One Pound Gospel: Punching (and munching) to a conclusion

One Pound Gospel, volume 3 and 4
By Rumiko Takahashi

Even a lesser work by a great like Rumiko Takahashi can be a great read, and this boxing/romantic comedy manga certainly is, demonstrating her wonderful sense of comic timing and skill at defining characters without tiresome exposition or speechifying.  It's highly enjoyable reading, with each new chapter presenting a unique, if somewhat predictable, conflict for our hero and his would-be lady-love to overcome.

That hero, Kosaku Hatanaka, along with those surrounding him, is what really makes the story work; he's a dedicated boxer, but he's undisciplined, a slave to his stomach, always distracted by hunger and struggling to keep his weight within the limits of his class, not to mention preoccupied with thoughts of the object of his unrequited affection.  That would be Sister Angela, a nun who has feelings for him, but can't ever commit to him, for obvious reasons.  There's the central struggle of the series, with Kosaku trying to show his love for the Sister, and her trying to show friendship and support while fending off his (admittedly ridiculous) romantic advances.

While Takahashi doesn't really break new ground here or anything, it's sure fun to see her run through variations on her theme.  Volume 3 sees two shorter stories, one in which Kosaku take on a sort of apprentice, a kid who wants to be a boxer, and he has to prove his dedication to his parents by knocking out the strongest boxer at the gym.  His attempts to accomplish his goal have him always trying to sneak up on Kosaku and sucker-punch him, usually trying to tempt him with food first; it's silly and hilarious, especially when the kid keeps screwing up and punching the coach instead.  In the second short story, Kosaku befriends a fellow boxer from Mexico who has been imported to Japan in hopes of making it as a pro, but he's stymied by the guy's tattoo of the Virgin Mary on his stomach:

See, the abbess at Sister Angela's convent forbids him to punch an image of the Holy Mother, which leads to hilarious complications and such.  There's also other gags, like the guy's nickname, Tako, which is Japanese for octopus, but also refers to his attempts at cooking at his boss's restaurant, which turns out terrible, with only the always-ravenous Kosaku able to finish one of his dishes.  Comedy!

The longer story in volume 3 sees Kosaku befriend a woman who seems to be in the same boat he is, trying to lose weight but always sneaking off to hide and eat.  She is having trouble with her fiance, who wants her to lose weight to fit into her wedding dress, since she is so terribly flabby:

Ah, the Japanese.  If that woman is fat, I'm a nun.  Anyway, she ends up leaving her fiance and moving in with Kosaku, but relationship is completely platonic, since he only has eyes for Sister Angela.  But there are wacky misunderstandings, of course, and the sister keeps getting jealous and questioning her dedication to God if she has feelings for Kosaku.  And wouldn't you know it, but the fiance turns out to be Kosaku's next opponent, so everything comes together for maximum drama and resolution.  Could there a reason for her weight gain, one which glosses over the apparent abusive nature of the couple's relationship?  Who cares, they're only minor characters, so we get to assume they live happily ever after.

The final volume gets to wrap things up, although it does it in a sort of roundabout way.  Another supporting character shows up, Sister Angela's scheming aunt, who wants to marry her off to some rich fellow and get her out of the convent.  And Kosaku might be considering quitting boxing to be a restaurateur.  Or, you know, he might continue with the pugilism and she might decide to get together with him.  That ending is pretty much inevitable, but Takahashi seems to agree, and while she gets the characters in the place they're supposed to go, she doesn't push the theatrics to an unbelievable degree or over-dramatize the emotions.  No, she mostly focuses on the storytelling, and when things get to the right point, she ends the series a page or so later.  Maybe she felt a need to conclude the story, since she worked on it sporadically starting in 1987 but didn't actually conclude it until 2007, but while the stories leading up to the finish are still pretty good, the ending just kind of shows up with little fanfare, as if it was expected.

