Fire! (manga)

Fire! (ファイヤー!, Faiyā!) is a shōjo manga series by Hideko Mizuno about the rise and fall of an American rock star named Aaron. It was serialised in Seventeen from 1969–1971[1] and won the 1970 Shogakukan Manga Award.[2]

Fire!
The cover of the first volume of Fire!
ファイヤー!
(Faiyā!)
Manga
Written byHideko Mizuno
Published byShueisha
ImprintSun Comics (Asahi Sonorama)
MagazineSeventeen
DemographicShōjo
Original run1969 – 1971
Volumes4

Aaron Browning is an American teenager who gets sent to juvenile prison after being caught with a delinquent named Fire Wolf. He finds solace in music and later manages to sort-of bond with Fire Wolf himself, and he ultimately leaves to Detroit determined to make it in the musical industry. He leads a band named Fire! and soughts to lead people to freedom with their music.

The hedonistic Aaron is neither a 'boy next door' character, nor a 'shining prince', and Sandra Buckley states that it was his 'non-conventional, rebellious behavior' that was part of the attraction for the fans of Fire!. It was innovative for shōjo manga by having the first sexually explicit scenes in post-World War II manga, and by having a male protagonist.

The story has been read as a "conservative morality tale", but Buckley states that this ignores the two-year run of readers following Aaron's exploits avidly. There are accounts of teenage girls queueing for the next issue to come out.[1]

References
  1. Buckley, Sandra (1991) "'Penguin in Bondage': A Graphic Tale of Japanese Comic Books", pp. 170-171, In Technoculture. C. Penley and A. Ross, eds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota ISBN 0-8166-1932-8
  2. 小学館漫画賞：歴代受賞者 (in Japanese). Shogakukan. Archived from the original on 29 September 2007. Retrieved 19 August 2007.

Further reading
  • Frederik L. Schodt (1983). Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. Kodansha.
  • Shamoon, Deborah (2018). "Fire!: Mizuno Hideko and the development of 1960s shōjo manga". In Darling-Wolf, Fabienne (ed.). Routledge Handbook of Japanese Media. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315689036. ISBN 9781315689036.
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