Features & Reviews

By Hajime Isayama. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Bessatsu Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

The cover to this volume features Levi (surly), Hange (insane grin) and Erwin (pensive) at a bar, looking for all the world like they’re about to tear the reader of the book apart, and honestly it wouldn’t surprise me in the least at this point. In the last volume was all about realizing how corrupt the government is from top to bottom and that it was our heroes against the world, this volumes takes it further by showing that our heroes are also not without horribleness. The griminess that the last volume had only increases here, and I find myself missing Titans a bit.

I’ve been reading the new chapters as they’re released on Crunchyroll, and have been somewhat dreading this review, as this volume seems to feature all the things I like least about the series. I will start with the stuff that was very good. Isayama’s art is still questionable, but the battle sequence between Levi and… well, everyone else in the last two chapters is quite well done, and should be really fun to animate assuming a series ever gets that far. Erwin laying out his plan for a bloodless revolution, as well as his own tragic past, is well-handled, and explains a lot about the lengths he’s decided to go to. Kenny Ackerman is dangerously psychotic and over the top, and brings a fresh terror to the villains’ side. Jean, Connie and Sasha are fantastic for being the remaining moral core of the Survey Corps, even if I worry it’s because they’re meant to be “the softest”.

OK, let’s talk about the torture scenes. I hate them. I hate that our heroes are forced to resort to this, I have VERY MUCH that it actually WORKS. This is the wrong message to send to anyone, particularly young Japanese readers of a shonen magazine, and no, Hange kicking a table in anger at herself does not really help to gloss over the problem. I do not want to see “torture is bad, but it gets results” in any manga, ever. Particularly when it’s our heroes doing it. Case closed.

Secondly, there’s the scene with Levi emotionally and physically abusing Historia till she gives in to their demands, which I think I hate even more than the aforementioned torture. There’s a theme in this volume of “we have to get our hands dirty if we want to win and bring about peace”, and it’s not a message I want Attack on Titan to have. Historia, after the loss of Ymir and the revelation of her true identity, is clearly suffering from shellshock of a sort, and doing this is just mean. And, as others have mentioned, having someone say afterwards “I know he seems harsh, but he’s really sweet underneath” makes things worse, if that’s possible.

I have avoided mentioning the fact in these reviews, mostly as it wasn’t really relevant when it was just the Corps trying to figure out how to defeat 30-foot monsters and not get eaten, but now that we’re into political intrigue and justifying the means, it needs to be said: Isayama has been reported to be a war crimes apologist, and many in Korea have called for readers to boycott the series because of this. And now here we have Levi and Hange committing war crimes for “the greater good”. It makes me dislike them, which is a shame as I loved Hange a lot. It also makes me dislike this volume, and I’m wondering how much rope I’m going to give the series before it hangs itself. You’re on notice, Attack on Titan.

By Etorouji Shiono. Released in Japan in two separate volumes by Square Enix, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young Gangan. Released in North America by Yen Press.

After finishing this first omnibus, you can absolutely see why Übel Blatt was licensed, and why I think it will do very well over here. The plot is straightforward and is the sort of thing that lends itself to a long, drawn-out story. The hero is mostly likeable (more on that later) and you understand his burning need for revenge; the action, though incredibly bloody and violent, is well-drawn and not at all confusing. You find yourself drawn into the story and wanting to find out what happens next. It’s very well-written. It also has a rape so mind-bogglingly appalling in the first few pages that my jaw dropped, as well as two “semi-consensual” sex scenes that also push the limits. So there’s that.

Let’s back up a bit and talk about that plot. It may seem very familiar to fans of The Seven Deadly Sins, and that’s because it’s the exact same plot. Of course, Übel Blatt started in 2004, a good 8 years before Kodansha’s shonen series, so any inspiration most likely runs the other way. In any case, we have a typical manga fantasy world, where everyone is living in castles or huts but we also have flying zeppelins. The young man on the cover is Köinzell, who flashbacks show was once a cute young kid but now appears to be older, far more angry and bitter, and not quite human anymore. He’s on a mission to wipe out the legacy he and his companions left behind, one that has him and three other (seemingly dead) friends branded as traitors. Along the way, he meets a young girl trying to save her brother, an even younger girl just trying to get to the next country, and a seemingly endless number of evil monks.

