Natsume Ono MMF Archive

Hello one and all! Next week, starting November 13th and lasting to the 20th, I will be hosting the Natsume Ono Manga Moveable Feast. Every month, the manga blogging community holds a virtual book club of sorts. The goals of the Moveable Manga Feast (MMF) are to promote and stimulate intellgient analysis and discussion of the month’s topic (in this case, any manga written by Natsume Ono), and to foster a community of manga readers.

I invite you all to participate, whether you are an MMF pro or have never written for an MMF before. You can find our Google Groups page if you have any other thoughts or want to see what the folks who have signed up for the MMF mailing list are talking about.

If you would like your MMF work featured here on my daily content aggregation portion of the MMF, please shoot me a line through mangawidget (at) gmail (dot) com, or contact the MMF email list through the Google Groups page.

I look forward to seeing all of your hard work and intelligent commentary starting next week!

Some Updated Thoughts On J-Manga

Posted on October 30, 2011 by Alex

We have had a little time to get used to the J Manga service, and now that I have had the chance to work with it, actually read some titles, I have a few thoughts about the future of the service and my current opinion of it. Every new medium needs some time to grow, and I think we have gotten a good introduction to the services that J Manga is currently providing (or, in some cases, not providing) for its customers.

First, is the pricing: at $4.99, volumes of digital manga are much easier to purchase and are much more reasonable than their previous $8.99 price point, but I have no idea if this price point will stay the same. Right now I am paying 4.99 for a volume on Viz Media’s manga app, which i can take on my iPhone, iPad, or any laptop computer. The manga available for purchase on the Viz site is, by far and large, better translated and better adapted. There are no graphical glitches or unreadable text, which puts it a step ahead in quality, price, and convenience, all things that I am very sensitive to when it comes to digital content. I will be interested to see if the content goes back up to $8.99 on Tuesday – I imagine that if the price does go back up, I will be discontinuing my subscription. I didn’t buy Yen Press manga for that price digitally, and I won’t pay $8.99 for digital manga.

Second is content availability: there are plenty of books listed on the J Manga site, but very few are actually available on J Manga, The majority of shonen titles in the J Manga store are just the digitally localized volumes from the Viz Media app, and the selections that are available are sparse. This needs to change immediately. If you are going to list a series as available for purchase, it needs to be available to purchase. I understand the idea that these pages are a stand in for when the manga finally comes down from the Japanese companies on high, but nothing is more frustrating or off-putting than to attempt to buy a volume of manga that isn’t actually on the site.

Third: previews – these need to be at least a chapter long. Other digital services are pretty consistently allowing consumers to try the first chapter of a given manga before having to purchase. This is a system that J Manga needs to enact as soon as possible. As it stands, they aren’t meeting industry standards, and it is not helping them sell content.

Finally is a pet peeve of my own, which I don’t think many share: the josei section, which I am extremely interested in as a reader, is mostly yaoi. Not that yaoi is a bad thing. I just think it needs its own section. It clearly caters to women as a genre, but the stories that appear in josei manga anthologies and those that appear in yaoi anthologies are extremely variable. I also find that many series appear in multiple headers. For example, some books labelled as seinen are also available in the josei section. This is misleading at best, and confuses me as a consumer.

I am certainly not giving up on J Manga all the way, despite my gripes. I am interested in the content they can provide as a matter of wanting to read content unavailable in the USA. I am also interested to see if J Manga can provide license rescues that other print publishers have been unable provide. Still, J Manga has a long way to go before I will consider them a successful publisher and not just a flash in the pan. Let’s hope they can bring things around in the next two months.

Review: Sand Chronicles, Vol. 1

Posted on October 25, 2011 by Alex

Sand Chronicles, Vol. 1
Publisher: VIZ Media Shojo Beat(January 1, 2008)
Language: English
Genre: Shojo/Romance
Rated: OT for Older Teen
US $8.99, CAN $10.99
ISBN-13: 978-1421514772

I have read some comics that have been melancholy, sometimes even downright depressing. They are generally stories that show how people act towards personal tragedy or how they deal with atrocities. Comic books like Maus and Years of the Elephant show us personal pain and tragedy, and do it in a very unique fashion. Sand Chronicles may not be the most unique setting (the first volume focuses on school age Japanese students, like so much other shojo), but it is remarkably poignant and oftentimes saddening piece of fiction.

The story focuses on Ann, who starts the manga as a 12-year old who has just moved back to her mother’s rural Japanese hometown after her father and mother divorce. Ann meets other neighborhood kids, Daigo, Fuji, and Shika, and things seem to be going well for her, until the unthinkable happens – Ann’s mother commits suicide.

