Fullmetal Alchemist, by Hiromu Arakawa

Continuing in the shounen theme, Fullmetal Alchemist is an action/adventure story written by Hiromu Arakawa; it's set in a fictional world reminicent of pre-WWII Europe, with the major difference that alchemy is a (relatively) accepted branch of science with heavy military use. Like Naruto, it has a large cast of characters, some of whom are nearly as important as the main protagonists; but it's primarily about two brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric, young men who have joined their country's army in order to gain access to research materials and labs to further their quest for the philosohper's stone. The reason they are searching for this is because, at the start of the story, the misuse of alchemy has caused Edward to lose his arm and leg and be forced to wear metal prosthetics in their place, and has left Alphonse as nothing but a soul bound to a suit of armor. Their belief is that the philosopher's stone will allow them to restore Ed's arm and leg and bring back Al's human body so that his soul can return.

This is about all the anime and manga share in common--at a certain point in the plot, when the brothers reunite with their mentor, the two diverge wildly; and unfortunately I can't give any more details on how without horribly spoiling both stories for you. However, the main difference is that the manga--the original story--just ended this month, while the first anime ended in 2004, meaning that it had to create its own ending; and the movie, Conqueror of Shamballa, which came out afterward followed the anime's storyline further. A second anime, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, also began in 2009, and follows the manga storyline instead of continuing the original story of the first anime.

It sounds pretty complicated (okay, it is pretty complicated), but in essence there are two versions of FMA, the manga and the anime; and both are really good. The cast of characters remains essentially the same in both, but the paths that they all take and where they end up in the end are the real differences.

The Fullmetal Alchemist manga is published by Viz in the United States, while the two animes have both been licensed, subtitled and dubbed into English by Funimation. The second anime is still being produced in Japan, so English-dubbed episodes of it are still ongoing, as is translation of the manga; however, the Mooresville Public Library carries the entire manga series up to the latest volume (volume 22 at the time of this writing), so if you're interested in a story about alchemy, military life, and the consequences of making choices, give it a try!

Naruto, by Masashi Kishimoto

In celebration of the summer, let's get a little shounen up in here!

(Shounen is the term for a specific subset of manga, also known as "boys' comics;" shounen stories are typically about, and designed for, boys, though they're read by girls and adults as well. It's similar to the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson type books, but usually with more ninjas.)

And speaking of ninjas:

On the off chance that you're one of the few people who has yet to come across Naruto, it is a story about ninjas! (Technically, it is a story about ninja; like the Japanese words manga, anime, sushi, &c., the word ninja can refer to both the singular and the plural form. However, the English practice of adding an s to denote a plural has been become accepted with some Japanese words, so ninjas works just as well. Bet you didn't think you be getting a grammar lesson in an anime blog, huh?)

Naruto is an action/adventure story written by Masashi Kishimoto; it's set in a fictional world that has a lot of similarity to Japan in some of the customs and in the feudal nature of the territories that make up the area, but otherwise the story's world doesn't share much with our own other than the fact that gravity works. (Well, sometimes. Like I said, these are ninjas; sometimes gravity is there only to be defied.) The story has a huge cast of characters, but at the core it's about a boy named Naruto, an orphan in the hidden village (a term historically used to describe villages composed of ninjas taht Kishimoto adopted) of Konoha, who just happens to have the spirit of a fox demon sealed inside him. This happened because at the start of the story, 12 years ago, the fox demon attacked the village, and its leader was not strong enough to kill it; the best he could do was seal it away, and into an infant.

Because Naruto bears scars from this--most distinctively the whisker-like marks on his face--that remind the other villagers of both the fox demon and the huge loss of life that occurred when it attacked, he has spent much of his life being ignored and shunned by everyone. This in turn has driven him to vow that he'll make people notice him--and he usually does it in bratty ways (the first time we meet him, he's vandalizing a village momument by painting graffiti all over it). But as the story goes on, he slowly begins to meet people who look past the scars and see who he really is. Some of these people are from his own village, like Sakura and Sasuke, two of his classmates who were assigned to the same team with him under the guidance of an older ninja named Kakashi (in Naruto's world, learning to be a ninja is kind of like an apprenticeship); some of them are civilians from other, normal villages; and some are even enemies from rival ninja villages, including one character who also had a demon sealed into him by his own village leader, but who--for several reasons--turned out very different from Naruto.

As I mentioned, this series has a huge cast of characters; the characters above form the core group--Team 7--that Naruto both influences and is influenced by, but the village Naruto lives in has many different families in it, all of whom pass down different ninja techniques to their children, and part of Naruto's story is winning the approval of those families via his classmates. The story is also split into two parts: after the end of the first part Kishimoto jumped ahead three years, taking the characters from age twelve to age fifteen. In the anime, the post-timeskip story is referred to as Naruto Shippuden, while the pre-timeskip part is just plain Naruto; the manga uses the name "Naruto" for both.

Naruto was one of the first titles that Viz put out when it started publishing Shonen Jump and began its shift away from adult manga titles to more young adult ones, so it's been around for a while--and in Japan the series is still unfinished, so Naruto's story is still going strong!

