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My Quiet Blacksmith Life in Another World, Vol. 3

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By Tamamaru and Kinta. Released in Japan as “Kajiya de Hajimeru Isekai Slow Life” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Linda Liu.

Still enjoying this series, don’t get me wrong, but it’s time I face up to the face that I am skimming a large chunk of it every time simply because I really don’t care one jot about the Blacksmith Life part of this book. There is just so much detail about how to make swords correctly, knives correctly, and katanas correctly, including hilts and scabbards and the like. And of course we also get to hear Eizo talk a lot about how he’s using his cheats too, so these are essentially IKEA blueprints that contain the S. Harris punchline “then a miracle occurs” halfway through the process. It is a BIG chunk of every book, and I think the series would benefit from less of it, even if it means sacrificing a bit of the slow life pacing. Which gets a bit of a kick in the pants in this volume anyway, as halfway through Eizo is called out to help with a monster subjugation that turns nasty.

In the first half of this volume, we essentially get the same thing as the second half of Book 2, only with the elf replaced with a demon. Nilda recently suffered a crushing defeat battling against a mere human, and the mere human had a very familiar sword. Now Nilda wants a sword of her own to challenge her, so basically stakes out Eizo’s hometown till she runs into him. What follows is a lot of slow life sword building and all the girls admiring Eizo’s muscular blacksmith body. After this, Marius asks that Eizo go monster exterminating with them, so that he can repair the swords and armor when they’re broken in battle. This battle ends up being more personal than he expected, as he runs into the elf Lidy, who just left his shop with her own magic sword. She’s here to help them take out the main monster boss… and avenge her brother.

I gloss over it a bit in these reviews, but this is still very much that genre of “a harem series without any actual sex or even kissing” that is so popular in Japan. Nilda clearly likes Eizo. By the end of the book, Livy has gone back to his shop and moved in with everyone. We meet a young woman, Frederica, who is in charge of logistics and can best be summed up as “small insecure accountant” but also clearly is in love with Eizo by the end of the book. Hell, it’s implied that the Queen of the Demons has taken a liking to him as well, and the flashforwards we occasionally see very pointedly say he has a wife but never say who it is. This book is written for folks who love seeing a man surrounded by a dozen women but who will be making precisely zero moves. I know this upsets some light novel fans.

Still, it is what it is. It’s slow life, adding girls one by one, and smithing. So much smithing.

Nina the Starry Bride, Vols 1 and 2 by Rikachi

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Nina the Starry Bride Volumes 1 and 2 by Rikachi

I’m really bad at buying digital volumes of manga and then totally forgetting to read them, but I got a new tablet recently so I’m hoping to start getting caught up on some digital series that have been out for awhile. Nina the Starry Bride is likely one of those series that I would have glommed onto immediately if it had a print release, but I’m coming to it a bit late.

Nina the Starry Bride Vol 1

Royal duplicate plots are fairly common in fantasy manga, but Nina the Starry Bride is a solid example of the genre, helped a great deal by charming and detailed art. Nina is an orphan with unusual blue eyes who has found a family of sorts with a couple brothers. They spend their days hiding out and stealing occasionally to support themselves. When they fall on hard times, Nina is betrayed and handed over to slavers and her unusual eye color leads to her being recruited to be a stand-in for a recently deceased princess by the amber-eyed Prince Azure.

After some initial resistance, Nina works hard to develop her knowledge of etiquette and ability to behave like a princess. As only Azure and a few trusted servants know her secret, Nina grows closer to the second prince as she learns more about the royal family. Azure has a younger brother who is the acknowledged heir, a snarky stepmother, and his mysterious father is king. Nina and Azure share a certain loneliness, and it is nice to see how they begin to open up to each other. This series is fairly fast-paced as by the second volume Nina has a strong grasp of geopolitics and decides to save Azure, even though he’s attempting to prevent Nina from being sent off to a neighboring kingdom as part of a political alliance.

Rikachi has attractive character designs, with Azure looking particularly cool with his standoffish manners and asymmetrical earrings. Nina shifts from orphan to princess, and the lush detail of her life in the palace contrasts with the sparseness of her previous life. While Nina might not have the royal background of the people surrounding her, she’s true to herself in a way that makes it easy for her to deal with the political and family issues that she she encounters. While the elements of Nina the Starry Bride aren’t used in a particularly novel way, it is overall a strong fantasy manga that should appeal to fans of Dawn of the Arcana

When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace, Vol. 3

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By Kota Nozomi and 029. Released in Japan as “Inou Battle wa Nichijoukei no Nakade” by GA Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Tristan K. Hill.

Imagine that you are an Olympic sprinter. It’s the final race. All eyes of the world are on you. You’re feeling great. Your fiancee is cheering from the stands. The starter pistol goes off, and you take off, quickly putting all the other runners in the shade. It’s smooth sailing till the end of the race. You smile, confident and proud. Then you trip on absolutely nothing and fall flat on your face. All the other runners trample over you as they fly towards victory. You have humiliated yourself and your country. The medics don’t even want to treat you. Your fiancee leaves you, sobbing. The team bus leaves without you, as does the team plane. And so there you are, broke and starving, wondering where it all went wrong. If it wasn’t for that one horrid misstep right at the finish! If you can imagine that, then you can pretty much imagine how I felt on getting to the climax of the third volume of When Supernatural Battles Become Commonplace.

As has become the norm with this series, the first half is basically a bunch of fooling around, goofy gags, and Andou being incredibly irritating. The club plays tennis, and has a cosplay roulette tournament, which gets everyone into embarrassing outfits. That said, as you may have guessed by the cover art, Chifuyu is the featured girl of this volume. She seems to be having difficulty at school, which Andou drops her off at one morning, and trouble dealing with her best friend Madoka Kuki, aka “Cookie”. Well, best friend is probably the wrong word. Partly because Chifuyu is so helpless at doing anything that Kuki ends up acting more like a mom than anything else. And partly as, well, Chifuyu has the club, and talks about the club all the time. Which, naturally, makes Kuki mad.

