Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Katherine Dacey

Gate 7, Vol. 1

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I have good news and bad news for CLAMP fans. The good news is that Gate 7 is one of the best-looking manga the quartet has produced, on par with Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles and xxxHolic. The bad news is that Gate 7‘s first volume is very bumpy, with long passages of expository dialogue and several false starts. Whether you’ll want to ride out the first three chapters will depend largely on your reaction to the artwork: if you love it, you may find enough visual stimulation to sustain to your interest while the plot and characters take shape; if you don’t, you may find the harried pacing and repetitive jokes a high hurdle to clear.

Art-wise, Gate 7 most closely resembles Tsubasa. The character designs are elegantly stylized, rendered in delicate lines; though their proportions have been gently elongated, their physiques are less giraffe-like than the principle characters in Legal Drug and xxxHolic. The same sensibility informs the action scenes as well, where CLAMP uses thin, sensual linework to suggest the energy unleashed during magical combat. (Readers familiar with Magic Knight Rayearth will see affinities between the two series, especially in the fight sequences.) Perhaps the most striking thing about the artwork is its imaginative use of water and light to evoke the supernatural. As Zack Davisson observes in his review of Gate 7, CLAMP uses a subtle but lovely image to shift the action from present-day Kyoto to the spirit realm, depicting the characters as stones in the water, with soft ripples radiating outward from each figure.

The story, however, is less satisfying. The plot revolves around high school student Chikahito Takamoto, a timid dreamer who’s obsessed with Kyoto as a place of “history, ancient arts, temples, and shrines.” While exploring the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine, Chikahito is transported to an alternate dimension, where he encounters three warriors: Sakura, Tachibana, and Hana, an androgynously beautiful, child-like figure who possesses even greater spiritual power than the other two. Chikahito watches the trio dismantle a ribbon-like serpent, but before he can question what he’s seen, poof! he finds himself eating noodles with them in a Kyoto apartment as Sakura and Tachibana debate the ethics of erasing Chikahito’s memory.

Hana astonishes Chikahito with an awesome display of power.

The biggest problem with this introductory section is that the subsequent chapter traces a nearly identical trajectory: Chikahito returns to Kyoto, encounters Hana in the streets, then is whisked onto the spirit-plane for another round of magical combat. As soon as the monster is defeated, Chikahito once again finds himself eating a meal with Hana, Sakura, and Tachibana. (This time around, however, they gang-press him into cooking and cleaning for them.) CLAMP even recycles the same gags from the prelude: Hana’s fragile appearance belies a monstrous appetite for noodles, an incongruity CLAMP mines for humor long past the point of being funny.

Other problems prevent Gate 7 from taking flight in its early pages. As we begin to learn more about the Kitano Tenmagu Shrine, for example, various characters take turns explaining its history. These narratives are clearly intended to set the table for a more complex plotline, but have the unintended consequence of stopping the story dead in its tracks. The script also makes some maddening detours into mystical clap-trap; in trying to understand how the seemingly ordinary Chikahito can enter the supernatural realm, characters lapse into Yoda-speak. “We’re alike,” Hana informs Chikahito. When asked, “In what areas?” Hana cheerfully replies, “In areas that are… ‘not.’ Where he’s the same is… ‘not.'”

The most disappointing aspect of Gate 7 is the flimsiness of the characterizations. CLAMP seems to be relying on readers’ familiarity with other titles — Cardcaptor Sakura, Chobits, Tsuaba, xxxHolic — in establishing each character’s personality and role in the drama. Hana, for example, slots into the Mokona role: Hana refers to himself (herself?) in the third person, repeats pet phrases, and behaves like a glutton, yet proves surprisingly powerful. Chikahito, on the other hand, is a carbon copy of xxxHolic‘s Watanuki, a nervous, bespectacled everyman who unwittingly becomes the housekeeper and magical errand-boy for more supernaturally gifted beings. The frantic pace and abrupt transitions between the mundane and supernatural world further complicate the process of establishing Hana and Chikahito as individuals; with so much material stuffed into the first two hundred pages, CLAMP leans too heavily on tics and mannerisms to carry the burden of the characterization. (Cute finger-wagging does not a character make.)

The dramatic introduction of a new character in the volume’s final pages suggests that CLAMP may finally be hitting its stride in chapter four. As promising as this development may be, I can’t quite shake the feeling that I’m reading a Potemkin manga, all surface detail and no depth. Let’s hope volume two proves me wrong.

GATE 7, VOL. 1 • BY CLAMP • DARK HORSE • 192 pp. • NO RATING

Pick of the Week: Post-NYCC

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In the aftermath of New York Comic Con, we have no Bookshelf Briefs to offer this week, but we did manage to pull together a quick Pick of the Week! Check out our picks from this week’s haul at Midtown Comics below.

MICHELLE: Faced with yet another tough choice this week, I ultimately decided to award my pick to the seventh volume of Jun Mochizuki’s Pandora Hearts. Volume one introduced so many story elements at once that it left me baffled, but I’m glad I gave the story another chance because it has coalesced into an affecting tale with genuinely intriguing characters. True, volume six, wherein the gang heads off to visit the little sister of protagonist Oz—who, thanks to her brother’s stint in another dimension, is now older than him—at school and meets some new characters was not my favorite, but I have faith that it will lead somewhere interesting. That’s why I will most assuredly be picking up volume seven!

SEAN: I’m at NYCC, so this will be short. New Higurashi. Start of the Rena arc. Good stuff, go get it.

DAVID: There’s so much great stuff this week, with lots of new releases from Yen Press, a few choice items from Viz’s Signature line, and an always-welcome new volume of Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack from Vertical, but I have to go with the book that it feels like I’ve been waiting for the longest, and that would be the second volume of Kaoru Mori’s Bride’s Story from Yen. I thought the first volume was faultlessly beautiful, and I’m eager to learn more about its can-do heroine, Amir. As was the case with Mori’s Emma, the plot here is less interesting than the meticulously rendered trappings and the small but very lovely moments that reveal character. With Mori, it’s always more about the harmonic elements than a traditional, central melodic line, but the ultimate effect is always fascinating to me. I really enjoy spending time in the worlds she creates.

KATE: A Bride’s Story is at the top of my must-buy list, too, but since David has so eloquently described the series’ charms, I’ll recommend the first volume of CLAMP’s Gate 7 instead. This long-delayed project was first announced at San Diego Comic-Con in 2007, and has undergone several transformations along the way. (Remember when it was going to be simultaneously released in Japan, Korea, and North America in “mangette” form?) The story is pure CLAMP: a shy teen is transported from modern-day Tokyo to a fantasy realm that’s under siege from ferocious monsters. Naturally, he discovers that he has skillz he didn’t know he had — would it be a manga if he didn’t have a few hidden talents? — and must decide whether to save the Earth or go home for dinner. If the cover art is any indication, Gate 7 will be a feast for the eyes, even if the plot mechanics are a little creaky. Kathryn Hemann, who blogs at Contemporary Japanese Literature, has a thoughtful early review that’s worth reading if you’re on the fence about buying it.

