Rocket Girls by Housuke Nojiri

June 13, 2011 by 5 Comments

From the back cover:
Yukari Morita is a high school girl on a quest to find her missing father. While searching for him in the Solomon Islands, she receives the offer of a lifetime—she’ll get the help she needs to find her father, and all she need do in return is become the world’s youngest, lightest astronaut. Yukari and her half-sister Matsuri, also petite, are the perfect crew for the Solomon Space Association’s launches, or will be once they complete their rigorous and sometimes dangerous training.

Review:
I was really looking forward to reading Rocket Girls. I’ve long been intrigued by VIZ Media’s venture into Japanese sci-fi, Haikasoru, but this is the first title in the lineup that I’ve read (unless you count Brave Story, which I read before it was grandfathered into the imprint). Alas, I ended up disappointed.

The basic plot is that Yukari Morita, a high school student weighing 37 kg. (81 lbs.) has traveled to the Solomon Islands during summer vacation to search for her deadbeat father. She ends up meeting scientists from the Solomon Space Association just when they’ve determined that they need a really light person to pilot their rocket, and when the director promises to help her find her father, she agrees. Later, her similarly petite half-sister Matsuri joins up to serve as backup. The SSA folks have a lot of trouble getting a rocket into orbit, but eventually succeed (sort of) and Yukari becomes a national hero.

I guess I was hoping for the novel equivalent of Twin Spica or something, but Rocket Girls doesn’t even come close to achieving the passion and poignancy on display in that series. In fact, it almost totally lacks any depth whatsoever. The book is about 80% dialogue, with very little insight into Yukari’s thoughts, let alone anyone else’s. As a result, many of the characters’ reactions and decisions are inexplicable. Here are some examples:

  • The director of the space program, Isao Nasuda, calls up Yukari’s mother to obtain her permission for Yukari to become an astronaut. Without asking any questions at all, her mother agrees. I could accept a similarly carefree mom in a manga comedy, but it’s harder to swallow in a sci-fi novel.
  • Very quickly, Yukari finds her father, who had no idea she even existed (having disappeared during his honeymoon). His reaction? “How about that?” What, that’s it?!
  • Yukari decides she doesn’t fancy dying in an unsafe spacecraft, but her father won’t come back to Japan with her if she outright quits, so she decides to gain weight so that Matsuri will have to take her place. And then, suddenly, she’s done with that idea. I think this is because one of the scientists guys waxed poetic about his spacefaring dreams, but I’m not sure.
  • Yukari then decides to become hyper-vigilant about the safety of the craft and goes on a hunger strike protesting some new fuel mixture. And then later, when she’s strapped in and ready to take off, the team finds a problem. Her response? “If we let every little thing scare us, we’ll never launch.” Uh, then what was that whole protest about? She even had a sign.

At first, I was bothered that none of the adults seemed to have any empathy for Yukari. They treated her as a tool and spoke dispassionately of bringing her to her breaking point so they could test the jungle-survival capabilities of the new skintight spacesuit they’d designed for her. But then I realized that I had lost all empathy for Yukari, too! Probably I was supposed to care when she nearly died during the flight, but I did not. I just wanted the book to end. After a kind of cool but very brief visit to Mir, I got my wish.

Is one slightly nifty bit near the end enough to recommend the book? I think not. There is also a sequel, but I’ve no intention of reading it.

Filed Under: Books, Sci-Fi Tagged With: ,

Twinkle Stars 1-2 by Natsuki Takaya

June 12, 2011 by 28 Comments

I have no idea why Natsuki Takaya’s Twinkle Stars (aka Hoshi wa Utau) has yet to be licensed in the US, but when I learned that English editions were available in Singapore/Australia, I knew I had to acquire them. See the final paragraph of this post for a link where you might do the same.

I thought I might be disappointed by this series. There’s no shortage of complaining Takaya fans online, after all, and it’s not like her other series Tsubasa: Those With Wings or Phantom Dream really knocked my socks off, though I did come to like the latter by the end. After having read these two volumes, however, I am left to conclude that the chief complaint of unhappy fans is that Twinkle Stars is nothing like Fruits Basket. But why should it be? It’s a completely different kind of story, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t good!

Sakuya Shiina is a heroine in the mold of Tohru Honda, in that she has a difficult family situation but tries to keep up a cheerful front and doesn’t talk about her own problems very much. Her father contracted her cousin, Kanade, to be her guardian, though it’s unclear whether Sakuya knows that, since she seems to regard Kanade as a kind of savior (and often defends him against allegations of laziness). We don’t learn too much about Kanade, but it seems that he originally kept his distance from Sakuya, but has lately become very fond of her. As the story begins, he has actually remembered her birthday and offered to cook Sakuya’s favorites for dinner.

When Sakuya gets home from her part-time job that evening, she finds that Kanade is not alone. A young man named Chihiro is with him, and Sakuya simply assumes he’s one of Kanade’s friends. He gives her a present and tells her she’s amazing for always smiling and never giving up. Attracted to his lonely mien, Sakuya wants to meet him again, but discovers the next morning that Kanade didn’t actually know Chihiro at all! He spotted him loitering around outside with a gift box and assumed he was there for the festivities.

