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Housekeeping Mage from Another World: Making Your Adventures Feel Like Home!, Vol. 2

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By You Fuguruma and Nama. Released in Japan as “Kasei Madoushi no Isekai Seikatsu: Boukenchuu no Kasei Fugyou Uketamawarimasu!” by Ichijinsha Bunko Iris NEO. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Hengtee Lim.

I remember thinking after finishing the first volume of Housekeeping Mage that it was a lot darker than I had really expected. But I noted in my review that the story did its level best to try to have the trauma and abuse of our heroine be in the past so that it could be a cute romantic novel. That said… there is still the past trauma and abuse, and that comes to the fore here in the second volume, where we go into more detail about Shiori’s struggles after being isekai’d to this world (we still don’t know the reason) and we go into much greater detail about her time with her previous party, who were all such good kids… AT FIRST. And, well, bad things happen to her here as well. It’s just volume 2, so I’m OK with this, and it’s quite well written. I do hope we’ve sort of turned a corner, though. It can be cathartic but also exhausting to read.

As Alec and Shiori return from visiting Rurii’s family, they are beset upon by a snow wolf. And then, later on, three snow wolves. This is very unusual, they tend not to attack humans without a reason. They then arrive at a nearby village and find the reason, which leads to a huge battle between 60-70 wolves and only a few knights and adventurers. Unfortunately, during this, Shiori is badly injured, and this triggers memories of her past adventure party, to the point where she’s almost delirious with fear that Alec will abandon her. From this we also learn about how her party self-destructed so badly, and who was the mastermind behind it. Oh yes, there’s also a torture brothel involved. That said, this *is* still a romance, and by the end of the book Alec and Shiori are essentially a couple, and resolving to reveal to each other their secret backstories.

I am slightly optimistic that the worst of this is behind us, mostly because the narrative makes it textually clear. By the end of the main story, Shiori’s old diary detailing her travails since arriving in this world up to her abandonment has been burned, and the records showing exactly who was behind everything and why have also been burned, thus literally allowing her to start over fresh. Not admittedly there’s still Alec’s past, which is also touched upon here, and we also don’t know the reason she’s even here at all. But the summary of the next volume, while it implies bad things will be happening, at least says they’ll be fresh new bad things. And the romance between Alec and Shiori really is sweet. I could have done without the brothel subplot entirely, though, to be fair, which mostly seems to be there to show off what a bad guy the bad guy was.

So yes, I’m going to be reading more. I like the leads, I like Shiori’s slime, I like the supporting cast who aren’t evil, and honestly the ones who were evil are all dead now. Let’s hopefully move on.

My Quiet Blacksmith Life in Another World, Vol. 3

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By Tamamaru and Kinta. Released in Japan as “Kajiya de Hajimeru Isekai Slow Life” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Linda Liu.

Still enjoying this series, don’t get me wrong, but it’s time I face up to the face that I am skimming a large chunk of it every time simply because I really don’t care one jot about the Blacksmith Life part of this book. There is just so much detail about how to make swords correctly, knives correctly, and katanas correctly, including hilts and scabbards and the like. And of course we also get to hear Eizo talk a lot about how he’s using his cheats too, so these are essentially IKEA blueprints that contain the S. Harris punchline “then a miracle occurs” halfway through the process. It is a BIG chunk of every book, and I think the series would benefit from less of it, even if it means sacrificing a bit of the slow life pacing. Which gets a bit of a kick in the pants in this volume anyway, as halfway through Eizo is called out to help with a monster subjugation that turns nasty.

In the first half of this volume, we essentially get the same thing as the second half of Book 2, only with the elf replaced with a demon. Nilda recently suffered a crushing defeat battling against a mere human, and the mere human had a very familiar sword. Now Nilda wants a sword of her own to challenge her, so basically stakes out Eizo’s hometown till she runs into him. What follows is a lot of slow life sword building and all the girls admiring Eizo’s muscular blacksmith body. After this, Marius asks that Eizo go monster exterminating with them, so that he can repair the swords and armor when they’re broken in battle. This battle ends up being more personal than he expected, as he runs into the elf Lidy, who just left his shop with her own magic sword. She’s here to help them take out the main monster boss… and avenge her brother.

