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Sean Gaffney

Excel Saga, Vol. 23

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By Rikdo Koshi. Released in Japan by Shonen Gahosha, serialized in the magazine Young King OURS. Released in North America by Viz.

As you can see by the fact that that header says ‘serialized’ rather than ‘serialization ongoing’, Excel Saga has finally come to an end in Japan, with Vol. 27 being the last. Sadly, this does not mean that the volumes will be going on a faster schedule anytime soon – Carl Horn ends the volume by saying we will likely see Vol. 24 in 2013. On the bright side, at least it’s still not cancelled! Given this economy, we can all be grateful for that. Of course, as the plot gets more convoluted and some of the past volumes get harder to find, it can be difficult to work out exactly what’s going on. This is a manga series that requires a great deal of paying attention to get the most out of it. So what happens here?

Given Misaki’s on the cover, let’s start with her. When we last left her in Vol. 22, she was somewhat shaken up by Iwata being in Nishiki’s body, but more by the fact that Iwata was near death. That’s temporarily halted here, but not for long – we think things are back to normal, but halfway through the volume Iwata’s brain has regressed to the point where he’s forgotten everything after meeting Misaki in college. This shakes her up badly – by now most folks are aware that she’s in love with Iwata, but given her personality – and Iwata’s – it still comes as a shock every time we see it shown. So much so that she is willing to betray a newly formed allegiance.

Back to the first chapter of the book, and we are rather surprised to see Misaki and Excel genuinely teaming up, especially after last time when Misaki basically admitted her true desire was to stay out of things and just be left alone. Unfortunately, what’s going on with Iwata – and its connection to Excel – means that really isn’t an option anymore. Seeing them briefly working together is awesome – they are both in their own ways the most sensible and competent members of their respective groups – and it’s a shame we couldn’t see more of it.

We can’t see more of it because of what happened with Excel and Isshiki (Ropponmatsu 1 for those playing at home). To be fair to Rikdo, he did not pull this out of thin air. Much of the plot of the previous two volumes has been setting us up for what we see here. Excel’s amazing strength is shown in Vol. 20 in her fight with Isshiki, and we also see how consciousnesses can translate into other robot bodies when Iwata does it. That said, Excel definitely does not seem to be a robot. Despite having robot strength, and apparently robot invulnerability. Misaki hitting her with the laser whip was startling, but she had to know for sure. And that’s BEFORE Excel swapped bodies with Isshiki.

This is, as Shiouji tells Elgala, very dangerous. They’ve no idea how it happened, and no idea how to recreate or stop it. Meanwhile, Excel’s ACTUAL body does not have an Isshiki mind in it – it’s just sitting there slowly dying. And so Misaki is forced to ally with Elgala. This is much less of a powerful alliance. Elgala is very strong for a human, and is incredibly resilient for one too, but the fact is that compared to Excel she is simply not a superhuman. She’s also an idiot – yes, even compared to Excel. On the plus side, she’s a member of ACROSS. That’s about all the pluses. Her reasoning with Excel fails to take into account Excel’s devotion to Il Palazzo – one made even stronger by her immortal robot body.

As for other characters, it was rather surprising to see Hyatt not only remember Watanabe, but even seem to remember affection for him. Hyatt will, let’s face it, always be the most opaque cast member (And I include Miwa in that group) – and it’s not surprising that she vanishes from the second half of the manga. However, seeing this suggests that perhaps there is something more to her than just falling over and dying, and Watanbe brings it out… somehow. As for Watanabe, those weary of his descent into sleazy pervdom will be relieved to note that he reverts after this confrontation to his old Miss Ayasugi-loving self. Who is still a wuss, but the alternative was not to most people’s liking.

(BTW, Carl Horn confuses ‘True End’ with ‘Good End’. Watanabe thinks he’s getting the True End as he’s going to DIE, but still happy knowing he was loved/remembered. True endings tend to be bittersweet. Higurashi is a good example – the original games, manga and anime had a ‘Good End’, but the PS2 game version had a ‘True End’, which did not save everyone. True endings are generally deeper and more realistic, but of course less happy.)

Kabapu really doesn’t do much here, but we do get more Miwa. She’s clearly our end villain by now, and the one in control at ACROSS. Well, most of the time – it hasn’t been clear for AGES when anyone is dealing with the real Il Palazzo. For example, the Il Palazzo Elgala and Hyatt report to seems unaware that there was a robot President Excel at all. And Miwa walks right up to him at one point – is that the hologram? Is Il Palazzo like Isshiki? Or, more likely, is Il Palazzo like Excel? (We’ve seen flashbacks of the two of them in their previous lives.) I wonder if his consciousness can jump bodies? As for Miwa, we don’t know precisely what she wants just yet, but I’m betting having Excel in Isshiki’s body is good for her and bad for everyone else.

And so we leave off for another year – at a fairly annoying cliffhanger, it must be said. (Though really, wait till Vol. 26 – that’ll really make you scream.) Is Excel aware she may be working for the enemy? Where is the real Il Palazzo? Will Iwata regain his old goofy self? Can Misaki admit her feelings for him at all? Is Miwa really her husband in disguise, as all of Excel Saga fandom seems to think? What is Kabapu going to do? Can Watanabe ever truly reunite with Hyatt? And is Elgala going to say hilarious yet dumb things?

We won’t find out any of those for at least another year. Though I’m guessing the Elgala one will be true if nothing else. This volume was great. So much hot, thick plot pushing into my brain – ACK! Must stop that! Keeping my brain free of plot is what Il Palazzo desires!

Not By Manga Alone, March 2012

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Welcome back to Not By Manga Alone! This month Megan reviews the all-woman Womanthology, Sean looks at another Kilban collection, Tiny Footprints And Other Drawings, and Michelle visits with the young Beatles in Baby’s in Black.

Womanthology | By Renae de Liz, others | IDW Press – Womanthology was a Kickstarter sensation; the most successful comics project in the crowdfunding site’s history. The over $100,000 it raised has since been surpassed by Order of the Stick’s record breaking million dollar Kickstarter. Womanthology though, remains a singular project. It’s not the first all woman US comics anthology (far from it), but it continues to be high profile, generating both excitement and controversy. Maybe the project just came at the right time, when tensions over gender in the North American comics industry and community were hot, but the project’s continued high profile has meant valuable exposure for over a hundred creators, many of them up and comers.Womanthology - Joan D'Arc

Womanthology is an anthology with a social mission. It sought to build community among women creators, raise money for various Global Giving projects, and be a kickass comic book. It needs, therefore, to be judged by those, as well as artistic criteria. Does the book fulfil the projects threefold mission statement? Yes, yes and no. The results are mixed. Certainly Womanthology’s fundraising was impressive, and the excitement with which comics fans and creators greeted the project, suggest its gone a long way to its mission of building community. Womanthology was a nonprofit book, so it’s difficult to judge its sales figures against say, AvX, but it was recently announced that the anthology has been picked up as an ongoing series by its publisher IDW, so I think we can safely term it a commercial success.

Artistically it’s a mixed bag. The editors chose to pair up established and new and upcoming creators, which is a wonderful community building measure, but the art and writing is consequently varying degrees of polished. Some stories suffer under the shortness necessary for being part of an anthology. Endings are rushed, climaxes misplaced or absent. But one, two and four page stories are hard. It’s not surprising that the stories scripted and/or drawn by experienced cartoonists tend to be strongest. Stories that leaned on fairytale or newspaper/web comic strip tropes also tended to immune to the problem the page constraints. The one-two punch of a comic strip gag is perfectly suited to a tight frame; a superhero origin story might take a bit more breathing room.

