Muhyo & Roji’s Bureau of Supernatural Investigation 16
Posted: March 16, 2010 Filed under: Muhyo & Roji's Bureau of Supernatural Investigation 6 Comments »Yoshiyuki Nishi – Viz – 2010 – 18 volumes
Hm. Well, at the very least, I finally got to see the titular Bureau of Investigation. The cases are a little different than what I thought, and I think I’m missing out on quite a bit by not being all that familiar with Muhyo’s personality. His brevity and smug superiority when carrying out a job translated well in his heroics from the long story that just finished, but I just can’t tell what he’s implying when he does it on these short cases. There could be several readings, and I’m having trouble figuring out if he’s just a jerk or if his lack of explanations and insight is meant to get Roji and the reader thinking about what’s going on.
That’s probably my other problem. It was pretty obvious what was going on in the long story since monsters were summoned and fought in a pretty clear manner, but with these smaller ghosts, poltergeists, and whatnot, I’m having a harder time trying to figure out what the seven-headed dog or Muhyo are trying to do to defeat them. I think that’s part of the mystery, but since I don’t have as much a grasp on the magic system as I thought I did, that part’s a little lost on me. Even having said that, the story seems a little more fragmented than I’d like, too, and feels like it jumps around a lot. That could just be me having a hard time reading it because of the factors mentioned above, though.
I did ike the last case in the volume. There was a lonely ghost going around consuming any student who said they were its friend, and the case opened with two police officers seeking Muhyo and Roji’s help with a series of kidnappings they’d tried everything to solve. The officers didn’t believe in magic, but of course that’s what works in the end. I liked the little peek into the “real” world in that story, though the disbelief has little bearing on the case itself. And while I had a hard time following what was going on, I did love the ghost itself. It had a suitably sad story to go with it, and the methods used by both it, Muhyo, and the police were pretty epic stuff.
I still find myself interested, even after being slightly more disappointed with this volume than I thought I would be. I still like the general plot, and I still adore the whole aesthetic the series has going for it. Even after being puzzled by what was going on here, I’m still curious to read the last two volumes and find out what kind of conclusion the series reaches. As a whole, it strikes me as only okay, but I’ve grown attached enough to want to follow it to the end.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
By not understanding what’s going on with Muhyo ghostbusting wise, do you mean you don’t get that Muhyo mainly just sentences them to the underwold and then out pops monster thing to pull em down? If you only read a couple of volumes before this during the previous arc where the incantations and whatnot seem to be more about summoning them and let them fight it a la most action series rather than the beginning episodic stuff where it’s usually just sentencing the ghost and summon the demon that pulls them away deal, I can see where you’re kind of confused. Once the demon is summoned, there’s not really much for the ghost to do at that point so not much fighting goes on.
Nishi doesn’t do the best action or transitional scenes though, so I can see where trying to figure out what’s going at times is kind of murky. I think the portraying of action is probably the weakest part of the series, which is too bad since he has such a unique style.
As for Muhyo, I think he’s mostly just a jerk but that’s what makes him so refreshing to me, as Shonen Jump protagonists like that are few and far between, though Roji’s character is pretty lame.
I love the monster designs in the series. Another thing I kind of find peculiar about it is how Nishi draws women. They’re either heaving breast characters like Rio, the blonde haired executor or kind of androgynous like Imai, Biko, the chariot demon. There’s very little in between.
I hope that the series sells well enough to warrant Viz picking up the two volume series Nishi did after this, though I wonder if itbeing cancelled after two volumes bodes well for it to be licensed. I don’t believe he’s started another series yet though I hope the failure of his last one doesn’t put him off course to change his ways because he really has a unique style.
Forgot to mention but another small thing that raises my enjoyment of the book is the lettering job for it. It doesn’t do anything that would make someone look at it and say “wow, awesome job with the lettering” but it more of the absence of mistakes that make it stand out. Things like always having the text centered mean something to me and much more common than it should be shoddy production values in manga kills me.
