InuYasha

Originally running from 1996 to 2008, Takahash’s epic manga fantasy first debuted in American via paperback collections presented in the much-maligned “flipped” format. (Where original manga are laid out to read from right to left, American publishes initially were uncertain of readers’ willingness to “read backwards” and thus shuffled the panels so the works would conform of Western reading practices.) With Viz Media’s VizBig Edition’s current reprints of the saga, though, Takahashi’s work has been happily returned to its original compositional format.

Reprinting the first three paperback (tankobon) collections in a larger trade omnibus, the VizBig InuYasha definitely looks to be the proper package for sampling this hit series. The first VizBig volume was released in 2009, and at this writing the publishers are up to volume ten. I’ve gone through the first two big books and can see the appeal: InuYasha is an enjoyable blend of heroic fantasy, romance and comedy -- with some effective dashes of horror manga thrown into the mix.

Set in 1997 Tokyo and Japan's feudal past, the story revolves on Kagome, a middle schoolgirl who lives with her grandparents by a well in a sacred shrine. After our heroine is given a keychain attached to an artifact called the Shikon Jewel, a demonic lady centipede creature emerges to grab our heroine and pull her down into the well. Kagome finds herself in the Sengoku Period, a time in which demons live more openly, and her keychain gemstone turns out to be a demon magnet known as the “Jewel of Four Souls.” In contact with a magical being, we’re gold, the jewel can bestow great power.

Our heroine’s rescuer proves to be the title lead, a dog-fox-eared half demon named InuYasha, who himself wants the jewel and was pinned to a tree fifty years earlier by its original protector, a spitting image of Kagome. (“You stink of the woman who killed me,” InuYasha snarls at their first meeting.) To get the jewel, InuYasha would just as soon kill Kagome, but a string of prayer beads gives our girl the power to make the half-demon obey her. After the jewel is shattered in a second demon battle, its myriad pieces are scattered, and it’s up to our reluctant duo to retrieve them all.

Thus, we have the basic set-up for the rest of the book: our heroine is capable of traveling to the past and present through the well -- catching the attention of evil magical beings in both worlds. Along the way, she and InuYasha are joined by a young fox demon with shapeshifting abilities and a talking flea. The final storyline in the first VizBig edition turns on a Noh-like mask called the Mask of Flesh, which possesses anyone who wears it, transforming them into a multi-limbed beast with a penchant for devouring its victims’ heads.

InuYasha’s heroine proves up to facing the Big Bads and is more than a match for the surly half-demon. Their relationship is half boy/girl and half master/pet (when she’s first given the prayer beads, Kagome’s first command for InuYasha is to “sit!”) though we already know from the first three books that it will become something deeper as the series progresses. The growing bond between the two is the primary glue that holds the series, though a few of the secondary characters (the Naruto-like fox demon Shippo, for one) prove appealing.

Takahashi’s art is another big draw in this engaging series: crisp and bright, it is capable of carrying comedy and slam-bang action as well as dark horror. A few sequences of the latter rather surprisingly reminded me of Charles Burns and Junji Ito in more than one panel -- not what I was initially expecting.

But that appears to be what the celebrated manga-ka is attempting with this series: a genre-busting work that plays with and remains faithful to the conventions of shonen manga. By my reckoning, there should be 19 volumes in the VizBig reissues ‘til we get to the end in two years or so. Looks like I’ve made another hefty commitment.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: sixty-minute manga

“A PAINTING THAT’S THE OPPOSITE OF THE MONA LISA’S BEAUTY” The fourth in a series of graphic novels revolving around the Louvre Museum, Hirohiko Araki’s Rohan at the Louvre (NBM/ComicsLit) stands as the first work in this commissioned series not produced by a French artist. A manga creator known for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure,, Araki has taken a character from that series, artist Rohan Kishibe, and plunked him in the middle of a dark ghost story abut a cursed painting.

