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Fruits Basket MMF: Tuesday links

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As I was contemplating the engrossing qualities of Momiji Sohma, Sean (A Case Suitable for Treatment) Gaffney was examining my other favorite member of that cursed clan, Shigure:

He’s the character I keep coming back to even now, the little thorn in the side of the entire storyline, trying to free people from the bonds they have with their God by cutting into their flesh until they squirm free in their agony. He’s a manipulator, and you’d swear he finds people’s emotional pain amusing. The anime, sadly, never got to the point in the story where this really comes out, so we mostly just see him there as the goofy ‘yay, high school girls!’ guy who occasionally gives Tohru sage advice. No one who finishes the manga is left with that impression.

And over at Manga Power, Aaron makes a point I can heartily second:

It’s examples like this that remind me why I read Manga when I’m feeling bummed out because I have had to suffer through some fan service harem nonsense or some blood drenched ultra violence or I find myself raging against the heavens as to why we got nine(!!) volumes of Black Bird. I pick this series up again and again my faith in Manga is restored.

Again, thanks to everyone who’s linked to or tweeted about this iteration of the Manga Moveable Feast! If you’ve got a link you’d like to share, email me at DavidPWelsh at Yahoo dot Com or post a link in the comments.

Backstage Prince 1-2 as viewed on VIZmanga.com

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One of the more exciting manga-related announcements to come out of San Diego Comic-Con was the debut of VIZ’s new online manga portal, which syncs user accounts between the web browser and various supported devices. This is great news for me: since I don’t own any of those supported devices, I’ve been hoping a site like this would come along.

Of the assortment of shoujo, shounen, and seinen series available on the site, the two-volume Backstage Prince by Kanoko Sakurakoji—whose smutty supernatural series Black Bird is currently being published by VIZ—caught my eye, and being both short and something I didn’t already own in print, seemed like the perfect vehicle through which to test out the VIZmanga interface. (For MJ’s thorough report on both the VIZ and Square Enix online initiatives, click here.)

I had an utterly hassle-free experience creating an account and browsing the manga available on the site. There are two options for paying for one’s purchases: Paypal and Amazon. Since most people already have payment information saved in at least one of these places, this makes for a convenient checkout experience. My one complaint is that I had to go through the payment process separately for each volume, which I’m sure would get really annoying if one were buying more than just two volumes. It would be nice if there were an “add to cart” function so multiple volumes could be purchased simultaneously.

The web viewer requires no software installations and defaults to a two-page layout in a size I’d describe as “mostly readable.” To resize to full screen (“perfectly readable”) or to set a bookmark, users must hover their mouse pointer over the top of the image until a taskbar appears. (I discovered this by accident, and would recommend that VIZ make the option much clearer somehow.) When you set a bookmark and return to the manga later, you’re still taken to the beginning initially, but clicking on the bookmark icon by the progress bar underneath the viewer will quickly take you where you want to go. Aside from the taskbar hiccup, navigation is intuitive and easy.

Moving on to Backstage Prince itself!

Akari is a thoroughly ordinary girl with no interest in kabuki, but when she accidentally bruises the distinguished son of a famous kabuki family, she agrees to become his assistant until he heals up. Ryusei Horiuchi is bad around people—his only friend is his cat, Mr. Ken—but gradually warms up to Akari, who does not approach him with expectations only to be disappointed when he turns out to be so stiff and unfriendly. They’re a couple by the end of the first chapter.

Various challenges to their relationship appear in subsequent chapters. A pretty costar for Ryusei, possessive fangirls, Ryusei’s disapproving father… Most disruptive is Naoki, a kabuki understudy who finds it extremely easy to undermine Akari and Ryusei’s confidence in their relationship, so is always inspiring angst and insecurity in the former and anger and jealousy in the latter. All of this opposition is supposed to be making them a stronger couple, but if you think it grows tiresome to read, you are correct!

On the surface, Backstage Prince is a lot more tame than Black Bird. Akari isn’t sought after by demons who want to devour and/or ravish her and Ryusei isn’t controlling or purposefully cruel to her, but the series is still guilty of some backwards gender politics, and perhaps in an even more insidious manner.

You see, Ryusei needs Akari in order to do his job well. Whenever he gets stressed out from dealing with all those people, he rushes back to his dressing room to be with Akari, with whom he is able to relax. This might not sound so bad, but the end result is that he expects her to be there all the time while he is working. And she’s apparently just sitting there, staring into space, waiting for her man to come and give her purpose, because at one point her grades take a nosedive (any sensible girl would at least use the time to study!) and she’s dismissive of her parents’ concern. Akari quite literally has no goals in her life other than being near Ryusei. I find this far more depressing than romantic.

