Manga: Ikoku meiro no croisée
The first book of Ikoku meiro no croisée by Takeda Hinata took me forever to find! It hit the bookstores late Nov / early Dec but it was already sold out in stores by mid December.
I hadn’t gone out and bought it immediately thinking that it was running in Dragon Age Pure and it’s probably under the radar, but I ended up having to check almost 20 different bookstores to find myself a copy in December.
The story takes place in Paris in the late 19th century, when Japan had just been forced by Admiral Perry to open trade with the west, resulting in the creation of a Japanese arts sensation in Europe and America.
Yune is a girl from Japan who was brought to Paris to serve in a metal crafts shop with a French family due to reasons that have not been fully explained, and the bulk of the manga is about how she adapts to the different lifestyle.
The author Takeda Hinata is one of those extremely rare artists that can produce detailed and consistent art in both CG and manga, and also draw detailed backgrounds at the same time.
One of the things I loved about the manga is that I get the chance to read about the vast differences between the French culture and Japanese culture 19th century as Yune tries to adapt to her new life.
Like how the French believed that you have to cool your entire body with ice or cold water when you’re down with a fever. (I’m still wondering if it’s true, Google doesn’t tell me!)
Great expressions from Yune too!
Ikoku meiro no croisée is a great improvement over Takeda Hinata’s previous manga serialization Yaeka no Karte actually, I thought she was going to fade away after hearing nothing of her after Yaeka ended, but she pops back years later with this great gem.
February 19th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Generally if you are burning up with a fever, you can alleviate it by putting a cold or wet towel on your forehead which you need to change regularly. So cooling the body may be a viable technique. Of course in the process you may catch a cold as well…
February 20th, 2008 at 1:09 am
Man forehead is pretty normal (or at least I think it is), but the thought of cooling the entire body during a fever makes me tremble in fear…!
February 20th, 2008 at 2:01 am
Nice review ! And I love your color illustrations (they were not in the tankoubon weren’t they ? Need to check that).
I did a little presentation of the author on my site some weeks ago. I love her drawings, not only for her cute little characters. The scenery in Ikoku was magnificent !
As for the act of cooling the body when you have a fever, we French people still seem to believe it; the reasoning behind it being you need to bring down the temperature of the subject to heal him/her.
February 20th, 2008 at 5:54 am
The art is indeed, incredible; lots of detail and such in both characters and background.
As for that bathing in ice thing: a lot of people in the Philippines (mostly Chinese, from what I know) also practice this, though in my experience, it’s more of a cold compress by wiping the entire body with a towel soaked in ice cold water.
Of course, whether or not it works is still a mystery left unsolved.
February 20th, 2008 at 6:54 am
Very interesting manga indeed. I shall look up for it sometime.
In regards to the ice bath, it is actually a common treatment for really high fevers for which they have to cool the person down quickly to prevent further damage to the body.
February 20th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Man, the different cultures and their weird remedies! Next somebody will say you have to wipe yourself with vinegar! Or do something weird with potatoes!
>Ialda
The colour pages are all in the tankoubon actually, I love it when they do that.
February 20th, 2008 at 9:39 am
I’m French and I don’t remember anything about treating fever with ice-cold baths. Many cultural tidbits in Ikoku meiro no croisée are quite intriguing, actually; but since we don’t learn much about daily life of the “middle class” 150 years ago in either History class (which is focused on politics) or literature from that time (which tends to feature noble or high-bourgeois characters), I’m willing to take Takeda’s word for it. I have no clue what “croisée” in the title is supposed to mean, by the way :-)
Anyway, great review of a great manga. I can’t wait for volume 2.
February 20th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Wow. Nice art. Must hunt this down.
My mother never gave me anything for fevers/colds (other than advice me to stay in bed, tightly covered); she said that any treatments would only weaken my body.
…don’t judge my mom harshly.
And thanks for not throwing another “this is a nice manga.. but I don’t have time to review it!” :P
February 20th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Do manga artists usually draw everything themselves?
