Sean Gaffney

By CLAMP. Released in Japan by Kadokawa Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young Ace. Released in North America by Dark Horse.

And so, after a 10-year hiatus, Legal Drug returns, with added plot! It began right about the time that xxxHOLIC was wrapping up in Young Magazine, which is appropriate given the similarity between the two series. Indeed, CLAMP underlines this by having Watanuki show up in the middle of this first volume, assigning the team a task that he, being unable to leave the shop, cannot accomplish himself. It’s somewhat disappointing that the Watanuki we see her is the post-series calm, reserved, smirking Watanuki, as of course during most of the best parts of xxxHOLIC, he and Kazahaya were like peas in a pod – little balls of frustration and anger who screamed at their close friend/rival whenever life became too much for them, which was all the time.

I had thought that the art style would be greatly changed from the first 3 volumes in the past, but it turns out that’s just the cover, which has our heroes prettied up and I suspect is drawn by another member of the team. Once inside the art is much the same as it was before, although 10 years more experience has made Nekoi’s eye for composition even better than it was before. As with so much CLAMP, this is simply pretty to look at, with even noble suffering being given a languorous tone, and where smoke wafting around the room can have a smirking quality to it, just like its owner. And, of course, where a crow being ripped apart by human hands can also looks quite pretty, if devastating.

One problem with Legal Drug is that its main ‘plot’, so to speak, was very much held back, with the series kept on as a ‘monster of the week’ sort of story till it found its feet – and then, of course, came the hiatus. Now that it’s returned, we thankfully don’t need that incubation period, and a lot of what was suggested in the first series is brought into sharper relief here. Rikuo has someone (sister or lover, I’m not sure), who he keeps searching for even though all signs point to her being dead. Kazahaya has a sister he loves dearly but who he is desperately hiding from, and the cliffhanger of the book shows us why. And the shop the two work in seems to have been created as a place for the two of them to have their Big Destiny together – Kakei and Saiga are just helping them along.

There’s a lot less humor here as well, sadly – the amusing overreactions are kept to a minimum, and Rikuo outright gets a prophecy that says he has to make an impossible choice and will fall into despair no matter what. It works out, though, because the two leads seem better equipped to deal with whatever tragedy comes their way. Kazahaya is still impulsive, but not to the point of being socially inept like in Legal Drug. Rikuo is stoic, but is actually bothering to explain things to Kazahaya this time around instead of merely rescuing and smirking at him. They FEEL more like the two chained by destiny that they’re supposed to be.

So in the end, Drug & Drop is much like its earlier incarnation, only more serious and with better written characters. I can’t guarantee it will end well, given my experience with CLAMP’s endings over the years, but for now let’s just enjoy the ride.

By CLAMP. Released in Japan by Kadokawa Shoten, serialized in the magazine Asuka. Released in North America by Dark Horse.

I had first read Legal Drug when it came out from Tokyopop back in the day, but I have to admit it didn’t leave as strong an impression on me. Possibly it was too BL for my tastes (I was so much younger them), or possibly I wasn’t taken with the lack of forward plot progression. These days, though, it’s hard not to read Legal Drug and think to yourself “…this is just xxxHOLIC, only a lot gayer, right?” Legal Drug went on ‘hiatus’ in 2003, right around the time CLAMP were arguing with Kadokawa about the ending to X. Coincidentally, around the same time, xxxHOLIC started in Young Magazine, and also featured a grumpy hero who likes to shout and his cooler, more stoic friend solving supernatural mysteries at the behest of an eccentric mentor.

When this series first came out, CLAMP’s work sort of subdivided into two main groups separated by art: there were the books that looked like Magic Knight Rayearth and X, and the books that looked like Suki and Legal Drug. The latter have Tsubaki Nekoi as their chief artist – as did xxxHOLIC, come to that. Her style has evolved a lot over the years, though, and it felt nostalgic to go back and see the cuteness in the character designs for Kazahaya and Rikuo. This isn’t as fluffy as Suki, though – there’s a lot of deep subtextual backstory here, very little of which is actually wrapped up. Rikuo is desperately looking for a woman everyone thinks is dead. Kazehaya is hiding from his sister, who he seems to love dearly, and who loves him just as dearly – in fact, possibly a bit too dearly? As for the owner of the shop where they work, Kakei, he seems familiar, and you might find yourself wondering if he’s from another CLAMP title.

