Manga and Book Reviews by Michelle Smith
I reviewed the omnibus edition of this shoujo manga based on the Darker Than Black anime for Comics Should Be Good. Basically, all of the elements borrowed from the anime are pretty intriguing, but the manga’s storyline just doesn’t hang together very well.
You can find that review here.
Darker Than Black is published in English by Yen Press in a 384-page omnibus edition that contains both volumes of the series.
Review copy provided by the publisher.
From the back cover:
Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in Bon Temps, Louisiana. She’s quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn’t get out much. Not because she’s not pretty. She is. It’s just that, well, Sookie has this sort of “disability.” She can read minds. And that doesn’t make her too datable. Then along comes Bill. He’s tall, dark, handsome—and Sookie can’t hear a word he’s thinking. He’s exactly the type of guy she’s been waiting for all her life…
But Bill has a disability of his own: he’s a vampire with a bad reputation. But he is an interesting addition to the town, and Sookie can’t help but listen to what everyone else thinks about Bill… especially since she’s starting to fall for the buff bloodsucker. But when a string of murders hits town—along with a gang of truly nasty vampires looking for Bill—Sookie wonders if having an undead boyfriend is such a bright idea.
And when one of her coworkers is killed, Sookie realizes that Bill and his friends may have some special plans for a woman who can read minds…
Review:
I’ve had the first few books in the Southern Vampire series for a long time, but ever since acquiring them I’ve had doubts about whether I’d actually like them. My doubts appeared justified when an attempt to watch an episode of True Blood, the HBO series based on the novels, ended in about five minutes. Still, I can usually tolerate “blood and boobies” (description credit to Felicia Day) better in print than on screen, so I thought I’d give the books a shot.
As most probably know by now, this is the story of Sookie Stackhouse, a waitress in small-town Bon Temps, Louisiana. Sookie is telepathic, which has made dating difficult, but when she meets vampire Bill Compton and cannot read his thoughts, she’s intrigued. Eventually they become a couple, but as Sookie learns more about Bill’s world she realizes that most vampires are quite unpleasant and that the hierarchy in their society means that Bill’s “superior,” Eric, can command her attendance as he chooses and there’s nothing Bill can do to prevent it.
Their relationship struggles play out against a rural backdrop that’s presently plagued by a string of murders for which Bill and Sookie’s brother, Jason, are individually suspected. This mystery fades into the background at times, but its resolution was a genuine surprise to me, though in retrospect it really shouldn’t have been. There is a good deal of sex once Sookie and Bill get together, but it stops short of being so explicit that it offends my prudish sensibilities.
As a Southerner, I can tell this book was written by “one of us.” Although I live in a fairly urban city, we’re surrounded by rural counties where the residents of Bon Temps would fit right in. I don’t live a life like these characters do, but I bet that some of my coworkers do.
Sookie herself strikes me as quite Southern in that she’s somewhat apathetic about her lack of education and go-nowhere job and extremely tolerant of some of Bill’s peculiar behavior. She’s got flaws—the adjectives vain, naïve, petulant, and complacent all describe her at one point or another—but she’s also got common sense and is resourceful in emergencies. Bill, so far, is kind of dull. The most interesting thing about him is that he became a vampire in the Civil War era, and so must try to get over some old-fashioned notions about women.
Ultimately, my feelings for this series are similar to those for the Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom series by Julie Kenner: there are things that bug me, and they’re not the greatest books on the planet, but I am still strongly compelled to keep reading them. Maybe one day I’ll even give True Blood another try.
The Paradise Kiss MMF has now come to a close. Thank you again to everyone who participated—each contribution was a pleasure to read, and their quality made my job as host both easy and fun!
Tune in next month when we’ll be doing something a little bit different with the MMF: a kids’ table! Our main course will be Yotsuba&!, but we’ll also be feasting upon a variety of tasty (and kid-friendly) side dishes. The festivities will be hosted by the team at Good Comics for Kids, so be sure to keep an eye on their blog for details.
The complete archive for the Paradise Kiss MMF can be found here.
These are the final two volumes of Honey and Clover, so there will be spoilers here. Beware.
Be sure to have some mental palate cleanser on hand—fluffy shoujo may work for you but I turned to shoot-’em-up seinen—when you finish Honey and Clover, because, man, is it depressing! It’s not that I’d expected everything to turn out rosy, since much of the plot revolves around two love triangles among friends, and someone must end up disappointed if there is to be any resolution, but I had failed to grasp the bigger sorrow in these characters’ lives: the time has come for them to go their separate ways.
