Sean Gaffney

By Wataru Watanabe. Released in Japan in two separate volumes by Akita Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Champion. Released in North America by Yen Press.

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.

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

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.

By Ume Aoki. Released in Japan as “Hidamari Sketch” by Houbunsha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Manga Time Kirara Carat. Released in North America by Yen Press.

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.

By Hajime Isayama. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Bessatsu Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

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.

By Fujino Omori and Suzuhito Yasuda. Released in Japan as “Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darou ka?” by Softbank Creative. Released in North America by Yen On.

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.

By Shiden Kanzaki and Saki Ukai. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen Press.

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.

By Shigeru Mizuki. Released in Japan as “Gekiga Hitler”by Jitsugyou no Nihonsha, serialized in the magazine Manga Sunday. Released in North America by Drawn and Quarterly.

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.