Sean Gaffney

I have somewhat optimistically tagged this as ‘Monogatari Series’, but at the moment this is the only volume licensed, with potential other titles depending on how this one sells. It’s also not the first book in the series in Japanese publishing order – it’s actually third, after the 2-part Bakemonogatari books. That said, the author and agent both recommended that North America release this book first, as it’s the first in the series chronologically, introducing us to our hero, Koyomi, his vampire ‘master’ Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, his practical yet somewhat strange classmate Tsubasa, and the standard unreliable mentor figure Oshino. Also, it has vampires. Come on, vampires sell, and this series needs readers who haven’t seen or heard about the anime in order to do well.

Though I am spoiled a little bit, I freely admit I am one of those readers – this is my introduction to Monogatari proper, as I never got around to watching the anime. This despite it being by Nisioisin, an author I’m very fond of. I read the two Zaregoto books released years ago by Del Rey, which feature a narrator who is far more opaque than Koyomi ever gets to be. And I have spoken before about my obsession with unlicensed Shonen Jump manga Medaka Box, featuring a cast of superpowered yet broken teenagers and their quest to find empathy. Monogatari is more like the latter than the former, as Koyomi has a certain obsession with describing his sexual impulses that reminds you that he’s a standard high school teenager. That is the most otaku-ish element of the book, actually – Koyomi is a bit of a perv, and his narration tells you this up front with a long, detailed panty shot description that, ironically, kickstarts the entire plot.

Once things actually settle down and we get to the vampire battles, the prose kicks up, though there’s always a large amount of the quirks that have made Nisio famous – long scenes of people philosophizing about the nature of humanity, fourth-wall breaking discussion of how this will never become an anime with all this violence (for the longest time, it wasn’t – the book is only getting adapted starting next year), and the occasional tortured wordplay – Nisio loves his puns and odd jokes based around kanji readings, and you can tell, even translated, that they’re all here. Actually, the translation by Vertical is excellent – I can tell there are substitutions at times, but they’re well done, and you get the sense of what the character is trying to say or point out.

As I said before, there are several fight scenes here, and they’re exciting while they last, but have a tendency to be over very soon or get undercut, as usually the exciting fight is not the point of the scene. The main reason to read the book, though, is Koyomi’s interaction with the two lead women – Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade (and if you think that make is bizarre, you don’t know Nisio), a vampire in all senses of the word, but one who has lived a little too long and finds what may be a soulmate in Koyomi, and Tsubasa Hanekawa, a ‘prim and proper class president type’ who nevertheless has a disturbing compulsion to interact with and help Koyomi, to the point of not only being willing to sacrifice her own life for him, but also let him grope her sizeable chest in order to fire him up. (To be fair, she finds the second one far more difficult to actually go through with, and he backs off at the last minute.) You want to know more about the both of them, as they both seem to have horrible things as yet unstated driving their actions.

As for Koyomi, aside from his occasional perverse narration, he seems to be a fairly standard, somewhat emo teen, going on about not wanting to make friends or get close to anyone, then throwing that all away. By the end of the book he’s not quite a vampire, but I suspect that his inability to not meddle will be what drives any future books. In any case, Kizumonogatari is excellent, and if you like stories with vampires, stories with lots of clever dialogue, or even stories with extended monologues on the nature of panties, it will serve you nicely. Let’s hope we can see more of the series someday.

It’s no secret that the development of Historia’s character has been one of my favorite parts of Attack on Titan, and this volume continues to feature that, as she refuses to be treated like precious china merely because she has the Reiss lineage, saddles up to help defeat a titan who is actually her father, takes credit for it to further Erwin’s plan to stabilize the city, and finally is crowned Queen, though arguably her best moment comes shortly afterwards, where she somewhat falteringly punches Levi as a callback to where he abused her in order to get what he wanted. Of course, he has, and his genuine smile of thanks is rather touching here.

Moreover, we see what the effect of being ruled by someone who did not get controlled by the Firt King is that actual progress is allowed to be made. Underground inventions are allowed to come to light, leftovers from the giant titan battle are used in new and exciting ways, and Historia herself spends most of her time seemingly running an orphanage on a farm outside the city. (See: front cover, which looks like it should be called Little Titan on the Prairie.) This comes after the rest of Kenny Ackerman’s flashback, where he meets a young, starving orphan Levi and teaches him how to fight and get by in the streets. Again, Kenny’s search for something to strive for is relatable, and I like the description of everyone being “drunk on something”, but in the end he’s still a villain.

