MPD Psycho 9
Posted: August 29, 2009 Filed under: MPD Psycho 1 Comment »Story: Eiji Otsuka / Art: Sho-U Tajima – Dark Horse – 2009 – 13+ volumes
I don’t even know what to say about this. Twins? Twins?!
And to think I gave it credit for what happened a couple volumes back. Now all of that’s undone.
Strangely, focus has shifted to Sasayama as the main character. Sasayama has always been a major player, but over the last couple volumes, the action has shifted to focus on what it is that he’s uncovering. It’s possible it’s been like this for quite some time and I failed to notice because things were so badly shaken up. But all the same, Sasayama amuses me because of his presence as a very different type of character in Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. It would be magnificent and mind-blowing if the two series somehow pulled a Tsubasa/Holic and combine in a strange way, but I don’t forsee that being possible. Even a little bit.
Things are still meandering along, plot-wise. Tetora is running around, random Gakuso agents are running around acting on different tasks, twins of different and insane random characters are running around and getting killed, and now we can’t even trust Machi? I don’t know, I think that’s bad advice. Gakuso is now exercising government influence for some reason, but… may not be anymore?
Seriously. I’m just not sure where this is going right now. Literally, I have no idea what’s going to happen next volume. There currently aren’t any open plot threads save for the fact we supposedly can’t trust Machi. Whatever.
On the plus side, I love the editor’s notes in the back of the volume. Cultural notes are sometimes noted in the panel gutters and sometimes in the notes in the back, but the majority of the end notes are used to remind the reader who the hell the random characters are and what’s going on. Extremely useful. I certainly remembered who the female character was (if I remember one character in this series, it will be her), but I couldn’t figure out why Sasayama was reacting to the male murder victim until I read the end notes. Thank you, kind editor of MPD Psycho!
Slam Dunk 6
Posted: August 29, 2009 Filed under: Slam Dunk 3 Comments »Takehiko Inoue – Viz – 2009 – 31 volumes
I am continually impressed with how entertained I can be by a basketball manga. I have no interest in basketball, and yet I consumed half this volume in what seemed like 30 seconds.
And, well… the first half is the last 30 seconds of the game that’s been going on for several volumes. As Eyeshield 21 has taught me, 30 seconds can take a long time to elapse, sometimes, and a lot can happen. Slam Dunk may well have invented this proud tradition (or maybe it was Aim for the Ace or something way older, what do I know), and it doesn’t disappoint. I was actually very surprised by the outcome, as shounen sports manga aren’t in the habit of… well, doing what happened here. It was impressive, and made me like the series a lot more. Then again, Eyeshield 21 did this same thing in its early volumes, so maybe it won’t be as common as I think it will.
The second half of the volume introduces a new character, a member of the basketball team who was injured and whom Hanamichi hasn’t met yet. Of course he is Hanamichi’s double as far as punkishness, ego, and skill goes, except he’s probably a better basketball player. The two of them get off on the wrong foot, and after a few bad encounters in this volume, the next volume promises a huge brawl will take place.
Plot that isn’t basketball? I’ll take it. Gladly.
I also think it’s worth mentioning that this is the speed-liney-ist manga I’ve ever read. I almost never notice the speed lines, but… well, it’s like the characters are wading through a forest of them here. It’s easy to forgive, since they are playing basketball, but still. It moves FAST.
Also, this is a series that has benefited greatly from an adaptation. I had to call my roommate in to see the line “You can call me the bus driver ’cause I take everyone to school!”
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Choco Mimi 2
Posted: August 29, 2009 Filed under: Choco Mimi 3 Comments »Konami Sonoda – Viz – 2009 – 4+ volumes
This is still very, very cute and very, very little girl-y. Again, it’s a collection of 4-panel and short comics surrounding two junior high girls named Choco and Mimi. They like clothes and hanging out with their friends. The art is super-cutesy and goes over the top when it comes to flowers, sparkles, and clothes. It’s not terrible, I chuckled a few times, and I would have loved it if I had read it as a little girl.
