Blossom Book House is now selling first-hand Del Rey editions of manga titles for 250 Rs each, which compared to the Landmark price of 400-450 Rs is really cheap, AND they are stocking series. As in, not scattered volumes of a title, but complete runs. That is why I picked up five volumes of Ken Akamatsu’s Negima on Sunday.
Now let me be frank, my experience with manga has been with the well-known, occidentalised ones. Like Blame, Lone Wolf and Cub, Kamui, Blade of the Immortal and Katsuhiro Otomo’s works like Domu and Akira. These titles were brought out by American companies like Dark Horse, Marvel, First and Eclipse in the late eighties and early nineties, and were read, like other American comics, from left to right. Any manga buff worth his salt will tell you that the correct way to read manga is from right to left, which is the way they are generally created in Japanese. Fans therefore look down on “flopped” manga, the Americanization of the artwork so as to enable readers accustomed to reading comicbooks to carry on reading manga the same way(i.e lazy buggers like myself). So when publishers like Tokyopop, Viz and Del Rey got into the manga reprint business, they tried to stay as close to the source material as possible, and published titles with artwork that run right to left, and have the cover image at the back, and the book description (which is traditionally on the back cover) on the front. If you open one of these manga as you would a book, the first thing you see is a warning saying: “This is the end of the book, please turn to the other side to begin reading.” – or something like that.
Initially I found that reading right to left was really difficult. My eyes were just not conditioned to read that way, and the panel ordering on the first manga of that format that I read, Fumiko Soryo’s Mars was just too much for me. Then I downloaded fan scanlations of manga like GTO and Ichi The Killer, and got even more confused, because trying to figure out which manga has been flipped and which is not is a herculean task because they occasionally make sense both ways. But I kind of accustomed to the right-to-left reading, and so, Negima was a very good read for me. I have finished the first three volumes.
Negima is short for ‘Magister Negi Magi’. Negi Springfield is a 10-year old Welsh kid who happens to be a wizard. Now hold on, before you begin harrying me with the obvious comparisons, Negima is not about prophecies and Dark Ones and magic spells. The premise is that this ten year old prodigy is given a rather unusual career option when he passes out of Wizarding school. The charge that he is entrusted with, the one that will lead him to becoming a Magus is – teaching English. At a girls’ School. At a girls’ High School. Now how cool is that?
Needless to say, the levels of acceptance he gets from his students vary from brotherly affection to major crushes to out-and-out hatred. The first problem Negi encounters is a student named Asuna Kagurazaka, with whom he has to (gulp) share rooms. (Because, very conveniently, the school authorities have run out of beds in the teacher’s quarter, and….you get the drift.) Asuna has an unrequited crush for the previous English teacher, and therefore has a very low tolerance level for the new guy, who is something of a runt in her eyes, and also has some very strange things happening around him. Like the odd way in which everyone’s skirts fly up whenever Negi sneezes. (or in Asuna’s case, how she manages to lose her clothes once when Negi sneezes right in front of her, and everyone discovers she wears bear panties) Or how fast he is, for a small boy. Or why he carries around a long staff with him wherever he goes.
The storyline develops quite well, with Negi getting to know all of his students slowly, and discovers quirky things about all of them. He takes under his wing the Mighty Morphin Baka Rangers, a group of students who score really low on studies, and have to receive tuitions in English from the new teacher. At the same time, he comes to terms with the difference between using magic to solve his problems ( and some of his spells do backfire, like the time he develops a love potion for Asuna to woo the old English teacher, and drinks it himself), as opposed to good ol’ common sense and honesty. Things start getting a bit more magical by the time volume 2 ends, but that was to be expected, I guess.
I read the first three books with a smile on my face throughout. There are times when the stories get sentimental, but the humour shines through every panel. Ken Akamatsu excels at details, and the translation appears to be excellent, as even the minutest of sound effects ( and there are a TON of them throughout!) are given their English equivalents. The books do not fall into the “Hey y’all” trap, you know, making all the characters sound All-American – the Japanese antecedents of the school, and the students, are all left intact. The cuteness factor is really high.
