S.A. Volume 15

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By Maki Minami. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Viz.

Most of this volume sees Hikari and Kei taking a backseat to the rest of the cast, as the author starts to wrap up the various side plots she’s had going on. The one exception is an amusing chapter where Hikari thinks that Kei has eaten a love potion candy, making him overly romantic towards her. This is particularly hysterical given that Kei has been gaga over Hikari since the start of the manga. Needless to say, he decides to milk this for all its worth, stressing Hikari out with his affection, which he normally keeps a clamp on as it embarrasses her. The whole chapter ends with their first mutual, consensual kiss, and it’s lovely.

The rest of the volume gets devoted to the other couples (sans Akira and Tadashi, who have little to do here). Finn takes everyone to her home country, and ends up competing with Alisa for Ryu’s affections – which is especially awkward as Finn has to pretend to be a guy. And then, as we all knew would happen, Hikari finds out Finn’s secret. This is the weak link of the volume, being a very cliched resolution, with a hideous deus ex machina resolving things (the cast seem stunned when they hear it, as if they know how pathetic it is). Oh well, at the end we have another official couple.

Then we move to the strongest part of the volume, which is the one couple that *doesn’t* become official. I’ve enjoyed the pairing of Megumi and Yahiro from the moment it was first thrown at us, if only as it’s a total crack pairing – you sense that Minami saw they were the two main leftovers, and cackled at the idea of them being a couple. Then started to see how she would make it work. As it has some honest thought devoted to both of its participants, it thus *does* work. If only as it’s clear there’s much work to do. Megumi realizes herself how ridiculous it is having a crush on Yahiro, and knows (as does Yahiro) that he’s still too wrapped up in his past feelings for Akira to do anything right now.

And yet there’s just so much that’s wonderfully sweet here. And hilarious. From Megumi’s pathetic attempts to get a boyfriend off the street (and Yahiro laughing and tearing her apart for doing so), to the wonderful image of an insanely angry Yahiro bursting into Akira’s party (and completely ignoring Akira, I note), screaming Megumi’s name and asking if she wanted to make a fool out of him as he drags her off. And this is capped with Yahiro’s commanding (and browbeating) tone as he gets Megumi to sing perfectly. These two chapters are some of the best in the entire manga.

The volume then ends with a chapter about Alisa and Aoi, another crack pairing that works less well, mostly as it’s a last-minute pair the spares type, rather than showing the thought Megumi and Yahiro did. I was amused at Alisa, not knowing Finn’s secret as the others now do, point blank asking “Are you gay?”.

We have two volumes to go, and we still need to wrap up Kei’s grandfather’s issues, so I suspect this may be the last we see of the main supporting cast. If so, it’s a good issue to go out on. Especially recommended if you enjoy seeing shy wallflower in love with villainous jerk played RIGHT.

Why Not KOR? Thoughts on Licensing

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I’ve recently been reading an excellent book called The Star Machine by Jeanine Bassinger. It’s about the Hollywood studios from the late 20s to the early 60s, and how they engineered stars. What’s proving more fascinating is the section on stars that never were – they were attractive, they were talented, they had support… but they never hit it big.

I was thinking of this recently looking at the License Requests from my colleague David Welsh of Manga Curmudgeon. They’re all deserving titles, and publishers should be giving them a chance. But invariably, a lot of those titles are never going to come out professionally in North America. And not just because of pure marketability, although that’s one of the biggest factors.

As an example, let me pick a classic, incredibly influential romantic comedy from the days of Weekly Shonen Jump circa 1984 – in other words, a title running concurrently with the manga Dragon Ball. It’s called Kimagure Orange Road, and is the story of a love triangle between three students, one of whom is protecting a secret – he’s from a family of espers. It ran from 1984 to 1987, totalling 18 volumes. It spawned a very popular anime as well, which has been released in North American by Animeigo (though it is now out of print), and a couple of movies. And it was one of the first big fandoms online in the early to mid 1990s, along with Dirty Pair, Bubblegum Crisis, and Ranma 1/2.

When Ranma fandom took off, most folks thought that KOR would be an obvious pickup for Viz. It wasn’t as hilarious and wacky a comedy, but the romance and love triangle madness were thought to have great potential, especially with titles like Tenchi Muyo and the like hitting it big in anime stores. But it never got picked up. Then, when the U.S. version of Shonen Jump was announced, people though that they’d definitely want a good old-school romantic comedy in there, to balance off all the shonen fighting mangas, and that KOR was an obvious choice. However, no shonen romantic comedies were slated for the Jump magazine, though one or two (notably Strawberry 100%) are coming out over here in volume format.

Well-written title, not a huge number of volumes, a built-in North American fandom… why not KOR? Or, for that matter, any number of titles that *seem* like obvious choices but never made it over here. Well, let’s see.

1) It’s not who comes first, it’s who comes second. KOR was highly influential on manga’s romantic comedies, in particular the waffly teen boy, his tsundere love, and the perky yet jealous other girl sort of thing seen in dozens of manga since then. However, everyone here has now read that story to death. Will they really appreciate seeing an 18-volume manga just because of its historical value? (KOR does have one advantage over many of its followers in that it has a real ending, and resolves its triangle.)

2) Trapped in the 80s. Art marches on, and while KOR’s art is actually quite good, it’s also very much of its time, and it’s been noted that ‘retro’ art can sometimes hurt a title’s sellability. Not that this hurt Dragon Ball, but what about Saint Seiya, or Here Is Greenwood?

