I generally donate any review copies I decide not to keep to local libraries, but I figure as a last hurrah I will do a giveaway of spare copies of Tokyopop series:
Butterfly #1
Clean Freak: Fully Equipped #1
Pavane for a Dead Girl #1
Post a comment here listing the Tokyopop series you’ll miss most, and I’ll randomly select a winner next Tuesday.
Thanks for commenting, this giveaway is closed
One thing that I’ve always found a little odd the few times I’ve run across it is the occasional reference in manga and anime to the Jewish folk song “Dona Dona.” It generally is used as a shorthand way of referencing certain doom or despair for a particular character. I guess it is because this song that I’ve generally understood as a Holocaust metaphor (based on what I was told in Sunday School) is inexplicably popular in Japanese Elementary schools?
Here are a few references I’ve found, but I’m sure that there are plenty out there that I’ve forgotten or haven’t encountered yet. If you have any more please send them in and I’ll add them to the page. Thanks to ace Dona Dona spotter David Wolkin!
One of the longest and most overt references ever takes place in in Revolutionary Girl Utena, there’s a version of the song used when Nanami transforms into a cow (song kicks in at the end of the clip):
Here’s a panel from Detroit Metal City Volume 7:
And Slam Dunk Volume 1:
Do you have any Dona Dona references to share? Please let me know!
Cute Devil by Hiro Madarame
Tohru is the strong silent type. He wears glasses and serves in the student council. One day a boy with an angelic face named Fuuta asks if he’ll be his friend. Due to Fuuta’s striking looks, he’s treated like a princess by everyone at school. Fuuta pleads with Tohru with limpid watery eyes, and the two start hanging out together. While Fuuta might look like an angel, he’s actually a sexually rapacious demon and he’s picked Tohru to be his lover. I didn’t care for the story very much, because there wasn’t very time spent on character development. Also, I don’t find the fairly typical in yaoi dynamic of one character forcing himself on the other very entertaining. The chapters in the manga are all fairly similar, as Fuuta and Tohru play out the same dynamic in their relationship over and over again. That being said, Fuuta’s rapid personality shifts were funny and Madarame has some very attractive character designs.
Blood Honey by Sakyou Yozakura
Yuki is a vampire with a very sensible job of working at a blood bank. His favorite blood donor is Mayuzumi, a teacher who seems to enjoy donating blood more frequently than the average person. It turns out Mayuzumi is so hot blooded, he needs to get rid of excess blood so he doesn’t lose his temper. When Yuki is propositioned by his boss, Mayuzumi comes to his rescue and offers to give blood to Yuki for the rest of his life. Blood Honey switches the point of view for various chapters. Yuki’s featured at the start of the volume, Mayuzumi deals with temptation and his feelings for Yuki in the next, and the third story focuses on Yuki’s vampire nephew Kiri. Kiri’s a notorious playboy who keeps trying to insert himself into Mayuzumi and Yuki’s life, so they send him off to live in a temple along with a slightly corrupt priest. Yozakura’s art is simple and a bit on the cartoony side, as Mayuzumi’s temper seems to always show him overreacting to everything. I liked the linked short story format of this volume.
Review copies provided by the publisher
Like most other manga fans, I was surprised to read about Tokyopop shutting down. Soliloquy in Blue has a post listing what might be the final volumes of many Tokyopop series. Here are some of the things I’ll miss about Tokyopop:
Josei
Perhaps contributing to low sales, Tokyopop was one of the few companies to publish longer josei series earlier than almost anyone else. Some of the classic josei series they published include:
Happy Mania
Tramps Like Us (Kimi Wa Petto) – One of my favorite Josei series of all time
Paradise Kiss
Suppli
Clamp
Now that Dark Horse seems to have taken over printing many of Clamp’s historic series with new translations, hopefully this means that many of these series won’t go out of print. I’m not counting on anything though, especially with the recent Dark Horse staff layoffs. Tokyopop published Cardcaptor Sakura, Tokyo Babylon, Wish, and more.
Manhwa
This is simultaneously good and bad because the glut of manhwa that Tokyopop pushed out during the boom years probably contributed a lot to financial problems later on. But I’ll always be fond of Queen’s Knight, which was the first Manhwa title I really enjoyed.
