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Pick of the Week: Scrounging

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MICHELLE: There’s really nothing that I simply must have this week, so I suppose I’ll pick volume two of Lovesick Ellie for no deeper reason than that the cover of volume one kind of reminds me of Honey So Sweet.

SEAN: I’m uninspired as well, so I will go with a favorite author and pick Vol. 2 of Imperfect Girl, which will hopefully continue to be intriguing and disquieting in equal amounts.

KATE: I’m woefully behind on I Am a Hero, so I’m going to take advantage of a light week to dive in and catch up. Zombies ahoy!

ANNA: There isn’t a ton that’s coming out this week that inspires me either, so I’m just going to go with Full-Time Wife Escapist because I picked up a few volumes on sale recently, and that’s going to be my catch-up reading.

ASH: The second volume of Spirit Circle is unquestionably my pick this week! I had largely enjoyed the creator’s other series Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer so I was expecting to enjoy the manga, but I was still surprised by how much I ended up liking it.

Bookshelf Briefs 1/8/18

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Anonymous Noise, Vol. 6 | By Ryoko Fukuyama | Viz Media – Theoretically, a bare minimum of screaming should mean a substandard volume, but I must admit the tortured soap opera plot of Anonymous Noise is growing on me a bit. I mean, there are still a few issues—Momo runs away from his love problems like many other manga love interests (though usually it’s the woman who’s running off), and the attempt to have him get to know his new classmates is awkward and fake—deliberately so, I suspect. And Nino and Yuzu are having a spat, but also have music coursing through them—well, Yuzu does, Nino is trying to learn how to sing in a non-screaming way and not doing well. Meanwhile, the secondary pairings are starting to happen. How much longer does this run if they’re pairing the spares? – Sean Gaffney

Blue Exorcist, Vol. 18 | By Kazue Kato | Viz Media – There is interesting stuff going on here, like the resolution of Shura’s mini-arc (complete with dramatic haircut) and Amaimon coming in as a transfer student and immediately beign a giant jackass. But I’m most impressed with Shiemi’s response to Rin’s confession, which is very honest, has a long look at why this is totally in character for her, and sinks the ship but perhaps not permanently—this isn’t an “I love someone else” rejection so much as a “I have no idea how to love” rejection. Rin also takes it in a very mature way, insisting that they’re still friends and he will help her achieve her goals of becoming an exorcist. As love confessions that don’t work out go, this is absolutely top tier. – Sean Gaffney

Haikyu!!, Vol. 19 | By Haruichi Furudate | Viz Media – Back and forth we go, and for a lot of this volume it’s part two of what we had the previous volume, showing that Tsukishima is growing and learning a whole lot, and what’s more, may actually be (hold on to your hats) ENJOYING volleyball. Now it’s Hinata’s turn, as being short means he has to work even harder and use even more energy, and “try to block properly” is mean, but also accurate. And so our heroes are up against a wall again, but I’m sure someone will have a revelation or use a cool move or… I’m so sorry, I enjoy Haikyu!! a lot, but there’s a limit to what I can talk about in a review. SPORTSBALL! Also, that extra comedy manga at the end reeks of “getting around untranslatable Japanese wordplay.” – Sean Gaffney

Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You, Vol. 28 | By Karuho Shiina | VIZ Media – I have recently learned that this series is complete in 30 volumes and I am not ready for it to be over yet! That said, it definitely feels like things are moving in that direction. This volume covers Christmas and New Year’s (and Sawako’s blizzard-induced sleepover at Kazehaya’s house during which nothing more serious than kissing ensues), after which everyone will have a couple of weeks to study at home before their college admission tests. Sawako and Kazehaya seem poised to weather their upcoming separation just fine, Chizu tells Toru that she’s dating his brother, and Ayane… repeatedly gets flustered in Pin’s presence. Am I assigning too deep a meaning to the panel where he promises quite seriously to “think about it” regarding giving her a gift if she passes her exams? I can’t believe I’m rooting for a student-teacher romance! – Michelle Smith

