Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Archives for October 2019

Durarara!!, Vol. 13

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By Ryohgo Narita and Suzuhito Yasuda. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Stephen Paul.

And so, in the end, so much of DRRR!! turns out to be about love. First and foremost we have the love of Shinra and Celty, which is twisted (as Shinra cheerfully admits, saying he values his love for Celty over her own happiness) but also romantic, with Celty continuing to be the most tsundere Dullahan ever. She also saves the day about ten times over here, making sure that Mikado doesn’t kill himself, stopping the zombie Saika outbreak for a bit, etc. There’s also the love Anri has for Mikado, which is still in its nascent form but at least she can now admit to herself that love is what it is. Mikado’s feelings are a bit more vague, but he did save her from being stabbed (and was apparently in a coma for a month afterwards!), so that counts for something. There’s Seiji and Mika, who have Celty’s head keeping them together, even if their motives are totally in opposition. And then there’s Haruna and her teacher, who get one of the more horrifying but also satisfying twisted ends. Love is everywhere.

And yes, let’s also talk about Shizuo and Izaya. I think if you told canonical Izaya that he was in love with Shizuo he’d have something nasty to say to you, but it is striking how dedicated he is to proving that Shizuo is a “monster”. Izaya, who loves humanity as an abstract whole but can’t be attached in any way to individuals, pales in comparison to Shizuo, who gets TOO emotional when confr4onted with individuals, and needs to learn restraint, something Vorona helps teach him a bit. (Basically, he needs people to be a good example for.) I would not say Izaya is jealous of this per se, but I think he does not want Shizuo, whose body is almost indestructible and who can throw vending machines with one hand, to be a normal human. Moreover, while Izaya needs to have Shizuo as his nemesis, Hark a Vagrant style, I’m, pretty sure Shizuo would be happy to never see Izaya again. They’re both dark mirrors of each other.

This was one of the few LNs where I’d watched the anime before I read the book, and I was surprised that the epilogue made a few changes. Aoba sitting himself down in front of Anri and Masaomi at the hospital and being smug reads oddly, and you wonder why Masaomi doesn’t slug him. I think the anime wondered this as well, adding in a scene with Akabayashi threatening him to replace it and make it clear that this isn’t Aoba’s win. That said, the epilogue does seem to wrap everything up, at least as far as the current plot points are. The afterword mentions the sequel LN Durarara!! SH, but it’s not clear if that will be licensed here, and Narita’s current erratic writing schedule means it’s somewhat stalled at the moment. Fortunately, DRRR!! works as a contained unit here. Celty comes to terms with herself, Mikado realizes that being a villain is not what he wants to be, and they all live happily ever after. Except Izaya.

Hayate the Combat Butler, Vol. 34

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By Kenjiro Hata. Released in Japan as “Hayate no Gotoku!” by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Shonen Sunday. Released in North America by Viz. Translated by John Werry.

The history of Hayate the Combat Butler is an interesting one. Very much a funny gag sort of story for the first 16 or so volumes, it attracted that sort of audience, and the first couple of anime were of that nature as well. Then came the Athena arc, which was really good, and set up a far more serious backstory for the manga, which attracted fans who really wanted to know about that story. And so the last ten to fifteen volumes have made an attempt to still be light-hearted gag comedy while throwing out the occasional plot bone to keep readers here for the plot satisfied. It… hasn’t really worked. This will reach its apex about two volumes from now, in the series’ most infamous chapter, but for the moment readers who want more about castles and coffins will be delighted to find there’s an extended section here where Hayate discovers a hidden room in the boarding house, with something very familiar inside.

It is notable that everyone involved in the discovery of the hidden room is not one of the “normal” cast members, if such a word can be used to describe people like Hinagiku or Nagi. It’s Hayate, Tama the tiger, the ghost priest, Alice, who still doesn’t remember her past but is there because of who she is, and Isumi, who reminds us that this is still a comedy even in the dramatic plot sections by making an absolutely ridiculous entrance through the wall of the building, knowing full well how awesome she will look. Sadly, she looks less awesome when up against the series’ new minor villain, whose name I’m not sure of yet but she does enjoy wearing her Gurren Lagann cosplay shades. This doesn’t answer many questions… well, OK, any questions, except who shade-wearing woman is working for… but it does remind you that this plot exists, and it weighs on Hayate’s mind.

