Anna N

Kingyo Used Books Volume 3

Reading this series can sometimes be a little bit painful. All the loving descriptions of classic manga that will never be released in English make me pine for what I’m unable to read. This volume might be a little more fun for American manga fans because much of the manga profiled in this volume will be familiar. The third volume starts off when a scardey cat meets a beautiful woman who is obsessed with Umezu horror manga. He tries to read the manga as a superficial way of connecting with his pick-up target, and ends up appreciating the horror genre much more than he thought he would because “Every one of his characters goes full-throttle at everything.” In “Makeup” a woman struggling with her career finds the strength to continue when she revisits her childhood love of Sailor Moon. Sailor Moon serves as a cultural touchstone for all the women she randomly encounters during her day. They share memories, with one of them asking “Don’t you think dressing up feels like going into battle mode?”

The other stories in Kingyo Used Books feature stories about cooking manga, romance between employees, and the lengths someone will go to in order to track down an unreturned book. The notes in the back provide some interesting historical context about the status of manga lending libraries in Japan. It occurs to me that between Kingyo Used Books, with its overview of classic series and focus on the connections that readers make with manga and Bakuman’s feverish statistic-laced overview of the act of manga creation, it is possible to build up a good if idiosyncratic portrait of the manga industry in Japan.

Afterschool Charisma Volume 2

I’m not always great about remembering to go over to check the Sigikki site for online chapters (although I am very thankful the site exists), so I’m making a mental note to go over there this week and get caught up on Afterschool Charisma. I was familiar with most of the chapters in this volume due to one of my infrequent Sigikki binges, but it was nice to sit down with the print edition and revisit this series about a normal high school boy trapped in a school filled with the clones of famous historic figures. The clones are getting ready for their annual talent day. Glimmerings of a new religion begin to manifest when small groups of clones start carrying around tiny sheep and referring to the “Almighty Dolly”. Shiro has to deal with a couple stressful situations – he’s tasked with babysitting a suicidal Mozart, and the school’s feckless director swoops in along with an ominously familiar looking little girl named Pandora. The school director latches on to Shiro and forces him to play tennis and other sports while all the clones are studying. Shiro starts getting caught up in the clones new religion, along with his new companion Hitler. I continue to be an unabashed Freud fangirl, because it is just hilarious seeing teenage Freud skulk around with his pageboy haircut uncovering evil secret organizations, and then acting incredibly neurotic the minute anyone asks him what he’s doing. This volume ends with a big surprise, so I’ve got to get over to the online chapters and find out what is going to happen!

House of Five Leaves Volume 3

Every time I pick up a volume of this manga, I’m struck by the unique atmosphere that Ono creates. The blend of Edo period slice of life pacing and the underworld setting creates an undercurrent of tension. I’m always on edge thinking that the moment is going to come when hapless ronin Masa is going to get caught up in violence but he always manages to drift along on the edges of life, surviving despite himself. In this volume the spy/thief of the House of Five Leaves gets caught stealing, and Masa takes advantage of his new charismatic acquaintance Yagi to gain a side job at the house where his companion is being held captive. Yaichi is suspicious of Masa’s new friendship with Yagi, but is he anxious not to see someone else take on his pet ronin or is something else going on? Masa’s sister abruptly visits Masa in order to get some help extracting herself from a marriage offer, and it is funny seeing how the gang of hardened criminals acts around her. Everybody remarks that she eats just like Masa, and seeing Masa take on the role of scolding older brother shows a different aspect of his personality. For all of Masa’s supposed ineffectiveness, he does manage to aid his comrades but in doing so he gives the outsider Yagi more information than what might be prudent. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next between the odd triangle of Masa, Yaichi, and Yagi.

Review copies of Kingyo Used books and House of Five leaves provided by the publisher.

One of the unfinished series from Tokyopop that I’ll miss the most is Demon Sacred. It had a total commitment to shoujo insanity, and I’m sad that I won’t be able to see the end of this story about trans-dimensional unicorns, teen idol doppelganger demons, and reverse aging teens. Michelle pointed out to me that Crunchyroll is streaming Hanasakeru Seishonen, an anime based on another Natsumi Itsuki manga. After watching the first few episodes, it seems like Hanasakeru Seishonen isn’t quite as crazy as Demon Sacred (I’m not sure what could be) but the reverse harem scenario and off the wall plot elements will serve as compensation for the lack of new Itsuki manga in my life.