The story opens ten years earlier when our hero is a young man studying to become a mangaka (manga artist). While staying at his grandmother’s inn over the summer, Rohan meets a mysterious and alluring widow who both inspires his art (“An editor told me my female characters weren’t at all sexy . . . “ he explains when he’s discovered sketching her, “I was drawing you to train myself a little.”) and tells him a story about a work that’s “the darkest painting in the world.” Painted in Japan over 300 years ago with a “pigment of a hitherto unknown blackness,” the work’s artist was executed and his painting stored in the bowels of the Louvre.

A chance remark ten years later sparks the now successful mangaka’s curiosity about this most “evil” painting, so he travels to Paris to uncover it. His quest results in the painting’s curse being unleashed on a quarter of innocents -- not to mention Rohan himself -- as just a glimpse of it releases the hatred of each viewer’s ancestors.

Araki’s depictions of the ghostly attacks beneath the Louvre are darkly grotesque and effective, a strong counterpoint to the brightly hued images of the aboveground museum. The book‘s effete hero (early during his visit, he chastises some tourists for not being respectfully dressed in the midst of so much great art) proves an engaging character, though not having read the original series where he made his debut, this reader wanted a little more information about his self-described paranormal ability to “read people like a book in both the proper and figurative sense.”

Unlike one of its earlier manga releases (the evocative Stargazing Dog), NBM presents Rohan at the Louvre in the traditional right to left format. Araki’s art contains a strong Western comics influence -- his figures reminded me of 70's Marvel more than once -- and contains none of the visual short-cuts that can prove alienating to those readers less in sync with manga conventions. Reading this beautifully mounted book, my curiosity about the mangaka’s series JoJo was decidedly piqued. I already know that I’m eager to read any future “Musee du Louvre Editiones” that will be coming out through NBM.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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Sunday, January 08, 2012
      ( 1/08/2012 04:00:00 PM ) Bill S.  

“THIS MUST BE WHAT THEY CALL FATE. I GUESS.” It’s been a while since I’ve impulsively picked a new manga title to read, but a chance viewing of a YouTube clip from its anime adaptation got me seeking Oh!Great’s Tenjo Tenge (Viz Signature) recently. Fortunately for my manga explorations, the series has been reissued in large volume “Full Contact” Editions collecting two of the original smaller-sized paperbacks. A “mature” readers series about a high school heavily populated with fight clubs, the manga features gobs of gratuitous violence, obscenities, flashes of nudity and fulsome breasts that look like they’re yearning to burst free of their confines. Full-blooded entertainment, in other words.

Set at Todo High School, an institution where all of the students possess martial arts savvy, Tenjo Tenge focuses on the members of the Juken Club, which is “seen as one of the weakest martial arts clubs on campus.” This situation, we suspect, is about to change with the arrival of two new street-brawling students, spiky-haired Soichiro Nagi and dread-locked Bob Makihara. Their appearance on campus sparks more than one fracas and draws the attention of the Executive Council, a group of arrogant upper classmen who also have it in for the Juken Club. The first act of the aggression by the council is to send a bespectacled creep named Ryuzaki to kidnap and sexually assault Bob’s girlfriend Chiachi.

Though Soichiro at one point arrogantly declares, “I’m supposed to be the hero of this story,” the first two books of Tenjo Tenge devote just as much space to other members of the Juken Club. First, antenna-haired Maya Natsumi is the club’s leader: when we first see her, she looks like a little girl, but when it comes time to fight, she transforms into a scantily-dressed large-breasted woman with mega fighting abilities. “When you’re as skilled as I am,” Maya immodestly states, “it’s a piece of cake to pull of a transformation like this.” (We later learn that she’s not the only one capable of such transmogrifications.) Her sister Aya is a trace more modest -- in both personality and dress -- though she is the possessor of a great power known as Dragon Eyes, which enable her to see into the future and exert her will through humans and inanimate objects. As in Naruto, for instance, this great power itself has the potential of corrupting and taking over its wielder.

