First, for those who got here through the category system, some people consider Gold Digger to be “American Manga” and I tend to agree. Now, on with the post.
It’s an epic. It’s a comedy. It’s silly. It’s awe-inspiring. It’s sad. It’s sweet…. It’s Gold Digger by Fred Perry.
Gold Digger is an amazing North American comic. It has a manga-like art style, it’s been full-color since it’s 51st issue, it’s still going strong, and it’s the most amazing epic you’ll ever read. I dare not elaborate, for it will spoil some of the surprise, but I can tell you that Fred Perry is either the world’s best plotter, or a master of retconning.
The story starts out as a fairly ordinary story about a female Indiana Jones-style adventurer who doubles as a mad scientist of sorts and has a were-cheetah for an adopted sister, an archmage for a father, and a master warrior for a mother.
In the beginning (the black-and-white series, and the first few issues of the color series), the story makes for a fun series of events involving amazingly addictive characters. However, once the color series revs up, the dominoes begin to fall. Dozens of threads (some you didn’t even realize were flowing until now) begin to weave together, and yet, through it all, the inherent humor never diminishes, nor does it feel out of place.
You can only stand in awe of the genius it takes to weave such a story. Forget Lord of the Rings. Forget Dune. Forget anime like Last Exile. Gold Digger is the ultimate epic, no… the ultimate story. I only wish I could say more without spoiling something.
Well, I can say one more thing. The battle scenes are like Dragonball Z done right. Instead of having the combatants constantly power up to ridiculous levels while driving many types of readers to boredom, the combatants in Gold Digger simply reveal new skills they’ve always had, a feature which Fred Perry uses to build in extra character development. Truly the work of a master storyteller, more like a game of chess than a tale.
…not to mention, the “Peebo Manga” sidestory collection is hilarious. (A Peebo is essentially a cute sentient bomb)
For the record, the title of this post refers to the combination of an American song and a Japanese comic… not that I’m not also messing with you, as you’ll see when you start reading. Now, with that out of the way, on with the post…
First, a little something I’ve been meaning to post for a couple of months and I keep forgetting about: Boku no Futatsu no Tsubasa
One of the myriad fetishes which can be found in adult comics in Japan is what I will call “full-function hermaphrodites” (people who appear to be women, but have both sets of genitals. This differs from the medical term “hermaphrodite” because it’s genetically impossible for a single mutation to produce two fully-functional reproductive systems in a single body)
Anyway, I suppose you can kind of understand how that would appeal to some people. The reason that this manga is sheer genius is that, instead of being some cheap excuse for naughty pics, the author managed to come up with a “why didn’t I think of that!?” plot concept… What would a female main character do if her (supposedly male) cousin was invited over to co-habitate, and the cousin turned out to not only be a fully-functioning hermaphrodite (and a real bombshell), but (instead of being a sex machine) is naive to the point of never even having had rudimentary sex education?
The answer: One of the funniest legal-for-teen-buyers comedies that I’ve ever seen as an average Japanese girl ends up having to provide a two-gender sex education for her cousin who has ZERO sex education. (doesn’t even know what words like “masturbation” mean “virgin”, or where babies come from)
Add to that, the fact that the characters don’t fall into the same tired old stereotypes you see throughout manga, and it makes for one of my newest all-time favorites. If you’d like to give it a try, the manga’s name once again is Boku no Futatsu no Tsubasa (Translation: My Two Wings) and you can get scanlations from DummyScan. I doubt you’ll be disappointed.
Now, you may be wondering, “How the heck is he going to connect a Japanese sitcom comic about a hermaphrodite to something from the U.S.?” Very easily…
Music by Stephen Lynch
If you’ve never seen this guy, you don’t know what you’re missing. For a first on my blog, I’ll embed a copy of the video to his song “Hermaphrodite”
(which, for the record, is the song that reminded me to make this post)
Interestingly, this is actually the third song I’ve heard by this guy. The first was If I Could Be A Superhero which I saw in a clip from AMV Hell 3 and the second was Lullaby, sometimes called “Why Mommy Left Us”.
Don’t be fooled by the title. This romantic comedy is no shallow hormone fest but, because I made that mistake, it took me over a year to get around to reading it. Sure, it’s a shonen manga with a lot of fanservice, but the characters and events are quite good.
Among other things, I find it very rare to see a female character who is as realistically assertive as Nobuko Nizaki. (as opposed to comically assertive like the girls in Ranma 1/2 and the Tenchi Muyo OAVs) It also helps that the manga’s namesake, Ai the Video Girl is “defective”. As one review described her, trash-talking, assertive, and determined to help the main character find love even if she has to drag him all the way.