I was under the impression that it was a team effort…
February 20th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Thanks for the review Zepy, good to see other people are reading this series as well. (Though I must admit my interest originated in I’VE Sound doing an “image song” for the series, Ryukishi07’s novel turned manga and the Noizi artwork.)
Having enjoyed Emma, I kinda got the same vibe while flipping through Pure and decided it would be worth looking into how it got started. Glad I did. Apparently I’m also glad I pre-ordered it too, if you had that much trouble hunting it down.
I’ve picked up a couple other of the Pure titles as well and they have all been pretty high quality, with at least a couple pages of color art at the front as well.
Keep the manga reviews coming.
February 20th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Technically it’s the opposite, the more you move/raise temperature the faster you get cured from a fever because blood is running faster in your veins thus reacting faster against viruses so when ill do sport…at least that is what my french gym professor told me :p
On the contrary I though the cliché of making body cooler was from japan, lot of manga have the undress scene where the ill patient get cleaned with a cold watered towel.
February 20th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Actually regarding the cooling of a human body for bringing down fever, let’s take this in consideration:
1- it sounds like blunt logic, and as other posters mentioned, it wasn’t strictly a french method.
2- It was quite some time ago. back then, the knowledge in fields like microbiology and virology was a bit lackin, or so I heard.
At any rate, one could wonder if the reviewer found it weird because of the technical aspect, or because it was supposedly french?
Someone mentioned vinegar as a weird idea. Here’s matter for the thought: in Provence, a meridional part of France, until Pasteur brought up evidences about the link between hygiene and disease control, when a plague would threaten the area, people would often use a specific brew of vinegar in which they macerated medicinal herbs as a disinfectant prior and after handling diseased people. That mix was called the “Vinegar of the Four Thieves” (Vinaigre des Quatre Voleurs). There again one can notice the partial foresighting in that method: though one can really question the actual efficiency of this mix when it came to its antiseptic value, the notion of artifical antiseptic was already in the air.
We must give credit to the elders: they didn’t know all they needed to know, but they *tried*.
And for the record, well yeah I am french too ^^; and I always have a giggle when I read a manga which puts french people on stage. Who doesn’t remember Picorette Chardain, the champion of speed-eating in Ranma series, who mixed french and japanese in very strange sentences… like for example “Très bien gozaimasu”? Or “Je t’aime” (I love you) spelt in katakana :D
February 20th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
In fact in case of high fever for a baby it’s important to get the temperature down as soon as possible, and plunge him in a bath two degrees (celsius of course) less hot that the usual human temperature is a good method to do so.
The cold bath could also be a treatement inspired by hippocratic medecine based on the theory of humours.
February 21st, 2008 at 5:18 am
Thanks for all the info on folk remedies guys, I guess cooling the body was more common than I thought!
Though it’s quite strange how it’s almost entirely the opposite of the method of warming the body during a fever so you can sweat the fever out. I guess it works either way.
>Jimmy
The use of assistants vary from artist to artist actually.
Though for weekly serializations, the artist is usually unable to cope with the workload unless he has assistants working with him, so more likely than not he’d have a team of assistants.
Monthly serializations have less time constraints, and many of them try to do it alone so they don’t have to pay for assistants.
February 21st, 2008 at 7:47 am
>Zepy : just checked my copy. I don’t know how I did to forget there was color insert in it XD
Kudos to you for finding a copy in december ! I absolutely had no idea that there would have so much demand for this book, and I had to wait january to get mine.
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:38 am
Thanks for the review. Just bought my copy at Kinokuniya today. Even with my horribly limited reading ability, I enjoyed this tremendously. Will be going through this again with a dictionary again sometime soon.
February 26th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Whoa looks like a pretty manga. Hopefully I can still get it. :)
November 30th, 2008 at 7:38 am
I can’t believe I only got this gem like… a week ago. Magnificent and I’m falling in love with it.
January 22nd, 2010 at 8:54 pm
I bought book 1 and book 2 at my local manga bookstore ^^ this manga is one worth collecting!!!