I gloss over it a bit in these reviews, but this is still very much that genre of “a harem series without any actual sex or even kissing” that is so popular in Japan. Nilda clearly likes Eizo. By the end of the book, Livy has gone back to his shop and moved in with everyone. We meet a young woman, Frederica, who is in charge of logistics and can best be summed up as “small insecure accountant” but also clearly is in love with Eizo by the end of the book. Hell, it’s implied that the Queen of the Demons has taken a liking to him as well, and the flashforwards we occasionally see very pointedly say he has a wife but never say who it is. This book is written for folks who love seeing a man surrounded by a dozen women but who will be making precisely zero moves. I know this upsets some light novel fans.

Still, it is what it is. It’s slow life, adding girls one by one, and smithing. So much smithing.

Nina the Starry Bride, Vols 1 and 2 by Rikachi

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Nina the Starry Bride Volumes 1 and 2 by Rikachi

I’m really bad at buying digital volumes of manga and then totally forgetting to read them, but I got a new tablet recently so I’m hoping to start getting caught up on some digital series that have been out for awhile. Nina the Starry Bride is likely one of those series that I would have glommed onto immediately if it had a print release, but I’m coming to it a bit late.

Nina the Starry Bride Vol 1

Royal duplicate plots are fairly common in fantasy manga, but Nina the Starry Bride is a solid example of the genre, helped a great deal by charming and detailed art. Nina is an orphan with unusual blue eyes who has found a family of sorts with a couple brothers. They spend their days hiding out and stealing occasionally to support themselves. When they fall on hard times, Nina is betrayed and handed over to slavers and her unusual eye color leads to her being recruited to be a stand-in for a recently deceased princess by the amber-eyed Prince Azure.

After some initial resistance, Nina works hard to develop her knowledge of etiquette and ability to behave like a princess. As only Azure and a few trusted servants know her secret, Nina grows closer to the second prince as she learns more about the royal family. Azure has a younger brother who is the acknowledged heir, a snarky stepmother, and his mysterious father is king. Nina and Azure share a certain loneliness, and it is nice to see how they begin to open up to each other. This series is fairly fast-paced as by the second volume Nina has a strong grasp of geopolitics and decides to save Azure, even though he’s attempting to prevent Nina from being sent off to a neighboring kingdom as part of a political alliance.

Rikachi has attractive character designs, with Azure looking particularly cool with his standoffish manners and asymmetrical earrings. Nina shifts from orphan to princess, and the lush detail of her life in the palace contrasts with the sparseness of her previous life. While Nina might not have the royal background of the people surrounding her, she’s true to herself in a way that makes it easy for her to deal with the political and family issues that she she encounters. While the elements of Nina the Starry Bride aren’t used in a particularly novel way, it is overall a strong fantasy manga that should appeal to fans of Dawn of the Arcana

Pick of the Week: One Last Love Song

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KATE: Any week that brings a new volume of Skip and Loafer is a good one in my book, so I’ll make that my pick. I’ll probably also buy Bomba, though I have a sinking feeling I might ultimately regret that decision, given that the most recent wave of Tezuka licenses have been fair-to-middling.

SEAN: There are so many of my favorite light novel series out next week it boggles the mind. I mean, Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, Ascendance of a Bookworm: Royal Academy Stories – First Year, *and* the final I’m in Love with the Villainess? Bet they’re all really long volumes too. I’ll pick the final I’m in Love with the Villainess, which has gone far beyond its initial gimmick.

MICHELLE: I’ve got to admit I’m pretty wary of Bomba, and much else on the list are new volumes of series I haven’t started yet. So, even though I’m far behind, I’ll also pick the final I’m in Love with the Villainess this week.

ASH: I’m curious about Bomba, for sure. And one of these days I really will get around to reading Skip and Loafer. But in the meantime, I’ll rely on my good ol’ standby Junji Ito and make The Liminal Zone my official pick.

ANNA: I feel guilty about not getting around to I’m in Love with the Villainess yet, so that’s my pick this week.

MJ: I’m not incredibly attached to anything this week, so I will give a little shout-out to volume 17 of To Your Eternity. I haven’t read any of the manga so far, but I’ve enjoyed the anime, so I’m going to guess I might also like to read it—maybe even more so.

