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Reviews

Attack on Titan, Vol. 22

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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.

“Tragic backstory intensifies” would be a good description of this volume, for the most part. Eren continues to have dreams that flash back to his father’s life before he was born, showing us the fate of Grisha’s first wife (she appeared in the story earlier than we think, it turns out!) and what our kingdom really is – an island kingdom, with most of the world very much not dead on the other side of the ocean. We also, as predicted, see Eren and Mikasa in jail for the orders they disobeyed in the previous couple of books, though that doesn’t last, mostly due to how important Eren really is. Oh yes, and much to Mikasa’s horror, we get a time limit on the Titans’ lives – they only live for 13 years after being titan-ized, meaning that we also get another major character death, though this one is offscreen.

Yes, in fine lesbian character tradition, Ymir writes a farewell note to Historia that confirms that a) she wanted to live the rest of her life married to her, but b) she can’t as she’s soon going to be dead. After Eren’s revelations, it’s pretty clear that this is meant to be due to simply living out that 13 year span rather than due to being executed. Reiner, at least, lets her write said farewell letter, though I wish we’d been able to see more of Historia’s reaction. I suppose it was unbecoming of a queen. So no happy ending for Ymir, though at least she doesn’t seem to have been killed off just for being gay. As for Mikasa, I’ve pretty much written off any hope of her character revolving around anything other than Eren, so her stunned disbelief through most of this is unsurprising. Not sure if they’ll find a way to stop Eren and Armin from dying. I could see it going either way.

There’s also more arguing over whether it was the right thing to save Armin or not – I suspect this may have been an argument that Isayama and some of his editors may have had as well. I wish that it had been one of the regulars allowed to take an opposing side, rather than generic military police guy, who is there to remind Hitch that Marlowe likely died terrified and to yell at everyone else, so immediately turns into one of my least favorite characters. I think it would have had more impact if it was a more familiar face on the Erwin side, though. In any case, however, we jump forward a bit and see the Survey Corps confirming what they’d found out from Grisha – that this is an island, and that there is ocean at the end of it. This leads to possibly the only really heartwarming scene in the book, with the members of Levi’s unit cheerfully splashing in the surf (though not in swimsuits – we can’t rewrite reality that much).

I didn’t see an “End of Part Two” at the finale of this volume, but it certainly felt like it. We’ve gotten a lot of our answers, but what comes next? In any case, Titan fans should enjoy this volume, though likely they will get frustrated with it as well. But we should all be used to that.

Yona of the Dawn Vol. 7

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Yona of the Dawn Volume 7 by Mizuho Kusanagi

I knew when I first picked up Yona of the Dawn that the reader would eventually be getting awesome archery moments, but it has been quite a road getting there. Yona has been evolving into an action heroine for the previous six volumes and this is finally where all her practice sessions pay off, as Yona’s team along with benevolent pirates manages to stop some horrible human trafficking.

Yona and Yun manage to break away from the other captives and signal for help, but not before Yona endures some intense and scary moments. But when she finally gets a bow in her hands she assumes an intimidating power, suddenly her captors find themselves frightened by a girl they were dismissing casually just a few minutes before. The first chapter of this volume had some wonderful action moments, like when the Green Dragon swoops in to answer Yona’s summons at just the right moment. But one of the things that sets this manga apart from typical shoujo fare is that Yona ends up with the most heroic moments of the whole battle instead of her male companions. She comes into her own in a dramatic fashion, assuming a power and authority that the reader hasn’t seen before. It isn’t any of her companions who end up taking out Kum-Ji who is terrorizing the seaside town, it is Yona herself. I was struck by Kusanagi’s facility with facial expressions in this volume especially, as Yona shifts from righteous anger to resignation at having to take a human life.

I love the way this series focuses on the emotional connections between the characters as well. Yona has a chance encounter with Su-Won, and Hak is there to deal with the aftermath. Saying goodbye to the Pirate Captain is emotional both for the Green Dragon and Yona, and I have a feeling as the companions embark on their next adventure, they’ll be able to deal with whatever crisis they may encounter due to the strong bonds between them and Yona’s leadership. This is one of my favorite current series, Kusanagi always manages to pack in a ton of story and character development in each volume in a way that never seems forced.

Clockwork Planet, Vol. 1

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By Yuu Kamiya, Tsubaki Himana, and Sino. Released in Japan by Kodansha. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by fofi.

Ugh. I hate the (2) that’s sitting in the URL up there. Why couldn’t this book have had a subtitle like some other light novels? In any case, as the URL shows, I’ve reviewed Clockwork Planet before: the first manga volume, which Kodansha Comics put out back in March. And now we have the light novel it was based on. When I had only mild enjoyment of the manga volume, I was told a few times that the light novel is significantly better. And indeed those people were right, as my enjoyment of the novel was significantly better – especially in regards to Marie, whose inner workings (so to speak) are a lot more explicit and sympathetic than they were in the parts of the manga I read. That said, you can definitely tell that a lot of this is written by Yuu Kamiya, the creator of No Game No Life. It has the same… flavor, so to speak.

