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Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It

December 24, 2014 by Ash Brown

Editor: Anne Ishii, Chip Kidd, and Graham Kolbeins
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
ISBN: 9781606997857
Released: December 2014

The first major publication of gay manga to be printed in English was The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame: The Master of Gay Erotic Manga. Soon after its release a new project–a gay manga anthology called Massive–was announced by the same team that worked on Tagame’s debut English collection. Originally intended to be released by PictureBox, the anthology was temporarily orphaned when the publisher ceased releasing comics before the volume was completed. I was thrilled when Fantagraphics took on the project. Edited by Anne Ishii, Chip Kidd, and Graham Kolbeins, Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It became one of my most anticipated releases of 2014. Gay manga is an extremely underrepresented genre of manga in English. Massive, like The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame before it, is a groundbreaking work. Through manga, interviews, photography, and essays, the anthology introduces nine of the genre’s most influential, respected, and promising creators to an English-reading audience.

The volume’s table of contents is formed by a gallery of photographs paired with full-page color pin-ups illustrated by each of the contributors to Massive: Gengoroh Tagame, Inu Yoshi, Kumada Poohsuke, Takeshi Matsu, Jiraiya, Gai Mizuki, Fumi Miyabi, Seizoh Ebisubashi, and Kazuhide Ichikawa. This is followed by introductory essays written by each of the three editors. Kidd’s “It Feels Too Good” conveys the excitement over the fact that a volume like Massive even exists, while Ishii reveals some of the steps it took to publish the material in “Seeking English Translator.” Kolbeins essay “Glocalizing Gei Manga” is particularly enlightening, providing a greater context for Massive and a brief overview of the history of gay manga and how the volume fits into it. Also included is a timeline of male-male sexuality in Japanese culture, a list of recommended readings, and numerous photographs and illustrations. However, the real meat of the collection is the individual profiles of each of the creators introducing their work and personal histories and exploring their careers and the impacts they have made on the genre of gay erotic manga. The other major highlight of Massive is the inclusion of examples of their manga.

For most of the contributors, Massive marks their debut in English. Excluding Tagame, who has thus far had four collections published, Matsu is the only creator to have had a major release in English. And except for Jiraiya’s “Caveman Guu,” which was previously printed separately, all of the manga collected in Massive is being translated into English for the first time. Some are excerpts of longer works, like Tagame’s Do You Remember South Island P.O.W. Camp? and Poohsuke’s Dreams of the New Century Theatre, while others are shorter, standalone stories. There is humor and playfulness to be found in Yoshi’s “Kandagawa-Kun” and Matsu’s “Kannai’s Dilemma,” more dubious encounters in Mizuki’s “Fantasy and Jump Rope,” Ebisubashi’s “Mr. Tokugawa,” and Ichikawa’s “Yakuza Godfathers”, and even mythological inspiration in Miyabe’s “Tengudake.” The manga collected in Massive is most definitely erotic in nature. Some of the selections are simply suggestive, but many feature explicit, uncensored, and uninhibited sex between hypermasculine, muscular, and otherwise large-bodied men. It is called Massive for a reason, after all.

The profiles of the creators included in Massive are just as engaging as the manga that has been collected. The volume provides an incredibly valuable look into the creation of gay erotic manga and art. Interestingly enough, several of the contributors mention that they would like to create gay manga without as much erotic content, but to successfully do so would be difficult due to the demands of their audience and what is expected from the genre of gay manga as a whole. The artists address many of the same subjects in their interviews but they each bring their own perspective to the discussion. It’s fascinating to learn about how the manga industry has changed and continues to change, the impact and challenges presented by foreign scanlations of manga, the benefits of working within the manga industry or independently outside of it, the use and misappropriation of the term bara both in Japan and in the West, and the relationship between gay manga and boys’ love manga, among many other topics. Massive truly is a spectacular volume and highly recommended for anyone interested in gay manga, its history, and its creators; it’s a fantastic introduction to the genre.

Vinland Saga “temporarily suspended”

December 23, 2014 by Brigid Alverson

Bad news for Vinland Saga fans: The sixth volume has been removed from sales listings, and Kodansha Comics says the series has been “temporarily suspended.” In case you aren’t already reading the series, Johanna Draper Carlson explains why this is bad.

Good news for Shonen Jump readers: This week’s issue will include the one-shot story RKD-EK9 by Medaka Box writer NisiOisin and Death Note artist Takeshi Obata.

The Manga Bookshelf team look back at the most important manga of 2014.

Also at Manga Bookshelf, Erica Friedman has a nice introduction to the Japanese magazine Dengeki Daioh.

Twenty-five years after his death, Osamu Tezuka lives on in Japan, celebrated by murals, subway chimes, inventors, and the merchants in his old neighborhood, who trade Astro Money for civic-minded acts and serve up his favorite dish.

Erica Friedman posts a fresh edition of Yuri Network News at Okazu.

Happy blogiversary to Organization Anti-Social Geniuses, which turned four years old last week; if you haven’t checked it out from the links here, go take a look now!

