Everything Looks Like a Nail: Faust Vol. 1
"Light novels" - manga-influenced young adult fiction, often with manga-style illustrations - are a growing branch of imported Japanese pop culture. Although the definition of "light novels," like "moe," is a little vague (is it just a marketing term? Do they have to be illustrated? Do they have to be short?), most light novels are young adult fiction which uses the same tropes as popular manga—romantic comedies (
Inukami and
Karin), high school comedy (
Haruhi Suzumiya), occult battle (
Shakugan no Shana and the
Boogiepop series). The popularity of light novels is a testimony to
Kai-Ming Cha's theory that most fans read manga as a genre, not a medium.
Faust, Del Rey's new short fiction anthology, is an attempt to do "light novel" material with a more literary tone. In Japan there are several magazines—like
The Sneaker,
Cobalt and
Dragon—which run light novels in serial form, and as the first such magazine to be translated,
Faust is a bit like the English edition of
Shonen Jump. (Though the stories in
Faust are mostly standalones, not excerpts from longer works.) The Japanese
Faust started in 2003 as a young adult spinoff of Kodansha's literary science fiction prose magazine
Mephisto. Del Rey has chosen to print
Faust with the trim size of a graphic novel, probably because it fits on bookstore shelves better that way, but another approach might have been to do it as an artsy magazine or "mook" (magazine-book), like Udon Entertainment's
Robot. It features a mix of about 90% text and 10% manga (referred to in the Japanese edition as "illustories"), including work by some of the most respected manga artists (Takeshi Obata, Yun Kouga) and "light novel" writers (Otsuichi, Nisoisin, Kouhei Kadono).
Like the English edition of
Shonen Jump, the English edition of
Faust is sort of a "best of" sampling, together with a new cover, essays, and introductions for the English reader. Unfortunately, much of this new text has the pompous quality of speeches delivered at a groundbreaking ceremony ("
Faust: a legendary literary journal that's swept like a fever through the young readers coming of age in the new millennium, changing the face of Japan's literary scene in the blink of an eye"). The forewords to each story likewise veer into hyperbole (on "Drill Hole in My Brain": "This erotic phantasmagoria combines the surrealistic and the shocking in a way that readers of such Western authors as William S. Burroughs and Georges Bataille will recognize"). (Admittedly, the introductions also contain a lot of very useful background information.) With such name-dropping, together with brief, entry-level essays on
otaku topics such as Kaichiroô Morikawa's "Approaching Twenty Years of Otaku," the editors of
Faust seem to be hoping for recognition by both the literary and
otaku worlds. To make
otaku read William S. Burroughs, or to make
The New York Times Book Review read
xxxHOliC—either way, ambitious goals.
I too am curious what a hypothetical literary reviewer would think of
Faust, because it feels so steeped in manga and anime, it's hard to imagine coming to it from a newbie's perspective. (Or at least it seems that way to me; I guess you could counter with "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.") The only direct tie-in story in
Faust is "xxxHOLiC: Anotherholic" (a spinoff of CLAMP's
xxxHOLiC manga), but all the stories in
Faust strike themes which are familiar to manga and anime fans. "The Garden of Sinners" follows the conventions of the "occult mystery" manga genre, like
Shakugan no Shana,
Muhyo and Roji, or
xxxHOLiC for that matter. "Outlandos d'Amour," "Drill Hole in My Brain" and "F-sensei's Pocket" belong to a sort of genre as well, involving teenagers with more or less omnipotent powers and the troubles that these powers bring. In the words of editor Katsushi Ota,
Faust is dedicated to exploring the theme of "that feeling of self-consciousness in early adolescence." In this sense, the stories in
Faust are not just fantasy, they are magical realism. The fantasy elements are literalized metaphors, for adolescence, for young love, for alienation.
To me as a manga fan who grew up in the 1990s, this angst-in-genre-clothing brings to mind, not superheroes as it might for an American comics fan, but anime like
Neon Genesis Evangelion, the 1995 robot anime which started a trend towards more psychological subject matter. On the other hand,
Neon Genesis Evangelion was criticized for excessive angst and near-autistic protagonists, and
Faust risks this criticism too. "Drill Hole in My Brain," in which a boy with a hole in his head has head sex with a girl with a unicorn-like horn, is the most passionate voice in the anthology, with its fuck-the-world attitude and surreal masturbation sequences ("I was surrounded by adults on the Shinkansen, and the clasp on my pants was undone, and a glowing white crotch flower was sticking out of the fly of my boxers…Hot damn! I grew a clitoris!"). The hero of "Drill Hole" just wants to jerk off, but compared to most of the
Faust characters, he's a man chasing his dreams.
