Sean Gaffney

By Tomo Takeuchi. Released in Japan as “Ballroom e Youkoso” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Monthly Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics. Translated by Karen McGillicuddy.

For years, the received wisdom of the internet was that sports manga did not sell well in North America. Like most received wisdom, that wasn’t quite accurate. Price of Tennis, Eyeshield 21, and Whistle! all had fairly lengthy runs here. But recently, it would appear that the received wisdom is actually beginning to genuinely die, as we’re seeing more and more shonen sports-style manga come out and do fairly well for themselves. And it helps to show off one basic factor of the Japanese sports manga, which is that it does not actually matter what the sport is. Take a hero with no purpose in life, show him a competition that is amazing and features people showing off awesome bodies and equally awesome speed lines, and then have him train and train and train until everyone realizes that he’s got amazing potential. In the case of Welcome to the Ballroom, that sport happens to be ballroom dancing competitions, but that does not change its essential sports manga-ness.

Our hero is Fujita, and he does in fact remind me a lot of Sena from Eyeshield 21, and not just because of the hair. He’s got his teachers upset because he can’t figure out what to do with his life, he gets harassed by the local neighborhood bullies, and his nights at home are just him an his dad (for once, the mom seems to be divorced rather than dead as in most manga). But then he’s basically kidnapped by Sengoku, who is looking for new recruits for his dance studio, which also happens to feature a pretty girl from Fujita’s school who does ballroom dancing. After initially being totally overwhelmed with self-doubt and self-hatred, Fujita watches a DVD of a dancing competition secretly put in his bag, and falls in love with the way they move. He may lack common sense (his first training session literally lasts ALL NIGHT as he forgets what time it is), but he has an innate sense of movement that is struggling to get beyond his beginner’s body.

Moving on to the review proper, this is a very good start. Fujita is a very believable teenage boy, filled with insecurities and jealousies but a good kid at heart. The heroine, Hanaoka, has dreams of her own that she’s worried about, and so far does not seem to be there simply for the hero to fall in love with, although that does happen to a degree. (It helps that, unlike most sports manga, the women are an innate part of the sport.) And his first rival, Kiyoharu, is way beyond both of them in terms of talent, but I suspect that pushing himself too hard has already gotten to him, and it’s what leads to the first cliffhanger. As with most shonen manga, the way you know it’s really good is that you want to read the next volume immediately. That’s how I feel about Welcome to the Ballroom.

By Katsuhisa Kigitsu. Released in Japan by Akita Shoten, serialized in the magazine Champion Red. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jocelyne Allen, Adapted by Shanti Whitesides.

One of the strengths of Franken Fran is how it can be both an anthology of one-off horror concepts and also have an increasingly diverse continuity to call on when it needs to. Sometimes this means that one chapter bleeds into the next, as with the actor who has Fran give him pheromones so he can have more personal magnetism, followed by his co-star getting surgery so that she looks like a shoujo manga cover. Sometimes it’s building on previous volumes, as with the increasingly bizarre and over the top stories of the superhero Sentinel and his many knockoff imitators. And sometimes it uses the regular cast of Franken Fran, as when Fran tries to stop the horror that is her sister Gavril by unleashing a never ending army of Kuho clones, which Fran apparently decides to do for no reason other than to show us how hilariously awful Kuho’s life is.

I mentioned Gavril, and there’s no question she’s one of the best things about this volume, as well as possibly the most popular character in North American fandom. Fran saves lives as a doctor but has morals and ethics that make no sense to us whatsoever; Veronica has a moral and ethical sense, but is a killing machine. Combine the two in the worst way and you get Gavril, who loves slaughtering for its own sake, and has a deep desire to kill off Fran. I was wondering how Seven Seas would translate her initial chapter, and readers who may have read the source via other means may rest assured that in this official volume Gavril’s potty mouth is present and correct. With a heap of four and five-letter swears, appalling violent carnage, and walking around with her top unzipped, Gavril is a walking M rating. (Franken Fran is still rated OT by Seven Seaas, in case you wondered.)