The premise is that a socially ostracized boy with a REALLY acute sense of hearing has an automaton crash into his apartment one evening. This isn’t as odd as it seems, because as the name might imply, the Earth now runs on clockwork in order to stop its death. This particular automaton, however, is one of a very special series, and had in fact been dormant for the last two hundred years. Fortunately, Naoto is able to “hear” where the problem is and fix it, and now he has his very own robot girl, RyuZU, who is devoted to keeping him safe and happy and abusing him verbally, not in that order. (This is where the NGNL author’s fetishes come into play, as I mentioned above.) The other half of the plot involves genius teenage engineer Marie and her calm bodyguard/babysitter Halter, who is mostly a cyborg himself. They’re trying to fix a gravitational error that might destroy all of Kyoto. And then we discover that this error is, in fact, bpart of a VAST MILITARY CONSPIRACY!

As you may have gathered, subtlety is not on the menu for this book, but it’s a decent thriller, and I enjoyed the characters while finding them somewhat exasperating. Because this is written for a male Japanese audience, there is of course a large color picture of a naked loli girl in it, so as always this isn’t recommended for casual fans. But for Kamiya fans, or those who like “steampunk” type stories, it’s a lot of fun. The second half is definitely better than the first, as things swing into high and we show off what all of our heroes can do. And there’s a setup for future books, which we actually see a bit of in the prologue, as well as another robot girl that needs to be rescued from the government/military complex. Unlike a lot of “first volume” light novels that may or may not become series, this looks like it was designed to have more to it. Good thing we’re getting more. Recomme3nded.

Melody of Iron

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Osamu Teuka hit rock bottom in 1973. Mushi Production, the animation studio he’d launched to great fanfare in 1961, had just declared bankruptcy. Although Tezuka had parted ways with Mushi in 1968, he was still linked to his old company in the public imagination — Mushi was, after all, the studio that had introduced Tetsuwan Atom to television viewers around the globe, and made Kimba the White Lion a household figure in Japan. Tezuka also faced a creative crisis: his work was out of step with emerging trends in what he called “young adult manga,” a point he plaintively addressed in the afterword to the 1974 short story collection Melody of Iron:

The media was whispering that I’d hit my wall… With a broken heart, but also rebellious determination, I blindly tackled magazine jobs …These are examples of my Young Adult Manga write during times when I was mentally hungry. There were many more. Ranging from pieces that were too dark and hopeless, to really harsh pieces that, in today’s day and age, would immediately receive protest from all sorts of organizations. All of my pieces then had really emotionless themes and I don’t remember enjoying writing most of them.

Manga publishers agreed with Tezuka’s glum self-assessment. In 1973, Weekly Shonen Champion offered Tezuka an opportunity to write a limited five-week series with the implicit assumption that Tezuka was publishing his final work. That series turned out to be the opening salvo in a new stage of Tezuka’s career, however, as Black Jack became one of Tezuka’s best-known, best-loved titles, a mixture of bold, expressive cartooning, crazy plot lines, and gut-punch endings all held together by one of the most memorable characters Tezuka ever created.

Not all of Tezuka’s work from the 1970s walks this melodramatic tightrope as effectively as Black Jack, a point underscored by Melody of Iron. The title story, for example, is a three-act mish-mash of gangster movie cliches and seventies pseudo-science. In the first act, a young man runs afoul of the mafia, ratting out one their assassins in court; as punishment, the Albanis cut off his arms and leave him to die. In the second act, Dan holes up in a mad scientist’s laboratory where he learns to use a set of psychokinetic prosthetic arms. And in the final act, Dan’s ability to harness PK proves a mixed blessing when the arms exact revenge against the Albanis… without him.

The finale exemplifies what’s good and bad about Tezuka’s crank-it-to-eleven approach. On the one hand, Tezuka has the cartooning chops to make the arms look sufficiently animated, a necessary condition for selling us on his Stephen King-meets-Mario Puzo concept. On the other hand, Tezuka’s own distinctive style works against the potential horror of the killer limbs; the arms aren’t menacing enough to be a convincing embodiment of Dan’s fierce anger, looking more like the Tin Man’s costume than instruments of death. The arms’ efficacy is further neutered by the staging of their grand murder spree, a string of over-the-top deaths that re-enact Dan’s initial humiliation in the most baldly literal fashion: look, Ma, no arms!

The story also stumbles in its efforts to depict American racial dynamics. Shortly after Dan’s bloody encounter with the Albani’s goons, for example, a mob of African American teenagers harasses Dan, pelting him with stones and mocking him for his missing arms. The way these characters are rendered — with thick lips and maliciously gleeful expressions — creates a profoundly uncomfortable moment for the modern Western reader, resurrecting the visual iconography of minstrel shows to dehumanize these unnamed teens. Dan is rescued by Birdie, a black Vietnam vet who counsels Dan to abandon his murderous plans. Birdie looks more recognizably human than the rock-throwing teens, but he’s more a construct than a character, a noble voice of reason whose primary purpose is to advance the plot by introducing Dan to the mad Dr. Macintosh.

The third strike against “Melody” — and, by extension, the entire anthology — is that the edgier content feels like a self-conscious effort to dress up the material in adult themes, rather than a vehicle for exploring the darker corners of the human psyche. This problem is most pronounced in “Revolution,” a short story about Yasue, a housewife who wakes up from a coma convinced that she’s a young radical named Minako Hotta. In an effort to prove to her husband that she is, in fact, Minako, Yasue describes Minako’s sexual encounters with a wounded revolutionary, explaining how Minako’s tender ministrations brought him back from death’s door. We’re clearly supposed to sympathize with Yasue’s husband — he’s disgusted by Yasue’s “memory” — but his boorish, violent behavior in previous scenes makes it hard for the reader to sympathize with his predicament. Worse still, Minako’s sacrifices are presented as a sign of her dedication to the cause, a notion so risible it seems more like a lame joke from Woody Allen’s Bananas than a credible character motivation.

