Features & Reviews

By Jin Kobayashi. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Magazine. Released in North America originally by Del Rey, now released digitally by JManga.

Way back ages ago, I reviewed Del Rey’s omnibus release of Vols. 14 through 16, and noted it left off on a nasty cliffhanger. And there it sits, as Del Rey became Kodansha and Kodansha decided its sales were not sufficient to release more. But now JManga is picking up some of Del Rey’s old abandoned series, and have put all the prior Del Rey volumes up on their site, with more apparently to come. With that in mind, I decided to go back and review Volume 1, and see just how different things were back at the start.

Well, for one, that huge cast is not quite so huge. School Rumble starts off as being very much a two-hander, with the point of view switching back and forth. Our heroine, Tenma Tsukamoto, has a hopeless crush on stoic weirdo Karasuma, but is unfortunately hopeless at romance… and studies… and athletics… and pretty much life. Well, except for cosplaying. She is, however, a happy girl with lots of spirit. Contrasting this is our hero, Kenji Harima, a former biker who is trying to turn over a new leaf, mostly as he’s fallen head over heels for Tenma. Harima is strong and good at athletics, but otherwise is in the same boat as Tenma – he’s not all that bright, and his attempts to woo her are laughable. Add wacky situations and stir.

The comedy is all important here, as it would be through most of the early days of this series. The chapters have a lowered page count compared to most Shonen Magazine series (about 9-12, as opposed to 16-18), a sure sign that the editors consider it one of the funny manga rather than a romantic harem manga. There isn’t even a harem yet, really. Just a love triangle. Harima loves Tenma, Tenma loves Karasuma, and Karasuma… we have no idea what he thinks. This is also an unusual series in that it ran simultaneously in two magazines. The main Tenma and Harima plot ran weekly in Shonen Magazine, while the chapters at the end dealing with ‘side characters’ (the ones with a flat note as opposed to a sharp) ran in the monthly Magazine Special. In this volume they’re focused on Yakumo, Tenma’s younger yet more mature sister.

Ah yes, Yakumo. As I said earlier, there’s a large cast coming, and we see glimmers of it here. Tenma, for all that she is lovable and hyperactive, is pretty much exactly what she seems. Yakumo has a lot more to give us. She’s also a great cook, and pretty, and athletic – her perfection is noted by the boys at her school. When otaku who should know better talk about ‘waifu’ type characters, nine times out of ten they mean someone like Yakumo. Her one fault is her seeming obliviousness to guys. And I say ‘seeming’ because we know something about Yakumo that they don’t – she can read minds of anyone who likes her! (School Rumble has occasional fantasy content – Tenma is telekinetic once – but except for Yakumo, it’s always for the sake of a gag.) And given the typical minds of teenage boys, this has likely served to make her even more shy and retiring than she already is.

As for the other main characters, we do meet Eri, Mikoto, Akira, and (briefly) Hanai, but for the most part they look like they’re just going to be generic best-friend type classmates. Eri is stuck-up, Mikoto is tomboyish, Akira is deadpan. They haven’t been brought into the story, mostly as the story i still just about Tenma and Harima. But as their attempts to confess their love explode outwards, others will be drawn into the web. Especially Eri.

For a first volume, this is big, dumb goofy fun. Both leads are histrionic and over the top, and there’s lots of silly here, with an understanding that no one is going to be confessing their love anytime soon. What’s more, Tenma is still the focus of almost every chapter. As the series goes on, and as the popularity polls start to come out, this will begin to change…

By Nagaru Tanigawa and Puyo. Released in Japan as “Nagato Yuki-chan no Shoushitsu” by Kadokawa Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young Ace. Released in North America by Yen Press.

In an earlier post regarding this book’s imminent debut, it was noted that the series is essentially a fanfic AU written by someone who wants to get Kyon and Yuki together, just like you see with the infinite Harry/Hermione or Zuko/Katara fanfics on FFNet. And there’s honestly no denying it; that is exactly what this is. It’s light and fluffy fun, but it is essentially Haruhi with all the spiky bits filed off it. Everyone’s more agreeable, everyone’s more adaptable, and everyone’s simply happier. Including Yuki Sue… um, Yuki Nagato.

