Even Warriors Make Tea

Mizuo is a pretty typical teenager. He likes to chat and text on his mobile phone. He likes to play video games, and hang out at the local game centre. He likes to watch movies. What he doesn’t like is being sent by his mother to learn tea ceremony. What kind of thing is that for an ordinary guy to learn? He skips out on going when ever possible, and his favourite hiding place is a place he has known from childhood: an abandoned neighbourhood temple. There, he can sit on the decrepit empty altar, read manga, text friends, and just hole up for a couple of hours until his lesson is supposed to be over. That’s the plan anyway, but on this occasion, something screwy happens. As he sits, he hears weird chanting, and an odd air appears about the place. Before he can get away, he finds himself still sat on the altar, being hailed as the living embodiment of Buddha by a group of monks. Even scarier, he then gets plonked on a horse and taken into battle by a warlord, as a charm!

Mizuo would MUCH rather go home, even if it means facing having to learn the tea ceremony. Having swords swing at you with deadly intent, arrows piercing men about you, and the stench of death filling your nose is not only uncool, but seriously SCARY. Unfortunately, the charismatic leader of the Yamako army, Takakage, has taken a shine to the young Mizuo and wants to take him on as his page boy. Mizuo discovers this is no joke, he has somehow been transported to feudal Japan, with no way seemingly to get home. With what is entailed with being a page, will he decide to stay, or will he continue to search for a way home? If Takak has his say, Mizuo will go nowhere except by his side and into his futon. But fate may have other plans…

Souya Himawari has one other June title to her credit so far, Happiness Recommended, though she has an impressive 27 titles to her credit in Japanese, all in the yaoi and yuri genres. Her manga often have historical themes, and it is refreshing to catch a glimpse of old Japan, with its unique architecture and ways of traditional dress. Himawari does not skimp on accuracy, and here it is often provides a good laugh. The expression on the faces of the household when Mizuo asks for milk, and then explains what is, is hilarious. Likewise the samurai/page sexual aspect is not a mere plot device, but historically accurate as the mentor relationship extended beyond mere soldierly activities in much the same way that the ancient Greek system did with its erastes and eromenos roles.

Aside from the interesting plot devices, the story itself is deceptively fluffy. A quick read will yield a mere romantic romp with homosexual overtones, but taking the time to read it unrushed reveals a lot more. Mizuo is struggling with his sense of self and dealing with having to yield to parental pressures as he is still technically a child, though feeling what he thinks is rather grown up. Thrust into the past where he IS considered to be a person with more adult responsibilities, and with a charismatic and powerful warlord wishing to bind him to him, Mizuo finds he must either accept that he is not as grown up as he thought and run on home if he can, or take the first real steps towards adulthood by accepting certain personal responsibilities and facing what very well could be true love, not to mention his first sexual experience. It is tastefully done, and not overtly explicit, making this a very suitable title for its 16+ rating given by the publisher.

These aspects could bog the story down, but Himawari manages to make excellent use of of her art and prose to convey this in a light, entertaining manner. The facial expressions in particular are well done, with looks of confusion and surprise well done, without the oft seen side effect of looking slightly lazy eyed I have observed elsewhere. Her battle scenes are chaotic, and while we don’t see it from the point of view of Mizuo, he is in the midst of it, so we get an excellent feel for how trapped he feels in the melee while getting a good look at the skill being displayed by Takakage as he rides his warhorse and swings his katana in deadly arcs, leading his men, all the while shielding Mizuo sat before him.

The ending closes the current story arc rather well, while opening us up to the next, so I look forward to reading the next volume. It’s not out yet, sadly, but in the meantime, you can grab this one in paperback form from your favourite manga retailer. A digital edition is not yet available for purchase or rent, though DMP release titles this way regularly, so it is worth keeping an eye on their release schedule if that format is preferred.

