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International Geographic 1.12 - Shounen Tell Hello and welcome to the twelfth installment of Comic Book Galaxy’s weekly column on manga, INTERNATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC. This week we’ll be taking a FIRST HITS look at a variety of shounen (or something very much like it) manga as well as a BEYOND THE BACK COVER review of Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima’s samurai masterpiece, LONE WOLF & CUB. Before we dive into the reviews, I wanted to bring a moment’s worth of attention to one of my favorite magazines, GIANT ROBOT. I’ve been reading the ROBOT for about three years now and with every issue I’m really impressed with the complexity of the content and the excellence of presentation. While the magazine is definitely geared towards an Asian audience, the diverse coverage of the arts (ranging from music to fine art to comics/manga to film to graffiti art, you name it and it gets covered) is almost without peer. In the end, I learn a great deal from reading GIANT ROBOT and I appreciate the avenue they provide in expanding my horizons a little. Comics/manga fans will feel especially loved by the most recent issue (#38 which shipped last week in the Direct Market) which features: interviews with Golden Age comics artist Bob Fujitani (aka Bob Wells, Bob Fuje), gekiga pioneer Yoshihiro Tatsumi (THE PUSH MAN AND OTHER STORIES), and Seonna Hong; an article written by VERTICAL BOOKS (TEZUKA’S BUDDHA) publicist Anne Ishii; illustrations from David Choe, Jeffrey Brown, Allison Cole, Aaron Renier, Tim Biskup, and John Pham (among many others); and the obligatory but much loved REGGIE 12 comic page from Brian Ralphs. Interested parties are invited to check it out at The Giant Robot website. Now, on with the show. FIRST HITS
One of my favorite categories of manga is expository manga that seeks to educate the audience on a particular topic while simultaneously entertaining them with fictional sub-plots involving the various characters. Successfully integrating the two goals can be challenging and not all series rise to the occasion with equal skill. For the expository content to truly come alive for the reader, the fictional component must be clearly compelling beyond the merits of the information it is imparting. If the reader cannot become emotionally involved in the stakes presented, it is all for naught. HIKARU NO GO uses the ancient Japanese game of Go as the matrix for a exceptionally well-told story about Hikaru Shindo, a young boy who becomes inhabited by the spirit of Fujiwara-no-Sai, an ancient but quite deceased Go master. There is so much to appreciate about HIKARU NO GO that it’s tough to know where to start when taking it apart. Unlike many manga, HNG is a collaborative effort between the writer, Yumi Hotta, the artist, Takeshi Obata, and 5 Dan Go Master, Yukari Umezawa. Hotta’s story cleverly entangles both the primary audience of boys and the parents that will inevitably be subsidizing the consumption of said story by re-contexting a socially acceptable if time-worn cultural tradition (the playing of Go) within the entertainment expectations of the younger audience. Adding to this sense of HNG being “good for you” is the role that Fujiawara plays in helping his host make the complicated transition from childhood to adolescence. While he inadvertantly compels Hikaru to play Go against his will initially, the resulting interaction with disciplined Go players who don’t have the benefit of a ghostly master for an invisible tutor forces Hikaru to re-examine his own priorities. Obata’s art is at once stylish and very easy to digest. His character design can probably be best described as amiable but the true strength of his contribution is in the clarity of his visual storytelling. He is able to bring an essential sense of real-time kineticism to the Go games as they unfold but usually accomplishes this through careful planning rather than the psychedelic speed-line shows that pass for action in many shounen manga. Highly recommended for all ages.
PEACEMAKER is one of several manga series available in English right now set at the end of the Edo Period and, after reading this first volume, I have to say it’s by far the most confusing and, for me, the least enjoyable. I’m pretty sure I made it through all 175 pages without any clear idea of who any of the characters were or what their motivations might have been, which is an accomplishment of a sort. I can mark the moment that the magic of the period setting was dispelled as the scene where the guy with the dredlocks and the Ray-Ban sunglasses (I think he may be the Peacemaker in question!) showed up and started shooting people. After that, it all became a blur of speed-lines, ill-considered jump cuts, and these weird little cat people with big eyes. Oh yeah, and the gay sex that ends in murder. I’m not sure who the demographic for this is but if any of that sounds like you, jump right in. There will be plenty of room.
I know that no kid would probably be caught dead reading WILD 7 now because there isn’t a video game for it but back in 1969 when Mikiya Mochizuki originally released this series, I bet this was pretty hard-edged stuff. Visually inspired by a mixture of Tezuka and Monkey Punch, WILD 7 is about a gang of ex-con bikers who are recruited to fight crime in a more direct and confrontational manner than the regular police. There are definitely aspects of WILD 7 that will read as dated to any audience, like the archetypal character design choices that make them look more like the Village People than a biker gang. But, Mochizuki reaches some real moments of visual storytelling gold that transcend the mostly goofy plot (made even more so by its psuedo-rebellious tone) and involve the reader in the action on the page in spite of it. Comicsone has gone out of business and, as this volume was originally released in English back in 2001, it may be tough to find but, for those who dig on older manga, it’s worth the search and just wacky and clever enough to be memorable.
