Archives for April 2013

By Kazuma Kamachi and Motoi Fuyukawa. Released in Japan as “Toaru Kagaku no Railgun” by ASCII Media Works, serialization ongoing in the magazine Dengeki Daioh. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

First off, in case I forget to actually review the book, this was a fun volume of Railgun. The Sisters arc was wrapped up, we started a new one about the city-wide athletic festival, and there’s lots of awesome, heartwarming, and funny.

Now, let’s talk continuity, aka “Wait, when the hell did Kuroko get put in a wheelchair?!?!”

First, a brief timeline:
1) A Certain Magical Index Light Novels: April 2004-present. The “Sisters” book came out in September 2004, and the “athletic festival” books (which didn’t focus on Misaka entirely) in April-May 2006.
2) A Certain Scientific Railgun (manga): April 2007-present. It runs in a monthly magazine.
3) A Certain Magical Index (manga): May 2007-present. Also in a monthly magazine.
4) A Certain Magical Index (anime): October 2008-March 2009. This includes the “Sisters” arc, from Touma’s perspective.
5) A Certain Scientific Railgun (anime): October 2009-March 2010. Note that the manga had only just barely started the Sisters arc (from Misaka’s perspective) when the anime began. Which is why you didn’t see it.
6) A Certain Magical Index II (anime): October 2010-April 2011. This has the athletic festival from Touma’s POV, but likely won’t crossover with the Railgun storyline much.
7) A Certain Magical Index (film): February 2013.
8) A Certain Scientific Railgun S (anime): April 2013-present. Judging by the OP credits, this *will* have the Sisters arc, including the battle with ITEM.

For the most part, the Railgun manga has been pretty good about letting casual readers follow along, and explaining things as they go. The only time the storyline ever really connects with index is during the Sisters arc, and other than that, Railgun has its own plots and its own problems. There are, of course, little bonuses for those who follow the books. ITEM are given a major role in the Sisters arc as the child soldiers Misaka battles, right around the time they were becoming very important in the Index books proper. (This is why Rikou, who really wasn’t all that active in the battles, gets a larger picture on the cover than Frenda, who was. She’s more important later.)

Around Vol. 7 is where the continuity starts to snarl, though. First of all, the anime, needing to fill up episodes since they couldn’t animate the Sisters arc (as the manga hadn’t finished it yet) introduces Mitsuko Kongo much earlier, and gives her different plotlines to play around with. Not that the manga is ready to introduce her, it doesn’t really have the time to. So Mitsuko’s introduction takes about 2 chapters, where she sets herself up as the rich rival character and is very quickly humbled. (This actually has the added benefit of making her more likeable, and I thought she was pretty cute.)

And sometimes the manga simply has to abandon even explanations, and just trust the reader will go “OK, something happened.” The athletic festival takes place about a month after the Sisters arc ends, and somehow Kuroko is now in a wheelchair (and Uiharu is blaming herself for the injuries.) What happened? Well, the 8th Index novel, in which Kuroko, as a member of Judgement, goes after a fellow teleportation expert who is trying to steal valuable plot macguffins. In the midst of this, she nearly gets killed, and thus is now in said wheelchair for the duration of the festival. Unfortunately, the series is not called “A Certain Perverse Teleporter”, so Kuroko’s story is just elided away.

There’s also lots of other little things: Accelerator appears again, and seems to be crippled (from Touma’s beating? Actually, no.) and also not, apparently, in any trouble for the experiments. Actually, the manga does a nice little flashback showing how Accelerator was manipulated by scientists just as much as Misaka was, and makes you ponder if “I was only following orders” might be a valid excuse for someone so young. It gets to the point where when we see characters who actually ARE appearing for the first time (such as the “Queen”, or the Aztec girl at the end of the volume), we wonder if they’ve been in the main source and we missed it.

More accurately, I wonder this. Most casual readers likely are fine with reading this typically exciting and fun Railgun volume. But Kuroko’s injury and its out-of-nowhere appearance has been mentioned as confusing, so I thought I’d talk about it a bit.

Oh yes, and Saten is still awesome. But you knew that.

By Mizuki Sasakibara, based on the franchise created by Sunrise, Masafumi Nishida, and Masakazu Katsura. Released in Japan by Kadokawa Shoten, serialized in the magazine Newtype Ace. Released in North America by Viz.

