Pluto 7
Posted: January 13, 2010 Filed under: Pluto Leave a comment »Naoki Urasawa – Viz – 2010 – 8 volumes
There are still several huge questions floating in the air as of this volume, so it falls to the very last to have the final confrontation with Pluto and explain the last few big mysteries. All this time, we have been faced with the mystery of Bora. It hasn’t really meant anything, just something Wassily said, and the name of the survey group, but it didn’t really seem to have an affect on the plot, which appeared to be… more or less Abullah putting his robot against the world. Later, we find out that the robot is his son, in a way. Their father/son relationship is much different than, say, Tenma and Atom’s, but it is still there. Tenma explains the problems with advanced AI and how you have to go against robot laws if you want advanced AI to succeed last volume, and we are treated to a flashback that shows us how things went down in Thracia years ago that led to the awakening of… a robot. As I was reading it, I assumed it was Pluto, but it could be one of three possible candidates now.
That flashback was my favorite bit of storytelling in the volume. It explained several things, opened up several more, and my absolute favorite part was how Tenma bailed out after he saw the robot. Granted, the place was being bombed too, but still. I thought it was funny.
Most of the volume was set in the present, and was about Epsilon and Wassily. We see a lot of Epsilon interacting with his orphans, we see how he and Wassily met, and Wassily begins to come out of his shell and speak a little more. In a flashback, it is revealed that Wassily was the last surviving person in a village that had been evacuated so that Epsilon could destroy it. Wassily had apparently seen something that he shouldn’t have, and inexplicably, Abullah sees fit to destroy this child in an elaborate plot to get around Epsilon. Epsilon and Pluto fight twice. Neither one really wants to.
Incredibly, after having the whole series to get to know Epsilon, I felt that the scenes with him and his orphans just didn’t have the same emotional impact as some of the other sections of the story. I’m still blown away by how sad that Mont Blanc section at the very beginning of the first volume is, and I don’t care how obvious it was, I also liked the North #2 story. There are certainly a lot of things to humanize Epsilon in this volume, and the contrast between him and his orphans and the rather insensitive way the humans in the military treat him is notable, but… even the final scene, with just his hands protecting Wassily, just wasn’t as powerful as I thought it would be. I’m guessing this has more to do with the fact that the result of that scene was going to inevitably lead to the final battle and was full of more anticipation than sadness. It’s no real failing in the storytelling, I was just surprised it wasn’t a little more sad.
We also learn a little more about Pluto. We see him speak, and we learn that he’s being controlled, possibly by a third party (there’s an elaborate metaphor involving Pinocchio that Uran walks us through). Seeing his little smiling face while being ordered to do the most terrible things against his will is pretty horrible. His face only really looks like its smiling in one scene, but it’s still pretty creepy.
So, we’ve got one more volume. I like 20th Century Boys better, but Pluto is great in the sense that… well, for one, I can always tell where it’s going, and I know what the outcome of the last volume will be, of course. It’s an old-fashioned story, in some ways, so I can see what’s ahead, and there is something to be said about the familiarity of a story like this. But it is, if nothing else, an old-fashioned story told on a grand scale, so there’s still quite a bit left up in the air for the last volume to unveil. That’s what I like most about Pluto. 20th Century Boys is a more ambitious story, but Pluto is very solid and still quite amazing. I like both series far better than I liked Monster, and I’m still blown away by just how far Urasawa’s storytelling abilities have developed since Monster.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
20th Century Boys 7
Posted: January 12, 2010 Filed under: 20th Century Boys 5 Comments »Naoki Urasawa – Viz – 2010 – 22 volumes
Yes. Lots and lots and lots of epic goings-on happen here. In the present storyline, we see Shogun begin to make his move, and Kanna is AWOL and replaced by a girl named Koizumi who randomly decides to do a research paper on the Kenji faction and, somehow, is not blinded by the Friend propaganda and winds up meeting the right people to hear the story.
Meanwhile, Shogun is free, and we also re-encounter Kami-sama in the present storyline. Shogun is just how we left him, but Kami-sama’s new lot in life is pretty hilarious and unnecessary, and somehow fitting.
