Archive for the Now This Is Only My Opinion Category


It’s A Woman’s World: Bodacious Space Pirates, Maria-sama ga Miteru and The Bechdel-Wallace Test

July 10th, 2012

Bodacious Space Pirates came to an end and I thought it delightful in every possible way. As I (over)thought how I’d approach a final season review, I started to think about the qualities that made the series stand out for me – and what, specifically, that meant in terms of storytelling. And, ultimately, I started thinking about how the series portrayed women.

Courtney Duckworth on Broad Recognition has a really excellent review of Pixar’s Brave, in which she discusses something that any woman in the corporate world knows…to be a successful woman, you have to be a man. I remember a conversation I had with a young executive who was being groomed for a CEO position in the company I worked for at the time. He was having a little crisis because, in order to be the man they wanted him to be, he had to give up his family life. It was expected, respected and demanded that he not be there to see his kids play in their first ball game, not attend recitals, because his company needed him. I watched him as he talked his way through this, as he justified letting his family drop off in importance and the company become the thing he would care about. In the end, he became a very successful CEO, and I remember this conversation as the saddest one I have ever had with another human being. For women, who are presumed to be primary caregivers, the stress of letting go of family in order to be successful as a CEO is almost insurmountable. Let someone else raise your kids? (Doesn’t matter if it’s your husband…it’s NOT YOU.) You’re heartless. Focused and driven? You’re a bitch. Want to take time off to see your kid’s recital? You’re not dedicated. There is no way to win, because you are not a man with a wife who will watch the kids in the background.

Merida, like Ermina (Paros no Ken), Safire (Princess Knight) and Lady Oscar (Rose of Versailles), excels at men’s skills, in a world that pretty much has one path to excellence – being as brave and competent as a man.

Let’s stop here and take a look at the Bechdel_Wallace Test for a second. As a reminder, the test goes like this.

1. [The media in question] has to have at least two [named] women in it.
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something besides a man

In a recent email exchange with Alison Bechdel, she and I discussed the idea of “would Mo watch it?” as an unwritten, extra factor to measure if a media property follows the letter, but not the spirit of the Test (that is, it fits the criteria strictly, but it’s still not the kind of thing that Mo is looking for in entertainment). ^_^

So what does this have to do with Bodacious Space Pirates and Maria-sama ga Miteru? Everything.

Let’s start with Maria-sama ga Miteru. In the rarified and protected world of Lillian Girls’ School there are no “men’s jobs.” The leaders of the student body are women, the Principal and many of the teachers are women. The presumption with which the entire series is presented to us is that Youko or Sachiko or any of the other members of the Student Council  will move into positions with decision-making power when they graduate – if not effortlessly, then they will certainly be capable of standing up for themselves, because they have been trained to be leaders. No one ever comments that they are as good as men, or that they run the student body with masculine focus. Lillian is a woman’s world and within it, women do jobs women can do, if they are give the opportunity to do them. (This is something that research bears out – given equal opportunity to excel, women will excel equally.)

In Bodacious Space Pirates, Marika is going to school in a woman’s world, but she isn’t thinking about it that way, any more than Yumi was. It’s just…school. Then something changes and Marika is indeed sent into a world that is traditionally inhabited by men – piracy. And here, at last, we get to the point. It’s true that Marika faces some trials based on the fact that she’s y’know, a high school girl, but her gender alone is less of a problem than one might have expected in a series like this. Being a woman doing “man’s work” is pretty much never an issue, except in one or two totally valid scenes. (Two young women trawling the back alleys of a pirate hangout is a completely reasonable use of that kind of tension.)

Both these series star female characters in a relatively female-heavy cast, and so they both fly through the letter of the Bechdel-Wallace Test easily. But…there’s more to them. In neither series is there a focus on turning a sexualized male gaze on the characters. It really doesn’t matter how “strong” a female character is – when we are forced to stare continually at their crotch or chest, there’s a different story being told – “Yes, she could kick your ass, but it’s okay, you could still have sex on her, so you’re still superior to her..”