I’ve only watched the first four episodes of this thirty-nine episode series, so I’m sure there are some long-running plot elements that haven’t been introduced yet. But I thought I’d give a brief overview of the series for other manga fans that might be experiencing Demon Sacred withdrawal. Kajika is a mysterious girl who has spent most of her childhood on an isolated tropical island. The first episode of Hanasakeru Seishonen shows her enrolling in a normal Japanese high school and starting to blend in with her classmates. The focus on Japanese high school life is quickly diverted as Kajika’s incredibly rich father orders her to return to him in order to play a “marriage game” where she has to somehow identify, woo, and decide who she wants to marry among the three potential son-in-laws he has picked out. Along for the journey are Kajika’s baby-faced bodyguard Toranosuke and her companion Lee-Leng, who just happens to be the heir of a rich Chinese family. While the set-up appears to be a straightforward game of mystery date, Itsuki has a way of making things more interesting than you might expect from what initially seems to be a simple reverse harem scenario.

The first candidate for Kajika’s affections is Eugene Volkan, a man with unique coloring that reminds Kajika of her long-lost leopard companion Mustafa. Kajika decides that Eugene is carrying Mustafa’s spirit and immediately is drawn to him. Little does she know that the Volkan family has a complicated history involving insanity, artificial insemination, and suicide. Eugene himself is a stone cold womanizer who seems to set up a parade of woman who fall in love with him and then decide to kill themselves when he doesn’t return their affections. Kajika immediately latches onto Eugene and starts telling him stories about his previous life as a leopard. Lee-Leng is supposed to be overseeing Kajika’s progress in the “marriage game” and he views Eugene as an entirely unsuitable candidate, I suspect because he secretly wants to marry her himself.

There was plenty of drama in the first four episodes of Hanasakeru Seishonen. While it didn’t feature the endless parade of delightfully improbable plot elements that I found fascinating in the Demon Sacred manga, I’m expecting that the story will grow more and more complex, as Itsuki tends to touch on different areas when building her characters’ worlds. I’ll be watching the next few episodes, because I figure in a series as long as this it will grow more complex and interesting as it progresses.

I’ve procrastinated writing about the last couple volumes of Gatcha Gacha because I didn’t really want this series to end. In a world filled with cookie cutter shoujo, this series is genuinely weird, somewhat endearing, and occasionally disturbing. I’m assuming that based on the long stretches of time between the series debut and the translation of the final volume that this series didn’t do so well in the sales arena, so kudos for Tokyopop for finishing it. While I’m unhappy about so many series being unfinished with Tokyopop shutting down, I’m trying to comfort myself with the idea that at least Gatcha Gacha was finished. There are plenty of spoilers ahead, so be warned.

Gatcha Gacha Volume 7 by Yutaka Tachibana

The seventh volume was the first one where I felt like Tachibana was stalling for time before the end of the series. Instead of focusing on the relationships between the main characters, we get an extended flashback of what happened between Motoko and a girl from her past named Sae. Motoko gets involved in Sae’s life, and while Sae thinks that she’s using Motoko, it is clear that everyone’s favorite tough girl has her own motivations for intervening. The next story arc in this Motokocentric volume touches on the possibility that she has a different family background than everybody previously assumed. It is interesting to see the agony Yuri goes through when confronted with the idea that Motoko might be disappearing from her life. Motoko ends up solving the issue with her customary directness, and it reminded me how much I enjoy reading a manga that features a character that just says whatever she wants without fear. In another series, the situation probably wouldn’t have been taken care of in half a volume, because everyone would sill be sneaking around without saying anything.

Gatcha Gacha Volume 8 by Yutaka Tachibana

The final volume confirms that the great love affair in this manga wasn’t between Yuri and Yabe or Yuri and Hirao, but Yuri and Motoko. Someone with a better background in gender studies than I would probably have a field day with Gatcha Gacha. It certainly shows a quirky yet positive proto-lesbian relationship between Yuri and Motoko, but it also uses gay characters and situations as fodder for soap opera sleaze of the highest order, as the cute girl who has been stalking Hirao is revealed to be a guy with an overprotective brother/gang leader who makes his displeasure known when the male objects of his cross dressing brothers affection reject his advances. The image of Yuri being menaced by a gang member in full gimp costume is one of the most incongruous things I’ve seen in mainstream shoujo, and one of the reasons why I love Gatcha Gacha is that it can be both surprising and weird.

