sabikui bisco

By Shinji Cobkubo and K Akagishi. Released in Japan by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jake Humphrey.

OK, this is starting to irritate me. This is not the first time we’ve had a volume of Bisco that felt like the final volume except that there are clearly more coming, but it’s the first time I felt angry about it, because this really was a fantastic ending. It wrapped up most of the plots we’d had so far, it featured an epilogue that screamed “this is it, I have finished the series”, and it’s also one of the best books in the series. Sadly, after that ending you get the usual “movie trailer” preview that says Book 9 will be BISCOOOO… IN… SPAAAACCCEEE!. Now, this could be quite good, and I’ll definitely be reading it. But I’m getting kinda tired of this author wrapping everything up and then just continuing to roll along. Sometimes series can just END, y’know. In any case, back to Book 8 itself. If you’ve been annoyed by the heterosexuality in this book, particularly Bisco and Pawoo having a kid, boy do I have good news for you. It’s mpreg time, baby!

A mysterious ark, led by someone who looks and acts suspiciously like a United States President (not a specific one, honest, just… in general) is sucking up valuable specimens around the world, which ends up including most of our cast. Meanwhile, Milo has been trying to hide from Bisco that he’s been having mysterious morning sickness. That’s right, when they merged their powers earlier, it led to a magical daughter with Milo as the “mother” and Bisco as the “father”, who they name Sugar. Sugar rapidly grows to be a child from hell, especially when Milo and Bisco are taken in by the ark and made into specimens. Fortunately, she has a cat guardian to help… except she’s not really listening to them. More fortunately, Maria, Bisco’s mother, has shown up to help out… wait, WHAT?!? Wasn’t she dead? And is she really helping?

Maria is easily the best addition to this book, and she’s exactly what you’d imagine Bisco’s mother to be like. Her reasons for faking her death are… well, understandable is the wrong word, but they make sense for the character. I also really enjoyed her scenes with Pawoo, who still doesn’t get a lot to do here, but gets a lot more to do than she has in the last few Bisco books. This includes giving birth, which surprised me. The cover art made me think we’d get a time skip, but no, Sugar just grows up almost immediately. Then I thought we’d get one near the end, as Pawoo was only a couple months pregnant…but we live in magical mushroom country, and we’re also here to fight God, so babies need to be born when it suits them. I also really enjoyed the epilogue, which I don’t want to spoil too much, but I feel may have drawn from the author’s own experience… and also reminds us that, no matter how big a fantasy this is every time, it’s still Japan, not an isekai.

So yeah. Space Bisco. FINE, I guess. In the meantime, this was fantastic, and a great ending to the series.

By Shinji Cobkubo and K Akagishi. Released in Japan by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jake Humphrey.

I had wondered in previous reviews why Sabikui Bisco wasn’t simply in Shonen Jump, given its sensibilities, its dialogue, and its homoeroticism, but I think after this volume I’ve figured it out. Jump is a title where, if the author said “hey, I’ve decided that for the next 26 weeks I want this series to be a samurai drama starring a bunch of cats”, editorial would say, “No, you will not be doing that”. But this isn’t a Jump manga, it’s a light novel series, and the sky’s the limit. So we not only get a samurai drama starring cats, but it is as ridiculously overblown as everything else in Bisco. That said, fear not, because despite the samurai cats, this absolutely feels like a Sabikui Bisco title, it has some hilarious and fantastic dialogue, and its homoeroticism is higher than ever, despite, as always, a strong finish for heteronormativity. The two will simply have to exist. It’s a good thing they’re related.

Bisco is not having a good time at the start of this book. He’s dragged away from a rakugo performance he was enjoying by Pawoo, who did not appreciate that the performance was in fact attacking her. Despite being, supposedly, in wedded bliss, he’s feeling bored and full of wanderlust. And, oh yes, everyone suddenly starts growing cat ears and tails and behaving like cats. Including, of course, Pawoo ad Tirol. The answer lies in the underground nation of Byoma, which is inhabited by intelligent cats, who were affected by the disaster that led to the world of Sabikui Bisco just like everyone else. Their world and Bisco’s are now connected thanks to that reality-bending arrow he and Milo used last time, so they’ve got to go fix it… assuming that they can avoid becoming cats themselves!