Sakuya becomes determined to find Chihiro and enlists the help of her two best friends, Hijiri Honjō and Yūri Murakami, who are also members of the stargazing club Sakuya has started. One of Natsuki Takaya’s strengths is in creating terrific friends for her heroine, and Hijiri and Yūri are both interesting characters in their own right. Yūri is pretty straightforward—a short but athletic fellow who is brave, forthright, and easily flustered—but Hijiri is a lot more complex, one of those refined-looking girls who loves to say things that rile other people but who is fiercely protective of Sakuya, even though she seems to adore her friend largely because of her ineptitude in various areas and doesn’t intervene to spare her embarrassment. I think I could easily read a spin-off all about Hijiri, especially since we’ve already gotten a couple of hints that she’s got secrets.

Eventually, Sakuya runs into Chihiro. She’s convinced he’s not a bad person and just wants to hear his reasons for what he did so as to understand, but he’s not cooperative. “I don’t want to tell you anything,” he says, and seems willing to concoct some fantasy persona for himself but not reveal the reality of his life. He disappears after telling Sakuya he hates her, and only then does she realize that she’s fallen in love with him.

At this point it becomes apparent that this will probably be one of those stories (like We Were There or Kare Kano) where the heroine will help heal the hero’s pain and angst. Because this is a shoujo manga Chihiro soon transfers into Sakuya’s school, and though he is initially cold and remote, he very slowly begins to warm up to Sakuya. Another thing Takaya is good at is leaving little clues about important events, and we get a couple of glimpses of Chihiro’s past that inform his behavior toward Sakuya. Primarily, she’s so vulnerable and pathetic that it moves him to protect her, and this sort of unpredictable impulse scares him.

It’s not that he actually hates her, but that he’s uncomfortable and unsure around her. This point is proven when Sakuya speaks before a group of students in an attempt to recruit new members for the stargazing club. She flounders so badly that Chihiro, spurred by the memory of another girl in a similar situation, rushes to her side to reassure her. Although he initially comes across as an irritating jerk, by the end of the second volume it’s clear that he’s mostly just awkward, and perhaps a little broken, too. Sakuya continues to be confused by his behavior, but the lingering sadness in his eyes convinces her not to give up.

The quality of the Chuang Yi edition is quite good. Physically, the paper quality is lovely, the images are crisp and clean, and the volumes come with dust jackets. The translation has a British flair, tickling me by including words like “wonky” and “vexing.” Takaya’s art looks great, but also makes for a kind of bizarre reading experience. The characters are so obviously drawn by her that they look and feel incredibly familiar, and yet they are not copies of anyone in either design or personality. Take, for example, this panel of Sakuya and Chihiro.

There’s no doubt who drew that. And they look slightly reminiscent of other characters, but one would never get them confused. It’s almost like we’re seeing some denizens of the Fruits Basket world to whom we were simply never introduced before.

Contrary to expectations, I enjoyed Twinkle Stars a lot. True, it’s not epic on the level of Fruits Basket, but again, that’s okay by me. I certainly don’t expect Takaya to keep writing the same sorts of things over and over, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what she achieves with this different kind of tale.

Twinkle Stars is not currently licensed in North America. These English editions were published by Chuang Yi Publishing in Singapore and distributed by Madman Entertainment out of Australia. They are available for purchase here, but shipping is quite expensive. I’ll be switching to the French editions from volume three onwards. The series is complete in Japan with eleven volumes.

Filed Under: Manga, Reviews, Shoujo Tagged With: ,

The Science of Doctor Who by Paul Parsons

June 4, 2011 by Leave a Comment

From the front flap:
Almost fifty years after the Doctor first crossed the small screen, he remains a science fiction touchstone. His exploits are thrilling, his world is mind-boggling, and that time travel machine—known as the Tardis—is almost certainly an old-fashioned blue police box, once commonly found in London.

Paul Parsons’s plain-English account of the real science behind the fantastic universe portrayed in the television series answers such burning questions as whether a sonic screwdriver is any use for putting up a shelf, how Cybermen make little Cybermen, where the toilets are in the Tardis, and much more.

(Note: This is the 2010 revision of a book originally published in 2006.)

Review:
I am not a science person. In my years of schooling, I never once came up with a non-lame idea for a science project and was positively abysmal at experiments. I did pretty well on tests and homework, but if someone’s test tube was going to spontaneously erupt in a geyser of brown froth (true story!), it would be mine.

Suffice it to say, then, that while I enjoy science fiction entertainment, it’s not because of the science. Still, The Science of Doctor Who promises “a plain-English account of the real science behind the fantastic universe portrayed in the television series,” so I reckoned on being able to follow it. Alas, Paul Parsons’s definition of plain English is a bit different than mine.

I was okay with the majority of the material. Chapter topics include the Doctor’s recurring foes, regeneration, gadgets, weapons, space stations, force fields, parallel universes, and more. In general, Parsons would start by mentioning something that happened in a particular Doctor Who serial and then interview renowned scientists as to whether this is actually possible. Most of the time the answer is “no” or “only with extreme amounts of energy/effort,” but there are a few things that are not so far off. The chapters on alien worlds (Lots of planets really do have a north!) and mirror planets were particular favorites of mine.

