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Off the Shelf: Strobe Edge, Umineko, Apple Blossoms

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MJ: Well, hello, Michelle! Happy Thanksgiving! And other expressions of holiday cheer!

MICHELLE: And the same to you! At this present moment, I am looking forward to a turkey sandwich in my future!

MJ: That sounds delicious! Have any manga to talk about while you munch away?

MICHELLE: Mochiron desu! I’ll start with the debut of Umineko: When They Cry, the latest license from Ryukishi07, who also created Higurashi: When They Cry.

Although I have read a couple of Higurashi side arcs, I still have yet to read the main series. When initial reviews for the first volume were positive, I actually checked it out in the store, but was turned off by the “byoing” sound effects accompanying a female character’s bosoms and returned the book to the shelf. After enjoying the side arcs, I did go back and collect a few volumes but I missed my chance to follow it from the beginning, which was why I wanted to give Umineko a chance. I almost didn’t make it, because the title is front-loaded with even more boob-centric shenanigans.

The story begins in October 1986. Members of the Ushiromiya family are gathering at Rokkenjima island for their annual reunion. Our protagonist is 18-year-old Battler, who has been estranged from the family for six years, so he’s seeing some of his cousins for the first time in while. In short order, he proposes performing an exam on a cousin his own age to see how much she’s grown, coerces a nine-year-old cousin to promise that she’ll grow up to “be a graceful lady and let me touch your boobs whenever I want,” and very nearly goes through with groping a ridiculously well-endowed servant who’s in no position to fend him off. He claims that he is joking around and just trying to provoke a reaction, but not surprisingly, none of the girls is amused.

Though Battler’s boob fixation pops up a few more times, the story thankfully begins to focus on the weird behavior of the family patriarch and the legend of a witch who is reportedly the source of the family fortune. While Battler’s parents squabble over their inheritance, his grandfather concludes his contract with the witch, freeing her to select members of the family as sacrifices, which she does in grisly fashion. Meanwhile, an epitaph accompanying a portrait of the witch provides instructions by which the deaths may be reserved. By the end of the volume, a nicely creepy atmosphere has been achieved.

All in all, though, the mystery is just intriguing enough to bring me back a second time. I don’t like the art. I don’t like Battler. I don’t like the nine-year-old cousin, Maria, who has a verbal tic that causes her to say “uuu” all the time. (Seriously, there’s one panel where her dialogue reads, “Uuu, uuu, uuu!! Uuu, uuu!! Uuu, uuu!! Uuu, uuu, uuu!!”) I don’t mean to insult readers who enjoy moe and fanservice, but it’s personally really difficult for me to endure them.

MJ: Wow… you know, I just don’t know if I have it in me to put up with the fanservice and the moe “uuu”-ing, even for a good mystery. Have I just become old and jaded?

MICHELLE: I don’t think so. It’s probably more a matter of “Life’s too short to read things I don’t like!” And honestly, I’m not sure this is even going to be a good mystery. I just kind of want to see what happens next. It’s entirely possible I’ll give up on it before the end.

Anyway, what have you been reading this week?

MJ: Well, after all the fantastic comments and feedback we received on last week’s BL Bookrack: Best of 2012, I found myself with a growing list of titles I felt I should try—particularly from SuBLime, which has been a tough imprint for me so far in terms of finding books I like. I decided to check out the first of these, Toko Kawai’s The Scent of Apple Blossoms, and this turned out to be a very good choice for me. As soon as I finished the first volume, I purchased the other two and gobbled them up whole.

You covered the series’ premise nicely in your review earlier this year, so I won’t go over it too thoroughly here. In short, Japanese-American Haruna works for a liquor seller in Japan. Part of his job includes trying to persuade local brewers to sell their products to his company to be sold in their shops and restaurants. While visiting an especially cranky brewer, he falls in love at first site with the master brewer’s grandson, Nakagawa. The first volume mainly consists of Haruna trying to wear down the master brewer while also pursuing his seemingly unrequited feelings for Nakagawa, but this is BL, so you know he’s going to succeed in his romantic adventures by the end.

The plot here is hardly the point, however. This story is incredibly, incredibly sweet, yet somehow never fluffy, and the relationships—even the protagonist’s generally unbelievable seduction of a straight man—feel natural and never rushed. Haruna’s American forthrightness is genuinely charming, and it’s easy to see why reserved Nakagawa would be both confounded and fascinated by it. Situations that might normally read as relentless non-con are magically saved by a combination of Nakagawa’s badass demeanor and Haruna’s straightforwardness and unwillingness to make a move without permission. And even the loathed (by me anyway) seme/uke thing is written in a way that feels weirdly natural.

The first volume brings the couple together just as expected, and at this point many writers would have to fabricate unbelievable conflicts just to keep the story going. But Haruna and Nakagawa’s vastly different personalities lend themselves to frequent bumps in the road that actually read as genuine. A favorite section of mine involves an ex-boyfriend of Haruna’s coming to town. This causes some of the conflict you might imagine—serious Nakagawa isn’t happy about the way easygoing Haruna keeps in touch with his exes, which leaves Haruna to figure out how to handle it all without lying to anyone—but Kawai refuses to make these characters into rigid stereotypes, so everything plays out with the kind of real emotional give-and-take you would expect to see in actual life. As a result, what could easily have read as pure melodrama is instead a thoughtful take on the nuances of friendships and romantic relationships, and learning to communicate honestly with one’s partner—only a lot more charming and fun than that sounds!

As a bonus, I also learned a lot about sake, and it really made me want to buy some. Is that a good thing? I’m going to decide that it is.

