Spotlight #8: Jiu Jiu

Well, I've already covered Kamisama Kiss, and chances are good that, in the not-so-distant future, I'll be blogging on Her Majesty's Dog and Inu X Boku Secret Service / Youko x Boku SS (now that the English-licensed anime's out and most of it is even up on Hulu), so I think I'll be declaring "Girls and Their Dog-Boys" an official subcategory of femdom manga+anime. Come to think of it, Tramps Like Us / Kimi wa Petto would also fit more-or-less into this category, and even Inuyasha would get an honorable mention--though I don't think it really fits the 'femdom' criteria (magic necklace aside).

So, anyway. On to discussion of the femdom dog-boy manga to end all femdom dog-boy manga: the recently-licensed Jiu Jiu, volume one.

English Title: Jiu Jiu
Japanese Title: Jiu Jiu
Author: Touya Tobina
English Publisher: Viz Media
Manga?: Yes
Novels?: No
Anime?: No
Volumes out in English: 1

Technically, Night and Snow aren't dog-boys, but wolf-boys. Not to be confused with werewolves, which are a different monster in this universe. Nope, the two male leads are just domesticated demon/human hybrid wolves who can transform into boys. Naked boys, because this isn't a White Wolf role-playing game and they can't take "whole cloth." There is a predictable amount of the boys turning into naked humans and cuddling the heroine inappropriately, but it all plays out as quite innocent, mostly because the motivation on the wolves' part seems to be dog-like loyalty combined with an equally dog-like desire for attention rather than anything hormonal.

Takamichi, our heroine, is a demon slayer, and Night and Snow are her "Jiu Jiu," or demon-hybrid servants, who assist her in hunting the more dangerous, wild varieties of demon. When they're on the job, that is. In their day-to-day life, the wolf-boys are her pets while they're at home and her classmates while they're at school, making the trio's relationship a bit odd, to say the least. (They have a cage to sleep in--as dogs--but consistently end up sneaking into Takamichi's bed--as naked boys--in the night. Oh, running nudity gags.)

The story is . . . surprisingly affecting. (Warning: There be SPOILERS ahead.) At the beginning of the manga, we get a flashback scene in which Takamichi is having a hard time getting over the death of her twin brother. Her father, the demon-slaying clan head, gives her two demon wolf puppies to raise. (Time then jumps ahead three years to the manga's current continuity.) The emotional core of the manga is Takamichi learning to care for her pets, even while the trauma of her brother's death makes her want to push away those people she most loves. This setup offers some real internal conflict for the character, and it's also quite the refreshing change-of-pace to see the girl, for once, be the tortured/emo/angsty hero worried about sullying the ones closest to her.

The art is cute, if not especially intricate, with the requisite amount of bubbly shoujo backgrounds counterpointed by blood-splattered action scenes. The character designs are quite stylish, and the heroine has a particularly distinctive, little-girl-meets-angular-tomboy look to her, which ramps up the coolness factor quite a bit--and makes me want to figure out how to work a cap and sword into my own wardrobe.

It's a good look for her.

Takamichi, I want your hat.

Some of the panels, especially those which focus on shape and color more than detail, are actually quite beautifully composed, and really enhance the mood in a few key dramatic moments.

The weird: the male leads are three years old. Not that there's anything technically romantic about their relationship with the heroine in the first volume. And no real reason, aside from shoujo convention, to assume that their three-way relationship will blossom into romance. But they are three years old. And dogs. Which would make them, as dogs, approximately twenty-one years old. While Takamichi is sixteen. Which inverses the problem without really solving it. And some of the scenes look like this:

She sleeps with her puppies even though she's a cat person.

And this:

Why are they blushing so hard? Because Night's mistress just got up the courage to call him a "good dog." Aw, that's adorable. And a little messed up. I love manga.

Ultimately, I quite like this title. It has action, demonic puppies and a nontraditional female lead, along with hefty doses of squee-worthy cuteness and angst in equal measure. I also count it as a plus that the canine characters act a lot like you'd imagine dogs would if they could walk, talk, and demand extra Frisbee time. I'm looking forward to seeing how Takamichi's (hopefully platonic) relationship with her pups unfolds in future volumes.

