Sean Gaffney

Variations on a theme is one of the cornerstones of writing, and it’s just as true for manga. While it’s always nice to see something that no one’s ever done before, the true prizes for publishers are the series that are what’s been done before countless times, but with a variation or twist that makes it different enough so that people won’t get bored. This is especially true of sports manga, which tend to hit the same plot beats. There’s a ragtag bunch of misfits, an eccentric team leader, fighting to get to the national tournament… we’ve seen this before in soccer, baseball, and football manga here in North America. And now, with Saki, we get to see it happen with mahjong. Because trust me, mahjong is serious business in Japan, definitely worthy of a cute seinen sports series.

Saki is our reluctant heroine, a girl who’s not a fan of mahjong because she always played it with her family, and lost her allowance when she did badly. As a result, when she plays now she’s learned to end up not winning or losing, but getting precisely zero points, thus taking the heat off. Of course, this is much harder than it sounds, and the club quickly realizes they have a second prodigy on their hands. Second because they already have Nodoka, a mahjong prodigy whose skill is almost unparalleled… until she meets Saki, who has intuition in-game that’s almost supernatural. Can the two of them learn from each other’s weak points and become even better? And is Saki’s family really just a cutthroat family that happens to like mahjong?

As I said, this is a sports manga with mahjong, and family angst is part of that. You may also remember similar issues in Girls Und panzer, which was a spots manga with tanks, and shares quite a few qualities with Saki. This series is also not afraid to be ridiculous – Kobayashi knows from prior mahjong series that dramatic flourishes and poses are what make the genre, and so tiled will be flipped earnestly and with pure hearts. There is a lot of discussion of how mahjong works, but if you don’t know it doesn’t really detract from the story, any more than not knowing how football worked detracted from Eyeshield 21.

The main reason to read this is the characters. Saki clearly has issues, and is also somewhat introverted. Nodoka has different issues, but a similar personality, and finds Saki’s ambivalence towards the game intensely frustrating. And even when Saki decides to join the club, there’s no guarantees – the first thing that the president does is have the two of them get crushed by a professional mahjong player, so that they know how far they both have to go. Oh yes, and there’s plenty of eccentricity here as well, mostly from Yuuki, a young girl who enjoys starting off with huge wins (which she can’t hold), tacos, and teasing the supposed male lead, though more accurately he’s the male extra.

Saki can get a bit dry in its mahjong chat, and the fanservice reminds you this runs in a seinen magazine, but it’s a lot of fun, with two likeable heroines. I will definitely be getting more of it.

After Sariel proved to be a rather creepy and awful villain in Book 2, I was not going to be surprised if another archangel showed up to make trouble for Maou and company, and sure enough, Gabriel pops up halfway through the book to alternately threaten and be amusing. As with Emeralda, he seems to have some sort of regional accent in the original, which is conveyed by giving him a sort of ‘valley girl’ style voice – if you imagine Poland from the Hetalia books, you’re on the right track. In any case, as a villain he’s merely OK, mostly as we’re used to these guys being taken out fairly easily by now. As a comic character he’s funnier, being a whining slacker who seems to simply be very bad at his job, and he naturally ends up staying in Japan once the book ends.

That said, clearly the more important new character here is Alas Ramus, the magical child who appears from inside an apple (Ringotaro?) and immediately declares that Maou and Emi are her mother and father. She’s cute and clingy, as you’d expect from a girl who acts one year old most of the time, but she’s also a magical macguffin, so is allowed to do things like explain the plot in baby talk. Somewhat less successful is her resolution of the battle with Gabriel, mostly as the author wants to pretend briefly that Alas Ramus is returning to the fantasy world, so we get a brief “oh no, she sacrificed herself” beat. The trouble is that, as I indicated earlier, this isn’t the sort of series that would seriously do that, so of course it turns out she actually merged with Emi’s Holy Sword, which is now even more holy.

The bigger impact that Alas Ramus has is on the pseudo-harem that the books continue to tease. Chiho has a brief crisis of conscience when she realizes that, even after Maou says he depends on her, she still can’t help getting jealous about Maou and Emi raising a child together. (It’s almost as if she’s a teenager or something…) And Emi is again starting to realize that perhaps Maou is not quite the Fantasy Hitler that she wants to imagine him as, and continues to have more of the worldview that she keeps intact in order not to have a complete nervous breakdown kicked out from under her. (The cliffhanger implies the breakdown will not be long in coming.) And Maou gives us some backstory that suggests that most of the atrocities that happened while he ruled Ente Isla were less “I am evil” and more “I wasn’t really paying attention to my underlings”. And, more importantly, that he bitterly regrets that was the case. This is the best part of the book.

So while I don’t think this was quite as good as the first two books, it’s still very entertaining, and also continues the story past the anime, for those who hate to read already adapted novels. And the prose style, particularly the snarky narration, is excellent – as I’ve said before, this is one of Yen On’s smoothest translations. Definitely a fun read.

