ohzora – Manga Report

I was hoping to kick off the new incarnation of Manga Report with a triumphant series of reviews this week. Unfortunately I have a horrible cold and am really only capable of communing with my roku box and knitting scarves. But! There is a certain type of manga that I can enjoy when I am too incoherent to actually follow a plot very well, and that is romance manga! Because the plots are so predictable that even someone loopy on cold medication can follow everything without getting lost and the art is often pretty enough to distract me from my kleenex-riddled misery. Romance manga from Ohzora are usually amusing, because they are very similar to Harlequin manga adaptations, but usually the art is much more consistent and well-executed. Both of these titles are available from jmanga.com.

The London Game by Harumo Sanazaki

This is the story of Maximilian Rochefort, a commoner with an impressive fortune and equally impressive eyebrows, and Eleanor, the unmarried only princess of a tiny European country that has fallen on hard times. He proposes a game to her – she’ll convince him that the royal family is worth saving and he’ll rescue her. Maximilian and Eleanor knew each other briefly several years ago, and a party at a country house provides an opportunity for them to spend some more time together despite Maximilian’s antagonistic attitude. Unfortunately there are groups of other rich social climbers hanging around. Maximilian quickly determines that Eleanor’s country is basically auctioning her off to the highest bidder, and she’s utterly unaware of what is happening around her. Maximilian asks if she’s ever watched the news or read a tabloid and Eleanor says that her only reading material is “the front page of the Financial Times” because her father has always encouraged her to make appearances at charity functions instead of learning about current events. Maximilian yells “Are you an idiot?! It should be a crime to grow up this naive and unsullied! Think a little bit about who you are!” I found this scene very amusing, because all too often heroines in romance manga are idiots and no one calls them on it. Eleanor grows up a little bit and Maximilian stops acting aggressively petulant. Sanazaki’s art is detailed, lush, and a little bit stylized which is exactly the type of illustration I tend to look for from romance manga. I enjoyed the backup story about a vengeful ex-boyfriend “Flames of Love in the Aegean Sea” much less because it was a bit too rapey (in the old 1980s romance novel sort of way) for me.

Forbidden Love With a Prince by Rikako Tsuji

This was a fun single volume story about an aspiring actress named Sherry who is studying in a tiny European country (there are so many of those in romance manga) when she has an encounter with a handsome yet slightly weird young man named Ernest at her part-time job working in a cafe. He tries a slightly cheesy pickup line on her and she dismisses him. They meet in a park and Ernest woos Sherry in the undercover way commonly practiced by princes of tiny European countries who don’t wish to reveal their royal natures to their crush objects. Ernest and Sherry’s dating activities include foiling bank robberies and accidentally getting handcuffed together. Sherry’s career begins to take off and Ernest vanishes from her life. When Prince Ernest attends Sherry’s new play, she finally realizes who he is. Sherry then has to make a decision – should she continue with her career or become a queen? Tsuji is very good at portraying facial expressions and body language, and it was particularly interesting to see the way Ernest is open and enthusiastic when he’s undercover and then turns much more stiff and formal when he’s in his role as a Prince. The story took up the whole volume of the manga, and I was amused to see that there were little touches with character introductions which highlighted the possibility of a number of spin-off stories featuring Ernest’s friends and relatives.

Romance manga might not be great literature, but it is the perfect thing sometimes when one wants to be diverted and distracted by the spectacle of pretty people falling in love. Both of these volumes are good examples of the genre, and I’m glad that Jmanga.com has stepped up to translate so much romance manga in recent months.

Electronic access provided by the publisher.

Roman Holiday by Yoko Hanabusa

I did a quick double take when I spotted this title on Jmanga. I thought, surely this isn’t a manga adaptation of the Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck movie from the 1950s? But then I read the plot summary and it was! Roman Holiday is deservedly known as a classic movie, so I figured a manga adaptation would either be worth reading just for the possibility of a terrific train wreck, or it might actually be fun to see an interpretation of the movie in manga form. Fortunately due to a very faithful adaptation and some nice art from Hanabusa (who also adapted the Harlequin title To Woo A Wife) this ended up being quite enjoyable to read, but not as great as watching Roman Holiday all over again.

The plot of Roman Holiday (which if you haven’t seen, you should) centers around a wayward princess named Ann (Audrey Hepburn) who escapes the drudgery of her princessy duties for a day when she meets a newspaper reporter named Joe (Gregory Peck). Joe immediately sees the potential for a scoop in idea of escorting an escaped princess around Rome during her one day of freedom, so he gets his photographer friend to document the day as they run around Rome and do all the things that tourists do. Along the way they fall in love, but Princess Ann has to return to her duties and Joe is left to decide if he’s going to sell her story or keep the memory of the day as a precious secret. Let’s take a minute to bask in an image from the movie:

Wasn’t that refreshing?

As a fan of the movie, I was happy to see that the manga captured all of my favorite moments. There’s the near-diplomatic incident when Ann loses her shoe during a state function, the drudgery of Ann’s schedule, and the simple delight that she takes in things like wearing pajamas, wandering around a market, and getting her hair cut. Hanabusa’s art does a great job capturing both the settings and the costumes in the original movie, so the reader does feel like they’ve been briefly transported to Italy. Joe gradually becomes more and more reluctant to write his story as he sees Ann’s delight in her brief holiday, and there’s a definite wistful tone to the story as it shows a love affair that could never happen. While there is no way that a manga can really capture the charisma of Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn, I enjoyed being able to revisit the story of Roman Holiday in a different way. I’m not sure how much crossover there is between classic movie fans and manga fans, but if you happen to be both you will likely enjoy this manga.

Access to electronic copy provided by the publisher.