Pop Culture Gadabout

Pop Culture Gadabout

( 12/15/2009 06:04:00 AM ) Bill S.

HOLIDAY FOR PLUGS: Have I mentioned that copies of the plus-size comic soap opera Measure by Measure would make a delightful holiday gift for the incurable romantic in your life? Or that most of the online booksellers are still making it possible for you to get a copy delivered by Xmas?

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( 12/13/2009 10:22:00 AM ) Bill S.

“CC CORP HASN’T CHANGED A BIT, HAS IT?” Wasn’t initially sure just how newbie friendly Tokypop’s .hack//Legend of the Twilight would be, as the manga mini-series is only part of a massive multi-media franchise. Featured in a series of novels, animé and games, .hack concerns an elaborate virtual online setting called the World, where a variety players become involved in a series of adventures. From what I can tell, Twilight appears to be the first manga treatment of this universe, though Tokyopop has also released other manga volumes like .hack//Alcor. Originally issued in three smaller tankōbon paperbacks, the 21-chapter story has just been collected in a larger, more economical package encompassing all three volumes.

Twilight tells the tale of Shugo and Rena, brother-and-sister twins who are brought into the World when they win a pair of chibi (small person) avatars once used by the legendary dot hackers (whose original adventures, the newcomer supposes, have been documented in one of the .hack novels). Their explorations of the World lead them into hooking up with several other players, most notably Mireille, an acquisitive collector who explores the World looking for rare items, and Ouka, a busty “career werewolf.” When an ethereal figure named Aura gives Shugo an artifact named the Twilight Bracelet, the sibs’ adventure begins in earnest.

At first, the twins’ interactions with the World are random and primarily devoted to helping the duo build up strength to get them through their adventure: battles with monsters, puzzles, visits to a haunted house, and so forth. But by the second volume, a somewhat satiric story takes shape. Our gang is pursued by a group of system cops called the Cobalt Knight Brigade, who’ve been charged by CC Corporation (the company responsible for the World’s creation and ongoing maintenance) with making sure any unexpected irregularities in the system are eradicated.

Shugo’s bracelet is considered one such anomaly, and our protagonists need to unravel its secrets before Brigade leader Kamui wipes them out of the World. Kamui is particularly interested in Zefie, a waifish piece of system-created artificial intelligence who appears to be connected to the mysterious Aura. To the no-nonsense Kamui, the “vagrant AI” is also a bug because the free-thinking entity can’t be controlled by the World’s system administrators. Fourteen-year-old Shugo initially is reluctant to go along with the World’s elaborate game, but he soon becomes protective of Zefie.

As Twilight entirely takes place in its virtual World, we’re only given a glimpse of the protagonist avatars’ real-life counterparts in a two-page spread at the end of the book. And even here, tellingly, there’s no key as to who is who. The primary focus is on the world of the World, and though Shugo, in particular, displays character growth through the course of the mini-series, we’re never shown how this impacts him once he takes off his virtual reality headset.

Writer Tatsuya Hamazaki handles the elaborate .hack reality by providing enough background information throughout that I had no trouble following the general storyline, though I’m sure that fans of the franchise will get more out of the side details than I did. His treatment of his early teen-aged protagonists strikes me as convincing (the series is rated aged 13+), though Tokyopop indicates in its cover rating box that there’s some “mild fanservice” in the series: slightly titillating poses of Rena and the sexy wolf-girl Ouka, in particular. It doesn’t interfere with the story, though some manga newcomers might be taken aback by it.

Rei Idumi’s art efficiently carries the story, though at times -- as when our crew enter a disreputable corner of the World called the Net Slums -- you wish he’d pushed the setting a little more. We’re told that the Slums look choppy and broken, but aside from two establishing panels, we’re not provided much of this background. (I suspect that the anime adaptation of Twilight, which started a year after the manga series began its serialization, provides more visual information on this front.) Still, we’re given enough to get a sense of the various pieces of World that Shugo and Rena visit.

In the end, I found myself entertained enough by this .hack manga excursion to want to pick up any other graphic novel spin-offs, though not so invested in the concept that I feel the urge to go exploring the novels or other story formats. Perhaps if I was more of a gamer, I’d be interested in exploring all the nooks and crannies, but as a simple dabbler, I’m content to stick with the occasional manga. I've got a copy of .hack/Alcor on the to-be-read pile, though. Think I’ll move it closer to the top.

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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( 12/09/2009 07:15:00 AM ) Bill S.

MID-WEEK MUSIC VIDEO: After reading and reviewing the newest Tank Girl comic, I couldn't help pulling out some Gorillaz music:

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( 12/09/2009 07:06:00 AM ) Bill S.

“HOW ARE WE FOR NUKES?” “Now with added swearing,” the cover to the first ish of the newest Tank Girl (Titan) mini-series trumpets. And that little bit of hype is enough to let readers know that their Aussie heroine hasn’t change a bit since Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin first let her loose on the outback. Originally serialized in the Brit comic mag 2000 A.D., Tank Girl: Skidmarks has been colorized and uncensored for its four-issue mini-. Good news for fans of TG's brand of wanton mayhem.

The plot for this outing turns out to be an ultra-violent parody of Cannonball Run/Death Race 2000. Our hardnosed heroine has joined an illegal cross-continental race to win the money for an operation that’ll bring her friend Barney out of a skakeboard accident coma. The rule-free competition is peopled by disposable caricatures like a souped-up cart of club-wielding golfers and a Burt Reynolds lookalike. Accompanied by her boyfriend Booga, a talking mutant kangaroo, Tank Girl enters the race little knowing she’s being pursued by a mysterious figure who speaks in futuristic Abo gibberish. Car and tank crashes -- plus at least one decapitation -- ensue. Oh, and one guy gets a grenade stuck in his mouth.

Scripted by Martin and illustrated by Rufus Dayglo with plenty of flair -- though he doesn’t make our heroine look quite as punk-y as original artist Hewlett did -- Skidmarks proves a worthy successor to earlier adventures. Next ‘un, we’re promised a look back into TG’s school days. Now that should prove an edifying reading experience.

Labels: modern comics

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( 12/05/2009 07:33:00 AM ) Bill S.

WEEKEND PET PIC: Here’s another pic of a snoozing Xander Car, taken when our Ohio friends were a-visiting:

THE USUAL NOTE: For more cool pics of companion animals, please check out Modulator's "Friday Ark."

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( 12/03/2009 05:58:00 AM ) Bill S.

