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 #5: Ōoku

English Title: Ōoku: The Inner Chambers
Japanese Title: Ōoku (“The Shogun’s Harem”)
Author: Fumi Yoshinaga
English Publisher: Viz Media (Viz Signature)
Manga?: Yes.
Novels?: No.
Anime?: No.

After reading a fairly positive review of Ōoku, I went out and bought it "sight-unseen." Yes, folks, Ōoku is one of those titles that comes vacuum-sealed in plastic wrap (at least at the major chain bookstores to which I have access and for which I have coupons) with a tasteful "PARENTAL ADVISORY: EXPLICIT CONTENT" notice on the cover. Is it pornographic? Not at all. It's not even properly erotica, despite taking place almost exclusively in a harem. It's also not a "harem" (nor a "reverse harem") title despite taking place in a harem. It does involve sex, violence and plague, though. It is also really, really good. It has even won some critical acclaim, but you have to turn the tankoubon over to see the "Eisner Award Nominee" and "Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize Winner" notices. (Or at least that is the design I came across when purchasing.)

Volumes 1-3 only are currently available in English, so this post is limited to a discussion of those volumes.

Plot / Backstory: In Tokugawa era Japan, a mysterious plague called the "redface pox" has decimated the population of young men. Women take on more and more roles that formerly belonged to their sons and husbands, and girls start to inherit family enterprises. It becomes a major effort to produce family heirs, and men, as rare commodities, are protected and valued for their precious "seed." (This should ring familiar for anyone who has read Wen Spencer's highly enjoyable A Brother's Price.) The shogun becomes a female position, and she is served by a collection of rare, beautiful and frequently ambitious men in the "inner chambers."

Fumi Yoshinaga has received a good bit of attention over the last few years, especially for shounen ai titles like Antique Bakery, which showed up on YALSA's "Great Graphic Novels for Teens List" in 2007. (Antique Bakeryhas also been adapted into an anime, a live-action Japanese drama and a live-action Korean movie.) Beautiful men and food are a pretty common common theme in her work, and she has also produced a number of shoujo titles and period pieces (which seem to be mostly shounen ai). Ōoku, though it shares many traits with her previous work, is a definite change of pace.

Ōoku's art is produced in the mangaka's distinctive, spare style, and exhibits a particular skill in capturing characters' facial expressions, no matter how overt or how subtle. The illustration moves from moments of stylized, 'cartoony' humor to moments of high dramatic tension with a fluidity and grace that is quite possibly unrivaled. The panel layouts are clean, regular and aesthetically appealing, and shadows and highlights are used expertly throughout for emotional emphasis. (There is one panel consisting of nothing but solid black that I found especially poignant.) As far as I can tell from what little I have seen of her bibliography, the mangaka makes more use of backgrounds and patterns in Ōoku than she has in her other works. The books themselves are quite beautiful--slightly oversized for manga trade paperbacks, with a beautifully rendered, off-center color portrait of a central character on the cover of each volume. The front and back covers are folded to emulate the look of a book jacket, and the flaps, when unfolded, continue the covers' images.

The language of Ōoku's English translation is a bit odd. What I assume was originally a "formal dialect" used for dialogue is presented in a stilted, archaic English that at first is remarkably distracting. I was pleasantly surprised (actually a bit astounded) to find that, once I had gotten well into the first volume, the speech had begun to read as natural, and in the end it did not detract from the story at all. Once I became accustomed to it, I realized that it allowed for a few moments of linguistic beauty that might not have been possible had more conventional dialogue been used. I do, however, freely confess that the writing seems over-the-top (and then some) at first glance, and therefore might easily scare aware some potential readers. Narration, unlike dialogue, is given in a comparatively plain, modern style.

The first volume shows the entrance of a young man into the Ōoku; in this volume, the female-led shogunate is already well-established. Volumes 2 and 3 cover the origin of the new, matriarchal system and the beginning years of the first female shogun's rule. In addition to its setting in a more-or-less matriarchal society, Ōoku goes on the femdom manga list because the main female character is always the shogun and the main male character always her favored "concubine" (so far).

Conceptually, one of the most interesting things about Ōoku is that the rise of a predominantly female work force does little to change the society as a whole. As the culture is already under threat from the "red-faced pox," every effort is expended by surviving characters to maintain Tokugawa-era Japan's economy and culture. Class divisions are scrupulously upheld. Instead of issuing in a revolution, the extreme shift in population causes a desparate clinging to the
past, to the ideals and traditions that will provide the structure necessary for the country's survival in a global context.

