Reading Manga

Reading the first part of volume two of "The Poe Clan," a story that details how Edgar and Maribel came to be raised by vampires, and their foster parents.

Sheila (シーラ) (Syrah?) believes she is going to an engagement ceremony.  This is the ritual, instead, where the Old Lady Hannah imparts Vampire Energy into new recruits.

While teaching Lone Wolf and Cub volume one in my Japan 323 class, I was checking the translation versus the original.  What bothered me is that Ogami Itto and Daigoro's origin story, where they escape from the police (and the Yagyu), was printed in my Japanese edition as the first story (furthermore, a totally different set of stories ran in my volume 1 [from Futaba/Action Comics]); in the Dark Horse edition, it comes at the end of Vol. 1.  The Dark Horse edition makes much more sense.  There is a lead-up to the origin story that is more satisfying.  It feels like a flashback but properly position.  In my Japanese edition, the stories that follow the origin story have little to do with the origin story.  The problem I faced was whether to make an issue out of this during class.  Must the origin come first?

I had picked up a complete edition in Jinbocho, a used copy released by Futaba/Action Comics in the 1980s, during my last visit to Japan.  When I looked at the first (Japanese) volume I was shocked because the order of the stories was nothing like what you see in the Dark Horse edition.  Suspicious, I checked for publication dates in the volume.  Usually, Japanese reprints are good because they will indicate at the end of the story when (and where) it was originally published.  Unfortunately, my giant-sized edition did not do that; nor did it have a colophon with originally published information. 

I schlepped out of dealing with this in my class, but I did take the occasion to write to the editor of the Dark Horse series, a Mr. Tim Ervin, who kindly responded to my query.  Although we haven't settled the issue, he did relate this information to me in an email which I will paraphrase.  According to Mr. Ervin, the Dark Horse edition (all 28 volumes), are based on the bunko version published by [author-writer] Koike's own publishing imprint, Koike Shobo; thus, the order of the stories as well as the size of the English edition matches what Koike himself (re)published.  Koike's volume 1 (matching the Dark Horse one) was originally printed in 1995.  Mr. Ervin supposed that the edition I had might have been re-ordered according to the wishes of its publisher or the original publication date of the stories, but he could not confirm that.  Regardless, as Mr. Ervin says, "All of our relations regarding Koike's and Koike/Kojima's books are directly with Koike himself, so rest assured that what we publish is directly in line with his wishes."

I'm going to Japan next month so I'll see what I can find out about the publication order of the original series, but I was thrilled to receive some feedback on this from Dark Horse and thanked Mr. Ervin for taking the time to write to me.

Boy, I'm awful about consistently posting to this blog.  But I have been reading manga, I promise.  In the last week of my class, I started reading Hagio's The Poe Clan (Poh no ichizoku、ポーの一一族), which was tough to get into, but after the first 20-30 pages or so, I found to be quite fun.  Still reading Volume 1 (of 3).  My goal is to finish volume 1 by the end of June.  I typically read one of the stories over 1-2 days in downtime.  Sometimes the stories are long, like the most recent one I read, called "Penny Lane."  The same-sex love element or (doosei-ai, 同性愛) of course is intriguing all the more because a young girl, named Maribel, also plays an important role in the first volume's emphasis on Edgar (vampire) and Alan (human).  Maribel forms a third point in their love, making it a love triangle.  Even after she is dead (sorry, SPOILERS), she continues to haunt Edgar.  "Penny Lane" is interesting because while Alan is gestating as a vampire (sorry, SPOILERS), Edgar immediately turns to his feelings for Maribel, thus, the wrinkle in the story at this point is that Alan may function as a kind of replacement (or:  upgrade) for Maribel.  I never understood Edgar's feelings for Maribel in the first story, the origin story "The Poe Clan" until I reached this point.  In the first story, Maribel seems too childish to be of any real interest to Edgar, who, although his body is 14 it is clear that he is much older:  why would a mature man indulge in a fantasy of love with pure, innocent Maribel.  Is he merely going through the motions as Maribel's "guardian"?  By "Penny Lane," I think it is clear that Edgar has trauma associated with Maribel -- not only his connection with her as a fellow locked-inside-a-child's-body frustration -- but that Edgar was the one who initiated her into the Clan, and at that, poorly.  He is somehow responsible for her weakened state as a vampire.  The clues in "Penny Lane" suggest (to Edgar) that it is his being "different" (--> homosexual?).  So, in this story, it is crucial that Alan awaken from his sleep.  If Alan dies, then Edgar knows that his foster father's claim is right.  He is damaged goods.

And for some reason I cannot understand, Edgar ravages another family and adopts a little girl, Liddell.  Probably fodder for a new story...

I'll post an image or two of the striking layouts from "Penny Lane" that demonstrate Hagio's skill at portraying the struggles for interiority.
 
(The first:  Edgar blames himself for what he's done...twice.)
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(In the next spread, Edgar blames himself using the words of others, and reveals an interesting aspect of his past as a young vampire.)

I've been getting through Sadamoto's manga adaptation of Evangelion.  Now to up Vol. 8.  My feeling that Sadamoto's weakness is his inability to depict combat.  Vols. 1 and 2 weren't particular spectacular in terms of combat -- after all, Shinji just battles the 1st Angel in a straight line dashing towards him.  It shouldn't have been that difficult, but even then, I was left wondering just exactly is happening on the battlefield.  The combat depiction seems to center less on the actual positions of the combatants, and, instead, on the after effects of a blow.  After a blow is landed, a field reverberates; or, is broken open.  Unless you've seen the anime, you wouldn't understand the flow of fighting and what something blows up when it does.