Let’s think, for a second about the inevitable “beach episode” in Bodacious Space Pirates. In any other series, if I ask you, “What was the beach episode about?” the only real answer you’d have is “It was about reducing the female characters to a series of sexualized visual images.” Now think about the beach episode of BSP. What was it about? The plot was the trial run for the dinghy race, but it was *about* Ai-chan. In any other series, would there have been an entire episode about a relatively unimportant character like Ai-chan? Would there have been a follow-up episode about her? Would she have been developed as more than a name at all?  There was no attempt to turn Marika or any of the characters into a pair of jiggling boobs.  Yes, we absolutely saw the female characters in bathing suits…but we also saw Kane in a bathing suit. He was not ripped, but he was fit. We saw his ass as many times as we saw the girls’. I don’t care about *either* the girls or Kane in a bathing suit, but the service was pleasantly even-handed and blessedly low-key. It would have been hideously easy (and hideous) to simply stare up the Yacht Club members’ skirts all the time, as anime as a genre slides into a low place in which a majority of viewers seem content to huddle – but that does not happen here.

Both these series have female-heavy casts, but not female-exclusive casts. These are not reverse harems, not reverse shounen series. There are brothers, fathers, uncles, male teachers, colleagues and crew in these worlds, just as there are in the real world. A woman’s world in these series does not mean “the exclusion of all men,” as it might in a male gaze fantasy like Strawberry Panic!  These women have society, which is, in my reading of it, the meaning of the third and final criteria of the Bechdel-Wallace Test.

Maria-sama ga Miteru and Bodacious Space Pirates are about strong women as *I* understand the concept. Women who are perfectly capable living in a world populated by men and women; women who can take command of both men and women and be respected as leaders – and who are not judged by a set of standards that are skewed so they can only ever fail. Women who can find their own solutions to issues, not to have to excel at men’s thinking or men’s skills to be considered a success.

In these series, women are shown as being as brave and competent…as a woman.

Would Mo watch these? I think she might.





We Don’t Need No Stinking Publishers!

April 17th, 2012

This is a real conversation I had with someone recently:

Them: Why do we need publishers? We can publish without them!

Me: Who will license the book?

Them: Well, of course someone has to do that.

Me: And who will translate it?

Them: We have a translator.

Me: And don’t forget, you need a letterer and editor and layout person.

Them: Right, we can do that, too.

Me: And someone to manage the project so it makes deadlines and has quality control.

Them: Of course!

Me: And don’t forget someone to line up distribution, and you’ll need someone to do marketing.

Them: Right, yes.

Me: And, when you get all that together, you know what they call that?

Them: ….

Me: Congrats on recreating the concept of the publishing company from scratch. ^_^

***

To their credit, they got the point and were very gracious about it.





Invisible Layers of Manga

April 1st, 2012

I often refer to the fact that I very often mention “steps that were skipped” or “things readers don’t see” in reference to manga publishing. I’m asked about that quite often – what are those steps? What is it that readers don’t see?

I’ve been meaning to address some of this for ages and today seemed like a good chance to mention some, but probably not all, of the things that readers probably don’t know about (and frequently don’t care about.)

Let’s start with licensing. I imagine very few readers really have any grasp of what this entails, and to be honest there’s no one formula for licensing manga. Different companies have different requirements, some have agencies that represent them, some hire individuals, others have in-house groups that handle that. American manga companies may also hire an agent or representative, but they are more likely to do licensing in-house. In book publishing, this stage is handled by an “acquiring editor” who interfaces between legal and the author or agent. There are no acquiring editors in manga right now, because relationships are so often personal before they are professional and many of the Japanese companies, once they create a relationship, still prefer to go for exclusive agreements. That’s changing a bit. And some manga artists, especially independent ones, are starting to use an agent, but most still rely on their publisher to represent their interests.

