Reviews

By Maki Enjoji. Released in Japan as “Hapi Mari” by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Petit Comic. Released in North America by Viz.

Viz has started to slowly dip its toe into the waters of josei, first a few years back with Butterflies, Flowers, and now with two new series, of which this is the first. They’re all being put under the Shojo Beat imprint, because a) it’s a brand people look for, which a Signature title isn’t necessarily; and b) honestly, most of these titles hit the same beats as their shoujo titles, it’s just that the protagonists are adults and there is sexual content. It wouldn’t be hard to see something like Happy Marriage?! reimagined to high school and Sho-Comi, with Hokuto as the hot new transfer student or something.

The basic premise isn’t too hard. Chiwa is an office lady whose father is a bit of a naive idiot, so their family is in heavy debt. She’s trying to deal with it by taking extra jobs, but that’s not going so well. Then the company chairman has the brilliant idea of marrying her to the company president, a smooth yet vaguely jerk-like guy naked Hokuto. Neither of them are really enthused about the idea, particularly Chiwa, who is a twitchy virgin who has no idea how to handle anything like this. Will they gradually grow to love each other as husband and wife and find true love and sexual satisfaction?

It’s hard not to compare this title with Butterflies, Flowers, Viz’s first foray into the world of Petit Comic. Both have the same types of hero and heroine, both involve company power issues (he has far more power than she does), and both heroines tend to freak out when bad or confusing things happen to them. Happy Marriage?!, though, is a far more natural and mellow title than Butterflies, Flowers ever was. There’s no real exaggeration for comedic effect here. No superdeformed heroines, no over-the-top sexist behavior as of yet, and zero Gundam references. Hokuto seems a bit standoffish, and like many shoujo/josei heroes likes to smirk smugly on occasion, but compared to other types I’ve seen he’s not too bad. Likewise we see Chiyo standing up for herself on occasion, though her lack of life experience and self-confidence is no doubt going to be one of the issues this manga deals with through its 10-volume run.

Of course, the problem with not having the appalling lows of Butterflies, Flowers is it doesn’t have the amazing highs either. The comedy and gratuitous appallingness of the latter title was what kept audiences reading, as they wanted to see what outrageousness would happen next. There’s not as much outrageousness in Happy Marriage?!, so what you’re left with is just a bit duller. It feels like one of many other shoujo titles, just grown up. Which is something you could say for a lot of josei, really. Chiwa in particular hasn’t really done much to separate herself from other blushing blonde heroines. Hokuto at least is more reserved than this type usually is, and I liked that we see he doesn’t really understand his new wife any more than she understands him, he’s just better at hiding it.

This is a good start to a romantic series, and I look forward to seeing if it avoids other ‘smutty shoujo’ traps once our heroes get hot and heavy (which they don’t here). I’ll check out another volume. But it’s not making my jaw drop the way its predecessor at Viz did.

By Shigeru Mizuki. Released in Japan as “Gegege no Kitaro” by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Drawn & Quarterly.

This is another of those titles manga fans have been waiting for years to see, and now Drawn & Quarterly are finally releasing what I hope is the first of multiple volumes devoted to it. Shigeru Mizuki’s most famous and influential series, about the adventures of a young yokai and his various supernatural friends, who spends much of his time investigating creepy happenings and trying to stop them. Almost all yokai manga on the market owe a debt to Kitaro, even if, on the surface, this manga is not really all that much like Kamisama Kiss or Natsume’s Book of Friends.

It starts off fairly slowly, with a few short one-shots involving Kitaro being mysterious, and a large amount of human involvement. There are some very nice scares, though, such as the story about the drunken salarymen who insult yokai at a bar and then get taught a lesson on the train ride home. These stories have Kitaro mostly on his own, which is fine for a while, but he’s pretty much a stoic straight man, so the series needs some spicing up after it gets going. Enter Nezumi Otoko (Rat Man), a yokai who is always out for himself above any other. His appearance adds a lunatic joy to the proceedings, as you’re never quite sure if he’s been possessed by evil, is changing sides merely to save his own skin, or is genuinely being a complete ass. Usually it’s all three.