News from Japan: Naoki Urasawa is taking a break from Billy Bat; the series, which has already had several interruptions, will go on hiatus until April. Library Wars: Love & War may just have ended in Japan, but artist Kiiro Yumi already has a new series, Toshokan Sensō: Love & War Bessatsu-hen, in the works. Plans are in the work for a Kabuki play based on Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece.

Reviews: The Manga Bookshelf team posts another round of quick reviews in their latest Bookshelf Briefs. Ash Brown looks back at The Week in Manga at Experiments in Manga.

Ash Brown on vol. 1 of Afterschool Nightmare (Experiments in Manga)
Johanna Draper Carlson on vol. 3 of Food Wars (Comics Worth Reading)
Anna N. on vols. 1 and 2 of Honey Blood (Manga Report)
Johanna Draper Carlson on Mail (Comics Worth Reading)
Johanna Draper Carlson on vol. 2 of Manga Dogs (Comics Worth Reading)
Lori Henderson on vol. 1 of Noragami (Manga Xanadu)
Johanna Draper Carlson on vol. 4 of Say I Love You (Comics Worth Reading)
Erica Freidman on Stretch (Okazu)
Lori Henderson on vols. 1-3 of Sweet Rein (Good Comics for Kids)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 3 of Sword Art Online: Fairy Dance (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Erica Friedman on vol. 3 of Tsuki to Sekai to Etoile (Okazu)
Rebecca Silverman on vol. 8 of Umineko: When They Cry (ANN)
Johanna Draper Carlson on vol. 5 of What Did You Eat Yesterday? (Comics Worth Reading)
Rebecca Silverman on vol. 1 of Yukarism (ANN)

Sword Art Online, Vol. 3: Fairy Dance

December 23, 2014 by Sean Gaffney

By Reki Kawahara and abec. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen Press.

The novels are still running a bit behind the manga here in the West, so much of this review will be discussing how the light novel differs from the first two volumes of the manga that I’ve already reviewed. They mostly hit similar notes – Suguha’s crush on her brother is in full force, Asuna is still trapped in a birdcage, and Sougo is an over-the-top villain – but the ability of prose to let you get inside the heads of its leads allows for a greater depth than the manga had, particularly with Kazuto and Asuna. There’s also some nice discussion of Kazuto’s family beyond his sister, as we see his working mother, who he apparently got his obsession with games from. That said, once Kazuto becomes Kirito, we’re back to this series’ raison d’être, which is watching the boy do awesome things.

The contrast between Kazuto and his MMORPG self didn’t come across as much in the manga as it does here, and it may have been my favorite part of the book. Now that he’s not in Sword Art Online, we’re left with a young teenage boy who’s weaker than he’s been the past two years, unable to decide what to do with his life, and with the one thing he cherished more than anything – Asuna – still far away from him. After meeting Sugou, and hearing about Asuna’s arranged marriage, he almost completely falls apart, sounding nothing like the character we’ve known, not even after the death of Sachi in the previous volume. It’s only when he reached ALfheim Online, the successor to SAO, and can become Kirito again that things change. And change they do – Kirito was pretty confident in the first two books, but here he’s almost cocky, showing off his skills (ported over from SAO, for reasons unknown to him) and cleaning house.

As for Asuna, her POV also benefits the story. She goes through the same crisis that Kazuto did earlier in the book, being trapped with only the monstrous Sugou for company and not even being sure if her love is alive. Once Sugou attempts to break her will by saying he is (cartoon villains always seem to make this mistake), she gains new strength, and it’s immediately put to good use – her use of game mechanics and environment to find a way to escape her cage is brilliant, and shows that she’s more than just a prize waiting for Kirito to rescue her here. (Sugou also gets to be even more horrible here – the scenes of him touching her, trying to go far enough so that she’ll punch him and thus “justify” using his supposed mind control on her sooner, are true nightmare fuel.)

Suguha/Leafa is the new character here, and like the other two we enjoy getting inside her head. She’s startled at her brother’s sudden kendo skills, picked up by sheer muscle memory from his days in SAO. The family revelations, which he knew about but didn’t tell her about, also have thrown her off kilter, and that combined with the onset of puberty has led to her accepting that she has feelings for Kazuto – but she can see he’s clearly in love with Asuna. She’s very similar to her brother, and it’s no surprise that when she plays ALO in an attempt to understand what he enjoyed about it, she too got very good very fast and is one of the top players in the game.

If you hated the Fairy Dance arc of the anime, then reading the light novel will probably not change your minds. If you enjoyed aspects of it but felt it fell short, given this version a try. It may read like wish-fulfillment fanfic, but there’s nothing wrong with that if it interests the reader, and I’m still greatly enjoying Kirito, Asuna and Leafa’s adventures. This is a 2-part book, so in April we’ll find how things wrap up.

