Anna N

Jmanga.com launched today, an online site that promises to deliver digital content from a variety of publishers. When I saw the site I was delighted to see that they were making some more obscure manga available, but as I investigated further I found myself a little disappointed by their payment model and pricing.

The site is organized by genre, making it easy to browse shonen, shoujo, seinen, and josei manga. The titles available range from manga already available in English (I spotted titles from Viz, Dark Horse, and CMX) to material that hasn’t been translated before. One of the things I was hoping for from Jmanga before it launched was that it would be a good source of josei manga titles. Unfortunately the josei selection is tilted heavily towards the boys love end of the spectrum, without featuring the office lady or paranormal romances I was wishing to read. The seinen section of the site seemed to have the most interesting possibilities for me as a reader. I was absolutely delighted to see that Jmanga had a translation of Ekiben Hitoritabi available. I’d heard about this manga featuring people riding trains and eating bento before, but I’d never expected to be able to read it. It was this title more than anything else that prompted me to sign up as a Jmanga user.

The pricing is one of the most problematic aspects of the site. Jmanga requires you to sign up for a $10 subscription, giving you 1000 points to buy manga with. Initial subscribers get a bonus of 500 points, but 1500 points doesn’t go very far on the site. As a monthly subscriber, you can purchase additional points when you’ve used up what you have. Individual chapters are as much as 290 points and single volumes are 899 points. This is problematic and I think not very sustainable pricing for digital comics. Emanga has single volumes for around $5, and so does the Viz iPad app. I tend to go for bargains when buying digital content. I’m perfectly happy to watch my k-dramas on streaming sites with commercials, without paying for a premium subscription. I tend to buy ebooks for the kindle when there’s a special sale. I buy digital comics through Comixology when they have items on sale. I buy manga on the Viz iPad app when it is discounted, but I do pay full digital price when I’m missing a volume. I would much rather have a “pay as you go” system on Jmanga.com. Being forced into a subscriber model annoys me. I also just do not enjoy reading manga on a web browser all that much, and view the iPad as an ideal method of reading digital comics. I hope an iPad version of Jmanga is going to be developed soon.

I ran through most of my 1500 points in an evening. This is what I read:

Ekiben Hitoritabi

This seinen manga will appeal to anyone who wants to feel like they’re taking a leisurely trip around Japan. Daisuke’s wife sends him on a slow train tour of Japan for an anniversary present. He loves the unique train station bentos he can get at each station that reflect the unique food culture of the area he’s traveling through. Daisuke is a genial guide to this aspect of Japan. He’s a large bearded man with a perpetual smile on his face. He meets a travel companion named Nana. She’s a journalist who is working on an article, and she enjoys eating almost as much as Daisuke does. There’s no real romance here, although Daisuke enjoys spending time exploring bento with Nana. Like many foodie manga, Ekiben Hitoritabi will make you want to eat. Each regional bento is lavishly illustrated, with diagrams pointing out all the different types of food packed into a small rectangular container.

Ekiben Hitoritabi is an exercise in notalgia as a slower, more rural Japan is showcased. Daisuke is riding in sleeper cars and slow trains, making stops along the way to visit hot springs or to buy the best locally made bento. No shinkansens here! Along the way we also get stories Daisuke tells of the unique models of trains he’s riding, local stories about how the railway was constructed, and illustrations of different types of engines. I have to admit, the bento descriptions appealed to me much more than the train history aspects of the manga.
The translation quality for the manga was fine, I didn’t notice any major typos or glitches other than the occasional odd turn of phrase. As with most foodie manga, the art excels in depicting food but Daisuke and Nana had much more fluid facial expressions than I was expecting, with Oishinbo as the main foodie manga I’ve read before. After reading this manga I know that one image will stick in my mind – Daisuke almost in tears hugging a prized bento to his face and Nana laughing at him. Ekiben Hitoritabi is the best type of foodie/travel manga because after reading it I really wanted to duplicate the type of trip Daisuke was on for myself. If you can endure the inevitable craving for bento and longing for Japanese scenery that Ekiben Hitoritabi will inspire, it is well worth the read.

My Sadistic Boyfriend

Switching to one of the few shoujo titles that looked interesting that hasn’t already come out in English, I decided to try out My Sadistic Boyfriend. This is a pretty typical shoujo title with attractive art that I think would appeal to fans of Miki Aihara. Chiaki enrolls in a prestigious school only to be told on the first day that she’s won a lottery and is going to be roommates with the “Prince” of the school, Katsuho. Does he immediatly start putting the moves on Chiaki? Does he have a Jeckyll and Hyde type personality? Is she bewildered yet strangely excited by his unwanted attentions? If you have to ask questions like these, you haven’t read a shoujo manga before! So there is not much new in My Sadistic Boyfriend, but it seems fine for what it is. I just liked the title.

The Larceny Log of Zampei the Cloud Snatcher

If you are a fan of Golgo 13’s Takao Saito, Jmanga is the site for you because it hosts a ton of his titles. The Larceny Log of Zampei the Cloud Snatcher is exactly what you’d expect from a Saito title set in historic Japan about the greatest womanizing thief ever. Zampei meets with a female client who wants him to steal a sword in a hot springs. Being a Saito hero, the details about the job and an incredible amount of exposition are spread over several pages while Zampei abruptly has sex with his client. I was truly amazed at the amount of backstory and details about the sword she wanted Zampei to steal the woman was able to convey considering the variety of positions she was contorted into. Even though Zampei is an awesome thief, he does have a fear of snakes which causes some complications when he goes out on the job. This title had by far the worst translation of the three titles I sampled. There were misspellings and word transpositions (faminine for feminine) that were really obvious.

The flash-based manga reader functioned ok, but sometimes lagged a bit when loading pages. I enjoyed the way I could toggle between English and Japanese in the reader. This seems like a potentially useful tool for Japanese language students.

