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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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For the most part, Japanese names appear in their original order - surname first, followed by the given name.

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[Manga & Anime News] The April Agenda

We’ve already entered a new month and April ’17 looks like it has some very exciting things waiting for us – some new beginnings that might bring a sparkle to our eyes in best old-school shoujo manga fashion and some endings that will hopefully not be too tear-inducing…

Fukumenkei Noise/Anonymous Noise TV anime by Tokyo MX based on the manga by Fukuyama Ryouko→ The second week of April marks the start of an anime TV series based on Fukuyama Ryōko’s Fukumenkei Noise (Anonymous Noise). The series has been destined for the whole multi-platform treatment it will be getting (there’s also a movie coming out in November this year) from the start. Yes, it’s literally screaming for a form that goes beyond the printed medium and brings sound into the whole affair because it is about just that – sound, music! From April 11 on, which is the day the first episode airs in Japan, we can expect some pop punk noise accompanying the story of the love triangle between the girl Nino who turns into Alice, the lead singer of the massively hyped newcomer band in No hurry to shout (called Inohari by fans and the media), whose members wear bandages and eye-patches to hide their identities. Their guitarist and main songwriter Yuzu brings Nino into the band after Nino had inspired him to write songs for her back when they were kids and Nino had to overcome the fact that her first love Momo had suddenly moved away. Yuzu himself is still in love with Nino while Nino tries to find Momo through her voice but when she finally does, he rejects her. Momo is now a famous composer of pop songs, feeling guilty about making money with the songs he originally wrote for Nino for whom he still has feelings. He’s just in senior high, the same one Nino and Yuzu attend. And what makes the situtation even more complicated, he’s the bassist in band called SILENT BLACK KITTY who’s being criticized for being nothing but a copy band of Inohari.
Fukumenkei Noise follows Nino and the two very different boys, Yuzu and Momo, and their bands all the way to the top of the pop music world. With the added element of ‘real’ music, the anime will hopefully express even more powerfully the youthful energy and passion of the manga, currently running in Hana to Yume. I can’t wait. And please note: a post for the manga is coming to this very space next week!

Palace Meiji by Kuze Banko (Hakusensha)→ The end of the month will bring readers the final chapter of Kuze Banko’s series Palace Meiji in Hakusensha’s Betsuhana (Bessatsu Hana to Yume), with its June issue in stores April 26. To commemorate the conclusion of the magazine’s number one title, Palace Meji will be getting the magazine’s cover, a color spread and a furoku fan book called “Palace no omoide” (literally “Memories of the Palace”) along with the last chapter. And I’m getting my tissues ready because I really enjoyed young hero Kimiyori’s years of training and working at Meiji Palace, serving the young, tough and beautiful (fictional) empress Akiko. 6 comic volumes filled with episodes of court life in alternative modern-meets-traditional Japan, subversions of gender roles and lots of action, human drama, warm humour and suspense have been published so far, already destined to become classic shōjo manga material.
In related news, another long-running series, the romantic comedy Pochama ni by Hirama Kaname will come to an end in that same issue of Betsuhana.

The final volume of Izumi Kaneyoshi's Joou no Hana→ Following up from this post and the publication of the final volume of Izumi Kaneyoshi’s Joō no hana, it’s only fair to say the fantasy romance series stuck out like a rainbow-colored swallowtail butterfly among the brownish grey moths usually running in Shogakukan’s Betsucomi. The publisher itself must have come to the same realization and transferred the artist to the place she rightfully belongs on its roster of shōjo magazines, that being Monthly flowers. Izumi’s new series of one-shots will start with its first story titled Suisō Yakyoku (let me see, Nocturne of the Water Tank?), a whopping 60 pages including color pages plus the cover of the magazine, published in Gekkan flowers 6/2017 out on April 28. Looks like we’re back in the present day with a ‘it’s slightly complicated’ type of romantic comedy, judging from the short bit of description and the illustration of the two main characters on the flowers preview page.
The current flowers issue (5/2017) celebrates the 20th anniversary of Watanabe Taeko’s Kaze hikaru along with a sticker calender furoku, the beginning of the final story arc of Tamura Yumi’s long-running post-apocalyptic action manga 7SEEDS (which I must admit has the ability to give me nightmares, that series is just not for the faint of heart), and the very last chapter of Kodama Yuki’s Tsukikage Baby, the follow-up to her hit series Sakamichi no Apollon (Kids on the Slope).
My order with the limited edition of the final volume of Joō no hana with the memorial fan book isn’t here yet but I noticed it’s already sold out at most places and going for slightly crazy prices at amazon… See the cover for it, which wasn’t out when I wrote my post last month, on the top right!

So this looks like a fun-packed month that is guaranteed to bring lots of material to shorten rainy spring days and long commutes to and from school/work!

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Posted on Apr 2, 2017 (Sun, 2:34 am).