Bookshelf Briefs 12/22/14

December 22, 2014 by Sean Gaffney and Michelle Smith Leave a Comment

This week, Sean and Michelle take a look at recent releases from Seven Seas, Yen Press, Viz Media, and Kodansha Comics

Alice in the Country of Joker: Nightmare Trilogy, Vol. 2 | By QuinRose and Job | Seven Seas – Slightly better than the first volume, this has an interesting premise in that for once Alice has a repressed memory her love doesn’t want her to see that isn’t about Lorina. The idea of her scribbling in her dictionary is somewhat childish, but that fits the plot pretty well, to be honest. Unfortunately, we keep running into two big problems. First, the art is simply not up to par, frequently looking almost doujinshi-esque, and suggests a rushed product. Secondly, Nightmare just isn’t that good of a romantic hero, not showing off enough cool to make up for his basic flaws. It’s sad that the cutest part of this volume was in a side story which is Alice/Blood. For completists only.-Sean Gaffney

Durarara!! Yellow Scarves Arc, Vol. 2 | By Ryohgo Narita, Suzuhito Yasuda, and Akiyo Satorigi | Yen Press – It’s impressive just how much the narrative is bending itself to make sure that its three leads don’t find out about each other’s secrets. Masaomi *almost* sees Anri here, but Celty manages to rescue her before the damage is done. As you can guess, most of this volume is backstory and buildup, showing why Masaomi is tormented in his relationship with Saki, as well as how Kadota’s gang ties into this (Walker blithely setting thugs on fire is in keeping with this author’s tendency to enjoy psychopathic tendencies). And then there’s Shinra’s father, who is a real loathsome piece of work on all fronts. Ah, DRRR, even your likeable heroes are broken.-Sean Gaffney

Food Wars!, Vol. 3 | By Yuto Tsukuda and Shun Saeki | Viz Media – OK, this series has now fully won me over after its awful start. It’s got just what you want from a Jump series: ridiculous side character, rivals turned friends, ludicrous battles that are also amazing, all involving cooking, and teamwork winning out… well, at least till the end, when Megumi is expelled. I highly doubt that will last, and the cliffhanger suggests a new battle may change the outcome. But it also allows for some heartbreak. There’s a short story at the end that was Saeki’s debut work, showing a typical high school romance and also likely showing why he was paired with a writer for this new project. The main reason to get this is Food Wars, though, and I am looking forward to the next volume.-Sean Gaffney

Haganai: I Don’t Have Many Friends – Club Minutes | By Kurian and Bomi | Seven Seas – This volumes holds together a little better than the previous ‘comedy side stories’ volume, partly due to its focus on holidays, giving it more of a thematic impact. Everyone’s amusing quirks are on display here. Rika makes filthy jokes, Yukimura is deadpan (this time about the Warring States), Sena can’t win at bishoujo games, and Yozora is the most broken of them all. We actually seem to skip past the main release, timeline-wise, as we see Student Council members who are implied to be new regulars here, and seem to have wandered in from a more normal comedy Still, it wasn’t too spoilery, and those who want more Haganai will be happy with what this volume gives them.-Sean Gaffney

Honey Blood Vol. 2 | By Miko Mitsuki | Viz Media – Well, that didn’t end so much as stop. Despite the author’s best efforts to say that this was indeed the ending she had in mind, this ending comes very abruptly and made me raise an eyebrow. (There’s a ‘side’ volume in February, that seems to consist of the ‘pilot episode’ and some side stories.) It’s a surprise as we get a new antagonist vampire introduced here, who’s carried a grudge against Junya since the Edo period and is determined to break up our couple. Add this to Hinata’s worries about whether she can really be what Junya needs, and whether hteir ‘bond’ requires sex in order to work, and you have a tasty little vampire potboiler for supernatural fans. Just… be aware it stops rather than ends. -Sean Gaffney

Knights of Sidonia, Vol. 12 | By Tsutomu Nihei | Vertical Comics – There’s some obvious emotional manipulation going on in this volume, even more so than usual, and yet I still manage to find myself feeling bad for Sho, the newly introduced Honoka clone who is introduced to die tragicaslly, in a callback to events of the first few volumes with Hoshijiro (remember her?). I was less wild about the subplot involving who’s been peeping on the female pilots when they’re changing – naturally, everyone blames Tanikaze, and just as naturally it isn’t him. But if you’re going to introduce harem manga elements in your story, I suppose you have to take the bad with the good. Still, this volume is better off when it’s trying to pull at your heartstrings rather than hit your funnybone.-Sean Gaffney

Magi, Vol. 9 | By Shinobu Ohtaka | Viz Media – A transitional volume of Magi, this serves to a) introduce a whole bunch of new powerful people who serve under Sinbad, including the cover couple, who hate each other so it must be love; b) have a wacky comedic subplot involving Sinbad being accused of raping a girl in her sleep, which I could have done without; and c) introducing a new protagonist, Hakuryu Ren, who initially seems a bit villainous but allies himself with our heroes fairly quickly. Oh yes, and there’s Morgiana, who repurposes the shackles she once wore in slavery into her new magical weapons, which almost makes up for the comedy subplot. A good volume, but I’m more looking forward to what happens next.-Sean Gaffney

