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Features & Reviews

The Promised Neverland, Vol. 13

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By Kaiu Shirai and Posuka Demizu. Released in Japan as “Yakusoku no Neverland” by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz Media. Translated by Satsuki Yamashita.

Well, last time I said that Lucas and Yugo probably were not long for this world, but would go out in a blaze of glory, and I turned out to be 100% right there. This is the fate of ‘mentor’ characters in a lot of series, not just manga, and it makes sense in a story way – their work here is done, they’ve saved Emma and the others, and now they can get the classic ‘yes, they’re really dead this time’ moment (unlike, say, Norman, who didn’t get this and isn’t dead) when they see all their dead friends in the afterlife welcoming them. It really is a cool death, though, and will likely look fantastic animated. Sadly, they did have the main bad guy get away so that he can threaten our heroes once more, and also let them know that they need a new safe space – as Emma cheerfully says at the end of the volume, nowhere is safe for them right now – that’s why they’re doing this.

This is not to say that Emma does not suffer quite a bit in this book. Yugo’s death in particular – which plays out as his coming to visit and give her new advice, then point out that he’s just a dream she’s having – is heartbreaking, and it hits all the kids, including the Goldy Pond ones, really hard. So hard that they’re about to go off half-cocked and try to find Lucas and Yugo. Fortunately, the villain of this arc is so wretchedly horrible that he manages to drive the point home that they have to move on. That said, Andrew’s fate is nasty, as befits someone who is hell bent on murdering about 60 kids. It does feel a bit of a copout that he’s taken out by a demon, though – you get the sense the author is trying to keep Emma’s hands clean. This is even lampshaded by Andrew, who says Emma won’t be able to shoot him dead.

We’re getting more of a sense that the kids here are not the only force fighting back. We’ve heard about William Minerva, even though it seems doubtful he’s still alive. We also see another group of humans trying to save farms… or at least give those within them mercy killings. Given the attitude and personality of some of these people we meet, I suspect that Emma and Ray’s pile of idealistic children may be running into a pragmatic brick wall soon. We also see “William Minerva” from the back, and he looks vaguely familiar… in a way I think the reader is supposed to be able to guess. That said, before they meet Mr. Minerva, they need to save the dying Chris, so there may be another action sequence to go.

This is the sort of manga that cries out to be animated as well, so we’re fortunate that more is coming. Till then, enjoy another solid volume, which promises many changes still to come.

An Incurable Case of Love, Vol. 2

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An Incurable Case of Love, Volume 2 by Maki Enjoji

As with most romance manga I was totally expecting an additional antagonist to show up to further complicate the non-relationship between Dr. Tendo and nurse Nanase. Dr Kusagi is unfailingly smiling, with a focus on his outward demeanor that seems suspicious. Kusagi quickly keys in to the budding relationship between Nanase and Tendo and attempts to subvert it by plying Nanase with alcohol, even though after an earlier outburst and piggybacking episode with Dr Tendo, she is determined to cut down on her consumption.

Tendo immediately starts acting irrationally territorial, and if you enjoy grouchy and withholding heroes, this manga has plenty of scenes of Tendo attempting to object to things and then realizing that he has little standing to interfere in Nanase’s life. This doesn’t stop him though!

While the story is developing with a very familiar formula, Enjoji is executing it extremely well, with little touches that make the series unique. I continue to be amused by the workplace culture at the hospital, and the gang of nurses who continue on with their nicknames of “Valiant One” for Nanase and “Dark Lord” for Tendo. Their support of this unconventional mentoring relationship developing into a friendship is mainly because no one wants to be the target of the Dark Lord’s criticism, but it all still manages to seem like a relatively supportive and friendly workplace! The hospital setting also feels a bit fresh to me after reading plenty of manga series set in offices. Enjoji doesn’t have a ton of variation in her character designs, but she does draw with great expression as Nanase struggles to deal with her romantic life and move ahead with her goals as a new nurse.

Nanase and Tendo keep getting thrown together for various reasons, and the volume closes with a take on a serious situation that can befall any woman who might be easily targeted in a helping or service profession. The main workplace romance combined with side stories dealing with more serious topics seems like a promising way for this series to develop. I’m also enjoying Nanase’s personality, she’s young but still sometimes blunt about expressing what she wants, and I’m curious about how her character will develop as she becomes more comfortable with her new profession. We might only get one josei disguised as shoujo series being released at a time from Shojo Beat, but An Incurable Case of Love fits in well with the rest of the line, and I’m enjoying it while I wait for even more josei releases.

Chainsaw Man

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There comes a moment in every manga reader’s journey when they’re no longer dazzled by the sheer variety of genres, styles, or outrageous storylines that an issue of Weekly Shonen Jump or Big Comic Spirits offers—the moment when a manga about killer goldfish or a warrior with lethal nose hair sounds more exhausting than awesome. I reached that milestone around the time I read The Qwaser of Stigmata, a manga so lewdly preposterous I felt uncomfortable even summarizing the plot in my review. So when I heard about Chainsaw Man, a series whose premise is pretty much summed up in the title, I was pretty sure I wasn’t interested in reading it. Then I saw this image:

My first thought was whoa. And then: cool. And so began my Chainsaw Man read-a-thon, an attempt to understand the appeal of this blood-and-testosterone-soaked battle manga.

The character atop the shark is Denji, who begins the story as an ordinary young man struggling to pay off his father’s gambling debts. His only friend is the sweet-faced Pochita, a dog demon with a chainsaw blade where his snout should be. After local mobsters brutally attack Denji, Pochita transfers his demonic powers to Denji, thus enabling Denji to transform from scrawny teen to chainsaw-wielding menace with the pull of a cord. His remarkable abilities attract the interest of Makima, a professional Devil Hunter who recognizes Denji’s potential value as a weapon. Through a mixture of flirtation, cajoling, and threats, Makima recruits Denji for the Public Safety Council, dispatching him to kill monsters.

