Anime and Manga Review: xxxHolic

I’m continuing my review of the Dublin Library’s anime and manga collection this month with xxxHolic, a popular manga series by CLAMP, the team that created Card Captor Sakura, Magic Knight Rayearth, and Tsubasa Chronicle.

xxxHolic is set in modern-day Japan, with occasional crossovers to the alternate universe of Tsubasa Chronicle. It’s a personal favorite of mine, and I’ve been enjoying reading Tsubasa Chronicle and xxxHolic in parallel.

As xxxHolic begins, orphaned high school student Kimihiro Watanuki is plagued by ghosts and demons, thanks to his extreme sensitivity to the spirit world. The unrelenting harassment by the supernatural is making him fear for both his life and his sanity.

Seemingly by chance, he stumbles across a strange little shop located in what he thought was a vacant lot. There, he encounters a beautiful, mysterious woman named Yuuko, a witch who grants wishes–for a price.

In return for shielding Watanuki from the harassment of the spirits, she demands that he come to work for her as a part-time cook and housekeeper.

Watanuki agrees to the bargain, but Yuuko’s solution proves nearly as troublesome as his original problem…much to Watanuki’s disgust, to fend off his spirit stalkers, he’s forced to keep company with his classmate and rival, Shizuka Doumeki.

Doumeki, who is tall, handsome, athletic, and rather taciturn, is the son and grandson
of powerful Buddhist priests, and a naturally talented exorcist in his own right.

Watanuki can’t stand his new bodyguard at first–not only is he wildly jealous of Doumeki’s calm, quiet confidence, but the girl that Watanuki has a crush on is also much too friendly with Doumeki, in Watanuki’s opinion.

Watanuki is a kind and compassionate person who’s suffered some terrible tragedies in his life, but he’s also extremely lonely and insecure, and his insecurities often manifest as childish temper tantrums. He’s a caretaker by nature, and as the series continues and his circle of friends slowly begins to expand, he starts bringing obento (boxed lunches) to school every day for his friends.

In Japanese culture, gifting someone with a bento lunch is a sign of affection and caring. Never very articulate when it comes to discussing his feelings, Watanuki shows his caring by feeding the people important to him.

Yuuko isn’t shy about take full advantage of her bargain with Watanuki (and of his excellent cooking skills), and keeps him busy running her household. She also begins to send Watanuki–with the faithful Doumeki tagging along–out on various errands to fix problems in the spirit world.

Watanuki’s kindness and compassion help to resolve most situations, and when they don’t, Doumeki stands ready to lend a hand with his stubborn loyalty and his exorcism talents.

The series has an X-Files feel about it at times, as the two boys go on various missions and encounter a variety of supernatural beings, from the friendly (such as the fox-demon family who own an oden stand and serve up helpings of their delicious stew to customers) to the utterly terrifying (a spider demon who believes in an eye for an eye, literally).

As xxxHolic progresses, Watanuki finds himself becoming friends with Doumeki against his will, and he also finds a soft spot in his heart for Yuuko, who is by turns manipulative and lonely. Twelve volumes into this continuing series, I also get the feeling that Yuuko is training Watanuki up as her successor in balancing elements and resolving conflicts in the many parallel universes that she guards in her role as the Witch of the Dimensions.

Some of these parallel universes, most notably the universe of Tsubasa Chronicle, intersect with xxxHolic, and characters from the two series appear at various points in each series’ storylines.

The artwork is lush and detailed, with CLAMP’s distinctive style of long, lanky figures, flowing hair, and gorgeously depicted outfits (especially Yuuko’s clothing, which ranges from traditional Japanese formalwear, to sophisticated evening gowns that make her look like a movie star from the Golden Age of Hollywood).

So, is xxxHolic appropriate for your child? The publisher rates this series as appropriate for ages 13 and up, and I agree with this rating.

The publisher has done a very good job translating the original text, keeping the original Japanese honorifics where appropriate to convey nuances of relationships between characters, and providing informative historical and cultural footnotes at various points in the text. xxxHolic contains no sex or offensive language, but there is some gory violence, and occasional disturbing and creepy paranormal story elements.

 

Anime and Manga Review: Ranma 1/2

I’m continuing my review of the Dublin Library’s anime and manga collection this week with Ranma 1/2, a classic comedy anime series by the creator of Inuyasha.Ranma 1/2 skillfully combines appealing characters, fantasy, slapstick adventure and romantic comedy.

