Sean Gaffney

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.

Having defeated Death Phantom and the Black Moon Clan, and briefly saying hi to their 20th century selves, Usagi and friends have returned to the present, ready to prepare for their final year of middle school, with all the test-taking that involves for typical Japanese students. But this is Sailor Moon. More importantly, it’s the Sailor Moon manga, where filler is hard to find. There’s barely any time to breathe before a new enemy has made its presence known. But… who *is* the new enemy, anyway?

It has to be said, the senshi are getting better at finding and stopping threats. There is no flailing around the way we sometimes saw in previous volumes. The trouble is that while they can find beings of power, they aren’t quite sure if they’re bad guys or not. Sometimes it gets obvious right away. Possessed schoolgirl has huge lumpy monster leap off her back? That’s a bad guy. (Well, the lump anyway, try not to kill the girl.) But there’s also a couple at the newly formed Private School For The Awesome, Mugen Academy. He’s a cocky smart-aleck who seems taken with Usagi, but also gives off a different kind of aura. She’s a cool and self-possessed gorgeous teen who seems to like Mamoru. And together… well, they have their own agenda.

Of course, I am talking about Haruka and Michiru, who (along with Hotaru) make their debut here. It’s interesting in hindsight to see how much time Takeuchi-san devoted to making the main cast doubt the two new cast members, mostly as, of course, from our perspective, we know they’re good guys, if ones with ambiguous ethics. They’re helped out by a deliberate stylistic art choice. Haruka, when she’s being her normal Academy student self, is not only drawn in the male uniform but is drawn as a male. The judo practice in particular shows this. Whereas when she’s Sailor Uranus, there are far more curves. As I said, though, this is mostly stylistic (Naoko admitted as much in an interview), and Haruka does not appear to be a sex-changer like Ranma or anything. The anime didn’t even bother to deal with this at all, and just made Haruka obviously female for all but her very first episode.

There’s a lot of gender identity stuff here. When Makoto gets hurled to the ground in the judo match, the other senshi yell at Haruka, but she replies that gender shouldn’t matter if you have something you want to protect. Likewise, later on Usagi asks Haruka (who she suspects of being Sailor Uranus) point blank if she’s a woman or a man, and Haruka asks “Does it matter?”. Being a woman and the strength that it provides are a core theme of the series, of course, but Haruka’s dual identity adds a dual thrill to the whole thing. As for the agenda of Sailors Uranus and Neptune, it seems to be partly ‘this is our fight, not yours’ and partly ‘we are better at this and know better’. Though thankfully not quite as obnoxious about it as they would be in the anime.

And there’s also Hotaru, one of my favorite characters, who at this point seems to be shaping up to be a tool of the big bad more than anything else. As opposed to the other senshi (including Uranus and Neptune), Hotaru’s true identity actually *does* remain a surprise in the manga proper, though this is slightly spoiled by the start of the volume having a giant color picture of all ten senshi. Hotaru here mostly gets ill and bonds with Chibi-Usa (who is quite cute here, and also very much like her mother). There is an interesting scene where she is clearly unhappy with Kaolinite, her father’s new assistant, accusing her of breaking up their family. Unfortunately, I think she is going to be disappointed on that front. Despite her initial standoffishness, though (much like the other Outers), there is a core of empathy to Hotaru that makes us sympathize with her.

I do still have a few issues with the manga proper. The anime, particularly this arc, spoiled me for real villains. Yes, the Witches 5 are present and accounted for, but they’re one-offs who do their schtick and get killed off. We don’t even get Eudial driving her car! Likewise, I’m afraid that the main villain behind the scenes, Pharaoh 90, is another nebulous black miasma of evil. Not to be confused with the previous two nebulous black miasmas of evil. (I think Takeuchi eventually realized what she was doing and ‘fixed’ this, if I recall the Stars plotline correctly.)

Still, overall a fantastic volume of Sailor Moon. And hey, who’s that we see at the cliffhanger? Gosh, she looks very familiar…

By Akira Kawa. Released in Japan by Futabasha, serialized in the magazine Women’s Comic Jour. Released in the United States by Futabasha on the JManga website.

The second volume of Wonder! (which has just ended in Japan, by the way, and is 17 volumes total) continues the types of stories we saw in the first. It’s a story about what it means to be a family, in all the myriad ways: husbands and wives, parents and children, and the multi-generational aspect of everything. It also touches on childcare quite a deal, and might actually strike some as being a bit heavy-handed at times. I think the writing and characterization is so strong, though, that it overcomes any issues it might have.