RICE BALLS A popular foodee manga, with over a hundred volumes in its native Japan, Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki’s Oishinbo tells the story of Yamaoka Shiro, a slacker journalist who’s been handed the assignment of creating the “Ultimate Menu” -- one which exemplifies Japanese cuisine in all its facets. Originally created in 1983, the series has been serialized in Big Comic Spirits ever since. To keep American readers from being too daunted by 25-plus years of continuity, Viz Signature has begun printing “a la carte” collections of Oishinbo, selecting highlights from the series and clumping ém together by topic. The most recent volume in the series is The Joy of Rice, which examines all aspects of this stable of the Japanese diet.

Thus, our reporter hero gets involves in a debate over the merits of brown vs. white rice with a burly woman’s judo camp leader; helps a would-be bride learn the proper technique for storing and cooking rice; oversees a contest on the best “companion of rice” and gets involved in a rice ball competition against a rival paper which is promoting a “Supreme Meal” as a counter to Yamaoka’s “Ultimate Menu.”

Along the way, we’re treated to discourses on the way that antibiotics can sneak into “organically” farmed rice, on the role rice plays in Japan’s economy and the cultural importance of maintaining a distinctive national cuisine. This didactic material is incorporated into Oishinbo much more smoothly than you might expect -- in large part thanks to our hero’s know-it-all persona. The young gourmet has a knack for pissing off both his bosses and the powerful would-be epicures he meets as a part of his never-ending assignment. While he may not be as arrogantly obnoxious as the hero of Iron Wok Jan!, he definitely has his comic moments.

As an added complication, the man overseeing the rival paper’s “Supreme Meal” is our hero’s estranged father Kaibana. The old man shows up in the book’s concluding three-part rice ball match, but in this volume at least the dysfunctional family dynamics are downplayed.

Because the stories in the “a la carte” set are cherry picked from the series’ full run, the editors occasionally need to insert footnotes to explain any continuity issues. Fellow Tozai News reporter Kurita Yuko, for instance, later marries our hero, but in all of the tales included in Rice, this hasn’t occurred yet. In one story, though, a discussion of the best season to eat oysters relates to the duo’s planned wedding date. It’s an amusing piece that again shows the effect the environment can have on food flavor, even if it’s the one story which strays from the book’s overarching rice motif.

The art by Akira Hanasaki is cartoony (there’s a character in the series, Tomii Tomio, who at times looks like something Peter Bagge might drawn in his frantic mode), except when it comes to renderings of each dish. This approach is suited to the series’ rollicking tone -- many of the stories end with a joke at our smarty-pants hero’s expense – if a bit anatomically inconsistent in places. And if some of the stories’ punchlines seem more tacked on than integral to the storyline, it may be a reflection of Joy of Rice’s “a la carte” format. It doesn’t seriously detract from the tasty pleasures of this funny and informative foodee manga.

But do they ever actually put together that "Ultimate Menu"?

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( 12/02/2009 06:39:00 AM ) Bill S.

MID-WEEK MUSIC VIDEO: Been listening to a sampler of Dolly Parton's upcoming boxed set and have been digging some of her proto-feminist early songs. Like this 'un:

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( 11/29/2009 07:19:00 AM ) Bill S.

“A BITE MEANT YOU WERE PUT DOWN. NO EXCEPTIONS.” Set in an alternate America where vampire and zombie attacks were so much a part of our history that Ulysses S. Grant set up a government agency to combat ‘em, FVZA: Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency (Radical Comics) is an agreeably splattery three-ish mini-series narrated by the distaff half of a brother/sister reared by their Ahab-y Uncle Pecos to re-kill the undead. Though the government believes that the vamp/zombie menace was successfully put down in the sixties, both Pecos and the reader know that’ll it rear its ugly heads before the end of the first issue -- and that Landra and Vidal, the two sibs trained in the ways of slay-age, will soon find their skills put to the test.

Based on a popular website, FVZA treats its potentially over-familiar material with a commendable seriousness. Scripter David Hine and painterly artist Roy Allan Martinez know the value of a good full-page blood bath -- we get a particularly nice ‘un in the first with a mother and her brood of zombie kids -- and they refuse to treat website creator Richard Dargan’s universe with any winks or obvious metaphorical layering. If Martinez’s art can be stiff during some of the expository moments, it’s energetically disturbing during the monster moments. The scenes where we’re shown the process of zombification are particularly clinically unnerving, while a sequence depicting the aftermath of two would-be vampires’ initiation into the world of the undead is also effectively doom-y.

So when’s the John Carpenter movie coming out?

Labels: fifteen-minute comic

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( 11/27/2009 12:49:00 PM ) Bill S.

“WHAT IF HE LOVED ME?” A notorious work of sado-masochistic erotica originally published in France in the 1950’s, The Story of O has had more than its share of variably successful adaptations over the years. Arguably, the most successful attempt to translate Paule Reage’s infamous paean to female subjugation into another medium is Italian comic artist Guido Crepax’s graphic novel version. Originally published in the states by NBM in 1990 (the first title to be released by this publisher), The Story of O has just been reissued in a handsomely mounted shrink-wrapped deluxe hardcover edition – the perfect holiday gift for the submissive in your life.

I kid, but the fact is that unless you’re genuinely titillated by this time of material, both the source novel and its adaptation can be fairly tedious going. The book’s title heroine is a calculated cipher (her name “O” can be read as both a letter and a zero): the only thing we know about her outside the world of dominance-and-submission is that she’s a fashion photographer. Story depicts this leggy vessel's incremental submersion into the role of a submissive with mind-numbing specificity. Crepax is studiously faithful to this process, but after a while all the images of anonymous fondling and whipping grow repetitious.

The Italian erotic artist has a clear love for a certain kind of female form — you see O from all angles — and there are some elegant wordless images within the graphic novel. The book opens with our heroine being taken to Roissy, the sinister chateau where she will initiated into her new life, where is she first blindfolded, cuffed from behind, fingered by a series of anonymous men and then whipped. “We want to hear her scream,” one of the nameless men of privilege says, and as she’s whipped Crepax provides a lot of tiny panel close-ups of our heroine’s lips and eyes. The visual device emphasizes the way our initiate is both being broken down and objectified, and while the technique is effective, you can’t help wishing that it was being used on a character we cared about.

Yeah, I know: erotica ain't about character. Story of O is mainly about flagellation, submission, sex with animals and bestial men, power and the abrogation of power, labial piercing and branded buttocks, not to mention the eerie power of walking around naked with an owl mask over your head. Crepax is such a masterful comics artist that his treatment of this material results in some truly arresting moments (a one-page portrait of O being led in chains by an ape-like man, the disturbing panels showing the bird-masked protagonist being led through a party of partying aristos), but there’s a lot of ho-hum stuff in between. Like the book on which it’s based, Crepax’s Story takes its transgressive material and makes it a bit of a slog.