I will never understand why text is never aligned correctly, among other things, but it happens so often in manga that it makes me wonder if the companies could save themselves some money and have elementary kids do it or something. I would be embarrassed to be credited with the work on some books.
Yeah, I love his art, and that’s the main reason I like Muhyo and Roji, I think. It’s perfectly suited to this story, with all the demons and ghosts and dark stuff floating around, and it’s hard to imagine him tackling other subject matter. I’d love to see what else he could do, though, honestly.
The summoning and sentencing was a little baffling to me, but thank you for the explanation. It makes sense that they wouldn’t bother to re-explain things to new readers at this point in the story, but I also loved the refresh, since I like these little one-shots much better than what I read of the ongoing plot. Then again, I wasn’t in the best spot to appreciate that ongoing story either, but all the same. I do need to pick up a few more volumes of this at some point.
Oh, yes, and I’ll agree with some of what you say about the sloppy lettering. I’m beginning to notice it less and less after reading more stuff on Netcomics and the emanga site. I tend to forgive it there since the content is dirt cheap, I’m getting what I pay for, and I know that material wouldn’t be available otherwise. But… the Harlequin volumes I’ve read on emanga are lettered pretty terribly, as are… er, some of the series not meant for print on Netcomics (they also have pretty hilarious translations over there, too). But it’s a little more irksome in books that I do pay regular price for.
Similarly, I like books that take a little extra time to do something different with the lettering, whether it’s little flourishes the artist puts in themselves (like the weird English phrases illustrated into the Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure bubbles) or using a different font for certain characters or phrases (Hayate x Blade comes to mind, since a “creepy” character uses a different font than everybody else). I don’t ever talk about it, but I probably should a little more.
One series that I know I can expect some extra effort in the case of lettering is Skip Beat. I can see how some may find all the different fonts and styles a bit annoying but I really think the person does a good job and I imagine most of the font changes are due to similar changes in the original text.
I remember reading an article about lettering in manga that focused on the person who does the lettering for SB, among other series, and was surprised to find out she hand draws the sound fx’s rather than messing with various type sizes and effects. Supposedly very few people do it that way and it shows. There are some series, namely Viz since they are solidly in the replace the original sound fx with an equivalent camp, where the the replaced sound fx becomes a bit overpowering to the stuff on the page or the new sound fx is just bigger than the original fx because of how words are different sizes in different languages and obscures the picture too much.
I like the Skip Beat method of hand drawing the fx’s, but if not that, I prefer having a small translation next to the original fx like Del Rey tends to do rather than have it untranslated, equivalent sound fx placed in it’s place, or in the panel gutters.
Yeah, Skip Beat is great for all its different fonts, and it would be really difficult to replicate that with stuff that comes straight from a computer.
Sometimes I just laugh when I see the retouch work on a Viz series. Knights of the Zodiac is the worst I’ve seen, where the huge sound effects obscure much of the action through some scenes. I got a big kick out of the comment that Bisco Hatori made in some bonus material looking at Ouran High School Host Club in different countries, which was something along the lines of “Poor Tamaki! He’s being swallowed by the sound effects!” for the English page.
I agree with you that the translation nearby is the best way to go, but unless it’s extremely important to know what sound is being made, if the sfx aren’t going to be redrawn, I would rather they be left untranslated since I don’t want to waste the fraction of a second it takes to learn that something says “CRASH!” when it’s made clear by the context. The gutter translations are really distracting, and the index in the back is nearly useless since again, I’m not going to referencing it for nearly every panel. I like Dark Horse’s retouches when they do them too, since I think they hand draw them, but they also will often leave them with translations nearby. I think the only series I read where I was completely baffled without a translation was the older translation of Chobits, where words behind the characters describing their actions (not necessarily sound effects) were left untranslated, and it was hard to tell what was going on sometimes.