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Pick of the Week: Festival of Viz

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There’s a flood of Viz titles coming in to Midtown Comics this week. Check out the Battle Robot’s picks of the bunch below!

DAVID: It’s the first week of the month, so Viz follows its customary practice of flooding the shelves with new volumes of shônen and shôjo series. While they could certainly learn to pace themselves, I won’t complain if it means I can get my hands on the fifth volume of Julietta Suzuki’s Kamisama Kiss. This series is turning into a fine example of Suzuki’s ability to balance antic comedy and nuanced emotion, which is always a good recipe for satisfying shôjo. One of the things I particularly like about Suzuki’s work is that she respects her readers’ intelligence and doesn’t need to underline every romantic beat, choosing instead to highlight unexpected moments rather than dwell on the ones we can all recite by heart. The result is a series that fluxes confidently between sweet, silly, urgent, sad, and suspenseful. I’m always happy to spend more time with these characters.

KATE: My vote goes to the fourth volume of Blue Exorcist. I’d be the first to admit that the series covers well-trod territory: it’s got combatants of the cloth, a magical academy where exorcists learn their trade, and a tortured hero who straddles the demon and human worlds. But Kazuo Kaito’s elegant art and quick wit bring this very tired premise to life, making it easy to forgive the frequent capitulations to shonen cliche: characters declaring they’ll “do their best,” sloppy but talented fighters winning the grudging respect of their more disciplined peers. I’m not convinced I want forty more volumes of Blue Exorcist, but what I’ve read so far is good, solid fun.

MICHELLE: There’s a lot on this week’s list—which includes the final volumes of both Eyeshield 21 and Seiho Boys’ High School—that I personally plan on purchasing, but the one I look forward to with the most glee is volume 25 of Yoshiki Nakamura’s Skip Beat!. Although our heroine Kyoko Mogami is still fueled largely by the desire for revenge, she gets more serious about the craft of acting every day while remaining believably oblivious to the romantic feelings of her biggest mentor, renowned actor Ren Tsuruga. Somehow, Nakamura is able to make all of this feel fresh and new, and in volume 24 revisited the well-trod shoujo territory of Valentine’s Day with truly amusing results. I look forward to seeing what happens next!

SEAN: As always with Viz blitz weeks, there’s any number of titles I could talk about, including the aforementioned final volume of Seiho (I love Eyeshield, but it should have ended 3 volumes before it did). And I really want to pick Hark! A Vagrant as well, but it manages to not be manga. So my pick this week goes to a new Weekly Shonen Jump series, the first from Viz in quite some time. PSYЯEN sounds like a standard battle manga, with the only difference being the tournament arc starts right away as opposed to 9-10 volumes in. But I’ve been pleasantly surprised by many of the more recent Jump efforts (Nura, Blue Exorcist), and the art looks good. I’m hoping for another fun, exciting series that manages to have fights without letting the manga get overwhelmed by them. And Volume 1s are the best place for that!

MJ: Well, it’s been mentioned a few times, but I’ll be the one to come down firmly on the side of volume eight of Seiho Boys’ High School. This is the final volume of the series, which has managed to remain as brash and funny as ever, while also presenting one of the most moving, realistic portrayals of teen romance I’ve seen in a while. I’ll be discussing this more in this week’s off the shelf, but it’s not that often that shoujo manga successfully balances both the all-consuming heart-burst of young love right alongside its inevitable transience, without degenerating into serious melodrama. This fun, light-hearted series has turned out to be much more poignant than I ever expected, and at just eight volumes, it’s a nice, easy-to-collect length, too. Definitely recommended.

Readers, what looks good to you this week?

Bookshelf Briefs 7/18/11

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This week, Michelle, MJ, David, Kate, & Sean check out recent releases from Kodansha Comics, Viz Media, Yen Press, & Vertical, Inc.

