Review: Bakuman volumes 14-15

In volume 14 Bakuman. has blundered further into what always has been nefarious territory for the underdog shounen sports ilk: what happens if the protagonist in the question is no longer an underdog? Bakuman. has so far handled the duo's rivals well, with the right touches of comic and human, making them the actual interesting characters in the series, more so than Takagi and Mashiro. But then it decides to introduce a true villain, new mangaka Nanamine who has a strange creative process. He culls opinions from the Internet to determine the plot of his manga, a "dark," barely suitable for Jump, fearsome project.

The problems this little twist reveals of Bakuman. are myriads. First of all, Bakuman. has never been halfway decent with its manga within the manga, and has largely avoided showing this fault by offering very quick peeks. The problem is that the some-fifteen pages provided for Nanamine's new manga are painfully mediocre: there's clumsy exposition and rushed pacing and exaggerated expressions almost right out of 80s shoujo manga. (There is also the matter of conflating attractiveness with moral integrity, but perhaps that's only par for the course.) These pages supposedly demonstrate Nanamine's talents and intelligence--his only saving grace from the egomaniac he proves to be in later chapters--but if this is Bakuman.'s showing not telling, I'd rather it just tells.

The second problem this development makes devastatingly clear is that Bakuman. has said very little of value about manga and about writing, despite being a manga about manga. It has paid lip service to perseverance and creativity, to be sure, but it falters in harrier conversations like the validity of writing by committee and really, I mean really, challenging the publishers. If I have it right, in fact, the major conflict has been the mangaka wanting to work themselves to death and the editors not enabling that behavior. Anyway, both Ashirogi and the writing team of Bakuman. itself are two-person collaborations, plus some odd assistants, but what of constructing the plot by consulting with 50 different egos with a shaky driver seat? The project falls apart. Bakuman. makes it clear that the collaboration has been able to yield positive results, but is the idea inherently self-destructive, or is it Nanamine's own failing? It seems curious that by-committee creative process comes into so much scrutiny considering doujinshi's long tradition of writing circles and Bakuman.'s good track record with mangaka's contribution to each other's work.

Third problem: Bakuman's touch and go character work. On the one hand Bakuman. has a number of amusing sidekicks and rivals, on the other, there's the milquetoast protagonists and the blatant archetypes. It's clear, you know, that Mashiro and Takagi are supposed to be the readers' ciphers--they're in high school, they're mild-mannered boys, bam, half the demographic of Shounen Jump. The trade-off is perennial: There has to be absolutely nothing spectacular about them for it to be an effective cipher, ergo, no character work.

But, you may interject, there's that confession Mashiro made to Azuki in the first chapter. Wasn't that adorable? Wasn't that sweet what absolute romantics they are? Actually, it was something I hoped Bakuman. would grow out of. Think about it, the relationship that would be at the heart of the story has no foundation, no reason, and no chemistry--and that's supposed to be Mashiro's motivation! The only thing audacious about that first chapter is how lazy the writing is.

But, you may protest, Mashiro and Takagi are totally not cardboard stand-ins like those ecchi guys. Oh yeah? They are high school boys who want to write a manga instead of getting laid. Can't draw? You're the Takagi? Can't write? You're the Mashiro. Takagi and Mashiro are stripped of specifics to the point of having no personality. Consider this: can you name anything they do, not things that happen to them, what they do, that showcase their personality? IN FACT, how does any of their backstory affect their creative decisions? All of their output is what high school boys think would be dark and edgy to write about.