***I would like to thank Digital Manga Publishing for providing me with this review copy.***

Rating:

Playing with Paper Dolls- Ze vol 1

When I was a child, some well meaning auntie or another would up and decide to send me a little thin paperback book filled with paper dolls, usually accompanied by a note about how when they were a kid and money was tight, and they had to walk to school 50 miles in the a blizzard, and only if Fagin had not caught them sneaking away from the pickpocketing they had to do just to buy bread, they had paper dolls to play with. I have no idea what these notes were supposed to inspire me with? Joy at playing with overpriced dolls in elaborately cheesy costumes? Amazement at the intricate detail of the Kate Greenaway costume artwork? Seeing as these were all VERY expensive boutique imprints, I utterly failed to see how the poor little me stories contained within the notes were supposed to make me feel an obligation of being overjoyed.

Don’t get me wrong, they were VERY nice. But they were so nice, I got warned to be careful, not to damage them, etc. And then there was the whole 2D problem. Unlike normal dolls, these were little slips of paper that were of no size and shape to tea party with, sit under a tree with to share a storybook, or anything else. I used to wish that with their beautiful face and clothes, that I could utter words to turn them into a REAL doll. Yuki Shimizu takes this childhood wish, and turns it up several notches.

Making use of the Japanese notion that words have power, or kotodama, she introduces us to the Mitou family and their new housekeeper, Raizu. Raizu has had it tough. His mother was a foreigner and he was her child from a previous relationship, so he stood way out in the rural Japanese community he was raised in thanks to his height and naturally blonde hair. His parents died when he was young, so all he had was his loving grandmother, who was actually his stepfather’s mother. Not that any distinction had ever been made, as the son and the grandmother fully accepted and loved him as one of their own. Raizu had planned to graduate from school, and get a job to support his elderly granny so that at last she could take it easy, but fate has another cruel hand to deal Raizu. His granny dies, and Raizu has to sell the property they live in and ll his clothes just to pay for the funeral expenses and travel expenses to his new job as a housekeeper.

If this is not daunting enough, Raizu soon discovers that the large family he is to work for seem rather different, in an ominous sort of way. No matter what he cooks, half of the family refuse toe at. Then on day he makes a hotpot, so that they MUST gather together, and he is startled when a tearing sound rends the air and one family member Konoe’s arms lands in the nabe after being severed. Even freakier, there is no blood, and the offending appendage is stuck back on. What is going on? It is time for the family to come clean. They are a very special family, users of kotodama, and each kotodama user has a special partner. Every time kotodama is used, a wound appears on the user, and the partner must make contact with a mucous membrane to transfer the damage to themselves. The partner is does not bleed, because he is a doll. To be exact, a living paper doll. They appear human in most respects, but are creations of the family’s doll maker using an ancient art.

Between the intimate scenes he witnesses between the kotodama users and their dolls, the strange people visiting the house, and the cold shoulder he keeps getting from his room mate Kon, the only masterless paper doll, what is Raizu to do? Well, if the mysterious figure in the kimono and fox mask has anything to do with it maybe he’ll find true love….

With a cast full of quirky characters, intricate plot lines, and a unique plot device, this promises to be an interesting series as it progresses. This first volume does very well, introducing us to the core cast of characters and the family business without sacrificing any attention to detail in regards to the building of the relationship Raizu has with Kon. I quite like the way the stories are set up as journeys of self discovery; Kon finding out what it means to feel, how to value himself, and to discover his purpose in life, Raizu to discover his place in the world within this unique set of circumstances he finds himself in. The narrative flow is smooth, and while there is explicit content, it slots neatly within the framework of the story while driving it forward. The attention to the finer details, especially in regards to the nature of the kami (the paper dolls) raises this above the common garden variety boy’s love, moving it from the mere yaoi fan service type with little plot towards being more of a fantasy romance that happens to contain BL (and yuri) as it happens thanks to the inclusion of the Benio partnership). The artwork is as well presented as the story, integrating into a seamless whole that lures the reader into going from frame to frame and page to page without wanting to stop. Currently with five volumes in print, out of the current 9 volumes in Japan (and still ongoing), this promises to be one of those series that goes down as a classic in the genre.

