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Twin Spica, Vol. 12

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By Kou Yaginuma. Released in Japan as “Futatsu no Spica” by Media Factory, serialized in the magazine Comic Flapper. Released in North America by Vertical.

In Japan, this was released in two volumes, but it’s probably best for my heart that they came out here in this thick book. After seeing these characters bond and grow over the course of the series, we finally get the fruits of all their labors. After so much tragedy and blame and heartbreak… Japan is returning to space, and our heroes are graduating.

So much of this volume deals with the joy and sorrow of parting – even though they know that they’ll always be friends, the nature of the space school, and the fact that there will be only one student advancing to the final year, means that the idyllic school life that brought them all so close together is gone. We see everyone – even Marika – struggle with this, and trying to see how to go forward in life while still treasuring what they have. This includes, of course, Asumi, who is the student that gets chosen. (Sorry if that spoils you, but come on – she’s the heroine.)

This is not to say that Marika, Kei and Fuchuya don’t get a lot of attention. Not getting one’s dream does not necessarily mean abandoning it, and they all need to find a way to move forward on different paths while still remaining true to their desires to go to space. Whether it be Fuchuya’s preparing to take over the family business and trying to find ways to do fireworks in space; Kei’s love of photography and her pictures of the stars; or even Marika simply trying to find a cure for herself and others like her, this is a cast that has grown tremendously since we started. (The teacher talking about how much Kei’s enthusiasm meant to the class was possibly my favorite moment of the entire volume – that ogre!)

And so Asumi goes to space. And it’s as amazing as it sounds, so I won’t dwell too much on it. Surprisingly, the manga does not end there. Or rather, it’s not that surprising after all – the emotional climax of this series has never been ‘will Asumi get to space’, but about the relationship between Asumi and Mr. Lion. And now that she’s returned and has decided on a teaching career while waiting for the next mission (it’s not like they send a rocket up every 2 weeks, you know), Mr. Lion has realized that at last, there’s nothing really keeping him here. It’s a tough realization – we see a lot of Mr. Lion just sort of bumming around aimlessly here, even more than usual. But he says goodbye to Asumi, and it’s as heartwrenching as it sounds. But beautiful. Like the majority of this series.

In the end, things don’t necessarily end happily ever after for everyone – because this isn’t an ending, their lives will continue. Marika is still struggling with her illness, and we’re not sure if she’ll be able to discover a cure. Fuchuya still hasn’t really confessed to Asumi (who, as a time capsule towards the end reveals, was pretty much hung up on Mr. Lion anyway) so there’s no romantic resolution. But it’s still a great ending. In this cast we have hope not just for their own futures, but for the children of Japan. Seeing all the kids wanting to join the school after seeing Asumi go to space just puts a big grin on your face.

Twin Spica has been quite the journey, and I’ll miss it. Combining realistic depictions of what a space school might be like with the fantastic realism that comes with Marika and Mr. Lion (well, OK, Marika is merely sci-fi extrapolation, but…), and of course the gut-wrenching emotional tugs that are the core of this series. Every time you read it, you want to tear up – both happy tears and sad tears. It’s wonderful to see a series this affecting in North America. I wish Asumi and her friends the best on their outward journeys.

Scan angst

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The New York Times manga best-seller list has a good mix of publishers this week; the final volume of xxxHOLiC (published by the otherwise mostly defunct Del Rey) tops the list, with vol. 1 of Soulless, from Yen Press, in second place and vol. 13 of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei in third. Batting cleanup is vol. 11 of GTO: The Early Years, a former Tokyopop series that was rescued by Vertical. Overall, Kodansha and Viz each get three slots, Yen Press has two, and Vertical and Del Rey each get one, which makes for an unusually mixed list.

Meanwhile, manga grab 13 of the top 20 spots in February’s Nielsen BookScan list of the best-selling graphic novels in bookstores.

Looking ahead, Johanna Draper Carlson takes a look at the March Previews, which spotlights manga this month.

Erica Friedman has a new edition of Yuri Network News at Okazu, and she also discusses the concept of family in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.

Graphic Novel Reporter has a preview up of Jiro Taniguchi’s Summit of the Gods.

Apparently, Digital Manga has been allowing members of the Digital Manga Guild to send DMCA (copyright infringement) notices on their behalf, a practice that disturbs Ginger Mayerson. She points out that many scanlators work hard and love what they do, and that they will almost always take down scans of a book as soon as they hear it is licensed, and encourage readers to buy the new edition. (She dismisses the large aggregator sites, although they really are a bigger part of the problem.) Looking at a thread from the DMG discussion group, she is bothered by the aggressiveness of the Guild members, although it seems from the discussion that they are sending takedown messages for licensed properties.

Three Steps Over Japan has another peek inside a seinen manga magazine for us; this week, it’s Super Dash & Go.

