The Fall 2017 Manga Guide

Frau Faust

What's It About? 

The legend of Professor Faustus has existed for over 100 years, but young Marion never expected him to be real, much less a woman. Professor Johanna Faust temporarily takes up residence in his hometown and even offers to help him with his studies before she's quickly on the move again. Marion decides to see how much he can learn from the legend even if she did sell her soul to the devil. Frau Faust is an original manga by The Ancient Magus Bride creator Kore Yamazaki. Kodansha Comics released the first volume on September 26 for US$12.99.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Lynzee Loveridge

Rating: 4

Sometimes I think Kore Yamazaki has taken up residence in my head, mining for the subjects, settings, and details I want to read. I am a huge fan of The Ancient Magus Bride despite what were my initial misgivings about its “old dude purchases teen girl for forced romance.” It checks every one of my magical boxes, right down to its nuanced understanding of Celtric-Druidic pagan lore. Frau Faust is no different, again tapping into my novice interest in apocrypha. The last manga I read that bothered with this much demonic detail was Angel Sanctuary, so it's definitely been awhile since this particular itch was scratched.

Like the name implies, Frau Faust is about that Faust, the one of literary fame by Christopher Marlowe. Technically, the tragedy of Dr. Faustus isn't apocrypha, but the play has had far reaching literary importance. I mean, we're talking about a script from the late 16th century in a review for a manga. The romantic portrayal of a scholar selling his soul created perhaps the only demon more famous than Lucifer.

That demon is the “quest” subject of sorts in this retelling, as Mephistopheles has been rendered less menacing thanks to being torn limb from limb and having each body part hidden somewhere. In the meantime, the immortal Johanna Faust (gender-swapped from the original inspiration) is attempting to recover all the limbs to satisfy her own ends, whether it be to once again obtain an all-powerful demon servant or undo him by her accord. Magical quest aside, Frau Faust is another chance to go galloping into a magic world with Yamazaki, this time with an assured, adult female protagonist and an earnest boy as the apprentice with alchemical creations like Homunculi in tow.

The opening volume's primary downfall is its inability to completely separate itself from Yamazaki's other work. Faust may be more animated than Elias, but her morality is just as ambiguous and she's also both eccentric and prone to collapsing. Her hanger on Marion is nothing like Chise in personality, but he still fills the same narrative slot as a dutiful apprentice. Faust's beautiful “daughter” Nico fills in for Silver as an effective, feminine housekeeper albeit with more bite and the actual ability to speak.

If you love Yamazaki's previous work, I doubt the similarities will be a drawback. All of her worlds fill lived in and reasonable within their established rules despite all the magic flying around. Frau Faust's characters just need a little more space to grow into their own to adequately establish themselves.

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Austin Price

Rating:

“It's not at all like the fairy tales,” remarks Marion, the deuteragonist of Frau Faust, as he watches the titular heroine share a moment of affection with a homunculus she just saved. Readers familiar with any iteration of the legend of Doctor Faustus might be tempted to agree. Despite the title and the premise, Kore Yamazaki's latest work owes very little debt to its supposed inspiration, thematically or narratively. Faust here is not a religious soul in despair or a genius scholar filled with ennui, Mephistopheles no servant of the Devil; their relationship has likewise been totally redefined so that it's far more flirtatious. All evidence is that they're more like dueling lovers.

Why these changes were made is less clear. Classical works aren't sacrosanct, to be put behind glass and admired like artifacts dug up and preserved in museums. They demand to be played with, engaged with. Each of Marlowe, Goethe, Murnau and Mann's interpretations of the Faust legend took gargantuan liberties with the core story, and yet each also paid close attention to what was so captivating in the original – its preoccupation and razor-sharp understanding of the duality between the appetites of the body and the demands of the spirit; the way Christianity's strictures and God's silence often, ironically, drive adherents into godless materialism; a demonstration that salvation ultimately comes not through genius or knowledge, but through grace and love.

Yamazaki's does not. All elements of Christianity – of sinning humankind – have been scrubbed clean, here; these characters exist in a state of near blameless purity. Their ruined nobility is only a matter of good intentions subverted by happenstance, and then it's nothing that cannot be fixed with a little bit of ingenuity. The way Inquisitors are presented here they seem less like dangerous zealots than a team of martial bureaucrats draped in religious imagery the better for the lazy reader to identify them. The demons here are not representations of what happens when God's perfection is perverted, just mischief makers the Church keeps tabs on as if they were some gang of eccentric criminals. Even this story's interpretation of the Faustian bargain is implied to be something like a pact between noble but doomed lovers.

