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Since I Was Abandoned After Reincarnating, I Will Cook With My Fluffy Friends: The Figurehead Queen Is Strongest At Her Own Pace, Vol. 5

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By Yu Sakurai and Kasumi Nagi. Released in Japan as “Tenseisaki de Suterareta no de, Mofumofu-tachi to Oryouri Shimasu: Okazari Ouhi wa My Pace ni Saikyou desu” by M Novels F. Released in North America by Cross Infinite World. Translated by Emma Schumacker.

It’s been so long since the start of this series that I had honestly forgotten the setup, which is, of course, the standard “disgraced fiancee” story that I’m trying to stop calling “Villainess” when it doesn’t apply. To be fair, we spend so little time dealing with it that it was very easy to forget. But now, as if the author realized that there was more material to mine here, we’re going back to where it all began. Not just as the reigning queen of a foreign country, that would be too simple. Laetitia is also going back to school, which she of course left when she left the country, in order to complete her education. And you know what that means… the horrible guy and the horrible girl who started this are back, and they’re determined to get right back on the “why are you bullying her, you terrible woman?” cliche bandwagon.

Laetitia and Glenreed are going back to Laetitia’s home country, Elltoria. While Laetitia is going to get her education finished while she’s there, the main purpose is the celebration of the King reigning for ten years. And honestly, given how much of a family feud everyone has going on during this, you can see why ten years is a big deal. Sadly, the candidates for taking the throne after the King steps down are a) Laetitia’s old fiance, who is shallow and annoying, and b) Princess Velta, who judges men by how handsome they are and is a conniving backstabber. Honestly, neither one is all that appealing, but you can bet that Laetitia’s going to get dragged into this anyway, protected only by her magic power that is so high that it’s literally unheard of.

It was nice to see the author poking at their own setup, as well as the typical setup for novels like this. The idea that a prince of the realm can dissolve a long-standing engagement with a woman who has been trained for years to be the next Queen, just by shoving her into a fountain and saying, “the engagement is off!”, boggles the mind. What’s more, after hearing so much about Laetitia’s brilliant, talented brothers, who adore her, it’s rather odd that ALL of them were away when this played out. Sadly, we don’t learn WHY this scheme was hatched, but at least learning that it’s a scheme is sufficient. As for Laetitia and Glenreed, sorry, she’s still ludicrously oblivious. Hell, Glenreed’s main issue is that, because he hasn’t told anyone about her past life in Japan, he is jealous of a dog. Who he thinks is a former lover. This is funny but also quite sad. But mostly funny.

A lot of this book felt like the “your series is popular enough now, start spinning out subplots that will allow it to continue for a long time” sort of thing, but it read well enough. And there’s frozen oranges, lest you worry food doesn’t get a look in here.

Manga the Week of 6/14/23

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SEAN: A moon, a spoon, in June, Mang…oon. Nope, sorry, try again.

MICHELLE: Black Lagoon?

SEAN: We start with Airship. In print, they have Failure Frame: I Became the Strongest and Annihilated Everything With Low-Level Spells 7 and Vivy Prototype 4 (the final volume).

And in early digital we see Classroom of the Elite: Year 2 6 and The Haunted Bookstore – Gateway to a Parallel Universe 6.

Dark Horse has the 9th Blade of the Immortal Deluxe Edition.

ASH: At this point, I’m sure nobody is surprised that I’ll be picking it up.

SEAN: There’s Ghost Ship as well, with Welcome to Succubus High! 4 and Who Wants to Marry a Billionaire? 5.

It’s print week for J-Novel Club! We see Ascendance of a Bookworm: Royal Academy Stories – First Year, In Another World With My Smartphone 26, and Marginal Operation 14.

ASH: Yay, print!

