Reviews

By Tadashi Agi and Shu Okimoto. Released in Japan as “Kami no Shizuku” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Morning. Released in North America by Vertical.

The third omnibus of Drops of God sees the first major plot advancement in the series. After spending so long trying to guess which wine was described in the will, one of our heroes finally gets it right. Of course, that does leave eleven more. And there’s still a few other problems to solve along the way…

(Incidentally, my cover for V. 3 is different from the one above. Last minute change? Or multiple designs?)

Once again, we have a plotline about how wine is far more than just an alcoholic beverage. We left off at the end of the last volume with an amnesiac woman who only had a description of wine to link her to her forgotten past. The trouble is, she’s now married – and both she and her husband are worried that if she recovers her memories, she’ll remember she was in love with someone else. Even though it relied on a contrived coincidence (two car accidents in the past leading to tragedy?), I really enjoy the way the authors used this, showing that it doesn’t necessarily take amnesia to avoid the past. And indeed, that the future can also shape the past – when Kaori recovers her memories and discovers her old love, we see that she and her husband are not the only ones whose lives are shaped by the tragedy. Throughout this plot, wine comes into play, acting almost as a mnemonic in order to be a gateway to prior events.

We then get the battle for the first apostle, which comes down to a very interesting point: these are not ‘the 12 best wines’ that Shizuku’s father has been describing, but 12 wines that he wanted to describe. This means that the first apostle revealed here depends on it not being an outstanding wine, but rather a wine that you have to work at to enjoy. Not only can I empathize with this, but of course it opens the playing field of wine even more to the cast. As with previous volumes, we get lovingly detailed depictions of the scene they’re imagining (and that his father described), which allow you to see the similarities and differences between the two wines picked, which differ only in the year made. It’s a good scene.

Characterization of the regulars continues to be the weak part of the series, but to be fair this is a manga about wine, not about Shizuku and Miyabi. We do get a little more development of her character here, showing her first love from high school returning and shocking her by being a cold businessman, but honestly I thought the best part of the manga for her was her superdeformed jealousy of Shizuku having lunch with Sara. Any love story that happens in this series will take even longer than Oishinbo’s did (and that took 47 volumes!), mostly as when it comes to love Shizuku seems to be thick as a brick. Something lampshaded by the other cast members. Speaking of the rest of the cast, the Italian wine snob, Chosuke, gets a rather sweet little backstory showing why he dislikes French wine so much.

The volume ends with the first half of the story I mentioned above with Miyabi’s old love. It involves trying to show that brand name doesn’t always mean quality, but to do that they have to note that in terms of wine, it frequently does. Lafite and Rothschild aren’t the top names in wine just due to marketing and publicity. They’re the cream of the crop, and I liked the scenes where Shizuku and Miyabi realize what a big hurdle they have to overcome. In the meantime, they’re also searching for the second apostle. Given this is a manga series, I have a sneaking suspicion Shizuku is going to fail hard at finding it, but we shall see.

This continues to be a good solid foodie manga. The broad points (p;lot, characters) are cliched, but the writing is what makes them stand out, and shows the work of two long-standing professionals. Definitely one for your shelves… though maybe the drinks cabinet instead?

By Sacchi and Shinichi Kimura. Released in Japan as “Kore wa Zombie desu ka?” by Kadokawa Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Dragon Age. Released in North America by Yen Press.

Now, let’s be fair. I knew I wouldn’t like this title when I ordered it. As I’ve noted before, I sometimes get things I hate in order to bring more ‘balance’ to my blog – see my review of Qwaser of Stigmata as an example. And honestly, any title that ran in Dragon Age is guaranteed to get me looking at it warily, similar to Champion Red. Sadly, though, Is This A Zombie? is merely bad, and not laughably bad.

This is essentially one of those manga where the premise is ‘guy living with lots of cute girls of various tyes’, but the author can’t really be bothered to give us much backstory on them. character development for Haruna and Sera in particular is minimal, with the two of them fulfilling the usual moe fetish tropes – Haruna is the loli tsundere, and Sera is the violent kuudere. Amazingly, by the way, this is not actually the worst of the adaptations – there’s an ‘alternate universe’ manga running in Comp Ace called ‘Yes, She’s Your Bride’ that is basically this only with less monster fighting and more naked harem antics. The mind boggles.

There is meant to be a certain amount of self-parody here, I suspect, but it’s the kind that’s done by people who think putting ‘ironic’ in quotes is ironic. The sleazy fanservice winks at you, but wants to have it both ways so the wink doesn’t fulfill its function. There’s also our hero’s magical girl outfit – excuse me, ‘magikewl’ girl (Yen explains why they translated it that way, and I agree it works, but I still hate it) – which of course is designed for laughs. Even the layout of the manga itself screams ‘self-aware comedy!’. It’s just not very good at that.

This is actually a shame, as there are a few moments in the manga where it briefly gets serious, and they show a definite leap in quality. These tend to revolve around the third girl, Eu, who is the quiet Rei Ayanami-esque character. She’s the one who resurrected Ayumu and turned him into a zombie in the first place, and like many other emotionless girls in anime/manga, her emotionless state is actually a plot point. Ayumu’s advice to her, and his decision to take whatever fate throws at him in order to make her life easier, is about the only time in the entire volume I liked him (he is otherwise a sarcastic pervert, one of the new breed of harem leads who are a reaction against the nebbish “Tenchi” type, but seeing a perverse guy not sleeping with all the women chasing after him is even more irritating than seeing a ‘pure-hearted’ type not do so).

