All My Darling Daughters

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By Fumi Yoshinaga. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Melody. Released in North America by Viz.

I will admit that I’m a little behind in my reading of Yoshinaga compared to other manga bloggers. I’ve read Ooku, and think it’s excellent so far, but Antique Bakery and Flower of Life are on my ‘when I get some spare cash’ list, and I was mostly unfamilar with her until recently.

That may change if her other books are as good as this one was. All My Darling Daughters is a short 1-volume book she wrote for Hakusensha, published in their gateway shoujo/josei magazine Melody, which features both younger shoujo titles for their Hana to Yume imprint and older josei works for their Jets Comics imprint. This title (and Ooku, which also runs in Melody) falls into the latter category.

The bookend characters are Yukiko, a 30-year-old salarywoman living at home, and her 50-year-old mother, who has recently fought a battle with cancer. The familial relationship between them is not only obvious, but also well written. Yoshinaga doesn’t really beat us about the head with temper tantrums and storming out of rooms (even though both those things happen), and the book feels very realistic as a result.

As the book continues, we see Yukiko and her family’s friends and old schoolmates, and I gradually came to realize that Yukiko is probably one of the happiest and most together characters in the entire book. This comes as a surprise, as she tends to walk through it with a perpetual scowl, but her job (never shown, only inferred) and relationship (misunderstood by many of her friends, but her guy seems very nice) show she’s come through life well.

Many others who’ve reviewed this have touched on the longest story here, which deals with a sweet young woman trying to reconcile falling in love and the words of her old grandfather, but the one that hit closest to home for me was the fourth, which starts with Yukiko reading a yearbook showing two old middle-school classmates. She sends them a letter catching up, as she hasn’t spoken to them in ages.

This leads to a flashback narrated by Saeki, one of the girls, in which we see Yuko, the other one, discussing her hopes and dreams, and how she’s going to change things and make the world better for women. And then, over the course of the rest of the story… that just doesn’t happen. We see Saeki as an adult gradually realize things that her childhood self didn’t pick up on regarding Yuko’s abusive childhood, and then we see her meet Yuko as an adult, now with a husband, and the wasted potential hits us full in the face.

The final image of that chapter, with Saeki reading Yukiko’s letter and crying, was for me the saddest and best page of the entire manga.

Luckily, we get a more hopeful chapter to end on, returning to Yukiko and her mother, and also touching on her mother’s own daughter relationship. Words taken to be deliberate cruelty are shown to have far subtler reasons, and the whole thing ends with a fantastic “I Love You”… even if those words are never said.

At times haunting, and at times very sweet, this book isn’t easily classifiable. It even has some occasional humor, and I love Yoshinaga occasionally slipping into caricature when she’s drawing Yukiko’s snarling face. I’d love to see more titles like this from Viz, be they by Yoshinaga or someone else.

Oishinbo – Izakaya: Pub Food

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By Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Big Comic Spirits. Released in North America by Viz.

Ah, the final volume of Oishinbo Viz has planned. It’s been a great ride. I’ve certainly learned a lot more about food. And this volume is filled with little gems that make this series what it is.

One thing it doesn’t have, however, is a battle between Yamaoka and his father, Yuzan. I have to admit I’m almost relieved, as seeing those two screaming at each other can be very trying. Still, the battles were always exciting, and notably, in the ones we saw over here, our heroes lost most of them. It was very telling that youth does NOT beat experience in this manga most of the time.

The original manga is 103 volumes and still running, so Viz decided to release some volumes from Shogakukan’s reprints in Japan, which collect them into volumes separated by theme. (This particular reprint is Volume 12 in Japan.) This means that we’ve been treated to scattershot characterization, as we move from Yamaoka and Kurita being new colleagues on their paper to love rivalries to their marriage to their children without actually seeing a proposal, wedding, or birth.

However, even if the focus is always the food, we do still care about the characters, and we get some lovely final chapters here. One part I particularly liked was in a chapter dealing with Yamaoka getting offered a big job managing the food division of a multinational – one that comes with the string of his having to marry Mariko, who is Yuko’s rival for most of the first 45 volumes.

