Features & Reviews

By Kenichiro Takagi and Amami Takatsume, based on the game by Tamsoft. Released in Japan as “Senran Kagura – Shoujotachi no Shinei” by Media Factory, serialization ongoing in the magazine Comic Alive. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

As I’ve noted before, I try not to let this review blog be entirely “wow, this is really terrific”, so sometimes I get a first volume of something that I’m wary of or suspect may not be for me. And yet, looking at the basic premise of Senran Kagura without actually seeing the character designs, this should be quite appealing to me. Five female kickass ninjas battling against the forces of evil. No major male characters to swoop in and save them. Some plotlines that show the attempt at character development. And yet…

Even though I read it last, the afterword of this volume really sums up the mindset of the creators. Not only do we have several references to “boobs”, but we get at least three to “mega boobs”. The artist, who seems to draw herself as a bell pepper, also pledged to keep drawing the characters’ boobs for the happiness of the audience. And, doing a little research about the game itself, I see there’s nothing out of place about this at all – the game is a side-scrolling platformer whose big selling point apparently is using 3D technology on the lead females’ breasts. You can tell this is the point by the fact that the manga stars five different girls, and even the least endowed of them is still a double-D.

In amongst all the lovingly detailed breasts, we get the girl whose main habit is sexually harassing the other girls, and we also get the girl (named Yagyu, and wearing an eyepatch – we never get first names of these girls, but it’s clearly Jubei) who has a repressed but obvious yuri crush on her best friend. (I had hoped this might actually go somewhere, but again, checking the game work notes that it’s due to “she looks just like my dead sister” rather than, y’know, just being a lesbian.) There’s the cute clumsy one, there’s the stoic class president type, and there’s our naive yet filled with purpose heroine. It’s like they were ticking boxes off a checklist.

I’m no stranger to fanservice, of course – I read Negima, and Cage of Eden, and Excel Saga, and Higurashi. But all of those titles use fanservice as a spice, something that is there to attract the male reader flipping through the magazine to check out the story. The entire volume of Senran Kagura involves the ninja plot being secondary to showing these girls in as many titillating scenes as possible. Honestly, you’d think there’d be MORE here than there is – for all the attention to the bosoms of the leads, there’s no nudity at all. Just lots of busty women running around hitting each other.

In the end, the audience for this is, I suppose, those who played and enjoyed the original games, or saw the anime that also came with it, like most Japanese media franchises. But if you’re just coming to this series cold, and wanted to see a lot of huge-breasted women molesting each other… you’d probably get a better payoff getting a Project H book or something.

By Quin Rose and Riko Sakura, based on the game by Quin Rose. Released in Japan as “Heart no Kuni no Alice – Boushiya to Shinya no Ochakai” by Ichijinsha. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

We have now had about seven or eight spinoffs to the Alice series, most of them being variations on “well, what if Alice fell in love with this person instead?”. It’s been so long, in fact, that we may have forgotten that the original manga adaptation was pretty definitive about Blood Dupre being the canonical love interest, and its 6 volumes revolved around that. Of course, being an otome game adaptation, the manga can easily delight in all the possible routes. But it does mean that this spinoff, also dealing with Alice and Blood, is coming to us with a handicap: is there anything introduced here that we can’t get in the main series?

That’s not the only handicap, unfortunately. I’ve said before that I prefer Alice when it’s a psychological mystery rather than when it’s “which hot guy do I want to go out with”, and despite occasional attempts at a plot, this is very much the second. Alice is clearly attracted to Blood, with only his resemblance to her old tutor and his blunt ways holding her back. And even that doesn’t last long – Alice and Blood are in bed halfway through this first volume. (Again, I note that I am pleased that the series allows Alice to be sexually active without shaming or punishing her for it – probably a benefit to running in Ichijinsha’s josei line, where this sort of thing wouldn’t be out of place.)

As for Blood, well, he’s a charming rogue, and thus has the usual charming rogue issues. He’s attracted to Alice and wants her around, but demands control, and is jealous when she sees other men – particularly Julius. Yes, this is a Hearts world, so the clockmaker is back in the story, and everyone still hates him. I’ve mentioned before how much of this is due to the metatext of the game – his status as a neutral party, his connection with death that might remind Alice of why she’s in Wonderland in the first place – but this is a romance rather than a mystery, so honestly it’s mostly just the fact that they’re different types. Julius offers Alice peace and relaxation, something that Blood simply cannot provide.