The ending is one of those open-ended conclusions that often seem to plague manga. The characters are all a little different thanks to knowing each other, but all of the ongoing relationship issues are hinted at instead of given a clear resolution. Hirao is still enamored of Yuri, but even as she tries to give their relationship a chance and acts jealous if other girls give him attention, she’s probably slotted him into a non-romantic category in her mind. His emotional sensitivity and generosity has her thinking of him as princess she wants to protect. In contrast, when Yuri needs someone to rescue her, the person she calls for is Motoko. Motoko sweeps in, ready to fight for Yuri. When I first put the volume down I felt a little cheated because the end of the manga didn’t totally feel like a static conclusion. After reflecting a bit, I realized that even though there might not be major changes, the personalities of all of the characters have shifted a little bit just from their interaction over time. Motoko really views friendship with Yuri as something precious. Yuri is able to stand up for herself a little bit. Hirao is still going after Yuri, but he’s aware that it may already be too late. One of the funniest bits in this volume came with the omake at the back where the characters react to the lack of an ending, and Hirao is complaining that everything’s come back to where it started, only to be answered with the comment that “the girls have all grown into strong, sensitive men.” Gatcha Gacha has been one of the quirkiest shoujo manga that I’ve read, and I’ll horde these precious volumes until I die since they’ll be going out of print. I’m already looking forward to rereading the series next year.

Thanks so much to Sean Gaffney for sending me his extra copy of Volume 8!

I generally donate any review copies I decide not to keep to local libraries, but I figure as a last hurrah I will do a giveaway of spare copies of Tokyopop series:

Butterfly #1
Clean Freak: Fully Equipped #1
Pavane for a Dead Girl #1

Post a comment here listing the Tokyopop series you’ll miss most, and I’ll randomly select a winner next Tuesday.

Thanks for commenting, this giveaway is closed

One thing that I’ve always found a little odd the few times I’ve run across it is the occasional reference in manga and anime to the Jewish folk song “Dona Dona.” It generally is used as a shorthand way of referencing certain doom or despair for a particular character. I guess it is because this song that I’ve generally understood as a Holocaust metaphor (based on what I was told in Sunday School) is inexplicably popular in Japanese Elementary schools?

Here are a few references I’ve found, but I’m sure that there are plenty out there that I’ve forgotten or haven’t encountered yet. If you have any more please send them in and I’ll add them to the page. Thanks to ace Dona Dona spotter David Wolkin!

One of the longest and most overt references ever takes place in in Revolutionary Girl Utena, there’s a version of the song used when Nanami transforms into a cow (song kicks in at the end of the clip):

Here’s a panel from Detroit Metal City Volume 7:

And Slam Dunk Volume 1:

Do you have any Dona Dona references to share? Please let me know!

Cute Devil by Hiro Madarame

Tohru is the strong silent type. He wears glasses and serves in the student council. One day a boy with an angelic face named Fuuta asks if he’ll be his friend. Due to Fuuta’s striking looks, he’s treated like a princess by everyone at school. Fuuta pleads with Tohru with limpid watery eyes, and the two start hanging out together. While Fuuta might look like an angel, he’s actually a sexually rapacious demon and he’s picked Tohru to be his lover. I didn’t care for the story very much, because there wasn’t very time spent on character development. Also, I don’t find the fairly typical in yaoi dynamic of one character forcing himself on the other very entertaining. The chapters in the manga are all fairly similar, as Fuuta and Tohru play out the same dynamic in their relationship over and over again. That being said, Fuuta’s rapid personality shifts were funny and Madarame has some very attractive character designs.

Blood Honey by Sakyou Yozakura

Yuki is a vampire with a very sensible job of working at a blood bank. His favorite blood donor is Mayuzumi, a teacher who seems to enjoy donating blood more frequently than the average person. It turns out Mayuzumi is so hot blooded, he needs to get rid of excess blood so he doesn’t lose his temper. When Yuki is propositioned by his boss, Mayuzumi comes to his rescue and offers to give blood to Yuki for the rest of his life. Blood Honey switches the point of view for various chapters. Yuki’s featured at the start of the volume, Mayuzumi deals with temptation and his feelings for Yuki in the next, and the third story focuses on Yuki’s vampire nephew Kiri. Kiri’s a notorious playboy who keeps trying to insert himself into Mayuzumi and Yuki’s life, so they send him off to live in a temple along with a slightly corrupt priest. Yozakura’s art is simple and a bit on the cartoony side, as Mayuzumi’s temper seems to always show him overreacting to everything. I liked the linked short story format of this volume.
Review copies provided by the publisher

