Reviews

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

The second volume of The Drops of God continues our story where we left off, with Shizuku and Miyabi trying to find dazzling yet inexpensive French wines to satisfy a bet with their colleague who boasts that Italian wine is the best. Of course, each bottle they find brings another story, be it a family torn apart by both death and the inability to match wine with food; two brothers who cannot agree on anything about wine; and Tomine’s lover Saionji, who’s intrigued by Shizuku yet also wants to show him up in a wine-tasting competition. And of course there’s the will of Shizuku’s late father, which finally gives us the main plot of this whole series.

Really, there are so many things working against me with this manga, which I should not love nearly as much as I do. I don’t drink wine, which means that I’m usually smiling and nodding at all of the wine backstory and exposition about as much as I would be were I to read a really deep mahjong manga. The broad strokes of the plot rely on cliches that we have seen in a million other Japanese seinen mangas, food or otherwise, and this applies to some of the one-offs as well. (Father and daughter torn apart by an argument over the mother’s death? Two brothers, one a delinquent and one cool and intelligent? Did they get this from the Big Book of Manga Plots, Vol. 3?) And Miyabi, one of the main characters, is still rather undeveloped: she’s there to be the sounding board, provide mild fanservice, and be a cute female who the hero might eventually hook up with, but it’s not happening anytime soon.

All of this is true. So then why is Drops of God so good? Because the writers are fantastic at what they do. This is a manga written by two pepole who know exactly what needs to be done to sell a plot – which includes using tired cliches, which can easily work in your favor when handled correctly. The pacing is phenomenal, with every 4-5 chapters feeling like an episode of a TV drama (which I believe the show was later adapted to). These chapters were written for reading as a serialized weekly manga, and the start of each chapter recaps the cliffhanger from the last, just like old-school Doctor Who. The goal is to get you to be unable to ever put it down or stop – you have to find out what happens next week.

As for all the wine exposition, despite my lack of knowledge, I was never really bored with it. There is a balance between walls of text explaining a particular region of France and the emotional feelings that go with drinking the wines from that region. The descriptions of what it is like to drink a particular wine are not quite as over the top as the first omnibus, but are just as evocative – my favorite was probably the Parisian flea market. Given how hard it is to convey taste and smell to another person, you can easily imagine that wine critics talk like this all the time. I also enjoyed that the manga tries to be even-handed – the competition with Honma is not as easy as you’d suspect, and the Italian wines featured sound just as good as the French ones.

Lastly, I enjoy the art, which can sometimes be an afterthought in manga like these that are meant to be incredibly wordy. Most folks will love the scenes showing what the wine conveys to the drinker – I’d mentioned the flea market earlier, but the masquerade was just as good, and the description of the First “Apostle” looks gorgeous, and makes you want to figure out what wine it captures just as much as Shizuku. I also like the little ‘goofy bits’ that get thrown in – the manga has a certain sense of humor, though it’s not a comedy, and seeing Shizuku and Miyabi’s occasional frazzled or superdeformed expressions is great fun.

A lot of this reads like a giant mystery, which is not surprising given it’s from the creators of The Kindaichi Case Files. It’s a definite must for anyone who drinks wine. But it’s also fun for those who simply enjoy reading a well-crafted work with good dialogue. Albeit one that revels in some cheesy situatoios.

By Kakifly. Released in Japan by Houbunsha, serialized in the magazine Manga Time Kirara. Released in North America by Yen Press.

It’s finally time for time to catch up with the cast of K-On!. Graduation is around the corner, and this volume deals with everything that comes with it: the senior’s school play, deciding on a future, taking exams so that you can achieve that future, and of course their final concert. But is it really the end for our pop band cuties?

Of course not. This is not the sort of manga where you’re going to get a lot of angst and serious business. It’s a silly 4-koma, and we get what Kakifly does best. In fact, one of the main plot points is that the girls *don’t* want this to be the end – they all decide to join Mugi in applying to the prestigious Japan Womnen’s Univ – pardon me, to heavily disguised “N” Women’s University, because they’ve grown so close they can’t let it end like this. Of course, this isn’t just some convenient escalator school – Yui and Ritsu really have to buckle down, and a lot of the humor in this volume comes from the two of them trying to study while being so easily distracted (Yui) or bored (Ritsu).

Then there’s that class play. I’ve said it before, and I will say it again, this is not a yuri series, despite what the fandom would tell you. However, among the situations that aren’t yuri but which fans glom onto anyway, this volume certainly has the most, especially for Mio and Ritsu. The class decides to do Romeo and Juliet, and decide that Mio is perfect for the role of Romeo… which she totally isn’t, but clearly they just want to see her dressed up as a hot Elizabethan boy. Likewise, Ritsu is a horrible choice for Juliet, and was likely chosen because… well, Mio was Romeo, and the two are inseparable. The manga latches onto this dissonance immediately, with some of the best jokes being about Mio’s timidity and Ritsu’s brashness. (Speaking of which, Yen’s translation of Ritsu’s speech patterns is fantastic – in Japanese, aside from ‘watashi’, she always tends to use boyish speech, and that’s conveyed very well here.) The solution to their issues is both funny and very clever, and again relies on them knowing each other inside and out.

And then there’s the chapter where folks think Ritsu has a boyfriend. (Look, Ritsu’s my favorite character, cut me some slack.) This is probably my favorite chapter in the book, as everything is just pitch perfect. Mio’s panic and jealousy, Mugi’s support and joy (Mugi is a yuri fangirl, but really just pushes interaction of any kind – again, it fits with her upbringing), Ritsu of course using this situation as a giant prank, and Yui for once as the voice of reason (great line about how Ritsu being girly makes her feel sick). In the end, of course, Ritsu does NOT have a boyfriend – it was set up so she could watch Mio freak out. Needless to say, Mio’s reaction in general, and particularly the “Ritsu, you can’t do this! Men are barbarians!” line made yuri fans happy. (Half the chapter was leaked online in Japan, and big surprise – otaku who thought Ritsu was ‘impure’ freaked out and made threats to burn merchandise again. And people wonder why so few love stories in Japan resolve anymore.)

