Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu – Review
After much anticipation, I finally got ahold of Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu. Finally. But I won’t go into the drama that surrounded getting my copy, instead I’ll just talk about the drama of Pelu.
Now I won’t claim to completely understand anything that goes on in Junko Mizuno manga. A lot of times I just open it up and go for the ride, then try and wrap my head around it later. Sometimes much later. I’m still rereading part of Pure Trance, looking for some clue as to what it all means. If it means anything.
Pelu is essentially a fluffyball little male creature that used to live in the body of a female alien. Also in the body was a female version of Pelu and the biology of this planet dictates that Pelu and his wife (?) would make a baby inside the alien then the alien births the baby who is just like the alien. It’s an all female planet so all the babies are female with little fluffy balls inside of them. But Pelu escapes when the space hippo eats his host, biting her in half and he crawls out. Yeah. I’m serious.
Alone and wanting a baby of his own because he feels like a child will make him belong, he decides to head to the Space Hippo’s home planet, Earth. Once there he begins his quest to find a wife and have a baby. He encounters a singer, a rich girl, a clam diver and a highschooler.
The thing I love about Mizuno is that she writes about women as if the whole world were women, and in some cases, it literally is. Most literature written for and by men is this way. We even have the saying “it’s a man’s world” because, well, it is. A male protagonist means the book is for everyone. To set up a female protagonist is to write for women. The experience of femininity is singular while the experience of being a man is universal. Mizuno flips that. Men in her stories are often caricatures, sad, lonely desperate creatures who’s destinies are tied to the destiny of a woman. Though Pelu is technically male, he is not a man. He is desire. Not just sexual but the desire to belong, to relate and to procreate. Should men read this I think they would be liberated. Literature has denied men these feelings for too long.
Then there is, of course, the artwork. Mizuno’s style is hyper-color. Her eyes are wider, breasts bouncier, bodies rounder creating a sense of unease and awe. Like you’ve eaten too much candy. There’s so much to look at. Her worlds overflow with flowers and bunnies, so cute but sinister. As if she’s reminding her reader that the world, for all it’s beauty, is also withering and rotting. Her characters live their lives and make their choices within the limitations of the world they live in.
I don’t think I could hate a Mizuno manga if I tried. I knew I would love Pelu and I did. Some may not like the short story format but I enjoyed seeing so many ideas in one volume. I would want every page of this manga displayed on my wall!
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions
I have too many books on my to-read list. Incidentally, I’ve found that goodreads is a great place to keep track of lists. Much better than the sticky note method. Though I still do that too.
I’m at a loss of what to read next. There’s so many on my list, I think I’ve narrowed it down to five – will you help me choose?
Detroit Metal City (DMC) – This strange little manga is about a heavy metal rocker who dreams of boyband success. Very weird but lots of people are saying it’s really good.
Ember Fury – The child of celebrity parents deals with her stress by setting stuff on fire. The artwork looks neat and I’m a sucker for angry teenagers.
MariaHolic – a yuri obsessed teenager joins an all girls school in hopes of finding her love. But the perfect woman turns out to be a cross-dressing pyscho-man.
Cigarette Kisses – a yaoi about two men who almost get together when one decides to marry a woman. Years later they meet while smoking and um, I’m assuming things get hot!
Umbrella Academy: Dallas – I loved loved loved the first volume. Seriously, loved it. Enough to give Gerard Way’s band another try but no, the band still sucked.
So, which would you read? Have you read any of them and think maybe I can skip it?
List, list, lists!
You know I love lists. And Yaoi. So I’m all about a Yaoi Essentials List! Deb Aoki from About.com asked her Twitter pals what their favorite titles were and then, hooray, made a list! I haven’t read all the books on the list but I’m pleased to see one of my favorites, Future Lovers, was number 1. I also love Fake, Antique Bakery and Seduce me After the Show.
Of course, now my to-read list is even longer.
Did any of your favorite yaoi novels show up or not?
Review – Ikigami
A child is full of potential. That’s partly why we cherish them so much. In Ikigami: the Ultimate Limit, the government has developed a vaccine that can protect the population from every single known disease. However, to keep the citizens appreciation for life, a small percentage of vaccines kill the child before he or she turns 25. A day before their death, a man delivers an ikigami or death card to the victim. Fujimoto delivers these cards. Unfortunately, Ikigami is a lot like a child just full of potential. It never grows into anything more.
I would be willing to accept that a government would do this except it seems so pointless. People can still die of random acts. Also, generally, an appreciation for life comes with age. So killing children and young adults might hurt the families of those children but I would think that the surviving population would only feel relief that they had survived, not necessarily a new appreciation for life. Having the vaccine kill-switch triggered between 25 and 40 makes more sense. However, the book does focus on the devastation the ikigami brings to the families so I guess I’ll try and move past this nagging plot point.