MJ: I’m a bit of a post-con zombie this morning, but since I see that my cohorts have already covered several of my top choices (Pandora Hearts, A Bride’s Story, and Gate 7), I’ll take a moment to put the spotlight on the penultimate volume of Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack. This series is always a winner with me, but I’m especially interested in this volume’s final chapter, which reportedly comes in at something like 70 pages. Though short, episodic storytelling served this series well, I admit I’m thrilled at the prospect of digging in to something so substantial. Definitely a must-buy!

Readers, what looks good to you?

X, Vol. 1

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As a child of the 1970s, I appreciate a good disaster flick, whether the devastation is local or global, natural or man-made. There’s something immensely satisfying about watching the world go up in flames, only to walk outside the theater and be reassured by the presence of stop lights, busses, coffee shops, and pedestrians going about their business. Small wonder, then, that I adored CLAMP’s X back in 2003. Not only did it have an impossibly large cast of attractive characters, it also boasted awesome scenes of destruction — scenes worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster.

When VIZ announced that it would be reissuing X in a deluxe edition, however, I had misgivings about the project: would the apocalypse be as good the second time around?

In 2003, I’d swooned over the illustrations, re-read favorite scenes, and marveled at the fact that all the characters dressed like refugees from a 1980s music video. Though my inner snob normally disdained anything so purple, I secretly loved the all-caps dialogue, the swirling lines and wind-swept hairdos, and the melodramatic death scenes, not to mention the eerie, post-apocalyptic dream sequences that were sprinkled throughout the series. X read like a hybrid of The Seventh Sign (not to be confused with The Seventh Seal, a much classier flick), Götterdämmerung, and Captain EO, and I couldn’t get enough of it.

At the time I was collecting X, I hadn’t read much else, save a handful of manga by CLAMP and Rumiko Takahashi. The very qualities that drew me to X — angstful conversations, tortured characters — soon had the opposite effect on me: I started to avoid comics in which the emotional volume was cranked up to eleven on every page, as I found them exhausting, the manga equivalent of Tristan and Isolde. Re-reading Tokyo Babylon, for example, I was mortified by my initial enthusiasm for the story, which now seemed hopelessly overripe to me; not since I’d re-read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe had I been so disappointed by a favorite text.

Revisiting X proved a more rewarding experience, though the series’ structural flaws were more readily apparent on a second reading. The dialogue, for example, is often unintentionally hilarious: bystanders comment on the main characters, helpfully telling us how wonderful they are (“Last week, he saved my son from drowning in the river,” one anonymous mother says of Fuma), while the main characters introduce themselves to one another as if they’re networking, not preparing to kill each other. (Sample: “The name’s Sorata Arisugawa! A cute ‘n’ fun-lovin’ high school senior!” “Allow me to return the favor. I am Yuto Kigai. A humble public servant in the local ward office.”) Kotori, the first major female character to be introduced, embodies the Mary Sue concept to a tee; not only is she beautiful, kind, and long of hair, but she’s also very delicate, beset with a heart so weak that she collapses whenever someone frowns. More amusing still are the characters who materialize at the very moment they’re needed: witness the introduction of Tokiko Magami, a school nurse who just so happens to be Kamui’s sole surviving relative, and a fount of information about Kamui’s mother.

Yet these moments of narrative clumsiness are overpowered by the sheer force of the imagery. The battle scenes are kinetic and violent, as characters leap across rooftops, level buildings, and plunge their swords into one another; few licensed shojo or shonen titles can match the gory zest with which CLAMP executes these moments of hand-to-hand combat. The dream sequences, too, are shockingly graphic: characters are dismembered, crucified, impaled, and engulfed in flames, often right before their loved ones’ eyes. Though these images teeter on the brink of kitsch — in one dream, Kamui cradles Kotori’s severed head in his arms — they underscore one of the series’ most important points: sacrifice and loss are a fundamental part of becoming an adult, whether that sacrifice means leaving one’s family (as Sorata and Lady Arashi have done) or losing them (as Kamui, Fuma, and Kotori do in the early chapters of the manga).

The series’ other major theme — that humans are poor stewards of Mother Earth — is less successfully illustrated; three volumes in, it still isn’t clear what, exactly, the Seven Seals are charged with doing: preventing nuclear war? staving off pollution? protecting spotted owls? What will happen if the Seals fail, however, is evocatively rendered; CLAMP draws a post-apocalyptic Tokyo worthy of Katsuhiro Otomo, a landscape of twisted skyscrapers and rotting corpses slowly engulfed by sand dunes.

The fact that these images appeared in Monthly Asuka and not Young Magazine is what makes X so remarkable: it may not be the best shojo fantasy ever written, but it certainly is one of the bloodiest, a fierce, angry blast of emotion that scorches everything in its path. I hesitate to suggest that X‘s body count is an achievement, but it is sharp and welcome rebuke to the idea that female readers strongly prefer conversation and character development to butt-kicking and carnage. Count me in for volume two.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

X, VOL. 1 • BY CLAMP • VIZ MEDIA • 580 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

X, Vol. 1

by

As a child of the 1970s, I appreciate a good disaster flick, whether the devastation is local or global, natural or man-made. There’s something immensely satisfying about watching the world go up in flames, only to walk outside the theater and be reassured by the presence of stop lights, busses, coffee shops, and pedestrians going about their business. Small wonder, then, that I adored CLAMP’s X back in 2003. Not only did it have an impossibly large cast of attractive characters, it also boasted awesome scenes of destruction — scenes worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster.

When VIZ announced that it would be reissuing X in a deluxe edition, however, I had misgivings about the project: would the apocalypse be as good the second time around?

In 2003, I’d swooned over the illustrations, re-read favorite scenes, and marveled at the fact that all the characters dressed like refugees from a 1980s music video. Though my inner snob normally disdained anything so purple, I secretly loved the all-caps dialogue, the swirling lines and wind-swept hairdos, and the melodramatic death scenes, not to mention the eerie, post-apocalyptic dream sequences that were sprinkled throughout the series. X read like a hybrid of The Seventh Sign (not to be confused with The Seventh Seal, a much classier flick), Götterdämmerung, and Captain EO, and I couldn’t get enough of it.

At the time I was collecting X, I hadn’t read much else, save a handful of manga by CLAMP and Rumiko Takahashi. The very qualities that drew me to X — angstful conversations, tortured characters — soon had the opposite effect on me: I started to avoid comics in which the emotional volume was cranked up to eleven on every page, as I found them exhausting, the manga equivalent of Tristan and Isolde. Re-reading Tokyo Babylon, for example, I was mortified by my initial enthusiasm for the story, which now seemed hopelessly overripe to me; not since I’d re-read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe had I been so disappointed by a favorite text.

Revisiting X proved a more rewarding experience, though the series’ structural flaws were more readily apparent on a second reading. The dialogue, for example, is often unintentionally hilarious: bystanders comment on the main characters, helpfully telling us how wonderful they are (“Last week, he saved my son from drowning in the river,” one anonymous mother says of Fuma), while the main characters introduce themselves to one another as if they’re networking, not preparing to kill each other. (Sample: “The name’s Sorata Arisugawa! A cute ‘n’ fun-lovin’ high school senior!” “Allow me to return the favor. I am Yuto Kigai. A humble public servant in the local ward office.”) Kotori, the first major female character to be introduced, embodies the Mary Sue concept to a tee; not only is she beautiful, kind, and long of hair, but she’s also very delicate, beset with a heart so weak that she collapses whenever someone frowns. More amusing still are the characters who materialize at the very moment they’re needed: witness the introduction of Tokiko Magami, a school nurse who just so happens to be Kamui’s sole surviving relative, and a fount of information about Kamui’s mother.

