Yuri Monogatari 5
Edited by Erica Friedman
Rated MC, 18+
ALC Publishing, $15.95

This most recent volume of the pioneering lesbian manga anthology is 4 cents cheaper than the previous volume, 50 pages longer, and 100% better.

All the Yuri Monogatari anthologies are labors of love, and they serve an important purpose: Providing readers with true lesbian manga. But noble intentions don’t necessarily make for good comics, and while some of the pieces in Yuri Monogatari 4 were stellar, others weren’t quite ready for prime time.

Not so with volume 5. The stories still vary in style and tone, but overall the bar has been raised. As I commented in my original review, much of the art in YM4 was over-drawn and tried to use style and flourishes to cover deficiencies in anatomy and form. That’s not a problem in volume 5. The non-Japanese comics in particular are drawn with a simplicity and vigor that suggests the creators are getting more confident in their work.

That feeling is reinforced by the overall optimistic tone of the stories. Each one presents a dilemma that is resolved, usually resulting in a happy ending and lots of joyful sex. (The exception is Niki Smith’s “Your Hair,” which chronicles the waning of a relationship in a series of quiet, sad vignettes.) In Sakuraike Taki’s “Last Day,” two schoolgirls resolve to commit suicide together because their parents want to keep them apart. With spare and sketchy drawings, Taki shows how one type of defiance begets another.

Sirk Tani’s “Love Won” also deals with the problem of intolerance, but in a more idealized way. She tells her story of a teenager’s angst about being outed as a series of nested dreams, with an ending that is a bit too pat but characters who are breezy and likeable.

Jessie B.’s “Vagrants,” on the other hand, is pure fun, a hilarious whirlwind tour of all the bad jobs in the world, rendered in an energetic, thick-lined style. As with most of the non-Japanese stories, this looks more like indy comics than manga, but it’s pretty likeable anyway.

One artist who has shown impressive growth between volumes 4 and 5 is Althea Keaton, who contributed “Cog” to vol. 4 and “Umbrella” to vol. 5. Her line is more confident, her figures more solid, and her writing more convincing, in this latter story.

Once again, the Japanese stories are excellent. “Until the Sun Sets, Then Rises Again” is quiet story of a woman dealing with her insecurity about dating a much younger woman. The art is lovely but difficult to fully appreciate as the comic has obviously been shrunk from a much larger size. And while another dose of Rica Takashima’s cheerful and super-cute “Rica ‘tte Kanji?” is always welcome, she’s getting stiff competition from Sakuraike Kana, whose “On the Road Where the White Flowers Bloom” is a humorous tale of two yuri doujinshi creators, only one of whom is a lesbian.

Even the cover of this volume is different. Kristina Kolhi has replaced the shadowy silhouettes and severe single-color scheme of the earlier volumes with a full-color, nicely rounded drawing of two girls sprawled together listening to music. It accurately reflects the tone of the book: girls having fun with girls.

“Better” is not the same as “perfect.” This volume has its share of stiff figures and awkward anatomy, but the artists all share a confident style and a cheerful, comfortable outlook that go a long way toward making this an enjoyable read despite the occasional flaw.

This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.

Deux, the yaoi imprint of Aurora Publishing, has been cranking out titles at a pretty good clip, so I decided to check out two of their more likely-looking volumes. I’m not a yaoi reader, so my thoughts are more on the books as manga than as part of the genre. Both are rated M, mature, and priced at $12.95.

Yakuza in Love, vol. 1, by Shiuko Kano: Stylish, but hard to follow, tale of love among the ranks of organized crime. Lead character Aoi Ichimura has a cross-shaped scar on his face and a reputation as a badass, but underneath it all he’s a lovable wimp who happens to be extremely lucky. While dodging to avoid stepping on a baby bird, he bumps into The Don, knocking him away from a hitman’s bullet. As his reward, he is made the apprentice to underboss Yuji Sakiya, who is more the strong, silent—and competent—type. The attraction is instantaneous, but despite the fact that other members of the Yakuza are happily bonking each other all over the book, Aoi is reluctant to show his affection. There’s a real plot, involving the organization’s shift from its previous enterprises to porn and slavery, a rival gang’s attempt to muscle in, and plenty of double-crossing. I found the opening sequence confusing, but after a while things started to fall into place. Still, the story was disjointed enough that I was relieved to find the character profiles at the end, which helped me sort a few things out. The art is slick and elegant, and if broad-shouldered, well-dressed men are your type, then this is the book for you.

