Spiral 1
Posted: January 8, 2011 Filed under: Spiral 3 Comments »Kyo Shirodaira / Eita Mizuno – Yen Press – 2007 – 15 volumes
I really, really liked Record of a Fallen Vampire, also by Kyo Shirodaira, so… you know. We also have this in English, and there’s no reason I shouldn’t read it. I think RoaFV has an advantage in that the twisty, winding story that repeatedly flips itself on its head also involves dark, brooding vampires and lots of inherent emo, but I still think he’s good at making a mystery and revealing key points at just the right time. So I dug into Spiral.
Honestly, I wasn’t expecting it to be a straight-out mystery. Someone is murdered on the first page, and from that point on, prickly and somewhat apathetic (at first) Ayumu is saddled with finding the killer or winding up being accused of a crime he didn’t commit. The structure is very similar to Case Closed, where there is a crime, Ayumu gathers the details and figure things out, then there’s just a bit more poking around to encourage the reader to figure things out before Ayumu reveals the bad guy in grand style.
It is exactly like Case Closed, actually, except each mystery leads into another one that is slowly leading back to the disappearance of Ayumu’s brother two years ago. Ayumu’s brother was a brilliant detective on the police force, and I’m half expecting him to be an adult Shinichi Kudo. Ayumu is what Conan would be, attitude and all, had he not been shrunken down.
It seems unfair to compare it to Case Closed, the most popular mystery manga and one of the most popular manga of all time, but they really are similar, and not just in a “they’re both episodic mysteries with a schoolboy detective” way. Most mystery novels I read are more along the lines of the main character groping blindly through a series of clues before finally putting the pieces together, usually right before something terrible happens to them in the climax of the novel. Both Conan and Ayumu are geniuses who sleuthing just comes easy to. They don’t grope blindly for anything, they just pick things up at the crime scene and figure things out almost instantly. The reader often can’t make sense of what’s going on until it’s spelled out explicitly. And neither Conan nor Ayumu need to do research or use additional resources to find out the meaning of a clue. They just know. Format has a lot to do with that, since with a chapter a week, it would be boring to dwell on the same case for more than a couple months. And it seems like, with the structure of this series, it will move away from the episodic mysteries and more into an issue that will be central to the plot. The “blade children” and the disappearance of Ayumu’s brother seem like they will take center stage before too long, we just have to make it there first.
And to be fair, one difference in Spiral is Hiyono, a friend Ayumu picks up in the first chapter. She’s a bouncy, spirited girl who is editor of the school newspaper and has the frightening talent of picking up any and all gossip you could possibly want. Ayumu and she, after starting off on the wrong foot, form a team, and frequently Ayumu would’t be able to solve cases without the social insight Hiyono gathers on the people involved.
Comparing it to Case Closed isn’t an insult, either. I love that series, and this one works just as well as it does. It is well-written, and as far as I’m concerned, as long as the mysteries continue to be interesting and different enough in their own way, there’s no problem. I doubt it’s even really copying Case Closed, since this is also a valid approach to writing a mystery story, especially one told in a short format like this. I do wish I could compare Kindaichi Case Files to these, but I’ve never read it.
The characters do evolve through the course of even this graphic novel. Where at first Ayumu sees being a murder suspect as a major pain, he willfully involves himself in all the cases after that, possibly in order to find out what happened to his brother. And Hiyono mellows out, though she keeps her bouncy, pleasant edge. The other characters, including Ayumu’s older sister (?) and her partner on the police force, are still mostly just serving a role in the story, but I’m interested in seeing where they go from here.
So far, so good. I like a good mystery, and this looks like it’s going places before too long. After seeing how many good turns Shirodaira gave us in Record of a Fallen Vampire, I definitely have high hopes for this series.
Dorohedoro 3
Posted: January 7, 2011 Filed under: Dorohedoro Leave a comment »Q Hayashida – Viz – 2011 – 15+ volumes
I don’t know what to say. This is far and away my favorite of all the Ikki series I read. Mainly because it deals with three of my favorite themes: humor, violence, and genuine weird.
