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A First Look at Starving Anonymous

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Have you been checking out Kodansha Comics’ digital-only and digital-first releases? I have, and I love this initiative: it lets me sample dozens of series that might otherwise never see the light of day in North America. Rugby manga. Karuta manga. Really weird horror manga. Medical drama. Josei. As you might expect, there’s a good reason why no one was clamoring to bring out print editions of, say, Deathtopia, but lurking among the pedestrian, the awful, and the amateurish are gems such as Dragon Head, PTSD Radio, Shojo FIGHT! and Tokyo Tarareba Girls. This week, I previewed one of Kodansha’s most recent digital offerings, Starving Anonymous, which, according to Kodansha’s editorial staff, is “an intense dystopian horror thriller in the apocalyptic vein of Dragon Head and Attack on Titan, from the team that brought you zombie actioner Fort of Apocalypse.”

That’s not a bad description of Starving Anonymous; if you can imagine an Eli Roth remake of Soylent Green in all its gory, sadistic intensity, you’ll have some idea of what it’s like to read Yuu Kuraishi and Kazu Inabe’s latest effort. Like the 1973 Charlton Heston film, Starving Anonymous takes place in a heat-ravaged future where supplies are scarce, birth rates are plummeting, and people are crowded into fewer and fewer cities. The series’ protagonist is I’e, a normal high school student whose life is violently upended when he’s snatched off a bus and deposited at an enormous industrial facility where the main product is — you guessed it — people.

A concept this potentially repulsive lives or dies by the thoughtfulness of the execution, and it’s here where Kuraishi and Inabe stumble. The writing is efficient but artless, establishing the direness of the world’s condition through news flashes and pointed conversations but revealing little about I’e; he’s more a placeholder than a character, a collection of reaction shots in search of a personality. The artwork, by contrast, varies from slickly generic — Tokyo apparently looks the same 50 years from now — to willfully ugly; once inside the factory, Inabe draws rooms and conveyor belts filled with distended bodies, rendering every roll of fat and bulging eye in fetishistic detail. If Kuraishi and Inabe were trying to make a point about the ethics of factory farming, or the evils of overconsumption, that message is quickly shoved aside in favor of a more conventional escape-from-prison plot in which I’e and a group of young, healthy rebels fight their way to the outside. Nothing in the first chapter suggested that Starving Anonymous has anything on its mind other than characters doing and seeing horrible stuff, so I’ll be passing on this one.

Starving Anonymous, Chapter 1
Story by Yuu Kuraishi, Art by Kazu Inabe, Original Concept by Kengo Mizutani
Kodansha Comics
Rating: OT (Older teen)

New Game!, Vol. 1

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By Shotaro Tokuno. Released in Japan by Houbunsha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Manga Time Kirara Carat. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jenny McKeon. Adapted by Jamal Joseph, Jr.

I have joked before about the tendency of trends in the Japanese manga and light novel industry, and over here in North America as well. The piles of vampire manga, the buttloads of zombie manga, the oddly weird Alice in Wonderland deconstruction mangas, etc. But one that has been around forever, and likely will be long into the future, is “a group of cute girls do cute and funny stuff in a 4-koma”, aka the Azumanga Daioh clone. The series are of various types – mostly in school, but some (like this one) in a workplace, and sometimes there may be a token man. But for the most part, that describes an endless number of series that have essentially the same premise and audience, and generally also succeed about the same way – “that was cute”. They also sometimes have yuri subtext, though that isn’t a requirement. It even has its own magazine devoted to the genre, Manga Time Kirara Carat. And now we have New Game!.

New Game! stars Chiyo-chan… sorry, Aoba, who looks like she’s a 7th grader but has actually graduated high school and headed into the workforce – in this case, a game company, where she’s starting off designing characters. The rest of the team consists of Kou, the “ladette” sort of woman who’s the main character designer; Rin, the art director and team mom who seems to have an unrequited crush on Kou; Hifumi (character design), who is painfully shy but also rather cute (and apparently a heavy drinker); Yun (also character design), who I didn’t get much of an impression of except she has a heavy accent; and Hajime (motion), who seems overearnest and a bit hyperactive. The bulk of the first volume shows us Aoba fitting into the team, learning how they do things, and designing background NPCs for the fantasy RPG they’re working on.

New Game! is cute. I enjoyed it as I read it. That said, a lot of the actual humor has difficulty sticking in your head after you move on. The one joke I recall is also, oddly, the most out of character, when Kou amuses herself by having Aoba finish the design of a character that’s clearly based on herself (which Aoba doesn’t realize), who is an NPC who’s there to start the plot and then get killed, much to Aoba’s horror. Apart from that, there’s a few workplace gags that touch on the insane hours these jobs entail, and some character development showing Aoba settling in but still being somewhat hapless. As I noted above, Rin seems to have a crush on Kou, and this occasionally comes up, mostly when she’s frustrated that Kou isn’t picking up on it. It’s all standard stuff, but I did find it quite enjoyable. I will note that, once again, the decision to translate a heavy Kansai (I’m assuming) accent as something out of the ordinary doesn’t always work well. Yun saying “Wot’s all this, then?” and calling someone a “tosser” took me right out of the manga and made me notice the effort, which it shouldn’t.

Despite having forgotten much of the manga a few minutes after reading it, I was pleasantly amused enough that I’ll get the next book. If you enjoy cute girls doing cute things with no plot to speak of, New Game! is an easy buy.

