Sean Gaffney

By Yuu Kamiya. Released in Japan by Media Factory. Released in North America by Yen On.

I am starting to come to terms with No Game No Life. All the problems I had with the first volume are still there, with underage nudity, pointless ecchi fetishes, and another token loli added towards the end. But all the strengths are still there as well, this being a world with two strong lead characters, a fascinating premise, and enough humor that doesn’t revolve around panties that I found myself laughing quite a bit. More to the point, all the questions I had at the end of my first review are actually answered, always a plus for a light novel series. And unlike the first book, this one ends on a nasty, if rather sudden, cliffhanger that will leave you wondering what disaster has befallen Shiro and… um, was there someone else?

The girl staring saucily at us from the cover is Jibril, who is essentially an Angel, and probably the best addition to the cast this volume. She has a lust for knowledge (pretty much literally), a surprisingly vicious streak (the angels used to do mass slaughter till the ‘game board rules’ were enforced, and she misses killing), and a truly flaky personality that leads to the funniest section of the book, where she greets our heroes in broken gratuitous English. (The translation, by the way, gives this as broken gratuitous Japanese, which works, as well as a Kyoto dialect (Southern US) and ‘l33t-speak’ to convey just how silly and irritating Jibril is being.) The shiritori battle which follows is jaw-dropping, once again showing how smart and forward-thinking [ ] are (Here the translator is forced to simply give the Japanese word right after the translation, as it simply can’t be translated).

Stephanie, as you might expect, is mostly used as a figure of humiliation and humor, though she does get a few chances to shine, as she’s basically running the entire country while Sora and Shiro research how to possibly win against any other race. Speaking of which, we’re introduced to the first big challenge, the Werebeasts, who supposedly can read minds and also have animal attributes that make them scary, but to someone like Sora, that means only one thing – cute girls with animal ears and tails. And that’s exactly what he and Shiro get, as they meet the ‘ambassador’ of the Werebeasts, an 8-year-old with a tendency to swear copiously as she’s not used to the human language and doesn’t know better. She’s such a fetish figure that I almost have to shake my head and laugh, but I hope she gets character development later as the others here do.

I said in my first review that I wish the series could just drop the service and get on with it, but I suspect that part of the reason why No Game No Life is so successful is its ability to balance the two sides equally. The game theory is interesting, the plot twists usually surprising and well-thought out, and Sora as a large ham is fun. Shiro has less to do, but she’s far more introverted, and given the cliffhanger, I suspect a lot of Book 3 will have to feature her taking charge. And the fanservice is truly ridiculous (the chance of something pornographic happening, as with most Japanese ecchi series, is below zero), clearly not taking itself seriously – Sora even gives the naked girls Barbie Doll Anatomy at one point. If it weren’t for the fanservice, I’d happily recommend this to anyone. As it is, I recommend it to people who already know the series.

By Ryohgo Narita and Suzuhito Yasuda. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On.

As you may have noticed from the ugly 2 at the end of the URL, I’ve reviewed a DRRR!! Vol. 1 before, when the manga first came out in 2012. And now we have the novels, something I was not expecting. Those familiar with the anime and manga won’t find any major changes to what they already know, though there was a character building scene that was deleted from the anime (which actually came back to bite them recently when a girl from said character building scene showed up again). For the most part, though, reading this novel if you’ve already seen the anime or manga gives you greater depth of characterization, as we get inner monologues and narrations that help to flesh out Mikado, Celty, Izaya, and the rest of the cast.

I will warn you in advance: don’t buy this novel for the illustrations. Yasuda-san has improved in the ten years since this was released, as readers of Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? can see. But this first volume of DRRR features some very ugly characters with flat, dead faces staring at you from the front cover. The cover, however, does illustrate one of the main draws of this series (and Narita’s series in general): there is a huge cast of characters, all of whom play some part in the narrative and there is no one ‘main character’, though in this first book I’d argue Mikado comes close. Mikado benefits most from the light novel perspective, as you realize just from watching and listening to him just how much he desperately wants excitement in his life, and what he is willing to go through to achieve it.

As for the rest of the cast who have large roles in this first book, DRRR!! is also known for having no ‘normal’ people in its cast, as everyone ranges from mildly eccentric to flat-out crazy. This is best illustrated by our antagonist for this book, Namie Yagiri, her brother Seiji, and Seiji’s stalker Mika. The three compete to see who can be more messed up and make you want to put the book down in disgust. Namie is incestually attracted to her brother, her brother is in love with a severed head, and Mika wants to eat said severed head so that she can then gain Seiji’s attention. They truly deserve each other, as Mikado says, and give the book a nice frisson of creepy.

