Sean Gaffney

By Makoto Yukimura. Released in Japan as two separate volumes by Kodansha, serialized in the magazines Weekly Shonen Magazine, then Afternoon. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

At last, after years of fans begging for a license, we have one of the most anticipated titles of the year. Makoto Yukimura was released over here previously with his sci-fi garbage scow series Planetes, but that was another “critically acclaimed poor seller” that fans love and publishers hate. Nevertheless, the author’s skill is demonstrable in that series, and his art and storytelling have only improved since then. This tale of Thorfinn, a reluctant Viking warrior/prisoner-of-war and his tragic backstory is absolutely riveting, and makes you yearn for the next book in the series to come out so you can read on. Honestly, if it weren’t already in an omnibus (a handsome, hardcover one, by the way, looking very nice), I’d feel even more impatient.

We open with Thorfinn already a young adult, then flash back to tell his backstory. This helps to amp up the tragedy as we can see what a cold-blooded killer Thorfinn can be… and how he pales in comparison to the captain who controls him, Askeladd. For all that this series may be Thorfinn’s, Askeladd is the one who captures the reader’s attention right off the bat, and I suspect he won any reader polls Japan had. Cheerful, clever, sly, and ruthless all in one, Askeladd makes a great anti-hero to contrast with Thorfinn’s sullen warrior. He even has his own moral code, such as it is – one we see in the second half of the book, when we find out just how Thorfinn lost his father Thors and was captured.

By the way, for those who love Berserk, you’ll love this too. It’s not QUITE as bleak and ultraviolent – at least not in this first volume – but there’s a lot of the same feel, and the battle scenes are fantastic (despite the presence of one of the worst Star Wars jokes I’ve ever seen). The art isn’t only good in the battle scenes either – the author has taken great care to be as historically accurate as possible in a fictional manga world, and I loved the attention to detail we see here.

I was expecting this to be a totally male-dominated book – and honestly, it still may end up that way – but there are two very good female roles here. First of all, the book’s only light relief is provided by Thorfinn’s older sister Ylva, a tsundere trapped in 11th century Iceland, who has all the boys of the village falling at her feet but would much rather stomp around and be grumpy. As for Thorfinn’s mother, she mostly exists on the sideline supporting her husband… till we see a flashback to Ylva’s birth, where Thors is prepared to simply nod and leave, and his wife looks like she’ll leap out of the bed and throttle him unless he names their child. The manga is filled with little moments like this.

This is not going to be a cheery romp – expect the majority of the cast to die – but it’s gripping stuff, and incredibly hard to put down. I really enjoyed Planetes, but you can see how Yukimura has evolved further here. The story carries you along effortlessly, makes you care about these people even as it then hurts them horribly, and is simply filled with badass men being badass. It was worth the long wait to get this.

By Satoshi Kon. Released in Japan as “Kaikisen” by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Young Magazine. Released in North America by Vertical.

I must admit, I’ve never really been into Satoshi Kon’s directing work. I saw Perfect Blue years ago, but never got around to his other movies. I do know that many of them are considered works of art by anime fandom, though, so it was intriguing to see this title licensed, a manga that he wrote before he did any of the titles he’s now famous for. I liked what I read, too. This is a solid, mellow, and sometimes preachy story of a young man growing up by the sea in a small town, having to deal with progress, tradition, friendships becoming romance, and mermaids. Most of us have dealt with the same things. Well, maybe not that last one.

The story is quite simple, and fits very well in this single volume release. Yosuke comes from a long line of priests, whose job it is to care for a mermaid egg – and return it to the sea every 60 years, as part of a pact to keep the sea filled with life and healthy. His father is a modernist, and thinks that they could also raise some money with the publicity of this egg. His grandfather is a staunch traditionalist. Yosuke, meanwhile, seems to fall in between the two camps – much like the rest of his life, where as a teen getting ready for exams he can’t quite decide if he wants to escape his hometown or not. This is not helped by the return of Nami, an old friend who had gone to the big city, and who has an obvious bond with Yosuke.

I really liked the way this manga kept a balance between everything it’s trying to do. There’s lots of reflective, quiet scenes, but there’s also several exciting action pieces and a big chase climax. Yosuke can be reserved, but he’s not repressed or anything, he’s just a normal kid who is dealing with a lot right now. I loved the not-quite-romance with Nami, which has just the right touch, and his relationship with his little sister also rang true. Essentially, despite this title involving mermaids, the fact that your suspension of disbelief never comes into play is the most praiseworthy thing.

It’s not perfect, of course – something I’m sure Kon would be the first to acknowledge. The lead villain comes from a stock template of ruthless businessmen who will get what they want without thought of the little people or environment that get trampled underfoot. I suspect Kon didn’t want to end this volume with anyone actually being killed, but that makes the villain’s conversion – oh, I’ve seen what really lives in the sea, and it has made me a better person – the one thing here that’s really hard to swallow. The ending also does seem a bit rushed, for all of its excitement.

But those are just quibbles. Tropic of the Sea is simply evocative, and makes the reader want to walk out along the beach at night and smell the salt water. It’s no surprise that the creator went on to big things.

