Kare Kano Vol. 21 (And the rest of the series)

Kare Kano, along with Cardcaptor Sakura, was the first shojo series I managed to read all the way to the end. The latter series continues to be well-loved, and its English language translation is enjoying a second life through Dark Horse. But in skimming the various online tributes to TokyoPop, Kare Kano is, at best, mentioned only in passing. That's kind of sad, because like a lot of shojo manga released during TP's early days, there was nothing similar to it at the time. Manga that dealt with normal high school students confronting normal high school problems were still a rarity. So I've retained a lot of affection for Kare Kano, even as I've come to recognize it as a juvenile work that's no longer meant to speak to me as an older reader.

Like many fans, I was introduced to the series via its hilarious anime adaptation. Produced by Ganiax and mostly directed by Hideaki Anno, it was naturally a big deal to America's emerging anime fandom. The series makes it to around the halfway point of the manga before stopping abruptly. According to its Wikipedia article, Anno and creator Masami Tsuda disagreed over the comic tone of the anime, which led to Anno quitting as director and Tsuda refusing to let the series to go forward. But after reading the entire manga, I'm actually okay with that. The story changes dramatically over the course of 21 volumes before arriving at a fairly unsatisfactory conclusion. And it's the conclusion that I decided to reexamine. Warning: Spoilers ahead.

The best parts of the manga are those that deal with the rivalry/romance between star pupils Yukino Miyazawa and Soichiro Arima. In their relationship, Tsuda manages to capture something of the power politics that is the main preoccupation of most teenagers. Yukino is the school's most popular freshman student, who always maintains a cool and level-headed exterior. This hides a desperate need for social approval accompanied by an obsession with keeping up appearances. At school she appears immaculate. At home she's a bit of a slob. Then into her life appears Soichiro, who outdoes her in virtually every academic area. And he's a whiz at kendo to boot. On the surface, they appear cordial to one another. But it isn't long before Yukino is plotting to backstab him at every opportunity. As the story progresses, fierce rivalry is replaced by mutual respect, then romantic love. Tsuda does an exemplary job in fleshing out these two people's respective personalities, as well as the natural evolution of their relationship. There's a good balance of lighthearted personal interactions followed by awkward introspection that feels very believable for adolescents.

The series loses its focus the further away it moves from this premise. It didn't occur to me at the time, but a lot of the narrative structure involves Tsuda making things up as she goes along. She tries to expand the cast beyond the two leads early on, but almost none of them receive the care and attention that Yukino and Soichiro get. Some start out as complications to Yukino and Soichiro getting together, or as failed attempts to build a love triangle. Later on, some get paired off into their own romantic relationships. But these couplings feel extraneous. Then the series takes a weird turn when it dives into Soichiro's sordid past. The slice-of-life setting and humor of the earlier volumes are replaced by soap opera histrionics. Imagine a series that starts out like The Office turning into something more like Dallas. Soichiro's wealthy family, with all its accompanying intrigue, comes to the fore. Soichiro, who starts out as a slightly insecure teenager with a hint of emo in him, transforms into a bona fide tortured soul struggling to conquer his inner and outer demons. It's a tonal shift that upends the balance of the story. After all the shenanigans, the resolution in Vol. 20 feels too pat and involves an annoying retcon which changes the career trajectories of Soichiro and Yukino.

Vol. 21 is basically an extended epilogue. The first part has the circle of friends wrapping up their high school careers. The second part flashes forward sixteen years later to reveal their adult selves. They reunite for at least one day to attend a rock concert performed by one of their own. Rereading this volume reminded me how uninteresting the cast happens to be. During my first reading, I had enough difficulty following the characters. And it only dawned on me later how broadly they're portrayed: There's the artist, the talented writer, the seamstress, the doctor, the jock, the former fat kid, the moe-bait, the budding musician. Other than the two leads, no one made a lasting impression on me. They're serviceable as a supporting cast, but are less successful as an ensemble. They fall flat when compared to some of the manga characters that has come out since then. Their romantic lives aren't as complex as those in superior josei series like Nana or Paradise Kiss. They don't have the nice balance of quirky traits found in more memorable seinen comedies like Azumanga Daioh and K-On! Actually, they're not even as memorable as the cast of Cardcaptor Sakura. But then again, they don't have magical powers working in their favor.

