Flying Witch Vol. 1

By Chihiro Ishizuka
Translation: Melissa Tanaka

On first hearing of its premise, Flying Witch sounded like secondhand Hayao Miyazaki. A teenage witch in training “packs up her belongings (including a black cat familiar) and moves in with her distant cousins in rural Aomori to complete her training and become a full-fledged witch.” But the manga is actually closer to the popular Yotsuba&!, with the lead character Makoto Kowata as the oddball outsider inserted into the lives of a nondescript family. The magic she occasionally demonstrates is mostly played for comedic effect. Every mundane thing is a source of wonder to her. Creator Chihiro Ishizuka even draws in a streamlined style reminiscent of Kiyohiko Azuma.

With a story like this, a lot depends on the lead character. This is where Flying Witch falls short. As mentioned above, Makoto doesn’t perform a lot of magic. She’s actually not supposed to talk about her abilities to the uninitiated. But the irrepressible Makoto immediately babbles to a classmate she only just met. And her one act of flying in this volume occurs when she puts a broom through its paces at the local market. Those particular scenes make an impact early on. But Makoto isn’t eccentric enough a personality to pull it off every time. Her primary character trait is that she easily gets lost. This plays to diminishing returns every time its used. And it doesn’t help that the people around her, especially most of the members of her host family, can be a little blasé about Makoto’s novice witch status.

Thankfully, the story picks up steam later when members of the magical community show up. A creature called the Harbinger of Spring looks like someone who came out of a Miyazaki feature. And a much more experienced witch drops by to demonstrate how to pull off an ancient spell to Makoto.

It's still not enough to enliven the ordinary setting. Ishizuka is sparing with the use of hyper-detailed backgrounds. The page layouts are pretty boring: rectangular panels composed mostly of talking heads, arranged in two or three tiers. The main characters are very similar in appearance and facial expression. Only Makoto’s ten year old cousin exhibits more varied reactions than the rest of her family. That’s because she’s the only one young enough to be still astonished by the revelation that witches are real, and one of them is now living under the same roof. As far as these opening chapters are concerned, Ishizuka still seems to be working out how to achieve the proper balance between the supernatural and the mundane.

Love and Lies Vol. 1

By Musawo
Translation: Jennifer Ward
Letters: Daniel Cy
Cover Design: Phil Balsman

At first glance Love and Lies possesses an interesting premise. To combat declining birth rates (an issue of real concern in present-day Japan) the Japanese government enacted the “Yukari Law.” The state was empowered to match every single 16 year old with each other into arranged marriages for the purpose of optimizing procreation. The law didn’t just aim to stabilize the Japanese population, but to improve it through the use of eugenics. Basically, the government has the genetic information of every citizen on file in order to to find the best possible marriage partner for every individual. At the beginning of the manga, members of the original generation affected by the law (known as the “Yukari Generation”) have grown up and are presently raising children of their own. The program is widely touted as a success, and their offspring have been declared to be “mentally and physically gifted.” Those children who're coming of age are currently receiving their government approved marriage notices. But will this generation prove to be as acquiescent as their parents?

Anyone raised to cherish ideals like “democracy” or “inclusiveness” will be horrified at the prospect of living in such a xenophobic and oppressively heteronormative society. They would probably compare the story's premise to fictional dystopias like Brave New World or The Handmaid's Tale. But that would be very very far from the image Musawo paints in the manga. A couple of confused teenagers do express discontent for the status quo at the very beginning, only for the scene to be played as comic relief. Love and Lies is first and foremost, a boilerplate high school romance. And not necessarily a challenging one at that, based on reading this volume and viewing a recent anime adaptation. The near future sci-fi elements are pushed so much to the margins that the story might as well be a dramedy set in the present about an arranged marriage involving the usual love triangle.

The introduction to aforesaid triangle is main protagonist Yukari Nejima, unfortunately named after the very law responsible for his existence when it brought his parents together. Yukari is the archetypical nonentity of a male character found in so many shonen manga. You could even say he’s actually an argument against the success of the law, because he’s as dumb as a sack of hammers. Naturally, his earnest ineptitude is considered an attractive quality to the much more charismatic characters surrounding him. This includes the hottest girl in his high school class Misaki Takasaki. Yukari’s had a crush on Misaki since the fifth grade, but couldn’t muster the courage to talk to her. However, he discovers that she reciprocates his feelings on the very night he receives his notice. Her opposite and Yukari’s arranged future wife is the doll-like Lilina Sanada. She quickly exhibits greater wit and initiative in their first meeting. And of course, there's best friend and aloof popular boy who has his own adoring coterie of female fans, Yūsuke Nisaka.

Funnily enough, there’s a more ambitious story struggling to break through the more familiar material. Misaki and Yusuke haven't received notices despite their age. And this could be connected to a shared secret they’re both hiding from Yukari. Yusuke even drops a bombshell on the reader at the end of the book. But most intriguing is an early but all-too brief hint that things may not be alright with the government agency playing matchmaker to the nation’s 16 year olds. Two officials practically stalk Yukari in a park at night just to hand him his notice. And that’s after he receives the notice in the form of a suspiciously glitchy email. Who does that in real life? But this gets drowned out by Yukari’s unceasingly inane dithering,  the awkward and inappropriate conversations between the two female leads about what makes Yukari such a catch, the fanservice oriented art surrounding Lilina and Misaki, or Musawo’s not so subtle fetish for getting characters to engage in big, sloppy kisses. Yum.

As gross as that last part sounds, it does point to what’s good about the story. Love and Lies may be weak in the world-building department, and its social analysis is at best, insubstantial. But at least it gets one thing right about its characters. They’re still horny teenagers. No matter how jaded they claim to be, they're grappling with emotions brought on by puberty. Given half the chance, some will even flout authority by sticking their tongues down each other's throats.

