Shojo Beat

Publisher
Viz
Country of origin
Japan
Year
2005

Shojo Beat V. 1, Issue 6

By David Rasmussen
15th Jan 06

For the past few years you’ve been watching the success of VIZ’s “Shonen Jump”, the title that excels with titles you might be tired of. Titles like Yu-Gi-Oh (It’s time to d-d-d-d-d-d-duel!), Dragonball Z (Bhleahhhhhh -- (hair blows up and turns blonde) --- ahhhhhblah!), Naruto (hello naked female illusion!), One Piece (sorry, BANDAI, but the game is not the best), etc. And while that’s all well and good, yes, it’s also seen this and done that to excess. Where’s the Shoujo stuff!
If you know me by now then you know I am a fan of the Shoujo way, and that means I am most very disappointed that VIZ was not doing anything for the Shoujo fans… until now. VIZ has finally rolled out a read for the Shoujo fan, and I couldn’t be happier about it… unless the title sucks.

Sporting 222 pages of Shoujo goodness, Shoujo Beat Volume 1 Issue #6 finally does what Shonen Jump should have done, by offering up a reading experience new and fresh and not partially capitolizing on already established stuff like Yu-Gi-Oh and Dragonball Z, or soon to be exploited on TV stuff like One Piece & Naruto… which is kind of sad since it means there is zilch in terms of honest to goodness real Shoujo content to be proud of on TV these days, which sucks.
The title sports a nice variety of reads. From romantic comedy to horror, period drama to drama and even sports related shoujo, there’s something here for everyone. But what did I think of the reads? Let’s see…

Absolute Boyfriend
Stop me if you heard this one before, and you probably did but wait until I‘m done before you stop me.
Riiko hasn’t the best of luck with boys, in fact you could say she’s an unfortunate soul when it comes to love (your typical ailment of your main character soon to have more love problems than Samuel Alito has Supreme Court nomination problems). But that, as you might have guessed, is about to change when she meets a weirdo in a funny hat (looks like he mugged the funny talking Australian guy who flew the plane in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome for his hat) who proclaims to be a salesman, and somehow she ends up being stuck with a prettyboy android who wants to learn about girls! Yeah, and I bet there’s no return policy with this “boytoy” either! Well, she’s going to regret ever wanting to be straight each and every day of her life as long as he’s there, or so it seems, since he seems to do nothing but cause her to look distressed (and by now you should know the dopey look female characters have on their faces when they‘re “distressed“).

So you can now kiss innovation goodbye (ala how Resident Evil : Outbreak File #2 kissed innovation goodbye post Resident Evil 4), and say hello cliché. Once she agrees to “teach” him about girls (which he learns about through the special “mood ring” he wears), and he ends up going to her school? Well, out goes the expectation of originality and -- where are the cliché? Send in the cliché… oh, don’t bother, they’re already here… at this point the series becomes a long parade of cliché that you probably seen before.
One hot clueless guy who seems to be absolutely perfect which turns him into a girl magnet, drawing the wrath of the boys who become hateful of him for being such a girl magnet (but being so clueless about it all) while he tries to figure out what makes girls tick? Yeah, I haven’t seen that before… not.
It’s kind of sad really… no, wait, it’s VERY sad when what could have been something new becomes a sad exercise in cliché that drags more than draws. I am pretty certain most of the “happenings” in this issue’s story is something I’ve seen done before (sometimes in reverse with the hapless victim being male and the clueless hottie being female), so I kind of miss the appeal of Absolute Boyfriend. If you read this you’ll probably feel a sense of déjà vu, and that should make sense since I’m sure you’ve seen this all before which is probably the truth. So much for this being Absolute anything.

Godchild
What the hell is a retched horror title with gore and disgusting visuals doing in a book that proclaims to be “MANGA from the HEART”?!? What!?! Did somebody tempoarily remove the heart for this story?!? Yes there is some heart here, but if you can stand finding the heart admist the disturbing images and story then you’re a far stronger soul than I am. Anyway as you know from previous reviews I’m not the happiest camper when it comes to the horror genre, and so far the only company I’ve given any break to on that is Dark Horse (‘cause I’ve had only praise for their two big horror titles, Hellsing & The Ring), and this hasn’t changed my mind about my dislike of horror one bit. This is a read of disturbing people doing disturbing things (hacking the eyes out of girl’s heads in this case) with an evil man who looks like an evil woman at the heart of this! Yuck! And what’s worse is that the girly man is actually based on a real disturbing individual who did real disturbing things (though the image of the real person didn‘t look as much of a girly man as the character based on the real person)… So anyway why he looks like he’s two steps shy from wrapping up his sex change surgerys of his dreams and becoming a she is something only the creator knows for certain about… I think.

