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Rasetsu, Vol. 1

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rasetsu_coverRasetsu is a popcorn movie in manga form, a tasty mix of suspense, humor, and sexual tension with a sprinkling of supernatural elements. Though billed as a sequel to Yurara, Chika Shiomi’s five-volume series about a trio of high school students who see dead people, Rasetsu works equally well on its own terms, providing just enough background to bring newcomers up to speed without testing the patience of folks already familiar with the series’ protagonist, Yako Hoshino.

The new series catches up with Yako about eight years after the events in Yurara. Now a graduate of a prestigious university, Yako works in a library that has an unusual problem: one of its books is haunted by the spirit of its original owner, and is siphoning demonic energy from the other titles in the library’s collection. Though Yako possesses some ghost-busting powers of his own, he can’t quite exorcise the demon, so his boss dispatches him to the Hiichiro Amakwa Agency to enlist professional help. There, Yako finds a comely, if eccentric, crew of mediums: Kuryu, the kotodama specialist and resident clothes horse; Amakwa, the agency’s owner and psychic-in-chief; and Rasetsu, a smart-mouthed eighteen-year-old who bears a striking resemblance to Yako’s old flame Yurara. Through a plot contrivance that’s both amusing and ridiculous, Yako loses his gig at the library and joins the Amakawa Agency.

Enlivening the series’ demon-of-the-week plotting is the budding relationship between Yako and Rasetsu. Rasetsu, we learn, was attacked by a malicious spirit when she was fifteen. That spirit left a rose-shaped mark on her chest and vowed to return on her twentieth birthday to make her “his,” a reclamation with deadly consequences for Rasetsu. There’s an out, however: Rasetsu need only find true love before she turns twenty, a solution that’s heretofore proven elusive thanks to her abrasive personality and uncouth eating habits. It’s too early to tell if Yako will save Rasetsu from her fate, though it certainly wouldn’t be unexpected, given the strong undercurrent of sexual attraction that informs their bickering.

Of all Shiomi’s licensed works, Rasetsu boasts the best art and most accomplished storytelling. That’s hardly a surprise, given the story’s vintage; Rasetsu began serialization in Bessatsu Hana to Yume in 2006, whereas Shiomi’s other licensed titles — Canon, Night of the Beasts, Queen of Ragtonia — represent an earlier stage in her development. Though I’m partial to her High Baroque style, characterized by big shoulder pads, big hair, and unnecessarily elaborate outfits, Rasetsu has a cleaner, more contemporary feel than Canon or Night of the Beasts. The character designs are more refined, and the costumes, though stylish, no longer dominate the composition.

Shiomi’s narrative command is similarly improved. Gone are the creaky, expository passages found in Canon and Night of the Beasts, in which characters explain key plot points in excruciating detail. Instead, Shiomi shows rather than tells, using body language and wordless panels to fill us in on Rasetsu’s backstory.

Though Rasetsu covers some well-worn ground, Shiomi’s polished art and expert pacing make this series perfect summer reading, blending the unabashed romanticism of The Ghost Whisperer with the supernatural silliness of Ghostbusters to good effect. Highy recommended.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

RASETSU, VOL. 1 • BY CHIKA SHIOMI • VIZ MEDIA • 192 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Yurara, Vols. 1-5

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yurara1Common to all of Chika Shiomi’s supernatural thrillers are her butt-kicking heroines. Whether taming demons or hunting vampires, these unapologetically tough cookies always bag a fetching fellow, personality flaws and conflicting allegiances be damned.

In Yurara, Shiomi adds a wrinkle to her usual grrrrl power fantasy: her heroine is a butt-kicking, spirit-wasting avenger only when she’s in grievous danger; the rest of the time, Yurara is a wimpy, weepy mess who’s tormented by the sight of ghosts and tormented by her classmates, who are puzzled by her sudden emotional outbursts and erratic behavior. (How do you explain that you can’t take your seat because there’s an angry ghost already parked at that desk?) Thankfully, Yurara’s class just so happens to have two other mediums, Mei Tendo and Yako Hoshino, both of whom can see and exorcise ghosts.

