Archive for the Artists Category


The Rose of Versailles, Volume 5

June 25th, 2021

Today we look at what was, until 2015, the final volume of the grand historical epic The Rose of Versailles, by Riyoko Ikeda.

After the death of Lord Oscar François de Jarjayes, one might expect a final volume of tears and recrimination as the republic she died for turns to wholesale slaughter and a new threat of empire…buuuuuut……..no.

The chapters that comprise The Rose of Versailles, Volume 5 were written a decade after the original story ended and involve Oscar and André as the comedic sidekicks to Oscar’s precocious niece Loulou de Laurencie. These 10th anniversary chapters are an epic unto themselves, known as “The Great Detective Loulou.”

Loulou (and her doll, which functions as something between a backpack and hammerspace) turns out to be incredibly perceptive. Significantly, Oscar recognizes this and after the first adventure, in which Loulou cracks a group of jewel thieves, she takes Loulou’s antics very seriously. Loulou’s influence continues to expand to André, then Rosalie and beyond. It’s a good thing, too, because Loulou proceeds to stop a human trafficking ring and an illicit drug ring.

A little side story here… translator Mari Morimoto and I had a days long conversation about exactly what drug it might have been. I think it was cocaine-laced laudanum based on the chronology and supposed effects. (Heroine wasn’t common for another few decades and opium created a lassitude that any reader of Sherlock Holmes will be acquainted with.) But it’s all speculation and we’ll never really know what Madame Heberra was selling. ^_^

Ironically, the was the first volume of the series I worked on. Mari asked to bring me on since we had been discussing the series already and she wanted someone she knew. It was a lot of fun working on these chapters with her too, as there were so many things that were really left way up in the air after those incredibly detailed, historically accurate earlier volumes.

You might ask at this point if this is where we are meant to leave it all. After all that emotion, all those tears, we’re just walking away on a bunch of stories about a child genius? No, actually. Because in 2015-18, for the 45th anniversary of the series, Ikeda-sensei drew another 4 volumes, all of which I have reviewed here, in fact. I will spoil nothing, except to say two things: 1) I had completely, totally forgotten the one thing at the end of the story and OMG, and; 2) Even as I edited these chapters for the final volume for UDON, I found myself tearing up at Rosalie. Hopefully you will, too.

I don’t know when the final volume will be released, but as soon as I know, I’ll be sure to tell you!

I want to thank all of you who have picked up these books and enjoyed them so much. And my heartfelt thanks to Udon, to Erik for trusting me with these, to Mari and Jocelyne for being awesome to work with and Jeannie Lee, for low-key killing it doing the lettering. Honest to god, she did an outstanding job, matching the s/fx to the shape and feel of the original, and you should notice this kind of artistry.

I’m going to leave you with one more anecdote. After I got the chance to work on this series, I was in Japan, at Mandarake in Nakano, as one does and I saw something I had never, ever before seen – three whole issues of Margaret magazine when Rose of Versailles was running! I was gobsmacked. I grabbed them all and gave Mari and Erik one each as thanks, and kept one for myself.  Here is why.

This is the moment when Oscar, having found and lost her true love, throws herself at the Bastille, to join him as soon as possible. So….yea. I have this volume. It lives on a set of shelves I cleared for the entirely of the Rose of Versailles kanzenban, reference materials, mooks, magazines and…this magnificent collection. It’s just so lovely, I can’t get over it.

Not gonna rate this one, just want to bask in the glow. ^_^

Tell me how much you love this set in the comments!

 





Otona ni Nattemo, Volume 4 (おとなになっても)

June 23rd, 2021

In previous volumes of Otona ni Nattemo, we met Akari and Ayano, who met in a bar and spent the night together, Ayano’s husband Wataru, who has wondered what that means for him, and assorted family, friends, coworkers and students who have become involved in the lives of our principles. No one know what they are doing. Sure, they are adults, but…

In Otona ni Nattemo, Volume 4 (おとなになっても), the whirlpool sucks them in further. Wataru suggest a separation and Ayano agrees. Wataru’s going home to live with his parents. Akari, not knowing this, has also decided to move to give her distance between her and Ayano. At school, Ayano is playing at being a grown-up with answers for the children who have their own love triangle issues and is torturing herself on faking competent adulthood for elementary schoolers, while her own life is in turmoil.

Ayano and Akari coincidentally meet at the train station and coincidentally look back at one one another and, as the final pages of the volume are turned, Ayano suggest they go to the cafe at the station and talk….

I’m calling it – this series is Shimura Takako’s best work to date.

For years, I have said that her work reminds me of Melissa Scott’s novels – solid concepts with slightly too much emphasis on sex and gender considering the lack of conviction with which it was executed. For the first time ever, I feel that this book isn’t trying to say something – it’s a fully conceived story about people who might be real, and neither sex nor gender is the story, just part of human existence as a whole.