Stupidly, however, I hadn’t counted on there being so much physics! I frequently found my eyes glazing over during these sections, which were unfortunately clustered near the beginning (making it hard to get started) and end (causing a strong urge to set the book down with only forty pages to go) of the book.

Take, for example, this quote from page 35:

M-theory’s main thrust is to generalize the one-dimensional objects of string theory into p-dimensional objects known, amusingly enough, as p-branes (where setting p = 0 gives a particle, p = 1 gives a string, p = 2 a “membrane,” and so on).

My brain’s response: asdlkjasldkfzzt!

Seriously, is that plain English? I note that Parsons did not bother to define “p-dimensional,” though that probably wouldn’t have been much help to me anyway.

In the end, I did learn some interesting things. In the chapter on Cybermen, for example, I learned that a cybernetic brain implant currently exists that can block the signals that cause Parkinson’s disease. That’s pretty awesome! I also now know that Sontarans reproduce by cloning and it takes only ten minutes for their offspring to reach adulthood. That’s less awesome.

I’m glad I didn’t give up on reading The Science of Doctor Who but now I think I’ll give my brain a rest by actually watching some.

Additional reviews of The Science of Doctor Who can be found at Triple Take.

Filed Under: Books, Nonfiction, Science, Television, Triple Take Tagged With: ,

A Spy in the House by Y. S. Lee

June 4, 2011 by Leave a Comment

From the back cover:
Mary Quinn leads a remarkable life. At twelve, an orphan and convicted thief, she was miraculously rescued from the gallows. Now, at seventeen, she has a new and astonishing chance to work undercover for the Agency.

It is May 1858, and a foul-smelling heat wave paralyzed London. Mary enters a rich merchant’s household to solve the mystery of his lost cargo ships. But as she soon learns, the house is full of deceptions, and people are not what they seem—including Mary herself.

Review:
As a convicted thief, twelve-year-old Mary Lang is about to be executed when she is saved by the ladies of Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy for Girls. There, she receives an education and by the age of seventeen is teaching other students the skills they will need to be independent. Trouble is, she’s not satisfied and the few other career options open to her gender don’t interest her much, either. When she mentions this to the two women running the school, they suggest another alternative: the Agency.

The Agency is a covert organization of female spies, operating under the assumption that because women are presumed to be flighty and empty-headed, their agents will be able to retrieve information more easily than a man might, particularly in situations of domestic servitude. Mary quickly agrees, despite the threat of danger, and soon finds herself serving as paid companion to spoiled Miss Angelica Thorold, whose merchant father is suspected of dealing in stolen Hindu goods.

Mary (now using the surname Quinn) isn’t the lead on the investigation and isn’t supposed to actually do much of anything, but she gets antsy, and in the process of snooping meets James Easton. James’s older brother desperately wants to marry Angelica, but James has heard rumors about her father’s business practices, and so is doing some sleuthing of his own to determine whether a family connection would be unwise. He and Mary form a partnership and spend most of the book poking about in warehouses and rest homes for aging Asian sailors and following people on foot or in carriages while maintaining a flirty sort of bickering banter.

Author Y. S. Lee tries to make the mystery interesting, giving us a bit of intrigue between Angelica and her father’s secretary as a distraction, but ultimately it feels very insubstantial to me. Nothing much comes as a surprise and two story elements that could’ve been highlights—Mary’s month-long intensive training and Scotland Yard’s raid on the Thorold house—occur off camera! Too, Mary is harboring a secret about her parentage which is thoroughly obvious: she’s part Asian. Only towards the end did Lee actually make clear that Mary is keeping this a secret from others because of the foreigner bias of the time, and I must wonder whether the intended young adult audience was reading this going, “What’s the big deal?”

Not that it isn’t nifty to have a part-Asian heroine, of course. Mary is competent and level-headed, though I admit I did get irritated by how often she is favorably compared to “ordinary women,” who would scream or faint in situations in which Mary is able to keep her head. When a mystery stars a male sleuth, do we need to hear over and over how much smarter he is than the ordinary fellow? I don’t think so. On the flip side, the overall theme of the book seems to be “don’t understimate women,” and Mary finds time to inspire a scullery maid to seek out Miss Scrimshaw’s and to convince Angelica to pursue a musical career.

In the end, A Spy in the House is a decent read. It’s not perfect, but I still plan to read the second book in the series in the near future.

Additional reviews of A Spy in the House can be found at Triple Take.

Filed Under: Books, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Triple Take, YA Tagged With:

13th Boy 3-6 by SangEun Lee

June 1, 2011 by 8 Comments

After I read the first two volumes of SangEun Lee’s 13th Boy, in which a pertinacious girl named Hee-So Eun does everything in her power to win the love of the handsome Won-Jun Kang, I had high hopes for the quirky series but apparently not high enough because, starting with volume three, the story veers into unexpectedly (and awesomely) dark territory. That’s not to say that the sense of whimsy—best represented by Beatrice, a talking cactus—has disappeared. Indeed, volume six has several silly moments. But both the reader and Hee-So discover that things are more serious than expected, with the result being that she reveals some admirable qualities that she had not previously displayed.

