Gluey Tart: Lonesome, Ornery, and Mean

Crimson Snow Hori Tomoki, March 2011, Blu

First of all, Blu. I will miss you more than I can say. Even thinking about it makes me emo and cross and stabby. Fucking economy. Fucking Stuart Levy. The world is now a darker place.

It seems fitting to send Blu off with a column about a release that I kind of love, Crimson Snow. I’ll start with the cover, as I usually do, since that’s how my manga selection process works. It’s a dicey strategy – who among us hasn’t been burned by an intense, brooding stare, a well-drawn mouth, and the promise of more? But I’m a fool for a promising visual. I didn’t just fall for the poignant thug and the kimono-wearing pretty boy (who has on those geta with the fur-lined toe caps – so often I put on my Birkenstocks and sadly ask them, why aren’t you geta with fur-lined toe caps?). I like the design of this one, too, clean and rational in its use of flowers, confident of the drama it creates in juxtaposing not just the crisp, modern lines of the thug’s clothes with the flowing kimono robes, but also the muted colors of the two characters with the blood red of the petals and the gash across the top of the page.

Also, thug. Do I ever have a thing about thugs. I could do without the hipster facial hair, but his expression on the front cover is nice. There’s some of the at the end of his rope feeling his body language conveys so well, but there’s also something challenging, and part of that challenge is protectiveness over the robe-wearing little fruit loop holding him. Said fruit loop has nice hair, but there’s a problem with the perspective – or something – in his face. Not horrible, but not right. I’m giving it a pass because the thug looks so good, but the situation is duly noted. I like him better on the back cover.

That’s a lot of chin, but worrying about it would be picking nits, given that image, which picks up on the promise of the front cover and runs with it. (Also, the snake with the om disk in its mouth – besides being kind of hot, is this a Kundalini thing? Are we supposed to take a moment to think about the cosmic energy that lies dormant, coiled in the spine? Because I’m willing to make an effort, but I’d sort of just rather not. I was frightened by Kundalini yoga as a child.) (Sort of like this guy.)

(Oh dear, right? One must be made of stern stuff to navigate this yaoi shit. This guy is from the second story, but don’t worry – it’s not that bad.)

Opening up the book, I was initially somewhat concerned. (I mean separately from the above.) The glorious thug from the cover looks more like a used car salesman fallen on especially hard times.

The fruit loop looks like a normal (which is to say, terrifying) high school yearbook photo.

Things get better, though, and not just because I took a bottle of White-Out to that fugly mustache. (I didn’t, really. But I might.) It’s mostly because the situation won me over. A gentle, pure young man quietly falls in love with an obviously dangerous but badly injured stranger, and the stranger falls in love with him. (Spoiler Ho!) The stranger leaves to redeem himself, and the young man is sad. Oh, and they have sex. Sort of peaceful and hot. And eventually the reformed thug returns, in a sweet little short at the end.

I’m torn over the second story, “At First Sight.” Two differently shy boys fall in love. At first sight. Right. The author really puts the metaphor through the ringer. There are things about love at first sight, and glasses, and looking away, and a quote in Latin class, “Love is borne out of the eyes and sinks into the heart.” Stop beating me with your fists of ham, Tomoki, I get it. Geez. On the other hand, the boy who doesn’t look twelve is cute (the boy who looks twelve would be cute, too, except for the whole looking twelve thing), and the shy boys staring longingly at each other cross the quad and finally getting together is a powerful shtick.

The third story, “Cry for the Sun,” is, in a word, freakish. For all of you who have bitterly lamented about your desire for something different by way of yaoi plots, we have here a case of be careful what you wish for. (Spoilers ahead because there’s a big load of WTF I need to unload – sorry, union rules.) The story opens at a funeral. The bereaved son looks across the fresh grave and sees a tearful hottie who seems familiar (“It feels like my mind’s completely blank. But my body remembers something.” Whoa.) In a nutshell, tearful hottie was the father’s best friend when bereaved son was a child, and dead father’s boyfriend before that, and tearful hottie disappeared from their lives after he tried to strangle bereaved son when bereaved son was a tot. Of course, tearful hottie and bereaved son are meant for each other and fall in love. One can’t really read this story without casting a serious side-eye at the likelihood of this plot, and there’s an aftertaste of something nasty besides. Perverse is the word I think I’m looking for. But what the hell – I like it anyway. There’s something beautiful about the friendship between the boy’s father and his almost-murderer that I liked, so let’s not get all judgmental, OK?

And with that, the book, like its publisher, is over. Let us wave good bye to them like Kate Middleton acknowledging the hordes. Blu is dead; long live – well, June, I guess.