Batman: The Jiro Kuwata Batmanga Vol. 1

By Jiro Kuwata, translated by Sheldon Drzka, lettered by Wes Abbott
Batman & Robin created by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, Jerry Robinson

Originally serialised from 1966-1967 in Shonen King magazine to capitalise on the popularity of the Batman television series, the Batman manga would be rediscovered in 2008 by Chip Kidd, who would make it the centerpiece of his book Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan. Despite being well-received, Kidd was criticised for failing to credit the manga’s creator Jiro Kuwata. So for comic fans, it’s a little more gratifying to see DC release the first volume of a planned complete run for the manga in a format that more closely preserves the content of the original. But fans of the current incarnation of Batman or of today’s manga are probably going to find this comic slightly strange. This isn’t the brooding protagonist cloaked in black. Nor is the art going to remind anyone of today’s manga populated by delicately drawn bishonen and bishojo types. This is a solidly-executed boy’s action adventure of the period. But for someone like me, there’s something familiar and comforting about its simplicity.

To begin, this is a superhero comic that still displays the genre’s early circus roots. Batman and Robin don a variation of the traditional tights that they wore for decades before the duo started bulking themselves up with body armour. Long before superheroes were granted bodybuilder physiques, Batman and Robin were portrayed as lithe athletes. And this works for the kind of storytelling Kuwata employs. The duo are usually shown leaping off buildings, swinging on ropes, running at top speed, tossing and kicking their enemies, dodging bullets. This classic staging of fight choreography really helps to ground the characters in real physical exertion. By today’s standards Kuwata’s style is rather minimal. But it’s primary virtue is in how it captures the dynamism of its protagonists. The clarity and pacing of the action keeps what are sometimes wordy panels from slowing down the story.

The stories themselves, which mimic the 3-act structure of a television episode, are also fairly episodic, with Batman and Robin battling a succession of villains-of-the-week. Two of them (Lord Death Man and Doctor Faceless) were lifted from the manga’s American counterparts, but none of them could be described as an essential member of Batman’s rogues gallery. The plots and characterisations are now fairly predictable, with many of the tropes seen here having been used many times since the 60s. What I found surprising was the science-based nature of the antagonists. Like many readers, I’ve become accustomed to the horror/crime themed interpretation of Batman’s more popular arch-foes as well as Batman himself being portrayed as a psychologically scarred individual. But Kuwata’s stories reflect the post-War fascination with science and technology gone amuck. So the manga's always flamboyant villains tend to be hucksters, mad inventors, or freaks of nature rather than the more familiar assortment of mobsters, assassins, mass murderers, or serial killers. The only thing missing here are angst-ridden individuals transmogrified after being bathed in radiation.

This results in a very different kind of Batman. Rather than the urban avenger waging a one-man-war against crime in Gotham or the control freak who plans for every outcome, we have a Batman who initially stumbles when confronting a new villain’s MO for the first time. He starts out at a clear disadvantage dealing with their unfamiliar technology since he has no way to counter it. And while he eventually finds a way to win, he's far from infallible. This isn’t Batman the Dark Knight, but closer to Batman the problem-solving Science Hero. Admittedly, this plays to some of my more nostalgic instincts.

Give My Regards to Black Jack Vol. 1-3

Created by Shuho Sato

Having given the nod to Osamu Tezuka’s classic creation, Give My Regards to Black Jack goes in a different direction from its predecessor. While they both have a doctor as their main protagonist, the latter series is set in the more down-to-earth milieu of Japan’s healthcare system. The manga’s intent of exposing its flaws falls into familiar territory of the individual fighting a corrupt system. It’s a curious blend of serious social critique and manga tropes.

Author Shuho Sato front-loads the story with a bevy of statistics in order to impress on the reader the true scale of the country’s health care industry. Eight thousand students graduate from medical school annually and go on to become interns for two years at various teaching hospitals. Interns are overworked and underpaid, forcing many to take up part time jobs elsewhere despite a chronic lack of sleep. Our hero Eijiro Saito graduated from Eiroku University, the manga’s equivalent to Harvard, and is interning at the university hospital. The guy starts his career full of pep, boasting of surviving on only two hours of sleep a night. But he’s dirt poor, so he moonlights at the E.R. of an affiliated hospital. While there, his naive outlook is quickly shattered. He learns that the E.R. only accepts traffic accident victims due to a legal loophole that allows the hospital to overcharge to the patient’s insurance policy. Japanese hospitals are usually understaffed and Saito has to operate on patients he has no business treating without proper training. When he objects after being forced to deal with a particularly gristly accident victim, his immediate superior tells him “...if he’s got to die, you might as well cut his abdomen open...”

Things aren’t much better at Eiroku. Once his rotation training begins, he’s exposed to the unseemly underbelly of hospital administration. Surgical procedures are decided on dollars and cents as much as they are on the patient’s welfare. University professors are often revealed to be incompetent or indifferent doctors. Bureaucracy is often a hindrance and leads to interdepartmental conflict. It’s all pretty demoralizing. But what particularly offends Saito is the old boys network (Japanese medicine here is very much a male-dominated world) that informally links the nation’s hospitals to its medical schools, creating a kind of industry-wide web he disparagingly labels the “medical mafia.” Doctors obsessed with social climbing and prestigious positions often obscure the advancement of more qualified physicians.

None of this would be strange to people who regularly consume medical dramas. But Sato backs it up with liberal sprinklings of facts and figures. His storytelling has a certain muckracking quality, and for all I know he may have an axe to grind. With each department rotation, Saito gets involved in cases were his personal ethics often conflict with the orders of the department heads. These dilemmas seem grounded enough to be based on actual events. The hospital settings are lovingly rendered in detailed realism, which can be disconcerting to more squeamish readers when Sato illustrates several medical procedures. While I’m not qualified to comment on the accuracy of his research or the merit of his arguments, his characterizations often lack subtlety. Baby-faced Saito seems to only function through extreme moods, swinging wildly from joy to despair. In many ways, he’s your typical hot-blooded shonen protagonist. And the doctors can be distinguished by how they’re visually portrayed: The doctors Sato disagrees with all look haughty and a bit affected. The good doctors are naturally all rebels possessing rugged facial features which he loves to draw in extreme closeups just as they’re staring into the distance while wearing an expression of fierce determination.