Primarily, this realization affects Takemoto and Hagu, the two characters who are graduating. Hagu has said before that she plans to return home to Nagano to live a simple life and paint as she pleases, but lately it seems like she wants something else, but is reluctant to ask for it. As she articulates her dilemma, we see a more adult Hagu than we’ve ever seen before. This impression deepens when a freak accident leaves Hagu with nerve damage in her painting hand and she goes without painkillers in order to feel the first inkling of pain that might tell her there’s hope for regrowth. (If you had ever had reservations about this series because of Hagu’s child-like appearance, rest assured that she is clearly a strong, fascinating, and respected grown-up by the end.)
This accident is the catalyst for just about everything that follows. Takemoto has a job offer from the temple restoration group he’d encountered on his bicycle journey, but can’t decide whether to leave a recuperating Hagu behind. Ayu decides that Morita ought to know about what has happened to Hagu, and their reunion coincides with a frustrating lack of progress in Hagu’s physical therapy. Morita, who is sick of people loving or being jealous of him because of his talent, is ready to cast all that aside and offers Hagu the chance to do the same and just live as two people in love. She’s tempted, but when a night away from the hospital results in swelling in her hand, she realizes what is most important to her and decides to go back.
Hanamoto-sensei is ready to give everything up and stay by Hagu’s side as she recuperates, but doesn’t want her to know about the sacrifices he’s poised to make lest that knowledge influence her decision of what to do with her life. The night with Morita helps her realize that art is more important to her even than love, and in order to be able to pursue it, she needs Hanamoto by her side, to nourish her with his presence and enable her to relax and grow. It’s this that she was loathe to ask for, but nearly losing her ability to paint clarifies her desires and she ends up requesting the very thing he’s been ready to offer.
You see, though I never would have guessed this, Hanamoto is in love with Hagu, too. Through being with her, he was able to recapture some of the joy in art—and in life—that he had lost. Because of this, though she does not return his feelings in the same way, he’s willing to devote his life to staying near her. I find this inexplicably sad for some reason. Too, because Hagu chooses this path, both Takemoto’s and Morita’s romantic hopes are dashed. It’s just so awful that nobody’s love is returned in the same measure that their own is given. These are kind people, willing to keep on loving no matter what, and I can’t help but want to see that kind of devotion rewarded.
Takemoto and Morita have both been positively affected by their love for Hagu—her vow to always watch over Morita prevents him from giving up after all—but neither gets a happy ending. It seems possible that Ayu might, in time, be able to forget about Mayama and accept Nomiya’s feelings, but that’s still some ways off. The person closest to a happy ending is probably Mayama, who is making slow progress in his relationship with Rika. A lot of things are left up in the air, including the outcome of Hagu’s therapy, but this doesn’t result in the story feeling unfinished.
In the end, Takemoto achieves some measure of peace—he couldn’t have stood losing out to Morita, but to lose to Hanamoto-sensei’s “kindness and consideration” is somehow more tolerable—and takes the restoration job. Oh, how I cried when Hagu turns up at the train station with a bundle of ginormous sandwiches to bid him farewell. Each sandwich contains a four-leaf clover, and Takemoto realizes she must’ve spent ages searching for those, which brings to mind a memory (of the gang searching for clovers for Hanamoto-sensei back in volume two) that sums up the feeling of the series’ end quite well.
As time passes I guess the day will come that all of this is just a memory. But that day you were there and I was there and all of our friends were there. And we all looked for just one thing. In fact, that whole miraculous time in my life is going to keep turning nostalgically, somewhere far away deep in my heart, accompanied by a sweet pain forever.
Thanks for an awesome series, Chica Umino. I hope someone licenses Sangatsu no Lion soon.
Review copy for volume ten provided by the publisher.
The Paradise Kiss MMF is winding down, but there are still some new contributions to highlight.
Proving once and for all that manga isn’t just for kids, Derik Badman shared his academic paper, “Talking, Thinking, and Seeing in Pictures: Narration, Focalization, and Ocularization in Comics Narratives,” for which he used Paradise Kiss as an example:
Were I able to spend the time, the shifting focalizations of Paradise Kiss would prove a fertile ground for further investigation. In contrast to the previous examples, this manga uses more wide-ranging effects of focalization and ocularization in regard to a larger number of characters, but it is all enclosed in the retrospective internally focalized narration of Yukari herself.
