Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Katherine Dacey

Elegant Yokai Apartment Life, Vol. 1

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Elegant Yokai Apartment Life suffers from multiple personality disorder, lurching awkwardly from one situation to the next without comfortably settling into one storytelling mode long enough for the reader to decide if it’s a sitcom, a soap opera, or a horror show.

In fairness to creators Hinowa Kouzuki and Waka Miyama, few stories purely embody a single genre; the labels that the publishing and entertainment industries have coined — rom-com, dramedy — give ample proof that hybridization is a common strategy for enlivening familar plots. For such hybrid forms to work, however, the tonal shifts must be intrinsic to the story, arising naturally from the interactions between the characters and their environment. Elegant Yokai‘s narrative swerves, however, feel more like a desperate attempt to appeal to as many different constituencies as possible: there’s fanservice for guys (a female ghost who wears only panties and a well-placed towel) and girls (a hot onmyoji with a ponytail and a silver fox with an eye patch), yokai drawn from folklore and urban myth, a potential love interest for the hero, a raft of comic-relief characters who get brief turns in the spotlight, a subplot borrowed from a 1983 Afterschool Special, and tragic backstories for several characters just in case the idea of a “ghostly boarding house” doesn’t tickle your funny bone.

The most frustrating part of this narrative abundance is that so much of it feels… extra. Any one of these elements could be excised from the story without fundamentally changing the premise, making room for more character development. That point is crucial: Elegant Yokai‘s lead is less a person than a reader surrogate, walking from one situation to another in a state of mild befuddlement about his supernatural neighbors. Author Hinowa Kouzuki has saddled Inaba with motivations that explain how he ended up rooming with yokai, but hasn’t actually given him any discernible personality traits. Kouzuki and Miyama’s few attempts to flesh out Inaba’s character are clumsy and, frankly, illogical: what well-adjusted person marks his middle school graduation by fighting his BFF in an abandoned lot because he’s “always wanted to do that”? (Shouldn’t Inaba quote one of the rules of Fight Club or something?)

The artwork suffers from a similarly overdetermined quality. The human characters are less drawn than assembled from bits and pieces of other artists’ work — a dash of CLAMP here, a bit of Yuu Watase there — while the yokai have been shamelessly copied from Rumiko Takahashi and Hayao Miyazaki’s oeuvre. Making deliberate allusions to other artists’ work is, of course, a time-honored tradition, but here, these nods feel less like tribute and more like theft; readers tempted to compare Miyama’s art with Miyazaki’s are bound to find hers a poor substitute.

It’s only in the final chapter of volume one that we get a glimpse of what Elegant Yokai might have been. The story trains the spotlight on Inaba’s fellow apartment dwellers Kuga and Shiro, a boy and his dog who were murdered by Kuga’s mother. Once a month, Kuga’s mother — also a ghost — shows up at the apartment building to reclaim her son. Over time, however, her human form has deteriorated and memories have faded, reducing her to a pitiful demonic state, more scribble monster than angry wraith. The frankness with which Kouzuki and Miyama depict her crime prevents these scenes from descending into bathos; these moments are the only ones that elicit an authentic emotional response from the reader, not least because Kuga and Shiro’s predicament has a demonstrable effect on the other characters. Too bad the rest of volume one is such a frantic, disjointed mess.

ELEGANT YOKAI APARTMENT LIFE, VOL. 1 • STORY BY HINOWA KOUZUKI, ART BY WAKA MIYAMA • TRANSLATED BY ADAM HIRSCH • 206 pp. • RATED T (13+)

Pick of the Week: Flower Girls

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KATE: This week’s manga haul has something for everyone: new installments of digital-only releases like Tokyo Tarareba Girls, new volumes of perennial favorites like Nichijou and Master Keaton, and a handful of debuts like Kiss Me at the Stroke of Midnight and Sweet Blue Flowers. And while I’m intrigued by Sweet Blue Flowers, my vote goes to volume nine of A Bride’s Story, Kaoru Mori’s gorgeously illustrated chronicle of life on the Silk Road. What say the rest of the MB gang?

MICHELLE: Despite the handful of Seven Seas titles that I’m genuinely looking forward to, I really can only choose Sweet Blue Flowers. I’ve been looking forced to reading this series in English for years! (I even bought the Japanese volumes for a while!) Thanks, VIZ!

SEAN: It’s light novel week, so you know I want to say Baccano!. And there’s a bunch of other titles I want in this monster week. But as with Michelle, my choice goes to Sweet Blue Flowers finally getting the treatment it deserves. Can’t wait.