Aya falls in love at first sight with Soichiro when he comes crashing into her shower during a fight with Maya, much to the chagrin of Takayanagi, her straight arrow fellow club member. As the series opens, he meets the possessor of the Dragon Eyes for the fist time and himself is instantly smitten. “At that moment,” he narrates, “time stopped dead for me, and I couldn’t look away from her eyes.” The poor sap -- just one of the victims what looks to be an increasingly more entangled storyline full of star-crossed relationships.

In place of chapters, Oh!Great’s series is divided into “Fight”s, an apt label since each episode features at least one face-to-face confrontation. A lot of these are accompanied by imposingly titled moves (“Whirling Cuff,” “Mount Tai Avalanche,” “Heart and Mind Six Harmonies”) that may be pure nonsense but sure sound cool -- plus plenty of verbal posturing. Some of this is done tongue-in-cheek by the manga artist -- who wittily couples his martial arts melodrama with adolescent histrionics. In one scene, for example, Takayanagi’s head is pierced by a word balloon after Aya calls him a “second-rate martial artist.” The taunt pushes Tak into kicking the ass of his opponent, of course -- but the moment remains an amusing one.

Tenjo Tenge has seen two editions in the U.S. The first, published by the now defunct manga line CMX, was criticized by fans for being heavily censored. Viz Signature’s shrink-wrapped edition, in contrast, contains an abundance of sweaty naked female body shots and obscenities, along with lots of over-the-top violence. Not a series for younger readers or the prudish, but definitely a treat for those of us who happily cut their teeth on R-rated grindhouse kung-fu.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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Thursday, November 10, 2011
      ( 11/10/2011 06:36:00 PM ) Bill S.  

"WHEN ONE'S MESSED UP, EVEN THE STUPID FISH KNOW IT." From its very opening -- police find a junked out vehicle with two bodies, a long-dead male and a more recently deceased dog -- you know that Takashi Murakami's Stargazing Dog (NBM) is going to end on a melancholy note. And so this best-selling manga does, though writer/artist Murakami also manages to imbue his effectively sentimental dog tale with enough lightness to keep it from bludgeoning you.

The story of Daddy, a somewhat dim patriarch who loses his job, home, and family -- but never the company of his loyal pup Happie -- Stargazing Dog tracks Daddy's misfortunes through the canine's naive eyes. To Happie, all that matters is the time he spends with his owner. When Daddy loses his job, for instance, the dog is overjoyed to have walks in the daytime; when the two travel south, living out of Daddy's car, all the dog sees is a “fun road trip.” Just being in Daddy's presence is sufficient. Everything else is just details.

With its opening panels of dragonflies buzzing around the trashed car to its penultimate scene where a bedraggled Daddy and Happie look up at the night sky, Stargazing Dog has a visual sweetness that carries you through even its saddest moments. The key to it all proves the title character, of course, who views Daddy's downfall through a childlike/canine perspective. As Murakami notes in an “Afterword,” the tragic flaw of Happie's master proves his inability (or perhaps unwillingness) to adapt to the changing world around him. Yet, ironically, it's the constancy of his dog who provides his salvation. “I lost everything,” the human tells his companion at one point, “but as you are sitting next to me, I'm strangely happy.”

The title story is followed in NBM's edition by a 50-page sequel, “Sunflowers,” about a social worker named Okutsu who is driven to learning the story behind the nameless vagrant and his dog. In so doing, he recalls his own life living with a pair of elderly ailing grandparents and the dog they'd given him for the day they passed away. In this piece, the meaning of the book's title is explained. “It's an expression for a person who hopes for too much,” Okutsu notes, adding that it's human nature for all of us to do so. In the end, the companionship of Daddy and his dog stands for something that is attainable in our lives -- even in an era when so many other dreams are being dashed. No wonder this book resonated so much in its native land.

“I myself was also saved by my own dog,” Murakami writes in his “Afterword.” We don't doubt him at all.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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Wednesday, September 21, 2011
      ( 9/21/2011 05:43:00 AM ) Bill S.  

