Features & Reviews

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect of this series going in. Its author is supposedly Russian (though that feels like a pen name), and it originally ran in Japan, as far as I can tell, as a cellphone manga. Those are a lot bigger there than they are here, and it’s gotten up to nine volumes. The gimmick, as it were, is that this is a shonen fantasy re-imagining of the console wars between Sega and Nintendo in the 1980s, with our heroes on the Sega side battling the evil Nintendo Empire. (I do admit this does not look good for our heroes, if we stick to established history…) I know a little bit about gaming, but not much. So how confusing would this title be to me?

The answer is not very. Honestly, if it weren’t for the obvious Kingdom names – “Segua” vs. “Ninteldo” – and the author’s interspersed notes giving a brief history of gaming in the 80s, I may not even have noticed the metaphor. The leads are supposed to represent a different game – Gear, the hero, is Sonic the Hedgehog; his childhood friend Nel is Phantasy Star 2; his tsundere love interest Opal is Fantasy Zone, etc. I didn’t know this until the notes told me. More importantly, these are stock shonen characters – the author even admits she created Gear to be a shonen manga role model, and that he is.

Because when it gets right down to it, this isn’t really for fans of computer games as much as it is fans of Fairy Tail. Gear is a fast fighter who wants to avenge the death of his friend. He goes to the capital city and joins the army by means of simply defeating everyone in it. Opal is even more stock character, immediately hating and challenging the young man who appears out of nowhere, but falling for him the second she is defeated. Even the perverse mentor who shows our heroes how to get stronger while constantly making suggestive remarks feels right out of Dragon Ball.

This has the feel of a Magazine title more than Jump, mostly due to the sexual overtones. There’s actually very little fanservice so far (much to my surprise), but the aforementioned perverse mentor (who’s meant to be Tetris, I think) keeps talking about plugging the gaping holes in everyone’s defenses with his rod, and also gropes the heroine to teach her a lesson after she’s magically exhausted. And the army commander, Ramses (she’s meant to be Columns, I guess?) gets sexually aroused seeing Gear fight (we see her naked, in the one piece of fanservice in the volume) and is describes as having ‘unspeakable hobbies’. But again, these types of sexualized ‘guy jokes’ would not be out of place in Magazine or Champion.

In all honesty, this is pretty generic shonen. I’m interested in seeing how Ninteldo (which is, of course, led by Mario) looks once we see them in action as more than just evil guys. That said, I am totally behind Seven Seas licensing this and putting out more of it, for one very good reason: it’s nothing like anything else they publish. Seven Seas is trying to expand a bit away from their mainstay market of ‘otaku fanboys’, as we’ve seen with the female-oriented Alice spinoffs. This is another step in that direction, showing off a series that appeals to the shonen boy in all of us; a young man vowing to fight for his country against the bad guys, using powerful moves. Let’s see how Gear can differentiate himself from Luffy or Natsu.

When we last left our heroes, they’d finally gotten back to Earth. Of course, this proves to be only the beginning of their troubles… they’re in enemy territory, and are being told by their allies in South America “get here first, then we’ll tell you what to do next.” Their ace pilot is having a bit of a PTSD attack, and wants no part of all of this. The refugees they picked up are resorting to taking hostages just to be allowed to leave. And our man in charge, Bright Noah, just can’t seem to get any respect. But then, this is what happens when your enemies call your ship the “Trojan Horse”… you have all the luck that Troy did.

To get the obvious out of the way first, most of what you enjoyed about the first book is present and correct here in the second. The battles are done very well, with lots of attention to detail and realism (given that these are robot wars), but don’t take up so much of the book that you get bored with all the combat. The overall tone is serious, but there are some very amusing dashes of humor, including Lieutenant Reed’s ulcer, Fraw Bow’s jealousy (and a flash of the same thing from Amuro), and every exasperated face Noah makes. But overall, the message continues to be what Gundam does best: war is a horrible thing that destroys entire cities, and one should never revel in it.

