Sean Gaffney

By Quin Rose and Hazuki Futaba, based on the game by Quin Rose. Released in Japan by Ichijinsha, serialized in the magazine Zero-Sum Ward. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

Seven Seas has very helpfully noted this is from the creator of the Alice in the Country of series on the cover, and indeed fans of that series will find a lot to like here. There’s a greater depth to the heroines, lots of hot guys with major personality defects, and a feeling that the entire world is just slightly broken. That said, it sure was helpful having Lewis Carroll’s template for the Alice books, because without that, things in Crimson Empire get awfully muddled awfully fast.

That said, the volume opens awfully well. Our heroine is a street rat somewhere in Anime Arabia, who sells her soul to a demon (who notes she has quite a future ahead of her – though good or bad, he can’t say)and becomes an assassin-cum-bodyguard, defending Prince Edvard from the many and varied people trying to kill him – including Justin, his own half-brother. Oh, and of COURSE, she has to dress up as Head Maid. After all, this is the aristocracy, and we can’t just have women walking around in suits.

I made this sound a bit more fetishy than it actually is, to be honest. The fanservice is nil, and this is definitely a josei title. Sheila is quite similar to Alice, though a bit stronger and more broken (she’s been through a bit more), and as with Alice, the various men around her are Otome Game types, where the player can choose to interact with their favorite. In terms of manga plot (vs. game plot), the first volume is quite simple. Sheila prevents people from murdering Edvard, Edvard snarks and acts nice on the outside but evil on the inside, Justin is the opposite, etc.

The difficulty here is, even with a ‘Cast of Characters’ page at the start, there’s simply too many people introduced too fast. Things aren’t helped by the fact that this is a semi-sequel to another Otome Game, Arabians Lost, which introduces a few characters from that series and mentions the Queen, who was the player character. Moreover, Sheila seems to have past relationships with several of them, which don’t come off as “Well, the manga will catch me up on their shared history” as much as “I feel I missed something, I should go buy the previous game this is clearly meant to be pimping out.”

From a manga perspective, the plot simply meanders. Given there’s less of a desire to see who Sheila will end up with (she’s sold her soul, so it’s sort of irrelevant, as she’ll end up with the demon one way or another), the need to read this likely hinges on how much you enjoy seeing Sheila interact with the characters around her. This isn’t helped by Sheila being, so far, the most interesting character. I also can’t help but compare the guys to the Alice series – Meissen, for one, is clearly Ace with the serial numbers filed off.

This is only three volumes, so I do recommend it if you like the Alice series in general and are a fan of this sort of josei “girl surrounded by pretty boys” series. But plotwise, it really needs to sort itself out. More scenes like the bleak opening, which was excellent.

By Yuuki Kodama. Released in Japan by Kadokawa Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young Ace. Released in North America by Yen Press.

The second volume of Blood Lad improves on the first, and this has become a nice, solid series. The lead is different in an interesting way, the otaku humor is fit in better, we meet several new possibilities for antagonist, and the fighting and humor are top notch. There are still issues with the heroine, but I can’t have everything – and besides, this runs in Young Ace to begin with.

Let’s start with Fuyumi, actually, as we do get a bit of a hint that there’s more to her than previously thought. Her mother has passed away, and Braz indicates in his usual vague yet evil way that she has a connection with Bell. It would not particularly surprise me if she turned out to have some demon blood in her (related to Bell?), which could possibly lead to new plot possibilities and a cure for her current condition. That said, I doubt it will lead to a cure of being Miss Fanservice. The scenes where she is sucking on the phallic water bottle made my eyes roll back so far into my head I worried I’d have to see a doctor.

That said, I’ve seen much worse fanservice than this, and the rest of the title more than makes up for it, particularly our reluctant hero. Staz’s limiter is removed in this volume, making him even more powerful than before – dangerously powerful, everyone notes. And yet he’s not all that hot-blooded of a shonen hero. Oh sure, during a fight he’ll get fired up, but there’s a passivity and caginess to Staz that really makes him appeal to me. He’s not going to go charging headlong at an enemy – well, not unless there’s a good reason to. Or they have a DVD set.