Sato can sometimes be dismissive. Even when his antagonists put forth arguments that deserve a more considered response, he employs his art to present them as venal, condescending towards patients and subordinates, and self-serving. They’re the villains, they’re wrong, and Sato brooks no room for more nuanced take on the issues. A chapter showcasing a doctor running a private clinic as being a more dedicated caretaker than the staff at a large hospital is really no more sophisticated than the message found in Doc Hollywood.

Give My Regards to Black Jack is a flawed work. Its topical focus and heavy-handed approach isn’t going to appeal to everybody. While the art is accomplished, it's stiff and awkward, and can look gloomy and oppressive at times. And Saito isn’t a particularly well-rounded character. But to give Sato the benefit of the doubt, I’ve only reviewed the series' first three volumes. Its interesting that such a dissenting voice has managed to keep the series going and I’m curious to hear what people who are more informed about Japanese medicine would have to say about it.

Sundome Vol. 1

Created by Kazuto Okada

I've read enough harem and magical girlfriend comedies to notice how creators love to write about romantic couplings that begin from a vantage of inequality. Whether it's the tsundere uppercutting her would-be boyfriend. Or the alien goddess lowering herself to the role of a mere mortal's loyal servant. Or other playful variations of Japan's intricate social hierarchy. But the unconventional relationship in Sundome comes closest to a dominant/submissive sexual partnership. Not that anything explicit actually takes place. The book can be described as one big tease. The title itself when translated into english is "stopping the moment before", which is a generally accurate description of the events in the volume.

Hideo Aiba is your standard wimpy male protagonist found in shonen manga. He's a member of the Roman Club, a group devoted to seeking out boyish adventures such as investigating ghosts, UFOs, and other paranormal mysteries. The members must remain virgins in order to preserve the club's youthful vision. To the rest of the high school's student body, they're just a bunch of otakus. But the club members also maintain high marks in order to get into a good college and have a successful future career. The club's "Old Boys" (school alumni) give out scholarships to members who manage to graduate with their virginity intact. But they also make this goal virtually impossible to achieve by sending "assassins" to strip them of it. Needless to say, these actions foster a certain degree of paranoia.

Then one day the beautiful Kurumi Sahana transfers into Hideo's class. She becomes immediately popular with all the boys in school. Hideo is no exception, and almost quits the club to pursue Kurumi. But when she expresses an interest in joining, he reconsiders. The other members naturally suspect that she might be another assassin, but are too flustered in her presence to object.

This silly premise in itself doesn't necessarily separate it from other rom-coms aimed at young readers. But the sexualized imagery certainly does. The story is characterized by juvenile fascination with prurient subject matter. Hideo's infatuation when first meeting Kurumi is expressed through his massive erection, drawn as a fairly obvious bulge in his pants. What perks Kurumi's interest in the club is their secret book on masturbation techniques. And when she confronts Hideo about it, she first asks him to demonstrate how to jerk-off, then rather bluntly states "Even if we were the last two people on Earth, I'd still never have sex with you. No matter how much you beg or cry, I’d never let you come". Hideo accepts these terms as long as it doesn't mean outright rejection. And he happily describes agreeing to this  arrangement as putting on a "collar".

So begins an erotically charged, yet oddly chaste affair. Hideo is so desperate to please Kurumi at every turn that he often performs tasks that are well outside his comfort zone. He willingly courts injury and humiliation to keep himself within Kurumi's good graces, and for the small yet titillating "rewards" she doles out to keep him happy. Kurumi scolds him for showing weakness and praises him when he completes a task. The extremity of this behavior is going to be off-putting to a lot of readers. Manga fans who prefer their rom-coms be more innocent are going to balk at the level of abuse Hideo tolerates. Kazuto Okada doesn't use any of the usual manga tricks to glamorize his characters. While they might be sexualized, they aren't exactly sexy. Kurumi's emaciated form in particular is a gloomy mirror image of the petite figure ideal found in moe manga. All the characters look awkward and twisted, and the mood is exacerbated when they're surrounded with oppressive black stippling. The situations Hideo and the Roman Club face parody conventional manga tropes e.g. the constant panty shots, the indirect kiss, standing up to the school bully, the "test of courage", and other school club hijinks. But they're drained of much of their usual cuteness. And without the PG-13 filters, this brings to the fore the teenage cast's angst and obsession with sex.

Towards the end, the promise is held out that there may be more to Kurumi torturing Hideo than mere self-amusement. But the overall mood of this volume is one of abasement punctuated with moments of real intimacy, raunchy humor, and intense slapstick. Most of the adults who read this are going to wonder why Hideo puts up with Kurumi, and it would be hard to argue against the idea that what he needs most is to grow a spine. But beneath the surface, Sundome is a work that adolescents can relate to. Lurking within it's emotionally clumsy narrative is the dawning realization that nurturing a deeper, more mature connection with another human being sometimes involves the discharge of bodily fluids.

Ninja Girl Ko! Indie Special #1-2 and Video Girl Ai Vol. 15

Today's reviews are all about the kind of girls shonen manga fantasizes having around the house - inexplicably loyal to the passive male whom they happen to share the same roof.

Ninja Girl Ko! Indie Special #1-2
by Marco Dimaano, Kriss Sison

Ninja Girl Ko! began in the pages of the original pinoy manga anthology Mangaholix in 2007. With that magazine no longer an ongoing concern (as far as I can tell. Their website hasn't been updated lately), series creator Marco Dimaano has decided to go the self-publishing route, resulting in a big drop in production values. Succeeding the previous glossily colored work, NGK lives on as a pair of cheaply-printed minis. Ironically, this change brings the comic much closer to the look and feel of Japanese manga magazines.