As with Tezuka’s other work from the period, the principal characters in Melody of Iron are generically attractive types whose personalities emerge primarily through what they say, while the supporting cast members are vividly drawn caricatures whose personalities are established through how they look. Such visual shortcuts are a standard manga technique, of course, but in Tezuka’s hands these aesthetic decisions are effective since they’re rendered with flair and specificity; you know exactly what kind of person Dr. Macintosh is from the shape of his nose, the tousle of his hair, and the hunch of his shoulders. Tezuka also scatters a few Easter eggs through the collection, including a sequence modeled on The Godfather‘s iconic wedding scene, and a panel depicting Broadway’s signature jumble of lights and signs; look closely and you’ll see the names of several Tezuka titles gracing the marquees.

For all the flashes of imagination in Melody of Iron, however, Tezuka was onto something when he characterized his “young adult” stories as “less approachable” than his other work from the early 1970s. Even the most over-the-top scenes feel a little labored and dour, lacking the visual exuberance or emotional oomph that makes “Dingoes” and “Teratoid Cystoma” such memorable entries in the Black Jack canon. Readers looking for an introduction to Tezuka’s late work may find Melody of Iron a good point of entry, but anyone with dog-eared copies of Black Jack or Ode to Kirihito may be underwhelmed by this more workmanlike collection.

THE MELODY OF IRON • BY OSAMU TEZUKA • TRANSLATED BY ADAM SECORD • DIGITAL MANGA, INC. • RATED YOUNG ADULT (16+) FOR VIOLENCE AND SEXUAL CONTENT • 214 pp.

A Small Charred Face

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A Small Charred FaceAuthor: Kazuki Sakuraba
Translator: Jocelyne Allen
U.S. publisher: Viz Media
ISBN: 9781421595412
Released: September 2017
Original release: 2014

Kazuki Sakuraba is a fairly prolific author in Japan, having written numerous short stories, essays, and novels; sadly, only a small handful of those have been translated into English thus far. Although Sakuraba is probably best known as the creator of Gosick (which, I’ll admit, I still need to actually read), my introduction to her work was through Red Girls: The Legend of the Akakuhchibas, an award-winning, multi-generational epic which I thoroughly enjoyed. When Haikasoru, Viz Media’s speculative fiction imprint, announced that it would be releasing Sakuraba’s A Small Charred Face with a translation by Jocelyne Allen in 2017, I immediately took note. I was previously unaware of A Small Charred Face, originally published in Japan in 2014, and I’m not especially interested in vampire fiction, but with Sakuraba as the author, Haikasoru as the publisher and Allen as the translator–a winning combination with Red Girls–it instantly became something that I wanted to read.

The Japanese town in which Kyo lives is bathed in blood, a hotbed of organized crime, murder, and vice. With a population willing to avoid looking too closely at the surrounding bloodshed, resulting in a plentiful and readily accessible supply of food, it’s the perfect place for the Bamboo, vampiric creatures originating from the deep mountains of China, to secretly coexist with humans. Carnivorous grass monsters but human-like in appearance, the Bamboo are extremely powerful and resilient but vulnerable to sunlight, never age but are still mortal. Up until the point he meets one, Kyo was never quite sure if the stories he heard about the monstrous Bamboo were true or if they were just told to frighten children. Confronted with the immediacy of his own impending death while only ten years old, his mother and sister having already been killed by a group of hitmen, Kyo is unexpectedly rescued by a Bamboo. Mustah, impulsively acting in blatant disregard for the rules of his own kind by taking him in, saves Kyos’ life and in the process changes it forever. But even while Kyo, Mustah, and Mustah’s partner Bamboo Yoji form a peculiar, tightly-knit family, it will never be entirely safe from the dangers presented by humans or the Bamboo alike.

At its very core, A Small Charred Face is about the curious, complex, exhilarating, and often fraught relationships that evolve between Bamboo and humans. The novel is divided into three distinct parts–three tangentially related stories which can all be connected to Kyo and his personal experiences with the Bamboo. In some ways the stories are able to stand alone, but the references they contain make them more powerful when taken together as a whole. The first and longest section, “A Small Charred Face,” focuses on Kyo’s life with Mustah and Yoji. The two men are fascinated and enthralled by his humanity, at times treating him as something akin to a pet but also raising him as family while protecting him through his adolescence. To Kyo, Mustah and Yoji are his saviors, parents, and something even more which is difficult to define. The second part “I Came to Show You Real Flowers” serves as an epilogue of sorts to the first, following another Bamboo who becomes incredibly important to Kyo as well as a young woman who plays a crucial role late in his life. Finally there is “You Will Go to the Land of the Future,” a story which delves into the history of the Japanese Bamboo. Linking back to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, it traces the tragic origins of the Bamboo’s strained relations with humans and the strict, harshly-enforced rules implemented to guard their society and existence.

