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Reviews

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Vol. 10

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By Fujino Omori and Suzuhito Yasuda. Released in Japan as “Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darou ka?” by Softbank Creative. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Gaippe.

Last time we asked what would change about monster hunting if we knew that not all monsters are evil and mindless. But if there are good and bad monsters, then there are also good and bad people. And the bad people who make up the Ikelos Familia are very bad indeed, so a good deal of this book is reversing any gains made by the last book. In fact, reversing may be a bit of an understatement – by the end of this book, Bell’s reputation is in shreds and everyone is furious with him. (Well, not his own Familia, thank God.) And while Ouranos’ experiment is still living on, it’s hanging by a thread. It’s hard not to sum up this volume of Danmachi as “Everything is terrible. The end.” That said, how we get there is important, and there are some excellent fights, good character moments, and… OK, yeah, no humor this time around. Not even any harem antics.

Much of this book continues to revolve around Wiene’s story, and unfortunately that’s a weak point in the novel, as she is absolutely a damsel in distress throughout it, whether it’s getting captured and sobbing in captivity, or being forced to mindlessly rampage aboveground. The trouble, of course, is that her plight is needed to advance Bell’s character, so she has to suffer as a result. The moral battle between Bell (pure, good, a bit headstrong) and Dix (twisted, evil, scheming) is a highlight, though I’m not sure Dix’s description of Bell as a hypocrite quite fits. Dix’s anger stems from a classic dilemma in stories like this – who do you choose to save if multiple sides are in peril? Do you save humans or monsters? Bell saves both, of course, and that’s why Dix rails on him for such impossible optimism. Dix himself is a thoroughly loathsome villain, though I wasn’t all that fond of the whole “descendants must carry on the insane plan” thing.

Aboveground, the rest of the cast gets relatively little to do – Lili and Hestia investigate a bit to try to find out where the middleman is in this conspiracy, but for the most part they’re sidelined. As for Team Loki, they get the bulk of the climax, trying to stop the rampaging monsters in the city and wondering why in God’s name Bell is chasing after one of them. (It is fairly notable that Bell’s “this is my kill!” excuse is rather lame, and while it is what kills his reputation I don’t think anyone who really knows him buys it for a minute – Eina certainly doesn’t.) I was wondering if Bell would have to fight anyone from Loki Familia, but we avoid that, mostly as he’d get the crap kicked out of him, I expect.

And so now we wonder where to go from here. Bell’s reputation is bad, but he’s not thrown out of the city or anything. And Hermes is already trying to find ways to fix things. I have a feeling that the next book will involve a lot of dungeon crawling. and I hope that it’s a bit more lighthearted. Still, if you’re looking for a dose of Danmachi at its most serious and grim, this is the volume for you.

Nisekoi, Vol. 25

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By Naoshi Komi. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz Media. Translated by Camellia Nieh

Harems are a very popular genre, so popular they’re even called harems, rather than what they actually are – romantic comedy or romantic drama. You have a guy, or a girl, and their various love interests – when it’s more than two, that puts it in this genre. They are popular but also very dangerous to license long-term, especially for the West, where titles can come out in volume format over a year after fans have been shamelessly spoiled on the forums. Because let’s face it: 90% of readers are dissatisfied with the ending. Either the title leaves everything ambiguous (the so-called “no ending”), or the protagonist chooses the wrong one – i.e., the one the reader doesn’t prefer. This is true even if the correct choice has been signposted from the first chapter, so it must be even more frustrating for fans of Nisekoi, which theoretically did a much better job at keeping all its heroines as options till the end. That said, the series is still subtitled “False Love”. The False Love was the plot. And therefore the heroine… is the one we expected.

Therefore, this volume does its level best to shut down all the other pairings and show that, in fact, it’s Raku x Chitoge going forward. Chitoge is not the promise girl that we’ve been wondering about for the entire series – that’s Onodera – but she is the one that Raku decides he is in love with, despite the fact that, similar to Naru in Love Hina, she literally runs away from her feelings until there is nowhere left to run to. It’s very in character for Chitoge, and honestly everyone in this volume acts exactly as you’d expect them to. Tsumugi gets to have a cool fight, and finally show Claude that she is, in fact, a she (was anyone else reminded of that Night Court scene with Christine? No? Just me? OK…). Marika, who has always been the one whose feelings are RIGHT THERE, acts as an audience surrogate in telling Chitoge to man up and admit the truth. And Onodera… well, Onodera gets to cry, and also bake their wedding cake, something so mind-boggling that she has to textually tell the reader that she wanted to do this, and it wasn’t Raku or Chitoge’s idea. The nice girl to the end.

While we are starting to see a few series experiment with polyamory, it’s always in a “fantasy world” setting, and you’re not going to see it in modern-day Japan. And for those who want to ship the OT3 after the wedding… nope, we get a short epilogue showing Onodera’s daughter running into Raku and Chitoge’s son, and it’s obvious they haven’t met each other before. (Which is incredibly frustrating from anything other than a ‘dramatic irony’ perspective – must ALL harems never speak to each other again after the wedding, especially when they’re as close friends as Chitoge and Onodera were?) And so we’re left with a series that I enjoyed for 25 volumes… but is only going to be satisfying if you shipped Raku and Chitoge. This is the curse of all harem series, and it’s why they’re popular but hard to license, because hell hath no fury like a fanboy scorned. Still: Nisekoi was excellent. Good job.

