A sly, humorous look at Japan's burgeoning anime (comics) phenomenon, with friendly swipes at Japan's xenophobic reactions...
To boost circulation, the Gaijin Times, on orders from its owner Mr. Sanno, is about to convert to Japan's best-selling format—manga, or comic-book style. Freelance art columnist Rei Shimura (The Flower Master, 1999) is assigned to write up the historic and artistic significance of manga for the next issue, and Rika, the Showa College student interning at the paper, is to help with her research. Scooping up her boyfriend Takeo and a slew of comics, Rei is impressed with the Showa Story interpretation of Mars Girl, which reworks the mainstream comic heroine into a superheroine of the next century who goes back in time to the 1930s to solve prewar Japanese problems. Rei decides to interview Mars Girl artist Kunio Takahashi, but he proves elusive, and other members of his art circle are equally hard to pin down. His neighbor Nicky is soon found floating in the river dolled up as Mars Girl, a symbol sketched on his brow perhaps indicating a Yakuza connection. Still determined to interview Kunio, Rei chats up the raunchy male dancers at the Show a Boy club, where Nicky worked; collides with the family of printers who produce the Mars Girl comics; swims with The Fish, who insists Nicky had no gang connections; and dons a Mars Girl costume herself to chase after suspects at a comic-book convention.
A sly, humorous look at Japan's burgeoning anime (comics) phenomenon, with friendly swipes at Japan's xenophobic reactions to outsiders. If the plot is not quite as attractively laid out as those platters of sushi, a few hours of the company of Rei-san are well worth your time.Pub Date: May 12, 2000
ISBN: 0-06-019229-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
Looks like Neal Carey, the peripatetic agent of that free- lance justice troop Friends of the Family, will never get back to New York to write his dissertation on Tobias Smollett. This time he's sprung from three years in a Chinese monastery (The Trail to Buddha's Mirror, 1992) only to be sent undercover as a ranch-hand in the Nevada plains to scout out the Sons of Seth, a white- supremacist flock that's his best hope for locating two-year-old Cody McCall, snatched from his Hollywood mother during a paternal weekend. Neal settles in deep, of course, and his ritual ordeals- -having to sell out the rancher who took him in, breaking off his romance with tough schoolmarm Karen Hawley, going up against rotten-apple Cal Strekker, getting ordered to kill his Friendly mentor Joe Graham—are as predictable as the trademark dose of mysticism as the bodies pile up, and as the certainty that when the dust settles, Neal won't be back at school. Winslow's Aryan crazies don't have the threatening solidity of Stephen Greenleaf's (Southern Cross, p. 1102 ), but Neal's latest adventure is full of entertaining derring-do.
Pub Date: Nov. 16, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-09934-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1993
O'Brien proves to be the Oliver Stone of literature, reiterating the same Vietnam stories endlessly without adding any insight. Politician John Wade has just lost an election, and he and his wife, Kathy, have retired to a lakeside cabin to plan their future when she suddenly disappears. O'Brien manages to stretch out this simple premise by sticking in chapters consisting of quotes from various sources (both actual and fictional) that relate to John and Kathy. An unnamed author — an irritating device that recalls the better-handled but still imperfect "Tim O'Brien" narrator of The Things They Carried (1990) — also includes lengthy footnotes about his own experiences in Vietnam. While the sections covering John in the third person are dry, these first-person footnotes are unbearable. O'Brien uses a coy tone (it's as though he's constantly whispering "Ooooh, spooky!"), but there is no suspense: The reader is acquainted with Kathy for only a few pages before her disappearance, so it's impossible to work up any interest in her fate. The same could be said of John, even though he is the focus of the book. Flashbacks and quotes reveal that John was present at the infamous Thuan Yen massacre (for those too thick-headed to understand the connection to My Lai, O'Brien includes numerous real-life references). The symbolism here is beyond cloying. As a child John liked to perform magic tricks, and he was subsequently nicknamed "Sorcerer" by his fellow soldiers — he could make things disappear, get it? John has been troubled for some time. He used to spy on Kathy when they were in college, and his father's habit of calling the chubby boy "Jiggling John" apparently wounded him. All of this is awkwardly uncovered through a pretentious structure that cannot disguise the fact that there is no story here. Sinks like a stone.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 061870986X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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