Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Michelle Smith

There’s Something About Sunyool 2-3 by Youngran Lee: B+

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Sunyool Lee’s life is full of disreputable accomplishments. If only she had something to show for them!

Volume two picks up four years after the dissolution of Sunyool’s six-month marriage to Sihyun Park, a wonderful guy with whom she was perfectly compatible. After a two-year stay in Paris, where she attempted to forget her pain and honed her pastry chef skills, she returned to Korea. A one-year stint running her own bakery ended in failure and now she works as an assistant at a bakery owned by a foul-tempered but gorgeous (aren’t they all?) novelist named Kangjae Lee.

When Kangjae first meets Sunyool, he’s willing to overlook the fact that she has just destroyed his laptop because she’s totally his type. Once he puts his contacts in, however, his illusions are shattered and they begin an adversarial relationship. Kangjae has the dubious talent of being able to enrage anyone within five seconds of meeting them, but Sunyool is able to hold her own against him, even while she’s working off her debt by working as his housekeeper. Most of the second volume consists of Kangjae acting like a spoiled child—“He’s a toddler who has no regard for anyone else’s feelings,” Sunyool decrees at one point—and Sunyool learning about his crappy childhood from his assistant/cousin, Byungman.

Things pick up a great deal in volume three with the return of Sihyun. In a nutshell: he still loves Sunyool and wants to be with her. Sunyool’s pride is stung because he didn’t stand up for their marriage four years ago and she knows that nothing has changed as far as his disapproving family is concerned. Various family members/wannabe fiancées show up to accuse Sunyool of ruining Sihyun’s life, and this is where she really shines as a character.

Although she, and members of the supporting cast, comment often on the storyline’s resemblance to a violent soap opera, Sunyool counters the over-the-top bitchiness of her accusers with a profound level-headedness that’s extremely satisfying. She has no expectations of a happy reunion with Sihyun, and makes that clear time and time again. Seeing a woman depicted as both in love and sensible is truly a lovely thing to behold, and though some of these twists are silly (though I did love the scene where she snaps and assaults someone) they also serve to show what makes her such a unique and interesting character.

Complicating matters is Kangjae. He begins hanging around the bakery more and more, getting antsy when Sunyool is not there and feeling jealous of Sihyun when he shows up. According to his cousin, Kangjae (whose real name also happens to be Sunyool Lee) was neglected by his parents in favor of his talented brother, so to see Sunyool all hung up on Sihyun when she could be basking in his hotness instead really bothers him. Initially, I was sort of annoyed that I was supposed to take the horrible Kangjae seriously as a love interest, but maybe this will shape up to be a Boys Over Flowers kind of scenario where the tough-as-nails commoner girl is able to help the immature rich guy become a better person.

In the end, There’s Something About Sunyool offers a lot of crackalicious drama that is extremely fun to read. Volume two is a bit slow, as all of the bickering grows tiresome, but don’t let that dissuade you from continuing on to volume three, which is much better and ends on quite a cliffhanger. That’s a little worrisome, since there haven’t been any new updates on the NETCOMICS site lately, but I choose to believe we’ll get more of this story in the future.

Volumes two and three of There’s Something About Sunyool are currently available only at NETCOMICS.com, though a print version for volume two is scheduled for a September release. No cover image is currently available.

Review copies provided by the publisher.

Off the Shelf: Damnably Dubious

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Welcome to another edition of Off the Shelf with MJ & Michelle! I’m joined, as always, by Soliloquy in Blue‘s Michelle Smith.

This week’s installment includes titles from Yen Press, Viz Media, Tokyopop, Del Rey Manga, and Digital Manga Publishing.

MJ: The air is like soup here in western Massachusetts this week, which means there’s been nothing for me to do but huddle against the air conditioner with a volume of manga. What about you?

MICHELLE: I’ve certainly been staying inside as much as possible, though in the South central air conditioning is a must so there’s no actual huddling required. :)

This weekend, for example, I passed a lovely afternoon binging on Spiral: The Bonds of Reasoning, the first of the series I sampled in our Shounen Sundays experiment that I have managed to continue (though I promise not to abandon the rest!).

MJ: Oh, really? Has your opinion of the series changed after a bit of total immersion?

MICHELLE: Mm, a bit, though I liked it to begin with. It began as a mystery series in which high schooler Ayumu Narumi gets involved in investigating the Blade Children, the same topic that his genius detective brother was looking into before his disappearance. Then it morphed into what the author called a “showdown manga,” in which various members of the Blade Children issue challenges (at his brother’s orders) designed to awaken Ayumu’s potential.

This weekend I read volumes four through six. As volume four begins, Ayumu has just been duped by one of the Blade Children and is feeling pretty crappy about it, but his clever and useful sidekick, Hiyono, arranges to get herself taken hostage, knowing that when someone *else* is on the line, Ayumu will forget his worries and do his best to save her. What follows is a really awesome challenge in which Ayumu and the Blade Children engage in a game to see who can secure both Hiyono *and* a tape containing evidence of crimes committed by the Blade Children. There are a lot of clever twists and it’s a lot of fun to read; even the character who in earlier volumes screamed moe to me is revealed to be a lot smarter and stronger than previously suspected….

