All the Manga I Read Good Reviews For Last Year And Finally Read, Part 1 of 1
My last two weeks have been more or less filled with: working, sleeping, AMV editing, putting together a quilt top, complaining about the snow, and... reading manga. Here's that last one. I wrote most of this earlier this week while drinking coffee at Dunkin' Donuts and waiting for a bus, like a huge (and cheap) dork, so please excuse that.
All My Darling Daughters
A one-shot from Fumi Yoshinaga that is a) not yaoi (I promise) and b) quite good. It reminds me a bit of an older version of Flower of Life by the same author, also a real-world comedy-drama (high school in that case, post-college in this case). It's structured as a series of short stories about a group of friends and friends-of-friends, facing situations like realizing that they didn't Go Places as easily as they thought they would. Despite that depressing summation, it's delivered with humor as well as the believable characterization that keeps sending me back to this author's work like the addicted fangirl I am.
It's a shame that it's not going to sell much, since the entire premise is probably lost on manga's major fanbase - high-schoolers. (Unless those kids sitting in the aisle never actually buy those books whose spines they're breaking, as I suspect is sometimes the case. In which case, go, old people!)
Moyasimon: Tales of Agriculture (vol. 1)
College freshman starts at an agricultural school, trying to hide the fact that he can see microorganisms with the naked eye. Hijinks ensue.
I feel like I don't quite know what this series has up its sleeve (i.e. what type of hijinks), and I don't actually mind. I enjoy strange choices of subject matter, and explaining the fermentation process with little semi-anthropomorphized yeast and bacteria is pretty weird.
The statement that I enjoy odd choices of subject matter might sound like it's at odds with my stated love of slice-of-life series. I don't feel that way, though. I like SOL/modern-day/etc. series that nail their characterizations and underplay their drama. I don't have as much patience for playing off every papercut and high school crush as though it were the end of the world. And I prefer to invoke the "strange choice of subject matter" clause when it's used to do something interesting rather than weirdness for weirdness' sake. (Moyasimon may be weirdness for weirdness' sake, and if it starts feeling that way, I'll jump off.)
It's a matter of going against the grain, is what I mean. Although there's also something to be said for going with the grain and doing it better than the rest.
Ooku: The Inner Chambers (vol. 1 & 2)
I saw a lot of good reviews for this one, and it's Yoshinaga again, so I bit. Ooku is a bit like a Shogunate-era Y: the Last Man: a plague kills off 75% of the men in Japan, and the story follows various denizens of the (female) shogun's palace.
I'm a little torn. It's well done, all around, and the setup has potential for some interesting satire / commentary, but the Ren Faire translation is very distracting to me. It was written in archaic Japanese, so the "thee / thou / verily, sirrah!" business is meant to parallel that. I don't envy the translators that task. But the end result is still that I'm yanked back out of the immersion all the time. Since it's a series of stories with new narrators every time, being pulled out of the story by the translation makes it even harder to get into.
I'll continue, but with some reservation.
Sand Chronicles (vol. 1)
This is another series that I can't quite predict yet, and I hope that it doesn't disappoint. Sand Chronicles opens with a fairly major spoiler, so it's hard to summarize easily. In short, the protagonist moves with her mother from Tokyo to her mom's tiny hometown. I think the series is gearing up to follow her as she grows up; the story starts at age 12 and reaches 14 by the end of the first book, and it's framed at the beginning with some narration from her mid-20s. Overall, we have what appears to be a solid example of shoujo drama. There are light moments, but not many; there's romance, and what's probably going to be a triangle (I think); there's jealousy and infighting and realizations that supposed enemies may actually be friends and on and on.
I feel like I could get on board with this.
The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya (book 2 of the series)
Let me spoil a detail here, in case it will annoy you: this entire book is about the shooting of the Cultural Festival movie, a.k.a. Episode 00. When I realized this, it seemed like a slog would lie ahead, but it was surprisingly lively and had some relevance to the larger scenario. (I hesitate to say "plot".)
Sometimes I felt as though I'd read a scene before, but while scanning the anime for an AMV, I realized that the book was merely heavily referenced by the anime - and I hadn't noticed it at the time. The scuffling, throwing people into lakes, white doves and talking cats business was all fleetingly covered in episode 00 without any explanation, and the book covers all of these off-screen escapades from the other side.
The only thing that annoyed me was this: while the book was an entertaining read overall, the tortured similes/metaphors are wearing pretty thin. Ex.: "If sweet peas could smile, it'd probably look something like this." Really? (Though when it comes to that case, this volume won me back over by finally pointing out that Asahina is suspiciously tailor-made to Kyon's preferences. It makes his constant fawning a little more interesting.)