Millennium Snow, Vol. 4 | By Bisco Hatori | Viz Media – It’s possibly unfortunate that this came out the same week as the last Honey Blood, as they both feature very similar plotlines, with a vampire from the past arriving to stir things up and ruin our hero’s life. Of course, Toya is far easier to manipulate than Junya, so things work out a lot better for the villain here. It’s up to Chiyuki, now dying again without Toya’s help, to try to figure out what’s really going on. The outcome is not really in doubt, nor is the epilogue,, but it’s still nice to see feelings being returned. Oh yes, there’s also the subplot with Toya’s grandfather, which has a sad and tragic air around it as it deals with senility that comes with old age. A solid, if somewhat stolid, ending for the series.-Sean Gaffney

Voice Over: Seiyu Academy, Vol. 8 | By Maki Minami | Viz Media – We’ve already seen Hime having to deal with her apathetic, neglectful mother earlier in the series. Now we get Senri’s parents, and we find out that things are even rougher here. I love the flashback to Senri’s parents, as it’s framed as a sort of shoujo manga of its own, with two eccentric people meeting cutely and falling for each other. But there’s a reason shoujo mangas often stop before the couple has children (or even a wedding), and this is why: it doesn’t always translate into good parenting. Given Sakura is also the actress who most deeply influenced Hime, and we can see a major roadblock coming up in the next volume or so – assuming Hime gets past admitting that she’s Shiro.-Sean Gaffney

Voice Over!: Seiyu Academy, Vol. 8 | By Maki Minami | Viz Media – Although the regular gang makes an appearance in the first chapter, in which Tsukino finally manages to speak up and convey her feelings, the majority of this volume is devoted to Senri’s childhood. It all starts because he realizes his friendship with Shiro (heroine Hime in disguise) is making him happy, but then he panics because he can’t tell if it’s genuine happiness or just a performance. It turns out his famous actress mother was never her genuine self around Senri, always taking on a variety of roles and not considering how this would affect her son and his ability to relate to others. I suppose this could be treading perilously close to one of those shoujo manga that becomes mostly about the lead guy’s angst, but I actually quite enjoyed it, especially the story of Senri’s first cat friend. I find I’m sad that there are only four volumes left! – Michelle Smith

Witchcraft Works, Vol. 2 | By Ryu Mizunagi | Vertical Comics – There are some interesting battles and discussion of witchcraft here in this second volume, but for the most part the emphasis remains firmly on comedy, particularly with the introduction of Honoka’s overprotective little sister Kasumi, who it turns out is also a witch. If you saw the words ‘overprotective little sister’ and groaned at the thought of what was to come, congratulations, you win the otaku cliche bingo card. She sleeps in his bed, she takes baths with him, etc. No surprise then that Honoka (also for everyone’s safety) moves into Ayaka’s high rise, though they may not live long enough to enjoy it. I’m not sure I’m going to keep up with this one, but it’s fun for fans of supernatural comedy, even if a bit predictable.-Sean Gaffney

My Week in Manga: December 15-December 21, 2014

December 22, 2014 by Ash Brown

My News and Reviews

Last week was another week with two reviews here at Experiments in Manga. My monthly horror manga review project is now underway, so I took a look at Setona Mizushiro’s After School Nightmare, Volume 1, which is a very intriguing start to the series. Next month I’ll start in on the in-depth reviews for Yuki Urushibara Mushishi and continue to alternate between the two series until the review project is completed. Last week I also reviewed The Early Cases of Akechi Kogorō by Edogawa Rampo, which I was very excited to read. The volume collects four of the earliest stories featuring Rampo’s great detective. And over at Manga Bookshelf proper, I and the rest of the Manga Bookshelf bloggers talked a little about the Manga the Year of 2014, noting some of our favorite things from the past year. Like I did last year, later this week I’ll also be posting my own list of notable releases from 2014.

I’m still extraordinarily busy at work as I settle into being the temporary boss of my unit for the next seven months or so, so I’ve been a bit preoccupied and haven’t had a chance to closely follow what’s going on in the mangasphere these days. However, I did still manage to catch a few interesting things to read online. Jason Thompson’s most recent House of 1000 Manga column focuses on Learn English with JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, which I am now determined to track down. J. R. Brown has an introductory post to Boys in Skirts, her series of article and reviews focusing on otokonoko at Mode: Verbose. I also came across a fascinating post about the popularity of the Year 24 Group. I’m not familiar with the author or the blog, but it looks like it should have other promising manga articles as well.

Quick Takes

Angel Sanctuary, Volumes 16-20 by Kaori Yuki. Here it is, the tumultuous conclusion to the epic Angel Sanctuary. By the end of the series, Yuki actually does manage to pull everything together in a way that mostly makes sense and proves that she actually can kill off a main character, something that I had my doubts about. I know a fair number of people who adore Angel Sanctuary, but while there were some things I really liked about the series, overall I found it pretty frustrating. Maybe I just wasn’t paying close enough attention, but more often than not I found Angel Sanctuary to be confusing and difficult to follow with a huge cast of characters, none of whom are exactly who they initially appear to be, and plot twist after plot twist. Granted, that did mean the series was consistently drama-filled. But with a little more editorial guidance, Angel Sanctuary could have been something phenomenal instead of just good. I did appreciate the manga’s core, however. Love is the driving force behind Angel Sanctuary. All of the characters are dealing with love in one way or another; it is the source of tremendous good as well as tremendous evil, but in the end it is shown to be a redemptive force.

