Reviews

By Io Sakisaka. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Bessatsu Margaret (“Betsuma”). Released in North America by Viz.

As many readers of this blog know, give me a choice between a new series that’s daring, bold, experimental and avant-garde and a new series that’s more of the same as all the other series except with different bits, and I will go for the latter every time. I appreciate the value of alt-manga, but am far more happy reading Vol. 97 of Shoujo Girl X. Usually because every time I do, even if it seems like it’s going to be more of the same, there’s always something that ends up drawing me in. These series all have to compete in Japan with 7,000 other high-school romances. There needs to be something that stood out enough to have it be a success there and get licensed here. Which brings me to Strobe Edge.

The cover really says it all – it’s hard to look at and not feel ‘well, it’s a bit overly sweet, isn’t it?’ without even reading the content. And the first half of the book doesn’t seemingly do much to change that opinion. Ninako is naive and a bit flighty, but not overly ditzy. She’s got a group of close female friends (who so far have stayed her friends, yay!) as well as a male childhood friend that everyone assumes she is in love with, mostly as he is clearly in love with her and that’s how these things go. Ninako, however, isn’t sure what she feels for Daiki is love. And she has *no idea* what these feelings she has are when she runs into Ren, the school heartthrob and all-around mysterious guy.

As I said, so far so normal. If I told you Daiki was blond and Ren had black hair, I assume you’d be totally unsurprised. But gradually I started to realize that more thought was being put into the plot than I suspected. Ninako may seem flighty, but she thinks hard about everything, and once she realizes that what she’s feeling for Ren is love, all sorts of extra problems come up. As for Daiki, he is obviously the ‘unlucky childhood friend’ who is there to provide the love triangle, but this does not make his crush on Ninako any less weighty, especially as we see its origins. He’s a nice guy, as Ninako herself says, and we feel for him even as we root for Ninako to get together with Ren, because that’s how these things go.

The second half of this volume really picks things up, and I was quite startled a few times. Ren, for one, is not really the aloof loner type he presents… or at least not around Ninako, which is a good sign. Of course, things aren’t as simple as ‘if I just worked up my courage to confess, we’d be together’. Ren’s own life intertwines with Daiki’s in very unexpected ways, and as Ninako herself notes, when you fall in love with someone the feelings don’t merely vanish just because you get rejected. I suspect the plot of much of Strobe Edge will deal with that, given the large number of unrequited relationships we bring out here.

Strobe Edge begins with its heroine thinking about what it means to be in love, and I suspect that’s what the whole series is going to be about. It’s working with stock shoujo manga types, but what it’s doing with them is interesting. Which, as I said before, is exactly what I look for in ‘normal’ shoujo manga.

By Ema Toyama. Released in Japan as “Watashi ni xx Shinasai!” by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Nakayoshi. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

There has been a certain growing trend in shoujo manga that gets licensed over here lately, pulling away from the overly perky/helpless female lead in favor of someone a lot more sarcastic, cold, and awkward. And I for one could not be happier. Yes, it can be argued that this type of shoujo doesn’t sell quite as well as Black Bird and the like, but its heroines are usually a breath of fresh air, especially given how they deal with the heroes, many of whom remain the same heartthrob of the school types.

Yukina, the heroine of Missions of Love, is not quite as sharp as the two other heroines she calls to mind, Kanoko from ‘The Secret Notes Of Lady Kanoko’ and Maria from ‘Devil and Her Love Song’. But then this did run in Nakayoshi, which caters to a much younger demographic than the other two titles. The author’s comments even notes that she was told this isn’t really the sort of thing Nakayoshi does. So I suspect that the goal here may be to see how long Yukina’s natural-born snark can win out against the narrative trying to get her to say ‘what is this strange feeling in my heart?’ This is not helped by this being her own goal as well.

Yukina is a secret popular cell-phone novelist, a genre that has not really taken off in North America yet… I think the best description would be drabbles strung together into a narrative. Her talent and intelligence have made her quite a draw, but her social ineptness means that her works lack a certain… heat. So she wants to find out how love feels, but is not callous enough to ask some normal guy to show her what this Earth thing called kissing is. That’s when she spots Shigure, the popular male in the class, getting hit on by someone else. And rejecting her politely. And then… ticking off her name in a book?

