Four Shōjo Stories

Four Shōjo Stories is a shōjo manga anthology released by Viz Media in February 1996. It contains two stories by Keiko Nishi, and one each by Moto Hagio and Shio Satō. This was one of the earliest (if not the first) shōjo titles released in English in North America.[1]

Four Shōjo Stories
Cover of Four Shōjo Stories.
GenreFantasy, Romance, Science fiction
Manga
Written byMoto Hagio
Keiko Nishi
Shio Satō
Published byShogakukan
English publisher
MagazineVarious
DemographicShōjo
Published1996
Volumes1

Plot
Promise

The brother and father of Reiko, a teenage girl, died not long after she was born. She must cope with her mother neglecting her, including her mother's decision to remarry. Reiko begins skipping school and she often meets by chance a boy who had helped her when she was little. He helps her get used to her new situation.

They Were Eleven

Ten young space cadets are put onto a decommissioned spaceship as their final test. If they pass this test, their lifelong dreams of being valued people in their respective societies will come true. They find upon reaching the ship that they have an eleventh member. The crew suffers hyperthermia because their ship is too close to a star, and they must find out which of their number is the spy.

The Changeling

In the distant future, Lin is employed to check up on Earth's terraforming efforts. She runs across a peaceful-seeming world, but her ship is nearly sabotaged.

Since You've Been Gone

An unfaithful husband is with his lover as an earthquake devastates his home. His wife refuses to be evacuated, as she wants to find a purse with "deep sentimental value".[2]

Releases

Rachel Matt Thorn, a noted anthropologist, translated all four stories in the anthology. This anthology is unusual in the fact that Viz did not ask permission to publish the four stories as an anthology, and they had to pull it from the shelves when the original rights holder (Shogakukan) found out what they had done.[3] Of the four stories, They Were Eleven was distributed separately by Viz as a "monthly comic series" in 1995,[4][5] Promise and Since You've Been Gone have been compiled in one floppy by Viz called Promise which came out in April 1994, and The Changeling was serialised in Animerica.[5]

  • Four Shōjo Stories, ISBN 1-56931-055-6, Viz Communications, February 1996

Reception

Shaenon Garrity describes it as being "an odd mix" of stories, attributing this to the "very little" amount of shōjo manga available in English at that time. She describes Promise as being "affecting", and regards the story of The Changeling to be "engaging", although she describes its art as "sparse and uneven". She believes the best of the four to be Hagio's They Were Eleven. Garrity describes Four Shōjo Stories as being one of the best short manga anthologies in English.[5] Debbie Carton, writing for Booklist, regarded the book as a "fascinating introduction to the world of shojo manga" and regarded the range of stories included to be a positive. She recommended it for any collection including graphic novels.[6]

References
  1. "Four Shōjo Stories". 2007-03-07. Retrieved 2007-07-14.
  2. Jandoc, Wilma (2005-03-27). "'Shōjo Stories' heralds a manga resurgence". Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Retrieved 2007-07-14.
  3. Brigid (2007-03-08). "Why you can't find Four Shōjo Stories". Retrieved 2007-07-14.
  4. Thorn, Matthew (September 2008). "Matt's Vita/Resume". Retrieved 2009-03-31.
  5. Garrity, Shaenon (2007). Thompson, Jason (ed.). Manga: The Complete Guide. Del Rey. p. 110. ISBN 978-0-345-48590-8.
  6. Carton, Debbie. "Four Shojo Stories." Booklist July 1996: 1818. Literature Resource Center. Web. 7 Jan. 2016.
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