How weird? At one point, Caiman and Nikaido go into a restaurant. As soon as they walk in, a waiter greets them and assumes they’re there to use the toilet. Caiman is confused, and tells him they are there to eat. Then the waiter explains that theirs is a fire toilet that connects directly to hell. Caiman and Nikaido then sit down to eat. Nothing more is really said, until later we briefly see the fire toilet during a scene where Caiman is almost recovering his memory. The toilet is never spoken of again.
That’s why I love this series.
That, and the ridiculous violence. At one point, Shin and Noi break up a group of bullying sorcerers when Noi chops one directly in half with her hand and splits him in half from head to crotch. Shin, Noi, Nikaido, and Caiman all do a lot of casual killing. At one point, Caiman complains about having to stuff the bodies in a dumpster. Shin and Noi seem less concerned about disposing of those they murdered. It’s so casual, too. Caiman and Nikaido almost have a reason (sorcerers torture them in the hole, one turned Caiman into a lizardman and stole his memories), but Shin, Noi, and En seem to kill people because they don’t like them. In this volume, they also kill a lot of sorcerers tied to the mysterious performance-enhancing black powder.
And that’s the other great thing about Dorohedoro, is that while all this weirdness is going on, there’s still a plot that’s moving forward quite clearly. En is still trying to discover the meaning behind the mysterious head that Shin and Noi cut off of Caiman, and he does everything from trying to resurrect it to giving it a new robot body. Meanwhile, Caiman and Nikaido go on an adventure together that I won’t spoil too much, but I love seeing Caiman exploring a new place and new things. His reactions are often tinged with violence, which suits the mood of the series oh-so-well. We also get to meet a gang of rogue sorcerers that appear to have the same eye markings as Caiman.
We even almost get a little bit of character development! Does Nikaido like Caiman? How does En feel about those he keeps close? Who is that head, is it Caiman?
And the art’s still wonderful. I just can’t get over how much detail there is. There are many, many lines, but they all illustrate something. For instance, in a small illustration of Caiman, you can just make out his eyes squinting in his mask, with the lines that indicate exasperation underneath them. The sorcerer’s masks, their gloves and clothes, and just everything about the environments and objects in this comic is detailed and incredible. And with all the detail, the style is still grungy and dirty, and it suits the series perfectly. I can’t stop looking at it.
This is really, really great stuff. I can see how it might be an acquired taste and too bizarre for some, but I hope it’s finding a niche of readers that love it as much as I do. You can read it on the SigIkki site for free, but I like to torture myself and wait for the graphic novels so that I don’t spoil myself. They come out so slowly, but it’s always worth the wait.
Library Wars 3
Posted: January 7, 2011 Filed under: Library Wars 1 Comment »Kiiro Yumi / Hiro Arikawa – Viz – 2010 – 6+ volumes
I don’t know. I really just can’t get into this series. The plot here is okay. It’s equal parts… well, love and war, as the title suggests. It shifts between business and pleasure for the characters pretty quickly, and we see a lot of Iku fighting with Dojo and the two of them growing closer in their own slow, aggravating way. It’s not my favorite type of relationship, since the “growing closer” usually comes in the aftermath of a misunderstanding, and I hate it when the main couple fight this much. It’s hard for me to root for anyone in that situation, especially since everyone keeps… well, disrespecting Iku. Nobody ever says anything nice to her. It’s not malicious, and she seems to take it in stride, but it’s hard to read when it seems like the main character can’t seem to do anything right and always yells at the love interest.
Last volume, it was hinted that Tezuka was also a possible love interest, but he’s put aside in this volume. It’s all about Dojo, and Tezuka hardly makes an appearance. It’s hard to tell these two apart, though, since they wear the same uniform, both yell at Iku a lot, and both have dark hair. One has smooth hair, one slightly spikier. Why Iku would prefer one over the other? A mystery. Both are occasionally nice to her. Except they do it in such a way as to make them look like a jerk, so Iku gets mad and yells, only realizing their kindness later.