Master Keaton, Volume 1 written by Hokusei Katsushika and Takashi Nagasaki and illustrated by Naoki Urasawa. One of the many reasons that I became so enamored with manga was thanks to Urasawa’s series Pluto, so I’m always curious and excited when a new work of his is licensed in English. Admittedly, Master Keaton, while newly translated, is one of Urasawa’s older collaborations that began in the late 1980s. The titular Keaton (technically Hiraga-Keaton) is a half-Japanese, half-English archaeology professor who works as an insurance investigator on the side. He also used to be a member of the British Army’s Special Air Service, which adds survival skills and combat experience to his already impressive and eclectic set of talents. I enjoyed the first volume of Master Keaton. The manga has a nice mix of action and adventure, mystery and detective work, and even a bit of family drama. Occasionally it can be a little heavy on politics and history which interrupts the series’ pacing, but generally the slower parts are interesting, too. It’s also worth mentioning that the book design and production quality of Viz’s release of Master Keaton is particularly nice.

Open Spaces and Closed Places, Volumes 1-6 by Saicoink. I don’t remember exactly when or how I first heard about the mini-comic series Open Spaces and Closed Places, but it was recently brought to my attention again when Saicoink released the sixth and final volume. I finally got around to reading the series, and I absolutely loved it. Jirou is the boss of the delinquents at his school. When he isn’t busy getting into fights, he’s pining for Oscar, the president of the student council. Oscar likes Jirou, too, but for various reasons doesn’t feel he can accept his love, and so spends much of his time teasing the other boy instead. It’s a delightful relationship, both adorable and sad at the same time. Soon after Open Spaces and Closed Places begins, fantastical elements are introduced and the series becomes more and more surreal as it goes, culminating in a spectacular dream sequence. Saicoink specifically mentions drawing inspiration from Suehiro Maruo and Usamaru Furuya. While their influence can be seen in Open Spaces and Closed Places, the series isn’t as grotesque or as graphic as some of their works, though its humor is still accompanied by some amount darkness and tragedy. It’s a sinister, strange, and wonderful series.

Sankarea: Undying Love, Volume 9 by Mitsuru Hattori. Sometimes Sankarea is all about its horror, sometimes it’s all about its peculiar romantic comedy, and sometimes it manages to be about both. The ninth volume is generally successful in balancing the series’ two opposing aspects, though the comedy has definitely taken a turn for the serious. Hattori does still find plenty of opportunities to add a bit of fanservice to the manga, this time mostly in the form of dressing Rea up in a variety of revealing costumes and outfits, often for no better reason than she looks cute in them. But even with those largely unnecessary diversions, the plot does continue to move along nicely in the ninth volume. Chihiro and most of the rest of his group have made their escape from ZoMA and return to Japan. Rea is suffering from amnesia though and doesn’t remember Chihiro or their relationship. Often I’m annoyed by the memory loss trope in manga—frequently it’s the result of bad or lazy writing—but for the most part it actually works pretty well in Sankarea. I still like the quirkiness of the characters in Sankarea, but Bub the undead cat remains my favorite by far.

Honey Blood Volumes 1 and 2

December 21, 2014 by Anna N

Honey Blood Volumes 1 and 2 by Miko Mitsuki

Two volume manga series are a bit tricky sometimes. They tend to be series that are canceled because they were not entirely successful, and sometimes have unfinished or rushed endings as a result. Sometimes there are two volume series that do end up telling a story satisfactorily, but most of the time when I read them, I either end up acknowledging that I just read a manga that was never going to work or I find myself wishing for just one more volume.

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Hinata is a normal high school girl going about her daily life, slightly mystified about the vampire novels that are taking her school by storm. At the same time there have been cases of young girls who are the victims of mysterious attacks in her city. When she comes home one day after school, she bumps into a strange young man in traditional Japanese clothing. He’s accompanied by a clinging female editor. It turns out that he’s Junya Tokinaga, the writer of the novels that Hinata thinks of as ludicrous. Hinata has a tendency to burst out with whatever is on her mind and her first encounter with the famous author has her musing how the central plot point of a vampire giving up immortality to die with the person he loves is difficult to understand. Junya ends up acting bizarrely flirtatious around Hinata while she keeps making comments like “I can’t stand guys like you!”

The neighborhood attacks continue, and Junya saves Hinata from a man who almost assaults her when she is walking alone at night. She begins to be more fascinated with her next door neighbor, and he continues to demonstrate his interest in her. Hinata begins to suspect that Junya is a vampire, and it turns out that Junya’s novels describing a situation where a vampire who kisses a mortal is bound only to her until they both die is based on the conditions of his own vampirism. I thought the art in this series was attractive, but the storyline ended up shoving Hinata and Junya together a little too quickly to be believable. By the end of the first volume, they are almost a couple with Hinata pursuing Junya while he attempts to hold back details of his life from her. The continued vampire attacks make the reader a bit uneasy, as it is unclear if Junya is feeding on other women, or if in fact there are other vampires around.

