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Manga the Week of 8/2/17

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SEAN: The Dog Days of August begin with a manga pile worthy of an entire dog show.

Cross Infinite World has been releasing some shoujo light novels digitally, something I had shamefully forgotten till now. They have a release next week of AkaOni: Contract with a Vampire.

ASH: Oh, shoujo! I’d forgotten as well. It’s great to see these being released.

SEAN: Fantagraphics has the 2nd and final Otherworld Barbara omnibus, and I really really want to get it. Sadly, I actually ordered it from Amazon rather than Diamond, and for once Diamond is ahead of the game here.

MICHELLE: Woot. Looking forward to this one.

ANNA: Can’t believe I missed the first one, well now I can get both!!!!

ASH: Likewise, I’m going to have to wait for my copy, but I’m always excited to read Hagio’s work.

SEAN: J-Novel Club will be releasing the 3rd How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom. Take a shot for each mention of Machiavelli.

And we get our monthly Invaders of the Rokujouma?!, the 5th volume in that long series.

Kodansha Digital gives us a new Del Rey rescue with the 20th Alive.

Kodansha has a 22nd volume of Attack on Titan, which finally gives us a beach episode.

ASH: Hahaha! Does it really? I admit, I’ve fallen a bit behind in reading Attack on Titan.

SEAN: GTO: Paradise Lost has a 4th volume digitally.

As does suspense title Kasane.

There’s also 2nd volumes for new series Kounodori: Dr. Stork and Love’s Reach.

One Peace has two debuts hitting comic shops next week (and bookstores a bit later). I Hear the Sunspot (Hidamari ga Kikoeru) is from Printemps Shuppan, running in the mostly BL magazine Canna. This isn’t BL, and appears to be about a student with hearing loss. It seems interesting.

ASH: My copy of I Hear the Sunspot actually arrived early. I’m very curious about the manga and hope to read it soon.

ANNA: Huh, that does sound interesting.

SEAN: They also have a light novel debut, Mikagura School Suite. It seems to be a Battle School title, based on a series of Vocaloid songs.

Seven Seas has a 3rd Magical Girl Site, which despite its title is dark horror.

And there’s a 3rd There’s a Demon Lord on the Floor, which is comedy fanservice just as its title implies.

Udon has a 6th volume of Persona 3.

Vertical has a done-in-one manga debut. She and Her Cat is written by Makoto Shinkai, so expect a bittersweet ending, but it should be very good.

ASH: As many Shinkai manga are, I suppose.

MICHELLE: Of course I am entirely down for this.

ANNA: Done in one manga are certainly nice sometimes!

SEAN: And now it’s time for Viz. The 17th Assassination Classroom has the kids arguing about whether they should assassinate in the classroom, fittingly.

There’s a 4th Behind the Scenes!!, which I continue to be a bit lukewarm on.

And an 8th Black Clover, which will feel even more like Fairy Tail now that Fairy Tail has ended.

Bleach’s 3-in-1 release hits Book 20.

And Food Wars! has a 19th volume – will things continue to be ‘darkest just before the dawn’?

Haikyu!! continues its monthly release with its 14th volume. The Japanese release is around Vol. 27 or so, so we’ve a ways to go before we catch up.

MICHELLE: I’m eager for both Food Wars! and Haikyu!!.

ASH: I’m still loving this series, and loving that it’ll continue to be released monthly for a while yet.

ANNA: I clearly need to go on a big volleyball binge.

SEAN: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure has another hardcover of its least impressive arc with a 4th Stardust Crusaders.

ANNA: I love these hardcovers and the insane action of JoJo’s.

SEAN: Rejoice! August means Kaze Hikaru, which may be only one volume a year but it tries harder!

MICHELLE: Yaaaaaaaaay!

ASH: I plan on picking it up!

ANNA: I LOVE IT SO MUCH!!!!!!!!

SEAN: Kuroko’s Basketball has its 13th/14th volumes out in this omnibus, which will involve the characters playing basketball.

MICHELLE: *snerk*

ANNA: I thought they were all pastry chefs!

SEAN: Maid-sama! has come to an end with this 9th omnibus. Will Misaka be able to kick ass and take names? And how much blushing will we have? (Answer: so much.)

MICHELLE: I’m looking forward to the finale.

