Features & Reviews

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

For a genre that has a reputation for not succeeding in North America, there have been quite a few sports manga released over here, most of them connected in some way or another with Weekly Shonen Jump. There’s been Slam Dunk, and Whistle, and Eyeshield 21. It’s a classic and established genre in Japan, with its own cliches and foibles, and I’ve read enough of them to know what to look for and to be surprised when something I expected didn’t happen. The type of sport shown doesn’t really matter – basketball and soccer are always popular, though not baseball – Jump avoids that, possibly as Sunday and Magazine are so well known for baseball titles. And now we have Haikyu!!, which tells us about a down-on-its luck high school volleyball team trying to make it back to the finals with some promising but troublesome rookies.

Our two heroes are on the cover, although it’s possible that the dark-haired guy is more of an anti-hero. Hinata is a very typical Jump hero – short, overenthusiastic, filled with amazing athletic abilities that no one has ever been able to hone, but also prone to overconfidence and lack of experience. Kageyama, at first glance, appears to be the classic polar opposite to that sort of character – stoic, always frowning, experienced and unlikely to make the sort of rash decisions that Hinata would. But, as it turns out, this is just a fakeout, and was possibly my favorite part of the book. For Kageyama is actually an arrogant guy with a very hot temper, who expects to be the star and is rather frustrated that this is actually a team sport. Seething ball of rage Kageyama is a very interesting character, and I look forward to seeing more of him.

If you don’t know volleyball, no worries – Hinata barely knows the basics as well, so we get a lot of explanations. We also get a whole lot of characters, typical for a series like this – a team needs players, after all. There’s 2 third years who play good cop/bad cop, and an overzealous 2nd year who matches the rookies’ enthusiasm. There’s a tall, arrogant first-year whose face every reader will want to punch, and I can’t wait to find out what kind of situations he’ll have to go through before he stops being a complete jerk (he’s on the same team as our heroes, so will no doubt have to stop at some point). Oh yes, and the female manager is cool rather than cute.

There’s nothing particularly groundbreaking here, though as I said I was surprised and pleased by a few of the character choices. It’s just a sports manga, well-told. It’s 20+ volumes in Japan, which means that Viz is going to be releasing it every month for a while, so get used to these guys. And it’s the start, hopefully, of a sports manga renaissance, as now that Slam Dunk has finally finished, Viz is also picking up Kuroko’s Basketball as well. Can Touch or Major be far behind? (Well, yes, they can. Far, far behind.) In any case, Haikyu!! is a fun and energetic sports manga in the classic Jump tradition. You’ll enjoy it.

By Akiko Higashimura. Released in Japan in two separate volumes as “Kuragehime” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Kiss. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

Princess Jellyfish is turning out to be a difficult but worthy read for me. I spent much of this omnibus being irritated by the majority of the characters, either for making stupid decisions, being horrible people, or having the self-awareness of a gnat. And of course, that’s what the whole point is. It’s where the majority of the comedy comes from, and also the character development. Without Tsukimi’s introvertedness and low self-esteem, without Inari’s blackmail and vampishness, and without Kuranosuke’s amazing unself-awareness (though he’s above the majority of Amars, to be sure), we wouldn’t have anything to read about. And all of these aspects are in this volume in abundance.

Tsukimi is our heroine, of course, and so she gains the most depth here, even as she takes a few steps back as well. I’m still not particularly happy with Kuranosuke’s constant attempts to get her to do things and be more outgoing, but it does lead to a few nice moments, particularly when they’re designing dresses based on types of jellyfish and Tsukimi unleashes her inner fashion designer. (I also appreciates the fact that, while she does have untapped talent, things weren’t perfect right off the bat and the first attempt was totally wrong.) Sadly, she alsp sees the guy she has a crush on with another woman, and has no idea how to deal with it, even as she’s unsure what her feelings are. She equates love as something that makes her a ‘normal girl’, something to be truly feared.