I will admit up front that I haven’t seen the anime series this is based on, which Viz is obviously selling hard. I am familiar with Katsura’s work via Video Girl Ai, DNA^2, etc., but aside from Blue Rose looking a bit like Karin Aoi (naming her Karina doesn’t help), there’s not really much influence here. As a result, for once I can ignore all the other variations and alternate continuities I’m familiar with and enjoy this for what it is – a goofy Japanese take on superheroes and mass media, with a very compelling lead duo.

The artist for this manga seems to have worked for Marvel Comics before, and it shows – this is a Japanese take on American superheroes that knows what it’s doing, and can get behind the ridiculousness of people in spandex running around as well as the awesomeness. But as much as it’s a take on superheroes, it’s also examining the state of mass media and marketing in the modern age, with the superheroes being sent out at precisely the right time to grab ratings, and having to work together in pre-scripted ways… while still actually trying to capture the bad guys, who aren’t (so far) pre-scripted. The fact that they’re actually trying to do good helps this title avoid the cynicism of, say, a Max Headroom, but it’s still all a bit false.

Naturally, Tiger, aka Kotetsu Kaburagi, is an old-school hero who doesn’t hold with all this televised ratings crap. Not that he doesn’t actually go along with it… after all, a hero’s gotta work. His working-class superhero attitude not only contrasts with the rest of the superheroes we see, but also with his new partner, Barnaby Brooks, Jr. Barnaby looks to be the classic insufferable genius, who regards ‘teamwork’ as a dirty word and fights crime with a sneer on his face. Actually, this doesn’t seem to be the case, as when he’s in action he seems to be quite friendly and smiling to those he rescues. He just dislikes Tiger. I have no doubt he will have a horribly tragic past.

I was rather surprised that both Tiger and Bunny have the same power – an unusual thing for a superhero team-up, but one that helps to show why they don’t get along at first. As for the other superheroes, we don’t see much of them here, but they have moments where it seems they’re chafing against the script as well. The sooner we get away from heroes-as-wrestling and into serious character drama, the better. As for the fights, they looked fine. The action was easy to follow and exciting, and definitely showed some Marvel influence.

This is a very good first volume, leaving you wanting to go hunt down the anime to find out more. Even the character bios intrigue me – Tiger having a daughter means his tragic past can war with Bunny’s. (How sad is it that my first thought on seeing “guy with daughter” is “how did his wife die in the backstory”? Heck, maybe he’s just divorced. But I doubt it.) I’ll admit I was expecting this to be just another tie-in, but it’s quite worthy on its own. Recommend it to friends who want to try manga but have never ventured beyond the X-Men.

By Rikdo Koshi. Released in Japan by Shonen Gahosha, serialized in the magazine Young King OURS. Released in North America by Viz.

I have to remind myself at times, when Miwa or Kabapu are making master plan after master plan and putting different personas in different robot bodies of other characters, that Excel Saga is still predominately a satire. Yes, the plot and characterization are a cut above the anime (and again, I remind readers that when the anime was licensed, Shonen Gahosha’s caveat was that the show would NOT use Rikdo’s plots), but it’s still making fun of everything, be it the fall of Japan’s bubble economy, the everyday 3-jobs-a-day week of the Japanese working girl, sentai shows like Power Rangers, or power-mad villains stockpiling schemes like Aizen. To a degree, the inability to truly understand what’s going on may be hard-wired into the format – that’s the joke.

That’s not to say there aren’t points of interest here. Il Palazzo has always been the hardest character to get a grip on in this series, even more so than Hyatt, and even Miwa is having difficulty figuring out what he’s doing. Indeed, he may not know himself – we’ve seen he is having a war with some other personality in his head. And for that matter, how many people are possessing Iwata at any one time, and re any of them Iwata himself? It gets bad enough that even Misaki is taking to making guesses – she picks Shiouji’s father, and is informed that she’s incorrect (if fan theories prove to be correct, she’s more wrong than she knows). For that matter, how much of ACROSS’s base runs on ancient technology?

This being Excel Saga, there are many moments of hilarity here. Elgala’s crucifixion, The meta commentary on Iwata and Excel being the sort who would “be the hero of a manga” (notably, Hyatt is absolutely correct, but for the wrong reasons – I’m afraid we’re at the point where Excel is simply never going to climb that pedestal Hyatt puts her on), and almost everything with the Department of City Security folks imprisoned in ACROSS’s base with, theoretically, minimal food and water. Even Misaki, who is usually out Only Sane Woman, finds herself losing it a bit here. One of the more serious parts of the book is her self-awareness of how close she’s coming to a total nervous breakdown, and trying to calm herself and stop it from happening – or at least put it to good use for things like blowing up walls.

