Michelle Smith

MICHELLE: MJ, after we finish this one we will have done as many columns in 2019 as we did for the entirety of 2015-2018! Go us!

MJ: *laughs weakly* Yes… “go us.” Um. Wow. When you put it that way, we sound terribly unimpressive.

MICHELLE: Well, the alternative would’ve been to let it disappear, so I think we deserve a bit of credit for resuscitating it! Anyhow, I expect that you’ve been reading some manga!

MJ: I suppose you’re right! WE ARE BASICALLY GODS.

…

Okay, maybe not. But yes, I have indeed been reading some manga, or at least rereading, which is to say that I took some time this week to look at the new omnibus edition of CLAMP’s four-volume manga, Wish, originally published in Kadokawa Shoten’s Mystery DX, adapted into English in the early 2000s by TOKYOPOP, and resurrected just a few weeks ago by Dark Horse Comics, with their usual omnibus treatment—larger trim size, very nice-looking print, and a somewhat refreshed translation.

For those who missed Wish the first time around, it’s the story of an angel, Kohaku, who has been sent to Earth to find Hisui, one of the four “Master Angels” (why they don’t just say “Archangel” is a mystery to me, but maybe there’s something I don’t get), who disappeared from Heaven after a visit to the bridge between Heaven and Hell. During their mission, Kohaku—who appears human-sized during the day but reverts to tiny cherub form at night—is rescued from an attacking crow by Shuichiro, a local human doctor. Complications ensue when it turns out that Hisui actually defected to Earth in order to be with Kokuyo, the actual son of Satan, with whom they have fallen in love. Meanwhile, Kohaku becomes confused by their own growing feelings for Shuichiro.

There’s a whole lot packed into this short series, including more angels and demons, time travel, reincarnation, messenger rabbits, cats (some of whom are actually demons), and a tree fairy, but generally speaking it’s all just incredibly CLAMP from start to finish, and if you’re into that, you know what I mean. Someone even sacrifices an eye. This thing honestly couldn’t get any CLAMPier. It’s not my favorite of their series—I could live very happily never reading another manga about angels for the rest of my life—but as most CLAMP fans will know, the big deal about this edition is the translation, which is certainly what caught my attention.

In CLAMP’s original vision, there is no gender in Heaven or Hell, but in early 2000s publishing, it was unthinkable to convey that in English, especially when it came to the angels, who, in Japanese, referred to themselves with genderless pronouns. This led to a decision to choose genders for each of the angels, based on heteronormative standards regarding appearance and romantic entanglement, outraging some fans but satisfying style guides. Fast forward to 2019, when publishing has finally recalled that singular “they” is a thing, and our angels are genderless at last.

I’ve already mentioned that Wish is far from my favorite of CLAMP’s work, so I wasn’t especially eager to reread it, but I was surprised to note just how much more enjoyment I got out of it this time around. As someone who identifies as nonbinary, I realize this may be of greater importance to me than most, but whatever CLAMP’s intention really was when they filled their comic with genderless angels, it feels like representation, and for something originally published in the 1990s, that is kind of a big deal. Freeing the angels from gender expectations breathed new life into them for me, made the story richer, and opened up its universe to the notion that love and attraction might be based on something other than a person’s gender expression or whatever reproductive organs they happen to possess. These are not novel ideas for many of us, but with all the hand-wringing over this series back in 2002, it feels revolutionary. Mostly, though, what I’m struck with as I read this edition, is how easy it would have been to publish it exactly as it is now, then. The sentences are not awkward. There is nothing that feels labored or unnatural in this translation. How has it actually taken publishing this long to figure that out?

MICHELLE: It’s been a long time since I read Wish, and it was also not my favorite, but I definitely feel a greater spark of interest when I imagine a translation that represents the angels as genderless! It makes me want to shake TOKYOPOP and demand, “Would that have been so hard?!?!” (They had other similar issues back in the day, too, and not just with genderless protagonists. I distinctly remember a character in GetBackers being assigned feminine pronouns when, in fact, he is very much a dude and if anyone had actually bothered to learn anything about the series they were translating, they would’ve known that. SIGH.) I can totally see how it would make the whole story richer as a result.

MJ: Yeah, nobody could be more surprised than I am to be describing Wish as “rich” in anything other than CLAMP’s beautiful, swirly artwork, but I genuinely enjoyed rereading it, and I’d even recommend it, at least to fans of shoujo manga, and particularly to other enbies. It’s an unusual treasure of representation for the time period. And messenger bunnies! Who doesn’t love messenger bunnies?