Labels: modern comics

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( 11/26/2009 06:57:00 AM ) Bill S.

“EVERYBODY’S BEEN PLEASANTLY SHOCKED BY YOUR USEFULNESS.” The idea of yaoi -- “boy love” romances aimed at a young girl audience -- is one that raises more than a few Western eyebrows. But the manga sub-genre is a successful one in its native Japan, and, judging by the success of titles like Sanami Matoh’s Fake, has developed an audience in this country, too. Yaoi has become popular enough that American manga publisher Tokyopop even developed a line focused on this stuff, Blu Manga, of which Hinaka Takanaga’s Liberty Liberty! is one of the latest examples.

Got to admit I’m a relative newbie when it comes to yaoi. Read the first volume of Fake many moons ago, but never followed up on it, so I’m coming to this material fairly fresh. Liberty Liberty centers on a young boy named Itaru Yaichi, who we meet post-bender, lying on a pile of trash bags with little memory of how he got there. (“This tangy yet bitter odor,” he thinks, could it be my own barf?”) Would-be writer Itaru has fled the city of Tokyo for Osaka and is broke and homeless, but he soon is rescued by Kouki, a handsome ponytailed TV cameraman who has staked out the alleyway where Itaru has drunkenly collapsed. Thinking the hungover boy is a celebrity stalker, he tries to take his picture, only to have Itaru grab and smash his camera.

Despite this costly act, Kouki takes in the homeless runaway, introducing him to the rest of the crew at Himawara Cable, a ragtag indy TV station. These, predictably, turn out to an oddball bunch, none more than the flamboyant Karumi, the station’s cross-dressing “female” anchor. As Itaru finds a place for himself in this group and discovers himself growing more attracted to Kouki, we learn that the cameraman and anchorwoman share some history. Do they still have a thing for each other? Is Kouki jealous over Karumi’s current relationship with Kyobashi, the moneyman funding the station? It wouldn’t be a romance if you didn’t have such questions hovering in the air.

Takanaga paces her developing romance slowly: though the first volume builds to a big kiss, we know there’ll be plenty of misunderstandings and miscues along the way. There’s a subplot relating to Itaru’s reason for fleeing the school he was attending in Tokyo and a bit pertaining to his need to pay Kouki back for destroying that camera, but these are both deeply secondary to the developing romance.

Liberty Liberty!’s art is clean and expressive. The artist especially seems to have a good time with the effervescent Kurumi, while the contrast between the more hard-bitten Kouki and the neophyte Itaru is neatly conveyed, primarily through the characters’ eyes. (There are times when the latter looks like a wet, sad puppy dog.) There are a lot of yearning looks and moments when one character watches another from afar in this series, and Takanana is able to convey ‘em without overplaying her hand.

The Older Teen series is rated for mild sexuality, mild violence and alcohol use, though you know the aspect that’ll get the blu-noses running is the boy/boy romance. This the manga writer/artist treats lightheartedly and without much to-do. When Itaru happily hugs and hangs onto Kouki, it’s treated as a simple expression of boyish glee. You have to wonder whether part of the appeal -- in this country at least -- of yaoi lies in its depiction of a world where differing human sexuality is no big deal.

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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( 11/25/2009 06:43:00 AM ) Bill S.

MIDWEEK MUSIC VID: Here's a classic and seasonal bit of eighties garage punk from the Huxton Creepers, "Autumn Leaves":

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( 11/21/2009 10:24:00 AM ) Bill S.

WEEKEND PET PIC: Here's a photo of Xander Cat, taken by one of our recent visiting guests and stolen by yours truly off of Tammy's Facebook photo page.

THE USUAL NOTE: For more cool pics of companion animals, please check out Modulator's "Friday Ark."

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( 11/21/2009 07:40:00 AM ) Bill S.

“ALL I EVER DID WAS WANDER AIMLESSLY AMONG THE EVER-SHRINKING STARS.” Though the title of This Ugly Yet Beautiful World (Tokyopop) contains an echo of Asano’s young adult manga What A Wonderful World!, the two series have very different intentions. The latter is an angst-y slice-of-life look at urban young struggling to find their place in a bullying world; the former (at least in its first volume) is a more lighthearted story about young girl aliens discovering planet Earth for the first time.

Adapted from an animé teleseries by Gainax, with art by Ashita Morimi, the manga centers on two young boys who take in a pair of aliens who arrive on our planet as shafts of light. (“It’s not normal for a light resembling a shooting star to turn into a girl,” one of them reasonably notes.) Taking the bodies of attractive young girls (“So strange, having a body like this,” the ultra-busty elder alien Hikari says at one point), they become part of the two boys’ social and family circle even as we know their presence on the planet is the harbinger of dire occurrences in the near future.

First time that Takeru and Ryou, our two heroes, meet Hikari (whose name means “light” in Japanese), the former winds up having to defend her from a monstrous creature that suddenly appears as he’s motorbiking her home. Takeru’s hand inexplicably transforms into a “sword thing” that he uses to slay the beast, but this is the only moment of such action that we see in the first volume. The bulk of the book is devoted to Hikari and her sister Akari (“brightness”) wreaking comic and emotional havoc in the lives of the two boys. When Takeru, for instance, takes Hikari back to his uncle’s house so she’ll have a place to stay, the boy’s cousin Mari quickly becomes jealous of the developing relationship. Takeru, who’s too dense to see that Mari has a thing for him, teases the waiflike girl for not having as shapely a body as Hikari -- then is puzzled when she kicks him and stomps off.

Both alien girls come off innocent and unconstrained by modesty: the “mature” rated manga has more than its share of nudity, typically featuring the naïve Hikari as she happily embraces an embarrassed Takeru or shows up unexpectedly in bed with him. All fairly mild, particularly as rendered by artist Ashita Morimi, who depicts each girl with brightly big-eyed ingenuousness, though I can’t help wandering how these moments were portrayed in the original animé.

One of the more amusing aspects of the story lies in the fact that -- unlike most Aliens Among Us stories -- nobody bothers to hide the fact that the two girls are not of this Earth. Takeru and Ryou openly admit it to family and friends, who accept, deny or offhandedly joke about it. “Situations like this always have a beautiful girl in them as a matter of default,” one of Takeru’s school chums observes. “Not like a gray-skinned or tentacled creature either.”