The bottom line: if you’re open to the idea of reading manga online, VIZ’s new site provides a clean, simple, and legal way to do so. I can definitely see myself using the site again in the future and recommend it without reservation. But maybe you should read something other than Backstage Prince.

Fruits Basket MMF: The saddest Sohma

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Natsuki Takaya introduces a whole lot of Sohmas over the course of Fruits Basket (Tokyopop). They come in all different emotional flavors – vulnerable, secretive, courtly, angry, bubbly, bratty, withdrawn, demented, you name it. Takaya gives them all a chance to move the reader, and they all pretty much fulfill that promise. There is one, however, who almost always broke my heart, mostly because he was so damned sneaky about it.

Momiji Sohma represents the rabbit in the Chinese Zodiac. Instead of going with the animal’s timidity, Takaya gives Momiji the rabbit’s bounciness. He’s the oldest child of a Japanese father and a German mother, so his speech patterns can sometimes seem a little formal, even precious. He’s older than he appears, a quality he uses to the irritation of his male cousins. When we first meet him, he’s all hoppity and adorable, landing gleefully in Tohru’s loving, motherly embrace. Like most wise-beyond-their-years cutie pies, there’s something a little off about Momiji, something a little creepy.

Of course, every character in Fruits Basket is a little off, a little creepy. They have good reason to be. And while most of the narrative is dedicated to revealing those reasons, Momiji’s reveal is the first, best example of Takaya’s sucker punch. “You think you’re looking at something cute, something maybe even cuter because it’s a little bit sad? I will give you sad.”

So the fluffy little bunny not only witnessed his mother’s mental disintegration and purposeful abandonment, he subjects himself to reminders of it as often as he can. This isn’t because Momiji is a masochist; it’s because he’s an optimist. Like Tohru, he believes that things can be fixed and connections can be restored as surely as they can be broken and severed. It’s not for nothing that, when Tohru is threatened, Momiji is right there by her side. They’re kindred spirits, and they’re both tougher than their exteriors and sweet natures would suggest.

For me, Momiji is the character who best embodies the truest nature of Fruits Basket: pretty on the surface but almost unbearably damaged beneath that, yet still possessed of the resources to make things work out in the end. I love a lot of the Sohmas for their sadness and their strength, but Momiji is my very favorite.

 

MMF: Fruits Basket – Shigure

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“I want to spoil her rotten. I want to trample her to a pulp.”

When it came time for the Manga Moveable Feast to do Fruits Basket, I pretty much knew I would be writing about Shigure Sohma. He’s the character I keep coming back to even now, the little thorn in the side of the entire storyline, trying to free people from the bonds they have with their God by cutting into their flesh until they squirm free in their agony. He’s a manipulator, and you’d swear he finds people’s emotional pain amusing. The anime, sadly, never got to the point in the story where this really comes out, so we mostly just see him there as the goofy ‘yay, high school girls!’ guy who occasionally gives Tohru sage advice. No one who finishes the manga is left with that impression.

Hatori, who is one of the people who probably understand Shigure best, and he once noted that Shigure needed to be careful in all his manipulations that he didn’t break anyone. Which, in many ways, is what Shigure *is* trying to do. He’s trying to break the curse, even if it’s not directly – trying to get it to snap and crumble away from Akito. And well, if that means breaking other people, then so be it – at least they’ll have someone around to pick up the pieces. Right, Rin? (Chapter 107, which implies Shigure was aware of what Akito did to Rin and let it happen in order to prove a rather sadistic point, is probably his worst moment.)

Speaking of that chapter, Shigure and Rin discuss the curse, and note that it should break within their lifetimes. But that’s not good enough for Tohru, who is painfully aware of what Kyo’s fate is to be – and how easily he seems to accept it. After briefly running off, Shigure goes to get her – and delivers another stunning speech, clearly intended to push all of Tohru’s buttons and weak spots. It’s quite an interesting contrast to earlier volumes, where Shigure can be seen cheering Tohru up or giving her a gentle push in the right direction with a few kind words.