ASH: Like Kate, I’m certainly looking forward to the next installment of A Bride’s Story, and there are plenty of other manga being released this week that I’ll definitely be picking up (such as Descending Stories), but I’ll be joining Michelle and Sean in choosing Sweet Blue Flowers as my official pick. Shimura’s Wandering Son was an incredibly important series for me personally, so I am thrilled that more of her work is be released in print.

ANNA: There are quite a few great series coming out this this week! I’m going to have to go with the last volume of Master Keaton. Urasawa is always at the top of his game, and I’m going to miss all the insurance investigation shenanigans.

MJ: I find myself echoing what others have said so far regarding Takako Shimura’s Sweet Blue Flowers. A real release of this series has been a long time coming, and I’m thrilled to see it finally hitting the shelves. I can’t wait to read it.

Pick of the Week: Butlers, Cosplayers, and Sunspots

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SEAN: It’s a light week with no first volumes. A few books I’m looking forward to, but I’ll be Don Quixote again and give my pick to Hayate the Combat Butler. All my other lost causes have either ended or been dropped, but Hayate is still there, trickling out.

KATE: Whoa… I reviewed the first volume of Hayate back in 2006, when I was writing for PopCultureShock. I remember enjoying it, reading a few more volumes, and then… well, I think I lost track of it. Sean’s comments, however, reminded me that VIZ has been good about continuing series that never quite found the audience they deserved. (See Kaze Hikaru.) So my vote goes to Hayate the Combat Butler as well.

MICHELLE: My pick this week goes to the final volume of Complex Age. It’s been riveting and it’s been truly upsetting, but my hope is that it’ll end on an empowering note, too. I’m looking forward to it!

ASH: I’ve never actually read any of Hayate the Combat Butler (although perhaps I should). However, I have read the first part of Complex Age and found it to be surprisingly relatable and personally meaningful. I’m a few volumes behind in reading the series, but I join Michelle in choosing the final installment as my pick this week. I’m very glad that Kodansha Comics brought the series to my attention.

ANNA: It is such a light week! Of the titles that are coming out, Complex Age is the series that I’m most likely to finish, although like Ash I need to catch up. That’s my pick as well.

MJ: I’m still in catch-up mode from the summer when I was directing an opera, and since there’s nothing on this week’s pack that really grabs me, I’m going to dig back into the stuff I missed and finally take a look at One Peace Books’ I Hear the Sunspot. It sounds like exactly my kind of BL (if it is, in fact, BL). So let the catching up begin!

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Vols. 1-2

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Can someone who’s never played a Legend of Zelda video game still enjoy the manga adaptations? That’s the question I set out to answer by reading the first two volumes of the Twilight Princess saga.

The short answer to the question is a qualified yes — if by “enjoy” you mean, “get a handle on what’s happening.” Akira Himekawa, a pseudonym for the two-woman team of A. Honda and S. Nagano, pack a considerable amount of exposition into the first two chapters, making it easy for the uninitiated to grasp the premise. Honda and Nagano also use these introductory pages to introduce us to the residents of Ordon Village — the hero’s home — treating us to idyllic scenes of farmers tending their crops, shepherds minding their flocks, and barefoot children cavorting. Though these tableaux are as cornpone as anything John Ford ever committed to screen, they’re rendered in a crisp, readable style that helps the reader understand what’s at stake if Link fails in his quest to restore the balance between light and darkness.

But if you equate “enjoyment” with “feeling a spark of pleasure or surprise while reading,” then the answer to my initial question is a resounding no. There’s a labored quality to the storytelling that prevents Twilight Princess from coming alive on the page; Honda and Nagano try too hard to nail down every narrative detail, producing a story that often reads more like an overly scripted PowerPoint presentation on Twilight Princess than an organic work of fiction. In the first volume, for example, we’re introduced to the obviously pregnant wife of an important supporting character. Just a few pages later, however, another villager helpfully mentions that Uli’s wife is… pregnant. A similar round of no-shit statements accompany Link’s volume two transformation into a wolf, a development that prompts Link — and other characters — to repeatedly observe that he’s no longer human; you could play a decent drinking game by taking a swig of whiskey whenever someone registered surprise at Link’s lupine form. At least he looks cool.

The plot developments are equally obvious. As soon as Honda and Nagano introduced a tremulous teenage girl and her snot-faced little brother, for example, I knew it was only a matter of 30-40 pages before they’d be snatched, giving Link a compelling reason to enter the Twilight Realm. This predictable turn of events wouldn’t be frustrating if we cared about Ilia and Colin’s fate, but they’re such generic characters that they never transcend their function as plot devices. Even the combat feels more like a sprinkling of “adult spice” than a real attempt to tell a darker or more complex story; Twilight Princess is so devoid of ambiguity or suspense that even the most intense, violent sequences seem largely inconsequential.

