Reviews

By Izumi Tsubaki. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Viz.

In my review of the last volume, I said that Hayasaka’s past was looking more serious than this manga usually gets, but I didn’t think it was going to get that dark. Boy howdy was I wrong. Not that Oresama Teacher has suddenly turned angsty and depressing, but certainly this volume hinges on the fact that Momochi’s mental manipulation of Hayasaka is being helped along naturally by his own traumas, and that he has in fact had this sort of thing happen before. Luckily, he has the Public Morals club to help him this time, and the volume ends on an upbeat note (albeit one with our heroes at the bottom of a cliff – what is it with Hana to Yume series and cliffs?)

Tsubaki enjoys playing with reader preconceptions and that’s certainly the case here, as Hayasaka’s supposed family background is the sort of thing we’ve seen in manga and anime before, with the mistress kept in a locked room away from everyone. Only that turns out not to be the case, and in fact is something that Hayasaka has created to cover up the real tragedy that he refuses to accept. The scene with Hayasaka and his father at the funeral is heartrending, something I never really thought I’d say about Oresama Teacher. And in fact, again contrary to our expectations, Hayasaka’s family turn out to be mostly okay – his hatred of his father stems from something that isn’t happening anywhere but in his head, and his dad, while trying to keep Hayasaka’s past hidden, shows genuine concern for him.

There is some humor in this volume, rest assured, though I wonder if the story turned more serious when Tsubaki was starting off Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun. Most of it comes from Mafuyu and Yui, who continue to react in a hilarious way whenever called on to be normal or mature. Mafuyu also gets an emotional arc in her desperation to make Hayasaka recover his memories, though I wonder if that will come back to bite her in the end, as it’s hinted that the main reason that Hayasaka hasn’t realized Mafuyu is Natsuo or Super Bun is his own mental blocks, and those may be coming down. Her emotional tears in the last chapter are well earned, though.

We’re still not quite done with this arc, though, as Momochi is still a threat. We see she’s used her ‘hypnosis’ powers in the past, and has forced several students to withdraw from school – even non-delinquents. There are, of course, nasty rumors about her, and I have a feeling that Hayasaka may not be the only one with a tragic past. (And he has a first name now! Though I can see why he wants to keep it a secret – and an endnote might have helped there, Viz.) Oresama Teacher is still worth reading for the comedy, but as it barrels towards a theoretical conclusion soon, it’s also gaining real depth and heart.

By HERO and Daisuke Hagiwara. Released in Japan by Square Enix, serialization ongoing in the magazine GFantasy. Released in North America by Yen Press.

There’s been a strong market recently for repurposed web novels and webcomics licensed by major publishers and redone more professionally. Sword Art Online was originally published (fittingly) online. One-Punch Man was based on a webcomic band now has the Eyeshield 21 artist giving it a more manga feel. And then we have Hori-san to Miyamura-kun, a webcomic by HERO, which not only was popular enough to have Square Enix release the comic itself in 10 volumes several years ago, but now has a reboot with a new artist, running in Square Enix’s ‘we don’t have a shoujo magazine, so here it goes’ title GFantasy. And I’m happy that we’re getting it as well, as Horimiya is a delightfully fun and relaxed shoujo series about two people who find they can show each other their true selves, and how they then start falling for each other as well.

Fans of Kare Kano may find the premise a bit familiar, but as you dig into it the differences stand out more. Kyouko is a bright, pretty, popular girl at school, but doesn’t hang out with her friends after as much as you’d expect. Izumi is a somewhat otaku-ish guy who always wears long sleeves and long hair no matter what, and who tends to keep to himself. The plot kicks off when Kyouko finds out that outside of school, he’s actually a pretty handsome guy with tattoos and piercings. And Izumi finds that Kyouko is actually a pretty diligent big sister who has to essentially raise her little brother while her mom is away for days at a time at work. Both of these are things they need to hide at school (though admittedly the whole “without my makeup I am plain and don’t want anyone to see this is how I relax” thing made me roll my eyes a bit), and Kyouko’s little brother really bonds with Izumi, so the two of them end up hanging out after school… and possibly more.

