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One Piece, Vol. 60

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

I am still a little mindboggled that I get to review a sixtieth volume of a manga that’s been released in North America. Yes, it’s true that without Naruto’s success, I likely wouldn’t be reading this, but honestly without Naruto’s success I wouldn’t be reading ANY Viz manga. This volume wraps up Luffy’s flashback sequence, and then takes us back to dealing with the aftermath of the Marineford debacle.

As with most volumes of One Piece, there’s so much going on that you simply have to stop and focus on a few things that jump out at you. Sabo is an interesting character to add here, especially gives he has an explicit connection to Luffy’s past – *and* he’s the son of noblemen, who once again are shown to be thoroughly corrupt and evil. Sabo is the exception, of course, and his “death” halfway through the volume, unlike Ace’s, feels more like the deaths of One Piece past – i.e., you get the sense we’ll be seeing Sabo again at some point. This does not diminish any of the heartbreak, of course, especially following the disastrous fire which destroys the city.

The flashback now finished, we move back to the fates of those affected by the previous 7-8 volumes. It’s great to see Makino again, who seems to be the closest thing we’re ever going to get to a mother figure for Luffy, and she points out that just because someone is not sobbing on the ground in despair does not mean that they are suffering. And Luffy, who has been feeling that he has lost everything, is reminded of the one thing he still has and that he can still take heart in – the other Straw Hat Pirates. Who we finally *see*, after so many volumes missing. They aren’t reunited yet, no, but we get some nice ‘epilogues’ to their cover page stories, showing them getting Luffy’s mysterious ‘message’ and understanding it.

There is then what amounts to a montage of characters we have known, as Luffy, Jimbei and Rayleigh decide to GO BACK TO THE BATTLEFIELD (a sequence, I note, we are told about but don’t see – very smart, considering how long this arc has gone on) and everyone reacts to this. Highlights include Coby discovering that his screaming at everyone to stop fighting wasn’t just being really loud – he has haki now! Well, he has to keep up with Luffy somehow. Various pirates are off to the New World, including some of the Supernovas and Crocodile. Even Buggy is reunited with his crew. And it’s always wonderful seeing Vivi again.

The back half of this manga is filled with nostalgia, but it’s also pointing the way forward. The next volume will finally wrap things up and get our crew back on their way to adventure – OK, maybe the volume AFTER that – but Oda has built a world so strong that we are content to follow his plots wherever they may meander. Especially if it means we see Ace and Luffy as kids fighting giant bears.

A Devil and Her Love Song, Vol. 1

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By Miyoshi Tomori | Published by VIZ Media

The back cover blurb of A Devil and Her Love Song contains the following lines: “Meet Maria Kawai—she’s gorgeous and whip-smart, a girl who seems to have it all. But when she unleashes her sharp tongue, it’s no wonder some consider her to be the very devil!”

And in my mind, this built up the expectation for a comedy, but that’s not what A Devil and Her Love Song is at all. It’s much more serious and sad than I had anticipated, but if I had done my research beforehand and realized that it originally ran in Margaret, I shouldn’t have been surprised.

Beautiful Maria Kawai has been expelled from her prestigious Catholic school, St. Katria’s, and must now enroll in a new school. She carries a lot of mental baggage from her experiences at St. Katria’s, most notably the fact that someone she regarded as her best friend told her “You taint everyone around you.” And, as if to lend credence to these words, Maria stirs up hostilities amongst her classmates almost immediately. The problem is that she’s so perceptive, and so blunt in her delivery, that she points out personality attributes that her classmates would rather not acknowledge, like the fact that they’ve been gossiping about her prior to her arrival, or that one boy is pushing himself to be liked by all even though he is not naturally a people person. Over the first week of school, matters escalate to the point where Maria is shoved down a flight of stairs and a truly odious teacher is telling her she’s “rotten to the core.”

And yet, there are certain lessons from her St. Katria’s days that serve Maria well in tough moments, like “those who believe will be saved,” which provides her encouragement to get through bullying encounters with a group of Mean Girls in her class. But she’s not taking solace from a religious implication of these words; instead, she seems to feel that if she believes in people’s good intentions, has faith that one day they will accept her, that this will actually come to pass. And so, even though she knows the girls have it in for her, she puts herself in the path of their harassment in the hopes that one day, she’ll win them over. As I said, it’s really rather sad and makes her far more sympathetic than I ever expected a sharp-tongued heroine to be.

I regret to admit I made another snap judgment of the series based on the chapter one title page, which depicts Maria and a couple of boys, one a cheerful blond and the other a surly-looking brunette. I assumed these would be her stereotypical shoujo love interests, but though both boys are definitely interested in her, they are far more complicated individuals than I had assumed they would be. The brunette, Shin, is grumpy, rebellious, and not really friendly with the rest of the class, but has a kind heart. It unsettles him that Maria can so clearly see through him, and he’s terrified of what would happen if she could discern what he’s feeling about her, but he still comes through with her when no one else will. There’s one especially nice scene where she’s so happy and scared by his kindness that she can’t even find the words to explain, so she sings instead.

On the other hand, you have Yusuke, who is trying so hard to be everyone’s friend that he’s actually no one’s real friend at all. His philosophy is the “lovely spin,” which is a survival mechanism he tries to impart upon Maria with little success. Turn everything into something palatable and nice, even if you’re being untrue to yourself, is the basic gist. It’s probably good for her to master this subterfuge, to avoid further confrontations and to effect the personal change she seeks, but why is he doing it? Just as he helps her master the art of diplomacy, one wonders whether she will help him drop the charade.

I mean no slight to shoujo comedies when I say that A Devil and Her Love Song is much better, richer and more deep, than I anticipated. To say that I am looking forward to reading the rest of this story would be a gross understatement.

A Devil and Her Love Song is published in English by VIZ Media. The first volume will officially be released on February 7, 2012. The series is complete in Japan with thirteen volumes.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Hyakusho Kizoku, Vol. 1

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Drawn in a loose, improvisational style, Hiromu Arakawa’s Hyakusho Kizuko may remind readers of the gag strips that round out every volume of her wildly successful Fullmetal Alchemist. That’s not a knock on Hyakusho, by the way; like her fellow sister-in-shonen Yellow Tanabe, Arakawa’s omake are every bit as entertaining as her more polished stories, offering her a chance to riff on favorite characters, complain about her job, and reflect on her previous career as a dairy farmer.

In Hyakusho Kizuko, however, the focus is squarely on the joys and hardships of farm life, rather than the pressures of bringing a popular comic to press. Arakawa shares humorous anecdotes about her ongoing war with the Hokkaido squirrel, a skilled crop thief, as well as her family’s penchant for using animal medicines to cure their own ailments. She also waxes poetic about the temperament of cows — apparently, they make great pets — and celebrates Hokkaido’s important role in feeding the rest of Japan. (As she notes in chapter seven, Japan’s dependence on imported food would rise from 50% to 80% if Hokkaido stopped supplying the other islands with its agricultural products.)