I kept a closer eye on it this time to gauge it for possible negative influences. There really wasn’t anything I could disagree with. There were a few jokes about Mimi’s bad grades in the last volume, but it doesn’t mention Mimi’s lack of interest in studying at all in this volume, and does mention a few times how Choco is a good student. The clothes, for as much focus as they get, aren’t inappropriate, and frequently the girls are dressing in layers with lots of those cute/cheap accessories that young girls have in abundance. About the worst thing they wear are shorts, or halter tops overtop of a tank top, and I can’t really fault it for that. It’s possible a materialistic message can be inferred from that… but I couldn’t find it in my heart to fault it, since the girls aren’t actually going out and shopping all the time, or commenting on how the clothes make them look pretty or anything like that. There are several strips that lay out outfits in varying degrees of simple and complex in a way that I would have appreciated when I was young.
There is more focus on their adorable relationships with the boys they hang around with. Choco and Ando have a mutual crush on one another that neither want to aknowledge, and an annoying boy named Mumu has what is most likely a crush on Mimi. Both girls also adore one of Ando’s friends, a smart but spacey and strange boy that both Choco and Mimi see as a prince. There’s no actual dating, or segments on how to pick up boys or look pretty or anything. The boys are already friends with Choco and Mimi, and most of the comics are just about them hanging out and being friends, doing things like having birthday parties, going to the beach, spending New Year’s Day together, stuff like that.
I would have no problems giving this to a young girl, really. It’s just cute and absolutely made for little girls. Sugar and spice and everything nice, and all that.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Oh My Goddess 32
Posted: August 29, 2009 Filed under: Oh My Goddess! 2 Comments »Kosuke Fujishima – Dark Horse – 2009 – 39+ volumes
Wow, what a weird volume. The most notable thing about it was probably how out-of-character Belldandy seemed. Now, normally Belldandy hides her jealousy and protectiveness of Keiichi pretty well behind a solid wall of naivete, but here… well, within the first few pages, she flat-out tells the Gate “no” when she asks Keiichi to teach her about romance, and then admits to being very narrow-hearted when it comes to Keiichi. This was… this was just beyond weird. It sounded very wrong coming from her. Usually she would find some polite way to turn the Gate down, or find some way of avoiding the subject. Here… she just says no, and then admits to being selfish. What happened, Belldandy? Did character development happen while I wasn’t looking?
The next story was a confrontation between the Goddesses and a species of water-dwelling creatures called Lorelai (a type of German river mermaid apparently unique to a bend in the Rhine river). They wage war, and I thought this would turn into one of those nice, long, epic storylines that used to come up but hasn’t in a while. It, uh… doesn’t quite pan out that way. There is a misunderstanding. There’s lots more of Belldandy acting strangely out-of-character about Keiichi, but to be fair, the Queen Lorelai is trying to steal him, and is being rather rude about it. Belldandy is pretty obvious about a kiss at the end of the story, which is incredible given the fact this is Oh My Goddess, and the two of them have kissed maybe three times total. Even more incredibly, it was given out of jealousy. I’ll say it again: what?!
Keiichi continues to be a wimp. It’s good that some things never change. He’s got a kind of reverse mullet going on lately, which I haven’t mentioned and probably should. It’s the same hairstyle he’s always had, just with more detail, and quite frankly, it’s business in the back and party in the front.
The other weird thing about this volume is that Peorth is gone. I didn’t think that would actually happen. Maybe she’ll be back. For as little as Urd and Skuld contributed to this volume, you wouldn’t think another Goddess would have made a difference, but I miss Peorth. I like her a lot.
Yeah… this volume just made me feel uncomfortable.
Cut
Posted: August 29, 2009 Filed under: Cut | Tags: BL 2 Comments »Toko Kawai – June – 2009 – 1 volume
This had been recommended to me, so I was looking forward to reading it, even with the heavy subject matter the title promised.
Now… there were lots and lots and lots of taboo things in this book. One of them I’m not going to be able to bring myself to state overtly. To me, worse than the cutting (which I was expecting) was the relationship the main character was in prior to finding his partner. Now, it was one of those “not really related, not really incest” relationships that manga uses from time to time, except this one was… er, not the usual brother or cousin, if you understand what I’m trying to get at. I found myself deeply, deeply troubled by this, and even more troubled by the fact that the relationship is an extremely abusive one.
So there. There is cutting in the story, and not without cause. The cutting doesn’t actually come into play until much later. After we realize what is going on with the main character and his relationship, he starts happening across a classmate more and more frequently. Except it’s not in the usual places. These places were inevitably the park at 2 am, or the school roof when he was cutting class. Nobody at school seemed to really know this boy either, so obviously he’s not all about interacting with people. We find out that this boy was also a victim of abuse, which is obvious right away, but he doesn’t really discuss it until later in the book.
