So, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, renowned for his awesome and unique illustration style closely associated to the Evangelion franchise and notorious for his inability to keep to a monthly serialization schedule, is bringing back Evangelion again according to an announcement in this month’s Young Ace magazine.

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I loved the manga and own all of them. On the other hand, this table of his past record speaks for itself. (Source: 2ch thread)

Moteki is a short manga series by Mitsurou Kubo about a girlfriend-less guy, Yukiyo Fujimoto, who suddenly finds himself catching the attention of three different girls from his past just as he is about to turn 30. He decides that this is his once-in-a-lifetime “moteki” (lit. period of popularity) and his last shot at finding a girlfriend and not dying alone.

Interestingly, this is not exactly a harem title. While the three female characters, Aki Doi, Itsuka Nakashiba and Natsuki Komiyama, do have some kind of romantic encounters with Fujimoto, he soon realizes that his “moteki” is not what he imagined it to be and things won’t go smoothly as he had thought.

Fujimoto begins the story as a typical awkward Keitarou-type character who spends way too much time second-guessing the girls he interacts with and yet somehow manages to overlook all the important details.

The Keitarou dash (usually the result of a misunderstanding)

The girls themselves are not entirely well-adjusted individuals (e.g. tomboy who finds it hard to be seen as a girl; girl who can’t keep her pants on when drunk) and seek solace and support in various forms through their encounters with Fujimoto, but he suffers from a severe inhuman lack of self confidence and is unable to see pass the fact that the girls have boobs long enough to compute their silent cries for help. C’est la vie.

There are no explicit scenes

Over the course of four volumes, Fujimoto learns that he is not the undesirable loser that he thought he was and that romance is about more than just finding the courage to say, “I love you.” He matures as a person and eventually finds the self confidence to help the girls around him and himself to become (slightly) more well adjusted individuals.

The interesting thing about Moteki is that it is written completely from the Fujimoto’s herbivorous-male perspective but the mangaka, Mitsurou Kubo, is secretly a lady whose real name is Mitsuko Kubo. She likes to draw a beard on her avatar and use a male pseudonym because she was told by her editor that it’s better to pretend to be a guy when drawing male-oriented manga.

You would never guess this from reading the manga because the monologues feel so authentic that I swore it was meant by the author to be autobiographical. Heh.

Sometimes you feel like there’s a whole stadium cheering you on

Moteki was originally intended to be a one-volume release but it was extended due to popular demand. I have mix feelings about this.

Volume 1 and, to a lesser extent, Volume 2 are very well written, but the story wanders off into a weird direction somewhere around the third volume when Kubo decides to introduce another socially-awkward extremely-creepy character (who just happens to be a popular manga artist) and dedicate a few chapters to his sad life story that ultimately lead nowhere. It was a completely wtf-inducing plot digression that was clearly not in the original plans.

On the other hand, one volume would definitely have been too short to properly let Fujimoto grow as a character.

The eye of a sex predator

The ending is not entirely satisfying — not every one of the three male female characters receive proper closure and there is one (or two) huge loose end left hanging — but the first half is good enough to carry the story to the finish line a winner. More or less.

The author apparently agrees with this assessment because there is a Volume 4.5 special release containing a few extra side-story chapters to give a proper finale to one of the girls who got screwed particularly badly by her haphazard story planning. (Let’s just say she doesn’t show up at all in Volume 4.)

Despite its flaws and faltering second half, Moteki is a brilliant bitter-sweet example of seinen manga with imperfect characters who feel human enough for you to empathize with without being too edgy, and heart-wrenching despair (絶望した) matched by moments of pure joy and tenderness. A good read.

The tsundere blush (*´д`*)ﾊｧﾊｧ

I experienced a brief moment of surreality when Twitter was mentioned by one of the characters in the story. Somehow, it just felt so out of place in a manga, granted it’s probably because most titles I’ve been reading are years (if not decades) old.

This is also surreal

Kubo also talks about visiting Singapore to see the inaugural Singapore Grand Prix in one of her end notes. The world is, like, totally interconnected, man.

I have half a mind to give the live action adaptation a try, but I think I probably won’t like it.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government is set to pass new legislation restricting the sales of manga depicting certain sexual acts to minors under eighteen.