Speaking of which, there was actually less crossover from other CLAMP works than I’d expected here. The most obvious one is from Suki, but that makes perfect sense in a meta way: the plot requires Kazehaya to have a high school girl give him her uniform at graduation, in exchange for a cute outfit. There is literally NO ONE IN THE WORLD who would be naive enough to do this – except Hina, of course. CLAMP readers who might have found this unbelievable now smile and nod, as all is right in the world.

I joked in some earlier posts about the BL quotient of Legal Drug compared to xxxHOLIC, but re-reading it really brought it home. Compared to this series, xxxHOLIC is straight as an arrow. Kazehaya is a social misfit (from what little background is revealed, he seems to have grown up with only his sister and no one else till about 6 months ago), and Rikuo doesn’t seem to care about much (though does show a preference for teasing Kazehaya). But Kakei and Saiga are clearly a couple, which is why I was trying to figure out what series they’d been in before, and the last third of this omnibus is set in a boys’ school where one of the students straight up admits they all get into relationship0s as there are no girls around. (Given the sheer amount of yuri titles that use the same approach, it’s nice to see things reversed here.)

The supernatural mysteries are excellent, and sometimes creepy, as you’d expect from a series whose spiritual sequel was xxxHOLIC. But the main reason to read Legal Drug is the character interaction, which can range from hilarious to heartbreaking. And now, of course, we get to see the actual sequel, as Drug & Drop began in Young Ace (thus changing genres from shoujo to seinen, though there appears to be no difference in content) in 2011. We’ll come back here soon to see how the years have changed our two leads.

By Sabu Routa. Released in Japan by Ichijinsha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Comic Yuri Hime. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

I was in a somewhat cranky mood when I read Citrus, so wasn’t as appreciative of it as I could have been. The cover makes it seem a bit more salacious than it actually is, though that may change later. The back cover copy tells us it’s reminiscent of Girl Friends and Strawberry Panic, which is certainly true in terms of genre. But as I read it, I realized it felt more like standard shoujo with a female lead who fights back against the system and changes in her life. If it weren’t for the yuri, this could have been written by Natsumi Ando. And thus the difference between this and, say, Girl Friends is the level of drama it brings to the table.

Yuzu has just moved to an all-girls’ school, and finds that the strict regulations pretty much demand she change everything about herself. Things aren’t helped by the class president, Mei, who appears to be rather uptight and straightlaced, but is apparently having a secret relationship with the teacher. She then returns home to find that her mother, who has recently remarried (the father is absent, and honestly the mother seems a bit not all there), has asked her new stepdaughter to stay with them. No prizes for guessing who it is. Then when Yuzu, who acts worldly but isn’t, talks about a magical first kiss, Mei shuts her up by kissing her.

I like Yuzu. She’s a good heroine, easily outraged, emotional and exasperated. She is perhaps portrayed as a bit too naive, but the whole “ah, so this is what love feels like” situation is a staple of shoujo manga. In fact, most of the situations we see here are staples of shoujo rather than yuri (though the genres overlap quite a bit): outing the sleazy teacher, the threat of expulsion for doing what’s right rather than following the rules, the jealous classmate catching the lead couple in the classroom and staring at the cliffhanger ending of the volume with an “I will DESTROY her” expression…

Mei is harder to like right away, but that’s because she’s the repressed, stoic one. Her kissing of Yuzu seems oddly out of character, and you get the impression she did it entirely to drive her away and shut her up rather than out of any lingering affection. The trouble is that she also lit a fuse in Yuzu, and now has to take responsibility for Yuzu’s turbulent feelings. (This makes up the other half of the cliffhanger in Vol. 1.) She’s not quite the Sachiko-type – not enough oneesama tendencies for that – but close, and I fear that dealing with Yuzu and all her extroversion will lead to Vol. 2’s crisis point.

