Author Archives: Erica Friedman

Overthinking Things 6/2/2011

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It’s Just a Comic Book, or, Judo Master has friends who are Asian

The date on the inside of Judo Master No. 96, tells me that it’s a Modern Comics (a Topps imprint) 1978 reprint of a 1967 comic.  I probably picked it up in 1978, at the local newspaper/candy/tobacco store, because that was where I got my comics until I became an adult and bought them for inflated prices from skeevy dealers at comics “shows” in the meeting rooms of Holiday Inns or in overfull, slightly tattered comic stores.

I remembered very little about the story, the title just popped into my head one day recently. I had to clean out the office to find it and there it was, looking as fresh as the day I bought it…maybe a little yellower. Judo Master is, along with a few other unfortunate comics, the overlap of two of my passions – comics and martial arts. (The very first book that I paid for by myself out of my allowance was “Teach Yourself Judo.” I was seven years old. I think my little sister has never forgiven me.) I remembered having really enjoyed the translation of each technique Judo Master uses. I remembered very little else, except the casual racism of the superior Caucasian man who not only is better at a Japanese Martial Art than any Japanese, but defeats evil, dismissively titled, Asian foes with their own martial arts.

Judo Master 96, 1978 reprint by Topps

I haven’t the vaguest clue what the story is, I only have this one volume and I have no interest in “doing the research.” I can tell you this, Rip, the manly, western (he causally makes references to football, baseball and other wholesome American activities,) “Judo Master” is allied with a group of anti-Japanese Japanese on an island…somewhere. Joining them is Suzi (short for Suzikawa, but conveniently American-sounding, as “Susie,”)  Rip’s love interest, who wears something similar to a cheongsam, but definitely unrelated to a kimono. Eh, girl’s clothes, who cares what country they are from, it’s all so impenetrable to men, you know.

When they are discovered by The Acrobat and his evil “Jap” henchmen, I couldn’t help but notice that our square-jawed hero is a Master of a Martial Art, while our bad guy is merely an acrobat – clearly no one worth taking seriously. (According to the first page, Rip previously defeated the Red Crusher – guesses as to what country he was from?)

With a masterly series of shimewaza and osotogari, Judo Master defeats his opponent and, in an Arthurian moment, unmasks his opponent with “It’s time we took a peek under that falseface [sic] of yours and see what you really look like!”  The Acrobat turns out to be none other than Suzi’s misguided brother!

After Suzi realizes that her brother (who remains nameless) will never care that he was used by the “Imperial warlords,” Rip ends the chapter by comforting Suzi. “Suzi, someday this war will be ancient history! Who knows how things will be changed by then? …But in the meantime…”

What Rip? What in the meantime? There’ll be more “Japs” to kill in the name of freedom, or was that meant to be an overture to Suzi to celebrate his heroic efforts in their island bedroom? We’ll never know, because the story ends there and I never found another issue.

Now, here’s the thing about  Judo Master. He’s not racist, right? He has a Japanese girlfriend (okay, with Chinese clothes and a vaguely Chinese and vaguely American nickname, but still,) and he fights with a bunch of Japanese guys…so…? And it’s a WWII-era comic, right, so we have to forgive the propaganda, right? Well…no. Remember the dates above. The original book was published in 1967. I was two. This is *in my lifetime.* This is not a relic from a war-era comic. This is a cheesy recreation of a war-era comic feel. (Many of the comics I read as a young person were similar to this. Just post-Vietnam, it was obvious that comics were flailing to get back that good-guy flair. Lots of Nazis were defeated in comics when I was a kid. It was easier then, we were the clearly the good guys.)

Judo Master isn’t racist – look, he’s got friends who are Asian. He’s got a “Jap” girlfriend. He does Judo. He’s not fetishizing elements of Japanese culture and appropriating them for his own use or anything.

But, hey, this is just a comic, right? We shouldn’t take it so seriously. That’s what readers said in Noah’s discussion of racism in The Priest, and what commenters said in Colin’s comments about the exhaustingly awful use of sexual violence by DC in Flashpoint. Oh, and don’t forget Asians are getting all uppity about Akira. But then, I’m told to take Chester Brown’s Paying For It seriously, because it’s a serious work, with a premise worth discussing.