And while the residents of Amars may not be normal girls (though they show surprisingly more aptitude at attempting it than Tsukimi does), Kuranosuke and his family prove to be just as screwed up. Inari is trying to tempt Shu using sex as a weapon, but he’s repressed (as we discover here, he seems to have been traumatized by walking in on his father as a young boy) to a point where she’s actually thrown off her game. Inari is at her most interesting when she’s like this – the idea of Shu being a genuine innocent virgin almost horrifies her a bit – but I’m unsure how long the manga can keep this plot going. She certainly has staying power, I’ll grant you. As for Kuranosuke, he may be the most interesting character so far, even if I keep waffling between liking and disliking him. He’s amazingly selfish most of the time, and, just like Tsukimi, seems horrified at the idea of falling in love like a normal guy.

It’s the tension that keeps me going as a reader, seeing how far the author can take all these plot points – Kuranosuke’s secret that he’s actually a man, Inari being terrible, etc. – and actually have them collapse. And, of coruse, there’s the fashion design, which I suspect is going to take up more and more of this manga’s time. It’s not perfect, but it’s the flaws that make Princess Jellyfish so fascinating.

By Ameichi. Released in Japan by Ichijinsha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Comic Zero-Sum. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

Back in my pre-blogging days I used to write up the week’s manga shipping list on my LiveJournal, similar to Manga the Week of but with less commentary. I noted the Japanese company the work came from, and what genre it fell into – shonen, shoujo, seinen, josei, or “whatever Wings is”. The last was my running gag for Shinshokan’s flagship magazine, which by all rights should probably have fallen under shoujo, but always had a bit more action and fantasy than your typical Margaret or Hana to Yume works. Of course, this was about 7-8 years ago, and now we know there’s also GFantasy, and indeed Comic Zero-Sum, which is where today’s title comes from. Battle Rabbits not *quite* BL, as there’s never any actual follow through, but I would say it caters to BL readers who don’t mind just being teased. And oh do they get fanfic fodder here.

I had actually forgotten this was a Zero-sum title until it arrived. Based on title alone, I was expecting a different kind of Seven Seas series, catering to their flagship demographic. And to be fair, there is a young girl wearing rabbit ears in this first volume. Mao is cute, and a bit of a ditz, and there are precisely zero readers who would get this title for her, because oh those guys. We start with our hero, Kaguya, who really should have known what was going to happen just by looking at his name. As a child, his father was murdered by a mysterious demon, but no one believed him and called it a suicide. Now he’s in high school and still dreams of getting revenge. Which, good news! A delinquent with a grudge against Kaguya gets possessed and attacks him, and we find out that Kaguya is actually a Battle Rabbit – which technically are supposed to defend the Earth but in actually seem to, as many of these titles are wont to do, stop people whose personal life problems are making them turn into monsters and heal them.

Despite the delinquent clearly being tsundere for our hero, the real BL tease comes in the 2nd half of the volume, when we meet Hijiri, leader of the Battle rabbits’ base on Earth. It turns out Kaguya is not only a Battle Rabbit but basically King Battle Rabbit, and thus everyone’s calling him “Young Master” and such in the best Little Lord Fountleroy-sama tradition. Hijiri meets him by putting a ring on his finger, uses mind control to get him to agree to fight as a Battle Rabbit for them, and later pops up in a dream literally in a wedding dress marrying him. So yeah, the authors (who have mushed their names together as a single pen name) know their audience. I’m less taken with Kaguya himself – I liked the idea that his need for revenge is just too emotional a reason to actually fight, but when he’s reluctant he’s far more generic. Oh yes, and Mao, the female Battle Rabbit, does the third-person speaking thing, for those who don’t like that style.

If you enjoy handsome guys looking cool and saving the day with a smile and a smirk, you should get a lot out of Battle rabbits. I’m not sure I’d be desperate to continue it, but as I said before, this series has a demographic and knows how to hit said demographic right in its sweet spot.

By Kazumi Kamachi and Kiyotaka Haimura. Released in Japan as “To Aru Majutsu no Index” by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On.