So as I said at the start, Citrus is a decent shoujo potboiler of a manga. It’s not very original, but that’s not unusual. If you like dramatic shoujo, and don’t mind the leads both being girls, this is a title you may want to check out. If you like yuri, of course, you’ve probably already read it by now.

(Oh yes, and Harumin is fantastic. She’s the Tsutako of the series, and plays her role admirably.)

Story by Ryukishi07; Art by Soichiro. Released in Japan in two separate volumes as “Umineko no Naku Koro ni: Alliance of the Golden Witch” by Square Enix, serialized in the magazine Gangan Online. Released in North America by Yen Press.

This review is a couple of months late, partly as so many others things came out at the same time, but mostly as this particular Umineko arc is so hard to read. Like Higurashi’s third arc, the Curse Killing Chapter, this arc deals extensively with abuse, particularly child abuse. Ange is bullied at school to the point where she wishes out loud for death, and the “magic” that she was once able to manipulate is lost to pure despair. Likewise, Maria can’t simply paper over her relationship with Rosa anymore, and when her mother goes too far, Maria’s wellspring of rage threatens to overwhelm the entire book.

One of the key features in Umineko is ridiculous over-the-top melodrama, and for the most part it’s been well-balanced between ridiculous light-heartedness and Grand Guignol awful violence. This volume, though, like the previous one, alters the original visual novel’s structure. The first omnibus was almost all Ange, with Battler and Beatrice relegated to the very end. Here it’s Ange’s struggles in 1998 that are missing – you’d be forgiven for thinking that she had genuinely been transported to Battler’s game, as we see nothing of her search with Amakusa to find the truth of what happened 12 years earlier. While I realize that these manga are done with the approval and supervision of Ryukishi07 (though not as much as the heavily rewritten 7th and 8th arcs), I wish that they’d kept the timeline of the original work.

Thematically we get more examination of what Magic is and how it can help you… and when it can’t. One of the most important scenes in the book is when Ange, tormented by the constant bullying she gets at school, orders the Stakes to kill all her classmates. It’s up to Mammon to state the obvious – they can’t do it as Ange is unable to commit murder. Magic may be able to hide actions in some other guise, but the responsibility remains with whoever uses it. And this shatters Ange, whose struggle to avoid crushing sadness and loathing is lost here. Likewise, once Maria faces the severed head of Sakutarou, ripped apart by Rosa in one of her angry rages (speaking of which, I wish we had a better look at Maria seeing it as a human severed head Rosa is holding up – censorship, I suspect, but another lost opportunity), there’s nothing left for her but dark magic, the magic of murdering people. And the fact that she kills her mother over and over again in the magical world shows she has the killing intent Ange doesn’t.

The other very important scene here is the one between Ange and Lambdadelta. Lambda has been shown to be cruel when it serves her purpose, and she’s incredibly cruel to Ange here, but she’s also trying to tell her the truth, which Bernkastel is avoiding in order to make Ange the perfect pawn. Nothing Ange does here can affect her own future. This isn’t Higurashi, where everything snaps back each time. Even if Ange somehow arranges it so no one dies in 1986, the her of 1998 can’t go back. This Ange is essentially doomed, something Lambda gleefully points out, before offering her own deal – keep the game going forever, with no winner or loser. It’s a sign of how much Ange has lost that she’s sorely tempted.

Of course, there’s also the problem of October 4th, and Beatrice’s game. We get a new Truth introduced here, the Blue Truth (again, colored ink is expensive, so have a different font). It allows the game to move faster, but I suspect won’t end well for Beatrice. We also get more sacrifices, and a focus on George and Jessica, who have to fight to prove they can be family head, and also for their loved ones. (For those who were expecting a focus on Kyrie, while she does get more attention here, there isn’t nearly as much as there was on the other three mothers in the first three arcs. It’s almost suspicious…) Of course, this whole volume is devoted to cruel reality. And thus, we do not end with Jessica and George being awesome, but rather with their sudden death.