Faust is full of distant, disconnected people who don't know their own emotions or their own goals, like the self-destructive Kushimura in "Outerholic," the amnesiac Shiki in "The Garden of Sinners," or the affectless protagonist of "Outlandos d'Amour." The foil to these characters are know-it-all magic counselor types like Yûko in
xxxHOLiC or Tôko in "The Garden of Sinners," who basically exist to speak for the author and deliver the moral of the story. (From "Sinners": "There are two kinds of escape: fleeing aimlessly and fleeing with a goal in sight…Only you can decide which one of the two your view from above is…") The shorter pieces in the anthology tend to be focused on antisocial characters as well, like the pseudo-autobio "Yûya Satô's Counseling Session" or Tatsuhiko Takimoto's "Guru Guru Counseling Session," the one zillionth Japanese media piece about
hikikomori, people whose social phobias are so intense they never leave their room. (On the other hand, Kozy Watanabe's short-short story "H People: An Evolving World" manages to say something new about the
hikikomori topic.)
Although the stories have common themes, stylistically
Faust is an interesting mix, where works based on formal experimentation, like "Drill Hole in My Brain," coexist with straightforward genre works like "The Garden of Sinners." The best all-around story is probably "F-Sensei's Pocket," which combines good, solid prose with a simple but engaging plot, in which two girls discover and misuse the magical tools of the manga character
Doraemon. "Drill Hole in My Brain" is a fun read with the most colorful (and graphic) imagery, although with its "maybe the protagonist is in a coma and this is all a dream" structure, it keeps one foot on the ground instead of descending completely into wonderful madness. "Yabai de Show" is short, incomprehensible and based on Japanese puns. "Outlandos d'Amour" (apparently named after the Prince album) is a bit of a misfire, the story of a man with strange powers who is used by a government agency, but just wants to live a normal life with a pathologically shy girl with whom he falls in love at first sight. It has an interesting payoff, but the romance is painfully awkward and unappealing, and the text suffers from a bland minimalism that often results from translating a "manga-style" story to prose:
"No, I'm, um…" She was very pale, and it did not look like he could expect any kind of positive reaction.
But Kunio was too carried away to notice.
"You…I, uh…you…"
"Er, um, I…"
Both of them were just babbling now, their conversation never managing to connect.
This sequence brings to mind the pointless stuttering of a manga love comedy where the hero and heroine have just bumped into one another. Whether this is intentional or not, it's not good. Likewise, Nisoisin's "Outerholic" feels dry and padded-out without CLAMP's artwork to support it. "The Garden of Sinners," from one of the creators of
Fate/stay night and
Lunar Legend Tsukihime, is an evocative, creepy story of occult investigation, but the plot is formulaic. An occult investigator defeating a spirit in a one-sided supernatural battle works as the pilot episode of a long-running anime or manga series, but it doesn't engage the reader as a standalone short story. Dave Sim once wrote that, in terms of information density, 10 comics pages are equal to one good page of prose, but there are some things that pictures simply do better. For example, if
Lone Wolf and Cub were prose, it would take thousands of words to describe the scenery, atmosphere and costumes of Tokugawa-era Japan as well as Goseki Kojima's artwork. The same goes for CLAMP's gorgeous artwork when adapting
xxxHOLiC to a non-visual medium. Similarly, fight scenes work better in manga than in prose, because the spatial relations tend to fall apart into a meaningless drone when reduced to text.
Of course, both "The Garden of Sinners" and "Outerholic" are illustrated, but just barely. Star manga artists like CLAMP and Takeshi Obata get prime placement on the cover, but their contribution is limited to one or two illustrations each (a testimony to the publishing truth that if you are a "mangaka" you get $50 a page, but if you are an "illustrator," the industry standard is $300 per black-and-white spot illo). The illustration styles in
Faust varies wildly, from Takeshi Obata's beautiful artwork to Hajime Ueda's minimalist cartoon figures. In some cases, the artwork actually weakens the stories: Otaro Majio's pseudo-outsider-art for "Drill Hole in My Brain" looks like it was drawn in a three-ring binder (and doesn't convince me that Otaro is the next William S. Burroughs), while TYPE-MOON's head-and-shoulders spot illustration for "The Garden of Sinners" just tells us that the main character of the story is a generic-looking anime character. (The character designs weren't the strong point of
Lunar Legend Tsukihime either.)
The actual manga section of
Faust is clumped in the back, where the right-to-left format won't compete with the left-to-right text in the rest of the book, an unfortunate formatting necessity. "After School, 7th Class" by Yun Kouga and Nisoisin, the only full-length manga, is a lavishly drawn and memorably weird vignette involving a young genius scientist and her conversation with the warden of the prison she is trapped in. The very short color manga (printed in color in the Del Rey edition) by Moheji Yamasaki, Vofan and take aren't long enough to work as stories, but the art is lovely. The manga sections of
Faust are so good that I wish there was more of them; they look like they could have come from
Flight, or from Udon Entertainment's
Robot.