There is one jarring panel in the first volume, where one of the demons seems to misgender Kohaku as “she,” but I don’t know if that was an editorial oversight (that’s how it’s translated in TOKYOPOP’s version, too) or if it was actually written that way in Japanese. But in over 800 pages, that one panel wasn’t significant enough to mar my enjoyment overall.

So what did you read this week, Michelle?

MICHELLE: Maybe that demon was intentionally being a jerk.

I checked out the first volume of Hitorijime My Hero by Memeco Arii, one of the first boys’ love manga published in print by Kodansha Comics. (They did release a handful of others digitally in 2018.)

As a kid, Masahiro Setagawa hated tokusatsu shows because he knew that, no matter how miserable his life was, no hero would come to save him. But when he fell in with a group of delinquents in middle school and became their gofer, a hero did come in the form of Kousuke Ohshiba, the so-called “bear killer,” who defeated the thugs and ended up with Setagawa as his new underling. Setagawa befriended Ohshiba’s younger brother, Kensuke, and as the manga begins, some time has passed. He’s dealing with the fact that Kensuke is now in a relationship with another boy named Asaya Hasekura and that Kousuke is a teacher at their high school.

Almost immediately, Kousuke is confronting Setagawa about the feelings he believes Setagawa has for him, saying, “Even if you feel that way I won’t be able to return those feelings.” Setagawa is too dumbstruck to deny it, and then Kousuke (an adult) keeps sending him (a teenager) mixed signals, like suddenly smooching him or calling him “the guy I like.” It turns out that Kousuke is basically trying to make Setagawa realize he is gay. This eventually works. And then they do it. Eyeroll.

Because this series is a spinoff from an earlier series, we’re just kind of thrown into a confusing timeline and a mix of characters without a lot of context. I’ve seen the first couple of episodes of the anime, and they handle all of this material far more clearly. The manga does a little to show why Setagawa likes Kousuke—he’s strong, smart, and capable—but none at all to show why Kousuke likes Setagawa, aside from one page where he talks about how his devotion helped him retain his humanity or something. Really, it’s all pretty disappointing so far. I know it’s a popular series, so I’m hoping it gets better.

MJ: I can’t help but roll my eyes along with you. This basically sounds like a collection of my least favorite BL tropes, though maybe (hopefully??) at least without the younger, smaller guy wincing in pain and horror every time they have sex? Please tell me it at least doesn’t have that. Though maybe it doesn’t matter. I know the student/teacher thing is a common trope too, but I really hate it, especially when it’s the main romantic plot line. I know it’s a popular series, but I honestly can’t imagine reading it by choice.

MICHELLE: To its credit, it absolutely does not have that. It’s fully a fade-to-black scenario with some evidence afterwards that Setagawa enjoyed himself tremendously. As for the student-teacher thing, this is a slightly different variation in which the two people concerned knew each other for years before Setagawa came to the school where Kousuke teaches, so the power imbalance between them is not so much that Kousuke is in an official position of authority but that Setagawa has kind of idolized him.

MJ: Either way, I’m guessing it’s not for me. I’ll wait to hear what you think of future volumes before taking the risk.

MICHELLE: Okay. I can handle at least one more. Speaking of Kodansha’s advances into the realm of print BL, would you care to do the summary honors for our mutual read this time?

MJ: Sure!

This week, we both read the first volume of the much-anticipated series 10 Dance, by Inouesatoh, also from Kodansha Comics, as Michelle mentioned above.

The story involves two ballroom dancers with similar names—Shinya Sugiki, who is an international champion in Standard Ballroom, and Shinya Suzuki, who is the Japanese national champion in Latin Dance. Their relationship with each other is both admiring and rivalrous, and when Sugiki asks Suzuki and his partner to train with with him (and his partner) for the 10-Dance Competition (combining the 5 Standard and 5 Latin dances), Suzuki finds it impossible to refuse.

Over the course of the first volume, the four dancers train together—the men in particular working to be able to lead in each other’s specialty—and that’s literally all that happens in the story, but as we watch the two of them butt heads (and other things) throughout the training, it’s honestly just riveting. This story is all about personality and relationships, and certainly we’re expecting some steamy romance between the two male leads down the line, but even in this preliminary volume, where nothing overtly romantic happens, there’s so much interpersonal entanglement to enjoy.

The two men couldn’t be more different. Suzuki, who grew up in Cuba, has been dancing with his partner since childhood, while Sugiki changes partners constantly, never quite settling in with anyone. Suzuki’s strength is showing passion on the floor, while Sugiki’s is the elegance of his form. And though things are slowly heating up a bit, I honestly believe I would be happy just watching them dance together as I learn new details about Standard and Latin ballroom rules, pretty much forever. It’s that entertaining.

