Multiple Manga Reviews
Sep. 19th, 2003 02:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jcfialaWell, let's see. I did say I was going to do some reviews, and since I can't fall asleep tonight, I might as well try my reviews.
Top of the pile is Erica Sakurazawa's Angel, translated and published by Tokyopop. I remember when Tokyopop was starting up, with their 'Mixxine' collection of four different ongoing series. The Mixxine didn't seem to take off very well, but one of their titles - Sailor Moon - came along just at the right time to be bought up en masse and help catapult the company along. I don't know for sure, but I would guess that it's really the collections of Sailor Moon, distributed to chain bookstores around the country, that catapulted them into profitability. These days, about half of the collected Manga that I see in my local comic shop - not to mention local bookstore - in small, easy to carry paperbook-sized collections that each cost ten bucks.
But I digress. 'Angel' is worth about twenty bucks, in my humble opinion. Mrs. Sakurazawa spins a tale of an otherworldly angel that most people can't see, but who gives people wings simply by kissing them. During the entire book the angel doesn't actually speak a word, and one of the ways the various people she comes in contact with are defined is by the way they react to the silent figure. Kato sees her as a way to pass the time until she's gone, which propels him into a search that allows him to find what he needs. Mizuho sees her as something special in a dull and painful world - and then as something special in herself. Chi sees her as a sister to complete a family she barely has. It's good storytelling.
It's good art too. Mrs. Sakurazawa's art grasps me. The backgrounds are often either very detailed or missing, setting the scene or ignoring it to focus on the characters. The character art is somewhat rough, helping to show the imperfections in the characters, I think. It's hard to describe, but it's marvelous. It's not the usual cartoonish large-eyed art one associates with anime and manga, and instead looks very realistic, which fits the adult topics of depression, alcoholism, single mothers and relationships.
The art of 'The Kindaichi Case Files: The Opera House Murders' by Yozaburo Kanari and Fumiya Sato on the other hand is expressive in the general 'anime' style, with cartoonish faces and bodies, but detailed backgrounds. Mr. sato does a fine job - his characters emote well, and there's a sense of place about his work that helps you keep track where everyone is.
And that's important in this case because - as the title suggests - this is in fact a murder mystery. The school drama club has gone to an isolated island to engage in intense rehearsal of 'The Phantom of the Opera' at the aptly named 'Opera House Hotel'. There's the usual grab-bag of actors and actresses, the prop department, the scenery painters... and Hajime Kindaichi, a slacker generally disliked by most of them, but allowed to come along because his friend Miyuki brought him along to help fetch and carry. When people start dying, he gets to work unraveling the mystery using skills he's somehow inherited from a famous detective he's related to.
If you at all like mysteries, this is definitely something to pick up. There aren't a lot of pure mystery stories done in comics, and this one is good, keeping me guessing to the end, but faithfully leaving the clues out in front for anyone to figure out the answer before Kindaichi does.
With 'Death: At Death's Door' by Jill Thompson, I'm technically leaving the Manga world - but just barely. Advertised as 'From the pages of the Sandman' on the cover, this book shows what Death was up to during the events of 'The Season of Mists' storyline of the classic Sandman series - only done in a Manga style, published in Tokyopop's manga size and sold for their $10 price. Jill does a great job here - by necessity, she has to repeat a lot of scenes from Neil Gaiman's original book from Death's point of view so the story hangs together for new readers, but somehow she manages to put her own spin on them so that they weren't boring. I expected once I realized she was repeating scenes to start skipping over them to get to the new bits, but her quirky take on the manga style managed to keep my attention through those parts.
But really it's the new sections that grab the attention, and they're good. They're also mostly light - The 'Seasons of Mists' storyline really is a fairly down tale for it's length, and Jill leavens those scenes with her own, whether it's Delerium's Green Mouse and Telephone Ice Cream, or the longing looks Edgar Allen Poe keeps giving Despair. Altogether it works, and works well, and one is lead to wonder if the '1' on the binding means that we'll see more of Jill's reinterpretations of the Sandman mythos.