Going into Chainsaw Man, I was fully prepared for carnage and mayhem and three-eyed sharks. What I didn’t expect were moments of genuine pathos. The interactions between Denji and Pochita, however, are sniffle-inducing, underscoring the poignancy of Pochita’s decision to sacrifice himself for Denji. Later chapters set up an interesting parallel between Denji’s relationship with Pochita and his relationship with Makima, who refers to him as her “dog.” When Denji chafes against the conditions Makima has imposed on their partnership, it spurs a moment of self-reflection about his own treatment of Pochita, making him realize just how much he took Pochita’s companionship for granted.

Of course, no one is reading Chainsaw Man for these kind of emotional beats; they’re hoping for outrageous displays of gore and violence, and on that front, Tatsuki Fujimoto does his utmost to push the boundaries of good taste. Every time Denji reverts to his demonic form, chainsaw blades burst through his chest and head with great clouds of arterial spray, a preview of the even bloodier manner in which he kills his enemies. Though some of the demons are uninspired—how’s a giant bat grab you?—Fujimoto’s most memorable creations are clearly designed to elicit an appreciative “ewww”; the first monster Denji kills, for example, is an enormous tomato devil who looks like something that’s been moldering in the crisper drawer for weeks.

Between the action scenes, Fujimoto peppers the script with crude jokes to remind us that Denji is a teenage boy whose primary motivation for fighting demons is to impress Makima and earn enough money to eat junk food. In that respect, Denji is a more honest shonen hero than the typical Jump lead; he thinks and acts like a real teenage boy, right down to his self-absorption and total objectification of women. (There’s even a chapter called “A Way to Touch Some Boobs.” Yes, really.) I can’t say I ever warmed to Denji as a lead character, but I finished my read-a-thon with a grudging respect for Fujimoto’s excessive, ridiculous creation, which entertained and repelled me in equal measure. Your mileage will vary.

Chapters 1-53 of Chainsaw Man are available at the VIZ website. 

CHAINSAW MAN • STORY AND ART BY TATSUKI FUJIMOTO • VIZ MEDIA

 

The Economics of Prophecy: Avoiding Disaster in Another World

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By Norafukurou and Rei Shichiwa. Released in Japan by Legend Novels (Kodansha). Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Hikoki.

So you want to read an isekai, but instead of being a horny Japanese teenager, you’re a late 30s-early 40s Japanese officer worker. You’re married, have a couple of kids. You really are not looking for a fantasy involving game systems, harem building, and fanservice. You don’t even need illustrations. You’re looking for something a bit more highbrow. Fortunately, Legend Novels, a fairly new Kodansha imprint, has you covered. The Economics of Prophecy is not kidding about its economics, and so will replace discussion of gaming stats with correlation coefficients. There is more than one girl interested in the hero, but they are more understated and political about it. As for the hero, well, yes, he’s a bit bland, but he’s bland in an ADULT way. All that said, this is still a young Japanese man transported to another world with monsters and magic, who goes to an elite private school along with his unlucky childhood friend and the gorgeous, naive princess. Not ALL the tropes are gone.

The actual “reincarnated and growing up in a new world” part of Ricardo’s life is glossed over in about two paragraphs – we jump right into him as a young businessman, trying to attend school and get his family honey-making business off the ground. Unfortunately, rival companies are bigger and richer than he is. All he has is his knowledge from Japan of economic theory and his secretary/childhood friend Mia. The fourth princess of the realm, Alfina, even does a taste test between the companies. Unfortunately, as Ricardo finds, once you start meeting this princess you can’t stop meeting her. And she’s actually an oracle with a different prediction than the usual “everything’s fine again this year” – there will be a disaster. What kind? She doesn’t know. Exactly where? She’s not quite sure. Can Ricardo help her figure out what and where is going to happen? And will it even matter given the complacency of this kingdom?

The plot and the main leads are the strongest part of this book. There is a lot of economic stuff, but it never quite gets to the point where you want to flip ahead. Ricardo is one of those “I am scheming and clever but also secretly really nice to people” sorts, a bit like the Genius Prince in Yen’s recent series – he works best when he’s being pressured. Alfina manages to be a very naive, innocent royal without becoming annoying, and she’s really sweet. On the flip side, Mia is vastly underused – we clearly see she has a thing for Ricardo, but given that she (like he) is also emotionally minimal this mostly comes out as disapproval when he’s around other women. I would have liked more of their childhood backstory. Alfina also has an aide that ends up getting relatively humiliated, but I’m not entirely sure that the crime merited the punishment – it wasn’t clear enough that Claudia had abandoned Alfina, so it seemed sort of mean instead.

This is still definitely strong enough that I’d recommend it, and I’ll be reading the second volume. It’s respectable, an isekai you could happily introduce to your parents.

The Irregular at Magic High School: Ancient City Insurrection Arc, Part I

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By Tsutomu Sato and Kana Ishida. Released in Japan as “Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Prowse.

Just because a large majority of the cast go “eurgh” whenever Miyuki is snuggling up to her brother does not mean that the writer is not leaning on the incest subtext as hard as he possibly can. Indeed, one can’t happen without the other. And since a lot of this book is Minami suffering through watching the siblings be “embarrassing”, or noticeably avoiding saying anything in order not to upset the powerful teenager with a hair-trigger killer ice move, there is an awful lot of my least favorite plot element in this series in this book. I made a promise to myself that I would hold out till the 16th book – this is, after all, one of Dengeki Bunko’s ‘flagship’ series, alongside titles such as Sword Art Online and A Certain Magical Index… which also have issues. We’ll see why I chose Book 16 in the summer. Till then, fortunately, there is more to this book than just snuggling against Tatsuya, though it suffers from being part one of two.