None of it feels a piece with the actual myth. Everything here feels instead tacked on. Like an afterthought. The lazy art only confirms this suspicion: gone is the confidence and competence that characterizes Yamazaki's work on The Ancient Magus' Bride. There are no sights on par with that of Angelica's workshop, nothing as unsettling as the visit to Ulthar; even simple panel transitions and action are too often unclear and unmotivated. But then nothing about this first volume feels motivated. It's like a sketchbook of Yamazaki's she tried to stitch together with a smattering of plot.

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Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Kore Yamazaki of The Ancient Magus' Bride fame joins such literary noteworthies as Christopher Marlowe and Goethe as an author who tackles the German legend of Faust, a scholar who (depending on which version of the story you read) is desperate for more knowledge than is available to him by ordinary means and thus makes a pact with a devil. Yamazaki's angle on this? What if Faust was Johanna and not Johan?

There's clearly more going on here than a simple gender swap, because this is Yamazaki, and the woman knows how to do her folkloric research. In fact, there's some question based on Johanna's flashbacks as to whether she was always female – either she cross-dressed in order to attend university in the past, or becoming a woman was part of the bargain she made with Mephistopheles, because there's a distinct difference between current timeline Faust and past Faust. There's also the possibility that Johanna's extended life and healing abilities may take away years of her apparent age as collateral, because she looks a lot younger in the story's present than she does in the past, and she makes a comment that could imply that she's getting shorter as time goes on. I very much doubt that Mephistopheles gave her osteoporosis, although that does sound like an appropriately devilish thing to do.

Alongside this question, the story in this first volume also raises the possibility that rather than just being about the adventures of Dr. Faust as seen through Yamazaki's eyes the text may in fact be about Faustian bargains, both those made and facilitated by Johanna herself. This comes up when she returns to a town that she gave a dangerous strain of wheat to – the wheat saved the town from a famine, but it did so at the potential cost of a few human lives, as it can take root in living flesh and kill its host. At first we think that this was a choice made by Johanna, but as the story goes further, we find out that she merely facilitated the wheat's planting: it was requested by a town elder. Therefore his bargain was with Faust herself, not Mephistopheles. Does this put her in the same category as the devil? And if so, is Mephistopheles as evil as the Church thinks he is? That's something that Lorenzo, an inquisitor on Johanna's trail, is going to have to consider; his partner Vito is already learning things that are making him question the legend he knows.

Even if you haven't gotten into Yamazaki's better-known work, Frau Faust is really worth reading. It has in interesting take on a well-known story, Yamazaki's trademark research, and if the back-and-forth of the timeline isn't quite working right now in terms of narrative, it is giving us a lot to think about. Plus there's a neat short story in the back. What have you got to lose?

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Amy McNulty

Rating:

It's no secret to devotees of The Ancient Magus Bride that Kore Yamazaki is a master at ambiance, of creating worlds filled with magic and darkness. Frau Faust volume 1 shares elements with Yamazaki's better-known series, such as the girl/monster relationship at the core, but even that relationship itself is starkly different. Johanna Faust is brash, confident and at odds with her demonic companion, Mephisto, and Mephisto as a character is mostly only seen in flashbacks, as he's currently missing a head and a few appendages. However, the tension between the (more grown up) Faust and Mephisto in those flashbacks is palpable. Faust walks a thin line between using the demon and letting herself be used, and this game to track down his body parts that's in progress as the series begins hints at the push and pull the two have gone through for lifetimes. In this volume, Marion, as Faust's new traveling companion, acts as a suitable enough audience surrogate who's thrown into this mystery, though he hasn't had much time to develop into a rounded character just yet. Nico is a stand-out, and any shallowness or awkwardness in her character is explained well enough within the volume. Faust's pursuers, Lorenzo and Vito, are the weakest links in the cast so far, though taciturn Lorenzo has shown some depth by caring about innocent bystanders above capturing his quarry when necessary.

As with The Ancient Magus Bride, Yamazaki draws fanciful backgrounds in Frau Faust that are partially responsible for drawing the reader in. They're not quite as detailed or as charming as the Magus Bride set pieces, but “charming” isn't an apt word for this darker story regardless. It's a darker story with more mature themes, and that's reflected in much of the artwork's tone. Between striking costumes and somewhat varied faces, the character designs are all distinctive, making it simple to keep track of every individual.

There's a bonus one-shot short story set in modern day at the end of the volume that won't disappoint fans of Yamazaki's whimsical storytelling style. All in all, Frau Faust volume 1 will strongly appeal to fans of The Ancient Magus Bride despite some slightly recycled elements. Fans new to Yamazaki's work and those who passed on Magus Bride will still find that this darker tale is off to a promising start.