Despite its moments of sexual and relational comedy, volume one concludes on an ominous note: the image of dead fish washing up on the shores of the beach. “I’ve seen this before,” younger alien Akari says. “No, I’ve seen a more horrible version of this.” No doubt we’ll be seeing more of the ugly side of this beautiful world in future books.

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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( 11/18/2009 06:14:00 AM ) Bill S.

MID-WEEK MUSIC VIDEO: It's a caper video, featuring the Shins and their song "Australia"!

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( 11/16/2009 06:44:00 AM ) Bill S.

WARTS AND ALL: Say what you will about political lightning rod Ted Rall: the man’s not afraid of coming off like a dick. In The Year of Loving Dangerously (NBM), abetted by Spanish artist Pablo G. Callejo (Bluesman), the provocateur political cartoonist takes us back to 1984, the year a young Rall got his ass evicted and expelled from Columbia. To stave off homelessness, the young Rall sponged off a series of young New York women while pretending to be an up-and-coming yuppie. Portrait of the Artist as a Manipulative Stud Boy.

Rall isn’t the first autobiographical comics writer to depict himself as an ass, of course -- back in the nineties, Dennis P. Eichorn produced a series of entertaining walks on the low-life side for Fantagraphics entitled Real Stuff -- though, perhaps he’s the most susceptible to cheap shots, given his propensity for pissing off his ideological opponents. For Rall to produce such a bleeding-warts-and-all graphic novel is either an act of bravery or the reflection of a severe case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Maybe both.

Rall’s narrative can get muddy in its chronology -- it starts out with our hero showering in the morning after one of his trysts and later shows us how he lost both his dorm space and his place as a student at Columbia – but its themes remain constant. The ways that poverty “makes every act an economic transaction,” the way that self-prostitution undermines you capacity for pleasure. “It was impossible to assess whether I actually liked her,” Ralls says, as he reflects on one such dalliance. “The experience had been queered by the inconvenient fact that I was desperate.”

In between his romps between the sheets, Rall offers up slices of life in Reagan Era America: the struggles to find an affordable place to life in NYC, a disastrous Massachusetts road trip, an anti-Reagan protest on the Washington Mall that concludes with our man with a threesome, work as a trader trainee for Bear Stearns, a Dead Kennedys concert, the workings behind a subway token scam plus the inevitable naked geezer on the subway. Callejo’s painted art, a far cry from the proto-punk stylings Rall uses on his political cartoons, captures the milieu wonderfully and even manages to convey the varying degrees of dismay Rall’s young self feels over the way his life is going.

He keeps the political proselytizing to a minimum. Though it wouldn’t be true to his character to avoid anti-Reaganomics rants altogether, Rall doesn’t shy from taking his own level of responsibility: “None of them could have fucked me up if I hadn’t let them,” he says early of his -- and with that admission, I found myself liking the dickish Rall more than I initially expected to. Year of Loving Dangerously is a strong addition to the growing field of graphic memoirs.

Labels: modern comics

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( 11/14/2009 08:22:00 AM ) Bill S.

“HOW WOULD YOU FEEL IF EVERYONE TURNED THEIR BACKS ON YOU?” As a regular reader of Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto (I’m a few volumes behind, but don’t tell anyone!) manga, I’ve long been curious about the anime based on this popular ninja series. Caught a few episodes here and there on the Cartoon Network -- usually mid-story -- but it wasn’t until Viz announced its release of the teleseries’ first half of Season One as an “uncut” box set that I saw the opportunity to immerse myself in the anime from its beginnings. (Viz has released smaller uncut sets from the series in the past, but with 25 episodes going for what previously was the price of one-fourth of Season One, this is the better bargain.) Twenty-five episodes featuring our favorite “#1 Hyperactive Knucklehead Ninja”? Pass me the Ritalin -- I’ll sit and watch!

Volume One encompasses the first five books of Kishimoto’s manga, and contains three basic arcs. The first establishes our core cast: Uzumaki Naruto, an impulsive and mischievous would-be ninja who doesn’t know he has the spirit of a fox demon imprisoned within him; Sasuke, the most promising student in Naruto’s class; Sakura, the smart girl with a hidden temper and a thing for Sasuke; plus the trio’s two teachers, Iruka and Kakashi.

Of the two teachers, Iruka appears the more empathetic toward Naruto’s plight. Though the kid doesn’t know he has a nine-tailed demon inside him, all the adults in the Village of the Hidden Leaves do. “When the people reject someone’s very existence and look at that person,” Iruka says, “their eyes become cold. . .” It’s this outcast status which fuels our hero’s desire to become the Greatest Ninja Ever.

The second story arc revolves around a “Class C” mission that our threesome embark on under Kakashi’s watchful eye: the transportation of an elderly bridgemaker back to his village -- a mission that, of course, proves to be much more dangerous than anyone anticipated. This introduces the series’ first memorable antagonists: the rogue ninja Zabuza and his young and deadly companion Haku. The duo shares a multi-layered master/servant relationship that proves surprisingly poignant, even when we think that Haku has successfully managed to slay Sasuke.

Arc three concerns the opening rounds of the Chunen Exams, a series of test and competitions that all three students must pass as a part of their ninja training. The Exams, which take up the manga series through volume thirteen, only make it through the written tests by the end of Volume One, so one assumes that the rest of the first season is also devoted to this competition. In this set, we meet a variety of other would-be ninjas from neighboring villages, each with their own way of manipulating chakra, “the elemental life energy used to perform jutsu” in battle. The number of fresh faces tossed into the story mix at this point can be a bit daunting, though from the manga I already knew which figures would become more prominent in the series, so I just let it all flow over me.

The anime adaptation proves largely faithful to its source -- though a few comic scenes are extended to prolong the slapstick -- and the characters are believably voiced in both their English and Japanese versions. Maile Flanagan’s Naruto (yet another case of a middle-aged actress voicing a young boy in cartoon work) is the star here. She amusingly captures the boy’s pugnacious boastfulness along with his moments of comic distress and dismay. Punctuating each pronouncement with a “Be-LIEVE it!” which manages to sound both assertive and uncertain at the same time, she adds the necessary leavening to a character who could come across as just plain obnoxious if handled wrong. Great voice work.

As for the “uncut” aspect of this set: far as I can tell, the additions primarily consist of a few obscenities, Farrelly Bros.’ style bathroom humor and some gouts of blood. One of the early gags in both the manga and anime relates to Naruto’s ability to use his chakra to create a “sexy jutsu,” transforming into a naked full-breasted babe who creates instant arousal in his unprepared students. Per comic manga tradition, this excitement is visually depicted with large spurts of blood from the victim’s nose. We get to see this physiological syndrome more than once: the Japanese equivalent of Tex Avery’s horny Wolfie.