Yen’s translation is fine for this type of series – it’s very colloquial, and at times read like a dub, but the original was no doubt just as colloquial. There’s lots of sentai and giant robot references, all explained in Yen’s copious endnotes. Sadly, absent from the endnotes is an explanation of why they licensed this at all. Admittedly, it *has* an audience here, unlike Sasameke. This title will appeal very much to the harem-anime-downloading, body-pillow-buying, waifu-proclaiming males out there. For everybody else, read pages 130-145, realize that the rest of the manga is nothing like that, and find something else.

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 fourth volume of Sailor Moon, and Jupiter gets the cover! Unfortunately, we’re also in the middle of a ‘have the senshi get abducted one by one’ arc, so she gets the first chapter and not much else. As with the Mercury and Mars chapters, we see Jupiter bonding with a friend of hers, this one male. It seems pretty platonic, though, at least on her end. We also get the revelation that her parents are both dead from a plane crash, so she lives on her own in a swank apartment. No idea where she gets the money… Rich relatives? Settlement from the crash? Honestly, most of the senshi are well-off. Even Usagi and Minako, the two most likely to be whining about not having any money, don’t seem to be hurting.

But in any case, soon Jupiter joins her friends in ‘captured off screen’ land. Venus is theoretically the next chapter, but honestly she’s not in it much. Presumably as Minako had an entire manga series devoted to her own personal life, she didn’t need a chapter that shows who her friends are and what she does on her days off. What we’re more concerned with is Chibi-Usa and the new enemies (who I will just start calling the Black Moon Clan, as that’s who they are). Chibi-Usa is settling in nicely in the past, and has even made a new friend (Momo will be Chibi-Usa’s designated friend till Hotaru basically replaces her in SuperS and Stars). But she’s still in denial about what’s going on, and actually seems to have some sort of PTSD (and with good reason, as we shall find). So Usagi is worrying about that, to the point where Naru and Umino are concerned. Remember them? Naru here even admits she knows Usagi is part of “another world that she can’t enter”. True enough, Naru, the author will forget you again soon.

Venus is abducted as we expected… but this time Usagi and Mamoru get there in time, and Mamoru gets a bit of powerup (albeit a ridiculous one: Tuxedo La Smoking Bomber is not in the anime, which tended to make Mamoru less powerful and more jerkassish). So Venus gets to stick around and help question Chibi-Usa, who has finally broken down and admits the truth: she’s from 1000 years in the future. And the future is in danger from the same folks abducting senshi. So, after a brief stop at Mamoru’s to get it on… oh, yeah, about that. Chapter 19 has Chibi-Usa basically terrified, so she wants to stay at Mamoru’s apartment. Usagi goes along, and after discussing things and various reassurances, they start to kiss and fall onto his bed. Then it’s the next morning, and Chibi-Usa is looking out the window. Usagi and Mamoru come in, Usagi wearing the same dress she had on last night and Mamoru’s dress shirt. So, nothing may have happened… or something may have happened. Most fans of Usagi and Mamoru’s romance think of this as their ‘first time’.

So we’re off to the 30th Century, something which is basically forbidden. So forbidden, in fact, that another senshi arrives to stop them! Yes, Sailor Pluto debuts here, though at this point in the story she’s still basically trapped in one place, at the Gates of Time. She’s devoted to stopping intruders, even if that means Sailor Moon and company (which makes no sense, but we’ll assume it’s some preventing paradox thing). Luckily, Chibi-Usa shows up, and it’s revealed that she and Pluto are close. In fact, the 30th Century, for all its crystal utopia, seems to be a very lonely place, as Chibi-Usa is mocked for being relatively powerless by the other children (she’s also 902 years old, something so gratuitously broken I don’t even want to get into it. Pretend that line doesn’t exist.), and Pluto’s stoic duty is only relieved by visits from Chibi-Usa (who she dotes on) and Endymion (who she seems to have a small crush on, as noted by her blushes here.)

Ah yes, Endymion. Arriving at the desolate wasteland of corpses that is the 30th Century, we meet King Endymion, aka Mamoru, who is a phantom but can at least interact with the others. We also meet, encased in crystal, Neo-Queen Serenity, aka Usagi, the future ruler of the planet. This is not really a surprise today, and honestly I don’t think it was meant to be back then either. Chibi-Usa is their daughter, and we also meet Luna and Artemis’s daughter Diana. Unfortunately, Usagi is still having difficulty with the whole ‘Mamoru loves his daughter more than me’ thing, and runs off to get captured.

I haven’t talked much about the Black Moon Clan here, but Prince Demande deserves a special mention here as being a loathsome creep. He’s not the true big bad in this arc… that would be Wiseman, who gets the cliffhanger for this volume… but he’s the equivalent of Beryl, and it seems appropriate that he has an obsession with Usagi the way that Beryl did with Mamoru. He even forces a kiss on her, much to her horror. (One note about the odd continuity here. After going to the future and getting told the plot, the senshi quickly go back to their home era… only to pretty much immediately have to return after Usagi storms off and gets captured. Why bother going back at all? No wonder Pluto gets annoyed when they arrive… the Time Gate must be a revolving door.)

