Sean Gaffney

By Yoshiki Tanaka. Released in Japan as “Ginga Eiyū Densetsu” by Tokuma Shoten. Released in North America by Haikasoru.

It’s rare to see a book that was first published in 1982 get so much excitement, but that’s exactly what happened when Viz’s SF imprint Haikasoru announced they had the first three volumes of this legendary series. The announcement was very much meant for old-school fans, those who are now in their early 40s and grew up with questionable translated fansubs of the 100-episode OAV that adapted the books (which has also recently been licensed). Why the excitement? Because it’s a really good story, showing off epic space battles and cool military tactics while at the same time showing us why constant warfare is something we should always strive to avoid. If the title sounds grandiose and over the top, it should. That’s what we’re going for here.

The first novel divides itself fairly equally between two sides of a long-running war. The Empire are a bunch of not-quite-Germans, whose lead character is Reinhard von Lohengramm, a young, handsome and brilliant tactician who is motivated by hatred and revenge after having his sister taken as mistress to the Emperor several years ago. Luckily, he has the standard sensible best friend with him, who occasionally reminds him to not go too far. On the side of the republic, we have Yang Wen-Li, who reminds me far too much of Tylor except that Yang came first. Yang desperately wants to be a historian and not get involved in the war at all, but sadly he’s an equally amazing military tactician, so he slides upwards through the book to full Admiral, mostly by virtue of being sensible, not lusting for glory and honor, and the occasional bout of clever genius.

The book begins with a long prologue showing how the Empire came to be, with the rise of Rudolf, a Hilter expy who shows off how much worse the Empire used to be. The sympathy of the Western reader, I admit, definitely resides with Yang over Reinhard, at least at the start. As the book goes on, though, and you see the very familiar corrupt democracy who think nothing of starting a war to get votes, you realize that neither side are really able to claim to be the good guys, and there are a bunch of inept generals and foolhardy glory hounds who show off the bad sides of both groups. Halfway through the book the Empire suffers a grievous military loss, and at the end an even worse political one. The Alliance shoots itself in the foot badly and is seen at the end licking its wounds. Even worse, there’s a hint that there are other parties trying to play both sides against the middle… led by the Church. (The Church, in stories like this, is almost always evil, unless it’s run by nuns.)

Haikasoru did a good job with the translation, I feel. It’s pompous and overly formal much of the time, but that’s exactly what the author is going for, I believe – much of the volume reads like a history book, and informality would miss the point. As I said earlier, the title is not just for show. This is not a light novel – it’s an epic legend, along the lines of Wagnerian opera. The anime, in fact, used a LOT of Mahler as the background music, which is highly fitting. If you enjoy military tactics books, as well as political infighting along the lines of Game of Thrones, then this is definitely the series for you. Haikasoru has promised two more volumes (the rest depends on sales) and I will absolutely be getting them.

Story by Ryukishi07; Art by Akitaka. Released in Japan in two separate volumes as “Umineko no Naku Koro ni: End of the Golden Witch” by Square Enix, serialized in the magazine Gangan Joker. Released in North America by Yen Press.

This review is quite late, mostly as I didn’t really want to read this volume, at all, even though I also really did. Umineko can be very difficult to read and enjoy for fun, especially if you are someone who empathizes with the pain of others. While Higurashi dealt with abuse in one of its plotlines, every single page of Umineko is about abuse on a grand scale. The daily contempt and grinding down that drives Natsuhi to the brink long before the series even begins. Erika’s joyful cruelty in removing every last shred of denial and hope in Natsuhi’s heart. And of course Bernkastel, whose loving adoption of Erika as her daughter is contrasted with the hate-filled rage seen when Erika fails, as of course she does, because there’s more of this series to go. A lot more.

