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Pick of the Week: Lotsa Kodansha

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Take a look at the Manga Bookshelf bloggers’ picks from this week’s new releases!

SEAN: There’s any number of interesting titles due out this week (hurricane permitting), but the one that most catches my eye is Bloody Monday. First off, it’s from the brother/sister writing team responsible, under various pen names, for Drops of God, Getbackers, Kindaichi Case Files, Remote and Psycho Busters. Secondly, it’s an intense psychological techno-thriller with terrorists, computer viruses, and a lot of difficulty knowing who to trust. It might definitely appeal to the Death Note crowd who liked the manga’s tense back-and-forth plotting – or heck, even Die Hard fans, though there’s no obvious John McClane figure here. It’s also spawned 2 sequels, the last of which is still running in Japan.

DAVID: After the last few weeks of relative scarcity, it’s nice to see a diverse list, even if it isn’t a particularly bountiful one. For me, the highlight is the 13th volume of Hiroki Endo’s Eden: It’s an Endless World! This paranoid, post-apocalyptic drama almost always has something intriguing to offer, even when Endo strays too long in pet subplots that don’t seem entirely specific to the world he’s been building. I’m glad that Dark Horse continues to release this series, however slowly, though I always have to go back and refresh my memory of what happened during the last couple of volumes, because I’m an old man, and some of my brain cells go into retirement over an 18-month period. Of course, a new volume of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service would make me even happier.

KATE: I normally loathe manga based on video games, but I was pleasantly surprised by Hiro Mashima’s Monster Hunter Orage: it’s funny, fast-paced, and smartly illustrated. Mashima does a fine job of adapting the source material, translating game play into an actual narrative and not just a series of monster-fighting set-pieces. Oh, and Mashima creates two awesome female leads, both of whom are smart, sensible, and handy with weapons. (Not surprisingly, they find the strong but dumb-as-toast hero a source of amusement and frustration.) No, it won’t change your life, or challenge your conceptions about what shonen manga is, but it’s a perfect read for a subway commute or a rainy afternoon.

MICHELLE: I agree with Kate’s assessment of Monster Hunger Orage 100%, but rather than simply say “ditto” I will cast my vote for Warning! Whispers of Love, a new one-volume title from Digital Manga Publishing. I admit that I am judging this one almost solely on its unconventional cover, but that strategy worked well for me with I Give to You, so why not employ it a second time? The blurb over at DMP’s site suggests that the hijinks might get a little too zany for my tastes—one of the boys seems to have an ear-swabbing fetish—but I’m willing to give it a shot, at least.

MJ: I’m going to stray from the usual Midtown list this week and pick out a title that became available at Boston’s Comicopia last week, Kodansha Comics’ re-release of Until the Full Moon from mangaka Sanami Matoh. Having completely missed the original English release from Broccoli Books, I admit I’m quite eager to give it a whirl, if for no other reason than my undying love affair with its brand of old-school shoujo artwork. I would be content with simply looking at this manga, but I’m hoping to find it enjoyable to read as well. Absolutely my must-read comic for the week.

Readers, what looks good to you this week?

Bookshelf Briefs 8/29/11

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This week, Kate, David, MJ, & Michelle look at recent releases from Kodansha Comics, Viz Media, and Vertical, Inc.

Animal Land, Vol. 1 | By Makoto Raiku | Kodansha Comics – This odd little fable focuses on Monoko, a tanuki who discovers a human baby at the edge of a river. Monoko, herself an orphan, immediately identifies with Tarozo’s plight, and vows to raise him herself — a vow complicated by many factors, including an abundance of dangerous predators lurking just outside the tanukis’ village. Whether you’ll like Animal Land depends on how you feel about the tanukis, as they look like theme-park mascots with grotesquely oversized ears and china-doll faces. (I suppose we should be thankful that Makoto Raiku didn’t follow convention in super-sizing other parts of the tanukis’ anatomy, but still.) The tanukis’ behavior is just as outsized as their ears, steadily alternating between pratfalls and teary, anguished conversation, leaving little room for character development or new patterns of interaction. Younger readers won’t mind, but adults may find the tanukis’ odd appearance and frantic antics tiresome. – Katherine Dacey