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I think the second volume shows the author throwing a bunch of ideas out to see if anything would stick. Hinata and Junya embark on their unconventional romance. The reader gets a bit of back story when it is revealed that Junya’s long lost love was one of Hinata’s ancestors. Hinata and Junya’s overly solicitous editor get into a conflict of personalities. A rival vampire named Setsuna shows up to complicate the situation further. I liked the romance better in the second volume when Hinata and Junya were an established couple. I also enjoyed the blend of vampire angst and little moments of humor, like when Hinata picks out modern clothes for Junya only for him to promptly become a target for aggressive modeling scouts. As the second volume wrapped up, I found myself wishing that the author had a bit more time to develop the series before launching it in the first place. It seemed like it was starting to get a bit more interesting only to be cut short. If a longer series by Mitsuki gets licensed, I would be interested in reading it, because I’d be curious to see what she could do with more space to develop a series. As it is, I’d recommend Honey Blood for vampire manga collections, or for people who don’t mind reading short manga with abrupt endings.

Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon?, Vol. 1

December 21, 2014 by Sean Gaffney

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.

For those who see that title and roll their eyes, the commonly agreed on abbreviation, from the Japanese title, is ‘DanMachi’. We’ve seen a few of the cliched light novels with titles as long as their content in manga and anime format before, but this is really the first time we’ve seen one as a light novel. As you’d expect, the longer the title the more likely that this is a romantic harem comedy, and that’s true here. It’s also a fantasy, though, one closely connected to the world of role-playing games (though it’s not players trapped in a game, for once). I think that the fantasy gamers will likely find it easier to appreciate this title than the harem comedy fans, though both will find things to like and dislike. One thing I think everyone will agree on is that the cover blurb is pretty misleading: Bell stops being a ‘damsel in distress’ almost immediately.

That is where we start, however. Bell is our narrator for most of the book, though it does switch off when the author wants to tell scenes without his presence to a third person style. He’s young and naive, wanting to become an adventurer in order to meet girls and get a harem, but he mostly wants that because this is what his grandfather (now deceased) taught him was the way of all things. In reality, he can’t catch a clue when it’s thrust in his face, really. The other protagonist is his sponsoring god, in this world where gods have come down to the real world and form gangs of adventurers to entertain themselves. Hestia has only one adventurer – Bell – but it’s clear that she just needs to mature. It’s also clear that she’s head over heels for Bell, and is somewhat frustrated at his lack of interest. As the book goes on we see more women – the big sister trying to convince Bell not to be stupid, the young waitress with an immediate crush on him, another goddess who wants him mostly to amuse herself – but it’s apparent from the start who the ‘lead girl’ is.

The fantasy aspect fares better, though I don’t really game so it’s possible I’m missing stuff. Bell fights increasingly tough monsters, and when he defeats them gets gems to exchange for money, or ‘drop items’ that might be useful. It honestly takes a little while to get used to the fact that this is meant to be a real world – adventurers have their ‘stats’ printed on their back in runes, for goodness’ sake. But the fights are well-written and go fast, and there’s a nice feeling of suspense to them. The book read very quickly and smoothly, which was nice, and lacks a lot of the self-important narrating we’ve seen in other books this year. There’s also a surprising lack of fanservice – surprising as the color artwork inside the front cover is filled with it. Hestia gets the nickname ‘loli big boobs’, which is unfortunate, but other than that the emphasis here is on the story for the most part.

I may have made this sound more interesting than it is – there’s nothing here that really gets me fired up for another volume. But it’s pleasant enough, and a nice quick read. Harem fans will be annoyed at the obliviousness of the hero and the possessiveness of the heroine, because they always are. Fantasy fans might be entertained by the ‘RPG in real life’ aspect, though, and may want to give it a shot. And fans of the Durarara!! light novels or the Yozakura Quartet manga will recognize the artist. It’s also available digitally, and an anime is due out soon.

Manga the Year of 2014

December 19, 2014 by Sean Gaffney, Michelle Smith, Ash Brown, MJ and Anna N Leave a Comment

SEAN: Technically this should be Manga the Week of 12/24, but that’s merely one title: Vampire Hunter D 22. And tempted as I was to make a “Give her the D for Christmas” joke, that can’t really sustain an entire column. So I’d like to ask the team what they think the important titles of the year were for them this year. New series you fell for? Old series that have ended? Emerging trends?

