![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I mentioned Ôoku: The Inner Chambers before I moved to DW. Finally got volume 3 delivered through my favorite local bookstore yesterday. They said it would take 6 weeks but only took...3? Pleasantly surprised and pleased nonetheless that I didn't have to pay an arm and a leg for shipping from amazon. I'm loving the quality of the printing. The storyline is EPIC.
If you want to preview the series, a fan put up the chapters on Manga Fox. I bought it because it's so awesome. It's even going to become a live-action movie! *excited* lol Volume 4 comes out in English from Viz on August 17, 2010.
Description again:
"Drawing on themes found in such diverse works as Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Brian K. Vaughan’s Y: The Last Man comic-book series, and James Clavell’s Shogun (1975), Ôoku envisions an alternate history in which a plague decimates the male population of eighteenth-century Japan. Mizuno is a healthy young man who grants his seed to the poor women of his village, who would never be able to afford the courtesans that provide such a favor. But he must leave his good deeds and his true love behind when he is inducted into the Inner Chamber, the female shogun’s private “stash” of healthy men. Fending off the aggressive advances of the other concubines and proving his intelligence and fencing skills, Mizuno is maneuvered into the position of the secret swain, whose duty to the new and contemptuous shogun is both a sacred and deadly one. Opting for slow-building intrigue and character development, Ôoku explores themes of commoditization and gender with intelligence, and the graceful, uncluttered art creates an elegant world of privilege and duty. An exceptionally strong beginning to a very intriguing manga series. --Jesse Karp" (booklist)
If you want to preview the series, a fan put up the chapters on Manga Fox. I bought it because it's so awesome. It's even going to become a live-action movie! *excited* lol Volume 4 comes out in English from Viz on August 17, 2010.
Description again:
"Drawing on themes found in such diverse works as Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Brian K. Vaughan’s Y: The Last Man comic-book series, and James Clavell’s Shogun (1975), Ôoku envisions an alternate history in which a plague decimates the male population of eighteenth-century Japan. Mizuno is a healthy young man who grants his seed to the poor women of his village, who would never be able to afford the courtesans that provide such a favor. But he must leave his good deeds and his true love behind when he is inducted into the Inner Chamber, the female shogun’s private “stash” of healthy men. Fending off the aggressive advances of the other concubines and proving his intelligence and fencing skills, Mizuno is maneuvered into the position of the secret swain, whose duty to the new and contemptuous shogun is both a sacred and deadly one. Opting for slow-building intrigue and character development, Ôoku explores themes of commoditization and gender with intelligence, and the graceful, uncluttered art creates an elegant world of privilege and duty. An exceptionally strong beginning to a very intriguing manga series. --Jesse Karp" (booklist)