Yes, finding out about love is all right as long as there’s no actual emotion involved. So now that she knows Shigure is a jerk, she can feel free to emotionally blackmail him. This is the meat of the book, and also the best part, for several reasons. Shigure has gotten through life by observing people’s likes and faults and playing up to them – he even has a notebook full of traits to note – but Yukina is not only better than him at it but doesn’t need to write it down. He tries to blackmail her right back a few times, unsuccessfully. She’s probably just what he needs. Yukina, meanwhile, is not without fault – she hasn’t mentioned her books at all (she is, after all, a secret author), so her come-ons to Shigure sound even weirder than we know them to be. It’s hard to learn about love when you have no concept of real social interaction.

I didn’t even mention her cousin, who seems poised to be the romantic rival if the cliffhanger to Vol. 1 is anything to go by. But I suspect he won’t be too much of an issue. The reason to read this is the same reason we enjoy watching the best screwball comedies – to see the guy and girl exchange barbs and grow closer even as they both try to manipulate each other. Good stuff. (And, despite the Japanese title, decidedly G-rated.)

By Ken Akamatsu. Released in Japan as “Mahou Sensei Negima!” by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

With this volume, we finally wrap up the Magic World arc that began almost half the series ago. Even Ken Akamatsu admits that it took a lot longer than expected (which may have ended up having a bigger influence on the end of Negima itself – more on that later), but at least the finale gives us a lot of the shonen tropes we like Negima for best: lots of shonen battles, enemies becoming friends, everyone reaching out with their bonds of friendship to save a fellow classmate… you know, the works.

First off, despite Negi’s best efforts, he and Fate are destined to fight for this final battle. Even if you get the sense that it’s less due to a difference of opinion and more because they really want to. This leads, as many shonen fights do, to a flashback, where we get a better look at the inner workings of Fate’s mind. He’s not just a stoic, he’s a cynical stoic, deliberately crafted to be different from the arrogant and hotheaded Secundus by his creator. This seems to annoy Fate, who I think wants some surety in his life. Unfortunately, part of being human is lacking that surety. As he flashes back to a girl he was unable to save, and to Nagi and Rakan talking about what humanity really means, he finally gives in, and agrees to at least listen to what Negi says.

If you know shonen, you know what comes next. That’s right, they’re both taken out by an influx of MORE enemies. Negima does seem to rejoice in hammering on its cliches, but it does so in such a assured way that you can’t really blame it. This is a Boy’s Own story, and this is how they go. So the enemies show up, and then our heroes have their own teachers and mentors show up to help them, and so forth. Meanwhile, the actual 3-A class is tasked with trying to wake up Asuna, who is still being a giant unconscious magic battery. Naturally, this requires the entire class, even those nowhere near the battle, as well as Yuna and Sayo (conveniently cured).

And it works, and thus Asuna enters the fray (the cover should have clued you in). And this… well, this is where Akamatsu starts to go a bit off the rails. He’d already had pacing problems earlier, resolving Setsuna and Mana’s fights in about 4 pages so he could get them out of the way (and we never see Tsukuyomi again, as the extras for this volume note). Now he has to deal with what happens when one of your characters is basically The Messiah. And, just like Usagi in Sailor Moon, he knows that if you’re going to have the Messiah card, you have to play it eventually. And so, after finally defeating the Lifemaker (whose identity is a plot point that isn’t remotely resolved here, so I’ll ignore it), Asuna proceeds to resurrect everyone and everything. And I mean everything – we hear her muttering about plants and animals as well.

And while this leads to many heartwarming scenes of our heroes being reunited with those who sacrificed their lives for them, it does bring up the point of where to go from here. Any ongoing threats are going to be next to impossible to take seriously. And by now the audience of Negima really is not going to be content to going back to the wacky “oh no, sensei saw me naked” Love Hina shenanigans. We have a giant pile of unanswered questions – Nagi, Arika, Asuna’s fate, Chao – but are those going to require a whole new adventure arc?

Despite the many, MANY unanswered questions, I’ll be honest with you – if you want a very open-ended but satisfying ending to Negima, Vol. 36 is a really good place to drop the series. For those who want to see how everything is resolved in the last two volumes, I will be reviewing them in time. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Still, this volume is recommended, provided you aren’t allergic to Asuna Ex Machinas.