Like most other manga fans, I was surprised to read about Tokyopop shutting down. Soliloquy in Blue has a post listing what might be the final volumes of many Tokyopop series. Here are some of the things I’ll miss about Tokyopop:

Josei

Perhaps contributing to low sales, Tokyopop was one of the few companies to publish longer josei series earlier than almost anyone else. Some of the classic josei series they published include:

Happy Mania
Tramps Like Us (Kimi Wa Petto) – One of my favorite Josei series of all time
Paradise Kiss
Suppli

Clamp

Now that Dark Horse seems to have taken over printing many of Clamp’s historic series with new translations, hopefully this means that many of these series won’t go out of print. I’m not counting on anything though, especially with the recent Dark Horse staff layoffs. Tokyopop published Cardcaptor Sakura, Tokyo Babylon, Wish, and more.

Manhwa

This is simultaneously good and bad because the glut of manhwa that Tokyopop pushed out during the boom years probably contributed a lot to financial problems later on. But I’ll always be fond of Queen’s Knight, which was the first Manhwa title I really enjoyed.

Sailor Moon
It seems weirdly cyclical that Tokyopop is shutting down just when the flagship title that touched off the manga craze in the US is going to be published by a different publisher. I previously about how stumbling across the Tokyopop editions of Sailor Moon got me interested in manga again after a long absence.

Some of my favorite completed Tokyopop series include:
Marmalade Boy
Mars
Kare Kano
Karakuri Odette
Gatcha Gacha
Planetes
Fruits Basket

Current series I’ll miss:

Skyblue Shore
Shinobi Life
Stellar Six
Alice in the Country of Hearts
Silver Diamond
VB Rose
Demon Sacred

I thought that recently Tokyopop had been picking up much more interesting shoujo titles, and I’d increased the number of series from them I was actively following. I’m sorry I won’t be able to see the conclusions of many of these series.

Oresama Teacher Volumes 1 and 2 by Izumi Tsubaki

Izumi Tsubaki is the author of the high school massage club manga Magic Touch, that didn’t generally get favorable reviews from most manga bloggers. I read one volume from Magic Touch that was from the middle of the series and didn’t think it was horrible, although it didn’t inspire me to pick up the rest of the series. Oresama Teacher seems so much better! There’s an element of subversive humor on display that many shoujo series
lack, and some of the unconventional interactions between the characters made me think that Oresama Teacher seemed a bit like a kinder and gentler version of an Ai Morinaga series. And I love Ai Morinaga.

One of the things that I liked right when I first picked up Oresama Teacher is the fact that the heroine is a semi-reformed juvenile delinquent being packed off to an alternative school. I wish we had more teacher-centric female juvenile delinquent manga released in English, and can only hope that one day we get Gokusen translated over here. Mafuyu is able to fight and lead a gang with great competence, but she is utterly incapable of living alone and cooking for herself. When she goes out to replace the instant ramen she destroyed, she happens upon a handsome older man who is getting beaten up. He acts mysterious and bizarre and steals her food. Of course, when Mafuyu shows up at school the next day she discovers that the man is her homeroom teacher Takaomi.

Tsubaki comes up with something I didn’t think was possible – an interesting twist on the old “I have met my beloved childhood friend again as a teenager” plot device that is used so often in shoujo manga. Takaomi is Mafuyu’s long lost neighbor, but he carefully trained her to be a delinquent from a young age. Mafuyu at first remembers her old friend tenderly, but when her real memories start to come back she realizes that due to Saeki, her childhood was filled with brutal training sessions and savage beatdowns. While she starts school determined to act like a normal girl, join clubs, and fall in love, Mafuyu soon finds herself confronting her former ways. She sits next to young delinquent Hasakaya who is able to detect her innate bloodlust. Hasakaya is so eager to fight that he takes on large groups alone, and Mafuyu decides to rescue him while disguising her actions. Hayasaka is just dim enough to believe that she had no involvement when he wakes up with bodies piled around him. Saeki appears to be sociopathic and manipulative, getting Mafuyu and Hayasaka to join his “Public Morals Club” and indulging in the occasional bit of sexual harassment.