Arisa, Vol. 3 | By Natsumi Ando | Kodansha Comics – With the help of classmate Manabe, Tsubasa continues to look for the identity of the “king,” an unknown person who grants wishes and made her twin sister Arisa his target. In this volume, suspicion falls on Midori, Arisa’s boyfriend, who is nearby after a nicely creepy fun-house mirror King sighting, and who is also one of the chosen five, an elite group of students allowed to submit their wishes to the king. Tsubasa can’t believe he’s involved, though, as his friendliness seems too genuine, but she may have to do some untrustworthy things herself if she wants to help her sister. Fast-paced, spooky, and yet thoroughly shoujo, Arisa is a great deal of fun to read. Each time I finish a volume I lament that I do not already have the next in hand. – Michelle Smith

Black Butler, Vol. 6 | By Yana Toboso | Yen Press – The sixth volume of Yana Toboso’s Black Butler finds young aristocrat Ciel Phantomhive and his devilish (literally) butler Sebastian infiltrating a circus upon Queen Victoria’s orders. They’ve been assigned to investigate a string of missing children whose last-known whereabouts coincide with the troupe’s itinerary, and the bulk of the volume sees them first qualifying to join and then attempting to find an opportunity to do some poking around while contending with chores and the appearance of an unfriendly grim reaper. It’s not a bad volume by any means—certainly better than the recent silliness involving a curry competition—but suffers some from being only the first half of the story. Still, the creepy atmosphere Toboso creates for the circus is fun, and there’s a certain satisfaction to be derived from watching imperious Ciel peel potatoes. – Michelle Smith

Black Jack, Vol. 15 | By Osamu Tezuka | Vertical, Inc. – Readers who love Tezuka in his crazy, kitchen-sink mode will find plenty of over-the-top stories in volume fifteen. Black Jack performs a full-body skin graft on a porphyria patient, saves a boy who’s begun sprouting leaves from his body, and gets trapped not once but twice in caves with critically injured people. Entertaining as these stories are, the real highpoint of volume fifteen is “A Surgeon Lives for Music,” in which a famous doctor finds an ingenuous way to circumvent a totalitarian regime’s ban on “decadent” music. “A Surgeon” may not be Tezuka’s best work, but it’s a deeply personal story, touching on two of the most important things in his life: his medical training, and his passion for Ludwig van Beethoven. Highly recommended. – Katherine Dacey

Cross Game, Vol. 4 | By Mitsuru Adachi | Viz Media – Due to an error on Viz’s Facebook page, some of us were afraid that this was the final volume that Viz would publish. Unpleasant as those hours of uncertainty were, they served as a reminder that this series should be praised as often as decency allows, if not somewhat more frequently. The most consistently amazing thing about Adachi’s tale of high-school baseball players is that there’s absolutely no contrivance to it – not in the evolution of the team, not in the prickly relationship between star pitcher Ko and childhood frenemy Aoba, not even in the endearing bits of fourth-wall demolition that Adachi occasionally indulges in. I can think of few manga where the reader is invited to know the characters so well and like them so much, and even fewer examples where that was accomplished with this kind of gentle understatement. Just read it. You won’t be sorry. – David Welsh

Eyeshield 21, Vol. 36 | By Riichiro Inagaki and Yusuke Murata | Viz Media – This is the penultimate volume of Eyeshield 21, and like the volume before it there is a sense that it should have ended with the Christmas Bowl. Much as it’s nice to see Sena take on Panther one last time, this feels more like a victory lap than an actual plot point. Still, it’s a fun victory lap, as we see lots of what make shonen sports manga so great – thinking you’re the strongest and then finding guys who are even stronger, faster, and smarter than you. The second half is the football game, and it’s great seeing all the Japanese stars on the same team. But the highlight is earlier in the book, watching Hiruma and Clifford in a high-stakes poker game, where both parties come out feeling like they’ve lost. Tense stuff. – Sean Gaffney

Seiho Boys’ High School!, Vol. 6 | By Kaneyoshi Izumi | Viz Media – For shoujo manga veterans, the fact that this volume begins with preparations for a school festival (one that involves slapstick humor mixed with cross-dressing, no less) does not bode particularly well. Fortunately, the real purpose of the festival plotline is to explore further one of the series’ most unconventional relationships—that between crude student Nogami and school nurse Fukuhara. The fact taht Izumi is the first creator since Fumi Yoshinaga to make me even remotely interested in a high school student/faculty affair is noteworthy on its own, and if Izumi doesn’t quite have Yoshinaga’s genius, her work still stands out, and in a decidedly positive way. This volume remains true to the tone of the series so far, with its refreshing mix of thoughtful drama and boy-centric humor. Still recommended. – MJ