There is a certain amount of religion in Index, more and more as the series goes on, in fact. The whole point of the Magic side of Index is that it’s made up of various religious factions who are at odds with each other and themselves, and even an Angel has gotten in on the act. That said, I’m not really sure Kanachi has anything deep to say about religion in particular. I think he’s just using the basics as fodder for what he wants to do, which is tell stories where cool things happen. Which is fine, and there’s lots of cool things going on in this volume of Index. I quite enjoyed it. But I also grew up Roman Catholic, and the group of nuns that are introduced here adhere far more to the “Spanish Inquisition” type than the more modern Catholic Church. In fact, the text goes out of its way to say “Roman Orthodox”, and casually says the word Catholic doesn’t really apply to them anymore. Which is true, because what we have here is not a convent, it’s a paramilitary unit.

Introduced in this volume: Laura Stuart, Orsola Aquinas, Agnes Sanctis, Lucia, Angeline, Saiji Tatemiya. Yes, Yen’s translation spells it Agnes, not Agnese. I think that’s fine. For anime and manga readers expecting Itsuwa, she was added to the adaptations but isn’t in the light novel. No worries, she’ll turn up later. This takes place a whole week after Book 6, which is huge in Index terms. for Railgun readers, Misaka’s not in this one, probably as she’s still in California dealing with events in the Railgun SS novel. For Accelerator fans, the Accelerator manga’s start takes place around this time.

Laura Stuart is the most important of the names mentioned above. For all of the amusing “Your Japanese sounds stupid” jokes and occasional dojikko moments she gets, she’s clearly meant to be to the Magic Side what Crowley is to the Science side, i.e. a chessmaster who’s always thinking 10 moves ahead of everyone else. As Stiyl notes, she’s the one who told all those lies about Index that kicked off the series in the first place (a popular fan theory is that she’s Index’s mother, possibly as that makes it much worse), and certainly nothing that happens in these pages seems to surprise her – everything turned out as planned. That said, simply due to her nature and the way she’s written the reader tends to find her more sympathetic than Crowley (who, as we learn here, is likely also a magician in any case).

Much of the volume deals with a grimoire called The Book of the Law, written by Crowley, which is supposed to be undecodable, except Orsola thinks she knows how to decode it. Orsola is basically the one Roman Orthodox nun we meet here who isn’t a villain, and her tendency to underplay horrific injuries and forgive those who have attempted to kill her must surely strike a familiar chord with Touma. As for Agnes and the others, they’re zealots, thinking nothing of lying to Touma and the others about absolutely everything as, well, they’re non-Catholic heathens, so who cares? That said, Touma, who possible has been spoiled for the 11th novel, says he can totally see him being on Agnes’ side later. Touma tends to be on the side of whatever he thinks is right at the time.

There’s more I could discuss, including Index (who once again gets a lot to do) using a whole lot of magic given that she’s someone who supposedly is unable to use magic (I suspect that Laura may be responsible for that as well), but I think this is getting a bit long. Suffice to say this is a strong volume of the Magical Index series that will please its fans, unless they’re hardcore Catholics, in which case please note that Index is to actual religious theory of today what Goofy is to an actual dog.

By Yui Sakuma. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Morning. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

The genres that make up the Japanese manga industry have been becoming more fluid over the last few years, and there are titles and even entire magazines that don’t quite fit the label. That said, I still try to always put where the manga first came out in my reviews, both as a helpful reference and because it can be useful to see if you’re going to like something. Jump shonen titles are very different from Magazine shonen titles, and both of those are equally different from a Sunday title. A title that runs in Betsucomi is probably never going to fly in Hana to Yume. With seinen and josei it’s a bit less regimented, but you still see it. All of which is a fairly long preface to explain that I was rather surprised to see that Complex Age ran in Weekly Morning, a seinen magazine, rather than the josei magazine Be Love, where I would have expected it.