For the most part, this was a lot of fun. Andou has become tolerable for the most part, especially when we contrast him with his loathsome “friend” Sagami. He and Tomoyo go on what is, to all intents and purposes, a date midway through this book, and it’s cute as hell. There’s some ominous foreshadowing of a character from Andou’s past (who might be trans?), but that’s for a future book. And Chifuyu’s problem thankfully has nothing whatsoever to do with the superpowers or the other evil organization – it’s just typical elementary school stuff, and reminds you that she really is ten years old. Which makes Andou’s “solution” to the problem really head-slappingly terrible. Even Hachiman would not quite be this self-sacrificing. It’s creepy. And it also reminds you that Chifuyu probably *is* a love interest for Andou despite being ten, because the whole club is – that’s the point of the book, ti’s a harem series. Which, whatever. But there’s no need to underline it with all this lolicon stuff.

So, 85% of a good book. Just stop before the final chapter and assume there was a sensible solution. …right, this is When Supernatural Battles Become Commonplace, there is nothing sensible here. Never mind. Carry on.

The Manga Review, 7/22/22

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Great news for fans of Fumiyo Kouno: the crew at Mangasplaining has teamed up with UDON to publish Kouno’s Giga Town: Manpu Zufu (A Catalog of Manga Symbols), which uses characters from the Choju-jinbutsu-giga to explain “the visual iconography of manga.” Though Kouno’s work won’t be serialized on the Mangasplaining website, Deb Aoki, Christopher Woodrow-Butcher and Andrew Woodrow-Butcher will be intimately involved in bringing Giga Town to North American readers, offering subscribers a “behind the scenes on how a manga is made from licensing through translation, lettering, and more.” Giga Town is slated for a spring 2023 release; Ko Ransom (Invitation From a Crab) will translate.

NEWS, INTERVIEWS, AND ESSAYS

ICYMI: Anime News Network reports that Tokyopop is bringing back its Rising Stars of Manga contest this year. Earlier this month, Tokopop announced that “previous winners and industry professionals will judge the competition,” and “artists will retain the copyright on their works.” No information about the contest has been posted on the Tokyopop website as yet, though Tokyopop indicated that the contest would run from July 25th – October 25th. Stay tuned for more information. [Anime News Network]

Brigid Alverson offers an in-depth look at the June 2022 NPD Bookscan charts, observing that “[wh]ether the comic is based on the show or the show is based on the comic, media tie-ins were prominent on this month’s charts of the top 20 Author, Manga, and Superhero graphic novels in the book channel.” [ICv2]

Jocelyne Allen takes a break from translating to sing the praises of Takeuchi Sachiko’s Numa no Naka de Fuwaka wo Mukaemasu. “She takes all these emotions and illustrates them to the extreme,” Allen notes. “It’s like physical comedy in manga form, and she only gets better at it with every book she puts out.” [Brain vs Book]

With the help of translator Katsu Tanaka, Danica Davidson interviews Monkey King creator Katsuyu Terada about the art that inspired him to become an manga-ka. “I grew up inspired by amazing Japanese manga illustrators, as well as traditional Japanese artists like Hokusai, and also various other foreign artists like Mœbius,” Terada explains. “With so much inspiration from so many different times and places, I’ve come to see human expression as a wave, layering ripples from far away shores to the other side of the ocean and connecting the world. I would be honored for my work to be seen more internationally, to inspire the same wonder I felt when I was young, and open new paths to a more creative world by expanding my audience’s creative mind.’ [Otaku USA]

REVIEWS

At The OASG, Krystallina and Justin compare notes on the first volume of Burn the House Down, “a whodunnit with a twist — mainly, someone has already said “Idunnit”. Meanwhile, the folks at Beneath the Tangles tackle a slew of new releases–among them Why Raelina Ended Up at the Duke’s Mansion and Shortcake Cake–as Sean Gaffney and I post a new crop of Bookshelf Briefs here at Manga Bookshelf. Writing about the first volume of A Nico-Colored Canvas, Sean reports that “Nico is a lot of fun to read about, but I think in real life I’d find her exhausting and difficult to deal with.”

Bookshelf Briefs 7/22/22

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Box of Light, Vol. 1 | By Seiko Erisawa | Seven Seas – The blurb for Box of Light promises a “delightfully creepy supernatural tale” that takes place at a “convenience store at the crossroads between life and death.” That sounds like a great premise, but Box of Light is sorely lacking in likable characters, memorable plot lines, or even a good old-fashioned jump scare. The bland, utilitarian artwork is equally disappointing; if I flipped through volume one in a bookstore, I’d assume that Box of Light was a workplace comedy, as the artwork seems more appropriate for a slice-of-life series than a horror story about people caught in purgatory. Only one vignette—”Indecisive Yuuto”—yields an image that’s unnerving enough to make lasting impression. In it, a young girl crouches outside the store as darkness envelops her with the stealth and speed of an incoming tide. Too bad nothing else in volume one is nearly as spooky. – Katherine Dacey

The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You, Vol. 3 | By Rikito Nakamura and Yukiko Nozawa | Ghost Ship – This series really loves to take things as far as it possibly can while also making sure that everything stays sweet, heartwarming and romantic, and in this volume it’s got its most difficult challenge yet. Hakari’s mother Hahari has insisted she’s never to see Rentarou again, and has a huge, impossible-to-get-into mansion to back it up. She’s also super young, having had Hakari at the age of thirteen (Hakari’s father was dying). If you think to yourself “wait, is this series really going to have a guy dating a mother-daughter pair?”, then well done, you can be a writer for this series. It’s hilarious, it’s sweet, and it’s jaw-droppingly blatant. – Sean Gaffney

Komi Can’t Communicate, Vol. 19 | By Tomohito Oda | Viz Media – Last time I noted how large the cast of this manga had gotten, so I’m not sure it was the best idea to spend most of this nineteenth volume introducing a new bunch of classmates with various personality tics. They run from mildly amusing (she speaks too softly) to deliberately aggravating (she constantly trash talks people and points out their faults, even when she knows she should really shut up). It’s meant to show off how far Komi has come (she actually speaks aloud at one point) as well as how dedicated she is to seeing the good in people, but I’m losing track of folks. On the bright side, Tadano’s sheer niceness and seeing the best in everyone makes him a revered saint. – Sean Gaffney

