Slightly Biased Manga

…Man.  I almost quit when I got to the part where Ginji defeated his enemy by convincing him not to fight.  That part was so goddamn lame I don’t even have the words.  The rest of the volume isn’t too fantastic either.

Mostly this is just fight after fight after fight after fight between different characters in different places.  We do get an explanation as to what’s up with Amon Natsuki and why the two clans are fighting, but other than that it feels like the plot doesn’t advance AT ALL.  I mean, obviously several opponents are defeated, so everyone’s that much closer to… whatever the hell it is they’re going to do here, but other than completing several battles, nothing happens and nobody meets up with one another.  In fact, several characters split up, thus ensuring things will take even longer since they have to meet back again.

So Himeko fights alone versus a butterfly woman who uses poison powders like she does.  Akabane fights against one of the bosses he knew from when he was the real Dr. Jackal, saving lives and everything.  Ginji fights… okay, Ginji doesn’t even fight, he just gets scared, then somehow “finds his power” and easily convinces his opponent that killing is bad.  Except he doesn’t really find any power, or not anything terribly obvious.  Ban fights one of the other bosses, and his battle is actually the only one that was remotely cool.  Well, Akabane’s was kind of cool since we got the barest hints of his background, but a lot of the time I couldn’t really tell what was going on because the art isn’t very clear during these action scenes for some reason.  Also, there’s a battle at the very beginning between a couple of the Insect bosses that involves Himeko, Ban, and the Observer.  Amon and the whip guy are shown still mired in battle, but that’s just more to let you know they’re still around since they don’t really get their own chapter this time around.

Mmm.  I don’t think I’m missing anything.  If you’re reading this series, feel free to skip right over this volume.  I’m sure the only important bit of information (what’s up with Amon Natsuki) will be immediately apparent when events start moving forward again.

Man, I TRY to stay on schedule, and look what happens. My internet goes down. Well, we’ll just see how much I can get done before it cuts out again.

Even though I was kind of optimistic after reading the last LuvLuv title, I have to admit I was slightly disappointed with the first release from the imprint. This one fared much better though, at least for me. Instead of several short stories, this volume was composed of two main story lines. The first story was called “Real Love” and was broken down into three chapters, and the other two stories in the volume, “Baby” and “Love Star” involved the same set of characters.

While I liked the first story, “Real Love,” I’ll admit parts of it made me feel kind of uncomfortable. The main female character runs into a guy she broke up with several years ago, apparently for cheating on her. Despite the fact she hates his guts, she can’t help but be attracted to him, and the two enter into a casual sexual relationship that the girl seems to be rather torn on. Her inner conflict was so strong, in fact, that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the sex scenes since they seemed at least slightly tainted with non-con. The main character also has a twin brother who hates the ex-boyfriend’s guts and says really hateful things to his sister throughout the course of the story that add to my discomfort. The brother also has a girlfriend who he treats rather poorly. The girl painfully lacks a will of her own throughout the entire story, but it’s partially redeemed in the end when she begins to stand up for herself, many things are revealed, and a couple characters turn out to be actually kind of nice.

“Baby” was my favorite because the female was a bit stronger and more free-spirited. She is a musician who performs on the sidewalk, and she begins to hang out with a guy she winds up in bed with one night. She gets really wrapped up in him and even begins writing a song, but his intentions turn out to be… not the purest. She breaks down a bit in the end, which is a little disappointing, but it’s still a pretty good story.

I liked the second story involving those two characters a lot less. The girl turns into a clingy hanger-on and the guy starts denying her nearly everything. It was a bummer to read, but it was pretty short and kind of a throwaway.

On another note, I kind of liked the art in this volume. The style somewhat resembles Ai Yazawa, but I may just say that because one of the characters wears a very Parakiss-looking hat.

So yes. Still flawed, but I liked it much, much better than the previous LuvLuv volume, Voices of Love. This one reads somehow more shoujo-y than the last one though.

Mmm.  This one still isn’t doing it for me, and it still has to do mostly with the huge number of characters involved with the plot at this point.  I think it will thin out again once Taikobo sets out on the next leg of his journey, and I’m eagerly awaiting this next bit of story, but as things stand… there was a bunch of people fighting, both friend and foe, then there was a flashback with a few different characters, then all the good guys moved into the next town and another character was introduced who will probably be important later… there’s just a LOT of people to keep track of.  Really, there’s only a handful you need to keep track of, so it doesn’t have Bride of the Water God problems where there’s a ton of people wandering in and out of the background whose roles you’re not really sure of.  It’s pretty clear who everyone is and what their roles are, it’s just hard to remember their names and follow conversations where characters are discussed.

