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Michelle Smith

Pick of the Week: Magical Girls FTW

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Though Midtown Comics expects some real winners this week, much of the gang looks to other distribution sources for one of the most-anticipated releases of the year.

MICHELLE: While this week’s list over at Midtown Comics does include some real contenders—Bunny Drop and Goong especially—I simply must go off list this time and pick what has to be one of the most highly anticipated (if not the most, but we are in a situation where Princess Knight is also on its way!) releases of the year: Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon. It’s a classic and a nostalgic favorite for many, but also has an empowering message for young girls. They’ve got a duty, a mission, they can become strong, and it’s up to them to make the most of themselves and save the world. Don’t miss the prequel/companion series Codename: Sailor V, either!

SEAN: Yes, while I really should be trying to drive up Hayate the Combat Butler’s sales by talking about how enjoyable this current serious arc is, it’s got to be Sailor Moon this week. Or rather, I’ll talk about Code Name: Sailor V, the series whose popularity is what led to Sailor Moon in the first place. Many who are unaware of the series’ origins have noted the similarities between Usagi and Minako, and there’s a good reason for that – Moon is just V with an added sentai team, as requested by the author’s publisher. This does not make V any less awesome – Minako is more proactive (and impulsive) than Usagi, which leads to some fantastic humor. (As TV Tropes noted, trying to contrast the two heroines: “Usagi is a crybaby and Minako is a drama queen.”) So happy to see North America finally getting a chance to read this.

MJ: Though I’m loathe to pass up the chance to talk more about Goong, I simply can’t deny the spectacular nature of this week’s release of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon and its prequel, Code Name: Sailor V. Though it’s yet unknown whether I will fall for the series as so many have, I am absolutely thrilled to finally have the opportunity to experience what was the initial point of entry for so many American manga fans, and especially for female fans. These are absolutely my must-read manga for the week.

DAVID: For whatever incomprehensible reason, neither of the Sailor debuts will be showing up at my local comic shop, which would have been enough to plant a seed of dark bitterness in my heart, were it not for the fact that I can look forward to the fourth volume of Yumi Unita’s Bunny Drop from Yen Press. (Okay, there was also the intervention of a small squadron of Sailor Scouts who fired sparkly beams at me from their accessories.) I have a weakness for stories that unfold in something close to real time, and when you combine that with a thoughtful, slice-of-life examination of parenting, I’m pretty much undone. I love this book, and I’m looking forward to meeting more of better-than-he-expected adoptive father Daikichi’s extended family. Seeing a competent male parent, single or otherwise, is something that’s so rare in entertainment that Daikichi’s anxious, thoughtful efforts are particularly welcome.

KATE: Since MJ is singing the praises of Sailor Moon, I’ll bang the drum for volume 12 of Goong: The Royal Palace. This gorgeously illustrated manhwa isn’t just for monarchy watchers, though anyone who followed Kate and William’s nuptials will certainly adore this soap opera. It’s for folks who like a good old-fashioned drama, with a big, sprawling cast of characters, a plucky heroine, several handsome suitors, and the kind of meddling parents who make Queen Elizabeth look like the founder of the Free Range Kids movement. And if you’re the kind of person who keeps tabs on what Kate and Pippa wear around London, so much the better: no one in Goong ever, ever leaves their room without dressing to the nines. In short, it’s a stylish, compelling soap opera that makes the most of its royal trappings, and I’m totally addicted to it.

Readers, what looks good to you this week?

Arata: The Legend, Vols. 1-6

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By Yuu Watase | Published by VIZ Media

As a fan of Yuu Watase’s shoujo classic, Fushigi Yûgi, I expected that I would like Arata: The Legend, her first shounen series. Turns out, I had underestimated my enjoyment: I really like it!

The story begins in a world known as Amawakuni, where the child-like princess is preparing to yield the thrown to her successor after reigning for 60 years. There are no suitable females in the royal (Hime) clan to take her place, however, and so a fifteen-year-old boy named Arata is coerced into passing himself off as a girl until another suitable candidate can be found. During the ceremony, the twelve retainers of the princess—known as the shinsho, because they are masters of powerful sword-gods known as hayagami—revolt and the princess is cut down before Arata’s eyes. The shinsho pin the deed on him and his flight to evade capture takes him to the mysterious Kando Forest, where he is swallowed up and exchanged with his counterpart from another world: Arata Hinohara.

Hinohara has been having a tough time lately. In middle school, he was bullied so much that he eventually stopped going altogether. Now it’s his first year of high school, and at first everything seems to be going okay. He purposefully chose a school far away, where no one would know his old self, and is able to make friends quickly, thanks to his quick actions in capturing a train groper. After a month, however, his former nemesis Kadowaki arrives and the torment starts anew, capped off by the betrayal of Arata’s closest new friend, Suguru.

When he arrives in Amawakuni—and is taken for Arata by everyone he meets—Hinohara is thrust into Arata’s role as a wanted criminal. When his touch awakens a slumbering family artifact—what turns out to be a legendary hayagami known as Tsukuyo—he is suddenly recognized as a sho, which means he’s part of the battle for the the throne. The shinsho overthrew the princess because they were tired of the control she exerted over their powers, but now they must battle and dominate each other until one stands supreme. Like it or not, as a sho, Arata is swept up in the conflict and has two choices: submit himself (this essentially means death) or force others to submit. (Meanwhile, Arata contends with life in modern Japan, including going to school and eventually beating up Kadowaki.)

I really love how Watase fleshes out Hinohara’s complex character here, because everything he does makes sense based on what he’s been through. When he first arrives, he refuses to trust anyone, but when Arata’s childhood friend, Kotoha, makes good on her promises to stick by him no matter what, it has a profound effect on him. Too, the prospect of forcing others to submit reminds him too much of the domination he suffered.

Because of his experiences—and because of the unique property that allows Tsukuyo to safeguard the souls of other sho without actually causing their death—he is gradually able to win over a few sho by sympathizing with their own suffering, whether it be betrayal, isolation, or loneliness. In a conversation with the princess—courtesy of the special necklace that also occasionally allows him to converse with Arata—he promises to unite the hayagami under Tsukuyo and return to her before she dies completely. He’s got a long road ahead, and it’s one that can only be won by changing the hearts of others.

It is this mission of Hinohara’s—not unlike those usually assigned to magical girls—that makes me want to apply the demographic label “jounen” to this series. It’s definitely shounen in scope and feel, but it’s also attuned to its shoujo side. The slowly developing romance between Hinohara and Kotoha is very well done, for example, with Hinohara cognizant of Kotoha’s love for the real Arata and Kotoha confused because “Arata” is responding to her in a way he never did before. I also like that Kadowaki eventually arrives in Amawakuni because a) that is so very Yuu Watase, for two outsiders to come into a fantasy world and immediately assume powerful destinies and b) the ultimate test of Hinohara’s newfound bravery and purpose is for him to be able to sustain it in the face of Kadowaki’s unrelenting hostility.

The pacing of the series is also outstanding. There’s just enough foreshadowing of significant things—the gravestone that connects one of the shinsho, Kannagi, with his reasons for rebelling against the princess—to make the eventual reveal more significant, but one never has to wait too long for the answer to a question. Similarly, Hinohara frequently actually comes out and says what he’s thinking, so misunderstandings are not allowed to perpetuate for long. In fact, revealing the truth behind things—like when Hinohara finally convinces Kotoha that he is not her beloved Arata—gives the story more places to go rather than reducing all dramatic options.

My one complaint about the series is largely rectified by Kadowaki’s entrance into Amawakuni, and that’s that Arata is given very little to do. At first, there’s only a chapter or two from his point of view every once in a while, but once he meets an intriguing girl named Oribe—who can tell he’s an entirely different person than Hinohara—things begin looking up, especially when one of the shinsho is transplanted to Japan in Kadowaki’s place. Suddenly, Arata is in genuine peril, which is bad for him but good for the story!

In the end, while there’s a lot going on in Arata, it never feels like too much, always makes sense, and yet always leaves one wondering what is going to happen next. Not only am I genuinely excited about continuing the series, it has also rekindled my determination to read Fushigi Yûgi: Genbu Kaiden, of which I have heard good things.

Arata: The Legend is still in serialization in Japan; the twelfth collected volume was released there in August 2011.

Review copies for volumes one, two, four, and five provided by the publisher.

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

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From the back cover:
In America’s Gulf Coast region, where grounded oil tankers are being broken down for parts, Nailer, a teenage boy, works the light crew, scavenging for copper wiring just to make quota—and hopefully live to see another day. But when, by luck or by chance, he discovers an exquisite ship beached during a recent hurricane, Nailer faces the most important decision of his life: strip the ship for all it’s worth or rescue its lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl who could lead him to a better life…

In this powerful novel, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi delivers a thrilling, fast-paced adventure set in a vivid and raw, uncertain future.

