I got CARDED?!

No manga post today. Instead of staying home and reading manga I went out with a friend to see the new Rob Zombie Halloween movie. I prefer the original. The most shocking thing about the movie was what happened before the movie.

When I went to purchase my ticket, I was asked for ID! There were six windows, all full of people and I was the only one they asked. I looked at the guy (who was my age) behind the counter and asked "What rating is this movie?" I thought maybe because it was Rob Zombie it had some sort of age restriction or something. But it was only rated R, which means the guy thought I looked younger then eighteen.

Now I think I've aged pretty well, but eighteen? (For those who don't know, I'm 31!)

Manga a day: Happy Hustle High vol 5

Amazon.com: Happy Hustle High, Volume 5 (Happy Hustle High): Books: Rie Takada ISBN: 1421503239 ISBN-13: 9781421503233

I knew going from a complex story like Dokebi Bride to a regular shoujo manga was probably a bad idea. I think I would have been disappointed with this anyway. Volume five of Happy Hustle High is the final volume of the series and it feels like filler. The series could have ended with volume 4 with no problem. The last "plot" chapter was second chapter of volume 4, where wild-haired Hanabi chose Yasu over Take.

I really don't even see why they continued the story. They were really stretching for topics. The first three chapters were completely filler. The first chapter starts out with Hanabi playing heroine, helping the girls in class get revenge on the sexual predators that apparently surround their school. Their solution, beat 'em up, trash their cars and take their money. Not that I don't appreciate the sentiment, but if they actually have enough people flashing and sexually harassing the girls on a daily basis I don't think I'd be starting a campaign to beat them up. I'd be switching schools! Then the boys come and save the day and tell all those silly girls to stop protecting themselves to let the men handle that kind of things. *eyeroll* 9_9

The next two chapters are just as deep. One being a "what if" story about what it would be like if Yasu didn't have a woman allergy and Hanabi was still a crybaby. The chapter after that is the obligatory preparing for the school festival chapter where Hanabi gets to wear a pretty dress. Seriously, that's the climax of that chapter.

Then the last dangling plot point is tied up when Hanabi and Yasu finally have sex. Hanabi's only been thinking about it since volume three. What finally gets them together? Yasu meets Hanabi's father and he teases him about liking Take better. Great reason to hook up with your girlfriend there, guy. Not that Hanabi cares, she's just happy that they had sex. Her classmates notice her walking funny the next day, and guess that she's finally "become a woman." 

They swarm around Yasu to congratulate him, and lo and behold, his woman allergy has been cured! He no longer sees them all as chicks (literally little baby chickens) but people. Of course this doesn't sit well with Hanabi, since his attention is now split. With the day of the school festival arriving, Hanabi is feeling neglected but decides that she's going to trust Yasu. That lasts all of a couple hours after she's been chasing him around campus for the length of the festival without being able to catch him. Just as she's about to give up hope, she's reunited with Yasu who declares his love for her in front of the whole school. Turns out he was talking to all those girls just so he could find out about what Hanabi was like before they met. How sweet. I'd love it if my boyfriend decided to hang out and find out about me with my friends, without me. It's not like hey... he couldn't have talked to Hanabi about it or anything.

Despite the failings in the story, Takada's art is continually pleasing. Her artwork bounces between sexy, cute and funny quickly and smoothly. She's got a very crisp and clean style that I really like. Her characters a distinctive, though if you read her other books you'll see character "archetypes" turn up. But you'll never be confused who is who in her books. I've also never had a "which word bubble am I supposed to read next" problem either, he layouts are flawless. It's a relief to see such expressive characters. Hanabi's moods bounce off the wall and her expressions change just as quickly. In some books it can be disturbing to see a character become chibi or super deformed as often as Hanabi does. But Takada actually manages to make it look natural.

Even though I've found the last two series I've read of Takada's, Punch and Happy Hustle High, disappointing story-wise I still look forward to more from her. I'd always be willing to try a new series just for the art. Her ten volume series Wild Act remains a favorite method of mine to addict friends to manga. I hope she manages to craft a story of similar quality soon. 