So, readers, is Judo Master racist? Was it racist in 1978? How about in 1967? 1942?

When do we take racism and sexism in comics seriously, because it’s a serious issue, with consequences worth discussing? When do we look at comics writers, artists and publishers and say, enough with the aggressive cluelessness. Enough racism, enough sexism, enough with the “it’s just a comic book.”  If comics are indeed an a form of serious artistic expression, then we have to stop dismissing the bits of it we don’t like, the parts that make us squirmy and uncomfortable. If it’s just entertainment, then let’s stop pretending it’s anything other than pubescent fantasies and utterly banal writing.

“We didn’t mean it that way” Does. Not. Work. If someone is offended at a thing, it is offensive. That feeling cannot be wiped away with “it’s just a….” If anything, that kind of casual denial of offense serves to heighten it.  Words and images have meaning – those meanings have consequences. If we acknowledge the power of words and images, the we have to acknowledge the consequences, too.

When will it be time to stand up and recognize the racism, the sexism, the denial and the pathology embedded in the words and images in comics for what it is?

I’d kind of like that moment to be now.

Overthinking Things 05/03/2011

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40 Years of the Same Damn Story, Part 2

One of the most popular and enduring Yuri tropes is that of the “Girl Prince.” While it’s probably impossible to fully remove the Girl Prince from the role of “butch” in current Yuri fans’ minds, today we’re going to look at the literary and theatrical roots of the character and see how she has changed over time.

Torikaebaya Monogatari The Girl Prince can be traced back as least as far as the Torikaeabaya, a Heian tale of brother and sister who are naturally more aligned with the roles assigned to the other gender. They switch places at the Heian court and drama ensues. The princess of the story makes a spectacularly good prince until she falls in love and is undone by pregnancy, a theme that is echoed in many a western tale of female cross-dressers.

In the 1920s, a musical theater troupe was formed to bring travelers out to a small town in western Japan. The town, and the troupe are called Takarazuka. The troupe was created as an all-female group, with roles of men being played by Otokoyaku, a term commonly understood to be the popular culture analogy to the Onnagata (men who play female roles) of the high culture Kabuki theater.

Otokoyaku not only play male roles on stage, they are required, to some extent, to play the man 24/7. To these western eyes, the “men” of Takarazuka appear exaggerated, clownish lampoons of men. They stand aggressively, speak harshly, but make love tenderly, like the hyper-masculinized men of romance novels.

James Mitchener’s Sayonara provides a post-WWII male perspective on the cultured elegance and “masculine” mannerisms of the Otokoyaku:

[Her Lt. Pinkerton] was arrogant, ignorant and ill-mannered. Yet at the same time the actress herself seemed more essentially feminine than any of the other girls on stage.

This, Major Gruver instinctively understands, is what makes the Otokoyaku so popular with the women. That, although they wear men’s clothing and are aping masculine attitudes, they are understood to be even better women than the other women around them. After Gruver has fallen in love with, lived with and been forced to give up his relationship with Hana-Ogi, an Otokoyaku, he comes to truly understand and appreciate her abilities. Watching her play the same Lt. Pinkerton role he was disgusted by above, he says:

Now my reaction was different…. She had studied with intimiate care my mannerisms and now reproduced them in burlesque form. When she lit a cigarette she mimicked me, when she propositioned Madame Butterfly it was me trying to kiss her on the Bitch-bashi.

The Otokoyaku is poised, like so many drag kings, between a feminine interpretation of idealized masculinity and a lampoon of “gendered” mannerisms.

In 1954, God of Manga, Tezuka Osamu combined the Otokoyaku of Takarazuka with the hyper-feminine Snow White of Disney and created a prototype for all Girl Princes that would come later – Safire of Princess Knight/Ribon no Kishi (soon to be published in English by Vertical Publishing.) Safire was a girl, but forced for political reasons to live as a boy. Like the Otokoyaku of Takarazuka, she is an object of desire for other women, but essentially feminine. Although she falls in love with a man, she never loses her own heroic qualities. Safire set the standard very high for all Girl Princes who followed in her footsteps.

