Short Takes: Flower in a Storm and Moyasimon: Tales of Agriculture

For those of you who’ve been following this weekly-ish feature, I have a programming note: I’ll be posting Short Takes on Monday from now on, and bumping The Shipping News to Tuesday. Regular reviews and features will follow throughout the week, with a linkblogging post on Fridays. Thanks for bearing with me while I experimented with various formats and schedules — I think I’ve finally found a formula that works.

On deck this week are the second installments of Flower in a Storm (VIZ), a shojo drama about a high school girl with superpowers and the billionaire who loves her, and Moyasimon: Tales of Agriculture (Del Rey), a comedy about a college student with the ability to see bacteria, here rendered as cute, roly-poly critters with a hint of ‘tude. How do the latest installments stack up against their debut volumes? Read on for the scoop.

FLOWER IN A STORM, VOL. 2

BY SHIEYOSHI TAKAGI • VIZ • 196 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

The premise: Rika wants nothing more than to be a normal teenager with a normal dating life, but her super-strength and super-speed make blending in with her peers more difficult than she imagined. Only Ran, the heir to a multibillion-dollar corporation, seems up to the task: he’s adventurous, bold, and confident, and determined to make Rika his wife. If only Rika didn’t find him obnoxious and overbearing!

What I said about volume one: “What would a superhero comic for teen girls look like? Flower in a Storm offers one possible template, liberally mixing car chases, kidnappings, and assassination attempts with romantic drama. Rika has numerous opportunities to strut her stuff — leaping from a speeding convertible, subduing a gunman — but, in a nice touch, is reluctant to reveal her powers for fear of standing out in a crowd. Though Ran is a pure wish-fulfillment character — he’s handsome, rich, and brilliant — he’s an appealing one; like Tony Stark, Ran thinks big, plays hard, and travels in style, entering or exiting the story with an outrageous gesture or snappy line. At times, Flower cleaves too hard to shojo convention, with some tired, paint-by-number scenes… Shigeyoshi Takagi does better when she’s staging a fight or poking fun at her characters, as those scenes have genuine comic zest. Flower isn’t perfect by any means — stronger, more distinctive visuals would help — but it’s a nice bit of escapism for female readers who like the idea of superhero comics in principle, but prefer heroines whose everyday struggles more closely resemble their own.”

How I feel about volume two: The second and final volume of Flower in a Storm feels more hastily executed than the first, with choppy, self-contained stories that bump up against each other, rather than flowing smoothly. The weakest, by far, are the first two, as they rehash tired shojo plotlines: the sudden appearance of a fiancee/rival, the Yuletide date. The first story has occasional moments of wit — Ran’s would-be wife is horrified when he chucks her Birkin bag out a window — but author Shieyoshi Takagi has nowhere to go with the rivalry, as we know from the very first panel that Ran isn’t interested in dating a rich, materialistic bimbo; the only question is how he’ll ditch her for Rika. The second story tries to explore why Rika vacillates between hostility and schmoopiness when she’s around Ran, but never digs any deeper than “they come from different worlds.” Struggling against class differences is a standard theme in romances, but Takagi doesn’t do much to dramatize Rika’s feelings, nor does she explain why Rika feels so uncomfortable around Ran’s affluence — a crucial oversight, considering how many teenage girls would swoon at the prospect of dating a bazillionaire. (The handbags! The shoes! The teddy bears! The moonlit helicopter rides!)

The final story arc is the volume’s best, providing Rika the opportunity to use her superpowers when something real is at stake: namely, Ran’s life. Though the rescue operation casts Takagi’s draftsmanship in a poor light — it’s often unclear how the action advances from one panel to the next — Takagi finally shows us Rika behaving like a strong, capable young woman who’s confident in her judgment. Better still, Takagi has the courage to end the story in a dramatically plausible fashion, rather than pandering to her readers’ desire for a certain outcome. Were it not for its mediocre execution, I’d be more enthusiastic about recommending Flower in a Storm to readers who like a side of action with their romance; alas, Takagi’s inexperience (Flower was her debut work) prevents her potentially interesting concept from taking wing.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media. Volume two of Flower in a Storm will be released on August 3, 2010.

MOYASIMON: TALES OF AGRICULTURE, VOL. 2

BY MASAYUKI ISHIKAWA • DEL REY • 240 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

The premise: When Tadayasu leaves his rural home for an agricultural college in Tokyo, his unusual gift — he can see bacteria with the naked eye — makes him a minor campus celebrity. He soon finds himself hanging out with an eccentric gang of losers: childhood friend Kei Yuki, whose feminine appearance belies a wicked temper; sophomores Misato and Kawahama, who hatch dozens of fruitless get-rich schemes involving mold, yeast, and other bacteria; graduate student Haruka Hasegawa, a sullen, angry woman who spends most of her time in the laboratory, dressed as a dominatrix; and Professor Itsuki, a researcher with a scientific interest in terraforming and a passion for fermented delicacies.

What I said about volume one: “Though the art is solid and the characters firmly established, Moyasimon hasn’t quite found its groove yet. Ishikawa can’t make up his mind if he wants us to admire the diversity and tenacity of bacterial life or squirm at the thought of its ubiquity; every educational speech about bacteria’s numerous benefits is punctuated by an icky rim shot. Still, it’s hard to deny the odd appeal of Moyasimon, as Ishikawa takes an all-too-familiar trope — the teen who sees things that other people can’t — and gives it a fresh, idiosyncratic spin.”

How I feel about volume two: The first half of volume two plays like an extended dance mix of Oishinbo: Sake, in which the proprietor of a secret wine bar introduces Tadayasu and pals to the art of brewing nihonshu, explaining the pros and cons of pasteurization and the role of bacteria in producing certain flavors. The pace of these sake-focused chapters is slow and deliberate, with only a few gags interrupting the lectures — a welcome departure from the antic gross-out jokes in volume one. The result is a dense but entertaining blend of scientific fact and sly, under-the-radar humor that makes good use of the “I see bacteria!” gimmick.

Following on the heels of the sake storyline is a playful chapter told entirely from the bacteria’s point of view (they complain about humans ogling them through microscopes, and demand a “laygerm’s explanation” for various human behaviors) and a longer, less successful story about a student festival-cum-hazing-ritual involving a robot, a stash of aphrodisiacs, and a group of rollerblading thugs. (Shades of Air Gear!) Masayuki Ishikawa doesn’t do much with Tadayasu’s abilities in these later chapters; from time to time, a sidebar identifies a bacteria that’s nominally visible in one of the panels, but these annotations feel more like afterthoughts than a meaningful attempt to show us Tadayasu putting his gift to work. Therein lies Moyasimon‘s main problem: though the supporting cast is comprised of vivid, if one-note, characters, the story’s hero is a cipher, a talent in search of a personality; when the discussion shifts away from bacteria, Tadayasu’s entire rationale for existing disappears. Tadayasu’s bland persona isn’t enough to sink Moyasimon, but it does suggest that Ishikawa hasn’t spent enough time fleshing out his protagonist if H. pilori routinely upstages its host.