Archive for the Nakamura Ching Category


Ride or Die on Netflix

April 16th, 2021

Ride or Die on NetflixIf you are a regular reader here at Okazu, you know that I have loved the darkly violent Yuri manga GUNJO from the day I received a message about it on Japanese social platform Mixi, back in 2008ish. I’ve written reviews of various chapters I read in Morning Two magazine and all three of the volumes in Japanese in my GUNJO category here on Okazu.  In 2018, I was able to meet with Nakamura-sensei (over what was possibly one of the hilariously worst lunches I can remember. This was supposed to be a BLT. It was inedible.) At the time, we worked out how we might do a translation for GUNJO into English. And she mentioned that she was in talks about a live-action adaptation.

Translator Erin Subramanian and I have completed the translation for Volume 1 of GUNJO, into English, which is purchasable by the chapter on Nakamura-sensei’s website. We’re hoping to see a collected Volume 1 on ebook sellers near you one day soon. As we completed Volume 1, the pandemic hit and the project was paused. Today’s review was, in large part, why it paused. Last night Netflix released Ride or Die, the live-action movie based on the manga by Nakamura Ching.  Ride or Die, directed by Hiroki Ryuuichi, is not GUNJO. It is, however, within spitting distance of it.

Like GUNJO, (I ended up using this spelling when Morning Two magazine chose it over Gunjō, so forgive me) Ride or Die contains graphic violence and marital abuse. Unlike the manga, the movie also contains several explicit sex scenes, both straight and lesbian. If any of this makes you feel uncomfortable, you may well want to give this movie a pass. Interestingly, for the lesbian sex scene at the end of the movie, the staff brought in an “intimacy coordinator,” which Max Gao writes about in his article on NBC, Stars of Netflix’s lesbian thriller ‘Ride or Die’ on their on- and off-screen connection. This intimacy does change the end of the story considerably, but whether you think it works better or worse will be an entirely personal decision. In my opinion the end of the manga is very hard to beat for perfection. ^_^

Another change from the manga is that the characters – who remained nameless and were referred to as “Megane-san” and “Lesbian-san” by Japanese fandom – here are named. They get to share moments of genuine joy in this movie, which was probably the most disconcerting change for me. I don’t think it was a bad change, it merely signaled that we would not get that manga ending. Overall, I think both Sato Honami as the abused Nanae and Mizuhara Kiko as Rei, the woman who loves her enough to kill for her, did an excellent job. There were moments when Sato looked so like Megane-san that it was quite extraordinary and I found myself commenting on it every time.

As you may remember in my other movie reviews, I dislike the slowdown of pacing that seems to be to be a common occurrence in Japanese live-action manga adaptations. In the case of Ride or Die, it was the sex scenes that I felt went on too long, and the movie would have benefited from them being cut slightly. But this was pretty much my only complaint. This, I think, came from the choice of director whose career began in pink films and whose body of work tends to favor graphic sex and violence. 

Some of you may wonder about the title, Ride or Die, which I’m sure many of us see as an already tired trope. Nakamura-sensei mentioned that the title change was something she approved of and I’m inclined to agree. It allows us to view the movie as something separate from the manga…but also to see this is a subversion of the trope itself. This is not a “ride or die” scenario in the most typical sense. The characters are, yes, being followed by the police, but not hot on their heels. There’s just no urgency as they wander randomly through their lives together until they and we have all the pieces.

Ratings:

Cinematography – 9
Story – 9
Characters – Portrayed beautifully, so 9 but they are sometimes deeply unlikable
Service – 10
Lesbian – 10

Overall – 9

I’ll watch it again, for sure. If you get a chance to watch it, let us know what you think in the comments!





GUNJO, by Nakamura Ching Getting a Movie on Netflix!

October 27th, 2020

Thanks to YNN Correspondent Mercedes for bring this to my attention early today. Nakamura Ching’s GUNJO is being made into a movie by Netflix. This true-crime style story follows the aftermath of a murder. A desperate woman has the woman who has loved her for years kill her abusive husband. The story happens as they run from the police. The Netflix movie will star Kiku Mizukara and Honami Sato.

Komatsu-san at Crunchyroll News has the details.

Volume 1 of GUNJO is available in English at Nakamura-sensei’s site, on a per-chapter basis. I was able to edit is, with Erin Subramanian doing a fantastic job on translation. I hope you’ll read it! With luck, we’ll get a collected e-book volume soon.





LGBTQ: Okaasan Futari Itemo Iikana!? (お母さん二人いてもいいかな!?)

January 18th, 2016

2momsIf you read a lot of manga, especially shoujo and shounen manga, you’ll have encountered author’s notes and quite possibly you’ll have thought something like, “Really? You’re writing a note to millions of fans and all you have to say is that you like jelly?” But, when you think about it, we all know manga creators are put through a grinder of deadlines and appearances and it’s probably not all that surprising that they have relatively bland personal lives. If you’re out partying, you’re not at the drawing board, so…. But yeah, it would be nice sometimes to know a little more about the manga artists we love. Maybe the name of their lover, or about a hobby besides drawing manga.

In Okaasan Futari Itemo Iikana!? (お母さん二人いてもいいかな!?), Nakamura Ching-sensei, writing here under her real name, Nakamura Kiyo, gives us an  unprecedented honest and intimate look at her personal life. She lives with her wife (in name only, as Japan does not legally recognize same-sex marriage), Satsuki, and is stepmother to Satsuki’s three sons.

