Archive for the English Manga Category


Yuri Manga: Sweet Blue Flowers, Volume 1 (English)

October 4th, 2017

Third time’s the charm. In 2012, JManga did a digital-only translation. Towards the end of 2014, Digital Manga Publishing also tried putting Shimura Takako-sensei’s new classic Yuri manga out as a digital publication. Now, in 2017 we have what is very likely to be the definitive English-language translation for the series, in omnibus format. Thanks to Jocelyne Allen, Jen Gruningen and the folks at Viz, I think we’re at peak Aoi Hana here in the west.

Sweet Blue Flowers, Volume 1 introduces us to Manjome Fumi and her old childhood friend, Okudaira Akira. They had been very close as children, but when Fumi moved, they fell out of touch. Now, as they both head to different high-end girls’ schools, they’ve met again. 

I was reminded as I read this book that although the opening and the ending are – in my opinion – very weak, the rest of the story is excellent. It’s got surprising depth and breadth. Characters that surround Fumi and Akira are as well-developed as they and as interesting. 

In the first half of this Volume 1 – the original Volume 1 that was, Fumi is charmed, then asked out by an upperclassman at her all-girl’s school. Sugimoto is not her first girlfriend, but may well be the first by her own volition. Their time together is brief, as it becomes very clear that Sugimoto carries a whole host of issues with her and Fumi recognizes that she’s worth paying full attention to.  By the second half of the volume, Fumi has learned a lot about herself, among them that Sugimoto is the third person she’s loved.

The school play gives a chance for the cast of both schools to mix and emotions to be be heightened. Wuthering Heights is an unsurprising allegory for the tensions and passions of the cast to swirl and come together and part, like a storm. 

But by the end of the volume we have Akira and Fumi still friends. Fumi has, in a very rare act in Yuri manga, comes out to Akira. It’s a tempestuous time in their lives, but they both know who each other were – and are – and are there for each other. 

This still, after all these years, stands out as one of Shimura’s most tightly put-together stories. Other series have sort of swirled and eddied around the same material without changing, but we can see the changes to Akira and Fumi and their friends in pretty steady progression, as they encounter, deal with and grow from challenging situations.

This is a series that has many (if not all) the hallmarks of a “S”-era story and in my Very Brief History of Yuri I call it and Maria-sama ga Miteru “S for a new generation.” We can, like Fumi, enjoy the atmosphere of an old girl’s school. We can enjoy the drama that comes along with the hot-house environment. And we get the added advantage of characters with society – friends and families, brothers and parents and teachers who are male and female and a modern sensibility, in which gay people exist, and have lives. This is all so critical to my enjoyment of a manga. We have this series in omnibus form (available in print and digital format) and it, like several other series available right now, will be on my short-list of books that embody the classic concepts of the genre of “Yuri.” 

Interestingly, since the author attempted (unsuccessfully) to visit Yoshiya Nobuko’s home, the grandmother of Yuri gets both a mention in the notes and is attributed as the women who pioneered Yuri in Japanese literature. This is true, but she’s even more important than the note accounted for, because she not only pioneered Yuri, but also a great deal of what we think of as shoujo literature and manga. Yoshiya Nobuko-sensei was the richest woman in Japan in her lifetime. She’s an inspiration and a hero of mine. (Here’s my report of visiting Yoshiya-sensei’s home, from 2013.)

This edition came with a lovely assortment of postcards from the Aoi Hana Meets the Enoshima Electric Railway collaboration event from 2012 (an event reported in excellent detail by Guest Reviewer Bruce P – with pictures!). The book itself is exceedingly well put-together, with those cover flaps that take the place of a dustcover, but allow readers to see all of the cover and flap art. Color pages are included – including the cover of the second volume as a interior color page. Even the font choice matched the original well. And the translation and adaptation are excellent. I really do think this is a “definitive” edition. We’re not likely to get better. There’s very little room for it to be better. 