Natsume’s Book of Friends, Vol. 21 | By Yuki Midorikawa | Viz Media – As the author herself notes in her copious afterword notes, we’ve rarely seen Natsume and Nyanko-sensei at odds, and I’m not sure that the author really pulls it off in this battle to see who earns the sleeping god’s favor and gets sake as a reward. (To be fair, the author admits this as well.) My favorite story in this volume involved Natsume’s friend Kitamoto, one of “those two guys” in his class, and a bookshop with a cute yokai acting as the clerk. Mostly as I like old bookshops. That said, I suspect most fans of this series will be most interested in the final chapter, which flashes back again to the wacky teenage misadventures of Natori, Matoba, and their amazing powers of bishonen. A good solid volume. – Sean Gaffney

The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window, Vol. 4 | By Tomoko Yamashita | SuBLime – We begin with Mikado taking a case to Mukae instead of Hiyakawa because he’s thrown by the latter’s suggestion that they could make money cursing people. Even after Mukae tells him that Hiyakawa has placed a “leash” on him binding them together, he’s still unable to forget how much Hiyakawa has helped him and can’t simply abandon him. In the end, and without Yamashita-sensei actually spelling it out, it seems that Mikado’s plan is to take a more active role in helping people, using the bond between them to pull Hiyakawa along onto a more righteous path. I do dearly love how Yamashita trusts her readers to understand things. This particularly comes into play in the chapter about Mikado’s parents and the poignant nonverbal panel in which Mikado’s father realizes that his son has inherited his abilities. All of this plus some ongoing plot threads make for a standout volume. – Michelle Smith

Species Domain, Vol. 4 | By Shunsuke Noro | Seven Seas – Again, I am impressed by how well the author is sticking to Dowa being a dwarf, which means not only does she have her big bushy beard, but when we get the obligatory beach arc, we see her swimsuit body and she is absolutely ripped, as you would expect from a dwarf. The beach arc itself is mostly a bunch of shenanigans, as the two rival clubs face off against each other in a series of amusing contests. More interesting is the ship tease between Ohki and Kazaori, both at the start (a forced date) and at the end, where Ohki’s “future vision” invention works a bit too well, and gives us a Kazamori who has literally lived the next ten years. And yes, she spoils everyone. A fantastic non-perverse monster series. – Sean Gaffney

The Water Dragon’s Bride, Vol. 4 | By Rei Toma | VIZ Media – In order to interact with and understand Asahi more, the Water Dragon God has taken on the guise of a human. When Asahi requests that he take her and Subaru somewhere fun, they end up attracting notice and, ultimately, Asahi is summoned by the child emperor, who refuses to believe she doesn’t have some kind of special powers, since she’s hanging out with a god. There’s an interesting balance here between slow-burn relationship stuff—Asahi attempts to shield her steadfast protector Subaru from the knowledge that she desperately wants to go home (though he knows already) and the Water Dragon God makes strides toward caring about Asahi’s feelings—and worldbuilding, what with the introduction of the emperor and some rumination on the possible loneliness of gods. I definitely plan to keep reading! – Michelle Smith

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Vol. 10

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By Fujino Omori and Suzuhito Yasuda. Released in Japan as “Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darou ka?” by Softbank Creative. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Gaippe.

Last time we asked what would change about monster hunting if we knew that not all monsters are evil and mindless. But if there are good and bad monsters, then there are also good and bad people. And the bad people who make up the Ikelos Familia are very bad indeed, so a good deal of this book is reversing any gains made by the last book. In fact, reversing may be a bit of an understatement – by the end of this book, Bell’s reputation is in shreds and everyone is furious with him. (Well, not his own Familia, thank God.) And while Ouranos’ experiment is still living on, it’s hanging by a thread. It’s hard not to sum up this volume of Danmachi as “Everything is terrible. The end.” That said, how we get there is important, and there are some excellent fights, good character moments, and… OK, yeah, no humor this time around. Not even any harem antics.

