Rocket Bomber - Manga Moveable Feast

Having expressed some regret at being late to the SV&R MMF, first out of the gate this time is Garrett Albright of Yen Plus Info:

“No, Emma is the personal maid of Kelly Stonwar, an elderly retired widow who plays something of a mother figure to the orphaned Emma after taking her in. Her maid frock is modest and simple, and she has yet to bare so much as an ankle – I’m at a loss as to why CMX slapped a “Teen Plus” rating on the back cover. And unlike Black Butler, the domestic servant in question is wholly human and spends her day cooking and cleaning rather than fighting bandits and solving mysteries.

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Furthermore, I felt Emma herself as a character was a more interesting element of the comic than the romance between her and William. What does that mean when the story is supposed to be a romance? The whole is lesser than the sum of its parts.”

Click here for the archive of all Emma Manga Moveable Feast links

The nominations are over and the votes are in: Yuki Urushibara’s Mushishi will be the topic for the next Manga Moveable Feast.

Most promisingly, there is another blogger waiting in the wings to host the April event, but I won’t spill the beans until details are finalized and he/she has the opportunity to make their own announcement.

Mushishi is another fairly substantial series: also 10 vols. (2000-2007, Del Rey) and also with an anime adaptation (26 eps, licensed by Funimation) but I think this is just a coincidence; the second place finisher was Ai Yazawa’s Paradise Kiss (5 vols., 2000-2004, Tokyopop) and three one-shots & other shorter series made up the bulk of the remaining nominations.

I leave it to our next host to determine the best way to select the May MMF (Though my vote may just go to Paradise Kiss) — but my experience in this process leads me to suggest combining the nomination and voting into a single post: perhaps instead of a separate poll, I should have just counted the comments as votes?

From the Publisher, CMX:

Meticulously researched and beautifully rendered, EMMA is a beloved, award-winning series that was adapted into an acclaimed anime series in Japan. In Victorian-era England, a young girl is rescued from a life of destitution and raised to become a proper British maid. Emma meets William, the eldest son of a wealthy family, and immediately falls in love with him. William shares her feelings, but the strict rules of their society prevent their relationship from ever coming out in the open. Traditional class distinctions and rich, historical details provide the backdrop for this appealing romance.

Emma is a 10 volume manga series by Kaoru Mori, who also wrote the similar one-volume Shirley manga (also licensed by CMX) and the currently ongoing Otoyomegatari. Emma was published in Japan by Enterbrain, which first serialized the story from Jan. 2002 to May 2006 in the monthly Comic Beam (described on Wikipedia as a seinen manga collection, that is to say, one who’s target audience is usually young men, aged 18-20, though the unknown Wikipedia author also states “Its small but loyal readership is regarded as consisting largely of a hard core of otaku, art students, and manga-literate hipsters.” Comic Beam was also home to Bambi and Her Pink Gun, Desert Punk, King of Thorn, and Junko Mizuno’s Fancy Gigolo Peru.)

Emma is a bit unusual for manga, not in it’s attention to historical detail, but that the historical details have nothing to do with Japan: Mori clearly loves her source material, and tries very much to place the reader in 1895 London. Though Emma is not the source for the Japanese fascination with maids, Mori’s eye for details (and appealing characters) have inspired at least one Emma-themed maid cafe, which may no longer be open, and for those who must: You can buy both her maid uniform and Emma’s distinctive glasses at the official Enterbrain Emma site.

Emma was also adapted into a 24-episode anime series [split over 2 seasons, in 2005 and 2007] by Studio Pierrot and TBS, which has been licensed for the US by Nozomi Entertainment.

For the purposes of the MMF, as noted in the call for participation, I’ll be happy to link to (or host on this site) reviews and views about Emma the manga, Emma the anime, or Shirley — Kaoru Mori’s other maid story, set in Edwardian rather than Victorian England.