This is the version we all wanted. There’s no excuse not to buy it and support the author and folks at the publishing companies that brought it to us! Volume 2 will be out in December, 2017.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Characters – 8
Story – 7
Yuri – 7
Service – 1

Overall – 8

Today’s review was brought to you by the kindness and generosity of Okazu Superhero and occasional Guest Reviewer, Eric P.! Thank you Eric, once more, for all your many years of support! 

If you enjoy our Guest Reviews here on Okazu, I hope you’ll help support the Guest Reviewers – the Okazu Patreon is a mere $34/month away from being able to pay our writers. Every dollar will get us closer to that goal. If you’re a regular reader here and have enjoyed Eric’s reviews, I hope you’ll consider supporting Okazu on Patreon so we can pay him for his work! 





MURCIÉLAGO Manga, Volume 3 (English)

September 7th, 2017

In Yoshimura Kana’s MURCIÉLAGO, Volume 3, we take a good, long, detailed look into the darkness of obsessive psychopathic murderers…and don’t really do much of anything with the information. ^_^

First, Kuroko deals with the Skin Collector, a man who skins his female victims and we learn, both in real time and from his exposition, that his daughter Ringo shares both his skills and his predilections for killing. In her case, her Daddy issues go rather deeper than usual. The author takes pains to show us how happy the families Ringo destroys are so, long after we’ve put the book down, we can feel crappy about enjoying it.

While Kuroko is finishing off Ringo’s father, the police are sharing a bit of exposition, to indicate to us what we must have surely recognized…Kuroko and Hinako are both not functioning within what society considers normal parameters. The specifics are, as yet, left hidden.

Which segues us nicely into the hidden realms of the Elder Gods, and the amusement park based on H.P Lovecraft’s Chthulu mythos. It’s sort of a given that among my friends, that everyone goes through a Lovecraft phase, at least in a sort of secondhand osmosis kind of way. Not all my friends have read the original or derivative works, but enough of them have that we just don’t really notice any inclusion of Lovecraft’s work as something notable. It’s more like…duh…of course it’s there. Which is part of why I forget to mention the inclusion of it in this series. It’s like…duh, of course the mascot at the amusement park would be Shoggoth. (Well, arguably, I would have chosen, Nyarlathotep, and no, not because of the Nyarko-san anime, but because of a bumper sticker on a car of a friend of mine from like 25 years ago.)

So, after we visit the hidden depths of the Elder Gods and the inside of Kuroko’s mind, we turn our attention to other, somewhat lower, places. One of Hinako’s old college friends shows up, worried about her sister, who has joined a religious cult. Faced with the idea that “Virginal Rose Academy” is an all-female cult, full of cute girls, run by a buxom young woman, Kuroko is all in.

Ratings:

Art – 6 Not likely to get better
Story – 7 Still horrible violence with some silly violence, but there sort of was a story, so that’s good
Characters – 8 Hinako fascinates me….
Service – 10 Creative, awful and pervasive
Yuri – …wait for it…. 

Overall – 8

This is an excellent volume of a really strange manga, with violence, amusingly deranged Edwardian fictitious mythologies, action, more violence and some other bits of violence for color. Next volume, there will be consensual lesbian sex, as well. Let’s look forward to Volume 4!

 





Discovering New Yuri 2017 Presentation

August 21st, 2017

At Yurithon 2017 I did a presentation called Must-Read/Must-Watch Yuri.  At Flamecon 2017, the same presentation was presented as Discovering The Best New Yuri Anime and Manga.

I promised to put the entire presentation up here, so folks could draw on the links, rather than taking photos of the screen. Not that I didn’t want them to do that, but this is SO much easier, I hope! For reasons, the videos were making it impossible to upload as a Powerpoint (and not everyone has that, so I’ve taken out the videos and converted the presentation to PDF. The links should work for you. Only the Utena Blu-Ray and Citrus anime have no links, as they currently have no ETA. 

 

 

 





LGBTQ: Legend of Korra Turf Wars, Part One Preview on Amazon (English)

July 17th, 2017

Via Senior YNN Correspondent Eric P. we have some really exciting news today.  Legend of Korra: Turf Wars, Part One is due to hit shelves at the beginning of August and Amazon has a preview of the first chapter.