I think my favorite party of the volume was watching every single interaction between Char and Garma. After all the earnestness that our heroes fall into, it’s great seeing two people who clearly despise each other attempting to one-up each other in how politely smug they can be. Char’s needling of Garma, and manipulation as the story goes on, really shows of his people skills, albeit not in a good way. He spends much of this volume simply watching things develop (well, that and taking long showers so that he can properly show off his fantastic naked body to the reader). This makes his arrogant sneering at Garma right at the end all the more startling, and reminds you once again that he may be the bad guy you love to hate, but he’s still the bad guy.

As for Amuro, he gets the bulk of the second half of this volume, as he reunites with his mother. I’ll be honest, I totally expected him to return and find his mother dead – all the signs were pointing that way – but then, this series has pointed one way and gone another before, so I shouldn’t be surprised. What we got was even better, though – his mother has no context for what’s happened to Amuro at all, and all she can see is that her little boy has become a killer. This is far more visceral than most stories of this time, given Amuro has to lethally fight his way out of the encampment his mother is living in. It’s the emotional heart of the story.

And then there is the titular Garma. The Gundam story makes sure that we don’t simply see the Zeon enemy as “space Nazis”, and Garma’s desire to be worthy of his name, as well as his romance with an Earth girl, is part of this. I was never quite sure till the end how invested he was in Icelina, but it seems to be more genuine than I thought, and I wonder if she’ll return at some point down the line. But in the end, this is a story about war and the prices that one pays during it, and the final images we see are a father brutally gunned down in front of his daughter, and a father stunned to hear of the death of his son.

I admit I would perhaps have slightly fewer mech battles if I were plotting this, but oh well. Gundam is still a riveting and fascinating series, and fully justifies why it has endured all these years. And the presentation, again, is fantastic – a real coffee table book. It’s hard to wait three more months to see what happens next.

I didn’t know a whole lot about this series going into it, except that it had striking cover art, and the premise seemed to promise a whodunnit sort of thing. As it turns out, the death at the start of the book is more of a catalyst than a mystery. Instead, it’s the story of several really broken people, and watching them all move through life, desperately trying to find the purpose they lack. And trust me, that’s a lot more riveting than trying to figure out how someone really died.

The plot of the manga involves a well-known writer who has apparently begun a new series in a monthly magazine called ‘Utsubora’ – an archaic Japanese word that can mean ‘hollow space’. The fictional story and the manga both are inhabited by people who define that word, be it the writer himself, the mysterious girl who seemed to be his muse, his exasperated editor, or the niece who is seemingly the most normal girl here. One of the things I really liked about the manga is the way that Nakamura makes you shift sympathies as you read and understand more – I really empathized with Tsuji, the young editor, at the start, and then less and less as the story went on and we saw how far he’d go regarding his crush. Likewise, Mizorogi started off as a stoic creep, but gradually I felt deep pity and empathy for him.

Despite what the title may imply, not every series that runs in Manga Erotics F has to have sex in it. This one does, though, and we see quite a few scenes of lovemaking. The interesting thing is that they’re all presented very differently depending on who is present. Mizorogi’s psychological issues mean that sex with him is very different from sex with someone like Tsuji, a fact that is pointed out immediately by the girl who’s been with both of them. (It also ties in to his issues with being able to write, and using “Fujino” for that.) And a later scene showing Tsuji and a desperate female author who’s in lust with him seems far dirtier than the other scenes, less loving and more passionate and quick.

I haven’t talked much about the two girls on the front and back covers, even thought they are very much the focus of this work. Indeed, for a while I wasn’t quite sure what was going on with them at all. The mystery set up at the beginning was less about the death and more about what happened before, and how much we, as a reader, could trust what’s presented to us. In the end, though, I’m left with an almost aching sadness as I look back on what happened with Aki Fujino, Sakura Miki and Fujiko Akiyama, and it’s her character that conveys the meaning of the title the most. At the start, and at the end, she stands stoic before us, but in between those times the raw emotion is almost too much to bear.