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Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris: B-

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From the back cover:
Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in Bon Temps, Louisiana. She’s quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn’t get out much. Not because she’s not pretty. She is. It’s just that, well, Sookie has this sort of “disability.” She can read minds. And that doesn’t make her too datable. Then along comes Bill. He’s tall, dark, handsome—and Sookie can’t hear a word he’s thinking. He’s exactly the type of guy she’s been waiting for all her life…

But Bill has a disability of his own: he’s a vampire with a bad reputation. But he is an interesting addition to the town, and Sookie can’t help but listen to what everyone else thinks about Bill… especially since she’s starting to fall for the buff bloodsucker. But when a string of murders hits town—along with a gang of truly nasty vampires looking for Bill—Sookie wonders if having an undead boyfriend is such a bright idea.

And when one of her coworkers is killed, Sookie realizes that Bill and his friends may have some special plans for a woman who can read minds…

Review:
I’ve had the first few books in the Southern Vampire series for a long time, but ever since acquiring them I’ve had doubts about whether I’d actually like them. My doubts appeared justified when an attempt to watch an episode of True Blood, the HBO series based on the novels, ended in about five minutes. Still, I can usually tolerate “blood and boobies” (description credit to Felicia Day) better in print than on screen, so I thought I’d give the books a shot.

As most probably know by now, this is the story of Sookie Stackhouse, a waitress in small-town Bon Temps, Louisiana. Sookie is telepathic, which has made dating difficult, but when she meets vampire Bill Compton and cannot read his thoughts, she’s intrigued. Eventually they become a couple, but as Sookie learns more about Bill’s world she realizes that most vampires are quite unpleasant and that the hierarchy in their society means that Bill’s “superior,” Eric, can command her attendance as he chooses and there’s nothing Bill can do to prevent it.

Their relationship struggles play out against a rural backdrop that’s presently plagued by a string of murders for which Bill and Sookie’s brother, Jason, are individually suspected. This mystery fades into the background at times, but its resolution was a genuine surprise to me, though in retrospect it really shouldn’t have been. There is a good deal of sex once Sookie and Bill get together, but it stops short of being so explicit that it offends my prudish sensibilities.

As a Southerner, I can tell this book was written by “one of us.” Although I live in a fairly urban city, we’re surrounded by rural counties where the residents of Bon Temps would fit right in. I don’t live a life like these characters do, but I bet that some of my coworkers do.

Sookie herself strikes me as quite Southern in that she’s somewhat apathetic about her lack of education and go-nowhere job and extremely tolerant of some of Bill’s peculiar behavior. She’s got flaws—the adjectives vain, naïve, petulant, and complacent all describe her at one point or another—but she’s also got common sense and is resourceful in emergencies. Bill, so far, is kind of dull. The most interesting thing about him is that he became a vampire in the Civil War era, and so must try to get over some old-fashioned notions about women.

Ultimately, my feelings for this series are similar to those for the Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom series by Julie Kenner: there are things that bug me, and they’re not the greatest books on the planet, but I am still strongly compelled to keep reading them. Maybe one day I’ll even give True Blood another try.

Off the Shelf: Herky-Jerky, Kinda Girly

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Welcome to another edition of Off the Shelf with MJ & Michelle! I’m joined once again by Soliloquy in Blue‘s Michelle Smith.

This week we offer up an array of girls’ manga and manhwa from Viz Media, Tokyopop, and Yen Press.

MICHELLE: It seems like forever since we’ve done a regular Off the Shelf column! It’s actually kind of soothing! What goodies did you read in preparation for this frabjous day?

MJ: Well, I heard you were getting a little bit girly, so I decided to do the same! This week, I delved into the latest volumes of two sunjeong manhwa titles from Yen Press and one Viz shojo title. I’ll begin here with the first of the manhwa, volume nine of Goong.

For those who don’t know, Goong is the story of an ordinary middle-class girl who, thanks to a long-forgotten agreement made by her grandfather, is plucked from her exceedingly normal life to be the new Crown Princess of her country. The premise is pretty standard girls’ comics fare, but what makes this series particularly enjoyable (and unusually fresh) is its setting and characters.

Set in an alternate version of present-day South Korea, with a constitutional monarchy firmly in place, manhwa-ga Park SoHee is able to weave a modern-day romance right alongside all the fantastic historical goodies that would usually be part of a big costume drama. Though the story’s heroine, Chae-Kyung, is thoroughly ensconced in the modern, everyday world, her sudden relocation to the isolation of the royal palace almost makes her seem like the anachronism at times, rather than the other way around. It’s brilliantly executed, really, and this constant conflict serves both the story and its characters very effectively. …

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Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace: A

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From the back cover:
There are lots of children on Hill Street, but no little girls Betsy’s age. So when a new family moves into the house across the street, Betsy hopes they will have a little girl she can play with. Sure enough, they do—a little girl named Tacy. And from the moment they meet at Betsy’s fifth birthday party, Betsy and Tacy become such good friends that everyone starts to think of them as one person—Betsy-Tacy.

Betsy and Tacy have lots of fun together. They make a playhouse from a piano box, have a sand store, and dress up and go calling. And one day, they come home to a wonderful surprise—a new friend named Tib.

Review:
Although I’ve been meaning to read the Betsy-Tacy series for several years, I didn’t really know what to expect. That is, I knew it was the story of two life-long friends, but I didn’t know that it would be written so fondly, so amusingly, or depict life as anything but rosy for these two girls.