Vol. 7 and 8 are even worse.  You have multiple Evas on the battlefield doing all kinds of crazy combat stuff.  Vol. 8 has Shinji's Eva-01 ripping out the S2 engine from the flat-angel but you never understand that until, at one scene, with Misato and crowd observing the battle, she says, "What is THAT?" commenting on the orb that Eva-01 has in its lap.  Before it eats it.  (Close-up on the eating again destroys the sense of the action and instead you just get this creepy "ewww" feeling...but still, you pretty much have to know what is happening as you read the comic.)

What Sadamoto does well is the subtle shades of perception or awakening in his characters.  This seems to be the limit of his drawing ability, because when he needs to be explicit (as when he's doing combat), it falls flat.

While reading "They Were Eleven" I recently came across this image which reminded me of a section of Matt Thorn's interview with Hagio Moto about how in shojo manga you often have a full-length body of a (male) character.  Hagio suggested that manga readers would "color in" the costume for fun.  I wonder if this image is what she is talking about.  (Note:  the right long panel)

After waiting a few weeks for interlibrary loan to acquire the oop "Four Shojo Stories" (retails for $200 on amazon.com?!?), I finally got my copy albeit in somewhat dehabilitated form.  It was worth it.  To my surprise, the Hagio Moto "They Were Eleven" (Juuichinin ga iru) was included.  Amazing considering that VIZ published it in its own volume (that too is oop).  I wonder if that volume has an additional Hagio story?

Fans of sci-fi would love this story.  Setting:  intergalactic exam requires its top examinees (all young people, here, all "men") to carry out some kind of a real-world rescue operation.  These ten protagonists are augmented in number by one mysterious addition that makes the test harder.  Is the Eleventh Man a spy or saboteur?  With 53 days to go, the crew of the "White," a disabled spaceship hurling towards the sun, must figure out how to work as a team to save themselves, and, more importantly, to pass the exam.  All of this a strangely female male character as one would expect in a work by Hagio Moto.  Funny and light with cool sci-fi puzzle moments.  Throw in paranoia and claustrophobia and you have a really fun manga novella.  "Ten Little Indians" in space with gender issues.  Who could ask for more?

I've been reading an article that ties together Shojo manga with the Evangelion anime series.

The commentator points out certain interesting characteristics of the genre and how they manifest even in a robot anime like Evangelion.

One interesting characteristic is what he calls, "Noise" (noisu). Usually these are little outbursts of thought from characters that have nothing to do with the main dialog. An example I can think of in the Evangelion manga is when Misato rescues Shinji from the first Angel attack (when she was supposed to be picking him up from the train station); they nearly get blown up when the government drops a bomb on the Angel and their car rolls around. Misato and Shinji come out of the car unscathed, but Misato blows a fuse when she sees that her new dress is in tatters. It's a little aside she has. With herself. That's noise.

Sometimes the noise takes on a visual quality -- just random letters or roman letters in the background (instead of background proper). In anime, this commentator notes how "radio broadcasts" (radio calisthenics, e.g.) play in the background against a scene that doesn't really need this "noise." The noise is a manneristic quality of shojo manga, he argues.

So that's why it's in there! :)

Last night I finished the final two chapters (story) of the book; "X+Y" is by far the best story of the three-story series.  Not only does it reach a climax in typical shojo manga fashion, it does so with a lot of flair and humor.  Perhaps a little heavy on denouement, all the loose ends are tied up and in Hagio's sci-fi future of an ideal world, every character, even the shallow Merime, is neatly resolved.  Little flourishes of humor, sometimes out of place within the serious narrative, show an author in total control of her narrative and having fun with it.

The final image in the book neatly symbiolizes the future Mori and Tacto have.  Brilliant.

Plus, cross-dressers are explained and we become comfortable with all of the sex-changes.  Thank God for that.

Having read now 3/4 of the book, I am blown away.  While the first story is good, the following two stories build on the setting and expand it to something much larger.  The "Unicorn" genetically-engineered race is the Alien Other that one sees in Star Trek (Vulcans, 6 or 9 Borg, etc.).

A, A' is Star Trek asking the question in a different way:  if Roddenberry uses Vulcans say to ask the question "What does it mean to be human?" then Hagio uses these asexual/polysexual Unicorns to ask, "What does it mean to be Male?" or "...Female?"  Love is the driving force here, instead of the Star Trek desire for The Truth Beyond Exploration.

I recently discovered the translator's website, which looks quite interesting (an interview with the author no less)

http://matt-thorn.com/

Hagio Moto came recommended to me by a colleague who explained how important Hagio was in terms of developing the shojo manga (girl's manga), particularly shonen no ai (boy's love).  Unfortunately, she's relatively untranslated into English, so I hunted high and low to find something that might be meaningful to my class.

What I found was A, A' (A, A Prime):  shojo manga meets sci-fi.

I've read the first chapter and found it pretty good.  Setting:  space exploration phase of human future history.  Given the dangers of this kind of work, the explorers often have themselves cloned so they can regenerate and get back to work to colonizing.  The story centers around Abby who is almost over tweendom and has a fatal accident, thus setting into motion the activation of her clone, who is 3 years younger (16).  The story centers around the love affair that was cut short with a good-looking, boofy-hair guy; since she has lost 3 years of her life, she comes back into his life without any feelings for him (or anyone, for that matter -- clones are kinda cold people); he agonizes over the lost love; she, indiffierent.  The idea of criss-crossing a person's getting back in touch with their (romantic) feelings with the device of a clone's coming to grip with her humanity makes good reading.  The art is stylish -- makes me regret spending money and time reading that previous NISHI Keiko story collection.  Hagio has trippy 70s sci-fi clothes and set designs, frozen planets with snow plants, and beautiful glacier landscapes.  Pretty neat so far.