A Nico-Colored Canvas, Vol. 1 | By Nao Shikita| Kodansha Manga (digital only) – How much you enjoy this series may depend on how much you love the “manic pixie dream girl” trope, though in Nico’s case she’s the star rather than the impetus driving the male lead. She’s arrived at art school from the sticks, and is doing her own thing, which gets her into trouble (and thrown out of a prestigious class), but also attracts the attention of the other non-conformists in the school, including a very sketchy guy who at least is treated as very sketchy by the narrative. Nico is a lot of fun to read about, but I think in real life I’d find her exhausting and difficult to deal with. Fortunately, this is a manga rather than real life, so I’ll continue to see how she does. – Sean Gaffney

Outbride: Beauty and the Beasts, Vol. 1 | By Tohko Tsukinaga| Steamship – This was the debut of Seven Seas’ new “Ghost Ship for ladies” imprint Steamship, so I thought I would grab the first volume and give it a try. I regret everything. Starting as a standard “hit by a truck” isekai, our heroine finds it’s now 2,000 years in the future, all of humanity is dead except her, and she has to mate with four different types of “celestial beings” and bear their children now. There’s elements of Omegaverse here, as her being a human gives off a scent that drives the men crazy, but mostly this is nearly two hundred pages of her screaming “no” a lot and being ignored by everyone except the one half-decent guy. Absolutely not my thing, but Omegaverse fans may like it. – Sean Gaffney

Ya Boy Kongming!, Vol. 1 | By Yuto Yotsuba and Ryo Ogawa | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – In this fish-out-of-water comedy, Shu Imperial Chancellor Zhuge Liang, a.k.a. Kongming, makes a deathbed wish to be reborn “into a world of peace.” His wish comes true, but in an unexpected fashion: he wakes up 2000 years later in present-day Japan. After a night of stumbling around Shibuya, Kongming is rescued from the streets by Eiko, an aspiring singer-songwriter who brings Kongming up to speed on the twenty-first century. As you might expect, Kongming is dazzled by modern conveniences—the humble wall clock throws him for a loop—but Yuto Yotsuba’s clever use of historical facts about the real Kongming pushes the story in a delightful, unexpected direction by giving Kongming an opportunity to put his military strategizing to use… as Eiko’s manager. Recommended, especially for anyone with a working knowledge of The Three Kingdoms. – Katherine Dacey

Reincarnated As the Last of My Kind, Vol. 4

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By Kiri Komori and Yamigo. Released in Japan as “Tensei Shitara Zetsumetsu Sunzen no Kishou Shuzokudeshita” on the Shōsetsuka ni Narō website. Released in North America by Cross Infinite World. Translated by Roman Lempert.

It’s two years after the previous book, and there’s a lot of bad, heavy things going on. Tina is now living at the captured fort, being flown around to various dangerous places to purify monsters. She’s referred to as “the holy woman” by basically everyone, and has almost come to accept it. She’s also coming to accept the fact that she’s in love with Renge, and debates confessing to him, though world events kind of put a kibosh on that. But the Sugula keeps coming closer and closer to them, and it needs to be destroyed soon. We’re getting into “this is the passing of an era” style fantasy, where one mentor close dying and another mentor actually dying off screen (how rude!). And, of course, there’s still the occasional enemy attack, and those are getting more and more dangerous. What on earth can Tina do to help things? If your answer was “have a fashion show”, then congratulations, you too may be able to write web novels.

To be fair, the fashion show *is* a side story, where Tina tries to solve the problem of newly freed slaves who still have tons of issues working them out by bullying each other. There’s also two side stories, which focus on the non-Tina romances in this book, and show off that just because a character SEEMS dense and oblivious it doesn’t necessarily mean they actually are. Unfortunately, the two side stories and the extra story run to just over half the book, leaving only the first half left for the actual plot to bubble up. This is also a problem with web novels, which are rarely written with the author thinking “now, I’m at about Page 220 if this were a Kadokawa book, time to have a cliffhanger”. But it can be very frustrating if you’re invested in how the world is going to be saved.

Tina doesn’t really have a fun book. We don’t even SEE the inn that she and her father used to tend here, and she’s pretty much resigned herself to being the savior of many (though her sister and others also yearn for a day when she can just lie around and make incredible healing potions, something she doesn’t have time to do anymore). She gets more information on her parents’ background, but this comes at the cost of losing a new found family member just when she realized she was a family member. And of course there’s the revelation that falling in love with Renge may actually produce a stone that could lead to a war that lasts centuries – again. As plot macguffins to stop a confession go, it’s certainly a strong one. That said, I think that the 5th book is the last? So we may not have more to go before an actual confession.

This is the second book in a row that felt like it was just marking time, and as always YMMV on the romance between a 15-year-old with the mind of a 30-year-old inside her and an immortal who rescued her as a baby. Still, I’ll soldier on. This was OK.

Manga the Week of 7/27/22

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SEAN: July is coming to an end. What have we got?

Airship, in print, gives us Reincarnated as a Dragon Hatchling 4 and A Tale of the Secret Saint 3.

In early digital, Airship has the 5th and final volume of I’m in Love with the Villainess, though rest assured they have already licensed the spinoff novel She’s So Cheeky for a Commoner, which shows us events from Claire’s point of view.

MICHELLE: I should get caught up with this. I thought the first volume was pretty fun.

ANNA: Me too, this is one of those things I feel guilty for not reading.

ASH: I really need to catch up on this, too.

SEAN: Cross Infinite World brings us Expedition Cooking with the Enoch Royal Knights (Enoku Dainibutai no Ensei Gohan), the story of a young elf in poverty who joins the royal knights… only to find their food is TERRIBLE! She can fix that. Sounds along the lines of Housekeeping Mage from Another World.

ASH: This counts as food manga, right? So, I’m curious!

SEAN: Ghost Ship has World’s End Harem: Fantasia 7 and Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs 20.

J-Novel Club has a new short story collection from one of their most popular series: Ascendance of a Bookworm: Royal Academy Stories – First Year. These stories are pretty much Rozemyne’s days at the academy, from the POV of people other than Rozemyne.

ASH: This should be fun!