And then we get graduation, and more attention is paid to the one band member who isn’t doing so, Azusa. Getting her to admit she’s an emotional bundle of stress, of course, is like pulling teeth – Ui and Jun both note this. However, when the other four have gotten their diplomas and reality is finally sinking in, Azusa just loses it, in what is one of the sweetest scenes in the entire series. Kakifly’s art is usually more what I’d call “satisfactory” than anything else, particularly with his ‘far older than they look’ character designs. But the way Azusa’s expression is drawn when she begs the cast not to graduate is simply excellent.

And so now it’s over… except it’s not. We now have not one, but TWO sequels running in Japan. The first deals with the four graduating girls in college, the second has Azusa, Ui, and Jun trying to keep the light music club going in high school. How this will be collected is unknown at this point, but no doubt we will eventually see more K-On!. Till then, this was a light and fluffy but of fun, and I enjoyed hanging out with these girls.

By Osamu Tezuka. Released in Japan as “Ribon no Kishi” by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Nakayoshi. Released in North America by Vertical.

This second volume of Princess Knight continues right where the previous one left off, with Sapphire going from one threat to another. The threats get worse this time around, however. First her girl heart is successfully stolen, leaving Sapphire as a boy (albeit a very shapely boy). And later on, when that heart is stolen as well, Sapphire falls into a coma. Can Tink manage to sort everything out at last? Can Sapphire ever find true happiness? Well, yes, but not before the end of the book. This is high adventure romance, after all.

(I’m not certain why the online images of this book feature different colors on the cover than the actual volumes themselves. Pretend that the picture you see above is far less blue.)

Much as I love Sapphire, and she gets some great things to do here, she does spend a fair amount of time in this volume reacting to others. So I spent a fair amount of time watching her reactions, and was struck by how well Tezuka can convey emotions with minimal effort. Sapphire’s face on the bottom of page 16, when confronted by Prince Franz, is “why must my love hate me”, “why is this happening to me”, and “oh my god, why does he not GET IT” all in one. Without her honest love, worry and despair throughout these pages, the book would suffer greatly.

It has to be said, there is a certain ‘I am writing from week to week with no real thought in mind’ feel to this book. The main antagonist from Volume One, the witch, is dispatched halfway through this book, which seems early to me, and is promptly replaced by the Goddess Venus, who can also do bad things to Sapphire via supernatural means. Likewise, the witch’s spunky and likeable daughter, Hecate (who also dies, which is a shame) is replaced by the spunky yet likeable Friebe, and for a moment I thought there was some reincarnation thing going on, but no. You aren’t really reading Princess Knight for realism, so you have to accept there is a certain ludicrousness here in terms of throwing obstacles in front of the heroine. (And what was with that sudden repentance and suicide of one of the main villains? Sheesh.)

Speaking of Hecate and Friebe, the book is also quite good at presenting some strong and likeable women. Hecate is tied to her mother by more than just blood, and yet is determined to live her own life, rather than one chosen for her by her mother – even if she does grow to like Prince Franz. Likewise Friebe may be the classic ‘searching for a strong man to marry me’ type knight, but this does not diminish her swordfighting skills in any way, and she ends the book still in armor and with sword (as opposed to Sapphire, it must be said). Then there’s the battle at the castle between the male army and their wives (who have given Sapphire sanctuary). It’s filled with amazingly shallow stereotypes, but its heart is in the right place, and it does mock the classic ‘only men are fit to rule’ idea seen in a number of fairy tales.

The thing that summed up the book in my mind was a line of dialogue said by Friebe’s brother Oolong (who is a wonderful character in his own right – after so many royal idiots, it’s a pleasure to see one who plays the role for all it’s worth). When Friebe cries on his shoulder and admits she can’t marry Sapphire as Sapphire is a woman, he laughs and notes that “you can find women as manly as any man in every country”. He’s gently mocking the fact that she zeroed in on Sapphire as her choice, but it also allows us to be more comfortable in Sapphire’s ending, where she finds the Prince and presumably lives happily ever after. Sapphire may go on to be a feminine queen, but there are strong, capable women like her in every kingdom. She is not a rare and precious snowflake. And that’s a good thing.

I’m not sure that Twin Knight (the sequel to the original Princess Knight that ran in Nakayoshi in the late 1950s) is likely to be licensed anytime soon, so this may be the last we see of Sapphire for a while. I’m very happy we got her story, though, and I hope that in the future Vertical can publish more of Tezuka’s ‘children’s’ works, in addition to his gritty adult titles.

By Akira Kawa. Released in Japan by Futabasha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Women’s Comic Jour. Released in the United States by Futabasha on the JManga website.

I got blindsided by this one a bit, I will admit. The blurb and cover made it sound a lot fluffier than it actually is, and also that it would be far more about the dog. Now, rest assured that Wonder (the dog) is a large part of this manga, but it’s not a manga *about* a family getting a new dog. That’s just the starting point. What Wonder! gives us is a manga about what it means to be a family, even if it’s non-traditional, and how bonds with other members of that family can affect how we grow and learn – even if we’re adults.

The author of Wonder! is Akira Kawa, an old-school shoujo and josei artist who’s been doing manga since 1968. In the 1970s she was a mainstay at Shueisha’s Margaret magazine, and now that she’s at the age where she can do whatever she wants, she’s at Futabasha drawing manga for their josei magazine for housewives, Jour. Her wikipedia page says that her manga seem to specialize in family, and it shows; this is a well-thought out work. It’s fairly clear from reading it that it was initially conceived as a one-shot; then another chapter was added later, and finally the last two chapters were put in before it got picked up as a ‘series’. This happens a lot, especially in shoujo manga. Thankfully, unlike other examples, we don’t have to be reintroduced to the characters every single chapter.

