One Pound Gospel 3
Posted: April 17, 2009 Filed under: One Pound Gospel 3 Comments »The announcement that Viz is going to release Rumiko Takahashi’s new series simultaneously with the weekly Japanese chapters has caused me to break out a celebratory volume of One Pound Gospel. And if that weren’t enough to celebrate, apparently Inu-Yasha is being released in a VizBig edition starting at the end of the year, which is as good a reason as any for me to start it.
Anyway. One Pound Gospel continues to deliver exactly what you would expect from it, which is sort of its charm. The first story is about Kosaku trying to lose weight and Sister Angela giving him a string with a hair in it tied around his finger in order to get him to keep his resolve. Kosaku, of course, assumes it’s Sister Angela’s hair. To keep things interesting, there’s also a little kid staying at the gym who gets to stay in Tokyo and train to be a boxer only if he can land a punch on Kosaku (there are no real ulterior motives for this, he has to land a punch on the strongest guy). This is a pretty typical Takahashi gag where things keep interfering whenever the kid throws a punch. The last punch is pretty awesome, though, if only because this series is never serious.
The second story is about Kosaku getting all wound up about an eight-round match. He makes Sister Angela promise they can spend Christmas together if he wins, so he trains extra-hard for it. Amusingly, Kosaku bonds with his opponent as the only person that will eat the opponent’s (apparently terrible) cooking. Their friendship was pretty neat, actually. A complication comes into play just before the match when the Mother Superior finds out the opponent has a gigantic Virgin Mary tattooed on his chest and says Kosaku can’t spend Christmas with Sister Angela if he hits the Virgin Mary. So no body blows.
The last story is about a girl that looks like Lum who comes to stay with Kosaku, very much to his chagrin, when her boyfriend kicks her out for over-eating. But her story isn’t quite what she thinks it is, or what anyone else thinks it is. Sister Angela gets the wrong idea about Kosaku and the girl, the girl’s boyfriend is jealous and turns out to be Kosaku’s next opponent… you see where this is going.
The stories are once again quite charming and subtle, but they are of a particularly mature and definitely acquired Takahashi taste. If you liked the first volume, you’ll probably like all of them, but if you read it hoping something more would develop as the series went on… well, that just doesn’t happen.
Croquis Pop 2
Posted: April 17, 2009 Filed under: Croquis Pop 1 Comment »Now, the good thing about this volume is that the story is getting a bit more developed. Instead of the short monster-of-the-day-type stories from before, one story fills this volume and actually runs into volume three. It’s a good story too, where an old assistant shows up at the studio and Da-Il winds up sharing a room with him and somehow getting sucked into his past in the alternate dimension of the story. This story also has a lot less of the weird fighting and stuff from the first volume. I liked that it backed off the weird stuff, just because it’s probably better that I have some time to digest all that stuff, and it’s better that it comes slowly in nice stories like this rather than all at once in shorter stories.
On the other hand, there’s no effort to explain absolutely anything here. We’ve still got an older woman and a younger woman that look like they are controlling things for Da-Il, we’ve still got Mu-Huk running around (kept from Da-Il this time by, uh, Judas, who’s stronger because he’s famous), and, well, Mu-Huk isn’t running around, actually, because he’s sealed in a box in the night sky. I don’t know. While I don’t want this stuff all at once, it would be nice if I could have at least a little peek at what some of it means.
Plus… well, it’s very much a shounen manga. Friends stand up for friends, they go for what they believe in, and the fight scenes between Mu-Huk and Judas are pretty standard fare. Aside from the bizarre and mysterious Dead Zone mechanic, and the fact that it’s got a weird meta thing going on where the artist Ho Go is drawing a comic starring Da-Il doing all the things he’s doing in the Dead Zone… well, actually, that sounds pretty awesome, and it is. The problem is the generic flavor of the actual meat of the series. Perhaps it will shake itself of this in a couple more volumes as things become more clear, though.
