Kimi ni Todoke 12
Posted: February 20, 2012 Filed under: Kimi ni Todoke Leave a comment »Karuho Shiina – Viz – 2012 – 16+ volumes
Aww. I was wondering where the story was going to go now that Kazehaya and Sawako are an item. I thought the focus might turn to the side characters, but this volume deals with how Sawako tells her parents about her new beau and how both she and Kazehaya deal with the overwhelming emotions they seem to have for one another.
The story spends a long time with Sawako’s internal monologues. She over-analyzes everything about her relationship with Kazehaya, and is confused about the fact that she wants to hold hands, hug, and kiss. Are these things okay? Is Kazehaya comfortable with her initiating something like this? How does she go about it? Do these feelings make her weird? How can she do these things like a regular girl? The musings are adorable, and what makes them even better is some of the frank discussion between Sawako and Kazehaya. Kazehaya is just as embarrassed and unsure as Sawako.
Seriously. If this series were any more adorable, I think my teeth would rot out of my head from the sweetness. I just can’t get enough.
The Sawako’s parents storyline is just as awkward and cute as the rest of the series. Sawako’s mom is totally cool about everything, and actually tries her best to make things as non-awkward as possible. Sawako’s dad is a lot like her, though, and it’s really funny watching he and Kazehaya interact.
The final story in the volume is about how Chizu and Yano became friends. I’m not going to spoil this one. As cute as the Kazehaya/Sawako stories were, this was my favorite chapter in the volume. I love that this series can make me like even the side characters this much.
I’m happy that the slow pace and awkward relationship is still so great this far in. Sawako’s honesty and earnestness is a big draw for me, and I’m glad that she’s developing enough to keep things interesting this far in. Kazehaya isn’t so bad himself, and again… all the side characters are interesting. I feel like there are a lot of stories that Kimi ni Todoke could tell, and all of them are probably worth reading. I’m also hoping that time will pass and the characters will age, too. At any rate, reading a volume of this series always leaves me smiling, and I’m glad that it’s remained one of my favorites for so long.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Blue Exorcist 3
Posted: February 20, 2012 Filed under: Blue Exorcist 2 Comments »Kazue Kato – Viz – 2011 – 8+ volumes
I know it’s been a week or so since I’ve talked about this series, but my ardor hasn’t cooled. I read all the volumes in about one day. I started re-reading this one while I was writing it up here. It’s just… hard not to like it. It’s really difficult to not find it in your heart to root for Rin.
This volume is more of the same stories about Rin trying to control his powers and keep his true identity from his classmates. The first chapter is a cute story where he uses his head, rather than any special powers, to tame a cat sidhe that has gone wild after the death of its master, Father Fujimoto. It’s chapters like this that make me compare Rin to Luffy from One Piece. I like them both for the same reasons, but it’s not really a case of Rin being a copy of Luffy, in the way that other series are obviously trying to cash in on the best parts of One Piece. Rin is about as much like Luffy as Luffy is to Goku, from Dragon Ball. All are sort of dopey, good-hearted characters that are charismatic and get along with others well. Rin is a bit more like Goku, since both of them share a kind of monstrous power that sets them apart. Actually, Blue Exorcist may be like a mix of One Piece and Dragon Ball, since some of the characters introduced in this volume (Mr. Pheles’ “brothers”) remind me more of the saiyans from the later volumes of Dragon Ball than they do One Piece villains.
Anyway. One of the major stories in this volume introduces Shima, a senior rank exorcist and investigator that was sent to spy on Rin and determine if he is a liability. Shima, for whatever reason, doesn’t wear a shirt, or a bra that fits, once she’s introduced, but I like her other than that. She’s slovenly and rude, and I tend to love powerful characters like her that care very little about how they appear to others, with comedic results.
We learn that she was Father Fujimoto’s apprentice, and we get to see flashbacks with her time with Father Fujimoto. I already love Father Fujimoto, and I’m glad his presence seems destined to remain heavily ingrained in the series. There’s also some flashbacks for Rin, too, where we learn that he had trouble controlling his temper and strength, and how Father Fujimoto got him back under control. Yukio also reminisces about him. He’s had such a huge influence over everyone, and is easy to like in the same way Rin is. He’s a little silly, fairly heroic, and a great guy.
Later in the volume, there’s another group activity with the exorcists-in-training. Rin’s trying hard to fight without using his flame, and in this scenario, in the woods at night, he’s forced not to use it since his classmates would immediately see him if he did.
