Dogs 2
November 10, 2009
Shirow Miwa – Viz – 2009 – 4+ volumes (+1 for volume 0)
You know, I couldn’t believe it, but the entire time I was reading this, I was wishing it was Black Lagoon. Usually it’s the other way around. I think that proves that I like Black Lagoon a lot more than I say I do.
I like Dogs quite a bit, but this volume wasn’t a terribly good one. I love watching Badou and Heine act goofy and then tear through impossibly huge groups of enemies, and I liked the plot that was starting to develop around Heine’s alterations and other people like him, and I also liked the idea of having all the main characters going up against an army of genetically manipulated soldiers, four-against-an-army style.
This volume focused on developing Naoto, my least favorite character. She follows Badou and Heine into an assignment, and most of the rest of the volume is the three of them in a big melee, mostly with Heine and the other characters probing Naoto for information about who she is, which of course she can’t provide since she has no memory. Introducing Naoto to the other characters was a necessary evil since I assume that Naoto is going to join up with Badou and Heine, but it was still hard to sit through.
As much as I like the high-contrast, dynamic art in this series, sometimes it makes it hard to follow the action scenes, especially when they are as long and confusing as they were in this volume. Most of the problems I had with reading the art were with Luki and Noki, who are wearing frilly, ostentatious costumes and fighting with gigantic, unlikely weapons like guns and swords as big as their arms. It’s hard to tell what is dress and weapon when they fight. Another big problem was the gigantic, retouched sound effects. That’s something I normally don’t notice, but in this case, they might have been covering too much of the art. I suspect the fights may have been a bit easier to read with streamlined effects, but then again, I haven’t seen the originals.
I have to admit, I’m not the biggest fan of Luki and Noki, either. The series didn’t really need a pair of cutesy, goth-loli-type twins that can beat everyone to the ground, but then again, it’s the kind of silly thing that makes Dogs fun to read.
The volume didn’t lower my opinion of the series at all, I think it was just a slow spot in the story (or slow as far as Dogs goes, which still includes a gigantic, hilarious melee). We did get to meet one of the other villains in what was admittedly the coolest reveal in the world, and said villain did power away in a gigantic train, so it wasn’t a total wash.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Clover
November 10, 2009
CLAMP – Dark Horse – 2009 – 4 volumes
the Dark Horse edition is an omnibus containing all four volumes.
So, the thing about Clover is that I read it when it first came out in English and more or less hated it. But it is pretty. I have the original four English volumes from Tokyopop and the recent two-volume Japanese rerelease of the series, and couldn’t pass up this pretty omnibus. Once I had it, though, I had absolutely no desire to read it. The omnibus was a good chance to give it another try, though. I didn’t read the Japanese edition after I bought it, and I hadn’t read the English volumes in six or seven years.
The thing about Clover… it’s super-pretty, and has amazing composition and minimalist art. But it’s a series that hinges on song lyrics, which is a bad idea in the first place since you have no idea what the tunes to the ever-present songs are. Most manga series about singers feature a song every volume or two that takes up a page, which is fine. You can read the lyrics and try to imagine the tune, but you only have to do so for one page. When snippets of the lyrics appear in every scene, not knowing the tune becomes a problem. It bugs me, and the lyrics in Clover are on every page. David Welsh recently took that a step further, and pointed out that the lyrics are also atrocious. Sure, Sue and Kazuhiko are on a journey, but I get it. I get that she wants to be taken someplace far away, and that she may or may not be seeking happiness during or at the end of said journey. I don’t need to read it on every page. It really is repeated that frequently. I would count how many times that line appears, but that would require reading that line over and over once again.
I like the plot itself. It’s quite romantic, and I’m a sucker for stories that are good at jumping around their timeline. The first two volumes tell a continuous story, then the third volume jumps back in time to focus on Ora, an absentee character central to the first story, then the fourth volume jumps back even further to talk about another character and the Clover project in general. Technically, the series is unfinished, and I suppose it’s possible the story could go on from the end of the second volume, but I’m pretty satisfied with what we got. It reads like a complete series. Apparently CLAMP had originally planned it to be six volumes, but I can’t recall what was going to be in the next two.
