Manga Movable Feast: Sexy Voice and Robo

David Welsh, blogger at The Manga Curmudgeon, had an idea for what he (somewhat puzzlingly) called the Manga Movable Feast; a manga title and date would be announced, and manga bloggers around the web would be invited to post about that title on the week of that date. The first title was Iou Kuroda’s Sexy Voice and Robo, and the date was Monday, February 8. I decided I wanted to join in, so I headed over to Amazon and placed my order for a copy of Sexy Voice and Robo. However, I opted to use Amazon’s free shipping option, which is marketed as “Super Saver Shipping” but should perhaps more accurately be titled “Whenver We Get Around To It Shipping,” as I ended up not getting my copy of until Tuesday, and I just finished it Saturday.

But perhaps being late to the party will give me a unique perspective. I was careful to avoid others’ posts about the book until I was done reading it for myself, and now that I’ve caught up on those other posts (which are listed here), I can react to those as well as the book itself.

Let’s start with the book. The curiously-titled Sexy Voice and Robo is, essentially, an episodic mystery series. The eponymous characters are Nico, a fourteen-year-old girl who part-times as a phone flirt (think phone sex, but less overtly sexual), hence “Sexy Voice;” and Iichiro, a stereotypical otaku adult loser with an unhealthy obsession with giant robot toys, hence “Robo.” (Erica Friedman provides us with a character study of Robo.) Nico’s job has made her quite skilled at not only altering her voice, but accurately judging the appearance and personality of the men she talks to just by the sound of their voice. Besides the money, Nico plans on parlaying her job and her talent into an eventual career in espionage, and she gets her chance when a mysterious old man in a café learns of Nico’s talents and hires her to solve a mystery for him… and one mystery is followed by another. As Nico becomes one of the mysterious man’s henchmen, hapless Robo becomes Nico’s henchman, mostly because his adultness provides Nico transportation and access to places she wouldn’t be able to get to otherwise.

The structure is pretty standard for a mystery (Kate Dacey compares it to the American novel Harriet the Spy, which also features a young girl sleuth), but executed well enough that it doesn’t feel stale or trite. In each chapter, a mystery presents itself, but by the end, Sexy Voice has cracked it owing mostly to her gift of gab. There’s a good variety to the stories presented. Though each chapter is independently episodic, there’s an overarching story involving the old man’s past which is revealed in stops and starts. The book’s ending has struck others as rather abrupt and left them calling for more, but I personally thought that the ending in relation to that overarching storyline is well-placed, and that the reader can draw their own conclusion as to where Nico’s spying career will go from there - I know I sure did.

The reactions to Kuroda’s art seems to be all over the board. Kuroda uses bold thick lines which appear to have been applied by brush, mostly sticking with simple black and white and using very little toning (to the point that it sometimes even looks out of place when he does); the look is very different from many modern Japanese comics, and rather refreshing. The look of the characters’ eyes in particular struck me as I started reading - and then I came across the chapter in which eyes play an important role. It’s rather cool how it unfolds, so I won’t say more than that, though unfortunately some of the other reviews you’ll find as part of this Feast spoil it a bit. However, it struck me initially that Kuroda was having some problems with perspective - things which should have been further back in his art didn’t look further back. Everything looked like it was on the same plane… It’s kind of hard to describe. In retrospect, I found this aspect of the art bothering me less as I got further into the book; whether the art improved in this regard or I just stopped noticing it, I’m not sure. There’s also the case where it can be sometimes difficult to discern just what the heck is happening in the more action-packed panels and you end up hoping that whatever happened will be explained later on in the chapter, but that seems to be an annoying fault of a whole lot of manga, so I won’t hold it against Sexy Voice and Robo uniquely.

The book itself is released by Viz and was originally printed in 2005. The pages’ dimensions are the same size as an anthology like Yen Plus (or, presumably, the one this series was initially serialized in), rather than being reduced in size for trade printing as is typical for manga; sorry, but if you have a “manga shelf,” this book may not fit on it. The book, which contains all chapters in one volume, runs almost 400 pages, starts with a note by Kuroda, and, interestingly, ends with an essay by one of Viz’s editors about Kuroda’s artistic rendition of Tokyo. Overall, it’s not a bad presentation, though I do want to fault Viz for leaving a lot of the text in Kuroda’s art untranslated, even when it was more than trivial in terms of the story. One part that struck me in particular was a note that one of the more important characters in the overall story arc finds. Viz doesn’t translate the note at all, though with my infantile Japanese skills, I was able to make out it was telling him to kill someone - rather a crucial plot element, I think. What other plot points did I miss because I couldn’t read them?

Kuroda’s unique and mostly pleasant art and strong stories come together to provide a cohesive whole which ends up as a rather fun read, particularly if you’re a fan of mysteries. It’s well done, but the whole is not more than the sum of its parts - I cannot unilaterally declare that you should “run out and buy [it] right now” as Christopher Butcher does, and I can see how it wouldn’t appeal to everyone - “Mehhhh,” says Sadie Mattox. You’re going to have to enjoy the mystery genre, and be at least tolerant of art which is well outside of the norm. But if that’s you, I think you’ll find something to like about Sexy Voice and Robo.

Okay, review ends there. I’m going to finish off this post by going a bit more in-depth into an issue brought up by other Feasters, and will maybe spoil the story a bit, so please only continue reading past the next paragraph if you’ve finished reading Sexy Voice and Robo yourself, lest you be spoiled. (If you’re on the front page right now, click the “Read more” link below.) To space things out, let me sell the site a bit for those visiting it for the first time.

Hi there. I’m your humble editor, Garrett Albright. This is Yen Plus Info, a fan site primarily providing news and info about the Yen Plus comics anthology published by Yen Press, though lately I’ve been sharing my experiences with other comics both foreign and domestic. Why not check out the front page and browse a while?

Okay, continuing. There’s been some opining in other reviews about the nature of the relationship between Sexy Voice and Robo; Sam Kusek goes so far to call it a “budding (and possibly unrequited?) romance.” I really don’t see it that way at all. We learn in the first chapter that Nico uses her skill as a tool for her own personal gain, whether that be to solve a mystery or merely to make some pocket money. To her, Robo is just another tool to help her crack a case; I don’t see her ever considering him more than that at any point. For his part, Robo is a prototypical nice guy; if a girl shows him a little attention, he’ll do anything she asks him too, even if he knows he’ll ultimately never get any romantic or sexual gratification out of it - and the fact that she occasionally pays and feeds him is nice as well, especially after he loses his job. And I think he’s mostly aware of his status as her tool. Yes, there’s that bit near the end where, prompted by his friend, he asks her if she likes him, and perhaps there was some wishful thinking there. But like other nice guys, I’m sure he’ll be able to resign himself to being just her friend (or less) if it means he can hang out with her every now and then. Maybe he even gets a bit of a thrill from the sleuthing bits too. (In case you can’t tell, I was able to personally relate to Robo’s predicament a little too well.)