***Ze is published under the 801 Media imprint. Due to explicit sexual themes, Ze is rated at 18+ . I’d like to thank Digital Manga Publishing for providing me with the review copy.***

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Meet the Aggregators part 1- MangaFox

Manga fans offering to share manga to read online for free? How sweet of them! Aside from the part whereby the creators and publisher’s don’t get their money for all their hard work that is. Aside from that though, just who are these people? Well, let’s look at Mangafox. Let’s take a peek from the bottom up.

At the bottom, we have the readership. These people not only can read the manga, but upload it. A few may be actual scanlators, but by and large they are folks who leech manga from scanlation groups with strict sharing policies, and upload it up onto sites like Mangafox without permission. Often these same users will scan actual English language editions, and upload them entire, complete with the publisher’s copyright notice. The current trend is that scanlation groups, spurred on perhaps by the recent crackdown towards scanlation aggregator sites, are requesting their manga scanlations removed and for their groups works to be placed on a banned list. This is not foolproof however, as OEL (original English language manga) is on the banned list, no matter the origin, yet, Tokyopop’s OEL Vampire Kisses was requested, added, and uploaded, with the latest update within the past week.

Requested

http://forums.mangafox.com/showthread.php?t=132976&highlight=vampire+kisses

Uploaded

http://www.mangafox.com/manga/vampire_kisses/

No doubt this is to help generate ever more income; why remove it when it is ranks as the 18^th most read manga on the site, with over 202,000 readers a month?

In addition, Sunday, MangaFox put back up the mature genre (one wonders if anything gave them a prod?!). This was done without prior notice to the volunteers who run the site, and seems to have been done hurriedly, as it literally restored ALL previously supposedly removed manga, including works removed at scanlator requests well over two years ago. Volunteers scrambled to re-take those down as angry scanlators returned asking for their releases to be removed. It should be noted that the mature manga still carries an 18+ warning, but the only age verification required is a simple registration that allows you to enter whatever birth date you please to get past the censoring. No surprise then, that the forums flooded with readers thanking MF, many admitting their underageness and gushing how they could now read their sexually explicit materials online, as they were too young buy it in stores, or could otherwise not access it due to age restrictions in place at other reading outlets. It seems that Mangafox are interested more in reading numbers than international child safety laws. Additionally, their forum announcement by Noez staffer Firefly-Lynn tells readers that they do this for the fans, at the cost of losing Google ads, yet Google ads are clearly running across the site. Seems like they are posturing, as they certainly have not resigned themselves from the Google Adsense program and removed the banners that are generating their income.

So, just who are the staff overseeing all this? A visit to the forums reveals it is all ran by volunteers, and if you follow the links, you get a lengthy list of the staff, volunteers and otherwise. Most have “retired”. I spoke to two staffers, 1 now retired, and the other still active, and got a clear picture of the current state of how Mangafox is ran. Mangafox recruit volunteers from their readership base. Most are young, several still in high school. In fact, the quality control team includes high school students, which raises an eyebrow. Firstly, they are young and being given mature manga, including sexually explicit containing materials, to deal with. These are materials that it would be illegal for them to go buy, never mind help distribute. Secondly, they are not experienced in business and do not have a responsible adult on hand to oversee any liabilities. These volunteers are the one who authorise a manga’s upload, facilitating the readers to add the files. Occasionally, they do the upload themselves. They seem completely aware of the legal position this puts them in personally in regards to international anti-piracy laws.