As I said above, the reader is meant to empathize with Natsuhi, because the writing impels us to do so, but saying that she’s the best of the parents isn’t saying much. Besides her emotional abuse of Shannon, we find here that she is in fact a murderer herself, having been driven to it by expectations of women in the 1960s and a general sense of self-loathing pushed outwards. She gets by in life due to the poorly expressed but genuine love her husband and daughter have for her (which Erika destroys as well – note to readers, never keep a diary filled only with bad things) and a denial of reality that feels very familiar five arcs into this series. Erika destroys that as well, of course, showing us that no, Kinzo always hated her.

It’s Erika’s supposition that Natsuhi was having an affair with a deluded Kinzo that feels like one piece of sourness too many though, a further blow that is entirely unnecessary. But that’s Erika for you. There’s also Beatrice, who does finally seem to be killed off here – twice – as befits the title. She dies broken as well, as Battler still – still! – has no idea what she’s talking about with a promise that he broke, and finally begs for death. I am aware that this is the low ebb of the series, and that future arcs, while dark and depressing, have more light than this. But even for Umineko this is just hard to take.

Thankfully Battler finally comes to the rescue, a bit too late for Beatrice, but at least he gets another chance to try again. He has finally realized what Beatrice was trying to tell him, though naturally he doesn’t tell the reader that, in case there are folks who still haven’t guessed. I felt his last battle against Dlanor was a bit rushed, to be honest – it felt like they underestimated the pages needed. (This likely led to the last two arcs having EVEN MORE volumes to play around in.) And now Battler is in charge of the game board, and the next arc – Dawn of the Golden Witch – will show us how he plans to honor Beatrice’s memory.

This is a great series to read intellectually, and if you like horror and Higurashi faces (TM) it’s also excellent, but I don’t think I’ve seen a series as emotionally exhausting as Umineko in quite some time. The break between volumes is welcome.

By Milan Matra. Released in Japan as “Kamigoroshihime Zilch” by Fujimi Shobo, serialization ongoing in the magazine Dragon Age. Released in North America by Yen Press.

Before we begin, I do want to note that, even if in Japan it’s meant to be pleasant onomatopoeia or something, having the word ‘Zilch’ in your title is just asking for trouble. As for the manga itself, I once again run into my problem of wanting to read first volumes even though I suspect it’s going to turn out badly. Dragon Age titles are usually not a favorite of mine. And I’m also fond of saying that originality is not as important if your cliched plot and cliched characters are interesting. Unfortunately, at some point you run into a work which can’t even meet that low bar, and such a title is Demonizer Zilch. It’s not difficult to read like some other otaku-oriented titles are, but after reading it, I found it hard to remember what was in this and what was in other similar manga I’d just read.

The author, for Yen Press fans with long memories, is known over here for Omamori Himari, another Dragon Age title with a similar demographic. Our hero, Haruomi, is passive and aloof, haunted by memories of his sister and childhood friend being taken from him and disappearing. Then, while out at karaoke with his friends, he runs into various mysterious girls with mysterious powers, all of whom seem to want to kill him except one, the aforementioned Zilch of the title. She arrives, kisses him, calls him master, and proceeds to blow away the enemy for him. Turns out Haruomi has latent powers, which his parents experimented with, and they are now coming into play as there is a war between the vaguely evil human Church and the vaguely evil Demons that Zilch is part of.

First of all, this is somehow not based on a light novel. I can only assume, therefore, that figuring out within 15 pages that the two girls who work for the church and are trying to kill Haruomi are his sister and childhood friend all grown up is something the audience is meant to do. I certainly hope so, as it’s thuddingly obvious. Beyond that, you may be getting this series confused with The Testament of Sister New Devil, which came out a couple months back and also features a lot of the same things going on. I certainly did, and had to remind myself which book was which as I wrote this review, which made me sad, as it meant I had to think about Sister New Devil again. Oh, and I didn’t mention the harem antics, or the fanservice, which are there in typical Dragon Age bucketloads.