The Irregular at Magic High School: Yokohama Disturbance Arc, Part 1

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By Tsutomu Sato and Kana Ishida. Released in Japan as “Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei” by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Prowse.

Having finished the athletic competition between the magic schools, we now get a chance to see the scholarly competition, which is not nearly as popular with the masses but carries just as much prestige for the winners. Naturally, since Tatsuya is a freshman and also in Course 2, he’s not in charge of this; that’s left to Suzune, the former Student Council Secretary and resident tall, dark and handsome girl of the group. Of course, Tatsuya being Tatsuya, he’s asked to join the team as a helper anyway, partly as the previous helper was the girl who got zapped in the athletic festival and therefore can’t use magic anymore, and partly as the alternate choice disagrees with Suzune’s objectives, so why not use Tatsuya, who does agree with them and is also perfect in nearly every way? That said, terrorists are all around them, both as students trying to stop the competition, and as Chinese mafia trying to do the same thing for different reasons.

Honoka and Shizuku are on the cover, but unfortunately have the least amount of face time devoted to them of our main cast. Or perhaps it is fortunate, as the other half of this novel is devoted to taking the various members of Tatsuya’s crew and trying to put them in wacky romantic comedy situations. This works best with Erika and Leo, mostly as the two don’t really have a shred of sexual tension or attraction to each other besides “oh look, attractiveness”, and thus they are allowed to behave fairly normally, leaving aside Erika’s tendency towards rage and Leo’s cluelessness. It works least well with Mikihiko and Mizuki, in a scene that is so blatantly a set up for wacky “whoops, I tried to stop you falling and groped you” antics that I actually winced. (The author implied in the afterword that he added some scenes from the webnovel to set up later stuff better, so I assume these two become an item – they DO seem to have some chemistry, when they aren’t being written badly.) And Mayumi and Miyuki, who I expect are two of the triangle of “Tatsuya partner candidates” in this book (Honoka being the third) get scenes as well. Given I’m not fond of the incest subtext in this series, it’s no surprise who I preferred.

The pats of the book that are a serious action movie with terrorists fare much better. This is what Sato writes best, and there are a lot of cool fight scenes with clever uses of magic – Mayumi and Mari come off particularly well. The Chinese Mafia are there to be goons, with the exception of Zhou, who seems like the sort of “always smiling Chinese villain” I remember from Patlabor. I suspect he’s the only one I have to remember for later books. In any case, as the title implies, this is the first of what the author says is a two-volume arc. I imagine we’ll see the academic competition sabotaged further later on, though whether we’ll get more romantic comedy hijinks is not in my power to guess. (Please no.) If you like thrillers with magic and cool characters, this is right up your alley. As always, if you hated Tatsuya before, you’ll hate him again.

Sword Art Online, Vol. 12: Alicization Rising

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By Reki Kawahara and abec. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Stephen Paul.

Last time I mentioned that the regulars not named Kirito barely appeared in the book, and this time they don’t appear at all – even Asuna isn’t in it, as we spend our entire time in Underworld watching Kirito and Eugeo slowly make their way upward in order to stop our chief villain of this arc. It can be a bit frustrating, especially as Kawahara excels at introducing new characters who could conceivably be quite an interesting addition to the ensemble and then leaving them by the side of the road. Eugeo, at least, continues to play the second protagonist role admirably, and once again the narration of the book is divided, with first-person Kirito for the first half and third-person Eugeo for the second. The book, in fact, somewhat mirrors the last one – just as that ended with a pile of exposition after a series of cool fights, so this one begins with the exposition before we get to the fighting. Kirito even gives us a “for those of you just starting this series” intro.

My favorite part of the book was probably the two girls on the cover, Fizel and Linel. They’re introduced at a point where the ordinary reader would be very suspicious, which is why the cover fakeout is so clever – given that they flank Kirito, clearly they’re meant to be new allies that he picks up along the way. A heh. Perhaps not. That said, once their subplot is done they are tossed out of the way like everyone else, and I do wonder if we’ll ever see what becomes of them, particularly if Kirito wins the day, something that is still not entirely certain. The best fight scene in the book goes to an Integrity Knight named Fanatio, which has to be intentional as she certainly seems fanatical. She has a complex about being a feminine knight, both because she was treated as weak by other men before and also because Alice has just arrived and is pulling off being feminine and hella strong perfectly. Kirito, who points out that he’s had the crap kicked out of him by women in fights before, is all too happy to duel her and teach ehr the error of her ways. It’s not terrible, but I’m not sure it comes off the way he wants it to – there’s still a tinge of sexism here.

Of course, we knew that before we reached the top of the tower and the final villain we’d have to fight Alice again. And, as if proving Fanatio to be even more wrong, she proceeds to absolutely kick Kirito and Eugeo’s asses, at least until the obligatory cliffhanger. Given everything that we learn about the Integrity Knights in the early infodump, I am curious as to whether Kirito and Eugeo will be able to snap her out of it – I suspect that may take up a good deal of the next book. In the meantime, Sword Art Online continues to be exactly the sort of series you think it is. The highs still high, the frustrations still omnipresent. I’d still argue it’s well worth a read, unless you hate Kirito.

Also, I found it hilarious that Kirito points out he has now failed to graduate THREE times – from middle school (trapped in SAO), high school (being trapped here), and sword academy (for breaking the taboo index). It’s OK, Kirito, there’s always McRonald’s.

