Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Blog

Off the Shelf: Generally Halloweenish

by and 4 Comments

MJ: Boo!

MICHELLE: Omigawd, you almost gave me a heart attack.

MJ: Yay?

MICHELLE: I suppose that is the spirit of the season.

MJ: So, speaking of the season, I expect you’ve been indulging in some spooky manga this week?

MICHELLE: Some spooky, others not-so-spooky, but generally Halloweenish, yes.

One thing I checked out was the debut of a new manhwa from Seven Seas (their first, I think) called My Boyfriend Is a Vampire. This series appears to be complete in fourteen volumes, and Seven Seas is releasing it in 2-in-1 omnibus editions.

I have to say, this does not get off to a very auspicious start. A girlish boy collapses on the street from a neck wound and the police are called when he is found to have no pulse. Just when the cops arrive, however, the guy sits up and takes off. When he gets home, the wound has already healed but he has inexplicably turned into a girl.

Cue flashback to a month ago, where the boy (Gene) is getting into lots of fights over the fact that he looks like a girl when he isn’t agreeing to masquerade as one. This is all fairly silly until he, in the middle of defending gang territory, ends up in the middle of a squabble between two vampire half-brothers, each with the potential to become their powerful father’s heir. Long story short, he saves one guy (Ryu) but ends up being made a vamp in the process (cue paragraph one) and of course there is some awesome legend or prophecy or something about a girl who survives being bitten and how she will be the 1337est vampire ever and also have the ability to change genders or something.

Honestly, a lot of this story is pretty ridiculous and the art is totally generic, but by the end I was looking forward to reading more. Strip away the supernatural trappings and what this reminds me of the most is Click, another manhwa which was published by NETCOMICS a few years ago. You’ve got the tough/bratty guy who becomes a girl, the best friend from childhood with whom there will now presumably be romantic tension, and the undesirable element to whom the protagonist finds him/herself drawn. The fact that vampires are involved really doesn’t matter very much at this point, since this seems poised to be a gender-bending comedy.

I believe you’ve read this one, too. What did you think of it?

MJ: Well, I’m absolutely with you on the general ridiculousness of this series so far, though I admit to enjoying it for its silliness more than I would have expected. While it lacks the cracktastic brilliance of something like Reiko Shimizu’s Moon Child or even slightly more down-to-earth treasures like SangEun Lee’s 13th Boy, it has enough of a spark to grab my interest, even in its lesser moments. I’m sad to note that there are many more of those “lesser moments” than I’d like, but I can’t help looking forward to the next volume.

MICHELLE: Same here, and though the second volume was much stronger than the first, which bodes well for things to come. It might not be a masterpiece, but it will likely be entertaining.

So, have you been reading spooky manga this week?

MJ: I have indeed, or at least partly so. My first read this week was volume seven of Yuki Midorikawa’s Natsume’s Book of Friends. Though this supernatural series tends more towards adjectives like “quiet” and “touching” than it does things like “scary,” this particular volume actually kinda hits the mark.

In this volume, Natusme finds himself relying on his uneasy friendship with flashy exorcist Natori in the face of someone much more terrifying, whose disregard for yokai puts Natsume and his friends in danger. And as it turns out, this is a really good thing. This is not a series that I generally consider suspenseful, but I was hovering on the edge of my seat for this entire volume, worried and anxious and generally creeped out.

Midorikawa’s artwork has always been a highlight of this series, creating wonderfully rich emotional moments with imagery alone. Even so, I was surprised here by how easily she was able to put me on edge with the tiniest visual details. The shade of an umbrella, a part of the hair, the shape of a lip—each of these tiny details is used in a way that stood my hair on end. It’s marvelous to behold.

Though this series was a fast favorite for me, early on, I’ll admit my interest waned during some of its middle volumes. Those days are clearly over now, and I simply can’t wait to see what comes next.

