15 January 2014 9 Comments

S.S. Astro: Asashio Sogo Teachers’ Room, Volume 1

S.S. Astro, Volume 1Creator: Negi Banno
U.S. publisher: Yen Press
ISBN: 9780759528987
Released: August 2008
Original release: 2007

S.S. Astro: Asashio Sogo Teachers’ Room is a yonkoma, or four-panel, manga created by Negi Banno. The first volume of S.S. Astro was originally published in Japan in 2007. Yen Press released the English translation of the manga in 2008, around the same time that it was licensing several other yonkoma manga series. As for S.S. Astro, only one volume was ever released. As far as I can tell, the series has been on hiatus since 2007 in Japan. Although I believe that Banno has created more S.S. Astro strips than those found in the first volume, there have not been enough to collect into a second volume. I have no idea if Banno plans to ever return to the S.S. Astro manga, but because so many years have passed it seems increasingly unlikely. S.S. Astro was actually one of the first yonkoma manga that I ever read. I originally came across it a few years back while searching for manga in English with yuri elements, which used to be a little more difficult to find than it is now.

Seven years after she graduated, Izumi Maki is back at her old high school. Except this time she’s one of the ones responsible for molding the young minds of Tokyo’s Asashio Integrated Public High School. It’s her first year as a teacher. Maki’s now in charge of both health and physical education classes, not to mention a home room with nearly forty students. (Now she just somehow needs to find a way to remember all of their names.) Maki’s not the only fresh blood at Asashio. Her good friend Yuko Nagumo, the new Japanese instructor, is also a first year teacher. The nursing teacher Setsuna Arai has a couple of years of experience on them and Maki’s backup teacher Kaname Karasuma, the instructor for the school’s English course, has even more. She also has a huge crush on Maki, not that Maki has noticed. Throw in all of the other teachers and their quirks, as well as Maki’s older brother, and high school is just as entertaining and complicated as it was the first time around.

Yonkoma manga tend to be fairly hit-or-miss for me, but in the case of S.S. Astro it’s mostly a hit. As with many four-panel manga, whether or not someone actually likes the series will depend on whether or not the reader likes the characters as they are. Although there are plenty of running jokes in S.S. Astro, the series tends to be episodic without much of an overarching plot and very little in the way of character development. Fortunately, I do like the characters. Quite a bit, actually. Maki’s a scatterbrain but earnest. Nagumo can put away an impressive amount of food and is closet fujoshi. Arai has a delightfully sadistic streak. Of the four main characters, Karasuma is the most responsible one, at least when she isn’t completely lovestruck. About halfway through the first volume of S.S. Astro the rest of the Asashio staff are more thoroughly introduced. Prior to that they were largely relegated to the background. I like the other teachers as well and wish more time could have been spent getting to know them better, too.

Quite a few manga licensed in English take place in a school setting. What helps to set S.S. Astro apart is that it focuses on the teachers rather than on the students. I find this to be a refreshing change of pace. One of the reasons that I’m particularly fond of S.S. Astro is that the manga focuses on the adults and their lives and relationships. Granted, the main cast are all relatively young and still in their twenties, but there are some older characters as well. Maki and the others can be immature at times, but in the end they are adults with adult responsibilities. Which is not to say there isn’t room for fun in S.S. Astro; being an adult has its perks, too. Video games, drinking parties, and a little bit of workplace romance (straight and otherwise) all have their place in the series. The artwork tends to be rather cute, too. In general, I find S.S. Astro to be fun and funny. S.S. Astro may not be a manga that I go out of my way to recommend to people, but it is one that I quite enjoy. I only wish that there was more of it.

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13 January 2014

My Week in Manga: January 6-January 12, 2014

My News and Reviews

Two reviews were posted at Experiments in Manga last week! The honor of the first in-depth manga review of the month (and of the year, for that matter) goes to Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki’s Oishinbo, A la Carte: Fish, Sushi & Sashimi. I love food, I love manga, and so I love Oishinbo, too. I happen to really like fish and sushi as well, so I particularly enjoyed this volume. I also posted a review for Edogawa Rampo’s mystery adventure The Fiend with Twenty Faces which is the first novel in his series The Boy Detectives. I’ve read some of his stories and essays written for adults, but this was his first work for younger audiences that I read. It’s a lot of fun.

