This month, the Manga Movable Feast is taking on a series that I personally consider to be one of the most enjoyable shoujo series I’ve read in the past few years. Along with the recent The Secret Notes of Lady Kanoko, I consider Karakuri Odette a do-not-miss series for fans of shoujo manga who nevertheless crave something a little different from energetic, clueless girl is in love with jerky, but noble, guy.

Odette is a perfectly normal girl. She wants to make friends, she wants the people she cares about to be happy. She wants to be cute. She wants her battery pack to have a cute cover. The only difference between Odette and any other girl her age is that she was not created as an act of love between a man and a woman in bed, she was created as an act of research by a man in a lab. Odette is a robot, or android, if you prefer.

Odette’s story is not Pinocchio’s, however. While she definitely seeks to better understand the human experience, she does not desire to “become a real girl.” It would be a redundant wish because, as we see time and time again, she is already a real girl and the fact that she is an artificial/created intelligence changes nothing about that.

Karakuri Odette is not just a story about a robot girl being more human that the humans around her. (And even if it was, it would be delightful anyway.) By being so *real*, Odette actually does turn someone around her into a real person. Not Chris, her foster-cousin, another robot brought into the story as a weapon, but integrated into the family circle. Not Shirayuki, a self-ostracized girl who has never been able to relate to other people on account of the fact that she can hear their thoughts. No, the person Odette has the most profound effect upon and humanizes the most is her father, Yoshizawa-hakase.

To illustrate this, let me sum up a number of their conversations from various chapters into one whole conversation.

“Professor, I want to go to school.”

“Okay.”

“Professor, I want to be able to eat.”

“Okay.”

“Professor, I want to go to go shopping for cute clothes.”

“Okay.”

“Professor, I want a cell phone.”

“Absolutely not. You don’t need one.”

Can I get some raised hands from people who had that conversation with their fathers? Anyone? I thought so.

In Volume 5, it all comes to a moment in which, after asking for a cell phone again, Odette says something viciously and the Professor responds with “how dare you say that to your father!” (I’m working from the Japanese version, so my apologies if this differs from the Tokyopop translation. I haven’t gotten that yet.)

While fellow androids, the emotionally stunted Grace and haughty Travis call their creator “Papa,” it is Professor Yoshizawa who declares loudly that he loves every last screw in Odette.

Odette is just a perfectly normal girl, who is fundamentally different from everyone else, but is allowed, encouraged and supported by the people around her to be exactly who she is.

In honor of this month’s MMF theme, and the inspiration Odette is to me and hopefully to a lot of “different” people, I declare today “Odette Day.” For today, we won’t care if there are jellybeans in our eggs. For today, we will treat everyone as if they don’t have bad intentions. For today, we will be okay with being not like the other kids. For today, we’ll cover our insulin pumps and asthma inhalers with a cute fleece cover. For today, it’ll be okay to be different.

Happy Odette day to you all.

Mashiro is a hemaphrodite. From the waist up he is male, but his internal organs and lower half are female. This might not be a big problem in the long run, except today he just got his period for the first time and he’s really uncomfortable with the idea of being a woman. What Mashiro wants more than anything else is to just be a guy. Mashiro is the protagonist of Setona Mizushiro’s After School Nightmare.

Soon, Mashiro’s gender will be much more important and much less important than he could ever have expected. A mysterious teacher – who does not appear to actually exist – leads Mashiro to a basement in the school – which also does not exist – gives him no useful information whatsoever, and sets him to participate in a group nightmare shared by a number of students. Each student appears in the nightmare as their internal vision of themselves and they experience each other’s darkest and most traumatic secrets, while competing for a key in order to “graduate” from school. In the meantime, students are randomly and rapidly disappearing from the school and no one seems to be noticing.

In his first nightmare, Mashiro appears in the girl’s uniform, thus giving away his secret. He encounters a homicidal girl who had been raped. Knowing each other’s secret, they become friends, then start to date. Kureha is comfortable with Mashiro because she knows he is not quite fully a guy, and Mashiro wants to prove to Kureha that she can be friends with a guy.

Mashiro has a male rival from his days in the kendo club, a tall, dark, broody guy named Sou. Sou knows that Mashiro is “really” a girl, and one day, kisses Mashiro.

Thus an uncomfortable triangle begins, with Sou pursuing (in a broody, semi-rape-y, i.e. BL-ish, kind of way) Mashiro, while Mashiro clings to Kureha, (in a codependent and needy, i.e., lesbian-ish kind of way.)

When Kureha and Mashiro first kiss, his thought is that he is “kissing another girl,” which puts the lie to his insistence that he is a guy.

As his relationship with both Sou and Kureha becomes more uncomfortable, he’s learning more and more about the nightmares he and the other students are experiencing. In heroic fashion, his true desire is to save as many of the others as he can, rather than focus on “graduating,” himself.

The story is very ably drawn, and I really can’t complain about characters or dialogue. The plot holds together nicely and the tension between Mashiro and Sou is palpable. But…I didn’t *enjoy* the two volumes I read. For several reasons.

