Mushishi

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By Yuki Urushibara. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Afternoon. Released in North America by Del Rey.

I will admit, I always enjoy a volume of Mushishi when it comes out. Just like most folk stories, it has a certain relaxed, ambling pace that is suited to the scenic, watercolor art. Even in black and white, the art still looks like it’s being painted rather than drawn. Ginko is a good POV character (calling him the hero seems wrong for this series), and the whole thing is well-written.

And yet, after reading it, I rarely go back to reread. I feel no desire to watch Mushishi AMVs, or read Mushishi fanfics. In fact, I’m not sure there’s much of a Mushishi fandom at all. This is no Naruto, or even a Honey & Clover. It’s a work of art, but you feel like you’re seeing it in a museum. It never comes home and sits above your fireplace.

I had mentioned folktales, and really, that’s probably the best way to describe the plot of Mushishi. As Ginko wanders from village to village, he comes across a new vaguely supernatural phenomenon, all of which lead back to the Mushi that are part of the title. Sometimes Ginko is able to solve things and leave everyone happy, and other times the solution brings only sadness, or at least melancholia. And then he moves on. There’s no regular cast, which is probably just as well as the one-shot characters who are not Ginko tend to look very similar from volume to volume.

If there were any other genre I would ascribe to Mushishi, it would be horror. Not the gore-filled shock horror of many other manga titles, or even the corpse-laden sarcasm of Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. This is the sort of horror you get after waking up from a long nap to discover that weight on your chest is the corpse of a little girl. Disquiet wrapped in a blanket. Several times in this series I’ve debated putting it down, as I don’t really like horror, but it never quite hits the level of doom and destruction that other series do.

The strength of the series, and possibly also its weakness, is its slice-of-life mentality. Here is humanity, laid out for you as Ginko goes around the country. There are cruel people, and loving people, but mostly we see a lot of people trying to get by and distrustful of anything that’s different. The Mushi may not be an evil thing when it comes down to it, but their effects – and what they do to the lives of the people that come on contact with them – are chaotic and frequently undeserved. But then, life goes on, and is rarely fair.

Mushishi takes place in all seasons, and some of the stories are in blazing heat, but for some reason I always think of it as being a winter manga. Cool, yet not frozen, Mushishi trudges along, looking gorgeous and inspiring much thought. But it’s also almost impossible to get close to. This is a series that you can write essays about, but will never hug to your chest and go “Squee!”.

Bamboo Blade Volume 4

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By Masahiro Totsuka and Aguri Igarashi. Released in Japan by Square Enix, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young Gangan. Released in North America by Yen Press.

This volume of Bamboo Blade focuses on the introduction of two new girls, one a minor villain and one a major protagonist. Technically there’s also a lot of Kojiro in it as well, and he does get some nice development as he goes back home for a bit to help at his parents’ store, but honestly, does anyone read Bamboo Blade for the guys? Well, maybe for Dan-kun…

Tama finishes her part-time job, as she now has enough money for her DVD box set. Likewise, Miya-miya is also finished… although that may not have been as voluntary. A girl came by the store and tried to shoplift, and it turns out she’s Miyako’s old rival/nemesis from her middle school days. Reimi seems to specialize in being obsessed with Miyako and making her life miserable, and it might run in the family – her mother looks very familiar.

When Reimi actually tries to get revenge it works out badly. She sends some goons after Miyako’s ‘boyfriend’, but gets the wrong guy, as she can’t even imagine Miyako and Dan together. So the goons go after Yuji. Sadly, these are low-level goons, and Yuji gets rid of them easily in one of the funnier scenes. However, Reimi works far better as a mere absent threat, as we see Miyako being driven slowly insane with worry about what will happen this volume, to the point where everyone is starting to notice.

I continue to be impressed at how the author’s handle Miyako’s relationship with Dan-kun. It’s still mostly one-sided, as Dan is the sort of character that remains a mystery – partially as he’s still a joke a lot of the time, and partly because I think the authors want to keep his thoughts a mystery. Miyako is an open book, though, and one of the things that remains clear is that she really does see Dan’s good qualities and loves him. It helps to soften her up – Miyako’s the sort of person who can get very abrasive very fast.

In the latter half of the book, we see the club trying to track down that elusive 5th member. They find that there’s someone at their school who was fantastic at kendo in middle school, but they only know her first name – Azuma. After an amusing series of ‘wrong person’ comedy mishaps, Kojiro finds out who she is… and why it’s impossible for her to be on the team. She’s brilliant at kendo, but horrible at school, even going so far as to wear fake ‘huge glasses’ so that she’ll be smarter. She studies hard, and takes notes… she’s just BAD. An after-school club would make things even worse.

Too bad, as she’s exactly the member they’re looking for, kicking the asses of the others when they lure her into a practice match. Will they be able to find a solution? Tune in next time! As always, this series balances kendo and comedy perfectly, and makes a great sports manga for people who don’t like sports mangas. Recommended.

Gatcha Gacha Volume 1

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By Yutaka Tachibana. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Melody. Released in North America by Tokyopop.

Having wrapped up one of my major manga obsessions in I Hate You More Than Anyone, it’s time to start talking far too much about another. And what better series than a cute girl who finds herself falling for only jerks? Wait, I normally hate that sort of series. What makes this so different? Basically, two things: the girl is essentially upbeat about her life, and it’s a broad comedy. These are far more important than they may seem, especially the first.