When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace, Vol. 3

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By Kota Nozomi and 029. Released in Japan as “Inou Battle wa Nichijoukei no Nakade” by GA Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Tristan K. Hill.

Imagine that you are an Olympic sprinter. It’s the final race. All eyes of the world are on you. You’re feeling great. Your fiancee is cheering from the stands. The starter pistol goes off, and you take off, quickly putting all the other runners in the shade. It’s smooth sailing till the end of the race. You smile, confident and proud. Then you trip on absolutely nothing and fall flat on your face. All the other runners trample over you as they fly towards victory. You have humiliated yourself and your country. The medics don’t even want to treat you. Your fiancee leaves you, sobbing. The team bus leaves without you, as does the team plane. And so there you are, broke and starving, wondering where it all went wrong. If it wasn’t for that one horrid misstep right at the finish! If you can imagine that, then you can pretty much imagine how I felt on getting to the climax of the third volume of When Supernatural Battles Become Commonplace.

As has become the norm with this series, the first half is basically a bunch of fooling around, goofy gags, and Andou being incredibly irritating. The club plays tennis, and has a cosplay roulette tournament, which gets everyone into embarrassing outfits. That said, as you may have guessed by the cover art, Chifuyu is the featured girl of this volume. She seems to be having difficulty at school, which Andou drops her off at one morning, and trouble dealing with her best friend Madoka Kuki, aka “Cookie”. Well, best friend is probably the wrong word. Partly because Chifuyu is so helpless at doing anything that Kuki ends up acting more like a mom than anything else. And partly as, well, Chifuyu has the club, and talks about the club all the time. Which, naturally, makes Kuki mad.

For the most part, this was a lot of fun. Andou has become tolerable for the most part, especially when we contrast him with his loathsome “friend” Sagami. He and Tomoyo go on what is, to all intents and purposes, a date midway through this book, and it’s cute as hell. There’s some ominous foreshadowing of a character from Andou’s past (who might be trans?), but that’s for a future book. And Chifuyu’s problem thankfully has nothing whatsoever to do with the superpowers or the other evil organization – it’s just typical elementary school stuff, and reminds you that she really is ten years old. Which makes Andou’s “solution” to the problem really head-slappingly terrible. Even Hachiman would not quite be this self-sacrificing. It’s creepy. And it also reminds you that Chifuyu probably *is* a love interest for Andou despite being ten, because the whole club is – that’s the point of the book, ti’s a harem series. Which, whatever. But there’s no need to underline it with all this lolicon stuff.

So, 85% of a good book. Just stop before the final chapter and assume there was a sensible solution. …right, this is When Supernatural Battles Become Commonplace, there is nothing sensible here. Never mind. Carry on.

The Manga Review, 7/22/22

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Great news for fans of Fumiyo Kouno: the crew at Mangasplaining has teamed up with UDON to publish Kouno’s Giga Town: Manpu Zufu (A Catalog of Manga Symbols), which uses characters from the Choju-jinbutsu-giga to explain “the visual iconography of manga.” Though Kouno’s work won’t be serialized on the Mangasplaining website, Deb Aoki, Christopher Woodrow-Butcher and Andrew Woodrow-Butcher will be intimately involved in bringing Giga Town to North American readers, offering subscribers a “behind the scenes on how a manga is made from licensing through translation, lettering, and more.” Giga Town is slated for a spring 2023 release; Ko Ransom (Invitation From a Crab) will translate.

NEWS, INTERVIEWS, AND ESSAYS

ICYMI: Anime News Network reports that Tokyopop is bringing back its Rising Stars of Manga contest this year. Earlier this month, Tokopop announced that “previous winners and industry professionals will judge the competition,” and “artists will retain the copyright on their works.” No information about the contest has been posted on the Tokyopop website as yet, though Tokyopop indicated that the contest would run from July 25th – October 25th. Stay tuned for more information. [Anime News Network]

Brigid Alverson offers an in-depth look at the June 2022 NPD Bookscan charts, observing that “[wh]ether the comic is based on the show or the show is based on the comic, media tie-ins were prominent on this month’s charts of the top 20 Author, Manga, and Superhero graphic novels in the book channel.” [ICv2]