MICHELLE: I know I say this every time you mention Natsume’s Book of Friends, but I really am planning to get caught up on it soon. When you wrote about the worry and anxiety you experienced it reminded me of the similar atmosphere created by Ghost Hunt when that series was firing on all cylinders. Which, in turn, made me sad that we’ll probably never see its twelfth and final volume in English. Unless Sailor Moon makes Kodansha so much money they can afford to take on charity cases.

It seems like Midorikawa also gets that the secret to engaging your reader like this is not concocting frightening situations but creating characters that people will genuinely be concerned about. Sometimes that’s lacking in straight-up horror manga.

MJ: That’s a great point, Michelle, and definitely appropriate to this series! Yes, we’re anxious here not because Natsume has met a really creepy guy (though he has) but because of the vulnerable position Natsume and the yokai are in. It’s really quite harrowing!

So what’s your other maybe-spooky-maybe-not selection for the evening?

MICHELLE: The first volume of the Yen Press adaptation of James Patterson’s Witch & Wizard, drawn by Svetlana Chmakova, who has become somewhat of a Halloween fixture for me thanks to her Nightschool series.

Alas, I don’t like this one as much as Nightschool. At least, not yet. I can’t tell if the problem is Patterson’s original novel (which I haven’t read) or this adaptation, but I am leaning towards the latter. It’s not that it’s outright bad, but it’s extremely rushed and the juxtaposition of comedy (I use the term loosely) and drama (ditto) is jarring.

An oppressive organization known as N.O. (New Order) has taken over government and is rounding up anyone who does not conform to their ideals of law, logic, order and science. To this end, soldiers break into the home of the Allgood family and take children Whit (nearly 18) and Wisty (15) into custody. For some reason, N.O.’s representative during this encounter is some snot-nosed teen whom the Allgood siblings make fun of. Anyway, through various miscarriages of justice they end up incarcerated and facing imminent execution, until they are brought into the “Shadowland” by Celia, Whit’s deceased girlfriend.

I mean, there truly is potential here, but everything just happens so fast that many things ring false. For example, Whit pines a lot for Celia, his “soulmate” who has gone missing. When his powers have developed enough that he is able to slip through a wall and arrive in the Shadowland, she tells him that she’s been murdered. Only it’s like she’s fine one panel then in the next tears are suddenly streaming down her face as she infodumps the details of her demise. Nine pages later, Whit is making stupid quips again. That just seems so wrong to me. Where is the impact here?

MJ: Like you, I’ve never read the novel, so I can’t really make a clear call here, but what you describe seems to me to match the most common problem I’ve seen in comic adaptations of novels overall. Maybe some of it can be chalked up to some things transferring better from prose than others, but really most of the time it just seems to come down to… well, time. It takes time to tell a story well, regardless of the medium, and for some reason that’s where comic adaptations really seem to skimp.

MICHELLE: Yeah. I’ll probably give it another volume to see how it develops, at least. Maybe now that the exposition’s out of the way the story will be able to breathe a little.

So, what else have you got for us this evening?

MJ: Well, you know, “horror” can have various meanings, and in my ongoing experiment to see just how much “horror” I can take, I decided to delve into volume eleven of Kanoko Sakurakouji’s demon-centric romance, Black Bird.

It’s possible that the most horrifying aspect of the latest volume of Black Bird is that, relatively speaking, it’s really not all that bad. Sure, Misao walks around with a permanent flush on her face and Kyo is possessive and controlling, but somewhere along the way in this volume it seems like… I can’t believe I’m going to say this… it seems like maybe he kind of learns something.

*blink*

Assuming you haven’t died of shock, I’ll continue.

Furthermore, this volume is actually kind of scary in the more traditional sense. Kyo’s brother, Sho, has returned with an ugly agenda, and for once there seems to be some real danger here. And though there is a seriously overplayed “scorned woman” in the mix (groan, why do authors do this to women?), I have to admit that the volume wraps up with some genuine suspense, and I almost-sorta-kinda want to know what happens next.

Now, before you lose all faith in reality as you know it, I’m not exactly giving a positive review of a volume of Black Bird. But finding myself in a position where I’m not inclined to give a scathing one certainly seems like a step up.