Complex Age stars Nagisa, a mid-twenties OL who also has a hobby of cosplay that takes up most of her time and money. She creates the costumes herself, and goes to show them off at the latest Comiket and other such events, along with her friend Kimiko. Her obsession is a long-running magical girl series that isn’t quite PreCure, but it’s close enough for jazz. She is, however, running into several problems. She still is trying to keep her cosplay a secret from her office life, particularly as some of her coworkers seem like the sort who would use it against her; another, younger girl comes along and looks absolutely perfect for the role that Nagisa is cosplaying herself; and Nagisa is getting to the age where it’s harder and harder to realistically play a 14-year-old magical girl. She’s also really tall, which also doesn’t help. This culminates in someone at the even calling her a “giant old lady”, causing her to snap and have a bit of an emotional breakdown.

I’m trying to think of a better way to say it, but I can’t: this is a very good series. The characters all have a depth and nuance that takes them beyond a level where I would normally expect them to stay. Nagisa’s friend Kimiko in particular amazed me. At first I thought that she might be setting up Nagisa for a horrible fall, and couldn’t imagine why, given they’re best friends, but it turned out to be – pardon the term – far more complex than that. As for Nagisa herself, after the beginning emotional turmoil, she actually proves to be far more mature than you’d expect, helping her new protege even as she inwardly writhes. And while new protege may look the part, there’s a lot more to cosplay than just looking right. The manga shows that cosplay can be a money-sucking hobby, but it never belittles it. And there’s a nasty cliffhanger that immediately makes me want to get the next book.

There’s a one-shot at the end of this volume that was the basis of the ongoing series, and it won an award. It’s quite different, showing a married woman as opposed to Nagisa’s OL, and seems a lot starker, ending in a literal bonfire where she cuts off her old cosplay life and moves on. It was well-told, but I preferred the ongoing tale, and I hope that Nagisa can find an ending that allows her to not be completely cut off from what she loves.

By Kazuma Kamachi and Motoi Fuyukawa. Released in Japan as “Toaru Kagaku no Railgun” by ASCII Media Works, serialization ongoing in the magazine Dengeki Daioh. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

I usually decide which series get full reviews and which ones get a review of the first volume and then shuffled off to the Briefs section fairly quickly, but Railgun muscled its way up over the last several volumes with a combination of dramatic plot, action, and excellent characterization. Sadly, that’s not all the series is. As part of the Dengeki line, there’s a certain amount of otaku pandering in its chapters (the same is true of its parent series, Index, and in fact many of the things I’m going to be complaining about originated there). And Railgun just wrapped up a big plot, and clearly wants to fool around a bit before it gets to the next big one. And so we get a volume like this.

I’m still attempting to save my complaints about Kuroko for the review of the 8th Index book in August, which stars her, so I will simply note that Kamachi and Fuyukawa seem to think “lesbian” and “sexual predator” amount to the same thing, and they are oh-so-hilarious. We also see a macguffin introduced here, Indian Poker, which lets you see the dreams of someone else – supposedly with their permission, but of course, horny Academy City teens are already using it to dream-screw the hottie of their choice – including Mikoto and Misaki (who at least get a reasonable amount of revenge here). Much of the last third of the book is devoted to Mikoto and Saiai (from ITEM about 6-7 volumes earlier, in case you’d forgotten) attempting to get a special Indian Poker card that increases your breast size, and many, many bust jokes follow, with the final punchline being that the card DID work but on some bystander. Oh, and to top it off, there’s an entire CHAPTER devoted to Awaki Musujime and her shotacon fetish, which if you haven’t read Index must baffle you (and honestly, even if you have read Index it’s baffling.)

Speaking of Awaki, while one can still read Railgun without being cognizant of what’s going on in Index, it’s becoming more and more difficult, due to both sly continuity cameos and callbacks/callforwards. Some time seems to have passed since the last volume of Railgun, which took place during the athletic festival. The astute Index reader can tell this because ITEM now has a lackey, Shiage Hamazura, who will grow very important as the Index series goes on, but not yet. We’re likely sometime between Index books 13 and 15 (we can’t be after 15, for reasons I won’t spoil). Moreover, the entire volume is filled with Index characters – the guy selling the cards that allow you to dream-screw Misaki and Mikoto is “the blue-haired piercings” friend of Touma’s; Frenda mentions her little sister; Mikoto’s dream of a girl wanting huge breasts is clearly Aisa, the vampire killer girl; and yay, we get more hints of the incestuous relationship between the Motoharu siblings. It’s continuity porn, even if you may not want it.