There are a few important things that happen here.  Some back story is revealed, including all the back story about Dakki and Bunchu and how Dakki got the body she currently inhabits.  The other important thing is an elephant race, which is not so much important as it is awesome.  Things like this give me hope that the next story line, featuring fewer characters, could really get things going.

I really, REALLY got into this series hard again after rereading the entirety of the newest story arc in Japan.  This series is so far 50 volumes long, and as far as I’m concerned, the quality has not suffered.  Thriller Bark was my favorite story arc so far, and also… just… Brooke.  There are no words.

Anyway.  In this volume, we have the end of the Drum Island story and the very beginning of the Alabasta arc.  Drum Island is still one of my favorite story segments, mostly because I like Chopper so much.  Unfortunately, the final battle between King Wapol and Luffy/Chopper isn’t all that exciting compared to some other final battles.  What I do like is just how happy everyone on Drum Island is after King Wapol is taken care of.  I know that happens at the end of every battle where a dictator is disposed of, but for some reason I like it best here.  There are some vague story hints (Dr. Kureha mentions something cryptic about “D” which still hasn’t been answered, and there’s a character who will pop up shortly looking for Luffy), and I always kind of like those, especially in retrospect.  I also always like the parties that happen on board the Straw Hat ship whenever someone new comes along, and that’s mostly because every single character in this series is amazing.

The best part of Drum Island, though, is the way Chopper gets sent off by Dr. Kureha and Dr. Hiriluk’s research.  Both the farewell and the sendoff were just fantastic.  I love One Piece for reasons like this.

The beginning of the Alabasta arc is basically just introducing us to Mr. 0 (Sir Crocodile) and everything he’s doing in Vivi’s homeland.  The most important thing that happens, however, is that we get to meet. Mr. 2 Bon Clay.  I’ve been wondering for quite awhile how he would be dealt with.  Apparently he’s a follower of the “Oh Come My Way” lifestyle, which is only half of the Japanese pun (”Okama Way” being the other half of the pun, which I understand is a slang term for a drag queen and explains why he’s the only officer agent with both names and no female partner).  It’s important to know that I’ve had an unnatural love for Mr. 2 Bon Clay ever since I read this part of the story five years ago.  But I think I’ll talk more about him later.  Just know that he’s important to me.

Wow.  I couldn’t have been… more surprised at the contents of this book.  I was expecting stories in the same style as the main Phoenix series.  These are… drawn like Princess Knight, like a shoujo Astro Boy.  And they are VERY, very shoujo.  Sometimes the logo is made out of hearts.

The stories themselves aren’t bad, as much as I would like to hate them.  Each one concerns the same couple, who starts off in Egypt and are granted immortality by the Phoenix.  When they “die,” they fall into a kind of sleep and wake up hundreds of years later.  They first wake up in Greece and each take part in the battle between the Trojans and the Spartans, then they wake up in Rome and participate in things like lion fights et al.  It does feel unfinished (Rome cuts off abruptly, and the fate of the couple is never determined), and it also shows its age because… the couple isn’t called a couple, nor are they ever married.  They actually say several times that they think of each other as brother and sister.  I find that a little creepy, but I suppose times have changed.

Mostly the stories are about the two characters being separated and a lot of dramatic and historical events happening between the two before they are reunited (usually tragically) at the end.  They periodically lose their memories, but fate brings them together again and again.  Besides them, there is the child of the original Phoenix, who is growing up as the events are playing out, and after the original Phoenix dies, the child’s care is entrusted to a trio of animals (a rabbit, a fox, and a turtle, who I have a feeling appeared elsewhere in Tezuka’s universe), all of whom have been granted immortality.

I kind of liked them, but I’ll be the first to admit they weren’t very good.  It almost feels weird associating them with the rest of Phoenix, because they really DO NOT fit in.  I think most people would probably do well not picking this last volume up, but hey, who am I to stop anybody from completing their series.

This series is awesome in the same way that Trigun is awesome.  Both have excellent artwork (major bonus points for the color pages in the front of volume 2 here), both have really great-sounding plots, and both are nearly incomprehensible when you get down to the nitty-gritty of the plot.

I mean, I know that the main character’s husband changes into a different person at night, and that the main character has fallen in love with this person despite herself, and there’s a lot of drama and intrigue surrounding that… the character who also loves the water god, the water god’s mother, the fact the water god may still love his former human bride, the fact that the main character may find out that Mui and her husband are the same person… stuff like that, and I think if things solidify and really get going, it’ll be awesome.  As it is, there’s a lot of characters wandering around that I sometimes have trouble remembering and keeping straight (the two male side characters in particular, I can’t really remember who they are and they pop in every once in awhile), the sense of place isn’t very good, and the sense of time is also a little skewed.  But it’s so pretty it’s hard for me to begrudge it these things.

I’m definitely picking up volume three, if only because I desperately want things to hop on track.  Plus, yes. great art.