NGK takes its cues from traditional shonen tropes from the Eighties. Filipino teenager Anton Alcazaren wanders into the woods during a school excursion, where he runs into Michiko Yamashita, a beautiful kunoichi and surviving daughter of a WWII-era Japanese soldier. At first enraging her with his patented clumsiness, he manages to earn her loyalty by saving her life. Michiko follows Anton back to Manila and becomes his bodyguard/housekeeper. But it isn't long before her presence attracts the unwelcome attention of a shadowy nativist organization called The Kamao. While the premise sounds like the setup to a domestic farce along the lines of Ranma 1/2 or Tenchi Muyo, both the artwork and preference for combat hews closer to later series like Naruto and Bleach.

The story has not yet gotten too far, so the two indie specials are a suitable enough jumping on point for new readers. Prior events are summarized and things pick up where they left of. In order to pay to replace a previously wrecked bike, Michiko enters an underground cage-fighting tournament. She easily thrashes the competition, but is then attacked by an equally skilled escrimador. Naturally, she's also a cute teenage girl. Named Maya Luna, she's later revealed to be working for The Kamao. Much of these two issues is devoted to building her up as a worthy martial arts rival to Michiko. And she's contrasted as the short-haired, genki girl equivalent to Michiko's more reserved personality.

The change in format seems to have freed-up series artist Kriss Sison. He's more willing to break with the grid and utilize a more Japanese style of layout. The results are more elaborately staged fights scenes accompanied by more "decompressed" storytelling. And the computer coloring of the past is now replaced by more straightforward stippling. The upshot though is that the series is now paced like mainstream shonen manga, while subject to the irregular release schedule of an indie comic. This could get much more irritating with the passage of time.

Video Girl Ai Vol. 15
by Masakazu Katsura

Any knowledgeable fan who's read Video Girl Ai could have predicted that nonentity/wish fulfillment character Yota Moteuchi would end up with magical helper Ai Amano. That's how the formula goes. How the story arrives at that endpoint is what attracts the reader to a particular series. Masakazu Katsura accomplishes this through a mixture of tortuous personal growth and shameless fan service. Characters are often expressing their niggling insecurities through extended monologues. Then the scene suddenly shifts to someone staring at some cute girl's ass. The pain and suffering isn't always confined to people's headspaces. There are scenes involving actual torture, assault, and attempted rape. Then there's the fantasy elements embodied in Ai. Unlike other would-be magical girlfriends, she exudes spunk. Her tomboyish behavior doesn't make her immediately attractive to Yota, so it's a slight subversion when he begins to favor her over the more traditionally feminine love interest. Not that this hasn't been seen before in romantic comedies were the leads start out hating each other before they fall in love at the end. However, the meaning of Ai's very existence is tied to getting Yota a girlfriend. So when she begins to develop feelings for him, her mission is not only deemed a failure, her life becomes imperiled as well.

The saga of Yota and Ai lasts for an emotionally-laden thirteen volumes. But rather than ending there, the last two volumes of the series feature side stories involving a different cast of characters. I skipped reading Vol. 14, which forms the first part of "Len's Story". I didn't really find that I missed much, as the it mirrors a lot of the main narrative. Hiromu Taguchi is a Yota version 2.0, and is helped by new Video Girl Len Momono, whose personality and appearance is also very similar to Ai's. The main difference is that the emotional issues Hiromu faces are resolved a lot more quickly and with less fuss. The last volume apparently ended with Hiromu thrown into turmoil over rumors about his love interest Ayumi Shirakawa. Vol. 15 starts with Len berating Hiromu for thinking less of Ayumi just because she might not conform to his virginal fantasy of her. It's very candid for a shonen romance. But hey, it turns out that the rumors are lies being spread by Aumi's conniving ex-boyfriend. The ex is confronted. Problem solved. When Hiromu starts to take Ayumi for granted, triggering the couple's first big fight, Len tells him to rediscover what he loves about her through art. Len is a repository of practical dating advice, embodied in a cheerful and assertive teenage girl. It's a more lighthearted approach. But the relative brevity of "Len's Story"  doesn't allow much room for its cast to establish a stronger separate identity from the main cast.

The last story "Video Girl" is actually an early prototype for the entire series. The art is a lot less refined, the visual gags are a bit more obvious, the humor tends towards slapstick, and the characters' personalities are portrayed in broader strokes. Compared to what came after, it fares badly. So it's more of a curiosity than integral reading material.

More NonSense: Post Holy Week Edition

Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco. One of the best comics of 2009.

Tom Spurgeon finally posts his "best of 2009" list. This time he splits his choices into subdivisions like best archive reprint, or best first print collected edition. I'm not one to put too much stock in "best of" lists. But if I did, Tom's is a good a place to start.

CNN's belated report on the controversial video game RapeLay is predictably broad and sensationalistic, and prompted mangaka Nogami Takeshi to write an open letter protesting the stereotyping of Japanese culture. The highlight of the letter is when he quotes the Gospel of John 8:1–11. Score one for Takeshi!

David Welsh writes in appreciation of the geek-oriented series Glee. The television show premiered over here on cable less than three months ago. It's populated by the usual collection of high school stereotypes and bufoons - some highly irritating and some pretty amusing. The writing is hit or miss, but the singing is both infectious and bolsters the generally optimistic outlook of the show.

Speaking of cable TV, I'm not too crazy about Animax Asia. The channel usually broadcasts english dubbed versions of various anime serials, which wouldn't be half as annoying except that the quality of the voice acting is mostly indifferent. But they also air subtitled versions of more current anime, which usually prompts me to complain about the poor subtitling. One example which is nearing completion is the delayed telecast of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. The anime is as far as I can tell, a faithful adaptation of the manga, which is pretty grim for a shonen series. The channel's subtitles tend to err on the side of literal but clunky translations. Another which recently began airing is the anime version of the yonkoma K-On! The series is as pandering as any moe-inspired seinen comedy. Think of it as Glee with J-pop in place of Broadway show tunes, and without the sex or the bitchy popular kids. It's available in subtitled and dubbed versions so viewers can choose which is less grating to them.

