The best manga of 2016? Review of Savage Season

Posted: August 24, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: review | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Granted, the first chapter of this manga came out in Japan at the very end of 2016. Still, the lack of buzz it got abroad is surprising, given that it is written by none other than Mari Okada, anime screenwriting superstar of Anohana (etc. etc.) fame.

Savage Season (荒ぶる季節の乙女どもよ / Araburu kisetsu no otome-domo yo; English title: O Maidens in Your Savage Season) chapter 1
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Authors: Mari OKADA (writer), Nao EMOTO (artist)
Publisher: Tokyopop (originally Kōdansha)
Year: 2020 (originally 2016)
Number of volumes: 8
Pages: 60
Website: https://www.tokyopop.de/buecher/josei/savage-season/ (German publisher), https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=140875 (Baka-Updates)

The world of the five members of an all-female high school Literature club gets turned upside down when they discover sexuality – first in the books they read, then in their own lives. Each has her own issues with sex: Kazusa finds it difficult to accept that she has fallen in love with her male childhood friend Izumi, while Sonezaki feels deeply embarrassed when anyone around her even mentions sex. In later chapters, we learn that Hongo secretly writes erotic novels (which are deemed not realistic enough by her editor, so she starts researching), Sugawara is so attractive that she always has to fend off advances of older men, and Momoko goes on her first date but finds it disappointing.

By volume 3, things get decidedly creepier when two of the girls experience or recount sexual encounters in the wider sense (i.e. there’s no nudity or sexual intercourse depicted or implied) with adult men. But let’s stick to the more innocent beginning of the series. The main selling point of Savage Season is undoubtedly its fresh main topic, female teenage sexuality, which so far has hardly ever been thoroughly explored in manga. In most other romance or romantic comedy manga, if that’s the genre we’re looking at here, sexual intercourse is conspicuously absent (Wolf Girl & Black Prince being a notable exception). Savage Season handles this sensitive topic in a way that has been described as “wholesome”, “sweet and understanding” and “frank” at the same time.

That in itself isn’t what makes Savage Season a good manga though, just as the thorough exploration of the fresh topic of off-season camping alone isn’t what makes Yuru Camp great. Instead, one can think of Savage Season as an ‘enhanced’ high-school romance manga: there are multiple parallel but intertwined love stories, tied together by the school club at which the protagonists meet. This is not unlike e.g. Boyfriend in which the love story is set against the background of school bullying which becomes less and less important as the plot progresses. Except that in Savage Season, the sex angle infuses a healthy dose of realism (and also a source of humour).

An important contribution to the overall quality of this manga is the artwork. Nao Emoto had an entire host of assistants (ten, according to a group picture in vol. 2), and this shows above all in the vast amount and variety of screentone used; e.g. on the very first pages in which the afternoon sun shines into the club room onto the girls’ heads. There are also some brilliant and unusual panel compositions, such as the one in which we see Kazusa’s crouching figure from behind. As for the writing, its quality is harder to assess: due to its uneven structure, it takes some time before e.g. Momoko comes into focus, which makes this character appear “largely undeveloped” at first. Perhaps in later volumes the parallel story arcs will be interwoven more tightly, but will readers have the patience and take the gamble to find out?

At least the first chapter, which is supposed to be the item under review here, should leave readers wanting to find out how things turn out between Kazusa and the boy next door. As most manga, however, Savage Season seems to peter out somewhat after the first volume. In the end, as a contender for the title of ‘best manga of 2016’, Savage Season would have to compete against other romance and rom-com manga such as My Love Story, and maybe it isn’t quite on par.

Then again, as Sonezaki says in volume 3, books help us to define feelings for which we didn’t have a name before, and if we absorb that feeling again, a new one arises. Perhaps there is something of that in Savage Season too. E.g. when Kazusa, also in vol. 3, ponders whether love and sex are separable at all and whether “all those wonderful feelings that exist in the world […] ultimately come down to Ess Ee Ecks”, which in turn informs her conflicted feelings for Izumi – a notion that e.g. Kimi ni todoke only vaguely hints at.

Rating: ● ● ● ○ ○

The best manga of 2016? Review of Yuru Camp

Posted: January 29, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: review | Tags: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Although the first two volumes were already published in 2015 and 2016 in Japan, Western publishers once again came late to the party and only began translating Yuru Camp when it was adapted into an anime series.

panel from vol. 2

Yuru Camp (ゆるキャン△ / yurukyan△; international title: Laid-Back Camp) vols. 1-2
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Author: Afro
Publisher: Manga Cult (originally Houbunsha)
Year: 2020 (originally 2015-16)
Number of volumes: 11 so far in Japan
Pages per volume: 175
Price per volume: € 10
Website: https://www.cross-cult.de/titel/laid-back-camp-1.html (German publisher), https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=121961 (Baka-Updates)
ISBN: 9783964333094, 9783964333223

Most other reviews mention how unusual the subject matter of this manga – camping – is, that the Japanese truly have a comic for everything, that it is enjoyable even if you don’t like camping, and that it is also an educational manga that gives detailed and practical information on the topic of camping. All of this may be true, but it’s worth noting that the kind of camping that we get to see here isn’t everyone’s idea of camping. First of all, it’s camping without hiking. Rin takes her moped to go camping, Nadeshiko lets her older sister drive her in the car, and on one occasion, Chiaki, Aoi and Nadeshiko take the train and then have to walk for 4 km, only to find out later that they could have taken a bus.

