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This blog is a storage space for various thoughts, observations and musings centering on shōjo manga (少女漫画, Japanese comics for girls), josei-oriented manga (Japanese comics for women) and manga created by women (in the widest sense). Topics from other fields of relevance, such as music, art, literature and film may be discussed here as well.

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Viewing all posts in category: Manga Review



[Manga Review] More Than Family: Yajirobē by Yamakawa Aiji

Yajirobee 1 by Yamakawa Aiji (Shueisha)One of the most horrible things that can happen to a young child is to lose its mother. This is exactly what happened to 5-year old Haru. Now, 10 years later, Haru looks back on her life with Seiji, her stepfather. Both are the only family they have for each other as Seiji has been keeping his distance from his own blood relatives since his strict grandmother never liked Haru’s mother. Haru realizes that Seiji still misses her mother and feels sad about the empty space she left behind both in his and in Haru’s life. Haru on the other hand also notices small changes in her feelings toward Seiji which leads her to confront the question what Seiji’s role has been so far and will be from now on in Haru’s life.

colour illustration for Yajirobee by Yamakawa Aiji (Shueisha)Just like with a yajirobÄ“, a T-shaped balancing toy with two little balls or weights hanging on the opposite sides of a thin strip of metal or other materials that spins around on a wood handle, the characters of the same-titled short manga series by Yamakawa Aiji (see our mangaka profile for her here) find themselves always at a distance from each other, a distance they reluctantly try to overcome. In a way, Haru can be seen as the wooden stick of the toy, the center around which different pairs of people circle. She observes their relationships to each other and to herself. When Seiji and Haru have to move out of their soon-to-be demolished apartment, she meets her childhood friend Bonta who she hasn’t seen in more than a year after he and his parents had moved out of the apartment next door. He’s a year older than Haru and classic shōjo manga love interest material – cool and aloof on the outside but also clumsily caring and attentive towards Haru. Haru cannot help but slowly realize there is now more than pure friendship between them. After she successfully manages to get into the same high school as Bonta, they see each other more regularly at school, a perfect chance to get a little closer to each other.

double page from Yajirobee by Yamakawa Aiji (Shueisha)

Another pair Haru watches is Seiji and his friend Kawabata-san who squats at their apartment whenever he feels like it. And with a mixture of curiousity and jealousy Haru observes his stepfathers platonic relationship with Chie, a now divorced single mother and a stunningly beautiful woman who Seiji meets again at a flea market. Haru finds out that Seiji rejected Chie’s advancements years ago when they were university students. Chie is a person who wants to make everybody like her so Seiji’s resistance to her charms is a puzzle to Chie, Kawabata and Haru alike. Even more confusing to Haru is Towa, Chie’s son who is one year younger than Haru. He seems a little mysterious and excentric but also tries to reach out to Haru whenever they meet. Then there’s Seiji and Chie who can’t seem to get closer to each other because Seiji always sees Haru as the priority in his life.

While in her monologues Haru often ponders the people and things she has lost so far in her life, the manga as a whole feels both mellow and light-hearted a lot of the time. Haru was lucky enough to have Seiji by her side after her mother died so her death wasn’t quite as traumatic as it could have been to other less fortunate children. Seiji fully takes on the roles of a father and a mother. He almost turns into a housewife for Haru, showing her how to cook (and letting her do things her way even when she fails) and how to grow vegetables in his small garden. When he brings home some young tomato plants one day, Haru realizes after a while that Seiji raised her not from the seed but from the time she was already a small plant. And with Seiji’s care, love and attention she managed to grow and turn into something beautiful just like the tomatoes that are now ripening in their garden.

Yajirobee 2 by Yamakawa Aiji (Shueisha)But the main theme in this manga remains the question of how to communicate your feelings and intentions to somebody else without being too imposing on the other person. How do you overcome your fear of being rejected when you feel attracted to somebody and want to tell them how you feel? These questions aren’t just raised in a romantic context. Haru learns how to be more open about her feelings from Towa’s mother Chie, a kind of ersatz mother. She also teaches Haru how to use makeup which Seiji as a man wouldn’t have been able to do. Something Haru still wants to achieve is help Seiji get closer to his seemingly cold and disapproving grandmother again. The possibility of her and Seiji gaining a bigger family is just around the corner…