Safire is “forced” to pretend to be a boy, and she longs, in quiet moments, to wear frilly dresses and go to a dance or two, but she does not reject the privilege granted to her as a Prince. She cheerfully sets out on quests when it suits her. Safire is the hero many little girls want to be before the stories explain that they are merely meant to be the reward for the Prince. What women want, when we watch Otokoyaku, is to be wooed by a “man” who understands us (because he is a woman.) When we look at the Girl Prince, we simply want to be her.

In 1973, Ryoko Ikeda (if Tezuka is the God of manga, I’m inclined to think of Ikeda as the Goddess,)  took up the challenge Tezuka had laid down with Ribon no Kishi and produced her defining work, Rose of Versailles. (Interestingly Rose of Versailles is one of the favorite productions of the Takarazuka, with countless iterations over the years since Lady Oscar made her debut in Margaret magazine. Ribon no Kishi was made into a musical theatre production, but never by Takarazuka, which is headquartered in the town where Tezuka grew up.) Lady Oscar, like Safire, was a girl raised as a boy and the story is set during the years leading up to the French Revolution  – which is just as fantastic an age as the purely fantasy world in which Safire lives. Also like Safire, Oscar was attractive to other women, but her own heart was taken by her closest friend, Andre. The story comes to an end at the appropriately epic storming of the Bastille. Oscar changed the map for the Girl Prince completely. She does not wish to be girly, she is completely embedded in her Otokoyaku life, and does not reject it, even when love becomes an issue. Oscar’s difficulties accepting Andre are entirely due to their separate stations in life and, even more troublesome to the upright Oscar – the fact that she is his military superior. Gender roles or sexuality are not the issue here. Oscar imbued many of the Girl Princes after her with a fierce sense of duty and honor.

In 1978, Ikeda once again broached the concept of the Girl Prince, this time with the far more obscure manga Claudine. Claudine is notable for its ambiguity about the sexuality and/or gender identification of the lead character. It is never truly clear if Claudine is a man in a woman’s body, or a lesbian who simply desires male privilege and opportunity to love freely. Either interpretation is valid. Ikeda masterfully raises the ante on Tezuka with these two stories, setting the tone for many Girl Princes to come. Now, not only are Girl Princes likely to be attractive to their own sex, they might be attracted to other women. The Girl Prince’s role as “butch” in the relationship has been established.

In 1983, the cool, competent Otokoyaku-type character Shinokita Reiko, from Yajikita Gakuen Douchuuki owned Akita Shoten’s popularity polls for years. Otokoyaku and Girl Princes are sexiest to other women when they don men’s clothing. Kita is the perfect reluctant Otokoyaku; cold, emotionally distant, rejecting the women who want her with disdain and being even more attractive to them for being unattainable. Kita is forced by circumstances to play “host” at a Host club, a role that would forever change the perception of the Otokoyaku in Yuri Manga. “Hosts,” like hostesses, cater to the emotional needs of a club’s clientele, playing on established gender roles in Japanese society, in order to stimulate the club’s business. When Reiko dons a tux to become top host “Rei,” she merges the world of Otokoyaku and Girl Prince in a way that will never quite be separate again.

Another master of shoujo manga, Kurimoto Kaoru, took up the cause of the Girl Prince in 1986’s Paros no Ken a romantic tragedy about a Girl Prince, Erminia, who rejects the love of men, including her Andre, her knight and champion, Yurias, for the love of a serving girl, Fiona. The story changes the focus of the Girl Prince’s interests from the political to the personal. Not only does Erminia reject her fate, she leaves her kingdom to a usurper in order to find happiness with her true love.

Which bring us to – and don’t tell me you didn’t expect this – Sailor Moon. Takeuchi Naoko embraces the Otokoyaku as host/Girl Prince role with the creation of Tenoh Haruka who, we are informed, has the heart of both a man and a woman. Like Erminia, Haruka is willing to reject her fate but it is her partner, Kaioh Michiru, who leads her to face and embrace it. Like the other Otokoyaku who had come before her in manga, Haruka looks studly in a suit, has the polished manners of a popular host and is clearly, and unrepentantly, butch. Her former life as a member of the Moon Kingdom court provides many an opportunity to imagine her as the Girl Prince, as indeed, the official art of the series frequently did. Haruka was so incredibly popular that she set the standard for Otokoyaku characters for years to come, and we can see echoes of her even to this day, in characters like Otokoyaku Izumi from Nobara no Mori no Otome-tachi.