After trying Jmanga out these are my hopes for the future:

• More variety available for shoujo and josei titles. I would also like to see authorized translations for some of the many orphan series we have that were left untranslated in the US. I would like to pay to read many of the unfinished series that were previously licensed by CMX.
• A better, more reasonable pricing scheme and subscription model. I signed up, but I’m not going to continue to subscribe for many months unless my points go further. They need to either lower prices or have some crazy sales for additional points in order to match what other manga companies are currently offering.
• Development of an iPad app

As a first try, there are aspects of Jmanga that are very promising. Being able to get series online from so many different publishers is certainly something to be excited about. I hope that in the next few months they work on some of the issues they had at the launch.

Fumi Yoshinaga is the topic of the Manga Moveable Feast for August. Ooku is by far her most artistically ambitious work, and while I enjoy and appreciate it very much, it doesn’t conjure up in me the same feelings of fondness as some of her other series like Antique Bakery and Flower of Life. Ooku’s more complex alternate history framework ensures that the series moves around telling different stories, without the leisurely time devoted to the slice of life character-based interaction that Yoshinaga excels at.

The sixth volume of Ooku focuses on the Shogun Tsunayoshi. Her unrealistic edicts of compassion for animals make her unpopular with her subjects, and she struggles with naming a successor. Even though she’s caught up in the machinery of government, it is the small human considerations that drive her decisions. Though her father is senile, she doesn’t want to name an heir who he opposes. After an assassination attempt, Tsunayoshi is strangely unmoved, not wanting to make an effort to live anymore. She finds brief comfort in the arms of Senior Chamberlin Emonnosuke. The tension between the official history of the shogunate and the events that actually happened is always present, as the third person narration hints at rumors the reader is shown to be true.

The second story in this volume introduces Sayko, a man so desperate to get away from his abusive mother that he clutches at the possibility of entering the service of the next Shogun Ienobu. He regards the Valet of the Chamber Akifusa as his savior, falling in love with her. One of the underlying themes of Ooku is the way power twists and changes normal human relationships. Akifusa has Sayko trained in all the gentlemanly arts of the samurai, and then tells him that she’s been grooming him for the role of the Shogun’s concubine. When Sakyo sees Ienobu sitting with her official consort, he thinks “These two people should have grown older in happy harmony, with nothing to come between them. Instead, because as Shogun she must produce an heir, her highness must lie with the likes of me…’Tis a wretched thing…”

The constraints posed on the characters by the structure of society and the office of the Shogun ensure that the best anyone can hope for is a moment of fleeting happiness. I put this volume down wondering if the most recent shogun Yoshimune will be able to enact some reforms after spending so much time learning about her predecessors.

Review copy provided by the publisher

Horror manga is generally not my thing. I do appreciate it when I stumble across it, but I’ve never felt the urge to collect all the volumes of a horror manga series. I am glad I tried out this volume of Scary Book, just because I haven’t read much Umezu before. This volume features two stories: “The Mirror” which shows what happens to a vain rich girl when the reflection she admires has a mind of her own and “The Demon of Vengeance” which has an almost inspiring story of revenge.

Emi lives in a mansion with an elaborate mirror. She loves standing in front of it, but as she grows older she starts to feel uneasy. She has a boyfriend, and is admired for her looks, but she’s old fashioned and affected in her mannerisms. When Emi’s boyfriend Mitsugu attempts to be physically affectionate with her she dumps him, then returns to her house where she keeps having horrible accidents, as if the mansion is trying to destroy her. Things get even worse when she has a dream about her reflection coming out of the mirror to strangle her only to wake up to see that her evil doppleganger is loose in the world, systematically destroying Emi’s life. The premise of an evil mirror twin might seem simple, but I was impressed by the way Umezu wrung every opportunity for psychological humiliation out of this story. Emi finds herself dating the class nerd, she fails at school for writing backwards, Mirror Emi takes her place with her family, and Emi finds herself wandering around town in shabby clothes only to find that no one is capable of recognizing her as a rich beautiful girl anymore. Even though Emi isn’t a particularly likeable character, I did like seeing that she starts taking action against Mirror Emi as the story progresses, she isn’t content to see her life taken over by a supernatural entity. Umezu’s illustrations are effective in portraying the creeping sense of menace that pervades the story as Emi finds herself fearful of mirrors or any reflective surface. He relies on stark black and white contrast often, saving details for when he is focusing on extra horrifying images, like Mirror Emi’s expressions of hatred.

“The Demon of Vengeance” is the story of a vassal who finds his life destroyed and manages to live in order to inflict the most horrible revenge on the lord who betrayed him, even when you might think that it might be physically impossible for him to do anything. I won’t say much because I don’t want to give anything away, but there were some moments in this story that were almost hilariously over the top in their deception of righteous anger. One of the things that is fun about Umezu is that people are fully committed to their emotions. No one is mildly afraid or angry, they are more scared than anyone ever has or ever will be again! Scary Book was a pleasant change of pace from my usual manga reading.

Oresama Teacher is rapidly becoming one of my favorite shojo series due to the fact that it isn’t like most of the other manga in the Shojo Beat imprint. Instead of exploring teen romance, this manga focuses on dumb comedy. Even though many of the characters are idiots, they are also endearing because their idiocy stems from personality quirks that also make them strong. Mafuyu is going away for high school in an attempt to put her juvenile delinquent past behind her, but she finds out that her teacher Takaomi is her long-lost neighbor who trained her in all of her fighting techniques.

In the third volume of Oresama Teacher, Mafuyu goes home to visit her old gang. She’s curious to see how they’re doing without her leadership, and she misses her friends. Mafuyu gets caught up in her old school rivalries and winds up kidnapped with her two former sidekicks, the enthusiastic Kanagawa and the masochistic Maizono. There is nothing that better expresses the differences between Oresama Teacher and more typical shoujo manga than a great scene of Mafuyu lecturing her former lackeys about the proper way to position one’s hands when being tied up by kidnappers. She gives a full on mini-tutorial about techniques to escape binding, then realizes that her instructions are useless because the boys are already tied up. She breaks the boys out, only to be pushed aside as they face their confrontation with their rivals. Mafuyu wonders about the nature of their friendship, only to realize that everyone’s acting unconcerned about her help because they need to stand up for themselves on their own. This was actually a cute message, delivered with a light touch along with Mafuyu’s humorous MacGyver-like fighting techniques.