I’ll start off by picking the third one, and talk about something that isn’t technically manga. Yen Press has been quietly putting out a few light novel series for years, with mild successes such as Book Girl, Kieli, and Spice & Wolf. But 2014 saw the explosion of the Yen On brand, which began with the first Sword Art Online novel and looks in 2015 to be expanding far, far more than anyone had expected. With the promise of approximately 25 volumes for the year 2015, I likely should have waited a year for this. But 2014 was a great start: not only Sword Art Online and its sister series Accel World, but the amazingly popular (and previously thought too big to license) A Certain Magical Index series, and the fantasy romantic comedy Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon?. Yen On is determined to put down the myth that “light novels can’t succeed in North America”, and they’re what I was most excited about in 2014.

Runners up: The end of Excel Saga, the Ranma 1/2 re-release, Sailor Moon Crystal (so much excitement, so much disappointment…), Showa, Whispered Words.

MICHELLE: I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I have to say… the manga that I loved most this year is What Did You Eat Yesterday?, by Fumi Yoshinaga. I had wished for this license for years, putting it forth whenever companies (mostly Vertical) would solicit suggestions, and it’s such a tremendous delight to be able to say that now that it’s here, I haven’t been disappointed by it one bit. And, even better, it’s been coming out every two months like clockwork! (I am trying not to think how sad I’m going to be after volume nine comes out in July, at which point we’ll likely be caught up with Japan.) Thank you, Vertical!

Runners up: The end of Dawn of the Arcana, instantly endearing/fascinating new series like My Love Story!! and Black Rose Alice, the influx of really interesting new shoujo from Kodansha, and my continued heart-felt love for Skip Beat! and Natsume’s Book of Friends.

ASH: It’s so hard to choose just one manga, so I’m just going to choose one publisher instead. Fantagraphics has a very small manga line, but I’m always impressed by what it releases. In fact, I count all four volumes of Fantagraphics’ manga published in 2014 among my favorites for the year. I will always be eternally grateful for Takako Shimura’s Wandering Son being translated into English (happily, the editing and quality control for that series seems to be back on track now), I still haven’t been able to get Inio Asano’s Nijigahara Holograph out of my head, and Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It is an incredible collection and groundbreaking work. Rumor has it Fantagraphics is looking to publish even more manga in the future; I can’t wait to see what’s in store.

Runners up: In Clothes Called Fat is one of the best comics I’ve read, My Love Story!! makes me incredibly happy, and Chromatic Press/Sparkler Monthly continues to do some wonderful and marvelous stuff.

MJ: Truth be told, my favorite series this year is the same as Michelle’s. Like her, I’d been waiting anxiously to read What Did You Eat Yesterday? since I first heard of its existence, and (like her) I will be eternally grateful to Vertical for bringing it to me so much sooner than I imagined was possible. I’ve enjoyed every volume of this series so far, and I don’t expect that to change. But in the interest of spreading the love around as far as possible, I’ll use my space here to give a final thank you to Chromatic Press for resurrecting and providing (IN PRINT) the final volume of of Jen Lee Quick’s Off*Beat. When new chapters began serialization in Sparkler Monthly in 2013, I know that there were still some skeptics who feared we’d never get to see its conclusion. But with the final print volume’s release this year, I hope that even they have come to terms with the value of what Chromatic Press/Sparkler Monthly can (and continues to) offer us—including a new series from Quick, already in serialization now!

Runners up: Continuing to prove the awesomeness of Vertical, Knights of Sidonia is a series I can’t seem to get enough of. And speaking of resurrections, many thanks to Dark Horse for rescuing CLAMP’s Legal Drug from the OOP graveyard. I’m so looking forward to new volumes of that series’ reboot in 2015! And of course, everything my colleagues have mentioned here has a place on my list, too.

ANNA: This has been a good year for paranormal shoujo, with Midnight Secretary winding down, Spell of Desire starting up, the continuation of Millennium Snow, and even more vampire romance available in the two volume series Honey Blood. However I have to highlight what is one of the oddest paranormal titles that I’ve read recently, Black Rose Alice. There’s a dramatic shift in tone between the first two volumes that I found really intriguing, and the vampires that appear in the series are genuinely unusual even though there are plenty other vampire shoujo series to read! Setona Mizushiro’s art is an interesting mix of the pretty and the surreal. I find myself more impatient for the next volume of this series than any other manga I’ve read this year, so it gets my vote for pick of the year.

The Great King of Manga, Dengeki Daioh

December 19, 2014 by Erica Friedman Leave a Comment

Way back when I started reading manga, the very first magazine I ever subscribed to was Dengeki Daioh. It had two, maybe three series running at any given time that I was following, a bunch more I could take or leave and a few that made me want to shower in acid. And so it remains, all these years later, long after I have stopped subscribing. ^_^

Like many magazines of its kind, Dengeki Daioh rides a line between targeting teens and adult men. Stories frequently star young women in various states of undress rather more often than not, who will sometimes throw themselves at the male protagonists, and kisses that are common, but not commonly mutual. The magazine also has a fairly evident lolicon readership, as indicated by many of their most popular series – some of which have made over to western shores, Masayuki Takano’s Blood Alone, Barasui’s Ichigo Mashimaro (Strawberry Marshmallow) and Kiyohito Azuma’s Yotsubato! (Yotsuba&!).