It’s also camping without wilderness, despite what the blurb might say (“A time off in the wilderness”, the German back cover says). Our protagonist high school girls always put their tents up at official campsites, and these campsites usually come with amenities such as firewood, lots of rules, and sometimes pricey fees. Nature does feature in the form of scenic landscapes viewed from the campsite, but in essence, this kind of camping is, as the title says, rather yuru (緩 – loose, relaxed) and consists essentially of outdoor cooking – various recipes are provided – and sleeping in a tent.

On the other hand, the kind of camping undertaken by Rin and the others is peculiar because it’s off-season camping, meaning that the story takes place in late fall and winter and it’s always cold. This gives the author the opportunity to offer tips on how to protect against cold weather, while at the same time not having to have the protagonists interact with many other characters, as they are almost the only campers on their campsites at that time of the year.

page detail from vol. 1

And of course, our main characters are probably not the first kind of person that comes into one’s mind when thinking of campers. A sort of explanation is hinted at in the story: at Rin’s high school, there are two different clubs, the mountaineering club and the “outdoor club”. Perhaps all the boys at that school who are interested in camping have joined the former? In any case, with Yuru Camp, we’re deep in the sub-genre within the slice-of-life genre known as “Cute Girls Doing Cute Things”, which is closely related to (or, as some say, identical with) the concept of moe.

Reading such a kind of manga is always a bit of a guilty pleasure, at least for heterosexual male readers. Not that it is sexually exploitative or anything – despite several onsen bathing scenes, there is no explicit nudity – , but such para-erotic appeal is of course precisely the essence of moe. Then again, the manga abstains, perhaps mercifully, from any yuri elements whatsoever (although there would be plenty of opportunities for homoerotic scenes, e.g when there are two girls sleeping in the same tent etc.).

Some who have reviewed the first volume only have expressed doubts regarding the single-mindedness of the characters and the manga as a whole: would Yuru Camp remain interesting over several volumes? It does, by virtue of a carefully crafted story. Basically there are two parallel stories, that of the outdoor club, and that of Rin who prefers to go camping alone. But through the characters of Nadeshiko who is a club member but also befriends Rin, and Ena, a schoolmate who isn’t interested in camping but encourages Rin to befriend Nadeshiko, the stories are interwoven and feel like one big story.

Interestingly, the artwork of the scenery isn’t that spectacular. There is a lot of almost crude cross-hatching, and an overuse of an obtrusive parallel hatching effect that shrouds many backgrounds (and quite a few foreground objects as well), perhaps to indicate that it gets dark early during off-season. The figures, in contrast, are elaborately rendered and exhibit versatile facial expressions.

All in all, Yuru Camp is definitely one of the strongest manga series still running. However, it’s a shame that both the German and the American publisher decided to put such a hefty price tag on it. A Yuru Camp volume is perhaps worth it, but only just.

Rating: ● ● ● ● ○

The best manga of 2016? Review of The Girl From the Other Side

Posted: June 20, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: review | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

A story involving a fatal ‘curse’ that infects people at the merest touch seems eerily timely in 2020, but its serialisation began in 2015 already, in those blissful days when ‘Corona’ was still nothing but a beer brand. The first tankōbon was published in Japan in 2016 (and also the second), which makes it a legitimate candidate for the best manga of 2016. The English and German translations followed a year later and were duly noticed by readers and critics, resulting in a top 20 spot in the 2017 best-of list.

The Girl From the Other Side: Siúil, a Rún (とつくにの少女 / Totsukuni no shōjo; German title: Siúil, a Rún. Das fremde Mädchen) vol. 1
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Author: Nagabe
Publisher: Tokyopop (originally Mag Garden)
Year: 2017 (originally 2016)
Number of volumes: 9 so far
Pages: 174
Price: € 10
Website: https://www.tokyopop.de/buecher/seinen/siuil-a-run-das-fremde-maedchen/ (German), https://sevenseasentertainment.com/series/the-girl-from-the-other-side-siuil-a-run/ (English)
ISBN: 9783842039780

Shiva is a young girl who lives in the forest with a scary-looking creature. In the Japanese original, she calls him sensei, which becomes “Doktor” (doctor) in German and “Teacher” in English, and while sensei can mean both, he is more likely meant to be a physician than a schoolmaster. Anyway, they live secluded from other people and are shunned because of the ‘curse’ that supposedly turns humans into monstrous ‘Outsiders’. It’s all very mysterious in this first volume and Nagabe reveals background details only slowly, giving ample space to the day-to-day activities of Shiva and Doctor.

This all takes place in a pseudo-historical setting that, typically of manga, eclectically combines elements from the Middle Ages (the soldiers’ armour and weapons) to the 19th century (Doctor’s clothes and his home furnishings).