Obsessions of an Otome Gamer: Elementary School Years

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By Natsu and Shoyu. Released in Japan as “Ongaku de Otome wa Sukuenai” by the author on the Syosetu website. Released in North America digitally by Cross Infinite World. Translated by Charis Messier.

I’d never really read a Cross Infinite World novel before now. They specialize in both novels geared towards young women and also going directly through the author, i.e. most of the books published were published on the Syosetsu original fiction website, or various equivalents, rather than going through a publisher. (That said, the author has had published work as well.) But nothing had really caught my attention until the announcement of this series. I love visual novel-style storytelling, and I love classical music, so I was delighted to see the two combined. As I started to read the book, I was expecting things to be very light and fluffy, with the occasional warped sense of humor. I was surprised at several plot and character choices the book made, though. I was even more surprised by a plot twist that I will do my best not to spoil (yes, really) about one-third in. And I was not surprised but a bit taken aback by the length. This book is HUGE.

One thing that surprised me was the decision to have the entire book take place when our reincarnated heroine, Mashiro, is between the ages of seven and twelve, something that I blame on the light and hard to read font on the front cover, which meant I missed the subtitle. She’s the reincarnation of Rika, a young woman who was obsessed with an insanely difficult otome game called Hear My Heart, where you not only had to make the right romantic choices with regards to the two guys (one outgoing and arrogant, one sullen and introverted), but you also had to compose music – and if the music wasn’t good enough, you failed. That’s a high bar to clear. She then sees a poster advertising a remake of the game… and falls into an open manhole and dies. (This would be the warped sense of humor I mentioned above.) As Mashiro, she recalls her previous life when she’s seven years old and just your average elementary school girl who folds origami of Angkor Wat in her spare time. Now she’s in the game world, and has met Kou and Sou, the two heroes, as young boys. But is the game world what she really wants from life?

While Mashiro is eighteen years old in her head (at times – it’s lampshaded that this isn’t consistent, and is actually an important plot point), she and the two boys are young kids, and despite the occasional schoolkid flirtation, the book maintains those boundaries. Of course, this doesn’t mean we don’t get a heartfelt confession or two, but you may relax and not have to worry about kiddie makeouts. There’s also a heavy emphasis on classical music and piano, as Mashiro burns with a sudden desire to learn the piano, at first because she wants to meet the guy she liked from the game, but her love rapidly becomes genuine and all-consuming. The book helpfully tells us the names of the pieces she’s working on, and you could make an excellent Spotify playlist if you liked. Mashiro is a prodigy, though she may not be aware of it. And there’s also that spoiler, which revolves around her best friend Kon, who is Kou’s sister – and also reincarnated into this world from a previous one. Mashiro only has memories of the first version of the game. Kon played the remake, but not all of it. Is she really what she seems? And can Mashiro really avoid being a heroine?

The writing and plotting can get immensely wordy at times – I understand this was actually edited down from the original text, but it’s still super long, about twice the size of your average light novel. That said, I never found myself counting pages till it was over. Mashiro is a fun heroine, savvy when needed, clueless also when needed. There’s also a surprisingly deep look at how reincarnation into another world would work when you retain some of your own memories. The book ends with Mashiro graduating and moving on to Middle School, which I imagine will take up Book 2 of the series. If you’re looking for a nice romantic book with hidden depths, or love shoujo and visual novels, this is a fantastic read.

Dragon Half, Vol. 1

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By Ryusuke Mita. Released in Japan as two separate volumes by Fujimi Shobo, serialized in the magazine Dragon Magazine. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Andrew Cunningham. Adapted by David Lumsdom.

In another world, this sort of title would have been licensed around the time it came out, back in the late 1980s/mid-1990s, when its art style and sort of humor were far more common and appreciated, and the anime had become a cult classic due to its over the top humor and pacing. Of course, back in 1994 or so when the Dragon Half OAVs came out, and the manga had just finished its run, the “manga scene” did not really exist as such – we’re talking a time when Mai the Psychic Girl was the hot thing, and Ranma 1/2 was still in 32-page pamphlet form. Still, what goes around comes around, and a lot of the cliches that were ripe for mocking in the late 80s RPG/fantasy scene are still ripe for mocking. And thus, despite artstyle and personalities that remind me a bit of Urusei Yatsura, Dragon Half manages to be a heck of a lot of fun, which is surprising given that humor titles tend to wear out faster in omnibus format.

I must say, the cover does the title no favors – Mink is a lot more dynamic than the passive little girl figure we see there. She’s the daughter of a human adventurer and a dragon, who can helpfully turn human when she wants to. As such, Mink has certain advantages like super strength and flight, but also has teenage girl obsessions, such as the teen idol (and also adventurer) Dick Saucer. (Yes, he’s named Dick Saucer in Japanese.) Unfortunately, Mink is half-dragon, and Dick is dedicated to killing dragons. Poor Mink! Can her feelings ever get through to him? Well, no, but nobody really cares, because the plot is just an excuse for Mink and her two friends (the airhead “bi-curious” Lufa and the childish always-armored Pia) to go around having adventures and making fun of everything that 80s RPGs and bad fantasy novels had to offer.