Meeting Mei and Yako proves especially fortuitous, bolstering Yurara’s popularity (Mei and Yako are the class hotties) and unleashing her guardian spirit, a gorgeous, tough-talking teen who possesses Yurara’s body whenever malicious ghosts are present. Not surprisingly, Mei and Yako are intrigued by this development, with Mei, the shameless flirt, preferring Yurara in her quieter, self-doubting mode, and Yako, the brooding pretty boy, finding Yurara more attractive in assertive babe form. Yurara is flustered by their sudden interest in her, struggling to figure out which boy she actually wants to date — a problem compounded by her tendency to transform whenever she’s kissed. (If she’s in her more empowered state, she reverts to moe mode, and vice versa.)

yurara2While Yurara’s premise isn’t particularly novel, I found it a nice bit of wish fulfillment: who wouldn’t want the power to transform into a more competent, attractive version of themselves when the occasion warranted? Shiomi has the good sense to exploit her set-up for laughs as well as chills, milking her awkward love triangle for all its comic potential and populating her story with some goofy ghosts. In volume three, for example, Shiomi introduces us to the spirit of Yurara’s grandfather. Thrilled to be among the living again, he dudes himself out as a seventies hipster — about the decade he would have been in his masculine prime — and swaggers through the streets of Tokyo, oblivious to the fact that only Mei, Yako, and Yurara can actually see his youthful new appearance.

Shiomi also has the good sense to make both of her male leads compelling, creating one of genre’s few isosceles love triangles. The seemingly aloof Yako demonstrates genuine vulnerability, while Mei’s aggressive flirting and himbo antics camouflage a vengeful anger, making him a more interesting character than the usual player-with-a-hidden-heart-of-gold type. Yurara, on the other hand, is far less interesting than Mei or Yako. Most of the time she’s a classic good girl: timid, polite, mildly fearful of boys (especially of the species pulchrum puer scelestus). It’s only when she channels her guardian spirit that she becomes a truly interesting character. I’d like to think Chika Shiomi is spoofing the kind of inept heroines found in magical girl manga like Fushigi Yuugi, but the series’ finale left me wondering if I was suffering from my own case of magical thinking.

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Shiomi’s art is competent, if not distinguished. Like Fumi Yoshinaga, Shiomi has a limited repertoire of character designs — tall boy with short hair, tall boy with messy hair, wide-eyed heroine with bangs — that she uses in all of her stories. Yurara’s guardian spirit, for example, looks like a leaner, meaner cousin of the Queen of Ragtonia’s heroine, while Mei bears a strong resemblance to Sakaki, the vampire anti-hero of Canon. That said, Shiomi’s characters are stylishly drawn, with sharp, chiseled features, expressive faces, and smart outfits — no one ever has a bad hair or clothing day in one of her stories.

At five volumes, Yurara sometimes feels a little rushed; I wish that Shiomi had explored both sides of the heroine’s personality in greater depth. The final volume, in particular, has a hasty feel, as Shiomi labors mightily to tie up loose threads with a conclusion designed to satisfy Mei and Yako partisans alike. That she succeeds without resorting to an unabashedly happy ending is testament both to her skill as a storyteller and her deep respect for teenage girls’ intelligence.

Review copies provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

This review is a synthesis of three earlier reviews posted at PopCultureShock. My original review of volume one can be found here; my original review of volume three can be found here; and my original review of volume five can be found here.

YURARA, VOLS. 1 – 5 • BY CHIKA SHIOMI • VIZ MEDIA • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Detroit Metal City, Vol. 1

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Detroit Metal Citydmc_manga_cover is a rude, raunchy comedy that’s both a satire of death metal culture and a loving portrait of the folks who labor in its trenches.

When we first meet the series’ hero, twenty-three-year-old Soichi Negishi, he’s wearing a fright wig, kabuki makeup, fangs, and a pair of knee-high platform boots that look like they were swiped from Paul Stanley’s closet. Soichi is the lead singer and guitarist for Detroit Metal City (DMC), an “evil core death metal band with a huge following.” Onstage, Soichi adopts the persona of Krauser II, Lord of Hell, spitting lyrics about rape, torture, and mutilation; offstage, however, Soichi is a sweetly metrosexual young man who loves Swedish pop music, Audrey Tatou movies, and shopping for stylish clothing in the Daikanyama district. How, exactly, Soichi ended up singing in DMC is something of a mystery; by his own admission, he left his parents’ farm hoping to start a “hip indie pop band.” Five years later, however, Soichi is living in Tokyo and performing in DMC while doing his utmost to conceal that fact. Try as he might, however, he can’t quite limit his loud, violent persona to the stage, as Krauser has an unfortunate tendency to manifest himself whenever Soichi is depressed, angry, intoxicated, or feeling rejected by Yuri, a pretty young magazine editor who shares Soichi’s passion for perky tunes.