Just before the turn of the century, the Girl Prince was reborn in Revolutionary Girl Utena (about to be re-released as remastered DVD by Nozomi Right/Stuff.) Tenjou Utena followed her predecessors by blurring gender lines, adopting boy’s clothes to create her own unique look. In Utena, the concept of masculinity takes second place to the the concept of Princeliness. Like Safire, Utena saves princesses…and princes…and redefines for herself and for the audience what “Being a Prince” means. Because the anime, the manga, the movie and the movie manga each tell slightly different versions of this story, the creators, Saito Chiho and Ikuhara Kunihiko are given the freedom to play “what if?” with Utena. What is the outcome if she loves the Prince? What if she rejects him? What if she loves her rescued Princess? What if the world itself rejects her? Each ending plays with the ideas established by Girl Princes before her and, as anyone who has seen the television anime can attest to, there is overt acknowledgement of literary roots in character and set design. Ikeda Ryouko, and Yoshiya Nobuko are both present as guardian angels in this narrative.

By the early 2000s, the concept of the Takarazuka Otokoyaku has not really been shed from Yuri manga – if anything it had become intrinsic. Where a character was feminine, but has “masculine” qualities – or is simply gay – they are sometimes overtly given the role of Otokoyaku. In Konno Oyuki’s Maria-sama ga Miteru, the protaganist Yumi thinks that Sei looks like a “Takarazuka Top Star” in one of the novels, confirming what we already knew – that she is butchy. And, in Takako Shimura’s Aoi Hana, it’s obvious to us that Sugimoto-sempai is destined for the role of Heathcliff in the school play version of Wuthering Heights. When it came time to create a mascot for my own Yuricon, there was no doubt in my mind that the archetype I sought for our organization was going to be the Girl Prince. Yuriko is both Otokoyaku and the Girl Prince of her own story, translated to a more modern interpretation of “Prince.” Yuriko is a pop idol. Clothes and their assigned gender roles are fluid for her, but there’s no doubt in readers’ minds that she is modern royalty.

Which brings us to one of my favorite subversions of the Girl Prince role, the Queen in Fujieda Miyabi’s fantasy, comedy romance, Iono-sama Fanatics. Iono-sama is actual royalty, the Queen of some small, unnamed western kingdom. Iono-sama is both attractive to and attracted to other women, which leads to a harem story of epic and humorous proportions. A plot point in the second volume is that the various ladies-in-waiting, suffering from Iono-sama’s prolonged absence are waging an civil war. In Iono-sama’s world, royalty hath its privileges and neither gender, nor sexuality, are issues if the Queen chooses to bestow her love upon you.

Whether the Girl Prince is an actual prince, a girl who wants to be a prince, a cross-dresser who is fully invested in being a woman, or is simply the boyish star of the school,  as we read Yuri manga, The Girl Prince and the polished suit-wearing Otokoyaku are fixtures. The role allows us to understand and express our feminine and masculine ideals. We can play the Prince and still get the Princess for our efforts. However we approach the Girl Prince, it can’t be denied that she, and the Otokoyaku and their damn classic timeliness (as witnessed by the current reprints and re-releases) are contributors to it feeling like we’re reading the the Same Damn Story.

Postscript – this post makes 1 year here at Hooded Utilitarian. I’m still excited and pleased to be included among such luminaries in the comics crit scene. I’ll be buying myself a cake, sticking a candle in it and blowing out later today.

Overthinking Things 04/03/2011

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40 Years of the Same Damn Story, Pt.1

I call it “Story A.”

I wasn’t very clever that day; tired, maybe a little worn to the nub by reading yet *another* story that felt awfully like all the other stories I had read recently.

Sometimes Story A is a genuine delight to read – other times it’s a chore.

“Story A” is the story, the basic setup that defines a genre. Every genre has a Story A. Suspense stories have psychotic serial killers who stalk and kidnap the investigator (if she is a woman) or the female dearest to the investigator (if he is a man.) Fantasy stories have (or at least had for many years) long journey-quests with teams of ill-suited partners. We all know Story A in our genres.

