Bonus Podcast: 2022 March - Manga Medley (Patreon)

It's a tale of the New, the Old, and the Unlicensed as Mercedez, Vrai, and Chiaki return for a manga medley in our latest patron-exclusive podcast.

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Episode Transcript:

VRAI: Hey there, AniFam. Welcome back to another Patreon bonus podcast. My name is Vrai. I’m managing content editor here at AniFem. And this month I have with me Chiaki and Mercedez. Thank you both for taking the time to join me.

MERCEDEZ: Well, as I told you earlier, I am taking time away from playing Paradise Killer, so you are welcome.

VRAI: [Chuckles] This month we are doing another of the general manga rec/talk posts since those continue to be pretty highly requested by you folks over on Patreon. And so, we’ve each brought a series or two to talk about. Chiaki, would you like to go first or shall I?

CHIAKI: Sure, I’ll just go—and as with the previous recommendations, these are not translated into English just yet. So if anyone here is listening from Seven Seas or any other publishers who translate manga, please take this into consideration!

So today I’d like to suggest Ore ga Watashi ni Naru Made by Sato Hatsuki. I guess you could translate it into “The Day Until I Became Me” or “The Day I Became a Woman.” This is yet another—because I am known for it—TSF comic, which is about how a person turns into the opposite sex by magic or illness or whatever, and then hijinks ensues. This was originally a webcomic on Twitter that got picked up for formal publication. It’s about Akira, who is at the very start a shitty second-grade bully who one day wakes up to find out that he has turned biologically into a girl. It’s about four volumes in now and is currently in the eighth-grade arc. And Akira’s gradually coming to accept who they are and their own gender, as well as just realizing that maybe they didn’t want to be a boy after all.

From what I recall, the story is supposed to go through high school, when it’s implied that Akira is going to totally affirm that she is a girl at the end of this journey. So, initially, I think it was supposed to be three volumes, but we’re on volume 4. The author, Hatsuki, has gradually become much better at storytelling and character development, so it’s just kind of gotten longer as they’ve matured.

VRAI: Oh, it’s one of those “we’re growing with the author” series.

CHIAKI: Hatsuki was a pretty good one-shot author for this, but four years on, working on the same story, it’s just blown up to be a much more involved and interesting story. Ultimately, I think this is a very slow-burn story about self-acceptance and navigating trauma. And so I will warn, if you do pick up this story, that, especially in the first volume, there’s a lot of triggering, discomforting moments, especially related to bullying, and it’s bordering on sexual assault. So, just keep that in mind.

But as the story continues, things mellow out considerably and it’s more about Akira trying to process what happened to her during elementary school and facing the fact that she used to be a really shitty person in elementary school and letting that trauma guide personal denial, like “Oh, I used to be a boy. I used to be shitty. I shouldn’t enjoy these things. I’m not allowed to have friends.” It goes through all these emotions and thoughts that guilt-trips her, that she has to get through and realize that there [are] so many more people around her that respect and love her. So it’s a really nice story in my opinion.

Yeah. Also, this is a story that’s TSF but is a rare case where they acknowledge that trans people exist.

MERCEDEZ: Hm!

CHIAKI: Yeah. A kid turns into a girl and so the adults are like, “All right. Well, you used to be a boy. You’re probably going through a lot of gender dysphoria right now. Do you want to transition? Do you need to do things?”

Akira’s mom is extremely supportive, as best as she can be. She’s not the perfect mom, but she’s trying her best, trying to figure out like, “Oh, did you want to enroll in a middle school that doesn’t enforce gendered uniforms? How do you want to grow up so that you’re comfortable with yourself?”

There’s other people who are just as… It’s also a story that’s not so stereotypically gendered, like, you know, “Oh, you’re a girl now, so you have to wear a dress” or something. One of Akira’s biggest mentors is a nurse that she meets while going to the hospital. And she’s this chill person who helps her navigate what being a girl is about and goes out to tell you like, “Hey, just because you’re a girl doesn’t mean you need to constantly shave your legs.” It’s like, fuck that. [Chuckles] It’s these moments of affirming what it means to be a girl.