Technorati Tags: manga, review, shojo, graphic novel

Manga A Day: Dokebi Bride vol 5 (and other volumes revisited)

Amazon.com: Dokebi Bride: Volume 5 (Dokebi Bride): Books: Marley ISBN: 1600090796 ISBN-13: 9781600090790

This is the last volume of Dokebi Bride I have, so I'll be moving on to something else tomorrow. I haven't decided what yet, it'll be hard follow a complex story like this one with a regular manga. Volume five likes to jump around a lot and once again I don't know where the story is going, but I like how it gets there. This volume introduces a whole bunch of new characters, but I don't know how many will stick around for future volumes. It's a very special episode of Dokebi Bride.

In volume four, a young shaman showed up and asked for Sunbi's grandmother's shaman armory claiming it as her own. In volume five we go back into the past a bit and get to learn about the shaman, Hwaran. It's interesting that there is no villain in Dokebi Bride. Here is a woman who shows up on Sunbi's doorstep and asks her for the last mementoes she has of her grandmother, and the flashback is meant to give us understanding why Hwaran should have them. At the same time, there are no heroes. Hwaran is imperfect and not terribly sympathetic, but you understand her. The same is true for Sunbi's family, Sunbi herself, her Dokebi Gwangsoo, and just about any other character introduced.

Sunbi does not react well to being told to give up her grandmother's artifacts. Sunbi pushes Hwaran's buttons by talking to the guardian spirits that she's having trouble communicating with. Hwaran retaliates by trying to forcibly read Sunbi's spirit. Sunbi throws her off easily, but in the ensuing fit manages to reopen painful wounds with her father. Hwaran is thrown out, but takes the armory with her, all except for the sword. Sunbi manages to keep that for herself.

So upset with having to part with the last of her memories of her grandmother that Sunbi runs away and the story picks up two months later with her living on the street. She falls into a runaway community and the rest of the story plays out, something like one of those "very special" tv episodes that deal with teen "issues." Of course with an added dash of the same supernatural flair the overall story has. It's not just a filler volume as we do learn some important stuff about Sunbi's strained relationship with her father.

To keep things light we also have a bit with Gwangsoo, who despite being a mystical being, can't find Sunbi either and misses his "bride" lots. He tries a charm in desperation to get her to come home. He has to sneak into her room and in the process we get to meet another new character, who at the moment has no name. He's the first attractive male they've introduced into the series, so if there is a true love interest for Sunbi in this story I'm guessing he's it. In the previous volumes there was mention of a son of Sunbi's mother's friend who would be coming to stay and all signs point to Mr "likes to run around without a shirt on" being him.

So I've talked a lot about Dokebi Bride's complex and layered story and keep promising to talk about the art. Marley is the exact opposite of most manga and manwha artists. With most artists, they focus on the characters and backgrounds come later if at all. Usually, even if the proportions might be off, manga artists focus on making their characters express and their backgrounds are stiff and utilitarian. In Dokebi Bride often times the environment is much more expressive then the people that inhabit the space.

The characters are inconsistently drawn, often having a very attractive and detailed introductory "image shot" and then becoming less detailed in simpler in the rest of the book. This is how artists typically establish scenery, a very detailed shot to "frame" the scene in your mind and then just using suggestion to fill in the blanks in subsequent panels. I get the feeling that she designs the characters, lacks the skill to make them express properly. Sunbi's father, for example, has two expressions, eyebrows up and eyebrows down. Eyebrows up is when he's surprised. Eyebrows down is for when he's angry, concerned, thinking, worried, or any time he's not surprised. She is especially weak when trying to express extreme emotion. Take these panels where Sunbi's step sister is being snide:

Sunbi's sister is the blonde who's features are wandering around her face. I think this is supposed to Marly's version of "super deformed" and it feels really inappropriate to the story. Everything else (even the dokebi and spirits) are so realistically drawn that any kind of exaggeration like this seems out of place. And that housekeeper is actually drawn like that all the time, unimportant characters don't even get real features or care.

