I Am Completely Serious

The old-school sci-fi manga was way more ambitious, wasn't it?

In the future, earth is unlivable due to environmental devastation, and a harsh, unified human society exists in space, dedicated entirely and obsessively to restoring the earth. Children are raised by professional parents on colonies specially designated for the purpose of child-rearing, and given frequent psychological testing until their fourteenth birthdays. If they pass the final test, they are sent on to a special school, never to see their parents again, with portions of their memories removed and their minds deadened. If they fail, they are killed.

Some children are born as Mu, physically frail but having psychic powers; much of the psychological testing exists to weed them out. Jomy Marcus Shin has made it to his fourteenth birthday without either realizing he is a Mu or being detected. But when he tells his mother he isn't ready to leave her, she is frightened, and turns him in as a possible deviant. He is rescued by a group of rebel Mu whose leader, Soldier Blue, is dying and has chosen Jomy to succeed him. The other Mu aren't sure about this, and neither is Jomy, but none of them are quite capable of disobeying Soldier.

Several years later, another boy, Keith Anyan, is the star pupil of Mother Computer Eliza, who monitors all teenagers carefully, bringing them to maturity with psychological coercion and brainwashing. (I'm sure that this idea had absolutely no effect on the first Battle Angel Alita series.) When Keith realizes that he has lost all memory of his childhood, his classmates complacently shake their heads - only more proof of his perfection. Keith finds himself having doubts, and wonders why Eliza hasn't simply erased them.

This manga goes several levels deeper with its premise than I think a modern shoujo manga would, but it's also extremely pulpy. Takemiya has a tendency to transition somewhat abruptly from a careful explanation of something to a scene of intense melodrama. There'll be a couple of pages talking about psychological testing, and then someone's shouting Jomy's name as he rockets off into space because he's having a painful epiphany about humanity. It kind of reminds me of Marion Zimmer Bradley.

It's like Bradley, too, in that much of the conflict comes from domestic sources and is associated with birth and motherhood. Jomy's mother and Mother Computer Eliza are both threats to their sons, of course, but (spoilers for volume 2) children themselves are also sources of danger. Jomy's sort-of-godchild, a little boy named Tony who calls him "Grandpa," is the first natural-born human child in hundreds of years, born due to Jomy's insistence that the Mu begin reproducing in the natural way. Jomy, as are a lot of people in this society, is devoted to the ideal of motherhood. Tony, however, is a monster who feels no regret when his actions lead to his mother's death - she failed to live up to his ideals. For this and other reasons, I am placing a bet with myself that Keith ends up destroying Eliza.

Where this manga is unlike Bradley is this - the women don't have much agency. Physis, a blind and deaf albino tarot-card reading Mu (I'm sure that this idea had absolutely no effect on X.) who is the most prominent female character, spends a lot of her time crying, calling out Jomy or Soldier's name, or being wise. Mostly crying. She doesn't make decisions, and when Jomy or one of the other characters speaks to her, it's because they've sought her out, not because she's gone to them. And though she is admired by the other Mu, she's rarely consulted when they make major decisions. You stay on your pedestal and look otherworldly and sorrowful, woman.

A Drunken Dream and Other Stories, by Moto Hagio

In Two Sentences Or Less: Mostly a little slight. Hagio's better in long form.

The Long Version: The best things in this collection are Hanshin, a deeply professional punch in the stomach, and Matt Thorn's interview with Hagio. Interestingly, these are also the only things in the book to have been previously published in English.

That's not to say that the book's not worth buying, because it is, but it's hard not compare this stuff to her longer work. The ones that stood out most to me:

Iguana Girl - Vivid, disturbing, and obvious in a way that can't diminish the former qualities.

A Drunken Dream - Needed to be twenty pages longer to escape feeling like cheating.

Girl on Porch With Puppy - Hah.

The Child Who Comes Home - In places, a little lazy; in others, a genuinely affecting depiction of grief.

The Willow Tree - I'm unclear why she bothered to write this, and then, having written it, publish it. Did a friend ask her for a short story of a really specific page-length, and this was what she had lying around?