Review:
Ship Breaker won the Printz Award this year, and I must say I think it deserved it! It took a little while to grow on me, but I liked it a lot by the end.

At some unspecified point in the future, a community of people has sprung up on Bright Sands Beach (on the Gulf Coast) where the best work to be found is on crews breaking down giant, rusting wrecks of oil tankers. Everyone toils away to meet their quota, all the while dreaming of the lucky strike—oil or other scarce commodities—that could make them rich. Nailer Lopez is fifteen years old and works on the light crew, where his job is scuttling through pipes to scavenge copper, aluminum, and nickel.

After a near-death experience during which his wits and luck save him from drowning in a pocket of oil, Nailer is christened Lucky Boy by his friends. This moniker seems apt when he and his friend Pima discover a valuable wreck left behind in the wake of a hurricane. They set to work stripping it but are stunned to discover a survivor—a very wealthy girl named Nita Chaudhury, who promises her father will reward them for saving her life. When Nailer’s drunken and dangerous father Richard discovers the wreck, however, he opts to trade Nita to her father’s enemies, which forces Nailer to make a whole bunch of difficult decisions.

When he and Pima find the wreck, she urges Nailer to be smart about it. In her eyes, “smart” seems to involve profiting enough to obtain a position of power on Bright Sands Beach. Nailer is aiming higher, however, and makes Nita promise to take him and Pima away and into a better life. The choices he makes from that point on are partly in pursuit of this goal, but also out of a growing sense of loyalty towards Nita, who proves herself capable and quickly loses her prejudices towards those less cultured than she. There are many times where he could have walked away and abandoned Nita to her fate but doesn’t, and ultimately, his concern for her works out in his own favor.

The story ranges over a few different settings, from the beach to the drowned docks of “Orleans” to a clipper ship crewed by people loyal to Nita’s father. As a big fan of the Hornblower series, I liked the ship the best. I hadn’t realized how much I missed depictions of naval battles until the awesome sequence wherein Nailer’s familiarity with the coastline results in a surprise advantage over a superior foe. In fact, the whole final sequence of the book was quite exciting, and makes me think this would make a good movie.

I also found it interesting that the main villain of the work is Nailer’s father, Richard, because Nailer harbors such conflicted feelings about him. He remembers the man his father used to be before his mother died, and though Richard’s now more likely to be high and abusive than relaxed and kind, Nailer feels obliged to care about him and give him chances to be a better person. After many disappointments, he finally realizes that Pima and her nurturing mother, Sadna, are his true family and is able to muster the strength to stop believing that his father is capable of turning over a new leaf at this point. Essentially, he’s a victim of domestic abuse who finally achieves the strength to say, “I’m not going to let you hurt me anymore.”

Lastly, Ship Breaker is commendable for its effortless portrayal of characters of many ethnicities. None of the lead characters is Caucasian. Their skin color is mentioned as part of their physical description, but doesn’t factor in to their relationships at all. Characters are judged purely based on their individual actions. If anything, the only real prejudice left in the world seems to be between the rich (or “swanks”) and the poor, but Nailer’s actions convince Nita, at least, of the errors of her ways, especially since he proves fully capable of functioning in her world if given half a chance.

Although initially a little frustrating—despite my love for dystopic YA, I still get a little frustrated with crappy situations that just seem to be getting crappier—Ship Breaker turns out to be a well-crafted and riveting tale.

Off the Shelf: Hungry?

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MICHELLE: Mmm… Leftover pad thai.

MJ: Um. Macaroni & cheese from a box? I’m not sure I can *quite* say “yum.”

MICHELLE: We put diced tomatoes in ours. It’s definitely yum. :)

So, what have you been reading this week?

MJ: Well, first I checked out the first two volumes of Eri Takenashi’s Kannagi. The second volume isn’t due out from Bandai Entertainment until October, but the first has been out for a while, and I’m just now catching up with it.

Kannagi tells the story of Jin, a spiritually gifted high school student who pays tribute to his town’s recently cut-down sacred tree by carving a statue of its spirit from the leftover wood. Having met the spirit of the tree as a child, his likeness is close enough to the real thing to actually bring the tree’s guardian deity to life in the form of a human girl. With her tree now gone, the deity, Nagi, has lost some of her power, and must rely on Jin to help her cleanse “impurities” that lurk around looking like insects and snakes. Meanwhile, newly-human Nagi wreaks havoc on Jin’s life, both at home and school.

As a premise, this all works pretty well. Foisting a pretty, domineering, otherworldly girl into the life of a young everyman may not be the most original shounen plot ever, but in-between boob jokes, Takenashi throws in some genuinely quirky stuff. For instance, after watching a magical girl anime on television, Nagi soberly builds her own magical staff out of plastic toys and paper, believing it will help her stamp out the impurities. The book’s early chapters are filled with small bits of humor like this, and even when the first volume beings to drift into harem territory, it retains most of its charm.

Unfortunately, things slide quickly downhill in volume two, when much of the series’ original premise is abandoned in favor of an increasingly obvious harem setup, complete with maid cafes, random swimsuits, and an endless supply of breast/otaku jokes (rotating on a regular schedule). By the end of the volume, in fact, pretty much everything I found charming about the series initially was gone, and it’s hard to say whether I’ll be sticking around to see if it ever returns.

MICHELLE: Oh, that’s too bad. For a while there it seemed like a shounen romantic comedy that any audience could enjoy. I guess it was too good to last.

MJ: Well, maybe I’ve given up too soon. But I’ll admit to being pretty disappointed, after such a promising start.

So what have you got for us this week?

MICHELLE: Like you, I read the first two volumes of a series whose second volume came out recently and its first some time ago (2009, in this case). I’m talking about Angelic Runes, a josei supernatural/fantasy series from Makoto Tateno, better known here for her BL work.

Sowil is a young man possessed of a unique brand of magic who is looking for his father and some answers. Shortly into his quest he comes upon a village where the people are preparing to bury two children alive, believing them to be the source of a curse. Sowil intervenes and ends up taking the kids—a girl named Allueh and a boy named Erudite—with him on his journey. Very quickly he realizes that they’re oracles; Allu can hear the divine voices of demons and Eru the voices of angels. These celestial beings provide Sowil advice on his travels and generally steer him in the direction of people needing his help.

As the trio travels, Sowil ends up helping an ocean-dwelling spirit return home and identifies the being responsible for a series of killings. Both have a connection to the father he is seeking, and gradually Sowil begins to break through the seal that has been placed over his memories and those of the people where he grew up. The angels and demons observing through Eru and Allu are concerned, as well, and through them we see even more investigation of Sowil’s past. Tateno mixes quite a lot of mythologies here, but it’s all in good fun.

What this results in is a kind of low-key story with some genuinely likeable characters, which is definitely my cup of tea. Sowil is really nice—his propensity to help random townspeople reminds me of Rakan from Silver Diamond—but his unique runic magic also makes him somewhat of a badass, so that’s an interesting juxtaposition. I’m also really interested in Allu and Eru, who seemingly have no personalities of their own and simply function as vessels for higher powers. That’s either mysterious or incredibly sad. Perhaps both.

Anyway, there is at least one more volume of this. I hope it won’t be another two years before we see it.

MJ: That does sound like a tasty cup of tea. Why have I been ignoring this series?

MICHELLE: Well, when the first volume comes out and then nothing happens for two years, I think one is justified in thinking, “Hm, perhaps this series has been discontinued.” I like Tateno in general, though, and remembered that Connie (of Slightly Biased Manga) liked the first volume back when we were all part of Manga Recon, so I never forgot about it. It probably doesn’t sell too well, alas, but I hope DMP makes enough through their BL catalog to finance a third volume someday.

What’s your second manga du jour?

MJ: My second read this week was volume one of Bloody Monday, one of Kodansha Comics’ many recent debut series over the past month or so. It’s a thriller about a teen hacker named Fujimaru aka “Falcon.” Though Fujimaru’s skills are often sought out by his special agent dad, he also uses them to do things like liberate his private school from the influence of a harassing faculty member.

When his dad stumbles onto something that gets him framed for murder and puts his family in jeopardy, Fujimaru takes matters into his own hands and, with the help of his high school newspaper crew, continues his dad’s investigation regardless of the danger. Though the series’ super-smart-teen shares some of the more over-the-top qualities of Death Note‘s Light Yagami, he’s at least not a sociopath, which certainly helps in terms of likability, if not in believability. Opening boob and panty shots would suggest that this series shares some other attitudes in common with Death Note-style boys’ comics as well, but at least it seems to feature at least a couple of potentially competent female team members. I suppose time will tell.

Comparisons to Death Note might suggest that I found little to like in Bloody Monday, but actually I enjoyed it more than I expected. Though it’s obviously intended to appeal to fans of the former, I have to admit that its kinder tone goes a long way with me. Despite its highly derivative premise, I expect I’ll continue on with it.