And so, ironically, all this is about Akira turning into a girl, but also the turning into a girl is more of a mental mindset of: you don't have to have a body of a girl to be a girl. You get what I mean?

VRAI: Yeah, totally. And I think that might… I know that TSF, maybe because of its roots, does tend to tread a lot into bioessentialism at times, or a lot of works in the genre do. So it’s cool to hear about the stories that are dealing with gender in a way that is trans-inclusive, as opposed to a subtextual trans fantasy. You know what I mean?

CHIAKI: Yeah.

MERCEDEZ: Mm-hm.

VRAI: That is cool to see. Not that the eggs of the world don’t still need the fantasies that have a nominal degree of protective metaphor around them.

CHIAKI: Mm-hm. Yeah, no, this is definitely, I feel like, a very queer story by and for a queer audience. Hatsuki isn’t publicly out about anything about their gender, so I can’t speak to that. But it feels like it’s coming from a place close to their heart. And it definitely talks to me as well.

VRAI: Yeah. Tell folks the title again, if they want to recommend it.

CHIAKI: Ore ga Watashi ni Naru Made by Sato Hatsuki.

MERCEDEZ: Ooh. Okay. I think that was for folks and for Mercedez, too!

CHIAKI: [Chuckles]

VRAI: And me! Yeah, no, I am extremely…

MERCEDEZ: Yeah! Oh my gosh.

CHIAKI: If you want one extra little thing to tip you over the edge, I kind of read it like Shimura Takako’s Wandering Son. It has that sense of an ensemble cast and people growing up, but I feel like the story is a lot more focused because Shimura’s stories just fucking explode into a giant mess of characters that I don’t care about half the time. But this one stays focused on Akira the whole way through. And sometimes some of the drama in the story is because the story is so focused on Akira that you don’t realize that shit’s going down elsewhere within his social group. And it’s like, “Wait, shit. That was happening?” Yeah, so it’s pretty great.

VRAI: Oh, yeah, that sounds fantastic and I do want to read it immediately.

MERCEDEZ: Yes!

CHIAKI: [whispering] Translate it!

MERCEDEZ: [whispering] Same!

VRAI: Please!

MERCEDEZ: Food!

VRAI: All right, I can go next. Mm, I actually had two I was wavering between, but because you brought up writers who are kind of growing into themselves as they go along in their series, I’m going to go ahead and kind of, sort of, recommend Earthian, a series that is very close to my heart.

It is the very first manga by Yun Koga, who is better known as the semi-infamous creator of Loveless, which will never be finished and is itself extremely messy. Yun Koga is like if Mari Okada had fewer successful hits. Which is to say that she writes about very fraught issues, specifically around trauma and particularly child abuse, but also sometimes tends to tip over the line into doing some fetishy bullshit. And so, I tend to find her very interesting, but also, it’s a mixed bag, folks!

So, Earthian is her very first series. It is an incredibly influential one. CLAMP named it as something that really influenced where they were going. So, technically, you can still buy this on digital. It was originally put out in paperback via the BLU imprint, and they’re really, really nice paperbacks. It was rescued by DMP, who suck.

MERCEDEZ: Aw! I’m sorry.

CHIAKI: Boo!

VRAI: [crosstalk] Yeah, I know.

MERCEDEZ: My condolences. What a sad rescue.

VRAI: It’s extremely sad because one of the things that Earthian does best is these beautiful two-page spreads, which DMP does nothing to try to preserve. Truly some of the most impressive two-page spreads in manga that I have read, but it just doesn’t come across. But technically, you can still legally buy it digitally. Fucking DMP.

MERCEDEZ: Ugh.

VRAI: So this is going to sound very familiar to anyone who’s ever read a CLAMP work, for reasons. The plot of Earthian is that these angels are tasked with watching humanity. Basically, angels are divided into people who are plus checkers and people who are minus checkers—humans’ good works versus their awful works. And it’s like a constant tally where if one were to ever get the edge over the other, then humanity would be destroyed by this overwatching body. And they go out in pairs where you have a plus and a minus who go out and observe human behavior and report back.

