What I've been reading: Wandering Son
I found this manga series at my local public library: Wandering Son by Shimura Takako. I'm reading the Fantagraphics translations, which are in hardcover and pretty nice.
I took a chance on it, and am actually enjoying it. The author has created a good cast of diverse personalities. It's a manga about children, at least so far--they've aged over a year since it started--but written for an audience of adults.
More specifically, you might say it's about transgender 11-year-olds in Japan. >.<
Well, yeah, that's sort of what it's about. It's realist, not fantasy, in case you're wondering. Not recommended for those who have little tolerance for pubescent drama, genderbending, or Japan.
One of the main characters, the "Wandering Son" if you will, is a boy with apparent transsexual tendencies. He gains a few friends who are also trans in their own ways. The characters don't have the vocabulary to define their queernesses as all the different categories of QUILTBAG a progressive Westerner might use, and they are still figuring themselves out. But it seems that the author has made them several slightly different flavors of odd.
Nitori Shuichi (Nitori-kun) is a small, timid boy who mostly has female friends. Some of his friends encourage his transvestite tendencies early on in the series. This was a little uncomfortable for me, in that it almost seemed like he was being pushed into it by the odd girl who has a crush on him. But he does seem to have transvestite/transsexual fantasies on his own. One of his sister's colleagues mocks him for looking at himself in the mirror and being (she surmises) turned on by himself. At one point he decides he "like likes" Takatsuki-kun.
Takatsuki Yoshino (Yocchan to her mother, Takatsuki-kun to her buddies) is so far mostly your basic girl who wants to be a boy, and can actually pass as a boy pretty well. At one point she dresses like a girl and one of her classmates thinks it's really funny that Takatsuki-kun is "in drag." Four volumes in, what we've seen of her sexuality is more about what she doesn't want (as makes sense at that age).
Ariga Makoto (Mako-chan to Nitori-kun) wants to be a girl, can't pass as well as Nitori, and is clearly attracted to men, as opposed to Nitori and Takatsuki's sort of avoidance of clear homosexual or heterosexual expression.
Chiba Saori (Chiba-san) is an apparently straight girl with a fetish for boys who dress like girls, and encourages Nitori-kun to dress like a girl. Because she "like likes" him.
By the third volume or so, those four, and their friend Sasa-chan, constitute their own little gang of sixth-grade oddballs.
The cast also includes Nitori-kun's elder sister, who becomes a model; various parents & classmates; and an eccentric adult woman who has some weird attraction to Takatsuki-kun. I mean, she has a boyfriend, but she definitely has a...weird affection thing for Takatsuki. I'd say you have to see Yuki-san to believe her, but I've seen her and I still don't quite believe her. (She's not exactly malevolent, just awkward, loud, and odd.)
Anyway, I have been reading this series pretty avidly, between other things. I don't know what else to say about it. It's a little like shoujo manga I have liked, like Land of the Blindfolded (but without the fantasy elements or the distinctive melancholy mood of that series). (OK, that's the main shoujo manga I like. >.<)
At least once this week I started up my laptop meaning to use it, then opened up a volume of Wandering Son and read that instead.
When I got to the end of the third volume, I looked for the fourth--by mistake I looked on WorldCat before checking the library's catalog, assuming they only had three volumes here. I ordered an Inter-Library Loan for Volume Four. By luck, I checked my account the next day and my "ILL" was in. I read it in a day, went back and got Volume Five.
I got on WorldCat just now, it looks like Volume Six was just released. I guess I don't have to wait so long to continue I forget most of it.
This entry was originally posted at http://philippos42.dreamwidth.org/125796.html, where Russian botspam is a rarity.
I took a chance on it, and am actually enjoying it. The author has created a good cast of diverse personalities. It's a manga about children, at least so far--they've aged over a year since it started--but written for an audience of adults.
More specifically, you might say it's about transgender 11-year-olds in Japan. >.<
Well, yeah, that's sort of what it's about. It's realist, not fantasy, in case you're wondering. Not recommended for those who have little tolerance for pubescent drama, genderbending, or Japan.
One of the main characters, the "Wandering Son" if you will, is a boy with apparent transsexual tendencies. He gains a few friends who are also trans in their own ways. The characters don't have the vocabulary to define their queernesses as all the different categories of QUILTBAG a progressive Westerner might use, and they are still figuring themselves out. But it seems that the author has made them several slightly different flavors of odd.
Nitori Shuichi (Nitori-kun) is a small, timid boy who mostly has female friends. Some of his friends encourage his transvestite tendencies early on in the series. This was a little uncomfortable for me, in that it almost seemed like he was being pushed into it by the odd girl who has a crush on him. But he does seem to have transvestite/transsexual fantasies on his own. One of his sister's colleagues mocks him for looking at himself in the mirror and being (she surmises) turned on by himself. At one point he decides he "like likes" Takatsuki-kun.
Takatsuki Yoshino (Yocchan to her mother, Takatsuki-kun to her buddies) is so far mostly your basic girl who wants to be a boy, and can actually pass as a boy pretty well. At one point she dresses like a girl and one of her classmates thinks it's really funny that Takatsuki-kun is "in drag." Four volumes in, what we've seen of her sexuality is more about what she doesn't want (as makes sense at that age).
Ariga Makoto (Mako-chan to Nitori-kun) wants to be a girl, can't pass as well as Nitori, and is clearly attracted to men, as opposed to Nitori and Takatsuki's sort of avoidance of clear homosexual or heterosexual expression.
Chiba Saori (Chiba-san) is an apparently straight girl with a fetish for boys who dress like girls, and encourages Nitori-kun to dress like a girl. Because she "like likes" him.
By the third volume or so, those four, and their friend Sasa-chan, constitute their own little gang of sixth-grade oddballs.
The cast also includes Nitori-kun's elder sister, who becomes a model; various parents & classmates; and an eccentric adult woman who has some weird attraction to Takatsuki-kun. I mean, she has a boyfriend, but she definitely has a...weird affection thing for Takatsuki. I'd say you have to see Yuki-san to believe her, but I've seen her and I still don't quite believe her. (She's not exactly malevolent, just awkward, loud, and odd.)
Anyway, I have been reading this series pretty avidly, between other things. I don't know what else to say about it. It's a little like shoujo manga I have liked, like Land of the Blindfolded (but without the fantasy elements or the distinctive melancholy mood of that series). (OK, that's the main shoujo manga I like. >.<)
At least once this week I started up my laptop meaning to use it, then opened up a volume of Wandering Son and read that instead.
When I got to the end of the third volume, I looked for the fourth--by mistake I looked on WorldCat before checking the library's catalog, assuming they only had three volumes here. I ordered an Inter-Library Loan for Volume Four. By luck, I checked my account the next day and my "ILL" was in. I read it in a day, went back and got Volume Five.
I got on WorldCat just now, it looks like Volume Six was just released. I guess I don't have to wait so long to continue I forget most of it.
This entry was originally posted at http://philippos42.dreamwidth.org/125796.html, where Russian botspam is a rarity.