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Detroit Metal City, Vol. 1

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Detroit Metal City is a rude, raunchy comedy that’s both a satire of death metal culture and a loving portrait of the folks who labor in its trenches. When we first meet the series’ hero, twenty-three-year-old Soichi Negishi, he’s wearing a fright wig, kabuki makeup, fangs, and a pair of knee-high platform boots that look like they were swiped from Paul Stanley’s closet. Soichi is the lead singer and guitarist for Detroit Metal City (DMC), an “evil core death metal band with a huge following.” Onstage, Soichi adopts the persona of Krauser II, Lord of Hell, spitting lyrics about rape, torture, and mutilation; offstage, however, Soichi is a sweetly metrosexual young man who loves Swedish pop music, Audrey Tatou movies, and shopping for stylish clothing in the Daikanyama district. How, exactly, Soichi ended up singing in DMC is something of a mystery; by his own admission, he left his parents’ farm hoping to start a “hip indie pop band.” Five years later, however, Soichi is living in Tokyo and performing in DMC while doing his utmost to conceal that fact. Try as he might, however, he can’t quite limit his loud, violent persona to the stage, as Krauser has an unfortunate tendency to manifest himself whenever Soichi is depressed, angry, intoxicated, or feeling rejected by Yuri, a pretty young magazine editor who shares Soichi’s passion for perky tunes.

The tension between Soichi’s two musical personae turns out to be a brilliant framing device for the story, allowing manga-ka Kiminori Wakasugi to have his cake and eat it, too. As Krauser II, Soichi can sing the kind of crudely misogynistic lyrics that might otherwise offend because we, the readers, know that DMC epitomizes everything Soichi disdains in real life — in effect, Soichi is our surrogate, expressing indignation for us so that we might laugh freely at the risque jokes. At the same time, however, DMC gives Soichi an outlet for expressing the darker side of his personality—for de-wussifying him, if you will—and acknowledging his deep disappointment that no one appreciates his gentle, sensitive side.

Nowhere is the tension between the Swedish pop star and the Japanese metal god more evident than in chapter twelve. While hanging out in a trendy boutique with Yuri, Soichi lands an opportunity to play a small, intimate gig in the store. Soichi jumps at the chance, performing a saccharine tune called “Sweet Lover”:

When I wake up in the morning
You’re there making cheese tarts.
Sweet baby, that’s what you are.
My sweet, sweet lover
Let’s go
Let’s dress up and go to town.
With cheese tarts in one hand,
You’re romping around.
Cut through the crowds
Let’s go to that store we love.
To buy those matching rings
I promised you.
Sweet sweet sweet sweet lover…

The song’s god-awful lyrics, however, meet with indifference, prompting the boutique owner to eject Soichi from the store. Dazed and wounded, Soichi goes on a drinking binge, his embarrassment slowly curdling into rage. He then dons his DMC outfit and performs “Bad, Bad Lover,” a darkly humorous re-working of his much-reviled love song:

When I wake up in the morning
You’re there frying your parents up!
Let’s go
Kill everyone dressed up in town.
With chainsaw in one hand
You’re slashing around.
Slaughter the crowds
Let’s go to that store we love.
To get those matching weapons
I promised you.

As one might imagine, there are only so many scenarios in which Soichi can transform into Krauser (and vice versa). Mid-way through volume one, I worried that the joke was beginning to wear thin, as Soichi once again found himself trying to explain to Yuri why, exactly, he’d suddenly started acting like a loud, foul-mouthed boor. Thankfully, Wakasugi finds some odd and marvelous ways to spin the story—none of which I’ll spoil for you—including a contest between DMC and an Ozzy Osbourne-esque rocker, and a visit to Soichi’s hometown, where his cheerful, clueless parents grow mushrooms and raise livestock.

All of these scenes are rendered in a crude yet energetic style; if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say Wakusagi didn’t do very well in life drawing, as his bow-legged figures sit awkwardly in the picture plane. Yet the very clumsiness of the art works perfectly with the story’s over-the-top premise, capturing both the intensity of DMC’s performances and the sheer stupidity of their on-stage antics. Were the art any slicker, many of Detroit Metal City’s most outrageous moments just wouldn’t work, as their verisimilitude would elicit a “That couldn’t happen in real life!” response from the reader.

Fans worried that Viz would sanitize Detroit Metal City for English-speaking audiences can breathe a sigh of relief. The script abounds in f-bombs, anatomical slang, and crude sexual humor, suggesting that Viz made every effort to preserve the tone and content of the original script. Translator Anne Ichii deserves special mention, as she did a terrific job of making the song lyrics funny in English, a task akin to translating “Big Bottom” or “Stonehenge” into, say, Czech or Chinese. (Just how does one say “mud flaps” in Czech?) The production team merits praise as well, both for their snazzy cover design and for their inclusion of 2009’s coolest extra: temporary DMC tattoos.