This is a fun series. Köinzell is mostly serious, even in his lovemaking, but this isn’t really a manga that needs comedy relief. Even the token little girl who gets taken along for the ride doesn’t really get too many wacky antics here. The first half came out as a “Volume 0” in Japan, but unlike most other Volume 0s appears to have actually debuted at the same time as Vol. 1, so I will assume it’s not ‘go back and rewrite the backstory to make it fit what I have now’. There are some men and women in the background I’d like to see more of.

It’s just very hard to recommend a manga where you have to admit that it begins with one of the mook villains explicitly raping a woman, then when he tosses her aside to rant for a bit, his HORSE decides he’s going to get some as well. I understand the need to show that this is a desperate and horrible world which our heroes will need to save, but there are better ways to do it than this. What’s more, Köinzell (who is, to be fair, not the usual sexless hero, something that surprised me) is not much better, recognizing a young woman’s crush on him and having her stripped and his hand down her pants within ten seconds.

Thus my recommendation of this series is tempered by “if you can get past the rape, assault, and non-consensualness with many of the female characters”. I hate saying that. As with Japan, I suspect Übel Blatt’s main audience are young college-aged men who like fantasy series with a lot of sex and violence, and this is probably better than a few others coming along, though I’d try Berserk (which has similar issues all around) first.

By Satsuki Yoshino. Released in Japan by Square Enix, serialization ongoing in the magazine Gangan Online. Released in North America by Yen Press.

The genre of ‘Fish out of water city boy moves to the country and is slowly won over by the laid-back, charming ways of the locals’ is so well known in Japan that it’s become a bit of a cliche, but we don’t see it too often over here in North America, likely as it’s almost always filled with hard-to-translate dialect humor, lacks a big, eventful plot, and relies essentially on being heartwarming. The series Yotsuba&! has a similar feel, but whereas that’s all about the child, Barakamon is definitely about the young man, Seishuu Handa, and his reactions to his new neighbors and attempts to deal with the mess he’s made of his life.

The thing I like best about Handa is that he’s got a lot of decent guy underneath him, he just tends to stress out a lot and overreact to things. I have issues with this myself, so can identify. His constant admission of hating children does not really mean that he’s bad at dealing with them – at times he proves to be even better than their local teacher, and certainly bonds straight away with young Naru, the first-grade girl who practically moves in with him from day one. But he’s at a crossroads in life after one very ill-advised tantrum (he had to move from the city as everyone thought of him as ‘the guy who punched an old man with a cane’), and worse, he’s starting to see the old man’s point about his calligraphy.

Calligraphy is Handa’s profession, but trust me, you don’t need to be an expert to enjoy this – god knows I’m not. I did smile when I saw Handa’s efforts to have fun while writing characters, and later on seeing the calligraphy filling a room that he called his failures. He understands his problem but is unsure how to fix it – somewhere we’ve all been. The basic cure is likely “stop being so serious”, something I expect the rest of the cast will take care of before too long.

Other than young Naru, the rest of the cast get introduced fast and furious, but haven’t stuck around as long. She has a shy friend, Hina, and a young boy who has a crush on her and doesn’t know what to do. There’s also Hiroshi, a young high schooler whose idea of effort, and what everyone else expects of him, is frustrating to both him and the reader. This was probably my favorite chapter in the volume, as Hiroshi gradually comes to realize that he may THINK he’s giving effort, but compared to others he really does deserve all the average grades he gets. It also shows off our hero’s tenacity.

The presentation is good – there’s a final page explaining the title and some of the dialect jokes. The dialect itself is translated as ‘vaguely Southern’, but not enough to really jar the way some other publications have done (I’m thinking Osaka from Azumanga here). The plot reminds me of Yotsuba&! combined with Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei, and how can you go wrong with that? Anyone who enjoys slice-of-life mangas should enjoy this one, and given it’s 10+ volumes in Japan, Yen has fast-tracked it, so expect another volume in 2 months.