Spotlight #7: The Flowers of Evil

This post could just as easily be entitled "What just happened to me while I was standing in the manga aisle at Books-A-Million?" Or perhaps "What the frell just happened to me while I was standing in the manga aisle at Books-A-Million?" Because fictional curse words convey a sense of out-of-one's-element confusion that real ones just can't.

Without further to-do:

English Title: The Flowers of Evil
Japanese Title: Aku no Hana
Author: Shuzo Oshimi
English Publisher: Vertical
Manga?: Yes
Novels?: No
Anime?: No
Volumes out in English: 1

So, this middle-school kid, Takao, is kind of a loner and really likes reading Baudelaire. He has a prized copy of the poetry collection The Flowers of Evil that he carries around with him. It has an awesomely creepy eyeflower on it. His schoolmates get on his case for being so unutterably bizarre as to read stuff (which, as I recall, is exactly what middle school kids do when they see someone having the audacity to read in public) so he's already got a reputation for weirdness at the beginning of the book. He's head-over-heels for the cute, smart honor student Saeki, so much so that when he happens to find a bag with her gym clothes in it, he steals the gym clothes. Naturally. (Baudelaire made him do it.)

And that's how the manga starts. SPOILERS ahead--because there is so little plot here that I have to talk about a lot of it to talk about any of it:

Unfortunately for Takao, Weird Girl Nakamura saw him steal Cute Girl Saeki's clothes, and from that point on, Takao pretty much becomes Nakamura's bitch. (In this volume, anyway. Not sure what will happen later.) What does Nakamura want from Takao? Well, more perversion. She's very excited to have found her very own real-life pervert to mess with, and she wants him to reveal all his perverted thoughts about Saeki to her. Actually, what she says is that she wants to "strip" Takao bare of all the "skin" his perverted self is hiding behind, so . . . that's interesting. (Especially as that moment nicely represents what I assume will be the emotional core of the series.)

I have no idea what to make of this. I saw the premise as laid out in blurb-form on the back of the book, thought "hey this fits in the femdom category as I describe it; maybe I should check it out" and then read a little of the volume to see if I liked it enough to buy it and bring it home with me. I ended up finishing the volume before I could decide whether I liked, hated or was completely indifferent to it. I just don't know. I read it yesterday and today I still don't know.

Was it interesting? Yes, more or less, though it sounds more interesting than it is. This manga has a pretty slow, thoughtful pace, and very little actually happens in Volume 1.

Did it make me think about sexual awakening, and what it means that (in both America and Japan) kids generally experience the emergence of their own sexual selves before a repressed society is willing to give them the tools with which to understand their newfound urges and realizations? Of course.

Did it make me think about perversion and what it means? A little. Not as much as you might think. In one of the author pages, Shuzo Oshimi states that he hopes that this manga will get people to think about perversion. Which got me contemplating perversion more than I otherwise would have. Of course, this is only volume one, and there's lots of room for further development of this topic.

It's marketed as for kids 13+, which is nice, since it means that some kids still in puberty will be encouraged to read a manga actually about puberty. But hey, it's (as my own experience attests!) not bound in plastic wrap, so probably whomever wants to can gain access to it.

Is it good? No clue. Is it bad? Again: no clue.

It's well-dawn, anyway, though the art has that unnervingly solid look to it that a lot of horror, seinen and shounen manga use, and that style isn't particularly to my taste. Fits the tone of the book, though.

Are the characters sympathetic? Honestly, I found Nakamura more sympathetic than the whiny protagonist or the innocent, virginal, untouchable object of his 'shameful' desires. Perhaps because she was trying to be honest about her own socially unacceptable desires. Then again, if I found out at the end of the series that she was a projection of Takao's psyche, I would not be exactly surprised, in spite of the fact that she interacts with other characters. So, this indicates to me that she is not (yet, anyway) fully developed as a character in her own right.

