Sean Gaffney

By Takaya Kagami, Yamato Yamamoto, and Daisuki Furuya. Released in Japan as “Owari no Seraph” by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Jump Square. Released in North America by Viz.

I’m always a little bit wary when I see more than two names on a book’s cover, particularly when it’s a manga and yet one of the names is credited for ‘storyboards’. I checked to see if this is based off of an anime or video game property, but apparently not. Its author does specialize in light novels, however, most recently Itsuka Tenma no Kuro Usagi, which got an anime. The artist seems to specialize in adapting light novels as well, having drawn Kure-nai for Jump Square as well. And now we get Owari no Seraph, which already has its own spin-off light novel focusing on the commander we briefly see being an ass to our hero. The manga itself, though, focuses on three core people.

Of course, they aren’t the three people that you might expect when you pick up this volume. We meet our antisocial hero, Yu, as a young boy growing up in an orphanage along with several other children. They live in a world where vampires have taken over after a virus killed everyone over the age of thirteen. Together with his strategist best friend, Mika, and his likely love interest, Akane, he will find a way to fight back against those who… oh wait, everyone except him just died. Nevermind. What this is actually about is Yu four years later, forced by the military that he hooked up with upon escaping to attend school in order to cure his jerkass tendencies and make friends. And perhaps kill a few vampires along the way.

It’s hard to read this series and not be reminded a little of Attack on Titan. The vampires aren’t nearly as impossible to kill as the Titans, but that’s made up for by Yu’s berzerker rage whenever he sees them – he’s not quite as bad as Eren, but it’s a close thing. He’s also part of a friendship trio, though they don’t have the strong bond Eren, Mikasa and Armin do – at least not yet. Shinoa, who seems to be his minder, exists mostly to point out when he’s being stupid and watch him do it anyway. Yoichi is the stock earnest, bullied character, whose idealism will no doubt contrast with the cynical viewpoint of the other two. They’re all likeable, or at least will be once Yu sheds a lot of the walls he’s put up around him, which I suspect will happen soon.

Amongst this background, there’s some interesting worldbuilding (the world’s population has been decimated, so everyone is encouraged to repopulate the Earth – this is mostly an excuse to have Shinoa get away with calling Yu a virgin constantly), some well-choreographed fight scenes (perhaps this is where the storyboarder came in), and some disturbing horror, as you’d expect from a series where the vampires are, for once, the bad guys. Though the cliffhanger for this volume makes me wonder how long that villainy will truly last. If you like Attack on Titan, or maybe Blue Exorcist, another series which this seems similar to, give Seraph of the End a try – it’s a strong, solid first volume.

By Eiichiro Oda. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz.

One Piece may go beyond the typical shonen manga most of the time, but that doesn’t mean it’s above many of the standard cliches. Being a Jump Manga, it is firmly in the cliche of “Friendship, training, Victory”. Oda is not above fanservice for fanservice’s sake either, as we see in the Gulliver’s Travels parody with Robin and the Tontattas. That said, when you read this volume and realize that Oda is beginning a Tournament Arc, it’s somewhat surprising to see that he waited this long. Technically, I suppose the Davy Back Fight may count as well, but no one really thinks of that anymore except to remember Afro Luffy. This one is clearly in it for the long haul, with dozens of named contestants, many of whom look to actually be important so we will have to try to remember them. Oh dear.

Most major arcs in One Piece start with a lot of stuff all happening at once, but Dressrosa’s arc manages to top that, as we’re also dealing with fallout from the last arc. Law is bringing Caesar Clown to Donflamingo for a hostage negotiation, and decides the best way to do this is for the Straw Hats to split up. Naturally, it takes about two seconds for everyone to go off and do their own thing, but hey, he tried. By the end of the volume Zoro is running through town with a Tontatta, getting lost as usual; Sanji has hooked up with a gorgeous woman who will no doubt take advantage of him but I suspect he doesn’t care; Franky is busy actually findning out about the plot and backstory needed for this arc (there’s something very odd about this being an Island of Toys, some of whom seem far too human); Nami, Chopper and brook are back on the ship having little to do (I hope more happens next time)…

And then we have the other two groups, who get the lion’s share of what’s going on. Law, Robin, Usopp and Caesar are headed for the rendezvous point, and increasingly are becoming aware this is a trap. They get split off even more when Usopp and Robin are captured by Tontattas, the One Piece version of Liliputians, who actually manage to achieve something major by forcing Robin to have pop-eyed reactions at their naivete. It’s still within the realm of human normal, but for Robin it’s the most emotive we’ve ever seen her, I think. As for Luffy, he’s disguised (poorly) as Lucy, a gladiator taking part in the tournament. As I said, we meet dozens of competitors (I suspect the gorgeous female fighter will be relevant later), but the most interesting is the return of one of Luffy’s earlier enemies. Remember that jerk that Luffy one-shot KO’d in Volume 25? Yes, Bellamy the Hyena is back, and he’s matured – Luffy even roots for him! He doesn’t win, but it’s always nice to see characters at least go from villainous to less villainous.