One of the reasons why I like Oresama Teacher so much is that there isn’t very much conventional romance in it. Mafuyu may be a hardened juvenile delinquent, but she has very little idea what to do about the opposite sex, other than registering that she may have confusing feelings for someone before she moves on to give an enemy a well-deserved beatdown. The fourth volume of the manga brings back Mafuyu’s gender swapped disguise as Natsuo when Takaomi announces that the Public Morals Club has to fight the Yojimbo club. Mafuyu is worried about Hayasaka’s fighting abilities. He’s good at fighting but is so single-focused that he lets himself get hurt. As Natsuo, Mafuyu tries to teach Hayasaka how to dodge and block and think more strategically in a fight. Hayasaka doesn’t seem to be clued in that Natsuo and Mafuyu are never in the same place at the same time, and look alarmingly similar.

One of my favorite moments in this volume was the depictions of torturous mental calculations Mafuyu does about Hayasaka’s fighting abilities while she’s thinking in class. She stares at him intently, throws her head down, bangs on her desk, mopes, and then indulges in an evil smirk when she hits on her training plan. Hayasaka looks mystified and then both confused and alarmed.

Both volumes end with a Mafuyu/Takaomi story. In one, she’s forced to stay over at his place when she accidentally gives her house key to the school’s bancho. In another, they go to the beach with complications as Mafuyu doesn’t even remember that she can’t swim until she’s floating on a swim toy in deep water. While the prospect of a student/teacher relationship isn’t a plot point that comes up very often in the manga that gets translated here, it is hard to picture anything happening with Mafuyu and Takaomi at this point in the series. Takaomi is so manipulative and evil, yet weirdly protective when it comes to Mafuyu actually suffering any harm.

I enjoy Oresama Teacher a lot more than other shoujo humor titles. There’s something about the juxtaposition of all the dumb, character based humor and violent fights that just has me much more invested in wanting to know what will happen to the characters even after four volumes.

Review copies provided by the publisher.

All titles available on emanga.com.

Married by Mistake by Takako Hashimoto and Renee Roszel Wilson

I didn’t realize when I started this that it is a further book in a series with a harlequin manga I read earlier, To Marry a Stranger. In this book, the heroine of To Marry a Stranger has been impregnated by her husband with an eye patch. Helen starts having contractions near the infamous “Mansion of Love” so of course she and her sister Lucy are stuck with having to deal with a sudden home birth in the romantically cursed house. Lucy manages to assist her sister with having twins in the space of a panel. Let me tell you, I’ve had twins and it doesn’t happen that quickly! Lucy is exhausted after assisting her sister and thinks back about her fiance Stader, who kept postponing their marriage. This Stadler guy is no prize as in Lucy’s memory he appears with wavy hair and an odd sort of cravat. Do not trust a man wearing a cravat unless you live in the early 19th century, ladies. Lucy is woken by Jack, a man with intense eyebrows and a decent suit who is wearing a tie instead of a cravat. This looks promising.

Lucy mentions the legend that if a woman spends the night of her birthday at the mansion of love, the first man she sees the next day will be her destined love. It is the day after her birthday, and Jack looks both befuddled and horrified. He’s Lucy’s ex-stepbrother and he has loved her for a long time. It turns out that Lucy’s horrible cravat-wearing fiance has decided to get engaged to an actress and travel to Lucy’s hometown in a fit of cravat-inspired cruelty. Lucy’s family promptly decides that Lucy has to pretend to have a fiance for revenge and Jack is just the person for the job. The art in this adaptation is really much better than the typical Harlequin manga title. The backgrounds might be sparse, but the character designs are distinct and attractive. What I found most amusing was the wacky facial expressions of Lucy’s family as they cheer on her fake romance. I was especially amused by the antics of Lucy’s one-eyed brother-in-law Damian who was the tortured hero in To Marry a Stranger, as he keeps popping up in chibi form with a big grin to cheer on his sister-in-law. In conclusion, men with cravats are bad, but men with eye patches or suits are good. This is what I’m taking away from this Harlequin manga.

Caribbean Desire by Cathy Williams and Takane Yonetani

The cover for this looks good, because it appears that there are wind machines blowing the male and female leads’ hair in opposite directions. Unfortunately the inside of this manga doesn’t feature the goofy fun I tend to prefer in my Harlequin manga adaptations. Emma arrives on an island to interview the rich businessman Alastair for his biography. She develops an intense dislike for the Conrad, the man currently running Alastair’s company. Emma has a secret connection with Alastair’s family, but will she reveal her secret before it is too late? And what will she do with her growing attraction to Conrad? The storyline was as predictable as Harlequins usually are, but there wasn’t really any humor to lighten things up. The art and adaptation were pretty typical, with stiffly posed characters and sketchy backgrounds. This wasn’t a good title to read right after Married by Mistake!, because it really suffered in comparison.

Marriage Wanted by Debbie Macomber and Eve Takigawa

Savanna is a wedding coordinator with an injured leg. Dash is a divorce attorney who has given up on love. Together they find love through a marriage of convenience, as one always does in Harlequin romance world. I tend to enjoy Harlequin manga very much when the art has a vaguely 1980s aesthetic. Even though this adaptation was produced in 2005, I still see a bit of a retro feel to the art with Dash’s square jaw and Emma’s bright eyes. Savanna is convinced the she’ll never find love because her limp makes her unattractive to men. Dash comes into Savanna’s store and proceeds to lecture her about the meaninglessness of weddings when he finds out that she’s planning his little sister’s wedding. Dash and Savannah spend more time with each other and decide to enter into a marriage of convenience when he needs a wife to get a promotion and she needs a husband to get her parents to stop being so overprotective. There wasn’t much humor in this title, but the art was better than average and it was fun seeing Dash and Savanna argue with each other over the value of marriage.