Everything in Dragon Half is subservient to the humor – and there are a lot of laughs, all of the “broad comedy” variety. If you’re looking for subtlety, look elsewhere, but if people getting hit with rocks is your thing, you’re in the right place. Surprisingly, Mink ends up being the “straight man” for much of the volume, using her semi-superpowers to bail her foolish friend out of trouble (yes, friend – Pia usually just goes along with things, but Rufa is actively harmful most of the time). She’s be in danger if the villains were any threat at all, but from the evil princess who’s really a slime in disguise to the soldier who brags that the tiny size of his brain is an advantage, Mink can usually do pretty well for herself. Towards the end of the volume (as the author notes) there are one or two stories that actually have a semi-serious tone, but fortunately they fit in pretty well, and more jokes are just around the corner.

This is the first of three omnibuses schedules, and is filled to the brim with extras such as color pages, promotional artwork, and author commentary. It’s a good title if you like humor, a great title if you enjoy mocking old-school games, and essential if you’re nostalgic for the late 80s-early 90s style of manga art and characterization.

Silver Spoon, Vol. 1

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The title of Hiromu Arakwa’s latest series is a pointed reference to Kansuke Naka’s The Silver Spoon: Memoir of a Japanese Boyhood. First serialized in the pages of the Asahi Shimbun in 1913, The Silver Spoon traced Naka’s journey from childhood to adolescence through a series of vignettes that recalled turn-of-the-century Tokyo in vivid detail, describing both the bustle of its modern neighborhoods and the rustic isolation of its western regions, a contrast underscored by one of the book’s most important events: Naka’s move to rural Tokyo. “For me to be born in the midst of Kanda was as inappropriate as for a kāppa to be hatched in a desert,” he declares, viewing the country as a place of rebirth.

Yuugo Hachiken, the fictional protagonist of Arakawa’s Silver Spoon, undertakes a similar journey, moving from Sapporo to the Hokkaido countryside, where he enrolls at at Ooezo Agricultural High. Though his peers chose the school for its curriculum, Hachiken chose it to escape the college prep grind — cram schools and high-stakes tests — and his parents, who seem indifferent to his misery. His competitive streak remains intact, however; he assumes that he’ll be the top student at Ezo AG, sizing up his classmates’ mastery of English and geometry with all the condescension of a prep school boy in a backwoods schoolhouse.

Hachiken’s path to redemption predictably begins with a rude awakening: there’s no spring break and no sleeping in at Ezo AG, where students rise at 4:00 am to muck stalls and harvest eggs. Adding insult to injury, his cosmopolitan prejudices are challenged by his peers, who are more ambitious, motivated, and knowledgable than he is; in one of the volume’s best scenes, Hachiken’s elation turns to despair when he overhears his classmates discussing the transformative effect of somatic cell cloning on the Japanese beef market. “Are they speaking in tongues!!?” he fumes, rivers of sweat pouring down his ashen face. “Are you guys smart or stupid? Make up your minds!!”

After a series of humiliating trials, Hachiken makes tentative steps towards fitting into the community and finding his purpose. His incentive for trying a little harder is, unsurprisingly, a girl — specifically Aki Mikage, a pragmatic, cheerful soul whose horse-wrangling skills, can-do attitude, and endless patience with dumb questions endear her to Hachiken. Though she’s instrumental in persuading Hachiken to join the equestrian club, her main role in volume one is to help Hachiken overcome his sentimental ideas about farm life, encouraging him to see the farm as a factory or business rather than a collection of cute animals.

This bracing dose of reality is one of the manga’s strengths, preventing the story from devolving into a string of sight gags and super-deformed characters screaming and flapping their arms at the sight of poop. Near the end of volume one, for example, Mikage invites Hachiken and fellow classmate Ichirou Komaba to the Ban’ei Racetrack to watch a draft horse pull, an outing that quickly turns somber when they stumble upon a horse funeral in progress. “Some souls are thrust into a cruel existence where there are only two options, life or death, simply because they happen to be born livestock,” Mikage’s uncle observes — a statement that makes a deep impression on Hachiken, who’s just beginning to realize that many of the piglets and chickens he’s raising will be on someone’s dinner table in a matter of months.

The racetrack episode also highlights Silver Spoon‘s other secret weapon: its terrific supporting cast. Though Hachiken, Komaba and Mikage’s more serious conversations dominate the chapter, one of the series’ most memorable personalities — Nakajima, the equestrian club supervisor — makes a cameo appearance as well. Nakajima exemplifies Arakawa’s gift for creating visually striking characters whose goofy, exaggerated appearances belie their true nature. He looks like a Bodhisattva but acts like a gambler, a tension that plays out almost entirely on his face. When riding a horse or encouraging Hachiken to join the equestrian club, for example, his eyes are half-open, framed by two semi-circular brows that suggest a meditative state, but when he visits the race track, the thrill of betting brings a maniacal gleam to his eyes, pulling his eyebrows into two sharp peaks. He even dresses the part of a Saratoga regular, trading his pristine riding outfit for a trenchcoat — collar popped, of course — and low-slung fedora.

As this comic interludes suggests, the twists and turns of Hachiken’s evolution from sullen teen to happy young man are dictated more by shonen manga convention than fidelity to Naka’s The Silver Spoon — there are 200% more jokes about cow teats and chicken anuses — but the sincerity with which Arakawa captures the emotional highs and lows of adolescence shows affinity with Naka’s writing. Hachiken’s mopey interior monologues and fumbling efforts to connect with his classmates are as authentic as Naka’s own reminiscences; both convey youthful angst without irony, embarrassment, or “the layered remembrances of adulthood” (Kosaka). And for readers more interested in laffs than literary references, there are plenty of those, too; Hachiken spends as much time hanging out with ornery ruminants as he does ruminating, all but ensuring a bumper crop of manure gags in volume two. Highly recommended.

