Gluey Tart on Women in Comics

Posted on July 29, 2009 by kinukitty

This is part of a roundtable on women creators. Please read the previous entries, if you haven’t already – there’s lots of good stuff, as always.

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This is a roundtable on women creators in general, but I originally thought it was just about women creators in comics – which seemed like an odd topic. Don’t you think? And indeed that wasn’t quite the topic, but this is a blog that is kind of sort of about comics, so what the hell. And you do see this sort of thing, not infrequently. You know what I mean: “Huh. Women comics creators. Let us discuss their relevance!” It made me realize that I live in a bubble. Because I find it bizarre that people would focus on comics by women as a specific subgenre, as people do in the West. I read comics – shojo and yaoi manga – all the time, lots and lots of them, almost all by women. It’s unusual for me to read comics by men. So the situation with American mainstream comics strikes me as a weird aberration.

There certainly aren’t a lot of women working on mainstream American titles, though, and I have to wonder why. It isn’t that women can’t do it (proof below), or even that women are inherently disinterested in mainstream comics; something’s keeping them out. There have been lively discussions about that topic on this very blog – here is a recent one, and here is more of a classic.

When I thought about women creators in comics (in the West), the first name that came to mind was Jill Thompson. Apparently I was right on the money with that, since her Web site says she is “the most well-known female comic book artist working in the comics industry today.” She has done art for a lot of mainstream titles, including some of my favorites, Sandman and The Invisibles. These are girl-friendly mainstream titles, of course, especially Sandman. She’s also illustrated even more mainstream ones (more tights and capes, fewer girls) – Batman and Spiderman and Wonder Woman. (Do I know which series? No. I find the myriad divisions of Batman and Spiderman and Wonder Woman and the like incredibly confusing, and frankly, I can barely get out of bed and get to work every morning, much less keep track of superheroes. Ignore ’em all and let God sort ’em out, I say.) (I do know who’s DC and who’s Marvel, if that makes anyone feel any better. Although I frequently say Superman when I mean Spiderman, much to the irritation of my son and husband. I do know the difference, I just apparently don’t – care.) (And the names Superman and Spiderman are treated differently, now that I think of it. Like Kmart and Wal-Mart. One has a hyphen and a capital letter in the middle, and one doesn’t. I know this because I am an editor and people get it wrong all the time. Or people used to, when people were writing about Kmart. My easy way of remembering it is that Kmart has nothing and Wal-Mart has everything.) (I don’t actually have any other pointless interjections at this point; I just wanted to throw in another parenthetical comment to show I could do it.) I’ve seen a certain amount of Thompson’s work on those titles, and I don’t especially like any of it. It fits in with the rest of mainstream comics artwork, which is what it’s supposed to do.

Look at this panel, which I chose at random from The Invisibles because I had it at hand. And, huh. What the hell is going on here? This is not exactly the stuff, artistically. Which is pretty much what I always think when I look at mainstream American comics. (This is personal, but I don’t mind sharing it with you: I don’t understand why superhero comics readers are content with art that isn’t that great. The art is at least fifty percent of what’s going on. It should be really good, or why not just read words?)

The thing is, I actually come not to bury Jill Thompson but to praise her. I’m not crazy about her mainstream comic art, but I don’t really like any mainstream American comic art. She’s done some wonderful work, though. Her Scary Godmother books are some of my favorites. They’re actually children’s books and not technically comics. Well, they sort of hang out at the intersection between comics and picture books. The art is wonderful, stylish, and fun. (The storytelling is also very good.) You get the feeling Thompson got to do what she wanted to do here, like she finally got to slip her leash and run.

I wouldn’t know the first panel was drawn by a woman. I’d assume it was done by a man because most of those kinds of comics are. I would definitely assume the second panel was drawn by a woman. That’s because the first one conforms to the expected mainstream American comics look, and the second one is a cute Goth for girls thing. I am a fan of some, but not all, cute Goth for girls things (as in most areas of human endeavor, some are well done and some are lacking). I am also aware that this genre lives in a ghetto, segregated from the other titles in the comics store.

Scary Godmother is a series of four hard-bound books, published in the late ’90s, plus a couple of comic book series and a one-shot or two. It has a distinctive style and is done in watercolors, which is clearly the way for Thompson to go. I say that because her next two projects, Death: At Death’s Door and Dead Boy Detectives, are drawn in a manga-cized version of her Scary Godmother style, but in black and white, and they don’t do much for me.

Those books were followed by Beasts of Burden, which you can read online right here. This title was written by Evan Dorkin and illustrated by Thompson, in a return to watercolors. The art is nice, and (separately, in my opinion), she won an Eisner award for it. (She won one for Scary Godmother, too.) Thompson also has a new series of children’s books about a character called Magic Trixie, and it’s very much in line with Scary Godmother, thematically and artistically. Also painted. The art is lovely.

