Reviews

By Gakuto Mikumo and Manyako. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen Press.

You’ll pardon me if I find myself saying the same things I said in the first two reviews of this series. I have gotten to the point where I almost wish Strike the Blood was worse than it actually was, as that might actually make it slightly more surprising, even in a horrible way. But no, this is very much a series that fulfills its function. It has a lot of cool, well-written action scenes, the plot advances incrementally, the hero gets a couple of new girls who like him, and the heroine sees this and is cool and frosty to him for reasons he can’t quite figure out. It’s very well colored, but never goes outside the lines. Not once.

Oddly, you would expect a series like this to have varied covers, usually with the hero and a different girl on each of them. that is one thing Strike the Blood does do differently – each cover is Yukina posing for the reader, reminding readers that she is the main heroine whether they like it or not. And as a main heroine, she’s pretty good. The main reason I’m interested in her is that she seems to get frosty when the hero does something that implies he’s not attracted to her, rather than the usual punchy. Her overly earnest personality balances nicely against the more normal childhood hacker friend, the classic tsundere not-lesbian, and (introduced here) the shy princess and her sister, the teasing princess. Of course, the fact that all those are classic harem series archetypes also says something about what we’re reading here.

As for non-harem plot antics, well, trying to turn your adopted daughter into an Angel in order to make her happy is certainly not something you’ll see every day. I did appreciate that Kensei’s motives were given a bit of depth, showing off the somewhat misplaced love he has for her, even if his solution is appalling. It made a nice contrast with Beatrice, who comes to us right out of sneering female villains 101, and is such a cliche that it begins to verge on parody. Same with the elder princess, La Folia, who is noble and very royal, but also introduced to the reader by being found bathing in a stream, and also becomes the latest girl Kojou has to bite in order to release a beast monster to save the day.

I would ideally like something in this series to horribly offend or appall me, so that I could simply drop it and that would be the end of it. But no, Strike the Blood continues to be quietly competent and eminently enjoyable, provided you hate surprises. The hero is a nice guy, but if it weren’t for the illustrations provided throughout, I’d likely imagine him as looking exactly the same as Touma from A Certain Magical Index, a series which this has some similarities with. Index’s prose can be a bear to read, though, and it does throw the occasional curveball. Strike the Blood is batting practice. Straight down the middle, book after book.

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.

There’s not really much in the way of plot or character development in a series like Nozaki-kun (indeed, much of the comedy relies on everyone not growing or learning in any way), so when it comes to reviews such as this, I need to look elsewhere to find things to talk about. This is another great volume, and Chapter 27 is one of my favorites in particular. It’s a pitch-perfect example of how everything is about the gags, but it doesn’t overuse the same gag, and its comedic rhythms are highly suited to the 4-koma style. It bears examining, so let’s do so.

We begin with what is probable the ‘default’ gag in this series, as Nozaki and Mokoshiba show up pretending to be delinquents because Nozaki has to write in a rival character. They’re horrible at it, of course, so this leads to 2-3 pages of them doing something silly or out of place and Sakura giving her best tsukkomi comeback. She fulfills her traditional straight man role. However, we can’t forget that Sakura is in love with Nozaki. And, as we see when he attempts to climb a tree, fails miserably, and her heart skips a beat, she seems to especially be in love with Nozaki being an adorable loser. We then have 3-4 pages devoted to Mikoshiba and his issues, ranging from his embarrassment to simply being unable to climb back down the tree, and both Nozaki and Sakura serve as dual straight men. Finally, they leave and Seo shows up, being a genuine “delinquent”. Now it’s Mikoshiba who’s the straight man, observing Seo’s uncaring, oblivious antics. And Seo ends up getting the final punchline: “I’m late ‘cos a cute guy fell from the sky”.

