Short Takes: Manga Hall of Shame Edition

I have a special fascination with bad manga. And when I say “bad manga,” I’m not talking about stories that are merely cliche or derivative of other, better series — for better or worse, manga is a popular medium, and popular media survive, in part, by giving audiences what they want, even if that means more of the same — I’m talking about stories so ineptly drawn, so spectacularly dumb, or so offensive that they make Happy Cafe look like Phoenix by comparison. To judge from the coverage of this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, I’m not alone in my connoisseurship of wretched books; among the most widely reported panels was The Best and Worst Manga of 2010, in which a group of seasoned reviewers singled out titles for praise and punishment. To kick off my Bad Manga Week, therefore, I thought it would be a fun exercise to look at three of the titles that made the worst-of list to see if they were truly suited for inclusion in The Manga Hall of Shame. The candidates: Orange Planet (Del Rey), a shojo farce starring one clueless girl and three hot guys; Red Hot Chili Samurai (Tokyopop), a comedy about a hero who favors spicy peppers over PowerBars whenever he needs an energy boost; and Togainu no Chi (Tokyopop), an action-thriller that proudly boasts its origins as a “ground-breaking bishonen game.”

ORANGE PLANET, VOL. 1

BY HARUKA FUKUSHIMA • DEL REY • 200 pp. • TEEN (13+)

Haruka Fukushima specializes in what I call “chastely dirty” manga for tween girls — that is, manga that places the heroine in compromising situations, teasing the audience with the prospect of a kiss or a grope that never quite materializes because the heroine is a good girl, thank you very much. In Orange Planet, Fukushima’s sex-phobic lead is Rui, a junior high student who lives by herself — she’s been an orphan since childhood — and pays for her apartment with a paper route. (That must be some paper route, considering she lives in a modern high-rise apartment and not, say, a cardboard box.) Rui is one corner of a highly contrived love square; the other three points are all standard shojo types, from the boy next door and the hot young teacher to the mystery man from the heroine’s past.

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The Best Manga You’re Not Reading: ES: Eternal Sabbath

Back in June, Brigid Alverson, Robin Brenner, Martha Cornog and I gave a presentation at the American Library Association’s annual conference called “The Best Manga You’re Not Reading.” Our goal was to remind librarians that manga isn’t just for teens by highlighting fourteen titles that we thought would appeal to older patrons. Response to our presentation was terrific, so I decided to make “The Best Manga You’re Not Reading” a regular feature here at The Manga Critic. Some months I’ll shine the spotlight on something obscure or out-of-print; other months I’ll feature a title that you may have heard about (or even read) because I think it has the potential to appeal to readers who aren’t necessarily mangaphiles. This month’s title — ES: Eternal Sabbath (Del Rey) — was one of Brigid’s picks, a sci-fi manga that she felt had strong visuals and a suitably creepy atmosphere. I couldn’t agree more, so I decided to revise an old review from my PopCultureShock days to explain why you ought to read this trippy, thought-provoking story about the perils of cloning and extrasensory perception.

ES: ETERNAL SABBATH, VOLS. 1-8

BY FUYUMI SORYO • DEL REY • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

The vivid images that haunt us when we sleep seem like perfect fodder for art, yet we often produce dream-inspired work that’s much goofier and far less potent than our nocturnal imaginings: think of Salvador Dali’s unabashedly Freudian dream sequence in Spellbound (the one false note in an otherwise great thriller), or John Fuseli’s heavy-handed symbolism in The Nightmare (in which a Rubenesque sleeper is tormented by a ghostly horse and an incubus, the ultimate Romantic two-fer). These images fail to shock because they seem too mannered, too staid — in short, too neat, failing to capture the subconscious mind’s ability to juxtapose the banal with the fantastic. In ES: Eternal Sabbath, however, manga-ka Fuyumi Soryo (best known to American readers for the shojo drama Mars) steers clear of the cliches and overripe imagery that reduce so many dreamy works to kitsch, producing a taut, spooky thriller that reminds us just how weird and terrifying a place the mind can be.

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Short Takes: Flower in a Storm and Moyasimon: Tales of Agriculture

For those of you who’ve been following this weekly-ish feature, I have a programming note: I’ll be posting Short Takes on Monday from now on, and bumping The Shipping News to Tuesday. Regular reviews and features will follow throughout the week, with a linkblogging post on Fridays. Thanks for bearing with me while I experimented with various formats and schedules — I think I’ve finally found a formula that works.