Yet these moments of narrative clumsiness are overpowered by the sheer force of the imagery. The battle scenes are kinetic and violent, as characters leap across rooftops, level buildings, and plunge their swords into one another; few licensed shojo or shonen titles can match the gory zest with which CLAMP executes these moments of hand-to-hand combat. The dream sequences, too, are shockingly graphic: characters are dismembered, crucified, impaled, and engulfed in flames, often right before their loved ones’ eyes. Though these images teeter on the brink of kitsch — in one dream, Kamui cradles Kotori’s severed head in his arms — they underscore one of the series’ most important points: sacrifice and loss are a fundamental part of becoming an adult, whether that sacrifice means leaving one’s family (as Sorata and Lady Arashi have done) or losing them (as Kamui, Fuma, and Kotori do in the early chapters of the manga).

The series’ other major theme — that humans are poor stewards of Mother Earth — is less successfully illustrated; three volumes in, it still isn’t clear what, exactly, the Seven Seals are charged with doing: preventing nuclear war? staving off pollution? protecting spotted owls? What will happen if the Seals fail, however, is evocatively rendered; CLAMP draws a post-apocalyptic Tokyo worthy of Katsuhiro Otomo, a landscape of twisted skyscrapers and rotting corpses slowly engulfed by sand dunes.

The fact that these images appeared in Monthly Asuka and not Young Magazine is what makes X so remarkable: it may not be the best shojo fantasy ever written, but it certainly is one of the bloodiest, a fierce, angry blast of emotion that scorches everything in its path. I hesitate to suggest that X‘s body count is an achievement, but it is sharp and welcome rebuke to the idea that female readers strongly prefer conversation and character development to butt-kicking and carnage. Count me in for volume two.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

X, VOL. 1 • BY CLAMP • VIZ MEDIA • 580 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Codename: Sailor V, Vol. 1

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Do you remember Wonder Woman? From an adult perspective, the show was dreadful, marred by ham-fisted scripts, low-budget special effects, campy plotlines, and wooden performances. From a child’s perspective, however, Wonder Woman was magical: the heroine had a secret identity, wore a cool crime-fighting outfit complete with nifty, crime-fighting accessories, and fought bad buys. Better still, she could transform from civilian to superhero by extending her arms and twirling a few times, a transformation made even more dramatic by a blinding flash of light and a musical flourish on the soundtrack.

Codename: Sailor V irresistibly reminded me of the old Wonder Woman show. Judged by adult standards, it’s repetitive, hokey, and poorly drawn; judged by a child’s standards, however, it’s an appealing fantasy in which an ordinary girl can assume a new, powerful identity in order to defeat bullies, robbers, and aliens who like to impersonate idols. (More on that in a minute.)

Sailor V follows a well-established shojo template in which a seemingly ordinary girl discovers her true identity as a soldier, priestess, or princess. For perky tomboy Minako Aino, her alter ego is Sailor Venus, a glamorous, sailor-suited warrior tasked with protecting the Earth from the Dark Agency, a nefarious band of aliens using the entertainment industry to enslave humanity. With the aid of Artemis, a talking cat, Minako begins mastering her two secret weapons: a magical pen and a crescent-shaped compact, both of which enable her to overwhelm opponents with the light of truth….

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Codename: Sailor V, Vol. 1

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Do you remember Wonder Woman? From an adult perspective, the show was dreadful, marred by ham-fisted scripts, low-budget special effects, campy plotlines, and wooden performances. From a child’s perspective, however, Wonder Woman was magical: the heroine had a secret identity, wore a cool crime-fighting outfit complete with nifty, crime-fighting accessories, and fought bad buys. Better still, she could transform from civilian to superhero by extending her arms and twirling a few times, a transformation made even more dramatic by a blinding flash of light and a musical flourish on the soundtrack.

Codename: Sailor V irresistibly reminded me of the old Wonder Woman show. Judged by adult standards, it’s repetitive, hokey, and poorly drawn; judged by a child’s standards, however, it’s an appealing fantasy in which an ordinary girl can assume a new, powerful identity in order to defeat bullies, robbers, and aliens who like to impersonate idols. (More on that in a minute.)

Sailor V follows a well-established shojo template in which a seemingly ordinary girl discovers her true identity as a soldier, priestess, or princess. For perky tomboy Minako Aino, her alter ego is Sailor Venus, a glamorous, sailor-suited warrior tasked with protecting the Earth from the Dark Agency, a nefarious band of aliens using the entertainment industry to enslave humanity. With the aid of Artemis, a talking cat, Minako begins mastering her two secret weapons: a magical pen and a crescent-shaped compact, both of which enable her to overwhelm opponents with the light of truth.

What distinguishes Sailor V from other magical girl manga is Minako’s can-do spirit. Minako may flunk math quizzes and miss homeroom, but when the fate of the Earth hangs in the balance, she embraces her responsibility with cheerful resolve. “I feel liberated! I’m overflowing with power!” she declares after her first successful mission. Even when the missions fall into a predictable pattern, Minako’s enthusiasm and competence prove irresistible: she delivers high-flying kicks with graceful precision, discovers new powers in the heat of battle, scolds evil-doers for evading the tax code (no, really), and experiments with different personae. (In one story, she transforms into a handsome male idol; in another, she poses as a military commando.)

Put simply, Minako kicks butt and has fun doing it.

I’m less enthusiastic about the artwork, which is a riot of busy screentones, arm-flapping chibis, and noseless characters. The visual flow is often choppy, with abrupt shifts in perspective and setting that can disorient the reader. The character designs, too, leave something to be desired, as the villains all have blank, doll-like faces and enormous foreheads, while Minako and her friends have saucer-shaped eyes. Only the fight scenes are well executed; using undulating lines and balletic poses, Takeuchi does a fine job of distinguishing Minako from Sailor V, showing us how a plucky teen transforms into a strong young woman.

And therein lies the key Codename: Sailor V‘s appeal: the series allows young girls to try on a grown-up persona, to imagine what it might be to like to be a strong, smart, and capable woman who’s free to realize her full potential. At the same time, however, Sailor V honors a young girl’s ideas of femininity, recognizing that it’s perfectly possible to save the day while wearing a cute outfit. Small wonder, then, that the Sailor Moon franchise proved so popular among young girls on both sides of the Pacific: who wouldn’t want to be a princess and a warrior?

CODENAME: SAILOR V, VOL. 1 • BY NAOKO TAKEUCHI • KODANSHA COMICS USA • 272 pp. • RATING: TEEN (13+)

Pick of the Week: Cross Game & More

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This week, Midtown Comics plays catch-up with several months’ worth of Kodansha Comics releases, giving the Battle Robot plenty to choose from. Check out our picks below!