Hate to Love You, by Makoto Tateno: The cover trumpets this as “a yaoi version of Romeo and Juliet,” but the chief similarity is that the two protagonists come from feuding families, which is only the starting point of Romeo and Juliet. The whole web of love, deception, and death that Shakespeare used to fill up the rest of his pages is noticeably missing from Hate to Love You, and Tateno’s work contains something the bard neglected to include: a seme and a uke. The Konoe and Kazuki families both own construction companies and have been feuding for generations, and high school students Masaya Konoe and Yuma Kazuki are continuing the tradition. The story is told from the point of view of Masaya, who is frustrated because Yuma is better than him at everything, from grades to getting the girl. Yuma is the cool one, except when he gets passionate with Masaya, while Masaya is all emotional and bothered and can’t do anything right. I actually found the most likeable character to be the girl who connects the two, Akiko Tojoin. She’s a smart, sympathetic character who brings the two families together, literally and figuratively. This one-shot story wraps up in only four chapters, so Tateno fills out the book with a rather creepy short story about a kid who stalks a grownup and winds up getting more than he bargained for. Tateno’s fans seem to like her art a lot; I found her figures a bit flat in places, but her drawings have a dynamic quality that makes them work anyway.

A few words about production values: The Aurora/Deux folks are aiming a bit higher than most manga publishers in terms of paper and print quality. The first batch of books I saw from them, which includes Hate to Love You, was printed in China on paper that was very white and very stiff, which made their books hard to open—not unlike Broccoli Books were a year or so ago. The latest books, including Yakuza in Love, are printed in Japan on creamier, thinner paper that is still smoother and whiter than the stock used by most manga publishers. This makes the newer books easier to read, physically, but they also have an odd smell, possibly from the ink.

In terms of cover design, I like the Yakuza in Love better because it’s bolder and more graphic, plus I like the typeface they used for the title. On the other hand, the hot pink logo clashes with the rest of the art; it’s too bad they couldn’t modify the color. I’m not crazy about their back cover design, which is used for all their books—purple and pink type on a white background and an oversized logo, ratings box, and price tag all make the book look cheap, which at $12.95 per volume, it really isn’t. Still, if the worst thing I can find to say about a company is “I hate their back cover design,” they’re doing pretty well.

MW
By Osamu Tezuka
Rated 16+
Vertical, $24.95

The opening scene of MW reminded me of a cheesy cop show from the 1970s: A car on a lonely bluff over the ocean, a truck swerving in from nowhere, a kidnapping plot gone awry, helicopters overhead, guys duking it out on the deck of a motorboat. I kept expecting Tom Selleck or maybe Jill St. John to show up and join in, at least until things turned bloody at the end of the scene.

That 70s vibe continues throughout the book. It’s partly cosmetic: chief villain Yuki Michio’s muttonchop sideburns and his stripey swingin’ bachelor pad never let us forget what era this is, and Michio’s chief pursuer is a flowing-haired detective who looks like he stepped out of a Peter Max painting. The story is slick and shallow with plenty of action to keep the reader involved. And while the book touches on issues that seem very contemporary—chemical weapons, the molestation of a child by a priest—these are merely story elements, dropped in without much commentary or angst.

It’s hard to summarize MW without making it sound more outlandish than it actually is: It’s about a serial killer who plans to annihilate the entire earth—and the priest who loves him. The story starts in the 1960s on an Okinawan island, where The Crows, a band of hippies straight out of Central Casting (headbands, love beads, vest worn over bare chest) kidnap a young boy, Michio, and send one of their number, Iwao Garai, to hide him in a cave. During the night, Garai molests Michio, and when they emerge the next morning, everyone else on the island is dead, stopped in their tracks by what we later learn is a deadly gas, MW.