Licensing involves more levels of negotiation than you can possibly imagine if you’ve never done it. This stage might takes months or years, while every single detail is hammered out – even down to the way the title looks, the way the credits are handled, distribution for first and successive printings, payment, milestones, formats the files will be sent in…Every. Single. Detail. Obviously, scanlation groups skip all this – they can hit the ‘net faster, because there’s no pesky lawyers, company wanting to know how the books will be distributed or how it will look, making sure that previous contracts are not infringed upon or creators wanting to be paid and make sure the spellings are the way they want them.

After the licensing is done, then the folks who are doing the localizing can get to it. The translator gets a script from what would, in the book publishing world be called a “managing editor.” Managing editors manage the project from this point on until it actually goes to the print. Ideally, these days the manuscript are the pages of the raw manga in digital form. This is where scanlators start the process, having skippped all the tediousness of licensing negotiation. Manga companies do not typically have a “managing editor” and the editor in chief of the company may act as project manager if it’s a really small company.

Translation is not a science. It’s an art. I’ll keep saying that until people get it. ^_^ There is no “right” way to translate, there are a number of ways to translate any given thing.

At this point, there’s a couple of ways a company can go. Some translators send the script as a text file to the adapter. Maybe that person has a bit of understanding of Japanese and has the manga to hand, so they can compare, but that’s pretty rare, honestly. Most companies now require translators to do their own adaptation. Some are better than others at it. Usually this takes some fluency as a writer in the language being translated to. That’s an entirely different thing than just speaking your own language fluidly. The most important thing removing the adapter does is 1) removes a fresh new pair of eyes looking over the script, and so losing an opportunity for some input on things like Voice. 2) It saves money and time, as well.

Some companies have an editor look over the script at this point. A few do, and you usually can tell, because those companies have unusually good translation. Copy editors do not just proofread. They are looking for consistent language use, widows and orphans in the text, grammatical and syntactical errors and other larger issues. Of course, they also find typos. Most manga companies have a translator and an “editor” who does the copy editing and project management. Because of this – and because the quality of editors are so variable, you sometimes get rougher “translation” to your language than you might like.

Then the script goes to lettering. Oh, but wait, there’s no way to letter a page with lettering already on it, so first the page is cleaned up and touched up in places and then it is lettered. Scanlation circles typically use a DPI of about 200 or 300 for their distribution. I can tell you from personal experience that that is absolutely nothing like cleaning up a page at 1200 dpi and retouching it, so that 1-pixel specks don’t show up as black dots in a print version.

Then lettering begins. Companies make hard choices about things like sound effects, which are so often drawn into the manga panels. Do they just translate them, or do they go to the considerable time and effort of replacing them? In almost all cases, I replace them at ALC, because it looks so much nicer. But it definitely takes way longer. And in a few cases, there’s just no way around it and a sound in English has to be set next to the art.

Here’s where it all gets very messy. In book publishing, the managing editor then gets a “galley” copy – a rough copy of the printed volume. This is sent back out to the editor and more importantly, another missing layer here – a proofreader. Some manga companies send lettered manuscripts to the copy editor at this point. It’s a little harder to make changes, but it’s pretty key because…

Okay, so when I reviewed JManga.com this week, I told you that there are almost always errors in manga. Well here’s why….because there are no galleys. Manga publishers do not get rough copies back. In offset printing the most expensive book is the first one and every time the plates are set, it costs. Even big manga publishers here in the US don’t have in-house printing and can’t afford this step. So there are no galleys to send back to the editors and proofreaders who can then spot the mistakes the letterer made. THIS is why one has to presume there are typos in every manga.

And, in some cases, where the letterer has already done their work, there still is only one layer of editing, so after the copy editor makes changes, *no one checks the finished manuscript.* This drives me absolutely crazy. Every manuscript needs more than one editor looking at it once.

True story – when we finished the very first Rica ‘tte Kanji!? volume, we had a total of 5 editors and proofreaders – and there were still two typos that escaped. You can never have too many eyes check a manuscript.

So, in book publishing, the galley goes back to the copy editor and then a proofreader…and then if the managing editor is not a moron, they take a look at it and THEN it goes to print.