I don’t like the abruptness of the storytelling, which is a problem that’s complicated by the strange (but unique and completely awesome) setting and the political unrest that we are thrown into. Details offer themselves up in a timely manner, and you can see that the story is well-planned as you read, but I still hate that things get underway and move fast right from page one. The fast pace works against the plot too, since it means that most of what’s going on flies by and strips the main story down to a very short journey to Fairy Park with brief delays. There’s also something that seems insincere when otherwise serious and romantic stories move so quickly. But the fast pace is rewarded as we learn more and more about Sue and Kazuhiko and what is happening to the both of them, and the way Sue opens up at the end of the story is still great, even after all these years.
I like that the emotions of the characters are offered without any explanation, too. In the third story, Ora and Kazuhiko are lovers completely smitten with one another, and what we see of the two of them provides enough evidence to see how devastating what happens to Ora truly is. Similarly, the friendship between Kazuhiko and Ginsetsu is never discussed, but it is clearly a powerful bond between the two men.
For the record, Ora is up with Watanuki and Kamui as one of my favorite CLAMP characters of all time. I hated Clover the first time through, but I loved Ora. I still do. She’s a great character, and plays her role well. I wish Sue had been developed as much as Ora. Sue’s very basic role works well in the context of the series, but aside from knowing that she’s been isolated and her feelings on Ora and Kazuhiko, we know absolutely nothing else about her thoughts and feelings on anything at all. Even at her most sincere, she seems completely devoid of emotion. I think that her lack of emotion lends itself well to the scene where she opens herself up, though, which may be the point.
The art, while fantastic and certainly some of CLAMP’s best, can also be… well, misinterpreted, and uninteresting to some. There are some brilliant page spreads, and its minimalism is well-suited to the story here, but my roommate took one look at it and pronounced it “lazy,” though I would disagree. There isn’t much on most of the pages, and all four volumes only took me about an hour and a half to read. Take that how you will. But I see the emptiness as an amazing use of negative space, and it also excels at its fantastic panel layouts that trickle down and through single and double page spreads. It also has wonderful details in the setting and clothing the characters wear. Ora really feels like the centerpiece of the entire story, both in terms of her character design (both of them) and the outfits she wears. And what I wouldn’t give to have those wide CLAMP shoulders back in the current works.
But keep in mind that a lot of those panel layouts are there to effectively give the lyrics to those awful songs something to wrap around. Never forget those ever-present songs.
So I still don’t like Clover, but I can admit that I like the plot much more than I did when I was younger. The subtleties of the characters and the love story that was going on were lost on me at the time, and that’s a large part of what makes the series enjoyable. But again, that is all ruined by having to read those songs over and over again. Sure, you could just skip them, but they’re there. In that awful font, too. You don’t have to do more than glance at them to know what they say. It’s a real problem.
Game X Rush 2
November 10, 2009
Mizuh0 Kusanagi – Tokyopop – 2009 – 2 volumes
I reviewed this for the weekly Manga Minis column at Manga Recon, so you can check it out over there.
I loved the first volume, but really did not like the second, which was the conclusion to the story. It’s a real shame when that happens.
With the Light 4
November 9, 2009
Keiko Tobe – Yen Press – 2009 – 14+ volumes
this omnibus contains volumes 7-8 of the series.
Continuing with the omnibus theme for this week, here’s With the Light, which I am sadly behind on. This only comes out every six months, so there’s really no reason why I can’t stay caught up. Oh well.
I don’t really have that much to say that I haven’t said already. There weren’t a whole lot of changes to Hikaru or his routine in this volume, though careers were discussed, as well as factories that employed handicapped individuals, and Hikaru had a kind of assessment to determine his strengths and weaknesses. There were some comings and goings. There were two parts that were quite touching, though neither dealt with Hikaru directly. One was where his father was finally able to deal with his situation at work and come to terms with it (complete with a long chapter about appreciating what you can in a bad situation), and the other dealt with an old friend who was having some abuse problems in an orphanage. Actually, that storyline was never quite resolved. I wonder what happened to Oki?
