Upcoming 9/9/10

There are new volumes of three very enjoyable series due out this week, according to the ComicList.

In addition to being a sensitive and intelligent look at young people with big dreams (space travel, in this case), Kou Yaginuma’s Twin Spica (Vertical) is also one of the titles on the list of 50 Essential Manga for Libraries assembled by Deb (About.Com) Aoki. The third volume arrives Thursday.

The main story in Hinako Ashihara’s Sand Chronicles (Viz) came to an end in the eighth volume, but the creator still has a relative wealth of side stories to offer. Some of them arrive this week in the ninth volume. Sand Chronicles didn’t make it on the aforementioned library list, but it certainly could have. It’s a sensitive look at a girl’s gradual maturation from pre-teen to independent woman.

Yuki Yoshihara’s Butterflies, Flowers (Viz) offers further proof, if proof were needed, that women can be just as adept at smutty slapstick as men. The fourth volume delves further into the disastrous, dysfunctional office romance of a former aristocrat (now an office minion) and her former servant (now her boss). For added interest, this is the series that’s launching Viz’s sneaky, sideways steps into the josei market.

What looks good to you?

We have a Drunken winner

Congratulations to Julia on winning the copy of Moto Hagio’s A Drunken Dream and Other Stories (Fantagraphics). As you may recall, I asked entrants to pick a manga-ka who should receive the curatorial treatment. Here’s Julia’s choice:

“I’m going to pull a selfish-license-request and go with Machiko Satonaka, another older era shojo manga artist. I’ve fallen in love with what I’ve seen of her artwork, especially the historical and period pieces and would love to read something longer by her, even if it’s short stories. I think she’d fit in nicely with the classic manga line.”

Other recommendations included:

Eiichiro Oda for “a passion and determination that are hard to match in any author.”

Hagio assistant Yukiko Kai, “who has earned comparisons to such masters of modern Japanese literature as Yukio Mishima and Osamu Dazi from her fans deserves to be more well known to the English speaking world.”

Katsuhiro Otomo, so that we can “have those lesser-known stories from an acknowledged master more widely available.”

Shio Sato, “based entirely on the fact that [the entrant] love[s] ‘Changeling’”.

Yuu Watase, best known for some big hits here but who also has “quite a number of short stories under her belt, with several small anthologies of her work published in Japan.”

Reiko Shimizu, “an older shoujo mangaka, though not of the same generation as Hagio.”

By the way, one of the entrants asked a question I can’t answer, so I’ll throw it out there:

“Just out of curiosity, you don’t happen to know if any of Ursula K. LeGuin’s works have been adapted into manga, do you? Moto Hagio’s A,A’ really makes me think of Left Hand of Darkness.”

Anyone?

Manga Moveable Feast: Yotsuba & Ultra Maniac

It’s sometimes diverting to consider what comics a comic-book character might enjoy. Yotsuba, the titular heroine of Kiyohiko Azuma’s Yotsuba&! (Yen Press), is pre-school aged and strikes me as more of a doer than a reader anyway. She might enjoy Masashi Tanaka’s wordless, hyperactive Gon (CMX), since it’s got lots of animals in it. But Gon is seinen (it ran in Kodansha’s Morning), and I’ve heard tales of some little kids being perfectly horrified by this story or that. Yotsuba’s pretty sturdy, but you never know what’s going to touch a nerve, as with real kids.

Given her various phases, she might also be really taken with Akira Amano’s Reborn, just because it features a toddler with a gun. Yotsuba seems like she enjoys a little more grit in her crime drama, so maybe Reborn might be too silly.

I don’t think she’d have much patience for her own comic. Thinking back on my tastes as a five-year-old, I can’t remember having much interest in slice-of-life narrative. I might have liked the fact that the protagonist seemed to interact exclusively with people older than herself, since those were also my companions of choice. Back then, I tended to read a lot of Casper and Richie Rich. It now strikes me that Casper was wasting his afterlife, and I think Yotsuba would click more with the Ghostly Trio. I was a child in the early 1970s, so I can’t possibly judge how any other kid dresses, but even I knew Richie looked like a tool, no matter how swank his mansion was. He was like Thurston Howell the Fourth.