There’s a lot of old ground gone over again – this being the Hatter Route, we get the subplot involving his secret relationship with Vivaldi again, as well as his ability to fluster and enrage alice simply by opening his mouth. If you’re a fan of Blood Dupre, you may want to give this a try, but for those wondering if this is a required read as an Alice fan, I’d have to say no. You get most of what happens here in the main series. (I was amused to see that this seems to be the only non-BL series the artist has drawn – she specializes in smutty yaoi.) I still like the Alice series, but the spinoffs are running out of ways to charm me.

By Kei Murayama. Released in Japan as “Centaur no Nayami” by Tokuma Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Comic Ryu. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

I think the North American marketplace has sort of reached the point where it’s wary of slice-of-life series. There was a huge glut a few years ago, but we’re seeing less of them now. They were quiet, laid-back stories, usually involving a group of girls in high school and their slightly comedic, slightly heartwarming adventures. They’re so huge in Japan that one publisher, Houbunsha, has almost devoted its entire company to making them. But these days you can’t just have cute girls in clubs, or cute girls in bands, or cute girls in yuri relationships. So you need a hook. A Centaur’s Life certainly has that hook.

The title literally translates as “A Centaur’s Troubles/Worries”, and indeed the first chapter (which reads like an ecchi doujinshi that was toned down for publication… then again, given it’s Comic Ryu, maybe it wasn’t toned down too much) features our heroine being very worried indeed. She attracts some cute boys, and is concerned about her sexuality. The hook is that Himeno is a centaur, in a world where fantastic creatures are the norm, and her main concern is that she wants to know that she’s … compatible with other humanoids. After all, she has the body of a horse. Her friends Nozomi (a dragon girl) and Kyoko (a goat girl) help her out and calm her fears… not that this helps her romantically.

The first chapter is, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit too concerned with the girls’ privates. Luckily, the chapter does indeed seem to be more of a pilot chapter, and the rest of the series settles down as a slice-of-life that happens to feature a multiracial… indeed, multispecied cast. We see the usual school tropes. The marathon run, and the girls trying to get out of it. The school play. Side jobs as a model, and trying to hide it from the school. There’s also a hint of yuri sprinkled throughout between Himeno and Nozomi, though so far it seems to be mostly just the standard “if it’s you, it’s OK” high school tease.

What makes the manga interesting, and ensures that I will at least try a second volume, is that the writer doesn’t seem to be using the idea of fantastical creature folks as fodder for fetishes or comedy, they’re honestly worldbuilding. Centaurs used to be a slave race, so riding on top of them – even if consensual – can lead to arrest or worse. There’s discussion of “snake people”, and how the term is felt to be derogatory and they prefer “Antarctic people”. We see how Angel clothing deals with wings, what shoes centaurs wear, and how underwear works for those with tails (yes, the fanservice goes way down, but it’s still there at times). This is not just “let’s take these fantasy characters and dump them in cliched situations”, it’s “how would these situations go if these types of characters were involved”.

So far the series is merely adequate – like most slice-of-life, they tend to seem better the more you get to know the characters, so I expect my appreciation to rise as we go along. The girls may be fantastic creatures, but their personalities are still “the naive one”, “the tomboy”, etc. But given that the premise seems like an excuse for weird fetish pornography, I was pleasantly surprised at A Centaur’s Life, which is taking itself more seriously than you would think. I’ll get a second volume.

By Shigeru Mizuki. Released in Japan as “Comic Shouwashi” by Kodansha. Released in North America by Drawn & Quarterly.

The one thing that will strike you as you read this manga history of Japan by one of its preeminent creators is how it should not remotely work the way that it does. This book is over 500 pages, and a great deal of it is simply laying out the facts – they’re about 2/3 of the book, with the other third devoted to Mizuki’s own autobiography. It should be dry, didactic and boring. And yet it’s utterly compelling. Partly this is simply due to what’s going on – this is a dark and chilling time in Japanese history, and the facts really don’t need embellishment or excitement, as presented by themselves they can carry a book. But partly this is due to the fact that Mizuki isn’t just famous because he talked about a lot of yokai – he is a genius craftsman, writing a cyclical narrative where we constantly spiral back to see what’s happening in the most concise way possible.

The narrative starts out as third-person omniscient, but Mizuki quickly comes to realize that an actual character voice is needed to help explain some of what’s going on. (He also does this via conversations between two people on the issues of the day, many of which point out how much of a narrative device this is. “Let me tell you about this.” “I know about it already, but tell me anyway.) As a result, Nezumi Otoko from Gegege No Kitaro insinuates himself into this narrative, so quietly that it takes a good 20 pages before he has to introduce himself. As D&Q point out in their endnotes, not only does this allow any children reading to get their narrative from a beloved character, but Nezumi Otoko is essentially untrustworthy, shifty, and always out for himself. Thus the narrative voice is skewed so that we aren’t meant to be quite as trusting of the facts as we would be if it were still Mizuki narrating. (He also gets in a few slaps, which pleased me.)