Meanwhile, at Manga Kaleidoscope, Zoe Alexander’s review focuses on the relationships but doesn’t forget about the clothes! Here, she talks about a scene that makes her cry every time and I am right there with you, Zoe!
I also really liked the symbolism behind the clothes. To George, every design he makes holds an important memory to him, so for him to allow Yukari to wear them shows just how much he really loved her, despite the way he treated her at times. The scene near the end, where Yukari realizes that he’s left all his designs to her even though they’ve broken up, makes me cry every time. It’s his way of saying “I love you,” and so uniquely George.
Jason Green, Sarah Boslaugh, and Erin Jameson contribute to a great panel discussion on Paradise Kiss at PLAYBACK:stl. I particularly like this bit about the order in which Yukari asks herself some fundamental questions:
The end of high school always leaves one awash in feelings of “Who am I? Who do I want to be? Where do I want to go to college? What do I want to do with the rest of my life?” And Yukari is confronting those same issues, but through the lens of someone who basically upheaved her entire life by quitting school, changing friends, leaving home, and becoming a model—before she started asking herself those questions. It’s only natural in those circumstances to ask yourself “Am I becoming who I’m meant to be, or am I only doing this because of this weird new environment I’ve plopped myself into?”
At Slightly Biased Manga, Connie has posted an essay about the way she identifies with Yukari, the protagonist of Paradise Kiss. I had remembered she was a fan, but when I visited her site to read her reviews, I noticed there weren’t any. “Strange,” I thought. Here, she explains why that is:
I’m no fashion model (in case you couldn’t guess). I didn’t rebel in the way that Yukari did. I never went on to have the spectacular life that Yukari lived (proving that even the most sympathetic manga have to have some element of wish fulfillment). But every time I picked up a volume of that series, it made me cry. It still does, and I have never reviewed any of it, because it’s just too personal. The character emotions and the things they deal with in their lives are spectacular, Ai Yazawa is an excellent writer, and I was of the right age when I read this, but all the same, I still really feel this one.
Lastly, Jason S. Yadao posts to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser urging readers to check out Paradise Kiss. He concludes with these words:
Yazawa just has a way of crafting wonderful, down-to-earth gritty situations for her characters to deal with—see NANA, her current series, for proof of that—and I can’t recommend it enough.
Forsooth!
For more on Paradise Kiss, visit the MMF Archive.
From the back cover:
There are lots of children on Hill Street, but no little girls Betsy’s age. So when a new family moves into the house across the street, Betsy hopes they will have a little girl she can play with. Sure enough, they do—a little girl named Tacy. And from the moment they meet at Betsy’s fifth birthday party, Betsy and Tacy become such good friends that everyone starts to think of them as one person—Betsy-Tacy.
Betsy and Tacy have lots of fun together. They make a playhouse from a piano box, have a sand store, and dress up and go calling. And one day, they come home to a wonderful surprise—a new friend named Tib.
Review:
Although I’ve been meaning to read the Betsy-Tacy series for several years, I didn’t really know what to expect. That is, I knew it was the story of two life-long friends, but I didn’t know that it would be written so fondly, so amusingly, or depict life as anything but rosy for these two girls.
Betsy Ray has no girls her age to play with until bashful Tacy Kelly moves in across the street. Tacy’s shyness prevents them from becoming friends immediately, but once they bond at Betsy’s fifth birthday party, they’re inseparable. A lot of the book is devoted to the various imaginative ideas they come up with to entertain themselves, whether it’s coloring sand to sell to other children or pretending to drive the family surrey to the exotic realm of… Milwaukee.
Much of the book is quite amusing, especially the stories Betsy makes up. I’m particularly fond of the one featuring a talking horse with a hankering for some doughnuts. I was pleasantly surprised when things took a more serious turn: Tacy is one of many children and the youngest, “Baby Bee,” dies after an illness. There’s a really wonderful scene where Betsy’s storytelling abilities help cheer Tacy up. Later, when Betsy is upset over the birth of a new, “perfectly unnecessary” sibling, Tacy takes up the role of comforter. It might not sound like much by way of drama, but both instances manage to be charming and a little bittersweet at the same time.