Many of the characters in Oresama Teacher are hilariously dimwitted, the better to set up Tsubaki’s jokes. This is the type of thing that gets a little tiring after multiple volumes of a comedy manga series, but Tsubaki’s characters have a bit more depth than usual, because she’s careful to develop everyone’s individual motivations. Hasakaya’s weird code of honor ensures that he’s always going to get into trouble by challenging multiple people to fight him at once, and Mafuyu’s impressive fighting skills and desire to save her friend ensure that she’s always going to come to his rescue. Her new found friendship is important to her and she doesn’t want Hasakaya to think that she’s odd, so she makes a rather pathetic attempt to hide her identity by wearing a bunny mask. Mafuyu’s penpal by way of carrier pigeon, the macho guys in the crafts club, her growing friendship with Hasakaya and the inexplicable relationship between her and Takaomi have me looking forward to the next volume. Oresama Teacher is a great manga to pick up if you’re looking for something light and funny that also serves as an antidote to more typical shoujo.

Review copies provided by the publisher

I love the way there sometimes seem to be themes with the Harlequin manga that’s added to the emanga site. Sometimes it is all about billionaires, sheiks, or pregnant mistresses. I noticed today that there were three titles that incorporated the word “revenge” so I of course decided to read all of them. I’ve listed them here ranking from least to most favorite.

The Millionaire’s Revenge by Cathy Williams and Hiromi Kobayashi

This was the first revenge title that I sampled, and it was the least entertaining. I was hoping for some more vengeance but instead we got a simple story about a pair of star-crossed lovers. Rich girl Laura has an affair with stable boy Gabriel, but refuses to marry him. Years later, he returns having made millions of dollars while her father has gambled the family fortune away. Gabriel is determined to have his revenge by buying the estate of his former employer and enacting a scandalous plan to make Laura fall in love with him yet again, only to reject her. Of course, they find love after all. I generally tend to prefer my Harlequin titles to be a bit loonier than The Millionaire’s Revenge. There was no murder, kidnapping, or any other shenanigans, so this title didn’t really inspire much enthusiasm from me while reading it. The art is the fairly standard rushed adaptation, and some of the dialogue felt a bit on the stilted side. You can safely give this Revenge title a pass, because the next two are much better.

The Italian’s Passionate Revenge by Lucy Gordon and Junko Okada

Passionate Revenge! I was hoping for more excitement in this title, and it did amp up the drama a little bit. Elise was forced into a loveless marriage by her father, leaving behind her Italian boyfriend Angelo. Years later, her husband’s employer shows up at the funeral and whisks her away to Italy. Elise is mesmerized by Vincente’s “fiery eyes” and they start an affair. But what is Vincente’s true motivation?! It turns out that he’s been employing a private detective to assemble a profile on Elise. He’s the cousin of the long-lost Angelo and he has decided to avenge the death by suicide of his broken hearted cousin. But the past may not be what it seems! This title was a little more exciting than The Millionaire’s Revenge, since it featured past suicides, seductive Italians, and a private detective who walked around wearing an inexplicable eyepatch. The art was as good as you can expect from a Harlequin adaptation, but sometimes the characters were drawn with odd facial angles that were not very attractive. There were plenty of tearful inner monologues about revenge, and overall I found this much more entertaining than The Millionaire’s Revenge.

Purchased for Revenge by Julia James and Masako Ogimaru

This was by far my favorite of the three revenge titles, as it features a cracktastic plot and better than usual art. I knew that I was in for a treat when I read the first page of the manga and saw that it featured a cute guy in a tuxedo being thrown out of a casino into a dirty alleyway. In the South of France, Eve is being forced to endure the odious company of her father’s business associates. When she steps out for some fresh air she meets a handsome stranger. They share a kiss in the moonlight, and they part. She never expects to see him again, but she finds out that the man she was mesmerized by is her father’s most hated business enemy Alexi. Oh, the humanity! Ogimaru’s art is fluid, with more interesting panel layouts than I tend to see in most Harlequin manga adaptations. The higher quality art combined with the crazy plot elements made this manga very enjoyable for the lunacy factor alone. Alexi assumes that Eve is a prostitute because there are rumors circling that her father has a habit of pimping her out to his business partners. When Eve is roofied by her father who then invites Alexi to sample her unconscious body, Alexi’s fears are confirmed. So in just a few pages, Purchased for Revenge has inadvertant attraction, a hostile business takeover, mistaken prostitution, and a destitute heroine. It gets even crazier as it goes on, although the consummation of Eve and Alexi’s romance features the rather tortured gender dynamics that you might expect from a Harlequin manga circa 1985. I haven’t even touched on the alcoholic mother, charitable foundations, and past murder that come into play later in the story. Purchased for Revenge was the best by far of this bunch of Harlequin manga.