Have you died? I hope you haven’t died.

MICHELLE: I haven’t died, but I did have to fetch my smelling salts.

I’ll be interested to see whether Black Bird will ever be able to redeem itself in your eyes. I keep thinking I should read it—and, indeed, I have quite a stockpile of volumes—but I only have so much time and I always prioritize something else. So, in a way, you’re doing this for all of us who want to see what happens without investing our own time and eyeballs.

MJ: Well, time will tell whether my eyeballs are truly up to the task. But thankfully, this particular volume offered up a not-too-horrible Halloween-appropriate read.

MICHELLE: I think it’s fitting that we end our Halloween column on the topic of eyeballs.

MJ: Agreed. Happy Halloween everyone, from Off the Shelf!

Manga the Week of 11/2

by

Oh dearie me. (deep breath)

Bandai is shipping the 4th volume of Code Geass: Knight, the doujinshi anthology series that focuses on the male characters for female fans of the series. Expect lots of BL tease with no actual BL.

If you want actual BL, then DMP is the place for you. We get new volumes of the awkwardly titled Great Place High School Student Council, the deluxe edition of Kizuna, Seven Days, and The Tyrant Falls in Love. And there are three new series debuting: Mr. Tiger and Mr. Wolf (no, it’s not a Tiger and Bunny spinoff), Only Serious About You, and Private Teacher. I think this giant pile of BL will satisfy even the most hungry enthusiasts.

Remember when I said we’d get the rest of Kodansha’a October this week? I was indeed correct! New Air Gear, which has hit 20 volumes of rollerblading frenzy. Vol. 2 of Bloody Monday’s intrigue and Cage of Eden’s potboiler antics. And two new thick omnibuses: Love Hina 1-3 (which I reviewed here a couple of weeks ago), and Tokyo Mew Mew 1-2 (for those who can’t get enough magical girl shoujo and can’t wait for Sailor Moon/V).

Speaking of omnibuses, Seven Seas is releasing Vols. 7 & 8 of Gunslinger Girl, which I believe means we’re now caught up with ADV and getting new material. Yes, it’s about killer loli assassins and their kindly adult male guardians, but it actually manages to deal with the serious issues surrounding such a plot and not be too skeezy. Mostly. Well, a lot. OK, over 60% not skeezy. Seven Seas also has the third volume of Toradora, which does star a tsundere, but it actually manages to deal with the serious issues surrounding such a girl and not have her be too tsun. Mostly. OK, maybe 40% dere? Perhaps an actual math degree would help.

Vertical is debuting its new Furuya title, a modern updating of the famous Japanese novel No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai. I’ve also reviewed this, and it maintains Vertical’s reputation for cutting edge manga that makes you think.

And Viz has its first-week madness. From the Jump and Jump Square file, we have new volumes of Claymore, D.Gray-Man, the Death Note “Black Edition”, and Tegami Bachi. On the shoujo side, we have new Ai Ore! and Black Bird, some Dengeki Daisy (which I warn you has another nasty cliffhanger), Haruka: Beyond the Stream of Time (earlier BL manga, I’m sorry I called you unwieldy after reading this), The 11th volume of Kimi ni Todoke (wait, you mean it keeps going after they get together?!?!), and new Oresama Teacher and Story of Saiunkoku. It is a very Viz week.

So, in among that deluge, what do you want to buy?

Re-flipped: GoGo Monster

by

Okay, I don’t know if this comic counts as horror in the strictest sense of the term, but it’s one of the first titles that came to mind when I considered this month’s Manga Moveable Feast. It’s one of my favorite spooky-ish comics, and yesterday was Taiyo Matsumoto’s birthday, so…

“Yeah, well…” a grade-schooler opines early in Taiyo Matsumoto’s GoGo Monster (Viz), “There’s a kid like that in every class, right?” He’s talking about Yuki, a classmate who claims to sense things no one else can, an invisible population of mischievous creatures and a new insurgence of more malevolent beings. And the classmate is right; if manga is to be believed, the schools of Japan are well stocked with young people who traffic in the eerie. None of them are quite like Yuki, though, probably because not many creators are quite like Matsumoto.