There’s no immediate hook to this series the way One-Punch Man had. It’s a standard shoujo with two likeable leads who are clearly going to end up together, it’s just a matter of when, and their friends who are slowly going to learn the terrible secrets contained within. But it’s one of those series that’s just very well told. The two leads are not overly naive and idealistic or sullen and rude, as you find in so many shoujo series these days. They’re just kids. The mood reminds me a bit of Love at Fourteen, only here they’re a couple of years older. The humor arises from the characters and situations, and sometimes made me laugh out loud. There’s even a good cliffhanger where Kyouko realizes that, despite being a nice kid, Izumi is indeed a teenage boy who might (gasp!) be sexually attracted to her.

Horimiya is a strong debut, and I recommend it not only to Yen’s followers but also to any Shojo Beat fans who might miss it because it’s from a different publisher. I eaglerly look forward to the second volume.

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

The cover of this volume of Sword Art Online features Asuna and Kirito shot from above, both relaxing happily as they float down a river in their gondola. It’s a fitting image, as this volume is also very relaxed and leisurely, and though there are some well done action scenes and sword battles, this volume lacks the tension that the first volume had, content to develop the themes it’s had since the beginning: how this world differs from the beta before it, how Kirito and Asuna are both getting closer to each other while also being socially awkward, the ongoing war between the Forest Elves and the Dark Elves, and the pretty scenery of the game itself.

While Asuna once again gets no narrative voice, we as the audience are learning more about her slowly; she’s clearly from a rich family, and Kirito wonders if her talk of ‘real castles’ means she’s seen some before. But her mixed feelings on Christmas also show us a girl who’s grown up very lonely, and is finally coming into her own as a person thanks to the game – though I suspect she feels guilty about that. As for Kirito, he’s gotten better at seeing when Asuna’s upset, but he’s still terrible at guessing why. In this respect, much as he’s the elite gamer who cannot be defeated and always gets the Last Attack bonus (this remains a highly amusing running gag), he’s still very much a 14-year-old boy, one with his own family issues.

There are several cute bits written for the seasoned fan of Sword Art Online. Lisbeth isn’t named, but we do catch site of someone who clearly matches her description early in the book. Argo appears less than I’d like, but her one major appearance is possibly the best part of the entire novel, as she walks on the water alongside Kirito and Asuna’s gondola, showing off her amazing agility and ability to tease Kirito to the max. There are also some interesting quests, such as Asuna and Kirito’s attempts to get their gondola made by the grumpy retired shipwright in the region, which requires them to fight a giant mutant Prophecy bear, and a secret quest to spy on some fallen elves, which requires them to hide in a crate and leads to accidental gropings that are possibly “amusing” to some.

Which there are some serious moments in the book, particularly Kirito and Asuna both worrying about how long they’ll survive and also keeping pace with one another, overall this book is very light and pacey. If it has a fault, it’s that it may be a bit too light – it’s nice to see Kizmel again, and I sense we’ll get more elves as we go on, but honestly not a lot really happens in this book. It’s a shame, as we’ve now caught up with Japan, so I suspect a wait for the 4th book – where the author has promised a tougher boss fight than the one that barely gets three pages here – will be a while. Still, recommended to Sword Art Online fans, especially those who just like to focus on the two leads.

By Kazuma Kamachi and Arata Yamaji. Released in Japan as “Toaru Kagaku no Accelerator” by ASCII Media Works, serialization ongoing in the magazine Dengeki Daioh. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

The danger of spinoffs, as always, is that those unfamiliar with the series may be spoiled for later events when they read it. On the other hand, what reader is going to be picking this up having no idea what’s happened in Index already? That said, be aware that this manga series takes place sometime after the fifth novel, due out next month from Yen On, and that if you don’t know who Last Order is yet it may be wise to wait till you read that before digging in. On the other hand, if you are a fan of the index series but wish it had more action scenes, things blowing up, and girls being brutally murdered, this is an excellent series to get involved with.