So, there are a couple of points here. Point the first: Jill Thompson has done some really good stuff, and you might want to hook yourself up with it. Point the second: There aren’t many women creators in mainstream American comics, and the best-known one – who is capable of great things – hasn’t done anything close to her best work in this field. One is tempted to draw conclusions. It suggests, I think, that mainstream comics, with its emphasis on continuity of the visual style rather than on the artistic strengths of the individual creators, doesn’t attract female artists because it doesn’t play to their strengths. Or any artist’s strengths, from the looks of it. I can see why an outsider might shy away from joining this club.

Gluey Tart: Lovers and Souls

Posted on July 9, 2009 by kinukitty

Lovers and Souls
Kano Miyamoto, Deux Press, 2008

This is one of those mangas. I read it just last week – late last week, even – and I felt all happy and a little swoony about it, especially the main story (out of five; the other four are pretty short). Pretty art, complex emotional whatsit, ambiguous sexuality, casual prostitution, and a good amount of”explicit content,” as promised on the cover. Yes! Houston, we have a winner! And a week later, I still love the main story. I might still love the secondary stories as well, but I can’t remember them.

This is an interesting phenomenon (interesting to me, anyway). I read a lot of yaoi. A lot, a lot. And my memory is not – well, it’s really not very good, that’s true, but I do manage to stumble along and get to work and back and pay the bills on time. Usually. What I’m trying to establish here is that I’m not significantly impaired. The only reason this matters, as far as this column goes, is that I don’t have the slightest idea what’s in the stories between pages 113 and 238. And if I do not suffer from significant mental impairment, this might mean that there’s not much there there. Lord knows it happens.

We’ll table that logical leap for a moment and discuss the main story, the part between pages 1 and 112 that I do in fact recall. It’s a melancholy little thing with a surprising and, I thought, absurdly melodramatic ending, even for melodrama. Now, I know melodrama is supposed to be a dirty word, but I’m a fan. I’m not dismissing anything because it contains a hefty dose of melodrama, or even an excess, necessarily. I’m just saying. It’s really a stubbornly emo ending. I thought it was maybe a bit much, but it worked in context, and there was a point to the out of nowhere-ness, so I can live with it.

“What the hell happens?” I hear you asking. I’m not going to say, because the element of surprise is really important. I don’t mind spilling about the rest of the plot, though. Shinomiya is hot and aimless and earning money for college by posing nude for Matsuoka, a photographer. Matsuoka wants Shinomiya, who says he’s straight, but – maybe not so much, since all it takes is some extra cash. After he tries it once, Shinomiya gets pretty comfortable with both gay sex and Matsuoka, eventually working in a gay sex club. (As one does.) The story is about their relationship and how it develops.

This isn’t the kind of story where flowers explode all over the page. It’s quiet and subdued and sort of grim. The character development is believable, if kind of strange. The photographer, Matsuoka, seems like a complete dick at first, apologizing to the obviously offended Shinomiya about “that incident” and asking what it’ll take to get him in bed. He stuffs $100 down Matsuoka’s pants and forces a kiss on him, offering him money for more and telling Matsuoka to think about it before he has to force him. Nice. The next time we see them together, Shinomiya is taking pictures of Matsuoka and seems much nicer. He does offer Matsuoka money for sex, but he seems a lot less predatory about it, and Shinomiya accepts, saying he’s kind of interested in Matsuoka. Earlier, Shinomiya had been musing to himself that he isn’t especially interested in other people, and he doesn’t much care what happens with his body. Over the course of the story, the disinterested part changes. It doesn’t happen smoothly, and neither party exactly understands it, but Shinomiya starts to fall for Matsuoka. And Matsuoka shows a surprising amount of gentleness and insight, given his opening scenes.

Well, it ends badly. I feel OK saying that much, since the back cover announces that this is “a tragic tale of love found and lost.” The story is a little sordid, a little vague, and, dare I say, bittersweet. I wouldn’t say it feels realistic, but it has a ring of truth about it that I responded to. It had enough presence to keep me thinking about it, days later.

So, let’s go back to the other stories, the ones I apparently stopped thinking about instantaneously. If I ever thought about them in the first place. Let us look over them, you and I, and retrace what happened.

Story two, “Vanity,” is about Shinomiya’s response to the unfortunate events wot I do not explain. It’s good – in some ways, maybe better than the main story. Shinomiya is depressed and confused and desperate, and his reactions are believable and even sexy, which is a deft trick. This story really illustrates how complicated and fragile and coincidental and harrowing relationships with other people can be. OK; I hadn’t forgotten his one. I just thought it was part of the first story.

