Sean Gaffney

By Karuho Shiina. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Bessatsu Margaret (“Betsuma”). Released in North America by Viz.

I’ve been reviewing this title in the ‘Bookshelf Briefs’ section for a long time. There’s been a lot going on since my last review, but one thing that amused me is that I was discussing Kento never shutting up, saying the wrong thing, and generally being extroverted all over the pages of what’s trying to be a quiet, peaceful manga. And hey, guess what’s still happening! After a brief period where I was beginning to like him and hoping he and Yano would work out, he’s back to being my least favorite. Meanwhile, another old villain makes a reappearance, and as she has in the past, spurs Sawako to try to apply herself and chase her dreams.

Given how Kurumi was originally introduced to act as a contrast to Sawako’s purity and general niceness, it’s highly amusing to see that they both want to pursue similar careers – though only Kurumi really gets this, and she is properly annoyed by it. In fact, Kurumi spends most of the volume on a low boil, possibly as all the main characters have hooked up with each other and she’s watching them all be happy. But Sawako has bigger concerns – she’s finally found happiness with Kazehaya, and while she doesn’t want to leave the town, she does envision going to a college that would temporarily separate them. While Kazehaya knows this and decides to try to pull his grades up so that he can go to college as well, he makes it clear to Sawako that this is her choice and she should feel confident in it. As always, they’re both really sweet.

Yano has never been described as sweet, but she’s usually tried to be the most mature of the bunch, and the most level-headed. Now we’re starting to see that facade crumble, particularly around Pin, who is easily able to see through her facade to the anxious teenager beneath it. And it’s fairly clear that, while Yano is happy with what she currently has with Kento, he’s not really factoring in what she really wants – college in Tokyo, a much farther distance away than the others are talking. It’s also far more difficult, and Pin admits she needs to pull her grades even higher if she wants sure success. (Pin is pure awesome in this volume, by the way, and while teacher/student romances are iffy, I totally get why this is also a ship.)

So while Yano frets, Kento is there… to propose to her, saying he wants to spend the rest of his life waking up next to her. Kento has always been forward and blunt, but my jaw actually dropped at this moment, and I wondered if it was a setup for something more. I got my answer later in the volume, where Pin has a disastrous meeting with him, where Kento admits he’d like to study interior design, but going to the same college as Yano is more important. His face in this scene is a sort of goofy, happy-go-lucky type that makes me want to hit it, as he’s not thinking about Yano here at all. To make things worse, she actually hears this outside the teacher’s office. Kento wants Yano as his girlfriend/wife, but seems to take it as read that she’ll be OK with this. And she isn’t.

A cliffhanger seems to show Kento starting to realize that something is wrong, but we’ll have to wait for a bit to see if it sinks in, or if things continue to go south. In the meantime, this remains must-read shoujo, and if you dislike angst, there’s always Sawako and Kazehaya, whose stressful situations are resolved through honest communication. Funny, that.

By Satoshi Mizukami. Released in Japan by Shonen Gahosha, serialized in the magazine Young King Ours. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

Well, I can’t say I didn’t warn myself in my last review, where I described everything coming to a halt so that the author could do plot setup. And now that it’s set up, the guns are fired, with lots of cool action scenes, character development, and the introduction of Animus’ sibling Anima, who doesn’t talk much and seems to be able to grant even more superpowers. The series also continues to show off the connection between having cool superpowers and teenage angst and grief, which as fans of old school superhero comics know if the classic way to go about things. I have to say, however, that perhaps the most ridiculous yet tragic thing about my last review is when I was discussing Hanako’s oddness and suggested that she might not survive the series. Wow, in hindsight that is the worst thing ever.

This is not a series afraid to kill off its main characters, and to be fair I should have realized what was coming. Taro was one of the most ‘normal’ of the cast, and we weren’t sure what his wish was. The one thing we were sure of was that he was totally in love with Hanako and hadn’t told her yet. And, despite what her familiar tells her, he dies in a heroic, amazing way. Yes, he made his wish to resurrect her if she was killed and then tried to stop her getting killed anyway. But that’s love for you, and I thought it was fantastic. I also liked how Taro’s impact was felt on other characters through his food – his other main personality trait besides ‘likes Hanako’. I’m not sure how much I like the observation that his death is Hanako’s punishment for what her wish was, though – I think that’s placing too much of a burden on her.

