Monthly Archives: January 2010

xxxHOLiC Followup

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When I was invited to do a guest post on xxxHOLiC vols. 1-3, I took the assignment literally. Even though I had read the whole series (though not recently), I wrote my review with reference to the first three volumes alone. Since these volumes are episodic and largely self-contained, this struck me as reasonable. But I can see why fans of the series might be unhappy. So I took up Kristy and Kate’s implicit challenge and read the entire series so far, including scanlations of what del Rey hasn’t published yet: these cover volumes 15 and 16, and a few chapters of what will be volume 17. (For those who want to do the same, the new stuff begins with Chapter 171.)

It is quite true that the first three volumes are not representative of the series. It’s also true that the later volumes fix some of the problems with the first three. For one thing, they gradually drop the episodic structure and focus on the regulars rather than the customers, so the “simplistic morality tales” I complained about are gone. For another, some of the characters’ annoying quirks are minimized. (Not all, though: Watanuki’s irrational dislike of Domeki is still prominent, and still not funny.) But for most of the series, Watanuki and Yuko
remain one-dimensional characters, and Yuko is still more of a plot device than a character.

Moreover, the later volumes provide an additional ground for complaint. As the series progresses, the link with Tsubasa becomes much more important. Although it’s still possible to read xxxHOLiC without reading Tsubasa, unless you read Tsubasa you won’t know the full story of who Watanuki is, or why Yuko’s shop exists in the first place, among other important questions. I have read Tsubasa, or tried to. Not only is it long and bad, its plot is a labyrinth which few who enter ever find their way out of. To be fair, Tsubasa does provide a thematic counterpoint to xxxHOLiC; but that’s not enough to make it worth slogging through all 28 volumes.

The first volume of xxxHOLiC I really enjoyed was volume 15. For one thing, the characters of Watanuki, and to a lesser extent Yuko, finally acquire some depth. For another, something big actually happens, as opposed to Yuko telling us that something is about to happen, as she does repeatedly in the preceding volumes. (Even though xxxHOLiC originally appeared in a magazine for young men, CLAMP seems to think that they need to explicitly explain important points over and over, or their readers won’t get them.) And for once, the ending doesn’t disappoint: it’s powerful and affecting, more so than anything else up to that point. And there’s some beautiful and striking art.

It turns out that volume 15 and the first chapter of volume 16 mark the end of an arc that encompasses the entire series up to that point. And when the second arc starts, there are major changes, including in characterization and tone.

If xxxHOLiC ended where the first arc ends, I’d conclude by saying that one good volume isn’t enough to outweigh fourteen mediocre ones. But the second arc feels like it will be a long one, possibly as long as the first. And while it starts off slowly, it may wind up being good enough to redeem the series as a whole. While I stand by what I wrote about the first three volumes, all I can conclude about the series as a whole is that it’s too soon to say.

Update by Noah: The entire xxxholic roundtable is here.

xxxHOLiC Followup

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When I was invited to do a guest post on xxxHOLiC vols. 1-3, I took the assignment literally. Even though I had read the whole series (though not recently), I wrote my review with reference to the first three volumes alone. Since these volumes are episodic and largely self-contained, this struck me as reasonable. But I can see why fans of the series might be unhappy. So I took up Kristy and Kate’s implicit challenge and read the entire series so far, including scanlations of what del Rey hasn’t published yet: these cover volumes 15 and 16, and a few chapters of what will be volume 17. (For those who want to do the same, the new stuff begins with Chapter 171.)

It is quite true that the first three volumes are not representative of the series. It’s also true that the later volumes fix some of the problems with the first three. For one thing, they gradually drop the episodic structure and focus on the regulars rather than the customers, so the “simplistic morality tales” I complained about are gone. For another, some of the characters’ annoying quirks are minimized. (Not all, though: Watanuki’s irrational dislike of Domeki is still prominent, and still not funny.) But for most of the series, Watanuki and Yuko
remain one-dimensional characters, and Yuko is still more of a plot device than a character.