As the collection goes on, the stories get longer and more complex. One tale has Kitaro and several of the stronger yokai (including future series regulars Konnaki Jiji, Sunakabe Baba, and Ittamomen) headed to an island that has been taken over by Western monsters such as Dracula and Frankenstein. At first I was expecting this to be a fairly lighthearted romp, but things got surprisingly dark and serious for our heroes. Even more impressive is the largest story in the book, which shows Kitaro joining an expedition to track down an immortal yokai monster, but being hindered (and later completely betrayed) by an egotistical young scientist who wants the credit and glory of single-handedly discovering it. What eventually happens is a giant kaiju battle, a la Godzilla. This gives us some of the best art of the series, and also has Nezumi Otoko bitchslapping the villain over and over again, something I will never get tired of reading.

Contrary to today’s hipper, sexier Shonen Magazine, the stories that ran in the 1960s version are totally child-friendly, and I think that still applies today. Younger kids may get freaked out a bit by some of the scarier things, particularly Kitaro and his father, who is an eyeball that lives in Kitaro’s own empty socket, and pops out grotesquely from time to time. For the most part, however, these are great, fast-paced ghost stories with action and laughs that any child can enjoy.

And it goes without saying that adult manga fans should enjoy this as well. It’s fairly episodic – there really aren’t any ongoing plot threads beyond ‘Kitaro discovers new yokai threat’ – but that’s mostly irrelevant. You’re here to see a good story well told, some really creepy yokai, and the work of a master craftsman in what has proven to be his greatest work. Highly recommended.

By Mizuki Nomura. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen Press.

It is not uncommon in the world of fiction – and indeed in the world of manga – for the main character to be the most difficult, the most problematic, and sometimes the least satisfying. This is particularly true when the goal of your book or series of books is to have that character achieve catharsis, to rise above mental and emotional blocks and become a better person who can move past the past that may be causing them suffering. There’s a fine line here, particularly in a series. Their faults and trauma drive the plot, but at the same time the goal is to heal them. This can lead to an unfortunate tendency to ‘forget’ past lessons learned in time for the new book to roll around, so the character always starts two steps backward from where he was before.

As you can guess, I’m talking about Konoha Inoue, the first-persona narrator and hero of these books. The last events in this series chronologically, Book Girl And The Wayfarer’s Lamentation, showed Konoha finally confronting directly the girl most associated with his past trauma – Asakura Miu – and dealing with exactly what led to that point, both his actions and those of Miu. At the end, both have moved to a point where they can start to repair their psyches. So you can imagine my frustration where, at several times during this new volumes, Konoha is still consumed by the same demons that haunted him before, particularly in regards to his writing.

It’s especially frustrating because we even see Miu, who is brought in in a short scene to attempt to smack some sense into Konoha, and we can see for ourselves that the same thing has not happened to her. Miu is changing, has grown and started to mature, even though we see that it’s hard for her, and she may still be regretting a few things. We thought this is what Konoha was doing as well. He was moving in the right direction, had started to opemn up to others, and had (we thought) made peace with Tohko, his mentor/friend, moving on to college. Of course, the main problem with this is that the series didn’t end with Book 5, and there’s one more backstory we haven’t really focused on, and that’s Tohko’s.

Konoha and Tohko have what amounts to a very codependent relationship in this book, far more than what we appeared to see in the prior books in the series. There had been small hints in the past, but nothing that quite led us to expect what was going on with Tohko and Ryuto here. It thus feels overwrought and emotionally draining, and worse, it feels like those emotions haven’t really been earned yet. This is in contrast with the scenes with Miu, and also Nanase, where you can buy into the tension and dissonance that flows between their characters and Konoha. Tohko seems to have made a leap here I wasn’t prepared for.

Speaking of Nanase, she really needs to move to another series ASAP. K-On!, or Sunshine Sketch, or something cute and fluffy that is absolutely not filled with broken people who think nothing of throwing each other to the wolves. While Ryuto’s frustration with Konoha is absolutely understandable – we feel the same way, honestly – his handling of Konoha is brutal and horrible, and made me lose all sympathy for him, mostly as he’s risking Konoha having a complete mental breakdown. Given the cliffhanger shows that he’s determined to ‘break’ Nanase, I can only look forward to that part of Vol. 8 with dread. I never had any illusions that Konoha and Nanase were going to remain a couple – his affection for her has never quite seemed like genuine romantic love – but this isn’t how I want to see them break up.