MICHELLE: I enjoyed it tremendously! From the start, the cover art reminded me of est em, and the content within does, too. With est em, I was always struck by the way her characters would talk while engaged in intimate acts, and although Sugiki and Suzuki aren’t having sex, they’re still engaged in physical activity—indeed, they’ve been dancing until dawn together for months—that puts them in close proximity, gettin’ sweaty, maintaining eye contact, et cetera. And they’re talking throughout, gradually becoming closer and revealing details about their personal lives in the process. I love the slow development of their relationship and how this, in turn, makes small moments so pivotal. The one that stands out is when Sugiki has gone to London to defend a championship title. When he succeeds, it’s Suzuki that he calls, and when this reserved man actually smiles when being told “Hurry up and come home,” it has such impact! Of course, they go right back to butting heads after that.

MJ: I agree on est em, though I’d go even further and say it feels like an est em/Fumi Yoshinaga hybrid, with the additional warmth of their observations about each other’s habits and idiosyncrasies and the scene where they dance together at a restaurant, because trying to make points about dance while sitting at the table just isn’t working. It’s got all of est em’s sexiness and suave, along with Yoshinaga’s warm goofiness, and the underlying elegance of both.

MICHELLE: “Warm goofiness” is a great way to describe the scene where Sugiki, frustrated by Suzuki’s attempts to lead the waltz, gets Suzuki to adopt the woman’s role and proceeds to very thoroughly make him feel like a princess. “I feel like I could pop out a dozen babies for you right now!” And you’re absolutely right about elegance, too; these dance scenes are drawn so beautifully.

If you’ll forgive somewhat of a non-sequitur, although I don’t know the kanji used for Sugiki and Suzuki’s given names (and, indeed, it might not even be the same), one definition for “shinya” has a meaning that’s very applicable to the story. Check it out.

MJ: I believe I read somewhere that the kanji for each of their names is slightly different from the other, but I’m tickled by that meaning all the same. It certainly is appropriate!

Bottom line, I can’t wait to read more of this series, and I’m thrilled that Kodansha brought it over for us!

MICHELLE: I enthusiastically concur!

Thanks for joining us for another installment of Off the Shelf! The winner of last column’s giveaway is Joseph Miller! Joseph, send over an email or drop a message to MJ on Twitter to collect!

MJ: Well, hello, Michelle! Can you believe we’re back again in just two weeks? I hope you’ve had time to come up with a new joke.

MICHELLE: That last one I made was so very bad, I’m starting to feel remorse for inflicting terrible dad jokes on people at the start of these columns. So, you get a reprieve, everybody!

MJ: I dunno, I think you may be disappointing more people than you know!

MICHELLE: If you actually miss the terrible jokes, leave a comment and I’ll do better next time. How about that?

MJ: Fair enough! Well, if we’re not telling dad jokes, I suppose we’d better talk about some manga. What have you been reading this week, Michelle?

MICHELLE: I finally took the plunge and read the first two volumes of Fruits Basket Another, the three-volume Fruits Basket sequel by Natsuki Takaya. I was wary about this one, but though it has some significant flaws, I liked it more than I expected to.

In volume one, we’re introduced to Sawa Mitoma, an exceptionally meek girl who spends so much time thinking things like “Why do I always irritate others without even realizing it?” and being perhaps the most passive protagonist I’ve ever seen that she actually becomes irritating to the reader. She has just started her first year at Kaibara High School, and soon encounters “an incredibly sparkly boy” when she drops her student ID. This boy looks a lot like Yuki Sohma and, surprise, it’s his and Machi’s son, Mutsuki. Be prepared for a bunch of this sort of thing, because in short order we learn that Hanajima’s little brother is Sawa’s homeroom teacher and that Makoto Takei (remember that overzealous student council guy?) is a teacher whose obsession with Yuki has now transferred to Mutsuki. (He’s really creepy about it, too, and desperately needs to be fired.)

Sawa next meets Hajime, the son of Kyo and Tohru, who is serving as student council president. Mutsuki is the vice-president, and soon Sawa’s been drafted to be the first-year member. Over time, she meets more Sohmas, including Riku and Sora, the twin children of Hatsuharu and Rin. She gains confidence by being useful to the council and Riku helps her realize that by always keeping her head down, she’s missing opportunities available to her, like the nice girls in class who want to ask her to have lunch with them.

