Short Takes: Super-Sized Shojo Edition

Welcome to Shojo Manga Week! For the next seven days, I’ll be shining the spotlight on a variety of shojo titles, new and old, while counting down my all-time favorite series. I admit that I’ve had a long and ambivalent relationship with shojo; though I love the idea of female creators writing stories for female readers, I often find myself rolling my eyes at the ubiquity of dopey plotlines — a massage club? — and wishy-washy heroines. At the same time, however, the raw honesty and elegant artwork of the very best titles keeps me soldiering through the Black Birds and Love Master As in search of something as moving as Sand Chronicles or The Name of the Flower. To kick off Shojo Manga Week, therefore, I look at five brand-new titles aimed squarely at teenage girls: Alice the 101st (DMP), The Clique (Yen Press), Dengeki Daisy (VIZ), Romeo x Juliet (Yen Press), and Ugly Duckling’s Love Revolution (Yen Press).

ALICE THE 101st, VOL. 1

BY CHIGUSA KAWAI • DMP • 208 pp. • RATING: TEEN (13+)

Fourteen-year-old Aristade Lang, a.k.a. “Alice,” is a musical savant; he can play complicated tunes from memory, but his technique is unorthodox, he can’t read music, and he doesn’t really understand how music works. (Translation: he wouldn’t know a seventh chord if it bit him in the ass.) Though he hardly seems like conservatory material, the faculty at the prestigious Mondonveille Academy admit him on the strength of an impassioned audition, pairing him with two very different mentors: the friendly but steely Victor de Corteau, a seventeen-year-old viola student, and the brusque Yannick Dalberto, a young faculty member who’s appalled by Alice’s inability to sight-read or play a major scale.

None of this would be very convincing if manga-ka Chigusa Kawai had skimped on the musical research, but she avoids one of the most common traps of this genre by showing us that native talent alone isn’t a guarantee of artistic ability; practice and a solid grounding in the fundamentals play equally important roles in a musician’s development. (As an added bonus, Alice and his fellow violinists play actual repertoire; no one trots out a transcription of Schubert’s Ave Maria for a concerto competition.) Kawai’s elegant artwork — especially her renderings of instruments — and vivid cast of supporting characters give this very basic fish-out-of-water story some fresh energy; the other musicians are believably prickly and suspicious of Alice without coming across as monstrous. The only sour note is a false whiff of homoeroticism in Alice and Victor’s relationship, with Victor pawing and fussing over Alice’s appearance to such a degree it occasionally distracts. Still, that’s a minor flaw in what’s shaping up to be a very entertaining series about a young musician learning the hard truth: there’s only one way to get to Carnegie Hall.

Review copy provided by Digital Media Publishing.

THE CLIQUE

BY LISI HARRISON AND YISHAN LI • YEN PRESS • 196 pp. • RATING: TEEN (13+)

The Clique reads like My Super Sweet 16: The Manga, a celebration of consumerist excess and teen entitlement masquerading as a story about a nice but fashion-challenged transfer student who runs afoul of her new school’s alpha girls. The plot, based on Lisi Harrison’s best-selling book of the same name, focuses on the rivalry between Massie Block, queen of Octavian Country Day School, and Claire Lyons, a middle-class girl whose family has just moved to Westchester County. Though Claire is as friendly and guileless as a puppy (at least in the early going), Massie views Claire as a nuisance, embarking on an all-out campaign to humiliate her new neighbor — until Claire decides to fight back.

Artist and adaptor Yifan Li remains faithful to the snarky tone of the original, preserving the brand-name conscious dialogue and cleverer-than-thou put-downs of Harrison’s book while trying, perhaps unconsciously, to make Claire a sympathetic figure. It’s clear from the loving detail with which Massie’s life is portrayed, however, that we’re really supposed to envy and identify with her — a depressing proposition, given how dumb and selfish she is. Li’s plastic artwork is does little to improve matters, as her middle school students look more like Barbie Dolls than twelve-year-olds in their Junior Miss Sex in the City outfits. The backgrounds are as synthetic as the character designs, neatly rendered collections of perfect, sterile geometric shapes that sap the story of any geographic or temporal specificity. If you think tweens in Manolos are ridiculous, congratulations — you’re too old for this book. Anyone who doesn’t see the problem with middle schoolers wearing $800 sweaters and booking spa treatments, however, might just find The Clique to their liking.

Review copy provided by Yen Press.

