Category Archives: manga moveable feast

Sailor Moon Manga Moveable Feast: Call For Entries

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It’s time for December’s Manga Moveable Feast, and this month’s topic is Sailor Moon. It’s a manga that I tend to talk about at the drop of a hat, and so I immediately volunteered to be the host for this month’s event.

(A brief warning: there is really no way to make this discussion spoiler-free. I realize there are people who, with Kodansha’s re-release, are coming to the series for the first time, and I apologize to them. But Tokyopop’s complete manga and four of the five seasons of the anime have been out in North America for years and years. And I also want to gush about the Outers later on. So you have been warned: this will spoil the series.)

In college, I vaguely seemed to have Sailor Moon on the outskirts of my attention as one of those cute Japanimation cartoons the kids were talking about. As I got into anime and manga via Ranma, I began to note there were several fanfics that had him meeting up with Serena/Usagi (delete where applicable) and their cohorts, but nothing that really drove me to find out more. It was really when Mixxzine began to appear, serializing the story, that I started to realize just what it was that was making children and adults talk about this phenomenon.

There’s really so much to talk about. The strength of the main cast, who are all decidedly feminine and yet will not hesitate to kick anyone’s ass if so required. The manga (and anime) examining what it means to be a defender of justice and how, unlike other previous magical girls, this is not something that they happily give up when they grow up and get married. Usagi and the others are not just magical girls, they are the future rulers of the entire planet. And despite all of that, the manga also shows us that they are not only free to pursue their dreams, but are actively doing so. The sheer brutality of both the manga and the anime – I know that when people actually saw the ending of the first season uncensored, a lot of tears were shed; and let’s not even talk about the manga, where one volume began with Usagi staring at the reader as her flesh melted off her head revealing her skull beneath. (She got better.) And there’s any number of things that can be said about Haruka and Michiru, who managed to break several barriers both here and in Japan. Even when censored into ‘cousins’, you could see who they really were.

Obviously I can’t say all these things myself. Nor would I want to, when there are much better writers out there to do so. I will chip in during the week for an essay or two, but this is a call to bloggers, readers, or interested parties to write about the series.

A few things to note:

1) Obviously this is the MANGA Moveable Feast, but I feel that when you’re discussing Sailor Moon, especially in North America, where most of us saw the anime first, you inevitably find yourself discussing both, even when they differ. In fact, especially when they differ. As a result, please feel free to mention the anime as well. And you can also talk about Sailor V, of course.

2) As I said before, you may discuss the entire series. You may want to, as I did, put a quick note at the top if you’re going to be getting into the nitty-gritty of the Black Moon arc or the Starlights arc. But it’s not required.

3) I realize the manga is being reprinted and not entirely available yet, and that the anime is also out of print, but it goes without saying: please do not link to scanlation sites or torrent sites.

4) If you don’t have a webspace or blogsite but want to contribute, just let me know.

To participate, you can either post your article on Twitter, making sure to tag it with the hashtag #MMF so that I will see it (I am @Toukochan on Twitter, you could also add my name to the tweet); or you can email the link to my attention at gaffneys at gmail dot com. (Sorry, spammers suck.) I will post daily links as is the custom. The MMF runs from today through January 1st.

I look forward to seeing everyone’s awesome articles, essays, reminisces, or just plain old gushing.

And now, post-MMF, here are all the daily links in one handy page:

Day One
Day Two And Three
Day Four
Day Five
Day Six
Day Seven

Tesoro

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By Natsume Ono. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Ikki and in various doujinshi. Released in North America by Viz.

It’s time for another Manga Movable Feast, this one timed for the release of Tesoro, a collection of short stories by Natsume Ono. It’s a good collection to discuss, as I think it contains most of her strengths and weaknesses in one convenient package. Plus it has a bear on the cover. Everything’s better with bears.

The strengths of the book are mostly all at the front, as she’s put her later work first. This is good, as by 2003-2006 (the period we see here), she’s already developed and honed her style and type of dialogue. There’s some Italian stuff here, as you’d expect (it’s almost inevitable by this point, Ono simply loves Italy – and no doubt finds the constant conversation she does easier to justify with Italian men). But there’s some excellent stuff that takes place in Japan as well, including what is probably my favorite of the collection, a story about a couple who are both very thin, and tend to have gossip floating around them. “Quiet stubbornness” is possibly the most defining trait of Ono’s men, and it’s in full flower here.

The other story that really captures the attention here is Eva’s Memory, about an orphan girl with a tendency to call various men her father and how that gets a man running for election into a bit of controversy. It’s told through the point of view of her friend, who has just the right amount of exasperation and sympathy. Which is good, as Eva also rides the line here between liking her and wanting to smack her. It’s a good thing that the politician in question is so nice… and there’s also a question of who her real parents actually are, something our hero finds out as he tries to help Eva and also regain his sense of optimism about anything good in the world.