Moreover, the later volumes provide an additional ground for complaint. As the series progresses, the link with Tsubasa becomes much more important. Although it’s still possible to read xxxHOLiC without reading Tsubasa, unless you read Tsubasa you won’t know the full story of who Watanuki is, or why Yuko’s shop exists in the first place, among other important questions. I have read Tsubasa, or tried to. Not only is it long and bad, its plot is a labyrinth which few who enter ever find their way out of. To be fair, Tsubasa does provide a thematic counterpoint to xxxHOLiC; but that’s not enough to make it worth slogging through all 28 volumes.

The first volume of xxxHOLiC I really enjoyed was volume 15. For one thing, the characters of Watanuki, and to a lesser extent Yuko, finally acquire some depth. For another, something big actually happens, as opposed to Yuko telling us that something is about to happen, as she does repeatedly in the preceding volumes. (Even though xxxHOLiC originally appeared in a magazine for young men, CLAMP seems to think that they need to explicitly explain important points over and over, or their readers won’t get them.) And for once, the ending doesn’t disappoint: it’s powerful and affecting, more so than anything else up to that point. And there’s some beautiful and striking art.

It turns out that volume 15 and the first chapter of volume 16 mark the end of an arc that encompasses the entire series up to that point. And when the second arc starts, there are major changes, including in characterization and tone.

If xxxHOLiC ended where the first arc ends, I’d conclude by saying that one good volume isn’t enough to outweigh fourteen mediocre ones. But the second arc feels like it will be a long one, possibly as long as the first. And while it starts off slowly, it may wind up being good enough to redeem the series as a whole. While I stand by what I wrote about the first three volumes, all I can conclude about the series as a whole is that it’s too soon to say.

Update by Noah: The entire xxxholic roundtable is here.

Utilitarian Review 1/31/10

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On HU

I started out the week by reviewing the Mike Sekowsky run on Wonder Woman.

The discussion of whether or not manga critics are too nice continued with some snark by m. of coffeeandink and a long, long comments thread.

Kinukitty reviews the yaoi Sense and Sexuality.

Suat talked about problems with Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms. There’s a long comment thread as well, with Kate Dacey, Jog, Derik Badman, Bill Randall and others commenting.

Vom Marlowe reviews a good white ink.

Utilitarians Elsewhere

At the Chicago Reader I reviewed Garry Wills’ new book Bomb Power.

There’s no doubt that the bomb and nuclear fears are regularly marshaled in defense of unlimited executive power. And Wills makes a good case that the Manhattan Project provided institutional impetus for, and training in, federal secrecy. But his claim that the bomb “caused a violent break in our whole government” is less persuasive.

He argues, for instance, that our foreign policy following World War II was in large part predicated on our need for missile bases—a claim I don’t see any reason to dispute. But in the course of that argument he also states that the need for bases “began a long history of friendly relations with dictators.” This neatly elides America’s extended, inglorious prebomb encouragement of tyrannies abroad, starting with our support for the slave-holding regime in 18th-century Haiti and finding perhaps its most spectacular expression in our brutal and extended battle against a popular insurgency in the Philippines in the early 1900s.

At metropulse I review a number of recent Thai luk thung release.

Luk thung is often characterized as Thai country music, which is both accurate and misleading. It’s accurate in that, yes, luk thung is mostly created and consumed by folks from rural backgrounds, and its lyrics reflect their concerns—the love left at home, the joys of rural cooking, the shock of moving to the city and discovering that your new urban flame is a he rather than a she, etc.

It’s misleading, though, in that luk thung doesn’t sound anything like country music. It sounds like film music exotica. Also garage rock. And like J-pop and Bollywood and AM radio balladry. And like hip-hop. In other words, and very much unlike American country, luk thung is almost pathologically omnivorous.

Bert Stabler and I discuss Inglorious Bastards and Zizek and other things.

At tcj.com I review two crappy manga: Biomega and Ikigami.

At Madeloud I review Drudkh’s fantastic first album, Forgotten Legends.