In fact, one former stafer tells me that parent company Noez only appears once in a great while, without notice, usually to fix an issue with the site, such as a crash. However, Noez staff are the ONLY ones who can actually completely remove a manga once uploaded to the site. Volunteer admin can lock it, but purging must be done by Noez staff only, following an April Fool’s prank by volunteer staff. Volunteers can hide it, and flag it, but Noez have to remove it. But just who are Noez? Chatter on Mangafox says they are a China based company, thanks to the website that the former staffer alleges is fake, Noez Works , which shows “Jacky and Brandon” as being located in Zhejiang, China. It looks like manga is not the only thing they are trying to hide , such as the fact being that their servers are actually located in the US.

click here to view full size

Following on the DNS report’s information about the domain registration, I found that apparently Mangafox was not actually (only) in China either. It not only has the two servers that are located in the United States, but the domain is registered to an American company also known as Noez Works, with offices at 1133 Broadway, New York, sharing a suite that when Googled, yields the information that it is used by a large variety of internet marketing firms, including Noez’ anime related business AnimeEden (which gives this address as the place to send membership fees (including carefully concealed cash as a method of payment). The contact information is given as one Jacky Yung, with a NYC telephone number. This may well be merely the US office of a China based company, but with business operations, including server activity, on US soil, this probably puts Mangafox on the line in regards to US anti-piracy actions. American publishers won’t have to rely on international law enforcement to shut down operations, with the servers literally within grasp of US authorities. With the worldwide ire from manga publishers, scanlator groups, and fans who support the industry legitimately, all that remains to be seen is how long will it be before the servers fall silent and the money from the pirated manga and anime starts channelling back towards its rightful recipients? I don’t know, but I can tell you that I don’t think it would be smart to follow the investment opportunity the NoezWorks company page is asking people to partake in any time soon.

UPDATE Scanlators who requested their projects removed are up in arms over Mangafox’s offhand disregard in how they handle removals. One scanlator group was surprised to begin receiving requests for information on a series’ licensing, when it is NOT yet licensed for English language distribution. Further investigation revealed that Mangafox was once more merely hiding the series, and that they could be accessed easily enough despite the manga titles’ homepages having a message up saying it had been removed because of licensing, further fanning the flames. Fans and scanlators are upset, asking for accurate information to be posted as to reason for removal, and for the removal to be complete, as the information provided leads to fruitless searching for volumes to purchase, which do not exist, with the scanlators facing fan ire over it, not to mention canny readers finding how to read the hidden files.

Shell Game Manga

Earlier this month the otaku world was roiling with the news about a new Japanese and American manga publisher coalition dedicated to stopping mass illegal distribution of their copyrighted properties. Shortly after the news broke, participants Tokyopop and Viz Media began tweeting and issuing press statements on their own about it, sending out a frenzy amongst the manga reading populace. Then earlier this week, manga began to disappear from several of the large aggregator sites, such as MangaFox and AnimeA. Or did it?

This seems a bit familiar doesn’t it? A mere month before this latest “crisis”, there was another “take down the manga” “emergency” that sent MangaFox and One Manga, amongst others, into a tizzy. While these sites are free to the reader, they generate millions of dollars a year in profits by making use of Google Adsense. A manga and animé blogger happened to notice that several titles being shared broke the TOS for Google Adsense, tipped them off about it, and then blogged about it. The issue? Google Adsense does not permit sites with mature material, nor with materials that may be considered pornography by local community standards, to participate in the Google Adsense program. So anything not strictly PG-13 simply had to go. Off went the yaoi, the mature seinen and josei stuff with any gore, nudity, depictions of illegal activity, etc., the yuri, shotacon, lolicon, and anything that was mislabelled as such by the article and that Google decided to name specifically for removal. Or so it appeared.

A visit to MangaFox’s community forums will reassure the Google “police” that yaoi is indeed not permitted, to the weeping and wailing of a thousand fan girls (and boys). But a trip through one’s bookmarked manga or a title search will reveal differently. If you know the title, or had one bookmarked, unless it had shota, it just may be there for you to read. Pull up just one yaoi title, and behold the yaoi and mature tags are there, clickable. Click the yaoi tag and 14 pages of still available graphically explicit, and occasionally licensed, titles will appear. Why? Perhaps this gem from the MangaFox forums will explain, but hurry, they have it in the Incinerator area where the evidence will disappear soon. So why would they take such a risk? Well, yaoi and yuri are popular genres, and popular genres with popular titles means lots and lots and lots of readers. Readers who generate that ad revenue. One title, the licensed yaoi title Junjo Romantica, actually ranks in MangaFox’s top 30 most read titles across the site, pulling in at number 27 this month. This translates into site stats of 15,776 monthly views or reads, which are unique. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this means they get a nice return ad revenue wise with stats like this.

