Tag Archives: Manga

Spirit Circle: A Comfortable Boredom

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“It’s hard for me to hate you,” Touko admits in Spirit Circle’s fifth volume. This isn’t a happy revelation. It’s spoken with bitterness, more of an accusation than an apology. And it’s easy to see why: hating Fuuta makes everything easier for Touko.

With Fuuta serving as the target of her rage, all of the injustices that have befallen Touko make a certain kind of sense. In our chaotic and frequently tragic world, it can be comforting to believe all of your problems are a result of some specific antagonist, some malevolent force that is specifically denying you the happiness you deserve. The idea of getting revenge for a grudge inherently implies some faith or hope in the order of things. When you were wronged, that was a deviation from how things are “supposed” to go, and you must “set things right” by punishing the person who caused this deviation. We cling to villains because the truth is much scarier – that life is simply chaotic without purpose, and bad things often happen to good people.

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Spirit Circle: What We Keep, and What We Leave Behind

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Initially, Kouko’s demand that Fuuta relive his past lives must have felt like a kind of divine punishment. Dragged out of his happy, oblivious adolescent experience, he has been forced to experience hardship after hardship, carrying the suffering of multiple lives on his own shoulders. Fuuta’s past lives don’t even possess the decency to merely lurk in memory; they surge upwards at the most inopportune times, tainting his current experiences with the stifling taste of old, unfulfilled grudges and regrets. Thanks to Kouko, Fuuta carries his past with him always, living with one foot dragging through a mist of half-forgotten sentiment.

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My Hero Academia, Volume 22 – Review

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My reviews of the My Hero Academia manga continue today, though I’m personally far more occupied dealing with the final challenges of preview week. To be honest, I’m mostly linking this review here as an excuse for a general check-in; it’s currently looking like new premieres will be more or less concluded by Sunday, so you can expect my Virtually Every First Episode Retrospective the Monday after that. That’s right, I am TIMELY motherfuckers, and will be back on the Current Projects circuit right after that. In the meantime, this volume of My Hero Academia was great, and I hope you enjoy my review!

My Hero Academia, Volume 22

One Piece – Volume 19

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We return to One Piece in the midst of its Alabasta arc, as we’re presumably nearing the climax of the overarching “Baroque Works” era. I haven’t actually read One Piece before, but given this final confrontation will involve squaring off against the actual leader of the Baroque Works pirates, and prompt either the fruition or destruction of the plan he’s been concocting for literally years, I have at least a certain degree of confidence that this arc will resolve the overall Baroque Works saga. So how does the view look from this point, as we near the conclusion of such a crucial conflict?

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Blue Flag – Volume 1

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The first thing that struck me about Blue Flag was its attention to detail in terms of how clothing hangs on the bodies of its characters. For a great deal of manga, those classic school uniforms might as well be attached to the characters themselves, moving neatly in sequence with their own movements. But in Blue Flag, the unique stresses and hanging edges of clothes that don’t quite fit you are always apparent. You can see where the cast’s clothes stretch, see the lines of bone beneath the fabric, and see how different characters either successfully transform their uniforms into an expression of self, or resign themselves to the shapelessness of clothes that never quite fit them.

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Planetes and the Great Man’s Shadow

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Planetes’ second volume describes the allure of conquering space in familiar terms, as it sets the stage for protagonist Hachimaki’s attempts to join the first manned voyage to Jupiter. Its synopsis opens with “in the history of space travel, many great men have forged the way into great frontiers, and many great men have died so that others may continue further into the great reaches of space.” It goes on to describe Hachimaki’s dream of traveling to Jupiter and joining this hallowed pantheon, but its frame of reference for history and society is already set by those first few words. Though Planetes is about many things, in its second volume, it could perhaps most clearly be described as a story about the mythology of the Great Man.

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The Dream and the Dark – Planetes, Volume 1

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The first image of Makoto Yukimura’s Planetes features protagonist Hachimaki in a bulky space suit, staring up at nothing, standing on nothing. The earth lies vast and silent beneath him, but his eyes are drawn upwards, towards something we cannot see. Without the earth in frame, the scene would feel almost peaceful; in light of its presence, Hachimaki seems terribly vulnerable, as if he’s suspended on a glass surface over an endless abyss. The shot is likely Planetes’ most defining image; a composition that simultaneously conveys the vastness of space, our fragility as we hang in its grasp, and the mundanity of turning this inspiring, terrifying expanse into your garbage removal workspace.

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Something Good Will Happen: Forgiveness and Spirit Circle

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From the beginning, Koko has clearly seen Spirit Circle as a kind of revenge narrative. She must get her revenge on Fuuta, and hopefully break the cycle in the process, but the revenge part at least is paramount. Of course, simply punishing this boy who doesn’t even know what he’s done wouldn’t be particularly satisfying – so first, she must make him understand the weight of all the suffering he’s caused her. It’s an instinct almost anyone can relate to; revenge is in large part about wanting someone else to understand and pay back the pain they inflicted on you, and if we could simply share our pain directly, then we might not lash out through other means.

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The Great and Terrible Cycle: Mizukami’s Spirit Circle (Volume One)

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Satoshi Mizukami has weathered a long and circuitous road on his way to western acclaim. Though his Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer has long been lauded as a unique, ambitious, and heartfelt twist on the shonen formula, it only received an official translation long after its release, and never received an anime adaptation. Most recently, his Planet With demonstrated both the power and limitations of translating Mizukami’s work to animation, but without that translating into anything approaching wide appeal (in spite of my best efforts). And nestled between those two works, we find the brief, beautiful, and utterly characteristic Spirit Circle.

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One Piece – Volume 18

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There are scattered moments within One Piece that seem to embody the romance of the high seas; the mysteries of the ocean, the scale of its vast movements, the ways we can come to understand it so well it feels like an old friend. Nami excels at facilitating these moments, as her navigator’s knowledge and generally contemplative personality tend to make her most attuned to the ocean’s sway. The scene early in chapter eighteen, where Nami muses on the nature of underwater vents, doesn’t impact our ongoing narrative in any way, and would be skipped in a point-to-point summary of this arc’s events. Nonetheless, it’s a beautiful moment that naturally embodies the wonder of the ocean, and highlights how One Piece is far more than a straightforward action tableau. I appreciate that Oda consistently offers these little tonal oases, these beautiful moments that are only their own reward.

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