If there’s a drawback to this volume, it’s that there’s almost too much going on – I suspect I will enjoy it more when the arc is over and I can go back and find all the foreshadowing that I’m not picking up right now. But even a chaotic overcomplicated One Piece is still one of the best titles out there. Don’t stop yourself from picking this up.

By Bisco Hatori. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine LaLa DX. Released in North America by Viz Media.

This release of the third volume of Millennium Snow, along with an omnibus re-release of the first two volumes, gives us a unique glimpse into the world of manga publishing. Here we have a small series by an author which, halfway through, stopped for 10 years as suddenly a one-shot by the author blew up into a much MORE popular series (Ouran High School Host Club). After Ouran finished, the author returned to Millennium Snow, but brought with her ten extra years of talent and experience. What’s more, Viz has a similar arc – the first two volumes of this series came out seven years ago, but that was all there was until just last year, and it’s been long enough that they can’t rely on the buyer having the old volumes. So how does the older half of this supernatural shoujo series match up with the new volume?

Hatori admitted that she had a great deal of difficulty re-reading the old volumes to refamiliarize herself with the plot and characters, as she was taken aback by how poor it seemed to her now. I can see her point, though it’s certainly readable enough. The differences between the first chapter and one of the chapters in the third volume are startling. This can even be seen on the omnibus covers, as the three leads are drawn in a very sharp, angular style with wide mouths that is also typical of early Ouran, but which she gradually softened over the years. The cover to the third volume, with Toya lying on the ground being tortured and gorgeous, is far more mature – and also far prettier.

The changes don’t just limit themselves to the art, though. The first two volumes of this series are pretty good – I really love the heroine, Chiyuki, particularly after she recovers and starts to act like the energetic, snarky girl she’s always wanted to be. but you get the sense that Hatori wasn’t quite sure where she wanted to go with this series. Clearly it will end next volume with Toya and Chiyuki together for the next thousand years, as is fairly blatantly signposted from the start. However, the first half reads like a shoujo romance, with various young men coming into (or returning to) Chiyuki’s life to make things difficult for her and Toya. It’s told fairly well, but it’s pretty standard.

The third volumes switches gears, turning more towards an examination of Toya himself, as well as the supernatural world around him. Instead of potential boyfriends swarming around Chiyuki, we how have almost a yokai series, as Toya and Chiyuki investigate various supernatural events. Toya is also opening up his worldview, not just to Chiyuki but in general, and becoming less lonely as a result. It’s no coincidence that Satsuki, the werewolf boy who’s introduced as the main rival for Chiyuki in the early parts of the series, has a much smaller role in the third volume – there’s no real need for him to be there anymore.

Millennium Snow is a good read if you’re a fan of Hatori’s Host Club series, or like supernatural romances. But it’s also a great read because you see an artist return to a work she had to abandon for so long and not only pick up seamlessly where she left off, but raise it to a higher level. It’s not perfect (I just didn’t care for Yamimaru, whose cutesy accent didn’t help things), but it’s still above-average shoujo.

By Girls Und Panzer Project and Ryohichi Saitaniya. Released in Japan by Media Factory, serialization ongoing in the magazine Comic Flapper. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

I wasn’t sure what to think of this title when I first saw it. It’s based off of an anime, though the fact that the story is by a ‘Prroject’ team clearly says they had multimedia franchise planned from the start. It’s also a moe manga about tanks, and I had assumed it would be similar to Strike Witches, a moe anime about fighter planes. This time, though, the girls are not anthropomorphic personifications, there’s no horribly gratuitous fanservice, and the cuteness actually welds itself into the story with no great effort. By the end of Volume 1, I was surprised to see how much I had enjoyed reading it.

