Tuesday, 11 August 2009

Yonen Buzz: Manga Review

Title: Yonen Buzz

Author: Christina Plaka

Label: Tokyopop

Volumes: Ongoing



I’m a sucker for a story based around a rock band, both NANA and Beck place highly in my favourite anime/manga estimations. Yonen Buzz, for me, attempts to inhabit the same space as these titans, and does a fantastic job of it.

The main premise will be familiar to all; it follows the fortunes of a struggling musical foursome attempting to make a living from their music. I am not a proponent of the “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it” school of storytelling, favouring more the approach of “If it’s not broken, great! Now go and make something new”. However, Yonen Buzz does not merely follow in the footprints of its megastar predecessors, dancing a merry jig and presenting you with nothing new, instead, it manages to carve out its own niche, in so doing telling a gripping tale.

The story is still very much in its infancy, and so far we have only hints as to the underlying back-story of the characters, for example; while we know that guitarist and frontman Imai Jun lost his parents as a child, we know none of the details, which promises to be an important reveal later in the story. An interesting, and for me, welcome, change from formulaic romance plotlines is that the story begins with the two main characters already in a relationship. This means that there is an absence of the moribund long, drawn out ‘Will they? / Won’t they?’ plot line where both characters nervously judder into their pillows, plucking up the courage to say ‘it’. This is a huge breath of fresh air in manga-storytelling, due to that particular storyline having been done to an ugly death. Constantly. Repeatedly. Over and over again.

The characters are lively and likeable, without resorting to gimmicky repeating jokes, again a novelty in the ‘teen drama’ genre. Importantly, the characters all feel genuinely rounded, which is no small feat in what is, necessarily, a fast moving story which has to assume that you haven’t read the prequel. There is little explained in the prequel (now re-released as Yonen Buzz: Plastic Chew) that isn’t skilfully and succinctly recapped in the actual series, although if you enjoy the series it would certainly be worth going back to the very beginning. The members of the band are straight-up earnest, without being sickeningly twee, again, a fine line deftly navigated by the author. My personal favourite is reliable nice guy and bassist Kato Atsushi. What is perhaps hugely enjoyable about the series is that the characters, the members of the band at least, are able to create a sense of honest friendship, which isn’t interrupted by the usual shallow misunderstandings that lead to ‘hilarious consequences’ that are a formulaic blight on all mangakind. Having said that, the characters are put into testing circumstances, after all it is a drama, however the solidarity of the friendship shines through in an honest and real way (as opposed to the Grandia 2 way). While the mandatory fallings out and grumpings of the band are rectified, there is a degree of brooding and angst-filled sequences, however it is a story following the antics of a 90s influenced grunge band, so to complain that it is angsty would be a little ridiculous. As though I’d read a story about swimming and complained that there was too much water in it.

The art is also a departure from bog-standard manga design, with a noticeable lack of V-chinned, inter-changeable, androgynous characters, plumping instead for still-stylised, but perhaps more honest representations of human beings. The differences are particularly noticeable in the jaw-lines of the male characters, which are more squared off than is usual in manga, and also indulging in a splash of stubble here and there. The design of hairstyles is also a far-cry from the ‘fight with a glue gun’ variety of DBZ-fame, and while I have no qualms with ludicrous, gravity defying styles (the very opposite in fact) the realistic styles are far more appropriate.

The clothes in the series will be enjoyed by lovers of rock, especially if you are feeling nostalgic for the 90s, now that we are almost an entire decade away from then. As the story has progressed, Jun has transformed more and more into a lookalike of Kurt Cobain, but since the manga itself references this fact, it seems almost a redundant observation.

The feel of the entire series is of a story that the author is completely immersed in. It is a joy to bear witness to a tale that the author is dedicated to telling, not merely eking it out as anther half-baked idea. Every chapter is accompanied by messages from the author, sometimes providing commentary or insights to the story, sometimes with lyrics for the songs of the band, also providing short biographies of bands which influence the separate characters in the story. It is this kind of immense backlog which helps round out a character, meaning that they are not merely 2D cut-outs running through a story. It is also clear that the author feels as strongly as her characters about music, with the bands original name of Prussian Blue being changed in the re-release to Plastic Chew, due to the appearance of a real-life Prussian Blue, described by Wikipedia as a white nationalist teen-pop duo, and by me as a pair of racist cunts. So a good call on the part of Christina Plaka to distance her work from them.

Now one reason why NANA and Beck have the advantage over Yonen Buzz is due to their anime incarnations, which enabled them to record actual songs for their respective bands, adding an extra layer to the story. Now though Yonen Buzz does include the lyrics for the band’s songs, I was all set to say that it couldn’t quite live up to the other offerings. Before writing this review, however, I did some research (if typing ‘Yonen Buzz’ into a reputable search engine counts as research)(re: it does) and discovered that there were recordings of Yonen Buzz songs on YouTube. I assumed these were songs created by fans of the series that had taken the lyrics from the books and composed some noise around them. But no, the truth is better than that again. There are a series of recordings of the songs, composed and performed by the author, on YouTube. What makes this particularly fantastic, in my opinion, is that they are not professionally filmed; they are merely a short clip of a woman with an acoustic guitar, singing her own songs into a digital camera. For all the professional quality and big names involved in the recording of the songs for NANA and Beck (which, don’t get me wrong, is hugely impressive) the indie, home-grown nature of these songs is far more amazing, and importantly, very much in line with the nature of the story. Firstly, they are clearly a labour of love, and performing them herself is surely a brave step, and moreover, beyond the call of duty. You wouldn’t expect your favourite musicians to start writing stories, and I certainly didn’t expect an author to also write music. But I am incredibly glad she does.

There are a few slight niggles I have with the series, the biggest of which is that it takes forever for a new volume to appear. Having said that, however, it does make the series slightly special, with never-ending serials sometimes feeling pointless and throwaway, I am more than happy to wait for a new volume that is well thought out and structured, rather than getting a new volume every week and discovering that it is tripe. The translation from German to English is mostly above criticism, however one particular scene (in Vol. 3) indicates that one translator was perhaps not on the same wavelength as everyone else. It says on the back that the book is suitable for 13+, however in a sequence of dialogue where a drummer thinks he is going to be replaced, he angrily drops the c-bomb. Now it seems somewhat coy of me to have censored it there, since I used it earlier in the piece to describe a neo-nazi pop act, however I am writing this in the understanding that children will not be reading it. In a story marked 13+, where terms such as ‘dorkface’, ‘turd’ and ‘buddy boy’ feature, the word ‘cunt’ seems hugely out of place. I, personally, enjoyed the sudden plunge into no-holds-barred language, but I can imagine that the parents of children reading it might not.

All in all, the story isn’t an epoch-altering breakthrough, but it is an engaging story well told, and well drawn. I am awaiting the next volume with infantile, unrestrained glee.

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