While Garai is spared, Michio is profoundly affected, physically and mentally, by MW, which has apparently burned away his conscience. Tezuka skips the next 15 years and presents us with two characters who have apparently taken completely different paths: Garai is a priest, Michio works in a bank, where his planning abilities and utter cold-bloodedness are assets to his social and career climbing—and to his life of crime.

While some deeper themes are presented here, MW is really about watching Michio commit one heinous crime after another, pulling them all off with the same smirking competence. Eventually it becomes clear that Michio is targeting those responsible for the MW incident and the subsequent coverup, but this isn’t about revenge; Michio is dying, and he wants to take the rest of the world with him. And he’ll use MW to do it. Most thrillers have something strongly pushing the action forward; MW lacks that element of urgency until fairly late in the book, when the clock starts ticking and Michio is finally outwitted.

Tezuka has a great imagination, and he puts it to work devising an escalating series of adventures for Michio and Garai. That doesn’t mean he steers clear of the clichés of the genre: When a reporter hot on the trail of MW agrees to meet Michio alone, late at night, in a garage, we know he’s doomed. And some of Michio’s capers stretch even the credulity of a dedicated manga reader—such as when he murders a young woman, then puts on her dress and a wig and impersonates her so well that her parents are taken in.

Unfortunately, both main characters come across as pretty flat. Michio is so cold-blooded and depraved that he’s almost boring. Whether he’s dispatching his boss by hanging him from an iron bar and tossing lit matches in his face, setting up Garai in a gay sex club, or having sex with his dog, he does everything with the same smirking opacity, without ever slipping and showing us the inner man. Garai has a conscience but does little with it; the seal of the confessional provides a handy excuse for him to cover for Michio, but it’s harder to understand why he repeatedly accompanies him and gets drawn into the action. You’d think he would learn after a while that this guy is trouble.

Garai and Michio’s affair is the cheesiest part of the whole book. Tezuka’s figures are so smoothly polished that the sex scenes look almost abstract, and Michio does most of his seducing chastely clad in underpants, which make him look more comical than come-hither. The biggest problem, though, is that Tezuka fails to establish a convincing emotional connection between Michio and Garai. The general pattern is: Michio does something horrible, Garai decides to take a stand, Michio thwarts Garai and then says “Oh come on, don’t be mad,” and they have sex.

The art in MW is smooth and straightforward, often dramatic but seldom outstanding. Tezuka is at his best when he’s working the whole page, and he has a few breathtaking turns here, but most of the time the action is contained in small panels and the illustrations are competing with the word balloons for space. And there are a few places where he just punts. You get the feeling his heart wasn’t in it for big stretches.

Nonetheless, Vertical gives this volume the full treatment: It’s beautifully printed on creamy paper, with a luscious black and white and magenta cover and dust cover by Chip Kidd. The artwork is flipped, which doesn’t hurt the story much, and sound effects are translated and retouched so as to become part of the art.

MW reads pretty well as a caper story, not so well as literature. It’s entertaining enough to watch Michio pull off one clever but improbable plot after another, but he never really gets under your skin, and neither do the other characters. It didn’t make me lose my religion, but it did keep me entertained enough not to want to put it down, which after all is exactly what comics are supposed to do.

This review is based on a complimentary copy supplied by the publisher. All images copyright (c) Tezuka Productions.

Tokyo Is My Garden
Script by Benoit Peeters and Frederic Boilet
Art by Frederic Boilet
Fanfare/Ponent Mon, $18.99

Christopher Butcher mentioned recently that he really enjoyed this book, but he didn’t elaborate, so I figured I would.

Tokyo Is My Garden is two love stories in one: it’s the story of a man and a woman who meet and fall in love, but it’s also the tale of a man who has fallen in love with Japan—and may have to leave.

The main character is David Martin, a French man who was sent to Japan to promote a brand of cognac but instead has been slowly going native: He works at the Tokyo fish market, navigates the subway system with ease, and studies kanji in his spare time. He even takes earthquakes in stride, and his Mahjong skills are the envy of the locals.

