Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Reviews

GTO: The Early Years, Vol. 11

by

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

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Tokyopop released the first 10 volumes of the SJG omnibuses, but then stopped 3 years ago (they seem to have stopped before they folded, in fact, so we can ascribe it to mediocre sales more than anything else, I expect). Luckily, Vertical has picked up where they left off, and say that if sales are good they may go back and re-release the first 10. That said, this is not GTO: 14 Days in Shonan, where you can simply hop right into the story with minimal info. The series was up to Vol. 21 and 22 in Japan (the volumes collected here), and it shows. New readers are advised to go here to catch up on the characters so as not to be confused.

That said, it’a not impossible to read this without huge knowledge of what has gone before. I had fallen way behind in my SJG reading, but was able to pick up where I left off with minimal confusion, mostly as this is a delinquent manga, and so just expect lots of people hitting other people. When Onizuka was in GTO, and even 14 Days, he still gets into tons of fights, but at least there he’s slightly more successful at not wanting to get involved in them. Here, in high school, there’s simply not enough impetus (beyond “getting laid”, still his primary motivation) to not be the leader of a gang. Mostly as Onizuka and his best friend Ryuji are *really good* at being gang leaders. They don’t do evil stuff, they inspire loyalty, and they protect the weak. They’re the gang you only see in Japanese manga like this.

Of course, Onizuka is still recognizable even if he’s younger (though, being that it’s school, be prepared for everyone to say Eikichi more than Onizuka – it is his first name, after all). Mostly in his complete inability to score with the opposite sex. By now we’re far along enough in the series that his friend Ryuji is living with his girlfriend, the sweet (at least sweet NOW) girl Nagisa, but Onizuka still strikes out, for the exact same reasons as in GTO: he’s an absolute idiot about it. And just like in GTO, there are girls who are clearly in love with him and would be happy to be with him if he’d only get a clue. Chief among these being Shinomi Fujisaki, who clearly likes him but is also far too similar to him for things to work out. (It doesn’t help that he sees her as a little sister.) I like the girls in GTO, who come in many different types and varieties, and the gang aspect of the plot means we get a lot who can kick any guy’s ass. Shinomi is, along with Azusa and Urumi from GTO, one of the most important women in Onizuka’s life. Expect to see more of her.

There’s also some terrific comedy here – the author likes to break up all the gang fights with one-shot chapters that are hilariously silly. Here we have two opposing tough guys trying to outbluff each other, only to have everything completely ruined by the escalating war between their respective girlfriends. Possibly the funniest chapter, though, was seeing Golgo 13-esque huge guy Usagi and his family, who are all named after Sailor Moon characters – and all look like they stepped out of Fist of the North Star. Despite having a punchline that you can see from space, it still works beautifully.

Be warned – with GTO and 14 Days in Shonan, you can sit through the manga without necessarily being a fan of big, epic fights. (well, just about.) That’s not something you can do here. GTO The Early Years shows us how Onizuka came to be the guy we know, and that means a lot of gang wars, fights, and blood. No one is killed – this still runs in Shonen Magazine, after all – but it’s a manga about young kids who get into a lot of fights. If you can respect that, there’s a lot to love here. Well, except maybe Onizuka’s hair. He did himself a big favor when he lost the perm.

Higurashi: When They Cry, Vol. 17

by

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.

I will admit, very little happens in this volume of Higurashi, at least in terms of actual events. Rena’s paranoia grows, the others realize just how far she’s gone, and they resolve to save her. That’s about it, along with one other revelation. But that said, this was a fantastic volume of Higurashi, mostly as it rewards the readers who have been following along with the first volume.

We haven’t quite seen Higurashi get as ‘conspiracy happy’ as it does here, and that’s mostly due to the choice of protagonists. Keiichi was the newcomer, so his paranoia was stemming from not knowing his new friends well enough. As for Shion, everything about her revolved around Satoshi, making her manipulable in that sense. Rena, though, has already killed and is well on her way to the madness we’ve seen before. So it’s time to break out the silly guns. Yes, we get ‘aliens are causing it all’, along with ‘it’s a parasite burrowing into people’ and ‘my dead friends have been replaced with exact duplicates’ as well. Sadly, not only are many of those actual common diagnoses with folks who have paranoia, but several of them might be true. We’re still not sure what’s actually causing everything. And now we find that one of the series’ perennial corpses – Takano Miyo, the sleepy-eyed nurse – may have been dead 24 hours before she was supposed to have died.

So Rena’s not doing very well, and Keiichi, the one person she can trust, immediately goes and tells Moin about this. From Rena’s perspective, it’s the worst kind of betrayal. From *our* perspective, we’re cheering. At last, we’ve stopped distrusting our best friends! And true to form, Mion is able to put his mind at ease and also help start a search for Rena, who’s gone missing. Rena is, of course, hiding from everyone who is plotting to kill her – i.e. everyone. And unfortunately, the one to run into her first is Rika. We’ve gradually become aware that Rika can remember the previous iterations of this manga, and would appear to be very different from the small child she appears to be. She’s never been quite so bleak and uncaring as she is here, though. Some of what we see is clearly Rena’s ‘paranoia-vision’, but some of it is clearly a person who is exhausted and has just given up – and who has seen a bit too much of the nasty side of humanity. Rika’s cynicism here is the opposite of what we want to see in Higurashi, which makes it heartbreaking.

(She’s also drinking wine as well, which can’t be good for her. And talking to an offscreen voice we can’t see.)

After this, Keiichi tracks down Rena, but she’s prepared for him. She reveals Keiichi’s past to us. Given that everyone else in the manga has a tortured, tragic past, it makes sense that Keiichi would have one as well – it’s not as bad as the others, but it definitely shows us why he might be the way he is, and why he’s so tolerable of the girl’s goofy antics at his expense. And given that, like Keiichi, Rena has also shown signs of being very intelligent but hiding it under a mask of goofy, it helps to connect them even closer. If Rena wasn’t driving him away, that is.

So a guilt-ridden Keiichi confesses what he did before he moved to Hinamizawa to his other friends. And they’re OK with it, forgiving him, noting they were all little brats as well, and pointing out that being friends doesn’t mean telling everyone every aspect of your lives. It was good to hear that, especially from a comedy-horror manga. Then, just as Keiichi is coming to accept their forgiveness… he remembers the events of Book 2. Remember Book 2? The first arc? Seeing a shot of Mion’s head getting beaten in with a bat, especially as we weren’t expecting the flashback, is very startling. and now Keiichi’s in even worse shape. He thought he just had to be forgiven for his own past – now he has to atone for the other Keiichis as well!

Rika’s the one to notice the big thing, though – Keiichi REMEMBERS ANOTHER ARC! She even calls this an impossible miracle, noting that she’s the only one who remembers them. That said, it’s to Keiichi’s credit that this doesn’t turn him into a gibbering heap – remembering Rena desperately trying to save him (and it was terrific, if horrifying, seeing the events of the first arc as they actually happened – with Keiichi’s paranoia fueling his murders) makes him even more determined to avoid her going through the same thing. Even better, this actually galvanizes Rika. She notes that this world is beyond saving – this isn’t the last arc – but decides to help Keiichi anyway, as Rena is her friend and it’s the right thing to do.