Man, I think my main problem with this series is that I want it to go a lot faster than it’s paced. That’s not really its problem, I think I just expect action and am getting a romance story instead.

A lot of the romantic elements I was most uncomfortable with have abated somewhat, but in their place new complications have arose. I was a big fan of when Cesare and Chiaro were allies, but it looks like that might be gone forever. Chiaro figures less in this volume since he’s mostly recovering from injuries and laying low… and really, I guess Cesare is less prominent too, but he does show up occasionally to menace Lucrezia.

Most of the volume is about Lucrezia and her marriage to Alfonzo. Lucrezia is probably my least favorite character, so I can’t get that excited whenever she figures heavily into the plot, but I like Alfonzo a lot. I like his sister Sancia a lot as well, even though I probably shouldn’t. Those two are probably the most genuine real people characters in the series, and they do a good job of keeping their emotions guarded instead of breaking down into sobbing drama-tastic fits, and they react well even to the worst situations.

My favorite part of the volume, actually, was the short story at the end which was about Alfonzo and Sancia and an incident in their childhood. That story was quite excellent.

I’ve been see-sawing on this title ever since it was licensed. Whenever the opportunity to buy it comes up, I always seem to be in a rare conservative mood and restrain myself from starting a new series. Of any other series, it’s kind of strange how I haven’t wound up buying this one after wanting it for, like, two years. Especially since it’s so short. Apparently I was meant to have it though, because volume one surfaced in a discount bin at Chicago Comics over the weekend. I couldn’t turn it down for two dollars, and I’ll probably wind up buying the rest pretty soon.

The plot intrigued me, though I knew it would wind up being a slightly more mature, but still likely mediocre, shoujo story. It has being serialized in Princess magazine in its favor, and I tend to like series from there A LOT (After School Nightmare and From Eroica With Love spring immediately to mind). After reading it, it was basically what I expected. An introverted girl is forced into a social situation when she shares a butterfly birthmark with more than just her sister… and apparently the birthmark means that a promise was made in a past life with a destined lover. For some reason, I thought time travel was involved too, but it has abstained so far, and I’m okay with that. I kind of dislike time travel since I’m not at all familiar with Japanese history and a lot of story details miss me in those situations.

So far, so good with volume one. It is kind of lukewarm, but it definitely has potential to be a fun story. I like the main character and her sister. The main character is extremely self-assured and knows exactly what she wants in life and how to deal with people despite being totally withdrawn from the rest of her students at school. Her older sister is really shy and has no idea how to interact with others, but somehow she’s wound up as a really famous actress.  To deal with this, she’s adopted a personality as written by her sister so that she can deal with people as the “actress” and not as herself.  Both sisters seem satisfied with this arrangement.  I thought this was pretty unique myself, especially as a secondary plot.  It’s a good idea, but I don’t think it would hold up for long if that was all the story had going for it.

The main character begins getting harassed at school by a pair of boys who have the same butterfly birthmark on their thumbs that she does.  She doesn’t like talking to others, but the pair keep dragging her around, and one insists that they are destined lovers.  The girl rejects him again and again, and goes on to say that she’s already got a (made-up) boyfriend.  His story is strengthened by the fact that the girl does have strange visions of the past when the two touch their thumbs together.  By the end of the volume, the name of the game is keeping these boys from finding out that her sister has the same birthmark.  Also, the sister begins to seem like she’s getting jealous of the time that the main character is spending with friends and not with her, though she’s not the kind of character that’ll come out and say it.

Actually yes, so far this series is really fun and extremely unique.  I think the reason I’m not completely won over is that I haven’t warmed up to the characters yet, but so far it’s got a lot of unique ideas at work in the plot.

I think I’m sort of falling out of love with this series. It’s still very funny, but… after reading all that Ouran and learning to love that, I just miss not having romance in this series. If only the two main characters were getting together more quickly! Of course, it took me, like, 5 or 6 volumes to get into Ouran, so maybe the best is yet to come. I hope so, because I was pretty sad about not enjoying this as much as I should. I followed this up with the Tokyopop version of Your and My Secret to make myself feel better. That series is also awesome, but I won’t post about it now since I… already reviewed it four years ago.

Actually, to be totally honest, a lot of the humor fell flat in this volume, too. There was a silly chapter about the two twin boys falling in love with a pair of twin girls and everyone “helping” set them up on a date. Of course, things go badly when Hana botches her surveilance, and while there’s a priceless panel of the results of everyone’s grooming at the end of the chapter, things just really didn’t amount to much.

I did like the chapter where everyone was helping Hana study and she basically admitted she was just too stupid to go to school with them. Of course she is tempted with treats and there is a strict and comical study regimen she is forced to stick to, and of course her sleep time is cut into, but the main character is the one who helps her most, and Hana seems very appreciative of this in the end, though there isn’t really a nice moment between them like there sometimes is.