MICHELLE: I’m so glad that you liked this! I actually haven’t read the other two volumes yet, so you’ve inspired me to check them out.

If you’re interested in more Toko Kawai, I really liked CUT, Café Latte Rhapsody, and In the Walnut. I’m also really intrigued by Just Around the Corner, but I haven’t managed to read it yet.

I guess this amount of gushing means I’m a Toko Kawai fangirl!

MJ: I suspect I will be soon as well!

So, our mutual read comes from VIZ this week. Want to do the introductory honors?

MICHELLE: Sure!

Strobe Edge is a shoujo series from Shueisha—ten volumes total, originally serialized in Betsuma—that covers the well-trod terrain of a high school girl experiencing first love. Ninako Kinoshita is earnest and innocent, and though she joins her friends in admiring school heartthrob Ren Ichinose, she mostly thinks of it as a way to pass the time. When she actually has a chance to talk to Ren, however, and realizes how sweet and awkward he is in his effort to replace a cell phone charm he accidentally stepped on, she begins to feel closer to him. Up to this point, Ninako’s been content to accept the opinions of others as true—a shopkeeper says an apple is delicious, so it must be; my friends tell me what I feel for my friend Daiki is love, so it must be—but now she’s beginning to think for herself. What is it that she’s feeling for Ren?

It would be easy to label this as generic shoujo, and I really can’t claim that it’s forging new territory, but I found the characters to be likable and sympathetic. It’s total comfort-read material, more in the vein of a Kimi ni Todoke than a Black Bird (for which I am profoundly grateful!).

MJ: My experience with this book was fairly mixed, I’ll admit. About twenty pages in or so, I remember thinking (and actually saying out loud to the others in the room), “I’m so bored.” That was my initial reaction to Strobe Edge. “I’m so bored.” Yet, weirdly, even though that impression did not honestly change much over the course of the volume, by the time I reached its romantic cliffhanger ending, I felt extremely anxious to know what happens next.

And I think this may all come down to the likeableness of the story’s characters, as you mention. Despite the fact that I had difficulty getting invested in yet another high school crush, there were some characters I really felt for, and eventually this even included the story’s heroine, Ninako, though I’d had trouble connecting with her in the beginning. In particular, though, I felt immense sympathy for Daiki, who doesn’t have any confusion over what he feels for Ninako, yet is the one most being left out in the cold. And while I generally found Ninako’s endless waffling and naiveté over what “love” is—not that this isn’t a question all humans wrestle with, but man, how does a girl get to be in high school without having been saturated in the concept through books, TV, even advertisements, for heaven’s sake—she at least knows enough to stop stringing Daiki along after figuring it out.

MICHELLE: Yes, I really liked that about her, too. I guess it’s more of the “making up her own mind” progress, wherein she just instinctively knows that going out with Daiki while continuing to like Ren would be completely unfair. Speaking of unfair, I think Ren’s somewhat in the wrong for showing excessive kindness to Ninako while he already had a girlfriend, but he probably liked having the chance to connect with someone instead of remaining merely an object of distant adoration, so it’s hard to fault him, either.

Suffice it to say, I join you in your anxiety to know what happens next. There are a few wrinkles by the end that at least suggest the series will not tread the predictable path, but even if it does do that, I’d probably still enjoy it.

MJ: I suppose I probably will, too! Despite my early ambivalence, I clearly care at this point. Such is the nature of shoujo addiction.

Bunny Drop, Vol. 7

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By Yumi Unita. Released in Japan as “Usagi Drop” by Shodensha, serialized in the magazine Feel Young. Released in North America by Yen Press.

Please do not discuss Bunny Drop in the comments beyond Volume 7.

Everyone thinks a lot in Bunny Drop. I don’t just mean that we see their thoughts in addition to their dialogue, which we do, but that they think deeply all the time. Weighing decisions – and then wondering if they’re the correct ones – is something that Daikichi and Rin have done since this series began, and now that Rin is getting near graduating from school, she’s starting to think about her future. Which will involve having to resolve her past, and that means that she is finally going to have to meet Masako.

Yumi Unita knows that the best way to write a lovable, heartwarming manga is to make sure everything is as awkward as possible, so I was relieved to see that when Rin and Masako finally do meet, it wasn’t all hugs and tears and resolve to see each other every 2nd Saturday from now on. Rin still barely remembers Masako, even now – though we find out a reason for that here – and Masako may be moving on with her life and trying to be a better person, but she still acts like she regards Rin as a failed time in her life that makes her think lots of things she doesn’t want to. Masako’s childish qualities haven’t gone away, and it’s still very hard to sympathize with her. But we’re meant to be on Rin’s side here anyway.

Rin does a lot of soul searching here, spurred on partly by what happened with Kouki in Vol. 6 and partly through hearing about Reina getting a boyfriend (and then later watching it fall apart). She’s spent her last ten years growing up in an unconventional family, and realizes that she has a rather small pool of friends as well, mostly as she’s not doing clubs or sports, but going home to take care of Daikichi. I don’t think this is meant to be a dig on Daikichi himself – the general sense is that Rin really wants to do these things, and is likely better at cooking, etc., so has just stepped into this role at home.

Daikichi, meanwhile, is also growing older, and is having to deal with a serious injury for the first time – he puts his back out catching Rin when she falls off a stool. Given that he works in the shipping industry, this could be a big problem if it lingers. I was amused to see his co-workers coming over and reminiscing about their own back pains of the past, as well as Kouki’s mother telling Rin she had a back injury when she was in her twenties. But all this does is remind us how insular Daikichi’s own life has become as well. He doesn’t really hang out with co-workers anymore – his closest friend, in fact, may be Kouki.