“THE UNIVERSE IS SO MYSTERIOUS.” Having taken on stats, calculus, even the theory of relativity, the crew behind the Manga Guide series have elected to think bigger. Kenji Ishikawa and Yutaka Hiiragi’s The Manga Guide to the Universe (No Starch Press) tackles the huge huge questions: the theoretical origins of the universe, its shape and size, the possibilities of extraterrestrial life. As with other titles in this series, the lessons are presented via cute manga teens and a wise teacher, though unlike The Manga Guide to Statistics, our teacher isn’t as comically nerdy.

The typically negligible plot serving as a set-up for our manga lecture centers on the Kouki High School Drama Club’s efforts to put on a performance for the school’s arts festival. If the small club can’t cobble together a show, the school will shut down the club, so brainy senior Yamane, headstrong junior Kanna and new American exchange student Gloria strive to work up an adaptation of “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter.” An ancient folk tale about a princess from the moon, the story leads our drama-minded threesome to try and concoct an “outer space romance.” To research the play’s sci-fi elements, they enlist the aid of Kanna’s older brother Kente, who takes them to one of his professors. It’s Prof Sanuki who schools our quartet on the nature of the universe: the first question is whether the Earth is the center of the universe.

As in the other Manga Guides, the professor’s lessons are presented through comic interactions and histrionics on the students’ part, plus sudden costume changes and metaphors. The professor uses more than one sports prop to demonstrate size and distance, which particularly appeals to the athletic Yamane. The usual heavy text pages are interspersed between each manga segment; in several instances they consist of play-like dialog between the students as they hack out topics like Heliocentric Theory, the Big Bang and our expanding universe. Since the book culminates in our cast putting on their play, this approach seems apt.

Yutaka Hiiragi’s shojo art is light and amusing, capable of portraying his winsome characters as well as the theoretical visuals used to convey the professor’s take on the universe. Kenji Ishikawa’s script examines the history of scientific thought from Galileo to Hubble -- also appropriate since so much of what we “know” today remains largely theoretical. Unlike many of the earlier volumes in this series -- which focuses on topics so specific (e.g., Databases) as to push away many manga readers, Manga Guide to the Universe has plenty of broad appeal.

A strong entry for this charming and informative EduManga series.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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Sunday, June 05, 2011
      ( 6/05/2011 07:33:00 AM ) Bill S.  

“IN MUSIC, COUNTRY DOESN’T MATTER.” With the spring announcement that mainstay American manga publisher Tokyopop was closing up shop in the states, the wisdom of cracking open the first volume of a recently launched T’pop series is slim at best. Yet Koge-Donbo’s Pavane for a Dead Girl is such a strange misfire that I can’t help wanting to look at it more closely. “What were they thinking?” the stunned manga reader wonders after they’ve reached the end of the first volume. Damned if I could tell ya.

Set at the end of the Meiji Era at the start of the twentieth century, Pavane concerns Takenomaru Sagami, a young violin prodigy living at the Marianne Music Academy, a school for girls overseen by Takenomaru’s adoptive father, himself a former musician. Gifted with both preternatural beauty and the ability to play the violin “like a dazzling jewel overflowing with love and radiance,” Takenomaru has a dark secret. His looks and talents are “gifts from heaven” that have been bestowed at a price. To keep them he must regularly gather the Tears of Maria for the Great Angel. This entails finding young girls who will be willing to sacrifice themselves by allowing the young musician to remove “a crystal of feeling” from their hearts. Though the details of this process aren’t shown in the first volume, it’s pretty clear that it’s at the expense of each girl’s life.

