• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Comment Policy
    • Disclosures & Disclaimers
  • Resources
    • Links, Essays & Articles
    • Fandomology!
    • CLAMP Directory
    • BlogRoll
  • Features & Columns
    • 3 Things Thursday
    • Adventures in the Key of Shoujo
    • Bit & Blips (game reviews)
    • BL BOOKRACK
    • Bookshelf Briefs
    • Bringing the Drama
    • Comic Conversion
    • Fanservice Friday
    • Going Digital
    • It Came From the Sinosphere
    • License This!
    • Magazine no Mori
    • My Week in Manga
    • OFF THE SHELF
    • Not By Manga Alone
    • PICK OF THE WEEK
    • Subtitles & Sensibility
    • Weekly Shonen Jump Recaps
  • Manga Moveable Feast
    • MMF Full Archive
    • Yun Kouga
    • CLAMP
    • Shojo Beat
    • Osamu Tezuka
    • Sailor Moon
    • Fruits Basket
    • Takehiko Inoue
    • Wild Adapter
    • One Piece
    • After School Nightmare
    • Karakuri Odette
    • Paradise Kiss
    • The Color Trilogy
    • To Terra…
    • Sexy Voice & Robo
  • Browse by Author
    • Sean Gaffney
    • Anna Neatrour
    • Michelle Smith
    • Katherine Dacey
    • MJ
    • Brigid Alverson
    • Travis Anderson
    • Phillip Anthony
    • Derek Bown
    • Jaci Dahlvang
    • Angela Eastman
    • Erica Friedman
    • Sara K.
    • Megan Purdy
    • Emily Snodgrass
    • Nancy Thistlethwaite
    • Eva Volin
    • David Welsh
  • MB Blogs
    • A Case Suitable For Treatment
    • Experiments in Manga
    • MangaBlog
    • The Manga Critic
    • Manga Report
    • Soliloquy in Blue
    • Manga Curmudgeon (archive)

Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

kamichama karin chu

Kamichama Karin Chu vs. Shugo Chara!

February 22, 2010 by MJ 1 Comment

I have a review offsite this morning in today’s Manga Mini’s column, for the final volume in Koge-Donbo’s Kamichama Karin Chu, published by Del Rey. Though I have found plenty to enjoy in this series during its run, things fell apart a bit over the last few volumes, limiting its appeal for adult readers, in my view.

What this series mainly suffers from, however, is inevitable comparisons between it and Del Rey’s other currently-running magical girl series, Shugo Chara! which unfortunately blows it away on pretty much every front–plot, characterization, art, you name it. Perhaps the most obvious disparity between the two, however, is in its depth of messaging, especially for female readers.

Karin’s focus throughout the series is to grow up to be a wife and mother… and a powerful god, of course, but a wife and mother first. Even in this volume’s final side story, she is portrayed as a poor student who strives to bring up her grades only so that she can get into the same high school as her future husband. Shugo Chara!‘s Amu, on the other hand, is focused on discovering her own talents and desires, torn between the many paths open to her, none of which ultimately have to do with boys. Don’t get me wrong, here. There’s nothing objectionable about a woman being a wife and mother, and certainly homemaking is one of Amu’s options as well. I think offering girls a variety of choices, however, is a much stronger way to go and much more in tune with the dreams of young girls today.

Interestingly, too, though Amu fights alongside the Guardians, a group made up of both boys and girls, Karin’s fellow gods are all boys whose help she requires in nearly every battle. While I appreciate messages of cooperation (teaching kids that they should fight all their battles alone is supremely unhelpful), it really does matter that Amu’s backup is consistently mixed-gender and I think that sends a much healthier message to both girls and boys.

Am I trying to paint Shugo Chara! as a feminist series? No. I’m really not. But I do think it offers a great deal more depth in its portrayal its young female protagonist and the world around her than can be found in Kamichama Karin Chu, by a lot.

Thoughts? Disagreement? Please feel free to comment!

Filed Under: NEWS Tagged With: kamichama karin chu, manga, shugo chara!

Kamichama Karin Chu, Vol. 7

February 22, 2010 by MJ Leave a Comment

By Koge-Donbo
Del Rey, 176 pp.
Rating: T (13+)

Karin and Michiru traveled to the future in volume six to try to stop Kirihiko Karasuma (in Jin Kuga’s body) from creating the future they’ve worked so hard to avoid. As they arrive in volume seven, they discover that Kazune has come along as well, despite the loss of his Apollo ring. Together, the three of them face Kirihiko in a final battle to save their futures and bring everyone together again, including loved ones who have been fighting against them.

Time travel is a messy thing indeed and though it has been a major element in the story all along, things begin to unravel here with Karin meeting up with her future self and the Chronos Clocks suddenly taking on new power that seems a bit too conveniently manipulated to make things turn out just right. Everything about this volume feels strained, from its rushed romantic moments to its anticlimactic final battle, as though mangaka Koge-Donbo was forced to wrap things up just a bit too quickly.