I’d mentioned above that Anima has started to give powerups to the various Knights, and we see Yuuhi fight to ensure that he gets one… and lose. Yuuhi has always been at the low end of the totem pole when it comes to kicking ass, and I don’t see that changing as I think it’s perhaps the only thing keeping him likeable. We do see his growth here, though, as he encourages Samidare to talk with her estranged mother (who can’t seem to balance work and family well at all) even as he’s still estranged from his own grandfather. I’m still of the opinion that the Earth is not going to be destroyed, and I suspect it will be because he stops being such a nihilist. Leave that to the resident Nihilist Knight… I mean Owl Knight.

In the end, the scene that sticks with me most is the final one of the volume, where Hanako uses her ice powers to take out one of the golems in a fit of suppressed grief and rage, showing the emotions on her face that we haven’t seen since we met her. It extends to the others as well, as the death of Taro’s killer and Hanako’s sobbing allows all the other knights to show their own grief… even Yuuhi. It’s a good sign for the future. I eagerly await the next omnibus.

By Hirohiko Araki. Released in Japan as “Jojo no Kimyou na Bouken” by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz Media.

It is possible, I suppose, that someone out there read the first volume of this series, featuring grandiose over the top histrionics galore, and felt “well that was OK, but it was just far too sedate and naturalistic. What would really make the series take off is if one of the characters came back as an immortal vampire”. Well have I got news for you! Araki ups his game here, turning the amp from 11 to 12 and delivering more action, more histrionics, and a whole lot more death and violence, while also adding a few trickster mentors and loathsome underlings. It’s still not a parody, honest: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure just is.

The highlight of the book may very well be the beginning, where Dio cuts loose and starts to not only kill people and steal their lifeforce but bring them back to life as hideous zombies. JoJo’s still looks up to Fist of the North Star after all, so there’s lots of heads exploding and eyes popping in slow motion here. That said, probably the most grotesque moment of violence comes later on, when Jack the Ripper (yes, that one – Dio takes him on as a disciple) attack the horse and wagon our heroes are in, kills the horses (and driver) by cutting their heads off, and then hides inside a horse corpse so that he can emerge, womb-like, from the neck like your worst nightmare. It’s around that time that you realize how “Tom Brown’s Schooldays” the first volume really was.

If there is any break from the nonstop action and hysteria, it comes in the form of Erina Pendleton, who went to India for several years to study nursing and attend the Tsukasa Hojo School of Heroine Design, and arrives just in time to attend to a dying Jonathan’s wounds. We see once again the steel that’s underneath her soft exterior, and even Speedwagon is forced to withdraw coolly (yes, Viz kept that, thank goodness) in her presence. Sadly, when he starts training and getting attacked by evil minions, Jonathan thinks he can’t let Erina get involved in this, and she vanishes once more. The same cannot be said for Speedwagon, who is both the ‘normal guy’ and Greek Chorus in this series – although how normal someone is when they use the power of their flaming hot abs to heal Zeppeli’s arm is a debate for another time.

I should also probably mention the narrative voice here, or rather the multiple ones. Araki has third person narration drop in from time to time, telling us how glorious everything is in full! blown! CAPSLOCK! But then Jonathan, Speedwagon and Dio also seem to have their own inner monologue, functioning as a narrative voice as well, and just as dramatic. It’s as if you took all the characters and gave them microphones so they could turn to the audience and soliloquize for a while. Honestly, the only normal thing in this entire volume is Zeppeli, whose attitude towards training has been used over and over in so many shonen manga (and yes, he probably got it from Ashita no Joe or something) that you don’t even bat an eye when he threatens Jonathan. But that’s OK, Speedwagon is there to bat them for you.

You can’t really casually read a title like this – you have to leap in full body and drown yourself in it. If you do, not only do you get top notch action and horror, but you also get things like Elizabeth I’s evil face as she condemns two nights to their deaths, where she looks like a yanki punk. I can’t wait for the conclusion of this arc.