I liked to read up, so my pre-super-hero drug of choice was Archie. More accurately, it was Betty and Veronica. Like the gay uncle I would someday become, I think I wanted to advise them both to trade up even then, and they cultivated a lifelong interest in unlikely female friendships. But gender politics aside, I always liked reading about their part-time jobs, their dates, and their various high-school woes. It didn’t do a thing to prepare me for actual high school, which was horrible, but it was a nice safe space in which to imagine what high school might be like, at its best.

There’s something of that to Wataru Yoshizumi’s Ultra Maniac (Viz), an all-ages, five volume shôjo series about a magic-school dropout who transfers to a regular human junior-high school in our world. (Junior high school was even more horrible than high school, but I can’t remember any specific pieces of fiction lying to me about that.)

Nina, the inept witch, meets Ayu, the pretty and poised seventh-grader who’s carefully cultivated a calm, cool and collected exterior because the boy she likes said that’s what he likes. Ayu helps Nina out with something minor, and Nina tries to return the favor with magic. Alas, Nina sucks at magic, so Ayu usually ends up in some humiliating state. Betty and Veronica cross over with Lucy and Ethel. There are some genuinely funny bits in the early going.

It might be disappointing when Yoshizumi turns her attention to romantic possibilities for the girls, but she does something unusual. Instead of romance driving a wedge between the girls via jealousy or feelings of abandonment, it brings them closer. Nina works hard to help Ayu be happy, and Ayu returns the favor. They’re prepared to make sacrifices for each other because they genuinely like each other and friendship comes first.

That’s an idealistic message, obviously, but it’s leavened by the fact that Yoshizumi’s female leads have great chemistry. Their various love interests aren’t really anything to write home about – nice boys, but nobody to lose sleep over, if you know what I mean. What they aren’t is domineering and jerky, as some shôjo princes can be. They respect girl power even before they realize how much of it Nina and Ayu can wield when they put their heads together.

Re-reading the series to write this, I see some flaws that weren’t evident the first time through, as it was released by Viz. There’s a long chunk in the later volumes with a rather generic rival rearing her pretty head. She’s nowhere near as vivid or internally consistent as the stars, so it’s hard to take her mischief seriously. There’s also something mawkish about her motives, and bits of her back story are a little on the bleak side. That’s not necessarily a fatal flaw, and Yoshizui has doled out disappointments and sadness prior to this, but it still seems tonally off.

But Yoshizumi corrects before she wraps things up, giving Nina a lovely and unexpected reward for her good intentions and occasionally successful good deeds. And Yoshizumia consistently rewards readers for sweet, well-drawn stories featuring a generally charming cast. It’s on the short side, it’s got magic and romance and comedy, and it gives younger readers a completely unrealistic glimpse into the terrifying world of junior high. What more could you want?

License Request Day: Gokusen

This week’s letter in the Seinen Alphabet led to mention of a likely excellent josei title that starts with “G.” It’s Kozueko Morimoto’s Gokusen, originally serialized in Shueisha’s You. I’ll turn to Wikipedia for the nuts and bolts:

“The plot involves Kumiko Yamaguchi, the granddaughter of a Yakuza boss, Kuroda of the Kuroda Ikka. Her parents died when she was younger, and her grandfather has no other descendants, so Kumiko is next in line to head the family business with the title of Ojou. However, her lifelong dream has been to become a teacher. While her grandfather approves of her choice, others in the family want her to become the next boss.

“Kumiko (known by her students as ‘Yankumi’) becomes a teacher at an all-boys private high school. Her class is full of delinquents, but she tries her hardest to teach them not just about academics (her subject is Mathematics), but about lessons of life, much like any ‘dedicated teacher’ story. Though she’s forced to keep her family a secret from the public, her Yakuza upbringing gives her the strength and the experience to reach out to her students, while also providing comedic relief.”

Since it will likely be a while before someone picks up the charming My Darling! Miss Bancho, left in a cage at the homeless manga shelter by CMX, this would be nice compensation, don’t you think? A forthright young woman dealing with a horde of delinquents in unexpected ways? I’m game.