And then there’s Eren, who spends a lot of time being his usual emo self, then sees what Historia has been doing and literally punches the whine out of himself. This might come back to haunt him, of course, as following this we see him overextending himself to the point of physical exhaustion, as he realizes that right now he is the only one who can do these things. I suspect he sees Historia more as an inspiration than as someone to be romantically interested in, though naturally Mikasa takes offense at anyone female getting remotely close to Eren. I’ve sort of given up on the idea that Mikasa’s feelings for Eren are going to remain familial, as the author has far too much fun with her repressed jealousy, but I don’t enjoy it. There was some genuine amusement late in the volume involving Marlowe, who has transferred to the Survey Corps despite Hitch’s tsundere exhortations, which everyone but he and Eren can see through (Eren being similarly clueless about any romance).

There’s still quite a bit of mystery here, which I suspect will get solved a bit more in 18, when we go back to training to visit our old instructor. In the meantime, this is a nice solid Titan volume, with a good fight, the usual somewhat questionable politics (yay, isn’t military rule great?), the usual questionable art (Isayama is good at terror, not so good at non-terror), but excellent plotting and characterization, and makes you want to keep reading.

This volume of Bell Cranel and his ongoing adventures has the main story only take up 2/3 of the book, the rest being filled in by two character developing short stories. While both stories are enjoyable, and I did like the main tale, it does feel a bit like the author wanted to hold off on the next big twist till Vol. 5, but could not quite come up with enough material to squeeze into this volume to pad it out. Welf Crozzo’s backstory is mostly given in an infodump, and his issues are resolved simply by having Bell be who he is – Bell is the sort to not go after someone for his own personal gain, and Welf has had nothing but that most of his career.

Welf adds a needed dynamic to Bell’s group, though, especially given this is essentially a shonen manga in light novel form. He adds the loud, brash type who rushes in first, which complements Bell’s extremely skilled but self-loathing personality and Lilly’s savvy yet cynical not-a-hobbit-honest girl. Which is good, as it’s also made apparent in this volume that in order to delve further into the dungeons they’ll need more people – don’t be surprised if Vol. 5 brings us another regular, and I bet she’s female. As usual, the story is presented smoothly and with a minimum of fuss, showing off an amusing sequence where the gods give Bell a nickname (and remind us of Freya, otherwise absent from this book) and a brief look at Aiz, who is trying to go beyond the impossible as Bell has and finds it’s not as easy as he’s making it seem.

The two short stories both have large amounts of Hestia in them, which makes up for – once again – a fairly small part in the main book. Hestia can’t go dungeon crawling with Bell, which given that’s the main thrust of the book means she’s always going to be getting the beginning, the end and not much else. The better short story was the second one, a simple character piece showing us Hestia three days after taking Bell in, and how she starts to fall in love with him. The other piece develops a small house that specializes in potions, and how unfortunate circumstances have led them to try to put one over on easy suckers – meaning Bell, who luckily has Lilly with him to be genre savvy. The best part of this story had Hestia and Lilly describing how oblivious Bell is and how the two of them are delegated to ‘goddess who isn’t even female’ and ‘cute little sister’ in his eyes. Given the ‘rivalry’ scene in the last volume, I’m pleased to see them bonding over lack of affection.

While not as strong as the other volumes of the series, this is still a very easy read, and I suspect we’re due for a major crisis point soon. Also, for fans of the anime, they adapted this into a single episode, so pick it up to see how much was cut out.

Tempting as it may be, I can’t simply point to my review of the first volume of Black Bullet and say “Exactly what I said before, only with an added loli.” And it is tempting. Black Bullet’s strengths – its action scenes and politics – are still very strong, and its weaknesses – all of its anime cliches – are still there and pandering. There were mercifully a few less pedophilia jokes this time around, but that was made up for by added harem and boob jokes. But its strengths are quite strong, and given that this is a text medium and the illustrations aren’t too bad, it’s easier for me to ignore the service and focus on the grim dystopia of this world and the shiny, shiny young woman attempting to change things despite everything.