...this comes off as quite negative! Sorry about that, that's not really the intention. But I really don't think another short story collection was the way to reintroduce Hagio to the west. It's been tried before, if in a very different publishing climate for manga, but part of the problem really is that her longer works are much stronger. I am open to argument over exactly what should've been first, but I argue in favor of The Poe Clan, with Heart of Thomas as the runner-up.

(I'd suggest Marginal, except that my feeling is that that visual style doesn't go over well in the North American market - for some reason it actually feels more dated than the two older works on first glance. On the other hand, Heart of Thomas does have those old-school tone shifts - like Eric's fit here - that I think might throw people who read mainly modern manga. Those things are signalled very differently now than they were once-upon-a-time; there's this really specific architecture of panel flow, and I think there are federal statutes regulating line thickness for superdeform-style and goofy heads. I hear Sakura Kinoshita spent a couple days in jail over volume two of Matantei Loki. The prophesied second coming of Osamu Tezuka will probably be brought to an abrupt end by a stoning prompted by an unorthodox use of diagonal gutters.)

tactics 8, by Kazuko Higashiyama and Sakura Kinoshita

In Two Sentences Or Less: In Which The Mangaka Continue Their Tradition Of Cutting Away To Cheap Jokes Every Time The Story Appears To Be Going Somewhere.

The Long Version: The first chapter is the finale of the plotline from the last volume, which went much deeper into the dysfunctional nature of Kantarou and Haruka's relationship than any of the previous storylines had. The rest of the volume, naturally, consists of comedy one-offs.

Not that they're bad comedy one-offs, for the most part! But it's getting to be obvious that this is something Higashiyama and Kinoshita do when they feel in over their heads. I think that they do know where the plot's going, but that they're uncomfortable with it and aren't in a hurry to get there.

The Princess and the Hound, by Mette Ivie Harrison

In Two Sentences Or Less: Too much manpain, not enough Princess. Or hound.

The Long Version: I think that actually was the long version.

Well, I'll say this much - rushthatspeaks is right in comparing this to Robin McKinley, because the tone is very like hers. The problem is that Harrison isn't willing to put the kind of weight on the story which McKinley-style prose is designed to hold. The actual conflict here is very minor, because the characters who would be ripping each other's hearts out in a McKinley book are too restrained to do it here. Things feel too easy, and when I got to the end I thought - "what, that's it?"

Fire Dancer, by Ann Maxwell

In Two Sentences Or Less: Man, why the hell isn't more sci-fi like this? And by "like this," I of course mean "completely insane."

The Long Version: I'm actually just going to quote oyceter here:

I laughed every time I encountered "Kirtn," which I unfortunately pronounce as "curtain." I also giggled over his furry virile manliness and his sexual frustration. Also! There are talking rocks! And there is a species that is so foreign that they forgo apostrophes for slashes! I kid you not, they are called the J/taal. Rheba knows nothing about sex, given that her planet exploded before she could learn.

I ask you - what is not to like?

About half of the last few volumes of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle was just people telling each other about magical stuff. But I'm reading Magic Knight Rayearth right now, and the percentage of the dialog devoted to explaining things there is closer to 75%. At this rate, CLAMP will produce an infodump-free manga in 2025.

Is this a deliberate reference to Shunkin? Or is Beautiful Morally-Problematic Blind Shamisen Player Woman a trope in itself, to which Shunkin herself is a reference?

via wintersweet, the premise of Banana Bread no Pudding:

Now that Ira's older sister is getting married, who will take her to the bathroom after 10 p.m. and sing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" outside the bathroom door in order to protect her from the beautiful, androgynous, child-eating clown? Will marrying a closeted gay man help?

It may be read on MangaFox, and it is glorious. I think it's the "crunch crunch crunch" that makes the page.

(I'm thinking of just setting up a separate blog for reviews like this. I'm going to call it "Unpleasant Manga Reviews." I like that title; it's straightforward.)

