Manga Monday: Do kindergartens have entrance exams too?

Note:  Bunny Drop Volume 2 is, of course, the sequel to Bunny Drop Volume 1.  The review of Bunny Drop Volume 1 is here.Otherwise read on!

Sometimes the evil in the world isn't the magic aspect

The dark side of urban fantasy doesn't always have to be the magical side. Sometimes, the mundane world is more than able to create its own problems. But when the magical comes to fix what the mundane has messed up, things are much more complicated than it seems.

In The Painted Boy by Charles de Lint, 17 year old Jay Li has struck out on his own to escape his overbearing spiritual leader and grandmother Paupau. He chooses a city in the desert of Arizona at random, packs a backpack and heads out to Santo del Vado Viejo. Directly upon exiting the Greyhoudn bus he ends up crossing not one but two of the local gangs, and is hidden and eventually taken in by Rosalie.

Rosalie has a tendency to take in strays, as her collection of dogs and cats show, and he can't help but want to help this newcomer to town, especially since he's ended up crossing the gangs so quickly. Having lost both family members and a best friend to the gangs already, she has a special hatred of them, which is backed up by her uncle and guardian, who left the gangs years ago and now runs a restaurant in town.

As Jay lives in Santo del Vado Viejo and becomes a member of the community, the secret that he's been hiding since he was ten years old begins to come out. He's been chosen as a leader of the Yellow Dragon Clan. When the spirits selected him, the symbol of the clan appeared on his back in the form of a full back tattoo depicting a Chinese dragon. Of course this only helped to isolate him when he was young, since he certainly couldn't let any of his friends or classmates see his back. This meant no swimming, no gym class or sports, and no sleepovers.

But Jay and his dragon spirit have found their new home and place to protect. In the process, he's also learning more about himself from the local lore and the other animal 'cousins' who inhabit the desert around the town. And as time goes on, one fact becomes painfully clear: the gangs are killing the spirit of the land, and it's up to the Yellow Dragon, traditional guardian of the Chinese imperial family, to save it.

As always, de Lint seamlessly weaves the desert southwest folklore, along with Native American and Mexican stories into the real wold in a manner that seems almost real. We meet crow people, a jackalope girl, and perhaps even a coyote spirit as Jason takes back the city from those who are destroying it, and most of the mundane, 'five finger folk' will never know exactly what happened.

That doesn't mean that de Lint glosses over what a town in the grips of a gang war goes through. Good people get killed for stupid reasons, or no reason at all. Businesses leave town, pay protection money, or are shut down by petty gangbangers. Families lose members, either by death or, sometimes worse, by having members join the gangs themselves.

The grandfather of urban fantasy has created yet another wonderful story, which might reach out better to boys than his other two recent young adult books The Blue Girl and Little (Grrl) Lost. It might even been a good pick for urban schools in which the students face the same problems as the townsfolk of Santo del Vado Viejo, and help show them that people really can make a difference, even the mundane ones.

Highs: And intricate weaving of both Eastern and Western folklore

Lows: Several false endings break up the flow of the story near the end

Verdict: Young Adult fantasy at its best

Further Reading: Little (Grrl) Lost, City of Bones

Manga Monday: Will Young Godai manage to accomplish EITHER of his goals?

Slice of life romances, along with comedies, are also a staple of manga in Japan. Honey and Clover is one that has made a big hit in the US, but they've been around for years. We can even travel back over 30 years to one of the founders of modern manga and take a look at Rumiko Takahashi's Maison Ikkoku.

Godai-kun, a ronin trying once more to get into university, is finally fed up with the way his housemates have been treating him. He's decided to leave, but on his way out the door he runs into Kiyoko-san, the new manager of the building. Although she's slightly older than he, it's love at first sight and he resolves to stay at Maison Ikkoku.

What follows is a fairly standard, 1980s style manga. The tenants are a bit on the bizarre side by real life standards, though fairly tame in the manga world. In room 1 we have the Ichinose family, with a lush of a mother, an absent salaryman father and a young son. In room 4 we have Yotsuya-san, who has broken a hole in to Godai's room to swipe food and drink, as well as spy on room 6. Room 6 hosts Akemi-san, a hostess at a local bar who is also quite good at 'acquiring' drink from the people around her, and is perpetually either drunk or hung over, and is often not properly dressed.