Aside from length, some stories suffer from a layout that isn’t intuitive, and doesn’t always clearly delineate where stories begin and end. Titles and credits are too often weirdly placed, tiny, or bleeding into the background. The pages of the book are divided into two parts: up top are comics and pinups, footnoted below is an ongoing comic strip that’s interspersed with creator blurbs and quotes. It’s separated from the bulk of the page by a divider of three small stars rather than a straight line, and while this may sound like a minor issue, it took me a few seconds to figure out what part of the page needed my attention first. Confusing page design can be comic book death, so it’s a good thing the content of the book drew me in quickly. The creator quotes, all of them advice on how to make or break into comics, are the book’s standout design element. Besides being good advice, they contribute to a sense of continuity, which is so important in an anthology.

For me, the big draw of Womanthology is the sheer variety of styles and voices in the book. The art runs the gamut from the traditionally superheroic, to high fantasy, to picture book and even glamor pinups. Ming Doyle’s pulpy superheroine story is a predictable standout, but there is a lot of great work in this book, and not just from the big name creators. Janet Lee’s Ladybird is lovely, unusual and textured. Nado Pena’s colours in A Stuffed Bunny in Doll-Land are stunning; a nice bit of storytelling that perfectly compliments her pencils. Everwell, script by Jody Hauser, with art by Fiona Staples and Adriana Blake is another standout, an original fairytale with two different but equally dreamy art styles. The Culper Spy, script by Amanda Deibert and art by Amy Donohoe is a particularly fun story, introducing Agent 355 of the Revolutionary War’s Culper Ring, a savvy shoutout to Brian K. Vaughn’s Y: the Last Man. But while there’s lots of fresh and impressive talent in Womanthology, many stories could have used another go-through. Several otherwise outstanding stories suffer from misplaced word bubbles that utterly disorder conversations. Some of the book’s prettiest art is at times frustratingly opaque with action scenes that make little sense, and are hard to read.

But these are minor complaints, when the book as a whole is such a satisfying read. The sheer volume of content is impressive–this is isn’t a book you’ll get through in one sitting–and kind of wonderful. The undeniable hugeness of the book, along with the thoughtful creator interviews that wrap up the book, might help you through your sticker shock. Fifty dollars US! But worth a read. – Megan Purdy

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Tiny Footprints And Other Drawings | By B. Kliban | Workman Publishing – I had said in my review of Kliban’s last collection, Whack Your Porcupine, that his use of art and wordplay was at its zenith. In Tiny Footprints, we see him going in the opposite direction. Except for one brief section dealing with rhyming sentences, these cartoons are almost entirely wordless, requiring you to focus on the art to get the humor. Perhaps as a result, the humor is much stranger here, and his cynicism that has popped up through the prior books seems stronger than before. I note that between his last book and this one, he had published a cat calendar and cat portfolio, so perhaps this collection is a contrast to the growing celebrity his cat drawings were getting in the public eye. This is the other Kliban, who could be crude and nasty towards humanity but also judged them with one of the best artist’s eyes in the business.

Some other things I noticed in this collection: there’s a lot of transposition of humans and animals in here, with Kliban never quite allowing us to forget our roots – or indeed how thin the veneer of ‘sophistication’ we have is. This goes both ways, of course – one cartoon has a delivery man being barked at by a naked man patrolling his fenced-in yard, while another sees an unimpressed princess holding a frog sticking out its enormous tongue, clearly ready for much more than a mere peck on the lips. There’s also some analysis of the ‘professional’ and the degrees you can get for it – we see a street corner with a prostitute who apparently has a Ph. D. in her field, and another street corner noting a beggar with the same. But as always, my favorite cartoons tend to be those that make me stare and say, “…what?”, such as the bus shaped like a duck walking down Main Street. Taken as a whole, these cartoons once again make you admire both the visual eye and the twisted mind of this artist. — Sean Gaffney

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Baby’s in Black | By Arne Bellstorf | First Second – First off, let me state up-front that I am a huge fan of The Beatles. Not only that, but I am the kind of Beatles fan who has read multiple books about them and their early days and who would certainly be capable of finding fault with a graphic novel purporting to be about them. I clarify all this so that when I tell you that I enjoyed Baby’s in Black immensely you will realize how tough I will have been to please.
Baby's In Black

It’s a familiar story for me: The Beatles are playing in a club in a seedy area of Hamburg, Germany. One day, a young German named Klaus Voormann happens to catch a performance, and is so awestruck he insists that his quasi-girlfriend Astrid Kirchherr hear them for herself. Astrid, a photographer, is instantly intrigued by the group’s enigmatic bassist, Stu Sutcliffe, and while she befriends the band as a whole, she and Stu soon fall in love. He’s only in The Beatles to please his best friend, John, but with Astrid’s encouragement enrolls in a local art school and begins to attract notice as a painter. Alas, just as things are starting to go well, he begins getting these awful headaches.

Sometimes, a phrase can be really important. In this case, the phrase in question appears on the back flap and reads, “Written with extensive input from Astrid Kirchherr herself…” If this phrase hadn’t been present, my reaction to scenes of Stu and Astrid alone together might’ve been dubious. But because of her involvement, it felt like I was getting to see little moments between them that had never been considered significant enough to make it into any other chronicle. I wish the book could’ve been longer, or had a happier ending, but it wasn’t meant to be.

I do think Bellstorf handled Stu’s death in a tasteful yet striking way, and I was particularly fond of a few pages afterwards where Astrid’s gaze alights upon various spots in her home where Stu can no longer be found. Too, Bellstorf’s artwork, complete with scribbles that occasionally exceed panel borders, nicely captures the exuberance of The Beatles’ music as well as Stu’s painting sprees. If I had any gripe, it’s that the boys in the band are sometimes distinguishable only by their eyebrows and that I occasionally got Klaus and Stu confused, especially after Astrid gave the latter the haircut that the other lads would eventually ask for themselves.

If you’re new to early Beatles history, this would be an accessible place to start. And if you’re a seasoned fan, you still might learn something new. – Michelle Smith

A Devil and Her Love Song, Vol. 2

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By Miyoshi Tomori. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Margaret. Released in North America by Viz.

In Volume two of this series, we delve further into the psyches of both Maria and Kanda, and get a good look at how the series overall is going to shape up. Basically, if you dislike hardcore bullying, or people abuse authority? You may wish to consider another series. I wish you wouldn’t, though, as this is really quite good.

It can sometimes be frustrating that so many manga series are devoted to life in high school. Do we really need to relive those years all over again? And this volume is especially good at showing us the darker side of high school – Maria has virtually the entire class (save our two heroes, of course, as well as Tomoyo, the girl we dealt with in Volume 1) united against her, with Ayu Nakamura only being the most obvious. Given the nature of shoujo manga, I expect Maria will eventually win over one or two more of these girls, but in the meantime, it’s hard to take – especially given how vicious they are here, calling Maria a slut and ripping off her rosary (which them gets thrown away by the teacher.)