But if Tohru wants to save Kyo, time *is* running out, and Shigure can’t simply sit by and watch her stress out over whether Kyo is pushing her mother’s memory out of her life. He’s mean – talking about how the curse *is* a curse, and not just some cute ‘we turn into animals!’ thing. All the Zodiac feel horrible about it, and Kyo is, as Shigure notes, a reminder that it could be worse – they could be him. Tohru, notably, stops Shigure’s monologue with a hand outraised and her head down – she can’t bear to hear his words anymore. I was reminded of the way she stopped Akito from abusing Yuki very early in the series, when she and Akito first met. It’s probably my favorite Shigure scene in the series.

Of course, it’s not just about Tohru. All of Shigure’s actions, everything we see him set up throughout the book, is designed to drive people away from their God and break the curse – so that he can have Akito all to himself. Shigure is a very possessive lover, and does not take kindly to having to share. It’s quite telling that the only time we really see him filled with hatred for anyone, it’s for Kureno – the man who is currently closest to Akito. And so he pushes at Akito – harder than he does anyone else, really – and watches as she does break. There’s only one moment where I think Shigure wonders if he went too far – he asks, after Tohru falls from the cliff, whether Akito pushed her – but it all works out well in the end.

This is the odd thing about the series. Everything seems to work out well in the end. Shigure never apologizes for anything he does, but I think in his mind he doesn’t *have* to – after all, everyone ended up happy. The curse is broken. Tohru wasn’t seriously crippled and is now with Kyo. Hatori has gotten over his first love and is opening up to Mayuko. Rin has chosen to embrace Haru and stop trying to ‘protect’ him by shoving him away. Same with Hiro and his relationship with Kisa.

In a way, I’m strangely reminded of Usagi from Sailor Moon. I once discussed the Outer Senshi Haruka and Michiru with my friend John, who has mixed feelings about the two of them. In the real world, the two outers would be right – Usagi’s idealism and super purity would be ripe for abuse, and it’s sensible to be pragmatic like the two of them. But they fail to realize that they aren’t in the real world, they’re in Usagi’s manga, and she’s the star. Therefore she is always right, and they are forever proven wrong. Likewise, Shigure’s actions don’t seem wrong to him at all. I’m sure if anyone tried to call him on it, he’d note how happy everyone is after the end of the series.

That said, we do occasionally see stabs of regret. Shigure notes early on that he is ‘the filthiest’ of the Zodiac, and I think knows that his relationship with Akito – even post-curse – is not a healthy one, but doesn’t particularly care enough. He once wondered what would have changed if he’d dreamed about Tohru. Leaving aside the horror that fills me if I imagine Shigure with Tohru, I think that it’s one of those hypothetical questions that will never get a true answer. So much of what Shigure is – everything that drives him – stems from that dream of Akito, and his love of Akito, and his need to possess Akito. Perhaps, now that he has everything he wants, he can find the time to get in touch with the nice young man who gave Tohru advice on how to deal with multiple problems.

Fruits Basket MMF: Monday links

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At Comic Attack, Kristin Bomba delivers a thoughtful look at the roles of Tohru Honda and Akito Sohma for the Fruits Basket Manga Moveable Feast:

I decided, rather than go all fangirl all over the place (which I could do, trust me, for HOURS), that I would take a more serious approach to the series. One of the things that really fascinated me about Fruits Basket was the relationship between Akito and Tohru, separately and together (meaning their literal relationship with each other, and how they otherwise affect each other throughout the story). While Tohru is very easy to read, Akito is a bit more complicated to understand.

Tons of ink has been spilled on compare-and-contrast between a certain boy wizard and another who apparently must not be named, and I think there’s a similar dynamic to be examined between Tohru and Akito, so thanks to Kristin for digging into that territory!

And thanks to everyone who’s thrown some links this way, like Johanna Draper Carlson of Manga Worth Reading, who has already contributed quite a bit to critical discourse on the subject of Fruits Basket.

Feel free to send me your own links via email to DavidPWelsh at Yahoo dot Com, or post them in the comments here. And thanks for reading!

 

Pick of the Week: Boys, Girls, & Ghosts

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It’s a slow but not quite dismal week at Midtown Comics. Check out the Manga Bookshelf bloggers’ picks below!

DAVID: It’s a narrow but interesting selection at Midtown Comics. In one of my experiments in crowd-sourcing, I ended up pre-ordering Kikuko Kihuya’s Entangled Circumstances, which will consequently earn my Pick of the Week status. I admit that I’m shallow enough that part of this was because I really found the cover design to be striking. It’s also about grown-ups with jobs, which makes my heart flutter, though the protagonists also share a past of some degree of awkwardness tracking back to their university days. I’m really just that easy to please, though: make it look nifty, and make your protagonists old enough to drink or sign a lease.