Seraphic Feather: Seeds of Chaos is the second compilation of episodes from the ongoing story that Dark Horse has been publishing in their 'Super Manga Blast' anthology book. Unlike Tokyopop's 'Mixxine' anthology, SMB has been continuing strong for quite a long time, and the various stories are being collected and republished as collections. This one, the second, is in a larger format than Tokyopop's, and costs a hefty $18 as well, a price I wonder if Dark Horse will change as Tokyopop's books continue to do well.
The story isn't simple. There's a psychic boy living on the moon who does all sorts of odd jobs, including tour guide. He's on the moon because his childhood friend Kei died on the Moon, and he came up to investigate - and hasn't earned enough for his return trip yet. As it happens, his current charges are a dead-sexy investigator and his supposedly dead childhood friend Kei, who doesn't remember him at all. There are also strange powerful artifacts called 'Emblem Seeds' and a number of alien beings that may only be robots here to judge our suitability - or just to prepare for a true invasion. It's not a simple plot, and starting with the second volume isn't recommended.
But it's good story if you have read the first one. The story is mostly action in this volume, with a little exposition peppered about, but the action is well done, and the story slowly answers questions while setting up new ones. The art is marvelous - apparently the artist Hiroyuki Utatane used to do pornographic comics in the past. This isn't porn, but his lovingly done renderings of the characters shows a sensibility of people as sensual beings - not in the 'big tits tight clothing' style of Image's infamous bad girl books, but a more realistic depiction, I thought, of the way bodies look. This is not to say that there aren't occasional fan service panels. However sexy the art is, together with the story the two work together to keep drawing me in.
Earlier I mentioned that mysteries aren't common in comics, and I'll repeat that here. Ruse is almost a straight mystery comic, but a drizzling of the fantastic shrouds it. Ruse is written by Mark Waid, penciled by Butch Guice, inked by Mike Perkins, and colored by Laura Martin, and is published by Crossgen. This is the first volume in the 'Traveler Edition', which takes the comic-book sized art and shrinks it down to manga size, and the $10 manga price, and it's a good deal. The book collects the first six issues of the comic.
The book is set in a Victorian setting like Britain, and contains a very Sherlock-Holmes-ish Simon Archard, an investigator who is able to choose his cases based on how interesting they are to him. His sidekick is Emma Bishop, and it's her viewpoint that we see the large methodical and emotionless Archard. The fantasy twist is that Emma is apparently a powerful being inserted into the story to try and teach Archard to be a better person. The twist is that if she ever uses her true power, she will be removed from the story, and it will be considered a failed experiment of some sort. It lends an interesting twist to the standard series of Holmes like adventures, tracking down the unusual clue that turns the mystery into a solution. It's more honest than I remember Holmes being, with special clues not being as hidden from the reader as in that, which is helped by Emma not being as dense as her Watson-like behavior would suggest. It's a good book, and at ten dollars it's very good.
Next up is another Traveler edition from Crossgen, this time volume one of the 'Mystic' series. This one collects seven issues. The basic idea is a sorcerous world, where magic runs free and easy through society. Giselle Villard, the main character, has largely ignored wizardry whereas her sister Genevieve has studied hard and long to the point where she is about to become one of the seven magical masters of the world, wizards who are semi-possessed by the spirits of the past masters, which gives them access to all of the past masters' skills and magical knowledge. Somehow, during the ceremony to make Genevieve one of the masters Giselle instead gains the spirits of all seven schools of magic.
The basic plot is pretty simple, but well executed. The current masters aren't willing to take this change to the status quo lying down, and fight her with various tools at her exposure. But it's the characters that are more interesting - Giselle, a party animal now forced to carry a responsibility she's not ready for, Genevieve, the good sister reacting badly to her sister taking the only reward for her diligence. There's Thierry, a possible mysterious boyfriend candidate, and the dark thrill of Darrow's sleek attentions with his definite hidden agenda. And then there's the requisite talking animal, which seems more interested in keeping secrets than anything else. It's good, but not great, and I don't suggest picking this up unless you intend to follow up with later stories.