So Rin is wondering about what it means to be a mother, and what it means to be a daughter. And realizing that the time may come when her life takes her away from Daikichi. And, unsurprisingly given how she’s grown up, she is not particularly fond of that day coming at all. That said, it’s not clear that day is coming soon in the manga either. The romantic drama we saw in Vol. 6 gets a brief mention here, but for the most part still appears to be over. So where does Rin go from here? Stay tuned for Vol. 8, coming out in April. Which may have a certain elephant that’s been lurking around the room. In the meantime, Vol. 7 gives us more of what we like about this series – thoughtful moments in the life of a kid who’s far too smart (but naive) for her own good.

Give My Regards to Black Jack, Vols. 1-4

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Give My Regards to Black Jack Volumes 1-4 by Shuho Sato

I’m not sure if many people in the English language manga blogosphere have reviewed Give My Regards to Black Jack. I know Kate at Manga Critic covered the first couple volumes. Give My Regards to Black Jack is an interesting example of digital manga, as it is released directly in Kindle format. It is only $2.99 per volume, so it it is also one of the better bargains out there for digital manga. It is a bit ballsy to reference Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack in a modern medical procedural manga, and while there were aspects of the manga that I found very gripping, a story that took up volumes 3-4 made me question if I wanted to continue reading the series.

Saito is a just graduated medical intern, training to be a full-fledged doctor. He has a certain type of relentless optimism and a “can do” attitude that will be very familiar to anyone who has read manga before. Saito’s salary as an intern is so insignificant, he has to take on a night shift in the emergency room at a nearby hospital. Saito is entirely unprepared for the next phase of his life. He finds himself paired with an emergency room veteran for his first shift, and Dr. Ushida doesn’t have the time to babysit the new doctor when car accident victims start rolling in the hospital. Saito romantically assumes that the hospital is providing the best medical care for accident victims, but Ushida quickly disabuses him of the notion that altruism plays any part in what goes on in the hospital. They can bill more for traffic accident victims, so every patient experiencing severe trauma is actually a moneymaker. Saito is wondering if it is morally right to take the higher salary at his part-time job, but when he’s left alone to cover the emergency room he freezes instead of providing treatment because he has no experience doing major surgery. The head nurse has to call in the supervising physician.

The art in Give My Regards to Black Jack is workmanlike, but it doesn’t have that extra flair that would cause me to read the manga more for the art than the story. The accident victims and surgeries are quite detailed. Saito is portrayed as a wide-eyed innocent, while the other doctors sometimes look like detailed caricatures. Ushida looks rather horse-like, for example.

Give My Regards to Black Jack is a very didactic manga, as Saito’s adventures provide the author with plenty of opportunities to expound upon the problems with the Japanese National Health Care system, issues with medical billing, and problems with the hierarchical nature of intern training and hiring. These elements actually appealed to me a little more than Saito’s emotional struggles with becoming a new doctor, because I’m always a little fascinated at the way manga of this type will work random factoids into a larger story.

The second volume shows Saito rotating on to the cardiac care unit and struggling with a patient named Mr Miyamura whose physical condition makes it almost certain that he will not survive his scheduled surgery. The other doctors don’t believe in really giving the patient the full picture of what is going on, but Saito decides that he’s going to try to find a more qualified heart surgeon to treat his patient from outside his hospital, even if the result is political and professional suicide for himself. Saito is helped out by Ms Akagi, a cynical and world-weary nurse who just happens to know one of the best heart surgeons in Japan. Dr Kita is having his own crisis of faith as a surgeon, but meeting Saito causes him to take up the scalpel again.

The third volume opens with Saito dealing with political fallout from his actions, but he still has the time to check up on one of his colleagues who is thinking of dropping out of the program. Michiba’s grandfather is a neighborhood doctor, diagnosing colds and making a pittance of a salary. Michiba doesn’t want to end up like him. But Saito and Michiba see the impact an old-fashioned doctor can have when they go along on a house call to a live-long patient who is dying of terminal cancer.

The next story in this volume featured a situation that I had a great deal of difficulty connecting to as a reader. Saito is rotated on to neonatology, a placement that every intern before him has avoided. He’s assigned to care for premie twins whose parents refuse to bond with them over their fear that they will end up disabled. The father in particular just wants his sons to die, and since he’s a lawyer he is prepared to file suit if the hospital doesn’t withhold treatment from the babies. Give My Regards to Black Jack doesn’t hesitate to wallow in sentimentality but this was one situation where I thought the motivations of the parents wasn’t fully explored, and Saito’s reactions in pushing for the treatment of the infant to the extent where he was exploring parental rights and offering to raise the baby himself were so farfetched that they were unrealistic even for an overly sentimental medical procedural manga. While the reasons for the parents’ reactions were explored, it was really difficult for me to feel any sympathy for them whatsoever, so when the story wrapped up with a somewhat happy ending, it felt both unnecessary and in some ways unearned by the narrative.

This was my first experience buying manga for the Kindle app in my iPad, and it was a smooth reading experience. The pages turn with the orientation of a western book, but the manga itself was unflipped. $2.99 is a bargain for digital manga, and the medical procedural aspects of Give My Regards to Black Jack did appeal to me. I might give another couple volumes a try once Saito has rotated beyond neonatology to see if the rest of the series has more appeal than that particular storyline.

