Periodically (pun intended) I subscribe to a manga magazine named Rakuen Le Paradis. It’s technically a Jousei magazine, but is an unusual one. Hakusensha lets their artists have a pretty long leash and so, one finds both men and women creators in its pages creating things that are not conventionally “for adult women.” The stories I’ve seen in the magazine range widely from cute school drama to BDSM. The stories have been straight, BL and Yuri. Some years it was heavily Yuri, and others less so. One of their best known BL names turned their talents to Yuri and so in 2019, we were treated to Nakamura Asumiko’s Mejirobana no Saku.
Now, in 2020, we’ve gotten a chance to read this series in English as A White Rose in Bloom, from Seven Seas. This volume is a perfect blend of a classic Yuri at a private girls’ school story with highlights of the modern world intruding at every turn.
Ruby Canossa’s parents are having trouble and she’s very much caught in the middle. Tossed by their selfishness into an uncomfortable and lonely holiday break nearly alone at school, Ruby find a cause to believe in. But her relationship with the only other girl who stayed behind for the holidays, school star “Steel” Steph, is still awkward, uncomfortably intimate and hard to navigate. As Ruby starts to build some stability, her parents make it impossible for her to stay, but she doesn’t want to leave.
YMMV, but I like Nakamura’s balance of overly dramatic expressions on Ruby, to Steph’s almost complete lack of expression. Nakamura’s got a Goya-esque style that gives everyone a long, lean look that suits the halls of a storied school for wealthy girls. Kudos to translator Jocelyne Allen and the entire Seven Seas team for another excellent job on a book that I hope people won’t overlook, thinking it’s just another school romance.
This book is marked volume 1. There is no Volume 2, yet. Rakuen Le Paradis (楽園 Le Paradis) magazine is only released 3 times a year and the magazine is pretty chock full of top talent, so not every story is featured every issue. I’m so far behind in Rakuen issues (the last one I read was Issue 30)I don’t even know what happens! I’m clearly going to have to make some time to catch up. But it definitely is continuing. Issue 34, the current issue (available in Japanese on Global Bookwalker) lists a new chapter in the table of contents. Good! I really want to know what happens!
Ratings:
Art – As I say, YMMV, but 8 for me
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Service – There is a little, but not what you might expect.
Yuri – 7
Overall – 8
In the meantime, you can enjoy Nakamura-sensei’s great nonplussed facial expressions and slapfighting in the hallways of a staid old institution…and wonder what on EARTH is going on with that headmaster, because she honestly looks so untrustworthy I am sure she’s a blackmailer in her spare time. ^_^
Thanks to Seven Seas for the review copy!
So, I’m not mistaken, is this the same Nakamura Asumiko whose BL manga was adapted into a full-length anime a few years ago? Hah, it looks like there is really more than one BL writer who likes to write yuri too.
As I understand it, Rakuen is non-demographic. There’s an afterword in one issue where the editor says the main reason he started it was to have a place free of such genre distinctions.
This series has various parts where it seems that it being set in America would ironically create awkward localization choices for an American publisher. Such as Ruby’s image of Christmas being chicken and cake on Christmas Eve or a teacher casually referencing Japanese bird species for an analogy.
Absolutely. I count it among my “fifth column” magazines, but the Japanese Magazine Publisher’s Association disagrees and lists it among the magazines for women. ^_^ The JMPA only has the standard four demographic categories and has not yet added an “other” category.
I believe this is set in “Europe.” The reference to l0th-, 11th- and 12th-years is not American. Oddly, I had two completely different discussions this week about that. In the US, we typically refer to students as Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior, rather than by grade, but that doesn’t naturally map to first-, second-, third-year in manga. Although there are time when we call classes 9th, 10th, 11th , 12th, but mostly in the context of classes, like 9th grade English.
America was named in chapter 6. The language being English, the currency being dollars and Christmas being in winter narrowed it down a lot before then though.
The Japanese version used 1年生, 2年生 and 3年生.
I see. The language being English, Steph having encountered a landmine indicated to me that it was vaguely British or European. We have few schools like this in America, but England and Europe have a larger body and history of religious “public schools.” I know the US has private schools, of course, but boarding schools are so early 20th century. Most of the ones around here – I live in a pretty historically old and obscenely wealthy part of the US- had to go co-ed and stop boarding, because it just cost too much to maintain.
Only four? But if my memory serves me right, Girlfriends was published in a magazine that was aimed at audiences of any gender.
Th JPMA marks magazines for four demographics, I believe. generally for men, for women, for girls, for boys. Comic Action is “for men.” You can see they list it under Comic Magazines for Men according the JPMA. It’s true that Futabasha is very open to work that are LGBTQ friendly, but the way bookstores organize the magazines usually still follows the JPMA lists.
Eh, I have nothing against “traditional” categories, but I would also be interested to see what kind of work a conditional “magazine for adults” or “magazine for teenagers” could publish. For example, manga with a seinen themes, which would also be interesting to the josei audience due to the realistic and mature portrayal of adult female leads.
Girl Friends ran in Comic High, which was supposedly a shoujo magazine aimed at men. Basically it was a seinen magazine and the influence it took from shoujo manga was rather limited really, being more a response to the growing popularity of female leads in male oriented series.
Thank you for the clarification.I couldn’t remember if it was Action or High.
I’m a little confused, but this was helpful information, thanks. By the way, can this be compared to the recent trend on shoujo-ish shonen like Moriarty? Such series are usually published in shonen publications, but they still have strong shoujo vibes and a mostly female audience like Butler.
(The freshman, sophomore, junior, senior terminology may be a regional thing. Growing up in the Midwest, we used grade numbers. I don’t think I learned what order “sophomore” and “junior” came in until I was in college.)
I suppose you could regionalize Christmas visions by substituting “Chinese food” for “chicken”?
That would definitely work here in the NYC metro area. ^_
I stand corrected, Rakuen le Paradis is no longer listed under magazines for women on JMPA’s site. It’s not listed at all, in fact.