The bulk of the drama revolves around three childhood friends: Won-Jun, Whie-Young, and Sae-Bom. The three of them have been stuck in a love triangle for years, with Won-Jun pining away for Sae-Bom, and Sae-Bom pining for Whie-Young. But so much time has passed, they begin to question what it is they actually feel for each other. Won-Jun, for example, is staying near Sae-Bom partly out of guilt born of an awful secret that in turn led to a serious accident. Sae-Bom is stunted because of these incidents, behaving like her seven-year-old self (though she is now fifteen) in an attempt to return things to how they used to be. And Whie-Young doesn’t want much to do with either of them.

Into their group comes Hee-So, and though she first appears obnoxious (I didn’t like her much in the first two volumes) her bright outlook and unfiltered expression of what she’s feeling make a big difference in their lives. At first, she merely turns the triangle into a square, with Whie-Young drawn to her while she chases after Won-Jun, but soon begins to make an impact on the others as well. Although Hee-So initially befriends Sae-Bom because it hurts to see Won-Jun caring for his damaged friend so solicitously and she figures he’ll have to do less of that if she helps out, she throws herself into the friendship with true commitment and eventually helps Sae-Bom relinquish her tight hold (literal and mental) on Toe-Toe, a stuffed rabbit who at one point had been given life by Whie-Young, who has magical powers.

You might not think that convincing a teenage girl to give up her stuffed animal would be riveting drama, but it really is. There’s a lot of emotional baggage concerning Toe-Toe, like who was responsible for his death and what that has subsequently meant for Sae-Bom’s emotional state. Simultaneously, Hee-So’s ability to rebound after being snubbed by Won-Jun makes him relax, because even if he should hurt her accidentally, it doesn’t affect how she feels about him. In time, he grows to feel a profound peace in her company and once Sae-Bom actually starts to look at him instead of Whie-Young, it may already be too late for her, because Hee-So has gotten her wish at last.

Starting in volume three, each volume is full of major progress in the story, to the point where I began to think “And there are twelve volumes of this series?! We’re not supposed to find this stuff out until the very end!” But SangEun Lee continues to come up with unforeseen avenues for the story to travel, with the most recent development being that Beatrice, the talking cactus, has realized that he is in love with Hee-So. Although this results in some amusingly absurd dialogue, like “Please don’t say that. It’s an unworthy thought. I am a cactus. I don’t have the right to love her…” it’s still treated fairly seriously, and Beatrice’s wish to become human (something he already manages each month on the full moon) has the potential to complicate the story still further.

And yet, while the romantic feelings of each character are definitely important and inform their motivations, this is not a story that can simply be settled by Hee-So and Won-Jun getting together and living happily ever after. There are too many secrets and too many deep bonds for matters to wrap up so neatly. Will Sae-Bom succeed in redirecting Won-Jun’s attention onto herself? Will Won-Jun, now that he has conquered the symbolic hurdle of “crossing the bridge” into Hee-So’s neighborhood, regress back into childhood obligations or continue on his own path, which ultimately might not include Hee-So? Will Whie-Young, who purports to be tough but yet frequently grants magical favors at the cost of his own health, really fail to live to the age of twenty? In many series, I would doubt that the death of a major character would be allowed to occur, but not 13th Boy.

If you read only the beginning of the series and dismissed it as a romantic comedy, I urge you to reconsider, because 13th Boy is surprising, complex, and well worth reading.

Review copies for volumes three, five, and six provided by the publisher.

Filed Under: Fantasy, Manhwa, Reviews Tagged With:

Soliloquy in Blue Joins Manga Bookshelf!

June 1, 2011 by 16 Comments

Some might wonder “What took so long?” but personally, I’m sort of pinching myself. To be in the company of such esteemed bloggers as MJ, Kate Dacey, and David Welsh is a big honor, and I’m very flattered they wanted to make me officially part of the family.

You might notice regular Soliloquy in Blue features like Let’s Get Visual are now appearing on Manga Bookshelf’s front page, and there’s also a little corner there now for my reviews of prose works! MJ is responsible for the gorgeous site redesign—seriously, I find it hard to stop looking at it—which I actually find pretty inspiring. So, if there’s to be any change, it will probably be an increased frequency of posts!

Thanks for following me to my new home and if, for some inexplicable reason you’ve not visited the blogs of MJ, David, and Kate, I suggest you click the little ‘Manga Bookshelf’ icon in the top right and remedy that immediately!

Filed Under: News

Kamisama Kiss 2 by Julietta Suzuki

May 31, 2011 by 6 Comments

From the back cover:
Nanami Momozono is alone and homeless after her dad skips town to evade his gambling debts and the debt collectors kick her out of her apartment. So when a man she’s just saved from a dog offers her his home, she jumps at the opportunity. But it turns out that his place is a shrine, and Nanami has unwittingly taken over his job as a local deity!

Nanami doesn’t want to miss out on the fun when a hot teen idol joins the student body. Tomoe reluctantly agrees to let her go, as long as she conceals her divine mark. After all, what could possibly go wrong at high school…?