Compared to them, folks like Celty, who may be a supernatural headless Dullahan but is possibly the nicest, most normal person in the series, or Izaya, who tries to be a villain but mostly ends up just being an asshole, are more relaxing and easier to take in. It actually may surprise folks how much of the cast don’t get much focus in this first book – Shizuo barely shows up, Anri mostly functions in terms of her relationship with Mika, and Masaomi turns out to be mostly irrelevant except to contrast with Mikado. Of course, this will change – despite Narita hoping the book goes beyond one volume, I’m fairly sure this was commissioned as a 3-volume series to start, and the next book will definitely be focusing on Anri.

Fans of the DRRR!! anime and manga will definitely want to check this out. If you watched it for the Shizaya, there’s a nice fight here for you. If you avoided it because of the Shizaya, they barely interact except for that fight. Something for everyone! Stephen Paul’s translation is also smooth and non-obtrusive, with the narrative being wordy as Narita usually is but lacking that ‘light novel’ feel some other series have had (hi, Index). And the art will improve in a few books time. And it’s out digitally as well, for folks who’ve watched me hammer on about that on Twitter!

Oh yes, sorry, Baccano! fans, Isaac and Miria’s cameo was anime-only. You will see the Nebula Corporation here, though.

By Rumiko Takahashi. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Shonen Sunday. Released in North America by Viz.

A word of warning here: I love Nabiki Tendo. Love love love her. I don’t deny that if I were ever to meet her in real life I’d run away, but she’s fictional, so I am free to openly admire a confident confidence trickster who decides to mess with Ranma and Akane purely because it amuses her… and also to get some of Ranma’s cash, of course. This volume is the first one where she’s really had an arc focusing on her, and she’ll only have one more after this (about 7 omnibuses from now). So most of what folks consider ‘canon’ comes from the 6-chapter story in this volume, where, after a huge fight – again – Akane decides that Nabiki can be Ranma’s fiancee instead.

Of course, like every other story in the series, Nabiki’s presence here is to help show how Ranma and Akane are perfect for each other, while also demonstrating why it’s taking forever to get them to admit that. Akane’s hair-trigger temper is seen here several times, topped only by Ranma’s amazing tendency to say exactly the wrong thing and not understand why anyone would get angry. If you combine this with their mutual innocence and gullibility, it’s no wonder that Nabiki can play them both like fiddles. It helps that Nabiki is one of the few women in the series not attracted to Ranma – at one point she decides to wrap things up, thinking “wouldn’t want him to get TOO attached to me.” I also like that she’s not perfect – her plan to sell Ranma to the highest bidder is done in by Shampoo, Kodachi and Ukyou deciding that killing Nabiki would achieve the same end (yes, Ukyou is also there, just slightly less murderous), and she misreads Ranma as genuinely trying to hit her towards the end. She should know better. She also shows a bit of concern that her plan might genuinely break Ranma and Akane up, which is sweet.

Of course, there’s a lot more in this omnibus than Nabiki, but it’s not quite as interesting. Picolette Charin’s story is wrapped up in a fairly weak way, though the force-feeding was pretty clever. The entire second half of the volume, though, is taken up with a new minor villain, who has the unfortunate name of Pantyhose Taro. In fact, his name drives the plot – he got the name from Happosai, who happened to be at the springs where the young baby had drowned and christened him as if it was a baptism – and his tribe forbids name changes unless it’s the one who gave the name. So Pantyhose Taro has a grudge, and is also possessed of possibly the most ridiculous Jusenkyou curse of all, a yeti riding an ox carrying an eel and a crane spring. This translates to a hideous huge monster, but Pantyhose Taro is fine with that – it’s the name he hates.

Most of this volume is taken up, unfortunately, with a lot of fights and with Akane getting kidnapped and used as bait – again. Luckily, there’s also some sharp humor as well, mostly at Taro’s expense. Pantyhose Taro ends up being the inverse of the usual manga villains – usually they never appear again in the manga, but the anime has them return. Here it’s the anime that didn’t bother to bring Pantyhose Taro back, but we’ll see him again soon. We’re halfway through Ranma 1/2 now, and next time we’ll get a few more amusing one-shots, as well as the development of two new devastating attacks for Ranma and Ryouga.

By Akira Hiyoshimaru. Released in Japan as “Hatsukoi Monster” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Aria. Released in North America by Yen Press.