On the petty side, I did notice something early on, Michelle, that made me think of you. There’s a panel in the first chapter that is so poorly laid out in terms of speech bubble placement, that one bit of dialogue looks like it’s being spoken by a character’s hand, or maybe the canister she’s holding. Once I figured out what was really supposed to be going on, I thought, “Michelle would have a field day with this!”

MICHELLE: Probably I would! I kind of relish skewering things like that. I am glad you enjoyed this, though, because it’s written by the same guy behind GetBackers, which is a series I liked a good bit. If GetBackers is any indication, Bloody Monday may well be able to balance the fanservice and competent female characters to your liking.

Now this makes me sigh ‘cos I wish Kodansha would pick up GetBackers, but it’s really been so long…

MJ: I’m definitely interested to see where this goes! I feel a little weird about enjoying something that’s so obviously derivative of a series I was fairly wishy-washy on, but I’m going to just go with it.

So what’s your second offering for the evening?

MICHELLE: I seem to be mirroring you this week, since I also checked out another Kodansha debut. Gon may not be new to American audiences, but it was new to me. I’d seen it praised quite a bit, but never before been compelled to check it out. Now that I have… well… I’m not entirely sure whether I’ll keep reading it.

The premise and execution are certainly unique. Gon is the last remaining dinosaur, and is only a year old. This doesn’t stop him from challenging animals many times his size, however, as this volume finds him facing off against a bear whom he later uses for a bed, convincing a lion to serve as his steed and later eating alongside him as equals, and protecting a nest of eagles from a prowling bobcat. The art is incredibly detailed and entirely nonverbal. So, in that respect, I must say that Gon is really something special.

The thing is… I just don’t like Gon. While I commend mangaka Masashi Tanaka for not making him cute and endearing—he’s fierce and intimidating, even if diminutive—how can I like a critter who basically floods out an entire forest habitat making a dam that makes it easier for him to catch fish? So, on the one hand I’m like “Heh, what a little bastard”—and it is kind of cool how one can so easily invent dialog for all the displaced animals along the lines of “I hate that guy”—but on the other hand I’m like, “Man, what a little bastard!” Can I enjoy bastardly doings for six more volumes? I’m not sure.

One last thing puzzles me. This volume is quite slim. The material has previously been released in the US. And, being without words as it is, is a very quick read, even for a notorious slowpoke like me. These three factors seem to suggest this would be an ideal candidate for omnibus treatment—something Kodansha has shown a willingness to undertake for series like Love Hina and Tokyo Mew Mew—so why not Gon?

MJ: Well, huh. I’m intrigued for sure, though I suspect I may have a similar reaction overall. I find it really difficult to enjoy a series whose protagonist I dislike, especially if there isn’t some other character for me to really latch on to. Your omnibus question is interesting as well. I wonder if it has to do with licensing?

MICHELLE: Probably it does. Or else they’re keeping the volumes small so they’re not intimidating for kids.

MJ: Ah yes, could be.

MICHELLE: So. Um. Good night, then. :)

MJ: And to you, my friend!

Pick of the Week: All Viz, all the time

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It’s a Viz-heavy week at Midtown Comics. Check out picks from the Battle Robot below!

KATE: It’s time for the semi-monthly VIZ dump, which means new volumes of such long-running titles as Naruto and One Piece, as well as a random assortment of shojo and shonen series. My pick is the fourth volume of Oresama Teacher, a juvie-gone-straight comedy from the creator of Magic Touch. The fact that the same person is responsible for both series is nothing short of mind-blowing; I found Magic Touch tepid, tedious, and entirely too wholesome for its own good. Oresama, on the other hand, is fun and silly, with a great, feisty lead character and just enough edges that an old curmudgeon like me can enjoy it without needing an insulin injection.

MICHELLE: I actually thought the 58th volume of One Piece was coming out in October, so with Midtown’s list providing evidence to the contrary, how could I do otherwise than name this my pick of the week? It’s pretty special to be this excited about the 58th volume of a series, but mangaka Eiichiro Oda continues to do new and interesting things with the world and characters he’s created. In the current arc, for example, the simmering tensions between pirates and navy have finally come to a head in the form of an epic battle in the midst of which Luffy, and his kickass drag queen allies, strive to rescue his brother, Ace. Yes, I miss the other Straw Hats, but this is definitely going to be a volume I start reading immediately after coming into possession of it.

SEAN: First of all, I enjoyed The Magic Touch quite a bit, so neener neener neener. (Sorry, I had to respond, it’s contractual). For my pick of the week I will pick a final volume, the last of the josei experiment from our friends at Shojo Beat, Butterflies, Flowers. I have been back and forth about this title its entire run, generally depending on how much backbone its heroine is showing at the time. However, unlike some other shoujo series with bad reputations, Choko does show SOME backbone – when she puts her foot down it can be awesome. And the hero is of an over the top type we really haven’t seen over here – Tamaki from Ouran might match him for foolishness but is far too much of a gentleman to ever go as far into the gutter as Masayuki does throughout. Best of all, even if it’s offensive and wrong at times, it at least KNOWS it’s a comedy – which is more than one can say for Ai Ore half the time. I’ll miss it, and hope Viz tries more Josei Beat soon.

MJ: My choice is pretty surprising, or at least it is to me, but after reading the 36th volume of Bleach due out this week, I found myself more interested in the series than I have been for a long time. A long jump back in time might not be the most original storytelling convention ever, but it turns the focus away from battles and back to characterization, which is where I love Tite Kubo best. I don’t know for sure how long this backstory arc will last, but I’m grateful for it while it’s here. It’s nice to feel excited about reading Bleach again.

DAVID: I’m rather surprised to see myself type this, as I’m still on the fence about the series, but I’m going to go with the fourth volume of Kaori Yuki’s Grand Guignol Orchestra. My reaction to each volume so far has been mixed, but Yuki keeps bringing enough eye-popping weirdness and energy to the proceedings to keep me on the hook, even if consistency isn’t her watchword. Our band of zombie-fighting musicians has really put their collective feet in it as this volume begins, forcing Yuki to pay attention to her overarching plot. In my admittedly limited experience, her likelihood of success in this endeavor is about 50%, but I know there will at least be some freaky, “What the hell was that?” diversions.

Readers, what looks good to you this week?

Bookshelf Briefs 9/5/11

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

Black Bird, Vol. 10 | By Kanoko Sakurakoji | Viz Media – Dear Black Bird: I’ve nearly defeated you. After allowing you to work me into a state of blind fury over the course of nine volumes, I’ve finally become indifferent to your crimes. The constant belittlement of your heroine, her permanently flushed face—even the way your beloved hero always manages to blame her for his most abusive behavior no longer has the power to affect me. Wait, what am I saying? Okay, I admit I lied. You did get to me by the end of the volume, you sneaky devil. Sorry about those pages I ripped up and burned, but you have to admit you were asking for it. After all, I think you said it best. “There are times I want to treat you really well … and times when I want to treat you mean and make you cry … Which way I lean all depends on you. So don’t blame it all on me.” – MJ

Bleach, Vol. 36 | By Tite Kubo | Viz Media – It’s easy to become jaded as a manga reviewer, especially when it comes to long-running shounen manga. Though some series manage to transcend formula, others just seem to settle in, churning out pages of endless battles, increasingly generic foes, or whatever popular staples their genres require. Bleach has long walked the line between the two, just barely balancing compelling drama with mind-numbing repetition. After volume 35‘s strict conformity to this pattern, nothing could be more surprising than volume 36. Completely abandoning (for the moment) the battle set up in the volume before, Bleach 36 dives back into the past, promising new and exciting revelations about characters we already care about, including the enigmatic Kisuke Urahara and the entire lot of Visored. Though future tedium undoubtedly awaits, for the moment, Kubo gives us his very best. Unexpectedly recommended. – MJ

Deltora Quest, Vol. 1 | By Emily Rodda and Makoto Niwano | Yen Press –As a reviewer, sometimes you have to try to avoid the easy way out and grind through why you couldn’t really enjoy a title. It’s tempting, especially with a title as dull as Deltora Quest was, to simply wrote “No.” as a review and be done with it. But it’s my own fault, as I ordered the book even knowing that sword-and-sorcery fantasy is one of my least favorite genres, because it was part of a big pile of Kodansha Vol. 1s. And I have not even read the original novels by Emily Rodda either. Oh, and I’m not a 9-year-old boy. So, honestly, it should come as no surprise that I found this manga a tedious slog, with two-dimensional characters, action scenes where I kept flipping the pages faster and faster, and tortured exposition. Best of all, a time skip at the end shows us that the entire volume was mere prologue for the real story, which begins with the son of our protagonist next time. Also, kings should know better than to have grand viziers by now. It’s just asking for trouble. Skip this.– Sean Gaffney