Wonder, it must be said, starts awkwardly. Its heroine, Kaori, is not particularly likeable at first. We see her drunk on a park bench, pouring out the plot – I mean, her heart – to a stray dog, who turns out to be the titular Wonder. She’s married to Taiyo, but according to her it’s an ‘open marriage’ where both of them are free to date other people. She may think this is what she wants, but it’s fairly clear watching the two of them that this is not making either of them happy. Things are further complicated by the arrival of the dog, who follows her home, and a 9-year-old boy, who arrives when Taiyo’s sister dies. Dies? Or was she killed? It turns out that the boy, Kota, may have seen something suspicious…

For a while I wondered what genre Wonder! actually was. The first chapter combines family drama with mystery, and sees Kaori slowly warming up to Kota, who she clearly did not want living with them at first. There’s also a bit of a supernatural element to it, but it’s very mild – Wonder has a sixth sense for people that can be similar to Lassie at times, and also seems to have lived long beyond what his natural life is. But ‘family drama’ sounds about right – despite the thriller and mystery aspects, this is at heart a story about a family trying to find its footing and deal with everyday life.

Kota becomes the second protagonist starting in Chapter 2, when the series moves forward six years. He’s now in high school, and has grown up to be the star of your typical high school shoujo manga – except he has no girlfriend. He’s just a nice, pleasant, vaguely aloof sort of fellow, good at sports and good at school, but not really understanding other people. (This runs in his family, of course.) The one girl he seems to have a crush on is one that he knows isn’t going anywhere – Kaori, who by now is pregnant with her first child. (This gets brought up a few times in the volume, but I don’t think it’s meant to be squicky – it’s the typical misplaced love bonding kids get sometime). The last half of the book sees him start to make friends… but not with who we think he will. This was the better written half of the book, with some genuinely surprising twists.

Lastly, there’s an unconnected short story afterwards, which is far more serious. It deals with a family whose teenaged son commits suicide. They are stunned, as they had no idea he was anything other than happy. As the mother searches for answers, she discovers that he had been bullied at school… and that bullying in Japan is as hard to prove as ever, with the school doing its best to absolve itself of guilt and also indicate that she and her husband are to blame. There’s no easy answers in this one, just a family trying to deal with their grief, reach out, and hope that they can avoid the same thing happening to their younger daughter. It’s heavy stuff, but again it’s very well done.

There are a few drawback to this volume, of course. Kaori, as I noted, takes a while to become likeable, and in Chapter 2 seriously considers having an abortion when she finds out that she’s pregnant. (She doesn’t. This also has one of the funnier parts of the book, where she notes at work that she’s pregnant and the entire male office staff tenses up before she notes it’s her husband’s baby.) Her husband Taiyo is one of those guys who’s hard to read, typical of such manga where we’re meant to empathize with the heroine, and doesn’t develop as much as I’d like – we do see he has a silly side to him, and certainly he and Kaori love each other in their own way, but I hope future volumes flesh him out. Lastly, their are two timeskips – six years after the first chapter, and about a year and a half after the second – which can make it a bit hard to connect.

That said, I was surprised how much I really enjoyed and connected with this manga. The characters are well-written, they all have their own voice. Kaori is a fun, imperfect heroine, yet you can clearly see why guys would fall for her. And like adopted mother, like son – Kota is clearly hot high school crush material, but needs to be able to get along with other people rather than holding them at arms length. the series is still running in Japan 8 years later, and has 14 volumes out to date. A few future volumes feature Kota with what appears to be other high school children, so I suspect I will get my wish. Wonder! is a great manga for adult women who grew up reading high-school shoujo, but now want to read manga by the same writers about grown-ups as well. Definitely recommended.

By Tomoko Hayakawa. Released in Japan as “Yamato Nadeshiko Shichihenge” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Bessatsu Friend (“Betsufure”). Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

Every time I review a volume of this manga, I feel the need to explain my continued enjoyment of it. I enjoy the romance, while acknowledging it will likely never be satisfactorily resolved. I enjoy the comedy, which admitting that a lot of it is the exact same situation written over and over with variations. And I like the art, despite the author’s complete lack of attention to backgrounds and Sunako still being superdeformed much of the time. Despite all these flaws, I enjoy this manga as it’s a classic example of an artist knowing she has a narrow range and using that narrow range to her best advantage.

Since about Vol. 15 or so, the series has gotten into a pattern. The majority of the stories feature the stormy friendship/something more between grumpy Kyohei and twitchy Sunako, and yes, after 27 volumes, she’s still occasionally freaking out about his “brightness” and wanting to be a creature of darkness. Generally once every two volumes or so she will throw in a chapter about the stoic Takenaga and his gorgeous yet lacking in self confidence girlfriend Noi; or playboy Ranmaru and his far too tolerant fiancee Tamao. Once every 5-6 volumes we may see a chapter devoted to cute and sweet Yuki, who’s the guy on the cover of this volume, but generally not; the author doesn’t know what to do with him, really, as he’s far too normal. His own girlfriend is notably also very normal.

No one reads Wallflower stuff for normal. You read it for things like Sunako deciding that after the events of last volume she’s leaving the mansion again and working at a maid cafe… with the creepy otaku therein. (Word of warning: otaku are portrayed entirely negatively here.) Or Sunako getting possessed by a ghost – again, the others note – who wants to satisfy her desire to pick flowers with an incredibly handsome man (read: Kyohei). Or Sunako getting the flu and Kyohei being forced to take care of her, in what might be the most fanservicey chapter this story has had to date. Or even for the token Ranmaru story, where he is kidnapped by an S&M club and held for ransom.

