Maid in the U.S.A: Kaoru Mori’s ‘Emma’
This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week November 10, 2009 Sign up now!
By Kai-Ming cha -- Publishers Weekly, 11/9/2009 2:57:00 PM
In 2006, when CMX, DC Comics’ manga imprint, released volume one of Kaoru Mori’s Victorian era manga series, Emma, American manga readers had their first taste of Japan’s fascination with both maids and romance. Three years later, Emma will come to a close in December when CMX releases the final volume in this series.
In Emma, the titular character is a maid who catches the eye of a middle class merchant who, despite his engagement to a young woman from a family of higher social class, falls in love with Emma. The story harkens back to whimsical fairy tales like Cinderella while dramatizing the social suicide of intercaste romance and forbidden love in 19th Century England.
Mori was awarded the 2005 Japan Media Arts Festival’s Excellence Prize for the series, whose popularity led to an animated television series as well as an Emma-themed maid cafe in downtown Tokyo. In the U.S., Emma has been CMX’s most popular seller, having gone back to print numerous times, almost more than any other CMX license. In 2008, the Young Adult Library Services Association listed Emma in their top 10 graphic novels for teens. The Emma anime series was licensed in the U.S. by Nozomi Entertainment with whom CMX cross promoted the Emma manga.
The series stands out for Mori’s meticulous detail in narrative, illustration, historical research, as well as for her understated tone. Much like mangaka Jiro Taniguchi, Mori relies little on gimmicks such as screentones or cascading flowers to fill her panels, opting instead for intricately and accurately illustrated backgrounds. As CMX editor, Jim Chadwick, explained it, “In the stories, what’s not said is often as powerful as what is said, maybe even more so. It’s rare to ever see an artist say so much with a mere gesture or a glance.” In the series, soap-opera drama is tempered with the mundane, everyday tasks of dusting and polishing. Emma is a reserved character who expresses herself through action and small gestures such as blushing or exchanging letters with William Jones, the aforementioned merchant and love interest. "Ms. Mori excels in expressing even the subtlest emotions in her drawings,” CMX director of manga, Asako Suzuki, told PWCW, and Mori also worked with a historian on the series so as to convey as accurately as possible, the climate, culture, and architecture of the time.
The story of Emma proper ends at volume seven, which came out last March. Mori penned and illustrated three additional volumes that focus on the supporting characters in the Emma storyline, as well as a stand alone single volume story about a 13 year-old maid, Shirley, which also takes place in the Victorian Era.
Mori is currently at work on another series, Otoyomegatari, which takes place along the Silk Road trade routes. Chadwich described the series as “absolutely stunning. The artworks looks even more detailed than Emma, which is saying a lot.” As to whether CMX has plans to acquire the license to Otoyomegatari, Chadwick says that he’d love for the company to continue their association with the artist, but have no comment outside of that. “We’ll just have to see what happens,” He said.
