26 June 2013 18 Comments

Manga Giveaway: Dystopian Duo (No. 6 and Attack on Titan)

It’s the last full week in June, which means its time for another manga giveaway here at Experiments in Manga. Thanks to the good folks at Kodansha Comics, I actually have two volumes of manga to give away this month: the first volume in Hinoki Kino’s No. 6 and the fifth and most recent volume of Hajime Isayama’s Attack on Titan to be released in English! One lucky winner will receive both volumes of manga. And, as always, the contest is open worldwide.

I first started reading dystopian fiction when I was in high school. I’ve never grown out of dystopias and I continue enjoy reading about them. While at the moment the young adult market in particular is fairly inundated with dystopian literature, there are relatively few manga that have been licensed in English that deal with dystopian themes. But just this month, Kodansha Comics released the first volume in No. 6 which is a excellent example of a classic dystopia—a seemingly perfect, highly controlled society with a darker side and hidden costs. Attack on Titan is a dystopia of a different sort—a world in which humanity struggles to survive against forces beyond its control. It may not be a dystopia in the strictest sense and may actually share more in common with post-apocalyptic fiction (its difficult to tell from only the first five volumes), but I’d argue that there’s often significant overlap between the two subgenres.

So, you may be wondering, how can you win a copy of No. 6, Volume 1 and Attack on Titan, Volume 5?

1) In the comments below, tell me which of the two series—No. 6 and Attack on Titan—interests you the most and why. (If you win, you’ll still be getting both volumes regardless of your response.)
2) For a second entry, simply name a dystopian manga that hasn’t been mentioned yet by me or by someone else.
3) If you’re on Twitter, you can earn a bonus entry by tweeting about the contest. Make sure to include a link to this post and @PhoenixTerran (that’s me).

So there you have it! Each person can earn up to three entries for this giveaway and has one week to submit them. If you have trouble leaving comments, or if you would prefer, you can e-mail me your entry at phoenixterran(at)gmail(dot)com and I will post the comment in your name. The winner will be randomly selected and announced on July 3, 2013. Good luck to you all!

VERY IMPORTANT: Include some way that I can contact you. This can be an e-mail address, link to your website, Twitter username, or whatever. If I can’t figure out how to get a hold of you and you win, I’ll just draw another name.

Contest winner announced—Manga Giveaway: Dystopian Duo Winner

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24 June 2013 Leave a Comment

My Week in Manga: June 17-June 23, 2013

My News and Reviews

Last week was the Skip Beat! Manga Moveable Feast, hosted by Laura at the wonderful shoujo manga blog Heart of Manga. For my contribution to the Feast, I reviewed the first omnibus volume of Yoshiki Nakamura’s Skip Beat! I had read the beginning of Skip Beat! before, but had forgotten how much I had enjoyed the series. It’s a tremendous amount of fun. Earlier in the week I reviewed Sakyo Komatsu’s award-winning earthquake disaster novel Japan Sinks. It’s been forty years since the volume was first released in Japan and it is still a chilling account.

As somewhat of a bonus, over the weekend I also reviewed Dale Lazarov’s and Amy Colburn’s short collection of gay erotic comics, Manly. Out of all of Lazarov’s collaborations, Manly happens to be my personal favorite. It’s not manga, but I do think it would appeal to readers and fans of hard yaoi and bara and erotic comics in general.

While working on my review of Manly, I discovered that Bruno Gmünder, its publisher, will be releasing Gengoroh Tagame’s Endless Game in December. Earlier this year PictureBox published The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame, which was incredible, so I’m pretty excited that more of Tagame’s work is being released in English. In other licensing news, Sublime Manga has announced the acquisition of Kou Yoneda’s collection NightS, which I’m looking forward to reading, as well as additional volumes in previously acquired series.

Elsewhere online, Manga Bookshelf has published the results from its recent reader survey. I find this sort of data fascinating, so I was very glad that they decided to share it! Finally, over at Books from Japan, Matt Alt contributed the article A wild monster chase: yokai and Haruki Murakami. Alt is one of the co-creators of the marvelous Attack! series, which I love. Surprisingly enough, I actually haven’t read much Murakami, but I still found Alt’s article to be fascinating.