SEAN: My Hero Academia is one of Jump’s biggest hits, containing a cast filled with characters everyone loves, and Mineta. The 9th volume ships next week. (Seriously, everyone hates Mineta.)

One Piece’s 83rd volume will continue to develop Sanji’s predicament and upcoming marriage.

Platinum End’s 3rd volume will be there for hardcore fans of this manga team.

So Cute It Hurts!! is almost over, as the 14th volume is the penultimate one.

Toriko is also almost over, though the 39th volume shows we have a few more to go.

Vampire Knight: Memories is the debut from Shojo Beat. It’s nice to see the author return to her most popular world, I guess, though I worry it’s because she wasn’t able to duplicate that success.

Yona of the Dawn’s 7th volume continues our PIRATES! theme, though I do not believe ninjas, zombies or robots feature.

ASH: I think I’m okay with that.

ANNA: I so enjoy Shojo Beat’s fantasy manga.

Yu-Gi-Oh! never quite ends, as this is the 11th 3-in-1 and we’re still not near the end.

Lastly, Yen Press has one straggler, as the third Twinkle Stars omnibus finally shuffles onto the scene, looking furtively at its shoes as it apologizes for being so late.

MICHELLE: <3

ASH: I quite taken with the first two omnibuses, so I’m glad the third is finally here!

ANNA: Maybe I will finally read the first two volumes that are stacked up on my to-read pile!

SEAN: Which of these titles dog your footsteps?

Kakegurui: Compulsive Gambler, Vol. 1

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Kakegurui: Compulsive Gambler resists easy labels, combining elements of a tournament manga, high school drama, and instructional comic. The plot focuses on Yumeko Jabami, a wealthy girl who transfers to Hyakkaou Private Academy, one of those only-in-manga institutions where the curriculum emphasizes poker and roulette instead of reading and writing. Although Jabami seems demure, her pleasant demeanor turns to maniacal resolve at the first mention of gambling. Within hours of arriving at Hyakkaou, she’s engaged in a high-stakes game of rock, paper, scissors with another student, betting ¥10,000,000 on the outcome. (When in Rome, I guess?)

To make the contest more exciting, author Homura Kawamoto adds a few novel rules, transforming a simple set of challenges into a complex game of chance involving cards, ballot boxes, and voting. He also raises the dramatic stakes by initially portraying Jabami as impulsive — even foolish — in her decision to stake ¥500,000 on a single face-off. By the end of the game, however, we realize just how cunning and observant Jabami really is, as she not only triumphs over her snotty opponent Saotome, but does so by figuring out how Saotome was cheating and using that information against her.

What really puts this chapter over the top is the artwork. Toru Naomura stages the contest like an extreme sporting event, using her entire bag of tricks to convey the contestants’ intense effort — sweatdrops, speedlines, split screens, sound effects — and mimicking the kind of camera work that ESPN trots out for the X Games. The fluid, inventive layouts are also key to making these betting matches come to life, artfully illustrating the rules of play without too much speechifying; even the most inexperienced Go Fish player could follow the game and calculate Jabami’s odds of winning. Naomura’s most effective gambit, however, is the way she draws Jabami’s face. When Jabami is playing her cards close to the vest, her eyes resemble dark, placid pools, but when she’s trouncing the competition, her eyes go supernova, turning into a set of concentric, fiery rings that mimic the line work in Saul Bass’ iconic Vertigo poster:

For all the swagger with which Jabami’s first match is staged, it’s clear that Kawamoto is more interested in the mechanics of gameplay than in the development of three-dimensional characters or the introduction of new plot twists. Each of the subsequent chapters follows the same basic pattern as the first, with Jabami besting her opponent after blowing the whistle on her for cheating. Then there’s the fanservice: Naomura never misses an opportunity to draw an extreme mammary close-up or a glimpse of underwear. And ugly underwear, I might add; Naomura’s artwork is solid, but her application of plaid screentone is so clumsy that it screams MacPaint.

Despite these shortcomings, volume one of Kakegurui is a fun, trashy read that has the good graces not to take itself too seriously. I’m not sure if the premise is strong enough to sustain my interest for more than a few volumes, as the series’ cast of schemers, cheaters, and sadists seem doomed to repeat the same patterns of behavior from chapter to chapter. I put my odds of continuing with Kakegurui at 3 to 1, but other readers may find the psychological combat between Jabami and her opponents enough to persevere through seven or ten installments.