And so, we have Kagetsuya, who is kind of the class golden boy. He is extremely broad-shouldered and blonde. And then you have Chihaya, who is the only angel with dark hair. He’s a literal black sheep, y’all. It’s very Drama. And the whole thing is that as they go down to Earth and encounter moral relativism and Chihaya is very torn by these scenes of people doing desperate things and these individual episodic morality plays. Eventually they start to fall in love.

And it’s the ‘80s, so this is extremely high drama because it is illegal to be gay in heaven. So they get put on trial. There is a whole thing. There is an angel cult of people on Earth who are half-angels because there were angels who were fallen for falling in love with humans. It’s very in that mold of forbidden love and the valorization thereof as a way of talking about queerness.

And it’s notable in that this series was serialized at the same time as Banana Fish, which—y’all may remember—has an incredibly shit ending for all the things that I like about it. Earthian has a happy ending for its gays in like 1990.

MERCEDEZ: Oh, wow. That’s… wow. I actually don’t have words. Wow.

VRAI: Excuse me. The manga started in 1988 and ended in 1994. But yeah, Kagetsuya and Chihaya get out of it together and they have a happy ending.

CHIAKI: It’s a CLAMP story, as well?

VRAI: It is not. It was a major influence on CLAMP.

CHIAKI: Ah. I see, I see.

VRAI: Mm-hm. So when you go back to read it as a modern audience, you’re like, oh, wow, this really looks like early CLAMP. No, it’s because early CLAMP looks like Yun Koga.

CHIAKI: Ah, I see, I see.

MERCEDEZ: Wow! I did not know that. That’s really fascinating.

VRAI: Yeah, I have a huge soft spot for it. And actually, the sex scene is entirely consensual and it’s really beautiful. It’s the biggest reason that I’m mad about DMP fucking up the digital. Because they’re DMP. It does come with some fairly major content warnings in that, because it was made in the ‘80s, the only way it could get away with showing positive representation of this loving queer couple is to frame it in that forbidden love mold. So there’s also some incest. There’s also some romanticized incest in this manga.

MERCEDEZ: [Sighs]

VRAI: Yeah…

MERCEDEZ: Yeah…

CHIAKI: Can’t win ‘em all.

VRAI: Yeah… Because it’s really about “Who can we judge? You love who you love, man.” No. Look, I get that this is the only way you could get this past the radar, but please, stop. Please, you’re killing me.

MERCEDEZ: I am very thankful that we live in a time where that is not as common of a thing. I think that’s what I’m feeling right now. That we are existing in a time where series that did that because it wasn’t socially acceptable no longer have to.

VRAI: Yeah, and I feel so protective of this series, because what it does well really holds up. And to me, the things that are very obviously wrong with it feel so extremely, to me, very obvious end results of publishing restrictions of the time, kind of like when you read Heart of Thomas, and it’s like, “Ah, there are dead gays in this.” “Yeah, but it’s also surprisingly hopeful at the end there for the time!”

MERCEDEZ: Yeah, and I think that context is really important, because I think a lot of times people forget… And I am certainly someone who did, being someone who was born in the ‘90s. I think a lot of manga fans have to remember the global climate of the ‘80s and ‘90s, which was: economy’s up and down; also, AIDS. And so a lot of what was socially acceptable now just wasn’t. And that we are benefiting from a lot of people fighting a very gut-wrenching, heart-aching fight for us to have things in different cultural capacities and different cultural contexts.

And so, the fact that we get to enjoy things that don’t bury your gays, things that don’t have to be tinged with that forbidden love aspect… The context that we have now for a lot of things is just as important as the context for things that were made in the ‘80s and ‘90s and had to lean on that. It’s all good. It’s all important. You know, you can find fault with anything, but I think it is important, right? I think that’s what I’m trying to get at.

VRAI: Yeah. It’s not a series that I think I would recommend everyone go out and immediately snap up. But I think if you are interested at all in classic shoujo… because this was serialized as a shoujo series. But if you want to read more classic shoujo, if you are interested in the history of queer manga—because I think this was before BL and shounen-ai were codified in the modern sense—I think it is a really worthwhile read whose good points, at least to me, make it worth sticking out the parts that suck. And, I don’t know, it just makes me feel things and it makes me soft in my heart.

MERCEDEZ: Aw.

VRAI: What about you, Mercedez? What are you recommending to the people?

