Category: manga

Hoshikuzu Kazoku

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Hoshikuzu Kazoku (星屑家族) is a two-volume graphic novel set in an alternate universe where parents are required to obtain a license to raise children. To qualify for a license, a prospective family is asked to undergo an audition with a homestay student. This auditor, who is often an orphan raised in a government-run facility, evaluates the family’s fitness by deliberately behaving badly and provoking difficult situations. 

An auditor who goes by Hikari is assigned to Daiki and Chisa Hirokawa, a young couple who live on the grounds of a Shinto shrine. During their initial interview, Daiki surprises Hikari by openly requesting that their family be denied a childrearing license. Daiki claims to be happy living with his wife as a couple, and he shares his suspicions that Chisa doesn’t actually want children. With that out of the way, Daiki says, the three of them can enjoy the homestay visit without any pressure or expectations.             

Chisa and Daiki genuinely seem to be happy together, but Hikari soon notices that Chisa is the target of a longstanding prejudice held by people in the neighborhood. Chisa’s mother killed her father when she was a child, and she’s been ostracized ever since. Along with her foster father, who once managed the shrine, Daiki was the only person who was kind to her. Now that she and Daiki have married and set up a household at the shrine, Chisa feels trapped within a community she can’t escape. Why, then, does she want a child so badly? And is it Hikari’s place to get involved?

Hoshikuzu Kazoku is a high-stakes family drama that presents a moral conundrum with no easy solutions. If the government creates regulations to ensure a well-ordered society, what happens to the people whose lives are more complicated than the provisions allowed by the legal code? If there’s room for flexibility in the bureaucratic system that enforces the law, who should have the right to grant exceptions? And more specifically, in a country witnessing its birth rate decline in response to the disintegration of community support structures, what are the limits of government intervention?

Even putting such questions aside, Hoshikuzu Kazoku is compelling by virtue of its problematic yet still sympathetic characters. Hikari, Daiki, and Chisa each bring loads of emotional baggage to the table, but they do their best to communicate to the limited extent of their abilities. Despite their many flaws and the odds against them, I wanted these characters to be happy.

Aki Poroyama’s writing, dialogue, and pacing are all excellent, and the visual language of the manga serves to set the mood and create dramatic impact. I wasn’t familiar with the work of this artist, and I was amazed by the polish of this graphic novel. I’d recommend Hoshikuzu Kazoku to mature readers looking for socially conscious speculative fiction driven by complicated human stories. 

Belles Ruelles

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Belles Ruelles is a gorgeous full-color anthology that collects the work of eleven manga artists and illustrators, each of whom has been tasked with telling a story set in the fictional European town of Eufemia.

Eufemia has preserved its medieval cityscape while maintaining a lively community of established shops, young entrepreneurs, and cultures from all over the world. It’s filled with narrow alleys, charming old buildings, ivy-adorned walls, and even a bit of magic.

One of my favorite stories is Keiko Shiki’s “Spice,” in which the young assistant at a store specializing in herbal teas and cooking spices learns just how much love and care the store owner puts into perfecting her craft.

I also love Hiromi Matsuo’s “Soie Rouge,” in which a college student tastes the luxury of trying on a kimono for the first time. Every panel of this manga is an artistic masterpiece, and the writing gently guides the reader through the sartorial experience.

I’m happy to see that this anthology is the first in a series, because I’m very much looking forward to visiting Eufemia again soon. If you’re a fan of the fantasy European setting of Studio Ghibli movies like Kiki’s Delivery Service, I’d encourage you to take a trip yourself.

Dragon Goes House-Hunting

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Earlier this year, Seven Seas released the tenth and final volume of Kawo Tanuki and Choco Aya’s fantasy series Dragon Goes House-Hunting. This manga follows the misadventures of a gentle but cowardly dragon named Letty and his real estate agent Dearia, a massively powerful and inhumanly beautiful dark wizard. Letty is searching for a comfortable house that will accommodate his size while also protecting him from the pesky adventurers trying to hunt him for crafting materials. While Letty pictures himself in a cozy cottage, Dearia encourages him to be more pragmatic and dungeon-minded.