Access to electronic copies provided by the publisher

Sakura Hime: The Legend of Princess Sakura Volume 1 by Arina Tanemura

Arina Tanemura can be a somewhat polarizing manga creator. Some people love her detailed art and others might find overly cluttered. Some people may enjoy her plotting and characters which are girly to an extreme. Others might find her manga a bit hard to relate to. The main series of Tanemura’s that I’ve read in its entirety is Kamekaze Kaito Jeanne, about an art thief named Maron who is the reincarnation of Joan of Arc. I have a lot of lingering affection for Tanemura due to Kamekaze Kaito Jeanne sheer craziness (Maron goes to talk to God in the final volume), and I’ve been slowly collecting volumes of her other series Full Moon and Gentlemen’s Alliance Cross. So to people who say “Artwork too busy!” I say “Galaxy Eyes!” If somebody says “Too many shoujo cliches!” I say “Look at the ribbons! LOOK AT ALL THE BILLOWING RIBBONS!”

Sakura Hime is set in the Heian period, which gives plenty of room for Tanemura to display her love of detail with all the flowing costumes the nobles wear. Sakura is a princess who has grown up in isolation, promised in marriage at a young age to Prince Oura. The introduction page of the manga encapsulates the whole story, as it has a picture of our cheerful heroine and a potentially tortured young man with the text “Always I watch you. I hate you. I hate you. Always I’ve hated you. Always….I watch you.” This might be getting a little dark, despite all the magical girl trappings of Tanemura’s story. Sakura is visited by an arrogant emissary named Aoba who claims to be a representative of the prince. Sakura wants to make her own decisions and isn’t happy about being sold into marriage. Aoba (who is of course the prince in disguise) and Sakura naturally fall in to the type of bickering relationship that usually signals a romance drawn out over at least four volumes. But there are complications, as it turns out that Sakura is a descendant of one of the legendary Moon Princesses and thus her fate is to transform into a fighting sailor outfit and armed with a sword that she can’t exactly control, fight demons!

The rest of the volume shows Sakura gradually starting to stand up for herself. Romance isn’t working out for her, and she has to flee, accompanied only by her tiny sidekick. She soon makes new friends but dealing with Aoba and her own mystical nature ensure that she’s still going to experience rough times ahead. If you have a low tolerance for silly magical girl manga, Sakura Hime isn’t for you. If you have a tendency to be distracted by billowing ribbons and always appreciate it when characters yell things like “Sakura Descends! There is no escaping the moon’s divine retribution!” Sakura Hime seems like an amusing way to pass the time while you’re waiting for the new Kodansha editions of Sailor Moon. Tanemura’s billowing ribbons really are the best.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

One nice thing about the insanely cheap prices for first volumes in the Viz Media iPad store last month is having the opportunity to try out some new titles that I wouldn’t ordinarily read. Sometimes this will make for a pleasant discovery, and other times I will just confirm that certain manga titles aren’t for me.

Rosario Vampire Volume 1 by Akihisa Ikeda

Rosario Vampire is a fairly standard harem manga that provides the slight twist of a monster school setting. Tsukune is an average human boy who finds himself inexplicably attending a high school for monsters where they practice their skills in pretending to be human. Tsukune is promptly befriended by the most beautiful and powerful girl in the school, a vampire named Moka. She’s drawn to him as a blood source, but she also acts as his only friend. The story in Rosario Vampire is pretty much what you’d expect. There’s plenty of accidental touching and viewing of young monster babes in their underwear. Tsukune’s status as an undercover human is occasionally threatened, and Moka is able to unleash her mystical powers to defend Tsukune whenever he needs rescuing. The art is clear and easy to follow, and for a shonen harem manga this series does seem competently done. But there wasn’t anything extra to engage me, as a reader who isn’t really in the shonen harem manga target demographic. If I want to read a manga about a schlubby human boy tormented by a oblivious girlfriend with amazing powers, I’d just go back and track down some Urusei Yatsura.

Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan Volume 1 by Hiroshi Shiibashi

I’ve written before about having “yokai fatigue”. There are so many manga series that feature people fighting spirits, it really takes a special series like Kekkaishi to win me over as a dedicated reader. Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan does exhibit some cliched shonen plot devices, but the basic premise provides an interesting counterpoint to the standard super-powered teen fighting evil spirits plot that manga readers have come to expect. In Nura, the hapless teen with hidden powers isn’t an ordinary human. Rikuo’s been born as the heir to the Yokai Clan – a group of powerful spirits that functions a little bit like a powerful mafia family. Nura’s grandfather the supreme commander is powerful, but he tends to use his mystical powers to perform a dine and dash when he takes his grandson out to eat at local restaurants. Rikuo grows up in two worlds, surrounded by strange spirit guardians who present themselves as heroic and his classmates at school who think that yokai are evil and annoying. Rikuo doesn’t want to become a yokai, but his monstrous side comes out when his classmates are threatened.

Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan starts out with the familiar framing device of showing Rikuo as a small child in the first chapter, while the second shows him as an adolescent still struggling with the demands of his family and normal school life. One of the things I look forward to in yokai manga are the monster character designs, and Shiibashi comes up with some whimsical supporting characters. I was fond of the spiral-eyed Yuki-Onna, and the neckless Kubinashi, whose head floats above his torso. The first volume of Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan just seems to be setting up many of the story elements. Rikuo is unaware of his stronger Yokai side. His classmates are fascinated with ghost busting. A powerful girl exorcist transfers into Rikuo’s class. These events are pretty familiar to anyone who has read a lot of Yokai manga, but the positioning of the Nura clan as a powerful Yokai family and their interactions with Yokai from other clans was much more interesting. These elements reminded me a bit of The Godfather, if the mafia families in question were all ancient Japanese spirits. Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan does seem like a promising shonen series and I’m going to read the next volume to see if the more interesting aspects of the first volume continue to be developed.

Library Wars: Love and War Volume 4 by Kiiro Yumi and Hiro Arikawa

I’ve read reviews from other manga bloggers that find this series somewhat insipid, but Library Wars will always be the perfect comfort reading for me. Not only does it feature action hero librarians, but the romance in this manga is sweet even if it is a bit predictable. In the last volume Dojo sent Iku out on protection duty to get her out of the way of a combat mission. Unfortunately his plans to keep her safe were disrupted when Commander Inamine is kidnapped by document censoring terrorists and Iku accompany him into captivity in order to protect him.

One of the things that I like about this series is even though Iku is often portrayed as the female equivalent of a dumb jock, she always seems to be able to show her intelligence in flashes of tactical brilliance. When the terrorists make their demands, she’s able to tip off her comrades about her location. Much of this volume is devoted to showing Dojo’s thought processes, with flashbacks to the day he became Iku’s mysterious prince when he helped her rescue a book as a schoolgirl. Seeing Dojo’s motivations and worries for Iku made me want to root for them as a couple more, even though I’m sure they’ll end up together. I also enjoy the haphazard way the Library Corps follows rules. They aren’t allowed to pull their guns on property they don’t own, so they quickly purchase the building where Iku and Inamine are being held captive so they can rush in ahead of the police tactical units.

This volume ended up having a good balance of action and introspection, as we are treated to Dojo’s inner life for the first time. When the crisis is over, Iku has to cope with her parents visiting. We see the reasons why she’s estranged from them and determined to succeed on her own terms. I was happy to see this volume hit the New York Times manga bestseller lists. I hope this series does well enough that we can get some of the other versions of Library Wars translated too.

It was funny seeing all the manga bloggers explode into a twittergasm yesterday, and I was among them because when the news broke that Kodansha was going to bring back Sailor Moon into print I was absolutely delighted . I’m glad that I never tried to assemble a complete collection through the exorbitant prices the old Tokyopop editions go for on ebay – I bought a few used copies of Sailor Moon when I could find them reasonably priced, and ended up selling them in a more reasonably priced bundle on ebay myself.

I have an erratic history with manga. I started buying it in the first wave, when Mai the Psychic Girl, Area 88, and Nausicaa were coming out in small monthly editions instead of the larger books that are ubiquitous today. The entire comics market in the 90s really turned me off comics in any form, including manga. I was still interested in Japanese culture, and managed to study Japanese in college and go over there on a study abroad program, and I read absolutely no manga while I lived there. I stopped reading comics and manga regularly and only started again when I was in graduate school. I actually rediscovered manga when I was house sitting for a librarian who had a teenage daughter who was crazed for Sailor Moon and Rurouni Kenshin. There were volumes of manga scattered around the house, and when I picked up and read them I was reminded of why I enjoyed manga so much in the first place. Sailor Moon was so wonderfully goofy, with its magical girl incantations, Tuxedo Mask running around with a rose clenched between his teeth, and Usagi the ditsy yet powerful heroine.

Sailor Moon might have silly moments, but it combines them with a surprising number of fights. The story grows more complex as the series progresses. The cultural impact of Sailor Moon was huge in Japan and here, where it was a gateway manga for many girls. I’m not sure if those girls will pick up these new deluxe editions or if new readers will be picking up the series. I’m just selfishly happy that I’ll be able to read this series again.