White Ink: A New Player in Town

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Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen, White: recommended

I’m still slowly working on my Great Inking Project wherein I review the black drawing inks in my stash, but in the meantime, I ran across a fabulous white ink and wanted to rush to tell everyone about it.

As some of you know by now, I am wee bit obsessed with ink.  In drawing comics or manga, which admittedly I do only as a hobby, I primarily use black ink on white paper, but like many (most) artists, I also use white ink to add highlights, correct marks, or do various techniques.

The problem is that white ink does not behave like black ink (which dyes paper, among other things).  There are several white ink options available, but most of them are more paint than ink, since it’s very difficult to get good opaque coverage with fine white liquid.  I’ve used the usual White-out, Copic white, and various white inks. There are several problems with these: one must use a brush or sponge and the lay-down of the ink/white-out is gloopy thick and thus makes making marks over it again in black rather difficult or the white ink is smooth but covers not a whit.

I’ve also tried various correction pens in white.  Correction pens are such a lovely idea.  Unfortunately, they either suck or they give me a vicious headache.  Or both.

Which is why when I ran across this nifty little white pen, I was so pleased I had to share as soon as possible.  This is a white ink pen, has no discernable smell (to me), lays down good coverage, creates smooth lines that could easily be covered over (ie, is not goopy whatsoever), and generally behaves like a dream.  You have to buy it in the nail polish section of the drugstore instead of an art supply shop, but such are the trials and tribulations of being an artist.  Unlike many white-pens, the tip is quite fine and it does not have a maximum number of purchases or other anti-graffiti or anti-huffing retail restrictions, at least in my state.

Below you will find the results of my trial.  I took three kinds of ink and laid down thick dark swathes.  I used two kinds of pens and made lines.  Finally, I used a single drawing ink and made very fine effects lines.  Then I used the white pen over each of them.

I used three kinds of ink for the swathes.  The first is a Sumi ink (you can tell it is not rich, extra-dark black).  The second ink is, I believe, alcohol based, but I cannot be certain because it is Japanese; it is however, alcohol soluble when dry but not water soluble when dry.   It’s called Deleter #6 and is my favorite drawing ink.  The final ink is an India type ink, which is not water soluble or alcohol soluble when dry; (this particular India ink is Speedball).

The marker/pen lines are first, Faber Castel pen in size small, black.  The second is a brush-nib Copic.

The effects lines are done with Deleter #6 and my trusty G-nib, because those are my favorites.

Going from top to bottom, you’ll notice that the Sumi ink isn’t all that black, and that the white pen covered it pretty well.

The Deleter #6 is darker ink, but the white covered it OK when writing/highlighting but began to smear, especially during the line marks.

The Speedball India Ink is the darkest of the inks, and the white pen covers it the best.  Unlike the Deleter, there is no smearing whatever.

The first set of marking pens is the Faber Castel and the white pen covered the marks pretty well, but might have benefited from a second coat.

The second set of marking pens is the Copic, and you can begin to see more smearage and poor coverage.

The final set of effects lines shows the worst of the smearing.  That was done with the Deleter.

As far as I can tell, this white pen does very, very well on any ink except that which is alcohol based.  If you use a Sumi style or an India style, you should be just fine.  If you want to do some minor, very fine correction work on an alcohol based ink (because you’re addicted, like me, to Deleter #6 or Copics or for some other reason) you may find it usable with some tweaking. 

Review: Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms

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“The ultimate defeat is, in short, to forget; especially to forget those who kill us. It is to die without any suspicion, to the very end, of how perverse people are. There is no use in struggling when we already have one foot in the grave. And we must not forgive and forget. We must report, one by one, everything we have learned about the cruelty of man. Otherwise we cannot die. If we do this, then our lives will not have been wasted.”

Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Le Voyage au Bout de la Nuit (as quoted by Kenzaburo Oe in Hiroshima Notes (“On Human Dignity”))

Fumiyo Kouno’s famous work on the after effects and survivors of the Hiroshima bomb needs little by way of introduction. Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms has won a Tezuka prize and has received near unanimous acclaim from American comic critics. This includes a book of the year citation from Dirk Deppey as well as high and consistent praise from the noted manga critic, David Welsh, who counts it among his very favorites.