Gluey Tart: So Nice I Read It Twice

No Touching At All, Kou Yoneda, October 2010, June

My attention is scattered. There are so many shiny things, you know, and all the boring and/or dreary things, and also the bus, which certainly isn’t shiny but also isn’t boring or exactly dreary, because there are always weird things going on, on the bus, and also I can read my Kindle. I don’t read yaoi on the bus because I’m not completely shameless. It gets tight on the bus, and not everybody wants to see that ho shit before work. What was I talking about? Oh, right. So many things, so little time. I pretty much never reread anything, no matter how much I like it, because there’s this towering stack of unread manga (actually several towering stacks of unread manga), to say nothing of the towering stacks of unread books (both physical and virtual). I read it and move on – baby, baby, I’ve got to ramble. But when I finished this manga, and went right back to the beginning and started over.

I wasn’t all that excited about No Touching At All based on reading the description on the back cover. “On his very first day at a brand-new job, shy Shima is trapped in the elevator with a hungover mess of a guy… who turns out to be his boss!” If you read yaoi, you now know how this book is going to work. Shima is a shy, nice guy, and also a bottom, and he’s going to fall in love with some drunk, disgusting asshole who’s also his boss. Drama will ensure, but their love will triumph. Yuck. Usually, I’d rather not. Life is too short to saddle yourself with some drunk, disgusting asshole, even for the hour or so it takes to read a comic book. But the front cover – well, the front cover is different.

The story and art in this manga have a gentle quietness to them, a stillness that lets the uncomplicated but poignant details play out and reverberate in a way I found affecting. On the cover, the smaller guy (yes, that would be Shima) is so nicely rendered, folded up into himself, wound up tight, eyes downcast, but holding on to the other man tight, desperation palpable. That’s a lot for one illustration, and nicely drawn, too. The other man is the drunk, the boss, Togawa. Ignore the fact that his back and torso make nonsense of perspective, space, and possibly time. And that something truly unfortunate is going on with his right foot, which looks like a depilated bear paw. Actually, his entire right leg is perplexing. But never mind. The way he’s holding but not quite holding Shima is beautiful. He’s in love, and I am hooked.

The story isn’t icky, either. One might think this comment is damning the thing with faint praise, but not so. I think of these manga as being a bit like noh plays. (I’ll bet you weren’t expecting that.) There’s a finite number of traditional themes. (Also, all the roles are played by men.) (This isn’t meant to be an air-tight comparison, by the way.) There’s a number of stock themes, and the creators change the details (ideally) from manga to manga in ways that might not look exactly original to all comers. They don’t need to be. We don’t necessarily want them to be. A certain amount of the enjoyment comes from exploring all the nuances of your chosen scenario. Fluffy, weepy little fruit loop getting dominated by “rakish” asshole of a boss is not my chosen scenario, thus my initial concern. To be clear, it wasn’t that I was afraid the book wouldn’t be original – I have no expectations that it would be original. I just wanted it to tweak the same old stories well. “Well” can, to a certain degree, be defined as “in ways I like.”

Shima isn’t a fluffy, weepy little fruit loop, though. (Well, yes, maybe he is weepy. It plays all right, though – he has his reasons. I don’t have a generalized problem with male characters crying, but there’s a style of yaoi that has the uke carrying on like John Boehner.) Shima’s character is well-imagined; he feels real, and most of what we know about him is told through the drawing. We see him staring stoically at the elevator doors as he first meets Togawa, who is still drunk at 9 a.m and about to vomit. (“He stinks,” Shima thinks to himself as he stares.)

We see him sitting quietly at his desk as he listens intently for information about Togawa, never giving anything away. Shima is quiet and contained. Cautious. When he finally pushes Togawa against a wall and kisses him – this is after they’ve had sex, so it’s an ownership move rather than a “confessing my love” move – it’s believably surprising. And moving. We feel how far Shima has come to allow himself to do this, and how desperate he is.

Shima has the requisite sad backstory, but Togawa’s sad tale of woe is grim in a serious and complete way. And he’s a nice guy, it turns out. Easygoing and considerate. The requisite three-quarters-of-the-way-through-the-book breakup is Shima’s fault, a combination of the usual contrived misunderstanding – probably a seven-ish on the one-to-ten scale of authenticity and plausibility, as these things go – and an odd but perhaps believable reaction to Togawa’s unfortunate background. The contrived misunderstanding is often a problem – it doesn’t have to be utterly believable, since it’s more of a plot device than an integral part of the story, but if it isn’t believable enough, you don’t get the payoff of relief and catharsis or whatever. In this case, the cause of the problem isn’t entirely solid, but what carries it is, as usual, Shima’s small reactions.

The pacing often feels off at this point in the story. After the long, detail-filled lead-in, lovingly chronicling the falling for each other phase, the near-breakup and getting back together part tends to get short shrift, as if we’re three quarters of the way through the run and we have to wrap this up. I often start losing track of plot points right about here, and that happened with this book, too. But in this case, it isn’t that I’m annoyed about suddenly not being sure what the story is about any more; it’s that I feel like I’ve missed out on some good stuff.

