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Kouga Yun: LOVELESS vol. 01-04

I've told this story a few times before, but I don't think here. Stop me if I'm beginning to sound like an old lady who can't even remember what she babbled about to her grandchildren this morning.

I first met Kouga Yun (figuratively) in a dusty used books shop in an obscure corner of Paris in the early 90s. The bookshop mostly dealt with Japanese paperback novels and only had one shelf or two with manga, and a less-than-mint first volume of her series Earthian was the only one in the small bunch I found intriguing enough to buy. I paid for the volume, got into the metro home, and promptly began to read it. It felt as though someone had shot my brains out.

It was nothing like anything I had previously read. No, not the gay -- I read gay shojo manga since I was seven or eight. The pure style of it. Today this style has become an integral part of shojo manga (dammit, they're quick) so it's difficult for me (and probably even more difficult for people who read Kouga for the first time today) to pick apart her work and determine exactly what caused me (us, for Kouga indeed shocked everyone at the time) such a huge shock, but ... The monologues. The panel work. The use of tones on the skin. The white-outs. Everything was new. Whether you like Kouga Yun or not, her impact on the industry is unquestionable. I personally spent the next few years of my life intoxicated by the blow it gave me. I still have an unhealthy attachment to her work although I don't seriously believe much of it is "good".

So anyway, LOVELESS. Her newest series. About battles with words and lost memories and catboy shota. I have yet to find a good summary of it, and people keep saying it's too complicated to convey in few words, but those people just haven't read enough Kouga Yun, if you ask me. This is the most concise Kouga manga to date. Basically it's about sex. It's about bonds between people and wanting to be wanted. But everything she ever draws is about those things, so what sets this one apart is the concise storytelling: a Kouga manga that hasn't fallen apart at volume four and still manages to hold onto the themes close to her heart? Like, wow. Miracle. People seem to do unreasonable and strange things and plot-points do seem to come out of the blue at times, but that's because the basic storyline is complex, not because she's making it up as she goes along. The characters are okay; she has a tendency to make everyone like the main two characters, but she doesn't put down others to do it so it works. The only thing that doesn't seem to work, in my mind, is how childish and un-menacing she has so far described the main "villains", but maybe that'll change. So far the end of volume four almost had me weeping, and I'm happy.

I honestly think this could become her best manga.

Quick, everyone! Knock on some wood! Pleeeeeeease!!!

Category: Shojo/ladies | Posted by Alicia at January 27, 2005 12:08 PM

Comments

Posted by: Atazure at January 31, 2005 09:45 PM