On the plus side, there was nothing mind-numbingly offensive. The fanservice is nothing we haven’t seen ten million times before, but hey, at least the girls have actual nipples. It reads fast and the action sequences make sense, which is always good. There’s a lot of backstory doled out, but you don’t really have to understand it to get the gist of what’s going on – if you like, imagine all the adults in this title speaking in the Peanuts cartoon ‘wah wah’ voice. Oh, and the biggest plus, this is a brand new series just out in Japan, so we don’t have a Volume 2 for a while yet. If you enjoy harem fantasies with nudity and things blowing up, you likely don’t read my blog anyway. But you can give this a try.

By Yuuki Kodama. Released in Japan by Kadokawa Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young Ace. Released in North America by Yen Press.

I reviewed the last volume of Blood Lad in the Bookshelf Briefs, and I will admit that it’s hard to find new things to say about it at times. This is a very straightforward series, with even the plotting and counterplotting amongst the villains being of a very shonen nature, and it doesn’t really lend itself well to overanalysis. We continue to build up to the big battle between the villain and his minions and the Blacklisted, who are classic ‘misunderstood’ types. Braz keeps trying to figure out a way to destroy the villain without getting killed himself. And there’s more wacky harem antics with Bell and Fuyumi… ah, wait, I can talk about those.

Yes, Bell has wised up and realized that it’s not really Staz that she loves, but the Stax who is protecting Guyumi – i.e. the Staz who loves Fuyumi, though neither he or Fuyumi are quite there yet. Having realized this, she’s free to confess to him and accept his confused non-reaction, where he doesn’t realize what would make anyone fall for him at all. And Fuyumi, who has always tended to be the flattest of the characters (quiet you), gets a bit more depth and emotion here. She’s also unsure if her attraction to Staz is her need for his blood or genuine, and she’s also put off by the fact that he’s being nicer to her, as opposed to ‘being more interested in her skull’. Unfortunately, we don’t get any further here, but it’s nice to see the author trying to put some effort into her.

There’s also Burgundy, the minion of our villain Akim (or is he Akim? Does it really matter when your murderous villain is being gradually taken over by a different murderous villain?). She’s hanging out at Pati’s cabin in the woods, waiting for our heroes to be done with their training from hell (said training providing most of the comedy in this volumes, especially the end where Bell gets crushed by her own boulders). Once Staz and Wolf return, she goes into insane combat mode, but Pati refuses to believe that she’s irredeemable, to the point where he too turns into a monster and escapes with her. We,, of course, as the audience, are rooting for her as well – just because redeemed villains are a trope as old as the sky doesn’t mean they aren’t nice to see.

So it looks as if we’ll see a giant free-for-all next time, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we wrap up in 2-3 more omnibuses. Blood Lad won’t win any manga awards anytime soon, but it’s always entertaining, and is starting to show a bit more effort in characterization. Oddly, the author’s efforts have mirrored the lead character, Staz, who has also been forced to take things more seriously and grow into greater power. I would prefer seeing him in the fight coming up rather than miniboss 1, 2, and 3, but can’t have everything.

By Mamoru Hosoda. Released in Japan as “Bakemono no Ko” by Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On.

this was one of those titles that I picked up but knew absolutely nothing about except the bare minimum. This is a rarity for me, as regular readers know. I was aware it was from the author of Summer Wars and Wolf Children, so expecting a heartwarming coming of age story was pretty much it, and that’s what I got. The main thrust of this new work is fairly predictable, and it’s also quite short, so you can zoom through it. That said, there are individual moments in the work that quite surprised me, and the characters are fun and easy to like, even the Beast in the title, who is the focus of the one bad word in the whole child-friendly novel (he’s called a prick, because, well, he is).

Our hero is a young boy who gets the benefit of both a dead mother AND a disappeared father, who escapes his snooty mother’s attempts to take him into their family and heads for the streets. There, he accidentally runs into two men with faces like beasts, and (evading police looking for runaways), ends up in a completely different world, one where beast people are the norm and being a human is strange and untrustworthy. Turns out that one of the guys he followed is in competition to be the village “grandmaster”, with the slight problem that he’s an angry hothead with no social skills. Since our hero is an angry hothead with no fighting skills, the two are made for each other. An apprenticeship begins.

