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Level E manga review

Did you know that once upon a time Yoshihiro Togashi could actually draw? Or maybe I should say “Yoshihiro Togashi would actually draw.” The potential is still there, but you wouldn’t know it to look at current chapters of Hunter x Hunter (a.k.a. Hiatus x Hiatus). You would know it if you read Level E, though, a short but enjoyable 3-volume manga Togashi started in 1995 after finishing Yu Yu Hakusho. The summary goes like:

Tsutsui Yukitaka is a freshman entering high school who hopes to become a good baseball player. However, when he walks into his new apartment, there is a man in the room who claims that he is an alien who lost his memory. He is in fact the first prince of Planet Dogra, known to have the best brain but the worst nature.

But the whole story is really about Ouji the prince of Dogra and the high school freshman is reduced to a rarely-appearing side character pretty quickly. And it’s not just him but the most of the rest of the cast only appear sparingly to be used and discarded and then reappear again when you least expect them. That has the disadvantage of leaving all the characters paper-thin, but on the plus side it keeps every chapter fresh because you just never know who’s going to show up.

There’s no real overarching story besides “Ouji toys with everyone for his amusement” but most chapters deal with some alien or another coming to/being on Earth and some drama occurring. Some stories are outright hilarious, but they also just as likely to be serious and even tragic. The best chapters are the ones that don’t feature Ouji at all or have very little of him, but while he can be an irritating jerk sometimes (all the time), other characters agree with the reader on his hateability and frequently band together to try and defeat him, making it fun to root for their usually futile attempts to get rid of him.

As with most Togashi series the art isn’t 100% consistent and gets worse as the series draws to a close, but like in the nursery rhyme “When it was good, it was very very good, but when it was bad it was horrid!” Thus I wouldn’t recommend trying Level E for the art alone but rather for the art + the characters + the great stories within.

There’s only one story that was boring and difficult to follow – some rubbish about a baseball team that got lost in a dream. It’s ironic because I picked Level E in the first place because it had baseball in the description, but the baseball parts turned to be the worst things about it. In fact nobody ever even plays baseball, they just talk about it. So you can basically ignore that bit… wait, you didn’t care in the first place, did you? Don’t mind me and my baseball manga fetish ^.^;;

Get Level E if: you like sci-fi, especially aliens. You like comedy. You like short-story/anthology formats. You like drama/tragedy that doesn’t get too depressing. Don’t get Level E if: You hate sadistic characters that get away with their bad behavior. You prefer a consistent, well-developed cast. Btw, I hear an anime came out recently, so if you’d rather watch than read, you can give the Level E anime a try instead.

Remember manhua review

Remember how ‘Red Colored Elegy‘ was supposed to be a highly-influential work? When I reviewed it, I noted that I could see how people would be inspired by it, but the keyword was ‘inspired’ – I never expected someone to flat out copy the whole thing. Until I read Remember by Chinese artist Benjamin, that is…

The blurb goes:

What is the fine line that separates love from hate? How can a broken heart heal from a loss so deep? When is letting go of your inhibitions worth risking your life?

International artist Benjamin depicts profoundl moving portrayals of love and loss that get at the core of what it means to throw your heart into life. The artist doesn’t offer any comfort from the despair we all feel in our lives – while we know there is no answer, we are all better off for asking the question… and remembering the struggle.

Actually the real question they should be asking is “What is the fine line that separates inspiration from plagiarism?” I will give Benjamin props for being a pretty good artist (that cover just screams “Buy Me!” doesn’t it?), but when it comes to storytelling he is utterly bereft of ideas. And he is completely aware of it too, if his self-loathing author’s comments are anything to go by.

Remember is made up of two short stories. The title story ‘Remember’ deals with a Struggling artist with a bad attitude, girl who loves him for no reason, he pushes her away until she does go away and then he hates himself even more than ever, the end. I really didn’t need to summarize that, I should have just pointed to the original story, which for all its flaws does a better job at conveying the doomed relationship and almost, not quite, making the characters relateable.

Anyway, this struggling artist submits story after story to a comic publisher only to have them turned down because they’re not enough like Japanese manga. “Chinese readers don’t want originality! They want plagiarized Japanese manga!” the editor straight-up tells him. So it’s ironic – or maybe meaningful – that the story itself is a straight-up copy of Red Colored Elegy, with better art and with the sex cut out or made ambiguous to avoid censorship.