In manga, the letterer gets a script that’s been edited once and no one checks the lettered manuscript for errors. Or, if the editor gets the manuscript after lettering, no one checks it a second time after those have been fixed. There can never be too many eyes. And manga companies almost always skimp on eyes.

So, why do they do that? Well, remember, manga companies have been constrained by comic book and bookstore distribution until recently. That means that they had to determine a release date way back at the beginning of the process. Readers expect the book to be ready by then, and are very demanding about things going as fast as possible, which means the company has to get that thing out the door to the printer asap to be ready. (Printers are never fast.) So they send books to print after one read rather than holding the thing up while they wait for a second round of reading/changes – and forget a third round. I have friends in book publishing who will be hired to copy edit/proofread books going to second and third printings and even with all those added layers, they still find errors.

About half the time when you see an editor-in-chief’s name on the book, they never actually edited it. Again, at ALC I always re-read a book after the editors have sent in their changes and then I hand it off to proofreaders to catch the things I still missed (and we still miss some. It’s just the way life is.)

True story – when I was a child I had a book I loved. (This was back in the day when publishing books was a respectable job.) At the very climax of the book there is a critical typo that changes the entire story. At 11 years old, I crossed out the wrong word and wrote in the right one. It just bothered me that much. ^_^

Then we head into issues of distribution and marketing which I have talked about previously, so I won’t belabor the points here. But they also take time, one of the many things fans are always so dissatisfied about.

I hope this gives you a little glimpse into some of the layers that readers never see – and hopefully explain to you why you see errors, and wonder why the company never caught it or what’s holding the book up or other questions and concerns readers have, but have no answers for.

Perhaps this new world of digital distribution will make it simpler for readers to catch an error and companies to fix it. Here’s hoping. ^_^





A Uniquely Biased Review of JManga.com on Laptop and Tablet

March 21st, 2012

Disclaimer: As many of you know, ALC Publishing has been collaborating with JManga to provide localization for some of their manga. Therefore, it would be the height of absurdity for me to tell you that this is an unbiased review. I am human, and there will be bias. Duh. However, I am not approaching this review in the sense of “We’re great, everyone else sucks”, because aside from it not being true, that too would be absurd. So, I’ll do my best to be consistent, coherent and to make my biases as transparent as possible, so you know where I’m coming from.

In addition, I am not spending a single moment pointing out typos, “misspellings” (if that can indeed even be considered to be a thing in a transliteration) or choices in translation that would not be the choices I myself would make. Those are the kinds of things people do when they have no creative energy themselves and instead prefer to feel important about something by poking pedantic holes in a thing. For the sake of today’s discussion, let’s assume that every volume probably has a typo or two (and in a few days I will tell you *why.* It’s a completely different topic.) I will comment on lettering and font only to discuss issues with the legibility of a page and anything that impacts the reading experience in a way that takes one out of the moment. I’ll grade them A-F, Where A+ is outstanding and F is Fail, because I think numbers aren’t really applicable here.

Lastly, in the interest of complete transparency, I received a number of credits from JManga to supplement my subscription, not so that I would do this review, (in fact, they have no idea I’ve written it yet,) but because they are very nice people. Nonetheless, I pay for my own subscription plan out of my own pocket.

Having said all that, let’s begin. I will not discuss the registration process. It’s as straightforward as can be and there is nothing unusual or complex about it, if you have ever registered for anything, anywhere online.

Subscription

Negatives: I have previously mentioned that I am uncomfortable with the “subscription” model of JManga. In a nutshell, the “subscription” one buys is not a subscription. On Crunchyroll, one pays a monthly fee for all-you-can-watch access. That is a subscription. On JManga, one pays a monthly fee and receives that much in credits, their site currency, which one then cashes in for titles. This is akin to going to an arcade, putting $10.00 in the machine and getting $10 worth of tokens, which you can then only spend in that arcade. The subscription itself provides no value. The value of those tokens is the entertainment you can buy with them.