We’ve got one more omnibus to go (well, for this arc – fear not, End is solicited), and at this point it’s all up to Battler. He’s been given a lot of help, things have been made more obvious, but does he really have the desire to win? And does he know what winning will cost him? As for this manga adaptation, I’ve mentioned my reservations with this adaptation, but that’s mostly as I’ve read the visual novel. For new readers, they may not notice. In the end, this is a hard arc to read, but it’s essential to understand what’s going on.

(One last whine: the manga left out the ridiculous parody fight between Krauss and the Goat. I may never forgive it for that.)

By Q Hayashida. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in a Shogakukan magazine to be named later. Released in North America by Viz.

I pretty much had my jaw on the floor through this entire volume, though halfway through it changed from boggling at Nikaido to boggling at Kai and company. As always with Dorohedoro, there’s a lot going on and it’s pretty unforgiving to those who don’t remember previous volumes, but that doesn’t stop it from being a stunning read every time. In addition, we get another reminder that behind all these masks, many of the main characters are female. Gender reveals of Nikaido and Noi occupied Volume 1, but Hayashida still enjoys doing it, so we get two more here (though I think we already knew them and I had forgotten).

A couple of vlumes ago I had discussed Nikaido dealing wht her past and childhood, and how the misuse of her magic led to her best friend being erased from existence. This in turn led to her suppressing her own powers. So now that her power is needed, we have to have some shock therapy to speed things along. I could have done without the attempted rape dream sequence, to be honest, but it is a dream sequence, and ends up being more about Nikaido confronting her own fears and demons. Once that happens, not only is she gaining the abilities (and looks!) of a devil, but her power is now kind of scary. We see this as she returns to her own past, and this time manages to save her childhood friend and set time right (sort of). Nikaido’s abuse of time powers was a powerful message in the earlier books, but it’s now come full circle, and I was stunned.

Meanwhile, most of the second half of the volume deals with Kai’s rampage against sorcerers, who he and his gang have been slowly killing off. Dokuga and company are feeling a bit uncomfortable with this, but “the boss” is still “the boss”. Natsumi has disappeared, though, and just isn’t answering her calls. There’s an air of something about to snap here, and it all comes to a head in Tanba’s restaurant (also providing a good excuse to put him on the cover), with a huge fight that ends with Kai getting his face literally cut off by Kirion… not that this stops him, as several more heads (apparently devil tumors?) arise from the wreckage, and now Kai seems to be Aikawa. The whole Kai/Ai/Caiman/Aikawa thing the series has been playing with is about as close to getting confirmed as possible here.

The remains of En’s merry band don’t get as much to do here, though they do send Fujita off on a reconnaissance mission to find En’s devil tumor. No one is more surprised at this than Fujita himself, but Sho informs him that he is “the one who loves En’s family the most’, which is really sweet. Oh, and in case you were wondering about Ebisu, she provides the best moments of humor, with her puppet conversations, and also a brief moment of heartwarming, as she wishes Fujita good luck after he’s left (because God forbid he should hear her or something).

When Dorohedoro finishes, it’s going to be one of those series that’s amazing to marathon in one whole sitting. Till then, we are grateful for getting these volumes at four-month intervals, and the next one can’t come fast enough.

By Aya Shouoto. Released in Japan as “Junketsu + Kareshi” by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Aria. Released in North America by Yen Press.

In general, when I’m reading a manga I am looking for an entertaining story that draws me in and makes me want to read more. The originality of that story, however, is way down on my list of necessities. I don’t need a title to be different from all those other titles, I just want it to be well-told. So don’t take it the wrong way when I say that there really isn’t much that is original in this series at all. The author is quite familiar to these shores, as Kiss of the Rose Princess, which runs in Asuka, came out a month or so ago. This is a more serious story so far, though there are light-hearted moments. But for the most part, as I went through I was quite happy with what I was reading, even if I kept thinking “This reminds me of Vampire Knight” or “This is just like Millennium Snow”.