There are few experiences reading manga that will prepare a Western reader for the guilty pleasure that is GTO. Eikichi Onizuka is an ex-biker, part-time street thug that decides to become a high-school teacher in order to meet girls. If he were ever in danger of achieving this goal, the series would, of course, not be very funny but it becomes quickly plain that Onizuka is an utter dolt and in possession of a heart of gold that leads him to inspire rather than molest his students. Fujisawa has a genuine knack for comedy that at times overshadows his many gifts as an artist. One of the only advantages of the manga over the faithful anime adaptation is the overlapping layers of smart-ass dialogue that he is able to cram into his panels. Fujisawa’s art may seem rough or brutish to the casual observer but this element of his style shifts considerably to meet the emotional requirements of the scene, which occasionally range further than one might suspect from the premise of the series. Recommended to anyone in need of a good laugh. BEYOND THE BACK COVER
LONE WOLF & CUB may not be shounen manga but it’s damn manly and that counts for something. On top of that, it’s one of the most engrossing and well-told narrative art stories of any tradition. Unlike nearly all other truly landmark manga, LONE WOLF is a collaboration that brings the immense talents of both creators to bear on one of the most ambitious stories in the history of the form. It is a revenge story, an accounting of history, a philosophical treatise, a paean to culture, and, upon closing the final volume, just one of those experiences that you never forget. LONE WOLF & CUB is the story of Ogami Itto and his son, Diagoro who defy the authority of the Shogunate and become assassins in order to finance their quest for retribution against those who have destroyed through deception the honor of the Itto clan. The twist, of course, is that as the story begins Daigoro is only three years old and can do little but watch as his father begins swimming up the tide of beheaded and bloodied corpses that will eventually lead them to either death or redemption. Thus the haunting image of Itto, stone-faced, pushing his cherubic son along in a baby cart as he walks time-and-again into the arms of certain death is born. Even from the strength of this core conception of the series, LONE WOLF’s creators are never satisfied with merely entertaining the audience with Itto’s exploits. On one level, the story as it unfolds is merely an excuse to step into the rich and elaborately delineated historical environment that Koike and Kojima are able to conjure through their research and imagination. Though Koike is never afraid to launch into something resembling a short lecture to give necessary context, the bulk of this work is hard-wired into the infrastructure of the story. The environments in which the characters move and interact seem to extend intellectually for miles beyond the panel borders, giving the sensation that at any moment one could walk away from the action and disappear inside this world forever. Beyond this aspiration, LONE WOLF is something of a didactic work, creating a sense of loss at the passing of the bushi code by holding it up as morally superior to the relativist philosophies that dominate at present. This is not a new argument but the passion with which Koike and Kojima deliver this sermon is infectious and, as considered in light of the many moral fables on display here, more compelling than one might suspect. In contrast to the bichromatic morality of superhero comics, LONE WOLF is a morass of tangled ethics and morality that questions the very concepts of good and evil while maintaining that an individual’s honor is the only absolute that one is even capable of defending. It is a dark and existential work that honors the complexity of the Buddhist philosophy at the heart of Itto’s interpretation of bushi. After taking all that into consideration, remember that LONE WOLF & CUB is one of the most visually stunning manga, comic, or anything else that one is likely to read in this lifetime. Kojima’s art is not particularly pleasant to the eye but it is very true to life. It has an almost primitive quality that is ideally suited for the historical component of the story. But, Kojima is as capable of breathtaking subtlety in his rendering of human emotion as he is meticulous in capturing horrifying, graphic human brutality. Even as the art is placed in a subordinate role to the delivering of exposition, it is seen just as often taking over the story in bold and carefully considered scenes of silent and gripping visual storytelling. It is this immaculate balance between the word and the image, not unlike Itto’s own struggle between retribution and the path of meifumado, that define LONE WOLF & CUB as the great collaborative work of the manga tradition. Only recommended for those who are ready to hold all subsequent comics and manga read to a new standard for excellence. That’s all I got. Thanks for tuning in again 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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HIKARU NO GO Vol 1 by Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata.
Viz Media/Shonen Jump, $7.95, 188 pgs+, Rated A (All
Ages)
PEACEMAKER KUROGANE Vol 1 by Nanae Chrono. Adv Manga,
$9.99, 175+ pgs, Rated 13+ (Violence, Adult themes)
WILD 7 Vol 1 by Mikiya Mochizuki. Comicsone, $9.95,
187+ pgs, Not Rated (Violence, Language 13+)
GTO Vol 1 by Tohru Fujisawa, TokyoPop, $9.99, 188+
pgs, Rated OT 16+ (Language, Violence, Sexual Themes
and Images)
LONE WOLF & CUB Vol 1-28 by Kazuo Koike and Goseki
Kojima. Dark Horse Comics, $9.95/ea, Not Rated (Pick
anything that anyone might potentially find offensive.
You’ll find it here in plentitude. 18+)