In non-Chapter 27 news, Seo proves that she can use her obliviousness for good as well as evil when she buys a new exacto knife for Wakamatsu, and they also go on the worst date ever (at last from Wakamatsu’s POV); we see that everything horrible in Ken’s life is a result of Maeno’s very existence; While searching for a flaw that Suzuki could have, Nozaki misses the obvious, which is Kashima’s incredibly horrible singing voice; We find that Hori really is an excellent actor, but has trouble distinguishing between the actors and the characters they play, be it wanting to beat up Kashima or Miko-rin’s resemblance to a shoujo heroine; And Sakura’s attempts to show her affection fail miserably, be it old Valentine’s Day chocolate or someone mistaking her for the third wheel in a love triangle.

If you dislike standard Japanese comedy, this may not be as funny to you – much of the humor still relies on screaming “what the heck?” in disbelief. But for me, this is top drawer humor, and the 4-koma format means it doesn’t have to stop for pesky story development like Oresama Teacher, her other series. I love this series.

Also, though they aren’t as prevalent as before, the tanukis continue onward.

By Kugane Maruyama and so-bin. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen On.

Given the extreme popularity of Sword Art Online, Log Horizon, and similar titles in Japan (and now in North America, where you can’t seen to walk ten feet before hearing about a similar series being licensed), it makes sense that we’d start to see series that play around with the format, or use it as a springboard for something else. Such a series is Overlord, which spends much of its first quarter or so making you think that the main character is going to find himself trapped in the game he loves so much only to end up being somewhere a bit different – he, and all his NPCs, are transported to a different fantasy world. Oh yes, and he played the game as an evil undead skeleton, and his minions are equally evil.

With SAO, we saw a brand new game just opening. In Log Horizon, it was a popular game receiving a brand new update. And Overlord has Yggdrasil, which is a popular game whose time has now passed, and it’s getting its servers shut down. Our hero (who has three names throughout the book, but who I’ll call Ainz for convenience) was one of about forty players who had their own guild, which was composed of “monsters”, i.e. non-humanoid characters. Of course, that was a while back. Now he wants to have a party to celebrate the end of the game, and only three other players bother to show, and they all bail early. Right away you get the sense that he is more intensely devoted to the game than the others, but also that he is far more unfulfilled in real life than they are – he admits all he does is work, eat and sleep.

And now he, his group of somewhat cliched NPCs (all of whom have detailed backstories written by the other players, which is how we find out about them), and his giant hellish fortress are bounced into the middle of this fantasy world fighting a battle among three various empires. Luckily, there’s one tiny village that seems to be a focal point for all three, either as “killing everyone in the village will set an example” or “we are heroes, so must save this village no matter the cost”. Into this wanders Ainz, who tries to remain aloof and dispassionate but is still not about to let a cute teenage girl and her sister get run through.

I’ve summarized a lot of plot here, usually a sign that I don’t know what else to write about, but that’s not really true here. There’s a lot to work with after this first book has finished. Ainz is dispassionate because his undead form suppresses emotions – is he even human anymore? He still seems to regard this as a game he’s trapped in – will this change? And then there’s his NPCs, suppliers of most of the humor in the title – Albedo, his main subordinate, has a massive crush on him do to his being stupid before the “server shutdown”, and this leads to typical anime yandere humor. His NPCs also have motivations that go beyond obeying his command, something I don’t think he grasps yet.

So there’s a good many ways this title can go, and I am quite pleased I read it. That said, I do hope that it continues to play with its cliches rather than embracing them – there’s always a danger that this becomes a straight=up male power fantasy sort of title, and I think it could be much more than that.

By Ryohgo Narita and Katsumi Enami. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On.

If you’re familiar with Durarara!!, then you may know that this was the author’s first major series. It also had a (far less successful) anime. That said, the two fandoms don’t really interact, particularly in North America. DRRR’s fandom is very much about two or three characters that people obsess over, while Baccano’s tends to be more about the books themselves, and overanalyzing its cast to death. Given that DRRR is doing well over here, it was a natural pickup, and I am very pleased to see that Yen On is releasing it. This first volume introduces us to much of the main cast, and shows us how they became involved with demons, alchemy, and immortality.

