The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Weekly Graphic Novel: Week 24 - Battle Vixens v.4, October 2004

I think it's virtually impossible to ignore the booty above this sentence, so if it's your wont, go ahead and have a good look. I'll wait. (To be honest, this book's been sitting next to my bed for a few weeks as I read through it, so I've been waking up some mornings and seeing those well-rendered buttocks first things which, some days, is pretty okay.)

So, whether I'm fooling myself or not, I'm now convinced that the fan service that made me cringe at this title initially is actually being used as a not-so-subtle critique, mainly of a particular variety of men. Every time someone mentions breasts or panties in this series, that person is, in general, summarily thrashed by a boss-ass woman who gives absolutely no fucks. It's really pretty great. I'd compared the meshing of sex, violence, and ridiculousness in this series to the phenomenal Kill La Kill, and the comparison holds - a fact for which I'm very grateful. Shiozaki is obviously weaving a very intricate story here, and I'm fascinated to see where it goes.

Unfortunately, I may not be able to follow it all the way to the end at the present time. While I've got 12 volumes of the series, the four remaining volumes published by Tokyopop are long out of print, and are proving difficult to find even on Amazon. Add to this the fact that the Japanese version is up to 22 volumes, but there appears to be no English translations of the later books.

Off to start learning Japanese....that's not too hard, is it?

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Weekly Graphic Novel: Week 20 - Battle Vixens v.3, August 2004

I continue, trepidatiously, to make my way through Yuji Shiozaki's brazen and brutal series. I have to admit that I'm finding the story quite compelling - my earlier noting of all of the characters paying far too much attention to Hakufu's breasts comes to a head and even she is tired of the size of them ("Geez...they are big, aren't they? I can't even see my feet. Da-amn!"). There's an interesting thing happening with her character, as all she wants is, in her words, a fair fight without having the addition of men either drooling over her or sexually threatening her.

And it's on that point that I'm having a slight problem. I've allowed that, hopefully, the hyper-sexualization is ironic, to a certain extent, commenting on our meshing of the drives for sex and death. Freudians would have a field day with this comic. But this volume contains a number of very off-the-cuff references to and jokes about rape, which is hardly a matter to take less than seriously. Again, I'm really hoping that there's an ironic subtext here that I'm perhaps not picking up on. It could have to do with the translation, as always, or it could be something that will develop over the course of the series. It's certainly one of the most awful mixes of the two drives, and if the series is hinging around that, a conversation about rape culture is vital. But I just don't know if it's going to happen in this series. Every female character thus far has been both badass - more so than just about any of the male characters - and object of the male gaze. I guess we'll see where things go.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Weekly Graphic Novel: Week 14 - Battle Vixens v.2, June 2004

There is this interesting line I try to straddle in talking about physical representation of women in comics. It has, of course, been a long-standing criticism of the medium, and specifically of superhero stories, that depictions of women tend toward the ridiculous adolescent hetero-sex fantasies of boys. Tight clothes, pert bottoms, large breasts, flawless skin, and attractive (by mainstream societal standards) faces. Such depictions would not be so easily criticized if they were one amongst many, rather than ubiquitous across publishers, characters, nations. So I have a strange time trying to talk about Battle Vixens and look past the fact that pretty much every character takes notice of Hafuku's enormous breasts.

But maybe that's how I reconcile it. It's not just the reader that's noticing her breasts, but the characters as well. There's a hint of the ridiculous in the amount of narrative that is devoted to thinking about her physicality (not that it's necessarily a lot, but really is only balanced by the amount of time devoted to fighting). Were there not this attention in-story, I might be tempted to simply write off Shiozaki's gratuitous panty-shots, torn t-shirts, and heaving bosoms to the aforementioned sex fantasies, but in having our attention constantly drawn (pun intended) to Hafuku's body, there is certainly a voice of irony and critique bleeding through the kicking and punching school girl action. As I noted in my previous review of the series, there's something of the Kill La Kill ridiculousness going on here, and the optimistic side of me sees that Shiozaki is not only attempting to tell a very interesting, mythic story, but also offer a commentary on our conjoined fascinations with sex and violence, two drives that are intrinsically linked in this series.

That said, I'm having some difficulty keeping all of the characters straight in the series. Some are introduced in this volume that I feel like I should have some knowledge of but that I don't actually recall having read about before. I can chalk this up to translation difficulties, or sloppy storytelling, or simply a bad memory on my part, I suppose. With any luck, by the time I reach the 24th volume of the series, I'll have them all sorted out.

Yeah.

Right.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Weekly Graphic Novel: Week 12 - Battle Vixens v.1, April 2004

What does one do with such a beast? Go on. Have a look at that cover. The back matter reads "Hakufu Sonsaku is a busty, beautiful girl with an irresistable lust -- for battle!" And that, really, is about all you need to know, at least for this first volume of Ikki Tousen, or Battle Vixens. I picked up the first 12 volumes of this series for $1 each at a thrift shop, and it looked amusing enough that I didn't balk at the price. It took me a long while to actually pick up the first volume and give it a read, and, for a little while, it was exactly what I thought it would be: lots of bouncing, heaving bosoms, lots of panty-shots, lots of mentions, some subtle, some not-so, on the main character's....um...assets? But having watched a number of episodes of the remarkable anime Kill La Kill, I was willing to entertain the notion that the ridiculous exploitation might be done from an ironic perspective. It is. Sort of. But what the series, thus far (and, as of this writing, I'm part way through the second volume), is doing is to set up a story of young people possessed of the skills of ancient warriors through mystical gems passed down through their families. It just so happens that the focal character happens to be a voluptuous high school girl. As focal characters often are in such manga.

I did a bit of research, and the manga has reached, as of September last year, 24 volumes. Whether or not that's the end, I didn't check, in the interest of avoiding spoilers. What that tells me, though, is that the artist has, and perhaps continues to have, a vision of where this story is going, which helps in reading these early chapters. It also helps that the English edition was overseen by the inimitable Keith Giffen, a writer and artist whom I hold in high regard, high enough that I'm willing to give this series, which looks very silly and more than a little insulting, a chance. I'm mildly impressed with it, so far.