I'm Going to Change!

Have Fun

Cutey Honey Desktop Wallpapers

Ninja Girls vol. 1 and Samurai Harem: Asu no Yoichi! vol. 1

Koryū meets Harem Comedy 

With all hubbub about how the manga bubble has apparently burst in Japan, I thought I would close the year by looking at two manga that combine two of Japan's more stereotypically retrograde aspects of Japanese fandom: A fantasy-fueled obsession with the country's classical military traditions (koryū bujutsu); and a more recent pandering to the fan notion that even the most pathetic males are truly special, and can even cause several formidable females to fight over him. We're a long way off from when Ittō Ogami walked the meifumadō during his quest for vengeance.

In Hosana Takana's story Ninja Girls, an orphan boy named Raizō wanders the battle scarred landscape of the Sengoku Period trying to eke out a living. This is made more difficult by the fact that he's shunned by everyone because he has a short horn growing out of his forehead. As it turns out, his disfigurement is actually a fortuitous sign. One by one, a trio of kunoichi find him and explain that his horn proves that he is the last surviving member of a once powerful feudal clan. Being faithful servants, they swear to protect Raizō and help him rebuild the clan. But more than that, they're all very attracted to his kind and gentle nature. The manga's requisite first girl Kagari is the shy and retiring type that no one expects to be a competent warrior. And indeed when they first meet, Raizō saves her from almost drowning in a shallow pool. She possess a kind of ninja superpower that dramatically increases her strength and resilience to physical injury. But Kagari has so little control over it that she claims it only works "when the man I want to kiss watches me". Obviously she means Raizō. That's what passes for female empowerment in shonen manga these days.

The setup owes a lot to the Tenchi Muyo franchise: The hero is a nonentity who discovers his aristocratic heritage while acquiring a squabbling unwanted harem. While there is a threat lurking in the background that pushes the plot forward, most of the volume centers on the domestic farce of the hero trying to broker peace between his servants/wannabe lovers. Despite the addition of one flamboyant cross-dresser, the characters designs aren't as oddball as Tenchi's. The humor just leans slightly more towards the sweet and sentimental than the wacky and violent.

In Samurai Harem: Asu no Yoichi! by Yū Minamoto, Yoichi Karasuma has spent all his life in the mountains with his father, training to be a bushi (a well worn cliche). But when his father realizes that his son has surpassed him, he sends him to train with the Ikaruga family, a related martial clan living in the big city. But Mr. and Mrs. Ikaruga are away indefinitely, and Yoichi must learn to cohabit with their four daughters. Unfortunately, he makes a pretty bad first impression at their first meeting. Despite their reservations, the eldest sibling Ibuki convinces her sisters to accept him out of a sense of obligation, if nothing else. Like his figurative ronin counterpart Keitaro Urashima, Yoichi the literal ronin has to figure out his place in the world by first trying to understand and appease his opposite-sex housemates. But the Love Hina comparisons don't extend far beyond that. Samurai Harem doesn't have any of its predecessor's wit or manic energy.

Looking at the two manga side by side, it's obvious which is far more gratuitous. The Ninja Girls female leads and their antagonists are dressed in anachronistic costumes which reveal way to much skin to be functional. But the fanservice quota doesn't extend far beyond this, which might disappointment certain fans. The manga is wallows in emotional the wish fulfillment of every nebbish who wants to be the center of attention of a bevy of pretty girls. To use the fans' own vernacular, there's more deredere than tsuntsun behavior.

However with Samurai Harem, there's a lot more tsuntsun directed against Yoichi by the Ikarugas; with the deredere emerging as they gradually learn to trust him. The manga pokes fun at his old-fashioned formal behavior, his manly code of chivalry, and dedication to an antique artform. He may not be a bumbling otaku, but the end result is that this yokel just as clueless and totally unprepared to deal with his new environment. Both manga use traditional domestic role playing as a comedic resource: At one point both male leads fall sick and the women fall over each other trying to nurse him back to health. Minamoto's visuals push the T&A element to much greater extremes: The Ikaruga siblings range from elementary to high school age; and Yoichi first meets each of  either while they're barely clothed; or he somehow accidentally gropes them. Actually Minamoto often doesn't even bother to use him as an excuse to draw many between the leg shots. The female physiques possess unrealistic proportions; and their clothing clings to them in a manner similar to American superhero comics.

While the battles in Ninja Girls are mostly earnest affairs, the lack of any serious threats in Samurai Harem means that the fights have a more comedic shonen quality. Yoichi's would-be rival is a stereotypical school bully/delinquent whose fearsome reputation has the unfortunate side effect of scaring away the girls he likes. Their confrontations could be described as a misunderstanding between two equally clueless individuals who embody two different forms of machismo: straight-laced honor vs. teenage rebellion.

Both manga manage to conflate duty, subservience, sacrifice, bravery, filial piety, with romantic love. Love means devotion to your master - preferably one that's distantly related by blood or a tradition of past service. Add some butt-kicking, female infighting, cleavage or underwear shots, and all is good.

I'm Going to Change!

Honey Flash!

Cutey Honey Desktop Wallpapers

Pluto Vol. 1

As much as the I've grown to appreciate Osamu Tezuka's importance to the comics medium, it's safe to say that my younger self wasn't exposed to his work at anywhere near the level that a certain generation of Japanese fans were as children. So I can only guess at the visceral reactions from anyone over the age of thirty when Naoki Urasawa's interpretation of Atom was revealed in the pages of Pluto. If hardcore Japanese fans are like hardcore fans everywhere else, some must have hailed Urasawa a genius while others must have wanted to strangle him for desecrating their precious childhood memories. As a long-time Star Trek fan, I was tempted to make comparisons with the case of J.J. Abrams recent re-imagining of the original Star Trek cast. But this is the frickin' god of manga we're talking about, so I wont.