The end to the volume is pretty epic and kind of sad, though, and it does leave off in a pretty awesome place for volume 3.
Bastard 10
Posted: April 17, 2009 Filed under: Bastard 3 Comments »Okay, now here’s exactly what I’ve been looking for in Bastard all this time. I wasn’t expecting it to be good. That’s fine. I was expecting it to be a really hardcore and over-the-top-extreme fantasy manga with an obnoxious main character with women falling all over him and a bunch of fantasy animals and stuff for him to slay with ridiculous spells. This is hard to pull off well, because doing it without being self-aware will make the jokes terrible. Somehow, after stopping the last storyline and bringing Dark Schneider back to life, it has become exactly what it was that I thought it was going to be. It’s not serious about anything it does. The art has become less lazy. The swearing has become excessive and hilarious. A variety of monsters are now in every volume, as opposed to one big enemy that engages Dark Schneider in the most boring fight ever.
I’m glad it’s gotten so much more readable. This is one of the top selling series of all time in Japan, and reading through those other volumes was making me lose faith in… something. Probably manga, since I can’t imagine how many good series failed to sell more than this one. Looking at a chart, it’s sold more than Death Note. I know that it’s about twice as old and twice as long, but damn it.
Anyway. The motley group of heroes make it over to some sort of Ancient Elf City where they suspect Princess Sheila wound up after Metallicana blew up. Dark Schneider, after some prodding, speaks in an ancient tongue and the heroes use a portal to get there, whereas the enemies are using The Emerald Eye of Ekron and some blimps or something. Dragons are fought. Dark Schneider tries hard to be a bad guy, even though he has trouble now since Yoko doesn’t like it and he’s still part Lucien.
Kall-Su (who still reminds me of Cipher, and will as long as I see him) has been taken over completely by Anthrasax. Anthrasax wants to be unsealed before the great good that beat him wakes up, and there’s just the matter of Princess Sheila to finish up before it happens. Apparently he takes direct control of Kall-Su to make sure that this happens, but it’s also notable that most of the enemy headquarters has turned into some sort of weird biological extension of his body. Hmm.
Captive Hearts 1
Posted: April 17, 2009 Filed under: Captive Hearts 1 Comment »Well, I thought I’d pick up volume one of this series since I’ve been reading along all this time. I don’t really like this series, so it wasn’t so much because it was good. More like it was because I saw it cheap, and I wanted to see if it filled in some stuff for me.
Mostly I was curious to see how the child slavery stuff fit in. That came up in volume two, but hasn’t really been mentioned since. It didn’t really fit the mood of the series, but I thought maybe Shizuka had been rescued from child slavers before coming to Japan. That… er, was not the case. Maybe I missed the brief part where that was explained in volume 2. But there was no mention of that stuff in this volume. Apparently that was just a random thing that happened and wasn’t referenced before or after. That dropped my opinion a few more notches.
The main problems with this series is that it’s really cheesy, random, the characters are shallow, and the plot is all over the place. I like the idea of Megumi being cursed to be Shizuka’s servant, but the way they are suddenly mutually attracted to one another in this volume was kind of forced. Their relationship was distanced in the second volume, but that seems more as a result of something Megumi said at the end of this volume. I think it works much better as a sort of awkward attraction than the sudden mutual passion they both seem to be experiencing.
And the manservant fit joke was just repeated over and over and over again. As much as I like it, it just wasn’t funny anymore.Aside from that, it’s mostly just the characters freaking out around each other as they get Shizuka accustomed to Japan, school, and living around Megumi. I… just don’t like it.
V. B. Rose 5
Posted: April 14, 2009 Filed under: V. B. Rose 2 Comments »I reviewed this for the Manga Minis column at the Manga Recon, so you can check out the review over there.
Long story short: A lot of what was bothering me in the past couple volumes I’ve sort of set aside, and I like it a lot more as the romance story it is. It’s not a deep romance, and there’s not much else to it, but it’s hard not to get caught up in Yukari and Ageha’s constant worries, and I liked it a lot for what it is.