If you find South Park offensive, it’s a safe bet that Detroit Metal City won’t be your cup of tea. But if you can look past the swear words and lewd behavior, you’ll find a surprisingly funny, touching story about a musician on a quest to discover his true voice — crank up Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to eleven, and you have a pretty good idea how this crude, goofy story reads. Highly recommended.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

DETROIT METAL CITY, VOL. 1 • BY KIMINORI WAKASUGI • VIZ • 200 pp.  RATING: MATURE (18+)

Otomen, Vols. 1-2

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otomen1To a casual observer, Asuka Masamune epitomizes masculinity. Not only is he the captain of the kendo team and a star student, he’s also tall, handsome, and quick to defend weaker students from bullies — the kind of stoic, principled guy that boys and girls admire. That macho exterior belies Asuka’s true nature as a sensitive young man with girly hobbies such as making elaborate bento boxes, sewing stuffed animals (the cuter, the better), and reading Love Chick, a shojo manga serialized in his favorite magazine, Hana to Mame (literally, “Flowers and Beans,” a pun on Hana to Yume, or “Flowers and Dreams”).

Asuka’s charade is threated by classmate Juta Tachibana, a tousle-haired player who discovers Asuka’s big secret: an unrequited crush on transfer student Ryo Miyakozuka. Ryo is yin to Asuka’s yang, a pretty young woman who can deliver a mean karate chop but can’t bake a cake or sew a button onto a blouse. They may seem like a match made in shojo heaven, but there’s a catch: Ryo disdains “girly” guys. Her initial impression of Asuka is favorable, but that encounter unleashes a torrent of emotion inside Asuka that makes it increasingly difficult for him to play the cool, macho customer. Juta pledges to help Asuka win Ryo — a gesture that initially seems out of character for such a transparent opportunist and womanizer. As we begin to learn more about Juta, however, we discover that he is, in fact, the manga-ka behind Love Chick (he uses the pseudonym “Jewel Tachibana”) and that Asuka is the inspiration for the series’ graceful heroine. Whether Juta empathizes with his subject, or is hoping to manipulate Asuka’s life for literary fodder, isn’t yet clear, though Juta embraces his matchmaking role with gusto.

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Otomen, Vols. 1-2

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To a casual observer, Asuka Masamune epitomizes masculinity. Not only is he the captain of the kendo team and a star student, he’s also tall, handsome, and quick to defend weaker students from bullies — the kind of stoic, principled guy that boys and girls admire. That macho exterior belies Asuka’s true nature as a sensitive young man with girly hobbies such as making elaborate bento boxes, sewing stuffed animals (the cuter, the better), and reading Love Chick, a shojo manga serialized in his favorite magazine, Hana to Mame (literally, “Flowers and Beans,” a pun on Hana to Yume, or “Flowers and Dreams”).

Asuka’s charade is threated by classmate Juta Tachibana, a tousle-haired player who discovers Asuka’s big secret: an unrequited crush on transfer student Ryo Miyakozuka. Ryo is yin to Asuka’s yang, a pretty young woman who can deliver a mean karate chop but can’t bake a cake or sew a button onto a blouse. They may seem like a match made in shojo heaven, but there’s a catch: Ryo disdains “girly” guys. Her initial impression of Asuka is favorable, but that encounter unleashes a torrent of emotion inside Asuka that makes it increasingly difficult for him to play the cool, macho customer. Juta pledges to help Asuka win Ryo — a gesture that initially seems out of character for such a transparent opportunist and womanizer. As we begin to learn more about Juta, however, we discover that he is, in fact, the manga-ka behind Love Chick (he uses the pseudonym “Jewel Tachibana”) and that Asuka is the inspiration for the series’ graceful heroine. Whether Juta empathizes with his subject, or is hoping to manipulate Asuka’s life for literary fodder, isn’t yet clear, though Juta embraces his matchmaking role with gusto.

The set-up is ripe with possibility, but I wasn’t entirely sold on Otomen after reading the first volume. Aya Kanno earned points for her sensitive portrayal of Asuka and gentle digs at shojo cliche, yet the story lacked the necessary edge to be a true satire. Her characters expressed disdain for various shojo conventions while engaged in stereotypical shojo behaviors — meeting on rooftops, exchanging bento boxes, visiting amusement parks. Kanno enlivened these stock scenarios with a generous helping of slapstick, but they never quite rose to the delirious, gender-bending heights of Your and My Secret or My Heavenly Hockey Club.

Volume two suffers from the same have-cake-and-eat-it-too problem, as Kanno trots out more subplots from the shojo playbook: a Christmas date, a surprise fiancee. As with the amusement park trip in volume one, Kanno pokes fun at these familiar scenarios by piling on the misunderstandings and the fist-fights. When Asuka meets his fiancee, for example, he’s initially enchanted by her girly clothing and Disney-fied living quarters. He sticks to his guns, however, and declares his love for Ryo, setting off a chain of events that culminates in a daring rescue by Ryo and Asuka. Yet aside from inverting the usual rescuer/rescuee roles, this scene feels like it could have been lifted from almost any wacky shojo romance; Kanno can’t quite bring herself to skewer this very creaky plot device even as she paints a ridiculous scene.