KAKEGURUI: COMPULSIVE GAMBLER, VOL. 1 • STORY BY HOMURA KAWAMOTO, ART BY TORU NAOMURA • TRANSLATED BY MATTHEW ALBERTS • YEN PRESS • 240 pp. • RATING: OT, FOR OLDER TEENS (16+)

Love’s Reach, Vol. 1

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By Rin Mikimoto | Published digitally by Kodansha Comics

I am an enormous fan of Kodansha’s digital offerings, so it pains me to admit that I can’t find anything to recommend about Love’s Reach.

Sixteen-year-old Yuni Kururugi, a “genius ice queen,” excels in every subject except for English, which is taught by her 24-year-old, supposed-to-be temporary homeroom teacher, Haruka Sakurai. He’s flirty and unprofessional with his students, and though Kururugi likes the way he looks, she finds everything else about him unpleasant. When he calls her to his office after school one day, he creepily backs her against a wall and says, “Have you been getting answers wrong on purpose? Maybe you’re really just trying to get my attention.” The briefly gratifying fact that Kururugi smacks him and says, “Let me be perfectly clear. I hate you” is undercut by her reflections upon how cute he looks in that moment. Sakurai ends up requiring Kururugi to attend daily tutoring sessions and, inevitably, they fall in love.

This is one of those cases where, even setting aside the problematic student-teacher relationship aspect, I just don’t see why these characters like each other. Sakurai flip-flops between manipulative mind games and minimal acts of kindness (oh boy, he left her some patches for her sore ankle!), and allows other teenage girls to hang all over him. What’s to like about that jerk? For her part, although we are told several times that Kururugi is a genius, she sure doesn’t act like one. Some of her behavior might be excused as romantic inexperience, but not the fact that after insisting on a date with Sakurai, it never occurs to her that someone might see them out together until someone does. Eyeroll.

None of the relationship drama is interesting and by the halfway point, I was thinking, “When can this be over?” and that was before the predatory lesbian teacher showed up to blackmail the happy couple! Too, the art style is really weird. The space between a character’s eyebrows and the top of their head occupies as much space as their entire face!

So, to sum up. Weird art. Unlikeable characters. Inexplicable and icky romance. I won’t be continuing this series.

Love’s Reach is complete in ten volumes. One volume is available in English now and the second comes out next week.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Generation Witch, Vol. 1

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By Uta Isaki. Released in Japan as “Gendai Majo Zukan” by Ichijinsha, serialized in the magazine Comic Rex. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jill Morita. Adapted by Janet Houck.

It’s been nice to see the ‘slice of life’ genre move, to a certain extent, beyond ‘a bunch of female students living their everyday high school life’ in recent years. We’re seeing slice of life manga with actual twists, and one of the more current ones, fitting in with manga’s current obsession with anything supernatural, is “slice of witch life”. Flying Witch is an example of the ‘pure’ slice of life genre, with regular characters and an ongoing plot, but now we also have Generation Witch, which is more of an anthology series, each new chapter featuring a new witch and new issues. This works in the book’s favor, as it allows stories to have more resolution than they otherwise might have, and also lets the stories be a bit more depressing and dark than you’d sometimes see in slice of life.

The premise is that this is a modern-day Japan, but in a world where about 1% of the population have magical powers of some way, shape or form. The world, somewhat surprisingly, seems to have adapted to this very well, and witches are quite popular and cool. This first volume shows us a series of stories that are basically ‘what is life like around someone who can do magic?’ We start with a traditional witch (complete with broom), who’s also an overprotective older sister, trying her best to save her sibling from a guy who might be a new friend but in reality turns out to be just another pervert. The longest story in the book, taking up about half of it, involves a young man who was teased for his dreams of using magic as a kid (his powers matched an anime girl), and so is trying to live like a normal person. We all know how that ends, he runs into a very eccentric witch who wants him to join her club which helps find people’s lost things.