Betsy Ray has no girls her age to play with until bashful Tacy Kelly moves in across the street. Tacy’s shyness prevents them from becoming friends immediately, but once they bond at Betsy’s fifth birthday party, they’re inseparable. A lot of the book is devoted to the various imaginative ideas they come up with to entertain themselves, whether it’s coloring sand to sell to other children or pretending to drive the family surrey to the exotic realm of… Milwaukee.

Much of the book is quite amusing, especially the stories Betsy makes up. I’m particularly fond of the one featuring a talking horse with a hankering for some doughnuts. I was pleasantly surprised when things took a more serious turn: Tacy is one of many children and the youngest, “Baby Bee,” dies after an illness. There’s a really wonderful scene where Betsy’s storytelling abilities help cheer Tacy up. Later, when Betsy is upset over the birth of a new, “perfectly unnecessary” sibling, Tacy takes up the role of comforter. It might not sound like much by way of drama, but both instances manage to be charming and a little bittersweet at the same time.

Betsy-Tacy would be a great book to read aloud to elementary students, particularly an audience comprised of girls. My brother and his fiancée need to hurry up and give me a niece so I can read this to her.

Off the Shelf: ParaChara!

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Welcome to another edition of Off the Shelf with MJ & Michelle! As always, I’m joined by Soliloquy in Blue‘s Michelle Smith.

Once again, the Manga Moveable Feast is upon us, this month focusing on Ai Yazawa’s short josei series, Paradise Kiss (see Michelle’s introductory post here). As has become our habit (if, in fact, twice constitutes a habit), Michelle and I took the opportunity to discuss the series together, here in this week’s column!

MJ: As you might imagine, I’m quite thrilled with this month’s choice for the Manga Moveable Feast. Since we’ve each reviewed this series as a whole (me almost a year ago and you just this week), perhaps for today’s discussion we can take a moment to explore each of its main characters in-depth. I know I could talk about them for hours, and I’m curious to see how our impressions match up (or not). I certainly have my favorites and I bet you do too. Perhaps I’ll ask you to begin with yours?

MICHELLE: I think with Ai Yazawa there’s always a distinction to be made between characters who are excellently developed, three-dimensional people with fascinating flaws and characters who are one’s favorites by virtue of being just plain likeable. In the latter category, for example, I would place Isabella. She’s warm and nurturing, and completely devoted to George for accepting her as she is. If I had a problem, I’d like to pour my heart out to her while she made me some tasty stew.

But in terms of a character that one could simply talk about for days, I think I’d have to go with George. He’s maddening and unpredictable, but man, those moments when he looks hurt and vulnerable really pull at one’s heartstrings. It’s easy to see why Yukari fell for him….

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Apollo 23 by Justin Richards: B

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From the back cover:
An astronaut in full spacesuit appears out of thin air in a busy shopping centre. Maybe it’s a publicity stunt.

A photo shows a well-dressed woman in a red coat lying dead at the edge of a crater on the dark side of the moon—beside her beloved dog ‘Poochie.’ Maybe it’s a hoax.

But as the Doctor and Amy find out, these are just minor events in a sinister plan to take over every human being on Earth. The plot centres on a secret military base on the moon—that’s where Amy and the TARDIS are.

The Doctor is back on Earth, and without the TARDIS there’s no way he can get to the moon to save Amy and defeat the aliens.

Or is there? The Doctor discovers one last great secret that could save humanity: Apollo 23.

Review:
In the run of the Doctor Who: New Series Adventures books, this one comes in at number 37. At some point I’ll go back and read the earlier ones, but I’m really enjoying the new season with the eleventh doctor and couldn’t resist the temptation to check out the first book to feature him and his spunky Scottish companion, Amy.

I’m used to media tie-in books being fairly crappy, so Apollo 23 was a pleasant surprise. Oh, it’s not great literature or anything, but the characterization of Eleven and Amy is very solid, with dialogue that I can easily hear the actors delivering and several lines that elicit a grin. The basic plot is somewhat reminiscent of Dollhouse: there’s a secret base on the moon where experiments are being carried out on prisoners. The goal of the experiment is ostensibly to remove memories of bad experiences that led to criminal activity, but the technology winds up being used to create “Blanks” whose personalities are stored elsewhere while alien minds are imprinted upon them.

There’s more involving quantum links between Earth and the moon, but it’s really a sort of alien invasion/body snatchers story. The Doctor gets to zip around impressing people with his brilliance while Amy does a lot of snooping about. If this were an episode of the show, I’m sure it would be a disappointment, but in this format, it’s a quick and enjoyable read that might help ease the pain of the long wait ’til the Christmas special. I’ll be reading more!

Roundtable: Gerard & Jacques

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Fumi Yoshinaga’s Gerard & Jacques is a two-volume boys’ love manga that tells the story of Jacques, a young aristocrat swept into a new, terrifying world following the death of his father, and Gerard, the unlikely man who eventually becomes his new family.

Published in English by BLU Manga (Tokyopop’s BL imprint) Gerard & Jacques was recommended highly to me when I first began reading yaoi, but I’ll admit I had some difficulty with it my first time around, due to some specific content in the manga’s opening chapter which kept me from enjoying it at all at the time.

When I began to make plans for this special week of Yoshinaga, I decided to give Gerard & Jacques another try. I was also interested to hear what some of my favorite critics (and BL fans) thought of the work, so I invited a few of them along for the ride.

