20th Century Boys 11
Posted: September 29, 2010 Filed under: 20th Century Boys 4 Comments »Naoki Urasawa – Viz – 2010 – 23 volumes
This volume was a lot more exposition than we’ve yet seen in this series. Not a whole lot of action, nor any detailed flashbacks, nor were there Earth-shattering revelations of any kind. Just a lot of talking. It was still interesting though, and even 20th Century Boys needs to catch its breath sometimes.
Sadakiyo… hm. The situation with Sadakiyo gets very strange, very fast, and that develops while Kanna is being told that her father is the Friend (something I still doubt, though it was brought up in the early stages of the story). Basically, Sadakiyo knows damn near everything, and he learned it all from Mon-chan. Of course, we don’t learn what “everything” is, and “everything” is written in a cryptic, stained, and crumbling shorthand. So we’re left with the characters puzzling through their memories. Unfortunately, their revelations don’t really mean much at this stage, they mostly seem like major plot points for another day. But it’s still fun to see Yoshitsune and Yukiji hanging out together. And “everything” is important enough that the Friend organization would torch a building full of elderly people to destroy it. The head Dream Navigator is a ruthless, ruthless lady, and it looks like she’ll be back for more at a later date.
The story does explore Kanna’s background a little more, as it moves on from the point where she is told she is the Friend’s daughter (and why would you believe that? Especially under the circumstances in which she was told?). She learns what she can about her mother, absent for all these years. The truth of the matter winds up being pretty ugly, though it makes sense in a way, too. After all… would a nice lady have a kid with a man who turned into the Friend? Hmmm.
At this point, when it’s been established that all manner of craziness can and will happen, there are nonsensical things I am waiting to happen. I don’t know that the characters have ever said that Kenji was actually dead. In this volume, they mention he went off by himself, he put his life on the line, pretty much everything except “he gave his life.” I’m waiting for Kenji to show up. And I’m waiting for him to show up in some outlandish role that doesn’t make sense until three volumes of action/explanations make it clear that it somehow fits perfectly in the logic of the story, and has since the beginning.
As for the Friend, other than a lingering theory that it’s some sort of double personality for Kenji, I have no idea who it could be, and it seems like he’s relatively unconnected to Kenji’s group of friends at this point, at least the ones that had been established at the beginning of the story. That makes him a little less interesting, especially since the significance of Kenji’s class is lessened by new people coming out of the woodwork now, but… who am I kidding? I’m still dying to know who he is and how he fit in with Kenji’s group.
I’m also interested in the role of music in the series. Kenji is a musician, a tape of his songs is what keeps Kanna going, and in this volume, we see a speech he made about how all the classic rock songs are simply a part of his flesh and blood, and he only needs to close his eyes to feel any one of them. Also, given the fact that the series is named after a T-Rex song, and the first scene of a boy being bound and gagged and a song blasted over the PA has still not been explained… I’m waiting more and more for music to come into things. I’m not sure if I’m reading too much into it or not, but it’s still an interesting element.
A quiet volume, sure, full of characters pausing to try and sort things out, but I still have yet to see 20th Century Boys lose its forward momentum. It’s still getting better and better. It trumps Monster about a hundred times at this point, and is probably the best series I’m currently reading. Amazing stuff.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Black Bird 6
Posted: September 28, 2010 Filed under: Black Bird 2 Comments »Kanoko Sakurakoji – Viz – 2010 – 11+ volumes
Okay, so reading two volumes of this back-to-back is a bad idea. The overdose left me looking at the bare bones of the plot, and it wasn’t pretty.
Basically… Sho, Kyo’s evil brother, locks himself in a storehouse with Misao, then tries to have sex with her. Poisonings and bloodlettings commence, as does a tragic flashback to childhood. At the very end of the volume, there is a plot twist where… if I’m reading this right, a being so magical that human blood will poison it asks Kyo to have sex with Misao, then have sex with his daughter to share the maiden’s/Misao’s “essence,” thus curing the daughter.
Yeah.
Again, I do like the shallow naughtiness/trashiness of this series. It’s very earnest and serious without being angsty most of the time, and though there wasn’t a whole lot in this volume, it gets away with a lot of the sex talk between Kyo and Misao because those two are genuinely passionate. The romance elements are good, and the plot is very dark, which is what I like about it. And on some level, I love that Misao has it in her to poison a captor, who then turns the tables by helping himself to her magical healing blood. Yes, it’s kind of stupid, but I still like it. It makes for a lot of suspense and a pretty cool gimmick.