Review:
Nanami has been out of school for three months, living in the shrine that is her new home, but the appalling lack of worshippers means her days are very dull indeed. When she sees a TV news story about a famous pop idol transferring to her high school, her school spirit is suddenly reinvigorated and she decides to return, even though Tomoe (her fox-eared familiar) insists she wear a stupid-looking headscarf to cover the mark that identifies her as a tochigami (deity of a specific area of land), lest yokai detect her presence and attack.

The pop idol, Kurama, turns out to be a jerk, but he’s intrigued by Nanami’s ability to resist his charms. The other students aren’t too friendly, either, and tease Nanami about her poverty. Enter Tomoe to save the day, clearing her name when she is accused of theft, delivering a delicious lunch when she’s too poor to afford something from the cafeteria, and generally making it appear as if she’s now under the care of a wealthy family. When Tomoe later finds himself in need, having been shrunk by another deity who has taken over the shrine, Nanami is grateful to be able to give back to him, watching over him as his child’s body struggles to contain his powers. In the end, when the other deity is ousted, Tomoe chooses to reenter into a contract with Nanami.

I’m still unsure exactly what to make of Kamisama Kiss. I definitely like its sense of humor—it’s pleasantly absurd, like when Kurama (who predictably turns out to be a yokai) is chased through the halls of the school by one of Tomoe’s fireballs while in the form of an ostrich—and the supporting cast (like the two onibi-warashi who occupy the shrine along with Nanami and Tomoe), but the main characters have yet to really intrigue me. It’s nice that Tomoe and Nanami are building a more friendly relationship, and that both clearly care about each other, but there’s nothing to really distinguish this development from all the other stories in which two argumentative sorts wind up falling for each other.

I think part of the problem is that I am still mentally comparing it to Suzuki’s other series released in English, the very charming Karakuri Odette. I shouldn’t, because they’re very different types of stories, but every now and then Nanami gets an expression on her face that reminds me so much of Odette that I can’t help myself.

Because Karakuri Odette turned out to be so good, I am reasonably confident that Kamisama Kiss will eventually win me over, but in the meantime I’m left a little bit disappointed.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Filed Under: Manga, Reviews, Shoujo, Supernatural Tagged With: , ,

Cross Game Color Commentary

May 27, 2011 by 30 Comments

As part of this month’s Manga Moveable Feast on Mitsuru Adachi’s Cross Game, Kate Butler and I engaged in a bit of conversation about our love of sports manga in general and this series in particular. As we reference the plot and characters, this page from VIZ’s Shonen Sunday website might come in handy.

MICHELLE: I’m fighting the compulsion to start this thing off by going, “So. Cross Game, huh?” But perhaps I had better begin by introducing my fellow interlocutor, Kate Butler. Kate and I have been friends for about a decade now, and share a markedly similar taste in books, which extends to a love (somehow this word doesn’t seem quite strong enough) for sports manga. In fact, I am pretty sure that it was from Kate that I first heard about The Prince of Tennis and Hikaru no Go, both of which have been long-time favorites of mine.

What was your first exposure to sports manga, Kate?

KATE: The very first sports manga I read was the first couple of volumes of Harlem Beat. Was TOKYOPOP still calling itself Mixx back then? In any case, it was a long time ago, and I remember being surprised that this story about basketball, something which I find incredibly boring in real life, was holding my attention. But the real truth is that my love of sports manga comes about because of my strange attraction to shounen battle manga (and their insanely lengthy anime counterparts)—you really can’t describe The Prince of Tennis as anything else, even though they battle using tennis and not swords or super saiyan techniques.

But even though Cross Game shares a number of elements with that particular genre, I doubt anyone would peg it as a pure battle-sport manga.

MICHELLE: The closest I’ve come to a shounen battle manga that actually involves literal battles is probably Rurouni Kenshin, which I adore. I have yet to read any of the Dragonball series, but I suspect that I’d probably like it, too, since I enjoyed the pair of Toriyama one-shots I read.

You’ve touched upon one of the central mysteries of sports manga for me: how come I never want to watch live sports, but I gobble up the manga like candy? If forced to name a favorite sport, I would probably say basketball or tennis, which some might take as evidence for why I love Slam Dunk and The Prince of Tennis, but I can honestly say that I have never, at any point in my life, ever found baseball interesting. And yet I love Cross Game.

KATE: I wonder at my interest in sports-related manga as well. My adoration for The Prince of Tennis knows no bounds, and sometimes it even makes me think I must have been wrong—of course I must enjoy watching actual tennis! But then I try and am disappointed to discover once again that it’s as boring to me as it ever was.

Baseball is probably my most favorite of all the major league/professional sports popular in the U.S. But that’s not saying a whole lot—I always enjoyed my outings to Fenway Park with my dad, but much of my attention was focused on when I got to buy my next hot dog or ice cream.

I guess my next question would be, is Cross Game really about baseball? At least in the earliest volumes, while there’s plenty of baseball-related content, it’s not -about- baseball, at least not in the way The Prince of Tennis is about tennis.