Positives: JManga has recently run a number of very interesting sales and promotions, and is constantly running additional sales on the price of the volumes of manga. So, during one of the recent promotions, they doubled the amount of credits you initially received with your $10 or $25. If you were to pay $10, you received 2000 credits and much of the manga was discounted to 499 credits. So, for that $10, you could “purchase” up to 4 manga. Basic math tells you that that is a great deal.

A big positive is that a subscription to JManga is not a commitment to JManga. According to their FAQ, you can downgrade your subscription at any time and still retain access to anything you have previously purchased. So you can buy your manga on sale, then downgrade back to free, until you have a few more bucks in the bank. I honestly like this. It makes the “subscription” model more tolerable than a commitment to a monthly purchase that I may or may not want to make. I buy my manga in bulk. With the variability of manga series’ lengths, and the lack of consistent timing on new material (by which I mean “new material I want”) being added to the site, there’s no guarantee that I’d spend that $10 every month….and while credits are rolled over from one month to the next, there is a sincerely held concern that there might be a time limit for rolled over credits or, let’s be real here, the longevity of Jmanga itself.

I will review the series I read on Story, Overall Presentation and Overall Translation, and at the end, discuss the viewing experience on two different tech systems, a laptop and a tablet.

I purchased a number of titles, both Yuri and non-Yuri, to get an overall feel of the quality of translation. A number of people have commented on the not-entirely-fluent feel of several series, but I find that more often than not, translations were perfectly fine. There’s a panel, or a page, here and there, were English grammar isn’t perfectly tight, but, like typos, there’s a reason for that, and I’ll cover it under a different essay.

First up, Ekiben Hitoritabi: I picked this manga first, because I had never read it, had no expectations and no a priori opinion.

Story: Both incredibly interesting…and sort of dull at the same time. ^_^ Food, train, view, food, train, view. I like all three and there is no doubt that if I had read this in Japanese, I would have missed most of the story. So it was really nice, but the density of detail was overwhelming at times.

Overall Presentation: Not all that good, actually. I frequently had to expand the page size to see side comments and notes. I don’t know for sure, but it appears that this was scanned in at a low DPI, which meant I frequently needed to zoom. I’ll get back to the zoom later in the tech section. There was a serious issue with the retouch. Digitally “whiting out” text is quite easy, because you just set the brush to the color of the background and whiteout the previous text. This manga has thick gray lines behind the text, where it looked as if someone actually used whiteout and scanned it in, but it’s probably more likely that the color of the brush was just off from the background color.

Overall Translation: Generally quite good. If there were places that didn’t seem perfect, my brain has washed them away and I’m left remembering a pleasant journey with two pleasant people.

Score: B

From there, I went to the Yuri page and downloaded all the Yuri they had. Obviously, these were of interest to me.

YNN Correspondent Chriz P, who is from the UK, has been keeping me abreast on what UK fans can access and not. According to Chriz, GIRL FRIENDS is now accessible in the UK. (I’m particularly vocal when the UK is left out – I have many friends there and of course they read English, so there is just no excuse for them to be embargoed.)

Story: I’ll keep it short here. Sweet, tortured, a little sexy, sometimes service-y, GIRL FRIENDS tells the story about two girls who fall in love.

Overall Presentation: Excellent. I don’t recall ever having to expand the picture to read the notes, except for once and the note was genuinely tiny. No weird whiteout marks (I was concerned that I’d run into that again, but I have not.) The lettering was easy to read overall.

Overall Translation: A little stiff in places, but acceptable. There’s a very unfortunate glitch in the language on the first page, and from time to time, there’s a spot that’s just not smooth or natural, but I wasn’t pulling my hair out or anything.

Score: B+

Third up, Love My Life. I had some serious trepidation about reading this, because I feared that the translator didn’t love it as we do and that might be reflected in the translation.

Story: Two girls in love, one learns her parents were gay/lesbian. She meets her late mother’s lover, her father’s current lover, deals with friends, school, her own love life and lives happily ever after.

Overall presentation: Solid. There were a few quirks/mistakes, but nothing made me cringe and die or anything. This one needed a little post-lettering editing. I loved the fonts they chose for this book.