The blandness of the manga’s execution prompts me to ask a second question: who is Twilight Princess for? Book sales indicate that there’s a large audience of Zelda fanatics who are enjoying this series, so my guess is that the manga appeals to players’ nostalgia for the original games. For the rest of us, however, Twilight Princess is neither interesting nor imaginative enough to compete with One Piece, Naruto, Fairy Tail, or Fullmetal Alchemist on its own terms, nor does it offer any clues why the Zelda games have been a global, thirty-year phenomenon that’s captivated two generations of gamers.

VIZ provided a review copy of volume two.

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: TWILIGHT PRINCESS, VOLS. 1-2 • BY AKIRA HIMEKAWA • TRANSLATED BY JOHN WERRY • RATED T, FOR TEEN

Pick of the Week: One Last Love Story

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MICHELLE: Last time I had the option to pick Skip Beat!, I said that it’d likely always be my pick when it comes out, due to its biannual release schedule. Well, not this time. As much as I deeply love it, this is my final chance to choose My Love Story!!, so I’m gonna do it. It’s brain balm of the best kind—warm and sweet but never sappy or boring. I will miss it very much.

SEAN: So much to love this week, and I want to pick Queen’s Quality, as I do love me some Motomi, but I agree with Michelle: there’s no question that the final volume of My Love Story!! is going to be my pick. Some have accused it of being too sweet and sappy, and they’re absolutely correct, but that’s what I want from this series. Mainline the sugar into my veins, please!

KATE: I’m torn between the final volume of My Love Story!! and the latest installment of One-Punch Man, which deserves to be a Naruto-sized hit in America.

ANNA: This is a great week for manga for me. Like everyone else, I feel compelled to pick the final volume of My Love Story!!, it is such a uniquely quirky series that is heartwarming without being cloying.

ASH: I’m in agreement with everyone else here. While there are quite a few things that I have my eyes on this week–Captain Harlock, Haikyu!!, Sweetness & Lightning–it’s My Love Story!! that has my heart.

That Time I Got Reincarnated As a Slime, Vol. 1

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I’m a sucker for a great title, a tendency that’s yielded a bumper crop of disappointments through the years; I still haven’t purged the memory of a Screaming Broccoli album I purchased in 1988, or the 90 minutes I spent watching So I Married an Axe Murderer. I’m pleased to report That Time I Got Reincarnated As a Slime proved a better gamble than punk-rock vegetables, offering enough solid jokes and weird plot developments to sustain this reader’s interest. What surprised me the most about Reincarnated, however, wasn’t the premise — that’s clearly advertised in the title — nor the hero’s appearance — again, see title — but the story’s fundamentally optimistic message: there are always second chances in life.

The first chapter introduces us to Mikami, a 37-year-old virgin trapped in a lousy job. On a fateful afternoon, he impulsively saves a junior colleague from a knife-wielding attacker, an act of heroism that costs Mikami his life — as a human being, at least — and leads to his reincarnation in a fantasy realm that looks remarkably like World of Warcraft, Game of Thrones, and a hundred MMORPGs. Guided by an unseen dungeon master, Mikami reinvents himself as Rimuru, a slime monster who absorbs his enemies’ powers by eating them — a trick that quickly enables Rimuru to do remarkable things from healing the wounded to spinning thread.

What’s more remarkable about Rimuru is that he immediately puts his powers to work — for other people. (Well, monsters, really.) In chapter two, for example, he teaches a community of goblins how to defend themselves against a numerically superior opponent, helping them build sophisticated fortifications that repel a snarling pack of direwolves. (Paging George R.R. Martin!) Rimuru also bestows names on each member of the tribe, an act that transforms the once small and homely goblins into strapping specimens. That would be a good joke in and of itself, but it lands with greater impact because Rimuru’s act of generosity is consistent with what we saw of his human self, both in the prologue and in a brief flashback to his interactions with colleagues.

And speaking of jokes, Stephen Paul’s crisp translation plays an instrumental role in bridging the gap between the original novels and their manga adaptation by creating a distinctive, sardonic voice for Rimuru that situates him somewhere between audience surrogate and hero. The tone of Rimuru’s monologues captures the mixture of enthusiasm, wonder, and bewilderment with which he approaches new situations, great and small. After bestowing the names Gobta, Gobchi, Gobstu, Gobte, and Gobto on a family of goblins, for example, Rimuru heads off criticism from the reader by declaring, “I didn’t claim I was some kind of naming virtuoso!”, while a fortune teller’s romantic predictions prompt him to ask the same questions we’re thinking: “Do slimes even have genders? How do they multiply? Cell division?”