First off, this is another one of those titles where, no matter how good the execution is, recommending it to friends is just going to be problematic. “See, the twist is that the male lead is really 11 years old… STOP CALLING THE COPS, DAMMIT!” Manga and anime romance has skewed young pretty much since inception, but 13-14 used to be the low end, with most of it taking place in high school. Lately, though, we’re seeing more and more series with younger and younger characters, and even if they aren’t getting in relationships they’re sexualized in some way (hi, No Game No Life). And of course this is written for Aria, which has increasingly become Kodansha’s ‘eccentric’ shoujo magazine. Come into this knowing that the premise is questionable.

The good news is that the author and the cast also know the premise is questionable, and call it out throughout the entire volume. Our heroine is caught up in the flush of first love based both on looks and the fact that he saved her life in a cool manner, but is aware this is deeply wrong. Everything Kanade does emphasizes that he’s not ‘mature for his age’ in anything but appearance – he’s still playing in sandboxes. If this were a case where she were in college and he was in high school, it would be like any other shoujo romance out there, but the fact that he’s 11 adds a frisson of wrongness that just doesn’t go away. It drives the entire title.

Honestly, I kept expecting this to be creepy and make me stop reading, but it never did. It has so many elements that could have gone badly. If the 11-year-old hero had also been mentally/emotionally mature… if the heroine had not been sheltered and naive herself, as well as starved for affection… even the appearance of the characters, which the author says in a note her editor had her change, as the original was a normal-sized girl with a short guy (she liked the huge difference between then, so when told to make the girl tiny, made him huge to contrast), ends up massively improving the product.

There’s also lots of humor – this doesn’t take itself seriously, and I laughed out loud at the introduction of Kanade’s equally huge classmates, as well as their Detective Conan-eaque leader. The one thing I really disliked was Taga, the college age guy who attempts to sexually assault Kaho because… well, because that’s what happens in these sorts of titles to provide conflict, and I wish it didn’t. Naturally, he gets away with a busted lip and nothing else, and is free to emotionally abuse the heroine later. Luckily, the rest of her roommates are more supporting, but that guy needs to go away.

As with so many titles I’ve reviewed lately, if the premise squicks you, don’t get First Love Monster. But the author actually respects and treats the leads sympathetically, without setting up the heroine for comedic humiliation faces. That means I’m intrigued, and will get the next volume to see where it goes.

Pandora in the Crimson Shell: Ghost Urn by Shirow Masamune and Rikudou Koushi. Released in Japan as “Koukaku no Pandora – Ghost Urn” by Kadokawa Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Newtype A. Magika: Swordsman and Summoner by Mitsuki Mihara and MonRin. Released in Japan as “Magika no Kenshi to Shoukan Maou” by Media Factory, serialization ongoing in the magazine Comic Alive. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

As I’ve said before, my tendency to give all Volume 1’s a shot even if I suspect they won’t be my thing at all gets me into a lot of difficulties, particularly with Seven Seas, which is very much an all or nothing company with me. They debuted two new titles this month, one of which not only has the amazing writer-artist team of Shirow Masamune and Rikudou Koushi (leaving Viz means he gets his u’s back), but managed to be on SDCC’s worst manga of the year list despite having been out a total of 5 days when the panel ran. The other one is a harem fantasy from my old nemesis, Comic Alive. Two otaku-pandering titles enter, only one can leave – which one did I like more?

Pandora gets off to a poor start with that cover, featuring our heroine bursting, semi-mude, from some sort of mosaiced plastic casing. We then get color pages of another heroine dressing up in tiny lingerie. This title definitely does not skimp on the fanservice, as we’ll see throughout the volume. The basic premise involves Nene, our heroine, getting involved with a confident young woman who may actually be a supervillain and her cyborg companion. Nene is also a cyborg and highly idealistic, saying that she wants to see world peace. Sadly, she arrives at her island destination to find a robot gone amok, and only she and Clarion (the other cyborg) can hope to stop it.

On pure skeeze factor, Pandora in the Crimson Shell wins hands down. The sequences where Nene has to finger Clarion in her vaginal ‘port’ are risible, though admittedly I wouldn’t put it past Shirow based on past titles. Speaking of which, the credits show quite a committee working on this title. Rikudou is the main artist in charge, but I had felt that I could only see his art style occasionally, and that may be why. His sense of humor, thankfully, is sometimes more apparent, particularly in the Excel-ish intrepid reporter and the dry tones of Uzal Delilah. The action sequences, which make up much of the second half, are… decent. Basically, if it weren’t for the horrible service and constant sexual assault hints, I may actually have enjoyed this. Sadly, the service and assault is all over the book.