A Small Charred Face opens with the brutal aftermath of the rape and murder of those close to Kyo with him facing a similar fate. It is a horrific, gut-wrenching scene, but the story that follows becomes surprisingly beautiful. Though still punctuated by moments of extraordinary violence and devastating heartbreak, A Small Charred Face is a relatively quiet and at times even contemplative work. The relationships shown are intensely intimate, with love, desire, and devotion taking on multiple, varied forms. The characters struggle and frequently fail to completely understand one another–the worldviews, life experiences, and fundamental natures of humans and Bamboo occasionally at odds–but the strength of the connections that they form regardless of and in some cases because of their differences is tremendously compelling and affecting. There’s also an inherent queerness to the stories that I loved. It’s perhaps most obvious through Yoji and Mustah’s partnership and the fact that Kyo spends a significant portion of his life presenting himself as a girl for his own safety, but many of the novel’s essential underlying themes explore found family, the need for acceptance, and what it is like in one way or another to be a hidden outsider within society. While A Small Charred Face resides firmly within the tradition of vampire fiction, Sakuraba’s contemporary take on the genre is still somewhat unusual and unexpected; I enjoyed the work immensely.

Thank you to Viz Media for providing a copy of A Small Charred Face for review.

Invaders of the Rokujouma!?, Vol. 5

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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.

I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy Yurika’s role in the novels, being the constantly mocked and abused girl whose suffering is absolutely hilarious. That said, it’s not the sort of thing that you’re going to be able to drag out over 26+ volumes, not if you want to actually develop the characters enough to have people read 26+ volumes. So I was not particularly surprised that this volume of Rokujouma was going to try to give Yurika a bit more gravitas, or at least show us that as a magical girl she isn’t, in fact, as completely incompetent as her personality may imply. I wasn’t expecting this to turn into the best volume of the series to date, though, as Yurika’s frustrations in the first half of the book give way to a battle royale with her evil counterpart, and she finally gets her wish: her friends believe her.

And yes, I can see you raising an eyebrow at me. “Magical reset at the end?”, you say cynically. Yes, yes, magical reset at the end. But that’s not the point, the point is that Yurika is NOT affected by the magical reset, which means that the development she gets in this book will (hopefully, crosses fingers) remain going forward. A lot of Yurika’s issues are self-confidence related, which makes sense given her background which we get a bit more of here – she was an “ordinary girl” attacked for the large amount of mana she had, and her magical girl sempai pretty much sacrificed herself so that Yurika could continue to defend the world, etc. As a magical girl, Yurika is actually pretty damn powerful. It’s just the constant ridicule and denial by her friends that wear her down. But now she’s aware that, memory loss or no, in the end when her friends discover the truth they do support and defend her.

As for the harem, it’s interesting that Yurika does not particularly moon over Koutarou the way that the other girls do. There are a few hints she likes him, but for the most part she’s content to set up Harumi with him. Her attempts at helping that relationship along work much better than her attempts to get people to believe she’s a magical girl, honestly. As for Koutarou, his main issue is that he’s surrounded by a ghost, two aliens, and an “underground priestess”, and Yurika the “cosplayer” is the one normal girl in his life. Once he accepts that his harem are not going to abandon him, I think things can move forward. (As for Harumi, her main issue is that Koutarou puts distance between them that he doesn’t do with the others, and this is relatively straightforwardly fixed.) The other haremettes don’t get much to do, though the ending implies that the next book will feature Kiriha – which makes sense, she’s on the cover of this book. Gotta keep things consistent.

Rokujouma is never going to break any originality records, but it’s settled nicely into doing its thing, and the characters are growing with each book. Well worth a read for fans of battle harems.

Yona of the Dawn, Vol. 7

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By Mizuho Kusanagi. Released in Japan as “Akatsuki no Yona” by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Viz. Translated by JN Productions, Adapted by Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane.

Wrapping up the pirates arc, there’s a lot to love here for the Yona of the Dawn fan. Yona herself is at her most badass, saving Yun and setting off the flare, killing the main bad guy herself with an arrow, and of course getting Jaeha on their side through the sheer power of her determination and awesomeness. Yun is also very awesome, getting the crap kicked out of him and showing that he’s far more than just the party straight man. Jaeha kicks and kicks some more, and also manages to be charming and seductive in that “nothing will ever really come of it” sort of way. But I think I have to admit that after finishing the volume, there’s really just one scene that I want to read over and over again, and that’s when Yona, in the aftermath of the battle, runs into Su-Won, who is equally stunned to find that she’s not dead.

Su-Won is, of course, the villain of the piece, and it was his killing of Yona’s father that started the whole shebang. But there’s always been a sense that there’s more to him than that – he’s Yona’s childhood friend and crush, and we knew at some point he would start to show a different side. We get that here, as his amazement at Yona not being dead leads to his needing to protect her from his own aides, who would no doubt not take kindly to Yona bopping around the country with a bunch of superpowered hot guys. The series has always done a good job showing Yona the Princess contrasted with Yona the outcast and messiah, and briefly being that princess again and seeing Su-Won (and reaching for his sword to potentially kill him) sends her into a bit of a mental tailspin. Hak is, of course, there to help clean up, and there’s even some parts played for comedy (such as when she unthinkingly starts to strip), but mostly this emotional scene serves notice that we will be returning to Su-Won again, and find out why he needs to do all this.