Sailor Moon
It seems weirdly cyclical that Tokyopop is shutting down just when the flagship title that touched off the manga craze in the US is going to be published by a different publisher. I previously about how stumbling across the Tokyopop editions of Sailor Moon got me interested in manga again after a long absence.
Some of my favorite completed Tokyopop series include:
Marmalade Boy
Mars
Kare Kano
Karakuri Odette
Gatcha Gacha
Planetes
Fruits Basket
Current series I’ll miss:
Skyblue Shore
Shinobi Life
Stellar Six
Alice in the Country of Hearts
Silver Diamond
VB Rose
Demon Sacred
I thought that recently Tokyopop had been picking up much more interesting shoujo titles, and I’d increased the number of series from them I was actively following. I’m sorry I won’t be able to see the conclusions of many of these series.
Oresama Teacher Volumes 1 and 2 by Izumi Tsubaki
Izumi Tsubaki is the author of the high school massage club manga Magic Touch, that didn’t generally get favorable reviews from most manga bloggers. I read one volume from Magic Touch that was from the middle of the series and didn’t think it was horrible, although it didn’t inspire me to pick up the rest of the series. Oresama Teacher seems so much better! There’s an element of subversive humor on display that many shoujo series
lack, and some of the unconventional interactions between the characters made me think that Oresama Teacher seemed a bit like a kinder and gentler version of an Ai Morinaga series. And I love Ai Morinaga.
One of the things that I liked right when I first picked up Oresama Teacher is the fact that the heroine is a semi-reformed juvenile delinquent being packed off to an alternative school. I wish we had more teacher-centric female juvenile delinquent manga released in English, and can only hope that one day we get Gokusen translated over here. Mafuyu is able to fight and lead a gang with great competence, but she is utterly incapable of living alone and cooking for herself. When she goes out to replace the instant ramen she destroyed, she happens upon a handsome older man who is getting beaten up. He acts mysterious and bizarre and steals her food. Of course, when Mafuyu shows up at school the next day she discovers that the man is her homeroom teacher Takaomi.
Tsubaki comes up with something I didn’t think was possible – an interesting twist on the old “I have met my beloved childhood friend again as a teenager” plot device that is used so often in shoujo manga. Takaomi is Mafuyu’s long lost neighbor, but he carefully trained her to be a delinquent from a young age. Mafuyu at first remembers her old friend tenderly, but when her real memories start to come back she realizes that due to Saeki, her childhood was filled with brutal training sessions and savage beatdowns. While she starts school determined to act like a normal girl, join clubs, and fall in love, Mafuyu soon finds herself confronting her former ways. She sits next to young delinquent Hasakaya who is able to detect her innate bloodlust. Hasakaya is so eager to fight that he takes on large groups alone, and Mafuyu decides to rescue him while disguising her actions. Hayasaka is just dim enough to believe that she had no involvement when he wakes up with bodies piled around him. Saeki appears to be sociopathic and manipulative, getting Mafuyu and Hayasaka to join his “Public Morals Club” and indulging in the occasional bit of sexual harassment.
Many of the characters in Oresama Teacher are hilariously dimwitted, the better to set up Tsubaki’s jokes. This is the type of thing that gets a little tiring after multiple volumes of a comedy manga series, but Tsubaki’s characters have a bit more depth than usual, because she’s careful to develop everyone’s individual motivations. Hasakaya’s weird code of honor ensures that he’s always going to get into trouble by challenging multiple people to fight him at once, and Mafuyu’s impressive fighting skills and desire to save her friend ensure that she’s always going to come to his rescue. Her new found friendship is important to her and she doesn’t want Hasakaya to think that she’s odd, so she makes a rather pathetic attempt to hide her identity by wearing a bunny mask. Mafuyu’s penpal by way of carrier pigeon, the macho guys in the crafts club, her growing friendship with Hasakaya and the inexplicable relationship between her and Takaomi have me looking forward to the next volume. Oresama Teacher is a great manga to pick up if you’re looking for something light and funny that also serves as an antidote to more typical shoujo.
Review copies provided by the publisher