Anna N

Dragon Girl Volume 2 by Toru Fujieda

I think it was a good decision for Yen Press to go with the omnibus format for this five volume series. I enjoyed this series very much, but if I was reading it spaced out over five volumes my interest might have started to wane a little bit. Being able to sit down and devour huge hunks of shoujo goodness with this slightly quirky manga made me enjoy it even more. Even though many of the plot elements in Dragon Girl evoke typical shoujo cliches, I am still amused by the odd and humorous elements Fujieda inserts in her story. For example, the hottie on the cover that heroine Rinna is embracing isn’t a high school boy who has a crush on her – it is her long lost father Sakuya, the globe trotting former traditional cheerleader captain/anthropologist. I think Sakuya, with his long hair, creative accessorizing, and breezy attitude would easily take the title in a coolest manga Dad contest.

Rinna and her friends in the cheering group struggle with getting their club officially reinstated and dealing with their rival high school. Rinna confesses her crush on childhood love Subaru, but finds out that a romance with him is impossible. Yatome and Rinna grow even closer but it seems like cheering captain Hasekura might finally get up the nerve to tell Rinna how he feels. There’s nothing particularly earth-shattering about this title, but it is great comfort reading. I challenge anyone not to enjoy a manga where the heroine’s response to rumors being spread about her is to stand outside the school with a megaphone yelling her side of the story in order to set the record straight. Even thought the ending of Dragon Girl was predictable, I enjoyed seeing Hasekura’s reaction when he was finally able to meet Sakuya, his cheering idol. Also, when Hasekura finally changes his “manly” look, the response of the female students to actually being able to see his shaven face was hilarious. Even the evil scheming student council president doesn’t turn out to be so bad after all. Dragon Girl lets the reader momentarily escape into a world filled with camaraderie and costumed high school students yelling their hearts out. I finished this manga with a smile on my face.

I’m probably much harder to please with monster-hunting manga than any other subgenre. There’s just so much of it, it usually has to be both outstanding and irresistible to really catch my attention. Butterfly doesn’t really fit into this category for me, but there are a few things about it that make it quirky and potentially interesting. First of all, this series is actually seinen manga written by a woman. I have great fondness for other seinen by female authors like Soryo’s ES (Eternal Sabbath), so those publication details did make me more intrigued about the title. While this is a seinen series, it is set in high school with a male main character who is not all that great at school. Ginji refuses to write any career goals as he heads into his final months of school. His life is changed when he meets Ageha, an elementary school kid with glasses and long hair who promises to pay his debts if Ginji will work them off by doing some ghost busting.

Ginji hates the idea of ghost, but he’s haunted by an event that happened to his older brother. When Ageha suddenly appears before him, asking if he wants to “Go and kill…all the ghosts in the world together,” Ginji is extremely skeptical. He tags along on one of Ageha’s missions and finds out that the exorcisms he’s going to be involved in are a little different than he expects. It turns out that Ageha has the ability to manifest images of the things that haunt people, and Ginji has the ability to destroy them. So Ageha is effectively exorcising people’s worries and fears by giving them a form that Ginji battles with. Ageha and Ginji have complementary powers, but the way they work isn’t fully explained in the first volume. Ageha is a bit of a mysterious being as well, because while people tend to assume she’s a girl, others maintain that she’s a cross-dressing boy.

Aikawa’s art is clear and easy to follow during the action scenes, but lacks a unique style. I was fond of Ageha’s mannerisms, just because after reading The Secret Notes of Lady Kanako, I’m happy to see yet another glasses-wearing protagonist with social issues. While Butterfly didn’t totally win me over with the first volume I was intrigued by the idea that Ageha is manifesting people’s internal demons, and Ginji’s destruction of those illusions brings the afflicted some peace. I’m curious to see if some of the mysteries behind Ageha’s origin and the nature of the duo’s complementary powers are explored more in the next volume. I think that Butterfly would probably appeal most to older high school students and adults who want a slightly different spin on monster hunting manga.

Review copy provided by the publisher

X-Men: Misfits Volume One by Raina Telgemeier, Dave Roman, and Anzu

Of all the American manga-style productions, I think X-Men: Misfits must be one of the oddest ones. Why did Marvel lend out one of their franchises for manga treatment? Who had the idea to write a reverse harem shoujo version of the X-Men? What audience was this supposed to appeal to? I think most X-Men fans wouldn’t be fans of the loose way general X-Men continuity was handled in this book, and would manga fans care about the opportunity to look at Quicksilver’s tanned abs? I’ve read plenty of X-Men comics and I’m a big fan of reverse harem shoujo so I found this title incredibly entertaining, if a little flawed.

Kitty Pryde is having a rough year. She keeps accidentally falling through things. Silver Fox Magneto shows up at her house to announce that she has a scholarship to the Xavier Academy. When she gets there, she finds out that she’s the only female teen student in a school full of boy mutants and she’s the object of everyone’s attention. When I realized that this X-Men adaptation was going to be a blatant reverse harem scenario, I thought it was a stroke of genius. The original X-Men comics were essentially reverse harem anyway, with Jean Grey being the only female mutant surrounded by boys. Kitty is torn between FIRE! (Pyro) and ICE! (Iceman). Bobby acts incredibly cold towards her, because he is AS COLD AS ICE! Pyro ensures that Kitty is invited to the Hellfire Club, which turns out to be a separate student faction headed by Angel and including Forge, Havok, Quicksilver, and Longshot.

Anzu’s art is a little overly pretty and occasionally features some stiff poses. I wish she’d spent more time on character design, because there are a few glimmers of enjoyable insanity in the way she depicted some of the older characters. The Beast is a puffy, Totoro-like cat. Colossus switches to his metal form and looks like a cross between one of the Mario Brothers and Tik-Tok of Oz. Sabertooth hangs around the Hellfire club wearing a choker collar and a chain, serving fondue. I think that reverse harem series are generally more effective if there are a manageable number of handsome male characters. X-Men: Misfits has far too many attractive men hanging around Kitty, to the point where they become indistinguishable from each other. I kept getting confused about who Havok and Longshot were, despite the fact that Havok always appears to wear sunglasses pushed back on his head. Gambit is introduced without wearing his customary trench coat, so I didn’t even recognize him. There are amusing cameos from some of the established X-Men characters. Cyclops is a cranky vegan, and Storm appears in her mohawk mode.

