The Adventures of Young Det 2
Posted: September 30, 2009 Filed under: Adventures of Young Det 3 Comments »Gyojeong Kwon – Netcomics – 2009 – 4+ volumes
YES. I got absolutely everything I wanted in this volume. The clear buildup in volume 1 pays off here in the form of a very romantic and tragic relationship, and the prologue section of the story finishes up spectacularly. When the final levels of light and dark magic were explained, I have to admit I saw the ending coming just a little, but that didn’t make it any less effective.
It was so effective, in fact, that I didn’t want the main story to start after it was done. I wanted the story of Lazarus and the Great Ferat to keep going, despite the events that happened. It ended exactly how it needed to, but even so. It’s a shame to waste a good romance like that one. I was quite attached to both of them.
The one thing I was having trouble working out for myself through the series of predictions the Gaderins were making was how, precisely, the dragon was summoned since it was very firmly established that the characters in the story so far have nothing to do with it. That’s left up in the air as a tantalizing mystery as the main story starts.
The prologue is made into the stuff of legends as the story starts in a village as far removed from the world of sorceres, magic, and prophecy as can be. The citizens in the village have no idea about Gaderins and magic and whatnot, and have their own legends, disbelieving “wise men.” Or whatever. The actual main characters in the story appear, Det and his friend Osen. They are pretty average boys leading pretty average lives in their small town, and eventually, while setting up a house for a sort of low-level sorcerer, the first Det has ever seen, he is struck with a strong wanderlust and he and Osen set out on adventure in the end.
Once again, the story with Det and Osen here mostly felt like exposition, but after the payoff at the beginning of this volume, I’m willing to consume all the exposition this series cares to give me. My copy of volume 3 hasn’t arrived, but I’m quite excited to continue reading as things move into a more adventure-monster-slaying atmosphere. And a character I’m still attached to is still floating around, so I hope that they somehow become connected to the party later on, too.
Excellent stuff. Pick it up if you’re at all inclined towards shoujo fantasy.
B.O.D.Y. 7
Posted: September 30, 2009 Filed under: B.O.D.Y. 2 Comments »Ao Mimori – Viz – 2009 – 15 volumes
On one hand, this series uses one of my favorite gimmicks, which is the couple that stays together through thick and thin. As much as I don’t care for a lot of what’s going on, the fact that Ryoko and Ryu have gotten to the point where they talk out misunderstandings and come out on the other side just fine is pretty significant, and I can’t help but like it a little for that.
There’s still a bit of a train wreck going on as far as the story goes, though. The story with Ryu’s mother peters out lamely early on in the volume with a fake death plot device that I saw through immediately. And of course the mother starts off by hating Ryoko, then growing to like her at the end. Bah. At least she was a good cranky old lady, and the fact that Ryu has such a dysfunctional family is kind of cool.
Next, another shoujo plot device comes off the shelf in the form of the old flame from Ryu’s past. In this case, the old flame is a tutor who has – gasp! – come to Ryu and Ryoko’s school as a substitute. Ryu treats her pretty coldly, but of course Ryoko still does a lot of digging until she finds the truth: that Ryu only liked the teacher for, like, a second.
The whole “doing it” thing was pretty insane. I have no idea how that leap of logic happened, nor did I like what it actually turned out to be in the end. Just… what the hell, B.O.D.Y. I know I complain about needing more of that in my shoujo series, but really, that’s not how it’s done.
Also, the last few pages of this book made me cry because it was so obvious where the story is headed next volume. Literally, the next 200 pages of story flashed through my mind unbidden as yet another shoujo plot device came off the shelf.
I’m always cranky when I finish a volume of this, and yet I keep reading. I don’t know. This isn’t even a case of it being a trashy addiction. It’s just not very good. I may take a kind of perverse pleasure in seeing how exactly it tops itself every time, though.
This is a review copy provided by Viz.