Amongst all this, there is a serious story in the middle, as Kuroko and Uiharu help a young boy with precognition try to save people from various accidents that he has seen. That said, its placement in between the two Indian Poker storylines reads like it was put in to fill out the page count as the author hadn’t quite decided which direction to go yet, and while it shows off how much of an excellent Judgment member Kuroko is that just makes it all the more frustrating that we get the “pervert” talk as a punchline. Railgun can be excellent when it ditches the cameos and fanservice and is about women kicking ass. This is mostly not that volume.

By Natsuki Takaya. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Yen Press.

If ever there was a series that cried out for a license rescue and re-release, it was Fruits Basket, one of the biggest gateway manga of the 21st century. First released in North America between 2004 and 2009, the story of a young girl and her encounter with a “cursed” family is one of the most beloved shoujo manga of all time over here. It was also big in Japan, and the re-release we’re seeing is based off of the Japanese re-release. I say that because I know some people will be annoyed that the original author’s sidebars are missing – this is very common with re-released manga, simply as the sidebars tend to be very dated – as Takaya herself says in her afterword. We do see new cute SD-art to replace them, but sadly it repeats itself, so we see the same bookmark-ish art over and over. There’s also a new translation, which reads fine, though of course those who have the old one memorized may find it jarring. It feels a bit freer than the Tokyopop one. Worry not, though, we do have honorifics here.

As for the content, what is there to say? If you haven’t read this series, do so right away. I will try not to spoil it, though it’s honestly very difficult not to do so, as the fun of re-reading is going back and seeing all the little hints that I never picked up the first time I was reading the series. I’ve made little secret that my favorite character is Shigure, for example, and I recalled his character getting darker and more manipulative as the series went on. But no, there it is as I reread it. He was like that from the very beginning, it’s just we were distracted by the whole “high school girls!” and flirting with Ayame going on. Likewise, Tohru’s relationship with her late mother, which I think the reader is first meant to see as sweet and touching, already shows some of the dark undercurrents to come.

These two volumes show us the first four of the original release, and you can tell right away that no one was quite sure if it would be a hit yet. Takaya’s previous big hit for Hakusensha, Tsubasa: Those With Wings, was only 6 volumes long. And you can see here that Takaya wants to get a lot of the zodiac introduced and show us their deep traumas and tragedies as quickly as possible, just in case it goes the same amount of time. It is almost startling how fast Hatori’s backstory is breezed though, to give an example, or Momiji’s. The exceptions are Yuki and Kyo – as the two male leads, they get the most focus, and we see the development of their characters over the course of both omnibuses – each wants what the other has, and wishes things could be different.

It’s not all sad boys in snow, though. Fruits Basket could be hilarious much of the time, and the humor works very well. Tohru’s friends Hanajima and Uotani contribute the bulk of it, being the sort of girls you;d normally imagine would never hang out with a bright shining object like Tohru but brought together through circumstances we don’t know about yet to form a deep bond. We see how much the two girls care about Tohru, and worry she might be taken advantage of by the Sohma family, even if they seem nice enough. But Tohru needs a place to stay. And, as becomes clear, Yuki and Kyo need Tohru – as does Shigure, who clearly has some scene that requires her to be there and make the others break out of their shells. We see what might be driving that when we get a few glimpses of Akito, the leader of the family, who manages to terrify Yuki in just a few seconds, leading Tohru to physically push him away – something startlingly unlike her.

If you already have Fruits Basket and are wondering whether to get it again, well, it’s a larger trim with new covers and interstitials, and a new translation. Make up your mind from that. If you haven’t, do so at once. The series only gets better as it goes along, and rewards readers who pay attention. A well-deserved classic.