By Naoko Takeuchi. Released in Japan as “Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon” by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Nakayoshi. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

The third arc of Sailor Moon ends here, with more apocalypse than ever before. Given that this arc was all about trying to prevent the Senshi of Destruction from waking and destroying everything – and that in the end they basically fail – it makes total sense that there’s a lot of, well, destruction. Of course, Saturn is not the Plot-In-A-Box that she was in ancient times anymore – she’s also Tomoe Hotaru, and thus can take things in a different direction.

We pick things up, however, with Hotaru still very much being a disembodied spirit held back by Mistress Nine, the Black Lady of the S arc, who is possessing her body. Hotaru thus uses her disembodied spirit power to help save Chibi-Usa, who proceeds to take off with Mamoru so she can join the others for the end of the world, then destroys her body and Mistress Nine’s taking them both out. Of course, this leaves the traditional final boss, a miasma of evil energy. Luckily, our heroes have an insane amount of power, especially when Usagi let’s the Power Of Christ… erm, the Holy Grail compel her and pours a large amount of sweetness and light into the darkness… which just makes it grow stronger and stronger. Whoops.

Sailor Moon, being who she is, decides to turn herself into a giant nuclear bomb and throw herself into the maw of the enemy. This, as if to show the universe finally throwing up its hands and saying “OK, I’ve had all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!”, seems to be what inspires the talismans (with very little input from their three owners, who mostly get to join the Inners is standing around gasping “Sailor Moon!” a lot) to do what they have to do – resurrect Saturn to destroy everything. Saturn, of course, being Hotaru. And give Takeuchi credit – she does indeed destroy everything. Saturn has an INSANE amount of power, and we briefly see shots of the few bits of Tokyo that weren’t taken out by the villains falling over dead and crumbled.

Of course, Saturn does this knowing that they have an ‘out’ clause – Sailor Moon, who is now SUPER Sailor Moon, can resurrect everyone and everything. So after Saturn shoves herself and Pharaoh 90 (the villain, in case you had forgotten) into a different dimension, Moon proceeds to do just that. Everyone and everything not evil (well, supernaturally evil) is resurrected – including Hotaru, who is now a little baby and presumably lacking cybernetic implants.

This arouses the other Outers’ maternal instincts, in a scene that screams ‘crap I only have 10 pages to wrap this up’ but oh well. They grab Baby Hotaru, thank the others, say they’ll surely see them again, and take off in their private helicopters to a land where they can presumably raise Hotaru and be really freaking rich. All they leave behind is a shot of them nude from the shoulders up in the sky, a classic ‘they may be dead but we will always remember them’ shot only slightly marred by their not actually being dead. This whole arc, honestly, has lost something in textual description, and really does sound less silly and more epic if you read it. It’s quite good.

The last third of the book is the start of the fourth arc, which brings us a new set of villains, a new set of adorably quirky minions (the Amazoness Quartet, who get a lot to do in the manga, and the Amazon Trio, who don’t), and a new theme, this one being dreams. Everyone is now in high school (and Makoto has a real uniform that fits at last), and Chibi-Usa is ready to finally return to the future. But don’t sigh with relief just yet. She can’t quite make it due to unknown forces. Could it be the unicorn that appears and begs her for help? Could it be the evil-looking Circus that’s just gotten into town? Or could it be that she still needs to grow up (as does her mother), with Chibi-Usa whining about wanting to be adult and Usagi whining about how kids have it easy. If you’ve ever watched a wacky Disney movie, you can see what the cliffhanger of this volume will be!

Super S’s arc starts off slow here, but will really pick up next volume, as it (finally!) focuses on the other Inners and their own dreams and desires. Still the epitome of magical girl shoujo, even if I sometimes wish it would take a bit to catch its breath.

By Shimura Takako. Released in Japan by Enterbrain, serialization ongoing in the magazine Comic Beam. Released in North America by Fantagraphics.

One of the things that impresses me most about this manga is how much everything seems to be in flux. Nitori and Takatsuki’s gender identity disorder is the most obvious, but nothing else seems to be clear-cut at all, just as kids feel right around middle school. In this volume we see their secret get revealed to the class, and though a majority of the fallout focuses on Nitori and Takatsuki’s feelings, we also get to see how it affects people like Sasa, who’s just concerned that her friends are all pulling apart, or Seya, who’s falling for Nitori without really knowing the truth, but whose feelings continue to be an issue even after he finds out.