Bastard 9
Posted: April 14, 2009 Filed under: Bastard 1 Comment »Some awesome things: a new character named Vlad Kills, a really cheesy shower scene that’s only good because it’s such blatant classic fanservice, someone calling Dark Schneider “monkey spunk,” and a two page spread with Dark Schneider yelling “Fucking Die!”
Actually, this volume was a lot more profane and hilarious than the previous volumes, and was a lot more blatantly erotic. One of the chapter title pages had Yoko laying naked across Dark Schneider’s (also naked) lap. He may have been goosing her. Or tweaking her. I don’t know.
This volume was a lot better in general. This is more in line with what I thought the series was going to be when I started it, and maybe it has gone back a bit to the quality in the first couple volumes. The plot makes sense and is readable, and even though 100 new characters are introduced and immediately die, it’s pretty easy to follow that Kall-Su is ruling with an iron fist, farmers are rebelling and Yoko and some Samurai are helping them, and some of Kall-Su’s generals engage the Samurai, Yoko, and eventually Dark Schneider in a fight. Things don’t get over-the-top ridiculous until Dark Schneider shows up at the end of the volume. I think his random hilarious profanity helped me enjoy it more, but he still talks about how great he is, and he still makes lewd remarks about Yoko, he still fires off heavy damage spells… I don’t know, I just liked it a lot better here.
It’s still not what I would call “good,” but this is the cheesy sort of stuff I’m looking for, so that’s fine.
Real 2
Posted: April 14, 2009 Filed under: Real 11 Comments »There’s a few things going on in this volume, but Kiyohiko’s backstory was of the most interest to me. Knowing how the sad story would turn out had a rather depressing effect on the whole thing, especially when it took him so long to figure out that he loved running and was naturally gifted at it. Seeing him play in the wheelchair basketball game and getting the other players fired up about it while the one teammate was trying to drag him down was a nice bit of story too, and it explains some of what was going on in the early parts of volume 3.
The other big part of this volume was watching the playoff game for Takahashi and Nomiya’s old high school team. Nomiya is there to see it, and he’s quite emotional since he sees what the team has become without him, and seems to wish more than anything that he could be down on the floor helping them out. Their loss in the playoffs seems to take a toll on him. This scene also informs another in volume three, where Nomiya goes to see Takahashi and talks to him about what would have happened if they had been playing, and it also lets you know the difference between how much Takahashi tried at the things he saw as important and how much Nomiya tried at them (Nomiya practiced way more than anyone else on the team, judging by the flashbacks in this volume). Nomiya’s putdown next volume thus makes a lot more sense.
But yes, obviously this is not a series you can read out of order. I liked what I read of volume three, but it was a much better read after the first two. The story is quite dense, and the three characters lives are now sort of woven together, so that the events lead in and out over time. It’s quite amazingly crafted.
And that’s not to mention the art, or how well these editions are put together. Everything about Real is superior. I love it.
Fever 2
Posted: April 13, 2009 Filed under: Fever 1 Comment »Again, I really enjoy Hee Jung Park a lot, and I’m a little sad her stuff came out right when the Tokyopop axe fell. That being said, I do like Martin & John and Hotel Africa much more than I like Fever. But my problem with Fever is probably more that it needs a closer read than I’ve given it. It’s got a lot of characters with a lot of different stuff going on, and at least two different main plots running alongside one another. I was a little lost since it had been so long since reading the first volume, and I was intrigued enough to give it a re-read after I finished this.
The main theme of Fever is teenagers finding themselves. What the two main characters (one female, one male) have in common is that they stay at a sort of school/commune-type place called “Fever,” and are supported by their friends while they try to sort themselves out or reinvent themselves.
The main plot from last time, with the main female character, Hyung-In, loosing her friend and getting fed up with the pressure at school, sort of fizzles in this volume since Hyung-In manages to move into Fever and sort of loosen up around all the new people. Most of what goes on here for her seems to be setting up character relationships to build more story on, so there’s not a whole lot of payoff on her side of the story just yet.