We also see more development of Staz’s two siblings. Braz is handled better, and walks a nice fine line between being an evil mastermind and being a supportive brother. He’s likely both, so that shouldn’t be too much of an issue. As for Liz, every fear I had about what she’d be like after finishing the first volume turned out to be absolutely correct. That said, she’s cute and harmless, so I’ll just roll with it. The scenes of her bonding with Staz and Fuyumi over watching Laputa: Castle in the Sky is sweet and adorable.

Lastly, here’s a rarity for a shonen manga (yes, it runs in Young Ace, but there’s absolutely nothing in this that shouldn’t be in Shonen Ace too); it’s very well-paced. No subplot outwears its welcome, and even the fights seem to be exactly the right length. This could be simply as everyone is very clever here. Staz shows it the most, but there’s a genre awareness here that permeates into all the characters, allowing it to get away with things that a reader wouldn’t otherwise accept. Combine that with a great sense of humor, as well as a worldscape filled with vampires, werewolves and demons, and you have something that should be a can’t miss it over here.

By Ken Akamatsu. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

When I reviewed the first omnibus of Love Hina, I noted that one of its major faults was that, compared to the pacing of the end of the series, it seemed glacially slow. Now we’ve gotten to the final volume, and I’m starting to see the opposite problem. Akamatsu has discovered he can do fast chases well, so after an entire volume spent chasing Naru to the north of Japan, we get another one devoted to chasing Keitaro around the MolMol Kingdom, with all the wacky hijinks that entails. Indeed, reality, which always had a tenuous hold on this series anyway, seems to mostly go out the window here.

As you can see, Kodansha spoils the entire volume on its cover (I have this image of Angry Naru haters replacing her head on the cover with Motoko or Kitsune or whoever and giggling). Yes indeed, the series does end with a wedding. But before that, we have to run through the pick of the best of some of Love Hina’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2. Which means archaeological ruins, chase scenes, the girls all trying to stop Keitaro and Naru simply because the plot requires it – indeed, Su basically admits she’s only doing this for fun. Speaking of Su, turns out she’s MolMol’s princess, which probably gives some justification as to why she acts the way she does. Motoko gets a lot of stuff to do at the start of this omnibus, even if most of it is a repeat of a previous volume (notice a pattern?). Shinobu less so, but at least she gets out a confession. And Seta and Haruka get married, in one of the fastest weddings you’ll ever see, barely giving Haruka a chance to turn red.

As for Keitaro and Naru, well, life continues to conspire against them. A popular fan theory is that the universe LITERALLY does not want to see them together, and constantly sends disasters their way just to prevent it, and you see a glimpse of this sort of thing here. Things aren’t helped by Naru, who clearly loves Keitaro, wants to become more intimate with him (she takes him to a love hotel here)… but still has issues that lead to disaster and Keitaro getting whacked. (I’m a huge foe of the “Naru is insane and needs therapy” fandom block, mostly as it rarely comes from sympathy, but I will admit I do wonder if something in her childhood happened that led her to be this twitchy.) As for Keitaro, by now he’s accepted his lot in life, freely admitting his supposed immortality and going with the flow provided the flow takes him back to Naru.

The title ends with an epilogue showing the Hinata Inn four years later, with the arrival of a new girl who’s heard it’s legendary for helping hopeless students get into Todai. She’s essentially a female Keitaro, so it’s no surprise that she runs into the residents of the inn (now older) naked, accidentally screws something up, and ends up in a giant chase scene. And if she’s Keitaro, then who does Keitaro get to be? I think most of the “Keitaro turns into Seta Mk. 2!” fan displeasure came from this epilogue, where admittedly he pretty much does act like Seta. But then again, a relaxed Keitaro who’s resolved his Todai and love life issues may very well go in that direction… we’ve seen how Seta and Haruka parallel Keitaro and Naru to begin with. More likely, he was Seta’d up to make the situation funnier, because this is still a manga.

And so in the end I think I have finished unleashing all my inner fandom demons at Love Hina, and can appreciate it for what it is; an intermediate work of Ken Akamatsu’s, filled with memorable characters, sweet moments and a lot of humor, but also poorly paced, about 5 volumes too long, and over-relying on physical comedy. His next series, Negima, gets better at all of these, but still has the same essential weaknesses. Luckily, his strengths also get even stronger there. So let’s leave Keitaro and Naru, married now, living at the Hinata Inn and no doubt spawning a new generation of comedic misunderstandings that could be worked out if only anyone would stop for two seconds.