The series revolves around Ranma Saotome, a teen-aged boy and lifelong martial arts student. While on a training mission with his father, Genma, in China, Ranma and Genma fall into a set of cursed springs. As a result, Ranma turns into an attractive girl whenever cold water touches him, and Genma turns into a giant panda.

As the series opens, Ranma and Genma show up as surprise houseguests at a martial arts dojo owned by Genma’s old friend, Mr. Tendo. Mr. Tendo’s youngest daughter, Akane, is a tomboy and skilled martial artist. Poor Ranma and Akane both get the shock of their lives when their fathers announce that the two teenagers are betrothed.

Not at all ready to settle down, but also unwilling to defy their fathers, Akane and Ranma reluctantly agree to try being engaged. Thus paired off, the two of them begin to spend time together, a rough road considering that Ranma is frequently rude and arrogant, and Akane has a hair-trigger temper.Their relationship is both strengthened and made more difficult by the challenges of enrolling Ranma at Akane’s high school.

With a childhood spent following his father from place to place in search of martial arts training, Ranma is anything but a well-behaved student, and he quickly becomes notorious at school for pulling pranks and getting into brawls.Although he’s initially horrified by his tendancy to turn into a girl whenever he gets wet, the cunning Ranma quickly learns to use his gender-switching powers to play tricks and manipulate the other boys at the school. Akane is usually mortified by her fiance’s antics, but she soon comes to realize that life with Ranma, while noisy and frequently aggravating, is also a lot of fun.Slowly, they become friends and then even more slowly, they begin to develop deeper feelings for one another.

In addition to Ranma, Akane, and their family members, the series has a well-rounded cast of secondary characters: the panty-stealing, old scoundrel of a martial arts master Happosai; the rich, handsome, and extremely pompous high school athlete Tatewaki Kuno (who falls in love with Ranma’s female alter-ego, leading to many comic complications); the Chinese Amazon warrior Shampoo, who swore to wed Ranma after he beat her in a martial arts contest; and Ryoga Hibiki, Ranma’s rival in both martial arts and romance.

Ryoga also fell into one of the cursed springs, and is cursed to turn into a cute little piglet when wet. Directionally-challenged, tongue-tied around girls, and head-over-heels in love with Akane, Ryoga is humiliated at first by having such an unmanly alter ego. But, like Ranma, Ryoga soon finds ways of turning his situation to his advantage. To Ranma’s displeasure (and jealousy), Ryoga’s piglet form is adopted as a pet by an unwitting Akane and named P-chan. This situation of course leads to more hilarious complications as Ryoga tries to keep Akane from discovering his secret, and Ranma tries to keep P-chan out of Akane’s room and bed.

All in all, Ranma 1/2 is a light-hearted romp with some hysterically funny scenes (including a martial arts figure skating competition that left me howling with laughter). Unlike many anime series, including Inuyasha, Ranma 1/2 is episodic, with continuing characters and situations, but no real season-long story arcs.

So, is Ranma 1/2 appropriate for your child? The series was originally intended for pre-teens and teens, and it’s got bloodless slapstick violence, some tastefully-done nudity in non-sexual contexts, occasional references to sex, and panty raids.

 

Anime and Manga Review: Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex

After taking an extended break to deal with book deadlines and some family matters, I’m returning this week to review Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex, an action-adventure anime series available at the Dublin, Fremont Main and San Lorenzo library branches.

Loosely based on the Ghost in the Shell theatrical feature films, and with many of the same characters, though the storyline is quite different, Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex is a 26-episode anime series that’s partly a police procedural set in a near-future science fiction setting, and partly a philosophical musing on what comprises a human being.

Major Motoko Kusanagi leads a team of anti-terrorism police in a near-future world where almost everyone has cybernetic enhancements. There are also robots that look and act human, which has led to interesting social and legal dilemmas about who is human, and therefore entitled to human rights, and who is merely a machine, something that can be owned and disposed of at the owner’s will. The distinction is the soul, or the “ghost in the shell.”