Franken Fran’s bread and butter is still its horror and humor, though, and both combine well here provided that you don’t try to sympathize with anyone involved. Several times in this book Fran is overwhelmed with emotion at what she considers to be a touching, tragic story (even when it isn’t), and manages to make it even worse. She is helped out a great deal by her clients, many of whom are horrible examples of humanity. Franken Fran shows us the seedy underbelly of human desires, and the greed, lust, and desire for power within so many people. If your amusement park is filled with mascots that will immediately kill once they stop hearing music… well, that fits in perfectly with the amusement park aesthetic! This volume doesn’t have as many moments when I laughed out loud, but it has many, many moments when I put my hand to my mouth and went “Oh my god.” It’s that kind of series. If you don’t mind horror (and be warned, the cockroaches make a return here) and love twisted humor, Franken Fran remains a must reda.

By Kaoru Mori. Released in Japan as “Otoyomegatari” by Enterbrain, serialization ongoing in the magazine fellows!. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by William Flanagan.

As you might have guessed from the cover, Pariya is the main focus of this volume, though we do see a brief wrapup of the ‘two wives’ arc from the previous book. We’ve been building up to this storyline for a while, Pariya being the most obvious next bride in line (at least, back at our home base of Amir’s village). But this is definitely going to be a story that will take longer than just one volume, as Pariya’s issues are not ones that are easily solved. I’ve called her the tsundere of A Bride’s Story, but the label doesn’t quite fit her well (indeed, you can argue that most tsunderes don’t fit the label all that well). Pariya is highly emotional, has difficulty focusing, and most importantly, has a low self-image of herself due to everyone’s expectations of what a good wife should be.

I’ll be honest, it’s very clear that Mori loves drawing Pariya’s faces, especially when she’s frustrated, humiliated, or otherwise blushing her head off. And I love it, even as I sympathize with her. She feels like a modern girl trapped in the late 19th century, and things aren’t helped by the events that begin her arc in this volume: their house burns to the ground, taking with it most of the cloth that had been saved up for her dowry. The family panics; they don’t few Pariya as someone who’s easily married off to begin with, and now without something to give to her potential husband’s family, it’s going to take even more years to make things happen. Pariya, of course, is painfully aware of this, and because she actually DOES like her latest suitor, she’s determined to do something about it, even if it involves… grr… actual needlework.

The scenes of Pariya’s slow, steady progression with the needle, as she drives herself forward by imagining the caustic words of the village elder, who she is literally hallucinating behind her. The good news is that her hard work IS rewarded, and the others are there to show her the joy that can be taken in it – seeing Pariya with a happy blush as opposed to frustrated is also a reward to the reader. That said, the last chapter is darker, as Pariya imagines her future husband dumping her at the altar because of her personality, and then, thanks to her overenthusiastic physical labor during the cleaning of the streams they use for water, she is terrified that he’s scared of the “real” her. (My guess is it’s probably the opposite, but we’ll have to wait till next time to figure that out.)

Pariya is also not helped by having Amir as the perfect example of a superwoman – not only does she have the temperament of a good bride, she also rides horses, hunts big game, can prepare an instant picnic, is good at making friends… she’s the impossible standard that Pariya can’t hold herself up to. No wonder Karluk is trying to improve himself so that he can stand beside her as a good husband. Whether you like Pariya or Amir, though, this is a typically excellent volume of A Bride’s Story.

By Gakuto Mikumo and Manyako. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jeremiah Bourque.

This volume of Strike the Blood features a) our hero trying to stop a molestor on a subway only to get mistaken for a molestor himself; b) our hero walking naked into a bathroom where two young girls are bathing, and the heroine’s reaction as if this is his fault even though it isn’t; c) a childhood friend that everyone assumes is a boy who’s actually a tomboyish girl, now all grown up, here to make everyone in love with the hero uncomfortable; d) two girls waking up next to each other, and teh teasing one saying “you were wonderful last night” despite nothing actually happening; e) bodyswapping, with all the cliches that this entails; and f) two women presented as the big bads of this volume who turn out to be rather pathetic, and are really just a ruse to cover up the actual big bad, who is herself merely a pawn in the game of the actual actual big bad.