The opening pages of  Kouno’s narrative are intentionally filled with a sense of the ordinary: there is a period of communion over a recently finished dress; the protagonist’s, Minami’s,  tranquil passage through the city of Hiroshima with its period detail; and her quiet austerity as she collects bamboo wrappers to make a pair of sandals. The gentle rhythms of life and conversation are interrupted only by Minami’s exclamations and flashbacks.  Her past ordeals are inseparable from her present reality and triggered by the simplest of suggestions: in one instance, that she would make “a good wife” and, later, a combination of memory and the senses as the shadows, heat and steam of a bathhouse produce unwelcome reminiscences. Another flashback is triggered by the hint of romantic love which becomes mixed with descriptions of swollen bodies, melting shoes and of walking over the dead. Her friends and family remain at a distance, almost placid observers of her gradual descent into darkness. It is this tragic lyricism, the slow but measured pace conferring a sense of dignity, which seems to have earned Kouno’s story a place in so many readers’ hearts.

Continue reading →

Gluey Tart: Sense & Sexuality

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You Higashino, 2009, Media Blasters

This manga was always going to be one of those things for me. Like when you’d really like a dense, perfectly moist brownie, but you go and get a bag of M&Ms from the snack machine instead. The experience isn’t without its redeeming features, but it isn’t the platonic chocolate experience whose reflection you once glimpsed against the wall of the cave in the flickering light of the bonfire. I was iffy about the plot description and a little less than iffy about the art. The cover design is quite good, and I’m pleased to see a bit of a trend toward actual design on these things, rather than just a big image of the characters embracing against a spray of flowers or whatever. They don’t have to look like 1970s romance novels. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s nice to have options.) But I digress – as usual.

The plot synopsis advertises this as a Taisho era love story (and I originally typed “ploy synopsis,” which is a pretty insightful typo). The Taisho era was from 1912-1926, and I understand “Taisho jidai” means “the period of great righteousness,” which is an amusing setup for a decadent bit of porn. (I mean decadent in the Victorian/Edwardian aristocratic sense, as does Higashino. We’re not talking about cults of Cthulu. Although I’d love to read that. Oh my god.) The Taisho era was known for its liberalism, following the Mieji era, and this is also part of the joke – my knowledge of Japanese history is sadly fuzzy and lacking in details and context, but I’m almost certain that the liberalism of the day did not extend to a completely blasé attitude about same-sex cavorting. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Higashino does, by the way, throw in an inexplicable (and clumsy) nod to historical accuracy by having one of our wealthy cad protagonists assaulted by communists. To which I said, huh. Communism was a big deal in Taisho Japan (and elsewhere). The Japanese communist party was founded in the early 20s in response to the Bolshevik victory in Russia a few years before, and there was high-profile violence. The police came down hard on the movement and had pretty much stamped it out at the end of the decade. Unlike the farmer and the cowman, communists and fabulously wealthy robber barons can’t really be friends. But throwing it into the middle of this mindless post-Edwardian romance just feels muddled. It’s a convenient plot device, certainly, and of course one must thrust one’s characters into each other’s arms in some way or other. But it felt heavy-handed, especially since the historical accuracy is otherwise, shall we say, uncertain. (And, oh dear, I feel another disclaimer is in order; I have nothing against historical inaccuracy, either. I’m all for it, in fact. It amuses me. What I’m commenting on here is the mix – juxtaposition is everything.)