What Paul’s translation can’t do is goose the pacing. Manga-kaTaiki Kawakami makes a game effort to handle the first volume’s exposition as efficiently as possible, which results in many static panels of Rimuru learning the rules of play from the unseen dungeon master. Though the dialogue is punchy, the story unfolds in fits and starts, seesawing between short, intense bursts of action and leisurely scenes of Rimuru chatting with other characters, pondering one of his new-found abilities, or describing something that happened off camera. These info-dump passages are all the more tedious because Rimuru lacks the limbs, eyes, or mouth to adequately register surprise or awe at what he learns; what features he has — two pencil-line eyebrows — are frozen in a perma-scowl.

The other disappointing element of the manga adaptation is the paucity of female characters in volume one, a problem that series creator Fuse cheerfully acknowledges. “It’s quite possible not to have a heroine in a traditional sense,” he opines in the manga’s epilogue, “but not having any female characters whatsoever is a problem. There’s no beauty in the manga.” Kawakami’s strategy for addressing this issue is not to introduce an important character a little sooner than she appeared in the novels, or expand one of the minor female characters into a more essential figure, but to pile on the fan service by turning any gathering of female characters into a harem scene; I’m still scrubbing my eyeballs after reading a chapter in which an attractive elfling uses Rimuru as a boob shelf. (Worse still: someone cracks wise about E.I.L.F.s, a quip that wouldn’t have been funny in 2003, let alone 2017.)

For all its flaws, however, Reincarnated has its heart in the right place, using Rimuru’s adventures to demonstrate that it’s possible to make the most of any situation, no matter how improbable or unpromising it may seem at the outset. Better still, Reincarnated imparts its moral with tongue firmly in cheek, never lapsing into sappy earnestness about doing one’s best, or sacrificing yourself for the greater good. Of course, we haven’t seen what will happen if and when Rimuru stumbles into a second chance at romance, though volume one offers a few tantalizing clues about a future love interest. Here’s hoping that Rimuru begins his second — and potentially more terrifying — journey of romantic self-discovery without losing his wit or his wits.

THAT TIME I GOT REINCARNATED AS A SLIME, VOL. 1 • CREATED BY FUSE • MANGA BY TAIKI KAWAKAMI • CHARACTER DESIGNS BY MITZ VAH • TRANSLATED BY STEPHEN PAUL • KODANSHA COMICS • RATED: TEEN (13+) • 240 pp.

Pick of the Week: Scrounging for Choices

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SEAN: Despite the large number of manga available this week, my pick is the latest book in the Monogatari Series, the 2nd Nisemonogatari. I enjoy this series despite its fanservice, but this one may be challenging even with that. Toothbrushes out!

MICHELLE: As Sean predicted, the new releases that appeal to me the most are Kodansha’s digital sports manga. Days is shounen fun, but Giant Killing offers a seinen slant that makes it unique and my pick for this week.

KATE: I’m backing Michelle’s play by picking Giant Killing and Days, too. I’d love to see even more sports manga available in English, and supporting Kodansha’s digital publishing efforts seems like the best way to encourage them to be bolder in their licensing choices. We need manga about golfing, running, synchronized swimming, mountain biking, kayaking, sailing, speed skating, agility training, sled dog racing… the possibilities are endless!

MICHELLE: I’m still holding out hope for Mitsuru Adachi’s Rough, too. (Though not from Kodansha, obviously.)

ASH: Were I a digital reader this would be a great week of releases for me with new volumes of Giant Killing, Saki, and Space Brothers coming out. Limiting myself to print releases though there’s not much that I’m super-excited about, but I am very curious about the debut of Kigurumi Guardians.

ANNA: There’s not a ton out there that I’m reading this week, although I’m very happy that more sports manga is being released. I’m picking Altair: A Record of Battles volume 3, because that’s what I’m most likely to read… someday!

Pick of the Week: Food, Glorious Food!

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MICHELLE: It is happy cruelty that this week I am forced to choose between Chihayafuru and What Did You Eat Yesterday?, both of which I love intensely. I think we will probably see another volume of Chihayafuru before volume thirteen of WDYEY, as it won’t even come out in Japan until next month, so that gives Yoshinaga the slight edge this time. But really, get them both.

SEAN: My pick this week is the final volume of Blood Lad, which I’ve definitely enjoyed more than I expected to. It feels like it’s just about the right time to end it, too. Also, Fuyumi cover!