SEAN: The digital debut for J-Novel Club is Fake Saint of the Year: You Wanted the Perfect Saint? Too Bad! (Risō no Seijo? Zannen, Nise Seijo Deshita! Kuso of the Year to Yobareta Akuyaku ni Tensei Shitanda ga). A lazy NEET wakes up one day to find he’s in the otome game he loves so much… but yeah, he’s not reincarnated as his “waifu”, but as the terrible “Fake Saint”. Now he has to try to fix things to get a happy ending for all. I’m not sure how much this leans into “guy in a girl’s body”, but it definitely seems to lean comedy.

Other digital titles: The 12th Black Summoner manga volume, the 2nd Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte manga volume, the 2nd I Parry Everything: What Do You Mean I’m the Strongest? I’m Not Even an Adventurer Yet! manga volume, Lady Rose Just Wants to Be a Commoner! 3, Rebuild World 2 Part 2, and Reincarnated Mage with Inferior Eyes: Breezing through the Future as an Oppressed Ex-Hero 2.

The first print debut for Kodansha is Prophecy Complete Omnibus Edition, which is what it says, an omnibus of the manga released by Vertical a while back. It’s a psychological thriller.

MICHELLE: Ooh. Somehow this was not on my radar when it was initially released.

ASH: It’s definitely worth checking out! (If I recall correctly… it’s been a while since I first read it.)

SEAN: Also debuting is the manga version of Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World for My Retirement (Rougo ni Sonaete Isekai de 8-manmai no Kinka o Tamemasu), which runs in Suiyoubi no Sirius. For FUNA fans only.

Also in print: Last Gender 3 (the final volume), Rent-A-Girlfriend 19, The Seven Deadly Sins Omnibus 10, and Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun 2.

MICHELLE: Yay!

SEAN: And digitally we have The Fable 15, Gang King 6, Giant Killing 37, Life 2: Giver/Taker 4, Police in a Pod 23 (the final volume, though the blurb says “end of the first part”), Tokyo Revengers 31 (the final volume, though a side story is ongoing on Kodansha’s online manga app), and WIND BREAKER 10.

MICHELLE: At first I wondered, “Are we getting close to the end of Giant Killing?” So I checked and no. No we are not. Not that I’m complaining!

SEAN: One Peace Books has the 7th and final volume of I Belong to the Baddest Girl at School and Usotoki Rhetoric 3.

Seven Seas debuts Qualia the Purple: The Complete Manga Collection (Murasakiiro no Qualia). Based on the light novel, it ran in Dengeki Daioh.

Seven Seas also has Correspondence from the End of the Universe 3, The Eccentric Doctor of the Moon Flower Kingdom 2, Even Though We’re Adults 6, His Majesty the Demon King’s Housekeeper 4, Kageki Shojo!! 9, The Masterful Cat Is Depressed Again Today 6, The Summer You Were There 3, The Tunnel to Summer, the Exit of Goodbyes: Ultramarine 4 (the final volume), and X-Gender 2.

ASH: There are some really good series in that list.

SEAN: From Square Enix we see Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! 7 and Wandering Witch 4.

MICHELLE: I need to catch up on Cherry Magic!.

ASH: Same! I really enjoyed the earlier volumes in the series.

SEAN: SuBLime debuts Old-Fashioned Cupcake, a BL title from ihr HertZ. A middle-aged salaryman finds romance… and pancakes… with a much younger co-worker.

ASH: I do love when BL manga crosses with food manga.

SEAN: There is also a 2nd volume of The Dragon’s Betrothed.

Three debuts from Tokyopop. At 30, I Realized I Had No Gender: Life Lessons From a 50-Year-Old After Two Decades of Self-Discovery (30-sai de “Seibetsu ga, Nai!” to Hanmei shita Ore ga Around Fifty ni Natte Wakatta Koto) is a one-shot biographical manga published by Bunkasha. It explores the difficulties in being agender in Japanese society.

