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Title: Othello
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| CONSUMER ADVICE |
Parents, this is a mixed bag. While there is some foul language, some bizarre moments, and some sexual references (one chapter is devoted to catching a groper on Japanese trains), the story is mostly clean. Comedy and drama fans will appreciate this series as Nana is a hilarious character and the books get a shade darker with each volume. People who like psychology and psychiatry will devour this book |
Comedy and drama fans will appreciate this series as Nana is a hilarious character and the books get a shade darker with each volume. People who like psychology and psychiatry will devour this book. Kevin's reviews usually make sense, and after I read the series he reviews, I agree with him on most things. However, he misses stuff occasionally in his reviews that should be mentioned. Case in point with Othello. It was Kevin's review that got me to read the series, and I discovered a lot more than what he had written. (No offense to Kevin; it was a good review, though you didn't explain why you gave it a B.) It is the story about a meek girl named Yaya Higuchi, who's called "Yaya the Cry-ya" by her so-called "friends" Seri and Moe, and how her split personality Nana gets revenge for Yaya whenever someone lynches her, turning Yaya's life upside down.
From this basic summary, I didn't really have any interest in reading this series because I was expecting the typical split personality cliche: the other personality handles the meanies in an inappropriate way and someone else has to take it down before it goes crazy, and the meek one suffers the consequences as he/she confronts their darker side. But Othello avoids that cliche. Nana, instead of going crazy on Seri and Moe (who are the first of the story's meanies), punishes them humorously, from stealing back an MD/mp3 or drawing over their faces while cosplaying. (Heh. That's my favorite scene in the first volume.) Even so, if this was all that the series was about, I would be disinterested. Luckily, there's more beneath the surface. Yaya, we realize, doesn't just hate her life and wishes she could change it. She's a girl in need of psychological help. Her father indirectly blames her for her mother's death, nearly everyone makes fun of her for existing, and her dreams of becoming a singer just seem to be dreams.
Though some people say she should become more assertive, I understand why she is so passive. If there's anything I'm frustrated about, it's that no one realizes that this girl needs help once they realize that she is Nana! She may not be attempting suicide like Asparagus from Confidential Confessions, but wouldn't you recommend her to a psychiatrist if you knew she had a split personality? A boy named Moriyama, the first person to realize that Nana and Yaya are one and the same, tries his best to help her, but even he should have common sense about this. The second person to find out just tortures Yaya one more time waiting for Nana to come out. This isn't supposed to be a realistic series (half the time it can be pretty surreal), but still...aside from that, this is my favorite manga. I re-read the first volume constantly because Satomi Ikezawa writes a beautiful dramedy. (Comedy and drama.) I agree with Kevin that the first volume is the funniest one. However, this series isn't Harry Potter; no one dies. It gets subtly darker. In the second volume, Seri and Moe are even more vicious to Yaya, but Nana keeps it from becoming a drama thanks to her witty lines and actions.
At first Yaya needs to look into a mirror to become Nana, but soon all she needs to do is to get in a terrible situation and Nana appears. What will happen when Yaya learns she is Nana? Nana says that Yaya will break down, and that Yaya is already breaking down. I asked a psychology student what that meant, and she said, "It means that she'll go insane." Will there be a point where even Nana can't save the situation with humor? I don't know, as this is still in progress (and I'm not entirely convinced that this will be a happy ending, as there hasn't been any so far), but I do know this: Othello should become a classic manga series next to Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon. Were there any nitpicks in here? There are several:
1) Most of the supporting cast are creeps- I'm not kidding. Just as you're hoping that someone new will be nice, it turns out they aren't. Moriyama and Yaya's cosplaying friends are the only likeable people so far. There are also construction workers who Nana works for in the fourth volume that are decent, but who knows if they'll appear again. Moriyama is even better because he does try to help Yaya as much as he can. But a majority of the girls are back-stabbers in this series. It's literally Yaya and Nana against the world.
2) The artwork. Half the time the characters are lacking noses, and the character designs aren't that original. And despite what people said in the series, I didn't find Yaya's cosplaying outfits unusual. That may just be me, but take the character's comments on it with a grain of salt. But Satomi Ikezawa makes the series more realistic by having the girls wearing different hairstyles, and by having Yaya different from Nana simply by their postures and expressions. This is the first time I've seen this in a manga, so at least that's something original. It also provides more variety in style.
What "Fight Club" would look like if it were a shoujo manga.
3) This isn't a nitpick, but it does question whether or not the story is realistic. There are several surreal moments in Othello, one where Nana talks to a large koi that just saved her from a surprise dunking. Another one is Nana against a small alligator because the alligator considers her a love rival for this singer named Seishiro. I haven't come across these since Volume 3, but either Satomi Ikezawa is having us question the world in Othello on purpose, or she is having fun. I enjoyed these moments because they are funny. That's another thing I want to comment on; the humor. Along with everything else, Ikezawa-sensei has little captions that say funny stuff. I know that you'll find this out in the first volume, but in there, Moe's chin gets pulled by Seri and it's extending out of the panel as she's talking. The caption goes, "Don't protude out of the panel..." How about Del Rey's preparation? Well, I love the covers, and I enjoy the cultural notes because they help me understand the story better, as usual with Del Rey manga. I do wish that all the previews were translated into English instead of some, but that's not an option. I have nothing to say on the color pages...I am not Kevin. I don't care about the color pages as much, although I do agree that they should be there because it's stupid to have those gray pages since you can tell that they were once in color.
Sidenote: There is a game called Othello where you have a large set of coins. One side of each coin is white, the other is black. I assume this was where Satomi Ikezawa got the title.
- -Review By Jaya Lakshmi- -