Arakawa doesn’t neglect her life as an artist; throughout the stories, we see her interact with her editor, who’s decidedly skeptical about the marketability of agricultural manga. “How come you’ve written about poop two chapters in a row?” her exasperated editor asks. “In a farmer’s story, poop is your friend,” Arakawa cheerfully counters. Besides, Arakawa notes, her manga explores other topics: “I also mention cow teats,” she declares.

As these matter-of-fact exchanges suggest, Arakawa is eager to educate Japanese readers about where their food comes from. She drops facts about food consumption, discusses cow bloodlines, decries government interference in dairy production, and describes what happens to animals that don’t contribute to a farm’s bottom line. She does so with a light hand, however, interspersing the more serious discussions about sustainability with sight gags involving wild bears, foolish tourists, and barn cats.

None of these passages would be entertaining (or edifying) were it not for a solid adaptation. I’ve complained in the past about other JManga titles, which sometimes suffered from overly literal translations; witness Otaku-Type Delusional Girl, better known in English as Fujoshi Rumi. Hyakusho Kizuko, however, is a pleasant surprise; the translator has done an excellent job of rendering the text in fluid, conversational English that’s a genuine pleasure to read. In fact, the best compliment I could pay the translator is to note that I actually laughed out loud reading several passages.

I’d be the first to admit that Hyakusho Kizuko won’t be every FMA fan’s idea of a good read; folks who like Arakawa best when she’s staging magical combat may find the information-dense passages too didactic for their tastes. For curious city dwellers, however, Hyakusho Kizuko will be a revelation, offering them an entertaining look at the day-to-day operations of a working farm. Highly recommended.

HYAKUSHO KIZOKU, VOL. 1 • BY HIROMU ARAKAWA • SHINSOKAN PUBLISHING CO., LTD. • 139 pp. • NO RATING

Skip Beat!, Vol. 26

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By Yoshiki Nakamura. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Viz.

It’s been a while since I reviewed Skip Beat! in depth – the last two volumes were Briefs for the Manga bookshelf team. Since then, the Natsu arc has basically wrapped up, although Kyoko is still doing that show. In the meantime, Chaiki has now joined the Love Me team. And, as with Kyoko and Kanae, her cynicism and inability to “love” is her undoing, at least as far as Lory is concerned.

Lory may be an eccentric (the python is quite typical of him, complete with the pun), but you can’t say that he’s not trying his best for these girls. Not only is his “punishment” acting assignments most young people would kill for, but they’re tailored perfectly for each of the victims. Chiaki in particular is trying hard to rediscover her love of acting, and swallows her pride a little here as she is well aware of what she needs to do in order to open up. Sadly, we only hear a bit of what Kanae is going to be doing. But Kyoko is the star, and as always the focus is on her.

Kyoko is ordered to go meet a “scary person”, and I was amused at the reminder of how out of place she is in normal society, especially in the Love Me uniforms (which are given a nice cover image here). Kyoko just stands out, and given that the crowd are already creeped out by Cain Heel, it makes sense that the combination of his aura with that of Kyoko’s leads to fireworks. Speaking of Cain Heel, Cain is, of course, Ren, something that we and Kyoko recognize right away, though Kyoko immediately doubts herself. I do sometimes wonder if Ren is an ex-Love Me member, and if Lory still gives him assignments in the same manner that he does for Kyoko. Certainly Cain Heel is designed to hit several of Ren’s buttons.

Naturally, Kyoko is now paired with Ren again, and we get to see her take on another role – this one outside of the TV camera, as she’s playing Cain Heel’s spoiled sister, Setsu. Seeing Kyoko get into the role is probably the high point of this volume. Each time she’s had to play someone “different” from herself it’s caused problems, and this time is no different. Yet she seems to get a hold of Setsu’s basic nature much faster, and has become adept at looking into the character’s motivations. Of course, this can be very problematic when they’re forced to live together in the same motel room…

Though obviously not explicit, there’s an incestual subtext here. The Heel siblings are close to the point of obsession, and Kyoko accurately notes that Setsu’s love of her brother is a bit disturbing. And it goes the other way as well, of course, showing us Cain’s love of his sister intermingling with Ren’s feelings for Kyoko. Ren has always been about repression and masks, so seeing him losing it and cracking is a treat. He really desires Kyoko here, and we start to see the real reason that Lory paired Ren and Kyoko together. Of course, he regards his desires as deeply wrong, so we’re still not actually going anywhere, but…

This new arc promises to be a lot of fun, and is already mixing together humor, romance and drama in equal measures. It’s still running in Japan, so we’ll be seeing a lot of the Heel siblings in future volumes. For now, though, we’ll enjoy the comedy, be amused at the pseudo-romance, pretend not to notice Ren’s obsession merging with “Cain Heel”, and try to forget that terrifying panel of Ren’s huge hand reaching out to grab Kyoko and drag her into an alleyway, which would be genuinely horrible if we didn’t know it was him.

Tidbits: A Trio of Kodansha Shoujo

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I’m catching up on three of Kodansha’s currently running shoujo series, so I thought I’d group them all together here for a Tidbits post! First up are volumes four and five of Natsumi Ando’s suspenseful Arisa, followed by the second and final volume of Naoko Takeuchi’s Codename: Sailor V, with the second volume of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon bringing up the rear. Tidbit power, make up!

Arisa, Vols. 4-5 by Natsume Ando
Tsubasa Uehara continues to attend school in the guise of her sister, Arisa, as she endeavors to find the identity of the King who is fulfilling wishes from chosen students in dangerous ways. Her spirits flag when it seems she’s been unsuccessful in protecting the latest target, but when it turns out her efforts actually prevented the girl from sustaining permanent injury, her spirits rise. Alas, a friend’s betrayal is followed by an explanation of divided loyalties and the introduction of a pivotal new character with kind feelings towards Tsubasa but a burning hatred for Arisa.

So, there are several characters at this point who could be the King, but the strongest possibility seems to be Kudo, a transfer student who I had forgotten about entirely after reading volume three, so that tells you how memorable of a guy he is. Manabe doesn’t seem like the culprit, and neither does Arisa’s boyfriend, Midori, but it’s not out of the question. Mostly we see the King as a shadowy figure, grinning in a dastardly fashion as he does things like arrange for Tsubasa to fall off a cliff. (Side note: any time the female lead of a shoujo manga goes out into the woods at night, she is going to fall off a cliff. It’s, like, the law.) New character Shizuka seems like a potential candidate, until it’s revealed that the King is manipulating her into making wishes that will harm Arisa/Tsubasa.

All of this makes for a fast-paced and suspenseful read, but it does cause me to wonder whether Ando’s just making up all of this as she goes along. Does she really have a plan for who the King is, or is she keeping readers suspicious of everyone until inspired to take the story in a specific direction? I’m not exactly complaining—because, again, it is a fun read—but the lack of any kind of permanent gain is a little bit frustrating. I just hope there’s a satisfying and dramatic payoff in the end!