News from Japan: A new series is launching in Shonen Sunday: Area D – Inōryōiki, by Kyoki Nanatsuki (Project ARMS) and Kyung-Il Yang (Blade of the Phantom Master). Meanwhile, at Monthly Shonen Sunday (Gessan), Cross Game creator Mitsuru Adachi is winding up his series Q and A and working on a new one, which the promotional images suggest will involve baseball. Shūzō Oshimi, the creator of Flowers of Evil and Drifting Net Cafe, has a new series, Boku wa Mari na Naka (I’m in Mari), which just started running in Futabasha’s Manga Action magazine. And the French site Manga news informs us that Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei is coming to an end; the entire series will run to 30 volumes.

Reviews: Adam Stephanides discusses vols. 7 and 8 of Billy Bat, Naoki Urasawa’s current series (not out in English yet) at Completely Futile. Connie writes briefly about some manhwa that have crossed her radar at Slightly Biased Manga. Other reviews of note:

Sweetpea616 on vols. 1-3 of 100% Perfect Girl (Organization Anti-Social Geniuses)
Ken Haley on vol. 1 of Erementar Gerade (Sequential Ink)
Lesley Aeschilman on vol. 1 of Flame of Recca (Blogcritics)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 6 of House of Five Leaves (The Comic Book Bin)
Kinukitty on I Give to You (The Hooded Utilitarian)
Lori Henderson on Kiichi and the Magic Books (Manga Xanadu)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 61 of One Piece (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 7 of Oresama Teacher (The Comic Book Bin)

Pick of the Week: Twin Spica & Young Miss Holmes

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It’s an uneven week at Midtown Comics but the Battle Robot presents a nearly-united front on this week’s must-buy. See below!

SEAN: Well, there’s not quite as much going on with the list this week as there was last week. But we do get a final volume of a series I really enjoyed… and also tended to avoid. Twin Spica was very well written, emotional, and had wonderful character development, but I always kept putting off reading the volumes when I got them. Possibly as I knew they would be such an emotional wrench – the series is not depressing overall, but its lows can be quite low, and its highs always seem to be fleeting. But it has a fantastic likeable heroine in Asumi, and in the end I’m glad that Vertical took a chance on the series, even if it didn’t sell quite as well as hoped. In this final volume we’ll get to see who – if any – will be going to space. And whether Mr. Lion can finally find peace.

MJ: I’m definitely with Sean this week. Twin Spica has been a consistent high point over the past couple of years. It made my Best Of list with its debut in 2010, and has never once disappointed me over the entire course of its run. Twin Spica 12 is absolutely this week’s must-buy manga.

KATE: My votes also goes to Twin Spica, a series that hasn’t yet found the wide audience it so richly deserves. The artwork is clean and unfussy, yet very expressive; the characters are as interesting, complex, and contradictory as real people; and the science fiction elements are handled with skill and knowledge. (Anyone who’s read about the Mercury or Apollo programs will nod their head in recognition during the astronaut training sequences.) Kou Yaginuma even manages to introduce elements of magical realism into the story without compromising the serious tone. In short, Twin Spica is utterly heartfelt, speaking directly to adolescent fears and hopes, but is crafted with enough skill to sustain an adult’s interest. If you haven’t yet tried it, what are you waiting for?

MICHELLE: I concur on the Twin Spica front, though I’m lamentably behind in the series, but I am going to award my pick of the week to something that’s not on this list but which, according to Amazon, is coming out this week and that’s Young Miss Holmes, Casebook 1-2 from Seven Seas. I have a soft spot for mystery manga, and when you make it a seinen historical fiction mystery manga starring the niece of Sherlock Holmes, I surely cannot resist. I love that Seven Seas is packaging the series—now up to volume seven in Japan—in lovely two-volume chunks, as well!

Readers, what looks good to you this week?

Bookshelf Briefs 3/12/12

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This week, Michelle, Kate, MJ, & Sean take a look at new releases from VIZ Media and Vertical, Inc.

Arata: The Legend, Vol. 9 | By Yuu Watase | VIZ Media – By now, I should probably be immune to such shounen staples as “hero’s weapon gets larger to signify an increase in power,” but I still always find it cool, and when it happens in this volume of Arata, it’s no exception. The first half of the book is mostly fighting, with a little bit of heartstring-pulling thrown in that is still affecting, even though it felt like Watase was ticking things off a checklist in a very business-like manner. The relationship angst ramps up a little in the final chapters, as Arata learns that not only is he the successor to a powerful king, but also that he will create a new world with a “chosen woman” by his side. I really like the overall tone of this series, and though it offers few surprises or innovations, it still consistently entertains me. – Michelle Smith

Blue Exorcist, Vol. 6 | By Kazue Kato | VIZ Media – There’s a lot going on in this volume, despite it being mid-arc. The plot regarding the stolen eyes, and the revelation about a traitor in the cast. Shiemi’s inability to get past her knee-jerk reaction to Rin’s background, which is contrasted with a cute short story showing how well the two work together with Yukio, both in exterminating evil and in being his conscience. But mostly this volume is about Bon, and what it means to have a father that you can’t respect. Or rather, Bon *wants* to respect his father, but everyone else’s attitude, plus his father’s own ambiguous attitude, make it next to impossible. This is the meat of the story, and makes the conflict with Rin (who also has father issues) very powerful. This is an excellent manga, even if you aren’t a Jump fan. – Sean Gaffney