If My Favorite Pop Idol Made it to the Budokan, I Would Die (Oshi ga Budoukan Itte Kuretara Shinu) is a long-running yuri-ish series from Comic Ryu, it also had an anime. It’s the story of a minor member of an idol group and her #1 fan.

Why I Adopted My Husband: The True Story of a Gay Couple Seeking Legal Recognition in Japan (Douseikon de Oyako ni Narimashita) is another biographical manga from Bunkasha, and examines the same sorts of issues, only for a gay couple rather than an agender person.

ASH: If only I wasn’t avoiding Tokyopop! So many of its recent releases are absolutely up my alley.

SEAN: Viz Media debuts Spider-Man: Fake Red (Spider-Man: Itsuwari no Aka), a complete in one volume about a young man in Japan who comes across a Spider-Man costume. It ran in Magazine Pocket, and is a Marvel tie-in as well, of course.

ASH: I might have to check this out; Spider-Man is very popular in my household.

SEAN: Viz also has Call of the Night 12, Komi Can’t Communicate 25, Yakuza Lover 9, and Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon 3.

Lastly, Yen Press has the 2nd and final volume of Rose Guns Days Sorrowful Cross Knife out digitally.

ASH: Wait, there are weeks in which Yen only releases a single volume?

SEAN: Any manga have you feeling poetic?

Ascendance of a Bookworm: I’ll Do Anything to Become a Librarian!, Part 5: Avatar of a Goddess, Vol. 4

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By Miya Kazuki and You Shiina. Released in Japan as “Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo Erandeiraremasen” by TO Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by quof.

With each successive volume in this arc, that subtitle is becoming more and more like foreshadowing. We see here that Hartmut is already brainwashing everyone in the temple to add Rozemyne to the list of Gods, and though she tries to shut him down you get the sense that she won’t be able to for very long. We also see, even if they may not think of her as a Goddess just yet, they definitely think of her as a Saint. The bulk of the first half of this book is that the Liesegangs, now the dominant power after Sylvester p;urged his own base to get rid of the Veronica Faction, think that Wilfried is useless and awful, and that Rozemyne should absolutely be the next Aub. While they’re not wrong about Wilfried (I’ve sort of given up on him, the narrative makes it clear why he’s gotten so awful but it doesn’t make me like him), they forget that Rozemyne simply has no interest in this.

Rozemyne arrives home to find that things are… not great. She’s surprised and rather upset to find Sylvester telling her to try to lay off getting the duchy elevated for the moment, because they’ve done it so fast that no one is ready for what it entails. Of course, what that really means is that the older generation like things as they are and fear change. Sylvester is essentially unable to do anything because the Liesegangs are dominant, but fortunately Rozemyne’s retainer Brunhilde has a wonderful solution that will solve most of these problems. Meanwhile, Rozemyne returns to the temple, now filled with a lot more children whose parents were executed or imprisoned, and gets ready to train Melchior to take over for her. And there’s still time to visit other areas of Ehrenfest and learn some very important past history of the duchy.

The story of Eisenreich is another reminder that women in this world have to struggle to get any headway at all, and that frequently even after achieving their goals they’re still unhappy. The aub’s daughter who essentially saved the country centuries earlier was given a poisoned chalice of a position, and it’s not a surprise that trying to keep the duchy together eventually broke her. We get this history after all the politics with the current generation, with Brunhilde stepping forward to offer herself up as Sylvester’s second wife… but this only comes after her father sires a son, meaning all the power that she would have been coming to will now be taken from her. She ends up consoling Charlotte, who (as we saw in the short story book last time) is bemoaning the exact same thing. We know that Charlotte is the most obvious choice to be the next Aub. But that knowledge does not help us… or Charlotte.

All this plus Angelica gets extra blessings!… with the help of her sword literally telling her what to say. Angelica, I love you. And hey, only three more books till THAT spoiler!

Dahlia in Bloom: Crafting a Fresh Start with Magical Tools, Vol. 7

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By Hisaya Amagishi and Kei. Released in Japan as “Madougushi Dahlia wa Utsumukanai” by MF Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Osman Wong.