We end this volume with Cibi-Usa being the one doing the running off, and running into a fortune-telling black cloud of evil called Wiseman. As with all black clouds of evil in Sailor Moon, this is not going to prove to be a good thing. Not for our heroes, not for Chibi-Usa, and especially not for Pluto. But that’s for Volume 5.

By Yumi Unita. Released in Japan as “Usagi Drop” by Shodensha, serialized in the magazine Feel Young. Released in North America by Yen Press.

Quick note: Please do not write spoilers about this series in your comments. They will be deleted.

When we last left our heroes, Rin was a cute 6-year-old, enjoying school, and starting to come into her own. Daikichi was still bumbling along, but generally had gotten the hang of being a good parent and was making inroads on getting closer to single mother Nitani. And so we come to Volume 5… where ten years have passed.

Yes, it’s a giant time skip, and Rin and Kouki are now in high school. Well, I had said that the series needed to shake itself up a little, and this certainly does that. More to the point, however, it manages to shift things to an entirely different place. The basic premise is still the same… we’re seeing Rin grow and Daikichi parenting. But Daikichi has raised Rin to be a self-sufficient, strong young lady. She can take care of the cooking and cleaning when necessary. No, being the parent of a teenager brings fresh new issues. Like romance.

It is fairly obvious throughout this volume that Kouki is completely in love with Rin, and that it seems to be mostly one-sided. Not that she doesn’t like Kouki, but they get compared to brother and sister, and Rin doesn’t think that’s far off. Plus, in some of the gap filling we get in this volume, Kouki apparently has an ex-girlfriend who was not very fond of Rin, and this seems to have soured her opinion of Kouki and romance a bit. Rin is at a point where she’s not sure what she’s feeling. Honestly, the person she’s closest to is still Daikichi, whom she asks for advice. His advice is not particularly helpful, but it’s from the heart. Which sometimes is all that matters.

Then there’s Daikichi and Nitani-san. I had noted in early volumes that I wanted them to hook up, and now ten years later it hasn’t happened. This is quite frustrating to the reader. And to Kouki. And indeed to Daikichi and Nitani-san, both of whom clearly have feelings for each other. We get a flashback in the last chapter to a moment a few years back, where Nitani-san is trying to deal with Kouki acting up and being a delinquent (he’s gotten better by the present day). This scene is one of the most awkward, heartfelt yet also heartbreaking things I’ve ever seen in manga, an encapsulation of everything that doesn’t go right in romance. Sometimes even when everyone wants to… you simply can’t quite make that final leap. There’s several volumes to go, but after this, I honestly no longer expect these two to get together. Which is a shame.

When this series began, we had four volumes of cute, which fit very well with cute little six-year-old Rin. But now Rin is a teenager, which means we’re at that awkward period. And true to form, this entire volume is filled with awkward. People not quite saying the right thing, not getting their point across, unsure of how to handle something. And this is the entire cast, not just the actual teenagers. Bunny Drop has grown with its heroine, and now asks that you stick around while she deals with all these pesky feelings. I suspect I may cringe on the fallout from all of this, but I’ll be riveted nonetheless.

By Hisaya Nakajo. Released in Japan as “Hanazakari no Kimitachi e” by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Viz.

Yes, I know, Viz is drawing me in again. Another long series I haven’t read that Viz teases me with easy to collect omnibuses of. And yes, I am aware that after the 3rd omnibus Viz will stop and tell me to find the rest in backorder. And I won’t, as I am lazy like that. Still, this is a shoujo series that I had never really gotten around to when it first came out, so I thought I would give it a try.

At the time this first came out in North America, it must have been a lot more original to readers than it seems now. Girl dressed as a boy… love triangles with perky blond and serious brunet guys… what are these strange feelings in my chest… attempted rapes (I wish that last wasn’t a cliche). But a good 7-8 years on, we have to sort of retrofit our brain and read Hana-Kimi as something that influenced a lot of other shoujo manga doing similar things. And to be fair, as I read Hana-Kimi I kept thinking to myself “Wow, this reminds me of Here Is Greenwood”, a series that ran in Hana to Yume ten years before Hana-Kimi.

There are a few notable things that make Hana-Kimi stand out. First of all, to the delight of female readers no doubt, there’s a lot more “queerness” in this manga than you tend to find in most cross-dressing shoujo manga. Sure, Oresama Teacher and Ouran High School Host Club tease that people think that their alter egos are gay, but it’s almost entirely used for comedy, and is basically brought up then forgotten about. Here the theoretical homosexuality of the characters is right up front, and a constant presence. The school’s doctor is perhaps the only genuine gay character, but Nakatsu is hopelessly confused about his feelings for Mizuki. Still mostly used for comedy, but having it out there and in your face a lot is rather refreshing. I wonder if we’ll see any genuine gay relationships in the future?

The other guy in this triangle, by the way, becomes aware almost immediately that Mizuki is a girl. However, he doesn’t actually tell her. This leads to an interesting tension – Mizuki is constantly trying to hide her gender, and Izumi is trying to hide from her that he is aware of it, thinking that she basically must have a good reason and will tell him when she’s ready. This makes things a lot of fun, though I do note that this series is 23 volumes long, and I’m not sure how much fun it will be if they’re still doing this dance by the end of the series. In any case, Izumi is the serious young man with the (relatively) tragic past, and matches well with Mizuki – as with most love triangles in shoujo, the actual couple is never in doubt. Especially as Nakatsu is always used in comedic situations.