Manga Bookshelf Forum

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A few months ago, I polled Manga Bookshelf readers to see if there was enough interest to warrant opening a discussion forum here on the site. In the end, the vote came down to a similar number of “Yes” and “No” responses, and a whoooole slew of “Maybe”s. So I’ve decided to give it a shot and see how things go.

Manga Bookshelf Forum

If you already have a user account at Manga Bookshelf, you should be automatically registered in the forums. If not, I’ve opened up site registration to all. I’ve opened up a few public forums to start, and reader participation is strongly encouraged! Here are a few options, right off the bat:

Reader Reviews: Post your own reviews of new (or old!) manga. Be sure to follow instructions on formatting your subject lines to that people will be able to easily identify who you are and what you’re reviewing!

Where to Buy Manga: Profile your favorite local shops to help other fans in your area find the best prices and selection!

Manga Sales-Watch: Heard about a great manga sale? Tell everyone about it here!

Fandom & Fanworks: Talk about fanfiction, fanart, and your favorite ‘ships here!

I’ve kicked things off with our first Topic of the Week—a weekly moderator-led discussion. This week’s topic: What’s on your manga wish list for this holiday season?

Come join me!

ETA: I am aware of a problem with the stylesheet not loading on the Profile Options pages. I am working on trying to get this resolved. In the meantime, though the current form is ugly as hell, it seems to be functional. Update: As of 9:40 EST this is fixed!

JManga the Week of 11/29

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SEAN: JManga is not taking the holidays off this week, and next week promises even more new content. Let’s see what we’ve got.

I had written before about manga JManga could pick up, and suspected they already had Teekyu, which had an anime air this fall. Sure enough, they announced it at NYCC, and here it is. It’s from the increasingly omnipresent Earth Star Entertainment, and seems to be a cute tennis comedy.

MICHELLE: I like sports manga, but I’m wary of the moe factor.

MJ: I only *sort* of like sports manga, so I’m probably feeling even more wary than Michelle.

SEAN: Kemonogumi is also an Earth Star title, and I know absolutely nothing about it except it’s by ESE, who also does the Wanna Be Strongest In The World! wrestling manga on JManga’s site. Given that title’s over the top fanservice, and the fact that the cover to Kemonogumi features what seems to be a poodle with large breasts next to a bunny girl, I suspect I am not the audience for this series.

MICHELLE: … Wow.

MJ: Um. Yeah.

SEAN: Gokujyo Drops is the smutty yuri title of this week, a manga from Ichijinsha’s Yuri Hime that was actually released initially as a cellphone manga. It seems to be in that genre of yuri that thinks that sexual harassment is incredibly erotic. That’s not me, so I think I’ll move on.

MICHELLE: So far, this list isn’t looking too promising.

MJ: I was okay with “smutty yuri” until it got to the part about sexual harassment. That’s disappointing.

SEAN: I met the creator of Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru at New York Comic Con, and he was very nice and easy to talk to. I need to catch up to his low-key but funny maid cafe manga, which has reached Vol. 9. It’s not belly laughs, but it does put a smile on your face.

MJ: I really should read this. It doesn’t really look like my kind of thing, but I heard great things all-around about the mangaka from those who met him at NYCC, and I’ll admit that goes a long way.

SEAN: Peacemaker Kurogane is at Vol. 3. That’s not the final volume, so I assume that peace is not made.

MICHELLE: *snerk*

SEAN: Lastly, and for me the big release this week, we have Vol. 1 of Sweet Blue Flowers (Aoi Hana), a slice-of-life yuri series from the creator of Wandering Son. This is still running in Ohta Shuppan’s Manga Erotics F (Shimura is also still doing Wandering Son for Enterbrain’s Comic Beam – she’s incredibly prolific), and is simply one of the best manga titles out there, yuri or otherwise. I absolutely cannot wait for this!

Saved the best for last.

MICHELLE: You certainly did! I am really, really excited for Sweet Blue Flowers! (It feels weird to type that after calling the series Aoi Hana for so long.) I actually bought the first six volumes in Japanese just so I could look at them, so I am thrilled to actually have the chance to read the series.

Even after a largely disappointing list, JManga redeems themselves in the end with this one!

MJ: Yes! I was so excited when JManga announced this license, and I hadn’t realized it was due out so soon! This really does turn the entire list around.

SEAN: What intrigues you this week?

Manga Radar, 18 November 2012

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this week’s charts
about the charts
The last Manga Radar column was 13 weeks ago. ouch.

So welcome back to the most recent installment of the very occasional feature: Manga Radar. Here I share with you some of the bleeding-edge preorders I’ve been discovering while compiling my manga bestsellers, and also taking some deeper dives into all this data, to either make sense of what’s happening or just gawk at it.

The current online performance of Sailor Moon is interesting to me for two reasons: First, of course, it’s Sailor Moon. In a mangaverse supposedly ruled by Shonen Jump, it’s amazing as both a Kodansha and shoujo title, and really shows what a couple of decades of pent-up demand will get you.

Secondly, though: its online performance isn’t really all that different from Naruto, Death Note, or Bleach – in profile, particularly now in it’s first year of release, it’s a good way to illustrate what sales of a top-tier manga look like:

Sailor Moon Volumes, rankings, 12 Aug to 18 Nov 2012, logorithmic scale

Before I get too deep into the discussion, note the y-axis and its scale: logorithmic means the top 3rd [1-10] is given equal weight as the middle third [10-100] and the bottom third [100-1000] – this is a bit of necessary compression, else the chart would be way too tall and the Top 10 would be compressed to a single, illegible line.

