Classic in more ways than the obvious: Swan Lake by Higuchi Tachibana (shoujo manga review)

While it holds true that there's nothing new under the sun, this doesn't mean little felicities can't be found basking in its sunny rays. I proved this heliocentric truism to myself when I read 樋口　橘 Higuchi Tachibana-sensei's Swan Lake.

Swan Lake represents Higuchi Tachibana-sensei's first manga tankoubon, but don't let that first mislead you into thinking «amateur»; there is nothing of the novice in this story-telling. Higuchi-sensei took several faerie tales, reworked them, collected the resulting updated-for-a-shoujo-audience stories in an anthology and the Swan Lake manga was born.

You can argue that the narrative skill I applaud owes much to her source material—to which I reply, no, it is very much Higuchi Tachibana-sensei's. After all, it's much harder to take classics and masterfully put your own twist to them, yet so frickin' easy for a follower to plunge into the path pit of least resistance (S-Strain and A Little Princess). No one wants to read mere imitations (especially mediocre ones), but the three titles in this standalone manga: Swan Lake, Mermaid, and The Frog Princess don't suffer even when compared with their Hans Christian Andersen and Brothers Grimm forebears.

The Stories

01 Swan Lake

Contrary to the title, this story bears no relation to Tchaikovsky's ballet; it is more a kin (a very distant one, many times removed) to Han Christian Andersen's The Ugly Duckling, with bits of Cinderella thrown in. Higuchi-sensei's three-chapter adaptation stars the perfect, popular princess Nire Tsubaki who is adored in school (bar one—the former princess dethroned by Nire) and worshipped by her entire family (bar one—her dad who's gone AWOL).

Everyone has matched up Nire with the rich upperclassman Katsuraki, much to Nire's delight. For unbeknownst to Katsuraki-senpai, he is the target of Nire's tama no koshi: she sees marrying him as her way out from the poverty in which her family lives, which she hides from everyone at school. Left to her machinations, she would have succeeded but fate, in the person of transfer student Aiba Riku, intervenes in her carefully-laid plans.

Still, there seems to be a way for Nire to achieve her ends. In return for protecting her secret, player extraordinaire Riku proposes a deal: Become my girlfriend, or else...

Kyaaa! Doki! Doki! (Riku's the total heart throb ^^)

02 Mermaid

Imagine you've never watched Ariel and Disney's version of The Little Mermaid and envision an alternate ending to Hans Christian Andersen's tale in which the mermaid, broken-hearted after the prince marries a human princess, originally becomes a daughter of the air who will gain her longed-for eternal soul after performing enough good deeds or existing as an ethereal spirit for 300 years.

This is exactly what Higuchi-sensei did.

Instead of our little mermaid transforming into sea foam and ceasing to exist as per predestined for her and her merkin, the evil witch offers the mermaid another option: she will turn the mermaid into a human and give her one chance to make the metamorphosis permanent. If, as a human girl, the mermaid can locate the prince's reincarnation and win his love, she will be able to live happily ever after.

Duly transformed and now christened Tajima, our mermaid spends her days helping out at her school's clinic, assisting the doctor Miwa-sensei. His medical training regardless, everytime Tajima lays eyes on Miwa-sensei, her chest hurts and she can't speak. Bingo! These are the exact symptoms the witch said would clue her in to the prince's identity. Now comes the hard part: Yes, Miwa-sensei is Tajima's soul mate, but can she make him fall in love with her when she can't even utter a word to him? And to make things worse, he (and the rest of the school) thinks Tajima loathes Miwa-sensei because she "refuses" to talk to him? Miwa-sensei even misunderstood why she refused to share his umbrella (with the two of them using it, he ends up half-wet). There's no Guppy #35 AKA Flounder, Horatio Ignatius Crustaceous Sebastian, or Scuttle the seagull to help Tajima out; only her own determination will be able to keep her from succumbing to her original sea foam fate.

Ganbatte ne, Tajima-chan!

03 The Frog Princess

(Probably one of the most complicated adaptations of the Brothers Grimm tale I've ever read.)