Yona does recover, of course, and sets out again, because there is still journeying to be done. Naturally, Jaeha decides to go along with her, but I did love the goodbye that both he and Yona got from the grumpy get good-hearted pirate captain, who’s served as a mother figure for both of them. I also appreciated that the volume ended with a goofy comedy chapter – it wasn’t all that funny, being a variation on the :love potion makes you fall for whoever you see first” story, but it was just nice to see lighthearted fare again. We will no doubt begin a new arc next time, and I still maintain that this is one of the best Shojo Beat series you could be reading.

How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom, Vol. 3

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By Dojyomaru and Fuyuyuki. Released in Japan by Overlap, Inc. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Sean McCann.

I will give credit to the author, he managed to hold my attention despite the fact that the entire content of this third volume of Realist Hero is setting up the board for future books. This despite the fact that it’s also dealing with the fallout from Book 2, i.e. the war with Amadonia. This world’s equivalent of the United States is dropping by to arbitrate, and by arbitrate I mean tell Souma and company to give Amidonia back to its rulers, even though the arbitration is done with reluctance. Souma has plans, though. He’s starting the equivalent of a Japanese variety show in order to show Amadonia what true freedom is like. He’s discovering Aisha’s previously unknown talent for tsukkomi. He’s dealing with the nobles who didn’t rebel against him but are still being evil, and does it using (sigh) the power of Machiavelli’s The Prince, which I am never going to enjoy. And if all else fails, he still has his Mr. Rogers cardigan to break out.

As you may have gathered, Aisha, Souma’s elf bodyguard, does get a bit more to do in this book, which is good, given that she’s also set to become Souma’s second ‘primary queen’. The difference between royalty and commoners is highlighted in the narrative, but also pretty much accepted as ‘well, that’s the way it is’, which is uncomfortable. Aisha is royalty by dint of being an elf princess. In any case, there’s also Juna, who gets to be the country’s first big idol singer – something which backfires on her when Souma points out he can’t announce he’s marrying her as well or there would be riots. She is first on his bucket list, though, which also has a few likely suspects that get hinted at here. Though not, refreshingly, the younger sister of the Gran Chaos Empire, Jeanne, who gets ship tease with the prime minister instead. It’s nice to see romance in the series that doesn’t involve Souma.

We also get our first slave, since slavery is legal here as well, because fantasy world. This is a way to reconcile the plot with Castor and Carla, who were on the bad side but weren’t “against the king” per se. Castor is basically stripped of everything but allowed to live because of his years of military experience. Carla doesn’t have that, but she’s Liscia’s friend, so she’s made into a maid for the household. I suppose it’s a better way to deal with her in this narrative than killing her off, but again, I wish this series kicked back a bit more against its cliches, particularly when they involve ‘these people are better than those people’. I may get my wish in future books; there’s a suggestion that Souma’s inability to tell “demons” and “monsters” apart, and everyone’s else’s shock at this, may factor in future books.

And so we end with Souma having to come to terms with the fact that he had a dozen people executed for the crime of ‘might plot against me in the future’, and the fact that this is, to a certain degree, monstrous. Fortunately, he gets some healing therapy in the form of two hot fiancees in bathrobes snuggling up against him. (Note: this therapy likely only works in isekai harems.) I have many issues with Realist Hero, and they keep stacking up like cordwood, but I can’t deny its compulsive readability.

Also, Souma and Aisha’s banter during the ‘variety show’ was A+, the book is worth the price just for that one scene.

Kaze Hikaru Vol. 25

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Kaze Hikaru Volume 25 by Takeo Watanabe

Every August I’m always happy because another volume of Kaze Hikaru comes out, but I’m also a little bit sad because I wish it came out more frequently! But I’ll be happy with what I can get. As always, whenever I pick up a volume I am amazed at how well Watanabe combines romance, action, and intricate historical detail.

The first part of this volume continues with the flashback that was introduced in the previous volume, as the reader is treated to seeing the Shinsengumi leadership when they were young and struggling in a different way, not yet in the leadership positions they would later attain. Most of the volume is centered on a financial forensics detective story, as Sei is assigned to help out with the accounting division.

She discovers that 50 Ryo is missing, and the chief accountant Kisaburo begs her not to report the problem until he can send for more money from his parents. He notes that times are tough for the men in the Shinsengumi and they’ve tapped into the saved funds before. Sei isn’t happy about this, but wants to help out and tries to discover who the culprit is. As the slowly building romance between Sei and Soji continues, it is fun to see them growing more and more conscious of each other. Soji is worried because he thinks Sei is hiding a crush on Kisaburo, while Sei is being her usual intrepid self and trying to resolve the problem on her own.

As the secret gets out, the vice captain uses his trademark harsh methods for dealing with the theft, and Sei doesn’t understand his judgement and reasoning. As with most issues with the Shinsengumi, the resolution very much depends on the Bushido code, and consequences coming to people who aren’t acting in accordance with it. Kaze Hikaru is such a pleasure to read, I always enjoy the clarity of Watanabe’s art and how well she is able to handle such an extended cast of characters and the relationships between them. I wish it came out more often than once a year!

No Game No Life, Vol. 6

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By Yuu Kamiya. Released in Japan by Media Factory. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Daniel Komen.