Much of this book continues to revolve around Wiene’s story, and unfortunately that’s a weak point in the novel, as she is absolutely a damsel in distress throughout it, whether it’s getting captured and sobbing in captivity, or being forced to mindlessly rampage aboveground. The trouble, of course, is that her plight is needed to advance Bell’s character, so she has to suffer as a result. The moral battle between Bell (pure, good, a bit headstrong) and Dix (twisted, evil, scheming) is a highlight, though I’m not sure Dix’s description of Bell as a hypocrite quite fits. Dix’s anger stems from a classic dilemma in stories like this – who do you choose to save if multiple sides are in peril? Do you save humans or monsters? Bell saves both, of course, and that’s why Dix rails on him for such impossible optimism. Dix himself is a thoroughly loathsome villain, though I wasn’t all that fond of the whole “descendants must carry on the insane plan” thing.

Aboveground, the rest of the cast gets relatively little to do – Lili and Hestia investigate a bit to try to find out where the middleman is in this conspiracy, but for the most part they’re sidelined. As for Team Loki, they get the bulk of the climax, trying to stop the rampaging monsters in the city and wondering why in God’s name Bell is chasing after one of them. (It is fairly notable that Bell’s “this is my kill!” excuse is rather lame, and while it is what kills his reputation I don’t think anyone who really knows him buys it for a minute – Eina certainly doesn’t.) I was wondering if Bell would have to fight anyone from Loki Familia, but we avoid that, mostly as he’d get the crap kicked out of him, I expect.

And so now we wonder where to go from here. Bell’s reputation is bad, but he’s not thrown out of the city or anything. And Hermes is already trying to find ways to fix things. I have a feeling that the next book will involve a lot of dungeon crawling. and I hope that it’s a bit more lighthearted. Still, if you’re looking for a dose of Danmachi at its most serious and grim, this is the volume for you.

Nisekoi, Vol. 25

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By Naoshi Komi. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz Media. Translated by Camellia Nieh

Harems are a very popular genre, so popular they’re even called harems, rather than what they actually are – romantic comedy or romantic drama. You have a guy, or a girl, and their various love interests – when it’s more than two, that puts it in this genre. They are popular but also very dangerous to license long-term, especially for the West, where titles can come out in volume format over a year after fans have been shamelessly spoiled on the forums. Because let’s face it: 90% of readers are dissatisfied with the ending. Either the title leaves everything ambiguous (the so-called “no ending”), or the protagonist chooses the wrong one – i.e., the one the reader doesn’t prefer. This is true even if the correct choice has been signposted from the first chapter, so it must be even more frustrating for fans of Nisekoi, which theoretically did a much better job at keeping all its heroines as options till the end. That said, the series is still subtitled “False Love”. The False Love was the plot. And therefore the heroine… is the one we expected.

Therefore, this volume does its level best to shut down all the other pairings and show that, in fact, it’s Raku x Chitoge going forward. Chitoge is not the promise girl that we’ve been wondering about for the entire series – that’s Onodera – but she is the one that Raku decides he is in love with, despite the fact that, similar to Naru in Love Hina, she literally runs away from her feelings until there is nowhere left to run to. It’s very in character for Chitoge, and honestly everyone in this volume acts exactly as you’d expect them to. Tsumugi gets to have a cool fight, and finally show Claude that she is, in fact, a she (was anyone else reminded of that Night Court scene with Christine? No? Just me? OK…). Marika, who has always been the one whose feelings are RIGHT THERE, acts as an audience surrogate in telling Chitoge to man up and admit the truth. And Onodera… well, Onodera gets to cry, and also bake their wedding cake, something so mind-boggling that she has to textually tell the reader that she wanted to do this, and it wasn’t Raku or Chitoge’s idea. The nice girl to the end.