Next: “Sleeping Beauty.” This one is the backstory for a something fleetingly mentioned in “Lovers and Souls,” that Matsuoka had taken a picture of Shinomiya and entered it in a contest, all without Shinomiya’s knowledge, much less permission. That detail, tossed out at the very beginning of the manga, had made me wonder about Matsuoka. That and the non-con and the $100 kiss. These points, taken together, made him look, well, kind of sleazy. You know, just a little. But he turns out to be very different. This little story gives us just a bit of insight into this blessedly complicated character, and, oh yeah, the ending is super-sweet. I forgot it because it almost isn’t there – only eleven pages. But, in retrospect, they’re a nice eleven pages.

Story four: “Eternal Moon.” It’s a nice little story, too, sparse and real. Long enough to develop the characters of two friends who fall in love. It doesn’t play as trite as it sounds. I would have enjoyed this more the first time I read it (and thus possibly remembered having read it) if I hadn’t spent a certain amount of my limited mental abilities wondering if Kai was the character from the first two stories, who I remembered only as bi-guy (and this is where I admit, to my shame, that certain Japanese names just slide off my brain as if it were coated with Teflon). What the hell was that guy’s name? Oh, Hikaru. Well, he isn’t. May you all learn from my stupidity. (Also, a bonus: Toward the end, Kai – not Hikaru at all – wears his hair in that half-updo thing I’m so excited about. Woo hoo!)

Story the last: “Tomorrow’s Sky.” This one is about the characters in “Eternal Moon.” (Hey, there’s a theme there! Eternal moon, tomorrow’s sky – yup, definitely a theme. You can’t fool me.) It’s told from the point of view of Nozaki, the other half of the couple. Public affection is offered and fidgeted about, a fight is fought, insecurities are aired, and understanding is fumbled toward. It’s short and not necessarily substantial, this story, but it is quietly gentle, the kind of story that leaves you with a smile. Which you should savor, since in about thirty minutes, you’ll have no memory of this moment. If you’re like me, anyway.

I love Kano Miyamoto’s art, the pacing of her stories, and her over-arching lack of desire to create plot. She is able to convey wonderful subtleties of expression and nuances of emotion without a lot of movement. And that may have something to do with my lapse of memory, too. The more plot you have, the easier it is to remember the details. But those aren’t the kind of details this manga is concerned with. I was left with an understanding of the characters, a feeling for them, and the ways they experienced love. (Which did include explicit sex scenes, by the way, involving invisible penises – well, you can’t have everything.) So, good enough. I’ll put this one on the keeper stack and probably read it again, one day. The whole thing will no doubt be brand new to me, by then. And I’ll enjoy it just as much the second time. (Cue “Feels Like the First Time as background/fadeout music.)

Gluey Tart’s Rock Your World Fandom Confessions

Posted on June 11, 2009 by kinukitty

This is part of a roundtable on Fandom Confessions, in which embarrassing things we liked back when are transmuted into embarrassing blog posts. Like alchemy, but funnier.

I didn’t have to stop for a moment to think about what I should write about; it was so, so obvious. Joe Perry. God, how I loved Joe Perry. I got started on my guitar god hero worship in the late ’70s, so Joe Perry was not an embarrassing choice, in and of itself. I still contend that ’70s Joe Perry was a thing of beauty and a joy forever. The degree and depth of my adulation, though, are – awkward.

To say I admired Joe Perry is a laughable understatement, akin to saying I had some issues with George W. Bush’s policies or that I have been known to occasionally look at manporn. I spent hours listening to Aerosmith through enormous Pioneer headphones, or on the floor with my head stuck between my enormous Pioneer speakers, teasing out every nuance of the guitar parts, figuring out what was Joe and what was Brad Whitford, listening for key changes, waiting for Joe to sing on the chorus. My room was covered with pictures and posters of Joe, and when that wasn’t enough, I drew a life-sized, full-body portrait. I studied every nuance of his sneer. I learned to play guitar because of him. I tried drugs and casual sex because of him. On some level, I cursed being a girl because it kept me from identifying more completely with him.

Joe Perry was the major component of my belief system. I ran my choices through the WWJPD filter – what would Joe Perry do? What Joe Perry actually did was take a stupendous amount of drugs, crash cars, and generally not look like he was having a hell of a lot of fun with any of it. And as you might expect, WWJPD was really a very poor decision-making mechanism. No one will be surprised to learn that it led me to do a lot of stupid things.

Jean Claude, for instance. That wasn’t his real name. His real name was Joe, but I didn’t feel like he lived up to it, so I called him Jean Claude. Jean Claude was irritable and sneering, unpredictable and antisocial, all of which I liked. We were once banned from a pizza place because he pissed on the salad bar. He was annoyed after having been asked to leave because he’d carved a picture of a spread-eagle naked woman into the wall with a fork. It was pretty good, too. Jean Claude broke into cars to steal cassette tapes so he could record over them. Unfortunately, I have chosen this example at random. This is the company I kept.

