Short Takes: Library Wars, Ooku: The Inner Chambers, and Your & My Secret

A unseasonably cold, rainy weekend proved just what I needed to catch up on my reading; not only did I tackle a big part of my review pile, I also had a chance to flip through several recent purchases: bilingual editions of Doraemon and The Tale of Genji, Helen McCarthy’s The Art of Osamu Tezuka, and the long-anticipated Korea as Viewed by 12 Creators. I’ll post reviews of all these titles in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, I’m dedicating this week’s column to three continuing series: Library Wars, Ooku: The Inner Chamber, and Your & My Secret.

LIBRARY WARS: LOVE & WAR, VOL. 2

STORY & ART BY KIIRO YUMI • ORIGINAL CONCEPT BY KIRO ARIKAWA • VIZ • 200 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

I’m happy to report that the second volume of Library Wars is more compelling than the first. More happens, for one thing; the Media Betterment Committee stages a raid on the Kanto Library in an effort to confiscate books found in the possession of a teenage murderer. The raid raises a host of interesting ethical questions — can literature corrupt suggestible minds? should readers’ privacy be protected at all costs? does one’s reading habits reveal anything about one’s propensity for violence? — and creates a strange alliance between the Library Defense Forces and one of its avowed enemies, the Department of Education. Iku has more opportunities to opportunity to strut her stuff, for another: she rappels down the side of a building to prevent MBC thugs from capturing the “degenerate” titles in question, absolving the scornful Tezuka from performing the one task that unnerves him.

Continue reading »

Gente and House of Five Leaves

I find Natsume Ono’s work rewarding and maddening in equal measure. On the plus side, I love her idiosyncratic style; her panels are spare and elegantly composed, with just enough detail to convey the story’s time and place. Her character designs, too, are a welcome departure from the youthful, homogenized look of mainstream shojo and shonen manga. Her people have sharp features and rangy bodies, yet inhabit their skins as comfortably as the proverbial pair of old shoes; it’s rare to see middle age depicted so gracefully. And speaking of middle age, her characters’ maturity is another plus, as they grapple with the kind of real-world problems — failed marriages, aging parents, child-rearing — that are almost never addressed in manga licensed for the US market.

On the minus side, Ono’s artwork is an acquired taste; the reader sometimes has to take it on faith that a particular character is handsome or pretty, as Ono’s children and twenty-somethings are less persuasively realized than her older characters. Then, too, Ono’s fondness for depicting everyday moments can rob her stories of any meaningful dramatic shape, creating long, meandering stretches where very little happens and even less is revealed about the characters. More frustrating still is her tendency to vacillate between allowing the reader to interpret events for herself and slapping the reader across the face with a pointed observation, as if she doesn’t trust the audience to read the scene properly without a little authorial intervention.

Continue reading »

The Manga Hall of Shame: Color of Rage

When reading historical manga, I grant the artist creative license to tell a story that evokes the spirit of an age rather than its details. What rankles my inner historian, however, are the kind of anachronisms that result from sheer laziness or paucity of imagination: modern slang, gross disregard for well-established fact. Alas, Color of Rage is filled with the kind of historical howlers that would make C. Vann Woodward or Leon Litwack gnash their teeth in despair.

The story begins in 1783. Off the coast of Japan, a whaling ship sinks in turbulent seas, claiming the lives of all but two crew members: George, a Japanese man, and King, an African-American slave. The two wash ashore, cut away their shackles, and set out in search of a community where they can live peacefully — no small challenge, given how conspicuous King is among such a homogenous population. Of course, this being a manga by Kazuo Koike, George and King’s journey is anything but picaresque, as they bump up against the vigorous defenders of Edo-era status quo: ruthless daimyo, yakuza thugs, samurai-for-hire.

Continue reading »

Short Takes: Sarasah, Seiho Boys’ High School, and Time and Again

This week’s Short Takes column looks at three recent arrivals. The first, Sarasah (Yen Press), is a time-traveling adventure in which a lovelorn teen has a chance to repair her romantic karma; the second, Seiho Boys’ High School (VIZ), is a comedy about an all-boys’ school located on a remote island (feel free to make your own Alcatraz jokes); and the third, Time and Again (Yen Press), is a collection of ghosts stories set in ancient Korea. None were slam dunks, though two showed considerable improvement over their debut volumes. Read on for the scoop.

SARASAH, VOLS. 1-4

BY RYU RYANG • YEN PRESS • RATING: TEEN (13+)

The opening chapters of Sarasah reminded me of the pilot for Star Trek or Life on Mars — not because it has anything in common with either series plot-wise, but because both shows underwent dramatic transformations between their try-out episodes and their actual runs, with casting changes, tempo changes, and, in the case of Mars, a new setting. Sarasah‘s first chapter suggests an ill-conceived rom-com about a girl who’s so obsessed with the boy she likes that she stalks him, gives him unwanted gifts, and pays him embarrassing compliments. When JiHae orchestrates a birthday surprise for Seung-Hyu, he snaps, pushing her down a flight of stairs and killing her. Only JiHae doesn’t die; heaven’s gatekeepers offer her a chance to fix her romantic karma by going back to seventh-century Korea and figuring out how she alienated Seung-Hyu in a previous life. Once back in the Three Kingdoms period, Sarasah morphs from high school romance to historical drama, depositing JiHae in the middle of a plot to unseat Silla’s queen.

Continue reading »

Five Underrated Shojo Manga

Earlier in the week, I sang the praises of Kaze Hikaru, my all-time favorite shojo manga (and one of my all-time favorite manga, period). Today I shine the spotlight on five great titles that haven’t garnered as much favorable notice as they deserve. Sadly, all but one are officially out of print or will be soon, owing to publisher closings, lapsed licenses, and so-so sales. If you can’t find them through retailers such as Amazon, Buy.com, or Right Stuf!, you might wish to cast your net wider to include sites like Robert’s Anime Corner Store (a good source for older titles) and eBay, or try your local library for copies.

5. PHOENIX, VOL. 12: EARLY WORKS

Osamu Tezuka • VIZ • 1 volume, complete

My Favorite Shojo Manga: Kaze Hikaru

In Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics, author Paul Gravett argues that female mangaka from Riyoko Ikeda to CLAMP have often used “the fluidity of gender boundaries and forbidden love” to “address issues of deep importance to their readers.” Taeko Watanabe is no exception to the rule, employing cross-dressing and shonen-ai elements to tell a story depicting the “pressures and pleasures of individuals living life in their own way and, for better or worse, not always as society expects.”

Kaze Hikaru begins in 1863, a period of immense political and social upheaval in Japan, as the ruling class divided into factions loyal to the emperor (whose seat was in Kyoto), and factions loyal to the shogun (whose government was housed in Edo, or present-day Tokyo). Exacerbating the tension between these groups was the looming question of sakoku, or isolationism, a centuries-old policy that was crumbling in the face of military and economic pressure from the West, an unstable currency, and the dawning realization that certain Western technologies might have a role to play in the modernization of Japan. Taeko Watanabe draws on the events of the Bakumatsu (or late shogunate era, 1863 – 1867) for Kaze Hikaru, incorporating real historical figures into the story and dramatizing some of the major and minor conflicts of the period, from the Ikedaya Affair of 1864 to the Shinsengumi’s ambivalence about adopting rifles and canons into the samurai arsenal.

Continue reading »