Sleep Is For the Weak

Rated 16+ for tame nudity and sexual misadventures; official website (manga)

As far as mangaka go, Kazusa Takashima is an interesting but sad case. Undeniably talented, she suffered (on the accusing party side) from a nasty plagiarism scandal a few years ago. She’s mostly known for her BL titles, several of which are already in English but are pretty much out of print, and the fact that the scandal drove her away from the manga industry for quite some time. I think she’s producing again, but the fact remains: this woman’s work is in high demand but is often out of the reach of fans, meaning her career is plagued with frustration from all sides. That said, seeing Mad Love Chase - her 5-volume shoujo title that started running eight years ago - come out in English recently was both a surprise and a treat. Originally known as Harlem Beat wo Yoake Made, or the nonsensical Harlem Beat Until Dawn, TOKYOPOP decided to go with the original manga’s English subtitle Mad Love Chase, which, all things considered, was the least-bizarre choice they could’ve made. (Also, Harlem Beat is already a very different manga.)

Takashima is the first to admit in the author’s notes of this title that shoujo “isn’t her thing,” but that actually ends up being a blessing - Mad Love Chase takes traditional supernatural shoujo traits and makes them weird enough to not be cliche. The plot follows the prince of hell, who gets engaged against his will while going through some kind of unholy (get it?) pubescent rebellion stage. He flees to the human realm with his pet cat, and poof - they turn into an average Japanese schoolboy and a big-busted school nurse, respectively. Hell wants its prince back, so it releases three hapless bishounen monsters to find him, they all have human forms that are unrecognizable to the prince and vice versa, and all hell breaks loose (ho ho!). In the only way to tell which Japanese high school student is actually the prince of hell, the bishounen monsters and a variety of silly villains have to find the prince’s unmistakable full-back tattoo, which means…do I really have to spell it out? Supernatural bishounen, like vampires and werewolves, tearing off the shirts of Japanese schoolboys.

The whole thing is actually a bit more tasteful than it sounds, since the villains quickly realize that ripping clothing off of teenagers is a great way to get arrested and thus spend their time trying to find the right schoolboy to assault. The whole thing is played up for humor and the nudity is a lot more slapsticky than exploitative. You can definitely see the mangaka is more used to drawing boy-on-boy stories, but with a few notable exceptions (see above pic), the homoeroticism is pretty subtle - because that’s how shoujo likes its homoeroticism and Takashima is versatile enough to work with that. There’s also a bromance between one of the villains in schoolboy form and the prince himself in schoolboy form, and then said villain starts to question the morality of dragging an unwilling prince back to a marriage that will make him miserable…etc. This comic is extremely busy and was absolutely impossible to understand when I attempted to read it in Japanese many years ago, but a solid English adaptation makes it coherent, if still a bit dizzying. Takashima crams an ungodly (zing!) amount of silliness into every panel, but it’s all decently funny, so it’s a packed, entertaining read. Also, the bishounen vampire? Totally not angsty, which is a much-appreciated reversal of the usual shoujo vampire stereotype. One thing’s for sure: while reading this, I had a damned good time!

No, I won’t stop, I never stop.

Initial impression: This is a weird little shoujo title, but it’s funny and refreshingly devoid of a lot of shoujo pitfalls. I hate the word “zany,” but that’s the word I’m going to have to go with here. This manga is zany. A little devil of a shoujo, if you will. AND YES, I WILL. (Lianne)

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