Attack on Titan, Vol. 23

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By Hajime Isayama. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Bessatsu Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics. Translated by Ko Ransom.

It is not uncommon, particularly in shonen manga, to see what is generally referred to as a “time skip”, where events jump ahead a few years and we see the cast has grown and changed (see One Piece) or, for some strange reason, is almost exactly the same (see Fairy Tail – twice). It allows the author to jump ahead to the next part of the story they want to tell. It’s also not unheard of for a series to debut a new cast, meant to carry on from the original – you see this in some school series where time actually passes and therefore the regulars cant’ help but graduate. The new cast are usually introduced gradually, interacting with the popular regular characters till they have enough popularity of their own to take over. (K-On! tried this, but it didn’t really work well.) And then there’s Attack on Titan, which thinks nothing of trying to do both at the same time.

Reiner is still around, to be fair – in fact, he and Zeke (the Beast Titan) are the only ones, bar flashbacks. Instead, we’re introduced to a new group of child soldiers, who are here to take out enemy supply lines, blow shit up, and sic titans on people. The kids run the gamut from tortured and brooding young man who may be our lead going forward to the confident (some may say overconfident) girl who screams out “I am going to be killed or horribly maimed to teach an important lesson”, but so far seems to be riding on pure awesome and adrenaline. They’re fighting their own battles, but things aren’t going to well, and it turns out that having a giant pile of titans is not nearly as awesome as it could be, even without the special equipment Eren and company had. Perhaps it’s time to go back to the island and get back the powers of the founding titan.

I’m going to be very honest here, but I’m debating dropping the manga if this keeps up. I don’t really read Attack on Titan for the plot, which manages to be both “war is hell” and very right-wing militaristic at the same time. Likewise, the titans themselves have never interested me except as conduits to help the human characters grow and change. It’s no surprise that the moments I enjoyed most in this volume were the smaller, quieter ones – such as Reiner’s reverse psychology when he threatens Falco for not respecting the Titans enough, or his memories of everyone back on the island (in which we realize that Sasha eating the potato is once again the only thing ANYONE remembers about her). But I really hope that Eren, Mikasa and the others show up soon, because I’m just not as into this new cast.

Attack on Titan is still worth reading if you like cool battle scenes (that are beginning to actually be drawn… OK? Not horribly?), political discussions, and tortured angst. Just be aware that there’s a sea change here, and most of the beloved characters you liked have been left behind.

The Asterisk War: Battle for the Crown

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By Yuu Miyazaki and okiura. Released in Japan by Media Factory. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Melissa Tanaka.

I always enjoy each volume of Asterisk War I read, despite the fact that you can see every plot beat and character development coming from eight miles away. The good thing about it is, it’s the RIGHT kind of character development. This being a tournament arc, you would expect that the losers among our heroes get shuffled off to the side to watch from the stands, like… well, every other tournament arc in manga and anime. But no, Saya and Kirin (yes, it’s a spoiler that they lost, but not much of one if you have any idea about how narrative works) not only get to save the day in their B-plot, but Saya actually gets something of a resolution in the argument she had with Rimcy a couple books ago. And speaking of Ardy and Rimcy, their character arc is not winning the tournament, it’s showing that they are capable of growing and striving just as humans do, and it’s also carried off very well. The well-worn path this walks is comfortable, and has tea at the end.

The girl on the cover this time around is Sylvia, president of the all-girls institute that’s one of the six schools. She essentially shows up to give Ayato a hand in the kidnapping B-plot and to tease him – even the author admits he had planned to add her later. She’s cute, though, and I look forward to seeing how she differs from Claudia in the Ayato harem sweepstakes. As for the tournament part of it, there are two really good fights and one sort of mediocre one – we know that Ayato and Julis are going to reach the finals, and so the battle they face to get there feels perfunctory and short – which is better than perfunctory and long, I suppose. Saya and Kirin fare better – as I said above, they have to lose for plot reasons, but they do a damn good job, forcing Ardy and Rimcy to bring out their secret weapon earlier and generally showing that they are not just stoic/meek (delete where applicable) girls.

They also get to rescue the kidnapped girl, despite severe injuries from the tournament, injuries that are also handed to Ayato and Julis in the final. The final battle takes up the most space in the book, and is mostly worth it, though perhaps drags on a bit long – yes, even in books as short as The Asterisk War, scenes can go on too long. But Ardy is fun, and I liked the way that Ayato and Julis finally got together to take down the pair, which is clever, finds a way around Ayato’s big weakness, and is also quite shippy. That said, their pledge at the end of the book to keep allying in the other two competitions no matter what just seems to be inviting trouble, if you ask me.

So one tournament down, and apparently next time we get a slight break before jumping into Tournament Two. In the meantime, The Asterisk War continues to be, in my opinion, predictable cliches done right.

Water Dragon’s Bride Vol. 4

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Water Dragon’s Bride Volume 4 by Rei Toma

One of the reasons why this manga is so fun to read is that each volume starts out with a slight change in circumstances for the characters. In volume 4 the Water Dragon is now undercover as a human, and Asahi is looking at him as a odd experimental subject, as she teases him into eating human food, even though it isn’t going to have an effect on him. Subaru is a bit creeped out by this new arrangement, but still determined to serve as Asahi’s human protector.