Access to electronic copies provided by the publisher.

Black Blizzard by Yoshihiro Tatsumi

I haven’t read Tatsumi’s critically acclaimed The Push Man or A Drifting Life, so I’m probably starting at the wrong place by reading the earlier Black Blizzard. This manga has a pulpy appeal and when you consider that it was produced in the 1950s when the author was 21, it is pretty amazing.

Black Blizzard opens with a piano player frantically practicing. His fingers are jittery and drops of sweat are flying off him. A man in a fedora and trenchcoat enters the room. The piano player is expecting him. He collapses on the piano, saying “I killed someone, but it can’t be…it can’t be true!” The story picks up again with a train moving through a desolate winter landscape. The piano player is now handcuffed to a hardened criminal. There’s a crash, and the criminal takes the opportunity to escape, dragging the hapless musician along with him. They move through a blizzard trying to evade capture and take refuge in a desolate cabin together. The criminal is keen on sawing the musician’s hand off so the duo can separate, but the piano player objects. He starts telling the sad story of how he wound up handcuffed to a murderer, beginning with his involvement with a circus girl with a lovely voice. The escaped prisoners grow more frantic to detach from each other, leading to a surprising bargain and a plot twist that requires a healthy tolerance for contrived endings.

Tatsumi’s art style is sparse and dynamic. The characters are rendered with just a few effective lines for their facial expressions. The blizzard is depicted with slashing diagonal lines, making it easy to picture the horrible winds that buffet the escaped prisoners. Tatsumi relies on some straightforward square and rectangular grids but he varies his perspective often for effect – focusing on a face, a broken glass, and the snow building up on a deserted building. The production by Drawn and Quarterly plays up Black Blizzard’s pulpy heritage. The pages are tipped in yellow, and the jacket copy imitates the text you’d see on an old noir paperback. This manga is flipped, which I adjusted to ok. What I found distracting was the way the sound effects were handled. In some places the sound effects are left in the Japanese, with a note providing translation but on most pages the sound effects are translated. The original sound effects just looked so much more stylish on the page even though the translated effects mimicked the same style.

This wintery crime manga was a perfect thing to read on a hot summer night. The ending of the manga wrapped up things a bit too nicely, but I put the book down amazed that this was the work of such a young creator. There’s an interesting interview with Tatsumi in the back of the book that provides some background on the creation of the book. It was interesting to hear that single volume manga like Black Blizzard was produced for the rental book market in 1950s Japan.

Moon and Blood Volume 1 by Nao Yazawa

Despite the general cultural mania for vampires that has overrun popular culture recently, I still enjoy a good vampire manga. Moon and Blood by Nao Yazawa seems like a slight format experiment from Digital Manga Publishing. The online and print versions of this volume are around half the size and price of a typical manga. As a result, this volume just feels like the very start of the story, with all the characters and conflicts established but not elaborated on.

Sayaka is a normal cheerful teenage girl who is coping with everyday life after the loss of her mother. She fends off the advances of boy next door Takeshi and deals with her father and brothers. One morning when she’s getting ready for school she comes downstairs to find a handsome boy sitting with her family. Her father makes the announcement that Kai is the son of an old family friend and he’s going to be living with them for awhile. Sayaka immediately starts building up scenarios of romance in her head, but when she gets to school she finds that Kai seems very disaffected and sleepy. He naps through math class, but when the teacher calls on him to demonstrate a problem Kai has no difficulties at all. When the other boys tease him during PE, he manages a slightly hungover slam dunk. Kai takes refuge in a school closet and sleeps the day away. At home, Sayaka gets a glimpse of a possibly kinder boy as he helps her with cooking and goes on moonlit walks with her. Kai tells Sayaka not to get too close to him, because they are opposite types of people. Kai is a vampire, and his vampire mother is a young girl who sometimes has the form of a cat. She enjoys feeding on Sayaka’s male relatives, and wonders why Kai isn’t taking advantage of his closeness to the girl. There’s an undercurrent of melancholy romantic tension in the way Sayaka and Kai deal with each other, and while she thinks he’s odd she doesn’t seem to suspect his true nature yet.

Yazawa has the type of deceptively simple but expressive art style that I enjoy. Takeshi is like an energetic puppy dog bouncing around Sayaka. Sayaka exhibits all the mood swings of a typical teenage girl, but she exhibits genuine concern and caring when she thinks Kai is lonely. Kai’s otherworldly nature is signaled by his more angular eyebrows and slightly smaller pupils eyes. Kai isn’t above goading Takeshi when he can, but it seems like his attempts to distance himself from Sayaka aren’t going to work. Moon and Blood seems like a good choice for people wanting a simple paranormal shoujo romance without all the overblown angst of Vampire Knight

Access to electronic copy provided by the publisher.

I’m a big fan of Julietta Suzuki. I hosted the Manga Moveable Feast for Karikuri Odette, so it isn’t a surprise that I’m finding her latest series Kamisama Kiss absolutely delightful. In some ways Karakuri Odette, with its android protagonist and the way it explored romance without leading to a typical shoujo manga conclusion, was an anti-shoujo shoujo manga. Kamisama Kiss is a little more typical as Nanami, the human girl turned shrine goddess struggles with her feelings towards her shrine’s protector, the fox spirit Tomoe. While the storyline may be a bit more expected, Suzuki seems to be stretching her artistic skills a little bit more in this series. The characters are cute, with a bit of an edge. The opportunities to portray spirits attached to different types of landscapes allows for some refreshing character designs from Suzuki.

