Bookshelf Briefs 9/11/17

Absolute Duo, Vol. 1 | By Shinichirou Nariie, Takumi Hiragiboshi, and You Asaba| Seven Seas – In general, fans tend to dislike a couple of things in the manga they read, especially Western fans. The first is the tsundere female lead, and the second is the super-powered male lead. Not sure yet whether we’ll get the second, but Absolute Duo seems to be free of the first. Unfortunately, that does sort of make it clear why manga and light novel authors enjoy writing tsundere female leads—the conflict here is rather mild and undramatic, with our hero fighting against a nice girl, and when she loses, she just… says bye and leaves. As for the actual heroine, she’s nice and shy and sort of self-sacrificing. Absolute Duo is decent, and I like everyone, but if you didn’t see another volume you’d barely care. – Sean Gaffney

A Certain Scientific Accelerator, Vol. 6 | By Kazuma Kamachi and Arata Yamachi| Seven Seas – I said last time we were down to the final fight, and we’re still on it by the end of this volume. Index is filled with long, drawn-out battles, but in Railgun and the main series they tend to be separated by more mundane matters. Accelerator, true to its antihero, never really lets us relax, and humorous escapades are at a minimum. It also makes it rather difficult to review. I mean… the fights were cool? I actually understood the action, which is not always the case with heavy action manga. The villain is bad and you want to see them go down? And I’m pretty sure one of our team of heroes is going to die, though I’m also pretty sure it’s the girl who’s already dead. A good spinoff that’s not as good as Railgun at its best. – Sean Gaffney

Delicious in Dungeon, Vol. 2 | By Ryoko Kui| Yen Press – I’m enjoying this second volume more than I did the first, I think. We get a bit more backstory on the characters which makes them a bit more likeable, and Marcille is no longer whining at absolutely everything. On the opposite tact, Laios gets to do some truly ridiculous things showing that he’s a lot more impulsive than we expected (and we get flashbacks showing that his sister really was a major part of their party—I wonder if she’s actually died by now?). And Senshi, while he’s still the wise sage of the group, is also shown to sometimes be wrong. But of course the main draw here is the ridiculous food, detailed in loving “this is actually a cooking manga” detail. A lot of fun. – Sean Gaffney

Girls’ Last Tour, Vol. 2 | By Tsukumizu| Ywn Press – This volume sets itself up much like the last one did, with about 2/3 devoted to Chito and Yuuri’s slice-of-life adventures among the ruins of the world, and the last third has them meeting with another living person and helping them try to achieve a dream. Both times they do this the dreamer fails, though it’s not really the girls’ fault. It does make me wonder what sort of mood the author wants to convey here. There are occasional scenes of Yuuri being an airhead or Chito a grump in that Chika and Miu sort of way, but the air of melancholy you’s expect to hover over this world is more prevalent here. Is there an endpoint the author wants to get to, or when they run out of cute situations will we just have the girls quietly die? Good but odd. – Sean Gaffney

Haikyu!!, Vol. 15 | By Haruichi Furudate | VIZ Media – Karasuno has advanced to the semifinals of the Miyagi Prefecture qualifier tournament. Will their next opponent be Aoba Johsai or Date Tech? Readers are treated to some of that match-up before Aoba Johsai emerges victorious. There are some nice moments here, particularly one in which Kageyama actually admits to Hinata that he’s scared to face Oikawa again and a brief interlude where Sugawara is brought in to shut down a high-scoring newcomer, but not quite as many as in the last volume, which fleshed out background team member Ennoshita. There’s no such thing as a bad volume of Haikyu!!, and this has plenty of excitement and a cliffhanger ending, but the final page suggests I will like next volume’s payoff even more than this volume’s setup. Looking forward to it, as ever! – Michelle Smith

Kase-san and Shortcake | By Hiromi Takashima | Seven Seas – Well, the girls have gotten together in book one, and gotten to know each other more closely in book two. Book three has a double shot of plot, with Yamada realizing that Kase-san is going to a Tokyo university on a sports sholarship, while she’s going to a local college. This… really doesn’t sit well with her, and she frets about it as best you can do when your manga is meant to be cute and fluffy. We also deal with Kase-san wanting to take things further physically, but not wanting to pressure Yamada, and being somewhat stymied by Yamada’s complete ignorance of what to actually do—at one point, she even googles how to have sex with a girl, with hilarious results. Still adorable and fluffy even when everyone is crying. – Sean Gaffney

