Dorohedoro 1
Posted: April 6, 2010 Filed under: Dorohedoro 6 Comments »Q Hayashida – Viz – 2010 – 14+ volumes
It takes very little to convince me to read any series. The description for this series on the Ikki website didn’t sound that entertaining, but when I found out that humor was an element, I was in. Violence and humor will always, always win me over. I was in so fast I had the volume shipped priority, read it the same afternoon it arrived, then handed it off to my roommate, who did the same thing.
I wasn’t quite sure what to think after the first couple chapters. It’s difficult to get into at first, simply because the plot is so out there. Caiman, an alligator man, is eating a pair of bystanders. We learn that these bystanders are wizards, and Caiman sticks the head of any wizard he meets into his mouth in order to let the person that lives inside him tell them if they are “the one” or not. Usually, they are not, and then they are promptly killed. Great premise, but it makes very little sense until it is expanded slowly in the chapters that follow. Even after we learn that the wizards are the bad guys and that the plot of the series is that both they and Caiman are trying to track down the wizard that gave Caiman his reptile head, there are still a lot of questions. The series has a very slow and deliberate way of revealing things, and there are still a lot of things that are confusing at the end of the volume, but it is a very stylish and well-told story.
It’s pretty dark and violent stuff, especially since Caiman not only uses his teeth, but is also fond of carving people up with knives. That is why the humor is essential. It’s slightly out of place, and not usually funny at all when someone makes a joke, but I think that’s why it works. It is absurdist. The terrible jokes somehow seem to fit with Caiman and his lady friend Nikaido, who are strangely unconcerned with the wizards that everyone else fears. The chapters usually end with some banter between them, and Caiman is also prone to making bizarre, uncalled-for observations. I also like Caiman because, behind his crocodile head and badass action movie skills, he seems to be a generally boring, whiny person. There’s something endearing and very funny about that.
I love the little details that are woven into the story without being fully explained. For instance, all magic comes in the form of black smoke that is fired from the fingers of wizards. If the fingers are broken or cut off, the wizard can no longer do magic. The ones that appear in The Hole are usually some sort of apprentice, and they wear little domino masks, or variations on them. Full-fledged wizards all have their own unique masks that vary widely in design and include things like hearts and Hellraiser-like disfigurements (I’m not sure if that character is wearing a mask, or just has his lips pulled back with metal or whatever). Even better, one of the featured wizards wears a mask backwards for no reason, and its a mask with no face in the first place.
The art is really something, too. It is very dark and almost scumbled-looking in places, and I love the loose style and attention to detail. I also adored the character designs, especially Caiman. He’s got spikes coming out of the back of his head and usually wears a gas mask around. The spikes sometimes impale his pillow when he’s having a bad dream.
It’s strange, and I feel like I’m still not quite sure of everything that’s going on, but I know I want more. Of all the series running on the Ikki site that I’ve tried, this is my hands-down favorite. The others I’ve tried give you a lot to look at and chew on, but this caters to me personally, and I loved every page of it. I’m sure it won’t have as wide an appeal as Kingyo Used Books or Saturn Apartments or anything, but the combination of the absurd sense of humor and violence, along with the excellent art and character designs and detailed setting, really did it for me. It’s something special.
Seimaden 1
Posted: April 6, 2010 Filed under: Seimaden 10 Comments »You Higuri – CMX – 2005 – 10 volumes
My love for Ludwig II has prompted me to go back and look at some of Higuri’s other series. Perhaps I should have started with Gorgeous Carat, but I love demons, so Seimaden was the way to go.
This is more or less her debut work (there’s a prequel volume floating around that looks like it came out the same year), and you can more or less tell. You can also tell that this was a product of the early 90s, though the art has aged extremely well over the years. There are illustration techniques that date it (some of the poses, free-floating “shoujo” panels, the fact that Laures is gigantic compared to everyone else), but as a fantasy series, it doesn’t really have any story elements that date it.