So everyone’s forgiven everyone – except for Rena, who’s scratching at her bloody throat and getting out her billhook to prepare to kill everyone in the village in order to save them. (Something, notably, she and Keiichi had regarded as ridiculously stupid at the very start of this volume.) Will Keiichi be able to stop her madness? The previous evidence suggests the answer is no, but who knows? One more volume to go to find out.

Manga Artifacts: Osamu Tezuka’s Lost World

by

Reading Osamu Tezuka’s Lost World (1948) reminded me a formative graduate school experience. I was researching George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (1935), when I stumbled across a blistering review of a composition I’d never heard: Blue Monday (1922), a one-act “jazz opera” that Gershwin composed for Paul Whiteman’s Scandals of 1922. After attending its premiere, Charles Darnton, critic for the New York Tribune, pronounced the project a disaster, an ill-advised attempt to transplant the conventions of verismo opera to a Harlem setting. Blue Monday, he opined, was “the most dismal, stupid, and incredible blackface sketch that has probably ever been perpetrated. In it a dusky soprano finally killed her gambling man. She should have shot all her associates the moment they appeared and then turned the pistol on herself.” (Darnton, 11)

Ouch.

The review piqued my interest, however, prompting me to track down a recording of Blue Monday. Judged against Porgy and Bess, it was an inferior work; as Gershwin biographer Charles Schwartz observed, the music was several degrees removed from jazz and ragtime, drawing its cues from Alexander’s Ragtime Band and not The Maple Leaf Rag. (Schwartz, 61) The dramaturgy, too, was weak, conveying little of the Harlem setting. Yet in this early experiment, I could hear glimmerings of Gershwin’s mature style, a conscious effort to bring African-American music to the opera stage. And that excited me.

I had a similar reaction to Lost World, an early, problematic work in the Tezuka canon. First published in 1948, Lost World focuses on a scientific expedition to the fictional planet Mamango, a large, egg-shaped rock that, five million years earlier, had been a part of the Earth. When the scientists arrive on Mamango, they discover a Jurassic landscape carpeted in monstrous ferns, populated by hungry dinosaurs, and littered with powerful “energy stones.” The financial and scientific value of their discoveries, however, soon cause a deadly rift within the expedition party.

The execution of Lost World will come as a shock to readers familiar with Tezuka’s mature style. The profusion of subplots, minor characters, and doppelgangers makes the story hard to follow on a moment-to-moment basis; without frequent narrative interventions from the characters, large stretches of Lost World would be incomprehensible. More frustrating still is Tezuka’s over-reliance on dialogue to resolve plot points and reveal motive, even when that information is readily conveyed by the pictures. (“This is payback for you throwing me into the gorge! You get me?!” one character yells as he pummels the person who pushed him off a cliff in the previous scene.) The biggest disappointment, however, is the artwork; most of the panels consist of talking heads, with a handful of dramatic, but disjointed, action scenes interrupting the steady stream of chatter.

Writing about Lost World in the 1980s, Tezuka conceded Lost World‘s shortcomings, attributing them to his age (he was 20) and the circumstances of its publication. As he explained, the work originally ran in an Osaka newspaper, Kansai Yoron, where the target audience was young adults. The two-volume version published by Fuji Shobo, however, was aimed at the children’s market, necessitating substantial changes to the the script. What had been a romance in the original version, for example, was recast as a brother-sister relationship in the Fuji Shobo edition; anything more explicit would have been “absolutely taboo in children’s comics” of the period. (Tezuka, 248)

At the same time, Tezuka touted Lost World as an important milestone in his artistic development. “I thought that at the very least, there was no other comic book like mine, which was like a novel (albeit a very crude one), and had an unhappy ending,” Tezuka explained. (Tezuka 247) A careful inspection of Lost World supports Tezuka’s claim for its significance; whatever its shortcomings, many of the characters and themes of his mature works appear in embryonic form in Lost World.

On the most basic level, Tezuka employs several of his best-known “stars” in Lost World, arranging them in contrasting pairs. Acetylene Lamp, for example, plays an unscrupulous journalist who stows away aboard the expedition’s spaceship so that he can get an exclusive scoop on Mamango — and profit from the mysterious “energy stones” scattered across its surface. Another Tezuka favorite, Shunsaku Ban (a.k.a. Higeoyaji), plays yang to Lamp’s yin; as in many of his other incarnations, Ban is a middle-aged detective whose blustery demeanor camouflages his basic decency. Both characters are motivated by curiosity, but their curiosity compels them in opposite directions: Lamp towards profit, Ban towards truth.

From left to right: Acetylene Lamp, Shunsaku Ban/Hygeoyaji, Kenichi Shikishima

The story’s two scientists are likewise played by major “stars” from the Tezuka troupe. Kenichi Shikishima, hero of New Treasure Island, leads the Mamango expedition. Dr. Shikishima’s youthful spirit, resolve, and courage are contrasted with that of Dr. Butaru Makeru, a mustachioed villain whose cowardice and opportunism precipitate the disaster on Mamango. While Shikishima resolves to visit Mamango “for the sake of world science,” Makeru hints at his selfish motives for participating in the expedition: “If by some chance we meet with something unexpected on that planet, don’t blame me. Heh, heh, heh!” That contrast is also underscored by their terrestrial research as well: while Shikishima’s experiments are intended to help animals achieve human consciousness, Makeru’s experiments are designed for his own personal benefit, with little regard for their greater social or scientific good.

In later works, Tezuka was less schematic in his representations of good and evil, allowing characters to simultaneously embody both. Father Garai, anti-hero of MW, is a good example of this later tendency: Garai is a good man tormented by dark sexual desires, seeking grace even as he sins repeatedly. Black Jack is another, a character whose misanthropy and greed are counterbalanced by a strong reverence for life. As Helen McCarthy observes in The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga, Black Jack is “sometimes a gentle and compassionate savior, sometimes a cold and unforgiving avenger,” two opposite yet equally human responses to “the inevitability of death.” (McCarthy, 199)

Ayame

Mimio

Lost World also introduces a recurring character type found throughout Tezuka’s work: the artificial life-form. Early in the story, Tezuka introduces us to Mimio, a talking rabbit, and Ayame, a “veggie girl.” Both are the result of scientific experiments: Dr. Shikishima surgically enhanced Mimio’s brain to grant him human intelligence, while Dr. Butamo cultivated Ayame in a laboratory. (Note that Shikishima’s motives seem benevolent; he wants to help animals achieve equal status with humans, whereas Butamo is more interested in making a wife for himself.)

Mimio and Ayame’s quest for humanity is rather baldly presented. In an early chapter, for example, Mimio visits Shikishima’s lab, where a new group of surgically enhanced animals are learning how to think and act like humans. Though the animals’ struggles with language and manners are played for laughs — “Boy, all humans sure do look alike!” exclaims a dog — there’s a definite sense that these creatures’ own desires are being subordinated to Shikishima’s grander mission of animal-human detente. “You’re very being is unique,” one of Shikishima’s colleagues tells his subjects. “Therefore, you should help humans and be a guide to other animals in perpetuum.”