The little things in each volume are what keep bringing me back. We actually see Sunako transform from superdeformed to her normal self (in three poses) in the first chapter, which once again makes us wonder about how this works in the ‘real world’. The chapter with the ghost shows off Kyohei’s reluctant caring side, as this particular possessive spirit isn’t as selfish as prior ones have been, and he can’t simply tell her to get out and give Sunako back. The chapter with Ranmaru is fun and horrible at the same time, as he blows off his fiancee, who is there to learn from Sunako how to make him delicious food, to date more cheating wives. Tamao is clearly ready to sacrifice a pile of money for his well-being, and though he is grateful, and seems to have some feelings for her (note she’s probably the only woman he won’t actually sleep with, and we all know what that means with playboys), we still question why she puts up with his assholish tendencies. (Luckily, Sunako is there throughout to make these points, as she gets kidnapped as well.)

Then there’s the flu chapter. I’m not the audience for this shoujo material. 18-19 year old girls are. And boy howdy, does this chapter deliver. Kyohei’s half-naked throughout, but that’s not the type of service we’re talking about, for once. No, this is all about the torrid sexual tension between these two epically stubborn people. Sunako’s flu-ridden fever dreams are about Kyohei kissing her, and it’s driving her insane. Kyohei, meanwhile, just wants her to change and get better, but she refuses to do anything she tells him and is generally a horrible patient. This culminates in his blindfolding himself and stripping her naked so he can change her sweaty clothes, which she finally acquiesces to. (It’s very noticeable that for almost 25 pages or so, she’s not superdeformed in the least). And then she runs out into the rain, and he’s going after her screaming that she’ll get more sick, and then they trip and fall on top of each other…

…and then a lightning bolt comes down from the sky and strikes the both of them, ending the chapter. It’s like the hand of God, but more accurately it’s the hand of the author, reminding us all that the manga is still running in Japan and she really does not want to resolve it at all. Sigh. Oh well, in this manga filled with frustrating characters and situations she has now rewritten at least five times each, we still find little oases of awesome. That’s why we keep coming back to this even after 27 volumes.

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.

After two or three volumes of a giant fight/massacre, a break is much needed. You can’t simply have nonstop fighting in every chapter. And so this Negima is devoted to Negi attempting to gain more power and learn what he really wants from the fight, and for several of the others to get powers of their own. There’s lots of plot and character development to enjoy here.

First off, a great deal of time is dedicated to the four ‘sports girls’ who stowed away to the Magical World and are now having to deal with the consequences. We’ve followed Ako’s arc more than the others, so it’s good to see the other three getting equal time. This is not to say that Ako gets nothing to do – her pactio is quite sweet, and I liked the fact that she’s aware of her feelings for Negi and is stamping them down as being wrong – this is a constant theme in this manga, given Negi’s age, and it helps to remind fans that in reality, it *is* squicky. She’s also still crushing on Nagi, even now that she knows he doesn’t exist, and this is a reason why she refuses to pactio with an ‘aged-up’ Negi. Her Pactio is also hilarious, though we don’t know what it does yet.

The other big revelatoin is regarding Yuna. We’ve known for some time that her father and mother were mages, and that Yuna had been kept in the dark about it. Now Takane feels they’re in a situation where it’s too dangerous not to know, and reveal the truth to her. Yuna, being of the ‘spunky take life as it comes’ variety, is seemingly okay with this, and notes she’d worked most of it out beforehand. She’s also reasoned this through to the end, and asks Takane if her mother’s death was really an accident like she’d been told. Takane’s response, and Yuna’s reaction, shows how well Akamatsu has mastered subtlety when the situation calls for it. We don’t see Yuna’s face when she reacts to the news, and that makes it all the more sad.

As for Makie and Akira, they aren’t quite as heartwarming, but still well done. Akira is first and foremost concerned for her friends, and tries to help Negi realize the situations he’s gotten himself into while not overwhelming him. Makie, who gets one of the best lines of the volume “I don’t understand men or women…” is as always a fairly simple girl, in a good way. She admires Negi and is happy to pactio with him, and that’s all that matters. So now three of the four girls have magical abilities (Akira is too shy/nervous to try), some of which, as Ako quickly notes, are more badass than others. (Yuna’s guns are implied to be special in particular – I have a feeling they may have been her mother’s.)

Negi, meanwhile, has finally broken free of the mental wall that’s been keeping him from using his full abilities – he realizes that he’s basically becoming something that isn’t human, and is okay with it if it’s to protect his friends. And what’s more, he’s leveled up in his thoughts on Fate as well – it used to be “I want to beat him”, now it’s “I want to be friends with him”. Well done, Negi, you’ve recognized you’re in a shonen manga. Now if we can just get Fate, who’s acting like an impatient boyfriend waiting for his date, to realize the same.

Speaking of which, I would be remiss if I did not mention Tsukuyomi. She made the transition from goofy villain to terrifyingly insane villain some time ago, but she really shows off her chops here. She goes toe to toe with Fate for a while, apparently because she’s bored, and forces him to actually have to get serious briefly. Then, bored again, she goes off to kill a few of Negi’s friends, starting with Colette, who is another ‘wooden doll’ in this world. Luckily Negi is there to stop her, but then we get her reaction to his newfound magical strength. I’m sorry, but it’s really hard to say anything other than “she sees his power and has an orgasm”. It’s that blatant. Then when Negi suggests that, as a hired mercenary, he could buy her off, she comes out with the chilling “There is no meaning in this world. All I want is blood and battle.” Something tells me we will not be befriending her like we will Fate.

Finally, we get everyone in position. Things are moving more rapidly than anticipated due to Tsukuyomi leaving behind a horde of demons to attack them, but Negi’s party gets to the Gravekeeper’s Palace with minimal fuss and is ready to go. And then they’re stopped. By… well, I’ll say who it is when I review Volume 33. I’ll just note that when this chapter came out in Japanese, it was generally regarded as the biggest surprise of the entire series to date. No one guessed this.

(I will note briefly that Kodansha’s lack of editors has done it again – the character bio and cover design is missing from this volume. The Nibleys said they did translate it, so it’s all on the editors. Sigh.)