Reading the series is a little more tedious than I like, mostly because of the repetition I’m sure I’ve mentioned before. The story was written with the magazine format in mind, and exists to inform more than to entertain (which is fine, that’s what it does), so a lot of the story points and information are repeated over and over again. This probably isn’t a problem if you make the long volume stretch out over several days worth of reading, but you’ll notice if you read it all in one sitting.
Again. This series is wonderful at what it does, which is to teach the reader about autism and show how an autistic individual develops and adapts to the world and people around him. It really is an interesting read, and I learn so much from every volume. It’s not light, entertaining reading, though. Don’t look for the usual story and plot.
Hmm. I wonder if this series is still running in Japan? It doesn’t sound like it ends at volume 14, but I can’t find it in any of Akita Shoten’s current women’s magazines, and they stopped featuring the newest volume on their site, something they’d been doing for at least a year or two.
Inu-Yasha 1 (Big ed.)
November 8, 2009
Rumiko Takahashi – Viz – 2009 – 56 volumes
This omnibus contains volumes 1-3 of the series.
Incredibly, I haven’t read any of the Inu-Yasha manga, despite the fact I’ve read at least parts of all of Takahashi’s other series. It’s probably her most famous, at least in the US. I know the plot pretty well, and I knew I would like it since I like pretty much all of Takahashi’s other work, but I just never started buying the series. There’s a lot of it, and starting from the beginning is a daunting task. Luckily, we’ve got the Big editions now, and it’s the perfect time to jump in. Notably, the Big editions are unflipped, which isn’t that important to me, but it’s there if that’s what you were waiting for all these years.
It’s… well, it’s Inu-Yasha. It is what it is. Reading it was a little strange, because it wastes no time jumping right into the plot I was expecting. Kagome falls into the well, she finds Inu-Yasha, they start fighting demons, the Shikon Jewel shatters, then they start gathering the pieces. There wasn’t a lot of exposition accompanying any of that, and most of the background and details come as things move along. It doesn’t feel rushed at all, just very fast-paced, and it was interesting to see the details dealt with in progress rather than as a wall of text or explanation from one person.
Explaining things as the story moves also helps to keep things very simple. You don’t know about Inu-Yasha’s father until Myoga and Sesshoumaru show up, and even then, it’s only that his father was a dog-demon and that Sesshoumaru is his brother. They fight. That’s really all there is to it, and the story moves on to the next demon, but all the same, the fight is interesting, as is the simple links between characters. There’s no elaborate backstory (as of yet), and not a lot to remember about Sesshoumaru except that he’s a demon and that the two brothers do not get along. I know he’ll be around a lot in the future. As far as the demons go, there’s similarly no metaphysical explanation offered for their existence or powers. They all take different shapes and do different things, but that’s just the way things are, and no explanation is necessary. I liked it since it kept the battles very interesting and, again, very simple since there wasn’t a whole lot to know aside from the fact that they are fighting a frog demon that possessed a lord. Myoga offers some color commentary to the fights later, but it’s never more than “Oh, that’s a frog demon! It’s super-old and more dangerous than it looks! Be careful!”
The bigger question to me was how I would like it, since I’d read Rin-ne first. I liked Rin-ne all right, but the problem was that both the main characters are pretty vanilla in the first volume. Both series deal with the supernatural, but in Rin-ne it’s exorcising ghosts with quirky stories in the present, whereas Inu-Yasha fights surprisingly gory fights in the distant past. On the whole, Inu-Yasha seems to be quite a bit better, at least based on the single volume of Rin-ne that I’ve read. Kagome is still a pretty vanilla character, but Inu-Yasha at least has an entertaining evil streak to him, and it’s fun to watch Kagome and Inu-Yasha work together. By the end of this big volume, romance is beginning to be vaguely implied between the two, but they play off each other a lot more than Rin-ne and Sakura do, and Kagome has a reason to accompany Inu-Yasha (she can see the jewels, he can’t), something that Sakura doesn’t really have in regards to Rin-ne.