This is not to say that the premise is not inherently RIDICULOUS. In fact, its very ridiculousness was one of the things that appealed to me before I read it. It takes place in a world much like ours except that, similar to flower arranging and tea ceremony, tank driving is a feminine art that all proper young ladies must know. Our heroines form a tank team at their high school and engage in mock combats, all the while extolling the virtues of tanks. If you can’t buy into this premise, this is definitely not the manga for you. It’s also not shy about its fetishing of tanks – there’s minimal fanservice of the girls here, but that’s possibly due to the long, lingering shots of treads and turret guns we see here – for once, we may have a moe manga where the cute girls doing cute things is just a spice.

I understand that the anime follows Miho, the shy but determined girl who seems to have some sort of tragic tank backstory. In the manga, however, she’s more of the cool and awesome sempai of the group. The manga’s viewpoint character is Yukari, who likes tanks a WHOOOOOLE lot, to the point where she’s alienated all of her old classmates. Thus she is over the moon to be attending a school where she can gush about tanks and not be shunned (though the others do think she goes a bit overboard). Yukari is fun, a loud, energetic tank otaku who gets to react a lot, just what you like in a typical cute heroine. The rest of the main cast includes Saori, who is on the lookout for cute boyfriends; Hana, who is the yamato nadesico of the group, and Mako, who seems to be combining the emotionless stoic and the odd weirdo into one cast member. I like her best, probably.

As I said before, what I think I like most about this manga adaptation is that it doesn’t do what I expected (note: this is Volume 1. Future volumes may make me eat my words). There are no long nude bath scenes, no one is groping everyone else’s boobs, no one trips and falls over all the time. It’s just girls and tanks, and mock battles (with hopefully mock ammo – it’s never made clear how injury is avoided). More to the point, the fact that it’s not focusing on the obvious lead character – Miho – gives it a sort of off-kilter perspective I enjoyed quite a bit. It may become more cliched later on, but for now, if you like a gonzo premise, girls being pretty awesome, and don’t mind a lot of tank warfare, this is a title for you.

By Hikaru Suruga and Gun Snark (Nitroplus). Released in Japan as “Shingeki no Kyojin Gaiden – Kuinaki Sentaku” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Aria. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

Given what the fandom is like, both in the West and in Japan, a spinoff of Attack on Titan featuring Levi is possibly the most obvious moneymaker in the history of time itself. He’s the most popular character by a factor of two over everyone else, and his backstory has not been covered by the main manga itself (though that may be changing soon). Based on a visual novel that was released with one of the DVDs, this manga tells the story of how Levi came to join the survey corps, what his motivations may have been, and his complicated relationship with Erwin Smith, the other lead character shown here.

Not that those are the only two characters. Levi is shown to be living in the underground slums as we open this volume, surviving with the help of some purloined vertical maneuvering gear and two other friends. The friends are a lot of fun. Isabel is young, full of spunk and energy, and a tomboy that Levi probably sees as a younger sister type. Furlan is more sensible, and seems to be the one with the plan the three of them come up with – Levi is a bit too pinpoint obsessed to really be far-thinking. The three of them make a very good team, both before and after they join the survey team. That said, the narrative is telegraphing Isabel and Furlan’s deaths by the end of the next volume, so I will be VERY surprised if they both make it past Volume 2.

The other half of the narrative is Erwin and his political machinations, which is something that we already get plenty of in the main story, but it’s always nice to see. The Survey Corps is constantly in danger of being dissolved, so he has to resort to scurrilous means of getting what he wants (including blackmail and threats). His recruitment of Levi and his friends is important – he needs people not only talented enough to kill titans, but driven enough to kill them. Levi certainly qualifies – the final battle with the titan at the end of this book is riveting, and shows off how talented Levi and his friends are in comparison to everyone else.

You could argue that Levi is a little too perfect and awesome, and you’d be right – but given this is a title dedicated to showing him off, and it runs in the shoujo magazine Aria, what did you expect? (Yes, No Regrets is a shoujo title. Shelve it next to Kitchen Princess.) There’s not only a lot of fast, thrilling action but scenes such as Levi getting dressed up in his ‘cleaning clothes’, which serves no point except to have the reader go ‘kyaa!’. You just roll with it, and you’ll find it’s a lot of fun. For those looking for other cast members, you won’t find many – Hange is here, but she only appears a couple of times and has no lines. But that’s OK, as Levi and Erwin can carry this on their own.

