Manga Notes: A Bride's Story 12

Only getting around to saying something about a manga series here at its twelfth volume does seem a bit peculiar (given the series should be continuing on from here, anyway), but I guess “wanting to post something to this journal every so often” can push me to lengths every once in a while. I do pick up new (somewhat premium hardcover) volumes of Kaoru Mori’s “A Bride’s Story” with interest. Having read her Victorian-era series “Emma” (perhaps the most wholesome and respectable “maid” story there is in manga and anime) before seeded that interest; the that much more detailed and gorgeous artwork along the nineteenth-century Silk Road of Central Asia in her later series is the main draw for me. A big part of the detail is the costumes of the female characters, and there I can think it’s good to have this particular perspective on women in the Islamic world, although reading a Japanese take on things can remind me I haven’t sought out ones closer to the area; so far as “graphic” takes go, too, there’s Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. (In the meantime, I’m also reading the manga Satoko and Nada by “Yupechika,” which has much less elaborate art but is set just about here and now, with Japanese and Saudi young women meeting in the somewhat neutral territory of the United States.)

While A Bride’s Story might be tangential to “slice of life” manga and anime, there’s a bit of a unifying story in a European scholar-adventurer making his way (with much help from the locals) through the area; in his turning around to retrace his encounters now with a camera, I can consider potential end points for the series. In this case, of course, “the journey should be the reward” might be worth remembering.