Quick Takes

Atomcat by Osamu Tezuka. I was completely unaware of Atomcat until it and Triton of the Sea were tacked on to Digital Manga’s Kickstarter project for Unico. Of the three works I was least interested in Atomcat, but the volume turned out to be a fun and fluffy read. (Pun entirely intended.) Atomcat is a remake of sorts of Tezuka’s Astro Boy. The basic premise is that, in a bizarre twist of fate involving space aliens, a small kitten is granted the same powers as Astro Boy. He also faces some of the same personal dilemmas that Astro Boy had to deal with. Atom, the kitten, uses his new powers to protect his human family and to foil the evil schemes of other cats. It’s really quite cute.

Attack on Titan, Volume 5 by Hajime Isayama. While the artwork in Attack on Titan is improving very slowly, it’s still easily the weakest element in the manga. But as bad as the art can be, I continue to find the manga as a whole to be oddly engaging and at times even compelling. In addition to introducing more characters, the fifth volume reveals a little bit more about the titans and a little bit more about the society in which the humans are living. I didn’t find this volume to be quite as dark or oppressive as some of the volumes that came before it. The fear and terror caused by the titans is still there and very real, but the story has left the battlefield and turned to focus more on the societal changes and political maneuverings that have been brought about as a result.

Brave Story: A Retelling of a Classic, Volumes 1-5 by Yoichiro Ono. The Brave Story manga is a very loose adaptation of Miyuki Miyabe’s fantasy novel of the same name. The manga series reached twenty volumes in Japan before its conclusion, but only five volumes were ever released in English. While many of the major story elements and characters are the same as those found in the novel, the manga is actually quite different. Unfortunately, I didn’t find it to be quite as good, either. Although Brave Story is a seinen series, Ono makes excellent use of shonen tropes which is very appropriate for the story. Brave Story in all of its incarnations is also heavily influenced by fantasy role-playing video games.

Junjo Romantica, Volumes 1-6 by Shungiku Nakamura. I’m torn over Junjo Romantica. The boys’ love series features four related storylines/couples: Junjo Romantica, Junjo Egoist, Junjo Minimum, and Junjo Terrorist. I like the narrative structure and how the stories intertwine with each other. I also like how almost everyone is somehow involved with the publishing industry or studies literature. But the only pairing that I really like and the reason I read Junjo Romantica is Egoist. (Although Minimum is admittedly adorable.) The relationship of Junjo Romantica‘s main couple is not at all a healthy one. Usagi is abusive and extremely controlling. It makes me uncomfortable how this has been romanticized. Fortunately after the first couple of volumes this does improve.

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22 June 2013 Leave a Comment

Manly

Author: Dale Lazarov
Illustrator: Amy Colburn and Dominic Cordoba
Publisher: Bruno Gmünder
ISBN: 9783861878872
Released: September 2008

Out of all of Dale Lazarov’s gay erotic comics collections to have so far been released in print—Sticky, Manly, Nightlife, and Good Sports—my personal favorite is Manly. Released in 2008 by Germany-based publishing house Bruno Gmünder (which specializes in gay fiction, nonfiction, comics, art, and photography), Manly was Lazarov’s second collaboration to be released by the publisher. In the case of Manly, comics writer Lazarov worked closely with Amy Colburn, a homoerotic illustrator from Virginia. Manly was Colburn’s publishing debut as a comics artist. Dominic Cordoba also contributed to the volume by providing the color work. Lazarov self-describes his work as “smart, wholesome gay comics smut” which I feel is an entirely apt description. I would also agree that Manly, which was my introduction to Lazarov’s comics, fits that mold perfectly.

Manly collects three short, unrelated erotic gay comics: “Busted,” “Clinch,” and “Hot Librarian.” I say unrelated because the stories do not share any plot or characters with each other, but they do all feature a pair of masculine men who take great pleasure in each other’s company. The collection opens with “Busted” in which a civilian aids in the arrest of a criminal, gaining the attention of the lead ATF agent working on the case in the process. In “Clinch,” a retired championship boxer and a successful, up-and-coming younger fighter discover their mutual admiration and attraction. Manly closes with “Hot Librarian” which follows a man new to the gay club scene who, after an awkward start, ends up finding love in the stacks instead. As a librarian myself, I couldn’t hep but have a particular fondness for “Hot Librarian,” but I enjoyed all three comics a great deal; “Clinch” appealed to my interest in fighting arts and the leads in “Busted” were incredibly endearing.