I feel torn by this turn of events. In one hand, the possibility of her suicide is hinted at, and her breakdown is a slow, gradual process in the beginning chapters of the book that makes it believable. But it is unequivocally the most depressing moment I have yet to read in a shojo comic. I think that this is the general point of Sand Chronicles – it is a sad book, and it intrinsically deals with how people deal with sadness. Ann is dealt a pretty terrible hand in this first volume, and I think that she makes some very understandable mistakes, especially regarding her relationships, because of how her mother’s death overshadows her thoughts. It seems apparent that the relationships built in the first volume of Sand Chronicles cannot last, at least not in the forms in which they exist at the end of this volume. That would be making something very complicated far too simple.

The drama of these events, their effects on the human psyche, and the way that people deal with them, is a core feature of Sand Chronicles. Another is the way that Ashihara defrays her most serious situations with one-note jokes. And trust me, while I have dismissed other writers in the past for this same tendency, it works much better here, thanks to a well written adaptation, and for the sole fact that Sand Chronicles DESPERATELY needs these jokes. They are what keep the story from wallowing in the murk of despair and self-pity.

The art in Sand Chronicles is pretty standard fare, but it conveys all of the necessary emotion. I am reminded of We Were There and Monkey High!, but maybe with a little less fish-eye than We Were There and not quite the fluidity and bounce of Monkey High (all three series were/are published in Shogakukan’s Betsucomi, so this similarity may be on purpose).

Sand Chronicles is dramatic, and marked by sadness and worldliness that other shojo manga from Viz Media’s Shojo Beat line don’t manage to achieve. This is both a blessing and a curse; the series has the emotional gravitas to work out a mother’s death by suicide, but this gravitas also keeps the reading experience somber and heavy. Whether or not Sand Chronicles can stand out as a series past the first volume depends on its ability to develop a meaningful and reflective story that continues to acknowledge the drama and gravitas of the first volume. It will be interesting to see how volume two plays out.

Love Hina MMF: It Gets Better

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Alex

Love Hina is a series that has, and for a long time, been a part of my background as a member of the manga fandom. It was one of the first series I read compulsively, and during a family vacation, instead of waiting a week for books I had reserved on inter-library loan to finish the series (volumes 13 and 14) I instead stopped by a local bookstore in a town I knew nothing about to buy them and find out – what happens to Keitaro and Naru?

In some ways, Love Hina and I have had a sort of tumultuous relationship. At first, I absolutely loved the series, and devoured the series published by TokyoPop. This would have been 2005, I think, so the series had recently finished publication in the USA, so it was fairly easy to find the books. Later, I purchased the entire series on eBay, and read it again, and was torn. What was the reason I liked this series, I wondered. It didn’t seem to have the same charm as it did in the first read, and I grew impatient with the stalling and bickering between the two main characters.

And then, to my great pleasure, I have had the chance to review the Love Hina omnibus released by Kodansha Comics, which has really revitalized the series with a brand new translation and a book that reads crisply and has great art. Looking at the differences between the TokyoPop edition and the Kodansha edition, it is a night and day difference in image quality. Kodansha clearly trumps the old TokyoPop versions, and it’s a cleaner and much more vibrant book. The translations are much more focused and the lettering is very clean and certainly unlike TokyoPop‘s original print run. It is obvious that whoever put this project together loves this comic, and wanted to see it released in style.

While I was reading through this new version of Love Hina, I remembered in a flash what had enamored me to it so nearly 7 years ago; like another series I had recently started reading, Harry Potter, Love Hina tried to show me that if you try hard enough, if you want something bad enough, if you work and dedicate yourself to that thing, you can obtain it. For Harry, it was resolution and the ability to become a great wizard. For Keitaro, it was an education and a wife.

When I was reading Love Hina in the summer of 2005, I had recently just resolved a really sour relationship. It had changed how I thought about relationships and my future, and now, looking back on that time in my life, I can see that I was much more depressed than I think I let myself believe, and certainly shaken to the core. I did not think that I could go through a relationship again if that was the end result of being with other people.

But, I began reading Love Hina, and found myself re-evaluating my problems. I could project them onto Keitaro (that poor bastard, he has enough problems without mine to deal with), and escape into the lovely world of the Hinata Inn. Keitaro was my proxy, and I found myself rooting for him as if I were encouraging myself to do better as I moved into the next phase of my life.

I know that Love Hina doesn’t have this deep meaning or strong themes to criticize and analyze – but sometimes, that isn’t the point. The point is to empathize and care about the results of the story, to connect, to project, and to become, if only for a moment, a character of another world. I think that is why Love Hina is a series that deserved its own MMF.

