Features & Reviews

By Mizuho Kusanagi. Released in Japan as “Akatsuki no Yona” by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Viz. Translated by JN Productions, Adapted by Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane.

The cover to this first volume features our heroine, Yona, surrounded by swords, and on the back cover we see her confidently wielding one. But on the front she’s looking at them with a look of melancholy, and I feel that this fits the tone of the volume. For although this is the story of a princess who will take up the sword and become a warrior, we’re not there yet. Instead, what we get here is a sweet, sheltered young girl with a crush on her cousin and childhood friend and an antagonistic relationship with her bodyguard and other childhood friend. In other words, were it not for the fantasy castle setting, this could easily be any other shoujo high school romantic comedy. Then… things happen.

The layout of this volume actually ends up being very odd. We start off with the love triangle setup, and then things rapidly turn serious and deadly with the murder of Yona’s father, the king. We’re told that, as a king, he wsa rather conciliatory, so it’s no great surprise that someone wishes to replace him, but it’s still a chapter of Yona avoiding also being put to death and running for her life. The second half of the book is a series of flashbacks, told as Yona and Hak (the aforementioned bodyguard) hide in the woods and deal with things like leeches and snakes, things that Yona is clearly totally unfamiliar with. The flashbacks show us more of the relationship between Yona, Hak and Su-won (said cousin she’s in love with, and again it’s really sweet and shoujo-ey, as she turns to Hak for advice on how to deal with suitors she doesn’t want, and how they all get colds as kids after a snowball fight and the King tries to make broth for them, which is ridiculously awful but makes her happy.

In other words, we are shown a tragedy, then we get to see why it was so tragic after the fact. Yona’s father does indeed seem to be a rather ineffectual king most of the time, though there’s a hint or two that this is all just a facade. There’s also some backstory that I’m sure will be developed more later, with Su-Won’s father having been killed before the book began, and various tribes (there are five, and one is the “wind tribe”, so I won’t be surprised if we see a water and fire tribe at some point down the road) all jostle for political influence. And then there’s Hak, who is apparently an incredibly strong warrior, but is also devoted to Yona, both because he was “tricked” into doing it by her father, and also because he clearly loves her, though he keeps that hidden for now.

Yona of the Dawn’s first volume is good setup, with an interesting story structure, and I look forward to seeing how its naive and sheltered heroine becomes the confident swordslinger on the back cover. Oh, and we also have a serious dark-haired good guy and a nice but secretly evil blond bad guy as rivals for Yona’s affection, for those of you who play shoujo manga bingo.

By Tadatoshi Fujimaki. Released in Japan as “Kuroko no Basket” by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz. Translated by Caleb Cook.

I’ll be honest with all of you. Of the ‘big four’ North American sports, I’ve always found basketball the least interesting. Sure, I’ll get excited by March Madness, but the pros do nothing for me, and watching the games on TV just makes me want to do something else. That said, I can’t deny that the sport has an allure that attracts a lot of people, particularly high school kids and promising young manga artists. And now that it appears Viz has vanquished the curse of sports manga in the States once and for all (with the possible exception of baseball – sorry, Adachi), we can see why this series was absolutely huge. The only reason it wasn’t licensed sooner, I expect, is that Viz was still releasing Slam Dunk, the ur-basketball manga, and didn’t want the two to compete.

Kuroko is the blue-eyed stoic on the cover, and the title is pretty telling, as Kuroko’s style of basketball is very much not like the rest of the team, as it’s designed around his own lack of a personality. While this is, for the most part, a typical fiery sports manga, it has its fair share of humor, and a great deal of it revolves around Kuroko’s stoicness and ability to not be noticed even when he’s literally standing in front of someone. Most other basketball manga would star the redhead behind him – indeed, Slam Dunk did, as Kagami is very clearly modeled after that character. But it’s Kuroko that makes this interesting, as he uses his quasi-invisibility to the team’s advantage. He can’t make shots, of course, but it makes him a near-perfect passer. And with Kagami on the team, who is driven by the desire to compete against the strongest teams and win, they become well-nigh unstoppable.

Basketball does not appear to be all that big in Kuroko’s school itself. The manager, also pictured on the cover, is the coach as well, and they sometimes have trouble with school discipline. Riko, by the way, seems to be the sole female in the manga so far, and there’s no hint of romance. Because the other big reason that this manga is getting licensed is that, like many other recent Jump series, it has an absolutely huge BL fandom. There’s none of that in the actual manga itself, of course, but you do get an awful lot of handsome guys sweating and being athletic, and combined with the usual Jump goals of friendship, training and victory the combination can be irresistible. Heck, Kise, Kuroko’s old teammate from middle school introduced as the first semi-antagonist, seems to behave very much like the ex-boyfriend who wants to get back together really badly.

