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1.6 Only Lacking Something Borrowed Greetings, True Believers, and welcome to the sixth installment of INTERNATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC. This week we’ll be taking a look at a mix of newer and older titles (as well as something blue) in the weekly survey of reviews. Before we get started, here’s the monthly plug for SHOJO BEAT [hyperlink] with issue two shipping last week. The essays that accompany the serial manga have been really well-written for what is ostensibly a teen mag, evoking at times the provocative and often instructive spirit of the late and much lamented, PULP Magazine. It’s girly but so was Madonna in the 80s so what say we just get over it now? FIRST HITS RG VEDA Vol 1 by CLAMP, TokyoPop, $9.99, 200 pgs. Rated T 
RG VEDA is the debut series (originally published in 1990 in Japan) from CLAMP STUDIOS. While the artists of CLAMP are female, their work is part of a tradition that seeks to appeal to both audiences by focusing more on sequential action, punctuated by the more expressive effects often associated with shoujo. As their debut manga, we can see in RG VEDA several themes and character archetypes that will recur through many of their series. In this sense, this first volume read like an unrehearsed version of X /1999 though in possession of cruder versions of its charms as well. CLAMP manga, in general, have a particular rhythm to them that tends to draw even the most skeptical reader into the story, reminding me at times of a caricature of Claremont X-MEN stories; narrative driven by seemingly unlimited access to the interior of ensemble casts being run through more sub-plots than will ever be resolved or even justified in the end by merit of the gravity of their consequences. These first variations on themes that would become like a fingerprint for CLAMP are as entertaining as the rest if slightly less visually evolved. I’d say the target audience for this is probably 13-15 and, looking at the back cover, we find Tokypop thinks so too. HOT GIMMICK Vol 1 by Miki Aihara, Viz Media, 180+ pgs, $9.95, Rated OT (16+) 
This had the double pedigree of selling well in the store and coming highly recommended from people with defensible taste so it’s something of a miracle that I held out this long to check out HOT GIMMICK. The foundations of the series are so commonplace as to barely warrant retelling: a simple miscommunication puts a normal teenage girl at the mercy of the guy she hates, to the detriment of a budding relationship with her then childhood friend, now teen man model, who has recently returned to the neighborhood where they all grew up. There are signs even within this first volume though that Aihara is of the temperament to transform the disposable quality of the narrative materials she begins with into something both meaningful and singular in vision. Part of this comes from the marked assuredness of her storytelling as she moves from sketchy interior narrative styles to clearly delineated action sequences. Her actors, an expression of Aihara’s craft as both writer and artist, come across as very natural, even when stylized along genre lines. The story in he first volume is just predictable enough that if I hadn’t already been assured that it picks up as it moves along, I might not revisit it quickly if at all. The level of craft in the art and storytelling is high enough though that I’ll extend that benefit of the doubt a volume or two further before making a final decision. DANCE UNTIL TOMORROW Vol 1 by Naoki Yamamoto, Viz Media, $15.95, 200+ pgs, Rated M (18+) 
DANCE UNTIL TOMORROW was one of the many bizarre and wonderful serials that emerged from Viz’s PULP MAGAZINE back in the day. Composed of the slenderest of premises, DUT is the saga of Suekichi Terayama who is set to inherit the equivalent of 4 million dollars but only if he can graduate college, establish himself, and get married. Re-reading the first volume opened me up to a new reading of the series as kind of the naturalist dark complement to Rumiko Takahashi’s MAISON IKKOKU, where the protagonist is promised only the possibility of true love as reward for essential the same hat trick. The domestic tranquility that is like a noble quest in MAISON is transformed into a sleazy, reality game show where the only prize is money. The result is, as my grandmother might have called it, “something blue” but enjoyable for older audiences. What is more remarkable though is how Yamamoto, a former hentai artist, is able to take this story and make it both emotionally engaging and, in some ways, more honest than Takahashi’s brand of Japanese Romanticism. The sexual content of DUT is definitely erotic in intent but it is rarely glamorized as being anything but half-assed expressions of dysfunctional affection between varying sets of emotionally stunted adults. This formula is not clearly established or even plumbed for its full facility in the first volume but the mood of the piece comes through pretty well here. I hear tell of a new edition of DANCE UNTIL TOMORROW due sometime in the foreseeable but, for the nonce, this might be a little tougher to track down. BEYOND THE BACK COVER FORBIDDEN DANCE Vol 1-4 by Hinako Ashihara, TokyoPop, 200+ pgs/ea, Rated T (13+) 
FORBIDDEN DANCE, which began its English release schedule in 2003, was the first ballet/dance shoujo manga to be made available in the English. My impressions of it then were a mixture of fascination with the genre and affection for Ashihara’s likeable storytelling. Having now read a sizeable chunk of one of the landmark ballet manga, Ariyoshi Kyoko’s virtuosic SWAN, I expected to be less-impressed with this distant descendant on a second read-through just by virtue of comparison. Some of these fears were well-founded. SWAN is a veritable encyclopedia of ballet with immaculately researched exposition that seeks to teach as well as entertain. FORBIDDEN DANCE is essentially a shoujo romance costumed in tutus and tights that rarely pans away from the characters long enough for the reader to really enter the world they inhabit. Working from this inarguably more limited framework, Ashihara’s story lacks SWAN’s stately pacing or its graceful plot twists. Instead, the characters bounce from one extreme situation to the next, giving the series the emotional dynamism of a Michael Bolton song. Given these inherent flaws, I was a little surprised at how little they influenced my enjoyment of the story. While lacking Kyoko’s decadent palette, Ashihara has one of the most charming rendering styles in modern shoujo (at least that I’ve seen). Her character design reminds me at times of Moyoco Anno, minus the cynical irony, filling her books with these impossibly thin, frail creatures that are almost to bishonen/bishoujo for their own good. Perhaps my favorite Ashihara affectation is the pronounced underbite she gives her main character. It seems a little frivolous to hinge a critical reading on liking the way the artist draws the characters but FORBIDDEN DANCE, in the end, has mostly only the charm of its characters to draw the reader into the story. After recognizing that two manga may extend from a common tradition (in this case, ballet) without necessarily sharing narrative priorities, I’m comfortable knowing that while FORBIDDEN DANCE may never aspire to be as definitive or substantive as her older sister, she takes no less pleasure from the dancing itself. Great for teen girls with parents nervous about suggestive sexual content as it has none to speak of. Thanks for reading and I’ll see y’all in seven. ### -- ROB VOLLMAR Rob Vollmar is the Eisner-Nominated writer of THE CASTAWAYS and BLUESMAN, both with artist Pablo G. Callejo.
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