Is this how low Benjamin had to sink to get his work published in China? Maybe. But what is more likely is that he put that scene in just to cover his inability to write a Chinese manhua that would be accepted by editors. “See it’s not me, it’s the editors, they forced me to plagiarize! Left to my own devices I could totally write a great story!” If that’s the case, why is the copy even worse than the original?

Besides, the Remember collection includes a second short story as well, about students in art school being bullied, but it’s crap. I read about a third of it and then just skimmed through it because it was just more self-loathing navel-gazing twaddle. He probably copied that from a Japanese manga as well, I just don’t know enough manga to spot which one.

In any case, by that time the nice art had lost its effect on me and all of Benjamin’s shortcomings as a writer were on display for all to see. Rambling, incoherent ‘I’m so deep and nobody understands me’ characters dot the pages like so many teenagers at an emo concert. They’re all flat one-note characters – ‘quirky girl’, ‘misunderstood artist’, ‘unreasonable editor’ – one defining characteristic carries them through the whole story. Even in a short story you should be able to flesh characters out a little more than that, especially in slice-of-life kind of stories where enjoyment depends on getting under the character’s skins.

Benjamin can draw, there’s no question about that, but unless he can learn to write as well it really doesn’t profit him very much. The fact that the manga goes for less than $2.00 on Amazon despite being out of print should tell you everything you need to know about that. Still I’m not a mean person, and I can see some budding talent there. I’d advise him to work on his writing skills if he really want to make it as a mangaka (manhuajia?). Failing that, there’s nothing wrong with being a dedicated artist and illustrator, since he does have the skills to back that up. Good luck, Mr. Plagiarizer!

Boy meets Girl ~Mound no Shoujo~ manga review

No, I hadn’t forgotten that I was on a baseball manga kick. I’m slowly weaning myself off it and reading other stuff in increasing amounts, but I’ve still got a mountain of baseball manga left to try. Currently on the chopping block: Boy meets Girl ~Mound no Shoujo~(～マウンドの少女～) by Natsuko Heiuchi.

It’s a bittersweet sports romance story about a short little leaguer named Fumitake Morita (Moritake for short) who has a huge crush on his little league team ace, a tall girl named Shiori Kanzaki. Unfortunately Moritake suspects and becomes increasingly certain that Shiori has a crush on the catcher/clean-up of one of their rival teams. What, if anything, is he going to do about these feelings he has for her?

Along the way Shiori herself has to deal with the changing balance of power on the team as the boys reach puberty and begin to grow taller and stronger faster than she can keep up. Moritake especially starts out as a shrimp who can’t even hit a double, much less a triple, but by volume 2 he’s hitting home runs and batting better and running faster than ever before. Shiori meanwhile hits a slump and begins to contemplate quitting baseball altogether. And on top of all that there are rumors her family might be moving away soon. What’s going to happen to this hurdle-fraught relationship? Does Moritake stand a chance with Shiori?

Heh, find out for yourself, I’m not telling. :-p I recommend you read it for yourself, seeing as it’s only 2 volumes long with full furigana. Moritake’s character is well-fleshed out and easy to relate to while Shiori – and the rest of the cast, come to think of it – remains an enigma until the end, but that just makes Moritake’s feelings for her all the more understandable. He’s a kid trying to be an adult and stumbling in all the typical kiddult ways, it’s just too cute.

As a bonus the baseball action is pretty good as well. The ending of the final game was predictable as most baseball manga final games tend to be, but the matches are fun to read, the art is clear and simple and the action is always easy to follow. And there were some moments where I went “What’s gonna happen next?! *doki doki*” but since the focus in Boy meets Girl is on the relationships rather than the game, such moments were few and far between.

If I write any more I know I’ll end up spoiling the ending so I’m going to stop here. I enjoyed it as a short, sweet baseball romance series that made its point and got the feelings across without resorting to the constant arguments and unnecessary melodrama that frequently characterize other baseball romance series (*cough*Adachi*cough*). If you’re not looking for anything deep and just want something you can read, enjoy and forget, give Boy meets Girl a try and see if you like it.