Alas, the characters are also rather shallow, and their best sides are not on display in this volume. The naughtier side of Kyo is M.I.A. lately, and that seems unlikely to change given the fact that the two are in the middle of some sort of sex taboo right now. And… yeah, Misao doesn’t really have a good side, she’s mostly just a damsel in distress.
One really nice thing in this volume is that the folklore elements are starting to play a larger and larger role in the story, and if that develops more it could get pretty exciting. Aside from the Tengu clan, the Tsuchigumo spider demons play a role in this volume, as do the shirohebi snake people in some small part. We don’t see members of either clan, but their powers come into play, which is the most important part (honestly, seeing another episodic story with a member that was somehow involved in the past of the characters would keep me away for good, so it’s better this way). At the end, we get to meet a member of a godlike race of dragon people. I am very excited about the possibilities of seeing more of said dragon people, along with any other godlike magical beings the story cares to present.
The bonus pages are also great, with a brief story about how Sakurakoji threw a party for her mangaka friends, then revealed she just wanted them all over to help with her bonus pages. They were all pretty recognizable shoujo artists too, from Setona Mizushiro to Shoko Akira to Hinako Ashihara. “Yasuko” was the only one I didn’t recognize.
Basically, this is not good, but it is my kind of not good. Even with a mediocre volume like this, and the promise of more dancing around the characters having sex in the future, I’m still kind of looking forward to the next volume. I do like the mythology elements, and yeah, the trashiness is the flavor I enjoy. What can I say? It’s a guilty pleasure. Not one I can enjoy frequently, or in large doses, but still.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
I Want to Bite
Posted: September 27, 2010 Filed under: I Want to Bite | Tags: BL Leave a comment »Isaya Takamori – DokiDoki – 2010 – 1 volume
this is a novel
I reviewed this BL novel over at the Manga Village, so you can check it out over there.
I liked this. A lot. A whole lot. I cracked it open without realizing it was a novel, then proceeded to read the entire thing in about one sitting. I like vampire hunting stories, and while this didn’t have the best romance or the… uh, most coherent ending, the action and character development were really, really good. Plus, the very end of the book had me wishing for a sequel. I don’t think one exists, but I would read other books by the same writer. Good stuff, and it was light on the BL and heavy on the action.
Breaking Down Banana Fish, vols 7-8
Posted: September 27, 2010 Filed under: Articles on Other Sites Leave a comment »We (meaning me, Melinda Beasi, Michelle Smith, Eva Volin, Khursten Santos, and Robin Brenner) had another Banana Fish roundtable over at the Manga Bookshelf, this time covering volumes 7-8. I do enjoy these, they’re a lot of fun to participate in. Please check it out over at the Manga Bookshelf.
These volumes covered a lot of the good Ash/Eiji parts, but the next set will get back into the action, if I’m not mistaken. I am looking forward to it!
Dokkoida?! 3
Posted: September 25, 2010 Filed under: Dokkoida 4 Comments »Yu Yagami / Taro Achi – CMX – 2008 – 3 volumes
Did I say something bad about this series after I read volume two? I may have. I think I may have been in some sort of cranky, manga-hating mood when I read it. I will freely admit that there’s nothing terribly deep about the series, and that most will probably not like it, but man was this book a lot of fun.
The one-off chapters continue, highlighting one of the handful of major characters, but the fun it had with cliches was more obvious this time. As all the characters leave simultaneously and conveniently together, they all comment on how strange it is that they all go to the same vocational school/are in the same class/have work at the same time/teach at the same school. We are spared the hijinx at the school itself in favor of the swearing rabbit character foiling a burglar space villain.
Another good reason for the good one-shots this time around were the amusing theme villains. The burglar villain fits in with the chapter where the rabbit is left home and has to convince the burglar to rob every lousy apartment in the complex, a villain resembling Oscar from Rose of Versailles is crying themed and tells sad stories (based on a litany of real-life sad stories that made me laugh), and the final villain is a pea-man that tries to kill people with a giant potato monster. His theme isn’t really that funny, actually, but it’s still a little amusing.