One thing I got a really big kick out of is the fact that the present still plays a role in the story. I didn’t realize that time passed the same through both worlds, and that Kagome could go between the two at will. I love it when Inu-Yasha just shows up in the present since he’s so… well, anachronistic as well as a demon, and I like that Kagome still has to worry about her exams. I’m sure this is downplayed quite a bit as things progress, but all the same, I love the contrast and the nonchalant way that Kagome deals with it.
I have to admit, the simple formula had me addicted by the end of the Big volume. I’m really looking forward to the next. Takahashi just has a way of writing that’s super-easy to fall into and enjoy. There’s not much more to it than that. I would say that it’s also good because of the familiarity with her type of story, but other than the way the characters act, Inu-Yasha really is quite different than everything she’s written before. It’s like a bizarre mix of Mermaid Saga (my favorite of her series) and… I don’t know, Ranma 1/2, with the way Akane and Ranma were always at each other. I’m sad to see the series is on a quarterly release, I was hoping for bimonthly due to the length. Well… there’s always 40 volumes of the regular size available if I get too desperate.
Also, I don’t think there’s a hyphen in the title of Inu-Yasha, but I prefer it that way, so… you know. My site and all.
Otomen 4
November 6, 2009
Aya Kanno – Viz – 2009 – 9+ volumes
I don’t know, every time I read a volume of this, I become more and more convinced that it’s impossible to hate it if you like shoujo manga at all. On one hand, it’s cycling through story cliches, but on the other hand, it’s doing that on purpose. I can’t figure out if it’s trying to make fun of the overused stories, or its characters, or both. It’s hard to see through all those sparkles, but it’s funny stuff no matter where the humor lies.
I forgot how much I liked this series, then promptly remembered within the first few pages when Asuka took Ryo’s dad to a strangely cutesy department store, populated by stuffed animals and only the most adorable merchandise shops. Ryo’s dad seems to hate every minute of it, and has a hard time dealing with the… floweriness of it all. The faces the two make while in the shops are funny enough (the dad is super-embarrassed, and Asuka cycles through ecxtacy and shame), but what really put the whole thing over the top was Princess Mary’s Hide-and-Go-Seek pasta. It really was one of the most adorable things I’ve ever seen.
The second half of the book is taken up by a storyline involving the group spending summer vacation working at a shop owned by Yamato’s uncle. The “getting there” part is quite funny, and the story knowingly and ridiculously rushes through the sequence of events that puts just the students in charge of a run-down, unpopular and old-fashioned shack competing with a very modern snack bar. Everyone uses their individual talents, be they ultra-manly or super-girly, to ultimately make the shop a success, but both chapters with this storyline feature competitions with Tonomine, Asuka’s rival and secret otomen who loves to do makeup. Tonomine cracked me up for a reason Juta mentions later in the story – he’s the usual bespeckled cold-type boy that these stories always have, except he really is super-arrogant and never really shows another side to his personality. That’s a real shame, because I think otomen should stick together.
A new character is introduced, a really tall, quiet boy who likes flowers and sneaking up on people to decorate them with flowers. I mean, he loves flowers. Way more than Asuka loves baking and sewing. He’s quite creepy, and a wonderful addition to the story. He reminds me a lot of another really famous character who is silent and likes sneaking up, except the name and details are escaping me at the moment.
Reading this after Detroit Metal City is probably a bad thing, because the style of humor is the same. Both succeed by doing the exact opposite of what is expected in the story setup, with some additional help from the way the side characters react (though Otomen isn’t as gag-driven as Detroit Metal City). Each chapter is basically a one-shot where Asuka fumbles through a situation where certain things are expected of him, but he succeeds because he likes girly things. Usually the other characters run contrary to what you would expect too, like Ryo having ultra-manly hobbies while still being mostly girly, the creepy flower boy, or the girly boy who would be absolutely devastated if he found out Asuka had such un-manly hobbies. There are occasional hilarious male fantasies that break up all the sparkles and jokes otherwise. Otomen brilliance lies in the fact you can read it like a regular shoujo manga, too. You can ignore the humor, and just enjoy it for the sparkles and all the shoujo manga things it does.