Welcome to TV Tropes: The Light Novel.

Again, there’s no way to really review a series like this without repeating what I’ve said before, so please put up with it. The books still feel as if they’re an adaptation of a pre-existing anime, rather than the other way around. Kojou remains a somewhat underdone hero, though he’s not helped by the fact that this turns out to be the first book in a longer arc, meaning he doesn’t get a big fight to show off with. This is because he spends half the book in the body of his childhood friend Yuuma, and thus is “a normal human” in the sense that most girls who are bred to be a mind controlled tool to rescue a woman from the most well-kept prison in the world is a normal human. And make no mistake about it, Kojou would definitely insist she’s absolutely a normal human, because if you’re going to be an off-the-rack discount copy of Kamijou Touma, you may as well go all the way.

And the series’ strengths remain strong. It’s a light, breezy read, showing that it may copy Index’s hero but not its prose style. The fight scenes are fun. It has several amusing scenes, mostly involving Yukina, such as when she informs the now female Kojou that he should never use the toilet in that body ever, and telling Sayaka “Stuff happened, so he’s a girl now.” As for Yuuma herself, I’m always a sucker for powerful kids with a past history of abuse who hate themselves and think they’re disposable, especially as most narratives exist, rightly, to prove that they’re wrong. I expect the next book in the series will be a lot more serious, and involve a lot more use of vampire powers. Till then, we have this book, which, like the others in the series, is well-written and completely lacking in ambition. It is what it is.

Story by Ryukishi07; Art by Hinase Momoyama. Released in Japan in two separate volumes as “Umineko no Naku Koro ni: Dawn of the Golden Witch” by Square Enix, serialized in the magazine GFantasy. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by Stephen Paul.

Two more volumes of the 6th arc in this series, and how’s Battler doing? Not great, it would seem. His game, it is becoming increasingly apparently, is just duplicating what was done last game, simply because that worked. He’s decided to enter the Love Competition that George/Shannon and Jessica/Kanon are having, with Fledgling Beato as his partner, which raises all sort of questions. More to the point, though, Battler is still far too nice to really be good at this sort of thing. (At one point he tries to praise Lambda for the same thing, and she essentially shuts him down cold.) Battler thinks the best of people, and is easily moved by a girl’s tears. This allows Erika and company to get the upper hand, which I’m sure will rebound horribly on him in the final volume of the arc.

Speaking of Erika, this volume also attempts to give her something of a backstory, as Dlanor asks her why she hates magic so much. The backstory rings a bit false – partly as it presents an Erika who sounds to me more college age, whereas the Erika we see here is mid-teens at most. But mostly it’s because it is very obvious from the start that Erika is Bernkastel’s “piece” – it’s Bern self-inserting her way into the story to cause havoc. Thus a “real” tragic backstory for Erika pales in comparison to, say, Bern’s own. That said, the background does show us a major theme of the series. Erika couldn’t bring herself to trust her boyfriend as she found circumstantial evidence that he was cheating on her, and though Dlanor tries to present counter evidence that he loved her, she can’t believe it because it’s not “the red truth”. In other words, love requires having faith in someone, which is something Erika can’t do. (She fares far better with Dlanor, honestly, and the yuri tease that was mildly in the VN is amped up here.)

In the meantime, there’s still the murders of the first Twilight, which are framed as part of the love competition going on. George manages to escape his mother’s clutching grasp (Pink Floyd’s ‘Mother’ resonates through this whole scene), and Jessica is able to kill off Kyrie after seeing a truly terrifying example of envy and hatred in action – Kyrie is scary. (Notably, George is rather sanguine about his murder, while Jessica is in tears after hers.) Rosa and Maria are killed fairly perfunctorily, although Maria’s rage at seeing her mother killed is very well-drawn, some of the best art in the book. Fledgling Beato may be confused as to who the man from 19 years ago is (hint: it’s not Battler), but is able to knock off Natsuhi with the help of her father/lover/mentor. (The incest subtext is icky.) And battler manages to top them all by killing himself – yes, in this game board, Battler dies on the first Twilight.