The Secret Garden book review

“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickendenss of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities 0 his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

For although they knew God , they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.” – Romans 1:18-22

A rightly famous passage from the Bible, but what does it have to do with a children’s book from 1911? Plenty, as I saw as I waded though all the proto-New Age ramblings Frances Hodges Burnett stuffed The Secret Garden with. First a quick blurb as usual:

In this timeless, enchanting tale, a lonely orphan girl, Mary, finds the key to an abandoned garden which she determines to restore. As she and her invalid cousin Colin tend the arden, with the help of their new friend Dickon, their lives change in mysterious, wonderful ways.

The magic of the Secret Garden transforms the lives of all who enter.

The story itself isn’t bad, as far as children’s stories go. Mary, Dickon and Mary’s cousin Colin discover an abandoned garden locked away by Colin’s grieving dad. They sneak in there day after day planting and weeding and cleaning the place up to make a little hideaway for themselves. Eventually Colin’s dad comes home and discovers what they’ve done and that Colin isn’t actually an invalid, and they all live happily ever after. It’s cute stuff and must have resonated with generations of kids who wish they had a secret hideout and a house all to themselves and that their neglectful parents would show up one day and think they were absolutely wonderful. Wish-fulfillment and children’s books usually go hand in hand, after all.

What got me shaking my head was the author’s vigorous denial of anything approximating God within nature. And be sure it’s the author not the children doing the dismissal. So you have children plant seeds, weed gardens, the rain falls, the wind blows, the sun shines, the flowers bloom, and who gets the credit? “Magic”! It must be magic, after all, it couldn’t possibly be God. And to hammer that point home, Burnett has the characters sing “Praise God from whom all blessings flow” only to follow it immediately by a dismissive “Well God and Magic must be the same thing” from Colin and that’s the end of that.

On top of that Burnett has her characters sit around in a ‘mystic circle’ where they chant made-up incantations at each other about how wonderful nature is. And these mantra chanting sessions are compared unfavorably with church sermons, which are implied to be boring, ritualistic cash-grabs. This is not the sort of thing I’d let my children read if I had any.

“Come on, it’s a children’s book, not a a religious tract!” you say, and you’re completely right. But that only makes it all the more insidious the way the writing deliberately aims to shift all the credit for growth and blessings on some ‘unknown force’ instead of onto God. If they never sang the Doxology and never even mentioned God you could write it off as just another children’s fantasy novel, but bringing Him up just so you can ‘put Him in his place’ and promote your own vague, unformed nature-worship ideas to children is more than just ignorant, it’s evil and dangerous.

“If anyone causes one of these little ones–those who believe in me–to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea.” – Mark 9:42. With that in mind, while The Secret Garden wasn’t a bad read, I’m not going to let my nieces and nephews get their hands on this book. If an author wants to indulge in a fantasy world, good for them, but active God-deniers have no place in my library.

Daiju no Mound manga review (it’s terrible)

I’m still on a baseball manga kick and I still have a lot of ground to cover. I’ve read some good stuff, some not so good stuff and just recently I read Daiju no Mound (大樹のマウンド) by Masashi Asaki, which is flat out terrible. Unlike something like A Single Match, which is terrible because it makes no sense, or Ayako, which is bad because it’s so trashy, Daiju no Mound is bad because the author doesn’t know the first thing about writing likable characters. Since there are no summaries out there, I’ll have to write one myself this time. Tch.

Daiju no Mound is about a boy in junior high named Daiju. He badly wants to play baseball. However his dad, who pitched at Koshien but ruined his shoulder after going pro and never made it out of the minors, is dead set against Daiju following in his footsteps. In his third year of junior high, however, Daiju runs into the cute manager of a little league team who wants Daiju as their ace pitcher and won’t take no for an answer. Will Daiju be able to run from his destiny?

Of course not. Otherwise the manga would have ended, mercifully enough, after two chapters instead of five volumes. Daiju himself is bland but occasionally stubborn with a weakness for pretty girls, like most shounen heroes. If he was the only character in Daiju no Mound we wouldn’t have a problem. Unfortunately everyone around him just sucks. I’m not going to cover every single character in the series, firstly because this manga doesn’t deserve that kind of coverage and secondly because I have luckily started to forget them all. The worst culprits, who made the manga nigh unreadable, are:

The cute manager, whose name I’ve forgotten: Her sole raison d’existence is to nag, nag, nag, nag, nag, nag x200 Daiju into doing things he usually doesn’t want to do. He had made peace with not being able to play baseball, for example, but she just wouldn’t let it drop. She showed up at his house day after day after day until he joined the little league team.