DENGEKI DAISY, VOL. 1

BY KYOSUKE MOTOMI • VIZ • 200 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Shortly before his death, Teru Kurebayashi’s older brother gave her a cellphone that connects her to a mysterious person named DAISY, explaining, “If you’re ever sad or in trouble, contact DAISY. DAISY is very kind and will come to your aid.” At first, Teru treats her cellphone as a kind of interactive diary, confessing moments of loneliness or frustration to DAISY, but when a computer teacher uses his programming skills to drain her school’s scholarship funds, Teru finally turns to her unseen pal for help. Teru has no idea who DAISY is, but it doesn’t take long for the author to present a strong candidate: Tasuku Kurosaki, a hunky school janitor who delights in tormenting Teru but always come through for her in a pinch.

If Dengeki Daisy feels as familiar as an old pair of sneakers, it’s at least a comfortable, stylish pair, thanks to its vivid characterizations. Teru, in particular, is a strong, self-reliant heroine who fights back when bullied (she turns a hose on the snotty school council), bonds with her fellow misfits, and manages to befriend the school’s meanest girl through a mixture of compassion and tough love. Teru does her best to solve problems without DAISY’s assistance, though as the story progresses, author Kyosuke Motomi dreams up progressively more ridiculous situations that necessitate DAISY’s intervention. The artwork, like the plot, is pure cookie-cutter, with oodles of screentone and deformed reaction shots and gratuitous images of Kurosaki in sleeveless shirts, looking hot yet sensitive. No one will confuse the tame humor of Dengeki Daisy with, say, the raunchy subversion of Your & My Secret, but I give Motomi credit for adding a few interesting ruffles and flourishes to the shopworn “Someone to Watch Over Me” storyline. A fun beach read for teens.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

ROMEO X JULIET

ART BY COM, ORIGINAL STORY BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE • YEN PRESS • 372 pp. • RATING: TEEN (13+)

If you’re hoping to read Romeo x Juliet in lieu of The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet for your next English paper, you’re out of luck: this fantasy-adventure bears as much resemblance to Shakespeare’s original as Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District does to the Scottish play. That’s not to say Romeo x Juliet is bad or unimaginative, just that it uses the Bard’s famous story as a jumping off point for a very different tale of star-crossed lovers, borrowing a few characters from other Shakespearian plays — hi, Cordelia! — and transforming Juliet into a swashbuckling avenger in the Robin Hood/Zorro tradition.

These changes are a mixed bag: while it’s nice to see Juliet re-imagined as a tough, sword-wielding advocate for Neo-Verona’s downtrodden citizenry, most of the supporting players have been shorn of their original identities and roles in the drama. The final hundred pages are too compressed, introducing two new important subplots that recycle elements of Laputa: Castle in the Sky, inviting a not-so-flattering comparison between Miyazaki’s work and Romeo x Juliet. The artwork, too, borders on hot mess much of the time, as COM tries too hard to recreate the lavish interiors of the anime; without color to give definition to these intricate settings, however, the images are too busy, with foregound and background competing for the reader’s eye. Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of Romeo x Juliet are the fight scenes, which are awash in sound effects and slashing lines that obscure the action.

The bottom line: fans of the anime will enjoy this faithful adaptation, as will readers without a passionate attachment to the Bard’s play. Old curmudgeons, on the other hand, may spend too much time caviling about the revisions to appreciate the book’s strengths: the pretty color plates, the attractive character designs, and the odd but entertaining cameos from Will S. himself.

Review copy provided by Yen Press.

UGLY DUCKLING’S LOVE REVOLUTION, VOL. 1

BY YUUKI FUJINARI, BASED ON ORIGINAL WORK BY GUNGHO ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT, INC. • YEN PRESS • 176 pp. • RATING: TEEN (13+)

One of my perennial gripes about shojo manga is that plain Jane heroines are visually interchangeable with their more glamorous, popular peers; even the heroine of Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You looks like a normal, pretty teenager, despite her classmates’ insistence that she’s a shoo-in for the ghostly star of The Ring. Ugly Duckling’s Love Revolution is a departure in this regard, as its cheerful, hardworking heroine is plump. Really plump — in fact, artist Yuuki Fujinari renders her as a round, squat girl with apple checks and piggy eyes, forcing us to look beyond her appearance to see the sweet, helpful young woman beneath the tight-fitting clothes. I wish I could say the rest of the manga was as boldly conceived as Hitomi’s character design, but alas, Ugly Duckling is a dull variation on The Wallflower in which the heroine resolves to lose weight under the tutelage of her school’s four hottest guys. Though it’s a relief to see Hitomi treated kindly by her classmates, the story’s complete and utter disregard for the way real teenagers behave makes it hard to find Hitomi’ struggles very engaging. Bland artwork and a borderline creepy relationship with her older brother (he keeps a diary documenting the major events in Hitomi’s life) further hinder the story’s development; if one ever needed proof that interactive video games don’t always make the best source material for manga, they need look no further than Ugly Duckling’s Love Revolution.

Review copy provided by Yen Press.