Unlike Mimio, Ayame looks human, even though she is composed entirely of plant material — and that makes her situation more precarious than the rabbit’s. On the one hand, Dr. Butamo wants her to become his wife, threatening to kill her if she refuses to honor his marriage proposal. On the other, some of the characters view Ayame as nothing more than a walking, talking cabbage — and thus a potential food source when the crew’s rations run out. Ayame remains committed to exploring her humanity nonetheless; late in the manga, she and Shikishima have this pointed exchange:

Shikishima: Miss Ayame, surely, you must be surprised to be having so many adventures.You see? The world of humans is full of adventure and wonder!

Ayame: I feel as if I finally understand what things bring the most pleasure and happiness to the hearts of humans!

Shikishima: Well, then, when you return to the laboratory, you should have Mr. Butamo teach you even more, shouldn’t you?

In Mimio and Ayame, it’s not hard to see the inspiration for later characters such as Dororo‘s Hyakkimaru and Black Jack‘s Pinoko, both of whom struggle to reconcile the circumstances of their “birth” with their desire to be fully human.

Perhaps the most striking thing about Lost World is the final act, in which an accident permanently strands Ayame and Shikishima on Mamango. In Tezuka’s original version, Ayame and Shikishima embrace their fate as lovers, but in the Fuji Shobo edition, Tezuka portrayed them as brother and sister. Nonetheless, Tezuka left the final words of the original intact, speculating that in five million years, “when Mamango once again approaches the Earth,” mankind might find a new race of “plant animal people” descended from Ayame and Shikishima.

Similar Adam-and-Eve motifs recur throughout Tezuka’s oeuvre, finding a more sexual and spiritual expression in such mature works as Apollo’s Song and Phoenix: Nostalgia. Nostalgia is a particularly odd and fascinating variation on the theme, as the Adam figure dies early in the story, leaving his pregnant wife alone on a remote space colony. His wife then mates with her own offspring who, in turn, mate with an extraterrestrial life form whose DNA proves essential to rescuing humanity from the brink of extinction. In short, Nostalgia — like Lost World — dares to a imagine a new future for mankind in which other forms of life — terrestrial and extraterrestrial — play an important role in our evolution.

Whether these observations will make Lost World more palatable to a casual reader is debatable; I fully admit that I struggled through its 246 pages, backtracking frequently in a futile effort to understand what was happening. But if you approach Lost World in the same spirit I approached Gershwin’s Blue Monday — as a window into a major artist’s early development — you may find, as I did, a work of astonishing vibrancy, contradiction, and interest.

Works Cited
“Bet Lost on First Opera.” New York Times. 21 July 1935: II1. Print.
Darnton, Charles. “George White’s Scandals’ Lively and Gorgeous.” New York World 29 Aug. 1922: 11. Print.
McCarthy, Helen, and Osamu Tezuka. The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga. New York: Abrams ComicArts, 2009. Print.
Schwartz, Charles. Gershwin: His Life and Music. New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1973. Print.
Tezuka, Osamu, and Kumar Sivasubramanian. Lost World. Milwaukee, OR: Dark Horse, 2003. Print.

Toriko, Vol. 8

by

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

It’s been a while since I did a full review of Toriko, but this is a good volume to talk about, as it’s less fight and more food oriented. After finishing off the cliffhanger from last volume (and getting to meet several of the side-villains face to face), Toriko reunites with Komatsu and goes to Gourmet Town, the #1 town to get fantastic food. While there they meet up with a legendary chef, the elderly but insanely strong and intelligent (as with most elderly manga women) Setsuno, who gives the two of them a taste of a legendary soup. A soup that is still incomplete, and needs one more ingredient. This leads to the cliffhanger of this volume, as both Toriko and Komatsu must journey to “Ice Hell” to find said ingredient…

In general, successful Jump series seem to fall into a pattern of “fighting + friendship + X”, where X is a variable. Plus ninjas, plus pirates, plus mangaka, plus Nisioisin… that type of thing. Here it’s food, and while much of Toriko is sitting back and watching insanely strong men battle each other, the food is not just an added extra to make the story palatable. First of all, even with the occasional ‘reader suggestion’ thrown in, the different types and varieties of food show off the author’s prodigious imagination. But food also controls the plot and the main characters. They live for it. A lot of the scenes in this volume will be familiar to fans of Oishinbo or similar titles – the initial reaction of happiness, followed by a description of what they just ate, possibly delineating the ingredients used. This is Jump foodie manga.

This volume also has several strong scenes between Toriko and Komatsu, including Setsuna, reminiscing on her own partnership with Jiro (who she was also romantically involved with), noting what good partners Toriko and Komatsu make. Now, I don’t think that any Jump title currently running is written primarily for the magazine’s growing BL audience. No, not even Reborn. But certainly a lot of what attracted the BL fandom in the first place is here – men in close friendships, with lots of bonding and fights and befriending former enemies. Komatsu is in many ways the perfect uke, and he’s surrounded by strong partners – not just Toriko, but also Coco and Sunny from previous volumes – all of whom initially see him as rather pathetic but then grow to treasure him as Komatsu’s true talents in food preparation are revealed. There’s also a dearth of women in this story – Rin has been around, and she has a crush on Toriko, but he completely ignores it. So while this isn’t a BL story, it does have everything that drew BL fans to Jump in the first place, and does not go out of its way to disappoint them.

I’m impressed by the world building going on here. A lot of titles like this give off a feeling that the author is making stuff up from week to week, but several of the plot points here seem to be well planned. Komatsu’s naivete is useful in this regard, as Toriko can explain various things to him, but there’s a casualness to it that doesn’t make it seem like exposition. I particularly liked the references to the Colonel sending a duplicate to Ice Hell rather than himself – it’s made mysterious while also being obvious for the reader.

Toriko is great fun, and looks to be starting another big arc. Hopefully it will continue to balance its big fights and male bonding with more delicious food. Recommended for Jump fans.

Soulless: The Manga, Vol. 1

by

Soulless is saucy in the best possible sense of the word: it’s bold and smart, with a heroine so irrepressible you can see why author Gail Carriger couldn’t tell Alexia Tarabotti’s story in just one book.

As fans of Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate novels know, Alexia is a sharp-tongued woman living in Victorian London — or rather, a steampunk version of Victorian London in which vampires and werewolves co-exist with the “daylight” (read: “human”) world. As she would in the real nineteenth-century England, Alexia faces pressure to marry, a prospect complicated by her age — she’s twenty-six — her ethnicity — her father was Italian — and her prodigious intellect. Alexia has one additional strike against her, albeit one that doesn’t affect her marriageability: she’s soulless, a “preternatural” being who can neutralize the vampires and werewolves’ power, temporarily reducing them to mortal form.