The second half of the book contains doujinshi that were written in the late nineties and early 2000s, and it shows – they’re far messier, and not just in the art. There’s a story about a young man getting out of a 5-year prison stint (he killed someone while drunk driving) that cries out to be rewritten now that she’s at the height of her powers, but instead comes across as… well, here’s the thing. When Ono is on, you can read 800 pages of her characters sitting in one room talking and you don’t care a lick. When she isn’t, it’s all just so much verbosity that you want to scream at people to “get on with it!”. Likewise, her characters ride a fine line, as I noted above in the Eva story. In a later story involving a girl named Monica and her bad luck with men, she came across as the villain to me, so I never got into the story.

Tesoro is therefore an excellent sampler of Ono’s work, but not something that should be a beginning for anyone who wants to try her. They’re better off with Ristorante Paradiso, in my opinion. For the seasoned Ono fan, however, there’s several gems in here. And even the sketchy ones have something to pick out – the story involving the chef who wants to see a movie is almost incoherent at times, but the punchline is fantastic. (And yes, he’s right – it *is* OK if it’s The Sting).

Halloween Briefs

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So, due to power outage, these aren’t on the regular Manga bookshelf site with last week’s briefs, and the MMF is actually long over. So just pretend this is still relevant.

The Manga Movable Feast dealt with horror, but most of the titles I’m about to talk about fall more under the realm of ‘supernatural’. They’re shonen and shoujo titles that deal with friendship, romance, etc., but happen to feature monsters, demons, or yokai in some way. This is, of course, not to say that they don’t all have the ability to scare in some way.

The one with the least horrific content here is likely Kamisama Kiss 5, which continues to be about a young girl who finds herself the god of a local shrine, and her vaguely romantic relationship with her familiar, sexy fox creature Tomoe. This particular volume in fact, is about removing the terror – no one goes to the shrine due to its reputation, so Nanami decides to hold a festival to entice people to notice the shrine is no longer run-down and creepy. There is a mysterious chapter where Nanami thinks that Tomoe has abandoned her and the shrine (which looks like a pit again), but it turns out to be a trick, and the majority of the volume is devoted to showing Nanami as plucky and never-say-die, and Tomoe as being aloof yet caring. The supernatural mostly is a spice here.

Much more scary, or at least with a vague tinge of unease hanging around it, is Natsume’s Book of Friends 9. The series is about a young man with the ability to see and control yokai thanks to his grandmother, and his attempts to balance out a normal school and family life with his desire to help free (and to a certain degree befriend) the yokai in his book. The stories tend to be drenched in yokai lore, and sometimes need a footnote or two, but generally dealing with monsters tends to be universal. We all know when a monster demands something or else she will do harm, and then gets what she wants, harm is going to happen anyway. There’s less school antics here and more of Natsume working with his own familiar, Nyanko-sensei. Who, thank goodness, is not a sexy fox creature. Things can get scary here, but this series gives more of a feeling of melancholy than terror.

Nura also deals with yokai, and is a Shonen Jump manga, so is not concerned so much with cute romance or finding friends as it is with awesome fights. Rikuo is still having issues with his leadership skills, and a lot of this volume continues to deal with the takeover of the town by a rival gang of yakuza… um, yokai. This volume in particular is very good at contrasting Rikuo’s caring and accepting nature, even of those who can’t stand him, with that of Tamazuki, who callously destroys his closest allies with a cruel word and a wave of his hand. It’s the difference between ruling by loyalty and ruling by fear, and this being a Jump manga, we know what will eventually win out. There are several good scary moments here, but I’d read it more for the Friendship, Training, and Victory myself. (Also, the Rikuo/Tsurara shiptease is really getting hammered on here.)

Lastly, there’s Vampire Knight 13, which despite the presence of vampires and demon hunters, is not so much horror in this volume as the political intrigue that it’s excelled in ever since Yuki came into her heritage. I’ll be honest, I think I preferred Yuki in the earlier volumes – despite trying to balance being prudent with becoming her own person, she still comes off as awfully passive here. There are a few scattered bits of action, and a scene or two of blood and gore (tastefully and sexily done, of course – this is LaLa Magazine, after all), but this is horror in the same way that Wilkie Collins was horror – romantic suspense horror with twists and turns and fitting into society turning out to be far more important than the number of people you kill. Normally I enjoy it, but I admit I found this volume a bit boring.

So, to sum up, it’s November 5th. Happy Halloween! Dress as Guy Fawkes!