Review: Kasumi, vol. 1

Kasumi, vol. 1
Story by Surt Lim
Art by Hirofumi Sugimoto
Rated T, ages 13+
Del Rey, $10.95

Kasumi is an interesting hybrid, a global manga written in English by an American writer and illustrated in Japan by a Japanese artist. People often seem to be surprised to hear that it’s an OEL (original English language) manga, even after they have read it.

For one thing, it looks like it was translated. The book is printed right to left, and the speakers use honorifics as well as other Japanese terms—when was the last time you saw the word “hai” left untranslated in a Japanese manga? And it appears to take place in a Japanese high school, not an American one, judging from the elaborate uniforms and social structure. This is a selling point for some readers, but it is also the book’s Achilles heel, and it raises the question of how closely global manga should imitate Japanese manga.

At the outset, Kasumi is an ordinary girl (for shoujo manga, anyway), the cheerful, selfless daughter of a hard-working single father. Early in the book she has a mystical experience while out in the forest—she follows a glowing light up a tree, falls, and is caught up in some sort of magical fog that keeps her from being hurt. Kasumi wakes up with almost no memory of this, but the reader knows that Something Important has happened.

But that has to be set aside for the moment, because Kasumi is heading out for her first day at her new school! The experienced reader’s heart will begin to sink at this point, because we know what is coming, and indeed, Lim delivers all the cliches: The school is a snooty academy for rich kids in which a self-selected clique enforces a rigid code of behavior. There is apparently only one guy worth having, Ryuuki, and we meet him right away; he’s cool and aloof, and all access to him is controlled by his fan club. (One wonders how he feels about this, but Lim leaves that avenue unexplored).

Kasumi is clueless about all this. Her hobby is performing magic, and in a heartbreaking scene, she tries to impress her new classmates with some sleight-of-hand. They are not impressed, and when the teacher assigns her to a coveted seat near Ryuuki, the mean-girls clique is horrified and offended at her transgression (despite the fact that it was the teacher who assigned the seat).

The next plot angle is particularly contrived, even for a Japanese manga: The mean girls tell Kasumi she must put on a magic show for the school, and if Ryuuki is impressed, she can stay—otherwise, she has to leave. (How would that be enforced, pray tell?) Of course they sabotage Kasumi’s equipment, and the show is a disaster. In her distress, Kasumi unknowingly summons up the magical mist from the first chapter and manifests a previously unknown power: She turns invisible when she holds her breath. The mist causes panic, as students flee what they think is a fire, and her power to disappear saves her, as the students think it was a really impressive magic trick—although it’s hard to imagine that students who were pelting her with tomatoes a few minutes before would give her the benefit of the doubt, rather than assuming she just got lost in the chaos.

Perhaps it’s not fair, but the device of the ruling clique bullying the new kid bothers me more in an American manga than a Japanese one. American high schools do have their own pecking order, but the students don’t refer to their classmates as “commoners” or feel the need to punish them for sitting in the wrong seat or sending a note to the wrong guy. In fact, it’s hard to imagine American teenagers tolerating a self-selected club that enforces such rigid rules.

True, Kasumi is apparently set in Japan, but it seems to me that the implicit understanding between the creators and the readers is different. The American reader who picks up, say, Boys Over Flowers knows that she is reading a foreign book, and that the customs and mores presented are normal for Japan if not for here. That foreign-ness may be attractive or it may be an obstacle to overcome in order to enjoy the other facets of the book, but it’s out of place in an American book. The art and paneling in global manga may be similar to Japanese manga, and the types of stories may be the same, but in picking up specific story points, Lim mimics Japanese comics too closely. Furthermore, by leaning on these cliches she misses the opportunity to bring more complex and realistic high-school drama into the plot.

It’s a shame, too, because Kasumi has a lot of good ingredients: The heroine is likeable, and she has an interesting power. What teenager hasn’t wished for the power to vanish from time to time? At the same time, the power is limited—Kasumi can only disappear for as long as she can hold her breath. I also liked her lovable-nerd sidekick, Otaku-Ken, who is a huge fan of superhero comics.

The art is professional and competent and shines in places, particularly in the scenes where Kasumi is interacting with the magic mist. The character designs are good, although the faces seem curiously noseless much of the time, and Sugimoto gives us enough background detail to establish a sense of place. However, his use of flat areas of screentone for areas like hair and clothing gives the art a cheap, hurried look. In short, the art is good but not great.

Kasumi is a good start but tries too hard to be Japanese, at the expense of the story. Shoujo manga fans may pick it up anyway—from what I’m hearing, many of them have. But by falling back on the standard plot, Lim misses the chance to tell a more authentic story. Nonetheless, this first volume is good enough that I want to see the second; the story shows promise, and perhaps Lim will take another cue from Japanese creators and move beyond the stereotypes in volume 2.

(This review is based on a complimentary copy supplied by the publisher.)