Oh My Goddess 33
Posted: September 30, 2009 Filed under: Oh My Goddess! Leave a comment »Kosuke Fujishima – Dark Horse – 2009 – 39+ volumes
I reviewed this for the weekly Manga Minis column at Popcultureshock, so you can check out my review over there.
Admittedly, I like this series, and I tend to say the same thing about it every time. But after being vaguely disappointed with the last volume and feeling a bit out of sorts while reading it, I was pretty happy with a return to basics in this one. We get weird vehicles, we get a not-quite-race, we get meddling, we get the characters being themselves with just a smidge more interaction betwee Keiichi and Belldandy than is usual, which is certainly a welcome change.
It’s just a nice series to read. I like all the characters, I like Oh My Goddess, and that’s all there is to it.
Adventures of Young Det 1
Posted: September 27, 2009 Filed under: Adventures of Young Det 3 Comments »Gyojeong Kwon – Netcomics – 2008 – 4+ volumes
I knew I would like this series as soon as I saw it start on Netcomics. I love girly fantasy in all its forms, and this series just oozes everything I like about the genre. It’s a shame it took me so long to pick up the first volume.
Now, the one downside to this volume is that it is very clearly setting up the rules for a much longer story. I was surprised to find that the titular “Det” was nowhere to be found. The story in this book is part of a prologue called “The Tale of the Feramores.” It features two characters, a dark sorcerer named Lazarus and a powerful light sorcerer and prophet called only by her title of Ferat. Ferat is the title given to the greatest of the Feramores, a race of what appear to be gigantic women that give up their magical abilities in order to see the future. Ferat is a Feramore/Human that, incredibly, can practice powerful light magic while being able to see into the far future, farther than any other Feramore in history.
What we get here is a kind of subtle love story between Lazarus and Ferat that begins as a relationship where each mutually benefits from the other by teaching what they’ve mastered of either light or dark magic. Both are apparently the highest level practitioners in the country for their respective art, and each gains levels in the other type of magic far faster than any other sorcerer. Neither really reveals much about their studies to others, which leaves Lazarus’s clan to believe he is still strong, rather than freakishly advanced and on the final level of dark magic. The relationship between Lazarus and Ferat is slow, and we mostly see it from Lazarus’s point of view, who doesn’t realize he’s in love until he is forced to leave the Feramore enclave briefly. Their subtle gestures to one another are quite nice, as is the slow pace of their conversation and the topics they cover.
Amidst this, we also have to deal with a prophecy that Ferat sees at the beginning of the book which basically calls for the apocalypse of most via an unnamed sorcerer summoning an evil dragon that destroys everything. One of the reasons to keep Lazarus’s level secret is that people will suspect him as the summoner and kill him before it happens, despite the fact Lazarus himself confirms he has no way to summon the dragon, nor the motivation. Later, some begin to suspect the Ferat summons it for love of Lazarus, or to stop the prophecy of the destroyed Feramore compound from happening. As of the end of the book, we do not know.
The downside is that a big part of the book is composed of conversations between Ferat and Lazarus discussing the minutae of dark and light magic, something that I have no reason to care about now, but will probably become very important later. It can be a little mundane getting through all that, but I still enjoyed it immensely despite the magic lesson I was recieving. The art is also a little stiff, but I also felt this lent itself to the back-and-forth conversations between Lazarus and Ferat and the overall light mood the volume seemed to keep despite the dark prophecy.
It’s a well-constructed fantasy with a subtle romance worked in. And this is just the prologue. Half of the prologue, really, maybe less. I am going to read the second volume right now, and I’m really excited about where this series will go. I would encourage you, if you are at all interested, to try it out on the Netcomics website, which is both extremely easy and very cheap. I think it’s still coming out in Korea, and I suspect the Netcomics serialization has caught up to the current position of the series, but in the meantime, read the three available volumes. I think the third one has just come out or will be coming out very soon.
