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Reviews

7SEEDS 1 (Japanese) by Yumi Tamura: B+

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Book description:
The last thing Natsu remembers is going to sleep in her own bed. She awakes on a sinking ship in the company of three strangers, each with no memory of how they got there. After managing to reach a deserted island, the four need to overcome their differences and work together to find out about the inhospitable, strange island where nature appears totally out of balance. What happened? How did they get there? And will they be able to survive?

Review:
Yumi Tamura’s Basara is one of my favorite manga series, so I was really interested in reading 7SEEDS, a series she began in 2002.

The premise is an interesting one, though comparisons with the TV show Lost are probably inevitable. This first volume mainly covers the four castaways exploring the island, discovering that most living things—animal, plant, or insect—really really want to eat them, and being suspicious of one another.

The heroine of the piece is Natsu, and she’s a little annoying so far, as she’s very timid and seemingly unable to think for herself. There’s two guys—the nice Arashi and the not-nice Semimaru—who are both really afraid of bugs. My favorite character so far is the ruthlessly practical Botan, who seems to have more of an idea of what’s going on than any of the others.

Tamura does well with dramatic moments—the frequency of thunderstorms on the island helps to furnish ominous lightning as needed—and it’s never dull, though it’s pretty much just setup so far. The art is essentially unchanged from Basara and though Arashi looks a great deal like Shuri and Natsu like Kikune, they’re still distinct enough in expression that I don’t think one would confuse them. I really like how Botan is drawn; her competence just radiates.

I’m sure Basara wasn’t a hot seller for Viz, but I hope they or some other company will license 7SEEDS for American release someday. We need more good sci-fi shoujo!

Kare Kano 5 by Masami Tsuda: B+

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From the back cover:
School’s out! But since Soichiro is going to be away competing in a kendo tournament all summer, he and Yukino are forced to spend their vacation apart. Will their romance be able to survive the separation? Yukino decides to spend her free time hanging out with her gal pals, but soon her friend Tsubasa announces she’s leaving home. Tsubasa’s upset about her father’s plans to get remarried, and freaks out even more when she meets her new brother-to-be. Yukino tries to be there for her friend while still nurturing her relationship with Soichiro from across the miles.

Review:
I liked this volume a bit more than the last one, even though Arima was hardly in it.

The first couple of chapters dealt primarily with Yukino’s new friends and really felt like an entirely different series as a result. Most aren’t completely likeable, but I suppose that makes them good matches for Yukino. Tsubasa’s story about her dad bored me at first, but I was surprised to find that I actually really liked Kazuma, her stepbrother, and enjoyed the chapter where they get to know one another a good deal.

There was also a lot of focus on Yukino’s family, which was cool. We really see her family a lot more than families are seen in the other manga I read. From learning about Tsubasa and Hideaki’s situations at home, she also began to realize that perhaps she hadn’t really understood what kind of a strain Arima’s family situation has put on him. At least the tribulations of the supporting characters actually had some kind of impact on the main couple.

Kare Kano 4 by Masami Tsuda: B+

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From the back cover:
A pretty little girl named Tsubasa, an old friend of Soichiro’s from junior high, comes back to school. When she sees her beloved Soichiro with Yukino, Tsubasa gets extremely jealous and goes on the warpath to try to get Soichiro for herself. Meanwhile Maho, another girl who’s jealous of Yukino, gets all the girls in class to gang up against Yukino and give her the silent treatment. Yukino decides she has to face these problems on her own, without relying on Soichiro…

Review:
I had mixed feelings about this volume. Tsubasa’s jealousy-inspired antics were pretty annoying, and I got rather tired of the time devoted to the anonymous female students as they worked out (through somewhat incomprehensible logic) that one girl had manipulated them into snubbing Yukino due to her own personal vendetta.

That said, there were more nice, quiet moments between the main couple and I was also happy to see Yukino straightforwardly face the consequences of her deception and also start to make some friends. Tsuda totally used Meg Cabot’s trick of giving each prospective friend some kind of hobby or interest, though. It was pretty silly when three girls in turn introduced themselves and their hobby in the same sentence.