Utsubora is a book, I think, that has to be felt almost as much as it has to be read. Its examination of a writer’s life, and the people that surround that life, is tangible and heartbreaking. There’s a lot of stuff I wasn’t even able to cover here, simply as I didn’t want to spoil too much about this book, which is highly unusual for me. Seek this out, it’s one of the best titles I’ve read this year.

Cross Game is one of those series that was so great, I’m a bit angry at myself for taking so long to finish it. The seventh omnibus volume was a bit of a surprise, because something that I expected to happen didn’t, and it didn’t happen in a way that was really interesting with the story that Adachi was building. All along I thought that there’d be a major confrontation between Ko’s team and the antagonistic coach at Kurokoma. But Kurokoma doesn’t even bother to scout their first-round competition because they’ve never heard of the team. Daimon’s arrogance is on full display as he talks to Junpei who is on his way to scout Seishu’s first-round opponent. Daimon says of his competition that he doesn’t even know what they are called, they’re “some no-name school…a team I have no intention of remembering…” The no-name team ends up being Seishu’s next opponent, as Kurokoma is defeated in the first round. Daimon’s comeuppance didn’t come at the hands of Seishu, it came from his own internal failings. In most other shonen manga there’s be a more simplistic confrontation between the two teams during the tournament, but thankfully Adachi doesn’t write his manga in an expected way.

Junpei has proposed to the oldest Tsukishima daughter Ichiyo, and she’s answered that she’ll marry him if Seishu gets to Koshien, adding an extra element of romantic tension to every baseball game. Ko’s finally reached a point where he can’t rely on Aoba for advice. His athletic abilities keep growing and as he tries to adjust his form after throwing the ball faster than he has before, Aoba can’t help him because she’s never thrown a ball that fast. Akane is hospitalized, and the idea of losing her combined with her similarity to Wakaba, makes the summer seem a bit eerie. Ko seems largely unflappable through the whole situation and Aoba comments to Yuhei that he seems cold. Yuhei comments that Ko knows “some things you just gotta do. Other things, you can only have faith…”

One of the things I love is the way simple scenes end up saying so much about the relationships between the characters. Aoba and Ko are riding an empty train together and she makes a point of sitting as far away from him as possible. Ko comments that the distance between them never changes and when she sharply asks if he said anything, he just replies “Nope.”

As the series comes to a close, I was reminded all over again how for a manga the focuses so intensely on baseball, it isn’t really about baseball at all in terms of the motivations and actions of the characters. Ko’s calm and constant training is touched off by the idea that Aoba’s will only like a boy who can pitch a 100 mph fastball. As All of Ko’s training begins to pay off with some inspired pitching as his team becomes a contender for Koshien, his pitches start clocking at higher and higher speeds. As Aoba watches Ko she thinks that he used to be like her, overly emotional and with a quick temper, but now “he’s just like Wakaba.”

During the final game there’s parallel baseball action and emotional revelation happening, as the reader sees the depth of Aoba’s hatred for Ko, and how that hatred is a proxy for dealing with Wakaba’s death, and how stoic and emotionally mature Ko is to just let himself be the object of Aoba’s scorn. During a pivotal moment Ko has to bat, and he hands the umpire a token, putting himself firmly back in the mental space of all of the times he’s practiced his batting at the Tsukishima’s batting cage. Adachi introduces these moments in such an off-hand naturalistic way that the symbolism involved never seems forced or overly precious. As the series concluded I realized that more than just showing the dramatic struggles of a high-school baseball team, Cross Game is really a classic romance manga, with some closing moments that would put most shoujo manga to shame just in terms of the emotional depth portrayed. Ko and Aoba are one of my favorite manga couples, and Cross Game really is a work to be treasured.