Bokurano: Ours, Vol. 4 | By Mohiro Kitoh | Published by VIZ Media – Mangaka Mohiro Kitoh is beginning to tweak the established formula of Bokurano: Ours in some innovative ways. The presence of a pair of military observers (Seki and Tanaka) is making a big difference, for example, as they introduce more organization to what’s going on, resulting in some gatherings where the children interact with one another prior to someone being called for pilot duty. Too, it appears that two of the kids don’t actually have a binding contract to participate, which interjects an interesting complication to the story. (The kids assume this includes the lone fourth grader in their midst, but I somehow doubt she’ll be off the hook.) Lastly, the stakes are especially high for one of this volume’s pilots, who hopes to save a sick friend’s life with an organ donation, resulting in a cliffhanger that sent me to the SigIkki website for the resolution. Good stuff! – Michelle Smith

Oresama Teacher, Vol. 4 | By Izumi Tsubaki | Published by VIZ Media – I feel like I’m always unexpectedly learning something when I read Oresama Teacher. First, there was the informative sequence on how to foil attempts to tie you up, and now we learn techniques for dodging and deflecting blows as Mafuyu (in her mail guise, Natsuo) trains Hayasaka in the finer points of fighting so he’ll be prepared to square off against the members of a rival club who’re out to ambush the members of the Public Morals Club. Mafuyu is worried about how straightforward Hayasaka will fare in a fight, but comes to trust him and even realizes that, though gullible Hayasaka completely believes in and reveres two of her adopted personas, he also cares for her true self enough to put himself in jeopardy. With all the action and comedy, this isn’t really a romance manga, but I still think I may detect some feelings beginning to bloom… – Michelle Smith

Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, Vol. 10 | By Koji Kumeta | Kodansha Comics – There’s a lot to like about Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, from its crisp, confident artwork to its broad, equally confident characterization. But what’s really most impressive about this series is its ability to remain funny, volume after volume, while its format (and universe) remains unchanged. Nobody wearies of a gag manga faster than I do, but ten volumes in, I’m still laughing at Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei. Furthermore, volume ten is one of the series’ strongest so far. Jokes related to its then-new anime adaptation continue from the previous volume, enhancing (but not overwhelming) chapters revolving around subjects such as three-way standoffs, protecting “unnature,” entitlement, and “May sickness,” and even the volume’s most Japanese-specific jokes appear to translate effortlessly in the hands of new adapter Joshua Weeks. Still recommended. – MJ

Velveteen & Mandala | By Jiro Matsumoto | Vertical– If you read some of the cruder entries in Top Shelf’s AX anthology and found yourself saying, “I wish this was longer,” then Velveteen and Mandala is the book for you. Matsumoto pits dim, bickering schoolgirls against a horde of bemused zombies, throwing gobs of gross-out humor and precocious sexuality into the mix. Imagine a better-drawn Tokyo Zombie with female protagonists, and you’ll have the general idea. There’s certainly an audience for this sort of thing, but it’s equally certain that I’m not a member of that subset of comic fandom. To be honest, Velveteen and Mandala, with its indifferent plotting and feeble, familiar attempts at transgression tested my patience far more often than it rewarded it. Aside from some stylistic flourishes, there’s nothing here that you probably haven’t seen before, and it’s up to you whether you’re really eager to see it again. – David Welsh

Dorohedoro, Vol. 4

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By Q Hayashida. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Ikki. Released in North America by Viz.

It’s really amazing how much I still enjoy every page of this series, considering that there’s so little forward progression in it. Those who get frustrated by a lack of plot are going to get very annoyed very fast reading this volume, which contains a baseball game featuring our heroes, two of the villains, and various zombies… apparently because Hayashida felt like it, who knows? But the game is still a lot of fun.

That’s not to say there’s absolutely nothing happening here – there’s a ton going on. It’s just not immediately plot-oriented. Caiman has figured out by now that Nikaido is actually a sorcerer, and though conflicted, he’s trying not to let that destroy their friendship. Fujita discovers that he can get revenge on Caiman and Nikaido, who killed his partner (remember that opening scene in Vol. 1?) and goes out to do his best, along with tag-along Ebisu. Fujita’s on the cover this time, so seeing him get more to do makes sense, even though he still tends to be a bit of a sad sack who is there for bad things to happen to. Which makes him a good partner for Ebisu, come to think of it, as that’s what she’ there for as well.

