Parasyte 8
Posted: August 5, 2009 Filed under: Parasyte 10 Comments »Hitoshi Iwaaki – Del Rey – 2009 – 8 volumes
Wow. Just… wow. That was certainly the best ending I’ve read all year, or maybe the past several years. I’m pretty happy with fairly superficial endings sometimes, but this one exists and is powerful because it literally draws on everything established throughout the series, states its final thoughts and what it had been getting at all this time, and commits a few final shocking acts that left me tearing through the volume to find out what happens.
I especially appreciated the moralizing, oddly enough. Normally I hate when a manga sets out to deliver an Important Message, because frequently the message is convoluted and lost in the story or is repeated so many times that you feel insulted for reading it. Not so with Parasyte. It is certainly heavy-handed throughout. There are several points where you can see the message is that humans are just as savage as any creature, and morals are somewhat arbitrary when it comes to the greater circle of life. The speech from the mayor a volume or so ago sums all this up best, and I liked that speech. It did blatantly hand you everything that was going on with the series, but it was in a moment where the themes were illustrated best, and it really did have to be said in order to end things there.
With that in the past, I wasn’t really expecting a reiteration in the ending. It was there anyway, in conversations between Migi and Shinichi that, again, had to happen before the story could finish. I couldn’t believe how eloquently the messages were put into words, and then illustrated and carried out through the actions of the characters. There are three major incidents that end the series, and each one is equally amazing. Each also has something different to say.
And the messages are worthwhile in the end, too. It’s hard to deny the power in the absolutely maddening scene where Migi and Shinichi debate over whether it’s right to kill a parasyte. The conversation, and its ultimate conclusion, would have been my favorite moment of all in the series, had the first chapter not happened. Something somewhat less thematically important, but more emotionally powerful happens right away in the book. It was also completely unexpected, and I was reading in a complete state of shock right up to the other scene I described, which was a good 2/3rds of the book. The final scene is, of course, the expected reunion with Uragami, which was all sorts of insane.
Absolutely nothing finished up even remotely how I had imagined it. I enjoyed being preached to, and I loved that the message of the book was that mourning the loss of life is really a waste since life is lost every day, but on the other hand, that’s what makes humans wonderful.
I can’t adequately describe just how moved I was by the series as a whole. It runs a gamut of ambitious moral questions that take a great deal of subtlety and storytelling finesse to pull off properly, and it achieves everything it set out to do. I will be thinking about Parasyte for a long time, and I will re-read it many times in the years to come. What was an excellent series has been propelled into one of my favorites of all time by a spectacular ending.
If you were thinking of reading this series, by all means, please do. Just know that when you start, the slicing and dicing weirdness really does have a story to tell in the end. A fantastic story that is very much worth reading.
I should also point out that the back of the volume contains several more letters columns and an essay or two on Hitoshi Iwaaki. All of it is worth reading. The man is a genius.
Mixed Vegetables 4
Posted: August 5, 2009 Filed under: Mixed Vegetables 1 Comment »Ayumi Komura – Viz – 2009 – 8 volumes
Hmm. I don’t know what to say. Normally I can find something noteworthy about even the weakest, most mediocre shoujo series because I just love the genre and everything that goes along with it. I mean, I thought Magic Touch was okay because it’s a massage manga, something you don’t see often, even though nothing particularly inspiring is going on otherwise, and I actually quite like Monkey High, which has great characters but lame plots. But Mixed Vegetables… what am I going to do with you?
I can see where it’s going. Hanayu lives with a pastry chef and wants to be a sushi chef, Hayato lives with a sushi chef and wants to be a pastry chef. When boy and girl meet, they will inspire each other to realize their dreams. In this volume, it looks like Hayato’s dream might not be as clear-cut as that, but I find I really don’t care. There is absolutely no chemistry between Hayato and Hanayu, no interesting obstacles or incidents coming up to either help them down their path or hinder them seriously, and the best things they have going for them are being optimistic, seize-the-day manga characters.
There was a chapter about the teacher making home visits to discuss things with the students’ parents. I have no idea why Hanayu was freaking out about this since she’d already been given everyone’s blessing. Later, there’s a kind of boring subplot about Saki, the other employee at the sushi restaurant. I just could not be made to care. Then it moves into a little bit of a story about Hayato’s grandfather, who is no longer alive. We just have to relive sketchy memories that the characters are using as inspiration. Maybe there will be flashbacks next volume, but… it looks like a major point of contention for the next volume or so is going to be this character that we don’t get to meet or really even know.