We also meet a new character, Makoto, who takes a surprisingly large role in this volume. He’s surprisingly mature, being a bit more confident in his desires, more ‘intellectual’ in his speech and manners (watch his cutting remarks to Maho when she’s about to insult him), and no doubt also far more emotionally fragile than he lets on. He reminds me a bit of Saori, but she still wears her heart on her sleeve. He’s also shown to be quite attracted to Nitori, which is something we haven’t really gotten into given the age of the protagonists, but no doubt will as the manga advances. What will happen when sexuality starts to come up?

I was pleased to see us moving beyond the school in this volume, with Maho dragging her brother along to her modeling audition. I continue to enjoy reading about Maho, a very ‘bratty big sister’ character whose head you can nevertheless easily get inside. Loneliness and lack of self-confidence lead to some of the more impressively awful scenes in the book, as she sets up Seya on a ‘not date’ with her brother dressed as a girl. That said, after Makoto dresses her down, I think she’s starting to think more about what she’s doing. The final scene, showing her and Nitori defending each other against the overly pushy modeling crowd, is quite heartwarming.

Then there’s the scene with Takatsuki and Yuki. This is a manga that takes place in a slightly lighter, fluffier world than reality, so things don’t turn too dark, and there’s a sense of ‘easily forgiven’ to the whole thing. At the same time, though, Takatsuki’s panic and fear is palpable on the page, and reminds you once again that these are just *kids*. Yuki’s behavior also ties in with Maho’s earlier, and the modeling girls at the end, in that they’re treating Nitori and Takatsuki as objects, even if it’s unconsciously. Takatsuki, who’s already upset that they both got found out but that Nitori is taking the brunt of the class’ reaction, is especially upset by this. Neither she or Nitori are dolls that people can play with as they please, or substitutes that they can live vicariously through.

It took a while for me to get around to reading this volume, but as always I was immensely impressed when I finished it. As I said, this isn’t quite ‘reality’, but it still handles everything realistically, and shows the emotions that everyone goes through. The middle school years are a giant state of flux, and therefore a great place to examine the gender issues that Wandering Son does. Roll on, Volume Four.

By Keiko Suenobu. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Bessatsu Friend (“Betsufure”). Released in North America by Vertical.

Keiko Suenobu is a name that might be familiar to those manga readers with long memories. Tokyopop put out several volumes of her shoujo manga Life before Kodansha took their licenses away, and it was a decidedly different shoujo manga from the usual fare. Not that it didn’t feature high school girls, dating, rivalries and bullying, etc. But it also discussed topics such as suicide, self-mutilation, body hatred, and rape, and did not try to give us the usual ‘you will defeat the bullies if you get emotionally stronger!’ message that most manga do. It was quite popular in Japan, winning awards and spawning a live-action drama. And now Vertical has licensed her next project, which takes high school popularity and tosses it into the middle of the unknown wilderness.

If there’s one big issue I had with Limit, it was this: I feel the accident that causes the plot to happen should have been on Page 175, rather than Page 45. We’re introduced to a class and get a quickly sketched out plan of who’s popular and who’s unpopular, with the main characters briefly touched on. But given how much of what happens focuses on Morishige and her feelings of hatred and revenge, I wanted to know more about the class dynamics and in particular about the class’ ‘queen’, Sakura, and our heroine Mizuki. As it is, being thrown into the deep end along with Mizuki helps give a feeling of uncertainty and fear, but it also makes her rather flat. If we’d had a couple of chapters that faked us into thinking this would be a typical coming of age (albeit serious) shoujo, I think the added depth would have helped.

That said, there’s a lot to like here. Teenage drama is something that Suenobu specializes in, and it’s all over the place here. The manga manages to give us the overly dramatic histrionics we’d expect from privileged teens caught in a disaster without making it too annoying or causing it to get bathetic. One might argue, given this is a manga dealing with the ‘strata’ of Japanese classrooms and bullying to a degree, that making the bullied school outcast the main villain is helping to contribute to the ‘blame the victim’ mentality that kids constantly deal with. But this story doesn’t seem to be about bullying per se, nor does it seem to have only one antagonist.

Where the story really shines is in the relationship between Mizuki and Haru, and how quickly group dynamics can change when the catalyst of the group is removed. Even close friends don’t know everything about each other, and here Mizuki finds that her peer group is just as rife with self-doubt and paranoia as she is. Being a popular girl is a two-edged sword, and what may seem to Mizuki like trying to blend in and bond with all the different girls is seen by others as switching sides deftly to avoid getting singled out. Which, as we see in a flashback, is exactly what Mizuki was doing. If you don’t open up or take a stand, you don’t get hurt.