The Thesis Competition is coming around again, though this year Tatsuya is not involved – at least not directly. He’s going to be doing security, given what happened at the last event. Unfortunately, he’s also still dealing with fallout from the last couple of books – in particular, Gongjin Zhou’s whereabouts, which likely will impact a lot of things going forward. The ancient magicians are taking interest in him and his friends as well. Fortunately, trying to locate the base of these magicians allows him to travel to Nara and make a new friend. Possibly unfortunately, Minoru is, of course, probably going to be a major enemy down the road, particularly if they’re dealing with the parasites that have been cropping up for a while. Fortunately, he’s on their side for now, and is a nice, polite, pretty and very powerful young man. Possibly unfortunately, Minami falls for him – hard.

When you snip out discussion of magic and incest, what little is left in this series is action, and the action is very good. We even get the death of a character we’d seen before, which surprised me, and their death also impacts Mayumi, who is unable to get much information out of her “I am evil and sneering” dad. (Their relationship makes em think of Tokiomi and Rin.) Mayumi also gets to be in possible the funniest scene of the book, where she’s having lunch and discussing things with Mari and tries to deny that she’s in love with Tatsuya, a denial that is rather pathetic – she’s trying to say they’re like a big sister and little brother, but this is NOT the series to say that in. And it is nice – although, as Tatsuya and Miyuki acknowledge, rather odd – for Maya to actually ask Tatsuya to do a thing, rather than order him.

As I noted, this is Book 1 or 2, so I expect the second half will have a lot more action and payoff. Till then, this remains a good series provided you strip out the incest and magic talk – which, alas, leaves about 50 pages per book.

Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World, Vol. 2

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By Kei Sazane and Ao Nekonabe. Released in Japan as “Kimi to Boku no Saigo no Senjou, Aruiwa Sekai ga Hajimaru Seisen” by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jan Cash.

The days when people were begging for a light novel – any light novel – to be released are long since past. We live in a glut of light novels, with new titles releasing several times a week, and it’s impossible to keep up with them all. This is difficult for someone like me, as I have a very high tolerance when it comes to entertainment. I have started to try to find reasons to drop series so that I don’t have to get even further behind in reading all the other series I read. And, honestly, Our Last Crusade seemed a perfect candidate for this after its second volume. Its plot was OK but not earth-shattering. The women in the book are… not great, particularly in this volume. There are some decent fights, but less of the self-analysis of the respective regimes we saw in the first book beyond “the empire tortures witches”. It seemed like a good place to leave off. Alas, then came the epilogue.

A vortex has appeared in the world, one that can give the right people amazing powers. Unfortunately, it’s desired by both sides. And so once again Iska and Alice are fighting against each other… or so it would seem. But unlike the last book, this time they keep missing each other, turning a Romeo and Juliet-style fated romance into drawing room farce. Most of the emphasis of the book is on Iska’s end, where his battalion has a very rude and uncaring leader and also a traitor, which is not good news for Captain Mismis, who is captured by said traitor. On Alice’s end, there’s a smug masked man and a powerful woman named “Kissing” with a blindfold and an attitude, but mostly there’s just Alice getting very, very annoyed that she isn’t making out with… erm, pardon me, fighting Iska to the death like she should be doing.

I’m gonna be honest here, Alice whining over wanting to fight Iska about every single page is going to get very boring very fast, and given that I suspect that once she gets over this it’s going to turn into “a young maiden in love” I’m not looking forward to future developments. Mismis, also, really really needs to develop beyond a captain who reads more like a mascot, and spending most of the second half of the book captured and in peril does not help. The book doesn’t really slide into being actively annoying or bad… it’s well-written, the pacing is good, and you can simply grump at Alice and Mismis as you go. But it lacks a hook that made me want to read past this volume. Or at least it did till the end. I will not reveal what the two hooks are, but I will say they’re perfectly delivered for maximum “dammit, now I have to get the next book in the series” effect. In particular, I’m cautiously optimistic one of the two issues I had with the book might change because of this? Maybe?

It could also be I’m just a soft touch who’s too easily pleased. But I am hoping that the third book in the series gets a bit more political and also does more with its female leads than having them be cliches.

The Wize Wize Beasts of the Wizarding Wizdoms

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“Whimsical tales of anthropomorphic beasts in love”—or so the dust jacket of The Wize Wize Beasts of the Wizarding Wizdoms promises. The eight stories in this collection do feature a race of half-animal, half-human creatures who behave like boys at a British boarding school, forming intense friendships that sometimes cross the line into romance. I’m a little reluctant to call these stories “whimsical,” however, as that word implies a certain degree of playfulness that was lacking in most of the stories, some of which were intensely sincere, and some of which raised legitimate questions about boundaries and consent.

Wize Wize Beasts unfolds at a special academy “dedicated to the study of wizardry,” where demi-humans of every imaginable type peacefully co-exist as they learn the arts of potion-making, spell-casting, and alchemy. Each story centers on a pair of opposites: prey and predator, teacher and student, mammal and reptile, smart and average. Most of their relationships fall under the general heading of “unrequited love,” in which one demi-human pines for his opposite, but can’t muster the courage to say how he feels.

