FOUR SHOJO STORIES, featuring stories by Keiko Nishi, Shio Sato, & Moto Hagio. First published in 1975-1989, and first published in North America in 1996.
PLOT:
This short story collection covers tales of young girls dealing with family drama and supernatural forces, a group of various children trapped on a spaceship trying to solve a mystery, a future traveler whose travels nearly end in disaster, and a husband dealing with his faltering marriage in the middle of an earthquake.
STORY:
Four Shojo Stories is one of the first attempt to bring shojo manga to the American masses. This collection's approach was to treat these stories as a sort of prestige release, aimed at an older audience and divided fairly evenly between fairly down-to-earth sentimental stories and science fiction. I don't know if it's a combination that works all that well together as an anthology, but it does represent a rare glimpse at shojo artists that were seldom (if ever) published in English again.
Two of the four stories here are by Keiko Nishi, whose presence is a little confusing as she's largely recognized as a josei mangaka. That being said, her stories are the ones that will feel the closer to what modern readers would recognize as shojo manga. "The Promise" takes a disaffected girl running away from her (soon-to-be) step-family and gives it a supernatural twist. The nature of said twist is fairly easy to guess, but it's still fairly effective and sweet in a low-key sort of way. "Since You've Been Gone" is much more mature in perspective, a story of a troubled married couple who are brought back together by an earthquake and a coin purse. It's quiet and sad, but manages to end on a hopeful
Meanwhile, Shio Sato's "The Changeling" is more of a speculative sci-fi story, something in the vein of Star Trek. It too is something of a mystery, as an observer from Earth visits a terraformed planet and tries to uncover the truth behind a revolution that took place 70 years ago. It's interesting stuff, but if it suffers from anything it's that it's too talkative for its own good. Sato would have done better to show more of what was going on versus having others explain it, as doing so would have done wonders for building the mood of the piece. That being said, the twist is effective and reminiscent of the glory days of sci-fi.
The best-known of these stories is easily "They Were 11," marking the first (but far from the last) time where Rachel Thorn would serve as champion for the works of legendary shojo mangaka Moto Hagio. The premise is a sci-fi mystery, where a team of young people have to work together to survive in space while investigating the mystery of what appears to be an extra person in their 10-person team. The mystery itself is often relegated to the background, but she still keeps up a sense of tension by ramping up the sense of competition and mistrust between them. All of them need to work together to pass this practical test, but they also have to come to terms with their own personal biases and goals to do so, as well as figure the mystery behind the ship and the mysterious eleventh person.
Hagio also uses the story to explore some genderqueer themes, thanks to team member Frol. Frol comes from a world where everyone is born genderless, but only the eldest child of any given family can become men. Frol very strongly identifies as male and hopes to win this competition in the hopes of earning the right to change their sex as they see fit. That being said, she doesn't handle it with total sensitivity. There's a running gag of sorts where Frol is misgendered by the rest of the crew and Frol reacts angrily. There's also the fact that even though our ostensible protagonist, Tadathos, does end up in a romance with Frol, it comes with the implication that Frol will eventually become a woman, turning what could have been a shockingly progressive romance into a somewhat depressingly heteronormative one. Still, it's easily the most complete and complex of the featured stories and it's easy to see why it's remembered even now.
That being said, it's easy to see why this collection did not catch on with contemporary audiences. The combination of quiet sentiment and high-brow sci-fi feels more reflective of the editor's taste than anything else, and it's debatable how well it works as an anthology considering these works are separated by many years. That's not even getting into the fact that Viz released this collection without getting all the necessary permissions, causing it to be pulled from the market entirely.
Sadly, the shojo manga that would catch on just a year or two later would be markedly different from this book. It was brighter, sparklier, brimming with more contemporary art styles and explicitly targeted towards teenage girls, and it would be many years before anyone would attempt to bring over older, more prestigious works like this again.
ART:
While these stories span roughly over a decade, you can see a sort of artistic evolution through them. With Hagio's story, you see 1970s shojo in full-flourish. While Hagio's style was never quite as florid (both literally and figuratively) as contemporaries like Keiko Takemiya or Riyoko Ikeda, there's a languid, dreamy quality to her panels that makes for an interesting contrast with the sci-fi setting.
Sato came from the generation of mangaka that came immediately after the likes of Magnificient Forty-Niners like Hagio - in fact, Sato got her start as an assistant for Hagio and Takemiya. You can definitely see Hagio's influence in her character design, but visually she is much more sedate and planative. Meanwhile, Nishi's works are removed from the rest by the better part of a decade, and as such take much more from the more angular, fashionable styles one was seeing in 1980s shojo and josei manga.
PRESENTATION:
There's a brief essay at the beginning from Rachel Thorn, giving what was then necessary context not just for the featured artists, but shojo manga as a whole.
RATING:
While "They Were 11" remains the standout piece, Four Shojo Stories is a thoughtful and beautiful collection of works. While it was not appreciated at the time of its original release, it has aged beautifully. Fans of old-school shojo would do well to hunt this one down, cost be damned.
This book was published by Viz. It is currently out of print.
No comments:
Post a Comment