Features & Reviews

By Kazune Kawahara and Aruko. Released in Japan as “Ore Monogatari!!” by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Bessatsu Margaret (Betsuma). Released in North America by Viz.

There are precious few manga series where one can finish the first volume, set it down, and say “Wow, that was just adorable.” Luckily, we now have a new one with Viz’s release of My Love Story!!. Its unlikely lead does not detract in any way from the fact that this is sweet, heartwarming, and designed to make you smile broadly. Takeo may look and act like he’s from some other, less fluffy genre, but he really is a shoujo character at heart – this isn’t like dropping Onizuka into a shoujo manga. The juxtaposition is the starting point, but by the end of the first volume you’ll wonder why you ever doubted he’d fit in at all.

The fact that this is adorable and heartwarming should not be a surprise given that it’s Kawahara; after all, 3/4 of High school Debut ran on that same fuel. We have a different artist here, who has been working steadily in Japan at the same magazine but who’s being seen in North America for the first time. (Her Yasuko and Kenji series was briefly announced by JManga before they closed.) The art is excellent, though, with every shot of Takeo reminding you that he stands out like a bright primary color. Everything he does is BIG and LOUD and he has no idea how to deal with more subtle emotions. Not that this stops him from being the BEST FRIEND EVER, though. It’s clear from the outset that Yamato fell for Takao on first sight. His best friend, the cool and reserved Sunakawa knows that. The reader knows that. Yet Takao knows that girls like her falls for guys like his friend, and so gets everything wrong.

I get the sense this was written as a one-shot and then picked up for series, like many shoujo manga are. The first chapter could easily be stand-alone, and resolves everything nicely. Luckily, we get more later on, which gives some added depth and adds Sunakawa’s older sister, who it turns out also had feelings for Takeo but hadn’t said anything as he was still too young. It’s amusing seeing her attempt to derail his budding relationship, only to be thrown off by the fact that Yamato is an utter sweetie pie who shares many of Takeo’s traits. (Yamato’s confession that she’s not pure as she’s fantasized about holding hands with Takeo makes you want to say “…”) Luckily, both siblings are basically nice people and more importantly, both get why Takeo is who he is and appreciate him deeply. Sunakawa has not been rejecting girls left and right as he’s a cold male shoujo lead, he did it because they kept calling his friend ugly. It’s touching.

I anticipate that future volumes of this series are going to have to add more conflict and a few characters that don’t make you want to say “aww”. But for the moment, we can enjoy this romantic comedy, whose lead is meant to be incredibly out of place but in actuality fits right in, and is someone that every reader can root for. An absolute delight.

(Also, the entire manga is worth buying just for Vol. 1’s final gag, which is AMAZING.)

By Ark Performance. Released in Japan as “Aoki Hagane no Arpeggio” by Shonen Gahosha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young King Ours. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

This is not really what I was expecting when I first saw this manga licensed. That should not be a surprise, as of all the major manga companies Seven Seas is the one that – for both good and ill – manages to surprise me the most. Still, when you see a manga whose premise seems to be ‘cute girls are battleships’ come out shortly after a ‘cute girls are fighter planes’ and ‘cute girls playing with tanks’ manga, you expect something along the same lines. But this is actually an action-oriented techno thriller manga, with lots of tactics and politics in among its occasional cute girl. It actually reminds me a lot of another Young King Ours title from way back. No, not Excel Saga, stop anticipating me. I’m referring to Geobreeders, which also had a tac unit fighting a mysterious organization with the help of a cute girl who was an enemy agent who had switched to work for our heroes.

This is one of those alternate future AUs, as aliens have come to Earth and made the seas impassable with their Fleet of Fog, which can stop almost any vessel humanity can put out there. Enter our hero, Chihaya, who has a dark past (his father sided with the aliens) and a somewhat shrouded upbringing (we know very little of what got him to this point). One thing he does have, however, is an alien ship that’s on his side. Iona is the ‘mental model’ (which is to see, personification of a cute young girl) of a submarine that can get through the Fleet of Fog with help and a certain amount of dangerous firepower. Now he and his crew (including an eccentric engineer who *really* reminds me of Geobreeders) take on tasks for the government, though always needing to beware of behind the scene manipulation by the United States (who, naturally, don’t come off too well here) or the aliens themselves (who have their own ships).

As an action thriller, this works quite well. The battle scenes are fast-moving and don’t confuse, there’s a good amount of tension even though you know our heroes are going to make it out of this somehow, and it’s balanced out by a large chunk of plot and backstory. Iona is sufficiently cute that we like and sympathize with her, but doesn’t make you want to be sick like some overly moe types. The hero seems a little one-dimensional so far, but I suspect backstory will come out in a volume or two to help there. Same with the crew – though I’m not sure we’ll ever find out why one of the crewmen wear a mask.

