Mania, Melodrama, and Melancholy

by Jonathan L. Switzer

Honey and Clover Vol. 1 & 2
Story & Art by Chica Umino
Published by Viz Media, $8.99 ea.
http://www.honeyandclover.us
http://www.shojobeat.com

One of the big stories in the comics world for the past, oh, five years or so has been the rise of manga as the new face of comics for most comics readers under, say, twenty. With volumes of the trials-of-a-ninja-kid series Naruto constantly cropping up on USA Today’s top-150 bestselling book charts, a feat rarely accomplished by works of Western comic authors, it’s clear that many of today’s comics readers would much rather “Make Mine Manga” than “Make Mine Marvel.”

However, as I once observed to my pal and fellow comics observer Ian, it seems to me that what’s really come in vogue, at least as far the sales charts tell us, isn’t so much manga as a whole but rather anime comics — no, not those awful glossy color things you occasionally run across on the graphic novel shelves where they take freeze frames of animation and slap word balloons on ‘em, but manga series that have been adapted into television animation. Sure, there are certain segments of the manga market that have exploded without TV exposure — skim Diamond Previews any given month and there seem to be somewhere in the ballpark of ten to twenty new guy-on-guy romance manga volumes for the young ladies — but many manga readers seem to stick pretty close to what they’ve seen on the tube when it comes to making their manga buying decisions.

I have to say, I’m guilty of this myself. For instance, the manga series I’m reviewing today, Chica Umino’s Honey and Clover, is one that I first followed in animation for a few episodes about a year or so before the manga reached U.S. shores. I thought it was a delightful little show, a pleasant slice-of-life dramedy with a largely relaxing atmosphere broken up occasionally by bursts of manic energy. Its soothing earthy pastel color palette was complimented brilliantly by a poppy musical score that reinforced the light, feel-good mood of the work.

Of course, a black & white manga won’t have those earthy tones, and a book won’t have a poppy score. In fact, that relaxing atmosphere by and large won’t be found in these two volumes; most chapters in the first volume seem to whiz by at breakneck speed, and provide only mere moments of reflection before dashing along to the next snapshot of comical mania, while the second breaks up streams of melancholic soap opera with scenes of increasingly high-spirited comedy, topped off with a cherry of premature nostalgia. Still, the core of the two works is identical; a slice-of-life series lives and dies by its characters, and boy, does Honey and Clover ever have some characters!

The series, originally published in the U.S. in the pages of Viz’s monthly Shojo Beat anthology, follows the lives and loves of a group of Japanese art school students. There’s the everyman sophomore Takemoto, wide-eyed, naive, and directionless. There’s the bespectacled senior Mayama, sober yet childish, pining for an older woman while his tomboy classmate Ayu “Ironman” Yamada pines for him. Completing the triumvirate of male leads is the monkey wrench in all their lives, Morita, a seventh-year senior who disappears for weeks a time, works mysterious jobs for mountains of money — all in cash — and completely gives into his impulses in goofy, juvenile ways. No common sense or restraint in that one; Morita will say whatever pops in his head and do pretty much whatever he wants, whenever he wants, much to the frustration of all around him.

Our female lead is arguably the first volume’s cover girl, Hagu, a delicate eighteen-year-old sculpture prodigy who doesn’t look a day out of middle school. She’s looked after by one of their teachers, Professor Hanamoto; she’s his cousin’s daughter. Hagu is constantly doted on, and suffers from stress-related panic attacks when she’s around too many people. She’s the sort of “precious little flower” that’s written and drawn to evoke protective feelings in the readership. I’ve always found there to be something awfully creepy about too-cute, young-for-her-age characters like this, but Honey and Clover is such an earnest work that Hagu doesn’t raise that red flag for me, especially considering that the guy with the biggest crush on her, Takemoto, seems so very boyish himself. Quirky Morita also seems to have an interest in the little sprite; at the very moment he sees her, he gets a brainstorm to make her the subject of a money-making website, surrounding her with oversized props and Photoshopping backgrounds behind her to make her appear to be a Japanese mythological creature along the lines of a faerie or leprechaun — all without her consent, of course. And yet, his interest in her does seem to go beyond money-making schemes, though it’s hard to tell what exactly is going on in that head of his.

