Shiiku-gakari Rika: Rika the Breeder 1

Author: Motoni Modoru
Imprint: Super BBC
Publisher: Biblos
ISBN: 4-88271-897-9

Reviewed by Jeanne Johnson

'Something's happening here and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?' I admit it. Guilty as charged. I haven't a clue.

OK. Rika is a riddle wrapped in an enigma clothed in a mystery... yeah, yeah, you know how it goes. The story can actually be read as a detective mystery of sorts. New boy Natsume Hiro comes to a boarding school unlike any other school in existence (one fervently hopes) to solve/ resolve something that happened in his past- but even that fact takes a while to emerge. The school (this is apparent from page one, so no spoilers) is a hotbed of bullying and rape kept slightly in check by a feudal organization called the Salon. The Salon protects its members from random abuse by specifying who can/ must rape whom (yeah, there are must rapes here) under what circumstances, and punishing those who rape/ abuse without proper permission. All this to be decided at the whim of the Salon head. Sex at the school is both an overwhelming obsession, as befits an all-male society where there are no other outlets for stress, and a matter of down-and-dirty power politics, not unlike an American jail. When you throw in the Byzantine institution of the Salon, you have a scenario reminiscent of the surrealistic, closed, hothouse world of British boys' schools. But the Rika world is even more bizarre than that.

The atmosphere of yaoi gone seriously wrong will likely rivet most people's attention to the exclusion of all else, at least for the first go-through. Rika is one of those stories (not all of them yaoi) that you sort of hope you wake up from soon, but it's also so beautifully done that you have to keep reading it. Motoni's technically exquisite, high-contrast black and white style shows the awfulness in unblinking detail, like a police photograph of a crime, but it also doesn't blink the fact that the criminals involved are pretty damned dishy. At the same time the very starkness of her style keeps the emotional temperature down. 'Here it is. Here's what's happened. This is reality at this school.' And a good thing too. If the artwork were more sensuous, it would be unbearable.

The reader is put in the position of Hiro, trying to make sense of this nightmare world without a map. Hiro at least has the advantage of knowing the truth of the tragedies in his own past. We're only given hints and suggestions of those, scattered randomly throughout the manga. This ambiguity goes double for the past events at the school, that surround Hiro like a whirlpool. Neither he nor we know what really happened two years ago that led to the mystery he needs to solve. Hints abound. Excerpts from his brother's diary, sudden flashbacks, random quotations from speakers unknown, references to 'that boy', 'that guy'-- all the means by which Japanese manga can be made obscure are here on display. We hear one thing from one person and another from another, and don't know who to believe. This in a place where believing the wrong person can be dangerous to one's health.

As an illustration of the general obscurity, take the much-debated question of the title. Rika, who becomes Hiro's roommate, is a member of the Salon executive. He's the 'breeder', in the sense of dog breeder or cattle breeder. The first thing Hiro asks when he enters their room is 'What's a breeder?' (The reader has been wondering that too.) Rika answers 'Mama.' Later when Hiro knows the school better he says 'Breeder doesn't mean Mama. You're the guy who trains the younger guys here. You're the sex symbol of the school.' Right or wrong? Rika doesn't answer. Later another member of the Salon executive says to Rika, apropos of Hiro entering the Salon: 'Your job is to make people who don't want to, want to.' Rika says, 'Hiro will never be anyone's catamite.' 'I'm sure you'll manage something. After all, your real work...' and he doesn't finish the sentence. So maybe Rika is a trainer of sorts after all. But then we twice see him acting as 'mama': and once it's when he's screwing the head of the Salon, the guy who really runs the place. Everyone calls him by his nickname 'Gil'; but in bed, Rika calls him by his real name, and he kills Rika 'Mama.' Obviously there's something in this Mama business, possibly even something that has to do with Rika's very survival within the system. But we can only guess what.

The whole series is like that, to date. The events of the past, the structure of the school, the underground power politics and plots and vendettas- everything is made as obscure as it could possibly be. If you like to solve mysteries while they're happening, and your Japanese is top-notch, this is a great read. If you hate not knowing what's going on, it's an exercise in masochism, especially if you're reading the thing in installments in BeBoy Gold. Unfortunately reading it in BBG is also an exercise in addiction. No doubt the best thing one could do is wait till the series is finished. There's only going to be three volumes, and we're ballpark halfway through the action now, so the wait can't be too long. But if that's not a possibility, the next best thing is to get the first tankoubon and read it twice. Three times to be safe. At that point small little details start to string themselves together to form semi-consistent patterns, so that you at least have an idea of what's happening. Then read every installment three times. Maybe at that point you'll feel on top of things. But don't bet on it. This manga world is like a funhouse mirror: everything distorted, and what you see may not be there.

Below some musings about the whole thing, involving necessary spoilers

Click here for spoilers