Codename: Sailor V, Vol. 2 by Naoko Takeuchi
It’s rather hard to like Minako for the majority of this volume, as several of the stories play up her shallow side. First she gets fat by eating too much evil chocolate, then she must contend with a trio of animal-themed siblings who unleash energy-sucking cats, dogs, and mosquitoes upon the populace. Minako slacks off frequently and makes various unkind comments to her long-suffering feline companion, Artemis. She also meets the latest idol sensation, handsome and mysterious Phantom Ace, and becomes one of his biggest fans.

There’s not really a whole lot to recommend these chapters except more of Sailor V’s amusing speeches, like this one, which occurs as she’s foiling the enemy’s scheme to collect energy via blood donation:

You have used clever words to abscond with a precious tribute of blood from weakened hospital patients! That is your crime!

And to add to it, you have sullied a woman’s simple joy of collecting stamps!

Worse, you forgot to give me my reward for donating blood to the tune of 800cc! And that crime is grave!

Luckily, though the premise of the final two chapters is just as silly as what’s come before—Minako is ordered to win the part of Ace’s leading lady in his latest project, filming in China, so that she can observe his potentially evil production company—it doesn’t preclude genuine dramatic impact. Though Minako entertains fantasies of marrying Ace and retiring, when he professes his to love her, she realizes that it’s not what she wants. She loves being Sailor V and, furthermore, remembers making a promise to protect an important person. Eventually, her memories fully awaken and her Sailor V costume is replaced by one matching the design of the other senshi. It’s kind of goosebump-inducing.

Though I’ve read this series before (with translations), I had completely forgotten that Ace had any connection at all to Minako’s past life, so was pleasantly surprised by that revelation as well as by this awesomely grim quote:

Your love will never be granted, for all eternity… Your love or your duty… now you can live the rest of your life never having to worry about the tortures of deciding between them. Your fate is to battle on. Because your true battle starts now.

How could I have forgotten that?! Minako is a girl who is always falling (if superficially) in love, so she can’t welcome this news, but neither does she shirk from her destiny. Ever irrepressible, she ends the series on an upbeat note, poised to show (if I recall rightly) greater maturity and determination when she joins the others in the main series.

Ultimately, Codename: Sailor V is worthwhile despite its flaws. We never learn what the enemy was hoping to achieve, nor the identity of “Boss” (though the second volume of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon provides some insight on the matter), but we do meet a special, spunky girl as she comes to accept her unique destiny, and that can never be a bad thing.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Vol. 2 by Naoko Takeuchi
A lot happens in this volume, which I shall attempt to quickly summarize. When facing off against Zoisite, the girls are rescued by the timely arrival of Sailor Venus. Minako is now in her second year of middle school and comes across as very mature, competent, and serious about her duty. She’s been monitoring Usagi through the Sailor V game and has also been researching the enemy. She provides all sorts of information about the Dark Kingdom and also claims (well, Artemis claims) that she is Princess Serenity. Her proximity triggers some past-life memories in the others, as well.

However, Usagi starts having dreams that suggest that she was actually Serenity, and when Mamoru is injured protecting her from one of Kunzite’s attacks, one of her tears transforms into the Legendary Silver Crystal and her true identity is revealed. (The bit with Venus was evidently a ruse to direct enemy attacks onto a more experienced Guardian.) Mamoru is subsequently kidnapped by the Dark Kingdom and eventually used as Queen Beryl’s pawn, securing the crystal for her by volume’s end.

So, all of this is very dramatic and shoujo-tastic while it occurs and I honestly loved every minute of it. There are a couple of things that I found especially interesting, though. The first is how much information we get on the enemy compared to the dearth of intel provided in Codename: Sailor V. We see, for example, a flashback to the moment in which Beryl was “irresistibly drawn to” the North Pole, where she discovered the remains of the Dark Kingdom. This made me wonder… was Beryl reborn on Earth as a regular human, just like the Guardians? And did she waken to her past memories as the seal imprisoning Metalia faded?

We also learn a bit about the Four Kings of Heaven, who were generals to Endymion (Mamoru’s past identity) that were swayed into becoming Metalia’s devotees. I’m not exactly sure about this, but it seems as if their bodies had been converted into crystals and recently awakened into human form at Metalia’s whim, and that they can be revived as many times as necessary. Somehow this is sadder and more sympathetic than if they had just been some regular guys suddenly remembering their previous lives.

The second thing that struck me was how much certain elements of the story remind me of Please Save My Earth. Usagi and friends living on the moon in their past lives is the most obvious resemblance, but there’s also the fact that Usagi is troubled by questions of identity brought on by these recollections (“Am I becoming the princess? It’s like I’ve stopped being me…”) and that the residents of the Moon Kingdom were tasked with fondly watching over Earth and helping it to evolve in the best manner possible. They actually travel to the moon to listen to a computerized incarnation of Queen Serenity tell them about the tragic events of the past and how Metalia must be sealed away for good. (She was also responsible for waking Artemis and Luna from the stasis they entered after the destruction of the Moon Kingdom, which makes me suspect that she is “Boss.”)

I could probably go on for another five hundred words, which just goes to show how engaging this story is. It wouldn’t be a Kodansha review if I didn’t complain about the typos—seeing the word “it’s” used instead of “its” is even more painful when it’s part of genius Ami’s dialogue—but even their irksome presence does not detract from the enjoyment I derive from reading this series.

Adventures in the Key of Shoujo: Sailor Moon, Vol.1

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Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Vol. 1 | By Naoko Takeuchi | Published by Kodansha Comics USA | Rated: T, Ages 13+

“I’m… the pretty guardian in a sailor suit! Guardian of love and justice! Sailor Moon!”

Working on a simple premise… (Follow my logic, would you?) If you took a squad of girls, magical powers, tokusatsu-style fighting, and a viciously unassuming story arc and threw them into a blender, what would you get? My-Hime, that’s what. But before My-Hime—before all that—there was Sailor Moon, an archetypal series that influenced the entire genre of magical girls within manga and anime. To this day, Fred Patten states that it introduced the idea of the magical girl team into the medium’s subconscious. The brainchild of artist Naoko Takeuchi, the sheer weight of its importance leans heavily on everything that came after it.

Simply put, the Great Ruler of the Dark Kingdom wants energy leeched from humans and the Legendary Silver Crystal that goes with it. With that, they can rule the world. All that stands between them and success is a small, black cat called Luna (who can talk and has a mark on her head in the shape of a crescent moon) and a team of fourteen-year-old girls who wear exaggerated versions of Japanese school sailor outfits and have magical powers, and whose code names are taken from the names of the planets in the solar system. Leading the team is a complete klutz named Usagi Tsukino who takes on the persona of Sailor Moon. Also into the mix goes Tuxedo Mask, a young man who dresses in a gentleman’s evening attire and wears (you guessed it) a mask. He likes to help Sailor Moon, but he has his own reasons as well. The girls are soldiers (or senshi) in a war against the enemies of love, truth and justice. And so the board is set, the players are moving, and the game can begin.

