Archive for the Artists Category


34-sai Mushoku-san Manga Vols. 1-4 (34歳無職さん) Guest Review by Bruce P.

April 2nd, 2014

34-saiIt’s Guest Review Wednesday once again on Okazu and I couldn’t be happier…but that’s because I’ve already read today’s review and I can’t stop laughing. Once again it is my sincere pleasure to welcome back Okazu Superhero, longtime friend, traveling companion and amazing Guest Reviewer Bruce P Yaaaayyy!   

I picked up a copy of 34-sai Mushoku-san (The Unemployed 34-Year Old), (34歳無職さん) Volume 1, by Ikeda Takashi, with the not unreasonable thought that the author of Sasameki Koto might have included some Yuri along the way. I was wrong; four volumes later, and there hasn’t been a hint of Yuri. Instead what we are given is a viciously drawn-out interior monologue of boredom, hopelessness, and personal failure. It’s cruel, peculiar, glacial, and grindingly depressing. Plus it makes me laugh. What a great manga.

The protagonist, who is never named, is a 34-year old woman who lives alone in an apartment and who has lost her job. The first chapter starts right off with a gag–she wakes up and can’t find her glasses (they’re on top of her head). The jokes continue. She doesn’t get up in time to take out the recycling. Her vacuum cleaner falls over. And then it falls over again. What we have here is a wacky slice-of-life story, as our madcap heroine searches for love and employment in the big city! Except…she doesn’t actually ever do any searching for love, or for employment, and as the same jokes begin to repeat, and repeat, it becomes clear that they are not jokes at all. They are symptoms, and despite her best excuses she is a woman in serious trouble.

Though able to deal marginally with others, even if there aren’t many others she ever deals with, at home she lives in a state of almost total paralysis. She cannot pull herself out of her futon until late afternoon, or up from under the kotatsu – Yui from K-ON! all grown up when it is no longer cute. You get the sense that losing the job may not have had much to do with the economy after all. She’s isolated from her family (including a daughter) and has only one acquaintance, a woman she meets occasionally for dinner and who is blatantly drawn with eyes always shut. Her only real companion is her apartment. She just swirls slowly, sleepily around in the drain of her well-vacuumed world. And if that doesn’t make you want to shell out for the multi-volume set, be assured that in Volume 2 she takes dramatic steps to change her life, by contemplating possibly taking dramatic steps to change her life. Contemplation of these steps continues in Volume 3 and Volume 4.

It sounds grimmer than kidneys on toast. Why read it?

(1) Asymmetric though she is, her character is strikingly realistic, and in more spots than are comfortable I can see, in her, a reflection of some of my own unlovely edges. This is both disturbing, and of value when I’m trying to get out of bed in the morning.

(2) It’s beautifully and brilliantly drawn, which nicely counters the subject; some chapters contain no words at all, but are simply picture plays as she bleakly and languorously contemplates her empty life. It’s like mime, in two dimensions, though not as depressing.

(3) Ikeda-sensei has a nice comic touch, and it really is quite funny. Even if laughing at all the pratfalls feels somehow misdirected, like appreciating the Hindenburg disaster on account of it being all bright and sparkly.

(4) Nothing has changed in four volumes. I’m still waiting for the thing to happen.

***

Subcribe with Patreon Enjoy today’s post? Subscribe to Okazu with Patreon and keep it coming!

***

Ratings:

Art: 9. Brilliant. Just brilliant.

Story: 5. Not so much a story as a slowly deteriorating situation. I’m betting on something happening; it eventually did in the classic gently-paced series Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou when Kokone reappeared. My suggestion is to add robots.

Character: 18. She’s not honestly sympathetic, but credit for every year over the age of 16.

Yuri: 0. Unfortunate, but ideally Yuri requires a second character.

Service: 2. A few sponge bath scenes, if you’re desperate enough.

Overall: 8. 34-sai Mushoku-san will not be to everyone’s taste. However, I have never been a fan of action series, and with this one I hit the jackpot.

 





Yuri Manga: Okujou PikaPika Romance (屋上ぴかぴかロマンス)

March 31st, 2014

You know what? I think I really, really like Ohsawa Yayoi. Last year I was blown away by her Black Yagi to Gekiyaku Madeline /Strange Babies series, but here we are in her totally grounded in reality collection of shorts, Okujou PikaPika Romance (屋上ぴかぴかロマンス) and I still really like her work. A lot.

In “Shoshin Metronome,” Kawai-san does not like snare drummer Ichibashi-san, but as a trumpet player, she has to sit directly in front of her.  Their relationship changes from prickly dislike to reluctant friendship to maybe just a little more.