Does it support the whole virgin/whore dichotomy thing? Oh boy oh boy yes.

Does it interrogate the same? A little. Mostly in that Takao's pedestal-worship of the virginal Saeki is so obviously something he does arbitrarily, for himself, without learning anything about the girl one way or the other. There's room for later volumes to shatter his dichotomous mode of thinking about women, and I think the series as a whole may get a lot more interesting if it goes in this direction.

Concluding remarks: At this point, the manga has the potential to become 1) brilliantly insightful, 2) disgustingly offensive or 3) unutterably boring. It also has the (approximately equal) potential to become all three at once.

In other words: What the frell was that?

Spotlight #6: Kamisama Kiss

English Title: Kamisama Kiss
Japanese Title: Kamisama Hajimemashita
Author: Julietta Suzuki
English Publisher: Viz Media
Manga?: Yes.
Novels?: No.
Anime?: No.
Volumes out in English: 8

Wow, it's been a looong time since I posted anything here. I guess I could talk about my work, my life and why I've let this blog lie fallow for so long, but I think I'd rather just jump back in with a new 'femdom manga' spotlight.

Like many a manga hero/heroine, Kamisama Kiss's Nanami Momozoni has a useless parental unit (in this case, her father) whose bad habits with money eventually lead her to become broke, homeless and alone. As we all know, broke, homeless and alone is an excellent jumping-off point for the hero/heroine in a shoujo or shounen manga. (See: Hayate the Combat Butler, Fruits Basket, Ultimate Venus and oh so many more . . . ) Sometimes, being broke, homeless and alone means that a manga protagonist will stumble their way into working as a maid/butler/housekeeper/groundskeeper in a live-in job at a new home, which is usually occupied by attractive members of the opposite sex. At other times, being broke, homeless and alone will directly precede the hero or heroine's discovery that they are the long-lost heir or some other form of successor to a new home, also frequently populated by attractive members of the opposite sex.

Summary (minor SPOILERS for Volume I): So, broke and homeless Nanami, who is all alone, is busy being broke and homeless and alone when she comes across a strange man who has been treed by a small dog. Nanami 'rescues' said man from said dog. After a short conversation, the man kisses Nanami on the forehead and tells her he is giving her his home. Our heroine thinks this is weird, but takes him up on it, as then at least she will no longer be homeless and alone (she will still be broke, but hey, you can't have everything). When she gets to her new home, she finds out that it is a shrine and that she is the new god of the shrine. She also meets Tomoe, the attractive-member-of-the-opposite-sex who will become her fox-spirit shinshi (meaning, in this manga at least, her spirit-beast servant). Tomoe is kind of a jerk and Nanami is kind of a ditz (this is shoujo manga, and it would honestly be more noteworthy if Tomoe were nice and Nanami were competent), but as the manga progresses, they slowly develop feelings for one another. One at a time, other attractive-members-of-the-opposite-sex start cropping up, giving the manga that "harem" feel we all know and love.

This goes on the femdom list, obviously, on account of the "shinshi contract" that Nanami enters into with Tomoe, which means that, not only is he bound to serve her, but he is magically bound to obey any command she gives him.

Nanami's reaction upon learning that Tomoe, who is kind of a jerk, will be loyal to her if she enters into the contract (Volume I, Chapter 2, page 64):



Nanami's reaction upon learning that Tomoe, who is kind of a jerk, is magically bound to obey her (Volume I, Chapter 5, page 144):



Nanami's not going to be breaking the shoujo manga heroine mold anytime soon, but I kind of love her for the two moments illustrated above. They're small, but they're important to me as a reader simply because it's rare to see a shoujo manga heroine express desire for any kind of power. In a lot of what I describe as 'femdom' manga and anime (not that there is all that much of it around to begin with), heroines luck into or back into power. They don't get it because they want it; it's just forced upon them. Because these characters are 'good' girls, and in many cases 'good' is expanded to mean 'passive', especially when we are talking about women of any age. (While this equivalence may be more prevalent in Japanese media, it's certainly to be found in American-made products as well.) It's refreshing to see Nanami, who is positively portrayed, gleefully anticipate having and using power, even if only for a few moments.