Then there’s Umi, the one remaining innocent in this series, who’s been sent/lured down to ACROSS’s base by Miwa in order to see if Excel will break. It works, to a degree – Excel’s berserker rage is distracted for a moment – but I think as long as Excel still thinks that Robot Body allows her to be more useful than Human Body she’ll continue to make the same decisions, whether Teriha’s memories are still talking in her head or no. Of course, this may all be moot now that she has a giant hole blown into her. The thoughts in her head about “not wanting to be alone” are odd – are they Teriha’s, or is she picking up Umi in some odd way? Honestly, we’ve never seen Excel have much of a problem with solitude, and I think as long as Il Palazzo was with her, she’d be absolutely fine being alone.

(Great seeing Shiouji SUPER PISSED, too – for all that he finds Umi annoying, he doesn’t want to see her hurt in any way – indeed, a large part of his actions in the series are to avoid Umi getting emotionally damaged.)

And of course there’s the endnotes by Carl Horn, which are marvelous as always. They contain actual info about obscure references, meta-commentary on the series itself, they have their own in jokes (Carl is right – that line absolutely should be read by George Takei), and there’s a long endnote afterword discussing Rikdo’s current series, which he is drawing and Masamune Shirow is writing. Yes, Ghost in the Shell Shirow. As for Excel Saga 25? It was great, though the plot was not advanced a whole lot, and there may not be as much to advance as I think – see point #1. And it’s good to see all the Ropponmatsu vs. Ropponmatsu battles, after so long apart. Can’t wait till August, for the penultimate volume!

By Quin Rose and Hazuki Futaba, based on the game by Quin Rose. Released in Japan by Ichijinsha, serialized in the magazine Zero-Sum Ward. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

Seven Seas has very helpfully noted this is from the creator of the Alice in the Country of series on the cover, and indeed fans of that series will find a lot to like here. There’s a greater depth to the heroines, lots of hot guys with major personality defects, and a feeling that the entire world is just slightly broken. That said, it sure was helpful having Lewis Carroll’s template for the Alice books, because without that, things in Crimson Empire get awfully muddled awfully fast.

That said, the volume opens awfully well. Our heroine is a street rat somewhere in Anime Arabia, who sells her soul to a demon (who notes she has quite a future ahead of her – though good or bad, he can’t say)and becomes an assassin-cum-bodyguard, defending Prince Edvard from the many and varied people trying to kill him – including Justin, his own half-brother. Oh, and of COURSE, she has to dress up as Head Maid. After all, this is the aristocracy, and we can’t just have women walking around in suits.

I made this sound a bit more fetishy than it actually is, to be honest. The fanservice is nil, and this is definitely a josei title. Sheila is quite similar to Alice, though a bit stronger and more broken (she’s been through a bit more), and as with Alice, the various men around her are Otome Game types, where the player can choose to interact with their favorite. In terms of manga plot (vs. game plot), the first volume is quite simple. Sheila prevents people from murdering Edvard, Edvard snarks and acts nice on the outside but evil on the inside, Justin is the opposite, etc.

The difficulty here is, even with a ‘Cast of Characters’ page at the start, there’s simply too many people introduced too fast. Things aren’t helped by the fact that this is a semi-sequel to another Otome Game, Arabians Lost, which introduces a few characters from that series and mentions the Queen, who was the player character. Moreover, Sheila seems to have past relationships with several of them, which don’t come off as “Well, the manga will catch me up on their shared history” as much as “I feel I missed something, I should go buy the previous game this is clearly meant to be pimping out.”

From a manga perspective, the plot simply meanders. Given there’s less of a desire to see who Sheila will end up with (she’s sold her soul, so it’s sort of irrelevant, as she’ll end up with the demon one way or another), the need to read this likely hinges on how much you enjoy seeing Sheila interact with the characters around her. This isn’t helped by Sheila being, so far, the most interesting character. I also can’t help but compare the guys to the Alice series – Meissen, for one, is clearly Ace with the serial numbers filed off.

This is only three volumes, so I do recommend it if you like the Alice series in general and are a fan of this sort of josei “girl surrounded by pretty boys” series. But plotwise, it really needs to sort itself out. More scenes like the bleak opening, which was excellent.