One thing I haven’t really talked about with Dahlia in Bloom is a fact that it shares with a lot of more male-oriented isekai/reincarnation titles, which is polygamy. It’s made clear here that a lot of nobles have multiple wives (it does not go the other way round, btw), and that commoners can also do this, but most don’t. And this is important because Dahlia and Volf are still denying that they have anything but friendship between each other, which makes Dahlia very vulnerable, not only to single men, but to married men who see her as a hot commodity and can afford a second wife. The trouble is that Dahlia is a one-man woman, and she wants her partner to be a one-woman man. Plus, y’know, Dahlia’s usual self-deprecation. Things are going to have to come to a head soon, because as this volume shows, Dahlia’s inventions are revolutionizing everything, be it military-grade weaponry or a kotatsu.

There are basically two subplots in this book. The first involves Dahlia and Volf’s quest for the perfect magic sword, which in this case ends up being two swords connected by a wire. When showing them off to his fellow knights, Volf doesn’t want to make Dahlia more popular than she is, so says it came from a weapons company started by his brother. Sadly, the weapon proves SO popular that everyone then goes to his brother to talk about it. The other subplot is Dahlia making a kotatsu, which immediately becomes the biggest thing since sliced bread. Everyone wants one, they’re (relatively) easy to make, and the lead to “degeneracy” as no one wants to come out from under them after they first try it. Even the royal family are buying it. Which, again, reminds you that Dahlia has come up with at least 7-8 history-changing inventions during this series, and is still single. Please be careful, Dahlia.

This volume has a much larger role for Dahlia’s friend Lucia, probably because Lucia’s spinoff series, Lucia and the Loom (also licensed by J-Novel Club recently) debuted between books 6 and 7. Lucia is basically what Dahlia would be if she had confidence, and she’s a lot of fun. She too is single, and she too is vulnerable to getting marriage proposals, this time from Forto, whose wife shows up asking if Lucia will become Forto’s second wife. The first wife is basically pure nobility, which does not help, but also, like Dahlia, Lucia wants to marry for love, to one man, who will also only have one partner. That last one is the definite sticking point in this series, as there’s a lot of guys who are “not exclusive”. Dahlia’s solution is obvious – just hit her and Volf in the head over and over till they get it – but I’m not sure what will be happening with Lucia down the road, especially if her star is hitched to Dahlia’s.

There’s only one more volume to go till we’re caught up with Japan, so folks waiting for the payoff may have to wait even longer. Till then, this is fine.

Pick of the Week: Burning Bright

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KATE: I was going to be a party-pooper and opt out of this week’s column, but then I read the blurb for Tiger, Tiger and I was sold. High seas adventure? Swashbuckling pirates? Smart, resourceful heroines? Yes, please!

SEAN: My pick is the 3rd in a series I’ve really come to love, The Two of Them Are Pretty Much Like This. One of the better “normal adults” yuri manga out there.

MICHELLE: I’m still so asquee about Don’t Call It Mystery that I’m tempted to pick that again, but I’ll go with volume ten of Lovesick Ellie. This is as far as I got when reading the first time, and checking out Love, That’s An Understatement recently reminded me how much I enjoy Fujimomo’s work. Looking forward to seeing how Lovesick Ellie wraps up.

ASH: Those all sound like great choices, but I’m with Kate this week—Tiger, Tiger is the release that has my attention. Hiveworks comics often match my taste, but this one looks to be particularly excellent. I’m glad to see Hiveworks teaming up with Seven Seas to bring this webcomic to even wider distribution in print.

The Apothecary Diaries, Vol. 8

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By Natsu Hyuuga and Touko Shino. Released in Japan as “Kusuriya no Hitorigoto” by Hero Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Kevin Steinbach.