The third volume shows Nanami struggling with the realization of her feelings for Tomoe. They have to go on a visit to see swamp goddess Himeneko, but Nanami opts to attend in her school uniform instead of taking fashion advice from Tomoe. Himeneko’s underwater palace is bright and luxurious, with fish swimming by as Nanami admires the decor. Three bitchy carp princesses immediately attach themselves to Tomoe, while Himeneko takes Nanami aside for a bit of a makeover. Tomoe tells Nanami that she’s beautiful and she’s overcome with emotion. He keeps vowing to never fall in love with a human, so Nanami continues to suffer. A rival for Nanami soon appears when she gets rid of a white snake at her shrine. It leaves a mark around her wrist which is the equivalent of a snake engagement ring. Mizuki is a lonely snake spirit, and he’s selected Nanami as his new companion. There’s a hilarious story later in this volume, as Tomoe uses his powers of disguise to attend school as Nanami when she’s back at the shrine nursing a cold. Tomoe-Nanami has some interesting encounters with Nanami’s school friends, and Nanami’s hair starts whipping around almost like tentacles when Tomoe’s temper accidentally shows through his disguise.

Nanami continues to struggle with her feelings for Tomoe in somewhat superficial ways, testing his devotion to her and trying to get him to go out on a date with her. But when she asks Tomoe to go into the sea even when it is forbidden to him in order to rescue one of her friends, she starts displaying her feelings for him in a very substantial way. When Tomoe enters the sea he alerts a vengeful god who he tangled with years ago. The sea god promptly kidnaps Tomoe as payment for past wrongdoings, but agrees to a bargain with Nanami. If she can find the eye that Tomoe stole from him long ago, he will restore Tomoe to her. Mizuki the snake comes along on Nanami’s quest and she shows how far she’s willing to go to protect Tomoe. It seems like Mizuki is going to be sticking around for some time, so I’ll be looking forward to Tomoe’s reaction to that in the next volume.

The textiles of the yokai outfits and the undersea backgrounds in this volume were very detailed. When combined with Suzuki’s charming knack of rendering her facial expressions just exaggerated enough for humor but still realistic enough to inspire sympathy from the reader, Kamisama Kiss provides great summer escape reading.

Review copy of volume 4 provided by the publisher.

It was a happy day in my house when I realized I had two volumes of Story of Saiunkoku stacked up to read. This manga featuring a heroine who is dedicated to her dream of becoming a civil servant and the quirky men who surround her is one of my favorite current series. I’ve seen a bit of the anime adaptation of this series, so these early volumes have a feeling of pleasant nostalgia as I see characters I’m already familiar with in manga form.

As the third volume opens Shurei has left her position as royal consort and is back to her old life with her family, worrying about repairing her house and studying again for the civil service exam that she’s unable to take because she’s a woman. The emperor Ryuki sends her letters signed “Lord Anonymous” every day, along with ridiculous presents like buckets of flowers, a giant block of ice, and far too many hard boiled eggs. It is summer, the season when Shurei’s mother died. Shurei doesn’t respond to the Emperor’s overtures, thinking “If I get too worked up I’ll just overheat myself in this weather. It’s a waste of energy and of sweat…which means a waste of household resources!” Shurei stumbles across a scruffy bearded man who has collapsed near her house. She invites him inside for a meal, and when he exhibits superior staff-fighting skills when subduing an errant chicken, Seiran recognizes him as a man named Ensei. Ensei and Seiran have the type of bickering relationship that I think is only exhibited by people who’ve been through a war together. Ensei decides to stick around for awhile. Shurei gets a taste of the civil servant’s life when she’s given the opportunity to work for the Minister of the Treasury in the Outer Palace. She has to masquerade as a boy, but she’s delighted to be given the opportunity to work even if it is only temporary.

Shurei’s new boss is the incredibly strict Minister Ko, who always wears an elaborate mask whenever he is in the presence of other people. Ryuki continues to be an intriguing mixture of innocence and cleverness. While he’s imagining the horror of Shurei marrying Seiran, he is actually working hard to change the laws in his country that limit Shurei’s opportunities. His enthusiasm might derail the entire process. Shurei struggles through the summer month, dealing with her fears of thunderstorms that trigger memories of the day her mother died. Ensei’s lighthearted personality goes a long way in making sure she doesn’t get too depressed. One of the reasons why I like this series so much is that even though it might sound like a typical reverse harem scenario, Story of Saiunkoku has so much depth. The idea of romance is a burden more than anything else to Shurei, because she’s so focused on achieving her goals. While she’s surrounded by cute men who want to support her, they all have their own concerns as well as their own friendships to deal with.

There’s some intrigue and action as Ensei’s true identity is revealed. Ensei and Shurei take refuge from bandits in the house of a nobleman who is almost distractingly beautiful. They are aiding a pair of Sa bandit children who attempted to rob the treasury earlier. Their mysterious benefactor doesn’t seem to mind being invaded by sudden house guests, and Shurei notices that his hair and mannerisms seem a little familiar. Ryuki shows up at Shurei’s house for a “Midnight Tryst” only to find out that she’s gone somewhere with the mysterious Ensei. Ryuki, Seiran, Koyu, and Shuei decide to crash the party too, since Ensei is still being targeted for attack.

I like that there are so many side stories that aren’t centered on the heroine. We get a glimpse of the possibility of romance for Shurei’s father as he spends time talking to a noblewoman who is willing to drink his horrible tea in order to converse with him. The relationship between Shurei’s uncle and Minister Ko has hints of a long shared past, and Ensei undergoes a transformation that isn’t only confined to his physical appearance when he shaves off his beard and decides to start applying himself to his work. Even Shurei’s opportunity to take the civil service exam isn’t only for her, as Koyu informs her that she has to pass with extremely high marks in order to be an example that will help other women follow in her footsteps. One of the things I like about the adaptation is the way so many of the characters have a distinctive way of speaking. Ryuki’s speech is the most formal, as you would expect from his position as emperor. The ragamuffin Sa bandit children speak in grand excited tones, as though their actions and thoughts are the most important and dramatic things in the world.