What makes Dragon Goes House-Hunting stand out in the “slice-of-life fantasy” genre is the consistently high quality of its art, which references the detailed monster designs from video game manuals of the 1990s while still feeling fresh and contemporary. For video game fans especially, it’s quite entertaining to look at dungeon design from the perspective of the monsters, who are just trying to make it through the day without being harassed by heroes. The manga’s situational humor is gentle and sweet, but each volume still managed to surprise me with at least three or four devilishly sharp jokes.

Perhaps the easiest way to describe Dragon Goes House-Hunting is to say that it’s the high fantasy version of the wholesome yakuza comedy The Way of the Househusband. Like The Way of the Househusband, Dragon Goes House-Hunting is designed to be accessible to all ages, but it will resonate most strongly with readers old enough to have some experience with real estate (even if that experience is limited to looking for a student apartment). For a more action-oriented and kid-friendly take on the concept of “building homes for monsters,” I’d also like to recommend the ongoing shōnen series Soara and the House of Monsters, which is a gorgeously creative celebration of fantasy architecture.  

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室外機室

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室外機室 collects four gorgeously illustrated magical realist stories drawn by an otherwise unpublished artist who goes by Chome. The stories transport the reader to a reality slightly removed from our own as each of the mundane protagonists catches a small glimpse of a hidden world.

I immediately fell in love with this collection from the opening pages of the first story, Tsugiho, in which a woman attends a large comic convention and finds a self-published minicomic that turns out to be brilliant despite its nondescript cover. The comic doesn’t seem to be documented anywhere online, so the woman starts writing a description. Her project quickly spirals out of control, however, as the pages of the small book seem to change each time she reads it. In the end, the woman’s essay transforms into an original illustrated short story, which she self-publishes and takes to the same comic convention where she found the mysterious comic that inspired her.

Speaking personally, I couldn’t describe the process of creative inspiration more accurately if I tried. What begins as a relatively straightforward act of casual appreciation can easily turn into something that has almost no relation to the original work at all, often to such an extent that the source is entirely forgotten by the end. In addition, it’s not always the case that creative inspiration comes from “the great works” of art and literature, as smaller and more specific stories can create a powerful sense of resonance and creative motivation even despite being unacknowledged by the broader culture. It’s nothing short of amazing that Tsugiho captures this aspect of creativity so perfectly in just twenty pages. 

The two middle stories are thought experiments that are far more beautifully executed than they have any right to be. In 21g no bōken (which illustrates the manga’s front cover), a young woman dies and finds that her ghost is able to go anywhere and do anything. This story is primarily an excuse to illustrate the joy of absolute freedom of movement, but the ending is quite touching. Meanwhile, Konshin takes place almost entirely in a woman’s bedroom as she sits at her desk and listens to a strange radio broadcast from a parallel universe in which history has developed in an entirely different direction. The strength of this story lies in its writing, but the uncanniness of the broadcast is augmented by the visual coziness of the woman’s apartment.

The fourth and final story, Chika tosho tankenshō, is a seventy-page graphic novella that blew me away with its creativity and charm. A young woman doing research at the library drops her eraser, which bounces into the crack of a panel at the bottom of a bookshelf. The woman opens the panel to find a staircase. To the woman’s surprise, there’s an enormous library complex underground, but something about it is decidedly strange. The staff is wearing traditional Japanese clothing, and none of the books have titles. The young woman quickly arrives at the conclusion that this isn’t a place she’s supposed to be, but can she escape without being caught by the librarians? And what are all the mysterious books?     

If I had the power to snap my fingers and make any manga appear in a licensed English translation, Shitsugai Kishitsu would be at the top of the list. This short story collection is a hidden treasure that easily stands its ground with the experimental but gorgeously polished work of emerging creators published by small presses like Silver Sprocket and Peow, and I could see any of these minicomics being released in the line-up of the ShortBox Comics Fair. Whoever the mysterious Chome may be, they’re creating brilliant and accessible comics that deserve an appreciative international audience.