This is a particularly hilarious volume, with a lot of choice lines I don’t want to spoil, and features a lot of cat-related puns and cool action scenes. But it does have a serious core at its heart, one that ties the cat samurai stuff in with Bisco’s ongoing plot. The world of Byoma is suffering because, years ago, a samurai and his true love could not separate love and duty, and everything went to hell as a result. Now she is back, ready to destroy the world and remake it in her own image (well, in the image of monster mushrooms, because this is Sabikui Bisco, and everything is mushrooms, let’s face it). But this conflict, and also seeing it literally from the villainess’ point of view (which leads to the funniest line in the book) allows Bisco to resolve his own angst. He’s been trying to be understanding to Pawoo, who is governor and has a lot of responsibility. That’s why he’s not wandering around with Milo being slightly gay. Only… are those his only two choices?

It remains to be seen whether this series, which is very fond of literally hurling Pawoo away from the book for the majority of the pages, will feature her heavily in the next volume. Till then, this was a hell of a lot of fun.

By Shinji Cobkubo and K Akagishi. Released in Japan by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jake Humphrey.

You know, I appreciate its use as a plot twist or a way to get the characters to do something they would not normally do, but as I was reading this 6th volume of Sabikui Bisco, I began to think that this series goes to the “I am mind controlled” well a few too many times. Half the cast in this book is, at one time or another mind controlled, including Pawoo, who spends nearly the entire volume at the beck and call of the villain. It can be a tad predictable. That said, I can’t really talk about just mind control. Sabikui Bisco is a series that overdoes everything and dares the reader to object. This volume has reality-warping powers pulled out of nowhere, to the point where everyone remarks on this. It brings back every single cast member of the last five books to do a cameo. It has Milo veer so far into the yandere stereotype that I’m comfortable using the term. The book is just A LOT.

Kurokawa, the villain of the first book, is back. She’s in a female body now, she’s a film director, and she’s taken over all of Japan. If you’re thinking that makes no sense, clearly you have not read the other volumes of this series. Bisco and Milo are forced into action by the evil director, who wants to use Bisco’s attempts to stop her as the plot of her latest film. To do this, she has her assistant director/muscle (Pawoo, mind-controlled as I noted before), as well as any number of minions wearing rabbit masks, who she will happily kill if they don’t get her film trivia correct. As the book goes on, and Bisco keeps pulling out ludicrous solutions to Kurokawa’s even more ludicrous problems, I am once again left with the odd dilemma: how do I sum up the plot in this second paragraph if the book doesn’t have one?

This may make it sound like I did not like the book, which is not true. I actually think it’s the best book since the first. The series has always had an element of “action movie” to it, which normally feels like a Shonen Jump series but here is far more like a Western action film, complete with expensive sequences and CGI. The author now trusts the reader to not particularly care that none of this makes a lick of sense, or that Bisco can defeat the bad guy if everyone just claps for Tinkerbell (the second time I have written that this week). And, as with previous volumes, I am highly amused at the contrast between every single woman in the series falling for Bisco, and he and Pawoo still being married, with the fact that he and Milo are clearly destined for each other and the gayest things ever. The whole book is ridiculous.

But that’s why we read this. I don’t need self-examination from Bisco, even when he goes through genuine tragedy. Just keep pulling out more arrows.

By Shinji Cobkubo and K Akagishi. Released in Japan by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jake Humphrey.

Sabikui Bisco tends to coast along on three elements. The first is what I would call “high concept”, coming up with fantastical ideas, people or places that make the jaw drop when they’re described. The second is the wall-to-wall action sequences that make up the bulk of the book. And the third is Bisco and Milo getting closer and closer to just making out, even as each book seems to add a new girl to fall in love with Bisco and sigh as she watches he and Milo declare themselves to be soulmates. The good news is that this fifth volume has all of those things in abundance. The bad news is that it does tend to lean a bit too much on the action scenes this time around. Bisco is not really someone who ever slows down or stops to smell the roses, but reading this book is like watching an action movie that’s all the last 15 minutes. It can be utterly exhausting.

