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Sarasah, Volume 1

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Sarasah, Vol. 1
By Ryu Rang
Published by Yen Press

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High school student Ji-Hae has an obsessive, long-time crush on her classmate Seung-Hyu. She pursues him relentlessly–so much so that she’s pushed him to the point of utter disgust. When her elaborate birthday scheme (involving an enormous banner, a hall full of floating feathers, and a note reading, “You are mine. You can’t get away.”) finally pushes him to the brink, he accidentally pushes her down the school stairwell to her probable death. Ji-Hae finds herself waking in a new world, where she is told that it is not yet her time to die and that she must return to the living world. Horrified by the prospect of returning to a life of humiliation and unrequited love, Ji-Hae begs to be able to just stay dead, but instead is granted the opportunity to return to a former life–the original source of her discord with Seung-Hyu–to rewrite her soul’s own history in hopes of earning a second chance at love.

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Boys Over Flowers 24 by Yoko Kamio: B

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boysoverflowers24From the back cover:
Tsukushi has been unconscious for two days and wakes up in Tsukasa’s cousin’s home! This terrifying man saved her life and now he’s courting her! What is the secret behind this mysterious cousin who so closely resembles Tsukasa, and what could be the reason for his intense hatred of Tsukasa? Why does Tsukasa not know anything about him?

Review:
I find I’m kind of running out of things to say about this series. Each volume is usually a combination of good scenes between Tsukushi and Tsukasa and silly plot happenings that often border on ludicrous. Volume 24 manages to be pretty decent without much direct interaction between the two leads, at least.

Tsukushi is pursued by a guy who claims to be Tsukasa’s cousin, though he pretty quickly reveals himself (to the reader) to be more than he’s letting on. Tsukushi’s rich friends are suspicious and take it upon themselves to investigate, and though this involves a bunch of mistaken notions about detecting, it’s all still kind of sweet.

The best part of the story at this point is kind of underplayed. Tsukasa has already asked Tsukushi if she’s never once regarded him as just a guy, and seeing a rival version of himself without all the rich boy baggage is bothering him. In an attempt to prove how normal he is, for example, he decides that he is going to travel by train. The experience is almost entirely played for comedy, but there is one moment with Akira where Tsukasa asks, “Akira, I’m not very different from these other guys on the train, am I?” Alas, he doesn’t get the answer he wants.

Once the truth about the cousin is revealed, Tsukushi gets good and fired up and demands to see Kaede. While she’s feeling rebellious, I’d like to see her finally confess her love to Tsukasa, but I have a feeling that’s still several volumes away, at least. Sigh.

Click 5 by Youngran Lee: B-

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Book description:
While Jinhoo doesn’t believe Heewon’s declaration that Joonha is actually a girl, his girlfriend, Hyejin, manages to catch a glimpse of Joonha in his school uniform. Will she share that information with Jinhoo, and risk him leaving her for his former best friend?

Review:
The status quo is upheld in this volume. Not much really happens aside from Hyejin becoming convinced that Joonha is a girl, but because of her own insecurities—we see in a side story about her that she has always felt Jinhoo valued Joonha more than he did her—her first thought is that Jinhoo is going to leave her. I can’t really like Hyejin much, or any of the characters for that matter, but I do have a little bit of sympathy for her, at least.

A diagram of the relationships in this series would be pretty amusing. Here’s how they stand at this point: Joonha is attracted to his/her best friend Jinhoo (who is going out with Hyejin, who hates Joonha), a new friend Taehyun, and a former love interest Heewon (who is now going out with Taehyun’s lackey, Jihan). With whom will Joonha end up?! Seeing as how I can’t stand Heewon at all, I’m really hoping it isn’t her. The pull towards Jinhoo is strong, but I think I actually prefer the idea of Joonha teaming up with Taehyun and getting away from the angst of the past.

In terms of redeeming qualities, Click doesn’t really have a lot aside from its sheer addictive potential. The premise is silly, the story’s kind of stagnating, and I don’t really like anybody, but I still want to know how it all ends.