Contrary to what certain easily-excitable individuals may proclaim, this is not a ban and this is not the end of the anime. But it will certainly pose a huge problem to the industry.

Background

The proposed law has been working its way around the bureaucracy for months and started off as an anti-lolicon bill. A detailed guideline to classifying paedophilic content in manga was drafted by the person in charge, but this proposal was shot down for being too vague.

In the guideline, the author attempted to justify why certain scenes of nudity featuring minors (such as Doraemon‘s Shizuka Minamoto who loves to take baths) will fall outside the definition of child porn, but this was deemed to be too arbitrary by the committee who probably possessed enough mental capacity in their old age to realize that enforcing age restrictions against drawn cartoon characters is insane. The bill failed to muster enough support.

Months later, it was resurrected and rewritten to target depiction or glorification of sex acts that are illegal (e.g. rape) or immoral (e.g. incest which is not illegal in Japan), a criterion which was deemed to be much more enforceable and objective. This has the unfortunate side effect of making the law even more draconian than its original intention.

Yesterday, the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly’s General Affairs Committee approved the bill by a large majority after a last-minute compromise between the conservative LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) proponents led by Tokyo Governor Shintarou Ishihara (who famously cracked down on Kabukichou) and the DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan, the less conservative national ruling party) assemblymen. The compromise requested by the DPJ was to include a clause giving exceptions to works that demonstrates “artistic merits”.

The LDP, DPJ and Komeito voted for the bill and only the Seikatsusha Network Mirai and the Japanese Communist Party (i.e. pretty fringe oppositions) voted against it over technical disagreements rather than principled ones. Having passed the General Affairs Committee, the bill is expected to be passed by the main assembly tomorrow, 15 Dec 10, despite uncharacteristically intense protests from the industry.

Her name is Reon Kadena

Tokyo Anime Fair

Due to Governor Ishihara’s uncompromising attitude against the anime and manga industry, he is perceived by some to be carrying out a personal vendetta by pushing for this bill.

In protest of this, ten major publishing companies led by Kadokawa, including Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan, have withdrawn their participation from the upcoming Tokyo Anime Fair taking place in March next year. Collectively, they own the rights to a large portion of the popular current titles. Unless this boycott is called off, Tokyo Anime Fair 2011 will likely be cancelled or at least totally lame and pointless.

When asked for his opinions regarding the boycott by a reporter, Governor Isihhara (who is technically the chairperson of the TAF organising committee but seems to be totally disinterested in it) responded angrily and effectively told the companies to fuck off and do whatever they want.

And late last night, Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who is not involved in this prefecture-level legislation, included a short postscript in his blog post describing this as an issue concerning the “Japan Brand”. He covered his base by saying that protecting the youth is important, but goes on to emphasise that promoting anime is also important as part of Japan’s soft power. He appeals for the parties involved to ensure that it will be possible for Tokyo Anime Fair to continue to thrive in Tokyo. This is interpreted by some as a warning to Ishihara not to push the issue too far.

Saaya Irie

The Law

Information on the proposed ordinance itself is scant online because Japan as a nation is terrified of the Internet and refuses to post any useful information online. If someone can find the full Japanese text of the bill, please link me. (UPDATE: Refer to the bottom of the entry for the relevant text extracted from the actual bill.)

But from what I have gleamed from Japanese new sources, the proposed law seeks to restrict sales of anime and manga titles depicting or glorifying sex acts that are illegal or immoral. The two examples given by all the newspapers were rape and incest, but presumably this is not an exhaustive list.

It is interesting that the law specifically targets anime and manga instead of generic creative works. This lends credit to the suggestions of certain conservative agenda at work. Or perhaps otaku were simply deemed to be harmless weaklings who would not be able to resist, giving an easy brownie point for the moral crusaders.

Please also note that this is a Tokyo Metropolis bill being passed by the Tokyo Metropolitan (i.e. prefecture) government and not the Japanese national government situated in Tokyo, so if passed it will affect only the Tokyo area.

Effective Ban

This ordinance does not ban anything. Hardcore pornographic manga will still be legal as they have always been, because they already comply with the proposed 18+ restrictions.

However, there are many manga titles targeted at working adults that will be affected by the proposed law. Off the top of my head, I imagine titles such as Kiss x Sis, Gantz, Berserk and various yuri/yaoi titles will be faced with a dilemma.