That explanation out of the way: Notice how ordinary the graph looks, and how little it has changed over the past 15 weeks: the individual titles ebb and flow a bit, but there are always 5 Sailor Moons in the top 10 and a dozen in the top 100. The rather slow fall of Codename: Sailor V is more indicative of what we’d expect, actually; the other volumes of Sailor Moon didn’t actually follow suit until about 4 weeks ago.

Surprising, however, is the meteoric rise of the Vols 1-6 Box Set. The sharp upward slope of its ranking is even more impressive when I remind you the y-axis is logorithmic – in 9 weeks it has gone from barely registering (#1171) to a top 10 title. However, since the books themselves have been available all year (volume one released September of last year, volume six has been out since June) this means that a whole new group of fans are now “buying in” to this series – not just the Superfans who have driven sales to date but a new second wave. I’ve noticed this before on things like Death Note – when both the box set and the ‘black editions’ drove additional sales – but in the case of Death Note and the similar VizBig editions: these sales bumps occurred only after the series was completed, or to goose sales of early volumes that had been released years before.

Sailor Moon is like watching a Shonen Jump release but on a more intense, shorter timescale.

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With the analysis part done, now it’s time for the eye-numbingly-long lists. (this is my forté)

Also, please note that each week I post the ranking pre-orders, both in my Top 10s summary post, and the full Top 50 in the extended reports. You all know I post more than just a Top 10, right? There are seven ancilliary rankings and a full Top Manga 500 ranking that posts each week – this is where the fancy numbers come from for the fancy line graphs, like the one posted above.

Ranking Preorders, September 2012 and forward:

Itazura na Kiss 9 – DMP, Sep 2012
Love Chemistry Lab – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Sep 2012
Merry Men – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Sep 2012
Want To Be Happy? – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Sep 2012
Weekend Of Dreams – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Sep 2012
I Want a Love Story – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Sep 2012
Paradise Kiss 1 – Vertical, Sep 2012
Arata the Legend 11 – Viz Shonen Sunday, Sep 2012
Fluffy Fluffy Cinnamoroll 5 – Vizkids, Sep 2012
Jack Frost 6 – Yen Press, Sep 2012
Raiders 8 – Yen Press, Sep 2012
GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class 4 – Yen Press, Sep 2012

The Garden Where The Ivy Plant Grows – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Oct 2012
A Taste of Honey – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Oct 2012
Fever (yaoi) – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Oct 2012
Spider – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Oct 2012
Love Is Like a Hurricane PLUS – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Oct 2012
Longing for Spring – Enjugroup, Oct 2012
Kitchen Princess Omnibus 2 – Kodansha Comics, Oct 2012
Heroman 1 – Vertical, Oct 2012
Bloody Monday 8 – Kodansha Comics, Oct 2012
Air Gear 26 – Kodansha Comics, Oct 2012
Dracula Everlasting 2 – Seven Seas, Oct 2012
Limit 1 – Vertical, Oct 2012
A Devil & Her Love Song 5 – Viz Shojo Beat, Oct 2012
Jiu Jiu 2 – Viz Shojo Beat, Oct 2012
Toriko 12 – Viz Shonen Jump, Oct 2012
Slam Dunk 24 – Viz Shonen Jump, Oct 2012
Kekkaishi 34 – Viz Shonen Sunday, Oct 2012
Black God 17 – Yen Press, Oct 2012
The Infernal Devices 1 – Yen Press, Oct 2012
Demon Consort (novel) – Yaoi Press, Oct 2012

The Name Of Love – DMP Digital Manga Guild, Nov 2012
Sailor Moon vols 1-6 box set – Kodansha Comics, Nov 2012
Animal Land 6 – Kodansha Comics, Nov 2012
Queen’s Blade: Visual Collection – Vertical, Nov 2012
Limit 2 – Vertical, Nov 2012
Neon Genesis Evangelion vols 1-3 collection – Viz, Nov 2012
We Were There 15 – Viz Shojo Beat, Nov 2012
Strobe Edge 1 – Viz Shojo Beat, Nov 2012
Oresama Teacher 11 – Viz Shojo Beat, Nov 2012
Rin-Ne 10 – Viz Shonen Sunday, Nov 2012
March Story 4 – Viz Signature, Oct 2012
Thermae Romae 1 – Yen Press, Nov 2012
Haruhi Suzumiya The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi-Chan 6 – Yen Press, Nov 2012
Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro 3 – Yen Press, Nov 2012
Umineko When They Cry Legend of the Golden Witch 1 – Yen Press, Nov 2012
Nabari no Ou 12 – Yen Press, Nov 2012

Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service 13 – Dark Horse, Dec 2012
Vampire Hunter D (manga) 7 – DMP, Dec 2012
Attack on Titan 3 – Kodansha Comics, Dec 2012
Heroman 2 – Vertical, Dec 2012
Natsume’s Book of Friends 13 – Viz Shojo Beat, Dec 2012
Bakuman 17 – Viz Shonen Jump, Dec 2012
D. Gray-Man 23 – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced, Dec 2012
Arata the Legend 12 – Viz Shonen Sunday, Dec 2012
Itsuwaribito 7 – Viz Shonen Sunday, Dec 2012
Kaoru Mori: Anything and Something – Yen Press, Dec 2012
Pandora Hearts 13 – Yen Press, Dec 2012
Higurashi When They Cry 20 Massacre Arc 2 – Yen Press, Dec 2012