As for news and other interesting things found online: The English translation of Toh EnJoe’s Self-Reference Engine (one of my most notable release of 2013) has been nominated for a Philip K. Dick Award. The University of Michigan will be hosting an international conference on Natsume Sōseki from April 18 through April 20. (If you happen to be in Michigan around then, it’s be free and open to the public!) After months of no news, it looks like those who supported the Kickstarter for Osamu Tezuka’s The Crater may actually receive their rewards. And finally, Joe McCulloch takes a look at some of Suehiro Maruo’s most recent work over at The Comics Journal. Now if only more of his manga would be licensed in English!

Quick Takes

Basara, Volume 6Basara, Volumes 6-10 by Yumi Tamura. I love this series so much! It really is a shame that Basara is going out-of-print in English, but at least Viz has begun to release it digitally as well. The story is epic and engaging and the characters are complex and multi-layered. These particular volumes of Basara include the Okinawa story arc, which I especially enjoyed. It’s very interesting to see how Tamura is using events and politics from throughout Japan’s history to inform her post-apocalyptic world and culture. There are definite echos from the Warring States period, World War Two, and so on. Just as it was historically, in Basara Okinawa is a separate country from Japan that maintains its own traditions, relies heavily on trade, is largely at the mercy of foreign military influence, and is beset by natural disasters. Also, it’s the homeland of karate, which plays a part in some of the battles. (As a karateka myself, I couldn’t help but appreciate this.) I’m really looking forward to reading more of the series.

Entangled CircumstancesEntangled Circumstances by Kikuko Kikuya. I ended up enjoying Entangled Circumstances much more than I thought I would. I found the first chapter or so to actually be a little boring, but by the end of the volume Entangled Circumstances had managed to turn itself into a rather funny, and even a little sweet, boys’ love story. Actually, bonus chapters after the main story were the funniest and probably the favorite part of the manga for me because of that. Shibui and Himeko were once college classmates, but now they work at the same advertising agency. Himeko’s been in love with Shibui for a while now, but after a past awkward love confession, things have been strained between the two men. Often they seem to act like high schoolers rather than full-grown adults, so it’s difficult to take Entangled Circumstances completely seriously. It’s a lighthearted and fluffy sort of manga. The manga is nothing extraordinary, and I don’t know that I will necessarily need to read it again, but it was quite enjoyable.

ZooZoo by Andy MacDonald. I haven’t read the original novel Zoo, a science fiction thriller written by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge, but MacDonald’s graphic novel adaptation somehow came into my possession, so I figured I’d give it a try. Since I haven’t read the original, I can’t definitively say how the graphic novel works as an adaptation, but I get the impression that MacDonald has been very faithful to the source material. The Zoo graphic novel can be somewhat text-heavy and some of the plot lines are a little compressed (though not exactly rushed) but I was never confused as to what was going on. Even so, I may have rolled my eyes a bit at the plot’s development and some of the rather predictable “twists.” Unfortunately, Zoo just doesn’t have that original or great of a story to begin with and I had a difficult time suspending my incredulity. The ending in particular was rather disappointing. Zoo starts out as a fairly action-packed, and bloody, doomsday scenario, but its heavy-handed moral can be a bit much.

MeganebuMeganebu! directed by Soubi Yamamoto. I already knew that I enjoyed Yamamoto’s visual style from her previous work and so I wasn’t disappointed by Meganebu!‘s brightly colored and slightly eccentric animation. Even so, it took a few episodes for the series to really grow on me. There’s not really much of a plot to Meganebu!. There are the members of the Glasses Club and their continuing efforts to create a pair of glasses with X-Ray vision (with some very unexpected and explosive results) but mostly the series just follows their daily lives and the trouble they all get into. Once I got over the fact that Meganebu! is fairly pointless, I could sit back and enjoy its peculiar sense of fun. As a glasses wearer myself, I could particularly appreciate all of the humor surrounding eyeglasses. To the members of the Glasses Club, glasses are more than just a fashion accessory. Neither are they simply used to correct vision. Glasses have the power to change the world. Meganebu! is an absurd anime, but I’ll admit to enjoying it.