Oh yes, that teacher. Another trend of Japanese manga and anime dealing with bullying is that ‘blame the victim’ seems to be the norm (not that this is limited to Japan). Fruits Basket had Kisa being urged to “get stronger” so that she wouldn’t be bullied, and Medaka Box has a bullied track star afraid to tell anyone as *she* would be the one cut from the track team. Towards that end, we have the class’ sadistic teacher, who seems happy enough to use Maria to further his own ends. He’s over the top, yes, but I also liked the fact that he is a clever bully – he manages to turn things around against Kanda quite well, and is compared uncomfortably with him. Teachers in Japan hate the nail sticking up, which is exactly what Maria is – and what Kanda tried not to be every day.

Vol. 2 delves deeper into Kanda’s psyche, as we see not only how much of his everyday behavior is a false front, but how much he relies on that front to get him through life. Maria has no filters, so is unable to see just how people use them to make things less harsh. (I’ve noticed her tendency to use full last and first names with everyone.) The trouble with these filters, of course, is it makes it harder for genuine feelings to get through – on either side. Maria is so unfiltered that she makes an impression right away, but I also loved the end, where Maria notes that the class is so angry with Kanda because he was so important to them in the first place.

This is a 13-volume series, and we’re barely into it. Which makes sense, not because Maria will have to defeat and/or befriend teachers and bullying classmates in order to get that brass ring, but that it’s becoming clearer that the biggest obstacle is her own self-hatred. If Maria keeps thinking of herself as making everyone and everything around her worse, then she’s never going to be able to open up. She seems to realize this, and is happy that she came to this new school. As we get more of her backstory (and the cliffhanger here seems to imply the next volume may have more of it), hopefully we’ll get to see her begin to cope with not being a devil, but simply a teenager who’s been through a harsh life.

Manga the Week of 4/18

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Man, April has been a very busy month for manga. Let’s see what’s hitting stores this week. It’s a lot.

Dark Horse, a company that’s cut back on manga in recent years, has three whole new books out! There’s Vol. 22 of popular violence ‘n service title Gantz. Vol. 41 of Oh My Goddess!, which is not known for its violence or fanservice. Well, not the kind of service Gantz offers, anyway. And after 7 years, we see Vol. 2 of The Monkey King, another adaptation of the famous story by Vampire Hunter D artist Katsuya Terada that ran in Shueisha’s Ultra Jump.

From Kodansha, we get Vol. 5 of their two newest Shonen Magazine titles. Thriller Bloody Monday (which reminds me of 24), and mystery Cage of Eden (which reminds me of Lost, only with far more shots of breasts drawn in loving close-up).

Seven Seas gives us two volumes that many folks got today from Diamond – for once, it’s Midtown being a week late. Blood Alone Vol. 6 has vampires in it. And Toradora Vol. 4 has tsunderes in it. It’s arguable which creature might be more scary to the average person…

Udon offers us Vol. 1 of a manga I know absolutely nothing about, Captain Commando. It seems to be some sort of superhero thing. And is apparently not from Japan, but original to this publisher? I guess? Looks interesting, at any rate.

Viz’s third week is usually its most interesting. We see Vol. 6 of my favorite Ikki title Dorohedoro; Vol. 6 of the Tenjo Tenge omnibus; and Vol. 2 of the X reprint, which should look gorgeous if nothing else. And apocalyptic.

Lastly, Yen has a giant pile of releases. New Betrayal Knows My Name. New Black Butler. New Black God. And that’s just the B’s! There’s also the 2nd Durarara!! manga, which should finally give us some Shizuo; a 6th volume of Zombie massacre title High School of the Dead; and the final volume of Higurashi’s latest arc, the Atonement Arc. After this we take a 5-month break before the next arc begins, so enjoy Higurashi now for the summer months!

So what are you getting out of that large pile of manga?

The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, Vol. 12

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By Eiji Otsuka and Housui Yamazaki. Released in Japan as “Kurosagi Shitai Takuhaibin” by Kadokawa Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Shonen Ace. Released in North America by Dark Horse.

It’s been a long, long wait, but it’s great to see a new volume of this horror/comedy/workplace series. The reasons for the long wait are many: first off, I imagine Carl Horn was quite busy, as he also edits all the Oh My Goddess and Evangelion titles for Dark Horse, and OMG was on a ‘speed-up’ release schedule. He also had Excel Saga 22 and 23 in there somewhere. But mostly I suspect it’s due to poor sales, as Carl admits in the liner notes. This is why the cover for Vol. 12 is now a normal manga cover as opposed to that cardboardey-feeling cover we had for 1-11. Luckily, the content inside is still excellent.

That cover image above comes without the little ‘Parental Advisory: Explicit Content’ sticker partially obscuring Sasaki’s face, but the sticker is most definitely needed, as this particular volume has explicit sex to go with its explicit gore. No, Karatsu hasn’t gotten it on with either Sasaki or Kikuchi – though he and Sasaki are absent from the last story for a “trip to Hawaii” that’s apparently in Vol. 13. Instead the first story deals with the dangers of virtual reality RPGs, and also trying to sell your identity – or buy another one. As you can imagine, when unscrupulous people get a hold of something shady that needs marketing, bad things happen. Note this is not only the most sexually explicit in the volume, with both sex and nudity, but it’s also the goriest – “Talk about loss of face!” is a grotesque pun here. It also has the most unpleasant of this volume’s villains. Luckily, she gets hers as our heroes make another of their grand entrances. And as a bonus, Sasaki gets to wear another ridiculously impractical outfit, even if only in VR.

The middle story was my favorite, even though I knew it would end poorly. It features a washed-out comic and a club hostess who meet cute, immediately fall for each other, and are basically adorable. In *this* series? You know how long they’ll last. That said, the adorable is there, and it’s refreshing seeing Eiji Otsuka writing the closest this series will ever get to romantic comedy. This story deals with both discorporation – the talent of the hostess girl – and the Japanese housing market, which proves to be as bloody and cutthroat as anything else in this series. It’s also a rather cynical take on the world of showbiz comedians, with the villains here giving off a very seedy, sub-Jerry Lewis vibe. It also has the happiest of the three endings – well, as happy as you’re gonna get.

Lastly, we have a story about a dollmaker longing for his dead sister, who passed away during World War II. Unfortunately, this also ties in with both Korean politics (which the authors have gone into before, possibly as it makes Japan very uncomfortable, and they love pushing buttons) and realdolls (complete with many creepy otaku and some cameos of dolls based on Ayanami from Evangelion and Yoko from Gurren Lagann). It’s the weakest story in the volume, possibly due to Karatsu and Sasaki’s absence (Makino is there but doesn’t do much, as per usual, but that does leave the bulk of things to the “goofy” characters), but not without merit, and has a morbidly cynical punchline. Plus there’s some more Makino/Yata ship tease, which pleases me.

For those wondering about the small fragments of plot that have been going through previous volumes, well, there’s none of that here. What we get is a strong horror manga, with dark veins of comedy and a few heartwarming spots (OK, very few). It’s a solid series that needs more love.

Pick of the Week: Cross Game & More

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There’s plenty to choose from at Midtown Comics this week. Check out the Battle Robot’s picks below!

MICHELLE: Decisions, decisions. I will definitely be picking up the latest volumes of Arisa and Itazura Na Kiss, and I’m tempted by the second volume of Countdown 7 Days, as well. But really, the one absolutely can’t miss release for next week is volume seven of Cross Game. This, the penultimate volume of VIZ two-in-one release, contains volumes fourteen and fifteen of the original series, and is sure to be chock full of baseball and slice-of-life relationship goodness. I shamelessly implore everyone to buy Cross Game so that we may see more Adachi released here in future!