Magika Swordsman and Summoner is our second title, and reads like a modern-day light novel checklist (appropriate, it’s based on a light novel). Our hero is the lowest of his class at magic school, not good for much yet but stirring water around. He’s also the only male in a class of females. He has an adopted sister (older than him, but acts younger as they only found that out recently), who harbors incestuous feelings for him. At the school, he meets a busty airheaded woman who turns out to be student council president, as well as an angry young blonde who seems very upset that he doesn’t recognize her, for some reason. Oh yes, you can also add in a quiet, stoic elf-girl and a shy girl who can’t deal with men. When he summons an amnesiac diva with no powers (which gets him in trouble, as she may be evil), he discovers he has to form a harem of 72 women in order to become the Harem King.

If you started throwing up halfway through that, you may get the feeling I had while reading this title. Everything about it is from Tropes 101, be it the Magic Academy stuff or the Harem stuff, though I admit 72 is aiming high – even Negima didn’t quite go for that many women. (Yes, it’s from reports of the houris that accompany Muslim martyrs after they die.) Seven Seas’ back cover notes that fans of Dragonar Academy and Zero’s Familiar will enjoy it, and I can’t argue with that – it’s certainly more of the same. The one redeeming feature is the hero, who seems a decent sort and is very uncomfortable with the whole harem concept. We’ll see how long that lasts. Or rather, other readers will.

In general, if you’re going to be a bad manga and keep me interested, it’s best to do it with style. Neither of these titles are things I’d recommend to anyone except SS’s core otaku audience. But honestly, Ghost Urn made me wonder how the cliffhanger might be resolved, whereas with S&S I just didn’t care. On balance, I have to give the edge to Shirow, Rikudou and company here.

By Kaori Yuki. Released in Japan as “Kakei no Alice” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Aria. Released in North America by Yen Press.

I’ll admit that I’ve always found Kaori Yuki titles hard to get into, and even harder to review. There is a certain amount of ‘aesthetics preferred over plot and character’ to her work, which makes it highly entertaining and visceral but leaves a person frustrated when they have to talk about it. There’s also giant piles of corpses in most everything she’s done, usually of the most sympathetic women in the book, and that applies here 100%. And of course the grand guignol horror of it all. Oh, and this is yet another of what has become my least favorite genre, the survival game. Despite all that, this is still a compelling read, and I had no trouble getting to the end of Volume 1, though I’m not exactly sure where it’s going beyond ‘chaos’.

Our heroine is the Alice seen on the cover – except not really. She’s actually Stella, a normal dark-haired high school student who is part of a very eccentric family of orphans who were adopted after a tea party filled with mass child slaughter. Every month the family goes to a tea party that’s held by their amazingly insane mother, who this month tells them that the time has come for them to fight each other to the death to see who gets to be the next family head and have access to a medicine that makes a person young and beautiful even in their old age. Some of them are, of course, reluctant to do this, so each of them has a hostage who will be killed if they don’t comply. To make matters worse, none of them are exactly stable to begin with – certainly not Stella, who snaps in traumatic situations and transforms into the blood-spattered Alice seen on the cover.

If this sounds a bit over the top, welcome to the world of Kaori Yuki. I also forgot to mention Alice’s stalker-cum-protector, Tsukito, who carries around voodoo dolls to curse people and is obsessed with Stella, yet halfway through shows up to become her new bodyguard and who we’re now supposed to feel sympathy for, despite the fact that he was a real creep earlier. As for the rest of the family, the other one who merits mention is Zeno, Stella’s ‘big brother’, who is killed early in the volume but then revived, only for Stella to find his personality is quite a bit different. She should be used to this, though, given how she does a 180 degree turn into murderous grinning killer when faced with horrible situations.

I’m not sure I actually enjoyed this – the horror is really grotesque in places, and there’s a sequence with a toy bunny getting restuffed that should come with a trigger warning. But it’s certainly compelling and gives a visceral thrill. I wouldn’t read it if you want to see what happens next with the plot and characters. But if you enjoy Kaori Yuki’s terrifying manga titles, and want to see lots of action and corpses, Alice in Murderland is right up your alley.

By Reki Kawahara and abec. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On.

One of the problems with a series that’s narrated in first person, which Sword Art Online is (yes, sorry, Asuna fans, this is again all Kirito), is that it can be harder to see the flaws inherent in the protagonist, since you have to remove yourself from the narrative voice to see what’s really going on. Last time we saw Asuna starting out in Aincrad trying to find a noble way to die, and Kirito had to show her that there are better things to try for than that. But he has issues of his own – he’s bad at dealing with people, as he both admits himself and we see time and time again, making bad jokes in order to try to get past the fact that he finds it hard to gauge what others are thinking. And while I think he’s right that Asuna could grow to be a great inspiration to others trapped in the game, I worry he may be putting her on a bit of a pedestal, particularly as he tries to ensure the other players don’t see her as a villain.