KimiKiss, Vol. 1

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By Taro Shinonome & Enterbrain, Inc.
Tokyopop, 224 pp.
Rating: 16+

Kouchi and Mao have been friends since childhood, but now that they are in high school, Kouchi is depressed that he hasn’t managed to attract a girlfriend. Mao offers to help him become a “real stud” by teaching him how to be attractive to girls, beginning with lessons in kissing. The lessons start to get a bit steamy, especially after Mao is invited to sleep over with Kouchi’s little sister, resulting in a late-night tryst in Kouchi’s bed. On a later trip to the local pool, Mao really turns up the heat, but when she notices Kouchi talking to another girl, she realizes that her time with him may be over. Fortunately, Kouchi realizes that the girl he really likes is, in fact, Mao, something he finds the courage to tell her just in time.

Based on a PS2 dating sim, it comes as no surprise that the story’s plot is unoriginal and generally predictable. Unfortunately, KimiKiss is even more disappointing than might be expected. The humor is embarrassing (“Heh, heh, your balls are huge!,” Mao says, referring to Kouchi’s riceballs as they picnic by the pool), the art is dull, and even the plentiful fanservice—the series’ one potential draw—is nothing that hasn’t already been thoroughly explored by a thousand 1980s teen films. Following its cardboard characters through pages of generic dialogue and lifeless plot is honestly excruciating, and even the hero’s sweet sincerity is unable to save the day. Overall, KimiKiss is a series best missed.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at PopCultureShock.

Papillon 3 by Miwa Ueda: B-

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papillon125Ageha grew up in the shadow of her beautiful twin sister, Hana, but lately, with the help of her school counselor, Ichijiku-sensei, she’s been gaining confidence. As volume three begins, Ichijiku and Ageha have begun dating, but it doesn’t last long, as devious Hana dupes Ichijiku into believing she’s Ageha and behaves obnoxiously on a date, causing him to call off the relationship. He eventually figures things out, but getting dumped (even mistakenly) is fuel for Ageha’s insecurities, and more drama ensues. Hana, meanwhile, continues to impersonate her sister, using that guise to test her boyfriend’s fidelity.

Papillon has some pretty significant problems. In this volume, for example, it’s completely ridiculous that Ichijiku does not recognize Hana for who she is. She dresses differently, addresses him informally, doesn’t respond to the nickname he’s given Ageha, and behaves like a selfish wench. Ageha and Hana’s boyfriend also fall victim to her tricks without hesitation. With everyone being so incredibly easy to manipulate, I find myself actually rooting for Hana!

The main problem, though, is that I just can’t cheer on the budding relationship between Ageha and Ichijiku because he is a school counselor and she is a student. When Hana’s ruse prompts him to suddenly become a stickler for the rules and declare that a relationship between them is impossible, I think he’s actually making the right call.

Despite these complaints, though, Papillon still somehow manages to be an entertaining read. Part of it is the art, which is quite attractive, and part of it is Hana. I simply must see what deceitful plan she’ll come up with next.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.

Yuri Monogatari, Volume 6

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Yuri Monogatari, Vol. 6
Published by ALC Publishing

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Yuri Monogatari, now in its sixth volume, is an anthology of short comics featuring lesbian life and love, special in both its unity of theme and diversity of art. Written and drawn by artists from across the globe, the vast differences in style and storytelling could easily create a fractured feel over the length of the volume, but instead there is the sense that there is simply something for everyone. Though there were certainly stories that appealed to me less than others, no story was easily pigeonholed from the beginning and I found that I ended up really enjoying some stories much more than I would have expected based only on a first glance at the artwork.

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Children of the Sea, Volume 1

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Children of the Sea, Vol. 1
By Daisuke Igarashi
Published by Viz Media

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Though summer has just begun, Ruka’s temper has gotten her kicked off her handball team, leaving her with nothing to do. Taking the train to Tokyo on a whim, she encounters a young boy at the ocean who seems to intuitively understand her thoughts. When the boy turns up later at the aquarium where her father works, she discovers that he was one of two young boys found swimming with a herd of dugongs, by whom they had most likely been raised. Though she tells her mother she is still attending handball practice, Ruka continues to return to the aquarium to see the boy, Umi, and eventually her father gives her the job of entertaining Umi (and his less friendly brother, Sora) as “punishment” for her behavior. As she spends time with the boys, Ruka finds out that they have experienced the same strange sight she did as a young child–a fish that turned into light and disappeared before her eyes–something they call the “ghost of the sea.” Drawn to these boys and to the mysterious world of the sea, Ruka’s long, strange summer truly begins.