SEAN: For those of you who might have been living in a cave for the past couple of years, I will tell you that my pick this week is Volume 23 of Rikdo Koshi’s bubble economy sentai satire Excel Saga. It only comes out once a year now (and the liner notes indicates that isn’t going to change even now that it’s done in Japan, as it says “see you in 2013”), but that just makes it an event, and in the past few volumes we’ve seen the author pull out all the stops and keep developing the actual plot he’s had going. (Yes, anime fans, the manga has a plot. I realize that may be off-putting to you.) An incredibly underrated series, buy it today and make Carl Horn smile. You want to see Carl smile, right?

KATE: I heartily second all of Michelle’s selections, but ultimately cast my vote for Rohan at the Louvre. Like Glacial Period, Sky Over the Louvre, and On the Odd Hours, this manga takes the famous museum’s immense collection as its starting point, building a story around a mysterious, 200-year-old painting. The author is Hirohiko Araki — he of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure — and the lead character a minor character from the JoJo universe. From the summary at the NBM site, I don’t think prior knowledge of JoJo is a prerequisite for enjoying the story, which makes this a great, commitment-free way to get acquainted with Araki’s work.

MJ: I’ll admit that my top choice this week is probably the same as Kate’s, Rohan at the Louvre, and my second is Michelle’s, Cross Game (and yes, I do want to see Carl Horn smile), but since these have already been praised, I have the chance to throw my vote elsewhere. So with that in mind, I’ll name volume two of Dark Horse’s omnibus edition of Magic Knight Rayearth. Though I’m certainly a CLAMP fan, I’ll admit this is one series I’ve never actually read, and with the CLAMP MMF looming up in July, it’s time for me to study up! The fact that Kate chose this edition as a runner-up in her Best Manga of 2011 gives me a lot of confidence that catching up with Magic Knight Rayearth will be worth my while. I look forward to discussing it in July!

Readers, what looks good to you this week?

Bookshelf Briefs 4/9/12

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This week, Sean, Michelle, and Kate look at recent releases from JManga, Viz Media, Dark Horse, and Vertical, Inc.

Ekiben Hitoritabi, Vol. 2 | By Jun Hayase | JManga – If you read volume one of Ekiben Hitoritabi, then you know what to expect from volume two. In this volume, middle-aged bento shop proprietor Daisuke Nakahara continues to travel around Japan by rail, acquiring two new companions who are initially reserved but eventually succumb to his relentless enthusiasm for railway facts and train station bentos. It’s fairly formulaic, but the panoramic vistas and detailed food drawings are still enjoyable, and dialogue like, “This whole shrimp is pretty lavish! It’s large and filling” inspires indulgent amusement rather than mean-spirited snickering. I even got a little verklempt during the chapters where Daisuke takes a boy on the train journey promised by his now-deceased father. It may not be the most exciting manga ever published, but it’s certainly got its own unique, leisurely charm. Thank you, JManga! – Michelle Smith

GTO: 14 Days in Shonan, Vol. 2 | By Toru Fujisawa | Vertical, Inc. – After unexpectedly enjoying the first volume of GTO: 14 Days in Shonan, I was really looking forward to the second. Happily, it did not disappoint. In fact, I liked it even better than the first as, aside from a gag wherein our protagonist’s nether-regions are the target of a swarm of ants, it’s more serious, focusing on Onizuka’s attempts to not only rescue Miki Katsuragi, the rebellious teen who’s caused him so much trouble, from a kidnapper but to get her police chief dad to realize that she’s been acting out in a desperate bid for his attention. Because we are privy to Onizuka’s more bumbling moments, his clear-eyed, rule-defying pursuit seems even more impressive and heroic by comparison. Okay, maybe there’s a little blatant heartstring-pulling here, with the whole “all of us worked as one” search party, but you know what? I don’t care. It’s effective. Bring on volume three! – Michelle Smith

GTO: 14 Days in Shonan, Vol. 2 | By Toru Fujisawa | Vertical, Inc. – For all that GTO can be moralistic in its “life isn’t as bad as you think it is” ways, there’s no denying that it shows life can be pretty damn bad. These kids aren’t just cynical teenagers with no worries – they deal with abuse, gang culture, and as we see here, kidnappers drugging them into online prostitution. That said, the basic theme of “children act up as the adults have abandoned them” reappears here, and we see how “The Girl Who Cried Wolf” isn’t as much fun when taken seriously. Luckily we have Onizuka, who can be a complete idiot much of the time but has the strength to back it up, both physically and mentally. Gang culture is so omnipresent in Onizuka’s world as it’s the closest thing to family for most of these kids, and seeing that family rally to save one of their own is heartwarming. Plus, car chases! –Sean Gaffney

Kamisama Kiss, Vol. 8 | By Julietta Suzuki | Viz Media – The beauty of Karakuri Odette was twofold: it was a medium length series of six volumes, and its romantic focus was small. These end up being a weakness, unfortunately in her new series. Much of the recent volumes of Kamisama Kiss have been taken up with wondering how long we can drag out the on-again, off-again romance/servant relationship between Nanami and Tomoe. It can be frustrating. On the up side, we do see Nanami’s cleverness here in escaping the World of the Dead, and she has improved greatly as a God. The big emotional drama in this volume, though, is saved for the end, where Nanami meets Mikage once more, who shows us why Tomoe has gaps in his memory – and why he wants Nanami to fill them. If you accept this is taking forever, it’s a good fantasy romance series.-Sean Gaffney

Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, Vol. 12 | Story by Eiji Otsuka, Art by Housui Yamazaki | Dark Horse – In the latest volume of KCDS, the Embalming Gang — as I like to call them — enter Second Life in search of a corpse, match wits with a girl who can leave her own body, and help a dollmaker say good-bye to the sister he lost during the 1945 Tokyo Fire Raids. The first story is the weakest of the three. Though Eiji Otsuka makes a game effort to explain how the gang’s powers work in virtual reality, the material never gels; the story feels like an grab bag of plot points from The Matrix, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and a furry snuff film. The other two, however, are more successful, offering just the right mixture of morbid jokes, spooky surprises, and poignant moments between the living and the dead. As always, Carl Horn’s exhaustive editorial notes are a boon to the curious reader, explaining cultural references, in-jokes, and sound effects in detail. –Katherine Dacey

The Story of Saiunkoku, Vol. 6 | By Kairi Yura and Sai Yukino | Viz Media – As you would expect, just because Shurei has passed the exam to become a civil servant (which she does, in a quickly elided few pages) doesn’t mean that she gets accepted by one and all. Resented for being female, she is quickly assigned to the worst tasks in the ministry go to her (we’re talking cleaning the toilets here), and those who were bullied in school may find this volume disquieting. Like most Japanese manga dealing with bullying, it rides a fine line between “she must get stronger on her own” and “why aren’t we stopping this?”. On the bright side, I like the relationship between her and the Emperor more and more, and his sneaking off to ‘be her bodyguard’ is very clever – especially since it’s becoming harder and harder to see her otherwise. With this series, the long, drawn-out romance is justified by history and events.-Sean Gaffney

Skip Beat!, Vol. 27

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By Yoshiki Nakamura. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Viz.

We left off last time with Ren and Kyoko posing as siblings – and all of the awkwardness that comes from this, including having to share a room. Volume 27 does now pull back on this at all, but makes things a whole lot worse, as we get to see, for once, Ren lose control rather than Kyoko.