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.

While Higurashi was divided into four Question Arcs and four Answer Arcs, Umineko plays it cagier, saying that the last four arcs are ‘Core Arcs’. Getting closer to the truth, but you’ll still have to dig for most of the answers. The first of these arcs, End of the Golden Witch, lives up to that name, as we skip most of the fluff and romance we’ve gotten in earlier arcs and go straight to what’s important: the Epitaph, the Gold, and the Murders. That said, there is one big difference: Lambdadelta and Bernkastel are in charge now, not Beatrice. And, as a result, everything is a bit twisted.

Ronove and Virgilia helpfully explain that our replacement game masters can’t do things impossible for Beatrice to do, but they can do things Beatrice WOULDN’T do. We see a bit of that in the scene with Natsuhi and Beatrice having tea together while reminiscing about her honeymoon with Krauss. It’s the sweetest scene in the whole volume, and has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with solving the game or defeating Beatrice. Yet Bernkastel takes delight in telling us, in Red Truth, that Natsuhi is simply having tea by herself, the conversation never happened. Beatrice used the Red truth to stop Battler going down false paths, or lead him closer to where she wanted him to go. Bern uses the Red Truth to be mean because she finds it hilarious.

This leads me to the new character that enters the series at this point. That’s her on the cover, Erika Furudo. No, not Rika Furude. No, not Frederica Bernkastel. Ryukishi said in a recent interview that he regards Rika looking like Bern to be similar to Tezuka’s ‘star system’, where Rock or Lamp might show up in any work as a “different” but similar character. Fans of Rika were already a bit surprised that Bern turned out to be a heartless villain (though honestly, they can’t have been TOO surprised… go read Higurashi’s darker moments again). Erika, though, is written entirely to irritate, to annoy, and to make the reader hate her.

I was wondering how Yen Press would handle translation for the scene where Erika sums herself up best, and I am very pleased it’s 100% as fans of the game will remember: Erika, fantasizing about seeing Jessica in tears after the epitaph is solved, leers as she describes herself as an “intellectual rapist” who enjoys wreaking havoc for the sake of it. Which makes sense, given that she’s basically Bernkastel imposing herself on the island as a self-insert. Even when Erika tries to make nice and simply be a goofy, slightly off-kilter young girl, it looks calculated and wrong.

There is another new character we see here, of course, which is the mysterious “man from 19 years ago” who keeps calling Natsuhi on the phone and driving her into hysterics. Natsuhi is accused of the murders by Erika in a sort of flashforward at the start of the book, so we know she’s in for a terrible arc. And indeed, as we’ll see in the next omnibus in September, she is not without horrible crimes in her past. But honestly, Krauss, Natsuhi and Jessica are probably my favorite of the four families, if only as they all clearly love each other and they’re all so BAD at showing it. (Krauss’ foray into Moon Tourism also doesn’t help.) Taking Natsuhi, who has trouble communicating even the most basic feelings of love and affection, and putting her through this is vicious.

We end this volume with what appears to be the First Twilight, so let me briefly discuss the manga adaptation here: it’s excellent. As with all other adaptations, things have been removed and shuffled around, but more than any other this one takes care to include everything important and show how important it is (such as the maid and baby being “lured” off a cliff to their death by golden butterflies and witches). The faces are also nicely done, particularly when Erika, Lambda or Bern is going creepy and horrible on us. And the cliffhangers are well-timed, driving you forward to see what happens next. As far as I can tell, the artist hasn’t really done much other manga, which is a shame; they do a bang up job here.

Umineko is still a wonderfully tense and intricate read, if you can get past the fact that everyone in it is a horrible person. We’ll see how things go once Erika gets to play The Detective next time.

By Kaoru Mori. Released in Japan in two separate volumes by Enterbrain, serialized in the magazine Comic Beam. Released in North America by Yen Press.