GTO: The Early Years, Vol. 11 | By Toru Fujisawa | Vertical, Inc. – The first volume of GTO: 14 Days in Shonan was a pleasant surprise, a raucous comedy about an earnest but slightly dim homeroom teacher who wants to make a difference in his students’ lives. Given how much I enjoyed my introduction to the world of Great Teacher Onizuka, I thought volume 11 of GTO: The Early Years would deliver more of the same. Alas, I found it a crude cousin to the later series, with rough, uneven artwork and jokes that repeatedly fell flat. Vertical, Inc. has done a better job of packaging this series than Tokyopop did back in the mid-2000s, with a snazzy cover and a snappy translation that conveys some of the sexual chemistry between the characters, but even Vertical’s first-rate presentation can’t transform this sow’s ear into a silk purse. -Katherine Dacey

Kamisama Kiss, Vol. 8 | By Julietta Suzuki | VIZ Media – I want to like Kamisama Kiss: it’s got a memorable hook, an appealing cast of supporting characters, and enough yokai intrigue for two Shojo Beat series. As I’ve dutifully read each volume, however, I’ve come to the conclusion that Julietta Suzuki has no real plan for how her story will end. Nanami doesn’t seem wiser or stronger than she was in the very first chapters of the book, while her relationship with Tomoe, the crotchety shrine guardian, has fallen into an irritatingly predictable holding pattern that offers few rewards for the loyal reader. Volume eight does little to dispel the sense of futility; even a detour into the underworld seems more a demonstration of how inept Nanami remains than an inspired subplot. Strictly for fans of supernatural romance. -Katherine Dacey

Kimi ni Todoke, Vol. 13 | By Karuho Shiina | VIZ Media – While Kazehaya and Sawako remain the stars – and seeing her meet his family is probably the cutest part of this volume – this focuses more on the group, which I appreciate now that the main romance has moved from ‘will they or won’t they’ to ‘so what now?’. Chizu is dealing with a rather attentive Ryu, who’s becoming more obvious – possibly by design. Meanwhile, Ayane is not only dealing with Kento finding her interesting (something which she seems to be ignoring, possibly as she doesn’t understand him as easily as she does everyone else), but with her own ideas of what love and dating are, which are not as ‘pure and innocent’ as her two friends. She agrees to go out with a guy who confesses to her near the end of the book, but I honestly can’t see it ending well. Also, terrific cover art. – Sean Gaffney

No Longer Human, Vol. 3 | By Usamaru Furuya | Vertical, Inc. – Though it’s no secret that I’ve been a fan of Usamaru Furuya’s inspired adaptation of Osamu Dazai’s classic novel from the beginning, as the rather unrelentingly optimistic type that I am, even I find this a bit surprising. Hopelessness has been assured far before cracking open Furuya’s final volume, yet it’s impossible to resist the need to follow Yozo’s journey to the end. Though this heartbreaking volume is remarkable on both dramatic and artistic levels, what I found perhaps most compelling were Furuya’s own notes at the end, describing his personal connection with Dazai’s work and how he came to write the adapation. Complete in three volumes, this series is a must-read for any grown-up manga fan. Highly recommended. – MJ

Oresama Teacher, Vol. 7 | By Izumi Tsubaki| VIZ Media – Another highly variable volume – I love this series, but the author still has issues with focus and pacing. At its best, we get chapters like the first one, where we learn about Takaomi’s motives. It’s good to see his character gain some depth, and you really begin to see how driven and goal-oriented he is – and how that inspires Mafuyu. Meanwhile, the ‘summer vacation’ chapters get progressively worse, with Mafuyu’s festival with Sakurada being quite funny, but the ‘haunted house’ chapter being possibly the worst we’ve seen this series – so confusing I had trouble telling who was who from panel to panel. Ah well. Hopefully she’ll get that out of her system soon and we’ll be back to school, where Mafuyu fares much better – as does the mangaka. At least we get plenty of silly faces. – Sean Gaffney

One Piece, Vol. 61

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By Eiichiro Oda. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz.

There was a joke going around fandom when Chapter 597 first came out in Japan that on the last page it would say “One Piece – end of Prologue.’ It’s not quite that ridiculous, but the timeskip we see does give us a lot to talk about – and finally, FINALLY reunites Luffy with his crew and his ship. It is appropriate that the cover of this volume is a mirror to Volume 1’s cover.

Before the timeskip comes some nice stuff, though. Having seen the crew bolt from their rescuers in order to reunite with their captain and console him after Ace’s death, it’s somewhat odd to see them immediately turn around and go back. It’s handled beautifully, though, with each crew member getting a flashback that shows just how much Luffy impacted their lives. They really would do anything for their captain, and it shows. Luffy, meanwhile, gets to train with Rayleigh on the island of amazingly dangerous animals, and we learn a little bit more about haki – though really, it still amounts to ‘magic charisma’ when you get right down to it.