I haven’t talked much about the basketball itself, mostly because, as I said, it’s not my thing. But it’s the majority of the book, and it’s exciting, well-told and well-drawn – I was never confused or bored. Still, you read this for the characters, and I greatly look forward to more of Kuroko and his quiet, eccentric linefaced self.

By Yoshiki Tanaka. Released in Japan as “Ginga Eiyū Densetsu” by Tokuma Shoten. Released in North America by Haikasoru. Translated by Daniel Huddleston.

In the first volume, we saw the Galactic Empire and the Free republic spend most of the book at war with each other. This time around, they spend most of the book at war with themselves. Reinhard is not the best at making friends and influencing people, and so the aristocracy decide to take him out in a coup. Meanwhile, knowing that he needs the republic to be distracted while this is going on, Reinhard plants a traitor in order to start a coup on the republic side, which will keep Yang Wen-Li busy doing what he hates the most – fighting military battles. By the end of the book, both Yang and Reinhard have suffered grievous losses, though you could argue that Yang’s is merely sad, while Reinhard’s amounts to a grand tragedy of epic proportions.

This series has a huge cast, to be frank, bordering on the ridiculous. I will not blame the reader from getting completely lost among the Empire’s admirals, not knowing their Wittenfelds from their Mecklingers. That said, I never felt lost, mostly because, with the exceptions of the obvious main characters, the book is more about the plot than the characters. And it still has its obvious agenda – war is a tragic, horrible thing that devastates everyone. As with the first book, neither side comes off very well. The Empire is filled with arrogant scheming aristocrats who regard ‘the people’ as their toys, and indeed most of the latter half of the book hinges on such a jaw-droppingly heinous incident that I am reluctant to spoil further. As for the Republic, we see the dangers of the military assuming that they know what’s best for the people – sure, there’s martial law and no freedom of speech now, but freedom will return. really. Any day now.

If LOGH has a huge cast, it also has a reputation for killing that cast off. The aforementioned heinous incident leads directly to the most astonishing one, but (again trying not to spoil) its main purpose is also to show us that Reinhard is still stunningly immature at times, and can react just the way the aristocrats that he’s trying to put down do. I think the nest volume will be very important in seeing whether he manages to mature as a leader, or if he’s going to be the villain of the series. (The author is being very even-handed about both sides being tremendously flawed, though I suspect most Western readers will automatically side with Yang Wen-Li.) Speaking of Yang, he’s forced to admit at the end of the book that the republic’s own leader is a dangerous tyrant – and Yang feels a great desire to do something about it, something that goes against his very nature.

Having introduced most of the backstory in book 1, the second book does not feel quite as much like a history lesson. The translation can still get pompous and didactic, but again, I’m fairly sure the original was exactly like that as well. And the space battles are described well enough that even those uninterested in such things will be drawn in. I suspect the third volume will be a giant signpost as to where the rest of the series is heading – I highly look forward to it.

Haikyu!! Volume 2 by Haruichi Furudate

I thought that the first volume of this volleyball manga series was unusually strong, and it set up some interesting dynamics between Hinata, the enthusiastic volleyball player with untapped athletic abilities and absolutely no experience, and Kageyama, the star player who is incapable of being a team player.

The second volume opens with the team getting a chance to play a practice match against a rival school where some of Kageyama’s former teammates ended up. This provides an opportunity for the Karasuno High volleyball team to test out their newest players. As with the best sports manga, this volume does a great job maintaining the tension and action of competition, sprinkled with a bit of exposition of volleyball rules, with a great deal of character development packed into a single game.

Hinata’s overwhelming enthusiasm about the simplest things like getting a team jacket also has some ill effects, as he is so nervous about playing his first game he keeps visiting the bathroom every five minutes leading up to the match. Kageyama finds himself in the position of being an unlikely sports psychologist, which serves to contrast the personalities of the two protagonists of the series even more.
Hinata ends up awakening Kageyama’s full potential as a volleyball setter, as Kageyama finally realizes that he needs to consider the player he’s feeding the ball to. Hinata’s jumping abilities also inspire a degree of trust in a teammate that Kageyama that he never had before. He gets the timing down so exactly that Hinata just has to jump and expect that the ball will be there when he arrives for that brief moment at the top of the net.

The ending of this volume showcases the potential of the scrappy Karasuno High team. They might not be functioning as a full team yet, but they have a lot of potential and a real future, if only they get some help working on some fundamentals and even more practice time. The volleyball action scenes were as dynamic and gripping as the first volume. I’m happy that this series is on an accelerated release schedule, so I don’t have to wait too long before the next volume!

By Leiji Matsumoto. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics. Translated by Zack Davisson.