I wasn’t reviewing manga online when Emma first came out via CMX back in the day, and I’ll be honest: I never did finish the series. I think at the time I found it a bit too slow-moving and tedious. Which, to be fair, it is at times. But as the years have gone by, I’ve come to appreciate what Kaoru Mori does a bit more, and I now see the mood she was trying to evoke with this story of romance and class drama. Indeed, the heroine, Emma, reminds me very much of the heroine of A Bride’s Story, in that I find it very difficult to get a handle on what she’s thinking at all. Her love for William is so subtle that it creeps up on you.

William’s love does not creep up on anyone, being very much a love at first sight sort of thing. William is perhaps the most difficult thing to like about this series so far; he’s reserved when compared to the rest of Emma’s suitors, but still has a tendency to seem like a lovesick puppy compared to the rest of the Victorian era cast. This makes it a bit easier to understand his strict father, who is 100% against his son marrying a common maid, despite the fact that the Joneses are fairly new money themselves – they’re merchants, and have to keep up appearances far more than inherited money would. Indeed, the rest of William’s siblings look like they’ll make things more chaotic as the series goes on, particularly tomboy Vivian, who is quite happy to climb up roofs and run down halls to make her opinions knows.

For the most part, though, the best moments of Emma are the quiet, slow ones, sometimes not even needing dialogue. Emma cleaning the house after her mistress has passed away is one of the more heartbreaking things I’ve seen in some time, as if the cliffhanger ending for this omnibus, showing Emma leaving London to move North, with William just missing her. There’s also a sad and bittersweet element to Eleanor, a young woman who is arranged to be married to William and is clearly smitten with him, but I suspect she’s going to be very unhappy down the road. Even the past is tinged with menancholy – Kelly Stowner’s marriage to her husband being tragically cut short, leaving her a widow at twenty. You can see why romance is so hard to pin down, and why it would take getting locked in the Crystal Palace overnight to even kiss.

It’s not all stiffness and decorum, though – Mori still loves the East, and that’s apparent with the introduction of Hakim, a childhood friend of William’s who comes visiting with his harem of dancing girls/servants and his elephants in the garden. Hakim is briefly shown as a rival to Emma’s affections, but in reality he’s here partly to add an air of lightness and exoticism to this series, and partly as the author really likes this sort of thing – which is also why she’s drawing Victorian England, for that matter. This sort of creative freedom on a debut series is something that surprised me, but then Comic Beam is sort of a ‘5th genre’ magazine, known for experimentation and freedom. It allows for well-crafted storytelling, which is the main reason why everyone should be happy to see this back in print, and want to see where it goes next.

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

Takahashi has settled into a groove by now, and it shows in these two volumes, which have some of the strongest combinations of comedy and action in the entire series. Unlike the last omnibus, there’s no real serious plotline here – indeed, several of the plotlines are best known for their complete and total ridiculousness. But that just allows Takahashi to mine them for ridiculous and hysterical comedy, and show you why she had such an amazing reputation back in the 1990s. And it also shows off a bit more Ranma and Akane not-romance, for those who watch for that.

We start with ludicrous right off the bat, in the form of the Gambling King. (Well, OK, there’s a story with Kuno getting a sword that grants wishes, but it’s the weakest in the book, so let’s skip it.) The King is not unlike your typical Ranma one-shot villain – grossly egotistical, somewhat thick, tends to cheat in order to gain temporary victories – but of course what makes the comedy truly work is that he looks exactly like the King on a deck of playing cards, and therefore there’s always a comedy visual dissonance when he interacts with anyone. Add to this Ranma’s laughably awful attempts at a poker face, and you have a definite winner. (It was also nice to see Nabiki take on the King – she was winning handily till he cheated – though she’ll need to wait for the next omnibus to finally get her turn in the spotlight. It’s also fantastic whenever Kasumi and Nabiki emit ‘giant scary auras’, which they both do here.)