(I was vaguely irritated that, in the shot of the Supernovas all encountering danger in the new world, Bonney is the one that’s captured and subdued (twice!). Oda is miles ahead of other Jump authors when it comes to his female characters, but they still tend to get into peril when the situation calls for it. Still, I suppose Akainu and Blackbeard menacing, say, Apoo wouldn’t have had quite the same feel.)

Then, as noted, we jump forward two years, and see what our crew is up to as they reunite on Sabaody. This leads us, inevitably, to the Fakehats. It’s not particularly surprising that someone would be trying to imitate Luffy and friends given their amazing reputation – in fact, it’s a wonder we hadn’t seen it before now. But I wasn’t expecting it to be as funny as this is. The Fakehats are gloriously awful, amounting to not even a bad parody of the people they’re trying to imitate. (Naturally, Luffy, Usopp and Chopper are taken in right away – just because there’s a timeskip doesn’t mean that the characters are THAT different. Everyone keeps their comedic flaws.)

As for the actual crew, so far they seem mostly the same. Which is reassuring. Franky has modified his body to look even more ridiculous. Zoro is missing an eye. Luffy has a scar on his chest. Nami has long hair. Usopp is more muscular. Robin has a new hairstyle. And then there’s Sanji. Who now has his hair… covering his other eye! Oda is delightfully deadpan about this in comments, but it’s also a good sign that he’s still enjoying One Piece more than anybody else.

As the Straw Hat Pirates prepare to go to Fishman Island at last, the Marines are coming out in force to stop them. But hey – allies of the pirates (many of whom are former enemies) come out to help, as we get some more great cameos. Hancock was a given (and is still a glorious parody of shippers – Luffy’s constant “I’m not marrying you” is a stitch), but it was a surprise to see Perona show up to lead Zoro to his crew. And hey, she is all grown up! (I totally ship Zoro/Perona, in a ridiculous way.) Luffy and company are ready to pave the way for a new age of pirates – and everyone wants to see them to it. It’s very heartwarming, especially when compared with Rayleigh’s flashbacks of Gold Roger.

And so – at last – we’re headed for Fishman Island and a new arc. Will it top Impel Down and Marineford? Probably not. But that doesn’t really matter. Just having the crew back together again is enough. We’ve seen how Luffy survives without his crew. Now we’re ready to see them work as a unit again. Bring on the next 60 volumes.

New licenses, old magazines

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JManga is running a special this weekend: Sign up for a $10 monthly subscription and get two books’ worth of points for free; sign up for a $25 subscription and get five free books. Don’t feel like spending any money? Just for this weekend, unregistered guest users can read the free previews of 199 different manga on the site (as opposed to the usual limit of six).

More JManga news: Erica Friedman just announced another ALC/JManga collaboration, Kimi no Tamenara Shineru, a yuri manga set in the Heian period.

Lissa Pattillo picks the choicest morsels from this week’s new releases in her On the Shelf column at Otaku USA.

At Comic Attack, Kristin checks out the manga in the latest issue of Previews.

Jason Thompson steps into the wayback machine for a look at Bringing Home the Sushi, an anthology of business manga, with a side trip along the way to discuss Mangaijin, in his latest House of 1000 Manga column at ANN.

Seven Seas announced a new license yesterday: Guardians of Luna, a werewolf manga by Nozomu Tamaki, the creator of Dance in the Vampire Bund.

Digital Manga has three new licenses: Honey*Smile, Secret Thorns, and Start with a Happy Ending. Honey Smile and Secret Thorns are yaoi and will be published both digitally and in print; Start with a Happy Ending is a josei manga that will be print only. Also, the first two volumes of Erementar Gerade, their latest license rescue, are now up on eManga.com.

It has been 20 years since the Sailor Moon anime was first shown on Japanese television, and the LA Times Hero Complex blog celebrates with a little retrospective.

Lori Henderson has the list of this week’s all ages comics and manga at Good Comics for Kids.

Lovely Duckie shows off her amazing manga and figurine collection at The Manga Critic.

News from Japan: Haruhi publisher Kadokawa Shoten has signed a deal with Amazon Japan to put all its content on the Kindle, including Kindle apps on all platforms. Black Lagoon creator Rei Hiroe has set a tentative date for his return to the manga, which has been on hiatus, but he’s nervous about going back to it.