The protagonist role continues to switch back and forth between forthright and emotional Kaori and her reserved and quiet adopted son, Kota. Having jumped forward about 9 years in the first volume, this one settles down into his final years of high school, as the manga seems to have been picked up as a series fully by now. Kota’s future is not so certain, though. He doesn’t really want to go to college, and is content to simply start working full time at the snack bar he’s been with. Everyone seems to wonder if this is really the right choice for him, though… especially as he seems to brim with unfulfilled potential. As the volume goes on, a new possibility makes itself known: Kota is really fantastic with kids, and it’s brought up that he may want to look into being a caregiver of some sort. Whether he takes this up or not is another matter. Kota is not quite as hard to read as his father, Taiyo, but it’s clear he’s at that age where he doesn’t want to burden his family but also doesn’t ant to leave.

As for Kaori, if she seems angrier than usual here, it’s mostly because her mother has moved in with them temporarily, after getting divorced from what appears to be her fifth husband. It’s lampshaded right away that Kaori and her mother are far too similar for their own good, though Kaori certainly comes off better when we compare; her mother is written as deliberately antagonistic most of the time, and picks fights constantly. Just as much as this series is about family, it also seems to be about communication, and how hard it is to really get anything across even when you *do* mean well. Kaori has always been upset with her mother for ruining her second marriage (the first, which led to Kaori, ended with her father’s death from illness). And after a long series of arguments, her mother finally reveals the real reason that marriage fell apart. Kaori is stunned, and rightly so, but… you also feel sympathy for her mother, as really, how do you begin to bring that up with a child?

It can be argued that Kori and Taiyo’s family is a bit too perfect, especially compared to the other family we get to know in this volume, which involves both spousal and parental abuse. There’s an interesting discussion of disciplining a child – Kaori is adamant about hot hitting her child, partly due to the real reasons that it’s not a good thing to do, but also because of her own memories of being hit as a kid. When the abused young child of a different family comes to live with them for a short period, Kaori is frustrated that he’s acting up and lashing out – the child even attacks Wonder, the titular dog! Kaori is stunned to realize that at one point she wanted to strike the boy, and her mother cynically notes, “Did you think that you were perfect?” Well, she may have – her own child, Miya, is adorable, well-mannered and behaves, she and her husband have resolved the whole ‘open marriage’ thing from last volume and seem to have bonded. It’s easy to be judgmental towards someone whose problems you’ve never dealt with.

As with Volume 1, this volume ends with a one-shot story about an unrelated couple. This one has a bit of a fantasy aspect – a young wife who’s feeling stressed out and uncertain about her marriage, especially as her husband is ten years older than she is, finds that an older couple have moved in next door to him – and not only are they eerily similar, but there even seem to be future echoes of the fights that she and her husband have. The revelation here was more obvious than I’d have liked – anyone who’s read speculative fiction will get it right away – but I still enjoyed it, especially as it examinees the fact that choosing to live with someone the rest of your life can be a scary and terrifying thing to do… but is ultimately really sweet.

In case you’re wondering, Wonder does appear throughout, and still appears to have that ’empathy’ superpower and ability to always find a person in trouble that he had previously. In fact, Kota may share the same ability – the parallels between Kota and Wonder are numerous. As for Volume 3, I’m definitely awaiting more, despite a cliffhanger ending (was it a cliffhanger?) to Chapter 9 that made my jaw drop – let’s just say that the most serious part of the manga was dragged uncomfortably back and given a light, almost offhand touch. I’m not certain how morally dissonant it was meant to be, honestly, and to say more would be to spoil. But for anyone wanting a josei manga about family and raising children, Wonder! is a fantastic choice.

By Ken Akamatsu. Released in Japan as “Mahou Sensei Negima!” by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

Sometimes when you’re reviewing Volume 35 of a series, it can be a bit difficult to know what to say. Especially when so much of the volume is people punching other people, sometimes with lightning. But as we head breathlessly towards the climax, we are reminded that Akamatsu always manages to make things interesting, even when we don’t expect it.