The last couple of stories take a much more serious turn, and show the dangers of magic powers. The first is a somewhat disturbing story of a young salaryman who goes home to his “daughter”, who turns out to be his childhood friend who he promised to marry as a kid. Sadly, she’s a witch who can’t control her powers, which means a) she can’t leave the house, and b) she won’t grow beyond a little girl. But he’s with her anyway, in a thankfully chaste way, and it’s a bit melancholy how he tries to assure himself that he’s been very lucky. The last story is let down by the fact that we can see where it’s going almost immediately, but shows us a young girl who can see the future and her budding relationship with her classmate, and ends in tragic fireworks.

This was pretty solid, if not groundbreaking. The idea of an anthology series about witches is a good one, and this also looks to be 5 volumes and done in Japan, which seems just about right. If you like witches and don’t mind that sometimes there aren’t happy endings, this is a good book to pick up.

Behind the Scenes, Vol. 4

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Behind the Scenes Volume 4 by Bisco Hatori

I thought the first few volumes of Behind the Scenes were ok but a little rough just due to the somewhat frantic pacing of character introductions and the episodic nature of the plot. I enjoyed the forth volume very much, because it gave me more insight into the background of many of the characters.

The volume opens with difficulties as everywhere Ranmaru goes he seems to be trailed by an eccentric group of people. It ends up being his family in town for a surprise visit. After seeing his lolita sister, his mother the former spy, and his father who is obsessed with social networking and western culture, it is easy to see why Ranmaru fits in so well with the extreme personalities in the art club at school. Ranmaru still has a tendency to look on the dark side of things, and isn’t fully able to interpret his family’s devotion as affection.

This shorter story is followed by a longer episode that showcases the art squad’s ability to get a job done at any cost, as Goda has to work with a director he’s clashed with in the past. The tension is made even worse when it turns out that the perfect location for the shoot is Goda’s childhood home, where his father is still in residence and passing judgement on his son’s chosen path. Becoming an art director is not very similar to Goda’s family tradition of the priesthood! Goda’s approach to finishing up the photo shoot demonstrated both compassion and sacrifice, so perhaps the two careers aren’t as misaligned as someone would think.

I’ve been wondering about Izumi’s breezy personality, and he finally gets some of his history filled in with this volume. The backdrop for this is the manga plot staple of a school festival, but Hatori’s spin on it is to show the art squad continuing to work behind the scenes to ensure that everyone else is a success. I found this volume so much more satisfying with the stories that focused a little bit more on character development than wacky antics. Hatori’s art is polished, and I’m enjoying the slight hints of steampunk illustration that she tucks in to the opening pages of each chapter.

Manga Giveaway: The Royal Tutor Giveaway

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It’s once again the final Wednesday of the month which means it’s once again time for the monthly manga giveaway here at Experiments in Manga! For this month’s giveaway, everyone participating will have a chance to win The Royal Tutor, Volume 1 by Higasa Akai as published in English by Yen Press. (The series started out as a digital-only release, so I was very happy when a print edition was announced, too.) As usual, the giveaway is open worldwide!

The Royal Tutor, Volume 1

While I have almost no interest whatsoever in the lives of contemporary royal or imperial families, I find that I actually do have a significant fondness for fictional stories, historical or otherwise, that deal with royal dynasties and their courts. Generally, what particularly captures my attention is the seemingly inevitable court intrigue–the intense relationships that develop between people and the resulting complicated, shifting web of power. Potentially, all of this drama can lead to a very serious story, but some manga like The Royal Tutor are also able to incorporate a fair amount of humor and levity into the narrative.

So, you may be wondering, how can you a copy The Royal Tutor, Volume 1?

1) In the comments below, tell me a little about one of your favorite members of royalty from a manga. (Don’t have a favorite? Simply mention that instead.)
2) If you’re on Twitter, you can earn a bonus entry by tweeting, or retweeting, about the contest. Make sure to include a link to this post and @PhoenixTerran (that’s me).

That’s really all there is to it. Participants in the giveaway have one week to submit comments and can earn up to two entries. Comments can also be sent to me directly via email using the address phoenixterran(at)gmail(dot)com if needed or desired. I will then post those entries here in your name. The giveaway winner will be randomly selected and announced on August 2, 2017. Good luck, everyone!

VERY IMPORTANT: Include some way that I can contact you. This can be an e-mail address in the comment form, a link to your website, Twitter username, or whatever. If I can’t figure out how to get a hold of you and you win, I’ll just draw another name.

