Sean Gaffney

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

We’ve had a lot of revelations in the last few volumes of Attack on Titan, revelations that the group really haven’t had time to take in what with the kidnappings, fleeing and screaming at each other. And we get one more big one at the end of this volume, as we discover the reason why Eren is so important to the Titan cause (and no, it’s not his temper). Mostly what this volume does, though, is strengthen and reinforce the themes of the series in a ‘battle to the death’ context: friendship vs. duty, love vs. safety, and what it means to be a human.

Let’s start with Ymir, who gets the largest picture on the cover, even if it’s in her titan form. Ymir’s devotion to Historia has been apparent almost from her first appearance, and this volume pretty much spells out how much Historia means to her – she’s willing to side with the rest of the Survey Corps unless Reiner and Bertolt can meet her demands. (This does lead to two of the only pieces of humor in the entire volume – first, when Historia delightedly spots Ymir’s titan only to go ‘eh?’ as she’s promptly swallowed in her mouth; and 2nd, Ymir’s defense of titans, where ‘eating people’ gets a Some Like It Hot response – nobody’s perfect!) Once Ymir and Historia are reunited, they spend no time in trying to out self-sacrifice one another, and Historia shows that the obsession is not merely a we-way street. (I’ll be using Historia, by the way, in the future, as this is the name she now wants to use for herself – Krista is a pseudonym.) In the end, though, they simply CAN’T be together, not right now.

As for Reiner and Bertolt, they’re still guilt ridden over what they had to do, and Bertolt screams out how they don’t enjoy killing anyone and that no one would choose to do this. This doesn’t stop them from needing to take Eren and Historia to the Titans. Armin, who is getting craftier (and more morally grey) with each volume, starts needling them about their comrade Annie, who Armin says is currently being tortured by the scientists back home. I’m not entirely sure this is true – in fact, I highly suspect it is false – but that doesn’t matter. Armin can see how torn the two of them are by what they’re doing, and uses it to his best advantage. God help us all if that boy turns evil.

Mikasa mostly spends this volume screaming and beating the crap out of people, but her most telling moment comes when she’s too injured to protect Eren anymore, and a Titan is upon them… the same Titan that ate Eren’s mother so many years ago. Mikasa tends to show her softer side only to Eren, and even then only when she senses one of them is near death. Here she wants to show Eren the depths of the familial love (I refuse to ship them, shut up) that she has for him. Speaking of familial love, they are both promptly rescued by the sacrifice of Hannes, who was important at the very beginning of this manga but has since fallen out of focus. It makes thematic sense that, after losing Eren’s mother, we would now see a father figure fall to the same titan. This does not make it any less depressing, though.

And so the long battle is over, and arguably our heroes won. Eren and Historia are back with the Survey Corps. Erwin lost an arm, but is alive. Reiner, Bertolt and Ymir got away to an uncertain future (it’s hinted Ymir may be walking to her death, something that she’s surprisingly OK with – Historia’s ‘goddess’ habit is rubbing off). Where do we go from here? I’m not sure, but this volume certainly will give readers more of what they like to see in this series. Still recommended. (Needs more Sasha, dammit. Where is she, anyway?)

By CLAMP. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

(This review is based on an advance copy provided by the publisher.)

There is a genre of fanfiction that is quite popular these days called ‘fix fic”. This is when you have a beloved series that then does something horrid to your favorite character or pairing, and moves in a direction you hate. You then write something to resolve this dilemma, either bringing the character back, breaking up the hated pairing, etc. You could also try simply ignoring that anything happened after a certain point. Tara fans who watched Buffy like doing this, saying their fanfic ignored everything from Seeing Red onwards. And now we have CLAMP, returning to their own work only a couple of years after wrapping it up with a contested ending. And we have what seems at first to be a bizarre case of the creators writing their own fix fic.

If you enjoyed the early volumes of xxxHOLIC, boy, is this the volume for you. We see the return of the entire cast. Yuko is getting drunk, harrassing Watanuki, and acting mysterious. Watanuki is angry at absolutely everything, and tends to have supernatural events drawn to him. Doumeki continues to be the stoic not-boyfriend (the BL tease is through the roof here, something noted by Yuko). Himawari is there to, well, bounce plot ideas off of – for some reason Watanuki’s crush on her isn’t focused on quite so much, possibly as CLAMP know their audience. And there are some nice moments of existential horror, such as when we see what’s been following Watanuki around and asking him questions. I also loved the customers of the volume, which continues a theme of xxxHOLIC of supposedly mild, pretty women hiding amazingly petty depths.