Although I haven't picked it up in the traveler edition, I did see miniature copies of Crossgen's 'Meridian', and I strongly recommend that as an excellent young-adult series about a young woman forced to bear a power she wasn't supposed to, and a responsibility for her city-state that she hadn't yet been trained for. That, on the other hand, did strike me as great.
But back to manga. 'Confidential Confessions' is one of Tokyopop's edgier offerings. Created by Reiko Momochi, the first story deals with two girls contemplating suicide, and the second story focuses on a teen prostitute who never gives her real name. The stories are played up as being 'A controversial manga that tackles society's most complex issues.'... But it sometimes seems to me a bit more 'preaching' than 'teaching' - it feels like the stories are meant to teach teenagers not to go into these situations more than it feels like telling a story about these situations. I guess it's well enough done, but between that and the rather sensational cover I doubt I'll pick up another volume.
But hey, let's end on a light note. Clamp has been known to do a wide variety of stories - from X's apocalyptic drama to Card Captor Sakura's lighthearted magic girl story. This story is about 20 Faces, a good-hearted thief in the tradition of 'Saint Tail' and 'Lupin III'. In this case, it's a young boy whose father was the original 20 Faces, who steals things because his capricious mothers demand them, and he can deny them nothing. (Yes, MotherS. Apparently his father married them both at the same time.) The stories are light, and the series exists for only two volumes. They're cute, and fun, and a nice diversion with a taste of romance.
So, to summarize: 'Angel', 'The Opera House Murders', 'Ruse', 'Death', very good to good, 'Seraphic Feather' very good if you pick up the first volume, 'Man of Many Faces' and Mystic: Rite of Passage' good, and Confidential Confessions fair.
Top of the pile is Erica Sakurazawa's Angel, translated and published by Tokyopop. I remember when Tokyopop was starting up, with their 'Mixxine' collection of four different ongoing series. The Mixxine didn't seem to take off very well, but one of their titles - Sailor Moon - came along just at the right time to be bought up en masse and help catapult the company along. I don't know for sure, but I would guess that it's really the collections of Sailor Moon, distributed to chain bookstores around the country, that catapulted them into profitability. These days, about half of the collected Manga that I see in my local comic shop - not to mention local bookstore - in small, easy to carry paperbook-sized collections that each cost ten bucks.
But I digress. 'Angel' is worth about twenty bucks, in my humble opinion. Mrs. Sakurazawa spins a tale of an otherworldly angel that most people can't see, but who gives people wings simply by kissing them. During the entire book the angel doesn't actually speak a word, and one of the ways the various people she comes in contact with are defined is by the way they react to the silent figure. Kato sees her as a way to pass the time until she's gone, which propels him into a search that allows him to find what he needs. Mizuho sees her as something special in a dull and painful world - and then as something special in herself. Chi sees her as a sister to complete a family she barely has. It's good storytelling.
It's good art too. Mrs. Sakurazawa's art grasps me. The backgrounds are often either very detailed or missing, setting the scene or ignoring it to focus on the characters. The character art is somewhat rough, helping to show the imperfections in the characters, I think. It's hard to describe, but it's marvelous. It's not the usual cartoonish large-eyed art one associates with anime and manga, and instead looks very realistic, which fits the adult topics of depression, alcoholism, single mothers and relationships.
The art of 'The Kindaichi Case Files: The Opera House Murders' by Yozaburo Kanari and Fumiya Sato on the other hand is expressive in the general 'anime' style, with cartoonish faces and bodies, but detailed backgrounds. Mr. sato does a fine job - his characters emote well, and there's a sense of place about his work that helps you keep track where everyone is.
And that's important in this case because - as the title suggests - this is in fact a murder mystery. The school drama club has gone to an isolated island to engage in intense rehearsal of 'The Phantom of the Opera' at the aptly named 'Opera House Hotel'. There's the usual grab-bag of actors and actresses, the prop department, the scenery painters... and Hajime Kindaichi, a slacker generally disliked by most of them, but allowed to come along because his friend Miyuki brought him along to help fetch and carry. When people start dying, he gets to work unraveling the mystery using skills he's somehow inherited from a famous detective he's related to.
