SF/F Commentary

I’ve spent the last year practically immersing myself in the Utopia Studies canon, which might explain why Oh Se-kwon’s Utopia’s Avenger grabbed my attention. The legendary kingdom of Yuldo is gone, destroyed by a ruthless army who were bent on ending Hong Gil-Dong’s utopian dream.  Now Yuldo is little more than a memory, its creator disappeared.  But when a merchant’s daughter is attacked by the Bright White Killers, she is rescued, to her surprise, by none other than Yuldo’s creator (and his companion).  Hong Gil-Dong has returned with a new mission:  vengeance against those who brought his kingdom to its knees, destroyed his people, and left him without a home, and the search for money to rebuild Yuldo.  But returning the merchant’s daughter safe and sound for the reward money proves more difficult than Hong and his companion ever expected. Utopia’s Avenger succeeds on three fronts:  art, action, and concept.  The first is obvious the second you open the book.  The landscapes and monsters are enormously detailed, and even simpler panels are detailed enough to allow Se-kwon’s tale to rise above other manga titles.  Se-kwon’s style is meticulous and beautiful, and it mixes well with the dark story set up in Utopia’s Avenger.  The monsters are particularly interesting in this respect, in part because the detail is enticing, but also because they remind me of H. R. Giger’s work.  They are dark, wicked, and terrifying — exactly what monsters should be — and are exciting when placed in battle with Hong and his companion. Much of Utopia’s Avenger is action-oriented, with plenty of battles in the first volume alone to keep the action-obsessed fan glued to the page.  The battles, however, are not drawn out to their extremes (at least, not in the first volume).  Instead, they help to establish the power of the main character, but also his arrogance.  Hong often sends in his companion to do the dirty work while sitting on the sidelines and stepping in only when things turn for the worst.  But this doesn’t always work in his favor; Hong’s arrogance makes him stupid and overly trusting, which both result in a less-than-ideal situation in the end of the narrative.  The arrogance narrative is interesting, but it is also problematic because most of the book is spent showing uneven battles between Hong (and companion) and his various enemies.  Future volumes, I hope, will establish a more reasonable antagonist for the hero. Likewise, the narrative suffers from comedic timing.  Hong’s companion is portrayed as a pervert, and many jokes are had at his expense, sometimes immediately after a disturbing moment in the narrative (i.e., after a kidnapping).  Other times, jokes occur during battles, which sometimes removed the tension of the moment.  Hong’s arrogance and frequent success make it difficult enough to buy into the threat of Se-kwon’s monsters, but throwing in humor at inopportune moments only further removes the sense of dread that should exist in a story about fallen kingdoms and heroes.  The tension is also dispelled by the characters yelling the spell or move they were performing, which I have always found irritating even in traditional fantasy literature.  Magic that requires enunciation is, in my opinion, neutered of its power.  These are, of course, staples of manga and may not bother more seasoned readers. Regardless, the concept for Utopia’s Avenger is an interesting one.  The world is full of monsters, magic, and warriors, all within a narrative of a fallen hero who desperately wants to bring back the ideal kingdom he once constructed.  The fact that the hero must traverse the dangers of a clearly imperfect world in order to regain the idealism of a lost one ties Se-kwon’s story to a host of mythic tales about establishing utopias.  Utopia’s Avenger, however, separates itself by being about reacquisition, rather than initial attainment.  But it is also a story with a fascinating underlying question:  what exactly was so ideal about Yuldo if it was founded on the basis of a warrior’s heart?  Hopefully Se-kwon answers these questions in future volumes, allowing small details of the lost world to permeate the boundaries of the new, but broken one. If you’re a fan of series like Naruto, then Utopia’s Avenger is definitely for you.  If not, then give this one a try anyway.  It’s high-octane fantasy manga and worth giving a shot. To learn more about Utopia’s Avenger, you’ll have to do so on Amazon, since Tokypop has apparently shut down.  Sad.