He is rather startled by this, and even more startled when a crushed Yuko (who is out on a date with Yamaoka’s own rival) suggests it would be good for his career if he married Mariko. We then cut to a shot of Yamaoka, Yuko, and the rival all looking depressed and upset, but (of course) not saying anything. Luckily, Yamaoka uses sardines to show that he would not feel right being handed a major food division just like that.

Another chapter takes place just after Yuko has delivered twin babies. She and Yamaoka are discussing naming them, and decide to split the name choices between them. It’s a surprise to see Yamaoka take this so seriously – but then, Japan places far more emphasis on a good name being absolutely necessary for a child’s development than the West would. Naming a child is serious business. Naturally, there’s a brief fight, but after some nice deep-fried oysters the children are named and all is well.

As you can see from those previous two examples, no matter how much characterization there may be, it’s all about the food. This volume is devoted to food related to the ‘izakaya’, the pub-like establishments seen all over Japan. They generally have more filling food than most regular old bars in Japan, but the food tends to be simple and uncomplicated, the better to reward a drunk salaryman after a long day.

And in a nice callback to a previous volume, we end the series with sake, as a young actor is having difficulty getting the right expression when he drinks sake on the set and needs Yamaoka to show him what the true joy of sake at an izakaya is like.

I’m very pleased that this series was brought over here, and even though it’s finished the format is such that Viz could do future volumes if they so choose (hint: sales would help this along). There are 48 reprint “a la carte” volumes in Japan, so they aren’t exactly running out of material. In the meantime, these volumes are an excellent overview of one of the most popular manga in Japan.

Sunshine Sketch Volume 4

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By Ume Aoki. Released in Japan as “Hidamari Sketch” by Houbunsha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Manga Time Kirara Carat. Released in North America by Yen Press.

Sunshine Sketch is very good at what it does. It wants to be a cute and funny slice-of-life 4-panel comic about high school students at an art school, and that’s exactly what it is.

It’s certainly cute. The characters are stereotypes, but that’s not necessarily a drawback as long as an artist uses them well. Miyako, for example, is the spunky, energetic girl of the group, but can also be obnoxious when the situation requires it, or the spacey one, and of course it’s pointed out by the author that she’s the smartest and most talented of the group, despite her personality.

We do get two new characters in this volume, as the year passes and our heroes move up a grade. The new first years are Nori, who’s a computer girl who seems to be another ‘straight man’ character, and Nazuna, who is in the ‘normal’ track (she went to the school as it’s close to home, as opposed to all the others in the manga who are art students) and seems to be low self-confidence girl. Hopefully she will get more than that, as Yuno’s low self-confidence is generally enough for me.

It’s also got some good humor. Nothing here will make you laugh out loud, or even snort, but most of the gags will make you smile, either at the characters or in recognition. One of my favorite gags involved Yuno, our protagonist, procrastinating about what art track she wants to choose for her second year. She puts off making a decision by rearranging her entire apartment. The final gag shows her waking blearily the following morning, moving to get out of bed – and slamming into a wall, as she’d moved her bed.

This isn’t an Okazu guest review, but I would be remiss if I did not mention the yuri tease that the artist is now putting in a bit more. The final part of this volume is a non-4-panel extra comic going into Sae’s ‘rival’ Natsume, and how she met Sae. It’s pretty clear she was crushing immediately, and a combination of that and jealousy of Hiro led to her becoming what she is today. Likewise, Sae and Hiro get the occasional suggestion, notably when Sae says meeting Hiro for the first time, she thought Hiro was like a sugar candy. She says this with a huge blush, and the landlady is in the foreground with a “just kiss already!” expression of annoyance on her face.

Of course, there is one big problem here, and it makes it hard for me to unreservedly recommend this series. The art. I am used to the typical younger than they look moe style by now, but Sunshine Sketch really pushes the envelope. Its characters already look superdeformed, and then they have a further SD form that simply looks as if they were squashed by an anvil. And they really do look quite young. When Miyako is sometimes drawn relatively normally, and we see her substantial chest, it jars with the typical ‘7-year-old squishy face’ we get the rest of the manga. It also means when the author does try to draw sex appeal, it becomes very creepy. See: the cover of this volume for an example.

But if you can get past the moe-overload art, Sunshine Sketch is a good example of what it’s trying to be. Cute, fluffy, funny, and with the occasional life lesson.