So why has it taken this long to write the review, seeing as I received the manga over two weeks ago? I think it’s the awe in which the series is held. Sailor Moon has a fanbase that rivals even Dragonball or Evangelion. Dragonball is an interesting title to compare, in terms of its Western audience. For the most part, the perception is that Dragonball found a large male audience and Sailor Moon, a large female audience. I say “perception” because market analysis can only tell you so much. But it’s unfair to label Sailor Moon as Dragonball for girls, as I once did. The two series are worlds apart in their execution, tone and setting. Yet, I cannot discount the idea that each gender can find something in both stories that resonates with them.

My failing was that I decided that girls could like Dragonball but boys couldn’t like Sailor Moon, because there was nothing there for them to latch onto. I think what set me on that foolish path was the God-awful treatment that Sailor Moon received at the hands of DIC Entertainment when the animated version of the story came to European English-speaking shores. DIC made it sound like the most girly of enterprises (something no self-respecting angsty teenager would be caught dead liking), where the girls were all airheads and the villains were dead simple. The show was never going to attract a boy who had grown up with He-Man. It was not going to happen for me. And so, I ignored it.

But the fanbase, as I’ve said, is relentless. Every time you look at cosplayers, someone is dressed as Sailor Moon. So I would speak with people who talked about the story as if it was manna from Heaven. They ranged from cosplayers who said the series was their gateway into anime, to those who had been reading the manga since the 1990s TOKYOPOP editions. Interestingly, the anime breaking into North America is credited by many as the event that destroyed the grip the male, 15-25 demographic had on driving anime sales in America since the 1980s. Today, the market leans more heavily toward female fans than male fans of anime, manga, and J-Culture, so it’s a testament to the series that it had and still has that effect on the fans.

Still, I’m confused about Sailor Moon. Mostly because I cannot figure out where Takeuchi is going with it in this first volume, or indeed if she’s got some kind of plan going even here in the opening act. On the surface, Usagi is a airhead more concerned with being a girly girl, hanging out with her friends, and playing video games at the local arcade than entertaining the notion that she should be doing anything to save the world. Even when she accepts being Sailor Moon, she still doesn’t want to be put into scary situations by Luna. It makes for a nice intro to the character for whom we will ostensibly be rooting for the next however many volumes. The spoken-diary entries that Usagi has are something to behold. She tells us every single time a new chapter starts who she is, where she is from, what recently happened, and what is happening now. I know that this is because of the fact that Sailor Moon was serialized in Nakayoshi Magazine—to keep new readers in the loop, Takeuchi wrote those in—but the aftereffect is that Usagi comes across as even more bubbly, and this is a good thing.

The tone of the fight that the Sailors are in and the opposition that the author sets is one of innocence that can only be derived from a teenager’s perspective. When I was 14, the people who had it in for me in school wanted to beat me up and throw water over me, but they didn’t want me dead. For all the Dark Kingdom’s mwah-ha-ha-ha and general evilness, I cannot take them seriously. They are defeated by a dunderhead every single time. Then the dunderhead gets her own team of crack commandos and the bad guys get trounced, again and again, by a bunch of fourteen-year-olds who only got their powers recently. Even when they are vanquished, the villains treat it like “Bah! Another setback!”

Some people would argue that Sailor Moon has a lot of evidence of plot conveniences for the sake of convenience; I counter the argument because the same evidence is rather exculpatory in nature. To explain, while I want to say that the whole “You are destined to become a team of magical fighting girls!” thing is a little too convenient, the truth is that’s how all good quest stories start and since I don’t really have a problem with them, I don’t have a really big problem with Sailor Moon doing it, either. So the girls are destined to be a team of superheroes not because they were destined to be so, but because Luna had been keeping an eye on all of them. The same can be said for the items that the senshi use to defeat the forces of darkness. Usagi, we have established, plays video games at the arcade. She gets prizes every time she gets a high score. These items look very suspicious and don’t look like the usual tat, if you get my meaning. However, throughout this smoke-and-mirrors routine I can see a kind of epic gathering of heroes (the girls being recruited) and figures of cruelty and infamy (Dark Kingdom’s minions) moving around and cannot wait to see what happens next.

Artwork-wise, I cannot say enough good things about it. From Usagi’s transformation sequence to Luna’s little interstitial at the start of one of the chapters telling us who’s in the team, its biographical details and any allies and enemies, the art is really sweet and genuine to look at. Graceful and elegant, it still has its quick thumbnail drawings of our heroes and heroines to speed us through a page. There are real examples in the pages that Takeuchi is using mise-en-scène* to build a colorful and coherent stage that her actors are moving around. The whirling fog that surrounds our heroes when the enemy has the upper hand or when the senshi reveal to the villain (and, by extension, the audience) their power and become light-filled are but two such examples. The moments of tranquility when Tuxedo Mask dances with and around Sailor Moon are wonderful. Even as a battle-hardened, knowledgeable young man of 30, I can understand the feeling of falling for someone and feeling like the whole world stopped for that moment. Takeuchi gives her leads a distinctive look and you’d never confuse one Sailor Senshi for another, even in their uniforms. Plus, she never makes the fact that they dress in sailor outfits into something crass. With the supporting cast it’s a little more difficult to keep an eye on who’s who but I don’t mind that so much at this point, as they don’t contribute much.

It’s interesting, both in terms of storytelling and, of course, artwork, to see the different types of girls who get recruited into being Sailor Senshi become staples of magical girl stereotypes. There’s the ditzy girl, the smart girl, and the girl who works at the shrine. I don’t doubt that I’ll see even more types emerge as the series goes on. While Sailor Moon didn’t invent these types for the most part, it perfected them. The chief bad guys are also designed this way: they have been around before but never in this context and setting. The more I reread this volume, the more I wonder if I’ve been wrong about a great number of shows and manga that I’ve passed by simply by having a prejudiced opinion. As an aside, the translation by William Flanagan is spot-on and I’m, as always, grateful for the liner notes at the back to make sense of the nuances within Japanese culture.

Ultimately, Sailor Moon works because you get swept up by the story. The idea of battling evil-doers over rooftops or in exotic locations with brave allies and with nothing more than the power you have inside of you is something we know from when we were little and read fairy tales. Later we dismiss such stories as mere whimsy. Usagi and her friends are living in a fairy tale and I can and will wholeheartedly continue to embrace this whimsy for as long as it lasts.

* Mise-en-scène is a French term which literally means “placing on stage” and refers to the art of placing elements (actors, props, sets, lighting) in front of the viewer in order to immerse them in the story. Where the actors are placed within a scene and how they move in the scene are also elements within mise-en-scène.

Review copy bought by reviewer

Dorohedoro, Vol. 5

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By Q Hayashida. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Ikki. Released in North America by Viz.