Okay. I can’t get into this series because of the characters.
The plot is also a little hokey, but at least it’s fairly original. In the first half of the book, Iku and company help a pair of junior high students stand up to a committee that is looking to further censor books in schools. And after that, an information archive closes and there is an actual battle, with guns, between the library forces and the media committee that wishes to steal and censor the material that’s being transferred to the library.
That there are actual wars being fought in order to keep information free from censorship is a little heavy-handed, and the story doesn’t really handle it well. The other side of the fight is fairly faceless, and the committee that wants to censor the books in the schools is villainized to a ridiculous degree. The leader, after making a fuss when the children are allowed to voice their opinion, she tries to throw hot coffee on Iku. It’s pretty ridiculous.
It ends in an interesting place, though. Forced to sit the battle out, Iku is charged with guarding the head of the library. Both are kidnapped, and we are left wondering by who and how exactly Tezuka and Dojo will save them.
It’s just… pretty mediocre. That’s a shame, because it’s got a good premise, but it’s not handled very well, and I just can’t get into the characters. There’s definitely better shoujo out there, but this still might not be bad for a young teen (caveat: some violence), especially with such an original premise.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Blade of the Immortal 9
Posted: January 7, 2011 Filed under: Blade of the Immortal 2 Comments »Hiroaki Samura – Dark Horse – 2002 – 27+ volumes
YES. This volume was amazing. As much as I liked the last one, this is exactly what it lacked, and what it was building up to. Even Rin gets to shine.
There are two halves of the story here, now that Manji and Rin are split up. In the first half of the book, we see Manji’s fight. The last volume ended with Manji up against three travelers, with his arm out of commission, for all intents and purposes. Of course, we know this doesn’t really matter to him. This fight is absolutely insane. It is horribly bloody, and Manji uses everything from deception to brute strength to try and take them out. From trees to the river to a rice paddy, it goes everywhere. He uses a dead body as a blood smoke screen in the river. There is one man that won’t go down, who is killed again and again and again. He’s not immortal, just tough. And for every time they lock horns, Manji is put at a further disadvantage. For all his weapons and for not being able to be killed, Manji is as fallable as the next man. Things don’t end well here, and Manji has help. And all for the Tegata so that he can go chase after Rin.
It’s crazy, but not nearly as suspenseful as what Rin gets up to. Because while we know that Manji will probably come out on top, Rin has no such special skills. While Manji is fighting for the Tegata, Rin is trying to bluff her way through the gates into the next han as a family member of a local that lives on the border. It’s not as easy as it sounds, and the guard breaks out the family register and goes as far as a full-body inspection. If she and the innkeeper she’s with are caught, they will likely be executed, and Rin is taking a big risk. You don’t know how prepared she is for scrutiny, and the questioning gets more and more intense. I loved it. I gained a lot of respect for Rin after that scene.
I’m sure the next volume won’t be nearly this spectacular, since all there is to tell next is probably… well, whatever happens to Manji, and Rin’s travels. But if it was always like this, I wouldn’t appreciate volumes like this. This series is spectacular. I loved every page this time around, and I think I’ll probably burn through the rest of the volumes I have pretty quickly now.
Mistress Fortune
Posted: January 5, 2011 Filed under: Mistress Fortune Leave a comment »Arina Tanemura – Viz – 2010 – 1 volume
This. Hm. Well. I always have to remind myself that Arina Tanemura’s series run in Ribon, a magazine for little girls, and are not really meant for me. She can certainly draw, and if nothing else, I love looking at the pretty pictures. But sometimes… sometimes the going is rough. This volume is a good example.
