Tag: shonen

One thing that I’ve found a little off-putting about One Piece is the wide consensus that it takes quite a few volumes to really get going. I tend to follow a two book rule on principle when evaluating manga series to see if I want to collect them, because while I’ve read plenty of so-so first volumes that develop into an interesting series by volume two, I have a limited amount of patience when it comes to the idea of collecting several volumes just to get to the good stuff. But I only have the first two volumes on hand right now, so that’s what I’m going to look at today. I’m going to attempt to show what might lead a reader to assume that the series isn’t so great and also highlight the aspects that might cause someone to come back for more.

The first chapter of One Piece follows a very typical shonen formula. An adventurous proto-hero gets inspired by a total bad-ass and decides to become a hero himself. I’m sure there are numerous examples of other manga that have similar beginning chapters, but the ones that come to my mind immediately are Tegami Bachi and Gun Blaze West. The heroic quest idea gets a little bit of a twist in One Piece because Monkey D. Luffy decides that he’ll become “The King of the Pirates.” Luffy is aided in his ambition by his inadvertent ingestion of the fruit of the Gum-Gum tree, which adds him to the ranks of stretchy superheroes. I’ve often thought that elastic powers give a cartoonist the license to go absolutely crazy, but Luffy’s powers mostly seem to manifest in near-invulnerability and the ability to do devastating super-stretchy punches.

Luffy is a hero who is made engaging due to his almost stupid levels of enthusiasm and his tendency to leap into action without any fear for himself. He sets out in a dinghy for the fabled “One Piece,” the legendary pirate treasure that will make him Pirate King. Luffy’s early adventures show him gradually assembling a team that will help him fulfill his quest. He’s joined by Zoro, a swordsman with a hilarious three-sword technique (he fights with swords in both hands and one clenched in his teeth) and Nami, a greedy femme fatale of a navigator.

The art in One Piece is one aspect that might be off-putting to a new reader. Oda’s style is cartoony, with plenty of exaggerated facial expressions. If someone comes to One Piece wanting slick art featuring the giant blades and billowing costumes of Bleach, they’re going to be disappointed. I enjoyed the Oda’s art, just because it looks very different from most shonen titles. I especially appreciated the variety in the character designs for the villains Luffy faced, which ranged from a hideously gigantic pirate queen to a corrupt navy captain with an iron jaw and an axe for a hand. I wasn’t surprised to see that Oda once worked as an assistant on Rurouni Kenshin, because I always thought one of the great things about that series was distinctive villain character design. That’s something I look for when reading shonen manga, so that goes in One Piece’s bonus column for me.

The storyline in the first couple volumes will likely perplex anyone who is wondering why One Piece is a bestseller in Japan. Luffy pulls his team together due to his enthusiasm and genuine friendliness. Even if other characters initially think Luffy is crazy, they end up falling in with his plans despite their earlier intentions. The first couple volumes feature plenty of fights made more interesting by the unique qualities of the villains as well as some episodes that have a bit of after school special type moralizing about the power of friendship. Luffy meets a boy whose ambition is to join the navy and fight pirates, and he becomes Luffy’s first friend from outside his village. Later, a dog’s loyalty is shown to endure past the life of his master in a town decimated by pirates.

The emotional tone in the first couple volumes is one thing that I think hasn’t gelled yet. The series seems on the surface to just be fairly goofy, with the exaggerated villains, plenty of action scenes and jokes, and a hero who can’t be hurt by anything. But there are scattered scenes that emphasize the arbitrary nature of violence and death. Luffy’s hero gets his arm bitten off by a shark and seems largely unconcerned about the sudden amputation. Zoro’s back story is about moving on from tragedy and while Luffy is largely unharmed by fighting with pirates, his companions don’t have that luxury. Zoro fights past the point of exhaustion and announces his intention to sleep on the battlefield, and Luffy cheerfully flexes his muscles and decides to take over. The darker element of violence mixed with the more frivolous elements and usual shonen boosterism of friendship might hint at darker times ahead for Luffy and his crew, and that’s what I’d be interested in seeing later on in the series.