Glitch

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Shima Shinya’s four-volume sci-fi manga Glitch opens in a mundane setting in contemporary Japan: a high school student named Minato Lee (who uses they/them pronouns) has moved to a small rural town with their mother and younger sister Akira.

Minato notices that there’s something strange about their new home after a fragmented hole in reality emerges from the ceiling of her classroom. Two of Akira’s friends confirm Minato’s experience, telling them that only some people can see the distortions.

The group consults with the clerk of a neighborhood corner store, a mild-mannered man in flip-flops with a Biblically accurate angel for a face. He tells them that, since the town was constructed on top of open fields thirty years ago, various visitors have been emerging from a mysterious forest. He should know, given that he’s one of them, but the town’s glitches are a mystery to him as well.

Shima is a big fan of Star Wars and a co-author of The High Republic: The Edge of Balance manga series. Glitch captures the fun “weird little creatures in rundown environments” spirit of Star Wars, but the manga also engages with the deeper themes expressed in the movies, especially regarding how the small-scale actions of a diverse coalition are necessary to undermine the mundanity of evil.

Glitch handles its portrayal of diversity in a light-handed and clever way, and the “evil” confronted by the characters isn’t what readers might expect. While its story takes time to develop, the strength of Glitch’s art is immediately apparent, as Shima mixes the dynamic poses and expressions of Disney-style animation with the detailed backgrounds and dramatic panel compositions of indie manga.

The manga’s fourth and final volume was published in July 2023, and I’m overjoyed that Yen Press is releasing the series in English translation.

Tower Dungeon

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Tsutomu Nihei’s newest manga series, Tower Dungeon, is a grim and grisly dark fantasy about a small team of knights attempting to rescue a princess from an evil wizard at the top of the mysterious Dragon Tower.

This purposefully bog-standard fantasy premise is a bait-and-switch for the actual story, which is as brutal and fiercely imaginative as any of Nihei’s sci-fi dystopias. Instead of being set in the claustrophobic cable-choked interior of a spaceship, the visual space of Tower Dungeon is filled with vaulted ceilings and crumbling stone walls, but Nihei still dazzles the reader with labyrinthine passageways and an awe-inspiring sense of scale. 

Nihei’s signature body horror is on full display in Tower Dungeon, which is populated by the shambling undead, grotesque human graftings, uncanny automatons, and abject abominations. Even when they’re not monstrous, I love the designs of Nihei’s heavily armored knights.

There’s a bit of fanservice, sort of? But not really, and I’m not complaining. If I had to guess, I’d say that Nihei has a crush on Malenia, the deadly woman warrior from Elden Ring, but don’t we all.

The pacing of Tower Dungeon is excellent, and the action sequences are balanced by downtime and light banter that doesn’t try too hard to be funny. The characters offer very little exposition, but the background setting is intriguing. Given my experience with Nihei’s previous manga series, I’m not expecting the story to coalesce into any sort of cohesive plot, but I’m happy to join this strange journey wherever it leads.

I think, honestly, that Tower Dungeon is the Dark Souls manga I always wanted. I hope it gets an English translation soon!

Tokyo These Days

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Taiyō Matsumoto’s newest series, Tokyo These Days, follows a senior manga editor named Shiozawa who suddenly quits his job at a publishing company. After an initial period of wanting nothing more to do with manga, Shiozawa visits various artists he’s worked with over the past thirty years, hoping to commission “the perfect manga.”

Like Matsumoto’s Eisner-winning graphic novel Cats of the Louvre, Tokyo These Days is a sensitive yet realistic story about artists and the industry professionals who support their work. Although Matsumoto is honest about the pain caused by frustrated ambitions in a market that doesn’t value the wellbeing of artists, small moments of kindness and hope prevent the tone of the story from becoming too bleak.

Given that Tokyo These Days is a book about books, it’s worth mentioning that Viz’s hardcover edition is a beautiful publication with a glossy canvas cover and high-quality paper that allows Matsumoto’s artwork to shine. If you’re familiar with the kinetic urban fantasy Tekkonkinkreet, you’ll know just how much love Matsumoto puts into the details of his environments, and it’s a pleasure to take your time studying each page to appreciate the ink textures and image framing.