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10 January 2014 2 Comments

The Fiend with Twenty Faces

The Fiend with Twenty FacesAuthor: Edogawa Rampo
Illustrator: Tim Smith 3
Translator: Dan Luffey
U.S. publisher: Kurodahan Press
ISBN: 9784902075250
Released: March 2012
Original release: 1936

Edogawa Rampo, the pen name of Tarō Hirai, was one of Japan’s preeminent authors of the erotic grotesque nonsense movement. However, he was also well-known for his detective and mystery stories. Later in his career he even wrote a series for children called The Boy Detectives. The first and possibly best-known novel in this series was The Fiend with Twenty Faces, originally serialized in the boys adventure magazine Shōnen Club in 1936. The English translation of The Fiend with Twenty Faces by Dan Luffey was published by Kurodahan Press in 2012 with illustrations by Tim Smith 3. Although Rampo was a prolific and extremely influential author in Japan, relatively few of his works have been translated into English. So far, The Fiend with Twenty Faces is the only example of Rampo’s stories for a young audience to have been made available. As a fan of Rampo’s ero guro works, I was curious to read something a little different of his.

Terrorizing the wealthy of 1930s Tokyo is a criminal known only as Twenty Faces, a master of disguise who can change his appearance with such ease that no one has been able to uncover his true identity. Using his skills of disguise and his tremendous intellect, he steals whatever suits his fancy—priceless jewels, family heirlooms, works of art—nothing is safe. He has even been known to resort to kidnapping. To make things even worse, Twenty Faces announces exactly what it is he intends to steal and when. But even armed with this knowledge, no one has yet been able to put an end to his crime spree. The only person who might be a match for Twenty Faces is the famous detective Akechi Kogorō. Unfortunately, he is currently overseas working on an important case. However, he has left behind Kobayashi Yoshio, his young assistant and protégé, to attend to his affairs. Kobayashi may be extremely clever, but Twenty Faces is cleverer still. With Akechi away, there is little hope that the criminal can be stopped, but maybe Kobayashi can at least make things a little more difficult for him.

Rampo very clearly draws from other great mystery writers in his creation of The Boy Detective series in general and in The Fiend with Twenty Faces specifically. Influences from Maurice Leblanc’s series featuring the infamous gentleman thief Arsène Lupin and Arthur Conan Doyle’s mysteries with the master detective Sherlock Holmes can particularly be seen in The Fiend with Twenty Faces. Twenty Faces shares similarities with Lupin and Akechi exhibits many of the same skills that Holmes possesses. Having previously read many of Rampo’s short stories (at least those available in English), I was already familiar with Akechi from his mysteries aimed at adult audiences. I’m actually rather fond of Akechi and so was quite pleased when he made his appearance in The Fiend with Twenty Faces, even if it did take nearly half of the novel before he finally returns from overseas.

The Fiend with Twenty Faces was highly entertaining and a tremendous amount of fun. Despite being a mystery, the novel is a fairly straightforward adventure story written for a younger audience. As someone who is fairly well-read, I was able to anticipate most of the twists and turns in the plot of The Fiend with Twenty Faces. If something seemed to be too convenient or unlikely to be a coincidence, it’s most likely because it was. However, I still enjoyed the story a great deal. The characters are also fairly engaging. Twenty Faces himself is a bit of an arrogant bastard and his rivalry with Akechi is marvelous to watch unfold. I could easily imagine reading the novel aloud; Rampo’s writing addresses the reader directly and would be well-suited for performance with very little modification needed. I’m not sure if any more of the novels in The Boy Detectives series will be translated, but I’m glad to have had the opportunity to discover firsthand one of the other reasons why Rampo’s influence has been so enduring in Japan.

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8 January 2014 1 Comment

Oishinbo, A la Carte: Fish, Sushi & Sashimi

Oishinbo, A la Carte: Fish, Sushi & SashimiAuthor: Tetsu Kariya
Illustrator: Akira Hanasaki
U.S. publisher: Viz Media
ISBN: 9781421521428
Released: July 2009
Original release: 2005
Awards: Shogakukan Manga Award

With over one hundred volumes, it is very unlikely that the award-winning food manga Oishinbo will ever be licensed in its entirety in English, especially considering that the series is still ongoing at this point. However, seven volumes of Oishinbo, A la Carte have been released by Viz Media under its Signature imprint. These volumes are thematic collections which select stories from throughout the series proper. Fish, Sushi & Sashimi was the fourth Oishinbo, A la Carte collection to be published by Viz and was released in 2009. However, in Japan Fish, Sushi & Sashimi was actually the fifth volume in the series and was published in 2005. As a lover of both food and manga, it probably shouldn’t be too surprising that I enjoy Oishinbo immensely. And I’m not the only one. The series, written by Tetsu Kariya and illustrated by Akira Hanasaki, has been in serialization since 1983 and in 1987 the creators received a Shogakukan Manga Award for their work.