Fushigi Yugi: Genbu Kaiden 9
Posted: September 27, 2009 Filed under: Fushigi Yugi: Genbu Kaiden 9 Comments »Yuu Watase – Viz – 2009 – 9+ volumes
I’m a little sad that this series won’t resume production until next spring. Then again, I’ve got, like, six early volumes I haven’t read plus the entirety of Fushigi Yugi to read and re-read, so I guess I’ve got enough to keep me busy until the next volume comes out.
I wasn’t really aware of Takiko’s circumstances at home before reading this volume, so it was interesting to see her ejected from The Universe of the Four Gods and back to her normal life. Her home life is a little sad at the moment, and it seems like she’s dealing with the loss of her mother, a grieving father, and some stuck-up classmates rubbing a well-placed marriage in her face. Thinking that the Genbu Celestial Warriors had ejected her for good and telling her father to destroy the scroll, she decides to settle into the semblance of a normal life. And then we learn that… well, she’s not long for this world.
Most of the volume actually deals with her life away from the Universe of the Four Gods, and I loved the balance struck between real life and the “fantasy” life inside the scroll. That was always one of the more interesting things about Fushigi Yugi, that it could do both fantasy and reality. Takiko doesn’t live in modern times, but I appreciate the look into real life to balance out all the fantasy war stuff that’s going on in the land of Genbu.
Genbu isn’t doing so hot either, and when Takiko (inevitably) returns, nature is on the brink of collapsing on itself and we aren’t any closer to summoning Genbu. Except then we find out there’s a toll for summoning Genbu, one nobody wants to pay (well, we may have found this out last volume, I can’t remember). And then we find out why it’s bad that Takiko and Uruki are so close. Except maybe it’s not bad. Maybe it’s good.
Again, I’m impressed by how much I like this series even after not having read most of the first several volumes or its prequel. The story and characters are really fantastic and fun to follow, and even with all the dark, convoluted politics and magic coming in to play, it’s pretty impossible not to appreciate all the work and love that goes into the story. I know I say this every time, but I really am going to start Fushigi Yugi the next time I see it on sale.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Black Jack 7
Posted: September 27, 2009 Filed under: Black Jack 2 Comments »Osamu Tezuka – Vertical – 2009 – 17 volumes
Reading “God of Comics” made me want to read something, anything, by Tezuka. I was going to start in on Buddha, which is the only series by him published in English that I haven’t read yet, but then this came in the mail yesterday, so Buddha will have to wait for another day. Probably tomorrow.
Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy this volume of Black Jack as much as I have the previous volumes. The stories were just a touch more moralistic than I like. For instance, there’s a story about a baboon (or some other monkey) mauling women, and when Black Jack wounds it and follows it back to its cave, he sees that he’s mauling women to steal milk (that they happen to be drinking?) for his two children, whose mother died while giving birth to them. He then patches up the wounds he gave the baboon and goes on his merry way, only to curse a man who shoots the baboon later for mauling the women. WHAT.
There’s all sorts of crazy on display here, as per usual, which is why I am okay with the moralistic endings a lot of the stories have. One of my favorite morals came during a story where Black Jack was hired to cure a man with severe burns, which he later finds out he suffered when his sister threw him in a furnace after she thought he was dead… since she knocked him over the head while he was giving her one of her regular beatings. When Black Jack finally fixes him up enough that he can lead a normal life, he turns a blowtorch on his sister and catches the whole house on fire, burning the two of them together. The last two panels are pretty typical lame Black Jack wrap-up lines: “We doctors can heal the body fine, but not the depths of the human heart.”
One thing I wasn’t comfortable with was the backstory we got here, which gives Black Jack his reason for charging so much money. Turns out he’s on some sort of crazy revenge fantasy. Like, really crazy. Buying islands and booby trapping them, only to patch up your intended victim to get them to confess crazy. Holy shit. At least we now know what happened to his family and his hair, I guess.
There was a really nice story that sort of went against the usual Black Jack story pattern. Usually his patients are selfish and somehow that comes back to them, except in this one a man gives up his entire corporation and all his wealth in order to save the life of a man who saved his. Even with the moral at the end, I loved the positive message.