Viz’s DVD box packs a lot of discs in the set, but the bonuses are primarily limited to two brief sections comparing storyboards to finished scenes from Episodes One and 22, plus the usual promos for other Naruto and Shonen Jump product. Both Japanese and American versions are offered on the discs, and, as I’ve done with other Viz sets, I watched most of the episodes in English with the subtitles on, just so I could spot the difference between the Americanized dialog and the original. Caught one funny flub in the subtitles, too: wherein the gangster responsible for hiring the bridgemaker’s assassins says, “I hired rouge ninjas," which instantly brought up images of Naruto and friends having to fight an army of chakra-wielding drag queens.

Per tv anime standards, the movement on Naruto can be overly limited at times, though the chakra-riffic fight scenes are visually striking. If I still tend to favor the manga version of this series, it’s because I find Kishimoto’s art (abetted by his assistants, of course) so appealing in its black-and-white line work. Still, whenever I read any further books in the series, I just know I’m gonna have Maile Flanagan’s voice in the back of my mind, inserting the occasional “Be-LIEVE it!” into the word balloons whether it’s there or not. And I can understand the anime’s popular appeal: in either manga or cartoon format, the title lead and his story remain engaging.

Izumaki Naruto: Hero to Hyperactive Knuckleheads, everywhere . . .

Labels: anime

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( 11/13/2009 06:59:00 AM ) Bill S.

SICKY: Action’s been non-existent around this blog -- and pretty darn sparse over at Twitter, too, for that matter -- coz yours truly has been under the weather. Little over a week ago, I started feeling feverish and exhausted: just as we were expecting two friends to come visit from Ohio. Went into work on Friday, but wound up leaving at lunchtime, going home and sleeping the afternoon away. Slept a good deal of Saturday off, too, though Sunday I felt well enough to go with my wife and friends on a tour of Kartchner Caverns.

Don’t think this is the Big-Name Flu, but it truly wore me out. The fever was gone by Saturday, but the lassitude remained throughout the weekend. The inside of my mouth has felt like a hot slice of pizza’d been pressed against my tongue and my roof -- making it genuinely painful to eat. I’ve been able to go to work and generally make it through mid-afternoon before I start to feel myself flagging. But once I get home, I’ve been good for a little bit of editing work and little more. Been conking out an hour-and-a-half ahead of my usual bedtime, too.

Got a ton of reviews that I want to write: made some headway into a piece on the first Naruto uncut DVD boxed set that I hope to get up this weekend, but there’s a batch of GNs and manga hectoring me to write about ‘em. Each day I’m feeling a skosh more energized, but it’s clear that I’m not gonna be at full capacity (whatever that means) for a while yet. Me, I’m just wanting my mouth to feel less tender, so I can bite into a puffy Cheeto without tearing up.

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( 11/07/2009 05:05:00 PM ) Bill S.

“THE WOMAN I LOVE IS AN ASSASSIN. AND SHE GAVE ME CRABS. . .” Have to admit if I hadn’t received some promo emails from NBM, I probably wouldn’t have given Dungeon: The Early Years a second look in the bookstore. Its logo is deliberately redolent of a fantasy role-playing game, and to my eyes the majority of comics based on games have been less-than-stellar. But this French comic series by writers Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim, with art this time out by Christopher Blain, turns out to be a sharply adult funny animal parody/satire: close to Stan Sakai’s wonderful ronin rabbit series Usagi Yojimbo -- if Sakai had a darker, more underground sensibility.

NBM has released seven volumes of the Dungeon series, of which Volume Two: Innocence Lost is the most recent. In its native country, the material in this book was released as two albums (Une Jeunesse Qui S’Enfuit and Apres La Pluie), with a gap of “many years later” between the two storylines. Still, both halves fit under the volume’s title, though you could probably argue over just how “innocent” the book’s central figure truly is. Early Years centers on Hyacinthe, Dungeon keeper to be, charting the youthful chicken as an idealistic young swashbuckler called the Night Shirt. When we first meet our hero in “Innocence Lost,” he’s stealing the loot from a trio of brigands with the aim of passing the goods onto a charitable institution. “Money doesn’t stink if it can serve a good cause,” he says to himself. Unfortunately, the plunder proves harder to get rid of than it was to confiscate.

Hyacinthe winds up in the bedroom of the lady assassin Alexandra, who is in the midst of attempting to rob and murder a local lawyer, and after a tryst between the bird and this sharp-beaked dame, our hero gets a bevy of STDs. In his visit to the doctor, he meets the equine botanist Gabrielle who takes him on a trek to Necropolis, land of the dead. On their way, they get enmeshed within the labyrinthine legal system in a land of “tacky rabbits,” who imprison the two for trying to collect some barley. From there Sfar and Trondheim cheekily move their hero through a series of adventures that are as random as the moves in your average role-playing game. Each encounter pushes the story off into another direction, providing its writers with yet another land to send up.

The second story, “After the Rain,” depicts Hyacinthe several years down the road, mourning the death of his wife who was slain by his assassin mistress Alexandra. A much grimmer piece, it shows the future Dungeon keeper as a much less idealistic figure. No longer the Robin Hood-y Night Shirt, the chicken has become a moneyed landowner and head of the Assassins Guild. When his former teacher, Professor Cormor, attempts to enlist his aid in averting the destruction of the city of Antipolis, Hyacinthe refuses to help and instead embarks on a night of self-pitying debauchery. Cormor is forced to enlist Alexandra’s aid to save the city (the danger arises from a subway project that is undermining Antipolis’ foundations), but it all concludes in a disaster of Groo-like proportions -- if the creators of Groo had been slipped a hit of really bad acid.

Writers Sfar and Trondheim capture their hero’s moral downfall deftly and believably: you never get the sense, as you did when R. Crumb turned his famous funny animal creation Fritz the Cat into a degenerate Hollywood type, that they’re grinding any axes at the expense of character. While some of the supporting cast meant less to me than I suspect they do to full-blown followers of the series, they’re each sketched in so efficiently that I was curious to learn more about ‘em.

Artist Christophe Blain proves adept at handling both funny animal cartooning and evocative medieval fantasy ‘scapes: his swashbuckling action scenes are particularly engaging, while the story’s thrillingly rendered catastrophic finale makes you wish that NBM was printing this series in a larger format than its approximately 7-x-9” book size. After the city’s fall, as two of the story’s characters attempt to flee to safety, the story grows even darker -- and this new reader is planning on picking up a copy of Early Years: Volume One to see just how much innocence that fallen bird truly has lost.