Overall Translation: Same as above. There were a few moments when I thought, “that was awkward,” but I started reading it out loud and, y’know, it really wasn’t. What was awkward was just seeing it on the page. From time to time there was a genuinely awkward set of lines, see above about post-lettering editing.

Score: B+

Madame Joker was the greatest choice on JManga ever. I cannot express to you how wonderfully quirky this book was!

Story: Widow Ranko is a woman who lives by no one else’s expectations. She has two children, and a lover, and and in her spare time, she solves murder mysteries. From Jour magazine, (and clearly I need more Jour in my life!) the art style is old school, and the story has a pretty classic feel about it too. Sort of Victorian SCA meets “Murder, She Wrote.” No Yuri in this, that I know of, but I know some Yuri has run in Jour recently.

Overall Presentation: Pretty great. But to be fair, I’m utterly besotted by the art style and may be missing whopping big problems.

Overall Translation: The language is stilted and odd and I sincerely think that that’s partially that slight awkwardness of the translation and partially the fact that the two kids were raised by the Victorian SCA and so their Keigo is odd.

Score: A THIS was worth my $10, right there.

I had enjoyed Morita-san ha Mukuchi well enough when I read it in Japanese. I wasn’t expecting to be blown away. I was blown away.

Story: Morita Mayu doesn’t say much, but that doesn’t mean she’s not all in there. Mayu is popular and friendly, she’s just quieter than most people.

Overall Presentation: Perfectly fine. Better than fine, really, because of all the series these were the sharpest looking pages I read. Lettering was really nice.

Overall Translation: I randomly opened a chapter here and three pages in I snorted as I laughed out loud. Done deal. This was funnier in English than in Japanese, because I was missing less and the language was clear of awkward phrasing.

Score: A

Finally, I reached for Poor Poor Lips. Not to be critical, but to make sure it worked, since that was our first translation for JManga.

Story: Nako is very, very, very poor. She gets a job in a gem shop, but finds out the shop owner is a lesbian. Ren says Nako’s not her type, but….

Overall presentation: Oddly of all my choices this was the one I had the hardest time reading. I was not in love with the lettering, but once I switched to tablet over laptop, it was peachy.

Overall translation: I’m so proud of how this came out. Nothing awkward, great smooth language. Erin does spectacular work.

Score: Well, A, duh, I did say this would be a biased review. ^_^

I have one serious complaint: ALC specifically requested to have credits on the work, and those were not included. I’m a tad vexed about that, but it’s true sitewide. People who do work should be properly credited. I feel this way about all work, in every industry. Every single person who worked on Photoshop gets their name in the product – every translator, editor and letterer should have their name on JManga.

Update April 2012: Translator and editor are now credited. I still think everyone, retouch and letterer and anyone, who worked on it should be credited.

Notebook vs Tablet

For the purposes of this review, I am using a Dell Inspiron, 15″ screen with 1366 x 768 resolution (now that I notice that…what a weird resolution…), running Windows 7 and a Samsung Galaxy 10.1″ tablet with 1280 x 800 resolution,  running Android 4.0 Icecream Sandwich.  Obviously, with Windows 7 and Android, there was no issue at all about the Flash reader. (Another jab at the late Mr. Jobs who allowed his personal vendetta to get in the way of, oh, letting people watch and read stuff.)

I started the process on my desktop, but found the screen – wide as it is –  to be more of a burden than a blessing. With the two-page spread, the panels were just slightly too small to read comfortably with my computer on my lap (which is where I keep it most of the time.) Using the zoom was fine for a single spread, but when I “turned the page” the zoom would unset and I was back to having to zoom again. I avoided “Guided View” so I have no idea what it might have done.

Table of Contents was a bit vexing. Shortcuts to the chapters worked variably well.Sometimes it was easier just to start from the beginning.

The Language control is a nice little feature. Click the Globe and the Japanese script replaces the English script. Ideally one day there’ll be more options, too.

Then I moved to my tablet. Wow. This was absolutely the best way to read JManga, IMHO. I was able to switch to a single-page view with a click (all the commands live on the bottom right hand corner – they disappear when you don’t use them for a bit, just move your mouse/finger around the general area and the controls pop up.