Joining me in discussion are …

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BL Bookrack: Yoshinaga Special

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Welcome to the first edition of BL Bookrack, a new, monthly feature co-written with Soliloquy in Blue‘s Michelle Smith. Once a month, in place of our weekly Off the Shelf column, we’ll be presenting reviews of a handful of boys’ love titles, both old and new. It is our particular pleasure to launch this feature with a focus on the works of Fumi Yoshinaga as part of Manga Bookshelf’s week-long tribute to one of our favorite mangaka.

In this month’s column, Michelle starts us off with a look at Don’t Say Any More, Darling, deeming it enjoyable, if not quite the best of Yoshinaga’s work. I follow up with two favorites, Ichigenme… The First Class is Civil Law and The Moon and the Sandals. Michelle then wraps things up with a thoughtful take on Solfege.

We hope you’ll enjoy this special Yoshinaga edition of BL Bookrack. We’ll return next week with another Off the Shelf!

Don’t Say Any More, Darling | By Fumi Yoshinaga | Published by Juné (DMP) | Rated M (Mature 18+) | Buy this book –

Don’t Say Any More, Darling is a collection of five stories by Fumi Yoshinaga—two of them not actually BL—that show glimmers of her future greatness but which are, at least in several cases, pretty durn weird.

The title story is the most straightforward boys’ love offering in the group. Kouhei and Tadashi have been friends since their school days, but the former has gone on to be a successful doctor while the latter is an impoverished lyricist who would probably starve if Kouhei didn’t stop by every once in a while. Kouhei’s parents are after him to meet a prospective bride—there’s a very amusing scene where they harangue him for being a “parasite single”—but when he meets his date, she only reminds him of Tadashi! Like most cheerful BL stories, this one ends with the boys in bed, but Yoshinaga gives this outcome a little twist by depicting Kouhei as comically traumatized by the experience.

“My Eternal Sweetheart” is the first of the weirder stories in the collection. Initially, it appears to be the story of an ailing teenager named Arthur whose immune deficiency syndrome prevents him from going outside and whose brother has built him a maternal android for a caretaker. It takes a turn when Arthur requests a male “sexaroid” to relieve his boredom, and a few other surprising twists follow. While I admire the plot of this story, it does contain an underaged sexaroid and quasi-incest, so things get a little creepy.

The two non-BL stories in the collection both have to do with making and then losing a connection with another person. In “Fairyland,” a bullied boy named Kaoru seems to have successfully wished all of humanity away. This gets rid of his tormentors, but also his family. When Kaoru meets another rare survivor, Ryohei, it seems he’s finally found someone who can understand and forgive his actions. In “One May Day,” a widower finds new love with a restaurant proprietor, only to quickly tire of her subservience and constant apologizing. This one is particularly short and odd.

My very favorite story in the collection is the last one, “The Pianist.” As a younger, haughtier man, Takayuki Date had some moderate success as a pianist and songwriter, but was never able to make it big. At the time, he never lacked for men, but now that he is older he’s having a hard time finding handsome younger guys willing to sleep with him. One day, he’s approached by a friendly college student and must figure out whether the young man is actually interested in him. The whole vibe of this story is wonderful—I really love how Yoshinaga handles the revelation that Date is not really the “debauched fallen genius” he pretends to be but rather simply lacked the talent necessary to achieve lasting success—and feels the most like Yoshinaga’s later works to me.

While Don’t Say Any More, Darling is not the best Yoshinaga manga available, it’s still intriguing and definitely worth a read.

– Review by Michelle Smith.

Ichigenme… The First Class is Civil Law, Vols. 1-2 | By Fumi Yoshinaga | Published by 801 Media (DMP) | Rated 18+ (Mature Content) | Buy volumes one & two –

Kensuke Tamiya is a serious law student who finds himself in a zemi (a small, professor-led seminar) filled entirely with lazy rich kids who have come up through the university’s affiliated schools. It is there he meets Taka-aki Tohdou, the playboy son of a politician who kisses Tamiya at their zemi‘s drunken welcome party.

Later, when Tohdou makes a serious attempt to pursue him, Tamiya protests adamantly that he’s not gay, while secretly suppressing the truth he’s known for years. As Tamiya slowly comes to terms with his sexuality, his classmates struggle with school, scandal, and the often ugly workings of the social hierarchy set up for them by their elders.

Though advertised as a “campus love story,” Ichigenme is really so much more. It is, at once, a thoughtful take on a young man’s struggle with his sexuality, an idiosyncratic romance, a jaded commentary on sexual double-standards applied to female students in Japan, and a fairly scathing look at the Japanese affiliate school system.

One of the most gratifying elements of Yoshinaga’s yaoi works is the fact that she is not afraid to write about characters who identify as gay. With Ichigenme…, she takes that one step further by actually exploring what that means for her protagonist, who, even after admitting that he could never have sex with a woman, is reluctant to accept the truth of it. Tamiya’s anxieties follow him even into the bedroom, where, though he learns to discuss what he’s doing with surprising frankness, he is unable to be open about his feelings.

With Tamiya, Yoshinaga turns two yaoi tropes on their heads–the shy, reluctant uke and the genre’s resistance to the word “gay”– transforming them from myopic clichés into realistic neuroses that actually add dimension to the character. As a result, Tamiya and Tohdou’s relationship is wonderfully awkward and slow to develop, with its sexual and romantic progression never quite in the same place.