KATE: Them’s some slim pickings at Midtown Comics this week! But if I had to pick something from the list, I’d choose the sixth and final volume of Time and Again (Yen Press). I admit that I found the first few volumes a bumpy ride, as the script abounded in slangy phrases and anachronistic jokes that detracted from the spooky atmosphere. By volume three, however, author JiUn Yun had a better handle on the material, and the series began to evolve into something more interesting: a character study about a troubled young exorcist. The final volume explores the family curse that doomed Baek-On to a life of lonely wandering, allowing us to fully appreciate the origins of his prickly, detached personality. Oh, and that flashback? It’s a heck of a ghost story, too.

MICHELLE: You’re not kidding about the paucity of options on Midtown’s list! Still, like David, I find myself intrigued by the new batch of DMP releases. Entangled Circumstances has the prettiest cover, it’s true, but some of the others fare pretty well, too, like This Night’s Everything, which definitely doesn’t look like your typical BL. It also involves grown up with jobs—apparently a politician and his bodyguard who coldly handles dirty work—and sounds like it has potential to be an interesting story.

SEAN: I am going to rebel against the Midtown list, as they are apparently involved in some giant Kodansha boycott or something, and make my pick the thirtieth volume of Ken Akamatsu’s Negima!, which Diamond will be shipping to all non-Midtown stores this week. The manga has been in its ‘Magical World’ for about 10 volumes now, and things are finally getting to a big action-packed climax, which will take several volumes and is still ongoing as of this writing. This is the start of it, where Negi finds out the truth about his mother’s so-called treachery and the enemy makes their move against his students. Also, I believe this volume is low on fanservice, so it’s a great one to pick up if you dislike that aspect of it.

MJ: Since Kate’s already put the spotlight on what would have been my pick from Midtown, the final volume of JiUn Yun’s Time and Again, I’ll follow Sean’s lead and go rebel against the list by naming volume eleven of Peach Pit’s Shugo Chara! from Kodansha Comics, which by all appearances should be arriving this week, but isn’t. Shugo Chara! is a long-time favorite of mine, thanks to its feisty, deeply-conflicted heroine, her idiosyncratic team of friends, heart-pounding tween-fantasy romance, adorable artwork, and identity-searching themes that resonate more personally with this forty-something reader than they probably should. This is the final volume of the original series, with volume 12 picking up the published chapters of its sequel, Shugo Chara! Encore!, thankfully continued by Kodansha Comics after being pulled from Del Rey Manga. So if you’ve never tried this thoughtful magical-girl series, this is the time to start!

Readers, what looks good to you this week?

Bookshelf Briefs 7/24/11

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This week, Michelle, MJ, Kate, & Sean check out recent releases from Kodansha Comics, Viz Media, Seven Seas, & Vertical, Inc.

Dengeki Daisy Vol. 5 | By Kyousuke Motomi | Published by Viz –I cannot help but compare the cover of this volume of Dengeki Daisy to those of Black Bird, which runs in the same magazine in Japan. Black Bird’s covers always reminded me of sexual assault, with inappropriately placed blood and a terrified heroine. Dengeki Daisy also features a somewhat bloody hero clutching his heroine, but the image here is meant to invoke protection, and she isn’t frightened of him at all. I find that much better. As for the story itself, the plot continues to get more and more dangerous, as Tasuku is even briefly hospitalized. The enemy is trying to confront Teru psychologically, and it’s to her credit that she’s keeping it together as much as she is. Meanwhile, she and Tasuku are still hiding things from each other about her knowledge of Daisy, and are finding it increasingly hard to deal with their burgeoning feelings. Tense, gripping stuff, this series is a real page-turner.– Sean Gaffney

Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit, Vol. 7 | By Motoro Mase | Viz Media – Every volume of Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit follows the same template: Motoro Mase introduces the victim, then shows us how he or she copes with the news of his impending death. Though a few victims have violently resisted their fates, almost all the stories have an uplifting ending in which the victim reaches out to an estranged relative, apologizes to a friend for callous behavior, or gives a final performance. I think these stories are meant to underscore how unjust the National Welfare Act really is, but the cumulative effect induces numbness, not outrage. Death messenger Fujimoto’s own journey to conscientious objection is unfolding at such a slow pace that it’s hard to know if he’ll ever have the courage to resist his charge. And with no one actively fighting the government, Ikigami is rapidly devolving into an unpleasant hybrid of Afterschool Special and snuff film. In a word: grim. -Katherine Dacey>