On some of the series, the full page view was a tad wonky at first – the page would be half off the screen, or too high up. Once I pulled it into place, the next page would do the same. Suddenly, for no reason, the system grokked what I wanted of it, and the whole thing worked nicely. Next time, same weirdness, but I only had to reposition a page once. Third time, it was fine.

On the tablet, the pages were perfectly sized in the single page view. I quite often read manga with the spine bent back (it’s my manga, I can mangle it as I see fit) so this one page at a time was fine. A quick turn of the screen allowed me to enjoy a two-page spread. The text was clear (clearer in some series than others, depending on the fonts chosen, and no one was choosing for middle-aged eyes, if you take my meaning.) I only needed to zoom once, because a side comment was very small. This is acceptable – I have quite often pulled out the magnifying glass to read an aside in a print manga in Japanese.

Turning the pages on the tablet was not emotionally satisfying – poking the page, then waiting for the new page to load wasn’t as elegant as I’d hoped. I prefer the swiping motion, but the tap to turn was functional, so I’m not complaining.

On the whole, I’ll stick with reading my JManga on the tablet. As soon as they come up with an Android app to allow me access to my library when there’s no Wi-fi, I’ll be happy with the deal.

Negatives: Poking my screen makes me pokey; no technical credits on the stories; clunky ToC; variable fonts/quality.

Positives: Perfect for the tablet; simple controls, easy to figure out; wacky great stuff to read that we’d never encounter elsewhere.

Notebook: B
Tablet: A

Conclusion

Since JManga launched a mere 7 months ago, they’ve come a long way. They clearly listen to their market and they have really showed some stretch in content, format and presentation.

Of course there’s things that can be improved, but I have complete confidence that JManga is on the right track to being a powerful digital manga bookstore.





The Concept of Family in the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha-verse

March 11th, 2012

At the beginning of Volume 4 of Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha Vivid and the end of Mahou Senki Lyrical Nanoha Force, it’s hard to avoid the obvious – group shots of all the characters smiling happily, not in portrait fashion, but as if we, the readers, are allowed to see them in a candid, relaxed moment. And it’s hard to miss the subtext here – these people, people who were our enemy for reasons that were beyond their control – are now our friends, our family.

It’s not uncommon to see this absorption of enemy to friend, especially in shounen series where it has long been known as the Dragonball Phenomenon. Enemies that have been beaten by the hero become allies – it’s easy enough to recognize this pattern in One Piece, Yu Yu Hakusho and other Shounen Jump titles – it’s not too hard to see it in Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura, as well.  Because the hero/ine’s motives are pure, when the enemy is released from their bondage, of course they will become an ally.

But, as I read these two manga serially, I couldn’t help but notice that the Nanoha-verse takes this another step. These former enemies don’t just become friends – they become family. In fact, the concept of an alternative family structure is embedded deeply in Nanoha, far more deeply than just about any manga/anime mythos than I can think of.

It seems a bit ironic to start from the beginning and remember that in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Nanoha and her best friends on Earth all have traditional families, with two parents, siblings, pets. In the first series, Nanoha frees Fate from her ties to her manipulative and insane mother. This act of beating the hell out of the bad guys is affectionately known to fans of the series as “Befriending.” ^_^ At the end of that series, it’s pretty obvious that Fate and Nanoha consider themselves closely bound by friendship  – and many of us see their relationship as more. This is borne out in the second series, Nanoha As, where they now live together. Fate, freed now to create her life on her own, is adopted by a powerful and high-ranking member of the Time-Space Administration Bureau (TSAB). This gives her both status and protection when she is released from jail. More importantly, it gives her a family to turn to, something she has never had before. With Nanoha as her partner, Fate is now ready to live a fulfilling life with purpose, family and community.

