Under Grand Hotel 2
Posted: May 6, 2011 Filed under: Under Grand Hotel | Tags: BL Leave a comment »Mika Sadahiro – 801 Media – 2010 – 2 volumes
I’ve got a huge backlog of books to write about, and this is one of the oldest. I read it months ago, and really liked it. It’s one of those deeply passionate and romantic BL books that I’m fond of, though even I am embarrassed at the premise (prison lovers, and the relationship is tinged with violence). I talked about the characters last time, so I’ll talk about the plot this time.
There are… uh, several different places the story goes in this 2-volume bunko edition (love the 350+ page format!). I’m not sure if there’s meant to be an overarching plot aside from character drama, but it’s interesting watching all the small jealousies and interactions and seeing where they lead. Some are slightly unrealistic, but all are juicy. One of the ones that’s harder to swallow is the warden’s interest in Sen, but all the same, it makes for some wonderful drama and misunderstandings between Swordfish and Sen, especially given the Warden’s talent for meddling and misdirection. There’s also Norman, who loves Swordfish so much that he’s willing to kill and do anything to split up the main couple. These two plot elements come to bear off and on throughout most of the two volumes, but it’s interesting how Sen and Swordfish resolve both of them. Again, I have a hard time swallowing the “reality” of the plot, since neither Sen nor Swordfish is in any position to negotiate or manipulate, but all the same, it sounds good within the context of the story regardless of how realistic it is.
But if you don’t like unrealistic, don’t read the ending. I’m still having trouble wrapping my brain around that, and it’s been months since I’ve read it. It’s exactly the point of this type of story, a complete romantic fantasy with no basis in reality, and particularly relevant for Sen and Swordfish. Since it is a prison manga, it’s not giving too much away to say that it involves escape, but it doesn’t have the expected conclusion. Not at all. Except… in some ways, it also does, and I liked that about it. I liked that I could choose which I preferred.
I also liked that Sen wasn’t really a criminal, and that it was a theme throughout the series. What was Sen doing in the prison? Why didn’t he speak up? I know it was to make him more of a martyr and sympathetic, I suppose, but it was still an interesting plot element. Or maybe not. I guess there’s always an innocent man in prison.
This was more musing on my part, since it’s been so long since I’ve read it, but read the first volume review to get more of a sense of why I loved this. Namely, because it’s ridiculously romantic. Violent and unrealistic, yes, and it turned my stomach more than once, but it’s still good stuff if you don’t mind, and it’s still less reprehensible than some BL books I’ve read. It’s eared all its rave reviews.
Marriage Scandal, Showbiz Baby!
Posted: May 6, 2011 Filed under: Marriage Scandal, Showbiz Baby Leave a comment »Sharon Kendrick / Marito Ai – Harlequin – 2011 – 1 volume
Again, I have a soft spot for these Harlequin manga adaptations that can be found so cheaply at emanga. They always deliver what they promise, in this case, two celebrities in the middle of a divorce that suddenly find out that there’s a baby on the way. Why the split? Cheating, of course, and some divergent personalities… but of course they still love each other, because otherwise, how could the baby wind up in a happy family? Add a pessimistic, meddling mother and you’ve got everything you need.
It’s not fantastic, but again, it scratches that romance manga itch, which is all I’m after when I read these. It’s always a bonus if they happen to be good too, but this one doesn’t go above and beyond. It does have better-than-average art, though, and I liked Marito Ai’s backgrounds a lot. It was more detail than I’m used to seeing.
Do you like romance? Celebrities? Have 400 points to spend over at emanga? You make the call.
Peepo Choo 2
Posted: May 6, 2011 Filed under: Peepo Choo Leave a comment »Felipe Smith – Vertical – 2010 – 3 volumes
Hmm… the plot thickens. Some of the blatantly satirical elements from the first volume fall to the wayside as the characters all seem to fall headlong into their fantasy worlds, with varying degrees of success.
As embarrassing as Milton is, it’s nice to see he found a friend in Japan. He’s hard for me to deal with, because on one hand, I don’t want to see his dreams crushed, but on the other hand, his dreams are so crazy that I just want him to shut up and face reality. But these things have to happen slowly, and I thought that Miki and Reiko would do a good job explaining things to him. That situation blew up though, then I felt bad about wanting Milton to accept reality when Jody abused him so harshly when reality hit.