We’re shown this in the first half of volume one through Nanao Kaga, a cute-eyed young girl who has come to the big city music academy in search of a musician she calls the “Prince of Harmony.” Though the back of this self-billed “romance/fantasy” makes it look as if Nanao is going to be the series heroine, in actuality she’s Marion Crane to the violinist’s Norman Bates. Second half of the first book is devoted to our anti-hero’s back-story, wherein we learn how he got to make his less-than-heavenly deal -- and also discover the roots of the deep misanthropy which provides him the capacity to extract the Tears of Maria from young innocents with a sword and his bare (surprisingly bloodless) hands.

At heart, then, Pavane is a horror manga, even if its packaging and art don’t give that impression. Shojo artist Koge-Donbo is known for creating cute and highly romantic manga (Pita-Ten), not gothic fare like this. Her art is so light-hearted, her heroines so visually childlike, that it works against the story’s themes. Even when we’re provided a flashback to our Bryonic protagonist’s damaged youth to learn why he hates and despises the world, the renderings of our young boy hero don’t quite bolster this -- though the image of a small pox riddled Takenomaru come close. On more than one occasion, reading this book, I found myself thinking back to the manga adaptation of The Ring, another instance where art and subject matter were not in sync.

A very strange little title, then, that makes me curious (almost in spite of myself) as to where Koge-Dondo intended to take her handsome anti-hero. Too bad the publisher appears to have gone the way of Takenomaru’s first victim. . .

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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Wednesday, May 25, 2011
      ( 5/25/2011 05:52:00 AM ) Bill S.  

“THE MORE I’M WITH YOU, THE LONELIER I FEEL.” When I finished the opening story in Hiro Madarame’s mature readers manga, Scarlet, I’ve got to admit my first response was to re-read the back of the book. Billed as “romance/comedy,” the yaoi manga opens on a decidedly un-comic note: a scene in which a love struck student lies bleeding from a box cutter wielded by the boy he loves. This is comedy? This is romance?

A series of short stories about male/male couplings, Scarlet focuses on the power dynamics in its heroes’ believably flawed relationships. In the title story and its follow-up, “Scarred,” we see the volatile pairing of two classmates, Akio and Ryo. The latter is immature and unreliable, a serial cheater whose “European” good looks bring out all his girl classmates. Smitten Akio repeatedly forgives these dalliances, but his devotion is severely put to the test after one of Ryo’s jealous flings convinces him to violently cut off the relationship.

The duo’s relationship endures, however, and in “Scarred” we get to watch the twosome in the aftermath of Akio’s assault. “I guess I’m also an idiot for not being able to let you go,” Akio says at one point, and we the readers can’t really disagree with him.

A less troublesome pairing gets depicted in three subsequent shorts, “One Night Stand,” “One Night Stand Again,” and “Toki’s True Feelings.” In these, Toki, “a plain sort of man who blends so well into the back people don’t even notice me,” is liberated from invisibility by a one-night stand in a gay bar. This brief encounter ends up being with a man who works in the same building as Toki, which forces the closeted introvert to become more open about his desires. It’s a slow process for Toki, but Madarame ends her little trilogy on an optimistic note.

The third set of stories, “My Lover” and “Project: Naoki Makeover,” proves the slightest entry in the book, though it does contain one disturbing sexual moment where its cool guy hero takes advantage of his sleeping nerd lover.

The tales in Scarlet are mildly explicit: we get more than one lovemaking scene in the book, though the artist backs away from detailing anything too clearly. As an artist, Madarame shifts between lithe-lined renderings of her lovely boy/men to simplistic cartoons a bit too much in the Akio/Ryo stories (particularly when Ryo gets histrionic), though she thankfully tamps down that tendency in later stories. Yaoi fans who come to this stuff for the images of pretty-eyed boys won’t be disappointed.

As a look at flawed romance, Scarlet has its moments, though this reader came away from all three of its couplings wishing that we’d been given more of each story. Madarame would go on to produce a better-known manga entitled Cute Devil, so perhaps this collection is best seen as her still-somewhat-tentative take on material she’ll explore more fully in her later works -- hopefully, without any box cutters involved.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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Friday, April 22, 2011
      ( 4/22/2011 06:58:00 AM ) Bill S.  