Plot-wise, Soulless is an agreeable mishmash of Young Sherlock Holmes, Underworld, and Mansfield Park, with a dash of Jules Verne for good measure. The basic storyline is a whodunnit: Alexia becomes the prime suspect in a string of supernatural disappearances around London, and must collaborate with Lord Collan Maccon, a belligerent werewolf detective, to clear her name. What they discover in the course of their investigation is a grand conspiracy worthy of an Indiana Jones movie, complete with evil scientists, vampire “hives,” sinister-looking laboratories, and a golem; all that’s missing is the Ark of the Covenant and a few Nazi generals.

At the same time, Soulless is a romance. Alexia would make a swell Austen heroine, as she faces the kind of obstacles to marriage that would elicit sympathy from the Dashwood girls and Fanny Price. The greatest of these hurdles isn’t her name or her age, however; it’s Alexia’s firm conviction that marriage should not be a socially or financially expedient union, but a true partnership. Paging Elizabeth Bennett!

Given how many genres are present in the text — it’s a crime procedural, a thriller, an urban fantasy, a comedy of manners, and a bodice ripper — it’s astonishing how well all the tropes mesh. Some of that success can be attributed to the dialogue. The characters’ peppery exchanges are an affectionate parody of British costume dramas; substitute “soulless” for “penniless,” and Alexia could easily be a character in Sense and Sensibility. A few passages strain too hard for effect — would anyone have really chosen “comestibles” over “food” when complaining about a party? — but for the most part, Carriger finds a convincing tone that’s neither faux-archaic nor casually contemporary.

Soulless’ other great strength is its appealing cast of characters. Alexia and Maccon are clearly the stars of this imaginary universe; anyone who’s read Middlemarch or Emma will immediately recognize that Alexia and Maccon are The Main Couple, as they spend most of volume one denying their mutual attraction and trading zingers. (“I may be a werewolf and Scottish, but despite what you may have read about both, we are not cads!” Maccon declares in a fit of Darcy-esque pique.) In the spirit of the best nineteenth-century novels, however, Carriger situates her lovebirds inside a vibrant community, albeit one inhabited by grumpy werewolves and flamboyant vampires in lieu of parsons, baronets, and virtuous maidens. Though these supporting characters don’t always get the screen time they deserve, Lord Akeldama, Professor Lyall, and Ivy Hisselpenny enliven the narrative with sharp observations and sound advice for Alexia and Maccon.

Manga artist Rem, best-known for her work on Vampire Kisses, does a fine job of translating Carriger’s prose into pictures. Though Rem’s attention to period detail is evident in the characters’ sumptuous costumes and lavishly furnished parlors, her meticulousness extends to the action sequences as well. An early fight between Alexia and a vampire is expertly staged, making effective use of dramatic camera angles and overturned furniture to capture the intensity of their struggle. Rem also manages to fold many of Carriger’s steampunk flourishes — zeppelins, steam-powered carriages, “glassicals” — into the story without overwhelming the eye; if anything, I found the subtlety of the steampunk elements an improvement on the novel, where the object descriptions sometimes felt like tangents.

The only drawback to the artwork is Alexia herself. In the novels, Carriger describes her as plain and full-figured; in the manga, however, Rem depicts Alexia as a buxom, wasp-waisted babe with a pouty mouth and a pretty face. That transformation is certainly in keeping with manga aesthetics — even the plainest young characters are usually pleasing to the eye — but not with the source material; as a reader, one of the real pleasures of Soulless is watching the heroine triumph on the strength of her character and brains, not the size of her bust.

On the whole, however, Rem has succeeded in taking a justifiably popular novel and making it work in a different medium on its own terms; readers new to Carriger’s work will be as enchanted with this cheeky, fun adaptation as her hardcore fans. Recommended.

Review copy provided by Yen Press. Volume one of Soulless: The Manga will be released in March 2012.

SOULLESS: THE MANGA, VOL. 1 • STORY BY GAIL CARRIGER, ART AND ADAPTATION BY REM • YEN PRESS •  208 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (VIOLENCE, SEXUAL SITUATIONS, NUDITY)

Hayate the Combat Butler, Vol. 19

by

By Kenjiro Hata. Released in Japan as “Hayate no Gotoku!” by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Shonen Sunday. Released in North America by Viz.

Hayate has reached the point now here, popular and enjoyable as it is, its cast is simply too large to use in one complete plot. So while I said last time that the cast was all going to wind up on a holiday in Greece, there are exceptions. And so Wataru, Saki and Sakuya end up in Las Vegas, which coincidentally has its own subplot waiting in the wings for them! This would be highly unrealistic and a detriment to any manga that is not as silly as this one, but (even after the Athena arc) the reader still has a tendency to say “Yeah, OK, whatever.”

The Las Vegas chapter introduces Wataru’s mother, who is… not a nice woman. Oh sure, on a scale of one to Hayate’s parents she’s still small time, but it’s clear she loves gambling and is not above humiliating her son and his friends just to show off how lucky and powerful she is. (You get a sense of where the manga is going with her when we see a flashback where Wataru hands her a doll he has made. It appears to be Nezumi Otoko from the children’s series Gegege no Kitaro. Oh kid, little do you know your mother is more like that doll than you think… In any case, the cliffhanger for this volume involves Wataru’s mother gambling with Saki (who doesn’t know how to play cards) for Wataru’s fate. It also includes Sakuya as a fanservice magnet, something that I think started in Japanese fanart circles and that Hata might have picked up on. Unlike those circles, Sakuya stays (mostly) decent, though.

Meanwhile, earlier in the manga, we get a chapter devoted to one of the Idiot Trio, Miki. She’s arguably the most intelligent and perceptive of the three (given she got a 36 on her most recent exam, this is very arguable), but that’s not really why we get this chapter. For a manga where every single woman seems to be in love with the hero, it is refreshing to see someone who isn’t. And, Ayumu’s teasing of Hina aside, we haven’t really had any yuri in this manga to date either. Now we get both – Miki is not interested in Hayate, mostly as she has her heart set on someone else. It can be a bit disheartening to hear Miki say she knows she’ll be rejected so has no plans to confess… but, knowing Hinagiku like we do, Miki’s probably correct. Oh well. Maybe she’ll get lucky if Hayate ends up with someone else! (By the way, notice how Hayate immediately makes the connection between Miki’s vague allusions and Hina. He’s very perceptive in anything not involving himself.)

Other than that, well, there’s plenty of humor in this volume. Which is good, as folks read Hayate for the gags. For those who worried that we’d be returning to the mood of the previous 2 volumes, that’s not happening right away. Of course, not much else is happening right away either. By the end of the book, half the cast are either in Greece or Vegas, but our hero and heroine are still stuck at home. The main flaw of this book is that, for everyone except maybe Maria fans, very little happens in this volume. We left off with the cast getting ready to go to Greece (where Athena awaits, let’s remember), and we’re still waiting here. Ah well. At least we haven some ominous foreshadowing with Hayate’s ‘King’s Jewel’ given to him by Nagi’s jerkass grandfather. Foreshadowing of dark, terrible events is always welcome in comedy gag manga.