I’m looking forward to this exorcist mission, since the last one was fantastic. I love the way the characters work together and use their different strengths towards a common goal, rather than targeted “fights” where each fights an enemy suited to them that happen in other shounen series. It definitely helps me grow fonder of the side characters with every volume. The male characters are still a little faceless in this volume, but every story makes me like them a little more.
So, yes. Basically, this is fantastic. I can’t get over just how much I like every volume of this series. It kills me that we’re caught up with Japan now.
Cross Game 3
Posted: February 20, 2012 Filed under: Cross Game Leave a comment »Mitsuru Adachi – Viz – 2011 – 17 volumes
this is an omnibus containing vols 6-7
I liked the second omnibus so much that I made myself hold off on reading the next one, lest I run out of available volumes and have to wait for more. I do this with novel series more than I do manga, but for whatever reason, I take some comfort in knowing there’s another volume of something to read, should the need arise. Also, somehow, as good a read as it is, one volume of this is very fulfilling, so I don’t feel like I need to tear through six others.
I also read this immediately after a volume of Slam Dunk. As much as I love Slam Dunk, it’s hard to believe the difference between the two. Slam Dunk is more of a ride, with the momentum coming from the rather exciting basketball games. I’m not a big fan of basketball, and the volume I read wasn’t even a game with the main characters in it, but I still tore through it. That contrasts sharply to Cross Game, where the appeal lies in the characters, their slow development, and the way they quietly interact with each other.
This volume/omnibus, surprisingly, brings us the confrontation between the portable and regular teams. I thought the animosity between the two would simmer for awhile, with the confrontation coming after we’d had several volumes of fighting between the two. It’s what any other shounen manga would do, right? But Cross Game is taking a different path, and I’m almost excited to see that the story is readily moving in a different direction now. Plus, the lead-up and game itself was fantastic, and I was happy that it came so early in the series.
After a few chapters where it’s hinted that the portable team has been playing some unofficial games with other schools, the regular team’s Coach becomes annoyed with the portable team, and decides to put pressure on them to disband once and for all. The portable team’s coach lays his job on the line, saying that they will have one more game between the two teams, and the coach that loses will bow out of his job gracefully. With the regular team’s coach full of confidence with the junior high students he’s been grooming, he accepts gratefully.
And… we all know where this goes. There’s some interesting new angles here, such as a surprise connection to the chairman of the school, and the fact the actual strengths of the team aren’t revealed until later in the game. Not even Ko looks all that cool for several chapters, and I was delighted when I learned why.
I have a difficult time talking about why these volumes are so good, too. This game isn’t exciting in a way a game would be in any other sports manga. It is, because I couldn’t stop reading it, but it isn’t because I was hanging off every pitch. A game like this might also last 3 volumes in a normal series, but it’s condensed here to several chapters. Mainly, this is because it’s not really about the game. It’s about what the characters do before and after the game, and how it affects them. One of the themes here is that the regular team’s coach, and the regular team itself, fails because there’s no spirit of camaraderie, they are simply playing to win and be the best. The portable team, and Cross Game in general, is more about teamwork, and how all the players interact and live their lives and whatnot.
As for living life… I’m still not sure whether Ko and Aoba are supposed to be together or not, and I’m delighted by that as well. They seem to go together well as a couple, and yet the specter of Wakaba still hangs between them, and I think that will prevent them from ever really being together. But maybe it won’t? I also like that this is only a small part of what’s going on. Even better, the chapters that dwell on this are winter chapters, meaning that time passes in this series, and at a reasonable rate. I couldn’t be happier with that.
The later chapters appear to be working hard to introduce a new character. There has been three or so lead-up chapters to this, so I’m excited to see what he can add to the story.
It’s just… great. A very solid read. A good series because it does absolutely everything right story- and character-wise. I think it might disappoint a lot of readers because it moves so slowly and isn’t overtly action-packed, but I find that to be one of its strengths. It’s sweet, sentimental, and uses baseball to tell a story about its characters rather than being a baseball manga outright. I love it to pieces, and I’m so happy that it’s being published in English.
Chayamachi’s Collection: BLANC
Posted: February 20, 2012 Filed under: BLANC | Tags: BL Leave a comment »Suguro Chayamachi – Digital Manga Guild – 2012 – 1 volume
It feels like it may have been a while since I’ve covered a DMG title. I think I still have at least a couple I still need to talk about (Rainy Day Love, Tired of Waiting for Love… and have I covered Faraway Places yet?), but I picked up Chayamachis Collection: BLANC last week, so I’ll talk about it while it’s still fresh in my mind.
