And a Happy New Year

It’s the last day of a surprisingly eventful 2023 and I have revived this blog just long enough to share that I wrote about some of my favorite reads this year over on my tumblr.

My favorite new reads of 2023 discusses manga and light novels that I first picked up this year, while my favorite continuing reads of 2023 discusses manga and light novels that I started and continued reading this year.

As ever, thank you for reading my little ramblings about my beloved comic books, and may we all have a surprisingly wonderful 2024!

A Hiatus

And with the close of 2022 comes a break for me.

When I started this blog, I thought it would fizzle out within a matter of months. My attention would wane, perhaps, or my reading focus would turn away from manga. I was proud when I managed to keep it up for a full year and then a second and third. I am extremely proud that I’ve managed to keep my writing project, whipped up on a whim in the middle of the night one December, going for four whole years.

But as may be clear to anyone who’s been reading my posts of late, my workload has become increasingly incompatible with writing on anything like a regular basis, and I don’t expect it to decrease any time soon. In fact, I only expect it to increase as I work on some personal and professional goals in the coming months.

And so, jess in books will be going on indefinite hiatus.

Thank you to everyone who subscribed, who liked a post or two, or just popped in for a bit of a browse! I’ve greatly enjoyed my time here in my tiny corner of the internet, rambling on about stuff I love a little more each day, and I hope you have too.

2022 in Review: A Farewell (?) to Yamashita

The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window, Tomoko Yamashita
SuBLime, 2015-2022

White Notepad, Tomoko Yamashita
MangaPlaza, 2022

Entre les lignes, Tomoko Yamashita
Kana, 2021-

If I didn’t write about Tomoko Yamashita’s work at least once during my year in review, I’d feel a bit at sea. She’s my favorite mangaka for the kinds of stories she tells, the ways she tells them, and the ways she draws them, and I was lucky enough this year to get to read three different titles from her.

The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window, my beloved spooky not-bl bl title, concluded its English run this spring with volume 10, and I already miss looking forward to Mikado and Hiyakawa slowly working out their very unusual relationship. My sadness was alleviated ever so slightly by White Notepad, the only title I would ever purchase on MangaPlaza. About a teenage girl and a middle-aged man who meet a year after they mysteriously switch bodies and grapple with questions of identity, it’s a fascinating and ever so slightly eerie read that I wish could get more attention — and a release from someone besides MangaPlaza.

Most of the time, I would stop here and lament the lack of my favorite mangaka in English. That is, after all, what I did when I finally ran out of Natsume Ono’s then-translated work in 2019. But this year, I brushed off my extremely rusty high school French (and my extremely helpful translation app) and tried, painfully slowly, to read Entre les lignes, the French translation of Yamashita’s current series about a 35 year old novelist trying to figure out how to live with her orphaned teenage niece, Ikoku Nikki. It’s no substitute for an English release, dragging myself through a book in a language I can only barely read. But reading Entre les lignes this year has been such a rewarding experience and I’m so glad that I can at least glimpse some of Yamashita’s thoughtful character work despite my lack of fluency.

So with the end of my 2022 in Review, I’m saying farewell to Tomoko Yamashita’s work in English, since I have no idea if I’ll ever see any more. But I’m so grateful that I can still have Entre les lignes in my life, no matter how difficult it is to read.

(But seriously, will someone please license Ikoku Nikki in English now?)

2022 in Review

2022 in Review: Supernaturality

Stigmata, Hidebu Takahashi
futekiya, 2022

I fell off reading bl a bit this year. There’s still a metric ton of it on my reading list, of course, but I’d been feeling a bit less than interested in a lot of the new offerings this year from a lot of publishers. I enjoy a good romance, but when all the storylines start to feel like they’re being photocopied from each other, I have to find something else to read.

But fortunately, futekiya brought me Stigmata, a delightful supernatural detective title from Hidebu Takahashi, whose stories could never feel photocopied from something else. After all, who else would open a slow burn romance between a police detective and his colleague who physically experiences the wounds of murder victims in a morgue?

Hidebu Takahashi’s work has long been of interest to me — Yuki and Matsu is a stellar series and one that I’ve reread multiple times — but it’s a difficult sell for English-speaking audiences. The subject matter is often a bit off-kilter from your typical bl, and the art style, while stunning, doesn’t easily lend itself to gracefully beautiful characters. Stigmata falls right in line with that. Originally started in a seinen magazine before switching to a bl magazine for this sequel series (it was, by Takahashi’s own admission, too gay for its original serialization), it has an astonishing amount of blood, a deeply sympathetic significant female character, and a thoughtful examination of bi- and pansexuality. It’s beautifully done, but certainly not the most popular choice for anyone looking to put out bl in English.

In a year when I’d felt a little put off by the sameness of new bl options available to me, Stigmata is memorable for being so much itself. I deeply hope that we’ll get more of Hidebu Takahashi’s unique voice in English in 2023… and dare I even hope for something in print?

