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For those of you that missed it I found out about Emma: Volume 1

last week, the post is here. It is a manga, or graphic novel, by Kaoru Mori.

The story takes place in London during the 19th Century. Emma is a maid for an old widow who used to work as a governess. The widow appears somewhat classless in the story, which allows her to encourage Emma's interest in her old student, William Jones. William Jones is a member of the gentry whose father is set on him marrying a higher class woman, but William wants to marry for love and he loves Emma. It's a little cheesy, love at first sight, but the rest of the story is so great that I didn't think much about it.

Willliam Jones is very extreme in how much he cares for Emma, which I feel is more characteristic of a manga than of a Victorian romance novel. He will do anything to please her and buys her glasses because she cannot see out of hers. When he is walking in London he is always looking out for Emma, and since it is a manga he always sees her.

What I love most about this graphic novel is not the romance story though, it is the attention to traits of the Victorian society. In chapter three William Jones has a friend visit. His name is Hakim and he is Indian royalty. His entrance is a little eccentric, he arrives with a herd of elephants and belly dancers, later taking William on an elephant ride. While I felt that was a little extreme I did like how much it showed the interest of British people in the East. I think Mori made Hakim's entrance so extreme to show how the Victorian people had exotic ideas of the East.

In another scene Hakim and William are at the library and they find a book with photographs of scantily clad women. Hakim is not impressed and William makes a comment about the people in India not wearing clothes. Things like this made it interesting for me, it is very different from a Victorian novel but deals with a lot of the same issues. If I had to compare it to a none graphic novel, it kind of reminded me of Leonard Woolf.

To William's surprise, Hakim is also falling in love with Emma. Actually, everyone is falling in love with Emma (because it's manga). William goes to get a note to send to her and the girl at the counter says that several people have come to send a note to the exact same girl. Since it is a series there was no resolution left at the end, so if I want to find out more about the Hakim, William, Emma love triangle I suppose I will have to snag the second volume! Overall a good read if you're interested in Victorian history but are looking for something different. There is also a television show called Emma - A Victorian Romance Season 1

based on the manga.

Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: CMX (September 20, 2006)
Language: English

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Scott Pilgrim is 23 years old and has spent the past year trying to get over his last girlfriend. It looks like he is finally going to get over her when he starts dating a high school girl named Knives Chau. So... Scott is kind of a loser. The entire graphic novel is written in a video game style, with the specifics of characters listed as they appear on the pages. Scott is in a band and when they play the pages look eerily like the video game Rock Band. The entire book is basically Scott trying to progress to the next level, which includes finding out who this rollerblading, Amazon delivery girl Ramona Flowers is. Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life

is basically a celebration of all things twenty-something and the culture that surrounds that generation. The best character is definitely Wallace Wells, Scott's gay roommate, and even he kind of turns into a jerk at one point in the book (and he only gets a 7.5 rating at the beginning, so we know he isn't perfect). Bryan Lee O'Malley does a great job of summing up their relationship in two panels that show their apartment. Everything in the apartment has a label on it and we quickly find out that most of the stuff in there is Wallace's and Scott just uses it, including Wallace's socks.

Which is probably why I really, really loved it. The language was spot on and not gluttonous like the language in Juno. All of the characters are pretty unlikeable, Scott is a loser, Ramona is kind of an oddball, Knives is gullible teenager, and most of Scott's friends are mean, but as twenty-year-old you recognize that most of the people in your life fall into these categories too. It doesn't have anything to do with hipster culture, as many have said, because, let's face it, if Scott Pilgrim was a hipster he wouldn't have any friends and he would have much better taste in clothes. Bryan Lee O'Malley's drawing style is also not hipster enough to create a graphic novel about hipsters. It's not manga but it's not what we typically see from comic book artists today. It's almost more like a webcomic style--which I was totally on board with.

The book moves rather quickly and I suppose at time it might be a little too fast. If you didn't understand the language or world O'Malley assumes you understand the book would probably be difficult to get through. I can't speak to that, as I did understand it. If you're a college student I don't see how you wouldn't understand it, at least a little bit. I really can't speak more highly of the first volume in this series, so I will just end by review and hope you all give Scott Pilgrim a try.