Contest winner announced–Manga Giveaway: The Royal Tutor Giveaway Winner

Mixed Bathing in Another Dimension: The Ancient Seawater Baths

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By Nagaharu Hibihana and Masakage Hagiya. Released in Japan as “Isekai Konyoku Monogatari” by Overlap. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Sophie Guo.

Last time we had a large focus on the adventures of Haruno’s party; this time they’re absent (except to get mentioned in the cliffhanger) and the focus is solely on Touya and his party. To be honest, for the first half of the book I wished we’d cut away a couple of times – while fighting mutant hermit crabs and stopping scheming merchants at an auction is all very well and good, there’s no denying that the volume tends to meander for over half the book till it gets to the plot it came here for. One it does hit that plot, though, things pick up, and the second half works much better, and introduces us to a new girl, though she’s not new to Touya: it’s his sister Yukina, who passed away three years earlier back on Earth, now resurrected into this world as a demon girl.

Oh no, I hear you cry, a little sister character in a harem series. And you are correct to do so, though the narrative is very odd in that respect. The illustrator is certainly down with Yukina as a sexy young thing, and we see Touya blushing at her – in the illustrations. Likewise, the afterword has the author bragging about how he finally got the “not related by blood yet related by blood” sister into the harem (she’s resurrected as a demon, see, so technically no longer Touya’s blood relation). What’s pushing back against this is Touya himself, who in the narrative shows absolutely no sign of seeing Yukina as anything but a little sister, even when they’re bathing together. Obviously, this will likely change, but for the moment Touya and Yukina read like a normal (if overly close) pair of siblings. Though she does get to do the jealous “cling to his arm and stick out her tongue at a rival” pose. So there’s that.

Speaking of Yukina, sometimes in this series, despite the depth that the author gives to the backstory and concepts, I feel as if he’s writing it very linearly, and I ended up thinking that here; Yukina and her death should have been foreshadowed at least two books earlier, particularly as it gives an answer to “why doesn’t Touya really care about getting home?”. Elsewhere, the bath levels up again a few times. Sometimes it’s sensible – we finally have toilets (with bidets), and the tub is now big enough to fit Yukina in along with everyone else – and sometimes it’s just silly, like the sink tap that dispenses orange juice and udon broth, which just puzzled me. Touya is a little annoyed about the blessings of the Goddesses being “had a really nice bath”, but honestly, he does pretty well with that bath. Don’t be ungrateful.

In any case, they now have a submarine, courtesy a mad scientist, which may come in handy as the cliffhanger reveals that Haruno and her party are in trouble. The 5th volume just came out in Japan this month, so I’m not sure how fast we’ll see it here. But, sibling love aside, Mixed Bathing remains a nice, relaxing isekai with attention to character and narrative. One of J-Novel’s best current series.

Bookshelf Briefs 7/25/17

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Dreamin’ Sun, Vol. 2 | By Ichigo Takano | Seven Seas – First of all, I get what the author is trying to do with Zen, and yes I know there are guys like that in real life, but oh my God I want him OUT OUT OUT of this manga, he is making me very unhappy. Aside from that, this was a decent second volume, mostly focusing on Shimana’s burgeoning love, though there are signs of a larger plot, mostly involving Taiga, who remains the only adult in the room (which is sort of sad, given I’m sure we haven’t even begun to dig into his own issues). Shimana herself can be hard to take, but she grows on me as the book goes along. You can tell this came out before orange, which is stronger, but this is still quite a decent book. Only lose the moments of Zen. – Sean Gaffney

The Full-Time Wife Escapist, Vol. 4 | By Tsunami Umino | Kodansha Comics (digital only) –Mikuri and Hiramasa make incremental progress toward genuine couplehood in this volume, particularly when Mikuri’s aunt gives them a voucher for a night’s stay at a swanky premium inn. I am always delighted to see that, beneath Hiramasa’s stoic exterior, there exists an inner spaz with the hots for Mikuri. At one point, it gets the better of him and he plants a smooch on her, which he’s then incapable of explaining. Meanwhile, Mikuri has realized that she loves him, but while he’s reining himself in lest he drive her away, she worries she’s just forcing her desires on him. After the kiss, there may be hope, but she’s just too scared to admit her feelings. In less capable hands, their failure to communicate and just get together already would be supremely frustrating, but somehow Umino provides just enough payoff to make it work. Looking forward to volume five! – Michelle Smith