Oreimo 2 – Dark Horse, Jan 2013
Missions of Love 2 – Kodansha Comics, Jan 2013
Fairy Tail 23 – Kodansha Comics, Jan 2013
Limit 3 – Vertical, Jan 2013
GTO: 14 Days in Shonan 7 – Vertical, Jan 2013
Loveless vols 3-4 collection – Viz, Jan 2013
Jiu Jiu 3 – Viz Shojo Beat, Jan 2013
Haruhi Suzumiya The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-Chan 3 – Yen Press, Jan 2013
Soul Eater 12 – Yen Press, Jan 2013
Book Girl and the Undine Who Bore a Moonflower (novel) – Yen Press, Jan 2013

Gantz 26 – Dark Horse, Feb 2013
See Me After Class 1 – DMP Project H, Feb 2013
Tender Hearts – DMP Project H, Feb 2013
Kitaro – Drawn & Quarterly, Feb 2013
Kitchen Princess Omnibus 3 – Kodansha Comics, Feb 2013
Stepping on Roses 9 – Viz Shojo Beat, Feb 2013
Inuyasha VizBig Edition 14 – Viz Shonen Sunday, Feb 2013
Tenjo Tenge: Full Contact Edition 11 – Viz Signature, Feb 2013
Pokemon Diamond & Pearl/Platinum 7 – Vizkids, Feb 2013
Umineko When They Cry Legend of the Golden Witch 2 – Yen Press, Feb 2013
Pandora Hearts 14 – Yen Press, Feb 2013

Vampire Hunter D (novel) 19 – Dark Horse, Mar 2013
Blade of the Immortal 26 – Dark Horse, Mar 2013
Genshiken Second Season 2 – Kodansha Comics, Mar 2013
Fairy Tail 25 – Kodansha Comics, Mar 2013
Dark Hunters Infinity 1 – St. Martin’s Griffin, Mar 2013
Paradise Kiss 3 – Vertical, Mar 2013
Neon Genesis Evangelion vols 4-6 collection – Viz, Mar 2013
Fushigi Yugi Genbu Kaiden 11 – Viz Shojo Beat, Mar 2013
Skip Beat! vols 10-12 collection – Viz Shojo Beat, Mar 2013
Higurashi When They Cry 21 Massacre Arc 3 – Yen Press, Mar 2013
Durarara!! Saika Arc 1 – Yen Press, Mar 2013

Oh My Goddess! 44 – Dark Horse, Apr 2013
Ray’s Days – DMP Project H, Apr 2013
Missions of Love 3 – Kodansha Comics, Apr 2013
Arisa 10 – Kodansha Comics, Apr 2013
Fairy Tail 24 – Kodansha Comics, Apr 2013
Dawn of the Arcana 9 – Viz Shojo Beat, Apr 2013
Library Wars: Love & War 9 – Viz Shojo Beat, Apr 2013
Kimi ni Todoke 16 – Viz Shojo Beat, Apr 2013
Kamisama Kiss 13 – Viz Shojo Beat, Apr 2013
Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds 4 – Viz Shonen Jump, Apr 2013
Blue Exorcist 9 – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced, Apr 2013
Itsuwaribito 8 – Viz Shonen Sunday, Apr 2013
Pandora Hearts 15 – Yen Press, Apr 2013
Spice & Wolf (novel) 8 – Yen Press, Apr 2013

Gantz 27 – Dark Horse, May 2013
Sailor Moon 11 – Kodansha Comics, May 2013
Fairy Tail 26 – Kodansha Comics, May 2013
Zero’s Familiar Omnibus 1 – Seven Seas, May 2013
Neon Genesis Evangelion vols 7-9 collection – Viz, May 2013
Black Bird 16 – Viz Shojo Beat, May 2013
La Corda d’Oro 17 – Viz Shojo Beat, May 2013
Claymore 22 – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced, May 2013
Inuyasha VizBig Edition 15 – Viz Shonen Sunday, May 2013
Alice in the Country of Joker Circus & Liar’s Game 2 – Seven Seas, May 2013
Haruhi Suzumiya The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-Chan 4 – Yen Press, May 2013

Sailor Moon 12 – Kodansha Comics, Jul 2013
Kisses, Sighs, and Cherry Blossoms Pink – Seven Seas, Jun 2013
Sleeping Moon 1 – SuBLime, Jun 2013
Puella Magi Kazumi Magica 1 – Yen Press, Jun 2013
Pandora Hearts 16 – Yen Press, Jun 2013
Higurashi When They Cry 22 Festival Accompanying Arc 1 – Yen Press, Jun 2013
Highschool of the Dead Color Omnibus 2 – Yen Press, Jun 2013

I Don’t Like You At All, Big Brother! vols 5-6 collection – Seven Seas, Jul 2013
Twin Knight (Princess Knight) – Vertical, Jul 2013
Naruto 62 – Viz Shonen Jump, Aug 2013
Rosario+Vampire Season II 12 – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced, Aug 2013
Kimi ni Todoke 17 – Viz Shojo Beat, Aug 2013
Rin-Ne 12 – Viz Shonen Sunday, Jul 2013
Until Death Do Us Part 4 – Yen Press, Jul 2013
Black Butler 14 – Yen Press, Jul 2013
Spice & Wolf (novel) 9 – Yen Press, Aug 2013

##

I’ve omitted certain DMP titles, which have been delayed (and as noted here DMP Project H titles are *not* being delayed), but that’s a ton of books in a market ‘niche’ that is supposedly in decline. I think I might also have to double-dip, and get the Kitchen Princess omnibi – if only to see if Kodansha added some additional extras to the Del Rey releases.