Ōoku presents the moving, sometimes painful stories of characters struggling to live and work together in the enclosed, stifling world of "the inner chambers" within the larger-yet-still-enclosed world of an alternate-history Japan that has almost entirely cut off its contact with all other nations.

And I really, really like it.

How I Draw, post #1: The Technical Side of Things

This post is devoted to describing the process I go through when drawing Familiar Magic.

Materials:
-Bristol Board (smooth)
-Drawing Pencil, #3 or #4
-Plastic Eraser
-Pigment liners, 0.5 to 0.7, or
-Technical Drawing Pens, 0.35 to 0.7
-Brush Pen
-Scanner
-Computer + Mouse
-Photoshop

Step 1: I lay out panels with a pencil and ruler.

Some days I actually have ideas about what I will later put into each panel. This, however, is rare. I generally have an overall concept for the page--what it does to the story, who appears in it, etc.--and keep that in the back of my mind while I set up a "grid" that I, at least, find visually pleasing. The geometric pattern of the page almost always comes first.

Step 2: I sketch the comic in light pencil.

This is where the plastic eraser comes in. I sketch, erase and sketch again until I'm satisfied the page does what I want it to do. Bodies and faces are the things that take me the longest and involve the most trial-and-error. Plants give me the least trouble. This is in part because I never check to see if the plants I draw actually exist in our world. I just draw the "tree/flower/grass I want to see there" and call it good.

Step 3: I ink the page.

I take my 0.5 pigment liner and ink all the 'normal' to 'medium' lines (in terms of thickness). Lines from pigment liners smaller than 0.5 have a hard time surviving the journey from my scanner to my computer unbroken. I can go a bit smaller with the technical pens. I use wider pens to color in small sections of black and a brush pen for large sections of black that I don't plan to color on the computer. I also occasionally use the brush pen for hair, feathers, emotional SFX and other flowy, wispy things. I do not ink the panel borders.

Step 4: I clean up the page.

All hail the return of the plastic eraser! I erase stray pencil lines to prep the page for scanning.

Step 5: I scan the page into Photoshop.

I usually scan the page in at 600 dpi, though I've used both larger and smaller resolutions.

Step 6: I clean up the page again. I play around with levels, fills and the magic lasso to make the black-and-white page, well, black-and-white (instead of black, many varieties of gray, white and some other colors that snuck in when the page was scanned). This can get really tedious.

Step 7: I color the page.

This is where I really go to town. I mean, the comic is basically a digital coloring book at this point. What's not fun about that? I use brushes of different sizes and textures--and many, many layers of opacity--to get the effects I want. I play around with contrast/brightness and color settings when I feel the need. My wireless, ergonomic mouse is quite a blessing at this stage.

Step 7.5: I reboot Photoshop, cussing out the program the whole time, and make up my lost work so I can finish coloring. This step only happens for the obvious reason. Fortunately, I usually prefer the final version to the "one that got away."

Step 7.75: I compulsively save my work at near-random intervals, compelled by my recent loss of progress.

Step 8: I add speech balloons and speech balloon tails, guided by a general idea of what the characters say.

Step 9: I add speech. This is when I decide what the characters actually say.

Step 10: I add any verbalized thoughts and SFX that were not added during the penciling and inking stages.

Step 11: I resize the page. All standard Familiar Magic pages are 700 pixels wide, though they vary in length.

Step 12: I save the page in .png (though it was .jpg up until a few updates ago) format.

I then post the page, wait for it to upload, check to see how it displays, update my archives, etc., but all that isn't really part of my drawing/pagemaking process (except perhaps in a broader theoretical sense, as webcomics do not truly stop at the borders of their comic pages) so I will not discuss it now.

Spotlight #4: Twelve Kingdoms

English Title: Twelve Kingdoms
Japanese Title: Juuni Kokuki
Author: Fuyumi Ono
English Publisher: Tokyopop
Anime Makers / Distributors: Studio Pierrot via Media Blasters
Manga?: No.
Novels?: Yes.
Anime?: Yes.

Twelve Kingdoms is my favorite anime. Some pieces of fiction hit you in exactly the right way at exactly the right time, and this can make you feel close to them, a bit in the same way that you can feel close to a person and a bit in the same way that you can feel close to an idea. Greer Irene Gilman's beautifully dense, painstakingly ornate novel Moonwise hit me in the right way at the right time. So did the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And so did Twelve Kingdoms.

The first time I watched Twelve Kingdoms, it was not my favorite year. Stuff went down, I cried a lot, and I wanted out. Not a permanent out, but just a chance to sit back, relax and breathe for awhile.