Kirito is also having to have genuine interaction more than he expected, as the elf that they meet up with, Kizmel, not only doesn’t die – as she did in the beta Kirito played – but proves to be far more well-rounded and realistic than any NPCs he’s come across before. Both he and Asuna over the course of the book are amazed at how Kizmel grieves for the sister she lost, has mysterious, prophetic dreams, and seems to be having flashbacks to the beta test that Kirito participated in. This helps to show how SAO is not just another game, but it also lends a bit of intrigue to the series going forward, as this isn’t really explained much beyond “wow, Kayaba was a better programmer than we thought”. Luckily, without spoiling much, I will note that Kizmel survives, and I expect we’ll see her again in Book 3.

The other big focus of the book is the reveal of Morte, and what kind of player he is. Fans of the SAO anime and Japanese fans who read the books in order may be a bit ahead of those coming at the novels in NA-publishing order, as they are aware of the guild called ‘Laughing Coffin’. I’m pretty sure that’s what we’re seeing the genesis of here, as Kirito chillingly runs into a player who simply has the desire to kill, because he realizes that he can do it here and get away with it. The duel itself is the high point of the novel, menacing, action packed, and a bit terrifying. After that, we get a fight that doesn’t arise, as Kirito (and Asuna, who thankfully tails after him when he’s being a loner idiot) talks down two nascent guilds from fighting against each other and helps them realize the goal is for everyone to work to escape the game.

As for my review, those who read me regularly know the less I talk about the actual qualities of the book and the more I theorize, the better I like it. Sword Art Online Progressive’s prose is more mature than the original works, its steady pace (we only get one floor this time around) allows it to grow more naturally, and Kirito and Asuna are clearly destined for each other but are both in denial, which is cute. (For a killer drinking game, try drinking every time Asuna elbows Kirito in the gut. Actually, don’t do this.) Honestly, I’d recommend this series to an SAO newbie first, even if it does have a lot of callbacks. Probably my favorite SAO novel to date.

By Atto. Released in Japan by Media Factory, serialization ongoing in the magazine Comic Alive. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

There is, as most fans know by now, a large market in Japan, and a smaller one in the West, for manga for grown men that involve groups of young girl students doing cute things in a comedic and laid-back way. K-On! is perhaps the most obvious example, but there’s also Sunshine Sketch, GA Art Design Class, etc. Most of them tend to involve ‘girls in school doing activity X’. Non Non Biyori (Biyori is ‘weather’, but I think the title is meant to sound nonsensical) doesn’t even get to that point – the series features a group of four girls, and occasionally their teacher, in a country school far removed from anywhere in particular, doing adorable things. That’s the plot.

The girls are all eccentric, to varying degrees. Hotaru is the ‘normal’ one, being the transfer student just moved from the city, but she’s got quirks too; she’s 11 years old but looks about 17, and she has a big crush on another girl, Komari, though as is standard in these sorts of titles the yuri is one-sided and is there for humor and not much else. Komari is Hotaru’s opposite, as shes 14 but short and childlike. She tries to act the older sister, but her personality keeps failing her. Her younger sister, Natsumi, is 13. She’s the troublemaker, bad at school and tends to try to get a rise out of everyone else, particularly her sister. And Renge, who is 6, is precocious but strange, with that triangle mouth that Lucky Star readers will recognize (and that’s another series that this manga is like.)

You won’t find much originality here (even the teacher, Renge’s older sister, is the usual ‘laid back, one of the girls’ types we’ve seen in Azumanga, etc.), but it succeeds in its one goal, which is being cute as a button. Each short chapter involves an amusing situations, and the laughs come naturally from it. The class rabbit has escaped its hutch and must be captured. The teacher tricks the class into working on her family’s rice field for a day. Komari watches a horror movie and gets scared, so Natsumi trolls her. It fulfills its demographic target amiably. There’s also a minimum of fanservice, with no bath scenes or underwear shots that I could spot. Given this runs in Comic Alive, I’ll consider that a big victory.

There’s a short, unrelated manga at the end that involves a girl who dreams of being in a dream, which is even weirder than the main manga but also probably the weakest part of the volume. Best to stick with the main series. Honestly, this is the sort of series that, based on its premise, you’d automatically assume was a 4-koma – just like every other series above that I compared it to. But no, it’s fashioned like a regular manga, which means you don’t get the gag at the end of every page feel. It allows the humor to be more laid-back and relaxed. Which is a good description for the entire volume.