Book Girl and the Suicidal Mime

March 13, 2012

Book Girl and the Suicidal Mime is the first volume in the eight volume "Book Girl" light novel series by Mizuki Nomura. Originally published in Japan from 2006-2008, it is currently being translated and released by Yen Press.  Four volumes are available currently with new ones coming out on a six month schedule. The series is told from the point of view of Konoha Inoue, a 16-year-old second-year high school student. Two years ago his first novel became a best seller, but the world thought it was written by a girl, so he's never really gotten credit. The embarrassment of the situation followed by a personal tragedy made him swear of writing ever again.  Until a year ago he met Tohko Amano who is one year his senior, president of the then one member literature club, and a goblin who lives by eating the written word.  According to Tohko, handwritten words are the tasty, so after Konoha stumbled on her secret she bullied him into becoming a member of her club where he spends each afternoon writing her "snacks", sweet love stories when they are getting along, bitter-tasting tales with bad writing that breaks all the grammar rules when he's annoyed with her.

The novel starts the year after they met, with their back story filled in through Konoha's internal ruminations.  In the present, a fellow student, Chia Takeda, has come to their club begging for help.  It seems Tohko set up a "mailbox" offering help with love, so Konoha is roped into writing her love letters to woo an archery student, Shuji Kataoka. Konoha enjoys writing the letters and finds himself cheering for Chia's love, until things take a strange turn.  No one seems to have ever heard of Shuji, despite Chia's claims that he is a popular archery student and always has girls flocking around him. So just who is Chia giving Konoha's letters too? And just where is Shuji Kataoka?

Konoha could be a pitiable character, but instead he is a likeable fellow I can't help but sympathize with. He has had some painful incidents in his life that he's still not fully recovered from, and it tells in his reactions to the world around him. It quickly became clear to me that the comfortable relationship he shares with Tohko is unusual, and seems to have had a healing affect on him some. Tohko is also an interesting character, the way she gets so into both talking about and eating books.  With the story told totally from Konoha's point-of-view, we're left wondering why she choose him and what she is thinking during the times he glimpses a sorrowful expression on her face.

As a bonus, the novel features quite a bit of discussion on various novels and authors, both American and Japanese.  One in particular, No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai (which is available in English ), is a core aspect of this novel that plays into the story as a whole and in some ways controls the others actions.  These discussions provide both an interesting take of the various novels mentioned and a look into Japanese literature as a whole. I wonder if future volumes will similarly have a core novel that intertwines and speaks to the central plot of the story.

All in all, if it isn't clear by now, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. I usually don't like first-person POV novels. I rarely read them and have more than once rejected a book because of it.  But I bought this one blind based just on the blurb on Yen Press' site. It was such an interesting set up - a book eating demon and a former novelist.  I'm glad I gave it a chance, because it is really quite good!  The set up might make it seem like it would be a comedy, but it is really more of a drama with some darker elements, including the hints of Konoha's past.  Interspersed throughout the novel are bits of letters, dark lonely letters than indicate the writer is in agony.  The author of the letters is unclear at first, but as you read along it seems to become clearer, but does it really? Nomura spins a wonderfully engrossing tale that had me forcing myself to put the book down long enough to sleep (work and all).  I finished it in two days though and am already eagerly anticipating the next volume, Book Girl and the Famished Spirit. Yen Press' translation seemed clean to me and I can't recall any real grammatical or structural errors. 

Rating: A+

Persona 4: The Animation

January 16, 2012

One of the anime series I've been watching via Hulu recently is Persona 4.  It is an adaptation of the hit PS2 game, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4, released by Atlus back in 2008. I love that game, only slightly less than Persona 3.  The anime closely follows the game's story, opening with high schooler Yu Narukami moving to Inaba to live with his uncle and young cousin after his parents go to work overseas. His first day at his new school, a dead body is found near campus, left displayed in a gruesome and unusual fashion. The victim appeared on a phantom TV channel, the Midnight Channel, the night before. Together with classmates Chie, Yosuke, and Yukiko, Narukami discovers a secret world inside TVs that they are able to enter. There they meet Teddie, who explains that someone is throwing people into the TV to be killed.  While battling the Shadows that infest the TV world, the gang must confront their own inner demons to save themselves and future victims, while searching for the serial killer throwing people into Teddie's world.

