Category Archives: MMF

The Manga Movable Feast is a blogger’s book and advocacy club. Participation is voluntary, and a new MMF is hosted monthly.

Cross Game MMF: No Character Left Behind

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This is it – the final day of Cross Game posts from Manga Widget. I hope that you’ve enjoyed all the content here, and all the other blogs contributing to this month’s Manga Moveable Feast. Special thanks go out to our excellent host, Derik Badman at The Panelists; if you haven’t visited the site and seen all the content, now is your chance.

Today, I wanted to focus on something a little less like a footnote, and more like a stray observation about Adachi’s style of story development. One of the things that makes Cross Game such an interesting and involving read is its character development – and not just the development of a few odd characters who make up the bulk of the action in Cross Game. We see Aoba develop and get to experience Ko’s coming of age, but Adachi has plans for all of his characters.

In the first volume, Nakanishi, one of the players on the Portable team, is shown angrily fighting the high school team. This isn’t important to the story, other than these thugs from the high school team and their antics are Ko’s stated reasons for not joining the baseball team. I feel that Ko’s statement doesn’t have a whole lot of validity – he doesn’t have to show Nakanishi after a fight, his hands bloodied, his range barely contained within the panels of the page. But he does, and develops Nakanishi as a character. We know that he hates injustice and bullying, and that he has a hot temper.

One of the interesting characters that Adachi spends quite a bit of time developing is Senda, a boy in Ko’s class who fancies himself a pitcher and makes it onto the Seishu team only to later be kicked out and put on the Portable team. While at first, this character is merely a source of comic relief for readers and a source of irritation for Ko and Aoba, he suddenly becomes something more – he becomes part of the team. We get to see a great interlude in the third omnibus that shows how Ko and the baseball team spends their New Year holiday. Senda spends the day out trying to find people to hang out with, and finds out after he comes home that the team has been over to hang out, and has since left. This development shows us what Senda is – an insecure boy who hides his fears and anxieties under a mask of boastful confidence. Again – not a necessary detail for the story of Cross Game to continue, but a detail that helps readers connect to the characters presented in Cross Game.

All this character information is presented in a show, not tell sort of style. Adachi is adept at showing readers things that help them connect the dots; his character development is certainly one of these things.

This character development is unlike anything in other shonen or shojo manga, and solidifies Adachi’s place as a great author and entertainer. Because of his attention to detail and focus on the development of his entire varied cast of baseball-playing high-schoolers, Cross Game transcends its Shonen Sunday background and can, if even only for small moments, change from a form of entertainment into art. And we are much the richer for it.

MMF: Cross Game and Mono No Aware

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Welcome back to the Cross Game Manga Moveable Feast. This week, the manga blogosphere is doing its best to feature Mitsuru Adachi’s stellar sports manga, Cross Game, and already there has been some terrific writing, especially at The Panelists, where Derik Badman is hosting this month’s festivities. There is a lot of wonderful writing that comes out of each month’s MMF, and I love to dig into it and learn from it. Case in point -
earlier this week, David Welch at the Manga Curmudgeon explained some of the reasons why he loves Cross Game. (This article is excellent reading, by the way, and I recommend it to all of you).

As I was reading through his article, I realized that he had used a term I had not seen before: mono no aware. The phrase comes from Japanese literature, and I was curious what he meant by it. As I read and learned, I found that I too was impressed and moved by the series’ use of this literary device, but up until that moment in time, had not properly considered it or defined what it did for Cross Game. What is mono no aware, and why is it so important to Cross Game?

