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Crimson Hero 2 by Mitsuba Takanashi: B+

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From the back cover:
Nobara is issued a challenge from the boys’ volleyball team: if her team can score one point against them in a match, the girls will win. But, if the girls lose, Nobara will have to give up on having a girls’ volleyball team at Crimson Field forever. With everything on the line for the girls, the boys are playing to win, and even Haibuki seems determined to crush Nobara by aiming at her on the court.

Review:
This volume is a lot of fun. First, there’s the three-on-three challenge between the girls and the boys, which goes exactly as one might expect, but is nonetheless very entertaining and features Haibuki sneakily alerting the broadcast club so that a bunch of students will turn out and lend their support to the underdog girls’ team. I also like that the formerly assy boys living in the dorm begin showing much more support for Nobara’s endeavors after her showing at the game.

Next, there’s Nobara’s search for team members which reminds me a lot of Hikaru no Go in terms of the acquisition of a couple of enthusiastic newcomers who help fulfill the numbers requirement without really providing much by way of talent. These newbies bring the club’s membership up to five, leaving Nobara one person short of officially qualifying as a team.

Enter Tomoyo Osaka, who was a star player in junior high until an injury sidelined her before an important game. She was convinced that her team needed her in order to win, but it turns out they found a replacement pretty quickly. Since then, she’s stayed away from the sport and adamantly maintains she has no intention of playing, but of course we and Nobara know better, and our protagonist exerts her hero skills again as she finally breaks through to what Tomoyo’s real objections are. This whole section was perfectly paced; Tomoyo’s sour attitude and backstory angst would’ve gotten irritating if it’d continued for too long, but here it wraps up in just enough time for Nobara’s success in getting through to her at last to feel well-earned.

About the only complaint I could make is that all of this scrambling and struggling—the entire series, even—could’ve been averted if only Nobara had made sure that she was going to be attending a school with a strong girls’ volleyball team. You’d think that if she’s so passionate about it, she’d put forth that extra effort.

In any case, Crimson Hero is definitely fun and I am eager to read the next volume. Which is handy, ‘cos I have about eight of them sitting here.

Report on ConBust 2009!

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Happy Friday, everyone, Good or otherwise. I was hoping to manage a review for this blog last night, but other than a few minutes spent watching the new Fullmetal Alchemist anime (I look forward to it getting through its setup and on to the manga plot), I ending up using the entire night finishing my coverage of ConBust at Smith College, which is up now at Manga Recon!

I enjoyed the convention immensely, and I can’t emphasize enough how gratifying I found its focus on female fans and creators. Those of you who follow me on Twitter probably recall some frustrated tweets about some (fairly infuriating) comments made about manga during the con, and I do address that at the end of the article, but I really hope that will not overshadow the essential awesomeness of the con and the Smith students who put it together every year.

Follow this link to read my report, and if you’re in the Pioneer Valley or thereabouts (and especially if you’re a sci-fi and/or fantasy fan) I hope you’ll consider attending ConBust in 2010!

Crimson Hero 1 by Mitsuba Takanashi: B

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From the back cover:
All that matters to 15-year-old Nobara Sumiyoshi is volleyball—she’s an awesome player with big-time ambitions. But sometimes it seems like a girl just can’t get a break in the competitive world of high school volleyball.

Nobara’s family wants her to inherit the role of “young mistress,” serving rich patrons at her family’s old-fashioned Japanese restaurant. No thanks! When Nobara transfers to Crimson Field High School, known for its top-notch volleyball team, it turns out that her mother will stoop to dirty tricks to keep her off the court. With assistance from her feisty Aunt Momoko, who’s got some connections at Crimson Field, Nobara decides to start playing offense.

Review:
Seriously, are there any bad Shojo Beat manga? I suppose I wasn’t very keen on Time Stranger Kyoko or I.O.N, but I think I’ve liked all the others that I’ve read.

From childhood, Nobara’s parents tried to mold her into a “young mistress” of grace and refinement who would be suitable to take over their traditional family restaurant. She continually disappointed them, and was always being unfavorably compared to her lady-like younger sister, Souka. It was only through volleyball that she found something at which she excelled and, through it, she eventually learned to like herself as she was.

