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Reviews

Kiss & White Lily for My Dearest Girl, Vols. 1-2

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By Canno | Published by Yen Press

I haven’t read a ton of yuri manga, but even I have encountered the “all-girls school with multiple couples” setup before. Kiss & White Lily for My Dearest Girl is another example of the same.

We begin with Ayaka Shiramine and Yurine Kurosawa. Shiramine has always been the perfect student, but she works hard for her grades. Enter Kurosawa, the lazy genius, who shows up and immediately takes the number one spot. Squabbling ensues, with Kurosawa going all sparkly when a furious Shiramine calls her “just a regular person.” It seems she’s been waiting for someone who might beat her. My problem with this couple is that Shiramine is not very likable, even if I sympathize with her frustration. Plus, I ended up comparing her “there’s no way anyone could love me when I’m not perfect” angst with that of Nanami Touko in Bloom into You, where the idea is executed with more depth and originality.

Thankfully, these characters soon rotate into the background as focus shifts onto Shiramine’s cousin, track star Mizuki. Kurosawa also happens to be great at running, and Mizuki is upset when the team manager, Moe, avidly attempts to recruit her. Moe is supposed to watch Mizuki the most, after all. It all turns out to be for a cute reason, and I like the M&M pairing much more.

Volume two introduces still more characters. Ai Uehara doesn’t endear herself to me by whining about the availability of third-year Maya Hoshino—“Mock exams are more important to you than I am!”—and the chapter where she tries to make her friend stay in town rather than going to the university of her dreams and then realizes that this makes her friend sad and then promptly trips and starts blubbering just about had steam coming out of my ears.

But, again, thankfully, we move away from the annoying character to someone more mature. Chiharu Kusakabe is Hoshino’s roommate and is in love with her. Hoshino seems to be aware of this, particularly after a clichéd “locked in the storeroom” incident, but doesn’t return her feelings. While Chiharu is busy pining for a sempai, she encounters a younger girl who begins pining for her. And, again, some cuteness ensues.

I’m definitely on board for volume three, but I wonder… will each volume introduce someone I profoundly dislike in the first half and then give me a couple to really like in the second half? I suppose I can deal with that, and I also want to see more of Mizuki and Chiharu.

Kiss & White Lily for My Dearest Girl is ongoing in Japan, where six volumes have been released so far. The first two volumes are currently available in English; the third will be released in August.

Review copies provided by the publisher.

Golden Kamuy, Vol. 1

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By Satoru Noda. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Young Jump. Released in North America by Viz. Translated by Eiji Yasuda.

Among my many thoughts on finishing the first volume of Golden Kamuy, the strongest one was “the author must be from Hokkaido”. And sure enough, that seems to be the case. Indeed, his other major manga series seems to be a sports manga devoted to the love of ice hockey. The show-covered woods are practically a major character in the series, adn they’re conveyed well, both in their beauty and in their ability to be deadly. And of course, they’re only one of the things that can kill you in this rather violent title. From the hero on the cover page, to various escaped convicts, to vicious bears and wolves, this is a series with the potential for a lot of gore. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to be about that. Rather, it’s about a young man and the Ainu girl he meets trying to avenge her father and find some hidden gold.

The story takes place after the Russo-Japanese War, but not that far after, so I’m guessing 1906 or 1907. Our hero is a veteran who says he was discharged from the army for killing a fellow soldier, though honestly the way he frames the story makes it sound like he could be making that up. He’s prospecting for gold in the wilds of Hokkaido, only to find, like most prospectors, that easy money schemes don’t actually work in real life. The supposed reason he’s looking for gold is because the wife of a (now dead) war buddy of his needs eye surgery, and the gold will pay for it, but I suspect the real reason is that Sugimoto is one of those soldiers who can’t really survive well without a life of adventure in some way. And survive is what he does – he’s somewhat famous for being alive after several injuries that would have killed most men. He’s also a lot of fun, being written much like a standard “dumb but likeable jock” type from a sports manga, only older and filled with battle experience.

Asirpa is the other star of this manga, a teenage Ainu girl whose father was brutally murdered by the man who theoretically knows where this hidden gold is – in fact, it’s Ainu gold, as the man who is now a convict killed six men and stole the gold from them. Sugimoto frames their journey as her getting revenge for her father, but it’s notable that she doesn’t seem to frame it that way herself, being content to silently going along with him. As first I thought she was going to be one of those emotionless Ayanami Rei types, but she turns out to simply be naturally reserved, and also very competent at living and surviving in the woods. She’s an excellent foil to Sugimoto. The rest of the cast consists mostly of ex-soldiers who are also here to search for hidden gold, ex-prisoners who have a coded “here is the gold” tattoo on their backs, though it doesn’t quite work the way they’d like it to, and of course the appearance of a clearly despicable villain at the cliffhanger of this vo0lume.

Golden Kamuy is a bit of a bunny movie with less comedy, as Sugimoto and Asirpa contrast with each other but work well together. If you don’t mind a lot of death and blood, this is a solid action story, and a good addition to the Signature lineup for Viz.

The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up: A Magical Story

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First published in 2011, Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing became an international phenomenon, selling over seven million copies in 40 languages. The book inspired a two-part television drama, a follow-up called Spark Joy: An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Tidying Up, and a veritable tsunami of related products and experiences including apps, seminars, and journals for documenting “what brings you joy every day.” In an effort to bring her message to even more readers, Kondo recently collaborated with artist Yuko Uramoto (Kanojo no Curve, Hanayome Miman) to create the most quintessentially Japanese tie-in product of all: a manga version of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.