There’s nothing that really reaches out and grabs you here, but there’s also not much that does anything wrong. This is simply a good, solid, well-drawn manga, and you finish it wanting to see what happens next. That’s good enough for me.

Black Rose Alice Volume 1 by Setona Mizushiro

I am always happy to read silly paranormal shoujo series, as evidenced by my affection for series like Midnight Secretary and Demon Love Spell. But it is also nice to read some supernatural shoujo that is genuinely creepy, so I’m excited to see the addition of Black Rose Alice to the Shojo Beat lineup. North American readers may already be familiar with Setona Mizushiro through the series After School Nightmare, which was a very surreal series I’ve always regretted not finishing. The first volume of Black Rose Alice shows a unique and visually arresting take on the vampire genre.

The manga starts off by telling the story of Dimitri, an up and coming tenor in 1900s Vienna. He’s been taken in by a wealthy family and given the benefits of education and training that allows him to live in upperclass circles, but he’s still held apart from his adopted family in many ways. Dimitri is in love with Agnieska, the fiancee of his Theodor. Seething with unexpressed emotions, Dimitri gets trampled by a horse and almost dies. A butterfly alights on his prone body. Shortly after he wakes up he sings in a rehearsal, and shortly thereafter all the other musicians start dying in a series of improbable incidents. Dimitri notices a strange rose mark appear on the back of his neck, and a strange man names Maximillian greets Dimitri, telling him “You don’t appear to have noticed…but you are a vampire.”

Vampires in the world of Black Rose Alice are a bit like plants, as the seed of a vampire master implants itself on the fresh corpse of a handsome young man. Maximillian warns Dimitri that he may start exhibiting the personality traits and attitudes of the previous vampire that is now using Dimiri as a vessel. Dimitri scoffs at Maximilian’s advice and later sings a few bars to one of his lovers, who promptly throws herself off a balcony. As Black Rose Alice progresses, the effects of vampirism become more visually arresting. Mizushiro has a great talent for portraying horrific scenes in a surreal and yet oddly delicate way. Dimitri’s transition soon starts to have a terrible impact on the people who surround him. The concluding half of the volume flashes forward to Japan in the year 2008, where a fully vampiric Dimitri entangled himself in the lives of a high school student and his teacher for his own evil vampire reasons.

Black Rose Alice does a great job setting up an intriguing mystery through the contrast between 1900s and 2000s Dimitri, he’s innocent and tormented at first and the cold and dispassionate personalty he exhibits later in the volume represents a stark change. Mizushiro’s art does a great job portraying Dimitri’s personality shift, as well as the elements of visual horror that make the feeding habits of vampires in the world of Black Rose Alice extremely disturbing. Vampires as plants is an unusual twist on the genre, and I would recommend this manga to anyone looking for a unique supernatural shoujo series.

By Arina Tanemura. Released in Japan as “Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne” by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Ribon. Released in North America by Viz.

There are spoilers here, FYI for those who want to avoid them.

I’d mentioned in previous reviews of this title that it’s a standard magical girl series with a core of darkness. Of course, that applies to most magical girl series, to a greater or lesser degree – Madoka Magica did not invent the genre, they only removed the optimism. Jeanne’s background as a parentless child has been a core of the series, and we’ve also seen how difficult it is for her and Chiaki to trust each other given they’re on opposite sides. This new volume takes us even further down the rabbit hole, giving us dead, sexual assault, and a shocking plot twist that pretty much alters everything we’ve seen to this point.

What seems to be the big event of this volume happens with the arrival of a new teacher, Hijiri. He’s the one who saw Maron at the end of the last volume, and he’s not afraid to take advantage of that. He also seems to know far more about what Maron is doing as Jeanne regardless of whether he saw her or not. This culminates in a fight over the next victim, an isolated dying boy whose demon is the only thing keeping him alive. The boy, Zen, naturally falls for Jeanne (we still have to obey the rules of the genre here) and Maron is desperate to find a way to keep him alive and still not have the evil consume him. This is not helped by Sinbad, who, having had something explained to him offscreen by his magical familiar (we conveniently don’t hear it) is more determined to stop Jeanne than ever.

The aftermath of what happens devastates Jeanne and she’s clearly unwilling to discuss it with Chiaki. This is exactly what Hijiri wanted, as he turns out to be a figure from her past… no, not Maron’s past, Jeanne’s past as Joan of Arc. This culminates in the most disturbing scene in the volume, even worse than the cliffhanger, where Hijiri attempts to rape Maron in order to seal off her powers (which are said to be only due to her virginity). This scene goes on for quite some time, and I’d actually put a trigger warning on the volume for those who want advance knowledge. Unfortunately, while Hijiri does get beaten up and stopped, he does not leave the plot or Maron’s life, which is rather annoying.