Despite some flaws, X-Men: Misfits has a certain loopy charm. I was amused by the endless parade of hot mutant guys and Kitty’s awkward reactions to dealing with her new social environment and her mutant powers. She spends the early portion of the manga wearing a bicycle helmet and skating pads because she can’t really handle her abilities. Kitty does well filling the traditional role of slightly clumsy shoujo heroine, and she discovers that her friends in the Hellfire Club aren’t as benign as they might appear. I’m honestly disappointed that there won’t be a second volume of this series published. As it is, X-Men: Misfits will remain a hilarious artifact of some of the inexplicable aspects of the manga publishing boom.

Are hot janitors a Thing? After reading Dengeki Daisy and Skyblue Shore, which both feature handsome yet tortured twentysomething janitors, I am now convinced that anyone who wants to find cute men in Japan needs to start staking out custodial closets in local high schools. Skyblue Shore is a fun shoujo manga, with some hints of darkness that keep it from being overly sweet.

Skyblue Shore Volume 1 by Nanpei Yamada

Tomo used to visit the beach daily as a little girl. One day she met a boy who gave her an agate that he found while beach combing. While she went back to the beach daily, she never saw him again. Years later, Tomo’s grown older and she’s left her love of the beach behind. She’s on her way to school when someone starts feeling her up on the bus. A tall, dark and handsome man notices what’s going on and throws the groper off the bus, yelling that no one is going to touch one of his students. He leaves behind a keychain that has the same type of agate that Tomo keeps as a souvenir. This is a fairly formulaic beginning to a manga. Stories about children who reconnect as teenagers are common but even while Skyblue Shore evokes plenty of shoujo cliches, it does so in a refreshing way. The teenage Tomo is a fairly typical shoujo heroine. She’s pretty, popular, and enthusiastic but considers herself average. What makes her stand out a bit from her character type is her tendency to exhibit a strong nurturing streak due to the fact that she’s had to take care of her flighty mother. Tomo stumbles across a sullen boy who has a hairtie that exhibits the same construction techniques as the mysterious stranger’s broken keychain. Ten offers to fix her keychain and she trails him back to a shack on the roof of the school. She barges in and finds an apartment furnished with things from the beach, with elaborate driftwood assemblages. Ten, is of course, the boy who gave Tomo the agate when they were children. While he figures out who she is fairly quickly, she doesn’t connect Ten with her long-lost friend. His older brother Riku is the junior janitor at the school who has a habit of defending high school girls from perverts.

The pairing of an enthusiastic girl and sullen boy can be found plenty of times in shoujo manga. But I enjoyed seeing the relationship between this particular couple in Skyblue Shore. Ten starts taking Tomo beachcombing, and she’s delighted to rediscover one of her favorite childhood pastimes. She exhibits the same degree of excitement about being on the beach that she had as a little girl, but what happened to change Ten from being a happy little boy to a prickly teenager who hides behind his hair? Tomo spends more time with Riku, and promptly develops a hopeless crush on him despite his tendency to treat her like a little sister. Ten clearly cares about Tomo too, so the classic love triangle is all set up. Tomo starts appearing by Ten’s side after school, asking if he’s found any treasures at the beach. When Ten tells Riku that he’s taken on Tomo as his apprentice beachcomber, he says “I think…she’s been waiting a long time for me.”

I enjoyed all the details about the sea that Yamada included. Ten shows Tomo how to bleach sand dollars, and you can practically smell the salty air when the characters go down to the beach. Yamada’s character designs are clean and attractive, and I like the way she varied the body types of the brothers. Riku is clearly more mature, with more of a weighty, adult look while it is clear that Ten and Tomo haven’t finished growing yet.

Skyblue Shore Volume 2 by Nanpei Yamada

Skyblue Shore might initially seem like a charming, slice of life shoujo series that is only differentiated from other similar manga by the beach setting. Where it starts to stand out is the theme of past psychological trauma and potential insanity that is interwoven with all of the nice scenes of Tomo and Ten hunting for agates. A dark female character with unhealthy ties to Riku is introduced in the person of Michiru, who only sporadically attends school. When she comes back she definitely doesn’t approve of Tomo and Riku’s friendship. Tomo observes some close encounters between Riku and Michiru, and is dismayed. While Riku doesn’t cross any lines, it is obvious that they have a shared history and Michiru seems very emotionally damaged. Ten can see straight through Michiru and warns Tomo to be careful of who she makes friends with. Riku shares the fact that he and Ten lost their sister to the sea when Tomo almost drowns. She comforts him, and he asks her to be a good friend to Ten and Michiru. She starts to treat Michiru like a bit of a project, trying to bring her out of her shell and getting her to socialize with some of the other students. When Michiru stops coming to school, Tomo gets her to come by using the only threat she can. She says “Unless you drag your lazy carcass to school, I’m going to claim Riku for myself!”

Riku and Ten are clearly emotionally damaged by their loss, even though Riku might seem to do a better job of appearing normal. It doesn’t seem quite fair for Tomo to be put in the position of emotional caretaker for her group of friends. The blend of slice-of-life stories inter cut with past revelations of tragedy reminded me a little bit of Oyayubihime Infinity without the fantasy elements. Skyblue Shore is only six volumes long, and I’m curious to see if the characters actually manage to work through their various emotional issues and achieve some form of happiness.

Review copies provided by the publisher.

It has been far too long since I’ve read some harlequin manga! Much like the romance novels themselves, these manga are perfect to read when you want to switch your brain off for a little while. I’m coming down with a cold, so I relished the opportunity to read about pregnant women who somehow manage to attract the attention of millionaires. I think millionaires must really like motherly types, I have no other logical explanation. All of these books are available for rental at emanga.com.

