Reviews

By Kosuke Fujishima. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Afternoon. Released in North America by Dark Horse.

It’s going to feel very strange living in a world where no new Oh My Goddess is coming out. As I’ve said before, this was only my second manga series ever after Ranma, and I’ve been following it in various formats for as long as I’ve been in the fandom. And now it’s over, with an ending that’s a bit rushed, to be honest, but gives us one last look at our favorite gods, goddesses, and (one) human (more on that later), seeing them escape Hell and return to yet another completely destroyed temple in time to have a pseudo-wedding. No, there’s no kiss or honeymoon – this isn’t the Oh My Goddess of Vol. 1. Even if their sexy times limiters are now turned off, K1 and Belldandy are still incorruptibly pure pureness personified.

In a series this long, there are certain things that we not only expect to see, but which are brought out to help wrap the plot up – character development come full circle. This includes Skuld’s kludged-together improvements having self-destruct mode at the most opportune times, and Lind’s hilarious inability to repair anything being used in order to allow the gang the time to escape at the last second. There’s a lot of fast-paced action and chatter from the usual suspects, which don’t really include Keiichi and Belldandy – let’s be honest, their big emotional wrap up happened in the last couple of volumes. Hild and Ansuz also have a very interesting discussion on the nature of love and what is and isn’t appropriate to sacrifice for it, something that I think filters down into how their daughters were raised.

Everything ends with a wedding, but unfortunately it’s an impromptu one involving only the goddesses that have formed around Keiichi (and demons – Mara is still used here for comedy relief, as she has been for 48 volumes or so). While this is sweet and looks nice, I do wish we’d gone an extra chapter and shown K1 and Bell getting married among their friends and family. The human cast has at one time or another been just as important in the series as the goddesses,and while Belldandy has a token mention of some of them earlier in Hell, it would have been nice to see them. Certainly I imagine Megumi will have words with her brother about getting married without their parents or his sister involved.

And so the series comes to a close, and Fujishima has moved on to his next project,which debuts over here in 2016. I’m not sure how successful someone would be in getting new fans addicted to Oh My Goddess the way us old-school fans are – so much of what defines the series has been mined for other anime and manga over the years that you don’t really realize how influential it really was. There’s also the frustration of the main relationship being so static and sexless for so long, something unfortunately also highly influential in harem comedies, though at least Fujishima hammered on an explanation at the last minute. Have a happy marriage, Keiichi and Belldandy. We’ll miss you.

By Shigeru Mizuki. Released in Japan as “Comic Shouwashi” by Kodansha. Released in North America by Drawn & Quarterly.

This was always going to be the trickiest volume of Showa. First of all, the span it’s covering is a good three times that of the other books. And secondly, the buildup and fallout from World War II, and the War itself, were amazing dramatic narratives. The rest of the Showa period has its interesting points, but there’s a struggle here to make it as exciting as the other three books. This might be why we see so much about murders and scandals, even more than the previous books. There’s also a constant reminder of the economic injustice in Japan, even as the country itself grows more prosperous. Again, having Nezumi Otoko as the narrator (though he’s at his most subdued here) helps. The success of postwar Japan is balanced by failures.

That cover image, by the way, has changed since its prerelease – the book I have has the bottom image replaced with a drawing of a bustling city with freeways surrounding it. Much of the final volume of Showa deals, in one way or another, with money. Companies get richer, politicians accept bribes, and at one point a man finds 100 million yen taped randomly to a bridge. As for Mizuki himself, we see him at the start just as poor as he’s always been, pawning everything he owns and eating food past its sell-by date. As time goes on, though, his desire to keep the ‘hopeless guy’ caricature starts to fail him, as we do see Mizuki doing better. He gets married in an arranged way, but seems reasonably happy about it, and has two kids. His yokai manga start to sell, and we see (but don’t really hear about) his improving circumstances. He’s even able to return to the South Seas a couple of times to meet the islanders who saved him in WWII.