Fast forward to high school. Nobara has enrolled at Crimson Field High School purely on the strength of its volleyball program, but when she arrives, she finds that her mother has exercised her PTA clout to get the girls’ team disbanded. In a fury, Nobara runs away from home and her aunt, the school nurse, sets her up with a job as the interim house mother for the school’s volleyball dorm, currently occupied by four rather assy boys. Nobara makes many mistakes, but eventually the fact that she’s trying so hard purely for the opportunity to play volleyball starts to win over a couple of the guys.

I think this may actually be my first shoujo sports manga, but so far I’m enjoying it a lot. I love Nobara’s androgynous character design, and also that she tries to be tough but sometimes experiences insecurities. Most of her vulnerability comes from having her dream continually thwarted by her family, so when someone actually speaks up for her—as dorm resident Yushin does when her mom shows up at the dorm to collect her—it’s actually a pretty emotional thing.

Towards the end of the volume, Nobara begins to make contact with the girls who used to be on the volleyball team, as she’s been told that if she can assemble enough players, the school will reinstate the team. Her passion and refusal to submit to insults from the boys’ team inspires the dispirited remnants of the team, making one realize just what the title really means. I find I’m really looking forward to the formation of the team and actually seeing the girls work hard in pursuit of success.

On the negative side, there are a couple of cheesy plot elements, like the fact that Nobara has met one of the boys before in elementary school and that, as a result of juggling all of her responsibilities, she (of course) contracts a fever and requires nursing. A more minor, yet still annoying, quibble is that Nobara seems to be the only student at her school who does not wear a uniform. How is she not getting in trouble? Too, there doesn’t appear to be any standardization in the sailor fuku the other girls are wearing, so it’s just entirely confusing

Lastly, I think Nobara and Haruna from High School Debut should meet. They would probably get along well.

Crimson Hero is still being serialized in Japan and its fifteenth volume is due out there later this month. Viz publishes the series in English; they’ve released through volume ten. I think this series is the only one of the original batch of titles featured in the Shojo Beat magazine to still be included in its line-up. This results in rather lengthy delays between volumes.

Click 2 by Youngran Lee: B-

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From the back cover:
Poor Joonha has moved to the big city and is now living incognito, as a girl, at a new school. But that doesn’t mean his (her?) troubles are over. First, Taehyun, the obnoxious class playboy, coerces Joonha into a “friendship” that royally ticks off Yoomi, Taehyun’s ex. That’s before the reappearance of Heewon, the lovesick stunner who’s followed Joonha all the way from their old school—and whose feelings apparently stay the same whether Joonha is a boy or a girl!

Review:
I liked this one much more than the first volume, to the point where I’m tempted to give it a B. There’s just too much lingering sexism (albeit an incredibly diluted amount compared to volume one) for me to justify doing so. There does look to be some progress on this front, though. First, Joonha, being severely humbled, is not actively being arrogant and cruel to girls. She does still, however, have this notion that being a girl means that there’s no reason to do well in school anymore or to have ambitions of any kind, so she’s been slacking off in a major way. When her new friend, Taehyun, gets wind of this attitude his response is one of disbelief at this antiquated notion. He encourages Joonha to live life to its fullest, whatever her gender may happen to be, and she ends up turning out a bravura performance on her next round of class exams and makes plans to join Taehyun as his business partner.

There’s all sorts of other drama going on, too, including the girl Joonha spurned in junior high emerging on the scene and beating up the leader of Joonha’s new gang of admirers, Taehyun’s serious-minded lackey falling in love/obsession with her, an angsty family background for Taehyun, and the return of Joonha’s childhood friend Jinhoo (now a famous concert pianist) after a concert tour.

Despite the persistent problem of no truly likable characters, but I can’t deny that it’s getting pretty addictive at this point. The volume serves up a couple of nice cliffhangers in the final chapter, too.

