SORA TOBU PENGUIN (The Flying Penguin) is a story that tends to bemuse, amuse, frustrate, and relieve, not that unusual for stories by Wakuni Akisato. In this story, we mix together three half brothers (well two as one claims to be a sister), a poor girl, an errant mother, a vengeful wife, her brother, and her philandering, rich, husband. Now, have the poor girl stumble in between all three siblings; have her mother entertain an affair with the rich husband; have the vengeful wife's life saved by the poor girl's dead father eleven years ago and you start to get some of the elements of this story. Oh, we forgot to mention that two of the brothers hate each other and they are both practicing pro-wrestling—on each other.
How the story begins: One day before summer break Hatsuko Kakurai's life takes a severe turn. Her high school is on the peninsular tip of Izu and is quite the average Japanese high school. Her friends tell her about the special "Miss Izu" contest that is happening the next day at the school fair, though.
Students from the Midori Yama (Green Mountain) school will be at the school fair. Hatsuko at first fails to see why this is anything to get excited over, but her friends help her put one and one together. The Midori Yama school is up in Yokohama where all of the rich kids go. They believe that perhaps some rich "prince" will see the winner of the beauty contest and sweep them away to a nicer life. Hatsuko, being a bit of a frail person, starts to get dizzy from the resultant blood rush when she starts thinking about all these possibilities. A classmate of hers, Tsubaki Todoroki, tries to shake Hatsuko out of her dreams of a prince on a white horse. Other classmates note Tsubaki's antics and deduce that he has a crush on Hatsuko.
At home that night, Hatsuko is still dreaming of big houses, chauffeured cars, and wide canopied beds. Her reverie is interrupted by her mother returning home. Hatsuko's first thought is that her mother will prepare supper now. Instead her mother gives Hatsuko a new pair of shoes and shows off the new silk slip that she has gotten. Hatsuko exclaims that it must be expensive. Her mother goes on about how it was designed by the super-maker of underclothing TAKAO. She comments that Hatsuko is only fifteen and still a bit too young to appreciate such things. Hatsuko replies that it is not that at all: they are almost entirely out of rice and they have to eat something. Hatsuko's mother seems unconcerned and calls out for Hatsuko to get her a beer. Hatsuko muses to herself that her mother seems to have gotten another boyfriend and that means she will probably go off and abandon Hatsuko again.
At the school fair, everyone seems to be talking about the special event that is to occur between someone named Ukon and Mario at three. We then find out that it seems to be a wrestling match between two brothers. We find the sister, Shikibu, of these two brothers talking with her brother's trainer and very upset. Shikibu is worried that her brothers will be taken by whoever the winner of this beauty contest is. At this time the trainer's sister, Kayako, enters saying that Shikibu should not worry so much. She has arranged the contest to really be one where they pick the most unbecoming of the contestants. This way they can insure that the winner will not catch the interest of Ukon or Mario or any of the other boys from their high school. Kayako seems to be doing this to make sure she, as queen of the Midori Yama high school, is not upstaged by some Izu brat.
Meanwhile Hatsuko is finally making her way to the fair still hoping for her prince to arrive and take her away from this life of poverty. Passing by a cliff next to the sea, Hatsuko notices a woman staring out into the water at the top of a very precipituous drop. Hatsuko realizes this is the sort of place where people commit suicide and she rushes out towards the person. Unsure of what to say she shouts out "Konnitiwa!" The woman calmly turns towards Hatsuko and replies saying that it is a nice day. The woman continues on that staring out at the water here is her favorite place. Hatsuko, always blurting out what is on her mind, thought the woman was going to jump. The woman finds this very amusing, but suddenly gets serious saying that eleven years ago that is almost what she did here—jump. Apparently at that time she had been extremely depressed for she was raising three sons that her husband had fathered; however, none of them were her children.
The woman suddenly notices that Hatsuko's new shoes are all scuffed up from running over the stones, and she feels to blame for them being ruined. She immediately offers to buy Hatsuko new shoes, but Hatsuko, embarrassed, runs off. The woman calls out that when Hatsuko is done she should come back near here and that her name is Michiko Takao. Hatsuko replies over her shoulder that she is Hatsuko Kakurai. Michiko watches her run off in shock. Something about the name Kakurai is very important to her. Eleven years ago Michiko had met a Haruo Kakurai.
After Hatsuko arrives at the school fair she attempts to screw up her courage to sign up for the Ms. Izu beauty pageant. She is interrupted by Tsubaki again. He tells her that it is foolish to hope for a prince to come and sweep her away like in some fairy tale. It would be like a penguin learning to fly. Hatsuko, rather annoyed at Tsubaki begins flapping her arms about with a look of concentration on her face. When Tsubaki asks what she is doing she says she is a practicing penguin, learning to fly. Tsubaki tells her it is not possible and she turns on him. He suddenly replies back that he has a serious crush on her. This is not something that she wanted to hear and she ends up running off.
Without looking where she runs, Hatsuko finds herself in a labyrinth that had been setup for the fair. The sign outside warns that it is dangerous for a single person to enter and that one should enter with the person they like the most (ie: it is a tunnel of love of sorts). Hatsuko immediately starts to scream for help. Ukon, our male protagonist, shows up asking the person at the door to the labyrinth what the problem is. The classmate of Ukon says that a girl ran in there by herself. As Ukon enters the labyrinth the classmate asks if it is alright and Ukon retorts that of course it is not alright. Meanwhile, Hatsuko is having a relapse of when her mother abandoned her for five days when she was very young. She passes out right as Ukon arrives and carries her out of the maze.
So begins the story about the relationship between Ukon, Hatsuko, Mario and Shikibu—with all of their parents, and even an odd brother thrown in to the mix. This story has many different things which make it enjoyable to read: First, it is never clear which way the details of the story will go. Even though the reader suspects what the ending will have to be, how it gets there is certainly not the expected path. Secondly, there is enough up and down tension between Hatsuko and all the other characters to make the reader want to smack a number of characters several times with some common sense. Woven through these twisted relationships (and some of them are pretty twisted!) is a rather impish sense of humor that keeps the story fresh and entertaining.
In an interview for NEWTYPE magazine the author, Wakuni Akisato, once said that she did not really enjoy drawing because her art was not very good, but that she drew manga because she loved to tell the stories. It seems, though, that her art style is quite accomplished. She has been a manga-ka for some time now and the way she draws her characters shows her ability. She tends to use a rather fine line and concentrates almost entirely on the characters instead of the settings and backgrounds. The only exception is when the setting is the point of a panel. Then she will concentrate on the background making it the foreground so that it highlights just the elements you need to see in order to get the point. For instance when she shows Hatsuko and her mother at their poor little home, we see how small the place is, and the lines in the walls taped over here and there. Or, when Hatsuko first sees the chauffeured limo that Michiko Takao rides in, it stands out from the rest of the frame almost like the perfect car commercial.
As an example of Wakuni Akisato's work SORA TOBU PENGUIN is the longest of her stories. It keeps the reader engaged, amused, and hopeful for what the ending will be. Written with generous furigana, it remains quite approachable to almost all readers of Japanese. The hardest thing to learn when reading her works is to know when she is being serious and when she is being whimsical. This story does keep its readers on the edge, wanting to know just how our heroine will get out of her sticky situations, while also entertaining with all its antics. If you are after a story like this that is easy to read, then pick up SORA TOBU PENGUIN, or almost any of Wakuni Akisato's works.

SORA TOBU PENGUIN Copyright © Wakuni Akisato 1991-1994 Flower Comics/ Shogakukan ¥390 per volume 10 Volumes