To make up for that, we get a chapter where he spites Hana’s lack of interest in him by petitioning the rest of the eager girls in school for a girlfriend. There’s a silly event where he holds a haunted house to take girls through and the rest of the members of the club dress up as horror-type characters, but bear in mind that the president of the hockey club hates ghosts more than anything.

But nothing major to report. I’m hoping Hana sort of starts… reciprocating the presidents feelings, even a little bit, sometime soon, or at least the stories get a bit more interesting, because while it’s still pretty funny, I gotta admit I’m getting a little bored with it.

Also, in case you were wondering, no hockey is played. Hockey may only actually come up like 3 or 4 times in the entire volume. I have to admit, the strict avoidance of hockey is something I really admire about it.

So I started buying some of the artbooks associated with this series, because it is my undisputed queen of girl comics. There are no less than 4 different artbooks in print at the moment along with a few older things which are harder to find, but only one is an actual “artbook.” The others can be disappointing, but make it up to you with the insanity of the illustrations they contain. Consider this, which I’m pretty sure is a parody of Mars Chastising Cupid (I mean, it’s not quite the same, but they are dressed as the characters, and the… uh, action is the same in both). I had a moment of Zen on the bus ride home while I was flipping through that book, since that’s one of my favorite paintings, and I thought it was fairly obscure… plus, it’s just… what the hell. I can’t read the text on it or on the page next to it, so it’s without context, which makes it even better. My school owns that particular painting, and if their interpretation is to be believed, Cupid is enjoying it just as much as Dorian is.

Anyway, I wanted to share that. I put off the review because I was trying to get my scanner to work. Putting it off meant I got to read the book again a couple days ago, which… again, is just something I do not do since I have about 100 other things I haven’t read yet sitting within arm’s reach. I like this series that much.

This volume is the end of the “Laughing Cardinals” arc along with a few one-shot short stories. The main story sort of ends abruptly, but not before cramming in a few jokes about the Major’s butt in for the road. As part of a clever ploy to get Klaus a gun in front of a KGB agent, Bonham sort of… I don’t know, fondles him to get his attention and to remind him that he had a gun hidden away. For his efforts, Bonham is booted rather hard in the shin, and the Major states that “Usage of my rear for other than its intended purpose is strictly verboten” while Dorian yelled “Spoilsport! It won’t break!” from a chandelier. It was beautiful.

After all the dust settles, since it turns out that every single one of the Major’s men was captured and the lines they were feeding the KGB turned out to be the true location of the information they were looking for, Klaus fires every single one of them on the spot and sends them to Alaska, all except for Z. Amidst all their own suffering, the men find time to offer Z their condolences since they figure he’s gotten the worse end of the deal, staying all by himself with the Major.

There are two one-shots that deal with the only thing that could make the Major more angry in his situation (chained to his desk doing paperwork meant for 25 people, no missions in sight), which is Lawrence showing up from England to help him out. On one hand, I kind of hate Lawrence because I can’t figure out if he’s actually a decent agent or just an idiot through and through. These two chapters have definitely lowered my opinion of him considerably. On the other hand, everyone hates him with such a passion that it’s hilarious to see the reactions to him. The Director shows Klaus a kindness when he gives him a simple surveillance mission, but the trick is that Lawrence has to come with him so that he doesn’t hang around NATO headquarters. While on this mission, Lawrence decides that the Major got his “Iron Klaus” nickname by being tireless with the ladies, and the two are also forced to share a bed when the hotel has only one honeymoon suite left to rent.

After their intended target flees from the Major in terror, Klaus decides to send Lawrence to Lucerne with the restored Laughing Cardinals fresco as an “escort” so that he can pester Dorian. Lawrence does his job well, bonding with James to create double the irritation, but the Major’s plan backfires when Lawrence actually returns with Dorian in tow, because Dorian just can’t believe that Lawrence and Klaus have shared a bed.

I just… am consistently blown away with how funny each volume is. I go into them thinking that the newest one can’t be better than the ones I’ve already read, but I’m always pleasantly surprised. There’s a ton of jokes and plot I’ve left out… for instance, Lawrence strolling into the Monastery in Lucerne and laughing to himself for about half a page before he notices Dorian and blows a gasket, or the whole encounter with Dorian, Lawrence, and Klaus in the NATO office. That part is priceless. Klaus questions Dorian’s gaydar, and tells him he should be kicked out of the club. I was dying. Plus the adaptation is always really top notch. A lot of German words and British slang terms are inserted into the character’s dialogue, which makes the European setting much easier to keep in mind.

I love it. There’s nothing more I can say about it. Once again, if you’re not reading this and you love shoujo manga, you’re some sort of criminal. This series is fantastic.