Manga the Week of 12/21

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Looking for a last-minute gift for that special someone before the holidays? Why not get them some brand-new manga? There’s a number of titles out this coming week for any type of fan.

Remember Del Rey? When Kodansha split off, for contractual reasons the xxxHOLIC books stayed with the parent. And now we get the penultimate volume in the series, which… well, honestly, it’s lost me by this point. But I’m sure other Watanuki fans ill love it to bits!

As for Kodansha itself, there’s always the third volume of Mardock Scramble. Which is unusually resistant to my glib jokemaking, but possibly I’ll think of something by the time the fourth volume comes around.

Midtown Comics is apparently running late on its wine manga, as they not only have the second volume of international sensation The Drops of God, but also the first volume as well. Sounds like a gift set to me!

Yes, I want to have this be the image for Dorohedoro 5, which is awesome and highly underrated (stop looking for the plot – just let it wash over you), and you should all be buying that. But I just have to give prime position to the 27th and FINAL volume of Fullmetal Alchemist. The whole series has been building to this volume, an it absolutely does not disappoint – one of the best endings to any shonen series in North America. And if you’ve somehow missed the previous 26 volumes, Viz is kindly selling all 27 in a giant box. In fact, the box came out before this individual volume. Lastly, there’s the 7th and 8th volume (or 4th omnibus) of boobs and fights manga Tenjo Tenge, which if nothing else reminds me I still need to read the 3rd.

So what’s in your stocking?

Princess Knight, Vol. 2

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By Osamu Tezuka. Released in Japan as “Ribon no Kishi” by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Nakayoshi. Released in North America by Vertical.

This second volume of Princess Knight continues right where the previous one left off, with Sapphire going from one threat to another. The threats get worse this time around, however. First her girl heart is successfully stolen, leaving Sapphire as a boy (albeit a very shapely boy). And later on, when that heart is stolen as well, Sapphire falls into a coma. Can Tink manage to sort everything out at last? Can Sapphire ever find true happiness? Well, yes, but not before the end of the book. This is high adventure romance, after all.

(I’m not certain why the online images of this book feature different colors on the cover than the actual volumes themselves. Pretend that the picture you see above is far less blue.)

Much as I love Sapphire, and she gets some great things to do here, she does spend a fair amount of time in this volume reacting to others. So I spent a fair amount of time watching her reactions, and was struck by how well Tezuka can convey emotions with minimal effort. Sapphire’s face on the bottom of page 16, when confronted by Prince Franz, is “why must my love hate me”, “why is this happening to me”, and “oh my god, why does he not GET IT” all in one. Without her honest love, worry and despair throughout these pages, the book would suffer greatly.

It has to be said, there is a certain ‘I am writing from week to week with no real thought in mind’ feel to this book. The main antagonist from Volume One, the witch, is dispatched halfway through this book, which seems early to me, and is promptly replaced by the Goddess Venus, who can also do bad things to Sapphire via supernatural means. Likewise, the witch’s spunky and likeable daughter, Hecate (who also dies, which is a shame) is replaced by the spunky yet likeable Friebe, and for a moment I thought there was some reincarnation thing going on, but no. You aren’t really reading Princess Knight for realism, so you have to accept there is a certain ludicrousness here in terms of throwing obstacles in front of the heroine. (And what was with that sudden repentance and suicide of one of the main villains? Sheesh.)

Speaking of Hecate and Friebe, the book is also quite good at presenting some strong and likeable women. Hecate is tied to her mother by more than just blood, and yet is determined to live her own life, rather than one chosen for her by her mother – even if she does grow to like Prince Franz. Likewise Friebe may be the classic ‘searching for a strong man to marry me’ type knight, but this does not diminish her swordfighting skills in any way, and she ends the book still in armor and with sword (as opposed to Sapphire, it must be said). Then there’s the battle at the castle between the male army and their wives (who have given Sapphire sanctuary). It’s filled with amazingly shallow stereotypes, but its heart is in the right place, and it does mock the classic ‘only men are fit to rule’ idea seen in a number of fairy tales.

The thing that summed up the book in my mind was a line of dialogue said by Friebe’s brother Oolong (who is a wonderful character in his own right – after so many royal idiots, it’s a pleasure to see one who plays the role for all it’s worth). When Friebe cries on his shoulder and admits she can’t marry Sapphire as Sapphire is a woman, he laughs and notes that “you can find women as manly as any man in every country”. He’s gently mocking the fact that she zeroed in on Sapphire as her choice, but it also allows us to be more comfortable in Sapphire’s ending, where she finds the Prince and presumably lives happily ever after. Sapphire may go on to be a feminine queen, but there are strong, capable women like her in every kingdom. She is not a rare and precious snowflake. And that’s a good thing.

I’m not sure that Twin Knight (the sequel to the original Princess Knight that ran in Nakayoshi in the late 1950s) is likely to be licensed anytime soon, so this may be the last we see of Sapphire for a while. I’m very happy we got her story, though, and I hope that in the future Vertical can publish more of Tezuka’s ‘children’s’ works, in addition to his gritty adult titles.