Mardock Scramble, Vol. 1 | By Tow Ubukata and Yoshitoki Oima | Kodansha Comics – Mardock Scramble walks a fine line between dark and glum. The premise places it squarely in dark and compelling territory: a young woman gets a second chance at life — and a chance to bring her would-be killer to justice — after getting a bionic woman makeover. Rune Balot’s reluctance to embrace her new abilities, however, frequently threatens to drag Mardock into glum terrain; though it’s entirely plausible that someone as damaged as Rune isn’t ready to get all Lady Snowblood on her abuser’s ass, watching her passively resist self-actualization is a depressing and frustrating spectacle. Only the presence of Oefcoque, a cyborg mouse capable of transforming into just about anything, prevents the story from collapsing under the weight of its own grim agenda. – Katherine Dacey

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Vol. 9 | By Nagaru Tanigawa and Gaku Tsugano | Yen Press –This volume takes us through the end of Disappearance. For the most part, once again it’s simply poor when compared to the novel and the anime. I’ve no frame of reference to gauge how I’d feel about it if I hadn’t read/seen either of those, but I suspect I’d still find it wanting. I did note that Asakura is drawn far peppier and less evil/menacing than she appeared in the movie, which makes her final scene even creepier. There’s also a bonus story of the Christmas Party itself (which involves accidentally creating an ancient Egyptian hot pot), and another one set in Edo times (with Edo Haruhi being just as bad as the modern one, and wanting the perfect cup of tea), but neither add anything of note to the canon, nor are they bad enough to be entertaining on their own like the boxing story was last time. Substandard, though Vol. 10 apparently features Love at First Sight, a story as yet unanimated, so maybe it can try again there.– Sean Gaffney

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Vol. 2 | By Kenji Kuroda and Kazuo Maekawa | Kodansha Comics – I described the first volume of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney as “blah,” and I’m pleased to report that second volume is more to my liking. I’m still having issues with suspension of disbelief—ask me to believe in yokai, cyborgs, or reincarnated moon princesses and I’m fine, but ask me to believe that suspects go on trial two days after the crime, and I balk—but I’ve been (mostly) won over by the Case Closed vibe the kooky murder methods conjure. It doesn’t hurt that half of this volume is occupied with investigating the murder of an amusement park employee who was garbed in the furry mascot costume of a character named “Twinklestar” at the time of his death. Phoenix and his assistant Maya take it seriously, of course, but I enjoy the sheer absurdity of it all. – Michelle Smith

The Story of Saiunkoku, Vol. 4 | By Sai Yukino and Kairi Yura | Viz Media –First of all, I cannot emphasize enough how disappointed I am by Ensei shaving. His rough and tumble beard made him look like a man from a completely different world in this manga filled with interchangeable bishies. Now he’s just another one of them. At least he has a scar, but still, it’s the principle of the thing. In addition, we get hung up here with a classic problem adapting a prose novel to visual – someone has been described as inhumanly beautiful. The artist does their level best, but in the end, nope, just another pretty bishie. To be fair, it’s impossible to draw ‘inhumanly beautiful’, so they did their best. As for the manga itself, it’s still good, mainly focusing on court intrigue and Shurei’s learning curve, with only a brief stop at romance (I am highly amused that the emperor is doing the right thing entirely through instinct, rather than overthinking things. An excellent read.– Sean Gaffney

Warning! Whispers of Love | By Puku Okuyama | Digital Manga Publishing – This addition to the reading list was the result of one of my boys’-love polls , monthly quests where I try to find gems among the new BL and yaoi releases. Okuyama’s storytelling has its charms, but I found myself wishing for a little more genuine feeling mixed in with the antics. The title story is about a game of cat and mouse between two high-school students where both realize they enjoy the game. Logic isn’t driving the bus here, but Okuyama manages a pretty good, weird, recurring joke along the way. The middle piece, about a guy who values his solitude taking in a roommate on impulse, brings more emotional authenticity to the table, though the creator clearly has a possibly excessive fondness for flaky gamines. The last story is pretty much all antics, but at least there’s a really cute dog to distract me from the underdeveloped human characters in the story. This was pleasant enough, but I don’t think I’d rush to read more of Okuyama’s work. – David Welsh

Off the Shelf: Three from Kodansha Comics

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MJ: Well, howdy, stranger.

MICHELLE: Howdy. This place looks like a ghost town. Check out that well-timed tumbleweed.

MJ: Do you think we can bring it back to life?

MICHELLE: I reckon we can. Especially if we can rustle up some of them ladies of ill repute.

MJ: Oh, good idea! I’ll see what I can come up with on that front. In the meantime, you wanna tell us what you’ve been reading?

MICHELLE: I guess it’ll pass the time.

A whole bunch of new series from Kodansha have debuted this month, so I checked out a couple of those. The first was Animal Land by Makoto Raiku, whose Zatch Bell! was previously released by VIZ. I wasn’t sure if I’d like this and, even after having read it, I’m still not quite sure what to make of it.

Monoko the tanuki lost her parents to wildcats three months ago and is very lonely. One day, when she’s trying to catch a fish in the river, she spots a floating basket with a baby inside and is instantly smitten. She is determined to be a mother to the baby, and braves many dangers to provide milk for him and, with the help of the other tanuki, brings him back to life when he seems on the verge of death.

It soon becomes apparent that this is one unusual baby, since he’s not only able to understand tanuki speech, but can actually converse with all animals. This skill manifests most poignantly in regards to Kurokagi, a scarred, black wildcat who’s been hanging around. The tanuki all fear him, but Kurokagi has actually appointed himself their protector after a tragic incident in which he caused the death of an infant animal. It’s fairly bizarre watching this baby, who doesn’t even crawl all that well, holding a reasonably adult conversation with a giant wildcat, I must say.

So, yes, there are some nice moments here. And I like Kurokagi. But there are also some things I don’t like. The art, for one, is often unattractive. I don’t like how the tanuki are drawn at all, for example. For another, this is clearly a story for young kids, with a zany sense of humor that relies heavily on poop jokes. Seriously, characters will just randomly start pooping for no reason. It’s ironic, really, since I bet the poop is there to appeal to ten-year-old boys—I imagine Japanese manga editors calling for “More poop!”—but here in the US, its prevalence results in the book receiving a teen rating.

I’ll probably check out a second volume, but this may end up being a series that’s just not for me.

MJ: You know, even as a kid, I was pretty much immune to the charm of poop jokes. I just don’t get the appeal.

MICHELLE: I think appreciation of poop jokes resides on the Y chromosome.

So, what have you been reading this week?

MJ: Well, I decided to make it a Kodansha week too, and the results surprised me greatly. First, I read the debut volume of Mardock Scramble, which is the manga adaptation of Tow Ubukata’s novel trilogy of the same name that was released as a single volume early this year on Viz’s Haikasoru prose imprint. I hadn’t read the novel, and didn’t have high expectations for the manga adaptation, but actually I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Young Rune Balot thinks she’d be better off dead. “Rescued” from a life of abuse and prostitution by a guy named Shell, it’s only after Shell tries to kill her that Rune makes a (subconscious) choice to stay alive. She’s rescued from near-death by a techie detective, who gives her a new body and a shape-changing cyborg mouse to protect her, in the hopes that she’ll agree to testify against Shell in court.

There’s a whole bunch of stuff about Shell, who apparently kills girls and then loses his memory afterwards, and another mysterious man who’s coming after Balot, but even with so much plot and intrigue going on, the real story is in Balot, about whom we still know little, whose second chance at life could turn her into a completely different person–probably awesome, possibly terrifying. She’s the thing that really draws the reader in. Though the super-cute, badass mouse doesn’t hurt either.

Novel adaptations are hit-and-miss with me.Too often, I think they try to rush the story, or try too hard to be visually thrilling (especially in terms of fanservice) when really they just need to practice good storytelling. But I’m on the edge of my seat with this one. There’s still a lot to be revealed, and mangaka Yoshitoki Oima has left us with quite a bit of mystery (and a pretty big cliffhanger) at the end of the series’ first volume, but I’ve been given enough to be pretty well hooked.

I’m tempted to pick up the novel now, though I’d hate to risk compromising my enjoyment of the manga when I really am enjoying it so much.

MICHELLE: Wow, that sounds truly awesome. I was also somewhat wary that the prostitution backstory would mean fanservice would ensue, so I am happy to hear that’s not the case. And my inner twelve-year-old is *really* keen on that mouse!

MJ: Michelle, you would love the mouse. Truly.

Now, my second Kodansha adventure this week had a bit of the opposite effect on me, and since I know we both tried out this one, I’m anxious to hear whether your experience was similar. Care to start with a little summary?

MICHELLE: I will give it a whirl.

Until the Full Moon is a two-volume series by Sanami Matoh (Fake) that was originally published in the US by Broccoli Books. I actually owned that edition for several years and gave it away unread, but now I am finally giving it another chance.