This was a massive, massive downer for about 3/4 of the story. It was quite literally one of the most depressing one-shots I’ve ever read. And yet, it’s hard to fault it for that. It tells this horrible story in the most tasteful way it can be told (which is admittedly not tasteful at all when it comes to the main character’s early affair), and when the two boys find each other, the typical yaoi plot devices don’t come into play… you know, where they figure they are soul mates and start having wild sex that motivates them to fix everything wrong with their lives. I appreciated this, and it helped me to take the subject matter much more seriously.
The interaction between the boys is actually limited to just meeting and sitting in silence, more often than not. The partner character doesn’t like or appreciate small talk, and the main character learns early on not to drive him away with advances. The main character is addicted to abuse mixed with his affection, so he does try to force himself on the partner a couple times, but it’s nothing like how other yaoi books might handle it. Eventually, they do get together, but the story doesn’t really focus on it, and comments more on the fact that both of the boys are using their relationship as an escape from reality. And then several things happen that give them both the motivation to… well, live.
As horrible as the subject matter is, the story takes itself very seriously. Considering this is a yaoi story, that is almost unheard of, but it is necessary when telling this type of story. The relationship is slow and sensitive, and incredibly, it’s not all about the sex.
It probably bears repeating that this was one of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read, but it’s also worth reading if you feel like that won’t stop you. I wouldn’t say it’s a must-read, but it is a different type of story, it covers subject matter most yaoi wouldn’t touch (and I wouldn’t normally touch in a yaoi), and it does the best it can with it. Which winds up being pretty darn good, in the end.
Nora: The Last Chronicle of Devildom 7
Posted: August 26, 2009 Filed under: Nora: The Last Chronicle of Devildom 3 Comments »Kazunari Kakei – Viz – 2009 – 9 volumes
This series is a lot like Law of Ueki, in that both are pretty typical-looking shounen manga that do pretty typical shounen manga things, but if you look closely, there’s lots of awesome things that set them apart from the pack. The problem is that it’s hard to get people to look close, and sometimes you get volumes like this, where shounen manga tendencies override all the good stuff going on.
This volume is pretty much the windup to the final battle, and all the characters are running around the tower in the demon world looking for Fall in order to stop him from killing the Dark Liege, Nora, Kazuma, and pretty much every human and demon in existence. The Dark Liege has her turn at fall, and slowly but surely Kazuma and Nora make it to the group by the end of the volume. There’s lots of fighting and lots of “never give up!” moments, along with Kazuma’s promise that he will blaze his own path when it comes to making his decision about the Dark Liege.
None of that is out of the ordinary, but I get a particular kind of pleasure from Kazuma saying it, since Kazuma is just so cocky and is pretty much always, always right. Similarly, when Nora is yelling at the Dark Liege at the end of the volume, the words coming out of his mouth are the same I’ve heard from 100 other shounen characters, but coming from Nora, they turn into something special.
Great characters and great ideas always stand out, and it’s easy to weather and even enjoy standard shounen battle patches like this. The fights were only okay, and I’m no longer very impressed with any of the character’s powers (except for the snake lady at the end, who was just awesome). But waiting to see what would happen to Kazuma and Nora, and the Dark Liege, made me sit on the edge of my seat while reading this. I love them so much, and the novelty of the decision that Kazuma and Nora have to make still hasn’t worn off. I want to see it happen, no matter what. Kazuma needs that position like nobody’s business. I don’t think it will happen, not after what the Dark Liege says in the last few pages here, but all the same. Kazuma’s the man.
If you like shounen series at all, this one is worth reading. Do not start with this volume, because you won’t believe me. This is definitely one to start from the beginning, because otherwise you will miss out on the great clash of personalities between Nora and Kazuma, and how indeed Kazuma is proven right no matter what he says. There’s a great sense of humor, there’s lots of interesting things about the magic and the way the human and demon worlds work, and this Dark Liege decision just won’t mean anything if you don’t start there. It’s well worth it.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Silver Diamond 4
Posted: August 26, 2009 Filed under: Silver Diamond Leave a comment »Shiho Sugiura – Tokyopop – 2009 – 17+ volumes
On one hand, I still adore the fantasy world that this series is set in. The characters cross back over to the desert world here, and the political unrest and ecosystem problems have lots and lots of potential. Add to that the fact that the main characters have drifted into a den of “numbered children” – basically the unwanted extras from their respective families of all social standings – and really, you can see the series is just getting started.