For the more experienced Index fan, this manga is interesting primarily for Accelerator’s introduction to the Magical World, though he has no idea that’s what it is. Estelle Rosenthal is, as with everyone in Index who isn’t Touma, involved in some way with a shadowy organization, but for once she’s trying to bring it down. She also appears to be a necromancer, something which baffles Accelerator, who’s never heard of that sort of scientific ability. Given events of later Index books, it’s possible that the whole series may finish without him being any wiser as to her being a magician, but it makes for a good dynamic, particularly as she’s not the stuttering introvert I was expecting Accelerator to be paired up with. Indeed, her casual stripping in front of both him and Last Order shows she doesn’t seem to have too many social cues at all – and she has to be lectured about this by Last Order, who is hardly one to talk.

For those wondering, Last Order’s speech quirk is doubled, thus she sounds like the clones except she says “Misaka Misaka “. This is awkward, but honestly there’s no good way to convey the cutesy way she talks in English, so I’ll roll with it. Last Order herself is captured well here, as we get her hyperactivity and jealousy present and correct. As for Accelerator himself, he gets his defining moment right off the bat, as Estelle battles a mook right in front of his nose, and he never stops reading his book, having directed sound to not hit his ears. this is post-Vol. 5 Accelerator, meaning he’s still standoffish and basically a jerk, but is making the transition from villain to antihero, and nothing pisses him off more than people thinking that he’s been “brought down to Earth’ now, which is what leads to the best fight scenes in the volume.

Throw in a truly terrifying murder scene halfway through (it’s OK, she’s going to get her corpse reanimated so it’s all good), and you have a series that should appeal nicely to Index and Railgun fans, even though Touma and Misaka aren’t in it. Though the preview for Vol. 2 did note that one of the clones will have a big part in Vol. 2, which amused me. It’s spinoff fodder for sales, but done quite well. I look forward to more.

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

The usual caveats apply: there’s lots of skeevy art of underage girls, Sora spends much time discussing how to secretly film naked girls, and the not-quite-incest plot I was desperately hoping would be avoided from now on gets another peek. That said, I imagine anyone for whom those are a deal breaker would not be reading Vol. 3, so let’s move on to discussing Sora and Shiro, our heroes. It was refreshing seeing the start of this book from Shiro’s perspective, particularly as once Sora returned it went back to being mostly him, as he’s the one that talks. Sora and Shiro not only love each other like family (or more in Shiro’s case), but also idolize each other, and they each get narratives at some point bemoaning that they aren’t good at what the other excels in. Sora at one point mocks those who think this series is about the two growing stronger and maturing, as he points out they’re both already perfect.

The amusing thing about this, of course, is that it’s almost immediately undercut by Sora’s own actions, something Jibril cheerfully points out. Like it or not, this world is going to make the two of them change. That said, Sora also has a point – in terms of actual gaming ability, and the narrative need for victory, [ ] are already at the pinnacle. We don’t read this series to see how these two learn how to be better players – if anything, Stephanie fulfills that role in a way, though she’s still used almost entirely as comic relief instead. No, our heroes are already the best, and there is simply no doubt they will win – the question is how. Reading the long action sequence in the middle of the book, where they compete in a virtual shooting game against the Werebeasts, it really is astounding how much of the surprise twists were long thought out in advance by Sora beforehand. The same applies to the Othello game at the start.

Speaking of the Werebeasts, Izuna is the one who gets the most development in this book. Before the game starts Sora asks her whether she’s ever had fun playing a game. Of course the answer is no – with the fate of her entire nation always on her shoulders, this is a heavy burden. Plus she always wins, so it’s a boring heavy burden. But after her loss, she quickly realizes how exciting it is to be able to play someone who can kick her ass, giving her something to strive for. As for the fate of her people, what was somewhat clear in the first two books is made more explicit – the main plot seems to be Sora and Shiro uniting all of the 16 species into one nation, and the main difficulty is convincing everyone that they aren’t actually evil.

I’ve mentioned the books main flaws above, but as I hinted before, I really wish the author would do more with Stephanie – we’ve seen flashes of how smart she can actually be when she’s not dealing with Sora and Shiro or being humiliated, and I long to see more. Sadly, the fourth novel looks like a fluffy beach story, so I suspect I won’t get it. Other than that, the humor I liked in the first two books is still there, with lots of popular gaming references. There’s also some vivid horror as well with Sora’s fate towards the start of the book, and later Chlammy’s as well. There’s a fascinating series here beneath all the ecchi posturing and naked fanservice.