As the story opens, things are looking pretty bad for David: His girlfriend throws him out and his French boss faxes that he is coming to Tokyo to discuss how the cognac thing is going. This fills David with dread, because he hasn’t sold a single bottle. A co-worker from the fish market sends David to two parties where he can peddle his wares, but he gets so drunk that on his way to the second one, he leaves his sample bottle of cognac on the subway.

An unobservant person might think the story really gets going at the second party, where David meets Kimie, a Japanese woman, and they fall in love, just like that. In fact, the romance at the center of this book is one of its least satisfying elements, as there is no obvious chemistry, no push and pull, just two people enjoying themselves. They eat some ramen, they go on picnics, they put on kimonos and watch the summer fireworks. It’s pretty, but there’s not much conflict or struggle, other than David’s anxiety about his job.

(An observant person, who pays attention to the title pages of the chapters, will see that the story really started with the lost bottle.)

Things get more interesting when David’s boss, Mr. Heurault, arrives. Boilet and Peeters do a nice job of quickly sketching his personality: Heuralt is an idealist who isn’t quite as staid as he first appears. His idealized image of Japan comes from classic films, and he is surprised and horrified by the realities of modern Japan, but he also sees David’s deep affection for the place. Still, business is business, and Heurault reluctantly tells David he will have to cut him loose—which means David will lose his visa. A violent storm clinches Heurault’s desire to get out of Japan, and he decides to leave rather abruptly.

At this point, Boilet and Peeters deftly twist together a number of narrative threads that have been running through the book to confect a satisfying surprise ending. David and Kimie’s romance, Mr. Heurault’s faded desires, the lost bottle of cognac, all come together in a neat little package. It’s all rather improbable, but enjoyable nonetheless.

For a fairly short book (152 pages), Tokyo Is My Garden devotes an awful lot of space to things that don’t move the story much. There’s little depth or tension to David and Kimie’s relationship, for instance; once in a while you think something dramatic is going to happen and then… usually they just make love again. And there’s a scene at the French embassy that seems to serve little purpose other than to depict the French as racist clods (although the authors may have intended to draw a contrast with the more refined Heurault, who makes his appearance a few pages later). On the other hand, it’s fun to watch David take Heurault to see the sights—bars, a calligraphy exhibit, even a naughty video game—and it’s clear that Boilet had fun drawing those scenes.

While the story arc is gentle, to say the least, the authors weave a number of unifying threads through the story: The kanji that David is studying, his inane parodies of “My Way,” even his glasses, which people keep telling him are ugly. And there are a lot of symmetries and concordances in this book: David, who is French, loves Japanese culture, while Kimie, a Japanese woman, works for a French designer. Heuralt’s love of Japanese cinema is mirrored by Kimie’s mother’s love of French cinema. David wows the ladies with his Mahjong skills at a party and later gets a cartoon woman to doff her top in a computer Mahjohng game. And so on.

Boilet’s depictions of Tokyo are interesting and complicated and really convey a sense of place: The chaotic pre-dawn fish market, a nearly empty train on a Sunday morning. And if you squint, the characters look good too; he has a good sense of form and gesture, and the faces are distinct and expressive. The biggest problem with the art, actually, is Boilet’s penchant for using black blobs to indicate shadows and contours in the characters’ faces, which makes everyone look like they are breaking out with the plague. The toning, done by Jiro Taniguchi, helps reduce the impact, but it’s still distracting.

Although it does have a plot, Tokyo Is My Garden is best enjoyed as a slice-of-life manga, a loving meditation on the joys of young love in an exciting, complex city. It does not offer high drama or nonstop action; the story is simple but told with wit and elegance. In the end, it’s a love letter to Tokyo, written by someone who loves the city’s flaws as much as its beauty.

(This review is based on an untoned digital copy provided by the publisher.)

Harvey & Etsuko’s Manga Guide to Japan
Story and art by Charles Danziger
Manga art by Mimei Sakamoto
MG Press, $9.99

Harvey & Etsuko’s Manga Guide to Japan is a strange hybrid of comic and guidebook, manga and western comic. Harvey, a mouse, is drawn by American artist Charles Danziger in a loose, flat style; Etsuko, a shiny, buxom, big-eyed manga agent, is the creation of Japanese artist Mimei Sakamoto. The plot is fairly contrived: Harvey goes to Japan to rescue a mysterious cartoonist who may have been kidnapped; he meets Estuko, who promises to set him up with Mimei, a famous manga artist. But before Mimei will see him, Harvey has to pass a test. A test about Japan. This, of course, is just an excuse to drop Harvey into as many characteristically Japanese situations as possible.