We get far more of what makes Seitenshi tick in this volume, and like Rentaro, I can appreciate what she’s doing while worrying about her good sense. People like her tend to have low survival rates in crapsack worlds like this one, and when she’s up against a stronger politician like the leader of Osaka, she doesn’t give in but does seem to be working from a weaker position. It’s very telling that Rentaro tells her to her face that her main force of bodyguards are basically goons, and by the end of the book… they’re still her bodyguards, they just got yelled at for trying to kill a who had, admittedly, tried to kill Seitenshi numerous times.) As I did with Kisara in the first novel, I wish we could get more from Seitenshi’s POV, but I know better than to expect something like that.

The other new character is Tina Sprout, a Cursed Child whose character arc, while heartwarming, is almost entirely predictable. She befriends Rentaro without either of them knowing who the other one is, and he becomes the one person who doesn’t treat her horribly. She’s also very broken, as all the Children are, and tries to avoid killing when she doesn’t have to (though she manages to take out Enju enough that she’s absent from the 2nd half of the book – which allows her and Rentaro to have a one on one battle). And naturally, he is able to see the good inside of her and decides to save her. As I said, there’s nothing particularly bad about her story as it’s written, it’s just that if I described the character and asked a reader to tell me what happens to her, most could do so without even looking.

This is still a grim book series, and the humor that it has tends to revolve around a) people thinking Rentaro is a lolicon, or b) Kisara and her rival, the student council president girl introduced here, getting furious with each other and attempting to seduce a deliberately oblivious Rentaro. That said, I did laugh out loud at one passage, possibly my favorite in the book, where Seitenshi and Rentaro are preparing to meet with the leader of the Osaka area. Rentaro has met him before when he was a child and being trained to rule the world (or at least that’s what his training seems like from flashbacks). Seitenshi asks him nicely not to get angry or say rude things. He then walks in and is even ruder than I expected him to be, gets even angrier, and never even bothers to apologize. It’s possibly the most emotion he shows all book, and I hope we get more of this sort of thing next time around.

It saddens me to be writing this review now that Mizuki has passed on, but I am pleased that his work is still coming out to entertain and fascinate us all. Showa just completed, we have this new Hitler volume, and Kitaro finally gets a broader release in 2016. He spent his life creating works that will remain behind long after his death. And that includes this book, which was called something like Hitler: The Graphic Novel in Japan, but has been retitled here. And it fits, as the Hitler we’re seeing here feels more like Mizuki’s than it does history’s. This isn’t to say that Mizuki hasn’t done his research: everything is carefully couched in the history that we know (which is not as much as we’d like to). But as the book goes on and we dig deeper and deeper into the darkness of Hitler and the Nazi party, he becomes his own caricature.

We start off with Hitler as a starving artist, not looking unlike what Kitaro might look if he grew up. Those familiar with Showa will know what we’re getting here, though he did this work first: a combination of historical textbook mixed with dramatized scenes. The dialogue not taken directly from Hitler’s speeches is very perfunctory and drab, deliberately so, I believe: these are real human beings deciding to commit all these atrocities in the name of power, and it wouldn’t do to make their evil more grandiose than it needs to be. As the book goes on, we continue to see Hitler’s rise to power and eventual realization, during World War II, that he’s on the losing side. Most of the major points are kept: his disturbing relationship with his niece, his failing health towards the end, his power of rhetoric swaying opinions – and when that doesn’t work, killing anyone who opposes him.

The introduction notes that Western readers might be surprised at how little the Holocaust was mentioned. I was *very* surprised – it gets one page, right near the end, but other than that and Hitler ranting about Jews a few times in the first half of the book, we get almost nothing about concentration camps or anything else – most of the WWII history is confined to troop movements and leadership positions. To be fair, there are a LOT of famous people in this book, and Mizuki wants to keep it simple by focusing on the politicians he’s sure Japanese readers will know. Still, it’s a startling gap in the book.

