Romeo And Juliet

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By William Shakespeare. First published in Britain in 1597 by John Dexter (Q1), then in 1599 by Cuthburt Burby (Q2). Review copy from ‘The Arden Shakespeare: Third Series’, edited by René Weis.

This actually came out in printed format a couple of years ago, but I never reviewed it, mostly as I don’t have much to say about Romeo And Juliet as a play. It’s sort of like giving your opinion on Hamlet – I’m not sure where to begin, or if my opinion is even relevant. I’d really never gotten as attached to it as I had to, say, Measure for Measure or Troilus and Cressida, though I can recognize its greatness. However, it coincidentally happened to be the first Arden Shakespeare release to come out as an ebook – I got mine on Kindle via Amazon – and so I thought I’d take a look, seeing what the ebook version can give to me, and also reassessing the play.

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I generally prefer Shakespeare’s comedies to his tragedies, so it helps that this one is structured very much like a comedy till the deaths start happening, with lots of back and forth between servants and comedic sexual banter from Mercutio. But where in Much Ado the characters might get a bit angry at times, here almost everyone is constantly on edge – the first scene has the two families come to blows pretty much because they walk past each other – and therefore even comedic situations can ignite a spark. This is not helped by Mercutio (again), who practically goads Tybalt into killing him. Mercutio is much beloved as a character, mostly as he’s a more ‘modern’, with it guy compared to soppy Romeo and raging Tybalt, but he’s just as bad at keeping his temper and not doing dumb things.

And so tragedy does happen, as the crazy scheme to feign Juliet’s death till Romeo can come spirit her away goes soup. Juliet is one of the great female characters created by Shakespeare (which yes, was created for a young boy to perform), and it’s not just to avoid scandal that the actresses are usually much older than the ‘about to turn 14’ Juliet is. The audience is willing to suspend disbelief in order to see a truly stellar piece of acting, and Juliet gives a lot of fuel to burn there. Not to sell Romeo short – he starts off as a callow youth going through the motions of being lovestruck, but the way Shakespeare changes his vocabulary once he meets Juliet is one of the best parts of the play.

I actually found it easier to read this as an ebook – the printed version has the annotations (telling you what this Elizabethan term meant, etc.) on the bottom of the page, but your eyes still bounce up and down constantly as you track when the next note is. With the ebook you can tap to the endnote, then tap right back, making it flow better. The endnotes and annotations are positioned well – some ebooks have issues with endnotes, meaning you have to wait 30 seconds for the book to ‘catch up’ to you before you can return to the text, but not here. The only issue I had was with the facsimile of Q1 being too small to read on my phone, but larger ebook devices shouldn’t have that problem.

The scholarship here is good – Weis’ introduction is informative without overstaying its welcome, and the text fuses together Q1 and Q2 in ways that make sense (and are explained throughout), making this a very readable Romeo And Juliet. I suspect it was chosen to debut the ebook editions simply as it was one of the more recent books – formatting books like these doesn’t come quickly – and would not be surprised if Coriolanus, which came out in 2013, is the next one we see. In any case, those looking to dip their toes into Critical Editions of Shakespeare’s plays or just wanting a good readable ebook Romeo and Juliet should greatly enjoy this edition.

Takasugi-san’s Obento, Vol. 1

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By Nozomi Yanahara. Released in Japan by Media Factory, serialization ongoing in the magazine Comic Flapper. Released in North America by Digital Manga Publishing.

I must admit, as I got further and further into this series, it kept reminding me of a Hakusensha shoujo. The art style and tendency towards tinny textual comments in particular, not to mention that one of the characters is a straight up Expy of Shinobu from Teru Teru x Shonen. And sure enough, the author worked for Hakusensha for years doing one-volume short series for LaLa and LaLa DX before starting this series, her longest, for Comic Flapper. Flapper is sort of a seinen title, but in practice tends to be ‘shoujo for adult males’ a lot of the time. And for this title, the adult male is also the star of the show, as the titular Takasugi takes in his 12-year-old cousin after her mother dies.

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(The cover art has been slightly changed for the print edition, but this is the only image I could find.)

It’s honestly really hard not to compare this to Bunny Drop. Takasugi-san’s Obento has an awkward single male, around 31, who ends up being the relative who takes in a quiet and closed-off child still grieving for the death of her parent. Things are awkward but they slowly begin to bond and forge a life together, with the help of his workplace friends, one of whom begins to have a major crush on him. Takasugi seems to be somewhat bad at reading people’s hearts, despite having a Ph.D in Geography (I agree with Anna from Manga Report, by the way, clearly Cultural Anthropology is what’s implied here). Luckily, he improves over the course of the volume to a certain extent.

