Ed’s Twitter page

Comics Worth Reading (Johanna Draper Carlson’s site and an excellent resource for manga)

Ed’s entries on Comics Worth Reading (Ed used to have a regular column there and still writes for it)

Caleb Dunaway’s Twitter

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Please buy Kingyo Used Books through our Amazon links. It helps maintain the podcast.

Amazon UK:

Kingyo Used Books, Volume 1

Kingyo Used Books, Volume 2

Kingyo Used Books, Volume 4

Kingyo Used Books, Volume 4

Amazon US:

Kingyo Used Books, Vol. 1

Kingyo Used Books, Vol. 2

Kingyo Used Books, Vol. 3

Kingyo Used Books, Vol. 4

Side note: I’m now writing almost all the time now for Otaku News with news and review pieces. Check it out and look for my handle in the headers and see else I’ve screwed up on. I’m also writing a monthly column for MangaBookShelf called Shoujo I’m Scared Of.

Today, we tackle Sumomomo Momomo: The Strongest Bride on Earth Shinobu Ohtaka. A fun little diversion, nevertheless the slight ick factor could threaten to destroy what is otherwise a good manga. Also, I’ve now discovered the best Japanese tongue twister by researching this title. Click on the download link for more info. As always, click on the post image to buy volume 1 from Amazon US. Or follow the text links below for the volumes I’ve covered so far.

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Amazon US links:

• Sumomomo, Momomo, Vol. 1: The Strongest Bride on Earth (v. 1)
• Sumomomo, Momomo, Vol. 2: The Strongest Bride on Earth (v. 2)

Amazon UK links:

• Sumomomo, Momomo: v. 1
• Sumomomo, Momomo: v. 2

A small capsule review of Kaoru Mori’s A Bride’s Story here. I liked this story and I would say that if you’re tired of the usual fare in manga, this is a welcome change of pace. Volume one can be ordered from Amazon by clicking on the post image above and volume two can be preordered by clicking here.

UPDATE: Volume three is now up on Amazon for preorder for March 2012. Here’s the link.

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Thanks to Ed Sizemore and Johanna Draper Carlson for tackling the manga on their sites. Thanks to Kate Dacey over at Manga Critic for reviewing Bride’s Story and also to David Welsh and lastly to Deb Aoki and Melinda Beasi for putting me on the title in the first place.

However, in Not Love…’s favour, if you want a great side story surrounding the act of food restaurant crawls then this is right up your alley. With “fictional” manga-ka F-mi Y-Naga, the author may or may not be presenting her real life to us. Much of Yoshinaga’s real life is in here, is anyone’s guess. But anyway, the point of the story is that Y-Naga when she’s not doing manga of some sort, goes with her friends and roommate, S-Hara to various restaurants and eateries to sample, enjoy and discuss the food on display.

I love the off kelter take the book has. When we are introduced to Y-Naga, it describes her as making a living “by drawing men engaging in anal sex” and then proceeds to make her both attractive and ugly while showing that really other than food she really doesn’t have it together. And the people around her are just as bad if not worse. Her roommate, S-Hara, is also one of her assistants and he’s just as scatterbrained as she is insofar as he not only tolerates her eccentricities but actually doesn’t care anymore. So their life revolves around work then food and Y-Naga eating like a slob. But the book doesn’t go out of its way to show you their lives all that much. Oh, no. The book does something far, far better.

It’s only goal in life is to sell you food. Mountains and mountains of it. Fumi Yoshinaga went around the eateries and restaurants in Tokyo and wrote down or took pictures of the food, drew the maps to show how to get there and also wrote the side notes of what to expect when you get there, what you should order and how much you’ll expect to pay. With this winning idea, Yoshinaga then begins to spin her web about the characters as they make their way through the menu in front of them and in life. The food on display really is delicious looking. From Korean barbecue, Italian starters, ice cream to New York Chocolate bread, it’s all mouth watering stuff. I want to eat everything they eat! Every meal is described in loving detail and Yoshinaga shows that she sampled every single thing because the way she draws the food and has the characters give their reactions couldn’t have been found in a book.