There’s a lot of ‘old school’ 90s Hana to Yume style in this series, which was familiar to me from my reading of I Hate You More Than Anyone!. It’s not as messy as Hidaka’s early work, but you still see a lot of extraneous text outside bubbles, etc. Despite that, this is a fairly easy read, and I finished it fairly quickly. If you enjoy breezy shoujo comedies with a focus on gender blending… and don’t mind that Viz is likely to end this re-release at Vol. 3… then you should pick up this omnibus.

By Kaoru Shintani. Released in Japan as “Christie High Tension” by Media Factory, serialized in the magazine Comic Flapper. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

I will admit, when I first saw that Seven Seas had licensed Young Miss Holmes I was looking at it with a wary eye. Being a longtime fan of the original stories by Watson (via Arthur Conan Doyle), I was not especially looking forward to something that sounded like “Sherlock Holmes gets outsmarted by his ten-year-old niece.” Of course, the fact that it was written by Kaoru Shintani should have clued me in. Being a old and established mangaka, famous in many countries (except, of course, North America, where Area 88 utterly failed to take off for Viz), he was not about to let this become some cutesy story about a precocious brat, nor would he forget that this is Sherlock Holmes, brilliant detective. What we get instead is a nice balance, using the Holmes stories to tell the story of a child who is indeed very smart and precocious, but who still can be realistically childish and whom Sherlock can still out-think.

I will leave it to those unfamiliar with the Sherlockian canon to discuss how these stories work for those who are not familiar with the basic plots. Given I read this volume with my copies of Leslie Klinger’s New Annotated Sherlock Holmes sitting about 6 feet from me, I am not that person. Suffice to say that this first omnibus features five stories from the canon. Two are generally considered to be among Watson’s best: The Red-Headed League and The Dancing Men. Two more are not in the top pantheon, but do have elements to recommend them: Thor Bridge and The Sussex Vampire. And one is generally simply considered bad, to the point where scholars sometimes try to say it was not canon, and that rather than being a Watson tale it was actually written by Conan Doyle, based off of a play he wrote: The Mazarin Stone.

The manga essentially uses the adventures as basic templates: the events are much the same, and sometimes the outcomes are the same as well. But it is not wedded to Watson’s story either. It can’t be, given that the whole point is to insert Christie, Holmes’ precocious niece, into every story and have her attempting to solve the mystery as well. Sometimes that’s all the story basically does: the events of two of the tales play out much as the originals, with added Christie. A third simply has Holmes “on another case elsewhere”, and has Christie taking the role of the detective. And two of the stories actually end up being altered from the original. The alterations, while occasionally stretching credulity, did not make me toss the book away in frustration, so I would have to say they are a success.

As for Christie, she’s a lot of fun, but I admit I was more taken in by her supporting cast. Holmes and Watson are reasonably canon, once you accept the fact that Holmes is given a precocious niece, meaning he spends a fair amount of time being exasperated by her more than would seem appropriate. That said, in the stories he appears he figures out the solution almost immediately – must to the consternation of Christie, who can see he knows but not HOW he got there. And he doesn’t like to explain, which is totally in character. Watson is also treated with respect, though he has a smaller role in this manga. This is not the “Jam!” Watson from poor adaptations. Speaking of Watsons, Christie cleverly gets her own after the second story: Grace Dunbar, the wrongly accused governess in Thor Bridge, is hired by Christie’s (unseen) parents to be her own governess, and for the rest of the book takes on a Watson role to Christie’s Holmes. Fans of Thor Bridge may find this amusing.

And then there are the two maids. First off, before he got his big break with Area 88, Shintani was an assistant of Leiji Matsumoto’s. (No doubt this is why his art style remains very “70s shoujo’, even when he’s writing for adult men.) He’s also quite influenced by Osamu Tezuka, as 99% of manga artists tend to be. And so he also has what Tezuka fans have nicknamed a “star system”: he reuses character designs and personalities in different series, renaming and reconfiguring them. Thus Nora, the uneducated but wisecracking maid we meet in the first chapter, will be recognizable to Shintani fans as Irene from Suna no Bara (“Desert Rose”), a 15-volume manga he wrote for Hakusensha’s Young Animal in the early 90s about a female anti-terrorist group. And Ann-Marie, the prim and ladylike maid with a surprising knack for guns, is based on Helga from the same series. (Speaking of which, Grace Dunbar may be from the original canon, but Shintani’s design is Tina from his manga series Cleopatra DC.)

Secondly, I love Nora. Basically everything about her was designed to appeal to me personally: wisecracking street-smart woman who wields a whip, beats up would-be rapists and has ‘bedroom eyes’, aka droopy eyelids. I will admit I’m not as sure about Nora’s ‘Texan’ accent (I suspect it was thick Osakan in the original), but as I’m not entirely sure of her origins (which will be revealed in the 2nd omnibus, along with Ann Marie’s), I’ll let it slide till then.

Speaking of Nora’s whip, I note that Seven Seas has this volume rated at ‘All Ages’. I see their point – it’s hard not to sell a series about a young girl solving mysteries and not try to hit that market – but there is a certain amount of violence in this series, including corpses, head wounds by gunshot, and Nora’s gleefully whipping her attackers, complete with blood dripping from her whip handle. (You can certainly see why Christie’s parents hired Ann Marie and Nora – they’re as much bodyguards as they are maids.) Looking at the second omnibus, which will not only feature The Hound of the Baskervilles (!), but also The Five Orange Pips (!?!), I honestly don’t see this level dropping soon. It’s not overtly gory – this isn’t Hellsing – but was enough to make me notice it. So be aware that parents may want to review the series to see if it’s too violent.