If you at all like mysteries, this is definitely something to pick up. There aren't a lot of pure mystery stories done in comics, and this one is good, keeping me guessing to the end, but faithfully leaving the clues out in front for anyone to figure out the answer before Kindaichi does.
With 'Death: At Death's Door' by Jill Thompson, I'm technically leaving the Manga world - but just barely. Advertised as 'From the pages of the Sandman' on the cover, this book shows what Death was up to during the events of 'The Season of Mists' storyline of the classic Sandman series - only done in a Manga style, published in Tokyopop's manga size and sold for their $10 price. Jill does a great job here - by necessity, she has to repeat a lot of scenes from Neil Gaiman's original book from Death's point of view so the story hangs together for new readers, but somehow she manages to put her own spin on them so that they weren't boring. I expected once I realized she was repeating scenes to start skipping over them to get to the new bits, but her quirky take on the manga style managed to keep my attention through those parts.
But really it's the new sections that grab the attention, and they're good. They're also mostly light - The 'Seasons of Mists' storyline really is a fairly down tale for it's length, and Jill leavens those scenes with her own, whether it's Delerium's Green Mouse and Telephone Ice Cream, or the longing looks Edgar Allen Poe keeps giving Despair. Altogether it works, and works well, and one is lead to wonder if the '1' on the binding means that we'll see more of Jill's reinterpretations of the Sandman mythos.
Seraphic Feather: Seeds of Chaos is the second compilation of episodes from the ongoing story that Dark Horse has been publishing in their 'Super Manga Blast' anthology book. Unlike Tokyopop's 'Mixxine' anthology, SMB has been continuing strong for quite a long time, and the various stories are being collected and republished as collections. This one, the second, is in a larger format than Tokyopop's, and costs a hefty $18 as well, a price I wonder if Dark Horse will change as Tokyopop's books continue to do well.
The story isn't simple. There's a psychic boy living on the moon who does all sorts of odd jobs, including tour guide. He's on the moon because his childhood friend Kei died on the Moon, and he came up to investigate - and hasn't earned enough for his return trip yet. As it happens, his current charges are a dead-sexy investigator and his supposedly dead childhood friend Kei, who doesn't remember him at all. There are also strange powerful artifacts called 'Emblem Seeds' and a number of alien beings that may only be robots here to judge our suitability - or just to prepare for a true invasion. It's not a simple plot, and starting with the second volume isn't recommended.
But it's good story if you have read the first one. The story is mostly action in this volume, with a little exposition peppered about, but the action is well done, and the story slowly answers questions while setting up new ones. The art is marvelous - apparently the artist Hiroyuki Utatane used to do pornographic comics in the past. This isn't porn, but his lovingly done renderings of the characters shows a sensibility of people as sensual beings - not in the 'big tits tight clothing' style of Image's infamous bad girl books, but a more realistic depiction, I thought, of the way bodies look. This is not to say that there aren't occasional fan service panels. However sexy the art is, together with the story the two work together to keep drawing me in.
Earlier I mentioned that mysteries aren't common in comics, and I'll repeat that here. Ruse is almost a straight mystery comic, but a drizzling of the fantastic shrouds it. Ruse is written by Mark Waid, penciled by Butch Guice, inked by Mike Perkins, and colored by Laura Martin, and is published by Crossgen. This is the first volume in the 'Traveler Edition', which takes the comic-book sized art and shrinks it down to manga size, and the $10 manga price, and it's a good deal. The book collects the first six issues of the comic.