START ME UP, BABY, AND I’LL NEVER STOP: Nowadays, if you spy some kid boredom doodling in class, chances are the images they’re scratching on their lined notebook paper will be manga/anime influenced. None-too-surprisingly, many manga publishers have strived to tap into this potentially creative market by putting out manuals on how to create manga. Twenty-five years ago, the emphasis was on How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, but that was a whole different generation of comics readers.

DMP’s 2006 addition to the pool, the anonymously edited How to Pen & Ink: The Manga Start-up Guide, focuses on the mechanics of crafting black-and-white inked panels. Though occasionally advice is given on other aspects of manga storytelling – setting up a compelling storyline and characters, letting, mechanical shading -- the focus remains on the nuts and bolts. This is exemplified by an appendix where 71 artists list their favorite tools (pen nibs, ink, manuscript paper, etc.) right down to the erasers. More than a little obsessive? Perhaps, but I can see many would-be manga-ka poring over the tiny print at the back of this book.

For those of us who just want more general info, the more readable material comes in the book’s beginning: where a trio of manga artists (Yashuhiro Nightow, Oh! Great, and Satoshi Shiki) are interviewed about their lives and work as professional comic artists. The book's central section, a series of strips depicting a round-headed cartoonist’s misbegotten attempts to create his/her own manga series also proves amusing. Those more serious readers will doubtless light on the Q & A pages – which work to introduce readers to technical terms, tricks of the trade and some basic drawing tips. If much of the last should have already been learned in Basic Art class (perspective, anyone?), perhaps our fledgling artist should’ve spent less time doodling and more just listening to their teacher, eh?

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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Thursday, April 07, 2011
      ( 4/07/2011 06:41:00 AM ) Bill S.  

“AFTER THE DELINQUENT LIFE I’VE LED, I FELT I COULD DO ANYTHING.” On the cover of the first volume, Mafuyu Kurosaki looks like your typical high-spirited shojo heroine -- all big smiles in her school girl outfit. But the lead of Izumi Tsubaki’s Oresama Teacher (Viz/Shojo Beat) has a somewhat darker edge to her. The former head of a “straight-up delinquent” gang, she’s been expelled and shipped to a private school on top of a mountain with maternal instructions to “act like a lady.” For Mafuyu, this is no easy task: on her way to her new school, she happens upon a three-on-one street fight. She intervenes on behalf on the outnumbered party, little knowing that a.) the older man will turn out to be her teacher at her new school and b.) he also has a connection to her past.

A comic romance, Oresama Teacher initially had me considering it as a distaff switch on Great Teacher Onizuka. The two manga series share the same core element: an ex-delinquent struggling to stay on the straight-and-narrow. Though in this case the former gang-banger is the student, as the story progresses, we learn that her teacher Takaomi also has his own colorful past. If this shojo romance isn’t as broadly slapsticky as G.T.O. (though it has its moments of physical comedy), both series get mileage out of their protagonists’ conduct disorderly personalities. In one memorable sequence, for instance, our hyper heroine struggles to sit still in class for the first time in her life, counting the minutes as they creep past. This reader could definitely relate.

Complicating Mafuyu’s resolve to change her fighting ways are her handsome teacher’s knowledge of her once wicked ways, plus the presence of another exiled delinquent, Hayasaka, who feels our girl’s “bloodlust” her first day in class. It’s Hayasaka who articulates the emotional high of the fight life: “I. . . feel good when I’m fighting. I forget all the bad stuff. At least I feel like I’m not the me that I used to be.” All three of the book’s main characters are trying to affect a major change in their lives: even the seemingly impervious Takaomi has become a teacher when we’re told “it doesn’t really suit” his personality. “There was something I couldn’t do unless I became a teacher,” he explains, though what this something could be is a story mystery.