RIN-NE, Vol. 6 | By Rumiko Takahashi | Published by VIZ Media – Even though RIN-NE is now up to its sixth volume, nothing has really changed much. (Sort of) shinigami Rinne is still stingy and still besotted by perpetually calm classmate Sakura Mamiya, who assists him in aiding spirits to pass on. The addition of a female shinigami with the hots for Rinne (Ageha) and the continued presence of incompetent exorcist Jumonji (with the hots for Sakura) do little except fuel occasional episodic diversions, such as when Jumonji is tricked into cursing Rinne. Storylines are usually wrapped up within three or four chapters, with few lasting repercussions aside from a slowly growing cast of recurring characters. Speaking of which, I am seriously weary of Sabato, Rinne’s irresponsible dad, whose deceitful ways just bring more misfortune upon our hero. It’s probably expecting too much to hope for his comeuppance to happen any time soon, alas. – Michelle Smith

Shugo Chara!, Vol. 11 | By Peach-Pit | Published by Kodansha Comics – Three of Amu’s Guardian Characters have disappeared and, led by the fourth in an effort to find them, she embarks upon a journey along the wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey (not to mention sparkly) “road of stars,” catching glimpses of various characters with whom she interacted over the course of the series—friend and foe alike—who are all now working hard and having fun. What would be a warm and fuzzy conclusion is marred slightly by the fact that the mystery of the Embryo is never explained and one of Amu’s friends never divulges an important secret, but maybe these things will be rectified in the final volume, which “explores the side stories of the other characters.” My advice is to try not to think too hard about the dangling plot threads and just enjoy the good-hearted vibe of this delightful magical girl series. – Michelle Smith

Toradora! Vol. 2 | By Yuyuko Takemiya and Zekkyo | Published by Seven Seas –Memo to the manga artist for Suzumiya Haruhi: take a few lessons from Toradora’s adaptation. The series finishes up Vol. 1 of the light novels here and starts Vol. 2, and manages to keep the romantic comedy aspects going without it ever becoming tiresome. Taiga can be incredibly overbearing, but we see a lot more of her softer side than most manga tsunderes, and her facial expressions make this worth the purchase price alone. The artist knows when to do exaggeration and when to keep it real, fortunately. As for the plot, well, after the worst love confession I’ve seen in a long time, Taiga and Ryuuji seem to be back to Square One. But they’re not giving up, not even as a new girl arrives on the scene to make everything much worse. A fun, breezy read for those who like comedic romance hijinks and don’t mind tsunderes.– Sean Gaffney

Twin Spica, Vol. 8 | Kou Yaginuma | Vertical, Inc. – I often worry that I don’t have enough new to say about continuing volumes of Twin Spica, not because there is little worth noting, but because it so faithfully maintains its high quality over the course of its run that it’s hard to keep topping my own praise. The truth is, no matter how much I’ve raved about any particular volume, each new installment renews those feelings ten-fold, as mangaka Kou Yaginuma continues to dig deeper into the minds and hearts of his young student astronauts. This volume is largely about partings (or the prospect thereof) and left me teary at several points, while also steadily building up my anticipation and imagination as I ponder what’s in store for its characters, personally and professionally. Yaginuma’s nostalgia-tinted artwork is especially effective in this volume, and I’m constantly surprised by how expressive it is, despite its simple aesthetic. Still recommended. – MJ

Fruits Basket MMF: Triangles

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There are many evolving relationships in Natsuki Takaya’s Fruits Basket (Tokyopop), familial and romantic. There’s the central love triangle consisting of brave and virtuous Tohru, princely Yuki, and black-sheep (or cat) Kyo. There’s the whole Sohma nightmare, with head of the family Akito trying to keep everyone’s relationships within and beyond the family under control, or at least unstable enough that they’ll never challenge the bonds of those who share the curse that helps drive the manga’s plot.

Of course, I’ve never been one to take sides in triangles. Few of them are especially plausible to me, because most of them require all choices be equal, which obviates the difficulty of choice (at least in a fictional context). In Fruits Basket, the putative triangle is so hopelessly stacked in the favor of one character that Takaya spends almost half of the series constructing consolation prizes for the odd man out. (It’s a generous impulse.)