Otomen is at its best when tackling gender identity head-on. In volume two, for example, Kanno introduces a character named Yamato Ariake, an underclassman who suffers from the opposite problem as Asuka: his petite, pretty appearance leads many folks to assume he’s a girl, even though Yamato has conventionally masculine tastes. He “apprentices” himself to Asuka to learn how to be more manly, gushing about Asuka’s height, gait, and reserved demeanor with infatuated abandon. Yet Yamato expresses disgust when he discovers Asuka’s affinity for cute bento boxes and “girly” activities: how could someone as cool as Asuka be so feminine? On one level, the Yamato-Asuka relationship is a send-up of the “sempai” crush so prevalent in shojo manga; as Yamato catalogues Asuka’s best features, for example, Yamato’s saucer eyes sparkle with the intensity of a Moto Hagio character’s. On another level, however, Yamato’s plight helps underscore just how difficult it is to find a niche when your appearance or personality deviate from established gender norms.

Kanno drives the point home by showing us the degree to which Asuka’s thoughts and feelings reflect his feminine avocations. Using shojo manga tropes — flowery backgrounds, sparkling screentones, close-ups — she demonstrates that Love Chick has profoundly influenced the way in which Asuka fantasizes about Ryo, as he imagines an ideal Christmas Eve date that involves a tender exchange of words and a chaste kiss — hardly the stuff of harem comedies. She also uses these time-honored techniques to help us understand Asuka’s ambivalent feelings about his father, who abandoned the family to have a sex change operation. As we learn in volume one, his dad harbored a similar interest in girly things; his departure inspired Asuka’s mother to purge the cute and sparkly from Asuka’s life, lest he also turn out to be a woman in a man’s body. Though the flashbacks to Asuka’s childhood border on melodrama, the way in which they’re drawn gives them a poignancy and immediacy that mitigates against camp.

I’m not sure on which side of the drama/satire divide Otomen will settle, but I certainly plan to continue reading this odd, funny, and sometimes moving tribute to a character who’s man enough to excel at kendo and like shojo and stuffed animals.

Review copies provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

OTOMEN, VOLS. 1-2 • BY AYA KANNO • VIZ • RATING: TEEN

Otomen 2 by Aya Kanno: B

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otomen2-125This volume presents three episodic tales, two of which focus on Asuka’s challenge to be true to himself despite the expectations of others. In the first of these stories, he acquires an apprentice who wants to use him as a reference on how to be cool and masculine, requiring Asuka to suppress his girly tendencies, and in the other, his mother attempts to set him up in an arranged marriage and manipulates him by warning that her health will suffer if he should thwart her or betray any sort of preference for feminine things. This last story is insanely kooky, but it gives Ryo the opportunity to ride in on a white horse and rescue the about-to-be-wed Asuka, so I can’t fault it too much.

Kanno’s art is very attractive in general, but I was especially impressed by it in this volume because she was able to adopt a completely different style—one reminiscent of ’70s shoujo—to depict the parents of Asuka’s fiancée. What’s more, there are scenes where they are sitting at a table with Asuka’s mom, and seeing the two very different artistic techniques juxtaposed in the same panel is pretty awesome.

The other story in the volume is more of a romantic one. Asuka finds out that Ryo has never celebrated Christmas before, and so plans the perfect Christmas party for her. It’s a nice chapter overall, but the best part is Asuka’s inexplicable fixation upon a yule log as the essential ingredient for the event. I often find straightforward comedies unfunny, but the absurdity of Otomen gets me every time.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.

Real, Vols. 1-4

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real4Slam Dunk may have been the series that put Takehiko Inoue on the map and introduced legions of Japanese kids to basketball, but for me, a long-time hoops fan who grew up watching Larry Bird lead the Celtics to numerous NBA champtionships, Slam Dunk was a disappointment, a shonen sports comedy whose goofy hero desperately needed a summer at Robert Parrish Basketball Camp for schooling in the basics. Real, on the other hand, offered this armchair point guard something new: a window into the fiercely competitive world of wheelchair basketball. Watching Inoue’s characters run a man-to-man defense and shoot three-pointers from their chairs gave me a fresh appreciation for just how much strength, stamina, and smarts it takes to play the game, with or without the use of ones’ legs.

Much of the series’ appeal lies with Inoue’s superb draftsmanship. As he does in both Slam Dunk and Vagabond, he immerses us in the action, making us feel as if we’re on the court with his characters, bumping rims and talking trash. No detail is squandered; even a close-up of a character’s eyes or hands helps us picture where his teammates are on the court, and imagine how the play might unfold.