It is fairly impressive that Kumatetsu, the Beast of the title, is as much of a jerk for as long as he is in this book. There are flashes of goodwill, but the way he was raised and self-trained makes him simply bad with people, including Kyuta, his own disciple. The long journey where you’d expect them to bond and become close is instead an exercise in Kyuta learning from the other masters while Kumatetsu stands around bored. He’s a difficult man to like. That said, once Kyuta returns to Shibuya on a regular basis, his anger gradually reveals itself to be the desperate loneliness we knew was there all along, and his actions towards the end of the book develop well from his character.

Speaking of Shibuya, there are several odd narrative choices in this work, some of which are clearly there to make sure we can get through this in 190 pages or so. Eight years pass by in a few paragraphs, and suddenly Kyuta is one of the best fighters there is. I’d wished for a bit more there, perhaps a montage of various scenes through the years. The Shibuya stuff also surprised me – I was not expecting to return to our world until the end of the book, frankly. Kaede is nice and a good match with Kyuta (or is it Ren)?, and I loved her stubborn refusal to let him fight alone. Indeed, the entire climax of the book takes place in the middle of the city, as the two of them battle a giant magical Moby-Dick, something which must look amazing in the movie that this also is (it came out in Japan in July).

Some sources call this an illustrated novel, be warned. The one illustration is on the cover. But it doesn’t matter, as this is a decent story, well-told. It’s a good comfort book to read on rainy days, or get for your tween kids.

By Kazumi Kamachi and Kiyotaka Haimura. Released in Japan as “To Aru Majutsu no Index” by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On.

I’ve talked before about the way that Japanese manga and light novel series have to be planned out from the start with multiple ways to end, depending on popularity. If the series bombs, there’s the fast “wrap it up in 1 volume” ending. If it plays out as a minor hit, you get a medium-sized ending which develops the plot and characters more. and if it’s a big, big hit – as Index was – then you get to start to take out all your chess pieces and shuffle them around the board, confident that you have the time and audience to stretch and let things simmer for a few volumes till you can fire off all your plot guns. With this volume of A Certain Magical Index, we see Kamachi hitting that point. There’s a whole lot here that is relevant to later volumes down the road.

Introduced in this volume: Hyouka Kazakiri, Aiho Yomikawa, Sherry Cromwell. This takes place literally one day after Book 5 (in fact, we see Touma returning to Academy City at the start of this book), so the timelines for the spinoffs are still the same as the previous book.

While I said that this volume has a lot of setup for future plots down the road, a casual reader wouldn’t necessarily know that, as this is Kamachi’s smoothest work to date, with a minimum of bolded words and encyclopedic dissertations on the nature of superpowers. That isn’t to say that they’re absent, of course, but they blend together better with the story proper, as Komoe lectures Touma on diffusion fields while also reminding him of what’s truly important – saving anyone that’s in front of him. (This also leads to the funniest moment in the book, where Mikoto and Index finally meet each other and realize that they’re both “I didn’t ask to be saved but he saved me anyway” girls in Touma’s nonharem.) The absence of Last Order and Misaka Imouto also means there are less weird speech quirks for the translator to deal with.

This is also, for once, an excellent volume for fans of Index herself. She’s used very well here, showing off her childish side but also demonstrating that childish does not mean stupid, as she manages to go head to head with a giant golem for several minutes. She’s also exactly the sort of all-loving friend that someone like Kazakiri needs. Kazakiri herself is an extremely clever idea, but she’s also a sweet kid, and you feel for her when her sense of self is blown out of the water by Sherry Cromwell and her desire to start a war. As for Sherry herself, it strikes me that this is the first Index villain whose main motivation has simply been revenge. It’s also a misplaced revenge – as Touma hints, Sherry really wants to be stopped, but has to let it be known just how insanely dangerous letting the Magic and Science sides intermingle is.