By Yun Kouga and Sunao Minakata. Released in Japan by Kadokawa Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Newtype. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

I admit I wasn’t paying too much attention to this when it was licensed. I hadn’t seen the anime, and “yuri in a girls’ private school’ has come to mostly mean cutesy fluff or cutesy angst. There’s certainly some angst in Akuma no Riddle, but it avoids the cutesy entirely, as the cover might suggest. Instead what we have here is a sort of survival game manga, but where almost all the stars are capable of taking care of themselves. And at the center is Azuma, a young girl who is not as cool and stoic as everyone thinks she is, and seems to be missing something essential – perhaps a killer instinct.

This is another case where the cover design was changed at the last minute – the cover you’ll get has different typeface than the one above. In any event, Azuma is a star student at an academy devoted to assassination. She is being sent by her eccentric and somewhat nasty school administrator to another private academy, where she’s to join a class that technically doesn’t exist. Her goal is to assassinate a certain girl. Of course, neither she or we are told who the girl is, but it becomes pretty obvious right off the bat. As the volume goes on, we meet the rest of the cast, all varieties of young, female, and no doubt tragically broken girls who are there to kill said one person. And Azuma, who has her own past to deal with which makes her, as the manga puts it, an assassination virgin, has to decide which side she’s going to be on.

There is a strong sense of plot and character here, which is surprising given the entire volume is basically given over to just introducing about half the cast. Azuma is likeable in her awkward aloofness, and you can see her struggling to understand emotions that come easily to everyone else. Haru is adorable, outgoing, a fluffy bunny sort of person, and has an amazingly tragic past, and I’m not suite sure if the series if going to make her a shining beacon of hope of shatter her like a glass egg. Of the other girls we get a sense of, there’s an “arrogant bully” type, who ends up being our first attempted killer. There’s a girl with what appears to be multiple personalities. And there’s Nio, the only attendee of the class who originated with the school itself, and who is easily the most irritating character in the series to date – deliberately so.

Of course, looking at the credits I shouldn’t be remotely surprised that I enjoyed this so much – the story is by Yun Kouga, author of Earthian, Loveless, etc. She’s not doing the art this time around, but the artist gets her basic aesthetic, so that’s OK. I’m not quite sure where the series is going to go after the end of this volume – I suspect we will be getting an “And Then There Were None” type culling of the herd, so to speak – but ideally I’d like for Haru’s idealism to at least stick around a little longer, if only to avoid the series ending with a giant pile of corpses. Oh, and the yuri in this so far is mostly nonexistent. Doesn’t matter, recommended anyway.

By Ryo Akizuki, based on the anime by TRIGGER and Kazuki Nakashima. Released in Japan by Kadokawa Shoten, serialized in the magazine Young Ace. Released in North America by Udon.

There’s an episode of Monty Python that features John Cleese as a man who’s quite interested in shouting, so much so that he screams every line at the top of his lungs. As I worked my way through the first volume of Kill La Kill, it occurred to me that what this really needed was for everyone’s voice to be just John Cleese shouting. It starts with the volume at maximum and that’s where it ends too. And I don’t just mean the characters shouting, although boy do they shout. The situations, the fight scenes, the backstory, everything is so over the top that the whole manga is just 160 pages of “YES I’M INTERESTED IN SHOUTING, BRIAN!”

The premise, equally ridiculous, is that Ryuki has come to an elite private school academy in order to track down her father’s killer. She has one half of a giant pair of scissors that she uses as her chief weapon, and suspects the student council president has the other half. When she arrives, she is immediately befriended by a small, cheerful chatterbox who spends most of the volume being kidnapped and pseudo-tortured to drive the plot. Can Ryuki find out the truth and win as she battles everyone? And will she need the help of the sentient, perverse school uniform she’s forced to wear in order to do so?

As you can see, the plot is just as shouted as everyone else. I think even if you knew nothing about Kill La Kill you’d know this was based off of an anime just by the aesthetic. I’ve never seen the anime, but I’ve heard enough about it to know that it’s completely ridiculous and also somewhat polarizing. The polarizing elements are here as well – Ryuki’s battle outfit is fanservice personified, and she clearly hates it, but the manga enjoys lingering on her. And there’s a creeper teacher whose presence is entirely unwelcome, in my opinion. That said, honestly, the manga moves so fast and doesn’t really linger on anything long enough for me to get vaguely irritated before something else is already happening.

