Reviews

By Shiden Kanzaki and Saki Ukai. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen Press.

One of the more difficult things about reading modern Japanese manga and light novels is a certain tendency to follow what’s popular and throw things in that appeal to a certain audience – even if they may not actually be appropriate for the book that’s being written. As an example, Fujino Omori wanted to call their new fantasy novel series Familia Myth, but editorial convinced them to use the ever popular ‘long long title’ in order to get readers, resulting in Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon?. Which works OK, because there are other elements of that sort of genre in the books – harems, etc. But when you have a dark, brutal corpse-filled dystopian series about child soldiers, somehow populating it with lolicon jokes and tsundere grumbling seems even more jarring than it normally is.

There’s a very good dark action thriller in here as well. Rentaro spends most of the book talking about how useless he is, but this makes sense in terms of his characters and allows a genuinely surprising reveal towards the end of the book. Enju, like the other Cursed Children, is a giant bucket of adorable, and unlike most of the other cursed children she generally tends to be happy and upbeat – provided Rentaro is around. The relationship between them when she’s not going on about marrying him or trying to show off her prepubescent body is heartwarming. They’re contrasted well with Rentaro’s dark mirror and the villain of this first novel, Kagetane and his child Kohina. If Rentaro tries to be a big brother to Enju, Kohina sees Kagetane as her father, and he’s raised her, sadly, to be a sociopath. The fights between them are the high points of the volume.

I’d mention Kisara – that’s her on the cover, with a far bigger picture than Enju – except she really has a smaller part in this volume than you’d expect. Indeed, there were points, especially when she arrived in the middle of the council meeting with evidence of a conspiracy, that I really wish the book had a double narrative so that I could see what makes her tick. She seems to be driven by a white-hot anger against her grandfather, but what that is I’m guessing will have to wait till future books. As it is, so far she’s all potential. Oh yes, and Sumire is the classic eccentric weirdo scientist, complete with suggestions of necrophilia and a major role in Rentaro’s past.

If you removed all the elements that appeal to the typical Japanese otaku, this would not be out of place in Viz’s Haikasoru imprint. I know I’ve talked about this sort of thing earlier while reviewing No Game No Life, but that at least is fairly light-hearted and comedic with the occasional dramatic cliffhanger. Black Bullet is a brutal world where all that the heroes can hope for is making the world happy for the Cursed Children in the brief time they have available, and the last couple of pages show that even this rarely works, and that death is all that awaits. I really don’t need “tee hee, Rentaro is a pedophile’ jokes on top of it.

By Yusei Matsui. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz.

One of the things that makes this such an interesting manga is the tension between the standard cliched ‘teacher takes a class filled with losers abandoned by teachers and makes them care about learning and themselves’ cliche and the actual plotline that they are trying to kill their teacher to save the world by learning assassination. Koro-sensei is too straightforward and strange to really swell on this, and Irina is not at a point yet where she really particularly cares (she’s still mostly here for breast jokes and to get humiliated). But Karasuma is normal enough, even if he is a tactical military guy trained in dozens of methods of killing a person, to be aware of what they’re actually doing to these children. And to be disturbed when one of them shows signs of being really really GOOD at killing.

Naturally, it’s Nagisa, who is the closest we have to a ‘main character’ amongst the students. We’ve already seen how he has a talent for research and tends to try to think his way to a better assassination. Now we see that he doesn’t even need to use strength and power to be able to achieve this – he can rely on his natural unassuming, slightly feminine personality (there are several jokes here about him looking like a girl) and go right for the kill. And thank goodness for that, because he’s up against the government’s replacement for Karasuma, who gets results by being a complete psycho, and thinks nothing about belting a 14-year-old girl across the chops.

This leads to the other interesting thing about this book, which is the school principal. He’s clearly the main antagonist of the series, and we’ve seen how his method of teaching requires Class E to be at the bottom of the heap for everyone to bully. I was, honestly, surprised at the ending of the baseball story – not necessarily because our heroes won, but more because the principal didn’t punish the main baseball team in retaliation. That said, as an antagonist he’s great, being able to almost hypnotize his students into doing what he wants, and sticking to his principles even if they are twisted. That’s why his appearance at the end of the arc with Takaoka is wonderful, as he strolls up to and casually talks about how dull and boring his class was. Not even worth sticking around like Irina does, he’s terminated right there and then.