As is true of all of Lazarov’s comics, there is no dialogue or narration in Manly meaning that there are very few textual clues to move the narrative along. Instead, there is an even greater reliance on the artwork to carry the story. Fortunately, Colburn is up to the task and handles it very well. Because Manly is largely wordless it allows the comics to be enjoyed by a wider audience without having to worry about language barriers. Since there are no words to slow readers down there is a temptation to rush through the volume as a result, but to do so would mean missing some of the more subtle aspects of the stories—facial expressions, body language, and so on. At the same time, because there is so little text, readers must engage with the comics on an almost participatory level in the creation and interpretation of the stories. And there actually are stories in Manly. I liked that there was a bit of plot to go along with all the sex (and there’s plenty of sex, too.) For me, the balance of those two elements in Manly worked nicely.

Manly is sexy and sweet with a touch of humor and a lot of joy. It celebrates the physical intimacy between its men. The comics are explicit with nothing to hide but I wouldn’t exactly call them graphic, either. It was great to see an emphasis on safer sex and condom use. In fact, in one story the lack of condoms means that the men have to get a little more creative in their play. Manly is sex-positive and the delight the men find with each other is wonderful. I was consistently left with a smile and even an occasional chuckle. I liked that the men in Manly actually established relationships with each other. To them the sex was more meaningful than just a casual encounter. Although the men in Manly are all unquestionably masculine, I appreciated the range of ethnicities, ages, and body-types exhibited by the characters. Manly is a great if all too brief collection of gay erotic comics. While the volume remains my favorite, it convinced me to seek out more of Lazarov’s work. So far, I haven’t been disappointed.

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21 June 2013 3 Comments

Skip Beat!, Omnibus 1

Creator: Yoshiki Nakamura
U.S. publisher: Viz Media
ISBN: 9781421542263
Released: March 2012
Original release: 2002-2003

The first omnibus volume of Yoshiki Nakamura’s manga series Skip Beat!, published in 2012 by Viz Media, collects the first three volumes of the original English-language release—all three of which were published under the Shojo Beat imprint in 2006. In Japan, the first three volumes of Skip Beat! were released between 2002 and 2003. Currently, Skip Beat! is the only manga by Nakamura available in English and it is the series for which she is best known. In addition to the original manga, Skip Beat! has also been adapted as a drama CD, a twenty-five episode anime, a live-action television series, and even a video game. Skip Beat! was selected as the topic of the June 2013 Manga Moveable Feast. I had previously read several volumes of the series and vaguely remembered enjoying them, but I was glad for an excuse to give the series a closer look.

Kyoko Mogami left home after graduating from junior high, following her childhood friend and love Sho as he pursues his career as an idol. Now living in Tokyo and working two jobs just to afford their apartment, Kyoko is happy as long as she can support and be with Sho. But then she finds out that he’s been taking advantage of her the whole time—he harbors no feelings of love for Kyoko and instead views her as a convenient if sometimes annoying maid. Betrayed, Kyoko is determined to wreak havoc on Sho’s life and take her revenge in the only way that he’ll deign to recognize: she has decided to enter show business. Kyoko has her sights set on joining LME, one of the biggest talent agencies in Japan and coincidentally home to Ren Tsuruga, and incredibly talented and successful actor who Sho hates. Kyoko doesn’t have a particular interest in show business, nor does she have any training, but what she does have is guts.

At the beginning of Skip Beat!, Kyoko’s life is consumed by Sho and her love for him. After his betrayal, her life continues to be consumed by Sho, but love has been replaced by hatred and vengeance. Sho’s a total jerk, so I can’t really blame Kyoko for her change of heart. At first Ren comes across as a jerk, too, but its really more that he can’t be bothered by people who don’t take show business seriously. This is why early on he and Kyoko don’t get along—he appreciates her guts and willpower, but dislikes her motivation to succeed. Kyoko is focused on making it big just to show up Sho. But as can already be seen in the first Skip Beat! omnibus, over time she starts to change. Initially she wanted to be a celebrity solely for the sake of revenge, but she is slowly gaining pride in herself and in her work for its own sake. Granted, getting back at Sho, and to a somewhat smaller extent Ren, is never far from her mind.