Eventually I grew the fuck up, sort of, and got over it – mostly. Although I do still automatically pick up scarves I could see Joe Perry wearing. ’70s Joe Perry. I never exactly forgot, but the disappointments added up, and even I had to stop listening to Aerosmith. Joe became less of a mental presence. When his solo album came out a few years ago, I bought it for old times sake, knowing I would hate it. Which I did. Listening to it not quite once, I became curious about where Joe Perry was, now. Who he was, now that he’d gone from “Draw the Line” to the theme song from “Spiderman.”

Google is not always your friend. Sometimes a moment’s curiosity turns into years of angst. Because I was so much happier, not knowing about Joe Perry’s Rock Your World Mango Peach Tango sauce. According to the marketing copy, “Joe Perry has been creating bone rattling licks with Aerosmith for 30 + years. Now his Mango Peach Tango sauce will rattle your palette with its high voltage flavor and taste. Keep your taste buds a rockin’ & a rollin’ all night long.” (I just checked the site for the URL and, oh dear God, there’s also mac’n’cheese.) I just – don’t have words. Every time I think about Joe Perry’s Rock Your World barbecue sauce, I die a little.

I gave him a pass on the whole performing with Britney Spears at the Super Bowl thing. She was a hot mess, and what’s more Aerosmith than that? But then, the sauce. The TV appearance with Rachael Ray. Rachael fucking Ray, people. Last year, he said he was a life-long Republican and endorsed John McCain for president. I’m still reeling from that one. I mean, nobody could live up to the image I’d built up for Joe Perry, but holy shit. Mango barbecue sauce? John McCain? I could forgive him for the God-damned sauce – well, no, I couldn’t, but I could resolutely pretend I didn’t know – because, you know, he’s pushing 60, and presumably he needs to retire at some point. But a lifelong Republican?

Sigh. The anti-hero of my youth is truly gone. Good bye and good luck, Joe Perry. I hope you sell a lot of sauce.

Gluey Tart: Is Disgruntled

Posted on June 4, 2009 by kinukitty

Manhattan Love Story, by Momoko Tenzen
March 2009, Digital Manga Publishing

God of Dogs, by Satoru Ishihara
September 2008, Digital Manga Publishing

Romantic Illusions, by Reiichi Hiiro
September 2008, Digital Manga Publishing

Love Knot, by Hiroko Ishimaru
February 2009, Digital Manga Publishing

I don’t necessarily want to write about manga I dislike. This isn’t my naturally sunny disposition rearing its ugly head; I just don’t want to spend any more time with it than necessary. I read it, I failed to enjoy it, and the last thing I want to do is think about it for another thirty minutes. I’ve been on an unlucky streak, though, and decided I should share the pain – I mean, discuss what makes these yaoi titles the varying shades of bad that they are.

That reminds me of one of my favorite Edgar Allen Poe stories, “Berenice”:

“Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch – as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow! How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness? – from the covenant of peace, a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of today, or the agonies which are, have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.“

So true, yes? “Berenice” kicks ass, by the way, because the protagonist (whose name is Egaeus, for heaven’s sake) disinters his lost love to remove her teeth. She might not have been dead when she was buried, either, but of course that’s a given.

I am obviously not holding any of these poor books up to the standard of “Berenice,” because in that context, most things come off pretty badly. The thing is, every time I pick up a yaoi manga, I’m hoping to fall in love. I’m hoping something will work for me and leave me with a happy, stupid-looking smile on my face. And I’m really pretty easy, too. I’m usually happy enough if the art is pretty, even if the story isn’t great. Conversely, if the story is nice, but the art isn’t ideal, that’s still OK. And even if the art and the story are both a bust, sometimes the mangaka will hit one of my kinks, and that’s enough for me, too. So a title really needs to succeed on only one of three levels for me to feel like I got something out of it.

Sadly, despite my low standards, I am still disappointed more often than not. Manhattan Love Story, for instance, just pissed me off. I’ve read worse, but that’s the only positive thing I’m prepared to say about it. Well, that, and I like the cover design. That’s what suckered me into this mess in the first place. Too bad I ordered in from Amazon and couldn’t turn it over to see the illustration on the back.

