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Girls’ Last Tour, Vol. 1

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By Tsukumizu. Released in Japan as “Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou” by Shinchosha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Kurage Bunch. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by Amanda Haley.

As I read this manga, I kept wondering which of the many slice-of-life series starring young girls drawn in a moe style it reminded me of. I’d said on twitter that it was like a post-apocalyptic Yotsuba&!, but at times it also reminds me of Strawberry Marshmallow, Sunshine Sketch, and Non Non Biyori. The key thing that connects all of those titles is that they’re all slice-of-life – note that Girls’ Last tour doesn’t really remind me of other post-apocalyptic mangas where survivors wander the remains of the Earth. Because while that’s the gimmick here, it’s not what keeps people coming back to the title week after week. You come back to see Chito and Yuuri, the two leads, discuss reading, or find hot water so they can take a bath, or meet up with other survivors who help them get up to higher levels of the wasted world they drive their small, cute tank through. It’s… relaxing.

It’s never really made clear, at least not in this volume, exactly what happened to the world that the two girls are wandering through, and honestly it’s not all that important yet. All we know is that there are multiple levels, they are decaying and falling apart, and that for the first 2/3 of the book or so, the girls are the only two survivors we meet. Their concerns are basic: food, heat, shelter, and finding a way to get to a level where there might be more of all three. As you’d expect with a slice of life title, the girls have contrasting personalities. Chito is serious, studious, and does most of the thinking for the two; Yuuri is cheery, dazed, a bit of an idiot, and provides the muscle and shooting skills. And yes, they drive around in a tank and have guns, though we don’t really run into much of anything in this first volume that would require them. Unlike a lot of the slice-of-life seinen titles out recently, there’s not even any faux yuri tease in this – the girls are simply friends, with one perhaps finding the other one more aggravating than she’d like.

About 2/3 of the way through, they meet an older man who is trying to map out the desolate landscape they’re both exploring. Sadly, thanks to a malfunctioning elevator, his maps end up scattered to the four winds (this is even lampshaded right before it happens, with one of the girls talking about the poor design of the freight elevator they’re riding and how it needs railings). This also shows off that even if the girls can slide into moe sameness a bit (I still tend to forget their names), they both have a drive to explore more, to find out what’s beyond the next level, and they convince the understandably distraught mapmaker to do the same thing. Girls’ Last Tour is exploring a landscape quietly and peacefully with two cute young girls. It’s not just a slice-of-life moe manga, it’s trying to be the last slice-of-life moe manga you’d read before the end times cast the universe into heat death. And for the first volume, at least, that’s not too bad.

Strike the Blood, Vol. 6

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By Gakuto Mikumo and Manyako. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jeremiah Bourque.

Sigh. And here we are again, blank screen. It’s you vs. me, as I try to fill you up with another 500 or so words about the latest volume of Strike the Blood. The goal, as always, is not to simply cut and paste from the previous five reviews. As always, this goal tends to be thwarted by the plot, characterization, and writing in Strike the Blood, whose cookie-cutter quality means that the same things happen over and over again. Let’s face it, the big surprise in this volume was that for once Kojou is not biting a different girl to gain more superpowers… though in an icky way, I suppose that his possessed younger sister may count. I’d prefer to think that it does not. Other than that, though, it’s business as usual at Strike the Blood, Inc.

Even the covers depress me, as you can’t even get the ‘new harem member gets the cover’ cliche that you do with most other series of this sort. No, Strike the Blood now has 16 volumes out in Japan, and it’s Yukinas all the way down. The ‘new girl’ this time, sort of, is Nina Adelard, an immortal alchemist with a tragic past that’s tied into Kanon’s own tragic past. She spends most of the book either occupying Asagi’s body or taking on her appearance, and I suspect her ending up as a “fairy-like” creature will allow her to take on a role in future books similar to a magical girl mascot. (It also reminds me of Index, as much of this series does, though for once I believe that Strike the Blood actually did this first.) The plot involves lots of alchemy and liquid metal, and a few guards end up dead in horrible ways, but aren’t dwelled on.

Asagi also ends up dead briefly, which might have had more impact if there was any chance that it would stick. We do get more concrete proof that as long as she’s on the island she’s effectively immortal. Unfortunately, with no computer problems to solve this time, Asagi is in full on “tsundere anime girl” mode, which means wacky cooking antics and exploding stoves. (Yukina, of course, is also in cliche mode, reacting any time Koujo even briefly pays attention to another attractive female.) Everyone else fills their function: Kanon is waifish and still somewhat broken, Natsuki flits around saving the day and being the cute loli teacher. and Yaze continues to get hints that he may one day be relevant to the plot without actually being so in this book.

And so as ever I’m left with saying the same thing. The writing is good, moves quickly, the fights are exciting. But this could be written by the Light Noveltron 3000. And there’s still no real sign of any developing main plot, anything that might carry over from book to book. Things are neatly wrapped up, and I suspect Book 7 will have another danger to the island that is also neatly wrapped up. Strike the Blood is, when you get down to it, Strike the Blood. It is shaped like itself, and can’t really be reviewed as anything but that.

Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun, Vol. 7

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By Izumi Tsubaki. Released in Japan as “Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun” by Square Enix, serialization ongoing in the online magazine Gangan Online. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by Leighann Harvey.

The danger of most comedy titles is that they aren’t funny all the time. Not every joke can land, and sometimes you find yourself merely smiling and them moving on to the next page. That’s why it’s satisfying when you come across a volume that has an even greater number of hits than misses. I won’t say every page is fall-down funny, but the seventh volume of Nozaki-kun has an even higher ratio of laughing out loud than its previous volumes, which says something given that this is one of two manga where I can’t read it on public transit as I do laugh out loud too much. (The other is Oresama Teacher, by the same author.) By now we know the characters so well that we can anticipate what’s going to happen, but that doesn’t make the jokes any less funny. And, as always with this title, everyone plays the straight man or funny man depending on the situation.

The first chapter is a good example, dealing with cell phones and how manga that runs for a long time finds technology moving beyond it. We get gags about the fickleness of shoujo heroines and Nozaki and Sakura’s general ignorance of modern tech themselves (they still have flip phones, and react to smartphone discussion with what can only be called “dull surprise”). You’d think the punchline to the chapter would be Nozaki’s deranged idea of having him and Sakura communicate using cans on a string, the ultimate in low tech. But then Sakura’s general adoration of Nozaki adds to the gags, as does the class reacting to her doing this while having her normal phone sitting on her desk. The capper is two random students jokingly testing the can-and-string phone… and falling in love. Amping up the ridiculous is one of Tsubaki’s strengths.

Elsewhere, we see Miyako going out with her friends drinking for once rather than working on her manga, which actually rebounds on her later when she comes close to missing a deadline. (It’s hilarious but also personally terrifying for her, as she worries that she’ll be given back to Maeno for editing as a punishment.) Seo/Waka shippers get a chapter that is a gift from God, as Wakamatsu, at the advice of his team (who are trying to defuse her in some way), tries confessing to Seo, only to find her reaction to be very un-Seo like. This is the one chapter that defies our expectations a bit, as we expect some sort of ‘non-romance’ reason for Seo running off and getting embarrassed by the whole thing, but no: it’s just that she apparently has difficulty with directness. It’s really, really adorable. Though not as adorable as Sakura “bullying” Nozaki so he can get manga ideas, and getting a bit too much into her role.

Humor is subjective, and I’m sure some people won’t even giggle at any of these. But I found this to be one of the most rewarding volumes of Nozaki-kun to date, and it’s always one of the first things I read when it comes out. Great stuff.

Not many tanukis this time, but they are well-deployed and caught me by surprise.

your name.

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By Makoto Shinkai. Released in Japan by Kadokawa Shoten. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Taylor Engel.

I’m coming at this novel from a somewhat unique perspective, I think, as I am one of the few people reading it who hasn’t already seen the movie first. In fact, the author states he initially wasn’t going to write a novel at all (novelization might be more accurate), feeling that it was a story he felt best told through the medium of the animated movie (in particular, the music used for it). But the novel kept niggling at him, and he finally buckled down and wrote it. It’s from the perspective of its two leads, Mitsuha and Taki, which gives an opportunity to better get inside their heads, but also means we only see scenes they’re involved in. So if people are asking me whether your name. is worth reading if you’ve seen the movie, I can’t tell you that. I can say that by the end of the book I was enjoying it enormously, and I’m very happy I read it.

That said, the book comes with a warning from me to my readers: if you are bothered by second-hand embarrassment in your reading, them parts of this book are going to be like crawling through glass. The main premise involves a bodyswap between a boy and a girl, so we already get the normal ‘I’m acting weird and everyone is puzzled’ scenes, but the kids are also teenagers, meaning there’s lots of weird body issues and teen crushes, leading to the most awkward date ever. That said, both kids are nice, and the contrast between the way-out countryside and the middle of Tokyo was a nice contrast. Mitsuha’s perspective takes up a lot of the beginning and near the end of the book, while Taki’s has most of the middle for obvious plot reasons.

There is romance as well, of course, though it’s done so subtly that it almost crept up on me. At one point during the aforementioned awkward date, Taki’s crush says she can tell he’s in love with someone else, and he’s honestly as puzzled as the reader is by this point. But as things snowball, you can see the depth of feelings grow deeper and deeper, and by the end of the book we are quite content to actually not see the final familial confrontation because we’ve gotten what we wanted. More surprisingly, and without wanting to spoil too much, the ending is not quite as bittersweet as some of Shinkai’s other works, even though it still remains somewhat ambiguous. I have a sneaking suspicion that this may be one of the reasons that this movie has been a bigger hit than any of his other movies – bittersweet is lovely, but doesn’t sell as well.