While we are starting to see a few series experiment with polyamory, it’s always in a “fantasy world” setting, and you’re not going to see it in modern-day Japan. And for those who want to ship the OT3 after the wedding… nope, we get a short epilogue showing Onodera’s daughter running into Raku and Chitoge’s son, and it’s obvious they haven’t met each other before. (Which is incredibly frustrating from anything other than a ‘dramatic irony’ perspective – must ALL harems never speak to each other again after the wedding, especially when they’re as close friends as Chitoge and Onodera were?) And so we’re left with a series that I enjoyed for 25 volumes… but is only going to be satisfying if you shipped Raku and Chitoge. This is the curse of all harem series, and it’s why they’re popular but hard to license, because hell hath no fury like a fanboy scorned. Still: Nisekoi was excellent. Good job.

The Irregular at Magic High School: Yokohama Disturbance Arc, Part 1

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By Tsutomu Sato and Kana Ishida. Released in Japan as “Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei” by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Prowse.

Having finished the athletic competition between the magic schools, we now get a chance to see the scholarly competition, which is not nearly as popular with the masses but carries just as much prestige for the winners. Naturally, since Tatsuya is a freshman and also in Course 2, he’s not in charge of this; that’s left to Suzune, the former Student Council Secretary and resident tall, dark and handsome girl of the group. Of course, Tatsuya being Tatsuya, he’s asked to join the team as a helper anyway, partly as the previous helper was the girl who got zapped in the athletic festival and therefore can’t use magic anymore, and partly as the alternate choice disagrees with Suzune’s objectives, so why not use Tatsuya, who does agree with them and is also perfect in nearly every way? That said, terrorists are all around them, both as students trying to stop the competition, and as Chinese mafia trying to do the same thing for different reasons.

Honoka and Shizuku are on the cover, but unfortunately have the least amount of face time devoted to them of our main cast. Or perhaps it is fortunate, as the other half of this novel is devoted to taking the various members of Tatsuya’s crew and trying to put them in wacky romantic comedy situations. This works best with Erika and Leo, mostly as the two don’t really have a shred of sexual tension or attraction to each other besides “oh look, attractiveness”, and thus they are allowed to behave fairly normally, leaving aside Erika’s tendency towards rage and Leo’s cluelessness. It works least well with Mikihiko and Mizuki, in a scene that is so blatantly a set up for wacky “whoops, I tried to stop you falling and groped you” antics that I actually winced. (The author implied in the afterword that he added some scenes from the webnovel to set up later stuff better, so I assume these two become an item – they DO seem to have some chemistry, when they aren’t being written badly.) And Mayumi and Miyuki, who I expect are two of the triangle of “Tatsuya partner candidates” in this book (Honoka being the third) get scenes as well. Given I’m not fond of the incest subtext in this series, it’s no surprise who I preferred.

The pats of the book that are a serious action movie with terrorists fare much better. This is what Sato writes best, and there are a lot of cool fight scenes with clever uses of magic – Mayumi and Mari come off particularly well. The Chinese Mafia are there to be goons, with the exception of Zhou, who seems like the sort of “always smiling Chinese villain” I remember from Patlabor. I suspect he’s the only one I have to remember for later books. In any case, as the title implies, this is the first of what the author says is a two-volume arc. I imagine we’ll see the academic competition sabotaged further later on, though whether we’ll get more romantic comedy hijinks is not in my power to guess. (Please no.) If you like thrillers with magic and cool characters, this is right up your alley. As always, if you hated Tatsuya before, you’ll hate him again.

Manga the Week of 1/10/18

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SEAN: There is not quite as much manga next week as previous weeks… at least not print manga. Kodansha is here to ensure that there are still many more titles released.

Before that, Dark Horse has a 5th omnibus of I Am A Hero.

ASH: This series has been quite an intense ride, so far!

SEAN: J-Novel Club has a 4th volume of the very long-titled If It’s For My Daughter, I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord, as well as a 4th volume of Infinite Dendrogram.