Reviews: MJ and Michelle Smith discuss some new titles, messy and otherwise, in their latest On the Shelf column at Manga Bookshelf. Other reviews of note:

Lori Henderson on vol. 2 of Amnesia Labyrinth and vol. 1 of Dracula Everlasting (Manga Xanadu)
Phillip Anthony on vol. 1 of Codename Sailor V (Manga Bookshelf)
Brigid Alverson on vol. 1 of A Devil and Her Love Song (MTV Geek)
David Gromer on vol. 1 of Durarara!!! (Graphic Novel Reporter)
Jocelyne Allen on equus (by est em) (Brain Vs. Book)
Kate Dacey on vol. 1 of Is This a Zombie? (The Manga Critic)
David Gromer on vol. 2 of Maximum Ride (Graphic Novel Reporter)
Angela Eastman on vol. 1 of Soulless (manga and novel) (Manga Bookshelf)

Is This A Zombie?, Vol. 1

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Here’s a tip for aspiring manga artists: if you’re going to spoof a genre, your jokes should be poking fun at said genre’s conventions, not slavishly adhering to them. Is This a Zombie? wants to be a send-up of magical girl manga and harem comedies, but focuses so heavily on panty shots, “accidental” nudity (of the “whoops, my clothes disintegrated!” variety), and girl fights that it’s easy to forget that the story is supposed to be a cheeky riposte to Cutie Honey, Sailor Moon, Love Hina, and Negima!

The other great problem plaguing Is This a Zombie? is focus. From the opening pages of volume one, a reader might reasonably conclude that the main plot revolves around teenager Ayumu Aikawa’s quest to find out who killed him. The sudden arrival of Haruna, a self-proclaimed “magikewl girl” who wears a maid’s costume and carries a pink chainsaw, complicates the picture, however. By means never fully explained, Haruna’s powers are accidentally transferred to Ayumu, who undergoes a full Sailor Moon-style transformation into a dress-wearing, weapon-wielding magical girl in the presence of other supernatural beings.

If Haruna’s arrival provided genuine comic relief, or advanced the plot in a meaningful way, the resulting horror-magical girl mishmash might not seem so incongruous. The lame cross-dressing jokes, however, do almost nothing for the story except reveal Shinichi Kimura’s steadfast belief that if a man in a frilly dress is hilarious, then a male magical girl in a frilly dress is exponentially funnier. And if the guy-in-a-dress gags weren’t tired enough, Kimura gives Ayumu a full-fledged harem that includes Eu, a necromancer, and Sera, a vampire ninja. True to harem comedy form, the three girls live with Ayumu, clamoring for Ayumu’s attention, bickering with each other during meals, and seeking his approval on outfits. Whatever “comedy” results from their competition is of a meager sort; Kimura seems to think that that the girls’ catty put-downs have sufficient zing to generate laughs. (They don’t.)

The artwork does little to enhance the story’s comedic tone. Ayumu is as generic a hero as they come, with a carefully tousled mop of hair, a standard-issue high school uniform, and a nose that’s ever-so-slightly larger than the female characters’. Of the three magical girls, only Sera is drawn as a mature teen; Eu and Haruna each look about ten or eleven years old. The girls’ youthful appearance would be less unsettling if they kept their clothing on, but Haruna’s frequent costume failures put an icky, exploitative spin on a sight gag that’s clearly meant to be sexy.

The backgrounds and action scenes have the same perfunctory quality as the character designs. All of the settings — cemeteries, schoolrooms, apartments — look the same, a collection of simple, square shapes that barely establish the location. And while that means the fight scenes are lean and mean, unburdened with excessive detail, it also means that the combat seems to be taking place in an alternate universe from the main story, one that lacks any meaningful visual continuity with the other scenes.

I wish I could find something to like about Is This a Zombie?, as the story wants to be the Naked Gun of manga spoofs, a naughty but good-natured comedy that invites readers to laugh at tired tropes. The resulting story, however, feels a lot more like Epic Movie, a scattershot, semi-exploitative grab-bag of superhero jokes, Pirates of the Caribbean gags, and sword-and-sandal send-ups; substitute “zombie manga,” “harem comedies,” and “magical-girl manga” for the aforementioned genres, and you’d have Is This a Zombie? in all its awfulness.

Review copy provided by Yen Press. Volume one will be available on March 27th.

IS THIS A ZOMBIE?, VOL. 1 • STORY BY SHINICHI KIMURA, ART BY SACCHI, CHARACTERS BY KOBUICHI – MURIRIN • YEN PRESS • 172 pp. • RATING: MATURE (NUDITY, LANGUAGE, VIOLENCE)

Is This A Zombie?, Vol. 1

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Here’s a tip for aspiring manga artists: if you’re going to spoof a genre, your jokes should be poking fun at said genre’s conventions, not slavishly adhering to them. Is This a Zombie? wants to be a send-up of magical girl manga and harem comedies, but focuses so heavily on panty shots, “accidental” nudity (of the “whoops, my clothes disintegrated!” variety), and girl fights that it’s easy to forget that the story is supposed to be a cheeky riposte to Cutie Honey, Sailor Moon, Love Hina, and Negima!

The other great problem plaguing Is This a Zombie? is focus. From the opening pages of volume one, a reader might reasonably conclude that the main plot revolves around teenager Ayumu Aikawa’s quest to find out who killed him. The sudden arrival of Haruna, a self-proclaimed “magikewl girl” who wears a maid’s costume and carries a pink chainsaw, complicates the picture, however. By means never fully explained, Haruna’s powers are accidentally transferred to Ayumu, who undergoes a full Sailor Moon-style transformation into a dress-wearing, weapon-wielding magical girl in the presence of other supernatural beings.