Uramoto’s strategy for transforming a how-to book into a manga is simple: she turns the decluttering process into a narrative, using a fictional character, Chiaki, to lead us through the process step-by-step. When we first meet Chiaki, she’s a single, 29-year-old career woman living in a filthy apartment strewn with clothing, papers, sports equipment, dirty dishes, and bric-a-brac of every description. After her handsome next-door neighbor chastises her for leaving garbage on the balcony, Chiaki vows to change her life by calling — who else? — Marie Kondo herself.

Over the next nine chapters, Kondo gently but firmly helps Chiaki get control of her apartment. Before they tackle the clutter, however, Kondo asks Chiaki, “What kind of life would you like to live here?” Chiaki is taken aback by the question, but this visualization exercise is a cornerstone of the KonMari system, encouraging the client to think about decluttering not as a one-time effort but a first step towards living a more joyful, less harried life. Kondo then shepherds Chiaki through the discard process, helping Chiaki systematically assess all of her belongings, starting with the three biggest sources of clutter — clothing, books, and paper — before moving on to komono (odds and ends) and sentimental objects. Guiding all of Chiaki’s decision-making are two questions: “Does this item give me joy?” and “Am I using this item right now?”

As an adaptation, The Life-Changing Manga largely succeeds in teaching the KonMari method without recourse to talking-head panels. The graphic format allows Uramoto to show the reader how to store things, arrange a closet, and fold items into small rectangles that can stand upright in a drawer — one of Kondo’s signature organizational techniques. As befits a manga about decluttering, the artwork is both simple and cute. Though the character designs lack strong personality, they’re winsome enough to carry to the story and convey the emotional impact of using the KonMari method; by the story’s end, we appreciate just how elated Chiaki feels after liberating herself from the Tyranny of Stuff.

The manga’s most glaring fault lies not with the adaptation but the source material. Kondo frames de-cluttering as a one-size-fits-all remedy for life’s biggest problems, a point reinforced by the fictional Kondo’s conversations with Chiaki. As we learn in chapter two, Chiaki has a bad habit of falling for guys with hobbies, buying snowboards and tea sets so that she can get to know them better. Every time she breaks up with someone, however, she can’t bear to get rid of her newly acquired gear, developing elaborate rationales for keeping it. Kondo counsels Chiaki to get rid of these items, telling her, “If you hang onto things because you can’t forget an old love, you’ll never find a new love.”

There’s unquestionable value in Kondo’s insight that clutter accumulates when we’re not fully invested in the present, yet her philosophy is too reductive. A messy apartment might be a sign that you need to reconsider your approach to dating, but it could also be symptomatic of working such long hours that cleaning and organizing feel like a second, unpaid job. There’s also a whiff of sexism in the way Chiaki is depicted as a failure for being disorganized, messy, and single; it’s hard to imagine a salaryman character attributing his romantic shortcomings to a sinkful of dirty coffee cups or a jumbled closet, or viewing the KonMari method as the key to living a better, more fulfilling life.

That lingering note of sexism makes it hard for me to unequivocally endorse The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up. I think Kondo’s basic advice is sound, but I can’t quite shake the feeling that perfectly folded undies are being held up as a badge of true womanhood, rather than an artful way to organize your drawers.

THE LIFE-CHANGING MANGA OF TIDYING UP: A MAGICAL STORY • BY MARIE KONDO, ILLUSTRATED BY YUKO URAMOTO • TRANSLATED BY CATHY HIRANO • TEN SPEED PRESS • NO RATING • 192 pp.

Sound! Euphonium: Welcome to the Kitauji High School Concert Band

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By Ayano Takeda. Released in Japan by Takarajimasha, Inc. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Paul Starr.

One of the biggest surprise licenses from last year was this book, originally released as a stand-alone novel about the struggles of a high school concert band, which got made into a hugely successful anime. Note that I said ‘novel’ and not ‘light novel’ – there are no interstitial pictures in this book, which is the usual way to tell the difference about these sorts of things. But even beyond that, the fact that Sound! Euphonium does not take place in a fantasy world, at a magical academy, or even have Satan working at McDonald’s was a big point against it. But Yen took a chance on licensing the book, and I’m glad they did, as this is really well-written and dramatic, manages to show off in textual form the difficulties of playing music and the difference between ‘really good’ and ‘outstanding’, and most of all, it has in Kumiko one of the most fascinating protagonists I’ve met all year.

Kumiko is not a first person narrator per se, but the POV of the narration never leaves her, so in effect she functions as our eyes and ears for this book. She’s trying to “start anew” at a new high school, but can’t quite escape her concert band past, especially when her new friends also express an interest. Her childhood friend and not-boyfriend Shuuichi is also in the same band, as is her middle-school bandmate Reina. More on Reina later. Kumiko did not have a pleasant middle-school band experience, as most concert bands, where some instruments are more popular than others and some people get to solo while others don;t, is filled with politics and infighting, and the confrontations just wore her down. To a large degree the book is about helping Kumiko rediscover her love of the euphonium and band in general, and showing her how important it is to not simply glide along and have fun.