In the most enjoyable chapters—”Marley & Collette,” “Cromwell & Benjamin”—Nagabe explores the healthier side of attraction, showing how strong feelings of admiration and concern can bring out the best in friends, allowing for moments of tenderness, warmth, and emotional honesty even when the friendship remains platonic. My favorite, “Mauchly & Charles,” read like an irresistible mash-up of Winnie the Pooh and The Girl from the Other Side, focusing on a bear (Mauchly) and the human he rescued (Charles) from a dark, rainy forest. After Charles returns to his own world, he and Mauchly hold an annual reunion, using this ritual as an opportunity to reflect on what’s changed in the ensuing year. The emotional vulnerability and candor of their interactions is genuinely astonishing—not because men don’t have close friendships, but because the kind of physical intimacy and gentleness that defines Mauchly and Charles’ friendship is seldom depicted in popular culture.

The weakest stories in the collection, by contrast, often conflate possessive or coercive behavior with romantic attraction, justifying one character’s actions by suggesting his feelings were so intense that they compelled him to transgress social norms. In “Doug & Huey,” for example, a crow (Doug) carries a torch for his handsome friend Huey, who—natch—is a peacock. Though Huey spends most of his time chasing girls, Doug’s devotion to him is unwavering—so much so, in fact, that Doug sabotages Huey’s efforts to land a girlfriend so that Huey will “never be closer to someone else.” Huey, for his part, is so deeply narcissistic that he doesn’t recognize Doug’s controlling behavior, creating a deeply toxic bond between them that is presented as a simple case of unrequited love.

The issue of consent lingers over other chapters in Wize Wize Beasts as well. “Alan & Eddington,” for example, depicts the friendship between a brilliant Siamese (Alan) and a hardworking rabbit (Eddie) who’s dazzled by his classmate’s effortless mastery of complex subjects. Afraid that Alan will reject his advances, Eddie concocts and serves him a love potion. While under the influence of Alan’s spell, Eddie compels Alan to kiss him and profess his love for him—a scene that’s meant to be a little naughty, I think, but instead registers as squicky. Alan confronts Eddie about the incident, but then invites Eddie to “start over” without a magical aide, undercutting the power of his previous speech about Alan’s “cowardly” behavior.

If I was sometimes ambivalent about the content, I found Nagabe’s crisp illustrations thoroughly enchanting. His anthropomorphic character designs capture the essential animal natures of each character while retaining just enough human features for Nagabe to plausibly swathe them in flowing capes and tweedy trousers. Nagabe’s command of light, shadow, and line is superb, creating a strong sense of place without excessive reliance on screentone or tracing; his characters inhabit a well-defined world that has been vividly and imaginatively rendered on the page.

In the afterword to Wize Wize Beasts, Nagabe cheerfully jokes about “winning” readers over to his particular fandom. “I’d be deeply honored if this work exposes more people to non-human characters,” he notes. “And if you start to think, ‘Wow, non-human characters are awesome,’ go on. Get in there up to your neck.” I can’t say that Wize Wize Beasts made me a convert, but I did admire Nagabe’s creativity, sincerity, and honesty, as well as his willingness to take narrative risks that might not pay off with all readers. Your mileage may vary.

THE WIZE WIZE BEASTS OF WIZARDING WIZDOMS • STORY AND ART BY NAGABE • TRANSLATED BY ADRIENNE BECK • SEVEN SEAS • RATED TEEN • 228 pp.

Manga the Week of 1/15/20

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SEAN: Remember when January was the smallest month of the year? No more!

ASH: Ha!

SEAN: Ghost Ship gives us a 14th volume of To-Love-Ru Darkness.

J-Novel Club has three debuts, the first of their massive wave of Anime NYC licenses. The Economics of Prophecy (Yogen no Keizaigaku) is from Legend Novels, a Kodansha fantasy imprint. Can an ignored oracle and a reincarnated economist save the kingdom?

Kobold King is also from Legend Novels. A famous warrior who has become so powerful that everyone is too afraid of him tries to show a tribe of kobolds that he’s really a sweetie at heart.

ASH: I was previously unaware of Legend Novels, but with these two titles make the imprint seems like it could be a source with some potential.

ANNA: Ok, light novels featuring economists does sound amusing, but I am not a light novel person.

SEAN: The Underdog of the Eight Greater Tribes (Hachi Dai Shuzoku no Saijaku Kettousha) is from HJ Bunko, and is a battle fantasy, though apparently not involving literal magical academies this time.

Also from J-Novel is the 9th volume of If It’s For My Daughter, I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord, Infinite Stratos 11 and Seirei Gensouki 8.

In print, Kodansha has Hitorijime My Hero 6, If I Could Reach You 3, and Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches 21-22.

ASH: I’ve been meaning to give If I Could Reach You a try at some point.

SEAN: Digitally, the debut is GE: Good Ending, which has been rumored to get a license over here since it began, but never did. Now it’s over, and we have a digital license. It’s by the creator of Domestic Girlfriend, ran in Weekly Shonen Magazine, and is a potboiler, just like its successor.

We also have digital volumes for 1122: For a Happy Marriage (4), Ace of the Diamond (24), Domestic Girlfriend (23), Ex-Enthusiasts: Motokare Mania (2), Farewell My Dear Cramer (6), and Giant Killing (18).

MICHELLE: So much sports manga! *rubs hands together in anticipation*

SEAN: One Peace Books has a 6th volume of Hinamatsuri.

ASH: I’m a few volumes behind, but this series continues to amuse me.

SEAN: Seven Seas gives us an 8th Himouto Umaru-chan, the 5th Mushoku Tensei novel digitally, and a 2nd volume of Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out!!.

Debuting from SuBLime is Liquor and Cigarettes, a title from Gentosha’s Lynx magazine. It’s by the author of Coyote. They smoke. They drink. They smoke and smoke and drink… OK, sorry.

Vertical has a 4th volume of the Knights of Sidonia Master Edition.

