vignette00's manga / #Historical(10)

Two (or three) longer stories and one true oneshot to close out the volume. The first is probably Kusama Sakae at her atmospheric best (c.f. Carnivorous Animal's Table Manners), about two soldiers learning to cope with the effects of the war ending. A two-parter about isolation and reintegrating into society, it lets the perfect amount of introspection remain unspoken, and the effect is heady, humid, and affecting. More disturbing if you compare it to the real life story of Hirou Onoda, but the privilege of fiction is that you can take and leave what you like of history. And then, the Between 1 and 2/ 0 and 1 stories. Between 1 and 2 is a classic "bl chara doesn't understand that childhood friend is a dude, not a lady" story, and skims lightly across the hinted-at dark sea of, essentially, childhood sexual trauma. Kusame doesn't do much with the implied sexual predator in the story, and so the effect is simply froth (well-executed froth, but still froth). As for Between 0 and 1, though, the rape is explicit, textual, and disturbing, made worse by the fact that the characters don't really address it. It's a little like that Ono x Tachibana dj for Antique Bakery that Yoshinaga drew herself, the one that breaks open their sexual tension, only Kusame doesn't make the characters sit down and talk to each other afterwards like Yoshinaga does. Instead both of them get lost in their own heads and then they yell at each other and then they start a relationship that mostly consists of goading each other on. I don't mean to be disapproving, and I think Kusame's liner notes at the end show what she's trying to do (the characters are a mended lid to each other's broken pot). It's thematically consistent with the first story and the last oneshot -- to wit, a broken thing becomes stronger and more beautiful when it is mended with love. Whether or not you buy it depends on how you feel about the use of rape in stories. I wouldn't say that Kusame is condoning the rape, but it's certainly not treated with the weight I would think it deserved. Overall, though, worth it for the first historical oneshot.

Overdramatic and strangely shallow despite its weighty themes. Set in Meiji Japan, we follow the bad relationship between two brothers as it ropes in a third party -- a young duke who specializes in teaching ballroom dance. Things end tragically, though a love story does emerge and survive. Youka Nitta makes some very odd choices about when to summarize and when to introduce time jumps, resulting in a lurching, melodramatic ride with lots of deadspace where characters don't develop, change, or learn anything new, and the last scene ties up the whole mess in a deeply silly play for people's love of "until death do us part." Shoots for "Farewell My Concubine," with lots of nods towards real history and upheaval, but ends up achieving none of the gravitas. Still, an extra star for Youka Nitta's art, which is always pleasing to look at.