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Kouya no Tenshidomo (Miriam) manga review

If you read enough shoujo, you might have come across a manga named “Miriam” by Kyoko Hikawa. If you do a little digging around, though, you will realize there is no such manga named Miriam in Japanese. The fan-translators took three series: Kouya no Tenshidomo, Jikan wo Tomete Matteite and Sorenari ni Romantic, wiped out their titles and renamed them all Miriam after the main character.

That’s why you’ll see some places list it as a 7-volume manga, even though it’s actually 3 for Kouya (or two if you buy the bigger Hakusensha edition), 3 for Jikan and 1 for Sorenari. MangaSync did a good job with the translation and editing otherwise, but this was a really unnecessary, unwise and uncalled for change on their part, so I hope other fan groups never followed suit.

Now that we’ve got that all cleared up, what is ~~Miriam~~ Kouya no Tenshidomo all about? It’s a shoujo manga set in the Wild West that follows the adventures of a plucky, precocious 8-year old named Miriam as she tries to protect her beautiful adoptive mother Grace from the attentions of the slimy, cowardly Mr. Harnbag.

At least that’s the manga Kyoko Hikawa set out to write, but then her mistake was introducing three young men first, Card, Joel and Douglas, and having them do the bulk of the work in getting things done. Hikawa set out to make a manga with a strong female character who was also a child, and I still think it could have been done, but she wrote the story in such a way that the guys had no choice but to take center stage with Miriam playing a mainly supporting role – or even getting in the way through her stubborn recklessness – and Grace being all but completely useless.

But that’s okay, as long as the manga is good. Is it? Well it has a lot of things going for it. The unusual setting for a shoujo is one. I haven’t read much manga set in the Wild West, much less shoujo, so that’s a start. The child heroine in the midst of adults is also quite rare. They usually tend to be paired with other children.

Kouya no Tenshidomo also has a fair amount of action without actually being violent. This is a bit of a spoiler, but deaths are extremely rare, even in situations where you would expect there to be a few deaths. Obviously the good guys want to avoid becoming murderers, but the bad guys seem to have inexplicably bad aim while also managing to avoid hitting any innocent passersby. Thanks to that the manga manages to have a very feel-good atmosphere to it, which I like.

The art is neat but nice-looking. Nothing too special, and I did think Hikawa could have done more with the backgrounds and signs and stuff to make the series seem more “Wild Westy” but it turns out she was sick for a while when she wrote it so I guess she did her best. Either way the action is easy to follow, the story is short and well-told – this is the bad guy, these are the good guys, here’s what we’re gonna do. It’s a short satisfying experience and well worth the read for people who like unusual shoujos.

Except! The fly in the ointment! Spoilers follow for romantic developments…

The relationship between Douglas and Miriam starts too soon! She’s only 8 years old, for goodness’ sake! I can buy an 8-year old having a crush on an older teen, but WHY ON EARTH is he falling in love with her at that tender age? She’s 8, and she’s drawn even younger!

But she’s 8 years old now!!

Stop that, you pedo! So there were a lot of really creepy scenes with Douglas thinking about how much he wanted to see Miriam and vice versa and on and on and on. It made the 2nd and 3rd volumes a little uncomfortable to read because I was just thinking “Help!! Police!!” all the time.

At least the two sequel series Jikan wo Tomete matteite and Sorenari ni Romantic deal with Miriam and Douglas’s relationship at a more sensible age. It’s not the age gap that’s the problem, after all. It’s that she’s only 8 years old!!! I think the author had been reading too much Thorn Birds when she wrote that subplot in. Please don’t write anything like this ever again, Kyoko Hikawa, kthxbye.

Long story short, Kouya no Tenshidomo is a short, light read as long as you don’t mind that the lead male is a pedophile. It’s still a nice change from the usual (the rest of the manga is a change from shoujo series I mean, not the pedo hero being a change from non-pedo heroes) so give it a try if you get the chance.

Radio/TV programs for learning Japanese and Cantonese

Why yes, I’m still learning those two languages. My Japanese is leaps and bounds ahead of my Cantonese of course, so much so that sometimes I don’t even notice that I’m reading or listening to something in Japanese because it feels so natural. But I still have a long way to go with spoken Japanese, mostly because I don’t have the chance to speak it often. That’s why I think it’s necessary to listen to Japanese radio and TV as much as possible.

While it’s true you can learn a lot of spoken Japanese from anime, the fact remains that real Japanese people don’t talk as clearly and in turn and in such orderly, sensible sentences. You want real Japanese, you have to listen to regular humans speaking it to other regular Japanese people. Which is where Japanese radio comes in.

