Manga Worth Reading

This school-age romance is rather predictable, but the characters are so charming that I’m left with a good feeling after reading.

Strobe Edge Book 4

I appreciate the way Ninako is so in touch with and direct about her feelings. Ando is pursuing her, but she’s clear that she’s in love with Ren. Even though he’s dating someone else, she’d rather be honest and not settle for someone else. And although Ando is considered something of a player and a rival to Ren, it seems as though he really cares about Ninako. He’s not trying to talk her out of waiting for Ren as a way of scoring points, but because he’s convinced she’s going to eventually be hurt by caring about someone who doesn’t return her feelings.

What the reader knows, though, is that Ren does care about her. As does one of their classmates, who’s gently pushing them into situations together. We’re shown how they’re meant to be together when, for example, Ninako is the only one who notices that he’s sick, because he’s putting up a good front for everyone else, but she knows he’s not quite himself.

Meanwhile, Daiki (the original third side of the triangle, who was paired up with someone else early on) is being talked into buying his girlfriend an expensive necklace. Their pairing is complicated by Daiki’s dad moving to get remarried, which causes disruption for Daiki, as he ponders whether to move with him. Daiki’s sister is Ren’s girlfriend, so that relationship is affected, too. This isn’t a volume you can jump into — I had to reread previous reviews to remember who some of these characters are — but for those following the series, this is a rewarding volume that deepens cast interactions.

Artistically, the figures are cute and expressive without being overly exaggerated, and there are enough backgrounds for us to know where they are in settings. It’s a smooth, well-paced read. The silent sections, as characters are surprised by how they feel simply being close to each other, are particularly impressive, since they provide key moments of reflection for both the characters and the readers.

Although simple in structure, Strobe Edge can be sophisticated about emotions and their ramifications. It’s a comfortable, reassuring read that I find myself looking forward to more with each volume.

As this book opens, the young creators are learning the difference between getting reader support and selling lots of books. Although their first graphic novel is doing well, rival Eiji’s book has 900,000 copies in print, many more than theirs. That follows the pattern of their previous series, where they sold 500,000 a book while he sold 1,500,000. In addition to highlighting the difference between reader praise and those willing to actually put down money for the work, this story point is another example of how different the manga market is from the American comic industry. Those numbers are outstanding, the kinds of figures comics haven’t seen for decades.

Bakuman Book 19

It’s unfortunate that the guys decide that the route to popularity is dumbing down their work. It’s probably practical to choose simpler storytelling with less difficult words, but it’s disheartening to see it advised and accepted. Looking on the bright side, it’s refreshing to see that even with a certain amount of success, they keep striving to try new things. As an artist, you can’t rest on your laurels or coast. That part is highly realistic, and one of the reasons I enjoy this series so much — there’s always a new challenge.

Not so realistic, but perfectly suited to a competition manga, is the way the guys take everything as inspiration. When they meet Eiji at an award banquet, he swears he’s going to keep beating them… which they take as a sign that he’s actually convinced that they will eventually overtake him. At least the free food allows for some funny moments, as Eiji keeps stuffing his face and demanding more delicacies. The series has always done an excellent job of making conversation-heavy scenes visually interesting, either with exaggerated character reactions or interesting settings.

The main quest here remains the goal of getting an anime adaptation of their manga, a struggle complicated by internet rumors. For some reason, a voice actress can have her career destroyed if her shut-in fans think she has a boyfriend, so Moritaka is torn between trying to help his girlfriend Miho get a role and keeping their unusually chaste relationship a secret.

With one volume left to go beyond this in the series, the characters are starting to get sappy. They celebrate New Year’s together, talking about how much they want to stay happy like this and looking back on their eight-and-a-half-year career and philosophizing about how manga is like life.

I very much dislike the tendency for snappy manga heroines, the observant ones with a bit more bite to them than the usual good girl, to lose their spark as soon as love enters the picture. It’s too old-school “taming of the shrew” for me, playing into the idea that a smart girl who refuses to hold her tongue just needs romance to calm down and be properly feminine. Which is why I find the way this series has turned the heroine Yukina into a confused observer, instead of a determined director of the action, disappointing.