2022 in Review

2022 in Review: The Everyday Surprise

Kowloon Generic Romance, Jun Mayuzuki
Yen Press, 2022-

Let’s Go Karaoke!, Yama Wayama
Yen Press, 2022

I’ve talked so many times about how much of a sucker I am for period pieces; the clothes (ooh!), the different social expectations (ah!), the different storylines that just aren’t feasible with a contemporary setting (swoon!). I enjoy them for the effort that goes into giving me something that’s just different from the everyday. But what about contemporary stories that manage to do the same?

This year, Yen Press brought me so many delightful new series, from Asumiko Nakamura’s Tales of the Kingdom to Marimo Ragawa’s New York, New York to Shinya Shima’s Lost Lad London, spanning all kinds of times and places. But what brought me some of the biggest surprises were Jun Mayuzuki’s Kowloon Generic Romance and Yama Wayama’s Let’s Go Karaoke!.

The first volume of Kowloon Generic Romance, set in Kowloon Walled City in a time that could be now or in the past or even the not-so-distant future, seems ostensibly like a slice of life story featuring a woman working in a real estate office and tussling with her male coworker who she maybe kinda likes. But the sudden recontextualization of everything that came before at the end of the volume blew my mind in the best way. Let’s Go Karaoke!, on the other hand, wore its weird little heart on its sleeve from day one, dragging a normal Tokyo middle school choir boy into the world of singing yakuza who desperately needed tutoring from a (teenage) expert. It offered me a fun and funny take on yakuza tropes with Wayama’s off-kilter humor while also giving me a glimpse of Wayama’s take on bl.

Stories about the everyday don’t have to just be everyday stories. Sometimes they can use the mundane as a springboard to tell excitingly different stories. This year, I read a few titles that managed that, but Kowloon Generic Romance and Let’s Go Karaoke! especially shone with distinctiveness.

2022 in Review

2022 in Review: A Little More Yuri?

SHWD, sono.N
Seven Seas, 2022-

Goodbye, My Rose Garden, Dr. Pepperco
Seven Seas, 2022

This year has been a fantastic year for me in terms of finding yuri titles I really enjoyed. There was the debut of Sakaomi Yuzaki’s lovely manga about two neighbors slowly falling for each other over food, She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat, and there were two (!) titles from Sal Jiang with coworker romances in various degrees of conflict – Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko and Black and White. While I could’ve waxed poetic about any of these everyday life titles, I especially loved two series about places that are decidedly not contemporary Japan: sono.N’s SHWD and Dr. Pepperco’s Goodbye, My Rose Garden.

SHWD, about a seriously buff pair of coworkers fighting leftover biological weapons in a future post-war Tokyo, and Goodbye, My Rose Garden, about a Japanese woman who goes to early 1900s England to become a novelist and takes a job as a lady’s maid for a wealthy Englishwoman who begs her to kill her, could hardly be more different. Even the art styles are wildly disparate, with sono.N leaning more towards muscle fetish and Dr. Pepperco towards the beautiful slim youthfulness so common in yuri in English. But I love stories that are set outside the present day, and both of these take full advantage of their non-contemporary settings to give me a good romance between characters who come from two very different places.

2022 is definitely my personal year of yuri, with titles of interest coming at me left and right, and I have loved every single minute of it. But what I’ve longed for most from yuri in English are titles that make me feel the same way bl does, scratching the right story itch with the right art. Contemporary slice of life romances are fun, but SHWD and Goodbye, My Rose Garden really delve into something outside the here and now, and that is why they’re two of my most memorable yuri titles in 2022.

2022 in Review

2022 in Review: A Sparkling Gem in Text

The Case Files of Jeweler Richard (novels), Nanako Tsujimura
Seven Seas, 2022-

When Seven Seas first announced the license for the manga adaptation of the Case Files of Jeweler Richard novels, I assumed that would be all that we’d get of this series. I adored the anime, enough to beg for the novels on Seven Seas’ licensing surveys despite my lack of hope in getting them. The Jeweler Richard novels aren’t light novels – despite illustrator Utako Yukihiro being credited on the cover, there are no illustrations inside – and even the light novel scene isn’t overflowing with titles about two men working at an everyday shop in Tokyo. I was content (more or less) with getting Mika Akatsuki’s excellent manga adaptation of Seigi and Richard’s time together in Jewelry Etranger, even if it, like the anime, didn’t fully adapt the novels.

But actually getting the novels in English has been amazing.

A layer of queerness runs all through Jeweler Richard, both from characters directly talking about their sexuality and attractions and from characters’ interactions and thoughts. It’s present in the anime (enough to send me straight to writing fanfiction) and even more so in the manga, but Seigi’s breathless narration in the novels is difficult to duplicate in any other format. I’ve long thought of the story as a beautiful slow development of a complex relationship between two men who are both guarded for very good reason, and three novels in, it’s clear that that is exactly what it is. Is it romantic? Is it platonic? Does it even matter? Queerness is so multifaceted and it’s rare to find a story that wants to quietly explore different ways that people can be queer, including asexuality, and how society impacts them.