Now, this isn’t saying that this manga is horrible. I like it a lot. It’s simply saying that this manga is not particularly gripping or filled with tension. In essence, it’s not really a spinoff of the Haruhi series itself as it is a spinoff of the SD-manga spinoff Haruhi-chan. Various ideas from that series (Ryoko as an onee-sama type, though a comedic one; Nagato’s gaming habits; Haruhi going after Santa) are used in this AU, mostly to show off the author’s own preferences. But whereas in Haruhi-chan everything ends up being a setup for a punchline, here everything is a setup for an adorable heartwarming moment. Even the dramatic moments.

This volume sees the introduction of Haruhi herself (as well as Koizumi, who is essentially a non-entity in this series). She’s not totally unrecognizable. She’s still trying to befriend aliens, time-travelers and espers, and will scream this out to anyone who asks. She’s still bulldozing through people to get her own way, and quickly takes up residence at the literature club even if she goes to a different school. and she’s not above using Kyon as her personal punching bag when a punching bag is needed. But she’s more mature than the Haruhi of the original series, and it’s striking that, even though we see her starting to fall for Kyon here, she’s not going to get all that jealous about it. Haruhi doesn’t have the power to change the world with a bad mood here, and it seems to have made her a better person.

As for Yuki and Kyon, they continue to grow closer, much to Ryoko’s encouragement and chagrin. Valentine’s Day is in this volume, and of course there is chocolate to be made. This leads to what’s probably the best sequence of the book, where we’re led to believe that we will see a cliched misunderstanding lead to heartbreak. It’s not entirely out of the question – this manga isn’t all that original. But this Yuki is more of a ditz than a doormat, and the misunderstanding turns out to have been… well, a misunderstanding. And Haruhi, who’s no dummy and can clearly see that Yuki is head over heels for Kyon, challenges her to step up and go after him. In a genre where high school girls are so often cruel and heartless, it’s fantastic to see love rivals be open and honest.

The flaws I mentioned in Volume 1 are still here. The art simply isn’t all that great, though it’s getting better. And Kyon needs more snark desperately. But of course no one is particularly reading this book for Kyon, but for the moe cuteness. And in that respect, few things deliver on that promise like Nagato Yuki-chan. That said, I’m not sure the series can coast on cute fluffiness forever. I hope that the author comes up with a more serious arc by, say, Volume 4. (Foreshadowing: your key to quality literature.)

(Also, is it wrong of me to ship Haruhi/Ryoko? Cause I totally am.)

By Yun Kouga. Released in Japan by Ichijinsha, serialized in the magazine Comic Zero-Sum. Released in North America by Viz.

Another license rescue, this time of a very popular josei-ish series that’s still running, albeit at a crawl, in Japan. So I picked up the first omnibus thinking, why not? Generally I don’t read much BL, if any, but the author herself has said she doesn’t think it’s BL. Actually, if I’m honest, there’s not only a huge genre of ‘BL only not quite’, but several magazines devoted entirely to it, of which one is Comic Zero-Sum. (The most famous is probably Shinshokan’s Wings, whose manga I always classified as ‘whatever Wings is’ back in the day.) Given the cover, however, which features what seems to be an abused catboy being aggressively fondled by an unseen party, I’m going to guess that Loveless falls into ‘it may not be BL, but its fans sure are’. You know, like Naruto.

That aside, Loveless is basically a fantasy thriller with psychological overtones. Our hero, Ritsuka, is trying to start his life over after his older brother was apparently brutally murdered. He also has amnesia, and so is trying hard to figure out what he used to be like – something not helped by his mentally unstable mother, who keeps assuring him over and over again that he’s wrong and horrible and she wants her son back. To make matters worse, he ends up being stalked by another guy, who was close to his brother. Now he has to fight various members of an evil organization, figure out why his brother was killed, and deal with these strange feelings he gets whenever he’s around Soubi, the aforementioned stalker.

There’s very little setup here, with the author deciding it would be easier to simply drop you into the middle of her world and let you figure out how it works. So far it’s crossing between high school drama and fantasy. In this world, virgins have cat ears and a tail, which fall off after they lose their virginity. This mostly seems to be an easy way to mark off who’s meant to be innocent and naive and who isn’t so far, including Ritsuka’s ‘Christmas Cake’ teacher, Hitomi. Notably, she’s the only one actively mocked for said virginity, if only by the villains. Aside from this, there’s a lot of battle sequences where Ritsuka and Sougi must pair up to defeat whoever’s attacking them. This was easily the poorest part of the manga, with generic combat and spells/power words/whatever. The idea of your partner taking whatever damage you get could lead somewhere in the future, but at the moment it just seems to be there to make Ritsuka suffer more nobly.