The author says in this afterword that this 6th volume was very last minute, as the anime was coming out soon, they needed something quick, adn his editor suggested that he do this flashback explaining the past of Disboard that he had laid out for “some point in the future”. I applaud the editors, because it’s an excellent choice, and ends up giving us what is easily the best volume in the series to date. Told by the God Tet (in disguise) to Izuna (mostly so that she can break in and point out the obvious similarity between the stars in the past and our current stars), we get a “grim and gritty” backstory that actually works for more than just “being dark”, showing us the horror of the war-torn land and why it was worth sacrificing so much in order to ensure it became the game-ruled world it is today.

Of course, we’re not necessarily dealing with an entirely new cast – as Izuna testily points out, Riku and Schwi are clearly analogues for Sora and Shiro, and Couron is Steph’s distant ancestor and the founder of their kingdom. This allows readers to get a good visualization of them, even if the personalities don’t quite intersect – Schwi is pretty dead on for Shiro, but Riku is basically Sora if he’d been broken by reality even more. As for Couron, she’s Steph without the abuse, and therefore perfect. Indeed, a lot of the “ha ha the writer thinks this is funny” fanservice is absent from this book, as the war setting means that it’s hard to trot out the sexual perversions and humiliation of Steph. Yes, Riku is teased about being a lolicon, and there’s a few “dying a virgin” remarks that Sora would be proud of, but that’s about it. This book knows now is not the time.

We also, by the way, see Jibril, and in many ways she’s the villain of the book. We knew that her past life before the Games became the rule was filled with a lust for blood and carnage, and her fight with Schwi here shows off her impatience and tendency towards overreacting, even if it ends up doing her harm in the end. That said, we also see that she’s definitely different from the other Flugel, even if it will take Sora and Shiro to really drag her potential forward. Much of the book is Riku doing what Sora normally does, which is to say plan an elaborate series of moves that end up winning the game for humanity. Tet says Riku and Schwi are stronger than [ ], as their world didn’t have the “game rules”. Sadly, this also means that they’re not granted protagonist immunity, so be prepared for some tragedy as well.

This was an excellent book, and the big downside to it is that it shows off that the author can be really good when he wants to be, but frequently lets it get buried under a need for fanservicey jokes and stupid anime tropes. Book 7 (which is in December, NGNL has settled into twice a year now) returns us to Sora and Shiro, and it will be nice to see them again, but I hope we can keep some of the added depth and gravitas we saw here and not just have a series of jokes about Steph’s tits. If you want to test out the series, though, 6 is the way to start, oddly enough.

Twinkle Stars, Vol. 3

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

I laugh heartily at my comment in the last review that Hijiri was absolutely perfect. She’s still my favorite, but this omnibus seemed entirely designed to show off that no, Hijiri is not perfect, that she is arrogant and headstrong and coming from a definite position of privilege, and when combined with the genuine fear she has of seeing her best friend get hurt again, it naturally leads to a bad confrontation. Which does, at least, get us Chihiro’s backstory, and the girl that he was supposedly in love with, Sakura. The love that it was, though, was a deeply unhealthy one, something the reader is well aware of as it plays out. Takaya is always at her best when showing off emotional pain, and we get that in spades here – there’s a suicide attempt, mostly successful, and implications that Chihiro also has suicidal thoughts. Fortunately, Takaya also writes Pollyannas, and that’s exactly what’s needed from Sakuya here.

Back to talking about Hijiri, literally everyone in the book realizes that she is doing the wrong thing and calls her out on it. First Yuuri, then Saki… it’s something that only she can do, being rich enough to basically have Chihiro’s entire past investigated to make sure that he’s not going to be causing Sakuya pain. And then, when she finds out about Sakura, his old love, telling her about it. Then she compounds it by refusing to admit what she did was wrong. It takes everything tat we’ve loved about the character for the last two omnibuses and turns it on its head, showing off the unpleasant and negative sides that her personality can have. We also learn how she first met Sakuya, and how her curiosity about those who felt pain turned to guilt and horror as she realized what that really means. Oh yes, and thankfully the crush on the teacher is not going to happen.

As for Chihiro, he’s more of a Yuki than a Kyo, if you know what I mean. It’s always a challenge to see someone repressing all their past emotional wounds and scars and not have them turn out somewhat flat, and again, Takuya is a master of doing this the right way. His confrontation with Sakuya at the reservoir is the highlight of the book, as we see that his obsession with Sakura (even the names are similar – at least in romanji) to an eerie degree) can turn to hatred as much as it does to love. Sakura is also a lonely child with a tragic past of abuse, like half the cast here, but she’s not written in a sympathetic way. I’ve no doubt she’ll wake up at some point, and I do wonder if she and Sakuya will ever meet.

Twinkle Stars gives fans of this author exactly what they want – deep emotional heartache and catharsis, calling out abuse for what it is, and showing that just because someone has a tragic past does not mean that their current joy and happiness has to be faked. I can’t wait to see where this goes next.

Durarara!!, Vol. 7

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By Ryohgo Narita and Suzuhito Yasuda. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Stephen Paul.