License This! Aozora Yell by Kazune Kawahara

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Hi! I guess I should introduce myself. My name’s Travis and I’ve been reading Manga Bookshelf since it was just MJ’s blog, and have known her for even longer. I’ve never thought of writing here, since I don’t read manga in English, but then when MJput out her most recent call for contributors, I thought, well, maybe I could write about stuff I really love that I wish were published in English so that more people could enjoy them, and so License This! was born. For right now, I’m going to aim for a monthly column, because I don’t want to overcommit (a bad habit of mine), but I could also see possibly doing twice a month, so we’ll see where that goes.

As for what type of manga I’ll be writing about, the answer to that is pretty much “everything.” If pressed, I’d probably choose shoujo as my favorite genre, but I read very, very widely. And while I’ve chosen a currently running series for my first post (mainly because I didn’t have that much time to prepare and thus wanted something fresh in my mind, rather than an old favorite I haven’t read for years and may have to reread in order to remember it well enough to write about), I’ve been reading manga for almost twenty years, so I have a lot of favorites that are long since over.

Cover of Aozora Yell 10 And now with that out of the way, on to the first title! I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with Kazune Kawahara from her series High School Debut (also one of my favorites), but I am sad to see that nothing besides that one series has been published in the US. Admittedly, she only has two other long series, and the rest of her stuff is one-shots or single-volume series, but it’s all really great. I know that her art style is not to everyone’s tastes (especially anything that came before High School Debut), but the stories more than make up for it.

Kawahara is one of my favorite shoujo authors, but I think her sweet/innocent style may not be what US readers want to see (or at least what publishers think they want to see). It seems like a lot of what’s published in English is more edgy/gritty or else has fantasy elements (or both), but I really like this sort of heartwarming slice-of-life stuff. It’s just cute! Another thing Kawahara does well that I like in my shoujo romance is female friendships. So many romances (not just in manga, but western media as well) are all about girls fighting over guys, and while my favorite authors may include a rival sometimes, they also make sure to give their heroines good friends as well.

Aozora Yell (aka Yell for the Blue Sky) is Kawahara’s current series. With volume eleven just released yesterday in Japan, it’s looking to be quite a bit longer than High School Debut, maybe even as long as her first big hit, Sensei! (also a favorite of mine), which clocks in at twenty volumes total.

Our protagonist is Tsubasa, a first-year high school student who has enrolled in Shirato High because of their brass band. After seeing the brass band play on TV during a Koushien game (the high school baseball championship), she decided that’s what she wants to do…the only problem being she’s never played an instrument before. When she joins the band, she finds that everyone else has way more experience than her, having been playing since middle school or even longer.

Unlike many stories that start off this way, Tsubasa does not turn out to be a genius at the trumpet. In fact, as of the most recent volumes (which have reached the beginning of her second year), she is still the worst player in the band. However, she is working hard and slowly getting better. One of the things that keeps her going is that her dream has become more personal. It’s not just the idea of playing for a generic baseball team anymore, or even for her school. It’s a specific person she wants to cheer on, a boy on the team named Daisuke whom she has become good friends with. More than friends, in fact, but although she told him how she feels, he rejected her, saying he wants to focus on baseball for now. They’re still good friends, though, and encourage each other to practice hard and get better.

While I would definitely categorize this series as romance, the focus is just as much, if not more, on the band (and if you’re tired of school stories that focus on the same old annual events, at least band competitions are not something that’s been done to death) and on relationships in general (with friends, and with bandmates both friendly and not). You can’t help but root for Tsubasa as she struggles to be, not even great, but just good enough to be allowed to play with the rest of the band rather than sitting out a competition.

As I mentioned above, this doesn’t seem to be a genre that US publishers are all that interested in, but I think High School Debut did fairly well (certainly it seems like I know a ton of people who liked it), and I know that Kimi ni Todoke is quite popular, so I’m hoping that maybe this one has a chance.

Manga the Week of 11/28

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SEAN: After three weeks that absolutely buried us in manga, it’s a relief to find that the last week of November is reasonably small. If only as I’m so far behind I may never catch up. Let’s see what we’ve got…

First off, I’m pleased to see that Dark Horse has reached Lucky Vol. 13 of Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. It comes out so infrequently but that makes us love it all the more, especially Carl Horn’s expert liner notes, which get more glib with every passing volume. Last time we heard that Karatsu and Sasaki were in Hawaii on a case, so I’m hoping that we see said case here.

MJ: I know I’m late to the party here, but I’ve finally started reading this series, and of course it’s just as good as you’ve been telling me all this time. I expect I’ll make it to volume 13 before the next one comes out, from the sound of it!

MICHELLE: I read volume one a long time and liked the characters a lot, but got really grossed out by one page in particular. I’ve never gone back to it, even though I own through volume eleven or so. One of these days!

SEAN: Kodansha has a few new things as well. Deltora Quest hits its penultimate volume, and is one of the few manga released here under the ‘kodomo’ genre – i.e. it’s for little kids in Japan.

Fairy Tail is in the middle of its big alternate world with personality-swapped heroes arc, and Vol. 22 will feature lots of fighting, I’m going to guess.

MICHELLE: I generally read Fairy Tail courtesy of my local library, but I’m glad to see it’s still going strong. It seems popular amongst the young adult patrons, as well.

SEAN: Finally, for those of you who may have missed out on Sailor Moon 1-6 when they were first released, there’s now a big box set. It has stickers! (But no new content.)

MJ: It’s a great time for them to release something like this, too. It’s a natural choice for probably every manga gift guide that’ll come out this year.

SEAN: From Vertical, we have GTO Shonan 14 Days Vol. 6. I’m not sure if these twins are going to be the final Big Bad, but they’re proving to be very difficult for Onizuka. Not that this is going to stop him at all, of course. It’s Onizuka, we know what’s coming. DETERMINATION (and some perversion).

