A Drunken Dream and Other Stories

The 1970s marked a turning point in the development of shojo manga, as the first time in the medium’s history that a significant number of women were working in the field. These “founding mothers” weren’t the first female manga artists; Machiko Hasegawa was an early pioneer with Sazae-san,^[1] a comic strip that first appeared in her hometown newspaper in 1946, followed in the 1950s by such artists as Masako Watanabe, who debuted in 1952 with Suama-chan, Hideko Mizuno, who debuted in 1956 with Akakke Pony (Red-Haired Pony),^[2] and Miyako Maki, who debuted in 1957 with Hahakoi Waltz (Mother’s Love Waltz). Beginning in the mid-1960s and continuing throughout the 1970s, more female creators entered the profession, thus beginning the quiet transformation of shojo manga from sentimental stories for very young readers to a vibrant medium that spoke directly to the concerns and desires of teenage girls.

Several figures played an important role in affecting this transformation. One was Osamu Tezuka, whose Princess Knight (1954)^[3] is often erroneously described as “the first shojo manga.” (Shojo manga, in fact, dates to the beginning of the twentieth century, when magazines such as Shojo Sekai, or Girls’ World, featured comics alongside stories, articles, and illustrations.) An affectionate pastiche of Walt Disney, Zorro, and Takarazuka plays, Tezuka’s gender-bending story focused on a princess with two hearts — one female, one male — who becomes a masked crusader to save her kingdom from falling into the hands of a wicked nobleman. However conventional the ending seems now — Princess Sapphire eventually marries the prince of her dreams and hangs up her sword — the story was a rare example of a long-form adventure for girls; well into the 1950s, most shojo manga featured plotlines reminiscent of Victorian children’s literature, filled with young, imperiled heroines buffeted by fate until happily reunited with their families.

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May MMF: Roundtable on To Terra

Discussion and debate: they’re the essence of any good book club, whether the group focuses on British murder mysteries, Oprah’s favorites, obscure Russian literature, or, yes, manga. As part of the May Manga Movable Feast, therefore, I invited all MMF participants to participate in an informal round table discussion of To Terra. Four reviewers accepted my offer: Anna (TangognaT), Johanna Draper Carlson (Comics Worth Reading), Rob McMonigal (Panel Patter), and David Welsh (The Manga Curmudgeon). Below is a transcript of our conversation, as we address adolescent yearning, evil supercomputers, and the difficulties of marketing classic shojo to American readers.

KATE: To Terra addresses a number of common science fiction themes, from fear of destroying the Earth to fear of artificial intelligence surpassing human. Which of the series’ themes was most resonant for you as a reader and why?

ANNA: I think the sci-fi theme I enjoyed the most was the exploration of the regulation of childhood and adolescence. The society that Jomy was raised in is engineered to produce the perfect citizen. Everything seems fine on the surface, but the cracks in the perfect society quickly appear as the Mu are introduced as the next stage of the human race: physically imperfect but possessing psychic powers. By showing Jomy’s transition away from the regimented society that raised him as well as the struggles of the entrenched chosen elites like Keith and Shiroe, Takemiya builds a story that is as much about sociology as it is about science fiction. To Terra reminded me a lot of the work of Ursula LeGuin, one of my favorite science fiction authors who often bases her work around a sociological or anthropological thought experiment.

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May MMF: A, A’ and They Were Eleven

Though Vertical has published two series by Keiko Takemiya, the Magnificent 49ers’ work remains largely unavailable in English, with a few exceptions: Yasuko Aoike’s From Eroica With Love (which debuted in 1976 in Akita Shoten), and Moto Hagio’s short stories “A, A’ [A, A Prime],” “4/4 [Quatre/Quarts],” “X+Y,” and “They Were Eleven.”* These four stories comprise a mere 330 pages of material, but they offer readers a window into a key stage in shojo manga’s development, when women artists began pushing the medium in new directions, visually and thematically. Hagio’s work, like Takemiya’s, is unabashedly Romantic, filled with yearning characters who are struggling to uncover their true selves, even when that quest puts them at odds with societal norms. Though there is an intense, adolescent sensibility to some of her stories, that — for me, at least — is part of their beauty; Hagio clearly remembers what it feels like to be sixteen or eighteen, yet the way she frames those emotions is so exquisite and refined that the reader can appreciate her craft, even if the drama seems a little overripe from an adult perspective.

If you’ve been curious about what Takemiya’s peers were doing while she was writing To Terra and Song of the Wind and the Trees, or are wondering what to expect if you purchase Hagio’s A Drunken Dream this fall, read on.
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