Action has entered the picture in this volume too, and since it is enhanced by things like guns that fire plants, crossbows that grow from seeds, and mysterious swords, that element is shaping up to be pretty awesome. The action scene upon re-entering the desert world was the highlight of the volume for me, and in addition to the weird weaponry used, we begin to see the strangeness of the character’s background come into play, like Chigusa being a monster or Narushige’s noble status.
The downside is… well, Rakan is lame. He’s always asking for group hugs. Always asking for people not to kill. Even when bandits are surging forward with swords, nobody’s allowed to hurt them. The other characters want nothing more than to indulge Rakan. I can see how he’s supposed to be a bright spot in an otherwise dreary and disturbing world, but… there were just too many scenes where he would pipe up with a naive demand that everyone would be initially shocked by, then wind up doing happily anyway.
The lame hugs were really too much, though. I know this has been going on the entire series, but I think I just didn’t notice it as much until the characters were all thrown into the desert with bandits stalking them. The hugs seem less appropriate.
But Rakan’s lameness is balanced out by his plant power and the fact he baffles everyone by looking exactly like the Prince, and I’m more than willing to put up with group hugs when the premise is this good. It’ll take a lot more than that to turn me off Silver Diamond, which is moving slowly but surely into “fantastic shoujo fantasy manga” territory.
Golgo 13 11
Posted: August 25, 2009 Filed under: Golgo 13 1 Comment »Takao Saito – Viz – 2007 – 13 volumes
the US edition is based on a special “greatest hits” release of the manga. Golgo 13 is 148+ volumes.
Hmm. I wasn’t all that interested in the first story of the volume, which takes up about 3/4 of the pages here. It was quite slow to get started and I had trouble wrapping my brain around the politics involved, which were Japan-centric. The gist of it was pretty awesome though, which was that Okinawa had been getting the royal diplomatic shaft since WWII and a member of an old Okinawan aristocratic family, now in the military, is staging a coup to liberate the island from both the US and Japan (US military presence is apparently still very strong on the island, and apparently the majority of the Japanese SDF is also stationed there).
I can get behind crazy coups like that, and when I finally figured out what was going on, I was very interested, but by that time more than half the story had elapsed. It also doesn’t much help that Golgo 13 doesn’t appear until the end, and his role is literally a baffling mystery until the very last pages. He does take the shot though, which is really what I was looking for. He also plays a very unorthodox role, which would have been more interesting if we had seen it in more than three panels.
The second story was a riot, but very short. A traveling salesman in Chicago is mistaken for Golgo 13. He has a very similar name (it might be Dave Togo or something like that), and was waiting for a client to pick him up across the street from where Golgo 13 was waiting to rondevous with his client, so Golgo 13′s people picked up the salesman instead. He also bears a vague resemblance to Golgo 13. He is baffled by his special treatment and all the great lengths the client goes to in order to make him happy, like setting him up with a nice hotel room and an expensive prostitute and all that. His confusion about being needed as a salesman manifests itself in a few hilarious situations, like when he says “100% customer satisfaction” in response to a request for a summation of his work ethic.
And Golgo 13′s decision is pretty spectacular, too.
I wish this had been the long story instead of the one about Okinawa, but it’s probably better that it wasn’t stretched out for too much longer, because I think I would have enjoyed it much less if it had been padded out.
Wild Ones 6
Posted: August 25, 2009 Filed under: Wild Ones 3 Comments »Kiyo Fujiwara – Viz – 2009 – 10 volumes
I haven’t read this series before, but like I said, it’s a little easier jumping into shoujo series than shounen. This one wasn’t an exception, as all the situations and character dynamics were pretty clear even at the beginning of the book. The premise is that Sachie now lives with her yakuza family and has to keep it a secret from her friends at school. The main romantic interest is her “caretaker,” a bodyguard named Rakuto that follows her everywhere. The romantic rival is a boy named Azuma, who needs to find the courage to confess his feelings for Sachie.
The character types were pretty fun. Sachie is a very strong girl, and tends to be the pillar of support when everyone else around her goes weak-willed. Azuma is something of a smooth talker and pretty boy, but a nice guy through and through. Unusually, Rakuto, the main romantic interest is very quiet and doesn’t like to be directly involved with things. That might just be because most of the focus this time around was on Azuma, though.