Labels: modern comics

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( 10/31/2009 10:23:00 AM ) Bill S.

WEEKEND PET PIC: Here’s Willow Cat, relaxing in the noon day sun:

THE USUAL NOTE: For more cool pics of companion animals, please check out Modulator's "Friday Ark."

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( 10/29/2009 05:42:00 AM ) Bill S.

MR. BIG: Soon as I read the premise of Deka Kyoshi (CMX), I couldn’t help thinking of the Arnold Schwarzenegger comedy, Kindergarten Cop. Hard-nosed copper goes undercover in an elementary school? Yeah, we’re talking high-concept/low credibility here.

Once you get beyond its credulity-stretching premise, though, Tamio Baba’s “teen-plus” rated series goes in a direction beyond its initial comic concept. Ignore the fact that Toyama, the manly detective sent undercover to teach a fifth grade class after its beloved instructor turns up dead, is seemingly given his assignment without any time constraints. The series’ core “mystery” is secondary to its school kid character dramas -- which is where Deka Kyoshi excels.

Our entry into the mysteries of fifth grade behavior is a sensitive school boy named Makato, who Toyama rescues from bullies early in the first volume. Makato is the classroom scapegoat, but his emotional sensitivity provides him with the ability to view other peoples’ emotions “as visual metaphors,” a form of synthesia, we’re told. He sees his potential bullies as monstrous demons, sees a girl classmate with self-esteem issues as a child’s doll growing increasing more raggedy, and so on.

With Makato and the winsome lady sensei Narita as his guides, Toyama spends more time helping out his new charges than he does investigating his original case. In one chapter, for instance, a manga-addicted boy is brought to the detective’s attention after Makato sees tentacles emerging from a proffered volume of Hunter X Hunter. Turns out the manga fan has been swiping tankōbon from a local shop, so he can bring new books to school to lend to his classmates. (“I don’t see what’s so amusing about this dreck!” Toyama grouses as he peruses a pile of confiscated comics.) In another, our sensitive boy sees a girl with cutting behavior as swathed in bandages.

Toyama, trained as a cop, bulls his way through each of his students’ problems, but still manages to help them conquer their demons. (In this, he’s like a more straight arrow version of Great Teacher Onizuka.) If Baba’s solutions to his characters’ emotional issues at times seem rushed, his depiction of the difficulties his kids face is distinct enough that we quickly see how the teacher known as Mr. Big can get distracted from his case so much. “The job of a teacher is to believe in the students,” Narita says at one point, though our hero can’t help giving into his policeman’s suspicions. And in at least one of the first volume’s tales, he’s right to hold onto ‘em.

Baba’s art is clean and cartoony: though he’s also capable of serving up a good creepy looking psychological demon when the moment calls for it. At times I found myself comparing the art to Gosho Aoyama’s Case Closed, yet another series where the occasionally violent goings on are mitigated by a sprightly drawing style, though Baba’s art isn’t as textured. It suits Deka Kyoshi’s storytelling, though: the 162-page volume moves with such good-natured zippiness and affection for its characters that you really hope the Yamanouchi PD’s budget is big enough to keep our lovable lug of a detective with his fifth graders for the rest of the school year.

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( 10/28/2009 06:21:00 AM ) Bill S.

MIDWEEK SEASONAL MUSIC VID: Halloween’s around the corner, so let’s shake them hips with the Cramps and the “Ultra Twist”:

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( 10/25/2009 07:43:00 AM ) Bill S.

WEEKEND VISITING PET PIC: Here's our houseguest Bailey doing some research on the local backyard birdies.

THE USUAL NOTE: For more cool pics of companion animals, please check out Modulator's "Friday Ark."

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( 10/24/2009 07:14:00 AM ) Bill S.

”WHO NEEDS SWIMMING WHEN THERE’S SINGING?” In the 23rd century, Neo Takigawa is a “fish out of time.” A vivacious teen with a love of singing and a predilection for short skirts, she’s unsuited to her prudish future world. “Women today are modest and gentle,” the frustrated school authorities bemoan: not so Neo, whose “heinous behavior” is deemed a “danger to the purity” of her school. So when our girl opens a mysterious misty cylinder that transports her back to the era of her daydreams, it appears as if everyone’s prayers are answered. Dropped into 21st century Japan, Neo quickly sets about trying to establish herself as a pop star.

The premise behind Majiko!’s comic manga series Mikansei No. 1 (Tokyopop) is to take our fish out of time and pit her against that business we call show. When she lands in our century, it’s on the lap of a serious-minded would-be singer named Saya Kudou, and the two wind up tentatively partnering as a singing duo. Challenged by the afro-sporting music mogul Ebisu to put on a successful performance in the park, the twosome team up as the unfortunately named Clap and begin their arduous trek to stardom. Relational sparks fly, of course -- as Saya proves to be almost as judgmental as Neo’s old 23rd century teachers -- but we know they’ll hit the big time several volumes down the road. “He doesn’t realize how fun it is to sing with him,” Neo thinks as the two rehearse on a rooftop and start to meld as a singing duo.

Majiko! (also responsible for St Lunatic High School) draws the first volume of this teen-rated comedy with frantic cartoony energy that’s suited to our ultra-perky heroine. This is one of those stories where events move along simply because a fresh character pops up to change the course of action -- just when our pair needs to expand their test audience beyond the kids’ party stage, for instance, a schoolmate of Saya’s appears to tell them about an upcoming school concert -- which can get rather pinball-y at times but not fatally so. Hovering in the background are an anonymous benefactor and a figure who resembles a missing 23rd century school chum of Neo’s, but neither of these prove as diverting as watching our heroine gleefully bounce around her new city playground.

Late in the first volume, Neo receives a note from her unknown helper, which tells her, “If you want to get back to your time then you must succeed at your park concert and make your debut.” As a reader I was less concerned with how this was supposed to work than with why our girl would even want to return to her home era (as far as we know, parents are non-existent in the 23rd century). I also suspect most of Mikansei’s American teen readership, watching our girl take her first joyful steps towards Josie and the Pussycats fame, will be wondering much the same thing.

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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( 10/21/2009 06:01:00 AM ) Bill S.

MID-WEEK MUSIC VIDEO: Been watching eps of Jools Holland's "Later" on one of the cable nets lately and was prompted to pull up this 90's performance by Jellyfish from the show:

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( 10/18/2009 02:24:00 PM ) Bill S.

