Two-in-One Review: Viz Publications Part One Don and Randy take a look at some of Viz Comics' recent offerings. Randy: I generally don't read a lot of manga, but books like Eagle and Akira opened my eyes to the potential of manga, and since then I've been searching for more that fits my taste. Viz Comics has sent Don and I some new books for review, and we've decided to break it down into more than one Two-in-One. In this review, we'll be focusing largely on shojo, or girls' manga, most of which has a heavy romance element to it. Don: Shojo? Randy's mention of the term above is my first exposure to it. Though I've been exposed to more and more true manga recently, it's still a largely alien storytelling form to me, and I think Randy's in the same boat. Mind you, as I read these books, some boasted some truly endearing moments of humanity, but I still don't entirely get the more bizarre fantasy and sci-fi elements that are included along with those down-to-earth aspects. Randy: There are some common threads in many of these stories, some of which are quite alien and sometimes off-putting to me. The notion of stepsisters and stepbrothers being romantically involved seems to be prevalent in manga, for example. In addition, I notice that complex romantic links are a common source of story material in all of these books, usually featuring the lead characters pursued by at least two or three suitors at a time. This makes for a complex cast and a situation that isn't easily explained by "What has gone before" pages, especially when there may be as many as 10 or 15 volumes that Don and I haven't read. So keep in mind as you read these reviews that we are coming to these books cold, without having read the previous volumes. Fushigi Yugi Vol 6: Summoner by Yu Watase Don: So there are these two junior-high girls who've been drawn into a mystical world of swords and sorcery, and circumstances have made them both priestesses... and enemies. Powerful warriors vie for the attention of Miaka, while Yui has struggled and suffered. The two men to whom Miaka is attracted do battle. One wishes to protect her, and the other wants to kill her. Oh, and the girls get naked a fair bit. Randy: This is probably the least "shojo" of the bunch, because while it does focus on romance to a great extent, it is for the most part a fantasy epic. As I've noted in numerous reviews, I'm very picky about my fantasy, but Fushigi Yugi does have some intriguing story elements that drew my interest. In fact, the story behind this one, the idea of a quest to gather celestial warriors and summon a god to help out a kingdom under fire, is classic fantasy stuff. It's the usual complaints of hard-to-distinguish characters and some strange culture shocks that made it not quite connect with me. Don: I'm not the fantasy fan Randy is, so of the four books reviewed here, this was the one I liked the least. Even the brief "Story Thus Far" primer in the front of the book left me scratching my head, and I only grew more confused as I made my way through the book. Too many characters look alike, and the expansive cast is difficult to follow. Randy: Fushigi Yugi has a lot of likable characters. Miaka, the lead, may be a junior-high girl but she has a determination and an intelligence that marks her as much more mature, and the various celestial warriors are also fun. In particular, I found the roguish and loud Tasuki and his opposite number, the quiet healer Mitsukake, to be the most entertaining of the characters. A shame that they were mostly supporting players, while the main story is played out in a complicated romantic situtation between Miaka, the emperor Hotohori, a brainwashed celestial warrior Tamahome and the brainwasher Yui. Watase plays out the notion of a romantic triangle between two best friends with a fantasy twist, throwing in conversions to evil and a nice guy waiting in the wings as complications. It's interesting, as it's a standard romantic cliche, but the fantasy elements help to elevate it beyond that. This also stands out as one of the darker books we're reviewing of the four. It contains some fairly realistic violence, a little bit of nudity and some sexual overtones. This darkness and maturity made it more approachable and interesting to me, but it also sort of put me off, given that the lead character is in junior high. There seems to be a prevailing wisdom that junior-high girls are sexually and romantically active, and while that may be true in the Japanese culture, it has unfortunate resonances against American (and I dare to imagine Canadian) social mores. Don: Randy's putting it delicately and diplomatically. Me, I'll be more blunt. I found the sexualization of these girls to be disconcerting. I probably would have been more at ease if they were presented as even a couple of years older -- high-school age. I'm hardly so naive to think that junior-high kids aren't experimenting with sex, but the girls in this story are partnering up with grown men. Therein lies the creepiness of it all. I realize it's a cultural divide that makes for my discomfort, though, not a flaw in the storytelling. Randy: Finally, Fushigi Yugi suffers from some of the same artwork problems that plagued a lot of my reading experiences on these books. Watase's storytelling is actually fairly clear, and the detail work that I've come to expect