The majority of the manga revolves around poor Godai trying rather unsuccessfully to get closer to Kiyoko-san and study for university entrance exams. The former is quite hard, considering the fact that Kiyoko-san is a recent widow, even though she's so young, and has decided not to remarry. The latter is a problem mainly due to the other tenants of Maison Ikkoku having decided that Godai's room is where the parties are going to be held, and keeping him up with drunken revelry most of the night, which is quite hard to study during.

The series itself is a very traditional manga of the time. Even when the humor gets bawdy, it stays within about the same limits as Ranma ½ or any other Rumiko Takahashi manga. It may need a Teen or Older Teen rating within the US, but it's nothing that ought to offend an early high school student, or even really an advanced middle school student with lenient parents.

Highs: A sweet, almost-love-story

Lows: The older style of the manga may be off-putting to the new generation of readers

Verdict: A good, light read that helped found the genre

Further Reading: Ranma ½, Emma: A Victorian Romance

Manga Monday:Wow, your friend really IS Jumbo!

Slice-of-life comics often have a wide appeal. So much so, in fact, that it's surprising that the smaller publishers are just now realizing this and starting to bring them over to the U.S. Kiyohiko Azuma however, is a known author here, with his anime and manga series Azumanga Daioh being a staple of college anime clubs for years. So it makes perfect sense that Yen Press would rescue the license for Yotsuba&! and continue to bring it out for American audiences.

Yotsuba&! (pronounced Yot-su-ba-to and meaning Yotsuba and...!) Volume 1 starts with the introduction of our titular character. A five-year-old girl with a vague resemblance to a four leaf clover, she's recently been adopted by Koiwai, who she calls 'dad,' and the two of them have just moved to town. Yotsuba's origins are a little bit vague, as she says she says she lived with her grandparents on an island 'to the left.'

From that sketchy backstory comes one of the most charming, naïve and just plain odd little girls in manga. One has to wonder just what island she came from that she doesn't know what doorbells, air conditioners, or department stores are, and yet speaks Japanese perfectly well, as well as reads at an age-appropriate level. Beyond that oddness, though is the wonder of being a young child. Somewhere between preschool and adulthood, things like playing in the rain tend to lose their charm. And that's a shame.

Along the way, we meet a slew of recurring characters from the neighborhood. The Ayase sisters take Yotsuba in as either another sister or perhaps as a pet, depending on the the personality of the sister. Their mother too joins in, becoming something of a surrogate mom to Yotsuba. We also get to meet Jumbo, who probably isn't all that tall by Western standards, but leaves people in shock and awe of his 'Jumbo-ness' at first meeting.

All in all, Yotsuba&! has a certain 'Andy Griffith Show' feel to the neighborhood. The people in Yotsuba's life are essentially good people, and even the ones who tend to play jokes aren't mean-spirited about it. And that makes for a nice, reliably sweet comic suitable for all ages.

Highs: A five-year-old's interpretation of global warning

Lows: Of course, it's a manga, so Jumbo has a crush on the eldest Ayase sister

Verdict: A sweet, innocent slice-of-life comedy

Further Reading: Chi's Sweet Home, Azumanga Daioh

Manga Monday: The transitive nature of friendship...for kitties

Note:  Chi’s Sweet Home Vol. 3 is, of course, the sequel to Chi’s Sweet Home Vol. 2.  The review of Chi's Sweet Home Volume 1 is here, and the review for Chi's Sweet Home Volume 2 is here.  Otherwise read on!

Manga Monday: An overgrown adolescent ends up with a kid, but not in the normal way

Guys have a horrible reputation when it comes to children. For the most part, it's really undeserved; plenty of guys make at least as good a parent as the mother, if not better. But hundreds of episodes of Maury and Springer do a number on the collective psyche, and guys are labeled 'deadbeat' until proven otherwise.

It's prevalent in fictional media, too. Fathers are either incompetent (the Homer Simpson type), or absent altogether. The contrast between this and Bunny Drop Volume 1 by Yumi Unita might be part of what makes it so special.

Daikichi is a 30 year old, single salaryman. He's gotten himself fairly high up the ladder at his company, mainly by working long nights, attending alcohol-based social events, and by generally ignoring his family and social life. Admittedly, his less-than-stellar looks haven't helped him any in that department, either.

He takes off at the end of September to head home for his grandfather's funeral. He walks in to the barely controlled chaos that is most family gatherings, right past a young girl playing outside that he's never seen before.

Turns out, no one else there had known of her, either. It turns out, Grandfather kept himself busy in his golden years, and he's ended up with another daughter. Her mother is nowhere to be seen, and she's mostly quiet and just playing alone out of doors.