It also doesn’t take a genius to realise just why a coalition got formed, with stats like this repeated over and over across more than thirty aggregator sites, and for hundreds of titles. Say ten percent of those 15,776 readers go out and buy what they read for free. That would be 1,577 copies. Now say it was not available online, so 20% more people went and bought it, who otherwise would have read it for free. That’s another 3,014 copies, and is a rather conservative estimate, and for just one title, counting stats for only one site. Copies that would finance the publishers so that they could publish more books, pay for new licenses, and so that the mangaka could buy food and pay their rent. True, loads of fans are screaming that there is a recession on. Most of them are students, with a large majority seemingly in middle and high school. Without jobs of their own, they depend on family for pocket money, which during a recession is not so freely available. Many of these kids have been hit by the sub-prime financial crisis, and can’t see the bigger picture beyond their family’s personal finances, often because their friends and a few other family members have also been hit by it. Yes, the sub-prime fiasco caused a recession, but it was one that closed a lot of banks that had made bad financial decisions, and the individuals and businesses who could not pay what they had borrowed. A look at any reputable news source will show that economic recovery has been steady, with the businesses and individuals who already had sound financial standing doing well.

These people cut back on their outgoings, true, as they DID and still DO, feel the pinch, as the recession is not quite over. No more expense account lunches at high end restaurants, folks. And less going to the cinema and more buying DVDS and watching film channels at home. Other at home entertainment has been booming too. Amazon has seen an increase in sales in books and music, so why has the manga industry in particular seen a 30% drop over a three year period? Some is no doubt due to the recession, but the biggest source of customer haemorrhage has been the birth of the aggregator sites during this time.

Aggregators cause a lot of problems for publishers. Many argue that they are not customers because manga is not easily sourced in their home town or even within their country. This is actually a problem compounded by aggregator sites. The demand for the goods is there, but instead of it being made at points of sale so that distribution occurs, the readers are running off to read for free. One young fan in the USA says his home town has a book store that simply does not stock animé and manga, yet his local high school has a thriving animé and manga club. One has to ponder that if this is so, why the club does not approach said local book store or other retail selling outlet that stocks books, and ask them to get it in. One customer is not compelling, but a large group of steady customers is. The same can be said of anywhere, as long as what you want to read is legal where you live. And let’s not forget Amazon and Barnes and Noble, Forbidden Planet, and other secure online retailers who stock nearly every title currently in print by American manga publishers, large and small.

Nor are print copies the only option. Many bemoan the fact that manga publishers don’t do digital distribution, for download or to read online. True, some like Viz mainly offer online samples, but others such as Netcomics and Digital Manga Publishing offer an online reading service for many of their popular titles, in a variety of genres. As for downloadable content, DMP and Yaoi Press are two who offer Kindle and/or pdf editions of their books, which can be read on e-readers or the PC, I phone, or Blackberry using free applications. Other titles can be downloaded via the X box legally, and DMP offer vampire Hunter D via the PSP, which as more manga becoming available. The cost of renting the titles online is extremely inexpensive, and buying the official downloadable book is cheaper than a paper copy as well, with the added benefit that the online reading sites are open to international users, and the downloadable books usually are as well. Crying one doesn’t have a card, is under-age to buy what they want, or don’t have the money for something is no excuse to steal. No one will die without manga, but the manga industry WILL die without customers. No money, no manga. Quite literally, as without pay, mangaka have no reason to pursue their profession, as they have to meet living expenses too, nor can publishing staff and book store staff receive payment for services. Using an aggregator site to read licensed manga is like going to the store, getting a tank of petrol, and driving off without paying for it because you want to hang out at the mall and don’t have the money to pay for the gas. It’s theft, pure and simple, and not a victimless crime, nor one you can blame somebody else for. It’s a crime that the aggregators perpetuate because people come to participate and they rake in millions they don’t have to pay out to staff (they use volunteers), publishers, mangaka, or to the scanlators and up-loaders.