I had first heard of the anime as a “yuri anime”, and therefore was rather amused to note that the first half of the book featured precisely none of that. Indeed, Reina appears far less than you’d expect – she may as well be a minor character – until the festival, when Kumiko desperately tries to avoid Shuuichi asking her out (as it might actually force her to confront her feelings for him) and grabs Reina, saying they’re going together. Reina is fine with this, and takes Kumiko on a very romantic festival date. Despite Kumiko clearly being set up with Shuuichi, and Reina admitting that she’s in love with their teacher (what is it with Japan and teacher-student romances?!), it’s Kumiko and Reina who have the most chemistry together, as their body language and conversation reads like a couple rapidly falling for one another. I’d also like to mention Asuka here, the most fascinating character after Kumiko. She and Kumiko seem to be contrasted, if not as rivals, then as mirrors of each other, and their few scenes together are also charged – not with romantic tension, but with just tension. They ended up being my favorite scenes in the book, actually.

The book ends with the Kyoto Competition, and indeed ends somewhat suddenly with the reveal of the results. It was meant to be a stand-alone book, but the author ended up writing two more novels and some short stories afterwards, which were adapted into another anime season. So far Yen has only licensed this book, but I’d like to see it do well so we can see more of this cast – especially Kumiko and Asuka. Highly recommended.

Dorohedoro, Vol. 21

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By Q Hayashida. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Hibana. Released in North America by Viz. Translated by AltJapan Co., Ltd. (Hiroko Yoda + Matt Alt).

I’ve often talked about the fact that I find Dorohedoro very satisfying to read while at the same time immensely confusing. It’s a series with a lot going on, and there’s a lot of characters and locations (and many of the characters also wear masks!). But we’re getting near to the end of the series now, and the author is finally starting to dish out some answers. And it works: this volume felt very strong plot-wise, and I was able to follow Ai’s explanations of what happened to him for the most part. It’s quite a tragic fate, like many of the other fates in Dorohedoro, but looking back on everything with Caiman, Ai, Kai and Aikawa you can nod your head and say “yeah, that makes sense”. Well, except maybe for Caiman, which is openly lampshaded when Nikaido admits she has no idea who he is now.

Speaki9ng of Nikaido, there’s an explanation of that “cliffhanger” ending from last time – she’s turning into a devil more and more, and is now much taller and getting cloven feet. Unfortunately for her, En is back in business, and he’s still obsessed with having her as his partner, but we’ll see how that goes. In fact, most of the band is back together, as Shin is sane again and reunited with Noi, and the rest of the decapitated heads are getting bodies again (though almost immediately they’re mushroomed by En, who’s trying to save them). And yes, poor Ebisu is still roundly humiliated, though as always it’s in the most hilarious ways – En remotely creates a mushroom body from one that’s on Ebisu’s head, which causes her head to end up as the remote body’s crotch – something she finds hilarious, as you’d expect. What follows is a long, protracted mushroom war, as En shows off how powerful and clever he really is – though even he may be no match for the devil Chidaruma, who is gloating triumphantly on the cover for a reason.

I know I’ve said this in seemingly every Dorohedoro review to date, but my God there is a lot of truly graphic violence in this book. Decapitations, eviscerations, blood and gore on almost every page. There’s casual deaths, casual eye gouging torture, and Ai’s entire flashback, which is filled with flesh-melting horror. This all culminates in Chidaruma slaughtering everyone in Haru’s flying house, so that the house itself begins to bleed. Never let it be said that Hayashida doesn’t know how to do grotesque imagery. The art is a plus as always, and even though I still sometimes get a few of the characters confused (particular when they have masks on), it doesn’t matter because there’s always something on the page to marvel at. Dorohedoro is speeding towards a climax (I think – it’s still running in Japan), and now that the books are a good 80-90 pages longer each time, there’s even more reason to run out and buy it.

Psycome: Murder Anniversary and the Reverse Memorial

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By Mizuki Mizushiro and Namanie. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Nicole Wilder.

It is somewhat odd that I feel reassured at Psycome’s lack of ambition. At heart, this is meant to be a broad comedy, and as such it can’t give in too much to its premise. Despite having an innocent man in a prison devoted to making teen murderers into assassins, despite befriending a truly insane timebomb of a gas-mask wearing girl, despite finding out that your little sister seems to be genuinely disturbed… despite all that, the tone of this series has been light. Everything skews towards the cliche, towards the trope, towards the predictable. And yet you don’t really mind, because despite its flaws it’s sort of fun. That especially holds true for the 4th book, where we meet Eiri’s family and find they are a machine-gun nest of cliches.

Eiri herself is already quite the cliche, ticking off all the tsundere boxes very neatly. In case you think that she earned marks good enough to be able to leave the school, save your breath: she came in second to last, beaten only by the mohawk guy who spent the midterms in the nurse’s office. But her family have called for her, and so she must go. They’ve also asked for Kyousuke, which she finds disturbing. As for Ayaka and Renko, their grades WERE good enough to let them go outside for the reward, so they come along as well, because leaving Kyousuke and Eiri alone together is unthinkable. (Sorry, Maina, you’re just not important enough, though you do get the cover of the next book.) So everyone’s off to visit Eiri’s palatial home, which has the inscrutable mother, the little sister whose love for her sibling has turned to hatred, and the big brother who is creepy and a bit of a pervert. Oh yes, and murderous twin 9-year-olds, one male, one female, who are at least not named Hansel and Gretel. Eiri’s been called back home to try to solve the big problem: her inability to kill.