After that, the story flashes back to December 31st, 1999, and we begin to see how the day unfolded. I wasn’t expecting the explanation this soon, nor was I expecting it to be as straightforward as it is. There are still some flashbacks to childhood mixed in too, along with some 1999 explanations that go back to childhood, which makes the timeline for this series even weirder, if that’s even possible. I loved the childhood memories this time around, a little more than the robot battle, but I have a feeling that the most exciting parts of that are going to be in the next volume. Which I now need desperately, because this one ends on an awful cliffhanger.
I think the thing I like most about the childhood memories in this volume is that they are all nice and a little bittersweet, which this volume desperately needs for contrast to its dark, action-packed story. Kenji rocking out to 20th Century Boy as a little kid, contrasted with him rocking it as an adult while driving a truck full of dynamite up to a giant robot is pretty awesome. I also liked how they had to analyze the final battle in little kid terms, like taking hints about how the giant robot was controlled from the evolution of the giant robot in Japanese popular culture. Awesome. I also like that there is a manga story subplot running with the manga artist that escapes with shogun, but he will never be as awesome as Jewel Sachihana from Otomen.
Also worth pointing out is the fact that the Friend modification to the Tower of the Sun doesn’t hurt that (horrible) thing. Maybe in a worldwide takeover, it would replace the torch on the Statue of Liberty, or perhaps set atop the tines of (horrible) Joan Miro’s Chicago (I would suggest the more famous Picasso across the street from it, but it wouldn’t be much of a modification since it’s already mostly there).
Anyway, yes. I am still completely addicted and in desperate need of more volumes of this series, stat. May this never change as long as it runs.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Redmoon 1
Posted: January 12, 2010 Filed under: Redmoon Leave a comment »Mina Hwang – ComicsOne – 2001 – 18 volumes
the English version is incomplete at volume 6
There are a strange number of MMORPGs that take their plots from manhwa, and even stranger, the manhwa are licensed in English. The famous Lineage is one of them (Lineage was licensed by ADV Manga but never released), and prior to making Lineage, the game creator started with Nexus, based on Kingdom of the Winds, released by Netcomics. Redmoon is another, and the graphic novels have a version of the game handily bundled into the back. ComicsOne released this in 2001 (possibly making it one of the oldest manhwa in English, along with the ComicsOne version of NOW?), and they stopped after 6 volumes, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to pick up all of them recently. Especially since I love fantasy comics and promised to read more male-oriented manhwa.
Redmoon gets off to a non-traditional start, which is surprising in a sprawling fantasy epic like this. This entire volume is spent at a high school, in the life of a boy named Philar. Philar is beginning to experience strange surges of power, like the ability to singlehandedly take out local gangs that pester him at arcades and in class. Soon he finds himself the subject of bizarre accidents, like earthquakes and falling basketball hoops. The accidents are always severe, but somehow Philar lives through them when a regular person would not. It soon becomes clear he is the subject of a debate between two powerful beings from another world, and may or may not be the former king of a fantasy kingdom who has sealed himself into a regular high school boy. The king’s brother has seized power and has sent his former fiancee as an assassin to eliminate any possible form that the old king might take. The fiancee is sure that Philar is not their king. He may have fooled her by changing his name to Philar, a clever alias and completely unlike hiss real name, Philaro. Philaro Bercanees Feliwoono.
Towards the end of the book, the assassination attempts get increasingly more hilarious as the characters possess random passerbys that conjure knives and get thrown into rivers. Philar befriending a very confused boy that stabs him and nearly drowns was one of the highlights of the book for me.
The volume takes a long time to read, and I got very caught up in the story despite the fact it doesn’t do anything out of the ordinary or terribly exciting (aside from, again, being a sprawling fantasy epic that takes place in modern times… or the 1980s, whatever). It does take its time and is very careful about developing its characters. I feel like I’ll have more of a bead on it after I figure out whether the story will take place in a fantasy world (very likely) or in the real world with the young Philar. This was mostly exposition, but it did leave me interested and ready to dive into the story proper.
DN Angel 13
Posted: January 12, 2010 Filed under: DN Angel 1 Comment »Yukiru Sugisaki – Tokyopop – 2009 – 13+ volumes
I reviewed this volume for this week’s Manga Minis column, so you can check out my review over there.
