Reviews and Comments

Two stars because that’s legitimately how this book made me feel. One of those books I’ve meant to pick up a decade ago when I was reading a lot of dystopian fiction that was influenced/inspired by it. And one I should have perhaps culled from my TBR as my interest in those dystopians faded. While the internal monologue of our main character is heavily influenced by the extremely toxic culture that he finds himself in (that we are not supposed to be a fan of) it did make reading the book like being continually pricked by needles. Although, I guess I can see where people are coming from when they say that Zamyatin treats at least one of his female characters better then Orwell ended up doing. For all his general distaste for this novel. I seem to recall that one thing I did appreciate about 1984 that overlaps here is that we are centring a nobody who only gets ground down in the process. A more realistic perspective then some more popular dystopian where the main character is special and able to break down the system with their specialness. Of course at this point I see many more dangers in hyper individuality over having a more communal society. Not to mention that I think the black white binary between so called civilized/industrialized and everything that is held up as not those things should get chucked out the window.

Content note for adoption.

Looking at the mangaka, Kiyohiko Azuma he is apparently best known for his much shorter work Azumanga Daoih. Otherwise, I guess their main work is not publishing manga so publication of Yotsuba has been on the slower side. I certainly assumed that the series was long over, but apparently not. Comparing my local comic shop and goodreads it does appear as if all 15 volumes currently available are also translated; so that's nice. Currently my plan is to try and read these volumes by the end of the year and do another review once I've caught up? Because I've had bad experiences reading these sort of slice of life volumes one after another after another, but who knows when this series will be over. Knowing my luck, I'll do all this then Azuma will announce in 2024 that they are finishing up the series after one or two more volumes or something else that will render final series thoughts truncated and or awkward.

Keywords that came to mind with this first volume: family, new neighbourhood, naïve, learning, and failing.

As I've already mentioned a few times, I did try and pick this book up before and ended up putting it down pretty fast. Revisiting this series now, I initially thought it was because I was too serious at the time. And while I feel like that was probably a bit of it, now having read the whole first volume I also feel like it was related to how many times Yotsuba does the wrong thing. Which is an issue I've run into a couple of times with stories about young niave children. But instead of being an immediate DNF, I guess this time around I'm kind of intrigued by this discomfort with imperfection and would like to lean into it and figure out what's up. I kind of suspect it has to do with masking and rejection sensitivity or something like it.

Looking at the art, it's certainly very skilled and detailed - which does come up in a lot of positive reviews I saw. I also feel like Azuma hits a good balance of setting the scene with detail but also not being afraid to simplify things to draw attention to what is important; sometimes it feels like, when it comes to detail, creators are either all or nothing, so this was really nice.

Writing wise, I also felt like Azuma hit a similar good balance when it comes to wordiness. A+

Looking at gender and sexuality, I thought this first volume introduced us to an interesting cast of characters, none of them super gendered, and who all happen to find themselves outside of heterosexual monogomy. Especially when it comes up at the end that Yotsuba is sort of unofficially adopted and not the father's biological spawn. Of course none of them are actually queer either... and we shall see how this plays out going forward. In the negative column there's a very awkward point where family friend Jumbo refers to one of the sisters who live next door as jailbait.

Race is so far not really explored to any depth. That said, there does seem to be some racial diversity at play in that at the very end of this volume we are told that Yotsuba was kind of unofficially adopted by the father character when he was oversees? Which gives off very odd vibes as well, but I'm assuming is mostly to set up how different and generally ignorant Yotsuba is without feeling a need to go into too much detail. Although it could also be setting Yotsuba ends up to be an alien or something. Anything is possible.

Class and ability vs disability were not things that seemed to be explored in this volume.

To conclude, this continues to be a bit of an odd read for me but I am intrigued and will certainly be picking up more soon. I think I'll be rating this volume three out of five stars.

According to wikipedia Tatsuya Endo came from a single parent household, enjoys skiing and basketball, as well as performances by bruce lee and meg ryan. Previously Endo has worked on the series Tista, about a villain killing serial killer sniper, and Gekka Bijin/The Moon Sword.
But circling back to Spy X Family, a comedy action spy story, the premise is that a male spy must quickly fabricate a family in order to infiltrate an elite school. "Master spy Twilight is the best at what he does when it comes to going undercover on dangerous missions in the name of a better world... What he doesn’t know is that the wife he’s chosen is an assassin and the child he’s adopted is a telepath!" Reading other reviews, this volume appears to be set in a fictionalized east west Germany situation.
While the art felt pretty typical, that doesn't stop it from being very top notch and on point. With a very keen eye to detail.
Gender and sexuality are an interesting sub text. While none of the characters are necessarily labeled in the story as queer, the premise feels like it relates very well to how queer people have been forced to live through history. The single apparently cis female character is in danger precisely because she is not part of a heterosexual procreating unit and this chosen family is up against an elite school that won't stop talking about "family values".
And while the main characters are not necessarily blue color icons, the high class nature of the elite school is repeatedly highlighted.
Similarly, disability isn't really portrayed in any way, with everyone being somewhere on the spectrum between able bodied and super able bodied.
Whiteness is fairly central to the story, like most European set manga.
A real sucker for comedy premises in 2020, for obvious reasons, I ended up rating this first volume four out of five stars.