I give Scott Pilgrim an A.

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

Last night I was searching for more great Victorian novels and reference books when I ran across Emma: A Victorian Romance. It's a Japanese anime that aired from 2002-2006. I'm sorry I didn't find out about it sooner because it's so quirky. I've never seen an anime where the characters were essentially white people, well except maybe Pokeman. I am amazed by how versatile anime has become.

The series is actually based of a 10 volume manga series that I found on Amazon. From what I understand Emma is a lower class maid living in London who falls in love with an upper class male named William Jones. This of course is the making of many great Victorian novels. I'm also totally in love with the lady of the house who I think is William Jones' old teacher. She says great Victorian standbys like, "It's just good manners" but you can tell that she has a soft spot for her maid.

You can watch the first episode (in Japanese with English subtitles) on Youtube.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three

This week, Unfinished Person was inspired by the Watchmen movie to ask us the following question...

What book or books did a director or directors completely ruin in the adaptations(s) that you wish you could “unsee,” and why in your opinion, what made it or them so bad in contrast to the book or books?

So. This week we discovered that Geeks are not shy. Or opposed to tossing in a few swears when it comes to movie adaptions of beloved books. I had so much fun reading this week's posts because the answers were all over the place, in terms of the movies chosen. However, the one thing you all did have in common was your brutal honesty. Evidently, Geeks are very, very picky when it comes to how books are translated into movies.

Unfinished Person himself started us off by answering his own question. While he enjoyed the cinematography of The Grapes of Wrath, Unfinished Person felt the story left a lot to be desired. A lot.

Puss Reboots held no punches whatsoever in her post about Lolita. And Julie, discussing the third Anne of Green Gables book to movie adaptation, didn't see how a movie version could get any worse. In fact, The Grapes of Wrath and Lolita and Anne of Green Gables (part 3) have something in common. According to Geeks, they are all “crap.”

Jennie also put it bluntly. For her, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, and I quote here, SUCKS.

Ariel Dalloway took on Dragonball and summed up her feelings with this scathing ending to her post: "Goku, please. Kame Hame Ha this nonsense into dust and let it get blown in the wind and forgotten so those who haven’t read the manga will not think Dragonball is all about an American boy with bad hair."

Then there were the casting issues. Rebecca believes that Demi Moore is the worst possible choice for Hester Prynne, and Erika Lynn feels similarly about Tom Hanks as the lead in The Da Vinci Code. Poor Tom. Margot thought he was a bad choice for the lead in The Bonfire of the Vanities, as well.

As usual, it's been another fun and entertaining week in Geek-land. Thanks for participating!

I was a little disappointed with the second volume in Kaoru Mori's Emma series, so I was thrilled to see how beautifully crafted Emma: Volume 3 was. It truly made me fall in love with the series all over again. As I read each new volume I can see Mori's artisty become even more sophisticated. This was especially true of this volume. I don't know the manga lingo, so I will do my best to describe it. In this volume it seems like Mori is moving away from having several boxes on the pages to longer ones that take up a third of the page or even scenes that take up two full pages. The details in these drawings amazed me, and when I turned the page a few different times during the book I literally gasped. If you haven't read the Emma series yet, I urge you to do so. The remainder of this review will assume that you have read Emma: Volume 1 and Emma: Volume 2.

The last time we saw Emma she was leaving London after a failed romance with the aristocratic William Jones. This volume picks up right there, with Emma's journey to a new home on a train. Here she meets Tasha, a maid to a wealthy family. It is through Tasha that Emma finds her new place of employment and encounters many new mysterious characters. William Jones is still in London, but he is actually working now. It appears that since his father requested him to be serious and not consider riff raff like Emma he has decided to do exactly that. It is truly sad, because he pretends like everything is fine and dandy. His sister, however, can see that something is bothering him. William passively moves through this book though, not hinting towards his true feelings.

It seems like Mori is getting a little more interested in Victorian history with this volume, and especially with the options given to women during the time period. Most of Mori's stories deal with maids in Victorian England, but here we are introduced to the possibility of teaching as a governess or becoming an authoress, as the book says. Mori also uses historical background as a way to transition between scenes which is different from the two past volumes.

This novel earned an A.

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