So what’s next? A lot of pain for Battler, I suspect, as I have a feeling he’ll soon be trapped in a Logic Error. And there’s still the remainder of the love competition, as we try to figure out why Shannon, Kanon and Beatrice can’t all be happy with their partners – only one can prevail! Let’s hope that the next volume ends with a nice, happy wedding.

By Jin (Shinzen no Teki-P) and Sidu. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Kevin Gifford.

Though not without its issues, this is still overall the strongest volume of Kagerou Daze to date. Each volume has quietly doled out tiny bits of the backstory while letting us enjoy the wacky antics of Shintaro meeting the Mekakushi-Dan. This new book ditches Shintaro entirely and focuses instead on Kano and his own tragic past, which he explains to Ene over the course of the book. It really does give me exactly what I wanted to see from the previous books – why Kano appeared to Shintaro as Ayano and gave him a nervous breakdown, why Ayano is no longer with us, a suggestion of who the main villain is (though that’s still not quite clear), and the origins of the Mekakushi-Dan, giving much needed depth to Kano and Kido, and a bit of depth to Seto, who continues to be the one character who gets nothing to do.

As it turns out, most of the kids in the Mekakushi-Dan are orphans. Kano we initially see with his mother, who psychically abuses him (and by the way, Kano’s POV of the abuse and his justification for it is chilling and very well done, possibly some of the best writing in the series to date), but after a burglar kills his mother and living with relatives is messed up by the awakening of his eye powers (turning into a dead woman is never a way to win friends and influence people), he’s sent to an orphanage where he meets Kido, who is a giant ball of anger and can’t control her invisibility, and Seto, who cries an awful lot and is also sometimes telepathic, but again can’t control it. (Kano, by the way, controls his own powers through physical pain, which is utterly horrifying, and he knows it.)

Where this ties into the rest of the plot is when all three are adopted by Ayano’s mother, and she makes the most of becoming their big sister. Unfortunately, this backstory is not meant to show us the few happy, loving years they had – in a matter of a page or two, Ayano’s mother is dead and her father seemingly possessed by the “snakes” we’ve heard about in prior books – snakes which are also in each of the group. And finally we learn why Ayano killed herself. It was not, as it had been suggested, due to self-esteem issues or anything to do with Shintaro (though when impersonating her to fake her death, Kano is not above telling Shintaro it is his fault, which of course leads to his seclusion in the first place), but to stop the snake inside her father. Did it work? Well…

The one flaw the book has to me is the wraparound plot. I knew we’d see Ene becoming Takane again at some point, but it feels very tacked on here, as if the author finally got a cutoff point from his publishers and realized he had to start wrapping things up. (The series is still running in Japan, so we have at least 2 volumes to go after this.) Also, Kano’s ambivalence to his traitorous nature, while it fits his character, is not as emotionally satisfying as I’d like – because he’s always deceiving others and himself, it’s hard to get worked up about him working for the enemy (though I suspect he’s a triple agent, to be honest.) Also, if you’re going to include a child whose physical abuse made such an impression that pain is the main thing that makes him come back to himself, don’t have his best friend constantly hitting him like a tsundere. It sends a bad message.

Overall, though, this volume represents a huge upswing in the franchise, and I am eagerly awaiting the 6th volume in the series (which may be the last for a while – we’re catching up to Japan).

By Various Artists, based on the manga created by Hajime Isayama. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

This review is based on an advance copy provided by the publisher.

The moment this was announced, its potential was always going to be sky-high. Yes, Japan also has some anthologies based on prominent titles, and we’ve seen a few of them over here, but they’ve tended to be either a) only comedic (Evangelion), or b) not very good (Code Geass). But a cross-cultural anthology like this is unusual. Plus the talent announced made the American comics reader sit up and take notice. Faith Erin Hicks, Gail Simone, Scott Snyder, Paul Pope, Evan Dorkin… names so well-known that even the manga-only fan will be familiar with them. And so yes, there was always going to be a high bar to clear. I am pleased to say, though, that it soars over it easily, and manages to be one of the most riveting titles I’ve read this year, taking the world of Attack on Titan and opening it up to become so many other different things.