In the notes at the end of the manga, Higashino explains that the whole point of the manga was to draw dandies in the clothes of the time. That’s as good a reason as any, and better than some. And she does convey an aura of Oscar Wilde-ish world weariness and spoiled, bored dissolution and self-indulgence. So, full marks for that. The first stories of the book show a series of bets our two main characters make about who will be the first to seduce some sweet young thing. (The protagonists are named Masatsugu and Kuniomi, but we will refer to them as the blond and the brunet – or, ultimately, uke and seme, which should surprise no one. I have a hell of a time keeping track of some Japanese names because I am lame and undisciplined, and Masatsugu and Kuniomi flat-out refuse to stay in my brain for even a moment.) These are somewhat amusing and occasionally kind of charming. One of my favorite moments is when the blond looks out the window of his carriage at his next victim and says, “A school uniform, eh? It’s so stoic. It’s arousing.” At the beginning of another story/bet, he looks out from his box seat at the opera and says, “I would love to open his tight rosebud. And make him writhe with pleasure beneath me.” That’s funny stuff.

Also, there is actual nudity (instead of whited-out absences of genitalia or those bizarre half-there rods of light), and it is drawn reasonably well. After a series of these bets, the brunet confesses his constant and abiding love for the blonde and calls off any further bets. The blond is conflicted (which is to say, he does not say no to sex but is uncertain about the eternal love portion of the equation), but after the brunet is wounded by communists in an alley (“Your wealth was created by the suffering of the people! You’re going to pay!”), the blond starts to realize that he too has Serious Feelings. And they (literally) sail off into the sunset. It’s nice. It amused me and made me smile.

I do have an artistic bone to pick. The drawing is OK, overall, but there are a couple of clunkers that just made me stare in dismay. I mean, look at this:

What the hell? Seriously, what the hell? This is an abomination. (Maybe I should rethink my earlier enthusiasm for Elder God yaoi.) And while I’m flapping my hands in horror, I’ll note that there is the occasional blip in the sex scenes, too. Toward the end, brunet says to blond, “I’ll make love to you countless times, over and over… Until you smell like me from within.” To which I say – well, I don’t know what to say. Other than dear God, no.

These unfortunate malfunctions are the exception rather than the rule. They don’t ruin the reading experience, but they do leave a bad taste in your mouth. It’s the sort of thing I expected, though. I decided not to buy this title several times before I finally gave in, a victim to my completely irrational impulses. “It isn’t going to be that great, and you already have several thousand books in your to-read piles,” I said to myself. “But – but – but – post-Edwardian dandies! And I like the cover,” I whined back to myself. “You like all kinds of things. Things you’ve already purchased. Read one of those – this one isn’t going to be special.” “But – cover! Suits!” “Oh, for Christ’s sake, just go ahead and buy the damned thing, them.” “!!!!!! Cover! Suits!” Sigh. Sad, but true. I am a shallow magpie of a woman. So I bought it on July 18, according to Amazon’s handy feature that sometimes (but not always) keeps me from buying multiple copies of bright and shiny titles. Now that I have finally gotten around to reading it (which shows the level of anticipation I’d built up), I’m happy enough with it. I could like it more, but I could also like it a lot less. (I had a similar experience with Higashino’s Gay’s Anatomy, now that I think of it, except that I didn’t actually buy that one. It just came down to not really having a hospital fetish and also, inexplicably, not really liking characters in glasses.) (I assure you that Kinukitty has no such biases in real life.) (Thus endeth the pointless parenthetical comments and also, coincidentally, the post.)

Breaking News: Manga Critics Not Nice!

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During our xxxholic roundtable last week, Suat intimated that manga critics were too nice. M. at coffeeandink, in a post titled: “Summary of some recent comments in a discussion of manga, refutes him thus:

GUY #1: Manga critics are much too nice and praise substandard work. Naturally, I feel no need to provide any evidence of this contention. Maybe it is because of all the girls.

GUY #2: Yeah, I don’t like any manga. Even when it’s good, it’s made for girls. No, wait, I do like one manga — it is by a man, and about stereotypical guy stuff. Since it is male, it is gender-neutral, unlike yaoi or shojo, which people only seem to like for political reasons. My reasons for liking things are completely apolitical and entirely justified by intellectual arguments. When women write in detail about relationships, it’s just not aimed at me. When men write in detail about relationships, it shows complex emotional realism.

Also, why don’t you ever talk about boys’ comics?