SEAN: Also from J-Novel Club: Der Werwolf: The Annals of Veight 14, Dungeon Busters 3, Fushi no Kami: Rebuilding Civilization Starts With a Village’s 2nd manga volume, Hell Mode 4, Housekeeping Mage from Another World: Making Your Adventures Feel Like Home! 2, The Ideal Sponger Life 7, Maddrax 4, and My Daughter Left the Nest and Returned an S-Rank Adventurer 5.

After a long break following the crashing and burning of a Kickstarter, Tezuka Manga is back at Kodansha. We get a one-shot in print: Bomba. This 1970 manga from Weekly Shonen Magazine about a boy who can cause the death of others by summoning a magical white horse.

MICHELLE: I got curious and looked this up. The blurb mentions “the tortured youth’s explosive angst,” which I kind of feel like we get more than enough of presently.

ANNA: Yeah, glad there’s some Tezuka coming out though.

MJ: I am somewhere in between here. I suppose it will depend a bit for me on exactly what he’s tortured about. There are some themes along these lines I feel we simply… don’t need anymore.

SEAN: Also in print: Fate/Grand Order -mortalis:stella- 3, In/Spectre 16, To Your Eternity 17, UQ HOLDER! 26, Witchcraft Works 16, and Yuri is My Job! 9.

ASH: I’ve saved up a few volumes of To Your Eternity to read all at once; it’s been a really compelling series.

SEAN: The digital debut is My Tentative Name (Watashi (Kari)), a horror series from Magazine Pocket. A young man wakes up in a strange home with amnesia and a decapitated corpse. Things only go downhill from there.

Also digital: Burn the House Down 2, Cells NOT at Work! 5 (the final volume), DAYS 30, Harem Marriage 19, Her Majesty’s Swarm 2, The Rokudo Rounds 3, and The Shadows of Who We Once Were 2.

MICHELLE: I need to try Burn the House Down and The Shadows of Who We Once Were.

SEAN: One Peace Books has the 4th Higehiro manga, as well as Multi-Mind Mayhem 4.

In one of the weirder licensing things I’ve seen recently, Seven Seas debuts the print edition of Tokyo Revengers, which Kodansha Manga has been releasing digitally. This will be coming out in 2-volume omnibuses.

ANNA: I’m so confused!

ASH: Huh!

SEAN: We also see The Invincible Shovel 4, The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System: Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong 3, She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man 5, Skip and Loafer 5, and Wonder Cat Kyuu-chan 6.

ASH: I still need to get around to Skip and Loafer.

Square Enix Manga has The Misfit of Demon King Academy 4 and The Strongest Sage with the Weakest Crest 8. Sadly, this is the final volume of Misfit of Demon King Academy, as the artist passed away.

MJ: Oh, how sad.

SEAN: Tokyopop debuts Yuri Espoir, the story of a high school girl who’s told she’ll enter an arranged marriage once she graduates. So she decides to create a lesbian sketchbook to indulge herself in for the final year, observing other couples. This runs in Comic Ryu.

Viz debuts The Liminal Zone (Genkai Chitai), the most recent collection of horror from Junji Ito.

ASH: Still glad to see Junji Ito’s works being released in translation.

SEAN: There’s also a new Naruto novel, Naruto: Kakashi’s Story—The Sixth Hokage and the Failed Prince. I would like to grumble once again that Viz never published the NaruHina Wedding Gifts novel.

And a double dose of yuri, as we get How Do We Relationship? and the 9th and final volume of A Tropical Fish Yearns for Snow.

ASH: Those have been great series, too.

SEAN: Yen On has new volumes for three of its longer running series. Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody 17, Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- 19, and That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime 14.

And Yen Press has For the Kid I Saw in My Dreams 8, From the Red Fog 2, Minami Nanami Wants to Shine 2, and Run on Your New Legs 2.

ASH: Most of these are only second volumes, but I already need to catch up.

SEAN: It’s a sign of the current manga boom that this feels like a light week. What are you getting?

My Stepmom’s Daughter Is My Ex: “Childhood Friends No More”

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By Kyosuke Kamishiro and TakayaKi. Released in Japan as “Mamahaha no Tsurego ga Motokano datta” by Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Gierrlon Dunn.

Given that I’ve said how much I don’t care for Akatsuki, and how I prefer it when the series focuses on its main couple, this third volume was always going to be a hard sell for me, as it gets into the nitty gritty backstory of her relationship with Kawanami, how it changed, and her own personal issues, with Mizuto and Yume once again being pushed to the background. That said, it does a decent job, showing me that Akatsuki is aware of her dangerous personality issues and is doing her best to change them, even if she thinks of it as “wearing a mask”. And frankly Kawanami has just as many issues, some of which were brought on my his tortured past relationship but most of which are his own damn fault, and he seems to be as obsessed with his friendship with Mizuto as Akatsuki is about her friendship with Yume. They have a lot more baggage than our two leads, and I’m not sure they need to get back together.

The first half of the book focuses heavily on Isana Hagashira, who has now been rejected by Mizuto but oddly takes that as an invitation to be even more blatant around him, since she knows he’s not interested in her romantically. Essentially, she still has some difficulties working out how normal girls react around normal boys. And she’s probably not getting any help from the people around her – for one thing, Kawanami takes an instant dislike to her as she says she’s Mizuto’s best friend – that’s his job! The second half of the book gets into the backstory of Akatsuki and Kawanami when the group all go on a “study camp” sponsored by the school, and we discover, as Hagashira points out, that the “childhood friend” trope is something best reserved for fiction.

Explaining the backstory of those two is pretty easy, actually: they’re both latchkey kids who lived next to each other, and Kawanami was naturally extroverted anyway, so they simply grew together. Unfortunately, Akatsuki’s lack of boundaries proved to be crippling – we saw a lot of that in the first volume, and it creeped me out. Here we see Akatsuki acknowledge she was backsliding, and she really is trying not to get so obsessed with those around her (Yume as well) but the sheer loneliness that settles in when she does this is crushing. The intervention towards the end of the book that led the two of them to break down in front of each other is good for catharsis, but I’m not sure it will lead them to grow closer again just yet. As for Hagashira, she’s pretty hilarious, but I do think her shtick only works, as she knows, because of Mizuto’s lack of interest. As for Mizuto and Yume themselves… the biggest romcom thing that happened to them takes place entirely offscreen.