They don’t even cook in this volume.
There’s all sorts of problems when a cooking manga becomes a life story about characters who like to cook, but don’t, and then don’t do anything else interesting either. Like I said, it’s rare that I can’t find something to like in even the lamest shoujo, but that’s just how things are in Mixed Vegetables.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Wild Act 3
Posted: August 5, 2009 Filed under: Wild Act 9 Comments »Rie Takada – Tokyopop – 2003 – 10 volumes
Reading further into this series, while I still love the sense of humor and the characters, it’s getting harder not to notice the really common plot devices it relies on. I like the mechanics of it, but I kind of wish that both Yuniko’s parents weren’t legendary actors, along with her boyfriend, and the hokey feel-good situations between Yuniko and Ryu and Yuniko and her mother feel a little tired by the end of the volume. As much as I like the couple, there’s only so much support I can watch Ryu give in one volume.
On the other hand, I still like the little quips and jokes that go along with the hokey lines. Usually such jokes will come immediately before and after a cheesy love scene. I also have to admit I kind of like these love scenes, and I like the fact that Ryu and Yukino are such a happy and healthy couple. Their misunderstandings are brief and both are willing to forgive and forget in small matters, which makes this infinitely more readable than a lot of other things.
The bawdiness and sex jokes continue, with lots of dancing around thei issue without an actual consummation of the act. Again, I get a real kick out of this since it’s such a taboo subject in other shoujo manga. To see Yukino and Ryu discussing their (made-up) sex life with themselves and others is pretty comical and incredible in its own way, and it makes me wonder why the cavalier, yet responsible, attitude doesn’t appear in other series.
…Oooh, I see. It ran in Sho-Comi, which had those problems about the sexual content a few years back. Apparently Wild Act isn’t alone in its endeavors. And yikes, 25% of the magazine’s readership are 13-year-olds reading Mayu Shinjo?
Oh My Goddess 12
Posted: August 4, 2009 Filed under: Oh My Goddess! 2 Comments »Kosuke Fujishima – Dark Horse – 2009 (2nd ed) – 40+ volumes
note: this new edition contains material from “The Fourth Goddess” (2001), unnumbered, but 12th in the original unflipped graphic novel lineup.
I reviewed this book for the Manga Minis column at Manga Recon, so you can check out my review over there.
Truthfully, I didn’t bother to check how many volumes Oh My Goddess was actually up to. I assume it’s 40 at this point.
And yeah, I still like it, which is all I have to report outside of what I wrote in that review. The only other thing that bears mentioning is that… wasn’t Peorth’s angel called “Le Rose Magnifique” in the original editions? She’s called Gorgeous Rose here, and the internet seems to substantiate this, as does Oh My Goddess Colors, which usually mentions changes from edition to edition. I prefer “Le Rose Magnifique” since I like Peorth’s French language tendencies, and I had a whole thing written up about it, but I can’t find any evidence that was what she was called and I don’t have my older editions here with me. Maybe I just hallucinated that name.
Game X Rush 1
Posted: August 4, 2009 Filed under: Game X Rush 4 Comments »Mizuho Kusanagi – Tokyopop – 2009 – 2 volumes
I reviewed this for the Manga Recon, so you can check out the full review over there.
Basically, I thought I was really going to hate it, and after 40 pages that put me into a coma, it turned itself completely around when it turned out it had been using manga plot devices to lure me into a sense of security so that it could turn the character I liked into the type of person that beheads little girls with piano wire.
As I said in the review, it doesn’t rise much above what it seems like it will be in those first 40 pages (the boys are still friends who work together share their deep dark secrets or whatever), but it does have a great sense of humor and a messed-up way of dealing with things that makes it very entertaining. It loves abusing manga stereotypes for comedic effect, and I was won over in a manly love scene that rivals the Lohmeyer adoration in Honey and Clover. Not a must read, but a very entertaining read all the same, and it’ll be even better if it turns out to actually be two volumes, since it is episodic and would lose its novelty quickly if it went on too long.
Also, I’m having a lot of trouble not calling it Cross X Break (a Duo Brand series published in English by Go!Comi) or Cross X Game (without the X in the title, a Mitsuru “baseball” Adachi series).
Wild Act 2
Posted: August 4, 2009 Filed under: Wild Act 1 Comment »Rie Takada – Tokyopop – 2003 – 10 volumes
I finally got the rest of this, so I’m going to go ahead and start reading it. As of volume two, I couldn’t be more pleased with the direction the series is taking.