Speaking of Ebisu, we continue to discover little bits about her past before getting attacked by Caiman. Turns out her magic is connected to lizard people, so she too could be the one who created Caiman… except that doesn’t appear to be the case. Her magic appears to be quite dangerous, taking over Noi and transforming her into a rampaging lizard woman as well, forcing Shin to take measures against her. Then they have to go find En’s partner in order to save her, in what might be the shippiest scene in the manga to date. Fans of Shin/Noi (of which I am one) will be delighted.

We also get some development of Risu, the guy walking around wearing Caiman’s face. But the big development here is Shin, whose backstory is given here. As one might expect, it is rather tragic and filled with blood and gore, but it does serve to underscore how determined Shin can get whenever he’s after something. It’s getting harder and harder to see who the good and bad guys are in this series… there’s just a bunch of guys doing mostly bad things.

It’s not a perfect volume by any means. The baseball game was fun, but does meander a lot. And the way that they got Noi to be attacked by Ebisu’s smoke, with an assistant coming along, tripping, and dumping it all over her, is the worst of sitcom cliches. Still, Caiman’s off to the Sorcerer’s World by himself now, no doubt because a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. I look forward to seeing what happens. Dorohedoro is a series that requires a lot of patience, but I feel that if you hang in there there’s a lot of reward to it.

Otomen Volume 11

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Otomen Volume 11 by Aya Kanno

I’d collected a fair amount of Otomen when I stopped feeling the need to keep preordering it. I like it, but the episodic nature of the book means that most of the volumes revolve around the same conflict – will Asuka’s secret talents for feminine pursuits like knitting and baking be revealed and destroy his facade of manliness? The 11th volume is pretty much the same, but it wasn’t very hard for me to pick up on what was going on after skipping several volumes and Otomen is consistently funny.

Asuka is on a class trip/feudal Japan reenactment when he and his friends find themselves stranded in the wilderness. Asuka’s enigmatic and tomboyish girlfriend Ryo promptly starts foraging, while Asuka decides to lift everybody’s spirits by constructing lovely origami flowers. Ryo gets stranded in the woods and ends up cheerfully and capably rescuing Tonomine, who comments to Asuka “She may be a girl…but she’s a true samurai.” Other episodes in this volume includes Asuka attending secret baking lessons for men and a showdown at school over Valentine’s chocolate between Asuka and “Pheromone Prince” Suzaku Oji, the school nurse. Kanno’s sense of humor really comes through in her character designs, as Oji is drawn with flowing hair and a ruffled shirt worn under his white labcoat. He makes pronouncements like “come to me, my kittens,” and all the teenage girls swoon.

Asuka’s better nature begins to make inroads against the strict gender roles enforced by his school, but things are about to take a turn for the worse when his mother comes back from overseas. My major complaint with this volume was that there wasn’t enough focus on Ryo and mangaka Juta Tachibana. A bonus story of “Love Chick” the manga Juta wrote based on Asuka and Ryo with their genders swapped was included in the back of the volume. This was fun to see, since Kanno drew it in a deliberately more simple and insipid style.

Review copy provided by the publisher

43 Old Cemetery Road, Books 1-3 by Karen and M. Sarah Klise

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43 Old Cemetery Road is a quirky illustrated series for children that tells its ghostly story using letters, newspaper clippings, drawings, et cetera. There are three books in the series so far—Dying to Meet You (2009), Over My Dead Body (2009), and Till Death Do Us Bark (2011)—with a fourth (The Phantom of the Post Office) due in May 2012.

Dying to Meet You
What with the illustrations and the fact that the story is told through correspondence rendered in a large font, Dying to Meet You is a very quick read. And yet, for all that, it’s got some nuance!

Ignatius B. Grumply is a famous children’s author who hasn’t written anything for twenty years. Seeking to overcome his writer’s block, he rents a Victorian house in Ghastly, Illinois and is decidedly miffed to discover a boy and his cat living there. The boy, Seymour Hope, has been left behind by his parents, the owners of the home, who are on a lecture tour of Europe. They’re paranormal experts, and had moved into Spence Mansion hoping to confirm the existence of its rumored spectral resident. When Seymour could see her, but they couldn’t, they became convinced that a) ghosts don’t exist and b) their son is delusional.