3) HardKOR fandom? Uh oh. Everyone loves a show that has a built-in fanbase, but that can be a double-edged sword. KOR has been circulating around for years – the anime was a fansub favorite long before Animeigo put it out over here, and the manga was completely scanlated several years ago. If Viz announced ‘Whimsical Orange Road’ tomorrow, how many would say they aren’t buying it because, let’s say, they ruined the title? Yes, it’s not in the same league as censoring child nudity (Dr. Slump) or renaming the lead character (Case Closed), or even changing one letter in a name for legal reasons (One Piece), but fandom, especially these days, needs very little excuse to NOT buy something. KOR fandom especially, like the female lead they adore, can be prickly.

(As a short aside, several of my friends at Otakon years and years ago found endless amusement in trolling fans of Kimagure Orange Road, talking about how we enjoyed the show but really hated that annoying girl… oh, what was her name… oh, right. Madoka. Generally speaking, the two reactions were a) Anger and outrage, or b) Fans ‘helping’ by telling us we were confusing the names of the two lead females. KOR was one of the first anime fandoms to seriously ‘character bash’, and Madoka vs. Hikaru wars still exist, though since the days of newsgroups have faded considerably. Personally, I like both female leads, but Kyosuke’s indecisiveness, which is far worse in the manga, is really hard to read without wishing him a boot to the head.)

4) The manga creator doesn’t want it licensed. This is not as common now as it was in the old days of 32-page floppies from Viz, when many creators absolutely refused to have their work flipped and reading left to right. That’s less of an issue these days, but there are still many creators who either don’t want North America to see their work at all, or add conditions such as ‘you also have to release my 20 other non-famous titles’ that make things hard to finance. A recent example would be Urasawa’s holding back the license for 20th Century Boys until Monster had finished its run here.

5) It’s a one-hit wonder. Generally speaking, when manga hits it big in North America, the first thing publishers do is find other titles by that artist. Fruits Basket is the perfect example. Yet the creator of KOR, Izumi Matsumoto, had only one other short serialization (called Sesame Street, a title that would HAVE to change to be taken seriously over here), and has been mostly invisible for the last 20 years. (He recently revealed he’s been suffering from a cerebrospinal fluid disease, and hopes to return to manga soon.) So you’re left looking for titles with a similar FEEL to Kimagure Orange Road… a great number of which are already out over here, and have been for years. Back to #1…

I like KOR, and hope people didn’t see this as bashing the title. It just makes a good example to illustrate my point. What, if it’s not the actual quality of the work, makes a title unlicensed? What are those little factors that make a Viz or a Tokyopop or a Del Rey say “We don’t think that we can make this a success” or “various problems prevent this from being released” or even “we have no comment at this time”?

If anyone has any other good examples, please feel free to leave them in the comments. And Viz, if you decide to license KOR tomorrow just to make me look foolish, I’ll be very amused indeed. And will definitely pick up the series. Though I think a wideban might be more sellable. ^_-

One Piece Volume 36

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By Eiichiro Oda. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz.

Last volume was sort of a low ebb for the Straw Hat Pirates, but this one’s not particularly sparkling either. The entire city is out to get them, Galley-La is trying to kill them, and worst of all, Robin returns and it looks like the rumors about her being the assassin are true.

I had forgotten, when this volume first came out in Japan back in 2005, how much distrust still existed towards Robin in the fandom. There were a whole lot of people who were convinced that Oda had tricked us again, and that she was going to turn out to be one of the arc’s Big Bads (Spoiler: she isn’t). Admittedly, fandom was helped along in this by Oda himself, who does a very nice job of making Robin’s motivations murky and suspicious. Zoro points out how she was first working against them, and tries to remain the voice of reason even as Luffy, Nami and Chopper want to believe in Robin.

The one exception to Oda making Robin looks bad and menacing is towards the end of the scene where she tells Sanji and Chopper she’s leaving the crew, where she thanks them and notes that she doesn’t deserve it. In my review of last volume I noted that most of Usopp’s issues stem from his low self-worth. Let’s just say that in the Straw Hat crew, Usopp runs a very faint Number Two behind Robin in the ‘self-hatred’ category. We’ll see a lot more of this in future volumes.

(Speaking of which, I felt so bad for Usopp when I saw the character list at the start of the volume! Poor guy, he’s not even listed as part of the crew now. (Robin will also change starting with 37, but she just gets greyed out, not moved entirely.)

Much of this volume is devoted to action and intrigue, and we get several cool-looking fights. The Straw Hats are generally not very good at convincing Galley-La of their innocence, and their attempts to get in to see the wounded Iceberg are confounded by another secret group, which Robin is a part of, attempting to do the same thing.

It has to be said that the secret identities of CP9 are not particularly surprising, but then they weren’t meant to be. We only knew the group was around for about 3 chapters before they appeared, and the big surprise is that they *are* secret identities, rather than four different people that we’d never seen before who happen to work for the government. (That said, the reveal is really well handled, especially seeing the pigeon just going ‘coo coo’ while Lucci does all the talking.)

And we get a big old cliffhanger as well, as the confrontation between CP9 and Iceberg is interrupted on one side by Luffy and Paulie busting through a wall, and on the other by Zoro, Nami and Chopper entering, more sensibly, through a door. Well, OK, they entered by breaking the door down. Slightly more sensibly. What will happen next? Stay tuned!