That would have sobered me right up. I intensely dislike gay stories in which one of the pretty boys looks and acts like a girl. The whole point of reading romance stories about men is that they’re about men. In the first story, the main character, Diamond, is having a discreet affair with his boss, Rock. I kid you not. Diamond and Rock. That could probably be funny, under other circumstances, but trust me when I tell you that these are not them. Diamond is a tiny, timid, uncertain little florist with ridiculous amounts of hair. Rock is a hugely successful captain of industry who appears regularly in magazines and, for reasons that are unclear to me, his important business ventures include the little flower shop where Diamond works. I could overlook all of this, I think, if a) there were anything to the story, and b) if Diamond didn’t look and act like a big bundle of annoying feminine stereotypes. He’s flushed, he’s flustered, he has some bizarre physical condition that causes him to become very ill if he works too hard. To which I roll my eyes and mutter profanity. Perhaps his condition is caused by the strain of growing all that hair.

There are a couple of other stories in this book, and poofy-haired, overly feminine uke syndrome does turn up again. (Uke = bottom; in yaoi, the bottom is often drawn smaller than the top, or seme.) In one particularly creepy instance, the syndrome manifests in the form of an angelic little cherub, who is named Raphael, for Christ’s sake, and also has too much hair and is drawn to look about 7 but is said to be 13 or so (I don’t remember, and I refuse to look it up).

Raphael sees his teacher having sex with one of his fellow students, and later, the teacher confesses his love for Raphael. To clarify, this is presented as cause for celebration rather than a call to the Department of Children and Family Services. This kind of thing is not unheard of in yaoi, but it’s a couple of bridges too far for me. There are other problems, too, but I’ve had enough. No mas. Let us never speak of this manga again.

God of Dogs is a disaster, but not a fluffy, weepy, eighth-grade-idea-of-romance disaster. A completely different kind of cock-up, as it were. I blame the cover for this one, too, but not just the cover. The description, which promised brutal Chinese mafia action and a mysterious stranger, pushed some buttons for me. Nice art, favored kink – as the big man said, two out of three? Ain’t bad. I thought I couldn’t loose.

The art is in fact pretty good. That isn’t always a given – the cover art is not necessarily representative of what’s inside the book. In this case, there’s no subtlety to the lines, and the faces look overly Neanderthal (I realize they’re supposed to be gangsters, but geez). But overall, it’s fine. I can appreciate the aesthetic beauty of the pretty boys, tough as they are. And as a bonus, there’s a body dissolving in lye or something in a bathtub, which is always a pleasant surprise.

You’re sensing a “but” in here somewhere, aren’t you? To paraphrase a personal hero of mine, “Everybody I know has a big but. What’s yours?” (That’s from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. It’s a classic.) Well, yes. The manga looks pretty good, and it’s about gangsters, BUT it doesn’t make any damned sense. There is sort of a plot, and yes, you can pick out some of the salient points thereof, but my brow was furrowed in the WTF position pretty much the whole time I read this book. Maybe I was trying to think too much about the details, but God of Dogs felt like a three-hour movie cut down to 90 minutes, and like maybe they went too deep and excised a certain amount of connective tissue along with extraneous dog reaction shots.

The back cover says:

“The notoriously vicious Chinese Mafia has lost its next rightful heir… to sudden suicide! Now, the esteemed “God of Dogs” Tsai family must race against the ticking clock and hunt down the child of the deceased eldest son in order to preserve their ancient, sacred legacy. Meanwhile, the mysterious Archer has been convicted of killing his father and is on his way to jail. What will fate reveal for the powerful Tsai clan’s criminal dynasty AND this strange young man?”

Your guess is as good as mine.

Next! Romantic Illusions is a cheerful screwball comedy-ish title that explores the humorous and, yes, romantic possibilities inherent in multiple personality disorder. How could you go wrong with that? Right? Yu, the main personality, is a mild-mannered florist. (There were florists in the first book, too. What’s the deal with all the florists?) His other two personalities are a rockin’ tattooed playboy and a brilliant young lawyer (who has brown hair, when the other two are blond, which is a pretty impressive trick, when you think about it). (The less dominant personality is drawn shorter in some panels, as well, which I also found disconcerting.) Yu created the other two personalities so someone would love him, and yes, Hiiro does, er, touch on the possibilities for, um, physical humor inherent in this situation. Not very well, but at least she reaches for it. (Ahem.)

Ultimately, each of the personalities ends up with a boyfriend of his own, one of them another person with multiple personality disorder. That should be pretty good – funny, sweet, kinky, perhaps slightly disturbing, but potentially in a good way – but it isn’t. It just kind of falls short. How is that even possible? I don’t know.

Which leads us nicely into Love Knot, which is made of meh. The art doesn’t thrill me, but it isn’t bad enough to actively annoy me, either. The story sounded like a good bet – Keigo, a detective by day/assassin by night (and I do love me an undercover assassin), takes in overly effeminate, on-the-run psychic Emiya and discovers that Emiya had been held against his will as part of a secret government project. Keigo falls in love with Emiya and vows to protect him always. Complications ensue, but they wind up in a happily-ever-after situation that includes Keigo discovering that Emiya’s long-lost mother is dead, yes, but always loved him. Aw.

