Hoshin Engi 16
Posted: January 19, 2010 Filed under: Hoshin Engi Leave a comment »Ryu Fujisaki – Viz – 2009 – 23 volumes
I reviewed this for the weekly Manga Minis column over at Manga Recon, so you should check out my review over there. Lots of other good stuff this week too, which I always fail to mention, but I always get a kick out of the entire column.
Verdict: things are getting awesome again. A shame I spent this three-volume spree slogging through a boring war with a lot of filler. I like where things are headed, and now I have to wait again. I’ll try another 3-volume run, because again, this series is just too dense to read on a bimonthly basis. It didn’t work out so well this time, but at least I remembered who Fugen was the whole way through.
Shion: Blade of the Minstrel
Posted: January 19, 2010 Filed under: Shion 2 Comments »Yu Kinutani – Viz – 1990 – 1 volume
Here’s the second book in the Viz Spectrum line that looks to have included three books. I’ve already covered Hotel Harbour View by the wonderful Jiro Taniguchi, and I’ve got one more I’ll get to a little later in the week. These all share a notable unusual format in common. All are around 80 pages, magazine sized, and have clear vinyl jackets with ridged lines patterned into them. Shion also has foil printing on the cover, and I think all three have ornate endpapers and vellum title pages. They are very nice, and Shion is my favorite of the three.
This has more to do with the intricate artwork and the lyrical storytelling than the plot or characters. I was really blown away by the artwork, which is as intricate and detailed as Kentaro Miura, and looks great at the larger size. His backgrounds and character designs all look great, though he lacks some of the polish of Miura when it comes to monsters and some other details. The main character is a traveling minstrel out to slay evil monsters, so there is an almost poetic narration that goes along with his stories that works very well in translation. The first story in the volume is more an illustrated story than it is a comic, there is very little dialogue and most of the panels are just narrated actions, but it works great. The second is a more traditional comic, and is the longer of the two.
It’s unusual. It strikes me as very, very American. The art and action is very static, and the pictures that go along with narration is very common in American comics (especially old ones) and almost nonexistent in Japanese manga. The art is also more American-looking than Japanese (even though I compared it to Kentaro Miura, but I’d say the same thing of him). Of course, I’m completely ignorant of all European comics that aren’t related to 2000 AD, and the artist lists Moebius as one of his influences. Perhaps it’s very European. The story has an old European folklore flavor, though it is slightly less surreal than what I understand the work of Moebius to be. I wish… I wish there were Moebius reprints in English so I could just know.
The story is okay. I tend to like these sorts of old-fashioned stories that model themselves off old legends and folktales. The gist is that Shion is hunting demons. In the first story, we are led through a tale of childhood revenge against a demon that possessed his father and ate his eye as a boy. The second story is about Shion happening across twin sorcerers who control men with orbs in their heads, and he gets advice from an old God and a talking… shaggy goat thing that tell him how to defeat the sorcerers before they can capture him and hand him over to whatever greater evil he is hunting. They are simple stories, but well executed, and I was very satisfied.
There’s also an essay in the back that draws parallels between Shion and older legends. It’s informative, but I liked the essay in the back of Hotel Harbour View a bit better. I always appreciate when a little extra work goes into informing a volume of manga, though.
Awesome stuff. Track it down if you can.
Gestalt 5
Posted: January 17, 2010 Filed under: Gestalt 1 Comment »Yun Kouga – Viz – 2010 – 8 volumes
Yay, Gestalt gets very serious and much better in this volume! There’s still a few points where it’s not very clear what’s going on (for instance, all the characters hanging out outside while Olivier is debating with Messiah… that was kind of weird), but overall I like this shift in mood. The story also shifted as well, and as of the end of the volume, it looks like it might be taking a new direction, at least temporarily.