Viz has a debut title. You thrilled to Persona 3, you cried at Persona 4, now, at last, we see Persona 5! This runs in Shogakukan’s Ura Sunday, and (surprise!) adapts the game.

Viz also gives us Case Closed 73, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess 6, Radiant 9, and Splatoon 8.

ASH: I’ve been enjoying the Twilight Princess adaptation!

SEAN: Lastly, Yen Press has a 2nd Do You Love Your Mom (and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks?) manga, and a 13th Yowamushi Pedal omnibus. I suspect Manga Bookshelf folks will have little trouble choosing between these two.

ASH: Yup. It’s definitely Yowamushi Pedal for me!

MICHELLE: See above re: anticipatory hands.

SEAN: Do you like any of these titles? Or do you not like manga at all, but read this column just for the hell of it?

KATE: I don’t like (much) manga, but I always enjoy this column. :D

Combatants Will Be Dispatched!, Vol. 2

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By Natsume Akimoto and Kakao Lanthanum. Released in Japan as “Sentouin, Hakenshimasu!” by Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Noboru Akimoto.

Given that this is a series by the creator of KonoSuba, featuring characters who bear great similarities to those in KonoSuba, has a sequence where our “heroes” use The Destroyer from KonoSuba, and finally features a literal crossover with KonoSuba at the end, where a different evil operative goes to that world and is horrified by the overpowered nature of Aqua, Megumin and Darkness, it would not be unreasonable for a potential reader to ask me if Combatants Will Be Dispatched! is as good as KonoSuba. And the answer is… no, of course it’s not. Even if you weren’t aware that this was an earlier work that was dusted off and published by Kadokawa after KonoSuba became ludicrously successful, the fact is that KonoSuba’s characters are all likeable and you root for them, despite their many, many deep personality flaws. Even Kazuma. Whereas Agent Six, Alice and the others are just as flawed, but are really unpleasant people at heart. Rose comes closest, but it’s bad when the author has to say in the afterword “they’ll get more heroic soon, I hope.”

Alice is on the cover, and Akimoto states she’s the “featured girl” of the book, but honestly she doesn’t get much to do beyond what she did in Book One – snark at Six. Even her saving the day at the end of the book is only mentioned secondhand, because Six was knocked unconscious for all of it. To be fair, she is VERY good at snarking at Six – she’s still my favorite part of the book. With the Kingdom desperately short of water, the King missing, and the princess unwilling to say Six’s stupid password to a large crowd, he and his group are charged with negotiating water from a neighboring kingdom. Well, actually, he and the group are bodyguards for Snow, who is supposed to seduce the horny and easily led ruler of that kingdom. Unfortunately, due to a ridiculous chain of events, they end up starting a war. And also reviving an ancient superweapon. Fortunately, Six can still do what he does best – be petty and horrible till he wins the day.

I mentioned on Twitter that this feels like a KonoSuba with all the brakes removed, and I still stand by that. Snow is still a horrible combination of Darkness and Aqua with the flaws of both characters, and I longed for her to get run over by a bus. Rose comes off best of the crew, as I said before, but is driven by her appetite, which unfortunately leads to a lot of cannibalism jokes… not to mention sex = food jokes… when they have to cross a desert for several days with no food. Grimm is less fun here, with her one personality trait seeming to be “desperate”. There is a long-running argument over the course of the book between her and Alice over the nature of magic, which Alice, as an artificial human, rejects entirely. This could lead somewhere good, but it will have to be in future books, as nothing comes of it here.

Fortunately, this book does have one big thing still going for it: it’s funny. I laughed quite a bit. But with KonoSuba I laugh and also care, and I haven’t gotten to that point with this cast. They need a third dimension. Hopefully in future books.

The Alchemist Who Survived Now Dreams of a Quiet City Life, Vol. 2

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By Usata Nonohara and ox. Released in Japan as “Ikinokori Renkinjutsushi wa Machi de Shizuka ni Kurashitai” by Kadokawa Shoten. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Erin Husson.

The second volume of this series has many of the same strengths and weaknesses that the first has. The writing is good and makes you want to see what’s coming next. There is slightly less detail about the creation of potions, which pleased me. Those who are into deep worldbuilding will love it. But it seems tonally off in a way that means I can never quite love it. The author still wants to use slavery and critique it, but also shows us that all the slaves we meet are “bad guys being punished for robbery and murder” so that we’re still OK with it in this series. More to the point, there’s a disconnect between the world this book exists in and Mariela herself, and I don’t just mean that she’s displaced by 200 years from her old world, though that might explain it. It’s a slice of grim-n-gritty life, with Mariela being a bright ball of sunshine bringing joy into everyone’s life. The two don’t always mesh.

There’s a lot going on in this 2nd volume, even longer than the first – and the first was quite long. Mariela and Sieg are trying to run her shop, meet new people, and avoid having her outed as an alchemist, as she’d rather not be shut up in a building and worked to death. We see as the book moves along that her fears are not entirely unfounded. The Kingdom is still trying to beat the Labyrinth once and for all, helped out by Mariela’s Holy Water. And a noble family has a dark secret, one not entirely known to the nice girl who befriends Mariela and shows her the wonders of modern appliances, but her older brother certainly knows and is obsessed with it. What is concealed in a secret passageway in their mansion? And what kinds of things are being done to slaves to ensure the safety of the royal family?

If it sounds like this turned into a different story, you’re thinking along the lines I was. The last part of the book is quite dark and disturbing, with sacrifices, blood magic, and graphic descriptions of people’s heads cut open and brains showing. It contrasts with the childlike Mariela, who is shown to be even more childlike than she had been before in these scenes, as if the author wanted to emphasize the contrast but took it too far. Indeed, for most of the book the author can’t quite decide whether Mariela is meant to act like a 16-year-old or a 6-year-old, and it pinwheels between the two. This is especially discomfiting given that both Sieg and Lynx are shown to be falling for her. Innocent is fine, immature is less so.