Hana and Nozomi have been friends since childhood, but new school friends are pulling Hana in one direction, and she’s not sure if Nozomi is holding her back or not. I didn’t much like this story, as Hana forces herself on Nozomi in a very un-friendly way and a happily ever after does not actually make it okay.

“Double Bind” is probably the realest story in the book, which follows a deeply uncomfortable breakup between two adult  women. Mayu breaks up with Emi to go out with a guy. We follow Emi’s grieving and have to recoil a bit when Mayu shows up again and again, so Emi can’t move on. Worse, Mayu sleeps with Emi as a piece on the side, which enrages Emi. Emi pulls herself together and is starting to get her life back together when Mayu shows up, again, this time having left the guy because she realizes she was an idiot. The story does not have an end, leaving us with Emi’s tearful face. Will they get together again, or not? We don’t know…which is exactly why I think the story works.

In “in secret…?” a student learns there is more to her doofus-y teacher than can be seen on the surface. Carole King’s version of You’ve Got a Friend plays an important role in this story, which immediately made me think of nawoko’s Voiceful.

The final story is an original for this collection which returns us to the somewhat fraught relationship between Kawai-san and Ichibashi-san, as they find more than just a friend in one another.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – Variable, but 7 overall. “Double Bind” is hard to read, but really the standout story at a 9
Characters – 7 You like some more than others, just like life. ^_^
Yuri – 9
Service – 2

Overall – 8

Yet again, I find that I connect better to these stories as a collection, rather than individually in Comic Yuri Hime. And I strongly hope we’ll be seeing more from Ohsawa Yayoi-sensei.





New Yamaji Ebine Manga in Feel Young Magazine

March 23rd, 2014

ScanIn the February volume of Feel Young (フィール・ヤング) magazine, Yamaji Ebine has a new series starting that, at least at first glance, warrants our attention. “Binetsu no you na” (微熱のような), which I’d translate as “Like a Mild Fever” begins rather abruptly, in the middle of a conversation between Nao, a typical Yamaji-esque protagonist, and Mifuyu, an acquaintance at university, on their way to discuss a book with the author.

During the discussion, Nao finds herself suddenly quite tired. She wakes up in Sensei’s home, wearing a negligee, with no memory of how she got there or what happened. Sensei says that it was Mifuyu who undressed her and put her to bed.

Nao confronts Mifuyu, who thinks it all quite funny. After a conversation about Nao’s best friend in high school, Taki, who has gone to college in England, so Nao is feeling a bit lonely, Mifuyu also contrives to get Nao alone with her boyfriend, Yoshiaki. Yoshiaki hits on Nao, not in a bad way and, lonely, disappointed in her friend Taki, for becoming “just another normal woman and getting a boyfriend,”  Nao sleeps with him. Again, Mifuyu find this very amusing.

But it isn’t until Mifuyu hugs her that Nao feels anything. She’s suddenly aware of the electricity between her and Mifuyu, even as she is completely aware that there is something quite broken in the other woman.

In chapter two, things become even more complicated. Mifuyu still positions herself as Nao’s friend and it’s increasingly obvious that Nao is attracted to her, even as she’s leery of her. But Mifuyu is setting Yoshiaki and Nao up more and more…and we learn, (perhaps not surprisingly) that she’s watching when they have sex.  The second chapter comes to an end with Nao visiting Sensei and having her work critiqued. She asks not to be sent home that night, and Sensei obliges.

So far this story is, as many of Yamaji’s recent stories have been, uncomfortable. The attraction Nao is feeling and the actions she’s taking are in pulling in two opposite directions. And I can’t help but feel that Mifuyu is pulling the strings for some reason of her own. I wonder where this story will go, but I’m kind of not willing to think about it, either. ^_^;

Ratings:

Art – If you like her bare style, then 9
Story – Longer chapters and more direction that recent Yamaji works, but still kind of “uhhmmm”
Characters – I couldn’t begin to tell you yet, waiting for the boot to drop
Yuri – 3, maybe
Service – 4

Overall – Big ole, “I’ll wait and see”

The last few Yamaji works have felt more like her working something out than actual stories. This one feels more like a story, but imbued with a struggle I’m not able to understand.





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.





Dear Brother, Set 3 Campaign is on!

March 4th, 2014

Dear BrotherToday Animesols announced the opening of the crowdfunding campaign for the third and final set of Riyoko Ikeda’s classic shoujo series Dear Brother. The second set was fully funded in a weekend in conjunction with a matching donation, this time we’ll have to do it ourselves.

It’s already a good year for LGBTQ comics and anime fans and it’s only February! ^_^