I’m looking forward to seeing how the story of Tokyo These Days develops, but the first volume stands on its own as an episodic commentary on the difficult but still worthwhile business of being an artist and storyteller during the slow decline of the traditional publishing industry.

Shuna no tabi (The Journey of Shuna)

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shuna-no-tabi

Title: シュナの旅 (Shuna no tabi)
English Title: The Journey of Shuna
Author: Miyazaki Hayao (宮崎 駿)
Publication Year: 1983
Publisher: Animage Bunko
Pages: 149

This guest review is written by L.M. Zoller (@odorunara on Twitter).

Shuna no tabi (The Journey of Shuna) is a short watercolor manga by Studio Ghibli director Miyazaki Hayao. Shuna is not only the precursor to Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, but also to Princess Mononoke, Nausicaä’s spiritual successor. It contains many of the themes that define Miyazaki’s oeuvre, such as the relationship between humans and nature, human rights, and pacifism.

Shuna is a prince from a small nation in a valley where food cannot grow easily and the people and animals are starving. One day, an injured old traveler wanders into his community. Before the man dies, he tells Shuna about a place where golden grain grows in abundance and gives him some seeds that a traveler gave him when he was a young man. Shuna decides to set off on a journey in search of the grain with Yakuul, his red antelope. Along the way, he fights slave traders and thieves and rescues a young woman, Thea, and her sister from slavery in the castle town of Dorei. They outrun the slave traders and eventually part ways. Thea and her sister go to a town in the north where they live with an old lady. Thea farms, raises animals, and weaves. Meanwhile, Shuna enters a forest full of giant green humanoids who become the forest when they die. The giants are people sold into slavery who are transformed into giants in an organic machine with the help of the Moon, who appears almost like a mask in the sky and appears to be a deity or other supernatural creature. Shuna finds the fabled golden grain in the forest, but his journey back to Thea and her sister is more difficult than anticipated.

Fans of Miyazaki’s work will be delighted to discover the prototypes for certain themes and scenes from both Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke in Shuna no tabi. While the story is certainly more simplistic than the works it inspired, there’s still a lot going on beneath the surface. What is the machine that turns people into forest giants? If the Moon is a god, are there other gods? What relationship do the slave traders have with the Moon?

Additionally, many illustrations from Shuna no tabi were later recalled in Miyazaki’s animation. A scene of Shuna eating while looking at some fox-squirrels in the forest is reused in Nausicaä, whose heroine eats with her pet fox-squirrel Teto in an identical pose. After Shuna leaves the city, he encounters and camps with an old man who tells him to go west to find the grain, a scene that is used again in Mononoke when Ashitaka camps with the monk Jiko, who tells him the iron bullet he found came from the west. The old man’s character design is reused for a priest in Nausicaä as well. The aesthetic elements of the Valley of the Wind also have their origins in Shuna no tabi, particularly the formal wear of the northern village and the murals in Shuna’s home. Some of the illustrations depicting the forest, especially the image of the flowers growing out of Shuna’s gun, were later reused in Mononoke.

From the perspective of gender representation, one thing I’ve noticed and admired in many of Miyazaki’s works is that he doesn’t use extreme sexual dimorphism – that is, his young adult male and female protagonists tend to be built alike. Shuna and Thea look nearly identical in body shape and facial features, and they both resemble Nausicaä and Ashitaka. While Miyazaki’s character designs for middle-aged characters feature more differences in height and build, the dimorphism is nowhere as extreme as it is in Disney and Pixar films (and for that, this genderqueer reviewer is grateful).