Next we see why Ranma always has his hair tied in a pigtail, and it again involves comedy villains (more pathetic than anything else) who look ridiculous – this time they all look like dumplings. This has some nice Ranma and Akane interaction, but also plays up a man’s vanity for laughs. The strongest story in the volume, though, involves a Hot Spring Resort that is doing a contest, the winner of which can travel to any spring in the world – including Jusenkyou. If you guessed this content involved an increasingly ridiculous series of obstacles that can only be defeated by martial artists, you are 100% correct. We also have the three ‘main’ fiancees present and correct (sorry, Kodachi), and they’re all thoroughly pissed off at Ranma, while also trying to help him. Even at this point, still not quite halfway through the series, everyone unconsciously knows if Ranma is cured, life will move on and he’ll have to decide who he likes once and for all. Takahashi’s final joke, of course, being that this never happens.

Possibly the most terrifying of the stories here – if only for the grotesque faces – sees Ranma taking on Picolette Chardin II, a master of martial arts eating, helped along by the fact that his family all have giant, stretchy mouths. Again, in a situation where the laughs come from the premise, all you really have to do is drop the cast – here Ranma, Akane, and their two fathers – into it and have them be themselves. So Ranma is stubborn and determined to be the best at this because it is a martial art, Soun is determined to ensure that Ranma remains engaged to Akane by the end of it, Akane stands to the side making deadpan wisecracks and occasionally helping when Ranma doesn’t insult her, and Genma eats.

So, for Ranma fans, this is pretty much the classic period. It maintains its high quality next volume, too, as we see Nabiki finally emerge as the amoral shyster she remains the rest of the series, and are introduced to possibly *the* most bizarre enemy of Ranma’s ever, Pantyhose Tarou.

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.

Index had a good start, but I felt the second novel was a bit rushed and inconsequential. Luckily, there’s no such issues here, as Kamachi puts out one of the strongest books in the Index series, and one with a lot of consequences, not least of which is the inspiration for side-series A Certain Scientific Railgun, which especially in the West has become more popular than its supposed parent. We continue to examine the world our heroes live in, this time entirely on the ‘Science’ side of things, and see just how far researchers will go in the search for knowledge and power, a running theme in this series on both the Science AND Magic sides. And we also meet a few characters who will prove very important down the road, for reasons that I will awkwardly try not to spoil here.

Introduced in this volume: Kuroko Shirai, Misaka 10032 (aka Misaka Imouto) and her clone sisters, Accelerator, Maika Tsuchimikado (who I had forgotten gets introduced before her brother, though blink and you’ll miss her appearance.) For Railgun readers, well, you know this one. In fact, you know more than Index readers, as Railgun expanded this arc greatly.

The series may have as one of its main themes that trying to achieve knowledge for its own sake is a dangerous thing, but I can’t really ignore the fact that the series also has its unironic shonen side to it. This seems to aggravate readers, and not just in Index, as I know a lot of long-running shonen series have fans who keep hoping people will get killed off or the heroes will fail just so that manga can be more like DC Comics. Likewise, Index (who, along with Himegami, barely appears in this volume) is a lazy, hungry ball of moe, and therefore jars with anyone who wants to take A Certain Magical Index seriously. But I think it’s the tension between the two that makes it interesting – Touma goes through a ridiculous amount of hurt here, and the idea that he’s still getting up near the end of the book is laughable – but that’s what you do in shonen. You get back up.

Mikoto gets her first major role here, and I’m amused at the difference between the way she acts around Touma and the way Kuroko says that she is afterwards – dealing with Touma relaxes her, which is important given what she’s been trying to achieve. This isn’t her series, so she doesn’t get to save the day, but it’s her pain, and desire to kill herself if it will help to save her clones, that drives Touma to go beyond the impossible again and save her. She’s a serious girl, who clearly places a lot of weight on the choices she makes, even if she’s ignorant of what they mean. After this book, her popularity skyrocketed even higher, and I imagine Railgun was in development by around the 5th volume of Index.

Kuroko does appear here, but doesn’t do much beyond glomp Mikoto a couple of times and give exposition to Touma. Her lecherous habits will have to wait for a future volume for me to be irritated by them. Accelerator is more interesting. I’d forgotten that he actually had some depth here beyond “I am the villain of this arc”. He’s clearly bored with the entire experiment, demanding from the Sisters that they at least make it worth his while to bother coming out. He also states outright why he’s doing this – to be left alone. Being the most powerful Level 5 in the city means that everyone tries to challenge him all the time. This is why he gets so excited when Misaka Imouto, and later on Touma, actually manage to hurt him a little bit. It elevates the tedium. Unlike Isard from last volume, he’s not mentioned at all in the Epilogue beyond the experiment being suspended. The last we see of him is flying through the air via Touma Airways. I wonder if he’ll be back? (Spoiler: Yes, he will be back.)