ANNA: Chihayafuru is an easy pick for me. I am so happy this series is being translated!

KATE: There’s only one manga on my plate this week: volume two of Delicious in Dungeon. It reads like an episode of Martha Stewart Living crossed with a MMPORG, mixing action scenes with tips on how to get the most of giant scorpion meat. (Who knew it was good for tempura?)

MICHELLE: Oh, I didn’t even mention that or Yowamushi Pedal! So much great stuff this week.

ASH: There really are so many great manga being released this week, making it extremely difficult to choose just one! So, I’ll cheat a little and pick a subgenre instead–give me all the food manga you’ve got! Both What Did You Eat Yesterday? and Delicious in Dungeon are very high on my list and I’m definitely looking forward to sinking my teeth into them. (Not literally, of course.)

Pick of the Week: Heroes and Villains

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KATE:: For most readers, this week’s pick is a no-brainer: it’s the final volume of Tokyo Ghoul, which reaches its gory climax with volume fourteen. I never got on the Tokyo Ghoul train myself, so I’m more inclined to pick the latest installment of I Am a Hero, an even gorier series that manages to breathe fresh life into an undead concept by putting an unreliable narrator in the center of the action. (For the curious, I reviewed volume one.)

SEAN: Well, I mean, Tokyo Ghoul: re starts in October, so… in any case, I’m going to pick the 5th and final volume of Akuma no Riddle, a yuri manga that takes place at a school but is not like the 80 other yuri manga being released that take place at schools. I enjoyed this more than I expected, and I think it will benefit from a mass reread.

MICHELLE: There isn’t a whole lot that appeals to me this week, I’m afraid. So, even though I haven’t started the series yet, I’ll pick the fifth volume of All-Rounder Meguro to show support for Kodansha’s digital sports manga offerings.

ASH: Although I haven’t actually played very much of any of the games in the franchise, the release that I’m probably most curious about this week is the Assassin’s Creed manga adaptation, largely because I’ve greatly enjoyed Oiwa’s past adaptations.

ANNA: There isn’t a whole lot out there that is appealing to me this week either, but I’m probably going to check out Cosplay Animal in the hopes that it is fun and trashy, so that’s my pick.

Melody of Iron

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Osamu Teuka hit rock bottom in 1973. Mushi Production, the animation studio he’d launched to great fanfare in 1961, had just declared bankruptcy. Although Tezuka had parted ways with Mushi in 1968, he was still linked to his old company in the public imagination — Mushi was, after all, the studio that had introduced Tetsuwan Atom to television viewers around the globe, and made Kimba the White Lion a household figure in Japan. Tezuka also faced a creative crisis: his work was out of step with emerging trends in what he called “young adult manga,” a point he plaintively addressed in the afterword to the 1974 short story collection Melody of Iron:

The media was whispering that I’d hit my wall… With a broken heart, but also rebellious determination, I blindly tackled magazine jobs …These are examples of my Young Adult Manga write during times when I was mentally hungry. There were many more. Ranging from pieces that were too dark and hopeless, to really harsh pieces that, in today’s day and age, would immediately receive protest from all sorts of organizations. All of my pieces then had really emotionless themes and I don’t remember enjoying writing most of them.

Manga publishers agreed with Tezuka’s glum self-assessment. In 1973, Weekly Shonen Champion offered Tezuka an opportunity to write a limited five-week series with the implicit assumption that Tezuka was publishing his final work. That series turned out to be the opening salvo in a new stage of Tezuka’s career, however, as Black Jack became one of Tezuka’s best-known, best-loved titles, a mixture of bold, expressive cartooning, crazy plot lines, and gut-punch endings all held together by one of the most memorable characters Tezuka ever created.

Not all of Tezuka’s work from the 1970s walks this melodramatic tightrope as effectively as Black Jack, a point underscored by Melody of Iron. The title story, for example, is a three-act mish-mash of gangster movie cliches and seventies pseudo-science. In the first act, a young man runs afoul of the mafia, ratting out one their assassins in court; as punishment, the Albanis cut off his arms and leave him to die. In the second act, Dan holes up in a mad scientist’s laboratory where he learns to use a set of psychokinetic prosthetic arms. And in the final act, Dan’s ability to harness PK proves a mixed blessing when the arms exact revenge against the Albanis… without him.

