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Friday, November 26, 2010 ( 11/26/2010 12:42:00 PM ) Bill S.  “NOW THAT THE BELL’S RUNG, I HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO KILL YOU!” A snappy demonic variation on the werewolf/Hulk/Mr. Hyde transformation tale, Yoshinori Natsume’s Kuro Zakuro (Viz) concerns Mikito Sakurai, a geeky bespectacled teen who undergoes some radical changes after inadvertently swallowing a demon seed. A bully magnet at school, Mikito wishes to be “stronger so that nobody will push me around anymore” and is granted this wish by a fangy boyish creature who he meets standing underneath a barren tree. In return, the creature named Zakuro says, “I want you to cover this tree in flowers.” Little does our nice-guy hero know, of course, that the only way to accomplish this task is embrace the ogre inside him.Mikito, we soon learn, is no longer human: gifted with superhuman strength, he develops an insatiable appetite for uncooked meat and a capacity for rage that he can barely keep tamped. Confronted by the inevitable cluster of bullies, the formerly easygoing victim tells the gang of punks, Bruce Banner-like, “Please don’t make me angry.” But, of course, the dopes don’t listen. As our boy struggles to control his new voracious self, his childhood friend Saki and family try to make sense of the new personality he has started to display. His parents put it down to teen-aged rebelliousness, but simple adolescence alone can’t account for his growing attraction to the sight of blood. “It looks so beautiful to me, almost like a tree covered in flowers!” he says at one point. Still halfway between being human and ogre, Mikito is told by an ogre hunter that once he succumbs to his full monster self, his first victims will be his family. The idea of developing adolescent power being connected with monstrousness is not a new one, of course -- it’s the central theme behind a work like Carrie -- but Natsume handles his familiar material with plenty of visual flair. His ogre appearances are especially strong, with more than a trace of Mike (Hellboy) Mignola in his use of shadowy blacks, while his fight sequences have an appealing taste of early Marvel Comics to ‘em. His depiction of our hero’s desperation is convincing both in story and visual terms: when an attractive ogre hunter shows up at his school, Mikito’s need to control himself becomes even stronger. Hunters wear earrings with “serpentsynth” bells on them that ring every time an ogre gives into its instincts, which fact provides our hero more than one sweaty Hitchcockian moment. Kuro Zakuro (I’m unsure whether this book title should be one word or two, since I’ve seen it listed both ways) may be familiar, but it’s carried off with such clean-lined zestiness that I immediately found myself wanting to read into the next volume once I finished the first. A good sign. (First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: sixty-minute manga # |Thursday, November 25, 2010 ( 11/25/2010 07:36:00 AM ) Bill S. INTERESTING TIMES: As in the rest of the country, this is not a good time in the social services/behavioral health field. Money’s tight and the people being served have a pitiful amount of political clout. In Southeastern Arizona, where I’ve been working the past three years, I’ve been two periods of financial readjustment in the area. The first occurred a year-and-a-half ago when the child and family focused agency I was working for saw a major drop in referrals from the state’s Child Protective Services -- and subsequently laid off a significant amount of its staff, this writer included. The second just happened this month, with the behavioral health agency that’s most recently been my employer, laying off 140 of its workers in the region after losing something like two-thirds of its contract moneys. This time, though, I wasn’t one of the let go. I had already handed in my two weeks’ notice at the place to move to a new agency coming into the community. I hadn’t originally planned to do this. I’d originally gone in to speak to the new guys about doing part-time crisis work at night -- something I’d been doing over the past year several nights a month -- when they’d phoned me to offer a full-time job. I agonized about the decision for days and finally decided to accept it. A week-and-a-half after I put in my notice, the big lay-offs were announced. Monday, I started at the new place. I don’t congratulate myself too much on my decision -- anybody who tells you they feel secure these days is suffering from a severe case of the Pollyannas -- but at least I’m not going into this Thanksgiving with the image of a lay-off email burned into the back of my brain. I worry about my friends and former co-workers, though. Like I say, this is not a great time to be in the field where I’ve chosen to devote most of my working life. . . # | Wednesday, November 24, 2010 ( 11/24/2010 03:53:00 PM ) Bill S. MID-WEEK MUSIC VIDEO: Here's the Wondermints version of a long-lost piece of Monkees psychedelia (written by Goffin/King, amazingly enough"): # | Tuesday, November 23, 2010 ( 11/23/2010 10:03:00 PM ) Bill S.  ”I CAME HOME. I DON’T KNOW WHY THOUGH.” Though its cover (two bruised and dreamy-eyed boys caressing each other) and packaging give the impression that Suzuki Tanaka’s Love Hurts (BluManga/Tokyopop) is a typical yaoi title, the four-stories inside prove less about boy love and more about minute about quirky character studies.In “Unforgivable,” the book’s dark opener, for instance, we come in on a male couple with one of the duo lying dead on the floor, the second weeping with blood on his shirt. What happened? We’re never shown for certain, but when a young friend of the dead man appears for some money that he’s owed, we’re given enough flashbacks depicting the stresses and strains on the relationship to get a pretty good idea. The second tale, “Two in Love,” follows the young friend Koharu from the first story and provides a glimpse of his relationship with an older teacher, one that’s colored by domestic violence and uncertainty. Clearly, we’re led to think, this book’s title is meant to be taken thematically. But, then the writer/artist zigs with her third piece, “Fate of a Crime Fighter’s Love,” which focuses on a 22-year-old “subpar businessman” who doubles as a superhero. More explicitly comical, the piece parodies superhero conventions as it presents a somewhat more typical yaoi romance: our hero comes from a village where all the inhabitants have superpowers, and when a boyhood friend arrives in the city, the two bicker and compete before inevitably embracing. A much more lighthearted piece, though even this offering has its share of dysfunctional romance with a subplot featuring a young girl swindled by a scummy boyfriend. After showing us this, though, Tanaka abandons male romance altogether in the book’s final piece, “Kanaka’s Story,” which concerns a young schoolgirl who believes that aliens want to abduct her. The piece manages to be both amusing and disturbing since we’re never fully certain if the girl is imaginative or diagnosable -- or both. Through it all, Tanaka’s pen work is crisp and cleanly expressive. While the comparison may seem odd for a manga being billed as a “comedy/romance” on its back cover, I found more of an affinity to modern literary comics by the likes of the Hernandez brothers (especially in its slippery blend of the mundane and the fantastic) in Love Hurts than I did most of Tokyopop’s usual yaoi material. Those who come to this book for a bit of titillation will probably be disappointed. Those looking for more enigmatic and evocative fare may find this odd little collection up their alley. (First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: sixty-minute manga # | |
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