Works Cited:

Arakawa, Hiromu. Silver Spoon, Vol. 1, translated by Amanda Haley, Yen Press, 2018.

Kosaka, Kris. “A misanthropic memoir from Meiji Era Tokyo.” The Japan Times, 26 Sep. 2015, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2015/09/26/books/misanthropic-memoir-meiji-era-tokyo/#.Wres_5PwY1g. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.

Twinkle Stars, Vol. 5

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By Natsuki Takaya. Released in Japan as three separate volumes by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by Sheldon Drzka.

Endings are important, and often affect how we view the rest of the work in retrospect. Which is sometimes annoying. If you love fourth fifths of a thing, but it doesn’t stick the ending, can you really say that the whole is a failure? No, of course not. The journey to get there was spectacular. But you can say that the ending makes the series a disappointment. And I am sad to say that I felt the ending to Twinkle Stars made the series as a whole a disappointment. This is not to say I did not enjoy myself as I read it. Indeed, the first third of this omnibus was wonderful, featuring Chihiro and Sakuya finally bonding and going out on sort of dates and getting beyond all the past trauma of their lives to admit their love is wonderful. And then you hear “Sakura woke up”, and everything falls apart.

And yes, I am aware that falling apart is exactly the author’s intention. Indeed, a lot of the following volume is also excellent, showing the poignant agony of Chihiro giving up everything in order to be with Sakura, and Sakuya’s horrible pain, which she manages to work through, because she’s stronger now, thanks, in part, to Chihiro. The reactions of the others are also pretty much on point and in character. For Kanade, it’s the sympathetic ear of an adult. For Hijiri, it’s a punch, because she is the reader right now. So much of this depends on the reader being just as angry at Chihiro as the rest of the cast is, even if they don’t always show it as blatantly. The problem is that Sakura’s past was not as large a part of the story as the author intended. Indeed, I forgot she existed for volumes at a time.

That said, the good outweighs the bad for me with this final plot twist, and the emotions are well conveyed. The problem is the resolution, which feels very much like “you have this many pages to wrap everything up”. Takaya says this wasn’t the case – in fact, she says she went a volume over what she planned – but Chihiro’s revelation to Sakura as the manga draws to a close – that he’s still in love with Sakuya, and is there to make sure that Sakura gets better and nothing else. Which… would be fine, if he hadn’t kept that fact from everyone else, over the course of several years that the series timeskips forward to. Sakura, to be fair, does seem like she’ll fall apart if he’s away from her, and even after several years still seems fragile when she and Sakuya finally meet (she also still continues to use third-person when she speaks about herself, a “cutesy” Japanese thing that translates badly to English, in my opinion).

And so in the end our main couple don’t have time for much more than a reunion and tears before we hit the end. It’s very… unsatisfying. That said, before that, we had some excellent Takaya storytelling, and I’d say this is my second favorite story of hers. And let’s face it, I definitely prefer this to the trainwreck that is Fruits Basket Another, but I’ll save that rant for when it comes out in the summer. If you’ve been enjoying Twinkle Stars, there’s no reason not to get this final volume, even if I found the ending less than it could have been.

The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser of Einherjar, Vol. 1

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By Seiichi Takayama and Yukisan. Released in Japan as “Hyakuren no Haou to Seiyaku no Valkyria” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Amber Tamosaitis.

I think we may finally have hit saturation point where I have simply read too many isekai books in a row. This is not surprising, given that I doubt the average light novel company expeects a reader to try to keep up with ALL the titles they put out. Still, it’s hard not to feel a certain jaded malaise as one reads Master of Ragnarok. I was having particular difficulty not comparing it to other series that came out after it in Japan but before it over here in North America. Not that I think Ragnarok has been influential in any way. But it’s hard not to see “isekai guy struggles with how to properly run a kingdom” and not think of Realist Hero, just as it’s hard not to see him save the day with his smartphone and not think of… well,Smartphone. That said, both of those titles try to subvert the norm in at least one or two ways, while Ragnarok is quite happy to play it straight.

(Also, parenthetically, what is it with Japanese isekai and the throne room pose? Almost always, it shows the hero looking satisfied and smug when in the actual book itself he’s nothing of the sort – that’s the case here as well. I just wonder how it got so popular. Robert E. Howard? John Norman?)

Our hero, Yuuto, goes to visit a shrine with his childhood friend and not-quite-girlfriend Mitsuki and, due to a superstition gone horribly wrong, ends up summoned to another world. What happens next… is quickly elided, as we timeskip forward to see he has already gained the trust of most of the kingdom and rules over them all. Admittedly a somewhat odd way to handle thing, but I suppose the author did not want to get bogged down in the “introductory” scenes that plague a lot of isekai. It also helpfully allows him to skip a lot of character development. Now he’s leading his clan into battle with the help of his buxom and intelligent female advisor, who wants to get into his pants; his devoted bodyguard, who we briefly see was cool to him when he first arrived but somehow is now his most loyal fan; a tsundere engineer (no, really, that’s about it); and the princess of the clan he just conquered, who slowly begins to realize how awesome he is.