This is particularly significant to the series’ second volume, which might otherwise be just a series of increasingly explicit sex scenes. Thankfully, the complexity of both these men and their relationship drives the story all the way through to the end. Though a second couple is introduced halfway through the second volume, presumably to add fresh romantic momentum, this diversion is hardly necessary.

As always, Yoshinaga’s gift for dialogue creates a uniquely intimate feel, bringing life and complexity even to the story’s minor characters, especially Miho Terada, a smart, studious female classmate whose place at the university is called into question after her boyfriend sends a nude photo of her to a magazine. Despite the fact that this is essentially a romance manga, one of its most affecting scenes takes place between Terada and Tamiya, in which he reveals his naiveté regarding her circumstances.

“You’re the victim here, Terada-san … it’s the guy who’s in the wrong,” Tamiya protests, to which she responds, “You’re the only one who would say that, Tamiya-chan. My father said that it was more shameful than being raped. And hearing that felt worse than being raped.”

Though Ichigenme… was released under DMP’s more explicit 801 Media imprint (and rightfully so), its sex scenes are so artful and so essential to the characters’ emotional journey, I’d consider it suitable for any adult reader, male or female, fan or non-fan.

If any of this sounds like over-praise, I promise you it’s not. Ichigenme… is a true favorite, and I recommend it with pleasure.

-Review by MJ

The Moon and the Sandals, Vols. 1-2 | By Fumi Yoshinaga | Published by Juné (DMP) | Rated M (Mature 18+) | Buy volumes one & two –

Kobayashi has a massive crush on his history teacher, Mr. Ida, but just as he’s about to confess, he discovers that Mr. Ida is embroiled in a stormy love affair of his own. As Ida pursues a future with his long-time lover, Hashizume, Kobayashi is left to find new love on his own.

When Kobayashi’s good friend and English studies savior, Rikuko, is injured in a traffic accident, she convinces her older brother, Toyo, to replace her as Kobayashi’s English tutor.

Toyo is arrogant and demanding, but working with Kobayashi seems to soften him, and in no time at all, Kobayashi has transferred his crush on Mr. Ida to his new English tutor. But can Toyo return his feelings? And what about Rikuko, who harbors the same feelings for Kobayashi?

Though this was her debut manga, Yoshinaga was already playing around with standard yaoi fantasies (in this case, the teacher/student relationship), working them ’round until they become genuinely true-to-life. As a result, Kobayashi’s crush on his teacher, Mr. Ida, reads as a poignant tale of unrequited first love rather than romantic fantasy.

This relationship rings true throughout the series, especially in a scene late in the first volume, when Kobayashi seeks out his teacher, the only gay adult he knows, to ask for information on gay sex. Ida’s discomfort with the question leaves Kobayashi pretty much to fend for himself, but it’s the reaction from Ida’s lover that makes the whole thing worthwhile.

“You’re clearly the one in the wrong here,” Hashizume says. “Homosexuals are a social minority. There aren’t many with whom we can discuss our problems, either … If he can’t ask you, who else can he ask?”

Another area where Yoshinaga really shines here is in her treatment of Kobayashi’s friend, Rikuko. One of several general complaints that can be made about yaoi as a whole is a lack of female characters in a genre written largely by women, for women. Though it wouldn’t be reasonable to expect female characters in the lead in a genre specifically portraying romance between males, it’s rather depressing to note just how often women and girls are dismissed entirely as people of worth in yaoi manga, occasionally to the point of outright misogyny. Fortunately, Yoshinaga frequently writes women into her yaoi, and she writes them well.

Not only is Rikuko a rich, nuanced character with real hopes and dreams (including a promising future as a doctor, as shown in volume two), but her confession to (and rejection by) Kobayashi is written with a level of subtlety and understanding that speaks honestly to generations of high school girls (past and present) who have had the misfortune to fall in love with their gay best friends.

Click each to enlarge, right-to-left.

Images © Fumi Yoshinaga. English translation © Digital Manga Publishing.

The series’ second volume, a series of vignettes designed primarily to accommodate sex scenes, lacks the cohesion and depth of the first. Yet even these scenes are emotionally driven and rooted firmly in the rich character development established during the first volume. Though the first volume can be enjoyed entirely on its own, readers who seek out the second volume will find some real gems scattered within, such as a scene late in the volume regarding Toyo’s plans to come out to his parents.

Simply put, The Moon and the Sandals is utterly charming, recommended for any fan of smart, romantic manga.

– Review by MJ

Solfege | By Fumi Yoshinaga | Published by Juné (DMP) | Rated YA (16+) | Buy this book –

The important thing to remember about Solfege is that it’s not actually a love story. Instead, it’s the portrait of an unsympathetic music teacher named Kugayama who is a wretched human being but is still capable of bringing something positive into the world by fostering a life-long love of music in his students.

The story begins with Kugayama imparting the basics of music unto Tanaka, a youth who looks like a delinquent but loves singing and dreams of attending a music high school. Kugayama doesn’t have very high hopes for Tanaka’s chances, but is surprised when his student ends up exceeding his expectations. When Tanaka’s mother collapses and ends up spending over a year in the hospital, Kugayama allows the boy to stay with him and pays for Tanaka to study voice with another teacher named Gotoh.