The anime of this has started, and the verdict so far seems to be “OK but flatly animated”. We’ll see how it goes. Till then, this remains a decent romcom but I wish we would return to our main couple.

Ima Koi: Now I’m in Love, Vols 1 and 2

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Ima Koi: Now I’m in Love Volumes 1 and 2 by Ayuko Hatta

In today’s stressful times, reading determinedly uncomplicated romance can be quite soothing, which is why I’m enjoying the angst free and sometimes silly series Ima Koi. Satomi was too shy to confess her feelings to a crush in middle school, so she’s determined to be different in high school and seize her next chance for love. When stoic, incredibly tall Yagyu saves her from a train groper and she finds out that he goes to her school she follows through on her vow and asks him out. He says yes, and thus their romance begins.

Ima Koi

Satomi is cute, with her quick entry into dating she’s fulfilled her main goal, but she’s still figuring out what to do now that she’s in a relationship. Yagyu is a bit more enigmatic, but he’s won over by Satomi’s forthright nature and her tendency to fling herself on top of him from the subway stairs. He’s interested in getting to know her, and they soon start dating. They deal with complications that beset any new couple as Satomi has to navigate around Yagyu’s suspicious best friend and his obsessed younger sister. While this manga doesn’t reach the hilarity of My Love Story!! there are plenty of funny situations, such as when Yagyu and Satomi go on a date to the zoo and his younger sister Juri tags along. Juri becomes more and more enraged as Satomi keeps not reacting to her attempts to undermine the date, until she transforms into a menacing side character from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Ima Koi is a fun escape, and the way most issues get resolved by the end of every volume makes for a relaxing shoujo series.

My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong As I Expected, Vol. 14

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By Wataru Watari and Ponkan 8. Released in Japan as “Yahari Ore no Seishun Rabukome wa Machigatte Iru” by Gagaga Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jennifer Ward.

I will note that the ending to this series feels very much like you’d expect. The whole thing has involved people avoiding the subject, ducking the real issues, and trying to take care of everything without getting anyone else involved – all things that are impossible if you want to be an actual romantic couple. So somebody is going to have to take a step up here. It’s not going to be Yui, who communicates her feelings to Hachiman in the best “Hachimanese” she can, but he knows and won’t say anything. It’s also not going to be Hachiman, who will never do anything the honest, straightforward way if he can possibly duck out of it. No, it’s going to have to be Yukino, still trying to get the approval of her mother, and putting on a very nice compromise prom that has no problems… but still is not good enough. It’s going to require working together to get a happy ending… and possibly an actual confession.

So yes, they have the prom, and it goes well. Yui gets to dance with Hachiman. Yukino gets to validate herself in front of her family. Iroha gets to feel important and be really annoying. It’s good… but is it good enough? There was a bigger, cooler prom that got shot down, right? Shouldn’t they have fought harder for it? What’s more, it involved another high school, and they’re busy asking “hey, what about that joint prom?”. It’ll take a lot of work to fix this, as well as some brazen lying and bluffing. Fortunately, they have someone who is fantastic at hard work and someone who is fantastic at brazen lying and bluffing. Unfortunately, they’re both acting as if, once this is over, they’ll drift apart and never see each other again. Can Hachiman and Yukino be kicked in the ass enough to confess to each other?

This doesn’t spoil too much (if you think it’s a spoiler Hachiman and Yukino are the final pairing, I urge you to reread Vols 1-13), but it feels absolutely right that Yukino is able, after the 2nd prom, to finally come out with a sincere “I love you”, but Hachiman’s confession to HER is about as oblique as “the moon is beautiful tonight”, basically saying that he wants to continue to get involved with her problems and be in her life. But that’s huge, for him. He wants to be close to someone. He even admits he’s going to get a job after college, rather than the bullshit “househusband” thing he’s always said before. As for Yui… I’m sorry, this is not the sort of series that was going to end with an OT3, though at least she is still trying to stay friends with them. In the end, the only one who exits the story here is Shizuka, who gets transferred to another school, but not before one last dance with her favorite student.

This is the final volume… except there’s a short story collection coming after this. It’s mostly “bundle up the short stories that came out with Blu-Ray boxes”, but has one taking place after this book. In the meantime, this feels like a very appropriate ending for the series.

My Happy Marriage, Vol. 2

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By Akumi Agitogi and Tsukiho Tsukioka. Released in Japan as “Watashi no Shiawase na Kekkon” by Fujimi L Bunko. Released in North America Yen On. Translated by David Musto.

The late lamented manga Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei had as one of its characters a girl named Ai Kaga, whose name was a take on “guilt complex”. She constantly blamed herself for anything that happened around her, even if it had nothing to do with her. This was mined for considerable humor, as was everything in that manga, to the point where Ai’s apologies could actually be weaponized to take out soldiers. Now, take that sort of person and play it 100% seriously and tragically, and you have an idea what reading another volume inside the head of Miyo Saimori is like. Yes, the title continues to be the most ironic one ever, as just because we’ve removed Miyo from her abusive family does not mean that we’ve actually solved her problems, especially since her husband is also a past master at non-communication. The result is that this book feels a lot like the first one did: beautiful and well-written, but not something to read if you’re in the mood for a “light” novel.

Having settled in at the home of her fiance, Miyo is trying to learn the art of being a bride, complete with lessons on “how to act at parties” from Kiyoka’s bright and outgoing sister Hazuki. Unfortunately, she’s started to have horrible nightmares every night, which has made it hard for her to get any rest and has caused her mental health to once more deteriorate. This is not being helped by the fact that she has no idea how to ask for help or to say she needs to rest, and Kiyoka himself has no idea how to offer help if Miyo does not ask for it first. The result is that both of them are once again doubting their partner’s feelings. So it’s a very bad time for a man to show up and turn out to be her cousin, related to her mother’s side of the family… which has as many dark secrets as her father’s side.

As you’d expect with a book like this, once we reach the breaking point for Miyo and she is allowed to become proactive, she shows off that she can be a terrifyingly powerful and gorgeous young woman. It’s just that we kind of have to get through 150 pages, a break-up, more family abuse, and a heaping helping of despair first. I’m not surprised that Miyo’s actually not just powerful, but one of the most powerful Gift-Users around, as this was signposted in the first book. Possibly the most interesting part of the book was Miyo’s feelings towards her mother, who had deliberately suppressed Miyo’s powers in order to protect her… but this also led to Miyo’s abuse by her family for years. She finds this very difficult to simply accept with just a “she did it because she loved me”. I also really enjoyed Hazuki, a desperately needed outgoing and extroverted young who also has a sad backstory but is still strong.