The male main character, Ji-Jun, has a weird time of it here. His story last time was a bit more interesting, but it’s hard to argue with the entertainment value of him beating up a famous rapper after the rapper pees on his shoes. There’s a little less of the stuff between he and Ah-In, which is sort of what I liked in the first volume, but instead he gets dumped by one girl and picked up by another who warns him to keep apart from Ah-In. As a bonus, there is a really nice scene between the two boys at the end of the volume.
It’s got a lot of nice, in-depth character stuff going on. Ji-Jun and Hyung-In are separate but together, and it’s interesting (if a little hard to keep track of) some of the characters that move between both their lives. All the characters are quite unique, with their own strengths and weaknesses, and I would love to see them all developing their individual personalities. I do hope that Tokyopop can pick these Hee Jung Park series back up at some point.
Nora: The Last Chronicle of Devildom 1
Posted: April 13, 2009 Filed under: Nora: The Last Chronicle of Devildom 1 Comment »I actually like this series quite a bit, so I’m glad I finally got to go back and read the first volume. It’s one of those shounen series that probably should be middle-of-the-road action, but isn’t. Or perhaps it is, and it just strikes all the right things for me to be something kind of special. I do like demons, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before.
I actually thought Kazuma was portrayed as a bit more of a good guy in this volume. I probably should have known better. He’s sort of an evil guy with good intentions. He’s president of the student council, but even in that capacity, he seems to enjoy ordering people around and torturing them. The students can’t argue with him though, and sort of like him for it since he helps them out. I guess. I was a bit curious how his contract with Nora started too, because he just doesn’t seem like the type of character that would bother. I was right, he simply agreed to things because he was bored.
We get to see Nora as Cerberus twice in this volume, which I thought might be the case after he came back in volume 4. It’s kind of interesting, but the fights in this volume don’t make that much sense after reading the next three, where he’s going through all sorts of magical training. I was under the impression he couldn’t use magic at all. He uses it to fight Resistance foot soldiers, but they do point out that he doesn’t really have enough control to fight someone like Knell, a character that not even Kazuma can really lock horns with yet.
And I still enjoy Kazuma’s part of the story immensely. I like the types of series with fights that are won by outsmarting the opponent rather than overpowering them. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is like that, where every stand user battle is sort of a puzzle, some with more hilarious solutions than others. I also like that Nora is driven to fight by Kazuma’s insults, and that this is also part of Kazuma’s plan. Though Nora is sort of… obtuse (I laughed really hard when he labeled the parts of the body to show Kazuma he’d been educated), I like that he hates so bitterly to be insulted and belittled. This is true through the next three volumes too, but it’s established pretty well here.
So yeah, I’m pretty fired up about this series. The cliffhanger in volume 4 is killing me.
Hanakimi 23
Posted: April 13, 2009 Filed under: Hana-Kimi 1 Comment »I was a bit sad to see that this series sort of fizzled out on a lame note. This volume read a lot like… well, the author wanted to end it, and then just made everything happen that needed to happen in order to resolve the series. Mizuki is found out. Rumors spread through several different levels of scary, Nakatsu finds out, things follow through exactly how you would expect them.
I was most disappointed with the fact that Nakatsu’s reaction to the whole thing was only one or two pages. There was a lot that could have been done with him, but in a way such a non-reaction is sort of in the spirit of his character. He does roll with the punches.
There’s not even really an aftermath segment. That lasts about two pages as well, and I don’t even know why it was there. I guess just to offer at least a little closure.
There are a lot of series that are better than Hana-Kimi, but there’s a lot to be said about delivering consistent entertainment for 23 volumes. Each volume is good fun, most of the plotlines are enjoyable, there’s the necessary degree of silliness and expected behavior from any long-running shoujo romance like this… in short, it’s a really good version of exactly what a shoujo romance should be. I’ll miss it a little, even if it did take a long time for me to get around to reading the ending.
