First volumes of Sarasah, Ooku: The Inner Chambers

It’s been a while since I’ve written about any manga or manhwa, except for the volumes I covered briefly in my summer summary, so here are the first volumes of two new series from Yen Press and Viz.

Sarasah is written and illustrated by Ryu Ryang and licensed in English by Yen Press. This manhwa tells the story of an obsessive, love-struck teenager named Ji-Hae, whose unrestrained and unwanted attentions kind of push the crazy-stalker envelope. The real story begins, however, on the day the disgusted object of her unbridled affection, a callous pretty boy named Seung-Hyu, accidentally pushes her down a flight of stairs in a careless attempt to brush her off. When some of the guardians of the afterlife (sorry, I don’t know a better way to describe these characters) find Ji-Hae’s spirit hovering between the realms of life and death, they’re not quite sure what to do with her. They’re convinced it’s not yet her time to die, but they don’t know what she’s doing there. On hearing her story, however, they become interested, and decide to send her back in time to the Shilla dynasty, when both she and Seung-Hyu lived as previous incarnations of themselves. And so Ji-Hae embarks on a time-traveling, body-snatching, cross-dressing journey in an attempt to fix whatever went wrong between the two of them the first time around. But it’s not going to be nearly as easy as she thought, as complication after complication ensues.

Ok, so this was a total impulse buy for me. I was browsing through the aisles of Barnes and Noble, with a brand new gift card burning a hole in my pocket, when I saw this title and just decided to buy it on the spot. I’d never heard of the series or the author, but the story looked unusual and interesting, and I’m always keen to try new manhwa. Since purchasing it, I’ve read a lot of negative reviews of this volume from various bloggers. They don’t like the main character, they’re uncomfortable with her crazy obsession with Seung-Hyu, they don’t like the way she’s drawn, etc. I can definitely understand these sentiments (Ji-Hae is kind a of tough pill to swallow, especially in the first chapter), but I was actually pleasantly surprised by this volume as a whole. Yes, Ji-Hae has some serious issues, but she’s young and has lots of room to grow, which I’m hoping will happen over the course of her journey. If she undergoes no character development at all that could be a deal-breaker for the series, but if not it’ll be really interesting to see. Judging from the artwork and overall execution, this is definitely a more juvenile series. Yet the story is intriguing enough that I’m anxious to see where it goes next. So although volume one of Sarasah was kind of a mixed bag, the positive elements outweighed the negative ones for me. I think this series has potential.

Unlike with Sarasah, the release of the first volume of Ooku: The Inner Chambers was something I had looked forward to for months in advance. There had been a lot of buzz in the manga blogging sphere about the licensing of this new, award-winning manga from legendary author Fumi Yoshinaga (creator of Antique Bakery and Flower of Life), and I was kind of caught up in the anticipation. The word “Ooku” in the title (pronounced OH-ku, not oo-ku) refers to the “inner chambers” of the shogun’s palace, where his harem resided and where no man but him could enter. In this series, Yoshinaga creates an intriguing alternate version of Edo Japan, in which a noxious plague has wiped out most of the male population, leaving the women to assume the positions of power traditionally held by men. The shogun is a woman, therefore, and the Inner Chambers are filled with handsome men. The first volume focuses on a handsome young man named Yunoshin who enters the Inner Chambers in order to provide for his family but soon finds that for all its opulence and luxury the Inner Chambers can be a dangerous and lonely place. Towards the end of volume one, the narration shifts to focus more on Yoshimune, the new female shogun who seeks to challenge established rules and question the order of this new society.

While I wasn’t as completely blown away by Ooku as I expected to be, plotwise, I found the execution and artwork intriguing enough to keep me interested in future volumes. It certainly is a very ambitious work, compared to a lot of other manga I read, and there’s a lot there to draw one in. I especially liked the way Yoshinaga seemlessly incorporated such a complete and total gender reversal into her alternative Edo-verse: the women holding all politically significant offices and the men treated for the most part as sexual objects to be bought and sold. The artwork was also quite stunning – not as ornate and extravagant as Bride of the Water God by a long shot – but very impressive in its own way nonetheless. Yet although the premise was fascinating, the dialogue compelling, and the artwork brilliant, the character of Yunoshin felt very bland, kind of neutralizing my enjoyment of much of the first volume. Shogun Yoshimune, however, was very interesting, and I’m quite pleased that it looks like we’ll be seeing much more of her in the future. Overall, volume one of Ooku gave me a lot to think about, and I’ll definitely be checking out volume two, even though it wasn’t quite what I expected.

One last note about Ooku: the translation was pretty terrible. I wouldn’t expect it from such a new edition, but it was bad. The original was written in an archaic form of Japanese, and the translators tried to preserve the effect by throwing in lots of Shakespearian words and expressions with very unnatural, awkward results. Also, with the emphasis on gender reversal and the exploration of feudal sexual politics, this was definitely a more - er - adult manga than what I usually read. And I don’t have a problem with that, per se, the dialogue of Ooku had way more casual, offhand references to a man’s “seed” than should be found in any one volume of historical manga, in my opinion.