But, that's not to discount the real beauty that hides in these books. Click on these two thumbnails to see two beautiful spreads (sorry for the poor scans).

When she wants to detail, she does it and it's gorgeous. Her inhuman characters have way more personality then her humans, just look at this picture of Gwangsoo showing off his bride Sunbi to all his dokebi friends. (Sunbi can't see them at the moment)

And her horror images really can't be beat. Check out this spirit, one of the group that torments Sunbi when she first comes to Seoul. (Don't click on this thumbnail if you're eating.)

And she's funny! She tosses little things that make me laugh all the time.

Pretty much any time the Dokebi's show up, something funny happens. I haven't been able to pin it down, but the dokebi dialogue bits always remind me of Neil Gamian. There was one part in particular where the dokebis are gathered to around Sunbi's buckwheat jelly offering. They sit and debate if they should eat it or not, and in each panel there is a little turnip shaped dokebi that says nothing but "Jelly!" It so reminded me of something that could have happened in Sandman that I actually tried to think if something similar had ever happened.  ( I couldn't think of anything). In volume five, there is a great joke panel where Gwangsoo (above) is crawling across a ceiling and suddenly he's dressed in a spiderman costume.

I look forward to the next volume, it's rare to find a story that keeps your interest even when you have absolutely no idea where it's going. If she could just make her human characters express as freely as her dokebi do, this manwha would be flawless.   

Manga A Day: Dokebi Bride Vol 4

Amazon.com: Dokebi Bride Vol. 4: Books: Marley ISBN: 1600090788 ISBN-13: 9781600090783

It randomly annoys me that Amazon doesn't have the cover for Dokebi Bride vol three on file, but they do have four. Anyway, volume four takes a sudden jump in time from volume three. At the end of three Sunbi had secured a dokebi, Gwangsoo, to help her fend off the evil wandering spirits that were trying to posses her. Things didn't got as planned.

Now it's several months past her arrival in Seoul, she's graduated from 10th grade and is in the 11th. After a bit of trickery to scare her teacher off her case, Sunbi has been spending most of her time clubbing and avoiding everyone. Her only friend remains the nerdy Taehoon. In fact most of her classmates suspect she might be prostituting herself because of the many new clothes and things she walks around with. Actually, she's been getting gold from all of Gwangsoo's dokebi friends. They pay her to get things like soju (a cheap common liquor), crackers and buckweat jelly, or just to stare at her face for a while.

You'd think being rich and having nothing important to do with her time would make a teenage girl happy, but Sunbi remains a bitter pill. She still manages to get tormented by ghosts and since she argues with Gwangsoo he's not even very willing to help her. Plus, her family thinks she's nuts and tricks her into seeing a psychologist. I feel strangely sympathetic to her family, her stepmother, stepsister and father. They obviously have no idea how to connect with her. They make clumsy overtures but Sunbi is so determined to stand on her own that she continually pushes them away.

Sunbi is slowing gaining connections in town however, running into the professor who studies Dokebi myths she met briefly in volume two. I like the professor character and her friend Taehoon, but I know every time they show up we're going to have another info dump on either Korean myth, metaphysics, or some sort of mystic phenomenon. There are sections of the four books like this where the story just stops and they go into a page or two of exposition, but it's especially heavy in this volume.

The story doesn't advance much, but the story remains an engaging mix of drama, horror and comedy that you don't mind too much. The artwork really deserves a post of it's own because I want to scan in a few pages. Tomorrow I'll post on Dokebi Bride vol 5 (the last one I have, so I'll finally move on), and talk about the artwork.