Claiming his Pregnant Wife – Sometimes it can be tricky to adapt books, even formulaic ones like Harlequin novels. This is a middling example of Harlequin manga, just because there were so few transitions between scenes it felt more like an outline of a story than the story itself. Erin is a tourist in Italy when she becomes stranded and happens to meet a beautiful Italian man named Francesco. They start to date during her vacation and she discovers that he’s been hiding the fact that he’s an incredibly wealthy businessman. They quickly marry, but their new marriage starts to disintegrate when Erin suspects him of being a womanizer like her father. Some of the character motivations seemed to come out of left field – all of a sudden Erin starts not trusting Francesco due to her psychological issues with her parents’ marriage, but this isn’t really hinted at earlier in the manga. It generally had a very choppy feel, with characters suddenly introduced, and various reasons for the couple to be apart worked through. The art was a little static, and looked rushed, with the characters sometimes displaying awkward poses. Not the best example of a Harlequin manga.

The Millionaire’s Pregnant Mistress – This title had more of the loopy plot developments that I expect and enjoy in a good Harlequin manga. Tess is a hard-working chambermaid at a resort hotel who had a one night stand with a rich guest. He turns out to be Benjamin Adams, a millionaire movie producer who is haunted by the death of his wife and unborn son. He wasn’t haunted enough to stop himself from having a one-night stand with a maid though! He makes sure to tell Tess just how emotionally damaged he is after she tells him that she’s pregnant by saying “”Your existence itself will dig deeper into my wounds!” Benjamin decides that he doesn’t want a repeat of his past tragedy and will move her into his mansion to make sure she and the baby are safe during the pregnancy. While he’s planning on taking responsibility for the baby, he doesn’t plan to give Tess anything other than support payments after the baby is born. Tess has a hard time adjusting to the millionaire lifestyle and keeps trying to work at the hotel while she’s living at the mansion. Benjamin and Tess bond over their shared love for the movie Psycho (!) and begin to strike up a friendship. While the art in this title showed most people having problems with triangle-shaped chins, overall the art was a little more fluid and Tess’s glossy hair, limpid eyes, and devotion to her beater of a car made her an appealing heroine.

Marriage Scandal, Showbiz Baby!

I was happy when I started reading this volume and saw that instead of the rushed, less detailed art provided for many of these harlequin titles, it opened with a detailed scene of married but estranged actors confronting each other on the red carpet, complete with glossy hair and borders of floating flowers. If there aren’t flowers used as backgrounds in every few pages of a Harlequin manga I feel cheated. Jennifer is an actor and married to Italian superstar Matteo. They’re in the process of divorcing because Matteo romanced the actress that played the evil temptress in their most recent movie. Apparently she is also a temptress in real life. Temptress! There’s a series of flashbacks that show how they first fall in love, when Jennifer was appearing in a play and lured Matteo in because she didn’t care about his fame and wealth. Matteo liked a challenge! Now, as they split up Jennifer’s harpy of a mother keeps lecturing her about the evils of men, and Matteo’s trusty staff don’t put her phone calls through to him. Harpy! Betrayal! Jennifer gets cornered at a party by another womanizing actor named Jack, whose hairstyle, plucked eyebrows, and eyeliner somehow reminded me of John Taylor circa 1983. Duran Duran! Actually many of the fashions in this series ranging from Jennifer’s side-ponytail to the harpy mother’s blouse with attached bow evoked a certain over the top 1980s glamour, which I found amusing because this manga was produced in 2008. Matteo saves her, they get trapped in an elevator, and they make love. Love in an elevator! Jennifer finds herself pregnant, and she and Matteo begin to rebuild their relationship. Because if you need to trap a man, get pregnant! This was highly entertaining, and the lush art did a great job of evoking the fabulous lifestyles of the protagonists.

I thought for the Manga Moveable Feast, I write a little bit about where I first encountered Barefoot Gen, in the back of the classic Frederik L. Schodt book Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. This might be a thinly disguised way of attempting to hide the fact that I didn’t hunt down the collected volumes so my only way of participating in the MMF is to go with what’s on my shelves, but the manga excerpts translated in the Schodt book were also some of the first manga I read. After presenting an overview of the history of manga, Schodt chose the following creators to illustrate the variety stories found in manga for an English speaking audience: Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix, Reiji Matsumoto’s Ghost Warrior, Riokyo Ikeda’s Rose of Versailles, and Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen.

I can’t think of a more jarring transition than flipping from the tribulations of Marie Antoinette to the aftermath of the atomic bomb. The story opens at the start of a normal day, with Gen getting ready to go to school. The bomb drops and his neighborhood becomes a nightmare of destruction, filled with injured people he can’t even begin to help. The schoolboy runs from person to person, seeing a woman with her face melted off, a burned man begging for water, and a little girl with a face full of glass shards. Finally Gen finds his family only to discover his father and most of his siblings trapped beneath a house while a fire rages nearby. Gen gets his pregnant mother away, and she gives birth to his little sister. The child’s first sight is the devastation of war.

Going back and reading this excerpt many years after first encountering it, I’m finding it easier to read. I think when I first read this sample of Barefoot Gen back in the eighties, I didn’t have the background in the visual vocabulary of manga to easily parse the contrast between the stylized, cartoony art style and the images of the bomb’s aftermath. After reading more Tezuka in the intervening years (whose deceptively simple artwork is used to portray any number of heavy situations), I’m finding these pages of Barefoot Gen less strange than I remember. Barefoot Gen is the essence of a didactic manga, with the sole aim to show the horrors of Hiroshima. I wonder if its value as a cultural artifact might be equal to or greater than its literary value. Shodt effectively added Barefoot Gen to the manga canon for English readers by just including it in his book.

Eensy Weensy Monster Volumes 1 and 2 by Masami Tsuda

I’m disappointed that I didn’t finish reading this two volume series by Valentine’s Day because this cute story of teen romance would have been the perfect Valentine’s Day manga review. If you’re still in the mood for love, this is a great series to pick up. I still think of Masami Tsuda’s Kare Kano fondly despite the fact that the ending of the series was absolutely loony. Tsuda really has a knack for portraying teenage first love in a very compelling way. Eensy Weensy Monster has the all the cute and funny first relationship elements from Kare Kano without any of the angst and emotional trauma. I think that Kare Kano fans will enjoy this series and it would also be a good way to sample Tsuda’s work if you don’t feel like tackling the twenty one volume series she’s best known for.