It was still kinda blah, but we do finally get an explanation for Dark/Krad after all these years, and the current storyline is mercifully put to sleep at the end of the volume, so we have the possibility of something more interesting when next we convene.
There hasn’t been a new volume in Japan in awhile though, so I fear that it may be another couple years. High fives to Tokyopop for keeping D.N.Angel and I.N.V.U. alive through years of infrequent Japanese/Korean volumes, though.
Otomen 5
Posted: January 10, 2010 Filed under: Otomen 2 Comments »Aya Kanno – Viz – 2010 – 9+ volumes
This was my choice for best new series of 2009. I felt a little bad for choosing this over 20th Century Boys, but I feel like I made the right decision after reading this volume. I may feel differently tomorrow, when I read the newest volume of 20th Century Boys, but for right now, Otomen is making me laugh too hard to change my mind. 20th Century Boys probably is the better series, but the two are apples and oranges and nearly impossible to compare. Otomen certainly was the best shoujo manga last year, and I started off not even liking it much.
Starting this volume, I liked it, but I was a little afraid the weird meta magic was wearing off. The first storyline with Ryo playing Yamato Nadeshiko was okay, but full of jokes that had already been told. We know Ryo is manly. We know that Asuka is not, and that he is better than her at all the challenges in the contest she is entered in at school. She fails in all the ways you would expect, though I still laughed pretty hard at some of them (the best was probably the flower arrangement contest, where only Kitora sees the manly beauty in her arrangement). The other problem is that Ryo just isn’t a very good character to stand as the main character in a story. She hardly gets any dialogue, and she’s a rather simple character. I don’t dislike her, and her silence keeps her from being truly one-dimensional, but it’s hard to understand what she’s doing and why when you can’t hear her thoughts or see her reacting in anything other than a completely detached and silent way to everything.
The second story in the book is solid gold, though. Juta is the main character, and it revolves around his Love Chick manga winning the Kodakusensa Manga Award and his worries about having to give the acceptance speech and revealing himself to be a male. Juta is a good and very funny character, and Love Chick is my favorite part of the series, so already the chapter had a lot going for it. But then he actually arrives at the ceremonies, and the page where Asuka (there as a rep from his mother’s business) exlaims that the shoujo mangaka party was exactly what he thought it was, followed by a panel full of shoujo manga artists drawn in a very simplistic and very shoujo style, made me laugh so hard I had to stop reading for awhile and let the joke sit. And that wasn’t even the best part of the chapter! It was a joy to see the regular-looking Asuka and Juta conversing with the oddly cartoony shoujo mangaka, but the real treat came with Juta’s mentor, drawn to look like a full-blown 70s European shoujo character with advice to give Juta. Everything about this chapter was amazing. Amazing. AMAZING. This is why I will keep choosing Otomen as the best again and again. Because it earns my respect with the sweat on its sparkly brow.
The third story is good too, and gets off to a good start with a flashback to young Asuka giving a very frank report about his father in front of his grade school class and then goes on to pair him with Hajime as masked samurai giving beauty advice in a callback to an older story. It suffered for following the Love Chick story, but it does look like it will lead to Asuka meeting back up with his father in the next volume, so I am definitely looking forward to that.
There’s still no plot development, and I was a little sad that two major opportunities for characters to advance the plot (Ryo/Asuka in one and Juta in another) were wasted, but on the other hand, I’m still enjoying what it’s doing immensely, so I can’t complain. I’m incredibly pleased with the way it seems to deliver a story exactly to my tastes whenever I think it might be slipping, and if it keeps going like this, it will become one of my very favorite shoujo manga.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Wild Act 6
Posted: January 10, 2010 Filed under: Wild Act 1 Comment »Rie Takada – Tokyopop – 2004 – 10 volumes
Sigh. I took a little break from this series, but I’m still not all that interested in what’s going on, which is a shame after I liked the beginning so much.
To be fair, this volume was better than the past couple. Yuniko and Ryu finally step things up a little more in their relationship, which is nice to see, and again, I can’t get enough of their dialogue with one another or the sense of humor in this series. The dialogue is excellent, and I can’t get enough of the strange offhand comments and the barbs the characters make back and forth to one another. That’s definitely its strong suit, and it’s the only reason I’m still enjoying it as much as I am.