Fujimoto begins to question the practice but has to be careful because the big bad government kills anyone who questions them. Of course they do. In volume 1, Fujimoto delivers an ikigami to a bitter loser who promptly goes off the deep end and extracts revenge on his highschool tormentors. The story is designed to show the potential problems with alerting someone to their death; they’ve got nothing to lose. However, the overblown artwork makes it seem like the man was a psycho and it was only a matter of time before he went off anyway. In fact, his advice to a young child is ‘go off now, don’t wait’. Confusing.
In the second story a street musician duo is separated when one is tapped for stardom and the other isn’t. The would-be star receives an ikigami and decides to reconnect, in his last seconds, with his true soul. He sings a song the duo wrote and that song brings his friend out of a coma. Then Fujimoto begins to wonder if the ikigami isn’t such a bad thing but a gift that allows people to really live.
There’s a lot of unnecessary information about how the vaccine is made and how it’s recipients are kept secret. This extraneous information illustrates what’s wrong with Ikigami. There’s too much thought. Instead of being a story about human experience and limits of life, it becomes a commentary on government, crime, art, and duty. That’s too much. The artwork is also overdone. At times the characters look like they are in a Pokemon battle as opposed to dealing with a revelation (albeit an awful one). Tears pour over dramatically, veins bulge. These conventions don’t heighten the tension, they just take the reader out of the story.
I can see the potential in Ikigami because it’s not a bad idea. The format of a big story tied together by stort stories leaves the door open for lots of different emotions and themes. Unfortunately, nothing comes together in any tangible way. It’s not a bad but it’s certainly not good. Oh, and another nagging point that maybe someone can help me figure out. On the first page it says the elementary school is in Angleton, Texas yet all the children and teachers are Japanese. What’s the deal? Is this something that was changed for Western readers? If so, why?
No More Crayon Shin-chan
Comic book resources Robot6 blog reports that Crayon Shin-chan creator dies in climbing accident.
I wasn’t a really big fan of this series but it was cute and rude and pretty funny. Sad.
What would you shoot out of the manga canon?
Kate Dacey asks: What Belongs in the Manga Canon?. By extension of course, she’s also asking, should there even be a manga canon? If you aren’t an English major (and why would you be) then you may not be familiar with the concept of a canon. Basically, a bunch of like minded folks get together and make a giant list of what they think you should be reading. Then some other people, from a different perspective, come along and point out the stuff they missed. Then you read it and wonder, ‘why the hell is this on the list’? Only don’t call it a list cause then you’ll look like a giant uneducated idiot. It’s a canon.
So go over and read the post because it discusses the points and pitfalls of making a canon. I’ll wait here.
The biggest problem I see with making a manga canon for an English speakers is that it means the entire canon is translated material. I think this would just make all the problems Kate discusses tenfold. By being translated the integrity of the original work is compromised. Of course, I’m all for translating because it means I get to read manga and I know that most translators do an excellent job. But still, that’s one layer removed from the original intent.
Are Americans really the ones who should be making a canon out of completely foreign material? Won’t we inevitably add works that appeal to our sensibilities without even realizing it? Other people will know more about unlicensed material than I will, but what about that?
What would we be saying with a canon like this?
I’m not entirely against the idea. It will be interesting to see what people believe is canon worthy through that American filter. What do a bunch of Japanese books say about our own experience? What do we see in these stories, especially those “masterpieces” that reflects our image?
Kate also mentions the issue of gender. Different perspectives is, of course, the canon’s fatal flaw. Shakespeare means half of what Kate Chopin means to me. How do you include everything that represents everyone? It’s impossible. Things will be missed, not because anyone wants to exclude them purposefully but because we just won’t see them.
I don’t know what the answer is on this one. I’m a huge fan of Top lists. Mabye we should do that? Lots and lots of Top 10 lists – with pictures.
Jason Thompson wants to share
Jason Thompson, author of the Manga: the Complete Guide, is giving away his very extensive manga collection! Check it out here:
My 365 Days of Manga: Or, Manga The Complete Guide Returns
Top 5 “Melodrama” Picks
I don’t want to give the impression with my Saturday post that I dislike emotional porn. Good heavens, no! Quite the opposite in fact. I’ve left my freshman college English major self in the dust. While it’s true that I don’t think teenage girls emulating the likes of Bella Swan is a good thing, I do think it’s perfectly wonderful to imagine that somewhere, sparkling in a tree, Edward Cullen waits. Hmm, I know far to much about this Twilight business than I should considering I couldn’t make it through the first book.
Ok, on to my top 5!