There’s actually minimal fanservice in this volume as well. It’s straight ahead storytelling, with no detours in hot springs, and the pactios we get are mostly serious business. Could this be the manga’s final endgame we’re heading into? Will we ever get an entire chapter of Negi sneezing everyone’s clothes off again? Tune in next time!

By Naoko Takeuchi. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Run Run. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

(This review contains spoilers for this volume, as well as Volume 2 of Sailor Moon.)

It is possible that I implied in the review of the first volume of Sailor V that the second volume would be a lot more serious and dramatic. Which it is… in about the last 30 pages. I was going by hazy memories of reading the series years ago using raws and online text translations. But no, 85% of this manga is just as fast paced, wacky and fluffy as the earlier one, and Minako goes to even more over the top heights.

This is the final volume, and the reissue is almost 300 pages, so there’s a lot to take in. One thing I noticed right away is that Minako’s secret is exposed, something that the Sailor Moon anime experimented with quite a bit, but usually it was villains discovering their identities only to be killed off before they could tell anyone else. Here it’s the Inspector General of the police department, who happens to be a giant Sailor V otaku, and she manages to put two and two together by simply being in the right place – she sees V disappear behind a corner, and Minako reemerge two seconds later. The senshi’s ‘disguise magic’ has never really been gone into in great depth, and this is the closest we’ll get to it. Of course, everything ends up working out for Minako in the end.

There’s also Artemis, who gets a bit more focus here. As most of these chapters were written during or after Sailor Moon proper, there’s a lot more crossover and references to the other series. As a result, we can not only contrast Usagi and Minako, but also their animal guardians. For all that he desperately tries to get Minako to grow up and respect her duties as a senshi, Artemis can be just as impetuous and overreacting as his charge. At one point he feels so unappreciated by Minako (who really is callous in the chapter, the closest she gets to being a jerk in this series) that he runs away – then is stunned Minako never even noticed. More to the point, the chapter where he falls for the ‘puppy’ Luna is entertaining but also enlightening. We see that his memories are NOT as hazy as Minako’s, and that he definitely does remember Luna – and misses her a lot more than he lets on. Again, some nice detail that we can get now that the other series has been planned out.

(Speaking of which, one way you can tell that these chapters are written well after the Moon manga is the shot of the fictional manga artists’ 10 heroines – it’s clearly a silhouette of all 10 senshi, complete with the Outers and Chibi-Usa.)

For those who enjoyed the humor in the first volume, there’s some hysterical stuff here. Minako’s speeches to the enemy alone are worth the price. And fans of the best Minako anime episode (and one of the top 5 episodes of Sailor Moon period) will be delighted to here of the chapter where she gives blood – including using the disguise pen to age herself up and lie about her age! There’s a ton of side comments by the author in the dialogue boxes or in narrative form, which is highly cute but can also be a bit messy – I think this manga shows Takeuchi sort of unfettered, and we see a lot of chatter that the Moon manga didn’t have. (Josei manga Codename Sailor V!)

And of course there’s the finale. Minako has spent two volumes crushing on (and then abandoning or getting rejected by) any number of hot guys, and the start of this volume shows the up and coming young actor and possible ally, Phantom Ace! Of course, readers of Sailor Moon will see the word ‘Phantom’ and raise an eyebrow. Not that it’s meant to be a big secret, but surprise, Ace is actually the villain of the piece. His final battle with V involves more property damage than we’ve ever seen before (and V has had a LOT of property damage!), and it’s in the midst of this that she regains her memories of the Moon Kingdom, and her past life as Venus. It’s a radical shift in tone – Minako’s regaining her memories looks horribly painful, and it’s not clear if it’s due to the sudden inrush or simply having to relive her failure to save Princess Serenity.

The most fascinating part of the manga for me is the final pages after Minako has defeated Phantom Ace (or ‘Danburite’, as he is actually known). He’s occasionally told love fortunes with a pack of playing cards in previous chapters, and now he really hits Minako hard with his final one – she will never find love, and will always choose duty over it. Given Venus is the senshi of love, and Minako’s basic vivaciousness, this is quite a blow… or so one might think. I am recalling that this guy also professed to be madly in love with her in their past life. Minako’s issue throughout the 2 volumes has been focus – Artemis can’t get her to take her V duties seriously because she keeps running off after guys. Now she’s basically told, Venus is what you do as well as who you are. You never have to worry about having to make a difficult choice. It’s sort of heartwarming in its callousness, and will also be touched upon towards the end of the Sailor Moon series, where we see that Minako has come to terms with and accepted that being a Senshi and protecting her princess is her highest priority.

And so we come to the end of Sailor V, as Takeuchi briefly ties in with Minako’s appearance in Sailor Moon by implying she’ll be working with the Inspector General to fight crime for a bit (which the other manga noted she did before joining the others.) You don’t have to read Sailor Moon to understand Sailor V, but there are lots of cute references and in-jokes you’ll appreciate if you do – I liked Ami’s appearance towards the end, as if Takeuchi realized she was the only Inner she hadn’t written in yet. But really, Sailor V is much like its heroine, Minako Aino. A bit hyperactive, dizzy, gets off the point a lot, and talks constantly, but is filled with energy and life. I thank Kodansha Comics for picking it up after so many years. And now we can read Minako’s further adventures in future volumes of Sailor Moon.

(Hey, who was their boss anyway? It can’t have been Luna… Queen Serenity’s sentient recording again?)

By Walt Kelly. Released in North America from 1948 to 1950, first published by the New York Star, then Hall Syndicate. This new edition released by Fantagraphics.

Yes, it’s no longer a myth, the book we have been waiting for for four and a half years is finally here. A huge, collected hardcover of the Pogo comic strip, covering its first year and a half of syndication, as well as the early New York Star strips. And even if you have a bunch of old Simon & Schuster Pogo books from the 1950s such as The Pogo Papers, or the 1980s reprints such as The Best of Pogo, this is still a worthy purchase. The strip looks great, the Sundays are in color, and the whole thing reads like the labor of love it is.

