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Saturday, October 02, 2010 ( 10/02/2010 04:28:00 PM ) Bill S.  “THE WORLD’S TIME IS SKEWED.” A real fantasy smorgasbord, Natsumi Itsuki’s shojo manga Demon Sacred (Tokyopop) opens on a page-turningly unsettling note. A honeymooning couple, Rena and Ryota Ichijima, go to Finland, birthplace of a deceased music idol beloved by the bride. There to witness the aurora borealis, they’re instead treated to a more fantastic sight: a herd of unicorns galloping toward them. Hubby Ryota and the rest of the tourists suddenly vanish when they get too close to the mythical creatures, leaving nothing but their empty clothes behind. The only one to survive is Rena, whose contact with one of the unicorns “chains” and transforms it into the spitting image of her late musical hero.Cut to fourteen years later, and we’re in Japan with Rena’s twin daughters, who are being raised by an earnest young research scientist named Shinobu. “I’m the only family they have,” Shinobu explains since their mother has apparently since passed on and dad, you know, suddenly disappeared the night of the aurora. The father-to-be was one of the first victims of Return Syndrome, a “localized reversal of the space-time continuum” that causes most of its sufferers to rapidly age backwards and blink out of existence. Twin Rina is experiencing an ultra-rare version of the syndrome, aging backwards but doing so more slowly. Though the same age as her 14-year-old sister Mona, she has the body of a nine-year-old. The world-wide plague of Return Syndrome is linked to the unexplained appearance of all manner of legendary creatures, called “demons” by a religio oriented media. When the unicorn/demon named Mika (after the late Finnish idol he resembles) shows up, he tells Shinobu and the girls that the key to saving Rena is for Mona to call forth an even higher-level demon, which she can do since she carries her mother’s ability to be in close contact with these creatures and develop a kind of master-and-pet relationship with one.  From here, Demon Sacred turns into A Girl and Her Demon. Spunky Mona pulls up a dangerous creature, and he turns out to be a doozy: the Beast from Revelation (the monster that John sees rise up from the sea). Once chained, he appears as yet-another dreamy looking pop idol, only this time a living one named Kaito Fujino. This adds a further complication, of course, for while Mika is able to get away with looking like a musician everybody knows has been dead for over fourteen years, “K2” has a living counterpart walking the streets of Tokyo. You know the two are gonna meet, and in volume two of the series, that’s exactly what occurs.Unlike its typical practice of releasing tankōbon one book at a time, Tokyopop scheduled the release of Demon Sacred’s first two budget-priced ($5.99) volumes for the same day. The move makes sense since the events in the second book -- primarily focused on the comically K2 and his dreamy human double -- are obviously meant to further pull in a teen girl readership less interested in dialog about serious subjects like “spirituology,” the history of demons in our human world or the possibly sinister company politics at Shinobu’s research lab. Those of us interested in the broader scope, however, can only hope that the series returns to some of those more lightly touched plot threads in the series’ third volume. Creator Itsuki's art runs the gamut from flowery light (with all the requisite sparkles and floral patterns in the background) to darkly fantastic (check out the sequence where the beastly form of K2 rises from the sea), but the shifts don't feel disjointed. Credit the writer/artist's commitment to her characters. In the midst of all the free-ranging weirdness, Itsuki never loses sight of them or lets her elaborate imagination pound away their individuality. That’s not easy to do in serialized fantasy like this, but Demon Sacred manages it with wit and plenty of flair. A top-flight premiere that deserves to find its audience: hopefully, they’ll be able to look beyond the first volume’s nondescript front cover. (First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: sixty-minute manga # |Friday, October 01, 2010 ( 10/01/2010 08:39:00 AM ) Bill S.  “NOT ALL DOGS RETURN AS MEN, THEY SAY, ONLY THOSE WHO ARE READY.” As the companion to an elderly Australian Shepherd mix (Ziggy Stardust) who is at the stage in life when his hind legs regularly give out on him, I had some difficulty getting through the opening chapter of Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain (Harper). Narrated by Enzo, an aged mixed breed adopted by a young would-be race car driver named Denny, the book opens on the dog as he goes through his life one more time before leaving it. It is writer Stein’s conceit that Enzo, from his observant nature and time spent with Denny in front of the television, is a remarkably ruminative animal, capable of reflecting on the afterlife (no All Dogs Go to Heaven for this canine, more a steadfast belief in reincarnation) and opining on the greatest race car movies ever made.As he watches Denny go through his life and life crises, Enzo alternates between personal reactions (initial jealousy, for instance, when Denny meets the woman he marries) and the philosophical. The latter is frequently expressed through metaphorical reflections on auto racing as first pontificated to Enzo by Denny -- and also through a memorable chapter where the driver takes the dog for a spin on Thunderhill Raceway Park -- and if a few of these words read more like the author’s than they do the dog’s, I was willing to go along with it. This is one of those