I took plenty away from Love Hina, but the most important thing that Keitaro and the girls of Love Hina taught me is that things get better. We can’t always expect life to be sunshine and roses, and there will be strange circumstances and odd coincidences that ruin your day or make you feel like your back is up against the world. You may not be able to have a high quality relationship with the person or people you care about. And that is part of life. Keitaro taught me that we make our own way, one bumbling step at a time, and if we fall, the thing that matters most is that we stand back up.

Manga Widget Investigates: Toribako House

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Alex

With the release of Bunny Drop‘s 4^th volume last week, I’ve been thinking about Yumi Unita again, who I think has one of the most distinctive and beautiful styles in published josei today. Her use of line, pattern, and white space is different from most of the comics I’ve seen published, and I think that it is criminal that only one of her series has been published in the US (major props to Yen Press for picking up Bunny Drop, even if it is on a fairly slow release schedule). Also news – it looks like Unita is writing a Bunny Drop sequel that focuses on the story before the time jump that’s supposed to happen soon (I haven’t received my volume of Bunny Drop from my order yet, so I don’t know if the time jump happens in volume 4 or 5).

This week I’m looking at a two-volume Unita series called Toribako House (トリバコハウス), published in Shodensha’s Feel Young anthology in 2003. It focuses on an early-20s woman named Miki who is living with an older man. She has a real aversion to people being in her personal space, and comes across a guy who is brash, rude, and is all up in her grill. It is these sorts of situations that Unita derives her comedy and great story-telling situations, so I assume that this would be a great read. Apparently there are some darker tones to this series – threatened abuse from Miki’s boyfriend, perhaps – that apparently give it a darker feel at some points, but I suppose that’s what reading the book is for. The metaphor is a bird in a gilded cage, as evidenced by the cover art for the first volume (check out those shirt patterns!)

Unita has a style that I find expressive unique, and delicate, and unlike other shojo or josei, focuses more on the characters themselves than the places in which they interact. Her expressive facial features and varied character composition are highlights to what I consider a very excellent style of illustration, if a bit unconventional.

Toribako is a two-volume series, so not a big investment in funds – Yen Press could have it in a one-and-done omnibus (which I think I would prefer over two volumes, although I would certainly pay for two), and I wouldn’t mind reading it in digital if I had to – it looks like it lines up well with content from Digital Manga or NetComics, although I assume JManga could get the digital rights as well.

Toribako House looks like a cute series that could possibly stand on the line between shojo and josei, and could easily make it to the US because of its small size. Who do I have to beg to get a copy of this?

Reader’s Choice: eManga, NetComics, JManga – Help!

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Alex

I realize lately that I have been talking a lot about digital comics, but don’t really have a great number of non-Viz experiences with them. I have occasionally used eManga as a reviewer, but have never used the NetComics platform, and only have one volume of manga on JManga (Anesthesiologist Hana Vol. 1, for anyone who is interested).

With all this in mind, I’m coing to my audience today with a big question: What digital series should I read next?

So, here’s the plan: I am going to list a book from each of the digital services, and leave it for you to vote in the comments. The votes will be tallied, and I’ll buy/rent the winner, and give you a review of it. Each of the pictures below links to the volume’s website, so you can read about the books if you don’t know much about them. I’ve tried to pick a wide selection here (including a yaoi title) so hopefully there is a good selection here.

Here are the picks:

eManga:

NetComics:

JManga:

Dear and kind reader, I leave the decision up to you. Please be gentle.

Review: Otomen, Vol. 7

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Alex

Otomen, Vol. 7
Written and Illustrated by Aya Kanno
Publisher: VIZ Media Shojo Beat
Genre: Shojo/Romance/High School
Rated: Young Adult
200 pages, $9.99 US
ISBN-13: 978-1421532363

My first review of Otomen was also sort of a look at the digital manga content on Viz’s manga app for iPad. I am talking quite a bit about digital comics these past few weeks, but I wanted to go back to Otomen on the iPad and reexamine the series. I have been really enjoying the volumes between 1 and 7, but I think now is an appropriate time to follow up.

Otomen, for those who don’t follow this series, is a comic about a boy named Asuka who appears to be the manliest of men, but secretly loves shojo manga, cooking, sewing, and other “girly” activities. He is paired up with a “manly” girl named Ryo, and manga author named Juta who uses the relationship between the two as the basis of his best-selling manga series “Love Chick.” This pairing is sometimes interrupted by other people, such as a girly-looking boy who admires Asuka’s manliness, a flower-obsessed hunk, and one of Asuka’s rival martial artists who loves makeup. This diverse group all has one thing in common – they appear to be something, but deep inside they are the opposite of what everyone thinks they represent.