Beast Master Volume 1 by Kyousuke Motomi

Motomi’s Dengeki Daisy is one of my favorite new shoujo series, so I thought I’d check out the earlier series Beast Master. I think often mangaka’s earlier series tend to suffer in comparison when compared with the manga that become hits. But while Beast Master doesn’t have the more stylish illustrations and emotional depth that Dengeki Daisy does, it does share the same quirky sensibility that makes it stand out from more run-of-the mill shoujo series.

Yuiko is a typical teen girl with a passion for animals. Unfortunately she has an uncontrollable tendency to smother any animal she meets with too much affection, causing them to flee from her. Leo is an animalistic boy whose demonic eyes and strange mannerisms cause him to be misunderstood by everybody he meets. Leo transfers into Yuiko’s school, and she is the first and only person to make friends with him. She treats him a little bit like a stray pet at first, but as they get to know each other a real friendship develops. Where Beast Master stands out is in its depiction of Leo. While he is handsome, his animal-like rage is contrasted with a playful mode where he’s drawn to look a little bit like a playful giant cat. It is unusual to see the male lead of the series being portrayed in an unhandsome way so many times. Although there’s a little bit of a Jane taming Tarzan dynamic in Yuiko and Leo’s relationship, seeing how she was gradually able to integrate him into school life was fun. Leo’s tendency to watch over Yuiko saves her from some sticky situations. I’m not feeling as invested in this story as I am with Dengeki Daisy, but since there’s only one more volume in this series, I’m going to finish reading Beast Master. After trying both of Motomi’s series that are available in English, I’m hoping that more from this creator gets released over here.

Claymore Volume 1 by Norihiro Yagi

Claymore is one of those series that’s been on my radar for awhile because I remember reading several online reviews that pointed out it was a shonen manga series with some potentially interesting gender dynamics. So I was happy to spend .99 cents on the iPad version of Claymore volume one. This manga seems like a fairly standard fantasy action story, made much more interesting by the fact that the ultimate bad ass warriors in Yagi’s world are all women. Demons called yoma prey on hapless pseudo medieval villagers, and their only recourse is to hire claymores, women who have become part-demon themselves in order to be able to fight the yoma. The world of Claymore is introduced through the standard shonen set piece of having a young boy discover how claymores protect the world. Raki is orphaned, and he meets the claymore Clare when she is hired to protect his village. Clare is everything you might expect from a shonen action hero. She’s terse, business-like, and doesn’t hesitate to dismember a yoma by hacking off limbs before splitting it in half with her giant sword. Clare doesn’t even deal with the mercenary details of payment for her services. When the head of the town offers to give her money before she heads out on her killing mission, she tells him to wait and pay after she’s done with her job, “If I get killed…there’ll be no reason to pay.” Clare is followed from job to job by Rubel, a mysterious man who collects the money for her services.

Raki ends up following Clare and she agrees that he can tag along as her cook, telling him that he can stay with her until he finds another town he would like to live in. Clare isn’t one to sit around and talk about her feelings, but it is heavily implied that she’s taking on Raki as a sidekick because his companionship might be a way to help her regain some of her humanity. When the claymores transform themselves into human/yoma hybrids, they’ve started a process where they will eventually lose their human qualities and become yoma. A claymore who senses that she’s about to transform sends a black card to the next member of the organization requesting that she be killed.

Overall, I found this manga very intriguing. It is unusual to find a shonen manga that features a female main character that doesn’t feel exploitative. There were a couple scenes of Clare changing clothes taking a bath to wash the blood off of her self after battle, but these didn’t feel very gratuitous to me. Clare’s characterization is strong and forceful, and I’m curious to see what happens in the rest of her journey. I really liked the bleak tone of Claymore as well. It has been some time since I’ve read a grim fighting manga, so I actually found it a bit refreshing. Yagi’s art falls into the category of serviceable but not spectacular. I can see how it will probably improve over time, but Claymore doesn’t display the insane composition of something like Bleach that would prompt me to pick up several volumes for the action scenes alone. I’m very interested to see what’s going to happen with Claymore’s group of hybrid women/demon yoma hunters.

One of the things I like about reading manga on the iPad is that when reading it in the portrait or single page orientation, the art is automatically blown up to omnibus edition size. Also, being able to magnify individual panels is fun. The only thing that is making me a little hesitant about picking up this series is that it is so long! I will try to at least check out the second volume to see if I’m still interested. Can anyone whose read more Claymore let me know what they think about it? Does it get stronger as it goes along?