It stars a pair of psychic 14-year-olds named Kisaki and Giniro. They are a pair that work for a secret PSI organization, fighting cute non-threatening aliens under the names “Fortune Quartz” and “Fortune Tiara,” together as “Mistress Fortune.” It’s a three-chapter story, with two chapters of follow-up, mostly about the romance between Kisaki and Giniro.
As you can imagine, it’s not terribly deep stuff. Chapter one introduces us to the characters, their powers, and what the PSI organization is, chapter two sets up a sad backstory for Giniro and escalates the romance between the two. It ends with Giniro and Kisaki fighting, and chapter three is a big noble adventure that Kisaki undertakes. One of the side stories is about the leader of the PSI organization, and the other is about the mascot alien character that follows Mistress Fortune around.
This sudden explanation of Kisaki’s powers just about sums up how I feel about the series: “A ‘Planet Photon’ is an electromagnetic wave with the same frequency as the photon belt around Alcyone, which is located near the center of the Pleiades star cluster. This electromagnetic wave has the power to fracture the atoms that make up the Ebe [the aliens that Mistress Fortune fight]. In other words, it can terminate the Ebe.” It then goes on to talk about how one ebe is sweating into a volcano and likely to cause a phreatic eruption.
It’s cute, but there’s not a whole lot of rhyme or reason when things happen, and a lot of it is simply cute for cute’s sake. The conflict at the end is also pretty simplistic, and the fight between the characters somewhat silly. There are also a lot of rules for the sake of it, such as one that says the PSI agents can’t know each other in real life, thus making it impossible for Kisaki to confess her feelings for Giniro. Perfect for little girls, but not so much for me.
Admittedly, I liked the silly story at the end where Kisaki and Giniro follow their superior around to try and figure out if it’s a man or a woman. And I liked a lot of the silliness and light romance in the main story, too. But… short psychic magical girl series just aren’t my thing.
Two good things, though: Kisaki goes to the US in the final chapter, which cracked me up since there were a lot of culture shock moments. And, even better, her chaperone in the US is Nancy Thistlethwaite, one of the editors at Viz. How cool is it that she wound up in an Arina Tanemura manga? There’s a neat story in the back that elaborates on it, too.
Well, three good things. Tanemura’s art really does get better and better with every volume. This is some pretty gorgeous stuff, and the magical girl stuff really gives her a chance to shine with the little girly design flourishes she’s so good at.
It’s been awhile, but I want to say I liked I.O.N. a bit better than this book. I would say that this would be perfect for young girls, but I’d feel a bit uncomfortable giving it to a very young girl since Kisaki loves Kisaki’s DD breasts. It doesn’t go any farther or into any more detail than him saying he likes them (admittedly, in the most innocent way I’ve ever seen), and there’s no touching or groping or even attempts at lewd behavior, and the breasts themselves are pretty low-key. But all the same, it’s good to mention that.
Even after… not enjoying this volume as much as I was hoping, I’m still looking forward to The Legend of Princess Sakura, her new continuing series. It’s historical romance, I think, and I’m hoping it’ll have a lot of the flavor of Gentlemen’s Alliance Cross to it.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Blade of the Immortal 8
Posted: January 4, 2011 Filed under: Blade of the Immortal Leave a comment »Hiroaki Samura – Dark Horse – 2001 – 27+ volumes
Man, this is still some heavy stuff. I still find it hard to sympathize with Rin. She is the most realistic character in the series, a person driven by revenge who is not a monster and cannot truly hope to achieve her goal, but tries anyway. She’s the moral anchor of the series, too, something it desperately needs in order to keep it from getting too ludicrous. She’s a great character. And yet, you can’t help but hold it against her a little bit when she fails to measure up to the insane creeps that keep coming out of the woodwork to fight her and Manji. It’s difficult to get through the parts where morality is questioned too, since in the world of the series, violence and death are acceptable by everybody except Rin.