It is a character constellation that we’ve seen before in manga: just a young girl and her father (or surrogate father). Yumi Unita’s Usagi Drop, Kiyohiko Azuma’s Yotsuba&!, Nagabe’s own Nivawa to Saitō – one could even include Kōji Kumeta’s recent success Kakushigoto with its conspicuously absent mother in this ‘micro genre’. This idea of fatherhood without mother, this ‘asexual reproduction’ as it were, must seem oddly appealing to manga readers.

Another theme here is the Beauty and the Beast motif: only Shiva can see through the horrifying appearance of Doctor and recognise him as a kind person, whereas everybody else only sees him as a monster and is afraid of him. And what a ghastly appearance he has. Doctor’s design is doubtlessly the greatest strength of this manga and one of the most outstanding design achievements in manga of the decade. Obviously inspired by satanic figures with his tail, goat’s ears and horns, he also somewhat resembles a plague doctor due to his bird-like beak and his long dark coat. His lack of a mouth reduces his range of facial expressions, making him look even more hideous. Nagabe exploits this to great effect by contrasting Doctor’s looks with his tenderness towards Shiva, and also by simply juxtaposing his tall and dark figure with the small and light Shiva.

Generally, the art appears dense and dark through the use of hatching, plenty of screentone, and even some white-on-black drawings. Nagabe dramatically punctuates this darkness with some predominantly white figures such as Shiva and the soldiers, Doctor’s shirtsleeves and cravat, or the occasional blank panel background.

If one wants to find a flaw in The Girl From the Other Side, it’s that maybe the writing can’t quite keep up with such impressive artwork; the setting seems somewhat implausible and the story has a bit of a fairytale feeling to it. Also: € 10 for a regular tankōbon?!

Rating: ● ● ● ● ○

Corpus building, the ELTeC way

Posted: May 30, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: review | Tags: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Some time ago, I attended a fascinating presentation about ELTeC (European Literary Text Collection), a multilingual corpus of novels. Such a corpus is not a new idea, but the way in which novels are chosen for inclusion in ELTeC is so thoughtful and transparent that Humanities scholars (and perhaps particularly art historians) might learn something from it. Because usually, they (i.e. we) don’t think much about which objects they select for an analysis, much less justify their choices, thus leading to an inaccurate or distorted representation of reality with little scholarly merit.

The ELTeC criteria for inclusion can be seen on the Summary Page that shows the texts included so far:

  • language: the number of texts per language varies, but that is surely going to change; they seem to be capped at 100, and even languages with relatively few speakers such as Slovenian and Hungarian have reached this number already. Thus the project appears to strive for equal representation of all languages considered.
  • male author / female author: some of the numbers show that ELTeC aims at a quota of either 50:50 (English) or 2:1 (German, French). In other cases the ratio of female authors is lower though.
  • short/medium/long: probably based on word counts, the novels are divided into three categories of length. The idea was to represent all lengths equally, but this doesn’t seem to have worked out in all languages: e.g. only 8% of the Slovenian novels are ‘long’.
  • year of first publication: most likely due to copyright restrictions, only novels published in or before 1920 are included in the corpus. The earliest date is 1840, but they plan to extend the corpus to earlier novels eventually. This 1840-1920 period is divided into four 20-year segments, and again the aim is to represent all segments equally – in French, for example, exactly 25 texts are included from each segment.
  • frequent/rare: this criterion concerns the canonicity of the novels, as measured by the number of reprints. Both well-known and less widely known texts should be equally represented, although there doesn’t yet seem to be a strict rule in place how many reprints constitute a “frequent” or “rare” text.

Chart from the ELTeC website showing the distribution of the 100 novels in the English subcorpus.

For Comics Studies, a sampling approach based on these criteria is intriguing. As an example, albeit not actually a scholarly one, let’s look at the titles of the “best manga of 2016” reviews on this weblog, of which there are currently 11. So far, these manga have only been chosen for review because I happened to have been reading them (or meaning to read them) anyway, but what if I wanted to take a more systematic approach?

  • language: of course they are all originally published in Japanese, but the starting point of my blogpost series was to find out which manga were popular according to English and German sources. Who knows, maybe completely different manga would surface when one turns to other parts of the world?
  • male author / female author: the current ratio is 3 male mangaka to 8 female mangaka (including a team of two women). If I wanted to achieve a ratio more like 50:50, the next review should be about a manga authored by a man (spoiler: yes, it’s going to be).
  • short/medium/long: instead of word counts, the number of tankōbon volumes per series should be a feasible measure of length (although my reviews only refer to one individual volume each). Based on the number of volumes published in Japan at the time of reviewing, the 3-quantiles of our current ‘corpus’ would be the following:
    • short: 1-5 volumes
    • medium: 7-13 volumes
    • long: 15-29 volumes

    That’s not terribly helpful though: what if there already is a bias in the current sample? A better way would be to calculate the quantiles from all manga published in 2016. That would be a lot of work, but maybe the picture would change quite a bit due to the consideration of long-running series such as One Piece (83 volumes by 2016), or a higher number of one-shots.

