Eeeper's Choice Podcast » romance

Wandering Son Volume 2

eeeper — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:25:00 +0000

Wandering Son Vol.1 was an eye-opening read for me, full of opinions and options I had never considered before, and that I’ve already watched the series means nothing to how much I’ve enjoyed the manga. The first volume serves as a reintroduction to Nitori and Takatsuki, the young boy and girl who wish they were the other’s gender, and for those who’ve never seen the series, will not confused or disheartened. Looking at volume 2, we are presented with a new dilemma: now that I know how I’d like be, there’s the world to deal with. If Vol.1 was a masterclass in people not wanting to accept the status quo within their own minds, Vol.2 shows the uncertainty of the waiting world. The way that Nitori and Takatsuki fumble forward with no plan is painful and endearing. They know the two of them are better together but there’s the problem of dealing with classmates, family and teachers. It’s not easy and well done to Takako for not short-circuiting the process. It’s not easy writing characters in distress but it’s wonderful to read it. If you can recognise the character’s pain and sympathise despite your differences, it proves you’re human and so is the author.

First of all, I think I’m beginning to understand Chiba-san a bit better. She comes across as a weird pseudo-Christian in the first story and, in the TV series seems to be suffering from a breach between her and the other two, but in this I’m getting a lot more insight. She helps Nitori the most but she remains friends with Takatsuki. She helps seal a rift between her and Nitori
by not getting hung up by the exchange diary class exercise. Nitori and Takatsuki want to invite her to their diary exchange but they are unsure about asking and worry about having to invite Sasa-san, a classmate, into the circle. In the end, Chiba decides life’s too short and just does her own diary exchange with Sasa. There is a bit of tension when she invites Nitori to take some of her dresses but he hesitates and she remarks that he only will take Takatsuki’s dress. I think Chiba is worried she’ll lose Nitori to Takatsuki. Hmm, I don’t know what to tell her, I really don’t.

One character that I’ve fallen in love with was seen in passing in volume 1 and makes appearances in the TV series is Yuki. A transgender women, she lives with her boyfriend Shi. She is amazing with a demeanour the belies how serious a catalyst she proves to the children. After struggling with her identity throughout school, she finally broke free after her coming of age ceremony and ended up living with her boyfriend Shi, a childhood classmate. It is from her that the two children learn to be themselves, if only amongst themselves. Yuki’s and Shi’s apartment becomes a haven to them. While their families love them and would probably tolerate or even encourage them to be themselves, they can be understand and explain themselves with Yuki and Shi. I’m not saying that the whole world is miserable to them, I’m saying they can relax at Yuki’s. Also, the point where Shi is introduced to Nitori and Takatsuki properly is both hilarious and somewhat, um, I’m trying to search for a word that means weird but that everything is cool. Can’t find one so I hope the previous will suffice.

The emphasis in this volume seems to be on Nitori rather than Takatsuki. Takatsuki is not ignored, just that Nitori is the focus rather than the subject. The impasse his sister Maho comes to when she realises that the boy in her class likes Nitori in his girl persona is interesting. She doesn’t criticise, she just laments the fact. Actually, she encourages the confusion by giving the boy, Seko, a picture of Nitori dressed as a girl. I don’t quite understand why she did that. It’s not like Nitori will do anything about it. Curiouser and curiouser. However, the main event that dominates the book this time round, is the class trip. This trip is about Nitori, pure and simple. On the trip, he is embarrassed by one of the boys on the excursion. I want to curl up and die every time I read him getting up earlier than the others and waiting in the hall for the girls. It makes me angry and hurt that people can be made to suffer like this, this social death of a thousand cuts. When I was younger, I endured teasing and bullying at the hands of some small minded bigots who thought they could get away with it. My mother defended me on school business and took all comers but at the end of the day, it’s just you in your mind with all the fears, paranoia, the why me’s and the how come’s. So when Nitori declares in a quiet moment “I want to go home”, I’m there. But the resolution to the crisis comes from an unexpected source (or maybe an expected source, now that I think about it) and Takako tackles it with an amazing amount of dignity and doesn’t cheapen it with false emotion or sentiment. By the end of the chapter arc, Nitori has the courage to know what he should say.