Tsubaki depicts this all with a light hand, occasionally tweaking shojo visual conventions (at one point, Mafuyu asks if a character seen flowers in the background and the artist obligingly provides them in the panel) as well as the manipulative male storyline. Teacher Takomi proves to be a major game-player throughout the first volume -- and at times comes across borderline creepy toward his new student/childhood acquaintance. “In public, he’s a great teacher,” our heroine notes at one point, “but his real personality is horrible.” If that’s not prelude to a budding teacher/student romance, I don’t know what is.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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Sunday, March 13, 2011
      ( 3/13/2011 03:40:00 PM ) Bill S.  

“NO, NOT SHAME! YES! TOTALLY OCD!” Between this new series and Tachibana Higuchi’s Portrait of M & N, the neophyte manga explorer might start wondering whether today’s shojo romancers have begun looking to the DSM for story ideas. Like the masochist and narcissist leads in M & N, the hero of Touya Tobina’s teen-rated comedy Clean-Freak: Fully Equipped (Tokyopop) is definitely diagnosable. An obsessive-compulsive germ-o-phobe, Sata Senda descends into hyper-neurosis as a third grader on a trip to the amusement park. Touching all the poles leading to a roller coaster, he’s horrified to discover that a kid ahead of him has picked his nose and robbed his snot on a pole. “It was a formative moment of horror in my life,” Sata tells us, though we suspect that if it hadn’t been that particular incident, it would’ve been something else.

Cut to three years later, and our manga-sized Adrian Monk has become an intensely closed-off sixth grader, covering himself with face masks and rubber gloves, walking around in progressively more outlandish protective gear. He’s comfortable with his outsider status until a cute classmate, Anna Aiuchi, starts to pay attention to him, leading to a series of small steps forward and panicky retreats on our hero’s part. When Aiuchi temporarily leaves to go overseas, Sata once more tries to revert to his solitary stance, but the damage has been done. Other students -- the self-consciously immature Yui Anzai, for instance -- begin making overtures toward friendship, and Sata finds that he ultimately can’t rebuff them..

As a comedy, Clean-Freak frequently oversteps the lines of plausibility (that our hero, for instance, is even allowed to carry bottles of spray disinfectant through the school strikes this reader as a stretch), though its basic theme -- that social involvement can whittle away at dysfunctional self-absorption -- remains a valid one. If the humor doesn’t always pay off as strongly as it could, that might just be this western reader’s response to the art. Tobina’s figures at times are less substantial than necessary, particularly during the series’ many slapstick moments.

Still, there are plenty of droll bits. In one of the first volume’s funnier sequences, our hero reluctantly becomes involved in the care of a hyperactive pregnant rabbit. A panel featuring a stylized image of the bun bounding around proves agreeably goofy, as are several shots where the freak-out bare-handed Sata tries to hold onto the pregnant creature as Yui gives him off-base advice. (“Don’t! Her babies are gonna fall out if you hold her like that!”) Life is messy, and in that mess lies comedy. If Clean-Freak was willing to be a trace less neat, though, I suspect its comedy quotient would increase substantially.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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Saturday, February 26, 2011
      ( 2/26/2011 09:29:00 AM ) Bill S.  

“I’LL SHOW YOU SOME YOKAI MAGIC.”

The newest entry in Shonen Jump’s boyish fantasy line, Hiroshi Shiibashi’s Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan (Viz Media) has an opening nearly as ungainly as its title. Centered on Rikuo Nura, who we first meet as a third grader, the series charts the early adventures of a lad who is one quarter demon as he tries to straddle the human and yokai world.

Raised by his full-blooded yokai grandfather, who is supreme commander of the Nura Clan, young Rikuo initially is enthralled by the idea of becoming a part of the supernatural world. His love for his grandparent blinds him to the fact that yokai -- supernatural creatures who thrive on fear -- are many times more irritating nuisances than they are all-powerful beings. Grandpa Nurarihyon’s idea of “yokai magic,” we’re shown in the opening chapter, is just as likely to involve a dine-and-dash as it is any more scarifying acts. While there are more truly fearsome yokai out in the world, the majority of them appear to be more goofily grotesque than frightening, like manga versions of a Basil Wolverton cartoon. At times, especially in the initial episodes, the crowded panels of yokai frequently threaten to distract us from our hero.

