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By Cocoa Fujiwara. Released in Japan by Square Enix, serialization ongoing in the magazine Gangan Joker. Released in North America by Yen Press.

This is one of those volumes where I recommend that if you enjoy the series and haven’t read it, you avoid reading my review so that you aren’t totally spoiled. Just an FYI. In fact, let’s put an image here to block it off.

Admittedly, much like Higurashi, I suspect that the spoiler of “everyone dies” is something that most fans of the series knew before they picked this up. There is an anime, and it’s the type of series that appeals more to hardcore fans than casual ones, I think. This is not to say this isn’t a good volume – it is pretty good, and I think has done a nice job of telegraphing things. But we now know that this was meant to be a prologue to the main story, which presumably takes place in the future when everyone is reincarnated again. And as such, I think the odd pacing of the first few volumes make sense – the author wanted to have enough volumes so that this had an emotional impact, but didn’t really have enough for everyone to do so stretched a lot out.

It’s not helped that I feel the cast is a bit too big for a series that depends so much on emotional two-hander relationships. Sure, we get lots of time devoted to our leads, but I still can never quite remember the names when they’re all said in a group, particularly as they’re all fancy 4-5 syllable rich and hard to remember names. And we get more people introduced here, as we see the old woman who seems to be in charge of the yokai group, her young assistant, and the evil kid who seems to be behind the attacks that kill everyone off.

This leads to the other issue I had with this volume – the author is much better at either dumb comedy or romantic drama than they are at actual action scenes. The final battle is somewhat confusing and brings in too many elements, and is not helped by it fading out once Soushi dies. This does lead to what I think are the strengths of both this volume and the series – the comedy and the romance. Both are not for everyone – they depend very much on being familiar with and not minding the standard Japanese romance tropes, where the girl is flustered and the boy is smooth and skilled. Better written is the relationship between Watanuki and Carta, where he pleads with her not to give up after she’s found she can’t change out of her skeletal form, and that he loves her no matter what she looks like. It’s my favorite part of the book.

In the end, I expect that how I feel about the first four volumes will be affected by what comes next, i.e. how much do the actions of the past weight on the seemingly reincarnated heroes? Certainly the last few pages play up the fact that reincarnated Ririchiyo is exactly the same as the one we’re familiar with, to the point of using the exact same starting gags. As for Soushi, he now wears glasses, but will he still have the uber-devoted attitude? What changes and what stays the same will make or break a series like this. And while I think it’s flawed, I’m interested enough in Vol. 5 to check it out.

By Ema Toyama. Released in Japan as “Watashi ni xx Shinasai!” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Nakayoshi. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

I do enjoy mocking Missions of Love when I discuss it in my Manga the week of and Pick of the Week posts, saying that it’s gleefully trsahy and soap-operaish and that it’s like mainlining shoujo heroin. Which is true, but I worry that people may think this means that I’m enjoying it ironically in a Sharknado sort of way, and that could not be further from the truth. Trust me when I say that Missions of Love is an excellently crafted title that is a lot of fun to read. It just happens to also be gleefully trashy, etc. This new volume is particularly good in showing off the reasons why I enjoy it.

The big development in this volume is the return of Yukina’s preschool teacher, the one whose remark about her eyes led to a major breakdown by our heroine. Toyama has come back to this occasionally over the course of the series, usually when trying to give Shigure the upper hand by having him take off Yukina’s glasses. Now she runs across her former teacher (who looks as if he hasn’t aged a day in the last 10-11 years), and everything comes rushing back… including her old feelings, as she now realizes that the reason that his comment hurt so much is that she was in love with him. This is then followed by Shigure realizing that, although he’s dated a lot of women casually before, Yukina is the one who is *his* first real love.