Matsumoto has an extraordinary talent for rendering kid logic, their concepts of loyalty and justice and the way they engage with the world around them. This knack was on vivid display in Tekkonkinkreet: Black and White (Viz), for which Matsumoto won an Eisner Award in 2008. Like that book, GoGo Monster features two temperamentally different boys cleaving together to face the inevitable.

Many supernaturally sensitive manga characters can be divided into two categories. They either use that sensitivity to protect the unaware, or they struggle to conceal their abilities for fear of ostracism. Some are driven by both motives, but Yuki answers to neither. He’s disconcertingly matter-of-fact about the things he perceives, and he’s genuinely immune to the ridicule of his peers. He’s an excellent student, but he’s a disruptive presence. Yuki doesn’t perceive his own abnormality, and he doesn’t feel any pressure to conform.

While Yuki has few allies in the student body or faculty, he does garner the sympathetic attention of a new kid at school, Makoto. Average in every respect, Makoto is less intrigued by Yuki’s beliefs than by his indifference to ridicule. Maybe he recognizes it as a kind of strength of character, or maybe some emerging empathy makes him realize Yuki is at risk. Makoto is engaged in all of the aspects of Yuki’s character, not just his oddity. Instead of limiting him to the role of sidekick, this engagement actually makes Makoto Yuki’s equal in terms of reader engagement, or at least it did with me.

Other benevolent figures in Yuki’s sphere include the school’s elderly groundskeeper, Ganz, who understandably takes the long view of things. While the teachers yearn to fix Yuki, Ganz is content to listen to the boy. Then there’s IQ, who is even more ostentatiously weird than Yuki. IQ, who’s in an older grade than Yuki and Makoto, wanders the school grounds with a box on his head with a single eyehole cut into it. It’s telling and slyly funny that this is less disconcerting to his peers and teachers than Yuki’s less obvious strangeness and bursts of temper. Like Ganz, IQ has an odd kind of faith in Yuki, though the source of that faith is oblique.

The most interesting thing about GoGo Monster, the thing that grounds it, is that it’s ultimately irrelevant whether or not the things Yuki perceives are real. It’s Yuki’s belief in their reality and the possible consequences of that belief that drive the drama. That belief is never in question; Yuki is absolutely sincere, as is Matsumoto.

Tekkonkinkreet was set in a dying fantastical city slowly being destroyed by crassness and consumerism. Treasure Town was a richly imagined, almost living place. In GoGo Monster, the school setting couldn’t be more prosaic, but it’s no less vivid. Matsumoto captures the rhythms of the place, the mundane snippets of conversation, the casual cruelty, and the bustle. Even without the meticulous visual detail Matsumoto lavishes on the place, you can practically smell the food from the cafeteria.

That fidelity makes it all the more effective when you start to see glimpses of it through Yuki’s enhanced perspective. Matsumoto is positively restrained in introducing the weirdness that Yuki sees infesting Asahi Elementary. You glimpse it from the corner of your eye at first, or blink and it disappears. The clearest sense of them comes from Yuki’s crude drawings, and even he admits that they aren’t literal renderings. “This is just a conceptual sketch,” he tells the closest thing he has to a friend. As the school year that constitutes the book’s timeline progresses, Matsumoto reveals more of what Yuki is sensing.

Beyond his marvelous illustrations and elliptical storytelling, the fascinating thing about Matsumoto’s work is his ability to make me root for undesirable outcomes. In Tekkonkinkreet, I found myself hoping that its protagonists would accept the futility of their fight for Treasure Town, that they would cut their losses. In GoGo Monster, I found myself siding with the forces of conformity. Admirable as Yuki’s sense of self is, and enviable as his immunity to social pressure may be, I still was persuaded by Matsumoto’s argument for a healthy, happy Yuki, even if it resulted in a less interesting, less special Yuki.