MERCEDEZ: So, there is a series that I have been following since it debuted last November and that is Sousou no Frieren, or Frieren of the Funeral. I think it got localized as Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. And it is this story about the elven mage Frieren, who is the former member of this quartet of adventurers who went to defeat the Demon King over this ten-year quest. The series starts there, with them having defeated the Demon King.

And what the series asks is: if you had all the time in the world but your companions didn’t, what kind of life would you live? Because Frieren at the beginning of the series is this very cold, very pragmatic character, who after the defeat of the Demon King is like, “I’m gonna go study magic for 50 years.” Well, two of her companions are human. One is a dwarf. And it’s really leaning on the trope of elves being very, very long-lived, because at this point, it’s kind of hinted that Frieren is a couple centuries old.

And she’s like, “I’m gonna go study for 50 years,” and the comment is made, “Hey, Frieren, 50 years is a long time for a human.” And she comes back and the humans that she loves have aged, as has her dwarven companion. And at one point, the hero Himmel dies. And it’s at this point where Frieren realizes that she learned nothing about her companion and that in these 50 years which felt like nothing for her, time has passed her by. And it’s really a story about this young woman trying to gain humanity in the sense of gaining perspective on emotionality and on understanding what time means to humans and to people who are not long-lived like elves.

Frieren is interesting because she can definitely be read as asexual and aromantic. She even comments in the second volume that elves do not understand romantic emotionality and sexual desire, that that’s just not a part of elven culture, which I find fascinating because at its most generous reading, you could read this as a culture of largely aroace individuals who are long-lived and want to, of course, continue to exist but also have chosen to live as who they are. And for them, that does not mean a life of romance and a life of sex and sexuality. It means a life of pursuing magic, of pursuing understanding, of experiencing the world over centuries. It’s really, really interesting. It’s really, really emotional.

I think as of now there are three volumes out, with the third volume coming out on March 8. But it’s really good. It is a shounen series, and it tears my heart to pieces. I should say this is a series that won the New Creator Prize for the 25th annual Tezuka Cultural Prize, so it’s very highly rated. And it’s through Viz, so it’s getting that every-two-months treatment, and I love it!

It’s really, really good. I’m really into, as I’m reaching 30, series that really deal with emotionality and deal with the concept of time and how time both isn’t as limited and how we emote around time. And this is a really interesting series that deals with the notion of: what would you do if you had forever but your friends didn’t?

VRAI: My only question with the aroace reading is… It sounds like, from the way you describe it, this Frieren still has friendship love and stuff, because I feel like that’s the downside with those characters that are aroace-read a lot of the time: is “Oh, they’re frigid and they don’t…”

MERCEDEZ: Yeah. And I should make it clear: part of that aroace reading is me projecting me into this, into that reading. But I will say: Frieren takes on an apprentice; Frieren has friends. A lot of her struggles with friendship is just elves being a solitary species in this world, a solitary people. But she does have friends and she warms up, which I am really actually glad that they didn’t lean into whole “Asexual and/or aromantic people are just cold.”

Frieren has to learn emotionality in the way of the people around her, but it’s mostly because of her disconnect to time. Frieren is someone who’s very much out of time, because elves live for forever. She’s super powerful. The ten years’ journey that she went on was long for her human companions, but Frieren’s like, “Yeah, that wasn’t long. It was just ten years.” She even says at one point, “Oh, it was just ten years.”

Whereas I think about ten years… Ten years ago, I was in college. So, ten years for a human is like… you could create a new life and that new life could be reaching certain different ages, and you could have new jobs and new things and your body can be different and your mind can be different.

So, the good thing is that they don’t lean on her as a cold person. They actually grow that. And I can see this trajectory of Frieren eventually having to mourn her apprentice who is getting older, having to mourn the friends she’s making, of her wondering, “Well, 1000 years in the future, will places still celebrate the heroes or will they be forgotten?” It’s asking really important questions. I really, really like it.

VRAI: This is some vampire shit. I’m gonna have to pick that up, I think.

MERCEDEZ: It’s really good.