I note, as I do whenever I discuss this series, that I am talking about Tokyopop’s shoujo romantic comedy Gatcha Gacha, and not Del Rey’s shonen boobfest comedy Gacha Gacha. This series was probably never going to sell like Ouran or Vampire Knight, but I still say Tokyopop could have avoided a lot of hideous confusion and people avoiding it if they’d changed the title to something more Western. Gatcha Gacha (with a ‘t’) ran in Hakusensha’s Melody magazine from 2002 to 2008. Unlike Ooku or All My Darling Daughters (also in Melody), which are released in tankobon form under the seinen/josei ‘Jets’ imprint’, Gatcha Gacha is released under the Hana to Yume imprint, and thus is still considered shoujo. Albeit more mature shoujo that what was running in Hana to Yume.

Honestly, though, this could easily have run in HtY in the 1990s. As Hakusensha tries to make its flagship younger and more girly, however, its edgier series head to either BetsuHana (home of Otomen), or Melody.

Its heroine is Yuri Muroi, a cheerful and cute girl who has just broken up with her boyfriend. Her 11th boyfriend. She’s always dumped, and her boyfriends always seem to be the scum of the earth – gambling addicts, drug addicts, etc. Despite this, she tries to keep a cheery attitude, and her fellow classmates seem to, well, tolerate her. That is until she falls for Takihiro Yabe, a tall, bleached blond delinquent who seems to exude an attitude of cool and lazy. Yabe is not boyfriend material either, but his handsome devil-may-care attitude make him very popular with girls. Who want that slut Yuri away from their man!

Yuri’s life does not get any easier, as she also has to deal with the Student Council President, Sho Hirao. He’s a kendo clubber, and handsome, and studious… and has a reputation for hating women, mostly as he simply cannot control saying what he thinks when he sees them. He’s socially inept when it comes to talking to the opposite sex, so everyone is content to admire him from afar. Then he sees Yuri, and immediately finds he has a crush on her. He’s not sure why, but can’t resist talking to her, or coming to her rescue when she’s being attacked.

So the loose girl with the reputation not only is going after the hot delinquent guy, but has the hot President mooning over her! OK, she has to die. (I note that the mangaka does a very good job of leaving it open as to whether Yuri has slept with them all. It’s heavily implied she has… indeed, the author in notes says she worried readers would not like an ‘impure’ heroine… but it’s entirely possible that the rumors are exaggerated. The rumors are very T+ rated, by the way. “That girl has turned every knob in the school… and I don’t mean doors.”)

So far so predictable, and I admit if it were just Yuri and her guys vs. the school, I’d likely have dropped this ages ago. Ah, but there is Motoko. Motoko Kagurazaka, aka the reason this manga was licensed, and the reason it lasted more than a volume in Japan. Motoko is introduced as a beautiful tall leggy blonde. She’s popular, she’s good at sports, and the rumor is that she loves beautiful poetry and only listens to classical music. Yuri even sees a classmate confessing to her! And then notices the Motoko is not, in fact, paying attention to the confession, but is looking at the legs and butts of the girls doing gym outside.

Yes, Motoko is not what her reputation would have. A reputation that is quickly lost, by the way. She is loud, she is rude, she likes sports chants, fish sausage, and her general method of dealing with jerks is a kick in the head… followed by several more kicks while they are down. She also hates seeing violence against woman, and finds herself defending Yuri from some thugs trying to blackmail her into starring in some porn films.

Yuri and Motoko have the classic odd friendship beloved by both Western and Eastern readers. Yuri is short, cheerful, busty and dense. Motoko is tall, grumpy, flat-chested, and very observant. Despite Motoko’s insistence on calling Yuri Lackey #2 (Lackey #1 is a bespectacled geek who knew Motoko’s past from before), they quickly become close. In fact, Yuri quickly learns Motoko’s tragic past. We think. Yuri discovers that Motoko’s little sister died, and that’s why she’s always looking at young girls. So tragic… except, as Yabe points out, Motoko doesn’t have a younger sister. But hey, at least now the rumors that Motoko is a lesbian are taken care of!

(Like Yuri’s supposed sexual activities, Motoko’s sexual preference is generally left up in the air. She denies being a lesbian several times, but never shows the slightest attraction to a guy, not even Yabe, who insists he loves her.)

Tragic pasts are a feature of this manga, and we’ll be hearing more about Motoko’s past – both more stuff she makes up and the real one – later on. In this volume, though, we do find that Yuri has two younger brothers but no mother – she died when Yuri was young. So she’s good at cooking and the like. And what’s more, she may have dated a string of losers, but despite this she did gain something from each of them. One boyfriend was a hairstylist, so she’s great at giving girls makeovers. And at the end of the volume, she’s challenged to a kendo duel by one of Yabe’s exes, and she wins that by a clever but rule-abiding trick, noting that she learned some stuff from her boyfriend who was a yakuza. As Motoko notes, “She’s a Frankenstein’s monster of ex-boyfriend talents.”

There’s a lot going on in this volume, but most of the setup is there. Yuri loves Yabe, Yabe (claims) he loves Motoko, Hirao loves Yuri, and Motoko loves watching them be idiots. If this series were as earnest as We Were There or Black Bird, it might be impossible to take. But its broad comedy and over the top violence take the edge off it, and you just sit back and root for Yuri’s life to get better. Which, admittedly, will require Yuri to get better taste in men. Highly recommended.