The problem is that being classified as “18+” is a commercial kiss of death similar to the AO games rating in the US. Book stores will either not stock the books or place them in a corner designated for pornography. This will be a huge distribution, retail and advertising disadvantage for titles that are not porn but contain select scenes that fall under the new law.

Yes, hardcore ero-manga has its lucrative niche in the market. But if Berserk has to be sold next to actual porn in a hidden corner of the shop, then how can it hope to attract the attention of its intended audience: adults looking for edgy seinen manga? In the long run, this results in a chilling effect on the creative freedom in storytelling, since publishers will be unwilling to fund such works given the risk of being branded 18+ by the Tokyo government.

There are existing retail ordinance regulating the sales of porn and 18+ materials. I am not familiar with the exact intricacies, but I suspect that restricted advertising and physical isolation are probably among the guidelines.

Additionally, there are online speculations about whether titles like Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai and Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt will be affected, but my feeling is that it won’t be that drastic, so don’t get your panties in a bunch just yet. Yosuga no Sora on the other hand…

Aki Hoshino

Opinion — Doujinshi

The enforcement of the law will presumably entail government bureaucrats spending all day reading manga and watching anime in order to decide which titles should be 18+ restricted.

This brings into question how doujinshi, being non-commercial and unfunded in nature, will be treated by the system. If right holders must submit their works for approval for an administrative fee, then this barrier of entry may effectively prevent doujinshi from being sold in retail stores in Tokyo.

This also makes me wonder about Comiket. From my experience, Comiket tries to group works of similar nature together (i.e. smut with smut) but this is not enforced strictly and in general the individual stalls lack any indication of whether their products are 18+ in nature (at least the ones where this is not immediately obvious).

I presume that Comiket has long been in violation of some kind of Tokyo ordinance governing sales of porn and the government was just sort of turning a blind eye on it. I was actually under 18 during my first trip to Comiket and there was no age limit of any kind being enforced. If the Tokyo government chooses to tighten its enforcement, I wonder what will happen.

Certainly, it will be extremely costly and difficult for the organising committee to implement any effective screening for doujinshi sold during Comiket, especially since many of them are finalized literally days before the event. At the same time, enforcing an age limit for half a million visitors will not be any less insane.

I wonder if there exist any venues outside of Tokyo with infrastructure capable of hosting Comiket should it come to that.

Saaya Irie

Opinion — Age Limit

I am a free speech guy. In general where possible, I prefer unrestrained expression and have argued this before. However, I agree that age restrictions can be necessary and effective. In this case, the problem does not lie so much with the intention the law, but rather in the implementation.

As adults, I think we can all agree that we want a level of entertainment that exists between teenage-oriented shounen titles and hardcore pornography. The problem with a 18+ or nothing rating system is that it makes it difficult to market such a product. Market it as 18+ and be relegated to obscurity or market it as all ages and get blamed when children buy it.

This problem is not new and the industry has always tried to side-step it through its own system of genre classifications. But there is no uniform guideline that informs consumers if a seinen title is unsuitable for the youth. This problem has long been solved by movies and video games, so it puzzles me why it continues to be a problem here despite being often brought up.

I suspect that this has something to do with the industry not wishing to spend more money on working out a age classification system. But I think it’s also because such age restrictions were never deemed necessary for novels and you can easily find explicit pornographic novels prominently displayed in any major Japanese book stores with no restrictions on them.

So, I think a more comprehensive gradient of age classifications will help to alleviate some of the political pressure being exerted on the industry. You can argue that children still get to play violent video games, but the point is for the industry to demonstrate that it has done its part.

Branding your own product 18+ is commercial suicide. But if a sensible classification system exists that allows adult-oriented entertainment to thrive while differentiating them from both shounen and porn titles, content owners may be more willing to classify their works properly, reducing the need for a clumsy bureaucracy to step in.

Yukie Kawamura

Opinion — Enforcement

I think one interesting food-for-thought for me personally is the enforcement process.

Manga is just drawn pictures. How do you prove that illegal or immoral acts are being portrayed or glorified? I’m sure it will be clear cut in many situations, but I can think of a lot of potential loopholes.