Those familiar with the anime may be disappointed, as we don’t jump around between various time periods in this book (you’ll have to wait till Book 2 for the train). It’s all about what happens in 1930, where various plots are all happening at the same time. A young punk named Firo is joining the ranks of the Camorra (think Mafia, only less Sicilian and more Italian); two incredibly eccentric thieves are trying to turn over a new leaf by stealing for the right reasons, only their reasoning is highly suspect; and an old man and his female chauffeur and bodyguard are trying to resurrect a liquor that will grant complete immortality to anyone who drinks it – something the old man already has, but he wants to recreate it anyway just to show that he can. Gradually these plots and others interact with each other until it all ends in one giant confrontation and there are many dead bodies… of course, given we’re also dealing with immortality, are they really dead?

I suspect the average Baccano! reader over here will already be spoiled as to its plot, which is a shame, as there’s a lot of twists and turns to let us wonder who’s really immortal, who really knows who’s backstory, and what exactly is going on. Like DRRR, the ‘heroes’ of the book are morally ambiguous, in this case mostly being mobsters. Firo is a sweet young kid, except he’s also got a way with a knife, is unflinching at running an illegal gambling den, etc. It’s a matter of degrees. The worst is clearly Szilard Quates, the aforementioned old man, who will use anyone and anything to get what he wants. That said, if you’re looking for a protagonist of this particular volume, I’d say that it’s Ennis, the chauffeur/bodyguard. Thanks to interaction with the cast, she grows and changes more than anyone else, and her inner monologue is both heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time.

And then there’s Isaac and Miria. They may never be the protagonists of the individual books, but they are the poster children and mascots for the series itself, and their glorious idiocy is on full display here. They both possess an illogical logic, reminiscent of Gracie Allen, and I suspect an entire book of them would be exhausting. But as a spice, they’re perfect. The book gives depth to several characters via thoughts and actions not seen in the anime, and even Isaac and Miria are no exception. It’s never clear if they’re actually lovers or not, but they are most certainly in love with each other. They are a joy and a treat.

It’s hard for me to look at Baccano! with a fresh mind, as I’m so familiar with the series as a whole. For fans of the anime, you’ll see new and changed things. For those who like DRRR, it has a similar chaotic style. If you like characters who are completely trash scum, Dallas Genoard is right up your alley. I would argue that if you are unsure and want to sample the absolute top of the line books in the series, you might wait to sample books 2 and 3 (which come as a set). And the art gets better, honest – it’s very sketchy here, with some characters bearing only minimal resemblance to what they look like 6 or 7 books later. But honestly, this is also an excellent introduction to the clamor and noise that is Baccano!.

By Rumiko Takahashi. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Shonen Sunday. Released in North America by Viz.

The difficulty with these omnibuses is that they can feel very unbalanced. This volume contains one of the strongest emotional and physical battles in the series… in its second half. To get there, you have to wade through Vol. 27 first, which features far more Mousse than is really recommended, Principal Kuno returning when no one wants him to, more possessed inanimate objects, and Hinako falling for Soun Tendo, a storyline that was a bit creepy when it was first released in the 1990s, but now reads as SUPER CREEPY today. Hinako may really be in her 20s, and have the body of a statuesque woman when she sucks out ki, but she looks (and acts) like an 8-year-old most of the time, and that fact makes the entire sequence a bit beyond the pale. Fortunately, Soun is totally oblivious to her, still being very much in love with his late wife.

However, the 2nd half of this omnibus is top-notch. Ryu Kumon’s backstory, once revealed, may be played up a bit for comedy purposes, but it does feature his only parent killing himself by accident, leaving him alone. As a result, even though he is trying to trick her, Ryu is drawn to Ranma’s mother, who mistakes him for her own son, and he realizes that he can bond with her in ways that Ranma, who is cursed to always be female around her, can’t. This leads Ranma to be more emotional than ever, as his desire to be a good son for his mother, fear of the promise to kill an “unmanly” child that she made, and rage at this upstart taking over his life all coalesce, leading him to be a bit more serious than usual in the ensuing fight.