Does it sound awful? It’s not. What saves it is its sly, Rocky-and-Bullwinkle type humor. They pretty much had me on the introductions page, on which we get a paragraph each about Harvey, Etsuko, and the parasites. The parasites not only thank the reader for providing food and shelter, they actually serve a useful purpose in this book: Whenever Harvey encounters something he doesn’t understand (about once a page), they point the reader to a section at the end that explains it in detail.

Herein lies another of the book’s strengths: The depth of information provided. The last 57 pages of the book are strictly text and consist of explanations keyed to the events in the comic: J-pop, fugu, Kabuki, even cultural values such as the importance of perseverance and cloaking bad news in polite terms. This part is rich in detail and manages to avoid stereotyping the Japanese, instead providing cues that the reader should look out for. Some of the information is practical, such as the section on business cards, but most is simply interesting.

Although individual places get a mention, this is strictly a guidebook to culture, not a travel book. As such, I think it would be particularly helpful to manga readers and others who are developing an interest in Japanese culture.

The art is a bit tricky, though. Danziger’s style is deceptively simple—yes, Harvey is a blob, but when Danziger gets an entire page to himself you can see that he really does get comics. His style is very flat, with no shading or suggestion of roundness, and he makes good use of flat patterns to break up the page. It has a retro feel, like something from the 70s.

Sakamoto is completely different: Her figures are well rounded (very well rounded!), so well toned and highlighted that they look like they are stuffed vinyl or maybe polished steel. They also bring in an element of cheesecake. This is a strictly all-ages book—no nipples or panty shots here—but Sakamoto’s women display bountiful cleavage, and the book includes sessions at a hot springs and a strip club.

Integrating these two wildly different styles is difficult. Usually one artist or the other dominates a page and does a good job of it. The combination looks most incongruous when both characters share a scene, partly because of the contrast between Harvey’s flatness and Etsuko’s rounded contours. It works better on pages where the two are separated spatially, as when Harvey is inside his own panel talking to a figure on the outside.

So: The plot is contrived and the art is a mishmash, but Harvey and Etsuko is still a useful book that provides a few good laughs while shedding light on some of the less understood areas of Japanese culture. Its juvenile qualities will probably scare teenagers away, but I actually think older readers will get more out of it anyway. At $9.99, it’s not a bad gamble.

(This review is based on a digital copy provided by the publisher.)

King of Thorn, vol. 2
By Yuji Iwahara
Rated OT, Older Teen, 16+
Tokyopop, $9.99

Sometimes it’s hard to judge a series from the first volume alone, so when I spotted the second volume of Yuji Iwahara’s King of Thorn in my local library, I picked it up in hopes that I would like it better than I liked volume 1.

I’m really glad I didn’t pay ten bucks for it.

At first I was optimistic, because the story does advance a bit beyond the first volume. We get a little bit of a clue of who the people are, plus the obligatory reveal that Everyone Is Not What They Seem To Be.

Unfortunately, at least for me, a large portion of the book is taken up with battles with the dinosaur-like monsters that inhabit… wherever they are. Battles bore me; if you like them, this may be the book for you, but I would rather have more exposition and fewer battles.

Also, while I like Iwahara’s art, I found the fight scenes and some of the other action hard to follow. I think I may have some sort of fight-scene dyslexia, because this isn’t the first book that made me feel this way, but I also think Iwahara’s style doesn’t lend itself well to fights: He uses very little toning and lots of hatching, which is very nice when used to draw a figure or a cozy domestic scene (as in Chikyu Misaki) but clashes with the speed lines when he’s trying to draw action scenes.

Anyway, that’s my take. I don’t much go for survivors-fighting-the-monsters stories anyway, but even aside from that, this book doesn’t grab me. I’ll wait for his next series and try again.