Haikyu!!, Vol. 13 | By Haruichi Furudate | Viz Media – We’re still in the middle of the qualifiers, and our heroes are taking on a team that likes to have FUN when they play. I was honestly expecting them to get curbstomped, but this isn’t that kind of manga (or sport, really) and once again Karasuno has to work hard and try new things in order to break through and beat them. We see how other teams can try to use their own moves against them (though I doubt they’ll be trying Hinata’s wall-jumping anytime soon). Then we go up against a normal, good team who’s simply well-disciplined and OK in all aspects—as noted by everyone, a bad draw for the eccentric Karasuno students. Will they win? And how injured is Daichi? Excellent shonen sports. – Sean Gaffney

Honey So Sweet, Vol. 7 | By Amu Meguro | Viz Media – How much you enjoy this volume will, I believe, depend on how much you sympathize and see yourself in Miyabi, who has absolutely no idea what to do with the feelings she now has and is also filled with social anxiety, leading to several bad choices throughout this book. I felt bad for her despite her being aggressive about trying to steal Taiga, because we know she has no hope whatsoever. Meanwhile, Nao is noticing what Miyabi is doing but is repressing her own feelings, which fortunately she gets told quickly is the WRONG thing to do. What follows manages to be sweet and cute, even if it’s about a girl trying to break up an already established couple. Nothing is fluffier than this series. – Sean Gaffney

Liselotte & Witch’s Forest, Vol. 5 | By Natsuki Takaya | Yen Press – Sometimes it is hard not to read this series and see echoes of Fruits Basket in it, particularly in this volume, as Vergue is acting an awful lot like Kyo. Fortunately instead of Liselotte, his interaction is with Anna, who gets to show off more of her true self and browbeat him into thinking about his circumstances. It’s probably the scene I liked best in the volume. Liselotte is not having an easier time of it; she’s traumatized at seeing her brother at the festival she’s trying to quietly spy on, and she finally meets up with the Woglinde, who magically gives Liselotte back her hair but I have no doubt is likely going to be more of an antagonist than anything else. Save up, as we’re caught up with Japan, but still good. – Sean Gaffney

Nichijou: My Ordinary Life, Vol. 9 | By Keiichi Arawi | Vertical Comics – Again, so much of the humor in Nichijou is about things simply being strange and bizarre for their own sake—you may let out a laugh at the bizarre goings-on, but this is the type of manga to inspire headtilts and chuckles more than tears of laughter. We get a flashback to Yukko and Mai meeting Mio, who is starting at a new school and is not prepared for it to be as super weird as it is, and also flashforwards to the future, where the Professor is going to school, Nano is keeping house, and strangely Nakamura is living with them. Oh yes, and in separate chapters, Yukko and Mio almost die. If you love Nichijou, you’ll love this. If you don’t, well, you likely dropped it long ago. – Sean Gaffney

Princess Jellyfish, Vol. 5 | By Akiko Higashimura | Kodansha Comics – It’d been a while since I read any Princess Jellyfish and I’d kind of forgotten how wonderfully unique it is. I haven’t read a story where a bunch of otaku work so hard at a real-world challenge, but they’re really trying to make a go of this clothing line. Meanwhile, Kuranosuke, who’s been the voice of encouragement this far, is getting a dose of reality on the state of the apparel business. I also love how Tsukimi has begun to change (and even to date!) and that Jiji, too, is getting out into the world and rediscovering some practical skills. I hope this series ends happily, but I appreciate how much detail we’re getting on the complexities of what they’re attempting, even if it means success is unlikely. Very highly recommended. – Michelle Smith

The Water Dragon’s Bride, Vol. 2 | By Rei Toma | Viz Media – Not quite as disturbing as the first volume, but this is still a very dark and dramatic manga. We learn that Asahi is not the first person to have been spirited away to this world, and that the one she finds out about (a female doctor) never returned home and is buried there. Not the sort of thing you want to find out if you’re missing your mom and dad. As for the Water Dragon, he’s as annoyingly petulant as ever, making sure Asahi is not killed off, drowned, etc. but also treating her like an annoying pest, to the amusement of his fellow gods. I expect more romance in future books, as we end with the ever popular “10 years later,” showing us Asahi all grown up. Solid. – Sean Gaffney

A Certain Scientific Railgun, Vol. 12

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By Kazuma Kamachi and Motoi Fuyukawa. Released in Japan as “Toaru Kagaku no Railgun” by ASCII Media Works, serialization ongoing in the magazine Dengeki Daioh. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Nan Rymer, Adapted by Maggie Danger.