And yet anyone who read the original series is left to ask “what the hell is going on here?”. Doumeki still has his egg, so this isn’t a total reboot. And there are little hints that this is not really a reset but something of a continuation after all. Is Watanuki trapped in some sort of fantasy where he goes about the early manga shenanigans? Is this the world we’d be seeing if the dreaded name “Li Syaoran” had never crossed anyone’s lips? I suspect this is the case, even though I don’t want it to be, because I really did not like xxxHOLIC’s ending at all, and would really like to avoid ending up back in that place. And so you’re left with the ambiguity, which of course is what CLAMP revels in with this series.

Nevertheless, even if I worry about the endgame, this is a terrific volume to pick up for those who dropped the series around the 30,000th Tsubasa crossover. The art is terrific, still one of the main selling points (just look at that cover!). There’s some examination of human nature that’s cringeworthy – in a good way. And there is Watanuki, still the best creation CLAMP has come up with in the past ten years, back to trying to come to terms with his life and not simply accepting that he has to live in Yuko’s shop for the next 100 years. That alone is worth the price of the book. Let’s see how long it keeps up before the illusion is ripped away.

By Kanae Hazuki. Released in Japan as “Sukitte Ii Na Yo” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Dessert. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

(This review is based on an advance copy provided by the publisher.)

For every manga series out there that the reader immediately falls in love with the moment they read the first chapter, there are four others that take a while to get cooking. This can be dangerous, as readers are very casual these days and can drop a work fast if it doesn’t reach out and grab them. But even in works that aren’t lights out, there is a spark of something, be it a background, a secondary character, or what have you, that keeps you wanting to come back in hopes of getting more. That’s where I am with this manga, whose first volume I found flawed yet intriguing at the same time.

The author, Kanae Hazuki, may be familiar to reader with long memories and a habit of buying everything – her one-shot volume Voices of Love was published by Aurora under the LuvLuv imprint, their unsuccessful attempt to jumpstart a market for romantic and slightly smutty josei manga here in North America. This title is her breakout hit, and runs in Kodansha’s shoujo/josei borderline magazine Dessert, so I suspect it won’t get as explicit as most of her other works, but you never know – the lead male is hinted to be sexually active, something you rarely see in the fluffier shoujo titles.

The premise is ‘popular boy meets bullied girl and finds her interesting’, not exactly the most original one in the book. But Hazuki, in an afterword, notes how she wanted to focus on the bullying aspects, and it’s done quite well – by the end of the volume Mei and Asami may be friends, but the majority of the class is still not above being vicious to her, and Mei is not about to get any help from others – indeed, at one point after getting beaten by a couple of girls in her class, Mei notes to Yamato, “I fell.” This manga appears to have a more serious tone than My Little Monster, the other Dessert title Kodansha recently picked up, and that all starts with Mei. She has low self-esteem and most of her emotions have been repressed for years, so when Yamato shows interest in her she’s even more confused than before.

As for Yamato, his popular guy conceals a dark past, and we see why he would be nice to someone like Mei, who the rest of the school seems to delight in abusing. (Teacher figures are entirely absent from this volume, of course.) In fact, a lot of his behavior in this volume makes more sense in retrospect after the final chapter where he talks about his middle school years, and I honestly spent most of the volume not really liking him much. It didn’t help that his friend Nakanishi is the loud obnoxious type and his own romantic relationship was resolved, in my opinion, far too quickly, possibly so that there can be a couple that each of the leads can go to for advice later on.

There was a lot of awkward here. The characters didn’t reach out and grab me except for Mei, the pacing read like the author intended it to be another one-shot and was startled at having to expand it into multiple volumes, and there are a few consent issues here as well. At the same time I liked the basic themes, I want to see Mei’s character development, and I want to read more about how the cast battles back against the culture of bullying they live in. This volume is a bit half-cooked, but tasty enough that I’ll stick around for more.

By Fumi Yoshinaga. Released in Japan as “Kinou Nani Tabeta?” by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Morning. Released in North America by Vertical.

This series has been demanded by the manga cognoscenti almost since it began serialization, and particularly since Yoshinaga’s other titles made it big over here (well, semi-big – no one’s comparing sales between Antique Bakery and Vampire Knight). The story of a gay couple and their everyday lives and eating habits, it’s an intriguing title if only as, unlike other BL titles released over here, it’s very much slice of life rather than oriented towards BL fans like many other series with gay men released in North America. In a couple of ways it reminded me of the Odd Couple, if you replaced Oscar with another, slightly different Felix and made them both gay.

Our three lead characters are Shiro, a dapper lawyer who looks younger than his age and loves bargains; Kenji, a hairstylist who seems to live around the emotional extremes; and the food that they eat each chapter. Yes, trust me, the food is a main character, as loving attention is devoted to purchasing, cooking and eating it. Indeed, at times it seems the only thing keeping the characters sane and happy is delicious meals, as they (as well as the minor side characters) have a bunch of personal problems and neuroses that are equally on display here.