Koro-sensei actually doesn’t have much to do in this volume – the main story is all Karasuma, with Koro-sensei merely commenting occasionally, and the revelation that he can’t swim will carry us into the next book, but doesn’t do much good now. Still, the series has now gotten to the point where we don’t need to have killing Koro-sensei being the focus of every chapter. There’s a lot going on here, and as the series hits Vol. 5 you can tell that Matsui has realized he’s not on the verge of cancellation and is drawing out a larger plotline. I look forward to seeing where it goes.

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.

It’s striking how much of JoJo’s, particularly this first arc, has been embedded in anime fandom in general. I was unfamiliar with the arc till reading Viz’s version, but when Dio, about 3/4 of the way through this volume, begins screaming “WRRRRYYYYYYY!!!”, I laughed, finally knowing where another meme came from. One of the great joys of reading this series is seeing how easily it can get turned into memes – and that’s not a knock on its quality, it’s a sign that people are able to take the musing, exciting and horrifying that is JJBA and make it their own. Not every series is able to do that.

That’s Dio on the cover, but for most of the first half he sits out the battle, content to sit on a throne and do evil things like having a mother beg for her child’s life, then zombifying the mother so she kills the child herself. In Volume 1 a token effort was made to give Dio a reason to be evil, but it was just token – Dio is the villain because he really really loves doing evil things, and adding ‘immortal vampire’ to the list only made it easier for him to be MORE evil. Once Bill Bruford and Tarkus – or however they’re spelled – are taken out, Dio finally manages to fight with JoJo and show off how he really is from the dark side – pure attacks don’t even affect him.

This is the last volume of the first arc, and you can tell by how much the violence steps up. This was already a very violent series – I’d mentioned the debt it owed to Fist of the North Star before – but it really amps it up here, with the aforementioned mother and child, with one of Dire Straits (I love the naming in this series, and it reminds me I miss Bastard!!) getting flash frozen and then shattered, with JoJo’s mentor remembering at a convenient time the prophecy that said he had to die, and finally with the apocalyptic ending where Dio, now just a head, finds a way to kill off Jonathan Joestar once and for all.

The ending shows off how much JoJo’s is also immersed in the tropes of tragedy, though I’d argue it’s not really pure tragedy as JoJo doesn’t have a fatal flaw like Hamlet or Lear. He just can’t escape Dio, not even after he gets to marry Erina and go off on a honeymoon. The last 30-40 pages are awash in corpses, and indeed the story ends with (seemingly) Erina the only one still alive. Somehow, though, I doubt Dio is dead. The author clearly planned to move on right after this – there are no breaks between this arc and the next one in the series, so it’s not like many modern manga where a reboot takes place after a break of several months/years. Instead, it shows off how all of this – the histrionics, the shouting, the battles and the tears – was a prelude, working p to something even bigger.

What will that be? Well, we’ll find out in November. Or now, if you like reading digitally.

By Kohei Horikoshi. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz.

It has to be said, if you’re looking to succeed in Weekly Shonen Jump, ‘write the same thing as everyone else, only your way’ is a pretty good description of how to go about doing it. And to a degree, that’s what the author does with this new series. Even though the front cover parodies Marvel and DC Comics, and the kids are ‘superheroes’ in a Western sense, this is very much in the classic Jump mold – indeed, some of the amusing yet insane superpowers reminded me of the late lamented Medaka Box. Our hero as well is a sweet kid, the Naruto sort who starts off weak and bullied but will improve by leaps and bounds because he tries hard and refuses to back down when his principles tell him it’s wrong.

