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Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

QQ Sweeper

My Week in Manga: October 2-October 8, 2017

October 9, 2017 by Ash Brown

My News and Reviews

Last week at Experiments in Manga I announced the winner of the Assassin’s Creed manga giveaway. The post also includes a list of manga published in English that feature pirates of various types, including historical pirates, fantasy pirates, space pirates, and others. Then New York Comic Con (which is still going on) and Yaoi Con were held last week as well. I didn’t attend either event, but there were some announcements made by Kodansha Comics, Viz Media, and SuBLime Manga (which is technically Viz Media, too). Kodansha revealed plans to release Kenji Inoue and Kimitake Yoshioka’s Grand Blue Dreaming, Mitsurou Kubo’s Again!!, and Akiko Higashimura’s Tokyo Tarareba Girls in print. Among other things, Viz will be adding Hidenori Kusaka and Satoshi Yamamoto’s Pokémon Sun & Moon and Tenya Yabuno’s Pokémon Horizon: Sun & Moon and will be re-releasing Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys and 21st Century Boys in a hardcover edition in addition to speeding up the release of Kōhei Horikoshi’s My Hero Academia. SuBLime announced a few new digital titles, but Ranmaru Zariya’s Coyote and Ogeretsu Tanaka’s Escape Journey will receive print runs, too.

Quick Takes

Aho-Girl, Volume 1Aho-Girl, Volume 1 by Hiroyuki. I only realized it after I finished the first volume of Ah0-Girl, but I’ve actually read another of Hiroyuki’s four-panel manga, Dojin Work, which was never released in its entirety in English. It’s been a long while since I’ve read Dojin Work, but I get the sense that in general I prefer that earlier series over this more recent one. Aho-Girl, while it did legitimately make me laugh on multiple occasions, tends to rub me the wrong way and I personally could have done without all of the sexual harassment being used as the basis for comedy. The dirty jokes I don’t particularly mind, though. As defined by first volume’s cover, “aho-girl” is Japanese for a clueless girl. Yoshiko Hanabatake, the series’ titular character, is indeed an astonishingly dense airhead. Oh, and she really, really likes bananas. Other major characters in the first volume of the manga include Akuru Akutsu, her long-suffering next door neighbor and supposed childhood friend (who doesn’t seem to have many friends in part due to his own unfortunate personality), her mother Yoshie, who would like nothing more than to see the two of the together, and Sayaka Sumino, a genuinely kind girl, classmate, and friend. As may safely be assumed, most of the humor of Aho-Girl revolves around Yoshiko’s sheer stupidity, for better and for worse.

Appleseed AlphaAppleseed Alpha by Iou Kuroda. An adaptation of sorts of the Appleseed Alpha anime, which itself is a spinoff of sorts of Masamune Shirow’s Appleseed manga, Kuroda’s Appleseed Alpha manga forms a prequel to the original story. Although to be completely honest, I’m not entirely sure exactly how the Appleseed Alpha fits into the larger Appleseed franchise since I’m not familiar with any of the other manga or anime. What drew me to the Appleseed Alpha manga was Kuroda’s involvement. It’s been a few years since I’ve read it, but I remember enjoying Kuroda’s alternative manga Sexy Voice and Robo, so I was glad to see more of the creator’s work with its distinctive illustration style released. Kuroda’s Appleseed Alpha was longer than I originally thought it was–Kodansha Comics’ hardcover edition is in fact an omnibus collecting the entire two-volume series, but somehow manages to look much shorter than it actually is. Appleseed Alpha is not a quick read although the plot and action moves at a fairly steady pace. The story follows Deunan, a very competent ex-SWAT officer, and her combat cyborg boyfriend Briareos as the couple makes their way through a dystopic cyberpunk Western version of the United States. Previous knowledge of Appleseed is not needed to enjoy Kuroda’s somewhat quirky contribution.

QQ Sweeper, Volume 1QQ Sweeper, Volumes 1-3 by Kyousuke Motomi. I greatly enjoyed Motomi’s earlier manga series Dengeki Daisy, so I was looking forward to giving another of the creator’s series a try, which is what ultimately led me to QQ Sweeper. (A few of the characters from Dengeki Daisy actually happen to make quick cameo appearances in the series, too.) Fumi’s dream in life is to find a prince charming to sweep her off her feet. Instead, she finds Kyutaro who has a fixation on literally sweeping. He has a pretty good reason for it, though. Kyutaro and his family are responsible for ridding the local area of dangerous infestations of malicious thoughts and psychological torment which manifest as bugs and physical cleanliness can go far to help with spiritual cleanliness. Of course, sometimes the bugs really are just bugs. For as seemingly silly and charmingly goofy as QQ Sweeper can often be–it can essentially be summed up as a supernatural cleaning manga–the series quickly becomes surprisingly dark. QQ Sweeper ends somewhat suddenly with the third volume and doesn’t really provide much of a satisfying conclusion, but fortunately the sequel series Queen’s Quality has been licensed as well. The series’ humor and seriousness occasionally seems a little off-balance, but I really liked QQ Sweeper and certainly plan on continuing with the story.

Filed Under: FEATURES, My Week in Manga Tagged With: Aho-Girl, Appleseed, Hiroyuki, Iou Kuroda, Kyousuke Motomi, manga, QQ Sweeper

QQ Sweeper Vol. 1

October 13, 2015 by Anna N

QQ Sweeper Volume 1 by Kyousuke Motomi

I’m generally excited for any debut series in the Shojo Beat line, but I was particularly interested in reading the first volume of QQ Sweeper because I enjoyed Dengeki Daisy so much. Motomi’s slightly offbeat and cynical sense of humor makes her series stand out, and I was curious to see how the paranormal and cleaning would come together in this title.

Motomi does cranky heroes well, so I thought the male lead of the series was quite promising. Kyutaro Horikita is a member of the beautification committee at his school, and he’s introduced in the first chapter as a bit of a loner who is obsessed with cleaning. He comes across a girl sleeping in an abandoned room in his school. Fumi Nishioka is a new transfer student who is homeless, trying to hide evidence of how poor she is, and on a mission to become a real life Cinderella by snagging a rich guy. This doesn’t sound like the most flattering character description, but Motomi also is able to easily create sympathetic yet quirky heroines. Motomi’s slightly offbeat humor is on display in the first few panels, when Kyutaro seems to rely on threatening people with cucumbers a bit too much, and Fumi enters into a dangerous fugue state when she’s assessing the material possessions of a male student/mark.

I don’t even find shoujo cliches all that annoying when Motomi is executing them. In very quick order, Fumi finds herself interviewing for and getting a position as housekeeper for her school principal, who just happens to be Kyutaro’s older brother. Fumi quickly discovers that Kyutaro’s obsession with cleaning extends to cleansing the spiritual plane, and she also has the ability to help him. Motomi packs a great deal of plot and character development into this single volume, setting up the relationships between the characters, and establishing the background for the supernatural aspects of the manga. This is a very solid addition to the Shojo Beat lineup, and I’m very much looking forward to Motomi’s slightly twisted take on the supernatural romance genre in future volumes.

qqsweeper1

Filed Under: REVIEWS Tagged With: QQ Sweeper, shojo beat, shoujo, viz media

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