These volumes were very satisfying, and I’m looking forward to reading more. This is the type of series that I know I’ll keep on my shelves for a long time because I know I’ll enjoy reading it.

Review copy of Volume 4 provided by the publisher.

I think this is the first title I’ve tried from Seven Seas. Toradora is a cute but not very original shonen romantic comedy manga adapted from a light novel series. Ryuuji is a marshmallow on the inside, but he constantly seems to be glaring as his natural expression. As a result, his classmates all fear him as a fearsome juvenile delinquent. Ryuuji starts school making a horrible impression on his classmates yet again, although he has one male friend named Kitimura. Ryuuji also has a hopeless crush on one of the girls at school, a cute and outgoing girl named Minori. As with most protagonists who want a “normal high school life” Ryuuji’s dreams are shattered when he meets the “Palmtop Tiger,” a tiny, insane, ill-tempered girl named Taiga.
While the students quail in fear about the prospect of being glared at by Ryuuji, they dive out of the way to avoid encountering Taiga. An accidental encounter turns into a confrontation when Ryuuji discovers that Taiga accidentally let a love letter for Kitimura in his backpack. Taiga’s response to this accident is to break into Ryuuji’s apartment in the middle of the night and attack him with a wooden sword.

The unlikely duo agree to team up to help each other target their objects of affection. But Ryuuji’s plans to bring him closer to Minori and Taiga closer to Kitimura always seem to end in disaster. There’s plenty of slapstick action and exaggerated emotions in this manga. While the situation and plot in the manga is fairly typical, Ryuuji’s interior live and motivations are well-portrayed, probably because this was adapted from a novel. The art is well done, but not distinctive. It was a little odd but not unexpected in a shonen comedy that Ryuuji’s mother (who works as a bar hostess) seems to spend most of her time lounging around her house in lingerie. Overall, Toradora is a solid entry in the shonen comedy genre. Toradora is the type of manga I’d be happy to check out of the library, but it isn’t likely to make it into my regular reading rotation, especially when there’s genuinely absurd shoujo comedy like Oresama Teacher currently being published.

I will concede that there are many shoujo series out there that are better executed than Library Wars, but I will always love this manga because I am a librarian and this manga is about paramilitary librarians falling in love. While some of the plot contrivances in Library Wars are a bit on the thin side, it still functions wonderfully for me as a cute fluffy read. The main story in this volume centers around the enigmatic Komaki and a young deaf girl who he picks out library books for. Komaki might be deluding himself that he’s only performing reader’s advisory services for an old family friend, but as Marie grows up she falls in love with him. Their relationship is totally innocent, but this doesn’t stop the Media Betterment Committee from making false accusations, kidnapping Komaki, and tying him up and torturing him. Because that’s what happens if you are accused of making insensitive book recommendations. With the eyes of a young girl in love herself, Iku clearly sees that Marie cares for Komaki and takes her along on a rescue mission, even though Dojo objects.

I do wish that Dojo would stop slapping Iku whenever she’s trying to strike out on her own to do her job. He usually does this just before she’s supposed to rush into danger, but it suggests an unhealthy relationship dynamic, which I don’t think the author is going for. Aside from foiling the Media Betterment Committee and dodging her parents, Iku does have a great moment where she gets a surprise makeover as part of her guard duty at a literary event and Dojo spends most of his time fending off other men. So nothing earth shattering in volume 5, this installment is pretty much exactly what the previous volumes delivered but it is good enough for me. I was amused that when Dojo was chiding Iku about her reference duties, he called it “referencing,” which I thought was a bizarre but charming way of referring to the classic reference interview.

I love the cover for this volume! Most of the previous volumes had daytime scenes, so it seemed like a nice change to feature the characters against a night time backdrop. I’m a little concerned about Kaze Hikaru. I’d been behind on this manga but then decided to read a good chunk of the most recent volumes. I hadn’t realized that there was a year between volumes 18 and 19. Now there are 28 or so volumes out in Japan and the series is still ongoing, and I’m wondering if we really will get the complete series out here. Kaze Hikaru isn’t a manga that clobbers the reader over the head with tortured vampire bishonen but it is exceedingly well-crafted, with plenty of historic charm and angsty cross-dressing.

As always, Kaze Hikaru blends historic details with the drama provided by the slowly developing relationship between Sei, disguised as a boy to enter the Shinsengumi and her mentor Okita who knows her true identity. This volume was a little more heavy on the historic politics front, as it detailed some of the maneuvering from the arrival of foreign ships outside Japan. Sei is on a mission to locate a mysterious geisha Captain Kondo fell for, as he is overcome with illness. Sei’s girlish good looks become a problem for her mission, as she heads into a confrontation with a man named Ukinosuke who appears to be a dissolute drunkard. Okita arrives just in time to help out, and Kondo is able to finally meet the woman he fell in love with. Ukinosuke is revealed to be an alias for a very important man, and Kondo’s devotion to his duty ends up influencing a critical decision from the shogun. Sei ends up comforting and supporting Okita for a change, when he thinks he’s been put aside by the captain. The volume concludes with a delightful stand-alone story where Sei and Okita confront the bad reputation of the Shinsengumi and meet a pioneer of photography in Japan.

I’m always amazed at how much story Watanabe is able to pack into one volume and the fact that even though the relationship between Sei and Okita is progressing at such a slow pace, I don’t feel impatient about the idea of the story of Kaze Hikaru needing to resolve anytime soon. I think I’ll start to get impatient if I have to wait a year for volume 20 though!

Review copy of Kaze Hikaru provided by the publisher.