Pluto is Urasawa's retelling of the very popular and influential "The Greatest Robot on Earth" arc from Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy (Atom) manga series - something capitalized on by crediting both Urasawa and Tezuka in the title's byline. For those interested in reading the original Tezuka story in English Dark Horse published this story several years ago in paperback format. While it would be considered a model of brevity by today's standards, it is considered the first Astro Boy story to be told on an epic scale. The action-based tale of fighting super robots thrilled its preteen audience while building on Tezuka's arching themes of robot-kind's struggle for acceptance in a human world that treats them as slaves. Even the world's most destructive and villainous robots are but tools under the control of corrupt and greedy humans.

While Tezuka's robot combat could be seen as a metaphor for the arms race that took place during the Cold War, Urasawa's recall the more recent Gulf Wars. Some of the robot characters in volume one are veterans of the 39th Central Asian War - an invasion carried out to bring stability to the "Persian Kingdom." As the built-in programming known as the Robot Laws prevents the taking of human life, the robots fought and destroyed one another. The returning robots have been living amongst the general human population for several years when the story begins. But an unknown enemy starts targeting seven of the world's most powerful robots for elimination. One of those robots is main protagonist inspector Gesicht, a Europol detective investigating the case.

Graphically, Pluto pays homage to Tezuka, even utilizing his star system. Urasawa is very adept at facial expressions, and he seems to have relished adapting and expanding on Tezuka's considerably large ensemble of characters. Urasawa's more heavily cross-hatched and stippled style is less likely to provoke the accusations of racism that were raised against the more caricatured Tezuka approach (Although Urasawa still draws too many Westerners with large noses for my tastes). At the same time what he saw buried in the original story that appealed to him starts to become apparent. Firstly while Urasawa is able to draw objects which mimic that sleek futuristic design aesthetic typical of the 60s, what he really excels at and loves to illustrate is that decaying Central European ambience: Old neighborhood houses with narrow streets, classical facades, crumbling castles, ordinary people at work, large family gatherings in tiny rooms and children at play.

Secondly while volume one alludes to underlying tensions between the larger human population and the more powerful robots, the human-robot dichotomy is used to bring to the forefront Urasawa's interlocking pet themes: the nature of evil, the power of memory, and the indelible stamp of childhood on someone's identity. Robots were programmed not to harm humans. But as robots become more sophisticated, they acquire more human characteristics: They sleep, dream, eat, drink, get stressed and fatigued, fall in love, marry, and raise families (Volume one doesn't go into detail how any of this works). Isn't it possible they could learn to develop murderous intentions towards humans as well as other robots?

These themes converge in the set piece of this volume - the relationship between North 2, one of the seven robots, and Paul Duncan, a composer living in seclusion in Scotland. North is hired to be Duncan's butler, but what North really wants is to learn music from the master. Meanwhile Duncan is undergoing a creative crisis which is related to a childhood trauma regarding his belief that he was abandoned by his mother. North stoically endures Duncan's constant verbal abuse and disbelief that a weapon of mass destruction could want to be something more. The conclusion to their tale, which has North managing to uncover crucial information about Duncan's past, is heavy-handed in its application of sentimentality. In the pages of Monster, this might not have been so obvious. But when grafted to Tezuka's original material, Urasawa's stylistic predilections become more visible.

Any adaptation raises the issue of faithfulness to the source while updating it to more contemporary tastes. Urasawa is a fine manga-ka and shows a great deal of respect for Tezuka's work. Whether the reader enjoys Pluto will depend on their acceptance of the particular tropes Urasawa brings to the story - a meditation on identity, memory and human nature. I suspect that most Western readers will approach Pluto as Naoki Urasawa fans, having read Monster, rather than as Osamu Tezuka fans. They will find themselves mostly happy with the effort.

Short Manga Reviews

Here's a number of reviews I've been meaning to write, but haven't had the time till now.

Parasyte Vol. 3

The core of Hitoshi Iwaaki's engrossing body horror series is fairly simple, if not particularly original. Teenage protagonist Shinichi Izumi forms an alliance of convenience with an alien parasite who has replaced his right hand, in order to defend against other hostile parasites. However some parasites are interested in observing this alliance. In this volume Shinichi and his parasite Migi encounter Hideo Shimada, a parasite who enrolls at Shinichi's school. He expresses a desire to integrate into human society. Meanwhile the Japanese government has become aware of the alien attacks, but has little to go on until they can capture a specimen.

Iwaaki's art isn't particularly polished. His backgrounds are perfunctory, and his figures are a bit stiff. Most characters' facial expressions don't stretch beyond surprise, fear, and anger. Not that they were written with any particular depth in the first place. Ironically the parasites that have taken over a human host develop far more interesting personalities, and their motives drive the conflict of the story. There's something a little off about the symmetry in the faces that Iwaaki renders. Intentional or not, this weakness actually helps make the parasites and Shinichi look far more malevolent. But while humanity may not be Iwaaki's forte, the depictions of unleashed parasites going on a killing spree are where he truly excels. The bloody confrontation at the end of this volume is a real visual feast and not for the easily upset.

Pretty Face Vol. 6

The final volume of this series brings the story to a very sudden end. The premise (which I discussed in my vol. 1 review) exemplifies shonen manga's ability to both titillate and thoroughly creep out the target audience - the fan service, while no more egregious than any other manga, involves gender-bending male hero Rando Masashi either staring at his unsuspecting female classmates, or the reader witnessing the androgynous Rando coming close to being exposed in front of said classmates.

The series has put Rando in most of the typical situations readers have to expect of the genre: The beach, gym class, hot springs, sports fests, sleepovers etc. Several supporting characters have been introduced, but dropped instead of being developed. Midway through the series, there was an attempt to get the whole 'find the missing sister Yuna' plot thread moving. But after running into a dead end, it reverted to the usual episodic format. This inability to follow-up on this plot thread may be the reason why Yasuhiro Kano ended Pretty Face. Instead Yuna Kurimi unexpectedly shows-up two-thirds into vol. 6, and the story rushes to its conclusion, leaving a few plot holes along the way, and not quiet resolving every issue.