There are a few niggles – The book may be a bit TOO fast and short, for one. I’d also like to have seen more of Mitsuha vs. her father, and the side characters are not as developed as our leads. There’s also a side story volume coming out in the fall (by a different author) that may expand on this, as it apparently shows the story from other perspectives. But your name. is an emotional journey, and as the book goes on you’ll find yourself turning the pages faster and faster. I can’t speak for those who’ve seen the movie, but if you like romance with a touch of sci-fi, this is definitely worth a buy.

Platinum End, Vol. 2

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Platinum End Volume 2 by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

This is a series that I want to like a little more than I actually do in practice after reading each volume. I thought that the first volume had a lot of potential, but I was a bit worried about some of the themes being a rehash of Death Note. I had a mixed experience with the second volume, finding the first few chapters more interesting than some of the main action depicted in the latter portion of the manga.

Mirai gets struck by a red arrow by a girl who he already had a crush on! This was the part of the manga that I found the most compelling as a reader, because Mirai has been dealing with manipulating people and the complications that ensue in the first volume, but then the situation is reversed in the second volume. This change of dynamic was interesting, and I thought the emotional aspects of being in thrall to someone were well-portrayed as Mirai is suddenly enthusiastic about protecting Saki at all costs, but he clearly would have been willing to help her without being coerced. Saki meanwhile seems to like him well enough but is still signaling her disinterest in a romantic relationship with Mirai in a diplomatic way.

The bulk of the manga deals with a confrontation with Metropoliman in a stadium, where a variety of coerced god-candidates and audience plants end up in a series of revelations and double-cross maneuverings that play out while Mirai and Saki have to sit in the stands like regular audience members, so they don’t end up being a target for the god candidates too. There wasn’t as much dramatic tension in these scenes because most of the time people were yelling variations of “gotcha!” and played out over multiple pages, it got to be a bit too one-note for me. I didn’t very much care for the way an under-aged girl with the god-power of wings was portrayed, with some of the panels like one showing the way she got struck by a red arrow are uncomfortably sexualized.

The art is always a highlight of any Obata title, and for the most part I’m enjoying that, but I’m hoping that the story ends up being a bit more compelling in future volumes. I’m still not finding this title as compelling as Death Note, but that’s a high bar to measure anything by. Although I’m not enjoying Platinum End as much as I hope to, it is still more interesting than many shonen titles.

DAYS, Vols. 1-2

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By Tsuyoshi Yasuda | Published digitally by Kodansha Comics

Fifteen-year-old Tsukushi Tsukamoto doesn’t have any friends. He’s always rushed home after school to be there for his disabled mother, who is raising him on her own after his father passed away. After an eccentric fellow named Jin Kazama saves Tsukushi from bullies, Tsukushi is more than willing to grant Kazama the favor of playing a game of futsal with him. In fact, he runs six miles through the rain in order to fulfill his promise, and though he’s spectacularly awful at the game, he’s also a gutsy idiot and something about his enthusiasm rubs off on his teammates.

As it happens, Tsukushi and Kazama are attending the same high school, Seiseki, which is renowned for its soccer club. They both join, but whereas Kazama is the best of the incoming first years, Tsukushi is the worst, frequently causing the rest of his yearmates to run extra laps due to his ineptitude. The other guys get frustrated, but Tsukushi just works harder than ever. This is the first time he’s ever been part of a group moving in the same direction toward a shared dream, and he’s never had so much fun. The stoic, pro-bound captain, Mizuki, admires this dedication and predicts, “Two years down the road, he’s going to be our captain.” We eventually learn that Mizuki himself started off just as awful.

Little by little, Tsukushi manages to not completely suck, albeit only for brief moments at a time. Because of his ability to rekindle the joy of soccer in others, he is surprisingly chosen for the Interhigh team. Though he makes an error that costs them a penalty kick, he also makes a valiant save that rallies everyone’s spirits. I’m a sucker for those moments when the underdog first hears the crowd cheering for them so, predictably, this moment made me verklempt.

I did, however, have a few doubts about DAYS in the beginning. There are some gags with the bullies that are extremely unfunny, and a recurring bit where Kazama keeps handing Tsukushi panties with which to dry his tears. Too, there was one instance of girls’ boobs appearing (with requisite “boing” sound effect) a panel before we see their faces. I realize that this is a shounen sports manga, but most are, and they’re usually not as juvenile as DAYS is in its opening chapter. Thankfully, it gets better. I especially appreciate Yasuda-sensei’s skill with the poignant two-page spread and the organic way the supporting characters are beginning to be fleshed out. DAYS definitely won me over in the end.

DAYS is ongoing in Japan, where volume 22 has just been released.

Review copies provided by the publisher.

Descending Stories: Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju, Vol. 1

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In the opening pages of Descending Stories, we’re introduced to Yotaro, an amiable ex-con with an unusual plan for going straight: he wants to become a rakugoka, or rakugo artist. To learn the ropes of this venerable performing tradition, Yotaro cajoles Yakumo, a rakugo master, into accepting him as an apprentice — something that Yakumo has resisted doing in the past, even when more suitable candidates have presented themselves. Descending Stories then follows Yotaro’s first clumsy efforts at telling stories, making people laugh, and resisting the temptations of his old life.