MICHELLE: I think that’s an excellent question, and the key to its appeal. I’ve spoken on this theme several times in recent months, but I adore stories about lazy or disinterested characters who find something to be truly passionate about and/or a place where they belong. That’s why, of all the sports manga I’ve read, Cross Game reminds me the most of Slam Dunk. But even that is not really any comparison, since we learn much more about Ko and his motivations than we do about Sakuragi, and he certainly seems to be coming from a much deeper place than “get the girl” or “be the best.” The story becomes more about Ko and his personal journey rather than the actual specifics of his goal.

That isn’t to say, though, that the baseball games aren’t riveting and masterfully drawn, especially those between “the portables,” the lower-tier members of the baseball team, and the hand-picked varsity squad. Here again, I think Adachi’s stressing the importance of really loving something, no matter what it is, because simply doing that can bring one joy.

KATE: Yes, if I were going to try to identify Ko’s motivations, “be the best” and “get the girl” wouldn’t be among the first to spring to mind. Though it’s interesting that they wouldn’t, because we’re told early on in the manga that he’s actually far more competitive than he appears.

Your description of his journey from indifference to passion sounds a lot like Godai from Maison Ikkoku, though I personally am finding Ko much more difficult to get a handle on than Godai, whose faults and temptations and misunderstandings were all very much on display. Ko, on the other hand, feels slippery to me. Not to say he doesn’t have motivations and desires, but he’s very hard to read. It may have something to do with the way he’s drawn—I find his expression to be inscrutable most of the time, giving me little information about what’s passing in his mind.

Here are some examples of Ko’s expressions, captioned with the emotion he is experiencing at that moment:

Sly

About to Get Beat Up

Annoyed

Confused

Just Saw a Ghost

Puzzled

Shocked

Aaaand sly again

MICHELLE: That’s a good point, and especially true during the portions of the story where others are observing Ko and how much he’s grown. With the lack of facial cues, I pretty much just rely on his commitment to baseball as indication that he’s still doggedly on the path of making Wakaba’s dream come true.

Adachi’s art in general sends me mixed messages. In matters of pacing and paneling he excels, but his depiction of anatomy is more inconsistent. He seems to draw some bodies quite well. Ko’s when pitching, for example, and Aoba’s, especially on the chapter title pages on which she’s wearing revealing attire. I love how her body looks positively normal for a healthy, athletic teen, and don’t even mind that her clothes are a bit skimpy because they’re still practical and plausible. But then I look at her face, and it just seems incongruously cartoony compared to the rest of her. And then you’ve got the supporting characters like Nakanishi who—and I really appreciate that there are several awesome yet stocky characters in the cast—frequently looks too dumpy to even be able to run.

KATE: Well, maybe he can’t run very fast. Or more accurately, he’s not a distance runner. Baseball isn’t really a distance game, though: similar to American football, it’s mostly short bursts of high exertion followed by a bunch of standing around. Which is why your top soccer, basketball and marathoners tend to have a different body shape from football players and baseball sluggers. So I don’t particularly find the body shapes completely incongruous with high school baseball players.

The faces and the rest of the art—well, I’ll admit it, it took me quite a while before I was able to tell Aoba and Ko apart with any consistency. At first I found it annoying, but then I started to think it was probably on purpose that their character designs were so similar. They are meant to be two peas.

MICHELLE: I’m sure that’s intentional. She definitely looks different from Adachi’s other lead heroines, who tend to resemble the Wakaba type. And really, everything else—from the inscrutable hero, to the mild fanservice, to the dumpy bodies—is simply part of Adachi’s style. He’s remained quite consistent, as Joe McCulloch notes in his excellent post at the Panelists. It’s definitely an effective style for conveying this type of story.

KATE: Is that a Seishu uniform I see depicted on one of the panels from Nine? Interesting. I suppose given that so little of Adachi’s work has been translated into English, it’s not exactly unsurprising that I’m not intimately familiar with most of his series, but I do feel it’s a lack. The other series of his to which I’ve had the most exposure is Touch, and that just the anime. So while I can agree that the art is remarkably consistent, I can’t speak toward greater thematic consistency through his work.

On the other hand, Cross Game itself employs many plot elements to which I’m very partial. You said earlier that you enjoy stories where a less-than-inspired protagonist evolves into a passionate pursuer of something. I happen to adore stories where the arrogant and insufferable are brought up short by a plucky underdog. (That is, after all, one of the prime plot components of Pride and Prejudice, my favorite book of all time.) And in this first half of Cross Game we’ve already had a payoff on that particular plot thread.

MICHELLE: It is a Seishu uniform! I didn’t even notice that. And yes, I was only referring to artistic consistency because, sadly, like you, I haven’t enough experience with his long-form stories to know how the they compare. I’m hopeful that Cross Game will do well enough that VIZ will license more by Adachi. Alex Hoffman of Manga Widget recently speculated that Katsu! might be a contender, and I concur.

I’m with you regarding the payoff! Perhaps I should have expected that something like that would happen, but I still thought it was handled rather elegantly. In fact, one could probably predict several things about where the Cross Game story is going to go, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be enjoyable.

KATE: Well, after that random Seishu uniform, I must say my interest in seeing Nine has shot up about tenfold. I do hope Cross Game is selling well enough to spur more Adachi licenses.