But Olive C. Spence, the ghost of the woman who originally built the house, is indeed real! She sets out to drive Ignatius away at first, but after an incident with a chandelier causes more injury than she had intended, she begins to feel sorry for him and decides to help him with his book. It turns out that all of them have been rejected in one form or another: Seymour by his parents, Olive by the publishers who would never give her graphic epistolary mysteries a chance, and Ignatius by the woman he loved and upon whom he squandered his fortune.

Olive encourages “selfish and crabby” Ignatius to feel and care about others again, and thus achieves a warm and fuzzy ending where each of them gets something they want while drawing together into their own little family. It’s quite sweet, really. About the only complaint I could make is that some of the punny names are not funny—Paige Turner, Frank N. Beans, Shirley U. Jest—but I did have to snicker at Fay Tality and her dog, Mort, so they’re not all clunkers.

Over My Dead Body
Life at 43 Old Cemetery Road has been great since Ignatius, Olive, and Seymour began collaborating on a series of ghost stories. When a letter from Dick Tater, head of the International Movement for the Safety & Protection of Our Kids & Youth, arrives, however, everything is turned upside down. Tater objects to their living arrangements, especially the fact that custody of eleven-year-old Seymour was seemingly transferred via a rental lease, and his investigation results in Ignatius being committed to an asylum and Seymour being sent to an orphanage until his opportunistic parents deign to claim him.

The majority of the book is comprised of letters to and from Olive as everyone ponders how to escape confinement and satisfy the customers who have prepaid for the next three installments of their story. Dick Tater does various nefarious things, like canceling Halloween and instructing libraries to burn books that meet with his disapproval, and the book has a very pro-reading, pro-free thinking vibe as a result.

The book also features the second “just go with it” moment of the series. I assume this is going to be a recurring thing. In the first book, readers had to “just go with” the stipulation that sales of the trio’s stories (at $3 a pop, if I recall rightly) were sufficient to raise the $250,000 Seymour needed to buy Spence Mansion from his parents. Here, Ignatius and Olive (a ghost, mind you) are able to adopt Seymour simply by proving his parents don’t love him.

To this I say, “Whatever.” I am willing to go with it because it results in (nicely illustrated) passages like this, which I confess made me a bit verklempt. (Best attempted after you remind yourself of Seymour’s last name.)

And so, in a sense, we end where we began… in a 32½-room house built by a woman who, in her lifetime, never married or had children… and rented by a man who never married and always thought he disliked children… and purchased by a boy whose parents abandoned him. And so, even though one member of the family might still get grumpy now and then… and another might become cranky when she misplaces her glasses… neither would ever, could ever, abandon Hope.

Sniff.

Till Death Do Us Bark
One day, a shaggy dog follows Seymour home from the library. He has always wanted a dog, and so he asks his new parents, Ignatius and Olive, if he can keep him. They have reservations, and insist that he first attempt to find the dog’s owner, since he has a collar and everything. Seymour soon learns that the dog formerly belonged to Noah Breth, a wealthy man who recently died and whose children (Kitty and Kanine) are bickering over their presumed inheritance. But he doesn’t tell his parents this.

I must say that I did not like this book as well as the others. I like that Seymour admits that his goal was to be a perfect son, but that very quickly he was keeping secrets and running away. What I don’t like was how he was so passionately dog crazy when his best friend up ’til now has been his cat, Shadow. He didn’t show much concern that Shadow had seemingly run away after the dog showed up. And Ignatius, who is allergic to cats, suddenly had a flare-up and pledged to “get rid” of the cat once it was found. This is not the way to endear me to your characters, Klise sisters.

Of course, everything works out fine in the end and Shadow is nearby and well. The Breth siblings, who have been following a series of limericks devised by their late father on the hunt for his fortune, are shamed into suddenly becoming nicer people. A rare coin that everyone’s been looking for turns out to be exactly where it was telegraphed to be at the beginning of the story.