Are there problems with this volume? Maybe, but they are cosmetic rather than structural. The artwork still leaves me a bit confused if the person on the page is not a main character. The child sitting next to Nitori on the bus, I don’t know if that’s the same child who teases Nitori on the trip. Arrgh, ‘tis maddening! But other than that, I cannot find fault. So much of what we read is a kind of literary false economy. We put in so much and get so little out of it. Wandering Son asks so little of you and you get so much out of it. While I’ve never understood what LGBT people have to go through on a daily basis, I respect the struggle that a person goes through to be able to say “I am Who I Am, without fear or favour.” It is a wonderful, sweet, heartbreaking window into being different, young, unsure, afraid and human.

(Disclaimer: In referring to Yuki, I stumbled into a problem, namely which gender to refer to Yuki as having. In some info on the series, Yuki is referred to as a transgender man while on Wikipedia she is referred to as a transsexual woman. So in the light of the fact that I am ill-equipped to assign values to what gender I should refer to a pre-op transgender or a post-op transsexual person, I will not get into a conversation about how I should refer to characters and people within this grouping. In my mind and book I have seeing Yuki as a woman, referring to her as a woman in conversation, reading characters in Wandering Son referring to her as a woman so therefore she is a woman in my eyes and I will refer to her as such from here on in. Thanks to Brian, Ed, Linda, Sean and Erica for help wading through this minefield.)

Please click on the image of the book at the top of the review and you’ll go straight to Amazon US and I’ll get a referral fee! See, one hand washes the other!

Kingyo Used Books 1 – 4 Overview

eeeper — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 23:00:00 +0000

Finding time to read a book these days is something that I didn’t give much thought to when I was younger. I mean, bookshops had been around forever? They weren’t going anywhere. Then the Internet arrived. Bookshops shrugged. It’s the Internet, where people posted images on Geocities and browsed Usenets. Then the iPad arrived. Bookshops shuddered and when the Kindle arrived, things have never been the same since. So in the English speaking world, the power the big book chain shops had acquired was demolished, literally, brick by brick. Today I can find, maybe, five or ten bookshops in my city. Of them, I would trust three of them for recommendations. But in Japan, it’s different. The book publishing industry seems to be, er, booming? OK, that’s a lie. Japanese publishers are also feeling the pinch from eBooks and online reading services. But the used book shops do well. People always want to read the books they read when they were young. Or find that classic book they had put off but now want to read. Or even, the books that people have never heard of and that wait in the patient hope someone will read them. There must be people to read those books and they must have stories of their own, right?

Reading the synopsis for Kingyo Used Books, it sounds like a whimsical story. And it is, to be sure. But it’s not sappy. So what is it about? Hidden amongst the hustle and bustle of the big city, Kingyo Used Books sits quietly. Run by Natsuki Kaburagi on behalf of her grandfather, Seitaro, she has the aid of an avid manga reader named Shiba. Ostensibly the story revolves around their adventures but more often than not the chapters for each volume take in the customers who come in to the shop. As they buy or sell books at Kingyo, we see the threads of their lives interact with the shop and prove that more books can affect people in a human, honest, profound and emotional way.

I was once, in a former life, a video jockey at my local video rental place. Even before I started working there, I was a regular customer, I knew where each section was, knew which tapes were in good nick, knew all the staff and could recommend films to other customers. Every person had a story, a path or a purpose that brought them to my desk. More often than not, they knew what they wanted. But sometimes they were too stumped or too frazzled to pick something. So, I would chose something for them. Usually, it was a children’s film, a drama or a good action flick. The people who rented that last genre would be so drunk they wouldn’t even notice what I gave them. But they wanted an action film so I picked the one I thought they’d like. They would always come back to me. (Please note: not all my customers were drunk when they came in. The example given is a small cross section of my former customers). So when I began to read Kingyo, I found the manga equivalent of my video shop. So after I read each volume that’s been released so far, I would let out the same sigh I used to have when another satisfied customer would go out the door of the video shop. I felt good that a character had found contentment. It’s a wonderful feeling to have and it came from a book showing a world I knew nothing about.