She needs to be there, because otherwise the act of killing innocents and things like that becomes insignificant. She keeps the depravity from escalating, in a way. I do like that Blade of the Immortal is somewhat reigned in, compared to other seinen work where things spiral out of control and violence and intricate fight scenes only increase as the series goes on. I love that type of series, but there’s something to be said about keeping things real. Or as real as they can be when your main character is an immortal badass, and your villains walk around with women’s heads sown into his shoulders, anyway.
Anyway. As important as she is, it’s really hard to like Rin when she splits from Manji in this volume. It feels like an exercise in futility on her part to go down the path without Manji to take care of the monsters for her. So the story is now in two main parts, following Manji and Rin as they try to cross a heavily guarded border where they will surely be stopped. Rin decides to use deception and the kindness of strangers to cross, while Manji decides to obtain a pass through any means necessary.
Rin’s story is the more interesting this time around. Her plans hit an early hitch when she finds herself on a wanted poster for the brutal murder committed by the group member she and Manji were with last time. With her face on the wanted poster, she can’t even walk through a town, let alone cross a border without being executed. She absolutely breaks down, both for falling into the trap of having her face recognized, and also for gaining recognition as a criminal, something it seems she’s struggling with. She’s not a murderer, but murder is her ultimate goal, and she’s not a criminal, yet she and Manji regularly get themselves into problems that the law would not agree with.
Manji… he just tries to get a little information. And fight. The fight lasts into next volume, and hasn’t gotten to spectacular. Yet. Hopefully both Manji and Rin’s story will get a bit more interesting next volume. This was mostly exposition, I think, but it’s hard to tell since this was all still fairly interesting stuff.
Real 9
Posted: January 3, 2011 Filed under: Real Leave a comment »Takehiko Inoue – Viz – 2010 – 10+ volumes
I really can’t recommend this series enough. It’s got some of the widest appeal of anything I cover on here, and is just so touching in every way. Strong characters overcoming difficulties on their own and making themselves better – there’s no way to not make that sound really cheesy, but it’s honestly one of the best series I’m reading right now.
This volume focuses on Takahashi and Nomiya again. I think the two of them go together quite well, story-wise. While Nomiya does have his lows, and when he hits a wall it can be depressing, he’s one of the most positive characters in the series, so I like switching between his outlook and Takahashi, who is still having a lot of trouble coping with the fact he will be wheelchair-bound the rest of his life.
Except… Takahashi is also starting to come out of his horrible, black depression. His story is one of the most depressing I’ve ever read, simply because Inoue does such a good job of showing us just how much Takashi lost, how much it means to him to be “normal,” and why it is that there is nothing on Earth that can cheer him up. In this volume, Takahashi is distracted from himself by a new roommate, a pro wrestler who swears up and down that he’ll be able to walk and wrestle again in about three months, in time for an upcoming tournament. The wrestler looks up to Takahashi, who can do floor exercises with difficulty now, and the two of them form a fast friendship with an otaku-ish man who is also being rehabilitated. Takahashi is far from being happy with his life, but I think the two friends he’s made here are definitely lifting his spirits. There are a lot of light, funny stories between these three at the clinic.
Elsewhere, Nomiya has decided to try out for a professional basketball team. He’s going to be the only high school dropout at tryouts whose team never made it to any sort of tournament, but he doesn’t let this crush his good mood. He simply tells himself he has to be better, good enough for the team, and he makes a goal. He’s got ups and downs too, but he’s been very upbeat since meeting Kiyoharu, and with… “encouragement” from Kiyoharu, lots of practice, and lots of observation, he’s slowly going for it.
A summary is the most justice I can do for it, unfortunately, because the appeal lies in how the story is told, how the characters interact with each other, and how it is they go about getting what they want and succeeding where many would not, in terms of Kiyoharu recovering from the loss of his leg and Takahashi coping with losing the ability to walk. It’s charming, horribly sad, sometimes funny, and always an excellent read. I’m not praising it nearly enough, but take my word for it. Pick it up yourself and you probably won’t be disappointed. It really is that good.