In my chosen area of saturation, Yuri, Story A looks like this:

There is a girl, she likes another girl. The other girl likes her. They like each other. The end.

Sometimes “The end” is signified by a kiss, more often it is signified by holding hands and perhaps looking each other in the eyes. Recognition of mutual affection is as likely to be the final scene as riding off with the Prince to live happily-ever-after is in a fairy tale.

For those of us reading Yuri manga, Story A is the same damn story…and has been for nearly 40 years.

The roots of “Story A” can be traced back at least as far as 1919, with the publication of Yaneura no Nishojo, by Yoshiya Nobuko.

In this book, introverted Akiko meets and falls into passionate, one-sided love with Akitsu. In what was a remarkable ending for its time, the two girls decide to leave school to make a life together, independent of their families or of husbands. In the end, the love was not so one-sided after all, perhaps. (Although some critics have dismissed the idea that they were in love, and instead insisted that Akitsu was leading Akiko into the idea of a politically aware adulthood.) More importantly for our purposes today, this novel has given the manga world any number of tropes that underlie much of “manga for girls” and a whole truckload of Yuri manga tropes, such as life in a Catholic school dorm, intimate piano duet, room in the tower, and others.

Not quite 40 years ago, a manga appeared on the scene which took these themes and wrapped them in a melodramatic love affair…and “Story A” was born.

This prototype “Story A,” Shiroi Heya no Futari, also cemented the idea of a tall “Yamato Nadesico,” a traditional Japanese beauty with long black hair, and a shorter, energetic/cheerful girl with blonde or brown hair as the tropiest of Yuri couples.

In the beginning, “Story A” rarely had a happy ending. This is not because of the same-sex love, very few romance manga in the 70’s had happy endings. The typical couple were doomed to never be together for one reason or another. In the case of “Yuri” couples, the options were mostly one partner died or left to get married. In Shiroi Heya no Futari, we get to enjoy one, with a premonition of the other.

The 1980s were not good years for Yuri. The sexual revolution of the 1970s passed, leaving shoujo manga too tired and commercial to take risks. In the 1990s, however, something happened that changed everything…Sailor Moon. I won’t get into how it revitalized manga and anime for girls, but suffice to say that it left a strong impact on many. And it brought same-sex relationships between girls back as a potential manga topic.

In 1995, Nananan Kiriko drew a very realistic version of “Story A” called Blue, which has been translated into English by Fanfare/ Ponent Mont.

In Blue, we are treated to an alternate version of the “go off to get married” ending, in which Kayako goes “off to Tokyo,” leaving Masami behind.

Blue does not have the Nadesico/cute couple stereotype, but in every other way it fulfills our expectations of “Story A.” If anything, it’s more of a throwback to Yaneura no Nishojo, with a more realistic vision of life in a girls’ school and the resulting drama.

Masami and Kayako meet and find themselves attracted to one another. It’s easy enough to categorize this story as akogare, a Japanese word that means feelings of admiration that are tinged with desire – what we would probably call a schoolgirl crush. Even if one interpreted their feelings as “real,”  we can have no real expectation of a “Happily Every After” ending here.

Shiroi Heya no Futari had a profound impact on many series that came out in later years. Not just manga, but Light Novels were also influenced by the Yuri couple trope.

Maria-sama ga Miteru began in 1998 as a serialized “Light Novel” and it continues to this very day. The couple to the right, Yumi and Sachiko, are instantly recognizable to any fan of Yuri and the series, at least at first, is a set of “Story A”s among the students at a private Catholic girls’ school.

Most of these relationships are platonic romance, but within the initial few volumes at least one story went beyond the confines of “Story A,” to tell what can only be seen as a “lesbian” narrative. However popular that story, Ibara no Mori, was, the bulk of the relationships in Maria-sama ga Miteru sit well within the confines of “Story A.” As much as we might wish for it, Noriko and Shimako, Yumi and Sachiko, Rei and Yoshino, will never go running off  to make a life together, outside the confines of family or husbands.