The book takes a good hard look at Kiyo’s and Satsuki’s relationship, opening up a few cans of worms along the way. We learn of Kishie-san, Nakamura-sensei’s deceased first wife, and about abuse in Satsuki’s  and Kiyo’s past (Of which we knew some from Dare mo Korinai.) This books includes thoughts about the tentative legal standing their relationship has and the importance of acceptance by the people around them.

But mostly, this is a book about life with a wife and three sons. An intimate, sometimes touching, look at the personal life of a lesbian couple in Japan today, and an extraordinary look into the life of a favorite manga creator.

Ratings:

Overall – 8

In places this volume is very difficult, in others triumphant…just like life.





Dare mo Korinai Manga (誰も懲りない)

March 13th, 2014

Before we get started today, I’m going to ask you to watch a video. Abuse trigger warning, but if you think you can manage it, will you try?

Did you look away, maybe check how long the video was, or see what time it was?

If you looked away, why? You don’t know these people. This is not even real. It’s a Public Service Message that makes a point. It makes it well. And for a second, it was too hard to look at.

We don’t want to hear about someone else’s abusive situation. We don’t like being asked to confront that we are pretty helpless in the face of someone’s pain. The feels, they hurt. It’s even worse when the victim is a child. Between murderous rage and abject misery there is almost nothing we can actually do to change a story. Tweeting a message, writing a check to an NPO…these are things we do to salve our own pain, and we hope they salve someone else’s, because admitting that we really haven’t done all that much makes us feel bad.

As I’m reading the exceptionally well done, but emotionally brutal, Dare mo Korinai (誰も懲りない) by Nakamura Ching-sensei which was serialized in Quick Japan（クイック・ジャパン, I’m caught between praying to my gods that this is not autobiographical, and forcing myself to not look away in case it is.  I’d translate the title as “Some People Never Learn” and in regards to Nakamura-sensei’s manga, I may be one of those people. No matter how hard it is, I keep coming back for more.

Way back, when I started Yuricon, I wrote a serial for our mascot, Yuriko. At some point in the first book, Shoujoai ni Bouken, (which is online, for free, along with the sequel.) I have Yuriko tell a story about how, when her parents found out she was gay, they threw her out of the house. At that point, she had not spoken to any of her family in years. When that chapter went live, I received dozens of emails from people who were desperately afraid I had lived that, and dozens more from people who actually had. I reassured the former that I had not and sympathized deeply with the latter.  This also came to mind as I read Dare mo Korinai. A good writer writes something you like, a very good writer writes something you can’t imagine is fiction. I kept telling myself, “It’s fiction…it’s fiction” knowing that for someone out there, it isn’t and I feel powerless knowing that.

Nakmura-sensei described the book on social media as a kind of epilogue to GUNJO.  Sometimes when you’ve been working on a really emotionally intense project, you have so much built up inside that the only way to get it out is to get it out. You scream, you write, you draw, you make fun of the rage so it stops being something that hurts as much. Or you cut into it, plumbing the depths of the pain to see where it goes.

Dare mo Korinai, follows the life of Toshiko, a smart, talented girl from a well-off family whose life is shredded by abusive family members and stomped by family politics. Her lesbian lovers are no better for her and the best thing you can say about her life by the end is that she survives. But, by god it hurt to watch.

Ratings:

Art – 8 All hand drawn, without the detailed photographic backgrounds of GUNJO
Story – 9 but buckle up, it’s not an easy ride
Characters – I can’t.
Lesbian – 5 Yes, but no.
Service – Same

Overall – 8

So often I say that when I’m reading a book that I find painful, I wish to pluck the main character out, feed her, and give her a better home in a better story. I hope Toshiko finds herself in a happier story some day.





Yuri Manga: GUNJO, Volume 3 (羣青下)

June 20th, 2012

The third and final volume of GUNJO (羣青 下) is no easier to read than the previous two volumes. In fact, there are several moments that still manage to shock and appall, even with all we’ve been through.

“What would you kill for?” The brunette, Megane-san, asks the blonde’s, Sensei’s, sister-in-law, and she in turn asks her husband. It is a question that is buried deep in the heart of this volume.

Things we thought we knew, turn out to be not true, and the depth of the despair of Megane-san’s life only becomes truly apparent when she’s all but shed her last layer of emotional armor. Still, it is in moments where kindness manages to be felt for a mere moment, that brutality is the most harsh, and in the middle of the most intense violence when gentleness can be felt most clearly.

One of the questions asked back when I reviewed the first or second volume was – how much time has passed? I can answer that now – it’s been about a week, going on two.

As I read this story, probably about halfway through what would become the second volume, I conceived a wish – a hope. It was an insane hope, because there was nothing at all in the story that lead me to think it could ever come true. I desired, most of all, to see the two characters – the beaten, abused, unloved woman, and the woman who killed for her – smile. It was a ridiculous wish that could never happen.

The final half of this final book is the literary equivalent of lancing an infected wound to get the infection out. There’s really no other way to describe it. Page after page of confession, admission, digression, discussion finally brings the two characters through the last of their despair to the inevitable end of their story.

GUNJO is over and I have nothing left to say about it. It’s been wonderful, it’s been painful, it’s been sublime.

In the end, there’s only one question left for you to ask – Did they ever smile? You’ll have to read it and find out.

Ratings:

Overall – 10

Once again, I want to thank Nakamura Ching-sensei for creating this extraordinary story. 

Without question, GUNJO is the best manga I have ever read, and it encroaches deeply on the “best book I have ever read” list.