I should probably mention that GoGo Monster is a beautifully produced book. It’s magnificently colored hard cover comes sheathed in an equally handsome slipcase. The edges of the crisp, white pages are tinged red with a continuation of the cover image. It’s all very lovely, but the book would still be extraordinary even without those bells and whistles. Matsumoto has craft, intelligence, and heart, and he balances those qualities as well as almost any creator alive. In a fairly extraordinary year for challenging, artistically satisfying manga, it seems like a certainty that Matsumoto will garner a second Eisner nomination, perhaps even a second win.

Halloween Week 3.0!

by

It’s that time again! The third annual Soliloquy in Blue Halloween Week begins today, October 25, and continues through October 31. As before, I’ll be posting daily reviews of novels and comics with a supernatural bent. Some may be cute and fluffy, some may be genuinely creepy, but all will fit the general theme.

Each year I solicit ideas for future Halloween reading, so if you’ve got a favorite book or comic that you’d recommend, please leave a comment below! Last year I was able to tackle two reader-suggested works—The Mystery of Udolpho and Gyo—and this year I shall have two more in The Witch Family and Uzumaki.

Here’s this week’s menu. I’ll update with links as they become available.

Uzumaki, Vols. 1-3 by Junji Ito
Club Dead by Charlaine Harris
Haunted House by Mitsukazu Mihara
The Witch Family by Eleanor Estes
Yurara, Vols. 1-5 by Chika Shiomi
The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury (OMG, I really tried but Bradbury takes the lyrical language to such an extreme that I veered between feeling very sleepy and feeling very annoyed. It’s exceedingly rare that I do not finish a book, but I was practically physically incapable of doing so in this case.)

The Let’s Get Visual column planned for this week was unfortunately delayed due to weather-induced power outage and will appear at a later date.

My contributions to this week’s Off the Shelf will fit the theme, as well, and the whole Manga Bookshelf gang will get in the spirit for a horror-centric installment of The Favorites Alphabet and a special Halloween edition of Bookshelf Briefs.

I hope y’all will enjoy all this as much as I do!

Uzumaki, Vols. 1-3

by

By Junji Ito | Published by VIZ Media

As with Ito’s two-volume work, Gyo, the best word to describe Uzumaki—despite a back cover blurb promising “terror in the tradition of The Ring”—is “weird.”

High school student Kirie Goshima lives in Kurôzu-Cho, a small coastal town nestled between the sea and a line of hills. She narrates each chapter in an effort to share the strange things that happened there. It all begins when, on the way to meet her boyfriend Shuichi Saito at the train station, she spots his father crouching in an alley, staring intently at a snail. Shuichi confirms that his dad has indeed been acting odd lately, and suggests that the entire town is “contaminated with spirals.”

Mr. Saito’s fixation with spirals grows to the point where he dies in an attempt to achieve a spiral shape, which drives his wife insane with spiral phobia. She too eventually passes away, leaving Shuichi alone to become a recluse who is able to resist the spiral menace while being more perceptive to it than most. Other episodic incidents fill out the first two volumes, including unfortunate events involving Kirie’s classmates (boys who turn into snails, a bizarre rivalry over spiralling hair, etc.), her father’s decision to use clay from the local pond in his ceramics, a mosquito epidemic that leads to icky goings-on at a hospital, and an abandoned lighthouse that suddenly begins producing a mesmerizing glow. Things come to a head in volume three when six successive hurricanes are drawn to Kurôzu-Cho, leaving it in ruins. Rescue workers and volunteers flock to the area, but find themselves unable to leave. Dun dun dun!

Creepy occurrences mandate creepy visuals, but I wouldn’t say that anything depicted herein is actually scary. Oh, there are loads of indelible images that made me go “ew” or “gross,” but was I frightened by them? No. The real horrors of Uzumaki are more subtle: the suggestions that there are ancient and mysterious forces against which humans are utterly powerless and that the spiral’s victims will live in eternal torment. Many tales of horror involve bloodthirsty monsters, but a menace that forces you to live and endure something horrific is much more capable of giving me the jibblies. It’s the ideas behind Uzumaki, therefore, and not the surfeit of disturbing images, that evoke dread.