For a volume with as much plot going on as this Dorohedoro has, it’s interesting how much I found myself drawn to the little things going on in the background. Not just the art itself, which continues to be absolutely amazing, but the things you don’t always notice first time around. Hayashida tends to have any long, detailed exposition in her work contrasted with someone else doing something stupid in the background while it’s going on. Ebisu’s search for her fake breasts (and subsequent use of Judas’ Ear as a replacement) in the midst of En telling the story of how Shin and Noi became partners is priceless, and shows a real love of craft – the conversation is static, so *something* else has to be going on.

Speaking of Noi, she gets the cover this time around, and we get a glimpse into some of her backstory with Shin. The fact that Noi was in training to become a demon is not nearly as surprising to me as seeing that Noi was originally a fairly normal-sized high school girl. Now yes, En said she was training with 150-kilo armor, but the fact of the matter is that she failed her training, and at the end of the flashback still seems to be fairly lithe. How on earth did she bulk up to the huge, muscular Noi we know and love? That being said, the story with her and Shin is short and sweet, and shows Noi’s protective instincts and healing powers off. Noi is probably my favorite character in the manga, so I loved seeing this.

Then there’s Caiman, who’s down in the sorcerer’s world trying to get more info on his head, this time without Nikaido there to back him up. Naturally he gets into trouble, but he manages to get rescued. Much of Dorohedoro seems to revel in showing us hideous creatures in terrifying masks, and then later revealing that they’re just typical people trying to earn a living and stay alive. Even if they *do* have magic powers and/or mutations. Fukuyama is the author’s second “surprise! really a female!” character, and her “magic ability” is both disgusting and hilarious, but Tanba’s the really impressive one here, and I hope we see more of him.

There is a plot here, believe it or not, mostly centering around the “Blue Night” festival, where partnerships are formed and current partnerships are kept and/or broken up. Frequently by force. It becomes apparent that a good way to form partnerships is apparently by knocking your intended unconscious. Hopefully Shin and Noi will be able to reunite and work things out in Vol. 6. (Noi’s outfit, by the way, is yet another example of the odd sense of fanservice that Hayashida has.) En, meanwhile, is still obsessed with finding the sorcerer who can control time… and has finally narrowed it down to our heroine. Indeed, the volume ends with Nikaido literally “dropping in” on En and company. Much to her displeasure.

Things seem to be picking up speed in this volume, and there’s less emphasis on world building and more on the plot. That’s good, because the plot is compelling. You find yourselves rooting for both “sides” to work things out, even if you know it’s unlikely. Heck, even En is fairly sympathetic, even as he tries to bring Nikaido under his control. This continues for me to be one of the most addictive series around, and I cannot wait for Vol. 6. Apparently Viz can’t either, as it’s out in April. Slightly sped up schedule? Win!

Love Hina Omnibus, Vol. 2

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By Ken Akamatsu. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

At the end of the last Love Hina omnibus, we left our hero and heroine having just failed their entrance exams. We open this second volume with Keitaro depressed. This is his third straight failure, and the pressure is on him to find something else to do with his life besides apply to Todai. What’s more, a dashing (if eccentric) young man has arrived in town. This is Seta, Naru’s crush, and Keitaro completely fails to measure up to him. Seta also brings along a young girl, Sarah, who like many bratty young girls in manga proceeds to abuse and belittle our hero at every turn. Is it any wonder Keitaro decides to give up?

I’ll be honest, I still find Keitaro a weakness in this series. Searching for a purpose in life is all very well and good, and god knows we’ve all done it. The trouble is that we haven’t all had six different women all find they have feelings for us. Keitaro is still mostly defined by his failures and his bad luck, and occasionally being polite. He needs to have a better goal than ‘get into university so I can meet my mysterious promised girl’. We actually do start to see the first hint of that here, but I only know this because I’ve read the series before. For a new reader who is unaware that Keitaro’s gluing pots together is foreshadowing, it’s just 3 more volumes of him accidentally walking in on women naked.

Speaking of the women, aside from Naru and Mutsumi, they’re once again given short shrift here. It amazes me that Negima has a cast of 31 main girls, as Akamatsu has enough trouble handling the 6 he has here. Shinobu, Motoko and Su continue to get a focus about every 15 chapters, and Kitsune gets even less than that. That said, Kitsune’s focus chapter was actually a high point of the volume, as we see her love of alcohol and mischief is tempered by a genuine desire to see Naru and Keitaro get over themselves. We also see that one should not try to play mind games with her unless one is prepared to face the consequences – she’s quite cunning. As for the others, Shinobu continues to worry about immaturity (and first kisses), and Motoko about being a samurai yet having romantic feelings. Su gets a brief chapter where we see what she might be like as an adult, but this doesn’t really change her personality noticeably.

The exception is Mutsumi, who gets her largest role here (she sadly appears less often as the series goes on, the curse of not actually living at the Inn). Mutsumi is a lot of fun, and the revelation that she’s actually quite intelligent and only failed one entrance exam as she forgot to put her name down is unsurprising. There are bigger revelations, however, as it becomes increasingly apparent to Naru that Mutsumi is the girl Keitaro made him promise to. This leads to a situation where Naru has to make a decision to give up on Keitaro in order to let him find his destiny. His destiny, of course, has spent the entire manga showing that she already knows that Keitaro and Naru are destined to be together. And once again true feelings end up getting buried (at least on Naru’s side – Mutsumi honestly seems OK with letting Keitaro go).

Love Hina continues to show the strengths that Akamatsu had at this time. Lots of physical comedy, lots of fanservice, and the ability to develop a cliched yet likeable romantic plot. It also shows off many of his weaknesses, which he would improve on with Negima. In the end, though, the big drawback is that I’m not a 22-year-old guy anymore, and Love Hina is a title that’s very rewarding for 22-year-old guys but very frustrating for ones who are older and more mature. For pure nostalgia reasons, this is worth a buy, however. And I seem to recall the next volume should be more interesting.

A Devil and Her Love Song, Vol. 1

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Maria Kawai, heroine of A Devil and Her Love Song, is a cool customer. Not only is she beautiful, talented, and smart, she’s also tough — so tough, in fact, that she was expelled from a hoity-toity Catholic school for beating up a teacher. Her blunt demeanor further cements her bad-girl impression; within minutes of enrolling at a new high school, she antagonizes all the girls in her class with a few sharp observations about their behavior. Only two boys — Yusuke, a cheerful, popular student who avoids conflict at all costs, and Shin, a moody outsider — try defending Maria from her peers’ nasty comments and pranks.

So far, so good: Maria is spiky and complicated, a truth-teller who lacks the ability to censor herself, even though she’s aware of the potential consequences of speaking her mind. Throughout volume one, there are some wonderful comic moments as Maria struggles to put a “lovely spin” — Yusuke’s term — on her acid comments. Alas, Maria’s sideways head-tilt and doe-eyed gaze look more sinister than cute; not since Kazuo Umezu’s Scary Book has a manga-ka made a doll-like character look so thoroughly menacing, even when superimposed atop a backdrop of flowers and sparkles.