Rakugo, for the uninitiated, is Japan’s answer to continuous vaudeville. In lieu of acrobats and jugglers, however, yose (venues) offer customers a steady flow of rakugokas who regale the audience with humorous stories, each adhering to a clearly defined format that begins with the makura (prelude), moves to the hondai (main story), and concludes with the ochi (punchline). Unlike a vaudeville artist — or a manzai duo, for that matter — the rakugoka remains seated while delivering his material, using only two simple props — a fan and a cloth — to convey what’s happening.

In theory, rakugo sounds like an ideal topic for a manga: it’s a storytelling genre that relies almost exclusively on facial expressions and physical gestures to bring the story to life, actions that translate well to a silent, static medium like comics. The audible dimension of a rakugo performance also lends itself to graphic depiction, as a well-chosen typeface can suggest the register, volume, gender, and age of the person speaking. Yet the rakugo performances in Descending Stories capture little of the magic that would explain the genre’s enduring appeal in Japan. Too often, Haruko Kumota cross-cuts between a snippet of performance and a snippet of conversation in which audience members praise the rakugoka‘s technique, or comment on how much everyone else seems to be enjoying themselves. The net result feels more like watching a football game on television than attending a theatrical performance; we can see what’s happening, but the relentless stream of chatter and clumsy framing of the action keep us at arm’s length.

The flatness of these performances stand in sharp contrast to the vibrant story that surrounds them. Though the principal cast is small — Yotaro, Yakumo, and Konatsu, Yakumo’s adopted daughter — Kumota squeezes plenty of dramatic juice out of their interactions. In chapter three, for example, Konatsu accuses Yakumo of murdering her biological father, Sukeroku, who was also an accomplished performer. She vows to exact revenge by taking up rakugo herself, a gesture designed to provoke the staunchly traditionalist Yakumo. “Women can’t perform rakugo,” he tells her:

That’s just the way it is. They can’t enjoy stupidity, for one thing. Even if they can, their art doesn’t deepen as they age. And should they somehow master the art… well, there’s nothing more unpleasant than a woman who can do a good impression of a man. There’s just too much to overcome.

Yet Yakumo is no soap opera villain, intent on crushing the spirit of a plucky heroine; he’s a realist who bears deep — and as yet unrevealed — wounds from collaborating with Konatsu’s dad. He recognizes the depth of Konatsu’s pain, and her sincere desire to preserve her father’s legacy by memorizing and performing his material. As a conciliatory gesture, Yakumo begins reciting “The Naughty Three,” one of Sukeroku’s stories. This eight-panel sequence offers a fleeting glimpse of Yakumo’s true artistry, showing us how he twists his face and bends his torso to portray the story’s main characters. Only a solitary panel of Konatsu sobbing, “My father… He’s alive,” undercuts the effectiveness of the scene, baldly stating what’s apparent from the illustrations.

And that, in a nutshell, is what makes Descending Stories simultaneously frustrating and compelling. On the one hand, Kumota tries so hard to persuade us that rakugo is a funny, spellbinding, and vital tradition that the performances never take flight on the page; even the best scenes are marred by comments that feel like a poke in the ribs: “Didja get it?” On the other hand, Kumota creates such passionate, complex characters that it’s fundamentally impossible to dislike Descending Stories; I want to know whether Yotaro becomes a rakugoka, or if Konatsu finds an outlet for her own storytelling gift. My suggestion: read the omake for insights into rakugo, and read the main chapters for the drama.

DESCENDING STORIES: SHOWA GENROKU RAKUGO SHINJO, VOL. 1 • BY HARUKA KUMOTA • KODANSHA COMICS • RATING: YOUNG ADULT (13+)

I Saved Too Many Girls And Caused The Apocalypse, Vol. 3

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By Namekojirushi and Nao Watanuki. Released in Japan as “Ore ga Heroine o Tasukesugite Sekai ga Little Mokushiroku!?” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Adam Lensenmayer.

I had made much in my review of the first volume of this being a parody of the harem genre, and also talked about the humor in it. Book 3 is sadly lacking in good humor (R is barely in it), and the parody aspect is also starting to slip a little too, as we meet our hero’s female counterpart and find that she’s luring him to the dark side. Not that he’s turning evil or anything. But Hibiki also gets caught up in stories, as the heroine, and one of her friends – OK, if we’re being honest, her only friend – was injured because of that and is now in a coma. So ‘the dark side’ in this case means the darkness of the soul, where you wind up pushing everyone away because you don’t want to see them get hurt. And she infects Rekka with this mindset, which is a problem, because the entire premise of the series is therefore at risk.

