Joan (75 Books LV – LVII)

Now we move on to an older, shorter work from the mid-1990’s by Yasuhiko Yoshikazu, Joan. It’s a work of historical fiction, about a young woman named Emil who’d been raised as a man near the end of the Hundred Years War, who sees visions of Joan of Arc urging her to follow in her footsteps and serve the French king. I can’t say how historically accurate the work is overall, aside from the fictional Emil, but the last volume includes a short essay by Chojun Otani, a scholar of French literature, who says that Yasuhiko came to him for help in his research, so he’d apparently made at least some effort in keeping the work as accurate as the story allows.

In any case, the story gets off to a slow start, as Yasuhiko spends a lot of the first volume setting up backstory and just getting Emil into the king’s army. Once it gets going, though, it’s very good. As in Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin, he does an excellent job quickly establishing each character’s personality and motives, which is important in a work that’s only three volumes long. Though Emil is the protagonist, St. Joan does the most to advance the story. It’s Emil’s visions of her that motivate almost everything she does, and Emil’s resemblance to Joan tends to remind everyone she meets about their own relationship with her. Yasuhiko takes an interesting approach, really - like many people, the artist is clearly fascinated and inspired by Joan’s life, so one could easily see him just writing a work about Joan herself. Instead, he takes an indirect route, and besides Emil’s visions we get to know the saint entirely by second-hand accounts. Though unusual, this method was very effective; somehow, there’s a feeling of loss from every character so powerful that by the end, I started admiring Joan myself, even though she only appears a few times.

The events of the plot occasionally feel disconnected from each other. In particular, most of the second volume, adding up to a large part of the whole work, focuses on Gilles de Rais. He is a fascinating character and fits right in thematically, but the overall story and Emil’s development would hardly change at all if this part were radically shortened or, perhaps, even excised entirely.

I mentioned in my reviews of Gundam: The Origin that Yasuhiko’s art is excellent, especially the watercolour pages. I was pleasantly surprised to find, then, that the entirety of Joan is in colour, which is unusual for Japanese comics. As in Origin, many pages have a dominant colour, while certain characters or some other focal point will be a strong contrasting colour. 

Joan is out of print, since it was published by the now-defunct ComicsOne. It doesn’t seem too hard to find online, though you should definitely check the condition. My copies looked worn and the second volume’s spine detached while I was reading it, even though they didn’t seem too roughly handled. That said, it’s well worth checking out.