The plot itself isn’t really the draw. It’s not bad, and I like the quirkiness of the Yuniko, who is a thief stealing the possessions of her favorite deceased actor and slowly falling for the token bishounen, himself a very popular actor. In this volume, she struggles with family things, like having to deal with her mother’s hospitalization and coming to terms with a shocking surprise about her father that is not at all shocking to the attentive reader. With the plot alone, it’s a decent series.
It’s the sense of humor (helped immensely by the translation, I think) and the characters themselves that pull the series into fantastic shoujo territory. While they are a pretty stereotypical couple, Yuniko and Ryu stand out because of the banter they pass back and forth. They flirt with each other humorously, and not with overt gags where one overreacts or gets too shy like a normal shoujo series. A lot of the flirting is loaded with sexual innuendo, and they and the other characters in the series talk and joke about sex frequently. It’s not terribly naughty, and they don’t talk about actually having sex more than once, really, but a lot of the jokes just use sort of childish innuendo that you just don’t see in a series like this. Sex is treated like the bubonic plague in these series, except here there is very nearly a sex scene about a quarter of the way into volume two. Of course it is stopped, and Very Important Issues are worked out first, but the fact that this cheerful mood between Yuniko and Ryo and pretty much every other incidental character in the series is reflected in this healthy (and not terribly out-of-place) joking make the characters a notch or two more natural than what you would normally find, which is pretty incredible considering one is a talented thief and the other a hot celebrity. It takes a lot to humanize characters like that.
Yuniko and Ryu also act like real people. They have their tiffs, mostly surrounding the fact that Ryu thinks he’s just a substitute for the dead actor Yuniko likes, but misunderstandings are dealt with and forgiven, and you can’t help but smile when something happens like Ryu showing up at just the right moment and hiding himself from the cops by pretending that he and Yuniko are smooching country lovers. There’s lots of cool stuff like that, and it’s even better that something like that can happen without Yuniko smacking Ryu upside the head and yelling at him. In fact, they get a cute, real kiss immediately after that scene is over.
It’s just incredible how much of a breath of fresh air Wild Act is. I can’t wait to keep reading, though again, I’m not really looking forward to this whole Yuniko’s dad business. Oh well.
Cantarella 10
Posted: August 1, 2009 Filed under: Cantarella 7 Comments »You Higuri – Go!Comi – 2009 – 10+ volumes
I keep thinking that the last volume of this has come out, and then one more comes out. This really is the last volume before the hiatus. I got this about a month back and was a little bummed when I read the editor’s note in the back of the volume that simply said that this would resume when Crown finished serialization. Alas, Crown finished serialization a year or more ago and I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of this in Princess Gold. It’s possible I wasn’t paying attention, because apparently this was announced a couple months ago, but I was delighted when I got the newest Princess Gold and Cantarella was in the next issue ad. So yeah, it’ll be out again in a couple weeks. Also featured on that ad are all the best series in Princess Gold, including two of my favorite series ever.
Anyway. I actually, really, really liked this volume of Cantarella. I’ve been sort of lukewarm all the way through the series, but this volume finally got to the parts of Cesare Borgia’s life that I know are interesting, namely that he waged conquest-type wars and was a terror in battle. The politics building up the situation aren’t terribly interesting, but they do a good job of creating suspense so that when Cesare starts riding around with the King of France and people start fleeing and going underground, you know something serious is underway.
I think the climax is coming, because now the series has put Cesare and Chiaro opposite each other, so I suspect they will clash in an epic final battle and… something will happen. I’m not entirely sure what. I can’t tell if they’re friends or enemies at this point, which is pretty awesome. Machiavelli hinted that Cesare might not have to die, so maybe…? But then little Cesare’s spirit showed up and stabbed itself with a sword?
Also, I have to say, I enjoyed the weird/awesome Leonardo Da Vinci cameo. I hope he comes back. Though it was strange that Cesare’s situation was compared to that of Christ.
The romance, while not as passionate as it has been in other volumes, was there somewhat, but it served as a reminder about what I liked best about the series. Of course, I’m still not a big fan of Lucrezia, or the Lucrezia/Chiaro pairing, but I’m fond of pretty much everything else, implied and otherwise, that’s going on.
So yeah, I was surprised by how much I liked this volume, and I am very much looking forward to the rest of the series now.
