Creator: Mari Okazaki
Translation: Angela Liu
Adaptation: Liz Forbes
Publisher: TokyoPop
Age Rating: Mature
Genre: Romance
RRP: $9.99
Suppli v1
Reviewed by Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane

There's been some buzz about this title in the last few months, so we'll start with a quick plot rundown: Suppli is about a driven career woman, Minami (27 years old, which puts her way over the hill in Japan), whose long-term boyfriend breaks up with her and throws her life into a tailspin. Minami responds by throwing herself even more thoroughly into her work as an advertising company, but that's not enough to keep her from coming to the realization that without her boyfriend, what she has is her job, an apartment she barely recognizes anymore, and...no friends at all. She begins to look at her co-workers through new eyes after years of keeping them at a distance, and starts to reach out to them for the first time.

The manga paints a frightening picture of the breakneck pace at Minami's office, making it easy to see how she managed to lose herself so completely in her work. Even when she and her co-workers socialize, there's a frantic edge to it, a constant awareness that the work will always be there waiting for them. An older woman in the office ("In her late forties. Single," Minami observes) advises Minami not to wind up like her, a sentiment Minami wholeheartedly shares...and yet Minami also admires her and wants to ask her for advice. For all the stress and the possibility of disappointment when her ideas are passed over for more of the same old thing, Minami loves what she does. Small wonder that the people who share this world with her are the people she turns to for company.

The art in Suppli is appealing, and really lovely in places; Minami's body language is particularly good. This is my first exposure to Okazaki's work, and it makes me wish that more of it were currently available in English. (Her Sweat & Honey was released as the first volume of TokyoPop's Passion Fruit series.)

It's a treat to see a solid josei title making an appearance among the usual swaths of shojo (much as as I love a good shojo story); josei's sad underrepresentation in the English manga market isn't terribly surprising, given that the North American perception of comics seems determined to hold onto the idea that they're for kids and men who never grew up. That said, the wave of girls who discovered shojo (and other) manga and helped make it mainstream might well start to be interested in the more realistic depictions of life and romance that josei has to offer, and having those titles waiting to be found is a good start.

Volume one of Suppli includes a one-page glossary and list of honorifics, and is sold shrink-wrapped.

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6 October 2009
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