Vampire cousins David and Marlo were extremely close growing up, but Marlo has been keeping his distance the past ten years or so while his family lived in America. Now they’re back, and have come to David’s doctor father to discuss a bizarre condition Marlo has recently developed. He’s half-werewolf, and has begun to transform into a woman on the full moon! His parents angst in over-the-top fashion until David’s father suggests that the only possible solution is that David and Marlo must get married. The date is set for a full moon a year in the future.

Various obstacles insinuate themselves between the couple, be it a family friend who mistakenly believes his sister is in love with David, or an ex-girlfriend of Marlo’s who is jealous when she realizes that David is the one to whom Marlo was referring when he confessed he loved someone else. Everything is very campy, with lots of silliness and epic kisses upon floral backgrounds. The interior artwork is possessed of retro charm and that vintage Matoh look, but the cover art is distressingly generic-looking: I found myself very distracted by my inability to tell who some of these characters were even supposed to be. They look like they’re from some other series entirely!

MJ: Yes, I never would have picked it up from the cover art, but as soon as I saw the old-school look of the inner artwork, I was determined that I would love it. On top of that, the outrageous, gender-switching werewolf premise convinced me that this would be exactly the kind of cracktastic “classic” shoujo in which I most delight. Unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed in the silly reality.

The premise is, indeed, cracktastic, but the story itself reads more like a bad teen-penned novel than brilliantly mad shoujo. The volume’s main conflicts all read as completely contrived, with no real tension or meaning of any kind. I mentioned in Monday’s Pick of the Week that I would be content simply looking at this manga, and I’m wondering if I should have left it at that after all.

MICHELLE: While I was reading it, I kept comparing it to what I’d heard about the inventive kookiness of Demon Sacred which, from all accounts, was the very epitome of “brilliantly mad shoujo.” Alas, you’ve hit the nail on the head in describing this as “contrived.” David and Marlo also keep up the standard horny!seme and reluctant!uke roles, no matter what gender Marlo happens to be at the moment. The one element of the story I do appreciate is how David makes it clear that his feelings are for Marlo the person, not Marlo the specific gender.

MJ: The comparison with Demon Sacred is very apt, and sadly brings Until the Full Moon‘s shortcomings into clear view. Demon Sacred used its super-fantasy world as a tool for enhancing the real emotions of its characters. Here, the vampire/oddly transforming werewolf stuff feels superfluous to everything, like a badly re-themed board game.

What’s particularly sad to me, is that I actually sort of like David and Marlo as a couple, even with the clichéd BL roles, and might have been quite interested in just watching the two of them deal with their own issues. But the author relies so much on the external characters to threaten their happy existence, there’s never really any time spent on the two of them as a couple.

MICHELLE: You’re absolutely right. We just know they love each other ‘cos they say it all the time, but we don’t actually know why or see any of the moments between them that led to the development of these feelings. It’s extremely shallow.

And, yes, dead horse, but can we go back to the cover for a minute? Because seriously…. who are these people? Is David the blond on the couch with the ponytail? I don’t recognize ANY of these other characters. Not one. I am truly baffled.

MJ: I can only assume it’s going for a more contemporary style in an attempt to bring in newer readers? It’s a shame, really, since the vintage artwork is the book’s best quality by far.

MICHELLE: I assume that as well, but I am at a loss as to who the female characters in particular are even supposed to be. Maybe they’ll turn up in volume two, but it’s very puzzling and, as you will note, distracted me a good deal. :)

MJ: Yeah, it’s kinda like they took characters from Pandora Hearts (or something along those lines) and randomly stuck them on the cover.

MICHELLE: Heh. Yeah. So, anyway, do you think you’ll read volume two? I probably will, since that’s also the final volume.

MJ: Yes, I probably will. Though this disappointed me, it didn’t actively offend me, and I’ll nearly always give something a few volumes to find itself. Surely I can make my way through one more.

MICHELLE: I think that’s a great note to end on. “Until the Full Moon… not actively offensive!”

MJ: Works for me! See you next week!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Vol. 7

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By Brad Meltzer, et al. | Published by Dark Horse

When I write a review, I do my best to articulate what I liked and didn’t like as clearly as possible. When one is a passionate fan of something, however—as I undoubtedly and unabashedly am of Buffy the Vampire Slayer—such clarity becomes more difficult to achieve. I will do my best to explain my aversion to the “Twilight” arc contained in this volume, but what it really boils down to is that I just don’t like it.

Spoilers abound. Beware.

The volume actually starts off pretty well, with a Joss-penned one-shot called “Turbulence” (issue #31) that finally gets rid of those irksome colorful goddesses for good and contains an amazing scene between Buffy and Xander wherein she reacts to seeing him kissing Dawn by confessing that she has begun to see him in a romantic light. He is appropriately incredulous:

Xander: Yoooou… have feelings. At me.
Buffy: Would that be good?
Xander: That would be great. If it was a bunch of years ago and you actually meant it.

He also points out that, even if her feelings were genuine, once she saw him and Dawn together she should’ve realized that the decent thing to do would be to keep quiet. Honestly, I’m a little bothered by how immature and selfish Buffy is here, but her desperate loneliness coupled by Xander’s rejection might play a part in her actions a few issues later. Xander, on the other hand, comes off as entirely in character; I think he is probably the best thing about the Season Eight comics, actually.

Really, the first 2.5 issues of the “Twilight” arc are pretty good, too. Buffy and Xander explore the extent of her newfound superpowers. Dawn is concerned, pointing out that “you don’t get power for free,” and she is proven correct when Willow’s search for the missing Faith, Giles, and Andrew leads to the discovery of a bunch of dead Slayers. It turns out that 206 Slayers have died since the start of the conflict, and Buffy has inherited all of their powers. She’s understandably pretty freaked out by this. “If I’m sucking their power… it makes me a vampire.”

Meanwhile, the missing trio are being held at Twilight headquarters, where Giles recognizes the enemy’s voice and many hints are dropped concerning what’s going on and Giles’s knowledge of it. “Every Watcher wonders if his Slayer might be the girl… and you’ve had more reason than any.”

The high point of the arc is when Buffy interrupts this conversation to attack Twilight, at which points he unmasks himself. Angel. Buffy’s anger is initially white-hot. “You killed my girls! Two hundred and six girls!” and “Why did you put us through this fucking hell for the past year?!” Angel rationalizes his actions as a way to keep the body count lower than if governments had gotten involved. If he posed as the masked villain and talked of “master plans,” he would distract others who might’ve wanted to take action. Simultaneously, he would focus Buffy and help her superpowers develop.

And here’s where things start to break down for me. What it boils down to is this: by activating all the Potentials, Buffy upset the balance of the Universe. But also, there’s this prophecy (referred to as merely a myth by Giles when he’s accused of not sharing his awareness of the possibility) that a Slayer and Vampire will be used to usher in a new reality of superbeings. Or something. It’s all very vague. When this new reality is established, the old one (and humanity with it) will be discarded. This is what the whole season has been building toward, and it’s just such a disappointment. Ugh.

What I really hate about this idea is that it basically retcons Buffy’s personal attraction to vampires and makes it something that the Universe’s grand plan was engineering. How much of what is happening is free will, and how much is the Universe controlling their actions? Does Angel really believe all this stuff? Or is he essentially possessed? Did Buffy really want to jump his bones so desperately (which she does, in fact, proceed to do) because she’s in a lonely and vulnerable place, or did the Universe make it easy for her to put aside her fury and make with the sexy times?

I also hate how their sexual encounter is treated, with a peanut gallery making jokes about it and many silly panels where they zoom across the sky, bodies entwined, while the world erupts in seaquakes and cyclones. It just looks stupid, but more than that, I think it was done to shock the reader. Is this juxtaposition (NSFW) of imagery and text coincidence? I think not, especially after the whole Buffy/Satsu thing.

The final issue of the arc offers some redemption, with Buffy gradually regaining her focus after sexual bliss and being dissatisfied with the pleasure paradise to which she and Angel have ascended. He is ready to believe in it (and, again, is this really his personal opinion?) and dwell there together forever but she doesn’t trust it and, more than that, can’t be happy in a nirvana while her friends are fighting for their lives. Her exact words are “Fuck evolution,” and, after a brief sad smile to acknowledge what might have been, she and Angel return to help her family fight off the hordes of demons who have invaded “the lower plane.” Willow is suitably pissed at Angel—“What you got coming you better hope never comes”—and then Spike arrives, seemingly with the intent of knocking a bunch of sense into everyone. Yay, Spike!

So, anyway, I just don’t like this arc. I don’t think it was thought through very well, and I don’t like the implications it retroactively conveys upon the events of the series. While I’m airing grievances, I shall also point out that Meltzer gets a basic fact wrong—Faith did not become a Slayer upon Buffy’s death—that no one on the editorial staff was knowledgable (or attentive) enough to spot. Too, Georges Jeanty’s renderings of Faith continue to be extremely ugly. The only way to enjoy her scenes is to just try really hard to imagine Eliza Dushku in her place.