I think it helps that Aya Kanno has mentioned more than once that she hates girly things, and isn’t well-suited to drawing a series like this. I can only imagine Otomen getting popular as a kind of mangaka hell for her, but on the other hand, I think that’s why the humor works so well… it’s a super-girly shoujo manga drawn by someone who secretly hates super-girly shoujo manga.
I have to say, I am a little disappointed that there’s not a lot of forward momentum in the plot, but as long as Juta keeps calling attention to this and the story is perfectly aware of what it’s doing, I’ll keep reading. The new character also blew my mind, and I’m very excited about getting to see more of him. I believe I was promised an Otomen band as well, and I just can’t stop before I get to see that.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Ooku 2
November 5, 2009
Fumi Yoshinaga – Viz – 2009 – 5+ volumes
I wondered about the format of this series, but this volume answered my question. I think. Here, we jump backward in time to the first female shogun and a monk she coerces into becoming her catamite. The story this time is much darker than the first volume, and I was quite shocked when the story actually went down the dark path it promised, rather than whimsically taking all its threats back at the threshold to show that the shogun wasn’t a bad person. This happens twice, the first as a measure to get the pious monk into the inner chambers, and the second when the shogun finally appears in front of the monk.
Unlike Yoshimune in the first volume, the Shogun in this volume (who is without a name, officially, and is covered up to the best of everyone’s abilities) is very much a villain for most of the volume. I kept trying to sympathize with her. For awhile, the nurse/advisor character took the majority of my wrath, since everything can easily be blamed on her. But the Shogun isn’t that pleasant, either. From the first time she appears, she gives the reader reason to hate her, and most of the good things she does, or anything sympathetic, is balanced out with something obnoxious. But by the end of the book, Yoshinaga turns the tables, and in the last few pages, I begrudgingly admitted that the match between the poor monk forced to give up his vows and the Shogun looked to be a good one. I couldn’t believe how masterfully revealing her backstory explained every heinous thing she did, and even made me feel bad for her. I hated her so much. There is no other story that could make me hate a character, then make me like her, all in a single volume.
The monk character was a good one, and balances out the Shogun’s evil quite well. His role is apparently based on a true story, though with the genders switched. He’s very sincere about his vows, and we find out later that the position he reached at the beginning of the story was his main goal in life. He really, really does not want to join the harem, but does anyway in an incredibly powerful scene that borrows some of the devices and expectations mentioned above. He continues to hold his own in the court, speaking up when he feels strongly and bending when something isn’t worth fighting for.
The only link between this volume and the first, other than the premise of the men dying out, is the fact that the other members of the harem wage jealous wars on one another over who gets more of the Shogun’s attention. I like this element of it, and it’s pretty hilarious given the fact that you can easily imagine the scenarios playing out in a court of women as well.
I rarely mention artwork, but I very much enjoy Yoshinaga’s art. It’s sparse, but well-composed, and the composition and subtle ways she conveys emotion through facial expression and repetition are absolutely masterful in this story. It just wouldn’t be the same without the soft touch and insight the artwork offers. The last page is one of my favorite illustrations in the book, it looks very much like a woodblock print piece.
About the only thing I don’t like about it is the Early Modern English that all the characters use. It takes me out of the story, especially when words like “quack” come up and I have to look it up and verify that it actually is a ridiculous slang word from 500 years ago. But otherwise the presentation is quite good. There are translation notes in the back that help out with the difficult Japanese historical references, and the book itself maintains all the bells and whistles from the first, like the flaps on the cover and the vellum title page before the color illustration in the front. I’m also very fond of the minimalist design of the whole thing, and I love that there are no ads in the back to shatter the mood.