If Haruna’s arrival provided genuine comic relief, or advanced the plot in a meaningful way, the resulting horror-magical girl mishmash might not seem so incongruous. The lame cross-dressing jokes, however, do almost nothing for the story except reveal Shinichi Kimura’s steadfast belief that if a man in a frilly dress is hilarious, then a male magical girl in a frilly dress is exponentially funnier. And if the guy-in-a-dress gags weren’t tired enough, Kimura gives Ayumu a full-fledged harem that includes Eu, a necromancer, and Sera, a vampire ninja. True to harem comedy form, the three girls live with Ayumu, clamoring for Ayumu’s attention, bickering with each other during meals, and seeking his approval on outfits. Whatever “comedy” results from their competition is of a meager sort; Kimura seems to think that that the girls’ catty put-downs have sufficient zing to generate laughs. (They don’t.)

The artwork does little to enhance the story’s comedic tone. Ayumu is as generic a hero as they come, with a carefully tousled mop of hair, a standard-issue high school uniform, and a nose that’s ever-so-slightly larger than the female characters’. Of the three magical girls, only Sera is drawn as a mature teen; Eu and Haruna each look about ten or eleven years old. The girls’ youthful appearance would be less unsettling if they kept their clothing on, but Haruna’s frequent costume failures put an icky, exploitative spin on a sight gag that’s clearly meant to be sexy.

The backgrounds and action scenes have the same perfunctory quality as the character designs. All of the settings — cemeteries, schoolrooms, apartments — look the same, a collection of simple, square shapes that barely establish the location. And while that means the fight scenes are lean and mean, unburdened with excessive detail, it also means that the combat seems to be taking place in an alternate universe from the main story, one that lacks any meaningful visual continuity with the other scenes.

I wish I could find something to like about Is This a Zombie?, as the story wants to be the Naked Gun of manga spoofs, a naughty but good-natured comedy that invites readers to laugh at tired tropes. The resulting story, however, feels a lot more like Epic Movie, a scattershot, semi-exploitative grab-bag of superhero jokes, Pirates of the Caribbean gags, and sword-and-sandal send-ups; substitute “zombie manga,” “harem comedies,” and “magical-girl manga” for the aforementioned genres, and you’d have Is This a Zombie? in all its awfulness.

Review copy provided by Yen Press. Volume one will be available on March 27th.

IS THIS A ZOMBIE?, VOL. 1 • STORY BY SHINICHI KIMURA, ART BY SACCHI, CHARACTERS BY KOBUICHI – MURIRIN • YEN PRESS • 172 pp. • RATING: MATURE (NUDITY, LANGUAGE, VIOLENCE)

Comic Conversion: Soulless

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Soulless | Novel: Gail Carriger / Orbit Books | Manga: REM / Yen Press

Twenty-five-year-old spinster Alexia Tarabotti has a a few problems. First, she’s a spinster, and being a half-Italian in Victorian England isn’t helping. Second, she’s a preternatural, a human without a soul. And third, a vampire has just died–and it might be her fault! Alexia finds herself in the middle of a mystery involving vampire hives, royalty, and scientists, as rove vampires and lone werewolves are disappearing. In the midst of it all, Lord Maccon, the werewolf pack leader and head of the Bureau of Unnatural Registry, is taking a decided interest in her, and not just because of her preternatural powers. It’s enough to overwhelm any lady–but Alexia is out to prove that she’s much more formidable than that.

Soulless, written by Gail Carriger, is the first novel in the Parasol Protectorate, a paranormal romance/mystery series from Orbit Books. The story takes place in a Victorian England where werewolves, vampires and ghosts are not only real, but are a part of every day society. Last July, Yen Press debuted the manga adaptation of this series in Yen Plus magazine, and has just recently released the first volume in the series, trusting the artist REM (Vampire Kisses) to bring Carrriger’s steam punk supernatural romance to life.

Two pages into the Soulless novel I found myself utterly delighted with the prose. Taking on a distinct Victorian tone, Carriger uses the slight sarcasm you get from a Jane Austen novel to describe a surprise vampire battle. This creates some hilariously fancified lines (“For his part, the vampire seemed to feel that their encounter had improved his ball experience immeasurably.”) and amusing quips (“to put the pudding in the puff”) that plastered a grin on my face from the start. Of course, it pretty quickly feels like Carriger’s laying it on too thick, but luckily she seems to find a happy medium, and the tone evens out.