In the past I spent a lot of time trying to find various radio stations and switching back and forth all the time (chronicled in earlier articles in this blog), but nowadays I’m busy, to start with, plus there’s much to be gained by sticking to one station (easier to remember the schedule, easier to find favorite programs and announcers, etc), so I have one go-to radio station for Japanese, and one for Cantonese.

FM Castle (Japanese) – You’ll also find it called FM Tanba in places on the internet. It’s a local radio station from Fukuchiyama in Kyoto. You can listen to the broadcast on their website or do like I do and download the asx and add it to your Windows Media Player playlist. You can also listen to them at TuneIn.

What I like about FM Castle is that during the night (Japan time) they play a lot of older Japanese music from the 60s, 70s and 80s, which I really enjoy listening to much more than modern J-Pop. The female singers in the 60s and 70s could really sing as well, beautiful clear voices all around. I keep adding new songs to my mp3 list all the time. Some of the songs are a bit, uhhh, racy though, like the old “Don’t make me take my sailor uniform off” (セーラ服を脱がさないで) songs and stuff, so once in a while I have to mute the station until they sing sometime sensible. During the day they have a lot of talk shows and interviews so you can get your regular listening practice in as well.

RTHK Radio 2 (Cantonese) – Their website stream is working again. RTHK has a lot of radio stations, which is why I have to specify Radio 2. Radio 1 is very boring, all about politics and news and more politics. Unless you’re into that sort of thing. Radio 3 is English, I believe, and then some of the other channels broadcast Mandarin only. Radio 2 is the best because it’s mostly Cantonese, and they have a very good mix of music and talk programs. I prefer the music programs like Ngo Ngoi Guangdong Go 我愛廣東歌 (I love Cantonese music) on Sundays and San gwong dai yat sin 晨光第一線 and Hing Tam Chin Cheung Bat ye Tin 輕談淺唱不夜天 at night. Very lively conversations during the day.

Guang Dong TV (Cantonese) – I don’t watch this too often, because somehow I always tend to tune in when they’re giving the news. The newscaster usually speaks in Cantonese with a Mandarin accent and a lot of Mandarin words (has to be heard to be believed) but when they interview people, those people almost always speak Mandarin so I really can’t follow along much.

Once in a while I’m lucky to watch when there’s a drama on, which is usually interesting, but then I forget to tune in the next day and then it’s back to square one. What I need to do is find the TV schedule and pick a few programs to follow. Must put that on my To Do list.

Downtown DX & Honma Deka? (Japanese) – The Japanese TV shows I used to watch to get my listening practice in. I usually just get my episodes from Youtube and don’t really care too much whether they’re in broadcast order or not. Recently I’ve stopped watching them, though. I dunno, they just seem so trivial and superficial to me. What this “talent” is wearing, what that talent ate, and the tips and ‘research’ presented on Honma Deka is always spurious and poorly-researched at best, often selected for shock factor rather than usefulness. So I’m actually on the hunt for interesting Japanese programs is anyone has any to recommend.

So that’s the learning situation right now. I can say for sure I learn a lot from listening to Japanese radio, probably because I understand about 95% of what they’re saying already. With Cantonese I just enjoy hearing it spoken, but it would help if I backed up my listening with further studies. I’m working on a new Anki deck featuring actual spoken Cantonese instead of textbook examples, I’ll talk about it one of these days. Until then, that’s the progress I’m making!

Why I stopped reading Yomiuri Komachi

Do you know Yomiuri Komachi? It’s a Japanese webforum that’s basically an agony aunt site (http://komachi.yomiuri.co.jp/)*. People post their problems and other users give them advice and potential solutions. Problem posters can write back and answer questions, ask further questions or give updates on how the situation turned out, which was my favorite part of the site. I used to be an avid reader of the site right up to this month. I even translated a few of the problems into English on this very site.

*(More accurately it’s actually 発言小町 hatsugen komachi that’s the name of the agony aunt section, but nvm)

What I liked

All the questions are moderated before being posted, and answers seem to be moderated as well. That means both questions and answers are almost always polite, well-formed and easy to read and understand. No flaming, no vulgarity or cursing or l33tspeak or excessive slang. It’s done wonders for my written Japanese, and I’ve learned lots of proverbs and sayings as well.

Getting updates and clarification from the original poster. Most traditional agony aunt column have the aunt give the answer and then that settles it. Sometimes there are comment sections where the readers can chip in, but you still don’t hear back from the poster about whether the advice helped or not.

Why I’m quitting

– Original poster updates are on the decline. It used to be that most posters were at least polite enough to come back and say “Thanks for the advice” even if they ended up not using it, but now they just post the question and disappear forever. Was the advice good? Did it help any? What happened? It’s like having a movie cut off in the middle. So frustrating!