The best reason to read this book is Mizuki’s art, in particular his facial expressions. This has always been a strong point of Mizuki’s, but it’s almost sublime here, as his Hitler’s desperate, snorting face gives the pent-up emotion that the dry dialogue can’t necessarily carry. (Some of the funniest moments have Hitler reacting to horrible events with a simple “gyah!”.) Goebbels in particular is amazing, as Mizuki decides about 3 pages after his introduction to try to draw him like some sort of twisted Picasso face, attempting to slide off the page every time we look at it. It’s so fitting for Goebbels that I can’t help but laugh. Each caricature looks like the man portrayed, yes also exaggerates them to ridiculous heights.

If you’re looking for a good overview of Hitler’s rise to power, I think there are better books. But for a book showing us Shigeru Mizuki’s unique take on Hitler, and his ability to show off the man’s unique evil in his own style, this is a great choice. Also for amusement, try to add up the times we see Hitler doing the standard “Mizuki snort of rage” pose.

This title has been a fan favorite ever since Tokyopop first released it back in 2003. Now it’s rescued, with a new translation, color artwork throughout, and a larger trim size as two omnibuses. This first one covers the first 12 chapters, ending with Hachimaki’s vision quest, which is an excellent cliffhanger. Rereading it, I was reminded why I found the series so enthralling – it combines interesting and flawed characters, a political thriller plot, and of course the beauty of space exploration, and why people want to go to space, though it makes sure to note that sometimes what people do to get to space can be morally questionable.

Like many titles, the series starts off feeling like a series of one-shots, possibly as it was – many titles are given a chapter or two before they get picked up, which also explains such glitches as Hachimaki’s hair. From the start, though, we have the basical – Hachimaki, Yuri and Fee command a debris collecting ship, making sure that the worst of the objects that litter space are removed so that there’s less risk of an accident. We open on one such accident, which weights heavily on Yuri, the first of our cast we really meet. Ironically, his character arc pretty much finishes in this volume, as he is able to let go of his wife’s death and move on. Likewise, Fee is a wife and mother whose biggest issues are trying to find a place to have a smoke in peace – she’s more of a mentor figure, as well as providing comedy through physical and verbal violence and in her spare time saving all of Earth from cosmic disasters.

No, it’s clearly Hachimaki, and later Tanabe, who are going to be the stars of our show. Hachi is really irritating in that “I am 23 and therefore know better than anyone else” sort of way, and spends much of his time angry at the world, his colleagues, and himself, not in that order. He wants to control his own destiny, but his idea of doing whatever it takes to achieve it feels wrong, especially since we get to contrast it with the creepy villain Locksmith, who is able to write off the death of hundreds in an explosion as good data for his next attempt. In contrast, Tanabe is all heart, and while she’s just as angry and headstrong as Hachi the narrative seems to be on her side most of the time. The two of them are also falling for each other hard, though Hachi finds this idea irritating more than anything else.

This is an expansive series that is not afraid to shift its focus and open up its cast. We meet Hachi’s eccentric father, down-to-earth mother and determined brother; a young girl who’s lived her whole life on the moon due to health issues; and of course various terrorists, who pepper the entire book trying to destroy everything Locksmith and Hachi are working on. No one is presented as totally right or wrong here, though certainly violence is shown to be the wrong answer in general. Towards the end of the book Hachi finally gets onto the crew headed to Jupiter, but a combination of three near-death experiences over the course of the first volume have him questioning everything about himself and what he’s doing. This reaches a point of ridiculousness at the end, when he’s able to somehow stay alive for a week in his spacesuit while having a vision quest.

Planetes is simply a great manga. It has an interesting plot, character growth and depth (Hachi is far less hotheaded by the end), and some gorgeous art. It also rewards us by showing the joys and sorrows of space travel, and why we should still strive to achieve it, despite everything. Even if you’ve already got the Tokyopop volumes, I recommended getting this spiffed up new edition. You can fall in love with it all over again.

I have reached the point in this series where I genuinely do enjoy the adventures of Amir, Karluk, and their family, and I’m pleased to see we’ll be headed back there for Vol. 8. But I will admit that my top 3 volumes of this series have all been the ones that venture away from the ‘main’ characters and focus on English researcher Mr. Smith… or rather, focus on where he ends up in his travels, as he also barely figures in this volume. Instead, we get a different kind of wedding, as two already married wives with young children find each other and we are introduced to a marriage ceremony between two women who vow to be Avowed Sisters, a concept that reminds me of Anne Shirley’s bosom friends.