The meme of “love between girls in private girls’ schools” which was initially set by Yaneura no Nishojo, really gained traction in the late 90’s with the success of Maria-sama ga Miteru and, for the next dozen years, it has been a main component of our definitive genre story. “Story A” was to take place in a girl’s private school. Exhibit 4376, this page from Pieta from 2000.

The school was not “St. Whoever’s”, but the hothouse atmosphere of an all-girl school is still the setting, allowing Rio (boyishly attired here in sweater and tie,) to be a school playgirl, while “good girl”  Sahako is close to the traditional Nadesico type.

Pieta also contained a common trope for its time – that of linking lesbian romance with mental illness. Rio has a history of hysteria and suicide attempts…all of which have a perfectly excellent explanations and have almost nothing to do with her romance with Sahoko. If anything, their feelings for one another are what redeem Rio and pull her back from the brink of insanity. Nonetheless, it was very fashionable for manga of the time period to have unstable lesbian characters.

When male manga artists started to pick up what had mostly been a meme in girls’ manga, a distinct “checklist” of tropes became a common feature of  “Story A.” Absurdly luxurious private school? Check. Nadesico-type with wealth, power, athletic and scholastic prowess? Check. Genki blonde who is poor, but sincere and inexplicably the object of desire for everyone in the series? Check. Breast-highlighting tight uniforms? Check. In the mid-2000s, Kannazuki no Miko created a whole new wave of Yuri fans, with an action riff on the couple from Shiroi Heya no Futari. Instead of 70s melodrama and partying, we were given giant robots and apocalyptic prophecies.

At the same time Kannazuki was recreating “Story A,” another series that was playing with the same key elements fooled a whole generation into thinking it was telling an original story, by stealing from *every* Yuri story that had gone before it. Strawberry Panic! added a new twist to “Story A,” – a pretend glimpse past the gauze boudoir curtains of an all-girls, no-guys-allowed world. This concept quickly became a typical feature of Yuri “Story A”s aimed at men. (Presumably to heighten the sensation of forbidden love they enjoyed in Yuri.) This added thrill has retroactively invaded popular girl’s series, such as Maria-sama ga Miteru. The radio and live shows – the audience of which are mostly men – now begin with a warning that boys are not allowed. And many Yuri anthologies that target a male audience provide that same warning on the cover, just so the audience knows it’s getting a glimpse of some forbidden women’s mystery.

Where Strawberry Panic! really excelled was as an homage to “Story A” through the ages.

The manga riffed on series like Card Captor Sakura, Himitsu no Kaidan and Maria-sama ga Miteru, while the anime stole openly from Kannazuki no Miko, the above series and even Western stories such as The Graduate and Wuthering Heights. (Amusingly, it wasn’t even the first Yuri anime to borrow from Wuthering Heights. That honor would probably have to go to Cream Lemon: Escalation.)

Take a moment to compare this page with the page from Shiroi Heya no Futari. Do not think that this was accidental.

By 2005, the Yuri ball was rolling well. Not coincidentally, in 2005 I held a Yuricon event in Tokyo, and was able to be there at the formation of a new Yuri-focused magazine, Comic Yuri Hime. Now manga was being created explicitly for readers of “Yuri” as opposed to being one fetish in a series for men, or a schoolgirl crush in a story for girls. But, “Story A” was safe space, where no political, social or emotional commitments had to be made, which made it an attractive “space” in which to create a Yuri story.

The emotions might be real, the attraction may or may not be physical, but the implicit understanding of “Story A,” is that this is not forever – it is for now. As long as we are in school, as long as we are protected from the pressures of our duty to family, friends, jobs, society, we can be together.

What Yuri Hime could do – and has, in recent years done – is give us something that, like Akiko and Akitsu in Yaneura no Nishojo, escape the confines of societal pressure, to create a more realistic “Happily Ever After.”

However, many of the initial Yuri manga that ran in Yuri Hime fell solidly under the auspices of “Story A.” Some hit all the  buttons. Hatsukoi Shimai managed to cover exactly “Story A” territory and not too much more. Compare Haruna and Chika here  to Sachiko and Yumi in Maria-sama ga Miteru.

Private girls’ school? Check. Nadesico beauty who is smart? Check. Cute energetic girl who is sincere, but not smart? Check? Impossible to understand feelings? Stupid plot complications that keep us apart for no real reason – including, but not limited to interfering seductive person; poor communications issues, and; horrible secret? Check.