As Asahi completes her yearly ritual, she requests that the Water Dragon God take her and Subaru on a trip during her usual three days of disappearance after the ritual is completed. One of the areas on narrative tension in this series is contrasting the Water Dragon God’s basic inhumanity with the inhumane behavior of humans to each other. When the trio travel to a distant country that happens to be under threat from a natural disaster, the villages there try to offer up a girl as a sacrifice. Asahi can’t get the Water Dragon God to intervene, so she offers herself up as a substitute. She relies on her power to make it rain when she cries to fend off the threatening fire.

Asahi’s powers end up placing her in a priestess role again, and she has to intervene in an outbreak of illness and contend with the local boy emperor. Toma’s illustrations, which often contain little to no backgrounds when the characters are experiencing emotional turmoil, help the reader appreciate the symbolic and otherworldly nature of the situations Asahi finds herself in. Asahi attempts to shield Subaru from her intense sadness, but he understands what she’s trying to hide from him. The Water Dragon God gradually seems to be taking on more human emotions, so it will be interesting to see how his personality continues to evolve, and if Asahi will ever be able to find her way home.

Yokai Girls, Vol. 1

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By Kazuki Funatsu. Released in Japan as “Youkai Shoujo -Monsuga-” by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Young Jump. Released in North America by Ghost Ship. Translated by Jennifer Ward. Adapted by Bambi Eloriaga-Amago.

I have in the past been somewhat hard on manga that are fanservice for fanservice’s sake, particularly when it’s coming from Seven Seas, who for a while had the reputation of picking up that sort of series. (They’re growing out of it, and in fact the creation of Ghost Ship may have been partly to give said titles their own forum.) That said, like almost all genres, I’m not against a particular type of manga provided it’s written well. And, much to my surprise, Yokai Girl is written well. It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, as this is by the author of the legendary (if unlicenseable) Addicted to Curry, which ran for almost 50 volumes in Young Jump between 2001 and 2012. It’s basically a foodie manga, only it has, well, an excessive amount of fanservice, enough to make it hard to put out over here even if it weren’t incredibly long. For a followup, the author tries the same thing – this is essentially a yokai manga, only with an excessive amount of fanservice.

Yatsuki is our hero, looking somewhat sheepish on the cover. He’s a recent graduate who seems a bit of an “ordinary normal harem protagonist” sort, though there’s more to his backstory than meets the eye. He works part-time, lunches at a maid cafe with a cute girl waitress he’s attracted to, and has a younger sister (we think) back at his apartment. One day he runs into a girl stuck up a tree, and after getting her down in the classic ecchi tradition (crotch to the face, then an accidental grope of the substantial chest), she ends up passing out and he takes her back to his place. Though nothing happens, they’re clearly both attracted to each other… which is why he’s very surprised to find that she’s a yokai, a rokurokubi, or the girl with the really long neck that you’ve seen in some titles. And of course this proves to be only the beginning of his troubles, as soon more girls arrive, and more girls we thought we knew turn out to be related to supernatural origins. Fortunately, Yatsuki seems to be hella tough and also good at dealing with yokai.

As you’d expect, if you don’t like fanservice, stay away. Not only do we have a ton of panty shots, nudity, and mildly sexual situations (i.e. don’t expect any sex), but even the yokai are racier than I’d seen it titles like Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan. The Kakiotoko is not a yokai who I want to describe in the confines of this review, except that he looks like a very buff Freddie Mercury and is hilarious. More importantly, there’s an actual serious plot behind all the not-quite-porn shenanigans, as Yatsuki has a very good reason to want to seek out and work with both yokai and yokai hunters, and the fight scenes can be bloody and vicious. So, while there are a fair share of groanworthy moments (the running gag of his offending the maid cafe waitress gets old fast), for the most part this is a very good example of what you get when an established author with a good sense of timing and character turns his hand to “let’s titillate the teenage reader”. Recommended for fanservice fans.

That Time I Got Reincarnated As a Slime, Vol. 1

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By Fuse and Mitz Vah. Released in Japan as “Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken” by Micromagazine Publishing. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Kevin Gifford.

I may simply be tired of the genre. God knows a lot of fans say they are – isekai and reincarnation titles have drawn more groans than cheers lately when new licenses are announced, though sales of the popular ones still seem to be good. It could also be that this comes only a month after publication of “So I’m a Spider, So What?”, a series with which it shares a ridiculous amount of details. That said, the spider book entertained me throughout, whereas this had me constantly checking to see how many pages there were until the end. It features most of the things that are overdone in these sorts of stories – endless discussion of RPG-style attacks and level ups, goblins, elves and dwarves all present and correct, and of course an incredibly overpowered hero whose bland narration does not help the situation. It does have an interesting side story about a young girl possessed by an Ifrit, which I wish the book had been about.

Our hero is a somewhat jerk-like middle manager who is killed by a random goon one day in Japan, and ends up being (try to contained your surprise) reincarnated as a slime monster living in a cave. That said, he’s immediately given two amazing skills to start with, and those allow him to quickly become very strong even as his viewpoint tries to assure us he has no idea about his power. When you’re befriending the equivalent of Smaug within the first few pages, you may be a bit ridiculous. Leaving the cave, he runs into a race of goblins and starts powering them up as well – names have power, something he belatedly realizes after naming everyone he sees willy-nilly. He decides to civilize them, which involves getting some materials from a dwarf city, and showing off more of his awesome slimeness (he’s not like other slimes, you see).

