Welcome back to Book Club!
Ah, but this is a very special form of Book Club...
Random Manga Roulette!
You see, I've had a ton of random manga (all volume 1's) just sitting around, and my plan was to read and review each one. I think it's finally time to get started. Last night I had a wheel-picker choose one by random chance, and it landed on Queen Emeraldas. Let's see what's shakin'.
Queen Emeraldas is a space opera written and illustrated by Leiji Matsumoto, set in the world of Space Pirate Captain Harlock, Matsumoto's more notable work.
I came upon this in a used bookstore down in San Jose, and was drawn to its older artstyle. While in recent years the western manga industry has been gaining a lot of older titles, they're still pretty rare, so finding a random volume 1 is a nice treat.
But was it good?
Queen Emeraldas is set in a cutthroat, dog eat dog world, where open space travel is normalcy, and each planet is plagued with some form of prejudice or conflict. Our journey begins on Mars, where a young boy named Hiroshi Umino crash lands, the ship he spent so long building all but rubble. Then, he happens upon Queen Emeraldas, an infamous intergalactic pirate who's earned a reputation for her ethereal cruelty.
But she takes pity on young Umino, and tells him his story reminds her of her own.
The first chapter of this manga is rough, I can't lie. The art, in some ways, is truly an immaculate spectacle of romantic, cartoonish retro sci-fi -- and when it looks good, it looks damn good. It captures a style that's, by all means, dead and extinct in manga publishing today. And I had that thought while reading, too. So much manga these days is meant to look the same, with the wide eyes, button noses, cute girls, all an effort in emulating what sells rather than bothering to have its own style. For better or worse, I think this is just a trend in the industry, because back in 1978, when Queen Emeraldas was published, much of the manga of the era (Harlock, Cyborg 009, Astro Boy) have a similar look. Shotaro Ishinomori, Go Nagai, and Matsumoto himself are all notable names from these few decades, and their styles bounce off one another. I don't think this was done to sell volumes. Rather, it's more a reflection of the sensibilities of the creators of the time.
However, while I think this manga really shines in some scenes, it falls very short in others. I have to say this, but I think most of the character designs are just not great. It's a style that can capture the great beyond of open space, galactic oddities like nebulas and starships, but struggles at convincing me this goofy looking peanut-for-a-head is really a face.
I'm not saying I want everything to be realistic, but the struggle with proportion here is plain to see.
If we can step back and really appreciate the artwork where it's at its best, well, it's enough to pull us right into the world. A world of buzzing screens, beeping buttons, twirling lights and humming ships. Matsumoto knows exactly where his strengths lie, and has no trouble picking the best imagery possible to convey the scale and shape of his world.
After the first chapter, the story picks up. It's a dark world out there, to the point where a single page after we see a thwarted attempted murder on the protagonist, the perpetrator is shown getting executed by firing squad. There's a planet where ugly people are put into concentration camps, pirates are feared far and wide as perpetrators of horrible violence, and as soon as intergalactic law enforcement so much as knows someone has committed a crime, they're already getting gunned down.
Despite that, the story is rather rudimentary. Like many manga of this era, it's not that great at balancing exposition with action, nor is it great at propelling the narrative naturally scene-to-scene. Things just up and happen, and modern manga make great use of black borders, fade-ins, empty panels, and other such devices to play with scene composition. For the most part, the older stuff I have read does not, and that lead to confusion on my part more than once. Furthermore, it seems there's little to be dug into beyond how it looks. The story is cut-and-dry. Straightforward. There are things to appreciate, though. Queen Emeraldas's story directly parallels the protagonist in a way I quite liked, and later on we learn her motives are more sinister than they first appear. I finished it thinking that this mystery, alone, was enough to get me to grab the rest of the story.
Little did I know, however, that I read half of it already! The manga is four volumes long, but compiled into two hardcovers for the English release! So while it may look like I'm mostly railing on this, I assure you I actually liked it quite a bit and want to see it through. It's a slice of a retro pie, old enough to have directly inspired Daft Punk's Interstella 5555 -- a world of danger and adventure ripped right out of our greatest dreams to see and travel space. I may genuinely just pick up volume two and finish it.
I recommend this manga, dear reader. It has some flaws, but its talking points are worth the journey, and it's important we appreciate and preserve art from the past.
-- Austin, signing off!
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