MJ: Have I mentioned how much I love this series? I really love this series. It was one of my biggest surprises of the year, really. I wouldn’t have thought it’d be my thing, but it is—very much so. Can’t wait to read this!

MICHELLE: I echo your sentiments, but must point out once again how much Sean’s commentary amuses me. :)

SEAN: There’s also Vol. 2 of Limit, where I’m going to take a wild guess things are going to go from bad to worse.

MJ: I’m looking forward to this as well! Vertical’s been on a roll for me lately.

MICHELLE: Me, too!

SEAN: Lastly, it’s not on the list, but Yen also apparently released Is This A Zombie? Vol. 3 two weeks back, and since it hasn’t shown up via Diamond yet I’ll give it a mention here. There is much debate about whether it’s a parody of magical girls/harems/zombie manga or just a mulched-up pastiche. I’ll let others keep reading it to make that choice for themselves.

MJ: I… Ugh. I have nothing more to say, really.

MICHELLE: I was totally going to write “Ugh.”

SEAN: All this plus the debut of the My Little Pony comic from IDW! What appeals to you turkey-stuffed individuals?

Giving Thanks

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Today is the one day of the year when even Americans—divided and selfish as we often are—come together as a whole with our families and friends to give thanks. Privately, I have much to be thankful for, and I look forward to expressing gratitude to my own family and friends as the day goes on. I also have some particular thanks to share here at Manga Bookshelf.

First, I’m endlessly grateful to each of the writers who has contributed to the site this year. Phillip, Matt, Derek, Jaci, Angela, Erica, Sara, Jia, Megan, Emily, Nancy, Eva, Paul, Justin, and Aja—thank you so much for your thoughtful contributions. You have given Manga Bookshelf a depth and breadth of content it could not possibly have achieved without you.

I must also express my gratitude to the site’s current bloggers—Sean Gaffney, Michelle Smith, Brigid Alverson, and newcomer Anna Neatrour—whose brilliant work and general awesomeness keeps me blogging even when (perhaps especially when?) I fear I’m losing my passion. Thanks, too, to Kate Dacey and David Welsh, without whom the multi-site incarnation of Manga Bookshelf surely would not exist!

Thanks to artists, writers, and publishers who continue to fuel our obsession with their wonderful storytelling, and who give us something to keep writing about.

And most of all, many, many thanks to everyone who reads Manga Bookshelf, both for your continued readership and the ongoing conversation you’re willing to indulge in with us, day after day. You are the reason this site exists, and you inspire us all.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro, Vol. 3

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By Satoko Kiyuduki. Released in Japan as “Hitsugi Katsugi no Kuro – Kaichu Tabi no Wa” by Houbunsha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Manga Time Kirara. Released in North America by Yen Press.

I never reviewed the first two volumes of Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro, the main reason being that I didn’t have a blog when they were both released. It’s been four long years (and 4 volumes of GA Art Design Class, the cute 4-koma series by the same author that many fans blame for Kuro’s hiatus) since we last saw the adventures of the stoic girl and her coffin. Indeed, the author apologizes profusely at the end of Vol. 3 for the delay, and hopes that we’ll keep reading regardless. Luckily, that should not be an issue. Not only is there a particularly vicious cliffhanger to keep us hungry for Vol. 4, but picking up this series again is like revisiting an old friend – after a few pages it’s like they never went away.

A lot of people note that this series often has a downbeat and melancholy tone, which is true and certainly doesn’t go away here. It’s just as important, though, that it manages to keep a light touch, mostly in its portrayal of Nijuku and Sanju. TV Tropes has a page called ‘Morality Chain’ which discusses characters whose basic existence is what keeps our heroes on the straight and narrow. While Kuro isn’t close to becoming a supervillain, there is a certain sense that the two mysterious children/scientific experiments function that way to this series as a whole. They have the childlike wonder of a Yotsuba, while also being able to sustain a level of creepy due to their supernatural origins. It makes for a good balance.

As for the manga itself, much of it is the same as the previous two volumes – Kuro, Sen and the two kids roaming the countryside of ‘generic pre-industrial world’ and trying to find information about the witch who cursed Kuro. And while there are stand-alone plots throughout that have nothing whatsoever to do with Kuro’s past, we are starting to see events come together into a coherent whole. We meet a strange young woman who is called a witch, and who ‘is searching for the person searching for her’ – an obvious connection to Kuro. Kuro, meanwhile, not only deals with her mirror opposite, but also her possible evil twin… though given what we know of Kuro before her curse, there may be far less difference between them than we’d like.

And much as I enjoyed the fluffy slice-of-life chapters and the twins, they are outnumbered by the melancholy in the end. We meet wind-up dolls waiting forever for their long-dead owners, and fairy-tale legends built around not-so-great men. But most of all, we get Kuro, who walks on her journey with an air of stoic suffering that is absolutely necessary. She is not stoic by choice, but by pure force of will. And when that will is shattered – as it is at the end of this volume when she encounters a war veteran searching for his wife and daughter – we are reminded that Kuro is CURSED, and there’s a very good reason why she carries that coffin all the time.

As I said, Kiyuduki urges us all to forgive her hiatus and watch over Kuro for a little longer. And she couldn’t have chosen a better volume to get us to do it. I *need* to find out what happens next. Unfortunately, while Kuro may no longer be on hiatus, it’s still not the fastest series in the world, so I may have to stoically suffer until the next volume. Get this book at once, and go back and get 1 and 2 as well if you didn’t already.