Mono no aware (物の哀れ) or literally “the ah-ness of things” or more accurately, “the sadness of things” is a literary device that most likely arose during the Heian Period around the same time that The Tale of Genji was written. It is a mixture of Shinto and Buddhist thought; a Shinto expression of beauty and awe (aware) regarding the instability and impermanence of life (mujo). The form of this idea that we discuss today was developed by Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801), a Japanese studies scholar who postulated that mono no aware was the essence of Japanese culture. Interestingly, this aesthetic is echoed in the writings of Virgil, a Roman scholar who uses it in The Aeneid and calls it lacrimae rerum, or “tears for things.” The express idea in this aesthetic is that we marvel at and mourn the fact that life is constantly changing, and that moments in time are fleeting.

Cross Game is, with all its baseball trappings, a book about loss and the way that people interact with that loss. It is no surprise then, that Adachi uses mono no aware actively throughout Cross Game. The loss of Wakaba is the key instigator for this – the main characters, Ko and Aoba, are still dealing with her loss, and reflecting on that makes them keenly aware of how quickly time passes. In relation to Wakaba’s drowning it seems, we see many scenes that use mono no aware around bodies of water – the local stream, the municipal pool– each reminding both that the time prior to now was fleeting and full, and that it is now gone, and that the same is true for the present. Ko and Aoba both struggle to come to terms with their loss, and this is part of what makes Cross Game such a wonderful read.

Adachi is not the only mangaka who uses mono no aware to good effect. Kozue Amano, writer of Aqua and Aria, uses it heavily in her work, as does Kaoru Mori, the author of Emma and recently released The Bride’s Stories. But reading Cross Game, I find myself in a state of melancholy. I marvel at each chapter and contemplate the very fleeting nature of life and our experiences in it. Cross Game embodies mono no aware and makes it personal for me; it is that personal interaction that makes Cross Game such a joy to read.

Manga Widget Investigates, MMF-Edition: Katsu!

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Hey folks! We are postponing this week’s Rescue Me! post in lieu of a MMF license request. Please check back in next week for more Rescue Me! content.

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As hopefully you know, this week is the Cross Game Manga Moveable Feast, a monthly celebration of manga that lasts an entire week. For May, we are celebrating Mitsuru Adachi’s critically-acclaimed Cross Game, a Shonen Sunday manga published from May of 2005 until February of 2010. Derik Badman is hosting the MMF at The Panelists website, so check back there every day this week for more Cross Game content. Cross Game is 17 volumes long, and is being published in an omnibus format in the USA – seven of the 17 volumes have been released so far, the first translated omnibus volume consisting of the first three volumes, while the second two omnibuses are two volumes long apiece.

Mitsuru Adachi is a sports writer, primarily. He has worked in other genres, such as history and fantasy, but his major area of expertise is sports manga, which is why we haven’t seen too much of him the USA until now. Being a sports manga writer is sort of a kiss of death in the publishing industry in the USA – manga like Prince of Tennis and Eyeshield 21 are not popular in the USA, even though they do very well in Japan. This difference comes from the  audience differences between the two nations – in Japan, manga is for everyone, and caters to people of wide tastes and hobbies. Shonen Sunday and Shonen Jump target kids in junior high and high school, and manga in Japan has a much higher penetration rate than here in the USA. And, to be blunt, many of the people who read manga in the USA are not sports-oriented, and don’t enjoy reading about sports.

Cross Game has shown us that even when an author focuses on a sport, they can still manage to tell other stories. Adachi is especially adept at de-emphasizing action and the very meat-and-potatoes scenes that make most other sports manga tick – instead, he focuses on character interaction and emotion, and lets the reader fill in the blanks when it comes to action. It’s a very slick presentation that features a sport, but does not emphasize it above all other things.

Despite his perceived limited scope, it is my opinion that Mitsuru Adachi is one of greatest mangaka in Japan, rivaling Rumiko Takahashi in skill and popularity. His work is allegoric yet heartfelt, and maintains a pace and scope of storytelling unmatched by other mangaka. It seems like a tragedy that more of his writing has not yet made it to the USA, and I think that this is a problem that Viz Media and its parent companies need to rectify, so I’m making a suggestion for Viz Media‘s next Adachi release – Adachi’s 2001-2005 series Katsu!.

