Review: AX Alternative Manga

After reading a lot of mostly positive articles about this book, I checked it out from my local library (side note: I love that the Brooklyn Public Library carries this very adult manga!). And unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed.

Ax: Alternative Manga collects a slew of comics from the Japanese alternative comics magazine Ax, in the style of McSweeney's "Best American Comics" series. It consists of a sizable introduction and a collection of short comics, some of which are standalone tales and some of which appear to be excerpts.

While I'm always happy to see unexpected (and adult) manga translated into English, the content in this book was just not that great overall. There are a few titles that I liked, but too many were boring or nonsensical. Takato Yamamoto and Keizo Miyanishi's pieces, for example, were beautifully drawn, but I couldn't even get through them because they didn't follow a narrative and basically read like a stream-of-consciousness thing. I personally prefer my comics to tell some semblance of a story.

One complaint I read numerous times online is that the book as a whole has too much juvenile and gross-out humor, but this is definitely something I disagree with. Out of the 33 pieces, there are only about 3 or 4 that contain anything gross-out. Yes, these particular stories were pretty dumb and seemed like little more than an excuse for the author to draw penises, but they're hardly representative of the entire collection.

The stories that I enjoyed most were the furthest removed from the feel of traditional manga. Katsuo Kawai's simple line drawings more closely resemble the homemade mini comics you'd find in a local independent comic shop, and his brief tale about a woman's boyfriend leaving her for another woman is incredibly clever and elegant.

Toranusuke Shimada's thick black lines and bulbous shapes are positively fun to look at, and his fictional history of Eldorado motorcycles is one of the most engaging tales in the entire book. Kotobuki Shiriagari's "The Twin Adults" shorts are very clever and his drawings of the two little naked men are gently done in the watery brush stroke style of sumi (ink wash) paintings.

My two favorite pieces are by Shinya Komatsu and Akino Kondo (whose work also graces the cover). Komatsu's "Mushroom Garden" is illustrated in a highly detailed and magical Franco-Belgian style (think "TinTin" or "Asterix"), and the story of a mineral collector who switches to mushrooms is short and sweet. Kondo's "The Rainy Day Blouse" looks much more like traditional manga, but with perfectly smooth lines and lots of subtle roundness that gives it just a touch of an art nouveau feel. The simple story of a girl's new blouse and umbrella is also sweet and short with a hint of nostalgia. I will definitely be seeking out more of her work.

Now that I'm writing all this down, it sounds like there's a lot more that I like than dislike. However, that's because beside the stories I like a lot, I feel ambivalent about the rest. I don't like what's left, but I don't hate it (well, most of it) either. This collection is listed as "Volume One" on the cover, so I'm assuming Top Shelf will be publishing more. I look forward to picking up the next one at the library, but I would definitely not buy it, and overall there's just not enough good stuff for me to recommend this first volume.

NY Comic Con and Anime Fest Roundup

This past weekend was the NY Comic Con & Anime Festival. For the first time, they combined the Con and the Fest. I was a little disappointed in that decision because I knew the comics portion would have a much larger presence than the anime (and I was right), but then I remembered that the Anime Fest sucked last year... There weren't that many vendors, there weren't any screenings or panels I was interested in, and it seemed smaller than the 2008 Fest. So I stopped worrying and got really excited instead.

And that was an excellent choice because the Con was awesome! Easily the best Comic Con yet (I've attended the last three years). There were tons of vendors that spanned so many interests...classic comics, manga, small press, publishers, gaming... The convention was incredibly well-organized (well, except that it was difficult to find the guidebook), the main dealers' floor was huge, and there were a lot of great panels. In fact, there were so many I wanted to attend that they ended up overlapping and I couldn't get to everything. Here are the panels I did attend, and my impression of them all:

Saturday:

"Comics, Graphic Novels, And Manga For Adults"
With moderator Martha Cornog (graphic novel columnist and librarian), and panelists Robin E. Brenner (Massachusetts librarian), Ryan Donovan (NYC librarian), Karen Green (Columbia University librarian), and Natalie Korsavidis (Farmingdale, NY librarian).