Kaze Hikaru
Speaking of cliché, let’s have a title set in a samurai period about a girl who disguises herself as a guy for some reason or another, and then let’s see how freaked she’ll get when her pals take her to her first brothel and her first encounter with a mature woman in a sexual situation! Yeah… she’ll dodge it for sure and nothing will happen… or she’ll become a lesbian… one or ther other or something will happen. I’m pretty certain though her falling in love with a mature woman and carrying on a forbidden love with her would probably not be the choice here… oh, well.

Crimson Hero
Sports! Yeah, you don’t get many female powered sports reads, but when you do (like Princess Nine for instance) you get something worth recommending. This happens to be one of those recommended reads!
So (bleep) to Free on Demand! Yeah. As you know I was (last year) going to do more Free on Demand reviews but the channel (bleep)ed out and I couldn’t do it… nothing’s changed. Basically the channel is off more times than it’s on and so it’s not the most reliable for viewing. Damn shame too because they were showing the first volume of episodes from Princess Nine (subtitled w/original Japanese dialogue) and I really wanted to catch that… darn. But enough about that, let’s talk about something else… like this read!

Volleyball is as unto life itself for Nobara Sumiyoshi. She lives it, breathes it, takes it out for a walk and can talk rings around the sports announcers on ESPN when it comes to volleyball related news (and while she‘s at it she can probably also dance rings around the ESPN sports announcer who was recently on that blasphemy of American Idol spinoff hell known as “Dancing With The Stars“… one of the dozen bastard children of television spawned to milk money from people who “liked“ American Idol… bleah).
But back to Nobara. She is one hot player, who smokes when she steps on the court too because she is one of the brightest up and coming stars of the sport with professional aspirations in her future if she can help it. Too bad her family, on the other hand, can’t help but want to meddle in her affairs and derail her sports aspirations for some generic pointless drive your daughter away because you proclaim you love her future.
In order to protect her dreams of professional stardom, and because you saw this set-up coming from the above statement, she is forced to leave home (you saw that one coming didn’t you) and get a job at the Crimson Field High School boys’ volleyball team dorm.

As of this story she’s on her way to forming a girl’s volleyball club… that’s the same as an actual team, right? Well, all she has to do with her newly formed team is score a point on the boys and their dream is one step closer to reality… if they win, however, their dreams die with them. That might seem like an easy thing but considering the boys are top in their game and hot in their own right it’s not going to be easy.
Yes, Nobara does beat the odds and lays down the necessary point, but not before she’s spiked in the head by one of the boys which brings forth the blood. Yeah, real jerk right? Hmm, not so fast. Of course it does look like this one guy is the heavy and all… unless you were working to make yourself the “bad guy” to draw out support for the newbie girl’s team, even going so far as to be a secret “supporter” of the team by getting the “broadcast club” to get the word out to root out members for the girl’s team.
But that is only the beginning… of a good read. If you can go check out the first Graphic Novel which is out now, if it is as solid as this taste in this book I think we have ourselves a winner in the sports dept.

Baby & Me
Oh-kay, let me see if I got this straight. Takuya Enoki’s life has not been the best ever since his mom passed away. He’s only 11 but he’s quickly found life thrust upon him at full throttle when he becomes the only one really capable of taking care of his baby bro Minoru, what with dad being the bread winner and gone most of the live long day. Before this issue, as a matter of fact, Takuya was invited to a christmas party thrown by one of his classmates (rich fellow) only to feel the need to be at home and celebrate with his family (which he does). But now it looks like new problems has risen in his life in the form of… chain mail?

Seems somebody is leaving the gift that keeps on giving grief in the Japanese form of a chain letter known as… wait for it… LETTERS OF MISFORTUNE! And yes, they are misfortunate, especially since Takuya’s little bro slips and falls down when he steps on one of these “letters” and loses his footing… don’t worry, no underaged plot device child characters were harmed in the making of said scene.
So what’s up with these… (dah dah dah dah) … LETTERS OF MISFORTUNE! Seems Takuya has been marked for “termination” from a dude who falls in and out of love faster than the President falls in and out of favor with the public. Seems he is looking for love in all the… well… I’d say right places but it’s not his fault really, he’s nice enough and not a bad dude… until now since he’s been driven insane from loneliness… well, the girls keep giving the same names as to who they are really in love with and (yes) one of those names dropped by would be love interests happen to be our man Enoki. Obviously it’s driven this desperate Romeo over the edge and he’s sending LETTERS OF MISFORTUNE to break Enoki… then he snaps and challenges him to a fight and tries to beat him up, only no fight happens and they come to terms.
Eh… I don’t know what this has to do with heart (other than Takuya’s love and devotion to his little bro) but… I guess it has heart… somewhere. I just don’t know where. Maybe it’s just me.