Kana is a tomboy-ish heroine, popular at school, who seems to be good at everything, to the point where she joins three clubs a day to help out, then just as swiftly leaves. Of course, this is actually the result of not one but TWO tragic pasts – as a child, she was in a fire that took the life of two twins she was best friends with, and later, while running track, a delinquent’s misfired prank (also involving fire) results in a broken leg AND ligament tear, ending her career. So she’s at a loss in regards to life. The delinquent is still around, trying to make amends as he clearly is starting to fall for her, but that doesn’t seem to be where this story is going. No, instead she runs into one of the twins, now alive – and a vampire!

I frequently joke about titles being licensed only because there are vampires in it, but they’re a popular fictional genre, allowing readers to indulge in forbidden sexuality and darkness. The scenes of Aki (said vampire) biting Kana are drawn sensuously, and you can tell that there’s more pleasure than pain at work here. There’s a certain amount of subservience here – Aki declares Kana is his thrall, and describes her as his “food”. But the narrative starts pushing back against that fairly quickly – he’s clearly acting distant to cover up his feelings, and when he gets into a fight with Jin (the delinquent I mentioned earlier), Kana shows that she will not be content to simply stand there. Actually, the way she stops the fight is really clever, and my favorite part of the book.

There’s a lot of plot hints dropped here that I’m sure will play out in future volumes. Jin transformed into a wolf-man hybrid towards the end (see why I mentioned Millennium Snow?), Aki’s twin Eriya seems to be alive but in some sort of stasis (or perhaps evil?), and we see someone who seems to be either Aki’s boss or enemy clearly dislike what he’s doing (because of course vampires have rules that cannot be broken.) That said, the series (just ended in Japan) is 10 volumes long, so I imagine we’ll get our answers soon. There’s a lot of stuff you’ve seen before in this series, but it’s told well, and for me that’s what matters. Recommended, particularly if you like supernatural romance.

By Naoki Urasawa, Hokusei Katsushika, and Takashi Nagasaki. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Big Comic Original. Released in North America by Viz Media.

A long awaited release on these shores, this is the sort of title that you’d have expected to be licensed back in the old Viz days of the early to mid 90s, filled with Crying Freeman and Mai the Psychic Girl. The series had an anime in the 1990s, but by then the fashion for seinen had passed, and it’s taken a resurgence, helped by the cult popularity of 20th Century Boys and Monster, to see the series out here at last as a deluxe Signature edition. There’s also some question over the actual creation. When it came out in the late 80s, it was credited to Katsushika as the writer and Urasawa as the artist. After Katsushika’s death, Urasawa claimed that they’d fought early in the series, and from that point Urasawa did the story himself, a viewpoint which has led to some criticism. Also, the third author on the cover is the writer for the CURRENT Master Keaton revival, which started in 2012, and which… isn’t this. (As with many Signature releases of older works, this is a release of the Japanese re-release, which may have updated art/storylines.)

What is this, then? It’s been called “Indiana Jones manga”, but I’d compare it to another 80s icon, MacGyver. Taichi Keaton is a former SAS soldier turned freelance insurance investigator for Lloyd’s of London. He looks into wrongful death claims, art forgeries, and archaeological digs, all the while finding trouble and managing to maneuver his way out of it by virtue of his amazing survival skills. Sadly, he’s not nearly so competent in his personal live, being divorced and having a teenage daughter, Yuriko, who seems to find her father admirable and aggravating in equal measures.

I understand her frustration. Keaton is a man who it’s easy to admire but hard to like. His lax personality was highly popular at the time, and makes a nice change from, say, Golgo 13 (a series Katsushika also wrote for) or Crying Freeman. These days I think a reader might find it trying, especially his obsession with his ex-wife getting together with someone else (we never see the wife, and actually it occurs to me that Yuriko may have made the whole thing up to attempt to spur him into action). Later in the volume we see Keaton’s father, whose name he disavows (he takes his mother’s last name), and he’s also an eccentric, frustrating individual, who Keaton probably takes after more than he’d like. Keaton as a man seems mostly half-baked and half-hearted.