There’s a little bit of heat between Keigo and Emiya, so I was moderately happy with that. And there’s a hint of darkness due to the assassin and repressive secret government project angles, but it isn’t played out, so no payoff there. I put the book down and said, “Well. That was deeply mediocre.” In retrospect, it was probably sub-mediocre.

I blame myself, really. It’s not like I didn’t have adequate warning. Upon reflection, I remember that Momoko Tenzen also wrote Paradise on the Hill. Oh, yeah. I didn’t like that, either. Satoru Ishihara wrote Dost Thou Know? and Hiroko Ishimaru wrote Total Surrender. Nope, didn’t like those, either. Too bad I can’t reliably access my vast database of disappointing manga. It all blurs together. (I wasn’t familiar with Reiichi Hiiro, so I’m giving myself a pass on that one.) I have to admit that I’m a bit worried about what I’m going to read next. Because this has just been disheartening. Still and all, you have to get right back up on the horse that threw you, right? Take the huge, towering stack of unread manga by the horns and all that. Or maybe I should reread a classic, just to restore my faith in manporn.

Gluey Tart: The Dawn Of Love

Posted on May 28, 2009 by kinukitty

The Dawn Of Love, by Kazuho Hirokawa
November 2008, Digital Manga Publishing

I had one of those moments, when I saw this on the shelf. I often go trolling for yaoi, and I’m often disappointed. But every once in a while, I spot a cover that makes me suck in my breath and pause a moment, building the anticipation. Is this going to look as good when I pick it up? Flip through it? I sort of circle the book for a moment, glancing at other titles, trying not to rush the moment. Flirting with it. Then I pick it up and find out if it’s love or what.

Different things attract me. Sometimes it’s the design; sometimes it’s the art. Pretty colors, even. (I’m just a magpie of a yaoi enthusiast.) Maybe a combination thereof. When I saw The Dawn Of Love, I laughed out loud. It’s the gayest looking cover I have ever seen. Really. Look at it. Oh, wait; you need to see the back, too.

ZOMG, as they say. Big, pink flowers, frilly clothes – and, holy shit, a pink velvet suit! – classic romance novel pose, pink nail polish. So gay! I was delighted. Delighted, I tell you. I didn’t even look at the plot synopsis – I didn’t care. It’s not like I wanted to discuss string theory with it, right? I am capable of being incredibly superficial in cases like this, and after staring at the cover of this book for a few seconds, I was ready to buy it a drink and take it home.

Or to a love hotel, which would be appropriate for this title, since there’s a lot of sex, and almost all of it happens in love hotels. That’s significant to the plot, by the way. The author’s notes include this adorable bit: “Unbelievably, [the main characters] spend 45% of the time naked! The story still manages to progress somehow, thanks to these two characters, the love hotel guidebook I obtained several years ago, and my photo-illustrated manual of sexual positions, The Shijuhatte.” (The Shijuhatte, known as the Japanese Kama Sutra, is a trip by itself – there’s a Japanese version you can browse on your cell phone, but for English speakers, this NOT EVEN REMOTELY WORKSAFE but strangely hilarious site will, er, fill you in.) Anyway, there’s a lot of sex in this manga. A lot. Well-drawn sex, in my opinion. And lots of it. All in service of the plot, mind you. (That was a little joke there. Get it? Service?)

There is a plot, really. Masahiro, who’s a goofball, but studly, falls head over heels for Takane, who’s a man-slut, but – well, that’s all. It must be the perm. He’s appealing, no doubt about it, but we don’t find out a lot about why someone would fall so hard for him. No matter! Masahiro has enough personality for both of them, and Takane does eventually come around (presumably that isn’t really a spoiler; for the love of God, look at the cover!). The characters really are endearing, in part because their faces are so expressive. Kirokawa really has a knack for capturing broad swathes of emotion and telling little nuances.

Within the first few pages, Masahiro convinces Takane to have sex with him. (How? He asks.) After being with Takane once, Masahiro decides he must have him, and Takane agrees to be more than casual “sex friends” if Masahiro can keep him entertained for an entire week. Masahiro is up for the challenge, and his condition, upon winning his prize, is that Takane kiss off the rest of the guys he’s been seeing. Complications ensue. Complications are resolved. It’s satisfying. Masahiro and Takane sail off into the big gay romantic sunset. Happy sigh. (And suddenly I’m thinking of that Lemonheads song from the ’90s – “Big Gay Heart.” I like that song.)