This was also the first volume where I didn’t find Kamachi’s writing style difficult to get into. He’s still a very eccentric writer, and his narration can meander much of the time, such as when he’s discussing Japanese baseball pitchers, or explaining the plot of Index Volume 1 because Touma’s lost his memory and Mikoto wasn’t there. But it’s a page turner, even more than the last two, and you really want to find out what happens next. Also, his exposition, though frequent and voluminous, can be quite interesting. Not so much worldbuilding as a world textbook. Yen’s translation is quite good. Note they have a company policy of no honorifics, so Misaka Imouto is Little Misaka, and Kuroko says Big Sister rather than Oneesama. I think this is fine, though don’t be surprised if I tend towards what I’m familiar with in future reviews. More importantly, Misaka Imouto’s eccentric speech pattern is kept intact, which is hopeful news for Last Order fans waiting for Volume 5.

If you haven’t read any Index and want a volume that will show you why it’s popular, skip the first two and get this one. It really is excellent. Also, a reminder that Touma and Index spend the entire volume carrying cats around.

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

Writing something that is merely one part of a massive media franchise can in many ways be even more difficult than it is to create an original story – even if you’re the original creator. The writer has to balance out giving the fans who know everything already exactly what they’ve been expecting, and trying to create a space where new readers who may pick up the book sight unseen are encouraged to continue. Kagerou Daze is one of these books. It’s based on a series of songs created for the Vocaloid series, which became wildly popular. They thus spawned this light novel series (6+ volumes), a manga adaptation (also 6+ volumes), and an anime series with a completely different name (Mekakucity Actors, complete in one season and highly controversial.)

The novel is told in two parts, essentially. The first concerns Shintaro, a young man who has been holed up in his room for the past two years and whose narration verges on the histrionic, and Ene, his sentient AI whose job is apparently to annoy him so much that he forgets to be depressed. When his keyboard and mouse are damaged and the Obon holiday means he actually has to leave the house to replace them, he goes to a department store and gets caught up in one of the stupider terrorist attacks I’ve ever seen. The second and third sections are narrated by his sister Momo, a pop idol despite her best efforts who is having tremendous trouble dealing with the fame and the fact that she apparently causes it without really knowing why. She meets up with a group of teens who all have superpowers stemming from their eyes, and finds they can teach her how to control her own abilities to make everyone watch her.

So far so good, and the characters are all mostly likeable, though I think the guy whose outward persona is ‘be a jerk until people relax around each other’ is trying a bit too hard. There’s typical anime ‘types’ here – said jerk; the grumpy NEET; the ditzy younger sister (I know she’s bad in school, but 2 out of 100 is pushing it); the stoic girl with a side of tsundere, the shy to the point of extremes girl. The problem for me is that after finishing the first book (it’s quite short, probably the shortest of the recent Yen On releases), I’m not actually remotely sure where it’s going or what the plot is. There’s a cliffhanger ending of a sort, involving danger to someone we’ve never met before. There’s also interludes featuring a young sort-of couple who are apparently reliving the same trip to the park over and over again, possibly as one of them keeps dying, and it’s almost Higurashi-esque.

It’s diffuse. There’s very little to hang your hat on, so to speak. As I said above, these are based on a series of songs that, taken together, tell a sort of plot. I admit after listening to the first, “Artificial Enemy”, I am very glad that the creator chose to not end it by killing off the AI, who is annoying but probably the most amusing part of the cast. But it reads very much like a series where the author knows he can take his time to draw the plot out over several books as he has a built-in audience which will get it no matter what. That could be the case here as well – Kagerou Daze has over 2K stories on Fanfiction.net, even more than Sword Art Online. I just wish I knew more about what was going on.