This volume also included a short story written early in Tsuda’s career, about a planet of rabbit people and the human political prisoner who crash lands on their planet and then saves their village from a forest fire. No, really. It wasn’t awful, but neither was it particularly good.

Kare Kano 3 by Masami Tsuda: B+

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From the back cover:
Things are going well for Yukino and Soichiro. They have accepted each other for who they are, and have truly become boyfriend and girlfriend. But they’ve been concentrating more on each other than on their schoolwork, and it shows. When the two best students in school suddenly let their grades drop, it draws the attention and concern of one of the teachers. He wants Yukino and Soichiro to break up so they can concentrate on their grades again. And he even calls a dreaded parent-teacher conference to tell their parents his concerns. Will Yukino and Soichiro split up for good?

Review:
This is as far as I got through the manga my first try, but I can’t remember whether that was due to an ebb in the story’s awesomeness or if the rest of the volumes weren’t out yet and I just got so far behind I figured I’d just wait ’til the whole series had been released.

In any case, there’s a real slice-of-life vibe to this volume that is both good and bad. Yukino and Arima share some quiet moments that are quite nice and while I like that they had to face the academic repercussions of spending so much time together, three long chapters on the topic is a bit much. Yukino is also starting to feel the consequences of the other girls in her class realizing she’d been duping them with her perfection act.

Kare Kano is still a very good read, but like any relationship, it’s moving past the opening dramatics and settling into something more comfortable. I’m a little concerned because in the anime, it was soon after this point that the focus drifted from the main couple to the supporting cast (who I found far less interesting). I hope the same isn’t true of the manga.

Kare Kano 2 by Masami Tsuda: A

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From the back cover:
You know that couple who was obviously meant for each other, and everybody knew it, except them? That’s Yukino and Soichiro, the two top students in school, who are capable of anything other than a normal relationship. Still, despite all they’ve been through, it seems they could finally be getting together. But now, the school’s token pretty boy, Hideaki, is intent on wedging himself between them, for reasons they can’t begin to imagine.

Review:
One of the things I am enjoying most about Kare Kano is Tsuda’s innovative use of panels to dramatic effect. Take, for instance, the climax of chapter four. In what I would call one of the classic moments of shoujo manga, Yukino (after several failed attempts) finally reveals her feelings to Arima by silently taking his hand in the middle of a student council meeting. No words are spoken, and what follows are two pages of their facial reactions and then one final page, showing the both of them from behind. I can’t really explain why I love the perspective shift at the end so much, but I really do.

Another thing I like is that if a character is alone somewhere, like in a classroom or waiting outside a movie theatre, there will be a large panel of their environment and superimposed upon it will be tiny panels showing what’s going on in the immediate vicinity—some students laughing down the hall, a quiet patio, a couple meeting up for a date. There’s a lot of sky and clouds in her imagery, too, and though I won’t try to decipher its metaphorical meaning, it makes me realize the opening sequence of the anime was very appropriate. I must also mention the fabulous panel of Yukino’s silhouette against a darkening sky as she pined for Arima.

And, of course, I also like the story. I think I didn’t like the character of Hideaki much when I read this the first time, and now I wonder why that was. My second favorite chapter, after chapter 4, is chapter 7, where we see both Arima and Yukino’s differing perceptions of the same or similar events. Yukino worries she’s not good enough for Arima, and Arima worries he’s too boring in comparison with her, but by the end, they’ve each leant the other some optimism, so they end up reacting identically in a separate conversations with Hideaki. It’s neat.

Kare Kano 1 by Masami Tsuda: A+

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From the back cover:
Yukino Miyazawa has it all—perfect grades, looks, the admiration of her peers. She’s the #1 student at her school… at least she was until he showed up. The new boy, Souchirou Arima, one-ups her in every department. And the worst thing about it is that he’s sincere! With her ego in jeopardy, Yukino will do whatever it takes to regain the spotlight, but falling in love was never part of the plan.

Review:
What with watching the first disc of the anime twice, reading this volume way back in 2003, and rereading it now, I have consumed this portion of the Kare Kano storyline four times. I’ve read many other things in the interim, and I have to say this is still one of the best first volumes I’ve ever come across.