The volume is rounded out by “Willow: Goddesses and Monsters,” another Joss-penned one-shot set before the beginning of Season Eight. In it, Willow takes some sort of magical journey that she originally skipped over in her accelerated path to power. There’s really not a lot going on here, and a lot of the dialogue is supposed to be funny but isn’t, but it’s noteworthy because it’s the first time we’ve glimpsed Tara in the comics.

One more volume to go, and it includes Spike! I never did read the final two issues, so though I am spoiled on one pivotal event, much of it will be new to me. I hope I don’t hate it.

Bruiser by Neal Shusterman

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From the back cover:
Tennyson:
Don’t get me started on the Bruiser. He was voted “Most Likely to Get the Death Penalty” by the entire school. He’s the kid no one knows, no one talks to, and everyone hears disturbing rumors about. So why is my sister, Brontë, dating him? One of these days she’s going to take in the wrong stray dog, and it’s not going to end well.

Brontë:
My brother has no right to talk about Brewster that way—no right to threaten him. There’s a reason why Brewster can’t have friends—why he can’t care about too many people. Because when he cares about you, things start to happen. Impossible things that can’t be explained. I know, because they’re happening to me.

Review:
Let me just state upfront that any parents pretentious enough to name their children Tennyson and Brontë need a damn good whacking.

Moving on, Bruiser (from the author of Unwind) is the story of a social outcast named Brewster Rawlins who is perceived as a creepy delinquent by his classmates but is actually harboring a secret that compels him to keep his distance: if he cares about someone, he will absorb their pain, both mental and physical. Alternating between the perspectives of four characters (broody poetry fan Brewster, twins Tennyson and Brontë Sternberger, and Brewster’s daredevil little brother), the novel depicts how Brewster’s gift/curse affects his relationships with others and how, ultimately, being healed of all one’s ills is not necessarily a good thing.

Initially, Tennyson is opposed to his sister dating Brewster and sets out to warn the guy off, but once he catches a glimpse of Brewster’s terribly scarred back, he begins to suspect something awful is going on at the boy’s home. Concern and conscience win out, and he and Brewster begin to become friends, which is when Tennyson first notices that the scabs on his knuckles (a lacrosse injury) have miraculously disappeared in Brew’s presence. It takes a while for the specifics of his ability to come to light, and an interminable time for Tennyson and Brontë to realize that Brew’s ability to take away pain also extends to their feelings.

At first, I thought they did realize that Brew could quell mental anguish, and that that was part of the reason they convinced/manipulated their on-the-verge-of-divorce parents into taking temporary custody of Brew and his brother, Cody, after their guardian, Uncle Hoyt, passes away. Selfish to use Brew in this way, yes, but believably so for desperate teens. Eventually, though, it seems they really did not know, which is why Brontë kept pushing and pushing for Brew to make new friends, never considering that, for him, more people to care about means more potential injury. Uncle Hoyt was an abusive drunken bastard, true, but his ability to hang on to his own anger (instead of passing it off to Brew) and his insistence that Brew keep his distance from the world are seen in a new light by the novel’s end. (And speaking of the end, reports of its cheesiness are not exaggerated. The last few lines made me go “Pfft.”)

Even with the mystery of Brewster’s powers, Bruiser lacks the high-impact concept of Unwind. Instead of an epic dystopia where the whole country is going in a bizarre direction, Tennyson and Brontë’s world is defined by their home life, where they can tell that something very wrong is happening between their parents. Brew’s presence in their home acts as a balm for a while, but eventually they want to own their own pain because it seems so wrong to feel content while their family crumbles. The novel may not be as dramatic as Unwind, but is possessed of its own subtle themes and messages. I’ll definitely be reading more Shusterman in the future.

Ekiben Hitoritabi, Vol. 1

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By Jun Hayase | Published by Futabasha | Available in English at JManga

Even if JManga didn’t offer anything else to interest me, I think I would still love them forever for introducing me to Ekiben Hitoritabi. (The ekiben in the title refers to the boxed meals sold at train stations throughout Japan, while hitoritabi means “a trip undertaken alone.”)

Ekiben Hitoritabi is a slice-of-life story about an ordinary 35-year-old train enthusiast named Daisuke Nakahara whose wife gives him a ticket to Kyushu by special express sleeper train for their tenth anniversary. Once he gets to Kyushu, Daisuke begins making his way north by taking a variety of local and little-used rail lines. He’s accompanied throughout most of the first volume by a journalist named Nana, whom he educates on railroad history and exposes to the wide variety of tasty ekiben to be found at the stations they visit. When they’re not rhapsodizing over the contents of these ekiben, they’re admiring the scenery or the trains themselves.

I don’t think this is a manga for everyone. The biggest source of tension, for example, is worrying whether Daisuke and Nana are going to miss their train when it’s taking longer than expected to procure ekiben. Daisuke likes everything he tastes—and, indeed, his love of ekiben has inspired him to open a bento shop of his own in Tokyo—and is in perpetually good spirits. There’s always a page turn before the contents of the bento are revealed, so that each always appears on the upper right-hand side, with each component identified. Someone is bound to make a remark about the taste permeating his/her mouth, too.

But it’s just so charming. (One learns a lot about Japanese geography, too.) Daisuke is content with his life and with taking his leisurely time, and he makes it look so awesome that I am frankly envious. Now I want to travel Japan by local rail and sample a bunch of ekiben! I must admit, though, that I’d be reluctant to try some of them. And the one that looked the best to me was the only one Daisuke had anything even slightly negative to say about. Here it is, the Shaomai Bento:

(Click to enlarge.)

Shaomai is the Kyushu term for shumai, and after noticing that many of the ekiben contain kinshi eggs, I had to look them up and I WANT SOME ON RICE RIGHT NOW. That, of course, is the danger with Ekiben Hitoritabi: reading it while hungry is sheer torture.

What’s not torture is the translation, which is better than I expected. I did get the sense that the work was spread between several people, however, because treatment of sound effects was inconsistent and some errors (like “bento’s” instead of “bentos”) cropped up only intermittently. I never had any issues with comprehension, though, and JManga welcomes feedback, so I did leave them a few notes about the minor problems I noticed. Splitting a word between two lines seemed to be an issue, for example:

On the whole, however, I am utterly delighted that I got to read Ekiben Hitoritabi. I doubt it would’ve sold too well in print format, so if digital is the only way I can get it, then I am just grateful to have the chance. Grateful and yet impatient, because I am going to need volume two pretty soon. And some kinshi eggs.

Ekiben Hitoritabi is up to volume thirteen in Japan and is still ongoing.

Pick of the Week: Lotsa Kodansha

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Take a look at the Manga Bookshelf bloggers’ picks from this week’s new releases!

SEAN: There’s any number of interesting titles due out this week (hurricane permitting), but the one that most catches my eye is Bloody Monday. First off, it’s from the brother/sister writing team responsible, under various pen names, for Drops of God, Getbackers, Kindaichi Case Files, Remote and Psycho Busters. Secondly, it’s an intense psychological techno-thriller with terrorists, computer viruses, and a lot of difficulty knowing who to trust. It might definitely appeal to the Death Note crowd who liked the manga’s tense back-and-forth plotting – or heck, even Die Hard fans, though there’s no obvious John McClane figure here. It’s also spawned 2 sequels, the last of which is still running in Japan.

DAVID: After the last few weeks of relative scarcity, it’s nice to see a diverse list, even if it isn’t a particularly bountiful one. For me, the highlight is the 13th volume of Hiroki Endo’s Eden: It’s an Endless World! This paranoid, post-apocalyptic drama almost always has something intriguing to offer, even when Endo strays too long in pet subplots that don’t seem entirely specific to the world he’s been building. I’m glad that Dark Horse continues to release this series, however slowly, though I always have to go back and refresh my memory of what happened during the last couple of volumes, because I’m an old man, and some of my brain cells go into retirement over an 18-month period. Of course, a new volume of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service would make me even happier.

KATE: I normally loathe manga based on video games, but I was pleasantly surprised by Hiro Mashima’s Monster Hunter Orage: it’s funny, fast-paced, and smartly illustrated. Mashima does a fine job of adapting the source material, translating game play into an actual narrative and not just a series of monster-fighting set-pieces. Oh, and Mashima creates two awesome female leads, both of whom are smart, sensible, and handy with weapons. (Not surprisingly, they find the strong but dumb-as-toast hero a source of amusement and frustration.) No, it won’t change your life, or challenge your conceptions about what shonen manga is, but it’s a perfect read for a subway commute or a rainy afternoon.