As I said before when recommending the purchase of the book, Pogo was one of the first things I ever read. Yes, I suppose there was Dr. Seuss and Richard Scarry in there as well, but I also had copies of We Have Met The Enemy And He Is Us and Bats and the Belles Free that I had found in a used bookstore, and read them until they fell apart. Because Kelly has created a world rather than a comic strip, and one does not so much read it as bathe in it. It took me several days to read this volume, because I wanted to read everything slowly. The dialogue, the pacing, the situations… even when everyone’s running around and crazy events are going on, it’s still not what I would call hectic. This is good old fashioned Southern Okefenokee adventure, written by a man who grew up in my own home state of Connecticut.

For those who are unfamiliar with the strip, it could be described as a talking animals strip if you want to get that simple. Pogo is a possum who lives in the middle of the swamp, and he is also the straight man around whose life his crazier and funnier friends revolve. There’s the impulsive Albert Alligator, the pseudo-intellectual Howland Owl, grumpy yet lovable Porkypine, and the ditzy yet likeable turtle Churchy LaFemme. (Can men be ditzy? Or male turtles?) There’s also a whole pile of ancillary characters, many of whom debut here – Kelly would bring them in and out of the strip as he pleased, but those are the ones I’d consider the core cast.

For the most part, the strip varies between one-shot gag type strips (Kelly loved wordplay, and the book is filled with bad puns, as if Churchy LaFemme’s name alone didn’t warn you) and longer more intricate adventure strips, many of which seem to involve everyone thinking Albert has accidentally eaten someone else (sometimes he has – the beauty of comic strips is that creatures can survive quite a long time after being eaten by an alligator – they can even play cards!). Strangely, Albert is no less sympathetic for this, as he never does this out of malice or hunger, just carelessness. Indeed, one of the earliest satirical strips involves some of the villains setting up a sham trial to prove Albert guilty of eating the cute little Pup Dog, and Albert is clearly meant to get the reader’s sympathy.

For those more familiar with the strip, there is some satirical content here (mostly the arc I just mentioned), but we have not gotten too political just yet. In later volumes Pogo will delve further into the realm of political and social criticism, and indeed by the 1960s you may see why more folks compare it to Doonesbury than, say, Shoe, but here Kelly is taking it easy and building up his strip’s popularity. The villains tend to be as broad as the heroes, with Seminole Sam briefly taking a turn as a carnivore (along with the far more malevolent and nasty Wiley Catt) before Kelly realized that he actually made a far more effective villain as a shyster and small-time crook. What’s more, most of the situations Pogo and company find themselves in are made by the heroes themselves – Albert, Owl and Churchy are all easily led, and can change their minds whenever they please. Sometimes Pogo just finds himself going along with the craziness, trying vainly to put in a good word for sense. And by ‘sometimes’ I mean ‘for the next twenty-four years’.

I’d mentioned Kelly grew up in Connecticut, and indeed the dialect used in the strip is not genuinely Southern so much as ‘Southern once or twice removed, then exaggerated for comic effect’. But it’s amazing to read, and works very well when read aloud (another reason I took so long to read the book). Many critics have taken the time to examine Kelly’s written dialect, and it easily fulfills one of my own pet bugaboos about written speech: it has to sound like someone would actually say it. This is harder for many writers than you might think, but there’s no question that the swamp denizens are engaging in dialogues that are not only funny and engaging but sound real – even if they don’t necessarily sound Southern.

Kelly started to do Sunday color strips a few months after the syndicated debut, and they’ve been collected before, but usually in black and white. These are in color for I believe the first time since they appeared in newspapers. The introduction notes this was the main reason why the book kept getting delayed – cleaning the Sunday strips, and finding ones that could be published, was a major chore. They look fine here, about as good as I think you’re going to get when dealing with 60-year-old comics where the original art is long since lost. While the strips could occasionally be in continuity with the dailies, more often than not the Sunday Pogos had their own continuity from week to week. I was particularly fond of the Fountain of Youth story, which features much of what Pogo does best – immediate misconceptions and overreactions.

Fantagraphics has a nice introduction giving a brief biography of Kelly, and describing many of the struggles he had with Pogo and syndication. There is also a fantastic notes section at the end, which points out historical trivia as well as giving the context for some of the strips. Two of the main villains of the story where Albert is falsely accused are based on newspaper publishers William Randolph Hearst and Robert McCormick, something I would have been totally ignorant of as a child. As the strip got more satirical, we’d see more swamp animals based on real life figures, usually political. We’ll have to wait for Volume 3 for the most famous one, however.

It’s possible that the appeal of Pogo may be lost on folks who are so used to everything that it influenced, be it talking animal comedies or political satires. Doesn’t matter to me, though. This strip is funny, well-drawn, and features a huge mass of likeable characters doing entertaining things. Put it together with Fantagraphics’ excellent presentation, and you have a definite must-buy. I will assume that Volume 2 will be out this fall, and that the wait for future volumes will not be as long as the wait for this one, even if it was totally worth it.

By Carl Barks. Released in North America in 1948 and 1949, first published in various Walt Disney comic books by Western Publishing. This new edition released by Fantagraphics.

It seems rather odd to say this, but I never grew up reading Carl Barks. My comic book experience as a child was pretty much Archie, Asterix and Tintin. I read the occasional Plastic Man as well, but DC and Marvel just held no interest for me. Likewise, though I enjoyed Disney movies and the odd short I saw, the lack of Disney Channel in our house meant I missed out on the desire to get more Donald Duck adventures at any cost. And I’d never quite had enough word of mouth to get the many re-releases of Barks’s material over the years. But Fantagraphics has had some excellent archive material over the years, and when I heard them announce this, even though it wouldn’t technically be published in order, I decided to sit down and figure out why this man is so revered.

