Features & Reviews

By Takuma Morishige. Released in Japan by Media Factory, serialization ongoing in the magazine Comic Flapper. Released in North America by Vertical Comics.

By all rights, I shouldn’t really love this title as much as I do. At heart, it’s a variation on a standard Japanese comedic trope: a) person does funny thing; b) Other person says “WAIT ARE THEY DOING FUNNY THING?”; c) person seemingly has explanation for funny thing; d) Ah, OK, so it’s ____; e) Person does even funnier thing; f) Other person says “WAIT ARE THEY DOING EVEN FUNNIER THING?” Rinse and repeat. And yet My Neighbor Seki is a wonderful series, because the things are genuinely funny and strange, the chapters are short enough so that each one is just about the right amount of time devoted to one situation; and there’s a surprising amount of character development given that this is, at its heart, a series about two people at adjoining desks.

Basically, Yokoi is a “normal” middle-school student attempting each day to pay attention and study what the teacher’s saying, but can’t because the boy next door, Seki, keeps distracting her by doing… odd things. Elaborate domino setups, shogi with trapdoors, knitting cactuses… Seki’s imagination is topped only by the impossible nature of some of the tasks he performs. Seki himself is silent (and honestly Yokoi is much of the time as well)… we only get how elaborate Seki’s imagination is by Yokoi narrating everything he does and filling it in with her own interpretations. Which of course should clue us in that Yokoi is not really all that normal a girl after all.

The majority of this manga consists of Seki’s setups and Yokoi’s reactions, but it’s fun seeing how it occasionally dips its toe outside the box. The rest of the class apparently are fully aware of what Seki is doing; when he sets up his note-passing post office in one chapter, Yokoi is really the only one surprised by it; the rest of the class merely thinks “Cool!”. Of course, they’re not sitting near him, so he’s not the annoyance he can be to Yokoi. During a fire drill, we see (but don’t hear) Seki being normal and outgoing with other male students, and realize how much of his life we have filtered through Yokoi’s perceptions. And when another, clueless, classmates interrupted his Ouija board shenanigans, we see why he HAS to be filtered through her.

The art is fairly simple (just look at that cover), but highly expressive, and the main reason to read this in the end may be Seki and Yokoi’s facial expressions. They’re both so immature, in ways that only teenagers can pull off, even as they show amazing flights of fancy. You wonder at times if this is some demented form of courtship (Yokoi leaving notes in Seki’s locker after school really isn’t helping deny that), but this isn’t a romance. Yokoi gets punished several times through the series – for being distracted, for getting caught doing something Seki was doing, etc. – but it’s always her own fault for getting too involved, so she’s not really a total victim. Seki avoids getting discovered by anyone but Yokoi, but this means she’s the one who punishes him. They’re becoming rather codependent.

Basically, I enjoyed this as a funny comedy, but was surprised at how much depth it had. Of course, like Yokoi, I could be reading too much depth into it. But I’m absolutely buying more to see if I’m right, and you should as well.

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

I’ve talked about the disparate chaos going on in this One Piece storyline for a couple of volumes now, and while it doesn’t decrease in this new volume there seems to be a purpose behind it. The Tontatta Army states its intended objective – turn all the toys back into humans, give everyone their memory back – and then point out they realize this could lead to an outcome even worse than what they have, but they want to leave that up to the people – a sort of controlled, directed chaos. That type of chaos is seem throughout here, as we get a lot of explanations about what’s been going on, both here and through the series.

It’s not just order vs. Chaos either – the reveal that the old king of Dressrosa is still alive allows the series to contrast his rule of peace with Doflamingo’s suppressive, violence-led style. Like Crocodile, he comes into the kingdom as its supposed savior, having first set up the circumstances where he can do so. He talks about the heritage of his ancestors, but I’m not sure he actually cares about that, and a more telling speech is seen when he’s yelling at the melee fighters who tried to run away during their match, saying that taking a hit and getting bloody was better than any act of cowardice. It’s not just chaos, Doflamingo loves brutality.