Kyoko is one hell of a character. She’s brash, stubborn, and determined. And she’s not the only one—Skip Beat! has many strong-willed and incredibly eccentric characters. I like Kyoko a lot. I appreciate a heroine who is willing to take control of her own life and work through her mistakes. Skip Beat! itself is a highly entertaining manga. With so many strong personalities involved there’s bound to be conflict and the results are very funny. The characters frequently end up in outrageous situations and their over-the-top reactions are priceless. Nakamura’s visual gags in Skip Beat! are great, too. Kyoko’s inner demons often make an appearance to spur her on and occasionally are even strong enough to affect those around her directly. All told, Skip Beat! is a tremendous amount of fun; I enjoyed the beginning of the series even more than I remembered.

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19 June 2013 Leave a Comment

Japan Sinks

Author: Sakyo Komatsu
Translator: Michael Gallagher
U.S. publisher: Kodansha
ISBN: 9784770020390
Released: September 1995
Original release: 1973
Awards: Mystery Writers of Japan Award, Seiun Award

Sakyo Komatsu is considered to be one of Japan’s masters of science fiction and is highly regarded as an author. Probably his most well-known and influential work was Japan Sinks, an earthquake disaster novel that he wrote between 1964 and1973. Published in Japan in 1973, Japan Sinks earned Komatsu both a Mystery Writers of Japan Award and a Seiun Award. The novel has since inspired a sequel (which Komatsu coauthored with Kōshū Tani), two live-action films, a television series, and even a manga adaptation by Takao Saito. Michael Gallagher’s abridged English translation of the novel was first published by Harper & Row in 1976 and became the basis for translations in eleven more languages. Kodansha International brought the novel back into print in 1995 with an additional author’s note from Komatsu. Unfortunately, that edition has gone out of print as well and Japan Sinks is now somewhat difficult to find—a shame for such a notable work.

Earthquake and tsunamis are not unusual occurrences in Japan. They are something that the country has faced for centuries and has made preparations to deal with. But an increase in seismic and volcanic activity has many scientists concerned, especially when an entire island off the southern coast of Japan disappears over night. An investigation is subsequently launched into the incredible event. As hard as it is to believe, the island has sunk. What is even more terrifying is the discovery of unprecedented tectonic plate movements that will result in increasingly violent and destructive earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. It is theorized that within a few years the entire Japanese archipelago will be lost. The real question is what can be done about Japan’s impending doom. The geological event cannot be stopped, but no one wants to believe that it will actually happen, either.

The narrative in Japan Sinks is a bit disjointed, particularly early on in the novel. I assume this is at least in part due to the abridgement, but I’m not entirely sure how much or even what was cut from the original Japanese edition of Japan Sinks. The beginning of the novel seems like a sequence of scenes that aren’t directly related, but most are eventually revealed to be needed for the story as a whole. It’s as if the connecting material is missing, though. However, as the novel progresses, the disparate story elements are tied together. By the end of Japan Sinks the only things that seemed tacked on and largely unnecessary were the romantic subplots; I can only imagine that these were more thoroughly developed in the original, but once again I’m not certain. For the most part, the unconnected nature of the storytelling was only a minor annoyance.

Although the narrative is somewhat fragmented, there is one thing that Komatsu excels at in Japan Sinks—he takes into consideration all aspects of the impending crisis in a very realistic way. The story is solidly based in real science, which makes it all the more terrifying. Komatsu explores the political maneuverings, both national and international, that are involved in dealing with the disaster as well as its economic implications. The scope of Japan Sinks is both global and personal, but I found the novel to be most engaging when it focused on the experiences of individuals. Granted, these sections were so effective because they took place within a greater context. Widespread death and destruction takes on more significance when it is known what it means for a single person as well as for a country as a whole. Japan Sinks addresses all of these issues and as a result the novel is a chilling account.

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