Eensy Weensy Monster starts by introducing a shoujo staple character. Nanoha is an average student who is made almost invisible by her two best friends. Nobara is known as the school’s “Lady Oscar,” and her princely demeanor causes her to be the object of plenty of crushes. Renge is the resident genius, the only student able to appear out of uniform at school because she’s at the top of all of her classes. Next to her friends, Nanoha’s everyday talents of being awesome at folding handouts and dividing up food ensure that she fades into insignificance. The three girls share an easy camaraderie, but Nanoha’s peaceful school days are threatened by the resident prince of the school, Hazuki. He’s effortlessly popular and cute, surrounded by groups of girls that dote on him. His presence drives Nanoha insane. While she’s naturally very agreeable, she thinks of herself as having a tiny monster inside that will blurt out hateful thoughts if she isn’t careful.

Nanoha is walking along the hallway at school, awkwardly clutching a present that she’s taking to her teacher. Hazuki is so used to blushing girls approaching him with presents, he assumes it is for him and thanks her for it. This is just the type of incident that triggers Nanoha’s inner monster and she yells “Who said it was yours, you arrogant bastard!” Hazuki is utterly flummoxed by Nanoha’s hatred. Even after Christmas break, he’s being eaten up by wondering why she doesn’t like him. He says “What could you possibly not like about me? You’re pretty strange.” Nanoha’s monster (a cute chibi breaking shackles) is unleashed! She tells him that he makes her sick, and he might be attractive and have good grades but he’s petty and superficial. Hazuki is brought down even more when he goes to his fan club and they inform him that they agree with Nanoha’s assessment. They know he only cares about himself, but they use him as a crush object for fun.

Hazuki decides that he has to change himself and stops indulging in his prince-like behavior. The relationship between Hazuki and Nanoha remains cool for a long time, but then he begins to notice how nice she seems to be to other people. Nanoha feels bad for telling him off, and relations begin to thaw. In the spring, they begin to spend more time together as Hazuki helps Nanoha out with school. All the relationships at school are very light-hearted. The greek chorus of girls that forms Hazuki’s fan club pops up from time to time to offer their comments about Nanoha and Hazuki’s new personality. Nanoha’s Jeckyll and Hyde like transformations are funny whenever she’s speaking her mind, as her shadows suddenly form on her face and the fonts she uses to speak in are transformed to look bold and intimidating.

Nanoha and Hazuki’s relationship develops even more as the second volume starts out in the late spring. Hazuki has realized that he’s in love with her, and starts to act like a total spaz whenever she’s near. Nanoha’s monster assumes that he’s acting this way because he doesn’t want to hang out with her due to her being boring, and she confronts him. He tells her what he’s feeling and now it is her turn to act painfully awkward, mainly by staring at him around corners with saucer-like eyes and sweating a lot. One of the things I like most about Tsuda’s manga is the way she portrays the inner feelings of each part of the couple who is falling in love. She’ll frequently have split pages that show what Nanoha and Hazuki are thinking. Sometimes they’re right in sync, and other times they are in entirely different stages with their emotions.

For most two volume manga series that I read I’m usually left feeling a little bit unsatisfied due to plot elements that aren’t entirely resolved or rushed endings. I didn’t feel that way with Eensy Weensy Monster at all. Tsuda structures the book so the reader gets a sense of time passing from winter to summer break, to the start of a new school year. She noted in one of her author notes that she had each chapter take place in a different month, and I think that the element of time moving forward helped a lot in making the characters and situations not feel static. Tsuda is obviously great at portraying stuck-up characters that are forced to come to their senses, so Hazuki is a familiar character type for her. But even though there were similarities between Kare Kano and Eensy Weensy Monster, I wasn’t bored by the repetition. Eensy Weensy Monster might not be strikingly original, but it is cute, funny and heartwarming. Sometimes that’s all you need to ask for from a good shoujo series.

On the surface House of Five Leaves and Biomega don’t seem to have much in common aside from both of them being published by Viz’s Signature imprint. But both titles rely on distinctive art to create stories that rely more on mood than plot. While House of Five Leaves continues to explore a samurai falling further into a den of thieves in a meandering slice of life style, Biomega’s dystopic world grows even more stylized but still features plenty of decapitations.

House of Five Leaves Volume 2

Hapless samurai grows even more hapless when he’s stricken by illness and starts to lose sensation in his legs. He isn’t adjusting well to living in a brothel with the charismatic House of Five Leaves gang leader Yaichi either. Masa goes to live with Goinkyo in an attempt to recover and begins to learn more about the origins of the group of people he seems to have fallen in with. Very much like Natsume Ono’s series, revelations are made through people talking to each other, sitting in the same room watching the day go by, or sharing a meal. Masa still seems to retain a measure of dangerous naivete as he thinks of his new friends as kind. Goinkyo warns him that his new acquaintances are all criminals and Masa says “those whom you do wish to involve yourself with…those friends and companions with whom you wish to share feelings and experiences…I believe they just are as precious as family.” I’m not sure if the House of Five Leaves feels as deeply towards Masa as he feels towards them.

Even while absolutely debilitated, Masa still attempts to defend Goinkyo when a gang member from his past shows up to his house. But when Masa is feeling better and accidentally bumps into a local tough guy, he starts shaking and runs from battle. Masa’s skill is overpowered by his anxiety, and his weakness makes him an interesting character when thrown into the criminal underworld. Masa encounters a possible mentor, but I think it’ll be a long time before he’s able to summon up the confidence within himself that he admires in Yaichi so much. I think I enjoy this series a little more than Ono’s restaurant centric books like Gente and Ristorante Paradiso, because I enjoy the contrast between Ono’s modern art style and the historic setting. I have more patience for most of the story being expressed through the characters just talking to each other, because the backgrounds and period details like the type of malnutrition that Masa is suffering are a little more interesting to me than her more modern works.