Skip Beat!, Vol. 24 | By Yoshiki Nakamura | Viz Media – From the creator of Tokyo Crazy Paradise, still unlicensed! (Yes, it never gets old.) After the method acting controversy of the last volume (which apparently bothered me a lot more than it did everyone else), we move on to romance again for this Skip Beat!, as Kyoko is dealing with Valentine’s Day attacks on three fronts: she’s missed Ren’s birthday, and is debating a Valentine gift for him; the loathsome Reino blackmailing her into chocolates; and Sho’s jealousy becoming almost its own separate character. Misunderstandings fuel that last one, but it’s a reminder that it’s not all the Ren and Kyoko show yet. Sho still has a hold of her heart, and isn’t about to give it up easily, as we find out in a gripping cliffhanger. Sho and Kyoko are far more alike than either is really comfortable with. – Sean Gaffney

Skip Beat!, Vol. 24 | By Yoshiki Nakamura | VIZ Media – Valentine’s Day is a staple of shoujo manga, but never has it been so awesome as in volume 24 of Skip Beat!. Just about every male character is hyper-interested in who Kyoko is giving chocolates to and why, from first love and current enemy Sho, who mistakes the “go to hell” chocolates Kyoko makes under duress for Reino (his musical rival) for the real thing, to Ren, who already receives a plethora of chocolates that he never eats but who would still secretly like to receive something romantic from Kyoko. There’s so much misunderstanding—of the justifiable, non-annoying variety, thank goodness—that I’m almost reminded of a Shakespearean comedy. And if that isn’t high praise, I don’t know what is! – Michelle Smith

The Story of Saiunkoku, Vol. 4 | Art by Kairi Yura, Story by Sai Yukino | Viz Media – The latest volume of Saiunkoku focuses on masked Minister Ko, revealing the real reason he hides his face from all but a few close associates. Though these passages have a delicious, soap opera quality to them, volume four feels a little pokey whenever the spotlight shifts to one of the other supporting cast members. The script often bogs down in expository dialogue and voice-overs; a little judicious pruning of subplots and minor characters would do wonders for improving the story’s pace. On the whole, however, Saiunkoku remains an engaging read, thanks to its smart, capable heroine and her dedication to becoming the first woman to take Saiunkoku’s civil service exam — think Yentl with bishies. – Katherine Dacey

Yotsuba&!, Vol. 9 | By Kiyohiko Azuma | Yen Press – I was listening to a podcast in which the participants were discussing some of the pop culture artifacts that they particularly missed. One that came up was Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes, that marvelous ten-year look into the mind of a rambunctious little boy and his stuffed tiger. This volume of Yotsuba&! reminded me forcefully of Watterson’s strip, and not just because the title tot gets her own teddy bear. Like Watterson, Azuma absolutely respects the inner life and logic of the kid at the center of his storytelling. Azuma’s approach may be less fanciful than Watterson’s, but it has the same combination of raucous humor and emotional truth. Highlights here include an extended trip to a hot air balloon festival and dinner out for grilled meat. Lovely and spot-on as the balloon outing proved to be, few things delight me as much as seeing Yotsuba hang out with her father and his friends. – David Welsh

Off the Shelf: Four for the girls

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Welcome to another edition of Off the Shelf with MJ & Michelle! I’m joined, as always, by Soliloquy in Blue‘s Michelle Smith.

This week, we take a look at an upcoming debut from Tokyopop, as well as some continuing series from Yen Press and Viz Media.

MICHELLE: Once upon a time I worked for a circus and I lived in Omaha.

MJ: I’ve been to Omaha, if that counts for anything.

MICHELLE: That’s actually a lyric from the stage play version of The Wizard of Oz, which I was in in the sixth grade. For some reason, it gets stuck in my head all the time.

MJ: It serves as an interesting conversation-starter!

MICHELLE: I should try it at a party sometime. Anyway, I expect you’ve been doing some reading!