Lastly, there’s the question of what Book Girl as a series thinks of writing and authors in general. Ryuto’s mother points out that Konoha shouldn’t be an author, and Konoha through this book seems to regard writing as suffering. Except, of course, that he’s been writing short stories for Tohko the entire time. He just doesn’t think of that as coming from the same place. What he fears more than writing is notoriety – someone reading his work, holding it up to others, and judging it. Tohko notably never does that – his snacks are pretty much immediately eaten by her, and never see anyone else’s eyes. But given how screwed up Kohona is at this point, and the fact that Tohko’s mask may have been in place more than any of the other masked characters in this series, can we really resolve this in just one volume?

Well, no, that’s why there’s a Part 1 up there. This came out in Japan in 2 parts, and unlike the Haruhi 2-parter coming out in November, Yen has chosen to release it separately as two volumes. This means we have to wait till January to find out how this will all end. And despite all my complaints, I still want very much to see the resolution. After all, any series that can make me go on at this length about its faults is one that’s worthy enough to read. Even if Konoha does make me grind my teeth. A lot.

By Shigeru Suguira. Released in Japan initially by Shueisha; this updated edition was released by Shobunsha. Released in North America by PictureBox.

Wow. I had heard that this author was a bit surreal, so I went into this thinking I was prepared, but I was not remotely prepared. I’m not entirely sure that this manga can be read, per se. It’s an experience, almost like going to an interactive art show or something. Each page led to a new expression on my face: awe, bewilderment, sometimes staring blankly while saying “Really?” There is a story to tell, and it flows pretty well, but I’ll be honest, there’s nothing here regarding plot and characterization to talk about. Not that this is a bad thing. I found reading this to be very sensory, and absolutely would recommend it to other hardcore manga fans.

Technically, this is an adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tale, and the basic framework does sort of follow the plot. This doesn’t take place in a realistic world, however. This is the world of Wild West movies, where the East Coast can have huge mesa and rocky cliffs. It’s also very much the world of 50s comic books and strips. Photorealistic serious-minded Indians stand together with some of the goofiest faces you’ve seen this side of Doraemon. And it’s in your face the whole time – there’s no way you can try to work around it. Because this is also very comedic, despite its presence. There’s lots of fourth-wall breaking, and silly gags, and dumb Indians doing dumb things. It’s fun, but loose – one feels that if you take one wrong step along the way, you’ll end up in a place no reader has gone before.

According to the very welcome essays at the end of this book by translator Ryan Holmberg, this is how Sugiura’s style worked in general, particularly in the 60s and 70s. This edition dates from 1973-74, and is an update of the original 1953 edition. Reading the essays made me realize what my mind had been struggling with the entire time I read the manga – it felt like a collage. Pastiche isn’t quite right, because it doesn’t explain the way that the work gives a sense that anything can be pasted in from anywhere as you go. And so the two military daughters who need to be rescued are straight out of a romance comic-book and the villain of the piece is drawn completely straight, yet one of the guards is Oliver Hardy, and Wimpy from Popeye is the chef. The band Negativland once called this kind of approach culture jamming, and that’s what we see here – American and Japanese influence all thrown into one glorious canvas.

This is not the sort of manga I would recommend to any casual manga reader, nor do I think it would be a good present for kids, even if it was meant for young children in Japan. The content pretty much deals with the old, slightly racist way that Hollywood and comic books dealt with Indians, though honestly it’s much better than other contemporary works could be. But for those who really love something different in their manga, or for scholars, this is a real treat. It’s just about the right length – I’m not sure I could have taken more than the 114 pages it turned out to be, mostly as reading it can be a bit exhausting. For those who like a challenge, or art lovers, or even folks who enjoy slapstick comedy, give Last of the Mohicans a try. It’s like a yaminabe – you never quite know what ingredient will come out next.

By Osamu Tezuka. Released in Japan as “Futago no Kishi” by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Nakayoshi. Released in North America by Vertical, Inc.

In this sequel to Princess Knight (well, the original Princess Knight, that is – the rewrite we saw here is still 5 years away), Osamu Tezuka shows us very clearly right from the start that this is a fairy tale, a stage production, a full-blown melodrama. No, even more, a mellerdrammer. This is a cartoon straight out of Mickey Mouse. It has talking animals, it has villains that are so paper-thin it’s amazing they don’t blow away, it has truly ridiculous plot contrivances, it’s has somewhat questionable gypsies (who are straight out of the European Comics Book Of Stereotypes), two sets of twins, multiple breaks of the fourth wall, including an appearance by Tezuka as himself, and an ending that does not so much end as simply stop.