By Yoshikazu Yasuhiko; Original Story by Yoshiyuki Tomino and Hajime Yatate; Mechanical Design by Kunio Okawara. Released in Japan by Kadokawa Shoten, serialized in the magazine Gundam Ace. Released in North America by Vertical.

If you’re going to rewrite one of the most renowned and influential anime of all time, you have a lot of difficulties ahead of you. You have to tell the same story but add your own spin on it, making sure it’s not just a word-for-word copy. You need to draw the audience in by showing things that you were unable to the first time, for either budget or time reasons. And of course you need to remind everyone why the original was so legendary. It helps, of course, when you’re actually one of the architects of that original vision. And that’s what we have here, as one of Gundam’s creators has decided to tell the original story from the 1979 anime as a manga, adapting, expanding, and illuminating its plot and characters. And so far, I’m impressed.

I must admit, I’ve never gotten into the Gundam phenomenon – as a kid, Battle for the Planets was more my speed, which is about a generation earlier in mecha shows, and I didn’t really follow the Wing/Seed phenomenon. That said, I do know a few things by fandom osmosis. Giant robots, only serious. War is bad. Char Aznable. Lots of tragic deaths. Colony drops. And everyone hates Turn A. That pretty much sums up my knowledge. So I was looking forward to delving into this to see what made it so compelling. The story begins in media res, as we follow a platoon of commandos trying to get into on a secret new weapon the enemy ship has… which turns out to be a Gundam, as we realize the enemy ship is actually Our Heroes.

This feels very much like an epic motion picture, and at times it almost felt like I was reading storyboards rather than a manga volume. Events slide smoothly from one to another, with little to no chance for a breather in between. The lead character, Amuro Ray, is somewhat sullen and teenagery, but not as hard to like as I’d thought, and clearly shows compassion when it’s in his sphere of things he cares about. (There’s a beautifully drawn shot of his childhood friend Fraw running towards him as a huge explosion bursts behind her, and I was sure this would be the first of many deaths, but amazingly no; the “named character” body count in this volume is pretty low.) As for Char, it’s immediately apparently why he is the breakout character from this series. Cool and cocky, but lacking the evil arrogance of some of his friends (like the guy we see right at the cliffhanger), he’s a bad guy you love to hate. Also, his mobile suit is named the Red Comet, which just makes me imagine that the Zeon base is at Cedar Point.

On the presentation end, Vertical has produced possibly its most impressive book to date, with a gorgeous hardcover with thick pages (many color), suitable for any coffee table. It really goes above and beyond the call of duty; kudos to the designers. That said, the main reason to get the Gundam manga is probably the same reason the original anime became so legendary; you can’t stop wondering what happens next. These people and their struggle to survive are amazingly compelling, and everything about this manga adaptation – the plot, the artwork, the characterization – makes it justify its existence. I am very happy to see it coming out here, and can’t wait for more.

Oh yes, and red makes things go three times faster. I remember that as well.

Story by Ryukishi07; Art by Hinase Momoyama. Released in Japan as “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Minagoroshi-hen” by Square Enix, serialized in the magazine GFantasy. Released in North America by Yen Press.

And so we come to the end of the penultimate Higurashi arc, and – no surprise here – everyone is dead. And I do mean everyone, as this volume, having finally given away most of the secrets, goes into great detail how the “disaster” that wipes out the village actually occurs. Things are not particularly improved by Takano, who is waving her arms around during all this as if she’s a conductor, and has a final face that is perhaps the template for all “crazy Higurashi faces”. But let’s jump back a bit and see how we got here.

Rika and Hanyuu both feature on Yen’s chosen omnibus cover art (sorry, Takano, you just aren’t cute enough), with Rika having a resolved, determined face and Hanyuu looking depressed and dead inside. Most of this volume is showing us how Rika gets that determined, as getting the news about Tomitake’s death just seems to take all the fight out of her. Especially when she hears Oishii’s theories about who did it. A lot of fans have gotten on Rika’s case about being unable to figure out the killer, who seems really obvious in retrospect, and that she should have pieced it together after so many worlds in a row. Of course, as we see here, this is the first world where she’s not drugged up at the time of her execution. More to the point, she may have a hundred worlds of experience, but they’re the experience of a girl who only gets to about 12 years old. Rika has years, but not maturity, and it shows clearly here, when she resolves to hide everything from her friends so they don’t get killed.