There doesn’t seem to be an overarching plot, and this volume had three different one-shot stories. The first was about one of Sachie’s childhood friends coming back and setting himself on outing Sachie’s yakuza connections to ruin her life, the same way she outed his years ago and ruined his. This was the Rakuto-centric parts, since Rakuto is the one who is trying to defend her honor. Sachie does not approve, and defends her honor herself, with some support from Rakuto. The second story is about a former member of the yakuza gang in need of help, since loan sharks are about to close down his restaurant. Sachie rallies everyone around her to get the money he needs and help him turn his place into a presentable and delicious restaurant. This was an Azuma story, since Azuma is the one urging Sachie through all this and decides that he will admit his feelings to her when the debt is all paid off. Rakuto does not approve, but does little to stop the situation. Mostly he just blushes and keeps to himself.
The third story was also an Azuma story, but dealt more with a past love than with his relationship with Sachie. I actually liked this story the best, since the character development for Azuma came from a very unexpected and unusually cheery place.
But overall, I was not very much taken in by the series. I liked pretty much everything about it, but there wasn’t anything outstanding or terribly addictive in this volume. The stories themselves were okay, but not really… well, worth reading. Their one-shot nature worked against them, too. Since they didn’t appear to be contributing to a central plot, they seemed kind of pointless in addition to being bland. It was also surprisingly romance-lite, something that never earns shoujo series a place in my good books. For having two boys after her, Sachie seems to express no preference and nothing terribly interesting happens between them. Maybe I’ve just gotten a particularly unromantic volume. I’ve got one more volume here, so I’m willing to give it another try.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Ikigami 2
Posted: August 24, 2009 Filed under: Ikigami 3 Comments »Motoro Mase – Viz – 2009 – 7+ volumes
Wow, this was fantastic. Much better than I thought it was going to be. For some reason, I caught a supernatural detective vibe from it, even knowing it was about a society where a person is randomly selected to die in order to act as an example of why life is precious. I think I naturally assumed the plot would run to the main character (who is the bearer of bad news for the unlucky) helping the victims to escape and live. It’s not that at all. It’s about how different characters in the one-shot episodes value their lives and how they choose to live their last day (the notice comes 24 hours before they will expire due to a drug in their system, injected during childhood into the entire population but only actually killing 1 in 1,000).
I was sold by the time I finished this volume. There are two episodes, and while the first one was fascinating, I nearly teared up at the second episode. The first was about a young man who had been working his way up from the bottom of the food chain for the chance to be a director. When he finally gets his chance, he gets into a fight with his girlfriend, who is upset over his drug use. Then the death notice comes, and the young man begins to appreciate all the things his girlfriend has been nagging him about over the years. It had more of a taste of the cautionary tale than I like, but there was a little twist in the middle that I did not see coming, and the relationship between the girlfriend and the young man, along with all the fights and feelings they had together, were spot-on. I enjoyed reading it, but it didn’t quite sell me on the series.
The second episode features a younger boy who dropped out of public school after junior high and decided to be a nurse at a nursing home. Everyone there constantly scolds him, and he can’t seem to do anything right, but he feels that he is doing something worthwhile with his life, especially when one of the problem patients starts opening up to him. Then his death notice comes. The difference between the two stories was probably that this was a more sympathetic character, a young boy who felt he was finally touching lives when the old woman started talking to him versus a drug-addicted young man who wants to direct films. Both are dreams in a way, I suppose. The other difference is that the young boy didn’t have a girlfriend or anyone else to depend on, so the story took a look at the counseling the government provides for victims. The counseling had a strong impact on the main character of the series, the man who delivers the death notices, but the method of counseling someone who will be dead the next day didn’t really strike me until the end of the story, where the counselor admits to her true methods.
I loved it. I’m curious to see the paths that all these stories will take, and how many different types of people will work their way through the last day of life. It’s an interesting premise, and I’m happy to see that it sticks to the main theme instead of trying to overthrow the system or something like that.
It also reminded me a lot of The Embalmer, by Mitsukazu Mihara. I like both for different reasons… but then again, part of The Embalmer takes place in Pittsburgh, so I think I have to give the “series with a main character who works in death used as a framing device for short stories about coping with death” award to that one, for now. But the short stories in Ikigami are a bit more developed and emotionally striking.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