In the late 2000s, Yuri took a major jump from elements in various stories to distinct category of its own. Comic Yuri Hime had split into two magazines, each targeting a specific gender audience with some distinct elements, and other manga magazines began running more Yuri-themed manga, many of which continued to follow previously established “Story A” tropes.

In 2007’s Sasamekikoto, the Nadesico beauty Sumika retains her superiority not by wealth and status (as did Sachiko or Chikane,) but by being an accomplished student and good at sports.

The cheerful, energetic girl, Ushio, now is also the doofus-y, somewhat clueless girl, a quality that we see back in Shiroi Heya no Futari with Resine’s lack of awareness of Simone’s feelings – even after they have been explicitly expressed.

Sasamekikoto is on-going, and thankfully for readers everywhere, Ushio has moved away from cluelessness, as the story itself has shifted out of exploration of Yuri tropes and wallowing in “Story A”-ness to having actual lesbian awareness and identity. (I sometimes define “Yuri” as lesbian content without lesbian identity.) By making the characters aware of the impact of their relationship on the people around them – and how it might affect their future – this story has ceased to be purely “Story A.”

Aoi Hana was another mid-2000’s series that has now become an iconic series for Yuri fans, in part due to stellar writing and characterization and in part due to a not financially successful, but very beautifully made anime in 2009.

As you can see, even in color, Fumi fits the Nadesico type, this time with the added attraction of “shy glasses girl,” and Akira is the by now quite-stereotypical energetic, cheerful pig-tailed girl. Don’t let the fact that it appears to be a typical “Story A” fool you – this is a top-notch manga. It is “Story A.” It just happens to be a best of breed.

Like Sasamekikoto, Aoi Hana has some recognition of  what it might mean to “be lesbian” and how one’s decisions about one’s self can impact the other people in a life. And, while there are more stories being written now with this awareness, Aoi Hana also shows Fumi coming out, which is still extremely rare in “Yuri” manga.

Story A doesn’t always look exactly the same.  In many cases, it looks different…it just feels the same. The characters’ heights may change, their hair color and length may change. Their backgrounds, their previous relationships, their feelings about having these feelings at all. The private school might have a legend of two girls that ran off or attempted suicide together. There may be a tapestry or stained glass under which whispered vows become lifelong committments.

But in the end, there is a girl, she likes another girl. The other girl likes her. They like each other. The end.

And, even though nearly four decades has passed since Shiroi Heya no Futari began, sometimes it just feels like we’re reading the same damn story over and over again.

Sometimes. Every once in a while. We’re not.

But mostly, we are.

Overthinking Things 03/02/2011

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One of the barriers for anyone wishing to begin reading comics for the first time is to figure out *where* to begin. This is true for manga, as well.

In Japan, the manga market is not organized by subject or genres as we speak about them. There is no “romance” or “mystery” section in a manga store. Manga is organized by audience based roughly on gender and age. Shoujo manga are “for girls,” Shounen manga “for boys,” Josei manga are “for women” and Seinen manga are “for men.” To buy a manga series in Japan, you must know the gender/age of its intended audience, the publisher and then the name of the author. Individual magazines might focus slightly more on a genre type (romance, action, sports, adventure) but they are more likely to focus on the perceived overall interests of the intended audience.

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Overthinking Things 02/06/2011

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You remember the cartoon G.I.Joe, A Real American Hero, don’t you?

Every episode followed a simple plot: The G.I. Joes, were supposed to be *the* elite squad of of the American military, with powers that were practically magic by normal standards. The “Joes” were tasked with guarding a top secret technology that would help the world unless, by some outside chance, it was taken by the evil organization Cobra, which could instantly turn it into a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Before you could say “commercial break,” Cobra had nabbed the technology and the Joes were desperately fighting to get it back. The best they could do every episode was to destroy the technology to prevent Cobra from using it.

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Overthinking Things 1/2/11

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First!

Okay, now that that little bit of juvenile Forum humor is out of my system, Happy New Year!

You may have noticed that I use very few images in this column. For a column that talks about comics (and especially given the detailed commentary of the other columnists on meaning and composition,) this might seem weird. As much as I love anime and even more so manga, images are not what I notice.