Personal musing on La Corda d’Oro

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One of the anime series currently available for viewing on Crunchyroll is La Corda d’Oro, based on the manga series licensed in the US by Viz (which is, I understand, based on a video game). My husband brought it up to me recently as a series he’d be interested in watching and when he told me the name, my ears perked up as I reached excitedly into my pile of review copies where I have volume ten of the manga waiting to be reviewed for Manga Recon’s “On The Shojo Beat” column next month. Seeing this as a great opportunity for me to study up for my review (I don’t own or have access to the first nine volumes of the manga), we plunged right in.

Now I’ll say right off, I am really enjoying this anime series. Sure, the musical selections are straight out of someone’s supermarket CD of “Your Favorite Classical Music Hits,” but honestly this is what I expect to see in popular fiction, and even when the arrangements of these overused standards are utterly ridiculous (I looked it up–there actually is an existing arrangement of Pachelbel’s Canon for just violin and piano, as ill-advised as that may seem) the characters are so sincere about playing them it’s hard to remain snobbish about it, even for a stodgy old music geek like me. Recently, however, there has been a bit of a plot twist that has seriously thrown me for a loop. I found my own reaction to it surprising, revealing, and actually a little bit hilarious so I thought I’d talk about it here. Major spoilers after the jump. …

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Click 1 by Youngran Lee: C+

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From the back cover:
Joonha is a normal, healthy boy of sixteen who has cruised through life without too many problems. Imagine his surprise when a recent trip to the bathroom suddenly reveals that he’s not normal at all! With a shriek of “Oh, my God!!!,” he finds himself missing, well, something he never thought he could live without.

As it turns out, his family is abnormal in the weirdest possible way. After puberty, their chromosomes undergo some kind of mutation, which converts their bodies into the opposite sex!

Review:
There are a few things that bothered me quite a lot about Click, even while I think it’s fundamentally fairly interesting and I plan to keep reading.

1. Before spontaneously turning into a girl, Joonha is the most thoroughly infuriating chauvinist pig imaginable. He treats girls like his playthings in an attempt to teach them the feminine virtues of obedience. When the girl he likes confesses to him, he blows her off, saying that it’s her duty to “wait gracefully until you are chosen.”

2. When Joonha begins to live as a girl, he’s more tolerable, but I can’t help but think that this is because he suffered such a tremendous blow to his pride. The remorse he shows for his past actions is more along the lines of, “I should have kissed her” rather than “I shouldn’t have treated her that way.” It’s still ultimately about what’s in it for him.

3. None of the other characters are really all that likable, either. Joonha’s friend from childhood, Jinhoo, comes closest. The fact that he merely expresses mild disapproval of Joonha’s treatment of girls, however, speaks volumes.

4. Joonha’s parents are annoyingly chipper and dim. When he asks why they didn’t tell him about the family’s tendency to change genders, they claim they forgot about it. Yes, I know, I always take stories with wacky premises too seriously, but this is just too ridiculous to be suffered quietly.

There are a few good moments scattered throughout, though. My favorite is the scene in which Jinwoo and Heewon (the girl who confessed her feelings to Joonha) share their hurt feelings about Joonha’s sudden disappearing act. The art is also quite nice. It’s interesting to note, too, that once Joonha begins living as a girl, he doesn’t embody the same ideals of feminine behavior that he once held.

At this point, it’s hard to care about the story or any of the characters, but I plan to give it a couple more volumes at least to see if it gets any better.

Claymore, Vol. 14

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By Norihiro Yagi
Viz, 191 pp.
Rating: T+ (Older Teen)

Volume thirteen sent Clarice and Miata on a mission to execute Galatea and as volume fourteen begins they finally find her hidden away in the holy city of Rabona. As it turns out, the Organization’s discovery of her was not an accident but actually planned by Galatea in hopes that she, along with the Claymores sent to kill her, would be powerful enough to destroy an Awakened One (former number 2, “Bloody Agatha”) who has been menacing the city. The rest of the volume centers on the battle with Agatha, which does not proceed quite as Galatea hoped, followed up by a couple of thick extra chapters which provide more backstory on Priscilla, Isley, and Clare.

