ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS meets STONER AND SPAZ
Aiko Cassidy is fourteen and lives with her sculptor mother in a small Midwestern town. For most of her young life Aiko, who has cerebral palsy, has been her mother's muse. But now, she no longer wants to pose for the sculptures that have made her mother famous and have put food on the table. Aiko works hard on her own dream of becoming a great manga artist with a secret identity. When Aiko's mother invites her to Paris for a major exhibition of her work, Aiko at first resists. She'd much rather go to Japan, Manga Capital of the World, where she might be able to finally meet her father, the indigo farmer. When she gets to France, however, a hot waiter with a passion for manga and an interest in Aiko makes her wonder if being invisible is such a great thing after all. And a side trip to Lourdes, ridiculous as it seems to her, might just change her life.
Gadget Girl began as a novella published in Cicada. The story won the SCBWI Magazine Merit Award in Fiction and was included in an anthology of the best stories published in Cicada over the past ten years.
I was actually pretty excited to read this book. I’m in the target demographic, based on the
summary: a fan of anime and manga; when I was younger I even tried to create my
own manga, though I haven’t drawn seriously in years. There is very little in books for Americans
that involves a main character who’s into this kind of stuff, mostly because
I’ve seen firsthand that it’s still considered immature to like anime and
manga, even though there is plenty of it that is certainly not appropriate for
children. So while it does get points
for being original, it wasn’t quite as good as I was hoping it’d be.
I will give Gadget Girl credit: it’s a fast and easy
read. Unfortunately, I suspect that’s
because it doesn’t have a whole lot of substance. So much happens in the book, and yet none of
it is gone into in any significant detail.
Most events take up a page or two at most even if they’re supposed to be
significant, such as the art gallery opening or Aiko going to Moulin Rouge. I also would’ve liked her reaction to things
to be less rushed; when finding things out about her father, the information is
dropped in her lap, and she spends all of a few pages feeling bad about it
before she suddenly has a revelation.
However, Aiko will act the exact same way the next time something goes
bad; the boy in Paris, for instance. She’s
constantly agonizing over Hervé, thinking he’s not interested or thinking that
he already has a girlfriend. She’s so
quick to flip out about things right to the very end that it is a bit
annoying. It’s understandable because
she has self-esteem issues related to her cerebral palsy defects, but the fact
that it happens over and over before she finally realizes that Hervé likes her
for real and not out of pity seems more like an artificial way to add drama to
the plot.
There’s also the fact that while Aiko is always stated to be
a huge fan of anime and manga, there are very few examples of her being
anything more than a casual fan who knows what are considered the “starter”
titles. Sailor Moon and Hayao Miyazaki
are mentioned, but even people who aren’t into manga know those, as they’re
probably some of the most popular titles in America. There didn’t need to be namedropping
everywhere, but I would’ve liked to see some that proves she knows what she’s
talking about, or even some titles or manga-ka who’ve influenced Gadget Girl,
in story or style.
In the end, I found it to be about average. It wasn’t bad, as I was more than happy to
finish it and see how things end up for Aiko.
But because of the rushed pace, the unique character attributes of being
an otaku and having cerebral palsy don’t raise it to a higher ranking in my
mind. If the book had just spent more
time on the important events and delved more into how Aiko felt rather than the
obvious guilt about holding her mother back, anger that she can’t meet her
father, and shame over her defects from her cerebral palsy, it could have been
above average.
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