We get a little more revealed about the past of One Piece’s universe, in what for Oda is a giant block of exposition, as the disgraced fighters bring each other up to date. I’m not particularly surprised that it ends up having royalty and aristocracy as the villains – the cruel rule of the powerful over the oppressed has been one of this series’ top themes, with Alabasta being such an exception that they actually had to single it out here as being different so as not to paint Vivi and company with the same brush as the others. In addition to that, there’s a strong anti-terror message here in seeing the reaction of everyone to the King’s demand for ransom money – pacifism is a noble intent, but unless one realizes that there’s a limit to it, it may lead to an even bigger tragedy, because people can be bastards.

Through all this, we have the ongoing adventures of our heroes. Sanji gets a few moments to try to look cool, which I would enjoy more if they weren’t so telegraphed and obvious. Nami has an inspiring speech used as a comedic undercut, which made me facepalm, but she redeems herself a bit with a better rousing speech towards the end. As for Luffy, he mostly spends this volume just watching everyone, but we do get a dramatic revelation as a cliffhanger. It’s presented as a mystery (indeed, Viz’s ‘next volume’ blurb has us wonder who the mystery stranger is), but anyone who recalls the flashbacks to Luffy’s childhood will have guessed it by now. It’s nice to see confirmed what most already expected.

So after as much exposition as I think we’re going to get, I expect Vol. 75 to be a series of giant fights. Should be fun. One Piece: Still Excellent.

Kiss of the Rose Princess Volume 2 by Aya Shouoto

I enjoyed the first volume of this series, but it was a bit on the light and fluffy side. When I finished reading this volume, I felt much more invested in this series because this volume BROUGHT THE ANGST! And while a funny paranormal manga might be a disposable distraction, I find myself much more intrigued by a funny paranormal manga that is also serving up a side dish of emotional trauma.

All along there were some hits of something dark in the first volume of this series, as Anise’s anxiety about losing her rose necklace and her memories of her father threatening to punish her seemed a bit extreme. This volume fills in the background of the Rose Princess and her Knights, introduces a new character/romantic rival, and establishes that Anise’s father is indeed very evil. So many shoujo manga set in high school get livened up with the the addition of a new transfer student, and in this case it is Haruto, and old acquaintance of Anise’s from Osaka who announces that he’s transferred to her school because she is the perfect foil to team up with in a comedy duo tournament. Reverse harem shenanigans ensue, as Anise’s Rose Knights end up challenging Haruto. Unfortunately Haruto is somewhat unscrupulous and poisons Kaede with an expired juice box.

Horrible things seem to happen to the Rose Knights after Haruto comes to town, most notably Mizuki being mysteriously attacked. It turns out that Haruto is the yellow rose of jealousy. It turns out that the Rose Knights of the past used the yellow rose as a sacrifice to seal away a demon lord, and now the seal needs to be redone. Anise’s father and Haruto are clearly on the side of evil, but the angst comes in when one of Anise’s knights decides that it is his role to serve as the new sacrifice.

This volume alternated between comedic high school shenanigans involving goofy contests and giving classmates chocolate, but there were a few good moments of character development along the way. Kaede is always steadfast, the reader gets a peak into Mizuki’s point of view, and Anise is growing stronger and stronger, determined not to give in to a predetermined destiny that was placed on her with the role of Rose Princess. This second volume was more entertaining than the first, so I’m hoping that this trend continues in future volumes!

By Meca Tanaka. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine LaLa. Released in North America by Viz.

Meca Tanaka was an author I enjoyed back in the old CMX days – I was quite find of Omukae Desu. She has a certain messy style with a lot of words that reminds me a bit of Banri Hidaka, though really many Hakusensha artists have this, as their magazines have a lot more dialogue than the average Shueisha and Shogakukan title. Here we see her writing a short two-volume series about an alien who comes to Earth looking for a soulmate, and the girl with a life of bad luck that he declares is the one.