They also debut a spinoff novel. Yume Nikki: I Am Not In Your Dream, which is based off of a freeware game, and seems to be scary? And is not related to Future Diary, it would seem.

Kodansha Digital has no new titles announced for next week (yet – there’s always a danger of last minute announcements), but we do get Domestic Girlfriend 14, Grand Blue Dreaming 5, I’m in Love and It’s the End of the World 3, Kokkaku: Moment by Moment 4, Lovesick Ellie 2, and the final volume of Peach Heaven, 13.

MICHELLE: I’m still meaning to check out Lovesick Ellie.

SEAN: Seven Seas has a quartet of titles due out. The High School Life of a Fudanshi 3, Nurse Hitomi’s Monster Infirmary 7 (we’re mostly caught up to Japan on both of those), Spirit Circle 2 and Yokai Rental Shop 2.

ASH: The first volume of Spirit Circle was so good! I went in expecting to like the series, but at this point I’m honestly loving it.

ANNA: Interesting…..

SEAN: There’s some new BL from SuBLime, as we get a 10th volume of His Favorite (has this really been running in Japan since 2008?) and a 9th volume of The World’s Greatest First Love (which has been running since 2006).

Vertical has a 2nd volume of psychological thriller Imperfect Girl.

And speaking of long-runners, Viz has a 65th volume of Case Closed. That’s been running since 1994, and the North American release is only 27 volumes behind right now!

Getting something? Or catching up from previous weeks?

MICHELLE: Catching up, mostly!

ASH: A little of both, for me!

ANNA: So much to catch up on!

The Manga Critic’s Year in Review: 2017

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When I put The Manga Critic on hold in 2012, the Internet was changing: Facebook and Twitter were replacing forums, Live Journals, and personal blogs as the primary way in which Internet users shared opinions. The manga industry, too, was in flux, recovering from the collapse of brick-and-mortar retailers such as Borders, the scourge of One Manga, and the demise of power players such as Tokyopop. Looking back on that transitional moment, I feel pangs of nostalgia for the old blogosphere — where each blog functioned like a virtual water cooler, providing a place for manga lovers to gather and discuss what they were reading — and for the days when teenagers clogged the graphic novel aisles at bookstores as they pored over the latest installments of Naruto.

At the same time, however, I recognize how necessary many of these adjustments were. The introduction of digital manga and the increased emphasis on day-and-date releases have had a positive effect on the market, creating a viable alternative to scanlations (at least for licensed titles). Manga publishers have also gotten bolder with licensing choices: who’d have thought that Seven Seas — the company that brought us Aoi House and Monster Girls — would play such an instrumental role in bringing classic manga to the US, raising the possibility that 2018 might be the first time two manga by Ryoko Ikeda were available in English?

Finding my voice in this new environment has been my biggest challenge this year. I often found myself struggling to say anything insightful about the books I was reviewing, not because they were offensive or poorly executed, but because they were too obvious, too familiar, too… focus grouped. These are occupational hazards for anyone who reviews popular media, to be sure, but I felt that weight more fully this year, in part because I felt a stronger responsibility to myself and to my readers not to treat middle-of-the-road titles with contempt — a goal I didn’t always achieve.

On a more personal note, 2017 was the year I said goodbye to Grendel, my canine sidekick for the last thirteen years. She’d been with me through graduate school, divorce, moving, and job changes — the low points — but also with me for wonderful adventures: climbing Mount Washington and kayaking in the Finger Lakes. I learned a lot from her, from the importance of routine to the importance of being in the moment. Most of all, however, she taught me the importance of boundaries; she was tough, sweet, willful, and not above nipping my ankles when she wanted me to do something. I’d never lived with a dog who was as feisty or independent as Grendel, two qualities that made her a pain in the ass sometimes, but also made our relationship richer and more rewarding. R.I.P., Woozums — I miss you.