Part of the reason this manga is so addictive is that the characters can turn personalities on a dime. This makes sense; they’re middle schoolers in love, at just the right sort of age where all that is still malleable. I know there were a few reviewers (possibly including me) who were very happy with Yukina as the ‘snow princess’ sort who did not understand this Earth thing called kissing, but she’s merely emotionally repressed, not emotionally stunted. When she loses control, as we see a few times in this volume, it can be quite explosive. (And quite erotic, as Shigure also finds. I’ve noted before that the style of this work seems to edge towards the top end of Nakayoshi’s readership… there’s nothing explicit, but there’s some very hot and heavy kissing here.)

The major surprise of the book comes towards the end, however. Yukina is now determined to repair the relationship with her old teacher, or at least tell him what happened. A jealous Shigure goes to confront him first… and finds the teacher is very adept at finding out who Shigure is, and equally adept at a ‘false front’. It’s menacing to Shigure, yes, but I appreciated the teacher noting that it’s Yukina’s decision about what to do with her life, and that neither Shigure nor Akira can make it for her. This is something you don’t often see in this genre, and it’s appreciated.

I didn’t even mention Akira and Mami much, who provide what is both the funniest and most heartwarming scene in the entire volume. (They’d clearly make a great couple once they get over their first loves.) Mami’s Yukina impression is AMAZING. And let’s not forget Yukina attempting to ask Mami’s advice by dragging her headfirst out of a classroom window. In case you were worried about the cast turning normal now that the romance has heated up, don’t worry, they’re all still strange. So while this still feels like it should be bad for you, read it anyway, because it’s damn tasty.

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

This is the other major series that Kawahara has written, after Sword Art Online, and it’s interesting to see how the two series compare and contrast. SAO was written 6 years earlier and published online as a web novel, and only picked up for publication once Accel World won a major award. So it’s likely that this is the series that really kickstarted his career, with SAO along for the ride, though I’d argue that SAO is currently more popular than Accel World. And I can see why this book did well: it’s a strong first volume, barring a few hiccups, with a hero who is meant to be a definite contrast to the generic male lead that Kirito proves to be much of the time.

And right there is hiccup Nunber One, as we get yet another volume I can’t read on public transit. The cast of Accel World are all 13-14 years old, this time mostly for plot reasons, but there’s still the same amount of fanservice and sexualization you tend to get in series like these. Just as the Fairy Dance manga had Kirito’s younger sister showering for the benefit of readers, here we get the hero imagining Kuroyukihime in the shower. While I’m at it, I might as well bring up hiccup number two, which is the presentation of the villain of this volume, Cyan Pile. Kawahara seems to have trouble with villains in general, but here in particular it suffers from us barely getting to know this character at all before the big revelation, and therefore the emotional torture that should be there (and is written as if we feel it) simply isn’t.

That said, there’s a lot to like here as well. Let’s start with the hero. The author has apparently said in interviews that Kirito and Haruyuki were meant to contrast with each other, and that’s certainly evident here. Short, fat, and with an incredibly negative self-image, Haruyuki is so far away from the typical harem protagonist that he is completely unable to notice that he has two girls crushing on him over the course of this volume. His only skill (which, given this is another series about a virtual gaming world, proves to be highly important) is his speed and agility when playing virtual squash in a court no one ever goes to (so he doesn’t have to deal with people). This brings him to the attention of Kuroyukihime (real name deliberately not given, though there are hints), who tells him about a game, Brain Burst, that may allow him to achieve amazing things.

The game is the other success of this series, after seeing the generic RPG world of Sword Art Online. Much time is devoted to how to play it and strategy, and we see right away that Haruyuki is very good at thinking on the fly and coming up with solutions in battle. (Well, almost right away… he gets his ass kicked the first time. There are rules.) That said, I think that the main reason I liked this so much (and I did really enjoy SAO too, if you’ll recall), is that it’s a book that shows the skills the author has developed in the 6 years between that book and this one. It just reads easily. It’s a light novel, with all the cliches that this entails, so don’t read it if you dislike those sorts of cliches. But most fans of the genre should enjoy this, and I’m interested to see where it goes with Haruyuki.