I think that there is a lot of truth in this seemingly little message, but I feel like that now that we have reached the 7th volume of the series, the same old plot constructs are getting a little stale. It seems as though the same plot point is used in every major arc in the series. Otomen uses this character technique again and again, and by the time we meet the hard rocker playboy in book 6, it’s almost guaranteed that he is going to be a giant softie. Not that this is bad – it’s actually quite fun to read. Still, I am looking for the series to develop a bit and it has instead stayed mostly the same.

There are some interesting things that happen in this volume despite its overuse of the “don’t judge a book by its cover” thing Otomen loves. We see Juta get into drag once again in order to do an autograph session for “Love Chick,” and meets his first high school sweetheart (the girl who got him into shojo manga in the first place) and a ghost story that Asuka solves despite his reluctance and fear of the supernatural. There is a huge cliffhanger based out of the last chapter that I won’t spoil here, but threatens to change the entire dynamic of Otomen. I doubt that this event will actually happen, because if it does, Otomen would have to be about something more serious. Otomen is mostly just a one-note comedy, so I would imagine whatever happens resolves in a status quo sort of way, but I’ve been wrong about this sort of thing before.

The art in volume 7 is not the best we’ve seen in the series, but it does plenty of good for the stories in this volume. Kanno definitely has the chops for the emotions, the rough action, and the cutesy bento, arts and crafts, and anything else that Asuka gets his hands on. Kanno is especially good at inserting little touches into her art – a good example is when Juta is busy writing manga – he likes to clip back his hair to keep it out of his eyes. This adds to what you know and understand about the character with very minimal talk, and some artists would miss opportunities like this.

While I’ve griped about Otomen in this review a bit, I truly love it to death. The formula, despite being present in essentially every volume, is a good one – Otomen has proven it can be a mine of comedy silver and gold. If you haven’t gotten your hands (or your mouse) on a copy of Otomen yet, do yourself a favor and get it. You won’t regret it. Just make sure you check your normal “this has to happen in shojo manga” expectations at the door.

Gen Manga: Raw and Unfettered

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Alex

It seems I have been talking about digital comics quite a bit recently. My evaluations of JManga and a recent Manga Out Loud podcast, as well as my experiences with Viz Media’s manga app for iPad and iPhone, have been changing the way that I read comic books and the way I understand the content. If you had asked me whether or not I would be reading manga digitally three years ago, the only “digital” you could really mean was scanlations, so I would have answered with a resounding no. But now, there are multiple platforms to read manga on and purchase manga in, some more successful than others. I find myself looking at these new content delivery systems as a sort of wave of the future. There are series which I now only follow in digital, and digital comics are more and more a part of my reading experience. Gen Manga is also changing that reading experience.

Gen Manga is a relatively new monthly subscription service from Gen Manga Entertainment which offers chapters of manga of various styles and content structures. This manga is essentially doujinshi written and published first by Gen Manga, so the translation, cleaning, and lettering for the English language are done before the comic is even published for Japanese readers. So there is this sort of mix between doujinshi and what are essentially comics written by Japanese amateur authors for American readers. I will not venture to guess what kind of business model makes this possible, but Gen Manga has been releasing an issue every month and has 3 of the 5 issues available for purchase in print form.

One of the selling points of Gen Manga is the way that content is accessed and delivered. The website is slick and very functional, with a minimal amount of clicks to reach content. All comics are available at all times to read and download, so unlike Yen Plus, you can get the entire backstory and read every single volume currently released. Best of all, comics can be downloaded in PDF format and taken on the go, which is great for people who want mobile content.

Each volume clocks in at approximately 140 pages of content, which, for a monthly subscription of $2.99, is actually quite a steal (you pay how much for Ultimate Spiderman?). There are generally four to five series in each volume; consistently the base content of four different series, and in volumes 4 and 5, a one-shot in addition to the base content.

The four base series are:

Wolf: A boxing manga about a young upstart who wants to beat his father, a retired pro-boxer, in the ring, after he runs away from his family. At first, I thought Wolf was some of the worst written of the crew, but it is developing like a sports manga should, and there have been some good regrouping scenes in the past two volumes that have propped up the series quite a bit. It moves quickly, so don’t expect Adachi’s snail pace – still, it would be nice to see a little character development.

VS Aliens: Suspense/Romance/Sci-Fi story about aliens, crushes, etc. The art style is reminiscent of K-On! and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and plays to the audiences that like those books. VS Aliens is my least favorite of the series from Gen Manga, mostly because the story is just a backdrop for cute talking heads to, well, be cute and talk. The premise is interesting, but goes wacko in Volume 4-5, and not in a good way – just that same tropiness I expect from manga like this.