[Manga & Movie News] Movie adaptation of Okazaki Kyōko’s River’s Edge announced

River's Edge by Okazaki Kyouko (Takarajimasha)The most exciting news of the past few days to me came in the form of the announcement of a movie adaption of Okazaki Kyōko’s iconic manga River’s Edge. Principal photography is already being done while the movie is scheduler for a 2018 release in Japanese theaters. Okazaki started her work as a professional mangaka in the early 1980s, releasing mostly short stories and one-volume series both in manga magazine but also sub-culture and fashion magazines. Her extremely productive career – which earned her a cult following among readers and critics alike – was brought to a sudden tragic halt when she was hit by an SUV in 1996. To this day, she hasn’t been physically able to publish a new manga. She is thoroughly missed by her fans and throughout the years has influenced and inspired a lot of creative and intellectual people, among them artists, musicians, film directors, as well as cultural critics and scholars.

River’s Edge (published from 1993 until 1994 in the fashion magazine CUTiE and as a tankōbon in 1994 by Takarajimasha) tells the story of Haruna, a girl in senior high school who recently broke up with her bully and drugdealer boyfriend, and Yamada Ichirō, who is secretly gay and one of the victims of Haruna’s ex-boyfriend’s cruelties. Yamada one day tells Haruna her about his strange ‘treasure’ – a dead body he found by the edge of the river… River’s Edge is undoubtedly among Okazaki Kyōko’s most accomplished works. It is carried by Okazaki’s characteristic way of portraying young people in the 1980s and, in this case, the 1990s, their boredom, loneliness and lack of direction, partly due to their parents’ affluence, their fears and ambitions, their obsession with appearance – but Okazaki goes deep below the surface and finds the ugliness people try to hide and, at the same time, the very moving and fleeting beauty of what it means to be human.

The movie adaptation is currently in its filming stage, with director Yukisada Isao collaborating with Setoyama Misaki on the script. Yukisada rose to fame in 2001 with GO, a romantic zainichi action drama based on the same-titled novel written by Kaneshiro Kazuki. I’m very interested in seeing how he translates Okazaki’s very distinctive visual style into moving pictures. Haruna, the heroine, will be played by Nikadō Fumi and Yamada by Yoshizawa Ryō. (Coincidently, the two have previously acted together in the 2016 movie adaptation of Hatta Ayuko’s manga ÅŒkamishoujo to Kuroōji (Wolf Girl and Black Prince, serialized in Betsuma/Shueisha).) This will be the second movie adaptation of a manga by Okazaki Kyōko, following Helter Skelter for which Okazaki received the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize and which she worked on until the accident in 1996. The movie starring Sawajiri Erika was directed by photographer Ninagawa Mika and released in 2012.

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Posted on Mar 27, 2017 (Mon, 1:08 am).

[Mangaka Profile] Yamakawa Aiji (山川あいじ)

Namakemono to Haru by Yamakawa AijiAround the beginning of the current millenium, a number of young manga artists debuted through Shueisha’s monthly shōjo manga magazine Bessatsu Margaret (Betsuma) and its now defunct bimonthly sister magazine Deluxe Margaret (Derama), immediately grabbing their readers’ attention with eye-catching illustrations that relied heavily on cute details and ornaments, bright and often bold color combinations and intricate fashion designs. Their stories’ heroines were school girls whose lives and thoughts orbitted around school, friendship and, just as importantly, boys which isn’t all that surprising considering the target readership and the tradition of their ‘mothership’ magazine. But these girls went about their daily routines in style. They tried to find freedom in their restricted day to day life inside their own microcosm of female friends and boys while mirroring contemporary fashion trends with their pop punk or gyaru-style clothes. And just as prominent were their big eyes originally reserved for characters from Ribon, Betsuma‘s younger sister magazine mostly read by elementary school girls. It is definitely not wrong to assume that these young artists were heavily influenced by one of the most popular mangaka published through Ribon in the early 1990s, Yazawa Ai and her fashionable yet assertive girls.

It was always up to the respective artists how much they wanted to rely on style over substance or the other way around, going deeper than just that pretty surface and showing the insecurities, challenges, mistakes but also happiness and freedom their characters experienced on their way to (more or less) owning their future. The artists who were the most successful at combining light-hearted, fun aesthetics and tone with an underlying melancholy and seriousness were, to me, Aruko whose collaboration with Kawahara Kazune, Ore Monogatari!! (My Love Story!!) became a bestselling series read by both girls and boys, women and men alike, Takano Ichigo (who ironically rose to fame with orange only after Betsuma/Shueisha basically dropped her and Futabasha had the good sense to take her in instead) and also, to a lesser extend, Yamaguchi Izumi, but especially Yamakawa Aiji.

Renren by Yamakawa AijiYamakawa Aiji (山川あいじ) started her career like most shōjo mangaka with a string of short stories and shorter series published in Betsuma and Derama with a steady output of one annual volume of collected short stories from 2002 to 2006. What kept readers coming back for more were her beautiful color artworks, her stories and heroines that emanated youth and freshness, boldness but also vulnerability and uncertainty. Then the string of new works was somehow broken and while I kept waiting for her name to appear in Betsuma again there was nothing, nothing but silence.