This panel followed two others about comics for children and comics for teens and young adults. Discussion focused mainly on the difficulty the librarians have in convincing their co-workers and patrons that comics are not just for kids, and the resulting fight they go through to get those comics on the shelves. All the panelists were very clear in their opinion that comics are just as viable a reading source as conventional books. What I mostly took away from the panel was that comics still have a stigma of being "kids' stuff" despite the existence of titles like Maus, Persepolis, and all the adult-themed manga out there, but there are adults in academic positions who are working to erase that stereotype. Yay for librarians! I also learned that 95% of the time, if you ask your local librarian to get a particular book or book series, they will actually do it. And if your library doesn't have any comics on the shelves, check their inter-library loan. Sometimes all the comics are housed at a central library.

"MARVEL Television Presents MARVEL Anime"
I almost skipped this, but I am so glad I went! Marvel has been working with Studio Madhouse (a really, really great anime studio) to create anime shows about Iron Man, Wolverine, and Blade. These are going to be real anime, created by a Japanese anime house, not an anime-style American show. They're even all set in Japan and have Japanese dialogue with English subtitles. In this panel, we got to watch the first full-length episode of Iron Man and see a trailer for Wolverine. Iron Man was...pretty good. It was a bit flat, both in appearance and action, but I still have high hopes for it as the series progresses. The one thing I really didn't like were the scene transitions. They weren't smooth and felt unnatural. It was things like, there'd be two people in a car talking for a minute, and the next scene would be one of them getting off a plane that just landed. What about all the time between the car and plane? Where'd the other guy go? It's not really action you want to see, but the sequence was still jarring.

The Wolverine trailer, on the other hand, looked amazing. The only trailer on YouTube is an older one that looks quite different. The Comic Con trailer was modern while staying true to the Wolverine aesthetic, whereas the YouTube clip is too stylized and looks dated (Wolverine has a huge Labyrinth-style David Bowie mullet!). Wolverine already has a back story rooted in Japan, so it's a natural fit for him to be turned into an anime. Both these shows will begin airing on the G4 network in 2011. (I don't remember when they said Blade would air.)

"Indie Cred - Why Indie Comics Matter"
With moderator Tracey John (UGO's Comics, Toys, and Collectibles Editor), and panelists Julia Wertz (author of Fart Party), Jason Little (author of Shutterbug Follies), Mike Dawson (author of Troop 142), and Alex Robinson (author of Tricked).

I only went to this panel because I freaking love Fart Party! (Seriously, go read it. It's not about farts or parties, I swear.) It was basically what I expected. The panelists talked about how they got into comics, how they managed to get picked up by large publishers, and the differences between working with small press vs. "real" publishing houses. I thought the tone was awfully pessimistic, though. Little at one point said comics "are not a career" when an attendee asked for advice for aspiring comic artists. God, what a downer. When I spoke with Faith Erin Hicks, another indie and online comic writer who I love, she was all happy and said she couldn't believe she's being paid to do comics, and gave advice that can actually be acted upon (i.e. publish your work online immediately).

"Unusual Manga Genres"
With moderators Erin and Noah from the Ninja Consultant podcast.

I wish this panel had been longer. The moderators were only allotted an hour, so they (admittedly) rushed through it somewhat. Erin presented a slide show of all the "weird" manga that's not published in Japan. She spent the most time on games and sports-based manga. Japanese readers apparently really like reading about boring sports. There are literally dozens of titles based on golf, and numerous ones about...badminton! And...curling?? There is probably a manga title for any topic you can think of. Wheelchair basketball? Check. Baking bread? Check. Board games? Check. This was a really fun panel.


On to Sunday!