chapter cover illustration for Yajirobee by Yamakawa Aiji (Shueisha)A young girl and her stepfather, a teenage boy whose parents got divorced, remarried and are expecting a baby again, another boy who was raised by a divorced single mother, a young man who suddenly had to become a father to a girl who isn’t his relative by blood and who has lost contact with his own family because of that, another young man who – lacking a family of his own – finds company in the household of his old friend and his stepdaughter. These are the unconventional forms of family Yamakawa portrays through Haru’s observing eyes. There is a multitude of options for living together as human beings. And Haru realizes one important thing: she has to tell Seiji how she feels. In a long birthday letter that will not leave even the most stonehearted of readers untouched, she expresses her gratitude toward him for being exactly what a father is supposed to be to her. And yet until the very end of the story, a certain kind of ambiguity between her and Seiji will remain, because Haru finds out that Seiji and her mother’s relationship was about to change just before her death, making it also possible for Haru to take her mother’s place and to let Seiji become hers, something else than family…

double page from Yajirobee by Yamakawa Aiji (Shueisha)

And thus the story ends on an ambiguous note. On the inside cover of the second volume, YajirobÄ“ is listed as an ongoing work but Yamakawa started another longer series, Stand Up!, after this so one might as well see this as a finished work. Finished and accomplished. Yamakawa has managed to fully make use of the shōjo manga genre to tell a multi-facetted story with complex characters. There is an air of nostalgia surrounding Haru as she’s standing right between childhood and adulthood, something that makes it easy to identify with her whether you’re her age or an adult because it’ll make you recognize or remember your own feelings between longing for a childhood that’s now gone and the insecurities and uncertainties of becoming an adult. This is also mirrored in the art and the designs used for the cover with their nostalgic water colors, the soft retro color schemes with their white outlines contrasting with the chic and modern fonts used for the title.

double page from Yajirobee by Yamakawa Aiji (Shueisha)

Yamakawa’s beautiful art throughout the manga always makes it easy to become completely absorbed into Haru’s (and at times Seiji’s) thoughts and the way she observes her surroundings. Yamakawa’s story-telling is subtle, almost restrained yet deeply exploring, questioning without coming up with definite answers. (It’s actually very rewarding to read the manga a second and even a third time to fully grasp each character’s motivations, to get the full picture of what drives them, what sources of pain and hurt are buried in their pasts.) Her visual effects go along with that as her artwork is often light, airy, almost sketchy. When the story moves into heavier territory she often relies on completely black backgrounds on which the white text of the internal monologue – or as in one of the most moving scenes, Haru’s written words to Seiji – are almost etched into the readers’ eyes. Those sparse words leave an impact on the characters’ as well as the readers’ minds. The slender figures of the characters, the stream of consciousness-like floating monologue layered over tender scenes of the everyday, the subtle gestures between two characters fighting to overcome their distance without words – they all lend this manga a sense of fragility and vulnerability that never becomes too painful because Yamakawa’s main philosophy is that of a humane gentleness in social interactions.

Verdict: In a perfect world, this would have become a bestselling instant classic. But since it hasn’t, at least for the time being, it’s now up to us, the readers, to spread the word about this fantastic, moving, deeply human work. This a true gem not to be missed!

Title: Yajirobē (やじろべえ)
Author: Yamakawa Aiji (山川あいじ)
Volumes: 2 (complete; 2011-2012)
Magazine: Bessatsu Margaret, Bessatsu Margaret sister (2010-2011)
Label: Margaret Comics
Publisher: Shueisha

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Posted on Apr 6, 2017 (Thu, 1:38 am). .

[Review] Mutsu A-ko: Tenshi mo yumemiru rōsokuya

The cover of the bunko version of Mutsu A-ko's Tenshi mo yumemiru rōsokuya published by Shueisha Every year, I’m getting a little giddy with anticipation as February 14th is drawing nearer. And not for the obvious reasons of impending showers of chocolate, flowers, jewellery and all that stuff Valentine’s Day is supposedly made of if a whole industry dedicated to it were to be believed. No, it’s close but it’s not quite the reason. That feeling usually gets really strong in January, with the warm lights of Christmas long gone and the cold cruel wind blowing, as I’m making my way through snow (or even just rain). But I put that feeling of longing and excitement off, until on Valentine’s Day or one day later, on February 15th, I grab a certain volume of short stories from the shelf and – indulge in warm, fuzzy shōjo manga nostalgia!

The book that I blew imaginary dust off yesterday for its big moment is called Tenshi mo yumemiru rōsokuya by Mutsu A-ko, a small bunkobon released in 2005 by Shueisha as one of three volumes in the Ribon Otometic Memorial Selection (the other two being short story collections by Tabuchi Yumiko and Tachikake Hideko, respectively). And it’s the very same title story from it, which roughly translates to “The Candlelit Night When Even The Angels Dream”, that is such fantastic material for annual re-readings in synchronicity with the outside world.