The bond between Ouri and Olivier is a strange one. Ouri’s gender isn’t so much the problem since she clearly feels quite fond of Olivier (Ouri is, of course, a man who was “handicapped” by being turned into a woman). But she doesn’t want to push Olivier into anything he doesn’t want, so she has to settle into the role of protector and self-appointed “slave.” She continually beats herself up over the loss of Olivier’s arms, and when another event happens at the end of this volume, she takes to beating herself up and inflicting damage on herself to atone for what was lost. Strangely enough, while neither character’s true nature has been revealed, and both are acting themselves all the time, it still feels like we know more about Ouri than Olivier. Well, we do, and Ouri is also easier to relate to than Olivier, who is pure and holy and without flaw, but you know what I mean. Ouri is an extremely interesting character, and is the main reason I keep coming back to Gestalt.
I can take or leave Shazan, Suzu, and Sakata. Both Shazan and Suzu get a little bit of a chance to shine here (in various ways, Shazan winds up doing something awful to snap Ouri out of her funk), but all three feel rather unnecessary in what is essentially Olivier’s journey to find himself with Ouri the body guard tagging along.
They move from the holy temple to the town of Titania, home to those who worship the god of death and rebirth. Outsiders are not welcome, and Ouri finds herself shaken by the town’s rituals, which involve human sacrifices and the celebration of death in general. That’s a big part of why the mood of the story suddenly turns dark, but the other part is what they wind up doing in Titania to try and get Olivier’s arms back.
After Ouri self-destructs and the party is split up, the book ends on a very uncertain note. As much as I’ve been enjoying this story all along, this is the first time I’ve found myself really excited by the next volume. You can see Kouga’s storytelling skills developing as the series goes on, so it’s settled down from its former random fights and is moving in a very interesting direction now.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Papillon 4
Posted: January 16, 2010 Filed under: Papillon Leave a comment »Miwa Ueda – Del Rey – 2009 – 9 volumes
… I don’t know. There’s still a lot of back and forth. The only plot the series seems to have comes from Ageha thinking her boyfriend is cheating on her or otherwise being unfaithful. They make up from the incident last volume, but this volume involves a lot of Hana being together with him for counseling and Ageha not liking it. They aren’t together through the entire volume, but Hana seems to get more serious about it right at the end. Sigh.
To Papillon’s credit, Ageha also spends most of the volume believing in Ichijiku, which is unusual for this type of series, and I suppose is a good sign that the characters really are developing rather than going around in circles. Even with all the evidence mounting against him, Ageha still believes that Ichijiku wouldn’t cheat on her. And also to Papillon’s credit, the characters continue to take time out to have serious talks about their feelings and ways to change things they don’t like, which is also rare. When was the last time a character you didn’t like figured out the things that were unlikable about them and thought changing would be a good idea? And then sought help for how to do it? Papillon is still kind of trashy, but it does give good advice, at least, and it’s hard not to get sucked in no matter how much I hate the repetition. Or the fact that Hana is just another creepy Sae. We find out she does terrible things to her boyfriends to trick them into cheating on her, but we also find out why she does these things. I don’t think I would accept the weak excuse in another series, but in this one, it makes sense since she’s seeking to change it.
But yes. It’s Miwa Ueda, so I’m just going to go ahead and keep reading.
not simple
Posted: January 16, 2010 Filed under: not simple 8 Comments »Natsume Ono – Viz – 2010 – 1 volume
Holy… just… what? That was one of the most depressing things I’ve ever read. Also, probably one of the best. They just don’t write them like this.
The narrative is a little strange, starting at the very end and then going all the way back through the life story of Ian, and then the epilogue is a major event that was skipped in the main narrative. Ian’s days are numbered, and for more reasons than it first seems. Actually, not an awful lot about this story is as it seems. It will start off with disturbing subject matter, and then somehow twist it so that it gets even more disturbing when we learn the truth of a situation. Themes of incest, sexual assault, murder, alcoholism, STDs, prison sentences, divorce, death, and child abuse come up at various points in the story, and are dealt with in a more serious and somehow offhanded way than I’ve ever seen.