MJ: Indeed I have! I’ve had a pretty shoujo-tastic week, I have to say. Pretty snark-tastic, too, if I think about it, since both of the books I plan to discuss tonight feature wry humor in place of the usual wide-eyed shoujo optimism.

First on the docket, I’ve got the debut volume of The Secret Notes of Lady Kanoko by mangaka Ririko Tsujita, due out in a couple of weeks from TOKYOPOP. The series’ title refers to Kanoko, a third year junior high school student who prides herself on perfect objectivity. To maintain this emotional purity, she spurns any kind of social interaction with her classmates, preferring to simply observe (and, of course, take copious notes). When her interest is piqued by a classroom love triangle, Kanoko is shocked to find herself somehow drawn into the fray by each of the parties involved, and even more so to find herself accidentally befriending them.

My experience with this manga was a bit of a roller-coaster ride. I was immediately drawn in by Kanoko and the gloriously idiosyncratic friendships she develops against her will. Then, amidst a deep sigh of contentment, I was jerked right out of my shoujo-induced bliss by the volume’s second chapter, which begins with Kanoko having transferred to a new school, leaving everything I’d just learned to care about abruptly behind. My dissatisfaction continued through at least two more chapters before I finally realized that this is actually the premise of the series. That’s also when I realized that it’s brilliant.

Using Kanoko’s impossibly frequent school transfers as a structural conceit, Tsujita sets herself free from the bothersome constraints of reality, while also weaving in some of the most wonderfully real characterization I’ve seen in a manga comedy. It’s as though some sleep-deprived manga editor spliced together pages of Kimi ni Todoke with Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, absent-mindedly inventing a new and delicious flavor of shoujo satire that manages to consistently maintain the gag while telling an unexpectedly heartwarming story at the same time. And in a fantasy space like this, of course, Kanoko’s original, accidental friends are able to pop up as needed, to help our heroine learn and grow, even as she snarks her way through another anonymous middle school.

The real secret to the story’s success, however, is Kanoko herself. She’s smart, hilarious, and even kind of heroic, like a super-hero version of Harriet the Spy. She wards off bullies by genuinely not caring what they think of her, and blows off “friendly” saboteurs with little more than a sneer. I seriously wanted to applaud several times during the first chapter alone. She’s also deeply damaged and a complete mess, but even that’s not overplayed. It’s astonishingly well done.

MICHELLE: That truly sounds awesome. I, too, was unaware of the series’ structure, but had managed to pick up somewhere or other that Kanoko is a unique heroine, which is why I’ve been looking forward to this volume’s release. I note from the exterior of the book that TOKYOPOP has a new logo and it looks quite snazzy. Were any differences apparent on the inside of the book?

MJ: I didn’t notice anything new inside, other than this very pleasant sight on the book’s page of credits, “Editor – Asako Suzuki.” :)

You know, the thought I had as I was writing this, Michelle, was that this ability to mix satire with an actual, forward-moving story is what I’ve fruitlessly hoped for from Otomen all this time.

MICHELLE: Oh, that is a welcome sight indeed! And yeah, I’m beginning to see more disappointment with Otomen‘s lack of forward movement popping up online. I usually buy new volumes as they come out, but after the disappointment I mentioned when I discussed volumes six and seven here back in September, I just couldn’t bring myself to buy volume eight.

MJ: So now that I’ve blathered on, what have you got for us tonight?

MICHELLE: Back in the waning days of Manga Recon there was this review copy for Angel Diary volume ten that no one had claimed, so I ended up reviewing it. And, actually, it was pretty interesting. It was primarily a fight between siblings, and though it didn’t make me want to read the series from the beginning, it at least made me want to see what happened next. Well, I’ve now read volumes eleven through thirteen (the final volume) and, unfortunately, what happens next is really not too much.

Briefly, the premise of the story is that Dong-Young, the Princess of Heaven, has fled an arranged marriage with the King of Hell and come to Earth disguised as a boy. Of course, one of her classmates is Bi-Wal, the King of Hell, and they end up falling in love. In volume eleven, there’s some brief resolution to the battle between Bi-Wal and his brother, Ryung, and then Dong-Young decides to get serious about becoming the Queen of Heaven which means going home and devoting herself to studying.