-Too many defensive thread posters. It’s annoying when people post questions intended to serve as a rubber stamp for their own opinions. “I wasn’t wrong to do Terrible Thing X, was I?” Even if 200 posts follow telling them they were wrong, they either just ignore the thread, pick out the few ones that agree with them or argue endlessly that they’re right. It’s the rare, rare poster whose mind is swayed and can admit they’re wrong when they obviously are.

-Too many indecisive posters. They post the problem. They get advice. They don’t want to take the advice, so they keep coming up with objections. They’re called “でもでもだって” because they’re always finding excuses to everything.

e.g You want to get married, your boyfriend says he won’t marry you. “Find someone else” the advisers say. “But, but, I love him. But, but, what if there’s nobody else? But, but, what if he changes his mind? But, but…” And it just goes on and on and on. Same with people dealing with mooches or pushy neighbors, it’s always “But, but I don’t want to hurt their feelings. But, but I don’t want to make things awkward” and on and on. Nowadays I avoid those “my boyfriend won’t marry me” (and it’s always the boyfriends, wonder why) threads on principle because the woman almost never leaves. She just hangs in there going “But but” until everyone loses interest and goes away.

-Too much divorce advocacy. It seems like more and more the only answer people have for any problem involving marriage is “Leave him!” or “Leave her!” Some of the issues are very serious, to be sure, especially those involving domestic violence. But the vast majority of problems can be solved with time, patience, communication and counselling. Especially when there are kids involved, there’s no way just moving out is the best solution.

-And it’s like the users don’t even consider separation as an option, they always leap straight to divorce, like it’s so easy. And yet those same users are super-critical of questions from divorcees and single parents. I mean only a fool would divorce someone just because people on the internet told them to, but the irresponsibility of the posters who would even suggest such a thing makes me shake my head. God hates divorce.

-Overall loosening of morals in general. In the past 4 years I’ve been reading Yomiuri Komachi, I’ve noticed a general loosening of standards, especially when it comes to romantic relationships. When I started reading, the overwhelming mood towards couples living together before marriage was negative. Don’t do it, it’s immoral, you’re wasting your time, just get married already, etc. All good advice. But recently it’s swung in the opposite direction. The number opposing it has gone way down, and those opposing it for moral as opposed to “He won’t marry you” reasons are close to zero.

-On similar note, in a recent thread a woman refused to sleep with a guy after the first date. Not only were there people in the thread saying she was being too hard-nosed but also almost all the responses assumed that she would be okay with sleeping with a guy she wasn’t married to if he would just ask her out first, or if they had gone on a few more dates instead of just one. The criticism directed at people who get pregnant before marriage has also gone way down – which is obvious since they’re basically encouraging people to jump into the sack with people they barely know. Such a huge decline in only four years, which makes me think it will only get worse in future.

tl;dr It was fun to read at first, but now the frustration outweighs the fun. Either I’m more sensitive to moral issues now thanks to the Spirit or there’s been a decline in morals, so it’s not as enjoyable to read. Reading stuff with people praising evil and putting down good is bad for spiritual growth, so it would be better for me to find a Christian advice forum and read the questions over there instead of expecting Biblical advice from non-believers. I’m done with Komachi Yomiuri.

Metropolis (Osamu Tezuka) manga review

Another Osamu Tezuka manga! From 1949 too! After Dororo, Metropolis is probably the least bad Tezuka work I’ve read, but that doesn’t mean it’s all that good either.

The blurb:

From Osamu Tezuka, creator of Astro Boy, comes Metropolis, the legendary 1949 graphic novel that inspired the animated fame that floored audiences and critics alike. In a not-so-far-off future a beautiful, artifically created girl — unaware of her non-human background — wanders alone in a world populated by humans and by the slave-driven robots who serve them as she searches for the non-existent parents she believes must exist. Tezuka’s key theme of the nature of humanity in a technological society is framed in bold relief, as well as his wry allegorical observations of the Cold War that was escalating when he created Metropolis. A brilliant work of wit and wisdom — and guest-starring some friends you may recognize from Astro Boy! — Metropolis is one of graphic fiction’s most enduring tales.

As with Lost World, he also claims to be unfamiliar with the 1927 movie of the same name that the manga is suspiciously similar to. But since Tezuka is the “god of manga” or whatever they like to call him, no one bothers to dispute his claim. Personally I think he copies both originals, but that’s neither here nor there. Let’s just evaluate the manga as we have it.

TBH I don’t remember any observations on the Cold War, except for the part where a scientist speculates that humans become too advanced they might end up destroying themselves. I wouldn’t have realized it was linked to the Cold War if the back cover hadn’t pointed it out. The part about Michi “wandering alone” is not quite accurate either, since for most of the manga s/he is in the constant company of friends.