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Real, Vols. 1-4

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Slam Dunk may have been the series that put Takehiko Inoue on the map and introduced legions of Japanese kids to basketball, but for me, a long-time hoops fan who grew up watching Larry Bird lead the Celtics to numerous NBA champtionships, Slam Dunk was a disappointment, a shonen sports comedy whose goofy hero desperately needed a summer at Robert Parrish Basketball Camp for schooling in the basics. Real, on the other hand, offered this armchair point guard something new: a window into the fiercely competitive world of wheelchair basketball. Watching Inoue’s characters run a man-to-man defense and shoot three-pointers from their chairs gave me a fresh appreciation for just how much strength, stamina, and smarts it takes to play the game, with or without the use of ones’ legs.

Much of the series’ appeal lies with Inoue’s superb draftsmanship. As he does in both Slam Dunk and Vagabond, he immerses us in the action, making us feel as if we’re on the court with his characters, bumping rims and talking trash. No detail is squandered; even a close-up of a character’s eyes or hands helps us picture where his teammates are on the court, and imagine how the play might unfold.

The other thing that Real does incredibly well is give us a window into its characters’ emotional lives, something that the antic, frantic Slam Dunk never pauses to do. (In Inoue’s defense, I don’t expect a shonen comedy to shed much light on its hero’s interior life, especially one as dense and single-minded as the flame-haired Hanamichi Sakuragi.) Its three principle characters—Togawa Kiyoharu, a track-and-field standout whose promising career was snuffed by bone cancer, Nomiya Tomomi, a high school dropout responsible for paralyzing a girl in a motorcycle accident, and Takahashi Hisanobu, a high school basketball star sidelined by a spinal cord injury—are complex individuals whose foul tempers and bouts of self-loathing make them seem like ordinary people coping with extraordinary circumstances, rather than cardboard saints.

Consider Takahashi. Until the day he was hit by a truck, Takahashi embodied the big-man-on-campus stereotype, leading the basketball team, dating several girls at once, acing his exams, and enforcing the school’s social pecking order by ruthlessly hazing weaker students. The accident robs him not only of his mobility, but also his identity; Takahashi predicated his entire sense of self on what others thought of him. Once confined to a bed, however, he lashes out at anyone who shows him kindness: how dare these C- and D-list folk offer him pity? (In one of the series’ only running jokes, Takahashi evaluates everyone on a five-point scale, including the tough, homely nurse assigned to his ward. She rises in his estimation after ticking off a long list of American boyfriends.) As he begins the grueling process of rehabilitation, Takahashi’s sense of self is further undermined by the realization that learning to move again will require discipline, something he lacks. (In fact, Takahashi held his more disciplined teammates in contempt, viewing their work ethic as a sign of weakness.) His fear and anger begin curdling into self-pity, leaving him physically and emotionally paralyzed.

Degraded as the character may seem, however, Inoue never invites us to pity Takahashi. We feel his sense of loss and futility, yet it’s clear from Takahashi’s repellent behavior that he still has a strong will to live, giving us hope that his journey will end in redemption. What isn’t so obvious is how Takahashi will get his groove back, as Inoue doesn’t draw neat draw parallels between his story and Kiyoharu’s. (Nomiya, the dropout, emerged from his accident unscathed, and faces a somewhat different battle than the wheelchair-bound Takahashi and Kiyoharu.) Though it’s frustrating to wait and see what will happen to Takahashi, the slow and almost haphazard way in which his story unfolds gives the narrative a true-to-life rhythm that mitigates against a pat, uplifting resolution to the drama.

Inoue may take his time developing each character’s backstory, but he’s surprisingly efficient at establishing their personalities in just a few panels. The opening two pages of volume one, for example, speak volumes about Kiyoharu:

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Through a combination of facial gestures and body language, those first five panels capture Kiyoharu’s fierce determination and incredible physical strength — he’s a consummate athlete pushing his body to its limits. Inoue then pulls back from Kiyoharu’s hands and face to reveal a lone figure dwarfed by an empty gymnasium. Kiyoharu’s discipline may make him a first-class basketball player, but as this image suggests, that discipline isolates him from other people — a theme that Inoue develops in volumes three and four, when Kiyoharu estranges his teammates with a grueling practice schedule and tough talk about winning.

Viz has done a terrific job of packaging Real, wrapping each issue in a beautifully designed cover and printing the artwork on creamy, high-quality paper that makes both the grayscale and full-color images pop. (I’m not really sold on the French flaps’ utility, though they certainly look cool.) John Werry’s fluid translation gives a distinct voice to each of the three principles — no mean feat, given how belligerent all three of them can be. Each volume includes a helpful set of cultural notes, as well as sidebars explaining the rules of wheelchair basketball; if anything, the American edition might have benefited from a more extensive appendix at the end of each volume.