What I’ve compiled below is an index of sorts, an attempt to document in numbers and links what I accomplished here at The Manga Critic in 2017. The format owes a debt to — OK, shamelessly copies — the Harper’s Index, but the contents are a lot less stodgy. So without further ado, here is a guide to my first year back in the saddle as a manga reviewer.

THE YEAR IN NUMBERS

BOOKS REVIEWED

MANGA REVIEWED

* Denotes a digital-only or digital-first release

Sword Art Online, Vol. 12: Alicization Rising

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By Reki Kawahara and abec. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Stephen Paul.

Last time I mentioned that the regulars not named Kirito barely appeared in the book, and this time they don’t appear at all – even Asuna isn’t in it, as we spend our entire time in Underworld watching Kirito and Eugeo slowly make their way upward in order to stop our chief villain of this arc. It can be a bit frustrating, especially as Kawahara excels at introducing new characters who could conceivably be quite an interesting addition to the ensemble and then leaving them by the side of the road. Eugeo, at least, continues to play the second protagonist role admirably, and once again the narration of the book is divided, with first-person Kirito for the first half and third-person Eugeo for the second. The book, in fact, somewhat mirrors the last one – just as that ended with a pile of exposition after a series of cool fights, so this one begins with the exposition before we get to the fighting. Kirito even gives us a “for those of you just starting this series” intro.

My favorite part of the book was probably the two girls on the cover, Fizel and Linel. They’re introduced at a point where the ordinary reader would be very suspicious, which is why the cover fakeout is so clever – given that they flank Kirito, clearly they’re meant to be new allies that he picks up along the way. A heh. Perhaps not. That said, once their subplot is done they are tossed out of the way like everyone else, and I do wonder if we’ll ever see what becomes of them, particularly if Kirito wins the day, something that is still not entirely certain. The best fight scene in the book goes to an Integrity Knight named Fanatio, which has to be intentional as she certainly seems fanatical. She has a complex about being a feminine knight, both because she was treated as weak by other men before and also because Alice has just arrived and is pulling off being feminine and hella strong perfectly. Kirito, who points out that he’s had the crap kicked out of him by women in fights before, is all too happy to duel her and teach ehr the error of her ways. It’s not terrible, but I’m not sure it comes off the way he wants it to – there’s still a tinge of sexism here.

Of course, we knew that before we reached the top of the tower and the final villain we’d have to fight Alice again. And, as if proving Fanatio to be even more wrong, she proceeds to absolutely kick Kirito and Eugeo’s asses, at least until the obligatory cliffhanger. Given everything that we learn about the Integrity Knights in the early infodump, I am curious as to whether Kirito and Eugeo will be able to snap her out of it – I suspect that may take up a good deal of the next book. In the meantime, Sword Art Online continues to be exactly the sort of series you think it is. The highs still high, the frustrations still omnipresent. I’d still argue it’s well worth a read, unless you hate Kirito.

Also, I found it hilarious that Kirito points out he has now failed to graduate THREE times – from middle school (trapped in SAO), high school (being trapped here), and sword academy (for breaking the taboo index). It’s OK, Kirito, there’s always McRonald’s.

Attack on Titan, Vol. 23

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

It is not uncommon, particularly in shonen manga, to see what is generally referred to as a “time skip”, where events jump ahead a few years and we see the cast has grown and changed (see One Piece) or, for some strange reason, is almost exactly the same (see Fairy Tail – twice). It allows the author to jump ahead to the next part of the story they want to tell. It’s also not unheard of for a series to debut a new cast, meant to carry on from the original – you see this in some school series where time actually passes and therefore the regulars cant’ help but graduate. The new cast are usually introduced gradually, interacting with the popular regular characters till they have enough popularity of their own to take over. (K-On! tried this, but it didn’t really work well.) And then there’s Attack on Titan, which thinks nothing of trying to do both at the same time.

