Graphic Novels: August 2006 Archives

Employing the form of a graphic novel, “Fearless Dave” is the story of Dave, a zealous, if somewhat ineffectual knight-in-embryo and his well meaning, though somewhat overbearing, mother.

Responding to an advert in the paper making a plea for a person to help a Princess in distress, Dave sets forth with trusty wooden-blade in hand, and a bucket on his head intending to rid the princess’ bedroom of the beast that dwells there. All, however, is not quite as it appears, although the outcome does mean Dave does has to contend with one of his fears and so prove himself as brave…

Good natured, playful jibes are made about the excesses and hyperbole of history and age-old stories as a tour-guide fervently embellishes the true story of Dave, presenting instead a heroic account to amaze his audience, the contrast between this and the true pictorial and narrative account of Dave’s deeds make for a tongue-firm-in-cheek romp of a read.

Tsubasa means wings in Japanese and these play a crucial role in this graphic novel both as a plot device for Sakura, princess of Clow Country, and as a metaphor for the spiritual ‘flight’ they enable.

Raised by her brother, King Toya who presides over Clow County, Sakura has a vision of a symbol. When visiting the archaeologist Syaoran, a childhood friend to whom she intends to profess undying love, Sakura discovers markings in the shape of the same symbol. Powers are unlocked creating the formation of wings upon her back and quickly threaten to pull her into the ruins Syaoran has been uncovering. With tremendous effort, he is able to save Sakura, but amidst this process her wings shatter and disperse across the dimensions

Syaoran and the comatose Sakura make their appearance before Yuko – as concurs with the first volume of “xxxHOLiC”, another series by the CLAMP creators that runs in parallel with this. Syaoran learns that to save Sakura, he must collect each of the feathers from her wings.

Increasingly distressed by the powers vested upon him, Watanuki seeks refuge in a shop that purports to grant wishes. Inside the shop, Yuko offers to aid Watanuki’s hope to be rid of his ability to see ghosts, however, to remunerate her efforts, he must work off a debt equal to the power taken to achieve this…

Yuko is a sage, a wise witch who helps cure her customers of the various addictions, obsessions and preoccupations from which they suffer. Yuko has two henchman, Maru and Moro, twin entities with a deathly pallor and an unnerving ability to communicate telepathically with their mistress.

The “xxxHOLiC” volumes cross with those in “Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE” and CLAMP, the creators of both, claim the two series tie all of their previous work together. Referential material and interplay between characters and artefacts alike add an extra dimension to the series by consequence.

“A love between dogs and humans can never be”

Caught somewhere between Melvin Burgess’ “Lady My Life as a Bitch” and “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” but enlivened and made highly accessible by the dynamism of the Manga form, with its characteristic, almost hyper-active revelation of drama and emotion, “Guru Guru Pon-Chan” makes for a high-paced and humorous reading experience.

The action of the story begins when Grandpa Koizumi believes he has created a ‘chit-chat’ bone, a device allowing animals to communicate with humans. The bone, however, unexpectedly transforms the canine Ponta into a homo-sapien.

Mayhem ensues as Ponta, who in human form initially struggles to speak her needs and desires, gradually falls in love with Mirai who saves her life after she runs out into the road.

Much of the frenetic, sometimes almost too-fast-paced – humour derives from Ikezawa’s perceptive observations of the behaviour of dogs. Alongside parading naked, vomiting and the inevitable sniffing of excretia, Ponta battles against the prejudice of her classmates and has numerous accidents along the way concerning appropriateness of canine behaviour when translated into the human form.

A fun-filled, highly accessible book that will serve as a great introduction to the Manga form and that will resonate with dog owners.

Underlying the desire to become a Magister Magi, is Negi’s wish to find his father Nagi Springfield, a once legendary mage who most now believe to have died. On leaving his school of magic, bizarrely Negi is given an alias as a professor teaching English to a class of girls, all of whom are older than himself, in Japan.

Negi comes across as a likeable, although extremely youthful, individual who is both sensitive and hardworking. His age and relative inexperience enable Akamatsu to parody and satirise a number of conventions in the graphic novel form creating a fiction that looks inward upon its genre challenging a number of its clichés and parameters.

Negi’s class respond to him more as a younger brother to be patronised rather than as a teacher and an antagonism erupts between him and one of the students, Asuna who had a crush for the teacher whom Negi replaced. The story as Negi continues to battle to fulfil his dream of becoming a Magister Magi follows in further volumes.

Mai Taniyama is a high school student with a job employed by the mysterious company, Shibuya Psychic Research. She examines hauntings and the supernatural. Seventeen-year-old Shibuya Kazuya boss of the Psychic Research centre and, to Mai’s mind a liar, cheat and a narcissist, throws her into a confused state of attraction and repulsion from what she initially perceives as arrogance accompanied by boyish good looks.

The company is employed to investigate an old school building that is believed to be cursed after a series of ‘accidents’ occur each time the site is attempted to be re-developed.

Mai’s curiosity over a camera that has been set up to record evidence of any paranormal happenings, leads to her working to pay for the damage. The principal of the school hires other psychics to assess the property including Ayako Matsuzaki who is a Shinto priestess, Takigawa who is a Buddhist monk, John Brown a priest who has learnt Japanese in the Kyoto dialect and believes this to be the polite method of pronunciation and one of the most renowned psychic mediums as featured on teleivison, Masako Hara.

The cross sections of different thoughts and systems of belief provides a backdrop for theological and philosophical discussion. Disagreements abound between all concerned, not in the least between Shibuya and Mai herself, whose wrangling it is implied shrouds quite another emotion as is suggested at the end of the novel when Shibuya offers Mai an administrative position and she keenly accepts.