The interesting thing here is that he and Kururi, his cousin, end up bonding over their shared love of bentos, which his aunt made for him when he was growing up and then continued to make for Kururi when she was growing up. Kururi really comes alive when she’s comparison shopping and stressing over food prices, which are really important to her (to an extent her obsession with food almost reads like a function of her grief, but I think a lot of it was there to begin with). This is not a foodie manga by any means – you get no recipes, and will have to google to see what Kimpira Burdock is, as there are no translation notes – but the food seems to help tie everything together, both with Takasugi’s new family and with his friends and colleagues.

The series is seven volumes and still going in Japan. It’s also, unlike Bunny Drop, not scanlated and spoilered to hell and back. Which makes it all the more awkward that the first volume ends by showing us that 12-year-old Kururi has a giant crush on her 31-year-old cousin, and is drawing charts to see if they can get legally married. I’m hoping the series backs away from this pairing eventually – there is a running gag of everyone thinking Takasugi is a horribly creepy pervert that I had thought was there to show people the title wouldn’t go that way, and Kosaka (the colleague who has a crush on him) is adorable and I really want to see that relationship develop instead. But I can’t deny that this is Japan, and it’s possible that the manga might go down that road eventually. So if Bunny Drop burned you, consider yourself warned.

Overall, though, this was cute and adorable, and I managed to like all the characters quite a bit. I want to see Kururi grow and open up to others, and of course I want to see them eat more food. I will be checking out the next volume of this series (Due out in May, theoretically).

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin, Vol. 4

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By Yoshikazu Yasuhiko; Original Story by Yoshiyuki Tomino and Hajime Yatate; Mechanical Design by Kunio Okawara. Released in Japan by Kadokawa Shoten, serialized in the magazine Gundam Ace. Released in North America by Vertical, Inc.

There are spoilers in this review for this volume of Gundam, though not future ones.

As you might imagine by the subtitle of this particular volume, our heroes finally reach Jaburo and are able to have the ship refitted. What’s more, surprise, everyone decides to enlist… though not everyone is happy about this. In the meantime, though, this is still Gundam, which means we get to experience the horrors of war, the death of beloved crew, and the ‘good guys’ behaving in a way that makes them look just as bad as the ‘bad guys’.

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I dpo wonder sometimes how much Yasuhiko is writing for new readers unfamiliar with things (like me), and how much of this is paced towards folks who know what’s going to happen from having watched the TV series. I ask this because Lieutenant Matilda, who walks around White Base with every male salivating around her, is basically a perfect soldier, and chose a job in the supply corps as it’s the best way she can serve in this time of need, is just walking around wearing a sign saying “Hi, I am going to die”. (One can argue that Ryu is as well, but he’s been around from the start. Indeed, Ryu and Matilda’s deaths being so close together was rather startling to me, and felt oddly paced.) I do wonder if Matilda’s foreshadowing was done deliberately as the author knew it wouldn’t be a surprise. In any case, she is a terrific character.

Speaking of which, I liked the differing reactions to the deaths of Matilda and Ryu. After Ryu dies, Hayato has a bit of an emotional breakdown, and Amuro tries to snap him out of it with a rousing speech and a “snap out of it” punch. Unfortunately, Amuro is still really emotional himself, so the whole thing degenerates into a fight. Later on, we meet Lt. Woody, who is in charge of the refit at Jaburo, and also Matilda’s fiancee. After Amuro tries to apologize for being unable to save her, Woody gives him the rousing speech he should have given to Hayato, with the backing of more maturity and experience. It was nice to see.

Not that experience means everything here. I had wondered why the kids were being SO horrible and obnoxious throughout the first half of this volume, then I got to Part Two, where they essentially save the day. These are war orphans, and they’re also little brats, but they’re smart as whips, and I will take a little unrealism in my story for the sake of them being awesome and getting rid of almost all those bombs within just a few minutes. This allowed Jaburo to get the jump on the Zeon attack, headed by Char (who is fantastic, and fails only due to a combined effort from Woody and Amuro) and Garcia (who is a cartoon villain who gets his cartoon villain comeuppance, though it’s worth noting that the series shows how dangerous cartoon villains can be when ordering actual troops to their deaths).

It will be interesting to see where things go from here. There’s several open plot threads, and not just in regards to the war. Amuro clearly has some type of PTSD, and getting psychotropic drugs from the medical crew at Jaburo so they can try and see if he’s a Newtype isn’t helping. Meanwhile, Bright and Mirai continue to get closer, despite her having a fiancee (something Bright reacts poorly too). At one point it looks as if he’s reading her thoughts, and I’m not sure if that’s deliberate or not. Volume 5 is called Char & Sayla, though, so I expect it will build on the revelation we got at the end of this volume. In any case, this is a series that everyone should be reading, and each volume builds on the last to make a real epic.

Let’s not talk Yokusaru Shibata dressing Sayla up as a buxom maid in the extras, though, which merely served to remind me why 81Diver isn’t licensed over here.