It’s so good it could function as a stand-alone. I didn’t like the anime much by its conclusion, though, and I’ve heard some unflattering comments about the manga, too, so I’m interested to see how I’ll like the bits I’ve not yet read. At the very least, I’ll always have volume one!

There are only three chapters collected in this volume, followed by an unrelated (but cute) short story. My favorite was the second. Arima, who had previously confessed romantic feelings to the “perfect” Yukino but who has since discovered that Yukino is a fraud, uses this knowledge to seemingly blackmail her into completing his student council work for him, which keeps her at school until late every evening.

When she finally tires of it and tells him he can go ahead and tell everyone her secret, a fabulous chase scene through the darkened halls and grounds of the school ensues until Arima finally prevails and reveals that he actually just did it to have an excuse to hang around her. Yukino finds that she’s relieved to learn that he actually does still care about her, and her gradual recognition of her feelings for Arima is very well done.

The other two chapters provide additional background on each of the main leads, though Arima is still kind of hard to figure out at this point. That’s probably because Yukino’s goal is shallow and simple—she wants to feel worshipped—while Arima is actually dealing with some darker family issues.

I really hope I don’t end up as displeased with this series as it seems others have done. For now, it’s hard to imagine that being the case.

Ouran High School Host Club 10 by Bisco Hatori: B+

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From the back cover:
Ever since the day he helped her up from a nasty tumble, Black Magic Club member Reiko Kanazuki has been obsessed with Hunny. She is devoting all her knowledge of the dark arts to curse him and steal his soul. Will the sweetest member of the Host Club fall victim to her spells?

Review:
This series is starting to remind me of Hana-Kimi, which isn’t a compliment. While I enjoy some recurring characters, especially Kasanoda, I don’t particularly like it when long-forgotten characters reemerge out of the woodwork, like a coworker of Haruhi’s dad and a fruit-obsessed rival of Kyoya’s did in this volume.

A new character is also introduced. Mei is the rebellious daughter of the aforementioned coworker, and she’s not very interesting in and of herself. She does work well as a catalyst, however. When she decides to romantically pursue Tamaki, it prompts a tiny bit of progress from Tamaki and Haruhi regarding their feelings, which she picks up on. When she relates this to Kaoru, it coaxes out a bit more development. So, I suppose she’s useful in that respect.

One thing I wish is that the entire Host Club didn’t always have to show up to everything. It turns out that Tamaki was trying to help Mei and her father reconcile, and Haruhi decided to help him. It could’ve been so great if these two had just been doing it on their own. But no, the whole gang has to turn up and tip the scales in favor of hilarity.

There’s one completely random thing I do like, though. Towards the end of the volume, Mori is seen a few times with a baby chick in tow. Puzzled, I had to flip through the previous chapter until I finally spotted the panel where, quite unobtrusively in the background, Mori is seen patronizing a baby chick stall at a summer festival the gang attends. I like silly little things like that.

Ouran High School Host Club 9 by Bisco Hatori: B

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From the back cover:
In middle school, Tamaki Suoh must entice the coldhearted twins, Hikaru and Kaoru Hitachiin, to join his newly created Host Club. But in order to get them to accept his proposal, he must first best them at their own game.

Review:
I didn’t find much to get excited about in this volume. Tamaki’s cuteness was its saving grace, enlivening an otherwise ho-hum chapter about the twins’ induction into the host club and making tolerable a story about an insufferable princess who visited the school and issued many orders. In the course of this latter story, at least, Tamaki finally caught a glimmer of his feelings for Haruhi, and they shared a sweet moment together.

I probably liked the last Host Club chapter in the volume the best simply for its final few pages. They were incredibly adorable, and it’s for moments like this that I read the series. I just wish there were more of them.

Another of the “Love Egoist” short stories was also included, about a boy with a sunny disposition in love with a subdued girl, and I was enjoying it pretty well while I was expecting a bittersweet ending, but the actual resolution was kind of disappointing.

This series definitely has patchy success in terms of keeping the right balance between episodic stories and character development; it didn’t manage too well this time.

Sand Chronicles 1 by Hinako Ashihara: A-

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From the back cover:
After her parents get divorced, Ann Uekusa and her mother move from Tokyo to rural Shimane. Accustomed to the anonymity of city living, Ann can’t get used to the almost overbearing kindness of the people in her mother’s hometown. But when personal tragedy strikes, Ann discovers how much she needs that kindness.