As a result, more than the other books, this one feels like something only children would enjoy. I hope the upcoming fourth book represents a return to form.

Butterflies, Flowers Volume 8

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Butterflies, Flowers Volume 8 by Yuki Yoshihara

This is the final volume! I’ve enjoyed this series, which I tend to think of as “stealth josei” because even though it was released under the Shojo Beat imprint it skews a lot older. This series about a rich woman working in an office under the direction of a former servant to her family who she winds up dating might seem incredibly frivolous, but it ends up being enlivened by Yoshihara’s offbeat sense of humor and the caring exhibited in the relationship between Choko and Masayuki.

After dating for some time, Choko and Masayuki face the ultimate test when Choko goes on an arranged marriage meeting and Masayuki appears to be doing nothing to stop it. Of course he reveals his objections in a dramatic and hilariously crude manner, but will this odd couple be able to take the next step in their relationship? Choko resorts to hiding marriage registration papers around the office, trying to get Masayuki to sign the documents in a moment of distraction. When Masayuki finally comes around and asks her to marry him, he’s unable to call her by her first name because he’s so fully internalized their master/servant relationship. Choko wants a relationship of equals, and wants to move forward but Masayuki seems pathologically unable to see her as his equal. There isn’t really any doubt that the couple will get together, but despite all the weird master servant jokes, otaku Gundam references, and random crossdressers, there’s a certain level of sweetness present when Choko and Masayuki are able to move on from their roles as lady and servant.

I wish more series like Butterflies, Flowers would be published over here. I don’t mind plenty of high school romance shojo, but it is nice to have a little bit of variety in the settings of romance manga. I hope Viz licenses more Yoshihara manga because her quirky sensibility makes this series unique and weirdly endearing.

Review copy provided by the publisher

Saturday Spotlight: Stormy Sea

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It’s a tense weekend here on the east coast, but an impending storm provides a great excuse to stay inside and read manga, or at least read about manga, as long as the electricity holds. For my part, stormy seas put me in mind of Daisuke Igarashi’s melancholy beauty, Children of the Sea, published here in English on Viz’s SigIKKI imprint.

I’m a big fan of Children of the Sea, my first impressions of which can be found here, but my favorite discussion of the series’ first volume came from our own Kate Dacey, whose review is consistently the first thing to spring to my mind whenever I think of this title.

From her review:

The ocean occupies a special place in the artistic imagination, inspiring a mixture of awe, terror, and fascination. Watson and the Shark, for example, depicts the ocean as the mouth of Hell, a dark void filled with demons and tormented souls, while The Birth of Venus offers a more benign vision of the ocean as a life-giving force. In Children of the Sea, Daisuke Igarashi imagines the ocean as a giant portal between the terrestrial world and deep space, as is suggested by a refrain that echoes throughout volume one:

From the star.
From the stars.
The sea is the mother.
The people are the breasts
Heaven is the playground.

If you happened to miss this the first time around, do yourself a favor and check out this week’s Saturday Spotlight: Children of the Sea, Vol. 1 at The Manga Critic!

BL Bookrack: August 2011

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Welcome to the August installment of BL Bookrack! This month, MJand Michelle take a look at three offerings from Digital Manga Publishing’s Juné imprint, Butterfly of the Distant Day, I Give to You, and A Liar in Love.

Butterfly of the Distant Day | By Tooko Miyagi | Published by Digital Manga Publishing | Rated Mature (18+) – As a fan of Miyagi’s Il Gatto Sul G., I was looking forward to reading this spin-off/sequel, in which Riya Narukawa, one of the main characters of Il Gatto and a gifted violinist now studying in New York, accompanies his pianist cousin Saki to the swanky Berkshires to perform in a concert for young musicians. There, Saki unexpectedly reunites with Irving Russell, a British man with whom he’d had a two-year fling, and ends up renewing this arrangement in an effort to prevent Irving from seducing Riya, which Saki has somehow convinced himself is bound to happen.