At first I thought, “Oh, this is the Boys Over Flowers school of story conclusions, with one member of a couple going away for an extended period of time.” With two volumes left at this point, I expected there would be several chapters, at least, of Dong-Young hard at work and maybe even the pair waiting quite a while to finally get married. Alas, much of this period is skimmed over and the series ends shortly into volume twelve. The rest of this volume and the whole of the thirteenth are bonus chapters about supporting characters, frequently as big-eyed bratty kids.

I didn’t like or follow this series enough to feel disappointed by this ending, but it certainly lacks substance. I’m glad I wasn’t more invested otherwise I might have been annoyed. I will say, though, that I associate this series with Moon Boy a lot, since they both began with Ice Kunion around the same time and are now wrapping up in the same month, and between the two series, this one is superior. Everything makes sense and Kara’s art is frequently nice to look upon. In fact, I must confess that I felt some squee for Bi-Wal’s chief aide, Hee-Young, mostly because he has really cool hair.

MJ: Is “superior to Moon Boy” really much of a recommendation? :D

MICHELLE: I guess not. If one were in the mood for some utter fluff with pretty boys in it, though, Angel Diary would probably be a decent choice.

MJ: I’m a fan of Kara’s artwork in another Yen Press series, Legend, so though I may snark, I can well imagine the appeal of her very pretty men and their undeniably cool hair.

MICHELLE: I actually scored the first few volumes of Legend recently, and look forward to checking it out.

So, what’s your other wry shoujo read for this week?

MJ: My second shoujo-snark-tastic selection for the evening is the third volume of Kaneyoshi Izumi’s Seiho Boys’ High School, from Viz’s Shojo Beat imprint. Now, you’ll recall that the series’ second volume is what originally won me over, but I’d say that it’s the third that earned it a place in my recent holiday gift guide. And though, in part, this is because it simply maintained the second volume’s quality, it also has some particular merit of its own.

The volume starts a bit slowly, with townie Miyaji coerced into dressing up as a boy-dressing-up-as-a-girl to help Dorm 1 spice up their entry for the school’s play competition. Things move up quickly from there, however, with the introduction of a new love interest for our hero, Maki, and an unexpected development in Nogami’s flirtation with the school nurse.

As in the series’ previous volumes, what really makes this manga shine is Izumi’s honest treatment of her teenaged male characters, even within the context of a fairly light comedy. Though perhaps the more impressive achievement is her demonstrated ability to make a bunch of (mostly) heterosexual horndogs actually appealing to female readers. That Nogami, for instance, the most hideously crass of the bunch, is even remotely sympathetic as a character is an accomplishment indeed. She’s not above poking fun at her readership either, as she proves in the volume’s final chapter with the revelation that Maki’s new love interest is a dedicated fujoshi.

And though Maki is definitely the most average guy of the bunch, he’s also the one who consistently tugs at my heartstrings, whether he’s struggling with overcoming his continued attachment to his lost girlfriend or discovering that there’s more to a popular classmate than he’d previously thought. He’s a fragile sort of everyman, but it really works for this series.

MICHELLE: I’ve seen the girl-dressed-as-boy-dressed-as-girl plot before, as well as the school nurse (there’s one in the second book I plan to discuss tonight, actually) but it sounds like Izumi is able to make some tried-and-true shoujo ideas feel original.

MJ: Yes, she really does, and it’s by doing little more than playing them honestly. Though her terrific sense of humor certainly doesn’t hurt.

So, school nurses, eh? Bring ’em on!

MICHELLE: If your theme this week has been wry shoujo, then mine is “final volumes of light shoujo (or sunjeong).” I wasn’t too impressed with the first two volumes of Cactus’s Secret, in which prickly Miku expects the easygoing object of her affections, Fujioka, to pick up on her feelings despite the fact that she gets angry and yells at him all the time. The series has gradually improved, though, and the scene in the third volume where Fujioka finally admits/realizes that he likes Miku too is truly sweet. Shortly into the fourth and final volume, alas, a buxom new school nurse is introduced and I began to fear that a lame plot centering on Miku’s jealousy would soon unfold. And, in fact, that’s sort of what happens, but in a much better way than I’d anticipated.