The climax of this volume is actually a giant anticlimax – by design, to be fair – and so most of the meat is devoted to the relationship between Eiri and her younger sister, Kagura. The moment you see Kagura and she attacks Eiri, you can see the entirety of her plotline laid out from end to end, and sure enough it’s all there – the hero worship, the frustration at being second best, the anger at being second best to an assassin who can’t kill. And of course the buried love she still has for her sister, which ends up coming out even after Eiri refuses to kill an innocent child to prove herself. The point of this book is to get Eiri – and by extension her family – to admit that it’s not that she can’t kill but that she doesn’t want to – that she finds it wrong. This is tied into the murder of her father as a child – Eiri felt the agony of her father’s death and her subsequent grieving, and even though she wants revenge, every time she made the attempt she though of others going through that and stopped. It’s good character development. Honestly, it’s more earned than the “I guess I do love you” tacked on at the end, which seems designed to keep things on a more even keel romance-wise – Kyousuke having spent much of the volume wondering if he really does love Renko.

Psycome is never going to be “really good”, but it’s still reasonably funny, and I like many of the characters. And we keep getting hints of the endgame plot, which I suspect will happen in the final volume. Recommended if you don’t mind cliches.

Beasts of Abigaile, Vol. 1

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By Spica Aoki. Released in Japan as “Bara Kangoku no Kemono-tachi” by Akita Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Princess. Released in North America digitally by Seven Seas. Translated by Alethea and Athena Nibley, Adapted by Marykate Jasper.

Once again, a manga I had very few expectations for manages to please me greatly. I always enjoy it when this happens, particularly when it’s shoujo. The premise of this seemed to be ‘Werewolf reverse harem’, which did not inspire confidence, and I admit that when I first read the words ‘Alpha, Beta and Omega’ midway through, my heart sank. But it won me over anyway, partly due to the art (the artist is really good at facial expressions, particularly in the case of Nina, the heroine) and partly due to Nina herself, who is a great combination of spunky, stubborn, and sort of goofy in the best way. We haven’t seen a title from the ‘Princess’ magazine in quite some time – Tokyopop used to do a lot of their stuff before they shuttered their manga line – and I like that it feels different from the Big Three’s shoujo titles.

The premise is that Nina and her uncle have arrived at the vaguely Mediterranean country of Ruberia, apparently to get a fresh start after getting bullied so bad in Japan she had to flee the country. Unfortunately, no sooner has she gone exploring then an escaped convict runs past her, and when she tries to stop him using her martial arts fighting skills (because yes, she’s that sort of heroine), he tackles her and bites her neck, causing her to pass out. After some brief suspicious guards catch the convict, they shove her into the paddy wagon as well. When she comes to, she finds herself on the prison island off the coast of the country, which turns out to be populated by werewolves, all of whom are prisoners of sadistic human guards, trained and tortured to be servants to the country’s human population. Which is troubling enough, except… Nina now has wolf ears and a tail too! Did the bite turn her into a werewolf? And how will she survive?

As you may have guessed by the description above, this title is gloriously silly and over the top. If you take it seriously, I’m not sure it would actually work. The characters are not blazingly original – we get the seemingly nice guy who’s actually in thrall to the Queen Bee, we get the incredibly jealous girl who hates Nina getting the attention of her love (no doubt she will attack Nina viciously in Volume 2), and of course we get Roy, who’s the sort of smug but sexy and mysterious jerk that every shoujo manga needs. Luckily, Nina fights back – in fact, the final moment in this volume made me laugh out loud at a shoujo cliche getting subverted, and I daren’t spoil it. Nina also ends up in a pack of trans werewolves, and while they tend towards the stereotypes and sometimes a punchline, they don’t seem to be there to be made fun of, which is nice.

Basically, as long as you don’t mind werewolf cliches (I did mention the alpha thing), this is a hell of a lot of fun, especially Nina. I look forward to the next volume.

If It’s For My Daughter, I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord, Vol. 1

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By CHIROLU and Truffle. Released in Japan as “Uchi no Musume no Tame Naraba, Ore Moshikashitara Maou mo Taoserukamo Shirenai” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Matthew Warner.

The most popular light novel genre at the moment, both here and in Japan, is “generic RPG fantasy world”. In this genre, however, you can do all sorts of things. There are isekai variations, and novels where it really is a game. There are harem romances, and dark gritty tragedies. These days it seems like a popular editorial request is “do fantasy but with __________”. And with this particular title, we’re getting another type of popular Japanese genre, the “single dad raises his daughter/adopted daughter (it’s always a daughter) and she’s really really goddamn cute” genre. The dad can be bumbling or competent, but the adorableness of the girl is never in question. (The light novel genre being male-oriented, the single mom raising her adorable son has not to my knowledge had any series, but hope springs eternal.) And now we have this series, where the adopted girl is a devil abandoned by her people for mystery reasons, and she’s just cute as the dickens.

The first 2/3 of this book is basically running on that premise. Our hero is a seasoned young adventurer who looks like the standard ‘generic guy’ you see in these sorts of fantasy book (Smartphone guy looks exactly the same). He runs into Latina in the woods, starving and unable to speak human languages, and decides to bring her home on the basis of being unable to let her starve to death or be eaten by monsters. Then he and the couple who run the inn he lives in slowly watch her grow up, learn to speak and read human, show she can use magic, wait tables, and wrap absolutely everyone around her finger. Part of the fun in this book is seeing Dale (the dad) turning into a complete over the top loon about his new daughter. Actually, one drawback is that I wish we’d had a bit more of Dale as he was before he met Latina – we see flashes of it, but it loses a bit of impact as we barely know him before he’s a doting dad.

