On Crimson Hero Vols. 1-3

I so thoroughly enjoyed Haruichi Furudate's 45-volume Haikyu!! that I thought perhaps I should try giving another sports manga a shot, despite my complete disinterest in any sports of any kind in real life, and my inexperience with that genre of manga (Before Haikyu!!, the only other sports manga I had read was Prince of Tennis, although I tapped out after just the first few volumes). 

Mitsuba Takanashi's 2003-2011 Crimson Hero seemed, at least in one way, a potentially good candidate to fill the Haikyu!!-shaped hole in my heart, given that it too was about high school volleyball.  As quickly became apparent, though, the titles are very different, despite revolving around the same sport.

And that really shouldn't come as a surprise. Haikyu!! is a shonen manga (or "boys' comic", targeting adolescent boys) that ran in Weekly Shonen Jump. Crimson Hero is a shojo manga (or "girls' comic", targeting adolescent girls) that ran in Bessatsu Margaret, published by Viz Media first in their Shojo Beat magazine and then on their Shojo Beat imprint. 

Because of this, comparing and contrasting the two Japanese high school volleyball comics makes for an interesting demonstration of the differences between shonen and shojo. 

The main characters of both series have an overwhelming love of and drive to play volleyball, tackling any and all obstacles that might appear to keep them from doing so. But that's about where the similarities end.

Haikyu!! reads very much like a fight comic masquerading as a sports comic, the majority of the pages devoted to the various team vs. team competitions, and while most of the characters are quite compelling, they are mostly defined through the lens of volleyball, elements of their personal or inner lives coming up in a way that relates to the sport. We get glimpses of their family lives but, more often than not, these are only in passing. 

And in terms of interpersonal relationships, these too are mostly confined to those of teammates and rivals...which, sure, blossom into often lifelong friendships, but the manga concentrates on the characters as volleyball players. The relationship at the core of the book, that between Hinata and Kageyama, depicts them as something of soulmates engaged in an ideal relationship in which each gives the other exactly what they most need and want (even if it takes them hundreds of pages to realize it) and improving them both exponentially but, again, that's in terms of their volleyball playing. 

As for romance, Haikyu!! is fairly—and admittedly, almost frustratingly—devoid of it, a few characters' crushes on Karasuno High's beautiful manager aside (This may explain the world of ships associated with the property; I mean, I'm not the sort of fan who cares about such things in the comics I read, but even I found myself thinking that, say, Sawamura and Yui would make a cute couple, or that Tanaka and Amanai would, but, alas, almost all of the boys in Haikyu!! think of nothing but volleyball, their one true love, a handful of exceptions aside, and even those romances occur off-panel, the few couples simply introduced as already couples, their courtships left to the imagination). 

By contrast, in the first few volumes of Crimson Hero, there's relatively little action on the court, and when we do see volleyball being practiced or played, it's never at the epic, hundreds of pages of length games that fill up Haikyu!!'s collected volumes. The action in Takanashi's depiction of the game isn't as intense, dynamic, inventive or thrilling...but then, that's not really the focus of the series either, at least not like it is in Hakyu!!, in which the reader is often in the position of a spectator.

Many more pages are devoted to protagonist Nobara Sumiyoshi's home life and school life, and the many obstacles she must confront just in order to play volleyball at all. She has significant off-court conflicts to face and overcome, and Takanashi focuses on the character's inter-personal drama. 

There is also a degree of romance, although this early in the series, it's more along the lines of hints of it, as characters find themselves seeing one another in new lights or experiencing their hearts skipping beats or feeling the stirrings of jealousy. Within the first three volumes of the 20-volume series, there's what seems to be the beginning of a love triangle.

Finally, Crimson Hero's premise depends on a degree to Nobara's family running a ryotei for generations, which she is expected to take over as mistress of one day. 

I was not familiar with the term, and, looking it up, I'm still not sure I understand exactly what it is. The back cover copy refers to this as an "old-fashioned Japanese restaurant", and, on first mention in the manga itself, the translation defines it as "a high-class Japanese dining establishment," although there seems to be a sexual element to it as well, at least an implied or suggested one, rather than an element proprietor or patron would ever actually effectuate physically. 

In this manga, though, one ill-behaved rich patron will introduce a degree of sexual menace a few volumes in, groping a woman at the ryotei and seemingly sexually threatening Nobara's little sister, who has taken on Nobara's expected role of "young mistress" of the family establishiment.