I didn’t end up disappointed. This is really fantastic storytelling. Another review of this volume compared it to Tintin, and I think that’s very apt. There’s the adventures in foreign lands, the constant peril, the occasional wacky gags thrown in to alleviate said peril, and of course good old American ingenuity that, thankfully, never verges on jingoism quite as much as Tintin sometimes did. Heck, there’s even some questionable racial caricatures, although again I note that compared to what other artists were doing at the time, Barks was miles ahead. These aren’t cartoon cannibals or witch doctors – even if they’re drawn in a comic based around cartoons.

The volume takes in one year of Barks at his ‘peak’ – 1948 and 1949 – and features four adventure stories of 20-30 pages in length, about nine shorter comedy stories that are 10 pages each; and ends with a series of one-page gag pages. For those who are hardcore about reading in order, the actual publication dates are on the final page, but I didn’t really notice any issues – these aren’t continuity laden strips. The adventure strips are the best of the lot, so it makes sense to pack the front half with them. Lost in the Andes gets the cover and title, and rightly so -it has an epic flavor that the others don’t quite hit, and even manages to be majestic, while still believably starring Donald Duck. The search for square eggs is nicely silly, and manages to merge nicely with the lost world Donald and his nephews find. This is the longest tale in the book, but the pacing never lags.

The other three adventure stories aren’t quite as good, but are still well worth a read. Voodoo Hoodoo was apparently censored in some previous Barks books, and is presented warts and ll here, including its African zombies and witch doctors. (Shouldn’t the zombie be Haitian? Oh well, never mind…) Most of all, it features a thoroughly despicable Uncle Scrooge, who I’m presuming has not yet become a featured player, and who seems to happily wish a fate worse than death on his own nephew. Race to the South Seas also features Scrooge being a jerk, though slightly less malevolent here. I also met Donald’s cousin Gladstone, who appears to have immense good luck but a horrible personality. This helps make Donald more sympathetic than he otherwise is. Lastly is The Golden Christmas Tree, which doesn’t work quite as well, mostly as the story is less realistic, and has a mawkish moral not written by Barks tacked onto the end.

(Regarding the African and South Seas natives: This could be a good gift for children, but you might want to explain how times have changed and discuss the stereotypes of yesteryear, even if Barks is nowhere near the level of Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs.)

The little 10-page stories veer more towards the comedy end of the spectrum, and several of them feature Donald as the hot-tempered impetuous duck we know from the screen, as opposed to the likeable adventurer we’d grown used to before. Even here, though, Donald can surprise us. One of my favorites was a rewrite of the animated short Truant Officer Donald, where Donald’s nephews try to skip school, but find the new truant officer manages to be a match for them. I also enjoyed a story where Donald is plagued by recurring nightmares, and his nephews try to help cure him. This is a classic ‘things snowball out of control’ plot where the absurdity of the ongoing situations makes everything funnier. And for those who want good old classic Disney plots of Donald outsmarting himself or infuriating himself, there’s stories where he gets onto a quiz show and tries to raise a sunken boat on the cheap that should be right up your alley. Lastly, the one-page gag stories are just that – funny. You really don’t ask for anything else when the story’s a page and stars Donald Duck.

I can’t judge the look of the comics against previous editions, but I don’t really have any issues – everything looks clear and sharp. I have heard that Race to the South Seas was mastered from original art for the first time in decades, so I imagine those on the fence might be interested in that. The book also has a big introduction giving a history of Carl Barks, and short essays at the back on each of the ‘main’ stories, i.e. the adventures and the 10 page comedy shorts. These essays vary wildly, with the best providing useful information and context, and the worst sounding like they were lifted straight from the densest section of the Comics Journal’s prose. Which, given this is a Fantagraphics release, shouldn’t be too surprising. :)

I picked this up thinking it’d be a good chance to see if I liked Carl Barks and what the fuss was all about. Well, now I get it – and I’m hooked. The second volume, out in May, apparently will focus on the years 1952-1953, and be more of an Uncle Scrooge edition. Which is fine, he needs to win me over after his horrible behavior here. But overall, this is well worth the purchase for any fan of classic comics.

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

(There are spoilers for this volume in the review, please be aware.)

The first thing I noticed about the new volume of Sailor Moon, which contains half of the original Vol. 2 and half of 3, was how nicely it bookended itself. The volume opens with a dazed Usagi, waking up in Mamoru’s apartment, stunned to find out that he’s really Tuxedo Mask. And some two hundred and forty pages later, we end with the menacing cliffhanger of Usagi staring stunned at the same Mamoru, eyes now dark and with a menacing sneer on his face. Both of these things were highly predictable, but Takeuchi has a way of taking the most cliched plots and making them fascinating anyway.

Of course, in between those two set pieces, there’s a lot of stuff going on. First off, we get the arrival of our fifth Senshi. Takeuchi was not relying on her readers having read Code Name: Sailor V, so Minako gets introduced as if we’re meeting her for the first time. Which is a good thing, as Sailor V readers must have been confused by this serious, no-nonsense girl they thought they knew as a hyperactive ditz. (Remember, Sailor V was still less than halfway done at this point – the serious backstory for Minako was done retroactively after Sailor Moon ended.) In this case, I think Takeuchi realizes that the story is at a point where she needs Minako to be the experienced leader, rather than the genki flake. (That will come later, though never as much as the anime.)

So Minako is here to be the Senshi with long experience in fighting evil. The setup with her pretending to be the Princess is actually very well-thought out and sensible (I smell Artemis’s hand behind it), and even once the Princess’s true identity is revealed, note that it’s Venus who gets to be King Arthur and pull the huge sword out of the stone. (This does lead to the one ‘Mina-chan’ moment of the manga, where she drops the sword in the middle of Ami’s swank apartment complex lobby.) Unfortunately, this is a plot rather than character based manga series at this point, so Ami, Rei and Makoto get far less to do this time around except exposit. Though Makoto does manage to get briefly controlled by the enemy – it’s far more realistically done than Mamoru, and thus more disturbing.