Jocelyne Allen takes a break from translating to sing the praises of Takeuchi Sachiko’s Numa no Naka de Fuwaka wo Mukaemasu. “She takes all these emotions and illustrates them to the extreme,” Allen notes. “It’s like physical comedy in manga form, and she only gets better at it with every book she puts out.” [Brain vs Book]

With the help of translator Katsu Tanaka, Danica Davidson interviews Monkey King creator Katsuyu Terada about the art that inspired him to become an manga-ka. “I grew up inspired by amazing Japanese manga illustrators, as well as traditional Japanese artists like Hokusai, and also various other foreign artists like Mœbius,” Terada explains. “With so much inspiration from so many different times and places, I’ve come to see human expression as a wave, layering ripples from far away shores to the other side of the ocean and connecting the world. I would be honored for my work to be seen more internationally, to inspire the same wonder I felt when I was young, and open new paths to a more creative world by expanding my audience’s creative mind.’ [Otaku USA]

REVIEWS

At The OASG, Krystallina and Justin compare notes on the first volume of Burn the House Down, “a whodunnit with a twist — mainly, someone has already said “Idunnit”. Meanwhile, the folks at Beneath the Tangles tackle a slew of new releases–among them Why Raelina Ended Up at the Duke’s Mansion and Shortcake Cake–as Sean Gaffney and I post a new crop of Bookshelf Briefs here at Manga Bookshelf. Writing about the first volume of A Nico-Colored Canvas, Sean reports that “Nico is a lot of fun to read about, but I think in real life I’d find her exhausting and difficult to deal with.”

Bookshelf Briefs 7/22/22

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Box of Light, Vol. 1 | By Seiko Erisawa | Seven Seas – The blurb for Box of Light promises a “delightfully creepy supernatural tale” that takes place at a “convenience store at the crossroads between life and death.” That sounds like a great premise, but Box of Light is sorely lacking in likable characters, memorable plot lines, or even a good old-fashioned jump scare. The bland, utilitarian artwork is equally disappointing; if I flipped through volume one in a bookstore, I’d assume that Box of Light was a workplace comedy, as the artwork seems more appropriate for a slice-of-life series than a horror story about people caught in purgatory. Only one vignette—”Indecisive Yuuto”—yields an image that’s unnerving enough to make lasting impression. In it, a young girl crouches outside the store as darkness envelops her with the stealth and speed of an incoming tide. Too bad nothing else in volume one is nearly as spooky. – Katherine Dacey

The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You, Vol. 3 | By Rikito Nakamura and Yukiko Nozawa | Ghost Ship – This series really loves to take things as far as it possibly can while also making sure that everything stays sweet, heartwarming and romantic, and in this volume it’s got its most difficult challenge yet. Hakari’s mother Hahari has insisted she’s never to see Rentarou again, and has a huge, impossible-to-get-into mansion to back it up. She’s also super young, having had Hakari at the age of thirteen (Hakari’s father was dying). If you think to yourself “wait, is this series really going to have a guy dating a mother-daughter pair?”, then well done, you can be a writer for this series. It’s hilarious, it’s sweet, and it’s jaw-droppingly blatant. – Sean Gaffney

Komi Can’t Communicate, Vol. 19 | By Tomohito Oda | Viz Media – Last time I noted how large the cast of this manga had gotten, so I’m not sure it was the best idea to spend most of this nineteenth volume introducing a new bunch of classmates with various personality tics. They run from mildly amusing (she speaks too softly) to deliberately aggravating (she constantly trash talks people and points out their faults, even when she knows she should really shut up). It’s meant to show off how far Komi has come (she actually speaks aloud at one point) as well as how dedicated she is to seeing the good in people, but I’m losing track of folks. On the bright side, Tadano’s sheer niceness and seeing the best in everyone makes him a revered saint. – Sean Gaffney