I must admit, while I found Shiro to be endearingly dorky at times, particularly when he’s fretting about bargains, I’m not sure I’ve really warmed to him, as he’s rather hard to like. He’s still in the closet at work, and takes pains to remain so. He and Kenji fight a couple of times here, but nothing is particularly resolved, it more or less just goes ignored or gets papered over with delicious meals. Which I admit is very true to life and absolutely what some couples are like, but it doesn’t make for entertaining reading. Shiro works a little better when he’s dealing with others, such as the housewife he befriends who shares his love of food bargains.

As for Kenji, he seems nice enough, but there are undercurrents there as well. He’s far too passive and accepting in his relationship, though he does show signs of jealousy when he sees Shiro shopping at a bakery owned by his ex-girlfriend from college (an attempt to ‘play straight’ that didn’t last long). On the whole, though, he seems to be a bit more at peace with his life than Shiro is, though I’m sure he’d appreciate being more open about their relationship.

And the food? It looks delicious. Some chapters get recipes after them, but not all – Shiro thinks aloud as he cooks, letting us know the details of exactly what he’s doing. Cooking and eating seem to be the one thing that relieves him of his daily stress. I wouldn’t call this a ‘foodie manga’, though – the food is a spice, giving you another reason to read the story about two men and their everyday lives together. It’s definitely a title worth checking out, and features a lot of what people love about Yoshinaga. Just be aware that sometimes you’re going to want to shake the protagonists and say “What are you acting this way? Stop it!”

By Takako Shimura. Released in Japan as “Aoi Hana” by Ohta Shuppan, serialized in the magazine Manga Erotics F. Released in North America digitally by Digital Manga Publishing.

DMP’s digital only line of books has been cruising along for some time, with a broad selection of BL, hentai, and obscure shoujo titles to choose from. Lately they’ve pulled a couple of fan favorites out of their hat, as they announced Kimagure Orange Road, the old-school 80s romantic comedy that was a huge influence on North American fandom (in both good ways and bad), and Aoi Hana, released here as Sweet Blue Flowers, which is a yuri manga by the creator of Wandering Son, Takako Shimura. It ran in the oddball magazine Manga Erotics F, and to a certain degree feels similar to Wandering Son – we’re introduced to a cast of schoolgirls, two of whom are clearly the leads, and discover their psyches, problems, and crushes.

Our two leads are Akira, who is bubbly, straightforward, and easy to get along with, and Fumi, who is tall, cries a lot, and starts off the volume devastated to find that her cousin, who had been sleeping with her, is getting married to a guy and hadn’t told Fumi as she’d have taken it badly. Which she does. Fumi tends to be an emotional wreck for most of this volume, but to be fair she’s going through many things that would leave a delicate persona an emotional wreck – besides her cousin, there’s the reappearance of childhood friend Akira in her life, and recalling just how much Akira meant to her as a child (I suspect these two are the ‘end couple’, but who knows?), and her tentative relationship with cool beauty Yasuko, who seems to be hiding a secret relationship from her past.

The fourth member of our ensemble is Kyoko, who has a fiance already picked out for her (male), but clearly has a giant crush on Yasuko. She’s also there so that Akira can bounce ideas off of, as Akira and Fumi are at two different schools, though the two schools quickly end up working together on a stage play. If Fumi is emotional leaning towards tears, Kyoko is emotional leading towards anger, and I do wonder if we’ll see her blow up at some point in the future. As for Akira, she’s not sure what to think, especially when Fumi comes out to her, but resolves to be supportive like a good friend. There’s no indication that Akira has any romantic feelings towards Fumi as of yet – she seems more the level headed older sister type, though a bit flakey to truly fit that role – but we’re only at Volume 1 of 8.

As with Wandering Son, Shimura’s manga is matter of fact about both its school life and its relationships. I’m not sure how much of this is meant to be the akogare ‘it’s just a phase’ type of teen girl relationship seen in many Japanese manga – certainly the three ‘Greek chorus’ girls we see with our heroes fall into that pattern – but Fumi’s past and present relationships are treated with seriousness and a depth of sadness – it’s really clear that Yasuko is not the true love she was looking for either. It’s easy to see why this series is beloved, and I look forward to seeing Fumi’s growth in future volumes.

By Kiiro Yumi, based on the novel by Hiro Arikawa. Released in Japan as “Toshokan Sensou: Love & War” by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine LaLa. Released in North America by Viz.