But while that ending isn't entirely satisfying (which can be a common problem in manga series, so Takahashi isn't alone here), getting there is as enjoyable as ever.  And its predictable nature isn't out of character for the series either; in almost every story, Kosaku manages to happen across a future opponent and get personally involved in some way, with threats of vengeance sworn or promises to demonstrate superiority given.  But it works; as formulaic as it might be, Takahashi has a light enough touch that reading brings a smile to the face, whether from the slapstick comedy, the perplexed, angry, and frustrated facial expressions of Kosaku's coach or Sister Angela, or just the sense of comic timing.  Running gags show up here and there, like Sister Angela continually riding off on the coach's bike when jealously storming away from Kosaku when misinterpreting his relationship with his temporary female roommate, or an opponent always getting worked up at stray comments because he doesn't have a flashy style:

And the art always works to make the characters bounce off each other hilariously; just look at Takahashi's skill with facial expressions, like this angry look the sister shoots Kosaku when he accuses her of jealousy:

All in all, this manga might not be the highlight of Takahashi's career, but it's a solid second-tier title, demonstrating her natural skill at comedy and character work.  It's pretty lighthearted stuff, making for a nicely grounded bit of romance and sports action that never fails to bring a smile to the face.  Not everything can be a classic, but even a minor entry in a bibliography like Takahashi's is worth checking out, and a treat is in store for anybody that does so.

Manga Mania Month: Watch the hands, buster!

Here's another interesting bit of Rumiko Takahashi marginalia: hand gestures.  Specifically, a gesture that a character in One Pound Gospel makes when surprised:

It's more than just the hand gesture, of course; he's doing a full-body jump-scare reaction, but why the specific, "I love you"/Spider-Man-web-shooting hand motion?  He does it at least twice in the third volume:

So it's not just a quirk that Takahashi threw in one time.  I'm strangely fascinated by this; is it some sort of ritualistic warding off of evil spirits?  Some kind of recognizable gesture of the type that are so popular in Japan? An in-joke of Takahashi's that I'm not privy to?  Or just something goofy that doesn't deserve this much thought?  If anybody can illuminate me, I'd be quite happy.  Or I could just go on imagining reasons until my next obsession comes along.

Manga Mania Month: Rumiko Takahashi is a funny lady

Here's a good background gag from the third volume of One Pound Gospel:

(If you don't get it, click to enlarge)

I guess I'm not the only one who compulsively reads signs and scours background details.  That's the kind of tossed-off gag that Takahashi does so well, filling her manga with, and I had to share this one, since it made me laugh.

(If it turns out to be completely the work of the translator, then my applause goes out to them for finding a way to cram more humor into an already really funny comic.)

Mini manga musings

Before the real stuff, some links:

This interview with Felipe Smith is pretty interesting; for those who don't know, he's a Western cartoonist who is working on a manga in Japan called Peepo Choo.  I kind of liked the volume that I read of his series MBQ (which you can read about here), and he's got a crazy, frenetic, interesting style that I would like to see more of.  Hopefully Peepo Choo will get imported.

This overview of David Mazzuchelli's career is very interesting.

I always like seeing original art and/or sketches.  Here's the title page of a Gilbert Hernandez story in the upcoming Love and Rockets volume.

Joe Infurnari has an annotated version of his Eisner-nominated webcomic Vs. up at Act-I-Vate.

Hey, I'm disappointed that Joseph Larkin didn't respond angrily to my review of The Arcade of Cruelty like he did to Kevin Church.  That would have been amusing.  I guess I'll have to settle for secondhand obnoxiousness.

Here's an interesting look at Osamu Tezuka's adaptation of Crime and Punishment.  Looks like one to look for the next time I'm in a used bookstore in Japan.

Have I mentioned that I'm up on Twitter now?  I've had an account for a while, but I've actually been using it recently, so there's another way to receive my questionable wisdom, even more scattershot than usual.