I’m hoping that the deluxe presentation will encourage folks to give Real a try, regardless of their interest in basketball. It’s a sports story for those of us who care more about good writing and good artwork than the inner workings of a zone defense. But if you like to wax poetic about the Celtics/Lakers rivalry of yore, Real is your kind of series, too, as it will remind you just how beautiful the game can be when played with passion.

Review copies provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

REAL, VOLS. 1 – 4 • BY TAKEHIKO INOUE • VIZ • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

 

Crimson Hero 10 by Mitsuba Takanashi: B

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The six members of the Crimson Field High School girls’ volleyball team have come a long way and are now participating in the Newcomers’ Tournament, an important stepping stone to their ultimate goal, the Spring Tournament. They win their first two rounds handily, but are faced with a tough opponent for the third round. Meanwhile, Nobara and Yushin are still keeping their feelings for each other a secret.

Even though I am far from athletic myself, there is something about sports manga that I adore. Crimson Hero does particularly well at giving each teammate a moment to shine and in recent volumes, each of the supporting girls has improved her skills in some way or another. The matches are also a lot of fun and easy to follow. Frankly, I wish there were more of them.

I’m a little frustrated on the romance front, though. Nobara has liked Yushin for a long time, and was firm about this even when she realized that another boy, Haibuki, had feelings for her. Now, when Yushin has finally reciprocated, Nobara’s suddenly starting to be affected by Haibuki, thinking things like, “These days your smile messes with my heart.” I was really hoping this series wouldn’t go down this road; the fact that it seems poised to do so is disappointing.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.

Crimson Hero 9 by Mitsuba Takanashi: B+

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From the back cover:
Just when Nobara is set to play with the Eagles against the men’s team at Central Sokai University, Yushin shows up on campus! Has he come to make a play for Nobara?

Review:
At last! I love seeing good things happen for characters I like, and this volume is immensely satisfying in several important ways. Nobara gets her first taste of victory when the beach volleyball team manages to beat the elite college team, though I am kind of getting annoyed with all of these games that go all the way to the very final point. I guess that’s supposed to show how hard the struggle was? There’s also some awesome stuff between Nobara and Yushin.

But the very best stuff actually happens when Nobara returns to Crimson Field. In her absence, one of her teammates, Kanako, a relative newcomer to volleyball, has been training really hard. She’s proud of her new skills and shows them to Nobara, who is appropriately impressed. Alas, the coach is more interested in what Nobara has learned to do and is dismissive of Kanako, who’d been receiving personal attention up ’til that point and whose goal was to become better than Nobara.

Nobara realizes later, upon seeing the tattered state of Kanako’s equipment, just how hard she’d been working and refuses to accept Kanako’s resignation from the team. There’s this great scene where they meet up in a café or something. Kanako says, “I’m not going to lose to you!” To which Nobara replies, “I’m not going to lose to you, either!” Then they both break out in tears. There’s one panel of the two of them sobbing away with the sound effect “Waaaaah” going across it. It’s wonderful, funny, and in character, too. I think I read that sequence over, like, four times.

And, as if all that weren’t enough, the Newcomers’ Tournament (which has some bearing on the attendees for the Spring Tournament somehow) begins and the Crimson Field girls handily win their first game. It’s a feel good volume all around.

Crimson Hero 8 by Mitsuba Takanashi: B-

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From the back cover:
Coach Shima sends Nobara to train with the men’s team at Central Sokai University. However, these college guys have no intention of letting a girl join their practice—unless Nobara can find a way to gain their respect.

Review:
It took me this long to start to get tired of reading this series, which is probably a compliment. And really, this volume is pretty decent. Nobara is training with a beach volleyball team and learning to see her skills—like her amazing jumping ability—objectively. Her teammates are rather silly, but overall these chapters are pretty fun. In fact, they’re very shounen, with lines like, “I’ve got to become stronger!” and “There’s got to be an attack only I can do!”

Alas, there are also some lame, kind of retconny moments. Nobara having a particular childhood hero has never been mentioned before, but suddenly we are told she had one and turns out to be, of course, Ryo, the guy she’s been sent to train with. Worse, though, is that Nobara goes practically bonkers during a typhoon and rushes out to the beach to physically hold onto one of the posts holding up the net so that it won’t get destroyed because she must become stronger and all of that. She later explains that she often goes nuts during storms on account of the childhood trauma of being locked in a storage room during one. Normally Nobara is not the type of heroine to have a “too stupid to live” moment of such magnitude. It was pretty crapulent.

Anyway, it is at least clear that Nobara is improving. I look forward to seeing how her new skills will translate on the court.