Kusanagi treads a fine line between machine and human. Struck down by a crippling childhood disease, her brain was implanted in a beautiful, ageless, superhuman cybernetic body. Yet, she is considered human, because she has a “ghost.” Her team mates all have varying degrees of cybernetics, including artificial eyes that enhance vision. The one exception is the rookie member, who has made the highly-unusual choice not to acquire any cybernetic implants. This choice frequently hampers him in the course of his police work; yet, it also renders him immune to some of the cyber-attacks employed by terrorists.

The series, episodic at first, starts by exploring questions about what it means to be human, the philosophy interspersed with punchy action sequences and lots of explosions. Then the storyline settles into a tense investigation of a cyber-terrorist known as “The Laughing Man,” which then morphs into vicious inter-departmental infighting between Kusanagi’s boss and his rivals as Kusanagi and her team begin to uncover truths that the government would prefer stay buried.

Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex also has a wonderful soundtrack–the opening theme, sung in what sounds like Latin and Bulgarian, is haunting and gorgeous, and the rest of the series’ music is a deft blend of rock and neo-classical.

Is this series appropriate for your child? Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex is a hard action series that includes intense violence and acts of terrorism. This show is probably most appropriate for teens (13 years and older).

 

Teen Read Week

LOL @ your library!  That’s the theme of the 10^th annual Teen Read Week (Oct 14 -20, 2007), sponsored by the Young Adult Services Division of the American Library Association. The Dublin Library is joining with thousands of libraries across the country to encourage teens to celebrate this year’s theme “LOL @ your library” by reading humorous books and graphic novels “just for the fun of it”.  Feed your funny bone and check out our display of humorous books in the Teen section of the Library.  Let us know what makes you laugh by answering our Teen Advisory Board’s Question of the Month posted on the bulletin board in the Teen Area.  Check out the nominations for the 2007 Teens’ Top Ten Books at www.ala.org.teenstopten/ and vote for your favorites during Teen Read Week, October 14 -20. Need some good book suggestions? Check out these for LOL:

Alice I Think by Susan Juby. 15 year old Alice has been homeschooled by her “hippie” parents.  When she starts at a public high school she has a few opinions to share in this diary.

Sunshine Rider: The First Vegetarian Western by Ric Lynden Hardman. I’m already hooked just by the title.  How could a character in a western possibly be vegetarian?? 17 year old Wylie Jackson leaps at the chance to join a cattle drive but finds himself assigned to the chuck wagon and to keeping an eye on the pesky cattalo (a cross between a buffalo and a cow).  Somewhere in the mix, Wylie turns vegetarian!

 The Adventures of Blue Avenger by Norma Howe. David Schumacher created the comic book hero the Blue Avenger when he was 13. At 16, after the death of his father, he decides to legally change his name to the Blue Avenger and seriously set about righting the wrongs in the world.

Do you have something to recommend that will have us LOL?? Tell us!

 

Anime and Manga Review: Full Metal Panic!

This week, I’m reviewing Full Metal Panic!, an action-adventure series available at the Fremont Main and San Lorenzo library branches.

Full Metal Panic! is one of the best of the anime genre that features young men and women piloting giant robots. It’s a well-balanced combination of fish-out-of-water humor set at a Japanese high school, and military action sequences, distinguished by excellent plotting and well-rounded and interesting characters.

Sousuke Sagara is a teen-aged mercenary soldier who’s part of Mithril, a privately-funded anti-terrorism organization in an alternate-universe near-future setting. (In this world, the Soviet Union still exists, but the People’s Republic of China does not, having split into two warring countries, North China and South China.) Originally from an imaginary Central Asian country similar to Afghanistan, Sousuke was a child soldier fighting a Soviet-led invasion, trained as an assassin and sent out into the field at the age of seven. Later on, he was recruited by Mithril, and at 17, he’s both one of Mithril’s youngest members and also one of the most experienced in terms of actual combat.

He and two of his companions are sent to Japan to serve as covert bodyguards for a schoolgirl named Kaname Chidori, who may be one of the Whispered, who are a small group of humans with a mysterious psychic link to advanced (and possibly extraterrestrial) technology.

Because of Sousuke’s age, he’s sent undercover to Kaname’s high school as an exchange student, where he’s definitely a fish out of water. (His commanding officer also seems to think it would do Sousuke some good to experience normal teen-aged life for a while.) At the school, Sousuke endures several weeks of mishaps and misunderstandings, while forging a tentative friendship with the girl he’s been assigned to protect. Meanwhile, leads on Kaname’s possible abduction prove to be mere, untracable rumors.