At the very least, working there and/or eventually running the place definitely will involve Nobara performing a sort of exaggerated traditional femininity...and that is definitely not Nobara, a "tomboy" who is, in the series' first three volumes, repeatedly mistaken for a boy and, as previously mentioned, cares more about volleyball than, well, pretty much anything else. 

Being American and having no familiarity with the whole concept of the ryotei seems to be something of a stumbling block for me when it comes to Crimson Hero, though. 

So, 15-year-old, first-year high school student Nobara is expected to grow her hair out, wear a kimono and essentially be the definition of a girly-girl to work at her family's restaurant/hotel/whatever. She would prefer to leave that to her little sister, though. When the series opens, it's Nobara'sfirst day at Crimson Field High School, a private school she chose specifically because she heard their volleyball team is strong enough to go to nationals.

Things go badly.

First, her entering the girls' bathroom leads to a shriek, and so a very tall, spikey-haired fist-year boy grabs her by the collar and slams her into the door, thinking she was some kind of pervert. Apparently, both he and the girl who screamed when Nobara walked in thought she was a boy.

"First day of school and already peeking into the girls' john, huh?" the tall boy says to her.

When she protests that she's a girl, he gropes her chest (which is accompanied by a "SMUSH" sound effect), and replies, "Oh?! So you are... ...barely."

She proceeds to punch him ("CLONK"), knocking him down and leaving a bruise on his face.

This is Yushin, and he is on the school's boys' volleyball team. Later, his fellow first-year and teammate Haibuki tells him that it was his own fault that he got punched, as "Anyone can see she's a girl." It turns out that Haibuki knows exactly who Nobara is, though, as he had seen her play volleyball before. 

"At the junior high preliminaries in Kanagawa... ..she was the one who kept scoring points even though her team sucked," he says. (It will take a while, but we'll eventually learn that Haibuki knew her when they were in grade school, and he was a fan of hers, encouraging the then much taller than him Nobara). 

Nobara's first day only gets worse from there, though. She soon learns that what she heard about Crimson's volleyball team referred to the boys' team, not the girls' team. And, in fact, the girls' team had just recently been disbanded, at the request of a parent, one that had made a "generous donation" to the school. 

That parent? Nobara's own mother.

In response, Nobara runs away from home, and, with the help of her aunt/the school nurse, she manages to secure room and board at the school. She just has to serve as the dorm mother at the Crimson Field Volleyball team dorm, where she will have to cook and clean for five guys, including Yushin and Haibuki. 

That keeps her at school, but what about volleyball? Well, she takes it upon herself to rebuild the girls' volleyball team, but no sooner has she convinced two of the former players to join her then she finds that someone at school has been defacing her fliers, writing "losers" on them. 

She immediately suspects the boys team and confronts their captain (And not for the first time; previously, she had demanded they let her play on the boys' team, only to be thrown out of the gym).

"I challenged you to a game!" she says in the penultimate scene of the first volume, slamming a defaced flier on the desk in front of the team captain. "We'll see if the girls' team is really made up of losers!!"

That's a pretty strong cliffhanger, right? Certainly enough to make me want to pick up the next volume!

The second volume opens with the challenge, and the captain agrees to it, for reasons of his own. The terms? They will play a game of three-on-three to 25, with the net set for the girls' height (There's another thing I didn't know about high school volleyball; the height of the net varies, depending on whether boys or girls are playing). If the girls manage to score a single point, they win, and, therefore the captain has to allow Nobara rebuild the girls' volleyball team and quit calling them names. ("You make sure it never happens again!", she says). But if the boys win? Then she has to give up on rebuilding the girls' team for good.

The captain chooses a trio of first years to play Nobara and her two potential teammates, including Yushin and Haibuki. He instructs them: "If you guys want to become regular players... ...don't even think of holding back against the girls."

And they do not. In fact, Haibuki, who is the first of the boys to serve, aims a devastating jump serve directly at Nobara. And he keeps doing so, hitting them at her so hard that one knocks her down, and another draws blood when it hits her in the face. 

Given that this is only the second volume, you can probably guess whether or not the girls are able to score a point on the boys, although Takanashi certainly keeps the match suspenseful, with the boys managing to get all the way to 24 points before Nobara and her team manage to score their point through a combination of tenacity, teamwork and a bit of trickery.