For example, you can prove incest in real-life through DNA test, but how will you do that in manga? What if the characters involved turn out to be not related by blood? What if they are not depicted as siblings at all, but the girl just likes to call the guy “onii-san”?

The other example used, rape, is similarly mind-boggling. How can fictional characters give consent? What constitutes manga rape? I can see plenty of room for contention if someone chooses to dispute a specific ruling.

Furthermore, are non-explicit yuri and yaoi manga “glorifying” immoral sexual behaviours? And, for that matter, will homosexuality be considered immoral? There are a lot of unanswered questions over which I cannot opine without a copy of the original legislative text. (Refer to UPDATE below for further information.)

Conclusion

This law will not be the end of manga and anime because Bleach, Naruto and One Piece will survive like how cockroaches will survive the nuclear holocaust. But it will probably make manga and anime a lot duller than they have to be, in the absence of a more sensible content classification guideline.

Given the number of manga titles being produced on a regular basis and the amount of bureaucracy that will probably be required to assess them using these highly subjective criteria, this law will inevitably add an invisible tax to an industry that is not exactly in its best days.

The most likely outcome is that future titles deemed to be pushing the vague lines drawn by the law will be canned by the publishers because of the undetermined risks involved. There will be a huge financial incentive for companies to self censor and err on the safe side. This will most probably achieve the conservatives’ intended effect of reining in the industry’s growing dependency on sexual titillation, but one wonders at what cost.

As the Papa Bear puts it, this fucking thing sucks.

P.S. I think my favourite comment on this whole situation comes from Diemeow23 in Sankaku Complex’s blog comments:

If this does get implemented then I’m glad I saw anime and manga at its most shining brilliance however perverted the light was

Update

I was linked to the legislative text in question (so Japan does do some things right :P). The relevant portion of the text that defines works targeted by the law:

第八条第一項第二号の東京都規則で定める基準　漫画、アニメーションその他の画像（実å†ã‚’é¤ãã€‚）で、刑罰法規に触れる性交若しくは性交類似行為又は婚姻を禁止されている近親者間における性交若しくは性交類似行為を、不当に賛美し又は誇張ãã‚‹ã‚ˆã†ã«ã€æå†ã—又は表現ãã‚‹ã“とにより、青少年の性に関ãã‚‹å¥å…¨ãªåˆ¤æ–­èƒ½åŠ›ã®å½¢æˆã‚’妨げ、青少年の健全な成長を阻害ãã‚‹ãŠãã‚ŒãŒã‚るもの

The criterion as defined by Rule 2, Paragraph 1, Article 8 of the Tokyo Metropolitan Law: Comics, animation and other images (excluding photographs) that improperly glorify or exaggerate, through their depiction or presentation of, acts of sexual intercourse that violate penal laws or sexual conducts or acts of sexual intercourse between close relatives who are legally prohibited from marriage, and as a result may be harmful to the wholesome development of young people and impede their ability to form healthy impressions about sex.

It appears that the law is not as far-reaching as suggested by initial reports. Since homosexuality is perfectly legal in Japan, this means that yuri and yaoi are safe for now. It’s funny how they have to propose a roundabout definition of incest since it is not actually an illegal act in Japan.

This explains why news outlets reported the law as targeting illegal and immoral sex acts — incest is technically not illegal. But it also means that other forms of “immoral” sex acts are not actually covered by the law so long as they are legal in themselves by the standards of the penal code. But it’s still amusing to have to judge the legality of actions committed by fictional drawings.

So, all in all, this issue seems to be worthy of protest and improvement but it is nowhere close to an end-game scenario for the industry, since most ecchi fanservice and softcore porn depicted in anime and manga are neither illegal (especially since the age of consent in Tokyo is 13, well below the age of most anime characters) nor incestuous.

A long time ago, I stumbled upon the Golden Boy OVA series on Nico Nico Douga and thought it was an odd and unique piece of work. It left a bit of an impression but I didn’t think much more of it. Recently, I had the chance to read the 10-volume manga series that it is based on. It blew my mind in a way that words alone fail to describe.

Golden Boy starts off as a sexually-charged gag manga full of raunchy toilet humour much like the OVA, which was made based on six of the chapters contained in the first book. The interesting thing is that, up to the third volume, the degree of sexuality portrayed is actually much more explicit in the OVA than in the manga (at least until the third volume, after which the manga overtakes it by leaps and bounds).