Oh yeah, I also reviewed Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers #1 over at Comics Bulletin, and I talked about the most recent episodes of Dollhouse and Fringe at The Factual Opinion.

Finally, the real post.  I've gotten behind on a few books, and the longer I wait, the less I seem to be able to come up with a lot to say about them, so I'm going to throw a few of them together into a post of short reviews.  I hope it's readable.

20th Century Boys, volume 1

By Naoki Urasawa

It's hard not to automatically compare this series to Monster, since that's the most-recently-completed of Naoki Urasawa's translated works.  And it's not completely inapt, since Urasawa has some of the same themes going on here, like conspiracy and paranoia.  But he seems to be going for more of a look at memory, as well as a contrast between youthful idealism and adult complacency.  Plus, he's being especially ambitious, setting up a world-spanning conflict and telling stories with a multitude of characters in different time periods; he's as great a storyteller as ever, and while much of this first volume seems to be setting things up, it's a blast to watch him work.

The plot here involves a group of guys who grew up together in late-60s Japan, forming a club and getting up to the usual youthful shenanigans like swiping porn magazines and coming up with grandiose plans involving heroism and secrets.  Thirty years later, Kenji is a regular guy working at his family's convenience store and looking after his sister's baby.  But when strange things start happening that somehow seem related to his experiences as a kid, he begins to investigate, and may soon end up caught up in something much bigger than he ever expected.  For one thing, there's a sort of cult forming, and it seems to be based around his and his friends' club.  The symbol that one of them designed, which looks like an eye set inside of a hand which is set inside another eye, is popping up in places connected with murders and disappearances related to the cult, and the cult's enigmatic leader, who is only known as "my friend", seems to be taking his teachings straight from the experiences we see in flashbacks to Kenji's childhood.  It's freaky and chilling, and who knows where it's going to lead.

It's compelling stuff, and Urasawa really builds to a sense of something creepy going on that's beyond the grasp of the characters, giving the readers just enough of a sense of what's going on to make us feel like we know what the characters should do, but not enough to actually understand what is going on.  It's very effective and exciting, and it really keeps you guessing and wanting to find out what is going to happen next.  But beyond the larger plot, the small incidents work really well too, whether we're watching Kenji and pals be rescued by the outcast Donkey and his running skills in the past, or seeing the adult Kenji try to convince his friends that there's something weird going on while at at wedding before giving up, getting drunk, and singing karaoke.

It's great stuff, full of well-realized characters and memorable incidents (the boys getting excited about the 1969 moon landing is another highlight); I'm really excited to read future volumes (all 21 of them, I think).

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One-Pound Gospel, volume 2

By Rumiko Takahashi

This second volume of Rumiko Takahashi's boxing manga (read my take on the first volume here) indicates why it only lasted four volumes (as opposed to the dozens of installments of her more popular series, like Ranma 1/2 or Inuyasha), as it already seems to get a bit tired here.  Not that it's not entertaining, but for the two multi-chapter stories in this volume, Takahashi seems to have settled into a formula, with boxer Kosaku Hatanaka struggling to meet his weight limits, sneaking food, barely qualifying, crushing on his nun confidant Sister Angela, and winning through a combination of luck and determination, with plenty of goofy slapstick along the way.  It's entertaining, but diminishing returns seem to have set in already; hopefully Takahashi spun some interesting changes into the final two volumes of the series.

Of the two stories here, the first is the more enjoyable one, with Kosaku going up against an old rival named Taro Matsuzuka, who was humiliated by having all his teeth knocked out when he decided not to wear headgear.  There are some pretty funny wrinkles, with Kosaku having to drop a weight class to match Taro, who has do do the opposite and bulk up in order to get to Kosaku's level.  Their eventual match is a highly enjoyable bout, with both fighters struggling to prevail and uttering oaths about honor and dedication.  It's fun stuff, especially when Kosaku reveals his true motivation:

The second story isn't as good, possibly because it gets a bit silly.  Kosaku is still obsessed with Sister Angela, and he's pressuring her to become his girlfriend, which is of course impossible, since she's a nun.  Is this supposed to be plausible because knowledge of Catholicism is limited in Japan?  That seems doubtful; if Kosaku regularly goes to confession, he must know about vows of celibacy, right?  Yet the pressure continues, to ridiculous extents.  And I'm sure that she will eventually relent, with the two ending up as a couple.  We even get some nice hints that she is starting to fall for him; a more mild, believable romance would be preferable, but Takahashi seems to prefer to go over the top.