Crimson Hero 7 by Mitsuba Takanashi: B

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From the back cover:
Nobara’s drive to get the girls’ volleyball team ready to qualify for the next Spring Tournament has tensions running high. Have Nobara’s dreams finally outgrown those of her teammates?

Review:
Yay, volleyball once again takes precedence over romance! This volume begins with the girls team in shambles, reeling from yet another defeat, and Ayako telling Nobara that they’re not like her and never really believed they could make it to the Spring Tournament (Nobara’s big dream). After a brief stint at a special training camp makes Nobara realize that it’s her own team that she wants to play with, she returns and the team gets itself together. Training begins in earnest, with the new coach leading the girls through intensive drills.

The problem is that Nobara’s simply enjoying playing so much that she’s not trying her hardest in the practice games. I love that the other girls are worried about her talents going to waste and are working hard to try to challenge her. Finally, at the end of the volume, Nobara realizes that she isn’t pushing herself, and departs to go study with some surfer guy who I can only assume is a volleyball guru of some sort.

With things mostly stable on the girls’ team, it’s up to the boys to provide the drama. Alas, I found this segment of the volume pretty boring. Basically, now that the third years have retired to focus on their college entrance exams, the second years are feeling overshadowed by the new crop of talented first years and quit in a huff. Yushin is ultimately the hero. No big surprise there.

This volume is better than the last, but still isn’t as exciting as it could be. Hopefully there’ll be another fun game before too long.

Crimson Hero 6 by Mitsuba Takanashi: B-

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From the back cover:
Haibuki, jealous of Nobara’s crush on his teammate, Yushin, finds it hard to concentrate on volleyball, and both boys end up benched during a game. Now their coach has ordered Nobara to stay away from both of them!

Review:
There are some cute moments in this volume, but mostly it’s kind of disappointing, the middle pair of chapters especially. In the first of these, the training camp is done so everyone’s participating in a “night of fright” test of courage kind of thing. I actually giggled at Yushin’s nonreaction to a gorilla-headed guy bursting from some shrubbery (“Woah.”), only to groan some moments later when Nobara fell victim to the dreaded “girl on test of courage falls off hitherto unnoticed cliff and requires rescue by love interest(s)” plot. Seriously, so lame.

The next chapter after that is a major downer, as the girls acquire a coach who is apparently trying to motivate them by making them think they’re morons for having high aspirations or something. Also, there’s a lot of talk going around the volleyball scene about Nobara’s talent and how she’ll never achieve anything being stuck on a mediocre team. This is kind of painful to read, since I want the team to be succeeding already, but it’s true that they still can’t quite manage to keep it together and win a game. I do appreciate the consistent characterization of Ayako, who has always been the one who had the most trouble believing that the team really does have a chance to become something great.

At some point during all of this, the boys fail to win nationals but rank in the top eight. I would’ve liked to’ve seen some of that, but we really just see them walk on a court and are then told the results.

Anyway, I really want to see the girls start winning soon. I guess perhaps Takanashi figured that the audience would be expecting this win—and I was—so decided to subvert the standard pattern and give them further obstacles to surmount. I’m just already impatient for some feel-good triumph!

Crimson Hero 5 by Mitsuba Takanashi: B

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From the back cover:
Out walking in the rain, Nobara and Yushin are mistaken for a couple by passersby. Nobara wants to tell Yushin that she is in love with him, but he already has a girlfriend—Satomi. Yushin, worried that Satomi might get the wrong idea about his relationship with Nobara, leaves Nobara behind to walk home by himself—and comes across Satomi kissing another boy in the street.

Review:
My first reaction upon reading the back cover blurb is, “Well, that’s convenient.” It actually plays out better than I thought it would, though. It’s not a simple decision for Yushin to switch to Nobara now that Satomi is out of the way, since he feels he’s partly in the wrong for not spending enough time with her.

And, yeah, the romance stuff isn’t bad, but it has really taken over all of a sudden. There is some volleyball action—a new member joins the team and the girls also get to attend a ritzy training camp along with the boys’ team—but nearly everything works its way back to Nobara and her feelings for Yushin by the end. As much as I like them together, I like either of them being sporty and determined more than awkward and red-faced.

There are a few things to like, though, about how it’s handled. One is that Nobara makes a promise to herself that she won’t let her feelings for Yushin enter her mind when she’s on the court, and the second that she tells him it’s fine if he wants to focus all his energy on volleyball, because she intends to do the same. Just because she likes him doesn’t mean she’s going to become clingy. And even the Haibuki situation is interesting. He, at first, seemed like a likable enough, if quiet, guy, but has recently proven himself to be short-tempered and creepy.

So, no, not my favorite volume, but there are tournaments coming up, so hopefully the series will soon return to what it does best.