Month: June 2009

Manga of the Month: July

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Key to the Kingdom by Kyoko Shitou

Anything that even remotely looks like it could be high fantasy gets picked up by me this happens with varying results. However, with Key to the Kingdom it couldn’t have been a more worthy venture. This story starts perfectly and continues on with great vigor. Asta is the youngest prince, who has no desire to rule nor to hold a sword. So when the country’s rule lies in the hands of whoever can find the “key to the kingdom” it seems he will be able to leave his troubles in the hands of others. However, fate has other things in store as Badd, a retainer, drags him into looking for clues to the key’s whereabouts. Just as they start on their journey, arguing all the way, a Dragon Man appears on their path. It soon becomes clear that everything is not as it seems. A diverse cast emerges along the road as Asta resists but gets caught up in the complexity of the country’s history. The art is fluid even if it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. It is a wonderfully put together shojo fantasy filled with action, politics, dragons, mystery, and friendship. And at just six books it is a great read!

Touch by Mitsuru Adachi

I always had an interest in reading the works of Mitsuru Adachi. He is one of the great artists of the manga community that everyone talks about but rarely see any mainstream love for in America. I was waiting for some spark to give me the motivation to take the plunge into one of his manga series. That spark was the Cross Game anime. After seeing a few episodes I was sold on Mitsuru Adachi’s abilities as a storyteller. I decided if I was watching Cross Game I would go into Adachi’s back catalog and read through Touch to compare and contrast the two.

Kazuya and Tatsuya are twin brothers who seem as different as can be. Kazuya is the younger, upstanding, responsible, and focused young man who excels at everything he does including baseball. Tatsuya on the other hand is a perverted, irresponsible, slacker who does not really excel at anything. Kazuya is extremely popular with the girls while Tatsuya is much like Ataru, he hits on any pretty thing that moves but always strikes out. They are both in love with their next door neighbor Minami Asakura but everyone feels that Minami only has eyes for Kazuya. After Kazuya makes a promise to take Minami to Koshien and seems a lock in to deliver it seems that Tatsuya does not have a chance. But there are hints that Minami cares for Tasuya and possible more than his brother. But it often seems Tatsuya is his own worse enemy in developing their relationship.

Adachi is a master of melding the highs and lows of sports manga with the highs and lows of a well-crafted shonen romance. He is extremely skilled at making likable and instantly engaging characters. Tatsuya comes off as someone to root for right out of the gate. As the series goes on he we see he is a much more complex character but keeps the same energy from when we first met him. Shohei Harada is without a doubt the best character in the series. I will bring up the fact that Adachi’s simpler and somewhat traditional character designs might turn some people off. That is a shame, Adachi is able to draw out powerful emotions with his designs whether it be joy, sadness, anger, or passion. Easily worth checking out by anyone who wants a solid shonen romance. Hopefully one day someone in the U.S. will pick up Adachi’s manga and let people see how good he can be.

Keepin’ it REAL!

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There is a belief most people have even if they do not realize it: The grittier and more hopeless something is the more representative of life it is. Stories that are happy and bright are fake because the world is full of pain and suffering. While only the delusional believe that the world is always a cheery place, it does not mean that bright and cheery stories can’t be realistic. However, for some stories tortured characters who have horrible lives filled with misery ring more true to many people. This topic came up when Narutaki and I were discussing Genshiken. We both agreed that most people liked Genshiken. I mentioned that a major qualm people had was they felt it became increasingly unrealistic. Essentially people who did not like Genshiken accused it of being a candy-coated otaku pandering fantasy. Why can’t people accept a positive image of otaku? Why do people more readily accept a negative image of life than a positive one?

Being an optimist by choice (nature?), I often get into conversations about the state of the world and people’s view of it. When discussing Genshiken I was floored to hear that some found it wildly unrealistic. It has become some sort of life trope that the important and memorable moments are all made up of drama. If you look at the news, at celebrities gossip, or so-called reality television this is what it is chock-full of. More importantly people seem to emphasize the tragedies in lives as the pinnacle and that a happy ending is fictional. As I see it, most of our lives are made up of hilarious incidents rather than never-ending hopelessness. That is not to say nothing heartbreaking happens to people, we all have those times in our lives, but I’d argue for most it is not the common part of their everyday existence. My philosophy aside, the major qualm here is whether or not something sad is more true to life than something happy.

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Ongoing Investigations: Case #049

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Quest for the Missing Girl is a mature manga. Not in the sense that it has cursing, violence, or graphic sex; Missing Girl deals with topics such as missed chances in life, settling down and moving on, relationships between parents and children, and compensation dating. Even compensation dating which could easily be used for a gratuitous sex scene is discussed as a subject of serious weight and importance but is never shown. The story begins when the mountaineer Takeshi Shiga is informed that Megumi, the daughter of one of his old friends, has gone missing. Shiga soon finds himself playing the part of detective in Shibuya, which is just as unfamiliar to him as the mountains would be to most other people. As the story goes on we learn about what lead up to Megumi’s disappearance and how it relates to the lives and decisions of all the other characters involved. Except for the climax there is not much action. In fact, the climax is mostly Shiga VS inanimate object. The draw to this book is as a fascinating character study and tightly plotted one book story. It’s never going to have a huge fan base in the manga community. The story is excellent but it won’t pop for younger manga fans. It is not mature due to excess. It is mature because it’s a well told story which deals with matters that only those with life experience will care about.

I was really glad I had a chance to read Quest for the Missing Girl which is nominated for an Eisner this year. The plot of Megumi missing actually brings to the surface many underlying mysteries in the lives of the characters. The strained relationships also make for thoughtful scenes. This really gives the book a hefty amount of weight that is woven in and out of this not so complicated missing person’s case. All culminating in a daring rescue attempt that is very “a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do”-esque. There is something very passionate about Shiga who literally comes down from the mountains to find this girl. He isn’t a super over the top seinen hero but Shiga is definitely a manly dude who does some manly things. Jiro’s artwork is far from simple but it isn’t very stylized which compliments the story perfectly. So while on the whole it doesn’t come off as gritty it still seems gaunt at times especially with his way of shading. This book begs to be picked up and read in one swift sitting. Quest for the Missing Girl was my first encounter with manga-ka Jiro Taniguchi and it was an overwhelmingly positive experience. So much so that I ordered up a few more of his books immediately.

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