Katsu! is a boxing manga about a young man, Katsuki Satoyama, who joins a boxing gym to meet a girl Katsuki Mitzutani that is in his freshman class. After training a bit and sparring, he finds out that he has a latent talent for the game – and comes to discover that he is the son of a pro-boxer. The series features Adachi’s signature every-man main character and the feisty female co-lead who gives him headaches, but this time framed around the sport of boxing.

I’m sure that other people interested in Adachi would like to see his other major baseball series, H2, released in the USA, but I think that Katsu! is a much more reasonable series – like Cross Game, the series does not break 20 volumes (Katsu! is 16 volumes, Cross Game is 17). Both are more modern than H2, which ran for 34 volumes from 1992 to 1999, which isn’t necessarily a problem in art style, since Adachi has been pretty consistent with his art for the past 25 years, but I doubt that many publishers would want to start printing a 34-volume baseball epic that started print almost 20 years ago. Katsu! is a fine compromise and showcases Adachi’s ability to write about more than just baseball.

Part of what we doing an MMF is celebrate not only the story being told, but also the writer telling it. I think it is high time we let Adachi loose on American soil and get more of his manga translated into English. The stories are riveting, wonderful examples of how excellent comics can be, and Cross Game is only a taste of what he can offer to English-reading fans. Katsu! is a fine next step, and it is my hope that Cross Game does well enough to make other Adachi series viable for print in the US.

Cross Game MMF: What is Koshien?

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Welcome back to the Cross Game Manga Moveable Feast. Yesterday there was quite a bit of great writing posted for the 1st inning of the MMF, so please check with Derik and his roundups of content over at the Panelists every day for more content. I have a lot of content for everyone this week, so I hope you will all continue to revisit Manga Widget for the entirety of the MMF – I have a lot to talk about!

Cross Game is a manga about baseball, and while many of the story’s struggles and problems are based around interpersonal communication, the drama and camaraderie found in Cross Game is based on a foundation of high school sports. In this series, we can see the final sports-related goal of our main character even in the very beginning of the series (page 357 of the Vol. 1 omnibus, to be precise); that Ko and Akaishi would reach the finals of the Kōshien tournament series and win as a battery of star pitcher and catcher.

For some people, especially the youth of Japan, that would be enough – but when writers base their stories in the real world, especially if that real world is a foreign state to its readers, it helps to have a bit of background on the cultural issues they are discussing. Kōshien is a name you could throw out to any Japanese person and they could probably give you a good idea of what it was, so Adachi doesn’t have to explain it to his intended Japanese audience in Cross Game. Unfortunately, manga readers in the USA are not necessarily as proficient in Japanese cultural happenings as we could be, so this requires a little explaining.

So, what is Kōshien? And how do players get to play at Kōshien?

Kōshien is, in short, the ultimate goal of a high school baseball player.

First and foremost, Kōshien is a stadium. Located near Kobe in Nishinomiya, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, Kōshien Stadium is the home field of the Hanshin Tigers, a professional baseball team in the Nippon Professional Baseball League (similar to our own MLB). The stadium was constructed in 1924 by the Hanshin Railway Company, and is considered the best stadium in Japan. The Hanshin Tigers are one of the oldest teams in the league, and their fans are some of the most dedicated in the entire league. Famous players from the Hanshin Tigers include Minoru Murayama and Randy Bass, current Oklahoma state senator (yes, it works both ways; the MLB recruits Japanese players an the NPBL recruits Americans).

And, just to give you an idea of how popular the high school Kōshien tournaments are – this professional team gets kicked out of its own stadium if there are conflicting games during the Kōshien tournaments.