Far more interesting are the occasional looks at humans in this world that we get. The Ifrit girl is also from Japan, transported after a WWII bombing raid that killed her mother and severely burned her. The demon who called her seems to have been looking for something else, but her sheer desire to not die is so strong that he binds an Ifrit to her anyway – which is a curse and a blessing, as she’s not dead but the Ifrit controls her – whether she likes it or not, as one of her first friends finds out. Her long struggle against this takes a lifetime until she is (hold onto your hats) saved somewhat by the titular slime. I also liked the idiot trio of adventurers who the slime meets, who provide amusing comedy whenever they’re on the page – more amusing than the “idiot goblin” assistant, who also gets a short story that seems to be about his simple yet likeable ways. I found it more the former.

There’s some interesting world building here once you get past all the attack names and level descriptions, and I’ll probably give it another volume to see if it improves. But let’s face it, when your book is titled That Time I Got Reincarnated As a Smile, and the Slime is the least interesting thing in the book, there’s a real issue here.

Wake Up, Sleeping Beauty, Vol. 1

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By Megumi Morino. Released in Japan as “Ohayou, Ibarahime” by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Dessert. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics. Translated by Alethea and Athena Nibley.

We’ve all seen the type of story where you meet someone, start to fall in love with them, and then find out that either a) they have a terrible secret that they’ve been hiding, or b) they actually turn out to be completely different from how you thought they were. And sometimes it’s both, as is the case with Wake Up, Sleeping Beauty, which actually has the guy as the viewpoint character for once, and the girl as the one around whom the plot revolves. It’s a good plot, one that draws on the supernatural but doesn’t overly drown in it, and the story is dramatic and serious without being too angsty. I would argue that the heroine suffers from something of a lack of presence… but given that’s almost the point, it seems churlish.

Our hero is Tetsu, a bright young lad who has some tragedy in his life that is driving him to earn money, over the objections of his father, who doesn’t think he’s mature enough to move right into the workforce. (Dad is right, but Tetsu’s the hero, so he’s going to get away with it.) Tetsu ends up becoming a housekeeper at a mansion owned by a rich family. They’re under orders not to go into the small house at the back of the garden, where the family’s reclusive daughter, Shizu, lives. So, what does Tetsu do within the first few pages? Goes out to the garden and meets Shizu, who at least seems nice. Sadly, he also loses his bankbook at some point, and desperately goes to search for it. Shizu has it, and turns out to be a lot less frail and willowy than she first appeared – in fact, she’s a bit of a hyperactive terror. Is there a reason for the difference? And will Tetsu be able to keep being friends with her once he finds out the truth?

It’s sort of hard to discuss the manga without discussing its gimmick, but I will do my best. Shizu’s nature means that she is very different at different times, and for the most part we follow Tetsu as he finds out about it, falls into a state of shock, recovers, tries to be friends with her anyway, has a disastrous outing, tries to distance himself, and finally returns to the “be friends” with greater resolve. He’s a good kid, and I like his family as well – thank goodness that he’s fighting with his father but it’s not the standard evil uncaring manga dad. (I also love one of the sisters, Ryo, but I admit she barely appears – she just fits a type I really like). The book balances out mystery, romance and pathos in equal doses, and the leads are nice – you want them to overcome their problems. Also, it’s only 6 volumes, so should not wear out its welcome. If you want to try a new shoujo series with a sweet male lead who’s working hard, Wake Up, Sleeping Beauty is a good choice.

Yona of the Dawn, Vol 9

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Yona of the Dawn Volume 9 by Mizuho Kusanagi

Excellent manga continues to be excellent isn’t the most earth shattering reaction to the latest volume of Yona of the Dawn, but it is absolutely true. This latest episode swings between pathos and humor with the ease that I expect from Kusanagi. After meeting up with the Yellow Dragon, all of Yona’s guardians are assembled. What’s going to happen next? They wander into a village that Yun had adopted in the past only to find out that their food stores are low. Yona’s group immediately starts competeting to see who can deny that they are hungry the longest as they help to fix up the village, despite plenty of evidence of rumbling stomachs. Yona wants to see how the people are living as a manifestation of the poor choices her father made when he was king. The villagers are being preyed upon by a local gang of bandits, and Yona promptly proclaims that she’s the head of a rival gang called “The Dark Dragon and the Happy Hungry Bunch” in order to banish the bandits.

This is all pretty hilarious, especially the way the new gang starts threatening the villagers by forcing them to take extra portions of supplies and candy. But the local bandits once driven off come back in force, and things get serious. Sinha ends up confronting his terrible destructive power with Yona’s help. He’s drawn in shadow, with the focus on his eyes that allow his powers to manifest, seeming almost monstrous until Yona prevents him from using his powers in a way that he might later regret. As always with this series, while Yona has been training to build her capacity to fight, it is her insight into human nature and her genuine support of her companions that allow them to get through difficult moments.

This is such a pleasure to read, and I’m happy that Viz decided to all in on a multi-volume fantasy manga series. Seeing how the characters evolve in a series where there’s time for the mangaka to do slow and deliberate character development is extremely rewarding.

The Best Manga You’re Not Reading: Star Wars

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I was five years old when Star Wars: A New Hope blasted its way into movie theaters. Like most members of Generation X, the film cast a long shadow over my childhood, dictating my Halloween costumes, afterschool play, Happy Meal purchases, toy collections, and clothing; I had Princess Leia action figures, Star Wars drinking glasses, Star Wars t-shirts, and a Star Wars beach towel. One of the few tie-in products I didn’t own, however, was a comic book adaptation of the movie. I’d purchased The Star Wars Storybook at a Scholastic book fair in 1978, but never knew that Marvel Comics or manga publishers were peddling something similar.