Azumanga Daioh, by Kiyohiko Azuma

Well, that was an unexpectedly long break between updates! But, what better way to kick off MPL's summer reading than with a manga about school?

(No, really, hang with me here. It's very good.)

Azumanga Daioh is a another slice-of-life comedy written by Kiyohiko Azuma; like Yotsuba&!, it's set in a smaller, though still urban, town in Japan; and the majority of the story revolves around school life, though there's plenty of summertime jokes as well. It's the story of a group of five friends who are all in the same class at school. (This is significant because in Japanese schools, students are assigned to one classroom and then stay in it throughout the day; it's the teachers who travel from one class to another to teach their subjects. So in Japan, the classroom you're assigned to is the one you stay in for the whole school year--just imagine what that would be like if you didn't like one of your classmates.) The story focuses on these five girls, but there are lots of other characters, some of them students and some teachers, who get plenty of face-time too.

I mentioned when talking about Yotsuba&! Azumanga Daioh is not drawn in a standard manga page format; it was originally published as a four-panel comic strip, but while in America comic strips are printed and read from left-to-right, in Japan the panels are stacked on top of each other and read up-to-down--in addition to right-to left! It's not as confusing as it sounds, though; after a few comics you'll fall into the swing of it. And it isn't all comics; each book has one or two 'specials,' where Azuma draws the story in a more familiar manga format.

Azumanga Daioh was published by ADV Manga in the middle of their switch to doing more literal translations, so in the last two of the series's four volumes there are a few notes on jokes or customs and untranslated Japanese words. The most occur in the fourth and final volume, during the students' class trip to Okinawa, a southern island of Japan that has a heavily aborigine-influenced culture (it's kind of similar to how Hawaii is a part of the US but still has its own people and customs). The majority of the jokes and the story are translated as accessibly as possible, though, so it's a great and funny read!

Yotsuba&!, by Kiyohiko Azuma

Yotsuba&! is a slice-of-life comedy set in a small Japanese town and written by Kiyohiko Azuma. It's the story of Yotsuba Koiwai, a quirky five-year-old, and her life after she and her adoptive father move to a new town. The story focuses on Yotsuba, her father and his friends, and the neighboring family, and deals with many of the events that occur during in daily life in Japan, like shopping, school festivals, summer homework, and typhoons. The humor of the series comes primarily from Yotsuba's lack of knowledge about things a typical five-year-old would know, and the resulting way that she misunderstands a lot of what goes on around her. (If I'm making this sound too dry, trust me, it's not; this series is hilarious. My favorite parts are when Yotsuba and Yanda--a friend of her father's who became Yotsuba's enemy when he ate her ice cream--get into childish arguments with each other.)

Yotsuba&! is a change from Azuma's previously translated series, Azumanga Daioh: Yotsuba&! is drawn in a standard manga page format, while Azumanga Daioh was a series of four-panel comics (kind of like the comic strips in newspaper, except in Japan comics are printed and read up-to-down rather than left-to-right).

Yotsuba&! is published by two different translation companies: ADV Manga published the first five volumes, and then sold the title to Yen Press, which reprinted those five and has continued with the following volumes. This means that if you go from reading ADV Manga's translations to reading Yen Press's, you'll find some differences: one of the character's names is spelled differently (Fuka in ADV's, Fuuka in Yen Press's), and a few of the jokes are different. This reflects the two companies' different appraches to translation: ADV aims to make the translation as accessable as possible for the widest range of readers, while Yen Press tends to focus a little more on readers who already have a familiarity with manga and Japanese customs and spelling (the difference between Fuka and Fuuka is that romaji--the Japanese alphabet--has many double vowels, while in English that's pretty rare). But Yen Press includes notes to avoid being too obscure.

(I mention all this because at Mooresville Public Library, the first five copies of Yotsuba&! are by ADV, so don't be surprised when you spot the changes in volume 6!)

Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles, by CLAMP

It's a month full of CLAMP titles! But when the mangaka (the Japanese term for a manga artist/writer) group has been creating series for over fifteen years, maybe it's surprising that it's only a month.

I mentioned Tsubasa, or TRC (not to be confused with Tsubasa: Those Who Have Wings, a series produced by Natsuki Takaya, the mangaka of Fruits Basket) before when talking about xxxHolic; as I said there, the two series occur within the same universe and often reference each other. TRC differs slightly from xxxHolic in terms of story-telling--it was published in the Japanese Shonen Jump, and is a part of the shounen (boy's stories) subgroup of manga, meaning it is similar to other shounen titles like Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece.

Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles is a fantasy series set in no particular world; in fact, its plot involves four people traveling together to different worlds for their own reasons. Sakura is a princess whose memories were changed into feathers ('tsubasa' is Japanese for wing or feather) and scattered among many worlds as the result of an evil spell; she and Syaoran, a young man from her world, are traveling in order to find and return these memories to her. Kurogane is a ninja who was sent away from his world by the princess he served for being too bloodthirsty; he's traveling in order to return home. And the fourth person, Fai, is a wizard who refuses to use magic and who is traveling because he is running away from something--or someone.