Basically, this volume is much different than the first, but no less amazing. I was very fond of the fact it took the expectations from the first volume and warped them to make the story much darker than it could have been otherwise. And even with the darker and depressing story, the ending still managed to make the reader sympathize with the characters. I don’t think anyone has a talent for making characters quite like Fumi Yoshinaga, and this really is one of her best and most well-developed series. I do wonder if each volume will have a different story to tell with different sets of characters, or if they will all tie together in the end, as her series tend to do. I can’t wait to read more.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Berserk 31
November 5, 2009
Kentaro Miura – Dark Horse – 2009 – 34+ volumes
I got really pumped while trying to explain Berserk to someone today, so I was glad that the newest volume came in yesterday.
Now, if you had told me that I would be enjoying Berserk for the cuteness factor awhile ago, even two or three volumes ago, I would have thought you were lying. But here I am, with an entire volume of Guts and Schierke forming the world’s most adorable team, and I really can’t get enough. I nearly died when Guts gave her a piggyback ride. I see now why Chica Umino drew an alternate cover to volume 33. It just fits.
Part of me thinks I should be more creeped out, but the key factor is that there is nothing (absolutely nothing) sexual, even implied, in their interactions. For Berserk, this shows an incredible amount of restraint. Schierke has her schoolgirl crush on Guts, but Guts sees her as a valuable ally, and treats her like an equal in the team, which is a wonderful contrast since he’s the gigantic strong guy with a metal arm and huge sword, and she’s just a little girl.
Those two steal the show here, and a big part of the volume was a fight where Schierke… was magically along for the ride in Guts’ mind as he fought in the Berserker armor. With her there, he gets to stay himself while he fights, and she gets to offer adorable encouragement and worry about him getting hurt, with him just glancing up and not saying anything. Nobody worries about Guts like Schierke does, and I think he is taken aback by the pleas to keep well. Aww.
There’s also monsters, which you would expect. The Kushan empire is invading the city, and in addition to an entire gigantic army of… well, monster soldiers that Schierke and Guts dispatch (complete with a scene where Guts runs for cover with Schierke under one arm and Isidro under the other), there is also a Kushan magic user that is able to summon gigantic, powerful familiars. There’s also a kraken the size of the entire harbor thrown in for good measure, and an apostle who’s face just appears in the clouds and doesn’t have a physical body. Guts easily outsmarts his techniques.
There’s also a great “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” scene towards the end. I was delighted by Guts’ response, but honestly, I would have been pleased with either answer under those circumstances.
Mostly this volume was just fights with no exposition, and I still loved every page. That this volume was still so cute even when gigantic monsters were being slaughtered most of the time says quite a bit about this series, I think.
Oh, Berserk. Don’t ever stop being awesome.
Arm of Kannon 2
November 5, 2009
Masakazu Yamaguchi – Tokyopop – 2004 – 9 volumes
Oh, Arm of Kannon. The plot really, really doesn’t make much sense, but all I need to know is that three organizations seem to be clashing. The chemical company, the government, and Mao and whoever is keeping him. In addition to the chemical company (the ones that made Mao), there’s also the unit of badasses that they dispatched that seem to be tearing the government’s elite, Black Lagoon-like warriors to shreds. But their battle isn’t over, so maybe those government soldiers will win one for humanity.
The plot is most certainly not why I’m reading this. I’m reading this for the repulsive fight scenes, which are so far living up to my expectations. They aren’t quite as splatter-riffic as the first volume here, but we get more variety. The superhuman warriors tht the chemical company dispatches all have different methods of fighting, including psychological warfare, spider webs, and frying people on a subatomic level by assimilating them into their bodies, and those are all fun to watch. Androids are involved, as are people who weild “psychic swords” and can “see” weakness. Whatever. Mao himself plays almost no role, but the next volume promises he’ll jump into the melee.
Several specimins escaped when Mao broke out of the chemical company, and for whatever reason, they are monster-fying the flora and fauna in the forest the characters are searching. I’m hoping that escalates, but I don’t think the action will stay in the forest much longer.
I actually like the art in this series quite a bit. Despite being dated from 2002, it looks very early 90s shounen-ish, a lot like Bastard with better composition. The panel layouts are well-chosen, the character designs are suitably grotesque, and the art is extremely high-contrast, which adds to the nightmarish atmosphere.
It’s still not very good, but it is living up to my expectations and is thus far an entertaining read. I like it.