Before that, though, we have some highly amusing scenes in which Kyoko finds, once again, it’s hard to act method when you have no idea what something is like – in this case, being spoiled. You can tell Ren is having an absolute ball with this, and Kyoko’s faces throughout as a picture – especially as she realizes that seeing Cain acting like a petulant child is actually sort of a turn-on for her/Setsu.

This cuteness is just a setup, though. The real meat of the volume is what happens next, where Kyoko is accosted by a gang of young guys looking for “a good time”. She, naturally, sics her “brother” on them, which is fine, as Ren is quite good at dodging, and these thugs are nothing special. At least until they start pulling out weapons. When one of them knocks Kyoko to the ground, the sight of Ren losing control is rather scary. If not for us (we’ve had flashbacks spoiling us for Ren’s traumatic past for some time), then certainly for Kyoko, who is stunned. It’s made worse by the fact that she can’t break character, but has to break up the fight. Strong stuff here.

Afterwards, in the hotel room… well, we’ve done comedy. We’ve done drama. Now it’s time for some romance. Well, quasi-romance, that is – it’s only Vol. 27, after all, you shouldn’t expect any real development just yet. But Kyoko gets into character too easily, which means that if she’s worried about her brother drowning in a tub, she’s gonna walk in on him. What follows is both hilarious and sexy, showing the depth of feeling Ren has for Kyoko (and his complete misinterpretation of her reaction), as well as Kyoko’s growing love for Ren – which she’s oblivious to, of course. The highlight here has to be Kyoko upset that she didn’t see “all” of Ren… so that she could make her doll more realistic.

Meanwhile, just because Kyoko’s doing Setsu doesn’t mean she’s not also still involved in Box R. Indeed, her two roles are bleeding into each other, and it can be hard to switch. I like the way that Skip Beat! shows us that, even though Ren and Kyoko are prodigies, acting is still a difficult profession – and that even if you’re method acting, you still have to keep your head in the game. Which is definitely something Ren is having trouble doing. He begs Lory to have Kyoko “fired” as Setsu, as he worries he won’t be able to control himself around her. Lory agrees – provided Ren fires her himself, saying he “doesn’t need her”. Oh Lory, you’re such a wonderfully manipulative ass. XD

I mentioned this volume is Number 27, so it seems appropriate that it ends with everyone realizing just how much Kyoko has grown up recently – and how gorgeous she’s becoming. Poor Ren. He’ll have rivals before you know it. In the meantime, one of North America’s longest shoujo series continues to show why it’s so popular. Lots of fun.

New Manga Licenses from Sakura Con and Anime Boston

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Been a while since I did a licenses post, but this weekend had two conventions bringing us three publishers announcing a whole bunch of titles. So what exactly is coming soon?

First off, from Vertical, a redone, re-translated, deluxe omnibus version of Ai Yazawa’s fashion romance Paradise Kiss, which first came out, not in Shodensha’s josei magazine Feel Young, but in a fashion magazine for young women, Zipper. I’ve reviewed it before for the Manga Moveable Feast, and it’s a great pick up. Yazawa went on to the even more popular Nana, of course, and fans of that series should like this as well.

Dark Horse announced several licenses that seemed obvious for them, but the one that stood out was the one that didn’t. Ore no Imōto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai (better known as OreImo, and translated as My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute) started life as a light novel, then (as with most moe light novels) quickly became a franchise, spawning two manga series, two anime series, a web animation series, two games… In any case, Dark Horse has licensed the first manga series, which is four volumes and ran in ASCII Mediaworks’s Dengeki G’s magazine. The series is best described as ‘not quite incest’, and is staggeringly popular among fans of ‘moe’ and ‘little sister’ type anime/games.

The rest of Dark Horse’s announcements look more like something we’d expect from them. Blood-C is a manga adaptation of the anime of the same name, from the Blood the Last Vampire/Blood+ series also licensed by Dark Horse. This current incarnation runs in Kadokawa Shoten’s Shonen Ace. Evangelion: Comic Tribute is a one-volume doujinshi collection featuring popular mangaka doing takes on Evangelion (I imagine it’s similar to Bandai’s Code Geass Knight and Queen anthologies). Emerald and Other Stories is a collection of several short stories written by Blade of the Immortal author Hiroaki Samura, most of which I believe ran in Kodansha’s Afternoon magazine, home of BotI. Lastly, Yoshitaka Amano is doing a new illustrated novel, Deva Zan, which like much of Amano’s recent work seems to be written for the Western market, i.e. Dark Horse will publish it first.

Then there’s Yen Press, who made several announcements as well, and like Dark Horse it was a mix of surprising and obvious. The surprise was the announcement of Thermae Romae, an award-winning manga from Enterbrain’s Comic Beam about a Roman bath designer who time-travels to various places to see what modern bathing is like. The very definition of ‘better than it sounds’, it will be coming out in omnibus hardcover editions.

Kaoru Mori’s A Bride’s Story has done pretty well for Yen, so they’ve decided to license Anything and Something, a collection of short stories that only just came out in Japan a couple of months ago from Enterbrain. Again, hardcover.

Also in an oversized omnibus is a license that many fans had been begging for. Umineko no Naku Koro ni is not so much a direct sequel to Higurashi as it is a thematic one. A group of people gather on a secluded island, and bad things start to happen. Generally thought to be deeper than Higurashi, it’s also more cynical and bittersweet. (For those who missed it, the final two ‘arcs’ of the main Higurashi series, which were 6 and 8 volumes in Japan, will be coming out in omnibus format here as well, starting in September with the Massacre Arc.)

Blood Lad comes from Kadokawa’s Young Ace, and is 5+ volumes. It’s a comedic take on vampires, demons and werewolves, which makes it an obvious choice for licensing over here in the West, where the mere word vampire grants a certain number of sales.

Yen is re-releasing Alice In The Country Of Hearts this June, and they’re picking up the sequels that Tokyopop originally had before they went under. My Fanatic Rabbit ran in Mag Garden’s shoujo magazine Comic Blade Avarus, and seems to focus on Elliot, the “March Hare” of the series.

Another Haruhi spinoff, The Misfortune of Kyon and Koizumi, seems to be another ‘doujinshi anthology’ similar to Dark Horse’s Evangelion one. Needless to say, Kyon and Koizumi will feature. It also seems to be another ‘alternate universe’, similar to that of the also licensed Disappearance of Nagato Yuki.

Lastly, the author of High School of the Dead also has another title, Triage X. It runs in Fujimi Shobo’s Dragon Age (meaning it’s another Kadokawa title), and is filled with high school assassins, violence, and fanservice. But fewer zombies.

So, what has you the most excited? (Also, anyone else noticing that 2-volume omnibuses are the new 1-volume paperback?)

Manga the Week of 4/11

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THERE IS ONLY ONE MANGA OUT THIS WEEK. BUY EXCEL SAGA 23. THAT IS ALL.

…OK, there are a *few* other manga besides Excel Saga. Hrmph.

Dark Horse has the sequel to Magic Knight Rayearth, with our heroines returning to a Cephiro much changes. Expect ship wars between Ascot and Clef fans, lots of cute fluffy romance between Fuu and Ferio, and one of the few workable threesomes in all of manga with Hikaru. Guaranteed to be good CLAMP-y fun! In the genuine way, not the postmodern ironic CLAMP fun way

DMP seems to finally be releasing the 8th volume of Itazura na Kiss, with … did Vol. 7 ever come out via Diamond? They skipped it, didn’t they? God. Anyway, enjoy your favorite shoujo couple be prickly and worried at each other. There’s also another mini-manga of Moon and Blood. And for yaoi fans, Vol. 2 of Countdown 7 Days and Vol. 2 of Replica.