Ultimately, whether readers will find Pretty Face endearing or disturbing depends on how far they can buy into the idea of a virginal teenage boy swearing undying devotion to a girl who barely knows him and thinks he's dead. Admittedly the sheer weirdness of the premise and the slickness of Yasuhiro Kano's art kept me from dropping it.

Rosario + Vampire Vol. 1
Rosario + Vampire Vol. 2

This is a by-the-numbers male fantasy. Shonen nonentity Tsukune Aono, by some twist of fate, enrolls in a school for monsters. He only figures this out after attending his first homeroom class. Naturally desiring to preserve his life, he decides to withdraw. But Moka Akashiya, the popular girl he has a meet cute with, becomes predictably attached to him, and convinces him to stay. Moka is an extremely powerful vampire, but her true abilities are suppressed by a crucifix she wears on her neck (Every student is required to remain in human form when on campus). Tsukune discovers that under duress he is the only one who can remove the cross, which is a good thing as he's in constant danger of being torn apart by his unsuspecting classmates, and sometimes by the faculty. For her part the lonely Moka considers Tsukune her first true friend. But as they settle into their daily routines, a circle of rivals/friends develops into the usual web of possible romantic entanglements; The twist being that most of the cast are supernatural monsters.

Author Akihisa Ikeda isn't the best artist I've seen, but he's skilled enough to draw the attractive female-centric cast and the requisite up-skirt panty shots. The manga is literally a monster-of-the-week series. Tsukune and Moka get involved in a certain school activity, which puts them into conflict with an antagonist. Said antagonist turns into a monster, and Tsukune is forced to unleash Moka's vampiric powers. I should point out that Moka goes through a Jekyll and Hyde personal transformation when she morphs into a full vampire. She also doesn't actually bite any of her opponents, but beats them into submission with roundhouse kicks. The 'necking' she reserves for Tsukune.

While Rosario + Vampire is a competent manga, it doesn't particularly stand-out. At least not yet.

Dororo Vol 1

Dororo is a minor work that Osamu Tezuka never got around to finishing. Neither as long-lived as the hugely popular ATOM or Black Jack, nor as ambitious as Adolf or Buddha. But even lesser Tezuka proves to be a very potent read. This was a man brimming with many mad ideas. Dororo may be formulaic entertainment. But it's very well executed formulaic entertainment.

Set during the chaotic Sengoku period, an ambitious warlord makes a faustian bargain with 48 demons to sacrifice his unborn first child in return for greater political power. The baby boy is born with 48 missing body parts. He is left to die from exposure, but is adopted by a kindly surgeon, who later equips him with various prosthetic substitutes (Not bad for a 15th century physician). The child, named Hyakkimaru, grows into an effective demon hunter hoping to kill the demons who stole his body parts, and restore his body. Early on he meets an orphaned street-smart kid named Dororo. They quickly establish an uneasy but friendly rapport, and he joins Hyakkimaru is his quest because he covets the sword blades he carries.


It's truly astonishing how much Tezuka can get away with. The book is filled with so much violence, gore, and nasty supernatural elements, yet feels so thoroughly upbeat. This is in part because Tezuka's art is just so awesome. His monsters and demons are both frightening enough to scare kids while weirdly eccentric enough to amuse older readers. The disfigured baby Hyakkimaru evokes both horror and sympathy for his condition. The adult version makes for a dynamic heroic figure - slashing enemies left and right with katanas hidden inside his prosthetic arms. Tezuka's virtuoso cartooning alone is worth paying the price for this book. Everything from the atmospheric backgrounds to the creature designs are drawn with the confidence of a master comfortable with his craft.

Hyakkimaru and Dororo are easy enough to empathize with. Both are victims of the violent era they live in, and both are looking for ways to rise above their humble beginnings and find personal redemption through hard work. In certain ways they're the template for many shonen heroes that would come afterward. The author's voice clearly sides with the commoners against the samurai class, who are treated as the root of all misery in the world. The protagonists themselves have a lot or reason to be resentful to the samurai class, while enjoying the freedom that comes from their rootless lifestyle.


The parts of the volume that don't deal with the characters back-story focus on episodic action-adventure. The first involves a frog monster/faced-shape tumor that has enslaved an entire village. The second is about a warrior forced to kill by a cursed sword. Tezuka doesn't shy away from presenting the carnage. In fact this book is a useful example of how he mixes serious drama with slapstick comedy, oftentimes in the same panel. By this time Tezuka had already developed an array of quirky comic techniques: characters breaking the fourth wall, cartoon self-portraits, anachronistic asides, and cameos by characters from other comics. Thankfully these gimmicks don't distract too much from the main story.

This isn't Osamu Tezuka at his greatest, but it works very well for what it is. Kudos to Vertical for the beautiful paperback packaging. I eagerly await for the rest of the series.

Something Old Something Classic

I saw the new Iron Man motion picture recently, and I actually enjoyed it. Most of it had to do with the light touch applied to the plot. Most recent comic book film adaptations have tried to imbue their subject matter with a certain gravitas: The hero is encumbered by a tragic past, has some kind of identity crisis, or is on some kind of quest for revenge. Usually there's some tedious moralizing that accompanies the story. Not that this movie doesn't have a message, or that Tony Stark doesn't have a sense of purpose. Those are staples of the genre. It just doesn't dwell on those bits. There's this unavoidable geopolitical element arising from Stark's career as an arms dealer. And he goes through a conversion experience that leads him to try to rid the world of war, or at least try not to add to it. But incessantly hammering the anti-war message would only heighten the contradictions built into the story. It's about a guy who tries to end war by building the coolest weapon in his private workshop (It's great to be rich). Still the simplistic message has obvious resonance for Americans looking for easy answers. Just don't look at the film too closely.

Then there's the the anti-corporate populist stance presented. Obadiah Shane is the typical evil capitalist who puts the bottom-line before ethical considerations. He berates Tony for not giving his personal creation to Stark Enterprises so the company could profit from it. The irony of the message (no pun intended) comes from the fact that the Iron Man character is a corporate property owned by Marvel, but was the creation of individuals like Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Don Heck and Larry Lieber working in the 60s. They gave up the rights to their creation to the publisher, and Stan Lee gets to have cameos on all the films.