Finally, Sousuke and his teammates are told their assignment has ended. As a parting gift for a job well-done, Sousuke is granted leave and permitted to join his high-school class’s field trip to tropical Okinawa before resuming his regular duties at Mithril.

When the class plane is hijacked and diverted to another country, Sousuke may be the only one who can save Kaname from becoming the object of experimental testing on Whispered subjects…

Half a high-school comedy, and half a fairly gritty adventure series, Full Metal Panic! is compelling and very well-done.

Given his background, Sousuke is the most interesting of the characters–while at the high school, he appears to be a harmless, somewhat bumbling military nut mostly because he’s forced to pull short and pretend he’s just a regular student time and again. He’s fully aware that the other kids think he’s weird and stupid, and he is becoming more and more miserable with every false alarm.

But once the hijacking begins, he’s free to revert to his real self–a competent, highly-experienced soldier.

Unlike many other action series featuring teen-aged heroes, Sousuke actually *does* kill or seriously-injure people in the course of his job, and the series doesn’t shy away from depicting this.

Kaname Chidori is a strong female character, athletic and no-nonsense and surprisingly cool under pressure. After being kidnapped, she nearly succeeds in freeing herself before Sousuke shows up, and later on, when his rescue mission has gone horribly wrong, her Whispered abilities help save the day. Once she discovers that Sousuke really is more than just a military-obsessed high school kid, she befriends him, and provides him the first taste of a “normal” life he’s ever known. She also finds herself slowly falling in love with him…

Is this series appropriate for your child? FMP is a hard action series that includes bloody violence (one early episode features a man being shot in the head) and sexual innuendo (though nudity is shown only in silhouette and there are no sex scenes). This show is probably most appropriate for older teens.

 

Anime and Manga Review: Haibane Renmei

This week, I’m departing temporarily from the Dublin Library’s collection to review Haibane Renmei, a gorgeous, thought-provoking anime series available at the Bookmobile, Castro Valley, and Union City branch libraries.

Haibane-Renmei is one of those series that’s utterly engrossing but difficult to describe.

A fantasy turns poignant and gently humorous, it begins with a sequence of a young girl falling from the sky. She awakens from her falling dream, only to find herself hatching from a cocoon, into a world both strange and oddly familiar to her.

Her first few days after emerging from the cocoon are bewildering. She is shown the ropes by a group of teenagers and children living on the grounds of an abandoned school where she emerged, grows a pair of angel’s wings in a painful and messy process, and is given a halo (which, in one of the funnier sequences, refuses to stay straight, so the kids make her a contraption consisting of a headband and an old wire hanger, to keep her halo aligned).

As the days pass, and she settles into her new life as part of a little commune of angel-winged kids, the girl, who can remember nothing of her old life, is named Rakka (”Falling”) by the others.

Venturing away from the school grounds on an outing to a nearby town with her companions, she learns that the winged kids are called “Haibane,” and they occupy a special place in this world. They are permitted to work for food and clothing and other necessities, but are not allowed to handle money. They are also forbidden to buy or have anything new, so their clothing comes from thrift shops and from charitable organizations. Most of the townspeople treat the Haibane like charming nuisances, and a mysterious organization, the Haibane-Renmei, pays for rent and utilities at the old school.

The town itself, set in the midst of a gorgeously-animated landscape of fields and windmills, is reminiscent of a medieval German village, with cobblestoned streets and neat, gabled houses. Oddly, the village and its immediate countryside are surrounded by high walls. It is forbidden for anyone, human or Haibane, to cross over these walls.

The series presents many mysteries: who are the Haibane? Why is the town walled in? Who are the Haibane-Renmei? What lies on the other side of the wall? None of these questions is answered directly, but by the end of this short (13 episodes) series, enough hints have been presented for the viewer to make some guesses. 

What guesses? That would be telling, and given the magical, lyrical quality of this series, it’s almost beside the point.

Haibane Renmei is an excellent example of an artsy fantasy anime series. There are no dragons, giant robots, magical swords, or spaceships here. Instead, the story unfolds in a series of beautifully-animated, charmingly-characterized vignettes.