  • time segments: while the manga are supposed to be from a single year, 2016, there is some leeway as sometimes the date of the American or German publication is the one that led to the inclusion of the manga in the “best comics of 2016 meta list”. The most extreme time lag is perhaps that of Goodnight Punpun (not yet reviewed here) which was originally published from 2007-2013; due to its American publication in 2016 it was included in that list (and even ranked within the top 20). As mentioned in an earlier blogpost, this focus on ‘2016’ is not so much about that particular year but more about getting an idea what manga in the 2010s were like. Perhaps it’s not worth the trouble to categorise them into such small time brackets though.
  • frequent/rare: while the number of reprints would not be a suitable indicator for relatively new manga, one could complement the popular manga from the 2016 meta list with lesser-known ones that were ignored by English- and German-language media. I already did that, though not systematically: in fact, 6 out of the 11 manga reviewed were not ‘nominated’ by anyone as best manga of 2016 as far as I could see.

Regardless of the purpose of your corpus, the ELTeC criteria might help you detect biases. There’s no need to follow them religiously and strive for exact equality in all categories, but they are a good starting point for thinking about how you want to select the objects of your study. In other words: if there are e.g. no female authors in your corpus, you’d better be prepared to explain why.

The best manga of 2016? Review of To Your Eternity

Posted: March 14, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: review | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

At the end of the same year in which Western manga readers were treated to the first translated volume of Yoshitoki Ōima’s A Silent Voice, her new series was already launched in Weekly Shōnen Magazine in Japan. The first chapter of To Your Eternity consists of a whopping 80 pages, so it might make sense to review it as if it was a standalone comic.

To Your Eternity (不滅のあなたへ / Fumetsu no anata e) chapter 1
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Author: Yoshitoki Ōima
Publisher: Egmont (originally Kōdansha)
Year: 2018 (originally 2016)
Number of volumes: 12 so far in Japan
Pages: 80
Website: https://www.egmont-manga.de/buch-buchreihe/to-your-eternity/ (German publisher), https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=137169 (Baka-Updates)

Another reason for reading the first chapter on its own (besides safely staying in the year 2016) is that the story takes some wild turns in the subsequent chapters, and it is perhaps too soon to make judgements about the coherence of the plot or lack thereof before the series has come to its conclusion. Anyway, in these first 80 pages, the story is quite straightforward, yet far from predictable or unoriginal. It starts with some sort of alien or supernatural life form getting “cast unto the earth”. Stranded in a barren ice desert, it assumes the shape of a dying arctic wolf. The alien/wolf returns to a teenaged boy living all alone who used to keep the ‘old’ wolf as a pet and who now doesn’t notice that this wolf is merely a ‘copy’ of his old one.

At this point we learn that the setting is a pseudo-medieval one. The boy has been left behind by his tribe who went away looking for a better place to settle in a warmer climate. Now, after five years, the boy decides to follow them, in the company of what he believes is his wolf…

Naturally, the transition from a romance manga set in 21st century Japan such as A Silent Voice to the fantasy genre of To Your Eternity is a harsh one. Then again, the life-and-death stakes of a fantasy manga might make for the kind of highly dramatic and emotional story that plays to Ōima’s strengths. However, once more it is the subtler emotional nuances that Ōima conveys so convincingly, e.g. when the boy tries to smile even though he realises things are looking grim – or, conversely, when the facial expressions of the alien/wolf remain inscrutable even though we would expect him to react according to the basic instincts of an animal.

Occasionally we get to see glimpses of Ōima’s artistic genius, as in those incredibly detailed panels where heavy outlines and lots of white space speak for themselves. For these panels to stand out, Ōima counterbalances them with more conventionally drawn (though still finely executed) panels with hatching and screen tone. Despite the fantasy setting which yields lots of animals and exotic clothes, tools and architecture to depict, Ōima doesn’t get lost in details; she has a story to tell and does so efficiently.

Ultimately, comics are a serial medium in more than one way. By virtue of its author, To Your Eternity will always be regarded as a sequel of sorts to A Silent Voice, and these are some huge shoes to fill. But while A Silent Voice might be the more emotionally engaging read due to its more familiar setting, To Your Eternity has the one advantage of feeling delightfully fresh and highly original.

Rating: ● ● ● ● ○

The best manga of 2016? Review of Daisy

Posted: September 24, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: review | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

For Japan, the 2010s were marked by a historic event at the beginning of the decade: the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, and the ensuing nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. It’s somewhat surprising that there haven’t been many more manga on this topic, although I bet a lot of manga critics are going to interpret pretty much any manga published afterwards as somehow inspired by the triple disaster, just as they did with the Hiroshima nuclear bombing. Apart from 1F, the other big ‘3.11’ manga is Daisy, created in 2012 but not published in German until 2016 (and not yet available in English as far as I know).