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One Thousand and One Nights, Volume 8

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One Thousand and One Nights, Vol. 8
By Han SeungHee and Jeon JinSeok
Published by Yen Press

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At the end of volume seven, Sehara sacrificed himself to save his sultan by offering to accompany the crusaders out of Baghdad as Lord McCloud’s bard in exchange for the safety of Shahryar and company. This volume begins as the events are being relayed to Sehara’s sister, Dunya, revealing further details of the exchange including an unexpectedly touching (and unusually erotic) good-bye from Sehara in which he kisses the end of Shahryar’s sword. …

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Mushishi, Volume 7

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Mushishi, Vol. 7
By Yuki Urushibara
Published by Del Rey Manga

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The seventh volume Yuki Urushibara’s quiet, supernatural series strikes a particularly sinister tone as nearly all its stories expose the ugliest aspects of humanity. First, “Lost in Blossoms” involves a family who has been keeping one woman alive for hundreds of years by feeding her on a sap-like mushi and grafting her head onto younger bodies whenever hers is about to die. “At the Foot of Lightning” studies a mother who is utterly unable to love her own child or even care that he exists. “The Ragged Road,” told in two parts, delves into the darkest secrets of the Minai family–the most ancient line of mushishi–and what they are willing to do to themselves (and each other) in order to maintain their calling. Only the second story, “The Mirror in the Muck,” displays any kind of real hope for humanity, as its heartbroken heroine makes the choice to live on, even in pain, instead of allowing a mushi to steal her existence. Though these tales are almost uniformly bleak, the series remains no less beautiful or mysterious than it has from the beginning.

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The Cat in the Coffin

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The year is 1955. Twenty-year-old Masayo, an aspiring painter from Hakodate, apprentices herself to Goro Kawabuko, a handsome widower who teaches at a Tokyo art college. In exchange for a weekly lesson, Masayo agrees to keep house for Goro and tutor his daughter Momoko, a strange, withdrawn child whose only companion is a regal white cat named Lala.

Masayo, who comes from a humble background, finds the Kawabuko household enchanting. Or, more accurately, she finds Goro enchanting. Goro epitomizes urban chic, hosting lavish parties, listening to jazz, and wearing the latest Western fashions. Realizing that Goro is beyond her reach, Masayo instead focuses on Momoko; if she can gain the girl’s confidance, perhaps she’ll have a claim on Goro’s heart as well. Masayo must first demonstrate her affinity for Lala, however, as the cat exerts an almost maternal power over Momoko, responding to her mistress’ quicksilver moods with an emotional intelligence that borders on human.

Masayo’s tenure is threatened by the arrival of Chinatsu, a beautiful sophisticate who seems intent on marrying Goro. Chinatsu competes with Masayo for Momoko’s affections, touching off a battle royal between the two women. Watching their struggle unfold, we begin to see through Masayo’s guileless pose: she’s as masterful a manipulator as Chinatsu, using her relationship with Momoko to drive a wedge between Goro and his fiancee:

For a wicked moment, I savored the momentary discomfiture that flickered across the faces of Goro and Chinatsu. Momoko had shown precious little interest in Chintasu; indeed, she had all but ignored her. And then she came running to me. It occurred to me then that aside from Goro, nobody was closer to Momoko than I was. That thought made me feel even more elated.

Like Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw,” The Cat in the Coffin draws its power from “the strange and sinister embroidered on the very type of the normal and easy,” presenting itself as a domestic drama about a naive young woman who falls for her worldly employer. Yet the book has an oppressive, eerie quality that lends itself to several tantalizing readings: that Lala may be possessed by Momoko’s dead mother, that Momoko herself is a bad seed. By the novel’s end, the reader may believe Masayo’s account of events — and even feel great compassion for her — while questioning her involvement in them.