I loved it. But it really does seem to have everything that folks find annoying in a Tezuka manga. More than anything, I think this is the style of manga Tezuka did that we haven’t really seen over here much. The quick, dashed-off adventure stories. Lots of animal characters. Glib protagonists with not much depth. This is a good chunk of his output, particularly at this point in his career. If you read Tezuka for titles such as Barbara or MW, I can see you finding this ridiculously cloying and silly. Which it is. But it’s also so much fun! I can’t tell you the number of times I was grinning like a maniac while reading this. Not just for the adventures of Daisy and Violetta – truth be told, Daisy is perhaps the weak point of the entire manga. No, for things like the evil Duchess simply having her henchmen back out a high window to their deaths for irritating her. Ridiculous, but fun.

As for the sexism or lack thereof, it’s not too bad given the era and country it was written in, and I think does slightly better than Princess Knight. Yes, Violetta is constantly yearning to be female and wear dresses, etc, and her relationship with Emerald is far more interesting than that of her with Prince White (if this plot were written today, Daisy would marry Prince White and pretend to be Violetta while she goes off with Emerald for more adventures). But there’s no denying that Violetta kicks ass throughout, and the last page does note “Well, she may dress up as a man and have adventures in the future.”

Even better, and my favorite scene in the entire book, is when she and her family are thrown into the tower by the evil Duke and Duchess. She and her mother are separated into one room, and Violetta starts to despair. Then her mother sees a couple of swords that were conveniently left on the wall (the duke and duchess are not exactly the smartest of villains… we’re talking Gargamel-level smarts here) and decides that Violetta needs to learn how to REALLY fence… and be taught by Princess Knight. Here we see that, despite choosing to be Queen and settle down to raise a family, Sapphire has never truly abandoned her upbringing as a boy (and in fact, clearly must keep in shape with the rapier, given that she kicks her daughter’s ass). I loved this bit of family bonding.

There’s a lot packed into the 240 pages we get here. I didn’t even mention the incredibly tragic deer, or the cartoon wolves (one of whom I swear is voiced by Billy Bletcher), or the truly weird art that we see in places (check out the duke on page 231… pure Tex Avery). It’s not deep… it is in fact the very opposite of deep. But it’s fun, and lively, and would make a great fairy tale for children. Which, of course, is what it was meant to be back in 1958. A great addition to the North American Tezuka canon.

By Atsushi Ohkubo. Released in Japan by Square Enix, serialization ongoing in the magazine Shonen Gangan. Released in North America by Yen Press.

Soul Eater is a series I love, but it’s also a series that’s very easy to put on my ‘I only have one paragraph worth of things to say’ list, which is why I’ve been reviewing it as a brief for the last two years. With this volume ending the Baba Yaga’s Castle arc, however, it’s a good time to take stock and remind ourselves just why this series works. It’s not just about the awesomely surreal art any more. (Though the art is great… in particular, the use of simple black scribbles to show everyone’s minds being taken over by “spiders” is absolutely horrific.)

The last time I did a big review was Vol. 6, where our heroes ended up losing their battle to stop the resurrection of the big bad. They fare somewhat better here, but it’s still something of a Pyrrhic victory. Arachnae, for all her disturbing spider imagery, was always going to fall into the category of ‘not as interesting as Medusa’. And the astute reader has been waiting for Medusa’s ‘helping’ our heroes to eventually rebound back on them for about 4 volumes, now, so it’s not much of a surprise when it does. (I do wonder what happened to the little girl Medusa was possessing… I assume she lived, but we never do see her again. The anime implied she was returned to her parents and absolutely not mentally scarred by all this, which… seems unlikely.)

And of course our heroes have some casualties of their own, namely Kid, who is still trapped within the villains’ book. This means that Liz and Patty are now a duo like everyone else, rather than a threesome with Kid, and Patty is now the meister. This is dealt with mostly in a lighthearted way (Patty is shown to be hella strong, and also has no qualms whatsoever in fighting dirty when the need arises), but I am hoping that at some point we get an explanation of their backstory, as Liz and Patty just aren’t as developed as the rest of the cast (no pun intended).