Real Lies 1
Posted: January 3, 2011 Filed under: Real Lies Leave a comment »Lee Si Young – ICE Kunion – 2006 – 1+ volume
Okay, I have no idea how long this series is. It’s numbered as a first volume, and the author speaks of the “series” continuing, but ICE Kunion never released a second volume, and when Yen Press took over, they didn’t release a second volume, either. I’m pretty sure they continued and finished all of ICE Kunion’s series, and this one’s definitely not the worst of the lot or a black sheep in any way, so I wonder if another volume ever made it out in Korea.
While researching this, I found out the author has one other series in English, with one volume released by ADV before they went under, called Fantasy Land. It sounds simultaneously generic and fascinating, and I believe I will be picking myself up a copy in the near future.
This book is very unusual. Comic short story collections are a toss-up for me, and I normally dislike manga/girls’ comic short stories since they tend to stand on underdeveloped characters. But this one is full of good ideas, and reads like some of the better josei collections we’ve had in English. It reminds me quite a bit of A, A’ actually, though it’s not as successful at communicating its ideas.
The strange sentence on the cover, “How Martians conquer the Earth. Is it really impossible? Science fiction story.” is actually the titles to the three stories in the volume. The first, “How Martians Conquer the Earth,” is about a former playgirl who settled down with a good boy, then went crazy with grief when he died. The strange thing about this story is… you’re unsure if the character is dreaming, and she also makes references to martian invasion and the dead coming back to life. Neither of these things have any affect on her life, so they’re just ideas. Was there a martian invasion? Is that what happened to her lover? Does he come back from the dead? Is that what a “return” is? This story was somewhat difficult to parse in spots, and it peters out more than it ends, but there’s a lot of interesting ideas floating around, and it is very romantic. That’s frequently enough for me.
The second story, “Is It Really Impossible?”, is what made me think of A,A’. Or a cross between A,A’ and Ai no Kusabi, I guess. In a future society, women are declared “Goddesses” now that there are so few, and there are “dominant” and “recessive” males, all of whom have barcodes on their foreheads. The recessives are unable to produce offspring, so for some reason, they now all dress and act like women. Dominant males are the men’s men, and are allowed to date and attempt to father children with the “Goddesses.” The story is about one of the dominant males who enjoys the company of the recessive males more than the Goddesses. Though this sounds like the plot of a BL story, after the dominant and a recessive get into a conversation, we learn he dislikes being treated like a stud by the Goddesses, and genuinely wants to be friends with a girl he likes, something none of the Goddesses are interested in, but the recessives are. The recessive he talks to reveals that he wants to destroy the world. Whatever. It’s an interesting premise, and it is mostly used to frame the two characters, but a lot of their discussion walks us through the interesting society and its rules, and I loved the implications. I wish this could’ve been turned into a longer series.
The final story was the least interesting, and… may have been based on a Korean television show I’m not familiar with. A dour girl (I think, anyway, the main character was sorta sexless) resists being given a friendly robot after she suffers an accident, and the robot does everything it can to make friends with her, only to be rebuffed for being “too human.” This is a story that’s been told a hundred times, and I didn’t like the main character at all, but it has a nice twist at the end. A twist that lost me and may be tied into the aforementioned show, if it exists, but it was still a nice twist. The only reason I think the show might be real is because the dialogue had copious footnotes about it, and I think the characters would’ve explained the characters and whatnot themselves a little more if it was something unfamiliar to Korean readers.
I like the mood and ideas in the stories, and I like that they are sci-fi tinged while still being heavily romantic. It’s quite unusual, and I loved reading it. But, as I’m talking my way through this and going back through, I’m realizing that the stories were a little sloppy as far as storytelling goes. I still liked them quite a bit though, and this is a wonderful volume of short stories to pick up if you are so inclined. If it sounds interesting to you, you’ll probably love it, though the sloppiness makes it harder to recommend to a wider audience.