That’s a pity, because Star Wars has a long and fascinating history in print. Marvel’s six-issue adaptation of A New Hope, for example, was cooked up by a Lucasfilm executive to drum up business for the film — in essence, it was a trailer for comic geeks, arriving on newsstands a month before the movie opened. Though Marvel executives had been reluctant to license Star Wars — according to former editor Jim Shooter the “Prevailing Wisdom” at Marvel was that “science fiction doesn’t sell”  — it proved one of the company’s best business decisions of the 1970s. “The first two issues of our six issue adaptation came out in advance of the movie,” Shooter observed:

Driven by the advance marketing for the movie, sales were very good. Then about the time the third issue shipped, the movie was released. Sales made the jump to hyperspace. Star Wars the movie stayed in theaters forever, it seemed. Not since the Beatles had I seen a cultural phenomenon of such power. The comics sold and sold and sold. We reprinted the adaptation in every possible format. They all sold and sold and sold.

By contemporary standards, Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin’s version is skillful but a little stodgy, relying on voice-overs to introduce key characters and explain plot points, rather than allowing the art to shoulder the responsibility of telling the story. Nonetheless, as Star Wars fever crossed the Pacific, Weekly Shonen Magazine republished Thomas and Chaykin’s comic, touching off a Star Wars manga blitz in Japan.

Japan caught Star Wars fever again in 1997, when the Special Edition trilogy hit theaters across the globe. Kadokowa’s MediaWorks division churned out a new set of Star Wars manga, hiring Hisao Tamaki (A New Hope), Toshiki Kudo (The Empire Strikes Back), and Shin-Ichi Hiromoto (Return of the Jedi) to handle the adaptations. And while all three are good, faithfully reproducing the main beats from each film, Tamaki’s version of A New Hope is that rarest of tie-in products: it captures the look and feel of the movie without slavishly copying it, offering both a fresh perspective on a canonical text and a point of entry for someone wholly unfamiliar with Star Wars. 

Part of what makes Tamaki’s version so fascinating is how he compensates for the absence of a soundtrack — no mean feat, given how noisy the Star Wars universe is. While Tamaki uses plenty of hand-lettered sound effects, he never uses them as a crutch, instead finding nifty ways to help us imagine the sound of a landspeeder skimming the desert floor or a Stormtrooper firing his blaster. Tamaki’s most effective tactic is careful attention to the velocity and direction of moving objects; through deft placement of speedlines and artful manipulation of the panels’ shape and size, he conveys the same information that a well engineered roar, squeak, thud, or electronic rumble might.

Then there’s the film’s lush, Wagnerian score, the kind of movie music that had been fashionable in the era of Ben Hur and Lawrence of Arabia but was considered unhip in the gritty, naturalistic world of early 70s cinema. The opening fanfare and dense web of leitmotifs are unquestionably part of A New Hope‘s appeal, goosing fight scenes and capturing the melancholy of a young Luke Skywalker as he gazes at a Tatooine sunset. Absent those musical prompts, however, Tamaki is forced to think about how to elicit the same emotions in words and pictures. One of the most dramatically successful attempts to bridge sound and silence occurs in volume one of Tamaki’s adaptation, right after R2D2 and C3PO land on Tatooine:

In the film, John Williams accompanies C3PO’s trek with music cribbed from The Rite of Spring — a decent choice, as Stravinsky’s dour ostinati and octatonic harmonies imbue the harsh landscape with an otherworldly quality. Tamaki, however, distills this two-minute scene to an evocative two-page spread in which a wide-angle view of the Tatooine desert unfolds beneath the individual panels, reminding us just how small and vulnerable both droids are. These images track closely with Lucas’ own vision, but the implied silence of the first and final panels in this sequence more powerfully conveys C3PO’s isolation than any musical gesture could:

The absence of sound has another unexpected benefit: minus the actors’ desperate attempts to make George Lucas’ dialogue sound… well, like conversation, the script has more room to breathe. Tamaki plays the earnest stuff straight and ramps up the comedy whenever someone is surprised or indignant. Luke, in particular, benefits from such an approach, given his age and naivete; in Tamaki’s hands, he’s Monkey D. Luffy with a lightsaber, freaking out over chores, the Millennium Falcon’s shabby appearance, Obi-Wan Kenobi’s death, a kiss from Princess Leia… you get the idea. Tamaki’s elastic deformations of Luke’s face transform him from blandly handsome farm boy to Shonen Jump hero, equal parts brave and ridiculous:

One of the manga’s other great virtues is its ability to expand and contract time in ways that a purely temporal medium like film can’t. The ability to speed up and slow down the unfolding the plot isn’t unique to comics, of course; filmmakers can use slow motion imagery or cross-cutting to manipulate the viewer’s perception of time, but a good manga artist takes advantage of the fact the reader can, in fact, stop time by poring over an image or a scene for minutes, savoring small but telling details that would otherwise get lost in the cinematic flow. Writing for Animerica in 2004, Patrick Macias offered a thoughtful explanation of how this kind of creative expansion of time adds new layers of meaning to Tamaki’s story:

It is in Tamaki’s take on destruction of the planet Alderaan that he really shows off his stuff. A scene that took mere moments to depict on-screen is drawn out to fill half a dozen pages. He inserts images of the Alderaan populace looking up to the heavens, and you can almost hear those “millions of voices suddenly crying out in terror” with more dramatic impact in the manga than in the film.

