The Wallflower Vols. 1-3
Tomoko Hayakawa
Del Rey
186-220 pp., $10.95 ea.
Vol. 1 ISBN: 0345479122
Vol. 2 ISBN: 0345479491
Vol. 3 ISBN: 0345479998

To Americans, the most striking thing about Japan's vast output of shoujo manga may be that it exists at all, since the overwhelming majority of current American comics are aimed at a male audience. This wasn't always the case, though: In the 1950s romance comics, aimed at girls, were a thriving genre of American comics. But unlike those comics, the writers of contemporary shoujo comics, as well as their intended readers, are female. This difference means that the best shoujo comics can explore female experience from the inside, as comics written by men can't. But it also means that shoujo comics can pander to their audience in ways that male creators would be unlikely to think of. The Wallflower illustrates this second possibility neatly, though fortunately it has other things going for it.

The Wallflower is a gender-switched version of the so-called harem manga/anime, in which an average teenage boy suddenly finds himself surrounded by a bevy of sexy girls, all eager to attend to his every need. Here four beautiful, male high-school students are offered free room and board in a mansion for three years if they can transform the landlady's niece, who will be living with them, into a lady. And Hayakawa regularly contrives to show her bishounen both in states of partial or total undress (with the naughty bits hidden) and in sexy costumes and poses -- twice in bondage and twice as vampires.

If this was all there was to the series, it would hardly be worth noting (such gender switching having long since lost any subversive potential). What makes it distinctive is the landlady's niece Sunako, Hayakawa's female protagonist. Sunako resembles the heroines of various "goth" comics over here, but is funnier, in large part because of the way she's drawn. In general, the art of The Wallflower is realistic, but when drawing Sunako, Hayakawa alternates between a realistic depiction and a cartoonish, squashed depiction. While it's not uncommon for characters in generally realistic manga to occasionally be drawn in a cartoonish style, it's rare for such alternation to be as regular as in The Wallflower. It's also rare that the cartoonish figures are as funny as Sunako is.

Sunako's personality is as cartoonish as her depiction. Her "friends" are a skeleton and two anatomical dolls, and her favorite activity is to sit alone in her dark room with these "friends," watching horror and slasher videos. And she's more than a little unbalanced, at one point plotting to kill one of her bishounen housemates out of fear that his "light" will destroy her "darkness." She's also, improbably, a kickass martial artist when provoked; but Hayakawa is evidently not aiming for realism. Unlike many goth comics, neither Sunako nor Hayakawa are interested in sneering at "normal" people. Rather, Hayakawa has a genuine gift for placing Sunako in situations where the absurdity of her personality will shine.

In her self-introduction in the first volume, Hayakawa states: "My original idea was to write a 'how-to' book, about a girl with low self-esteem and her journey to becoming beautiful. Hey, what happened to that idea?" Indeed, this is how the series begins, and in the early chapters of the first volume the plot seems predictable: Sunako will gain self-confidence and become a normal girl, and find romance with Kyohei, the most outspoken of her housemates (and the one she tries to kill). But over the course of the first volume, you can see Hayakawa's conception of Sunako shift. By the end of the volume, she's someone who is perfectly happy the way she is. In consequence, in volumes two and three her transformation and romance have been put on hold indefinitely. Instead, the series becomes a sitcom: Hayakawa thrusts Sunako and her housemates into a series of contrived situations in which hijinx, as well as sexy oufits for the housemates, can ensue.

This mutation probably benefits the series overall, even as it robs it of direction. Whether it was Hayakawa's decision or her editor's to change Sunako's characterization I don't know, but Hayakawa seems to have taken to it with enthusiasm, elaborating upon Sunako's loopiness and morbidity with delight. Conversely, just as the revised Sunako is the manga's biggest strength, its biggest weakness is the absence of any other interesting characters. Kyohei is a stock character in shoujo manga (and American romance novels, for that matter): the handsome but rude and inconsiderate male who is sensitive underneath. And Hayakawa adds nothing original to him. The other three housemates have virtually indistinguishable personalities. Of the minor characters, the only one to make any impression at all is Noi, who is in lust with one of the housemates, and she's a one-joke character.

There's nothing deep about The Wallflower, and it's unlikely to win any new converts to manga. But if you take it for what it is, it's an enjoyable series. I do wonder how long Hayakawa can keep up the joke, though. (In Japan, the series is up to 10 volumes and counting as I write this.)

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