Daisy (デイジー ~3.11女子高生たちの選択~ / Daisy – 3.11 Joshikōseitachi no Sentaku)
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Author: Reiko Momochi; based on a novel by Teruhiro Kobayashi, Darai Kusanagi, and Tomoji Nobuta
Publisher: Egmont (originally Kōdansha)
Year: 2016 (originally 2013)
Number of volumes: 1
Pages: ~340
Price: € 14
Website: https://www.egmont-manga.de/buch/daisy-aus-fukushima/ (German), https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=87087 (Baka-Updates)
ISBN: 978-3-7704-9162-9

On the one hand, Daisy – full title in German: Daisy aus Fukushima (“Daisy from Fukushima”) – is a typical shōjo manga about a group of friends in their last year of high school: Ayaka, Moe, Mayu, and narrator Fumi play in a band, fall in love with boys, worry about which career to pursue after graduation, quarrel and reconcile again. On the other hand, they live in Fukushima-shi (Fukushima City), and after that fateful 11th March their lives are affected in many ways.

Even though Fukushima-shi is well outside of the evacuation zone, radioactivity has become a constant threat. It keeps guests from staying at Ayaka’s parents’ hotel, it deters customers from buying rice from Mayu’s father’s farm, and it makes Moe abandon her home town. Before the disaster, Fumi’s plan had been to go away to Tokyo to university, but now she wonders if leaving Fukushima at this time would make her a traitor.

It’s quite a feat of this manga to make this peculiar feeling palpable; these effects of the disaster that are much more subtle than radiation poisoning; this creeping fear of an invisible danger that is so unlike the blind panic of people running from a tidal wave. Daisy is similar to 1F in this regard: they both don’t show how the tsunami hits the coast or how reactors explode, and both focus on characters from outside of the evacuation zone – the main difference, of course, being that the ones in Daisy are fictional.

Reiko Momochi, who is perhaps best known for her similarly serious shōjo manga series Confidential Confessions (Mondai teiki sakuhinshū), provides solid artwork in which particularly character close-ups excel with discreet shading lines and screen tones.

When talking about the manga of the 2010s, Daisy is definitely one to rank among the most representative of this decade.

Rating: ● ● ● ● ○

The best manga of 2016? Review of Wolf Girl & Black Prince

Posted: May 27, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: review | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Now that the Reiwa era has begun, some people are compiling lists of the best manga from the Heisei era, even though 1989–2019 seems like a ridiculously long time to do so, and comparisons to the previous Shōwa era (1926–1989) are difficult due to their different lengths. However, towards the end of this year, lots of people are going to wonder what the best manga of the 2010s were, and then it will come in handy that we’ve taken an in-depth look at manga from the middle of this decade (technically speaking its 7th year) in this series of blogposts.

Wolf Girl & Black Prince (オオカミ少女と黒王子 / Ōkami shōjo to kuro ōji) vol. 11
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Author: Ayuko Hatta
Publisher: Kazé (originally Shūeisha)
Year: 2016 (originally 2011)
Number of volumes: 16
Pages: ~175
Price: € 7
Website: https://www.kaze-online.de/Programm/Manga/Wolf-Girl-Black-Prince-Band-11.html (German), https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=66333 (Baka-Updates)
ISBN: 978-2-88921-667-3

Even people who usually don’t read romance/shōjo stories seem to like this manga (and/or its anime adaptation). For some reason, though, apparently it has never been published in English. In 2016, the final two volumes came out in Japan, but in Germany, that year saw the publication of vols. 6-11, which is why I’ll deal with vol. 11 here.

Previously in Wolf Girl & Black Prince: in order to remain popular among her friends, 17-year old Erika pretends that her attractive classmate Kyōya is her boyfriend. She secretly begs him to play along so that her friends don’t find out that they’re not actually dating. He agrees to act as if they were a couple, but in private he is mean to her. In the end, however, they fall in love with each other and begin an actual relationship.

And that is the plot of about the first three volumes. The series could have ended there, but like with so many other long-running manga, the cash cow wasn’t dry yet. In the case of Wolf Girl & Black Prince, 13 more volumes followed which tell us of the romantic life of Erika and Kyōya, and of course their large cast of friends. In this eleventh volume, for instance, the first chapter is about Erika falling ill and Kyōya reluctantly caring for her, while the second and third chapters deal with romantic rivals (a co-worker at Erika’s job and a classmate who gets closer to Kyōya).

That isn’t to say that these ‘middle volumes’ are entirely without appeal. There are still moments in which Erika and Kyōya come across as compelling characters – she continues to be slightly selfish but also masochistic, he remains cool and distant. What really sets Wolf Girl & Black Prince apart from many other shōjo manga is its relatively mature content. For instance, the characters talk almost openly about sex (and also sometimes explicitly use that word), though sexual acts are never depicted.

One could probably say a lot about this manga from a gender perspective. The way in which Kyōya (“I’m going to steal your virginity!”) treats Erika, and the way in which Erika lets herself be treated by him, makes it clear that we’re not exactly reading a feminist manifesto here.

Another thing worth mentioning is that most volumes (at least in this Kazé edition) contain bonus stories. These can be spin-off stories from the main one, or unrelated one-shots. In the case of vol. 11, it’s a 38-page one-shot high school love story. On the flipside, though, this means that you only get 130 pages of the main story.

The artwork is of an extremely high quality and, in accordance with the humorous tone of this manga, is full of charming cartoonish characters. Too bad the story has lost its drive long ago and seems to go nowhere. Otherwise Wolf Girl & Black Prince would have indeed been one of the best manga of 2016.

