Ôoku: The Inner Chambers, Vol. 1

Bottom Line First:Fumi Yoshinanga’s Ooku, the first installment of a Magna series is an interesting variation; a Japanese Samurai era, post-apocalyptic world where most, but not all of the male population has died off. It is beautiful to look at but the characters are stiff and the dialogue too formal. The emphasis is on the manners and styles of court life but no one ever seems to unbend. The response of the Japanese Empire to the sudden loss of males for leadership position creates some interesting role reversals as men are now mostly bought and sold for procreation and have taken over many female roles without completely losing their male characteristic. Yoshinanga deserves credit for creating a believable world and leaving the reader to grasp the philosophical implications of what could have been a hectoring tone on the unfair roles of women in modern times. I respect her artistry. I do not care about these characters. I do not plan to get more books in this series.If you want to know who we are,We are gentlemen of Japan:On many a vase and jar —On many a screen and fan,We figure in lively paint:Our attitude's queer and quaint —You're wrong if you think it ain'tOoooh!From The Mikado, Gilbert adn SullivanEach page in Ooku contains one or more beautify, finely details images of courtly life in the Japanese feudalistic times. As is common in Japanese manga, smaller cartoonish drawing are used to denote characters over reacting or being childish. Usually this convention is just part of the experience for these books, but I found the convention jarring and disruptive of the aesthetic experience. This was the more unfortunate the characters were never that interesting.Yunoshin is quickly established as our hero. Handsome, noble in heart, a skilled swordsman and kindly about sharing his bed with women who had neither the looks nor the money to otherwise have a chance at child bearing. His goal is to become one of the Men of the Inner Chamber (the Ooku) of Edo castle, the center of Japanese government.Once there he will be at the bottom of a pecking order and exposed to the usual jealousies, hazing and the rest. He will of course catch the eye of the new and not bound by traditions, Shogun/Empress.And so it goes. There is much intelligence applied to this world tilted against male dominance and yet not free of it. There are some sly insinuations about what is wrong or unfair in our world regarding male and female roles. There is much about this beautiful book that bespeaks a talented writer. The whole is not greater than the parts. Characters are too remote and conversation was too stylized. I never developed any interest in these people. Authentic or not, I enjoyed looking but not reading.

This is a very, very good manga series.I'm an avid comic reader and sometime manga reader. I'm not a manga fan-boy by any stretch but I've read enough and done enough research to get an idea of the range out there. I'd rank this one up there with Tezuka's best.Very entertaining and interesting story from a dramatic and historic perspective. You get Japanese Edo period culture and history, a very good story and an abnormal level of "class" that you usually don't get in manga. That is to say, in an ongoing story that could have very easily turned to gratuitous sex or nudity, homophobia or homophobic stereotypes, there is none of that. To be sure, gender issues are explored but in an even-handed, non-exploitative way.Also, there are very instances of the goofy "cutesy" manga/anime tropes are here. This isn't gekiga (alternative, art-house manga) but nearly. The art may not be up there with the very best of manga but it's certainly very good.About the worst thing you could say about this manga--maybe it's only real typical manga-exploitative aspect--is that it's a more than $100 investment with at least 10 volumes expected.Anyway, if you're curious about manga, start here.

I came across this series while looking online for a story about strong women for my daughter (young adult). I only bought the first two books to see if she would be interested in the story line, etc. She is really excited about seeing what happens next and is waiting impatiently for the other volumes to arrive, lol. I guess that's a "yes" to the story line. She said I did good. So we're both pleased with the purchase. It was intriguing to ponder the idea of a woman Shogun and apparently they've done well at weaving the tail thus far. The first two volumes have kept her interest. If anything goes foul after the next few, I'll post a review about it as well. But so far, so good.

First off, I always like ''gender reversal'' stories that steer clear of the ''men are evil, women are perfect'' cliche. You know the type i'm talking about. The one where women are oppressed angels that will automatically work towards peace and prosperity once those pesky men are out of the way; with fluffy bunnies frolicking in the fields, women and girls working together in perfect harmony without personal conflict, and flowers growing outside military bases. That sort of trite.Here, the women are different in their approach to power, but there is no mistake that they WILL cut your head off if you try anything. They WILL go to war. They WILL go out of their way for wealth and sex and material possessions. Great stuff. This book treats women like human beings whilst at the same time doesn't treat this new world as exactly the same as men's world just with women in it now.Where my problems start though is that this is a bad dub. The characters speak as if they are in an amateur Shakespeare play - sometimes. Other times, they talk perfectly normally. Its inconsistent, and I am positive that it was nothing like this in the original Japanese.I also found the book hard going in that it demands a very detailed knowledge of Japanese history to get the most out of it. Is it unfair to hold that against it? No I don't think so. A dub is meant to make a book accessible to a foreign market, that's the whole point of it. And I don't feel as if this has achieved that in language or in ease of access. This book absolutely needs a glossary or it'll never get the most out of a Western marketplace imo.Overall it was an engrossing read. I will be looking at purchasing the rest of the series.