Despite this, the book overall is very readable, and while it has many parts that annoy me I don’t actually feel the need to drop it yet. The flashback scenes showing Mariela’s first learning of alchemy and the relationship with her master are excellent. I just wish the author would stay in the fantasy-slice-of-life lane and stop making detours to the wrong side of the tracks.

Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace

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As The Rise of Skywalker brings the Star Wars saga to its official close, now seems like the right time to revisit the very first chapter in the series, The Phantom Menace. Episode I debuted in 1999, making the leap from screen to print the following year with Kia Asamiya providing the illustrations. Readers familiar with Asamiya’s Silent Möbius will immediately understand why he was tapped for this project: he has a penchant for drawing detailed space ships and cityscapes, two important qualifications for translating George Lucas’ vision into a compelling comic.

Alas, Asamiya was also saddled with Lucas’ original script, leaving him little room to make the story more interesting on the page than it was on the screen. Asamiya faithfully preserves the film’s most frustrating elements—the tin-eared dialogue, the unfortunate minstrelsy of JarJar Binks—as well as its surfeit of plot points, secondary characters, and clumsy discussions of Federation trade policy. To his credit, Asamiya’s version is brisk and streamlined in contrast with Lucas’, marching from one scene to the next with a sense of urgency that’s often lacking from the film. Some of the film’s most tedious scenes—the blockade of Naboo, the first interactions between Padme and Anakin, the Imperial Senate’s deliberations—have been telescoped, giving Asamiya room for more detailed treatments of chases, light saber fights, and space battles.

The artwork, on the other hand, is a hit-or-miss affair. Asamiya’s skill at drawing aliens, robots, space craft, and futuristic cities is unquestionable; his evocation of Otoh Gunga and Coruscant do justice to the complexity and specificity of Lucas’ original designs, while Asamiya’s establishing shots of Naboo convincingly evoke the planet’s lush jungles and Greco-Roman palaces without the added benefit of color. His ability to compress lengthy action sequences is likewise impressive; in just a few artfully constructed pages, for example, he captures the excitement and danger of Anakin Skywalker’s pod race, using panels-within-panels to juxtapose the racers’ progress with the crowd’s ecstatic reaction to the event:

Asamiya’s human characters, by contrast, are as expressionless as their big-screen counterparts—a key failing, as the characters register as pawns, not people, dutifully shuttled from one scenario to the next with almost no sense of how the violence and chaos they’ve encountered has affected them. Only the two principle non-human characters—JarJar Binks and C3PO—are drawn in an animated fashion, providing the series’ few moments of genuine emotion and surprise.

And that, in a nutshell, is why Asamiya’s take on The Phantom Menace is so frustrating: it improves on certain aspects of the source material while emphasizing its fatal flaws, making for an efficient but affectless gloss on Lucas’ original story that reads a lot like Cliff Notes. Not recommended.

STAR WARS: EPISODE I – THE PHANTOM MENACE, VOLS. 1-2 • ART BY KIA ASAMIYA • MARVEL COMICS • NO RATING (SUITABLE FOR READERS 10 AND UP)

A Double Dungeon review

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Dungeon Builder: The Demon King’s Labyrinth Is a Modern City!. By Rui Tsukiyo and Hideaki Yoshikawa. Released in Japan as “Maou-sama no Machizukuri! ~Saikyou no Danjon wa Kindai Toshi~” by Overlap, serialization ongoing in the magazine Comic Gardo. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Elina Ishikawa-Curran. Adapted by Julia Kinsman.

My Room Is a Dungeon Rest Stop. By Tougoku Hudou and Takoya Kiyoshi. Released in Japan as “Boku no Heya ga Dungeon no Kyuukeijo ni Natteshimatta Ken” by Takeshobo, serialization ongoing on the online site Web Comic Gamma. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Wesley O’Donnell. Adapted by Kim Kindya.

After reading both of these titles I decided to review them together. Yes, they both have ‘dungeon’ in the title, but more than that, they’re both clearly catering to the exact same audience: light novel fans who enjoy fantasy manga, or in this case adaptation of light novels we don’t have licensed over here. They both have suitably generic male leads – one may be a demon lord and the other may be a schlub in a tracksuit, but at the end of the day they’re not why you’re reading this. And there’s also plenty of fanservice. Which is why folks are reading this.

Dungeon Builder might be an isekai – we do see the new Demon Lord has lost his memories but knows what guns are – but the isekai part is mostly irrelevant. Procel is new Demon Lord of Creation, and has to create minions and dungeons that feed on people’s despair and fear. As the flash forward at the start of the book tells you, however, he is too nice a guy, so decides to make his dungeon the happiest place on Earth. It’s not clear yet how he’ll do this – the first volume doesn’t get too far into the story. He’s joined by Marcho, his busty demon lord mentor (that’s her on the cover) and two cute minions, both of whom look underage (something cheerfully pointed out by Marcho, who nicknames him “Lolicel”. This has slightly less service than the other title, and might develop into something interesting, but also seems to run on cliche power – his rival Demon Lord of Wind is a classic tsundere with shaky self-esteem that shows as arrogance. There’s also a dwarf girl who ticks the “rei Ayanami Expy” box.