By Hiro Mashima. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

It’s been a long time since I last did a full review of Fairy Tail. In fact, the last time I did the blurb above said “released by Del Rey”. But this is a pivotal volume of the series, for many reasons. It also suffers from the same problem that has plagued the series since it began, one that many fans, particularly in the West, have trouble getting past: it feels like a One Piece ripoff. What’s most interesting about this volume is that Mashima, who surely must have heard this about five thousand times, goes ahead and duplicates one of One Piece’s most famous moves… but with a slight twist. He is embracing the One Piece-ness of his manga.

But before we get to that, let’s take a quick look at Gildarts and Cana. I’ve always liked Gildarts, who is a great way of showing that goofy grinning shonen boys grow up to become goofy grinning shonen men. This shows in Cana’s confession to him about her parentage, where he can’t resist making jokes about it, till he realizes that this is exactly what she doesn’t need right now. After that, it’s all heartwarming. It also ties in tragically with the end of the volume, where Lucy has to deal with the death of her own estranged father, who she discovers wanted to make amends with her. Lucy’s emotions, where she’s sort of at a loss and vaguely sad at first, are handled in a mature and understandable way.

This brings us to the timeskip. Yes, a timeskip, just like One Piece. This one is a full seven years, though. What makes this one interesting – and divisive – is that in those seven years our heroes were held in a sort of stasis bubble of magic, so that the outside world has aged but they haven’t. This was quite upsetting to many fans, who wanted to see older, non-teenage versions of their heroes start beating things up. But Mashima defends his choice, and I see his point. Fairy Tail as a guild has spent 30 volumes building itself up from a minor laughingstock of a guild to the very best in the land… and now everything is right back to where it started, with our heroes having to climb up once more.

This does lead to a few issues. Most of the main cast whose faces we see a lot were on the island, so for a while when we’re back at Fairy Tail 7 years later we’re following some characters that we haven’t really focused on since Volume 1, like Romeo. It’s meant to be heartbreaking, but lacks the emotional resonance simply as we haven’t seen any of these people enough to feel their frustration. Fairy Tail’s cast is huge, but Mashima sometimes expects us to have an encyclopedic knowledge of it.

So Fairy Tail has done a timeskip, and honestly there’s really only a few shonen cliches it hasn’t gone through yet. I’m not quite sure what could be left to go over in the next volume… oh hey, did someone say tournament arc?

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

(please continue to avoid spoilers in comments)

We all knew a volume like this was coming. Despite the mass deaths and danger, things had simply been going too well for our heroes recently. There were heartwarming moments, and points where you marveled at the awesomeness of humanity. That clearly cannot last. And so you have Attack on Titan 7, which, yes, also gives you heartwarming and reaffirming love for humanity, but then brutally stomps all over it and tears it to shreds while laughing in your face.

So yeah, it really didn’t bode well that Levi’s team, for all their backstory and character building, never had biographies at the front of the book. Much of this book (and indeed the series in general) is about the mindset of a soldier, and how you can commit to actions that seem stupid or that you may not believe in. I’ll give Special Ops this, they were decisive and trying to stop the Female Titan. And, in the end, they weren’t good enough and were brutally murdered. This doesn’t mean it was a bad decision, or that they didn’t die like heroes. It’s just a function of life in this book, and how horrible the situation is with the Titans. Things are really bad, and sometimes you make a firm decision that leads to an ignoble death.

Speaking of the Female Titan, as Armin has already noted, she’s definitely one of a special group of Titans that are intelligent and crafty, and it shows throughout the entire book. Even when Erwin has her cornered, she’s still able to think of a way out. And her fight with Eren and Mikasa is not only epic but gives us some stunning motivation on what the Titans are trying to achieve; when given an opportunity to kill Eren, she doesn’t, but tries to kidnap him instead. Eren, presumably as he’s also a Titan, is useful to them in some way. Chilling, really.

I do sort of wonder what it will take to get Levi to break, or if he ever will. He’s the most popular character in the series in Japan, and rapidly taking that position over here as well, but there’s only so far stoic can take you. Will he continue to suffer nobly and look off into the middle distance? If nothing else, he makes a very good contrast to hotheads Eren and Mikasa.

But it’s all about the final scene, which simply makes you want to cry. Eren waking up to see everyone re-entering the city. The jeers of the adults, and the cheers of the little children. Petra’s dad, running to Levi, asking him to give her something, and Levi’s stoic non-response. And the final narration, noting that they’re all basically under arrest, Eren’s going to be turned over (presumably to be tortured and executed), and Erwin and company may be in a lot of trouble all around. It’s a horrible place to leave a cliffhanger. And so naturally here is where it is.

But hey, from here things can only get better… right?

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

It’s worth noting, when reading this volume of One Piece, how much fun Oda is clearly having writing every single chapter. His simple joy in drawing all this crazy stuff comes out from the page and just overflows into your brain. Be it giant slime monsters clearly based off of video games in his youth, the bodyswap continuing to humiliate Nami and Sanji (and ending at just about the right time so it doesn’t get old), or even our heroes happily commenting on how Luffy and Smoker are locked up in another seastone cage again, just like Alabasta! (Bonus points for it being Robin commenting, who was a villain at that point.) This manga is what happy feels like.