It helps that Ryu is a top-notch martial artist. As ever, Ranma gets the floor wiped with him till he can figure out how Ryu is fighting and the way to counterattack. It helps that the actual “Martial arts _______” fight this time is one of Takahashi’s all-time cleverest, revolving around entering and leaving a house, and you’d be amazed at how much that can translate into fighting techniques. Of course, the trick is that it’s not a tool for fighting at all – which is why Ryu’s father, who thought it was, inadvertently killed himself trying to use it. As always, Genma and Soun are there to provide running backstory, and Genma seems to be at fault, but for once it’s only accidentally his fault. And the action sequences are really good, Takahashi has found her groove here.

Oh yes, I almost forgot to mention the “Cursed Tunnel of Love” storyline. The anime softened this considerably in terms of Ukyou and Ryouga, the manga doesn’t bother. Ranma and Akane mistakenly think the two are a couple, but the idea is meant to be hilarious – the fights between them are nothing like the fights between Ranma and Akane, they’re just simply Ukyou’s frustration at Ryouga being Ryouga. That said, we’re coming near to wrapping up the series, and it would be nice if at least one of the harem candidates (on either side) got paired off. Oh Ryouga, if only there was a girl out there for you…

By Hirohiko Araki. Released in Japan as “Jojo no Kimyou na Bouken” by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz Media.

In modern days, it has become a somewhat amusing joke to say that “no one dies in (insert Jump title here)”, be it Bleach, One Piece (until recently), or other such series. There are lots of apparent deaths, but it is a very popular cliche to have the supposedly dead person reappear to much rejoicing, and Jump in particular loves to do it. That said, this is a good 25 years earlier, and so JoJo’s is not afraid to brutally murder major cast members in order to advance the plot and provide much character development and tears of rage from our titular hero. Indeed, the villains are so arrogant that being killed by one of them personally is deemed to be a blessing given to a worthy opponent – attention has been paid.

Last arc it was Speedwagon who survived, with Jonathan being killed off right at the very end. Joseph is a different, less tragic sort of hero, and so it falls to Caesar to be the one who loses his life so that the others may pursue their goal of defeating the evil whositses – honestly, a lot of the plot details of JoJo still tend to whiz by me as people scream battle poses at each other. Not that this is a bad thing – that is why we read this series, as Araki is very good at keeping a reader’s interest with reaction shots and amazed exclamations. Take, for example, the return of Stroheim, who has returned as something of a cyborg, and manages for a while to go toe to toe with Kars (named after the band, or the Gary Numan song? Or both). This despite the fact that the entire “he’s a Nazi, but I don’t hate him as a person” plotline is deeply uncomfortable, and I won’t cry when we leave World War II behind.

As for Joseph himself, he is, as ever, more of a trickster than his grandfather was, which allows him more success in battle against enemies who are prone to being faked out. Of course, this comes with cocksure arrogance and sometimes a petulant anger as well. He’s at his best here dealing with Suzie Q, who he flirts with for about two pages before she’s possessed by another one of the bad guys. This is why seeing him and Lisa Lisa devastated at the climax of this volume is so heartbreaking. We don’t like seeing Joseph like this. I have no doubt that he will get an epic revenge in the fourth and final volume of this arc, but will he be able to bounce back and show us some cocksurity? Who knows.

By now anyone reading this series knows what they’re getting into. I wish there was less “Nazis may be evil but they sure are cool” here, to be frank, but other than that this is wall to wall excellent shonen at 100% volume.

By Rokudenashiko. Released in Japan by Kinyobi, Inc., partially serialized in the magazine Shuukan Kinyobi. Released in North America by Koyama Press.

Like many people, I first heard about Rokudenashiko via news reports retweeted and reblogged around the internet. In fact, it may have been watching The Daily Show, which covered her arrest (she makes reference to it here). But when I saw that she had a panel at TCAF and was promoting a manga discussing what happened, I decided to seek it out. and I’m delighted that I did, as this manga is fascinating, managing to make the reader angry and outraged at her mistreatment while at the same time laughing hysterically. It actually comes in two parts. The first, written for the weekly magazine, is a light-hearted (but the events are serious) look at her arrest and imprisonment for distributing 3D copies of her vagina via crowdsourcing. The second half retells some of the same events, but as part of her life story, and it’s more serious and personal.