My Room Is a Dungeon Rest Stop is more of a reverse isekai. Our hero Touru (Why? What that romanization now for that specific name? Don’t get me wrong, I was an ‘ou’ fan for the longest tine, but really?… sorry, back to the review) gets an apartment that’s dirt cheap… because once he moves in, the front door turns out to lead to a dungeon! Luckily, he can go out the window to his modern-day life. Exploring the dungeon, he comes across a passed-out adventurer girl and takes her back to his apartment, where she discovers the wonders of modern lie and explains a bit to him about dungeon life. Like Dungeon Builder, this title has barely gotten started. It’s a lot heavier on the fanservice – there’s a long sequence regarding the girl wetting herself from fear and the consequences of this that I really did not need to read about – and Touru is slightly more generic than the already generic Procel. As with Dungeon Builder, it opens with a brief flashforward showing us other characters who have fallen into our lead’s orbit.

I’d argue that both titles deliver what the intended audience wants, and will irritate anyone who is not in that narrow audience bracket. I’d say Dungeon Builder, based on its first volume, has more promise than Dungeon Rest Stop. I may get a second volume of the former. Still, if you like fantasy dungeon series with cute girls, these two books exist for you.

Skull-Face Bookseller Honda-san, Vol. 1

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If you’ve ever worked a thankless retail job, you’ll appreciate Skull-Face Bookseller Honda-san, a candid, fitfully funny series about working in the customer service industry. The titular character works in the manga section of a large Tokyo bookstore, helping buyers find the perfect series, taking inventory, and meeting with representatives from major publishers.

Some of her adventures are genuinely amusing, as when a handsome male customer requests explicit doujinshi for his daughter, or an American fujoshi explains her penchant for a particular seme-uke dynamic; other chapters are more matter-of-fact, conveying the difficulties of keeping popular titles in stock, or documenting the social and professional interactions among the staff members. Though none of its is laugh-out-loud funny, the artwork is terrific, capturing Honda-san’s sweaty anxiety every time a customer or colleague makes an uncomfortable request of her—no mean feat, given that the artist has depicted herself with a skeleton head and androgynous, apron-clad body. (Her colleagues’ identities have been camouflaged in a similar fashion: one has a paper bag for a head, and another wears a gas mask.) Amanda Haley’s thoughtful translation complements Honda’s crisp illustrations, offering useful context for understanding the unique challenges of selling manga to the general public, and plenty of footnotes to decode the insider shop-talk.

Yet for all the craft with which Skull-Face Bookseller is written, I never fully succumbed to its charms. I found the pacing uneven and the publishing-focused chapters long-winded, especially when contrasted with the snappy staging of Honda-san’s encounter with the international BL brigade. I’m still curious about the series, but would put Skull-Face Bookseller in the same category as Saint Young Men: a comedy that’s better in principle than in practice. Your mileage may vary.

SKULL-FACE BOOKSELLER HONDA-SAN, VOL. 1 • STORY AND ART BY HONDA • TRANSLATION BY AMANDA HALEY • YEN PRESS • NO RATING • 166 pp.

Bookshelf Briefs 1/4/20

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Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction, Vol. 7 | By Inio Asano | Viz Media – Every time a new volume of this fantastic series comes out I avoid reading it, possibly as I still expect it to end with everyone depressed or dead, because Asano. Despite that, things trundle along in this volume. Oran’s starting to have ominous feelings that she’s seen some of this before, and even the main cast heading to the beach, with lots of silly beach comedy, can’t quite stop you thinking things aren’t going to be the same anymore, especially after that cliffhanger. Makoto is on the cover, and gets a fair number of scenes as well, something you can’t always say about the covers. Most of all, this continues to examine the nature of conspiracies and media frenzies. Great stuff. – Sean Gaffney

My Hero Academia, Vol. 22 | By Kohei Horikoshi | Viz Media – What I remember about this volume’s chapters when they came out weekly was the fandom going ballistic attacking Momo after her loss. Possibly because the main cast praised her abilities regardless, possibly as she lost another fight and Jump fans are all secret wrestling fans complaining about “Jobbers.” It’s an excellent battle, though. The other fights are good as well. You’d expect Todoroki to clean up, but that battle too does not go as expected. Bakugo shows off that he can be kind and heroic while STILL being a loud asshole, and Izuku shows that the fact that he’s trying to learn his powers on the fly is leading to bad things. Fortunately, Uraraka and Shinso are there. Excellent. – Sean Gaffney

Queen Bee, Vol. 3 | By Shizuru Seino | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – In Queen Bee’s second volume, Toma realized he had feelings for Hirata while on a forest field trip, during which she displayed extreme competence (and fought off a bear). Now, they’ve become an official couple, but Hirata’s insecurity, coupled with the reveal of a junior high ex-girlfriend that Toma might still have feelings for, makes her worry that he’s just trying to make himself love her. Ordinarily, the emergence of a love rival in the latter half of the final volume of a short series would irritate me a great deal, but I actually liked that it gave Hirata one more opportunity to show that Toma’s happiness is her top priority. She may look scary, but she’s pure and valiant, and in the end, this series kind of gave me gender-flipped My Love Story!! feels. Truly delightful. – Michelle Smith

Queen’s Quality, Vol. 8 | By Kyousuke Motomi | Viz Media – Answers are here, with extended flashbacks showing us what actually happened years ago, and who Fumi is. It’s helpful to have Kyutaro’s late mother explaining things to them, admittedly, and she’s super cool—I’d be OK with more adventures of her. Meanwhile, as Fumi tries to take this all in, Kyutaro adds to things by confessing to her, something which is perhaps not timely but is at least heartfelt. That said, it may be relatively irrelevant, as the cliffhanger suggests that we may be seeing some memory loss/destruction of alternate selves going on. Still, as far as dream-laden fantasy shoujo with comedic undertones go, QQ is tops. And love that they still have Dengeki Daisy cameos in them. – Sean Gaffney