The biggest difference between Shuna no tabi and the works that followed it, however, is Miyazaki’s commitment to pacifism. Shuna spends a lot of time defending himself by shooting at people with his gun, and at the end of the story the village in the north still has to use guns to defend their land. In contrast, both Nausicaä and Ashitaka commit acts of violence in the beginning of their stories, mostly in self-defense. These experiences directly shape their commitment to pacifism as they both try to end the violence surrounding them; Nausicaä’s goal is to end a war between the kingdom of Tolkmekia and its colonies, while Ashitaka does his best to intervene in a conflict between Tataraba (Iron Town) and the deities of the forest. This is not to say that these characters refuse to commit violence, but that the narrative tone regarding violence shifts significantly as their stories develop.

The watercolor images are gorgeously rendered, and all the pages are in full color. My only complaint with the publication quality of the book is that the text, which is often printed directly onto the images instead of in word bubbles, can sometimes be hard to read, especially when the text is printed in white or blue ink. Adding the standard border and background to set off the text from the surrounding image would have eliminated this difficulty, albeit at the expense of preserving the full glory of the paintings.

I recommend Shuna no tabi primarily for fans of Miyazaki’s films who want to explore his earlier work. Shuna no tabi has not been translated into English, but it is written at a middle school level of language and should be accessible to readers with a high intermediate proficiency in Japanese. I would evaluate the Japanese at an N2 level, more so for the vocabulary than for the grammar. There isn’t a lot of violence in Shuna no tabi, but its depictions of slavery and starvation may be uncomfortable for some readers.

* * * * *

L.M. Zoller is a former JET CIR with an MA in Japan Studies. Ze wrote zir senior thesis on moral development theory in Miyazaki’s films and has probably seen Princess Mononoke 100 times (no joke). L.M. blogs about media and gender at The Lobster Dance (@odorunara) and food, sexuality, and gender at I’ll Make It Myself! (@illmakeitmyself).

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Manga through the Eyes of an Architect

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Manga through the Eyes of an Architect

Title: Manga through the Eyes of an Architect: The Economics of Yotsuba&!, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Evangelion, and Persona 4
Japanese Title: 建築家が見たマンガの世界：よつばと！、ジョジョの奇妙な冒険、ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版、ペルソナ４の経済編 (Kenchikuka ga mita manga no sekai: Yotsubato, Jojo no kimyō na bōken, Evangerion shingekijōban, Perusona 4 no keizaihen)
Author: Sakurada Ikka (櫻田 一家)
Publisher: Gloria Earth Technology
Publication Year: 2015
Pages: 199

In his preface, architect Sakurada Ikka explains that the idea for this book came about through a conversation with a group of friends at a bar. A young editor, referring to the adage that “a good novel will make its protagonist’s economic circumstances clear,” wondered if the same could be said for manga. Sakurada, knowing full well that someone’s home reflects their socioeconomic status, posited that any story with solid worldbuilding would give the reader a clear picture of the living space of its characters. Once he set about investigating this issue, however, he realized that there were a great many gaps lurking in the shadows of even the most solidly constructed manga (and anime, and video games). Manga through the Eyes of an Architect thus functions as a set of close readings that attempt to fill in these gaps.

Sakurada opens his book with a precise examination of Yotsuba&! in an attempt to hammer out the details of its setting. For instance, when does it begin? (Probably July 18.) Where in Japan is Ajisai City, the fictional town where Yotsuba and her adoptive father Koiwai Yōsuke live? (Probably in Chiba Prefecture in the general vicinity of Narita airport.) What direction does Yotsuba’s house face? (Probably south.)

Sakurada uses evidence not only from passages in the manga but also from his own real-world research and observation. For example, in trying to figure out where Koiwai’s parents live, Sakurada argues that, since Koiwai borrowed a light cargo truck (a 2001 Mazda 660KU series, to be exact) from his friend Jumbo to move from his parents’ house to Ajisai City at the beginning of the first volume of the manga, he probably wasn’t traveling for more than a few hours. The “New Pione” label on a package Koiwai’s mom sends him (in Chapter 27 of Volume 5) would seem to indicate Okayama Prefecture, but that’s too far away, so it’s probably coming from nearby Yamanashi Prefecture, a somewhat lesser-known source of the brand’s grapes.