I’m still looking forward to the next volume of this series, but I suspect it will once again be “no, this is still not a happy marriage”, because the plot seems to be “overcoming obstacles”. As such, let the reader beware.

Bookshelf Briefs 7/15/22

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Blue Lock, Vol. 1 | By Muneyuki Kaneshiro and Yusuke Nomura | Kodansha Comics – I had initially assumed Blue Lock would be another heartwarming story about a high school sports team striving together through rounds of tournament play. I was dead wrong—this is the absolute antithesis of that kind of manga. Yoichi Isagi is devastated when his team fails to progress to nationals, but his spirits are buoyed when the Japanese Football Union selects him for a special training program. Blue Lock is both a facility and an experiment in which 300 high school forwards live and train together under extreme conditions with the goal to be the last one standing. Because what Japanese soccer really needs, apparently, is one egotistical, world-class striker to finally lead the country to a World Cup victory. While I do adore more traditional sports manga, I also appreciate series that do something different. This was a lot of fun and I will most definitely be back for more. – Michelle Smith

Go For It Again, Nakamura! | By Syundei | Seven Seas –Go For It Again, Nakamura! is almost, but not quite, as charming as its predecessor. Since establishing that he and Hirose are friends at the end of the first book, Nakamura hasn’t managed to have a real conversation with him again and is now resorting to doing creepy things like sniffing Hirose’s gym clothes. (I’m also troubled by the amount of time Otogiri-sensei spends with Hirose and desperately hope this series doesn’t go somewhere icky in potential future installments.) The best part of the volume is when Hirose gets a girlfriend. Nakamura is upset at first, but after hearing Hirose claim him as a friend, he decides to be fiercely protective of Hirose’s happiness instead. When Hirose gets dumped, it’s Nakamura he confides in. I appreciate seeing their friendship grow at a realistic pace and hope very much that their story will continue. – Michelle Smith

My Hero Academia, Vol. 31 | By Kohei Horikoshi | Viz Media – The arc that wouldn’t end has finally ended, though not without cost. Yes, OK, only one hero that we actually cared about died, but it devastates a lot of people. Also dying is Endeavor’s reputation, although after a nice family chat he’s at least ready to get up and try to repent harder. I do appreciate that the author is not making “redemption” at all easy for him, or even likely. In the meantime, things are bad. Heroes are quitting left and right, Deku’s in a coma (which admittedly allows him to have a long chat with the vestiges), and All for One stages a massive prison breakout of a lot of crazed-looking prisoners and one sensible-looking woman who I bet will be important later. New arc next time! – Sean Gaffney

Phantom of the Idol, Vol. 1 | By Hijiki Isoflavone | Kodansha Comics – Yuya Niyodo “has the look.” Based on hotness alone, he was scouted by a talent agency and paired up with Kazuki Yoshino as the idol duo Zings. Niyodo only signed on because he thought it would be easy money—“No one said anything about making an effort”—and doesn’t care at all about doing the job well. When he meets the ghost of former female idol Asahi Mogami, whose only wish is to still be an idol, they work out an arrangement where she possesses him and takes his place. This is a pretty wacky manga, and something about its comedic sensibilities makes me think of One-Punch Man. Niyodo is a complete oddball who happens to be gorgeous, and I especially appreciated seeing the perspective of the Zings fangirls as they try to help their beloved duo attain greater success. It’s fun and kooky and I’ll keep reading. – Michelle Smith

Snow White with the Red Hair, Vol. 19 | By Sorata Akiduki | Viz Media – While it’s up in the air whether Shirayuki, Zen and Obito are doing anything romantically together, this volume puts a definite full stop on all the Mitsuhide/Kiki shipping, as she confesses to him and he rejects her—TWICE—because, essentially, guarding Zen is more important to him. That said, honestly, I’m not sure whether Mitsuhide is definitely ace, but I’d say he’s at least ace-adjacent, and far more content to keep the relationship they have now. This is good news for that other guy, whose name I suppose I will now have to remember, as Kiki still very much needs to get married soon. This is solid shoujo, and something all fans of the genre should be reading. – Sean Gaffney

Such a Treacherous Piano Sonata, Vol. 1 | By Hal Osaka | Kodansha Manga (digital only) – This is good old meat-and-potatoes josei, a series about a young music manager who is assigned to a troublesome composer. Kanna is a virgin who’s dated men but they always break up with her as she never really feels strongly about them. Then she sees her new client play Rachmaninoff, and suddenly she’s feeling a LOT. Unfortunately, he has a similar problem—he’s losing piano work as his playing is considered too cold and unfeeling, though technically brilliant. Oh, and he upset his patron’s daughter. Can she get him work, navigate a handsome rival and a change of composer, and possibly also finally find love? This is apparently three volumes, which seems about right. Not bad. – Sean Gaffney

The Manga Review, 7/15/22

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Do you know about Azuki? This year-old company is working hard to make it easy for you to read your favorite manga on a phone, tablet, or laptop. Founded by a quartet of manga enthusiasts, Azuki currently offers a variety of titles from Kodansha as well as smaller publishers such as Glacier Bay Books, Kaiten Books, Star Fruit Books, and SOZO Comics. Best of all, it’s free to get started; all you need is a little patience with pop-up advertisements. Folks who want ad-free, unlimited access to Azuki’s growing library can sign up for a monthly membership that costs about the same as a grande Frappucino.

Wondering what to read? I highly recommend Pop Life, a short series about two single mothers who create their own blended family. In a 2020 review, Morgana Santilli praised Pop Life for being a “gentle, down-to-earth manga, happy and meandering. It takes women thrown into a difficult situation, one that is likely a blow to their self-confidence and ideas of self-sufficiency, and proves that they can overcome hardship by helping each other.” For younger readers, Hikaru in the Light! is great choice, offering tweens a first-hand look at what it takes to become an idol. The series is refreshingly honest about how cutthroat the music industry is, and how much hard, unglamorous work goes into being a popular entertainer. Hikaru is a little too tame for the 13+ set—how ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm when they’ve read Hot Gimmick?—but for kids in grades 5-7, it’s just right. (Special thanks to Azuki for sending me a review copy!)