Biomega Volume 5

It wouldn’t be another volume of Biomega without some striking visuals and absolutely insane moments. The visual aspect of this volume that blew me away was the new setting of the cord world. With the organic tendrils and insect-like carapaces covering everything, the background illustrations looked like Nihei’s take on Miyazaki’s ruined world in Nausicaa. The crazy moment came when a disembodied womb gave birth to a tiny doll-like girl named Funipero, who is the heir of evil matriarch Niarudi. So action hero Zoichi is now wandering around yet another alien landscape accompanied by two tiny females his artificial intelligence avatar Fuyu and scarily intelligent Funipero, who seems to be eating a lot and exhibiting strange powers. I always put down Biomega feeling simultaneously bewildered and transported. I might not always understand what’s going on, but it is always interesting to visit the strange world that Nihei creates. There’s probably only one slot in my reading list for “post-apocalyptic insane yet strangely beautiful seinen manga”, but Biomega fills that spot very well.

Review copy provided by the publisher

Now that the final volume has come out, I’m catching up with the last half of the series. The more I read of Gatcha Gacha, the more I like it. It combines a certain gleeful trashiness with some affecting emotional moments. It also can occasionally be genuinely weird. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this series to someone who feels burnt-out on typical shoujo manga. I can’t imagine myself being so entertained by the worn out storyline of a character coming back from the dead with amnesia in any other series. Yuri and Yabe are dating, and he’s cleaned up his act by transforming into a proper looking Japanese boy. The blond hair is gone, as is the weedy looking goatee. While Yuri might be momentarily blissfully happy with her new love, trouble lurks on the horizon in the person of Kanako, a girl who looks just like Motoko’s deceased crazy sister. Yabe is shaken by his dead girlfriend’s doppelganger. Hirao watches this unfold from the sidelines, and while he’s still nursing feelings for Yuri he tells her that he’ll support her and Yabe however he can.

Kanako is of course Motoko’s sister, but her amnesia has left her unable to remember Yabe. Here is where Tachibana goes for the kill, because seeing Yabe’s conflicted expressions when he looks at her is just gut-wrenching. Kanako was farmed out to some distant relatives who have raised her as a foster daughter. The amnesia has caused her twisted personality to fade, leaving behind a rather sweet girl who still manages to be violent through subconscious reflex actions. Gatcha Gacha being Gatcha Gacha, issues between characters seem to be resolved through gang beat downs that lead to people talking about their feelings instead of non-violent confrontation. Kanako is kidnapped by a bunch of goons, and Motoko and Yabe go to rescue her. Yuri knows that as Yabe leaves, he’s also leaving her. She begs him not to go and he says “I know if I stayed and really learned to love you…I know I could finally be happy. But…I’m sorry. I’m not that good of a man.”

Tachibana does what few manga creators are capable of by making her main female character simultaneously an object of ridicule and sympathy for the reader. Yuri is left alone yet again, crying to the heavens “Will I ever be happy?” She’s absolutely silly and it is hard not to root for her to eventually be happy even though her basic personality is that of a happy cute puppy dog who keeps getting kicked around but still comes back for more.

Volume six starts with a return to the status quo. Kanako has regained her memory and is acting as crazily possessive of her sister and Yabe as ever. She starts to target Yuri but is warned off by Motoko in dramatic fashion. Hirao sees that Yuri may be losing her hair due to stress and he goes to extreme lengths to hide her tiny bald spot, running to a department store to buy a hairstick and devising a new hairstyle for her in an attempt to cover it up so Yuri and other people don’t know about it. He finally tells Yuri his feelings, and she begins to wonder if she can ever be attracted to him. He seems perfect, but she only feels any sort of chemistry with losers and jerks. Is the ultimate bad boy for Yuri actually Motoko? She continues to dress more masculine and rampages around like she always does. Yuri comments to Motoko that she’s physically incapable of being attracted to nice guys and says “What does it say about you that if you were a guy, I’d ask you out in a heartbeat?” Motoko’s face goes absolutely still and then she carries on the conversation with a smile.

The new, forthright Hirao might actually be enough of a loser to inspire feelings of attraction from Yuri when she finally spots him doing something loser-like. Hirao and Yabe begin to act a little more friendly towards each other. I’m not confident that a relationship between Yuri and Hirao will work out, but that’s the way things seem to be headed for now. Even though Gatcha Gacha is very much a shoujo series, Tachibana’s unique and darkly cynical sensibility makes it seem refreshing. With the two main female characters not being afraid to indulge in violence, it is actually fairly entertaining to see just Yuri slap Kanako across the face for being a brat, instead of slinking off to wallow in hurt feelings. When Tachibana’s characters do talk about their feelings, they are amazingly blunt and forthright. There are only two more volumes left for me to read, and I’m a little disappointed that Gatcha Gacha only lasted for eight volumes. I’m looking forward to the end, but I have no idea what to expect. With most shoujo series I pretty much know how the relationships will play out by the end. I’m really not sure what Tachibana is going to do next, and that’s a large part of Gatcha Gacha’s appeal.

Kurozakuro, Vol. 2 by Yoshinori Natsume

The second volume of Kurozakuro seems a little more conventional than the first. I wasn’t terribly impressed by the first volume, but I did like the way Natsume blended horror with ogre fighting action. For me, the most compelling parts of Kurozakuro came when human turned ogre Sakurai was forced to confront his bestial nature as he attempted to quash his urges to kill and eat the humans around him. He can’t even really stay with his family anymore if his condition starts to progress. The second volume of the series for the most part leaves these moments of internal agony alone and focuses on setting up a more standard shonen adventure quest. Sakurai meets again with ogre hunters Kugai and Asami and makes the decision to help them, claiming that he can keep his urge to eat human flesh under control. Sakurai ends up revealing his new identity to his sister and asks her to intercede with his parents when they discover that he’s missing.