There were two really, really sad stories, too. One about a really goofy-looking bear and another about a little girl that looks exactly like Pinoko. I’m sad Black Jack didn’t take matters into his own hands during the latter story.
Even though this volume had less of the insanity that I’ve grown to love in this series, and even less of the strange medical ailments that pop up so frequently, I still loved it dearly. Black Jack is never a bad read, even in the off volumes. You still get goofy bears and baboons and gangsters and canoes lost in the Pacific and what have you.
God of Comics: Osamu Tezuka and the Creation of Post-WWII Manga
Posted: September 27, 2009 Filed under: God of Comics 2 Comments »Natsu Onoda Power – University Press of Mississippi – 2009 – 1 volume
I reviewed this study of Tezuka and his work at the Manga Recon, so you can check out my full review over there.
This is technically outside the scope of my website here, but I enjoyed it so much that I thought it could use all the exposure it could get. It’s a really in-depth and thorough look at Tezuka and his work. It served the purpose of making me want to read about a thousand more series by him, but I also learned a lot about the history of manga and animation, which is always a plus for me. It also made me decide to pick up “The Astro Boy Essays,” something I’ve been wavering on for years.
I also failed to mention a review I did for a recent Vertical novel called “The Cat in the Coffin” that I recently wrote for Manga Recon, but if I review Haikasoru and Faust here, I might as well cover that, too, since it’s really no different. I’ll post that review and one I did on Librarything for another Vertical novel, “Now You’re One of Us,” which I enjoyed immensely, later this week. I’ll probably just make a separate category for books, since there are several I’ve already covered on here (Boogiepop, Hot Gimmick, et cetera). It also makes it so I can write about “Manga! Manga!” and “Dreamland Japan,” which I read a few years ago and still read pretty regularly to this day. Both of those are pretty amazing.
But for now, if you have any interest in Tezuka, “God of Comics” is a pretty great read.
I”s 12
Posted: September 27, 2009 Filed under: I"s Leave a comment »Masakazu Katsura – Viz – 2007 – 15 volumes
After reading a good volume of Pastel, I thought I would dip back into one of the better series in the shounen romantic comedy genre. It didn’t disappoint.
This went from being a wussy “does she or doesn’t she” series for ten volumes to getting all hot and heavy after the confession. I couldn’t believe there was a real, no tricks shower scene at the beginning of this volume. And there was even a little bit of a bed scene later. It didn’t go as far as I thought it was going to, but it went a lot farther than I”s has any business going, and I commend it for that.
Even better, both of the scenes in the first half of the volume are handled with way more sensitivity than you’d normally expect or find in these types of series. Much like the confession was absolutely perfect after taking so long to get there, both sides of the couple had their reservations about what was going on, and both scenes were incredibly tender (or as tender as they could be). Ichitaka’s thoughts of Iori, which are conveyed in a gigtantic 2-page montage at the height of the action, are quite sincere, and I liked I”s a whole lot more after this volume.
Even better was the fact that those scenes ended with the two characters going to find their friends, another strength of this series (normally such friends are kind of jerks… the friends here meddle, but they aren’t nearly as bad as, say, Pastel). The series passes over another group party scene in favor of a talk between Teratani and Ichitaka. Now, Teratani is alternately irritating and awesome, sometimes both, but he is certainly the best friend Ichitaka could possibly have. Ichitaka seeks out his opinion once again, and he gives some really solid advice. You can feel the love. And even when he follows it up with his usual pervy comment, I couldn’t help but like Teratani.
But then… Izumi. Ugh. We gotta deal with this now. This is the story venturing back into romantic comedy territory, though things are more promising at the end of the volume. Maybe Izumi will finally go away. That doesn’t stop whatever weird thing is going on in Iori’s room, though.
Honey Hunt 3
Posted: September 24, 2009 Filed under: Honey Hunt 4 Comments »Miki Aihara – Viz – 2009 – 5+ volumes
So we finally get presented with the eternal shoujo manga question in this volume: which of the two hot celebrity twins fawning all over plain-girl Yura will win in the end? What will happen to her acting career? Will she ever defeat her mother, the famous celebrity, in a battle of acting talent? Do the boys only love her because they want to get close to her famous musician father?