Of course, none of this would matter if Tamaki lacked the precision to bring Lucas’ vision to life on page. Again and again, Tamaki delivers amazingly detailed drawings of space ships, aliens, and weapons that pulse with the same life as Katsuhiro Otomo’s AKIRA and Shirow Masamune’s Ghost in the Shell; if you’d never seen or heard of Star Wars, you might reasonably infer that Tamaki dreamt up this world on his own. Tamaki proves equally adept at staging deep space dogfights, too, conveying both the dizzying speed with which the ships are moving and the maze-like surface of the Death Star:


For readers coming to the manga from the films, the biggest stumbling block will be the character designs: did Tamaki get them right? The short answer is yes, if you can tolerate a little artistic license with hairdos and body types. Not surprisingly, R2D2 and C3PO look most like their big-screen counterparts — no pesky noses or mouths to draw — but the rest of the cast bear a passing-to-strong resemblance to the actors who portrayed them, though Obi-Wan Kenobi looks and moves more like Chuck Norris than Sir Alec Guiness. Tamaki does an even better job of bringing Darth Vader and his Stormtroopers to life on the page, adding an extra touch of menace in the way he draws their helmets; you can almost see the soldiers grimacing under their plastic armor from the way he draws their browlines.

If I’ve sold you on manga Star Wars, you’ll be happy to know it’s a relatively inexpensive way to relive the original trilogy. The digital versions — currently available through Amazon and ComiXology — retail for $1.99 per volume. There’s also a Phantom Menace manga for the morbidly curious; Kia Asamiya is the author, and he’s been given the truly thankless task of condensing that stinker into two volumes. At least it won’t be as interminable as the movie.

WORKS CONSULTED

Macias, Patrick. “Star Wars, The Manga.” Animerica, VIZ LLC, 7 Apr. 2004, https://web.archive.org/web/20040407180902/http://www.animerica-mag.com/features/starwars.html. Accessed 27 Dec. 2017.

Rickard, Ron. “Retro Foreign: Japanese Weekly Shōnen Magazine #18 – 23 (1978).” Star Wars Comic Collector, 20 May 2016, http://swcomiccollector.blogspot.com/2016/05/retro-foreign-japanese-weekly-shonen.html. Accessed 27 Dec. 2017.

Shooter, Jim. “Roy Thomas Saved Marvel.” Jim Shooter, 5 July 2011, https://web.archive.org/web/20150912134444/http://www.jimshooter.com/2011/07/roy-thomas-saved-marvel.html. Accessed on 28 Dec. 2017.

Spellman, Ron. “A Long Time Ago: The Strange History of Marvel’s Original Star Wars Universe.” Comics Alliance, Townsquare Media, 28 Jan. 2016, http://comicsalliance.com/original-marvel-star-wars-comics-history/. Accessed 28 Dec. 2017.

Tamaki, Hisao. Star Wars: A New Hope, adapted from an original script by George Lucas, Marvel Comics, 1998. 4 vols.

The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 9

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By Satoshi Wagahara and 029. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by Kevin Gifford.

Sometimes there’s one scene or chpater of a book that has more impact than the rest of the volume. This is not uncommon, and does not mean that the rest of the book is lacking in any way. It just means that the chapter or scene in question is JUST THAT GOOD. In Vol. 9 of this series, we get that in a chapter entitled “The Hero Discovers That She Can’t Go Home Again”, which flashes back to show us Emi arriving back on Enta Isla and how she ended up in the position we saw her in at the end of Vol. 8, captured by Olba and being blackmailed. We see her being a detective, we see her learning more about her parents (indeed, possibly far more than she’d have liked), and we see that the bond she has with Alas Ramus may not be as direct as she’d though,. though to her credit she doesn’t reject Alas Ramus in any way because of this. And we see her longing for Japan, and modern times. If this light novel series ends up with the main cast back in Enta Isla, they’re going to need to modernize.

As for the rest of the cast, well, they’re back in Japan, getting ready for a rescue mission. This is not as easy as it seems – Maou has to get people to cover his shifts for a week, so that he doesn’t get fired from his McRonald’s job (the way I suspect Emi is going to be fired from her call center one). He and Suzuno need to buy supplies, which leads to them clashing over everything, as he’s a penny-pinching scrounger, and she has enough cash that “just buy the best thing” is always the first option. And they also have to deal with Rika, who after the events in Vol. 8 now knows their secrets. Do they erase her memory or let her in on the full story, which might put her in danger? The answer is not surprising, but it’s nice to see them asking the right questions. It’s also nice to see Chiho has come so far in nine books, and even though she can’t come along on the rescue mission her intelligence and calm is a great help.

Of course, Chiho is in love with Maou, and we see some jealousy flare up here, mostly as Acieth has the appearance of a clingy 14-year-old who keeps going on about being inside Maou. More seriously, though, Suzuno begins to realize that she may also be developing feelings for Maou. This is something of a surprise, as the ‘harem’ aspect of this series has really mostly been a love triangle before now, with Emi and Chiho – not that Emi will admit it, but she’s still the clear favorite. But when Suzuno hears the backstory explaining why Maou raised up a demon army to invade Enta Isla, she begins to realize that he’s not the demon she’d thought. Combine this with the ongoing revelations that the Angels may be the actual villains of this story, and she has the classic example of a maiden’s trembling heart. The sleeping bag helps take the edge off that, though.