How is he so awesome? Well, he still gets smartphone reception – somehow – near the mirrors where he was summoned from. He can’t go back, but can talk to the childhood friend, who he now realizes he was in love with (hence the rest of the harem isn’t getting anywhere, at least not now) and he can also download books to his not-Kindle. Thus he saves the world and rules the kingdom by applying modern warfare and concepts to this dark ages-ish period. As I said earlier, if you saw “In Another World With My Smartphone”, just the title, and wondered what the hero would be doing with his smartphone, this is what you’d come up with. Likewise, if you heard about Realist Hero without seeing it, you’d imagine him fighting a lot more battles as a general (as Yuuto does here) and not quite as many civics lessons (though both heroes are fond of, sigh, Machiavelli’s The Prince.)

This isn’t poorly written, and no one’s all that aggravating. It has 14+ volumes in Japan, and apparently an anime is coming soon, so it has fans. But usually I can at least summon something that makes this stand out from the pack and makes a reader want to continue. That’s not happening here. This IS the pack. If someone asks “what’s an isekai?”, this is an ideal book to give them. But have them branch out afterwards to more compelling titles and concepts.

Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest, Vol. 5

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By Ryo Shirakome and Takayaki. Released in Japan as “Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou” by Overlap. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Ningen.

After a few volumes of pretending to be your standard “reader surrogate gains immense powers and a wide variety of women” isekai story, Arifureta has settled down as it finally realizes the type of story it wants to tell, which is a messianic narrative. I’m not actually being facetious here, we have seen seeds of this before, but they come to full flower here. Hajime is here to save the world by being badass at it. Those who believe will be rewarded, those who do not believe will get their asses kicked. We see one of his believers doubt herself in this volume, and Hajime makes it very clear that this is no easy task – believe in him and stop stewing in self-hatred, or get out. Needless to say, we know which choice she makes. We also see Hajime go up against the powerful Church, which regards him as a heretic, and a demon who may as well be filling in for Lucifer. Subtle this ain’t.

Shizuka’s on the cover, but doesn’t appear much, though we do see her bonding with the princess of the royal family, who I had honestly forgotten. Most of the book is taken up with Hajime getting Myu back home, which also involves conquering not one but TWO of the remaining dungeons. Kaori is left behind for one of them as support, which seems quite sensible given that this is the MAGMA DUNGEON, but she comes along on the water dungeon crawl, which leads to her crisis of faith I mentioned above. Said crisis of faith is resolved by Hajime showing that he cares about her by threatening an entity that’s possessed her – indeed, most of the harem’s self-esteem issues are resolved by simply having the undemonstrative Hajime pat their head or vow to protect them or somesuch. In all honestly, as Hajime notes, he’ll basically do whatever they say, but I suspect the typical “I hate OP harem guys” fan won’t mind as Hajime is stoic rather than friendly.

We get a lot more background on the past of the world Hajime and company have been brought to here, and find that if we’re headed for a massive Holy War, it won’t be the first. I suspect the next volume will have Hajime’s group divert their plans to save Aiko, who is being imprisoned and tortured for believing in Hajime. No, really. As I said, if you don’t accept this as a messianic narrative, it may be hard to get past its inherent ridiculousness. Oh yes, we also meet Myu’s mother, who the author admits is straight up a ripoff of Alicia from Aria, and who clearly would be quite happy to be an addition to Hajime’s harem, though I’m not sure it will actually happen. It would be nice to have an “ara, ara” sort in the harem. In any case, the next volume will be as action-packed as this one, I imagine, thoguh knowing Hajime, he is unlikely to be crucified and die for anyone’s sins. Recommended for fans of ridiculously overpowered guys and the women who adore them.

Also, “Fish-san was a fishmancer.” I’ll just leave that there.

Sweet Blue Flowers, Omnibus 3

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By Takako Shimura. Released in Japan as “Aoi Hana” by Ohta Shuppan, serialized in the magazine Manga Erotics F. Released in North America by Viz. Translated by John Werry.

Everyone wants to read about the awkward pangs of unrequited love. Will they feel the same way? Will they hate me? Will this destroy our friendship? But it has to be said, and Sweet Blue Flowers does a very good job at conveying this, the issues don’t magically go away after you’ve started dating. Admittedly Akira’s acquiescence is somewhat lukewarm, which is no doubt why Fumi is feeling this way. But let’s face it, Fumi is the sort of person to overthink things anyway, and these sorts of worries DO stick around. Communication does not necessarily become easier when you’ve confessed. In many ways it’s harder. And of course if you want to keep dating, you have to keep yourself interesting and fun, because what if your partner gets bored with the real you? Sweet Blue Flowers may not be getting any closer to resolution of its main romance, but it certainly knows how to convey its painful emotions.

Sweet Blue Flowers does feature an awful lot of relationships between girls, but unlike some other series of this ilk, they aren’t every single relationship. There are men in this world. Indeed, sometimes the reader thinks that the man is the better choice – Ko breaks up with Kyoko here, and you can’t blame him, but I honestly do hope that she gets it together and gets back together with him, as he’s a good guy, and her pining away is not getting her anywhere. It’s weird to feel this way in a yuri manga, where the nature of fandom tends to regard any man who might get in the way of a relationship between two women as evil. We also have different types of relationships here – Akira and Fumi start to date, but it’s very vague, and you get the sense they’re doing it so that Akira can figure things out more than anything else. Some of the girls in the school are clearly in an “akogare” situation that they’re going to grow out of, but some are not – one of the minor characters outright says she’s a lesbian, and Akira’s teacher is in a happy relationship with another woman. This isn’t just yuri’s classic “Story A“. (Well, OK, sometimes it is.)