Those looking for more about Riya and his boyfriend Atsushi will likely be disappointed; aside from the opening chapter, Atsushi doesn’t appear at all, and Riya is mostly used in a supporting capacity. Instead, the story focuses on Saki and Irving. As Saki falls back into the same pattern of sleeping with Irving in the evening and being dismayed by his detachment the following day, he remembers more about their time together—how it began, how it ended, how he treated Irving—and eventually comes to realize that it was his own insecurity about Irving’s first love that made him defensively insist that what was going on in the present was merely a fling. Afraid to be hurt, Saki had denied the possibility that something real could grow between them and had instead kept Irving at arm’s length while pursuing a series of brief relationships with women. Now that he’s finally realized what Irving means to him, he wants to break this pattern.

There’s a lot to like about Butterfly of the Distant Day. First and foremost, the issues keeping the two leads apart are complicated, leading to the expression of some fairly complex emotions. Secondly, both of these men are adults, so we’re not dealing with a first-love BL scenario but rather a situation where one of the leads has already loved and lost. Miyagi-sensei has also done her homework where music is concerned—Riya and Saki are performing legitimately impressive compositions for the concert (notably a Fauré sonata for violin and piano) and when possible solo options for Saki are discussed, all of the composers mentioned genuinely did write suitable pieces for that instrument. The only glaring error occurs in a key signature; it’s too bad no one told Miyagi about the order of flats!

I did find it a little hard to get into at first and, looking back, the opening chapter with Riya and Atsushi doesn’t really fit with the rest, but overall, it’s quite an enjoyable one-shot.

-Review by Michelle Smith

I Give To You | By Maki Ebishi | Published by Juné | Rated YA (16+) | Buy at Akadot – I have a confession to make: I totally judged I Give to You by its cover. I didn’t know anything at all about the story, but the cover was so interesting and so unlike typical BL covers that I had to check it out. One of the characters has a kitty snoozing on his lap, for example, and there are a couple of cat toys on a nearby coffee table. How could I resist?!

In this case, it turns out that the atypical cover was indicative of the contents, because I Give to You eschews common BL artistic and story tropes. Instead, with its stark, high-contrast art and moody yakuza themes, it almost reads like a seinen series.

Ryoichi Iinuma is on the run. He cosigned a loan for his lover, Hiroshi, and when Hiroshi defaults, the debt collectors come looking for Ryoichi. He ends up at a tea house run by Ren Shirakawa, who allows him to work for room and board. Gradually, Ryoichi begins to learn more about Ren and his helper, Ritsu, like the fact that they’re both former yakuza who are shunned by their neighbors. In fact, the only customer the tea house has is a former detective who drops by periodically to keep an eye on the proprietors.

Ryoichi is openly gay, and that fact plays a big part in his choice to accept Ren, since he has been ostracized himself both for his sexual preference and his indebted status. He takes it upon himself to try to rehabilitate Ren’s reputation in the neighborhood, and though he soon recognizes that his feelings for Ren (whom he believes is straight) are romantic in nature, only gradually does he learn exactly why Ren is purposefully subjecting himself to the scorn and animosity of “civilians.”

I Give to You nicely balances dark and light elements—the story of Ren’s past, for example, is full of despair, but Ryoichi’s optimistic personality helps steer the story in a hopeful direction. (The occasional comic relief provided by the kitty helps, too.) One negative is that some lines of dialogue were difficult to comprehend; this may be a translation issue. On the positive side, I’ve never seen any other BL story depict the moment in childhood in which its protagonist realized he was different from others, and I loved how this experience enables Ryoichi to deflect Ren’s attempts to send him away to pursue a normal life.

Ultimately, I Give to You is unique, interesting, and definitely recommended.

-Review by Michelle Smith

A Liar in Love | By Kiyo Ueda | Published by Juné | Rated Mature (18+) | Buy at Akadot – When smooth operator Tatsuki gets a call from his younger brother seeking dating advice for a gay coworker, things seem pretty simple. Accustomed to letting his looks do all the heavy lifting, Tatsuki falls into his usual pickup routine, ready to love ’em and leave ’em as always. So what’s a jaded player to do when he finds he’s fallen in love?