KATE: Though I’m not sure why Kodansha felt it was necessary to release a third edition of Gon, I never miss an opportunity to recommend this beautifully illustrated series to new readers. Billed as “the tiny terror from the Jurassic era,” Gon is a little orange t-rex who has a talent for getting into trouble. He tangles with other predators; he eats psychedelic mushrooms; he swims with sharks; he builds a beaver dam. What makes Gon work are the illustrations: Masasahi Tanaka resists the urge to put words into his characters’ mouths, instead relying on his cartooning chops to convey what the participants are feeling and thinking. As a result, this animal-centric series is never too cute or saccharine, capturing the natural world in all its raw (and sometimes comic) glory.

MICHELLE: This week’s chart at Midtown Comics looks pretty bizarre, since they are finally getting in all those Kodansha releases they were missing before. I advocate strongly for quite a few of them—Sailor Moon, Arisa, Shugo Chara!…—but I am going to have to award my pick to the fifth volume of Cross Game, which comes out this week along with several other of VIZ’s Shonen Sunday titles. I enthused about this particular volume in a recent Off the Shelf column, where I concluded my remarks by saying, “If you like sports manga, you will like Cross Game. And if you don’t like sports manga, you will still like Cross Game.” And lo, MJsubsequently read the first volume and proved me right!

SEAN: I hate to duplicate, but I’m going with Cross Game as well. This volume introduces a new plot twist that at first seems like the most cliched thing a reader has ever seen, but Adachi is an expert, and the way things play out is fascinating. The reactions of all the characters are one of the best reasons to get it, as Adachi milks so much from his minimalistic faces. Best of all, there’s a promise of more baseball. After finishing off Eyeshield this week, I’m in the moon for some more sports, and Adachi’s baseball games are thrilling stuff.

MJ: Honestly, I’m really tempted to third Cross Game, but I guess in the interest of spreading the love, I’ll go with volume three of Kim Hyung-Min and Yang Kyung-Il’s March Story. This dark, whimsical series got off to a shaky start, but its third volume is really solid, making the most of Kim Hyung-Min’s episodic storytelling and Yang Kyung-Il’s intricate artwork. There is perhaps a little less through-story than usually suits my taste, but though this volume focuses less heavily on March and her history than either of the earlier volumes, there are enough little nuggets of new information to get me by. And the stories we do get here really work, with a level of consistency absent from the first two volumes. In the beginning, I stuck with this series for the beautiful artwork. Now I’m in for good.

DAVID: I’m going to surprise myself by not third-ing Cross Game (SECRET CODE: I’m totally actually third-ing Cross Game by claiming that I’m not) by giving a little leg-up to a new shônen series from Kodansha by Ryou Ryumon and Kouji Megumi, Bloody Monday. Now, I wasn’t wildly enthusiastic about this book in last week’s Bookshelf Briefs, but I have to say that there’s always room for another stylish mystery featuring super-smart teens, which Viz seems to realize, given the fact that they keep re-releasing Death Note over and over again. The creators do a nice job setting up their complicated story and making a persuasive case that the stakes are high, something not everyone manages in a first volume. I wasn’t precisely blown away by the series debut, but I like mysteries, and I like comics about smart kids who have unique skills, and Bloody Monday fits both bills.

Readers, what looks good to you this week?

Bookshelf Briefs 10/10/11

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This week, Kate, MJ, David, Sean, & Michelle take a look at recent releases from Digital Manga Publishing, Kodansha Comics, and Viz Media.

Blue Exorcist, Vol. 3 | By Kazue Kato | Viz Media – In the third volume of Blue Exorcist, Kazue Kato proves beyond a doubt that she’s in control of the material. She uses these chapters to properly introduce two worthy antagonists for Rin: Mephisto’s younger brother Amaimon (a dead ringer for Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong) and Father Fujimoto’s former protege Shura Kirigakure. But Kato also takes the time to flesh out her established cast. Rin has an opportunity to solve a crisis with reason instead of magic, while flashbacks allow us greater insight into Father Fujimoto’s relationship with Rin. Smart-looking character designs, brisk pacing, and crisp dialogue keep the story afloat, even when Kato is going through the standard shonen motions (e.g. busty big-sis types, school field trips involving camping and group chores). A worthy addition to the Shonen Jump catalog. -Katherine Dacey

Entangled Circumstances | By Kikuko Kikuya | Digital Manga Publishing – Everyone’s heard the adage “never judge a book by its cover,” but more often than not, doing so has led me to something interesting, especially where BL is concerned. Not so with Entangled Circumstances, alas. Oh, it’s okay, being the story of a handsome, popular guy (now the project manager for a magazine) and the stubborn, uptight guy (now in the magazine’s sales department) he’s been chasing for six years, but it’s not as quirky as its eye-catching cover—quite different from common BL motifs—would suggest. Pretty much the entire plot is “uptight guy refuses to admit that he loves the other guy until suddenly he does acknowledge his feelings and then they have lots of sex although he worries the popular guy will tire of him now that he’s caught him.” Yawn. Nothing new to see here. – Michelle Smith

Eyeshield 21, Vol. 37 | By Riichiro Inagaki and Yusuke Murata | Viz Media – We are finally at the end of Eyeshield 21, which is second only to Prince of Tennis for longest sports manga out in North America, I believe. And if, as I believe, it should have ended at the Christmas Bowl 3 volumes ago, I can’t really begrudge it this victory lap. We finish up the game against America, and as expected the Japanese team slowly begins to inch its way back. The highlights of the volume are probably a) the revelation of the bandaged player, who isn’t the person everyone thought; and b) seeing Agon finally give in and play like a real teammate. Much as I hate to see anything good happen to him after being a jerk for *so* long, it wouldn’t be very Shonen Jump-ey, and this is nice to see. As the series ends and we see the cast split into various colleges all playing against each other, we get a satisfying sense of closure (unless you were one of the few readers wanting romance – no hope there) and a sense that the future is bright for all of them.-Sean Gaffney

March Story, Vol. 3 | By Kim Hyung-Min and Yang Kyung-Il | Viz Media – From the beginning, March Story has had a compelling protagonist, a dark, intriguing tone, and beautiful, beautiful artwork, while other aspects of the series have waxed and waned. Things even out in volume three, as author Kim Hyung-Min finally hits his stride and then some. Though this volume conforms to the series’ episodic format almost to a fault, this seems to be a good thing, even in the eyes of an epic-loving critic like me. March’s surreally-designed mother figure, Jake, is featured in this volume, which is much more of a treat than I might have imagined. Other highlights include a story about an Ill trying to protect her human son, and an Ill who spends years devoted to a human woman. There isn’t a lot of Ill-hunting going on in these stories, but you won’t hear me complaining. This series is at its best when bittersweet. It’s nice to be able to finally recommend March Story without reservation. Hopefully this is a permanent trend. – MJ

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Vol. 1 | By Naoko Takeuchi | Kodansha Comics –I end up enjoying a lot of teen-demographic manga in spite of the fact that I don’t really care for the protagonist. If the supporting cast is large and interesting enough, I can ignore the lead’s shortcomings. Sailor Moon is shaping up in that direction, as I find our titular heroine to be too much of a drippy dingbat to actively like. While her solar-system sister is having a ball over in Codename: Sailor V, Usagi is behaving in some of the most predictable ways imaginable: lazy, shallow, and easily distracted. Fortunately, she’s surrounded by people with enough verve to drag her along, and Takeuchi has barely begun assembling her array of allies. I’m particularly taken with tough, elegant, slightly spooky Sailor Mars and dreamy, sarcastic Tuxedo mask, in spite of his contractual obligation to express fascination with our heroine. And whose life wouldn’t improve under the mentorship of a talking cat? – David Welsh