The basic storytelling template is as follows: Kintarou Oe, a boy genius who dropped out of Toudai after obtaining full credits in order to go on a journey of self discovery, arrives at a new town and takes up a new part-time job in order to learn a new skill. There, he meets a hot girl who is usually instantly turned off by his unrestrained perverted nature and thinks that he is just a good-for-nothing freeter. In the end, he surprises everyone by not only picking up the skill in record time, but doing it better than anyone else. He also usually ends up changing the girl’s life positively. But by the time anyone realizes what he has done, he leaves town on his bicycle and heads for his next lesson in life.

This story structure is repeated many times in the first two volumes and appears to be the original concept before the manga. However, by the third volume, things start to change. The episodic storytelling format is eventually replaced by a long continuous story as we learn more about Kintarou.

The most obvious shift happens when he encounters a cult bent on world domination who uses S&M sexual techniques to brainwash and mind control people. This quickly grows into long discussions about the state of modern society and its use of violence as a tool of conflict resolution, the role of the education system in producing unthinking slaves for the system and the role of sex in achieving inner and outer peace.

At this point, I suppose you just went “WTF?”

Consider where I cut off the image. Hint: nopan

Yes, the real meat, at least from the author’s perspective, behind Golden Boy is not its expert depiction of the female anatomy or its thorough examination of the different genres of sexual fantasies. It is instead a soapbox for the author to voice his anti-establishment and leftist ideologies in manga form. As a result, Golden Boy’s dialogues can get somewhat wordier than in most other manga, and disagreements between characters frequently descend into discourses on history, politics and society.

The main messages constantly repeated in Golden Boy are:

• The Japanese education system destroys a person’s inert ability to learn and brainwashes him into a conforming slave
• Sex is both a tool of political control and social liberation
• Modern society is built on egoistic violence against other people, against the natural environment, against tradition and culture, against human nature. Examples used include:
  • Destroying the environment to build golf courses and a fictional Japan-hosted Olympics (waste of tax money collected forcefully by the government)
  • World War II (he brings up Rape of Nanjing and Unit 731), Vietnam War, Russo-Japanese War
  • Indoctrination of the people to accept rule by elites through a hierarchical education and corporate system
• The Japanese political system is a continuation of the pre-war status quo and the same old flaws are concealed by material wealth
• Material possession and social status are hollow and meaningless
• Avocation of free love — that true love is not possessive and love does not tie you to your partner
• Avocation of life-long self-motivated learning over systematically-imposed rote learning (i.e. street smart over book smart)

The meaning of life in manga form

It is interesting because a lot of these messages coincide with the leftist and anarchist student movements in post-war Japan. The author, Tatsuya Egawa, was born in 1961 and taught college mathematics for a few months before switching to drawing manga, so it’s easy to see where the political outlook expressed in Golden Boy comes from. He was probably disillusioned by own education experience and subsequently influenced by the leftist anti-government anti-consumerism sentiments that were prevalent in Japanese universities during the height of the Cold War.

In sooth, Tatsuya Egawa is not at all a good story-teller. He frequently dedicates so much time in writing his tirades against modern society that the story becomes incoherent or neglected. His matter-of-fact rants are also rife with factual errors, probably copied and pasted directly from Communist propaganda pamphlets, so they should be taken with a grain of salt — they are interesting to read but far from gospel. Still, it is very eye-opening to see how Egawa, a Baby Boomer, perceives Japanese society at the end of its roaring bubble economy.

Beyond the political and social messages, Golden Boy also goes into great lengthy discussions about the human psyche — how we derive our own self worth, how we distinguish ourselves from others as individuals, how we seek to dominate or be dominated, etc. The author’s arguments in this areas make for some interesting food for thought, but are probably standard fare for college-level psychology.

It’s okay because they are (still) wearing clothes

For those who dare to venture into the unknown, be warned. While Golden Boy is not actually considered M-18, this must be placed in context of Japan’s traditionally liberal view regarding sexuality. Let’s just say that it has everything up to the extreme threshold acceptable for a manga that is not explicitly smut, including fetishes, S&M and almost an entire volume dedicated to a single sex scene — the characters literally discuss the socio-political significance and symbolism of sex while doing it.