The last third is far more serious, and at first I thought it might be dealing with Latina being bullied by her peers, but no, she’s being emotionally and mentally abused by her new teacher, who lost her family to devils and has gone half-insane to rage and prejudice as a result. Latina’s attempts to hide what’s being done to her with “everything is fine” even as she looks more and more worn and exhausted will ring a bell with anyone who ever dealt with a bullied child “staying strong”. The whole section is brutal, and it wouldn’t have nearly half the impact it does without most of the book being variations on “look at the daily life of this cutie”. It is nice to see the entire town seemingly standing up to protect her, including Dale, whose cold rage is absolutely terrifying to the temple who employed the teacher.

There are 5 volumes in this series, and each one shows Latina slightly older, so I suspect we won’t have cute antics for the whole series. But if you enjoy series like Yotsuba&!, Sweetness and Lightning, or Bunny Drop (the first half – I hope) and wish it had more swords and sorcery, I think you’d greatly enjoy this series.

Chihayafuru, Vol. 3

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By Yuki Suetsugu. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Be Love. Released in North America digitally by Kodansha Comics. Translated by Ko Ransom.

There’s a lot going on in this volume of Chihayafuru, which is starting to find its feet. We gain a new member of the karuta club, which has now hit the required five. Tsutomu, aka “Desk-kun”, is an introverted, small, nerdy guy who seems to be devoted to studies and has few friends. But once Chihaya sets her sights on him (which involves, at one point, kidnapping him), and he realizes that one of the otehr players on the team is in fact the #1 stude3nt in the school, he wonders if karuta can help his focus in other areas as well. I like Tsutomu. He brings a rookie lack of confidence that this sort of series always needs, and his crisis of faith towards the end of the book is both dramatic and understandable. What’s more, his suggestion of playing karuta with the poem-side down leads to a match of pure memorization between Taichi and Chihaya, and gives him his first big triumph.

Chihaya’s learning a lot in this volume, mostly as they now have a full team of five, which means that they have to learn how to play Karuta as a team – not that they play together, but such things as setting the right order for the matches and having trust that your other teammates are going to be fine. She’s also thrown off by one of her first opponents, who even gets her precious Chihaya card, which makes you feel like she’s going to break. (Her inner monologue has everything sounding far away to her, thus ruining her hearing advantage. I like this detail, as it makes it sound like she’s about to pass out – I’ve had that feeling myself.) Oddly, the true heart and leader of the team ends up being Taichi, who always knows the right think to say to Chihaya to snap her out of whatever funk she’s in. I suspect this is meant to be a love triangle with Arata, but given Arata’s ongoing absence it’s easier to fall on the Taichi side.

This volume is almost all karuta, but not entirely – there’s a “training session” at Taichi’s house that is just an excuse to give Chihaya a surprise birthday party. Sadly, it’s ruined when his incredibly strict mother comes home early, and the girls have to take off, but they at least get to meet up later (and we get an Arata text message cameo.) Chihaya continues to be the main reason to read the manga – Taichi may be the heart of the team, but she’s the heart of this series, and her incredible emotional ups and downs make for thrilling reading. Karuta isn’t just ‘let’s have fun and make friends’ anymore – by the end of the volume, the entire team is thinking ‘I want to win’ like it’s a mantra. Playing in a competitive sport means pushing your limits, and not slacking off. There’s a cliffhanger here, and Vol. 4 isn’t on Kodansha’s schedule yet, but I hope it comes soon. Unmissable.

Master Keaton, Vol. 11

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If you’re a connoisseur of British crime procedurals, you’ve undoubtedly watched Midsomer Murders, England’s answer to Murder, She Wrote. It isn’t the edgiest or smartest mystery series on television, but it is among the most consistently enjoyable, delivering a satisfying answer to the question, “Whodunnit?” at the end of every episode. Much of the series’ appeal lies with its formula: someone commits a ghastly murder, prompting DCI Barnaby to scrutinize the crime scene, interrogate reluctant witnesses, and suss out hidden clues before assembling the suspects to reveal the killer’s identity and motives. This formula is flexible enough to offer a new murder scenario every week, yet predictable enough to reassure viewers that there’s a payoff for keeping track of the subplots and false leads that frustrate Barnaby’s efforts to solve the mystery.

Master Keaton — a joint effort by Hokusai Katsushika and Naoki Urasawa — offers the same kind of experience in manga form. Every volume features an assortment of mysteries, all solved by the brilliant investigator Taichi Hiraga Keaton. (In an original touch, Keaton works for an insurance agency, though he frequently moonlights as a private eye.) Though the stories’ denouements occasionally veer into Scooby Doo territory — more on that later — Katsushika and Urasawa have a knack for spinning a good yarn, whether the story involves lost Nazi gold or a conscience-stricken assassin.

One key to Katsushika and Urasawa’s success is that they carefully adhere to the same basic rules as Midsomer Murders, setting each mystery in a community where resentments fester, secrets abound, and strong personalities clash. Katsushika and Urasawa put a fresh spin on this storytelling technique by choosing a new locale for each story, rather than limiting the action to a fictional English county, a la Midsomer. In volume eleven, for example, Keaton flits from East Germany to the Scottish highlands to a haunted London mansion. As disparate as these settings may be, each is as much “a cauldron” or “microcosm” as a country village — to borrow a phrase from Midsomer creator Anthony Horowitz — thus creating the right setting “for something unpleasant — a murder, for example — to take place.”