Tonight’s Take-Out Night | By Akira Minazuki | Digital Manga Publishing – The title story in this collection depicts a whirlwind romance between the manager of a burger joint and a guy from the corporate office. There’s not much emotional resonance to this tale, but that’s made up for by the next set of stories about an icy inhuman being (Kirin) whose killing streak comes to an end when he meets a kind physician (Shinnosuke). Their story brings all the drama one could ever want, including Kirin becoming human through his love for Shinnosuke (and angsting that he’s just a replacement for Shinnosuke’s late wife) and Shinnosuke eventually having second thoughts about this because Kirin will now eventually die. The last pair of stories are devoted to Makimura and Fujimori, an art student and his younger mentor who feel each other up first for sculpture-making purposes and then just for fun. All in all, it’s a diverse and enjoyable collection. – Michelle Smith

X 3-in-1, Vol. 1 | By CLAMP | Viz Media – Psychic powers! Family secrets! Mysterious destinies that threaten the entire world! Good-looking boys, and girls with yards of hair! X is pretty much dead center in the Venn diagram of “things I expect from a comic by CLAMP,” which is problematic only in that I like their work best when it surprises me. Siblings Kotori and Fuma find their high-school world turned upside-down by the return of their childhood friend, Kamui. He’s changed from the gentle, outgoing boy they knew, but you would too if you were constantly being attacked by nattily dressed, willowy psychics. On one hand, the whole “earth-threatening destiny” thing is as muddy and hard to navigate as a swamp; on the other, there’s an unapologetic level of violence here that compensates for the nonsensical quality of the plot it serves. The characters may be a little drab, and the story is a head-scratcher, but the fact that there’s this much bone-crushing, body-count action in a shôjo series is undeniably awesome. – David Welsh

Manga Artifacts: The Legend of Mother Sarah

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Most American manga fans know Katsuhiro Otomo as the creator of AKIRA, and perhaps of Domu: A Child’s Dream and Hipira. But did you know that Otomo was also the author of The Legend of Mother Sarah, a criminally under-appreciated sci-fi epic that’s equal parts Mad Max and Terminator II?

Set in the not-too-distant future, Mother Sarah begins in space — or, more accurately, space stations, where the survivors of a nuclear holocaust have sought refuge from the Earth’s extreme climate changes. When riots threaten the peace aboard these floating cities, the military evacuates civilians back to the surface, in the process separating thousands of children from their parents. Sarah, the story’s eponymous heroine, is on a quest to find her own family, all of whom disappeared in the chaos aboard the space stations. Traveling with Tsue, a trader, she wanders a desolate landscape of crumbling cities, slave-labor camps, religious compounds, and hardscrabble farms, putting the hurt on anyone who threatens the honest folk she meets along the way.

Given its classic premise and cool, resourceful heroine, it’s curious that Mother Sarah had such a short shelf life. As tempting as it may be to chalk up fan indifference to sexism, or antipathy towards Otomo’s other (read: not AKIRA) projects, I think the real reason lies with the way Mother Sarah was released.

Dark Horse published the series from 1995-98, but only collected the first eight issues into a trade paperback. . When read in thirty-page installments, The Legend of Mother Sarah: Tunnel Town is engaging but frustrating. Otomo and artist Takumi Nagayasu’s sense of pacing, in particular, is too leisurely for a stand-alone booklet: they establish a new setting with a dozen wordless panels, luxuriate in an explosion, or depict a fist-fight over five or six pages, gobbling up pages that might otherwise be advancing the story.

Contrast an issue of Tunnel Town with that of a long-running American series and the incompatibility of format and story becomes more apparent. In each issue of The Walking Dead, for example, one important event is dramatized: the characters make a critical discovery about their zombie foes or confront a troublemaker within their ranks. Though the issue may end on a cliffhanger, there’s a sense of closure that’s missing from an issue of Mother Sarah, even though both stories are clearly intended to extend beyond the confines of a single pamphlet. Put another way, each issue of Walking Dead has a clear beginning, middle, and end, whereas Sarah simply stops; it’s as if the author pressed “pause,” rather than set the table for the next chapter.

When read in trade paperback form, however, Tunnel Town has a more satisfying rhythm. Those establishing shots and slow-mo fight scenes draw the reader deeper into the story; we feel like we’re actually part of the scene, rather than passive witnesses to the action. The continuity between events is easier to appreciate as well. Sarah’s skirmishes with authority no longer seem like a string of isolated incidents, but a steadily escalating pattern of violence that demands resolution. And what a finale! Coming at the end of two hundred pages, the denouement is less a cool stunt than a thrilling affirmation of Sarah’s courage and smarts, an emphatic punctuation mark at the end of a long but well-reasoned paragraph.

I’m guessing that someone at Dark Horse must have thought Mother Sarah was ill-served by the thirty-page format, as the next two arcs — City of the Children and City of the Angels — were published in forty-eight page installments, a development highlighted on the front covers of each issue:

As a result, the later mini-series are more engaging; we’re treated to a larger, more satisfying chunk of story in each installment, a chunk that I suspect corresponds to the way the manga was serialized in Young Magazine. (I don’t know that for a fact, however, so feel free to politely educate me on this point if I’m off base here.) Alas, neither Children nor Angels were collected in bound form, making it harder for a new generation of manga fans to discover the series for themselves.

For all my grumbling about format and scarcity, however, all three story arcs are worth owning, both for the art and the story. Takumi Nagayasu’s crisp visuals are pleasingly reminiscent of Otomo’s. Nagayasu’s characters are drawn in a naturalistic fashion, with plenty of attention given to hands, facial hair, posture, wrinkles, and muscles; even the most inconsequential soldier or civilian is given a unique face and a thoughtfully constructed costume. Nagayasu also shares Otomo’s love of vehicles and decaying urban landscapes, rendering both in a fine, evocative fashion; one can almost hear the steel structures rusting from neglect.

Otomo’s writing is as strong as Nagayasu’s artwork. Though Sarah is a certifiable bad-ass, capable of kicking and stabbing her way out of a tight situation, she relies on her wits just as frequently as her fists. Her maternal instincts, too, inform much of her decision-making; throughout the series, Sarah is drawn to conflicts involving exploited or abused children, offering her a chance to symbolically “save” the family she lost ten years earlier. In short, Sarah is a woman warrior in the Lt. Ellen Ripley/Sarah Connor mold: fierce, strong, principled, and, above all else, a mama grizzly who sides with the young and the helpless. Oh, and she looks good while dispensing justice, too. Now that’s my kind of escapism, no matter how it’s packaged.

THE LEGEND OF MOTHER SARAH • STORY BY KATSUHIRO OTOMO, ART BY TAKUMI NAGAYASU • DARK HORSE • NO RATING

Manga Artifacts: The Legend of Mother Sarah

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Most American manga fans know Katsuhiro Otomo as the creative force behind AKIRA and Domu: A Child’s Dream, but Otomo’s catalog also includes works like The Legend of Mother Sarah, in which Otomo penned the script but relinquished the illustration duties to another manga-ka. And while Mother Sarah isn’t quite as visually dazzling as AKIRA or Domu, this post-apocalyptic adventure is every bit as fun to read, thanks to its vivid characterizations and dynamic action sequences.