Rather than be outraged because Fujioka is spending time with a physically beautiful lady, Miku is actually made insecure by the fact that Fujioka, whom she has pressured into considering his future, has apparently been able to discuss something with the nurse that he couldn’t share with her. It’s a classic case of opposites getting together and realizing, “Hey, we really are majorly different here!” Miku is very focused on her future, so the fact that Fujioka isn’t bothers her. Because she does care so much, he feels unable to reveal to her how clueless he is, lest he lose estimation in her eyes.

Finding the nurse a good confidante herself, Miku eventually realizes what Fujioka’s been feeling and the two end up working things out. Just like Angel Diary, this series ends pretty abruptly and is followed by a couple of bonus stories featuring supporting characters. Even so, I found the conflict in this volume to be engaging and honest, evolving organically from who these characters are. Cactus’s Secret doesn’t rank as one of my favorite shoujo series ever, but it just might deserve a Most Improved award based on the difference between its first and last volumes!

MJ: I wasn’t impressed by the first volume of this series, which kept me from continuing on, and now I’m torn by a desire to watch it improve and a desire to avoid being disappointed by an abrupt ending!

MICHELLE: I think it’s worth it, personally. The creator is also really young, so it’ll be interesting to see her develop, assuming her future endeavors are licensed here.

MJ: You make a compelling argument! I do tend to get attached to flawed works that show promise for their creators.

MICHELLE: Like Heaven’s Will?

MJ: That’s exactly the manga that sprang to mind! You know me too well, my friend.

MICHELLE: As my husband always says, “That’s my gig!”

MJ: So true.

Tune in next week for December’s BL Bookrack, and then again on December 29th for this year’s final Off the Shelf!

Off the Shelf: O the Yule Log, Fear its Might

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Welcome to another edition of Off the Shelf with MJ & Michelle! I’m joined, once again, by Soliloquy in Blue‘s Michelle Smith.

This week, we take a look at some recent titles from Tokyopop, Viz Media, and Yen Press.

MJ: There’s a chill in the air here in western Massachusetts–great weather for curling up with a blanket and a good book. I expect that’s not the case at all down your way, but I’m hoping you’ve read some anyway. You know. So the column won’t suck.

MICHELLE: Well, no one could call it chilly but our highs are now merely in the low 90s, so that’s a definite improvement! With the absolutely essential help of central air I have indeed managed a fair amount of reading this week!

MJ: Hallelujah, central air! So… anything noteworthy?

MICHELLE: Some! I thought I would take this week’s selections in ascending order of preference. And so, accordingly, I start with the first volume of The Witch of Artemis, a new series from TOKYOPOP.

In this shonen fantasy series, originally serialized in Comic Blade, orphaned Kazuhi is living a bland existence on Earth and spends a lot of time daydreaming about Artemis, a star that was the subject of many stories his late father told him. As the stories go, the people of Earth and the people of Artemis once lived together, but eventually those with special magical powers departed earth to settle on Artemis. Conveniently, Kazuhi overhears a news report about a girl in strange clothes—why the news would report this, I do not know—and dashes to the scene, whereupon he meets one witch, whom we later learn is named Viora, who inflicts a death curse upon him, and another, called Marie, who whisks him off to Artemis in order to cure him.

Marie is most textbook example of a tsundere character I have ever seen. After curing Kazuhi, she berates and insults him, trying to get him to leave her alone, but when he finds out she wants to do good deeds for people, he volunteers to help and, despite her crusty exterior, she still does things like follow him around when he goes off wandering to ensure he doesn’t come to harm. The second half of the volume depicts their first joint effort at helping someone, and includes an ominous hint from Viora that the world is on the verge of ending.

I might possibly have made this sound better than it is. So far, it’s rather bland. The art is pleasant, but not distinctive, and the characters and plot are the same. There’s always potential inherent in ominous hinting, and so I’m willing to read a second volume to see where the story goes—and, indeed, the series is only three volumes long, so if I’ve read two-thirds of it I might as well go all the way—but at this point I don’t have high hopes that it will ever be anything more than pleasant but not distinctive….

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