After the events of the last book, Shishi is now apparently evil, and Bisco is very definitely a 10-year-old. As he and Milo try to catch up with her so that he can do something about that, they end up on Hokkaido… which it turns out is basically a giant floating space whale. That was not in any of the guidebooks! Unfortunately, Shishi got there first, and is trying to take over the island with camellia flowers… which have already taken over the prison wardens from the previous book. Fortunately, they have allies in the native peoples of Hokkaido, which include (yes, try to contain your surprise) another teenage girl who thinks Milo is pretty hot. She’s not into Bisco, though, as he’s just a kid. Will they be able to stop the island being used for a mass terrorist event? And just how evil *is* Shishi anyway?

The book makes an effort to try to keep it ambiguous about Shishi’s motivations, saying that it wasn’t just her being possessed by an evil flower but her own desires that led to her murdering her dad. But given that this motivational speech is coming FROM the evil flower, it’s a bit hard to take this as anything more than “sorry, bro, I was possessed”. Indeed, it’s not the only possession of the book, as the climax of the volume shows that there is no character the series will not bring back to make another appearance. Speaking of which, Pawoo is kept far away from her husband, but Tirol is around to be the absolute worst again, and Amli also shows up to try to save her god/crush delete where applicable. This is a series that thrives on barely controlled chaos, so it works, but eventually the “controlled” part is going to be lost, I suspect.

Still, overall I was less grumpy about this book, despite it basically just being Bisco and Milo screaming for 260 pages. I’ll keep going.

By Shinji Cobkubo and K Akagishi. Released in Japan by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jake Humphrey.

This review really cannot happen without spoiling the end of the book, so beware if you do not want to be spoiled, though I will try not to exactly spoil. Throughout most of this volume, this has the feel of a “makework” volume in the series, as events happen but it lacks the striking imagery of previous books, which was one of the major reasons we read it. It also is not as gay, which is the other reason we read it, mostly as Bisco and Milo spend most of the book separated from each other, and there’s only one or two moments, such as brief princess carry, or Milo staring in what is clearly jealousy at one point, that makes you realize the writer knows what they’re doing. But it’s all right. It’s got some really cool fight scenes, Bisco is funny at times, we have a new waif who needs to be guided/rescued, and we get a little more development of the post-apocalyptic works with a slave race. OK, that last part is questionable.

We open with a teenager escaping from what appears to be a maximum security prison, only to be caught almost immediately, and their rescue/medical treatment by Bisco and Milo, and we then backtrack to see why they’re in a prison in the first place. They arrive at what is supposed to be a mushroom keeper’s village only to find it nearly deserted, covered in sakura flowers. The tribe have been arrested and thrown into a maximum security prison by the warden, who is very big on justice in a “Shonen Cop Gone Bad” sort of way. Shishi is part of a tribe called the Benibishi, an artificially engineered plant-based species designed as slaves. All the Benibishi are ALSO in the prison, and Shishi’s father, their King, is due to be executed. Now Bisco and Milo have to get into the prison and try to resolve things… except that they’re promptly arrested and thrown in there anyway.

Starting off with the one really great part of the book. The third volume ended, to the surprise of most readers, with Pawoo marrying Bisco, and she’s come along in this book as well. Then, a third of the way through the book, the prison warden grabs her and simply throws her out of the book and back to her home town. We never see her again. It’s jaw-droppingly funny given the novels’ BL tendencies. Well, that’s the good out of the way. Shishi is briefly presented as trans, but it’s unclear if that’s gender-based or just has to do with the idea of “prince”, and the book uses female pronouns for Shishi throughout. The Benibishi all are jailed because there is a worry that they will go mad with revenge and try to kill those who wronged them. Their plant nature means they run the risk of getting caught up in murderous rage, and the King warns Bisco and Milo about it, so they help his daughter calm down and not choose violence.