No matter how the story had actually played out, the Case Files of Jeweler Richard novels were always going to be memorable for me because of how much I loved the anime, but I’m so delighted that the elements I already enjoyed in the anime are even more present in the original text. Not only is Jeweler Richard a wonderful series about humanity, played out in stories of gemstones, but it’s a warm, welcoming series for me as a queer reader who wants more than just romance.

2022 in Review

2022 in Review: Girls in Charge

Basara, Yumi Tamura
Viz, 2003-2008

Chihayafuru, Yuki Suetsugu
Kodansha, 2017-

In 2021, I made a conscious effort to pick up more shoujo and josei titles, especially older ones, in the interest of mixing up my reading a little more. As much as I love bl, my reading lists were starting to skew a little too far towards nothing but that and I need variety in my life. Last year, I had a lot of success with Banana Fish and Nana, so why not add a few more series to my pile this year?

And so I fell head over heels for both Basara and Chihayafuru.

Truly, these two series have almost nothing in common — one’s a future post-apocalyptic story about a teenage girl unexpectedly thrust into the position of revolutionary leader against feuding kings, one’s a contemporary story about a teenage girl striving to be the top female player in a niche Japanese competitive card game. But even if the series’ particular battles are worlds apart from each other, what they do share is characters with intense passions connecting to others and learning from their strengths. Character interactions are my life as a reader and I have an immense fondness for characters whose own unrealized strength is an ability to draw other people to them. Sarasa and Chihaya are both such determined people even in the face of personal adversity, I can’t help but love them the way the other characters around them do. Being able to follow them through so many ups and downs, whether small scale or large, through such long series this year has been a delight.

I’ve been very pleased with my efforts to diversify my reading list so far, but this year, I’m especially pleased that doing so brought me Basara and Chihayafuru. 2022 would’ve been sadder without Sarasa and Chihaya’s determination to enjoy, and I’m glad I’ll still have many more volumes from both series to keep me company in 2023.

2022 in Review

2022 in Review: In Print?!

The Song of Yoru & Asa, Harada
Kuma, 2022

Loved Circus, Nemui Asada
Tokyopop, 2022

I keep a running list of manga I want to see licensed in English on my phone. Thus far, my wishlist has stayed mostly just a wishlist because (as I well know) my taste in manga is pretty niche. Even in bl, an area that has seen a growing amount of diversity in licensing over the last few years with the rise of digital services, I’m mostly left to long for licenses from my beloved weirdo mangaka who don’t write the same cookie-cutter romance and/or porn stories as everyone else. But imagine my surprise when not one but two artists with a reputation for being less than traditionally marketable got their first print releases in English this year.

Despite being much in demand by a certain segment of bl fandom, Harada’s work is a bit difficult content-wise for a lot of English publishers. While Renta and futekiya had brought some of their works over digitally, it wasn’t until Kuma put out The Song of Yoru & Asa this year that English readers finally got Harada in print. Yoru & Asa certainly isn’t an easy read – this pair of musicians falling in love has, at best, a questionably consensual start and absolutely a violent continuation – but for this Harada fan, it made my year to be able to hold both it and its sequel in my hands. Yoru & Asa is not for everyone, to put it mildly, but it’s a distinctive story from a distinctive voice.

Nemui Asada too had netted a couple of digital-only releases courtesy of futekiya and Media Do, and the fascinating mix of humor and discomfort in those stories had me convinced that it would be unlikely that anyone would pick up Asada’s work in print. Sure, I love weird uncomfortable romances, but would a broader audience? Tokyopop gambled on yes and picked up Loved Circus, about a man who attempts suicide after getting caught up with debt courtesy of a bar hostess and wakes up to find himself in a gay brothel being offered a job. Despite its premise, it’s surprisingly sweet and I hope it’s a signal that more publishers are interested in picking up Asada’s work.

I may still be left hoping on the vast majority of my manga license wishlist. But this year, Loved Circus and The Song of Yoru & Asa are memorable for being titles I never even thought I could wish for in the first place.

2022 in Review

2022 in Review

Somehow I’ve made it to my fifth Year in Review. Where has the time gone?

2022 has brought more manga and light novels to my reading list than ever before, with all kinds of interesting series both new and old making their way to my hands. As much as I still wish for my favorite mangaka to get more titles licensed in English, it’s really an exciting time to be involved in this hobby with all the possibilities in the air. And 2023 is right on the horizon with even more books to offer!

There were so many titles I enjoyed this year, in fact, that it was difficult to narrow them all down for this Year in Review. But what an excellent problem to have, truly. After a great deal of contemplation, here are the 2022 titles in review:

Basara, Yumi Tamura
The Case Files of Jeweler Richard (novels), Nanako Tsujimura
Chihayafuru, Yuki Suetsugu
Entre les lignes, Tomoko Yamashita
Goodbye, My Rose Garden, Dr. Pepperco
Kowloon Generic Romance, Jun Mayuzuki
Let’s Go Karaoke!, Yama Wayama
Loved Circus, Nemui Asada
The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window, Tomoko Yamashita
SHWD, sono.N
The Song of Yoru & Asa, Harada
Stigmata, Hidebu Takahashi
White Notepad, Tomoko Yamashita