That’s hardly going to work, however, given what happened with Satoko just a few days ago. Indeed, Satoko points this out to Rika directly, and Keiichi and the others make it clear that they’re not going to sit there and let Rika be sacrificed. We even have Rika quoting one of Bernkastel’s poems – usually reserved for the start and end of each arc, and indeed we get one at the end as well – which talks about who has a right to happiness. It’s easy to stand up against someone when it’s for the sake of others. When you do it for yourself, it can seem selfish, especially if it will put your friends in danger. Rika has to break through that barrier before she can accomplish anything.

We are – finally! – starting to get answers here, and indeed most of the pieces are together now. Not only is Takano the villain, but so are the “Wild Dog” bodyguards, who have always resembled a militia a bit too much for my taste. (I like how they are mook enough to have Keiichi and company take them out in order to rescue Rika, but not actually mook enough to have that last more than a few minutes – in the end, the kids lose.) And Hinamizawa Syndrome, the disease that causes the paranoia and killing impulses, is explained as well. This leads to why Rika keeps getting ritually slaughtered on an altar – Takano has gone mad and believes that if she kills the Queen Carrier, she’ll gain godlike powers.

And then there’s Hanyuu. We still don’t know much about her. She’s the incarnation of Oyashiro-sama, but strangely powerless, except for her ability to reset the worlds. She’s also even more worn down than Rika, and is also terrified that if she loses Rika this time she’ll be alone again… as she was for about a thousand years. Rena calls her out on this, as she too has the reoccurring theme of the Massacre arc – fighting back hurts too many people, it’s best not to have any hope. We’ve just proven how wrong this is, even if it did end badly. What’s more, we don’t really have much background on why the hell Takano is doing this, aside from “She’s insane”.

Luckily, we have one more arc – the longest yet, 8 volumes/4 omnibuses! – that should tell us about them, and will hopefully finally give us something that the characters and readers truly deserve after all this tragedy – a happy ending. Stay tuned for Vol. 1 of the awkwardly titled “Festival Accompanying” arc, where we meet a young girl named Miyoko Tanashi, and find out what makes her tick.

By Naoko Takeuchi. Released in Japan as “Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon” by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Nakayoshi. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

In the last volume of Sailor Moon, we had chapters each devoted to the development of a senshi, be it Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, or the Outers. That having been done, it’s time for an action-packed climax to the SuperS arc. Now, this can also be a drawback. Takeuchi’s battles do tend to have a certain sameness to them, and in many ways this is just another variation on “our light is purer than your dark”. So with that in mind, let me talk about all the other things that I loved about this volume.

First of all, the entire arc has been a look at the dreams and nightmares of the world, with the Dark Moon Circus dealing out both with impunity. We’re definitely on the nightmare end of the scale for this volume, with many grotesque, horrific images that look even better in Takuuchi’s long-limbed shoujo style. Seeing Usagi’s face melting off was what caused me to buy a copy of the manga in my comic store years ago (this was an older Japanese tankobon, I think), and it hits Venus and the rest of the senshi right where they live – the Princess is dead, they failed to protect her. (A flashback showing the very Sleeping Beauty-esque appearance of Nehelenia in the Silver Millennium only reinforces that – also, Venus and the others as chibi-Senshi are adorable.) Usagi, meanwhile, is caught in what seems an idealistic dream – she and Mamoru are the same age, and he makes her breakfast before they go to school together. But she immediately starts to see through it, even if regretfully – Mamoru was never that sicky sweet. It’s a childish Usagi dream, and she’s moved beyond that.

The other senshi mostly get to stand around and gape, but there are occasional moments of awesome. Venus and Uranus are the clear team leaders of their respective groups, and there’s a brief moment where we see they don’t really get along. We also see a magic mirror that needs to be broken, and after senshi attacks fail to do the job Jupiter goes with her Plan A – punch it really hard. (Who needs superpowers when you have MONSTER STRENGTH?) But the big winner here is Saturn, who is back, is around Chibi-Usa’s age, and is clearly the most savvy of the entire group – so much so that she and Chibi-Moon actually have to be banished from the plot for half the book (in another really creepy and well-drawn sequence where they’re imprisoned in shards of mirror). She confronts the Amazoness Quartet, abut can see them for who they really are – and almost manages to get them to remember before Nehelenia steps in and turns them into dull black orbs. (Also, she gets to do something in the volume on which she’s the cover star – a rarity for this re-released series.)