Fortunately, despite this volume being far more serious than the previous two, it holds up pretty well. The situations are still cliched, but having only one heroine to worry about much of the time streamlines things a bit, even as we still have to solve multiple promises. (Arguably the fox girl is a second heroine, despite Rekka’s cluelessness, but I’ll worry about that if she ever comes back). Rekka manages to overcomes his self-doubt, pushed along by a lack of confidence (something R lampshades, as she is wont to do). And the old heroines all get something to do. The scenes with Satsuki and Harissa are quite good, as thanks to Rekka pushing her away Satsuki has her own crisis of conscience. She’s known him the longest, after all. But Harissa is the ‘purest’ of the girls in terms of her love for Rekka, so she’s able to teach the valuable lesson this time, at least once she wakes up.

The big drawback to this volume, unfortunately, are its heroines. Hibiki is meant to be a female mirror of Rekka, and also show what he could be if he went down the wrong path. As such, she’s a bit of a mess, starting off strong but eventually just hanging off the villain’s arm waiting to be rescued. Also, it feels weird to have one tsundere a mere volume after the classic example of Tsumiki. Hibiki’s crush on Rekka simply doesn’t feel earned, not the way the other girls’ do. As for the other ‘heroines’ here, the fox girl is cute but basically frets constantly the entire book, and Meifa is a living reward who doesn’t even get to speak at the end of the book. I realize that it’s hard to create strong characters every time, but given the premise the author has made for himself, it’s something he’s going to have to muscle up and do.

So I’m a bit annoyed, but in the end turning more serious did not break the series, and there were several cool fight scenes. It looks as if Rekka has remembered the core to his series, which is ‘solve one girl’s problems using another girl’s talents’, and given Vol. 4 is back to three girls on the cover, he should be fine.

(Oh yes, and don’t use alien races as a metaphor for racism if your magic solution is “turn everyone white”. Just… don’t do that.)

Kitaro: The Great Tanuki War

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By Shigeru Mizuki. Released in Japan as “Gegege no Kitaro” by (among others) Kodansha, serialized in various magazines. Released in North America by Drawn & Quarterly. Translated by Zack Davisson.

The large majority of this book is made up of the title story, the first really huge epic tale we’ve seen from this collection of Kitaro stories by Drawn & Quarterly. And it’s a real pip, showing off the best qualities of Kitaro in the 1960s. He’s far more heroic here than he’s been in the past two books, but it’s a pretty thankless task, especially when he’s going up against shifty Japanese politicians. Honestly, you’d think he’d be used to dealing with them given that he’s best friends with Nezumi Otoko, who is in peak form here, always siding with whatever appears to be the winning side, and showing no moral qualms about throwing humanity under the bus. There’s also a larger role for Itta Momen, a yokai made up of flying cloth that I thought was meant to be toilet paper for the longest time.

The villains in this story are the titular Tanuki, who have featured in many Japanese folktales, though not usually as yokai per se. These are The 800 Tanuki of Shikoku, who are here to reclaim earth and take over. They’ve got many and varied ways of doing this, each of which seems to set a higher bar of “how on Earth will Japan get out of this one”? What’s worse, they really do a number on Kitaro, taking him out several times via various fatal traps – and I mean literally fatal, by the end of this story Kitaro has to regenerate from a baby for a month or so. It’s very much in the classic serial vein, which unfortunately means that the ending reads like “OK, wrap it up in this chapter” – it’s very sudden. But the grotesque ideas and imagery are pure Mizuki, and really stand out in this epic story, which also borrows from kaiju-style tales.

I was somewhat surprised by seeing the two-faced Japanese Prime Minister tell Kitaro that they will rely on him to save Japan just like Moshe Dayan saved Israel, till I realized that this was running in Shonen Magazine only two months or so after the Six Day War. You don’t think of Kitaro as referencing too many current events, but there are times it does, particularly when he gets involved in politics, as seen here. (Speaking of references, I was rather startled to see the Tanuki declare that they were going to have the Japanese woman serve them as maids – if only they’d been 30 years later they could have gone to a cafe instead!) The final two stories feel a bit like filler compared to the epic Tanuki war, but we do get to see a rare example of Nezumi Otoko coming out on top for once – it reminds me of the rare cartoons where Tom won over Jerry.

This is a very strong volume of Kitaro, though the reader should be prepared for bad things to happen to him – he spends some of the book as a literal puddle of liquid. As always, a must for fans of classic manga, as well as modern yokai readers who want to read something by the master.

Bluesteel Blasphemer, Vol. 1

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By Ichirou Sakaki and Tera Akai. Released in Japan by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by James Rushton and Kevin Steinbach.

If you’ve grown tired of novels where our hero is either transported to another world or dies and is reincarnated in another world, well, this is another one of those. There’s so many that you really need to figure out what it is about this particular one that makes it worth reading over the other 87,326 series released this year alone. In the case of Bluesteel Blasphemer, the answer may be its pedigree. This is not a case of a newbie writer who was putting his fiction on the web and got discovered by a publisher. Ichirou Sakaki has written such things as Scrapped Princess, Chaika the Coffin Princess, and Outbreak Company, which does feature a princess. And now we have one of his newer series, Bluesteel Blasphemer, which does not have princesses – at least not yet – but has a mayor’s daughter, a sacrificial victim, and a Rei Ayanami expy, because god knows we don’t have enough of those.