I was a bit worried at the start, what with the jokes about “shall we mate now?”, but it’s made clear right off the bat that consent is required first. Io, the alien, is not particularly adept at human social conventions, but he’s an alien so gets more of a pass than the usual shoujo boyfriends who are just bad at interacting and boundaries. Once Io realizes what Earth requires, he does his best to try to work within its rules, even if they baffle him. He’s also very cheery and friendly (except for one moment where he gets jealous), which actually works against him at the end, as Hako can’t tell if he’s being sincere about his love, especially when he seems to give it up so easily.

Hako also impressed me. Honestly, with the sort of life she’s led, she should be a lot more broken than she is, and it’s definitely a good thing that she’s been taken in by the occult club. That said, she gets a lot more emotional as the title goes on, and it becomes clear that a lot of her open cheerfulness is a mask. She’s also shown to be somewhat stocky (well, by shoujo manga standards), so makes a nice change from the usual tall thin girls. She’s a nice girl. You want good things to happen to her. Io ends up being a good influence.

As for the rest of the cast, I already commented on Twitter about finding Erina fascinating. Unlike Io, there’s no excuse for her – she’s just constantly smiling with closed eyes, all the time. I think the only time she remotely shows another emotion is when Io pretends to be injured and drives Hako away, and even then it’s less anger and more ‘tsk tsk’. I hope we find out something about her in the 2nd volume. As for the club president and Matchan, they make a nicely goofy beta couple – indeed, the president (is he ever named?) seems to be starring in a completely different manga, possibly Nisekoi. Matchan might feel a bit cliched to Western readers, but the girl who shows embarrassing emotions as anger is a classic Japanese trope, and so I just deal with it.

This is over in the 2nd volume, and honestly it almost felt complete in this first one – you could stop right here and have a satisfying ending. Still, I enjoyed it. It wasn’t deeply meaningful or anything, but was good enough for me to seek out the next in the series.

By CLAMP. Released in Japan by Kadokawa Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young Ace. Released in North America by Dark Horse.

And so, after a 10-year hiatus, Legal Drug returns, with added plot! It began right about the time that xxxHOLIC was wrapping up in Young Magazine, which is appropriate given the similarity between the two series. Indeed, CLAMP underlines this by having Watanuki show up in the middle of this first volume, assigning the team a task that he, being unable to leave the shop, cannot accomplish himself. It’s somewhat disappointing that the Watanuki we see her is the post-series calm, reserved, smirking Watanuki, as of course during most of the best parts of xxxHOLIC, he and Kazahaya were like peas in a pod – little balls of frustration and anger who screamed at their close friend/rival whenever life became too much for them, which was all the time.

I had thought that the art style would be greatly changed from the first 3 volumes in the past, but it turns out that’s just the cover, which has our heroes prettied up and I suspect is drawn by another member of the team. Once inside the art is much the same as it was before, although 10 years more experience has made Nekoi’s eye for composition even better than it was before. As with so much CLAMP, this is simply pretty to look at, with even noble suffering being given a languorous tone, and where smoke wafting around the room can have a smirking quality to it, just like its owner. And, of course, where a crow being ripped apart by human hands can also looks quite pretty, if devastating.

One problem with Legal Drug is that its main ‘plot’, so to speak, was very much held back, with the series kept on as a ‘monster of the week’ sort of story till it found its feet – and then, of course, came the hiatus. Now that it’s returned, we thankfully don’t need that incubation period, and a lot of what was suggested in the first series is brought into sharper relief here. Rikuo has someone (sister or lover, I’m not sure), who he keeps searching for even though all signs point to her being dead. Kazahaya has a sister he loves dearly but who he is desperately hiding from, and the cliffhanger of the book shows us why. And the shop the two work in seems to have been created as a place for the two of them to have their Big Destiny together – Kakei and Saiga are just helping them along.