The first, and most systemic reason was the air of “I know something you don’t know.” Having one character driven by that is irksome, but acceptable. The third character who gives a “knowing smile” or “humphs” knowingly, or says something like, “Because I know what happens next,” it’s off my list.

Secondly and probably more critical – I didn’t like Mashiro. Full stop. He’s a woman without breasts who wants to be a man. Fine. I don’t like getting my period either and it makes me bitchy too, fine. But. Dude, go find a professional, talk to them about gender reassignment. I’m not saying it’s not a big deal, but it seems like the way to go for you. It’s not like it’s an impossible thing. (This sounds more insensitive that it is – I understand that it IS a big deal in real life, with many repercussions. This is a manga. It is a horror-romance manga. Not real life. Breathe before you send me that angry comment.)

Ultimately, I found it hard to be sympathetic to Mashiro for a reason having nothing to do with his gender issues at all – he’s an *idiot.* Gee, let’s see, people are being dragged into these nightmares and some of them are “graduating” AND people are disappearing from school. Hrmm…any connection? No, I didn’t think so.

Thirdly I really didn’t like the way Mashiro treated Kureha. She accepted (and loved) him for exactly *what* he was, and he spends most of Volume 2 trying to change her. Bleah.

Fourthly, oh come ON! Sou is a jerk. He says he’ll rape a woman to make a point that he *really likes her.* What is it with BL fans and rape? I am so not getting the appeal. UGHUGHUGH, I cannot stand broody, non-verbal, driven-by-animal need Heathcliff/Angel/Edward types. Gah.

And lastly, the nightmare scenario is unpleasant and silly and I don’t see it going anywhere good. I’m not much for wallowing in people’s pain.

So I hit the end of Volume 2 and said, “That’s enough.”

In my head, I took Kureha, carefully got her out of the school, found her a nice girlfriend and we all moved on and lived happily ever after. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 7
Characters – 8 (like or dislike them, they made an impression and forced a reaction)
Yuri – depends on whether you’re on Mashiro’s or Kureha’s side
Service – 6 It’s pretty pandery whichever way you look

Overall – 5

Having typed this, I will now go read the rest of the MMF posts for this series and see how (again) I completely disagree with everyone else! ^_^

When it comes to reviewing manga in English, I appear to be an anomaly. I read more manga in Japanese than in English and many of the series I most enjoy, I read as they are serialized in the magazines. I prefer to read my materials untranslated, even (especially) if it means it will take me three months to read a novel, instead of two days.

As a result, I have a hard time seeing past a series’ origin. I know the audience for which the series was originally intended, and I find it awkward to pretend that that does not affect the story.

Yotsuba&! was, as many other people have pointed out, a series that was serialized in Dengeki Daioh magazine. Unlike those many people, I actually read Dengeki Daioh for many years and now still read it from time to time. Which is why I cannot pretend that Yotsuba&! is a book for children. Dengeki Daioh is/was also the home to such heart-warming stories about adult men and the pre-pubescent girls they love as Blood Alone and Gunslinger Girl. Call it shounen or seinen, this is a magazine for otaku men, who think that LovePlus (or a soda can) is a viable alternative to a relationship with a real human and who like to imagine themselves with a little girl sitting on their lap. And look at her underwear from time to time.

It’s also been noted by many people that when manga comes to America, most of the gender/age lines blur or completely fade. Stories targeted to the college age set in Japan are inexplicably targeted to young teens here, then censored for being inappropriate. Stories for children, because of the obsession with underwear and nudity one encounters as part of the “humor”in manga, and because of the Puritanism of America, all of a sudden find themselves with Mature Content warnings.

So when it was announced that this month’s Manga Moveable Feast was being hosted by the Good Comics For Kids crowd, my head exploded. I do not, no matter what the good people of Yen Press and other manga bloggers say, consider Yotsuba&! a “Good Comic for Kids.” I get why people can say that. Yotsuba is a delightful child. The comic is light-hearted, it has characters of all ages and personalities, so there is likely to be *someone* any age group can identify with. It’s a fun story; you can see young Dads of young children laughing and smiling, think of their own kids when Yotsuba does something wacky. Mom next door represents Moms wondering what the neighbor’s kid is thinking. Asagi, Fuka, Ena, Yanda and Jumbo all provide masks for ourselves, whoever ourselves may be, so that we can smile and watch Yotsuba and laugh with her…or at her, whichever makes us happiest.

I love Yotsuba&!. I love it in Japanese and love it in English and hope everyone reads it. It’s something a kid *could* read, especially with an adult to share the amusement.  But I can’t call it “for kids,” because it’s not. Tora Dora! is not “for kids,” neither is To Aru Kagaku no Railgun, and this isn’t, anymore than Akikan was.

Manga reviewers have taken the girl from the farm and want to pretend that, while she’s standing on 42nd street looking at her options, none of them are less than savory. That’s cool. More power to them. I’ll stick to knowing who is reading it in Japan, and why. And that’s cool too.