Sometimes you don’t read a manga for its plot, or characters, or artwork. Sometimes you read a manga because of its mood. You need something that’s evocative, that’s lyrical, that takes you into a different headspace – that of pirate ships in space, and betrayal and heartache, and the repeated narration of a gorgeous scar-faced woman who seems to know she’s speaking to the reader. If you need this, I have good news for you, as Queen Emeraldas is all this and more, and it’s in an omnibus hardcover edition to book, with expensive paper stock. Of course, don’t just get it as a collector’s item. Get it because it’s Leiji Matsumoto at the height of his powers.

The Japanese audience, of course, is familiar with Emeraldas by the time this manga first appeared in the late 1970s. Matsumoto had carved out worlds for everyone – Galaxy Express 999, Space Battleship Yamoto, Captain Harlock – and she was part of the extended cast that flit through these worlds. Let’s just say if she reminds you of Maetel, that’s not an accident. No worries about being lost here, though, as this is her own self-contained title, where she plays a mentor role to a young, driven boy – Hiroshi Umino – who wants to build his own spaceship and go to space. These aren’t just hollow words, either. He does so twice during the course of this volume, though his drive is perhaps somewhat better than his spaceship-building capability. He keeps running into Emeraldas, who stops what she’s doing to prevent him getting killed by the many people and creatures that try to stop him. And along the way, we even get a bit of her own backstory.

Harlock was once rewritten to fit in with Wagner’s Ring Cycle, and reading this it’s not surprising that the two would intermesh – this is not so much a story as it is high opera, with Emeraldas functioning both as the title character and as the chorus. The manga definitely feels like a weekly title, and unlike similar titles the narrative makes no effort to smooth out the constant repetition of who Emeraldas is and why she travels the stars. But she’s not the only one. Characters expound upon their hopes and dreams, and except for Hiroshi, these dreams are mostly shattered or abandoned for various reasons. But their stories also serve to inspire and educate. There’s also some bad guys as well, and the manga does not shirk on the violence – one spoiled rich daughter who tries to have Hiroshi murdered is shot by a firing squad organized by her own father.

There’s not much ongoing plot to follow here, and the characters are mostly static throughout the book. You don’t care, though, because the book is thrilling, and moody, and shows you how cold and vast space really is, and how this can make many people as cool as Emeraldas is. It’s not so much a manga as it is a song. But you’ll want to listen to it again and again.

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

Backstory is important when you’re reading fictional works. It helps to show depth to the characters, show that they’re meant to be real people and not just caricatures. And it can kickstart a plot, or add some tragedy to give emotional catharsis. Occasionally, though, you run into a problem, and it’s especially true of first volumes of manga, where you have to wait a while to see what happens next? Liselotte & Witch’s Forest, by the author of Fruits Basket, has that problem – at least for me. Liselotte is the princess of a feudal family, who took up arms and warred against her brother for control of the land. She lost, and now she’s in exile in the middle of a somewhat fantastical forest, along with two servants and a mysterious young man who reminds her of her lost love.

The difficulty here is twofold. First, the badass princess going up against her family with a sword is literally less than a 2-page spread, and we don’t even see her face. The majority of the volume is dedicated to seeing the somewhat inept at common things princess trying to make the best of it, seeing her servants be a) frustrated and b) stoic about the whole thing (the servants are polar opposite twins, and I can’t help but be reminded of Hiro and Kisa, to be honest), and discovering the aforementioned vague supernatural forest. We don’t quite see the witch herself, though her presence is felt. We do see her familiar, who is the equivalent of a 5-year-old pretending to be a badass grownup. And then we have Engetsu, who seems to clearly be related to whoever is in Liselotte’s past, but is also clearly connected to the witch, though we’ll no doubt find out more in future volumes.

So yes, I’m complaining about the plot I didn’t get, and I know I should just read Yona of the Dawn if I want that. What I do get is thoroughly pleasant, with Liselotte being a bit useless at cooking and gardening but with a good heart, though it’s quite clear why her male servant tends to spend his days in a state of apoplexy. I’m not sure how dark this will get, or whether we will see more figures from her past. As always with Takaya’s works, she’s best at conveying people with terrible sadness inside them who nevertheless show a smiling face to the world. Tohru was like that, and I’ve no doubt that Liselotte will be the same. Of course, the series is still mostly lighthearted – the male servant, Alto, provides half of the comedy moments, and is highly amusing. (The other half come from the witch’s familiar and his puppy villain antics).

We have four more volumes till we catch up with Japan. The series is currently on hiatus while Takaya writes a sequel to Fruits Basket that’s running online, I believe. I worry this means Liselotte isn’t popular – worst case, it may be like Millennium Snow and keep readers waiting a while while the author does something else. But I’m ready to read on, and look forward to the next volume, even if it doesn’t have a sword-swinging princess.