Once Tanaka’s mother recovers, he moves back home, but she promptly begins bringing men home and he turns up at Kugayama’s house again just when his former teacher is drunk and feeling horny. Kugayama proceeds to use his position as the most-admired person in Tanaka’s life to seduce his impressionable young student, and this is where I really started to hate the guy. I wished for Yoshinaga to accurately portray how traumatized a physically mature but emotionally vulnerable kid like Tanaka would be by this experience. Instead, he’s completely okay with the arrangement and the two continue to sleep together. I was disappointed.

I should’ve had faith in Yoshinaga, though, because once Gotoh finds out what’s going on, he takes immediate steps to remove Tanaka from Kugayama’s clutches. While Tanaka heads abroad to study music in Italy—and eventually becomes a success—Kugayama starts up a relationship with a Tanaka lookalike named Jun and, again, gets what’s coming to him for being such a screwed-up jerk. Scandal ensues, and it’s up to a grown-up Tanaka to meet with Kugayama again—as equals this time—and remind him of what it is that he does best.

I did not find Solfege to be in the least little bit romantic—and I’m honestly not sure how anyone could—but I did find it a complex and fascinating character study as well as a refreshing alternative to student-teacher romances that carry no repercussions for persons in a position of authority.

– Review by Michelle Smith

Afterschool Charisma 1 by Kumiko Suekane: B-

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Sigmund Freud. Florence Nightingale. Napoleon Bonaparte. These are not merely the names of eminent historical figures. They are also the names of students at a certain high school. These children are the fruit of leading-edge genetic engineering technology. In other words… they are clones.

It’s the year 2XXX A.D. and St. Kleio Academy is home to many students, all clones of famous historical figures. All, that is, except for Shiro Kamiya, son of a professor at the school and the only regular kid in attendance.

The students are expected to not only live up to the “monumental legacies of [their] originals,” but to strive to surpass their achievements. While some students are seemingly content with this arrangement, others strive to be their own person. Marie Curie, for example, lacks passion for scientific study and instead wants to be a pianist. When the school’s first graduate, a clone of John F. Kennedy, is assassinated while dutifully following in his original’s footsteps and campaigning for president, the astute Sigmund Freud does some digging and confirms the existence of a group whose agenda is to kill all of the clones.

Like me, you might find this concept very intriguing. Like me, then, you’ll likely be disappointed to discover that the tone of this volume is quite erratic. After some ominous hinting that Marie Curie—who the students believe has been allowed to transfer to music school—has been scrapped (“Another do-over,” according to Shiro’s dad), the story abruptly veers into fanservice territory, with Shiro and Freud shoved into the girls’ changing room by their friends. So, now we’ve gone from “Ooh, creepy!” to “Ooh, boobies!”

As the story progresses, it wanders seemingly without direction. There are still some hints about the anti-clone organization sprinkled throughout, but the focus becomes more on a sort of cult operating within the school whose members carry around plush toys in the likeness of Dolly, the famous cloned sheep. Also, because Mozart disdained Marie Curie’s musical ambitions, Shiro decides he needs to get fit so he can challenge him to a fencing match after which Mozart seemingly hangs himself to teach Shiro what it’s like to be a clone. Or something. It’s very odd.

In the end, I’m still interested enough in the story to read the next volume. I have suspicions about Shiro’s origins, for one thing, and the fact that the anti-clone folks have their faces hidden can only be significant. There’s a lot of potential here—I just hope the various elements coalesce into something more purposeful.

This review was originally published at Comics Should Be Good.

Afterschool Charisma is published in English by VIZ and serialized on their SigIKKI website. One volume’s available in print so far while in Japan the fourth volume has just been released.

Dengeki Daisy 1 by Kyousuke Motomi: B+

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From the back cover:
After orphan Teru Kurebayashi loses her beloved older brother, she finds solace in the messages she exchanges with DAISY, an enigmatic figure who can only be reached through the cell phone her brother left her. Meanwhile, mysterious Tasuku Kurosaki always seems to be around whenever Teru needs help. Could DAISY be a lot closer than Teru thinks?

One day at school, Teru accidentally breaks a window and agrees to pay for it by helping Kurosaki with chores around school. Kurosaki is an impossible taskmaster, though, and he also seems to be hiding something important from Teru…

Review:
Dengeki Daisy, from the creator of the charming Beast Master, is the latest series to debut under VIZ’s Shojo Beat imprint. It’s the story of orphan Teru Kurebayashi, whose older brother recently passed away, but not before giving her a cell phone that will enable her to contact “Daisy,” who will always be there to protect Teru in her brother’s place.

Due to her status as a scholarship student, Teru faces bullying at school, but pretends like everything is fine when text messaging Daisy. Little does she know that Tasuku Kurosaki, the delinquent school custodian, is actually Daisy and has been watching over her all this time. When Teru accidentally breaks a window at school, Kurosaki uses it as an excuse to keep an eye on her while he plays mahjong on his laptop and she does all the work.

There are definitely some familiar elements to this story. You’ve got the impoverished heroine being called a pauper, the all-powerful student council, and the somewhat-jerky-but-really-kind male lead. What makes Dengeki Daisy stand out from the pack are the original twists Kyousuke Motomi employs. Student-teacher romances are fairly common, but I’ve never seen a student-custodian one before. I like that Kurosaki is in love, but Teru is oblivious (though she does suspect right away that he might be Daisy, which he denies). And I genuinely like the characters and the way they interact, especially Teru’s group of misfit friends and the scene in which Kurosaki wields an edger as a weapon!