While there are an unlimited amount of things that you can do when you write a shoujo manga, it has to be said that when a typical reader thinks of one, they tend to think of a basic ‘type’. Kids in high school, girl likes guy, guy eventually likes girl, will they get together, etc. Violence, if any, tends to be emotional brutality or done for comedic purposes. (I recall I Hate You More Than Anyone having to include a ‘note: genuine shoujo manga’ remark after one of its typical over the top gags.) Library Wars runs in LaLa, a magazine which has a large number of these sorts of shoujo manga. So it’s startling to see a full-scale military assault, with blood, casualties and a shaking up of our main cast, with a couple of people seemingly written out of the series.

This is not to say that the series subtitled Love & War is entirely devoid of love this time around. It’s just driven or inspired by the aftermath of the Ibaraki Art Exhibit. Things start off bad with one of the library team’s men getting his arm sniped so he can’t shoot, and get worse when a desperate frontal assault by the enemy means that Iku is forced to shoot them. No one is killed in that particular attack, but it still leaves her a complete wreck – and she’s not the only one, as Dojo points out. The battles we’ve seen before were not like this. It doesn’t even end there, as once everything settles down, a lone man coming in to destroy the exhibit finds himself stopped by Genda… who he them shoots multiple times through the chest.

Amongst this, we have the love. Iku has finally realized her feelings for Dojo are love, much to the satisfaction of Shibazaki, who has known this for ages. Shibazaki and Tezuka get into a brief fight over what his brother was planning, and how much she knew about it (it also has an excellent point about when to reveal info that could potentially devastate the troops – the answer is not before a major battle). Even Genda and his estranged lover have a sort of reconciliation at his hospital bed. There are warm fuzzies here to be found if you so desire.

But mostly what I take away from this volume is what it means to be a soldier, and how trying to defend your beliefs can lead to the use of force. The opinions given here are biased towards the library soldiers, of course – they’re our heroes. The ‘nonviolence’ protestors are papers tigers for the most part, serving mostly to get Iku really, really angry. As we reach the end of this volume (which finishes adapting the 3rd novel), you sense there’s a major shakeup in the works. Commander Inamine is forced to resign, and I get the feeling that the implication of Genda’s 2-rank promotion is that he won’t be back either. I’m not sure where this battle-filled shoujo manga is going, but this was one of its most gripping volumes. Readers who thought it started slow may want to give this a try.

By Nakaba Suzuki. Released in Japan as “Nanatsu no Taizai” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

This is a title that’s been getting a lot of buzz recently, so it does not surprise me that Kodansha picked it up for release over here. It has a lot of what makes a successful Shonen Magazine title. The hero is incredibly strong and also cheery and outgoing, the female lead gets involved in a lot of fanservice moments and also gets to be cute and determined, there’s a talking animal put in there for no real good reason, and a big good guys unite to defeat the bad guys plot, with the twist that the good guys *are* the bad guys of the past. Supposedly.

This is a fairly new manga, having started last year. I note this because while reading it, the thing that struck me was how old-fashioned it felt. Meliodas is a giant pervert who tends to feel up the heroine and steal her panties, which could be out of any ecchi shonen comedy from the 70s and 80s. The trouble is he seems so blase about it – there’s no sign he’s actually aroused or anything, a la Ataru Moroboshi. It’s just his character trait. Likewise, Elizabeth does occasionally get embarrassed when fanservicey things happen to her, but compared to most heroines today, she’s strangely passive about things. Both of them clearly have more to their past that hasn’t come up yet, Meliodas especially, but there’s just that something about them here in the first book that seems like the author wants to use modern tropes, but in a 1980s sensibility.

We’re definitely in ‘shonen fantasy land’ here, what with talking pigs and giants. Diane is introduced right towards the end, and seems to be in love with Meliodas, though given their respective sizes I can’t imagine this relationship is anything but frustrating. On the other side, we meet a Holy Knight, Gilthunder, who seems to radiate an aura of smugness that just begs to be removed. Which is all you can ask of your villain, really. The action scenes are mostly well done, with a few 2-page splashes that show off the artist’s talent. By the way, Suzuki began in Jump, then moved to Sunday for his popular Kongou Bancho series (which I would love to see Viz license, but it’s a delinquent series, so no…), and is now in Magazine with his breakout hit.

If there’s anything wrong with this series, it’s stuff that seems to be ‘first volume problems’. The characters are just getting introduced and so lack the depth we know they will gain. Meliodas seems to be a bit blase for a hero, but then again this runs in a magazine where he’d be compared to Natsu from Fairy Tail anyway, so perhaps it’s best not to get him too fired up. I could also do without the panty flashes and boob grabs, but then he did move to shonen Magazine, so he has to meet their basic standards of fanservice. In most respects, however, The Seven Deadly Sins is a promising debut with two quirky but likeable leads. I’ll see where it goes.