So, is Haibane Renmei appropriate for your children? Although rated 13+ by its publisher, Geneon Entertainments, this series contains no sex or violence, and is appropriate for all ages (though younger viewers may not appreciate the leisurely pacing and philosophical themes).

On a related note, the Alameda County Library’s web site also provides a listing of anime and manga-related sites on its Teen Scene Entertainment page: http://www.aclibrary.org/teens/default.asp?topic=Teens&cat=Entertainment#anime

 

Anime and Manga Review: Fruits Basket

I’m continuing my review of the Dublin Library’s anime and manga collection this week with another personal favorite, Fruits Basket.

This manga series is a surprisingly poignant and often moving character study, if you can get past the weird name (it refers to a Japanese kid’s game similar to duck-duck-goose) and the girly-girly packaging.

The premise: Tohru Honda, an orphaned & homeless high-school girl is taken in as a housekeeper by one of her classmates, a very shy but very popular boy named Yuki Sohma. He’s living with his novelist-cousin Shigure Sohma in a rather isolated house in the woods, having run away from the main Sohma compound. But the guys have a big secret–they’re shapeshifters, two members of a cursed family.

Our heroine soon makes a place in their hearts with her relentless optimism and unconditional love & gratitude, and soon other disaffected members of the cursed family start to gather at Shigure’s house. Chief among the new arrivals is a violent-tempered but good-hearted young man named Kyo, who bears the most difficult curse of all, and who’s an outcast even within the Sohma family.

Akito, the head of the family, is cursed himself. He is  also intensely and malevolently possessive of “his” family, and when he hears that Tohru is privy to the Sohma family’s deepest secrets, he starts to plot his revenge…but at the same time, he hopes Tohru can save the family from the worst effects of the curse.

This manga series is a very interesting mixture of genuine pathos and wild slapstick, and author does a great job portraying the gradual change in characters of not only the two boys, Yuki and Kyo, over a period of several years, but also the maturation of the heroine, as Tohru develops courage and strength to match her innate compassion. She goes from being essentially a sweetly-smiling doormat to someone brave enough to stand up for herself and the people she loves–without getting mean about it.

I have to admit I started reading this series with some skepticism, thinking it’d be hopelessly silly, but ended up loving it. I had some quibbles with the ending of the series and resolution of the curse storylines, but on the whole, I can highly recommend Fruits Basket.  

(The anime series, adapted from the first four manga volumes, is also charming and very well-done, but is not currently part of the Dublin Library’s collection.)

 So, is Fruits Basket appropriate for your child? It’s a cute series that promotes the notion that love and acceptance can conquer all, and there’s not really any sex, violence, or nudity. But because of its emotional complexity, it’s probably more suitable for teenagers and adults than young children, who may not understand everything that’s happening.

 

Anime & Manga Review: Inuyasha

This week, I’ll begin my reviews of anime and manga items in the Dublin Library’s collection. And I’m going to start with one of my favorite series, Inuyasha.

On the surface, Inuyasha is a classic shoujo series, complete with a schoolgirl heroine who pulled into an alternate world to fulfil a magic quest, handsome men who aid her in her quest, and romance. What distinguishes Inuyasha from other entries in the genre are the fine characterizations, and the genuine jeopardies that face our heroine and her friends. Bad things happen to good people in this series, and the characters are frequently forced to overcome their own weaknesses and past deeds as well as facing the monster of the week. 

 Kagome Higurashi, the 15-year-old heroine of the series, is the daughter of a Shinto shrine family. When a demon appears and pulls her into an old well on the shrine grounds, Kagome manifests unexpected spiritual powers, and manages to fight off the demon–only to find herself stranded 500 years in the past, in the time known as the Sengoku-jidai, or Warring States era.  Almost at once, she is recognized as the reincarnation of a famous demon-fighting priestess, Kikyo, who was the guardian of a mystical jewel before her tragic betrayal and death 50 years earlier.  And then she unseals an infamous half-demon boy named Inuyasha, and things get really interesting…

 Kikyo, though a sworn shrine maiden, found her duties as the jewel’s guardian onerus and longed to rid herself of it. She fell in love with a half-demon boy named Inuyasha, and together, they planned to use the jewel to purge him of his demon half so that they could marry. However, they were each betrayed on the eve of the big day, and Kikyo died believing that Inuyasha had murdered her and stolen the jewel. For his part, Inuyasha fell into a 50-year coma, believing that Kikyo had betrayed him.