This is a short story collection. After the first story, Jiro, it became obvious that this would be a short story collection similar to Keiko Nishi’s Kyudo Boys, where it’s sort of advertised as BL (inherently so, in this case, since DMG is only doing BL at the moment), but isn’t really. Jiro is a story told from a stray cat’s point of view. The cat is fed by an owner of a liquor store, and one day, a young man takes it upon himself to track down the owner based on clues from the cat’s worn collar. The young man stops to tell his life story to the cat, and talk about things that get him down, and we find the cat had its own sad circumstances. It’s a fine story, but nothing terribly memorable.
The second story, Tobasco and Tobacco, is about a pair of semi-delinquent/mostly just bored students. One of them was in a terrible accident, and the story becomes about him trying to catch the man that cut the brake lines on his motorcycle. The two develop a friendship at the beginning of the story, but no romance is even vaguely implied. The most they share are deep thoughts on the pointlessness and randomness of life. Again, it’s a fine story, but nothing outstanding.
The third story, Green Step, has the shounen ai content, and reminds me a lot of a 70s-era shounen ai tale. Partially because the main character’s name is Gilbert (the main character’s name in Song of the Wind and Trees), but also because… hmm, the little I’ve read of 70s shounen ai seemed more nature-oriented than classroom-oriented, if that makes sense? Much of the interaction takes place outside instead of inside the school. In the case of Green Steps, the focus is the green steps, the hookup spot at the featured school. One of the characters admires an upperclassman from afar, and during his spying, meets a disagreeable underclassman who always seems to be underfoot. The upperclassman is revealed to be in a relationship, which breaks the main character’s heart, but he realizes the disagreeable underclassman might be more of a crush than the upperclassman was. It’s short and sweet, and not overtly romantic.
Blue People mixes things up a little with a bizarre sci-fi/horror story. When a young man realizes his girlfriend is experiencing a miscarriage, he panics, and a random passerby agrees to help him. The man wants to ditch his girlfriend (the pregnancy is unwanted), and the stranger agrees to “help” him help her. The stranger has magic powers, though, and in a Monkey’s Paw-type situation, the woman is helped by having her uterus magicked out of her body, something that only the man knows about for some reason. Things escalate, until death and other things happen in true “careful what you wish for” style. It’s definitely a creepy and atmospheric story, but it’s also bizarre, and is a little too abrupt after the first few light, introspective stories. I did like that the main character’s name was Buzz, though.
Dreams, Oh Dreams is about a young man that becomes obsessed with another, who he swears he saw in the hospital ICU looking exactly the same age when he was a young boy. The ageless character dodges all manner of questions about his condition, and does his best to keep his distance from the main character. The main character is also in denial of what he believes, and even though the ageless character seems to provide all sorts of reasonable explanations, for whatever reason, the main character can’t let it go. This was a strange story, and darker again, which still felt a little jarring after the first few lighter stories. It’s also not really shounen ai at all, since the obsession in this case never really goes anywhere.
Momiji, the final story, is a tragedy, yakuza-flavored, about the bond between the son of the gang leader and one of the men. Again, not terribly romantic in nature, though the bond is a rather deep one. The tragedy strips any possible romance from this story, however. I think this may have been my favorite in the volume, since the introspection in this story was more earnest than the others.
Overall… mmm. I was a little disappointed by the complete lack of romance in this collection, which may have biased me against the stories more than it otherwise would have. The stories were okay, and the volume was a solid read, but I think I would have rather read something else. I didn’t wind up taking a liking to either the stories or the characters much at all, unfortunately, but the stories were well-written, and again, my disappointment may have had more to do with the fact I wanted a romance book and this wasn’t it. The author does have another collection coming from the DMG. I’m thinking about reading that one, actually, knowing full well what it is before I read it, just to see how I react to a second volume.
Natsume’s Book of Friends 6
Posted: February 20, 2012 Filed under: Natsume's Book of Friends Leave a comment »Yuki Midorikawa – Viz – 2011 – 13+ volumes
This volume contains one long story arc, two short stories, and an unrelated short story in the back that was still cute. All of it was good stuff.