Natsuki is technically in charge of Kingyo and when her grandfather announces he is going to go on a search for manga in Japan, she takes over the running of the shop. She is easily my favourite character simply because it isn’t that she’s a manga freak like Shiba is, it’s just that she gets a huge amount of joy from helping people. Shiba is a fantastic character. He reminds me of myself when I was in my teens. Always reading with my head in the clouds. I love the feisty, lively and, if exasperating at times, relationship he has with Natsuki. He clearly likes her but he’s too much of a dreamer to make the first move. I think Seitaro is a wonderful player on this stage. Sage-wise with a hint of self-deprecating humour about him. My discovery of the relationship that grows between Ayu and Tome, two Sedori (people who buy manga cheap and resell at higher prices to used books shops) who, on the surface, don’t have anything in common with each other is heartwarming. But Tome, while unsure of what to do or say around her, wants to get closer to her and gets pushed away in a nice way by Ayu. But he persists and we get to know them both them in a great way. Going back to Natsuki, her parents have a charm about them. They drive me crazy with their different personalities so I can only imagine how Natsuki has learned to live with them. With each volume, I learn more and more about the cast so it’s a win-win for me.

The background characters are equally impressive. They’ve all got their reasons for going to Kingyo. Sometimes they get an answer to whatever is bothering them at the shop. Sometimes it happens outside the shop. But always it is a surprise when we see the resolution of their arcs. In one story, a young lad stays with his friend rising the train late at night because the boy feels his friend can’t or won’t go home. The friend is inspired to stay on the on the train thanks to Leiji Matsumoto’s Galaxy Express 999. But in the end, the story is resolved with some thought and care, I’m happy to say. Reading a review of volume 3 by Manga Curmudgeon in relation to the Kazuo Umezu chapter and it being somewhat predictable, I agree with him about it being un-Umezu, however, I don’t think this detracts from the story. Far from it, the way the characters describe Umezu, his writing and art makes me want to read more of his work. The chapters that struck a chord with me the most were the chapters about Night on the Galactic Railroad and the one where Shiba drags an uppity kid all over town all because he wouldn’t simply pick up a manga to read, finally lets him take a look at Go Nagai’s Devilman. The Night on The Galactic Railroad story is a wonderful piece about a hostess girl who sort of adopts a small child whose mother abandoned her. The child wants her to read to her the Night on… book so the girl, despite not wanting to, finds herself reading night after night to the child. It’s sweet, sincere and utterly without any purpose. The Devilman chapter is superb because you see this child who is supposedly not fazed by anything get riled by Go Nagai’s titular characte.

You notice how I keep mentioning the “Devilman” chapter or the “Umezu” chapter? This is because Kingyo Used Books focuses on a different book, a real book, for some of it’s chapters. OK, nearly every chapter mentions different books but some actually focus on an author or book and the end of each volume of Kingyo, we get a real used book shop owner explaining the significance of each title. This is because while Japanese readers might be familiar with names like Hinako Sugiura, Kyoko Hikawa, Etsushi Haruki, Tochi Ueyama and Masako Watanabe, English speaking readers may not. This window into certain titles and authors allows us to glimpse into the cavernous world of manga and it made me realise how little I know about it. I find myself drawn to the notes about the titles from the 60’s and 70’s that we have no chance of reading. It grieves me that I’ll have to import them. Maybe, though, JManga might publish some of them. I can certainly hope so.

Another thing I like about the series is the idea of the impermanence of things, i.e. Mono no aware: the feeling of noticing things and being in the moment, for the moment is fleeting. The cast of Kingyo move in their arcs, all the while we are conscious that they too will one day be gone and the books they care for or read will one day be in the hands of someone else. Few things in anime or manga have taught me as valuable a lesson as this concept has. When I have read stories like this (or even any book/anime/film) I try and commit it to memory. It helps me to form a more complete map of my own internal workings. Because as the man said: “[time] goes with us on the journey, reminds to cherish every moment. Because they’ll never come again.” I applaud Ms. Yoshizaki for being to able to communicate this kind of concept and I wish I could read more of her works. It’s just another reason on my list to try and learn Japanese if only to expand my worldview.

