twin brother, but the story only really seems to brush the surface of the trauma of the twin brother and other family issues Rei seems to be dealing with.

But even with the drama, the character interactions are handled so sensitively, the bad things are always a chance for the two to get closer. Their facial expressions are wonderful, as I said last volume, and properly convey more in all the situations than words ever could. I think that’s my favorite part of this series. There are also lots of cute parts during Rei and Kira’s date, like Kira laughing at Rei’s comments on gossiping ladies, a scene where they rush to embrace each other on an escalator, and a kissing scene. Regular couple stuff, but made so much better with Soryo’s wonderful character writing.

Mars 1

Fuyumi Soryo – Tokyopop – 2002 – 15 volumes

In case you haven’t noticed, I have a ridiculous weak spot for romance comics. Actually, I’m posting seven reviews tonight, and six of them are shoujo. That’s a little unbalanced even for me. But yes, I like them that much. Mars is a series I gave a pass when it came out, not because I thought I wouldn’t like it, but because I was buying too many other things at the time. But after reading Soryo’s other series in English, ES, I knew I had to have it. I suddenly decided I’d grab the next set I saw at the used bookstore where I work, but of course as soon as I decided this, we stopped getting them in. I passed on three sets while I was on the fence, and it was another year before I saw it again.

ANYWAY. I ramble too much. Mars is the usual high school romance. Kira is a quiet art student without a whole lot of friends, and Rei is the resident troublemaker. Most of what I read about Mars made Rei sound like a delinquent, but he’s mostly just a reckless kid. He’s very popular and outgoing, but he also loves motorsports, and seems to take the philosophy that he could die any day. He’s not much of a delinquent in the “lawbreaker and bully” sense, but he’s not a model student, either.

Rei and Kira meet in a park, and when Rei asks Kira for directions, she instead draws a map for him on the back of a sketch she was doing. Rei becomes quite taken with the sketch, and begins to pester Kira at school, who wants no part of him. She simply ignores him at first, but he slowly cracks her shell and gets her to open, little by little. It’s mostly teasing, nothing romantic, but their interactions are mesmerizing. They have a sensitivity that most shoujo manga lack. Soryo’s art also lends itself well to this sensitivity. In one scene, where Rei happens to show up at the art studio, he studies the bust of Mars that Kira is drawing, and, very slowly, Soryo shows us Rei bending in to lay a kiss on Mars, he is so taken by the legend. It’s a beautiful scene, and difficult to do justice with words. But while spare, Soryo’s art lends the story much of its sensitivity, since she takes to time to linger on facial expressions, and nails silence and gaps in conversation with near perfection. It’s beautiful.

In exchange for letting Rei keep the sketch on the map, Kira asks Rei to model for her, on the spur of the moment. As outgoing as Rei is, his sessions modeling for Kira make him more comfortable and closer with her, which doesn’t sit well with all the girls with a crush on Rei. There’s some bullying issues, and Kira and Rei settle them in their own way. Interestingly, neither has really brought up a relationship by the end of the volume, but they’re so close. The way Soryo portrays them, they’re simply drawn together. They don’t really need to fall in love, and the characters around them seem to see it before they do.

Again, it’s easier to tell you to just read it rather than trying to describe it. If you’re a shoujo fan, you won’t be disappointed. Well, maybe if you like fast-moving comedies. It’s slow, and there’s not a whole lot of funny to spare. But even so, this is exactly the type of thing I love reading. I can’t recommend it highly enough.