I'm starting to get a handle on the work of Satoru Ishihara, I think: her stories tend to be edgy, sometimes almost chaotic, with abrupt shifts in scene and mood, and she'll drop little bombs along the way that bring the story into focus. After reading God of Dogs I was hot to get my hands on other works. Regrettably, Charisma, the forerunner to God of Dogs, has not been licensed in English (wailing and gnashing of teeth here), but I did get hold of a copy of Kimi Shiruya: Dost Thou Know?
We have two sets of brothers in this one, all dedicated competitors in kendo, the Japanese art of the sword: Katsuomi Hanamori and his younger brother Masaomi, and Tsurugi Yaegashi and his younger brother, Saya. The Yaegashi family has just moved into the area; Katauomi and Tsurugi attend different schools, Masaomi and Saya attend the same junior high, and they attend two dojos: Katsuomi and Saya, and Tsurugi and Masaomi. Starting off as competitors, Katsuomi and Tsurugi each realize that the other is not such a bad guy. The focus is on the growing romance between Katsuomi and Tsurugi, wihch is spiky, edgy, and, as they say, fraught: they are, after all, rivals. The relationship between the two younger brothers takes a slightly different course and is pretty much sub rosa until the end of the book, which is when Ishihara also does a number on the reader with the main story.
It's going to come as no surprise to learn that I like Ishihara's work, and while Kimi Shiruya is not what I expected, that's no problem at all, at all. The story line is episodic, and as I noted above, there are abrupt shifts in mood, but one begins to see the consistencies in character that drive the story forward. Katsuomi, in particular, is the spine of this one: he's characterized as a "stampeding boar warrior," all strength and speed, opposed to Tsurugi's subtlety and finesse, but there's a lot more to him than that. And these are rough men, especially Katsuomi, all hormones and ferocity.
Ishihara notes in her afterword that this one took three years to complete, and you can see the shift in her graphic style. It's not a major thing, by any means, but the graphics in the last section are much closer to God of Dogs than those in the beginning. They are, however, strong and definite throughout, and her action sequences are superb.
One more observation: it's worth keeping in mind that Ishihara is layering text and subtext here, and disguising motivations as metaphor, particularly in the case of Tsurugi. The text is also suggestive, when it's not downright blatant: yes, these are athletes, but this is also yaoi, so when Tsurugi says to Katsuomi that he's looking forward to crossing swords with him, using real blades, there are a couple categories of innuendo there. I have to add that this one, even without a sex scene -- which would be a distraction rather than a completion of any sort -- is about the most truly erotic yaoi I've read.
It's a winner, as I suspected it would be. Now if someone will just get it together and start translating Charisma!
From Digital Manga Publishing.
Commentary:
This one brings into focus some more or less inchoate thoughts I've been having about manga, particularly yaoi, and about reading/listening/viewing -- i.e., participating as "audience" -- in general.
Take it as a given that in the experience of any work of art (or any experience at all, I guess), there are two sides: there's what the artist put in, and there's what you, the audience, put in. As a reviewer I'm very aware of this, and I've had to think long and hard about how it actually works. There's always a certain element of subjectivity involved, wihch means that my reactions will not be precisely the same as others', but there's enough common ground that I can comment and figure that most people will get it, even if they don't agree.
As a prime example, take my mention of eroticism in relation to Kimi Shiruya. "Eroticism" as a phenomenon is fiendishly difficult to pin down -- to me, it's a matter of what's not said, what's not shown, but what's implied, and it's much more a matter of structuring relationships than it is about sex -- given that sex is one of the fundamental driving forces in the universe. (It would be sort of like saying that space opera is about gravity -- well, sure, but. . . .) Ishihara works a great deal by implication in this one -- the whole book is built on implication stemming from one kiss not quite halfway through. At least, that's what I'm seeing, and in this instance, I think I'm right: others might miss it, if they're not paying attention, but then, I've gotten used to paying attention. I recall on first reading thinking "Something's going on here" and was delighted by the ending -- it's a twist, a surprise in a lot of ways, but the surprise is not in what happens but in how it happens and how it's revealed.
One of my delights in manga is the sophistication of the visual components. Remember: I was trained (quite exhaustively) as a visual artist and performer. I am achingly aware of the visual aspect of just about anything. (One reason I think I'm still in Chicago, in spite of the disgusting winters, is that in this city, anywhere you look there is a picture, from peaceful pastorales in the parks to that dizzying, insane geometry of downtown. I love just looking at my city, because it's beautiful.) Western comics have too often been concerned with visuals as illustration and not as a co-equal participant in the text. There are examples of other attitudes -- I recently picked up a copy of David Petersen's Mouse Guard: Fall 1152, which is wonderful, and even though he's not as adventurous in page design as most mangaka doing shoujo, he does some wonderful things. In shoujo, page layouts become fluid, intuitive, leaving behind the frame-follows-frame design usual in shounen and Western comics and moving the narrative into a new space, so to speak. (I have noticed, though, that the mangaka will anchor the flow every couple of pages with a more regular layout.)
One concept that just verbalized itself in my head that I realize has probably been key in my appreciation of manga is simply the idea of evocation. This was something that was obviously cooking back there in my mind after reading a comment on a LiveJournal page that the fight sequences in Kimi Shiruya were often confusing. The concept is "evocation," and it's central to Japanese art, as I learned when studying butoh: the point is not to portray the event, but to evoke an image of the event. I think that contributes greatly to the subtlety of Kimi Shiruya, and a lot of other manga. (And in the case of Kimi Shiruya, that's where the eroticism rests.) In the case of those fight scenes, you don't have to be able to read them in detail, you just have to know that there is a fight and sense the action and exertion of the participants. (Think about attending a sporting event yourself: how much of the action do you actually see?)
Of course, for me the appeal of yaoi is simply that it's boy-on-boy romances, of which there is too little in this world. I can enjoy them, no matter the level of quality, I think because I've trained myself to just take them for what they are. It gives me an advantage, I think -- I'm easily amused. (On the other hand, having just thought about the normal reaction when I confess to being passionately fond of Nickelback, sometimes it gives me an entree into something that others aren't picking up on -- expertise can be terribly confining if you're not careful.) It's when I run into something of the caliber and depth of Kimi Shiruya or Momoko Tenzen's Seven or Ellie Mamahara's Alley of First Love (and yes, comedy can be much more profound and engaging than you would at first) or Modoru Motoni's Dog Style, vol. 1 and vol. 2 that I have to stop and think about everything else I've read: it all gets re-ranked, which is an ongoing process intimately tied to my education in the genre, which I see as open-ended. (Much like my education in everything else.) Will I find something eventually that blows those works out of the water? It's entirely possible. I'm looking forward to it -- not without some trepidation.
So, enough of pretty much random thoughts for a Sunday morning. I think I'm going to cross-post this, at least the homily, at Booklag, and see if any of my manga buddies over there pick up on it.
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