Sooner or later in the life of every light novels, you get the volume that consists of short stories, usually because the author is still figuring out where to take the series next. And so it is with DRRR!!, which gives us 4 stories here surrounded by Izaya recuperating from his stab wound he got last time in the hospital, where he runs into a girl that literally everyone has forgotten, including him (and the creators of the anime, who were unhappy to see this, I imagine). The ‘theme’ of these stories seems to be Ikebukuro on holiday, and indeed, Narita has discussed the idea of the city as a character in the volume before. And of course there’s also some setup and moving of chess pieces for future books, most obviously in the story with Shizuo and Tom, which gives them a new co-worker.

First, though, we have to deal with the story nobody wanted. I think if you were to ask Western fans in particular which DRRR!! characters they never want to see or hear from again, the insane triangle of Namie, Seiji and Mika would likely top the list. And what’s worse, Narita has them in your face here, never letting you forget how much Namie wants to screw her little brother, or that Mika is seriously looking to EAT CELTY’S HEAD so that she can get closer to Seiji, or that Seiji… well, no, Seiji continues to be a nonentity. He gets some depth here, of a sort, but his main theme still seems to be “what do these two see in him?”. It’s not the most pointless story in the book, but it is the most disturbing. We then get a look at the backstory and current life of Akabayashi, the yakuza with a sweet cane and missing an eye we’ve seen in the previous book. He deals with the fallout from Akane’s kidnapping, stops some drug dealing on his turf, and escapes an attempt on his life with ease. He’s here to be incredibly cool, and succeeds. He also has a surprising tie to Anri, which is good as the “main” trio of teenagers otherwise make very minor to no appearances in this volume.

The best story in the collection, even if you don’t love her (which I do) is the third one, in which Vorona is cooling her heels at Russian Sushi and wondering what to do with her life now that she’s been beaten and humiliated. The answer? Join Shizuo and Tom in shaking down local deadbeats who rent porn and then never pay for it or other such offenses. Tom is rather startled at how good Vorona is at beating others up, and impressed at her wikipedia brain. Shizuo (who does not recognize her as the woman who kidnapped Akane, as she was wearing her motorcycle helmet) is just happy to be able to mentor someone. And Vorona is watching Shizuo closely, seeing how he manages to be stronger than everything else, and deciding that he’s her “prey”… much to the displeasure of Akane, who has decided that she needs to take out Shizuo as well, despite the fact that she really likes him. (It is implied that getting kidnapped on top of the family revelations kind of broke Akane, but that’s Narita for you.) This story is filled with humor and unnecessary violence, and the book is worth getting for just this one.

We end with a cute, if completely pointless, date between Shinra and Celty, who have gone off to the mountains to get closer but keep getting interrupted by the rest of the cast calling Shinra for one reason or another. This mostly serves to remind us that, eccentric as they are, these two are the least screwed up couple in the series. The book overall is marking time, but it’s still worth reading, provided you don’t mind the author occasionally reminding you that he loves to read horrible people being horrible at each other.

H. P. Lovecraft’s The Hound and Other Stories

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By Gou Tanabe. Released in Japan by Enterbrain, serialized in the magazine Comic Beam. Released in North America by Dark Horse Comics. Translated by Zack Davisson.

This is the first in a series of Lovecraft adaptations that are still being done in the pages of Enterbrain’s oddball magazine Comic Beam, home of Emma, Thermae Romae, and other hard-to-classify series. The mangaka, Tanabe Gou, has specialized in adapting horror titles to the comics page, and just reading a few pages into this volume will show you that he knows his stuff. This volume collects three of Lovecraft’s more well-known short stories and turns them into fairly gripping horror manga, with plenty of the author’s tortured, overdone prose, but not so much that you want to stop reading (as I frequently do with Lovecraft). Thankfully, the nameless horrors in these particular stories also don’t feature Lovecraft’s awful brand of racism that has led fans to back away from him a bit in modern times. You can enjoy them for what they are: scary stuff with no reasonable explanation.

We begin with “The Temple”, which takes place in WWII – something which may puzzle readers, as the story was written in the 1920s. The ‘about the author’ at the end mentions that Tanabe moved the action up a few decades, and honestly it works even better that way – the original U-Boat Captain was so villainous he may as well have been a Nazi. they find the head of an old Grecian statue on a dead British soldier, and its presence gradually makes the crew of the U-Boat lose its sanity – not helped by the captain shooting “traitors”. Soon he ends up discovering Atlantis underwater, and where that statue really came from. In “The Hound”, two men who enjoy grave robbing for kicks find a jade amulet and take it back to England, where they are soon haunted by the ghastly beast that they may have killed at the gravesite. Finally, in “The Nameless City”, there’s only our narrator, exploring a city in Arabia that no one dares go near, and finding (all together now) eldritch horrors beyond his comprehension.

Honestly, the plot is pretty much irrelevant. What matters most here is mood, and Tanabe nails it, particularly in The Hound, which I found the best of the three stories. The sense of an encroaching doom that will engulf our characters (all male – women rarely if ever appear in a Lovecraft story) grows more and more with every turn of the page, and the few actual shots of violence are striking. Lovecraft stories are about the unseen, the imagined, and the unimaginable. Therefore a lot of adaptations risk becoming silly by showing said unshowable evil and having it not measure up. Tanabe has just the right amount of balance, as The Temple relies on its narrator’s own villainous depths, and The Hound is glimpsed mostly in shadow and corners. The Nameless City does draw a few monsters in detail, but its viewpoint is still firmly on the narrator (and the amazing vistas that he’s passing through).