Nana
Yea! The second title of the six that I actually liked! Cool!
From Ai Yazawa… didn’t I review something from Ai Yazawa before? I can’t remember… anyway from Ai Yazawa comes Nana, the story of an enthusiastic but rather insecure girl who still has lots of growing up to do… right in front of us, no less! In order to mature (and to create a life for herself that doesn’t revolve around the shoujo IDIC of “romance over everything“) she has gone city and moved to Tokyo and is now rooming with a strong independent type named Nana… no, really, she’s a Nana too. Nana Osaki to be precise. Anyway Nana Komatsu (the star, nicknamed Hachi -- Hachi… she’s the grandmother of Hachi from Planetes…not) is just getting into her new life. She has a new job, and to celebrate she just bought the CD to her favorite band Trapnest without knowing that the group’s bad boy sex symbol used to be her new roomie’s old boyfriend. Life’s weird that way, isn’t it.

As the story opens we find Hachi… the female one who doesn’t collect space debris for a living and lives on the Earth… seems to believe that she is late for her first day of work, and she completely freaks out. Seems she isn’t late, it’s just that her “new” alarm clock died a premature death via being (bleep)y.

Shoujo Beat Breakdown 1 dash 6
What’s Hot?
Two reads have got me hopped up about this title. Without a doubt recommended for your reading consideration I present to you Crimson Hero (volleyball girls) and Nana (life coming at you at the speed of… well… life). These two are the highlight reads of the title, and something I think will be the big draw for readers considering checking out this new anthology from VIZ. Anyway if you are tired of the content of Shonen Jump, and you’d rather have something new and fresh to read that isn’t the same old same old then you should seriously consider checking out Shojo (Shoujo) Beat. Shoujo is not just for girls, you know, and this title proves it… that and Shoujo has always enjoyed a strong male readership so go figure.

What’s Not?
However while I have only praise for two of the six titles… the other four reads don’t do much for me. That and the title seems to be presently fixated on talking up this “Kamikaze Girls” thing. This book has a manga preview, last book (or previously) talked about a Kamikaze Girls movie, and next book will sport a novel preview… oh-kay, I get it, the Editors at Shoujo Beat love Kamikaze Girls, and it shows… enough!
As for the rest? Absolute Boyfriend was Absolute Cliché in my opinion. Godchild was too disturbing to read. Kaze Hikaru didn’t do anything for me, and I’m still not sure where Baby & Me fits into the concept of “MANGA from the HEART”. Still, I did like two of the six reads so that’s somethinig.

Moments to Remember?
Without a doubt it’s Crimson Hero and Nana, those I remembered the most.

What to Ignore?
I’d like to ignore how a title that proclaims to be “from the HEART” has something that seems to be horror in it… horror is from the heart? I did not know that.
Next I’d like to ignore how the Editors occasionally pander their own publication on the bottom of some of the pages. Yes, I saw that done in Shonen Jump and it wasn’t even remotely amusing then. People? Grow up. Oh, examples… let’s see…
- Absolute Boyfriend. On a page with an awkward silence moment the caption “Fill in your awkward silences with Shoujo Beat manga!”… yeah, sure.
- On the bright side nobody tried to wield the lame wit during Godchild, since attempts to make light of the gore and disturbing visuals would have made whoever wrote it seem like a dumbass.
- To their credit there’s no captions beneath Crimson Hero, and only a few beneath Kaze Hikaru.
- Prior to little Minoru’s falling incident in Baby & Me, this caption… “Rise and shine with Shoujo Beat manga!”… thankfully the next caption didn’t read “Fall in with Shoujo Beat manga!”… or something even worse. Yes, captolizing on the “humor” of falling toddlers with catchy self promoting phrases isn’t funny.
- Nana. “Shoujo Beat is like, so awesome!”… oh-kay, don’t go Valley Girl on me now whoever wrote this!
It’s not rampant, mind you… they don’t do this mindless self promoting prattle page after page after page like Shonen Jump did (when I read it), but still the “joke” is old and let’s never do it again. Think we can do that? Please? It’d be ever so nice. Use the bottom of the page for more cultural notes and less self glorification why don’t you!

Overall?
Even at a 1 to 2 ratio of favorite to not so favorite reads I still think that Shoujo Beat is worth checking out.
Look, it’s not the same old same old that you probably are sick of with Shonen Jump, and it has some fresh shoujo to read even if only two of them is something I myself can get behind and praise without limit. You might like Kaze Hikaru or Baby & Me, heck you might even love Absolute Boyfriend and… heaven forbid… Godchild, but I think the best of this title is still Crimson Hero and Nana.
Whatever. It’s different, it’s new, it has promising reads… all two of them… and if you can find it you should check it out. I did, and I liked… 33% of it. Well, it’s better than nothing.

-- David Rasmussen 15th Jan 06