Ultimately Kingyo Used Books is a story about used book sellers and readers enjoying their books while trying to make their way through life. There’s nothing else to it, no magic second or third act that the cast suddenly become intergalactic bounty hunters. Though, that would be interesting, I’m sure. If you have an inclination to read something that challenges you beyond the confines of typical manga. The series is ongoing in Japan but at this time VIZ under their SIGIkki line has put out the first four volumes so far at six month intervals. March this year will mark the end of the last six month cycle. Here’s hoping that people read this overview and give the series a try.

I encourage you to sample Kingyo Used Books on the SIGIkki website along with others in the line. If I could recommend some others, then please check out Saturn Apartments and I’ll Give It My All…Tomorrow. If you would further indulge me, check out my podcast with Ed Sizemore where we discuss Kingyo Used Books in further detail.

MMF: All My Darling Daughters

eeeper — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 20:40:00 +0000

Fumi Yoshinaga is a name that I’d heard before. Mostly, about Antique Bakery. So when the MMF decided to focus on her, I knew that she did Yaoi and I wanted to avoid those titles if I could. Not that I have anything against Yaoi, just that I’m not really ready to review Yaoi. Hell, I have a pile of LuvLuv titles from Aurora Publishing sitting in my storage lockup that I’ve read but not reviewed because I feel I’m not ready to review them. But two titles popped up in the discussion boards: Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy! and All My Darling Daughters.

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

Cyber Lesbians In Powered Armor

eeeper — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 21:00:33 +0000

This week I have Gerald from Anime World Order join me to review Fight! Iczer 1 an anime from 1985. With angsty naked schoolgirls, high eyeliner, lesbians, giant robots, the best damn Earth Defense Force EVER and Kaneto Shiozawa as a naked, evil, blonde-haired alien child(!?!) this title has anything and everything. Check out this tribute YouTube video(thanks to Regan for the link):

Links:

Promos:

Anime Pacific (They’re on their last few episodes, go check them out!)
Anime-82 (Regan covered Iczer One on his show as well)

Direct Download

Download audio file (ECP_Season_2_01.mp3)

Eeeper’s Choice Show 08 – The Pretty boys, Nerdy boys and Psycho boys Show

eeeper — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 16:47:00 +0000

This latest show has been delayed but I’ve now finished up the show notes finally!
This weeks show has Densha Otoko from CMX Manga, DNAngel from ADV and Kimagure Orange Road from Animeigo which may win this hamsters vote for the best old school anime I’ve seen this year(tying into joint first place with Giant Robo) and the dodgest dancing this side of Miami Vice…….

Direct Download

Anywho if you need to contact me with hints, questions, comments, requests for reviews and anything else then drop me a line @:

eeeperschoice- at -gmail.com
Also at GoogleTalk Voicemail @ eeeperschoice- at -gmail.com

Please note that all images (excluding Show Artwork included in the mp3) unless otherwise stated are the respective copyright and trademark of their respective owners and licensers. No copyright infringement is meant or implied.

News

CPM will re-release four titles with reduced prices on January 30: Black Jack DVD Collection 1 ($29.95), Ichi The Killer: Episode Zero ($14.95), Time Bokan ($9.95), and Hammerboy ($9.95).

Satoshi Kon’s next film Paprika is screening at 10 a.m. at Laemmle’s Grande 4-Plex in downtown Los Angeles through Sunday. This screening makes the film eligible to be nominated for an Oscar.I’ve checked out the ANN page on Paprika. It’s as good a synopsis as there is on the film so far.(P.S.: I know I was late with this news clip but I was too F***in’ tired to edit it out!)

ADV Films has officially announced their license to SGT Frog, which includes merchandise and gaming rights as well as other areas (everything but the manga). Separately, Diamond Distributors has relayed that ADV has announced that Volume 1, which is listed in the December Previews for a February release, has been rescheduled for later in 2007.