"MARVEL: The Women of MARVEL"
With moderator Jeanine Schaefer (editor), and panelists Lauren Sankovitch (editor), Colleen Coover (artist), Rachel Pinellas (writer), Christina Strain (colorist), Sana Amanat (editor), Grace Randolph (writer), and Stepanie Hans (artist). 

I got up early to catch this panel. It was about the women who work at Marvel, not Marvel's female characters. It was the best panel! The discussion didn't really focus so much on the fact that they were women, but focused more on how they all first got interested in comics, and how they all got into comics as a career. Interestingly enough, most of them came from unrelated backgrounds (architecture, publishing, musical theatre...). I asked the first audience question, which was how the editors got their jobs. Only one started out as an intern, and all but one of them came into it with no comic editing experience and were really taught the ropes once they got the job. I've wanted to work in comics for a long time now (applied to DC three times with no response), so this was pretty inspiring. 

"Black Butler Screening & Panel"
Sigh... This was the only panel I didn't like. It was a screening of the first two dubbed episodes of the anime show Black Butler. This title has gotten really big in the U.S. in recent months. The comic it's based on has been on the NY Times bestselling manga list for the last few weeks. So I wanted to see what the big deal was. But oh my god this show is not funny! It's full of all the standard anime humor tropes, so I feel like it's nothing new. It's about a rich British child whose parents have passed away, and the butler who is supernaturally tied to him and is tasked with keeping the home in order and protecting the child. God, the fans of this show were annoying. Every time the child was on screen, girls in the audience would scream like they had crushes on him--and bear in mind that this is a 12-year-old character (Ew! Stop lusting after a prepubescent cartoon!). Every time the butler was on screen or said his catchphrase of "I'm just one hell of a butler," the entire audience would break out in cheers. This response also happened every time something "funny" happened, to the point that you couldn't hear the dialogue. Ugh. As much as I love anime, I have to say, I hate anime fans! I left after the second episode, as I had no interest in listening to the creators and voice actors talk about the show. 

"The Changing Faces of Anime"
With moderator Join Evan Minto (of AniGamers.com).

This was a fun panel. Minto went through the history of character design in anime, all the way from Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy to today's American anime-style shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender. Minto narrated a slide show that went through character styles chronologically. The takeaway was that anime started out being influenced by Disney, and eventually came full circle to have American shows today highly influenced by anime.

go me!

I have two new posts up at AnimeIntro today because I'm just that good. (kidding!) I'm hoping the latter one will generate a good deal of debate, as it concerns fansubbing vs. file-sharing vs. piracy, so everybody please clicky clicky.

In other news, I may be getting a press pass to next month's New York Comic Con thanks to AnimeIntro--sweet! I'll obviously be writing a formal blog about it there, but some more personal reactions may surface in here. So far the only events I've ever managed to get into with a press pass have been free admission to museums.

bob loblah's law blog

I was recently hired as a featured blogger for animeintro.net, and my first post is now up. I'll be posting every Monday and Thursday. It's a new website, so it doesn't get much traffic yet and I pretty much have to create my own readership, so if any of my loyal readers here either care about, or have friends who care about, anime, manga, designer toys, Japanese fashion, and other offshoots of Japanese pop culture, please pass on the link :]

The blog cover page.
My current post: The Oscars Hate Anime

I'll probably be providing a link here every time a new post is up for the next few months, but don't worry, it'll only be a short little sentence each time.

Oh yeah, and the post went up yesterday and I already have three comments! Yay yay! So exciting!

Kazuhiro Okamoto’s “Translucent”

I’ve been consuming comics like crazy lately, but the titles I regularly follow have been coming out too slowly. So I decided I need to add another new series to my palate. I really want something different, though: no high school romance or boy-on-a-quest stories. Last week, I picked up the first two volumes of Kazuhiro Okamoto’s “Translucent” (from Dark Horse Comics), an unusual story that seemed promising.