The opening of the series is fairly straight forward from the game, with the introduction of Narukami, his new family, and his new school.  I thought the way they handled the personas was well done, and I really liked that they kept Narukami's unique aspect of being able to use multiple personas as well as combo them into attacks.  While many of the scenes are basically animations of the games, for me the story is so good that I'm glad the show didn't muck around with it too much and risk ruining a good thing. 

The anime, of course, lacks some of the more annoying elements of the game (like the 5 million battles, 100+ hours of game play, and side quests with the school and relationships, etc). However, it does manage to honor some of those elements in nice ways, such as the school trip and the mysterious bowl of unfinishable noodles they characters share in one scene.  The addition of the ramen that can be delivered anywhere is hilarious and helps add a light hearted side to a series that could easily get drowned in the darkness of its general story.

The animation is great, a perfect blend to the game imagery with some nice touch up. Not surprising as the art director from the game also did this series. The same voice actors from the game also stepped back into their roles, which explains why it all sounds good. :-) On the whole I'm quite enjoying this series and look forward to watching more. The series is still running in Japan, with Sentai Filmworks doing the Hulu simulcast for those of us in North America.  As of this writing, 13 episodes are available, with new ones being released every week or so. The first DVD releases are expected sometime this year, but no definitive date has been set yet.

If you're a fan of the game and the story, then the anime is a great way to revisit the story without the 100+ hours of game play required to get through the game. If you've never played the game, there are some parts of the series that may seem confusing, as it really is a fairly straight adaption, just without as many battles with shadows. The Velvet Room scenes, for example, and the whole thing with the Arcana make more sense if you're familiar with the game. However, the story as a whole is still compelling, so its worth giving it a shot.

Rating: B+

P.S. If you watch it, make sure to watch the bits after the end credits or sometimes the start of the next episode will make no sense!!

Happy New Year!

January 1, 2012

It's 2012! The world is supposedly ending this year, so let's go out with a bang!  Okay, yeah, I don't believe that BS either, but I do want to do better with this blog. I've been sporadic in posting in the last year, not because of lack of desire or lack of reading/watching anything, just laziness and well, 2011 was a really busy year for me, including some major projects at work sucking my energy out. So this year, I'm making it my goal to post to this blog at least once a month!  Not a lot, but certainly doable. I'm hoping it will be more, of course ;-)

As part of that goal, I'm planning to do more posts reacting to anime/manga news I read (where it interests me), some more editorial pieces on the anime/manga market in general, and the like.  I may also try more short form reviews, where I give quick paragraphs on some anime I'm currently watching online and the like. Oh, yeah, and fixing that archive thing since it seems to be broken. :-P So I hope you all stick around with me for the ride!

(P.S. seeing folks rating and commenting on posts helps energize me to write cause I know people are actually out there reading ;) )

Sand Chronicles (Series)

October 13, 2011

Written by Hinako Ashihara, Sand Chronicles is one of the series that appeared in Viz's short lived monthly magazine, Shojo Beat. It ran in Japan from 2003 till 2005, and Viz picked it up and began releasing chapters in Shojo Beat in 2007. The central character in this series is Ann Uekusa, who is 12 when she moves to Shimane with her mother after her parents divorce. They live with Ann's grandparents, and at first Ann has trouble adjusting to live in the small, close-knit, gossip filled town after coming from Tokyo which is depicted as being like New York (i.e. no one sees anything).  Ann's mother has problems, however, and that is clear very early own. Not long after moving there, Ann's mother kills herself.  Ann gets through it, in large part due her friendship with Daigo, and later siblings Fuji and Shika. As the years pass, friendship turns to love, but then Ann moves back to Tokyo. The distance, rivals for affections, and Ann's on-going psychological issues begins to strain both love and friendship.