By the end of the second volume, Sawa has become a much more sympathetic character. Not just because she finally starts taking the initiative and actually engaging with life, but because readers can finally see what Takaya-sensei was doing. It turns out that all of Sawa’s issues stem from her abusive mother, who doesn’t come home for long periods of time, and when she does deign to appear, demands gratitude and apologies from the daughter she viciously belittles. No wonder Sawa got warped into thinking everything she does is wrong and that she’s a useless lump who causes trouble for others!

In the end, the not-very-subtle premise of the series seems to be “this generation of the Sohmas all love their parents very much, so this time they’re going to be the ones to save and accept a girl cursed with a shitty home life.” The execution is rather clumsy, however, as the Sohma offspring talk about their parents way too much for normal teenagers. I did like that Ayame’s son, Chizuru, struggles because he’s the normal one in his eccentric family, and that Mutsuki’s love for his parents is partly due to realizing not everyone has it so good. There’s one worrisome panel that suggests young Mutsuki witnessed Akito protecting her and Shigure’s son, Shiki, from Ren wielding a butcher knife! I hope that’s explained in the third and final volume, as well as whether Shiki was responsible for getting Mutsuki to help out Sawa in the first place.

In any case, I liked it enough to finish out the story, and that’s more than I expected.

MJ: Okay, so I’ll admit that the parade of Sohma children just reminds me how irritated I was by the neat pairing-off of everyone that happened at the end of the original series (Ayame, seriously??) so it’s probably getting off on the wrong foot with me from the start. But more than that, I’m struck by your description of the kids talking soooo much about their parents, like some kind of weird collision of “let’s make more money off of Fruits Basket” and “let’s assume that nobody actually read Fruits Basket and we have so much explaining to do!” Or maybe it’s just “let’s make more money off of Fruits Basket, but in only a few volumes, so DUMP THAT INFO.”

Honestly, the only thing that gives me hope is that butcher knife. Akito with a butcher knife is keeping me alive here. I might read it just for that. Do we have to have the creepy teacher-student obsession, though? I let that stuff go with older manga, but seriously. It’s 2019.

Or wait. Is it Ren with the butcher knife? I think I added a comma in my mind to draw my attention. Without the comma, I’m suddenly less interested.

MICHELLE: Yeah, it was Ren with the knife. She didn’t go away just ‘cos the curse was lifted, so she’s still around being horrible, apparently.

And yes, after everyone paired off neatly at the end of the main series, all of the couples seem to have stayed together for the next twenty years, judging from the age of Hatori’s daughter. At least Hanajima didn’t marry Kazuma! The parent talk isn’t as bad as recapping the events of the original series, at least, but there is a little bit of explanation when introducing new Sohmas to Sawa. Like, no one says Momiji’s name or what particular business he’s doing, but we know he’s extremely successful at it, which is kind of nice.

It’s more like someone saying, “I want to be like them,” which is still more than teenagers generally say, in my experience.

MJ: So, okay, you’re enjoying this more than you expected and you’ll likely read to the end. Should I be following your lead, or should I just reread Fruits Basket? I do suddenly have an urge to reread, especially since I recently lent out the first few volumes to one of my teen students!

MICHELLE: I honestly don’t know. I think it might bug you somewhat more than it did me. Maybe wait until volume three comes out and I can give a definitive answer as to whether this series adds anything to the Fruits Basket experience.

What have you been reading this week?

MJ: This week, I dug into the debut volume of For the Kid I Saw in my Dreams, a new series from the creator of Erased, Kei Sanbe. Like Erased, it was originally serialized in Kadokawa Shoten’s Young Ace and is being published in English by Yen Press.

Senri Nakajou had a twin brother, Kazuto, with whom his connection was so strong, they experienced shared vision and literally felt each other’s pain when the other was beaten by their abusive, alcoholic father. As the older of the twins, Kazuto was intensely protective of Senri and would manipulate his way into taking the beating for both of them, to spare them “double the pain.” He’d also insert himself between their parents when they were fighting, to spare their mother from the father’s abuse. On those nights, Senri, hidden in the cupboard under the stairs, would experience Kazuto’s pain as he took their mother’s beating on himself, until one night, when the expected beating never came. Instead, Senri emerged from the cupboard to find both his parents murdered and his twin missing. Based on the two brief visions he shared with his twin afterwards, Senri is certain that his brother was kidnapped and murdered as well. Now, Senri is a high school delinquent, still searching for the man who murdered his brother.