This volume confirms the triumph of reassuring domestic fantasy over the uncertainty of a future full of possibility. Everyone lives happily ever after - No one breaks up since high school. Everyone is still with their first love. Everyone succeeds in their chosen careers. Friendships remain steadfast and unchanging. Even the old band is still together after sixteen years, and performing at the Budokan no less. It's far removed from the high school politics of the early volumes - replaced now by sweet marriage porn. And then there's the the squicky fantasy pairings that are to be expected from shojo love stories. Kare Kano isn't as adventurous as some other manga. For example, all the romances are perfectly heterosexual. But from a Westerner's perspective, vol. 21 contains one disturbing semi-incestuous relationship that takes up a considerable amount of attention. This involves Sakura, the teenage daughter of Yukino and Soichiro, and Hideaki Asaba, Soichiro's best friend from high school and now the couple's part-time nanny. What's particularly troubling is how it's described as "destiny" by the parties involved. Love is a strange thing.

But for many fans, Kare Kano's biggest letdown is the fate of Yukino herself, arguably the most interesting character of the series. Yukino starts out as a somewhat nerdy overachiever. But as she falls in love with Soichi, she gradually sheds her ambition. Yukino's average family background makes her a more relatable individual, while Soichiro's genius and bizarre family history makes his problems far more removed from reality. But her stature in the manga is later reduced to that of Soichiro's companion when the series shifts its attention to him. Sixteen years later, that arrangement hasn't changed. She's married to an outstanding but overworked police detective, she needs help raising her own kids, her friends have landed glamorous jobs, while she's entered into the Arima family's medical tradition. Unfortunately, she's described as being only a doctor of mediocre talent. Apparently it's destiny for people from normal families to be outshone by people who descend from family lineages overflowing with extraordinarily brilliant, but emotionally damaged egos. Hey, at least she's happy...

Zot! The Complete Black and White Collection

I remember that when I first read Zot!, I found myself strongly identifying with the main characters in the comic. Examined from any angle, Zot! is a very youthful work - The creation of an ambitious comic book artist, unsure of his gifts, and still figuring out the medium's potential. It's a superhero story that struggles to be so much more. It's a sweet teenage romance. And I imagine that the comic is a sublimation of McCloud's own unspoken, possibly traumatic, adolescent experiences. It certainly confirmed my own anxieties about how much the adult world sucked. But that was a long time ago. Rereading Zot! more recently, I'm struck by how much of it comes across as earnest and sentimental. The original pull the characters had on me isn't there anymore. In its place is now a healthy dose of world-weary melancholy.

For those coming in late, Zot! was a 36 issue series created by Scott McCloud and published from 1984-1991. It's about how a teenage Jenny Weaver is accidentally whisked away to an alternate-universe Earth, which is portrayed as a retro-futuristic technological utopia. There she meets and falls in love with Zachary T. Paleozogt, or Zot for short, a costumed crimefighter. After their initial adventure together, their friendship is sustained by visitations to each other's home-worlds. Zot! The Complete Black and White Collection collects the series after its initial ten issue run, which was printed in color. Other than that, the issues not included are the work supplied by Chuck Austen in #19-20. Accompanying the reprinted material is extensive commentary by McCloud himself.

At the heart of Zot! are the differences between the two worlds, embodied by the contrasting personalities of Zot and Jenny. Trapped in the suburbs and bored with school, Jenny is sensitive, self-absorbed, and overflowing with ennui. It doesn't help that her absentee parents are going through a painful separation. Like many an adolescent in her situation, Jenny possesses a strong impulse to escape into fantasy. But in her case she can literally step into a different world. Zot's Earth has none of the problems of Jenny's Earth, and only seems to suffer from the occasional supervillain infestation. McCloud isn't a great artist - his figures don't always look like they properly inhabit their environments. But he manages to render some jaw-droppingly beautiful cityscapes on Zot's world. He also has a knack for designing visually striking villains, the chapters dealing with antagonists Dekko and Zybox being particularly impressive. It's a fun world to envision, no doubt. But even there McCloud's attention begins to waver. Over time, Jenny's Earth takes on greater prominence. Whether this is a reflection of McCloud's evolving interests, or perhaps due to the use of photo references, her Earth looks more nuanced and textured. Its natural beauty only makes Zot's more advanced world seem cold and antiseptic by comparison. And the problems posed by its flamboyant rogues gallery seem somewhat abstract next to the emotional hang-ups of Jenny and her friends. My younger self certainly felt greater resonance with the scenes of her bemoaning stuff like math homework, though those sentiments have become far removed nowadays.