It’s an awful lot like RG Veda. Higuri’s style is very much like CLAMP in this work (at this point, they were working for the same publisher and in some of the same magazines), and RG Veda’s fantasy themes, costumes, and fatalistic love triangles are all in here. RG Veda was in the middle of its run when this started, but I don’t know how popular it was. Popular enough to replicate? Probably not, especially with CLAMP on board at the same publisher. I think big romantic fantasy like this was just popular in the early 90s. I have very little evidence to back this guess aside from RG Veda, Seimaden, Basara and Fushigi Yugi, but the latter two were very popular.
And after all that explanation, all I’m going to talk about is how I was disappointed that this suffered from debut series problems. I love demons, and Laures is a kind of king demon, but not even he is saving this first volume for me. There is a very stale setup involving a heroine named Hilda who has lost her memories, a dark-haired bishounen who is her protector, and a “good guy” that shows up later to “save” her from the dark-haired bishounen, who is apparently evil but doesn’t seem like it. They all have a past, and the dark-haired bishounen (Laures) has done some bad things, but it’s pretty obvious he’s not completely evil. Most everything else, including Hilda’s memories, are left a big mystery to be filled in later. Mysteriously, the summary on the back of the volume gives most of that mystery away.
It’s pretty bland, but it’s not good form to blame the first volume of a fantasy series for a boring set-up. Especially a romance, and especially an older series. I picked up the first three, so I’m going to hold off on judgement until I finish the third. We’ll see how much the characters and plot develop by then.
…I was disappointed surprised that there wasn’t even a hint of BL in this first volume, especially given Higuri’s other work. I had to slash Laures and Roddrick in my head. This tells me I am further down the fujoshi road than I care to admit.
Slam Dunk 9
Posted: April 4, 2010 Filed under: Slam Dunk 1 Comment »Takehiko Inoue – Viz – 2010 – 31 volumes
I skipped a volume in here somewhere, but it doesn’t feel like it. This volume opens with Sakuragi thinking about the aftermath of the fight, which must mean it took up volume 8. Must’ve been an epic fight.
Anyway, this volume covers… er, most of the tournament the team entered. The first game is covered in detail, then it skips over all the others in an awesome montage-like fashion to skip to the final 8. Most of what’s going on is about the teamwork and everyone’s role on the court during a game. Surprisingly, Sakuragi does have a place, but he’s not very successful since he can’t stop fouling out.
Again, I think one of the best things about Sakuragi is that he’s not an invincible, inherently talented main character. He is, in a sense, since everyone keeps talking about how he’s something special, but he doesn’t know how to play basketball and makes a lot of mistakes, which I like. Even better, he doesn’t use these mistakes to build character and mope around until something miraculously changes. He doesn’t learn from these mistakes at all. He just keeps doing them, to hilarious effect. He fouls out through the whole volume until he decides to ask Akagi for help out of sheer embarrassment. He is king in his mind, however, and all the praise that is normally lavished on the main character takes place entirely in his head. He’s hilarious and extremely upbeat, which is why he works so well as the lead. Volumes like this, that are just basketball, would be a whole lot less interesting without him.
I’m having trouble with the characters because of the skipped volume, unfortunately, even with the handy bios in the front of the volume and Haruko helpfully discussing each person’s strengths at the beginning of the book. It also doesn’t help that the punk with a crush on the manager has gotten a haircut. I get him and another one of the aces confused. It doesn’t really matter, since the only thing I really have to know is that one of them is a punk who will hit on the manager, but it still confused me a bit. That’s entirely my fault, though.
But yes. Still awesome. You can call Slam Dunk the bus driver, because it takes almost all other sports manga to school. I can’t get over how addictive it is and how quickly the volumes go by.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Black Jack 10
Posted: April 4, 2010 Filed under: Black Jack 4 Comments »Osamu Tezuka – Vertical – 2010 – 17 volumes
See, this is what happens when you leave boxes unopened on your floor for a week. I thought it was just volumes of stuff I needed to catch up on, and here it was the next volume of Black Jack. I tend to rave about it on here, but it doesn’t dominate my thoughts the same way a lot of other series do. All the same, it’s one of the only ones I read straight out of the box every time it comes in the mail.
