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Friday, September 3, 2010
Fluff
The Gentlemen’s Alliance, Inubaka, and Flower of Life
It’s been one of those weeks, y’know? Nothing specifically unpleasant has happened, aside from the climate trying to incrementally remove my face, but it’s been kind of a slog. After a week like this, the only sensible thing to do is fill up the tub, pour myself a glass of something gently numbing, and surrender to the fluff.
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Arina Tanemura’s The Gentlemen’s Alliance (Viz – Shojo Beat) is one of those romantic comedies set in a private school with a Byzantine caste system that the manga-ka immediately begins demolishing.
The Imperial Academy is a refuge for the children of the wealthy, the crème de la social crème. But even cream is rated for quality, and students are divided into bronze, silver and gold categories. Haine is decidedly bronze, a reformed delinquent who has enrolled at the Academy to pursue her abiding crush on Shizumasa, who is gold, or perhaps 24-carat gold. He’s president of the student council and the undisputed king of status and wealth, but Haine loves him because of her memories of brief but memorable encounters with his warm, outgoing side.
That side seems to have… Oh, I can’t even pretend to care about these two. Their budding romance doesn’t interest me in the slightest, though there’s nothing wrong with how either character has been conceived. They’re serviceable enough protagonists.
What catches my attention about the book and promises to hold it is the frankly bizarre supporting cast Tanemura has assembled to distract readers from the star-crossed drips at the story’s core. To describe them as motley is to understate things rather drastically. The student council vice president is a gay yakuza heir. The recording secretary is a frosty, man-hating mantrap whose softer side, while extant, is barely large enough to qualify as a side. The treasurer seems somewhat bipolar, and she’s rarely seen without her pet-- an angry miniature sheep. There’s even a cadre of anarchists, which may or may not be an official student organization.
I’m sure I’ll have to tolerate a lot of emotional misunderstandings and lowering defenses from Haine and her dream boy, but their entourage promises funny, freakish distractions.
(Comments are based on a complimentary copy provided by Viz, who went the extra mille with supplemental material in this volume. There’s a short bonus story, gag strips, remarks from the author, and eight pages of translation notes. The book is set for release March 6.)
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After spending last week blathering on about how important a charismatic central character can be to a successful manga series, I feel like kind of a sham for giving not one but two titles a pass in spite of bland leads. But like the leads of Yukiya Sakuragi’s Inubaka (Viz), I’m Crazy for Dogs.
Suguri is a recent high-school graduate with little in the way of prospects or plans until she meets Teppei, a Tokyo pet-store manager. More accurately, Suguri’s mutt Lupin meets Teppei’s purebred Noa, resulting in the kind of brief encounter that can send puppy breeders weeping to their attorneys. With a love of dogs and nothing better to do, Suguri offers to work at Teppei’s shop to atone for the impromptu canine congress.
Suguri and Teppei are pleasant enough company, but the real fun of the series comes from Sakuragi’s astute observations on the highs and lows of pet ownership. There’s a nice blend of comedy and uplift, along with a clear sense of the responsibilities of the relationship between dog and owner.
There’s also some fine, sharp dialogue. Suguri is having a tough time developing professional detachment and the ability to care for the shop’s puppies without viewing them as pets. Teppei sums the experience up quite neatly: “You get to meet so many dogs and become friends. Doesn’t that make you happy?” Followed by: “Time to clean their crap.” Much as I love workplace comedies, their settings often bear no resemblance to any business on earth. Inubaka’s Woofles has the added benefit of seeming real.
It’s not a perfect series. Among the supporting cast is a detestable, freeloading slacker friend of Teppei’s who seems like he got thrown out of Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad for being such a ridiculously obnoxious cliché. On the whole, though, it’s a nice meditation on the bonds between people and their dogs with plenty of appealing touches along the way.
(Comments are based on a complimentary copy provided by Viz. The extras are scant, which is too bad, because it seems like there are all kinds of dog-friendly charitable and educational associations that would have happily provided some back-up pieces. The book is due for release Feb. 20.)
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Is there a creator better suited for recuperative weekend reading than Fumi Yoshinaga? Her manga is chatty, amiable, intelligent, and slyly, sometimes raucously, funny. It’s often light on plot, but the other pleasures are so ample that it hardly matters.
The best summary I can provide of Flower of Life (Digital Manga – Juné) is that it’s a comedy set in a high school. Since it’s a comedy set in a high school created by Yoshinaga, it breezes past subjects like leukemia, adultery, otaku culture, box lunches, everyday mortifications, and chicken sexing. By some unexplained creative alchemy, it all coheres into a funny, moving whole.
Yoshinaga doesn’t need a conventional narrative structure to generate comedy or drama. Emotional highs and lows can spring from the most mundane exchange, and her ear for those kinds of moments is generally pitch-perfect. She’s generous with them as well, wrangling a relatively sprawling cast of teachers, students, and family members and making them endearingly distinct with short, sure strokes of characterization. Wit and style coexist peacefully with sincerity and emotional detail.
I did find myself wishing Juné would provide some translation notes. When a moment in the story could be enhanced with a little additional background information (like when a celebrity is referenced), it would be nice to be able to flip to the back of the book instead of having to Google it. And the copy editing in the early pages is a little sloppy.
But it’s easy to nitpick production issues when the creator in question Yoshinaga. When I sit down with one of her works, I want the experience to be seamless and the production to be generous. Because really, isn’t she worth it?
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April 22, 2008:
February 4, 2008:
November 20, 2006:
A Comic-Con without the Captain