I really don’t have any complaints about this volume—it’s light, cute fun—but I can see how Kurosaki’s protectiveness and occasional dispeasure with Teru’s actions could possibly be viewed as patronizing. It honestly didn’t come across this way to me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if others took issue with it.

All in all, I really enjoyed this debut and am looking forward to continuing the series. Thanks, VIZ, for bringing us something else from this talented mangaka!

Volume one of Dengeki Daisy is available now. The series is still ongoing in Japan—volume seven will be coming out there in a couple of weeks.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Off the Shelf: Not Loafing

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Welcome to another edition of Off the Shelf with MJ & Michelle! I’m joined once again by Soliloquy in Blue‘s Michelle Smith.

This week, we pull a few shojo titles off the shelf from Viz Media and Tokyopop, mixed in with shonen and seinen favorites from Viz, Del Rey Manga, and Vertical, Inc.

MICHELLE: It was a dark and stormy blog. Intrepid manga reviewer MJ was braving the elements in order to get home in time to read some books! Did she make it? Oh God, did she?!?!

MJ: Never fear, because she did! And quite joyfully, too! This was actually an incredibly pleasurable week for me, because I spent my time with the latest volumes of three of my favorite series.

First, I finally sat down with the second volume of Twin Spica, my favorite new manga series so far this year. The story is about a teenaged girl, Asumi, who vies to be part of Japan’s re-emerging space program, just fourteen years after a deadly accident stopped the program in its tracks. The first volume was fairly stunning (you can read my review here), setting the bar for the second impossibly high, or so one would think. With an introduction so strong, I was quite surprised to find that I liked the second volume even better.

The first volume spent a lot of time setting up the universe of the story and introducing its main players, including Asumi, her “imaginary” friend Lion-san (which I’ve put in quotes because I simply don’t know), her widowed father, and two girls entering the space program at the same time. This was all done beautifully, leaving readers full of warmth and wonder. …

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus 1 by Joss Whedon, et al.: B

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From the back cover:
The definitive collection of the first Buffy comics series starts here. This volume begins at the beginning—”The Origin,” a faithful adaptation of creator Joss Whedon’s original Buffy screenplay. The newly chosen Slayer’s road to Sunnydale continues by way of Vegas and a mental institution, and scenes of high school, the early Scoobies, and an English librarian lead the way into Season One—and The Goon creator Eric Powell gives a look at Spike and Drusilla causing havoc at the 1933 World’s Fair.

This omnibus series is the ultimate compilation of Dark Horse’s original Buffy comics and runs chronologically along the TV series’ timeline. A fitting companion to Whedon’s comics-based relaunch of the Buffy mythos.

Review:
Because this omnibus collects a variety of arcs from different points in the comic’s run—and created by various teams of people—I think it’ll be easiest to address each one separately.

“All’s Fair” by Christopher Golden, et al.
A short, murky story about the family of the Chinese Slayer Spike killed seeking vengeance at the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. The dialogue is decent, though Drusilla’s tendency to speak nonsense is overused, but the character likenesses are pretty bad and the story’s boring, to boot. Thankfully, this one’s quite short.

“Buffy: The Origin” by Joss Whedon, et al.
This purports to be “a faithful adaptation” of Whedon’s original screenplay for the Buffy movie. If so, apparently Joss originally envisioned vampires as cheesy green creatures! Still, this is much better than the movie as I remember it, doing a good job at depicting Buffy’s growing distance from her materialistic friends and setting up her conflicting desires/destinies of “normal girl” versus “chosen one.” I also liked that the scene of Buffy meeting her watcher, Merrick, for the first time seems to have been lifted wholesale from the movie script for use in season two’s “Becoming, Part 1.”

“Viva Las Buffy!” by Scott Lobdell, et al.
After Buffy gets expelled from Hemery High for burning down the gym (full of vampires), she and Pike head off to Las Vegas to investigate a casino catering to vampires. The story itself is not very exciting—despite involving time travel, half-vampire Siamese twins, and Angel doing his own poking around—but it’s narrated by Pike and provides an explanation for his absence from Buffy’s life in the series. It is rather weird to see Buffy being all proactive in her duties to vanquish vamps here, when she starts season one of the series so keen to avoid her calling.

“Dawn & Hoopy the Bear” by Paul Lee
This short story takes place while Buffy is in Vegas. In an attempt to kill Buffy, a demon imbues a teddy bear with the spirit of a djinn, but the delivery guy mistakenly gives it to Dawn instead. Instead of killing her, the bear takes a liking to her and becomes her defender. It’s a little weird to read a solo Dawn story like this, since we know it didn’t really happen, but I presume this is supposed to be one of the false memories Dawn has of her childhood. It’s actually really cute and I liked it a lot.

“Slayer, Interrupted” by Scott Lobdell, et al.
In the season six episode, “Normal Again,” Buffy reveals that she was once sent to a mental institution after telling her parents about vampires. While I don’t think that works with the continuity established in season two, in which Joyce appears to learn about Buffy’s Slayerhood for the first time, it’s still interesting to see what supposedly happened there. (Intriguingly, in this comic, it’s Dawn who’s responsible for the secret getting out. I wonder if Lobdell intended to propose a solution that would allow Joyce’s original reaction and Buffy’s memories—altered after Dawn was inserted into her life—to coexist.)