A Nico-Colored Canvas, Vol. 1 | By Nao Shikita| Kodansha Manga (digital only) – How much you enjoy this series may depend on how much you love the “manic pixie dream girl” trope, though in Nico’s case she’s the star rather than the impetus driving the male lead. She’s arrived at art school from the sticks, and is doing her own thing, which gets her into trouble (and thrown out of a prestigious class), but also attracts the attention of the other non-conformists in the school, including a very sketchy guy who at least is treated as very sketchy by the narrative. Nico is a lot of fun to read about, but I think in real life I’d find her exhausting and difficult to deal with. Fortunately, this is a manga rather than real life, so I’ll continue to see how she does. – Sean Gaffney

Outbride: Beauty and the Beasts, Vol. 1 | By Tohko Tsukinaga| Steamship – This was the debut of Seven Seas’ new “Ghost Ship for ladies” imprint Steamship, so I thought I would grab the first volume and give it a try. I regret everything. Starting as a standard “hit by a truck” isekai, our heroine finds it’s now 2,000 years in the future, all of humanity is dead except her, and she has to mate with four different types of “celestial beings” and bear their children now. There’s elements of Omegaverse here, as her being a human gives off a scent that drives the men crazy, but mostly this is nearly two hundred pages of her screaming “no” a lot and being ignored by everyone except the one half-decent guy. Absolutely not my thing, but Omegaverse fans may like it. – Sean Gaffney

Ya Boy Kongming!, Vol. 1 | By Yuto Yotsuba and Ryo Ogawa | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – In this fish-out-of-water comedy, Shu Imperial Chancellor Zhuge Liang, a.k.a. Kongming, makes a deathbed wish to be reborn “into a world of peace.” His wish comes true, but in an unexpected fashion: he wakes up 2000 years later in present-day Japan. After a night of stumbling around Shibuya, Kongming is rescued from the streets by Eiko, an aspiring singer-songwriter who brings Kongming up to speed on the twenty-first century. As you might expect, Kongming is dazzled by modern conveniences—the humble wall clock throws him for a loop—but Yuto Yotsuba’s clever use of historical facts about the real Kongming pushes the story in a delightful, unexpected direction by giving Kongming an opportunity to put his military strategizing to use… as Eiko’s manager. Recommended, especially for anyone with a working knowledge of The Three Kingdoms. – Katherine Dacey

Reincarnated As the Last of My Kind, Vol. 4

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By Kiri Komori and Yamigo. Released in Japan as “Tensei Shitara Zetsumetsu Sunzen no Kishou Shuzokudeshita” on the Shōsetsuka ni Narō website. Released in North America by Cross Infinite World. Translated by Roman Lempert.

It’s two years after the previous book, and there’s a lot of bad, heavy things going on. Tina is now living at the captured fort, being flown around to various dangerous places to purify monsters. She’s referred to as “the holy woman” by basically everyone, and has almost come to accept it. She’s also coming to accept the fact that she’s in love with Renge, and debates confessing to him, though world events kind of put a kibosh on that. But the Sugula keeps coming closer and closer to them, and it needs to be destroyed soon. We’re getting into “this is the passing of an era” style fantasy, where one mentor close dying and another mentor actually dying off screen (how rude!). And, of course, there’s still the occasional enemy attack, and those are getting more and more dangerous. What on earth can Tina do to help things? If your answer was “have a fashion show”, then congratulations, you too may be able to write web novels.

To be fair, the fashion show *is* a side story, where Tina tries to solve the problem of newly freed slaves who still have tons of issues working them out by bullying each other. There’s also two side stories, which focus on the non-Tina romances in this book, and show off that just because a character SEEMS dense and oblivious it doesn’t necessarily mean they actually are. Unfortunately, the two side stories and the extra story run to just over half the book, leaving only the first half left for the actual plot to bubble up. This is also a problem with web novels, which are rarely written with the author thinking “now, I’m at about Page 220 if this were a Kadokawa book, time to have a cliffhanger”. But it can be very frustrating if you’re invested in how the world is going to be saved.

Tina doesn’t really have a fun book. We don’t even SEE the inn that she and her father used to tend here, and she’s pretty much resigned herself to being the savior of many (though her sister and others also yearn for a day when she can just lie around and make incredible healing potions, something she doesn’t have time to do anymore). She gets more information on her parents’ background, but this comes at the cost of losing a new found family member just when she realized she was a family member. And of course there’s the revelation that falling in love with Renge may actually produce a stone that could lead to a war that lasts centuries – again. As plot macguffins to stop a confession go, it’s certainly a strong one. That said, I think that the 5th book is the last? So we may not have more to go before an actual confession.