 He awakens into a world where Kikyo is only a memory among the old people of the village, Kikyo’s young sister is now the aged village priestess, and Inuyasha himself has become a story used to frighten the village children into behaving. 

 When Kagome unseals Inuyasha, and then inadvertantly shatters the sacred jewel, the two of them find themselves bound on a quest to find the fragments and reconstruct the jewel. The jewel, dangerous when whole, is just as potent in pieces, and demons and evil men can use the fragments to wreak great havoc.

Thus begins a long quest that is part adventure, part romance, and distinguished by excellent characterizations and the development of interesting relationships between the characters. Inuyasha is a gruff, foul-mouthed, rude boy who has lived his life as an outcast in both the human and demon worlds. Under the influence of Kagome’s determined kindness, her trust in him, and her friendship, Inuyasha slowly begins to shed his mistrust, revealing his sensitive and noble character (he never does get rid of his potty-mouth, though the English translations of both the manga and anime series have toned down his language considerably to make the work suitable for teens).

 Inuyasha and Kagome are soon joined in their quest by new friends–Miroku, a charming scoundrel of a Buddhist monk who seeks to undo a long-standing curse that will eventually kill him; Sango, a demon-slayer who saw her entire village slaughtered by an evil presence seeking to use the power of the jewel; and Shippo, an orphaned fox-demon cub whose parents were killed for the jewel fragments they possessed.

And then there are the opponents–Inuyasha’s full-demon brother, Sesshoumaru, who hates and resents Inuyasha; Kikyo, whose legacy haunts Kagome and poisons her relationship with Inuyasha; and Naraku, a human-turned-demon who lusts after power and who revels in the corruption of good.

 The anime series drew to a close after 167 episodes and the quest still incomplete; the weekly installments of the manga series are still running in Japan, and at last count, 519 chapters had been published, with no end in sight.

Is Inuyasha suitable viewing for your kids?

There is quite a bit of violence, some of it fairly gory.  There are demons and rotting corpses and various supernatural storylines, some of them fairly frightening for children. Bad things happen to good people, which may distress younger viewers. And there are bawdy jokes and some circumspect mentions of sex and sexuality. The Anime News Network Encyclopedia rates Inuyasha as suitable for teenagers (May contain bloody violence, bad language, nudity), and I agree with this rating. 

 

Anime and Manga 101

Hi everyone!

Karin Welss here. The Dublin Library was kind enough to invite me here to write about the hot genres of anime (Japanese animated films and TV shows) and manga (Japanese graphic novels). I’ve been watching anime and reading manga for nearly ten years, and my collection is…large. Very large.

I was pleased to see that the Dublin Library has a fairly large collection of anime and manga, and according to the librarians, these are among the most popular young-adult items.

Anime series, dubbed into English (and frequently edited for language and content), air regularly on the Cartoon Network and other channels. And many translated manga titles have become bestsellers in the US and Europe. There are shelves of manga at most local bookstores, and my friends in Germany and France report that translated manga are very popular in Europe, as well.

But just what *is* manga and anime? And how do you tell whether it’s appropriate for your kids?

First, a little background. Japanese pop culture is very focused on demographics. For example, for manga, there are separate publication lines aimed at teen girls, teen boys, women in their 20’s, businessmen, sports fans, etc. When I was in Japan three years ago, I noticed a lot of people, old and young, reading manga on the buses and trains.

Successful manga series are often adapted into anime, or cartoon series, which run anywhere from 6 episodes (”Here is Greenwood”) to 300+ episodes and counting (”One Piece” and “Detective Conan”).

Manga/anime directed at teen boys (”shounen”) are typically action-adventure series, featuring a teen-aged hero who becomes stronger and more mature by facing a series of trials. “Bleach” and “Naruto” which are long-running manga series (and also successful anime series), are good examples of this genre. In both cases, the teen-aged heroes have extraordinary abilities (15-year-old Ichigo, the hero of Bleach, has strong spiritual powers, which enable him to become a shinigami, a death god, whose mission it is to battle demons who eat human souls; 13-year-old Naruto is the village outcast, who dreams of becoming a strong ninja and the eventual leader of his village.)