1. Vampire Knight – I do despise Yuki with her cow-chewing-cud stare but this story has three things that I can’t resist: Boarding schools, hot (shirtless) vampires and hall monitors with guns. Throw in the occasional ball and I am all over it. I’ve kind of quit reading but the first few volumes are yummy.
2. Absolute Boyfriend - so good. So so good. And here’s why. The love triangle includes a horny robot. I’ll repeat horny! robot! The first volume even features said robot, neked with a bow. I know! Making a robot fall in love and deny his robot self is unadulterated emotional porn.
3. You’re so Cool – Here he is, the bad boy. Not “bad” in the sense that he wants to suck your blood but really really bad. He’s cruel, taunting and you are the only one who can melt his cold heart.
4. Chocolate – Hello, boy band.
5. Fake – remember in those tv dramas, Moonlighting, X-Files, Bones – all that will they/won’t they stuff? Well this is like that only the Hayes/Scully/Brennan character is much hotter and also male. Be warned though, it includes a sweet side story that annoyingly gets in the way of the fun.
What are your top 5? Recommend some to me!
Back to Work/End of Summer Reading
I’m back at work! It’s kind of weird but believe me, I’m relishing the time to drink a cup of coffee and read my email without worrying I’m going to spill on the baby’s head or get my computer torn down by the toddler.
This may be shocking to some but maternity leave is no vacation! Still I did get to squeeze in a few manga these past couple months. Here’s how I felt about them:
Bride of the Water God Vol. 2
I had heard that the second volume doesn’t necessarily improve. The character development is still minimal, the plot is full of holes and the dialogue is laughable. Still, the artwork makes up for everything. I don’t care how insipid Habaek and Soah continue to be, if they wear those gorgeous clothes while flying past the moon in an elaborate ship, I will eat it up.
Uzumaki Vol. 2
There’s very little “horror” that I can’t handle. Uzumaki is pushing the limit. In this twisted (pun intended) volume, the terror is pushed up as the town possessed by a spiral, uh, spirals downward. I warn you, it’s seriously disturbing but brillant. The only thing that bothers me is that the townspeople have yet to figure out what’s going on. You would think that after multiple frightening incidents, including people morphing in snails for godsake, the folks would learn to stay away from anything strange or believe others when they relate that something is wrong – ah, but no.
Pluto Vol. 1
I should have read this title first. I’m a huge fan of Monster and was thrilled to see a couple of series by Naoki Urasawa. My comic book guy recommended it over 20th Century Boys, saying it was different than Monster and would make a nice change. Based on a single Astro Boy story, “The Greatest Robot on Earth”, Pluto takes the concept of a robot murdering serial killer and expands the world to a completely new level. There is obviously a lot of care and reverence to the master, Osamu Tezuka. I’m not sure why I resisted, perhaps because Astro Boy is my least favorite Tezuka title? Whatever the reason, I’m glad I finally got around to it.
So there you have it, my summer reading. Another good reason to return to work? The copies of Queen & Country and A Drifting Life on my desk!
New Word for YBY: Bishōnen!
Young Bill Young here. Sadie and her readers are probably laughing, but since Manga is still new to me, I keep stumbling across the different genres as I explore manga sections in library stacks and at local OKC comic shops. While browsing at Atomic Pop on South Western, I looked at a title categorized as bishōnen. Say what?
So, it was off to an Internet search. Bishōnen is a japanese word that means “beautiful boy,” and the bishōnen asthetic has been in existence in Japan for more than 1,000 years, although today it is very much a manga term. College student Can Tran, in this interesting post says a comparable western term for bishōnen would be metrosexual. (Now we’re getting somewhere!)
Unlike yaoi—that other gender-bending, mind-blowing Japanese manga term that Sadie shared with me—bishōnen features young men “whose beauty (and sexual appeal) transcends the boundary of sexual orientation.” (According to the bishōnen definition in this Wikipedia entry.) While the artistic depiction of bishōnen men in manga may be feminized, the protagonists are more stereotypically-male in other respects: they possess physical strength, often manifesting martial arts skills and a talent for sports. (Makes sense, since the title I picked up at Atomic Pop was definitely an action/adventure story.)
Bishōnen heroes also tend to be highly intelligent, with a “comedic flair.” (Wikipedia, again.) That may explain one of the reasons why, like Yaoi, it is a very popular genre with Japanese girls and women. (Gotta have some meat with those potatoes!)
In the end, I didn’t pick up the bishōnen title. Instead, I purchased the first issue of Pluto, a reimagining of Osamu Tezuka’s ground-breaking manga, Astro Boy. (Read Pluto online.)
But I’m going to keep my eye on the bishōnen genre. You can too at Bishōnen Guide.
Finally, is Adam Lambert bishōnen?