Given all this, it is no surprise then that supposedly removed manga is actually still there, s after all, content=revenue for these folks. MangaFox is not alone in trying the shell game, either. AnimeA have game on as well. Visit their site, click on a manga title they have supposedly removed, (all Viz so far, just like MangaFox) and up comes a message that it is licensed and you have to buy it. But if you have a page bookmarked, or come via a search engine, and click on a listed numbered chapter of (name of removed manga), guess what? Yes, it is there, just hidden and inaccessible from the main page in an attempt to appear compliant. In fact, AnimeA also have up a plea to users of the site to help them identify licensed titles. You do so by clicking “yes this is licensed” or “no, it is not licensed”. Guess what? Reported titles are still up. One major scanlator group leader mentioned that she emailed the site several days ago notifying them of titles they had to remove, and not only did not receive a reply, but the manga is till there. A look at the forums and a chat with other manga fans show this is not an isolated incident. I myself three days ago reported well over 80 titles, and they are still up. I tried the email thing as well. I also got no response. It begs the question as to how serious they are about removing manga they are not supposed to have. One thing is for certain. What appears to be gone, may or may not be, but what is going to happen next about it?

UPDATE: After this spread across the blogosphere , ANIMEA removed access to the previously hidden Viz titles. However, licensed titles from Digital Manga, Tokyopop and others remain up, though this admin post seems to indicate at last, they are coming down forever. Hopefully.

Emi-Art.com

***Emi-Art? Is this some sort of new artsy crafty thing gummy?***

It’s okay, this is not another site about sponge painting, scoubi knots, or paint spinner supplies. While those things might be fun, this is entertainment of a different sort. To be precise, it is a site maintained by one Emily Muto to showcase her original comics and illustrations portfolio online. Muto draws in the Japanese manga style, and her stories follow the shojo format. A few are complete, and one is still ongoing, receiving regular twice weekly updates. In addition, on site she provides contact information as well as details regarding her availability for freelance commissions, and a section showcasing fan art that followers of her manga have sent in of their favourite characters.

***Comics? Manga? How many, and any good?***

So far the site showcases five shojo romance titles: Universe of Jewels, Charmed Reality, Message in a Bottle, White Ribbon, and The Way to Your Heart. Each story stands alone and is unrelated to the others, and feature a nice variety of characters and dissimilar plots.

Universe of Jewels is a sci fi romance title about Daisuke Mizuno , the school star swimmer and heart throb who is looking for his ideal girlfriend. The piece of art representing it on the homepage is interesting, but sadly, all we get is this and a teaser blurb as she has not actually written this tale yet. Given the quality of the tales she has written thus far, I look forward to seeing it.

Charmed Reality is a cute little one shot about three school friends, Ai, Akemi, and Saori. The three used to be quite the close trio, but upon entering high school, Saori abandoned her aspiring shojo manga creator friends for the popular crowd. Undeterred, Ai and Akemi continue to draw, and one day Ai gives Akemi a pencil charm to inspire her while drawing. Little could Akemi guess that the little charm would work magic, making anything she drew come true! Created in 2004 for TOKYOPOP’s 4th Rising Stars of Manga competition, it shows off an early example of her efforts. It is beautifully drawn, but the story is choppy in places due to the overall brevity of the piece. It could be easily remedied by expanding the story a bit more, especially as it ends on a note that leaves an opening for further exploration. Overall it is a very good effort with minor shortcomings and still well worth the read.