Elsewhere,the boardinghouse continues to fill up, first by adding Ruka, who has “run away from home” because they’re trying to make her stop being a doujinshi artist and stick to pop idoling, as well as Ayumu, who literally has a mom and dad to live with but scrapes up the money to live in the boarding house for a month because she senses how big a threat Ruka is in the Hayate sweepstakes. (This leads to the best gag in the volume, where Hinagiku is stunned to find that she isn’t a threat – after all, if she can’t confess, what good is she?) We also get more of Ruka’s backstory, which matches Hayate and Hinagiku’s on the “bad parents” front (the bad parents are always in silhouette). And Nagi’s manga continues to be the series’ achilles’ heel, as her attempts to get better at it are bad and she still remains pretty annoying.

Still, overall this was a very good volume for the 5-6 people still buying this series, and if anything else we got to see Isumi performing feats even an olympic gymnast might have trouble with.

Suspension: Kubitsuri High School – The Nonsense User’s Disciple

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By NISIOISIN, illustrations by take. Released in Japan as “Kubitsuri Hai Sukūru: Zaregoto Tsukai no Deshi” by Kodansha. Released in North America by Vertical, Inc. Translated by Daniel Joseph.

(This review was based on a copy provided by the publisher.)

It’s been a long time coming, my friends. We got the first two books of Zaregoto back in the Del Rey days, and they did not sell well at all. But Nisio’s reputation grew, and the Monogatari novels did better, and then Zaregoto got an anime, not to mention the constant fan begging on Twitter, and here we are: the third in the Zaregoto series, a mere nine years later. Was it worth the wait? I think so. It’s not as good as the second book, but that’s a very high bar to clear. More to the point, while it’s still invested in lampooning the mystery genre, Nisioisin is not as concerned with the intricacies of the Whodunnit anymore. Which is good, as it’s pretty obvious early on who the killer is. Instead we get what the Zaregoto series does best, which is a book that looks at what it means to be a normal human told through the story of people who aren’t remotely normal.

Ii-chan is abducted… erm, invited by Jun Aikawa to help her with an escape. There’s a certain girls’ academy that has a student that would like to leave it. And so Ii-chan dons a girls’ school uniform and goes to meet this girl, Ichihime Yukariki. Of course, things do not go quite as easy as that, as Ii-chan quickly finds that the school seems to be training up assassins. Needing to get rescued from the rescue by Jun, the three of them try holing up in the office of the Director, only to find that there’s no escaping a pile of corpses that keeps getting larger. In the meantime, Ii-chan continues to entertain the reader by being his usual self, deflecting, prevaricating, omitting, and outright lying most of the time. The question is, how is he going to deal with it when he runs into someone who’s a little bit like him? No, not Zerozaki, someone else.

This is a slim book, the shortest in the series (there was apparently a contest, which Nisio used as an excuse to add an extra book to his contracted amount), and it’s also far more action-filled than the previous two. Which is to be expected given that Jun plays a much larger role here. It’s also got a lot more corpses than the previous two, though to be fair most of those are offscreen. The reason to get the book, though, is the dialogue and conversations between Ii-chan and the cast. He still avoids saying his name, but does give a few hints to one of the students which might help narrow it down for those who might know Japanese and also be good at math. And Ichihime is also a fascinating new addition to the cast. I’m not sure if she’ll show up again, but I suspect that Ii-chan inviting her to live in the apartment complex he currently does is some fairly unsubtle foreshadowing. I also really liked the other two students we met here, but sadly this is the last we’re going to see of them, unless Nisioisin does something weird like write them into a prequel in his Zerozaki side series. Lastly, Jun calls Ii-chan out on being a mystery protagonist – like Jessica Fletcher, wherever he goes, murders follow.

This does not have the psychological fascination of the second book, as I said earlier. It’s a quick hit-and-run. But it’s still a really good read, and I certainly hope that it does well enough that we get the 4th and 5th books (a 2-parter) before 2029.