One does not dislike Akari, Ayano or Wataru, they are all sympathetic in their own ways. I don’t pretend to know what the future holds for any of them, frankly. I don’t even have an opinion on whether any of them ought to be together. I’m content to see where the story – which is well-drawn and well-told – goes.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 9
Characters – 8
Service – 0
Yuri / Queer – Impossible to tell at this point. Ayano may be bi, Akari is lesbian, Eri might be ace, but we can’t be sure about anyone of them but Akari.

Overall – 8
I hope you’re all reading this story as it comes out in English as Even Though We’re Adults from Seven Seas. It’s Shimura at an absolute peak of her work and a story wholly for as well as about, grownups. Volume 1 is out, Volume 2 just came out last week, and Volume 3 will arrive in October (you can pre-order it on RightStuf or Amazon already.)





Kaketa Tsuki to Donuts, Volume 2 (欠けた月とドーナッツ)

June 17th, 2021

In Volume 1, we met Hinako, a woman who is crumbling under pressure to conform to society’s requirements for a “good” life and Asahi, a woman who has cast aside any interest in conforming for her own reasons. Usui Shio’s Kaketa Tsuki to Donuts, Volume 2 (欠けた月とドーナッツ) brings them to a whole new level of intimacy between two adult women who are very tentative about trusting someone else with their true selves. I know I have said this before, but it bears repeating – I adore this series. There’s nothing melodramatic here, just quiet real-life concerns, and two women whose loneliness had become a fact of their lives that they didn’t think they could do something about.

In Volume 2, Hinako is desperately trying to not impose on Asahi and Subaru but, equally desperately, loves spending time with them. When Subaru asks Hinako bluntly to please, please free her sister from her own choices, Hinako finds a little courage to admit that she actually wants to do that…and then, magically, takes steps to do so. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that her feelings for Asahi are more than she’s willing to cope with, until she meets Fuuka, Asahi’s ex (bing bing! the bell goes off in Hinako’s head) and best friend. Fuuka makes Hinako look her own feelings straight in the face and acknowledge them.

As for Asahi, we learn why she’s so removed from her own life. She’s made choices that prioritize Subaru over herself. This will not go unnoticed by her little sister, who simultaneously wants Asahi to have a happy life of her own, for herself to be free of obligation and to forge her own path forward. To be fair, Subaru really likes Hinako and is clearly rooting for the two older women to get together, for all the reasons.

I absolutely love everything about this story. The characters are all entirely likeable and we cannot help but root for them, not just to get together, but to be happy. I love the art, which is stylish and clean, and the constant touches that make this story feel so firmly rooted in adult women’s lives. Clothing and makeup and food and peer pressure and work concerns….these could be real people who you might know.

The struggles are internal, the drama is internal. This is not the explosive hyper-dramatic relationships of high school. It’s not even a messy relationship. It’s just really…tentative. And we want, so very much, for everyone to be happy. If Hinako and Asahi end up happy together, then yay for all of us. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 9
Characters – 9
Yuri – 6
Service – 0

Overall – 9

Volume 1 is already available from Seven Seas and Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon, Volume 2 is headed your way in August, so get ready for some grown-up feels!





Meisou Senshi – Nagata Kabi (迷走戦士・永田カビ)

June 13th, 2021

In my recent conversation on with the folks at Manga Mavericks about My Alcoholic Escape From Reality (a conversation that will go up on their Patreon later this month) we talked a little bit about this book as well. In the comments on Nagata Kabi’s TCAF spotlight, some lovely person expressed a wish that the author’s next book is about her hugging kittens. Well…it is definitely not that. 

Having given herself recognition that her comic essays are a valid form of artistic expression, Nagata-sensei has once again turned the spotlight on herself. In Meisou Senshi – Nagata Kabi (迷走戦士・永田カビ), she  tackles some of the things we might have been asking all along about her relationship with her gender and sexuality…and how that, and her physical and mental health,  affect and are affected by that relationship.

This is not an easy book to read. If anything, it open up whole new areas of discomfort. Content Warning: this book deals with sexual assault as a child. But, as we make our way through this in her wake, we can see (more clearly than we can with ourselves) how pieces of a life make up a whole. Her discussion of how  insurmountable was the effort of filling out the questions on a dating app, really struck home with me in regards to something wholly unrelated to dating.

Once again we see the power of a comic essay. This book contains increasingly intimate knowledge of her past, and tantalizing tidbits of her present, but we know we will never know the actual person through these.  These chapters are the comic equivalent of Van Gogh’s self-portraits….a visual record of her over time looking at a mirror and drawing what she sees. Some days the face that looks back at her is more haunted than others…sometimes it is almost happy. This records allows her to explore why that might be…and expose what the roots of that haunted look is.