Solanin (omnibus edition)
If you:
- are at least 25
- are realizing that life is more complicated than you were taught
- (optional) have needed at some point in your life to resolve your dreams with reality
...this may work for you. If you're in the mood for space vampires and maid robots taking over the universe, skip it. It's small in scope, sometimes dingy, and often mildly depressing. It's a small-scale story about a circle of college friends who work unimpressive jobs and play in a garage-type band on the side, while facing where they're going and - a less often asked question - why.
It's sad in stretches, but doesn't have a grinding view of the universe or posit that everything is hopeless if you choose to grow up. (See: Legend of Black Heaven, another band- and adulthood-themed series, in which growing up is inevitably an evil sellout designed to crush your dreams. Not a bad series at all, but relentless in its black and white view of nostalgia vs. Real Life. In that view, nothing is ever going to be as good as the past, ever, and any move away from it is bad. I found it less than satisfying.)
To illustrate the insidious hook that Solanin has, two anecdotes: One, I read this book in one sitting without meaning to. Two, my dad - who's never cracked a manga before - picked it up off my coffee table this afternoon and skimmed through several chapters. It's my favorite of this recent batch, and that's saying a lot when stacked up against two Yoshinaga series and a spin-off of my #1 fandom.
Which brings us to...
Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie
A great find at Half-Price Books. I don't think I'd seen it in person before.
There's a reason you rarely hear about the Utena manga - this one or the main one, based on the series - while many fans of other series use their preference for manga over anime as a badge of authenticity. The Utena manga simply don't stack up to their counterparts. Subtlety was apparently brought to the table by Ikuhara, the anime director, while manga artist Saito seems to have packed along pretty art, mostly OK scriptwriting, and all the subtlety of a second-grade What I Did This Summer essay.
The manga telegraphs very early on what's up with Touga, and spells out the ending much more literally (and sans car chase). This is tiresome sometimes, but it doesn't quite ruin the whole story. It also streamlines the movie immensely, ditching several subplots as well as all of the "noodling around with cool images just because we can" stretches that made the movie what it was, and toning down most of the surrealism. Some of the new scenes are well placed and work with the movie canon, and a few of the lines are quite interesting, like an outburst from Juri about why Anthy offends her so much. It's altogether worth reading, I think, but mainly as a footnote to the original.
All My Darling Daughters
A one-shot from Fumi Yoshinaga that is a) not yaoi (I promise) and b) quite good. It reminds me a bit of an older version of Flower of Life by the same author, also a real-world comedy-drama (high school in that case, post-college in this case). It's structured as a series of short stories about a group of friends and friends-of-friends, facing situations like realizing that they didn't Go Places as easily as they thought they would. Despite that depressing summation, it's delivered with humor as well as the believable characterization that keeps sending me back to this author's work like the addicted fangirl I am.
It's a shame that it's not going to sell much, since the entire premise is probably lost on manga's major fanbase - high-schoolers. (Unless those kids sitting in the aisle never actually buy those books whose spines they're breaking, as I suspect is sometimes the case. In which case, go, old people!)
Moyasimon: Tales of Agriculture (vol. 1)
College freshman starts at an agricultural school, trying to hide the fact that he can see microorganisms with the naked eye. Hijinks ensue.
I feel like I don't quite know what this series has up its sleeve (i.e. what type of hijinks), and I don't actually mind. I enjoy strange choices of subject matter, and explaining the fermentation process with little semi-anthropomorphized yeast and bacteria is pretty weird.
The statement that I enjoy odd choices of subject matter might sound like it's at odds with my stated love of slice-of-life series. I don't feel that way, though. I like SOL/modern-day/etc. series that nail their characterizations and underplay their drama. I don't have as much patience for playing off every papercut and high school crush as though it were the end of the world. And I prefer to invoke the "strange choice of subject matter" clause when it's used to do something interesting rather than weirdness for weirdness' sake. (Moyasimon may be weirdness for weirdness' sake, and if it starts feeling that way, I'll jump off.)
It's a matter of going against the grain, is what I mean. Although there's also something to be said for going with the grain and doing it better than the rest.
Ooku: The Inner Chambers (vol. 1 & 2)
I saw a lot of good reviews for this one, and it's Yoshinaga again, so I bit. Ooku is a bit like a Shogunate-era Y: the Last Man: a plague kills off 75% of the men in Japan, and the story follows various denizens of the (female) shogun's palace.
