This is volume eight, the penultimate volume, and our heroine has hit her nadir, abandoned by friends, lost. In a traditionally-structured shorter story, this would be near the start of the third act instead of butting against the end, but the three-act story-telling framework doesn’t lay quite so evenly on top of an episodic and long-running series. All this is to say: I wish I had the language to understand better how this story is put together. Yuu Watase is quite masterful, and it deserves better from me.
Written and emotionally illustrated by Yuu Watase
Takiko helps Uruki grieve for the loss of a loved one–a loss she knows only too well. But now that the Qudong army knows how to fight Celestial power, Takiko and the Celestial Warriors have no time to lose. As they prepare to rescue Teg, Uruki learns the truth about the prophecy: to summon Genbu, the Priestess will have to sacrifice her life. Refusing to let another death happen, Uruki vows to send Takiko back to the safety of her own world…by any means necessary.
Reviewing manga is difficult for me, because I’ve read so little of it that I don’t know what “normal” is. I can only compare it to American and European comics. Sometimes I feel like a man who’s only ever watched theatre his whole life, and is now watching a movie for the first time, and all he can say is, “the director choose to film in 24 frames per second, what a brilliant choice!”
Let me chronicle some things I am noticing and loving. Yuu Watase is leaning into three page layouts, and all of them are well suited for the size of a manga book. The first is one with a stack of panels falling vertically down one side of the page, on top of a background with strong vertical composition that shines on the other side. The second is a two page spread that’s mostly a single splash layout, but has one or two vertical panels on the right side, introducing it. The third is my favorite, whenever there is a strong emotion or action scene, all the panels will be emanating out from a character on the edge of the page. I love this third, because it’s such a smart compositional idea that I rarely see in western Comics, but I feel should be a common tool in any artist’s toolbox.
This volume has our first real fantasy landscape, a secret city of assorted clans living together in a magical forest. Fushigi Yûgi: Genbu Kaiden is a period fantasy, and as near as I can tell has leaned into realistic vistas and villages, the fantasy came from magical powers and a few weird beasts. But volume eight as a city built into a magical forest, and we’re treated to a funeral on a carefully landscaped pond, and it’s all just magical. I didn’t realize how much I miss having simple fantasy in my period fantasy.
Speaking of fantasy, in the Nassal forest funeral scenes Yuu Watase stretches her drawing wings and creates some fabulously chiaroscuro backgrounds. She has a knack for drawing clear nighttime scenes where every dark element is easily distinguished. I would 100% love to see a book filled with these Yuu Watase backgrounds. But I know that that is not the manga way. They way is to drop the backgrounds during fast scenes, and only filling them in when the eye is supposed to slowly take in the magical mise-en-scène.
Reading Fushigi Yûgi: Genbu Kaiden is an education.