Having created such a vivid character, however, Miyoshi Tomori isn’t sure where to go with the story. In several scenes, Maria does things that contradict what we know about her: would someone as perceptive as Maria willingly attend a party hosted by the class mean girls, especially after they’d harassed her on a daily basis? And why would someone as outspoken as Maria refrain from pointing out her teacher’s judgmental behavior — especially when it’s plainly obvious to both the characters in the story and the reader? These kind of abrupt reversals might make sense if we knew more about Maria’s past, but at this stage in the story, they feel more like authorial floundering than a conscious revelation of character.

From time to time, however, Tomori convincingly hints at Maria’s softer side. Midway through volume one, for example, Maria makes tentative overtures towards Tomoya “Nippachi” Kohsaka, a fellow bullying victim. (“Nippachi” means “twenty-eight,” and is a mean-spirited reference to Tomoya’s poor academic performance.) That scene is both sad and real; anyone who’s ever seen two ostracized kids turn their classmates’ scorn on one another will immediately appreciate the dynamic between Maria and Nippachi. Maria’s exchanges with Shin, too, reveal a different side of her personality; though the pair frequently engage in the kind of rapid, antagonistic banter that’s de rigeur for romantic comedies, their quieter conversations suggest a grudging mutual respect.

Maria’s interactions with Nippachi and Shin fill me with hope that A Devil and Her Love Song will find its footing in later chapters. If Tomori can find a way to reveal Maria’s fundamental decency without compromising her heroine’s tart, outspoken personality, A Devil and Her Love Song will be a welcome addition to the Shojo Beat catalog, an all-too-rare example of a story in which the heroine isn’t the least bit concerned with being nice or popular. If Tomori can’t, Devil runs the risk of devolving into a YA Taming of the Shrew, with Shin (or, perhaps, Yosuke) playing Petruchio to Maria’s Katherina.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC. Volume one will be released February 7, 2011.

A DEVIL AND HER LOVE SONG, VOL. 1 • BY MIYOSHI TOMORI • VIZ MEDIA • 200 pp. • RATING: TEEN (13+)

Durarara!!, Vol. 1

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Story by Ryohgo Narita, Art by Akiyo Satorigi, Character Design by Suzuhito Yasuda | Published by Yen Press

Here is the sum total of my Durarara!! knowledge prior to reading volume one of the manga:

1. It is based on light novels.
2. There is an anime.
3. People were really excited about the license.

It turns out that those light novels are by the creator of Baccano!, another exclamatory property with an anime that I’ve never seen, but which has been praised by various reputable sources. So, even though I knew nothing about Durarara!! itself, I was definitely curious.

In the space of six pages, three concepts and one narrative conceit are efficiently introduced. Time for another list!

1. Inside a pharmaceutical laboratory, a speaker (presumably male) promises a girl in a tank that he will “get us out of here.”
2. A trio of anonymous hands chat about the Tokyo neighborhood of Ikebukuro and the twenty-year-old urban legend of the Black Rider.
3. Timid fifteen-year-old Mikado Ryuugamine moves to Ikebukuro to reconnect with a childhood friend and attend high school.

Each of these threads will be developed and expanded upon in the volume to come, with some slight overlap but so far not much. Because of that, I’ll address them separately.

1. We learn the least about this subplot in this volume, but it appears to have something to do with Seiji, a boy in Mikado’s class, who lives with his possibly evil sister. Seiji briefly has a stalker who sees something she shouldn’t, and I wonder if that doesn’t tie in with the next item on our list.

2. We see the anonymous chatters a few times throughout the volume and it soon becomes clear that Mikado is one of them and I’m pretty sure the Black Rider is another. Seriously, the Black Rider is the most awesome thing about the volume. A competent fighter with a body seemingly comprised of shadows, the Black Rider takes courier jobs around Ikebukuro, dispatches thugs efficently, and lives with a “shut-in doctor” who would not be averse to a romantic relationship even though the Black Rider has no head.

3. Mikado, alas, is not so interesting, though the fact that he came to town because he wanted something strange and exciting to happen to him is at least somewhat encouraging. He reconnects with his friend, Kida, meets some of Kida’s otaku friends, and is warned against associating with various unsavory people, including someone named Shizuo, who hasn’t really appeared yet but looks kind of awesome, and Izaya, an informant with bleak ideas about the afterlife who extorts money from those who intend to kill themselves.

There are some series that bombard one with so much information that one ends up frustrated. If I were more astute, I might be able to pinpoint how, exactly, the creators of Durarara!! manage to avoid this pitfall, but they do. Granted, there is a lot going on, but the exposition is sure-handed, leaving one with the expectation that all will eventually make sense. Perhaps it’s the light-novel foundation that inspires this confidence, though that is certainly no guarantee of quality.

“Weird but intriguing” is my ultimate verdict for this volume, and I look forward to the second volume very much. It’s a stylish title, one that’s more cool than profound at this stage, and I realize that won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but it pushed the right buttons for me so I’ll definitely be back for more.

Durarara!! is published in English by Yen Press. The series is complete in Japan with four volumes.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Yakuza Moon: The True Story of a Gangster’s Daughter

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In the popular imagination, the yakuza are modern-day samurai, observing a rigid code of honor, decorating their bodies with elaborate tattoos, and meting out swift punishments to anyone who encroaches on their territory. When women appear in yakuza stories, they are usually unwitting victims of clan warfare or temptresses whose sexual allure threatens the established order; they are seldom leaders or soldiers in their own right.

Small wonder, then, that Shoko Tendo’s Yakuza Moon: Memoirs of a Gangster’s Daughter (2007) caused a mild sensation in Japan when it was first published, as Tendo gave a voice to all the women who had been relegated to the margins of yakuza stories. In direct, unembellished prose, she described the devastating impact of her father’s criminal activities on his family. She cataloged her father’s drunken rages and dalliances with hostesses; recounted his subordinates’ unwanted sexual advances; and recalled the taunts and gossip that swirled around her family after her father’s incarceration.

Tendo turned an equally unsparing eye on herself, documenting her increasingly self-destructive behavior. At twelve, she joined a gang and skipped school; by her sixteenth birthday, she’d been arrested and imprisoned for fighting, and by her nineteenth birthday, she’d become addicted to speed and enmeshed in several violent relationships with married men. Only after a string of near-death experiences was Tendo able to break the cycle of abuse and addiction that had reduced her to a eighty-seven pound skeleton with scars and false teeth.

From this blunt, vivid narrative, Sean Michael Wilson and Michiru Morikawa have fashioned a curiously flat graphic memoir, Yakuza Moon: The True Story of a Gangster’s Daughter. Wilson, the script writer, hews closely to the structure of Tendo’s book, preserving the chapters and the major events of Tendo’s narrative. Yet for all his fidelity to the original, the results are uneven. Most of Tendo’s siblings and lovers, for example, are reduced from major characters to walk-on roles. To judge from Wilson and Morikawa’s adaptation, for example, Tendo’s older sister Maki was a casual acquaintance, yet in Tendo’s memoir, Maki occupied an important place in her sister’s life: first as an idol, someone Tendo emulated, then as a cautionary tale, someone Tendo feared becoming. Tendo’s other family members fare worse than Maki; readers could be excused for wondering how many siblings Tendo has, as her older brother and younger sister are mentioned only in passing late in the book, with little discussion of how their father’s lifestyle affected them.