Consider “The Lost Genius Director,” one of the shortest, most tightly plotted stories in volume 11. In just two pages, Katsushika and Urasawa create a virtual “village” populated with vivid characters: a perfectionist director, his devoted wife, a vain leading man, and a nervous producer who’s caught between the director’s vision and the bottom line. All of these characters are living and working in close proximity on the set, clashing over the director’s insistence that the cast re-shoot several key scenes. When the director is found dangling from a noose, Keaton discovers a video of the victim’s final moments, a video that first implicates, then exonerates, the most obvious suspect. This narrative feint makes the actual “reveal” more satisfying, as we come away from the story feeling as if we were just a step or two behind Keaton in solving the crime.

The few stories that falter do so because Katsushika and Urasawa violate this second unspoken rule of whodunnits. In “Love from the Otherworld” and “Lost Beyond the Wall,” the endings feel arbitrary; there simply aren’t enough clues to justify the outcome of the story. The problem is especially acute in “Otherworld,” a supernatural mystery that plays out like a classic Scooby Doo episode: a book publisher hires Keaton to investigate a ghost who’s been roaming the halls of his mansion. Though it doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to realize that one of the household members is, in fact, “the ghost,” the story is so compressed that we don’t learn enough about the characters to independently arrive at the same conclusion as Keaton. More frustrating still, the denouement is handled in such a bald, clumsy fashion that the culprit all but declares, “And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids and that darn dog!”

It’s easy to overlook the few clunkers, however, as Katsushika and Urasawa clearly have a deep love for the mystery genre. Nowhere is that more evident in “Return of the Super Sleuth?!” and “Pact on Ben-Tan Mountain,” two stories that knowingly borrow elements from Rear Window and Strangers on a Train. Both stories honor the spirit of the source material, preserving the most important details while finding new and surprising ways to resolve these famous plotlines. Equally important, Katsushika and Urasawa don’t take any narrative shortcuts on the way to revealing whodunnit, granting the reader the same delicious sense of closure characteristic of Midsomer Murders — or, I might add, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Recommended.

A review copy was provided by VIZ Media.

MASTER KEATON, VOL. 11 • STORY BY HOKUSAI KATSUSHIKA AND NAOKI URASAWA, ART BY NAOKI URASAWA • TRANSLATED BY JOHN WERRY • VIZ MEDIA • RATING: TEEN+ (OLDER TEENS) • 318 pp.

Requiem of the Rose King, Vol 6

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Requiem of the Rose King Volume 6 by Aya Kanno

My only minor quibble with this series is that as it progresses, I sometimes have difficulty telling all the blonde Englishmen apart. However, once I’m further into each volume I start remembering the more subtle aspects of Kanno’s character designs and then I can tell who is who.

One of the themes of this series is the brutality of war and the psychological cost associated with making kings, both with those who seek power through manipulation and the kings themselves who end up as pawns in a bigger game of statesmanship. Richard and Henry have found a peace with each other that is utterly separate from their hidden identities as opposing Tudor and Yorks. While Richard as the central character of this manga is undoubtedly fascinating, I enjoyed the way this volume focused on the kingmakers Buckingham and Warwick, their varying relationships with Richard and the hazards of trying to seize power through putting someone forward for the throne.

Kanno’s artistic and surreal portrayal of Richard’s psychological torment and the horrors of war is a highlight in this series. The battle that Richard fights is made even more confusing by a fog that envelops the troops, causing the soldiers to be uncertain if they are fighting their own side or the enemy. As Richard heads towards the vengeance he desires for the death of his beloved father, he’s going to be even more overset when he finds out just who his Henry really is. It always feels like there’s quite a long wait between volumes, but this is one series that I’m going to be rereading from start to finish as soon as the final volume comes out, just to be able to get swept up in this fascinating story again.

Paying to Win in a VRMMO, Vol. 3

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By Blitz Kiva and Kuwashima Rein. Released in Japan as “VRMMO wo Kane no Chikara de Musou suru” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Elizabeth Ellis.

The afterword mentions that this volume’s story was not part of the original webnovel, but was especially written for the books in order to try to flesh out Sakurako/Kirschwasser’s character, as she doesn’t get much to do in the main series. She gets a lot more to do here, and I like her determination and devotion to the game, but I wish that we’d gotten a little bit more of the mysterious backstory she has – it’s hinted she’s “had a rough life”, but that doesn’t really go anywhere, and we don’t have any flashbacks to how she met Ichiro. The author, in the afterword, notes that Sakurako’s age was a factor – not with him, but with the editors, who apparently think that being a Christmas Cake makes you unable to be a heroine. Bleah. That said, her scenes were good, even if the novel, understandably, feels like it’s just marking time.

The fight between Nem and Iris occupies most of this volume, and you feel frustration with both of them, though obviously far more with Nem. I kept feeling a sort of tension regarding their real-life identities – given Megumi’s irrational jealousy of Iris, finding out her real-life identity would be catastrophic, as she can and would destroy Iris’ life. Fortunately, this is likely not that serious a series, and instead the whole confrontation seems to be more of an object lesson than anything else. As for Iris, when she’s putting herself down adn indecisive she shows off her actual age – ironically, it’s only when tearing Ichiro apart verbally that she really comes alive, and I’m pleased that any romance, if there is any, is far away – I much prefer Iris wondering why on earth everybody else falls for him.