The characters themselves are as packed together as the food has ingredients. Y-Naga is probably, and I say probably with reserve, the author in real life. But she’s (Y-Naga) a little extreme to be the real girl. Also the way Yoshinaga depicts her is as crazy. Y-Naga goes from being frumpy to wanton to chic in 200 odd pages. She can’t do anything for herself that doesn’t revolve around food. She need help with her work, her life and her friends. She misses that one of her friends is gay. But still she cares for her friends and tries her best to understand them. And we love her for trying. Usually in the mornings, she’s drawn with a headband on, bedhead hair and Henry Kissinger glasses. S-Hara at times, just the same as Y-Naga, is depicted as being an attractive man and then being nondescript. The rest of the cast doesn’t get the same kind of on/off treatment so I can’t comment on the authors thoughts about the other characters.

I’m not going to lie to you. Not Love… is never going to be on many top ten lists in most manga fans books. But the fact that it’s published in English and that it exists is more than enough for me to like it. The fact that it’s quirky characters and amazing concept drew me in as well as it did, speaks to the strengths of the author. It’s a great introduction to Yoshinaga and I recommend it to people unfamiliar to her works.

Psst: (Shameless promotion) If you want to buy this from Amazon, click on the image of the book and I’ll get a cut ;-D

Visiting the dealers room at Otakon, I found myself looking for these titles as I would have to special order them back home. Picking them up, I decided to read them on the plane journey home. Was I glad to have read and now review them? Between the two of them, Not Love… is more easy going and out and out funny. But AMDD, to shorten the title, was a different rhythm and therefore had a different impact on me.

Yukiko, a thirty something woman, lives with her mother Mari. One day she comes home to find her mother has started dating and moved in a young man, Ken, who she met at a host club. Of course, Yukiko thinks that Ken is trying to con Mari out money or God knows what else. However a revelation Yukiko discovers about herself forces her to move out into the big world for the first time. From what I saw of Ken, he seems like a nice guy who can see through Yukiko’s anger and knows that there’s more going on than her just being angry at he and Mari. And so she moves out to stay with friends. Now any other kind of manga would have the story be about Mari and Ken’s relationship developing and Yukiko coming to terms with it. But Yoshinaga doesn’t dwell on it, instead focusing on Yukiko and the people she lives with and hangs out with and their lives. From Mr. Izumi, whose student wants to give, um, “gratification” but not be in a relationship with him to Wakabayashi who tries to find a husband despite not having it in her to be discriminatory.

The stories are varied and Yoshinaga does a good job making me care about people I have literally just met. There’s something about how the casts good and bad points are laid bare and there’s nowhere to go. In Izumi’s case, his relationship with his student starts off sleazy (I don’t know how to say that she started it without it seeming like she’s at fault) and he’s not comfortable with it at all but by the end of their relationship he feels that the girl is on a better path without him. I love the story of Saeki, one of Yukiko’s childhood friends. To put a long story short, when she, Yukiko and fellow friend Yuko were all in school, they all had dreams and hopes for the future. And, well, for some life turns out as they wanted and for others, not so much. Saeki’s story could be yours and mine and it made all the more poignant by the fact that she and Yukiko don’t interact with each other during the story except for one postcard. I found myself *blinking* a lot during her story. Finally the last story deals with Yukiko as we end our journey with her. There’s a fine sense of resolution with her and I am so impressed that Yoshinaga managed to end the story with a great sense of connection between Yukiko, Mari and Mari’s Yukiko’s Grandmother.

Artwise, Yoshinaga treads a fine line between very watercoloury pencil lines for her characters to more absurdist artwork that is more frequent in Not Love… The pace of the story means that I can appreciate her artwork more as I leaf back through the book. There’s a stillness to some of the pages that makes you feel every sigh, sob and laugh. The cover and cover inlays of the book are in colour and I would love to see more of Yoshinaga’s work in colour. There’s a kind of vintage vibrancy to her colour work that I feel like.

Ultimately, the book is less about the trials of Yukiko, Mari and the others than it is about the mirror being put against our own lives as we struggle to make it in the world. You will see something of your own life in these pages and it’s nice to let it out for air once in a while. Ms. Yoshinaga’s All My Darling Daughters helps you do just that.

Psst: (Shameless promotion) If you want to buy this from Amazon, click on the image of the book and I’ll get a cut ;-D

WARNING: CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS!