Golden Boy is really one of those only-in-Japan phenomenons that can never find a profitable niche outside of Japan, except perhaps in prose form. Beyond the first two volume and the OVA series, the series’ message is so foreign, explicit and politically-charged that it’s impossible to appreciate it outside of its intended context.

With the right mindset and conditions, one can find some meaningful ideas in the way Golden Boy pushes the envelopes of political correctness and sexuality. But that perfect cosmic alignment of the universe happens rarely, so it’s not something I can recommend to anyone even though I found it curiously enjoyable. It’s an odd piece of work that is difficult to appreciate, as evidenced by the slew of hate-filled negative reviews it receives online. Really a hit-or-miss thing.

If you are still interested, you can find scanslations (no idea how good they are since I read the raws) up to the start of Volume 8 on AnimeA and raws of all ten volumes on Crazy’s Manga.

It’s also quite amazing to hear that Tatsuya Egawa has apparently just recently started to serialize Golden Boy II in Business Jump, after ending the original run abruptly thirteen years ago. (Sadly, the ANN comment thread on this announcement is quite superficially negative because English speakers’ exposure to the series is limited to the OVA series.)

I haven’t had a chance to read the first chapter of Golden Boy II yet, which I believe has already been published, but the promotion art looks quite evolved from his earlier works. I just wonder if the passage of time has served to temper Egawa’s fiery brand of political expression and if Golden Boy 2 will turn out to be a more mainstream ecchi gag comedy. Looking forward to finding out.

P.S. Having recently discovered the joy of RawScans, I have been downloading and consuming manga raws ravenously. I just finished reading Tokyo University Story, a 34-volume series by Tatsuya Egawa that was serialized the same time as Golden Boy. It contains the same general themes, but with a lot more focus on education and human relationship. It also has the most WTF ending ever in the history of human creativity.

Due to the dearth of anime that interests me, I have been spending more time on manga these days. During a recent frolic in the forest of books that is Kinokuniya, I bought the first volume of Natsu no Zenjitsu (夏の前日) on a whim, as I often do when I don’t want to feel like I wasted a trip there because the new releases I was actually looking for were not yet in stock. Though these impulse buys often, by their very nature, end up disappointing, this time it turned out to be a surprisingly good purchase.

Natsu no Zenjitsu is a sweet and somewhat melancholic story about Tetsuo Aoki, a 4th-year student at Hiyoshigaoka Arts University who works part-time at an art supply store, and Akira Aizawa, an older woman who works for a local art gallery. Imagine Honey and Clover with just Mayama and Rika, if you swapped their personalities and tweaked things a bit.

The great part about Natsu is really the art, which, unfortunately for those who cannot understand Japanese or do not want to purchase the book, has been completely ruined in the online scans by a raw cleaner’s overly-liberal use of Photoshop’s Brightness & Contrast tool. Scanslators love to make their scans have pure white background (because it gives the impression of a high quality scan), even if they really shouldn’t…

The original features beautiful cross-hatching done with delicate pen strokes and some very brilliant line art, with sparing use of prefab screen tones where cross-shading is not viable. The resulting presentation is simply a joy to look at, a whole different level from the flat tone-shaded visual style adopted by most weekly shounen titles. Simply beautiful. It’s a shame that the high contrast found in online scans wiped out most of the intricate details and turned everything that survived the genocide into blobs of dark abyss. This is why all the pictures in this post suck balls.

Natsu‘s author, Motoi Yoshida, also drew the original Koi Kaze, a fact that I only found out after I started writing this post, so you can get an idea of how the art really looks like from there. (Assuming you didn’t just download the scans for Koikaze too…)

Story-wise, Natsu is pure and simple. There’s basically no real problems to be solved in the story, just two characters falling in love (or not?) in an awkward and at times amusing manner. The brilliantness lies more in the subtle interactions between Tetsuo and Akira and the way the panels are composed to convey the weight of every meaningful glance and thoughtful pause. The pair’s idle flirtations take on a life of their own. Simply delightful.