The longer story arc was about a child that Natsume finds in an abandoned house. The child seems to be a victim of bullying, but Natsume slowly begins to realize that the child may have bigger problems than simple human bullies. Natsume saves him from a yokai attack, but the final end to this story involves a rather ugly sealed yokai and an exorcist mission that Natori is on.
There are a lot of yokai and plenty of action in this story, but really, it’s once again about friendship. Natsume makes friends with the boy throughout the course of the story, and just can’t bring himself to leave the boy alone when it becomes obvious that the boy is involved in some rather sinister affairs. There’s also an issue at the end, where Natsume has to somehow deal with the fact that the boy believes Natsume betrayed him. That breaks Natsume’s heart more than any yokai attack. And I love that, for all the flashy fighting and action and whatnot that goes on in this series (all of it good, by the way), that simple things like whether or not a little boy likes him weigh the heaviest on the main character.
The short stories are simple ones, bonus stories rather than the one-shot chapters that appeared in earlier volumes. One is about a little fox yokai that begins following Natsume around, and the other is the beautiful lady yokai (the recurring character, the one that calls Nyanko-sensei by his real name) reminiscing about Reiko Natsume. Both are cute short stories, simple but effective.
The unrelated story is a shoujo romance story about a girl that falls in love with her teacher, how he rejects her, and how she attempts to make herself a better person so that he’ll fall in love with her. It’s an earnest love story, and while it shares some of the best qualities of Natsume’s Book of Friends (it’s touching, the character communication is a strength, and it’s sentimental and very of-the-moment), it’s a little strange to see a shoujo romance story in Natsume’s Book of Friends. I guess I hadn’t noticed, but romance is absolutely not a theme of this series. I like it even better now.
Guide to English Language Editions of Tezuka’s Work
Posted: February 17, 2012 Filed under: Miscellaney 4 Comments »The date of the Osamu Tezuka Manga Moveable Feast is fast approaching. I had to bump this article up a week when I realized the one I wanted to post today required more research on my part. So this is early. But the love for the MMF is still there.
In case it wasn’t extremely obvious, I am a huge book nerd. I work at a used bookstore, and I love spending my time researching titles and editions for customers, where to pick them up, and how much they cost. Reading the books are a big part of it, of course, but researching different editions, and which one is the best, is one of my favorite things. This extends to manga, of course, and Tezuka in particular. Tezuka has had around 6 English-language publishers, and a good number of his titles have more than one edition. This is a list of every title, and every edition of each, that has been published in English, along with search-friendly ISBNs and a little information about each. I’ll update this as more come out, but it’s pretty monstrous already.
I plan on adding photos at a later date, to give you an idea of the size and look of the different editions, and for comparison’s sake. Currently, my collection is split across two states, and I can’t take photos of everything for another month or so.
Blue Exorcist 2
Posted: February 11, 2012 Filed under: Blue Exorcist 2 Comments »Kazue Kato – Viz – 2011 – 8+ volumes
Okay, I’m ridiculously addicted to this series. I liked volume two so much that I left work on my lunchbreak and went to a bookstore to buy the two volumes I didn’t have. And I work at a bookstore. It’s hard to justify spending my lunchbreak driving to another bookstore and buying something there, but for Blue Exorcist, I did it. It was that good.
This gets more into the story of the True Cross Academy and the exorcist cram school, introducing the other students and showing a little bit of how Rin keeps his true nature hidden from them. But mostly its a nice, gentle introduction to the other characters, including Izumo, Ryuji, and a little bit more about Shiemi. Kato is quite gifted at balancing all the characters and giving them equal parts in the story without overwhelming the reader or, really, branching the fights off too much to give the characters a chance to shine with their “specialty.” I really like the exorcist training theme, because each of the characters has a strength, and a role to play in battle, so they help each other out against one enemy instead of facing four or five different enemies split over six volumes or whatever Bleach does.
And while balancing the side characters, the emphasis hasn’t shifted away from Rin, either. His secret keeps coming up, and every time he can do something others can’t, it’s a tense moment, wondering if the other characters will give it much thought. There’s a strange scene in this volume where the other students test to see if they can summon demons and fight as a Tamer Exorcist, and for whatever reason, Rin completely doesn’t do this. I wonder if this will come up later.
I have to say, I love that Rin and Yukio are twin brothers, too. They don’t seem particularly close, and yet, they are brothers that seem willing to stand up for one another. Yukio has a massive inferiority complex despite being a good enough exorcist to be the freaking teacher at the training academy, and I think that will be a problem later, too. But I like that they have completely opposite personalities, and that always seems to lend itself to a lot of banter.