Lastly, it’s best to mention the crossover. Despite what Seven Seas’ own manga site says, this series is *not* a spinoff from Dance in the Vampire Bund, the very popular vampire manga that also runs in Comic Flapper, the magazine Young Miss Holmes runs in. Dance in the Vampire Bund is also Seven Seas’ best-seller. It’s tempting to say the series was licensed for the crossover, but I doubt it. More likely Media Factory said ‘Hey, we have this 7-volume series, and it SO HAPPENS it crosses over with your big hit.” In any case, Mina appears where you would expect her to, in the Sussex Vampire story. While you’d expect that this would alter the whole point of the story, it manages to fit Mina’s vampirism in without distorting the original solution (and also gives the writer an excuse to make Christie a quick healer, though thankfully not a vampire.) Vans of DitVB should find it fun. (And yes, yuri fans, Mina is clearly attracted to Christie, but nothing comes of it. She’s ten.)

Given the sheer amount of research I did after reading the first volume, I think by now you can guess that I greatly enjoyed Young Miss Holmes. I expect it will be 3 big omnibuses here, as it’s 7 volumes in Japan. (A new series has recently begun in the same magazine, showing Christie as a young woman, still dealing with Holmes cases.) Unfortunately, the 2nd one is not scheduled till November, meaning we’re in for a long wait. I definitely recommend it to fans of good manga. Hardcore Holmes fans may gripe a bit, but they should also be able to enjoy it. I’d give it more of a T rating, though.

By Masayuki Qusumi and Jiro Taniguchi. Released in Japan by Fusosha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Spa!. Released in the United States by Fusosha on the JManga website.

It’s Jiro Taniguchi month at the Manga Moveable Feast, and I thought I would contribute (as I’m sure many are) by looking at his new title released on the JManga website, a foodie manga called Kodoku no Gourmet, which translates as ‘Solitary Gourmet’ (I have been told JManga is working on getting permission to actually translate titles, but it hasn’t happened yet). This is a collaboration between Taniguchi (providing the art) and another writer, and this is probably a good thing, as the repetitive nature of this series (like a lot of foodie manga, honestly) would likely be overbearing were it not for Taniguchi’s impeccable craft.

Our hero has a name, but it’s only used once in the entire volume, and I had a tendency to refer to him as “Sad Sack’ due to his general demeanor. He’s an importer of foreign goods who spends half of his time moving heavy objects in warehouses, and the other half selling them to interested parties. This leaves him a) in very good shape, and b) hungry a lot of the time. As a result, whenever he’s wandering around various neighborhoods all over Japan, he’s constantly on the look out for something to eat. Not necessarily a new exciting taste sensation – this has gourmet in the title, but is not about rare and unusual foods. Instead, he’s after the staples of Japanese diet, and each chapter shows him at a different eatery, getting different food and taking it in by himself.

There’s a backstory that we only get a tiny hint of here. The character, as the title would suggest, is always eating by himself, and though he’s not necessarily glum or depressed, there’s a consistent air of despondency about him. His work seems to be his life, and the occasional relationships he’s had in the past are shown to be long since ended. Taniguchi really captures the essence of the man in his art, with the few smiles we see from him mostly being wry self-effacing grins. He is very passionate about food, I will admit – clearly the huge amount of heavy lifting he does for his job is the only thing keeping him from ballooning up. Well, that and the judo practice. He also has no tolerance for folks who interrupt the serenity of his meal, as we see in the most startling chapter of the book. I hope as the series goes on that we discover more about his past, though given it apparently has one volume that came out in 1997 and nothing since, I may be out of luck.

As for Taniguchi’s art, as always I find it a tactile experience more than an intellectual one. Food serves him well here, though as you’d expect we also see a lot of our protagonist walking around and looking at the sites. Taniguchi’s art inspires me to remember smells and tastes in what it shows, and I think that’s deliberate – he works with the writer to make sure that each menu choice in each neighborhood evokes a different mood from the reader. Sometimes it’s nostalgic, such as when he returns to a scenic view he’d been to with a girlfriend long ago. Sometimes it’s informative, as when he goes to an industrial section of Tokyo he’d never seen before, and we see a lot of the built up factories. Taniguchi’s works in general, and this one in particular, are not something that you simply read with your eyes – you need to use all five senses to give the best impression, or else it will become dull.

JManga’s translation is pretty decent – as with most foodie manga, it’s hard to screw up folks reacting to the dishes. I wish I had a physical copy to read, but then I also wish I had a pony, so digital is probably as good as I can get right now. As for Kodoku no Gourmet, even if we never get a 2nd volume, I’m pleased we got this. The writer gives us a melancholy yet comforting story, and Taniguchi’s art is the perfect complement. Just like a good meal, in fact.

By Koji Kumeta. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

It was recently announced that Zetsubou will be ending in Weekly Shonen Magazine in about two months, making it a total of 28-29 volumes long. As a result, this volume manages to not even be halfway through the series, something that I’m sure worries Kodansha Comics here in North America more than it does the average reader. Still, let us read on to see what we can glean from this volume.