I also finished watching The early 90s Cutey Honey OVA. I haven't had much prior exposure to this particular Go Nagai creation. This is the Japanese equivalent of a project meant to attract older fanboys, only without the continuity-porn and shared universes that plague American superhero comics. I didn't have to watch the 70s anime or read the manga to see that the OVA was basically a homage to those earlier works. A popular argument in favor of the appeal of Japanese comics is that creator ownership has meant that serials eventually end. But if you're like Nagai, turning your creations into successful ongoing franchises is a perfectly sensible option. Cutey Honey is one of those long-lived properties that has never been successfully transplanted to the English-speaking world. It's a bit too classic for most younger western anime fans. From what I understand she is the original transforming superhero of manga. While transformation is used by some American characters (The original Captain Marvel to name the earliest precedent), transformation has become a staple in tokusatsu and magical girl stories. The transformations in Cutey Honey work on one level as empowering fantasies, and on another as voyeuristic entertainment. Every new form is supposed to imbue Honey with new abilities, and she clearly revels in every one of them. But like most superhero costume changes, they seem more aesthetic than functional. That's the fun part of the anime. No two transformation sequences are the same. They're drawn exquisitely with an obvious sexual component.

This is more about exploiting the character's retro charm than about storytelling. The plot is pretty weak. An arch villain is introduced in episode one, but is defeated halfway through the series. The rest of the OVA is composed of disconnected episodes that leave the narrative arc unresolved. Perhaps there were plans for future episodes that never came through. There's definitely a decline in animation quality towards the end. Whatever the case, it feels incomplete. But as someone who grew up watching late 70s anime, the sustained use of a generally light tone and the refusal to update a classic character, or inject adolescent angst and Freudian analysis is much appreciated.

Pretty Face Volume One

Cross-dressing is one of those familiar romantic comedy conventions that goes in and out of style, but will probably never completely vanish. The protagonist gains access to, and is allowed to remain close with a love interest by being disguised as the opposite gender. She won't reveal her true identity for fear of being rejected. But if the relationship is to proceed beyond the platonic level, the disguise has to be discarded. There's the rub, and the catalyst for all kinds of situational humor. Think of Viola in Twelfth Night, or Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like it Hot.

While cross-dressing characters continue to show-up in mainstream entertainment, their traditional comic role has been transplanted into Japanese manga. Sometimes it's a case of playing with the appearance of androgynous-looking bishonen and bishojo: Haruhi Fujioka of Ouran High School Host Club, or the princesses of Princess Princess. But in the short-lived series Pretty Face, creator Yasuhiro Kano comes-up with a most unlikely premise for a romantic story, and proceeds to milk it for all its comic worth. High school bully and karate fighter Masashi Rando is involved in a school bus accident that leaves him horribly disfigured and in a coma for a year. When he finally recovers, he discovers that his parents think he's dead and have moved away leaving no forwarding address. Even more upsetting is that he now wears the face of Rina Kurimi, a girl he secretly likes, because Dr. Manabe, the surgeon who fixed him up, used a photo of her found amongst Rando's personal belongings to reconstruct his face. This gross incompetence progresses into criminal misconduct when he decides to perform a sex change operation on the comatose Rando, who fortunately at that moment regains consciousness. After fleeing from Manabe's clinic, he runs into Rina, who mistakes him for her missing twin sister Yuna Kurimi. Overjoyed by the sudden reunion, she drags him home where he is welcomed back into the family with open arms and no questions asked. Rando's first instinct is to run away, but decides to stay in order not to hurt Rina's feelings. He resolves to track down the true Yuna while continuing to masquerade as her.

Still with me? The real fun begins when Rando/Yuna enrolls at his old school and settles-in with Rina and her friends. He forgets to use the women's toilets, gets involved in the old rivalry between the karate and judo clubs, fends off the advances of a lecherous male teacher, makes excuses to avoid the annual medical exams, all the while dealing with Dr. Manabe's constant suggestions to get rid of that "unnecessary appendage." He initially tries to solve these problems by exploiting his newly acquired good looks and "feminine" charms, but can't help falling back on his old habits of resorting to physical violence. Ironically his actions, which branded him as a delinquent as a boy, now draw so much unwanted attention that an instant fan club is formed by his horde of male admirers. There's nothing subtle about Rando. He's the typical shonen roughneck with a heart of gold. While he acts like a jerk, he's completely devoted to, and highly protective of Rina, happy to be at her side. Rina is herself a rather bland character and no less a manga cliche. Generically quiet, sweet-natured, and smart, she was already conveniently crushing on Rando before his supposed demise.

Yasuhiro Kano has a strong proclivity for drawing cute high school girls. He gets rid of the dorky-looking male Rando in the first half dozen pages of the story. After his transformation, Rando/Yuna is shown in a number of compromising poses that emphasize his attractiveness while threatening to expose his masculinity. Look at the volume #1 cover for example. Would the uninformed person seeing it on a shelf at Borders think that was a boy? At one point he dons a pair of large fake breasts at Manabe's insistence, which convincingly makes him more effeminate than any live actor could by wearing makeup and prosthetics. Unfortunately he can't remove them for the next 24 hours, so he tries to hide them by wrapping them tightly in bandages, with predictably disastrous results. Only with pictures can characters be designed to provide fan service that simultaneously titillates and flummoxes the reader. Kano is also pretty adept at rendering comically exaggerated expressions and cartoon violence, which he uses to good effect to illustrate Rando's gender confusion and ferocious outbursts.

I don't know if it was a lack of commercial success or a decision on Kano's part to end the series, but Pretty Face reached only six volumes in Japan. Weirder manga have lasted longer than that. It's a fairly innocuous product despite Viz giving it a mature content rating. Just lots of goofy fun for young readers.