Soulless is a pretty steamy book, and while like most romances the “amorous activities”, as Alexia calls them, can get out of hand (making out in a jail cell? Really?) the love story never completely overshadows the mystery. The characters themselves are a treat: Alexia is smart and sharp-tongued, and despite the historical and cultural hindrances is a pretty inspiring female character. Lord Maccon is a little more one-dimensional as a gruff werewolf with a soft spot for a certain spinster, but it’s adorable to watch him fumble with human vs. werewolf courting. Members of Alexia’s immediate family fall flat: her sisters are foolish, her step-father is disconnected, and her mother is arrogant (by the end I don’t see why she would stoop to marrying an Italian in the first place). But other side characters liven up the story, with the flamboyant-but-formidable vampire Lord Akeldama, Alexia’s mildly eccentric friend Miss Hisselpenny, and Maccon’s perceptive Beta Professor Lyall, allowing our main pair to vent their thoughts while still showing plenty enough personality to make them interesting on their own.

The characters are just as appealing in the manga, with REM’s art style helping to enhance that. Akeldama is still exceptionally flamboyant, with outfits and mannerisms just as fancy and theatrical as I imagined. His exuberant, italicized dialogue is cut down a bit, but his sly smiles and occasional shift to a super-deformed look gives him the energetic feel of a mischievous child. Lord Maccon maintains his roughness in dialogue, though REM gives him a cleaner look than I would have pictured. Still, his care and interest in Miss Tarabotti is both more amusing (an arrow leads his gaze right down Alexia’s cleavage), and more endearing. REM also seems to know enough not to let text boxes overwhelm the art. Because of this, the occasional heavy-handedness of Carriger’s Victorian prose is eliminated, leaving us only with the delightful bits (“I say!” says Alexia as a vampire tries to kill her. “We have not been introduced!”).

The pacing of the comic is generally very even, with a good balance between the supernatural mystery and the romantic plot. On a couple of occasions REM chose to cut scenes out. Much of the deletion has little affect on either the flow or understanding of the story, like when Alexia’s mother and half-sisters return from a shopping trip: while it’s interesting in that it deepens the reasons for Alexia’s dislike of her own family, all this scene does is emphasize her sisters’ frivolousness and her mother’s condescension, things we’ve picked up on well enough. This scene is not missed, but another, when pudgy scientist Mr. MacDougal takes Alexia on a carriage ride, is a little more noticeable. While the book has him taking her around town as he explains his scientific theories, the comic only shows the end of the ride, when he drops Alexia off, and she merely comments that he had some “interesting theories on the soul.” Readers may be able to guess the conversation based on the dinner from a few pages earlier, but the main problem lies in the abruptness of the scene, giving the distinct feeling of something having been hacked out.

Both versions of Soulless had a couple of missteps in pacing that momentarily jarred me out of the story, and the romance scenes didn’t always have the best timing, considering the other tensions going on. But I easily jumped right back into the flow, and the romance is sexy enough to make up for the occasional poor placement. Soulless could have gone the route of many a paranormal romance novel, making the supernatural plot nothing more than a cheap gimmick, but Carriger manages to create not only an enticing romance but also an engrossing mystery and a fleshed out, believable fantasy world. REM’s art style and sense of panel layout gives us an adaptation that’s just as enjoyable, so in this case I say pick your favorite medium – you can’t go wrong either way.

Adventures in the Key of Shoujo: Codename: Sailor V, Vol.1

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Codename: Sailor V, Vol. 1 | By Naoko Takeuchi | Published by Kodansha Comics USA | Rated: T, Ages 13+

“Champion of Justice! The Pretty Guardian in a Sailor Suit! Sailor Venus has arrived!!”

Did you ever have that dream with the sensation that you’re falling, but you’re just not sure in which direction, and yet you’re perfectly safe doing so? The is the feeling I get from Codename: Sailor V, coupled with a curious feeling that I’m being led somewhere familiar, yet I’ve never been there. After diving into Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, I also picked up Codename: Sailor V as well, as I had heard it was a prequel to Sailor Moon. But while it was published at roughly the same time as Sailor Moon and it IS set in the same universe, tonally, this is a different tempo.

First of all, while it does have a girl becoming a magical champion of justice, the difference here is that Minako Aino is on her own. She has a familiar (a male cat named Artemis) and she answers to someone called “Boss.” However, there is no team to help her, so Mina must face all the agents of evil alone. In many ways, that makes this first outing both flat and exciting. It’s flat because if you didn’t like the formula of “Girl gains magical powers, fights a villain every chapter, overcomes and adapts, then triumphs” espoused by Sailor Moon, this is more of the same. So we are there for all the blundering Mina does, every goofy joke, every stock bad guy, and every cliché. While this might be bad for some, I’m glad of it, as it means I don’t have to keep remembering every chapter and can focus on the narrative (Confession: as I recently came into Sailor Moon, a lot of characters’ names and faces didn’t stick right away, thus I have to keep rereading to imprint the important stuff).