Maybe I'm just too used to cute shojo romances; or, I might be bitter at the outcome of the match in this chapter, since it is kind of silly, with all parties being happy and content.  It's not perfect, but there are still some enjoyable moments, especially Kosaku butting heads with Angela's Abbess.  Overall, it's still a pretty good volume of a fun series.  If all goes well, Takahashi will turn things around in the second half of the series and deliver some exciting, funny boxing action along with cute romance.  Here's hoping.

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Dogs, volume 0: Prelude

By Shirow Miwa

It's always nice to see seinen manga get translated into English, since so much of the market focuses on shonen and shojo books; material aimed at adults is something we need more of.  Series like this aren't great art or anything, but can be the equivalent of fun action movies that are filled with stylish violence.  This particular series is an interesting case, if only for the volume number; it's like something taken from American superhero comics, which often have a "number 0" issue published as a sort of origin story, often coming out after other issues in the series.  I thought that might be the case here, with mangaka Shirow Miwa putting out a series of origin stories for his characters (who seem to be a team of assassins or something, although they don't actually come together in this volume).  But it turns out this was sort of an introductory volume of the series, published in 2000 and 2001, with a second volume following in 2005.  It's similar to the model of Love and Rockets or The Invisibles, with a series being relaunched, but continuing from where it had previously left off.

Anyway, this volume isn't necessarily all origins, but more of a series of introductory stories for its characters, with each of them getting their own one- or two-chapter bit in which we can get to know them.  First, there's Mihai, a hitman who was tasked with raising the illegitimate son of his gangster boss.  When the son grew up, he turned on both his surrogate father and his real one, murdering Mihai's girlfriend and killing his father to take over the criminal empire.  Now Mihai returns and ends up facing off with his protege and learning what caused him to turn on his loved (and unloved) ones.  

Next, we meet Badou, who seems to be the comic relief of the team.  He's a goofball P.I., although he refers to himself as an "information broker", snapping pictures and "gathering sensitive data" to sell to the highest bidder.  When he ends up stumbling on a local mob boss in the midst of kinky sexual escapades, he becomes a marked man, going on the run through the city and trying to survive the waves of mobsters that are out to kill him.  Just when we think he's in an impossible spot and is going to die, it turns out that he gains impressive gun skills when deprived of nicotine, so (since he had been unsuccessfully searching for a cigarette all chapter) he is able to shoot his way out of trouble.  Amusing?  Yeah, pretty much.

Things get more serious with Naoto, the sole girl of the group.  She fits into the "silent but deadly" action girl trope, the kind of character that Garth Ennis mocks in The Boys.  We see that her parents were murdered when she was a child, the killer leaving her with an X-shaped scar on her chest, perfectly centered for aesthetic notability when she ends up topless (which happens in-story, but we also get to see her naked image, along with the other three male characters, on a fold-out poster in the inside front cover of the book).  After the murder, she was taken in by the killer and raised to be a killer herself, constantly trying to better herself so she can kill him and take revenge.  Except...maybe she was mistaken, and everything she has always believed is wrong.  The truth comes out in a dynamic knife fight, making for some nice action:

And finally, things take a strange turn with the story of Heine, who lives in a sort of underground city of criminals.  The book, which had seemed to take place in a modern city, takes a sci-fi turn here, when Heine discovers a prostitute girl who has small, angelic wings growing from her shoulders.  It turns out that she's the subject of genetic experiments, and thus highly valuable to certain people (i.e. pimps).  Heine ends up rescuing her, with the help of Badou, and we learn that he is also an experimental product, having a Wolverine-style healing factor that allows him to take plenty of bullets without falling.  That's an odd addition to the mix, but it also makes for some pretty stylish, dynamic action.