Chocolate Underground by Yamakawa AijiThe next time I spotted her name in Betsuma again, I did a double take: in 2008, she published a mini-series called Chocolate Underground, an adaptation of an Alan Shearer novel for children called Bootleg about an underground youth resistance movement formed after chocolate had been banned by the government. The story was more shōnen material than anything but what was even more surprising was Yamakawa’s refined new character design and artistic style. Gone were the overly huge eyes, the girly designs of the color illustrations, the focus on school uniforms brought to life with the latest fashion items and accessories!

About two years before Aruko did the same, Yamakawa collaborated with Kawahara Kazune, a hugely popular but more mainstream Betsuma artist, for a one-volume short series called Tomodachi no Hanashi (plus an additional one shot) in 2009-2010. Yamakawa contributed the visuals, i.e. the manga itself, while Kawahara penned the story. This was more in vein of what Yamakawa had published previously. But her artistic evolution made one wonder what direction her stories would take now, if she would write her own stories again. And she did so immediately after her collab, with a new shorter series called YajirobÄ“ which was collected in two volumes in 2011 and 2012 respectively. It can’t be stressed enough how absolutely stunning this manga is – the artwork and story are both subtle, restrained yet go beyond and much deeper than the average shōjo manga fare her peers create. YajirobÄ“ deserves all the attention it can get and I will post a full review of it here very soon!

Yamakawa Aiji’s style after her comeback had changed so much that Shueisha gave her the chance to republish her first two collections of short stories, Chōcho ni naru (originally published in 2002) and Futaribocchi (2003) with new cover designs in 2011, coinciding with the release of the first volume of YajirobÄ“. See the images below for a comparison of the old vs. the new cover designs.

The original cover designs for Yamakawa Aiji's Choucho ni naru and Futaribocchi  The new cover designs for the re-releases of Yamakawa's two early short story collections

Cover illustration by Yamakawa Aiji for MdN magazineIn early 2014, the design magazine MdN devoted one of their issues to the “shōjo manga design revolution” brought about by the fact that the big publishing companies gradually stopped using uniform cover designs for each of their comic labels. Graphic design companies are now hired to collaborate with the mangaka for the comic book covers and a serie’s “graphic identity.” The cover of MdN featured an illustration by none other than Yamakawa Aiji who represented more than anyone else the new freedom found in the art and design of mainstream shōjo manga.

But back to Yamakawa’s work as a mangaka. Even though the second volume of YajirobÄ“ promised a continuation of the story, the series pretty much ended after that volume with an open end but in a quite conclusive and satisfying way for the reader. Yamakawa’s next series, Stand Up!, marked the move from Betsuma to its bimonthly sister magazine The Margaret. So far, three volumes have been released but Yamakawa had to stop working on the series and then vanished almost completely from the professional manga world in late 2014/early 2015. In April 2015 the editors of The Margaret had to let their readers know that Stand Up! would go on an indefinite hiatus because of the artist’s health issues.

Cover illustration by Yamakawa Aiji for the Betsuma 2/2017 furoku One can only speculate about the reasons for her disappearance as a mangaka. A possible explanation could be the huge stress put upon the shoulders of manga artists who have to meet magazine deadlines for the latest chapter of their works. Stand Up! wasn’t even running regularly in The Margaret which comes out every 2 months and it was Yamakawa’s only running series so her workload must have been relatively low compared to that of other, busier artists. But then there’s also the need to conform to the genre conventions of the magazine your work is running in which you are more or less gently reminded of by your editor who knows what readers want and expect from your work through the “enquette” postcards sent in. Add a little bit of pressure and doubts you give yourself as an artist and storyteller, the financial insecurities of a freelance artist, the toll that the pressure and committment to your work can take on your own health but also your social relationships… Reasons to stop working as a professional mangaka exist in abundance but I hope Yamakawa Aiji makes it through somehow!

Cover illustration by Yamakawa Aiji for the Betsuma 4/2017 furoku manga Yamakawa has been publishing a bit of idol-related work as a doujinshi author under a different pen name but apart from that, it’s become relatively quiet as far as a continuation of Stand Up! or a new story are concerned, unfortunately. There is light at the end of the tunnel, though! Yamakawa Aiji contributed the cover artwork for the furoku manga volume which came with Betsuma 2/2017 (released January 13; see the cover above). And she did another (super cute!!) cover illustration for the furoku manga volume titled Kiss Collection coming with Betsuma 4/2017 (released a few days ago, on March 13; see right for the cover). For now one can only hope that Yamakawa Aiji makes a full recovery and resurfaces in the professionally published manga world very soon because her unique style and engaging stories from her very memorable characters’ points of view are such a vital contribution to the world of shōjo manga!

Please stay tuned for a review of one of Yamakawa Aiji’s longer works, the 2-volume YajirobÄ“ coming very very soon!

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Categories: Mangaka Profile.
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Posted on Mar 17, 2017 (Fri, 2:01 am).


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