Rating: ● ● ● ○ ○

The best manga of 2016? Review of My Love Story and 1F

Posted: September 7, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: review | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

The publication history of My Love Story (and to some extent also that of 1F, see below) demonstrates the difficulties of determining the best manga of the year through the aggregation of year-end best-of lists: in 2016, the first volumes of My Love Story came out in Germany, while in the US volumes 7-10 were published, and in Japan the series ended with the final three volumes, 11-13. Thus, even though My Love Story was being published in all three countries in 2016, in that year it attracted some media attention in Germany only, while in the US and Japan the hype had already died down. More and more it becomes clear in this series of blogposts that when we’re looking at the year 2016 in manga history (from a Western perspective), we’re actually dealing with more of a 5-7 year window. For today, let’s start at the beginning with the first volume of My Love Story.

My Love Story!! (俺物語!! / Ore monogatari) vol. 1
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Authors: Kazune Kawahara (story), Aruko (art)
Publisher: Panini (originally Shūeisha)
Year: 2016 (originally 2011)
Number of volumes: 13
Pages: ~175
Price: € 7
Website: https://www.paninishop.de/serie/my-love-story-ore-monogatari (German)
ISBN: 978-3-95798-904-8

The story revolves around Takeo, a high school student who is not only unusually tall and strong, but also honest, kind, brave, and naive. When he meets Yamato, he thinks at first that she’s only interested in his good-looking friend, Sunakawa. But it turns out Yamato has fallen in love with Takeo, she becomes his first girlfriend, and so His Love Story begins.

A lot of people file this manga under shōjo, but if it is a shōjo manga, it’s an exceptional one due to its protagonist – as the title suggests, a male character is at the center of this story. I’d be hard pressed to name another shōjo manga in which a male protagonist dominates the story as much as Takeo (except perhaps for those that veer towards the boys’ love genre).

And what a character Takeo is. It’s refreshing to have a truly unique protagonist who defies all manga stereotypes. Just seeing Takeo’s face is a delight, as artist Aruko endlessly varies her style with new combinations of different kinds of outlines, hatching, and screentones when drawing him.

In the writer’s preface, an interesting anecdote is related regarding Takeo’s appearance: her magazine editor thought Takeo was ugly and put a slogan on the magazine cover to that effect, but the authors intended Takeo to look ‘manly’ and by all means attractive (though not quite as pretty as his ikemen friend Sunakawa). A misunderstanding that is almost medium specific – if the story was told not in comic form but as a live-action film, for instance, it would be easier for most people to assess the attractiveness of this character (and indeed, apparently there was a live-action adaptation of My Love Story in 2015).

If My Love Story has one flaw, it’s some instances of lazy storytelling when something unlikely happens to advance the story. In vol. 1 it’s a girder inexplicably falling on Yamato (will Takeo come to the rescue? Read it to find out!); in a later volume, a bird rips Yamato’s brooch off her shirt… There’s actually one more annoying flaw in the manga: the authors’ columns already give away that Yamato and Sunakawa are kind-hearted characters too, thus destroying any air of mystery that might have surrounded them. That being said, My Love Story is a remarkable comic and one of the best manga of 2016 (if you will).

Rating: ● ● ● ● ○

 

1F (いちえふ / Ichi efu) vol. 1
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Author: Kazuto Tatsuta
Publisher: Carlsen (originally Kōdansha)
Year: 2016 (originally 2013)
Number of volumes: 3
Pages: ~185
Price: € 13
Website: https://www.carlsen.de/softcover/reaktor-1f-ein-bericht-aus-fukushima-1/74017 (German)
ISBN: 978-3-551-76107-1

1F (full German title: “Reaktor 1F – Ein Bericht aus Fukushima”; English spelling: Ichi-F) got a lot of press, but not in the context of 2016 year-end reviews – in the US, it was published only last year. As can be expected from a manga about the Fukushima nuclear disaster, people deemed it “moving” and “important”, but not explicitly good. Is 1F any good? Could it even be the best manga of 2016?

First of all, it’s worth restating what other reviewers already have noted: this isn’t a manga about the nuclear disaster per se. Don’t expect to see any giant waves or reactor explosions (though there are one or two flashback panels that show an explosion): this is the autobiographical story of Tatsuta coming to the Fukushima Daiichi power plant long after ‘3.11’ to work there as a ‘cleanup’ worker, i.e. to help in the tedious process of decommissioning the radioactively contaminated power plant.

There are two interesting aspects to Tatsuta’s story: one is the business side of the cleanup work, the shady companies at the bottom end of a subcontracting chain who exploit the mostly unskilled labourers coming from different parts of Japan (Tatsuta himself is from Tokyo, not from the Tōhoku area) for different reasons. The other, more fascinating aspect is the actual work in the highly radioactive power plant, even though Tatsuta’s job there consists of only janitorial tasks at first. The depictions of layers of protective gear, radiation measurement devices, meticulous security procedures all help to visualise the invisible, yet potentially lethal, threat of radioactivity.