For Attack on Titan fans, particularly those who like Levi, this is a must-buy. For anyone else, it’s worth a shot – the Titans themselves only pop up towards the end, and most of the volume is devoted to setting up the odd mentor relationship between Erwin and Levi. It should end with Volume 2, so I’m expecting a lot of bad things to happen next time.

By Ichihei Ishibumi, Zero Miyama, and Hiroji Mishima. Released in Japan by Fujimi Shobo, serialization ongoing in the magazine Dragon Age. Released in North America by Yen Press.

Given that the front cover of this new series features a cute young woman with bat wings, and the back cover features that woman plus another one hugging a slightly drooling young man, you can possibly guess not only the genre of this series, but also the plot. It’s your classic harem comedy, with lots of added fantasy this time, where the goal is to see how many different types of women you can have fall in love with the hero without any actual fornication occurring (as even Dragon Age would likely pass on that). So given that, what does High School DxD offer that separates it from Haganai, or Haruhi Suzumiya, or Zero’s Familiar, etc.?

Issei, our hero, seems fairly typical. He’s more at the lecherous end of the scale, constantly going on about breasts and talking about the fact that his dream is to one day have his own harem. Typical loser high schooler, which is why it’s something of a surprise to see him on a date with a gorgeous beauty as the story opens. Who then grows huge black bird wings and stabs him through the chest with a spear made of light, killing him dead. Luckily, he’s in the right series, as he manages to get resurrected and turned into a devil by Rias, the queen of the school and also, as it turns out, a devil. He’s now recruited to her team, along with several other stereotypes, in order to grant wishes for people in exchange for a price.

There’s a bit of discussion of Angels, Fallen Angels and Devils, and, as is typical with Japanese manga that discusses wars between Heaven and Hell, the narrative is firmly on the side of the devils. To be fair, our villains are all carefully chosen to be ‘Fallen’ – a Fallen Angel and an excommunicated exorcist – But I’m fairly certain that when the Angels themselves are introduced, we’ll be seeing them as the enemy as well. I was less impressed with the discussion of Sacred Gears, which is essentially the superpower that each devil has. Humans have them too, and it’s noted that all the really famous people through history are famous because of their Sacred Gear, rather than through, y’know, actual human effort. I’ve always disliked this school of thought, and didn’t like seeing it here.

There is a LOT of fanservice here, as you would expect. Rias is naked quite often through this volume, and does not appear to be remotely embarrassed about Issei seeing her naked body. We also have Akeno, a classic yamato nadesico type who turns out to be a sadist deep down (another common trait in hentai manga, and thus in this toned down harem variant), and Koneko, an Ayanami Rei clone. Interestingly, the last member of our team so far is Kiba, who is male, and reminds me of Koizumi Itsuki from Haruhi a whole hell of a lot, right down to Issei constantly denigrating him in his narration. I assume Kiba will NOT be joining Issei’s harem, though I could be surprised.

At the end of this volume, notably, Issei has not saved the day even once, and his power is shown to be so low that everyone boggles at it. This will change. It’s that sort of story. Not sure if we’ll add victim of the volume to the harem team (she’d fit right in, being a clumsy nun sort of character), but we will no doubt find out in the next volume. As for the series itself, it’s recommended to those who like harem fanservice series with a light fantasy tinge, though given the pages expended on worldbuilding here, the fantasy may be more important than I expect.

Also, I have no idea what the DxD is supposed to mean.

By Atsushi Ohkubo. Released in Japan by Square Enix, serialized in the magazine Shonen Gangan. Released in North America by Yen Press.

So much of what has gotten me addicted to Soul Eater comes to a climax in this volume. The discussion of madness and knowledge, and how the two sometimes interact. The artstyle, which lends an air of disturbing surrealism to any actual depiction of madness on the page, from Crona’s twisted grins of despair to a ball of black poisonous concentrated insanity. And of course we have the culmination of Medusa and Crona’s relationship, which has always been shown to be awful, abusive and toxic, but in the final chapter is given even more nightmarish proportions, to a point where there seems to be only one solution to the whole thing. Killing.

Speaking of madness, though, I liked the battle between Justin and Tezca, particularly with Justin pounding on about faith in the Kishin, and Tezca wondering how strong a faith can be when it simply switches over to the next big powerful thing to fear/worship. There are a lot of terrifying things going on in the Soul Eater universe, so it’s understandable that one would want to ally oneself with the strongest even if it means sacrificing ideals. I’m not really sure Justin had any ideals to begin with, though – the confrontation loses something as it’s sort of obvious that Justin is never going to go back to the side of the heroes.

