Maoh: Juvenile Remix 2

Kotaro Isaka / Megumi Osuga – Viz – 2010 – 10 volumes

So. I was a little overwhelmed here. Ando, aside from his cool ventriloquism power and his doubts about the Grasshopper vigilante group, turns out to be a little… weak-willed. He doubts, but he seems unwilling to act on his doubts. Granted, that’s a hard thing to do in reality, but in a manga, it’s unusual to see a hero that is so timid. And from the first chapter of volume two, we learn that someone has it in for Ando. Who? Why? The reader isn’t sure, but suddenly, a cocky assassin shows up and starts chasing Ando around town while Grasshopper and the local hero Inukai are out busting up a motorcycle gang.

It’s a little much to take in, but then Ando pauses for a minute. The assassin is bearing down on him, and he’s in a kind of drainage canal. He’s got unclimbable walls behind and to his right, and a river to his left. That leaves only one direction, right? Straight forward, with the assassin bearing down on him.

So Ando takes a minute to think. And then he suddenly remembers his hero MacGyver. What would MacGyver do? Well, he would think, and come up with a clever way out of his situation.

And then he just uses ventriloquism to confuse the assassin and run by.

While the MacGyver reference was wasted here, I’m hoping it comes up later and that Ando excels at nonviolent and complicated solutions to dangerous situations. That would be AMAZING.

Also, this manga had a MacGyver reference in it.

Ando alluded to Inukai being a demon due to his magnetic personality and… brutality, but that doesn’t go anywhere just yet. Inukai is mostly just bad news here, and in addition to brutally wrecking a motorcycle gang, it’s implied that he may be hiring hits. He’s not at all a nice guy, and we don’t have the benefit of seeing him brighten individual lives in this volume to balance it out. We start to see the face on the other side of the complex Inukai is fighting, too, a man named Anderson. Anderson had some shady dealings of his own, but so far, him putting in a shopping complex is much less sinister than Inukai’s warfare.

Also, the casual, friendly, and ruthless assassin that we meet in this volume is an awesome character. He mentions being from out of town, but maybe he’ll come back later. I wish he had been more clearly a good guy.

It still has interesting parts, but they haven’t quite jelled yet. I’m a little less enthusiastic after reading volume two, even with the MacGyver reference, but I’m hoping things start moving again in volume three.