Message in a Bottle is from early 2005 and created for TOKYOPOP’s 5th Rising Stars of Manga competition. Teen aged Jenny lives by the Pacific ocean and thinks of the nearby beach as her sanctuary. She comes there every day, and one day is surprised to find a bottle with something inside has washed ashore. Inside is a note, several years old, written in Japanese, from a then 8 year old boy in Japan. Jenny’s aunt taught in Japan for a few years, so is able to translate. It seems young Minoru Ishida was visiting his grandfather back in Sendai when his grandfather told him a story about a boy who put a message in a bottle and threw it in the sea, inspiring him to give it a go. In the note, he says he lives in Tokyo, and that he hopes that no matter how long it takes, the finder of the bottle will bring him the message back in person. Jenny’s aunt is a bit of a romantic and pushes Jenny into doing just that. The aunt offers to teach her Japanese for a few years and help fund part of the cost of the trip. So, a further 6 years down the line. Jenny arrives in Japan, completely unaware that the Minoru Ishida who was once an innocent boy who threw a message into the sea is now Japan’s hottest new idol. She soon finds out though, and two people become surprised by fate.

This second full length one shot is not only well drawn with fine attention to detail, but the dialogue and plot are better polished as well. The appearance of movement still seems slightly stiff and posed, as if frozen in time, but the facial expressions are natural and the eyes really begin to speak. One can see the natural progression of experience, and Muto’s talent clearly shines through. One can almost picture this mangaka standing on the precipice , ready to tumble over the edge from amateur to professional, with each succeeding effort.

The first stumble down that very precipice turns out to be The Way to Your Heart . It was actually started before the pieces submitted to the Toyopop Rising Stars Competition, and unlike the previously mentioned pieces, is an ongoing series spanning several “volumes” currently totalling over 500 pages. Yumi Takahashi has just transferred to the prestigious St. Othello Academy, and given her ordinary family background, is really hoping to fit in and make her family proud. Visual kei band Orochi are also students at the school, and most of the school idolise them. Unfortunately for Yumi, she makes a bad first impression on the unstable lead singer Miyabi, who decides to hold a grudge and make her life utterly miserable. But she has caught the eye of Miyabi’s best friend and band drummer, Toshio. Will Toshio and Yumi’s love destroy the band? And just why is Miyabi so negatively obsessive about Yumi?

And if that is not bad enough, what is going to happen when teacher, mentor, and band manager Mitsuzuka sensei discovers that Miyabi is sneaking around with his naive daughter Yayoi behind his back? Add in a face from Miyabi and Toshio’s past in the form of Miyabi’s former best friend and band drummer, Kazuki. Kazuki, who Miyabi betrayed in search of perfection, and who now has a band of his own, Phantasm. Phantasm, rising towards where Orochi now stands, and their only credible rival in the professional stakes. It’s a tale of love, friendship, betrayal, and the visual kei music and fashion scene all rolled into one.

Muto does an absolutely stunning job on getting the gothic visual kei elements right, something that even Japanese mangaka often fail to convincingly do. Indeed, the fashion is original to her, but would fit in nicely within the pages of Gosu Rori and worn on a Sunday visit to Harajuku’s pedestrian bridge hang out. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say she is a fan of the visual kei genre or well acquainted with someone who is, as it is portrayed in such a manner as only someone who has experienced it well from the inside could. The beginning of the series starts off with the art less polished and the prose a bit stiff, but as the pages and volumes near 2010, we see the subtle changes taking place. The last two volumes in particular stand out, with her prose flowing naturally, emotions full blast, and her plot threads more fully developed, Likewise the art of these later volumes is less stiff, with bodies seeming more naturally relaxed, movements less mannequin like, and the facial expressions more realistic. This is the break out point then, as what one gets is fully equivalent to what might find professionally offered by a major shojo manga publisher.

That she has reached this point becomes all the more evident in the perfect one shot microcosm that is White Ribbon. A short reflection on first love and the significance a single hair ribbon has made on the life of a now adult married man, it has none of the choppiness associated with the earliest produced works on showcase. Poignant and sentimental without being sappy, it leaves an impression upon the reader long after the final page has been left.

