Scan barcode
A review by hekate24
Ōoku: The Inner Chambers, Volume 1 by Fumi Yoshinaga
4.0
Popsugar 2021 challenge: A book in a different format than what you normally read (audiobooks, ebooks, graphic novels)
This one pretty much had to be a graphic novel or manga because I read audiobooks, ebooks, and physical books (listed in descending order of regularity.) I almost never read graphic novels/manga because in the past I've had trouble following along. I didn't struggle with this one though. Maybe because I was reading this on my kindle instead of on a computer? Who knows.
Anyway, this manga involves a very interesting thought exercise. It involves a pandemic in Edo era Japan that wipes out 75% of the male population. I actually started reading this one two years ago and .. yeah coming back to it feels a bit different now that I've been through a pandemic. Pandemics don't have to be as extreme as the one in this book to shift society and throw fault liners into stark relief. It's interesting to me that this book shows women taking on positions of power, but men are still more valued in a way due to their rarity. It had me musing on gender roles in general. Gender norms vary based on society and circumstances, but a constant seems to be that most places like to enforce them. The expectations of men in this society are different than they were in actual society, but the expectations are still rigid regardless.
A couple things kept this from being five stars... as other reviewers have noted, they decided to translate a lot of the dialogue with Ye Olde Vaguely Shakespearean Speech (and this was distracting to me because saying "thee/thy" is actually an informal mode of address. Basically you would never address the shogun with this!) The end of the volume also made me realize that this volume was more of a prologue to what I assume is the real story. This was actually a plus and a minus. A minus because it cuts off right when the story was really starting to grab me, but also a plus because
All in all a very interesting read and I will most likely read more of it because I'm curious about where it goes next!
This one pretty much had to be a graphic novel or manga because I read audiobooks, ebooks, and physical books (listed in descending order of regularity.) I almost never read graphic novels/manga because in the past I've had trouble following along. I didn't struggle with this one though. Maybe because I was reading this on my kindle instead of on a computer? Who knows.
Anyway, this manga involves a very interesting thought exercise. It involves a pandemic in Edo era Japan that wipes out 75% of the male population. I actually started reading this one two years ago and .. yeah coming back to it feels a bit different now that I've been through a pandemic. Pandemics don't have to be as extreme as the one in this book to shift society and throw fault liners into stark relief. It's interesting to me that this book shows women taking on positions of power, but men are still more valued in a way due to their rarity. It had me musing on gender roles in general. Gender norms vary based on society and circumstances, but a constant seems to be that most places like to enforce them. The expectations of men in this society are different than they were in actual society, but the expectations are still rigid regardless.
A couple things kept this from being five stars... as other reviewers have noted, they decided to translate a lot of the dialogue with Ye Olde Vaguely Shakespearean Speech (and this was distracting to me because saying "thee/thy" is actually an informal mode of address. Basically you would never address the shogun with this!) The end of the volume also made me realize that this volume was more of a prologue to what I assume is the real story. This was actually a plus and a minus. A minus because it cuts off right when the story was really starting to grab me, but also a plus because
Spoiler
I was getting annoyed by Mizuno's plot armor... but then the plot twist with the secret swain (lmao) thing getting him kicked out of the ooku genuinely surprised me in a good way!All in all a very interesting read and I will most likely read more of it because I'm curious about where it goes next!