This is the second book in a row that felt like it was just marking time, and as always YMMV on the romance between a 15-year-old with the mind of a 30-year-old inside her and an immortal who rescued her as a baby. Still, I’ll soldier on. This was OK.

Manga the Week of 7/27/22

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SEAN: July is coming to an end. What have we got?

Airship, in print, gives us Reincarnated as a Dragon Hatchling 4 and A Tale of the Secret Saint 3.

In early digital, Airship has the 5th and final volume of I’m in Love with the Villainess, though rest assured they have already licensed the spinoff novel She’s So Cheeky for a Commoner, which shows us events from Claire’s point of view.

MICHELLE: I should get caught up with this. I thought the first volume was pretty fun.

ANNA: Me too, this is one of those things I feel guilty for not reading.

ASH: I really need to catch up on this, too.

SEAN: Cross Infinite World brings us Expedition Cooking with the Enoch Royal Knights (Enoku Dainibutai no Ensei Gohan), the story of a young elf in poverty who joins the royal knights… only to find their food is TERRIBLE! She can fix that. Sounds along the lines of Housekeeping Mage from Another World.

ASH: This counts as food manga, right? So, I’m curious!

SEAN: Ghost Ship has World’s End Harem: Fantasia 7 and Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs 20.

J-Novel Club has a new short story collection from one of their most popular series: Ascendance of a Bookworm: Royal Academy Stories – First Year. These stories are pretty much Rozemyne’s days at the academy, from the POV of people other than Rozemyne.

ASH: This should be fun!

SEAN: Also from J-Novel Club: Der Werwolf: The Annals of Veight 14, Dungeon Busters 3, Fushi no Kami: Rebuilding Civilization Starts With a Village’s 2nd manga volume, Hell Mode 4, Housekeeping Mage from Another World: Making Your Adventures Feel Like Home! 2, The Ideal Sponger Life 7, Maddrax 4, and My Daughter Left the Nest and Returned an S-Rank Adventurer 5.

After a long break following the crashing and burning of a Kickstarter, Tezuka Manga is back at Kodansha. We get a one-shot in print: Bomba. This 1970 manga from Weekly Shonen Magazine about a boy who can cause the death of others by summoning a magical white horse.

MICHELLE: I got curious and looked this up. The blurb mentions “the tortured youth’s explosive angst,” which I kind of feel like we get more than enough of presently.

ANNA: Yeah, glad there’s some Tezuka coming out though.

MJ: I am somewhere in between here. I suppose it will depend a bit for me on exactly what he’s tortured about. There are some themes along these lines I feel we simply… don’t need anymore.

SEAN: Also in print: Fate/Grand Order -mortalis:stella- 3, In/Spectre 16, To Your Eternity 17, UQ HOLDER! 26, Witchcraft Works 16, and Yuri is My Job! 9.

ASH: I’ve saved up a few volumes of To Your Eternity to read all at once; it’s been a really compelling series.

SEAN: The digital debut is My Tentative Name (Watashi (Kari)), a horror series from Magazine Pocket. A young man wakes up in a strange home with amnesia and a decapitated corpse. Things only go downhill from there.

Also digital: Burn the House Down 2, Cells NOT at Work! 5 (the final volume), DAYS 30, Harem Marriage 19, Her Majesty’s Swarm 2, The Rokudo Rounds 3, and The Shadows of Who We Once Were 2.

MICHELLE: I need to try Burn the House Down and The Shadows of Who We Once Were.

SEAN: One Peace Books has the 4th Higehiro manga, as well as Multi-Mind Mayhem 4.

In one of the weirder licensing things I’ve seen recently, Seven Seas debuts the print edition of Tokyo Revengers, which Kodansha Manga has been releasing digitally. This will be coming out in 2-volume omnibuses.

ANNA: I’m so confused!

ASH: Huh!

SEAN: We also see The Invincible Shovel 4, The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System: Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong 3, She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man 5, Skip and Loafer 5, and Wonder Cat Kyuu-chan 6.