The mystical being Zakuro is dismayed at Sakurai’s unwillingness to embrace the ogre within him, warning Sakurai that he might die. Zakuro seems to be unnaturally attached to Sakurai’s continued existence for some reason. I expect that more about Sakurai and Zakuro will be revealed in future volumes, but after reading the second volume it still felt to me like the story was still being set up. I was disappointed that relentless teen vampire hunter Asami appeared to be left behind, because she was one of the few characters that I found interesting. Sakurai and Kugai join forces to hunt down a nearby super ogre. I think with the second volume Natsume’s blocky art style grew on me a bit. It is a tad simple but the heavy use of blacks and the simplistic, often screaming in horror faces of the characters does give the manga a unique if slightly static feel. There’s still not enough in the series to pique my interest, and I usually give up on manga after trying two volumes and finding that it doesn’t really appeal to me.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Itsuwaribito Volume 1 by Yuuki Iinuma

Due to tragedy in his past, Utsuho has turned into a pathological liar. He’s grown up in a village of orphans headed by a monk. Utsuho dedicates himself to mastering the tools of trickery. He has a good working knowledge of poisons, bombs, and other dangerous compounds. Bandits come to the orphan village, causing a mass slaughter and even killing the monk that served as Utsuho’s father figure. He lies to the monk as he’s dying, saying that the rest of the children are safe and waiting for him. Utsuho vows to become an Itsuwaribito, someone who lies, cheats, and steals. Utsuho’s version of an Itsuwaribito is someone who saves other people by lying, and he’s determined to save 1000 people to make up for the death of the monk.

Itsuwaribito follows a fairly standard shonen quest formula, but Utsuho’s trickster personality and destructive nature makes him potentially a little bit more interesting than the typical shonen hero. One way of measuring how much you might like Itsuwaribito is to think about the scene in the Princess Bride when Westley faces off against the Sicilian in the Battle of Wits. Utsuho often lies, then lies about lying, then lies about lying about his lies in order to defeat evildoers who previously prided themselves on their trustworthiness. Utsuho’s catchphrases are “I was lying,” “that’s cool,” and “that’s uncool.” He does exhibit some compassion for the downtrodden, as his first rescue is a orphaned talking Tanuki, giving him the animal sidekick that seems to accompany at least thirty-five percent of all shonen heroes. His next mission is to save the brother of a girl who has joined a gang in order to support his family, challenging the gang leader to a “duel of lies.” Utsuho is a cool antihero, but his origin as an orphan haunted by tragedy is a little too conventional for me. I was amused by his fighting methods. While he sometimes gets physical, he’s more likely to bring horrible destruction on his opponent by bluffing them with a random object that sometimes might be a bomb or poison capsule, and sometimes might be something entirely different. Itsuwaribito was definitely entertaining, but I’m not quite sure if I’d want to start reading it regularly. I’d probably check out the next volume just to see if the story gets more interesting once it moves beyond the set-up stage. I did enjoy Iinuma’s art quite a bit. There’s a delicate, light aspect to the art which ends up contrasting with the violence of the action scenes, making this more interesting to look at than I was expecting. Itsuwaribito is a Shonen Sunday title and I think like the other recent release Kurozakuro, it will appeal to older readers who are ready for some moral ambiguity and cynicism in their shonen fighting manga.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

The Story of Saiunkoku Volume 2 by Sai Yukino and Kairi Yura

The manga keeps moving along at a healthy pace. I was actually surprised at some of the revelations contained in this volume about Seiran’s true nature and the background of Shurei’s father, because I thought I remembered things moving much more slowly in the anime version of the story. But there’s nothing wrong with packing in a bunch of plot into a manga when it is done right! There’s plenty of court intrigue as it looks like someone is trying to poison Shurei. Ryuki shows that he’s really quite competent with subterfuge in his own right, as he manages to confiscate tainted items and give Shurei antidotes without anyone knowing about it. The point of the plot was Lord Advisor Sa trying to push Ryuki into finally acting like the Emperor everyone knows he can be. Ryuki decides to step out from the cloak of incompetence that he hid behind and take power in order to make sure that the ones he’s closest to remain protected.

One of the main reasons why I like this series so much is because Shurei is a particularly strong heroine. She’s portrayed as being extraordinarily nice but not in a cloying way. The scene that highlighted her personality occurs early in the volume, when she’s scolding Seiran for not taking adequate care of himself. She says “…just the way I always moan and complain to you when I’m upset…I want you to be able to tell me all your frustrations too.” She puts her head down on the table wondering how she’ll ever be able to repay the debts of gratitude she owes Seiran, and he tells her that her smiling face is “his greatest remedy.” As Shurei leaves the court and prepares to return to her normal life of studying and housework, I’m eagerly waiting to see the next phase of her adventures.

Stepping on Roses Volume 4 by Rinko Ueda

I love Tail of the Moon, but I’ve steered clear of Stepping on Roses because I thought this series about a poor heroine forced into a marriage of convenience with a rich businessman during the Meiji era seemed a bit too “Perils of Pauline” for me. If I hadn’t read Tail of the Moon I’d probably enjoy Stepping on Roses more because it does have a certain level of romance novel cheesiness that I usually enjoy. It suffers a bit in comparison though because Usagi and Hanzo are much more compelling characters than Sumi and Soichiro.