It’s this level of narrative complexity that elevates The Cat in the Coffin from romantic pot boiler to literature: we’re seduced by Masayo’s modest, self-effacing comments before we recognize that she’s an unreliable witness. One can certainly read The Cat in the Coffin as an atmospheric mystery, but it works on many other levels as well: as a meditation on jealousy, as a young woman’s sexual awakening, as a portrait of life in occupied Japan, as a parody of the Victorian governess novel. I’d love to see Vertical translate more work by Mariko Koike, as she brings an uncommon level of wisdom and literary sophistication to a pulpy genre.

Review copy provided by Vertical, Inc.

THE CAT IN THE COFFIN • BY MARIKO KOIKE, TRANSLATED BY DEBORAH BOLIVER BOEHM • VERTICAL, INC. • 190 pp.

Black Bird, Volume 1

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Black Bird, Vol. 1
By Kanoko Sakurakoji
Published by Viz Media


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Misao Harada has been able to see demons and spirits all her life, though they are invisible to everyone else. As she’s gotten older, they seem to follow her more and more, making her daily existence difficult to tolerate. The only good thing she associates with this hidden world is the memory of a little boy who lived next door when she was a child and who could also see the strange things that followed her. He left ten years ago, promising to return, and though Misao treasures her memories of him as her first love, as her sixteenth birthday approaches she is starting to wish she could let him go and just find a normal boyfriend. Unfortunately, when she is finally approached by a boy she likes–a popular school athlete–he turns out to be possessed by a demon who wants to eat her in order to obtain eternal youth. Evidently, Misao is a very special kind of human of which only one is born every hundred years. Her blood and flesh offer extended life to any demon who tastes it, and marriage to her will grant prosperity to his entire clan. Misao’s childhood love, Kyo, comes to her rescue just in time, but he reveals himself to be a demon as well (a powerful tengu with spectacular black wings), determined to marry her as the head of his clan. Though it becomes clear that Misao requires Kyo’s protection to keep from being eaten or snatched up by other eager demons, she is heartbroken by the discovery of his motives and does her best to resist him and the seemingly inevitable future he insists that she accept.

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Boys Over Flowers 23 by Yoko Kamio: B

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boysoverflowers23From the back cover:
Tsukushi ends her visit at her parents’ quiet seaside home and returns to Tokyo. She is welcomed back with a “girls’ night out” and ends up meeting a ton of guys! Unfortunately, they all turn out to be losers. In fact, one of the boys is downright terrifying and bears a striking resemblance to a certain curly-haired ex-boyfriend! Could they be related?!

Review:
The fishing village story line wraps up fairly decently, actually, with some nice awkwardness between Tsukushi and Tsukasa (in which she has trouble not confessing her love), the “No-Account” dude being reunited with his girlfriend, and, back in Tokyo, the Makinos being given use of a condo by Shigeru. It turns out that all of Tsukushi’s rich friends wanted to lend her accommodations and had talked about it at length to figure out whose generosity would put the least strain on her. Aww.

Of course, Tsukushi is determined to get a job so that the Makinos no longer need depend on Shigeru and so that she can fund her brother’s high school ambitions. Sakurako dangles the carrot of a high-paying job that she knows about and manages to get Tsukushi to attend a group date along with Shigeru and Yuki. These scenes with the four girls hanging out (and trying to help Tsukushi forget Tsukasa) are a lot of fun and I hope we see more of them together. I can even forgive the ridiculousness of encountering a Tsukasa look-a-like on the date and Tsukushi’s subsequent moron moment as she keeps mistaking him for Tsukasa.

As usual, the final scene of the volume offers some particularly scrumptious angst between our two leads. It’s worth noting that Tsukasa, who had said that if the two-month dating experience didn’t work out that he would let her go, is being true to his word and not exerting any effort to get Tsukushi back. I’d like this scene better if the Tsukasa look-a-like didn’t show up at the end, but it still serves to acquaint Tsukushi even further with her true feelings, so I can’t complain much.