Sweet Blue Flowers, of course, also has the same issues that it’s had before. Shimura’s character designs are too damn similar, and I find myself struggling to tell some of the girls apart, which makes it harder for me to remember the plotlines. Akira and Fumi’s teenage passion and fears are endearing but also exhausting, especially given this is an omnibus of two separate volumes. And I have to confess, I don’t like Yasuko all that much, and was irritated when she showed up again. Her going to England really helped this series find its feet. That said, this is still a very good volume, and since I believe it ends with the fourth book, there’s no reason for you not to get it so that you can wallow in panga of young love once more.

Voices of a Distant Star

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What would it be like to embark on a deep space voyage, knowing that when you returned, nothing on Earth would be as you remembered it? That’s the question at the heart of Makoto Shinkai and Mizu Sahara’s Voices of a Distant Star, a thoughtful — if sometimes clumsy — rumination on the human toll of interstellar travel.

The story begins in 2046, as sixteen-year-old Noboru Terao anxiously awaits text messages from his childhood friend Mikako Nagamine, who’s enlisted in the military. As we learn through snippets of conversation and text, Nagamine isn’t at a conventional boot camp: she’s been deployed to Mars, where humanity is preparing for a lengthy campaign against an alien race known as the Tharsians. Her early exchanges with Noboru arrive in a matter of days or weeks, but when she’s transferred to the front lines, she realizes that it may be years before Noboru receives her next text; as she ruefully observes, “By the time this message reaches you, everyone will be growing up into people I don’t know.”

The emotional honesty of their epistolary romance is the best reason to read Voices of a Distant Star. Through their brief exchanges, we grasp that Noboru and Nagamine are torn between the desire for a normal relationship and the dawning realization that they may be better off pursuing their own destinies — a realization made more poignant by the sharp contrast between Noboru’s ordinary school life and Nagamine’s extraterrestrial mission. Their dilemma would be more moving, however, if the artwork wasn’t executed in such a desultory fashion. The characters are utterly generic, lacking any semblance of individuality, while the space combat lacks any sense of place; the story could just as easily be unfolding in Phoenix, AZ as on a planet eight light years from Earth. I know — the story is supposed to give me the feels, not the chills — but a little more attention to the dangerous aspects Nagamine’s mission would have raised the emotional temperature of Voices of a Distant Star from mild to muy caliente. In spite of these artistic shortcomings, Noboru and Nagamine’s plight remains powerful, reminding us that our greatest obstacle to space travel isn’t distance — it’s time. Recommended.

Voices of a Distant Star
Story by Makoto Shinkai, Art by Mizu Sahara
Translated by Melissa Tanaka
Vertical Comics, 238 pp.

Infinite Dendrogram: Those Who Bind the Possibilities

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By Sakon Kaidou and Taiki. Released in Japan by Hobby Japan. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Andrew Hodgson.

I’ll pick up with a point I made in the last review: there was honestly no reason that the author couldn’t have simply kept this with the fourth book and released it as one big tome. It took me a while to get back into where the action was, as if you were watching the climax of a movie and stopped with 15 minutes to go so you could go on a two-week vacation. That said, given that we’ve not only got the climax of the previous book, but also an extended epilogue and a side story or two, this is a light, easy read. In fact, the side stories may be the best part of the book. Because this is a series where the world not only is a game, but also one where people are not trapped in said game, we’re actually allowed to deal with real life issues like making sure you do all your pre-college prep. And having the hero and villain pass each other like ships in the night.

We also get more of the Starling brothers and their eccentric awesomeness, though it appears it’s more “the Starling family”, as we hear about an older sister who’s more insane than either brother. (It would be nice to meet her, but I expect she’s just the sort of character to be talked about but never show up.) Shu proves to be, as the reader likely guessed all along, a phenomenal powerhouse who uses his incredibly unbalanced build and real-life martial arts skills to completely decimate Franklin’s army of monsters, all while making the bear minimum number of puns. And then there is Ray, who still sees himself as the typical, normal male protagonist even as he gets himself some evil blood-red armor and also loses an arm, replacing it with a hook. Nemesis was introduced into the book as his lovestruck familiar, but lately she seems to exist to occasionally sigh and mutter to herself about Ray’s tastes.

As for Franklin and Hugo, I was fairly surprised by their relationship, though again, I do think it would have had more impact if the book hadn’t been divided into two parts. Franklin’s “character” is a classic sneering, arrogant villain, the sort who thinks they’re being stoic but really they’re just being awful. I’m not entirely sure if the obsession with Ray Starling will extend into the real world – they’re oblivious to each other at the moment, but I don’t expect that to change anytime soon. I was slightly saddened to see that Marie’s character, while still remaining relatively badass, has acquired a bit of a comic relief quality, mostly in everyone knowing her real identity despite everything. I also enjoyed the two adult Superiors going out for a drink with a third one who, it’s implied, has just turned ten. Again, this is the nature of online gaming.