Kikuhime Yoriko's complicated life takes a sharp right to the absurd when on her way to school one day, a frog addresses her familiarly. The talking frog is her classmate Ukai Tetsuro who has been turned into a green amphibian by the Frog deity for having squished one of his own to death. Cursed, Ukai becomes a frog and returns to his human form whenever someone says the word, Frog.

Ukai asks for Kikuhime's help—she being the only one who seems to understand him even when he's speaking frog. Kikuhime initially says no on two grounds: first, frogs are the species she most hates, and second, she doesn't like Ukai who she once caught in an undressed clinch in their classroom. However, Ukai blackmails her into helping him by threatening to reveal that he saw Kikuhime coming out from a maternity clinic. Now what would a nice high-school girl like you be doing in a place like that? he insinuates.

Ukai's constant sticking to Kikuhime makes everyone at school—including the biology teacher and Kikuhime's cousin Kazuki—think they're an item. This makes Kazuki, also Kikuhime's lover, jealous.

Ukai ends up staying with Kikuhime, reasoning that he can't very well go home in his current state. He asks her why she lives alone and she confesses that she moved out from Kazuki's parents' home where she and her younger sister lived (their parents having passed away). The move was prompted by the fact that Kikuhime and Kazuki are (Setsuna and Sara) not just cousins but actually blood siblings, something she found out after telling her uncle of her pregnancy.

Determined to escape from the soap opera at its bubbly finest which is her life (her sister is also in love with Kazuki), Kikuhime eventually finds the strength to break off with Kazuki. Ukai comforts the grief-stricken girl. The end.

NOT!

It turns out that the Ukai who has been staying with Kikuhime is already a spirit. He was hit by a car after stepping on the frog and his appearance before the spirit-sensitive Kikuhime owed to his consciousness merging with that of the frog. His time running out, Ukai starts to fade away, but before he disappears completely, he asks Kikuhime to smile for him. She refuses; he vanishes.

Only her tears remain.

Bawl!!

What I Thought

As I read the three-chaptered titular Swan Lake, I was reminded of exactly why I worshipped Higuchi Tachibana-sensei: this manga-ka's stories have that peculiar ability of resonating emotionally (a discovery only subconsciously realized in my read of her more popular Gakuen Alice series). A key charm point of all three stories was how Higuchi-sensei ratcheted up the angst to near-despair pitch and then consummately let out the tension to achieve sigh-worthy endings. While I acknowledge that Swan Lake's and The Frog Princess' terribly pat conclusions could have been drawn by numbers, I also accept this nod to the expected happy end as inevitable. It did not tarnish the emotional satisfaction I walked away with.

The conclusion to her second faerie tale was less predictable: we don't know for sure if the mermaid Tajima was able to win Prince Miwa-sensei's heart and circumvent transformation into sea foam. While I commend this deliberate artistic withholding, the less-impressed with writer prerogatives reader in me mourns the lack of an explicit HEA.

I also have to note that Higuchi Tachibana-sensei's unique style as seen in Gakuen Alice and M to N no Shouzou is already established even this early in her career. I refer specifically to the character designs (Riku looks like an older, if blonde, Hyuuga Natsume; Miwa-sensei is a more mature Amakusa Natsuhiko) and the girls' uniforms (all sailor fuku which Higuchi-sensei has admitted a partiality to).

The virtuoso alternate retelling and early vintage constitute the reasons why I call Swan Lake a classic beyond the obvious.

I favorite-rank the stories in the order in which they appeared in the anthology. The manga achieves a rating of 8.75 of 10 pink hearts from this tickled pink reader.

~nik AKA 花木兰03 who will see you in the review of M to N no Shouzou next.

Probably. The M to N no Shouzou review is already up ^^ (added: 2007.12.18)

disclaimer
Swan Lake is © 1998 Higuchi Tachibana. First published in Japan in 1999 by Hakusensha Inc. Indonesian copyright by PT Elex Media Komputindo.

invaluable resource(s)

Wikipedia
The Arielholics Anonymous Home Page

Save as PDF