It takes a chapter or two for Sanbe-sensei to introduce Senri’s twin into the story—a choice that pays off, I suppose, by denying us full insight into Senri’s state of mind, which makes his morally-gray existence hit a bit harder in the beginning. The first things we find out about him are that he was discovered sitting in a pool of his parents’ blood as a child and that he now helps run an ongoing con in which his partners steal someone’s money and then Senri gets paid to pretend to recover it. He’s so cold and remorseless, we’d wonder if he might have murdered his parents himself if we weren’t also looking at his terrifying childhood drawings in which he repeatedly depicts the murderer (whose head he eventually lops off with a pair of scissors). Then the twin revelation transforms him from typical anti-hero into a scarier but more sympathetic anti-hero, which works much better, at least for me.

While Senri and Kazuto’s extreme twin connection doesn’t so far reach the supernatural heights of the protagonist’s time-traveling in Erased, there is a bit of a similar feel in this series that I admit I’m hoping might pan out into something just as fantastical, because an average tale of vengeance doesn’t much interest me. That said, there’s a lot going on here, and I am not at all sure where it’s leading. There is quite a bit of mystery introduced in this volume, beyond the identity of the murderer, and there are some supporting characters of whom I’m already very fond, including Senri’s grandparents, who raised him after he was orphaned, and his childhood friend, Enan, whose backstory is nearly as tragic as his own.

MICHELLE: Aside from an aborted attempt to read volume one, I haven’t read any of Erased, which I’m hoping to rectify this year. And this certainly sounds a worthy successor! I’m a little concerned I’ll have trouble getting into it, as I generally don’t love narratives that focus on remorseless anti-heroes, but it seems like the mystery of what happened to his parents will compel me forward. I confess that, even with this brief synopsis, I’m already expecting kind of a Loveless outcome with the older brother.

MJ: Well, maybe I’m overstating the antihero-ness? Senri’s got a lot of compassion in him (he’s the one who reached out to Enan when they were young and accepted her when nobody else would). He’s just very much intent on being the one to kill his brother’s murderer and it’s what drives his whole narrative at this point. He also tends to inflict physical pain on himself, and I don’t know whether it’s an attempt to recreate the pain he can no longer share with his brother or a survivor’s guilt thing, but he’s definitely a sympathetic character.

You’re not the only one thinking Loveless here, though. I’m also absolutely expecting that the brother is alive.

MICHELLE: Alive and potentially culpable! This really does sound pretty neat, though. I do like a good mystery.

MJ: I’m certainly intrigued! So would you like to talk a bit about our mutual read this week?

MICHELLE: Sure!

Ran and the Gray World is a seven-volume seinen series by Aki Irie. In this first volume, we’re introduced to Ran, a headstrong fourth-grader, who lives with her father and older brother, Jin. Ran and Jin’s mother, Shizuka, doesn’t live with them because her presence is required elsewhere to keep a pair of mysterious giant doors from opening. She’s a Grand Sorceress and it soon becomes apparent that Ran, at least, has inherited her mother’s abilities (and impulsivity). I’m assuming Shizuka also gave her the sneakers, currently far too large, which allow her to transform into a teenage version of herself. For his part, Jin has a magic coat that allows him to transform into a wolf, perfect for tracking Ran when she goes off on ill-advised adventures.

Insisting she’s already grown-up, Ran dons the shoes and hitches a ride with strangers to go visit her mother and, inspired by a special lesson from her kindly science teacher, attempts to fly from the school roof. She has some success at the latter and winds up in the garden of a rich guy named Otaro, who doesn’t endear himself to me when he returns to his apartment building naked, exposing himself to a couple of kids in the lobby in the process. Jin rightly pegs him as fishy, and it’s clear by the end of the volume that he’s become obsessed with Ran. Despite declaring he’d never touch a kid—she’s in teenage form for the entirety of their acquaintance—he soon suggests they become more than friends. He’s a creep, and I’m so glad Ran whisks herself off when he embraces her (“I’m outta here!”) but I do worry about what lies ahead.

MJ: I love a lot of things about the premise, and the art is freaking gorgeous, which is what drew me to the book in the first place. I’m also pretty into what’s going on with Ran’s family dynamic, MAGIC (always a winner), and wow, her mom and brother are both absolutely fascinating characters with so much going on. But I am super creeped out by Otaro and worried about what’s going to happen there. It’s funny as someone from the Big generation, I suppose, that I’m so disturbed by a story in which a young girl is inhabiting a much older body. But at least in Big (and I suppose also in something like 13 Going On 30), the young character is at least at an age where they are already experiencing sexual attraction and an interest in romance, so it somehow didn’t feel quite so incredibly wrong as this. So I’m worried about where this story is going to take Ran in that regard, but I’m trying to be optimistic, I guess?