Umino’s art is simple but easy on the eyes; her characters are all distinctive enough that even though they’re often reduced to simple cartoony figures, it’s easy to tell who’s who. Her style is very rounded, very soft; her figures have a sort of lanky weight to them that lends the series a certain sense of grounding; the guys aren’t the sort of pointy-chinned adonises you find in a lot of more wish-fulfillment or action/fantasy shojo manga. Still, in in a lot of ways Umino’s work is typical girls’ comics stuff, heavily screentoned and often bereft of backgrounds both for dramatic effect and, I suppose, to expediate production. When they do appear, backgrounds are often rough, like they were scratched in at the last second, but the charm of her wildly emotional figures more than makes up for a shaky background or twelve, or twenty, or whatever. I love the way she handles teary or spacy eyes with lots of little skitchy, scribbly marks. There’s a rough look to a lot of the more emotional moments that I think feels almost more honest than the work of some of Umino’s more refined peers. Still, I’d pay a dollar or two more per volume to get some of Umino’s more polished work, pages that were originally published in lovely pastel color both in the original Japanese serialization and in Honey and Clover’s serialization in Shojo Beat, reproduced here in all their eye-searingly bold glory.

That’s one of my two complaints about these two books; that, and there are a lot of Japanese cultural references throughout these two volumes that aren’t explained when they come up, but are explained in a glossary in the back. What would it have taken to make a little note to “see page such-and-such for a definition” during the first appearance of each reference? After all, the style of the art and Umino’s panel layouts provide a whole lot of empty white space.

One thing that sets Honey and Clover apart from a lot of shojo manga I’ve read is the setting; like a number of other series I’ve really been grooving on over the past couple of years, such as Ai Yazawa’s Paradise Kiss and Nana, it deals with college students rather than stereotypical uniform-clad high schoolers. I can certainly appreciate why so many series released over here focus on young stammering teens and their problems with school and crushes and such, but at the same time it’s nice to see stuff out here about people at a slightly later stage in their lives, worrying about wrapping up their final projects in school and finding jobs out there in the real world, and then finding time for friends with an adult professional’s schedule.

As I remarked earlier, the series grows increasingly soapy as the second book goes on; that isn’t to say that it’s missing any of the wacky energy of the first volume. If anything, as the emotional drama ratchets up, so does the comedy. The third chapter of the second volume opens with the students visiting the zoo in winter and fixating on a poor, lone giraffe. Yamada starts to go on about how since giraffes are doled out to Japanese zoos one by one, it will never see another of its kind as long as it lives. His classmates’ over-the-top reactions are hysterical. Likewise, there’s a bit towards the end of the book where Takemoto and Morita wind up playing a homemade game of Twister with the sorts of colors only an art student would pick — colors with names straight out of one of those big sixty-four-plus Crayola boxes. It’s not just the colors that are wonderfully offbeat; it’s the increasing intensity of the competition that makes it such a grand sequence.

At the other end of the spectrum, the end of that same chapter produced a moment that left me feeling a little melancholy and almost a little teary-eyed. I think it was all in the staging; Umino set up those lonely shots masterfully with angles and panel shapes she’d rarely cracked out earlier. The scene was laid out like something out of the end of a filmed romantic comedy, right before the lovers are reunited … only without the trite happy ending. What can I say; sometimes I can be kind of a sap for moments like that.

But who’s to say there won’t be a happy ending for our lovelorn teens and twenty-somethings? With eight more volumes to go, a lot can happen. Given that one school year ends halfway through the second volume, I’d say it’s likely we’re going to see most of these characters through the end of college, and who knows how many new students we might meet over the next several books? With these two books under my belt, I have to admit, I’m hooked, and willing to go along for the whole ride. While I find that I do prefer the animation for its more deliberate, even mood and pacing, the Honey and Clover manga is a solid example of quirky, character-driven Japanese comics for girls that I think any comics reader looking for something bereft of ’splosions and punching and possessing a colorful cast and honest emotional core might enjoy.

JLS