This book ends the first “arc” of the series, and we’re also almost caught up with Japan, though I think we’ll have one more volume to go before we have to wait. I expect the next arc will deal with what Franklin implied in this one, which is that of course Dendrogram is not “just” a game, there’s clearly something else to it. Till then, enjoy working your way through this book, though you might want to re-read the previous one first.

Sorry for My Familiar, Vol. 1

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By Tekka Yaguraba. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine good! Afternoon. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Andrew Cunningham. Adapted by Betsy Aoki

I’ve mentioned a few times before that ongoing manga series in Japan tend to be written with multiple plots and endings in mind, depending on how popular the series ends up being. The classic example is the failed Shonen Jump series that ends in about two volumes with “and the adventure continues”. And sometimes you see shoujo classics that begin as what seems like a series of one-shots before they pick up an ongoing plot – because that’s what they were. In my opinion, it’s easier to do the cut short version. In fact, editors are experts at it. I imagine it must be a bit more difficult when you have a cute idea that seems to be something that could go nine, ten chapters and then you realize that it’s got enough readers that you need to do more. Sorry for My Familiar feels like the latter. As a cute, one-shot, it’d be fantastic. As an ongoing series? Ummm…

The plot is pretty simple, and drive by comedy. Patty is a very nice little Devil girl who happens to be burdened with the classic deadbeat dad – in fact, as the book goes on you begin to wonder if the dad was written by Rumiko Takahashi. She’s in a demon world where most of her fellows have some sort of magical animal familiar. She’s not strong enough to get those. Instead, she has Norman, who is a human, a demon researcher, and completely and utterly WEIRD. Norman is the reason to read the series – Patty is nice and all, but is mostly used as the straight man and occasional tsukkomi. (In fact, Patty’s niceness may come down to her background – she has no idea what kind of devil she is, and Norman spends some embarrassing moments wondering if she’s actually a cow.) The series involves the two of them trying to find her father and getting into scrapes, usually because Norman is endlessly curious and kind of rude.

The start of the volume is the best, as you will find that Norman is just so appalling most of the time in his dedicated research above nearly anything else that you can’t help but be dragged along, much as Patty is. His research does come in handy in getting out of several scrapes, but honestly I think a large part of it may also be his inhuman endurance – not implying he’s secretly a demon or anything, if anything I suspect his ability to overcome any hardship is meant to be an extension of his “anything for research” side. The main trouble is that Norman is not only somewhat exhausting to Patty, but to the reader as well – about two-thirds of the way through the book I was ready for it to be over. This is not uncommon in many comedy manga, admittedly, and it’s why it’s so hard to do properly.

The series seems to be three volumes and counting in Japan, and I was definitely amused enough to get a second volume – it’s fun. But if you end up falling behind, a word of advice: don’t binge read this. Little sips.

Invaders of the Rokujouma!?, Vol. 10

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By Takehaya and Poco. Released in Japan as “Rokujouma no Shinryakusha!?” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Warnis.

As the author says in the afterword, technically this could have been Volume 9.5. That said, I am happy that it kept itself in the main series, as for the most part it had a larger scope than the chapters with Koutarou and Clan back in ancient history did. This particular volume shows that, even as Koutarou adn the reader thinks that his troubles began when all the girls tried to move into his apartment on the same day, they actually have a bond that extends back a lot longer. We already know about Koutarou’s relationship with Theia and Ruth’s planet, and of course Harumi seemingly being the reincarnation of Alaia. Now we see how he was Kiriha’s knight in shining armor all along, and he also had a major role to play in the past of both Yurika and Sanae, though neither of them technically show up here. It all ties together, and not in a teeth-grinding way either.

Adult Kiriha is on the cover, but child Kii-chan is who we get for 4/5 of the book, having run away from home due to latent grief over the death of her mother. She runs into Koutarou and Clan, who are time-traveling back but have to recalibrate. Naturally, Koutarou doesn’t recognize her till halfway through the book… and even then he promptly forgets about it because of an even bigger revelation – the day they’ve arrived is the day his own mother was killed in a car accident. Now he has to choose between saving his mother or protecting the future he’s fought for with everyone. There are, of course, a few problems. Kii-chan is a target for assassination. The assassin is actually a dark magical girl. Which means that Nana, Yurika’s predecessor and mentor, is also trying to stop her… as in a young woman who is an archer, desperately trying to save her daughter, whose spiritual energy is being bled out to power EVIL RITUALS. There’s a lot going on.

I’ll be honest, I was expecting the “save mom or save the timeline” decision to be less of an issue than it ended up being, but I probably shouldn’t have been. Each of the characters has shown themselves to be deeply lonely in a way they can only fix by being around each other, and therefore it should be no surprise that Koutarou’s first reaction is “forget about the timeline, I have to do this”. You can likely guess what the outcome is, but on the bright side, we get another cool battle that shows off Koutarou’s ridiculous endurance even as it shows us that he’s getting less pwoerful the longer he’s away from the others. Probably the best scene in the book is the final one, back in the present, as Kiriha has realized who her “oniichan” really is and is, unsurprisingly, ecstatic. The author really excels at drawing deeply emotional, sappy scenes without making the reader roll their eyes or feel uncomfortable.

Shizuka may have gotten the last cover, but she wasn’t in this one (though her ridiculous strength was mentioned). It seems unlikely she’ll be in the next one either, as we get another cliffhanger that tells us that next time around is Sanae-focused. If you’ve been reading Rokujouma from J-Novel Club, and you enjoy supporting the author by actually buying it (please support the author!), you’ll definitely enjoy this new volume.