When the manga isn’t focused on combat, it’s a lot better. Ritsuka is a messed-up young kid, and his hot-and-cold running emotions, even for a teenager, are jarring. He’s not quite sure about this whole ‘love’ thing, or why he’s so attracted to Sougi, but then again he’s not all that good at friendships either – it’s cute seeing him have to deal with someone as bright and talkative as Yuiko, the tall girl in his class who slowly befriends him. In case anyone’s curious, I absolutely loved Yuiko. I knew going in she was a heavily bashed character, so those who know me probably guessed this, but even more than that, she helps to lighten up the book and prevent the psychological drama from getting too depressing. I hope (but am not optimistic) she sticks around as events ramp up.

Loveless is a very odd duck, and I kept alternating between being fascinated and creeped out by its storyline. Soubi, who I barely mentioned at all, is likely the main reason for this – I just don’t like him yet, and thus it’s hard to see his disturbing devotion to Ritsuka, who is meant to be 12. The shotacon aspects are partly intentional, of course, but I’m pretty sure it’s only meant to be partly – which disturbs me. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Still, there’s no denying that the author has skills and power to draw you in. It’s easy to see why this series is popular. And I do wonder what happens next. (Will Ritsuka abandon his shotacon stalker for cute tall-girl love? Mmmmmmm, probably not…)

By Toru Fujisawa. Released in Japan as “Shonan Jun’ai Gumi” by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Vertical.

And so, after much delay and a rescue by our friends at Vertical, the GTO Early Years series is now complete.It’s been a ling ride, and you can visibly see how much Fujisawa has improved and refined his art – Shinomi, for one, is almost unrecognizable compared to how she looked when we first saw her, and most of the characters have that ‘GTO’ look that we’re more familiar with from the sequel. What’s more, knowing he has to wrap things up, Fujisawa devotes much of this volume to our heroes’ two love-interests, showing how each of them compares and contrasts with their man. In particular, Shinomi demonstrates that, in her own way, she can screw everything up just as much as Eikichi.

When I reviewed Vol. 14, I noted that I wasn’t sure if the cliffhanger reveal would be played for comedy or drama. Very cleverly, this is actually used in-story – Shinomi, in a fit or misplaced jealousy, is ready to mock Eikichi mercilessly, only to suddenly find that he’s far more affected by everything than she had anticipated. In fact, things get so bad so fast that she desperately confesses to him – which he seems to pretend not to hear, something that he’s very good at indeed. (Note that in GTO 14 Years he’s *still* pretending not to hear Shinomi at times…) After a heart to heart and a good cry with an old mentor, Shinomi decides to go all out and give herself body and soul to Eikichi. This ends up going horribly wrong in the best GTO tradition, and in the funniest scene of the entire book. I had always been a fan of Onizuka getting together with Azusa, given I read GTO first, but Shinomi is making me waver a bit. She’s a perfect complement to his idiocy.

Nagisa, meanwhile, is having troubles of her own. Mostly that Ryuji is using their dates to have sex with her and not much else. And the sex isn’t bad, but Nagisa is a romantic. So when a guy at a nearby high school confesses to her, she’s depressed enough to actually go out with him. Again, Ryuji has always been slightly (but only slightly) more mature than Eikichi, so it would make sense that his own complement is the same. As we see later in the book, she’s trying to study and get into college so she can become a therapist and deal with… well, people like herself. (It’s likely been long forgotten, but Nagisa has disassociative identity disorder). Getting Ryuji to realize that she’s not just there for him to stick it in is tough. Luckily, she’s still completely devoted to him, and it all works out.

And so we get to the final battles. There’s a group of new freshman entering high school, all of whom have heard about the famous exploits of the Oni-Baku Duo, and all of whom are now ready to pledge their lives to them and take over all of Shonan. This is somewhat disquieting to our heroes, who while they always unquestioningly defend their friends, and certainly enjoy being in a gang, fighting, and driving around on bikes, have never really had the ambition to take over the city. Or indeed do much at all. Ryuji sees his girlfriend’s fierce study and is blown away – he’s starting to wonder what to do with his life once he graduates. Onizuka is not quite at that stage (indeed, it will take until the start of GTO to push him there), but the two definitely realize they don’t want to be gang leaders the rest of their days, and something needs to be done.