Of course, it’s not all fun and games – or rather, the fun and games continues to be contrasted with the atrocities that Caesar Clown is committing. Drug addict giant toddlers, poison gas corpses that look like something out of Edvard Munch, and Luffy getting completely punked in his first fight with Caesar, despite his supposed poison immunity… this is not simply a walk in the park the way other arcs have felt. We even have yet another mole for the bad guy who’s a Vice-Admiral with the Marines (and, Oda-style, has a hamburger affixed to his cheek. As he forgot it was there.)

We also see Kidd and some of the other Supernovas meeting to discuss Caesar Clown’s offer, and it reminds me of something that Oda has been showing us again and again: anyone with power in this world is highly likely to be evil or insane. Luffy and company are one of the few non-evil pirate crews, and, fittingly, Smoker and Tashigi’s group are one of the few non-evil Marine crews. When you live in a world like One Piece’s, with so much raw power out there to abuse, you run into people who will do all they can to hold onto it.

Luckily, our heroes are strong, and can’t be kept down for long. Everyone has their own bodies again, and Kin’emon, the samurai, has his full body back (and is really quite tall now). What’s more, Luffy and Law have formed an alliance! I suspect that Law will rapidly come to regret allying himself with Luffy and company, which to a certain degree involves throwing your self-image out the window and giving in to the goofy. I am amused that once again Luffy says, when being informed of a plan, “Yeah, OK, I got it”, and then merrily go off to punch things again. It’s not something anyone can stop at this point.

If there’s something that feels slightly dissatisfying here, it’s that Caesar Clown doesn’t feel like a big bad. He’s pretty scummy, and I’ll enjoy seeing him defeated, but the revelation that there’s someone behind him who’s the real mastermind makes a lot more sense, and as a reader, I’d really like to leap ahead to that battle. Till then, though, One Piece continues to go where it wants to with unlimited joy.

By Kenjiro Hata. Released in Japan as “Hayate no Gotoku!” by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Shonen Sunday. Released in North America by Viz.

This volume, and the two that follow it, are for me the high point of the entire run of Hayate the Combat Butler. Hata has a tendency to get sidetracked and lost in comedy asides, to the point where he’s started to parody his tendency to do so. Also, it’s becoming quite clear that someone is telling him that he has to keep the series going and can’t wrap things up. But that’s in Japan. Here, we’re finally getting to the good stuff. All the slow character development, glacial plot points, and G*ndam references lead to this confrontation in Greece.

For all that Hayate is a wacky harem comedy, it has some dark tones at its core. Mostly it’s been about the horrible parents of Hayate, Wataru and Hina, and the absent/dead parents of Nagi and Athena. But there’s also been a sense of aiming for your dream and failing that’s come up several times with Hina’s alcoholic sister Yukiji. She’s in Italy because the teacher (and old high-school friend) who has a crush on her is trying to make grand gestures so that he doesn’t have to actually confess. After a chapter of misunderstandings and beatings, the now drunken teacher wonders out loud how the cool, guitar-playing Yukiji turned into the lazy, shiftless, aimless young woman we all know. And the answer is that life happens. It’s why people make wishes, and dream of fairy stories. And create magical luck stones, for that matter.

Speaking of which, we finally get the confrontation we’ve waited 10 years for… well OK, four volumes. Hayate sees Athena, and calls out to her. Unfortunately, she doesn’t know who he is. Or at least pretends she doesn’t know – as a very cute aftershot tells us, she is quite aware of Hayate but has some longer game, which involves that stone. The last volume gave us a few minor villains trying to get their hands on the stone, but now we move on to the more dangerous players. 16-year-old Athena looks like a dark queen, what with her black dress and princess curls (and healthy bust – clearly larger than any of the other girls in Hayate’s wannabe harem). We can only hope that she sides with her feelings over her need for that stone.

And so, having started the volume with Yukiji noting that sometimes things don’t work out, and dreams don’t come true, we end with the dinner date between Hayate and Hinagiku, who is determined to confess. Of course, Hina is mistakenly thinking that Hayate hates her because of her tsundere antics. And Hayate has worked out that Athena was lying, and is wondering what to do now and why meeting Athena is affecting him so much. So the dinner date is a masterpiece of distraction. Tragically, the two characters have revelations exactly at the WRONG time. Hina finally mans up her courage and starts to confess. And Hayate finally puts two and two together and realizes why he’s so devastated by Athena’s disfavor, and why he wants desperately to apologize: he loves her.

It’s an epic cliffhanger, to be sure. Hata certainly thought so, as Vols. 23 and 24 came out in Japan the same day. Sadly, that won’t happen here, where Hayate simply doesn’t have the sales. So we’ll have to check back in another six months to see how Hayate’s admission affects Hina, and whether it spurs him to return to Athena. The tension only gets higher from here.