I always strive to find new things in anime and manga. Sometimes, they hit you like a bolt out of the blue. I’ll wouldn’t be the first person to say that growing up in Ireland, you realise as you discover the internet and people from other countries, their experiences and how they live their lives, just how much you were sheltered. I will not go into the societal structure of Ireland in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, suffice to say that we really were socially unprepared for the onslaught of the concept of the “different lifestyle”, that is to say anything the Catholic Church did not view as morally wholesome. You would surprised the things that you’d never consider if you didn’t know they existed. There was, of course, homosexuality in Ireland way before I was born. But consenting intercourse between two males was illegal and a criminal offense until 1993! Imagine being Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender (as people identify themselves now) in Ireland? God, I can’t begin to grasp how, well, dangerous it was. You could actually be arrested for trying to show your affection for someone you were attracted to! Thankfully some other countries are further down the road in how they observe, treat, interact with and get along with other people who don’t fit into the society “norms”. In Japan, from what I can ascertain, LGBT people have an easier time in society. Mark you I said easier, as everyone has problems in the society they live in. But I’d never paid any attention to the mechanics of actually being in that group until very recently, as I said at the beginning. So with that in mind, I began searching out for manga or anime that addressed this demographic (can you call it a demographic group?) group. I’ve found some I think fit the bill. But I came across an upcoming manga alert and in it, there was one that I was immediately drawn too. Mostly because I was waiting to watch the anime version of it. So, the focus for today’s review is on the idea of wrapping your head around the fact that you are different. Different from everyone else (every adolescent believes that they are going through tough times on their own) and different enough to not know what to do.

Wandering Son by Shimura Takako is a heartfelt story of two people who I desperately feel for and for their families and friends. Shuichi Nitori is a nice lad who has a loving family and somewhat bossy sister. Yoshino Takatsuki is a girl with a similar, if slightly larger, family situation. But there’s one thing else that the two children share commonality on: they both want to be the opposite sex. Shuichi wants to be a girl and Yoshino wants to be a boy. And they are painfully making their way through the steps of both of them discovering their idenities, sexual or otherwise.

The main thing that drew me to this book was the fact that unlike a lot of western media that plays off the fact that a transgender teenager would have to deal with their friends and peers ostracising or bullying them for being different, Wandering Son goes straight for the heart, tackling the more important idea of how the person in the story feels. Reading the first volume, I can feel their awkwardness at them coming to the decision that they are different from other people and that they need to do something about it.

For me Takako is a great storyteller as she’s imbues her characters with a sense of self. Shuichi keeps having these nightmares, that’s all you can call them right now as they give only scary insights, where he’s interacting with Yoshino and suddenly he’ll be attacked by a loved one and wake up. This is something that informs his character, in what way I can’t say, yet I know these dreams are not just for show. If there is a trigger for Shuichi, it’s a dress that through a mixture of Takatsuki and a girl called Saori Chiba, a girl who goes to class with him. Yoshino gives a dress to Shuichi, making an off-hand remark that Shuichi would look good in it, and then offers it to Shuichi’s sister who gladly accepts. But seeing the dress hanging in the sibling’s bedroom triggers something in Shichi and one day when no one’s around, he tries it on. He answers the door to a stranger and they mistake him for a girl. Then he answers the door to Saori. And she doesn’t even blink. For Yoshino, it’s the fact that she can’t stop biologically being a girl despite how much she wants to be a boy. And when the boys tease her about needing sanitary napkins, she batters them. Just like a boy. I’m not one for violence but there was something satisfying about seeing them slightly bloodied. The leads feel alive, full of doubts and hopes. I feel for them every time they seem close to busting out and suddenly retreat. I can’t figure out though, how much is specific to be a transgender person and how much is run of the mill adolescence. I must admit that some of the trials the children face, I can identify with having been there myself. No, I’m not gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender but I’ve been five inches tall in my classroom hoping that I find some way of not suffocating surrounded by people who couldn’t grasp what I was feeling. I know what it’s like being this close to your family and being unable to talk with them about your problems but that when you finally do, it’s like the nicest wave to crash over you and cocoon you, ever. I want to tell Shuichi and Yoshino that these trials they face, like all things in life, will pass. That the greatest strength lies in their ability to look beyond the mountain in front of them.