Dark-and-edgy in quotation marks is all the Ashirogi brand ever was. The manga inside the manga are premises, not real stories. Their first ever project was about how you can sell your mind for money: ooh, corruption, dark! Ooh, dystopia! Can you actually tell me what's interesting about the moral quandaries we're presented with here? Can you even identify those moral quandaries? Their magnum opus was about a disaffected but observant boy?!?!?! What the fuck how--how can you possibly cater more to your demographics? And to bring it back to these volumes, Nanamine's new manga is a Battle Royale-inspired fantasy where an omnipresent force kills schoolchildren who lie? The people who lie just happen to be the bullies and the hypocritical jerks? And the "extreme and interesting" ideas about a boy not wanting to die a virgin so he forces a girl into the bathroom? They're just textbook definition of dark-and-edgy tryhard. "Morally ambiguous, psychological battle manga"? "Lays bare man's ugliness"? Blergh, it's a contrived situation, stupid. Even Takagi said it, there's little to none character work, and honestly, if you want to say something grand about human nature, you have to begin with something specific. Specific characters, with specific circumstances. Ashirogi gave the manga a 3 out of five for "Originality and Characterization," and 5 for story. The problem is that those are not separate categories, and if they are, characterization should be all that matters.

Sigh. Ashirogi didn't identify the real reason why Classroom is unpublishable in the end. It's not that the main character dies, it's that students have been dropping like flies since the first pages without any meditation on the story's part on their death. It's that reading it, I feel dirty, because what are readers but the omnipresent voice delivering death sentences from a box from high above? Bakuman. tries to make the story intellectual but behind it, there's an obvious and heinous sadistic glee that is the furthest thing from an earnest investigation into human nature.

Why was it sadistic? Many manga and shows I like kill characters all the time. The difference is they make us care about the characters first. In Nanamine's manga the teacher who dies first wants to kill his student so that he is the last one standing. The class president who dies shortly after is pathetic and manipulative and looks like a frog. Their deaths are meaningless in a way that deaths shouldn't be. It's gauche. It's clumsy. It borders on sociopathic. It's also creatively bankrupt.

Look, if you want a truly non-mainstream, anti-Jump manga, you write about loneliness and depression, not this. If you want to make a statement about human nature, you write a really human character in the freaking first place. Characterization is the cornerstone of writing and it's only from the specific and the intimate that you can say something universal, you goddamn asshole. Like, the fact that these new writers become younger and younger, starting out at 15 and 16 and shit, it's not inspiring or reassuring. It just means that they're more likely to be clueless manchildren with no empathy. Bakuman. certainly is portraying one such asshole, why doesn't it see sheer immaturity and lack of life experience and consequently anything meaningful to say as part of the issue?

Time stamp: I wrote a huge part of this post back in--I don't know, back when Bakuman. hasn't ended its run yet. I've since finished reading the manga and Jesus fucking Christ, all the the back half is mired in this unfortunate bullshit about writing the best manga in the world, OMG. That's not the poi--you can't even do it like that--I can't even--you gauge it by volume sales WTF THAT'S NOT HOW YOU DO IT. Okay it's true that many of the best manga were also the most popular in their time, like Touch, or Fullmetal Alchemist, but keep in mind that One Piece outsells both of them combined and that Detective Conan is on its last, practically nonexistent creative leg. But this is not a conversation you're even having, so, yeah.

And I should have known, honestly, because in the Ashirogi versus Nizuma Eiji competition what other metrics were they going to use? I had hoped they would come into a realization in the course of it, but you know, sigh. This is really the fundamental problem of running a manga about manga writing on Shounen Jump, because even as Bakuman. attempts to challenge what was okay for the magazine to print, it can't help but chronicle a traditional shounen rivalry in the middle of itself--a rivalry that is not at all fit for its subject matter, and Bakuman.,obviously out of its depth, finally resorts to traditional tropes to handle the non-traditional rivalry. Which is a fucking terrible idea. Instead of confidently making a statement about writing, Bakuman. betrays an insecurity about its own identity: What does it mean that I am published on Shounen Jump? Am I dark and edgy enough? Important enough? How on Earth do I judge that? Does my having zero life experience impede my ability to write a meaningful relationship?

(Okay that last one was--whatever.)

Skinnydipping in Anime: Detective Conan: Private Eye in the Distant Sea

Let’s get it out of the way that Detective Conan: Private Eye in the Distant Sea fails as a mystery, fails at telling a satisfactory, cohesive story, and badly needs some subtlety—any subtlety! All of which are side effects, I suppose, of being a fan service and propaganda delivery vehicle.

