Chicago # 1, by Yumi Tamura

[rachelmanija]

In the near future, a huge earthquake destroys Tokyo, as all manga catastrophes are wont to do. Well, parts of Tokyo anyway. Rescue worker Rei, who rides a motorcycle and is possibly the most ass-kicking shoujo heroine ever, and her hot partner Uozumi go to the rescue, but are shot at and then bombed. Uozumi is trapped and surrounded by flames. Rei rescues him by shooting the debris trapping him with a bazooka; his life is saved but he loses a leg.

They are presumed dead, so they go to work as mercenaries for a bar with really good potstickers which is a front for a mercenary rental joint. As one does. And then they rescue hostages and contemplate their love lives. Rei loves Uozumi, but he loves his girlfriend Mika. I think Mika is doomed.

This seems to be an older manga, based on the retro art style (Rei's eyes are humungous, even for shoujo) and the fact that my edition, from Animerica, is flipped. There's only two volumes, and I look forward to the next. I don't love the art but it's not actively offputting, Rei is awesome, it has sexual tension between partners, and the writing style has a nice indie-noir edge.

I believe that Tamura's famous work is an epic fantasy, Basara. How's that?

Comments

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Basara is a book I have an unholy love for. It takes a few volumes to get going, but is pretty good. It avoids anything resembling strict definitions of right/wrong for anything, and has plenty of complicated characters and relationships, and does it's best to take "enemies as lovers" to almos unimaginable heights.

It's been...uhm...4 or so years since I read Chicago(not long after I discovered Basara) but I remember liking it a lot. Tamura does a very good job with kickass heroines. (In addition to the heroine of Basara, I'm very fond of the pirate queen, and she does a good job of making characters who are almost literally nothing but ornamental court ladies interesting.)

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Basara is awesome. It's one of my all-time favorite series. However, her current series, 7 Seeds, is even better. (They're both post-apocalyptic, which is a huge kink of mine.) 7 Seeds is at present not available in English, but I really hope they bring it out here as it deserves a big international audience.

And no, Chicago isn't old (2000-2001). That's just her style. It's not my favorite style, either, but her storytelling is so unbelievably awesome.

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

IIRC, 2000-2001 is about when the US manga publishing industry started changing rapidly? I keep running across all sorts of oddities from that period in libraries and being surprised at how recent they are...flipped, publishers and imprints I've never heard of, titles I had no idea were ever published in English, etc.

[roadrunnertwice]

Shaenon Garrity's article about Basara had nothing but love for it.

[umadoshi.livejournal.com]

I adore Basara. I found that I didn't think about it much between volumes, but I loved every new volume when it arrived. ^^

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I liked Chicago, but I need to try Basara again, because in the first three volumes nothing happened that I had not predicted at least twenty pages in advance, so I got bored. I am told it gets better, though.

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

I've only read one volume of Basara and it didn't do much for me, but I keep meaning to try further volumes, as it comes very, very well-recommended, and a lot of my favorites started out slow.

Her collection of one-shots, Wild Com, is passably good. I bought it in a buy-1-get-2-free manga sale at a con because it was reviewed in the shoujo issue of The Comics Journal, and even though the reviewer hated it, I was curious. It's mostly not very nice and the eyes are ginormous to the point of distraction, but Tamura does a decent tale of stalkery revenge fantasy.

[larryhammer]

I like Basara but haven't actually finished it - got a little less than halfway through. OTOH, I adore 7 Seeds with an unholy, post-apocalyptic love (available at the usual scnalation download sites).

---L.

[seshat.livejournal.com]

Basara is 'so classic it hurts' shojo. It's set in a weird "post-apocalyptic so far future it might as well be fantasy" low tech setting, and it nails just about every trope solidly on the head. I wanted to axe murder the main love interests for being oblivious through better than half of the series (and yes, I own all 26 volumes that have come out over here so far, and plan to keep them). What made the series for me was the side characters, who were vibrant, allowed to have their own voices, and had interesting stories of their own. The heroine is gutsy and imperfect, makes rash decisions, but still manages to muddle through. I still thinks she needs to be bashed in the head with a clue-by-four, but when she's not being locked into things by the tropes of the shojo genre she's actually not all that dumb.

It is definitely a story with strong female characters kicking ass and taking names in all kinds of different ways.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

They are presumed dead, so they go to work as mercenaries for a bar with really good potstickers which is a front for a mercenary rental joint. As one does. And then they rescue hostages and contemplate their love lives

....hell with the shoujo, I believe that is MY PERFECT JOB.