There’s also a lot of destiny in this volume, most of it involving Usagi. A lot of this volume and the next is concerned with the past repeating itself – both the Senshi and the villains are worried about that, for different reasons – and how much fate controls our lives. There’s definitely a Romeo and Juliet vibe to the past life of Serenity and Endymion, though it’s unclear why their love is forbidden except that they come from different worlds. (Also, note Endymion being the leader of Earth – which helps explain why there is no Sailor Earth in this series, only in 70,000 fanfics on the Internet.) Seeing Endymion killed by the forces of evil is not particularly surprising, but seeing Princess Serenity stab herself with a giant broadsword IS. Takeuchi has never been shy about showing us blood and horror (witness Usagi’s dream of Mamoru’s melting skull, and Luna later on getting thrown so hard against a wall she almost bleeds to death). You can see why folks would like to fight Destiny repeating itself.

There’s also a lot here about the corrupting power of evil, something we’ll see time and time again in this series. Metallia is shown as a gray amorphous blob of pure nasty, and almost all the villains taking human form are shown to be possessed or controlled in some way, be it Beryl (who went on an archaeological search for Metallia’s seal, so was admittedly asking for it) to the four male Generals (who, like our heroes, appeared to have been reborn on Earth, but sadly were abducted and turned before they really knew what was going on.) Kunzite almost manages to throw off the spell for a bit – it’s clear that he’s dedicated to Mamoru over Beryl, at least till she pours the evil back into him – but for the most part it’s meant as tragedy, showing us the power and ambition that evil can command. (Note Beryl’s desire to take power for herself – and overthrow Metallia. Villains who turn against their masters is another thing you’ll see a lot of in this series, even if it doesn’t amount to much here.)

Kodansha’s presentation is pretty good. I noticed a typo or two, but for the most part the translation is very smooth. It’s not adapted as much as Tokyopop’s was, which works in some ways and not in others, but that is the nature of such things. Usako and Mamo-chan are both used here, with an endnote showing how they derived from the original names. This translation also keeps Takeuchi’s habit of having Usagi’s name represented by a bunny drawing – which can take some getting used to, I will admit. I wish the extras in the back had been translated – yes, they’re in teeny weeny script, and translating writer scrawl is always hard, but still. I also heard there are 4 ‘mini-comics’ that were left out of this edition. I checked to see what they were, and they all seem to be variations on Takeuchi saying ‘oh my god my old art is so bad’ and ‘deadlines are HAAAAARD’ and the like. So they would have been nice to see, but are not remotely essential.

Honestly, by the end of this volume I was feeling wrung out. There’s so much drama and emotion going on, in such a small amount of pages – remember, the anime took around 36-37 episodes to get to this point in the manga. Volume 3 will see the wrap-up of the first arc, and it should be a doozy. Let’s hope that destiny can be fought – well, except the destiny of true love conquering all, of course. That can stay.

By Nagaru Tanigawa and Puyo. Released in Japan as “Suzumiya Haruhi-chan no Yuutsu” by Kadokawa Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Shonen Ace. Released in North America by Yen Press.

Yes, it still has a narrow audience. Yes, many of its punchlines are Osaka-style, i.e. someone says something dumb and the straight man shouts “Are you kidding?”. And yes, it’s still cutesy-wootsy and superdeformed a good deal of the time (though honestly, less so than in prior volumes). And yet I still love this series as it honestly makes me laugh a lot.

I’ll see if I can divide this review of Vol. 4 into 3 parts: the silly, the fanservicey, and the character development (which remains surprisingly large for a gag manga based on something else). For those looking for pure silly comedy, the manga has you covered. Asakura and Kimidori-san solve a murder in their own adorable way; Haruhi invents what must be the world’s only game of Extreme Othello, combining it with badminton to lethal effect; and best of all, Koizumi attempts to train the others to prepare for Haruhi during April Fools’ Day by having Mori dress up as Haruhi and say things she would normally say… which in the end appears just to be an excuse to humiliate and embarrass Mori. But in the most adorable way!

The fanservice chapters are not ashamed to be completely pandering, either. There’s nothing explicit – this is a manga that anyone could read, really – but the blatant school tag game with all the girls in swimsuits even lampshades it by having the male characters doing their own, unseen tag game elsewhere, while we ogle Haruhi, Mikuru and company in swimsuits. And at the end, Haruhi tries to come up with an exercise routine that gets far too sexy far too fast, going so far that even she ramps herself back after revealing a bit too much of her internal monologue out loud. Naturally, these fanservice shots are NOT superdeformed, as the whole point is to look at the fine female form.

Then there’s the Kyon and Haruhi relationship, which is very well handled in the two chapters it gets a focus. On one, Koizumi has rigged a contest so that he gets to pick what the losers do, and gets Yuki to rig it further so that Kyon and Haruhi are the losers. You can see where this is going; he forces them on a date, complete with his own pre-written script. The fun here is seeing Kyon and Haruhi’s punch-drunk reactions at having to say all this cornball romantic dialogue, and seeing the occasional glimpse of their real feelings almost derail things “Don’t go off the script, jerk!” is positively ADORABLE here, especially with the huge blush. Sadly, there’s one line they won’t cross, even if it’s for a bet. On a fluffier note, we get a rewrite of Live Alive where Kyon and Haruhi, both bored, decide to wanter the culture festival together – but they are not a couple.

Lastly, I was highly amused by the chapter where Nagato got her roommates drunk on amazake (aliens have no alcohol tolerance) and we discover the amazing effects that a hangover can have on Asakura. It is incredibly strange seeing her like that, and I have to wonder if it might have been a shout-out to the author’s other Haruhi spinoff, The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki. Best line of the volume comes here (trying not to spoil), from Yuki: “This must be what a parent feels like when their child surpasses them… the bittersweet sadness of parenthood…”

Only buy this if you like Haruhi. But if you do, it’s a hoot. And miles better than the ‘official’ manga is.