That’s the other thing – strictly speaking Michi is neither male or female. There’s a switch in her throat that changes her gender when pressed, but s/he spends most of the game in male form, so I’m going to call him ‘he’ from now on. Michi is an artificial created by an evil Red Party …. ohhh, Red Party. Communism! D’oh, now I get it. Is Michi supposed to represent nuclear power gone out of control? Interesting.

Anyway, this fact is hidden from Michi for most of the story. He seems to be a mild-mannered sort of kid, but when he finds out the truth he goes totally berserk and destroys much of the metropolis before meeting his end. This turn of events is rather sudden because Michi had been such a happy, friendly child before, but I suppose the signs were there early on. Besides he wasn’t really human and he’s immature to boot, so it’s not quite fair to expect him to react with human rationality. “When science is misapplied, innocents suffer,” is what Tezuka seems to want to say.

My overall opinion of Metropolis is “Unrealized potential.” There were a lot of things that didn’t get the attention they deserved. Duke Red and the motivations of the Red Party, for example. The reason for Duke Red’s obsession with the statue that Michi looks like (no, it’s not his kid like Wikipedia claims). The friendship between Ken and Michi needed a little more exploration. The character of Emmy kind of came out of nowhere and went nowhere. Just because Duke Red is dead doesn’t necessarily mean the Red Party is done for. The ending is cheesy and rather abrupt. Poor Michi killed a lot of people but it’s okay ‘cos he was just misunderstood, aww. NOT.

In the author’s notes at the end of Metropolis, he mentions that he had to cut out a lot of things at the end of the manga, which goes a lot way to explain how sudden the events of the last third of the book are. There’s a lot of time wasted fighting giant Micky Mouse lookalike rats and running from KKK-dressed henchmen that would have been better served focusing on Michi, IMO. So the explanation that Tezuka meant to devote more attention to more important matters but never got around to it is a plausible one. I just think he cut the wrong things out of the manga when he had to, but I’ll buy his excuse that he was pressed for time.

So yeah Metropolis an interesting little story that doesn’t really go anywhere. At least it doesn’t contain any offensive content like Ayako, plus it’s a complete story in one little volume. It’s worth a read if you like standalone graphic novels or just want a light introduction to older scifi manga. I’m still on the hunt for what makes Osamu Tezuka so special, though.

Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de! volume 2 manga review

Well, things are certainly moving quickly. By the end of Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de! volume 2 the brothers have already become the main battery of the Hirataka high school baseball team and Koshien preliminaries have already began. The team went it expecting an easy win against their first opponent, but Ichiya quickly falls prey to the opponent’s mind games. By the time he snaps out of it Hirataka is already down 3-0. Is the team doomed to fail in its very first official game?

That would be an interesting twist, certainly. I rather doubt it though, simply because the bulk of volume 2 was spent introducing the rival team and the rival batter, Shinoi of Chouzan High. Hirataka is very conveniently destined to meet Chouzan right before the preliminary finals, so it’s unlikely that they’ll be knocked out before then. Plus most of the Hirataka team is made up of third years so this is their last tournament. If the team fails in the first match then author Shinji Tonaka will have to start over with an almost entirely new cast from volume 4. I have yet to meet a mangaka with that kind of guts, but who knows?

Apart from the introduction of Shinoi and the start of the tournament, nothing too exciting happened in volume 2. We were introduced to their eccentric team coach, one of those types who only gives cryptic advice instead of coming out to say what he means. The Touma brothers have also started working on a new pitch, since all Ichiya can throw right now are fastballs and sliders. Having Shinoi hit his pitch so easily has lit a fire under both brothers, though the results have yet to be felt.

TBH I wish the author would have delayed the start of the Koshien prelims by at least another volume. I haven’t got a good feel for the characters and their personalities just yet, and most of the Hirataka team is still just so much ink on paper. I don’t even know who bats when (Yoshi 3rd, Takaoka 4th, that’s it) or who defends what position. A little time spent developing the team by maybe focusing on training or the Touma brothers’ home life would have come in handy.

I can’t say I’m impressed by the baseball action I’ve seen so far either. It’s very boringly depicted. All pitchers adopt the same pose and then somehow the ball hits the bat/mitt and goes flying somewhere and it’s like whatever. Rather hard to follow and really hard to get into because you don’t know the main characters well enough to root for them to hit/strike someone out.

But it’s only volume 2 of Oto-Ore (the official abbreviation and much easier on the tongue than Otouto Catcher Ore Pitcher de!) so let’s keep reading and see how things develop, shall we?