Finally, everything seems to be resolving. Chiaki doesn’t outright say he loves Maron, but he comes close. They go on what is clearly a date, even if it’s because he promises to “tell Maron everything” – in fact, it’s such a date that Miyako, who was spying on them, flees the scene, finding herself more devastated that she’s not the closest one to Maron right now than that Chiaki is in love with someone else. Unfortunately, Chiaki then tells Maron something that she absolutely does not believe – so much so that she returns to her apartment just to verify it’s not true. But it is true – Jeanne has not been collecting chess pieces for good, but for evil! The revelation comes out of nowhere to a certain degree – not that Maron is being deceived, but who’s doing the deceiving, as Finn has been mostly an annoying ditzy mascot to this point. But there was some signposting, and we still have 2/5 of the series to go, so I’m sure we’ll see what’s going on.

There’s a lot of Arina Tanemura out there thanks to Viz, and I’ve never really been grabbed by much of it. This is the exception. Phantom Thief Jeanne is shaping up to be her best work, though, with thrills, romance, humor (Maron’s obsession with getting swine flu here is highly amusing) and a very deep plot. It’s a fantastic license rescue, and I can’t wait for the next volume.

By Yomi Hirasaka and Itachi. Released in Japan as “Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai” by Media Factory, serialization ongoing in the magazine Comic Alive. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

Much as I try to tell my readers whether or not they will enjoy a particular volume or series, in the end this is still my review blog where I mostly review to my tastes. I tend to like most of what I review. And my taste can be unpredictable from series to series. I do sometimes wonder about it. Why am I OK with fanservice in Cage of Eden or Negima when it drives me nuts in Food Wars or Monster Musume? Sometimes predicting what I like doesn’t really work. Usually a series I think I’ll dislike or drop early turns out to have some hidden depth or plotline or characterization that I latch on to, and suddenly it’s on my ‘surprisingly good’ list.

No series typifies this more than Haganai: I Don’t Have Many Friends. I decided to review this new volume, the 7th in the series, mostly as I saw that the ALA convention had a Best/Worst manga of the last three years panel. This is thankfully mostly dedicated to spectacular manga that the panelgoers may not have seen, but there is a section devoted to, shall we say, the bottom feeders. The results were both surprising and non. The surprising was Bakuman, which I knew had a healthy crowd that disliked its ongoing issues with sexism (including me – I dropped it early), but I wasn’t aware it was that healthy. The other two titles, Haganai and High School DxD, were firmly in the otaku harem grenre.

I get this. The harem genre is far more popular in Japan than it is in the US, and has large inherent sexism issues, just like Bakuman. It tends towards blatant fanservice, generic ‘nice’ heroes, and heroines who tend to fall into very obvious types. And no argument about High School DxD, whose first volume I was sort of lukewarm to but additional research has shown I’ll likely be dumping it pretty soon. That said… c’mon, voters, Haganai over Mayo Chiki? Over Triage X? Over I Don’t Like You At All, Big Brother!!? Is it just Haganai’s increased visibility?

I have perhaps chosen a non-typical volume with which I defend my enjoyment of Haganai. This particular volume does not have Kodaka’s gothloli younger sister in it at all, and the other resident loli, Maria, makes only a token appearance (though a cliffhanger implies Vol. 8 may be quite different). And Sena does not run through the pages naked with her breasts bouncing up and down in a grotesque parody. Instead, for the most part, this deals with the aftermath of Yozora cutting her hair, and subsequent jogging of Kodaka’s memories.

There’s still plenty of humor here, which is (more than the harem possibilities) the main reason to read Haganai. Yozora’s becoming a “pretty boy” to troll Maria is wonderful, Yozora and Rika trolling an oblivious Sena into a truly ridiculous hairstyle is magnificently over the top, and the entire parody of yaoi manga artwork is worth the price of the book alone. That said, the best parts of this volume are showing off how close the “not friends” have become, or seeing their vulnerability.

Yozora gets the bulk of the pages here, and it’s sweet yet also depressing seeing her inability to socialize, which is far more crippling than Kodaka and Sena’s simple mild personality quirks. A bonus chapter shows is the events of the start of the series from her POV, and her frustration is palpable. I also liked Sena’s immediate acceptance of Yozora’s new hair, and though she attempts to bully her about it it’s really a token attempt – these two are actually getting along quite well now. And Rika with her glasses off is actually briefly vulnerable, before the front comes slamming back up.

I get why folks would dislike Haganai, and admit it’s not for everyone. But there’s a lot of depth, humor and heart here, and compared to some of the other titles we’ve seen lately in the same genre, I can’t agree it’s among the worst. I’ve come to greatly enjoy this series. Now we’ll see if I can still say the same after what promises to be a loli-nun heavy Vol. 8.