Sure, I like a pretty picture as much as the next person, but I’ve been describing myself as “graphically impaired” for many years. I can see the art, and when called upon to do so, I can describe the art. I have only some of  the vocabulary to critique the art,  and none of the critical vocabulary to compare and contrast the art to….whatever.  But, the reality is, I don’t *look* at the art all that often. Not until I already like a story. For me the story is about the words.

What do you get when you take the art out of manga?

Very often,the words alone are not enough to carry the story. Removing the art, or part of it, can turn a slice-of-life comic strip into a surreal experience, such as Garfield minus Garfield. But this doesn’t stop Japanese companies from finding a way to make it work. Which brings us to my favorite way to experience manga – Drama CDs.

I mentioned Drama CDs briefly last month in my discussion of Hana no Asuka-gumi. Drama CDs are the step between manga and anime; a dramatization of the story performed by voice actors and actresses, without the visuals of either still art or animation.  The best of these are original stories that give a fan more time to spend with beloved characters, many are performaces of an already-known story, much like BBC Radio Dramas.  I find them appealing on several levels – they give me a deeper relationship with the story, as I hear it “come to life,” they add a layer of understanding to the characters as scenes are acted out, and they challenge me to understand spoken Japanese, something that I’m much weaker at than I’d like to be. (The side effect, I should warn you, of practicing Japanese listening skills by listening to Drama CDs is that your vocabulary becomes irrevocably skewed. I can follow detailed conversations about certain technical things, but cannot follow a conversation about everyday average things overheard on a subway.)

Not all manga is profound and likewise, many Drama CDs may be entirely absurd. And yet, there are moments that make it all worthwhile. Sometimes, it’s the moment when Sid and Nancy finally make their appearance and get to blister our ears with their rendition of hardcore punk cursing (Hayate x Blade,) sometimes it’s in the moment when Touko’s voice drops down into thrillingly sexy tones (Hatsukoi Shimai) and sometimes it’s in the after moments, during the cast talk, when actors blur the lines themselves and the roles and we explode from an adorable non-canon moment. (Maria-sama ga Miteru: Parasol wo Sashite.)

The as-yet-untranslated series Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (Yokohama Shopping Log) has, ironically, some of the most beautiful art I’ve ever seen. There is very little dialogue -whole chapters pass with no words at all. In the manga, android protagonist Alpha has developed a quiet lifestyle of her own. During the day, she runs a coffee shop (which rarely receives visitors, as she lives off the beaten path.) Alpha likes to craft whirylgigs, and and she likes things that are fished-shaped. She rides around on her scooter, taking pictures. And sometimes, when she’s in the mood, or when her friend and admirer Kokone (another android) visits, she takes the Moon-Lute down and plays, and sings. As a present to start off the new year, I offer to you a quiet moment with Alpha, a cup of coffee and the Moon Lute.

Humming to the Moon

Sometimes the best part of a manga are the moments when we stop thinking and just listen.

Overthinking Things 12/5/10

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Fashion, Fighting and Literature: Hana no Asuka-gumi

Sometimes, the power of a series is in the details. The subtle moments, the deft stroke of a brush or subtle camera-work,  the sound of a voice catching at just the right moment.

In Hana no Asuka-gumi, the power of the series is in the grand scheme, the wide-angle view of a world that, whether it truly exists or not, will never be seen by those unaware of its existence.

We all know that in every great city, in every country, there is an underworld organization that runs the illicit businesses humans require. But what if there was, behind even that, another world, an even more obscure world, of gangs and drugs and phone texting competitions and boy bands – a world that extends through middle and high schools country-wide?

In Hana no Asuka-gumi, Asuka is both part of and an outsider to a pervasive underground organization that runs all the girl gangs of Tokyo. “Gumi” here means gang, so the translation can be “Asuka of the Flowers Gang.” However, the “Hana no” is most often translated as “Magnficent” as in the “Hana no Nijuuyo-nen Gumi,” the “Magnificent 49ers” the name used to loosely identify the mothers of girls’ manga in Japan. It would not be out of the pale to translate the series “The Magnificent Asuka Gang.”

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