We also, as I noted, get the story of Shigeru Mizuki growing up during Showa, which provides relief from the historical facts. Some of this narrative will be familiar to those who’ve read Nonnonba, but this continues beyond that, and the yokai that appear here are few and fleeting. What struck me most about Mizuki’s story is how harshly critical he seems to be of his boyhood self. We’re presented with a young boy who goes off to do his own thing, doesn’t like school, gets involved in gangs, and by the end of the volume seems to be unfit for even the smallest and most menial jobs. His artistic talent is mentioned, but it’s described as sort of a side hobby that interferes with his ongoing life. This is not a likeable Mizuki, and it’s a striking choice.

Then again, it also fits with the bleak narrative as a whole. Growing up in the period covered here in this book meant knowing poverty, and hunger, and endless fatigue. It meant repression, and being imprisoned or executed for having the wrong views. It meant a military buildup that seemed to happen without the permission of any of the government, and reading about assassinations and murders seemingly every day. Mizuki needed to include the scenes with his family, as even if they are bleak, they still remind us that there are still good people at heart in the country, even as they get swept up in a tide of nationalistic fury. By the time the book ends, Tojo is making speeches, and Mizuki notes that he “is a man who never smiles, and because of that he takes away the smiles of the Japanese people.” This is almost a cliffhanger ending, leading into the events of the 2nd World War that will be covered in 1939-1944, due out this spring.

Make no mistake, this book can be very dry and factual. And yet there was no time when I ever felt the need to put it down and do something else. Reality makes for the best stories, even if they can be scary and oppressive. This book shows once again why Mizuki is one of the best creators in all of Japan. Highly recommended.

By Cocoa Fujiwara. Released in Japan by Square Enix, serialization ongoing in the magazine Gangan Joker. Released in North America by Yen Press.

I hear there are spoilers for later volumes. Please don’t discuss them in comments.

A lot of times when there is a series that piles up a lot of cliches – be they plot, character, action sequences, or all three – you have to pick your tolerance level. I’m I’m going to be reading this, what’s the big draw that pulls me in and allows me to tolerate some otherwise generic stuff, even if it is well-written? In general, for me if a heroine is grumpy and sarcastic, I’m willing to forgive it a lot. And dropping such a heroine into a world of butler bodyguards is the basic premise of Inu x Boku SS, which also manages to be a yokai manga to boot.

I have to say it – I kept thinking that the heroine was Rika from Higurashi. It doesn’t help that this began in Gangan Joker around the same time the final Higurashi arc was going. Rika was never quite as cutting and vicious as this, though. Ririchiyo simply can’t stop herself from saying what she thinks, and what she thinks is usually acidic and nasty. This has led her to have few friends. (Perhaps she should join a club… wait, wrong manga.) She moves to a high-rise complex, but finds that it comes with a loyal servant and bodyguard who will do anything for her. He’s nice and sweet to her, slowly coaxing her out of her shell of disinterest and loneliness, but he also has a dark secret which is hinted at towards the end of Volume 1.

See what I mean? The description of that bodyguard could fit any one of 2,000 shoujo manga. (This is shonen, but Square Enix has never quite been as caring about genre as the other companies, and I’d argue the pretty butler is as much a draw for female readers as Ririchiyo’s show of thigh is for the males.) We also get a goofy older brother guy, a perverse lesbian (well, faux-lesbian – because she’s perverse, nothing really ever happens. But one assumes…), and a quiet, shy girl. Also, one of the bodyguards is Walker from Durarara!! with bunny ears. (DRRR is also a Square Enix title… sometimes it’s really easy to notice the incestuous nature of the business as you read things.)

That said, this is quite competently drawn and written. You care about Ririchiyo, and want to both have her improve her social skills while not losing the biting retorts that make her interesting. The manga doesn’t take itself too seriously (at one point two of the male bodyguards flirt, and the yuri girl goes “eeew, disgusting”, a lovely hypocritical moment called out immediately), though there is also a hint that there is much darker stuff still to come. It’s just… there’s a lot of stuff here you’ve seen before in many other titles. If you enjoyed those types of works, Inu x Boku SS is definitely the manga for you. If not, I think it depends on how much you like Ririchiyo. I quite liked her, so will see what another volume brings.