Reading that description (or the even more generic official blurb) A Liar in Love sounds like nothing special, and in terms of premise, it’s not. Things progress exactly as you might imagine. Tatsuki reacts predictably to the discovery of his own feelings, pushing his lover further away, though there’s never even a moment’s doubt that we’ll eventually get our “happily ever after.” The story’s characters, too, are more of the same. There’s no shortage of beautiful playboy seme or quiet uke in BL manga, and mangaka Kiyo Ueda doesn’t stray much from type. What she does do, however, is bring enough real nuance into those types to remind us that they’re actually based on real, honest-to-goodness people, whom we probably all know or can relate to on some level.

Tatsuki is a typical playboy, confident in his ability to pick up whomever he wants, and dismissive of concepts like love and commitment. He makes his living translating romance novels, and seems content to live as someone who constantly pursues romance without ever dealing with the real-life stuff that follows.

Miura, his target, initially appears to be the typical shy, gullible uke and little else, but as the story goes on, he displays real maturity and insight, particularly concerning Tatsuki’s well-meaning younger brother who, at one point, imagines himself in love with Miura, though he’s never felt attracted to men. It’s a scene between Miura and the brother, in fact, where Ueda begins to display real brilliance, as she carefully exposes the brother’s feelings–sentiments that would pass for true love in most BL manga–for what they actually are: a childish crush with no meaningful connection to romantic love or grown-up sexuality.

Ultimately, A Liar in Love is a kind of rare gem, in that it manages to be a genuinely thoughtful, mature romance between grown-ups with jobs, while completely adhering to established BL tropes, and all in a single volume. Perhaps it actually is possible to please everyone?

-Review by MJ

Review copies provided by the publisher.

Disclosure: MJ is currently under contract with Digital Manga Publishing’s Digital Manga Guild, as necessitated for her ongoing report Inside the DMG. Any compensation earned by MJin her role as an editor with the DMG will be donated to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

Anesthesiologist Hana, Vol. 1

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By Kappei Matsumoto and Hakua Nakao. Released in Japan by Futabasha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Manga Action. Released in the United States by Futabasha on the JManga website.

Sometimes you buy a manga for a striking cover, or because of good word of mouth, or because you enjoyed the works of the author previously. And sometimes you simply have to buy a manga because of the title. That was definitely the case with Anesthesiologist Hana, one of Futabasha’s seinen offerings that, true to its word, is the story of a young doctor named Hana and her days working at a local hospital as an anesthesiologist.

While the precise genre of anesthesia manga may be unfamiliar, it becomes apparent on reading this manga that it’s the latest in a long line of workplace seinen, the sort of story that shows our everyman (or woman, in this case) hero and their struggles as they strive to do their thankless job. There are times when it seems to get overwhelming, or they think about quitting, but that never happens, because they grow to understand the importance of their job, and learn to take happiness in it.

And that’s pretty much what you get here. Hana is a young doctor who’s been with her hospital for about three years, and has come to learn the thanklessness that comes with it. In the first chapter, she even tries to resign, though can’t quite follow through with it. The surgeons she works in the operating room with are either obnoxious jerks who call her incompetent or sexist boors who try to cop a feel. The hours are mind-numbing and they’re constantly short-staffed. She rarely sees the sky, eats cup ramen for most meals, and her love life is zero. Most importantly, the job is thankless; everyone loves the surgeons who perform the operation, or doctors in other fields such as ophthalmology, but an anesthesiologist is only singled out if something goes wrong and a patient is lost.

Nevertheless, Hana manages to keep herself going – mostly. She has a grumpy, cynical older sister friend and a bubbly, more naive younger sister type who are her two fellow female anesthesiologists. Her boss is stern but overall a good-hearted guy. And one of her fellow doctors, though a bit weird and suspicious, is even quite handsome – and seems to notice the good qualities in her, possibly as he feels he’s lost them in himself (he has a somewhat sad backstory). The chapters are mostly episodic, but as the series goes on we do see the cast all banding together to help each other out, much like any good workplace.

There is a lot of focus on the actual ins and outs of anesthesia. Sometimes a bit too much – the manga can get a little dry at times, and it has to be careful not to look like a textbook, a la Stone Bridge Press’s ‘Manga Guide To’ series. I have no medical education, so have no idea how accurate everything really is. But it seems accurate. This isn’t a fantasy comic book world where you can always tell the psychics by their nosebleeds. The manga goes into great detail about exactly hat Hana has to do and watch out for, and the inherent dangers involved. There’s even a chapter discussing drug use, and how it’s not just using drugs properly for anesthesia, but keeping an eye out for drug takers among the staff that can be a problem.