Equally frustrating are the layouts: Yakuza Moon looks more like an illustrated novel than comics, with words carrying the burden of the storytelling and pictures playing an ancillary role. Only in Tendo’s sexual encounters does the artwork take a more prominent role; through nuanced facial expressions and body language, Morikawa speaks volumes about Tendo’s complicated relationships with men. We immediately sense which partners were bullies, and which were kind; which used physical intimidation to control Tendo, and which used emotional manipulation; and which she feared, and which she loved. There’s a frankness to these scenes that’s missing elsewhere in the book; Morikawa never shies away from depicting ugly or uncomfortable moments, but shows us what’s happening from Tendo’s point of view, rather than her partner’s.

And that, perhaps, is this graphic novel’s greatest strength: whatever compromises Wilson and Morikawa made in translating Tendo’s prose into images, the focus of the story remains squarely on Tendo. Yakuza activities — drug dealing, loansharking, beatings — take place off camera; we only see the terrible consequences, reminding us that no matter how elaborate the yakuza code of conduct may be, there’s no real honor among thieves.

YAKUZA MOON: THE TRUE STORY OF A GANGSTER’S DAUGHTER • BASED ON THE BOOK BY SHOKO TENDO, ADAPTED BY SEAN MICHAEL WILSON, ILLUSTRATED BY MICHIRO MORIKAWA • KODANSHA USA • 192 pp. • RATING: MATURE

Oresama Teacher, Vol. 6

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By Izumi Tsubaki. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Viz.

It’s the rare manga that can make me laugh when I open the front cover and look at the title page, but that’s what Oresama Teacher does here. Shinobu not only lampshades one of the more obvious faults of this series (a lack of other female characters), he also suggests Mafuyu is trying to create a “reverse harem”. Though there are a few guys here that are falling for her, I’d argue that he’s incorrect. This isn’t a reverse harem as this series is simply not focused on romance – mostly as the leads are too dense to understand what they’re feeling. How can you recognize love if simple friendship is beyond you?

Likewise, the first chapter of this volume is simply top comedy, as we meet yet another cast member with no common sense. Shinobu is simply a flake, albeit a skilled one, and therefore matches up well with “Super Bun”, who gets trotted out here again to my delight. It’s interesting to note that Shinobu flat out worships the series’ main villain, Miyabi. In fact, it almost borders on BL, without ever quite going there (just in case both are needed later to have feelings for Mafuyu). The fight itself, meanwhile, shows how clever Mafouyu can be when she’s strategic – thinking on her feet about how best to defeat a ninja and even using some pseudo-ninja techniques.

The rest of the volume is not nearly as funny, but that’s not a bad thing – we’re finally getting a pile of plot and backstory that has been hidden from us. Shinobu ends up joining the Public Morals Squad (as the world’s most obvious mole), and the three club members start to analyze exactly why the bet the school principal has with Saeki is so weird – why does the administration WANT delinquency in the school? Mafuyu thinks that she now has enough that she can get Saeki to tell her the rest, but he proves surprisingly cold, pushing her away by pushing on one of her biggest buttons – the “I want to stop being a delinquent” button. But is that really what she wants?

Having also been abandoned by Hayasaka (whose reasons are far more teenage boy-oriented than Saeki’s), we then get a wonderful scene of her opening up to the other girls in the class, and trying to be friends with them. It’s wonderful not only because her desperation and tomboyishness is amusing, but also because the other girls in class genuinely seem to like her, even if they find her incredibly strange. You could argue this is because they’ve never seen her fighting, but it’s rather nice, and makes me hope that one day we will see more female presence in this manga. It’s not going to be today, though – after defending Hayasaka, who still has his horrible reputation, Mafuyu runs off, realizing that hanging out with the other guys is where she wants to be.

Then there’s Saeki. If you recall, he’s the title character (though France actually changed the title to “Girl Fight”, putting the emphasis more on Mafuyu). His reasons for pushing Mafuyu away are entirely predictable, but this doesn’t make them poorly written, and the scenes with his grandfather are both touching and intriguing. A telling point comes towards the start of the book, when Mafuyu is running off to fight Shinobu, and Saeki asks her why she fights. Note that she doesn’t give a typical manga reason like “to defend the weak” or “to battle injustice”. She fights because she was challenged, and that’s it. She is Saeki’s reminder of what he once was, and that’s why he tries to get rid of her. Of course, she’s made of sterner stuff, which he knows but would rather not admit.

We end on a cliffhanger, with Saeki starting to tell Mafuyu the real reason for the bet, and what the bet actually involves. It’s going to be a long wait till the next volume, but when it comes I’m willing to bet there will be lots of fights, stupidity, and shoujo cliches. Just the way I like it.

Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll, Vol. 1

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Critic proof: that’s my two-word assessment of Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll, a new all-ages manga starring one of Sanrio’s lesser-known characters. The story is a mixture of sincere sentiment and calculated product placement that’s been carefully designed to appeal to the under-ten crowd; an adult can practically hear the cha-ching of the cash register every time a new character or magical object is introduced.

The Cinnamaroll of the title is described in the introduction as a “boy puppy” with a tail like a bun. Unhappy among his litter mates — all of whom are big, puffy clouds — he finds his calling at a terrestrial bakery that specializes in breakfast treats. There he befriends an assortment of other dogs: Mocha, a “stylish chatterbox” who accessorizes with ribbons and flowers; Cappuccino, an easygoing pup who likes to nap and eat; Chiffon, a high-energy dog with ears that faintly resemble a chiffon cake; Espresso, a talented know-it-all who boasts a “distinguished Mozart hairstyle”; and Milk, a baby whose entire vocabulary consists of the all-purpose word “baboo.”

Volume one features a dozen or so stories involving picnics, treasure maps, trips to the beach, and letters to Santa Claus. Though there’s a strong element of fantasy in the gang’s adventures, there’s an even stronger whiff of didacticism: in one chapter, for example, Cinnamoroll must set aside his fear of the dark to rescue his friends, who are being held captive in a haunted house, while in another, Cinnamoroll learns to embrace the fact he’s different from the other “cloud kids.” Every conflict is neatly resolved in a few pages, with Cinnamoroll learning an important lesson about friendship, loyalty, or selflessness; only Cavity, a dark cloud with a devil’s tail, seems impervious to the other characters’ warmth and energy.

As an adult reader, it’s impossible not to feel a little jaded reading Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll. The stories have predictable scripts that have been carefully designed to stimulate the reader’s awwwww reflex at regular intervals. The artwork, too, lacks personality; though no one would deny its fundamental cuteness, the art looks prefabricated, as if each character had been assembled from interchangeable parts from the Sanrio plant. More puzzling still is that none of the pups look particularly canine; the artist could easily have described all of them as long-eared rabbits without compromising the story.