I can’t figure out some of the characters, though. Shichi’s sister, Maho is coming across in a kind of duality. On one hand, she’s treating her brother as any sibling would (bickering and so on) but on the other, she’s seen in dreams as a more hateful figure. Maybe I’m reading too much in this here. Also, Saori. Saori is a likable, if a little weird, girl. She’s completely accepting of Shuichi and all. She helps Shu by suggesting that the class put on a play for their group project where the boys dress as girls and the girls dress as boys. She hopes that this will allow Shu some breathing room.But when she buys him a dress, Shu seizes up and can’t accept it from her. She, in turn, burns the dress in front of Shu and Yoshino. She then is seen praying to God for forgiveness. Now, I’ve skipped over the parts in between this behaviour but you get my drift. I can’t tell if Saori will be a good or bad influence on the two lead characters. Only time will tell.

The two children, Shu and Yoshino, have an interesting relationship. On the surface, Yoshino seems the stronger of the two with her daring attitude and pushing and teasing Shu to go out in a dress. And she has the courage to travel away from her home to dress as a boy. She wants to be a boy more than anything. But under stress, Yoshino sometimes cracks and Shu finds in himself strong support that in the initial pages is not immediately evident. The book ends with Shu making the observation that the “other” him is something that he knows can’t be bought. All the money in the world can’t buy the feeling being the other him gives to him.

The artwork is done in a kind of pastel, almost children’s drawing book kind of way. Takako is to be commended for such a deceptive look to the work. The artwork looks rough as if the author was rushed but it’s all a smoke screen and at times feels like it’s half done. It plays out in such a childlike way that you don’t notice that she’s wrapped you up in a blanket from which there is no escape.

And I don’t want to escape from this story. I want to be alongside these characters as they discover who and how they are. I want to see them triumph in ways that many of us never get to. Most of all, I want to be there at the end even if it ends in failure. My heart breaks when I see people suffer for no good reason except they only want to be themselves. All the “there, there’s” in the world can’t make up for a person who feels they are not and will never reach their full potential.

Matt Thorn must receive a pat on the back for the translation work he’s done here. Some translations askew the need for Japanese honorifics but here Matt explains the need to use it in Wandering Son. If you’re in the mood for more of his work then I suggest you pick up a copy of A Drunken Dream and Other Stories by Moto Hagio also by Fantagraphics. Plus Fantagraphics get high marks for such an excellent job, in particular the design work by Alexa Koenings. Such a stellar job, I hope Fantagraphics continue with their manga endeavours.

Finally, I must stress that any missteps I made in regards to LBGT persons in my review, I do so apologise. I try in my reviews to be as inoffensive as possible and as I prefaced at the beginning, my worldview is slightly rustier than most as it hasn’t had time to develop fully. Give me some time, I’m getting there.

Let me leave you with this thought, dear readers: My online dictionary defines potential as:

1. possible, as opposed to actual

2. capable of being or becoming

3. a latent excellence or ability that may or may not be developed.

With that in mind, let me further posit this amazing idea. This is not the story of two children with the potential of becoming fully grown transgender people. It’s the story of two children with the potential of becoming fully grown people, full stop. I submit to you that’s all we as human beings can only be convicted of if we truly honest with ourselves.

As always you know how and where to contact me. If you would like to follow Shimura Takako and you can read Japanese, here’s her twitter page and likewise for Mister Thorn. If you want to help my website out and get a copy of Wandering Son for yourself for the not unreasonable price of $12.69, click on the cover for Wandering Son at the top of the page.

P.S. Want to have a look inside the book? Check out this video Fantagraphics posted on their website:

I’m not a big fan of Shonen manga. I read it in the course of my day to day but I kind of stay away from it. But I don’t shy away from it by any means. I heard about Cross Game from Ed Sizemore, I believe, and decided to just cover it for the MMF. I had heard Mitsuru Adachi from his work on Touch (which I still haven’t gotten through) so I thought “it’s another baseball manga from Adachi!?” The phrase One Trick Pony came up, I can tell you. But the good news news is that I don’t feel of what I’ve read of Adachi that he’s in danger of being stale.

I found myself liking what I was reading by something I thought of after getting through the first part of volume 1. It was this: there are people with degrees of potential. There are the people who seem to burn bright but are cut down, the people who take a while to burn bright and the ones who seem to burn bright but really are dull on second glance. It’s been said that I give too much away in my reviews so in an attempt to not completely spoil everything I will censor some of my review. You have been warned.