MICHELLE: Yeah. At the very least, she’s able to extricate herself from these kinds of situations when they arise, but I can’t say I have any faith that she’s going to get any more savvy any time soon.

Jin is hands-down my favorite character in the series. He’s like a Doumeki type or something. Knows that magic exists, but sensible. Looks dour, but actually kind. And so, I side with him where Shizuka is concerned, finding her to be profligate with her magic when she comes to their house. I mean, it looked like people genuinely had car accidents when she rained giant desserts down upon the town!

MJ: You have hit the nail on the head with Jin as the Doumeki type! And that explains why I like him so much, too. I always identify with the Watanuki characters, but I adore and crave a Doumeki for reasons that are probably obvious. Kind of ironic, isn’t it, that the loose canon character here shares her name with him. Shizuka is a terrifying mess and her power lets her get away with it, so I feel that we can count on her to provide plenty of conflict here. We don’t need the creepy dude!

MICHELLE: Definitely not. Perhaps she’ll do us all a favor and turn him into a turnip.

MJ: I could get behind that!

Despite my reservations about Otaro and where that storyline might lead, I am probably more excited and intrigued about this series than anything else we’ve discussed here today. It’s whimsical, original, filled with mysterious potential (what’s behind those doors??), and I can’t overstate how beautifully drawn it is. With the artwork alone, I’m besotted.

MICHELLE: I failed to say this the first time you mentioned the art, but I absolutely agree. There’s a certain retro, Moto Hagio-ish quality to it that’s very appealing.

MJ: Yes, it’s sort of Heart of Thomas meets Bride of the Water God, art wise—detailed and ornate, but also flowing, always in motion, like Ran’s personality. I’m definitely looking forward to more!

MJ is running another Off the Shelf giveaway! Comment to this post or on Twitter with the answer to the question, “Are you a Doumeki or a Watanuki?” and enter to win volume one of Ran and the Gray World! Continental US only, we’re so sorry!

MICHELLE: Hey, MJ! You know what time it is. Time for my first really terrible joke of 2019. Are you ready?

MJ: Michelle, I was born ready.

MICHELLE: Okay, then. How do you find Will Smith in the snow?

MJ: Um. I don’t know, Michelle. How do you find Will Smith in the snow?

MICHELLE: You follow the fresh prints!

MJ: Okay, I know that was a terrible joke, but since I’m a pretty big fan of the Fresh Prince, I can’t help but appreciate it.

MICHELLE: It is exceedingly terrible but somehow it makes me happy! Anyways, we’ve once more dusted the cobwebs off the shelf because there’s some new manga we want to talk about. Would you like to go first?

MJ: I would! So, I just finished reading Kakuriyo: Bed & Breakfast for Spirits, which was adapted from the light novel series of the same name and as such, comes with a slew of credits: art by Waco Ioka, original story by Midori Yuma, and character design by Laruha.

Aoi was adopted as a kid by a man named Shiro whom she describes as her grandfather. Shiro was a notorious philanderer, who wandered Japan fathering countless children with his many lovers, so he was hardly wanting for progeny of his own, but he raised Aoi faithfully, even providing for her college tuition after his death. Now alone, Aoi is prepared to make it on her own, but before she can even begin, she’s kidnapped by an ogre named Ōdanna, who whisks her away to the Ayakashi (spirit) world. As it turns out, Ōdanna is the proprietor of a well-respected inn, which Aoi’s grandfather once trashed on a bender. Unable to pay for the damage, Shiro promised Aoi’s hand in marriage as compensation, and Ōdanna’s come to collect. When Aoi refuses, she is offered the opportunity to work off the debt herself, but to do so, she has to find a job somewhere among the Ayakashi, most of whom hate humans, especially her grandfather.

Manga adaptations of light novels are not usually a big draw for me, but they’re also a bit of a rarity for Viz, so I figured it was worth a shot, especially since the supernatural setup is the type of thing I generally enjoy. My immediate reaction was regret. This adaptation begins with pages of narrated exposition that may work perfectly well in the novel but are clunky and awkward in manga form. The setup feels rushed, as though the artist knows that it’s awkward and wants to just push through it to get to the parts of the story that will be easier to tell, which unfortunately renders Aoi as a pretty generic protagonist with no personality in particular outside of a soft spot for Ayakashi and an interest in cooking.