There is a person whom you may have met. She - though she defies barriers of gender, I'll call her "she" - leads a life of terrible persecution. She is impotent to improve her situation, for her every remedy is denied her by her many oppressors. She is unloved by her parents, neglected by her boyfriend, ignored by her friends. She has illnesses that defy ordinary medical classification. Her cat's missing. She is constantly overwhelmed by woe, wracked with orgiastic pangs of misery. If she has not yet discovered pseuicide, it's only a matter of time.

She does not act as if she realizes how manipulative she is, and I actually don't think she does. Her problem is that she is, basically, a sociopath. She believes on some unexamined level that her emotional needs are the most important thing in the world. So in her mind, when someone doesn't do exactly what she wants, it's not because they have their own needs - it's simply because they want to hurt her. Her extravagant misery is a punishment for them, and a goad, and sometimes it works; there will inevitably be a few people who can be convinced that they owe her something.

Papillon is the story that this person would write about herself. Ageha is a shy girl with freckles, glasses, and no self-confidence. She has a crush on a handsome but weak-willed guy named Ryuusei, but can never work up the nerve to speak to him. One day, she's bullied by a guy named Kyuu, who gets into her things and finds a photo of Ryuusei that she keeps. He encourages her to pursue him, scribbling a speech bubble saying "We're going out!" on the photo as a motivational device.

Ageha has a sister, the outgoing and popular Hana, who decides to ensnare the hapless Ryuusei to make Ageha miserable. Ageha's evil, ugly best friend goes through Ageha's things while she's out of the room and shows the photo to everyone. Ageha is mocked by her entire class, and in the final blow, set aside by Ryuusei on the roof of the school. She prepares to hurl herself to her death. Pity her!

We don't, because Ageha's victimhood comes off as calculated. I got to the part where she climbed the fence to jump off, and I just thought, "wait - is she going to kill herself to make everybody feel bad?" On the next page, Kyuu shows up and says, "I can see your underwear," so she stops killing herself for a second to tell him she's going to die because he was mean to her. Apparently I was right.

Here's the thing: If Ageha was so embarrassed by that picture, and if she knew her friend sometimes got into her stuff - and she clearly did know - then why was she carrying it around with her? Did she want it to be found? She "accidentally" lets Hana find out that she likes Ryuusei. Does she want Hana to mess with her? And all she knows about Ryuusei is that he's 1) hot and 2) possibly a jerk - they knew each other as children, but he never acknowledges her now. Is she trying to set herself up? I could suspend my disbelief for one or two preventable incidents like these, but the manga is full of them. Ageha is a professional victim.

This series could almost be satire, and there's something suspiciously meta in the fact that Ageha's evil sister Hana is her identical twin. Also notable is the scene in which, as Hana disrupts a hospital visit to their dying grandmother, Ageha stands around frets about how this will make her look to Ryuusei. But the tone of these scenes is entirely sincere. We're expected to believe that not only is Ageha the heroine, she's the kind of heroine who can do wrong.

The passive, put-upon heroine is one of the shoujo genre's most irritating tropes, and could stand to be whacked around a little. But if Papillon is doing that, it's doing it on a level so subtle that it's practically subconscious.

( In which a cliche is faced down and destroyed. )

See also Why You Should Read Vampire Game: In which our heroine makes her priorities clear. (I have a helpful longer post about that one!)

The Adoration of Jenna Fox, by Mary E. Pearson

Jenna Fox awakens in a house with three people she doesn't remember - two frightened parents, who seem to have videotaped every important moment in her life, and want her to watch all of them in order; and one distant grandmother, Lily, who talks about her granddaughter as if she's dead, and tells Jenna to skip to the end. They tell her that she has been in an accident. Her body does not always move the way she wants it to, she seems to have forgotten words and feelings as well as people, and she has no sense of taste. At first, these things don't worry her.

The gist of what happened to Jenna is clear from early on, but the book is a thoughtful and often vivid take on an old idea. The prose is sparse, sometimes evocative and sometimes awkward, but it's in the first person, and suits Jenna's character well. It reminds me a little of a Hagio Moto story, with Jenna as the ever-present lost, otherworldly character who needs saving, and her grandmother as the coarse, reality-based one who goes grudgingly to work on it. (Actually, now that I think of it, the plot is basically the same as my beloved A, A', which is probably part of why I liked it so much.)