This isn’t the sort of thing I could read if it were a long series – it’s simply too exhausting,even after only one volume. Luckily, it only seems to be three total, which sounds about the right amount. I’m not sure fans of the anime would get much out of this – it honestly feels like a straight up port of the episodes, though I can’t actually verify that. But for those who were curious, and enjoy seeing a lot of goofy action and manly shonen poses (though it’s technically seinen, probably due to the costume), Kiss La Kill is a decent series provided you don’t take it remotely seriously.

By Ayu Watanabe. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Bessatsu Friend. Released in North America by Kodansha.

God knows that I am not the type of person to fault a manga for being too predictable. The industry runs on predictability, and anyone looking for a good adventure, comedy or romance title knows from the start at least the gist of what they’re going to get into. I’m used to many shoujo romances having the same sort of shape. But there’s an agreement you make with the author there, which is that there’s something in this series that will pull you in despite the predictability, be it dialogue, depth of characterization, degree of exaggeration, etc. If everything about a series is something that you can connect the dots, where you guess what’s going to happen 4 pages before it does… well, you probably have something like L♥DK.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Our heroine confronts our hero, who has just rejected her best friend’s confession, and they exchange words. She then goes back to her apartment to find that he’s now living next door. Though a not-so-amazing series of coincidences, his apartment gets ruined and they wind up living together as she feels it was her fault. Now she must keep it a secret from everyone she knows, which is hard as she’s starting to fall for him. It’s also hard because he enjoys flustering and teasing her to such an extent that it would be called bullying if this weren’t a shoujo romance.

Shusei is the guy, and oh my god. I haven’t thrown a book across the room in frustration in quite some time, but when he climbed into her bath and situated himself behind her while her best friend was knocking on the door, I did just that. I get that ‘bully the girl you love’ is a popular trope, and being a straight white male, I am absolutely not the one who gets to say whether it’s good or bad. As always, tropes are good and bad depending on the writing. But this seems a bit over the top even for this genre. Things aren’t helped later on when the two are accidentally handcuffed together by their landlady’s kid, and my first thought was ‘he has the key and is just doing this out of amusement and a really bizarre desire to stay with her’. And sure enough!

Now, this could be OK if we had a really good heroine, and Aoi shows flashes on occasion, mostly at the beginning. But honestly, I think she falls for this guy way too fast, particularly given this series is 18 volumes and counting in Japan. Most of the character beats are “Argh he is so frustrating” – he does something intimate – blushing and flustered – he is rude. Repeat as needed. And I’ve gotten to the point where if I have a blushing, flustered heroine who spends most of her time wondering why she’s in this situation, I can’t also have a guy who is ‘I tease and bully because I love’. This is a very popular shoujo type, and I suspect this series will do quite well here. But it’s just a no-sell for me. I’ve seen it all too often before. And not in a good way.

By Junko. Released in Japan as “Watashi ga Motete Dousunda” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Bessatsu Friend. Released in North America by Kodansha.

It’s always tricky trying to do an over the top comedy that plays with tropes. You run the risk of people not getting the joke, or latching on to the very thing that you’re making fun of, or simply not going far enough. This new title from Kodansha sometimes falls into that pitfall trap, as occasionally it sympathizes with its heroine’s plight a bit too much, or doesn’t hammer hard enough on its basic premise. But for the most part Kiss Him, Not Me! manages to mock reverse harems while avoiding being a copy of The Wallflower, a series that ran in the same magazine and which has a lot in common with this.

The author, as she says in the afterword, has basically been a BL rtist before this title, drawing smutty titles for Gentosha and Prince of Tennis and Haikyuu! doujinshi. Now she has a mainstream title about a chubby girl who loves her BL pairings until one day her favorite character is killed off, whereupon she doesn’t leave her room or eat for seven days, and comes out looking thin and gorgeous. It’s the sort of plotline I’d recently criticized with Let’s Dance a Waltz, and I don’t like it here either – stop doing this sort of thing. That said, Let’s Dance a Waltz read like it was saying “if you too dance for two weeks straight, this can be you!”. Kiss Him, Not Me is telling readers “This is completely ridiculous, don’t do this”.