Unsurprisingly, things end in a cliffhanger here, with every single character in Enta Isla about to get involved in something nasty. I’m not sure how long this arc will be, but I am sure that if you’ve been reading Devil Is a Part-Timer, you absolutely will not be disappointed with this book.

Graineliers, Vol. 1

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By Rihito Takarai. Released in Japan as “Grainerie” by Square Enix, serialization ongoing in the magazine GFantasy. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by Jocelyne Allen.

There are some series with a complex plot and deep, developing characterization, and then there are those series that want to get along just by style or mood. Graineliers definitely feels like one of the latter, and fortunately it’s very good at portraying the style and mood to keep a reader turning the pages. The author has mostly done BL series before, and in fact is well known here for the series Ten Count and Only the Flower Knows, but this is not a romance work. Instead it’s (I know, try to contain your surprise) something of a supernatural thriller (GASP!)set in a world where plant seeds can given superpowers of a sort… well, honestly, it seems more like a curse than anything else. In this world we have our handsome and tortured hero, who is seen on the cover baring his chest to show off that instead of manly, virile chest hair he has manly, virile plant roots growing there.

The cast is pretty likable. Luca is our cover boy, who actually becomes a cover man after escaping from the coma being exposed to a seed puts him in. He’s curious but sensible, and it’s actually his father’s experiments that lead to the plot going forward. His friend Abel (the traditional handsome blond to be the best friend of the hero brunet, though there’s no shoujo heroine here, and in fact GFantasy straddles the line between the two genres) rescues and hides him, and finds after he awakens that he now has some characteristics of plant life, including apparently just needing water. Unfortunately, the vaguely evil government is not likely to look kindly on this, so Luca has to hide his features. He’s also not alone, as a cute young girl trying to help her beloved grandfather turns out to share a similar fate, in what’s probably the big “startle” panel of the volume.

It’s always hard for me to review books like these, where nothing really wowed me but there are no crippling flaws either. It’s a solid, readable manga that knows what its fans want to read and gives it to them. Luca and Abel are close and slashable, but can also be read as regular old best friends. For the most part the book is fairly serious, though there was an amusing joke at the end that surprised me, mostly as I wasn’t expecting anything of the sort. There’s also a fair bit on the seeds that this world contains, and why the government might be trying to suppress knowledge of them. Basically, it’s the first fifty pages of a mystery, setting things up but hard to read on its own.

But the setup is good, and leaves you wanting to see what happens next. That said, we’re almost caught up with Japan already, and after Vol. 2 drops early next year there may be a bit of a wait. Definitely a series to grab if you like mystery with a dash of fantasy and a heaping teaspoon of pretty boys.

Konosuba: God’s Blessing on This Wonderful World!: You Good-for-Nothing Quartet!

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By Natsume Akatsuki and Kurone Mishima. Released in Japan as “Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku o!: Chūnibyō demo Majo ga Shitai!” by Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Kevin Steinbach.

KonoSuba returns with its fourth light novel, though unusually there’s plenty of manga in this volume, which adds an extended ‘what you will see in this book’ manga chapter (none of it is seen), as well as a two-page spread in the middle. This is perhaps not surprising given that our heroes spend much of their time at a town devoted to hot springs. The subtitle this time around is a parody of the manga Yozakura Quartet, started by Del Rey and finished by Kodansha Comics digitally in North America, from the artist behind DRRR!!. You would think, given Wiz’s presence on the front cover, that she is the fourth member of the group to merit the title, but no, Wiz is sensible (and quite powerful) throughout, except for her horrible shopkeeping skills. No, Kazuma is just as bad as the rest of his crew, and this volume is happy to emphasize that.

We’re on a vacation this time around, ending up, as I indicated, at a city renowned for their hot springs. Sadly, Aqua keeps turning their springs into plain old hot water whenever she uses them, so things aren’t going well. You’d think she’d be happy, given that the town is filled with Axis Church followers – i.e. HER followers – but she’s as whiny and put upon as ever. Darkness, meanwhile, is having a ball – as a follower of Eris, she’s treated like absolute dirt, which makes her incredibly happy (and by happy I mean aroused). She’s a bit less happy with the fact that the group is now perfectly willing to use her family name to get their way, something she’s really rather avoid. As for Megumin, aside from a few stray moments, she’s the sensible one this time around. Kazuma may seem a better candidate, but not only does he die AGAIN, but he also gets everyone in trouble by not realizing that this ISN’T a transported-to-a-game world and that some “easy-level” monsters are in fact not so easy.

No one really reads KonoSuba for the plot, which is good as there isn’t much. Our villain is seen meeting with a busty woman who is never seen again, so I imagine she’ll pop up as an antagonist in future books. No, KonoSuba is read for the humor, and there are many, many wonderful jokes here – the dog food and “Legendary Sword Excalibur” being two of my favorites. (Let’s take a moment to realize that Kazuma, who is on the verge of being allowed to reincarnate into a nice life on Earth, is literally annoyed into returning to the KonoSuba world.) The cast are all terrible, with the exception of Wiz, and possibly Yunyun, who shows up at the end to deliver the ridiculous cliffhanger. We’re now caught up with the anime, meaning Book 5 should be new to most readers. (I’m going to take a wild guess and say the anime did NOT end with Yunyun’s request.) If you like tremendously silly light novels, KonoSuba is exactly what you’re looking for.