How to Draw Shojo Manga

by

This slim how-to manual caters to the manga fan who wants to become an artist, but finds the technical aspects of comic creation daunting. “If you’ve ever flipped through a How to Draw Manga book in a bookstore, looked at the pages that explain character design and perspective and thought, ‘I have to learn all this hard stuff to be a manga artist?’ then you are exactly the person who we want to read this book,” the authors cheerfully assert.

The introduction is a little disingenuous, however, as the book assumes a level of artistic fluency on the part of the reader that isn’t reflected in that warmly inviting statement. No novice could use the passages on anatomy or perspective to learn either of these essential drafting skills; the authors don’t break down the process of sketching a body or a three-dimensional space into enough discrete steps for a newcomer to recreate the examples in the book. The same is true for their advice on tools; though the authors provide a detailed catalog of pens, nibs, erasers, templates, blades, and brushes favored by professional artists, the information about how to use these tools presumes that the reader has worked with similar implements.

What How to Draw Shojo Manga does well, however, is introduce novices to the concepts associated with creating sequential art. The authors review the basics, explaining the various types of camera angles and shots, and when they’re most effective; discussing the underlying philosophy behind character designs; and showing how an artist takes a script from words to storyboards to finished product. The book also includes an appendix with practical information about submitting work to contests — obviously less applicable to American readers — as well as strategies for handling criticism; in a thoughtful touch, the authors critique a short story (included in full in the book) so that readers can better appreciate the substance of the editorial comments. Whenever possible, the authors use examples from actual manga to underscore points about character design and layouts; sharp-eyed fans will recognize works from such Hakusensha magazines as Lala, Melody, and Hana to Yume.

The bottom line: How to Draw Shojo Manga won’t turn a greenhorn into Arina Tanemura, but it will help her identify areas of weakness (e.g. poor drafting skills) and provide her with the vocabulary to discuss — and learn more about — the creative process.

Editor’s note: This review was originally included in a Short Takes column from November 2010. When I reorganized my site in January 2012, I created a category for instruction manuals (How to Draw Manga) and decided that this review would be better suited as a stand-alone piece. Look for more how-to reviews in the coming months!

HOW TO DRAW SHOJO MANGA • WRITTEN BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF HANA TO YUME, BESSATSU HANE TO YUME, LALA, AND MELODY MAGAZINES • TOKYOPOP • 176 pp. • RATING: TEEN (13+)

Drifters, Vol. 1

by

Back in the 1980s — the heyday of Dolph Lundgren, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Sylvester Stallone — Hollywood cranked out a stream of mediocre but massively entertaining B-movies in which a man with a freakishly muscular physique and a granite jaw battled the Forces of Evil, dispatching villains with a catch-phrase and a lethal weapon. I don’t know if Kohta Hirano ever watched Predator or Red Scorpion, but Drifters reads like the first draft of a truly awesome eighties movie, complete with a trademark phrase — “Say farewell to your head!” — and a simple but effective premise that promises lots of silly, over-the-top fight scenes.

The Dolph Lundgren character — if I might be allowed to call him that — is Shimazu Toyohisa, a Satsuma warrior facing long odds at the Battle of Sekigahara (1600). Just as Shimazu’s death seems imminent, he finds himself transported to an alternate dimension, one in which mankind’s greatest warriors — Hannibal, Nobunaga Oda, Joan of Arc — have been assembled for an elaborate game. The purpose and rules of the game remain elusive, but the primary objective seems to be mass destruction: the game’s organizer unleashes hordes of ghouls and dragons on Shimazu and his allies, in the process laying waste to cities, forts, and crops.

Like all good Schwarzenegger or Stallone vehicles, Drifters makes a few token gestures towards subplot and world-building. Shimazu helps a group of elves resist their oppressors, for example, teaching them the manly art of standing up for themselves. Hirano provides so little explanation for the elves’ marginalized status, however, that the entire episode registers as a stalling tactic for the climatic battle at volume one’s end, a half-hearted effort to show us that however unhinged or deadly Shimazu may be, he knows injustice when he sees it.

Drifters’ other shortcoming is the artwork. Hirano’s clumsy character designs make the entire cast look like Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, with huge, sunken eyes, large, triangular noses, and blocky torsos. Though one might reasonably argue that Picasso’s bodily distortions were a deliberate aesthetic choice, it’s harder to make the same case for Hirano’s work; his characters’ mitt-like hands and poorly executed profiles suggest a poor command of perspective, rather than an artistic challenge to it.

Hirano’s action scenes suffer from an entirely different problem: they’re riotously busy, bursting at the seams with too many figures, monsters, and weapons, overwhelming the eye with visual information. One could be forgiven for thinking that Hirano was trying to out-do Peter Jackson; not since Sauron flattened the forces of Middle Earth have so many warriors and monsters been assembled in one scene to less effect. Looking at the opening chapter, however, it’s clear than Hirano can stage a credible battle scene when he wants to: he depicts the Battle of Sekigahara as a churning mass of horses, samurai, and swords, effectively capturing the confusion and claustrophobia of medieval combat. Once dragons and orcs enter the picture, however, the action scenes begin to lose their urgency and coherence, substituting the terrible immediacy of hand-to-hand fighting for larger, noisier air battles where the stakes are less clearly defined.

It’s a pity that Drifters is so relentless, as the story certainly has the potential to be a guilty pleasure; what’s not to like about a manga in which Japan’s greatest feudal warriors fight alongside Hannibal, Joan of Arc, and elves? What Hirano needs is a little restraint: when the story is cranked up to eleven from the very beginning, the cumulative effective is deafening, making it difficult for the reader to hear the endearingly cheesy dialogue above the clank of swords and explosions. And if there’s anything I learned from watching old chestnuts like Commando, it’s that even the most testosterone-fueled script needs to pause long enough for the hero to utter his catch phrase.

DRIFTERS, VOL. 1 • BY KOHTA HIRANO • DARK HORSE • 208 pp.  RATING: OLDER TEEN

A Devil and Her Love Song, Vol. 1

by

By Miyoshi Tomori. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Margaret. Released in North America by Viz.

I must admit, when I first started reading A Devil and Her Love Song, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Maria. Sure, she was blunt, and I quite like blunt heroines, but she seemed just a bit too stoic for me. Was she really going to be able to carry a 13-volume shoujo manga. Also, the genki blonde male co-star was really getting on my nerves. Then within a couple of pages she shows us how much of that ‘get on my nerves’ attitude was a facade (hint: all of it), and does a head tilt that must easily be seen to be believed. You’d think she was totally mocking him if she weren’t so deadly serious and incapable of understanding sarcasm. That was when I began to love Maria Kawai.

Speaking of those two guys, there not nearly as reverse harem as I might have expected. Shin is likeable right away, especially for long time readers of shoujo manga, and I’ve a feeling that he and Maria will be the main couple. Yasuke is perhaps more interesting to me personally, however. I noted that he annoyed me at the start, and that really didn’t precisely go away as the volume went on. I did like the growing sense of unease that he feels, especially as Shin notes that his act isn’t really working as well as he thinks. Maria is simply the only one willing to call him out on it. His best moment is right at the end, where he opens up to Maria and reveals how much of his life is a deliberate lie. Usually the “broken bird” type in manga like this is someone like Shin – grumpy, cynical, worn down by past events. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with Yusuke in future volumes.