Indeed, the last short gag comic in this volume talks about the fact that, after the anime has aired, the cast has lost all motivation to continue to excel. Lots of cute little gags here – we see Kiri and Matoi in regular school uniform, and Nozomu in a T-shirt, as they just can’t be bothered to care. Naturally, this is a reflection of Kumeta-san’s own misgivings. He had been tortured back when Katteni Kaizo was running with the promise of an anime… which never materialized (at least not then.) Now that Zetsubou has gotten an anime series, he’s at a loss for what to wish for now. As the manga demonstrates, a live-action series would probably simply be ridiculous – for one thing, the violence would have to be toned way down.

Speaking of violence, for a while it seemed as if Chiri was slacking a bit in her role as Zetsubou’s favorite psycho. Luckily, she’s back on top form here, as she kills the cast and buries them under the floor in one chapter (then returns home to parents it’s hinted she’s also killed…) and in another chapter simply incites the rest of the girls to slaughter a number of prison guards in order to rescue their teacher. Kafuka has lost a bit of focus as the series has gone on, with Chiri’s stronger, more insane personality becoming more popular. But as ever, Kafuka shows who’s really in control of events here – I’m positive that’s her dressed as the girl giving Nozomu a love letter.

Another consequence of the series getting an anime is that it led to the manga getting new readers that would likely not have picked it up before – the otaku fan. Indeed, going to pixiv, a Japanese art site, shows a truly staggering number of questionable art of Kiri Komori, who was quickly singled out as the most ‘moe’ of the cast. Kumeta attacks these types of fans with even more vitriol than usual, especially in the chapter devoted to ‘honey traps’. Whether it be the average watcher of Haruhi and Lucky Star, or the man who buys character sheets and body pillows, no one is spared. Of course, as Kafuka cynically undercuts, they’re perfectly happy to have fans buying Zetsubou-sensei merchandise.

Chapter 129 has one of the stranger endings of the entire series, and even though Joshua Weeks (congratulations on lasting more than four volumes, Josh!) does endnote it, it’s worth looking at. Kumeta got his start at Shogakukan’s Shonen Sunday, and worked there for years. His most popular series there was Katteni Kaizo, which ran from 1998 – 2004… the period right before Zetsubou-sensei. Indeed, it was an argument with Shogakukan about the series (and the anime that never seemed to happen) that led to him leaving for Kodansha. (His assistant, Kenjiro Hata, elected to stay at Shogakukan, and was given his own series, Hayate the Combat Butler. Needless to say, ‘friendly rivalry’ doesn’t begin to describe things…)

Katteni Kaizo is a high-school gag manga about a boy who is convinced that he is a cyborg, his friend Umi who knocked him onto his head as a child, and their many,m many insane friends. When Kumeta deliberately cut it short, he decided to end it by showing Kaizo and Umi waking up in a mental hospital, where they had been imagining the entire series. Now “cured”, they go out into Tokyo to start life anew. The fan reaction was basically “…”, as you might imagine. One of the minor characters, Yoko, had, towards the end of the series, sealed herself in a wall by accident (something that is quite typical of this character). Whether Kumeta did this deliberately in order to write this precise chapter of Zetsubou-sensei 7 years later is unknown (I tend to doubt it), but it ends up looking quite clever.

I’m not sure what the future of Zetsubou-sensei is in North America. Vol. 14 is scheduled for April, but after that Kodansha’s schedule (up through November on Amazon) does not show it. You might argue “but it’s a New York Times bestseller!”, but aside from the fact that the NYT list frequently bears no resemblance to reality, the question is whether Zetsubou’s sales are worth the stress of having to translate this monster. More jokes than ever before in this volume are simply “this is funny if you’re Japanese, trust us” jokes, and the minimal endnotes only help a little. On the other hand, it could simply be that the series is taking a short break, possibly for the translator to recover his frazzled mind, and will continue down the road. Obviously I’m hoping for the latter. In any case, this is another solid volume of the series.

By Hayako Goto. Released in Japan by Takeshobo, serialization ongoing in the magazine Manga Life. Released in the United States by Takeshobo on the JManga website.

The first thing that struck me about this series, a title that I knew something of coming in thanks to Erica Friedman’s reviews on Okazu, is how appropriate it is that the word ‘poor’ is repeated in the title. In fact, if it had been called Poor Poor Poor Lips I wouldn’t have blinked an eye. More than a series about cute girls doing cute things, or about a growing love between two young women, this is a manga about a very, VERY poor girl, and what her life is like to the people around her. Mako isn’t homeless or anything. But she’s constantly on the knife edge of it, and deals with things like never having the money to buy clothes… or furniture… or even food beyond the meanest variety. It’s actually quite impressive the sheer amount of humor the author can wring out of Nako’s desperate poverty.

In contrast to this we have Ren, the woman who runs the shop that Nako comes to work for. Ren is an interesting character right off the bat, as she tells prospective employees point blank that she is a lesbian – something you rarely get in Japanese manga, even ones that do deal with actual relationships between two girls. Usually the closeness between the two gets some “it’s just because it’s you” lip service that manages to dance around the actual lesbian identity. So it’s refreshing to see Ren be so blunt about it, even if it is mostly to scare off people who can’t put up with her. Nako, of course, is not going to let anything like that stop her from work that might give her money to live, so she gets hired and the manga shows the two becoming friends.