Sand Chronicles spans Ann's live for well over a decade, from when Ann is 12 through when she is 26. For me, the most powerful thing about this series is the story itself. Ashihara pulls us along on Ann's journey, as she makes friends, loses friends, falls in love, loses love, and copes with the various changes happening in her life while also trying to deal with growing up. Along the way, we get a very realistic look, in my humble opinion, of teenage relationships, with confusion, uncertain, overstated optimism, casually given promises, betrayal, and heartbreak, along with the tender, awkward sweetness of a mutual first love.  Throughout the story we also glimpse Ann's unresolved trauma behind her mother's suicide is masterfully interwoven, managing to be both subtle yet clear, not only from Ann herself, but from those around her.  The stories with the side-characters is also interesting, particularly the family issues that Fuji and Shika have to deal with, and how that affects their relationships and actions regarding Ann and Daigo.

The art is good, with consistently well-drawn, distinctive characters, despite the sometimes large cast. The backgrounds are mostly kept simple, if there at all, yet with the detail needed to convey the place and feel of the scene. Viz's translation is, of course, well done, with translation notes included in each volume. Sand Chronicles is technically a ten-volume series, however the actual story concludes at the end of the eighth volume. The remaining two volumes are a collection of "side stories", including a look at the four friend's parents as kids, stories with some of the side characters, and a look at the characters in their 30s.  So you can choose to just stop at volume 8, but if you want to see more about the past and future, snag the last two as well.  In particular, the story 30 years before the main story, about Daigo and Ann's mothers, that starts volume 9 adds some extra depth to the main story and Ann's mother as a character. Also in Volume 10, you can get a bit of Daigo's past and his thoughts of events that happened during the story's climax.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the series, and I hope we see more from Ashihara, as she seems very skilled at telling highly dramatic stories without overloading on sap or melodrama.

Rating: A

Phantom Dream (series)

September 26, 2011

Phantom Dream is the second manga series by Natsuki Takaya, of Fruits Basket fame, to be published in English, but it is actually the first serial work she wrote. Published four years before its more famous predecessor, this five-volume series followed Tamaki Otoya a monsu (head monk) who is also the shugoshi who is charged with excising the negative emotions that take over people and turn them to monsters. His lover, Asahi, supports him as best she can, though she appears to have no powers and has been told by the Otoya family that she will never be allowed to marry Tamaki because she has no power. Opposing Tamaki and working hard to create even more demons are the Gekka. Led by Eiji, they claim they want to save the world by recreating and seek to reawaken their king, Hira, to fulfill this goal. As the battle intensifies, Tamaki must come to terms with having to kill to save the victims of the Gekka, but even his rapidly increasing powers may not be enough to save the ones he loves the most.

Often when I read a series written by someone who I've already read works for, I find that the characters are similar, and their stories frequently have similar themes. This, thankfully, is not the case with Phantom Dream. Despite the misleading front cover of the first volume that is stylized to resemble Kyo, the characters of Phantom Dream stand on their own and bear little resemblance to the later Fruits Basket. They are, for the most part uniquely designed and distinct, and well drawn. Asahi, in particular, is beautifully rendered, as is Hira. If there was one recurring theme from both series, it would be the inclusion of a few cats, though I must admit, I found the ones in Phantom Dream were actually better drawn than those later seen in Fruits Basket.

Storywise...well I can only say that Takaya is a masterful spinner of tales and if this is what her first work was like, I will be giddily waiting for her to write a new series! Phantom Dream may be short, but it spins a powerful story, as the past is brought to light. Both the characters and the events are mired in shades of gray, with few being clearly right or clearly wrong. As the motivations of the Gekka come to light, one can't help but feel sympathy and even understanding, even as you know they must be stopped. Tamaki himself reflects this internal struggles wonderfully, with those around him acting as the foils for various viewpoints one could take. The romance between Asahi and Tamaki is no less beautiful for having already been established before the start of the series.

The only major criticism I would give this series is that it felt too short and a bit rushed. I think it could easily have been stretched out another volume or two to flush out some elements only hinted at or quickly glossed over. In particular, one revelation near the end could have used some serious foreshadowing to make it less "whoa, WTF BBQ." As it is, it came out of left field and while Takaya managed to gloss over why there were no hints of it in the rest of the story, I still would have liked at least a clue or two. A longer series would also have helped flesh out some of the side characters, as this series has a pretty full cast for its size and as such, some were left on the sidelines more as background versus having a real roll to play.

All in all, I would certainly recommend this series both to Takaya fans and those who have yet to enjoy Fruits Basket. Just have a little tissue ready for the final volume or two. :-)

Rating: A-