The characters are still, still, still tracking down Akira Nanae stuff. There’s a boring and completely unsurprising confrontation between Maki and Ryu. Admittedly, the stealing in this volume is done much differently than it has been in the past, but in the end, it’s still just stealing Akira stuff, and the characters still haven’t learned anything new because of it. And even with Ryu and Yuniko stepping things up, there’s still fighting between the two, and the volume ends in a bad spot for the pair. If it actually goes for more than a volume in the direction its indicating, I’ll be surprised, but otherwise, this is a pretty typical shoujo manga rebound scenario, except the rebound character is completely uninteresting and Yuniko is nearly breaking character to be in this spot in the first place. I’m sure the misunderstanding will be smoothed out, they will make up, and go back to stealing Akira stuff in the next volume. Sigh. There was one other major upheval, but it was more a point of contention between the characters rather than a major plot point right now. I don’t have high hopes for it in the future.
I hope the next volume… I don’t know, is more exciting. Maybe I’ve just read too much shoujo manga and that’s the reason I’m not enjoying this. I feel mean for badmouthing it, and I feel like I really should be liking it. But I just feel like the plot should have moved forward, and I hate seeing the characters getting stuck in ruts that feel like they really should be strong enough to avoid.
Tag – You’re It! 1
Posted: January 9, 2010 Filed under: Tag - You're It! Leave a comment »Sook Kim – Central Park Media – 2004 – 3 volumes
This was the last item I obtained from last spring’s Right Stuf bargain bin sale. Obviously I was super-excited about this one since it took me a year to read. My hesitance wasn’t terribly misplaced since it wasn’t very good, but at the very least, it did seem to be a male-oriented manhwa, something I’ve been wanting to read more of, so I got a little taste of that.
I’m not entirely sure that it was meant to be a male-oriented Korean comic, and the only reason I think it was is that it read exactly like a Korean version of Boys Be…, with mostly male protagonists having comic woman troubles. They were the types of stories that are more comedic than they are romantic and can be enjoyed by both genders, so I’m not sure. It was pretty neutral. But all the same, if you’ve read Boys Be, you know what you’re in for here.
This volume was four short stories that went through a variety of situations. The first was about a boy obsessed with getting his first kiss, but also battling with a mouth full of rotting teeth he was afraid to get fixed. This one was my favorite of the stories and got the volume started off on the right foot, and I like the silliness and single-mindedness of the main character. Dental hygene is also a topic you don’t see come up frequently.
The second story, and the rest of the volume, were more typical teen romantic comedy-type stories. The second story involved a shy couple taking advice on how to be hard to get to increase their relationship (with terrible results), the third was about a stray high school student finding a job at a cafe and helping the unattractive owner work up the courage to talk to the beautiful woman who always requests hot lemonade, and the fourth wasn’t a romance at all until the end and was also the only story in the volume that reused characters (the beautiful woman and the high schooler from the “Hot Lemonade” story). The pair become a cleaning duo and wind up being drafted as assistance by a confused and eccentric comic artist. It’s fun stuff, but some of them went on for too long, and I wasn’t a big fan of the humor or the characters after that first story.
It’s a multi-volume series, and I kind of wonder if continuity starts taking over, since the last two stories were related, but I don’t feel compelled to keep reading. For some reason, I thought this was only a one-shot volume, and in a way it is, since no more came out. But yes, I wouldn’t really recommend it unless you were a big fan of Boys Be… (which I was at first too, but I liked Boys Be a bit more than I liked this).
Rin-ne 2
Posted: January 7, 2010 Filed under: Rin-ne 3 Comments »Rumiko Takahashi – Viz – 2010 – 2+ volumes
Cool! I forgot that volumes of this would be coming out every few months. I stopped reading the weekly chapters in favor of just buying the volumes, but I keep hoping the volumes will hook me to the point where I’ll desperately need the weekly chapters.