Previously best known to me for their adult webcomic Sunstone (which I'm totally going to review soon) Stjepan Sejic is a Croatian comic book writer and artist married to fellow creative Linda Šejić. He has also worked on Witchblade, Aphrodite IX, The Darkness, my favourite volume of Rat Queens, and part of a recent DC group title Harley Quinn: Black + White + Red.
As far as content warnings go, it's a DC Black label title, it stars Harley Quinn and the Joker, and is set in Arkham Asylum. Fictional mental health is extensively discussed and depicted and a psychiatrist becomes romantically involved with her patient.
But let's take a moment to discuss the use, or lack there of, of "mature comic" tropes. As a millennial who really got into comics as an adult, many of the first titles I picked up were under DC's old Vertigo label. One of these titles was the very popular Preacher series, and while I did enjoy some things to do with this series and should probably go back and re package my thoughts from before the great reset, it was constantly trying to be the most shocking thing ever. Sandman also did this to a certain extent (particularly in earlier volumes if my memory is to be trusted at all), among others. There always had to be the most shocking sex, the most shocking violence, and/or the "worst" drug use etc. And this always struck me as a bit stupid. Because even if I enjoyed other elements of the story, "shocking content" doesn't age very well and it generally lacks nuance. Whatever shocked people a decade ago is generally not shocking now and it comes across as a very silly kind of needy.
Circling back to Harleen however, while I was and remain not the biggest Harley Quinn fan in the world, I feel like the way that Šejić (who does make real erotic content) writes this mature DC title is much better. Not only because it is not trying to shock you with the biggest bloodiest most depraved scenario and will therefore age much better, but also because it's more (la shock) respectful. But I'll dig into more detail as we go along.
Moving on to the art section of my review, his style is one of the things I have found very interesting about Šejić, who has a great range of style that goes from very minimalist to very very detailed in a way that is very story driven. Well, I'm sure that some of it is due to being rushed for time, but the way its done always feels very intentional and this contrast is often used to draw attention to the focus of a scene. The cover design for this volume is also pretty on point - I mean who can resist this cover? Page layouts are highly varied and often expressive, but still easy to follow. And the colour scheme was perfect. I wish I had this strong a sense of style. Gees.
Clicking over to goodreads, the official synopsis is as follows: "A young psychiatrist with a potential cure for the madness that haunts Gotham City, Dr. Harleen Quinzel must prove her revolutionary theory to a skeptical establishment by delving into the disturbed minds of Arkham Asylum's deadliest inmates. But the more time she spends with her criminally insane subjects, the closer she is drawn to one patient in particular--and the further she falls away from reality. The birth of legendary antihero Harley Quinn and the shocking origins of her twisted romance with the Joker are revealed in Harleen, a stunning new tale of love and obsession."
Mental health, while not the worst representation in the world, is bound tightly by the restraints of popular consciousness in this book. And while I feel like Harleen herself has the best take of everyone in the story, we still have a lot of other people's much more black and white and stigmatizing thinking being talked about throughout. Plus, I'm not sure if having Dr. Quinzel becoming Harley Quinn sheds the most positive light on her her opinions. That said, I do feel like it could be argued that the callousness of the people around her drove her to becoming Harley more then anything she believed. Although don't romance your patient is a watch word to live by.
As far as gender and sexuality goes, this is a pretty CIS binary heterosexual romance. Not terribly surprising, since this is a classic pairing as it were. As I said already, I'm not a particular fan of either Harley Quinn or pairing her with the joker. I do tend to think it's more then a little toxic and not IRL goals. That said, I think it's widely enough discussed at this point that I don't need to spend any amount of time really digging into it and raining on people's parades. We all have at least problematic ship.
Visually, neither the Joker or Harley is ever very particularly sexualized. We see Harleen a couple of times in her underwear/pajamas, but its never in those f' me dear reader poses I've previously discussed.
Race is not really discussed at all. Class is perhaps touched on slightly but only in the way that any depiction of Gotham is this hyper exaggerated bad take on crime. Which particularly when you have a super wealthy vigilanty bouncing around your city relatively unscathed, is definitely about class.
To conclude, while I'm happy to have read it, and it is beautiful. Something about this comic just didn't spark with me so I'll be rating it three out of five stars. A perfectly good rating from me in general and "I liked it" according to Goodreads.