Set in the not-too-distant future, Mother Sarah begins in space — or, more accurately, space stations, where the survivors of a nuclear holocaust have sought refuge from the Earth’s extreme climate changes. When riots threaten the peace aboard these floating cities, the military evacuates civilians back to the surface, in the process separating thousands of children from their parents. Sarah, the story’s eponymous heroine, is on a quest to find her own family, all of whom disappeared in the chaos aboard the space stations. Traveling with Tsue, a trader, she wanders a desolate landscape of crumbling cities, slave-labor camps, religious compounds, and hardscrabble farms, karate-chopping anyone who threatens the honest folk she meets along the way.

Given its classic premise and cool, resourceful heroine, it’s curious that Mother Sarah had such a short shelf life here in the United States. As tempting as it may be to chalk up fan indifference to sexism, or antipathy towards Otomo’s other (read: not AKIRA) projects, I think the real reason lies with the way Mother Sarah was released. Dark Horse published the series from 1995-98, but only collected the first eight issues into a trade paperback. When read in thirty-page installments, The Legend of Mother Sarah: Tunnel Town is engaging but frustrating. Otomo and artist Takumi Nagayasu’s sense of pacing, in particular, is too leisurely for a stand-alone booklet: they establish a new setting with a dozen wordless panels, luxuriate in an explosion, or depict a fist-fight over five or six pages, gobbling up real estate that might otherwise be advancing the story. Contrast an issue of Tunnel Town with that of a long-running American series and the incompatibility of format and story becomes more apparent. In each issue of The Walking Dead, for example, one important event is dramatized: the characters make a critical discovery about their zombie foes or confront a troublemaker within their ranks. Though the issue may end on a cliffhanger, there’s a sense of closure that’s missing from an issue of Mother Sarah, even though both stories are clearly intended to extend beyond the confines of a single pamphlet.

When read in trade paperback form, however, Tunnel Town has a more satisfying rhythm. Those establishing shots and slow-mo fight scenes draw the reader deeper into the story; we feel like we’re actually part of the scene, rather than passive witnesses to the action. The continuity between events is easier to appreciate as well. Sarah’s skirmishes with authority no longer seem like a string of isolated incidents, but a steadily escalating pattern of violence that demands resolution. And what a finale! Coming at the end of two hundred pages, the denouement is less a cool stunt than a thrilling affirmation of Sarah’s courage and smarts, an emphatic punctuation mark at the end of a long but well-reasoned paragraph.

I’m guessing that someone at Dark Horse must have thought Mother Sarah was ill-served by the thirty-page format, as the next two arcs — City of the Children and City of the Angels — were published in forty-eight page installments, a development highlighted on the front covers of each issue:

As a result, the later mini-series are more engaging; we’re treated to a larger, more satisfying chunk of story in each installment, a chunk that I suspect corresponds more closely to the way the manga was serialized in Young Magazine. Alas, neither Children nor Angels were collected in bound form, making it harder for a new generation of manga fans to discover the series for themselves.

For all my grumbling about format and scarcity, however, all three story arcs are worth owning, both for the art and the story. Takumi Nagayasu’s crisp visuals are pleasingly reminiscent of Otomo’s. Nagayasu’s characters are drawn in a naturalistic fashion, with plenty of attention given to hands, facial hair, posture, wrinkles, and muscles; even the most inconsequential soldier or civilian is given a unique face and a thoughtfully constructed costume. Nagayasu also shares Otomo’s love of vehicles and decaying urban landscapes, rendering both in a fine, evocative fashion; one can almost hear the steel structures rusting from neglect.

Otomo’s writing is as strong as Nagayasu’s artwork. Though Sarah is a certifiable bad-ass, capable of kicking and stabbing her way out of a tight situation, she relies on her wits just as frequently as her fists. Her maternal instincts, too, inform much of her decision-making; throughout the series, Sarah is drawn to conflicts involving exploited or abused children, offering her a chance to symbolically “save” the family she lost ten years earlier. In short, Sarah is a woman warrior in the Lt. Ellen Ripley/Sarah Connor mold: fierce, strong, principled, and, above all else, a mama grizzly who sides with the young and the helpless. Oh, and she looks good while dispensing justice, too. Now that’s my kind of escapism, no matter how it’s packaged.

THE LEGEND OF MOTHER SARAH • STORY BY KATSUHIRO OTOMO, ART BY TAKUMI NAGAYASU • DARK HORSE • NO RATING

Gandhi: A Manga Biography

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British historian Phillip Guedalla famously described biography as “a very definite region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the east by obituary, and on the west by tedium.” Were I to locate Gandhi: A Manga Biography on Guedalla’s map, its longest borders would be to the south and west: it’s both contrived and dull, a series of historical tableaux that do little to reveal Gandhi’s true humanity.

Most of the book’s problems stem from its scope, as author Kazuki Ebine attempts to cover Gandhi’s entire life in a mere 192 pages. Ebine treats us to brief glimpses of Gandhi’s childhood, when Gandhi was first exposed to the injustices of India’s caste system; his time in England, where he studied law; his time in South Africa, where he challenged the government’s classification of Indians as second-class citizens; and his time in India, where he used strikes, boycotts, and other forms of non-violent resistance to protest English rule.

Though Ebine carefully inserts major historical figures into the narrative, none of them are treated as individuals. Some are straw men, representing unenlightened points of view, while others are apostles, converted to the cause through the power of Gandhi’s words. Even Gandhi’s wife is relegated to a minor supporting role; her primary function within the narrative is to patiently reflect on her husband’s inherent courage and goodness, rather than interact with him as a partner, friend, confidante, or lover. (“Your duty is to lead people in a right direction,” she solemnly informs Gandhi.) Ebine attempts to portray her as the one person who truly knew Gandhi, but the relentless pace of the story prevents him from showing the natural evolution of their relationship….

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Gandhi: A Manga Biography

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British historian Phillip Guedalla famously described biography as “a very definite region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the east by obituary, and on the west by tedium.” Were I to locate Gandhi: A Manga Biography on Guedalla’s map, its longest borders would be to the south and west: it’s both contrived and dull, a series of historical tableaux that do little to reveal Gandhi’s true humanity.

Most of the book’s problems stem from its scope, as author Kazuki Ebine attempts to cover Gandhi’s entire life in a mere 192 pages. Ebine treats us to brief glimpses of Gandhi’s childhood, when Gandhi was first exposed to the injustices of India’s caste system; his time in England, where he studied law; his time in South Africa, where he challenged the government’s classification of Indians as second-class citizens; and his time in India, where he used strikes, boycotts, and other forms of non-violent resistance to protest English rule.

Though Ebine carefully inserts major historical figures into the narrative, none of them are treated as individuals. Some are straw men, representing unenlightened points of view, while others are apostles, converted to the cause through the power of Gandhi’s words. Even Gandhi’s wife is relegated to a minor supporting role; her primary function within the narrative is to patiently reflect on her husband’s inherent courage and goodness, rather than interact with him as a partner, friend, confidante, or lover. (“Your duty is to lead people in a right direction,” she solemnly informs Gandhi.) Ebine attempts to portray her as the one person who truly knew Gandhi, but the relentless pace of the story prevents him from showing the natural evolution of their relationship.