As for its cast, they’re well sorted out by personality, if not always by art – I sometimes had trouble telling the two blond and two brunet guys apart. There’s no sense yet that one of them is the obvious romantic lead for her, mostly as, well, that’s the premise – she doesn’t really want to date any of them, she wants to ship them. She and her BL friend (who makes a decent straight man) argue about who should go with who, and who’s the seme and who’s the uke. Of course, they’re discussing real-life people rather than characters in a fictional universe. I’m not sure if future volumes will show the discomfort that can arise from this sort of thing, but if so, I doubt it will be hammered on very long – the purpose of this series is laughs.

If there’s one big weakness to this series, as I hinted earlier, it’s that I don’t think it quite goes far enough in its attempts to be over the top. I was expecting more BL tease than what we got here, frankly – it’s all in her head, of course, but we need to see a bit more of it. As for Kae herself, she’s basically placed in the position of female fantasy, as a gorgeous girl who suddenly has the four hottest guys in school all going after her. As such, I’d like to see a few more obstacles in her way. Sports and Study plots come up towards the end of this volume, but both are taken care of in such a way that she wins out completely. Compared to, say, Sunako in The Wallflower, Kae doesn’t exactly have it tough here. Still, if you want silly shoujo that will make you laugh, and don’t mind more magic weight-loss, this is a decent title to try.

By Hajime Segawa. Released in Japan in two separate volumes by Kadokawa Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Shonen Ace. Released in North America by Vertical Comics.

Sometimes it’s quite pleasant being totally ignorant of a title before digging into it. It’s very much unlike me, as I’m the sort who always spoils himself and reads the endings first, so when I preorder a title there’s usually a certain amount of research done on my part. Tokyo ESP is, I found, by the creator of Ga-Rei, another Shonen Ace volume about ghosts and demons that ran for about a dozen volumes and is available on Bookwalker’s online site. But I didn’t really look into Tokyo ESP much before I read it. It also involves ‘kids with powers’, but in this case they’re full fledged superhero powers. I’m not sure if there has been an uptick in Western-style superhero manga recently, or if we’re just actually seeing the titles licensed over here, but it’s interesting to compare My Hero Academia, which trains people to use their powers in a school, to Tokyo ESP, where the heroes are outcasts and have to hide everything.

There’s a lot I enjoyed in this first omnibus volume. The heroine is great throughout. The daughter of a cop who’s fallen on hard times, much of the humor in the title comes from her obsessive penny-pinching and attempts to hold down jobs – attempts which get far more difficult when she suddenly finds she can pass through walls, floors, etc. This turns out to have been the result of her seeing a swarm of flying fish in the sky one evening, one of whom went through her and seemingly gave her said powers. Now she teams up with an eccentric but handsome guy who seems to have a tragic past (and who can teleport) to fight off villains who want to become supervillains, and mysterious girls who want to change the world, in a totally ominous way.

There’s a lot of humor in this volume, as I said before. The art helps – much of the fun comes from watching the goofy reaction faces that Rinka and the other characters put on. Sometimes the humor slips over into outright parody, such as when the Ghostbusters show up to attempt to capture the penguin you see on the cover, who’s also involved in this to a degree. And by that I mean the actual cast – they’re clearly drawn to be Harold Ramis and Dan Ackroyd (the Bill Murray likeness is less clear.) And there’s also the usual hijinks based humor you’d expect in a title like this – the superpowers can be hilarious, particularly Rinka’s dad, who winds up causing chaos due to his being able to attract things to him – i.e., cars.

That said, there’s a lot of death in this volume as well, and I would not be surprised if this is one of those series that gets darker the further it goes on. But it’s a solid series to start with, particularly if you enjoy supernatural action-adventure type stories. The action is well-handled as well, as Rinka’s been trained in various martial arts which she uses in addition to her superpowers, and there’s lots of fire and explosions too. I look forward to seeing what faces Rinka makes in the next volume.