Missions of Love Book 3

I’m also not impressed by the sex-kitten covers. (Some of the inside spreads are worse, with one prominently featuring gartered stockings and a come-hither look not in keeping with the character.) That guy with his hand aiming up her skirt? That’s her cousin Akira. He’s the third side of the love triangle. (How very Southern of them!) He thinks he loves her because he misses spending time with her now that she’s got a boyfriend. She’s always cared for and protected him, and this reader, at least, suspects that his “love” is really fear of having to stand along for himself.

Anyway, once Akira declares his feelings, the first guy, Shigure, gets jealous and decides he’s not leaving Yukina after all. Shigure takes her on a date to an outlet mall (?), where we see a brief glimpse of the sass she used to have, as she ditches him in favor of observing other couples. He’s pulling out all his (formulaic) tricks, but instead of a gooey couples’ gift, she asks for an ice cream cone. It was just enough of what I liked about her to make the other scenes where she gets confused by her feelings less tolerable.

I’m finding it distracting that Yukina’s glasses have become the merest suggestion of connected ovals, replacing her nose, as shown here. The shapes keep reminding me of mouse ears, making it seem that this manga has been heavily sponsored by Disney.

More seriously, it’s unfair to writers, I think, to suggest that you get a successful creation by thinly fictionalizing whatever happens to you. Yukina’s latest cell-phone novel is popular because she’s using it to work out her own thoughts about being part of a love triangle. That’s great, that it works for her both as praise and psychotherapy, but we never see her actually working at her craft. I know, this story is fiction, but it’s a disservice to artists to play into such common misconceptions of how creativity works. You don’t have to live an artistic life to be a good writer. Some actually use their imagination.

I might have more of an eye for art styles than I thought, since I was browsing two PDFs I downloaded from eManga when I thought, hey, these books remind me of Wandering Son. A little research revealed that Happy-Go-Lucky Days Books 1 and 2 are by the same author, Takako Shimura. They were originally published as Dounika Naru Hibi from 2002-2004; 2002 is when Wandering Son started as well, so it’s not surprising the characters looked similar to me.

Happy-Go-Lucky Days Book 1 and Book 2 are available as digital-only releases from eManga.com (and they’re gated for ages 18 and over). Both collect various short stories — seven in the first book, eight in the second, with each book about 200 pages long — and were translated through the Digital Manga Guild program. They’re tagged as both “josei” (why I was checking them out) and “yuri” (for girl-girl romance).

I found Wandering Son well-drawn but oddly paced, with the art attracting me most to the book, so seeing the same style here was pleasing. The characters, though, were confusing to me. I didn’t always understand their motivations or impulses, and I found the storytelling oblique at times.

The first story features a woman, left by her husband, who picks up a guy in a bar, goes home with him, and never leaves. Others show us a shut-in girl who sleeps with her shoplifting neighbor, a woman being set up for marriage who lives with a ghost (we find out more about the ghost in book two), and a teacher who gets crushes on his students. Characters reappear, with later stories revealing that some of them are siblings.

Note that these books do contain explicit sex scenes, as one might guess from hearing that some of the stories were originally published in “Manga Erotics F”. (And that seems to be what Digital Manga is mostly releasing these days, explicit manga and half-dressed girl photobooks.) Sometimes, those scenes make up most of the story. Not all the sex is consensual, as one story is about a girl coerced into sex by her tutor. That’s a recurring theme, of teachers preying on students, as something similar happens to one of two twin boys (one of whom is gay).

If you’re specifically looking for yuri, book two starts with two ex-girlfriends of a woman getting married hooking up with each other. There’s also an odd piece about an older cousin trying to teach her younger relative about sex and another ghost story among the various pieces here.

I wound up skimming a good bit, not really involved in the situations, but I liked seeing the various character expressions and designs. Once again, I appreciated Shimura’s work more for the visuals than the story content. Then again, I was reading these for free. Unless I was hard up for some explicit reading material, I wouldn’t find them worth the price to buy for download, because overall, I was left confused and a bit discouraged (mostly from the stories about adults preying on children sexually). (The publisher provided digital review copies.)