Tatsuta’s art style lends itself well to this task of visualisation, as he relies mostly on clear outlines with little or no shading, and occasionally interrupts the comic narrative with diagrams such as floor plans. The flip side of the coin is that human figures aren’t as convincingly drawn; all the characters have a somewhat mischievous expression on their face.

Another flaw of 1F is that the story jumps back and forth in time, which is perhaps due to the haphazard creation history of this manga. It looks like the chronological order of events in the first volume would be: chapter 3, chapter 6, chapters  4-5, prologue, chapters 1-2. Still, overall 1F is a rare gem of an exciting non-fictional manga about science and technology.

Rating: ● ● ● ● ○

The best manga of 2016? Review of Yotsuba&! and Kimi ni todoke

Posted: February 18, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: review | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

2016? Yes, that’s right, we’re still not finished with that year. This time we’re going to look at some ‘problematic’ middle volumes of long-running manga series: how come first volumes and, on rare occasions, final volumes get all the media attention while all the volumes in between get none? If I remember correctly, Kiyohiko Azuma’s Yotsuba&! vol. 13 was included on only one best-of-2016 list and consequently didn’t make the master list, while Karuho Shiina’s Kimi ni todoke volumes 23 and 24 were not nominated at all but ranked among the best-selling shōjo manga of 2015 in Japan. Wouldn’t it be possible for a manga series to start out strong and then get even better in the course of the series, as its creator ‘finds his/her groove’?

Of course, this kind of progress is a rare thing. Most manga series are on a more or less steady downward slope, their creators eventually running out of ideas but still milking the proverbial cow until the readers’ loyalty is exhausted and the series cancelled. Another reason for ignoring middle volumes is that reviews of them work differently regarding their purpose as reading recommendations; typically, potential readers want to know whether the first volume is worth reading, and when they read it they make up their own minds about proceeding to the next volume. Still, some middle volumes stand out from the rest, some are good jumping-on points, and some are nothing special but keep up the high quality of a series and are simply better than most other manga volumes of the year, and consequently deserve a spot on a best-of list. So let’s talk more about middle volumes.

Yotsuba&! (よつばと!) vol. 13
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Author: Kiyohiko Azuma
Publisher: Tokyopop (originally Kadokawa)
Year: 2016 (originally 2015)
Number of volumes: 13 so far
Pages: ~220
Price: € 6.50
Website: http://www.tokyopop.de/manga/tokyopop-manga/shojo/yotsuba/1836/yotsuba-band-13 (German)
ISBN: 978-3-8420-2916-3

Previously in Yotsuba&!: Yotsuba is a five year old girl living with her single father.

Some people say each Yotsuba&! chapter is self-contained and they can be read in any order, but then you would lose track of the ever-growing cast (the neighbours’ daughters, their respective friends, and so on) and not get the references to earlier episodes, such as the camping trip in the previous volume.

This 13th volume is remarkable due to several unusual things:

  • There’s one episode that isn’t primarily humoristic in tone, as Yotsuba wakes up at night, doesn’t find her father sleeping next to her and wanders around scared in the dark and slightly creepy house.
  • Yotsuba’s grandmother is introduced, the only character (besides Yotsuba’s father’s friend Yanda) who isn’t overly friendly to her. It’s Yotsuba’s father’s mother, of course, as Yotsuba’s biological ancestry remains a mystery.
  • In the last episode, Yotsuba and her father have a make-believe swordfight, but the imaginary weapons are visualised for the readers to see.
  • A seemingly insignificant scene is referenced much later: in the beginning of the volume, a little bird hops towards Yotsuba on the street as if to greet her, and several chapters later, Yotsuba sees it again when she is with her grandmother who teaches her bird names.
  • The vignettes at the end of each chapter sometimes add twists to the respective episode, as in the first one of this volume: in the beginning of the chapter, Yotsuba gives a stick from her camping trip to the neighbors’ girl Asagi who doesn’t know what to do with it, but in the closing vignette, she has hung it on the wall as a decorative sort of key holder.

Overall, this is an above-average volume in an above-average series. On this level, the release of every new volume should be given attention.

Rating: ● ● ● ● ○

Kimi ni todoke (君に届け) vol. 24
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Author: Karuho Shiina
Publisher: Tokyopop (originally Shūeisha)
Year: 2016 (originally 2015)
Number of volumes: 27 so far in Germany, 29 in Japan (ends with vol. 30 in March)
Pages: ~175
Price: € 6.95
Website: http://www.tokyopop.de/manga/tokyopop-manga/shojo/nah-bei-dir-kimi-ni-todoke/1523/nah-bei-dir-kimi-ni-todoke-band-24 (German)
ISBN: 978-3-8420-2325-3

Previously in Kimi ni todoke: Sawako and her best friends Yano and Yoshida have at last found boyfriends, but as they enter their final year of high school, the threat of separation due to different university and career choices looms over all of them.

The last two volumes focused on Yano and Yoshida, but in vol. 24 we’re more or less back on track as the actual protagonist Sawako is once more at the center of the story. Sawako realises she wants to go away for university, but she is afraid of admitting that to her boyfriend. And that is, basically, what happens in this volume.