The script is equally problematic, abounding in typos and grammatical errors. (“Pease enjoy this humble farewell party for you,” one character tells Gandhi.) The problems extend beyond mere editorial sloppiness: the dialogue would have benefited from a vigorous re-write, as it sounds more like a poorly translated Power Point presentation than natural conversation. In one crucial scene, for example, a young South African man confronts Gandhi with what amounts to an eighth grader’s gloss on the crisis in South Africa. “When I first heard your speech, I was so inspired as if you boiled in my blood!” he declares. “No one else has tried to rise up against the whites. As Indians, we have decided to fight together beyond the differences in religions.” Another character tells Gandhi, “By revoking Indians’ right to vote, they try to shut our mouth up regarding sovereignty” — an indignity up with which he will not put.

The biggest disappointment, however, is that Ebine makes such uninspired use of the comics medium. The artwork is plain and lifeless, relying too heavily on computer shortcuts and pre-fab backgrounds to create a genuine sense of place or time. Though Ebine depicts numerous violent confrontations, most of the layouts are an unvaried parade of talking heads addressing assemblies and conducting back-room negotiations. To judge from the characters’ facial expressions, these scenes are meant to be as dramatic as the brawls and massacres, but the monotony of the presentation robs these scenes of specificity and urgency.

The bottom line: readers who want an overview of Gandhi’s life and work may find this slim volume helpful, but readers hoping to move beyond what Mark Twain called the “clothes and the buttons of the man” will be sorely disappointed.

Review copy provided by Penguin Books.

GANDHI: A MANGA BIOGRAPHY • BY KAZUKI EBINE • PENGUIN BOOKS • 192 pp. • NO RATING

Show Us Your Stuff: Burning Lizard’s Collection

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Welcome to the third installment of Show Us Your Stuff, now back at The Manga Critic! If you missed Daniella Orihuela-Griber’s contribution, click here. I’ve also created an archive for this feature here at The Manga Critic, which you can access from the “Features” menu or by clicking here. Today’s contributor is Derek Bown, a writer, student, and shonen manga enthusiast who runs the review site Burning Lizard Studios. Without further ado, here’s Derek in his own words.

Hey, I’m Derek, sometimes known as Burning Lizard. I run an anime, manga, and anything-that-catches-my-fancy review blog. I’m an avid reader and collector of manga, and in the past few years my manga collection has doubled several times. (Especially since the Borders liquidation.) I figured that since I’m like every collector out there: I’m just not satisfied unless I show my collection off to someone. So here you go internet, here is my manga collection.

What was your first manga?
Either One Piece or Ranma 1/2. Both were series that I originally experienced as anime. After my local TV stations started airing only reruns, I turned to the manga to get the rest of the story — which turned out to be crucial for One Piece, since there was an actual story to continue. Ranma 1/2 just managed to both entertain and piss me off towards the later volumes….

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Pick of the Week: Festival of Viz

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There’s a flood of Viz titles coming in to Midtown Comics this week. Check out the Battle Robot’s picks of the bunch below!

DAVID: It’s the first week of the month, so Viz follows its customary practice of flooding the shelves with new volumes of shônen and shôjo series. While they could certainly learn to pace themselves, I won’t complain if it means I can get my hands on the fifth volume of Julietta Suzuki’s Kamisama Kiss. This series is turning into a fine example of Suzuki’s ability to balance antic comedy and nuanced emotion, which is always a good recipe for satisfying shôjo. One of the things I particularly like about Suzuki’s work is that she respects her readers’ intelligence and doesn’t need to underline every romantic beat, choosing instead to highlight unexpected moments rather than dwell on the ones we can all recite by heart. The result is a series that fluxes confidently between sweet, silly, urgent, sad, and suspenseful. I’m always happy to spend more time with these characters.

KATE: My vote goes to the fourth volume of Blue Exorcist. I’d be the first to admit that the series covers well-trod territory: it’s got combatants of the cloth, a magical academy where exorcists learn their trade, and a tortured hero who straddles the demon and human worlds. But Kazuo Kaito’s elegant art and quick wit bring this very tired premise to life, making it easy to forgive the frequent capitulations to shonen cliche: characters declaring they’ll “do their best,” sloppy but talented fighters winning the grudging respect of their more disciplined peers. I’m not convinced I want forty more volumes of Blue Exorcist, but what I’ve read so far is good, solid fun.

MICHELLE: There’s a lot on this week’s list—which includes the final volumes of both Eyeshield 21 and Seiho Boys’ High School—that I personally plan on purchasing, but the one I look forward to with the most glee is volume 25 of Yoshiki Nakamura’s Skip Beat!. Although our heroine Kyoko Mogami is still fueled largely by the desire for revenge, she gets more serious about the craft of acting every day while remaining believably oblivious to the romantic feelings of her biggest mentor, renowned actor Ren Tsuruga. Somehow, Nakamura is able to make all of this feel fresh and new, and in volume 24 revisited the well-trod shoujo territory of Valentine’s Day with truly amusing results. I look forward to seeing what happens next!

SEAN: As always with Viz blitz weeks, there’s any number of titles I could talk about, including the aforementioned final volume of Seiho (I love Eyeshield, but it should have ended 3 volumes before it did). And I really want to pick Hark! A Vagrant as well, but it manages to not be manga. So my pick this week goes to a new Weekly Shonen Jump series, the first from Viz in quite some time. PSYЯEN sounds like a standard battle manga, with the only difference being the tournament arc starts right away as opposed to 9-10 volumes in. But I’ve been pleasantly surprised by many of the more recent Jump efforts (Nura, Blue Exorcist), and the art looks good. I’m hoping for another fun, exciting series that manages to have fights without letting the manga get overwhelmed by them. And Volume 1s are the best place for that!

MJ: Well, it’s been mentioned a few times, but I’ll be the one to come down firmly on the side of volume eight of Seiho Boys’ High School. This is the final volume of the series, which has managed to remain as brash and funny as ever, while also presenting one of the most moving, realistic portrayals of teen romance I’ve seen in a while. I’ll be discussing this more in this week’s off the shelf, but it’s not that often that shoujo manga successfully balances both the all-consuming heart-burst of young love right alongside its inevitable transience, without degenerating into serious melodrama. This fun, light-hearted series has turned out to be much more poignant than I ever expected, and at just eight volumes, it’s a nice, easy-to-collect length, too. Definitely recommended.

Readers, what looks good to you this week?

Bookshelf Briefs, 10/3/11

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This week, Kate, MJ, David, Sean, & Michelle take a look at recent releases from Digital Manga Publishing, Yen Press, Kodansha Comics, Viz Media, and Vertical, Inc.