That was bad enough. But then once it was time to pick high schools, she ignored the school he was planning to go for and dragged him to another high school and nagged, nagged, nagged him – with the help of his team mates – until he finally gave in and went to that school.

Sure it’s his fault for not having the will to stand up to this annoying girl, but she doesn’t make her case easier by being such a noisy, nagging shrew. The author quickly realized what a pain she was and tried to give her some sob story about “Boo hoo, I have a weak heart, my parents don’t want me to be a manager but I love baseball so much, boo hoo” but it only makes her even more irritating, so that plotline is quickly dropped.

The little league coach: I can’t remember his name either, so I’ll call him Coach. It turns out Coach also led Daiju’s dad to Koshien. If that’s the case then he should be aware of the disaster that later befell Daiju’s dad and thus more likely to protect young pitcher’s arms, right? Wrong! Instead Coach goes on and on about finding a pitcher who can be the future of Japanese baseball, but when he finds him what does he do? He promptly begins to destroy Daiju’s shoulder!

Daiju's 'rivals' are deliberate clones of Mashiba and Miyata from Hajime no Ippo. — Daiju’s ‘rivals’ are deliberate clones of Mashiba and Miyata from Hajime no Ippo.

Coach is so focused on winning some little league tournament (which they lose quickly anyway) that he rushes Daiju into playing in the tournament without teaching him a thing about proper pitching technique, without imposing pitch limits, without teaching him anything about protecting himself, nothing.

And when Daiju does come down with a shoulder injury, predictably enough, you would expect Coach to bench him and tell him to take better care of himself, right? Wrong! Instead he follows Daiju from doctor to doctor until they find a quack that okays him playing, then Coach teaches Daiju another pitch he can use while his very badly injured shoulder is healing.

When Daiju finished middle school and moved to the high school level, I thought “At last, he’s going to be paired up with a sensible coach!” You know, someone who knows that protecting a future star means not destroying him in a petty tournament at age 15. But noooo, right after Daiju enrolls a coaching change is announced and here comes Coach again. Nooooo! I stopped reading at that point and jumped to the end. There was no point, really.

Daiju’s dad: Parenting is a tough job, no question about it, and being a single dad to a teenager must be even tougher. I want to cut Daiju’s dad some slack, but he made a lot of mistakes in handling Daiju. The first one was making baseball some kind of ‘forbidden fruit,’ which only made it more enticing to the kid. He’s a teenager, after all.

Mistake number two, which was even worse, was not guiding and advising Daiju once the kid inevitably started playing baseball. Daddy must have known first-hand all the pitfalls awaiting a young, highly gifted pitcher. In fact, that’s the very reason he didn’t want his son playing in the first place.

Once he gave tacit approval for Daiju to play, then, he should have done everything in his power to avoid a repeat of his own fate. Check his form, check his diet, check what kind of exercises he’s doing. Impose pitch limits and make him stick to them. Teach him warning signs that mean ‘Stop immediately.’ And when it comes to picking a high school, help him find a school with a baseball team that is active but not overly-rigorous. Basically just take an interest instead of throwing up your hands and walking away. You’re his dad, for goodness’ sake!

Anyway, the characters aside, the manga itself wasn’t remarkable in any way. The art was pretty good (albeit heavily inspired by Hajime no Ippo) and the action was usually easy to follow, but apart from that there’s nothing to recommend Daiju no Mound for. Except, I guess, that it made Masashi Asaki realize that he can draw but he can’t write. Since then he’s made his living as an artist partnering writers like Ira Ishida and Yuma Ando, so you may have seen his work in titles like Shibatora and Psychometrer Eiji.

Since the manga was so bad I’m not going to bother doing a sample chapter. The chapters in this manga are about 70 pages long anyway, so the odds were against it from the start. Most likely I’m not going to do samples of future series either (too much trouble, also it’s illegal) so I’ll spoil the abrupt ending: Daiju’s high school team plays some other team in the Koshien qualifiers and win. They’re probably going to Koshien, but the manga was cancelled just then so we’ll never know how they fared when they got there. The end.