For most of the volume this almost seems like a short story book, with Maomao running around dealing with various things one by one. It’s only when we get near the end that we realize that all the stories we’d seen earlier are all tying together, and all of them are there to show off Maomao and how good she is at what she does, whether that be medicine, or crime-solving, or even just being blunt as hell. She may be annoyed about all of this, but she still does it, mostly for the promise of good food, good medicine, or the chance to avoid people that she’d rather never deal with again, i,e, Lakan, who is slightly less annoying than he normally is in these books, but that’s only because he’s performing the equivalent of a wake. And this all culminates in a final scene that I really don’t want to spoil, which is basically “who gets Maomao?”, and the consequences are larger than you think.

Maomao spends a lot of the book with Yao and En’en by her side, wondering offhandedly if this might be that thing humans call… friendship? She’s just gotten a pile of Go books written by Lakan, presumably as a present, and she’s desperate to sell them, especially when she hears how much people might actually be willing to pay for a book written by a legendary player. But first she has to solve the question of why the consistency of the makeup at a store has changed, the question of which of three identical triplets raped an underage girl, and the question of who stole – or sabotaged – the Empress’ hair stick, perhaps as a threat. All of this culminates in a massive Go tournament, with the rumor being that if anyone can defeat Lakan, he will grant them one wish. The rumor is fake, but that doesn’t stop someone from wondering if this is a way to solve his problems…

After featuring heavily in the first few books, we haven’t seen much of Gyokuyou recently, and this book tries to make up for it. She’s not having a great time right now. Her servants keep leaving (as tends to happen, they mostly leave to get married), and new ones are not coming her way because of her manipulative brother. Fortunately, she has a set of identical triplets (no relation, though they also are caught up in one of the crimes Maomao has to solve) to help her, but her oldest attendant is now over 30 and still not married, which is worrying. She *really* misses Maomao, who is a masterclass at cutting to the heart of everything. Unfortunately, she’s reckoned without the fact that Jinshi is ALSO really missing Maomao, and he’s far more obsessed with her than Gyokuyou is. I will not spoil the final scene, but it’s dynamite, with Maomao for once not being able to do anything as the three most powerful people in the country fight over her.

It does leave the question of where we go from here. The blurb for the 9th novel is suitably vague, so we shall see. Till then, please enjoy another book of this very prickly young woman who absolutely everyone adores.

Villainess Level 99: I May Be the Hidden Boss but I’m Not the Demon Lord, Vol. 1

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By Satori Tanabata and Tea. Released in Japan as “Akuyaku Reijō Level 99: Watashi wa Ura Boss Desu ga Maō dewa Arimasen” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by sachi salehi.

One of the frequent complaints about fantasy light novels that I’ve seen is that everything tends to be dependent on stats and levels, even when the novel in question is not depicting a world based on a game or people trapped inside a game. Because of Japanese RPGs being the default fantasy for everyone rather than, say, Lord of the Rings or Narnia, everything is about level grinding and raising your stats to the point where you can do things. It’s fine if you’re the reincarnated from Japan person – like our heroine in this book. But to the rest of the cast, this is just their world, and it just… has levels, for some reason that no one quite knows. Even the king thinks it’s baffling. Unfortunately, that’s also the plot of this series, as our heroine is all powerful and ALSO has the stereotypical hair color that makes her clearly EVIL. Fortunately, she’s not evil. Well, mostly. She wavers a bit.

Yumiella Dolkness remembers fairly quickly her past life from Japan (which we get no details about except that she was killed by a car) and knows she’s in a game she played – as the villainess, who also turns out, once you’ve beaten the game, to be a hidden super-strong final boss. Yumiella wants nothing to do with this, at first… but then realizes that if she wants to actually survive, she’d better be strong enough to stand up to the heroine and her love interests. Plus, she loves grinding levels. And, helpfully, her parents have essentially abandoned her in the countryside with only a servant or two, so it’s easy to go out and find monsters and dungeons. Now she’s arrived at the Academy, ordered to do so by her parents (who she’s still never met), and just wants to quietly get through school… despite being 99 times more powerful than most of the student body.