Of course, whatever authority Nanami has is largely subverted by the fact that Tomoe, who is kind of a jerk, spends a good portion of the series 'training' his master to become a better god, thus flipping the female-dominated master/servant relationship and turning it into a male-dominated teacher/student relationship, which is a pretty common trick for shoujo manga to play. Still, Nanami manages to retain some authority when it counts--in spite of her shinshi's sadistic streak--and she frequently manages to get her own way. This sometimes leads to her getting into trouble and realizing that she should have listened to the male lead, but again, this is shoujo manga. These things happen.

In many ways, Kamisama Kiss is a paint-by-numbers brand of shoujo title. The main characters, though ultimately sympathetic, are somewhat annoying and the supporting cast members (with one or two exceptions) are not particularly memorable. The art is pretty (and almost unbearably cute at times) and it does what it is supposed to do, but it rarely goes beyond that.

I love this series anyway. I really, really enjoy reading Kamisama Kiss. (So much so that when I cannot find the latest volume on the shelf at my local bookstore, I actually ask for it by name at the customer service desk. I know that doesn't sound like much, but it takes me a certain amount of courage to admit to a fellow adult that I want to read something with "Kiss" in the title. The cover art and graphics are usually in pastel tones, too . . . ) It's a cute, frivolous, wish-fulfillment title, with some adventure, some magic and lots of pretty animal-boys for the heterosexual preteen/early teen girl gaze (because they deserve eye-candy too!). Kamisama Kiss doesn't have a lot of surprises or even a lot of plot, but it makes for a fun, relaxing break from reality. And sometimes that's all you need.

Spotlight #3: Ultimate Venus

English Title: Ultimate Venus
Japanese Title: Kyuukyoku Venus
Author: Shigematsu Takako
English Publisher: Go!Comi
Anime?: No.
Summary: Yuzu is poor and her mother just died, so she does what any sensible homeless teenager would do and starts camping out in a playground. Kagami, Yuzu's rich, estranged granmother's all-purpose employee/servant, picks her up and takes her to her grandmother's honest-to-goodness palace, where Yuzu is basically kidnapped and forced to start training to become the Shirayuki heir, or at least one of the main candidates for this position.

Now, there are a lot of rags-to-riches stories where some loser kid gets picked up and whisked off to some amazing life of wealth and luxury only to whine, moan and cry about missing the good ol' simple days, and these stories can be tough to take. And Yuzu moans plenty. With Yuzu, though, the whining is actually pretty understandable: after kidnapping her and locking her up in a room that's basically an opulent jail cell (Seriously: it has bars and everything. Those wacky rich people!), loving Grandma Mitsuko and Kagami proceed to confiscate all her possessions, and (deliberately) try to throw out everything that reminds her of her deceased parents. Not to mention that Kagami slaps her within the first thirty pages of volume one.

This goes on the femdom list because, even though Yuzu herself gets pretty much manipulated by the household staff, Kagami and the rest are technically, at least, responsible for serving her and looking out for her welfare. It also goes on the list because Yuzu's grandma has her own freaking harem. That's right: a bonafide harem of pretty boys who lounge around being pretty but (of course) double as an equally pretty security force of elite bodyguards. Oh, and her palace is maintained by a staff of pretty young boy "maids" (sadly without any frilly apron cosplay; their uniform, while not screeching of masculinity, is more or less 'boy-appropriate'). So . . . I gotta say . . . good for Yuzu's grandma. I have to wonder what that hiring process is like, though.

Obviously, the strict, cold, 'Kagami-san' is destined to be Yuzu's one true love, and I suppose it's a relief that he's more reserved with her than ever actively mean (despite the aforementioned face-slapping). It comes out fairly early on in the series that the poor boy (He's older than her but younger than me; it's weird that I'm older than even some 'grown-up' manga characters these days.) harbors secret affection for Yuzu and wants more than anything to help her and protect her, but can't tell the recently-orphaned young girl that he gives a damn about her for some Mysterious Reason (TM).