There was a strange, strange mix of stories this time. All were thought-provoking, and I don’t think there were any duds in the bunch this time (though some of the endings were ambiguous). Two of the stories featured Black Jack’s father. While his past has been hinted at and his strange thirst for vengeance illustrated in at least one story, it’s unusual to see his father just step into the picture like this, and twice in one volume. Not that we ever have to worry about that again, but even so. The first story was about Black Jack’s father begging him to heal his wife, who had recovered from Hansen’s Disease but suffered from a horribly disfigured face. Black Jack gets his revenge in an interesting way, though a little too poetic for my taste. The second story was twisted and suffered a bit from Tezuka logic, but was of the extreme and nonsensical variety that I prefer. Assassination, inheritance, and little half-sisters are all part of it.
Speaking of assassinations and Tezuka logic, I think my favorite story in the volume was one where Black Jack was flown into Hawaii every time a man was shot in order to save his life. At the beginning of the story, he actually arrived after the man had died and brought him back to life. Hilarious. There was a political message in there somewhere that made it a bit more sober than what I’m describing, but I couldn’t get over the premise enough to appreciate the message. Also, the man was Lamp, which helped, too. There’s just something about seeing Lamp shot in a serious situation that is impossible to take seriously.
There is a resemblance betwee Black Jack, his father, and his younger sister in the eyes (which look extremely out of place on the sister), but there’s an even bigger resemblance between him and Hyakkimaru, the protagonist of Dororo and the character on whom Black Jack was based. The story that may be one of Hyakkimaru’s only appearances outside his own series appears in this volume, and I loved the way the two characters disagreed and ultimately bonded in the end. It was a nice way to display their similarities. I think this was one of my favorite stories so far, because of the character bonding, but also because it was about an old man that hired Black Jack to surgically implant 300 diamonds in various parts of his body. The old man was Shunsaku Ban.
There’s a cute story towards the end where a little kid gets one of his friends to pretend to be Black Jack in order to appease his very sick younger sister. There’s another one where, inexplicably, Black Jack helps out the princess of an island nation and her lover (inexplicable, mostly, because of the ending). A story where Pinoko gets sorta-kidnapped was mixed in there somewhere, and I loved that Pinoko’s attitude about what was going on was left completely ambiguous. At one point in one of the stories I’ve already mentioned, Black Jack operates on his own leg to save it from being amputated. In another, he puts a young woman back together using the parts from her dead family members. In another, he operates on and saves a dolphin out of boredom.
Forget what I said at the beginning. This series is the absolute best. No joke. I will declare a new winner when someone else can show me another story where a doctor is hired to fly across the pacific to resurrect a dead victim of assassination on more than one occasion.
Record of a Fallen Vampire 9
Posted: April 2, 2010 Filed under: Record of a Fallen Vampire 4 Comments »Kyo Shirodaira / Yuri Kimura – Viz – 2010 – 9 volumes
The thrilling conclusion! This is an extra-long volume. I figured the story would be twisting and turning right up to the end, but the only really big surprise comes in the form of an ultimatum Strauss offers the Black Swan. Most everything else goes more or less according to plan. Not to say that it isn’t awesome. I mean, the climax of the series (in a matter of speaking) is a pair of vampires flying through space to swallow an alien spaceship with their powers in a battle that takes place on the moon. Just because I knew it was coming didn’t make it any less awesome.
There’s lots of final conversations between characters, as expected from a last volume. Everyone loves Strauss, which runs fairly contrary to the first volume, where everyone hated him. It’s been a wild ride and a pretty satisfying 180, I have to say. My favorite conversation was actually between Strauss and Laetitia, his little Dhampire assistant, the one person who didn’t hate him. She was also the only one that didn’t get all weepy, and the only one that got an “I love you” out of him. Aww. We get a last word for pretty much everyone but Sabarhagen. Well, we even get a last word from her, I suppose. The talks do drag the story on a little, and I was really dying for the conclusion while everyone was still talking, but they did have to be there.