Arata Volume 5 I think I’m really hampered from fully enjoying this series due to my familiarity with Watase’s other works. Modern Japanese Arata still is putting together the pieces of his quest in a fantasy world with an imperiled princess, while the Arata he switched places with is back in Japan navigating the difficulties of modern school life. Watase does do quest storylines very well, but there’s not much new here to someone that’s already read the piece/people collecting narratives of Fushigi Yugi and Fushigi Yugi: Genbu Kaiden. I continue to me more interested in the other Arata’s adventures in Japan, and in this volume he gets an unexpected ally when a classmate sees through his disguise. What disappointed me was the plot twist at the end, which seemed so reminiscent of the whole Miaka/Yui dynamic in Fushigi Yugi that it didn’t carry much suspense or dramatic tension for me.

Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan Volume 3

Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan continues with its well-executed story of a boy who happens to be the heir to a clan of demons. Nura confronts the rebellious Guyki, and comes up with some clever maneuvering with clan politics when his grandfather announces his intention to make Nura his formal heir. Nura’s classmate Kana is menaced by yokai, and when Nura’s older and stronger form comes to her rescue a little bit of a Lois Lane/Clark Kent dynamic develops when Kana suspects that her classmate and the powerful yokai boss might be connected. The volume wrapped up with a story where Nura’s grandfather meets the powerful exorcist Yura, who attempts to defend the old man she assumes is human from a yokai assassination attempt. There’s plenty of action in this manga, which is enlivened by all the off-kilter character designs used for the yokai. I think this is one of the more solid recent shonen manga series from Viz.

Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac #27

My favorite of this recent batch of shonen manga was by far Knights of the Zodiac. I don’t collect every volume, but I’m always happy to read it when I come across one. The over the top manly shouting and endless battles between gods ensures that it isn’t too hard to just pick up a ransom volume and enjoy it, without worry too much about the ongoing storylines. Basically I read Knights of the Zodiac for two things: crazy battle shouts and ridiculous moments of insanity. The Bronze Knights are about to battle the henchmen of Hades, but there are horrible complications that might prevent them from being effective in battle. Awesome battle cries were in evidence from the first few pages as Dragon fights a trio with their “Grand Axe Crusher!, Blood Flower Scissors!, and Annihilation Flap!” No! Not the Flap! The craziest image in this manga occurred when Thantos was describing to Seiya how he trapped Athena in a vampiric urn, which slowly turns red as it absorbs all of her blood, thus killing her. Athena is shown sleeping with her head sticking out of an urn, tendrils of hair spread out everywhere. Phoenix shows up, as does Seiya’s long-lost sister. Everybody is gearing up for the final battle in the next volume, which I am going to have to get. I certainly hope Athena manages to escape from her vampiric pottery prison.

Review copies of Arata and Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan provided by the publisher.

The manga moveable feast for this month is Wild Adapter. I’m not able to participate fully, because I only read the first two volumes of that series a long time ago. I didn’t follow through with collecting Wild Adapter because I was much more taken by Minekura’s other series, Saiyuki. I’ve read most of the first series and have collected a decent chunk of Saiyuki: Reload, but I haven’t read Reload yet. This Manga Moveable Feast is a good excuse to go back and remind myself why I liked Saiyuki so much in the first place. Hopefully I’ll be able to make a second pass through this series over the summer and finally read most of Reload.

Minekura’s Saiyuki is very loosely based on the classic Chinese tale Journey to the West. Saiyuki’s quartet of womanizing and drinking heroes set off on a journey to prevent the escape of a great and destructive Yokai who was sealed away centuries ago. The land they journey through is Shangri-La, an uneasy mixture of Heaven and Earth, populated by both humans and yokai. Many of the yokai have started to turn on humans and the great priest Genjo Sanzo is charged with preserving Shangri-La. With him are yokai companions, the powerful and irrepressible Monkey Kin Son Goku, the womanizing half-breed Sha Gojyo, and the enigmatic Cho Hakkai. The bickering relationship between the characters makes their quest sometimes seem like a very strange episode from one of the National Lampoon Vacation movies, if it was cast with a boy band who makes frequent stops to murder insane demons.

When rereading the first few volumes of this series I was struck by how well Minekura paces her story. It starts out quickly with the quartet heading out on their quest and quickly getting into trouble. In between the fights are stories that showcase the individual characters and giving the reader insights as to why their combative friendship works. They see how distrusting humans are of yokai. Sha Gojyo shows an uncommon degree of gentleness to a woman who is pining for her lost yokai lover. Son Goku seems to spend most of his time getting into trouble and obsessing over food, but he’s devoted to Sanzo and is likely to be the most powerful of the group if he was ever unleashed. Cho Hakkai’s smiling and calm exterior hides a tragic past. Sanzo resolutely maintains his cynical exterior.

As the character’s personalities become more defined, it is also fun to see the world they navigate through on their quest. Minekura blends fantasy elements with modern anachronisms. Cho Hakkai’s dragon transforms into a Jeep that the characters drive through the landscape of Shangri-La. The heroes are chain-smoking beer drinkers who love gambling. When other monks encounter Sanzo they are horrified by his dissolute habits, but he’s able to put down rogue yokai with his awesome sutra chanting or his gun. With a cast of bickering cuties with tortured casts and Minekura’s growing habit of drawing her men in random pin-up poses, it is easy to see why Saiyuki developed a huge female following. I’m not even sure if this manga ever actually ended, because it seems to spawn any number of sequel and prequel series. But the point of Saiyuki is the journey, not the destination. I think I liked it just as much when rereading these volumes that I last read several years ago.

Tenjo Tenge is infamous as the manga that caused anguished otakus to rage at CMX for the censored edition that was put out during the earlier days of its publishing history. I’m wondering what the economic impact would be if everybody that complained about the CMX editions were to pick up this new Viz edition of the series. I generally am not a big fan of fighting manga where female nakedness is as much of a story element as the battles, but I have an inexplicable fondness for Oh!great. He did pick as a pen name a moniker that wouldn’t be out of place in the discussions of pseudonyms in Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga. It takes a certain kind of moxie to design a pen name for yourself that incorporates an exclamation point in it. I read and enjoyed the first few volumes of Air Gear. Air Gear had plenty of great action scenes, and I enjoyed the visuals and over the top idea of rival gangs fighting it out on flying roller blades. I hadn’t read the CMX version of Tenjo Tenge, so I was curious to see what this earlier Oh!great series would be like in the uncensored edition.

