Independent Opinions, News, and Reviews of Graphic Novels, Manga, and Comic Books
For the purpose of this post, I’m using a highly idiosyncratic definition of “best”, based mostly on what I looked forward to and enjoyed re-reading. (This year, given the economy, I also considered whether I’d buy series volumes sight unseen, whether I was entertained enough to feel they were worth gambling the money on.) I have a few subcategories, under which I’ve ranked a maximum of five titles, with #1 being best. Links take you to reviews of the titles. […]
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It’s the perfect manga for me! Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy! combines the foodie love of Oishinbo with the josei-style work focus of Suppli, only the career is making manga, a subject artist Fumi Yoshinaga previously covered in Flower of Life. Yoshinaga herself stars as the thinly relabeled Y-naga, a slobby creator of yaoi manga. She adores good food, though, and dresses up for it (making for amusing visual contrast). Her roommate S-hara is one of […]
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KC and I went to see The Social Network last week. You can probably tell how much I enjoyed it by considering that it took me this long to get around to writing up my thoughts. I don’t regret seeing it, but it wasn’t as entertaining as I hoped. The Social Network is a Citizen Kane for our time, looking at a media mogul — in this case, Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, played by Jesse Eisenberg — who is […]
Read moreMelinda Beasi at Manga Bookshelf had the lovely idea of having a Fumi Yoshinaga Week this week. So far she’s written about All My Darling Daughters, provided an overview of Yoshinaga’s boys’ love titles, and written a wonderful appreciation of the Flower of Life series. I’m afraid I’m too swamped to have anything new to add, but I have covered most of Yoshinaga’s work previously in these reviews: All My Darling Daughters Antique Bakery Flower of Life volume 1 Flower […]
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I tried to read To Terra… once before, three years ago, just after it came out. I didn’t make it through. It was so old-fashioned in both look and story — as the copyright page notes, it was originally serialized from 1977-1980. It’s also got what I call the 2001 problem, after the movie. I am told that Keiko Takemiya was an originator, that her work here inspired so many others that what was then innovative quickly became cliché as […]
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This collection of four connected short stories by Fumi Yoshinaga has more in common with Ooku than her yaoi works. For one thing, all of the love relationships demonstrated — and there are several variants included — are either male/female, friendly affection, or familial (parent/child). For another, the setting is a kind of historical fantasy, revolving around a castle and its baron. Two adopted brothers wander out of the desert to become bards for the baron, where they find an […]
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After enjoying the new books by Fumi Yoshinaga, Ooku: The Inner Chambers and All My Darling Daughters, I decided to try some of her earlier works. This Juné manga seemed a good place to start. I knew from the imprint that this would involve boys’ love stories, but it’s not at all explicit, more schoolboy romance than yaoi. The Moon and the Sandals is a series of six short stories about falling in love, each revolving around a different member […]
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Fumi Yoshinaga is well-known in manga circles for her yaoi and yaoi-like titles. (Some are still arguing about what to call Antique Bakery, about a group of men who sell dessert, one of whom is gay.) Her more recently translated Ooku: The Inner Chambers, again featuring a society of men, was on many best-of-2009 lists. She’s done some creative female character studies before, especially in Flower of Life volume 3 and volume 4, but I’ve never seen her cover mostly […]
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