MICHELLE: I agree with Kate’s assessment of Monster Hunger Orage 100%, but rather than simply say “ditto” I will cast my vote for Warning! Whispers of Love, a new one-volume title from Digital Manga Publishing. I admit that I am judging this one almost solely on its unconventional cover, but that strategy worked well for me with I Give to You, so why not employ it a second time? The blurb over at DMP’s site suggests that the hijinks might get a little too zany for my tastes—one of the boys seems to have an ear-swabbing fetish—but I’m willing to give it a shot, at least.

MJ: I’m going to stray from the usual Midtown list this week and pick out a title that became available at Boston’s Comicopia last week, Kodansha Comics’ re-release of Until the Full Moon from mangaka Sanami Matoh. Having completely missed the original English release from Broccoli Books, I admit I’m quite eager to give it a whirl, if for no other reason than my undying love affair with its brand of old-school shoujo artwork. I would be content with simply looking at this manga, but I’m hoping to find it enjoyable to read as well. Absolutely my must-read comic for the week.

Readers, what looks good to you this week?

Bookshelf Briefs 8/29/11

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This week, Kate, David, MJ, & Michelle look at recent releases from Kodansha Comics, Viz Media, and Vertical, Inc.

Animal Land, Vol. 1 | By Makoto Raiku | Kodansha Comics – This odd little fable focuses on Monoko, a tanuki who discovers a human baby at the edge of a river. Monoko, herself an orphan, immediately identifies with Tarozo’s plight, and vows to raise him herself — a vow complicated by many factors, including an abundance of dangerous predators lurking just outside the tanukis’ village. Whether you’ll like Animal Land depends on how you feel about the tanukis, as they look like theme-park mascots with grotesquely oversized ears and china-doll faces. (I suppose we should be thankful that Makoto Raiku didn’t follow convention in super-sizing other parts of the tanukis’ anatomy, but still.) The tanukis’ behavior is just as outsized as their ears, steadily alternating between pratfalls and teary, anguished conversation, leaving little room for character development or new patterns of interaction. Younger readers won’t mind, but adults may find the tanukis’ odd appearance and frantic antics tiresome. – Katherine Dacey

Bokurano: Ours, Vol. 4 | By Mohiro Kitoh | Published by VIZ Media – Mangaka Mohiro Kitoh is beginning to tweak the established formula of Bokurano: Ours in some innovative ways. The presence of a pair of military observers (Seki and Tanaka) is making a big difference, for example, as they introduce more organization to what’s going on, resulting in some gatherings where the children interact with one another prior to someone being called for pilot duty. Too, it appears that two of the kids don’t actually have a binding contract to participate, which interjects an interesting complication to the story. (The kids assume this includes the lone fourth grader in their midst, but I somehow doubt she’ll be off the hook.) Lastly, the stakes are especially high for one of this volume’s pilots, who hopes to save a sick friend’s life with an organ donation, resulting in a cliffhanger that sent me to the SigIkki website for the resolution. Good stuff! – Michelle Smith

Oresama Teacher, Vol. 4 | By Izumi Tsubaki | Published by VIZ Media – I feel like I’m always unexpectedly learning something when I read Oresama Teacher. First, there was the informative sequence on how to foil attempts to tie you up, and now we learn techniques for dodging and deflecting blows as Mafuyu (in her mail guise, Natsuo) trains Hayasaka in the finer points of fighting so he’ll be prepared to square off against the members of a rival club who’re out to ambush the members of the Public Morals Club. Mafuyu is worried about how straightforward Hayasaka will fare in a fight, but comes to trust him and even realizes that, though gullible Hayasaka completely believes in and reveres two of her adopted personas, he also cares for her true self enough to put himself in jeopardy. With all the action and comedy, this isn’t really a romance manga, but I still think I may detect some feelings beginning to bloom… – Michelle Smith

Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, Vol. 10 | By Koji Kumeta | Kodansha Comics – There’s a lot to like about Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, from its crisp, confident artwork to its broad, equally confident characterization. But what’s really most impressive about this series is its ability to remain funny, volume after volume, while its format (and universe) remains unchanged. Nobody wearies of a gag manga faster than I do, but ten volumes in, I’m still laughing at Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei. Furthermore, volume ten is one of the series’ strongest so far. Jokes related to its then-new anime adaptation continue from the previous volume, enhancing (but not overwhelming) chapters revolving around subjects such as three-way standoffs, protecting “unnature,” entitlement, and “May sickness,” and even the volume’s most Japanese-specific jokes appear to translate effortlessly in the hands of new adapter Joshua Weeks. Still recommended. – MJ

Velveteen & Mandala | By Jiro Matsumoto | Vertical– If you read some of the cruder entries in Top Shelf’s AX anthology and found yourself saying, “I wish this was longer,” then Velveteen and Mandala is the book for you. Matsumoto pits dim, bickering schoolgirls against a horde of bemused zombies, throwing gobs of gross-out humor and precocious sexuality into the mix. Imagine a better-drawn Tokyo Zombie with female protagonists, and you’ll have the general idea. There’s certainly an audience for this sort of thing, but it’s equally certain that I’m not a member of that subset of comic fandom. To be honest, Velveteen and Mandala, with its indifferent plotting and feeble, familiar attempts at transgression tested my patience far more often than it rewarded it. Aside from some stylistic flourishes, there’s nothing here that you probably haven’t seen before, and it’s up to you whether you’re really eager to see it again. – David Welsh

43 Old Cemetery Road, Books 1-3 by Karen and M. Sarah Klise

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43 Old Cemetery Road is a quirky illustrated series for children that tells its ghostly story using letters, newspaper clippings, drawings, et cetera. There are three books in the series so far—Dying to Meet You (2009), Over My Dead Body (2009), and Till Death Do Us Bark (2011)—with a fourth (The Phantom of the Post Office) due in May 2012.

Dying to Meet You
What with the illustrations and the fact that the story is told through correspondence rendered in a large font, Dying to Meet You is a very quick read. And yet, for all that, it’s got some nuance!

Ignatius B. Grumply is a famous children’s author who hasn’t written anything for twenty years. Seeking to overcome his writer’s block, he rents a Victorian house in Ghastly, Illinois and is decidedly miffed to discover a boy and his cat living there. The boy, Seymour Hope, has been left behind by his parents, the owners of the home, who are on a lecture tour of Europe. They’re paranormal experts, and had moved into Spence Mansion hoping to confirm the existence of its rumored spectral resident. When Seymour could see her, but they couldn’t, they became convinced that a) ghosts don’t exist and b) their son is delusional.

But Olive C. Spence, the ghost of the woman who originally built the house, is indeed real! She sets out to drive Ignatius away at first, but after an incident with a chandelier causes more injury than she had intended, she begins to feel sorry for him and decides to help him with his book. It turns out that all of them have been rejected in one form or another: Seymour by his parents, Olive by the publishers who would never give her graphic epistolary mysteries a chance, and Ignatius by the woman he loved and upon whom he squandered his fortune.

Olive encourages “selfish and crabby” Ignatius to feel and care about others again, and thus achieves a warm and fuzzy ending where each of them gets something they want while drawing together into their own little family. It’s quite sweet, really. About the only complaint I could make is that some of the punny names are not funny—Paige Turner, Frank N. Beans, Shirley U. Jest—but I did have to snicker at Fay Tality and her dog, Mort, so they’re not all clunkers.

Over My Dead Body
Life at 43 Old Cemetery Road has been great since Ignatius, Olive, and Seymour began collaborating on a series of ghost stories. When a letter from Dick Tater, head of the International Movement for the Safety & Protection of Our Kids & Youth, arrives, however, everything is turned upside down. Tater objects to their living arrangements, especially the fact that custody of eleven-year-old Seymour was seemingly transferred via a rental lease, and his investigation results in Ignatius being committed to an asylum and Seymour being sent to an orphanage until his opportunistic parents deign to claim him.

The majority of the book is comprised of letters to and from Olive as everyone ponders how to escape confinement and satisfy the customers who have prepaid for the next three installments of their story. Dick Tater does various nefarious things, like canceling Halloween and instructing libraries to burn books that meet with his disapproval, and the book has a very pro-reading, pro-free thinking vibe as a result.

The book also features the second “just go with it” moment of the series. I assume this is going to be a recurring thing. In the first book, readers had to “just go with” the stipulation that sales of the trio’s stories (at $3 a pop, if I recall rightly) were sufficient to raise the $250,000 Seymour needed to buy Spence Mansion from his parents. Here, Ignatius and Olive (a ghost, mind you) are able to adopt Seymour simply by proving his parents don’t love him.

To this I say, “Whatever.” I am willing to go with it because it results in (nicely illustrated) passages like this, which I confess made me a bit verklempt. (Best attempted after you remind yourself of Seymour’s last name.)

And so, in a sense, we end where we began… in a 32½-room house built by a woman who, in her lifetime, never married or had children… and rented by a man who never married and always thought he disliked children… and purchased by a boy whose parents abandoned him. And so, even though one member of the family might still get grumpy now and then… and another might become cranky when she misplaces her glasses… neither would ever, could ever, abandon Hope.