Despite all its violence and loving depictions of chopped-up corpses, Dorohedoro has always had a loose relationship with actually killing characters off, given that there are several deus ex machinas in this universe able to resurrect someone from the dead given enough time and materials. No one really doubts En is eventually going to be back, for example, and even though Fujita lay at death’s door and lost an arm in the last volume, he’s fully healed early on here. This is why when we do see genuine death it has an impact, even if there’s something in the back of our heads saying “are they reeeeeaaallly dead?”.

Natsuki’s death in Vol. 13 was such a death, and it gets confirmed here in the worst way, as Ton, the one most dedicated to finding her true fate, ends up sharing it. This is actually sort of sweet and touching in a horrible way, as Ton comes across her body, now strangely mute, but can’t escape where he thinks they are. There’s even a ‘going into the light’ cliche to show off that yes, they are indeed dead. The same can’t be said for the rest of the cross-eyes, though, as even though the majority of them are horrible butchered by their boss, who they’ve finally decided is not worthy of following, we could still see them come back, as we were able to save the corpses’ heads. It’s that kind of series.

Meanwhile, En’s party is also discussing death. Sure, they have Noi, and Judas’ Ear, but there’s still some kinds of lethal blows that you just can’t fix. Luckily, there’s an operation that makes a person virtually unkillable, even if they get their brains blown out. Admittedly, the operation is almost always lethal, but that’s why you do it on someone like Noi, who already has amazing resurrection powers. I love that Noi hates this, and regards it as a safety measure because she’s too weak – something Ebisu is quick to point out is basically correct. When you have the ability to heal anyone from certain death, you get coddled a bit, whereas Noi just wants to keep punching people till their bodies are piles of goo.

And then there’s Nikaido, whose motives are becoming more and more questionable as she gains more and more of her devil powers – her usually expressive eyes get narrowed to pinpricks, and the gyoza she made in a devil-induced flurry last time seem to be dangerously addictive. It’s a bit difficult to talk about morality in a series like Dorohedoro, where even the nice and sweet people happily go around butchering passersby. But you get the sense that something here is off, that Nikaido is heading down a dangerous road. This is not helped by the absence of Caiman – Risu just does not have the same ability to restrain her weirder impulses. In the meantime, we’ve now gathered the entire cast at the department store setting, and Fujita has managed to find En’s tumor, so I suspect the next volume may contain even more gore than this one, if that is strictly possible. Assuming you can get past the gore, highly recommended as always.

This upcoming year will see a bit of a renaissance in sports manga, a genre that has always had difficulty catching hold of readers in North America. Yes, Eyeshield 21 was finished, as was Cross Game, but for the most oart sports manga has been synonymous with “won’t be licensed”. A large part of this is that most sports titles go on for years, with volumes reaching Naruto or One Piece levels. But not selling like Naruto or One Piece. But we may be seeing a change. Viz has a volleyball and basketball manga due out in 2016. And at the tail end of 2015, Yen Press gives us Yowamushi Pedal (it’s untranslated to keep its large fanbase – I think yowamushi means ‘weak’ or ‘cowardly’), a shonen cycling manga that is almost a template of what the traditional sports manga is like.

Fans of Eyeshield 21 may find a lot of this familiar, in fact. Our hero is Onoda, a geeky otaku-type who lives for anime and rides his “mommy bike”, complete with basket on the front, to Akibihara every week to get the latest deals. The gimmick is that riding to Akibihara and back every week is 55 miles. On his little bike he’s had since elementary school. And he’s done this since he was 9. As a result, though he’s totally unaware of it, he has amazing natural skills when it comes to bike riding. As I said, folks may be reminded of Sena, who developed his running speed in response to being bullied every day. Onoda’s life gradually changes when he meets Imaizumi, a serious cyclist who will be playing the ‘stoic competitor’ role, and in the second half of this omnibus he meets Naruko, a loud hothead who would not really change much at all if you swapped the k in his name with a t, to be honest.

The art style is not really as polished as you might see in Jump, but it’s pretty decent, especially for a weekly series. (Compare this with Yen’s previous sports manga Sasameke, which I’ve lambasted before, and whose art was one of its main nonselling points.) But the main point of the series is the characters and the racing. Onoda associates sports clubs with the opposite of him, and to be fair he does lack the stamina that you’d expect a lot of cyclists to have. Getting past this mental block, and showing him how bike racing can actually be fun is the forward momentum of the first omnibus. Like many sports manga, we’re starting to pile on cast. In addition to the three leads I mentioned, we have the token girl in the manga, who works for a bike shop and gets to deliver the exposition; and a large number of guys already on the team we meet right at the end, some of whom will no doubt get fleshed out as we go along.

I anticipate Yowamushi Pedal will be one of those series where you need to double check the cast list on the internet as you go along. That said, most of the cast here is likeable (or sort of irritating in a likeable way in Naruko’s case), and you want to read more of Onoda’s journey of self-discovery – the goal of any sports manga.