Kōshien is simultaneously one of the most anticipated events in Japanese sports every year and the ticket for high school baseball players to enter the professional leagues. Starting at the single elimination challenges, the media buzz around the Kōshien tournaments is very big, and every game is covered on TV and radio. Review television programs, much like our SportsCenter, happen daily to recap the games of the day. Entire communities rally around competing teams, and fans outside of high school can often be rooting for two or more teams. Kōshien is the mecca of high school baseball, and playing on its “sacred dirt” is one of the biggest goals of any Japanese high school team.

Kōshien is also somewhat of a feeding ground for minor and major league baseball – players that excel in the Kōshien tournaments can be offered contracts into the major and minor league teams of Japan’s baseball association. There are two Koshien tournaments: Spring, an invitational that occurs in March, and Summer, the national high school baseball championship.

Spring Kōshien is an annual invitation only tournament whose participants are determined by the Japan High School Baseball Federation. There are 32 invitations, and the tournament itself is played in March.

Summer Kōshien is an annual nationwide high school baseball tournament that starts on August 8th of each year,  where regions of Japan host tournaments to decide which schools get sent to the final rounds of the tournament. This culminates in a two week final tournament staged with 49 teams from the 47 different prefectures of Japan (two apiece come from Hokkaido and Tokyo). The tournament is single elimination, with 15 teams getting byes for the first round while the other 34 teams play the first round. This is the tournament that Ko and his teammates will have to compete in and win in order to make Wakaba’s dream come true.

So Wakaba’s dream is not only to see her two favorite guys play ball together – it’s a lofty expectation and a demand of Ko’s ability to pitch. Can Ko and Akaishi manage to overcome and be Kōshien winners? We shall see.

Join me tomorrow as we talk about more Cross Game.

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You can find more information about Japanese Baseball at the following links:

Hanshin Koshien Stadium - Japanese
POV- Kokoyakyu, PBS

MMF: I am a Coward

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Barefoot Gen is a story that I have been looking at with trepidation since Sam announced his intention to do this month’s MMF. The story, much like Art Spiegelman’s Maus, is a biographical tale of the horrors of World War II, but it focuses on the plight of the common people in Japan, the people who were forced to starve to death as Japan slowly lost the Pacific front, and the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August of 1945.

The bombing of Hiroshima is, without question, one of the most heinous acts of senseless violence that the human race has committed upon itself. The weapons of mass destruction used in these attacks are the most powerful, most toxic weapons we can create on this earth.  The Hiroshima bombing is the moment when humanity prepared itself to destroy itself. These weapons continue to plague us, and threaten to destroy us.

What I wanted to do for this MMF was to take a look at the events in Barefoot Gen and correlate them to world history. It turns out that I was not able to make this goal a reality.

Reading Barefoot Gen deals a heavy emotional toll. Like David (Manga Curmudgeon) Welsh has said in his review of the first two volumes, the series is a lot to take. It catalogues the horrors and sufferings of the atomic bomb, and presents them in a fashion so vivid as to etch each account onto the mind of the reader.

What I have found, while reading, is a sense of distance in myself. The brutality of the characters in the opening volumes juxtaposed with the cartoony style of art is unhinging in nature. I study each panel, and at the end of the page, I tell myself, “No more.” But I need to flip the pages. The focus and the views of the book defeat me, inwardly. At every step, my strength flags. Eventually, the book bests me; I have to put it down.

This has happened for three nights. I sit down and use my reading time to get through another section of Barefoot Gen. At the end of my reading hour, I am more stressed, more tired, and more afraid to read another section.

I have had emotional responses to manga and other comics before, but none of them were ever like this. Even some of the darkest things I have read have not instilled in me this kind of despondence.I suppose that this persuasive, encompassing fear is part of the environment of Barefoot Gen. It is both the reason I dislike reading the books as well as the reason for its existence. And, although I went through the trouble of acquiring all the books through interlibrary loan, I will not finish them. I cannot.

I am a coward.