A real fun read, and you know what, I think I’ll go and pick up a couple of titles more today evening, probably Genshiken and The Wallflower.
Reminded me of the movie where Prabhu Deva looks at Khushboo’s boobs and sings “Manga, Manga Randu Manga..”
That’s a nice way of asking me for the books. ;-)
I like coincidences!
So, Blade of the Immortal comes recommended, does it? I wanted to check out Love Hina next, but that too is a teenage high school thing.
Blade of the Immortal is highly recommended, but not at the obscenely high prices they charge at Indian bookstores. It’s very different from Negima, though, both in terms of content and style.
Viva Voce would have made such a good album name for that pop act Viva.
I don’t think they would have that kind of brainwave anytime soon.
But this band is really good, you know.
I’ll look out for the band.
(Viva didn’t need to have brainwaves. They were managed and composed for. Besides, ‘voce’ in Kannada means something like freeloading.)
>Any manga buff worth his salt will tell you that the correct way to read manga is from right to left, which is the way they are generally created in Japanese.
Fascinating. I have no idea why random trivia like this interests me, but it does.
I read books from right to left all the time. Especially detective novels. That way, whenever anyone asks me, “So have you read?”, I can omnisciently reply “Well, I’ve just started it, but it’s obvious that the murderer is so-and-so.” The trouble is, no one ever asks me stuff like that. Stilll, it is always good to be prepared.
>Negi
So, Negis are Welsh? That will surprise my family’s tax accountant.
>At a girls’ High School.
Some people would prefer high school girls.
I was thinking of snarky things to say about your comment, but decided against it.
But again,
you don’t like High school girls?
>But again, you don’t like High school girls?
Of course I do! Lightly sauteed in extra virgin olive oil.
Ask a leading question, get a hideously tasteless answer.
Of course, I don’t have to ask you if you like High school girls. You’re too steeped in Japanese popular culture not to.
Pervert.
I fail to understand why you earthlings look down on us inhabitants of Perv.
>I fail to understand why you earthlings look down on us inhabitants of Perv.
Tut, tut. Was there even a hint of judgement in my post? No, it you who has judged yourself and found yourself to be wanting.
Wanting High school girls, that is.
Hmm, let me read The Wallflower first. :-)
Never a big manga fan, Negima did quite catch my fancy.. maybe I should give it a go. I’ve found that while all (well, almost all) Japanese fiction has some cultural resonance in its plots or character behaviour, works of fiction, as opposed to maga tend to be a little more psychological, while Manga fiction tends to use the fantastic to tell more relationship based stories.
I could be wrong, though.
while Manga fiction tends to use the fantastic to tell more relationship based stories.
The problem is, you can’t slot Manga that way. It’s a way of storytelling, and you can’t say manga is “fantastic fiction”, much like you can’t say that “all novels are scifi stories”.
Sorry if this sounds very pedantic, I hate to pretend like I know everything about manga there is to know, but as far as I can see, there’s manga created on EVERY FREAKIN’ TOPIC under the sun. Right from fashion (Paradise Kiss, which was the second right-to-left manga I read) to politics (‘Barefoot Gen’ is about the Hiroshima bombing, and I am afraid to download it because it’s supposed to be really profound, ‘Eagle’, which is supposed to be an authentic description of a US Presidential Election race) to history ( The best examples are Osamu Tezuka’s ‘Hitler’ and ‘Buddha’, both very lauded titles based you-know-who and you-know-who). Our perception of manga is slightly skewed towards high-school girly stuff, because that’s the kind of manga that seems to be more popular, and is hence to be found at bookshops here.
Very true.
It is easy to forget that Manga is a medium, and fantasy is a genre. Totally my fault, must’ve been stoned or something when I said that.
And you are correct in saying that the manga we get our hands on is almost always a variant of teenager-gets-magical-powers or this-is-space-let’s-blow-some-shit-in-huge-mechas. Which can never, ever be considered reflective of the complete Manga scene. My bad, beatzo-san.