The way the payoff of that particular plot was handled was excellent—but the buildup to it was also interesting, especially since neither of our protaganists was actually the original instigator of the portable team’s secret plan. I do love it when characters presented initially as thuggish turn out instead to be quite clever and nice. (At least to those who deserve it.)

MICHELLE: Me, too. And I think I’d read an entire manga about Okubo, the cheerful yet underestimated manager of the portables. I think that in it, she should solve crime. Also, I think I now ship her with Nakanishi.

KATE: I would so read Okubo: Girl Detective. Someone needs to write this manga!

Ahem. Getting back to the actual discussion again: Cross Game is very enjoyable thus far, we both agree. But there are few stories I find so perfect there’s not at least one or two things I might change. Is there anything in particular you haven’t liked so far?

MICHELLE: Hmm. Well, I’m not crazy about all the fourth-wall breaking that’s going on. I expected it more in volumes two and three, and so it bothered me less, but Adachi complaining about his schedule or depicting the characters reading his earlier series is just never going to amuse me. There was a bit in volume three that I laughed at, though, where someone threw something at a box of omniscient narration.

I also think Aoba’s dad is really creepy. For Ko, a teenage boy, to be curious about girls and to go into a daze while looking up the skirt of the girl ahead of him on the escalator doesn’t bother me, but for a grown man to hang around a batting cage so that he might catch a glimpse of a young woman’s underpants is, like, a criminal offense or something. And that his daughters know about and freely discuss his proclivities is also pretty gross.

How about you?

KATE: I’m completely with you on both points. It may be possible to break the fourth-wall in a way that blends almost seamlessly into the story, and there are a couple of instances even within Cross Game where it works out all right, but most of the time it just serves to jar you right out of the story.

And I don’t even know where to begin with Mr. Tsukishima. The existence of numerous other lecherous father figures (Shigure from Fruits Basket springs to mind, along with Nanjiro Echizen from The Prince of Tennis) suggests he’s part of some grand tradition I just do not understand. We may have to wait for someone to make this a topic of their dissertation before all the cultural dots are connected.

MICHELLE: Maybe so. I mean, it must be funny to someone, right? Probably Japan is just more relaxed about that sort of thing than Americans—it is the land of used-undies vending machines, after all—but I’d think actually ogling a customer would cross some sort of line even there.

Now that I think about, there are loads of fellows in Cross Game who are unabashed about their girlie mags. Azuma’s brother, Junpei, has a pile in his delivery van when we first meet him. Ko’s got his own stash. His dad left one lying about at one point, too.

KATE: I can’t claim to be an expert, but anecdotally, that kind of soft-core porn seems much more out in the open. Salarymen reading it on trains, etc. So is it really meant to be funny? I guess the idea that it’s a joke is less depressing than the idea that it’s meant to be serious and no one cares.

MICHELLE: I don’t think the act of reading the magazines is really supposed to be funny, just a casual thing, but I bet that Mr. Tsukishima’s antics were intended to be. For the most part, I bet Adachi uses those magazines to show that these are just regular guys and, though they may be talented, or be able to summon great dedication for something that they love, in the end they all still get goofy for teh boobies.

KATE: That’s probably true. And in that sense, the T and A quotient of this series is really not any more than you’d find on your average American sitcom. Or maybe even in Archie comics, considering how that’s been going lately.

I think as long as these things remain in the background as the series progresses they’ll continue to be ignorable offenses for the most part. My larger concern going forward is, of course, the bane of authors everywhere: the conclusion. So many authors are so incredibly talented at the beginning parts of a story. Quite a few authors can sustain a story admirably through the middle portion. But then the endings! Oh, the weak, underwritten, cop-out finales. I’m both eager and afraid to see which side Cross Game falls out on.

MICHELLE: Oh, indeed. Like I mentioned before, certain aspects of the tale can be predicted, and that’s simply because of the kind of story it is. I mean, I suppose Adachi might never allow the Seishu team to make it to Koshien, but I’d consider it highly unlikely for a sports manga to go that route. I must admit, though, that I have heard that some of his endings are rather open-ended.

KATE: I think the baseball-related developments are probably set in stone—it would be unthinkable not to see them get to Koshien eventually, though whether or not he’ll take us through the entire tournament is less determined. But the character side of the equation is where the possibility of letdown really exists. So far things there have been developing at a nice pace, so hopefully the ending won’t disappoint.

MICHELLE: I guess we will just have to wait and see!

Thanks for joining me to talk about Cross Game!

KATE: Thanks! This was a lot of fun!

Filed Under: Features, MMF Tagged With: , ,

In the Presence of the Enemy by Elizabeth George

May 27, 2011 by 2 Comments

Book description:
When a young girl disappears from the streets of London without a trace, her mother, a well-respected MP, is convinced she knows the identity of the kidnapper—the child’s father. But Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and Sergeant Barbara Havers soon learn that nothing in this investigation is what it appears to be, and that in betrayal and deception, lies death.