Many of the worlds and supporting characters of TRC are similar to those of previous CLAMP titles. In fact, Sakura and Syaoran are both characters from the series Cardcaptor Sakura, and many of the events in that series have an impact later on in the story of TRC. No world is ever quite like its original story's; but because so much of Tsubasa Reservior Chronicles either relies upon or is improved by a knowledge of CLAMP's previous works, it can make the story a little harder to dive into for those unfamiliar with them. And like xxxHolic, the translation of TRC maintains honorifics (those name-endings in Japanese that are similar to English "Mr." and "Mrs.") and some Japanese words. But also like xxxHolic, each volume has notes on terms and references to Japanese customs.

Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles is heavily dependent on a prior knowledge of CLAMP's works to understand a lot of its background; but the foreground--the plot and the growth of the characters as they travel, work together, change and sometimes even betray each other--does not require it, so you can read and enjoy the story for what it is: the tale of a group of people from vastly different worlds thrown together for a common goal and learning how to work together and to accept the personal changes that come as a consequence of growing close to other human beings.

Publishers: Del Rey Manga

I mentioned last week that Del Rey is the English publisher for xxxHolic, along with many other titles (including Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles, Gundam Seed Destiny, the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney comics, and some of my favorites like Air Gear and Ghost Hunt), and I thought I should give a little more background on them.

Del Rey Manga (which is a subset of Del Rey Books, a scifi and fantasy publisher) is a relative newcomer to the manga translation world. They began publishing manga series in 2004, and are probably most famous for being the first to consistently include honorifics in their translations, to maintain Japanese references within works instead of converting them to equivalent English ones, and to have notes at the beginning and end of each volume of their manga to explain both of these to new readers and readers unfamiliar with Japanese culture. Del Rey also began a practice of including a few pages, still in the original Japanese, of the next volume of a series in the back of the manga; but unlike the notes on honorifics and references, this is not consistent for each series.

Del Rey took the foundation that its main predecessors, TokyoPop and Viz, had built in bringing over manga titles, and added to it by assuming that manga had settled enough into the American landscape that more of its original, Japanese aspects could be preserved without causing too much confusion (or risking a rejection of the titles!). And since the manga they've brought over has been enjoyed for six years now, they may have gambled right. Del Rey's manga titles might not be the right place to start if you're just beginning to explore this whole 'manga thing,' but if you see one you want to read among their series, the notes will make sure you don't lose the story among the translation.

xxxHolic, by CLAMP

I learned about xxxHolic the same way a lot of people probably learn about a series they like: a friend told me I should read it.

xxxHolic is a supernatural series set in Tokyo (and occasionally other locales of Japan) and produced by CLAMP, a four-woman writing/drawing group. It's the story of Watanuki, a teenage boy who can see spirits and who is constantly chased by them. To get rid of his power (and to save his life), he makes a deal with Yûko, also known as the Time-Space Witch and who has the ability to grant wishes, to work for her in exchange for taking his ability away. However, Yûko's powers are based on equivalent exchange: because removing Watanuki's ability to see spirits and also his unconscious, unwanted ability to draw them to him is such a difficult task, he has to work for her for a very, very long time before it's paid off. (If it sounds a little bit like the philosophy of alchemy in Fullmetal Alchemist, that's because it is. If you don't know what Fullmetal Alchemist is, don't worry, I'll get to it.) So the two of them get off to a rocky start.

At first the series focuses only on Watanuki and Yûko and the fates of various customers who come into Yûko's shop looking to have their wishes granted, but as it goes on more characters appear: Himiwari, a girl at Watanuki's school who he has a crush on, and who always has strange things happen around her; and Doumeki, another classmate and the son of a Buddhist temple priest, who also has unusual powers and who Watanuki takes an instinctive dislike to. (Actually, it's more like irrational hatred.) Slowly these two become more and more involved in the wishes being granted in Yûko's shop, and in the lives of Watanuki and Yûko themselves.

Compared to other manga series, xxxHolic is heavily based on Japanese customs and superstitions. The translator maintains honorifics (ending words in Japanese that are attached to names, which serve the same purpose as English "Mr." and "Mrs.") throughout the dialog, and some words that would be hard to translate into English are left in their original Japanese. The most common one of these is "hitsuzen," a difficult word and an even more difficult concept (not even Watanuki knows what it means when Yûko first says it!): boiled down, it's the opposite of coincidence, the belief that something happens for a reason and there was no other possible way that things could have occurred--a theme throughout the series that some characters accept, and some fight tooth and nail. Fortunately, each volume of the series has notes on honorifics and jokes or puns that didn't quite translate right from the Japanese, so you won't get lost reading.

xxxHolic is a change from CLAMP's previous work in two ways: the art style is different, because the previous artist took a background role due to wrist problems; and the series is intertwined with another manga that CLAMP was producing at the same time, called Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles. The early volumes of the manga rely heavily on reading Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles at the same time to get a full idea of what is going on; but over time the series settles into its own world and the characters' friendships -- and antagonisms -- change and grow.