Honestly? I really like Rin. He’s clearly the Monkey D. Luffy of the story, super-powerful, able to gather allies like nobody’s business, and dumb as a brick. The last quality works against Rin more than it does Luffy, since Blue Exorcist takes place at a school, but it’s really hard not to like characters like Rin.
It’s been a long time since I’ve read a shounen manga I’ve been into as much as this. Blue Exorcist is definitely something special, and definitely worth a read if you’re a shounen fan that haven’t picked it up already.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Black Jack 15
Posted: February 11, 2012 Filed under: Black Jack Leave a comment »Osamu Tezuka – Vertical – 2011 – 17 volumes
The last volume of Black Jack has come out since the last time I talked about it here. I need to catch up. Writing these up is difficult, and for very good reason.
There is a story in here about a little boy that sprouts green buds all over his body. His brother calls Black Jack, and shortly, the little boy turns into a full-on cactus man. Black Jack removes a parasitic Brazilian cactus. The little boy is okay.
The story after this is about a girl suffering from anemia. Her teacher is concerned, so she goes for a home visit to see her parents. At the mansion they live in, the teacher runs into Black Jack, who insists the family is after her blood. There is an elaborate medical reason for this. The head of the family is staked at the end of the story.
The next story is about medical cadavers. Where they come from, who they are, how they wind up at medical school. There’s a story about a medical student struggling over why he should be a doctor, and another one about a thankful prisoner on death row.
What am I supposed to say about that?! I mean, the stories are all good. Every single one of them is a great read. The bizarre cactus boy. The vampire story. The sensitive story about medical cadavers. All of them are amazing reads. Every single one of them is bizarre in its way, whether because the story is outlandish in any context, outlandish in the context of Black Jack, or outlandish because it’s a sensitive story that followed two completely insane ones. Reading every book in this series is an amazing roller coaster ride, and you literally have no idea where any of these stories are going or what the turn of a page will bring. It’s truly an experience.
And that’s about all the elaboration this volume needs, I think. Black Jack is pretty much a must read for anyone, whether you read manga or not. It’s just great.
Dost thou Know?
Posted: February 11, 2012 Filed under: Dost thou Know? | Tags: BL Leave a comment »Satoru Ishihara – June – 2005 – 1 volume
My BL rule holds true once again, where if I find that I like a book, odds are the author has at least a couple more available in English. I read The Boys With Tomorrow to Conquer on eManga and really liked it, and found that June had published two other books by the same author. This came out a long, loooong time ago. I think it may predate the June imprint, because there seems to be an edition floating around with a purple DMP logo instead of the pink June band. That’s how you know your BL is old. And that you are, too, for remembering the changeover.
Anyway. This is more of exactly the same thing I loved about The Boys With Tomorrow to Conquer. There’s even a similar obscure sport theme, where one of the boys was an archery prodigy in The Boys With Tomorrow to Conquer (although that wasn’t really a theme), and in this one, both of the boys are into kendo. This is just as much a coming-of-age story as The Boys With Tomorrow to Conquer, where Tsurugi and Katsuomi are dealing with their younger brothers, the pressures of their respective dojos, and questions about what to do with the rest of their lives. Dost thou Know is also more of a romance, though, since it’s also about the two of them being mutually attracted and unsure about what to do with their feelings, as kendo rivals. The story is told mostly from Katsuomi’s point of view, and while the attraction is fairly obvious (at least from a reader’s standpoint) early on in the book, at about the halfway point, Katsuomi has to start proving himself in order to catch the eye of Tsurugi.
I like the characters that Satoru Ishihara seems to write, too. They’re a little rough around the edges, and much more manly than what you’d normally find in a BL book. Katsuomi and Tsurugi don’t spend a lot of time angsting about their feelings, and deal with confusion by training in kendo rather than crying or talking it out with someone. This feels much more natural, somehow (though I have to admit to being a fan of melodrama in other books), and the relationship develops much more smoothly and deeply because of it. There’s no physical relationship, and not even any hand-holding or kissing, really. But Ishihara doesn’t really need it to get her point across here.
I’m not sure which I like better, Dost thou Know or The Boys With Tomorrow to Conquer. Both are good, and for the same reasons. I may like the couple in this book a bit better, since this is a romance and the relationship is resolved in one volume. But I like the “they’re together, so this is about their lives” strategy of The Boys With Tomorrow to Conquer, too. And the second volume of Boys has an absolutely beautiful short story in the back, so there’s that, too. I think you may just have to read them both, if your tastes are anything like mine.