Saint Young Men, Vol. 1 | By Hikaru Nakamura | Kodansha Comics – The premise of Saint Young Men is both simple and kooky. Jesus and Buddha have rented an apartment in Japan to enjoy some well-earned time off, where they enter into a sort of odd-couple existence, with Buddha being the serious guy who does all the chores and Jesus being the carefree guy who has a popular TV review blog. The situations are pretty fun—the guys go to an amusement park and ride a roller coaster, they experience a packed commuter train, Jesus buys a Shinsengumi costume to wear as pajamas, Buddha wins a statue of himself while trying to win a trip to Okinawa…—but I’m sad to report that I never actually laughed at anything. Perhaps that will change with later volumes, as I did think this one got more amusing as it went along. We shall see! – Michelle Smith

Species Domain, Vol. 7 | By Shunsuke Noro | Seven Seas – The bulk of this volume is based around the school athletics festival, which gives us a chance to revisit several ongoing issues: Kazamori trying to live up to the “elf” standard everyone sees in her, ship tease between Hanei and Mikasagi, and the usual athletic festival cliches. The most interesting part of the book was showing us that Mizuno, who is frustrated at the mermaid classmate who’s going to put the swimming competition out of reach, also is a mermaid. That said, the reason they’ve been hiding it is fascinating, getting into both monster cliches and the sort of thing that LGBTQ people deal with daily, and I thought the reaction of the class was great. All in all, another solid volume. – Sean Gaffney

Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization, Vol. 5 | By Tomo Hirokawa, based on the story by Reki Kawahara | Yen Press – Despite Genesis being a clear bad guy, one who’s even taking drugs to enhance his gaming “performance,” he’s still able to make a huge impression on Tia. Sadly, when he is then “killed,” that proves the impetus for her to pick up where he left off, and she’s now out to remove humans from this MMORPG. As always with SAO lately, there’s some good discussion of what constitutes an NPC, and Premiere also goes through some emotional crises, especially given Tia is her dark twin. The next volume is the final one, so we’ll see if Kirito and the cast of every other video game spinoff can help. Despite the high entry level of this series, it’s pretty decent. – Sean Gaffney

The Trial of Kitaro | By Shigeru Mizuki | Drawn & Quarterly – Collecting five short manga originally published in shonen magazines between 1968 and 1971, The Trial of Kitaro brings to a close Drawn & Quarterly’s delightful seven-volume compilation of selections from Mizuki’s influential series GeGeGe no Kitaro. Combining creepiness with comedy (including some literal potty humor—beware haunted mountainside toilets), the stories in this volume are tremendous fun. As with previous installments, the episodic chapters were in part chosen specifically to be kid-friendly, so there’s a certain amount of grossness and just plain strangeness to them. But, regardless of intended audience, I’m enamored with these yokai tales of horror. I love how Mizuki has taken traditional Japanese folklore and incorporated his own ideas and even some Western legends to create something truly special. Along with the other volumes, I will treasure The Trial of Kitaro. I am sad that this is the series’ end, but I am so incredibly happy that these stories were translated. – Ash Brown

Full Metal Panic!: Ending Day by Day, Part 2

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By Shouji Gatou and Shikidouji. Released in Japan by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Elizabeth Ellis.

This is also quite a short book, though not as short as the first part, and it might have flowed better as one long volume. But light novels were shorter in general back when FMP! came out. What’s more, it might have simply been too exhausting: the events in this book are designed to grind our hero and heroine down to the point where they’re both mentally broken, and succeed in doing so, though thankfully no permanent harm is done. Having this as the entire second half of one book might have demoralized the reader. As it is, be prepared for Sousuke to get more and more depressed and distracted, to the point where he’s zoning out and thinking of Kaname during an actual mission, leading to an accident and Mao having to try to clean up after him. (One weakness of the book is that we don’t see him meeting Mao after this occurs and he stalks off, possibly as she’d break his jaw and he needs that jaw.)

After spending most of the last few books seemingly getting killed and then coming back like Richard Nixon, Gauron finally bows out here, though not before making Sousuke’s life even more miserable than it already is. His new squad commander shows he doesn’t trust the Arbalest, which Sousuke agrees with – this despite talking with “Al” and finding the AI a lot more human than he had imagined. Unfortunately, he does not have the opportunity to work this out off-duty, as Hing Kong is about to descend into civil war thanks to Amalgam, whose leader turns out to be Tessa’s brother Leonard, who is there to give us a new bad guy to hate now that Gauron (finally) dies. Gauron was after Sousuke – Leonard is after Kaname. Kaname is possibly helping out, as after finding that Sousuke has removed himself from her life, she goes on a rampage in an effort to get her new “watcher” to take action… something that has almost lethal consequences.

It has to be said, a number of Kaname’s actions in this book beggar belief, and are the very definition of “don’t try this at home”. In particular, if you are being watched and want your tail to make themselves known, don’t take some stranger to a love hotel so he can try to assault you. However, Kaname gets a number of good (if fanservicey) scenes in this book, none more so than her reappearance and thrashing of Sousuke after he had been told she was dead, which is one of the best moments in the entire series. Unfortunately, it also highlights the pacing problems – this book is all backloaded, meaning the front part drags. Clouseau wipes the floor with Sousuke, but then seems to mostly vanish, with only a brief suggestion that his trashing of their late commander was entirely an act. Oh yes, and Tessa’s apology to Sousuke was cute, but reminds us again that she’s a very, very distant second in this love comedy race for Sousuke’s heart.

The next volume promises to be a longer one, and also lighter in tone, likely with more of the “wacky” comedy parts of FMP that sometimes work and sometimes read like the author read too many shonen manga with tsunderes. This is a flawed but readable angst-and-action book in the meantime.