Betsy-Tacy would be a great book to read aloud to elementary students, particularly an audience comprised of girls. My brother and his fiancée need to hurry up and give me a niece so I can read this to her.
There are a couple of new MMF contributions to mention today, and both take time to bestow some praise upon Isabella, the “elegant transvestite.”
Over at The Manga Curmudgeon, David Welsh dusts off a 2005 column on Paradise Kiss and freshens it up with some new thoughts. I love his insightful take on Isabella’s function in the story:
I was initially a bit annoyed by the suspicion that Isabella, the elegant transvestite, would stay too far in the background, looking lovely and composed and not doing much of anything. And while it’s true that she gets the least amount of time in the spotlight, well, somebody has to be the grown-up in this crowd. Isabella is the quiet, reassuring eye of a storm of self-reinvention, and it makes perfect sense. Isabella has already reinvented herself to her own satisfaction, so who better to nurture her works-in-progress friends?
In our weekly Off the Shelf column at Manga Bookshelf, MJ and I focus our discussion on the characters of Paradise Kiss. Although our feelings about George and ability to sympathize with Yukari differ, we both agree that Isabella is terrific:
MICHELLE: I think with Ai Yazawa there’s always a distinction to be made between characters who are excellently developed, three-dimensional people with fascinating flaws and characters who are one’s favorites by virtue of being just plain likeable. In the latter category, for example, I would place Isabella. She’s warm and nurturing, and completely devoted to George for accepting her as she is. If I had a problem, I’d like to pour my heart out to her while she made me some tasty stew.
But in terms of a character that one could simply talk about for days, I think I’d have to go with George. He’s maddening and unpredictable, but man, those moments when he looks hurt and vulnerable really pull at one’s heartstrings. It’s easy to see why Yukari fell for him.
MJ: It’s interesting that you bring up these two characters specifically, because I have such contrasting feelings about them. Isabella is my favorite character in the series by far… Not only is she a wonderfully warm and nurturing character, as you mention here, but she’s also the one who is best able to see the truth about everyone else, unhindered by insecurity or personal bias.
Additionally, she’s just about 100% responsible for my ability to like George, which took a hell of a long time to develop, to be honest. It took me several times through the series to get over my deep intolerance of George’s refusal to take responsibility for his role in the lives of others, and it was only Isabella who was able to convince me that George’s unquestioning, immediate acceptance of her true self made him worth reconsidering… If it wasn’t for Isabella, though I’d have to concede that George is an absolutely fascinating character, I wouldn’t like him at all.
For more on Paradise Kiss, visit the MMF Archive.
Each day brings more terrific musings upon a terrific series! Today, we have three!
At Manga Xanadu, Lori Henderson has posted a review of the first volume and makes a nice comparison of her own initial avoidance of the series and Yukari’s preconceptions about the members of Paradise Kiss.
Just like with NANA, I was pulled into this series from the first chapter and hooked by the characters. Their complex relationships really draw you in, as does the enigmatic George. It’s easy to get just as caught up in his games as Yukari does. Like Yukari, I made the mistake of judging this title by its outward appearance. I’m glad the MMF gave me a push to check out this series. I’m now looking forward to reading more and seeing the fashion come into play, as well as where George and Yukari’s relationship will go, or if it will last.
Sean Gaffney’s take on the series is up at his blog, A Case Suitable for Treatment. If you’re curious about the series’ publishing history, Sean’s got you covered, though he does plenty of enthusing, as well. Here’s a sample:
It also features one of the great supporting casts in manga. Each of the six characters I’d call leads (Yukari, George, Arashi, Miwako, Isabella and Hiroyuki) are well-written characters with their own lives and problems, and the manga succeeds very well in avoiding a typical shoujo pitfall of having everyone be there to facilitate the heroine’s romance. Partly this is because they’re all so interesting in and of themselves (it’s arguable that the Arashi/Miwako/Hiroyuki subplot is more fascinating than Yukari’s), but partly because for once, this is a romance you may not want to see helped along.
At Comic Attack, Kristin has posted her review, which takes the extra step of discussing the anime as well as the manga. It’s a fun and lively read, and I think my very favorite bit is this passage about George:
Now we can talk about George. As a character, he’s hard to beat. George is cold, cruel, arrogant, and emotionally warped. As a romantic partner he’s about the worst guy you could find, but as a character he’s incredibly fascinating. And, despite how twisted he can be, he’s actually pretty great for Yukari. He makes her grow up and take control of her own life. It doesn’t really happen in the nicest way, but sometimes a swift kick in the ass is what you need. For that, he’s perfect. But beyond that?