Love Pistols 1
Posted: February 11, 2012 Filed under: Love Pistols | Tags: BL 4 Comments »Tarako Kotobuki – SuBLime – 2012 – 6+ volumes
I hate myself a little bit for even entertaining the idea of reading this series. I’ve read the first four volumes before, but I thought I’d wait to talk about it until the SuBLime edition came out. Mostly as a procrastination measure. You can read it digitally on their site, no print edition has been planned yet. I couldn’t tell you what momentary impulse made me pick this up in the first place, or even read four volumes of it. But the part I’m most ashamed of is that I kinda like it. It’s the concepts that terrify me, but to be fair, Kotobuki’s execution is pretty great. She takes these bizarre concepts and pulls them off.
In the world of Love Pistols, there is a race of people called zoomans (high five for the pun!). Most humans evolved from primates, but zoomans evolved from other animals, including cats, dogs, dragons, snakes, bears, et cetera. A regular primate human cannot detect the animal soul of zoomans, but zoomans can sense another zooman, and which animal soul they possess.
Primate humans can’t tell that there are zoomans, but their special power is that they have no problem reproducing. Zoomans have trouble conceiving amongst themselves, and a primate partner will always produce a primate human, so zoomans are quite rare. There are also three different “classes” for each of the zooman animals, and the more powerful and rare the zooman soul is, the harder it is for them to conceive a child like them. The characters don’t really have animal powers or anything like that, but they do rely on powerful animal instincts when it comes to choosing a partner. And they are obsessed with procreation.
If this wasn’t weird enough for you, keep in mind that this is a yaoi manga, so the partners are all male. Males obsessed with fathering children. So yeah. It goes there. It’s only mentioned in volume one. It’s explained later. I don’t like it at all. It puts me off horribly. But I read it anyway, because it’s strangely compelling.
The first volume is about Norio and Kunimasa. The story starts with Norio suddenly seeing everyone in the world as animals, and landing in the predicament of having every single person he meets fall passionately in love with him. After being relentlessly pursued by giant bear-man Kumakashi and sexually harassed by Kunimasa, Kunimasa explains that Norio is a type of zooman called a “missing link.” Missing links are from primate human families that have a zooman somewhere in their background. Sometimes, a missing link will develop, like Norio, who has his ancestor’s cat soul, but the fertility of a regular primate zooman. For whatever reason, this makes Norio extraordinarily sexually desirable for both zoomans and humans of both genders. Norio, despite being completely straight, finds himself with a great deal of sexual attraction towards Kunimasa. Kunimasa, an asshole, makes all the time he can for Norio as well, but refuses to commit in a relationship, or even admit that he wants to have sex with Norio for any other reason aside from procreation.
They resolve their problems eventually, and there’s another storyline involving Kunimasa’s brother Yonekuni and a classmate of his. What the relationships boil down to is that zoomans are controlled a great deal by animal instincts, and in the case of Kunimasa and Norio, despite the fact that those two don’t even really like one another, there’s not a whole lot they can do about the fact that they are only sexually attracted to each other once they meet. Things work out after this is resolved, but I like that the two characters are bound together like that. Love Pistols tends to move from couple to couple, rather than focusing on Kunimasa and Norio, and most of the couples have problems like that. It makes for an interesting read in that way.
But yes. It is all sorts of crazy. Amazingly, as confusing as all my explanations are, Kotobuki’s in-text explanations are not. She actually designs a lot of charts and children’s books for Norio that make things easy to figure out and simple to remember. I had to refer to the chart again and again the first time I read the series, but it’s included with every volume (as far as I remember), and surprisingly, it doesn’t really take me out of the story. Even more shocking, is that all this zooman nonsense works in the context of the story she’s writing. It’s… weirdly not forced. It is batshit insane, and she does use a lot of weird humor to make everything work, but it works. That doesn’t mean I’m comfortable with the read, or the reproductive angle of the whole thing, but I’m still reading it, because it’s worth it.
So yes. I find I have to give it a very cautionary, shamefaced thumbs up. You can see why I would hate myself for liking it, but it is a pretty good story. Perhaps better than most, for making all that craziness work for it. It’s not the most sensitive, or the best, or even really respectful towards the characters at all. But it is different.