MMF: Why Start Now? Lessons from One Piece

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I’m sorry there isn’t a review here, or a critique of One Piece as an antiestablishmentary epic focused on philosophy-based moral battles. That will have to wait until the next time One Piece gets an MMF – which, considering the length of the series, might be possible. Instead I would like to look at what One Piece means to me as a person who needed to learn a lesson.

I’ll come right out and admit it so that we can all be horrified and then move on: I didn’t read any One Piece for this MMF. My knowledge of the series comes from the first two omnibus volumes released by Viz Media, so that gives me volumes 1-6 of the original manga of which to give my opinion on. And, to top it off, I received the first of those volumes in the mail as a part of a manga exchange program that had me sending the first volume of AIshiteruze Baby to Ed Sizemore of Manga Worth Reading. (Don’t worry, I’ve got the next two omnibuses to read at the house, but other things on the stack are more important now)

Before receiving a copy of One Piece in the mail, I was skeptical about the series.  I feel that skepticism is a natural reaction when considering whether or not to delve into a 60+ volume series, especially ones like One Piece where the end is probably greater than another 60+ books away. I was worried that the series would be too large of an investment of time. I swore that it was ridiculous for me to spend all that money on a series, especially if it meant that if I liked it, I’d be shelling out something close to $400 per series just to have the series in its entirety. I doubted I could like it, and told myself that these popular series were for people with undiscerning tastes.  For that same reason, I had not read any Naruto, InuYasha, Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, or any Bleach. I became so defensive in my pursuit to stay away from these giant shonen epics that I completely avoided any of these series. My fear of large series built concurrently as I wrapped myself up in other large series: Negima!, D.Grayman, and Monster all were slowly building up on my bookshelves.

When Daniella at All About Manga started the manga exchange letter back in March of this year (wow that seems like a long time ago), I never expected to be getting a volume of manga in the mail that I could keep. I sent out my volume with the full intention of getting something that I would need to  send back. What I got was the first One Piece omnibus, for keeps. At first, I was unappreciative. I swore that I would hate this comic, and of all things, I got it in the mail! To top it all off, part of the requirement for being in the exchange letter group was that you had to review the comic you received. *gulp* Guess looks like I had to just wade in and hope that it didn’t kill me.

What I found, after I had read the book, was that, well damn, I actually enjoyed it.

It was preposterous. How could this behemoth have sucked me in? I swore that I’d never read it. But I failed to discover the reason why so many people liked it – because it was good. Folks like David Welsh, Kate Dacey, Melinda Beasi, and Lori Henderson had all given the series a thumbs up. I generally like what they recommend; why would One Piece be any different?

I’ve learned two lessons from One Piece. The first is that it’s okay to try new things, even if you don’t think you will like them. Knowing is far better than just avoiding something. In a manga case-in-point, I have now tried Naruto and Bleach since picking up One Piece. They were okay, but I stopped reading after a few volumes. But I tried them. That’s a step forward.

The second lesson is that while there are times when the crowd is wrong, the crowd can also be right. If someone recommends a series to me, it’s for a good reason. Being receptive to other people, and listening to them, is something I need to work on, and One Piece was another step in that direction.

I love comics. Comics are fun, entertaining, and plenty of times, thoroughly enjoyable. But sometimes comics, like art, music, painting, or sculpture, can reach us at different levels and show us something about ourselves. One Piece is one of those comics.

MMF: The Color of Trilogy – or, The Little Oscar Bait That Couldn’t

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A few months ago, I realized that I had not published some of my manga contributions from my work with Eye of the Vortex here on my blog. This was part of the Color of Trilogy MMF back in June, and I hope that you enjoy looking at it again. This month everyone has time off from the MMF, but we’ll be back next month.
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the-color-of-earth.jpg

I try to look at comics like I look at other works of art – I compare them to what I know, to what I’ve seen and heard, and try to create a connection between them and my circumstances. Whenever we read, we internalize, and we either reject it or we make it our own. With the Manga/Manhwa Moveable Feast, comics bloggers are invited to take these internalizations, these human connections, and present them to the world. This month, we are looking at The Color Trilogy, a Korean comic series written by Kim Dong Hwa that was originally published in 2003, and localized by First Second in 2009. The trilogy is composed of three (duh) books; The Color of Earth, The Color of Water, and The Color of Heaven. It explores Korea in an older age, and the growing process of Ehwa and her widowed mother, their sexuality, and their relationships as daughter, mother, friends, lovers, and women.

