Editor’s Note: After I posted my review of Peepo Choo, Felipe Smith’s unique, provocative series skewering trans-Pacific culture shopping, Erica Friedman stopped by to offer her two cents. Erica followed Peepo Choo when it was being serialized in Japan, and had a very different perspective on the material, both from reading it in Japanese, and from reading more seinen manga than I have. (A lot more, to be accurate!) When Erica offered to write her own review, I jumped at the chance to host it; even if she didn’t persuade me that Peepo Choo belonged on my Best Manga of 2010 list, I knew she would make me want to re-read the text and reconsider what I said. I hope you find Erica’s review as thought-provoking as I do!
PEEPO CHOO, VOL. 1
BY FELIPE SMITH • VERTICAL, INC. • 248 PP. • RATING: MATURE (18+)
I first encountered Peepo Choo in the pages of Kodansha’s Morning 2 magazine. It instantly blew me away with the unique art style, the unerring accuracy of wannabee-dom portrayal and a cruel — but entirely realistic — view of humans driven by delusion.
What was most apparent in those magazine pages was the art style. Or, I should say “styles,” because creator Felipe Smith was not afraid to shift his style from scene to scene. In fact, the distinct art styles drove the backstories as much as the dialogue did. The characters are all drawn in hyper-non-realism that one see so often in the pages of seinen manga, c.p. something like Tenjou Tenge or Ikkitousen where the body types are just as absurdly proportioned, but are presented in all seriousness.
Smith is not presenting these characters in seriousness, but as blatant parodies of characters you’d expect to find in just about any seinen manga series. These characters are all driven by a delusion of some kind. We sympathize with Milton’s delusion of escape into a happy place, we are disgusted with Rockstar’s delusion of excess, but in all cases Smith’s parody finds our own weak points and bares it for the entire audience to see.
Peepo Choo is a series about culture shock and coveting things that might not actually exist. Jesse represents every young man who wants to have a never-ending orgy with buxom women and, while we understand how Rockstar got that way, and each individual step of his metamorphosis into a walking id makes sense to us; we laugh at the mistakes and reject the end result, even as we ourselves covet it. Milton represents introverted kids everywhere who just want to find an oasis in which to be themselves, even as Smith mocks the distorted lens through which otaku view the land of “animu.”
One of the key features of Peepo Choo is Smith’s rendering of “moon language.” This phrase became popular during the ascendancy of Sailor Moon and still exists among lazy and incredulous fans. It renders Japanese into something utterly alien that only special people can understand and is, without fail, a phrase that enrages any American fan who has through sheer effort learned any Japanese. Japanese is not, obviously, a random, bizarre, incomprehensible language.
Milton, unaware that the anime he watches is meant as a mind-fuck, takes the lessons he learns to heart and think he is learning Japanese, when he is, in fact, learning an incomprehensible, random, bizarre and often rude set of words, a veritable Moon Language, as unused and unusable in Japan as it would be in Chicago. When I first encountered the parody of linguistic culture shock, it floored me. In English translation, it loses a little impact, because to the American reader’s eyes, Milton is still speaking English. In so far as written dialogue is a function of visuals, as well as meaning, it looked weirder for this little black kid in cosplay to be speaking incomprehensible, often extremely rude, Japanese. It also hurt more when he’s misunderstood, because 1) he’s only a little kid, and can’t he catch a break? and 2) anyone who has ever seen the looks of incomprehension on the face of a Japanese person when one tries their first halting steps to speaking the language knows the cold sick feeling Milton is experiencing.
Saying Peepo Choo is a parody only partially describes what Smith is doing with his comic. In a sense, he is presenting exactly what the audience expects, presenting it exactly as they expect it — and making them feel foolish for expecting it. “Here,” Smith seems to be saying, “This is what you want? You want tits and ass and blow jobs and violence and hahaha on American otaku? Is this what you want? Well, here!” as he holds up both middle fingers and smiles gently at us.
Yes, Mr. Smith, this is what I want – a brutally accurate skewering of the very things I look for in seinen manga, with a side of insistent irony and linguistic mortification. Thanks!
Peepo Choo is one of the smartest, cruelest, most original works I’ve read in ages. Thanks to Kodansha for recognizing genius when they saw it, and Vertical for knowing when to take a gamble.
Many thanks to Kate Dacey for providing the review copy and for allowing me to review this book on her site.
Okazu is the oldest and most comprehensive blog for anime and manga reviews, news and events of interest to Yuri, Girls Love and Shoujoai fans by Erica Friedman, the President and Founder of Yuricon & ALC Publishing. She is also President of Yurikon LLC, a social media promotion company focusing on small and “micro” niches.