Because Oishinbo, A la Carte is a selection of stories from Oishinbo, the overarching story of the original series is obscured. Instead of the ongoing plot, the focus of Oishinbo, A la Carte is very much on the food itself. Fish, Sushi & Sashimi collects eight different stories centered around fish. Sushi rolls are probably one of the first things that come to many people’s minds when considering Japanese fish dishes, but not a single one will be found in Fish, Sushi & Sashimi. Generally, the fare tends to be simpler and fish the primary ingredient. The fish specifically featured in Fish, Sushi & Sashimi include white trevally, chub mackerel, sweetfish, tiger blowfish, freshwater goby, flounder, salmon, and shinko, many of which are considered to be some of the best and most desirable or delectable fish in Japan. There is also a wide variety of preparations shown, everything from raw sashimi to fried tempura.

When dealing with fish as a source of food, freshness is key. This is true for most seafood, too, and is something that most people probably know. However, Fish, Sushi & Sashimi shows that there is much more involved in the freshness of fish than just how long it has been since it has been caught. Fish are very sensitive to changes in the environment in which they live. Simply put, quality fish come from quality waters. The healthier and less polluted those waters, the better the fish. Additionally, the same fish can taste significantly different due to seasonal changes, where it is caught (and how far it has traveled afterwards), or when in its life-cycle it is eaten. As is often the case in the Oishinbo, A la Carte stories that I have so far read, Fish, Sushi & Sashimi emphasizes the importance of locally sourced and sustainable foods, which is particularly true of fish.

One of the highlights of Oishinbo, A la Carte is Hanasaki’s artwork. The people tend to be stylized but the food is always realistically drawn. The catching and cleaning of the fish, the steps in the various dishes’ preparations, and the skilled knife-work employed are all important to Fish, Sushi & Sashimi. Because Fish, Sushi & Sashimi focuses on aquatic life both in and out of its natural environments, Hanasaki also has the opportunity to beautifully illustrate Japan’s oceans, rivers, and other waterways. Another thing that particularly struck me about this volume of Oishinbo, A la Carte was how many young people were included in the stories. Family drama has always been a part of Oishinbo with the intense father-son rivalry between Kaibara Yūzan and Yamaoka Shirō. It’s extremely entertaining to watch them battle it out over and with food, but it’s also nice to see some more wholesome family relationships in the series, too.

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6 January 2014

My Week in Manga: December 30, 2013-January 5, 2014

My News and Reviews

Last week I announced the 4-Koma for You Winner. In case you’re looking for something to read, the post includes a list of yonkoma manga that have been released in print in English, too. I also posted December’s Bookshelf Overload last week, for those of you interested in following my adventures in buying way too much manga and other media. Finally, over the weekend I posted a review of Delavier’s Mixed Martial Arts Anatomy. This is one of the most tangentially related reviews I’ve written at Experiments in Manga. Why is it here? Simply because I’m a karateka and found it to be a useful book. It’s a great strength training resource for any martial artist. Plus, it has lots of illustrations.

I’ve more or less been on vacation for the last two weeks, so I haven’t been online much except to make sure that things were updated here at Experiments in Manga. Even so, there were two things in particular that caught my eye recently. First and foremost, the Massive anthology of gay manga originally scheduled to be published by PictureBox has been picked up by Fantagraphics! Right now, it looks like we should see the release sometime in October 2014. The other news that I was excited to hear about is that we’ll be getting a second season of the Mushishi anime nearly ten years after the first season aired. I loved Yuki Urushibara’s original manga (which is now unfortunately out-of-print in English) and I loved the first anime series so I’m looking forward to the second season a great deal.