Kodansha has the 7th volume of shoujo thriller Arisa, and the 14th – and possibly final – volume of Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei. Please don’t Gintama this series on me, Kodansha. I will nag you hard.

NBM is releasing a single volume manga called Rohan at the Louvre, which I know nothing about but which I hear has some amazing art.

Udon is releasing the first volume of Sengoku Basara Samurai Legends, which sounds like it’s related to the series of video games based around feudal Japan.

Aside from EXCEL SAGA 23, Viz is releasing a bunch of other stuff. We get the penultimate volume of Cross Game, which I understand may have some baseball in it. A new Case Closed, a new Itsuwaribito, a new Kekkaishi. The final volume of Maoh: Juvenile remix (this last volume remixed by Junior Vasquez) (hey, if you’re going to tell a joke, tell it all). Vol. 8 of Nura, which did not ship last week for some weird reason. And Vol. 20 of 20th Century Boys, which no doubt will confuse some bookstores.

So, yeah, some other stuff. But mostly EXCEL SAGA 23.

The Drops of God, Vol. 3

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By Tadashi Agi and Shu Okimoto. Released in Japan as “Kami no Shizuku” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Morning. Released in North America by Vertical.

The third omnibus of Drops of God sees the first major plot advancement in the series. After spending so long trying to guess which wine was described in the will, one of our heroes finally gets it right. Of course, that does leave eleven more. And there’s still a few other problems to solve along the way…

(Incidentally, my cover for V. 3 is different from the one above. Last minute change? Or multiple designs?)

Once again, we have a plotline about how wine is far more than just an alcoholic beverage. We left off at the end of the last volume with an amnesiac woman who only had a description of wine to link her to her forgotten past. The trouble is, she’s now married – and both she and her husband are worried that if she recovers her memories, she’ll remember she was in love with someone else. Even though it relied on a contrived coincidence (two car accidents in the past leading to tragedy?), I really enjoy the way the authors used this, showing that it doesn’t necessarily take amnesia to avoid the past. And indeed, that the future can also shape the past – when Kaori recovers her memories and discovers her old love, we see that she and her husband are not the only ones whose lives are shaped by the tragedy. Throughout this plot, wine comes into play, acting almost as a mnemonic in order to be a gateway to prior events.

We then get the battle for the first apostle, which comes down to a very interesting point: these are not ‘the 12 best wines’ that Shizuku’s father has been describing, but 12 wines that he wanted to describe. This means that the first apostle revealed here depends on it not being an outstanding wine, but rather a wine that you have to work at to enjoy. Not only can I empathize with this, but of course it opens the playing field of wine even more to the cast. As with previous volumes, we get lovingly detailed depictions of the scene they’re imagining (and that his father described), which allow you to see the similarities and differences between the two wines picked, which differ only in the year made. It’s a good scene.

Characterization of the regulars continues to be the weak part of the series, but to be fair this is a manga about wine, not about Shizuku and Miyabi. We do get a little more development of her character here, showing her first love from high school returning and shocking her by being a cold businessman, but honestly I thought the best part of the manga for her was her superdeformed jealousy of Shizuku having lunch with Sara. Any love story that happens in this series will take even longer than Oishinbo’s did (and that took 47 volumes!), mostly as when it comes to love Shizuku seems to be thick as a brick. Something lampshaded by the other cast members. Speaking of the rest of the cast, the Italian wine snob, Chosuke, gets a rather sweet little backstory showing why he dislikes French wine so much.

The volume ends with the first half of the story I mentioned above with Miyabi’s old love. It involves trying to show that brand name doesn’t always mean quality, but to do that they have to note that in terms of wine, it frequently does. Lafite and Rothschild aren’t the top names in wine just due to marketing and publicity. They’re the cream of the crop, and I liked the scenes where Shizuku and Miyabi realize what a big hurdle they have to overcome. In the meantime, they’re also searching for the second apostle. Given this is a manga series, I have a sneaking suspicion Shizuku is going to fail hard at finding it, but we shall see.

This continues to be a good solid foodie manga. The broad points (p;lot, characters) are cliched, but the writing is what makes them stand out, and shows the work of two long-standing professionals. Definitely one for your shelves… though maybe the drinks cabinet instead?

Pick of the Week: Drops, Devil, & more

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The selection of new manga is wide at Midtown Comics this week. See the Battle Robot’s picks below!

KATE: My liver and I agree: this week’s must-read manga is volume three of The Drops of God. The genius of Drops is that it reads like a shonen tournament manga but has the soul of a Food Network show. Each volume manages to impart information about the world’s finest and rarest wines while delivering plenty of drama and adventure; it’s as if someone crossed Naruto with Oishinbo, and the results are totally, utterly entertaining, even if the characters spend a lot of time waxing rhapsodic about terroir and vintage. Really, what’s not to like about a series that dares to compare a 2001 Chateau Mont-Perac with Freddie Mercury’s singing?

SEAN: My pick this time is the 2nd volume of A Devil And Her Love Song, Viz’s new shoujo series for those of us who like our heroines with bite. However, leaving Maria aside, I’m also enjoying the way that the manga is giving us the traditional shoujo cliche of the happy blond guy and his more serious brunet friend. Maria manages to deconstruct the two of them almost right out of the box, and I look forward to seeing whether they plan to develop beyond the cliche. (I do expect the cliche to stay the same in one, way – serious guy is going to win the girl.) And, as ever with series where the girl is hated by her female classmates but surrounded by hot guy friends, there’s a hope for other sympathetic females.

MICHELLE: Oh man, this is a difficult week! I am definitely eager to read both Drops of God volume three and A Devil and Her Love Song volume two, but Kate and Sean advocated for them so eloquently that I’ve nothing left to add! I think, therefore, that I’ll go for volume two of GTO: 14 Days in Shonan. I knew nothing about the series going in, yet found it easy to follow and though it does have a little too much gross-out humor for my taste, it’s also got a lot of heart. It’s nice reading about a generally goofy protagonist who is also legitimately good at something. Recommended.

MJ: I’m anxious to read both the second volume of A Devil And Her Love Song and The Drops of God (I’m behind on GTO), but since these have already been mentioned, I’ll give my nod to the third volume of Rei Toma’s Dawn of the Arcana. Though at its core, it is a pretty typical shoujo love triangle, volume three finally manages to make the heroine’s supernatural ability interesting and introduces a new, fairly intriguing character as well. Even the political angles of the story are finally taking on some real heft. Though my enthusiasm for this series is still in-progress, this is beginning to look like a series I’ll enjoy following to completion. If you haven’t already, I’d say now is the right time to pick it up!

Readers, what looks good to you this week?

Bookshelf Briefs 4/2/12

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This week, Sean, MJ, and Michelle look at recent releases from Viz Media, Yen Press, Kodansha Comics, and SuBLime Manga.