And then comes the ending, which is like the author giving you a nice warm hug and then stabbing you in the back. Now, I will grant you there’s certainly a plot for Book 5 now, and I wonder if the only reason this happened is the author ran out of things to do in this series. But man, Shishi’s actions in the last three pages or so leave SUCH a bad taste in my mouth that I can’t really recommend this anymore. A merely okay volume of the series till the ending brings it down to bad.

By Shinji Cobkubo and K Akagishi. Released in Japan by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jake Humphrey.

Sabikui Bisco, as I noted on Twitter while reading this volume, bases itself around two aesthetics: “cool” and “gay”. Both of these aesthetics are present and correct in this third volume, which wraps up the story arc the author had in mind on creation, though it’s clear there are more volumes coming. Now, it may come as a surprise that I am saying that this volume of Sabikui Bisco is really gay, given that, over the course of the book, Bisco marries a woman and the book ends with the two of them going off on their honeymoon. And yes, that does happen. But it’s irrelevant. Bisco and Milo is still THE pairing in this book, and even the flashbacks to the memories of the villain falling in love with another woman have Bisco and Milo laid over the two of them. It’s ridiculous, but that’s part of this series’ charm. It runs on ridiculousness. Ah, I suppose that’s a third aesthetic.

We open with our heroes celebrating, complete with quasi-religious ceremonies. Unfortunately, we then get the arrival of this book’s Big Bad, Apollo. He’s determined to return Japan to the way it was in 2028, and to do so he has particles that will convert anything – building, animals, people – into cities. Now some folks are belching out tiny buildings, telephone poles and power lines. To make matters worse… or possibly better… Tirol ends up being possessed by an an aspect of the villain who is on our heroes’ side, and tries to explain what’s going on. What follows is a series of extended battles against the encroaching citification of everything. But in order to get to that point, as I said above, Bisco and Pawoo are going to have to get married. Because the villain runs on etiquette, and it would be rude to interrupt a wedding procession, even if it’s heading off to defeat you.

Again, this book runs on cool as much as gay, and the cool in this book is very cool. The sheer imagery of the cities popping out all over people is stunning, and it will be amazing if it’s ever animated. That said, there are a few issues I had with this book. About 2/3 of the way through, most of the major characters except for Milo and Bisco get killed off one by one, and I’ve read enough shonen manga to know that there was inevitably going to be a resurrection at some point. Not to spoil, but yep. Sabikui Bisco is a shonen manga in light novel form, and that sometimes means it has the bad aspects of shonen manga as well. And the fact that this book runs almost entirely on aesthetic means that there’s not an awful lot of depth to it. We are never really going to see a different, more shaded side to Bisco or Milo. They’re who they are. And while I was asking for more Tirol in future books, “possessed the entire time” was not what I meant.

Still, this book doesn’t really need to be good in the way other light novels need to be, it needs to be good in the way that One Piece or Fairy Tail are good. In that respect it passes with flying colors.

By Shinji Cobkubo and K Akagishi. Released in Japan by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jake Humphrey.

Last time I had asked myself how the first volume, which was excellent but felt very much complete in one volume, would become a long-running series. The answer, at least judging from this second volume, is to do more of the same. More mushrooms, more relationships that end up in betrayal and then reverse betrayal, more of Bisco and Milo being as gay as possible, and more love interests who could also function as family who are there to reassure the macho Dengeki Bunko reader that it doesn’t have to be TOO gay if they don’t want. Fortunately for all concerned, there’s one other thing which is the same as last volume: it’s just as good. This is a rollicking action piece, with lots of violence, some death, and a lot of fun dialogue. Plus it gets a move on faster than the first volume. Of course, there’s also the problem that Bisco and Milo accidentally release the man who will become the book’s main villain, but let’s face it, he was gonna get out of there soon anyway.