from most manga artists is definitely there. However, there also seems to be a tendency to change the characters' hair from light to dark from panel to panel, and when those characters are already quite similar visually, that can make for some real confusion. Marionette Generation Vol 2: Pulling Strings by Haruhiko Mikimoto Don: Izumi Morino has just embarked on what's turning out to be a successful career as a cartoonist. Young student Kinoko has become his assistant, and has eyes for the talented artist. There's someone else in Izumi's life, though: a little female doll he's named Lunch, a doll that talks, walks and carries with her a mystery. Izumi's settled into a comfortable routine, but that's unsettled by the arrival of Kozue, a young woman from his past who uses him for his money. Randy: Mikimoto, the creator of Marionette Generation, was a character designer for Robotech, one of the few anime series that I consider myself actually familiar with. Although Marionette Generation is of a completely different genre, I was still interested to see what Mikimoto would offer up. The central concept bears a strong resemblance to other shojo concepts, blending fantasy elements in with an over-the-top interpretation of romantic tribulations, and Mikimoto also follows the tradition of having a fairly extensive cast of characters. As far as main characters, there are technically only three in Marionette Generation: Lead character (and Mikimoto's alter-ego) Izumi Morino, a somewhat shy and quiet illustrator; Kinoko, the junior high girl who is his assistant, stepsister and apparently love interest; and Lunch, a doll who has come to life for mysterious reasons and who actually spends most of her time off-panel. As if these characters weren't odd enough, there's also a gang of kids whose relationship to Izumi is a little unclear (students, maybe?), another doll who was one of the most entertaining characters in the book and Kozue, a long-lost love who returns to make Kinoko jealous and Izumi nervous and frazzled. The result, especially with Mikimoto's character designs and fairly crowded panel designs, is a story where I'm never quite sure who each character is and how or why they're acting the way they do. Don: I don't entirely agree. There is some confusion, but for me, that stemmed from only two sources: Kinoko and Kozue. I had trouble telling them apart, but other than that, I found this book boasted a greater degree of clarity than the others we sampled. Though this book certainly boasts its fantasy elements, it was also the most down-to-earth. It's not hard to relate to Izumi, a young guy just starting out on his career. I also know what it's like to have someone burst into your life and take over your apartment. I really enjoyed those yuppie elements. Randy: Mind you, Mikimoto's art is certainly pretty. The background designs are wonderfully detailed, the faces have a lot of expression and some of the more cartoony moments, such as Lunch setting Izumi's hair on fire, are a great exercise in physical comedy. For that matter, the interstitial pages that mark the chapter breaks feature beautiful spot illustrations. It's just that the storytelling is often very confusing to me. Don: "Pretty" is an understatement. There's a soft quality to the creator's work here. I detected some Western influence in the visuals on this book. Specifically, a lot of Mikimoto's close-up shots of his characters reminded me of the style of Neal Adams. There's a strong level of detail at play, and less of the over-the-top exaggeration that I find distracting in other manga. Randy: I'll say this for Marionette Generation, though, despite my problems following a lot of it: it's an ideal comic for young girls. The fairly tame romantic elements, the goofy comedy and the overall cuteness make for a comic book that I'd imagine would appeal to many teenage girls who otherwise wouldn't be even remotely interested in what the comics market has to offer them. No Need for Tenchi! Vol 11: Ayeka's Heart by Hitoshi Okuda Don: Tenchi's a human guy with some weird roommates, alien warriors and shape-changers... that sort of thing. One of his alien roommates -- Mihoshi -- takes him to her home planet to give her childhood nanny her dying wish: to see Mihoshi get "married." Meanwhile Ayeka, another one of the weird alien roommates, disappears, only to return as a killer. And it just gets weirder from there. Randy: Don and I recently took a look at The All-New Tenchi Muyo! that is coming out from Viz soon, and it's a good thing, because otherwise I think I would have been completely lost in reading No Need for Tenchi! This is a series that could really have used the "what has gone before" page that each of the other manga books had. It features a complex series of character relationships amongst characters who all tend to look a bit alike, and it has the same tendency as many of the other manga I've read to treat the most bizarre relationships or history as if they need no further explanation. Don: Yep, it's far from the most accessible of stories, but to Okuda's credit, he does throw some thoroughly human elements into this sci-fi mix. Mihoshi's desire to make her nanny happy in her deathbed is easy to understand, and there's kind of a weird Three's Company riff at play that makes for an irreverent, if dizzying, read. Randy: This volume contains two main plots, a trip to help space cop Mihoshi make peace with her nanny's death and a more elaborate brainwashing/kidnapping story involving Ayeka, one of the alien princesses of the story. Both feature an odd mixture of character interaction and high-action antics, and it is this tone that sets No Need for Tenchi! apart. While the central premise of the book seems to relate to Tenchi and the five women he lives with, all of whom have some degree of affection for him, the unusual nature of his houseguests guarantees a variety of oddball cosmic plot devices just waiting to be used. There's a certain similarity of personality and appearance to too many of Okuda's characters, especially the various roommates that Tenchi has. Dialogue cues often made me figure out which one was the space cop and which one was the mad scientist, but without a firmer grounding in these characters it was often hard to figure out who everyone was and especially what they wanted. However, the latter half of the book contains a fairly simple plot of an enemy and an "evil twin" type brainwashing, which was pretty easy to follow and surprisingly entertaining. I was particularly impressed that Ryoko's "death scene" had so much effect, as I hadn't really grown too attached to the character at that point. It might simply have been the shock of seeing such violence in a comic that had seemed aimed at younger readers. Of the books we recieved, No Need for Tenchi! strikes me as the most complex and the most hard to read. However, it also strikes me as the one that I'm most intrigued by in this batch, because I like several of the characters and the unusual pairing of romance and space opera makes for a compelling genre mixture. Don: Okuda's art and designs reflects the zany and intense nature and pace of the story. It's angular and energetic. I think more needs to be done to differentiate between a couple of the female characters, though. Furthermore, some panels -- those with dark backgrounds -- didn't reproduce well in this trade-paperback edition. Ranma 1/2 Vol 19 by Rumiko Takahashi Randy: Ranma 1/2 is a book I've heard a lot about, but what has always stuck with me are two things: 1) It's supposed to be very funny and 2) It centers around a boy who changes into a girl when water is thrown on him. I always thought that sounded odd, but really, I had no idea. Because not only does Ranma change when he hits water, his father changes into a panda and another character in the story turns into a little pig. In fact, the introductory section of the comic was one of the funniest thing to me, because it so matter-of-factly features a guide to which characters turn into what, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Don: Again, we get a variety of plots, and a couple of them revolve around a subtle sexuality that, again, I found a bit uncomfortable due to both the apparently young age of the characters and the gender-bending character elements. This theme of sexuality turns up in all of these "shojo" books we're reviewing here, but in some -- like Ranma 1/2 -- it's far more subtly incorporated into the story. Randy: Normal is generally not a word I would use to describe Ranma 1/2. This volume focuses on fruit that can foretell whether Ranma is suited to his fiancee, a battle royale between father and son to determine who is the best martial artist and (I kid you not) martial arts cheerleading. The sheer strangeness sort of put me off, but I couldn't deny that Takahashi has an energy and imagination that is pretty impressive. It's becoming clear to me, the more manga I read, that I need to retrain myself to read them. Because while I can follow even the most complex layouts in American comics, a lot of manga just completely whizzes past my head, especially when it comes to action sequences. Ranma 1/2 is no different, as the martial arts battles were frenetic and fast-paced, but also often a little hard to follow. The similar hairstyles and designs for the characters is definitely a contributing factor to this confusion. Don: Normally, I'd agree with you, but I found the martial-arts sequences in this book to be clear, dynamic and basically just a lot of fun. The martial-arts cheerleading may be goofy in concept, but the sight of spinning batons and exploding pom-poms was really engaging. Randy: I have to admit that Ranma 1/2 didn't live up to the humorous reputation it had garnered for me, but I did find some elements of it hysterical. The "girls are icky" attitude that Ranma exhibits is hysterical given his penchant for picking up new fiancees, and Takahashi creates some imaginative but not overly complex romantic relationships for humorous effect in this volume. I was also impressed that despite having 18 volumes under her belt, Takahashi managed to tell a story that was pretty accessible to the new reader. Don: In the end, there's only one term -- and I apologize for its blunt nature for our more sensitive reader -- that really captures the nature of these manga books. Basically, this stuff is fucked up. And I mean that in both the complimentary and negative connotations of the term. For more information on Viz Comics, visit www.viz.com. Return to The Fourth Rail in one week for more Viz reviews. Email Randy and Don comments about this review, or discuss it on the Fourth Rail message board.