Note that Negi is not on the cover for the 2nd volume in a row. Instead we get Ayaka in costume, surrounded by the five girls who probably ended up getting the least attention in the series. I mean, even Zazie gets to be an actual demon. The twins and the cheerleader girls, though, ended up suffering from Akamatsu trying his best to write a plot that would feature 31 different girls and not quite making it. We get another brief reminder of Sakurako’s insane luck skills, but other than that, their main function is to be the ‘reassuringly normal ones’ when Haruna returns to Mahora Academy (even if, as Madoka intuits, that’s an insult by now).

As for the fighting, it’s rather interesting that even after all this time, Negi still wants to try to resolve things through discussion. It tends to separate out Negima from other shonen fighting titles – yes, there’s a love of physical combat, but every time we confront a villain and prepare for battle, there’s an offer to try to mediate. This doesn’t just extend to Negi, as even his followers do the same – Nodoka’s overture of friendship to Fate may get her socked in the jaw, but that doesn’t make it less sincere. (I would like to take the time to note, since I suspect I won’t get the opportunity again, how much I love Nodoka’s character arc in this entire series. She’s come a long way from ‘that one who’s like Shinobu from Love Hina.) But of course, for all the attempts at peacemaking, in the end it comes down to a lot of fights – which, luckily, Negi is also very good at.

One of the surprises in this volume is the fact that the connections between Magical World and the ‘real’ world of Mahora Academy have become so broken down that the fight is now literally coming to the school. This, of course, allows a lot of the cast who were left behind to appear again, as I noted above. It also allows Evangeline to finally give up and embrace her not-villain status. For a supposed morally bankrupt vampire, she’s really been one of the more noble characters in the series, and Negi’s influence has done her a world of good. As Zazie notes. Speaking of which, Zazie’s sudden penchant for conversation, and lampshading of Eva’s sudden affection for her classmates, is easily the funniest part of the book.

And yes, there’s people being stripped, and discussion on which of the girls Negi likes best, because this is still Akamatsu, after all. In the end, though, we’re left with another killer cliffhanger, as we find out what’s actually beneath that world tree. Oh yes, and Kodansha remembered to keep the extras this time!

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

There’s always a risk that Oda runs because he puts everything into his manga. This is not a title like Bleach, where a 5-minute fight can take three months of real time. There’s always at least ten different things going on. The difficulty is in trying to keep all that happening and not confuse or alienate the audience with too much information all at once. And in this volume, I’m afraid a lot of the time Oda doesn’t quite manage it. He’s simply trying to do too much too fast here, using too many characters that we haven’t grown to care about yet.

This is basically a volume in two halves. The first continues the melee battle on Fishman Island, as the Straw Hats get in between a civil war/coup started by Hody Jones and his brand of outlaw scum. Of course, they’re powerful outlaw scum, so King Neptune and his good guys are getting pounded. Meanwhile, Luffy has succeeded in getting Princess Shiratori outside, but this quickly leads to even more chaos. And then there’s Jimbei, who is down by the grave of the princess’ mother, feeling guilt and sadness. There are some nifty fights (Zoro is, as usual, badass) and the odd goofy comedic moment (Sanji seems to finally get better here, after briefly turning to stone (which I’m sure isn’t meant to be metaphorical at ALL.) But mostly the chaos is what’s driving everything, and this does make things incoherent at times.

Some things to note: Nami’s subplot is actually quite interesting. She’s recognized, sort of, as being an ex-member of Arlong’s crew, and certainly Jimbei’s guilt is directed quite a bit in her direction. But we don’t really see her reacting much beyond faraway looks and the occasional sweatdrop. I like to think that it’s Oda showing that Nami is finally starting to move on from her past (we get a nice page-long flashback from Nami for those readers who may have forgotten it), but also we see that she can also see things from the other side now, and is more aware of the prejudice and persecution that fish-people have suffered. Not that she’s forgiving Arlong anytime soon.

Which leads us into the big flashback. This is an unusual flashback in that it doesn’t seemingly stem from a crewmember’s past and end with them joining Luffy – unless that’s meant to be Jimbei. Instead, we meet Fisher Tiger and Queen Otohime, two characters whose dreams and ideals for their people are contrasted against each other. Fisher Tiger knows what’s right and tries to follow that, but the constant abuse of humanity against his people has ground him down. As for Queen Otohime, her naivete is contrasted with her nobility and pure stubbornness, and we learn that even if fishmen and humanity can try to move closer together, it only seems to take one person with different ideas to screw everything up. As you might guess, prejudice is not an easy fix, especially when it involves slavery.