This series looks to be six volumes total, so we’ve only just begun to see how it’ll play out. And I’ll be honest, I have a feeling that some cast members will soon be joining the rest of their classmates in sweet death (coughChikagecough). Hopefully we’ll see more development from our heroine, and more broken social dynamics driving the plot. Mostly as now that it’s broken, I want to see how it gets put together again. Will we get to see the girls work together and forge new friendships? Or is this just six volumes of slowly killing each other?

By Jin Kobayashi. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Magazine. Released in North America originally by Del Rey, now released digitally by JManga.

Way back ages ago, I reviewed Del Rey’s omnibus release of Vols. 14 through 16, and noted it left off on a nasty cliffhanger. And there it sits, as Del Rey became Kodansha and Kodansha decided its sales were not sufficient to release more. But now JManga is picking up some of Del Rey’s old abandoned series, and have put all the prior Del Rey volumes up on their site, with more apparently to come. With that in mind, I decided to go back and review Volume 1, and see just how different things were back at the start.

Well, for one, that huge cast is not quite so huge. School Rumble starts off as being very much a two-hander, with the point of view switching back and forth. Our heroine, Tenma Tsukamoto, has a hopeless crush on stoic weirdo Karasuma, but is unfortunately hopeless at romance… and studies… and athletics… and pretty much life. Well, except for cosplaying. She is, however, a happy girl with lots of spirit. Contrasting this is our hero, Kenji Harima, a former biker who is trying to turn over a new leaf, mostly as he’s fallen head over heels for Tenma. Harima is strong and good at athletics, but otherwise is in the same boat as Tenma – he’s not all that bright, and his attempts to woo her are laughable. Add wacky situations and stir.

The comedy is all important here, as it would be through most of the early days of this series. The chapters have a lowered page count compared to most Shonen Magazine series (about 9-12, as opposed to 16-18), a sure sign that the editors consider it one of the funny manga rather than a romantic harem manga. There isn’t even a harem yet, really. Just a love triangle. Harima loves Tenma, Tenma loves Karasuma, and Karasuma… we have no idea what he thinks. This is also an unusual series in that it ran simultaneously in two magazines. The main Tenma and Harima plot ran weekly in Shonen Magazine, while the chapters at the end dealing with ‘side characters’ (the ones with a flat note as opposed to a sharp) ran in the monthly Magazine Special. In this volume they’re focused on Yakumo, Tenma’s younger yet more mature sister.

Ah yes, Yakumo. As I said earlier, there’s a large cast coming, and we see glimmers of it here. Tenma, for all that she is lovable and hyperactive, is pretty much exactly what she seems. Yakumo has a lot more to give us. She’s also a great cook, and pretty, and athletic – her perfection is noted by the boys at her school. When otaku who should know better talk about ‘waifu’ type characters, nine times out of ten they mean someone like Yakumo. Her one fault is her seeming obliviousness to guys. And I say ‘seeming’ because we know something about Yakumo that they don’t – she can read minds of anyone who likes her! (School Rumble has occasional fantasy content – Tenma is telekinetic once – but except for Yakumo, it’s always for the sake of a gag.) And given the typical minds of teenage boys, this has likely served to make her even more shy and retiring than she already is.

As for the other main characters, we do meet Eri, Mikoto, Akira, and (briefly) Hanai, but for the most part they look like they’re just going to be generic best-friend type classmates. Eri is stuck-up, Mikoto is tomboyish, Akira is deadpan. They haven’t been brought into the story, mostly as the story i still just about Tenma and Harima. But as their attempts to confess their love explode outwards, others will be drawn into the web. Especially Eri.

For a first volume, this is big, dumb goofy fun. Both leads are histrionic and over the top, and there’s lots of silly here, with an understanding that no one is going to be confessing their love anytime soon. What’s more, Tenma is still the focus of almost every chapter. As the series goes on, and as the popularity polls start to come out, this will begin to change…

By Nagaru Tanigawa and Puyo. Released in Japan as “Nagato Yuki-chan no Shoushitsu” by Kadokawa Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young Ace. Released in North America by Yen Press.