The final outcome was not expected, though not the earth-shattering twist that “unexpected” implies from this series. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll only say I had mixed feelings about it. One of the things I like best about this series, though, is that whenever something unusual comes up in the storytelling, Shirodaira discusses it in his essay in the back of the book. This was no exception, but he really offers no explanation other than the story, especially the ending, was heavily inspired by Cyrano de Bergerac.
That’s right. A story about that ends with vampires fighting aliens on the moon was inspired by Cyrano de Bergerac. What’s more, I can kind of see it after he brought it up.
Marry me, Kyo Shirodaira.
I was pretty satisfied with the conclusion, and I was more than satisfied with the series as a whole. I still can’t get over how well the unusual story was told, and I really can’t recommend it highly enough to anyone who wants a well-written, bizarre story full of twists. It’s got to be one of the best for this, and I think it (or at the very least, its panache) will stay with me for quite some time.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Honey Hunt 4
Posted: April 1, 2010 Filed under: Honey Hunt 5 Comments »Miki Aihara – Viz – 2010 – 6+ volumes
In case I had forgotten how ridiculous this series is, the first page reminds me. “I’m not going to be satisfied until you admit you like me more than Q-ta.” “What’s he saying? Does that mean… that Haruka likes me?!”
Maybe it does, Yura. Maybe it does.
Yura continues to be her regular doormat self, letting her manager boss her around and the hot celebrity twins fight over her without much of a peep on how she feels. While I disagree with her quietly taking all the stern instructions from her manager, I also find myself agreeing with his advice: Yura keeps thinking about the hot twins while she’s scoring big celebrity jobs that she shouldn’t be getting. So not only is she getting these impossible jobs, she’s also thinking about which twin she likes better while she does it rather than about working. Her manager wants her to focus on her work while she builds up her career, but the boys are stealing away her concentration. Not to mention getting involved with either of them will create a lot of gossip. The manager wants the boys to wait a year to pick her up, which seems fair.
Unfortunately, it’s also implied that her manager has feelings for Yura, which almost invalidates all his points. Still, if an impossible celebrity career were dropped in my lap, yeah, I think I’d be able to screen out the boys until I was sure I could make it work.
There was also one other plot point that made me dislike Yura a little more towards the end of the book, where she ditches all her friends throwing a party for her to hang out with a boy. As terrible as that is, I am always secretly amused when shoujo manga heroines break the “bros before hos” rule. Usually it only happens in super-trashy series like this. B.O.D.Y. jumps to mind as another one where it happens.
But even after all that, I still tore straight through this book in record time. I am ridiculously addicted. And somehow, I don’t hate Yura despite the fact she is probably the embodiment of every negative stereotype you can put in a shoujo manga heroine. I don’t like her, really, but somehow I can’t really bring myself to hate her, either. Maybe it’s because she’s just too pathetic.
Whatever it is, it works. This series is completely insane and somehow an amazing read despite being no good for you at all. Like eating spoon after spoon of Hershey’s syrup. There are certainly better things you could be reading, but honestly… only a few things are really more satisfying than this. I can guarantee you that this series won’t take more than 20 volumes to get the main couple together, like Skip Beat.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Chronicles of the Grim Peddler 1
Posted: April 1, 2010 Filed under: Chronicles of the Grim Peddler 1 Comment »Lee Jeong-A – Udon Entertainment – 2008 – 2+ volumes
I’m really sad that Udon’s manhwa line seems to be on an extended hold, because all the series I sampled were really, really interesting. Both this and Reading Club were pretty unique and showed a lot of potential, and Evyione was quite simply one of the most amazing books I read in 2008. I loved it. I think its sad the second volume never came out. On the plus side, other lines of Udon Entertainment books seem to still be hopping, so there’s still hope for these series.
