Review: Blue is for Boys and Pink is for Girls,

Blue is for Boys
Pink is for Girls
By Various Artists
Sweatdrop Studios, $9.50

You can think of these two anthologies as the manga equivalent of practicing the scales. Each book has nine stories in different genres: romance, action, fantasy, music, horror, even a parody of fans. The hook here is that the stories in both books are based on the same concept, but Blue presents them as shounen manga while Pink is all about the shoujo.

The difference is more than just style: Most of the stories start the same in both books but wander off in different directions. Take the first story, about a student production of Romeo and Juliet in which the pushy female director is in love with the reluctant Romeo. In Emma Viceli’s shoujo version, “Give me my Romeo!” the two beautiful boys end up together. Sam Brown’s shounen “Alive in Triumph” quickly shifts to the story of a panty-flashin’ ass-kickin’ bad girl who takes down the boys and wanders off arm-in-arm with her best friend.

Sometimes the two books present two parts of the same story. The action in “Quest for Chenezzar,” in Blue, immediately precedes that in Pink’s “Return to Chenezzar.” The two episodes are drawn in strikingly different styles; Rik Nicol’s Blue version is dark and massive, relying on shading rather than line to define his bulky figures, while Sonia Leong’s art in Pink is light and romantic, closer to the Seven Seas style. As a result, the two episodes seem like completely different stories, rather than two chapters of the same work.

Similarly, the shoujo/shounen divide is obvious in the different takes on the inevitable classical music story. “Unmade Melody,” by Sarah Burgess, is shounen all the way, a battle for dominance that leaves one student deaf and the other remorseful. Morag Lewis’s “Unheard Harmony” is sweet, sweet shoujo, as a friendly and nonthreatening female classmate helps the deaf musician to play again. Both stories pay attention to emotion: In the shounen story, the main character resents Alastair, the musician, because his playing lacks feeling; in the shoujo story, Alastair is able to play with feeling because he finds someone to respond to his music. It’s actually a lot to pack into a small space, and Lewis in particular has a nice sense of pacing and paneling, but unfortunately her art is too stylized, and it’s not helped by poor reproduction that caused some of the hatching to fade.

Despite some weak spots, there’s a lot to like here. Both versions of “Two Halves,” a parody of clueless fandom, are funny in a good-humored way. Aleister Keiman’s “Brewing,” a wordless version of a couple eyeing each other across a coffee shop, made me laugh. Laura Watton’s “Steaming” is a much sexier version of the same story. And in this case, the Blue story has a female artist while the Pink story is by a male. Both books have plenty of creators of both genders; it’s the sensibility that counts.

Some of the stories fell a bit flat, but most are pretty solid, and the artists make good use of the storytelling conventions of manga. The art is much more uneven, which is not surprising given that most of the creators are not professional artists. While some, such as Hayden Scott-Baron, Sonia Leong, Vanessa Wells, and Niki Hunter, show considerable skill, some of the others could use more practice in drawing from life. Still, everyone here shows plenty of promise. All have a good sense of storytelling and pacing, and that’s where these books shine.

While both volumes are slim, at about 130 pages each, Sweatdrop has done a nice job with production. The attractive cover art plays on the boy-girl duality: the cover of Blue features a busty shounen girl holding a crystal ball with a boy’s face; the cover of Pink features that boy, shirt flapping in the breeze, holding a similar ball with the girl’s face. Each volume features an introduction by a serious manga scholar, Paul Gravett for Blue and Helen McCarthy for Pink. Creator bios in the back round out the books. The paper quality is good but the print quality varies, with lines fading away in some places and dark tones taking over in others.

Each of these books could stand pretty much on its own, but the really interesting part is comparing the two. After each story, I found myself reaching for the other book to see how another artist would handle it. The blue/pink concept could easily become hokey, but the Sweatdrop crew really understand what makes manga tick, and I was impressed with their creativity and imagination. For this group, playing the scales may be the first step on the way to Carnegie Hall.