The finale exemplifies what’s good and bad about Tezuka’s crank-it-to-eleven approach. On the one hand, Tezuka has the cartooning chops to make the arms look sufficiently animated, a necessary condition for selling us on his Stephen King-meets-Mario Puzo concept. On the other hand, Tezuka’s own distinctive style works against the potential horror of the killer limbs; the arms aren’t menacing enough to be a convincing embodiment of Dan’s fierce anger, looking more like the Tin Man’s costume than instruments of death. The arms’ efficacy is further neutered by the staging of their grand murder spree, a string of over-the-top deaths that re-enact Dan’s initial humiliation in the most baldly literal fashion: look, Ma, no arms!

The story also stumbles in its efforts to depict American racial dynamics. Shortly after Dan’s bloody encounter with the Albani’s goons, for example, a mob of African American teenagers harasses Dan, pelting him with stones and mocking him for his missing arms. The way these characters are rendered — with thick lips and maliciously gleeful expressions — creates a profoundly uncomfortable moment for the modern Western reader, resurrecting the visual iconography of minstrel shows to dehumanize these unnamed teens. Dan is rescued by Birdie, a black Vietnam vet who counsels Dan to abandon his murderous plans. Birdie looks more recognizably human than the rock-throwing teens, but he’s more a construct than a character, a noble voice of reason whose primary purpose is to advance the plot by introducing Dan to the mad Dr. Macintosh.

The third strike against “Melody” — and, by extension, the entire anthology — is that the edgier content feels like a self-conscious effort to dress up the material in adult themes, rather than a vehicle for exploring the darker corners of the human psyche. This problem is most pronounced in “Revolution,” a short story about Yasue, a housewife who wakes up from a coma convinced that she’s a young radical named Minako Hotta. In an effort to prove to her husband that she is, in fact, Minako, Yasue describes Minako’s sexual encounters with a wounded revolutionary, explaining how Minako’s tender ministrations brought him back from death’s door. We’re clearly supposed to sympathize with Yasue’s husband — he’s disgusted by Yasue’s “memory” — but his boorish, violent behavior in previous scenes makes it hard for the reader to sympathize with his predicament. Worse still, Minako’s sacrifices are presented as a sign of her dedication to the cause, a notion so risible it seems more like a lame joke from Woody Allen’s Bananas than a credible character motivation.

As with Tezuka’s other work from the period, the principal characters in Melody of Iron are generically attractive types whose personalities emerge primarily through what they say, while the supporting cast members are vividly drawn caricatures whose personalities are established through how they look. Such visual shortcuts are a standard manga technique, of course, but in Tezuka’s hands these aesthetic decisions are effective since they’re rendered with flair and specificity; you know exactly what kind of person Dr. Macintosh is from the shape of his nose, the tousle of his hair, and the hunch of his shoulders. Tezuka also scatters a few Easter eggs through the collection, including a sequence modeled on The Godfather‘s iconic wedding scene, and a panel depicting Broadway’s signature jumble of lights and signs; look closely and you’ll see the names of several Tezuka titles gracing the marquees.

For all the flashes of imagination in Melody of Iron, however, Tezuka was onto something when he characterized his “young adult” stories as “less approachable” than his other work from the early 1970s. Even the most over-the-top scenes feel a little labored and dour, lacking the visual exuberance or emotional oomph that makes “Dingoes” and “Teratoid Cystoma” such memorable entries in the Black Jack canon. Readers looking for an introduction to Tezuka’s late work may find Melody of Iron a good point of entry, but anyone with dog-eared copies of Black Jack or Ode to Kirihito may be underwhelmed by this more workmanlike collection.

THE MELODY OF IRON • BY OSAMU TEZUKA • TRANSLATED BY ADAM SECORD • DIGITAL MANGA, INC. • RATED YOUNG ADULT (16+) FOR VIOLENCE AND SEXUAL CONTENT • 214 pp.

Pick of the Week: Across the Spectrum

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SEAN: The title I find most intriguing this week is Nirvana, which is a reincarnated in another world title with a female lead (a rarity), and apparently borrows from both Hindu and Buddhist mythology. I’m in!

KATE: Hmmmm… If I were picking a manga on the strength of the title alone, Am I in Love Or Just Hungry would get my vote — we’ve all been there — but Sean makes Nirvana sound interesting, so I think I’ll follow his lead this week and choose Adventures in Reincarnation, too.

MICHELLE: There are a few titles that I’m somewhat interested in, but what I’m looking forward to the most is seeing whether the lead couple of The Full-Time Wife Escapist actually makes any progress. So, that’s my pick this week!

ASH: I’m a bit more curious about Nirvana now that I know a little more about it, but I must say that after three years since the last volume, it’s Drifters that really has my attention. It’s not a series that necessarily makes much sense, but it’s certainly bombastic with energetic action sequences and outrageous characters. (At least if I recall correctly; it’s been a while… )

ANNA: I’m intrigued by Nirvana after seeing everyone talk about it more, but the manga I’m probably most likely to get and read this week is Altair: A Record of Battles Volume 2, once I read volume 1 that is!