As for events, when was the last time you saw a manga where a boy and a girl are watching a movie, they both simultaneously prepare to “make the next move”, and it’s the movie that ruins the chance?
It also happens to be the first series I can think of where I can actually see that the characters are Japanese just from their body proportions. (they look their height, whereas many authors do that too subtly for me to really notice)
Finally, the last two volumes provide a refreshingly uncommon epilogue which deserved special mention. Enjoy.
As you may have guessed, I’ve always loved gender-bending comedy. Though it’s less likely, someone may also have guessed that I enjoy it, not only for the wild and wacky humor, but because I love seeing how the characters react and trying to decide how accurate their reactions would be in real life.
In essense, I enjoy analyzing and comparing exceptional characters by trying to get into their minds. Reading this, a logical (and correct) assumption is that I like shojo manga. To be honest, I love it. I could probably start a whole post just on this, but if I did that, I would never have time to get back on track and this post would become some completely useless and random tangent. In this form, itat least tries to be a manga review, but since I already found several other reviews which are much more eloquent, I’ll just link
to them and add my own viewpoints.
Warning: This rant ran far longer than I expected and, though I remain civilized throghout it, It’s the first post to tap whatever source I use for rants. As such, I will provide the links for the reviews here [1][2][3] in case you’re in a hurry or would prefer to skip the rant.
First, I should mention that I essentially collect unique and interesting characters. My memory is just too good and the fictional “department” of my thirst for knowledge too great, for me to read the same boring stuff cookie-cutter characters over and over again.
Also, one thing that has always bugged me about manga and anime is that, in 90% of the cases, “The nail that sticks out, gets pounded down” is a hard rule regarding tomboyish female characters. Call it one of my pet peeves. For example, if you compare “Angel Sanctuary” to “Devil and Devil”, the former is definitely beyond amazing, but the latter would be quite good too.
I say would because in “Devil and Devil”, the main female character spends a good portion of the manga looking for a way to help the main characters and what happens? At the end, after having even tried stealing a power suit from a crazed science club, the main characters once again say “Stay there and let us protect you!”, and she finally gives up. She wouldn’t survive the battle but that’s not what gets to me. It’s that throughout the series, it’s always been the same thing and during the final battle, it keeps going back to her, sitting and hoping for their return. That spoiled the whole manga for me. If Angel Sanctuary got two thumbs up, Devil and Devil probably got 1.5 thumbs down. (There were some good concepts but, in my opinion, it was a terrible implementation. The comparison is made even easier by the fact that Devil and Devil feels like a cheap ripoff of Angel Sanctuary.)
That is a rather extreme example, but in truth, the less extreme scenarios annoy me even more. It’s as if manga authors think that “tomboy + (love and/or time) = non-tomboy” is an inescapable fact of the human genome, like some aberration that cannot possibly survive without constant external aggravation. One recent example of this is “W Juliet” which really bothers me because it’s so interesting and yet, it’s falling into the same old mysoginist pattern which I can’t help but despise.
The other thing that bugs me is that, if you compare the incidences of transformations and cross-dressing, the ratio is over 5:1 in favor of “guy becomes girl” stories. I think I may have hit 10:1 before I misplaced the file I was using to keep track. (Anyone care to help me rebuild it?)
Having that for context, you can start to understand why “Your And My Secret” is so much more to me than even the glowing reviews I’m linking to. This is the first major “was girl, now guy” transformation case I can think of (outside of fanfiction), and it’s also the first case I’ve ever seen of a manga girl who’s not only un-feminine, but downright brutish and somewhat slovenly. This is not only the source of the most unique female character I’ve come across in ages, it’s an amazingly written dual-gender-bender. I’m really hoping for an equally unique fate for Nanako (the one who was originally a brutish girl) but, at the same time, I can’t risk getting my hopes up. From what I’ve seen of the manga that sells, a gender-swap that doesn’t reverse at the end, while the seemingly obvious good choice, would be as likely to be accepted by the publisher, as the chance of said author dying from a lightning strike before finishing the series. It’s far more likely that something will drive them to miss their old bodies enough to switch back.
The problem is that, I’ve never seen a character like Nanako survive that kind of ending intact. (This is speaking from experience with lesser characters since Nanako is so unique.) If the story does provide an ending that satisfies me, This Calamity Jane of manga will hold a special place in both my heart and my recommendations list. However, if it fails like every other manga I’ve seen, you’ll find it indexed under “Taming of the Shrew“.