Sniff.

Till Death Do Us Bark
One day, a shaggy dog follows Seymour home from the library. He has always wanted a dog, and so he asks his new parents, Ignatius and Olive, if he can keep him. They have reservations, and insist that he first attempt to find the dog’s owner, since he has a collar and everything. Seymour soon learns that the dog formerly belonged to Noah Breth, a wealthy man who recently died and whose children (Kitty and Kanine) are bickering over their presumed inheritance. But he doesn’t tell his parents this.

I must say that I did not like this book as well as the others. I like that Seymour admits that his goal was to be a perfect son, but that very quickly he was keeping secrets and running away. What I don’t like was how he was so passionately dog crazy when his best friend up ’til now has been his cat, Shadow. He didn’t show much concern that Shadow had seemingly run away after the dog showed up. And Ignatius, who is allergic to cats, suddenly had a flare-up and pledged to “get rid” of the cat once it was found. This is not the way to endear me to your characters, Klise sisters.

Of course, everything works out fine in the end and Shadow is nearby and well. The Breth siblings, who have been following a series of limericks devised by their late father on the hunt for his fortune, are shamed into suddenly becoming nicer people. A rare coin that everyone’s been looking for turns out to be exactly where it was telegraphed to be at the beginning of the story.

As a result, more than the other books, this one feels like something only children would enjoy. I hope the upcoming fourth book represents a return to form.

The Lying Game by Sara Shepard

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From the front flap:
The worst part of being dead is that there’s nothing left to live for. No more kisses. No more secrets. No more gossip. It’s enough to kill a girl all over again. But I’m about to get something no one else does—an encore performance, thanks to Emma, the long-lost twin sister I never even got to meet.

Now Emma’s desperate to know what happened to me. And the only way to figure it out is to be—to slip into my old life and piece it all together. But can she laugh at inside jokes with my best friends? Convince my boyfriend she’s the girl he fell in love with? Pretend to be a happy, carefree daughter when she hugs my parents good night? And can she keep up the charade, even after she realizes my murderer is watching her every move?

Review:
The Lying Game is the second collaborative effort between Sara Shepard and Alloy Entertainment (the team that brought you Pretty Little Liars) to be made into a TV series for ABC Family. I thought that this time I’d try reading the book before starting the show, so here we are.

Emma Paxton was raised by her unstable mother Becky until the age of five, when Becky skipped town while Emma was at a friend’s house. After Becky could not be located, Emma entered the foster care system, where she developed the ability to hold her tongue and become “whatever type of girl the situation needed [her] to be.” Now two weeks shy of her eighteenth birthday, Emma is hoping to make it through her senior year of high school and even dreams of attending USC and becoming an investigative journalist. Her skeevy foster brother has other plans, however, and Emma is soon accused of theft and told she must go when she turns eighteen.

Skeevy also shows Emma a video of a girl who looks just like her engaging in what looks like asphyxiation-for-kicks. From the video, Emma gleans that the girl is called Sutton and lives in Arizona. Googling leads to a Facebook page, and Emma’s message yields an invite from Sutton, who confirms that she was adopted. Without hesitation, Emma packs her bags and heads to Tucson.

Sutton fails to show for their appointed rendezvous, however, and when Sutton’s friends show up to whisk her off to a party, Emma finds herself using her adaptability skills to assume her sister’s role. Conveniently, Emma’s bag containing her cash and ID are stolen at this point. The next morning, she gets a note informing her that Sutton’s dead and that she’d better play along or she’ll be next. Emma tries various times to tell people what’s going on—Sutton’s parents, the police—but because Sutton was such a notorious prankster (more in a malicious way than a fun way) nobody believes her. Soon, Emma grows to suspect Sutton’s circle of friends may have offed their leader, and by the end of the book she’s learned the truth about the video but isn’t any farther along in discovering who killed her sister.

The Lying Game is definitely a guilty pleasure, and I already have the second volume in the series (Never Have I Ever) checked out from the library. Still, there are a couple of things about it that bugged me. The major issue for me is the choice to have Sutton stick around as an unseen-by-Emma ghostly presence. Conveniently, she has access to Emma’s thoughts, and so takes narrative duties, but in a really strange way. She’ll be narrating along omnisciently, referring to herself as “Sutton” or to things that belonged to her as “Sutton’s,” just like Emma might, and then all of a sudden she’ll switch into first person narration, using “me” and “mine.” It’s pretty distracting.

It’s also highly convenient that Sutton can’t remember many details of her past or see anything if Emma can’t see anything. She is, therefore, little use if Emma is in peril, though her timely recollections of snatches of memory do serve to heighten the dramatic tension when readers know something that Emma doesn’t. Mostly, however, I have the inkling that Sutton is there to react remorsefully when Emma discovers some of the horrible things she has done. Is Ghost!Sutton just a ploy to try to get us to care about her? In life, Sutton was a thoroughly nasty and entitled person, which makes this the second Shepard/Alloy series that focuses on the death of a girl so odious one wonders why she had any friends at all.

And that’s the second problem I had with The Lying Game: it’s too much like Pretty Little Liars. Granted, maybe that’s what fans of PLL want, but as I watched the action build towards a social event (a party, naturally) and watched Emma jump to conclusions I had the distinct feeling that I had been through all this before. There’s somewhat less focus on brand name fashions, at least.

Still, as mentioned, I will keep reading. And I’ll check out the show, too. Shepard is good at injecting twists into the story to hook a reader, and I like that Emma is beginning to have feelings for Ethan (a broody, poetry-reading boy) and seems poised to have an ally in her efforts going forward. Then they can jump to conclusions together, just like the girls in PLL!

Pick of the Week: JManga

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With only one volume of new manga shipping to Midtown Comics, this week’s pick looked bleak. Fortunately, David came to the rescue, by suggesting a new way for us to spend our money. See below!

MICHELLE: The big news in the manga sphere this week was JManga‘s launch on 8/17. I have already spent more money than I’d intended snapping up first volumes of some intriguing-looking series. All look potentially great, but I am perhaps most interested to read Ekiben Hitoritabi, a seinen series from Futabasha in which a train-loving man receives a trip around Japan from his wife on their tenth wedding anniversary. He proceeds to travel around, sampling the bentos available at the various stations. Like Sean mentioned in his recent review of Urameshiya, what I was really looking for out of JManga was a title I’d never heard of before that probably wouldn’t have sold well in a print edition. Ekiben Hitoritabi seems to fit the bill perfectly, and I’m really looking forward to reading it.

SEAN: As has been noted, I’ve already reviewed a manga from Futabasha, Urameshiya. I therefore wanted to highlight something new by another company. Shonen Gahosha has only free previews (in Japanese) of its titles best known here in America – Excel Saga, Hellsing, and Trigun). But it does have Volume 1 in English of a title that has not been released here – Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru, which translates approximately to ‘And Yet The Town Turns’ and is generally referred to as ‘Sore-Machi’. It’s about a maid cafe in a small town, and our plucky hero who tries to deal with events as best she can despite being not a particularly good maid. The manga also got an anime in Japan in late 2010, which might be why it’s available here, and is still running in Young King OURS, Shonen Gahosha’s best known magazine. In amongst all the worthy josei and seinen manga that my colleagues will no doubt be pushing, it’s nice to see a goofy, weird, slice-of-life maid comedy popping up as well to cater to slice-of-life fans and maid otaku (though I suspect this might be a bit too strange for the typical otaku).

MJ: With so much to choose from, I hardly know where to start! But I do have my eye on Hyakkiyakoushou, one of the site’s josei series from mangaka Ichiko Ima, previously licensed (but never published) by Aurora Publishing. I’m always a sucker for supernatural manga, and this one has lured me in with its free preview. There’s no new ground here, really, in terms of ghost stories, but it looks genuinely creepy and a little melancholy, both of which tend to appeal to me. It’s award-winning, according to the internet, with expressive artwork and some nice period details. The names of the first three chapters (“The Voice Calling from the Darkness”, “The Sea-Hare” and “Cherry Tree Sparrow”) appeal to my sensibilities as well. Looks like my kind of manga!

DAVID: One of my personal fascinations is fixated on comics that explore the way people work and the way that activity factors into their lives. I love just about any comic that’s set in a workplace in a meaningful way, and I think there are far too few of them. So the first offering to really grab my attention would have to be Anesthesiologist Hana by Nakao Hakua and Kabbei Matsumoto. The title is about as literal as you can expect from manga, offering a realistic depiction of the challenges of a young woman working as an anesthesiologist, an often-under-appreciated medical profession. The manga does not seem to offer a particularly realistic depiction of boobs, but you’re cutting out a lot of seinen if you use that as a limiting factor. I also find myself writing tag lines for the series: “She can put you to sleep, but her adventures will keep your pulse racing!”

Readers, have you checked out JManga? What looks good to you?