For science fiction, a genre in which it is not uncommon for a protagonist to save the world twice in one book, not a lot really happens - though politics are visibly taking place in the background, Jenna's activities consist of meeting people, going to school, dealing with her medical problems, and disagreeing with her family. The first half of the book is nonetheless very suspenseful. Beyond that point, though, the tension falls - it's difficult to convince readers that your character is torn between good and evil when she's never yet shown any sign of having evil in her.

A very good book. I've... actually already read it twice, and I only got it last week.

Tactics volume 7, by Sakura Kinoshita and Kazuko Higashiyama

(See my post on volumes 1-6 for the series' premise.)

I suspect that Kinoshita and Higashiyama are allowing their joint id to take over at this point. There are angst-ridden declarations of loyalty, followed immediately by hurt feelings, and Haruka and Kantarou are humiliated extra-special amounts. With bonus Hasumi humiliation! Also, adorable animal sidekicks show up, and Youko and Sugino get some hilarious dialog. So, something for everyone!

The plot still doesn't make sense.

Non-value-laden observations:

1) Is it a rule that, when a manga has a short, childish-looking hero with a tall, dark guardian figure, there's got to be a secret society that exists entirely to bother them? (See: Cain Saga, Black Butler, Pandora Hearts, Mythical Detective Loki.) I mean, has this ever not happened? Because I want a manga where where Riff doesn't have anything to protect Cain from, and they just end up getting really into novelty soap collecting.

(Hikaru no Go doesn't count - Hikaru is actually the guardian figure.)

2) Kantarou is albino, which I did not realize. So that means there's a manga where the albino isn't evil or locked in a box! That's nice. Though I guess we still have time for him to turn out to be a doomed genetic experiment.

I think this means that dark hair is a racial signifier in this manga - the only other light-haired characters have been foreigners and Shoukiku, who is a demon. I wonder why they chose to go that route - just to emphasize Kantarou's outsider nature? Exoticization of the past, by way of attaching racial markers to Showa-era people? Kinoshita's Japanese characters in Loki had a variety of hair colors, so this isn't her default mode. Or do they feel they need a differentiating trait because they're actually going to try to talk about race later? ...that's kind of an alarming thought, I don't know if I want them to do that.

Apparently they published Black Butler, Pandora Hearts, and E'S?

To explain why this is notable,

* Black Butler = Cain Saga but cynical and self-hating. It borrows big chunks of Cain Saga's plot, so this isn't subtle.

* E'S = X with less homoeroticism and no likeable characters. Similarities include character and background designs, obsession with tarot cards, and a doomed blond girl who the hero loves. Her brother goes nuts and tries to kill him. The guy doesn't look like Fuuma, at least? But that might be because he's supposed to be Nataku instead.

* Pandora Hearts = Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle with more cravats, no pacing, and, uh, for some reason Van Hohenheim from Fullmetal Alchemist is there? They're travelling around looking for the heroine's memories, which have been scattered; the hero looks like Shaoran, and might not have a soul or something; and the smiley guy looks like Fai and lost his eye to a guy who wants to use its magic to protect the heroine's memories.

I mean, they have to be aware that they're doing this.

(Despite its inability to plan more than three chapters ahead at the absolute most, I like Pandora Hearts. I'm mid-way through volume 6 right now, which is what prompted this post.)

Matt Thorn is asking for questions to ask Hagio Moto. I already provided the important one, so the rest of you guys can ask stuff about like... sandwiches or something, I guess. I don't know.

I am re-reading Ouran. It is kind of surprising me how studiously cynical it was about its genre early on. I mean, it still does that sometimes now, but not as much. I'm not really complaining, but there's definitely been a change in tone.

I still like Kyouya best. Because I am basically Renge, what this means is that I am hoping for an epilogue in which his terrible fortune from Nekozawa's evil Game of Life game comes true. I want my favorite character in the comedy manga to lose his massive fortune and become a janitor and be disowned by his family and probably contemplate suicide. I think that that would be excellent. There's a lot going on with me, I guess.