Thankfully, the artist does seem to find their footing about halfway through the volume, and there are some fairly compelling mysteries set up, especially regarding a shape-changing nine-tailed fox named Ginji, who seems to be a friend. Or is he?

MICHELLE: My immediate reaction to your summary is that Shiro sounds like quite the asshole!

I’m sorry to hear that it gets off to a disappointing start. Are the mysteries sufficiently compelling that you think you’ll bother to pick up volume two?

MJ: Shiro indeed seems to have been quite the asshole, though certainly there is a lot of mystery surrounding him as well. For instance, he carefully taught Aoi how to avoid being kidnapped by an ogre, which would indicate that he never intended to surrender her as “payment” after all, and I get the sense that there’s more to the story than Aoi’s being told. And yes, I do think I’d give it at least one more volume. As lukewarm as this began, by the end I really did want to know what was going to happen next. Would Aoi find a job? Is Ginji as harmless as he appears? And what’s up with Akatsuki, the inn’s cranky general manager who really hated Shiro, and his adorably tousled hair?

Oh, and lest our shoujo-loving readers fear, despite being an ogre, Ōdanna is a total hottie with red eyes and cute little horns, which honestly is kind of a disappointment for me, but will probably sit well with the intended demographic.

MICHELLE: Probably. I should also note that a 26-episode anime version aired recently and is available on Crunchyroll last I heard.

MJ: I suspect that an anime adaptation might be more effective, especially for the exposition sections, so perhaps that’s the way to go. I will stick with the manga a bit longer, though!

So, would you like to share what you’ve been reading, Michelle?

MICHELLE: Continuing with the VIZ shoujo trend, I just finished the first two volumes of Shortcake Cake by a duo creating manga under the name suu Morishita. The series runs in Margaret, which is typically a very good indicator that I’m going to like it.

Ten Serizawa is from a very small town where local schools only go through junior high, so she’s had an extremely long commute for her first month of high school. Her long-time friend Ageha has been trying to persuade her to move into the boardinghouse where she lives and finally, after visiting the place, Ten agrees. Because this is shoujo manga, it turns out that the gorgeous, bookish boy that all the girls are obsessed with turns out to live there, too. His name is Chiaki Kasadera.

By the end of the second volume, it’s clear that Ten likes Chiaki, but how we get there is a pretty interesting and complicated route. One of the other boarders is a flirtatious boy named Riku Mizuhara, and he’s intrigued when Ten shuts down his attempts at flirtation. Soon, he’s developed a crush on her that she finds out about almost immediately. She rejects him and to his profound credit, Riku backs off. “I don’t want to pester her and make her hate me.” Chiaki, however, wants the two of them to be happy, so when Riku’s estranged little brother Rei—a wholly odious and imperious little shit who calls Ten by the name “Ugly”—commands Ten to be his girlfriend (just to make Riku miserable), Chiaki claims that he and Ten are actually dating, hoping that this pretend relationship will convince Rei that Riku is already suffering enough. Then, the kid will back off and maybe Riku and Ten can make it work.

Still with me? I grant that all these boys have feelings for Ten incredibly quickly—well, only Riku has officially admitted that he likes her, but I imagine it’s only a matter of time before Chiaki and Rei are forced to examine their real motivations—but at least she’s not an annoying protagonist. What’s really neat, though, is that we actually see inside the boys’ heads! This is exceedingly rare in shoujo manga, so a little bit of narration from a potential love interest goes a long way. I’m sure that it’ll be Chiaki in the end, but Riku is so thoroughly charming that I really want it to be him.

MJ: Okay, so from your summary, I admit that, like you, I’m currently a fan of Riku. I always like the boy who isn’t going to end up with the girl. It’s a lifelong curse. Mostly, though, I’m thinking that this sounds so gloriously shoujo, I must read it right away. I mean, seriously. A boardinghouse. I’m so here for this.

Is there other stuff going on besides the romantic drama? Like, at school?

MICHELLE: Not even a little. Ten’s mother only puts in a brief appearance to consent to the arrangement (though it’s at least suggested that her parents did go have a look around the place and all before she moved in) and school pretty much only exists as a backdrop for Chiaki and Riku to both attempt to walk Ten home so that she doesn’t get menaced by Rei. On the one hand, the protagonist having a well-rounded life is nice, but on the other hand, maybe it means we’ll be spared some of the by now too-familiar shoujo story beats like sports and cultural festivals.

MJ: Fair enough. Sounds like a fun read, in any case. I’ll definitely be digging into these volumes myself.

MICHELLE: I look forward to hearing what you think!