In an earlier post regarding this book’s imminent debut, it was noted that the series is essentially a fanfic AU written by someone who wants to get Kyon and Yuki together, just like you see with the infinite Harry/Hermione or Zuko/Katara fanfics on FFNet. And there’s honestly no denying it; that is exactly what this is. It’s light and fluffy fun, but it is essentially Haruhi with all the spiky bits filed off it. Everyone’s more agreeable, everyone’s more adaptable, and everyone’s simply happier. Including Yuki Sue… um, Yuki Nagato.

Now, this isn’t saying that this manga is horrible. I like it a lot. It’s simply saying that this manga is not particularly gripping or filled with tension. In essence, it’s not really a spinoff of the Haruhi series itself as it is a spinoff of the SD-manga spinoff Haruhi-chan. Various ideas from that series (Ryoko as an onee-sama type, though a comedic one; Nagato’s gaming habits; Haruhi going after Santa) are used in this AU, mostly to show off the author’s own preferences. But whereas in Haruhi-chan everything ends up being a setup for a punchline, here everything is a setup for an adorable heartwarming moment. Even the dramatic moments.

This volume sees the introduction of Haruhi herself (as well as Koizumi, who is essentially a non-entity in this series). She’s not totally unrecognizable. She’s still trying to befriend aliens, time-travelers and espers, and will scream this out to anyone who asks. She’s still bulldozing through people to get her own way, and quickly takes up residence at the literature club even if she goes to a different school. and she’s not above using Kyon as her personal punching bag when a punching bag is needed. But she’s more mature than the Haruhi of the original series, and it’s striking that, even though we see her starting to fall for Kyon here, she’s not going to get all that jealous about it. Haruhi doesn’t have the power to change the world with a bad mood here, and it seems to have made her a better person.

As for Yuki and Kyon, they continue to grow closer, much to Ryoko’s encouragement and chagrin. Valentine’s Day is in this volume, and of course there is chocolate to be made. This leads to what’s probably the best sequence of the book, where we’re led to believe that we will see a cliched misunderstanding lead to heartbreak. It’s not entirely out of the question – this manga isn’t all that original. But this Yuki is more of a ditz than a doormat, and the misunderstanding turns out to have been… well, a misunderstanding. And Haruhi, who’s no dummy and can clearly see that Yuki is head over heels for Kyon, challenges her to step up and go after him. In a genre where high school girls are so often cruel and heartless, it’s fantastic to see love rivals be open and honest.

The flaws I mentioned in Volume 1 are still here. The art simply isn’t all that great, though it’s getting better. And Kyon needs more snark desperately. But of course no one is particularly reading this book for Kyon, but for the moe cuteness. And in that respect, few things deliver on that promise like Nagato Yuki-chan. That said, I’m not sure the series can coast on cute fluffiness forever. I hope that the author comes up with a more serious arc by, say, Volume 4. (Foreshadowing: your key to quality literature.)

(Also, is it wrong of me to ship Haruhi/Ryoko? Cause I totally am.)

By Yun Kouga. Released in Japan by Ichijinsha, serialized in the magazine Comic Zero-Sum. Released in North America by Viz.

Another license rescue, this time of a very popular josei-ish series that’s still running, albeit at a crawl, in Japan. So I picked up the first omnibus thinking, why not? Generally I don’t read much BL, if any, but the author herself has said she doesn’t think it’s BL. Actually, if I’m honest, there’s not only a huge genre of ‘BL only not quite’, but several magazines devoted entirely to it, of which one is Comic Zero-Sum. (The most famous is probably Shinshokan’s Wings, whose manga I always classified as ‘whatever Wings is’ back in the day.) Given the cover, however, which features what seems to be an abused catboy being aggressively fondled by an unseen party, I’m going to guess that Loveless falls into ‘it may not be BL, but its fans sure are’. You know, like Naruto.

That aside, Loveless is basically a fantasy thriller with psychological overtones. Our hero, Ritsuka, is trying to start his life over after his older brother was apparently brutally murdered. He also has amnesia, and so is trying hard to figure out what he used to be like – something not helped by his mentally unstable mother, who keeps assuring him over and over again that he’s wrong and horrible and she wants her son back. To make matters worse, he ends up being stalked by another guy, who was close to his brother. Now he has to fight various members of an evil organization, figure out why his brother was killed, and deal with these strange feelings he gets whenever he’s around Soubi, the aforementioned stalker.

