comickal: spies like them

Well ... given circumstances, they likely would be appropriate to the task at hand.

And, in a fit of oddly apropos timing: "Space Commies"?

All's I'm going to say is: nothing whatsoever, because anything I could say about what I would want to say would get me in SO much trouble...

Someday, she'll figure out what she's been talking about all these years. And then she'll never come out of her room again.

That would be ... an intriguing place for them to wind up.

comickal: recently read, polite dystopias edition

Library Wars, vol 1: Love and War (Hiro Arikawa, concept; Kiiro Yumi, story and art; Shojo Beat Manga)

OK, so picture this: just before Hirohito's death, Japan takes a sharp turn to the right. Akihito takes a different reign name. The government decides that there are many many many books which should no longer be read by the public, as they are clearly subversive and harmful. Every single local and provincial government goes into effective rebellion against the national government. Each level creates a Library Defense Forces branch; people go to library school to learn the normal librarianly skills -- reference, cataloging, how to make databases do things that make strong programmers beg to know our secrets, etc. A subgroup of that also gets trained as soldiers -- exactly the sort of training that you would expect soldiers to receive as basic training. A subgroup of that gets extra special training as a sort of elite task force. (What they actually do is unclear.) Things are bad enough that the national government has made it lawful for their soldiers to kill members of the LDF, and the cities and provinces have made it lawful for the LDF to kill members of the government's forces ... but only under certain, very specific circumstances. It also seems to be agreed that when officers of the LDF are present, because of peculiarity in the federal laws that have never been adjusted or repealed, the LDF outrank the government soldiers, and the government's people are to retire from the field (usually a bookstore or library) without a shot being fired. Nonetheless, being in the LDF is considered more dangerous than being in the police or the army.

So you're looking at this, and you're thinking, hey, we've got outright civil war at all levels of the state here, we've got dystopia a-go-go, we've got bodies in the streets from the LDF and government soldiers going at it, right?... yeah, not so much. Because this is shojo manga, which is to say, light fluffy romance aimed at teenaged girls. Thus, we have the politest civil war you have ever seen in your life. It's alleged that people get killed, but you couldn't prove it by anything that we see in volume 1. Nobody seems to be undergoing any particular hardship, aside from the people training to be in the LDF. The government seems always to be yielding to the LDF -- understandably, since the characters we're following are all LDF members.

Oh, yes, the characters. Corporal Inu Kasahara (in training) is madly in love with a mysterious man from her past, who saved her and a book she was interested in from the government forces. Only ... she doesn't know who he was/is. (This is, sadly, very very relevant to the story.) Corporal Asako Shibazaki (in training) is Inu's best friend, helping her with the library courses in which she is not much interested, because she wants the life of the LDF soldier, without quite understanding exactly what it is. Kasahara is, it turns out, the first woman to apply to be in the LDF. Instructor Dojo is a major teacher and leading officer. Initially, the story works relatively well, as long as you can understand the concept of a truly civil civil war. But then Kasahara does a few things wrong, and Dojo realizes it's because he incorrectly trained her -- for reasons that I think I'll leave alone for now. So, having incorrectly trained her for the basic LDF, he then invites her to be on the elite task force, because he thinks he should keep her with him until she's properly trained ...? I don't know, it doesn't make much sense to me. In any event, shortly after, we see Kasahara going out and doing normal librarianly work, and also some LDF work, and we see how the LDF does and does not relate to the normal forces.

It's ... interesting. As long as you go into Library Wars with your expectations properly calibrated -- grungy dystopic civil war, no; light fluffy teen romance in a wildly improbable setting, yes -- it's kind of fun to read. There are also occasional side notes from Hiro Arikawa, who wrote the original "light" novel series on which Library Wars is based. (And the idea of a set of novels like this I find positively mindbending, really.)

The closest thing I can think of in American books would be Gear School (reviewed here), which doesn't stint on the beginnings of teen romance, but also manages to present war as ... well, war.

OK; Recommended for young teens; adults may find it a bit ... much.

Yi Soon Shin #2 (Onrie Kompan, David Anthony Kraft/Giovanni Timpano, Adriana de los Santos; self-published; available through Amazon, oddly enough, as is the first issue)

After a longish wait, issue 2 of this four issue series comes out. (Kompan says that they've found backing for the last two issues, and they should be out a bit faster than this one. I continue to wonder why this isn't an Archaia title; this is right up their alley. It may be that the acquisition last year doesn't let them offer terms good enough.)

When last we left our hero, Admiral Yi Soon Shin had just discovered the charming present that Baron Seo, a Korean turncoat, had left for him. He'd flayed someone -- a Japanese captain who was "running from the battle", as it turns out -- and left the skinless, headless remains hanging from a tree for the admiral to find. For the start of this issue, we leap to occupied Korea, behind the Japanese lines. Gurijima Michiyuki, the samurai general, is furious with Admiral Todo, commander of the Japanese fleet, for losing his entire armada to the much smaller but better led Korean fleet. There's yelling and screaming and offers to commit seppuku ... and then they kiss. And then Baron Seo appears. And it turns out that he's blackmailing them into .... well, honestly, it's not entirely clear. Helping him kill Yi Soon Shin, but they'd be doing that anyway; killing the best officers on the other side is what invading forces do. I guess ultimately the idea is that maybe, once Yi Soon Shin and the Korean king are dead, he'll be the local regent/puppet? Seriously, no clue what he wants, aside from Yi's head.

Essentially, Yi Soon Shin's story is that he's surrounded by either traitors or easily manipulated idiots. To be sure, he exposes and defeats a Japanese plot against his life, but only by putting himself and other injured soldiers at risk. The other Korean military leaders are not amused. In any event, he gets manipulated into trying to save a renegade admiral who goes off on his own; the other military leaders refuse to support such a foolhardy endeavour. And things ... do not go well.

Timpano's artwork and De Los Santos' colors are impressive, as before. The beginning of the issue is very dark in color tone, but details are still easy to make out. But still, gorgeous to look at, even when some -- well, quite a lot, really -- of the gorgeous colors are blood.

As for the story, I wonder just how much of this is history, and how much of it's embellishment to make a good story. (And make no mistake, it is a good story so far.) The appearance of the blackmailed homosexual trope was ... unexpected, to put it mildly; were the military leaders of that expedition involved with each other? I have to admit, after reading this issue, I did a bit of reading up on Yi -- no doubt thoroughly spoiling myself for the rest of the story, but it's not going to stop me from reading the rest, whenever it comes out -- and that question was left profoundly unanswered. And even profoundly unasked, for that matter. Oddly, I haven't found any mention of Baron Seo, either, but Yi's domestic enemies were legion, so he may have just been lost in the crowd. And it just may be that my research was cursory enough -- yes, I did do more than look at Wikipedia, thank you very much -- that I just missed those details. That said, some events that didn't take place until 1597-1598 appear to have been brought forward into 1592 for story's sake.

Note, if you decide to do some research yourself, there's a variant spelling of his name: Yi Sun-sin. And it turns out that his life and career were quite amazing, and parts of it were quite quite horrifying -- he overcame one hell of a lot, and forgave one hell of a lot, to be in the position to try to save Korea from the invasion. The comic doesn't cover the early obstacles, and hasn't yet reached the later ones, but seriously, the man had one impressive life.

Very good; Highly recommended.