The most appalling turn of events, though, is how the family reacts to this piece of news. Each of Daikichi's family members comes up with some reason or another why they couldn't possibly take the girl in. When one person mentions finding a facility to place her in, Daikichi impulsively tells his family how horrible he thinks they're acting, and declares that he'll take the girl in himself. While this causes some concern for Daikichi's mother, the rest of the family is mostly relieved that someone else is dealing with the problem.

So, Daikichi has found himself with a quiet, six-year-old girl named Rin. All they're able to find of hers around the house is her mother-daughter health book (a sort of baby book with immunization records and the like in it), and a change of clothes.

The book goes on from here mainly as a slice-of-life story with a new father and daughter getting to know one another. Thankfully, perhaps because of her upbringing so far, Rin is fairly easygoing and as she comes out of her shell, she has no problem telling Daikichi what she needs at the mall, such as clothes and socks and the like.

Oh, and daycare too. Mustn't forget about daycare.

Later on, we start to see that Rin might not be as well-adjusted as she wants to seem. This comes out in the usual childhood ways, such as nightmares, a brief bout with bedwetting, and some problems when daycare starts, and she doesn't want to be left alone.

This is a very sweet story about Daikichi and Rin, and the way that a child changes every decision from that point on. The cast grows slowly, as we meet a working mother at Daikichi's office (more of a rarity in Japan than in the US), and another woman at Rin's daycare, whose child Rin seems to like.

This topic could easily become sickeningly sweet, but the fairly matter-of-fact manner of Rin keeps it grounded. It's simply a good hearted, slice-of-life story of what happens when good people try to do what's right, even when it's not exactly what they expect.

Highs: Seeing what every day life of a salaryman and child would be like in Japan, the way a normal, bickering family is portrayed

Lows: Very simplistic art at times, though emotion is shown quite well on the characters' faces

Verdict: Excellent josei slice-of-life storytelling

Further Reading: Chi's Sweet Home Volume 1, Honey and Clover Volume 1

Can maple syrup really save the world?

Live Free or Die is a really strange take on the First Contact subgenre of science fiction. Of course, when we’re first approached by an alien race, we’re vastly outclassed. We’d have to be, since we don’t have anything near the technology necessary to initiate contact with another world ourselves.

The first race to contact us is a friendly race of traders called the Glatun. But the Horvath…not so much. They put in an orbital, a space portal to quickly traverse long distances, and declare Earth their property, to be mined by the Humans for basic materials.

Since Earth is so very outgunned, and the more peaceful alien races have no interest in fighting our battles for us, the leaders of Earth have no real option but to capitulate to the Horvath’s demands.

Enter Tyler Vernon. He’s yet another lone wolf, science fiction author who knows something needs to be done and will take it upon himself to make sure it does. He gets himself into a position to interact directly with a Glatun trader, and finds something that only Earth can provide that the interstellar community wants. So, simply following the laws of supply and demand, he’s able to amass quite the fortune with which to defend the Earth.

There are a lot of parts in this book that people could, and do, protest. Ringo is a libertarian through and through. Therefore, most of his heroes are lone wolf, do-for-yourself types. This doesn’t sit all that well with the more socialist, government-does-for-me type.

Also, the Horvath are essentially a slaving race. Being more advanced than current and past slavers on Earth, they can put eugenics on hyperdrive to better their slave population and cull the ‘weak’ and ‘undesirable’ from the group. Who the Horvath determine to be the ‘undesirables’ will, of course, offend even more people.

Folks, this is how science fiction is. There tend to be a lot of libertarian science fiction authors, perhaps because there’s something appealing to the libertarian about the idea of science- and logic-minded people taking responsibility for the world on themselves and working to save it. Heinlein, a ‘great master’ of science fiction was the same way and had similar protagonists. Ayn Rand’s speculative fiction Is held up as suggested reading for the libertarian movement. And in Men Like Gods by H.G. Wells shows a parallel Earth thousands of years more advanced with us, where the libertarian creed rules.

The point is, the tenants of libertarianism and the ideas that populate science fiction go hand in hand. The problem is that it’s so unpopular to be anything other than firmly liberal that any other viewpoint will be distasteful to a significant portion of the reading audience.

If the reader can get past some politics that may or may not be in line with his, though, he’ll be in for an intelligent, inventive, and simply fun read.

Highs: Lots of humor and interesting tech ideas

Lows: Starts out a little bit familiar for people who have read Ringo’s other First Contact book, A Hymn Before Battle

Verdict: Fun storytelling that shouldn’t be missed

Further Reading: Schlock Mercenaries (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/), Citadel