Back to Maria for a bit, as I wanted to discuss something else that separates this series from most other generic shoujo mangas with a blunt, in your face heroine – her faith. Japan has a very casual relationship with Catholicism, and its depictions in shoujo manga tend to simply involve the Catholic School as a setting – the strict nun teachers, praying to the Virgin Mary about someone’s love life, etc. Maria, however, seems to have a genuine faith. Not in an active, religious sense, but more a faith in the good in man, and belief in oneself. It’s a very personal faith, and one I can easily identify with. Of course, that faith also brings with it a great helping of sin, and Maria certainly seems to have a low opinion of herself – something that’s helped along by everyone around her.

For Maria is highly empathic. Which unfortunately, combined with no social filters, leads her to tell everyone exactly what she thinks, and point out the obvious walls that everyone puts up to protect themselves from being hurt. Maria has no such walls, and so is hurt all the time, to the point where she almost seems dulled to pain. Almost, but not quite – her “date” with Shin not only shows us that she can be passionate about something (even if it’s goth-loli shoes), but that she is aware of how she is to other people. She holds herself to impossible standards, and when everyone around her says she’s a horrible person (usually for calling them on their shit), it only reinforces her lack of belief. Back to faith again – Maria wants to believe in herself, in a Maria Kawai who she can love and be proud of. But since she hates herself, this faith has nowhere to go. Except into singing “Amazing Grace”.

The old hymn appears a few times throughout this volume, sung by Maria, who has a beautiful angelic voice. When I grew up, I didn’t realize that I was taught a “censored” version of the song – the lyrics in the 2nd line that I learned were “that saved and set me free”. The original, of course, carries a far greater sense of self-loathing – “that saved a wretch like me”. It is this version that Maria sings. She believes herself unworthy of being saved, but desperately wants to be. (I will note that this manga does feature a cast of female classmates who all hate the heroine, a peril in many shoujo manga. But Maria doesn’t exactly warm the heart. I’m hoping as the series goes on, we’ll get her some female friends.)

I could keep writing – I found a lot to talk about with this series. Probably a sign of how good it is. Go and get the first volume.

A Kid’s View: Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll

by 5 Comments

Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll, Vol. 1 | By Yumi Tsukirino | VIZ Media | Rated All-Ages

Fluffy, Fluffy Cinnamoroll is about these puppies who go on adventures and help each other out. Cinnamoroll has big, fluffy ears that help him fly. He uses these ears to help people and get things from tall places.

I did not like the part when they had to go into the basement and the puppies were scaring each other. I thought there was a real ghost and something bad was about to happen. I also didn’t like that sometimes they don’t tell you what happens to the puppies at the end. I liked Cinnamoroll and Milk the best because Cinnamoroll helped the puppies out numerous times and I like Milk because he is so cute.

It wasn’t a really funny book. I just wanted to know what came next in the book. I longed to know what happened.

Some of the names were hard to pronounce, but there wasn’t anything I didn’t understand.

I liked this book. I would recommend it to first through fifth graders.

GTO: 14 Days in Shonan, Vol. 1

by

By Toru Fujisawa. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Vertical.

In the beginning, there was Shonan Jun’ai Gumi, a 31-volume series about the adventures of two young delinquents in the Shonan area, and their amusing attempts to try to lose their virginity and change their ways. (Only one succeeded, and he’s not the star of this manga.) Then we had a 1-volume prequel, Bad Company, showing how Onizuka and Danma (the stars of SJG) first met in middle school. Following this came the most popular entry in the series, and the ones most North American fans know about, Great Teacher Onizuka. The ‘delinquent/gang leader becomes a teacher and teaches students to stand upright and be proud’ type of series is its own genre in Japan, but Onizuka took this to new heights of comedy, outrageousness and heartwarming.

When GTO ended in 2002, after 25 volumes, Fujisawa tried various other series that were unrelated to the Onizuka saga, for better or worse. (Some of them came over here via Tokyopop: Rose Hip Rose/Zero, Tokko…) There was even a series about a mysterious masked teacher that looked very much like GTO with the serial numbers filed off. But apparently it was impossible to stay away for too long, as in 2009 Fujisawa decided to take Onizuka back to his roots.

This 9-volume series is what’s awkwardly known as an ‘interquel’, which is to say it takes place entirely within the GTO series proper, during the time that Onizuka recovered from the gunshot wounds he received from insane stalker Teshigawara. Of course, mere bullets are not enough to stop our hero, whose ability to take fatal blows and still laugh is something you’re just going to have to accept. Unfortunately, after accidentally bragging about nearly killing one of his students on live television, Onizuka’s in a lot more trouble than usual, and he has to try to stay low. (This, by the way, gives the regular cast of GTO a chance to make a cameo, including Urumi, the aforementioned student who was almost killed. For those wondering about the bizarre translation ‘mate with me’ and ‘I want your seed’, no, that’s really how she talks.)

So Onizuka has to lay low for the next 2 weeks, and decides to go back to Shonan and hang around with his old gang members. This leads to another old GTO gag, where Onizuka brags about how his old gang are still brothers who’d make any sacrifice for each other, then finds reality is not so bright. Luckily, he’s taken in by a young woman who recognizes him; she’s a friend of his fellow teacher and not-quite-love-interest Fuyutsuki, and wonders if he can so something about the kids she has at her local boarding house…

And so we prepare for Onizuka to do what he did in GTO, only with a different group of kids. Let’s not mince words: there’s not a lot of originality here. But Kodansha didn’t approve a revival because they wanted to see something different. Onizuka changing the hearts and minds of troubled youngsters is what people want, and this series gives it to them. The beauty of GTO is the way that it combined comedic juvenile gags, gang violence, and heartwarming scenes to give an overall impression of “the world is not as unfair as you think it is”. And since he’s only got 9 volumes this time round, he makes an impression right away, winning over the eccentric and somewhat suicidal Sakurako and punching the lights out of her abusive father. Onizuka tends to believe in the powers of “I will change your mind with my fists if necessary”, and his defense of Sakurako (which earns the approval of her abused mother) is beautiful.

For those worried that they won’t understand the series without having read GTO or SJG, don’t worry about it. The GTO cast appear for about 6 pages and then are gone, and Onizuka’s type of teaching is pretty universal. There’s a few anachronisms (Onizuka draws Haruhi Suzumiya at one point, which is rather prescient given that GTO is supposed to take place in the late ’90s), but nothing game breaking. I will note that Onizuka can be crude, and talks a lot about finally getting laid. (It’s not going to happen.) And for those who hate cockroaches, a scene towards the end may freak you out. Otherwise, GTO: 14 Days in Shonan does exactly what we wanted it to do. Onizuka is back, and he’s redeeming the souls of rebellious teens through sheer force of personality – and sometimes just force. Welcome back.

Sayonara, Zetszubou-sensei, Vol. 12

by

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

Once again, I don’t really have much to talk about with this excellent volume of Zetsubou-sensei except a string of random observations. Which seems somewhat fitting, given this series.

