Archive for the English Manga Category


Yuri Manga: Kiss & White Lily for My Dearest Girl, Volume 7 (English), Guest Review by Christian LeBlanc

November 28th, 2018

Hello and welcome to Guest Review Wednesday on Okazu! Yay! Today we welcome Christian LeBlanc of 3Dcomics.weebly.com to our loving embrace. Or, was that deadly clutches…I can never remember. ^_^ In any case please give Christian your full attention…as we head out together on today’s review.

By Volume 7 of Kiss & White Lily for My Dearest Girl by Canno, (translation by Leighann Harvey, letters by Alexis Eckerman) we’ve firmly settled into the template for a K&WL book: several chapters will showcase the new characters shown on the cover, and the remainder will focus on a ‘legacy couple’ (more than likely Ayaka Shiramine and Yurine Kurosawa, as is the case in this volume).

Our newest cast members are piano-playing junior-high student Haine Aoi (who has recently joined the gardening club so she can get closer to Yurine), and her supportive aunt Aika Yukimura, a senior at Seiran. (scratchy noise of a record skipping) Yes, I did say aunt, so let’s address this elephant in the room right away before it knocks over something valuable.

Canno portrays many different types of relationships in her work. Countless micro-stories fill the “Kiss Theater” bonus pages at the end of each chapter. Her story in Éclair: A Girls’ Love Anthology That Resonates in Your Heart follows a 28-year-old rogue and the 16-year-old girl who pursues her, and she’s even explored monster girls in a MONSTAR doujinshi (along with circle mates Nega and Kawauchi).

Non-romantic friendships are also valid story fodder, as we’ve seen in Volume 4 with Kaoru, Kohagi and Momiji. Here, then, Canno continues exploring different relationships between women by focusing on an aunt and niece, close in age, who were brought up as siblings. Canno even makes it explicit in one scene that they will never be paired romantically, when one character momentarily considers the possibility and is put off by it. I think Canno felt this was necessary given the expectations of romance set up by the cover (and genre) (and by contemporary stories such as Citrus, coughcough), but it still feels a little strange that they consider it at all. The alternative, I guess, is to not show this scene, and leave the reader with a seed of doubt: “but . . . are we supposed to think of them as a couple?” Better to just nip that question in the bud.

This all being said, Haine and her aunt Aika end up being a delightful pair to read about.  Their affection for each other is sincere and touching, rendered even more so by Leighann Harvey’s thoughtful and expressive translation. They both suffer anxiety over the idea that siblings are supposed to drift apart to some degree in adulthood, but Aika receives advice from a returning character on this. There’s also some tension between the two early on concerning piano skills (something they once bonded over nearly drives them apart!) and Haine needing her space and independence (I know she’s just at that age, but oh boy does she act like a brat!), so in all, we still get our ‘romantic conflict’ for our cover stars to work through.

As for our returning players, we see some major growth in effortless-genius Yurine and her relationship with hard-working honors-student Ayaka. We’ve already seen hints throughout the series that Yurine’s advantages over her classmates have caused her some alienation. This comes to a head when Haine triggers a depressive episode in Yurine by telling her she has an empty life for failing to find a passion for anything. Ayaka gamely tries to help her recover, still grateful for Yurine’s help back in Volume 5 when Ayaka was at her lowest.

Contrasted with this, however, is Ayaka’s negative reaction when Yurine later suggests throwing the exams to let Ayaka take back first place. Ayaka has always been comically tsundere before, but there’s nothing funny about her reaction this time – her words are cold and mean, with no underlying hint of “but I really like you!” at all. It feels especially shocking given how much Ayaka was earnestly trying to help Yurine in this book, and speaks volumes about her unresolved hang-ups concerning perfection.

This is also the first volume to end on a cliff-hanger, incidentally: as their relationship evolves, Yurine feels something different after one of her many kisses she’s forced on Ayaka, and it freaks her out – the next volume is about her sorting through what these new feelings mean, so stay tuned! Volume 8 is currently scheduled to be published by Yen Press on March 19, 2019.

Art – 7 Significant improvements: hair is given a lot more definition and shading, and there are more efforts to visually distinguish Yurine from Ayaka (their height difference feels more pronounced, for example). However, I have to knock two points off the English edition for being printed with significantly thicker blacks than the Japanese version, which destroys a great deal of subtlety in the tones and shading; scenes set in the dark particularly suffer from this. Additionally, Yen Press routinely trims off a fair bit of bleed art, and it was frustrating to see Ayaka’s and Yurine’s test results get cut off as well.
Story – 9 Again, Leighann Harvey has done a wonderful job translating this.
Characters – 9
Yuri – 5
Service – 3 My wife may or may not have uttered “Holy Bazongas!” when she happened to glance over my shoulder at the bath scene, and if you have a thing for Santa dresses, Canno’s got you covered with the introduction to the closing chapter.