ASH: I still need to get around to Skip and Loafer.

Square Enix Manga has The Misfit of Demon King Academy 4 and The Strongest Sage with the Weakest Crest 8. Sadly, this is the final volume of Misfit of Demon King Academy, as the artist passed away.

MJ: Oh, how sad.

SEAN: Tokyopop debuts Yuri Espoir, the story of a high school girl who’s told she’ll enter an arranged marriage once she graduates. So she decides to create a lesbian sketchbook to indulge herself in for the final year, observing other couples. This runs in Comic Ryu.

Viz debuts The Liminal Zone (Genkai Chitai), the most recent collection of horror from Junji Ito.

ASH: Still glad to see Junji Ito’s works being released in translation.

SEAN: There’s also a new Naruto novel, Naruto: Kakashi’s Story—The Sixth Hokage and the Failed Prince. I would like to grumble once again that Viz never published the NaruHina Wedding Gifts novel.

And a double dose of yuri, as we get How Do We Relationship? and the 9th and final volume of A Tropical Fish Yearns for Snow.

ASH: Those have been great series, too.

SEAN: Yen On has new volumes for three of its longer running series. Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody 17, Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- 19, and That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime 14.

And Yen Press has For the Kid I Saw in My Dreams 8, From the Red Fog 2, Minami Nanami Wants to Shine 2, and Run on Your New Legs 2.

ASH: Most of these are only second volumes, but I already need to catch up.

SEAN: It’s a sign of the current manga boom that this feels like a light week. What are you getting?

My Stepmom’s Daughter Is My Ex: “Childhood Friends No More”

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By Kyosuke Kamishiro and TakayaKi. Released in Japan as “Mamahaha no Tsurego ga Motokano datta” by Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Gierrlon Dunn.

Given that I’ve said how much I don’t care for Akatsuki, and how I prefer it when the series focuses on its main couple, this third volume was always going to be a hard sell for me, as it gets into the nitty gritty backstory of her relationship with Kawanami, how it changed, and her own personal issues, with Mizuto and Yume once again being pushed to the background. That said, it does a decent job, showing me that Akatsuki is aware of her dangerous personality issues and is doing her best to change them, even if she thinks of it as “wearing a mask”. And frankly Kawanami has just as many issues, some of which were brought on my his tortured past relationship but most of which are his own damn fault, and he seems to be as obsessed with his friendship with Mizuto as Akatsuki is about her friendship with Yume. They have a lot more baggage than our two leads, and I’m not sure they need to get back together.

The first half of the book focuses heavily on Isana Hagashira, who has now been rejected by Mizuto but oddly takes that as an invitation to be even more blatant around him, since she knows he’s not interested in her romantically. Essentially, she still has some difficulties working out how normal girls react around normal boys. And she’s probably not getting any help from the people around her – for one thing, Kawanami takes an instant dislike to her as she says she’s Mizuto’s best friend – that’s his job! The second half of the book gets into the backstory of Akatsuki and Kawanami when the group all go on a “study camp” sponsored by the school, and we discover, as Hagashira points out, that the “childhood friend” trope is something best reserved for fiction.

Explaining the backstory of those two is pretty easy, actually: they’re both latchkey kids who lived next to each other, and Kawanami was naturally extroverted anyway, so they simply grew together. Unfortunately, Akatsuki’s lack of boundaries proved to be crippling – we saw a lot of that in the first volume, and it creeped me out. Here we see Akatsuki acknowledge she was backsliding, and she really is trying not to get so obsessed with those around her (Yume as well) but the sheer loneliness that settles in when she does this is crushing. The intervention towards the end of the book that led the two of them to break down in front of each other is good for catharsis, but I’m not sure it will lead them to grow closer again just yet. As for Hagashira, she’s pretty hilarious, but I do think her shtick only works, as she knows, because of Mizuto’s lack of interest. As for Mizuto and Yume themselves… the biggest romcom thing that happened to them takes place entirely offscreen.

The anime of this has started, and the verdict so far seems to be “OK but flatly animated”. We’ll see how it goes. Till then, this remains a decent romcom but I wish we would return to our main couple.