Kiss & White Lily for My Dearest Girl, Vol. 3 | By Canno | Yen Press – We’re back to the first volume’s couple at the start of this new book, and it’s become pretty clear that their story will tie into all the others we see in this series, which is also why it’s not official as such. Ayake is still overdramatic and difficult to like, though you sympathize with her having to deal with the blase Yurine. As for Yurine, she’s dragooned into the gardening club, which is short on members and about to lose its garden to the sports clubs. And, as it turns out, is also being sabotaged. Luckily, Yukina is the utterly straightforward sort of ojou-sama type, and so it doesn’t end quite as badly as it possibly should. The series continues to detail how absolutely EVERY girl at school is falling for another girl, but that’s not uncommon in this genre. – Sean Gaffney

Log Horizon: The West Wind Brigade, Vol. 6 | By Koyuki and Mamare Touno | Yen Press – It is not a good sign when the best, most interesting part of the spinoff is the one that’s basically telling the events of the main series. I have no doubt that we see Raynesia because she’ll be interacting with our heroes in future volumes, but seeing her and Krusty here made me wish that we had a side series focusing on them instead. Instead, we get a predatory lesbian who seems to be in the West Wind Brigade for only that reason, though Soujiro can still calm her down. The other minor plot is the newbies training at the beach, and how Kawara may not be a dependable sempai but that her type of personality is probably just as good in the long run. I wish this was more consistent. – Sean Gaffney

Murcielago, Vol. 3 | By Yoshimurakana | Yen Press – This series continues to be super violent and super uncaring about the status of its victims—TWO loving fathers are graphically butchered, one right next to his daughter, and we don’t even stay behind to see the horror and grief. It’s all about the killing and the killers. Now, that does not mean that we can’t have fun—seeing Kuroko go to town is the purpose of this series, and it’s nice to watch her be cool and take down actual monsters. And you get the feeling that the next volume, involving Kuroko infiltrating a girls’ academy, will be funnier. But you really need to not really care what happens to anyone at all in order to get into Murcielago. It’s pure rush, but the rush is filled with sociopaths. – Sean Gaffney

One-Punch Man, Vol. 12 | By ONE and Yusuke Murata | VIZ Media – Even though hero-hunting Garo is on the cover, he barely appears. Instead, this volume mostly consists of glimpses of Saitama’s progress through the martial arts tournament intercut with various heroes fighting against a slew of monsters. Genos handles quite a few himself, including a skittering bad guy called Roach Awakening who is wonderfully icky, and it’s also fun to see a few other Class-S heroes in action, especially Watchdog Man, who I bet would get along well with Saitama when and if they actually meet. The tournament stuff is okay, and the action scenes are great, but it all seemed to zoom by so quickly without leaving much of an impact. I’m not sure what exactly I’d change about it, though. Could the answer be as simple as Saitama doing more punching? Maybe so… – Michelle Smith

Tokyo Tarareba Girls, Vol. 6 | By Akiko Higashimura | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – The last time I reviewed Tokyo Tarareba Girls, I found it to be majorly depressing. As a result, I let a few volumes accumulate and, honestly, kind of dreaded reading them. To my surprise, I didn’t find them depressing at all, despite Rinko and friends still being in the same awful relationships as before. I think the difference is that they’re beginning to see the truth, and there’s a strong suggestion that they’re going to do something about it. In this volume, for example, it’s Key to the rescue again as he helps Kaori finally (hopefully) break free of Ryo. Interestingly, though, when Rinko seems about to reunite with Mr. Hayasaka—and they’re genuinely cute together—and Key is poised to intervene again, I suddenly found his interference very unwelcome. Very eager for volume seven! – Michelle Smith

Yowamushi Pedal, Vol. 6 | By Wataru Watanabe | Yen Press – As I’ve mentioned before, this is one of those sports series that runs in a shonen magazine whose Western audience is predominately female, and the BL fandom is huge. (Pity poor Kanzaki…) I was not really expecting to see quite as much of why the BL fandom was huge till I got to this volume, the last half of which is Makishima and Toudou’s race, which may in fact be the gayest thing I’ve ever seen in a non-explicit manga. It’s incredible. The first half is also very good, involving Onoda getting into a crash which leaves him in last place, and having to pass 100 bikes in order to catch up. Which he does, because of course he does. The series is a pure exhilarating thrill ride, and I desperately want to read more. – Sean Gaffney