For the most part, the main cast of Attack on Titan are used sparingly here, though if you do want to see them there is Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer’s hilarious Attack on Attack on Titan, which puts the cast in a Milk and Cheese style gag comic that goes WAY beyond what we’ve seen in Junior High or Spoof on Titan. But you don’t really miss the cast. We do get some stories set within the series proper, or before it, as humanity fights against the titans or against the oppressive rule that constricts them. If you enjoy the fighting in the series, you’ve love Michael Avon Oeming’s Live And Let Die, which shows us a conflict between safety and freedom. There’s also Gail Simone and Phil Jimenez’ Good Dog, an almost wordless tale of a woman and her dog taking on a titan with the best possible derring-do. On a more tragic level, Asaf and Tomer Hanuka’s Memory Maze shows us how the Titans’ existence can devastate one family, even as the years go by.

There are also stories that use the Titans in different settings or in different genres. Genevieve Valentine and David Lopez’ An Illustrated Guide to the Walled Cities starts off cute and gets darker as it goes along, showing us one woman’s attempt to show off the wonders of the city while dealing with a repressive, cruel monarchy. Rihanna Pratchett, Ben Applegate and Jorge Corona’s Skies Above shows us what could have been under that same cruel monarchy, and all the opportunities that were lost, as well as some lovely action and tragic romance. Si Spurrier, Kate Brown and Paul Duffield’s Fee Fie Foh sees the invading titans as a Celtic fantasy, with an added dose of the corrupted hero who must relearn what heroism truly means. And while I found Ronald Wimberly’s Bahamut the most difficult to get into of the stories in this book, it manages to succeed on evocative mood alone.

Be assured, it’s not all grim tragedy in here. Aside from the aforementioned Evan Dorkin comics, we get Faith Erin Hicks’ The Titan’s Laugh, which shows the use of a good jokebook (and also shows us how grim and desperate the battle still is – the punchline wouldn’t be as hilarious if the serious consequences weren’t played up beforehand). Sam Humphries and Damion Scott’s Attack on Playtime is every young child’s revenge fantasy come to life, rebelling against cruel teachers, sadistic gym instructors, and unfeeling administration. And Brendan Fletcher, Cameron Stewart and Babs Tarr show us in Attack on Demoncon that when it comes to sexual harassment at a comic convention, turning into a Titan can be quite empowering.

If you like Attack on Titan, this is a great chance to see its world used to tell dynamic and evocative stories. If you enjoy Western Comics and have heard of the title through the creators, you may be surprised at the grim yet hopeful universe that we see. Both fans should be happy with this anthology, as it is an absolute delight.

By Reki Kawahara and Hima. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jocelyne Allen.

Accel World is about a group of elementary and junior high school students fighting battles to the death, and the novels are not afraid to show you the emotional fallout from such a situation. In fact, the first quarter of this book is devoted to a giant flashback to several years prior (when the best you could do is Level 5), where a young couple who have fallen in love in the Brain Burst world (despite not knowing who their real life identities are – oh, and she’s dying in real life as well) discover one of the seven Big Powerups in the game, and as a result are quickly turned on by their supposed friends and fellow players. It’s played for maximum tragedy and drama, and helps to explain why the Disaster Armor currently infecting Haru has a mind of its own.

And these are kids, even if they supposedly have more emotional maturity from all the time they spend in accelerated time. Nowhere is that more clear than with the confrontation Haru has with Takumu at the end of the book. Takumu’s jealousy of Haru was, of course, part of the plot of the very first volume, and it’s actually good to see that it did not magically go away, because those sorts of things don’t. It’s also not being helped by the new ISS pseudo-Disaster program, which is corrupting him so it’s hard to tell if these are his own thoughts or not. But you also see it with Haru, who is also still just a kid, and whose desire to punch hope into Takumu somehow is shown in the end to be just as foolish and short-sighted in a world where nothing is ever quite as easy as you expect. Which of course, means this is not a two-book series, but an arc, and we’ll see what happens next time.