The series is on firmer ground with the mystery stories, which much of the time turn into spy stories. Master Keaton began in 1988, at the tail end of the Cold War, but feels more like an early 80s tale, with the Communists still exerting their hold behind the Iron Curtain. I wonder if we’ll see that change as the series went on – it lasted till 1994. The first few chapters are not fleshed out enough – Keaton is the sort of story that requires a bit of room to breathe, particularly with all the exposition, and it’s no surprise that it’s the multi-chapter works that are the best in the volume.

Master Keaton, in the end, is classic seinen. If I said this was a mystery series in Big Comic Original in the late 80s, the well-read manga fan would likely be able to predict precisely the types of stories you’d see here. But it’s very well-told, as expected from Urasawa, and when he’s not getting involved in personal business, Keaton makes an excellent investigator. I’ll definitely be picking up more.

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

The novels are still running a bit behind the manga here in the West, so much of this review will be discussing how the light novel differs from the first two volumes of the manga that I’ve already reviewed. They mostly hit similar notes – Suguha’s crush on her brother is in full force, Asuna is still trapped in a birdcage, and Sougo is an over-the-top villain – but the ability of prose to let you get inside the heads of its leads allows for a greater depth than the manga had, particularly with Kazuto and Asuna. There’s also some nice discussion of Kazuto’s family beyond his sister, as we see his working mother, who he apparently got his obsession with games from. That said, once Kazuto becomes Kirito, we’re back to this series’ raison d’être, which is watching the boy do awesome things.

The contrast between Kazuto and his MMORPG self didn’t come across as much in the manga as it does here, and it may have been my favorite part of the book. Now that he’s not in Sword Art Online, we’re left with a young teenage boy who’s weaker than he’s been the past two years, unable to decide what to do with his life, and with the one thing he cherished more than anything – Asuna – still far away from him. After meeting Sugou, and hearing about Asuna’s arranged marriage, he almost completely falls apart, sounding nothing like the character we’ve known, not even after the death of Sachi in the previous volume. It’s only when he reached ALfheim Online, the successor to SAO, and can become Kirito again that things change. And change they do – Kirito was pretty confident in the first two books, but here he’s almost cocky, showing off his skills (ported over from SAO, for reasons unknown to him) and cleaning house.

As for Asuna, her POV also benefits the story. She goes through the same crisis that Kazuto did earlier in the book, being trapped with only the monstrous Sugou for company and not even being sure if her love is alive. Once Sugou attempts to break her will by saying he is (cartoon villains always seem to make this mistake), she gains new strength, and it’s immediately put to good use – her use of game mechanics and environment to find a way to escape her cage is brilliant, and shows that she’s more than just a prize waiting for Kirito to rescue her here. (Sugou also gets to be even more horrible here – the scenes of him touching her, trying to go far enough so that she’ll punch him and thus “justify” using his supposed mind control on her sooner, are true nightmare fuel.)

Suguha/Leafa is the new character here, and like the other two we enjoy getting inside her head. She’s startled at her brother’s sudden kendo skills, picked up by sheer muscle memory from his days in SAO. The family revelations, which he knew about but didn’t tell her about, also have thrown her off kilter, and that combined with the onset of puberty has led to her accepting that she has feelings for Kazuto – but she can see he’s clearly in love with Asuna. She’s very similar to her brother, and it’s no surprise that when she plays ALO in an attempt to understand what he enjoyed about it, she too got very good very fast and is one of the top players in the game.

If you hated the Fairy Dance arc of the anime, then reading the light novel will probably not change your minds. If you enjoyed aspects of it but felt it fell short, given this version a try. It may read like wish-fulfillment fanfic, but there’s nothing wrong with that if it interests the reader, and I’m still greatly enjoying Kirito, Asuna and Leafa’s adventures. This is a 2-part book, so in April we’ll find how things wrap up.