Ko Kitamura, in his third year of Junior High (seriously, I don’t get school ages in Japan/US), and works at his family’s sports equipment shop. He is friends with the Tsukishima family who run a local baseball batting centre, specifically Wakaba and to a lesser degree Aoba. He and Wakaba are the same age with Aoba being a year younger. Because of them being extremely close and friendly, people assume that Wakaba and Ko make a good couple. Ko and Aoba don’t get on but they are not hostile with each other. Life is good with Ko and the Tsukishima’s

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

. We then see as Ko and the Tsukishima’s grow up together and they enter high school. Ko is an excellent batter and Aoba is a great pitcher. Wakaba states that Ko could be really good. Aoba doesn’t believe her, per se.

Now I’m going to stop “plot-ising” here. The main thing that has me ordering the second volume of this series is the fact that Adachi completely gets the idea of the impermanence of life. People go about their life not knowing what could be around the corner. But they treat each day as best they can. I can’t tell you why but when the story is joyful, the author knows where to break and tell a joke, or give you something to feel light and good. But when things are bad, oh Lord, it’s absolutely heartbreaking.

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

On page 187-189, I’ve been there. Not specifically that situation, but the feeling of being lost and not knowing what to “do”. But life goes on. Horribly, painfully, it goes on. Where Adachi gets it right is that people cope with loss as best they can. We know they are hurting. But they try their best to meet each day.

The artwork is amazing. When the boys and Aoba play baseball, there’s a fluidity to the proceedings that is really buzzing. I know when they throw things, that they (the baseballs) are travelling fast. Unfortunately when they talk about scores and runs, I still don’t understand baseball. Oh well. The tranquillity of the scenes of daily life is really amazing. I could really feel that summer heat belting down on me. I found myself looking at all the details in the backgrounds to see if I could peer around covers and over buildings!

The characters are lovely, with the main leads getting the most development but the background ones are good too. Daiki Nakanishi, who is friends with Ko, serves as baseman ( I do know what everyone in baseball does, I just don’t know about scoring in baseball). Senda, a shortstop on the high school team, is an eejit. There, I’ve said it. Other than the Tsukishima sisters there aren’t that many female characters but towards the end of the omnibus things do improve at that end. Ko especially, I feel for. He’s not trying to be a great baseball player but he can’t help it. And it’s the Tsukishima sisters that make him want to be better, if only on a sub-consisous level.

All in all, I love this series. I can’t recommend this enough to people. The back of the book states “[the] story will change your perception of what shonen manga can be.” Yeah, that sounds about right in my case.

Jiro Taniguchi is a wonderful artist and story teller. I’ve read and covered some of his work on OtakuNews before and he never gets boring. Everything in his worlds needs to let out it’s breath really slowly. So this is another title that I’m looking forward to from him.

From the publisher:

Kyoto, 1966. Hamaguchi is working for a textile manufacturer whilst dreaming of becoming an artist, when an incident at the zoo forces his hand. He moves to Tokyo at the invitation of an old school friend who also arranges an “interview” at the studios of the famous manga-ka, Shiro Kondo. Here he discovers both the long hours of meeting studio deadlines along with the nightlife and artistic haunts of the capital.

For the first time ever, Taniguchi recalls his beginnings in manga and his youth spent in Tokyo in the 1960s. It is a magnificent account of his apprenticeship where all the finesse and elegance of the creator are united to illustrate those first emotions of adulthood.

After picking up the first volume of Dragon Girl (part of Yen’s Omnibus editions imitative) , I didn’t know what to expect. Nobody blogged about it, nobody mentioned it. So, I was alone in my reading pleasure, I guess. It’s a great book and don’t let the cover fool you. It’s not a pure shoujo story nor is it a sports manga. Somewhere in the middle between a sports manga and School Rumble. Great comedy, good drama. I’m looking forward to the second (and final!!!) omnibus edition which is out in February of this year.

From the publisher:

For all of her young life, fiesty, fierce Rinna Aizen has only had room in her heart for one man — Sakuya, the erstwhile captain of the most legendary cheering squad in the history of Shoryu Senior High…who also happens to be her dad! But as Rinna, following in her father’s footsteps, struggles to raise the Shoryu squad back to up to its former glory, will she also find a space opening up in her heart for one of the many boys in her life?!