The aftermath of the queen’s death will have to wait for the next volume, as she dies on the last page (Oda even notes there’s no room for extras this time). But it’s not going to be pretty. Oda is showing us that the world is a complex, contrasting, and sometimes horrible place. Even if he’s trying to jam it into a narrative already overstuffed with political battles and revolutions. Next volume should have a lot of fights, which will actually come as a relief after all this buildup, I think.

(Also, Oda’s response to the reader asking who the father of Makino’s child is is classic Odatroll. He clearly knows all about the Shanks/Makino shippers, and is baiting them mercilessly.)

By Quin Rose and Mamenosuke Fujimaru, based on the game by Quin Rose. Released in Japan as “Clover no Kuni no Alice – Cheshire Neko to Waltz” by Ichijinsha. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

I was less than impressed with the first spinoff from the Alice books, Bloody Twins. This second one promises a much longer and more involved plotline – it’s 7+ volumes in Japan – and like the heart volumes has Alice bonding with a lot of people while clearly being romantically paired off with only one of them. Here it’s Boris, the Cheshire Cat of Alice’s dream world.

The premise, supposedly, of the ‘Clover’ world is that the player, playing Alice, did not actually pick anyone while playing the ‘Hearts’ game – which involved a love based on passion. So the world changes to the ‘Clover’ country, where Alice once again interacts with most of the cast she knows (Julius is gone, and I missed him), along with a few new characters, and tries to see if she can find a love based on ‘companionship’. The manga thus fairly unapologetically plots out one of the ‘routes’ you can take as Alice in the game.

What this means in terms of an actual manga plotline is that Alice is uprooted from her comfortable life at the amusement park (as I said, different world from the Hearts manga) and dumped into a lonely forest. Much of this first volume involves her fear and uncertainty at having her life turned upside down right after she decided to stay there and not return home to her sister. Luckily, she eventually finds Boris, and through a series of wacky situations, ends up staying at the Hatter’s place and getting a new job.

Like Bloody Twins, this manga is focused far more on the romance than the Hearts manga. Alice’s sister is mentioned once or twice, but the implication we get at the end of Hearts is never brought up. Instead, we get the Hatter, and the Twins, and above all Boris, all trying to get into Alice’s pants. I’d mentioned in Bloody Twins that there was a far more sexually suggestive air to the book, and that continues here – at one point the Hatter says ‘So maybe you’ll *stay* if I make you *come*’ and his implication is clear. Of course, this manga series – and the original games – were written for female fans, not male ones. As a result, the tendency to try to keep all the harem characters virgins so as not to offend male otaku is absent. Nothing actually happens here, but I would not be terribly surprised if Alice and Boris come together – so to speak – in the future.

This volume does tend to get a little aimless at times, and risks being as light and frothy as Bloody Twins was. The good thing, though, is that it’s not afraid to show how emotionally damaged all its cast is. Alice and Boris are both filled with doubts and unfulfilled needs, and can’t communicate well at all – part of Alice’s worries are that Boris doesn’t love her as much because he’s a cat deep down. Meanwhile, thankfully Peter White and Ace are both in this universe as well, and they’re as insane as ever – Peter is the worst stalker ever, and Ace always seems to be one step away from a mass murder spree. If the title can balance its romantic comedy elements with the discomfort at its heart, it should prove just as fun as the original.

By Aki. Released in Japan by Ichijinsha, serialized in the magazine Comic Zero-Sum. Released in North America by Yen Press.

Yen Press has occasionally taken a flyer on short series that they can release as omnibuses, things that are somewhat off the beaten path. Sometimes this works out well (Dragon Girl), sometimes not so well (Sasameke). Olympos, a josei series about a petulant god and his captive human, seems to fall somewhat between those two camps, though I am ultimately pleased to have read it.

After a very well-handled fakeout of an opening, where we get teased about who the actual protagonist is supposed to be, things settle down. Ganymede, who people may recall from mythology, has been taken from his life and brought to a beautiful yet empty ruin, where he lives in stasis and occasionally has cross words with the god who has orchestrated all this, Apollo. The rest of the omnibus features Ganymede’s interaction with these gods, and Apollo’s attempts to amuse himself, which ultimately end up telling us more about the latter than the former.