Our hero is Yukinari, a young man who is rescued from modern-day Japan, where he was dying in a fire that killed his older sister, and reincarnated in a cool body (with a few tricks up its sleeve) by a young alchemist who seems very similar to his older sister, and Dasa, her younger sister and the Rei clone I mentioned above. After stuff happens, he and Dasa are on the run through the backwaters of the country, and run across Berta, a beautiful young orphan about to be sacrificed to appease the local erdgod, which is a nasty piece of work. It’s not clear whether the sacrifices work or not, and the mayor’s daughter Fiona, who’s in charge while her father is in ill health, has her doubts as well, but hey: it’s tradition. Unfortunately, Yukinari and Dasa proceed to massacre tradition, and now have to deal with his being the assumed local erdgod replacement – as well as the unfortunate arrival of the local Inquisition, here to enslave the village into their religion.

There are pluses and minuses to this series. The pluses are the plot and the writing, which are both excellent. You can tell the author is far more experienced, as there’s no long introductory sequence like most isekai. Instead, we get the feeling we’re starting with Book 2, which gets a bit confusing but pays off in the long run. The action sequences, of which there are many, work fine, and the plot twists happen at just the right moment. On the down side, well, the characters are not nearly as good as the book being written around them. Yuknari is fairly faceless, Dara is, as I said, another in a long line of snarky deadpan barely legals, and Berta’s desire to serve Yukinari as the new replacement erdgod is rather disturbing, as she seems to be confusing love and worship in her head. Fiona was probably the best character of the lot. (Honestly, as the author himself admits in the afterword, the harem aspect seems totally tacked on and uninspired). Also, the two older sisters who both die to inspire the heroes… bleah. I bet they both had that dead mom sidetail, didn’t they?

So it’s a decent, but not stellar, debut for this series. I’m willing to give it another volume to draw me in more. That said, I’m rather glad it’s only 4 volumes total.

The Full-Time Wife Escapist, Vols. 1-2

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By Tsunami Umino | Published digitally by Kodansha Comics

Mikuri Moriyama is a 25-year-old licensed clinical psychologist who hasn’t been able to find a job after grad school. She’s been living with her parents and working for a temp agency, and when she’s laid off her father arranges for her to assume housekeeping duties for a guy he used to work with. Hiramasa Tsuzaki is 36 and single. He seems humorless and particular at first, but Mikuri finds that working for a hard-to-please guy makes it easier to know when she’s been successful. She performs her duties well, even managing to nurse Tsuzaki through an illness in such a business-like way that it’s not awkward for him. Things go well for a few months, then Mikuri’s father prepares to retire and move to the countryside. Rather than lose their mutually beneficial arrangement, Mikuri and Tsuzaki decide that she’ll move in with him and, for the sake of propriety, become his common-law wife. They proceed to perpetuate the ruse that they’re actually a real couple.

I am really enjoying The Full-Time Wife Escapist so far! Mikuri is an interesting character. She’s outwardly educated and competent—equally able to engage in conversations about globalization and maintain a meticulous budget—but has these inward flights of fancy that only the reader is privy to. She often imagines herself being interviewed about the state of her life, be it with an unsympathetic talk show host or a man-on-the-street segment about middle-aged virgins (which Tsuzaki appears to be), or performing heartbreaking Les Miserables-style songs about the woes of unemployment. The injection of whimsy is fun and reminds me a little of Tokyo Tarareba Girls, but Mikuri is a lot more practical (and a lot less boozy) than the characters of that series.

As Tsuzaki’s coworkers learn that he’s gotten married, his social calendar suddenly fills up in a way it never did before, while Mikuri notices that her aunt Yuri, with whom she’s very close, has been hesitant to invite her out as much as she used to before Mikuri got married. Spending time with Numata and Kazami is enjoyable for the couple, but it’s also risky, because nosy Numata snoops and learns there’s only a twin bed in the bedroom, and by volume two, Kazami is convinced that they’re faking it. Kazami is perhaps as equally developed as Tsuzaki himself, as we hear a great deal about his reservations about marriage, which all leads up to the big cliffhanger ending of volume two (which I shan’t spoil). Tsuzaki, meanwhile, is attempting in vain to keep from developing feelings for Mikuri. She persists in being business-like, and he 100% believes there’s no chance she’d ever reciprocate, so he often looks emotionless in front of her, only revealing his feelings when he’s alone. I love that neither one of them is spazzy; they’re in a somewhat trope-y arrangement, but they’re handling it like adults.

I really can’t wait for volume three. There’s so many interesting ways the story could go, though I admit I actually do want it to go in the standard “they fall in love and live happily ever after” direction.

The Full-Time Wife Escapist is ongoing in Japan; nine volumes have been released so far.

Review copies provided by the publisher.

Chihayafuru, Vol. 2

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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.