A new trailer for Makoto Shinkai‘s upcoming Byousoku 5 Centimeter movie trilogy is now online. The films will be released next spring in Japan.

The official site for Gonzo’s Master of Epic anime series is now online. The show premieres next January in Japan.

With grateful thanks to the ANN

Reviews

Densha Otoko

Densha Otoko or Train Man is supposedly based on a true story but with all things Internet related I’ll let you decide. I found it to be a nice read while commuting so if you like your heroes nerdy but not Harem Heroic then this could be the title for you. It doesn’t have a UK based publisher as far as I know so you’ll have order it State-Side for now.

DNAngel

DNAngel was the title I got back into Anime and Manga after an almost ten year absense. And I know what some fans and listeners will say ‘He chose That Title to come back to!?!’ but it’s the perfect title to show some who’s been away from the Crusade for a while. Not terribly bad, not great just a little bit non-engaging. The manga is longer but has way more Shoujo elements to it than the TV series.

Kimagure Orange Road

KOR is fast becoming a favourite of mine but it’s purely an acquired taste. If you can’t stand 80′s anime this may not be your bag but then if you never watch 80′s anime then you’re not being a true Otaku are you? If you don’t like it then you don’t like it. Animeigo did a fantastic job translating it but they recently lost the license by that I mean that is that the Japanese label that controls it just recently brought out their own boxset in Region 2(Japan) land with better image and sound quality. In other words We’re not letting you produce any more of this DVD while we bring out our outrageously priced version that the fans in Japan must buy rather than pick up your nice, cheap
version…..

As I said before Animeigo did a fantastic job. Here’s the web page
for their liner notes on the TV series. Animeigo regularly bleed for their customers and so many of us ignore the fact that back in the day they were the ADV and Funimation of their day. They just announced their next license here.

Eriko Hara‘s(Hikaru) ANN page

Hiromi Tsuru‘s(Madoka) ANN page

Tohru Furuya‘s(Kyosuke) ANN page

Finally here’s some images from KOR (Please note ALL images taken from Kimagure Orange Road are for review purposes only and no copyright has been taken away from the owners or implied)

Madoka. The Heroine of the story.I think..

Kyosuke. Our Hero. Poor unlucky bas*&!d

A quiet moment between Hikaru and Kyosuke. It can’t last.

Told ya.

Kyosuke getting the job at ABCD from Master. Good Times. Good Times…..

Promos This Week:

I’m going on a short break to recharge the batteries so the next show won’t be out for two weeks. But on the next show I’ll be reviewing two manga titles, Infinite Ryvius based on the series by SUNRISE and Legal Drug by CLAMP and the truly awesome OVA series Giant Robo! Chuala Boola or what!?! Eh, eh!?! Ah, I don’t know why I bother…

Download audio file (ECP_show_08.mp3)

Eeeper’s Choice Show 05: A hookers, space kids, libel action and other kinds of softness sorta show

eeeper — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 01:12:00 +0000

This week I’ve joined the internet revolution of making myself appear smarter than I actually am.This week it’s thriller/comedy(!?!) manga Remote from TokyoPop and on the anime side I finally review a series in it’s entirety in the form of Stellvia of the Universe in the firing line. If this keeps up I’ll actually sound like a professional soon!….NOT THAT KIND OF PROFESSIONAL!….In the news Bandai threatens to tie up fansubbers with piano wire, The Anime Network continues to delude itself that it’s the Cartoon Network, Edward Alric whores himself out to MySpace and the UK contniues to rub my nose in the ground with FilmFour’s Miyazaki season. Oh, Lord! Why do you hate me so!

Direct Download

Anywho if you need to contact me with hints, questions, comments, requests for reviews and anything else then drop me a line @:

eeeperschoice- at -gmail.com
Also at GoogleTalk Voicemail @ eeeperschoice- at -gmail.com

Links:

Promos This Week:

Download audio file (ECP_show_05.mp3)