There’s very little setup here, with the author deciding it would be easier to simply drop you into the middle of her world and let you figure out how it works. So far it’s crossing between high school drama and fantasy. In this world, virgins have cat ears and a tail, which fall off after they lose their virginity. This mostly seems to be an easy way to mark off who’s meant to be innocent and naive and who isn’t so far, including Ritsuka’s ‘Christmas Cake’ teacher, Hitomi. Notably, she’s the only one actively mocked for said virginity, if only by the villains. Aside from this, there’s a lot of battle sequences where Ritsuka and Sougi must pair up to defeat whoever’s attacking them. This was easily the poorest part of the manga, with generic combat and spells/power words/whatever. The idea of your partner taking whatever damage you get could lead somewhere in the future, but at the moment it just seems to be there to make Ritsuka suffer more nobly.

When the manga isn’t focused on combat, it’s a lot better. Ritsuka is a messed-up young kid, and his hot-and-cold running emotions, even for a teenager, are jarring. He’s not quite sure about this whole ‘love’ thing, or why he’s so attracted to Sougi, but then again he’s not all that good at friendships either – it’s cute seeing him have to deal with someone as bright and talkative as Yuiko, the tall girl in his class who slowly befriends him. In case anyone’s curious, I absolutely loved Yuiko. I knew going in she was a heavily bashed character, so those who know me probably guessed this, but even more than that, she helps to lighten up the book and prevent the psychological drama from getting too depressing. I hope (but am not optimistic) she sticks around as events ramp up.

Loveless is a very odd duck, and I kept alternating between being fascinated and creeped out by its storyline. Soubi, who I barely mentioned at all, is likely the main reason for this – I just don’t like him yet, and thus it’s hard to see his disturbing devotion to Ritsuka, who is meant to be 12. The shotacon aspects are partly intentional, of course, but I’m pretty sure it’s only meant to be partly – which disturbs me. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Still, there’s no denying that the author has skills and power to draw you in. It’s easy to see why this series is popular. And I do wonder what happens next. (Will Ritsuka abandon his shotacon stalker for cute tall-girl love? Mmmmmmm, probably not…)

By Toru Fujisawa. Released in Japan as “Shonan Jun’ai Gumi” by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Vertical.

And so, after much delay and a rescue by our friends at Vertical, the GTO Early Years series is now complete.It’s been a ling ride, and you can visibly see how much Fujisawa has improved and refined his art – Shinomi, for one, is almost unrecognizable compared to how she looked when we first saw her, and most of the characters have that ‘GTO’ look that we’re more familiar with from the sequel. What’s more, knowing he has to wrap things up, Fujisawa devotes much of this volume to our heroes’ two love-interests, showing how each of them compares and contrasts with their man. In particular, Shinomi demonstrates that, in her own way, she can screw everything up just as much as Eikichi.

When I reviewed Vol. 14, I noted that I wasn’t sure if the cliffhanger reveal would be played for comedy or drama. Very cleverly, this is actually used in-story – Shinomi, in a fit or misplaced jealousy, is ready to mock Eikichi mercilessly, only to suddenly find that he’s far more affected by everything than she had anticipated. In fact, things get so bad so fast that she desperately confesses to him – which he seems to pretend not to hear, something that he’s very good at indeed. (Note that in GTO 14 Years he’s *still* pretending not to hear Shinomi at times…) After a heart to heart and a good cry with an old mentor, Shinomi decides to go all out and give herself body and soul to Eikichi. This ends up going horribly wrong in the best GTO tradition, and in the funniest scene of the entire book. I had always been a fan of Onizuka getting together with Azusa, given I read GTO first, but Shinomi is making me waver a bit. She’s a perfect complement to his idiocy.

Nagisa, meanwhile, is having troubles of her own. Mostly that Ryuji is using their dates to have sex with her and not much else. And the sex isn’t bad, but Nagisa is a romantic. So when a guy at a nearby high school confesses to her, she’s depressed enough to actually go out with him. Again, Ryuji has always been slightly (but only slightly) more mature than Eikichi, so it would make sense that his own complement is the same. As we see later in the book, she’s trying to study and get into college so she can become a therapist and deal with… well, people like herself. (It’s likely been long forgotten, but Nagisa has disassociative identity disorder). Getting Ryuji to realize that she’s not just there for him to stick it in is tough. Luckily, she’s still completely devoted to him, and it all works out.