Manga-a-day: Dokebi Bride Volume 1, 2 & 3

Amazon.com: Dokebi Bride Vol. 1 (Dokebi Bride): Books: Marley ISBN: 1600090753 ISBN-13: 9781600090752

Amazon.com: Dokebi Bride: Volume 2 (Dokebi Bride): Books: Marley ISBN: 1600090761 ISBN-13: 9781600090769

Amazon.com: Dokebi Bride: Volume 3 (Dokebi Bride): Books: Marley ISBN: 160009077x ISBN-13: 9781600090776

Now it makes much more sense! Yesterday I read Dokebi Bride 3 but was lost because I couldn't remember the plots of the first two volumes. I could only remember that I really liked them, so I was disappointed when I read three and felt lost. This is partially due to my own bad memory and partially because the story itself isn't linear. I find I have a hard time describing these books because they don't fall into a clear genre.

The monsters and demons are certainly scary, and when the artist/author Marley does tension she does it very well. But I wouldn't call this a horror book. There is definitely an element of family drama, the re-integration of Sunbi into her father's settled city family is a major plot line of the book. But I wouldn't call this a slice of life or family drama. There's a strong thread of the absurd running through the book, but it's definitely not a comedy. It surprises me how well the three elements work together.

The first book starts out with Sunbi in the city adjusting to her new family. It's obvious her father isn't comfortable with her, he can hardly look at her. Her stepmother tries to reneg on a promise to let Sunbi keep her dog but Sunbi cuts her down with hardly any effort. Her stepsister initially makes some friendly overtures, but Sunbi is so awkward she just manages to push her away and make another enemy. After this introduction the rest of the volume is a flashback of Sunbi's live in the small fishing village she lived in with her shaman grandmother. The storytelling is a little awkward, especially since it packs so much into one volume.

The second book is in the present. It's a complete horror show. Sunbi is plagued with demons and ghosts that no one else can see. The affect her physically, making her sick. (They make the reader sick too, they're disgusting and horrifically drawn.) Her classmates think she's a snob because she constantly "sleeps" in class and escapes every free moment. Her family doesn't know what to do with her. The one person who talks to Sunbi is the class president Taehoon. And that's more because his hobby is Kirlian (spirit or aura) photographs and he happened to snap some that show mysterious auras around her besides her own. The threads of her mother's past in Seoul are revealed, and it chases after Sunbi like a nightmare. She is nearly consumed by her fears but a coincidently placed monk temporarily shields her.

This sets the stage for volume three, with the monk's shield failing Sunbi is desperate to find some way to protect herself from all the stray spirits in the city. Feeling that there aren't any divine spirits to be found in the city she decides to call on the Dokebi spirits that she hopes live on the hill behind her school. She manages to trick one into being her servant (so she thinks, he has other ideas.) This leads to a little side adventure at Taehoon's family restaurant where she helps the kitchen spirit settle into the newly expanded kitchen.

The first book is full of mystical wonders like dragons, guardian spirits and sea dokebi. The second full of disgusting and horrid stray spirits. The third has a bunch of comedic relief dokebi. Each one has a different mood but the overall story keeps following the same consistent path. The mystery of the first book sets the stage necessary for the horrors of the second book to exist. I just wish that the third book had maintained the tension the second book had built up.

Since I'm reading Dokebi Bride 4 and 5 tomorrow I'll discuss the art then. It'll be interesting to see where the next book goes.

Manga A Day: Dokebi Bride Vol 3

Amazon.com: Dokebi Bride: Volume 3 (Dokebi Bride): Books: Marley ISBN: 160009077x ISBN-13: 9781600090776

I was going to talk about the manwha (Korean manga/comic) Dokebi Bride volume three, but I find it's been too long since I read the first two. I'm having trouble keeping the characters and plots straight. I think I'll put giving it a review on hold until I can re-read the first two. Dokebi Bride is about Sunbi, a young girl who had been living with her grandmother, a shaman. After her grandmother passes she must move to the city to live with the father she never knew and his new wife and daughter. Plus, she sees ghosts, demons and "dokebis." Dokebis are spirits that sound similar to farires, brownies or pixies. Sometimes helpful, some times tricksters, and usually best avoided.