It’s still not nearly as good as my favorite works by her (Ranma 1/2, that great first VizBig volume of Inu-Yasha, and Mermaid Saga, which isn’t a fair comparison), but it is starting to grow on me. That carryover story from last volume with the ghost haunting Sakura’s classmate is only okay, but I had to laugh at the ending, where the characters use a mirror to peer into the unlikely past lives of strangers, and I laughed even harder when the ghost found what he was looking for. That was probably the highlight of the book for me.
The next story involves a difficult ghost that seems to want to move on, but Rinne can’t seem to figure out how to get her to do so. This one’s probably my favorite so far just because I like the ghost so much, and the outcome is suitably goofy and out of left field, but it didn’t top that past life business from the former ghost.
The last story seems to involve a Ryoga Hibiki-like rival for Rinne in the form of a weird devil. The devil does things that seem inordinately stupid, and that Rinne recognizes as traps… and in fact they are traps, and not particularly clever ones, but ones that Rinne has to spring nonetheless. I had a hard time wrapping my brain around this character, because on one hand, it’s genius to have a character like this that continually sets himself up for failure and succeeds anyway. On the other hand, he’s continually setting himself up for failure. Actually, yes, he’s just a genius character, and although the gags surrounding him (and most of the series, for that matter) are kind of tired, I do hope he comes back eventually. Unusually, his story finishes with the end of the volume, so there’s no cliffhanger.
Sadly, the plot is not developing. Unfortunately, Rinne seems to be working himself even deeper into debt, which just feels bad. I mean, the guy does so much work for 300 yen, he doesn’t really deserve to be cheated, GetBackers-like, out of all the money he earns and more. I also keep hoping for more information about the afterlife. It’s true that we get to see a glimpse into Hell in this volume, and that’s interesting, but not much comes of it. I also keep hoping that somehow Sakura will be drawn into the shinigami role somehow too, even though… yeah, it’s kind of to be expected. Maybe it’s just because I feel like that it might bring Sakura and Rinne closer together, too, because they still just hang out together and have no chemistry or even interesting back-and-forth conversations. When those two start being even a little friendly (not necessarily romantic), that will likely be the point the series starts getting really good.
As of now, though, it’s still got fun stories, and is a decent read, but has yet to blow my socks off like a good Rumiko Takahashi series should. I liked this volume more than the last, so I’m going to keep reading and hope that it keeps improving. Again, you can check out the chapters weekly at the Viz Rin-ne website, so feel free to give it a test run to see how you like it. It’s episodic, so it’s easy to pick up wherever you’d like to start.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Itazura na Kiss 1
Posted: January 7, 2010 Filed under: Itazura na Kiss 4 Comments »Kaoru Tada – Digital Manga Publishing – 2009 – 23 volumes
DMP is publishing the series in omnibus format, complete in 12 volumes
This is another one of those series I heard about a long time ago, likely because of its legendary status and the sudden death of the mangaka (the series is unfinished due to the mangaka falling into a coma and dying after hitting her head in a move). DMP’s advertising campaign claims that this is the shoujo manga that set the standard for the genre afterwards, so of course I was going to read it. I mean, I love shoujo manga.
And yeah, I can believe that it set the standards. It is a completely charming read, but nothing about it deviates from what you would expect in a shoujo manga. Kotoko is a slightly ditzy girl who is bad at school, and she develops a crush on Naoki, the smartest boy at their school, and possibly in the country. The one surprise comes from the fact the series wastes no time with this, Kotoko is brutally rejected on the first page of the volume. After this, her house is destroyed in an earthquake, and she and her father have to move in with his old college friend. Surprise, surprise, it’s Naoki’s dad, and it makes for an awkward living situation. A love-hate relationship develops between them, with Naoki treating Kotoko rather poorly and Kotoko bumbling her way through shy encounters with him, getting angry when necessary. Chapters in this volume include events like studying for exams, exchanging Christmas presents, getting into college, competing in sports events, and other tame topics. Also, Naoki and Kotoko’s parents are trying to marry them off, which makes for many predictable embarrassing/comedic situations.