Mission number one of this movie: getting everyone you know some screen time, goddammit, no matter how tacked on these lumps of narrative have to be. Sonoko and the 1B detectives are the most egregious, because they don’t even contribute anything to the “plot,” but the way in which the movie insinuates Heiji and Kazuha into the story is more annoying. Yes, they do catch a bad guy—but it’s in a movie that has not one, not two, but three bad guys, at least two of which are totally unnecessary. The Heiji and Kazuha subplot is emblematic of how this kind of fan service destroys coherency: because everyone has to do something, the movie becomes convoluted, diluting any focus on any character. The emotional through line—in which Shinichi promises that he would be able to find Ran anywhere, and lo and behold, she ends up needing him to rescue her—is introduced half way through in a half-hearted attempt to lend the movie emotional gravitas. It doesn’t tie to the central mystery or any kind of theme, and kind of insults viewers’ intelligence in suggesting that Ran can possibly die and trying to wring some drama out of that tension. Another case of “you didn’t earn this” is Kazuha crying at the end. Crying is catharsis. Traipsing through Osaka solving puzzles and dodging bullets doesn’t earn catharsis.

For much of the same reason, Detective Conan: Private Eye in the Distant Sea is not an effective mystery. Look, the best Gosho Aoyama mysteries all have a hook and are clearly laid out. A favorite story I go back to every time is when seven detectives are gathered to solve a riddle inside a castle—traditional to be sure, but man, the atmosphere in it is incredible. It’s the closest Detective Conan has come to a thriller. In an Agatha Christie And Then There Were None kind of way, the seven detectives are all suspects, distrust each other, and kill off each other as the culprit watches, only better than Agatha because there’s dried blood between the playing cards, a car explosion, and a family crest that’s a cross between a crooked nosed man and a bird. Aaanyway, other Detective Conan stories all define their suspects and have a central conceit—locked room murder is a perennial favorite. Ones that feature a red herring, as this movie does, always revolve around a small and insignificant detail that the obvious solution doesn’t necessarily explain. The mysteries may seem complicated, but the goal is often very well defined: explain this thing, using details that we may not have drawn attention to. A lot of what makes up mysteries is misdirection.

Detective Conan: Private Eye in the Distant Sea isn't complicated; it’s convoluted and painfully straightforward, not understanding that mysteries are about misdirection. It draws attention to every little detail and they always come back like this intricate interlocking puzzle, and it’s convoluted not because every piece works together toward some nebulous conclusion—they don’t—it’s convoluted because there are so many mini-puzzles that do not cohere to a unifying theme. It lacks a good hook. It lacks a clear goal. The mini-puzzles are superfluous and purposeless. The culprit isn't even introduced in the first act.

I can’t deny, though, that the movie has some pretty entertaining moments, all of which, of course, are completely unintentional. Part of it is my having seen the movie on a Japan Airline flight in English subtitle; part of it is the dumb-as-a-box-of-oceanic-rocks terrorist plot, in which a “foreign country” tries to steal military secret from a top security vessel. I don’t know whether China or the US was in the original Japanese script or what, but have some backbone, dude. Speaking of, this movie immediately shoots up on the Top Ten Hilariously Pro-Military Propaganda Movies of All Time. It features the police and the Self Defense Force working together like a big happy family. It lavishes on dorky technical specs of the Aegis—which, I guess my mentioning the ship by name means that it works. I watched slack-jawed as credits rolled over cheesy, loving, live-action shots of the ship out at sea, with pelicans flying and everything. It’s an atrocity to subtlety. It’s great.

Also, for those who care which I know are depressingly not a whole lot, Detective Conan: Private Eye in the Distant Sea is kind of weirdly sexist. In the first act, Conan becomes suspicious of a female SDF officer because women don’t make up a ton of the SDF, so the chances of seeing one in the wild are not great. Look, fucker, even if women make up only one percent of the SDF or something, the chances of no one seeing a female SDF officer are still zero.

Extremely Short Take, Another Take: Black Butler

Oh my God stop me, Christmas is somehow making me vindictive. I.e., one sure way to bring out my Monday morning cranky side is by talking about Black Butler.