On deck this week are the second installments of Flower in a Storm (VIZ), a shojo drama about a high school girl with superpowers and the billionaire who loves her, and Moyasimon: Tales of Agriculture (Del Rey), a comedy about a college student with the ability to see bacteria, here rendered as cute, roly-poly critters with a hint of ‘tude. How do the latest installments stack up against their debut volumes? Read on for the scoop.

FLOWER IN A STORM, VOL. 2

BY SHIEYOSHI TAKAGI • VIZ • 196 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

The premise: Rika wants nothing more than to be a normal teenager with a normal dating life, but her super-strength and super-speed make blending in with her peers more difficult than she imagined. Only Ran, the heir to a multibillion-dollar corporation, seems up to the task: he’s adventurous, bold, and confident, and determined to make Rika his wife. If only Rika didn’t find him obnoxious and overbearing!

What I said about volume one: “What would a superhero comic for teen girls look like? Flower in a Storm offers one possible template, liberally mixing car chases, kidnappings, and assassination attempts with romantic drama. Rika has numerous opportunities to strut her stuff — leaping from a speeding convertible, subduing a gunman — but, in a nice touch, is reluctant to reveal her powers for fear of standing out in a crowd. Though Ran is a pure wish-fulfillment character — he’s handsome, rich, and brilliant — he’s an appealing one; like Tony Stark, Ran thinks big, plays hard, and travels in style, entering or exiting the story with an outrageous gesture or snappy line. At times, Flower cleaves too hard to shojo convention, with some tired, paint-by-number scenes… Shigeyoshi Takagi does better when she’s staging a fight or poking fun at her characters, as those scenes have genuine comic zest. Flower isn’t perfect by any means — stronger, more distinctive visuals would help — but it’s a nice bit of escapism for female readers who like the idea of superhero comics in principle, but prefer heroines whose everyday struggles more closely resemble their own.”

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The Best Manga You’re Not Reading

On Saturday, June 26th, Brigid Alverson, Robin Brenner, Martha Cornog, and I gave a presentation at the American Library Association’s annual conference called “The Best Manga You’re Not Reading.” The goal of our talk was to remind librarians about all the weird, wonderful, and diverse offerings for older teens and adults. Recommendations ran the gamut from Junko Mizuno’s Cinderalla (one of Martha’s picks) to ES: Eternal Sabbath (one of Brigid’s), with an emphasis placed on titles that are in-print and appealing to readers who self-identify as manga fans — and those who don’t. Below are my four picks, plus a “mulligan” (to borrow a term from Brigid).

THE FOUR IMMIGRANTS MANGA: A JAPANESE EXPERIENCE IN SAN FRANCISCO, 1904 – 1924

Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama • Stone Bridge Press • 1 volume

In 1904, aspiring artist Henry Kiyama sailed from Japan to the United States in search of economic opportunity. After living in San Francisco for nearly twenty years, Kiyama documented his experiences in the form of 52 short comics. His memoir — one of the very first examples of a graphic novel — examines the racism and economic hardships that he and his friends encountered on a daily basis. Kiyama also addresses major events of the day, critiquing several Congressional acts designed to curtail Asian immigration, and remembering what it was like to live through the Great Earthquake of 1906, attend the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915, and survive the flu pandemic of 1918.

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Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo, Vols. 1-3

The Count of Monte Cristo, arguably Alexander Dumas’ best novel, is a big, sprawling beast, stuffed to the gills with characters, subplots, secret identities, suicides, and dramatic confrontations; small wonder that GONZO felt it would provide a solid foundation for a twenty-four episode anime. The series debuted to critical acclaim in 2004, thanks largely to its arresting visuals (designer Anna Sui had a hand in creating the characters’ elaborate costumes) and its dramatic soundtrack, which employed key musical themes from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (the gold standard for operatic madness scenes) and Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony (a piece of program music inspired by Byron’s poem of the same name).

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A Few Thoughts About the Manga Industry

The last two weeks have provided a powerful example of what happens when supply outstrips demand: VIZ laid off 40% of its workforce, Go! Comi folded, and DC announced that it would be shutting down CMX on July 1, 2010. Though Go! Comi’s demise was the least surprising development of the three, it reminds us just how much the market has contracted from its highpoint in 2007, when it seemed as if everyone with a dollar and a dream was trying to launch a manga imprint. ICv2 reports that manga sales fell steadily in 2008 and 2009, from a high of $210 million in 2007 to a low of $140 million in 2009 — a decline of 33% from the market’s peak. Publishers have responded accordingly, dropping poor performing series, slowing the release of others, and acquiring fewer new licenses; 2010 will be the first time since 2004 that manga publishers will release fewer than 1,000 new volumes in a year.

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