Wonder!, Vol. 1

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By Akira Kawa. Released in Japan by Futabasha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Women’s Comic Jour. Released in the United States by Futabasha on the JManga website.

I got blindsided by this one a bit, I will admit. The blurb and cover made it sound a lot fluffier than it actually is, and also that it would be far more about the dog. Now, rest assured that Wonder (the dog) is a large part of this manga, but it’s not a manga *about* a family getting a new dog. That’s just the starting point. What Wonder! gives us is a manga about what it means to be a family, even if it’s non-traditional, and how bonds with other members of that family can affect how we grow and learn – even if we’re adults.

The author of Wonder! is Akira Kawa, an old-school shoujo and josei artist who’s been doing manga since 1968. In the 1970s she was a mainstay at Shueisha’s Margaret magazine, and now that she’s at the age where she can do whatever she wants, she’s at Futabasha drawing manga for their josei magazine for housewives, Jour. Her wikipedia page says that her manga seem to specialize in family, and it shows; this is a well-thought out work. It’s fairly clear from reading it that it was initially conceived as a one-shot; then another chapter was added later, and finally the last two chapters were put in before it got picked up as a ‘series’. This happens a lot, especially in shoujo manga. Thankfully, unlike other examples, we don’t have to be reintroduced to the characters every single chapter.

Wonder, it must be said, starts awkwardly. Its heroine, Kaori, is not particularly likeable at first. We see her drunk on a park bench, pouring out the plot – I mean, her heart – to a stray dog, who turns out to be the titular Wonder. She’s married to Taiyo, but according to her it’s an ‘open marriage’ where both of them are free to date other people. She may think this is what she wants, but it’s fairly clear watching the two of them that this is not making either of them happy. Things are further complicated by the arrival of the dog, who follows her home, and a 9-year-old boy, who arrives when Taiyo’s sister dies. Dies? Or was she killed? It turns out that the boy, Kota, may have seen something suspicious…

For a while I wondered what genre Wonder! actually was. The first chapter combines family drama with mystery, and sees Kaori slowly warming up to Kota, who she clearly did not want living with them at first. There’s also a bit of a supernatural element to it, but it’s very mild – Wonder has a sixth sense for people that can be similar to Lassie at times, and also seems to have lived long beyond what his natural life is. But ‘family drama’ sounds about right – despite the thriller and mystery aspects, this is at heart a story about a family trying to find its footing and deal with everyday life.

Kota becomes the second protagonist starting in Chapter 2, when the series moves forward six years. He’s now in high school, and has grown up to be the star of your typical high school shoujo manga – except he has no girlfriend. He’s just a nice, pleasant, vaguely aloof sort of fellow, good at sports and good at school, but not really understanding other people. (This runs in his family, of course.) The one girl he seems to have a crush on is one that he knows isn’t going anywhere – Kaori, who by now is pregnant with her first child. (This gets brought up a few times in the volume, but I don’t think it’s meant to be squicky – it’s the typical misplaced love bonding kids get sometime). The last half of the book sees him start to make friends… but not with who we think he will. This was the better written half of the book, with some genuinely surprising twists.

Lastly, there’s an unconnected short story afterwards, which is far more serious. It deals with a family whose teenaged son commits suicide. They are stunned, as they had no idea he was anything other than happy. As the mother searches for answers, she discovers that he had been bullied at school… and that bullying in Japan is as hard to prove as ever, with the school doing its best to absolve itself of guilt and also indicate that she and her husband are to blame. There’s no easy answers in this one, just a family trying to deal with their grief, reach out, and hope that they can avoid the same thing happening to their younger daughter. It’s heavy stuff, but again it’s very well done.

There are a few drawback to this volume, of course. Kaori, as I noted, takes a while to become likeable, and in Chapter 2 seriously considers having an abortion when she finds out that she’s pregnant. (She doesn’t. This also has one of the funnier parts of the book, where she notes at work that she’s pregnant and the entire male office staff tenses up before she notes it’s her husband’s baby.) Her husband Taiyo is one of those guys who’s hard to read, typical of such manga where we’re meant to empathize with the heroine, and doesn’t develop as much as I’d like – we do see he has a silly side to him, and certainly he and Kaori love each other in their own way, but I hope future volumes flesh him out. Lastly, their are two timeskips – six years after the first chapter, and about a year and a half after the second – which can make it a bit hard to connect.

That said, I was surprised how much I really enjoyed and connected with this manga. The characters are well-written, they all have their own voice. Kaori is a fun, imperfect heroine, yet you can clearly see why guys would fall for her. And like adopted mother, like son – Kota is clearly hot high school crush material, but needs to be able to get along with other people rather than holding them at arms length. the series is still running in Japan 8 years later, and has 14 volumes out to date. A few future volumes feature Kota with what appears to be other high school children, so I suspect I will get my wish. Wonder! is a great manga for adult women who grew up reading high-school shoujo, but now want to read manga by the same writers about grown-ups as well. Definitely recommended.