Acting on Impulse | By Natsue Ogoshi, Original Text by Vicki Lewis | Digital Manga Publishing – Opposites attract in this silly but charming romance about a farm girl from Virtue, KS who falls for a reformed playboy from Manhattan’s Upper West Side. When Trudy takes a job in New York City, her friends Meg and Peter appoint Linc to be her “bodyguard” and romance coach. Trudy wants to become a Sex-in-the-City sophisticate, having wild flings and meeting exotic men, while Linc wants to settle down. Their initial compromise — friends with benefits — proves more difficult than either anticipated, as each begins developing strong feelings for the other. (Didn’t they see When Harry Met Sally?!) I’m not giving away much by revealing that Acting on Impulse ends at the altar, but the story earns points for snappy dialogue and a heroine who’s hell-bent on preserving her independence, even if it means turning down a marriage proposal. -Katherine Dacey

Bakuman, Vol. 7 | By Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata | Viz Media – Things continue to go wrong for our heroes in this volume as their first series is canceled, and this may be the best thing that’s ever happened to Bakuman. Most of this volume focuses on the team’s power struggle with their editor, whose opinion about what direction the boys should pursue with their next series differs drastically from their own. This is one of the most interesting looks into the editorial process we’ve been shown thus far, ultimately coming to a conclusion I did not anticipate. Less interesting are Takagi’s potential girl issues, as he begins a professional but intense telephone relationship with female writer Aoki, but even this has its moments. The undeniable truth about Bakuman, is that it continues to be fascinating regardless of its shortcomings. Honestly, I can’t put it down. Still recommended.– MJ

Bamboo Blade, Vol. 10 | By Masahiro Totsuka and Aguri Igarashi | Yen Press – In the last volume, we spent most of the time on the awesome kendo battles, showing how much our team of determined girls has grown over the course of the series. Now we have to set up the next plot arc, featuring Tama matching up against her new rival. That is, if the opposing side can get the new rival onto the show. This volume may be low on kendo action (though there are some nice bouts in flashback), but it reminds you how funny this series can be when it’s on a roll. Chapter 82 and 85 are simply amazing, with Osaka-style overreaction to everything and a manga-within-a-manga parody that hits all the cliched genre conventions. We’re now about 3/4 through the series, and it’s good to see it can still make me laugh like this.-Sean Gaffney

Bloody Monday, Vol. 1 | By Ryou Ryumon and Kouji Megumi | Kodansha Comics – As a story, there’s nothing really novel about Bloody Monday, but the execution is so solid that I’m not bothered. A high-school computer hacker, Fujimaru Takagi, divides his time between the newspaper club and helping is secret-agent father decode sensitive computer files. Takagi, the senior, ends up on the wrong side of a conspiracy, leaving Fujimaru to try and clear his dad’s name, protect his sickly sister, and defend Japan against a mysterious disaster involving a virus of the organic kind. Ryumon piles on the plot twists but manages to keep things both orderly and suspenseful. Megumi’s art is very much in the crisp, Takeshi Obata vein, which always suits material of this nature. The visual fan service is certainly in evidence, but it’s pretty benign and hardly surprising considering that this is a story created for high-school boys that stars high-school boys. Overall, Bloody Monday is more than solid enough on all fronts to make me want to know what happens next. – David Welsh

Codename: Sailor V, Vol. 1 | By Naoko Takeuchi | Kodansha Comics –The thing I like best about this precursor to Sailor Moon is the fun its heroine has being a “champion of justice.” Lots of contemporary super-girls tend to mope over the necessity for secrecy and the burdensome nature of heroic duty, but Minako Aino seems to be having a ball. And why shouldn’t she? She gets to be glamorous, powerful, and popular, all while saving the day. Takeuchi also manages to tweak a lot of fan-culture mainstays along the way, from teen idols to spin-off merchandise to hunky juvenile delinquents. On the down side, the stories here tend to get a little repetitive, and it would be nice if Takeuchi relied a little less on the fact that Minako is kind of a dingbat to generate comedy. It’s fun to watch Sailor V kick ass and look fabulous doing it, but it would be more satisfying if she seemed to take more genuine pride in her work. – David Welsh

Kekkaishi, Vols. 7-9 (omnibus edition) | By Yellow Tanabe | Viz Media – There’s more classic shonen situations in these three volumes of Kekkaishi. We see the tragic backstory of Gen, whose life before joining the Shadow Organization is shown to be pretty much awful. A nasty villain is shown treating his fellow villainous colleagues as pawns, and sacrificing them just because he’s in a bad mood. A new teacher arrives to beat some sense into our heroes, and she turns out to be a hot dark-skinned girl (shades of Bleach). But it’s a sign of Yellow Tanabe’s craft that these cliches don’t feel worn, and I’m still enjoying the byplay between everyone as more of the plot is uncovered. Yoshimori gets less to do here, but this is made up for with a great sequence involving Tokine, who shows why she iss ruthless and not to be underestimated. A very good series, which I will now sadly have to get single volumes of.-Sean Gaffney

A Liar in Love | By Kiyo Ueda | Published by Digital Manga Publishing – On the surface, A Liar in Love looks like generic BL, featuring as it does a handsome playboy named Hiroki who makes a game out of seducing his brother’s timid and kind coworker, Yasuyuki. Actually, though, it’s pretty great, as Hiroki quickly finds himself out of his depth in this new relationship. It’s often difficult to sympathize with him, as he tends to treat Yasuyuki shabbily when confronted with his own shortcomings, but his journey from an inveterate player clinging to the notion that it’s all just a game to a person who can actually be genuine about his feelings is believable and compelling. Yasuyuki’s no slouch, either, especially when he’s able to stand his ground against Hiroki when the latter is at his most callous. With true-to-life characters in a realistic and difficult situation and lovely, expressive art, A Liar in Love is a gem. Highly recommended. – Michelle Smith

Psyren, Vol. 1 | By Toshiaki Iwashiro | Viz Media – Psyren is pretty much equal parts Gantz, The Drifting Classroom, and The Hunger Games, though it lacks the specific urgency of any of those entertainments. A dumb-but-decent, fight-happy boy named Ageha winds up sucked into a game-conspiracy where survival means victory and failure equals death in a dessicated, dystopian landscape. Ageha has a slight edge over his fellow competitors in the form of his desire to protect a classmate, Sakurako, who seems to have been suffering under the game’s random rules for some time. Sakurako, with her combination of ferocity and fragility, is the most interesting thing Psyren has to offer, and the prospect of getting to know her better is the most compelling reason to keep up with the series. Other than that, it’s competent enough as mayhem-survival drama goes. With so much really good survival-mayhem drama at your disposal, Psyren ends up feeling kind of inessential. Recommended for readers who like their body counts high and can withstand a lot of déjà vu. – David Welsh

Twin Spica, Vol. 9 | By Kou Yaginuma | Vertical – This volume of Twin Spica is not necessarily filled with warmth and good cheer, and certainly has many sad and wistful moments, but did not seem quite as melancholy as Volume 8 was. Our cast is now in its third year, and things get tougher as you would expect, but the praise is also coming more easily, even from their hardest instructors. Moreover, even as he’s seen less and less, Mr. Lion’s storyline continues to fascinate me. As Asumi grows older and more confident, and the actual reasons behind the fatal crash begin to slowly be revealed, we see him start to wonder if it’s finally time for him to move on. The fact that this is done with minimal dialogue is another tribute to the craft we see exhibited here. There may be trouble on the horizon for Marika, though, which is a shame as we also see her open up a bit more here. A nice peaceful ride, with lots of scenery. -Sean Gaffney