There is a scene with Sbhinigami and Kid where they argue about whether they should have gone into Baghdad to find the Kishin just because they knew there were anti-DWMA groups there, with Kid noting that they didn’t find anything, and Shinigami saying he was sure they’d find the Kishin there. I’ll just leave that here. Sometimes something is so blatant that even analyzing it would be overdone.

Maka and Soul get some nice stuff as well, with Soul managing to control the madness with in himself, but I want to talk more about Crona. Crona spends the first half of the book using black blood to destroy and drive insane anything that barrels into Crona’s path. Now in Russia, we see an entire city in the Ukraine where the populace are driven into madness and turn into a huge ball of madness. It’s especially chilling as it’s implied that those people can’t be brought back – that they are, essentially, dead. Like Justin, Crona’s last attempts at redemption seem to have come and gone. Unlike Justin, we still have some sympathy for Crona.

Let’s talk about the final chapter, ‘Just A Simple Story About Killing A Person’. It’s a two-hander between Crona and Medusa, who is at her most monstrous here. Crona’s backstory and childhood is every bit as bad as we feared, if not worse – from the stick-figure styled book about different ways to kill, to being starved to death unless Crona kills adorable baby bunnies, it’s all been designed to drive Crona to the very brink of madness, with Maka’s friendship being the only thing that ever held Crona back. And now Medusa needs to complete the descent, and does it in such a clever way, I almost have to admire her loathsome craftiness. She’s died in the series before, but I’m fairly certain that this time she’s died for good. But she got what she wanted – Crona is primed, ready to go, and completely insane.

As I said earlier, the art plays a major role in making this chapter as effective as it is – stick figures have never been so terrifying. And what’s more, it makes for a truly chilling cliffhanger. And next time, we start the final arc. An absolutely essential volume of Soul Eater. Even those who don’t read it should get it for the final chapter of the book.

By Arina Tanemura. Released in Japan as “Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne” by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Ribon. Released in North America by Viz.

When I reviewed the first volume of this Tanemura magical girl title, I noted that her parents splitting up and suddenly moving out of the country looked ‘suspicious’. Well, it turned out to be more prosaic, as in this volume Maron gets notice from her mother that they are indeed getting a divorce, something that sends her running away from everything for a while. I will admit, despite one of those “didn’t you see that they built this amusement part because they love you’ moments, these are still two parents who are not going to be winning awards anytime soon. They’re lucky that Maron has survived with only minor ‘screwed up’ tendencies. The rest of the volume continues to show off Jeanne’s skills as a phantom thief, as well as the author’s skill for giving a touch of darkness to the standard magical girl genre.

Speaking of families, this volume seems to focus on them quite a bit. First Chiaki’s father is possessed by one of the paintings, causing him to kidnap young women and store them in glass cages in his basement (something that really gives maximum creep factor, particularly as his father is such a weirdo to begin with). Then Miyako comes to Jeanne for help, despite their rivalry, and asks her to steal a painting that has corrupted her scientist brother, who is now turning to mad science (complete with “they laughed at me at the academy” overtones). This is all done with maximum threats of peril and also allows Jeanne to show off her skills at being clever, particularly in the first part where she uses the realistic android-like ‘dolls’ to her advantage to pull a switch.

Miyako also gets a side chapter going further into her motivation for chasing Jeanne. I have to say that she’s probably my favorite character in the series, and most of the time she seems to understands how Maron thinks better than she does. There is the small matter of her being unable to connect Maron to Jeanne, but that’s a standard trope of this genre, so I’m inclined to let it slide. (Honestly, given how things are playing out, I would not be surprised if Miyako had figured it out at some point and is just going along with it by now. Particularly when Jeanne is being far too knowledgeable about her brother.)

There is a lot less of the heaven vs. hell aspect in this particular book, with the exception of the final chapter, where Jeanne finds herself in a deathtrap without her transformation abilities or her familiar and has to power up through sheer force of will. This is referred to as “Holy Power”, and seems to delight Finn (who we see far less of this time around, which pleases me as she’s annoying). There is one line that really struck me, however, and I suspect it will be followed up on in the next volume. She’s thanking Chiaki for helping her as Sinbad, and notes “I didn’t know followers of the demon lord used a cross as well.” As she toddles off, Chiaki stares and goes “what is she talking about?” To me this suggests that we’re not looking at a simple battle between heaven and hell. I can’t wait to see more with the next volume.