Ichiro himself spends most of this volume in the real world, meeting with the creator of Narrow Fantasy Online and also talking about his worldview with an AI that is one of the game’s sysadmins. This section serves more as setup for future volumes than anything else, but it does feature Ichiro being far less irritating than he was in the first two books. That said, his lack of presence in the game until the very end means that there’s not as much ‘parody’ in this story that’s meant to parody a certain type of genre, even if you add in obvious fanservice like the return of the Kirihitters. The main thing I enjoyed about this volume are the small details that come up throughout the book- I won’t go into specifics, but a description here, a character reveal there. It’s the sort of volume where the little things distract you more than the main plot and thrust of the book itself, which – as I said above – feels like it’s treading water. Which it is, that’s what it was designed to do.

So this is still a solid, but not great series. I hope the next volume features more of Ichiro being ludicrous and Iris screaming at him, which let’s face it is why I read this by now.

After Hours, Vol. 1

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By Yuhta Nishio. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Hibana. Released in North America by Viz. Translated by Abby Lehrke.

There is something of a history in yuri manga of the protagonists realizing their feelings for each other while still in school. Sometimes it’s just them, sometimes we get another couple, and sometimes everyone in the school seems to be gay, but the theme is “students”. After Hours, therefore, with its relationship between a shy 24-year-old college graduate and the 30-year-old DJ she meets at a club, is a breath of fresh air for no reason other than the fact that it’s about two adults. Fortunately, there’s a lot more to it than just that, and in fact the ‘yuri’ part of the volume is touched on a lot less than it is in those school stories. These two meet, hook up that evening, and any angst or worry they have has nothing to do with the fact that they’re both girls. It’s great to see.

Emi is the blonde on the cover, and she and her friend are going out clubbing, something Emi is not really wild about. She’s even less wild when her friend hooks up immediately and leaves her to fend for herself. Luckily she’s saved by Kei, who works at said club. The first chapter may have been a one-shot that got turned into a series, as it’s really simple: they get on, Kei invites her to come over and look at her etchings… erm, collection of old records, and things end up progressing from there. Even the morning after, aside from a brief “OMG what did I just do!” look from Emi, is really sweet. Most of the rest of the first volume stays at that simmer, though it’s apparent that when Vol. 2 comes out there may be a bit more angst and drama. Emi is unemployed at the start, and dialogue hints that she’s living in an apartment with a guy… who she’s in the process of breaking up with. Much of this happens on the edges of the story, as Emi is understandably reluctant to bring this up with Kei, though she tries once or twice.

The other reason to read this manga is the excellent look it gives into Japanese club culture. Kei is a DJ, and shows Emi how to be a VJ and provide images for her songs about halfway through the book. It shows the fun and rush of doing these things, while a flashback of Kei’s shows how difficult it can be as well, particularly when you’re just starting out. (Kei is very laid-back and knowing for most of the present day stuff, and it’s nice to see that she used to be a ball of pent-up frustration and anger.) There’s a large group of clubbers here, almost all men, but they seem nice (accidental Jagermeister shots aside), and also seem to understand that Emi and Kei are in a relationship without it ever being brought up. After Hours is a yuri title, but the yuri in the first volume seeks, for once, to make things LESS awkward – Emi and Kei bond very fast, much faster than I think they would have if Kei had been a man. I really enjoyed the first volume, and hope Vol. 2 comes out soon (it’s not out in Japan yet, I believe.)

In Another World With My Smartphone, Vol. 3

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By Patora Fuyuhara and Eiji Usatsuka. Released in Japan as “Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Andrew Hodgson.

The author and reader are clearly settling in for the long haul here in this third volume of Smartphone. ON the author’s end, he’s become aware that he wants to tell a long, convoluted (if ridiculous) story, so is starting to add more key backstory and introduce characters who may not obviously influence the plot right away. Indeed, he goes a bit too far in the other direction – the new possible villain or possible ally, Kaworu… um, sorry, Ende… is casually introduced, implied to be important to both the past and present of this world, and then just goes away for the rest of the book. I’m all for foreshadowing, but again, Smartphone guy is keeping it real and making it as thuddingly obvious as possible. Fortunately, the rest of Smartphone is also the same as always, which means totally ridiculous and compulsively readable.

On the cover, as you can see, we have Sakura from Sakura Taisen… erm, Yae, whose country we visit at the start of the book. This allows Touya to singlehandedly put down a war with nothing but a few swipes from his phone – even finding out some of his foes are undead and can’t be killed by his normal go-to means is only a prelude to him trying something even more ludicrous and over the top, which works a charm, of course. He also manages to take out another “Monarch”, this one being a twofer combo of Gamera and a giant snake. Naturally, they soon become adorable plushie versions of themselves, as Touya owns them so hard the entire harem thinks he’s being too cruel. He gains access to a floating Garden of Babylon, complete with a gynoid servant who is easily the nest addition in the book. Touya’s main harem are all just as pure as he is, so a deadpan robot girl who constantly makes sexual innuendo and comes on to him was desperately needed. Unlike the stupid extra story from the last book, I don’t mind Cesca at all because both her dialogue and Touya’s reactions to same are entirely in character.