I missed picking up Emma when CMX released it but I’m determined to read this. The premise alone, harkens to Nausicaa and that kind of world like our own but not our own at the same time. Absolutely, I am going to enjoy this. UPDATE: A Bride’s Story has been short listed for the Manga Taisho award. Among the 12 other nominees is Daisuke Igarashi whose manga Children of the Sea has been previewed on VIZ’s SigIKKI website. Check out the blog posts by David Welsh and Khursten Santos

From the publisher:

A Bride’s Story tells the tale of a beautiful young bride in nineteenth-century Asia. At the age of twenty, Amir is sent to a neighboring town to be wed. But her surprise at learning her new husband, Karluk, is eight years younger than her is quickly replaced by a deep affection for the boy and his family. Though she hails from just beyond the mountains, Amir’s clan had very different customs, foods, and clothes from what Karluk is used to. As the two of them learn more about each other through their day-to-day lives, the bond of respect and love grows stronger.

After watching the first episode, I stick by what I said about this story, “Lordy, I can feel the hope on the streets with this title”. The story of a couple of kids trying to find themselves in the world that asks too much of them day in and day out, should be resonant with all of us and it saddens me that only manga, indie comics/books and anime fans will ever know of this title. More’s the pity.

The fifth grade. The threshold to puberty, and the beginning of the end of childhood innocence. Shuichi Nitori and his new friend Yoshino Takatsuki have happy homes, loving families, and are well-liked by their classmates. But they share a secret that further complicates a time of life that is awkward for anyone: Shuichi is a boy who wants to be a girl, and Yoshino is a girl who wants to be a boy. Written and drawn by one of today’s most critically acclaimed creators of manga, Shimura portrays Shuishi and Yoshino’s very private journey with affection, sensitivity, gentle humor, and unmistakable flair and grace. Volume one introduces our two protagonists and the friends and family whose lives intersect with their own. Yoshino is rudely reminded of her sex by immature boys whose budding interest in girls takes clumsily cruel forms. Shuichi’s secret is discovered by Saori, a perceptive and eccentric classmate. And it is Saori who suggests that the fifth graders put on a production of The Rose of Versailles for the farewell ceremony for the sixth graders — with boys playing the roles of women, and girls playing the roles of men.

That’s what I’m looking forward to in the coming year but I know, just like last year, I’ll find hidden treasures along the way. What are your anticipated titles for 2011?

With thanks again to Melinda of Manga Bookself for the inspiration post and to Deb Aoki of Manga.About.Com for pinching her images of the books. Sorry, Deb!

By Keiko Takemiya

Written for the May editon of the Manga Movable Feast, hosted this month by www.mangacritic.com

Perception: In the future, humanity, having fled to the stars after wrecking the ecology of Terra (Earth), have created a new social order on other worlds. There, children are born via artificial insemination and placed with foster parents until the Awakening Day, where they will tested by the local colony’s master computer and allowed to rejoin their brothers and sisters on Terra and work for a better society.

Reality: The worlds on which these children live are nothing more than testing grounds to find cogs that will work within the framework of the Master Computer’s (Mother) plan. If, at any point during a child’s Awakening, children are found to have extra-sensory perceptions they are defined as the Mu, an offshoot of humanity whose bodies are deformed in some way but have amazing psychic abilities, and are eliminated by Mother. Those children who escape Mother’s machinations, go on the run with the rest of the Mu, led by Soldier Blue as they search for a way to return to Terra and escape the persecution of Mother and her re-imagined humanity. One such child is Jomy Marcus Shin. If you survive Mother’s tender mercies, you’re put on the track of all gifted children: to lead Terra according to Mother’s plans. One such child is Keith Anyan.

At times social commentary, part sci-fi adventure and all times gripping drama, To Terra… is a title that I had heard about but paid little attention to it. For whose who are not in the know, To Terra…was written by Takemiya in the 70’s at a time when women manga-ka were coming into their own as creators, creating stories both for girls AND boys. Takemiya was part of a group of manga creators called the Year 24 Flower group or sometimes, the Forty-Niners referencing the fact that all the people in the groups were all born in 1949 (despite the fact that Takemiya was born in 1950!). These creators and the stories they tackled broke new ground in terms of content and scope. For the first time, authors took on stories about homosexuality, homophobia and other subjects that were considered too hot to handle by most traditional publishers. Takemiya had already made a name for herself with the publication of In the Sunroom. While writing To Terra… she also overlapped it with Kaze to Ki no Uta (her other great work, originally conceived over nine years before and stalled from publication because the author refused to edit out the more sexual elements in it). This lady knows how her stories should be, make no mistake about it. I know on our site I said we review everything but for some reason I’ve never tried to tackle anything even coming close to To Terra…before. More’s the pity as this is a fantastic read.