Apparently, Natsu is actually a prequel to another manga by Yoshida, Mizu no Iro Gin no Tsuki (水の色 銀の月) and, according to a random manga blog I googled upon, you can actually find out what happens to the main characters in Natsu if you read that earlier work. I’ll probably wait for Natsu to finish first, which will probably take a while considering that it’s serialized in good! AFTERNOON, a bimonthly magazine. Then again, Mizu only took two books and Koi Kaze, his longest work, ended in five volumes.

So anyway, although it’s probably because I am biased towards the genre, I find the book to be bloody brilliant. Get it on Amazon JP if you can read Japanese. If not, you can still pretend that it’s a cheap art book and enjoy the pretty artwork.

A small postscript note: Although not classified as an adult manga by Japanese standards, Natsu contains tasteful nudity and sex scenes. Be warned.

Kimi no Iru Machi does shounen romance like a cup of fresh milk. It’s frill-free and yet enjoyable. Sure, you could always add chocolate, bananas or space-alien girls to create a more exotic blend, but sometimes it’s nice to just savour that pure unaltered taste of simplicity.

The genre of shounen love comedy is mostly dominated by two archetypes: harem and girl-with-special-powers. Often a mixture of both. This is the result of a variety of factors, such as economical imperatives (i.e. maximising merchandising potential) and a need to differentiate one’s work from the rest in a highly saturated market. Love comedies that do not rely on either belong to, for the most part, the exclusive domain of shoujo (and are often written from a female perspective), a sad situation for people like me who are forced to secretly read pink-covered volumes of Kare Kano behind locked doors.

KimiMachi, featuring neither harem nor supernatural phenomenons, represents an increasingly rare sub-genre that has long been under-catered for: the pseudo shoujo. It consists of plot devices and character development that wouldn’t feel out of place in a typical teenage romance novel, but retains the art style and presentation that identifies it as shounen work. It’s basically a recognition that not all sentimental sop fests have to be targeted at female readers — just most of them.

KimiMachi is author Kouji Seo‘s follow-up to Suzuka, the series that started off as a better-drawn copy of Love Hina but made some people go “WTF” in the end where certain unexpected events transpired. I expect similar plot twists from KimiMachi and so far it looks like it will not disappoint.

Set two years after the end of Suzuka in a small town in what is today Shoubara, Hiroshima (the author’s hometown), the story of KimiMachi features a completely new cast of characters with occasional off-stage cameos by Suzuka characters. Haruto Kirishima has a huge crush on his classmate Nanami Kanzaki. One day, a strange girl named Yuzuki Eba suddenly moves into his house and transfers to his school. A love triangle ensues.

The initial set-up of the story appears generic at first sight, but, just as Suzuka started off as an apparent clone of Love Hina, it is the subsequent development that sets KimiMachi apart.

The great thing about KimiMachi is its unpredictability. Of course, it’s not completely unpredictable to the point that Yuzuki turns out to be an alien from the Andromeda Galaxy (fresh milk, remember?), but it does a good job of steering the story to unexpected directions. Every time it feels like the story has established a new status quo and you think you know what happens next, the story throws a monkey wench at your face and breaks your nose (eh, maybe that’s not the right metaphor). It goes like this:

You: “I’ve read enough love comedies to know that she is not going to confess her real feelings right now because that’s how the story prolongs itself.”
Story: “Screw your preconceptions. Here’s her doing exactly that.”
You: “WTF, so the story is over?”
Story: “Nope.”

Whereas the typical love comedy likes to condemn the main characters to a perpetual state of relationship limbo (i.e. more than friends, less than lovers, with the occasional longing stare) until the author finally decides to end the story with a Happily Ever Afterâ„¢, KimiMachi is perfectly willing to allow its characters to confront every situation directly to keep the story moving. Unlike the typical loser male leads whose popularity with girls defies logic, Haruto as a character is likeable and easy to empathize with because he tries to deal with problems proactively instead of merely being swept along by the story.

It’s quite hard for me to go any deeper about what I think of the storywriting without giving out spoilers, and I hate spoilers more than genocide. So, you’ll just have to take my word that it’s pretty good.

I also like the fact that the author incorporates his personal experiences into the story. From the cool Hiroshima dialect (which unfortunately does not translate at all into English) to the background art created from photographs of his hometown, KimiMachi feels a lot more personal and homely than his previous work, Suzuka. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the characters or situations are based on his own high school memories. The short introductions he gives to various places around his hometown on the cover fold of each volume help to add that little extra touch of realism.