I'm a little torn. It's well done, all around, and the setup has potential for some interesting satire / commentary, but the Ren Faire translation is very distracting to me. It was written in archaic Japanese, so the "thee / thou / verily, sirrah!" business is meant to parallel that. I don't envy the translators that task. But the end result is still that I'm yanked back out of the immersion all the time. Since it's a series of stories with new narrators every time, being pulled out of the story by the translation makes it even harder to get into.
I'll continue, but with some reservation.
Sand Chronicles (vol. 1)
This is another series that I can't quite predict yet, and I hope that it doesn't disappoint. Sand Chronicles opens with a fairly major spoiler, so it's hard to summarize easily. In short, the protagonist moves with her mother from Tokyo to her mom's tiny hometown. I think the series is gearing up to follow her as she grows up; the story starts at age 12 and reaches 14 by the end of the first book, and it's framed at the beginning with some narration from her mid-20s. Overall, we have what appears to be a solid example of shoujo drama. There are light moments, but not many; there's romance, and what's probably going to be a triangle (I think); there's jealousy and infighting and realizations that supposed enemies may actually be friends and on and on.
I feel like I could get on board with this.
The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya (book 2 of the series)
Let me spoil a detail here, in case it will annoy you: this entire book is about the shooting of the Cultural Festival movie, a.k.a. Episode 00. When I realized this, it seemed like a slog would lie ahead, but it was surprisingly lively and had some relevance to the larger scenario. (I hesitate to say "plot".)
Sometimes I felt as though I'd read a scene before, but while scanning the anime for an AMV, I realized that the book was merely heavily referenced by the anime - and I hadn't noticed it at the time. The scuffling, throwing people into lakes, white doves and talking cats business was all fleetingly covered in episode 00 without any explanation, and the book covers all of these off-screen escapades from the other side.
The only thing that annoyed me was this: while the book was an entertaining read overall, the tortured similes/metaphors are wearing pretty thin. Ex.: "If sweet peas could smile, it'd probably look something like this." Really? (Though when it comes to that case, this volume won me back over by finally pointing out that Asahina is suspiciously tailor-made to Kyon's preferences. It makes his constant fawning a little more interesting.)
Solanin (omnibus edition)
If you:
- are at least 25
- are realizing that life is more complicated than you were taught
- (optional) have needed at some point in your life to resolve your dreams with reality
...this may work for you. If you're in the mood for space vampires and maid robots taking over the universe, skip it. It's small in scope, sometimes dingy, and often mildly depressing. It's a small-scale story about a circle of college friends who work unimpressive jobs and play in a garage-type band on the side, while facing where they're going and - a less often asked question - why.
It's sad in stretches, but doesn't have a grinding view of the universe or posit that everything is hopeless if you choose to grow up. (See: Legend of Black Heaven, another band- and adulthood-themed series, in which growing up is inevitably an evil sellout designed to crush your dreams. Not a bad series at all, but relentless in its black and white view of nostalgia vs. Real Life. In that view, nothing is ever going to be as good as the past, ever, and any move away from it is bad. I found it less than satisfying.)
To illustrate the insidious hook that Solanin has, two anecdotes: One, I read this book in one sitting without meaning to. Two, my dad - who's never cracked a manga before - picked it up off my coffee table this afternoon and skimmed through several chapters. It's my favorite of this recent batch, and that's saying a lot when stacked up against two Yoshinaga series and a spin-off of my #1 fandom.
Which brings us to...
Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie
A great find at Half-Price Books. I don't think I'd seen it in person before.
There's a reason you rarely hear about the Utena manga - this one or the main one, based on the series - while many fans of other series use their preference for manga over anime as a badge of authenticity. The Utena manga simply don't stack up to their counterparts. Subtlety was apparently brought to the table by Ikuhara, the anime director, while manga artist Saito seems to have packed along pretty art, mostly OK scriptwriting, and all the subtlety of a second-grade What I Did This Summer essay.
The manga telegraphs very early on what's up with Touga, and spells out the ending much more literally (and sans car chase). This is tiresome sometimes, but it doesn't quite ruin the whole story. It also streamlines the movie immensely, ditching several subplots as well as all of the "noodling around with cool images just because we can" stretches that made the movie what it was, and toning down most of the surrealism. Some of the new scenes are well placed and work with the movie canon, and a few of the lines are quite interesting, like an outburst from Juri about why Anthy offends her so much. It's altogether worth reading, I think, but mainly as a footnote to the original.