Ian himself carries the story. I don’t really want to describe the plot since it will spoil it, but it’s enough to say that it’s simply the sad life of Ian. Ian is a quiet boy of few words that has the most terrible things happen to him, but he takes everything as it comes without a sound. Usually the points of these stories is to rail against injustice, but Ian doesn’t do that. It wouldn’t do Ian much good anyway, since he has very little say about what happens to him as a child, and has no say whatsoever what happens to those around him when he gets older. But despite all the terrible things, there’s something very solid in Ian. People seem to find strength in him, and his sole friend describes him as being upbeat and pure, but not simple, despite how rarely Ian speaks or shows emotion. Because he is quiet, he tends to be a loner, and the only people that speak to him are relatives, a friend of his sister, and one man who decides to be a friend to him. Well, there’s a second friend too, but it’s the first man, a reporter who meets Ian when he becomes a track star, that stays his friend until the end. He doesn’t have many words or any comfort to offer Ian, and others think that he may just be in love… but it doesn’t seem anything like that. He’s just… there for Ian, as he searches the United States state by state for his missing sister. He’s a friend. He also eventually writes a novel about Ian’s life, which is supposedly the story we’re reading. Eventually there is someone that Ian may be falling in love with, but there are various reasons it can never be, and the reasons are unfortunately not the most obvious ones.
It’s just a depressing read. It becomes more and more of a downer as the story continues, and it finishes on the saddest note imaginable. The sad note is something we know from the first chapter, but it becomes even more crushing when we find out everything behind it. But the nicest thing that happens to Ian is saved for last, so the story doesn’t end on an entirely bleak note. And the story uses all this sadness for positive ends, because the themes are ultimately about being happy with what you have and keeping your loved ones close. It’s a bleak way of saying it, but still excellent. I love stories like this (though I hesitate to call this “realistic,” like the works of Inio Asano), and I think this made a complete Natsume Ono convert out of me. I am very much looking forward to her other works coming out in English (Ristorante Paradiso, Gente, and House of Five Leaves), but I have to say, I’m not sure how any of them will ever surpass the power of this story.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Mazinger
Posted: January 16, 2010 Filed under: Mazinger 1 Comment »Go Nagai – First Publishing – 1988 – 1 volume
I actually stared at this for months in a case at work until it dawned on me that, hey, this is one of the only Go Nagai manga in English. It had been clearanced too, so I snapped it up for a dollar. Score.
It’s… pretty awesome. It was apparently created specifically for an American audience, though Go Nagai still did the story and art, and there was English adaptation involved. The incredible thing is that the entire thing is hand-painted. It’s quite good, too. I still don’t like digital coloring, and seeing this (which is, I’m sure, insane to actually pull off), it’s because I want every comic to look like this.
The comic itself is hilarious. It’s clearly the Mazinger story condensed down to 62 pages. That doesn’t make it any less awesome, it just made me want more. The plot seems to be, more or less, the Earth has been wasted through a long series of wars, and the survivors just wage constant war in giant robots. The best robot is Mazinger, a giant robot piloted by Major Kabuto. During a fight, there is an explosion so huge it throws Mazinger through a wormhole, and he winds up in an alternate, fantasy version of Earth where he’s fighting giant lizard-men for a princess with no shirt or pants. After the initial fight, the princess sits down to have a cup of tea with Mazinger, which is bizarre because… for a minute, you think they may have forgotten that Mazinger is a giant robot and the princess is a Zentradi or something. It comes up later though. This is more or less the end of the comic, as Mazinger fights the giant lizard-men again and another wormhole happens. There’s an interesting moral to this and a lot of Gulliver’s Travels allusions throughout. The moral was sensical and unexpected, and it made me like the book even more.
It can be called nothing less than insane as you read through it, and I think setting it across two or three volumes would only make it a little more sane, but that’s why Go Nagai is awesome. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and it’s the first time in a long time I’ve literally been baffled after every couple pages. I loved it. It’s a lot of fun, and has pretty amazing art to boot. There’s not that much to say since it lacks character or plot development, but for what it is, it truly is worth reading to anyone that may be interested in it.
