I Am Completely Serious

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?

Hi to all the people who have friended me and commented! Thank you all so much! I love you all and you are awesome, and making awesome observations all over the place!

But: I should warn you that I totally don't usually post such a high density of serious stuff. I do complain about manga, but it's not always coherent! I mean, sometimes I just edit pictures of Hitsugaya so he talks funny, or make wild claims to the effect that I am going to marry Olivia Armstrong. (Hint: I am not going to do this. Olivia Armstrong is not real.) And sometimes I don't talk about manga. A not-insignificant number of my posts are about, like... sandwiches. I'm basically lazy.

(This is why I'm totally behind on comments? I'm sorry, I'm working on it!)

And now, having established that I am usually lazy - I just spent all night trying to kill myself reading Japanese Wikipedia entries about the Magnificent 49ers. I've translated this one.

Ooizumi Salon

Ooizumi Salon is the name given to the apartment shared by artists Keiko Takemiya and Moto Hagio, where many members of the group of manga artists known as the Magnificent 49ers (in Japanese, the 24-nen-gumi or Year-24 Group) would gather.

Yasuko Sakata christened the apartment for its location in Ooizumi, in Tokyo's Nerimaku ward. [citation needed] Takemiya's friend Norie Masuyama (a novelist who has acted as Takemiya's producer and collaborator) had come up with the idea of establishing a "women's version of Tokiwa-sō," a famous apartment building inhabited at various times by mangaka like Osamu Tezuka, Shotaro Ishinomori, and both halves of the duo comprising Fujiko Fujio. Under her influence, Takemiya and Hagio moved into a row-house across the road opposite Masuyama's home. According to Masuyama, though Hagio and Takemiya were enthusiastic about manga, they had almost no knowledge about books and movies, and the knowledge Masuyama would introduce them to many new works. The theme of "shounen-ai" that would appear in both artists' work was also apparently due to Masuyama's influence and instruction.

Over the next several years, many young female manga artists, all born around the year 1949, would congregate at this apartment. These include Ryouko Yamagishi (born 1947), Mineko Yamada (1949), Nanaeko Sasaya (1950), Itou Aiko (1952), Shio Satou (1952), Misako Nachi (birthdate unknown), Sakata Yasuko (1953), and Yukiko Kai (1954). These women would come to the salon to meet, talk, draw their own manga, help others with theirs, and then return home again. Many of the women who participated in the salon would one day become the leaders of the shoujo manga world.

The Salon's most active years were the period between 1970 and 1973. In that time they produced the zine "Mahoutsukai," worked together on various projects, and debated the future of shoujo manga at all hours, according to Takemiya. [I'm not sure about that sentence.] Even after the Salon's dissolution, many of the artists involved have maintained close ties.

( So, somebody translate Masuyama's novels for me now? )

Graduating seniors who work at the library are supposed to pick out a book to be put on display at the end of the year, with our photo and an explanation of why we think the book's important. When they take it down, they put a little plate in it with our name and year of graduation. It's kind of stupid, because they don't let us pick out a book for the library to buy - we just choose one they already own - and nobody can check out the book we recommend while it's on display.

But, yes. I decided to donate my copy of A, A', by Hagio Moto for my book. I gave it to the woman in charge, let her take my picture, wrote my little tagline, and left.

That was a couple months ago, and it's only in the past few days the books actually went up. So I have no recollection as to why "my" explanation of the manga's import might read thusly:

A,A' Prime: a Graphic Novel. It's the only book by Moto Hagia, without whom, modern Manga, wouldn't exist in English.

...I WILL KILL YOU SO HARD WOMAN ohhh this is character assassination.

Even if she can't form a coherent sentence, she could at least have made the effort to spell the author's name correctly.

My assumption is that she had a comma spasm and lost the meaning of the original sentence, which I guess was something like, "It's the only book by Moto Hagio, without whom modern manga wouldn't exist, available in English."

I got my supervisor's permission to make myself a new sign. I've got a fairly well-behaved version finished - it's slightly snazzier than the original, with a less clashing color scheme and a better photo of me (that's important, too!), which I think I deserve after having such words put in my mouth. But I'm still teetering on the edge of adding something horrible. I wonder if they'll take it down if I use one of my Nekozawa Halloween photos. Or just a screenshot of Haruhi's mom's iei. Or a picture of Hunter S. Thompson.

There's a torrent of Torikaebaya here. And one of Four Shojo Stories, which includes Hagio Moto's They Were Eleven, here.