Though this series has declined toward the end, diminishing its adult appeal, it is still a fun, whimsical choice for younger readers with a fairly powerful message about making one’s own fate. “We are all little gods,” reads the final page of the series proper. “Sometimes, we can even change destiny.”

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at PopCultureShock.

Filed Under: MANGA REVIEWS Tagged With: kamichama karin chu

NANA Project #3!

October 16, 2009 by MJ Leave a Comment

nana6Just a couple of quick links this morning as I sit in the Salt Lake City airport waiting for my flight home. First of all, the third installment of the NANA Project is up, in which Danielle Leigh, Michelle Smith and I discuss volumes five and six of NANA. In this installment, we focus heavily on the addition of Trapnest to the regular cast of characters, and particularly Hachi’s involvement with Takumi. If you’re new to the Project, check out our discussion of volumes one, two, three, & four and please, join us in comments!

In other offsite news, check out my review of Kamichama Karin Chu, volume 4 in this week’s manga minis, and look for my review of the second volume of Rasetsu soon in an upcoming On The Shojo Beat column to be posted over the next couple of days. (ETA: Rasetsu review is up!)

Homeward bound!

Filed Under: NEWS Tagged With: kamichama karin chu, manga, nana, nana project, rasetsu

Kamichama Karin Chu, Vol. 5

October 12, 2009 by MJ Leave a Comment

By Koge-Donbo
Del Rey, 176 pp.
Rating: T (13+)

Karin, Kazune, and Michiru are cast as the Three Musketeers in the school play, which Karin hopes will be her chance to bring Micchi back into the fold as a noble god. Things don’t quite go as planned, but thanks to some help from Jin Kuga, who steps in as an understudy at a crucial moment, and the somewhat fortuitous appearance of a chaos seed, Micchi eventually realizes his true place is as a god. Reunited, the three young gods are lured to the beach by their enemy, Kirio Karasuma, where Suzune reveals an unexpected new form during a close call with a swarm of jellyfish. Unfortunately, that’s not the only surprise waiting at the beach, and the second is much darker, both for the gods and for Jin.

This volume gets off to a weak start with the Three Musketeers storyline, which brings Micchi back into the group much too quickly and easily to be believed. The second half of the book is much stronger, however, moving the plot forward and stressing the urgency of the gods’ unity, as well as providing some very touching moments between Karin, Kazune, and their future son, Suzune. The way this story plays with time—the strong glimpses these young characters are given of both their past lives and their future selves—is what maintains its emotional core, and it is incidents like the one with Suzune in this volume that most touch the heart and make the story into something more than its many clichés might suggest.

At its best, Kamichama Karin Chu is a delightful marriage of magical-girl formula and true pre-pubescent fantasy, straight out of the mind of any imaginative young girl. Though this volume falls just short of its best, its strong final chapters prove that this fantasy is still alive and well.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at PopCultureShock.

Filed Under: MANGA REVIEWS Tagged With: kamichama karin chu

Kamichama Karin Chu, Vol. 4

July 13, 2009 by MJ Leave a Comment

By Koge-Donbo
Del Rey, 192 pp.
Rating: T (13+)

In volume three, Karin had a dream that showed her a vision of the future featuring the horrible deaths of those she loves most. As this volume begins, she struggles to carry on with daily life while holding on to this painful truth that she believes she must keep to herself. After a blow to her head gives everyone a scare, Karin finally confesses the details of her dream to Kazune and he determines that together they must find a way to change it. Unfortunately things go rapidly downhill from this point on. After hearing about Karin’s dream, Micchi decides to give up his position as a god for good; Himeka, Kazune’s cousin who has just returned to them, is kidnapped by a mysterious and sinister girl; and new, shocking truths about their idol friend, Jin Kuga, are revealed.

Though this series is impossibly complicated and almost disturbingly cute, it’s hard not to be compelled by the overblown emotional drama and layers of supernatural intrigue. Time travelers, reincarnation, cloning, and magical girl-gods are the stuff of fantastic shojo, and if this series doesn’t quite come together like the best shojo fantasies, it is certainly fantastic in the most basic sense of the word. This volume’s drama is particularly thick with everyone fighting against their own fated deaths, but the over-the-top whimsy keeps things from ever becoming too heavy and the prevailing mood is oddly fun. A little romance never hurts either.

Dramatic, frilly, and a little bit trippy, the fourth volume of Kamichama Karin Chu provides a colorful mix of shojo staples in a super-cute package.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at PopCultureShock.

Filed Under: MANGA REVIEWS Tagged With: kamichama karin chu

 | Log in
Copyright © 2010 Manga Bookshelf | Powered by WordPress & the Genesis Framework