I am curious, for reasons that will become immediately apparent when you read this book, what her parents thought of it. Nagata-sensei’s feelings about how she hurt her family in her initial volumes are made plain in later volumes and in her TCAF interview. This volume wasn’t going to make for light dinner table conversation and yet, I got the feeling that she and her family may have struck a bargain over this and while it may not be fun, they won’t be blindsided again.

Seven Seas has announced the license of this book as My Wandering Warrior Existence, which has a projected release date in English of March 2022. If you don’t want to wait, you can read this online in Japanese on Web Action. 

Yet again, I will not be rating this book, for reasons that will become apparent when you read it.

It is compelling.

Next up, we return to the beginning, with her plumbing the depth of her relationship with food, in Meisou Senshi・Nagata Kabi Gourmet De GO!  (迷走戦士・永田カビ グルメでGO！) the first chapter of which available on Web Action.





I’m in Love With the Villainess, Volume 3

June 8th, 2021

As I said of the Japanese edition of  I’m in Love With the Villainess, Volume 3, “We’ve already established that all norms are off the table in this series, so the plot here is a little bit of everything – school drama, romance, socio-political drama, and some other things and then the demons arrive. From this point on the book is spinning plates and juggling balls and then an axe or two on a high-wire.”

And indeed, we are handwaved into an idyll that will be shattered, trod upon, and sliced and diced and none of it – not one word – hit me as hard as the final scene in a throwaway side story. (T_T)

Former daughter of the nobility and school villainess, Claire Francois and her wife, the supernaturally powerful and gifted protagonist of the game Revolution, Rae Taylor, are living a reasonably comfortable life. Given that this life was built in the ruins of a revolution to take down a monarchy, it’s a very sweet life. Their adopted daughters are energetic and precocious. They have jobs. Why would anyone give up all that they have carved out for themselves?

The answer is of course that Claire believes in her upbringing – that, as a (former) noble, she has standards  and serving her country is the core of her beliefs. That her country is, maybe less worthy than she hoped, is a given. Instead of rethinking society into a more equal structure, all the government wants to do is create a new kind of second-class citizen of women and queer folks. That’s only just about 100% likely.

But instead of wrestling with rich men’s refusal to share power, we head off to the Nur Kingdom. At which point, I would like to digress and discuss my personal interpretation of the country names. As I see it, they are as follows: Bauer is kind of Germany; Alpes is Austria; Sousse is Switzerland. That’s kind of straightforward.

Okay let’s do Nur. In Japanese its written as ナー, so more like “Naa”

What country might that be? Hm, I wonder what aggressive militaristic country is threatening to Japan right now. It’s not hard to see that Nur is China, and Rusha (Russia) is “north” of that.

I want to note that Frieda, who affects a fake French accent here is from Melica, or, as I think of it, ‘Merika. Because ‘Xico and Nacada (or something like that) will get a mention next book and there will be reasons. So, while this is my interpretation and not at ALL a criticism of the translation, I think of Frieda as a really annoying American. For reasons.

As I thought of all this, I realized that, in the smallest and most tedious way possible, I’m kind of in Rae’s position. I know what’s coming, but I don’t know how it might turn out, only how it has turned out, when it’s over.  So gosh, how irritating for Rae. ^_^;

In any case, as with Volume 1, Volume 3 is mostly introduction and set up and I will also say that not every question posed here will be answered in V4. Which is why I stare with longing at GL Bunko’s listings waiting for a V5 to be listed.  inori-sensei has also posted all the final chapters of this arc and her story from Claire’s perspective on pixiv fanbox and I hope that will bring up the page count enough for the next volume soon.

Now I will return to reading the manga for my fix. And waiting for V5 in Japanese or V4 in English, neither of which have a date as of yet. In the meantime, we may enjoy the sweet scenes of domestic bliss, holidays and celebrations and what will pass (for now, eff you new government) as their wedding. And that’s still not the queerest part of the book.

I mentioned that the emotional impact here for me was, rather than the childrens’ trials, the final chapter where Claire experiences a Rae who does not love her and how bereft her life becomes. That one got me in the gut.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 9
Characters – 10
Service – Kind of, but I’m alright with any and all of it.
Yuri – 10
Queer – 10

Overall – 10

There are STILL questions I have even after Volume 4. In the meantime, I have one question for you – what did you think of Dorothea? I adored her, as you might imagine and need a lot of fanart of her. ^_^ Sadly she’s too cool and competent (and adult /eyeroll/) for most fan artists, who seem to prefer Lily or Philene. Sigh. Poor me.