Complaining about misogyny in an Oh!Great series is a bit like protesting all the skulls used to decorate female private parts in Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose or the spinelessness exhibited by Miki Aihara heroines. Certain things just go with the territory for series like this, and there are plenty of illustrations of large bosomed girls busting out of their clothes in fights, a bizarre rape, and a weird habit of staging scenes in women’s bathrooms. Todo High appears to be a school that exists mainly as a staging ground for fights, because there are never any scenes of students actually attending class. New kids Bob and Soichiro arrive and announce that they’re going to be number one, but the members of the Juken fight club think differently. Maya Natsume spends most of her time in the form of a small child, but she transforms into a robust teenage girl when she wants to take down an opponent. Aya Natsume has untapped hidden power and an unfortunate habit of falling madly in love with the first boy (Soichiro) to fall on top of her when she’s taking a shower. Masataka Takayanagi is a skilled martial artist who spends most of his time mooning over Aya. Bob and Soichiro join the Juken Club, and the Juken club has to fight the evil Executive Council. So the fighting begins!

It is probably unfair to compare a later series with an earlier work from the artist, but I did like what little I read of Air Gear more than the first couple volumes of Tenjo Tenge. In the first few volumes at least, Air Gear had less frequent nudity, better proportioned female character drawings, and much more innovative action scenes. I hadn’t read far enough into Air Gear to encounter the time one of the characters is basically dressed in string while wearing a paper bag over her head, so I understand plenty of that stuff happens in that series but it seemed to be toned down a bit at first. One of the things that annoyed me a little bit about Tenjo Tenge is that the female characters often are drawn as if they have shrunken heads on much larger bodies. I understand a certain amount of exaggeration is going to happen in a title like this, but it gets a little ridiculous if one person’s boob is three times the size of their head. I did find Tenjo Tenge’s absolute commitment to endless fighting in school to be somewhat amusing. There are a few interruptions like when someone watches porn, a minor character explains how her rape wasn’t a rape using incredibly bizarre logic, or a bowling trip goes wrong, but mostly there’s an endless parade of fights or people training to get better at fighting. For people who like plenty of action scenes in their fighting manga, Tenjo Tenge certainly delivers. The girls fight just as much as the boys, with Maya being particularly deadly.

It wasn’t until the end of this volume that I started having a bit more fun reading Tenjo Tenje. I always enjoy it when martial arts techniques like “Linking Heavenly Iron Blossom Strike!!” are incorporated into the action, but this happened far too infrequently. The endless parade of panty shots seems to be there more to distract from the lack of compelling storyline or more stylish fights. There seemed to be more exuberance on display in Air Gear, so I’m sure that as this series goes along the art improves. While I read Tenjo Tenge and concluded that it isn’t for me, I do think that the Tenjo Tenge fans who were put off by the CMX editions will like this edition. The series get the full Viz Signature treatment with an oversized edition and color pages.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Only in shoujo manga would you find yourself rooting for the romance between a peppy orphaned high school girl and an emotionally damaged ex-hacker turned school custodian. When this series first started I was hoping that the industrial espionage aspects would be more fully explored. As this series settles down for the long haul, it is clear that the mystery behind the death of Teru’s brother and the secret he left behind is really going to be used as more of a background element to either bring Teru and Kurosaki closer together or further complicate their relationship. I don’t mind the lack of industrial espionage at the forefront of the series, because I’ve come to care about the characters. Plus, wishy washy industrial espionage is a little more compelling than school club activities, evil student councils, sudden sibling scenarios or any of the other slightly shopworn plots used in much shoujo manga nowadays.

Dengeki Daisy Volume 4

The third volume ended with a plot development that had the potential to move things along nicely. Teru discovered that Kurosaki has been acting as her mysterious guardian and best friend via cell phone Daisy. As the fourth volume opens, she’s struggling with the fact that she knows Kurosaki’s secret but isn’t sure if she should admit it to him. She’s afraid of how their relationship might change if everything is out in the open. Teru is acting uncharacteristically awkward around Kurosaki and struggles to keep her usual tone when texting Daisy. Eventually they work through their issues, helped out by the memory of Teru’s brother and the revelation of the violent reason behind Daisy’s nickname. The comedic relief in this volume comes in the introduction of the school director. Ando was also linked to Teru’s brother, and he seems to spend most of his time skulking in odd corners, so the students start thinking that the school is haunted. It is interesting that at least three positions at the school are populated by people with a connection to Teru’s brother. Someone starts posing as Daisy in a cell phone hacking attempt, and Teru’s school life grows even more complicated.

Dengeki Daisy Volume 5

The shadowy menace gets emphasized in this volume as Kurosaki gets injured protecting Teru. Her other protectors kick into high gear. It is clear that Kurosaki knows that Teru knows that he’s Daisy, but she doesn’t know that he knows that she knows. So complicated! Kurosaki’s guilt may prevent him from ever having a relationship with Teru, and she seems to want things to remain as they are so she can just enjoy spending whatever time she can with him. Events from previous volumes are brought up again as Arai, the former student council advisor is investigated for possibly being the source of the fake Daisy scheme and the attacks on Teru. Teru struggles with what to do to help solve the situation and Kurosaki has one of his scary but cool moments when he targets the manipulative Miss Mori. Kurosaki’s glares and evil demeanor brought some extra energy to this volume, I always enjoy it when he starts acting as menacing as he was in the initial volumes.

I’m still enjoying this series very much. The slightly unconventional relationship, the mystery of Teru’s brother, and the slow revelations about Kurosaki’s past are all very satisfying. I realize that popular series like this will probably get spun out over several volumes but I’m still enjoying the slowly developing relationship in Dengeki Daisy.

Volume 5 provided by the publisher