If I was just going by the first couple volumes of the series, I might just assume that One Piece was just a slightly better than average shonen series, with the added bonus of piracy. But seeing how many people are genuinely enthusiastic about this manga makes me think I should at least check out a few of the omnibus volumes even though I am frightened of getting hooked by a 60+ shonen series. I will be looking for One Piece at my local library too.

Hikaru No Go Volume 21

It has been some time since I’ve read Hikaru No Go. I started getting it when it came out and collected up to volume 11 or so, and stopped automatically buying it because I thought at some point I’d go back and fill in the missing volumes. Even though there was a big gap for me, it wasn’t hard at all to pick up this volume and get back into the story.

Hikaru has gone pro, and much of the volume centers around his preparation for his first big international tournament. Many people have a stake in showcasing young players at the tournament. The Go associations and media think there will be more general interest if younger players are included. Hikaru and Toya play well enough in the preliminaries to be selected for the tournament, along with Yashiro and Kurata. Even though I know almost nothing about Go, Obata’s art still makes all the matches and rivalries between the players look dynamic. Hotta’s story juggles several themes and sub-plots, so even though the main storyline might be about gearing up to compete in a tournament, there’s so much other stuff going on that the plot doesn’t seem stale. Akira’s father is competing overseas even though he’s retired. He’s still on a quest to find the divine move, and the way Akira looks at his father shows some frustration that I think is going to be explored in a later volume. A Korean player is talking smack about Hikaru’s former mentor Sai, setting up a cross country rivalry. Hikaru and his teammates sequester themselves for training, and Hikaru is still falling short when playing games against Akira. I’m looking forward to seeing how the young players handle the stress of a professional tournament. Checking in on this series again reminded me of how good it is, I need to stop being such a slacker and seek out some of the volumes that I’ve missed.

Arata: The Legend Volume 4

For the first half of this volume, I felt a little frustrated. I do generally like Yuu Watase, even if some of her series are often a bit formulaic. I like Fushigi Yugi, Fushigi Yugi Genbu Kaiden, Ceres, and Alice 19th a lot. Imadoki is simple, but very sweet. I do not speak of Zettai Kareshi. The first part of this volume was frustrting. I wasn’t sure how many times Arata was going to stumble across Kotoha when she was changing. The romance aspect of this manga is really uninteresting, I don’t particularly care about Arata being tortured with guilt because Kotoha has confessed her love to him, yet he knows she’s really in love with Other Arata who is taking his place in modern day Japan. The quest element of the story is the type of plot that Watase does often, sometimes well, and sometimes not so well. Arata’s emphasis on winning through peaceful means is a little bit of a twist on the more typical shonen fighting hero.

What made me want to keep giving the series another chance were a couple things that happened a bit further into the book. There was finally a long sequence showing Other Arata trying his best to live Arata’s life in Japan. It was interesting to see how he was able to deal with school bullies and the issue of having parents when he hasn’t had a family before. The other sequence in the book that I thought had a lot more emotional resonance was when Arata and his allies accidentally stumble in to an odd orphanage filled with plucky children who immediately start relating to them as parents. Somewhere there’s a mystical barrier, but the “adults’ in charge of the orphanage are anything but human. Arata and Kotoha befriend twins named Naru and Nagu, and the revelation about who has been creating the orphanage with magic and the resolution of the episode had much more emotional impact than a lot of the previous events in Arata. So while this is not likely to be one of my favorite Watase series, there were enough good elements in this volume to make me hope that the series might continue to get better.

Review copies provided by the publisher.