***So all is hunky dory?***

This is not to say that the work is still without faults. In fact, I personally have found one that fairly glares me in the face. Muto is writing manga type comics. Her art is classic modern shojo in nature, her plots revolve around Japan, and feature predominantly Japanese characters. Yet it is read left to right, completely throwing the reader who approaches a page that looks like native manga, feels like native manga, yet is read backwards to it. I read Korean manwha, which also reads left to right, but that has its own style and the brain now associates that feel to reading the panels in the left to right format. But the brain has to be tricked with every page here, and it makes it tiring to read after awhile.

Indeed, each time I come to check on the updates for The Way to Your Heart, I have to reread the first page because the brain sees “manga” and has to read it “backwards” and fails to do so on the first pass of the page. I rather suspect that I am not the only one with this issue, and given that most manga publishers, and indeed, the professionally published OEL (original English language) mangaka I have seen thus far, print in native manga format, it may just be that the task of having to flip the art to fit the expected format is the one thing holding her back. It might seem like a trivial issue, but given that it adds expense to a publisher’s overhead, it makes it a more unattractive proposition.

Given that the emi-art homepage comes in two flavours one selects from the landing page, English and Japanese, it also appears that one is hoping for the possibility of a crossover audience. With the manga available only in English, however, it would mean having to translate the text, and then there is still the issue of it needing to be flipped. Having it in standard North American and Korean manwha reading format seems an unnecessary hindrance to Ms. Muto’s progress, and one I hope she doesn’t let stand her way when a little effort on her part towards remedying the situation could bring so many benefits to herself and potential readers. I am giving this four out of five stars, taking away only one star for the flaws, as this is after all, an amatuer site, no matter how otherwise polished it is.

Rating:

Please note that the images here are the copyrighted property of Emily Muto. Do NOT use these without first obtaining her express permission. They are present here for review purposes only.

Antique Bakery vol 2

What’s That in Your Sack, Santa?

It’s winter and the grey skies bring in more than rain. They bring in a mysterious man driving an luxury car, and wearing a tailored suit and sunglasses. Ack! Is it the yakuza? Addressing bakery owner Tachibana as “My Lord”, EH? Just what kind of family is Tachibana from? Tachibana’s secret family history comes to the attention of his employees, thanks to one bad eye-sighted dimwit of a good looking man, the young family retainer Chikage Kobayakawa. When he is not bumping into walls or getting lost, he turns a lot of heads, male and female. Will Ono be able to resist using his demonic charm on him? One thing is for certain, with the super busy Christmas season approaching, new items on the menu and a Christmas delivery service being offered, they could use some extra help. But is Chikage up for it, in more ways than one?

Fumi Yoshinaga brings us another volume of her slice of life comedy drama, Antique Bakery, and once more the four men struggle to deal with their personal lives, boundaries of friendship, and maintaining a top notch customer experience. The laughs come aplenty with the introduction of the sweetly inept Chikage as he bumps and crashes his way into the hearts of customers and employees alike, while Tachibana’s hilarious attempt at playing Santa in a red sports car while delivering the Christmas cakes is absolutely hilarious. Small screaming children, blasé teens and a drunken adults abound making this a season to remember, though not necessarily for the right reasons.

Deftly balancing tragic personal pasts with comically frenetic business, we get a tableau of everyday life. The three men have now become four, and the patisserie settles on into its new routine with unexpected success (and the occasional minor failure). Work and friendship has never been so heart-warmingly funny, but a word of warning here. Yoshinaga sensei once more weaves delectable explanations of the confections on offer, and now the bakery has added light savoury meals to the mix. If the descriptions are not mouthwatering enough, wait until you see the pictures! Wonderful detailed images that will make the mouth water, both over the food and the handsome servers, abound. Add to this that Digital Manga Publishing once more use a delectable food image on the cover that is scratch and sniff, and you might find yourself wanting to consume the book in more ways than one if you are not careful.