The premise is something that immediately sucked me in, because anything having to do with evil variations of fairy tales has my attention. The framing device had me a little worried, though, since there are a lot of variations on the “omniscient purveyor of goods/advice/help to characters in fairy tale themed one-shot stories” series. This wasn’t quite like that, though it comes pretty close. While the Peddler does offer an item to the characters in the first chapter, he’s really more of an observer, or not involved at all. Sort of like the girl in Presents, I think, except even less so.
The first several pages had me very, very worried since they made no sense whatsoever. It starts off with some Alice in Wonderland allusions, then hops around a little bit before settling into the first story, which was an alternate take on Sleeping Beauty. The story was a very close retelling on the original, except the Peddler gave a “seed” to the princess’s mother so she could give birth, something that wouldn’t have happened since the King neglected her in favor of sculpting. The ending was bizarre and different, too, and involved a character that seemed like he would be important, then wasn’t. This story was okay, but also extremely disorganized. The other stories get better.
The second story is about the Peddler himself at home, and he’s visited by Hansel and Gretel. This was the most solid story in the volume and my favorite by far, since it featured a nice twist, had little to do with the original fairy tale, and also presumably gave us some information that will prove to be important to the plot of the series.
The third story was a retelling of The Little Mermaid with a mermaid who is more or less a terrible person. She tries to win over the prince as part of a bet with the Peddler rather than because she is smitten, and the prince sees straight through her. There wasn’t quite enough variation on the original story for my taste, but it was still a fun read.
The last story made no sense to me, and seemed to be a very liberal take on Cinderella, except involving vengeful twins and greedy parents and child abuse. The Peddler doesn’t have much to do with this story, either. That’s probably for the best.
Now, I liked this volume, but the storytelling definitely had some flaws to it. It’s still definitely worth reading though, and they seem like the kind of issues that will easily iron themselves out in future volumes. I do hope we see more, because I see this being along the same lines as Nightmare Inspector, another excellent series of fairy tale-like one-shots involving a character with insight into the stories being told. I’m interested in where the plot eventually goes, too, or if it’ll be mostly one-shots with the little bit of plot development left behind.
One other thing: the art is very pretty. Nice costumes, detailed settings, all the right stuff to really bring the stories to life. It’s rough, but is definitely worth picking up to anyone who is at all interested.
I Hate You More Than Anyone 7
Posted: April 1, 2010 Filed under: I Hate You More Than Anyone 4 Comments »Banri Hidaka – CMX – 2009 – 13 volumes
The plot with Saki and Maki thickens, and Kazuha is caught in the middle, predictably sympathizing with the creepy Saki and getting mad at Maki for his moodiness. The fight was a little unfair on Kazuha’s part, but to be fair, it fits with her character. She obviously values family ties quite a bit, and she did feel bad about it afterwards.
Other goings-on include an excellent scene between Senko and the elder Honjo. I like everything about that pair, from Senko’s temper getting the better of her after just the sight of Honjo, to Honjo’s unwillingness to do anything but whatever crosses his mind in the moment. Conversations that go on for any amount of time between the two are pretty hilarious.
There was a new character introduced, along with a future fashion show that all the characters will be involved in. I’m not all that fired up about it because it gets a little too close to V.B. Rose territory, and it also gives Kazuha and Maki less time to be together. They were together a few times in this volume, and there was even a very, very romantic scene that got away with the bare minimum of teasing the readers, but it still feels like the main romance is moving a bit too slowly.
Another problem is that the random gag humor with all the violence and the characters going off on tangents is back in full force. I dislike this part of the series most of all, and was hoing it would move beyond this once it was a few volumes in, but it seems to happen whenever there are scenes at school. The jokes aren’t funny, and they really break the rhythm of the story. Unfortunately, the Saki story means there are a lot of scenes at school, so there’s an awful lot of this kind of thing lately.
Infinite bonus points to this series for that daycare teacher showing up randomly during a conversation between Maki and Honjo and offering to ambush Saki in broad daylight, then commenting that Saki is suspicious because he is not the teaching type.
I like the series more and more with every volume, but there were just more things that irked me in this volume than usual. Hopefully this won’t be a trend.