Bakuman Volumes 1 and 2 by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

This is another series I’d steered clear of initially, because even though I enjoyed Death Note despite the narrative shortcomings towards the end of the series, I wasn’t sure how interesting I’d find manga about manga to be. I also read some reviews that charged the series with sexism, so I was avoid the series for that reason as well. I found the first two volumes of Bakuman entertaining, and the sexism in the series seems like an accurate reflection of the attitudes of its protagonists – aspiring manga creators and schoolboys Moritaka Mashiro and Akito Takagi.

Bakuman Volume 1

Mashiro is crushing on the coolest girl in his class, Azuki. He practices his drawing skills by sketching her portrait in his school notebook. When he leaves his notebook at school he rushes back to make sure no one will find out the secret of his drawing habit and his crush. He’s confronted by Akito Takagi, a boy who sits in the back of the classroom and prides himself on his observational powers. Takagi proposes a partnership: he’ll write stories and Mashiro will provide the drawings. They will become mangaka together. Mashiro loves drawing, but is reluctant to become a mangaka because his uncle used to be a professional who failed to build on the success of his initially popular gag series. He died broke and alone.

Takagi ends up forcing Masahiro to draw manga by dragging him to Azuki’s house and confessing their ambitions. Masahiro is so embarrassed, he randomly breaks out with a proposal of marriage, and she accepts on the condition that they marry after they’ve fulfilled their dreams. This ends up being somewhat convenient in a narrative sense, because Azuki ends up being a character that Masahiro can just use as a muse. She isn’t given much of a personality compared to her male counterparts.

I can see why people are criticizing Bakuman for being sexist, but the elements that someone would use to make that critique didn’t really bother me because they seemed to fit with the point of view of young Japanese teenage boys. Takagi makes a long speech about how clever Azuki is because she dedicates herself to being the perfect girl. Her grades aren’t too good. She has a socially acceptable goal of becoming a voice actress. She doesn’t act too stuck up, and she’s mediocre enough not to stand out so she doesn’t inspire jealousy in the other girls. Takagi attributes her behavior to careful calculation. This type of speech seems just like the type of thing a 14 year old boy with ambitions of becoming a writer would say.

Bakuman Volume 2

Seeing how Mashiro and Takagi evolve their ambitions and refine their approach to making manga was fascinating. I always knew manga polls in magazines were significant, but seeing the way the boys discuss the type of story they need to produce in order to get the poll numbers they need made me realize how much the creation of a successful series can be a numbers game. Mashiro and Takagi have a more cerebral, offbeat approach to the stories they create, while their prodigious rival Nizuma seems to be creating the straight-up action series that fans of Naurto would adore.

There were plot elements in Bakuman that seemed to make things just a little too easy. Takagi’s family has held on to his uncle’s studio and gives him access when he announces that he’s going to follow his dream. It turns out that Azuki’s mother was actually the long-lost love of Takagi’s uncle too. Azuki and Takagi agree to wait for each other while pursuing their respective dreams, freeing her up to be an objectified object of affection with the eventual couple only cheering each other on mostly through text messages. The genius fifteen year old manga creator Nizuma and the way he inspires the heros of the story to work harder seems more than a little reminiscent of the relationships between L, Mello, and Near in Death Note.

While all the details about manga creation were interesting, there was a slightly didactic or textbook-like quality to all the exposition. While I enjoyed reading Bakuman, I don’t think it would be the type of series I’d read over and over again. I put these volumes down with a renewed appreciation for Obata’s art. He makes playing Go look dynamic and filled with action, and similarly he makes the process of creating manga look gripping. I put these volumes down with an appreciation for the creative process and the business behind manga. It was interesting to see how Mashiro and Takagi started to revise their work after being taken under the wing of an editor. Seeing how difficult it is to even get a story published in the first place makes me appreciate manga creators even more. Bakuman isn’t a perfect work by any means, but I did feel like I got a lot out of reading it. I’d recommend this title for anyone who is curious about the process of manga creation.

Review copy of volume 2 provided by the publisher.