And the character-centric stories are a lot more cute. The stuck-up princess villain has a conference where she pretends to not love her baby brother, everyone at the Cosmos house comes to Suzuo’s rescue when his grandpa tries to take him back to the tea plantation, and there’s a cute chapter with the gruff girl trying to keep her kimono nice, eventually having it torn to shreds by a weapon that is so gentle it only tears clothes.
And the ending was very sweet. It takes up about the last third of the book, and even though there were one or two too many characters, and not much of an ongoing plot, the conclusion was still really great. It makes me happy when sentai comedies have such triumphant endings.
Another fine detail: the rabbit character, who had a Kansai accent in the original, was made to swear excessively in the English version. This is the best rendition of a Kansai accent I have ever seen, ever. Hands down. Everyone should do this from now on. I don’t care if it’s inappropriate in the context of the series.
I still like Heroes are Extinct a little better, but this is a pretty close second. The third volume is great, and I think the novelty of the premise did wonders for the first volume. I do love sentai comedies for their self-awareness and bizarre elements in general, and they are rare in English (this is more… tokusatsu, I think, but whatever). I tend to dislike comedy manga, but for some reason, these sentai series get me every time, no matter how vaguely crappy they may be (Imperfect Heroes is, uh, not very good). We must embrace them when they appear, so that we can get to the good stuff like Shinesman.*
*This will never happen, ever.
20th Century Boys 10
Posted: September 24, 2010 Filed under: 20th Century Boys 2 Comments »Naoki Urasawa – Viz – 2010 – 23 volumes
Interesting. So the storylines are all starting to come together. I really like Kyoko now, who is just a hapless victim with no clue as to what’s going on. She just keeps running into all the wrong people. People who others have been trying to find their entire lives. And it gets her in all sorts of trouble. Happily, she does meet up with Kanna in this volume, and Kanna hears all that she knows. They are soon separated, which would be annoying in any other series but so much exposition happens that I completely forgot to be angry.
They did cop out of showing the Friend’s face, but the cop-out was so bizarre and unexpected that I forgive it. The lead-in to the cop-out in this volume alone was very epic, visually (lots and lots of teasing, face-hiding, views of the back of the head, et cetera). And I even laughed a little, because… it was so weird, and the explanation made a lot of sense (though Yoshitune’s panic will need some work to make it sound like less of a weird plot hole). We finally got to meet Sadakiyo, both in the past and the present. And he tells his side of the story. Sadakiyo is all sorts of crazy, which says something in a story this insane, but he’s unhinged in a way that nobody else is. It’s interesting that, amid all his crazy, he doubts what he’s believed his whole life. He doubts friendship, which is all he’s really had.
And with all the action going on, Sadakiyo made me tear up a little when he met up with his old teacher. This story isn’t really one for sentimentality (Pluto more than makes up for that), so it made it all the more powerful. And it made me like Sadakiyo quite a bit.
And, of course, Kyoko winds up with Sadakiyo at the end of the volume. As if she hasn’t had enough crazy already. I want her to be someone important in the end.
There is some Kanna, but it’s mostly some short wrap-up from the big meeting last volume and her being brusque with Kyoko. We’ve met most of the major players at this point, I think, though I still expect Kenji is alive and well somewhere, possibly acting out the role of Robert Johnson. Now that really would be a trip.
Holy crap, but is this series good. A hundred times better than Monster, and a lot more inventive and strange than Pluto. Easily the best of the Urasawa I’ve read, and probably the best seinen manga I’ve read period. And I’ve read lots of good seinen manga.
Black Bird 5
Posted: September 24, 2010 Filed under: Black Bird Leave a comment »Kanoko Sakurakoji – Viz – 2010 – 11+ volumes
This series is one of the more… er, trashy, maybe, that I’m really into right now. Reading it, I know in some ways it isn’t good. For instance, the first half of the volume is mostly about whether or not Misao and Kyo can or will have sex. Then it switches gears, but sex is never far from either of their minds, nor do people around them ever stop talking about it.
I’ll freely admit to liking characters like Kyo, who have no problem with sexual flirtations around their special lady. Kyo’s toned it down a lot in this volume, since now he “can’t” have sex with Misao, but he’s the same type of character as Domoto from Butterflies, Flowers. Neither is flirtatious in a sleazy way, but still off-putting to the girl on the other end and a little funny. It works better in Butterflies, Flowers since that series is less dark and, frankly, better, but seeing it here on occasion still makes me smile.