Bamboo Blade, Vol. 12 | By Masahiro Totsuka and Aguri Igarashi | Yen Press – There’s a lot of silly fun in this volume, and most of it requires you to be familiar with the sentai genre. North American fans would best think of Power Rangers. Given that, there’s some hysterical mocking of it here, as well as some great poses. Most of the volume, though, serves two purposes: giving Usra a reason to return to kendo (which is not the “oh, wait, I love kendo all along” reason everyone thought it would be), and giving Tamaki a genuine challenge. We’ve seen TV savant Erina set up to be good at anything she does, so the cliffhanger shouldn’t be surprising, but we were all expecting Tamaki vs. Ura, so it is anyway. Everything is set up for the big finale, but will it be the finale we were expecting? Recommended to fans of sports manga and fun comedy.-Sean Gaffney

Cage of Eden, Vol. 4 | By Yoshinobu Yamada | Kodansha Comics – We have slightly less fanservice in this volume – which still means more fanservice than almost any other manga on the market, mind you – but that’s probably because things take a darker turn here, and the body count starts to pile up. There’s murder, attempted murder, rape, attempted rape, and more murder in these pages, which have more of a Lord of the Flies feeling than ever. Unlike Lord of the Flies, though, the adults on the island can be just as mercenary and villainous as the teenagers. In the end, though, it comes down to Akira – shonen hero extraordinaire, thinking on his feet and protecting the others – vs. Kohei, who panicked under pressure and is now sliding further and further into darkness in order to cover that up. It’s violent and servicey, but still a riveting thriller.-Sean Gaffney

Dawn of the Arcana, Vol. 3 | By Rei Toma | Viz Media – Visitors from a neighboring kingdom bring Princess Nakaba some new inter-palace strife, but they’re also responsible for the introduction of an enigmatic new character who so far provides more genuine intrigue than either of Nakaba’s current love interests. Furthermore, both Nakaba’s heritage and her supernatural ability are finally gaining some real dramatic traction, and even the story’s royal politics have begun to be interesting. Though the series’ romantic trajectory still remains pretty much standard, its plot and characterization have now taken the lead—never a problem for this reader. I described volume two as “tentatively recommended,” but I’m happy to report that this recommendation has now become more solid. – MJ

A Devil and Her Love Song, Vol. 2 | By Miyoshi Tomori | Viz Media – Following up on a strong first volume, A Devil and Her Love Song catapults from “good” to “great” here, as “Devil” Maria struggles with both a desire to reach out to her evolving circle of friends and her inability to gauge the impact of her own words on the brave few willing to stand with her. It’s refreshing to read a modern shoujo manga in which everyone is truly, deeply flawed, and no amount of “doing their best” can fix it. Even better, mangaka Miyoshi Tomori manages to do this while deftly avoiding both the syrup and cynicism that alternately pervade stories about high school “mean girls.” Happily, too, Tomori’s supporting characters continue to be just as interesting as her lead, including passive classmate Tomoyo, whose emerging backbone offers the promise of some awesome female friendship—one of my very favorite elements in shoujo manga. Definitely recommended. – MJ

Devil’s Honey | By Isaku Natsume | Published by SuBLime – Tasked by his superiors with reigning in a gang of punks at the school where he teaches, Toshimitsu Sugaya is surprised to learn that their leader, Yoshino, has not only been unfairly judged, but is also willing to obey his instructions without any argument. Turns out that a few years before, Sugaya inspired a runaway Yoshino to return home and stay out of trouble, and Yoshino has regarded him as a hero ever since. This being BL, these feelings become love soon enough, and after some token resistance due to the teacher-student taboo, the two get together. Honestly, there’s not a whole lot here that’s out of the ordinary, but that doesn’t stop it from being a pleasant read. It also seems to be one of the tamer offerings from VIZ’s new SuBLime imprint, if that’s more your speed. – Michelle Smith

Fairy Tail, Vol. 18 | By Hiro Mashima | Kodansha Comics – I wasn’t as enamored with Fairy Tail 17 as I have been of the series in the past, and while 18 suffers from some of the same problems – Mashima’s battles just don’t excite me as much as they should – this is still a definite improvement, mostly due to the concentration on character relationships. Natsu and Lucy get some excellent scenes together (and some ship tease too, even lampshaded), the villains get a bit more development, and even Leo and Aries get to be cute yet angsty. Best of all, though, is Erza, dealing with Jellal back before her eyes and amnesiac to boot. Her angry exhortation that it is better to live with the pain and guilt than taking the easy way out via death. Which, of course, she knows from personal experience. Still not sure where this is going, but it’s picked up again. –Sean Gaffney

The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi-chan, Vol. 5 | By Puyo and Nagaru Tanigawa | Yen Press – One of the best reasons for Haruhi fans to read these gag comics is that the character suffer great humiliation in ways that really only Mikuru seems to in the original. Seeing Haruhi so flummoxed by cats and crows, to the point of tears, is fantastic. Even better is the bodyswap episode, which gives us an opportunity to see Yuki acting like Haruhi. But best of all is the sheer lunacy of seeing Koizumi, off on an enforced vacation, being replaced by Arakawa-san and getting away with it. From the start, as he quickly turns the entire SOS Brigade into his disciples, to the ending parodying uber-serious 70s anime, it’s things like this that make me come back to this series over and over. Still better than the manga adaptation it’s parodying.-Sean Gaffney

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Vol. 4 | By Kenji Kuroda and Kazuo Maekawa | Kodansha Comics – Despite being comedic, the original Phoenix Wright games all revolved around murder, and could get quite dark and depressing at times. So here we have a story of a daughter accused of killing her father, and she’s shown to have endured a life of abuse – we see her father hitting her in the head with a kendo sword, and it’s shown that she wears a head bandage constantly. That being said, there’s some real mood dissonance here, also very common in the original series – the actual way that the father was murdered is so silly it almost undercuts the entire story. The second case, which we only get half of here, has fewer high points but also fewer moral ambiguities. Fun fluff for fans of the games, but not recommended otherwise.-Sean Gaffney

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Vol. 4 | By Naoko Takeuchi | Published by Kodansha Comics – You know, I think this might just be the best volume of Sailor Moon yet. Not only do we meet a new guardian in the form of Sailor Pluto, we also learn a little bit more about Sailor Jupiter’s daily life and watch as Sailor Venus gets frustrated trying to figure out the enemy and starts actively seeking answers. Various secrets and enemy motives are revealed, and though the majority are familiar to a long-time fan like me, there were some surprises, too, as I had completely forgotten that, in the manga, Tuxedo Mask has, like, actual powers! Even some awkward dialogue and a sigh-inducing “it’s” instead of “its” could not mar my enjoyment. At least they fixed “Sparkling Wide Pressure!” – Michelle Smith

Psyren, Vol. 3 | By Toshiaki Iwashiro| Viz Media – This series is probably never going to be in anyone’s list of top Jump properties, mostly due to it relying on hitting the basic shonen points. At the same time, those basic shonen points are the equivalent of eating beef stew – it’s not glamorous, but it fills you up. So we get a villain who is actually someone that Hiryu knew from before, now supposedly betraying them. We also get a volume filled with battle, as we’re back in the Psyren world for virtually the entire volume. People’s psychic powers are awakening, because that happens. And our hero and heroine get a chance to be badass and capable, which is always enjoyable. Honestly, there’s nothing here that will convince me this is great, but it’s not mediocre enough that I want to stop reading it. It’s good at what it does.-Sean Gaffney

Is This A Zombie?, Vol. 1

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By Sacchi and Shinichi Kimura. Released in Japan as “Kore wa Zombie desu ka?” by Kadokawa Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Dragon Age. Released in North America by Yen Press.