The amazing double-standards of Japanese culture, which has no issues with the word ‘chinko’ (which means dick), but can’t abide the word ‘manko’ (which means pussy) is on display throughout, from the initial sneering and TV-cop stereotype of her arrest to the hilarious points where the officers try to take her statement and she humiliates them by insisting on saying ‘manko’ as many times as possible. We get a lovely tour of Japanese women’s prison, which is as unpleasant as you’d imagine, and she has a variety of cellmates, ranging from the normal to the intensely strange. Interspersed through the manga are various textual articles discussing the nature of obscenity, Japanese law (yes, it really is far more like Phoenix Wright than you’d expect), and the campaign on the outside to petition for her freedom (which we barely see as we’re following her POV).

As I said earlier, the second part of the manga is a short biography of her life, and how she ended up becoming an artist who used her ‘manko’ as an inspiration for various art projects and showcases. The most amusing part for me was that her initial reasoning was seeing that you can have “vaginal surgery” and thinking “whoah, cool!”. She was later told by her editors to change it and make her more ashamed of her body in order to sell to readers better. I am reminded of many other editorially demanding manga series. That said, we also see that using ‘manko’ in her art also led to her divorce, to her friends abandoning her, and to suicidal thoughts. None of that was in the more commercial first part of the book, but it adds a sense of depth and realism that touches the heart.

So rest assured, this is a highly entertaining and moving memoir. But it’s also a wonderful look at the standards that go into defining what is obscene, and the struggles that an artist has to go through in order to be able to express themselves properly. The behavior of the police and courts in this book is jaw-dropping, and if nothing else, I’m hoping that more awareness of the these issues might lead to international pressure for change. In the meantime, the story of Rokudenashiko and her artistic triumphs and struggles is a must-read for anyone who loves freedom of expression.

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.

There was already a sampler of Kitaro a few years back, also by Drawn & Quarterly, but this new collection appears to be the equivalent of a multi-volume best-of, apparently signed off on by Mizuki himself, who gave the editor a test to see if he could choose the stories that Mizuki himself would have chosen (he got all but one). And so we see some earlier Kitaro manga from the late 60s, including a lengthy chapter from the magazine Garo that shows off how Kitaro came to be, and helps you understand that the otherwise generic zombie on the cover really is one of the main characters. It’s a grim little tale, more serious than the rest of the stories in this volume, possibly as it lacks the series’ main drawing point.

See, Kitaro is a nice kid, mostly (his ethics can be rather questionable from a human perspective), but he is essentially Mickey Mouse. He’s the title character and appears in every story, but what the readers really want is someone a bit more fallible and funny. And you can’t get much funnier or more fallible than Nezumi Otoko, which translates to Rat Man. He is the Donald Duck of this series, only Donald was never quite so evil. Nezumi Otoko will do absolutely anything for money, including tricking old rich men out of their life savings, luring respectable young manga editors to their yokai-influenced deaths, and take advantage of the dead – multiple times. Even when he’s not being an ass, he’s usually a coward, always the first to run away. This, of course, makes him a marvelous character, the best reason to read this series. He’s beloved in Japan (for a certain definition of beloved), and was used as narrator for Mizuki’s Showa history.

The other big reason to read the series is the yokai, who veer from the silly to the terrifying, but they’re all dangerous. Neko Musume shows up here, and those who recall her cute moe appearance in some of the more recent Kitaro animes will be startled by this bowl-cut girl who tries to literally eat Nezumi Otoko when she first sees him (to be fair, he deserved it – he always does). The Gyuki and Hideri Gami are more typical straight-up monsters, in the former case even managing to possess Kitaro, who gets to enjoy a rare turn attacking people. Kuckily, Kitaro is made of stern stuff, able to survive even being dropped in a volcano. Also luckily, this is very much not a serialized story. Tales need to end in a certain number of pages, so the yokai rarely get to do much before Kitaro has won and they’re off on their next adventure. (The anime was airing as these manga chapters were running, and you can see references to the insanely catchy theme song in these final ‘the adventure continues’ panels.)

Even if you aren’t a fan of manga history or yokai stories, this is still a must purchase. It’s also fairly child-friendly, despite a few scares. I am eagerly awaiting more.