This volume is still pretty drama-tastic, what with the sex agonizing and the fact they can’t have any affecting Kyo’s “leader” status in the Tengu clan. He’s also getting hit with a lot of pressure from home to seal the deal, so to speak. He does take Misao home with him, but mostly to settle the rights to the leadership position once and for all.
Hm… fun new characters this time around include Ayame, Sagami’s wife. She’s great, a very sick lady that still loves her husband very much. Her cheeriness is very welcome in the series’ world of dour, beautiful men. It’s a shame that the series has such a huge cast that goes mostly unused, though. I do hate it when stories like this have such a huge cast, because you don’t need more than a few core people to move the story, and having an entourage of eight men just seems excessive. Part of that problem is solved by having three members of the entourage played by young triplets, who are cute and/or mascots and don’t really need to be distinguished from one another, but there’s still a lot of faceless bishounen wandering around.
And the story… yeah. They, uh… have to have sex. But can’t. And that’s the gist of it. Make of that what you will. They are “settling” things with Kyo’s brother, currently, which will probably involve a lot of blood and fighting and angst.
Despite all its bad points, I still find myself ridiculously addicted. I do like the relationship between Kyo and Misao, which turns away from its hero/victim mechanics from the early volumes and becomes more sincere and earnest here. Plus, being a girl, I like romantic angst, regardless of context. I also love folklore-based stories, and although the magical parts still don’t really play a part, the fact that Kyo is a tengu demon is still extremely cool. I know that most people dismissed this series, and that’s fair, but there’s something about it that’s appealing to a die-hard shoujo fan that doesn’t like to think too hard about the story. Plus… I’ll be honest, the sex stuff is usually glossed over in most series like this, and it’s a little refreshing to see it out in the open. Even if I did just trash FY for doing it so excessively (in my defense, it was because multiple characters were trying to rape Miaka for, like, three volumes. Kyo and Misao’s situation is different).
There are better series out there, but Black Bird has just the right mix of my favorite things to make me look forward to every new volume. I just got volume 6 in the mail, so I’ll probably be reading that today or tomorrow.
Library Wars 2
Posted: September 22, 2010 Filed under: Library Wars Leave a comment »Kiiro Yumi – Viz – 2010 – 6+ volumes
What a fun concept! A shoujo manga about a kind of library army that fights the government and others to make sure that reading materials at the library aren’t censored. It gets bogged down in shoujo manga plot devices a little bit, but that doesn’t stop it from being a pretty cool little series.
I skipped the first volume, but the plot of the series isn’t hard to figure out, and the first chapter in the book re-introduces the storyline and all the characters. I have a hard time telling Dojo and Tezuka apart, since both are in Iku’s unit and are apparently love interests (?), but otherwise everything went very smoothly. I love it when series make it easy to step in from anywhere.
The story picks up in the middle of Iku’s training. Not long in, she experiences her first raid, and winds up having to protect books that are nearly censored from inside the library itself. Later, there are major PR issues surrounding a librarian who refuses to bend the patron privacy law concerning a murder suspect, and Iku has to keep her cool while the things she believes in are insulted. Among all this, one of the boys suddenly asks her out, and she seems to be falling for another.
One of the things that got on my nerves is that no matter what else is happening, someone is saying something bad about Iku. It’s always treated like a joke, and she seems to take all of it in stride, but it get old and repetitive very fast, and it’s frustrating when the flow of the story is constantly interrupted by these unfunny scenes. Similarly, it doesn’t seem to blend its shoujo and action elements all that well. The library parts and all the politics are pretty awesome, and I can see all of that going interesting places, but currently that aspect is taking a backseat to a frustratingly by-the-book shoujo love story that has nothing at all to do with it.
Iku’s a pretty average heroine. She’s clumsy, not good at a lot of things, gets wound up easily, and is great at what she does in a pinch. She’s flustered at the smallest hint of romantic attention, and seems oblivious to her own feelings. It looks like she also became a library agent to follow after a man who helped her when she was younger. I know Iku inside and out, because she’s been in a thousand manga before. It doesn’t seem like there’s much to characterize Iku in this series yet, other than the great scene where she suddenly turns into a good agent. The same goes for Dojo, who’s a pretty typical tease-y know-it-all guy who helps Iku out while possibly harboring a secret crush on her. Two other characters, Tezuka and Iku’s roommate, were more interesting than their stereotypes. The roommate doesn’t have much of an opportunity to shine, but this book focuses heavily on Tezuka, a boy who wants to be the perfect soldier but still has flaws. He seems to have a hard time expressing himself too, and appears to defer to superiors in all matters. It’s hard to like the other characters, since so much of their time is spent teasing Iku, but what I saw of Tezuka made me want to learn more about him in a serious context.