Genshiken: Second Season, Vol. 12

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By Shimoku Kio. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Afternoon. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics. Translated by Stephen Paul.

The last time I gave Genshiken a full review, I noted that the author seemed to be aiming for a new demographic with the new cast being mostly women, and their own interests tending towards BL. Well, we’ve had several volumes since then, and I’d say in the end the demographic didn’t QUITE change. Genshiken is still, at heart, a series for male otaku by a male otaku. But I think the Second Season may have helped broaden their horizons a bit, showing the readers what life is like outside their comfort zone, particularly with the awkward, touching but ultimately “just friends” relationship between Madarame and Hato. That said, I suspect that readers over here in North America may have wished that he’d pushed the envelope a bit more – the final half of this sequel was all about Madarame in a harem situation, something that aggravated as many people as it entertained. Still, at least it avoided the dreaded “nothing changes” stasis, mostly thanks to Saki, who makes one last appearance to kick Madarame’s ass into gear.

The cover art may give you an idea of who the Final Girl is, but honestly it was easy to figure out with Madarame’s rejection of all four, which had three sensible, well-thought out replies and one lame dodge, something Saki immediately points out. (Amusingly, everyone else there noticed it as well, but weren’t saying anything – Madarame can be appallingly stubborn, and only Saki can kick back against that.) And despite confessing to each other in otaku terms – or perhaps because of it – Madarame and Sue do actually make a very good couple, though actual coupling may still be a long way off. It’s also nice to see Madarame distancing himself from the Genshiken, moving away and trying once again to find a real job. The Genshiken has always been filled with weirdos, but Madarame vs. Saki had been the plot for so long that it was nice to see it return for one final appearance.

And then there’s graduation. I could talk about Kuchiki here, but don’t want to, despite the fact that the end of the book is mostly about him. Instead, let’s talk about Hato, who Madarame rejects here with a very well-thought out reason – he doesn’t think Hato is comfortable enough in his own skin to date a guy, and thinks that he should concentrate on being a “fudanshi” who likes to cross dress. The series has been dancing back and forth on Hato’s gender identity and sexual preferences, and again, I don’t think that the author goes as far as the audience wanted him to take it. That said, the journey we’ve seen in the last 12 volumes has been fantastic in many places, and Hato is absolutely the most interesting character in the sequel, with Yajima a close second. (Fans of Hato may be interested in checking out Spotted Flower, an unlicensed “alternate universe” Genshiken manga, though I warn fans of Genshiken proper that they may not like it.)

Like a lot of otaku-driven anime and manga, Genshiken went on too long, added some unnecessary subplots, and features far too much of characters that everyone hates – both in universe and out. But the journey had some wonderful moments, and in the end I think was worth it, even if it ended up more breaking down than reaching its goal. I wish the cast well.

Walking My Second Path in Life, Vol. 2

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By Otaku de Neet and Kurodeko. Released in Japan as “Watashi wa Futatsume no Jinsei wo Aruku!” by Earth Star Entertainment. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Shirley Yeung.

Towards the end of the second volume of this series, there’s a scene where Fie, our heroine, realizes that she’s sort of been coasting along from day to day as a squire without giving much thought to her future or what her goals are. I’m not entirely sure that the author meant it to apply to the series as a whole as well, but it’s a somewhat apt comparison. This second volume of Second Path feels at times like a short story anthology based around the main story, and is content to meander along as such. We still have never met Fie’s sister, and while Fie reveals who she really is to someone else in this book, it doesn’t really change much for her on the larger scale. Don’t get me wrong, this is still a fun series to read, and I enjoy the antics of Fie/Heath. I just get the sense that the author had a great idea for a series but has absolutely no endgame in mind.

There are two major events in this second volume, the larger of which is a competition between Fie’s dorm and the students of the Eastern dorm, their biggest rivals. There are a few characters introduced who seem to be something of a stock type – the arrogant jerk who belittles everyone, the stoic analytic guy, etc. This does serve to give us a bit more character development for a few of Fie’s fellow knights – in fact, Fie’s own battle is the odd anticlimax to the whole thing, mostly as she can’t win through normal means, so resorts to “the letter of the law, not the spirit” to achieve a sort of Pyrrhic victory. It’s thoroughly in character, but reminds you that whether she’s a princess or a knight, Fie is a giant brat.

The other major part of this book is inserting a romance into it. There’s the king, of course, who flits in and out of the book disguised as the Knight Commander, and who will no doubt become an issue once he and Fie realize who the other one is. But sensibly, the author writes the romance using the most developed character besides Fie; Queen, the socially awkward young man who went from “pet” to “friend” over the course of time. Queen’s always had something of a crush on Fie, and in this second book that expands greatly to full-blown attraction. This leads to the funniest scene in the book, which I really don’t want to spoil but is both hilarious and painfully embarrassing, especially if you’re a guy. That said, Fie is not entirely sure if she feels that way about Queen, and after taking advice that dating will be good “life experience” for her, she and Queen hooking up seems a bit less impactful than it could be.

Walking My Second Path in Life feels like walking along a long, meandering path with great scenery. You enjoy the view. Then you look up after 45 minutes and realize you have no idea where the heck you are. Fortunately, we’ve caught up with Japan now, so we’ll let the author try to figure it out while Fie flits along from day to day.