As I’ve noted before, Zetsubou-sensei has acquired a reputation of burning out translators, with each one before Joshua Weeks lasting 4 volumes. I’ve no idea if this is Joshua’s final volume as well, but it wouldn’t surprise me: this one was an absolute nightmare to adapt, I imagine. The first chapter is an entire chapter based on “explain the Japanese pun”, the final ‘extra’ makes no sense unless you read the weekly Magazines, and another chapter is based around Rakugo. Certainly this is why, after doing notes for Vol. 10, *I* gave up. Still, an admirable job, even if I once again feel there’s too few endnotes. But that’s just me.

Most of the cast of high schoolers tend to have lousy lives in general, but at least can sometimes have a default of ‘happy’ most of the time, even if it’s a psychotic sort of happiness. Manami, though, who graces the back cover with her debt book… wow, her life is simply brutal. Married at the age of 16 to a philandering husband who appears to use her as a name to saddle all his debt on to, she’s also hideously unlucky and tends to get herself into more debt through sheer gullibility. In Volume 11, after hearing some of her complaints, her teacher decides to simply ignore them to save his sanity. Really, we should do the same here. Her face in Chapter 119 as she talks about realizing her husband is the one for her speaks of horrible illicit affairs gone wrong. Luckily, this is a gag manga, so we’ll never have to worry about it.

I also noticed a couple of chapters showing Maria at the receiving end of some of the unfortunate gags, which surprised me. Generally the cast divides into “people bad things happen to” (Manami being an excellent example), and “people who blithely walk through the chaos” (Kafuka is a prime example here). Usually Maria is one of the latter, so seeing her two falls here is rather unusual. Still, no one in the end is safe from a gag as long as it’s funny. Well, except for the aforementioned Kafuka. I think even if a meteor destroyed the Earth, she’d be blithely smiling in her space bunker somewhere else…

The ‘hot or not’ chapter really worked much better in the anime. Probably due to the chilling chirpiness of Chiri’s ‘ari ari ari ari!’ in the original Japanese. Speaking of Chiri, she seems now to be committing murders on an almost daily basis, judging by her having to hide from police disguised as tree bark. And yet she still has a rival: Mayo’s face as she demonstrates the blowtorch is absolutely beautiful. (It was an inspiration for her appearance in the ending to the 3rd season.) And I love Kiri and Matoi sniping at each other as usual.

Then there’s Kiyohiko’s Night. Oi. The folks who watch the anime have an advantage over others, as they’ve actually seen the sequence in question, but here goes: Weekly Shonen Magazine has a special issues with one-shots and short special versions of regular comics that comes out on holidays. For one of these, Kumeta released a 4-page comic that involved a pun on the Japanese version of ‘Silent Night’ and a bizarre man named Kiyohiko. As viewers of the anime can tell you, it was not particularly funny. What’s more, the magazine it appeared in had to be pulled due to a controversy surrounding another artist’s work so very few people got to read it anyway. It was presumably supposed to be in this volume, but Kumeta, realizing it wasn’t that funny, pulled it and instead drew 4 pages of the cast complaining. So now you know! (You can see Kiyohiko on the swing by Maria at the back of the book, if you’re curious.)

Also, Kiri is changing into her sweats for her “don’t open it”, and you can see her semi-naked. I therefore conclude the missing Kiri from Vol. 10 was indeed the usual poor quality control rather than any censorious reasons. (Quality control seems better here.) Lastly, we have some of the Japanese fanart. One piece of which made me absolutely boggle. It involves Kafuka ogling her teacher’s ass. You really should see it for yourself.

And now I’m caught up! Roll on Vol. 13!

Cross Game, Vol. 6

by

By Mitsuru Adachi. Released in Japan in 2 separate volumes by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Shonen Sunday. Released in North America by Viz.

I had noted in my Manga The Week Of column that this new Cross Game might simply be 2 more volumes of nothing but baseball, but for once that’s not the case. Oh, there’s lots of practicing, and baseball does feature prominently in one of the subplots. But this is the offseason, and despite much practice and training, Ko and Aoba’s thoughts are also turning to other things. And then there’s the problem of Akane…

I find Akane fascinating, honestly. Adachi is certainly not flinching from showing us the sheer discomfort that everyone from Wakaba’s past has in her presence. At the same time, especially as the volume goes on, that same presence also gives them a sense of calm and peace. It’s also additionally unsettling for the reader who has followed Adachi’s works since the late 70s. Here is a story he created that finally has the heroine not being ‘nice, supportive, calm girl’, and what does he do? He has the spitting image of his old heroines show up and insinuate herself into Ko’s life! To be fair to Akane, she’s not being the ‘other woman’ here. She seems to know very well the feelings Ko and Aoba have for each other. But they’re both in denial, and not actually going anywhere. And Akane is starting to fall for Ko. So why not take a chance?

It’s not as if Ko is the only one being hit by this, of course. We get the best look at Akaishi we’ve had since the first volume, as he presses Akane and Ko into going on a date. Given that he loved Wakaba, and is clearly attracted to Akane, this seems highly unusual, but we shouldn’t be surprised, given that this is a manga where everyone is always so supportive of the other person without thinking of their own feelings. I noted on Twitter that if the cast of Cross Game were remotely selfish, the manga would only be about 100 pages long. I think Adachi knows readers are rooting for Akaishi… if only as they’re all rooting for Ko and Aoba, and someone needs to get the other cute girl.

It’s not going to be Azuma, who also gets a nice look in here. This is where the baseball I mentioned earlier comes in, as one subplot has Azuma smashing a line drive into Aoba, fracturing her leg. This upsets him far more than usual… not that we can see it in his face, of course, but you can see it through his actions, as his swing is not really what it should be until Aoba gets out of the hospital. Like Akane, he’s fallen in love with someone while knowing that she’s already taken, she just needs to realize this. The frustration can sometimes be palpable, which is likely why he decides to pretend the maintenance kit came from him. Ko already has a lead so large that no one can really pass it. Azuma’s brother gets the line of the volume when he asks Aoba “Have you ever thought you liked my brother without someone asking you first?”.

There’s a definite theme of growing up here, with the other two Tsukishima heroines both shown to be going out with (and toying with) other guys, and Ko telling Aoba’s father that he should think about remarrying as well. But the past still clings to us, be it a lookalike of Wakaba who has innocently taken her place in their lives, or a birthday present list that you just can’t stop buying for, even if you can’t admit it. The characters aren’t selfish. And that’s why Cross Game is 17 volumes long. This was Vol. 12 and 13, for those keeping up with the NA releases. Next up, I suspect: more baseball games.

(Also, love that reference to Major, which is not only Adachi self-deprecation, but a namecheck of a 78-volume baseball series, a friendly rival to Cross Game in Sunday, that will be licensed by Viz about the same time as the heat death of the universe.)

Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Vol. 33

by

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

This review contains spoilers for this volume, and I recommend you have read it before you begin.

When we last left our heroes, they had finally arrived at the scene of their final battle, only to be met by the least expected foe ever. This was part of a sequence of five chapters that basically hit Negima fandom like a bomb, and honestly, even though we’re over 50 chapters down the road now, I’m not sure it managed to top it until just this week. At least in terms of chatter.