Pick of the Week: Shining Wind And Twinkling Stars

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MICHELLE: It’s that time of year again! I’m very interested in the conclusion of Otherworld Barbara as well as I Hear the Sunspot and She and Her Cat, but I am simply unable to pass up my annual chance to squee about Kaze Hikaru. I agree with AshLynx, who expressed a wish that VIZ would start making the annual release a 2-in-1 volume. Otherwise we won’t catch up to where Japan is now until I’m retired!

SEAN: I can’t break with the yearly tradition. It’s definitely Kaze Hikaru as my pick. My goal is for it to sell well enough that we might see it… dare I hope… TWICE a year!

ANNA: Kaze Hikaru all the way for me as well. I love that series!

KATE: Add my name to the chorus of folks recommending Kaze Hikaru. I’m glad VIZ continues to publish new installments, but second Michelle’s request for a slightly faster release schedule. The East Coast will be underwater before we get the final volume here in the US!

ASH: Despite its slow release schedule, I’ve still somehow managed to fall behind with Kaze Hikaru. And so while I do plan on reading it because I do like the series, my pick this week (perhaps surprisingly) actually goes to Twinkle Stars. Although the series is a little trope-worn in places, I found the first two omnibuses to be both compelling and emotionally resonant.

Kakegurui: Compulsive Gambler, Vol. 1

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Kakegurui: Compulsive Gambler resists easy labels, combining elements of a tournament manga, high school drama, and instructional comic. The plot focuses on Yumeko Jabami, a wealthy girl who transfers to Hyakkaou Private Academy, one of those only-in-manga institutions where the curriculum emphasizes poker and roulette instead of reading and writing. Although Jabami seems demure, her pleasant demeanor turns to maniacal resolve at the first mention of gambling. Within hours of arriving at Hyakkaou, she’s engaged in a high-stakes game of rock, paper, scissors with another student, betting ¥10,000,000 on the outcome. (When in Rome, I guess?)

To make the contest more exciting, author Homura Kawamoto adds a few novel rules, transforming a simple set of challenges into a complex game of chance involving cards, ballot boxes, and voting. He also raises the dramatic stakes by initially portraying Jabami as impulsive — even foolish — in her decision to stake ¥500,000 on a single face-off. By the end of the game, however, we realize just how cunning and observant Jabami really is, as she not only triumphs over her snotty opponent Saotome, but does so by figuring out how Saotome was cheating and using that information against her.

What really puts this chapter over the top is the artwork. Toru Naomura stages the contest like an extreme sporting event, using her entire bag of tricks to convey the contestants’ intense effort — sweatdrops, speedlines, split screens, sound effects — and mimicking the kind of camera work that ESPN trots out for the X Games. The fluid, inventive layouts are also key to making these betting matches come to life, artfully illustrating the rules of play without too much speechifying; even the most inexperienced Go Fish player could follow the game and calculate Jabami’s odds of winning. Naomura’s most effective gambit, however, is the way she draws Jabami’s face. When Jabami is playing her cards close to the vest, her eyes resemble dark, placid pools, but when she’s trouncing the competition, her eyes go supernova, turning into a set of concentric, fiery rings that mimic the line work in Saul Bass’ iconic Vertigo poster:

For all the swagger with which Jabami’s first match is staged, it’s clear that Kawamoto is more interested in the mechanics of gameplay than in the development of three-dimensional characters or the introduction of new plot twists. Each of the subsequent chapters follows the same basic pattern as the first, with Jabami besting her opponent after blowing the whistle on her for cheating. Then there’s the fanservice: Naomura never misses an opportunity to draw an extreme mammary close-up or a glimpse of underwear. And ugly underwear, I might add; Naomura’s artwork is solid, but her application of plaid screentone is so clumsy that it screams MacPaint.

Despite these shortcomings, volume one of Kakegurui is a fun, trashy read that has the good graces not to take itself too seriously. I’m not sure if the premise is strong enough to sustain my interest for more than a few volumes, as the series’ cast of schemers, cheaters, and sadists seem doomed to repeat the same patterns of behavior from chapter to chapter. I put my odds of continuing with Kakegurui at 3 to 1, but other readers may find the psychological combat between Jabami and her opponents enough to persevere through seven or ten installments.