There are also some highly disturbing fantasy sequences in this volume, reminding us that Mizuki makes his living writing horror, even if it can be goofy horror at times. One sequence where he has his soul stolen by a doppelganger and goes to the afterlife is surreal and cruel, as he narrates aloud that the “replacement” Mizuki has been living his life ever since that day. A funnier bit, but the humor is black as pitch, has a shyster talk Mizuki and his wife into a sort of ‘swingers’ arrangement where they get to choose from various girls-for-hire stacked up like cordwood on a boat. Mizuki asks what happens if the spouse gets cold feet, and we see a shot of his wife getting drugged and flash frozen in the back seat of a car. Mizuki’s sense of humor can be a bit beyond the pale at times, and I am pleased that the sequence sort of petered out after this.

There are many other reasons to enjoy this volume – I liked seeing the real-life visual inspirations for Nezumi Otoko and Kitaro here. And even though the story of Japan’s last 36 years of Showa is not the compelling narrative force of the first 27, this still remains one of his most important books. The final chapter ends with an inspiring rant against the evils of war, and how he hopes this history will show why it’s crucial to prevent it. An amazing series of books.

By Kyousuke Motomi. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Bessatsu Comic (“Betsucomi”). Released in North America by Viz.

I was a big fan of Dengeki Daisy, Motomi’s previous series, which ended up being a technological thriller as much as it was a shoujo romance. Thus I was quite excited to learn of the license of her new series. There are certain similarities between the two titles – the comedy is much the same, our heroine is a spunky orphan, and there seems to be a lot of janitorial work. But whereas Daisy was grounded in tech, QQ Sweeper looks to be more of a fantasy, with owl familiars, doors leading into people’s inner hearts, and creepy black thoughts turning into bugs. It’s a solid first volume, though, and we also have a hero who seems more stoic than Kurosaki was, which leads to a different vibe between the lead couple.

Actually, I’m wondering if the lead couple will actually be the focus of the series, as this has the potential to be something of an anthology, with our heroes solving the personal problems of various classmates. The first volume gives us Sakaguchi, a baseball star who was injured and now takes his self-loathing out on everyone around him, including his childhood friend who also feels inadequate. This is the sort of series that makes you want to invite these sweepers into your own life, to be honest, as despite the disturbing mental imagery, things seem to work out for the best – and it’s also shown that it’s not just the “cleaning” that did it, but the affected parties also have to make an effort. I look forward to seeing more of these sorts of stories.

As for Fumi, it’s quite refreshing seeing a girl who is honest and upfront about wanting to date a guy solely for his money – the catch is that she’s ALSO searching for a Prince Charming, and won’t actually get in the way of true love. Her love dreams of rich handsome young men are a comedic high point to this series. Her mysterious past, though, is what will likely carry over to future volumes. Well, I say “mysterious”, but I will be very surprised if there’s not a connection between Kyutaro’s tragic past with Fuyu and Fumi – betcha Fuyumi us her real first name, in fact. Kyutaro himself is the brooding sort, but not in a grumpy or overly sadistic way like a lot of other shoujo manga – though he does admit to Fumi going to far when she overwhelms him with how happy she is at the end of Volume 1. Oh, and his obsession with cleaning provides his own comedic highs – I bet he’d get along great with Levi from Attack on Titan.

This is a new series that could go in several directions, but the first volume is strong enough that the reader is willing to go along with any of them. I look forward to seeing how it develops.

Story by Ryukishi07; Art by Akitaka. Released in Japan in two separate volumes as “Umineko no Naku Koro ni: End of the Golden Witch” by Square Enix, serialized in the magazine Gangan Joker. Released in North America by Yen Press.