Review:
This was really good, with an original structure that made the story feel special. It started with Ann around age 26, packing and getting ready to get married and move overseas. A memento from her past triggered some memories, and the rest of the volume featured Ann at age 12, then at 14. The setting was also original, taking place in rural and snowy Shimane rather than an urban environment. The essence of a small town was captured nicely, and I swear the snowy scenes really looked cold.

The first story dealt with Ann and her mother in their new surroundings, with Ann meeting some kids her age as well as an old friend of her mother’s, who provided some background information. In the second, she and her friends went on a camping trip, which might sound like a set-up for lame filler, but which actually provided many good character moments. There were some things about the stories I didn’t like, like the predictable outcome of the situation with Ann’s mom in the first story or her obnoxious romantic rival in the second, but they were greatly outnumbered by the things I did like.

I thought it was interesting that the second chapter dealt in part with Ann’s menstrual cycle. That’s a topic I’d never seen in manga before, so it was pretty cool to see a character discussing it with her good friend and just boosted the realism of the series even further. There weren’t any wacky hijinks here, just an “honest girl with a strong will” making her way through some painful times while attempting to cherish each moment of life. I’m looking forward to the next volume.

Total immersion

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As you may have noticed, when it comes to fiction, I most often opt for total immersion. There’s really nothing I love more than completely losing myself in a fictional world (mine or otherwise). And, actually, I think “losing myself” is the wrong term to use, because this process is *such* a personal, intimate experience for me, and when I am immersed in a world this way, I feel entirely *present* in a way I often do not feel in “real life.” I think I am, in many ways, more myself in these moments, when I am able to interact with someone else’s inner life through my own.

All that is really just a complicated lead-up to the fact that I have spent the last few days pretty much immersed in the Black Cat universe, and what will probably turn out to be a long-winded description of just how much I enjoyed that. The weekend was spent with the Black Cat anime, followed by a day or two of rapturous flailing, followed by rapid consumption of the manga, which took another two days, and which pretty much blew my obsession with the anime right out of the water. Not all of it is blown, mind you. I’m still haunted by the music and glorious imagery of the anime, especially in the first six or seven episodes, and there are elements of the anime that I probably love more than the manga, though I love the manga much more overall.

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Ichigo’s MJ’s Resolve

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Wow, it’s been a while, I realize. The holidays took over my life for a bit, but now I’m back into the daily grind. I worked a lot on the graphic novel over the past week, and things are really starting to take shape. I won’t have as much time, now that I’m back to work, but I’m trying to set some realistic goals over the next few months to keep myself motivated. I truly have never had an original project of my own that excited me as much as this one does, which helps too. I’m hoping to have a final script for the entire series completed by the end of the year, and possibly even well before then, depending on how demanding the rest of my life is. I’ve never been big on New Year’s resolutions, because I think they tend to set a person up to fail, so I’m not going to make one. But my desire to complete this project is strong, as is my resolve to do so.

I also did some reading over the holidays! …

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Hikaru no Go 11 by Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata: A

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From the back cover:
Hikaru’s classmate Ochi has won enough games to guarantee his place among the top three players who will pass the pro test. Hikaru, on the other hand, still needs to win more games, and he’ll soon face his friend Waya and Ochi himself, who has been preparing for their match with Akira’s help! When the dust clears, who will be left standing?

Review:
The pro test concluded with this volume. I really enjoyed the match between Hikaru and Waya, and how when Hikaru got stuck, he asked himself what Sai would do in a given situation. There was more focus on Sai this volume than there has been of late, as he began to realize how much Hikaru has improved and how he is becoming a capable stand-in for Sai himself.

I would’ve liked to have seen more of the match between Hikaru and Ochi, after all the set-up it received, culminating in a confrontation wherein Hikaru learned that Akira had been training Ochi nightly and deduced that it was all Akira’s attempt to gauge Hikaru’s strength through Ochi. There was a really cool panel where Ochi and Hikaru were sitting at the board with Akira and Sai behind them, respectively. But alas, much of their match happened off-camera. That said, I really liked that it was from Isumi’s perspective that we learned the result, since it meant the end of his chances of passing this time around.