Some of the shounen series feature strong female characters, but more typically, the girls are cast either as romantic interests, victims in need of rescue from villains, or there to cheer on the hero and his buddies. Violence is usually bloodless (magic swords are a staple of the genre) and sexuality may discussed/joked about but sexual relationships are rarely shown on-screen. The typical shounen series hero is a 15-17 year old boy, rough around the edges, with a foul mouth and bad manners, but a kind heart and noble spirit.

Manga/anime directed at teen girls (”shoujo”) is typically more relationship-focused and more overtly romantic. For action-adventure series, the heroine is typically a teen girl sent to an alternate universe where she must save the day (”Inuyasha;” “The Vision of Escaflowne;” “Fushigi Yuugi” are all popular example of this storyline). Alternatively, she stays in the everyday world, but acquires some sort of magic talisman, and a mission to go along with it (”Cardcaptor Sakura;” “Sailor Moon”).  The heroine is usually cheerful, modest, upbeat, and loyal, and overcomes challenges with the help of her friends. There is frequently a beautiful young man (or men) assisting her, with multiple young men often vying for her romantic attention.

A subgenre of shoujo romance manga/anime feature relationships between beautiful young men (genre name: shounen-ai, translated, “boys’ love”), and many shoujo titles may have handsome gay men in supporting roles. The level of sexuality in shoujo is usually focused on the heroine’s first kiss, but may include tastefully-done sex scenes (esp. in shounen-ai series) where it is implied, in a pan-to-fireplace sort of way, that that sexual activity has taken place.

There is also a wide variety of anime and manga aimed at adults, though fewer of these titles have been translated into English. Some of it is sexually explicit in nature, some of it extremely gory (such as “Berserk,” a blood-drenched but engrossing tale of a mercenary company in late-medieval Europe), but often, the dividing line between YA and adult anime/manga are the maturity of the characters, and the depths of story and characterization.

Adult manga and anime series often have heroes and heroines thrust into ethically-gray areas, where the stakes are high, and there are no easy answers. Sexuality is frankly discussed, and sometimes (but not always) there’s onscreen nudity.

One excellent adult-oriented anime series released recently on DVD in North America is “Black Lagoon,” where an average-Joe office worker/mid-level manager is kidnapped by modern-day pirates while on a business trip to the South China Sea. Realizing that his employer has set him up and betrayed him, the hero chooses to throw his lot in with the pirates, but soon realizes that he’s becoming a stranger to himself, even as he tries to hold on to his ideals.

Another excellent series, aimed at 20-something women (”josei” genre), is “Story of Saiunkoku,” which is set in a fantasy kingdom that resembles ancient China. The heroine is the highly-intelligent daughter of noble family, who yearns to become a government official despite the fact that women are forbidden to take the Imperial civil exams. Weathering the distractions thrown her way by politics, court intrigues, and a bevy of gorgeous suitors, the heroine persists in pursuing her dream of a career in government service. Unlike shoujo series, the focus of “Saiunkoku” is on the heroine’s growth as a career woman, rather than her romantic entanglements.

So, how do you tell if an anime title on sale at Best Buy or Circuit City is appropriate for your kids?

There are a lot of anime/manga-oriented websites, but my personal favorites are:

- the Anime Encyclopedia (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php), which offers plot summaries, genres, age ratings, and episode guides for nearly every anime series ever made

- the Manga Encyclopedia (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/manga.php), which offers the same information for manga series.

The Anime News Network site also offers up-to-date reviews of new anime and manga releases in all genres.

In future weeks, I’ll be reviewing various anime and manga titles in the Alameda County Library collection.

Until next time!
Karin

 

Meet Guest Columnist, Karin Welss

Karin Welss is a local author, long-time Dublin resident and a member of the Friends of Dublin Library.  She writes under the name Michaela August (for works co-authored with Marian Gibbons) and under her own name.  Her latest novel is TWIST OF HONOR, a historical romance.  Other than writing historical romances, working in the software industry, and volunteering with the Dublin Friends, Karin’s avocation happens to be anime and manga.  Her interest in anime and manga date back to the late ’90s, when she  watched “The Vision of Escaflowne” at a friend’s house and found herself hooked.    She has graciously offered to contribute an occasional column to this blog, reviewing various anime and manga series. Meanwhile, you can find out more about her novels at her website http://www.michaela-august.com.

Karin will be posting her first column in the next few days, so watch for it!