Every time I attend a convention, I come back with a little something extra in my collections. For anime conventions, this usually means I leave with a lot of manga and candy. Such is the story of how I came into the possession of the first volume of Kiiro Yumi’s Library Wars (thanks MegaCon!).  Unfortunately, the journey did not end with the desired result.  While the premise of Library Wars is an amusing one, the narrative and world lack any sense of continuity, leaving a story that feels both strained and nonsensical.  Library Wars is a prime example of what manga looks like when it goes horribly wrong. Iku Kasahara is a soldier in training for the Library Forces who has always dreamed of becoming a member of the elite Library Defense Force.  In a world where the government actively seeks to censor anything it deems “threatening” to the body politic, the Library Forces defend libraries, books, and bookstores from the government and its minions.  Kasahara desperately wants to be more than a librarian, and when she gets recruited into the Library Defense Forces, to the surprise of her classmates, she sets out to fulfill her lifelong goal.  But the Library Defense Forces are harder than she ever expected, including the fact that she must work with a classmate who has no respect for her and a superior who may very well be the man who changed her life in a bookstore when she was little.  She’ll have to work hard to fit in, or risk flunking out for good. The premise of Library Wars is silly enough to be interesting.  Who wouldn’t love to live in a world where libraries are able to mobilized against the forces of censorship to make sure everyone can get access to new and exciting books?  What starts as an amusing concept, however, quickly falls apart as the holes in the narrative’s logic are exposed. For example, much of the first volume relies on the audience believing that the libraries actually have a reason for training people to be military-grade fighters who use high-powered rifles.  But there isn’t a single instance in the book that justifies this level of militarization.  In fact, the use of weapons is utterly pointless.  When books are pulled from shelves in bookstores by censorship police, the Library Forces are legally able to acquire the books for the library without any fuss from the police.  Likewise, no battles ever take place, whether fist or gun fights.  It’s never made clear that there is anything for the Library Forces to fear.  Yet the narrative constantly reminds us that there is a war on, despite no evidence in the imagery or the plot to prove this true. These logical inconsistencies are further pronounced by the main character, who is one of the most incompetent people ever granted access to military-grade weaponry.  Kasahara doesn’t pay attention in her classes, she is barely physically qualified to meet the standards of the Library Defense Forces, she is willfully ignorant, an incessant complainer, and unwilling respecting military authority.  She constantly bickers with her superiors, who treat her, rightly so, like a child, and only demonstrates her competence when subjected to embarrassing situations (ones which demonstrate to everyone that she’s completely useless). To make matters worse, her fellow recruit, Tezuka, is treated like a pariah, even though he is intelligent, physically capable, and otherwise a perfect candidate for the job.  Superiors tell him to lighten up or chastise him for looking down on Kasahara when she fails miserably (failures that demonstrate not that she is human, but that she is, again, incompetent).  Despite this, the Library Defense Forces expect to be taken seriously.  Why?  Because they’re the Library Defense Forces and Yumi has told us over and over again that they are the elite super soldiers of the Library Forces.  What is actually being demonstrated, however, is a complete lack of narrative cohesion.  We’re supposed to care about Kasahara, but I felt consistently put off by her character, let alone her presence in the Library Defense Forces.  Nothing about Kasahara made me want to root for her.  She is annoying, willfully incompetent (i.e., she has no personal, financial, or psychological circumstances which might put her at a disadvantage), and wholly uninteresting.  Her very presence, as such, unravels the logic of the world. As much as I wanted to like Library Wars, I ended up finding it repulsive.  I’m willing to accept silly premises, because that’s a staple of a lot of manga, but those premises have to at least be internally consistent.  Library Wars, however, makes no effort whatsoever to represent characters who are realistic, nor does it try to represent a world that makes sense.  Instead, Library Wars is a monumental failure. If you’re interested in checking out Library Wars for yourself, you can find it on Amazon or anywhere books are sold.