When re-reading the entire series up to this volume, I was surprised how fast-paced the first 2-3 volumes seem, and how glacial the pace has become now. As noted before, Karuho Shiina largely avoids the danger of repetition inherent in a ‘talking heads’ type of story by employing ever-changing page layouts. On the other hand, sometimes the character proportions are still slightly off, and I can’t help but feel that a little sloppiness has crept into the art. As strong as the manga series is overall, at this point it has been manoeuvred into somewhat of a trough, and it remains to be seen if it rebounds for the final six volumes.

Rating: ● ● ● ○ ○

The best manga of 2016? Review of A Silent Voice and Yona

Posted: February 7, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: review | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

In this second part of a two-part blog post (read part 1 here) I’ll review two more manga from 2016, the widely acclaimed A Silent Voice by Yoshitoki Ōima and the ‘dark horse’ Yona of the Dawn by Mizuho Kusanagi.

A Silent Voice (聲の形 / Koe no katachi) vol. 1
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Author: Yoshitoki Ōima
Publisher: Egmont (originally Kōdansha)
Year: 2016 (originally 2013)
Number of volumes: 4 so far (completed with vol. 7 in Japan)
Pages: 190
Price: € 7
Website: http://www.egmont-manga.de/buch-buchreihe/a-silent-voice/
ISBN: 978-3-7704-8996-1

This is it. This must be the best manga of 2016. While I can’t claim to have read all manga from last year, it’s inconceivable that another manga could be as good as A Silent Voice.

As with Orange, the synopsis didn’t sound that exciting though, which is usually given as something along the lines of ‘deaf girl is bullied by her new classmate but then they get to know each other better’. However, apart from the first 8 pages of a framing narrative, the girl (Nishimiya) doesn’t even appear until page 50. This gives us a lot of space to get acquainted with the compelling character of Shōya, a sixth-grader who (similarly to e.g. Bart Simpson) does evil things without really being evil. Everything he does is motivated by his desire to ‘defeat boredom’ by all means. It’s impossible not to like him when he exclaims, “I declare this day a triumph over boredom!”, and it’s understandable how he immediately sees his new classmate Nishimiya as a remedy for boredom and desperately tries to make use of her to this end.

They way Ōima crafts her story is simple but couldn’t be more effective. By contrasting Nishimiya’s ultimate kindness with Shōya’s ever-increasing meanness while at the same time evoking the reader’s sympathy with Shōya, we experience their conflict as a gut-wrenching lose–lose situation. It can’t get more emotionalising than this. And even though the manga goes on for 6 more volumes, it’s not even all that important whether Nishimiya will ever be able to forgive Shōya – the story as told in vol. 1 is already perfect in itself.

While the script would have been strong enough to work well even if it had been drawn by a lesser artist, the opposite is also true: Ōima could probably illustrate the proverbial phone book and it would still look good. The art of A Silent Voice is absolutely on par with the writing. Of particular ingenuity is the device of repeating panel compositions of certain scenes (Shōya and his mates hanging out in his room, Shōya getting told off by his teacher, Shōya talking at Nishimiya) – not copy-and-pasting but re-drawing them with myriad background details (the amount of which is incredible in many panels anyway) changed.

Rating: ● ● ● ● ●

Yona of the Dawn (暁のヨナ / Akatsuki no Yona) vol. 1
Language: German (translated from Japanese)
Author: Mizuho Kusanagi
Publisher: Tokyopop (originally Hakusensha)
Year: 2016 (originally 2009)
Number of volumes: 3 so far (22 in Japan)
Pages: 190
Price: € 5
Website: http://www.tokyopop.de/manga/tokyopop-manga/shojo/yona-prinzessin-der-morgendaemmerung/
ISBN: 978-3-8420-3143-2

With vol. 1 released in both Germany and the US and vol. 20-22 in Japan last year, plus a popular anime adaptation the year before, I would have thought Yona to be the most talked-about manga of 2016. Instead, I found it on only one best-of-2016 list. Does that mean it’s not actually that good?

Yona is marketed as a fantasy story for the shōjo demographic, which is an interesting niche – although ‘fantasy’ might be somewhat misleading, as there are no supernatural elements (at least in vol. 1), so it’s more of an alternate history story in a vaguely medieval East Asian setting. This genre mix means that the manga has to deliver not only on drama and romance but also on ‘swordplay’. While the drama/romance part works out fine (could there be anything more dramatic than Yona’s father getting killed by the man she is in love with?), the few action scenes seem stiff, especially when compared to manga by masters who appear to feel more at home in the ‘samurai’ genre such as Sanpei Shirato, Gōseki Kojima, or Hiroaki Samura.

Another problem of this volume is its slow pace: at the end, Yona flees from her father’s murderer and embarks on a journey that will surely end in another dramatic confrontation with said killer. It’s palpable that this is the beginning of what will eventually become an epic and probably very exciting and good story – but in vol. 1, we’re simply not there yet.

Rating: ● ● ● ○ ○

To sum up, in my humble opinion, A Silent Voice is the best manga of the year 2016. However, there are several other strong ongoing series with which I have yet to catch up to their 2016 volumes, so maybe there’s going to be a third review post later this year.

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