When I wrote “a precise examination” earlier, that’s the level of precision I mean. Sakurada does walkthroughs of his reasoning like Sherlock Holmes, and it’s fascinating to read through his evidence and conjectures.

The next section of the book investigates the floorplan of Kishibe Rohan’s house from Part 4 (the “Diamond Is Unbreakable” arc) of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Despite Araki Hirohiko’s comment that his manga isn’t popular in America because Americans have no sense of style, all of the homes of the major characters exhibit classically American architecture. Sakurada teases out the layout of Rohan’s house room by room while discussing the history of the architecture and the furniture. As an American, I enjoyed seeing things I take for granted, such as Queen Anne houses and Mansard roofs, being treated as fascinating – and expensive! – foreign oddities. Sakurada tries to puzzle out how successful Rohan is as a manga artist by referring to the information presented in the manga Bakuman (about two manga industry hopefuls). For example, how many manga would Rohan need to sell in order to afford his Porsche 928 GTS? How do Rohan’s sales compare to the sales of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure? Was this sort of wealth achievable for a manga artist in the late 1990s?

Sakurada continues with an analysis of the Rebuild of Evangelion movies (released in 2007, 2009, and 2012). In order to figure out how much Ikari Shinji’s guardian Katsuragi Misato is paying for her apartment, he argues that we must first understand how the catastrophic “Second Impact” event affected the earth. Since the viewer is told this disaster melted the polar ice caps, Sakurada employs math and maps to demonstrate what parts of Japan would have been submerged. He also speculates on how various Japanese industries would suffer from the resulting climate change, as well as how this would affect local economies and regional infrastructures within Japan.

Sakurada’s main concern in this section, however, is Misato’s annual salary. Her apartment accommodates herself, her pet penguin, two teenagers who get their own bedrooms (Shinji and Asuka), plus tons of extra space for her garbage, including a nice kitchen and living room. Given the state of Japan’s postapocalyptic economy, Misato must be doing well for herself in order to afford such a large place. (I guess NERV has to pay people the big bucks to put up with Shinji’s asshole father.) In addition, Sakurada gives a detailed analysis of each character’s room, providing an interesting set of insights. For instance, Shinji’s haplessness is emphasized by the fact that the room he’s given in Misato’s huge apartment is tiny and has no windows. Sakurada concludes with an estimate of Shinji’s dad’s salary, arguing that the women in Shinji’s life should really consider being nicer to him.

The final section of the book, which is by far its shortest, is about “The Mysteries of the Dōjima House.” The Dōjima house is the residence of the protagonist of the 2008 PlayStation 2 game Persona 4. Although a wealth of material related to the game and its 2011-2012 animated adaptation (not to mention several spin-off titles) has been released, Sakurada has been able to find numerous inconsistencies in the official floorplans of the quaint Shōwa-era structure that serves as the player’s (or viewer’s) home base. Where is the staircase, exactly? What’s filling all the space that’s unaccounted for on the second floor? Where’s the bathroom?

Although it helps to be familiar with the source texts under discussion, this is not necessary in order for the reader to enjoy his speculation and analysis. No prior knowledge of architecture is required, and Sakurada’s clear explanations and frequent illustrations render his arguments accessible to even a casual reader.

Granted, both the information presented and Sakurada’s readings are highly specific. In fandom terms, what Sakurada is performing would be referred to as “textual meta,” meaning that his analysis is so minute and self-referential that it might not make sense to people outside the fandom. As I wrote above, I don’t think this is true – I know very little about Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure but still enjoyed reading Sakurada’s essays on its architecture and economics.

Still, it brings up an interesting point concerning how manga and other pop culture texts should be discussed in an academic context. Is it absolutely necessary to reference larger social, historical, and intellectual currents, or are we allowed to dig our heels into the text itself in order to make it more meaningful? In my opinion, Manga through the Eyes of an Architect is close reading done right, and I can only hope that more formal English-language discussions of manga in this mode of inquiry appear as the related fields of Comics Studies and Anime and Manga Studies continue establish themselves.