In the end, the stories in
Faust are competently written, but don't excite me. Apart from issues of manga-versus-prose, the short story medium has its own shortcomings: long works have more room for error. (Furthermore, in science fiction and fantasy in particular, there's more room for world-building.) A novel or a movie can generally coast by on a three-act structure even if it's not that original, but formulaic short stories are much duller than formulaic novels, since there's less meat on the story's bones. (Ever noticed how all those one-chapter pilot manga for
Shonen Jump are exactly the same?) By imitating the story structures of manga,
Faust gives itself an audience, but the risk is that the stories tend to follow a predictable pattern. I love manga, but I am unimpressed by light novels;
I don't necessarily want to read the same plots that I read in comics in another, non-visual medium). I wish
Faust had more manga, more illustrations, more twist endings, more surprises. I read manga because they are good comics, not because they are manga. Frankly, I wish
Faust was more like
Robot.
Jason Thompson is one of the best-known manga critics in the US. He currently writes for Otaku USA and is the author of Manga: The Complete Guide. His website is www.mockman.com.
Manga Salad is © Jason Thompson, 2009
Like the English edition of Shonen Jump, the English edition of Faust is sort of a "best of" sampling, together with a new cover, essays, and introductions for the English reader. Unfortunately, much of this new text has the pompous quality of speeches delivered at a groundbreaking ceremony ("Faust: a legendary literary journal that's swept like a fever through the young readers coming of age in the new millennium, changing the face of Japan's literary scene in the blink of an eye"). The forewords to each story likewise veer into hyperbole (on "Drill Hole in My Brain": "This erotic phantasmagoria combines the surrealistic and the shocking in a way that readers of such Western authors as William S. Burroughs and Georges Bataille will recognize"). (Admittedly, the introductions also contain a lot of very useful background information.) With such name-dropping, together with brief, entry-level essays on otaku topics such as Kaichiroô Morikawa's "Approaching Twenty Years of Otaku," the editors of Faust seem to be hoping for recognition by both the literary and otaku worlds. To make otaku read William S. Burroughs, or to make The New York Times Book Review read xxxHOliC—either way, ambitious goals.
To me as a manga fan who grew up in the 1990s, this angst-in-genre-clothing brings to mind, not superheroes as it might for an American comics fan, but anime like Neon Genesis Evangelion, the 1995 robot anime which started a trend towards more psychological subject matter. On the other hand, Neon Genesis Evangelion was criticized for excessive angst and near-autistic protagonists, and Faust risks this criticism too. "Drill Hole in My Brain," in which a boy with a hole in his head has head sex with a girl with a unicorn-like horn, is the most passionate voice in the anthology, with its fuck-the-world attitude and surreal masturbation sequences ("I was surrounded by adults on the Shinkansen, and the clasp on my pants was undone, and a glowing white crotch flower was sticking out of the fly of my boxers…Hot damn! I grew a clitoris!"). The hero of "Drill Hole" just wants to jerk off, but compared to most of the Faust characters, he's a man chasing his dreams. Faust is full of distant, disconnected people who don't know their own emotions or their own goals, like the self-destructive Kushimura in "Outerholic," the amnesiac Shiki in "The Garden of Sinners," or the affectless protagonist of "Outlandos d'Amour." The foil to these characters are know-it-all magic counselor types like Yûko in xxxHOLiC or Tôko in "The Garden of Sinners," who basically exist to speak for the author and deliver the moral of the story. (From "Sinners": "There are two kinds of escape: fleeing aimlessly and fleeing with a goal in sight…Only you can decide which one of the two your view from above is…") The shorter pieces in the anthology tend to be focused on antisocial characters as well, like the pseudo-autobio "Yûya Satô's Counseling Session" or Tatsuhiko Takimoto's "Guru Guru Counseling Session," the one zillionth Japanese media piece about hikikomori, people whose social phobias are so intense they never leave their room. (On the other hand, Kozy Watanabe's short-short story "H People: An Evolving World" manages to say something new about the hikikomori topic.)
Of course, both "The Garden of Sinners" and "Outerholic" are illustrated, but just barely. Star manga artists like CLAMP and Takeshi Obata get prime placement on the cover, but their contribution is limited to one or two illustrations each (a testimony to the publishing truth that if you are a "mangaka" you get $50 a page, but if you are an "illustrator," the industry standard is $300 per black-and-white spot illo). The illustration styles in Faust varies wildly, from Takeshi Obata's beautiful artwork to Hajime Ueda's minimalist cartoon figures. In some cases, the artwork actually weakens the stories: Otaro Majio's pseudo-outsider-art for "Drill Hole in My Brain" looks like it was drawn in a three-ring binder (and doesn't convince me that Otaro is the next William S. Burroughs), while TYPE-MOON's head-and-shoulders spot illustration for "The Garden of Sinners" just tells us that the main character of the story is a generic-looking anime character. (The character designs weren't the strong point of Lunar Legend Tsukihime either.) 