And perhaps Viz is game as well, with its recent, stealthy attempts to fold josei into its Shojo Beat line.

(And yes, I know that there are well-liked anime and live-action adaptations of this series. That’s great. This is the Manga Curmudgeon. Not the Adapted Franchise Products Curmudgeon.)

From the stack: A Drunken Dream and Other Stories

A Drunken Dream and Other Stories, the Fantagraphics collection of short stories from across Moto Hagio’s career, is one of those books that spoils you. It’s so lovingly conceived and beautifully produced, and the material it contains is so strong that it’s hard not to envision who might be next to receive this generous treatment. Hagio, one of the founders of modern shôjo manga and great contemporary manga in general, certainly deserves as much of a gracious spotlight as publishers are able to provide.

We all knew this already based on work like They Were 11 and A, A Prime and the loving profile and the interview by Matt Thorn in that great issue of The Comics Journal. Thorn is back to select and translate the stories here, and really, every great manga-ka should have as devoted and talented an admirer. A Drunken Dream and Other Stories is obviously a labor of love.

It’s also vibrant reading. When you consider vintage material, there’s always the awkward question of whether this material is being republished for archival completion or because it’s as good today as it was when it was first published. Prevailing market conditions may not be especially friendly to a virtue-based publishing strategy, but Fantagraphics is just the type to at least partially ignore those conditions for the sake of the canon. Fortunately, Hagio’s work passes both tests, historical significance and timeless excellence.

The oldest work here, “Bianca,” is potent and alive. It’s about a brief, intense relationship between two young girls, and Hagio hits all the right notes. Visually, it tracks closest with what might come to mind when one thinks of “classic shôjo,” and it has a fascinating psychological directness that balances the glowing sweetness of the illustrations.

From there, it’s fascinating to watch Hagio set aside visual delicacy for a style that matches her unflinching commitment to emotional detail. Take “Hanshin: Half-God,” a tale of conjoined twins. One is beautiful but virtually unable to function, with her bright, starved, ugly sister literally doing all of the heavy lifting. The amount of punch Hagio derives from the scenario is just staggering. Her grasp of an emotional triangle in “Marié, Ten Years Later” is almost as assured. She captures the wistful sadness of a trio of friends forced apart by jealousy and individual need.

All of these stories aren’t created equal, obviously, though they all make sense in curatorial context. Having now read Hagio’s more grounded stories, I find (maybe blasphemously) that I have a little less patience for her tales that are tinged to some degree with science fiction. The centerpiece, “A Drunken Dream,” is lovely and accomplished, but the fantasy elements feel like a distraction in light of how much she can do without the extra trappings. It’s not that she’s clumsy in their execution, but the more naturalistic stories are just so piercing. Who needs jumpsuits and telepathy when you’ve got such a complex emotional core?

Of course, a little weirdness can be tremendously advantageous, as in the gorgeous, lengthy “Iguana Girl.” In it, a smart, sensitive girl builds a satisfying adult life in spite of her mother’s neurotic cruelty. The mother sees the girl as a repulsive lizard, and the girl’s self-image agrees with the mother’s. Hagio’s rendering of the iguana girl is kind of cruelly accurate, but she finds ways to tinge the reptilian expression with sadness and regret. Even with the scaly flourishes, Hagio gets to the heart of ways a parent’s opinion can shape a child.

I could find something to say about every story here, but I’d rather you just read them. You could even read the introduction by Trina Robbins if you absolutely must, but it doesn’t tell you anything Hagio doesn’t show in her stories. (“Make sure to have tissues on hand!” Sigh.) And after you’ve read them, I wonder if you’d agree with me that there should be more collections of this nature – short, representative works that introduce a creator over time. (And I’d love to see a companion volume of Hagio’s boys’ love stories. I have to suspect that one is in the works, as it seems bizarre for it to have so little presence here when that’s one of the reasons Hagio is a living legend.) I know that they probably aren’t easy to assemble, what with rival publishers and shifting creative fates, but I think it’s an amazingly persuasive way to sell a talent and perhaps open up demand for their longer works.