Also, I liked the strange bonus comic in the back of the volume where Higuri talked about her appearance at Anime Expo. It was unexpected and hilarious.
Monkey High 7
Posted: August 1, 2009 Filed under: Monkey High Leave a comment »Shouko Akira – Viz – 2009 – 8+ volumes
Oh, Monkey High. I do enjoy this series immensely, but that’s because when it’s good, it’s really good. But the rest of it’s kind of average. That’s not so much the case in this volume (I liked all the chapters in this volume), but it does continue to lean heavily on common shoujo plot devices. Macharu and Haruna win a trip to a thinly-disguised Disneyland, and most of the second half of the volume deals with entrance exams and the two of them considering what will happen when they split up for college. It gets away with it because Haruna and Macharu really are wonderful characters, and I still like that they have a huge group of friends that hangs out with them regularly (though they don’t play a huge role in this volume).
More specifically, this volume deals with the sexual tension between Macharu and Haruna. Things almost escalate several times, but there are, of course, doubts and very shoujo manga-ish interruptions. Haruna makes a distinction between physical and emotional love, which I liked, and the question of sex is pondered at length, and several different sources, including friends, (sort of) teachers, and parents weigh in. College is also discussed at length, but mostly to show that Macharu is serious and driven and whatnot. It wasn’t as interesting, but again, Haruna and Macharu make up for a lot of what’s not there, and not only are both fairly interesting and sympathetic characters, they have a truly nice relationship that I enjoy reading about.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Record of a Fallen Vampire 2
Posted: August 1, 2009 Filed under: Record of a Fallen Vampire 2 Comments »Story by Kyo Shirodaira, Art by Yuri Kimura – Viz – 2008 – 9 volumes
I loved this volume, though I still think volume 3 is where things really get interesting. There were a few interesting story elements in the first volume, but nothing outstanding that made the series really stand out. Volume two takes those elements and makes them far more interesting, and then volume three takes that interesting plot and turns it on its head, and the rest of the story fragments it and brings it back together. I think. Let me read a little further to make sure.
Anyway, the most interesting thing here is the alliance between Strauss and the Black Swan. Now, one of the interesting things in the last volume was the curse of the Black Swan, the human race’s defense against Strauss, King of Vampire. The curse takes over one human and sets them against Strauss, and if that human is killed in battle, the curse jumps to a new human. Except for each new human, the magic of the Black Swan increases, and the collective memories of all of the Black Swans are also part of the deal, so the present human host has magic roughly equal to Akabara’s and knowledge of how each of her 50 predecessors were defeated. All of this is cool, but after establishing that the Black Swan and the Vampire King are mortal enemies now and forever, the second volume expertly reverses that and has the two pairing up at the behest of the Black Swan. Her intentions are not clear, and death is promised at the end of the alliance, but the fact that the story pulled this off in the second volume when most series who reverse a rivalry like that fail spectacularly is nothing short of astounding. Again, if you had told me that happened in this series, I would think there was no way it couldn’t be terrible. But that’s the magic of Record of a Fallen Vampire. It takes what should, by all accounts, be a really horrible story and makes it amazing.
The other good thing about this volume is that it humbles Strauss, but then shows that he may or may not have infinite tricks up his sleeve. He should have lost in battle several times, he has no magic to fight back against the Dhampires, and yet he seems to always win by outsmarting them. Bridget reveals the depth of his plans later, but the fact that he brought down four powerful opponents with no magic at his disposal was pretty cool. And again, this doesn’t sound cool, but something about it was. The fights are interesting, and I love seeing how the dynamics of them work. There’s even a fantastic art sequence where Strauss takes a sword from someone and turns it on them.
Strauss works as a character, I think, despite his status of Godlike powerful being, because he rarely says anything, and also doesn’t really show off or struggle or use his powers when not necessary. He’s very secretive, and no matter what, even without his saying anything, he always seems to have the upper hand in battles. I like his personality and the mystery surrounding him, which probably would have hooked me here had I started from the beginning of the series.
Lots of the mechanics of magic and the lines of friend and foe are explained in this volume, but even with lengthy explanations of what’s going on and a new representative for the human race showing up and turning the simple “rock, paper, scissors” game that Strauss, Black Swan, and the Dhampires played with one another into an extremely delicate and volatile system of checks and balances, with death promised at the end.
I like it. I like it a lot. It’s definitely a high recommendation. I’m very much looking forward to the next few volumes, and will probably cover up to the current release this weekend.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
