Reviews in Brief: Hinako Takanaga -- A Survey

This isn't really a review, and it's not really very brief, but I figure it's my blog, so I can do what I want.

Hinako Takanaga is one of my favorite mangaka doing boys' love manga, largely on the strength of a couple of more recent series. It's interesting to be able to put her work in some sort of developmental context -- I've now read two of her early comedies, The Tyrant Falls In Love and Love Round, her two major series, Little Butterfly and You Will Fall. . ., as well as a slightly more recent work, Devil's Secret.

I just got one that's new in English, although it turns out it was published five years ago in Japan -- The Tyrant Falls In Love. It's pretty much of a piece with Love Round: characters are somewhat quirky but not really developed all that fully, the drawing is appealing but not remarkable, and the stories are a little contrived. They're both "school-boy romances" after a fashion, Tyrant involving a professor and his student assistant, Love Round two high-school boys and a boxing club.

Little Butterfly, a three-volume series, appeared in 2006 and turned out to be an engaging story with good psychological depth. Character is key to this one, and Takanaga does it up proud:

we really understand these boys (yes, it's another school-boy romance). The drawing is also up a notch or two, much cleaner and more polished. Takanaga takes a visual character type she has been using and moves it into a new realm: I call it her "brooding, dark-haired boy," and it's a type she handles superlatively well. The "brooding boy" in this series is Nakahara, who has reason to be somewhat somber: his home life is really crappy, his mother is pretty much nuts, and his father is more than unsympathetic -- he's uncaring and sometimes abusive. His friendship and romance with the bright, sunny Kojima causes a real turn-around, and Takanaga handles it clearly, although it's not very obvious.

I had actually avoided the first volume of Little Butterfly -- the title and the somewhat fluffy-romantic style of the cover art didn't attract me -- but then I read You Will Fall in Love, the first book that deals with the brothers Shudo and their amours. Volume one follows the somewhat rocky romance between the younger brother, Tsukasa, and Haru Mochizuki, once Tsukasa's older brother Reiichiro's best friend, and now a teacher at Tsukasa's school. It's a rather more serious story than Takanaga's previous efforts -- a romantic drama much more than romantic comedy -- and it's a level or two above what came before.

Takanaga returns to comedy in the first volume of You Will Drown in Love, which is Reiichiro's story. This volume is a pendant to You Will Fall. . ., sort of surrounding that story with the tale of Reiichiro's courtship by Jinnai, the assistant manager at the fabric store where Reiichiro, unqualified as he is, becomes manager. It is a very offbeat and quietly funny romance, completely character-driven, and a real tour-de-force for Takanaga.

Something seems to have happened with Takanaga's work in 2006, which is when these two series first began appearing in Japan. Not only are the stories meatier, but the drawing and layouts are superb. Takanaga uses not only drawing and framing, but dialogue balloons, narration boxes, shading and pattern to set up an amazingly coherent and beautiful visual flow. Some spreads in these volumes are stunning, extraordinarily sophisticated and beautifully rendered.

I've reviewed a number of these at Epinions -- you can find links in the sidebar. While the earlier works are capable but fairly average, Little Butterfly and the You Will Fall/Drown series are excellent. I'm looking forward to seeing what she does next.