NEWS

Love Hina creator Ken Akamatsu will be joining Japan’s House of Councillors (the upper chamber of the Japanese Diet) this summer. Akamatsu has been an outspoken critic of proposed changes to Japanese copyright law, as well as a critic of various anti-pornography measures. [Anime News Network]

ICv2 just published its quarterly list of the Top Manga Franchises. Not surprisingly, Demon Slayer, Chainsaw Man, and Spy x Family made the cut, as did perennial favorites Attack on Titan and My Hero Academia. [ICv2]

At its Anime Expo panel, Yen Press unveiled an extensive list of new acquisitions including Your Forma, Kakifly, Honey Lemon Soda, and Doomsday with My Dog. [Yen Press]

In other licensing news, Azuki announced that it would be adding three new titles to its catalog: Turning the Tables on the Seatmate Killer!, a romantic comedy; My Dear Detective: Mitsuko’s Case Files, a Taisho-era mystery; and Invisible Parade, a short-story collection by MISSISSIPPI. [Azuki]

Jennifer De Guzman offers an in-depth look at Tuttle Publishing’s efforts to bring Filipino komiks to American readers. Over the next four months, Tuttle will publish seven graphic novels by Filipino creators, from Arnold Arre’s The Mythology Class, “a foundational work of contemporary Filipino comics ,” to The Lost Journal of Alejandro Pardo, a collaborative work that focuses on the “dark creatures of Phillipine mythology.” [Publishers Weekly]

FEATURES AND PODCASTS

Over at The Comics Journal, readers can preview the third volume of of Glaeolia, “a curated variety of compelling, stylistically varied, and completely self-contained (at least, so far) works, many from artists that have never before had their work read or published outside of Japan and their local small press scene… Glaeolia 3 contains stories reacting to very contemporary circumstances such as the early pandemic regulations and BLM protests or unexpected pregnancy, SF-tinged comics in uncertain worlds, surreal dramas about grief, coming of age, love, and beyond.”  [The Comics Journal]

Also worth a look: Sean McTiernan’s lengthy essay on the weird beauty of Taiyo Matsumoto’s No. 5. [The Comics Journal]

Ashley and Dee discuss The Story of Saiunkoku, “a semi-supernatural, extremely feminist manga adaptation of a light novel series” set in a fictionalized version of Ming Dynasty China. [Shojo & Tell]

Elliot and Andy devote the latest episode of Screentone Club to Ciguatera and Sensei’s Pious Lie. [Screentone Club]

This week’s Mangasplaining podcast focuses on Hiroki Endo’s All-Rounder Meguru, a manga about two childhood friends who become bitter rivals in the world of mixed martial arts. [Mangasplaining]

REVIEWS

Manga Librarian Ashley Hawkins is pleasantly surprised by the first volume of Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon. “I expected this manga to be bad,” she notes. “But what this manga does is that it basically takes the character designs and essential threads of the show, and fixes a lot of the problems with the anime.” Writing for No Flying No Tights, fellow librarian Adam gives Samurai Deadpool mixed marks, observing that “this particular book makes a very odd choice: it takes an incredibly simple story that would be a great entry point for newer/younger readers and then adds just enough violent gore to make this book inaccessible to that age group.”

At Women Write About Comics, Masha Zhdanova posts brief reviews of Kaiju No. 8, My Love Mix-Up!, and Devil’s Candy, while the Beneath the Tangles crew weigh in on the latest volumes of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, Penguin & House, and A Silent Voice.

Banished from the Hero’s Party, I Decided to Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside, Vol. 6

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By Zappon and Yasumo. Released in Japan as “Shin no Nakama ja Nai to Yuusha no Party wo Oidasaretanode, Henkyou de Slow Life Surukoto ni Shimashita” by Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Dale DeLucia.

It’s become a commonly known thing by now that Slow Life books, for the most part, aren’t really. They’re “I started with a slow life and then” books. No one is going to read 200 pages of JUST farming beans. You need to get a wide variety of cute young women, old friends trying to drag you back into fighting, monsters threatening your peaceful farm, etc. That applies even to a seies like this, where all the hero work was at the start and now Red and Rit are just trying to run a small apothecary shop and find the time for occasional hot wolfgirl sex. But Ruti is different, and the book is continuing to let us know that her deciding not to have her entire life destroyed for the sake of her hero blessing is not something that is simply going to be accepted. The world needs a hero.

Yes, Rit can turn into a wolfgirl, though honestly that’s the least important part of this book. On the heels of the three assassins seen at the end of the previous book, a massive ship appears in the harbor, there to block all trade until they get what they want. What they want is to search the church records of everyone in the town till they find a specific blessing, something the Church finds abhorrent. Ruti and Tisse start to investigate, and find the story of a prince who is searching for his birthright, a kingdom in turmoil, and a pirate elf woman who just wants to protect what she already has. Now Ruti has to try to play detective without simply solcing everything the way the hero would, and Tisse has to go after some former assassin classmates who have gone rogue.

You may notice I did not mention Red and Rit there. They’re both very much still the stars of the book, but are content to leave the dangerous stuff to Ruti and Tisse – their own job is to try to find alternatives to the things that the town can’t import anymore, like oil. It’s refreshing and heartwarming seeing them deliberately not help out with the monstrous plot on the horizon. Now, yes, this is clearly the first of a multi-book arc, and I know they will both be dragged into it in the next volume, especially since Red seems acquainted with the current Queen of Veronia, who has all the signs of being, if not a Big Bad, at least the gateway to the Big Bad. But that’s next time. For this, it’s about finding out how to get oil from coconuts, trusting your sister and her wife and their spider to handle things, and investigating new fetishes you’ve just discovered.

The book feels a bit slight, but that’s not uncommon with the first book of an arc – or of this genre in general. The slow life may go away eventually, but it’s winning for now.

Manga the Week of 7/20/22

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SEAN: The worst thing about heat is that it’s hot. If summer was cool, it would be better. Meanwhile, manga.