Overall – 9

I really enjoyed this volume. There are many returning characters, giving the book a welcome ensemble feel for the first time, reinforced by four bonus chapters at the end. The two main stories connect quite seamlessly, and the Christmas backdrop leads to some very pretty scenery (the cover, with its snow-flecked poinsettia, pinecone and holly border sitting above a starry-looking field of snowflakes, is my favorite of the series for this reason). It’s also refreshing to see Yurine struggling for once – she’s come a long way from her one-dimensionally super-human portrayal in Volume 1.

Erica here: Thank you so much for your insight, Christian. If I wasn’t already reading this series, your enthusiasm and affection for it would surely convince me to pick it up! Thank you again for a wonderful review. ^_^





Yuri Manga: MURCIÉLAGO, Volume 8 (English)

November 20th, 2018

While Kuroko, Hinako, Rinko and Shizuka take on the the Tozakura Group’s 70-year old grudge in the sewers, crazy eyed sniper Reiko is contracted to neutralize their above-ground operations.

Hinako’s new golden beetle obsession remains obscure, and we get a new, exciting psychopath killer, Aiko, for our roster of crazy women. 

The fights in MURCIÉLAGO, Volume 8 are ridiculous, bloody and physics-and sense-defying, which is pretty much everything we’ve come to expect and love from a volume of MURCIÉLAGO. 

And, as an added bonus, Reiko gets sex and a new girlfriend. 

 

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 7
Characters – 7
Service – 10
Yuri – 8

Overall – 8

No complaints here. ^_^

 





Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Manga Eternal Edition, Volume 1 (English)

November 14th, 2018

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal Edition, Volume 1 is, in a word, gorgeous. It’s also enormous.

It’s almost fitting that the English-language version of the 20th anniversary edition is huge, as America is kind of known for super-sizing things.

On glossy paper, with a brand new translation and a shiny version of the new-for-the-20th-anniversary covers, this edition is pretty much the definitive edition of Sailor Moon.

From Tsukino Usagi’s discoveyr that she is Sailor Moon, through the gathering of three of her four teammates, the story told in this volume is now well-established among the canon of legendary series. So what is left to say? The Nibleys are re-re-re-translating a series that is already practically mandatory for anime and manga fans, so you wouldn’t imagine that there’d be a lot of room to wiggle, but their translator notes are still interesting. (And their notes about disks and VHS tapes fascinating. This series is now officially so old that the cutting-edge technology of the time has all but disappeared from daily use. Hah!)

For those of you who remember Sailor Moon from the old Tokyopop recycled paper pages, the new all-glossy, very white pages might seem weird, but really, it’s just your lost youth you’re pining for. ^_^

Ratings: (Same as the Japanese volume)

Art – 8 Visibly better. So much has improved in 20 years.
Story – 7 Still silly. It’s never going to be not silly. So what?
Characters – 9
Yuri – 0
Service – This is so hard to parse. Mamoru in a tux is ostensibly service for the original readership of girls, but the costumes have ridiculously short skirts. Let’s call it a 5

Overall – Oddly, 9. Did I ever like it this much or am I getting soft in my old age?

I can now answer that question from 2014 – I am officially getting soft in my old age. 

Thanks very much to Kodansha Comics for the review copy. I look forward to having to find a huge space on my shelves for the remainder of the series. ^_^

I will be out of the office for the next few days at AnimeNYC, come look for me at Booth 334 on Friday and I’ll see you at the Kase-san and Morning Glories screening on Saturday!





LGBTQ Manga: My Brother’s Husband, Volume 2 (English)

October 28th, 2018

In Gengoroh Tagame’s My Brother’s Husband, Volume 2, (Volume 3 and Volume 4 in Japanese) Yaiichi begins to confront other people’s – and his own- homophobia.

Yaiichi, his ex-wife Natsuki, Mike and Kana all visit a hot springs resort together and Yaiichi tells Natsuki about his dream of Kana being a lesbian. Natsuki is delightfully unsympathetic, forcing Yaiichi to see his “concern” for the discomfort it is.

When they come home, while Yaiichi is confronting the “concern” expressed by others, the penny drops that his “concern” and their is the same bias. Mike meets a former classmate of Ryouji’s and learns the justification he uses to stay in the closet. There is a line here that sums it up beautifully; the classmate says he doesn’t want to make any special effort to be out, and Mike thinks, but you’ll make a lot of special efforts to stay hidden. …That’s the glass closet in a nutshell. Instead of letting people in, he uses a complete stranger to dump all his problems on. Mike knows that’s what he was there to do and not surprisingly, he isn’t particularly thrilled.

Yaiichi has to confront the kind of homophobia that takes the form of suffocating “concern” from good people and is able to find a way to thread the needle. As I noted in my review of the Japanese, this scene is a bit of heavy-handed allegory. And then, the story draws to a sweet, emotional ending.

The criticisms I have seen of this volume fascinate me. Queer western readers have objected to it being too preachy and Japanese queer readers have objected to the protagonist being Canadian. Those are of course valid criticisms, but also miss the point they are making.

Since Japan does not have same-sex marriages, it could not have plausibly been a Japanese gay man as a protagonist. Unless you flipped the script and had had Mike die and Ryouji come home, but then, he’d understand that why and how and what of passive homophobia and would not be foreign enough to have no cares about existing outside that. Ryouji might be worried that he’s ruin Yaiichi’s reputation, or Kana would be bullied, where Mike is outside society enough to not think about that. The narrative is a bit heavy-handed because it is openly uncovering things that are never spoken of and forcing a non-unhappy resolution on them.