Quick Takes

A Bride's Story, Volume 5A Bride’s Story, Volume 5 by Kaoru Mori. The art in A Bride’s Story always blows me away. Mori’s illustrations are so beautiful and detailed that it’s no surprise that there’s such a long wait in between each volume’s release. Most of the fifth volume of the series is devoted to the wedding between the twins and their husbands-to-be. The best word that I can think of to describe this volume is “joyous.” Mori shows the preparations that both families make for the happy occasion—a celebration that lasts an entire week. There’s dance and song, levity, plenty of food, and numerous guests. It’s extremely satisfying to see the entire community’s participation in the event. The manga as a whole is a gorgeous work, but the wedding itself is quite lovely. I enjoyed seeing the twins’ story develop. Their outgoing personalities might be annoying for some readers, but in the end I found the two of them to be quite endearing. Now begins the long wait for the next volume of A Bride’s Story.

Castle Mango, Volume 1Castle Mango, Volume 1 written by Narise Konohara and illustrated by Muku Ogura. Despite what the cover and title page of Digital Manga’s release indicate, Konohara wrote Castle Mango while Ogura was responsible for the artwork. Konohara is the same author who wrote About Love, which I quite enjoyed, so I was interested in reading Castle Mango. Both manga are slightly atypical boys’ love stories. Instead of being straightforward man-meets-man romances, the stories are more layered. There is an emphasis on well-developed characters and actual plot; it’s not just about getting guys into bed with each other. The leads of Castle Mango are rather unusual as well. Yorozu’s family owns and runs a love hotel while Tagame is a well-known porn director. Yorozu more or less blackmail’s Tagame into a relationship in order to keep him away from his brother, but he doesn’t even really like the older man. Their story is concluded in the second and final volume of Castle Mango. I’m very curious to see how things unfold, so I’ll definitely be picking it up.

A Centaur's Life, Volume 1A Centaur’s Life, Volume 1 by Kei Murayama. One of several “monster girl” manga recently released by Seven Seas, A Centaur’s Life is far less ecchi than the other titles. Plus, this one includes plenty of monster boys in addition to the monster girls, which I greatly appreciate. The manga is definitely centered around the series’ young women, though. The titular centaur is Kimihara Himeno; the manga is mostly a slice-of-life story which follows her and her other high school friends. (As a side note, I adore Himeno’s wild mass of hair on the cover.) Some people might find reading the first chapter a little uncomfortable as the story revolves around the girls’ privates, but following chapters are much less questionable. Overall, the manga was rather charming. And I am interested in learning more about the world that Murayama has imagined; it seems that some significant thought has been put into it. Although not the focus of the series, politics, law, cultural differences, disputes between races, and history have all been taken into consideration.

Ranma 1/2, Volume 15Ranma 1/2, Volumes 15-20 by Rumiko Takahashi. It’s been so long since I’ve read any of Ranma 1/2 that I had forgotten how much I love the series. After the main characters and basic premise are established, the manga becomes fairly episodic so it’s easy to pick up part way through the series and still know what’s going on. I find Ranma 1/2 to be hilarious and particularly enjoy the absurd martial arts that Takahashi comes up with. These particular volumes feature martial arts based around eating food extremely quickly and cheerleading, just to give two examples. I like the characters and I like the story, as silly and superfluous as it can be. Akane and Ranma seem to be no closer to getting married than they were at the beginning of the series. They argue quite a bit, but there are moments of genuine affection, too. Granted, those moments are frequently interrupted and don’t tend to last very long. The series’ off-the-wall comedy won’t be to everyone’s taste, but for me Ranma 1/2 is highly entertaining and a lot of fun.

Otome Yokai ZakuroOtome Yokai Zakuro directed by Chiaki Kon. The Otome Yokai Zakuro anime is based on an ongoing manga series by Lily Hoshino (which hasn’t been licensed in English.) The story takes place in an alternate version of Japan’s Meiji Era in which yokai and humans coexist. The office of Spirit Affairs is created in order to improve relations between the two groups. It’s made up of a small contingent of military officers and half-spirit girls who team up to work together. I’ll admit, I liked the first part of the series which explored the concerns over Japan’s Westernization and loss of traditions through the conflicts between humans and yokai much more than I did its end. Seeing as the opening has a bit of a spoiler in it, the series’ major plot twist was clearly planned well in advance, but it just didn’t seem to flow well as a whole as the narrative suddenly changes direction. The romantic subplots are broadcast from the very first episode—it’s obvious who will be falling in love with who—so none of those developments were particularly surprising or unexpected, either.

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