But if the romantic geometry is a non-starter, there’s a different kind of triad that I love dearly, as illustrated below:

Love triangles may do nothing for me, but enduring platonic friendships put a lock on my attention as few other emotional dynamics can. That’s why I’m so crazy about Tohru’s never-say-die bond with former gang-girl Arisa Uotani and spooky psychic Saki Hanajima. Beyond being a nicely constructed blend of personality types – sweet, rambunctious, and eerie – Takaya makes their dynamic credible. It takes a while, but we learn how Tohru bonded with Uotani, and then Hanajima.

We also learn that Tohru’s mother, former gang-girl Kyoko, was central to these friendships. It’s a legacy of her loving bond with Tohru, that Tohru was able to extend those feelings to people who are so different from herself. It could be argued that Tohru’s ability to achieve such a rapport with Uotani and Hamajima proves that she can get through to anyone, even a creepy family that’s been cursed for centuries.

But that would diminish the pleasure of the friendship for its own sake. Takaya tries to insert a number of high-school mayhem into the narrative (when not expertly assaying family dysfunction), and very little of it works. Yuki’s fan club, the stupid student council, and so on… all of these aspects land with something of a thud, and it’s probably partly because Uotani and Hanajima are so eccentric and authentic at the same time, and their affection for Tohru is so sincere. Everything else that happens in the classroom feels like play-acting compared to this inseparable trio.

 

Naruto Volumes 4-6

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

And this is why everyone should give Jump series about 5-6 volumes before they give up on them. This omnibus is definitely a big step up from the first, with the leads being slightly more likeable, lots of interesting new characters introduced, and a new arc that promises to be much more thrilling – and possibly more deadly.

First, however, we have to finish up the cliffhanger from last time, with Naruto and company defending the bridge and its creator from the evil ninja and the mob boss who hired him. Once again, we are reminded that small, petty villains are always MUCH WORSE than noble yet evil guys in the Shonen Jump world, and while Zabuza spends a lot of time showing us what a horrible person he is, he does manage to get some redemption, as does his gender-malleable assistant. I was rather startled at the death of Haku here – it’s quite gory, and from a blow by Kakashi, no less (if accidentally). Clearly ‘nobody dies in Naruto’ is not a meme that’s going to take hold. Well, not yet anyway.

Once that’s over with, we head back to the village and begin our next big arc – the exams are coming up for journeyman ninja, and despite only having worked together for a short time, Kakashi recommends that they all do it. This is a huge exam with over a hundred ninja apprentices from all walks of life, most of whom we meet in this book. I have no idea who will be important later or not – the only ones that really stuck with me are Hinata, who clearly has a crush on Naruto that’s a mile wide; Ino, who has some sort of rivalry/friendship with Sakura; and Gaara, who gives off the appearance of being one of the next big villains, so must not be one.

And then there’s Rock Lee, who really deserves a paragraph of his own. Even though I’d never read Naruto before this, I still knew of Rock Lee – how could I not? Amazingly, he’s exactly as I anticipated, being a larger than life Sylvester Stallone type bruiser in the midst of all these tricky ninjas. His master Guy looking pretty much like him only older also amuses me, and I was rather startled to note that Guy can apparently hold his own with Kakashi – even the comedy characters here are tough cookies.

As for the exam itself, it’s a ninja exam, so naturally there’s lots of secret cheating, given they all assume the point of the exam is to see how good they are at not getting caught. The final question is psychological, something that works on many of the exam takers but not on Naruto, who is far too stubborn for such tactics. (Note: not dense – Naruto seems to fully understand what he’s sacrificing. It’s the principle of the thing that bothers him.) And then we get Round 2, featuring a survival match through a deadly forest – one that has been infiltrated by one of the villains, Orochimaru.

This last third of the omnibus is far more serious than the volume before it, and once again shows that the author is not afraid to laughter its minor cast members in the way of drama. There’s lots of good stuff here – Sasuke shows that he’s not all smug jerk, though unfortunately seems to get infected (possessed?) by the enemy anyway. Even better is Sakura, who while she doesn’t accomplish much does show a plucky streak that’s very endearing, and is at least clever enough to not fall for the minor mook’s traps. The three leads are all coming along, and I’m interested in seeing how they get out of all this.

This still hasn’t reached the heights of One Piece for me – the battles still have trouble keeping my attention, for one, and introducing 25-30 new cast members in 2 volumes is over the top even if you *aren’t* meant to remember who they all are. But it’s definitely come along from the first omnibus, and this new Exam Arc is indeed as exciting as people said it would be. I’m looking forward to seeing how things go from here on.