On one hand, the meat of the plot, the fact that the hot twin celebrities are going to fight over doormat Yura, is so ridiculous that I’d like to think it’s some sort of parody. It’s unfortunately dead serious, but the sad thing is that I like it anyway. It’s addictive. I mean, what happens when Yura goes to see Haruka at one of his concerts and Q-Ta calls in the middle? Who do you choose? The deadbeat away in London who hasn’t bothered to call or message you in forever, or the cool dude that gives you a kiss and says he likes you right at home? I mean, it’s like taking all the dignity that some shoujo manga pretend to have and stripping it away, and then realizing you like it anyway even though you would never, ever admit it to anyone you really knew.
It’s the very definition of a guilty pleasure, I suppose. I can’t stop myself. I like it way less than Hot Gimmick, but I don’t think I will ever be able to stop reading it.
Let’s see… character development… we’ve gotten some hints about the growth in Yura’s acting, though her tricks and talent are still much less impressive than Kyoko’s in Skip Beat. Mainly, she realizes she has a crush on Q-Ta, and most of the book is spent trying to get tickets to Haruka’s concert so that he’ll tell her more about Q-Ta. Except by coming to the concert, Haruka thinks that he will be so cool that she’ll fall in love with him instead. Yes, that is seriously the plot. Take what you will from it, but I couldn’t put it down. And that’s one of Miki Aihara’s special superpowers.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Inukami 4
Posted: September 24, 2009 Filed under: Inukami Leave a comment »Mari Matsuzawa / Mamizu Arisawa – Seven Seas – 2009 – 6 volumes
I have no idea if this series is still running, but volume 6 came out in 2007, so it’s either over or on hiatus. Just so you know. I always like to know how many volumes long something is when I’m reading it.
Anyway. I last checked in with volume one, and I have to admit, I do like things a bit better after volume four. There are a few things this series does that are kind of interesting. The cases seem to deal with older people, and the main character himself is an adult. The case this time around is also kind of interesting, and without preamble or any amateur stuff, Keita jumps right in and tries to beat death and stop him from killing a young heiress. Apparently her grandfather made a deal with the devil, and ever since then the family members have died young. The heiress is the only family member left, and her butler is the only person left to take care of her. Every year, on her birthday, something terrible happens, and the grim reaper has warned her that she and anyone with her will die on her 20th birthday. So, then we have Keita and his inukami. They decide to… uh, challenge the grim reaper to a boxing match, which is actually goofy and pretty cool. The plot to this sub-story is okay, but there wasn’t anything terribly gripping or compelling about it aside from the fact we won’t get to see the conclusion next volume.
There are still things I dislike about Inukami, though. The main character is sort of a lech, which is a boring anime joke. The thing is, I can’t tell if he actually is or if he is just accused of it by his inukami all the time. It might be a little bit of both. This isn’t really a joke I like in any context. There are a lot of other jokes, and while they weren’t as terrible as the pervert jokes, I still wasn’t really all that into the sense of humor here. There’s an omake chapter in the back of the volume that features the characters at an all-girls school with Keita as a teacher (who is, of course, a lech for real in this chapter), but I kind of wished the main story from this volume had finished instead of being served that blatant fanservice. The other problem is that, despite the fact that everyone except Keita’s inukami is an adult, they still all look like 10-year-old kids. These are pretty significant hurdles, and given the fact that the rest of what was going on was only okay, it sort of makes Inugami appeal mostly to an extreme niche.
Despite all that, I did like what was going on. Even though he is portrayed as a pervert, unusually, my favorite thing about the volume was Keita’s skills and his attitude about doing his job. It made up for a lot of the other strangeness. It’s definitely still an acquired taste, and it’s more of a light read than anything substantial. It’s not really for me, but I’m sure there’s an audience out there for it.
This was a review copy provided by Seven Seas.