Kamen: Pretty standard seinen action manga with roots in fantasy and feudal Japanese history. There’s a talking mask, a super-powerful guy, and some evil guys. You can pretty much guess what happens. It’s mindless fun, but it is probably the best illustrated of the four base titles, and has enough action and suspense that you can get over some of the stodgy dialogue.

Souls: A horror/suspense story that feels like Time and Again, but with a much different focus and art style. I read the first two volumes of this one, and I don’t follow it closely – Souls could be fabulous, but I very much disliked Time and Again and my reaction to this is very similar.

The content itself is a little rough around the edges. The editorial direction is assuredly much different here than in other more established publishers, so it feels as though some of the rawness is inherent in the system, which can be quite interesting, if done correctly. Still, having doujinshi writers as your main talent, which can be quite a boon, can also be a stumbling block if the writers and illustrators are new to the art of storytelling and composition in regards to manga. You can see some of this in Gen Manga, because some of the stories move forward in a very awkward way, and it is clear that some of the authors are still learning the trade of making manga. Still, the content is starting to grow on me. Gen is very raw, and for that, it can get by with some of its flaws (for now) because it’s evidently a work in progress. The one-shot series Sorako and Alive are some of my favorite pieces published yet, so I am looking forward to more of the same type of content and maybe even continuations of those stories.

Gen Manga is certainly a step away from the norm. It functions as a gateway between the US and Japan that delivers new content and puts the reader in a very fun and unique situation. I look forward to seeing Gen Manga mature and grow as a content delivery service, and I feel that it represents a new way to view foreign content. Regardless of its longevity, it is an interesting experiment and certainly worth the effort.

Review copies were provided by the publisher. The first three volumes of Gen are available for free at the Gen Manga website.

Rescue Me! The Stellar Six of Gingacho

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Alex

I know what you all are thinking – Alex hasn’t been updating his blog lately, so he probably forgot about some of his ongoing series of articles. Well, dear reader, I am happy to prove you wrong this week with an update to my Rescue Me! series, where, for the new reader, I talk about some of my favorite and incomplete manga series published by now defunct publishers. I try to explain the reasons I liked the series and the reasons why I think the series should be rescued (and sometimes even suggest what publisher might benefit from licensing the series). This week, I am taking a look at a really low-key shojo slice-of-life series, The Stellar Six of Gingacho (Kirameki Gingachou Shoutengai, キラメキ☆銀河町商店街).

For anyone interested in looking at older entries in the series, here are the links!

1. Stolen Hearts
2. The Secret Notes of Lady Kanoko
3. The Stellar Six of Gingacho
4. Skyblue Shore
5. Happy Café
6. Argentis Apothecarium
7. The Lapis Lazuli Crown
8. Suppli

The Stellar Six of Gingacho is a shojo manga series from author Yuuki Fujimoto, and it ran for a total of 10 volumes published in Hakusensha‘s Hana to Yume. It was part of Tokyopop‘s last wave of releases and licenses before Stu closed up shop and took the business out behind the woodshed. They managed to print two of the ten volumes en masse, and the third volume is somewhat of a manga rarity – copies do exist, but finding them is somewhat of a difficult proposition.

The series follows the lives of six friends whose parents all work at the Gingacho Street Market; each of the characters is a unique piece of a giant friendship puzzle. All together, they conquer their fears and the problems of the Street Market in their own way. As the group moves into middle school, they start to drift apart, but Mike (pronounced “Mee-kay”) is bound and determined to keep the group together. Mike is the lead of the series, and she is a food obsessed, emotional girl who is a lot of fun to read. Each of the other five street market kids is also really fun to read, and each has their own little quirks.

Other shojo “group of friends” manga certainly exists, but I have yet to come across a series that does it as well as The Stellar Six of Gingacho. It is a fun romp that still manages to capture a healthy dose of mono no aware and not be too dramatic about it. The Stellar Six of Gingacho is a great “growing up” story, and it’s a definite comfort manga – nothing too deep, but it certainly evokes a feeling of peace and contentment.

I would certainly love to continue reading this series, and I am certain a publisher like Yen Press would benefit from having this series in its stable. If no one bites to do a physical print run, I could certainly see JManga bring this to their digital storefront. It is a fun series that needs to find a new home.

Manga Widget

A blog all about manga for manga readers

Natsume Ono MMF Archive

Contributions from:

Groups:

Individual Writers:

Round Ups:

Recommended Reading:

Natsume Ono Manga Moveable Feast: A Call for Content