Uzumaki has a much larger cast than Gyo, which prompted me to notice that Ito actually draws some really cute and realistic-looking female characters. Kirie is a prime example, but her classmates and TV reporter Chie Maruyama also fit the bill. I was pretty distracted by Ito’s rendering of a girl named Azami, though, because she reminded me so much of Madeline Kahn as Mrs. White in Clue. Observe:

Flames... FLAMES on the side of my face!

Uzumaki definitely delivers an unforgettable story with memorable art, but I would’ve liked to get to know the characters more. Kirie is a reasonably accessible lead and is smart, strong, and kind, but I felt at times that she was too strong. If anything gross is going on in town, Kirie is the one who’s going to discover it, and though she reacts in the moment, there wasn’t much emphasis on the cumulative effect of having witnessed all this madness. She keeps going and being shocked by things right until the very end, but a more normal person would’ve broken down long before. And why weren’t more people fleeing, I wonder? True, once the storms hit, nobody could leave, but for a while there plenty of crazy stuff is happening and folks are just sticking around.

I also would’ve liked to spend more time with Shuichi. He’s a pretty interesting guy, who wants to get out of town from the very start but remains because of Kirie. He seems to have inherited equal parts fascination with and fear of the spiral from his parents, which keeps him alive if not entirely sane, and is able to function at times when others are mesmerized, allowing him to come to Kirie’s aid on several occasions. Through these actions we see how much he cares for her, but I actually had no idea they were supposed to be a couple until he was specifically referred to as her boyfriend a couple of chapters in. Okay, yes, this isn’t a romance manga and I shouldn’t expect a lot of focus on their relationship, but even just a little bit of physical affection would’ve gone a long way.

Uzumaki is grim, gruesome, and a whole host of synonyms besides. This isn’t jump-out-of-your-skin horror, but a psychological tale with a decidedly grisly bent. I’m not sure I’d universally recommend it—I think I know several people who definitely shouldn’t read it, actually—but if it sounds intriguing to you, give it a whirl.

Uzumaki was published in English by VIZ Media. It is complete in three volumes.

For more entries in this month’s horror-themed MMF, check out the archive at Manga Xanadu.

Upcoming 10/26/2011

by

Thank goodness Viz is taking the week off on the ComicList, because a couple of other publishers are really bringing it.

The first volume of Drops of God, written by Tadashi Agi and illustrated by Shu Okimoto, arrives courtesy of Vertical. This series has the interesting distinction of having been covered by dozens of newspapers prior to ever being licensed. (And those articles were subsequently picked up via service by hundreds of other newspapers.) This phenomenon occurred because the manga has boosted the wine industry wherever it’s been published. Will that occur here? Will Wine Spectator feature it in the next issue? Hard to say, but I’m really looking forward to reading this tale of a race to find a roster of legendary vintages. (I’ll probably stick with Three-Buck Chuck myself, but at least I’ll know what I’m missing.)

Vertical also unleashes the seventh volume of Kanata Konami’s Chi’s Sweet Home, so you can balance rare wine with adorable pets.

Not to be outdone in the cute and funny department, Yen Press delivers the tenth volume of Kiyohiko Azuma’s Yotsuba&! I predict low-key, identifiable antics will ensue, and that I will probably giggle.

I also predict that my jaw will drop at the quantity and quality of pretty contained within the second volume of Kaoru Mori’s A Bride’s Story. I discussed this in more detail last week at Manga Bookshelf, though I couldn’t muster a Midtown-dependent pick this week. I did manage to provide a couple of Bookshelf Briefs.