Despite being a seinen title, there’s surprisingly little fanservice – Hana takes a shower in the first chapter, and is quite busty, though not overly so; she’s also groped a couple of times. The author’s notes make it clear that they had an original idea of making the hero a male doctor, but the editors told them to change it to a busty female. Not unsurprising; this kind of story, with all its exposition, earns more charm points by having a cute young woman as our viewpoint character.

Overall, I enjoyed this first volume. It can be very dry at times, and is never going to be incredibly exciting. But I feel I’ve learned an awful lot about anesthesiology, and I want to know more about Hana and her ongoing adventures (is she going to hook up with sexy doctor? Or is he just a mentor figure?). If you like workplace medical shows, give this a try.

Cage of Eden, Vol. 1

by

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a trans-Pacific flight encounters turbulence, and before any of the passengers can shout “J.J. Abrams!” — or “William Golding!” for that matter — the plane crash-lands an uninhabited tropical island, far from civilization’s reach. In some variations of the story, the island itself poses the greatest danger to survivors, harboring monsters or malevolent spirits. In other versions, the survivors’ own fear and narcissism proves more deadly than any jungle-dwelling creatures, as the rude wilderness strips away the survivors’ veneer of humanity.

In Cage of Eden, Yoshinobu Yamada combines these two survival narratives to tell the story of a high school holiday gone horribly wrong. Cage’s teen heroes crash-land in a prehistoric forest populated by long-extinct animals: saber-toothed tigers, horse-sized birds. These big, hungry predators aren’t the only threat to the students’ safety, however. Yarai, the class delinquent, seizes the opportunity to act on his darkest impulses, terrorizing his peers and the doomed flight’s captain. Only Akira, a small, self-described loser, and Mariya, a bespectacled, anti-social genius, have the skills and the smarts to outwit both enemies.

Though the story unfurls at a good clip, the execution is a little creaky. The opening chapter is a choppy information dump, as Yamada introduces the principal characters, delineates their relationships, and reveals the purpose of their plane trip. Once on the island, Mariya’s computer proves shockingly durable — it boots up without protest, despite plunging 35,000 feet — and helpfully equipped with a searchable database of extinct animals. (“Even without internet, I can still access program files,” Mariya solemnly informs an incredulous Akira.) The characters speak fluent exposition, frequently explaining things to one another that are readily obvious from Yamada’s crisply executed drawings. Worse still, the intelligent dialogue is reserved for the male characters; the few female characters’ primary role is to be menaced, rescued, and ogled, though not necessarily in that order.

However obvious the script or ubiquitous the cheesecake — and yes, the fanservice is executed with all the subtlety of a tap-dancing hippopotamus — Cage of Eden has a cheerful, B-movie vibe that’s hard to resist. The monsters are rendered in loving detail, down to their sinews and feathers and claws; as they tear across the page, it’s not hard to imagine how terrified the characters must be, or how fast they need to run in order to escape. The setting, too, is a boon, offering Yamada numerous places to conceal a dangerous animal or booby trap. Even the characters are effective. Though drawn in broad strokes, Akira is a sympathetic lead; he’s prone to self-doubt after years of being a bench warmer, an academic failure, a mama’s boy, and a second banana to the most popular student in his class. That the island provides him a chance to prove his worth isn’t surprising — that’s de rigeur for the genre — but Akira’s mixture of humility and bravery is refreshing, helping distract the reader from the absurdity of his action-movie heroics.

I won’t make any grand claims for Cage of Eden: on many levels, it’s dumber than a peroxide blonde, with characters doing and saying things that defy common sense. Yet Yoshinobu Yamada demonstrates a genuine flair for writing popcorn-movie manga, populating the island with scary-looking monsters and staging thrilling action sequences that temporarily erase the memory of the clumsy dialogue and panty shots. Cage of Eden is the perfect beach read for the final days of August: it’s fun and fast-paced, placing few demands on the sun-addled reader.

CAGE OF EDEN, VOL. 1 • BY YOSHINOBU YAMADA • KODANSHA COMICS USA • 200 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)