Sakura of DOOM

coffeeandink and I are trying to do a series of posts that are conversations about specific works. We decided to kick it off with a conversation about Hagio Moto's The Heart of Thomas.

This is the first of what hopefully will be a series of conversations about narratives of assorted kinds. In each, we’ll attempt to give enough background about the events of the narrative to enable people unfamiliar with it to follow the discussion, but we’re aiming for critical readings rather than reviews. There will be many spoilers.

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The Heart of Thomas (トーマの心臓) by Hagio Moto (萩尾 望都) was published in 1974. It is one of the first works of shounen ai (a genre now often called "boys' love" or BL) and is considered a manga classic. The first English edition was translated by Matt Thorn and published by Fantagraphics in 2013.

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Come read and discuss! Especially because we couldn't think of a conclusion and are thus depending on commenters to do so ;).

Whoo, Hagio Moto!

For people who don't know, Hagio Moto is one of the big names of shoujo manga who rose to prominence during the 1970s, when female mangaka began to take over from male creators in shoujo manga. She was also one of the first people to write shounen ai. Also, ever since writing my undergrad thesis on shoujo manga, I have been dying to read more of her, but it's hard to get hold of her stuff outside of Japan, much less translated into English.

This is a sampling of her short stories throughout her career: the stories range from 1975 to 2008. They're translated by Matt Thorn, and the book includes an introduction to her work by Matt Thorn and an interview that were both previously published in the special Comic Journal issue on shoujo.

Normally I don't pay that much attention to the physical bits of the book, but the production values on this one are really spectacular (thankfully, given the $25 price tag). Blown up comic panels introduce each short story, one short is entirely in color, and there are lovely color excerpts of Hagio's work in the interview. The one thing I am a little sad about is that it is too big to be shelved next to all my other manga, but that's really a minor nitpick.

I have had a problem getting into older manga before because of the art style. Although that held a little for this collection, it wasn't as big of an issue as I thought it might be, possibly because I was reading Rose of Versailles and started Hagio's "November Gymnasium" prior to this.

As expected, the short stories from the early part of her career are more cliched and have less depth to them. Even so, the art style of "Girl on Porch with Puppy" read more indie-style and less shoujo to me. And several of Hagio's shorts have little twists to them or are about subjects that are not expected. I particularly liked how she dealt with the love triangle in "Marie, Ten Years Later."

My favorites were probably "A Drunken Dream," which is a gorgeous fantasy/sf story of love and reincarnation (reincarnation! I was so there!); "The Willow Tree," a lovely, melancholy short that is nearly all image and very little dialogue; and "Iguana Girl," which hits rather close to home with its topic of a mother who thinks her daughter is an iguana. "Iguana Girl" in particular does a great job at making metaphor real.

I am more on the fence with "Hanshin: Half-God," which I think is one of Hagio's more famous shorts. On the one hand, the ending is great. On the other, I feel I've seen the use of conjoined twins in fiction before to demonstrate that divide between beauty and brains, in which one twin is physically and physiologically supporting the other. I was going to say that I dislike the use of conjoined twins as metaphor, but on thinking about it, I'm not sure how much of it is metaphor. And yet, I'm still very uncomfortable with the what I've seen of conjoined twins in fiction. So... YMMV.

All this said, the collection makes me want more of Hagio's full-length work even more. I'm not the best audience for short stories in general; I usually want longer work and find that a lot of short stories go over my head. I'd especially love more of her sf/fantasy, since the bits I loved most in the collection usually had a fantastical or sfnal bent to them.

... and now I am regretting not snatching up even more of her stuff when I was in Japan, even though it probably wouldn't have fit in my suitcase!

In conclusion: gorgeous book, some shorts I really liked, please put out more!

A, A' (pronounced: A, A Prime) is a collection of three short stories, all set in a universe in which there are genetically engineering humans called unicorns, all of whom have a distinctive red mane and a problem with expressing emotions. Said unicorns were apprently created to work with computers, but Hagio doesn't really get that much into the world-building on this point.

In "A, A'" the unicorn Addy has died on a mission, so her clone is brought back to help out. Some of the team is excited about this, but the first Addy's lover Regg is rather conflicted about this, to say the least.

In "4/4," Mori finds that his telekinesis powers grow stronger and more uncontrollable around the unicorn Trill. Trill doesn't speak much and doesn't seem to be much more intelligent than a child, despite being a fully-grown woman.

After the events of "4/4," Mori finds himself elsewhere, attracted to the unicorn Tracto.

I suck at plot summary.

Anyhow, the art here is so different from the art in Four Shojo Stories. It's much more eighties or something, wispier. The faces are also more oval. The plots are also very different from the rather straightforward mystery of "They Were Eleven;" Hagio focuses more on emotion, on questions of sexuality and identity, on loss and language.

Unfortunately, I wasn't that emotionally drawn into the works, particularly the longest one at the end, dealing with Tracto and Mori. I don't know why -- I think it was too short to really grab me. The one that I liked best was "A, A'," which raised interesting questions about clones and identity, and has a splash page of Addy' seeing Addy for the first time that's just stunning.

I think I work best with longer, serial narratives instead of these manga shorts.

Sigh.

Need to get my hands on The Heart of Tomas.