Title: Black Butler
Author & Artist: Yana Toboso

I first read Black Butler two years ago. I'm still reeling from the car crash.

It's not that I object to the creepy sexual undertone between a butler and his pre-pubescent master, because that would severely limit my reading materials if I were into manga at all, right guys? Right? Black Butler is merely an unholy marriage of every seedy underbelly aspect of manga. You see, the one thing that a person loathes more than the success of the things she hates is the failure of stuff she loves.

Let's analyze the premise: In Victorian England, snot-nosed brat Earl Ceil Phantomhive and his butler Sebastian look devastatingly handsome while battling the forces of evil. Except Sebastian has earned his perfect house cleaning degree (sarcastic) from devil school (metaphorical). Unadvertised/real reason anybody would read this thing: yaoi subtext that crosses age, species and gender boundaries.

Let's face it, yaoi subtext? Right up my alley. All the other trappings? Not so much. I have long detested the Gothic vein in manga, especially manga outright set in Europe, since not only do I prefer Eastern to Western aesthetics, but also because these manga have nothing in the way of substance, believing that frills and master-servant or sheltered heroine dynamic brings readers by the hordes and sustains their interests.

For the record, of course I have exceptions, after all, Fullmetal Alchemist is steampunk.

Anyway, the Victorian England settings often does disservice to the manga, because we all know how much mangaka like to research their subjects thoroughly, not taking liberties with period fashion right? Turns out that's the least of my worries.

Because Black Butler opens by establishing three things: Sebastian is perfect, all other characters beside Sebastian and Ceil are hapless, and the series is totally pointless. If I strip away the sparkles (of which there are lots,) the awkward exclamations (of which there are several too many,) and the decidedly unamusing interactions (which should be stronger since that's where you hang your hook,) the "plot" of the first chapter is thus: Sebastian wipes the floor with some martial artist. They both look the opposite of cool and the epitome of stiff human anatomy with the former posing a finishing move and the latter posing the 1000-hand crane (what, you say, what?) Sebastian proceeds to save a super important dinner (that's super important guys, Ceil is discussing children toys with a genial old man - a long-time business partner and everything) because the other servants have all chosen to simultaneously cock up. Cue exaggerated reactions all around and crude portrayal of foreigners and household servants.

Seriously, the world does not have to hang in the balance for something to have gravitas, but dear mangaka, for introduction to your characters and a simple dinner you don't need that level of melodrama. In fact, sometimes I prefer my first chapters to be non-action oriented if I was delving into the slice-of-life variety. Black Butler could be mining for dark comedy in treating dinner with life-or-death drama, but I didn't find the chapter funny in the least. It was plainly overdone. Waiter, send it back please.

Another problem is Black Butler's minor characters, in the sense that they are character traits slapped onto humanoid figures and an inconsequential echo chamber for the sheer greatness that is Sebastian. Why bother giving them names? Why not just label them the cook, the maid, because that's both easier to remember and what they ultimately amount to anyway. Their services become their identity, which, nice job of portraying Victorian England mindset.

My predictions for the following chapters, having heard so many wonderful ravings about the boys: Black Butler will attempt to adopt a "dark" tone (murder on the agenda! Unhealthy symbiotic relationships!) which will mesh well with the first chapter since evil was practically crawling underneath the surface and all. Sebastian and Ceil will engage in pseudo-sexual acts (it's not a kiss, it's mouth-to-mouth resuscitation! And butlers bridal-carry their masters all the time, et cetera.)

There is no saving grace. The art is clumsy and not nuanced; it merely ridiculously fetishizes Victorian fashion. Add that to the hopelessly objectified cardboard cut-outs of characters and the clunky storytelling, you've got my nightmare manga.

WTF Shounen in: AKB49 - Renai Kinshi Jourei

Title: AKB49 - Renai Kinshi Jourei
Author & Artist: Reiji Miyajima

Stop me if you have heard this before: wanting to impress his dream girl, a boy cross-dresses to audition for female idol group AKB48's 12th generation Kenkyusei squad, which consists essentially of hopeful trainees. He gets in, and for love-lorn reasons, continues to cross-dress and perform as a Kenkyusei member, in center position no less. Apparently, as foreshadowed in the very first pages of the manga, he eventually becomes the legendary 49th addition to AKB. Hence the title.