I read a lot of fiction and watched a lot of anime that year. Of all the new anime titles that I "discovered" during this period, Twelve Kingdoms is by far my favorite. This review will be focused primarily on the Twelve Kingdoms anime and not on the books upon which the anime is based. (So far, only three of the seven novels have been published in English.)

"Normal high school student" Nakajima Youko is attending her normal high school while some long-haired blond guy called Keiki pledges loyalty to her, gives her a sword, and goes on to be entirely unforthcoming about why Youko and her classmates are being attacked by a bunch of demons from another world. Keiki then spirits Youko (and her two "friends") away to said other world, where Youko obviously has an important destiny awaiting her.

Sounds pretty predictable so far, right?

However, just about as soon as they get to the other world, Keiki is put out of commission, and the three "normal high school" kids are left to fend for themselves in an impoverished kingdom where foreigners are despised and where, for some reason, only Youko can speak the language.

What really makes Twelve Kingdoms is its character development. When we first meet Youko, she is a rather unremarkable complete pushover of a reluctant fantasy heroine. By the end of her development arc, she is competent, confident and mature. (I feel like Twelve Kingdoms is the anime that women should give to their younger female relatives.) However, this is nothing like a smooth transition, and in the intervening time, Youko makes a lot of mistakes and actually gets to learn from them. But the lessons she learns are not the lessons that anime heroes and heroines tend to get in any genre. (How to "train" for the next battle, how to be nice, how to expose yourself to ridiculous and unnecessary risk (which leads to success for boys and failure for girls, more often than not), how to let yourself get walked on, etc. Youko started out the series getting walked on, remember? Happily, this means her big life lesson is about something else.) At the heart of the first arc, Youko learns that the world can be very harsh; even more importantly, and with much greater difficulty, she learns how to maintain her own human decency in a harsh world.

Youko is my favorite anime character. Also, she looks great in drag.

Youko, though central to the anime, is not always the central character. There are arcs toward the middle and end of the series in which she barely appears. Nonetheless, all of the major characters go throgh developmental arcs, and their development is always based on learning, about themselves and about their wolrd(s).

Twelve Kingdoms fits pretty solidly in the category of "femdom anime" as I define it. Keiki is an important enough male character in the show to vie for the position of "male lead." (Another possible contender is Rakushun, the mouse Hanjyuu (half-animal) who befriends Youko.) And (you can see this coming miles away in the show so it hardly counts as spoiler here, but SPOILER ALERT anyway) since Youko is eventually an Empress, the only male characters in the Twelve Kingdoms who could have official authority over her would be the world's actual gods. So, Twelve Kingdoms is femdom anime. What is even more exciting, however, is that it's also feminist anime. Hallelujah.

A short note on the first three novels: They're good. They're solid YA/children's lit fare, with a focus on strong young characters. In all three books, children from our world find their place in the world of the Twelve Kingdoms, where they learn about honor, courage and personal responsibility. Youko is the hero of the first book (and apparently shows up later in the fourth and sixth, which I await eagerly). The young male leads of the second and third books both discover that they are kirin, noble unicorn-beasts with the duty of choosing and serving the rulers of their respective kingdoms.

Why I Draw, post #1: Some reasons haphazardly presented

When I started this blog, I said that one of its primary purposes would be to serve as a place where I could discuss why I draw and what it means to me. I realize now that I have been putting this off long enough.

I draw because I love stories, and after I discovered that I love stories told in a graphic medium, I realized that I wanted to create them. I went through one of those near-inevitable downturns in my fiction reading somewhere in elementary school, when I decided that I was "too old" and "too imaginative" (silly, no?) to need or want things like pictures gracing words. (Irony of ironies: one of the things that spurred me to this very adult decision was Gaston's horrified reaction to Belle's picture-free book in Disney's Beauty and the Beast.) So it took me until someone loaned me their prized Sandman trades to realize that I do, in fact, love comics.

I draw because it's new to me. I am new to it. Everyone should have the joy of being able to do at least one thing they are new to and one thing they are accomplished at. I like learning to draw and I've been writing for pretty much all of my conscious memory . . . so, writing and drawing a comic feels wonderful. Frustrating and terrifying and wonderful.

I draw to learn. I have learned so much about comics as a form of expression from the simple act of trying to create my own. Writing a comic is everything and yet nothing like writing a poem or story. And pacing a comic--specifically, a webcomic, which updates one page at a time--is like nothing I have ever tried to do before. My hat is seriously, seriously off to webcomickers who manage to pace their comics well. For me, pacing is the Philosopher's Stone of webcomics.