Art-wise, I find KimiMachi to be an improvement over Suzuka, albeit more evolutionary than revolutionary. Scene compositions are more varied and effective, characters don’t blend into overly complicated backgrounds and the line art in general feels more polished. The drawings are functional and serve to enhance the storytelling without the occasional distracting awkwardness that can be found in Suzuka and Seo’s older workers. All in all, I think his style is maturing nicely.

Conclusion

Kimi no Iru Machi is a really enjoyable series. It has a fast-moving plot that constantly keeps you at the edge and manages to keep thing fresh for the most part. Ten volumes later and it has yet to disappoint. Wonder if it will get an anime adaptation soon?

Tsundere

I would like to introduce you to Rosario + Vampire, a very enjoyable manga series which seems to fall under the radars of most people for some reason. It’s about a guy called Tsukune Aono who accidentally enrols in a school for monsters and demons and end up with a harem of supernatural beings. The heroine is Moka Akashiya, a vampire, who falls in love with Tsukune(‘s blood) at first sight. Then there’s the succubus, the witch girls and the ice girl.

Anyway, the latest issue of Shounen Jump comes with an announcement that Rosario will be made into an anime series soon! There was a drama CD that was released some time ago so I guess this doesn’t really comes as a surprised. Now assuming the cast remains the same (which is highly likely), this is what it should be:

Tsukune Aono: Daisuke Kishio
Moka Akashiya: Nana Mizuki
Kurumu Kuruno: Misato Fukuen
Yukari Sendou: Kimiko Koyama
Mizore Shirayuki: Rie Kugimiya
Shizuka Nekonome: Kikuko Inoue
Gin’ei Morioka: Tomokazu Seki

The manga is at around volume 9 now, I think. The story gets really…emo towards the later parts, but the plot is pretty interesting and surprisingly it doesn’t revolve around Tsukune’s harem. If nothing goes wrong, the anime should be worth a try.

Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu Vol.4 Limited Edition (the manga) will come bundled with a 11cm-tall Haruhi figure. Due for June 2007 release. Preorder deadline is 28th Feb, so plenty of time left to talk to a Kinokuniya branch near you. Or wait for Amazon to put up their listing if you are one of those people who don’t get to pay for overpriced stuff at Kinokuniya. It costs ï¿¥1,785, or just about three times the price of the regular edition. But it’s worth it, right?

Let me tell you a story.

/me walks past the new releases.
Me: “ZOMG Honey & Clover final volume!”
*Honey & Clover Vol.10 get*
/me walks past the magazine shelf.
*Newtype October get*
/me walks to Japanese counter to place order.
Staff member A is busy attending to another customer (who, coincidentally, is from my school).
/me waits.
Staff member B: “Excuse me, are you Mr. (my name)?”
/me goes wtf?
Me: “Ermmm… yeah.”
Staff member B: “The book you ordered has arrived. Do you wish to collect it today?”
/me looks at the book. It’s Genshiken Vol.8.
Me: “Okay, sure.”
/me takes a few minutes to fish out the correct order slip from my wallet.
*Genshiken Vol.8 get*
Staff member A is done and I finally get to place my order.

You know you spend too much on manga when you have six Kinokuniya order slips in your wallet and the counter person knows you by name.

Anyway, I’m somewhat disappointed with Honey & Clover‘s ending. Somehow it lacked the impact that I expected. The ending is… unfulfilling-ly realstic. That’s how I would put it. The unrelated short story 「星のオペラ」 (The Stars’ Opera) that was included as the last chapter is quite good, though.

The limited edition is waaaay overpriced but I bought it anyway because I am a tool of the system. It comes with a DVD that contains promotional material for the new Negima! OVA.

After watching the DVD, I am happy to say that the new Negima! OVA is better than I expected. The character designs are surprisingly close to the original and the animation quality and detail are a few hundred times better than the horror that was the TV series. A few hundred being a modest estimate. The entire cast is retained as far as I can tell. The OVA also seems to contain a little more fanservice… Well, still far less than the manga.

One complaint: The OP “Yume Minna de” is not as catchy as “Happy Material”.