The end of one arc means the start of another, though, and there are several things in this volume that point forward to what is coming soon. We discover who the killer of B.J. is, and while it wasn’t obvious, it wasn’t all that surprising either – the killer has always seemed a little fishy throughout the series, so seeing he’s really evil is not that much of a stretch. As for Kim Diehl, it’s a bit of an anticlimax, as the far-too-understanding Shinigami seems to be perfectly OK with “she’s a witch, but not evil, so forgive her”. I wonder if Soul Eater Not! will deal with any of this fallout… assuming it ever catches up to this point in the manga. (I also want to meet her sister, who will inevitably be called Kelly Diehl.) Lastly, Maka and Soul hunt down a serial killer who is an amusing Freddy/Sadako hybrid, and finally gain the Death Weapon status they almost had in Chapter 1 before Soul messed everything up.

Everyone has matured and seem stronger now, which is good, as things are only going to get more dangerous from now on, particularly if Maka is still intent on saving Crona. Soul Eater has rapidly become one of the best shonen series available today. Get it.

(Also, trigger warning for spiders, but honestly, Soul Eater has so many terrifying art things that it seems a bit pointless to just narrow it to one.)

By Rie Takada. Released in Japan as “H³ School!” by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Shoujo Comic. Released in North America by Viz Media.

As many of you know, Viz has been releasing many of its titles digitally. And, while it’s great to have the latest Naruto or One Piece on your tablet, the main reason this is an amazing boon for consumers is seeing some of the older, out of print titles of yesteryear return. Let’s face it, I have enough trouble keeping up with the current titles I read, much less trying to go back and grab that series I missed 8 years ago. And this one intrigued me in particular, because I had vague memories of people really enjoying it. My other two experiences with the author – Punch! and Gaba Kawa – were more mediocre, so I wanted to give this a try to see if it was the exception. Sure enough, this is so far an excellent shoujo series with a great, spunky heroine.

Hanabi Ozora is typical of the shoujo heroines I like – takes no shit from anyone, generally beloved by her female classmates, can be dense as lead when it comes to the opposite sex, etc. These qualities are put to the test for her when her school is folded into a boys’ school as it wasn’t doing all that well. Now she and her classmates have to deal with boys – boys who seem, at times, arrogant, haughty, and cold. But also, y’know, really amazingly handsome. In fact, the girls’ school council can’t deal with the devastatingly attractive Yoshitomo, who is making rules against classmates dating. That can’t stand! Enter Hanabi, who has no issues whatsoever dealing with handsome guys – hell, her biggest issue is her frizzy hair.

The romantic male lead, by the way, is not the aforementioned Yoshitomo, who so far tends to be the ‘arrogant with a nice streak underneath’ sort, but the school vice-president, Yasuaki. Yasuaki has trouble dealing with girls in general, so getting Hanabi in his face every day is almost too much for him. His cold aloofness, naturally, turns out to be shyness. Oh, and did I mention he’s a surfer? Hanabi has to get his signature in order to ditch the anti-fraternization rule, and he gradually comes to appreciate her never-quit attitude, which seems to apply to her entire life as well as her petitions.

The complications start when the other school council member, Tokihisa, starts to fall for Hanabi, who’s never dealt with romance, so has no idea why being friendly with another guy would make the first guy jealous. This must be resolved by a tennis match… between men! (With added Hanabi.) It doesn’t help that Yasuaki is effortlessly good at everything he does, leading to Tokihisa having a serious inferiority complex. And if you guessed we’d be dealing with a forceful kiss by the end of this, you’re right… in fact, as a bonus, we also get mouth-to-mouth resuscitation after a surfing accident too!

Absolutely nothing about this is original, but as I’ve noted before, if you want originality, why are you reading shoujo manga? This manga gave me what I wanted: a strong, amusing heroine, a variety of hot guys she could potential end up with, the one cool, brooding guy she obviously will end up with, and some nice surfing shots. (The author, by the way, has moved on to josei, writing for Hakusensha’s Silky and Shogakukan’s Judy. Since those two magazines combined have inspired zero North American licenses, we may not get much more of her over here.) I’ll definitely be checking out further volumes of this series.