In general, I am not a fan of the theory that the writer does not control their characters and that they do things that are unexpected. Yes, the plot and characters can go in a different direction than the writer intended, but it’s still the writer who thinks of that new direction. And thus I tend to be more forgiving of characters than I am of writers. This is especially useful when reading something like Sword Art Online, where we see Kirito still managing the get the cover focus, saving the day, and helping to stop yet another rape threat of yet another heroine in peril. This wasn’t fun in Fairy Dance and it’s not fun here, though Sinon does at least manage to fight back more than the typical heroine in this position, particularly impressive given this is the one friend she’s made in the past five years, and he’s deliberately triggered her PTSD.

Having gotten that out of the way, I still greatly enjoyed this volume, the longest in the main series to date. I don’t game, but the descriptions of Gun Gale Online were smooth enough that I didn’t really need to know much more than what was explained to me. More importantly, Sinon is a really strong character, even with the sexual assault threats. Her PTSD is triggered mid-game, which understandably causes a minor freakout, but after a talk with Kirito she manages to work past it and realize that her attempts to become strong have been headed in the wrong direction, and that growing and learning requires remembering tragedies in the past and moving beyond them. This applies as much to Kirito – it wouldn’t be an SAO novel without Kirito getting contrasted with his not-quite-love interest – who is reminded of his execution of the Laughing Coffin members, something he too had tried to bury rather than move past.

As you’d expect, Asuna and the rest do not have much to do in this book beyond staying behind and providing support – Asuna’s support literally saving the day when her holding Kirito’s hand reminds him of the other gun he has (the one that’s not a lightsaber). She deals with the government official far better than Kirito does, finding out what’s going on and immediately figuring out what she can and can’t do to help. What she and Lisbeth can do is provide Sinon with some closure, in a final scene that a bit deus ex machina but I’ll forgive it because it was touching. I also like the way that they’re keeping Yui involved in the plots, both as a sort of AI for hire and as Kirito and Asuna’s daughter – they can’t let her push herself.

There’s a lot of macho posturing in this book, make no mistake, both by the characters and by the author. He states he had to rewrite it from the ground up, as opposed to his other books which were light retouches of his original web novel. But I suspect those still reading are aware of the author’s flaws and managing to enjoy the series nevertheless. As a reward, they’ll get a 7th volume in April that focuses on Asuna as the heroine, with Kirito in a support role. Can’t wait.

It becomes clear a little ways into this eighth volume of Sunshine Sketch that we really aren’t going to be able to drag out Sae and Hiro’s graduation any longer than half the volume, and therefore the series is not going to be wrapping up after all, but continue with Yuno and Miyako as third-years. As it turns out this is fine. We get a new first-year who is sufficiently different from the rest of the cast to add some fresh new gags to this somewhat mild gag comedy, and we also get to see Yuno deal with being a sempai at her height, and Miyako being forced to think about her future beyond what’s for lunch that day. Before we get that, though, we *do* have half a volume of Sae and Hiro graduation comics.

I’ve said before that Sunshine Sketch is not really a title you read if you enjoy surprises in your plotting and characterization. It’s a ‘comfort’ manga, where you want to see people react as they always have. So we see one last round of Sae stressing out, and Hiro worrying about her weight, and of course the inevitable suggestions of yuri without any actual yuri. Yuno and Miyako describe their apartment hunting as sounding like they’re planning a wedding, and indeed they’re sharing an apartment for college that’s close to both their respective schools. Oh yes, and Sae continues to panic about Hiro having a life revolving outside of her, which is somewhat immature but cute. She even returns at the end of the book just to fret about that, showing that the couple won’t be permanently disappearing.

As for the new character, Matsuri is upbeat and outgoing, similar to Miyako but without the inherent strangeness, although she does seem to think that the art department is a lot less normal than she anticipated. (Perhaps she’s been reading a lot of art school 4-komas, I hear they’re all the rage.) Like Nori and Nazuna, she’s eased in gradually, and the departure of Sae and Hiro also allows for more of Nori and Nazuna as they have to pick up the slack, showing off Nazuna’s somewhat airheaded ‘normal’ side and Nori occasionally breaking out of her ‘straight man’ tendencies. They still don’t feel quite as strong as Yuno and Miyako, but they’ve had less time.

I really liked the subplot with Miyako bringing up a relevant point for those who’ve followed her story from the start – she’s always incredibly poor, how is she going to be able to afford to go to college? Luckily her parents and brother seem to have anticipated this, and though they say she may need a scholarship (given she’s a natural genius, I can’t imagine this will be hard to get), it shouldn’t be too hard to imagine her and Yuno also moving into an apartment to go to art college once the series comes to a close. However, that day is not today. Today, we welcome a new character, some old gags given fresh paint, say goodbye to some friends, and await the next volume, which hopefully will not take another two years to come out.