Sakuran: Blossoms Wild Paperback – July 17, 2012

I cannot put this book down! I read it as soon as I got it cover to cover and here, I read it everyday! Great Art, Story, and you get the behind the scenes what it must have been like to be an Oiran in Japan. It wasn't easy, you had to be tough. You had to be perfect in the Arts, Music, and most of all Conversation. You couldn't have too many customers. You had to be Exclusive. Falling in Love is a No No! The only way out was to be bought out by a customer. 2 Famous lies in the Yoshiwara: "I Love You" and "I Will Marry You." Courtesans still are in Japan but only played by Actresses. Geisha on the other hand is a Profession. Dance, Music, Art, and Lively Conversation. (Sorry it is not permitted to take Customers to Bed.) You can fall in love and have private meetings but it all has to be discreet for a Geisha. Some marry and retire. Some marry and keep working. And some keep to the profession.

I really enjoyed this book. It was a quick read but easy to read. It didn't get boring and the story kept going nicely. Sad story, as I expected it to be.

Moyocco Anno's historical manga, Sakuran, opens boldly with a beautiful young woman basically being a tough you-know-what to a couple of kids.The kids call out for the help of the oiran, the head courtesan of the house, who is promptly told by Kiyoha, the young woman, that she is not defying her by acting as she does, but that she just can't stand her.And so the story begins of Kiyoha, a girl who was sold to a brothel in Yoshiwara and who will become one of its legendary figures.Kiyoha comes to Yoshiwara as a child. The child, who is named Tomeki, is rebellious and vows to run away. She makes trouble and defies the head of the house as much as possible and while continuously punished for her actions, her spirit never diminishes.But as with all stories of this type, the spirit may be willing but the circumstances are not so accommodating. So it is with Tomeki who eventually becomes O-Rin once she becomes a courtesan-in-training.The artwork is beautiful although the character design isn't as varied as it should be. I enjoyed the fierceness of how Kiyoha is portrayed but I did have some trouble with distinguishing other characters because many looked similar.But the fierce vibe overall was just to my liking. I have hopes that since Vertical is the publisher that has brought over Moyocco Anno's Sakuran that there will be more but in researching it looks like this single volume will have to satisfy.

One of the most powerful manga that you can read. This beautifully executed work combines skillful artwork, a compelling story and a very interesting, almost post-feminist perspective. It offers some intriguing inferences into Japanese culture through the life story of a very complex and challenging set of characters.

Sakuran is one of my favorite manga ever. I really love Moyocco Anno's art style and "man-women" however, the story was not meant to have a long run so it's a little choppy. Also, the main character's name changes many times like a girl who was raised in a pleasure quarter was (Tomeki > O-rin> Kiyoha > Higurashi). Another thing is that the binding was already kind of worn and after about a week of light use a page and the middle chunk of pages fell out. That is why this got 3 stars and not 4. I'll post a picture soon.

(Review originally posted on theblackletters.net.) I expected Sakuran to be fun - racy, rambunctious, ornate. Brothel life in Edo-era Japan, oh yeah. And it is fun, sort of - bubbling over with scheming, ambition, spectacle, and biting exchanges of emotional violence.But it's also deeply, and more lastingly, sad. Kiyoha is fifty times the usual feisty protagonist: she's crass, arbitrarily malicious, and often outright violent. While this can all be amusing, even admirable, it's also a disturbing, straightforward statement about the molding influence of a system founded on mistrust, competition, and the basic cruelty of buying and trading young women. Sure, Kiyoha might just be a queen of cats by inclination, but we also bear witness to the events that progressively eat away at her humanity, at her willingness to trust and share and be kind.The courtesans' lives are haunted by a desperate craving for love, and by its impossibility. If I recall correctly, only one of the girls eventually marries her favorite patron; the rest are fated to disappointment, or even death, at the hands of patrons, or their own desperation. The manga culminates in a quiet emotional ruin: in a few pages, we see Kiyoha - at the ripe age of twenty-something - eaten completely hollow by love's casual betrayal. Sakuran is an anti-romance, in other words.While I have nothing but praise for Sakuran`s emotional daring and honesty, there are several practical stumbling blocks to enjoying the manga. Moyoco Anno draws only a veeeery narrow range of facial features, so it's nearly impossible to distinguish the oiran (and many of their patrons, too) except by their wardrobes. Flipping frantically between pages to double-check which girl with what dialogue bubble had the kimono with the crane pattern and not the peony pattern and these hair ornaments not those hair ornaments, was about as fun as it sounds - and then you get to do it all over again as soon as the scene changes and everyone's wearing different clothes! Which happens often, since the manga drifts from vignette to vignette, with little connective tissue. This works to create a sense of drifting and dislocation, of the oiran existing in an unmoored twilight realm whose essential drudgery is punctuated by episodes of bizarrely heightened emotion. But my god, it wouldn't have hurt for everyone to look a little bit more different, would it?Productionwise, there's a lot to love about Vertical Inc.'s sophisticated visual design, as usual (ohhhh that glamorously garish metallic cover), but I wasn't entirely satisfied with the translation. While a certain degree of informality seems apropos to the manga's earthiness and irreverence, many of the anachronisms ("spacing out," "twerp") just seemed silly and misplaced. And, too, most of the lyrical reflections don't quite reach the height of fluency and elegance that they need to work as emotional transitions between scenes; they contort into fortune-cookie-esque awkwardness, e.g. "Castle-topplers whisper idle nothings to trap their guests."Still, the underlying substance of the manga is so very excellent that it more than made up for all the practical distractions; I look forward to the added fluency of comprehension that a reread will bring. If you didn't like Memoirs of a Geisha (I didn't), or maybe if you did, too, but are ready for a more hard-bitten take on the courtesan-memoir, I strongly suggest you give Sakuran a try.

even though the book looks vrey good with bw/colored pages the binding is very bad.it is the 1st manga book that fell apart (and i read lots of them).it is very disappointing from this publisher.is it a new trend with Vertical? hope not.at this price not exactly worth it - unless you like to read loose pages.

Assolutamente consigliato. Ho scoperto Moyoco Anno da relativamente poco e sono rapito dai suoi disegni particolarissimi. Storia molto intrigante in linea con lo stile della mangaka.Davvero un bell'acquisto

Sakuran is a pretty neat story. The issue i had with this manga was the actual book. It had poor binding at each of the color pages, and almost every color page in the book started to fall out on my first read through while the others detached completely. I purchased this new and was pretty disappointed at the physical copy. It's still a good read and worth your time, just be careful not to crease the manga at any point.

A mio avviso un piccolo capolavoro.

Il tema e i disegni di questo manga sono molto suggestivi. Purtroppo a parte nel primo capitolo, tutte le pagine a colori originali (e sono numerose) sono state stampate in bianco e nero. Peccato, perché a parte questo la qualità dell’edizione è ottima!La storia a volte è difficile da seguire. I personaggi femminili si assomigliano molto esteticamente e a volte non è facile distinguerli, anche perché il personaggio principale cambia nome via via che “fa carriera” all’interno della casa di piacere.Malgrado tutto, è un manga da leggere assolutamente!!

Manga arrivato in perfette condizioni, è sempre un piacere poter leggere autrici come Moyoco Anno!