The strength of this book is Yumiella, though she’s also one of the weaknesses, as her personality can vary highly depending on what the writer wants to do. At the start, she’s relatively stoic and blase about everything. As the book goes on, though, she starts to get a lot more “eccentric” in a Katarina Claes sort of way, especially when she ends up raising a dragon as her pet, not understanding why anyone wouldn’t think it was anything but adorable. Then at the end, when things have to turn serious, she’s mostly back to the first, with an added helping of “why aren’t you trying to destroy the country?” from the demon lord. He has a point, given how the very shallowly written heroine treats her. The answer might be Patrick, Yumiella’s love interest, and the only one who really treats her as a person – though he has to work at it. Frankly, given when we meet Yumiella she really DOES think about blowing up the school once or twice, it’s not hard to see where the “hidden boss” thing came from.

Still, overall this was more good than bad, and everything wrapped up nicely in one book. Except, of course, there’s five books and counting, plus an anime on the way. Guess we’ll see you back here in a couple months.

Spy Classroom: Fool Erna Once

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By Takemachi and Tomari. Released in Japan as “Spy Kyoushitsu” by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Nathaniel Thrasher.

It should go without saying, but the series Spy Classroom involves spies. And spies can sometimes be not nice people. Downright unpleasant, in fact. We’ve seen that in previous books, with villains working for other countries ranging from weak to comically evil. But for the most part, we know our girls. Those wacky, lovable scamps who are all dropouts but come together in the end with the power of friendship. Surely they’re all different! Well, OK, not Annette. We already know fro previous books that Annette is one of the only girls in Lamplight who can, when push comes to shove, do something cruel. But she may not be alone, as we learn in this book that focuses, for once, on the character the anime tried desperately to adapt and failed miserably. The character that even the publisher tried to avoid drawing for the longest time. A girl plagued by misfortune. Which even extends to this review, because sorry, Erna, Sara is my favorite character in this book.

After the triumph of the fourth book, and becoming an official team, things are not going very well for Lamplight. They’ve been screwing up mission after mission, and believe it or not, it’s not JUST Lily. Things take a turn for the worse, though, when they meet two members of another spy organization working for their country, Avian. If Lamplight is composed of dropouts and washouts, Avian is composed of only the top graduates of spy schools. And recently, their handler was killed, meaning they don’t have a leader. After discerning that Lamplight are pathetic and awful, Avian decide that Klaus should be their leader instead, and Lamplight can all go back to spy school where they truly belong. Of course, the girls are not going to take this lying down, and it ends up becoming a competition to see who the best spy team really is!

If you thought that my description of Lamplight in the last paragraph was a bit mean, you ain’t heard nothing yet. Avian may be just as eccentric as Lamplight, but they’re far, far more skilled, and they have a heaping helping of arrogance to go with it. They’ve also had actual completion of spy school, which means they have an extra technique the Lamplight girls do not, and much of this book amounts to our heroines “trying to reach their second form”. Sara comes close, and actually manages to kick ass and take names (yes, Sara, the animal girl), but of course Erna is the star of the book, for spoilery reasons, and it’s her own development that provides the big climax. It also allows Klaus to have a paternal talk with her, which I appreciate, as Klaus as a hottie everyone wants to bone is not my favorite thing. (That also comes up here, alas.)

All this plus one of THOSE epilogues, the ones that really like to kick you in the teeth and then make you wait for months or so for the next book. This book, though, was good, and arrives just in time for the second half of the anime, which… has nowhere to go but up.