Reiner is still around, to be fair – in fact, he and Zeke (the Beast Titan) are the only ones, bar flashbacks. Instead, we’re introduced to a new group of child soldiers, who are here to take out enemy supply lines, blow shit up, and sic titans on people. The kids run the gamut from tortured and brooding young man who may be our lead going forward to the confident (some may say overconfident) girl who screams out “I am going to be killed or horribly maimed to teach an important lesson”, but so far seems to be riding on pure awesome and adrenaline. They’re fighting their own battles, but things aren’t going to well, and it turns out that having a giant pile of titans is not nearly as awesome as it could be, even without the special equipment Eren and company had. Perhaps it’s time to go back to the island and get back the powers of the founding titan.

I’m going to be very honest here, but I’m debating dropping the manga if this keeps up. I don’t really read Attack on Titan for the plot, which manages to be both “war is hell” and very right-wing militaristic at the same time. Likewise, the titans themselves have never interested me except as conduits to help the human characters grow and change. It’s no surprise that the moments I enjoyed most in this volume were the smaller, quieter ones – such as Reiner’s reverse psychology when he threatens Falco for not respecting the Titans enough, or his memories of everyone back on the island (in which we realize that Sasha eating the potato is once again the only thing ANYONE remembers about her). But I really hope that Eren, Mikasa and the others show up soon, because I’m just not as into this new cast.

Attack on Titan is still worth reading if you like cool battle scenes (that are beginning to actually be drawn… OK? Not horribly?), political discussions, and tortured angst. Just be aware that there’s a sea change here, and most of the beloved characters you liked have been left behind.

The Asterisk War: Battle for the Crown

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By Yuu Miyazaki and okiura. Released in Japan by Media Factory. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Melissa Tanaka.

I always enjoy each volume of Asterisk War I read, despite the fact that you can see every plot beat and character development coming from eight miles away. The good thing about it is, it’s the RIGHT kind of character development. This being a tournament arc, you would expect that the losers among our heroes get shuffled off to the side to watch from the stands, like… well, every other tournament arc in manga and anime. But no, Saya and Kirin (yes, it’s a spoiler that they lost, but not much of one if you have any idea about how narrative works) not only get to save the day in their B-plot, but Saya actually gets something of a resolution in the argument she had with Rimcy a couple books ago. And speaking of Ardy and Rimcy, their character arc is not winning the tournament, it’s showing that they are capable of growing and striving just as humans do, and it’s also carried off very well. The well-worn path this walks is comfortable, and has tea at the end.

The girl on the cover this time around is Sylvia, president of the all-girls institute that’s one of the six schools. She essentially shows up to give Ayato a hand in the kidnapping B-plot and to tease him – even the author admits he had planned to add her later. She’s cute, though, and I look forward to seeing how she differs from Claudia in the Ayato harem sweepstakes. As for the tournament part of it, there are two really good fights and one sort of mediocre one – we know that Ayato and Julis are going to reach the finals, and so the battle they face to get there feels perfunctory and short – which is better than perfunctory and long, I suppose. Saya and Kirin fare better – as I said above, they have to lose for plot reasons, but they do a damn good job, forcing Ardy and Rimcy to bring out their secret weapon earlier and generally showing that they are not just stoic/meek (delete where applicable) girls.

They also get to rescue the kidnapped girl, despite severe injuries from the tournament, injuries that are also handed to Ayato and Julis in the final. The final battle takes up the most space in the book, and is mostly worth it, though perhaps drags on a bit long – yes, even in books as short as The Asterisk War, scenes can go on too long. But Ardy is fun, and I liked the way that Ayato and Julis finally got together to take down the pair, which is clever, finds a way around Ayato’s big weakness, and is also quite shippy. That said, their pledge at the end of the book to keep allying in the other two competitions no matter what just seems to be inviting trouble, if you ask me.

So one tournament down, and apparently next time we get a slight break before jumping into Tournament Two. In the meantime, The Asterisk War continues to be, in my opinion, predictable cliches done right.