In a parallel alternative family, Hayate is surrounded by loving, yet wholly unreal, avatars. Signum, Shahal and Vita make a great family for Hayate, but the four are also enthralled to an evil entity. Together Fate and Nanoha “Befriend” Hayate and her alternative family, freeing them from evil influence – allowing Hayate’s Knights to manifest fully as real humans and bringing them all into Fate and Nanoha’s “family.”

In StrikerS, we skip forward a few years. Fate and Nanoha are clearly partners both in life and work. Additionally, Fate has adopted two wards of her own – Caro and Erio, both of whom have experienced ostracization much like her own past. The kindness shown to her by Admiral Harlaown is now passed on and doubled. Added to this extended family are trainees Subaru and Teana, each of whom is taken under the wing on of one of the main characters. Proteges are naturally, “family” – the Japanese characters for “deshi” (pupil, protege) are 弟子, “younger brother” and “child.” Proteges are all but adopted children (and even today in Japan, some are actually adopted into the family.)

Complicating matters in StrikerS, it turns out that there are a host of enemies enslaved to an evil mind. When it becomes known that these enemies – the Numbers, as they are referred to by fans – are related to Subaru by genetic material, there is no question that they will be, as far as possible, “Befriended.” And so they are, as several of the Numbers are integrated into the Takamachi/Testarossa-Harlaown family. More critically, Nanoha adopts Vivio, and so now has a child of her own. She and Fate raise Vivio as their daughter, presenting the image of a happy nuclear family to the world.

This brings us to Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Vivid, and its expanded cast. The Numbers now live with Subaru and her sister Ginga or have become part of the Church, as the now suddenly huge Nakajima family. Nove, particularly, functions as Vivio’s big sister/mentor, training her in martial skills and the use of her Device. When Nanoha and Fate decide to send out invitations to a offsite training session, it becomes instantly apparent exactly how *large* this family has become. Hayate and her Knights, Caro, Erio, Letitia and her “mother” all join Fate, Nanoha, the remaining Numbers, Subaru, Teana, Alf and Zafira, Vivio, her friends Rio and Corona and…and here’s where it all sort of settles into place and you get that “ahah” moment – a character that *Vivio* “Befriended”, yet another reborn ancient king, like Vivio herself – Einhart Stratos. Along with family/friends from the TSAB.

But wait, we’re not done, because while Vivio strives to increase her combat and magical skills in Vivid, Fate and Nanoha are facing down a new enemy in Force. While the crew of the Huckbein are the “bad guys,” the tools they are using are a young man named Toma, the girl he rescues, Lily, and a traveling companion they meet, Isis. The three of them are drawn into a battle that they did not desire, for power they do not want. Once again, as the story draws to a close, we see Fate and Nanoha, Subaru and Teana, the TSAB members closest to them (including Hayate’s Knights) gathered around Toma, Lily and Isis. Clearly, they too have been drawn into this family circle.

In conclusion, more than any other story I have ever encountered, the Nanoha-verse is the story of creating one’s family for one’s self. This is a theme that strongly resonates with LGBTQ folks, as so many feel alienated from the communties they are born into. Like Caro and Erio, those communities simply may have no place for them, or are frightened of them. Like Subaru, the Numbers, Vivio and Einhart, they may feel as if they simply never belong, not because of what they have done, but simply because of who they are. The idea of gathering one’s family as one moves through life is something that is far less uncommon now than it was in the past, and to many of us who have existence on the fringes of society, it’s a dream that holds a lot of power.

In Vivid, Fate and Nanoha are presented, not as powerful mages, but as Vivio’s mothers. As children, we tend to not see our parents as individuals with their own lives, but as extensions of our lives. In Vivid, we see Fate and Nanoha less in their uniforms and barrier jackets and more in aprons, as they cook and clean for the family. In this way, Fate and Nanoha are not portrayed as lovers, but as loving, supportive parents to their daughter. It’s a take that adds a level of complexity and stability to their relationship. Again – it’s the idea of family that is pre-eminent.

The girl with a typical family and the girl with none. They gather around them friends, family, enemies and allies to make what is arguably the largest family unit in all of manga and anime.

Note: If anyone has a link to a picture of the entire family unit, please let me know. I’d love to add one here.