“Translucent” focuses on 14-year-old Shizuka, who is afflicted with “translucent syndrome,” a disease that makes her body “see-through.” It affects each person differently, with some people being completely transparent all the time and some (like Shizuka) regularly shifting from visible to varying degrees of translucency. Emotions also affect the syndrome, with negative feelings and stress causing Shizuka to go completely transparent and happiness causing her body to return to normal. If someone with translucent syndrome remains completely transparent for two weeks, it’s likely she’ll stay that way forever.

“Translucent” was a promising concept in theory. An adolescent girl with an unusual disease should allow for some entertaining drama. But in reality, the series falls completely flat. For one thing, there isn't enough attention given to the disease itself. We’re repeatedly told that there’s no known cause or cure. And that’s it. I can suspend my disbelief enough to ignore the scientific impossibilities at work here, but wouldn’t there be people studying this disease? Shouldn’t Shizuka at the very least exert some effort into understanding it?

For another thing, the art is totally unimpressive. The characters aren’t detailed enough to tell them apart. Shizuka’s friend Mamoru is supposed to be the most beautiful student in the entire school, but the only difference between her and Shizuka is their hairstyles. Bodies and body movement are also rendered extremely stiffly.

I could get past the amateurish art if the story itself was well told, but, unfortunately, it’s not. Problems wrap up much too simplistically to be enjoyable. In the first volume, Shizuka’s body turns completely transparent, so she has to move away to be close to a translucent syndrome specialist. But a special parting gift from Tadami makes her so happy that her body returns to normal, so the doctor tells her she only has to visit once a month and Shizuka returns to her old school. This quick fix and lack of development is unsatisfying.

There also appears to be no overarching storyline. This story really needs a concrete direction. I thought Shizuka’s desire to become an actress despite her condition (which develops after her successful drama club performance) would be the spine of the story, but it’s more of an afterthought, really, happening concurrently to the plot rather than driving it.

I actually ended up returning these books to the store because they’re so unsatisfying. It’s really disappointing to see such a creative theme executed so poorly. Next time I want to try a new manga, I’m going to read the whole thing in-store before buying it.

Last review of the trip

Here is the official review I wrote about the Museum of Sex's exhibit on Japanese comics:

Working Title:
When Worlds Collide: Porn in the museum

A dark room with black walls, small windows cut into each at varying heights so that one must stand on toe or crouch down, face pressed to the hole, to see inside. A peep show? Not quite, though a look within does reveal nudity, prostitution, and all manner of graphic sexual behavior. Set a few inches into the windows of the walls are Japanese prints and drawings detailing sexual escapades dating from the Edo Period (1603-1867) all the way up to modern day’s pornographic manga (comics).

On display through March 6 at New York’s Museum of Sex, Peeping, Probing & Porn: Four Centuries of Graphic Sex in Japan provides an intimate glimpse into the evolution of sex trade and gender roles in Japan, and chronicles the country’s relationship with the western world and its own rapid modernization.

The Edo-era woodblock prints that begin the exhibit feature prostitutes in action within the brothel district. Most include startlingly detailed depictions of colorful engorged genitalia, the artists not shying away from bodily fluids and closeups of penetration. By the time Commodore Perry arrived to force the opening of Japan’s ports in 1854, scenes of rape and sex with demons and animals appeared, a reflection of the West’s invasion. Then western-style clothing shows up and women’s roles appear less victimized, the notes accompanying the pictures pointing out joyful facial expressions and consensual relationships.

Manga exploded after a WWII ban was lifted. Hentai (pornographic manga) now depicts every type of sexual activity and relationship imaginable, signaling a less repressive society in which women are no longer submissive slaves. Wide age gaps, bestiality, and gay relationships are common themes.

The exhibit’s dark walls and bright red floor, small viewing windows, and fabric screens hanging from the ceiling to divide the room into chronological sections all add up to a sense that visitors are participants in a peep show. The copious number of written explanations, however, also provide ample historical context. This mix of sexuality and intellectualism almost desexualizes the pornography, yet the graphic nature of the images keeps it firmly entrenched in masturbatory fodder, making for a uniquely paradoxical museum show.