Sumi and Soichiro are in the type of marriage of convenience where it is clear that they both love each other but aren’t going to admit it for several volumes. Complications ensue when Natsuki introduces a maid named Keiko into the house as a spy. She’s underhanded and sneaky, trying to pry into Sumi’s hidden poor background. She attempts to sabotage Sumi and Soichiro’s relationship, but only the trusty butler Komai really knows what’s going on. I thought that Keiko was so unsneaky, it was hard to feel sorry for Sumi and Soichiro when things started to go wrong. I can’t get away from comparing this manga to Tail of the Moon. Ueda seems to specialize in sweet, ditzy heroines, but even though Usagi was frequently portrayed as incompetent, it was due to the fact that she didn’t fit in well to her ninja clan context. She was actually a skilled herbalist and only got into trouble when she attempted to act like a ninja. Also, with Hanzo’s position as being the head of a ninja plan, he had a good reason for acting gruff and strict most of the time. Sumi and Soichiro have very similar personalities when compared with Usagi and Hanzo, but I’m not finding the Meiji era setting as compelling. It is obvious that Ueda does a ton of research for her manga, so Stepping on Roses is really just suffering in comparison for being sort of ok, while Tail of the Moon was really great.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Natsume’s Book of Friends Volume 5 by Yuki Midorikawa

Midorikawa’s gentle book about yokai continues to combine arresting images with stories of redemption. Natsume visits a nearby hotel for a cram session with his friends, and discovers that the owner is haunted by an encounter with a mermaid many years ago. He manages to bring peace to the old woman and the mermaid, who manage to acknowledge the friendship began when the inn owner was a little girl. There were a few more scenes of Natsume interacting with normal people than I remember from previous volumes. One in particular stuck in my mind, when Natsume is walking along with his classmates and grows distracted because he’s the only one who can see an invisible giant walking through the village with his head stuck in the clouds. I was happy to see a good chunk of the volume devoted to Natsume helping a girl who can also see yokai when she draws spell circles. She’s been cursed, and she draws spell circles like graffiti all over the neighborhood in an attempt to locate the spirit who cursed her. Natsume is added to the curse when she utters his name, but he decides to help her with her problem. It was nice to see Natsume make another friend who might be able to understand what he’s going through. Another story provided the reader with more details about Natsume’s grandmother who spent all of her time imprisoning yokai with her “Book of Friends.” She’s grown up completely isolated, yet still decides to help Natsume’s uncle when he was a young boy. She enters his house and subdues the spirit saying “get out, this is the house where my favorite kid lives.” Natsume gains some understanding of his grandmother when he wonders if she was alone for so long that she forgot things, thinking “the proper term for that is my friend’s house.” Natsume’s Book of Friends seems remarkably consistent. The episodic nature of the way Natusume deals with the yokai ensures that it isn’t particularly surprising but there will usually be some interesting imagery or small episodes that illuminate human character, which makes for rewarding reading.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Made in Heaven: Kazemichi and Made in Heaven: Juri by Ami Sakurai and Yukari Yashiki

Since I am a woman in her 30s I tend to cherish any manga that I stumble across that looks like it is aimed towards an older female audience. I’m not sure about where Made in Heaven was originally published, but it passes my personal test for josei since it features characters that aren’t in school who happen to have sex. Made in Heaven is a moody sci-fi romance. While I think that sometimes execution problems hampered the authors’ ambitions, this two volume series is worth picking up if you are looking for something a little different from the typical shoujo fare. It was published by Tokyopop in 2006, and I can see it fitting in well with some of the other early josei titles from that publisher.

Made In Heaven: Kazemichi starts out with the main character being in a horrific bike accident. He wakes up only to find out that his body was almost completely destroyed, and he’s been rebuilt with an artificial body. Kazemichi feels disconnected from the world, but he begins to find another reason to take interest in his surroundings when he meets a slightly older woman named Juri. One of the things I liked about this title was the casual way it was established that it takes place slightly in the future. Kazemichi’s surgery is impossible, and people dote on artificial pets that have the same type of fake skin that now covers him. Kazemichi and Juri bond over their pets and the way they both seem to not entirely exist for other people. Juri is known for being expressionless, but Kazemichi tells her that he can see her emotions on her face.

There’s a general feeling of impending doom throughout the book, as Kazemichi only has a little while to live until his artificial body wears out. He was able to get the expensive surgery because he’s essentially been sold as a test subject by his adoptive family. Kazemichi’s broken home, problems with the corporation that resurrected him, and his habit of keeping his problems secret from Juri point to an unhappy ending for the lovers. The art for the series features attractive character designs, but their facial expressions seem a little static. While this theoretically fits with Juri and Kazemichi’s personalities, there’s also so much facial fractions going on in the paneling for the manga where the reader only sees a half or quarter of a face that I think it is due more to artistic limitation than deliberate effect. This isn’t the type of manga to read if you are expecting a clear, linear plot. Elements of Kazemichi’s past like his occasional forays into male prostitution, his relationship with his half-sister, and the desire of the medical company to data mine Kazemichi’s body are mentioned but not fully explored. All of this adds up to a general feeling of melancholy, but nothing is fully explored.

The narrative aspect of this series that I found most interesting was the shifting point of view between volumes. When Kazemichi is gone, Juri is left on her own to piece together the mystery of his life in Made in Heaven: Juri. She works as a psychologist for the police department, and when she’s called in to figure out what happened in an inexplicable death that seemed to involve a machine exploding along with human remains she finds out the truth about Kazemichi. She’s left with regrets because they never really discussed their feelings, she always thought being in his presence was enough.

The mystery investigation aspect of this volume wasn’t as interesting to me as Juri’s emotional journey. She’s dedicated to finding out whatever she can about Kazemichi because she doesn’t want to let him go. A complicating factor is the way the company responsible for his existence captured his brain waves, meaning they have the ability to use aspects of his personality as they further develop prototypes that push the boundaries of artificial intelligence. Juri encounters robots that have an uncanny resemblance to her dead lover. She attacks it, thinking “I am not leaving…until I let you return back to nothing. If you no longer have a soul…I don’t think I can bear for you to even be seen again.” In the end, Juri finds a form of peace as she begins to understand Kazemichi more, and his meticulous planning allows her to gain a sense of emotional resolution.

I wondered what this series would have been like if there had been a little bit more space to tell the story. Still, I liked having Kazemichi and Juri each tell their stories, and I wish the narrative device of multiple points of view was used more often in manga. People who like having every loose end tied up at the end of a series might find these two volumes frustrating to read, but I enjoyed the melancholy tone of Made in Heaven. I’d recommend this short series for anyone pining for more josei to read.