Never having indulged in graphic novels I bought this out of curiosity as it was a joint winner of the 2009 Tiptree Award which is given for fiction relating to gender questions.I'm not sure how much it would make sense to someone who didn't have some understanding of Japanese culture especially in the Edo period of the Shoguns as it is set in an alternate Japan and deals with the gradual breakdown of an entirely and extremely male dominated society in the wake of a disease which wipes out and then continues to kill four fifths of the male population. The social change though is gradual and seeks to retain as much as possible of the status quo as this is set near the start of the Shogunate and memories of the preceeding civil wars still hang heavy in the communal memory and no one wishes to see Japan return to the years of bloodshed. The loss of men is also used as the necessity for the closure of Japan to the outside world that was enforced at this time - here it is used to hide the weakness of a land unable to raise an army. Men become commodified as families that manage to retain sons regard them as a resource, protecting and cosseting them for rich marriages or selling their services as begetters of children.All the books are set largely in the Ooku, the inner palace where the Shogun's male concubines and bodyguard are housed - forever shut away from the outside world as the Shogun's women were in our reality.The first volume is set a couple of generations on from the initial catastrophe when the management of society by women has become an accepted norm and indeed most people seem unaware that things were ever any different. Volumes 2 and 3 look back toward the early upheaval and explore the difficulties of adaptation.I wonder if some of the ideas for this tale might have come from the current predicament in some Asian countries where the obsession with sons and the social denigration of daughters coupled with the ease of pre-natal scanning has led, through female abortion, infanticide and simple neglect of girl babies, to an opposite gender imbalance where well over one million men (It was reckoned at 1 million in 2000) will never find a wife and this also in societies where a man's grounding in society is confirmed by marriage.These manga only take a couple of hours to read once one has adapted to reading a book in the opposite direction, starting at what, in the west, is the back of the book and reading the page from right to left. It's such an intersting concept that I would very much have liked then to have been written as prose rather than graphic novels so that the inticacies of plot and social ramifications could have been explored more deeply. Even so I've got pre-orders in for Vols 4 and 5 scheduled for later this year.

Ooku: The Inner Chambers takes place in an alternate reality where men are plagued by a new disease and women have to rule the world. Due to this there's a gender role reversal - Ooku deals with this wonderfully, gripping the reader early on. Taking you through the inner workings of the Shogunate, Ooku tackles things that you rarely see in manga and does them well.

Ooku spielt in einer alternativen Version des feudalen Japans der Edo-Zeit. Eine mysteriöse Seuche, die ausschliesslich junge Männer heimsucht, hat einen großen Teil der männlichen Bevölkerung Japans dahingerafft. Um einen Zusammenbruch der Gesellschaft zu verhindern, müssen sämtliche Berufe nun von den Frauen ausgeübt werden. Die wenigen Männer werden stattdessen von ihren Familien behütet.Die Geschichte dreht sich hauptsächlich um den Hof des Shoguns, des militärischen Führers Japans. Auch diese Rolle wird nun von einer Frau ausgefüllt. Die Innere Kammer des Palastes (Japanisch: Ooku) beherbergt dutzende Männer, Sprösslinge adliger Häuser und Schönlinge niederen Ranges gleichermaßen. Sie alle befinden sich in einem Wettstreit um die Gunst des Shoguns. Die Innere Kammer wird zu einem Schauplatz von Intrigen, Eifersucht und Liebe.Die Rollen der Geschlechter sind in der Welt von Ooku aufgrund des Mangels an Männern in vielen Bereichen vertauscht. Die Geschichte beleuchtet auf gefühlvolle Weise, wie Männer und Frauen versuchen mit dem neuen Geschlechterverhältnis zurechtzukommen. Dabei wirken die Figuren realistisch in ihrem Denken und Handeln. Die Autorin vermeidet Klischees und einseitige Darstellungen. Gleichfalls wird ein Blick auf die japanische Kultur von Ehre, Pflicht und dem Wahren des Gesichts geworfen, welche zum Guten wie zum Schlechten das Handeln der Protagonisten beherrscht.Ich kann sowohl diesen, wie auch die folgenden Bände, empfehlen. Die Handlung ist packend geschrieben und die Zeichnungen sind klar und schön. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf den zahlreichen Charakteren und ihren Beziehungen untereinander, weswegen jemand, der mehr auf Action aus ist, vielleicht enttäuscht werden könnte. Die Rollen, welche die Frauen und Männer des Hofs einnehmen, sind spiegelverkehrt zu denen der historischen Figuren des Shogunats in Japan. Daher kommen auch Leser, die am historischen Japan interessiert sind, durchaus auf ihre Kosten.Ich habe die englische Version gelesen. Diese verwendet ein älteres Englisch mit teils antiquierter Schreibweise. Das könnte für Manchen etwas gewöhnungsbedürftig sein. Mich persönlich hat es nicht weiter gestört. Wem die Idee des Rollentausches der Geschlechter vor einem (alternativ)historischem Hintergrund gefällt, konnte einen Blick auf A Brother's Price von Wen Spencer werfen.

Partindo de uma premissa interessante de uma praga ter reduzido significativamente o número de homens no Japão da era Edo, provocando uma mudança radical nos papéis das mulheres, agora ocupando os cargos de mando e os homens como “concubinas”. No entanto o uso do ingles antigo nas falas e os desenhos cartunescos demais em algumas situações quebram o ritmo e dificultam a imersão. Apenas razoável.