Having ranted for far longer than I intended (I guess I read a lot more average manga than I thought), and at an intensity which I’ll probably want to edit later, I ask that you enjoy the reviews. [1][2][3]
If you ever wanted to post comments, now is the time to do so. Nighttime personality shift (That “everything feels different when you’re tired” feeling) may have given me the drive to rant at such length, but the underlying views remain unchanged.
I always get e-mail notifications of new comments so feel free to comment, no matter how old this gets. Every question, no matter how crazy, inane, biased, or bland, gives me a chance to clarify things others may wonder about. Just remember to be respectful and polite. Even I have my limits. Also, I’m willing to offer negotiable rewards for referrals of manga which I do not already have on my to-read list and, if anyone is interested, I’d be happy to post a succinct list of favorite manga and my reasons for liking them.
Title: Devil & Devil Author: Miyoshi Yuuki Genre: Modern Epic Fantasy Length: 15 Volumes Pro: Story is humorous and enjoyable with a good
ending Con: Main female love interest falls under the
overused “powerless, troublesome girl” stereotype which is
annoyingly more common in imported Japanese fiction. Notes: Feels like a poor imitation of Angel
Sanctuary but is good if you don’t compare them.
I’ve heard good things about Devil and Devil. I’ve heard some
people call it the next Great Teacher Onizuka. So, I finally got
around to reading it myself. While I wouldn’t consider it anything
like GTO (For one thing, it’s an epic, I will admit that it’s worth
a read. The story is definitely funny. Essentially, an angel and a
demon are fighting for the 100th time and end up falling to earth
and ending up stuck in human bodies. Not only that, the angel gets
the delinquent’s body and the demon get’s the wimpy nerd’s body.
They do find ways to power up over time and I think it feels like
YuYu Hakusho and looks like YuYu Hakusho mixed with 3×3 Eyes. I do
enjoy that. It does have some recycled plot elements but so does
almost everything these days. I did however, greatly dislike
Nanami’s role, always being forced into a passive “be protected”
role in battles and always meddling when at inopportune times.
Heck, She’s probably the epitome of the unwillingly useless female
“problem”. After compensating for my shoujo preference and my
dislike of sexist biases, I do have to say that this manga is good
though. The ending was nice.
I recently read Angel Sanctuary by Kaori Yuki and I liked what I saw.
The basic plotline is this. God has sealed himself away, things are going downhill, and only the angel Alexiel can stop it. However, Alexiel was sealed away for revolting against God, her body in crystal, her soul in a cycle of reincarnation and death. Every incarnation suffering, every incarnation dieing young. Her current incarnation is a human boy named Setsuna Mudou. But Setsuna only cares about one thing, his forbidden love for Sara, his sister.
Now that I’ve done what all of the synopses do, it’s time to be a bit more specific. It’s a well written epic but there’s definitely much more that I love. Through the course of this story, the main character defies heaven and hell to keep his love. Along the way, he gains the affections of a demon, defies God himself, and participates in the greatest power struggle of all time.
I often find manga stifling after a while. I don’t really know why but there’s some aspect of Japanese culture which I pick up on and dislike. It’s partly the restrained social rules and sexism but there’s more that I can’t grasp. Regardless, this manga didn’t feel like that.
Unlike the vast majority of manga and anime out there, Angel Sanctuary has female character who, despite being a princess, and falling in love, doesn’t seem to surrender to the ideals of Japanese culture. No matter how much manga I read, it seems that at least 90% of tomboys become culturally acceptable japanese girls either to attract the one they love, or as a side effect of finding love. Angel Sanctuary proves that being a tomboy and being in love aren’t mutually exclusive. Also, unlike so much manga out there, it doesn’t just ignore the fact that women have less social and political power, it actually integrates it into the story.
Another aspect I enjoy is how heaven and hell differ from expectations. There is no such thing as pure good and pure evil. If a character acts evil, we will eventually see why. There are evil angels and victimized demons. Heaven has slums and hell has palaces. These are characters you can understand, characters you can sympathize with. Not only that, but the plot twists make sure that there will always be more to learn. No matter how far I read, I never got bored.
In summary, Angel Sanctuary is a realistic epic based on christian mythology, the characters are believable and well thought out, and it breaks free from the stifling mire which consumes so much other manga. I’d probably give this a 9 out of 10 but I haven’t decided on a rating system. Either way, if you don’t mind a littly dirty realism in your manga and you’re tired of the standard fare, give Angel Sanctuary a try.