Yet for all the cynicism a project like Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll might inspire, I also understand its appeal: it looks like someone took the contents of my childhood sticker album and turned it into a story featuring puppies, unicorns, sweets, and rainbows. The stories, like the character designs, have a definite child logic to them, as the plots touch on a variety of pre-teen fantasies: being rich and famous, eating a diet of sweets, spending all your time playing with friends (no one goes to school), and learning that yes, indeed, you were born into the wrong family. If those stories aren’t executed with the grace or imagination of the best kids’ comics, they’ll still please the under-ten crowd with their whimsical settings and earnest characters. Just don’t be surprised when they ask the inevitable question: where can I get a Cinnamoroll doll?

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

FLUFFY, FLUFFY CINNAMOROLL, VOL. 1 • STORY AND ART BY YUMI TSUKIRINO, ORIGINAL CONCEPT BY CHISATO SEKI • VIZ MEDIA • 160 pp. • RATING: ALL AGES

 

Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 17

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By Bisco Hatori. Released in Japan as “Ouran Koukou Host Club” by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine LaLa. Released in North America by Viz.

It’s the second to last volume of Ouran, and things really aren’t getting any funnier. Not that there isn’t humor in this, especially towards the end, but the main thrust of this volume remains the family drama surrounding Tamaki and how it gets resolved. We’re in full soap opera mode here, and the tension is so high that even Kyoya loses it and starts screaming.

I was rather surprised at how well all of this holds together considering that so much of it is a giant infodump that’s hurled at us. The huge, convoluted plan that Tamaki’s father has would seem completely ridiculous until you remember that it’s Tamaki’s father, who has proven before to be as overdramatic as his son. Of *course* he would use the convoluted, overcomplicated plan! Actually, the family dynamics here are one of the best parts of the volume. Haruhi remarks how Tamaki, his father and his grandmother all share a bullheaded stubbornness, and we certainly see that here. I was quite p;leased with the depth that the grandmother got in particular, and I hope the final volume gives us some more resolution.

We also get some more of Tamaki’s mother. Given how she’s been presented as this beautiful-yet-weak fragile woman, it makes complete sense that she seems to suffer from the Ouran version of Love Story Disease, where one grows more beautiful the sicker one gets. That said, what little we see of her shows she’s not merely a potted plant – I loved her casual beating up of Tamaki’s father over what he did – it’s meant to remind us of Haruhi, I think. I suspect that Haruhi and Tamaki’s mother will get along swimmingly after the series ends.

Haruhi mostly has it easy here, getting to see Tamaki’s serious, stubborn yet noble side. It’s the side that’s easiest to fall in love with, and she has far fewer issues with it. Of course, she’s fallen in love with *all* of Tamaki, which also means you get his goofy, over the top side as well. And she *does* love that side, and not merely tolerate it. There is a wonderful inner monologue right towards the end of the volume where Haruhi reflects on joining the Host Club. Just as Haruhi keeps Tamaki grounded and attempts to tone down the worst of his excesses, so Tamaki shows Haruhi a world that she would never have otherwise experienced. I know this is a reverse harem manga, and there are many Ouran fans who would have preferred that Haruhi end up with Hikaru or Kyoya. But I think Hatori-san did an excellent job of showing why Tamaki is the real winner here.

And at the end of the volume those feelings are finally admitted in the open. After the catharsis of seeing Tamaki and his mother reunite, even if only for three minutes, Haruhi finally takes all the emotions that she’s felt over the past 17 volumes and tells Tamaki that she loves him. We don’t hear his response, of course – there’s still one volume to go. Somehow I’m going to guess he’ll overreact. Now that almost all the drama of Ouran has been resolved, I’m expecting a return to high comedy for the final one. Sadly, it’s another six-month wait. The curse of being caught up in Japan!

Higurashi: When They Cry, Vol. 16

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Story by Ryukishi07; Art by Karin Suzuragi. Released in Japan as “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Tsumihoroboshi-hen” by Square Enix, serialized in the magazine Gangan Powered. Released in North America by Yen Press.

As the Higurashi series has gone on, the descent into murder and gore has seemingly come faster and faster, with far less build-up. This is, of course, because the audience is well aware of what’s going to happen and needs less setup. Of course, just because the first volume ended with Rena committing bloody murder doesn’t mean things get to wrap up quickly. What’s going to happen in Volume 2?

Well, another murder. Right away. The first images we see are of Rena luring Satoko’s uncle out to the trash heap and killing him brutally with an axe. Of course, this leaves her with two corpses she has to get rid of. And it doesn’t help that she killed them in the one place that everyone who knows her well would go if they wanted to find her. So it does not take long for her to be discovered. This is where much of the horror comes in this volume – Keiichi and the others are determined to cheer Rena up, and the discovery of her hacking the corpses to pieces with her billhook… it’s chilling. As is Rena’s desperate response, asking why they had to show up *now* when she was almost finished covering everything up?

And so the next half of the manga deals with Rena’s confrontation with the rest of her friends. It’s an interesting examination of guilt, with Keiichi and company all feeling the exact same way – “why didn’t we notice how badly Rena was hurting before?” This is not helped by Rena slowly sinking back into paranoia and madness, and accusing them of the same thing. Here, though, is where Keiichi really steps up. In my previous reviews, I tended to call him an idiot a lot, and indeed he was. But in this arc, where he’s not the main character, he shows amazing insight and strength – I particularly liked him noting that Rena was crying “in her heart” this whole time, which helps lead to Rena finally shedding actual tears.

There’s an examination of “inaction” as a whole here, and in fact all of the others – Keiichi, Mion, Satoko and Rika – all apologize to Rena for various things they could have noticed and taken action about, but didn’t. And then they all choose to forgive each other – including Rena, the murderer here – and help her take care of her problems. Which, yes, means helping her chop up and hide the bodies. It’s amazing how heartwarming this is given what’s actually going on. But that’s Higurashi for you.

Of course, things have only just begun. Just as Rena is getting back to her regular school life, along comes the school nurse, Miyo Takano, with her notebook filled with Hinamizawa analysis. I’m really getting to dislike her – yes, she keeps getting killed off, but she manages to be quite creepy regardless, in a skin-crawling way. What’s more, she gets Rena reading about Hinamizawa’s past, including the three families. Is everything that’s gone on before a giant conspiracy? And why is Rena being followed all the time now? She does try to confide in Keiichi, but can she even trust him?

This book starts out very gore-laden, but quickly becomes an examination of what trust is – and what people can be forgiven for. The cast are very quick to blame themselves for what Rena did, and forgive her for the murders – but was that really the right thing to do? Moreover, if everyone is involved in a townwide conspiracy, is there anyway to trust someone without overanalyzing everything until you draw the inevitable conclusions? For all that the cast descends into paranoia in this series, it’s not as if they don’t have help. And oh look, there’s Oishii as well, the police officer who means well, but tends to make everything worse. So we’re now halfway through, and not any closer to Atonement. Will this all end as badly as Shion’s arc did?