You can’t really tell from the plot synopsis, but this manga is full-on charming. Takane is sultry and comes across as a free spirit. Masahiro is kind of an idiot savant. He’s loud and profane and kind of embarrassing, but he understands about love, and he’s arrogant, self-assured, and smart enough to make Takane understand, as well. His asides are the kind of thing that usually make me wince – and I did wince a few times, but I always laughed. Maybe I’m more in touch with my inner Kiss t-shirt wearing 13-year-old boy than I should be, but “relieve my errant wood” cracks me up. And “But your wiener’s pretty good, too, right?” “Of course! Another guy could never beat my wiener!” I mean, it’s painful, but it also made me laugh so hard my coffee came out through my nose. (Beat my wiener. Heh.)

There’s also an older story, “A Flower Awaits Summer.” The art is much less subtle (in the author’s notes, Hirokawa laments this: “Why? Why are the lines so thick, me of three years ago?!”). It’s still cute, though, and those expressive faces are already in evidence. The theme is not drastically different from that of the main story – a younger man who’s afraid of being hurt is convinced to give love a chance. (In the main story, which is rather nuanced, strange as that might sound, the one who needs convincing needs convincing because he’s never been in love and doesn’t understand what it means.) It’s short and sweet, despite the thickness of the lines.

Romantic sex. Sexy romance. Character development. Happy endings. Lots and lots of flowers. Wee!

Gluey Tart: Otomen

Posted on May 21, 2009 by kinukitty

Otomen, by Aya Kanno
2009, VIZ Media LLC

Otomen isn’t yaoi, but it does deal with some of my favorite themes, pretty boys and gender fuck. You can’t go wrong with that, right?

Yes, well, you obviously could. Not with this series, though. I’ve read the first two volumes (both out in 2009, with the third coming in August), and I find it charming and kind of clever. I love Aya Kanno’s art (I already wrote about her Blank Slate series) – something about her sharp noses and tired-looking eyes just sends me. And the pretty boys? Are pretty.

The gender fuck, then? I almost need a flow chart. The main character, Asuka, is a tall, cool, good-looking upperclassman who’s not just captain of the kendo team but the best in the country, as well as having a first-degree black belt in judo and a second-degree black belt in karate. His dark, painful secret is that inside, he’s Hello Kitty wearing a glittery tiara and a lavender unicorn t-shirt. He sews stupidly cute little animals and things. He knits scarves with bunnies on them. He creates outlandishly elaborate and adorable bentos for lunch every single day. And he lives for Love Chick, a shojo manga series. No one can know! It doesn’t matter that he can kick anyone’s ass (and often does). If people knew his shameful subtext, he’d be ruined! Ruined! (Note: There are spoilers ahead, but this part is all revealed in the first few pages.)

Asuka’s trauma is his parents’ fault, of course. His father left the family to become a woman, and his mother spent the rest of Asuka’s childhood trying to make sure her son wouldn’t follow in her ex’s mincing, high-heeled footsteps. To make his manipulative and borderline psychotic mother happy, Asuka must be utterly masculine, stoic, unromantic, and unexcited by stuffed pandas (and, for reasons that escape me, uninterested in sweets – by God, what a price to pay for filial devotion!).

Asuka has to hide who he is from everyone. He isn’t gay, mind you. In fact, that’s sort of his problem. He’s met a girl, Ryo, and fallen head over heels for her. And when you love someone – you make lacy crafts and fill your room with kawaii accessories! If you’re an ottomen, that is – a straight man who loves girly things and romance. (Wikipedia tells me Otomen is a multilingual pun, and that “otome” means “young lady.” “Men” means “men.”) (And by the way, if you need more pink and sparkle in your life, check out the official Web site for the series.)

Another main character, Juta, initially seems like he’s just going to play the experienced playboy sidekick part. He’s interested in Ryo, too. Or is he? Maybe he’s interested in Asuka? Turns out skirt-chaser Juta is secretly the famous shojo managa artist for Love Chick! Which he’s basing on Asuka and Ryo! Except he’s reversed them and made Asuka a girl in the managa, and Ryo a boy.

Ryo doesn’t get as much stage time as Asuka or Juta (at all), but she’s feisty and loyal and likeable, if somewhat lacking in explication as a character. She’s pretty, but – oh, you see it coming, don’t you? Kind of manly. She can’t sew or cook or make cute stuffed animals, and she isn’t interested. She’s also apparently clueless about relationships. Juta keeps trying to bring Asuka and Ryo closer (to advance the plot of his manga series), and it keeps not happening because of Asuka’s painful over-thinking of everything and Ryo’s complete obliviousness. The implication is that Ryo is like this because her mother died when she was young, and she was raised by her laughably manly father. She’s shown on the back of Volume 2 holding a cake she’s tried to make; it looks like a berry bush magically transmuted into the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and then melted in the afternoon sun.