Our heroine this volume is Anis, a young merchant’s wife who is married to a caring husband and has a young child, but still feels there’s something lacking in her life – she *is* happy, but knows she could be happier. After talking with her maidservant, she decides to start going to the public baths, and there meets up with the shy Sherine, who is also married, and bonds with her immediate.y And by ‘bonds’, I mean ‘falls in love with’, as we see immediately that Anis is physically and emotionally attracted to the reserved Sherine. They bond really fast – something remarked on by everyone – and eventually agree to become Avowed Sisters, with a ceremony led by one of the female elders. Of course, this being a dramatic story rather than a history, the moment the ceremony is over, Sherine’s husband drops dead.

I’ve talked before about how most of Kaoru Mori’s titles deal with repressed emotions, and that’s true here as well, even though by comparison Anis is open and obvious. Sherine’s husband was poor, and with him now gone it’s clear that she may be reduced to begging. This leads to Anis asking her husband to take Sherine as a second wife – something acceptable in these times and places – and his stunned reaction. Her husband’s been presented as a good guy throughout, who has trouble reading his wife but clearly loves her. He never took another wife as he was worried Anis wouldn’t like it, and Anis agrees that is absolutely true – except for Sherine. And so the volume ends with the two Avowed Sisters living together as co-wives, planning a trip, and feeding the birds by an ornamental pond.

The mood throughout is beautiful – after the last volume’s battles and deaths, Mori wanted to have a more peaceful story, though she jokes this just led to a lot of nudity. Indeed, the bath scenes take up a large part of the book, and there’s a fold-out color illustration with even more. For all that fashion is her first drawing love, Mori adores drawing the naked female form. But overall this is about Anis and Sherine, and another example of nontraditional brides in what is thought to be a very traditional period in time. It’s well worth your time.

My last review mentioned that I was more interested in the worldbuilding than the characters with this series, and it’s possible the author heard me, as this fifth novel, the first to not yet be animated, is filled with character development. Haruyuki’s personal issues still exist, but we are reminded that he’s not the only one having a bad time, and Kuroyukihime and Fuko are both dealing with devastating traumas, both involving Brain Burst and the real world, though we get minimal information on the latter. Luckily, this book isn’t simply piling up the angst – there’s a lot of fights going on here, and a race to the top of a brand new level which has a lot to offer everyone.

And there’s also that cover, as you are reminded yet again that this is a series filled with very young teens. That said, it fits well with the plot, as the overly dramatic ‘everything is terrible’ mood swings that kids get when they’re between 11 and 15 allows for dramatic speeches and loud screaming without feeling like you’ve stepped onto the cover of Shonen Jump too much. We get more development of the ‘Incarnate’ powerups, and they’re public now, so that’s a new worry. But the biggest worry is with our hero, who (as was becoming obvious) is not quite free of the killer possessive armor from Book 2, and one way that you can tell this is going to be a long-running series is that the volume is content to leave most everything up in the air.

It also resolves issues left over from the previous book about Fuko, who is at last doing something with the team, but really isn’t using her full potential due to her latent trauma over what she did to her legs in the game. I’d wanted more with her and Kuroyukihime, and I got it here, as it’s clear that both of them take the blame for the pain that each one suffered, and it’s up to Haruyuki to demonstrate that they are not a horrible person (Kuroyukihime) or to show off what her powers and avatar really is used for (Fuko). Haruyuki is very empathic, and (except of course for the increasing number of girls crushing on him, which he doesn’t get mostly for plot reasons) understands almost unconsciously what needs to be done to help people achieve their potential.

Brian Burst, for all its drama, twisted revenge antics, and continued suggestions of a dark evil villain side using it for bad things, is a game, and a fun one at that. The battles featured here are probably the best writing in the book, as they’re fast, exciting, dramatic, and uncertain. Yes, you could predict that our heroes would win, but how they won was certainly not expected, and I loved that it also required an assist from Blood Leopard and Ash Roller – breaking apart the boundaries of the ‘teams’. Given what happens near the end of this book, Haruyuki and company are going to need all the allies they can get. I’m eagerly looking forward to the next volume.