The thrust of the story, for me, is about the nature of control. Jomy is a happy child who doesn’t understand that his perfect life will be destroyed by Mother when he goes through his Awakening (though in reality they’re called Maturity Checks). He has no control over this happening. When he is rescued by the Mu, he doesn’t feel in control anymore. The people on the Mu’s ship telepathically gossip behind his back. He feels disconnected from his peer group. If the world he lived in hadn’t been based on a lie, then he should be mixing with kids his own age and with the same abilities as he had. But put into a alien environment, Jomy struggles to understand his place in it. George Lucas explored this kind of dilemma in THX 1138, with Robert Duvall’s THX character has been a good, productive member of the underground society he lives in until he stops taking his medication and his eyes open to the world around him. In the film, once you learn that you’ve been deceived, it is impossible to unlearn it and once learned, would you really want to go back to ignorance? Unfortunately, as in THX’s case, Jomy’s discovery of the “real” world makes him an enemy of the state. The problem for him is that since Mother has done such a good job painting the Mu as terrorists, the humans who are at work within the system don’t give a second thought to trying to kill Jomy. They (at least in this volume) don’t know of the real story of the Mu and as such can only define their reality as being the height of their horizon. If there’s nothing visible above my horizon, then it doesn’t exist. Similar themes were explored in the classic Star Trek episode “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky” where questioning the lie is punishable with pain and discovery of the lie is punishable with death. Keith is a good example of the flipside in control: the instrument of the system. If Mother has displayed herself in images around E-1077, the educational space station that Keith is studying on, I’d say we have ourselves a true cult of personality going here but here, rather than Orwell’s 1984 and its all powerful Big Brother, Mother is seen as benevolent and protecting of society from the Mu. Yet, Keith does, deep down, wonder why people born differently to him or that think differently to him have it so bad. He, in this volume, is beginning to suspect that the system is not what he grew up believing it to be but still fights for the system as, to him, it’s the only kind of system that works. The Mu, themselves are all about control. But in their case, it’s the lack of control that consumes them. All they want is to return to Terra and be left alone. But because Mother has declared them enemies of the state, they wander aimlessly searching for a place to call home. At the end of the first volume they set down on a world called Nazca and already they start talking about settling here rather than going on to Terra. They obviously have forgotten the lessons that Native Americans learned after encountering the Old World settlers: once you give an inch, they come back looking for more. Finally, we have Mother and the SD (Superior Domination) system. Herein, we see control in total action. The trick with micro-managing a population (as the Nazis and the Soviets discovered) is that while on the surface people are happy that a lot of life’s uncertainties have been taken off the hands (work, social disorder etc.), it usually comes at a cost to them and it is usually at the expense of another group of people.

I have to applaud Takemiya-sempai as she has created a story that can be viewed multiple ways. I’m sure if you pick this story up, you’ll see themes of racial tension, brotherhood, eugenics, war, state vs. individual and so on. Point is, I read it and came up with the above. I might be wrong about the nature of the story but the author has engaged me as a reader and has successfully made me question the structure and motives of the book in an attempt to understand what she’s trying to say with it. Now I want to know what happens next. And that can’t be a bad thing, surely?

Takemiya’s artwork is lovely and graceful without being austere. There are some moments of levity and they help break up the pace of the book so that we have enough time to come back up for air. Looking at the structure of the story I can understand why the Forty-Niners were such a system shock to Japanese readers in the 1970’s. And now that their work is, finally, starting to become available in the English-speaking market, we are in for one too.

For more information about Keiko Takemiya or the Year 24 group check the wikipedia article about them. For Takemiya’s other English published work Andromeda Stories, check out the Vertical (publisher of both titles) site And for an awesome inside look at the beginnings of the group, check out About.com manga guide, Deb Aoki’s interview with Keiko Takemiya and Matt Horne’s blog and his interview with fellow Forty-Niner, Moto Hagio.

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Upapaddle (I’m back now Kent, tremble before me!)
Lathers Blather
Anime World Order
Ninja Consultants

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Finally, once again I’m sorry for the wait.

Now, we’re back.