It’s Monday, February 15th, in the quiet neighbourhood of Asahigaoka, the day after Valentine’s Day. The two angels Spinet and Vivace are a little exhausted from their work the previous day but still they manage to watch over the love lives of a handful of girls and young women who are all connected to some degree on that fateful snowy night of candles lit and stories told during an electricity blackout in the small residential area.

For example, there’s Sasae celebrating her 17th birthday with three of her friends on that Monday evening. She is in love with her childhood friend Shikawa-kun who told her recently he needed some time to see her as anything more than just a friend. The girls dream about their future lives, their ideal partners and marriages, when in the present, love is something bittersweet and hard to reach for most of them, even for Olive who has a boyfriend but has to keep a long-distance relationship with him because he goes to university in far away Tokyo. But there is quite a bit of hope for Sasae herself who happens to meet Shikawa-kun when the girls go out into the dark of the blackout, the hope that his feelings for her finally might have changed when he greets her with a present.

Kari, a young woman with an inferiority complex caused by her boyfriend’s all too perfect ex-girlfriend, meets an alien girl named Piin while she’s sitting on a park bench in the snow during the blackout. The alien seems to know Kari from the inside out and takes her on a ride in her spaceship. From this higher viewpoint, Kari sees her world in a completely new light and realizes there is no reason to worry so much about her boyfriend and his dedication and earnestness towards her.

The school girl Kimako has been secretly watching her mysterious new neighbour, a boy called Haneo who has the whole school buzzing with gossip because of his excentricities, through her window. She learns he’s obsessed with extraterrestrial lifeforms and finally gets to meet Haneo in person in the snow during the blackout when he’s following a spaceship with an alien and a human girl on board through the neighbourhood.

And Banana, who has taken some time off after her graduation from university because she doesn’t know what to do for a living, daydreams about becoming an essayist when she suddenly gets the chance to win a trip to Paris and work as a professional travel writer through a competition in a womens’ magazine. But as the deadline is drawing nearer and nearer, she’s facing a massive episode of writer’s block, which she’ll finally (and successfully!) be able to overcome on the night of the blackout, remembering a trip to a lovely antique toy store in the north-east of Japan which brought back so many memories from her childhood.

This short voyage into Mutsu A-ko’s world provides an excellent introduction to the author’s early works: These bittersweet romantic comedies are decorated with cute details and settings (kawayui being the keyword here, yes, even cuter than kawaii) and follow girls in preppy clothes – most of them shy, some of them quite free-spirited – who are mainly focused on getting their crush to notice them, while the male characters range from the level-headed to the geeky.

The original tankōbon of the title story was published in 1982, the other 4 short stories also included in the bunko version date back to even earlier, so you’ll get a good impression of the sense of carefreeness both of youth and adolescence portrayed in shōjo manga in general but even more specifically during the prosperous times of Japan’s high-speed economic growth. The ideas some of the characters have about gender roles or romantic love might be a little dated. But in the end, what wins the reader over even today is Mutsu A-ko’s idiosyncratic mixture of slightly over-the-top comedic elements and beautifully nostalgic or melancholy romantic scenes with pretty artwork that has become the very definition of what clever editors of Ribon magazine once coined otometic. No matter how old you are, if you’re reading this for the first time or out of nostalgia, Mutsu A-ko manages to draw you into her very unique, charming, magical world, a universe you’ll want to revisit again and again, and not just once a year ;)

More about the author, whose birthday it happens to be today (February 15th), about a recent new edition (Best Selection) of her early works published by Kawade and about the otometic ‘way of life’ is soon to come! But for now, if you’re proficient enough in the Japanese language, buy your copy of this lovely little book!

Title: Tenshi mo yumemiru rōsokuya (天使も夢みるローソク夜)
Author: Mutsu A-ko (also: Mutsu Eiko, 陸奥A子)
ISBN: 4-08-618395-1
Publisher: Shueisha
Format: Bunko, 320 pages
Year: 2005
Additional information: Contains the 4-chapter (‘omnibus’) title story and four other short stories (“Kintarou-kun”, “Oshaberi na hitomi”, “Milky Sepia Monogatari”, “Magical Mystery Instant Coffee”). Published as part of the 3-volume Ribon Otometic Memorial Selection (りぼん おとめチックメモリアル選) celebrating the 50th anniversary of Ribon. More info @ Shueisha Manga Net.

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Posted on Feb 15, 2017 (Wed, 6:54 pm). .




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