Elsewhere in the book, Haru and Utai manage to at least get closer to escaping from the Imperial Palace world they’re still stuck in in the Unlimited section, helped along by a mysterious samurai-type who happens to have been in the section all along but refuses to tell them how he got there. It’s fairly clear this young boy is supposed to be a member of the Imperial Family (which explains why he’s there – he lives there), but Kawahara is being very coy about it for reasons that are also fairly clear. And Haru and Kuroyukihime get some nice shippy moments, much to the frustration of Chiyuri and Fuko, which leads to probably the book’s funniest moment (and also makes me think that Fuko is more interested in Kuroyukihime than Haru). And of course Haru remains marked for death, both from the Kings and from a group that has put a bounty on his head, as we realize that the flashback we see at the start of the book may come full circle.

This is mostly a setup book that will likely pay off with big fights in the next volume, but as always it’s eminently readable, and for once the cover is not something you have to hide from the outside world. And there should be less of a wait for the next one – the series seems to be shifting to four times a year.

By Wataru Watari and Ponkan 8. Released in Japan by Shogakukan. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jennifer Ward.

This is a highly anticipated light novel title, for many reasons. First, the anime proved quite popular in the West, and people wanted to see how the original was, particularly as the anime apparently compressed 11 books into 26 episodes. Secondly, Shogakukan has a number of popular light novel titles, but haven’t really licensed to the West before now except maybe via Viz. But most importantly, this series does not feature anyone trapped in a fantasy world, or trapped in a fantasy game, or anyone acquiring amazing superhero-like powers, or immortals, or dullahans. Heck, there’s not even a girl who eats books. No, instead we get something a bit more down to Earth: a Japanese high school where a cynical and belligerent young man with a sullen face is ordered to join a club devoted to helping others.

Of course, just because there’s no fantasy content does not mean that this series is not going to remind long-time anime and manga fans of other series. The retorts between Hachiman and Yukino may remind readers of the caustic relationship between Araragi and Senjougahara in the Monogatari series. And the idea of the club itself, as well as it consisting mostly of people who have difficulty interacting, is a lot like Haganai. But the title of the book si not wrong, at least not right away. Araragi starts off pseudo-cynical but quickly drops that as he gets swept up by events. Kodaka may have the face of a thug and the social kills of a newt, but he is fundamentally a nice guy. Hachiman, on the other hand, is an obnoxious dick throughout much of this book. He spends much of his time disparaging the people around him, including his teacher, his sister, and even the cute popular girl who seems to have taken a liking to him, who he refers to as a “slut” when they first meet. Enjoying this series requires getting over the very difficult hurdle of the hero’s mentality.

If you can get past that, though, there’s much to enjoy. Because the series is (at least at this point, no doubt it will change later) avoiding any serious romantic interaction, we can sit back and enjoy Hachiman, Yukino and Yui spit venom at each other (well, the two girls seem to like each other, they save their venom for him). The insults and comebacks here are very amusing, and don’t rely as much on the obvious ‘tsukkomi shouting’ as some other series. And of course there’s the fact that underneath his obnoxious, caustic front Hachiman does actually seem to want to help people, as he does throughout this book, usually complaining all the while. He’s not rewarded for it, as that would defeat the purpose. But there’s a spark that will no doubt catch fire as the series goes on. Till then, enjoy the fact that the most romantic tension he has in the whole book is with the cute bishie guy, who he can’t stop thinking about.

I suspect this is the sort of series that will reward more as it goes along, much like many series that begin with unlikable protagonists. Till then, I will at least enjoy these somewhat broken high school students snipe their way through their day, while also helping others along the way. And the fact that, at least through one volume, the youth romantic comedy is indeed kept on the back burner.