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

The benefit of re-reading a series with so much going on like Fruits Basket is that things you hadn’t noticed before turn out to be signposted, whereas things that once held your attention don’t appear to be as relevant in the long run. We only get one new Sohma this time around, as we meet shy, bullied Kisa trying to escape from serious bullying at school and a somewhat hysterical mother at home. I remember being impressed at the time with the fact that Takaya had the characters take exception to the standard Japanese response for bullying, which is “if you were strong enough, they wouldn’t bully you”. Of course, this is sort of what happens – the newfound bonds with Tohru and, to a lesser degree Yuki, allow Kisa to find inner strength and return to school. So the message is a bit undercut, but it’s still a very good arc, I think.

Speaking of Yuki, he talks about his own past and that he once turned in on himself the way Kisa did, but the details are sketchy – no doubt to be saved up for later. Certainly he once again contrasts with Kyo – the head of the family, Akito, seems to have smothered Yuki a bit, whereas the opposite is true of Kyo. There’s also the love triangle, which at this point Takaya is still trying to keep as balanced as possible, but knowing the outcome as I do, it’s difficult not to see that she had Kyo and Tohru in mind as the endpoint even at this stage. And while most of the latter part of this omnibus deals with Kyo’s family issues, as he and his sensei Kazuma try to show affection while still somewhat not understanding the other person, it’s very clear that Tohru is why Kazuma showed up in the first place.

This will be deconstructed later in the series, but at this point it’s astonishing how straight it’s played that everything can be healed with the power of Tohru’s all-loving presence. Shigure is betting everything on Tohru being what finally breaks the curse. Kazuma arrives as he’s heard about Tohru and wants to make sure that she’s not going to run away if she sees the actual true form of what Kyo’s curse is. And her immediate “I love you!” to Kisa, even if it’s more in a “so cute!” way, is what starts her on the road to healing. In retrospect, of course, this really is setting us up for a fall – the arrival of Hiro next time around will help, but right now Tohru is being portrayed as a saintly goddess as that’s how most of the main characters are viewing her.

As with previous volumes, this is a good adaptation of the Japanese omnibuses. The interstitials are gone, replaced with simple SD-art, but it was like that in the Japanese reprint as well. and there’s nice color pages at the start. And the translation is smoother but also looser than the original Tokyopop one. Anyone wishing to upgrade should be quite happy.

By Tappei Nagatsuki and Shinichirou Otsuka. Released in Japan by Media Factory. Released in North America by Yen On.

Given the sheer number of ‘person goes to a world based on a game’ light novel plots out in Japan, a genre so oversaturated that some competitions have banned the premise, it’s not a surprise that we’re starting to see the genre poked fun at a bit. Re: Zero begins with our hero, who went out to get snacks, suddenly in a busy intersection of a fantasy world, complete with anthropomorphic creatures, noble princesses, and sneaky thieves. The joke is that this is exactly the sort of thing that he’s read about constantly, and (given that he’s sort of become an ungraduating loser NEET in our world, albeit a buff one who keeps in shape) he is absolutely ready to gain cool new powers and save the world through the power of being awesome. Thankfully, this is not that series.

In fact, Subaru himself may be the weak point in the book – deliberately, to be fair. He’s meant to be the sort of character you want to give a swift kicking to for being so stupid, but that’s always a high wire act, particularly if it’s your protagonist. Subaru is a smartass, and not really in a good way – he’s there with a snarky response most of the time, but it almost feels overscripted, as if it’s a default he drops into when he’s not really sure how to act in a situation. When things get more dire and serious, as they inevitably do, he gets more interesting, though not necessarily more competent. Because his powers are the main title of the series: when he dies, he resets to zero, which is to say he returns back to the start of the day to try to avoid dying. He’s not particularly good at avoiding this.

The rest of the cast fares better than Subaru, as they merely have to be fairly standard fantasy types that will get development later. There’s the overearnest princess, who can’t help but worry about Subaru even though there’s no good reason to do so; the aforementioned sneak thief Felt, who the epilogue shows us is more than she seems (my money’s on missing royalty); and Reinhard, who is perfect in every way, and basically is the character that WOULD normally be our hero in most works – the best part of the book is when we figure out that the way Subaru saved the day and avoided getting himself killed is to call for help rather than fight, which indirectly lets Reinhard come in and save the day, something Subaru is simply ill-equipped to do.

I’m not sure where this will go in the future – I assume if he dies in Book 2 he’s not going to go back to that intersection, as that would quickly grow tedious. I do hope that he matures and acts a bit less of a doofus, though I have zero hopes of that coming true. That said, this is a fun series with a premise that can go in many different directions, and I want to see where it takes me.