I can complain about the Story Thus Far, however. Usually, this is pretty decent but this time it contains errors. It says of the final chapter in volume 21 that “Tsukushi does not reveal the real reason for leaving Tsukasa, and instead, tells him that she no longer loves him.” Er, that’s completely untrue. She specifically mentions his mother and the threats on her friends’ families. Also, how could you tell someone you no longer love them if you’ve never told them you love them in the first place? What she did do was allow Tsukasa to think calling things off was easy for her because she had no feelings for him.

NANA, Volume 17

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NANA, Vol. 17
By Ai Yazawa
Published by Viz Media

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“But now I just want one thing… the courage to face things once more.”

This volume begins in the future timeline, with Hachi meeting Shin at apartment 707 during the Christmas season where she discovers an envelope left in the mailbox containing photos of Nana singing in a faraway club. The scene is unexpectedly moving and it put tears in my eyes right from the beginning of the volume which never truly disappeared. Though much of this book focuses on the storyline begun in in the volume sixteen regarding Nana’s biological mother and the related Search exposé, what this volume really does is bring Nana and Hachi back together–something guaranteed to fill my heart with joy. Having been manipulated by the Search reporter into confronting Nana’s mother (though this confrontation is ultimately fruitless), Hachi first spends some time hiding out at her parents’ house in shame, but once the story finally hits she runs straight to Nana’s side, much to everyone’s relief. This volume also takes a surprisingly frank look at Mai’s past, including how she became “Misato Uehara,” and delves more deeply into the complicated relationships between the members of Trapnest, focusing on Reira in particular.

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Boys Over Flowers 22 by Yoko Kamio: B-

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boysoverflowers22From the back cover:
Tsukushi has left her on-and-off boyfriend Tsukasa, his mansion, her school, and Tokyo altogether! Down and out, she heads for the seaside village where her family has gone to live and work. Unfortunately, her parents are about to be run out of town. Just then, visitors from Tokyo arive!

Review:
What a disappointment! After the awesomeness at the end of the last volume, I was expecting something much better than this. Instead, we get a ridiculous plot where Tsukushi flees to the fishing village, where her incredibily annoying parents have told everyone that Tsukushi is engaged to Doumyouji and are racking up bills with the expectation that he’ll pay them. She also meets a slacker surfer guy who is waiting around for the girlfriend who left him to return and who has garnered a reputation as a “no-account.” Inexplicably, everybody in the village seems irate that Tsukushi is hanging out with this dude, and there’s a completely dumb scene where they all turn out at her parents’ house to confront her.

Meanwhile, Tsukasa is reverting to his violent ways, threatening his friends with bodily harm when they come to talk to him about what’s happened and being cruel to a girl who takes advantage of Tsukushi’s absence to confess her feelings for him. This, at least, is better than the fishing village story line and I kind of love the scene where Rui, having seen Tsukushi on TV (some kind of program was filmed at the beach and had Tsukushi in the background), goes to goad Tsukasa into going to see her, pushing all the right buttons by exaggerating her frail condition.

Ultimately, the best part of the volume is the ending, in which Rui and Tsukasa turn up at the village just in time to prevent some angry mob action. Yes, it’s completely goofy, but that Rui came himself (thinking he had failed to motivate Tsukasa) is actually pretty sweet. I’ve learned my lesson, however, and shan’t be anticipating any greatness out of the next volume just because this one ends well.

Goong, Volume 5

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Goong, Vol. 5
By Park So Hee
Published by Yen Press

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Goong is set in an alternate version of modern Korea in which the monarchy survived and continues on as in England or Japan. Chae-Kyung is an ordinary girl who happens to attend the same high school as the country’s current crown prince, Shin Lee. Though the prince is much admired and fairly dreamy, Chae-Kyung discovers early on that he is also a real jerk. Unfortunately for both of them, the royal family has decided that it is Shin Lee’s time to marry and after the only girl he proposes to turns him down, he’s bound to follow his family’s wishes and marry the granddaughter of his deceased grandfather’s best friend–a commoner who “treated him like a normal human being and not a king.” The granddaughter is, of course, Chae-Kyung.

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