The first volume divides its focus between the yokai-crammed home where Rikuo is being raised and his time in a human school setting, though through much of the first volume, at least, the latter segments prove less focused and interesting. The two worlds collide when Gagoze, one of the nastier yokai out there, attacks a school bus in the hopes of killing Rikuo before he can take over for his grandfather. The assault rouses our hero’s one-quarter-yokai blood, transforming him into a tall, longhaired sword-wielding warrior for short bursts of time. Though his subjects by and large all look monstrous, transformed Rikuo doesn’t, perhaps because of his quarter human heritage.

Having established its central set-up, Nura skips four years ahead, showing our hero as a bespectacled seventh grader much less starry-eyed when it comes to his yokai destiny: a fairly typical tween-ager, in other words, pushing away from the life his primary parent has chosen for him. At school, he’s followed by Yuki-Onna, a yokai servant sent to watch over him, who looks like a schoolgirl but has an uncomfortable habit of calling him “master” at inconvenient times. When one of his classmates founds the Kiyojuji Paranormal Patrol, both our hero and Yuki get pressed into joining the extra-curricular club, in part to keep an eye on Keikain, a young girl exorcist specializing in banishing yokai. She has come to the small town because it’s well known for a high level of supernatural activity and she wants to banish as many yokai as possible so that she can inherit her grandfather’s legacy. While Rikuo has doubts about his place in his family, then, his potential nemesis appears much more self-assured.

The first book of Nura takes some time to find its footing -- which doesn’t seem unusual for a shonen manga serial like this (think of the first rough episodes of Naruto, for instance). But by the end of the opening volume, Shiibashi has honed in on his hero and fleshed out his classmates enough to keep our interest. There’s even a hint that transformed Rikuo will in time effect a change on his clan, though you know that there’ll be plenty of resistance from the old-liners like Gagoze (who dresses like the Vault Keeper in the old EC horror comics) in volumes to come. A promising series, which has already sparked its own anime adaptation, Nura has the potential to be either a strong coming-of-age fantasy or a visually arresting mess. Either way, it could still provide an entertaining read.

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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Wednesday, February 23, 2011
      ( 2/23/2011 06:32:00 AM ) Bill S.  

“YOU COME UP WITH THE MOST OUTRAGEOUS IDEAS.” Three volumes in and Eiki Eiki’s romantic political comedy Millennium Prime Minister (DMP) has significantly shifted its story focus. The first volume, you may recall, concentrated on the relationship between 25-year-old Japanese p.m. Kanato and 16-year-old schoolgirl Minori. In the third, it takes half the book before the latter even makes an appearance.

Instead, the book concentrates on Kanato’s smitten former senior aide Sai, who’d run off at the end of the second book. Sai, it turns out, has a hitherto unknown family connection to the p.m.’s biggest political rival, who of course wants to use the broken-hearted boy to thwart Kanato’s political agenda. We’re given a hint of the p.m.’s plans for reform, but not enough that they make any sense to the reader. “Did you understand any of that?” young Minori is asked after Kanato broadcasts his agenda. “Not a single thing,” Minori answers, while writer/artist Eiki lets us off the hook by including an on-panel note that says, “Representing the reader’s view.”

If Kanato’s reform politics remain muddled, the yaoi manga artist’s sexual politics in MPM remain clear: the primary focus is on handsome well-dressed men balancing the political and personal -- with the personal winning out. While Sai’s shifting camps has clear strategic ramifications, it also, for instance, pollutes the once friendly relationship between Kanato and the reporter Matsumoto, who not-so-incidentally appears to have his own attraction toward the 18-year-old former aide. You never saw these kinds of entanglements on The West Wing, now, did you?

(First published on Blogcritics.)

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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