”WHAT IS THIS FEELING? IS IT DESPAIR . . . DISAPPOINTMENT?” Two things came to mind when I first saw the cover to the first volume of Inio Asano’s two-book What a Wonderful World! (Viz Signature). First was that the image at the top of the cover clearly was designed to evoke Ghost World. Second had we wondering which version of “What A Wonderful World” we were meant to hear in our head when we saw the title. Louis Armstrong or Joey Ramone? I’d bet the latter.

A series of nine interconnected vignettes (entitled “tracks”) populated by a cast of disaffected city youth, World recounts the existential and economic crises of its largely aimless characters: a struggling young college drop-out who half-wishes she could be a shojo heroine, “waiting for their prince to appear on a white stallion;” a school bully, rationalizing the life he’s created for himself; a former punk rocker, settled into a white-color job; a doomed robber striving to impart some last-minute wisdom to his kid partner. “Reality really is harsh,” more than one character repeats, but it also can contain snippets of beauty, too. The trick, as one protagonist says just before he’s about to be iced by a trio of mobsters, is to “aim for the good and live.”

Each of Asano’s vignettes are connected with a seeming randomness -- in one pair of tales, he uses a dragonfly flitting out of the first story as a bridge into the second -- though certain motifs recur suggestively. Images of falling/flying appear in three of the first volume’s “tracks.” In two of ‘em, we see figures toppling off the top of tall buildings; in the third, a young girl breaks through the fence at the bottom of a hill and goes soaring over the rooftops as a large crow watches.

Said bird (who our heroine decides is a shinigami) has been tormenting the young girl, a perennial victim in her school, for her lowly status. “The world of children is just society writ large,” the crow explains, and it soon becomes clear that the creature is badgering our young heroine in order to provoke her into doing something to pull herself out of her victim status. The bird reappears in the end of the volume’s last “track,” after another character’s funeral, so perhaps it truly is a personification of death.

Asano captures each of his people via inner monologues and subtly expressive face work (though he’s not above an occasional cartoony overreaction) and some wittily composed panels. (The image of ex-punk Horita, standing on the wall of his balcony, naked with only his necktie providing any modesty, really made me grin, while the two-page shot of the flying bike girl is particularly memorable.) If he occasionally over-iterates his themes, that’s consistent with World’s cast of rudderless urbanites still in the process of figuring out where they stand in the universe.

This is a group, after all, that likes to talktalktalk their way through epiphanies great and small -- and so they do . . . entertainingly. The cynicism-shielded heroines of Ghost World would recognize ‘em all, though the girls’d probably have a few snarky words about their peers’ typically unguarded openness. Would probably have some cracks to make about Satchmo’s hit pop song, too.

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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( 10/17/2009 07:57:00 AM ) Bill S.

WEEKEND PET PIC: In the menagerie that is OakHaus, the one cat and dog pairing that's developed over the years is 'tween Kyan Pup and Boo, the Arizona adoptee who came to our home last Halloween. Here's a fairly typical moment between the two:

THE USUAL NOTE: For more cool pics of companion animals, please check out Modulator's "Friday Ark."

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( 10/15/2009 05:58:00 PM ) Bill S.

SIGNS, SIGNS, EVERYWHERE ARE SIGNS: So I’m driving home for lunch, and I see this slogan outside one of Safford’s myriad Baptist churches. I ponder the thing the rest of the way home coz the sentence is a stumper. It says, “If truth is optional, error is permissible.” Okay, I think: what the heck is that supposed to mean?

I know -- this being a church sign, after all -- that the writer does not believe that truth is optional: there is One Truth and that One Truth resides in our very particular interpretation of our Holy Book. So if truth isn’t optional, than, presumably, error isn’t permissible. But isn’t mistake-making a basic component of human experience? Isn’t trial and error one of the ways that we learn? Am I never to be allowed the chance to fuck up? Not according to the followers of non-optional TRUTH.

This, I finally decide, is why I’m a heathen.

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( 10/11/2009 10:17:00 PM ) Bill S.

“IT’S ALWAYS SPARKLING AROUND MY BROTHER.” Shiro, the student council prez at Hato High, is one of those golden lads: a smiling pretty boy in the manner of so many shojo teen idols, he’s the charismatic center of his school because he “always draws people to him.” His younger sister Masago (a.k.a. Maa) is much less noticeable, however: “average” looking, she struggles with class-work that comes more effortlessly to her “genius” brother and shyly pines in the background for the bespectacled council v-p Yasaka. She half dreads going to Hato High because she knows she’ll always be in her brother’s shadow.

This dynamic changes suddenly, though, when Maa’s older brother is killed while pushing his sister from the path of an approaching truck. “I should have died -- not Nii-Chan!” Masaga cries to Yasaka in despair. But “God does some pretty clever things.” Instead of traveling on, Shiro’s spirit takes refuge in his sister’s body, sharing it with her. Why is he cohabiting with his sis? Everybody thinks it's because he has some "unfinished business," but nobody knows exactly what it is. Perhaps his presence is connected to the school's upcoming Culture Fest, an event that the living Shiro was feverishly promoting, though more likely it involves his helping his sister become her own woman.

A “Teen-Plus” rated manga series, Ken Saito’s Oh! My Brother (CMX) is like a high school variation on All of Me with male and female souls sharing the same body to comic effect. The idea central to both comedies -- that sometimes it can take two people to make a decent whole -- is good fodder for character comedy, and Saito makes smart use of her material. While some of the school-based tangents seem more than a little distracting (a subplot involving a former rival of Shiro's may pay off in later volumes, but it just seems irritating here), the primary sister/brother interaction is drolly convincing. Both of our leads clearly have stuff they need to work on: if our heroine’s mousiness keeps her from being noticed, our hero’s Type A cockiness has similarly restricted his life possibilities. “Could it be you were living so hard,” Masago thinks near the end of the first volume, “that God made an exception and gave you another chance to let you know there’s still so much to see?”

Saito (a woman, I’m told, though the artist’s gender is masked in a four-panel side strip attached to the first volume’s bonus story) draws this fluff in a suitably feathery style: skipping over the grimmer moments to keep her Thorne Smith fantasy airy. At times, you may wish for stronger visual cues as to who is momentarily possessing Maa’s body (in a movie like All of Me, of course, Steve Martin’s performance made that clear before he even spoke), but the dialog quickly lets you know what’s up. DMX's translation (courtesy Alethea and Athena Nibley) pays particular attention to the layered social honorifics of the story's high school setting, and while I have to admit to being initially confused by the number of different names a character can have, in the end it added to the texture of this enjoyable sibling rivalry fantasy.

"Even after I died, I possess you, Maa," Shiro crows in one of the duo's inner monologues. "It's hilarious." Maybe not hilarious, but decidedly amusing.