It’s also notable in some sense, since Go Nagai apparently invented robots that you ride in, of which Mazinger is the first. There’s a really nice article in the back about Go Nagai and his career. It made me want Devilman and Cutey Honey even more.
I’m also fond of huge size descrepencies between characters. I wish it came up more often, since it was hilarious here and even funnier in Robotech.
Ikigami 4
Posted: January 15, 2010 Filed under: Ikigami 1 Comment »Motoro Mase – Viz – 2010 – 7+ volumes
The overarching plot seems to continue to be a “live and let live” attitude towards the ikigami by the delivery man Fujimoto. He seems to continue to weigh the pros and cons of the system, and investigates its past and the history of the public outcry and possible changing public perception. Most of this volume weighs the cons, admittedly, as Fujimoto considers how children might be more well-behaved without the system and the stories themselves contain a lot of destruction and horrible crimes. The moral of the survivors valuing life more after the incidents always comes through in the end though, and it was sweet in both stories.
The first story in the volume, “The Last Lesson,” has been my favorite in the series so far, but also made me feel horrible while reading it. It’s essentially a story of a teacher with faith in his students being set up and disgraced as a pervert solely for having faith in the student. And even then, he still has faith. Don’t worry, this nice man will get an Ikigami. I wasn’t sure where it was going at first, because I thought the kid doing the setup was too young and the teacher was too old. I still didn’t quite understand, because… I mean, what a nice guy. I suppose that’s the point of the random death, but still. Of course, the nice man snapped and went on a rampage, but even then, he still had complete faith in the goodness of the students. There was some seriously disturbing and scary stuff wrapped up in here that I don’t really want to talk about for fear of spoiling it, but it was an excellent read, and there were some great dynamic and tense art moments to help the action along.
The second story was a little less exciting, about a young mother and deadbeat dad having to deal with an ikigami. I did see this ikigami coming, though the direction the story takes from there made it more interesting than it first seemed. Even as one of the less exciting stories so far (and I say this only because the setup is pretty traditional), it still has a lot of good things going for it. In addition to being hard to predict, it was also hard for me to completely give up on the family since it was clear that they were relatively happy aside from money problems and the little girl loved both parents. And for as much of a deadbeat as the father is, he does care for his wife and daughter.
The first story alone is very much worth the price of admission. I’m not a terribly big fan of episodic series, but each Ikigami chapter feels like it has something to say, and I’m continually drawn into the stories. They appear mundane at first, but they always grow out of control and manage to wind up bittersweet every time. It’s a pretty incredible read. I also like the slower release schedule the series seems to be sticking to, since it really isn’t the type of story that can be enjoyed in a multi-volume reading session.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Kurashina-sensei’s Passion 1
Posted: January 15, 2010 Filed under: Kurashina-sensei's Passion | Tags: BL Leave a comment »Natsuho Shino – June – 2009 – 3 volumes
I reviewed this volume for the Manga Recon, so you can check out the review over there.
It was only an okay read, but it was kind of unusual in that it was a June book that was very nearly not BL until the very end. More of a light, happy look into the zany world of an all-boys school. It had its good points, but boring plot and characters hurt it.
Berserk 32
Posted: January 14, 2010 Filed under: Berserk Leave a comment »Kentaro Miura – Dark Horse – 2009 – 34+ volumes
So before I get into the actual review, I’m in the middle of the book here. I feel compelled to comment on the fact that… well, there’s this page with the archer that’s teamed up with Griffith. There are several panels showing his arrows tearing into the Kushan army. These panels… I can’t tell if they’re supposed to be funny or not. All the panels show the arrows piercing heads in various ways, and some are clearly serious. Some are only slightly ridiculous, with the arrows protruding from the mouth. Others have the arrows entering through one eye socket and out the other, with the eyeballs gathered at one end like a kebab. One shows a body that has been entirely decapitated, along with an arm. Another shows the arrow tearing a jaw off, another shows no head, only an arrow flying through the air with a nose pierced on it. My favorite shows the point coming out of an ear, with what appears to be the cochlea and the rest of the inner ear skewered on it. The last panel only shows disembodied eyeballs and bits of brain.
