Kinderbook and Mariko Parade
Kinderbook by Kan Takahama. Fanfare/Ponent Mon, 2003. Sample pages here.
Mariko Parade by Kan Takahama and Frédéric Boilet. Fanfare/Ponent Mon, 2004. Sample pages here.
Also the “Nouvelle Manga Manifesto” by Boilet.
Both of these books appear under the publisher’s Nouvelle Manga imprint, so I’ll start with the manifesto of such. Boilet’s idea is to mix the “daily life” narrative of some manga with the Franco-Belgium bande dessinée’s (BD) illustrative emphasis and the “tone” of French cinema. He laments the stereotypical translated manga with its teen action genre (this manifesto lacks any note of shoujo, the explosion of which, in the US at least, it predates) and the translated BD’s sci-fi/fantasy/all-art-no-story. Basically, Boilet is attempting a marketing/terminological action to expose works that fall outside the stereotypical genres and could be enjoyed by the typical adult (or at least those outside the “otaku” or “BDphile” community). While he talks about BD translated into Japanese and manga translated into French, here in the US we can see both angles. The DC/Humanoids publications that apparently did not do so well shows the lack of interest in tradition sci-fi BD, just as Boilet notices in Japan. As far as manga goes its harder to compare with the aforementioned shoujo proliferation, but I know I feel the lack of manga that would appeal. It’s a noble attempt by Boilet. I already much appreciated the Taniguchi book that’s been associated with Nouvelle Manga as well as some Tsuge stories and some short pieces by Kiriko Nananan. All three of these are manga creators that are retrospectively associated with Nouvelle Manga (Boilet lists all three in his manifesto as influences). What to do when faced with works more contemporarily and directly connected?
Kinderbook consists of ten short comics by Kan Takahama (annoyingly on both this and Mariko Parade’s jacket flap her biographical sketch calls her “Kan Takama”). I want to say these stories are minimalist and Carver-esque, except I’ve read very little Carver. Still, this is what I think of: small happenings, emotional shifts, not a lot of plot events, conversations. Is this the stuff of “daily life”? Perhaps, though most of it has some dramatic path that seems more fictionalized than not, someone’s idea of a “daily life story” that is really just a regular old story with less explication, fewer “big moments”. As you can probably guess, I wasn’t thrilled by these stories. The jacket copy calls it “subtle”, so perhaps I am too dense, but after two readings most of these stories seem quite lacking to me. I’m not clear of what the point of them is, be it emotional impact, naturalistic recreation, or thematic point, none seemed to fit.
Takahama’s art is much more interesting than the stories. The line work looks to be done in pencil (it has that gray, grainy look to it) but the tones are something else altogether. Everything looks as if it were placed behind a slightly blurry filter. Backgrounds are often blurred. Some of the stories have the look of photographs that were scratched into (the art in “Over There, Beautiful Binary Suns” really looks like lines scratched into the emulsion of a photo that has been purposefully blurred). Others are more traditionally toned, perhaps ink washes or watercolors, but all maintain a sense of reality and documentation even when the characters are more iconic and cartoony. Takahama is very good with facial expressions.
Panel layouts are functional and uninteresting. One of my biggest issues with some of these stories is the word balloons. For stories that rely so much on dialogue, the word balloons were frequently of ambiguous origin. When there are multiple characters that one is trying to differentiate through dialogue (and find the story through the conversation, too), having four word balloons in a panel that don’t point to any of the characters makes for extra and unnecessary confusion. Maybe it is the right to left orientation, but I also found the order of the word balloons often confusing, I ended up reading them in one order and only at the end realizing that I had to read them in a different order. Maybe there’s just a trick to the orientation and the order of word balloons? I’ve read only a small few manga that were “unflipped” like this.
Mariko Parade is an odd collaboration between Takahama and Boilet. Takahama wrote and drew a framing tale to encompass a series of short pieces Boilet wanted to collect whose only connection is the use of his model Mariko (Boilet and Mariko’s story is told in his Yukiko’s Spinach (Fanfare/Ponent Mon) which I haven’t read). While most traditional framing tales (from the Arabian Nights to the Decameron) are flimsy ways to connect the tales which are the main interest, here Takahama’s framing tale is much more interesting than Boilet’s shorts. The inclusion of the shorts are also rather odd fits in almost every case except one. The story is going along and then one line of slightly out of place dialogue leads into the short. This happens a few times and makes for an uncomfortable fit that seems too contrived.
Takahama’s story fictionalizes a trip of Boilet’s and Mariko’s to a small Japanese fishing village to take photos (for Boilet’s reference, as he works from models (evident from his work)). With time to develop (180 page minus Boilet’s short pieces) Takahama creates more depth and interest than in Kinderbook. The space allows the characters to be slowly unveiled. It is interesting that Takahama, a young Japanese woman, ends up writing the story from Boilet’s perspective rather than Mariko’s, a young Japanese woman. Her sympathy with Mariko’s character allows her to leave more of her subtle and unsaid, while showing us more of the Boilet character directly with narration that grabs the heart of the story, such as: “Don’t ask me why but the Japanese are inclined toward that which is fleeting and sad. They say it’s in their nature. [...] Barely into a relationship and they’re already thinking about how it’s going to end.” (61-2). This story tells of a last hurrah trip. As Mariko says, the only feeling stronger than love is the decline of love.
Once again Takaham’s art has a pencil line over blurry photograph look. There are panels where I’m pretty damn sure the background is a drawn over photograph (for instance the sea in one image has a texture that seems to real to be drawn, including the boat floating on it).
Boilet’s short pieces are odd intrusions on this story. The one piece that most clearly fits is a sequence of two panel pages in warm oranges and browns that show, rather graphically, but also abstractly framed, a sex scene. This is inserted into a a place in the story where a sex scene between the protagonists fits and becomes important to the story. The rest of the stories are too forced in. They are all illustrated in what I assume is Boilet’s photo-realist style (not exactly photorealist but definitely relying heavily on models).
Of the two I’d recommend Mariko Parade more highly. Takahama seems more assured and given the space tells a more successful story that I can see fitting into Boilet’s “daily life” stories. Being a more recent book that leads me to be on the lookout for newer works from her. I haven’t seen enough of Boilet’s work to make any decisions at all. So far, though, the Nouvelle Manga precursors are more interesting than the contemporary adherents.
Tags: Bande Dessinee, Manga
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