Home > Flipped - David Welsh on Manga

New Beats -- Sand Chronicles and Clover and Honey Reviewed
posted February 13, 2008
 

New Beats
By David P. Welsh

The bulk of the "Best of 2007" lists have already seen the light of web, bringing with them the usual mix of reactions: "Good choices!" "What were they thinking?" "How did I miss that?" It makes for fun reading, and I always enjoy surfing during this time of year.

That said is it too early to start putting together a list for 2008? Because Viz has a couple of likely suspects, in my opinion. Both are in rotation in Shojo Beat, and each is an excellent, off-the-beaten-path addition to the shôjo category.

The first is Hinako Ashihara's Shogakukan Award-winning Sand Chronicles. The next time someone suggests to you that shôjo is trivial, escapist fluff, you should feel free to grab a copy of this book and beat said person about the head with it. This one's got teeth.

Ann Uekusa has moved from the big city to the sticks with her emotionally fragile mother. Ann's parents have divorced, and mother and daughter have moved in with Ann's maternal grandparents. It isn't an easy adjustment. Ann doesn't know anyone, though everyone seems to know her. There are no bookstores, and she privately refers to her grandmother as "the hag."

But she's got the adaptability of youth, and she's outgoing. Ann meets local lunk Daigo and rich-kid siblings Fuji and Shika and starts to embrace rural life. If only the same could be said for her mother, who spent her youth dreaming of escaping her isolated home town. Just as Ann starts to believe that life in Shimane might not be so bad, the unthinkable happens.

It's a gut-punch of a twist, and Ashihara doesn't hit a false note in rendering it. Readers accustomed to the dewy eyes and flower-bordered sorrow of some shôjo might well be shocked by the rawness of Ann's despair. She cries ugly, and she has reason. Ann's rage, her mother's under-the-surface agony, and her grandmother's frustration all feel shockingly real in the moments when they bubble up.

Fortunately, Sand Chronicles isn't all downbeat. (It would be mesmerizing but exhausting if it were.) Ashihara is equally scrupulous in portraying smaller, happier milestones. Ann's life may have been uprooted at the most fundamental level, but Ashihara gives her respite in the form of her friends and growing closeness with her grandmother. Even her lowest moments are punctuated with unexpected humor and warmth.

One of the things that I like best about the book is that it isn't strictly linear. The story begins with a 26-year-old Ann preparing for a major milestone and reflecting on earlier times. Things move back to her tumultuous 12th year, then forward a couple of years. It's a flexible approach, allowing Ashihara to craft her focus, but it doesn't feel like she's cherry picking highlights from her protagonist's life. There's a very organic feel to the book, which extends to the visuals.

I love Ashihara's rendering of the rural setting and the changing seasons. The passage of time is also represented by they physicality of the characters; when Ann notes that Daigo has changed a lot between ages 12 and 14, you see it, but you still recognize the boy you first met. And even in the frequent moments of extreme emotion, the acting never becomes campy.

Viz earns bonus points for giving Sand Chronicles an extremely fluid translation and adaptation by Kinami Watabe and John Werry respectively. In a nice change for this publisher, there's an extensive glossary after the story. All these elements contribute to a thoughtful presentation of an unexpectedly moving, potentially lovely work.

I haven't seen the finished paperback of Chica Umino's Honey and Clover, which doesn't arrive until March. The book itself is so charming that Viz could probably print it in neon ink on butcher paper, and I'd still love it, because it's so sweet and weird.

In a recent article in The Daily Yomuri, Jason (Manga: The Complete Guide) Thompson recommends the book for the Coming-of-Age crowd, those just turning 20 and achieving formal adulthood. It's a great recommendation for the reasons he states, but that shouldn't stop younger and older readers from enjoying its pleasures.

Umino's tone and aesthetic form an appealing hybrid of the emotionally nuanced comedy of Fumi (Flower of Life) Yoshinaga and the wooly, low-fi antics of Minoru (Love Roma) Toyoda. At the same time, it could be the ideal book to fill the void left by Kio Shimoku's college comedy, Genshiken (Del Rey). Umino's characters have a similar blend of optimism and anxiety, quirkiness and believability.

The cast is attending arts college, fumbling through brushes with student poverty, creativity on demand, and romantic complications. I've spent most of my adult life around students in the arts, and I can attest to the oddball authenticity of Umino's portrayal. Underlying everything is the sense of being on the cusp of something, though having no idea what precisely that something might be.

Beyond that, the series is happily difficult to summarize, or maybe it's just useless to try too hard. Take what might flexibly be called the narrative arc of Morita, one of those quasi-legendary students who can't quite confine himself to the conventional three-year plan. He exploits a fellow student to construct a scam web page, vanishes for weeks at a time, and generally embodies a recognizable kind of bad-boy narcissism. (If you were a college student looking for weed, Morita would be your go-to.) At the same time, he's uniquely odd, often thoughtful, and has an endearingly perverse sense of humor.

Umino is wonderfully adept at making the grab-bag of elements cohere. They're all part of the environment, which admittedly lends itself to extremes and eccentricities. But she doesn't take shortcuts in rendering those eccentricities. She lets her characters own their individual weirdness and react to the oddities of others in personal ways.

Distinct as they are in tone and intention, Sand Chronicles and Honey and Clover share that central importance of environment, among other qualities. Each is populated by carefully conceived characters, sprinkled with surprising and affecting plot twists and turns, and offers the kind of storytelling that invites rereading. While I'm always open to the possibility of the year's releases being so startling and satisfying that these two books could be bumped down the quality ranking, I think it would take a remarkable year in manga to achieve that.

this article originally appeared at Comic World News