We also see Aleister Crowley again, and he gets to show off his “mwahaha, just as planned” side to a disbelieving Tsuchimikado. As the mastermind behind most of what has gone on in the past several volumes, he’s clearly the Science Side’s final boss. I wonder if he has an equivalent on the magic side? (Foreshadowing: your key to quality literature.) In the end, there’s simply lots for the Index fan to enjoy here. Good fights, Kuroko being cool briefly (and lecherous, but I’m putting off that rant for a bit), Touma managing to stay out of the hospital for once, and, in perhaps the best moment of the book, Touma, turning his catchphrase he uses against antagonists – “I’ll smash that illusion of yours!” – and motivating Kazakiri by showing her that her own illusion “isn’t something that can be broken so easily!”.

It also breaks the even-numbered curse at last. Definitely recommended for Index fans, and those who like superhero books with 87 million characters.

By Izumi Tsubaki. Released in Japan as “Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun” by Square Enix, serialization ongoing in the online magazine Gangan Online. Released in North America by Yen Press.

There are certain benefits to doing a series that is entirely devoted to gags. The expectations that you have as an artist are significantly different from, say, a shoujo title like the one Nozaki himself draws. What’s most important is the punchline. As a result, though, you can be free to use other standard manga tropes without worrying too much about what the fan or editorial reaction will be. Thus Nozaki-kun has any number of ‘pairings’ within its pages, which are used and abused for gag purposes and don’t need pesky things like development or depth. That’s for fans to write in their fanworks (and believe me, they do.)

Sakura’s crush on Nozaki is an excellent example of this. Its intensity never wavers, but the focus on it can change. In the first chapter of the volume, when Nozaki takes her out to examine clothing he can work into his series, and asks her bluntly to wear a sailor uniform so he can see how it looks on her, you wonder what she sees in this somewhat dense lunk. But then we get scenes such as the art class, where all the girls draw Mikoshiba in ridiculous fantasy poses they want their boyfriend to be in but Sakura has him posing as Nozaki drawing. Or when Miyako draws Nozaki in a giant tanuki costume in a vain effort to stop her insane editor’s demands, and Sakura is entranced by it, that you realize that no, she is not the sensible one here either.

If there is a sensible one in this manga, it may just be Hori, who also gets a chapter devoted to his bizarre relationship with his drama underclassman Kashima. Even though Nozaki is not particularly keeping his manga a secret, it has become one for most of the characters working on it. As a result, when Kashima catches Hori walking around with Nozaki’s manga, she thinks it’s because he really likes shoujo manga. This, bizarrely, leads to several pages with Kashima as the tsukkomi – as I said before, any of the main characters can be the setup or punchline depending on the joke. There’s also slightly less violence here, as we focus instead on Kashima’s adoration or her sempai contrasted with Hori’s complete inability to deal with her ‘prince’ antics.

And then there’s Wakamatsu and Seo, as the last of our main cast is introduced in this volume. While I love all the main ‘ships’ in Nozaki-kun, I will admit this one is my particular favorite, and it also revolves around secrets. Wakamatsu is a first-year basketball player who gets abused on the court by Seo, still being brought in to show the teams what not to do. Off the court, he’s become entranced by the singing of the school “Lorelei”, which helps him when he has trouble sleeping. The gag is twofold; 1) he doesn’t realize that Seo *is* Lorelei, and 2) he has no idea how to communicate his frustration to her, so resorts – as Kashima does – to reading shoujo manga for advice, which results in the funniest scene of the entire book, his rooftop “confession”, complete with oven mitts.

So misunderstandings galore are the fuel for this comedy. Nozaki doesn’t know Sakura loves him, Wakamatsu doesn’t know that Seo is his rival AND crush, and Kashima and Hori simply have no idea how the other one thinks at all. It works well, and I continue to giggle aloud as I read the series. Always a treat.

Also, there are still tanukis.