GUY #2: Once again, I must assert that people are lying about their opinions of manga for political reasons, without evidence or example, and my list of all male great comics artists is completely without political bias. Also, I am going to cite Osamu Tezuka as a great comics artist, even though his career and oeuvre actually contradict everything else I’ve been claiming about audience and identification.

GUY #2: Wait, I haven’t named enough great male comics artists yet.

I am going to continue to assume that girls’ comics = comics about romance is such an obvious statement that it will inform all my thinking and yet never need to be clearly stated.

GUY #1: Whether situations are realistic, how intellectual they are, and how deeply invested the reader becomes in the story are totally objective metrics that are completely independent of all individual tastes and socio-cultural influences.

GUY #3: The problem is an age bias, not just a gender bias. To prove this, for the rest of this comment, I will only talk about comics written by men.

I would submit that this is truly high class snark, and not even a little bit nice.

I had a back and forth discussion with m that I thought I’d reproduce here, at least in part.

Me: I did want to point out though, that, whatever their failings, Suat and Matthias, were both very open to dialogue, and unfailingly polite when contradicted (as, indeed, were people like Melinda and VM with whom they were arguing.)

m: …comments like Suat and Matthias’ are why I basically gave up on looking at comics or manga blogs not specifically recommended by friends. You characterize Suat and Matthias as “very open to dialogue, and unfailingly polite when contradicted,” and indeed they seemed respectful of the people to whom they were directly speaking. But their comments are not open, polite, or respectful; their comments are extremely sexist. By this I don’t mean that they hate women or spoke with any malice or ill intent; I mean that their comments treated men’s responses and men’s experiences as the default and characterized women’s responses and experiences as deviations from the normal, special exceptions, and less meaningful or authoritative than men’s experiences.

They are hardly the worst cases of this I’ve seen, particularly in the comics blogosphere, but I’m not sure you understand the weariness that comes from encountering this over and over and over again–even in cases, such as this one, where these voices are not in the majority. Ultimately, it was a lot less painful and exhausting for me to stick to a different set of blogs and communities, where the readers and writers did not by default consider women’s writing or women’s reading less significant or less interesting than men’s.

Me: I’ve engaged in a number of irritating interactions with mainstream and arts comics readers on behalf of shojo and manga, so I have some sense of how wearying it is to have the same argument over and over — though, obviously, not being a woman, I’m probably not as personally infuriated. In any case, I certainly understand the impulse not to want to engage with that sort of thing. You certainly have no responsibility to tell people they’re wrong on the internet. I wish I was less prone to do that myself, honestly.

Nonetheless, for me — and I’m coming from a slightly different place, as I said — I think it’s worthwhile to try to have people from different kinds of communities talk to each other. That’s going to entail some (though not necessarily equal, alas) frustration for everyone. But I think the results can also be worthwhile — and seemed to me to be so in this case, where the back and forth was fascinating, and brought up a number of really interesting points (I thought Shaenon and Kristy in particular were fascinating on why they felt manga was worthwhile and/or different from Western comics.)

Along those lines, I think its useful to make some distinctions at least. I think calling Matthias’ and Suat’s comments “extremely sexist” is a bit harsh. It’s not hard to find extreme sexism on the web or in life, alas, but does this really qualify? Neither Suat nor Matthias dismisses women’s writing out of hand; in fact, both have read a fair bit of shojo and acknowledge some of its virtues, despite their reservations. Neither categorically dismisses either women’s writing or romance — in fact, elsewhere in comments, Suat basically says his problem with xxxholic isn’t that it is romance, but that it didn’t move him to tears. Both Matthias and Suat express an eagerness to read more by women critics and to think about these issues in greater depth. Suat linked to Melinda Beasi at the end of his original post; Matthias pressed VM for links (and she linked you, among others.)

I just feel like both Matthias and Suat were very much trying to meet their interlocutors halfway — as indeed, were folks like Melinda and Shaenon and VM. I think that’s worth something, and worth respecting, even if, at the end of the day, my own views are much closer to yours than to theirs.

You can read the whole thing, along with some interesting comments from other folks, at M.’s page here.