Rushed though the resolution may be, it is romantic. The characters’ movements and reactions to the plot contrivances ring true. Full pay-off for my inner sap (you don’t have to scratch too hard to find it).

Gluey Tart: Baseball Heaven


Ellie Mamahara, Blu, October 2010

I cannot explain my attraction to this book. I do not like baseball. For years, I lived near Wrigley Field in Chicago, an experience I can only describe as somewhat scarring. Indeed, my only interest in sports whatsoever is an admitted and frank enjoyment of David Beckham’s person. I will go further and admit that I am highly suspicious of teamwork, in general.

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Gluey Tart: Stray Cat

By Halco, 2010, Blu

I read this weeks ago and wasn’t thrilled with it, but decided it would do. (Wait a minute, the discerning reader might well be asking; just how low is the bar re. manporn you’re willing to waste our time with, anyway? And the answer, gentle reader, is that you should never ask questions when you don’t want to know the answer.) I wasn’t sure it would do initially, mind you. I only came to this conclusion after hours of the sort of intensive research you’ve come to expect here at Gluey Tart. No, no, I wasn’t cyber-stalking anybody. I read four more manga, and they were all worse.

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Gluey Tart: Maiden Rose, Volume 1

Fusanosuke Inariya, 2010, Digital Manga Publishing and Oakla

I’d heard very, very good things about this manga from people who were hoping someone would pick it up from licensing limbo. Now that June has come to the rescue, I decided I could not ignore all the buzz about this title, despite my misgivings. Grave misgivings. Because look at that cover. I am merely talking about my own squick factors here, but even a whiff of WW II fetishization raises a forest of red flags for me. I am also not a fan of ukes who appear to be under age. (Or semes either, but putting the too-young-looking one on the bottom seems to bother me more.)

Now, Taki, the uke of whom we speak, is younger than the seme, but not under age. It’s just that in the very fully realized sex scenes, he looks it. He’s even in a position of great power, a lord and a military commander. Not underage, not powerless. This is so clear that by the end of the book, I almost got over thinking he looked twelve whenever he was stripped (which was often). It is a testament to the power of the story-telling here that I was pretty much able to get over my pretty thoroughgoing distaste for this kind of visual.

And the book is about war. Old-fashioned world war, including lots of old-fashioned ideas about heroism and honor and noblesse oblige, all of which I think is not only horse shit, but dangerous nationalistic horse shit. I do not find war stories romantic. And I especially worry about the kind of sexual excitement some people get from fascism, often symbolized by Axis uniforms. Now, just like the uke isn’t actually under age in this book, the war isn’t exactly WW II, and the lovers (Klaus, a tall, strapping blond, and Taki, a diminutive Asian man) aren’t exactly German and Japanese. The particulars are technically different, but – look at the cover. It’s obvious what we’re looking at. I do not like to take things too seriously, especially yaoi manga, of all things, but I was highly skeptical that I was going to be able to enjoy a manga in this setting. (Apparently even Kinukitty has limits.)

But I was told no, it’s OK, really. It’s well done. I didn’t think that was likely, but I was interested in what this book would be, anyway, so I bought it. And pointedly ignored it for months, unable to quite deal with it.

I wound up bringing it with me to the park to read while my son flung himself alarmingly off large pieces of playground equipment. I will point out one thing right now – this is not the book you should bring with you to the playground. There is lots of graphic sex. Lots. Graphic. I was off in a corner by myself, but I kept looking furtively over my shoulder, terrified some other, more responsible parent would show up and see this extremely NSFW image after the jump:

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Gluey Tart: How to Seduce a Vampire

Nimosaku Shimada, 2010, Digital Manga/Oakla Publishing

Aaaaarrrrggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

No, really. This is a disaster. It can’t be happening. I cannot go on. I cannot bear the pain. Etc., etc. Because I thought there was a second volume. I don’t know why I thought that – probably confused it with Portrait of a Vampire, which does have a second volume – not that I care. Damn it. I have finished How to Seduce a Vampire and I was secure in the knowledge that there was more waiting for me, BUT THERE ISN’T. There isn’t even anything else available by Nimosaku Shimada. I may take to my bed and pine. Pine desultorily, and gnash my teeth in sheer vexation. Then nap.

This book snuck right up on me. I was wary, because, you know, my heart’s done time. (I thought that was kind of clever. You see, “Heart’s Done Time” is an Aerosmith song, from Permanent Vacation, a not completely intolerable album that was the middle of the end for a band that used to be one of the best and became – what they became. Heavy sigh. Now I’m thoroughly depressed.) Anyway. I love me some vampires, and vampire stuff has never been hotter, but – to take liberties with the state motto of Alaska – the odds are good, but the goods mostly pretty much suck. Since it is too late to make a long story short, let us at least summarize succinctly by saying I am wary about vampire films, books, and manga. I expect to be disappointed, and I usually am.

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