Akamatsu, of course, knew exactly what he was doing – he has Chisame immediately lampshade the fact that he dropped said foe right into the battle with little to no foreshadowing, which is *just not done*. In fact, given the state of things between Earth and the Magic World, it’s pretty much impossible that she can be there at all. But there she is, being deadpan and managing to… easily take out all of our heroes at once. Wow.

The two chapters that follow, which show Negi in a ‘perfect world’ where his parents defeated the enemy 20 years ago and never died, is really heartbreaking. Not just for Negi, who knows that no matter what he does, he’ll never ever have a childhood like this, but also in how the others are affected. In Negi’s dream the Kyoto arc never happened, which means that Setsuna and Konoka are still not speaking to each other. Eva is removed from him as well. As Negi himself notes, it’s a fun, happy world, but he instinctively knows there’s something wrong with it.

We get a sneak peek at most of the other fantasy worlds of the cast as well. Some are purely for comedic effect (Setsuna’s, Chamo’s), but it’s startling to see how many of them have the potential for heartbreak just as Negi must be feeling. Yue studying happily with her late grandfather; Mana still partnered with her dead sempai; Sayo simply being *alive*. Even the ones featuring couples give pause for thought. Nodoka’s fantasy involves her reading books with Negi… and Yue (I’m starting to suspect that these two are going to end up taking each other out of the love sweepstakes by sheer politeness), Ako is no doubt going to once again realize that the Nagi of her dreams doesn’t exist; and unlike Setsuna’s sexualized dream, all Konoka has is happily playing with Setsuna as a child. (That’s got to hurt; you may have your work cut out for you, Setsuna.)

Luckily, Negi is helped out by Zazie. The *real* Zazie, not the fake one that confronted him at the start of this volume. It is highly reassuring, especially given how little we know about her, to see that Zazie is still in Negi’s corner. She was supposed to have an arc of her own in the Festival volumes, but the story got out of control and Akamatsu had to cut it. Here you can see him using her complete lack of characterization as a boon, first to throw us off, then here to reassure us. I hope we see more of her in the future.

The next chapter contains what I think is, in my mind, the funniest moment in Negima ever. Admittedly, others will no doubt disagree with me, but Chisame being told why she and Makie did not succumb to the dream world like everyone else is a thing of beauty. It works well in English too, given that Poyo explains things using a ‘net term’, rea-juu, which had to be explained for the Japanese audience as well. (Also, thankfully, Makie’s confusion as to what the word means is given a different translation. I’ve no idea which is more accurate, Kodansha or the scanlators, but I’m happy to go with the less controversial one.) Chisame’s horror that she’s enjoying all aspects of her life right now is a thing of beauty, and wonderfully timed.

After that, everyone wakes themselves up, and the rest of the volume is a standard battle. Not that this is without many items of merit. It’s a lot of fun. Negi’s reveal that he has a plan to save the Magic World without destroying the magical inhabitants, as well as Fate’s angry reaction. Mana’s revelation of her own heritage, which is clearly combined with an honest lust for battle. Kotaro’s brief thoughts of taking on Fate himself, and (showing how he’s grown), his realization that it would be impossible. The cameo from Tsuruko of Love Hina, here more than just a shadow in the background (though she’s still unnamed). Nodoka tackling an enemy made of fire to stop her. And, in case you thought it was all serious business, Ako’s artifact, as well as the glee with which she wields it.

This is a very busy volume of Negima, which something for almost everyone. (Even Anya and Asuna get a look in.) Kodansha Comics nearly gets it right, but they’re still missing the character bios at the end. I’m not certain why, as they have 4 pages of fanart as well as Misora’s Q&A. Is it just because they decided to add the ‘Next Volume’ preview? I think most fans would disagree with that choice. In any case, recommended to all of you who’ve kept up with the series anyway.

This review was based on a review copy provided by the publisher.

GTO: 14 Days in Shonan, Vol. 1

by

GTO: 14 Days in Shonan is loud and silly, the kind of manga in which the slightest misunderstanding between characters escalates into shouting matches, bone-crunching violence, or incarceration (or all three). It’s the kind of manga in which the hero is over-confident to the point of being dumb. And it’s the kind of manga in which the author trots out the same gags two or three times per volume, repeating them with the insistence of a ten-year-old who thinks no one heard him the first time he said, “Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?”

I loved it.

14 Days in Shonan — a sequel to the wildly popular GTO: Great Teacher Onizuka — follows the same basic template as the original stories, pitting the hellraiser-cum-homeroom teacher against a posse of troubled teens. This time, however, the action unfolds in Onizuka’s hometown, where he takes up residence at a group foster home after disgracing himself on national television. (“I just tried to tell a fun little story, and see what happened,” he fumes.) Hijinks and beatdowns ensue when one of the residents wages a vicious campaign to send Onizuka back to Tokyo — a campaign that repeatedly backfires, thanks to Onizuka’s cheerful determination and  strong constitution. (No one takes a baseball bat to the head quite like Onizuka.)

Though the hijinks are amusing, what makes 14 Days in Shonan work is its sincerity. In many stories told from the teacher’s point of view, the teacher is a sardonic observer of student behavior, bemoaning his charges’ lack of knowledge, manners, or interest in the subject. 14 Days in Shonan, however, offers a rosier picture of teaching, one in which a good educator plays a decisive role in improving his students’ lives, whether they be victims of bullying or survivors of parental abuse. At the same time, however, author Toru Fujisawa pokes fun at the conventions of the To Sir With Love genre, gleefully mocking Eikichi Onizuka’s unorthodox methodology, gullibility, and exaggerated sense of importance; Onizuka may get results, but they almost always come at the expense of his dignity.

And oh! those affronts to his dignity are hilarious. Onizuka is teased by teenagers and cops alike: they insult him, remind him that he’s a virgin, and Photoshop his image, placing him in suggestive situations. Though he tries to maintain a suave facade, Onizuka can barely contain his embarrassment at the way he’s treated; not since Mr. Bean has a character been able to contort his face into so many distinctive states of disgust, arousal, or surprise.

But the most surprising thing about 14 Days in Shonan is its ability to address serious social problems without devolving into an Afterschool Special. The hand-to-hand combat and barrage of condom jokes helps mitigate against didacticism, to be sure, but Fujisawa is skillful enough to make the students’ personal troubles a meaningful — and sometimes moving — part of the story, inspiring Onizuka to new heights of creativity (and silliness) in his efforts to reach them. It’s never entirely clear when Onizuka is deliberately playing the fool, and when he’s genuinely out of his depth, but Fujisawa is always generous in giving his brash hero credit for helping students, even when Onizuka looks ridiculous.

Highly recommended.

Review copy provided by Vertical, Inc.

GTO: 14 DAYS IN SHONAN, VOL. 1 • BY TORU FUJISAWA • VERTICAL, INC. • 200 pp. • NO RATING (SUGGESTIVE SITUATIONS, LANGUAGE, VIOLENCE)