When I read the the Color of Trilogy, I am reminded immediately of the Oscars, and more specifically, the movies that that win Oscars because the Academy loves the trope of cinema these films belong to. Some cinegeeks call them “Oscarbait” and the reason is clear – they’re films that try their damnedest to win an Oscar by appealing to things that the Academy cares about, and they usually air within the last two months before the Oscars are awarded. Films like these are art-house indie flicks, and they are generally not well known to the general public. Such is the Color of Trilogy.

Compare the trilogy to any number of films, and you’ll start to see a resemblance, even in the minor details. The Color of Trilogy uses beautiful binding, uneven page cutting, and large page size much in the same way that films like The Aviator use big names (Leonardo DiCaprio, Alan Alda) to make an impression. When you look at the book/movie, you automatically think – this “work” will be good. Much in the same way, when you examine the plot, you see much beloved Oscar-nom tropes; oppressed women making real choices, sexual awakening. Compare this to films like The Hours or Precious and you’ll see the resemblance, even if it’s not an exact fit.

The Color of Trilogy defines itself as a period piece about women growing together. It does not, however, describe itself as a work tightly bound to traditional stereotypes, nor does it describe itself as a work that wallows in sexual content. These are, unfortunately, the defining characteristics of the work. On one hand, we see Ehwa’s mother fight against wealthy land owners vying for her daughter’s hand in marriage, but moments later we see her tell her daughter that it is a woman’s place to wait for her man at home. What wonderful sentiments. As to the love and relationships portion of the book, I would go so far as to say that the Color of Trilogy does not really focus on love at all, or, that the best the series can hope for is that love is a minor consideration for the reader. Constantly throughout the book we are bombarded with sex covered up with flowers, peppers, and seeds. Every statement is a metaphor for some sexual act or bodily function, even if the dialogue is about flowers and gourds.

What shows throughout all of this seedy (pun intended) content is that this is definitely not a woman’s tale of growing up in opression – it’s a man’s tale, written by a man who looks back at this time with a sort of rose-colored fondness. This is the main failing of the book – that the story told is not authentic. The Color Trilogy does not connect to this reader because it is so hollow and assuming. I cannot believe in the characters or their hardship because everything is painted over with a varnish of butterflies and some sort of ancient, childhood awe.

The issue is, unlike the pieces of cinema I mentioned that can win the hearts of the Academy, the final product here falls flat, not unlike Sam Mendes’ period piece Revolutionary Road, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. The Color of Trilogy, while an interesting work of fiction, does not do what it sets out to do. Like Revolutionary Road, the Color of Trilogy seems to show off its greatest attributes in the very beginning of the series, but the headway it gains from this beginning loses steam and peters out completely by the end of the tale. The Color of Trilogy shows off its impressive use of metaphor and beautiful art, but these attributes are quickly overshadowed by overly-flowery, sexist dialog. Likewise, Revolutionary Road gives a stunning portrayal of the death of love and an evocative look at the lust for conformity, then quickly turns into a marred, unsympathetic, and depressing rut. The Color of Trilogy and the Revolutionary Road both have qualities that could have made them award winners, but any good they do is quickly overshadowed by their flaws.

The author, Kim Dong Hwa, says that his comics are his mother’s story brought to ink and page, but the real story, that story of the girl who loved and wanted love, who was insecure yet beautiful, who stood by her mother, learned from her, and grew up with her, the story I want to read, is lost in translation amongst the flowers and peppers.