Now, let’s be fair. I knew I wouldn’t like this title when I ordered it. As I’ve noted before, I sometimes get things I hate in order to bring more ‘balance’ to my blog – see my review of Qwaser of Stigmata as an example. And honestly, any title that ran in Dragon Age is guaranteed to get me looking at it warily, similar to Champion Red. Sadly, though, Is This A Zombie? is merely bad, and not laughably bad.

This is essentially one of those manga where the premise is ‘guy living with lots of cute girls of various tyes’, but the author can’t really be bothered to give us much backstory on them. character development for Haruna and Sera in particular is minimal, with the two of them fulfilling the usual moe fetish tropes – Haruna is the loli tsundere, and Sera is the violent kuudere. Amazingly, by the way, this is not actually the worst of the adaptations – there’s an ‘alternate universe’ manga running in Comp Ace called ‘Yes, She’s Your Bride’ that is basically this only with less monster fighting and more naked harem antics. The mind boggles.

There is meant to be a certain amount of self-parody here, I suspect, but it’s the kind that’s done by people who think putting ‘ironic’ in quotes is ironic. The sleazy fanservice winks at you, but wants to have it both ways so the wink doesn’t fulfill its function. There’s also our hero’s magical girl outfit – excuse me, ‘magikewl’ girl (Yen explains why they translated it that way, and I agree it works, but I still hate it) – which of course is designed for laughs. Even the layout of the manga itself screams ‘self-aware comedy!’. It’s just not very good at that.

This is actually a shame, as there are a few moments in the manga where it briefly gets serious, and they show a definite leap in quality. These tend to revolve around the third girl, Eu, who is the quiet Rei Ayanami-esque character. She’s the one who resurrected Ayumu and turned him into a zombie in the first place, and like many other emotionless girls in anime/manga, her emotionless state is actually a plot point. Ayumu’s advice to her, and his decision to take whatever fate throws at him in order to make her life easier, is about the only time in the entire volume I liked him (he is otherwise a sarcastic pervert, one of the new breed of harem leads who are a reaction against the nebbish “Tenchi” type, but seeing a perverse guy not sleeping with all the women chasing after him is even more irritating than seeing a ‘pure-hearted’ type not do so).

Yen’s translation is fine for this type of series – it’s very colloquial, and at times read like a dub, but the original was no doubt just as colloquial. There’s lots of sentai and giant robot references, all explained in Yen’s copious endnotes. Sadly, absent from the endnotes is an explanation of why they licensed this at all. Admittedly, it *has* an audience here, unlike Sasameke. This title will appeal very much to the harem-anime-downloading, body-pillow-buying, waifu-proclaiming males out there. For everybody else, read pages 130-145, realize that the rest of the manga is nothing like that, and find something else.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Vol. 4

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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.

The fourth volume of Sailor Moon, and Jupiter gets the cover! Unfortunately, we’re also in the middle of a ‘have the senshi get abducted one by one’ arc, so she gets the first chapter and not much else. As with the Mercury and Mars chapters, we see Jupiter bonding with a friend of hers, this one male. It seems pretty platonic, though, at least on her end. We also get the revelation that her parents are both dead from a plane crash, so she lives on her own in a swank apartment. No idea where she gets the money… Rich relatives? Settlement from the crash? Honestly, most of the senshi are well-off. Even Usagi and Minako, the two most likely to be whining about not having any money, don’t seem to be hurting.

But in any case, soon Jupiter joins her friends in ‘captured off screen’ land. Venus is theoretically the next chapter, but honestly she’s not in it much. Presumably as Minako had an entire manga series devoted to her own personal life, she didn’t need a chapter that shows who her friends are and what she does on her days off. What we’re more concerned with is Chibi-Usa and the new enemies (who I will just start calling the Black Moon Clan, as that’s who they are). Chibi-Usa is settling in nicely in the past, and has even made a new friend (Momo will be Chibi-Usa’s designated friend till Hotaru basically replaces her in SuperS and Stars). But she’s still in denial about what’s going on, and actually seems to have some sort of PTSD (and with good reason, as we shall find). So Usagi is worrying about that, to the point where Naru and Umino are concerned. Remember them? Naru here even admits she knows Usagi is part of “another world that she can’t enter”. True enough, Naru, the author will forget you again soon.

Venus is abducted as we expected… but this time Usagi and Mamoru get there in time, and Mamoru gets a bit of powerup (albeit a ridiculous one: Tuxedo La Smoking Bomber is not in the anime, which tended to make Mamoru less powerful and more jerkassish). So Venus gets to stick around and help question Chibi-Usa, who has finally broken down and admits the truth: she’s from 1000 years in the future. And the future is in danger from the same folks abducting senshi. So, after a brief stop at Mamoru’s to get it on… oh, yeah, about that. Chapter 19 has Chibi-Usa basically terrified, so she wants to stay at Mamoru’s apartment. Usagi goes along, and after discussing things and various reassurances, they start to kiss and fall onto his bed. Then it’s the next morning, and Chibi-Usa is looking out the window. Usagi and Mamoru come in, Usagi wearing the same dress she had on last night and Mamoru’s dress shirt. So, nothing may have happened… or something may have happened. Most fans of Usagi and Mamoru’s romance think of this as their ‘first time’.

So we’re off to the 30th Century, something which is basically forbidden. So forbidden, in fact, that another senshi arrives to stop them! Yes, Sailor Pluto debuts here, though at this point in the story she’s still basically trapped in one place, at the Gates of Time. She’s devoted to stopping intruders, even if that means Sailor Moon and company (which makes no sense, but we’ll assume it’s some preventing paradox thing). Luckily, Chibi-Usa shows up, and it’s revealed that she and Pluto are close. In fact, the 30th Century, for all its crystal utopia, seems to be a very lonely place, as Chibi-Usa is mocked for being relatively powerless by the other children (she’s also 902 years old, something so gratuitously broken I don’t even want to get into it. Pretend that line doesn’t exist.), and Pluto’s stoic duty is only relieved by visits from Chibi-Usa (who she dotes on) and Endymion (who she seems to have a small crush on, as noted by her blushes here.)

Ah yes, Endymion. Arriving at the desolate wasteland of corpses that is the 30th Century, we meet King Endymion, aka Mamoru, who is a phantom but can at least interact with the others. We also meet, encased in crystal, Neo-Queen Serenity, aka Usagi, the future ruler of the planet. This is not really a surprise today, and honestly I don’t think it was meant to be back then either. Chibi-Usa is their daughter, and we also meet Luna and Artemis’s daughter Diana. Unfortunately, Usagi is still having difficulty with the whole ‘Mamoru loves his daughter more than me’ thing, and runs off to get captured.

I haven’t talked much about the Black Moon Clan here, but Prince Demande deserves a special mention here as being a loathsome creep. He’s not the true big bad in this arc… that would be Wiseman, who gets the cliffhanger for this volume… but he’s the equivalent of Beryl, and it seems appropriate that he has an obsession with Usagi the way that Beryl did with Mamoru. He even forces a kiss on her, much to her horror. (One note about the odd continuity here. After going to the future and getting told the plot, the senshi quickly go back to their home era… only to pretty much immediately have to return after Usagi storms off and gets captured. Why bother going back at all? No wonder Pluto gets annoyed when they arrive… the Time Gate must be a revolving door.)

We end this volume with Cibi-Usa being the one doing the running off, and running into a fortune-telling black cloud of evil called Wiseman. As with all black clouds of evil in Sailor Moon, this is not going to prove to be a good thing. Not for our heroes, not for Chibi-Usa, and especially not for Pluto. But that’s for Volume 5.