For more on Paradise Kiss, visit the MMF Archive.
The Paradise Kiss MMF has just begun, and some fantastic submissions are already coming in!
Ed Sizemore at Manga Worth Reading has posted his thoughtful take on the series, which includes this observation on the role of realism in the story:
The series has the feeling of a fairy tale. Not the light, frothy ones that get told today, but the original ones that blended a sense of reality and fantasy to create compelling, yet reassuring, stories. Realism is seen in the way George’s and Yuraki’s relationship progresses and ends. It’s further seen in the fact that Paradise Kiss doesn’t become an overnight fashion hit. The lack of a Hollywood perfect ending is part of what makes this a satisfying read.
Hisui and Narutaki of Reverse Thieves have contributed a fascinating discussion about one of the series’ supporting characters, entitled Hiroyuki: One Point on Two Triangles. I’m so glad someone devoted some consideration to this character, who ended up having a much greater purpose than I’d been expecting.
Hiro is an unexpected linchpin in the complicated relationships of Paradise Kiss. He is the foil, the good guy, the guy that got away, the childhood friend, and the first love and he occupies a spot in two completely different 
triangles of love… In many ways the girls, Yukari and Miwako, don’t realize the triangle exists; they are so focused on their current love affairs that there is little room for another. But George and Arashi are a different story. Their insecurities brightly manifest because of Hiro, each reacting to the threat, one with feigned indifference and the other with jealous anger. They both believe Hiro is better for their respective love interests than they are, and even the reader, as much as we fall in love with George and Arashi, [worries] they might be right.
Lastly, my review of the series has also gone up, and it’s probably the longest thing I’ve ever written. Perhaps it’s gauche to quote oneself in a post of this type, but I admit a fondness for this paragraph:
Any human emotion you can possibly think of is present in Paradise Kiss. Characters are seen at their best and at their worst. Some achieve their dreams, some come close, and some must resign themselves to helping others achieve theirs. It’s not a particularly happy story, but it’s not a particularly sad one, either. The overall feeling I take away from it is one of hope. After all, even though things sometimes don’t go as you planned, “nothing will happen if you don’t believe in your own possibilities.”
For more on Paradise Kiss, visit the MMF Archive.
From the back cover:
An astronaut in full spacesuit appears out of thin air in a busy shopping centre. Maybe it’s a publicity stunt.
A photo shows a well-dressed woman in a red coat lying dead at the edge of a crater on the dark side of the moon—beside her beloved dog ‘Poochie.’ Maybe it’s a hoax.
But as the Doctor and Amy find out, these are just minor events in a sinister plan to take over every human being on Earth. The plot centres on a secret military base on the moon—that’s where Amy and the TARDIS are.
The Doctor is back on Earth, and without the TARDIS there’s no way he can get to the moon to save Amy and defeat the aliens.
Or is there? The Doctor discovers one last great secret that could save humanity: Apollo 23.
Review:
In the run of the Doctor Who: New Series Adventures books, this one comes in at number 37. At some point I’ll go back and read the earlier ones, but I’m really enjoying the new season with the eleventh doctor and couldn’t resist the temptation to check out the first book to feature him and his spunky Scottish companion, Amy.
I’m used to media tie-in books being fairly crappy, so Apollo 23 was a pleasant surprise. Oh, it’s not great literature or anything, but the characterization of Eleven and Amy is very solid, with dialogue that I can easily hear the actors delivering and several lines that elicit a grin. The basic plot is somewhat reminiscent of Dollhouse: there’s a secret base on the moon where experiments are being carried out on prisoners. The goal of the experiment is ostensibly to remove memories of bad experiences that led to criminal activity, but the technology winds up being used to create “Blanks” whose personalities are stored elsewhere while alien minds are imprinted upon them.
There’s more involving quantum links between Earth and the moon, but it’s really a sort of alien invasion/body snatchers story. The Doctor gets to zip around impressing people with his brilliance while Amy does a lot of snooping about. If this were an episode of the show, I’m sure it would be a disappointment, but in this format, it’s a quick and enjoyable read that might help ease the pain of the long wait ’til the Christmas special. I’ll be reading more!
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