Yen On debuts the Goblin Slayer Tabletop Roleplaying Game, which I imagine is much like the KonoSuba one was, but with less of the authors playing it through.

ASH: Huh! I had somehow missed Yen’s entry into TRPGs.

SEAN: Yen Press has one debut: Hi, I’m a Witch, and My Crush Wants Me to Make a Love Potion (Doumo, Suki na Hito ni Horegusuri o Irai Sareta Majo desu), a series whose light novel came out here from Cross Infinite World. This is the manga version, and runs in Kadokawa’s Flos Comic. A witch is devastated when her secret crush asks her for a love potion. But he at least goes with her as she searches for ingredients. Maybe she can just bask in his company for a while longer?

Also from Yen Press: Banished from the Hero’s Party, I Decided to Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside 2 and Gabriel Dropout 11.

From Viz we get BEASTARS 19, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 5, Mashle: Magic and Muscles 7, Orochi: The Perfect Edition 2, Record of Ragnarok 3, Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle 18 and Undead Unluck 8.

ASH: I need to catch up on most of these, but it’s looking like a good Viz week.

SEAN: Steamship has a debut: I’ll Never Be Your Crown Princess! (Outaishihi ni Nante Naritakunai!!). This josei title from Zero-Sum Online features an isekai’d daughter of a duke who is unhappy that this world is polygamous and she’s expected to be one of many wives of the Prince. So she loses her virginity with some dude… then finds out whoops, said dude is that very same prince. Aside from “lost her virginity”, this sounds like many other “villainess” titles I could mention.

ASH: Isekai really is everywhere these days, isn’t it?

SEAN: Square Enix debuts SINoALICE, a manga version of the game that runs in Manga Up!. It is, try to prepare yourself, a dark and creepy version of Alice in Wonderland. I know, never been done before…

ASH: Ha! Never!

MJ: lol

SEAN: Square Enix also has Beauty and the Feast 3, I Think Our Son Is Gay 3, and A Man and His Cat 6.

MICHELLE: Finally something for me on this list!

ASH: I’ve really been enjoying I Think Our Son Is Gay.

MJ: I need to catch up on so much!

SEAN: A few Seven Seas debuts. Box of Light (Hikari no Hako) is a josei title from Zoukan Flowers (we may never get anything from Flowers, but we can get things from its spinoff) about a convenience store that seems to be haunted. It’s award-winning.

MICHELLE: I hope I never lose that feeling of delight to see a josei title coming out here.

ASH: Oh, I like the sound of this one!

MJ: I was in as soon as it said “haunted.”

SEAN: Dungeon People (Dungeon no Naka Hito) is from Futabasha’s Web Action, and features a woman searching a dungeon for her missing father. When she gets too far inside the dungeon… she’s asked to join the employees taking care of it? This seems oddly cute.

ASH: It does.

MJ: Agreed.

SEAN: Killing Stalking: Deluxe Edition is a Korean webtoon getting, as the cover might tell you, a deluxe color hardcover treatment. It’s BL horror.

MICHELLE: Hm… Did I learn my lesson with Boys of the Dead?

ASH: There seems to be a significant fanbase for Killing Stalking (which includes a few of my friends), so I am curious.

SEAN: Seven Seas also has Made in Abyss Official Anthology 4, My Lovey-Dovey Wife is a Stone Cold Killer 3, My Senpai is Annoying 8, and This Is Screwed Up, But I Was Reincarnated as a GIRL in Another World! 2.

In print, Kodansha Manga has A Galaxy Next Door 2, Grand Blue Dreaming 16, The Hero Life of a (Self-Proclaimed) “Mediocre” Demon! 5, Island in a Puddle 2, Living-Room Matsunaga-san 11 (the final volume), Those Not-So-Sweet Boys 7 (also a final volume), and Whisper Me a Love Song 5.

ASH: Another set of series that I’ve fallen behind on.

SEAN: The digital debut is Hella Chill Monsters (Yasuraka Monsters), which ran in Weekly Morning and whose creator did the art for the manga Astral Project, for those who can dig out their old CMX titles. A skeleton detective and his equally undead friends try to solve a city’s problems… but end up creating them.

MICHELLE: Somehow this is strangely appealing.

ASH: I agree! (And I was actually thinking about Astral Project just the other day…)

MJ: Oooh I already love it.

SEAN: They also have Blue Lock 14, Golden Gold 2, Heaven’s Design Team 7, Hozuki’s Coolheadedness 9, Irresistible Mistakes 4, A Nico-Colored Canvas 2, Saint Cecilia and Pastor Lawrence 9, A Serenade for Pretend Lovers 2, and When a Cat Faces West 3 (the final volume).

J-Novel Club has a pile of print releases. We see Ascendance of a Bookworm 13, The Faraway Paladin’s 3rd manga omnibus, Full Metal Panic! Volumes 10-12 Collector’s Edition (the final volume), I Shall Survive Using Potions’s 8th manga volume, Seirei Gensouki: Spirit Chronicles Omnibus 6, Tearmoon Empire 6, The Unwanted Undead Adventurer’s 6th manga volume, and The White Cat’s Revenge as Plotted from the Dragon King’s Lap 4.

ASH: That is a pile!

SEAN: While digitally they have My Instant Death Ability Is So Overpowered, No One in This Other World Stands a Chance Against Me! 11, My Quiet Blacksmith Life in Another World 3, My Stepmom’s Daughter Is My Ex 3, To Another World… with Land Mines! 3, and When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace 3.

Ghost Ship gives us The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You 3, 2.5 Dimensional Seduction 3, and Peter Grill and the Philosopher’s Time 8.

Dark Horse has an 11th hardcover of Berserk Deluxe. (It got bumped.)

ASH: That’s okay, I’ll pick it up whenever it ends up being released.

SEAN: Cross Infinite World has a 4th volume of Reincarnated as the Last of my Kind.

Lastly, Airship has the print debut of 7th Time Loop: The Villainess Enjoys a Carefree Life Married to Her Worst Enemy! (previously discussed when the digital came out), the first volume of Classroom of the Elite: Year 2, and Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation 17.

And in early digital we see the 2nd Classroom of the Elite: Year 2.

Has your manga melted already?