CHIAKI: I feel like there’s some relatability there, too, because even if you’re not living hundreds and thousands of years yourself, you never know when you’re about to lose somebody. You said, “Oh, ten years, I was in college.” Yeah, me too. Ten years ago, I was fresh out of college, starting up my job, but ten years doesn’t feel that much to me. That’s 2012. That was yesterday for me. Technically. Then you realize, “Oh, God, it’s been ten years.”

MERCEDEZ: Yeah. And then you realize “Gangnam Style” came out in 2012.

CHIAKI: Oh my God!

MERCEDEZ: And you’re like, “It’s been a century.” July 15, 2012.

CHIAKI: [Laughs]

MERCEDEZ: “Heyy, sexy lady,” “Gangnam Style.” It was there, it was there, right?

CHIAKI: [crosstalk] “Op, op, op, op.” Okay! Yeah.

MERCEDEZ: And it’s an interesting read during the pandemic, I have to admit. It is making me consider some stuff that I didn’t think I had to, which is, like you just said, of… Ten years isn’t long, but you don’t know when you’re going to lose somebody.

And I don’t know anyone who hasn’t lost… I’ve lost someone during the pandemic. And it’s just this weird… It’s interesting to see a story set completely in a fictional universe talking about very big, human—because we’re the only species that we know that does what we do, at this point—very human concepts. It’s really interesting. Making me tear up.

VRAI: Aw. Now I’m wishing I talked about the other series I was thinking about, though, just because it has a character in it who is ace, I think, but the series isn’t over, and I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts on it. But another time.

MERCEDEZ: [crosstalk] I thought you said real good words, so…

VRAI: Aw.

CHIAKI: No, they’re very good.

MERCEDEZ: Yeah. You too, Chiaki.

VRAI: [Chuckles] You did! I very much want to read that manga now.

MERCEDEZ: For real. [Chuckles] Yeah. Yeah. So I would recommend Frieren, and especially because it comes out every two months.

VRAI: That is nice. It’s ongoing, you said?

MERCEDEZ: [crosstalk] Yes. Right now in Japan, I believe it’s up to six compiled volumes. So, outside of Japan in North America, we’re set to catch up by July 19, 2022. We’ll be at volume 5. I suspect that volume 6 will probably come sometime in autumn. Volume 6 in Japan was compiled November 18, ‘21, so there is going to be that little bit of lag, but I’m sure probably either August or September, maybe probably September’s when we’ll get volume 6, so we’ll be caught up. Which is hard, because then there’s the lag of “Ah, dang, it won’t be every other month,” because, oh, there’s not… But it’s a really good series and I really, really like it. It’s really good, just so good.

CHIAKI: I didn’t realize Frieren was also very young-looking, too.

MERCEDEZ: Yeah, it’s actually remarked upon once her apprentice… Her apprentice comments at one point, because her apprentice hits her 20s, about, and she’s like, “Yeah, I’ve lived half my life with you.” Because she has. She’s lived with her since she was a kid and she’s taller than Frieren. And Frieren has not aged a day because physically she’s working with the genetics and the predispositions of an elf, so Frieren maintains this… she could look 14 to 16. And it can cause this dissonance because you realize Frieren looks so young but she’s centuries old. She’s lived maybe a tenth of her life.

And it’s this really good dissonance that I really like that adds this impact of… Unlike a lot of characters (I think of Tiki in Fire Emblem), she actually is this character who’s 10,000 years old, looks very young, but has the personality of someone who’s 10,000 years old and is just fully out of time because she doesn’t really grasp it until time hits her like a gut punch, and she realizes, “Oh, it’s not forever for everyone else.”

CHIAKI: Okay, I’m hooked.

MERCEDEZ: It’s good.

VRAI: All right, well… I like doing these. Thank you for suggesting them, AniFam.

MERCEDEZ: This is fun!

VRAI: Continue to suggest things to us in the comments for this post, because we care about you and want to give you things that you like. Thank you so much for joining us for another month. And as I am always going to continue saying, thank you so much for your support. Those reliable monthly small-number donations really mean more than you know in terms of keeping us going and being able to count on stuff that we will be able to pay our writers. So, thank you so much. Let us know your thoughts in the comments, and otherwise, we’ll see you next month. Take care, AniFam.