Demon Sacred Volume 3 by Natsumi Itsuki

I absolutely love this series. The third volume wasn’t quite as crazy as the first two, but some good stuff happens. We get to see melancholy teen idol Keito’s reaction to meeting his demon doppleganger K2 and learn that Shinobu, hot young doctor and guardian to mystical teen twin girls has an Evil! Adoptive! European! Family! in his past. I feel somehow like this manga should come packaged with a musical microchip to play suitable dramatic music during these important plot revelations.

Nothing good can happen when a doppleganger takes the place of a teen idol in a photo shoot and manages to produce better pictures. Keito is amazed and disturbed when he sees photos of K2, and a little worried about his livelihood because the photographer is saying that he doesn’t need any other subjects for the rest of his life. Keito tracks down K2 at Mona and Rina’s house, and the teens begin to hash out this case of mistaken idol identity. Mona learns that Keito has been orphaned by return syndrome too. He sent his parents on a celebratory trip when he made it big, and they disappeared after encountering demons. Mona’s hesitant about telling Keito the truth about K2, but they end up forming an alliance after Mona explains about the increased numbers of demons, the possible government involvement, and her desire to cure Rina’s return syndrome. Itsuki continues to do a great job with characterization for two people that look the same but have totally different personalities. Keito is mature and a little bit withholding and glum, which is at odds with his job. K2 is a dangerous 5000 year old little kid with a severe case of puppy love. When Mona hugs him and tells him she’s glad to see him when he shows up just in time to fend off a demon attack, he’s delighted.

Shinobu has plenty of problems to deal with when he is abruptly called into work due to his malicious European adoptive siblings suddenly showing up to find out how he’s doing with the family business. It turns out that tortured scientist Shinobu is tortured because his evil blond brother Helmut abused him so badly as a young child, he lost his memory of the abuse. Now nothing is left but Shinobu’s severe repulsion whenever he has to look at Helmut’s angelic Aryan face. Shinobu has a few other evil European siblings but the one that seems like the most trouble next to Helmut is the bitchy Zophie, who quickly susses out the woman at work who has a crush on her Japanese brother, makes some horribly cutting comments, and figures out that Shinobu’s research interests are not what they seem. She really is amazingly efficient.

I put down this volume amazed at the sheer amount of plot Itzuki was able to cram into 200 pages. I didn’t even mention the way the group dealt with the pesky Griffin that’s been bothering them, and the hints about demon/human chain relations and the nature of K2’s power. Sometimes Demon Sacred has passages here and there that rely a little too much on exposition, but the world that Itsuki is building is so interesting, I don’t mind it at all. Demon Sacred‘s combination of cute guys, plucky in the face of tragedy teen girls, and wacky fantasy complete with conspiracy theories is so compelling. I can’t wait for the next volume.

Butterflies, Flowers Volume 5 by Yuki Yoshihara

I tend to think of this series as “stealth josei” because while it is issues under the Shojo Beat imprint, the sexual content and mature readers rating puts it in the josei category for me. Yoshihara continues with her winning blend of workplace sex comedy and romance as Choko and her former servant/current boss/boyfriend Masayuki contemplate moving in together. His apartment is barren, so they go to a furniture store and try to pick out a few pieces. Even though Choko is now a working girl, she instinctively has upper-class tastes when it comes to furniture. Masayuki is crestfallen when the saleswoman doesn’t immediately treat them like a lovey dovey couple. Unfortunately when they are alone, Masayuki promptly becomes impotent because he’s unable to make the psychological switch to thinking of Choko as his girlfriend. Choko demands that he gets over his problem so they can have an ordinary relationship and refuses to respond when he calls her “milady”. Masayuki is unable to give up the master-servant relationship and decides to make love to her with the inexplicably otaku pronouncement “Even a Gundam is able to stand tall from willpower alone.” Butterflies, Flowers continues to be a little raunchy while simultaneously showing heart-warming stories about a developing relationship. It is a very unique combination that I think only Yoshihara could pull off.

Seiho Boys’ High School! Volume 4 by Kaneyoshi Izumi

This was a series I avoided when it came out for a couple reasons. I thought the premise of a shoujo series taking place in an all-boys high school had a very high potential for cheeziness. I also had read several volumes of Izumi’s other series Doubt! and gave up on it before finishing because I thought that the heroine was remarkably spineless. But I’d read several positive reviews of Seiho Boys’ High School! so I was curious to see if it really was good after all. The episodic nature of the manga and the handy character guide at the beginning made it easy for me to enjoy reading the manga even though I hadn’t read the previous volumes.

For an all-boys high school, there certainly seem to be plenty of girls hanging around. The romantic foibles of various characters are detailed in each chapter. Maki has a hard time moving forward with his current relationship due to his long-lost crush. Erika takes out her rage over his hesitation by mercilessly teaching him how to surf. The second story in the volume involves silent hunk Genda, who is utterly incapable of communicating his feeling to the girl that he’s dating, to the point of silently accepting without protest when she dumps him. When he sees her going out with a new totally unsuitable boy, he’s able to express himself with his fists and finally tell her how he feels. Izumi does a good job at showing Genda’s total and involuntary paralysis when it comes to talking to girls, which makes his breakthrough moment when he tells the object of his affections that she is “super cute” in a tiny voice. I liked the final story in the collection the most. Handsome Kamiki has a bit of a stalker in Fuyuka, who hangs around the school and is happy when he calls her by name. When Hanai confronts her, she says she realizes that she’s delusional but “My only choice is to embrace my delusions! I need to be a girl who lives in her dreams!” Hanai ends up serving as Henry Higgins to Fuyuka’s Eliza Doolittle, coaching her on how to change her personality to appeal more to boys. The interaction between Fuyuka was funny, with plenty of over-the-top pronouncements like “Master! I’ll work hard to perfect my womanly weapons!” Kamiki sees what’s going on and comments that he isn’t in favor of her sweetness and light act, and what if “people only like the plastic doll they’re seeing?” Fuyuka tries going out with a different guy and soon finds out that the strain of maintaining her new personality for someone she’s not even interested in isn’t worth it. I liked the short story format of this manga. I think Izumi’s character design and humor have improved a lot since Doubt!, and I enjoyed this volume much more than I was expecting.

Review copies provided by the publisher.