I like this series for two reasons. The first and most obvious reason: Mitsuko's harem. Shoujo titles with harems of lovely guys in them are the necessary counterbalance to all those loser-guy-gets-the-girls shounen titles. Or so I declare. The other reason I like this series is that, despite her obvious destiny to become the romantic interest of about every significant guy in the series, I actually quite like the protagonist. Yuzu can be pretty intimidated by Grandma and Kagami, but every so often she snaps and says or does something a bit 'aggressive' and 'inapprorpriate' (at least for a high-class-lady-in-training, I guess). And, despite this being shoujo manga, she is not always punished for such displays of unladylike temper. And a manga that lets girls know it's okay to get angry is not a bad thing.

Spotlight #2: Captive Hearts

English Title: Captive Hearts
Japanese Title: Toraware no Minoue
Author: Hino Matsuri
English Publisher: Viz Media
Anime?: No.
Summary: Kuroishi Megumi's family has been cursed to serve the Kogami family since the Muromachi era. As the Kogami family's been missing for fourteen years or so, no one bothers to tell unsuspecting Megumi about the curse until Kogami Suzuka shows up. Megumi has fits of intense servility around her; Suzuka has fits of non-curse-induced shiness around him. The two spend their days being dumb and adorable at each other.

It has finally happened. I've waited not-so-patiently as Merupuri, Vampire Knight and even Wanted cropped up on the shelves of my local bookstores, and Hino Matsuri's Toraware no Minoue has finally been licensed in English.

Toraware no Minoue, or Captive Hearts, was one of the first "femdom" manga to catch my attention back when it first started making the scanlation/fansite circuit. Intrigued, I ordered the five tankoubon online and taught myself kana by trying to translate the first few volumes from Japanese to English on my own. (I'm, uh, still working on that . . . yeah.) For this reason, I have a fairly strong personal attachment to the manga, though I suspect that my (blind) admiration for the work predates my days as a discerning manga consumer, so I'll do my best to try to remain objective in this "spotlight."

Art: The art is pretty and technically well-done, though it's clear that the mangaka was still getting a feel for the look of her characters, especially in early cover and filler art. Hino Matsuri tends not to focus much on differentiation in character design. The primary cast of Captive Hearts is thankfully small enough (1 adult male, 1 young male, 1 young biological female and 1 transgender female) that eye shape and hairstyle are usually sufficient as distinguishing features. (This is a different story than in, say, Vampire Knight, where the huge cast of bishounen vampires should really come with a chart or something--actually, this being shoujo manga, they may very well come with a chart. I will have to double-check.) The page design is busy to the point of looking a bit frantic, but this suits the rather slapstick humor that the series occasionally delves into, and I find it a nice change of pace from the more standard shoujo images of wide-eyed closeups and flowery backgrounds.

Plot: The servant's curse is a nice twist on the standard shoujo "boy meets girl" fare, and I like that we see the action from both Megumi's and Suzuka's points of view. Thankfully, the romance picks up pretty quickly, so we don't have to wade through the "Now I like him now I don't, now he likes me and I don't like him, now I like him but he stopped liking me, etc." mood swings that a lot of shoujo titles have fun tormenting us with.

Characters: Suzuka is sweet as a puppy, cute as a puppy, innocent as a puppy, enthusiastic as a puppy, and probably about as smart as . . . you get the idea. Megumi is ever-so-slightly more complex, and would probably be a pretty unbearable Standard Issue Bishounen Jerk(TM) if his curse had never shown up (though we only see a scant few pages of his life before Suzuka, so nothing is certain on that front). Megumi's overly enthusiastic father is pretty enjoyable, though he's mostly used for exposition and recurring "discipline" gags in the first volume.

Side Stories: The first volume has two side stories that take up too many pages for my taste. These are more or less Standard Issue shoujo stories, and lack the imagination and sense of fun that make the main plot so enjoyable.