KAKEGURUI: COMPULSIVE GAMBLER, VOL. 1 • STORY BY HOMURA KAWAMOTO, ART BY TORU NAOMURA • TRANSLATED BY MATTHEW ALBERTS • YEN PRESS • 240 pp. • RATING: OT, FOR OLDER TEENS (16+)

Pick of the Week: Killer Queen

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SEAN: No real dilemma for me this time – my pick this week is the 2nd and final Queen Emeraldas omnibus. It’s Wagnery delicious!

MICHELLE: In the Wagnerian spirit, I should warble about my decision for at least ten minutes or so, but… Yep. Same.

KATE: I’m fresh out of Wagner jokes, so I’ll keep it simple: Queen Emeraldas is my pick of the week, too. If you like Star Wars or Blade Runner, you owe it to yourself to check out Leiji Matsumoto’s work; his sci-fi stories are as richly imagined as anything in the George Lucas or Ridley Scott canon.

ANNA: I read the first volume of Queen Emeraldas and it was a bit too bleak for my mood at the time. But even though I didn’t connect with this space opera as much as I expected to, it is undoubtedly the most important manga coming out this week, so it is my pick as well!

ASH: There are actually a few releases that I’m very interested in this week, such as the next volume of Descending Stories, but like everyone else here it’s the finale of Queen Emeraldas that gets my official pick. I simply can’t resist a dramatic, classic space opera!

Ravina the Witch?

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Cute characters behaving badly — that’s been Junko Mizuno’s MO since her professional debut twenty years ago. Her latest work, Ravina the Witch?, is more picture book than manga, eschewing panels and word balloons for glossy, full-color illustrations, but the story it tells is pure Mizuno: a young woman meets a witch, inherits her wand, and then wanders the countryside meeting depraved men whose hobbies run the gamut from S&M to binge-drinking.

There’s a little more to the story, of course, since Mizuno loves to embroider a simple narrative with odd details. Ravina, we learn, was raised by crows in a junkyard, impervious to human custom and language. Once exiled from her home — by eminent domain, no less! — Ravina uses her new-found powers to cure disease, embarrass a cruel tyrant, and make mushrooms dance. She also finds time to work as a dominatrix and do crossword puzzles with an enormous owl. Oh, and she’s almost burned at the stake for being a witch.

As the plot suggests, Ravina sits somewhere between fractured fairytale and feminist rumination. Mizuno clearly recognizes the way in which female healers are viewed as both powerful and subversive; why else flirt with the idea that Ravina might be a witch, the quintessential symbol of dangerous femininity? Yet Mizuno’s obsession with food complicates any understanding of Ravina as a feminist text. In almost all of her works, from Pure Trance to Ravina the Witch?, Mizuno’s female characters binge, purge, and pop diet pills with ferocious abandon. Mizuno plays these scenes for uncomfortable laughs, blurring the line between criticism of the characters’ self-destructive behavior and critique of the cultural attitudes that fuel it. Ravina, for example, doesn’t just eat a meal; she gorges herself on animals, pies, and bottles of wine, with Cabernet-stained drool seeping down her chin. It’s not clear if Mizuno is showing us how the other characters see Ravina — as a repulsive, unstoppable force of nature — or if Mizuno is celebrating Ravina’s obvious pleasure in eating, defying social expectations that she be restrained, demure, or self-abnegating — in short, refusing to be lady-like in the presence of food.

The ambiguity of these binge-eating scenes stems, in part, from Mizuno’s trademark Gothic kawaii style, which subverts the true horror of what’s she depicting; even the most ruthless characters have soft, round faces that belie their rotten natures. (Heck, her maggots are cute.) Her illustrations are framed by a pleasing assortment of pastel doodles, with flowers, ravens, curlicues, and smiley-faced cabbages filling the nooks and crannies of every page. Although Mizuno is no stranger to full-color comics — all three of her VIZ titles are printed in color — Ravina is printed on glossy paper stock that enables Mizuno to exploit the natural shine and texture of metallic paints to striking effect, mitigating the flatness of her character designs and backgrounds with tactile accents.

Though Ravina the Witch? feels like a step forward for Mizuno’s artistry, story-wise it reads more like a remix of Cinderalla and Princess Mermaid. There’s nothing wrong with mining the same vein of inspiration to produce new works, but when your storytelling approach is this mannered, there are only so many times you can rehearse the same schtick before it feels tired. I’m not sure where Mizuno goes from here, but a gonzo sci-fi adventure, a crime procedural, or even a high-school comedy might give her fresh opportunities to stretch herself without rehashing the same Grimm plotline.

RAVINA THE WITCH? • BY JUNKO MIZUNO • TITAN COMICS • NO RATING (MATURE THEMES) • 48 pp.