The book is set in a Victorian setting like Britain, and contains a very Sherlock-Holmes-ish Simon Archard, an investigator who is able to choose his cases based on how interesting they are to him. His sidekick is Emma Bishop, and it's her viewpoint that we see the large methodical and emotionless Archard. The fantasy twist is that Emma is apparently a powerful being inserted into the story to try and teach Archard to be a better person. The twist is that if she ever uses her true power, she will be removed from the story, and it will be considered a failed experiment of some sort. It lends an interesting twist to the standard series of Holmes like adventures, tracking down the unusual clue that turns the mystery into a solution. It's more honest than I remember Holmes being, with special clues not being as hidden from the reader as in that, which is helped by Emma not being as dense as her Watson-like behavior would suggest. It's a good book, and at ten dollars it's very good.
Next up is another Traveler edition from Crossgen, this time volume one of the 'Mystic' series. This one collects seven issues. The basic idea is a sorcerous world, where magic runs free and easy through society. Giselle Villard, the main character, has largely ignored wizardry whereas her sister Genevieve has studied hard and long to the point where she is about to become one of the seven magical masters of the world, wizards who are semi-possessed by the spirits of the past masters, which gives them access to all of the past masters' skills and magical knowledge. Somehow, during the ceremony to make Genevieve one of the masters Giselle instead gains the spirits of all seven schools of magic.
The basic plot is pretty simple, but well executed. The current masters aren't willing to take this change to the status quo lying down, and fight her with various tools at her exposure. But it's the characters that are more interesting - Giselle, a party animal now forced to carry a responsibility she's not ready for, Genevieve, the good sister reacting badly to her sister taking the only reward for her diligence. There's Thierry, a possible mysterious boyfriend candidate, and the dark thrill of Darrow's sleek attentions with his definite hidden agenda. And then there's the requisite talking animal, which seems more interested in keeping secrets than anything else. It's good, but not great, and I don't suggest picking this up unless you intend to follow up with later stories.
Although I haven't picked it up in the traveler edition, I did see miniature copies of Crossgen's 'Meridian', and I strongly recommend that as an excellent young-adult series about a young woman forced to bear a power she wasn't supposed to, and a responsibility for her city-state that she hadn't yet been trained for. That, on the other hand, did strike me as great.
But back to manga. 'Confidential Confessions' is one of Tokyopop's edgier offerings. Created by Reiko Momochi, the first story deals with two girls contemplating suicide, and the second story focuses on a teen prostitute who never gives her real name. The stories are played up as being 'A controversial manga that tackles society's most complex issues.'... But it sometimes seems to me a bit more 'preaching' than 'teaching' - it feels like the stories are meant to teach teenagers not to go into these situations more than it feels like telling a story about these situations. I guess it's well enough done, but between that and the rather sensational cover I doubt I'll pick up another volume.
But hey, let's end on a light note. Clamp has been known to do a wide variety of stories - from X's apocalyptic drama to Card Captor Sakura's lighthearted magic girl story. This story is about 20 Faces, a good-hearted thief in the tradition of 'Saint Tail' and 'Lupin III'. In this case, it's a young boy whose father was the original 20 Faces, who steals things because his capricious mothers demand them, and he can deny them nothing. (Yes, MotherS. Apparently his father married them both at the same time.) The stories are light, and the series exists for only two volumes. They're cute, and fun, and a nice diversion with a taste of romance.
So, to summarize: 'Angel', 'The Opera House Murders', 'Ruse', 'Death', very good to good, 'Seraphic Feather' very good if you pick up the first volume, 'Man of Many Faces' and Mystic: Rite of Passage' good, and Confidential Confessions fair.
Ruse and Tokyopop
Date: 2003-09-19 10:45 am (UTC)From Tokyopop I also recommend Petshop of Horrors. I don't know if you'll like it, but I think it's good, creepy, and lovely funny at times too. About a man...of sorts...who runs a peculiar petshop in New York's Chinatown.
Re: Ruse and Tokyopop
Date: 2003-09-19 11:13 am (UTC)As for Petshop of Horrors, I don't know if I noticed that one before. As I'm attending our local anime con this weekend, I'll be sure to keep an eye out for the first volume of it.
Thanks!
Petshop of Horrors
Date: 2003-09-20 09:01 pm (UTC)