Umineko has a problem that Higurashi never really had, which is the fact that it is far more of an intellectual exercise. With Higurashi you had the mystery aspect of it you were trying to solve, but the primary focus was “oh my God, these poor kids, how will they avoid a tragic fate?”. Umineko has made it increasingly clear that there is no avoiding of any tragic fates, but more importantly, it’s become clearer that so much of what we’re seeing – all the meta, the increasingly ludicrous fantasy creatures and special effects shonen battles – is completely and totally bogus. Not just the “is it really witches” question, but the entire narrative.

The end of this omnibus features the witches in charge, Lambdadelta and Bernkastel, sweeping all the ‘pieces’ off the board entirely, to do the rest of the arc as a mock trial to show off how guilty Natsuhi is. The cast sits there like robots (with the exception of Battler, Natsuhi, and the witches), not really caring much about anything till they have to. It can be… hard to get invested in a plot like this. This is probably why Natsuhi made the best focus for this arc. Given choices of the other adult women we’ve seen, Rosa is a child abuser, Eva is also a child abuser (see: Ange), and Kyrie, aside from being a yakuza daughter, simply isn’t the sort who has emotional collapses. Natsuhi, who came into the Ushiromiya household as a fragile flower and has had every single one of her nerves shredded over the years, can give us realistic hysteria.

As you might gather from the cover, we get a few more new characters this time around as well. I love Dlanor – her name is a reversal of Ronald Knox, a classic mystery writer who gave us Knox’s Decalogue, a list of 10 rules that must be obeyed in mystery stories. (Yen does not explain either of those points, a shame as this series does have endnotes.) Dlanor, though, is a tiny, haughty minister of justice, here to make sure that everyone follows the RULES. Ah yes, she also has an odd Japanese verbal TIC. I was pleased to see that the official translation stuck with what Witch Hunt had done in the VN translation and gave her ending words CAPITALIZATION (or, given that comic fonts are always capitalized, BOLDNESS). It’s an excellent way to show off her ODDITY.

Dlanor is also far more sympathetic to us than Erika, despite being on her side. Of course, having spent most of the first volume letting us hate her guts, we see Erika start to lose it here. as Battler runs rings around her logic (arguably this is Lambda using Battler as her mouthpiece, but let’s let him have his fun), and many of her theories are smashed into bits. This allows her to be abused by Bernkastel, who is truly terrifying here, possibly as Erika is supposed to be her own self-insert there in Rokkenjima, and she’s humiliating the author. Erika then takes it out on Dlanor’s subordinates, of course, because where would Umineko be without cycles of abuse?

As for the standard murder mystery, it’s still not solved as of the cliffhanger, though I can give you some pretty good guesses. One thing for sure, it’s not Natsuhi, who everyone is gleefully setting up to look as guilty as possible. Not that Natsuhi is totally innocent – she has been faking Kinzo’s death for the last two years, after all, and the whole “Man from 19 Years Ago” thing does not sound done to me either despite supposedly only being Natsuhi’s guilt for wishing a baby dead followed by it happening. Assuming you don’t mind that the characters you’re invested in are frequently revealed to be the fiction they actually are, this remains an excellent series.

Story by Ryukishi07; Art by Soichiro. Released in Japan by Square Enix, serialized in the magazine Gangan Joker. Released in North America by Yen Press.

Fans of Ryukishi07’s work know that he is very fond of moments of what can best be termed ‘shonen drama’, which features all the characters being as cool as possible. The difficulty is that he’s rarely able to take full advantage of that, as his stories have involved murder mysteries and psychological horror first and foremost, so the cool moments have had to be undercut. Now, with his first series that isn’t a mystery and isn’t part of the When They Cry style, he can allow himself to open the throttle and just do a straight up action adventure which consists, seemingly, of nothing *but* cool people being cool. The result is highly variable, but it certainly has style.