One story that retains much of its emotional impact is "The Season of Dreams". Jenny wakes up to find that Zot is a figment of her imagination inspired by a television show. She's also been undergoing psychiatric treatment for her hallucinations. While this is eventually proven to be part of an elaborate ruse, it goes to the crux of Jenny's relationship with Zot and his world. Without his presence, Jenny has a complete breakdown that underlines just how dependent on him she's become, and to how desperately she wants, or needs, to escape reality. McCloud manages to convey Jenny's emotional fragility with wonderful conviction, and it remains the most powerful expression of despair and hopelessness found in the comic.

Zot himself comes across as a less interesting character with time. If Jenny always walks around as if crushed by defeat, Zot's default mode is pure ebullience. His optimism and self-confidence are a salve to Jenny's misery, and frankly that's a relief at times. But he's neither capable of maturing or being corrupted. That works in the earlier chapters when he's operating on his world. He's practically invincible there. But even when the tone of the series shifts and Zot experiences loss in "The Ghost in the Machine", he maintains his cheery attitude to the point of sounding amnesic. This dissonance increases when he operates on Jenny's Earth. In response to a question on whether he's ever been disappointed, he responds matter-of-factly "Haven't been so far." That's an odd answer from someone whose early efforts at being a do-gooder on Jenny's Earth have all been mixed at best. It seems that McCloud was signaling his unwillingness to follow the contemporaneous "grim and gritty" superhero trend, which is fine. But as the series becomes more realistic in its outlook, Zot's static nature becomes all the more incongruous.

A most curious experiment happens in the story "Ring in the New", a new year's party taking place in Zot's Earth. When Woody, Zot's rival for Jenny's affections, begins to examine the differences between the two worlds, he notices glaring inconsistencies. His findings are rather disturbing: "It's like someone went rummaging around in history and just took out all the bad stuff. What's left is nice enough, but it doesn't always make sense!" McCloud however refuses to arrive at any conclusions, pulling back as if realizing that he still wanted to maintain the notion that Zot's world is a viable alternate reality, or at the very least a symbol of a better way of life. But it conflicts with his implicit desire to move past the series original science-fiction setting.

What we get instead in the last nine issues is a form of compromise. Zot becomes more of a supporting character in most of them while the series focuses on Jenny's circle of friends and family. Each of them is just as damaged as Jenny. And each of them is aided by Zot, who acts as an external catalyst for change and growth. After all the supervillains and high-tech action in the previous stories, the number of real-world issues being addressed is surprising in its scope: poverty, alcoholism, sexual identity politics, racism, crime, youthful idealism, loosing one's virginity, school bullying, social justice, divorce, the stifling environment of academic institutions and of suburbia itself. I never got to this point with my original encounter of Zot, which is the shame as I would have loved these stories. As it is, McCloud's tackling of these topics is usually broad and superficial. A few, like Zot and Jenny discussing sex, have a certain poignant awkwardness to them. Others, like Zot's unsuccessful attempts to understand crime on a different world, are a bit too obvious with their delivery. But overall, they are an entertaining brew of coming-of-age drama containing a dash of superheroics, and I can understand why they are so highly regarded among fans. Anyone who grew up reading superhero comics at the time would have had their views of the medium enriched by them. Zot! might not have the penetrating insight or formal experimentation of a Watchmen, but its approach is far more personable, and in its own way more effective. As for myself, I ended up adopting the perspective of Jenny's mother, a person already beaten down by life. As she watches the Zot-Jenny-Woody love triangle unfold from the sidelines, she ruminates "...and when did life become so trivial. When did all the magic go out?"

Does the mundane finally triumph over the fantastic? Towards the end, Zot opens the portal between the worlds one last time for Jenny, her friends, and her family. As they escape to an Earth full of gleaming futuristic structures on flying cars, Woody reflects "We'll be back; we know we can't stay away forever. But just for a while… Just for a while…"