It is a very cool read though, and it gets major points for its concept. When the teasings gets too much, suddenly things pick up with a great action scene where Iku gets to be the hero, followed by a random love confession. The middle part was the most interesting, and the strength of that part will likely keep me coming back for more. It’s hard not to pick this up on concept alone, and it does have its weaknesses, but if the series manages to straighten all that out, it could turn into something spectacular.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Seiho Boys High School 2
Posted: September 20, 2010 Filed under: Seiho Boys' High School Leave a comment »Kaneyoshi Izumi – Viz – 2010 – 8+ volumes
There’s a panel in one of the chapters that almost perfectly sums up my attitude towards this type of shoujo premise (ie what kind of crazy/potentially sexy things happen at an all-boys school): at one point, when talking to a prospective student that rubs him the wrong way and also asks why he doesn’t have a girlfriend, Kamiki gets a scary voice, a far-off look in his eye, and a strange background with “a door to another world” while suggesting that “a boys’ school is not limited to just girls.”
Which is why I don’t read these, but thankfully Seiho Boys’ High School avoids almost all the traps that these series fall into. There is a gay character or two, but there’s no fanservice between the boys in this volume at all, and it’s very character-centric in a way that surprises me, since these are usually driven more by wacky hijinx-type stories. There’s none of that here. And it’s very sweet.
The sweetness mostly comes from the main character, who is a genuinely nice guy to everybody. Maki’s past with the girl he had a crush on is revealed in this volume over the course of three chapters. Initially it’s easy to hate his love interest, the rude Erika, because she tends to say the worst things to Maki when he attempts to be nice to her. But he continually insists that it’s because she’s bad with people. He finds it endearing, and it gets turned around pretty quickly when the rude things she says continually cross the line into the absurd. She won’t give Maki the time of day, but he has it bad, and continuously courts her and stands up for her despite everyone else badmouthing her constantly. Watching them slowly grow closer and closer, with Maki’s nice guy act and Erika’s prickly personality, was quite endearing, and changed my opinion of this series around entirely. The ending was especially worthwhile, and while it can be seen as a kind of cheap emotional cash-in, it was still effective, and something you don’t often see in this type of series.
Maki aside, there are two other side stories in the chapters in this volume. One of them kicks off the flashback, when Maki takes an insistent girl on a tour of the school. Looking at her, he constantly thinks about how she’s the type of cute girl he wants to date (not necessarily looks-wise, but he thinks about how a girl with a nice smile and a cute personality are the ones he likes best). She’s slightly manipulative, which puts Maki off, and when it turns out she went to the same junior high as Maki and badmouths Erika, he rather harshly kicks her to the curb, with the raucous support of all his friends.
One thing is, when Maki stands up for Erika, it’s usually because people call her “a nasty eyesore” and state outright that she’s not good enough for Maki. Maki counters this with… really terrible comebacks. For instance, “Don’t ever call Erika an eyesore, you ugly bitch!” The point is that he loses it when it comes to Erika, but it still seems out of character and a little hypocritical.
Another, unrelated, story is about a lonely local girl who laments the fact she doesn’t have a boyfriend and has to play hostess to her best friend and her boyfriend for the weekend. She runs into the boys from Seiho, and winds up convincing Kamiki to pretend to be her boyfriend for the weekend. This doesn’t go any of the usual places. The girl doesn’t fawn over or develop a crush on any of the Seiho boys, and even when Kamiki plays the part of the most gallant boyfriend on Earth, saving her from her lies more than once, the story is never about the two of them hooking up. It’s about her and her friend, with the Seiho boys playing foils to some extent.
Again, that’s one of the main reasons this stands out, in my mind. What other all-boys’ school series has the boys taking a backseat to a female character who isn’t likely to reappear? The side stories are very sweet, the characters likable, the stories touching, and I’m happy this goes against the formulas like that. It’s not super-stand-out as far as plot and characters go just yet (and its episodic formula has me thinking it might maintain this status quo for some time), but it’s a great light read, and definitely good for shoujo fans. Don’t let the title scare you away.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