Our hero Izuku (abbreviated to ‘Deku’ for reasons that Viz won’t explain because Jump titles don’t have endnotes) is the small guy on the cover, as you no doubt guessed. The world about 25-30 years ago evolved superpowers in about 80 percent of the population. And Izuku really, really loves superheroes – he’s pretty much an otaku. Sadly, he’s in the 20% that doesn’t have powers. This, naturally, leads to bullying on the part of all his school classmates, particularly Katsugi, who plays the role of the selfish ass quite well in this volume, though I suspect he will gain greater depth as the title goes on, particularly give his childhood past with Izuku.

Luckily, Izuku gets a superpower transferred to him from the other guy on the cover. Even more luckily, the power does not just magically make him a superhero – he has to go through an amusing and heartwarming training montage, complete with the usual ‘drag a refrigerator across the beach’ stuff, till he’s no longer a wimpy kid but rather a wimpy kid with a muscular build. And he doesn’t really get a chance to train with his powers, either – which means he’s in trouble when he applies to Superhero School, where the goal is to be awesome immediately.

Nothing here is really original, but also nothing here is really poorly done, either. The author has learned from Barrage, his previous series. Izuku is a bit of a shy coward without being unlikeable, All Might’s secret allows him to be hilarious as well as inspiring, and his new friend Ochako is cute, and not Shiemi from Blue Exorcist despite all appearances saying she is. The fight scenes look smooth and non-confusing, and there is actual tension as you wonder how this will get resolved – it also allows Izuku to be clever, which is the best way to advance when you also have cool superpowers. Add on a reluctant mentor and some random giant woman fanservice, and you can see exactly why this became a bit hit while Barrage was cancelled after 2 volumes.

If you want something you’ve never seen in Jump before… why do you read Jump, exactly? But if you want something light and fun, with potential for more, My Hero Academia may be right up your alley.

By Eiichiro Oda. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz.

The Dressrosa arc has gone on for a long time, and it’s got a long, long way to go. This can be a bit exhausting, especially given that this volume takes an already chaotic situation and threatens to turn it into incoherency. Thanks to Usopp, the toys are all turning back into people, and those left behind have regained their memory of them – including Violet and Rebecca. But Doflamingo is not going to let this stop him, as he deploys several body doubles and puts bounties on everyone who has opposed him – including Usopp, who gets the highest bounty of all, possibly the funniest moment in the book. There’s a lot going on, and One Piece is always enjoyable, but I always feel like I should reread the previous few volumes before I start this new one.

At least I’m finally able to talk about some revelations, even though the reappearance of Sabo has been the most obvious plot twist since Sogeking turned out to be Usopp. He and Koala are here representing the Revolutionary Army, who have to stop Doflamingo, but in reality he seems to mostly be here to help Luffy. This now means we have every major force on the island – pirates, marines, revolutionaries, actual residents, Tontattas… and it makes for a giant melee, as there’s just no way Dressrosa can contain this. At least Robin’s not a toy anymore. Oh yes, adn the tournament is over, as the Flame-Flame fruit is claimed by the victor. Somehow I don’t think Luffy will object too much.

Speaking of Luffy, he and Law make for an amusing comedy team throughout. Law is still cuffed with seastone, so literally all he can do is lay there and whine, and boy howdy does he. It’s always wonderful in One Piece to see the incredibly cool characters show off how nobody is ever that cool all the time, and Law’s frustration with Luffy’s ‘whatever, just go with it’ attitude is simply always funny. That said, I do hope he gets unlocked soon, as I’m fairly certain Doflamingo is not going to be as easy to defeat as Caesar Clown.

I’d say there are a few weaknesses. Rebecca continues to not be as strong a character as I’d expected, though to be fair to her she’s really going through a bunch of traumas that would make anyone break down. The huge cast and need to switch to a different part of the city every 2-3 pages does not make for easy reading, and I also miss Sanji, Nami, and other major Straw Hats, who have been shuffled off the page till this is all over. And I will admit, I thought everyone making fun of Pica’s voice was a bit mean. That said, it’s One Piece. If you read it, you’ll love it. If you don’t, you aren’t going to pick up Vol. 75.

Also, Sabo and Koala are totally Luffy and Nami, right? She even carries his hat!