I draw a webcomic because I like to read webcomics. I check for updates of my favorite webcomics as part of my daily morning routine. I read them archivally when I'm sick or sad. Furthermore, the webcomic is a fascinating and relatively new animal on the creative scene, and I think there's a part of me that just wants to be a part of that, in howsoever limited a way.

I draw for practice and I draw for catharsis. I look at pages from a year ago and I can think "Hey, look-improvement!"--and that's an amazing feeling. I also draw--and write--to work through and learn to accept my ever-changing thoughts and emotions.

I draw for therapy. I like activities that calm me down and draw me out of the world without the use of drugs and alcohol. A good drawing session is like a good cup of tea and soft music, or having a cat on my lap on a rainy day. It just . . . helps.

On a not-entirely-unrelated note, page #89 is up at Familiar Magic. Only 11 pages left until I hit 100 . . . which makes me a little bit happy.

Reality Breaks In: Comics Deemed Obscene

The title of this blog is "Breaks From Reality." Some days I have breaks from reality and some days I need breaks from reality. Some days, however, reality breaks in.

If I had not been taking so many breaks from reality, I might have noticed this sooner:

So, there's this guy in southern Iowa who likes manga. A lot. He collects it. A lot. He orders it from Japan so that, presumably, he can, well, read it.

In 2006, some customs officials open his mail and find--OH NOES--porn! And not just any porn, but "Seven books of manga" with "cartoon drawings of minors engaged in sexually explicit acts" and some "bestiality" to boot (quoted text from David Kravets's May 28 Wired article on the subject, found here).

In May 2009, Christopher Handley pleaded guilty to:

1) the mailing of obscene matter and
2) possession of obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children

He was being charged under the 2003 Protect Act, which, while by-and-large designed to actually protect children, also prohibits the mailing and owning of "obscene" materials (including drawings and statues) that depict minors doing sexual things. And how is "obscene" defined, exactly?

That's just the thing.

It isn't.

There is no national standard that defines obscenity; whether or not something is "obscenity" is officially defined by the community rather than the country. The closest thing we have to a national standard is the SLAPS test, which asks the "community" in question to judge whether a work has any Scientific, Literary, Artistic, Political or Scientific value.

Which community, you ask?

Weeeeell, that's just the thing. That's not really defined either. Based on this particular trial, one can only assume that the community designated to judge whether or not a work is obscene is the same community in which you are caught and charged with the possession of obscene material.

Let's all let that sink in for a bit.

So, there's this guy, and he's the first person to be charged under the Protect Act for the possession of cartoon art of any kind. When officials searched his home, they found no evidence of any child pornography, either in hard copy form or on his computer. The "obscene" material that he owned was part of a larger collection, most of which was not "obscene."

So, who, exactly, did Christopher Handley hurt in ordering naughty manga from overseas?

Children? In other "child pornography" cases, the prosecution argues for the defense of the abused children being used as models. Which does, after all, make sense.

You don't need actual child models to draw lolicon. (Lolion and yaoi were the two genres most frequently referenced in descriptions of the case.)

The community? Perhaps manga of this sort is seen as inherently corrupting.

As far as I know, he was not trying to expose his "community" to the "obscenity," just himself. Hmm, is self-corruption a crime, now?

Of course it is! Hasn't it been scientifically proven that looking at dirty pictures makes us do the things in them because as human beings we have no free will? Which is, of course, why every last person who has ever had an immoral, perverse or harmful impulse has immediately acted upon it?

No, wait, that doesn't sound quite right . . .

And even if our control of our actions were truly so terrible, we still have no proof that the erotic manga in this case was being read erotically. After all, the guy had both lolicon and yaoi in his collection, and that's a pretty unique overlap.

I don't know Christopher Handley. I don't know if he is a good person or a bad person. I don't know anything about him other than what was covered in the reports on his trial. I do know that he is a man who is being charged, at heart, for--of all things--the unacceptable taste that his community has judged him to have.

This is an attack on all otaku.

This is an attack on Americans' freedom, not only to speak, but to read.

A good chunk of manga is, let's face it, pretty gross. Even the stuff that gets categorized as "okay" to sit on bookshelves sans plastic wrap can be quite vile. Some of it has even made me feel physically ill.

When I first saw a description of this case, that's exactly how I felt: physically ill.

And this obscenity is going to take me a lot longer to get over.

Related Links:
Neil Gaiman's comments early in the case.
The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund on the case