By Keiko Suenobu, translated by Mari Morimoto (Vertical)
ISBN: 978-1-93565-456-8
Travelling a little off the beaten ShÅjo or “girl’s comic†path is a newly translated work by the marvellous Keiko Suenobu, whose latest series Limit has just been released byNew York publisher Vertical.
Born in KitakyÅ«shÅ«, Fukuokain March 1979, Suenobu graduated from the Universityof Tsukubabefore beginning her creative career with the school romance Happy Tomorrow, before gravitating towards darker themes of conformity, social pressure and bullying in Vitamin and the moving, controversial and award-winning Raifu – translated as Life by TokyoPop in 2006.
The author took her interest in the nastier side of school life to imaginative extremes in 2009 when Limit began serialisation in Kodansha’s Bessatsu Friend. Now this rather dark and exceptionally grim tale – which will definitely appeal to a readership far beyond the general ShÅjo target-market of young girls – is available in English and might well be a future classic.
Mizuki Konno is lucky – and wise – enough to fit with the “In-Crowd†at her all-girls school. Acceptably cute and suitably smart, she has learned to make no waves and accept that the ways things work is the way things should be. The popular girls – like undisputed teen goddess Sakura Himezawa – make the rules, and the rest conform. It’s a simple matter of survival…
If you’re physically different or interested in odd things, like dumpy manga-fan and tarot reader Arisa Morishige, life can be hell. Only the strongest personalities, such as bookish, decent and determinedly wound-tight non-conformist Chieko Kamiya have any chance of standing up to the constant bitchy pressure to comply, accept and keep your place in the hierarchy of ‘A Perfect World’…
Everything changes however when Sakura’s class drives off for an extended visit to an Exchange Camp in the wilderness. Every class spends a week roughing it with nothing more than a communal scythe and their ever-present cell-phones to hold back the horrors of nature, but with this last trip of the semester things go tragically wrong.
High in the mountains the coach driver has a heart attack and the vehicle, packed with excited girls and their harried teacher, plunges catastrophically into a wooded hidden valley.
Only five girls survive, and undisputed queen of the modern world Sakura isn’t one of them…
As Konno drags the shell-shocked Haru Ichinose (Sakura’s devoted deputy, utterly unable to function without her) out of the wreckage some time later, she sees smoke from a fire. Tracking the signal they find middle-ranking Chikage Usui with her leg splinted and bandaged outside a cave. The wounded lass has been saved and succoured by the coldly efficient Kamiya, who has also scavenged everything potentially useful from the crash site.
At the back of the cave Morishige sits inside a pentagram, casting the cards…
Kamiya has brusquely taken charge, organising resources and outlining options until the girls can be found and rescued, but introspective Konno can barely grasp the strange situation and the new rules of survival. Events take an even nastier turn when the Tarot reader suddenly explodes in jubilation, claiming her prayers have been answered and her tormentors all punished…
Indifferent, ambiguous pragmatist Konno is forced to confront a new world order in ‘The Strong vs. the Weak’ as the increasingly unstable Morishige takes control.
After panicking and unsuccessfully failing to climb out of the box valley, Konno returns to find the bereft Haru attacking the former class pariah but Morishige’s big and burly frame – which brought her such cruel treatment in school – is now the most valuable asset in this new environment and moreover she has also found that wickedly lethal scythe…
The new queen easily defeats her attacker and then regales the horrified girls with a litany of all the cruel acts she saw the perfect princesses constantly inflict upon each other during their wonderful school days.
Haru is unable to accept the change of status and even refuses Konno’s overtures to become allies just as the ascendant Morishige casts the cards again and sees a future where only the strong will survive…
With food already running out, events spiral towards deadly conflict as Konno recalls better days that weren’t actually that great, only to be dragged back to reality when Morishige decides to split the remaining rations four ways. The clearly unstable would-be witch has established her own social hierarchy with the pragmatically compliant Kamiya as “Royaltyâ€, Usui a “Commoner†and the roles of “Servant†and “Slave†still to be determined by her under ‘The Empress’ Rules’…
Haru is provisionally a Slave but since they don’t get food she must fight Konno to determine who gets the final privileged – and rewarded – role of Servant… to the death…
To Be Continued…
Rather inaccurately likened to Michael Lehmann’s 1988 cult black comedy Heathers (although perhaps influenced by Koushun Takami’s novel Batoru Rowaiaru or Kinji Fukasaku’s filmic adaptation Battle Royale) but certainly deriving much of its energising concepts from William Golding’s landmark tale Lord of the Flies, this bleak, viciously introspective and effectively chilling tale marries beautiful illustration to fearsome examination of what civilised folk consider acceptable behaviour and asks some entertainingly challenging questions.
This book – which also includes a charming glance at the author’s methodology in the mini-feature My Workroom – is printed in the traditional Japanese right to left, back to front format.
© 2012 Keiko Suenobu. All rights reserved.