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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( 10/10/2009 09:14:00 PM ) Bill S.

WEEKEND PET PIC: A simple shot of Kyan Pup on the old deck in the backyard:

THE USUAL NOTE: For more cool pics of companion animals, please check out Modulator's "Friday Ark."

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( 10/09/2009 06:12:00 AM ) Bill S.

THE UNBEARABLE SPARSENESS OF BEING Postings've been a lot sparer around this joint recently, but it's not 'cause I don't love you Sporadic Reader. I'm still working on getting into the routine of my new job at the behavioral health center: though it's less driving than my previous position as an in-home therapist, there are a lot less lulls in it. Most days I've been coming home, feeling pretty whipped and barely able to make it all the way past prime time.

At the same time, we're still working to pull ourselves out of the financial valley that my unemployment pushed us into. The new job pays less than my last 'un, so we're still having to readjust our already fairly modest lifestyle. Better than no job at all -- or having to go through the effort of relocation one more time -- but it still can be anxiety inducing. All part of the current economic slump, of course.

We keep hoping the book will capture someone's attention, but, to date, the response has been limited. It's a hard clime for small publishes, we're told, though that hasn't stopped up from initiating a follow-up to Measure by Measure. (We like the characters too much to leave 'em alone.) And if any of you out there have dropped good money to read the first Measure, why not leave a comment on one of the bookstore sites?

Anyhoo, I've still got more reviews and comments at this here blogspot in the works. Haven't said anything about the new teevee season yet: we're currently wholeheartedly enjoying Eastwick, liking Glee at times in spite of itself and holding out hopes that Flash Forward will really bust loose. When we realized that Jay Leno's new show had most likely helped push Medium off NBC, we were rather surly about it, but, thankfully, the show's shifted over to CBS Fridays where sturdy Patricia Arquette will most likely trounce that scrawny Eliza Dushku's butt. Me, I'm just grateful for the invention of the DVR.

See ya on the weekend.

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( 10/07/2009 09:52:00 PM ) Bill S.

MIDWEEK BLUESY MUSIC VID: A great performance from 1966 by that force of nature hisself Howlin’ Wolf. Whenever I feel the urge to hear some blues, the first man I turn to is Chester Arthur Burnett:

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( 10/04/2009 04:16:00 PM ) Bill S.

"I HAVE BROUGHT MYSELF TO A MOST TERRIBLE PLACE INDEED." The opening pages of Fumi Yoshinaga's Ooku: The Inner Chambers (Viz Signature) establish its alternate world setting briskly: set in 18th century Japan, the series' first volume opens on a cute young "monkey boy" named Sadakichi who ventures into the mountains to fetch some mushrooms for his mother. He's brought back down from the mountains, bloodied and feverish, carrying a plague that strikes the young men of his village. The pestilence swiftly sweeps across the island country, killing 80% of the male population. (The plague does not appear to cross the water since we later meet a Dutch envoy who knows nothing about it.) Eighty years later, women have taken on the leadership roles in this once strong patriarchy, while the parcel of surviving men are held "with extreme care as precious seed bearers."

The one place where young males aren't used as baby makers is the palace of the shogun. Said to contain 3000 of the country's most beautiful men (though, in actuality, the number is closer to 800), the Inner Chambers represent the "height of luxury in a time of scarcity," though for those young men who actually enter the chambers, it proves a seething setting filled with jealousy, feverish social battles and intrigue. Our eyes into the Inner Chambers belong to a handsome 19-year-old named Mizuna Yunoshin, born of a poor family, who looks at his entrance as a way of supporting his parents and sister without having to marry into money. He doesn't realized just how treacherous palace life can be until it's too late.

Within the chambers, there's a strict hierarchy: first divided between those who are deemed worthy enough of their liege's sight and those who aren't. When Yunoshin enters into service, he arrives in the lowest rank of houseboy, but it isn't long before he leaps into the upper tiers. A much more active and traditionally "manly" youth than many of the preening sons of the wealthy who primarily populate the Inner Chambers, he immediately stands out after he fights off a trio of his peers who attempt to "initiate" him by forcing him to "play the woman." He also draws the attention of the Machiavellian senior chamberlain Fujinami, who quickly realizes the disruption to the strictly maintained social order that Yunoshin presents.

Yoshinaga deftly delineates the social mores and social maneuvering in her hermetic setting. If she occasionally over-hammers the gender switch aspect of her storyline ("That is no different from the spiteful tormenting of indentured apprentices by the women of a merchant's house," Yunoshin says of his peers at one point), most of this is in tune with Ooku's community of emotionally stunted young men. In a world where having a "pale pretty face and impeccable manner of social conduct" bests swordsmanship, it's inevitable that an excess amount of foppish posturing will take place.

As a "Mature" rated series, Ooku has its share of sexual references, many of which turn out to be homoerotic: "T'is a commonplace of life here in the inner chambers." While nothing explicit is shown, Yoshinaga's dialog can get quick ribald. (Commenting on Yunoshin's quick rise in the social strata, one rival bitchily notes, "He rose from the bottom up with his bottom up!") The first volume is shrink-wrapped to prevent prying younger eyes from getting a peak at the provocative goings-on, but since the more adult material is imbedded within the comic's dense dialog, I don't see many peepers getting much of a charge from it.

And, again, these sexual themes remain secondary to Ooku's main concern: the jockeying for power and prestige within a rigidly stratified community. When a new lady shogun comes to take over the palace after the untimely death of her young girl predecessor, the political maneuvering grows even more deadly, especially at the hands of the savvy senior chamberlain. The new shogun, recognizing that the luxurious world of the inner chambers is impractical due to the dire straits of the shogunate treasury, begins cutting back on the extravagances -- which inevitably sparks resistance from those who've grown comfortable within the Inner Chambers.

Much of the action in the first volume, then, focuses on nuance and the minutia of palace service (there's a six-page sequence, for instance, devoted to finding a missing sewing needle), which is not to say that the stakes aren't frequently high for our protagonists. When Yunoshin is selected to be the new shogun's first dalliance, for instance, neither he nor the shogun herself realize that the role of "secret swain" carries a deadly penalty. Ooku's art -- filled with tiny flashes of emotion, guarded sidelong glances, and the occasional cartoony touch -- catches this shark-y milieu without over-dramatizing it. Her handling of her alternate Japan is so precise and convincing that at times you have to remind yourself that the Redface Pox never really happened.

Labels: sixty-minute manga

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Pop cultural criticism - plus the occasional egocentric socio/political commentary by Bill Sherman (popculturegadabout AT yahoo.com) - filled with scrubbing bubbles!

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