Overall, it's a pretty enjoyable book, if not a very deep one.  I'm not sure what the eventual status quo will be, since the team (if that's what they are) doesn't even get together here, so who knows what sort of business they will get up to in volume 1 and beyond.  But judging by Miwa's skill at exciting action here, it should make for some crazy action, and hopefully some good reading.  I can't say this is anything world-changing, but I can dig some violent gun- and sword-play that doesn't spare the blood and sex.  I imagine it won't be anything less than satisfying.

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Hmmm, those musings weren't all that mini.  Hey, it's good to get caught up.  Stay tuned for more writin'!

One-Pound Gospel: Cute nuns make an interesting boxing accessory

Holy cow! The Manga Blitz continues!

One-Pound Gospel, volume 1
By Rumiko Takahashi



Surprisingly, I don't think I've read anything by Rumiko Takahashi before this, although I've seen snippets of the anime versions of Ranma 1/2 and Inuyasha, and I have a bunch of the old pamphlet-format issues of Maison Ikkoku sitting around unread. I don't know what's taken me so long, but there's nothing like a good series that I was previously unaware of to kick-start my interest.

And this one, originally published in 1989, is an excellent example, detailing the travails of Kosaku Hatanaka, a cheerful young boxer who is talented but undisciplined, always struggling to control his raging hunger and stay in his weight class. After a string of defeats caused by him having to resort to laxatives to stay in the target weight, his always-exasperated coach is ready to give up on him, but Sister Angela, a nun at the local Catholic church, has taken a liking to him and encourages him to stick to his regimen and succeed.

The grasp of Catholicism seems a bit shaky, since I don't think nuns take confession, and it amuses me that Angela prays so hard for Kosaku to succeed, as if boxing matches are a big priority for God. But their relationship is quite charming, with Kosaku attracted to her inappropriately:





Oh boy, you could see that coming. Kissing a nun is never a good idea (at least, not this early in the series). But she can't help wanting him to succeed, alternately encouraging him and screaming at him from ringside:



She's actually a bit more interesting of a character (at least so far), since he's mostly just one of those always-cheerful manga protagonists who never gives up, while she struggles with the conflict between her faith and her attraction to him. In one of the best scenes of the book, she goes out drinking with some fellow nuns, then drunkenly confronts some guys from a rival gym when she hears them badmouthing Kosaku:



I love scenes like that; comedy is definitely one of Takahashi's strong points, and she uses it to excellent purpose here, with some goofy slapstick and hilarious facial expressions, like the over-the-top frustration of Kosaku's coach:



I also love the way Kosaku's opponents are all so ridiculously intense, a parody of the Japanese male honor that's been around since at least the era of samurai. Takahashi spoofs that type so well, scenes featuring them can't fail to bring a smile to the face:



And to add to the humor, these overly-honorable athletes usually get a humiliating comeuppance, with Kosaku winning through sheer luck or unconventional fighting. It's incredibly entertaining, and Takahashi makes the variations on the theme and growth of character really enjoyable. And while her art is a bit rougher than that of most modern manga, the fights are easy to follow and wonderfully dynamic:



It really seems like you can feel the blows right alongside the characters. It all makes for a really fun book, and a compelling, if fairly simple, story. I look forward to seeing Takahashi continue to develop the characters; Kosaku can't keep skating along on luck and good intentions forever, can he? Knowing Takahashi's grasp of character development, I expect she has plenty of nice developments in store. I can't wait to find out, and this definitely makes me want to search out and read as much of Takahashi's work as I can get my hands on.

This review was based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.