This is a cute 4-koma manga, so the rest of the volume tends to involve a lot of cute 4-koma situations. We follow Nako’s staggeringly ridiculous poverty, and start to realize how it is she keeps ending up that way (a naivete that manages to remain innocent and charming while still making you slap your head); we see her interactions with an old male friend from high school, who clearly is interested in her but can’t quite get that across; and we see Ren, who has already told Nako that she’s ‘not her type’, begin to fall for Nako anyway. The two contrast very well, with Nako’s blithe matter-of-factness contrasting well with Ren’s occasional tendencies towards being overwrought. Ren, of course, would like to give Nako more money and help, but it’s hard to simply DO that, so she has to be subtle about such things.

The yuri in this first volume is mild – Ren clearly is interested in Nako, but this is different from the usual sort of relationship – and girl – she’s had before, so she’s still trying to figure out what to do. Meanwhile, Keiki is a relatively sympathetic male co-star considering it’s a yuri manga. He and Ren don’t get along, but you clearly see things from his side as well, and they both share a concern that Nako will one day simply be kidnapped off the street. Nako, being fairly oblivious about such things, is not particularly helping either of them. But then, this manga is meant to be more than one volume long, so that’s only to be expected.

This was a lot of fun. It uses the 4-koma style well, being a series of slice-of-life events without ever giving off that feeling of ‘nothing will ever happen’ you get from many similar series. The characters are funny and likeable, and you want Nako to better her situation while realizing that her situation is what drives all the comedy and plot. And the translation, done in collaboration with ALC Publishing, is excellent, showing none of the over-literal awkwardness that sometimes plagues JManga titles. The one drawback to the series is that Nako is yet another of those girls who’s 21 but looks to be about seven years old. Japan loves this, but I really wish they’d learn to write about adult women who look like adults. Still, Poor Poor Lips is an excellent addition to JManga’s library, and Vol. 2 is already available as well, with 3 coming out next week. Give it a shot – you likely can afford it more than Nako could.

By Ayuko, from the light novels by Mizue Tani. Released in Japan as “Hakushaku to Yousei” by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine The Margaret. Released in North America by Viz.

Generally I try to give most Volume 1s a big review here, rather than pouring them into the ‘quick paragraph’ reviews I do with my colleagues for Bookshelf Briefs. That said, some Vol. 1s give me more to talk about than others. Let’s see what I can get out of The Earl & the Fairy, Viz’s new romantic fantasy shoujo?

3

The thing that struck me most while reading this first volume was how surprised I was that the author was Japanese. This reads like one of the Harlequin manga adaptations we see so much of on JManga these days. Pretty, spunky heroine abducted by handsome guy, rescued by another handsome guy, both linked by tragic, dark secrets… and fairies. OK, I admit, the fairies would probably be vampires if this were a genuine Harlequin adaptation. But still, there’s very much a sense of ‘romance novel’ in this series, as even the names are Western (which is a given, since it takes place in England.) This actually works quite well, giving it some variety that’s a long way from ‘girl in high school is trying to win over the boy she likes’ that tends to pigeonhole so much shoujo.

That said, while I’m not sure I’d go so far as my colleagues in calling it ‘a bit of a mess’, I do agree that the plot and characterization can be fairly unfocused at times. There’s a lot to lay out here involving Lydia, her family and her strange abilities, who Edgar is and his own past, the twin servants he has, who Huxley is and what his part in all this is, and still find enough time to have the heroine start to fall for the hero. Not to mention her magical animal familiar. (Oh please don’t let her power up into a magical girl, I beg you.) The pace is fast – some might say breakneck – but we haven’t really had time to breathe, and I sense that this volume will be best appreciated after the other three are out.

The author has done her research, though. There’s some interesting fairy lore here, and I liked the fact that the heroine considers her red-haired, green-eyed looks to be plain and unattractive – it’s the mid 19th century, when that type isn’t in style the way it is today. She manages to walk a fine line through the volume, being a damsel in distress much of the time, but manages to try to be independent anyway, and I like her banter with Edgar.

This manga is not really going to be much of a surprise to anyone who’s read Barbara Cartland or Amanda Quick. That said, it is somewhat of a change of pace for shoujo manga we’ve seen here (at least aside from the Harlequin adaptations of Western romances), and promises some intrigue in future volumes. I do worry that the twins will turn out to be evil, because that’s what tends to happen in these sorts of things. Still, a decent first book, and recommended for those who kept waiting for Edgar to be more of a pirate.

By Kou Yaginuma. Released in Japan as “Futatsu no Spica” by Media Factory, serialized in the magazine Comic Flapper. Released in North America by Vertical.

In Japan, this was released in two volumes, but it’s probably best for my heart that they came out here in this thick book. After seeing these characters bond and grow over the course of the series, we finally get the fruits of all their labors. After so much tragedy and blame and heartbreak… Japan is returning to space, and our heroes are graduating.

So much of this volume deals with the joy and sorrow of parting – even though they know that they’ll always be friends, the nature of the space school, and the fact that there will be only one student advancing to the final year, means that the idyllic school life that brought them all so close together is gone. We see everyone – even Marika – struggle with this, and trying to see how to go forward in life while still treasuring what they have. This includes, of course, Asumi, who is the student that gets chosen. (Sorry if that spoils you, but come on – she’s the heroine.)