The volume finished off with Hikaru doing some nostalgic eavesdropping on the middle school Go club to which he used to belong and with his mom wondering whether she ought to fret about his unusual profession. Little touches like these are what make this series truly excellent. I’m sad that I now have to wait until May for the next installment.

Hikaru no Go 10 by Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata: A-

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From the back cover:
The main round of the pro test has begun. Everyone’s feeling the pressure—no one more so than Hikaru’s friend Isumi, who has failed the test twice before. Fighting off his feelings of self-doubt, Isumi faces his next opponent, who turns out to be Hikaru. But a careless mistake lands the pair in an awkward position!

Review:
This entire volume was full of pro test goodness. Placements shifted a bit throughout these chapters, but it was always clear who was ahead and who’d fallen behind. The complete chart of each player’s wins and losses was also included at one point, which was neat to see. I liked that the focus wasn’t solely on Hikaru.

Once again, though all of the pro test stuff was great, my favorite chapters were those where Akira is dealing with his “fixation” on Shindo, as Ochi (who received a couple lessons from Akira) put it. I particularly liked the last chapter, where Akira recreated his first game against Sai for Ochi to explain his obsession. Ochi was appropriately astonished.

The art was really great, too, though that’s not unusual. I was struck again, though, by the variety among the character designs. No one looked the same, but Obata didn’t need to resort to unrealistic gimmicks to distinguish between characters. This series also has a lot of just average-looking people in it, which is something I appreciate.

The Moonlight That Surrounds Me 1 (Japanese) by Saki Hiwatari: C

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From the back cover:
Rin and Alice have brought closure to their past lives and are living happily. Their son, Ren, is a completely normal boy. One day, his guardian angels appear to him. But what is their true form!? And what is the power closed inside Ren!? Inherited thoughts and abilities… The first volume of the long-awaited Please Save My Earth second-generation series has arrived!

Review:
Alas, this is not very good. I didn’t expect much, but reckoned for something better than this.

Ren is likeable (and kind of goofy), but because he couldn’t resist bragging about his parents’ powers at school, everyone there thinks he’s a liar. His only friend is Kachiko, daughter of ESPer Mikuro. In the first of three stories, the spirits of Shion and Mokuren protect him from a villain practically straight out of Sailor Moon.

In the second story, Kachiko and her tiresome angst about her father spending time at his ESP research job in America take center stage. It grows worse when Shion gets involved and imbues Ren with powers so he can go harrass Mikuro for making Kachiko sad. I feel like Shion’s dignity has been sullied.

In the last story, Rin has no memory of promising his son to tell him about Shion and Mokuren, so everyone worries about him acting strangely. Turns out, Shion has been “hijacking his consciousness” because he wanted to interact with Ren.

Also, Shion and Mokuren can now apparently appear in the physical realm to those with ESP ability. The only scrap of explanation given for why they never did this in the first series (that I recall, at any rate) is a lack of motivation. Uh-huh. Shion was pretty motivated to get those passwords.

Lastly, Hiwatari’s artistic style has changed a great deal and I don’t like it as well. Jinpachi looks absolutely nothing like the character did in the original. I realize they’ve grown up, but the rest are still recognizable, even if it did take me a couple of seconds to realize who Shion was upon his first appearance.

I doubt I’ll be continuing with this series. Hiwatari herself admitted she doesn’t know where things are headed. The only truly interesting parts to me were the moments where Alice and Rin were alone together, or when it became clear that Haruhiko still has feelings for Alice, and even those weren’t enough to quell the notion that maybe I should’ve just let the original stand on its own.

Holiday ramble

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Happy holidays! I hope you’re all enjoying yours, however you choose to spend them. It’s been a bit of a strange holiday season for me, I admit. This is usually my favorite time of year, but everything has had a bit of a damper on it this time around. This year has been like that overall, I suppose, but I’m still surprised to find myself with anything even approaching the holiday blues. It is very unlike me. I hope this year remains an anomaly, as I don’t especially wish to repeat it. I did enjoy time with family, which was a true pleasure.

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