Once I re-read the first two I'm sure I'll understand why Sunbi was trying to trick a dokebi into being her servant and is suddenly acting like a shaman.

Manga A Day: Flower of Life vol 1,2,3

Amazon.com: Flower Of Life Volume 1 (Yaoi) (Flower of Life): Books: Fumi Yoshinaga ISBN: 1569708746 ISBN-13: 9781569708743

Amazon.com: Flower Of Life Volume 2: Books: Fumi Yoshinaga ISBN: 1569708738 ISBN-13: 9781569708736

Amazon.com: Flower Of Life Volume 3 (Flower of Life): Books: Fumi Yoshinaga ISBN: 1569708290 ISBN-13: 9781569708293

Yes, it's DMP and it's Fumi Soshinaga, but no, it's not Yaoi. Instead Flower of Life is a slice of life manga about Harutaro Hanazono (Haru), a student who started his freshman year of high school a year and one month late due to an extended battle with leukemia. I love pretty much anything Fumi Yoshinaga does. Her artwork is clean and her characters extremely expressive and well rounded. While the first volume centers around Haru, the series is really about his freshman class as a whole. The story is exceptionally well crafted with side comments made in some of the first pages of manga one becoming plotlines and stories in the second and third.

I actually read volume one of the manga a couple months ago, then earlier this week received 2 and 3 in the mail. I decided to re-read volume one so I could review them all together. I'm really glad I did! Having the second two fresh in mind I could really see where Yoshinaga was setting up all the jokes and storylines for the second books.

For example one of the teachers, Koyanagi, when finding out there is going to be a new student expresses disappointment that it's going to be a boy. Another teacher, Shige, chastises him and Kyanagi says "I don't touch 'em, not till they graduate." It's not until late in volume two that you find out Koyanagi is now having an extramarital affair with a former student. Commenst between two students exchanging books on page four of book one leads to a complete story of it's own in book three. 

The orchestration and pacing of the books is wonderful. At first it would be easy to write these off as a loose collection of classroom stories, but an overall mood and tension builds out of those little snippets that makes everything seem carefully placed and important. There's a surprising thread of melancholy and pain threaded through the story, poking up when you least expect it. But rather than push it in your face like many manga or slap you over the head with drama, it slowly reveals itself inside the little bits of everyday life.   

Fumi Yoshinaga's sense of humor can't be ignored either. Majima, the "Otaku of Steel" and a member of Haru and his best friend Shota's manga club, is more or less a running gag throughout the series. (Even though he does have his own important storyline.) His lectures on Moeh make him sound like a sophisticated and male version of Renge from Ouran Host Club. Yoshinaga seems to revel in poking fun of her Yaoi work with constant snide comments about the genre. Majima goes on a rant about making yaoi work attractive to women in volume 2 and in volume one sighs that he could make some good money off of selling pictures of Haru and Shota if Shota was just a thinner and more attractive. There's a whole running gag that some of the girls in the book look a bit mannish. It even goes so far that when one gets kissed in public there's a flock of thought bubbles from the crowd excited they'd just seen their first homosexual kiss.

This all covers only a small portion of the actual topics that are crammed into this title. When I was looking online for some information on how many volumes there are to this series (four, only these three are out so far) I found this great Flower of Life review. It covers a lot of the subjects I just glossed over, like the rampant manga-geek love threading through the book. It also has some excerpts and scans from the series, including my absolute favorite scene from book two where three very different girls go shopping. In case anyone is wondering, in high school I was the girl in glasses. (I want that lightbox!)

Yoshinaga's art is excellent, but I do have one peeve. The woman (I'm assuming) hates backgrounds! She has these wonderfully drawn characters, who mange to express an amazing range of emotions in the space of just a couple of panels, floating in a sea of white space. Hire some assistants already if you don't like drawing backgrounds!