Jazz 1: The Melody Begins
Written: Mar 22 '09 (Updated Mar 25 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Tough, strong story, beautiful drawing.
Cons: Up to you -- some "cons" may actually be "pros" here.
The Bottom Line: A hard look at two wounded men trying to find love. Tough, but very, very good. A real 4.5-plus.
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| rmthunter's Full Review: Tamotsu Takamure & Sakae Maeda - Jazz, Volume 1 |
Jazz is another one of my early yaoi encounters that I've recently taken another look at. To be honest, it's fairly disturbing on several counts, but on rereading, it's also a strong, substantial story graced by some exceptionally beautiful drawing.
Koichi Narusawa is an internist specializing in respiratory medicine. He is on call one night when a patient is brought in with a severe asthma attack, including convulsions. Naoki Segawa is a tall, striking young man, a high-school senior, whose condition starts to improve when Narusawa eases Naoki's overbearing mother out of the room. Naoki is so taken with "Doc," as he calls him, that he insists that Narusawa take over his care. He later invites Doc out for dinner to celebrate his being admitted to university, and then proceeds to drug and rape him.
Doc finds himself in a situation that he can barely tolerate but can't seem to break away from. He finally flees to America after getting a research appointment at an American hospital, leaving Naoki a letter informing him that they're breaking up. Naoki finally decides to follow Doc to America.
There are any number of reasons this series disturbs me, first and foremost of which, I think, is the psychology of the characters, which is examined relentlessly. Neither of these men is particularly admirable. Narusawa is pleasant, well-liked, with a ready smile, and none of it means anything: he's totally empty inside, and barely has a personality of his own, as well as being almost completely spineless. Naoki is rich, spoiled, neurotic, and terribly insecure, which is only aggravated by his realization that his Doc doesn't love him. His side of the relationship is marked by swings between overreacting to small provocations -- which usually aren't even really provocations at all -- and trying to make up for it. The tension in this story, and it's a good strong tension that holds our interest in spite of how off-putting some of the characters and situations are, is in watching these two terribly damaged men reaching desperately toward something that can be recognized as "love."
Jazz also brings into prominence an element that is almost a given in yaoi manga but one which I've not really commented on before: rape is a recurring motiv in yaoi, ranging from the most frequently portrayed pattern ("Stop! No! Do it harder!"), which seems to be lifted from some heterosexual male fantasy of what women really want, to, as in this case, a serious violation of another person's humanity. Narusawa's acquiescence in these scenes has nothing coy or playful about it: it is fear, need of a particularly desperate sort, and, perhaps, the hope of finding that there is actually something inside the shell: it's quite apparent from the narration that a large element of his attraction to Naoki is self-destruction. Naoki's side is simply that he is used to having his way and hasn't grown up enough to realize that love is always a negotiation -- in spite of his sophistication and forceful personality, he is pathetically immature, verging on infantile. It may be the psychology of the characters here that gives these scenes much more impact than those in other yaoi, where they are as often as not throw-ways. Here, the repeated rapes become a central element --and stumbling block -- in this relationship.
The drawing is deceptive. At first glance, it seems to be based on fairly standard manga character renderings, but one becomes aware that Takamure has given bodies a strong, sculptural presence with just a few deftly sketched lines. And it also creeps up on you that both Narusawa and Naoki are stunningly beautiful men -- remarkable even in a genre devoted to beautiful boys, and even though Takamure doesn't display that much variation in character design. I think it must be the way she handles emotional states: the drawing is tremendously expressive, and even frames with fragmentary images are revealing. The visual flow is also highly intuitive and fluid, adding layers of ambiguity as one encounters spreads with several possible readings. There are several spreads that are amazing in their complexity and clarity.
This is not your typical school-boy romance. It's a surprisingly tough story about two wounded men trying to find something to hold on to. Takamure adapted it from the original story by Sakae Maeda, and took some liberties with the original narrative as her adaptation progressed. She did good -- good enough that I'm giving it a 4.5+.
The series:
Jazz, Volume 2
Jazz, Volume 3
Jazz, Volume 4
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
rmthunter
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Member: Robert Tilendis
Location: Close to the lake
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