I’d said in the last review that Chihayafuru is, in many ways, a sports manga. But this is not your average baseball or soccer title. Karuta is not really thought of as something that kids do these days, particularly once they enter high school, and especially if they’re good at other sports, which Chihaya is – everyone points out she should be on the track team. But Chihaya has a dream, and is very, very driven towards getting that dream, even if it means playing over and over without her two friends – we’re in high school now, and both have been away for years. Luckily, Taichi has returned, bringing his unspoken crush, his reluctance to get back into an “uncool” sport, and his ability to see flaws that Chihaya can’t see herself. Arata is another matter – not only does he still live far away, but he tells them in no uncertain terms that he isn’t playing karuta anymore.

The reason Arata abandoned karuta is not the most original one in the world – in fact it’s the most cliched part of the book – but it works anyway, especially as it helps to show off why Chihaya’s impulsiveness is not always a good thing. That said, it looks like it may work out in the end, which is good. Karuta is very much something that Chihaya associates with ‘having fun with friends’, and the group activity is the most exciting part about it. In fact, Chihaya’s enthusiasm is actually masking several issues – Taichi notes that her memorization at the start is still quite bad, and a new character who ends up joining the club, Ooe Kanada, who reminds her that the poems aren’t just there because they sound pretty – there’s meaning and depth behind each one. This is AMAZING to Chihaya, who is nice and sweet but her single minded determination means she can miss the obvious.

As for the Karuta itself, it’s actually still pretty exciting. I was not entirely certain whether Chihaya would win the match halfway through the book – in a series like this, the occasional loss is going to be inevitable, even if you promise that you’re going to win. I’m still somewhat amused at various antics going on during karuta that I would argue are fouls, but then I’m not a karuta player. It’s also a very old-fashioned game – it’s pretty obvious why the club is somewhat mocked, though honestly you get the sense it’s due to Chihaya’s overenthusiasm more than anything else. It’s also very clear why Kana thinks that they should be performing it in kimonos – a lot of karuta runs on aesthetic, and if you look the part it may help in other areas as well. As for any romance in the story, well, Taichi still has a crush on Chihaya, but that’s about it – she’s totally oblivious.

Chihayafuru may not be the most obvious josei series out there, but if you read it it will win you over on pure energy, just like its heroine.

How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom, Vol. 2

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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.

This second volume of Realist Hero details a war fought on several fronts, and will no doubt delight those who enjoyed running campaigns in various roleplaying games. There are several ‘thinking outside the box’ moments that made me smile, most of which are lampshaded by excerpts from a future history book that show how the outside the box idea led to an idiom that is now in common use. And once again, I’m pleased w3ith how the cleverest ideas are not always left to Souma, the titular Realist Hero, and he’s occasionally allowed to be caught flat footed. That said, the thing that struck me the most about this second volume is that I was far more invested in the characterization than I was in the first volume, mostly due to one of the more subtle and unemotional nervous breakdowns I’ve seen.

(As a sidenote, if you’re going to have the cover of Vol. 2 feature the elf girl bodyguard, you might want to give her something to actually do in the book. Carla would have been more appropriate.)

Our king, Souma, may be a history expert who can map war scenarios onto old Japanese campaigns and spout Machiavelli with the best of them (though that thankfully happens less this time around), but he’s still a young man who grew up in modern Japan, and this whole King thing is wearing down at him. Interestingly, we never see this reflected in his own narration – it’s only when Liscia or one of the others is observing Souma that they note that something seems off about him. It’s also interesting to see how the polyamory is handled in this series – most of the other LNs I’ve seen with ‘multiple wives are legal’ scenarios mostly just have it as an excuse to not write jealousy, but Realist Hero looks into how its world handle this, and shows that the pecking order in such relationships is actually class-based more than anything else. It’s both amusing and disquieting to see Liscia pushing hard for Souma to take Carla as a secondary Queen, even showing off her hot body like a car dealer. Liscia and Carla are best friends who ended up on opposite sides in this war, and Liscia knows if Souma doesn’t marry Carla she’ll likely be executed.

The first book left several plotlines dangling for the second, and some of them are dealt with, though not all. Moreover, this second volume has quite a big open ending, as we don’t actually see what happens to Carla, her father, or any of the other nobles who rose up against Souma (bar the obvious cartoon villain nobles who get theirs at the end). Given the “realist” nature of this book, I’m not actually sure if Castor will be executed or not (Carla, being a young hot girl and friend to Liscia, I’m pretty sure is safe.) We get a few more details on the kingdoms and empires surrounding our Realist Hero’s kingdom, and are introduced to a few more potential future harem members. The series could go in any number of directions from here. The writing of Realist Hero is merely OK, and sometimes I suspect that what I’m seeing as subtle underplaying is actually just being dull, but I must admit that I want to know what happens next far more in this series than I do in other light novels.

(Also, more fantasy isekais need therapists.)

(Also also, did Liscia dramatically cut her hair just to stop me saying that she’s a duplicate of Red Saber?)