Unfortunately, it’s just too much like the season three opener, “Anne.” Buffy doesn’t want to be the Slayer; she’s stuck somewhere with a lot of helpless teens being victimized by a demon; she finally accepts who she is, and comes to everyone’s rescue. The story ends with a newly confident Buffy heading home, but again, this doesn’t really match with the Buffy we first meet in the beginning of the TV series.

While the stories are all drawn by different people, they have some artistic commonalities. First of all, many of them have problems with eye color. The earlier pieces in the collection depict vampires with red eyes, though this is corrected later. I’m more annoyed by Giles and Wesley having brown eyes and Buffy and Willow having blue ones. Eye color aside, though, Buffy in these comics looks more consistently like Sarah Michelle Gellar than she does in the Season Eight series.

Also, it’s not just Buffy whose pre-Sunnydale life we glimpse. The stories by Scott Lobdell contain scenes of the Watchers Council deciding which candidate will best serve as Buffy’s new watcher (this is where Wesley comes in), the gradual dissolution of Joyce and Hank’s marriage, and one brief sighting of a lonely Willow being sneered at by Cordelia and her cronies. Although there are a few minor inconsistencies, these arcs also flow quite well in chronological order, even though they weren’t originally published that way.

I actually own all seven of these omnibi, so expect more reviews to come!

Breaking Down Banana Fish, Vols. 5-6

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Welcome to the third installment of the Banana Fish roundtable!

This month, we tackle volumes five and six. With Yut-Lung conniving behind the scenes and Shorter’s loyalties stretched to the limit, everyone ends up in Papa Dino’s hands over the course of these volumes, and not all can survive. Ash orchestrates an elaborate escape, but his allegiance with the Chinatown gang may be lost forever.

I’m joined this round by Michelle Smith (Soliloquy in Blue), Khursten Santos (Otaku Champloo), Connie C. (Slightly Biased Manga), Eva Volin (Good Comics For Kids), and Robin Brenner (No Flying, No Tights).

Read our roundtable on volumes one and two here, and volumes three and four here.

On to part three! …

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Saturn Apartments 1 by Hisae Iwaoka: B+

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In this low-key, dystopic sci-fi story, a boy named Mitsu takes up his missing father’s occupation as a window washer in the hopes that it will yield answers about his disappearance, or maybe just life in general.

Humanity has vacated Earth. They were not, however, willing to move too far away from their former home, now declared a vast nature preserve, and have instead taken up residence in a gigantic ring around the planet. Within the ring, a very stratified society exists, with public facilities located on the relatively airy middle levels, spacious homes for the wealthy in the upper levels, and dark and cramped living conditions for everyone else in “the basement.” Saturn Apartments is essentially a slice-of-life story that follows Mitsu as he begins his new job (washing the ring’s external windows) and interacts with residents from the various levels of society. Most of the guild’s work is either assigned by the government or commissioned by the very rich, so when his first job is cleaning windows on the lower level, it’s rare.

This job has been requested by a young couple who are about to get married—the groom-to-be is Sohta, a very bright young man who obtained an advanced degree with the hopes of finding a job in the middle levels. Only after Sohta graduated was he told that, even if he goes to grad school, he’s still not going to be employable because he’s from the basement. He ends up settling for a job as a technician in a power plant instead. Many of the following stories also serve to illustrate the plight of the basement-dwellers while offering in contrast the excesses of the rich, including one eccentric fellow who keeps a near-extinct sea creature in his home and another who tinkers with robots all day long and has the crew back to redo his windows over and over without offering any explanation as to what they’ve done wrong.

Meanwhile, Mitsu seeks to learn more about the accident that apparently claimed the life of his father, Akitoshi. Five years ago, Akitoshi’s rope was cut and he plunged toward Earth. Mitsu had always suspected that his father cut the rope intentionally, but when he’s sent to work at the same spot, he notices some damage to the ring’s hull that could’ve been responsible for severing the rope, along with many handprints that suggest his father fought to stay alive. Later, he meets his Akitoshi’s former partner, Tamachi, and begins to hear about a side of his father that he never knew.

As I wrote in my introduction, the world of Saturn Apartments is what I would call a low-key dystopia. Those who dwell in the basement aren’t too happy with their lot, but they seem resigned to the fact that they can’t do anything about it. The only one who really has any spunk is Jin, the experienced window washer with whom Mitsu is partnered, but his frustration at rich folks manifests as bursts of ill temper that pass quickly. Iwaoka’s art excels at depicting the oppressive feeling of life in the basement—narrow alleyways and towering buildings reinforce the notion of insurmountable obstacles and one can almost feel the weight of all the rooms above Mitsu’s pressing down on him.

Mitsu himself is perhaps the weakest link here because he is so much an observer. We do learn that his mother died when he was very young and that, after his father’s death, some kindly neighbors attempted to care for him but he always kept a respectful distance from them. Now that he’s finished school and is working, he is determined to pay his own way and seeks to find meaning in the work that he’s doing. Too, he believes that following in his father’s footsteps and working hard will enable him to learn something. What that is, exactly, he doesn’t know, but perservering feels important.

I certainly find Mitsu’s quest interesting and will keep reading about him and his world, but it’s as if he’s keeping a respectful distance from the reader, too, which makes it difficult to become more than simply curious how things will turn out.

This review was originally published at Comics Should Be Good.

Saturn Apartments is published in English by VIZ. One volume has been released so far, though two chapters of volume two are available on the SigIKKI website. The series is still ongoing in Japan; five volumes are currently available there.