After Nehelenia is defeated (sorry, honey, no redemption for you here), we see everyone transformed into their ‘royalty’ dresses (we actually see it earlier as well, and it’s worth noting a couple of things. First, Serenity apparently has powers so vast that she can give her retinue prom formal gowns almost by default. Secondly, everyone gets white gowns bar Pluto and Saturn’s, which are black. I’d like to think there’s meaning to that beyond “breaking up the color scheme”), Saturn is still in her senshi outfit as she has another duty – have Serenity purify the orbs. And after she does so, we see the true forms of the Amazoness Quartet – the Asteroid Senshi, Chibi-Moon’s own inner retinue from the future. (This is actually not explained quite as well as I’d like, and is another weakness of this volume.) Add that to Helios, who is at last free to not be a giant magic horse and romance Chibi-Moon as himself – and one purpose of this arc is to give Chibi-Usa her own group to turn to in Crystal Tokyo that’s not simply her parents and guardians. She’s free to grow up.

For a volume that seems to be, on flip through, about half ‘senshi gape at encroaching darkness’ pictures over and over, there was a lot going on here. We’ve got two volumes of the main storyline to go, which will be the last arc, Stars. I’m especially looking forward to these as it’s the arc I re-read the least first time round, so I want to see what new insights I can find in it. (I also want a street date for the Takeuchi artbook – some of the title pages in this cry out for big color prints.) Still a can’t miss shoujo classic.

By CLAMP. Released in Japan by Shinshokan, serialized in the magazine Wings. Released in North America by Dark Horse Comics.

This is one of the big CLAMP series, the ones that first come to mind when you mention the creative team. It was their first really big hit (sorry, RG Veda), and when you read this first volume you can easily pick out why. Some manga are about the storyline and characters, some deal with building a world. But Tokyo Babylon is about building a mood, and it combines terrific artwork and a naive, somewhat somber hero to show us the world careening towards an inevitable apocalypse, one we’d see play out in the semi-sequel to this work, X.

I’ve made a habit of pointing out CLAMP’s shortcomings in their post-2000 works, so it’s important to note how much they get right here. The artwork alone is worth buying the volume for, with a cute/handsome cast, striking settings, and strong, confident action scenes. Each story is self-contained so far, and has a plot that we’ve seen in many series before – a young spiritualists deals with restless ghosts and helps them find eternal rest – but it doesn’t feel tired, thanks in no small part to keeping the cast small and nuanced. Subaru’s noble idealism shines off the page, and makes an excellent contrast with his sister Hokuto’s eccentric extrovert. and then there’s Seishiro…

Let’s face it, Seishiro’s got something going on. I’m not spoiling anything, it’s just signposted – Hokuto even notes how he keeps changing the subject. At the start of the book he seems to be the most shallow – a nice, always smiling guy who tries to give Subaru gentle, older-man to younger-man advice while making cute jokes about seducing him. But by the time we get to the end of this volume, it’s clear that there’s something dark and unpleasant underneath that, and that Subaru’s idealism is going to run into it with a giant crunch. Honestly, in a way I can sort of see it. Subaru’s shininess is *so* over the top that it’s hard not to look at him every day and want to try to break it just a little bit…

I’ve jokes before about the magazine that Tokyo Babylon ran in, Wings, which is a shoujo/josei/fantasy/BL-lite hybrid that essentially became its own genre. Dark Horse advertises the series as one of the first BL manga to come out over here, but the BL in it is quite mild. Hokuto and Seishiro constantly joke about his love for Subaru, but Subaru’s lack of response beyond the occasional blush means that things don’t really go very far. Honestly, Hokuto is the big reason that this title isn’t completely bleak and grim – she’s a spark of life that brightens every scene she appears in. This will become far more important in the second volume, believe you me.

Dark Horse has done a really nice omnibus here, based on the re-released version from Japan (in case you’re wondering where Hokuto’s side-story got off to – it’ll be in the next one). A little oversize, nice thick paper, it’s a quality release. I’m not certain how changed the translation is from the Tokyopop edition, but it’s likely worth exchanging your old copies for this one anyway. And for those who haven’t tried this series, you really should – it’s CLAMP at their mightiest.