The match turns out to be a good recruiting tool, too, and the rest of the volume details Nobara's attempts to hit the magic number of six she needs to start a team, as she aggressively seeks to recruit Tomoyo Ousaka, a former junior high volleyball prodigy who quit the game after an injury. And, for added drama, is Haibuki's ex-girlfriend.

 

Finally, we get to the third volume. Nobara has a team and she has a game. There are now a few new challenges, like managing to hold a team made up of very different personalities, strengths and levels of experience and dedication together...and somehow finding the money necessary to pay for uniforms and club fees when she's been cut-off by her mother.

The biggest conflict, though, involves her little sister, who has been playing the role of "young mistress" that Nobara is supposed to be playing. During a visit by a politician and his "playboy" young son (he's the one who gropes a worker, as mentioned above), he apparently took a liking to Nobara's sister, who we're told is a third-year in junior high (So, 14?). The son asks her on an omiai date (which is the sort that can lead to an arranged marriage), and, for some damn reason, she accepts for the good of the family business (No idea why her mom thinks this is a good idea, though).

From the lobby of the hotel they are meeting at, Nobara's sister gets cold feet, and calls her for help...two hours before Nobara's first game! Can she find her sister and save her and make it back in time to play...even with Yushin's help? 

Is the sister in peril..? It's definitely implied. The politician's son is definitely a creep, telling her how much her family owes his and that, therefore, "you understand... ...that you shouldn't make me angry." When she says she's not feeling well, he tells her "Up close, you're as pretty as a doll. Know that? Don't ruin it by talking." 

When he reaches for her, she gets up to leave, at which point he grabs her by the arm, saying "I don't recall saying... ...That you had my permission to leave!"

And when Nobara arrives, via a flying kick to the guy's face, Nobara repeatedly calls him a pervert in the exchanges that follow. 

At this point in the story, Crimson Hero seems to find a new equilibrium, Nobara promising her family she will devote herself to the family business....after high school, when she's done playing volleyball. In the meantime, her little sister will continue to fill in for her. 

The focus then seems to be realigning a bit towards volleyball—their first real game occurs in this third volume, and in shocking contrast to Haikyu!!, the game takes up less than a single volume rather than, you know, 2-6 volumes—and, perhaps, romance, as it becomes increasingly clear that both Haibuki and Yushin have feelings of some sort for Nobara. And, despite her repeatedly professed complete ignorance and inexperience when it comes to all things romantic, she's starting to have confusing feelings of her own. 

Given how relatively difficult it was to find some of these volumes, I'm not sure if I should continue with the series or not, or even if I will be able to, but I must confess I am now quite curious if Nobara will end up romantically involved with either boy and, if so, which one. Certainly more so than I am with how her team will fare against the clubs from other schools. 

But then, Crimson Hero seems to be about Nobara and her personal life as much as—well, actually more than—her life on the volleyball court. 

If I had read Haikyu!! as a teenager, could it have improved my mental health?

More than once while reading Haruichi Furudate's Haikyu!! I have wondered if it might have influenced or inspired me when it came to my own high school athletics, had it been around when I was in high school. (Which it most certainly wasn't; I graduated in 1995, and the manga didn't start until 2012.)

Now, my sports were cross country and track, the 400-meter dash being my best event of the latter (Being a very small school, we all ran multiple races). Both sports are very different from volleyball, as while they are technically team sports and they can technically involve elements of strategy, for the most part, what the athlete does and how well they do it is a more individual thing. That is, in cross country and some of the track events, you basically just have to run really fast. There aren't really plays in which you need to work closely together with your teammates to score points or anything like that. 

Haikyu!! is full of characters who embody the virtues of living, breathing, eating and sleeping volleyball; in fact, one of the endearing qualities of protagonist Shoyo Hinata and his rival-turned-teammate Tobio Kageyama that is often played for laughs is that their brains are so full of volleyball there's seemingly little room in them for anything else.

And of the dozens of volleyball players we meet over the course of the series, many of them talk and think about practicing more and training harder in order to get better (Hinata and Kageyama, for example, are yelled at by their team captain to leave the gym and go home at one point, for example). While potentially inspiring, I don't think that would have made me any better of a runner, as, with long distance running, there's really only so much you can do—that is, run—and so much of it you can do, the amount of hours in the day and your body's own physical limits preventing you from doing any more. 