You know how I am with managing expectations, but for once, I have very high hopes that this book will break ground. And, from the glimpses I’ve had from the preview and the of-course leaked pages on the Internets, it look like our hopes will be realized. Korra and Asami will be balancing relationship and teamwork in this series. As the description reads, “In order to get through it all, Korra and Asami vow to look out for each other–but first, they’ve got to get better at being a team and a couple!”

There, they said it.

I don’t know if this is the first mainstream large publisher, commercial property to ever say that so plainly or not, but it sure is one of the biggest YA franchises to do so. And certainly the only one I can think of where the lead was the one in the same-sex relationship, not a supporting role. We still love you Willow, just you weren’t Buffy… and I see all my favorite female characters stretching back to my childhood, all the almosts and might have and should have beens starting with like Jaimie Summers in the Bionic Woman. My life is littered with crumbs of female leads that ought to have been gay… and here we are. Finally. 2017 and we finally have a lead character of major commercial franchise who is a lesbian and the relationship is with another major character, not just someone to kill off.

Enjoy the preview and wait patiently a few more weeks. ^_^

Many thanks to Eric for the heads up and for the sponsorship!

 





LGBTQ Manga: My Brother’s Husband, Volume 1 (English)

June 25th, 2017

Yaichi is not a typical Japanese man. He is a single father and works at home, raising his young daughter, Kana. But, in most things, he thinks of himself as completely typical. He believes in the social order as it was presented to him….even though he himself has failed to completely conform.

When Yaichi’s late brother’s husband arrives from Canada to learn about his husband’s early life, everything Yaichi thinks he believes in will be challenged.

My Brother’s Husband by Gengoroh Tagame is a beautiful story about the passive homophobia of “good” and “decent” people and how being made uncomfortable can lead to change.

The catalyst to this change is Mike Flanagan. Mike is Canadian and openly gay. He’s come to Japan to be closer to his late husband, Ryoji. Yaichi is made deeply uncomfortable by this physical reminder that his brother was gay, and felt that he needed to leave Japan, but when Kana intercedes on her new-found uncle’s behalf, he invites Mike to stay with them.

Mike spends his time exploring locations from Ryoji’s youth. Yaichi spends his time recoiling from Mike’s emotional connection to his brother. As Yaichi comes closer and closer to recognizing his own homophobia, it’s Kana who always puts her finger on his sore spots.  In her innocence, she asks questions Yaichi doesn’t have the bravery to ask, and in doing so, she’s the one who highlights the hypocrisy of adults.

Tagame-sensei’s art is beautiful and his love of men’s bodies is apparent. But it’s his gentle touch with painting men’s emotional life that really makes this book stand out. Because, My Brother’s Husband runs in Monthly Action, a manga magazine for adult men. These men have been trained by society to not ask the questions and to be embarrassed by those who do. Kana serves to help them learn, while Yaichi allows them to share that embarrassment, and come to understand that ignorance breeds that embarrassment, and fear. 

The Japanese volumes for this series also include LGBTQ-community terminology and history in short essays between chapters. Explanations of gay pride and same-sex marriage and what LGBTQ means are discussed without complication…for the audience of Yaichis for whom this manga is written. These essays have been left out of the English edition and I’m torn on whether I think that a good or bad thing.

While in Japanese, this series is 4 volumes, (Here are links to Okazu Reviews for  Volume 1 | Volume 2 | Volume 3, with Volume 4 being released in July 2017,) the English-language edition has broken the story into two beautifully-made hardcover volumes of approximately manga dimensions. The final pages include storyboard pages from the work. 

If you have not already read this manga, I highly suggest that it would be an excellent Pride Month read.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 9
Characters – 10
LGBTQ – 10
Service – 4

Overall – 10

In America, this is an important and exceptional work – in Japan it is groundbreaking as a LGBTQ-themed fiction manga by an openly gay creator, running in a manga magazine for adult men. I hope it is beginning of positive change.