The premise of this book is that, due to a natural disaster during WWII, Japan has been taken over by America and China, with the Japanese still living in cities second-class citizens who mostly join yakuza groups in order to avoid starvation. Our hero, Leo, is a former soldier who’s arrived back in Japan after a long exile. He finds himself saving the madam of a high-class brothel, Primavera, and after a few more adventures she takes him on as a bodyguard. The rest of the book is about Primavera’s attempts to avoid getting taken over by the mob, and various fighting sequences. Oh yes, and like Tezuka’s ‘star system’, Ryukishi is reusing characters again – Meryl will remind many people of Satoko/Lambdadelta, and Stella might be a lot taller and bustier than Rika will ever be, but she makes it clear when she starts rubbing heads and pitying people where her origins really lie.

It’s refreshing reading a Ryukishi07 book where you don’t have to pay close attention to try to figure out little bits of the mystery, a la Umineko. Rose Guns Days is very straightforward, sometimes to a fault. Yen Press decided not to omnibus this series, so we only have the one normal volume to go on, and so we haven’t quite hit the ‘character depth’ point of the series yet. Leo and Rose particularly suffer from this – Leo is cool and smug, and can back up that smugness with his fists, but his tragic past that was hinted at in the visual novel hasn’t shown up here yet. As for Rose, what a girl as innocent as her is doing as the head of a group o prostitutes is baffling, given she’s so shiny and pure it’s possible she can be seen from space. Soichiro’s art also doesn’t help – this time around the character designs for the VN were by the manga artist, rather than Ryukishi07 himself, but that means that the manga itself tends to get stuck in a lot of ‘default sprite expression’ poses.

I suspect this is the sort of series where we won’t really have a feel of how it’s going to go till a few books in. Still, if you like fistfights and cool posing, and enjoy Ryukishi’s writing with the ‘irony’ filter turned off, Rose Guns Days is a lot of fun.

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

I had talked a bit last time about trying to balance a series based on something else – be it a game, visual novel, or in this case a series of music videos – between fans who already had a grasp of the story and new readers who didn’t really know what was going on. After reading this second volume, I feel it safe to say that the Kagerou Daze series is very much biased in favor of the former. I was confused after the first novel, and so decided to spoil myself a bit on what’s actually going on. (Those who know me will be surprised I waited that long.) It definitely helped, and I was able to make a few connections I might not have, but it’s still a fact that the Kagerou Daze light novels will appeal most to hardcore Kagerou Daze fans.

Honestly, I think the biggest problem I have with the second book is the story order. After the last volume ends on a vague cliffhanger, we get 120 pages of what appears at first to be a completely different story, involving a grumpy, introverted girl and the guy that she can’t really admit she likes making a homebrew video game for the school festival. It’s only when Kido and Kano show up to play and Kido uses her “out of sight, out of mind” cheat that we realize this is actually taking place a year or two before the first book. This is helped further when we see Shintaro, the supposed hero, show up… and he’s a horrible jerk, even worse than the histrionic but basically harmless shut in we’re used to. We now want to see what led to him shutting himself away.

The most interesting parts of the book are Ayano, Shintaro’s scarf-wearing not-girlfriend who appears to have no self-worth at all, and of course Takane Enomoto, who actually does turn out to have been in the first book after all. This is what I was talking about when I said that it felt like this book came out in the wrong order. I think it would have a much stronger, more devastating ending if the amusement park fluff had come first and then we’d seen Ene’s backstory. After 3/4 of a book where nothing really happens, there’s a series of horrible events starting with Haruka’s collapse that take the reader down a well-earned path of ‘what the hell? No seriously, what the hell???’.

Aside from the devastating bits, there really isn’t much happening here beyond character development, but that is what these novels are for. They’re taking the characters from the music videos and showing us what their hopes, dreams, and motivations are. And, of course, spelling out what’s hard to say in a video. The “Headphone Actor” in the original video was Takane, but in the novel it appears to be Haruka as well, and I have a sneaking suspicion his fate is going to be as dark as hers is. I’m still pretty confused, but I’ll definitely be reading the third volume early next year.