Kodansha isn’t quite as impressive in its generosity, but it does offer the 11th volume of Koji Kumeta’s very funny Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, which is not to be overlooked. (In other Kodansha news, I thought the first volume of Mardock Scramble was fairly promising, and I barely escaped the first volume of the unbearably shrill Animal Land with my sanity intact, but more on that later.)

So, what looks good to you?

 

Higurashi: When They Cry, Vol. 15

by

Story by Ryukishi07; Art by Karin Suzuragi. Released in Japan as “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Tsumihoroboshi-hen” by Square Enix, serialized in the magazine Gangan Powered. Released in North America by Yen Press.

It’s Halloween, and time for all good bloggers to discuss horror. And so I will talk about Higurashi, which may be a mystery series, and may also be a harem series, but is first and foremost known for its graphic horror. This volume starts a new arc, with events once again reset to the middle of June. There’s a basic horror in the premise: the cast are dying in horrible ways over and over, each time with someone falling into a spiral of paranoia and insanity. Worst of all, the young priestess Rika seems to be aware of the previous iterations. Will this arc, focusing on the cute redhead Rena, be any more optimistic?

Well, probably, but not in this first volume. This is the start of the “Atonement” arc, which is the mirror of the first arc of the entire series, the ‘Abducted by Demons’ arc. Unlike the previous Shion arc, however, which told the same events but from a new perspective, this is showing an entirely different plot, focusing on Rena. We do start off bright and happy as always, with Rena and the rest of the club playing a penalty game with water guns in gym class. As the story goes on, though, we realize that the chapter title “Happy Rena” is misleading, and that she uses a smile to mask her inner pain and sadness. And what’s more, it’s getting obvious.

Rena is an interesting case. Most of the previous arcs have shown the protagonist (Keiichi at first, then Shion) start off relatively well-adjusted, then slowly the paranoia and madness seeps into them as they start imagining things that aren’t really happening. Rena’s backstory shows us that she’s already been committed for a long period after her parent’s divorce, and has attempted suicide as well as assault. And while moving back to Hinamizawa helped briefly, now that a new woman is cozying up to her father, the old feelings are starting up again.

In addition to Rena not really needing much impetus to get her started into killing other people, the people she’s dealing with are those that we’re not really going to miss. It turns out that her father’s new love is a gold digger who leeches onto men and gradually strips them of their money… something she casually brags about in a cafe while on the arm of Satoko’s uncle. Remember him? Back in the Curse Killing arc, we saw his physical and mental abuse of the fragile Satoko. Combined with his new love, they’re a couple that Rena is allowed to kill while still retaining the audience’s sympathy… or are they? Does anything justify murder?

As for the horror elements in this volume, for those who were creeped out by the fingernail torture in the Eye Opening Arc, well, we may have found a way to top it. Rena’s repressed rage and despair apparently comes into her head in the form of imaginary maggots that are inside her skin. Note they don’t feel imaginary to her – or to us, as we see them a few times, most notably bursting from her neck as she tries to kill herself in a flashback. Karin Suzuragi’s art is generally considered the “cutest” and most “moe” of the group of artists adapting the series, so this is particularly grotesque. There’s also Rena’s murder of Rina, the aforementioned gold-digger. The anime keeps things vague and silhouetted, but the manga has no trouble being graphic, showing Rina being beaten to death with a pipe (after trying to strangle Rena, to be fair) and begging for her life once she realizes what Rena will do. Oh yes, and eyeballs bulging from sockets, a Higurashi classic.

Higurashi makes for an excellent horror series, but it’s the mystery and characters that keep me coming back after so many deaths and resets. This isn’t the final arc, so I know things will turn south – they already have. But I want to know if the heroes can get any closer to redeeming Rena, and if she can find the “atonement” the arc title implies. I also want to know why this reset keeps happening. There’s got to be more to it than just torturing teenagers over and over again. Gripping, unnerving, and with a jarring contrast between art and events. Welcome to Hinamizawa.