In fact, many of the series that run in the pages of Dengeki Daioh are popular, often as a result of a unique marketing tactic – manga series running in Daioh are very likely to get at least one season of an anime. The anime will end, but the manga series continues, now with a larger readership. It’s pretty rare for a Daioh series to get more than one season, in fact, which makes the exceptions that much more notable. Between Mediaworks open licensing and Kadokawa’s relentless marketing of popular series, it is not atypical to page through an issue of Daioh and have heard of more than a third of the series currently running. The addition of Kadokawa as a publisher means that readers are also seeing more manga adaptations of Light Novels in the magazine’s pages.

Originally started by Mediaworks in 1994, now published by ASCII Mediaworks and Kadokawa Publishing in partnership as a monthly, Daioh is the lead title in the Dengeki imprint, with a monthly circulation of 130,000, (the imprint also includes Dengeki’s G’s, Moeoh and Teioh magazines). The website is fully featured with sample chapters, highlights of the most popular series, news of upcoming anime, recruitment campaigns, contests, editor’s blog and upcoming manga releases. At 800 yen ($6.58 at time of writing) for over 1000 pages, Dengeki Daioh is a pretty cheap way to buy a lot of cheap entertainment.

Dengeki Daioh, from ASCII Mediaworks and Kadokawa: http://daioh.dengeki.com/

The Early Cases of Akechi Kogorō

December 19, 2014 by Ash Brown

Author: Edogawa Rampo
Translator: William Varteresian
U.S. publisher: Kurodahan Press
ISBN: 9784902075625
Released: November 2014
Original release: 1925-1926

Edogawa Rampo, the pen name of Hirai Tarō, was an extraordinarily influential author in Japan, especially when it came to the genre of detective and crime fiction. His influence can still be seen to this day and his work continues to inspire other creators. One of his most famous characters is the detective Akechi Kogorō. Previously, only a handful of stories featuring Akechi had been translated into English: “The Psychological Test,” found in Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination; The Black Lizard, which was collected in a single volume along with Beast in the Shadows; “The Stalker in the Attic,” published in The Edogawa Rampo Reader; and The Fiend with Twenty Faces. I have always wished for a volume entirely devoted to Akechi mysteries and so I was very happy when Kurodahan Press announced The Early Cases of Akechi Kogorō. Published in 2014 with translations by William Varteresian, the anthology collects four of the earliest Akechi stories written between 1925 and 1926.

After an excellent and informative introductory essay about Edogawa Rampo and Akechi Kogorō, The Early Cases of Akechi Kogorō opens with Rampo’s very first mystery featuring Akechi, “The Case of the Murder on D. Hill,” a short story about the death of Akechi’s childhood friend, the wife of an owner of a secondhand bookshop he frequents. Rampo hadn’t initially intended for Akechi to become a recurring character in his fiction but readers liked him. The second story in the volume, “The Black Hand Gang,” is narrated by the same protagonist as the first, a relatively new acquaintance of Akechi, and the two of them become involved with an investigation into the disappearance of a young relative. In “The Ghost,” Akechi doesn’t appear until rather late in the story to deal with a peculiar case of a wealthy man suffering from a rival’s deep-seated grudge. The volume concludes with The Dwarf, a short novel well-received by the public but apparently disliked by Rampo himself in which Akechi is faced with an increasingly complicated murder mystery with numerous twist and turns.

All four stories in The Early Cases of Akechi Kogorō were written towards the beginning of Rampo’s career. As is noted in the introduction, Rampo largely wasn’t very happy with them. Although The Dwarf became fairly well-known in part thanks to its film adaptations, the cases collected in the volume are generally not examples of Rampo’s best or strongest work, lacking the polish of later stories. An important component of “The Black Hand Gang” doesn’t even translate very well into English since it relies on a cryptographic method based on the Japanese writing systems. Overall, the included mysteries are still enjoyable but somehow not quite as compelling as many of Rampo’s other tales. He would, however, reuse, rework, and refine many of their elements in subsequent writings. One of the things that makes these four stories particularly notable, and the reason that they have been collected together in the first place, is that they reveal Akechi very early on in his development before has become Rampo’s iconic detective and even before his character has been firmly established.

I’ll admit, I like this early Akechi in all of his eccentricities. In “The Case of the Murder on D. Hill” he begins as a well-read and intelligent young man with a particular interest in and fascination with detective and mystery fiction. The small apartment that he rents is so full of books that there’s barely any room to stand, let alone sit or entertain guests. He’s a flashy dresser and an eloquent speaker with a fondness and flair for the dramatic. By the time of The Dwarf, Akechi has begun to transform into the master detective that he will later be remembered as. He is no longer just an amateur sleuth seeking out strange cases in his spare time as some sort of hobby; Akechi has become a skilled and famous investigator with contacts in the judicial and police forces and a cohort of men working under him. I enjoyed The Early Cases of Akechi Kogorō a great deal specifically because it provides a glimpse of the earliest incarnations of Rampo’s great detective. I do hope to have the opportunity to read even more of Akechi’s stories in translation in the future.