No, I don't think I got flagged down once in that entire description.

This crack-tastic premise doesn't betray how utterly generic the manga turns out to be, when you get down to it. In fact, everything aside from what happens in the manga itself boggles the mind. As in, What Demographic Does It Actually Appeal to? I know intellectually that AKB49 runs in Weekly Shounen Magazine, (alongside Fairy Tail, make of that what you will,) but I would be hard-pressed to find a teenage boy reading a story about a teenage boy becoming an idol, much less one of the female persuasion. In this sense AKB49 fits with the shoujo catalogue, but I would also be hard-pressed to find a teenage girl who enjoys reading about a boy becoming a female idol in the context of fanservice.

This is one for the built-in fanbase, then.

Which brings me to how I came to read this manga. I thought it would be a guide, of a sort, to a subculture of Japan that I have yet to be introduced to. I was morbidly curious, even though that way often lies madness. Well, I didn't know some of the things mentioned in this manga, the most fascinating of which being the "handshake events," where fans line up to shake hands with group members, but by and large, if you want something remotely educational, then you'd better move along, nothing to see here, no sirree.

This is because somehow  I doubt that Japan's idol industry is so welcoming to inexperienced newcomers, and generally operates on shounen logic, by which I mean oozing cheese out of its ears. A girl in a crisis of identity? One inspirational comment from a guy then back on her feet she goes. The most popular girl in AKB? Of course she notices the talent-questionable but hard-working newbie. Industry veterans and seasoned audience? Be moved by the sheer power of their commitment. Desperate last minute popularity bid? A sensational and quirky resounding success. AKB49 plays straight every cliche in the handbook, resulting in a less than accurate portrayal of the struggle behind the curtains. For that, go read something like Solanin, because there's no place for level-headed reflection on life in a shounen magazine these days.

What's there, is passion. Underdog sports shounen offerings and underdog idol's climb to the top have this in common, the passion. And underneath the rampant abuse of tropes and behind the flashes of panties, I could sense no malice, only a breathtaking sincerity. The attraction is not "everything a girl can do a guy can do it better," or merely bouts of inane bravado followed by watching pretty girls dance to their amusement, and even if it is, I choose to see its better sides. The attraction, for me, is that when I read AKB49 and root for Minori, I forget that Minori is Minoru, a boy.

The message is that gender ultimately does not matter, that any person following their dream is beautiful and worth watching. Granted, I do not think AKB49 is being subversive by conscious choice, the stereotypes such as the grating-on-my-last-nerve tsundere and the blandly attractive love interest would suggest differently. I would posit, though, that AKB49 has made well-worn tropes into the vehicle for more progressive thinking, despite its own host of frankly crippling issues. What's that you say, substance? Have you not been paying attention at all?

Edit, because I realize I have been making assertions that I haven't defended: Except for one dumb fanservice moment where Minoru is horribly conflicted about sleeping next to his crush who's looking as vulnerable as possible, AKB49 hasn't exploited the gender bender angle. (There's no changing room shenanigans, and he gets groped by a girl, how about that for role reversal?) And both Minori and Minoru are liberal blushers, display the same tenacity and rashness, because dear writers, that's a good look on both genders and not just your male protagonists. This is actually more progressive than certain gender bender manga and shows where the main conflict is "she's in an all-male boarding school, oh my god" which invariably entails small boobs jokes and aggressive behavior and forcing the girl to strip and her being rescued by a boy. Not that I would know, much.

An aspect where AKB49 is unabashedly shoujo: Minoru's growth as a freaking idol is marked with emotional maturity and not the acquisition of a new move. AKB49 can also verge into naivete: being perceived as a girl isn't constricting or liberating; it just means Minoru can be close to and more supportive of the person he loves.

(All well and good, but really, come for the experience, stay for the art. It can verge into inconsistent, but boy are the outfits gorgeous.)