I’m going to try to also post a daily diary, as I reread the first seven volumes, one a day, with an eighth day for Shirley and Emma vols. 8-9, and a final post Sunday next for volume ten and the series conclusion. (If you’d like me to include your reviews of the individual volumes — perhaps even some you’ve previously written — on the ‘appropriate’ day, just drop that in your message when you email me the link)

Please bookmark http://www.rocketbomber.com/mmf, which serves as the hub (and archive) of all links, and watch my homepage for the new Emma links as they come in.

Submissions, links to articles you’d like included, and any questions should be emailed to matt [at] rocketbomber [dot] com — or you can reach me (at odd hours) on Twitter @ProfessorBlind.

Even if you are just a reader: Thank You for joining us in the Manga Moveable Feast!

Update 6 March 7:00AM: I’ve taken the poll down, as voting is closed, but you can still see the final results here: http://www.blogpoll.com/results_180658.html

Yes, I included a ‘none of the above’ option but I hope you won’t use it. (If you do, you’re obligated to list a different title in the comments.)

Voting will be open until 6 March; I’ll make an announcement alongside the first posts for the Emma MMF. Thank you for participating — this blogging experiment wouldn’t work without the support of everyone.

Please read these two introductions to the concept of the Manga Moveable Feast:

The question I’d like to pose to the manga-biased internet is: What Do We Read Next?

Nominations for the third MMF can be made in the comments of this post, or via Twitter — I’ll compile all noms into an online poll posted to this website (I’ll include links here and there so even if you miss it on the main page you’ll be able to find it).

I hope to announce a ‘winner’ on 6 March — but of course a list of all nominated series will be passed on to the next MMF host for consideration for the May topic, so your favs will have 2nd and 3rd and nth chances even if they don’t win this time.

Update 11pm 24 Feb: Nominations will close in 24 hours. Before midnight tomorrow, I’ll compile all suggested titles into an online poll; voting in this poll will remain open until 6 March. Just to be clear: your comments below do not count as votes yet, so please come back and click a couple of buttons on Friday.

Update 10am 26 Feb: The poll is up — please take a moment to vote for the next title for the Manga Moveable Feast.

In response to The Hooded Utilitarian’s roundtable on CLAMP’s xxxHoLic, a number of manga bloggers on Twitter had a conversation one Friday night about a blogging experiment that might be fun to try, that exploded into an actual blogging experiment:

The first Manga Moveable Feast was hosted by David Welsh at The Manga Curmudgeon and 14 bloggers participated, and David also went the extra mile and landed an interview with Viz editor David Searleman. It’s a tough job to step in and try to follow his excellent example. (Thanks and praise are both due to David for launching the MMF in such grand style.)

For the second MMF, consensus at the time (prev. cited twitter conversation of 22 Jan) was to focus on Kaoru Mori’s 10-vol. manga series Emma (CMX).

I’d also like to invite reviews and views of the one-shot Shirley (by the same author), and also the anime adaptation of Emma. [I’ll permit anime in this case because I happen to like the Emma anime, and also to return a favour: Nozomi/RightStuf have posted online previews of the first seven volumes of the manga to http://emma.rightstuf.com/emmaPreview/index.html. It would be nice if any anime reviews at least referenced the manga; bonus points for any review that uses one as a lens to examine the other.]

As host, I’ll write an introduction to the series and also post daily updates with all the new reviews & articles that are submitted to me. You can review any single volume, or group of volumes, or a series overview — or simply email me with a link to a review (or reviews) you’ve already written. March’s MMF will nominally run the week of 8 March — I’ll start posting reviews and reflections a tad early, beginning on Saturday 6 March.

Any and all submissions are welcome; if you are fan without a blog or other web space, I’ll be happy to host your review on my site. Anyone who would like to participate should email matt [at] rocketbomber [dot] com, with either your questions or links to your reviews.

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Please also read this post: Soliciting Nominations for the Third MMF