Captive Hearts has romance, an ancient Chinese curse, an ancient Chinese dragon, and just enough bondage gags to qualify as femdom fanservice. All in all, it's a fun little title that touches briefly on the relationship between service and love, but mostly just takes its "servant curse" premise and runs with it.

Spotlight #1: Hayate the Combat Butler

English Title: Hayate the Combat Butler
Japanese Title: Hayate no Gotoku
Author: Kenjiro Hata
English Publisher: Viz Media
Anime?: Yes.
Summary: Protagonist's good-for-nothing, debt-ridden parents sell him to the yakuza and he ends up working as a butler for the rich girl who rescues him with money.

I have nothing against a boys' harem manga when it's done well, and Hayate is harem manga done well. The main male character is actually the kind of clueless sweetie you can see girls (and by "girls" it's possible I mean "me") falling for and the female characters cropping up left, right and center happen to be interesting and sympathetic (or at least funny enough that you don't care how horrible they are). To add frosting to this cake of sensible characterization, there are significant male characters in the story who are not the protagonist!

For those of you have have read widely in the harem genre, I'll give you a moment for that to sink in. For those of you who have not and are wondering why I think that's such a big deal, please see Kagetora, Maharomatic, Hand Maid May, Hanaukyo Maids Tai, He is My Master and/or Kage Kara Mamoru for reference, and you'll see my point.

Wow, just think of it: a world not limited to one guy and a bunch of girls! And while a lot of the girls are, inevitably, falling for Sweet But Clueless, the guys in the mix are just as capable of harboring their own secret crushes.

As far as fanservice goes, Hayate is delightfully and unapologetically equal opportunity. There are definitely some cute maids around (please note the prevalence of maids in the harem titles listed above), but the "maid-service" is happily balanced by, well, "butler-service," provided mostly (but not exclusively) by Hayate himself. Explicit fanservice elements include things like Hayate in a (female) "neko" costume and his "ojousama" in maid costume.

The series also tweaks the concept of fanservice a bit: since Hayate and his coworker Maria wear their butler and maid costumes on an everyday basis, it becomes a form of "fanservice" pretty much anytime they put on anything else, like street clothes or school uniforms.

However, the quite tame fanservice elements of the story are, thankfully, not the point (see that list of other harem titles again to remind yourself why that's so important), as Hayate the Combat Butler is, of course, a comedy. And in this case, that's not just a generic distinction used to keep from having to call it proto-porn (which it's not, just to be clear, but stuff like He is My Master makes me die a little inside); Hayate, unlike far too many of its fellow harem titles, is actually funny.

Aside from the highly adorable Hayate, the character who puts this series on my Top 10 manga to Take to a Desert Island list is the female lead, Sanzenin Nagi. While she is the short, cute, bossy, violent rich-girl stereotype, she somehow manages to be really likable at the same time. And while this could be because she's prone to the occasional random act of generosity, maturity or kindness, her likability is probably largely due to the fact that she is a complete otaku.

Nagi is the kind of fangirl who writes her own frenetic, poorly drawn and plot-less action/fantasy manga (We see several examples of it throughout the series, and it's a treat!) and sends it to contests expecting to win. She is also the kind of enormously rich fangirl who has different rooms for different game consoles. And while she is as "girly" (in the frills-and-knee socks way) as girly can be in terms of looks and dress, her taste runs towards the kinds of action-packed manga and video games that would normally be considered boys' fare. She also has a combination of skewed pragmatism and aggressive laziness that I don't feel I see often enough in female manga characters, or female characters in general.

This goes on my femdom list, obviously, because the primary pairing is female master/ male servant. It gets high marks on that list partly because both characters really embrace these roles and think (inasmuch as characters in this genre "think") about the responsibilities they have towards one another within this dynamic. Hayate, grateful to his rich young savior, goes about trying to please his "ojousama" with an attitude of puppy-like devotion. The ojousama in question, for her part, does her best to think about what her duties as Hayate's "master" are and tries to do right by him.

And if all that's not enough, there are giant robots.