Show Us Your Stuff: Myrah’s Tower of CLAMP

by 25 Comments

Welcome to the latest installment of Show Us Your Stuff! Today’s contributor is Myrah, an educator-in-training who’s passionate about books, baking, and CLAMP. Her collection is modest but catholic, and includes some rare Antique Bakery doujinshi. Here’s what this very busy woman had to say about her growing manga library.

Hello! I’m an undergraduate working on a major in English and minors in Education and Asian Studies. I’ve always enjoyed reading and writing and I’ve wanted to be a teacher for as long as I can remember. My decision to pursue Asian Studies is a more recent thing, partly influenced by my love for manga, and partly by my general interest in World History. I’m working on my Chinese and will hopefully study abroad in China for a semester in the near future.

I don’t have much free time between class and working as a teacher’s aide, but when I do I like to bake yummy things, ride my bike, and pet my cats. Besides my manga collection, I also have a rather large library of novels, anthologies, plays, non-fiction, and other graphic novels. Simply put, I love books!

What was your first manga?
That would be Sailor Moon, which is kind of strange because I never saw the anime. My sister (who doesn’t like books, let alone manga) borrowed the first few volumes from a girl on her school bus, and since I read everything I came across back then, I gobbled them up. I wound up buying most of the series, but sadly sold it years ago. I was very happy to hear Kodansha would be re-releasing it. (But I still haven’t seen the anime…)…

Read More

Sherlock Holmes Volume 1

by

Sherlock Holmes Volume 1 by Toya Ataka
One volume available on Jmanga.com

This shonen mystery manga creates a breezy and fun mash-up of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries combined with fantasy fighting elements. I was pleasntly surprised by the Sherlock Holmes adventures in this manga, which were made more entertaining by a genuinely creepy mystery and an irreverent approach in portraying the classic characters of Holmes and Watson. Here, Watson is an alarmingly competent and somewhat sarcastic tall drink of water, who affects a checkered eye patch that goes well with the checkered accents on his vest. Holmes is a tiny teenage whiz kid with a mystical shadow power that provides him with heightened powers of perception. Poor Holmes is also unable to control his tendency to blush. The first case the duo is tasked to solve hooks the reader effectively. A popular actress dies after giving a performance, with her teeth mysteriously disappearing before she drops dead in front of her audience. There are no witnesses to the crime, and Watson and Holmes have to piece together what happened as they interview the actresses patron and stumble across a creepy piece of jewelry.

Part of the fun of this manga for me was seeing the roles of Holmes and Watson swapped so effectively. Watson is worldly and sarcastic, taking the lead on the cases but having Holmes use his mystical powers to aid in the investigation. While Holmes is young and inexperienced, he’s still powerful and doesn’t hang back from taking initiative. Holmes’ shadow powers are illustrated effectively as his eyes turn into photo negative images when he calls on his shadow. Having mystical fight scenes take the place of more cerebral detection is only to be expected in a shonen version of Sherlock Holmes, but I found the entire volume entertaining. I’ll be on the lookout for the second volume.

Call for contributors

by 3 Comments

With autumn well underway and NYCC pretty well wrapped up, it’s time to do a little gussying up here at Manga Bookshelf! We’ve got a new full-time blogger on deck to join us shortly and we aren’t seeking more, but we’ve still got ample room for regular contributors.

Join us!

Got a great idea for a weekly or monthly column? Send us your pitch! Contact us with the following:

Your name
Your pitch
Links to 2 samples of similar writing you’ve done

Your pitch should include a theme for your column, a general outline for the column’s inaugural entry, how often you’d write it (weekly or monthly), and how you envision maintaining its theme over time. If your idea is a one-shot or short series of posts, please indicate that as well. We are particularly interested in columns that offer something different than what we do now, including types of comics we don’t currently cover or other aspects of Japanese or Korean pop culture, especially if these things can be tied in to comics (example: Cathy Yan’s Don’t Fear the Adaptation). Please allow at least four weeks for a response.

At this time, we are unable to offer monetary compensation for contributors, but we look forward to doing so in the future.

If you’re not a writer, but you’d like to support the site, click here to find out how!