YALSA top ten GNs 2011: Saturn Apartments Volume 1

Saturn Apartments Volume 1
Written and illustrated by Hisae Iwaoka.
Published by Viz (2011)

Mitsu has just completed school and is going to continue in his father's footsteps and start working at the window washers guild. Seems fairly normal, except for the fact that his dad was a window washer on a space station that houses all of humanity. Oh yeah, and his dad died while washing windows a few years ago.

The world that Iwaoka has created in Saturn Apartments is pretty interesting. The idea that Earth has been abandoned and that all of humanity now lives in orbit isn't necessarily new, but it's not one that I've seen frequently in comics. There is, however, one pretty gaping plot hole: why does there need to be a window washing guild in the first place. Couldn't robots do it better? Despite this I'm curious as to why people left the Earth, and how the space station itself functions economically and socially, but not enough to read a second volume.

The major problem I had is that Mitsu is basically a non-entity. He's incredibly passive, doesn't seem particularly bright, and doesn't really seem to have any interests or characteristics. If Saturn Apartments was an anthology about various people in the space station (the couple getting married, the scientist trying to breed Earth animals, the other window washers) it seems as though it would be more interesting. Now, admittedly Mitsu is fairly young and is still figuring out who he is, and for some people the story of him discovering himself would be enough, but I didn't feel there was enough of a character there to do the discovering.

Iwaoka's artwork is fairly standard manga-style for the backgrounds, and is generally pretty competent in those regards. The technology she draws, when it shows up, is well rendered and enjoyable. However, most of the indoors scenes look as though they could have happened in the present day. Given how much living space that each person (even the poor people) appears to have, I wonder exactly how huge this space station is (or, perhaps, the better question to ask is how many humans are still alive?). My major complaint in regards to the art is with the way that Iwaoka draws faces. I found the lack of detail she uses weirdly off-putting, as well as making it difficult to judge how old a character was and making me think that the characters were all about to fall asleep.

Years ago I read the series Planetes by Makoto Yukimura, which is about a similarly mundane space job (in that case they're garbage collectors). I really loved it, and was excited when I heard people mention a couple of other manga series were said to be similar. Those two being Twin Spica and Saturn Apartments. I found both of them to be huge disappointments when I originally read them, and rereading Saturn Apartments years later doesn't change my opinions about it in any way. However, if you want a less technical, more character focused science fiction story you might enjoy it.

YALSA top ten GNs 2010: Children of the Sea Volume 1

Children of the Sea Volume 1

Written and illustrated by Daisuke Igarashi.

Published by Viz (2009)

Ruka is a girl who is slightly too violent at hand ball. Not violent enough to be kicked out of school or get in any serious trouble, but violent enough that she's not allowed to play with the school team all summer. It's the first day of summer vacation, but fior Ruka it feels as though it's already over.

Ruka's parents both used to work for the Tokyo aquarium, but they've split up and now only her dad works there. Ruka lives with her mom, who drinks a lot of...alcohol? (It shows her drinking cans of something, but it's not translated or explained, so I can only guess that she's drinking beer. I mean, it's probably beer, I'm not sure why they'd show piles of cans in the garbage otherwise. The translator's notes in the back of book "helpfully" point out that people recycle cans in Japan.) Ruka doesn't seem to have the best relationship with either of her parents, or any of her classmates at school, and she's looking at a pretty lonely summer until she encounters Umi and Sora.

Umi and Sora are kids who can swim really well and spend most of their time in the water. They were apparently raised by dugongs (those weird sea cow things) for the first few years of their life, and are "prone to dryness" (e.g. they need to be soaked in water a lot). It's a mystery where they came from, or how they ended up being raised by sea mammals, but they've turned into normal(ish) kids. Umi and Sora feel like they have some sort of connection to Ruka, though as they're don't know their origins, they can't really explain what it is.

So that's the main plot of the comic right? Finding out what the deal with these kids is? That's what I thought until I read the description on the book flap. It says that this comic is about "the mystery of the worldwide disappearance of the ocean's fish", which isn't something that gets introduced in the (300 page) first volume. Because of that I'm left to wonder what this book is even about. Is that description accurate, and the mystery will be brought up in later volumes? Or is it wrong and the plot is "who are these weird kids who were raised by dugongs?". I'm not sure if I'm interested enough to find out, but I think that this sort of book could definitely appeal to teenagers (which is what the YALSA books are for). It's about outsider kids, loneliness, broken relationships, and mysteries. What's not to love?

Daisuke Igarashi's art kind of reminds me of a cross between Moyocco Anno and Taiyo Matsumoto, and while that at first sounded kind of strange to me, all three artists are listed on the Wikipedia article for La nouvelle manga (probably due to their inclusion in Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators) so they have at least one thing in common. (Oh wait, here's an interview where Igarashi says to Matsumoto "I actually read your work just to steal [your ideas]".) The storytelling is generally clear, and there are some pretty cool drawings of aquatic animals.

I don't read that much manga anymore. That's kind of relative I guess, I've read thirty something volumes of manga so far this year, but to be honest that pales in comparison to the other comics I've read (somehow I read 56 graphic novels in April) _and_ is the result of me trying to read more manga. But I used to read a lot _more_ manga than I do now. Either way, I am at least familiar with manga as a medium. Somehow, despite that, I still frequently seem to forget that the pacing in manga can be completely different from western comics. Case in point, Children of the Sea takes 70 pages before it introduces Umi (and Sora takes even longer).

It's kind of funny that the last thing I reviewed was Rust Volume 2, which was another comic that I described as slow, but unlike that one things do actually happen in Children of the Sea. Characters are introduced, events occur. There's no 60 page robot fight scene, but there's also no people discussing farms. So really, on that level alone I have to call it amazing.