The most interesting aspect of this volume is the relationship between Clarice and Miata, which becomes quite touching during the main battle and leads to an emotional breakdown for Clarice, who is intensely frustrated by her own weaknesses. It’s not clear yet just what role she plays in this story overall but her character is intriguing and certainly destined for something special. This volume’s greatest weakness is the drawn-out battle with Agatha which goes on just a bit too long, though by the end it is clear that there is much excitement ahead and the last few pages of the main story are seriously kick-ass.

In any long series, it is inevitable that some volumes will move the story along more substantially than others, and though volume fourteen falls into the latter category, it is obvious that everything playing out here is necessary setup for what’s to come. For fans who love a battle this volume delivers nicely, and there are enough fantastic gems of information in the extra stories (particularly concerning how trainees become warriors) to satisfy the rest.

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

Claymore 14, All Hail Crunchyroll

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Morning! Just a quick update before I run out to an early morning meeting (ugh). First of all, I have a short review in this week’s Manga Minis, for volume fourteen of Claymore, a series I like a lot and one of the few shonen series I have reviewed at MR. If you missed my review of volume thirteen back in December, here it is! It was actually my very first review for Manga Recon. Oh, the nostalgia.

Secondly, I just want to take a moment and appreciate Crunchyroll. We originally bought a membership in order to watch new episodes of Shugo Chara!! Doki as they came out, but yesterday we started watching three new series (we’ll probably keep going with two of them) which were being simulcast here at pretty much the same time as in Japan. It was exciting, seriously. I mean, this is what we’ve all hoped for, right? That someone would start to provide legally what was previously only offered by fansubbers–subbed anime available here at the same time (or shortly after) its release in Japan. Hell, I’d have gone for episodes aired even a month or so afterward–that’s still a huge improvement over the years-long wait for dubs I’m not going to watch anyway–but I admit there was something kind of thrilling about knowing we were watching at approximately the same time these episodes were airing for the very first time. Thank you, Crunchyroll, thank you. You are awesome. It’ll be interesting to see how Funimation’s Fullmetal Alchemist streams stack up!

100% Perfect Girl & FMA Squee

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First off, I have a review up this morning at Manga Recon, for volume nine of NETCOMICS’ manhwa soap opera 100% Perfect Girl. I’ve had a rough time with this series as its heroine is repeatedly dragged through hell by the men who supposedly love her, but if you love a soap opera this may be the series for you.

In other news, I was thrilled to see this morning (thanks to ANN) that Funimation is going to be streaming the new Fullmetal Alchemist anime series within days of its airing in Japan! Now that the manga is so far along, I have real hope that the new adaptation may be able to approach Arakawa’s genius. There are few stories I love as much as this one, and to be able to watch the new anime series legally as it airs is more than I’d expected.

I hope this means that all this new streaming going on is working out just as the studios hoped, and that this will become the new model (or at least a new model) for anime distribution. We’ve already got a membership at Crunchyroll so that we can stream Shugo Chara! in high quality each week (and we’re excited about trying some other series as well), and aside from a few technical glitches here and there, it’s been a fantastic deal.

Fruits Basket, Volume 22

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Here is the last of my “quick” reviews for this week! Please enjoy it!

Fruits Basket, Vol. 22
By Natsuki Takaya
Published by Tokyopop

9781427806833
Buy This Book

With the level of drama that volume 21 of Fruits Basket provided, it was hard to imagine that the next volume could actually be stronger, but it is. Still barred from visiting Tohru in the hospital, Kyo decides to face down his own demons by visiting his father who rejected him so many years ago. It is a painful meeting and provides nothing even close to reconciliation, but Kyo is at least able to declare his determination to live regardless of carrying the cat’s curse. Meanwhile, Akito makes the decision to end the curse entirely, resulting in emotional scenes for everyone and Akito most of all.