There’s a lot less humor here as well, sadly – the amusing overreactions are kept to a minimum, and Rikuo outright gets a prophecy that says he has to make an impossible choice and will fall into despair no matter what. It works out, though, because the two leads seem better equipped to deal with whatever tragedy comes their way. Kazahaya is still impulsive, but not to the point of being socially inept like in Legal Drug. Rikuo is stoic, but is actually bothering to explain things to Kazahaya this time around instead of merely rescuing and smirking at him. They FEEL more like the two chained by destiny that they’re supposed to be.

So in the end, Drug & Drop is much like its earlier incarnation, only more serious and with better written characters. I can’t guarantee it will end well, given my experience with CLAMP’s endings over the years, but for now let’s just enjoy the ride.

By CLAMP. Released in Japan by Kadokawa Shoten, serialized in the magazine Asuka. Released in North America by Dark Horse.

I had first read Legal Drug when it came out from Tokyopop back in the day, but I have to admit it didn’t leave as strong an impression on me. Possibly it was too BL for my tastes (I was so much younger them), or possibly I wasn’t taken with the lack of forward plot progression. These days, though, it’s hard not to read Legal Drug and think to yourself “…this is just xxxHOLIC, only a lot gayer, right?” Legal Drug went on ‘hiatus’ in 2003, right around the time CLAMP were arguing with Kadokawa about the ending to X. Coincidentally, around the same time, xxxHOLIC started in Young Magazine, and also featured a grumpy hero who likes to shout and his cooler, more stoic friend solving supernatural mysteries at the behest of an eccentric mentor.

When this series first came out, CLAMP’s work sort of subdivided into two main groups separated by art: there were the books that looked like Magic Knight Rayearth and X, and the books that looked like Suki and Legal Drug. The latter have Tsubaki Nekoi as their chief artist – as did xxxHOLIC, come to that. Her style has evolved a lot over the years, though, and it felt nostalgic to go back and see the cuteness in the character designs for Kazahaya and Rikuo. This isn’t as fluffy as Suki, though – there’s a lot of deep subtextual backstory here, very little of which is actually wrapped up. Rikuo is desperately looking for a woman everyone thinks is dead. Kazehaya is hiding from his sister, who he seems to love dearly, and who loves him just as dearly – in fact, possibly a bit too dearly? As for the owner of the shop where they work, Kakei, he seems familiar, and you might find yourself wondering if he’s from another CLAMP title.

Speaking of which, there was actually less crossover from other CLAMP works than I’d expected here. The most obvious one is from Suki, but that makes perfect sense in a meta way: the plot requires Kazehaya to have a high school girl give him her uniform at graduation, in exchange for a cute outfit. There is literally NO ONE IN THE WORLD who would be naive enough to do this – except Hina, of course. CLAMP readers who might have found this unbelievable now smile and nod, as all is right in the world.

I joked in some earlier posts about the BL quotient of Legal Drug compared to xxxHOLIC, but re-reading it really brought it home. Compared to this series, xxxHOLIC is straight as an arrow. Kazehaya is a social misfit (from what little background is revealed, he seems to have grown up with only his sister and no one else till about 6 months ago), and Rikuo doesn’t seem to care about much (though does show a preference for teasing Kazehaya). But Kakei and Saiga are clearly a couple, which is why I was trying to figure out what series they’d been in before, and the last third of this omnibus is set in a boys’ school where one of the students straight up admits they all get into relationship0s as there are no girls around. (Given the sheer amount of yuri titles that use the same approach, it’s nice to see things reversed here.)

The supernatural mysteries are excellent, and sometimes creepy, as you’d expect from a series whose spiritual sequel was xxxHOLIC. But the main reason to read Legal Drug is the character interaction, which can range from hilarious to heartbreaking. And now, of course, we get to see the actual sequel, as Drug & Drop began in Young Ace (thus changing genres from shoujo to seinen, though there appears to be no difference in content) in 2011. We’ll come back here soon to see how the years have changed our two leads.