Elsewhere, Morimoto Rockstar’s dreams of being a gangster go on uninterrupted. Mysteriously, reality doesn’t catch up with him, even though he indulges in the same caliber of fantasy life as Milton. The last page suggests that someone more well-acquainted with the lifestyle might be ready to coach him, though.
I do like Reiko, Miki’s friend who is fluent in English. I thought she was a stuck-up pretty girl in volume one that hung around with Miki to make her feel bad, but we learn she’s really self-conscious about her looks, and her attempts to learn conversational English by approaching foreigners has backfired due to her large breasts.
One of the best scenes in the book is from her perspective this time around. She gives a detailed account of just what American men are “really like.” There’s a lot of gold across these three pages, but my favorite panel is one where she suggests that “Americans eat T-bone steaks every single morning before going to work.” with an accompanying image of an enormous, table-sized steak with a man eating it while yelling “Good fucking morning! Fucking breakfast, motherfucker!”
I don’t know, I liked it.
I’m still not entirely sure where this plot is going, or how the various plotlines may or may not intersect, but I’m curious to see how much farther it gets in volume three.
Itsuwaribito 2
Posted: May 2, 2011 Filed under: Itsuwaribito Leave a comment »Yuuki Iinuma – Viz – 2011 – 8+ volumes
This series is aiming to please me. Its violence and morals far surpass anything you’d find in the average shounen series, but the artwork, types of characters, mascots, and much of the story resembles the genre essentials.
Within the first few pages of this volume, a corpse-looking individual corners a man, accuses him of being a liar, then kills him with an arrow. The arrow is shot into his mouth and exits through the back of his head and sticks into a tree behind the man. His tongue is pinned to the tree with the arrow, having been skewered, torn out, and driven through his head with the arrow as it went through and through. The corpse man took out his tongue because he was a liar, you see.
This sounds way more gory than it actually is (there’s very little blood), but this approaches Berserk levels of demented violence. Later, we find out that the corpse man keeps a pit of corpses whose tongues he’s removed, and that his face was torn off when he tried to escape from a well as a kid. There’s all sorts of wrong with this story. I really should emphasize it’s not really that gory, but it’s the idea of what’s going on that really impressed me. It’s the type of cartoon violence that is completely cool with most parents because it’s so far removed from reality, so it can go as crazy as it wants.
Anyway. After a one-chapter resolution to the story at the end of the last volume, we find out that the doctor, Yakuma, is probably along for the ride as his path crosses with Utsuho and Pochi and the three wind up traveling together briefly. Yakuma doesn’t trust Utsuho, a liar and self-proclaimed Itsuwaribito (professional liar), but his mistrust lands him in a situation with the aforementioned corpse-man, who stops everyone who passes through his neck of the woods and accuses them of being a liar. Yakuma is forced to trust Utsuho to do the right thing as Utsuho matches wits with the extremely violent corpse-man while Yakuma is impaled on a bed of spikes.
While so much of what’s going on is absolutely standard shounen fare (everything aside from the radical violence and the fact that the hero’s profession is lying, a surprisingly dark vocation for any hero), these first two volumes are worth reading for these Utsuho fights alone. They aren’t physical battles, more of a match-up of wits as Utsuho alternately lies and tells the truth about various small traps he sets. Seeing him work his silver tongue is something to behold, and I was sad to see that the second story arc in this volume stretches out a little longer, putting off the satisfying climax ’til volume three.
That’s not to say that Utsuho isn’t putting his lying skills to work throughout the second story in this volume. Yakuma and Utsuho decide to travel to a mythical island where society banishes convicted criminals and Itsuwaribito, an island that is also rumored to contain a medicine that makes men immortal. Once there, Utsuho crosses paths with many fine liars, but the story’s just getting warmed up, and it looks like most of the payoff will be in the next volume.
I really like what I’ve read so far, and the unique elements make this a worthwhile read. I’m not 100% sold on the entire series (however long that may eventually be), but I do want to read for another 3-4 volumes to see where it goes, and if it keeps improving, I’ll likely be in for the long haul.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Sensual Phrase 5
Posted: May 1, 2011 Filed under: Sensual Phrase Leave a comment »Mayu Shinjo – Viz – 2004 – 18 volumes
I took a little break from this series, but I’m going to try and polish it off before the end of the month. I’ve got several long shoujo series waiting to be read, and I’m sure they are all better than this one.