This is not to say that Marika, Kei and Fuchuya don’t get a lot of attention. Not getting one’s dream does not necessarily mean abandoning it, and they all need to find a way to move forward on different paths while still remaining true to their desires to go to space. Whether it be Fuchuya’s preparing to take over the family business and trying to find ways to do fireworks in space; Kei’s love of photography and her pictures of the stars; or even Marika simply trying to find a cure for herself and others like her, this is a cast that has grown tremendously since we started. (The teacher talking about how much Kei’s enthusiasm meant to the class was possibly my favorite moment of the entire volume – that ogre!)

And so Asumi goes to space. And it’s as amazing as it sounds, so I won’t dwell too much on it. Surprisingly, the manga does not end there. Or rather, it’s not that surprising after all – the emotional climax of this series has never been ‘will Asumi get to space’, but about the relationship between Asumi and Mr. Lion. And now that she’s returned and has decided on a teaching career while waiting for the next mission (it’s not like they send a rocket up every 2 weeks, you know), Mr. Lion has realized that at last, there’s nothing really keeping him here. It’s a tough realization – we see a lot of Mr. Lion just sort of bumming around aimlessly here, even more than usual. But he says goodbye to Asumi, and it’s as heartwrenching as it sounds. But beautiful. Like the majority of this series.

In the end, things don’t necessarily end happily ever after for everyone – because this isn’t an ending, their lives will continue. Marika is still struggling with her illness, and we’re not sure if she’ll be able to discover a cure. Fuchuya still hasn’t really confessed to Asumi (who, as a time capsule towards the end reveals, was pretty much hung up on Mr. Lion anyway) so there’s no romantic resolution. But it’s still a great ending. In this cast we have hope not just for their own futures, but for the children of Japan. Seeing all the kids wanting to join the school after seeing Asumi go to space just puts a big grin on your face.

Twin Spica has been quite the journey, and I’ll miss it. Combining realistic depictions of what a space school might be like with the fantastic realism that comes with Marika and Mr. Lion (well, OK, Marika is merely sci-fi extrapolation, but…), and of course the gut-wrenching emotional tugs that are the core of this series. Every time you read it, you want to tear up – both happy tears and sad tears. It’s wonderful to see a series this affecting in North America. I wish Asumi and her friends the best on their outward journeys.

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

There was a joke going around fandom when Chapter 597 first came out in Japan that on the last page it would say “One Piece – end of Prologue.’ It’s not quite that ridiculous, but the timeskip we see does give us a lot to talk about – and finally, FINALLY reunites Luffy with his crew and his ship. It is appropriate that the cover of this volume is a mirror to Volume 1’s cover.

Before the timeskip comes some nice stuff, though. Having seen the crew bolt from their rescuers in order to reunite with their captain and console him after Ace’s death, it’s somewhat odd to see them immediately turn around and go back. It’s handled beautifully, though, with each crew member getting a flashback that shows just how much Luffy impacted their lives. They really would do anything for their captain, and it shows. Luffy, meanwhile, gets to train with Rayleigh on the island of amazingly dangerous animals, and we learn a little bit more about haki – though really, it still amounts to ‘magic charisma’ when you get right down to it.

(I was vaguely irritated that, in the shot of the Supernovas all encountering danger in the new world, Bonney is the one that’s captured and subdued (twice!). Oda is miles ahead of other Jump authors when it comes to his female characters, but they still tend to get into peril when the situation calls for it. Still, I suppose Akainu and Blackbeard menacing, say, Apoo wouldn’t have had quite the same feel.)

Then, as noted, we jump forward two years, and see what our crew is up to as they reunite on Sabaody. This leads us, inevitably, to the Fakehats. It’s not particularly surprising that someone would be trying to imitate Luffy and friends given their amazing reputation – in fact, it’s a wonder we hadn’t seen it before now. But I wasn’t expecting it to be as funny as this is. The Fakehats are gloriously awful, amounting to not even a bad parody of the people they’re trying to imitate. (Naturally, Luffy, Usopp and Chopper are taken in right away – just because there’s a timeskip doesn’t mean that the characters are THAT different. Everyone keeps their comedic flaws.)

As for the actual crew, so far they seem mostly the same. Which is reassuring. Franky has modified his body to look even more ridiculous. Zoro is missing an eye. Luffy has a scar on his chest. Nami has long hair. Usopp is more muscular. Robin has a new hairstyle. And then there’s Sanji. Who now has his hair… covering his other eye! Oda is delightfully deadpan about this in comments, but it’s also a good sign that he’s still enjoying One Piece more than anybody else.

As the Straw Hat Pirates prepare to go to Fishman Island at last, the Marines are coming out in force to stop them. But hey – allies of the pirates (many of whom are former enemies) come out to help, as we get some more great cameos. Hancock was a given (and is still a glorious parody of shippers – Luffy’s constant “I’m not marrying you” is a stitch), but it was a surprise to see Perona show up to lead Zoro to his crew. And hey, she is all grown up! (I totally ship Zoro/Perona, in a ridiculous way.) Luffy and company are ready to pave the way for a new age of pirates – and everyone wants to see them to it. It’s very heartwarming, especially when compared with Rayleigh’s flashbacks of Gold Roger.

And so – at last – we’re headed for Fishman Island and a new arc. Will it top Impel Down and Marineford? Probably not. But that doesn’t really matter. Just having the crew back together again is enough. We’ve seen how Luffy survives without his crew. Now we’re ready to see them work as a unit again. Bring on the next 60 volumes.