The art style used here is very pretty and shoujo-esque. Deliberately meant to evoke androgyny, I found myself throughout the series forgetting that I wasn’t dealing with two women here. Even Poseidon, who is supposed to be big, burly and the masculine ideal, has a face that is very female. Of course, gender doesn’t really matter here – there’s no actual romance, except for the false start with Heinz and his doomed love. Still, the feminine faces are another way of showing that we’re dealing mostly with gods rather than man.

Easily my favorite part of the story was one that did not involve Ganymede at all. Instead, we flashback to a time when Apollo saw a temple being built in his honor, and began to interact with the sacrifice that had been offered to him. He refused to accept her, so she essentially hung around until he did. Iris, the sacrifice, is portrayed as a bit of a bubblehead, but her sweet and earnest devotion is rather cute, and you enjoy seeing Apollo open up to her, even if this leads to an inevitable conclusion.

By contrast, the weak point in the volume is Ganymede, who at the time we meet him has mostly grown rather resigned and bitter about his fate. There’s nothing particularly wrong with his conversations with Apollo, which tend towards the philosophical in regarding the nature of man and gods, but he does not stand out the way that the other gods (and Iris) do. Ganymede may be the focus of the book, but the show is clearly Apollo’s to steal.

I always enjoy seeing Japan dealing with Western mythology, and this is pretty well done. There’s a lot to think about here, involving Apollo’s relationship with Artemis, Poseidon’s desperate attempts at social climbing, and Zeus hovering above all, as unknowable to the other gods as they are to mankind. I do wish that the author had found a better way to go about conveying these ideas besides having everyone sit around and blithely discuss it. Don’t get me wrong, the discussions can be fascinating, but the utter lack of forward movement – even in the end, the manga simply stops rather than reaching a climax – makes the whole thing rather dry and dull, a bit like a textbook of Ancient Greece.

By Hidekaz Himaruya. Released in Japan by Gentosha, originally serialized as an online webcomic. Released in North America by Tokyopop in association with Right Stuf, Inc.

For the first time in over a year, I get to review a new Tokyopop book. And naturally, it’s the third volume of Hetalia Axis Powers. It was a runaway bestseller, so it makes sense that it should come back. The translation for it had already been done, given it was scheduled to ship a mere month after TP initially went under. And, being one of the company’s few Gentosha books, I imagine the renegotiations were easier than with a company like Kadokawa or Akita, who might inquire about the 7-8 other abandoned titles that there is little interest in reviving.

The quality of the book itself is a huge improvement over the first two, at least production-wise. The paper is thicker and more durable, there are color pages, and it simply feels more ‘quality’ than the almost xeroxed feel of the first two volumes. As for Himaruya’s art, it’s always going to look a bit dashed off, as that’s just what he does, but it does look a bit clearer here than in prior books.

The series is less about World War II than ever before, but that’s absolutely fine. History buffs may like Hetalia, but in the end it’s not particularly written for them. It’s a goofy comedy starring a bunch of (mostly) guys who do dumb things around each other, and happen to be nations of the world. There’s a bit less reliance on stereotype here (though still a lot – don’t think it vanishes) as we have grown to know the characters and therefore the author can rely on simple character-based gags, such as tomboy Hungary not realizing that she’s a girl, or Japan’s crushing disappointment that Switzerland does not look like Heidi at all.

This is not to say that there aren’t plenty of historical strips, they’re just used as setup for the most part. Probably the best in the book is the analysis of the alliance between Poland and Lithuania in the 15th and 16th century, which also gives us a chance to see some actual action in the series, however brief, as the two nations battle against Prussia and Sweden (what an odd pairing. Are their fanfics? … yes, of course there are.) At times the history/gag comic balance can be upset a bit, but it’s mostly unintentional. When Prussia comes across an older Hungary lying beaten against a tree with clothes torn open, the unpleasant implication is that she was just raped by Turkey. While this is not entirely out of place given the actual history that happened between the two, it jars in a comic that mostly has a light touch with catastrophic world events.

There are a few new nations introduced here (including another rare female, Belgium), and some get a bit more development, such as the Nordics. But for the most part the main cast of 3 Axis and 5 Allies remain the focus, and they have lots of goofy times. Several of the gags fall flat, but the book reads quickly, and in the end you read it with a smile on your face more often than not. That said, this is only recommended to those very familiar with the series, and would be a wretched starting point for newbies. Let’s hope it sells well enough to get a Vol. 4… and perhaps inspire some other license rescues?