And since I’ve ended up with a clean, extra copy of the book, I’d like to give it away. So I’ll do one of my slapdash contests. Email me at DavidPWelsh at Yahoo dot Com and name a creator who you’d like to see get the “Drunken Dream” treatment with a brief argument in their favor, and I’ll pick a winner to receive my spare copy. Deadline will be Sunday, Sept. 5, at midnight.

The Seinen Alphabet: G

“G” is for…

Let’s start with Gantz (Dark Horse), written and illustrated by Hiroya Oku and originally serialized in Shueisha’s Weekly Young Jump. It’s about a mysterious super-computer that plucks random people from the moment of their imminent deaths and forces them to weapon up and try and kill aliens. It’s packed with gratuitous violence and nudity, which makes it the platonic ideal of one definition of seinen.

You can’t leave off Ghost in the Shell (Kodansha USA), written and illustrated by Shirow Masamune and originally serialized in Kodansha’s Young, mostly because it’s one of the seinen titles that people who don’t read comics have probably heard of because the anime has run on Adult Swim. It’s about hot cyborgs fighting technological crime in a future near-dystopia. It was originally published in English by Dark Horse, then it was reclaimed by Kodansha who’s busily republishing an early Dark Horse version of the book, which apparently is meant to mark their big effort in publishing their own comics in English.

Gankutsou: The Count of Monte Cristo (Del Rey), written by Mahiro Maeda and illustrated by Yuri Ariwara, offers a sci-fi take on the classic adventure novel. It was originally published in Kodansha’s Afternoon.

Four-panel manga can be seinen, as demonstrated by GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class (Yen Press), written and illustrated by Satoko Kiyuduki. It’s about five cute girls who study art, and it’s serialized in Houbunsha’s Manga Time Kiara Carat.

No one has published an English version of award-winning mecha classic Galaxy Express 999, written and illustrated by Leiji Matsumoto, though five apparently published five volumes of one of the title’s sequels at some point. The original was serialized in Shogakukan’s Big Comic.

Viz has published Gimmick!, written and illustrated by Youzaburou Kanari and illustrated by Kuroko Yabuguchi. It’s about a special-effects expert who helps people avoid difficult and potentially dangerous circumstances through the art of disguise. It was originally published in Shueisha’s Weekly Young Jump.

My very favorite English-language seinen starting with the letter G would have to be Kio Shimoku’s Genshiken (Del Rey), which originally ran in Kodansha’s Afternoon. It’s an awesome slice-of-life series about a college club that takes an equal opportunity approach to geekery.

It never actually ran in a magazine, but Taiyo Matsumoto’s GoGo Monster probably would have run in a seinen magazine if it had ever been serialized instead of being dropped on an eager public in its whole and perfect state.

The beauty of Junji Ito’s Gyo (Viz) is that it manages to be both ridiculous and horrifying at the same time. It’s about fish with robotic exoskeletons who surge out of the ocean and attack people, and it’s absurd and scary in equal parts. It originally ran in Shogakukan’s Big Comic Spirits. The cover image above is from Viz’s second version of the series. The first version is less sleek, but I like it better, since it captures the story’s cheesy charm.

And I’d be totally remiss if I didn’t mention Japan’s more ruthless answer to James Bond, Golgo 13 (published in part by Viz), written and illustrated by Takao Saito, which has been running in Shogakukan’s Big Comic since shortly after the earth cooled. Seriously, there are over 150 volumes of this series, and it’s still running. This is actually an even more platonically ideal example of a very common definition of seinen, because it’s got a super-cool salaryman whose job just happens to be killing people.

Was the legendary alternative comics magazine Garo seinen in a technical sense? Probably not, but I suspect a lot of its readers were adult men. Here’s a piece at Same Hat! about an exhibit featuring work from Garo.

Again, I don’t know if you can specifically define gekiga as a subset of seinen, but I suspect the dramatic stories for grown-ups had a significant audience of adult males.

So what starts with “G” in your seinen alphabet?

Updates:

I was reminded of a previous license request for Osamu Tezuka’s Gringo, which was nominated for a Prix Asie and originally ran in Big Comic.