Speaking of the harem, I admit to being rather surprised at how fast things are advancing on that front. Clearly the author has realized that a) there’s no point in dragging out the ‘will they confess?’ any longer given that they’re all too pure to go any further than kissing anyway, and b) given this is a world where it’s OK to take up to 20 wives provided you can in fact be rich enough to support 20 wives, ‘who is best girl?’ is mostly irrelevant anyway. I was impressed with Linze for taking the advantage on the kissing front, showing off that she may be shy most of the time but is secretly the bolder of the twins. I was a bit less thrilled with Yumina basically already admitting that Sue, her little girl cousin, will also be part of the harem once she grows up, but I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. I was also amused that he asked advice from God (remember this all started with God?) on how to deal with this, and gets a pep talk not only from the main God but also the God of Love, who judging by the illustration and behavior, is Marielle from Log Horizon.

One of the themes of this book is that Touya completely does not realize how ridiculously OP and amazing he is, because he tends to think of it as “I did very little to achieve this, therefore it wasn’t all that great”. Combine that with him not realizing why the girls all like him, and he’s very much harem protagonist material. That said, it’s the rare harem novel that actually takes the hero aside and literally has two gods telling him he’s being foolish and to try being a bit more selfish once in a while. That brings me to my last shuddering realization about this series: I can’t in good conscience call it bad anymore. Yes, it is terminally ridiculous (the scene where our hero builds an entire hot spring for the hotel he used to stay in in approximately five minutes may set a new record for laughable), and the lead is such a ridiculously overpowered twink that anyone who takes isekai seriously will be grinding their teeth, but by god, it’s fun.

Uncomfortably Happily

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Uncomfortably HappilyCreator: Yeon-sik Hong
Translator: Hellen Jo
U.S. publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
ISBN: 9781770462601
Released: June 2017
Original release: 2012
Awards: Manhwa Today Award

Lately it seems as though there has been something of a renaissance or Korean literature in English translation. Korean comics haven’t yet experienced quite the same kind of resurgence, but they do continue to be licensed and translated. One of the most recent and notable manhwa releases in English is Yeon-sik Hong’s aptly named Uncomfortably Happily. Previously published in France in 2013 under the title Historie d’un Couple (History of a Couple), Uncomfortably Happily was originally released in Korea in two volumes in 2012 where it won the Manhwa Today Award. Drawn and Quarterly’s English-language edition of the work collects the entirety of Uncomfortably Happily in a single volume and features a translation by Hellen Jo, an accomplished comics creator and illustrator in her own right. The volume also includes a personal essay by Jo. Uncomfortably Happily is Hong’s first major personal work, a memoir of the short time he and his wife lived in the Korean countryside. Prior to its release, Hong was predominantly involved in commercial creative projects.

Yeon-sik Hong and Sohmi Lee are recently married and looking for a new home; their current apartment is on loan to Yeon-sik from one of his previous publishers and it’s past time that they move on. Since they’ll need to leave anyway, the couple decides to take the opportunity to find a place that’s more suited to their needs. Somewhere quiet and less complicated, congested, and expensive than city life in Seoul; somewhere they can both focus on their creative work. Eventually the two become enamored with a house and a bit of land for rent on the top of a mountain in rural Pocheon. With the clean air, beautiful countryside, and calm environment it seems like the perfect place for them–at least at first. Yeon-sik, Sohmi, and their three cats make the move only to discover that living in the country brings along with it its own sorts of challenges. But despite the isolation, inadequate public transportation, confrontations with hostile hikers, inclement weather, and encroaching development, they slowly build a home for themselves. It can be difficult at times, though, and some things never really change–financial hardship, personal anxieties, and looming deadlines don’t simply disappear and it’s just as easy to find distractions in the countryside as it is in the city.

Uncomfortably Happily, page 131Though I currently live in a more urban environment, I grew up and have spent most of my life in a very rural area. In Uncomfortably Happily, Hong captures beautifully what it is like to live in the country, both the good and the bad, the satisfaction and the stress. The volume’s chapters are divided by season, the narrative perfectly conveying the rhythms of the natural world and the lifestyle that is so closely dependent upon those rhythms, including the winters that seem to last forever with no relief in sight. Hong’s style of illustration is relatively simple but the attention given to the detail of the land- and cityscapes establish a real sense of place. In addition to the external world, the visuals in Uncomfortably Happily also reveal Hong’s internal mindscapes and imaginative fantasies. Though the subject matter can often be quite serious, Hong takes a charming and lighthearted approach. The small family (animals included) frequently break into musical numbers and Hong’s psyche manifests on the page in both amusing and affecting ways. But while humor is generally present in Uncomfortably Happily, the manhwa is also a sincere and honest work.

Uncomfortably Happily is a straightforward yet layered story of the day-to-day life of a newlywed couple going through a major transition in their life. There is the move to the countryside itself and all that entails, but Uncomfortably Happily is also the story about Hong’s emotional and mental turmoil as he struggles with professional and personal insecurities. At the beginning of Uncomfortably Happily Hong is already approaching burnout and the potential for a breakdown doesn’t seem to be very far behind; meanwhile Lee is making tremendous progress in her career as a picture book illustrator. It was bound to happen eventually regardless of location, but Hong having to confront and come to terms with his own abilities and limitations, wants and needs while living on a secluded mountaintop has a certain poetic appropriateness to it. While Hong’s particular situation and psychological journey are certainly unique, the themes explored in the manhwa are universal; Uncomfortably Happily is an engrossing and immensely relatable work.

Thank you to Drawn & Quarterly for providing a copy of Uncomfortably Happily for review.