books that dog lovers give to other dog lovers to read, and I’ll admit to having been a little wary when one of my co-workers first offered me a copy. That initial chapter, as Enzo describes the pain brought on by a lifetime of the kind of hip problems that frequently plague big dogs, is real and emotional, letting the reader know that the writer isn’t going to back away from the hard parts of his characters’ lives. Throughout the course of the book, Enzo’s family experiences cancer, the devastating death of a loved one, a punishing child custody battle and trumped-up allegations that his owner is a sexual predator. That last almost pushed me out of the book -- a bit too melodramatic to these eyes -- though I was held by our narrator dog’s believable devotion and concern for his man. In the end, though, I found The Art of Racing in the Rain difficult to put down once I got into Enzo’s life story. Most of us who live with animals have moments at our ebb when we look at our pet and know, at the very least, that they can sense we’re feeling down. Stein’s imminently readable novel takes that idea further and argues that our pets know so much more about us -- and still love us anyway. That’s a comforting thought, even if there are some things I’d rather not have Ziggy Stardust know about me. (First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: animal fare # |Tuesday, September 28, 2010 ( 9/28/2010 07:14:00 AM ) Bill S.  “WHAT’S UP WITH HIM? HE HAS ZERO COMMON SENSE!” An unbalanced blend of sports and boy love manga, Ellie Mamahara’s Baseball Heaven (Blue Manga) charts the growing relationship between hot shot rookie pitcher for the Tokyo Elephants, Eiji Uno, and the struggling older batter Ogato. When the former gets drunk and confesses his attraction to his more experienced teammate, Ogato lays down some ground rules. “If you get a perfect game in the next game you pitch, I’ll let you do whatever you want.”No problem, Eiji blithely responds, but, of course, it’s not as easy as that. The rest of the book charts the duo’s tenterhook-y relationship through two seasons as Uno strives to achieve a milestone only reached 15 times before in the Japanese baseball league. Adding to the complication: an opposing batter named Hattori, who both flirts with Uno and proves a major obstacle to that perfect game. We’ve seen this basic combination -- cocky young talent, weatherbeaten older pro -- and it’d be nice to report that Mamahara brought something new to the game. But, unfortunately, she hasn’t. Instead, it’s the same old round of come here/go back familiar to both lovers of movie romcoms and yaoi manga. Perhaps if Heaven delineated its games more dramatically, we’d be swept along by Uno’s quest to reach perfection. But the artist is more concerned with showing her ultra-elongated male leads yearning and bickering, bickering and yearning. In the end, the sprightliest moments in the book prove to be the one-page throwaway shots of posing team mascots (Elecchi the Elephant, Snaka the Snake) placed between chapters. Now there’s the ground for an entertaining manga romance: Kumaji of the Saitama Bears and Kerorin of the Kumamoto Frogs strolling paw in flipper into the sunset. I’d be dying to see how that worked out. . . (First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: sixty-minute manga # |Monday, September 27, 2010 ( 9/27/2010 06:30:00 AM ) Bill S.  “TOGETHER WE’LL AIM FOR THE ULTIMATE CURRY!” The second volume of Kenji Sonishi’s collected absurdo manga strip, Neko Ramen (Tokyopop), is subtitled “Curry Is Also Delicious” -- a comically inapt title since we know that would-be ramen chef Taisho’s attempts to master curry will prove just as inedible as his ramen noodle making.“It appears Japanese people eat four times more curry than ramen!” the feline chef tells Tanaka, his most loyal customer, so naturally he wants to cash in on it. With his never-ending attempts at repackaging a product that only his hapless friend returns to eat, Taisha is the quintessential 21st century entrepreneur. In one memorable sequence, the cat tries to add “international” ramen to his menu: the German ramen is made by pouring beer into the bowl. “It’s all foamy!” Tanaka complains. “That’s what makes the German stuff so tasty!” Taisha explains. Elsewhere, we’re provided a glimpse into the show biz life of Taisha’s father, a successful cat model; meet Tanaka’s dad, who improbably dreams of opening his own ramen shop; and get two engagingly moral-free reminiscences from Taisha’s checkered past. All agreeably silly, though not without the occasional head-scratcher “punchline” for those of us unacquainted with all the niceties of ramen and/or curry. As in the first volume, Sanishi alternates four-panel strips with longer “Short Comic Specials.” The first are laid out vertically, two to a page; the specials are presented like regular comics pages, with larger panels. I personally find the smaller strips more visually appealing, better suited to the artist’s simple cartooning style. The key to the strips’ humor lies in the character of Taisha, who’s both blithely self-confident despite his kitchen incompetence and wilfully oblivious about his place in the animal kingdom. In this, he works as a parody of the traditional shonen theme of mastery, but let’s not take that too far. At heart, what we’ve got here is a genially surreal gag strip set in an establishment as familiar to its core readership as a family run deli would be to most New Yorkers -- minus the cat hair on the serving bowls, of course. (First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: sixty-minute manga # | |
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