And certainly some of the stuff the characters do, like Hinata starting to carry a volleyball around with him constantly so that he is always touching one, in order to become as intimately familiar with the ball as a physical object as possible, wouldn't apply to running sports. 

But the stuff about mental toughness, the joy of the sport, the drive to compete, the passion to excel, a positive mental attitude, team spirit, camaraderie with your teammates? I think all of that stuff, peppered throughout the book and expressed by various characters in various ways at different points? Well, I think all of that would apply to cross country or track...or any sport...or life in general.  

Anyway, repeatedly while making my way through Haikyu!!, I wondered what high school sports might have been like had I read the series when I was 12 or 13 or 14.

And then I hit the panel above, and wondered if having read this manga as a pre-teen might have also helped cure my anxiety disorder? 

(Don't laugh; kids glom onto weird things...I still remember a scene from the original 1987 DuckTales cartoon where the heroes are menaced by a magical cloud that generates images of their worst fears, and the nephews ultimately realize the only way to defeat their fears is to directly confront them, a scene that would often come to mind a teenager and twenty-something; I mean, that's basically what I've read in multiple self-help books about dealing with anxiety as an adult, including the one that finally helped me make a break-through).

The character pictured is Akaashi Keiji, the setter for Fukurodani Academy and the friend and partner of the team's explosively outgoing, voluble ace Kataro Bokuto. 

His thoughts in the narration box are these:

Task focus.

The end result of a game. The referees' judgements. The actions of the opponent.

These are things outside of any one player's control.

What a player can control...

...is their own thoughts and actions.

You can't tell in the image I posted because I edited it so you couldn't see my fingers holding the book open to that page, but Furdate has an attribution for this narration after an asterisk along the bottom of the pane. It reads "Reference: Volleyball Mental Kyoka Method by Eiji Watanabe (Iikyo No Nihonsha)". Given that, perhaps Keiji is quoting the book verbatim...?

At any rate, when I got to that panel it occurred to me immediately that the words can apply to much more than just volleyball, or sports in general. \

There is a great deal in life you can't control and, in fact, there are only a few things you can, including your own thoughts and actions. Focus then, not on what you can't, but what you can; focus on your own thoughts. 

I've heard variations of that my whole life, of course, but not necessarily in comics. What that panel speaks of isn't just volleyball philosophy, but mindfulness in general. It sounds to me, an adult who has read so many self-help books and attended so many hours of therapy, as cognitive behavior therapy boiled down into a couple of sentences.

Could reading Haikyu!! as a kid made me a better, more competitive runner? Maybe. 

Could doing so have made me a healthier, happier human being as an adolescent and adult? It sure sounds like it!

Honestly the only reason EDILW didn't become a Haikyu!! fan blog over the last few months is that my scanner is broken.

So instead of posting about Haikyu!! on here constantly, I satisfied my compulsion to talk about it with someone by direct-messaging the friend who had recommended it in the first place every time there was a particularly dramatic development in the story (which was, in general, at least once per volume). In fact, I imagine I did so often enough that she has probably since come to regret recommending it to me in the first place.

Anyway, the above two panels (remember to read the dialogue in the first one right to left) are from relatively late-ish in the 45-volume series (Volume 36, I think; maybe 37). It's one of the maybe two instances in the series in which manga-ka Haruichi Furudate sounds like he is commenting on the book itself, in a somewhat meta way.

The character is Kenma Kozume, the setter for the Nekoma High's volleyball team. Throughout the series, he's presented as a rather aloof character, one who, at least in his own articulation of his feelings, is somewhat dispassionate about volleyball, a game he started playing mainly because his best friend dragged him into it (This, despite the fact that he is quite excellent at it).

Kenma is an avid gamer, though, and that seems to have influenced his volleyball abilities, as he's an extremely intellectual player who thinks in gaming metaphors. The moment above is actually a big one for the character, as he has an epiphany of sorts, in which he realizes how much he actually loves playing volleyball, and actually says so out loud.

The way he talks about it though, in that first panel, is pretty representative of the entire comic. It's an extremely action-packed, dramatic, epic-length saga of a comics story and yes, it's just about high school volleyball. 

There Kenma is saying exactly what I've felt since about volume two or so; it's just a comic about volleyball, nothing bigger or deeper or grander or more imaginative, but damn is it fun.