This is an incredibly lovely volume with everyone’s hearts laid bare and by the end, when the true, heartbreaking story of the curse is being revealed (“…that the Cat’s wish was finally granted”), I had tears in my eyes. What’s especially skillful about Natsuki Takaya’s storytelling in this series is that she balances the romance and the supernatural story just right, ensuring that the reader is equally interested in the outcome of both, so that when the story really finds its conclusion it is satisfying on more than one level. Not only that, she manages to make each of the character’s personal arcs intensely compelling, even those of minor characters, so with all of these achieving their dramatic climax at once, the effect is really quite stunning. It’s impressive too that after all this time, the character whose story here is probably the most moving is Akito’s. “I don’t have to be ‘special’ anymore. I don’t have to be ‘God’ anymore,” she says just before her final goodbye, filled with both terror and relief. “I can just be… me. Right?” …

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The Sharing Knife: Beguilement by Lois McMaster Bujold: B

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From the front flap:
Young Fawn Bluefield has fled her family’s farm hoping to find work in the city of Glassforge. Uncertain about her future and the troubles she carries, Fawn stops for a drink of water at a roadside inn, where she counters a patrol of Lakewalkers, enigmatic soldier-sorcerers from the woodland culture to the north. Though Fawn has heard stories about the Lakewalkers, she is unaware that they are engaged in a perilous campaign against inhuman and immortal magical entities known as “malices,” creatures that suck the life out of all they encounter, and turn men and animals into their minions.

Dag is an older Lakewalker patroller who carries his past sorrows as heavily as his present responsibilities. When Fawn is kidnapped by the malice Dag’s patrol is tracking, Dag races to rescue her. But in the ensuing struggle, it is not Dag but Fawn who kills the creature—at dire cost—and an uncanny accident befalls Dag’s sharing knife, which unexpectedly binds their two fates together.

Review:
For all that this book took me something like six weeks to finish, I find that I don’t actually have all that much to say about it. The description quoted above admirably sums up the beginning of the novel, in which Dag rescues Fawn from some bandits, her pregnant status provokes a nasty creature to kidnap her back again, and they end up taking down a “malice” together. I can’t help but think that the reason the blurb doesn’t touch on any plot after this point is that there really isn’t much of one.

Beguilement is really more of a romance than a fantasy novel, though Bujold has still done a good job with the worldbuilding, working in details on the differences between Fawn’s and Dag’s cultures throughout the novel. But after the malice is defeated, there isn’t much going on except them riding on horses, staying in inns, developing fancies for one another, finally consummating their relationship, doing it many more times and often outdoors in the company of bugs, encountering Fawn’s not-so-supportive family, convincing them to support a marriage, and getting hitched. I guess if I lay it out like that it looks like a lot happened, but really, how much of that sounds like a fantasy novel?

The fact that the characters are both likable makes up for some of the plotlessness, at least. Fawn has had a very sheltered upbringing where her thirst for knowledge was not encouraged. Now, with support for her quick wits, she proves herself to be pretty clever and resourceful. Dag is a very experienced patroller who was widowed before Fawn’s birth (there’s quite a big age difference between them) and has been fiercely solitary ever since, so opening himself up to her is a pretty unique experience for him. Because there’s a lot that Fawn doesn’t know and is curious about, it sometimes seems like you’ve got the “wise man teaching ignorant girl” dynamic going on, but it’s not really pervasive. There’s one scene near the end where Dag praises Fawn for a brilliant leap of logic that comes across as completely admiring and not at all patronizing. It even made me a bit sniffly after seeing how little her family appreciates her.

Too, Bujold simply writes really well. Without being overly wordy, she can paint a scene so vividly that it’s incredibly easy to visualize. The best example is probably the part where Dag has found the malice’s lair and is taking in the layout of the area: I swear I could picture it perfectly after only a couple of sentences. And even if the parts with Fawn’s family were rather uncomfortable to read, considering their dismissive treatment of her, they were still entertaining. Probably, enduring all that strife was necessary so as to be as relieved as the main characters when they were finally able to leave it all behind.

While I like Fawn and Dag both together and separately, I do hope that there’s more of a plot to the next book. A typical fantasy series would have an epic quest to wipe out evil, but I sort of doubt Bujold is going to adhere to standard genre tropes. Because I do admire her writing, I’m willing to stick around and see how the story develops, but if this was the first installment of a story by anyone else, I’m not sure I’d be too keen to continue with it.

Additional reviews of The Sharing Knife:Beguilement can be found at Triple Take.