So, to conclude our VIZtacular trio, our mutual read this week was the first two volumes of Ao Haru Ride by Io Sakisaka, who also brought us Strobe Edge. Would you like to do the summation honors?

MJ: Sure! Here we go.

Futaba Yoshioka was a shy junior high school student with no interest in boys, except for Kou Tanaka, whose quiet sweetness mirrored her own. She thought something might happen between them, but when she turned up to meet Kou for a summer festival at his invitation, he never showed, and then his family moved away. Now, she’s in her first year of high school, and when she discovers that Kou is at the same school, she imagines them starting over. But the truth is, they are both so changed, they might as well be different people. He’s become a prickly underachiever to cope with his broken family life, and she’s become a tomboy to stay on the good side of her catty group of friends.

Then everything goes wrong, and Futaba finds herself friendless and isolated in a new class. But when she makes the rash decision to volunteer as class representative, she begins to find new friendships among a collection of loners, one of whom is Kou.

MICHELLE: Nicely done! This series ran in Bessatsu Margaret so, of course, I like it. There are a number of things about the initial setup that are pretty neat. For one, the action doesn’t start on the first day of Futaba’s first year but rather in the last semester, meaning she’s been at the same school with Kou for a very long time without noticing him. He’s in the honors class, which convenes on a different floor, but has definitely noticed her. Secondly, instead of the heroine starting friendless and gradually acquiring them (like Kimi ni Todoke or Waiting for Spring, to name but two recent examples), she starts with some friends. They’re just not really friends because she’s been duping them about who she really is. It’s true that both of those girls are not very nice, but I also appreciated that the dissolution of their friendship was not accompanied by mean-girl antics. Futaba just has to start over, and we’re shown glimpses of two other isolated girls who seem destined to become her true friends.

MJ: I’m struck by the differences between this and my first read here. This series, too, starts off with a lot of narration, but it’s utilized so effectively in Ao Haru Ride. Because Futaba is so shy, most of her thoughts are kept to herself, especially in the beginning, but instead of delivering an exposition dump, this narration is guiding us through Futaba’s realization about her crush on Kou and her interactions with other kids at school. We’re experiencing her thoughts and feelings much the way we would if she were the POV character of a YA novel, but only exactly as much as we need to. We’re shown what’s happened and told how she feels about it. This isn’t something that’s unique about the series at all—it’s exactly what we want to see in shoujo manga, and when it’s done well, it’s kind of invisible. But after reading Kakuriyo, I’m struck by how skillfully Sakisaka utilizes Futaba’s inner monologue.

MICHELLE: And some of the things she thinks are so poignant, too. She spends much of these volumes looking for signs of the old Kou and there’s one moment when she’s looking at him and thinks, “The nape of his neck is familiar but he sounds like a stranger. It makes me feel like crying.” Physically, someone she used to know and love is standing in front of her, but the connection they had has been cut off. I have been there and I thought Sakisaka captured that kind of feeling very well.

And then Kou rightly tells her, “You’re acting like you want to move forward, but you’re holding on to the past,” which I liked, as well. Eventually she decides that only his words are harsh, but that his heart is kind. I was glad she came to that realization in the second volume, because I didn’t want to keep rehashing the contrast to his past self and also, it’ll be nice to see Kou grow, as well.

MJ: Things do seem to happen in this series exactly when we most need them to. Just when I was becoming impossibly frustrated about Futaba’s attachment to the friend group that forced her to hide her true self, she broke free of them. And as you say, just as I was done with her mooning over the boy Kou used to be, she finally let that go as well. The pacing in these volumes is somehow exactly right.

Just as I was typing this up, I saw Shōjo Beat mention on Twitter that the third volume will be out next month, and I felt a surge of glee, so Sakisaka is definitely doing something right.

A bit of an odd confession: I admit that I’ve come to a place as a reader where I’m a bit bored by stories that lack queer characters, so from the beginning I found myself personally casting Kou as trans to help me get into it a little better. Queer readers, If you haven’t tried this with Ao Haru Ride, I wholeheartedly recommend it!

MICHELLE: That’s interesting, especially when he comes back with a whole new name and she keeps using the one he doesn’t identify with anymore!

I had a surge of glee when I was researching Sakisaka and read a little about her current series. Now I really want that one to be licensed here, too!

MJ: Yeah, I really didn’t expect that, but it did capture something poignant and relatable there.

I’d very much like to see more of Sakisaka’s work make its way here, so I guess we’ll cross our fingers!

To celebrate the return of Off the Shelf, MJ’s running a Shortcake Cake giveaway on Twitter! Follow the link to enter!