Secondly, I don’t get a sense of an impending apocalypse with Codename: Sailor V that I got with Sailor Moon. In that, there’s a goal: finding the princess, finding the crystal. In Codename: Sailor V, there are the main villains (the Dark Agency) but we don’t know what they want, save to take over the world. And while we know the agency is being controlled by a higher intelligence, we’re just not told who that is. This fog is either Takeuchi being sly or she really doesn’t know what she’s doing. Now, I could buy that last point except both Sailor Moon and Codename: Sailor V were published at around the same time. I’d like to know what the frequency of the chapters for both were, but I don’t have that information. Since there are only two volumes of Codename: Sailor V and there are twelve plus volumes of Sailor Moon, I am curious to say the least.

Using Sailor Moon as a guide, while there are much the same types of characters, as there’s not such a large cast, I can focus on the them better. Mina’s relationship with Artemis is much more antagonistic than Usagi’s and Luna’s, but this is borne for the most part out of the fact that Mina is a complete slacker who does well in athletics but is poor at academics. Even her mother can’t stand the fact that she bunks off her responsibilities whenever she feels like it! Equally her friends, including her bezzie mate Hikaru, just roll with it. Though the background characters in this are so-so, I do like the police Inspector General who is in love with “V-Chan,” as she keeps calling her. If I had a gripe, it would be that the villains get whipped senseless in this. Unlike Sailor Moon, here the villains just turn up, take over and then get belted by Sailor V, who usually gets shoujo-medieval on their rump. Full marks every time Mina turns them into crispy critters.

Mina is even more of a girly-girl (is there such a thing, really?) than Usagi. She has all the problems that go with being a pubescent, amplified due to her identity as Sailor V. She wants her first love, first kiss, first crush, first holiday, and so on to be just so. But sometimes, I feel that she could do with someone like Tuxedo Mask in her life. Tuxedo gives Sailor Moon something to look forward to as a goal. And Mamoru gives Usagi’s heart a fluttery feeling whenever he’s around. Mina has no such person in her life. It would be interesting to see what she would do if such was the case. But that doesn’t detract from her character—far from it. It makes me wonder if she’s holding back her potential because she doesn’t seem to feel the same peril that Usagi and Co. get into. Would this make her a more flawed character, and therefore more sympathetic to us? Maybe, but I have a hunch that there’s enough of this coming down the pipeline for Sailor Moon, and if it happened to Mina in the same way, I would feel a cloning issue arise.

Artwork-wise, Takeuchi gives her characters an energy that is hard to define. If I had to place a finger on it, I would say they look alive in the sense that they are animated, lively and effervescent. Mina has a smile that goes through different stages. Her carefree one (used mostly for her friends), her dreamy one when she’s thinking about a boy, and finally her smile that only the readers get to see. This is a special kind of smile—one that shows the confidence of someone who could, literally, move mountains if she tried. The smile I refer to is the one she wears when she defends the characters and us, the audience, from all the nasties in the world, whether it be a sexist git who doesn’t want girls in his electronic man-cave or the Iago-like Dark Agency who would steal our lifeforce energy for its own nefarious uses. This smile will protect anyone or anything standing behind it. This smile would die rather than admit defeat. It’s amazing how much enjoyment you can derive from a smile. Maybe I’ve uncovered another of Takeuchi’s talents? Or is it one of Sailor Venus’?

Translation-wise, William Flanagan keeps it quick, coherent and easy to read. I’ve never read any scanlations or the first TOKYOPOP versions, so I will withdraw from speaking as to their accuracy. All I will say is Mr. Flanagan has a lot of text to deal with and manages to make sense of it and put it into a kind of literary tempo. He and Kodansha have their usual liner notes at the back of the book. Thanks are extended for the explanations.

As an aside, since I keep bringing up Sailor Moon in this review, I’ve got one or two wee problems. You see, in Codename: Sailor V, Mina runs by—is drawn running by or whatever—next to Usagi and Ami, leading us to believe that the events of Sailor Moon can’t be far behind. My confusion is that I don’t know within what time frame this story takes place. Is it at the same time as Sailor Moon? Before or after it? This perplexes me and I can only hope there’s some clarification soon. Another thing I’ve noticed is that the characters that Mina is friends with don’t get nearly enough time to develop on their own. I realise that Mina is the focus, but still I can’t help feel that I’m running out of time to get to know them. Other than that, this is a great first volume, and if you are wary of getting into Sailor Moon because of its length, there are only two volumes of this, so you should be fine.

This last point is also a source of sadness for me. In this single volume I’ve grown to like Mina, Artemis and even the Inspector General and the fact that the next volume will be the last that focuses on these characters is an unhappy one for me. Don’t get me wrong, I know that Mina plays a part in Sailor Moon but still, I’m going to miss them. Oh well, one more volume to go, I suppose. But knowing Takeuchi-sensei, she’ll have them go out in a blast. Oh, I cannot wait!

On a personal note, I wanted to say thanks to everyone who emailed me or left comments on Manga Bookshelf in regards to the column. I really appreicate the thoughts and suggestions and while I can’t say I will pick up all the titles suggested, I enjoyed getting such an enthusiastic response. Also, I wanted to thank MJ, Kate Dacey and all the people on their own blogs and on Twitter who mentioned the column.

Review copy bought by reviewer