The intended audience for this book is not LGBTQ folks (although clearly we are going to read it.) It is the straight – mostly clueless about LGBTQ people and issues – Japanese men who read the magazine in which it runs. It needed to be heavy-handed so they got the point, and so they were emotionally rewarded for getting that point. It wasn’t for us – it was about us for someone who, like Yaichi has never once thought about us (or if they had, had done so with passive fear and loathing society bolsters in a million ways.)

So, when someone says “it’s too preachy” I respond, “It’s exactly the right amount of preachiness for the intended audience of adult straight men who would, like Yaiichi, be horrified to the point of shutting down communication, if they learned a relative was gay.

I also found reviews by men amazed at the way the male bodies were drawn to be highly entertaining. ^_^ (“Wow, this guy draws really beefy dudes!” Yes, yes he does. ^_^)

More than anything My Brother’s Husband is the kind of wholesome, family-friendly book you could hand to a relative who just was not getting why their “confusion” or “concern” about your sexual identity was painful to you. So go ahead, get a copy for the grandparents, uncles, aunts or parents…

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 9
Characters – 10
LGBTQ – 10
Service – 2

Overall – 10

…while you’re at it, give a copy to the library. There’s kids out therewho will need it.





Ghost in the Shell: Global Neural Network Anthology (English)

October 11th, 2018

This past weekend at NYCC I had the very sincere pleasure of sitting in on the Ghost in the Shell: Global Neural Network Anthology panel featuring Alex de Campi, David Lopez, Genevieve Valentine, Brendan Fletcher and editor Alejandro Arbona, Moderated by Kodansha USA’s Ben Applegate, it was an hour-long celebration of the joy of being able to contribute to the iconic Ghost in the Shell canon.

Immediately after the panel, I went and bought the book at the Kodansha booth – it sounded that good. And, having read it, I can say with all honestly that it is that good. 

Ghost in the Shell: Global Neural Network is not an attempt to copy the original Ghost in the Shell manga. Only one entry has art that is reminiscent of Shirow’s work, while the other stories consciously reach for a out-of Japan look. Giannis Milonogiannis offers a consciously manga-like effort, with many notable nods to the original, including chibi characters  (as de Campi pointed out in the panel.) Lopez focuses on China for a more realistic look;  Brent Schoonover went full-on American comics for Valentine’s moving look at the remnants of The United States in the GitS universe (a story in which Section 9 never appears, but is nonetheless brilliant.) And LRNZ’s art is recognizably European for the final story that, in many ways, is one of the most profoundly Shirow-esque stories of the post-original-manga variations, right up there with Ghost in the Shell: Innocence.

None of the stories have the hyper densely crammed word balloons of the original and I frankly do not believe we in the west will ever truly be able to capture that until GitS is transformed into a neural network-shared media stream. Then we will understand Shirow’s point, I think.

Aside from that, I felt that every story in the anthology really grabbed onto one or more aspects of the original and ran with it. Issues of access to information, healthcare, safety; the meaning of identity in a world were you can be  – and are – multiple people; the meaning of borders, of ageing, of family all were highlighted in extremely smart ways. Every story took these concepts and delved into them for the rest of the world, people outside Section 9 and outside the borders of Japan.

There were no stories I didn’t like, although, of course, your mileage may vary. But the thing I found the most refreshing was that the members of Section 9 sounded like the people I remembered from the manga. Snarky-funny, loyal to each other, but always joking, picking on one another, poking at each other like siblings. That was the thing I loved best about Section 9 and it was fully represented here. 

The final story, “Star Gardens” by Brendan Fletcher and LRNZ focuses deeply on identity – the idea that Kusanagi is all the personas she has shown us over the decades, not one or another but all of them at once – and this really rang true for me especially in the light of Innocence, when Kusanagi no longer exists as a physical entity. This story also has a magnificent panel where we see the many fragments of Kusanagi from the movie, the manga, the TV series, the OVA, even the recent live-action movie, simultaneously. It was a fantastic image, which spoke volumes about the range of the canon and how we each have our own idea of the “real” Kusanagi. This story also contains an homage to the lesbian sex scene of the original manga, but with more meaning and emotion contained in those few panels that the original, where it was meant to be gratuitous.

Every story had strengths and weaknesses and, for any fan of the larger body of Ghost in the Shell I think this must be considered a meaningful addition to the canon, as Shirow has overseen and approved all of it. 

Ratings:

Art – 9 Variable, but I say damned good.
Stories – 9 Also damned good.
Characters – 10  Listening to everyone bust Batou’s chops made me so happy.
Service – 4 Some, but not half of Shiro’s ass fetish.
Yuri – 3 There’s a thing, yes.

Overall – 9

If you only like one version or another of Major Motoko Kusanagi, it might miss you, but if what draws you to Ghost in the Shell is the larger questions of identity and access, memory and reality and perception, it’s a must-read.