As ever in the GTO series, events spiral out of control into complete madness, and talking everyone down is no longer an option. So the two of them decide to pull off an elaborate final fight (between each other, of course), and leave this world once and for all. Now clearly we’re not buying what they’re doing – we’ve seen GTO, after all, which shows them both as adults – but I think even readers seeing this back in 1996 knew this was all an elaborate put-on. And sure enough, it’s not even 15 pages before the reveal. Those 15 pages, though, are styled like a documentary/remembrance, with reactions ranging from anger to disbelief to genuine grief (Shinomi and Nagisa).

GTO and its prequels/sequels ran in Weekly Magazine rather than Weekly Jump, and the audiences are fundamentally different. But in the end, you can’t deny that GTO: The Early Years brings you some of the best in shonen ideals. Kids having fun, getting into goofy antics, and trying to get laid are contrasted with holding on to your dreams, always being there for your friends, and enjoying your youth while trying not to destroy it. Eikichi and Ryuji have walked a fine line between those ideals at times, but in the end have shown the main way to accomplish these ideals: a good heart. (And also possibly being a badass biker with ungodly stamina.)

By Milk Morinaga. Released in Japan by Futabasha, serialized in the magazine Comic High!. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

I had reviewed the first digital volume of this series when JManga released it a while back, but it’s always worth revisiting things, especially in print. This omnibus contains the first half of the series, i.e. 2 1/2 volumes. It’s a chunky read, but I think that works to the book’s favor as it helps us really get to know the two heroines before we get to plunge into their new friendship and growing romance.

You’ll note the title is split into two words, and I think that’s for the best, as the author makes it a point to show us Mari and Akko bonding as friends for an entire volume before it really starts getting into the potential yuri romance. Given Mari’s shyness and insecurities, this helps keep things realistic. It also ups the stakes: Akko is Mari’s best friend, and while the romance may take all five volumes to really break out the friendship is close and endearing immediately. Mari is a sweet and sympathetic protagonist. and Akko is outgoing, impulsive and oblivious without it becoming too irritating, as many who read one-sided crushes know can happen easily.

But of course this is a yuri manga, and so Mari’s admiration of Akko soon turns into attraction to Akko. This can be tricky, as there’s a vague line between the sort of close ‘skinship’ friendships that aren’t necessarily sexual, and those what do turn into blooming relationships. Indeed, Akko’s reaction on hearing that Mari kissed her while she was sleeping is ‘oh, girls do that *all the time*’. Of course, when Mari is a little more drunk and a lot more forceful, even Akko manages to notice what’s going on.

These are teenagers, so there’s a lot of puzzlement and ‘is this what love is really like?’ on both sides, as well as yuri’s addition of ‘it will never work out because we are both girls’. Akko has a presumed sexual past with a guy (though we quickly learn that nothing happened, of course – this did run in a seinen magazine) which adds to Mari’s dread that all she’s doing is making herself miserable for something that can’t happen. So she turns to a guy from middle school who happens to like her – and manages to get Akko jealous, though she’s not quite sure why…

This is meant to feel like a fluffy shoujo soap opera, just with two girls as the lead, and that’s mostly what it does. There are also two best friends who are also very touchy-feely with each other but clearly aren’t going to be a couple, which is a relief in a genre that sometimes has everyone pairing off with everyone else. Seven Seas’ omnibus obscures the well-times endings of the first two books (Mari thinking she kissed Akko for Vol. 1, Akko boggling at Kiss #2 in Vol. 2), but that works out fine as it gives the omnibus volume a better cliffhanger, as Mari reveals she went all the way with her new boyfriend. (Does anyone really believe her? Well, except for Akko…)

This isn’t a lights out of compulsively addictive series. But it’s fun, wtih likeable characters and as realistic a yuri romance as you’re going to get in something that’s basically “Story A”, written with little consequence besides ALL THESE FEELINGS… IN MY HEART. I hope the second volume resolves said tortured feelings.