Going Digital: Viz Media & Square Enix

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It’s the weekend of San Diego Comic Con, which for manga fans generally means a flurry of excitement over new license announcements (Sean has the lowdown over at his blog, if you haven’t been there already). The announcements that excited me most this weekend, however, were those to do with various publishers’ digital initiatives, including some pretty impressive-sounding details about Jmanga, a massive web-based project involving most of Japan’s major manga publishers, expected to launch in August.

The cry for browser-based manga portals (as opposed to device-specific mobile apps) has been loud and clear from much of the manga blogosphere, and nearly everyone can agree that providing legal digital manga on the platform most easily available to the largest number of people is the best chance publishers have of fighting against widespread piracy. Though it’ll be a while before we’ll see what Jmanga really has to offer, I thought I’d take the chance to check out a couple of newer web-based initiatives available now, from Japanese publisher Square Enix and American publisher Viz Media.

Square Enix Manga Store

One of Jmanga’s Japanese holdouts, of course, is Square Enix, who launched their own digital manga website back in December with mostly negative reviews from the manga blogging community, who felt that the prices were too high and the interface too cluttered and difficult to navigate. I’m a huge fan of many Square Enix manga, but with first volumes of older series going for $5.99 apiece, there wasn’t much impetus for checking out Square Enix’s manga store when it first launched. This week, however, a Comic-Con special offering a free volume of selected manga just for clicking “Like” on their Facebook page was enough to finally lure me in.

After doing my duty on Facebook, I clicked over to the main site to get my free manga, and encountered possibly the most maddening registration/login process I’ve dealt with in years. Though I’d apparently created an account back when they first launched (which I discovered when my chosen username was already in use), even after going through their process to recover my password, I then had to log in at least three times, on three different pages, before even getting to the page where I could actually pick out my free manga.

Once I’d chosen my volume, I then was told I had to download special software to view it, called “Keyring FLASH.” This is not a concept I’m particularly fond of, since it requires that the user always be on their own home computer in order to view the manga they’ve purchased. Even if someone has already paid for manga from Square Enix, if they are accessing the internet from a library/school/work/public computer or a shared computer where they don’t have administrator privileges, they will be unable to access what they’ve bought. The application isn’t exactly lightweight either, downloading as a 40 MB disc image for installation. By the time I’d finally managed to jump through Square Enix’s registration hoops, picked up my manga, and installed the software to view it, I was so tired of the whole thing, I decided to leave the reading for later. This was a mistake.

Picking up later, the most immediately troublesome thing about the Square Enix manga storefront, is that, from the front page, there’s no obvious way to log in to your account. In fact, it seems you have to click into the store first, not the most intuitive setup, at which point a “Log In” button finally appears. Clicking on the “Members” button on the front page, which might seem like the obvious choice, is a grave error, as it actually takes you back to the Square Enix main site, where a “Members” login button in the middle of the page leads only to confusion and chaos, as being a “Member” apparently has nothing at all to do with the manga store. Use only the “Log In” button above the navigation bar. Just trust me on this.

If you’ve managed to log in to the manga store, you’ll see a page with your “bookshelf” on it, and images of the series you’ve purchased volumes of. Clicking on the icon for the series will take you away from your bookshelf and onto the main page for that item in the store, so you must click on the icon for the volume number you want to read instead.

Once in the site’s manga viewer, there are two size choices for reading your manga. On my 1920 x 1080-resolution screen, those choices worked out to be either “way too small to read” or “twice as tall as my maximum browser window,” the latter with the option of using the mouse to pan up and down each page in order to read it all, which reverts back to the too-small size every time a page is turned, requiring a click on the toolbar to magnify the page each time. I would have taken a screen shot of this, just to display the basic layout, but an attempt to do so resulted in an angry popup informing me that a capture application had been “ditected,” [sic] turning the page blank. Even an attempt to screencap the error just generated another error, demonstrating the real purpose of the Keyring FLASH application as nothing more than clunky DRM.

In the end, I came away feeling blind, exhausted, technologically frustrated, and pretty sure that Square Enix believes I am a thief, none of which gave me much inspiration to continue on. I possibly wanted to die, definitely wanted to get that software off my computer, and ultimately did not read the free volume of manga I’d gone through so much to obtain. I doubt very much I’ll be using their manga store again, and I’m afraid I can’t recommend it.