Oh, Berserk.
While the story was mostly exposition in this volume (a confrontation between Guts/Zodd/the Kushan King, a war between Virtannis and the Kushan army, a conflict between the Kushan Army and the Band of the Hawk), there was still a lot to like. It’s the massive war scenes that you see in this book where Miura’s art shines its brightest. There are a good number of large illustrations of sprawling armies, each member drawn individually with their own features. For all the conflict, there’s not a ridiculous amount of gore like we normally see, so really, there’s just a lot of soldiers riding around looking impressive. And I mean… looking very impressive. Nobody can draw an army like Kentaro Miura.
And if that wasn’t impressive enough, the end of the book contains a chapter where Farnese and Shierke begin to train in separating the astral body from the physical, so we get some truly gorgeous and fanciful scenes of the two flying around a ship at sea.
Good stuff. Next volume looks like it might contain an actual, all-out war between the Kushan Army and the Band of the Hawk, something I didn’t think woud come until much later in the series.
Hoshin Engi 15
Posted: January 13, 2010 Filed under: Hoshin Engi 2 Comments »Ryu Fujisaki – Viz – 2009 – 23 volumes
This volume has one of the best lines in all of shounen manga. In an epic fight between father and son, Otenkun yells “Dammit! His dilemmas made his heart explode!” Unfortunately, it was used without irony or comedic intent, but I like it anyway.
The battle in Kingo Island continues. It wasn’t nearly as boring as the last volume, since the battles this time around involve main characters like Taikobo and Yozen (and it’s a shame that we can consider Yozen a main character, but he’s suddenly become important, so…). I’ll also freely admit to liking Igo, the newly introduced disciple, even though I hate to have another new character this late in the game. He battles with Yozen and Nataku to take out two more of the Juttenkun, and Taikobo and Mugen take out another. Most of the second half of the volume focuses on another subplot involving Dakki in Kingo Island, and how she’s behind not only the war in the human world, but also this massive battle that’s been taking place in the sennin world as well. She’s been conspicuously absent for several volumes, and still hasn’t reappeared, but I am looking forward to the spectacular way she re-enters. With all this destruction in her wake, her next plot should be epic.
I can’t recall if this was explained earlier in the series, but the sennin war is caused in a similar fashion to the one in the human world: Dakki went against Kingo Island and had one of her disciples slowly brainwash Tsuten Kyoshu, the leader. He’s basically a puppet, and they used him to force Kingo Island to break a non-aggression treaty signed long ago. I had a hard time following along with the aggression between the two forces all this time, and I had reconciled myself to this war since it’s been just as long coming as the war with the humans. I was also confused midway through, because I thought all the sennin in Kingo Island were non-human, yosei sennin, while all the sennin in Mount Kongrong were human. This is still true, but apparently Kingo Island is also home to yokai sennin and not just yosei, which are inanimate objects that become sentient after being exposed to moonlight for hundreds of years.
There is a sickness that takes down the majority of the sennin on both sides in this volume, which whittles the war down to a smaller force (thankfully). The sickness is not a virus, like the one used earlier in the series, but is just Otenkun’s paope, which releases fleas that suck the energy from sennin. Very few are unaffected, and those few are the only ones fighting at this point. Because of this, I think the war won’t go on for nearly as long as I thought it would, which is good. I am beginning to like this part of the story, especially after the huge plot revelation at the end of this volume, but I am eager to see what comes after all this, and how this will affect the human war.
Also, because I don’t say this often enough, Ryu Fujisaki has awesome, awesome, AWESOME character designs. Sometimes the art gets a little too complicated to follow in action scenes, but you will never ever confuse any of his characters for another. Yozen’s new look in this volume is one of his best designs yet.