Now that Bisco is both a wanted criminal and very famous, he not only has to watch out as he and Mlo travel the land, but he also has to deal with a score of two-bit hoodlums pretending to be him in order to shake down others. While dealing with one of these idiots, they end up headed towards the Six Towers of Izumo, where they hope to find an answer to Bisco’s immortality. What they do end up finding is the old man who they rescued from the earlier two-bit hoods has literally cut out Bisco’s stomach, because liver and lights turns out to be a lot more religious and magical in this particular city. Teaming up with Raskeni, a grim but determined doctor, as well as her apprentice, teenage Amli, they try to figure out how to stop Kelshinka, get Bisco’s stomach back, and also perhaps stop the entire city from turning into a tower of death and destruction.

The best part of the book is probably Amli, who is a bundle of sunshine and joy, but who also has a bit of a tragic core that comes out more and more as we get further into the book. She also fills the role that Pawoo played in the first book, which is to say she gets a massive crush on Bisco, though she’s not sure if she wants him as a big brother or as a romantic partner. That said, she has a ways to go to get to the level of Milo, whose love for Bisco, and vice versa, is becoming a literal religious experience. If you told me that this author read Reborn, Gintama, Kuroko’s Basketball, and no other Jump manga, I would not be the least bit surprised. Oh yes, and there are an awful lot of fights, mostly involving mushrooms, and an awful lot of death and gore, also mostly involving mushrooms. It can get very dark. But fear not, it’s Shonen Jump. Sort of.

If you wanted exactly what the first book did, only more of it, great news. This series does not disappoint.

By Shinji Cobkubo and K Akagishi. Released in Japan by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jake Humphrey.

I admit that I was a little wary of this title. It got a HUGE amount of buzz when it first came out and when it was first licensed, which is all very well and good, but the last two times that happened it was The Detective Is Already Dead (which I bounced off of hard) and Osamake (which people stopped demanding the license of once they actually knew the plot). Not to mention that, let’s face it, this does not feel like a Dengeki Bunko light novel, it feels like a shonen manga. Even after I finished the book, I wanted to see what Jump or Magazine title it was novelizing. But no, it’s a real live light novel. It’s just loud, and boisterous, and action-packed, and stars two guys who feel like they could definitely be popular Shonen Jump characters. And, of course, there is one other reason why it reminded me of some of the more popular titles like, say, Reborn or Haikyu!: the two male leads are about as gay as you can possibly be without actually saying it.

Sometime in the future, and try not to be too shocked by this, a huge disaster has leveled Tokyo and left the other prefectures around it in an arid, desert state. What’s worse, people can get infected with rust, which spreads and eventually kills. Rumor has it this is all caused by the Mushroom Keepers, who have control over mushrooms and have gone underground after being accused of destroying the world. Our hero, Bisco, insists that in fact the mushrooms are what can save people! Now he must team up with a naive yet determined panda… erm, doctor named Milo (there’s a big cookie naming theme going on here, in case you didn’t get it) and try to get a cure for the rust before it kills off Bisco’s old mentor and Milo’s sister. This is not being helped by the many people trying to kill Bisco… including Milo’s sister.

This is definitely one of those “gets better as it goes along” books. It starts slow, and I tweeted after about a third of it that I thought it was trying too hard. But around about the time when the pink-haired mercenary who’s also been following them around spouts off every single cliched line in the world in one paragraph, I began to feel its vibe, and the last half flies along. It’s helped by its two leads. Milo bonds with Bisco immediately, and though Bisco takes longer to get used to Milo’s concentrated niceness, by about halfway in they’re both sacrificing their lives for the other. Milo even literally confesses “I love you” to Bisco. I suspect it may have made the editors uncomfortable, as Milo will occasionally try to tell Bisco how hot his sister is and how big her breasts are. It would be sad if it weren’t so funny – the tacked-on feel of it makes it hilarious.

There is one other big problem with this book – it’s a perfect one-shot. Which is an issue, as there’s currently 8 volumes and counting. Contest winner, I expect. In any case, that’s for future Sean to worry about – this volume, for once, actually deserves its hype.