The Manga Shelf is a column where I go over whatever I’ve been reading recently in the world of manga. Ongoing or complete, good or bad. These articles contain spoilers.
“Are we cinephiles because we watch masterpieces? No! We’re cinephiles because we watch whatever we damn well please!”
It’s a known phenomenon. Occasionally, a writer will get an idea stuck in their head. A challenge to themselves, a way to prove that they can write compellingly about anything. Yet, even more occasionally, the world itself will present you with this sort of challenge entirely of its own accord. As if to say “hey bozo, you think you’re so smart? Review this.”
This, in the form of a pair of close friends who I’ll here call H. and Z., is how Kine-san no 1-ri de Cinema, (I Love Cinema, I am Lonely or Kine-san’s Solo Cinema as it’s been variously unofficially known in English) entered my life. What prompted this thought that I simply must read and review Kine-san? Well, that’s down to its premise. Kine-san‘s title character, Kine Machiko, is a 30-year old businesswoman, whose main hobby is watching western action films and writing about them on her blog.
I could belabor the point, but there’s no reason to. Yes, I was curious as to how this fictional woman’s habits would reflect my own. Our interests are, in a way, a mirror of each other’s. She is a Japanese woman who loves American live action films. I am an American woman who loves Japanese animated television.
Not unlike my own preference for TV anime, Kine’s interests skew toward pop action films. Early on she names Michael Bay as a favorite director (a man who I mostly associate with defacing the Transformers franchise, myself), a later chapter is about the then-timely process of avoiding spoilers for the 2015 Star Wars film. Etc. This interest is what colors the manga the most. Kine-san is certainly the only manga I have ever read in my life to feature a shadowed gag-cameo from Jar-Jar Binks.
Kine doesn’t have a ton of character beyond “insecure and deeply nerdy woman”, but I’d argue she doesn’t really need it. A few chapters later she uses an illness as an excuse to get buzzed and watch a cluster of trashy zombie movies. As somebody who semi-recently downed the entirety of the deeply mediocre Magical Girl Raising Project in a single afternoon, I can’t help but relate, even if I don’t drink.
What Kine-san excels at is tapping into the universal etiquette dance that we build around the stories that mean things to us. Chapter 7 has Kine’s coworkers gawk in disbelief when she tells them she’s never seen a Ghibli movie. I briefly sympathized more with the coworkers–after all, my own interest in anime was sparked by seeing Spirited Away at a young age–but then yours truly remembered she’s never seen any of the Star Wars films, and the entire point of the sequence clicked into place.
On the other side of things, when Kine does vibe with someone (often her recently-divorced coworker and sometimes-roommate, Kasumi Satou) it’s a moment of joy. What we all ultimately want is just to be understood, and works of art are basic cultural units we trade with each other to expand that understanding. Satou in general is a fun character, and I often found myself relating to her particular brand of projective Letterboxd logorrhea a bit more than Kine’s own largely uncritical fangirlism.
Visually the manga is competent, with a particular knack for wide shots that convey an impressive sense of scale, albeit usually to comedic ends. There are a fair amount of impressive splash panels, often parodying famous movie scenes or posters, so, appropriately, cinephiles will have a lot to latch on to here.
It can even occasionally pull off some more serious composition. These moments are rare, but they prevent Kine-san from falling into a fairly common trap of comedy manga; making it seem like the cast don’t actually like each other at all.
On the less positive side, there’s a weird habit throughout of centering panels on the cast’s collective rear ends. Of course, Kine herself would probably argue that complaining about such a thing is simply nitpicking a genre cliché. (This thing runs in Young Animal, alongside a number of other seinen manga, yes, but also photos of scantily-clad gravure models, so perhaps it’s to be expected.) On its own it’s a minor complaint, but here it is unfortunately indicative of an undertone of sexism that at its worst takes some of the fun out of Kine-san. And it dampens some otherwise strong characterization. Take for instance, Kine’s mother, who is depicted, usually via flashback, as fairly strict about not wanting her daughter to become an otaku “because she’s a girl”. Later, we learn in chapter 19 that she’s a former sukeban, and much of her harsh demeanor stems from wanting her daughter to be a proper lady, and her own complex about her self-perceived lack of femininity. Does this add dimension to an otherwise fairly minor character, or is it that old otaku misogyny creeping in?
Well, let’s say this. As I finished reading all of Kine-san that’s currently available in English, I found myself realizing that despite finding it pretty funny in its best moments, I certainly don’t love it. I don’t like to get into the ten-point rating scale game on this blog (I think it’s kind of superfluous) but 21 chapters in, I was struck by the realization that the way that the title character and I are most similar is in our lackadaisical attitude toward actual quality. Now, at one point Kine disses Citizen Kane by implication (one of the very few live action western films I’ve both seen in my adult life and actually quite like), and I can’t stand for that. But, do I relate to the broader feeling of, say, watching a classic and finding that even if you respect its craft you don’t really, you know, like it? Well, all due apologies to Cowboy Bebop, but, yeah.
So I leave you with the quote sitting at the top of this article as a final thought. I find it hard to pass judgment on Kine-san, given how much of myself I (unfortunately?) see in it.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an episode of Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid to watch.
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