This Review has just made me buy Peepo Choo, I am now really looking forward to start reading it,
Sorry, but even after a read, I still don’t find holding up a mirror to a straw audience and giving them the finger to hold any more merit or insight than a particularly ranty blog. Scathing cynicism is cute and all, but a work of art needs to speak to diverse interpretation, not just trip a cheap laugh at yourself or others.
@Sheentaku – I’ll count that as a victory, thanks.
@Jade – You may not like it, but that’s okay. Calling the seinen audience a “straw” construct isn’t accurate, since it undoubtedly exists. Like so much of manga, this books was created for Japanese readers, not American ones.
One of the things I commented on in a Twitter conversation about this series was that Western fans are rather fragile about being made fun of, so I can see that many people who get their back up upon reading this series. It’s okay to not have enjoyed this book. That doesn’t make the book less good to people who are not you. ^_^
@Erica – You said, ‘“Here,” Smith seems to be saying, “This is what you want? You want tits and ass and blow jobs and violence and hahaha on American otaku? Is this what you want? Well, here!” as he holds up both middle fingers and smiles gently at us.’ Whether someone wants to squeeze themselves into that mold or not, it’s an assumption of the audience’s desires in a work that should, otherwise, be able to face interpretation by anyone at all, a straw construct.
Whether I’m personally offended by them or not, I also feel the book is a collection of gross stereotypes without enough of a level of irony to separate them from being anything but. The commentary is just too brutal and shameless to not crack the veneer of objectivity and the push to ‘hold up two middle fingers’ to the audience smashes it completely.
And I’m sorry, but why did you turn my comments about a book into comments about me, personally? I have a different opinion of this book; why did you turn that into personal jabs? It was tough not to respond in kind.
@Jade – I’m sorry if you saw it that way. I felt – and still feel – that you have significant and obvious hostility to this series and, by extension, me for liking it. Seems to me that you could just not like it without being so obviously angry about it.
@Erica – If I despised you for whether or not you liked a book, don’t you think I would have mentioned one single negative thing about you or your interpretation of the book in my comments here?
I commented here in addition to Kate’s review because I actually care about what both you and Kate have to say about the book. I don’t disagree with anything you had to say in your review here, we just came to different conclusions. Besides Kate thinking the book was a bit too gratuitous and…unsympathetic? you’re both saying pretty much the same thing and I never sent her any death threats for it.
You know what? You win. I’m reading things into the book that absolutely no one else sees. That doesn’t mean I have special insight, that makes me wrong and unable to understand why.
I can’t be frank and open on this site anymore because I’m ranty and acerbic with the very same underdeveloped human social skills that you mentioned in your How (Not) to Read Reviews article and I don’t want people swooping down on everything I say. Thank you for humiliating me on one of the only sites I care about.
@Jade – I have no idea what you’re arguing about. I respect your right to disagree with what is objectively a subjective opinion and would like the same courtesy in return. I haven’t “won” anything, nor have I humiliated you in any way.
As I see it, I wrote a review that you strongly disagree with and my responses to your comments are further fanning the flames. I apologize sincerely to you and to Kate.
@Jade: I wouldn’t have invited Erica to contribute an essay if I thought she would be disrespectful to other readers. Erica and I have differed on many books (Jormungand, for example), but have always found common ground in our shared interest in critiquing manga. You know that I appreciate your comments; we’ve had many excellent conversations about manga, Mark Millar, etc. that have prompted me to re-examine my arguments. I don’t really understand how we got to this juncture, however, as I didn’t see anything in Erica’s review or subsequent comments that was attacking you or, more broadly, people like me who didn’t like Peepo Choo. No one — least of all me — wants you to feel uncomfortable posting here, but I hate to see this kind of misunderstanding unfolding in the comments, as I think we’re all on the same page about Peepo Choo: it elicits a very strong emotional response from readers.
@Kate – ‘Western fans are rather fragile about being made fun of, so I can see that many people who get their back up upon reading this series. It’s okay to not have enjoyed this book.’ Yes, she is the very picture of courtesy right there. Anything I have to say about this book is apparently me lashing out at being made fun of because I’m fragile. If I misinterpreted, I questioned her on it and apparently I hate her personally because this book is trash. Disagreeing with me is one thing, but equating the thought I put into this book with childish drama is offensive. Less than two weeks after writing that How (Not) Read (One of MY) Reviews article she’s accusing me of her quaint talking points rather than at all engaging comments that I put some amount of thought into.
@Erica – I already gave you the halfway solid logic and childish hysterics you were desperately scratching for. Why are you still talking to me?