Despite the completely unsurprising story in the first volume, I liked the characters a lot. Their interactions at times reminded me a lot of Baby & Me, with its sweet, understated character relationships. It sounds really corny, but I like series like this where the characters seem to like each other for who they are, rather than because they are destined to be together or share sexual attraction (but don’t get me wrong, I like those too, but this type is a little more rare). I was also a little shocked by Naoki, who seems like a genuine asshole through most of the book, but occasionally deigns to do nice things for Kotoko, like help her study. He also inexplicably feeds her hopes of hooking up one day, which seems a cruel thing to do if he has no intentions. It’s probably okay though, since this is a shoujo manga and you know they will hook up anyway. Kotoko is ditzy, but as Naoki points out, she is sincere in everything she does, and her intentions are always good. Naoki also says that she’s a bright spot and an interesting wildcard in his otherwise boring life (because he’s so smart, you see, life bores him), which are all good things. Even the weird insistence the parents have in making Naoki and Kotoko hook up is charming rather than annoying, since it seems borne from a genuine wish to be a happy family. It also helps that Kotoko and Naoki’s mom get along really well, which was also an element you don’t frequently see in this type of story.
I feel a little bad talking about the series like this, because I am really excited to be reading it. I feel like we won’t get to the good stuff until next time though. This volume took care of all the expected events, and slightly more surprisingly, actually had a timeline that progressed and brought the characters very close to graduation. If the series is 23 volumes long, I have a feeling we’ll be following Naoki and Kotoko into college and adulthood, which should make for a fun read indeed. I also like the artwork, which is spare and looks like a weird cross between 80s shoujo and… something else. The character designs are sometimes slightly 80s, but the minimalism makes it feel less dated and makes it hard to guess the vintage, I think. Of course, I already knew how old it was, so it’s sort of hard for me to say for sure.
Basically, it’s cute and very charming, with good characters, but I’m waiting for the next volume to see if it breaks out of the standard mold just a little. If not, I’m sure I’ll just grow to like the characters more and stop caring.
Vagabond 31
Posted: January 7, 2010 Filed under: Vagabond 4 Comments »Takehiko Inoue – Viz – 2009 – 32+ volumes
Holy crap, I didn’t realize the English volume releases were only a couple months behind the Japanese for this series! That’s pretty amazing. I guess it’s technically four months behind, but that’s still pretty good, even for a popular series.
Anyway, I wanted to see what it would be like to read the volumes out of order. I started this one, then realized it is not the nature of this series to spoil itself, that the joy of reading it comes from the vignettes and the fights, which don’t really lead into one another. I thought I would be coming in during a complicated relationship between Musashi and Kojiro, but that’s not the case. The only difference seemed to be a calm that Musashi had here that he doesn’t have where I’m at. I don’t feel like I’ve missed anything in the 15 volumes between this and where I’m at, which isn’t a bad thing. It’s pretty incredible, actually, that it’s so consistently good that any volume can be picked up and enjoyed by itself. It’s not a very common thing in manga.
I actually decided to pick this up when the cartoony drawing of Matahachi’s mom on the back cover made me smile. She’s annoying, but a pretty funny character, and I was surprised that she’d stuck around the story for so long. Little did I suspect what happened, and it was the best story for both her and Matahachi, and I like Matahachi even less than her. Matahachi is forced to come to terms with his own nature and admit to her outright what has happened, which doesn’t change much of anything. Still, the scene was sad, stark, and touching, especially when he failed to do something that finally made him snap and declare himself weak. It was pretty incredible.
Otherwise… we still have Musashi prowling around, being challenged by errant swordsman who are struck down. He seems to have more of a strategy, and talks out loud, something he usually doesn’t do where I’m at. And as I said, he’s much calmer here, which is also interesting. I wasn’t surprised to see him working his way back to the Yagyuu clan, which really is more of the same, but also not. The opponent he meets on the way is amazing in a way that only Vagabond can make repeated encounters with swordsman, and the artwork helps to enhance the confrontation and drag it into the realm of the dark and fanciful. I was also happy to see the Yagyuu master and Otsu still hanging around, though it’s a shame to see she isn’t more a part of the story at this point. I pray I never see a cartoon drawing of her on the back of a volume.
As always, excellent stuff. I was also surprised that the single volume didn’t leave me wanting more like I thought it would, since I’ve been spoiled on the 3-volume doses of the VizBig editions. I guess that’s just the magic of Vagabond, it always satisfies.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