And so we get to the final battles. There’s a group of new freshman entering high school, all of whom have heard about the famous exploits of the Oni-Baku Duo, and all of whom are now ready to pledge their lives to them and take over all of Shonan. This is somewhat disquieting to our heroes, who while they always unquestioningly defend their friends, and certainly enjoy being in a gang, fighting, and driving around on bikes, have never really had the ambition to take over the city. Or indeed do much at all. Ryuji sees his girlfriend’s fierce study and is blown away – he’s starting to wonder what to do with his life once he graduates. Onizuka is not quite at that stage (indeed, it will take until the start of GTO to push him there), but the two definitely realize they don’t want to be gang leaders the rest of their days, and something needs to be done.

As ever in the GTO series, events spiral out of control into complete madness, and talking everyone down is no longer an option. So the two of them decide to pull off an elaborate final fight (between each other, of course), and leave this world once and for all. Now clearly we’re not buying what they’re doing – we’ve seen GTO, after all, which shows them both as adults – but I think even readers seeing this back in 1996 knew this was all an elaborate put-on. And sure enough, it’s not even 15 pages before the reveal. Those 15 pages, though, are styled like a documentary/remembrance, with reactions ranging from anger to disbelief to genuine grief (Shinomi and Nagisa).

GTO and its prequels/sequels ran in Weekly Magazine rather than Weekly Jump, and the audiences are fundamentally different. But in the end, you can’t deny that GTO: The Early Years brings you some of the best in shonen ideals. Kids having fun, getting into goofy antics, and trying to get laid are contrasted with holding on to your dreams, always being there for your friends, and enjoying your youth while trying not to destroy it. Eikichi and Ryuji have walked a fine line between those ideals at times, but in the end have shown the main way to accomplish these ideals: a good heart. (And also possibly being a badass biker with ungodly stamina.)

By Milk Morinaga. Released in Japan by Futabasha, serialized in the magazine Comic High!. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

I had reviewed the first digital volume of this series when JManga released it a while back, but it’s always worth revisiting things, especially in print. This omnibus contains the first half of the series, i.e. 2 1/2 volumes. It’s a chunky read, but I think that works to the book’s favor as it helps us really get to know the two heroines before we get to plunge into their new friendship and growing romance.

You’ll note the title is split into two words, and I think that’s for the best, as the author makes it a point to show us Mari and Akko bonding as friends for an entire volume before it really starts getting into the potential yuri romance. Given Mari’s shyness and insecurities, this helps keep things realistic. It also ups the stakes: Akko is Mari’s best friend, and while the romance may take all five volumes to really break out the friendship is close and endearing immediately. Mari is a sweet and sympathetic protagonist. and Akko is outgoing, impulsive and oblivious without it becoming too irritating, as many who read one-sided crushes know can happen easily.

But of course this is a yuri manga, and so Mari’s admiration of Akko soon turns into attraction to Akko. This can be tricky, as there’s a vague line between the sort of close ‘skinship’ friendships that aren’t necessarily sexual, and those what do turn into blooming relationships. Indeed, Akko’s reaction on hearing that Mari kissed her while she was sleeping is ‘oh, girls do that *all the time*’. Of course, when Mari is a little more drunk and a lot more forceful, even Akko manages to notice what’s going on.

These are teenagers, so there’s a lot of puzzlement and ‘is this what love is really like?’ on both sides, as well as yuri’s addition of ‘it will never work out because we are both girls’. Akko has a presumed sexual past with a guy (though we quickly learn that nothing happened, of course – this did run in a seinen magazine) which adds to Mari’s dread that all she’s doing is making herself miserable for something that can’t happen. So she turns to a guy from middle school who happens to like her – and manages to get Akko jealous, though she’s not quite sure why…

This is meant to feel like a fluffy shoujo soap opera, just with two girls as the lead, and that’s mostly what it does. There are also two best friends who are also very touchy-feely with each other but clearly aren’t going to be a couple, which is a relief in a genre that sometimes has everyone pairing off with everyone else. Seven Seas’ omnibus obscures the well-times endings of the first two books (Mari thinking she kissed Akko for Vol. 1, Akko boggling at Kiss #2 in Vol. 2), but that works out fine as it gives the omnibus volume a better cliffhanger, as Mari reveals she went all the way with her new boyfriend. (Does anyone really believe her? Well, except for Akko…)

This isn’t a lights out of compulsively addictive series. But it’s fun, wtih likeable characters and as realistic a yuri romance as you’re going to get in something that’s basically “Story A”, written with little consequence besides ALL THESE FEELINGS… IN MY HEART. I hope the second volume resolves said tortured feelings.