Lovecraft is not for everyone, and I would not blame people from passing simply based on the name. But if you like horror and want to read something really creepy and offputting, this is an excellent adaptation. He’s done more of these – I think The Colour Out of Space was also adapted – and I hope it does well enough that we see more.

Kagerou Daze VII: From the Darkness

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By Jin (Shinzen no Teki-P) and Sidu. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Kevin Gifford.

Each volume in the series has competed to see who in the Mekakushi Dan has the worst childhood, and we may have a new winner with Kido, who gets the focus here. The book is divided into two parts that it goes back and forth between, like previous volumes in the series. The main story continues, with Shintaro, the Mekakushi-Dan and a newly revived Takane trying to find a way to stop Tateyama – or rather, whatever is behind Tateyama – and figure out how to stop this whole mess. This is interspersed with Kido’s childhood, being a child of an affair whose mother then dies several years later, causing her to be taken in by her rich father. Kido is an introverted self-hating mess, which honestly fits pretty well with what we’ve seen of present-day Kido, so the flashbacks work pretty well. Luckily, she also has a big stepsister looking out for her. Unluckily, this book is called “From the Darkness”.

Kido’s sections are the strongest in the book, doing a good job (despite the author’s self-deprecation in the afterword) of a realistic young girl resented by most people in the mansion, ignored by her father, and waiting to be abused by a sister that she’s sure hates her. But Rin does not, in fact, hate her, and after a series of painful to read but oh so accurate scenes of Kido wondering when the next blow is going to fall, she gradually begins to open up to the other girl and speak. Unfortunately, her dad is not merely cold and withdrawn, he’s rather unhinged, something which I wish was written in a slightly less abrupt way – the shortness of these books means that sometimes motivations get either left out or reduced to a villain monologue, and in this case it’s the later, as Kido’s father insanely expounds on why he went mad. After tragedy strikes, Kido finds herself in Azami’s realm, where Azami – rather startled to be meeting someone – realizes that Kido has one of her Eyes, and tries to explain as best she can. This section works much better.

Things don’t get much better in the main storyline, where we learn that you rarely gain a cool cyborg body without its creator having the ability to take the body over and turn it evil. Balanced against this is the reunion of Shintaro and Takane, who has to explain why she did what she did as Ene – which is fairly heartwarming – and why she ACTED like she did as Ene – which is the funniest part of the book. Unfortunately, while Shintaro’s plan to take out Tateyama is a good one, as I said, it reckons without one of the group being possessed. And so how we end the book with Shintaro dead, Kido dead, everyone else presumably about to die, and the realization that Book 8 not only may be the last but also isn’t out in Japan yet. This will have to satisfy Kagerou Daze fans for now, but I think it will do a fine job.

Also, will Seto ever get developed?

Princess Jellyfish, Vol. 5

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By Akiko Higashimura. Released in Japan in two separate volumes as “Kuragehime” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Kiss. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics. Translated by Sarah Alys Lindholm.

I realize that it is coincidence, but frequently the volume of Princess Jellyfish that I am reading is there to answer the questions and concerns I mentioned in my review of the previous volume. Last time I talked about wanting Kuranosuke to have to deal with consequences and be thrown off his game more, and I also mentioned the market for the jellyfish dresses being upscale and not for people like Tsukimi. Lo and behold, in this volume Kuranosuke is not only dealing with once again being told how hard it is to be a successful clothing maker in the world today, but also has to stand by and suck it up as Shu and Tsukimi get close enough to start dating, although given the two of them are still talking at cross-purposes a bit, I’m not sure if that’s going to be an endgame. And yeah, what fashion would Amars, the most unfashionable, wear?

Amars is actually pretty impressive here; for all that they may whine and complain a lot (especially Mayaya), they’re very much involved in both saving the apartment complex and getting the jellyfish brand out there. And the biggest worry of the book, how they will react when they hear that Tsukimi and Shu are going out, also turns out to less of a crisis than expected – Shu is, after all, the son of a politician and being groomed for greater things. Ergo, a political marriage would be a godsend for the rest of Amars. Of course, as a reader I’m not entirely convinced that Tsukimi would make a very good politician’s wife. As for the dresses, now that we’ve established the high-end dresses, we need cheaper stuff for the casual buyer. But what if the casual buyer is Amars? Would they wear this stuff? Not a chance. So.. what WOULD they willingly buy?

This volume features not one, not two, but THREE characters slowly realizing that they’ve fallen in love, each with different impact. Tsukimi is the most obvious, adn I’m still not sure it’s sunk in for her, or even if she grasps what it means going forward. The proposal certainly hasn’t sunk in. Inari, meanwhile, hears from Shu that he has a “fiancee” at the apartments, and is horrified not just at the idea that one of those girls (she doesn’t know which one) could have bewitched him but that it hurts her enough for her to realize that she has genuine feelings of love for Shu as well. As for Kuranosuke, I think he’s the furthest behind, as he’s not really admitting to himself at all how he really feels about Tsukimi even as he distances himself by saying he’s the “sorcerer” who placed a spell on her to make her a “princess”. Which is all very well and good, but sounds pretty cowardly to me.

They just announced the manga is wrapping up in Japan this fall, though we still have a few omnibuses to go to catch up. In the meantime, it gets better with each volume, and if you haven’t picked it up yet you should.