Dreamin’ Sun, Vol. 1

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By Ichigo Takano | Published by Seven Seas

Even without knowing much about Dreamin’ Sun, I was sold by the fact that it’s an earlier series from Ichigo Takano, creator of orange, which I loved dearly. Dreamin’ Sun is more of a straightforward and comedic shoujo story in which characters do not contend with letters from their future selves or how to save a suicidal friend, but it still has a few poignant moments.

Shimana Kameko’s mother died in a car accident three years ago. Now, her father has remarried and with her new step-mom and baby brother, Shimana only feels visible when she’s being criticized. “I feel like this isn’t even my home anymore,” she thinks, as she decides to run away. Promptly, she encounters a weird kimono-wearing guy in the park named Taiga Fujiwara who offers her a cheap place to stay. Luckily for her, he isn’t a creep, and after assigning her the task of finding a spare key for his place (since he’s locked out), he also gets her to admit the real reason she left home: accepting the new arrangement felt like betraying her mother.

Thus, Shimana moves in with Taiga and two of her male classmates, Zen Nakajou and Asahi Tatsugae. Zen is the hyper, panda-loving one and Asahi the considerate, studious, princely one. Soon Shimana is developing feelings for Asahi, but he’s in love with his childhood friend who is, herself, in love with someone. In fact, there’s a lot of unrequited love going around. Zen seems to have unacknowledged feelings for Shimana, one of Taiga’s coworkers fancies him, but knows she’s not the one he really wants, etc.

These wistful feelings elevate Dreamin’ Sun beyond the “plain girl lives with several hot guys” trope. In addition, I really loved how much Taiga cares for the kids in his charge. He’s the one who’s able to convince Shimana’s parents to let her remain at his house and concocts a few situations to help her maybe get something going with Asahi. He also encourages each of them to have a dream, and claims his dream is “for all of you to grow up.” Could he be atoning for something? Too, at the end of the volume, we learn that he’s actually a prosecutor and that his father helped out Shimana’s family three years ago. Will some accident-related secret be forthcoming?

Even if no mystery arises, Dreamin’ Sun is still an appealing series, and I definitely plan to continue it.

Dreamin’ Sun is complete in ten volumes. Seven Seas will release volume two in July.

Neon Genesis Evangelion: Legend of the Piko Piko Middle School Students, Vol. 1

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By Yushi Kawata and Yukito. Released in Japan as “Shin Seiki Evangelion – Pikopiko Chuugakusei Densetsu” by Kadokawa Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young Ace. Released in North America by Dark Horse Comics. Translated by Michael Gombos. Adapted by Carl Gustav Horn.

For the most part, if I have reviewed any of the endless Evangelion spinoffs at all, I’ve reviewed them as Briefs, mostly as for the most part it’s very difficult to try to work up 500+ words on the topic. The Evangelion manga is excellent, but its spinoffs and side stories have amounted to a creepy shoujo supernatural comic that barely felt like Eva at all (Campus Apocalypse), a Lowest Common Denominator romantic “comedy” (Shinji Ikari Raising Project), a mystery with BL overtones (Detective Diary), *another* lowest common denominator romantic comedy (Angelic Days, if anyone remembers it), and various gag anthologies. This new title is definitely on the “gag anthology” side, being a spinoff of one of the stories from the Evangelion Comic Tribute that was popular enough to get its own series.

In my review of the Comic Tribute anthology (which I guess I did give a full review to), I noted that the stories by these creators were the best part of the book, so it makes sense that they’d get a chance to add more wacky humor and dense references. The “plot” is mostly irrelevant, but essentially we see NERV trying to defeat the Angels by training gaming nerds to defeat them, and Shinji, Asuka and Rei are the three biggest. What follows is a string of gags, both visual and verbal, which range from average to quite good, though I don’t know that I laughed out loud. Characterization is, for the most part, exaggerations of the “fanon” view, so Shinji is a bit meek and overserious, Asuka’s angry all the time, Rei is stoic, and Kaworu is super gay. But above all else, there’s the boke/tsukkomi comedy we’ve come to expect from Japan, and everyone (well, OK, just Shinji and Asuka) are quick with the retorts.

Those with an observant eye may note that Carl Horn adapted this himself, and it’s very much an adaptation in the nature of his Excel Saga work, i.e. he takes the original and crafts it into something else. If you like overly literal translations, you’ll hate this, but for the most part it works out very well, especially as the original is there to help, being filled with fourth wall breaking, bizarre gaming references, and stupid running gags (it’s just a t-shirt!). Adapting manga that’s solely devoted to comedy can be tricky, but they do a good job. Of course, the drawback is that there is only comedy here – if you like Evangelion for literally anything other than gags, you’re wasting a purchase with this. But the comedy is finny, everyone is exaggerated but not totally loathsome (except Gendo, of course), and the fanservice is surprisingly minimal, something actually pointed out by the characters as they lament their lack of a beach episode. Piko Piko Middle School Students is here to crack dumb jokes and chew bubblegum, and they’ve run out of bubblegum.