Review:
Eleven years ago, at a Tory conference, a young political hopeful named Eve Bowen enjoyed a week-long fling with Dennis Luxford, a tabloid journalist with Labour Party views. There was no love between them, and when Eve found out she was pregnant, she informed Luxford that she didn’t want him to have anything to do with the child. Luxford respected her wishes, but when he receives an anonymous letter instructing him to acknowledge his firstborn on the front page of his newspaper or she’ll be killed, his first instinct is to comply.

Eve, now a Member of Parliament and an Undersecretary of the Home Office, won’t have it, however. Her suspicion of Luxford—he’s the only other person who knows the truth about the child’s parentage, after all—and obstinate refusal to even consider that he might be innocent blind her to the real peril her daughter, Charlotte, is in, and the delay ultimately costs Charlotte her life. Inspector Lynley and Sergeant Havers are called in to investigate, and then Luxford’s son, Leo, is taken.

It’s an intricate plot, with many enjoyable twists and turns, memorable characters, and a satisfying conclusion. Among the cast are two particularly infuriating women, though, whom I wanted to take a moment to describe. The first, Eve Bowen, views all events through the veil of what they might mean to her political career. She’s convinced that Luxford is out to ruin her, experiences essentially no grief when Charlotte dies, and is just thoroughly unpleasant throughout. The other, Corrine Payne, is the mother of the local constable with whom Havers works in Wiltshire. She’s convinced that Havers and her son are having an affair, and refuses to listen to any of Barbara’s denials. Plus, she’s manipulative in a feeble, whiny sort of way. I think what gets under my skin the most about both of them is the way they absolutely refuse to listen to reason. Irksome qualities aside, they’re both well-written characters, so this does not actually constitute a complaint of any kind.

Moving on to everything I liked! Because Eve refuses to go to the police, Luxford hires Simon St. James to do some investigating on his behalf, so a substantial portion of the beginning of the novel is Simon, Helen, and Deborah looking for clues. When Lynley finds out they were involved and could have gone to the police and possibly prevented Charlotte’s death, he is livid. And then Helen tells him off for being self-righteous. Everyone’s so likeable and flawed simultaneously; it’s great.

Also great is that Havers gets a chance to shine. Although Charlotte was kidnapped in London, her body is found in a canal in Wiltshire, so while Lynley—assisted by the increasingly charismatic DC Nkata—heads up the London end, Havers is given charge of the Wiltshire investigation, and performs admirably. George does employ the tried-and-true “female detective finds herself alone in the murderer’s clutches” plot development near the end, but Havers proves far from helpless, as does Leo Luxford.

The depiction of the Luxford family is also one of my favorite things about the book. Here’s a man, the editor of a sleazy tabloid newspaper, whom one would expect to care less about the life of a daughter he never met than her actual mother, but that turns out not to be the case at all. He also faces some unpleasant truths about his motives for attempting to toughen up his son, and realizes near the end of the book the tyrannical figure he’s become in that regard. The final scene concerns this family and it seriously made me cry.

I think this may actually be my favorite Lynley mystery yet!

Filed Under: Books, Mystery Tagged With:

Alice in the Country of Hearts 6 (Japanese) by QuinRose and Soumei Hoshino

May 26, 2011 by 5 Comments

When TOKYOPOP announced in April that they’d be shutting down, I was bummed that we wouldn’t get the sixth and final volume of the surprisingly fun Alice in the Country of Hearts, which had been scheduled for July release. Happily, however, the volume is easily available in Japanese (I got mine from YesAsia.com). Unhappily, it’s a disappointing conclusion to the series.

When Alice was first brought into the game by the White Rabbit, she was given a vial and told that it would fill up as she interacted with Wonderland’s denizens. Now that vial is almost full, so it’s time—after some thoroughly boring and pointless territory negotiations—for her to think about going home. Even though she’s convinced this has all been a dream, Alice still worries what will become of Julius after she’s gone, since she’s been ensuring the workaholic clock fixer eats regular meals, and everyone else is depressed about her impending departure.

There are several things that frustrate me about what follows (spoiler warning). First of all, Alice has been shown throughout to be a very sensible girl. Why, then, would she fall for someone who has treated her as shabbily as Blood (the Mad Hatter) has? I honestly don’t get it. Sure, he looks like a boy she once loved, but it makes me lose respect for Alice that she’d fall for this guy. Secondly, Alice makes it back to the real world for all of ten seconds before Blood shows up and whisks her back to Wonderland. A montage of happy people ensues and then it’s over. Huh? What?

We don’t get any explanations about the nature of Wonderland. Back in volume one, she was told that it’s not a world she created, but one she wished for. So, is it a real place? Is it a delusion? Is she lying in a sickbed somewhere? Has this story been taking place in the imagination of an autistic boy with a snow globe? Alice never reunites with her sister, never makes good on her brief plans for the future… She just chooses to live in this fantasy world with a gun-toting jerk of a guy. It’s not as if the preceding volumes have been bursting with literary merit, but this final volume is so insubstantial it’s almost insulting.

I suspect this is all because there are more games in the series and the story can’t conclude here if they want to sell more, but it doesn’t make for a very successful or satisfying manga adaptation.

Filed Under: Fantasy, Manga, Shoujo Tagged With:
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