Buchō wa onee

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Buchou wa onee

Title: Mr. F. Vincent Is……
Japanese Title: 部長はオネエ (Buchō wa onee)
Artist: Nagabe (ながべ)
Publication Year: 2015
Publisher: Akane Shinsha (茜新社)
Pages: 231

Falnail Vincent is a section chief at a large corporation in Japan. He is cool, collected, and very good at his job. His colleagues respect him, and his subordinates admire him, but he’s desperately trying to keep a secret from his co-workers: When he leaves work, Falnail becomes Fal-chan, a hostess at an onee bar. At typical onee bars, patrons are served by glamorous “older sister” types, but Fal-chan’s bar, Jewelry, happens to be staffed by huge beefcakes in heels, hairbows, and strapless minidresses.

Cracks in Falnail’s masculine persona appear when he forgets that he’s not supposed to gush about girly topics like patisseries and makeup bags with his female co-workers. Still, he’s able to keep his two lives separate until a new patron at Jewelry, an American named George Weaver, shows up at his office the next day as a foreign business associate. Being a typical American (the kind that speaks perfect Japanese), George is upfront about his interest in Fal-chan and won’t take “no” for an answer, inviting Falnail out on dates to an amusement park and a fancy restaurant. Meanwhile, George’s advances have sparked the competitive spirit of Danto Impasu, Falnail’s junior at work who’s been harboring a crush on his boss. Because this is a manga, Danto also ends up visiting Jewelry, and hijinks ensue.

None of this deviates far from the routine BL nonsense we all know and love, but what’s a bit out of the ordinary is that everyone in this manga is an animal. George is a bird, Danto is a wolf, and Falnail is some sort of dragon. The mama-san of Jewelry is a tiger, and Fal-chan’s fellow hostesses are a shark and a ram. During his day job, Falnail works with rabbits, roosters, foxes, tanuki, and all manner of other creatures.

The tagline for Buchō wa onee, which just finished serialization in the bi-monthly BL magazine Opera, is “Jūjin + Suits + ML.” Jūjin (獣人) is a subset of a genre of manga called kemono-kei (ケモノ系), which might be glossed as “anthro.” As opposed to jingai (人外), in which mostly human characters have isolated animal body parts like ears or tails, jūjin, or “beast people,” are animals that speak, dress, and walk upright like humans. “ML” is an abbreviation of “mens love,” a subgenre of BL in which the characters are middle-aged and built like brick houses.

As in English-language anthro communities, there seems to be a strong interest male/male romance written and drawn by men and for men in Japanese kemono-kei, with bears being portrayed as literal bears (or wolves, or lions, or Satanic demons, or what have you). Buchō wa onee is extremely silly and lighthearted, but its overt bara stylizations hint at what I see as a movement away from the classic portrayal of androgynous bishōnen masculinity within the world of original dōjinshi comics for women.

I don’t want to read too much into the series of cute tableaus collected in Buchō wa onee, but the normalized strangeness of animals going about their daily lives in an environment otherwise exactly like our own lends an interesting perspective on Falnail’s dilemma, which is that he feels the need to keep his two personas entirely separate. He worries that his colleagues, who depend on him to be authoritative, won’t respect him if they find out about Fal-chan, but the fact that everyone is a different type of animal betrays the reality of the true diversity of the world, where it is not necessarily the case that one’s “species” affects one’s personality in any way. Over the course of the manga, it’s suggested that, even if Falnail isn’t completely comfortable with moving to America and living with George as an openly gay man, he can begin to bridge the gap between his two identities by slowly revealing himself to a sympathetic co-worker.

Mostly, however, Buchō wa onee is about ferocious anthro muscleheads being adorable. Sometimes it’s good to just leave all the real life gay drama behind in real life, you know?

If you’re interested in checking out more of the artist’s work, Nagabe is on Pixiv and Tumblr.

Since today is August 1, I also want to give a shout-out to the round-up of 2015 yaoi-themed web comics posted by Khursten Santos over at her blog Otaku Champloo. To all my fellow fujoshi and fudanshi, stay fabulous and never lose your sparkle-tinted glasses. Happy 801 Day!

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