(Spoilers ho!) There’s the setup. And wackiness ensues! Mild, soothing, cute wackiness. Kanno worries at the gender stereotypes like a mouthful of loose teeth, and Juta’s constant gaze feels palpable on Asuka’s skin. (All his manipulation is basically carried out through Asuka – I guess it would be creepy if he were stalking the girl.) In the second volume, Asuka gets entangled with a very girlie girl – who manipulates him and threatens to blackmail him and drugs him and kidnaps him. Ryo rides on a white horse to rescue him (literally).

So, let us recap briefly: Cute!!! I bought in because of the manga covers, which say it all, really. Otomen is an adorable exploration of pretty boys exploring their femininity. (In a perfectly safe, heterosexual context, of course. ) It’s sweet and fluffy, and the hero fights a bull. If you need more than that, you’re harder to please than I am.

Gluey Tart: Restart

Posted on May 14, 2009 by kinukitty

Restart, by Shouko Hidaka
Digital Manga Publishing, 2008

“A drunken night of sex sparks the beginning of their relationship, but Tadeshi’s growing insecurity over the younger Aki’s meteoric rise to stardom gets in the way of love. Clearly, it’s not all glitz and glamour in the tumultuous world of modeling.” So sayeth the dust jacket.

I had a strange relationship with this book before I read it. I accidentally bought it twice (and Borders wouldn’t let me return the second copy, damn them to hell), and caught myself thinking about buying it four more times before I remembered. And that wouldn’t sound at all strange if you a) knew me and b) saw my four terrifying, teetering “to read” stacks. The point is, part of my brain clearly wanted to read this book.

It was right, of course. I’m confused about many things, but the kind of yaoi I like is not one of them. I’m torn here, by the way. Should I launch into a summary? Or tackle the cliché question? The former, I think.

The major point of Restart is willowy, elegant-looking boys with long, messy hair. Or at least long, messy bangs.
I always award bonus points if one of the main characters has that little quasi-updo thing going, too.
I would say that’s just me, but it can’t be. It has to be a bit of a fetish for other yaoi fans, too; it occurs too often not to be. Because Japanese men are more fashion-forward and groomed than American men, but really, the incidence of the little half-ponytail in the wild is not extensive.

The semi-random means of bringing the willowy, elegant-looking boys together is a misunderstanding that almost destroys their nascent relationship (let’s spin the wheel – oh, one of my favorites! They get drunk, have sex, one of them doesn’t remember it the next day, and they pine for each other until the mistake is cleared up), but finally resolves into a new connection, followed by meaningful makeup sex. There are longing looks across the room. There are resentful musings. There are hurt feelings and confusion. Followed by meaningful makeup sex.

The sex can occur on- or off-screen; surprisingly, I don’t much care which. It’s always tricky, approaching the initial sex scene in a book by a mangaka you haven’t read before. Everything can be fine up to that, but there are just a lot of deal-breakers – I can be in love, love, love with everything about the story, and then, oh, God, the sound effects say “slurp.” You know. And then there’s how the genitals are, er, handled. They can’t show them in Japan (although some mangakas do anyway, always a pleasant change of pace), so there are conventions to let you know what’s being put where. There’s the ghost penis, where one of the characters obviously has his or his partner’s equipment in hand, but the hand is empty. Or there’s the partially rematerialized penis – think Star Trek, where everybody is kind of a shimmery cloud before they fully beam in. As far as where the penis is inserted, you often get a kind of cut-away; fingers are inserted into – nothing. And sometimes you just have to laugh. Laughing is enjoyable and, I understand, can help you live longer, but it isn’t always right for the big sex scene. Restart gets it right. There are a couple of sex scenes (actual, not implied), but it’s all about the romaaaaaaaaaance. Charged expressions, well-positioned hands (not a given), meaningful eye contact. And it starts in the bathtub, which just pleases me.

TMI? Well, that’s the thing, when you’re talking about porn. Yaoi isn’t just about sex, but it is about sex. So while literary criticism is relevant, it isn’t really as relevant as whether it, you know, works. If it’s hot. That’s a combination of plot, story-telling, the quality of the art, and if it hits your favorite kinks – which can be the most important part. And that brings us back to cliché.

Those of you who are familiar with yaoi will recognize the getting drunk and having sex that is immediately followed by a misunderstand aspect of Restart whether you’ve read it or not. (I’m talking about the main story here, which comprises five chapters; there are two others, both enjoyable, but filler) It is not an original plot device. It is, in fact, a well-worn plot device – so much so that I actually think of it as a subgenre rather than a cliché. I don’t have a problem with that because the drawing is lovely, the story is sweet, and, most important, the romance works for me, and the sex works for me. That’s why I read yaoi; I want romantic porn. If the book succeeds on that level, it succeeds.

The Hooded Utilitarian

a pundit in every panopticon

Author Archives: kinukitty