Warning: the first paragraph of this review, above the picture, is spoiler-free for the most part. After that I will not only be spoiling the volume itself, but also A Certain Magical Index 15, which comes out in May 2018 from Yen On. Most Index fans know this spoiler well, but for the casual readers among you who have only read Railgun, stop after the first paragraph. This is a solid Railgun volume, with thankfully little to no fanservice (Kuroko is absent, which helps). It’s a book of two halves, the first of which features Saten and Frenda meeting by chance and bonding over canned fish, then getting caught up in a nasty situation because Saten has once again been mistaken for something more than she is. The second half sets up a new arc as Mikoto and Misaki investigate a girl who is yet another Secret Project of Academy City’s endless array of mad scientists. Railgun readers should enjoy this.

OK, spoiler-free time is over. THIS BOOK HAS SO MANY DEAD PEOPLE. A lot of what Kamachi has been doing with Railgun (and unlike most spinoffs of popular light novels, you can tell he has a major hand in this series) has been to fill in the blanks between Index volumes where Touma wasn’t around, not just from Mikoto’s perspective but also others. He’s also taken a lot of the cast and expanded their roles immensely to give them depth, and no one’s a more obvious example of that than Frenda. We’ve seen Frenda multiple times through Railgun, first as a villain in part of the Railgun-only Sisters arc, then again in the Railgun anime ending helping Mikoto take out a Big Bad, and then various spotty cameos. Now she gets a big focus story as she works to help save Saten – despite the fact that she wonders why the hell she’s doing this – from the machinations of SCHOOL, a dark organization which is using Indian Poker for its own nefarious ends. Frenda really is likeable here, and when she and Saten text each other at the end, you smile, hoping she’ll turn up again.

But to the reader of Index Novel 15, which came out 8 years before these Railgun chapters, this is tragedy. Because Frenda dies, ripped in half as revenge for being “a traitor”. The “One Week Later” at the end of the arc, showing Saten texting Frenda and getting no response, and seeing Uiharu at her door instead, is horrible, and meant to be incredibly depressing. Also, note that Uiharu’s shoulder and arm are in a sling – I suppose I should be grateful that Railgun isn’t going to cover that as well, as that’s also an Index 15 thing. Oh yes, and SCHOOL will, with one exception, also be entirely dead by the end of Book 15 (and in one case, good riddance – my lip curled when I saw Kakine on the page). As I said, this volume is crawling with people who, in the main series, die horribly. It CAN be read without knowledge of those events, and is still quite good. But for those who know what happens next, the first half of this volume is very different. I definitely recommend coming back to it later on after you read Index 15.

Pick of the Week: Killer Queen

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SEAN: No real dilemma for me this time – my pick this week is the 2nd and final Queen Emeraldas omnibus. It’s Wagnery delicious!

MICHELLE: In the Wagnerian spirit, I should warble about my decision for at least ten minutes or so, but… Yep. Same.

KATE: I’m fresh out of Wagner jokes, so I’ll keep it simple: Queen Emeraldas is my pick of the week, too. If you like Star Wars or Blade Runner, you owe it to yourself to check out Leiji Matsumoto’s work; his sci-fi stories are as richly imagined as anything in the George Lucas or Ridley Scott canon.

ANNA: I read the first volume of Queen Emeraldas and it was a bit too bleak for my mood at the time. But even though I didn’t connect with this space opera as much as I expected to, it is undoubtedly the most important manga coming out this week, so it is my pick as well!

ASH: There are actually a few releases that I’m very interested in this week, such as the next volume of Descending Stories, but like everyone else here it’s the finale of Queen Emeraldas that gets my official pick. I simply can’t resist a dramatic, classic space opera!