The Manga Review: Scrolling Down the River

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Kicking off this week’s news round-up is Shueisha’s announcement that it will launch its own manga app in 2024. The twist? Jump Toon will publish stories in a vertical scrolling format… will Netflix’s upcoming One Piece adaptation satisfy fans or alienate them?… Golden Kamuy creator Satoru Noda will be launching a new series this summer in the pages of Weekly Young Jump… Yen Press just unveiled six new licensing acquisitions… and Shueisha has teamed up with Marvel on a new manga: Spider-Man: Octopus Girl, in which Doc Oc finds himself trapped inside the body of a Japanese schoolgirl.

AROUND THE WEB

The Manga Machinations gang dig into the VIZ Signature archives to review three titles: Orochi, House of Five Leaves, and Saturn Apartments, all of which are now available on the VIZ Manga app. [Manga Machinations]

Robert Adams has the scoop on Yumi Tamura’s much-anticipated series Don’t Call It a Mystery. [Dad Needs to Talk]

Andy and Elliot dedicate the latest installment of Screentone Club to March Comes in Like a Lion and Crescent Moon Marching. [Screentone Club]

The hosts of Manga Kaiwa gush over the first new chapters of Berserk to be published since Kentaro Miura’s untimely death in 2021. [Manga Kaiwa]

Bill Curtis compiles a list of June’s new manga and light novel releases. [Yatta-Tachi]

If you’ve been curious about Dandadan, let Muraktama Rodrigues persuade you to give this exuberant supernatural comedy a try. “The creature designs are amazing,” he notes, “borrowing from different mythologies, urban legends, and even western horror comics, once again favoring the weird, ridiculous, and funny rather than the horrifying and disgusting.” [How to Love Comics]

REVIEWS

Palomo Lin-Linares pronounces The Strange Tale of Panorama Island “quite tame compared to other Suehiro Maruo works”… Kristin gives high marks to the 35th anniversary edition of AKIRA…. Megan D. revisits Shirahime-Syo, “a beautiful little oddity from CLAMP”… That Manga Hunter reviews the full run of Love and Lies… and my Manga Bookshelf colleague Sean Gaffney offers brief reviews of Blue Box, Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction, and The Yakuza’s Bias.

New and Noteworthy

Complete, OOP, and Ongoing Series

March Comes in Like a Lion, Vol 1

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March Comes in Like a Lion Volume 1 by Chica Umino

March Comes in Like a Lion was one of the releases I was most anticipating this year, and it was so worth the wait. The opening panels show Rei Kiriyama waking up, getting ready, going to a shogi hall, playing a game against a man he knows. Throughout this introduction Rei says nothing, and the panels of the shogi game are intercut with scenes from Rei’s childhood. When Rei wins the game and his opponent gets up and mentions that he and his family members are worried for him, Rei waits until he’s alone to say “Liar.” Rei then heads home, just as isolated, but he’s interrupted by a flurry of texts and goes over to the Kawamoto sisters’ house, where he’s immediately enveloped in a warm family gathering.

March Comes in like a Lion

Umino balances portraying isolation, trauma, and depression with great skillfulness and moments of humor. She packs in so many slice of life character development vignettes into just a few panels. I appreciated the shonen battle stylings of Nikaido, who proclaims himself Rei’s rival and soon-to-become best friend. Rei goes to the hostess bar where Akari Kawamoto works with some other shogi players, and she cheerfully manipulates his companions into promising to look after Rei. Rei’s background is shown through a series of non-linear flashbacks, and while by the end of the first volume the reader has a sense of what has caused Rei to be so isolated, it is certain that there will be plenty more revelations ahead. One thing I really enjoyed is that the relationship between Rei and the Kawamoto sisters isn’t one sided – Rei also supports the sisters in his own quiet way.

Denpa’s production quality is excellent, with extras like french flaps and a color fold-out poster included at the start of the volume, which makes the manga feel like a bit more of a special collector’s edition. I also appreciated the essays about shogi that accompanied the story. I’m all in for this manga and seeing how Rei’s journey unfolds.