Vizmanga.com

After my experience with Square Enix, the idea of trying to navigate yet another online manga portal was difficult to stomach, but Viz Manga’s new initiative, Vizmanga.com, was a bit too enticing to ignore. Working in sync with Viz’s mobile apps, Vizmanga.com offers the opportunity to buy volumes of digital manga via any one of its available portals, and then read those volumes using any of them, with the user’s purchased manga always available for download on any supported device.

I already had an account through Viz’s iPad app, so I was able to log in on the website (from the front page, natch) using that pre-existing account. From there, though, I immediately feared another Square Enix nightmare. Though my account name was definitely correct, and I’d logged in successfully, on the page where the manga I’d purchased previously on the iPad should have appeared, I simply received a message letting me know I hadn’t yet purchased any.

My heart sank. I grasped around for any kind of help, and at first all I could find was a “Feedback” button on the left-hand side. I sent off a quick message using that button, but since it appeared to be intended for general customer feedback kind rather than support, I didn’t expect (nor did I receive) a response. Then I clicked around to this page, linked from the storefront’s “Buy it once, read it anywhere” image. At the bottom of that page was an e-mail address for the app’s technical support, so I sent off an e-mail to that address as well. After doing that, I received a response very quickly from Viz’s VP of Digital Publishing, Brian Piech, directly addressing my problem (no automated help desk response here), confirming what I’d said already and asking for a few more details. And though it took the better part of a day to fix whatever was wrong with my account, I received frequent updates on the situation from Brian, who stayed on the case with Viz’s engineers until the issue was resolved. Similarly, an inquiry about a pricing error in Viz’s iPad app, sent to the same address, elicited an immediate response from Digital Marketing Director, Candice Uyloan, who apologized for the problem and e-mailed me back within an hour to let me know it had been fixed.

Though encountering technical difficulty with something newly launched is not particularly rare in the digital world, in my experience, swift, attentive tech support is, and I can’t possibly praise Viz’s digital team enough for the way they addressed my problems. My one complaint is that the app support e-mail address should be more clearly visible, ideally from any page on the site, but at least on the site’s front page.

Now, finally to the manga! Though Viz wasn’t giving away any manga, they’ve put everything on sale for 40% off until the end of the month, which gave me a great excuse to finally pick up the first double-sized edition of Mitsuru Adachi’s Cross Game, which I haven’t yet purchased in print, but has been loudly recommended by all of my favorite critics. After making the purchase on my iPad and calling up Cross Game from my “My Manga” page on Vizmanga.com (which I’ve only had to log into once, by the way, over the past three days), there was no special software to download, just a clean, easy-to-navigate viewer that loads quickly on the page. The fact that this viewer comes without any built-in accusations of piracy is definitely a bonus.

Though Viz’s default page size is larger than Square Enix’s, there is no tool built-in at all for enlarging the page, which is its only downside (See note at the end of the paragraph for correction on this). Both DMP’s eManga and Yen Press’ Yen Plus web viewers do a better job with viewing size than Square Enix or Viz. Fortunately, Viz’s standard size is fairly readable on my 1920 x 1080-resolution desktop monitor. My 1280 x 800-resolution laptop screen fares slightly less well, simply because the reader is taller than my maximum browser size, requiring me to scroll to see the full page, though of course this is at least consistent, page-to-page. Unlike Viz’s i0S apps, a two-page spread is the only reading option, which makes good sense on increasingly-dominant widescreen monitors, but may require horizontal scrolling on older CRTs or smaller netbooks. Edited to add: I’ve been informed by a commenter than if you hover over the top of the manga you will see an option to make the manga full-screen, and it appears to be true! I suggest that it might be a good idea to make this more obvious, since my curser never had occasion to hover there on its own, and this is not indicated anywhere on the page.

The best feature of all this, of course, is that my purchased manga is available for me to read on every digital device I own—my iPad, iPhone, and computer—allowing me to read it however I want. My device of choice will probably remain my iPad, which is more ideally suited to reading comics than either of my other devices, thanks to its size, screen resolution, touch screen, and rotating interface (see my earlier review for more details), but cross-platform availability is a boon for fans without iOS devices, and does remove some of the pinch from Viz’s regular pricing for those of us with multiple points of access. That said, I do hope that Viz might be able to see their way toward lowering those prices on a permanent basis, should the new web platform really take off.

All-in-all, Vizmanga.com appears to provide a well-supported, well-designed platform for digital manga, and an answer to many manga fans’ most earnest digital requests. Recommended.