But will I enjoy them more? Sensual Phrase is an absolute riot, and I love every page. It… it isn’t good, but it is extraordinarily entertaining if you’re into this type of thing.
It’s just so unabashedly cheesy. It’s not trying to be anything but the absolute sweetest fanservice. The two main plot points in this volume were Aine getting hypnotized into thinking she was the sister of Sakuya’s romantic rival, and then Sakuya getting hit by a car and on the cusp of death. Through thick and thin, Sakuya and Aine stay by each other, and I think that’s why it’s successful. There’s not a whole lot of doubt or drama between the two, which is where a lot of other shoujo manga get the fuel for plot twists like these. It is almost literally going through the motions with these storylines (there’s no overarching plot aside from the fact Sakuya and Aine are dating, and of course they aren’t going to split up), but there’s something about the faithfulness of the couple that makes it utterly compelling for a genre fan like me.
Then there’s the eye-popping smut that’s scattered throughout the volume. I think Sakuya and Aine have sex three times here, maybe four. There’s also a scene where pop idol Sakuya, in the middle of a concert, turns off the lights, then grabs amnesia-addled Aine from the crowd, brings her back to the stage, turns the lights back on, then re-enacts a steamy music video where he feels up a naked Aine. Live on stage. In front of thousands of screaming teens.
It’s a Harlequin romance for naughty teenagers.
There’s also the author talks, where Mayu Shinjo discusses J-Pop idols, songs, and concerts at length and talks about the fan consensus based on letters she receives from readers.
This whole series is a perfect storm of absolutely everything an average female teenager would love, and it doesn’t try to be anything else. It simply there to put butts in seats, so to speak.
Blade of the Immortal 17
Posted: May 1, 2011 Filed under: Blade of the Immortal Leave a comment »Hiroaki Samura – Dark Horse – 2007 – 26+ volumes
Okay, so this prison arc is not as agonizing as I thought it was going to be. I find the story to be quite interesting. And again, I was most afraid of torture, but compared to what Manji’s been through in battle, in prison he seems to be getting three hots and a cot, at the very least, and the experiments that the doctor is putting him through weigh more heavily on his conscience than they do his body. And even then, the burden of morality lies mostly with the doctor, Manji is merely a bystander.
The main thrust of the story here is that the doctor that attends to Manji is trying to transfer his immortality to someone else’s body. They experimented on Manji’s body in the last volume in order to test the limits of his immortality, but here the doctor is doing a physical experiment with some degree of success. Manji bonds with the man who is becoming immortal, and as they swap limbs back and forth courtesy of the doctor, they grow closer. This prisoner is a decent man, but there is a long line of others after him who are not. Terrible things seem to happen to him, but the fate of the prisoners is, as I mentioned, more of a question of how the doctor feels about doing human experiments. He’s not okay with it, and it weighs on him after the first man, when he has to make a fast and terrible decision.
Elsewhere, the character that was introduced last volume, Doa, is more than just a simple girl, though I’m still not quite sure what will become of her and her attendant. Interestingly, I read Itsuwaribito a day after this one, and a plot point came up surrounding a facial tattoo very similar to the one Doa sports. In Itsuwaribito, it identified convicted murderers. It made me wonder if that was based in fact, or if it was just a coincidence that it came up both places. Doa is young, and she makes no attempt to cover hers.
And there’s Rin, who has teamed up with Hyakurin to find Manji. Hyakurin asks Rin about her relationship with Manji, and Rin brushes her off, of course, but the essay that I mentioned at Dark Horse a few entries back (it’s gone now, sadly) hinted at a possible romance. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but it is touching how hard Rin is trying to look for Manji. The two do find Giichi, and try and figure out what’s become of the Mugai-Ryu.
And now I’m reading the next volume. There’s not a whole lot of action in these books, but it’s interesting how much there is to chew on here, even with some of the funnest bits of the story absent for the time being. Now it’s a fantastic page-turner simply because I need to know how successful the doctor will be in transferring Manji’s immortality. I tore through this volume thinking he was certainly going to do it.
