Slightly Biased Manga

Following up on the heels of Variante, a series I don’t like very much and isn’t terribly good, here’s a series which certainly fails all quality tests, but I have an inordinate fondness for.

Certainly it tries to get me to hate it.  It’s got plenty of ditzy girls who throw their large breasts around and have no problem using their bodies to get what they want.  They also congregate around the main character, making some sort of… harem.  The magical elements are played waaaay down, you have to look really hard to find them.

I hate myself a lot for it, but I can’t help but like the main plot.  The main character, though very shallow, is a sweet guy, and there are nice scenes that play out while the girls are shoving their breasts everywhere.  For example, I was immediately enamored with this volume when the first chapter was a story about one of the characters building a magical piano so that demons could hear human music.  The music that’s played by a little girl who needed the piano attracts little demons from all over who have come to hear her beautiful playing.  I’m just a sucker for that.

It doesn’t help the main character’s such a nice guy.  He spends a lot of time worrying about other people and doing little things to help them, which I can’t help but like.  He also has several stupid awkward scenes with his teacher which I should hate every time, but somehow play out in my mind as really cute coming-of-age stuff.  I don’t know how I allow it this, but I do.

I don’t know.  I still want more magic, and I may get some next volume, since it seems like we may see Haruhiko trying to help a girl who can’t help her split personality.  But yeah.  I enjoy this series more than I’m ever going to admit, and I would be destroyed if it ever stopped coming out.  Hopefully the T&A will keep it afloat so that I get whatever bizarre enjoyment I can from its other… charms.

As I mentioned someplace else, this volume of Enchanter has been sitting on my floor for over a month waiting for me to talk about it here.  I’m not even sure why I put it off so long.  I like it, even though the series is mostly just mediocre, and enough stuff happens that it’s fairly easy to talk about.  I just kept burying it under newer, shinier things, I guess.

I’m a little bummed that the human/demon relationship isn’t exclusive to Eukanaria and Haruhiko.  I mean, I know that Fulcanelli was a human, but he was a human with special powers that Haruhiko somehow wound up with.  Maybe I missed or forgot about an explanation earlier on in the series, but I thought… well, what the two main characters had was special.  Aww.

Aside from Haruhiko’s classmate, another demon/human pair shows up.  Well, we did meet this pair earlier on in the series, I guess, so maybe I just wasn’t paying attention.  The demon is a rival of Eukanaria, and they move in with Haruhiko with little explanation.  Of course, Eukanaria’s rival (named Lavoix) just wants Fulcanelli’s power, so there’s some comedy as she tries to seduce Haruhiko and put down Eukanaria.  Mostly the story is about trying to bring together Lavoix and her human, though.

Actually, I maybe haven’t been paying attention throughout the course of the series.  We meet another enchanter, presumably human, who does engravings as her magic.  I like that all the enchanters are marked by their dual-colored eyes.  I always kind of thought that was a nice touch.

There was a bit more fantasy and story to this volume and less manga stereotypes, so I was pretty happy with this volume.  Haruhiko keeps finding out more and more about magic and fighting, so I’m hoping the plot will really start to get going with… all the magic business and whatnot.  I’m really looking forward to it, actually, even though it’s still full of some really shallow shounen comedy stereotypes.  Look no further than the cover, where both girls have nipples visible through their shirts.  That’s part of its charm, though.

I’m starting to get into the character relationships despite myself now.  There’s a really good flashback scene showing a tender moment between Fulcanelli and Eukanaria that made me like Eukanaria a lot more.  I was rooting for the relationship between the main character and Mana (the student introduced last time as a love interest) this volume too, though that was not meant to be.

I don’t know how I feel about what went on between the Crow (who has the memorable name “Navy”) and Mana.  I didn’t really want another pair like that in the series, but maybe it’ll bring Mana and the main character closer together.  Maybe.

For some reason, the relationship between the main character and the teacher got a real workout in this volume, too.  I don’t like that pair as much, but we get a lot of it anyway.  Plus some misunderstandings that are pretty typical setups in this type of manga, but I forgive them anyway.

And because this volume was very good, there was also a handful of the fantasy elements I like so much.  The main character is getting better and better at gadgets, and one of his items is featured in the fight at the very beginning, and later he modifies an item so he can control Navy.  Fulcanelli designs a little gadget in the flashback, and at the very end, we even get to see Bones.  I was very happy.

It’s still not the best series, but I like it quite a bit, and I forgive it the faults.  Its biggest problem currently is flat characters, and while they have a little personality, it’s hard to get into them.  Flat characters are bad when you start focusing on romance, but things seem to be holding up alright so far.

Hot on the tail of the last volume which was too character-driven, we get a volume which is solely concerned with the class field trip.  UGH.  We also get a new character introduced, a love interest for the main character, but I didn’t really mind that so much.

It gets into romantic triangles in this one… it also raises the question about whether or not Yukanaria should (or could) fall in love with the main character instead of just having sex with him to steal his soul.  The last thing this manga needs is romance.  What it needs first is more of the awesome fantasy plot, as I already mentioned.

It attempts to get back to this, as another demon appears near the end and tries to turn the new girl into an Enchanter.  Let’s hope that goes someplace interesting.  But I’ll be fair… even if it doesn’t, I still kinda like this series despite its badness and I’ll still keep reading it.

Hooray! This series made it over the DMP 3-volume hump and is solicited up to volume 6. I’m holding my breath, but hopefully if they made it up to six, they can make it all the way up to 11. I have no idea how popular this is… it’s not terribly good, but I keep reading it, so I guess it’s got its charm. I’d hate to see it cut off.

Mostly it’s not good because it doesn’t really work very hard to develop its characters and make them any more than stereotypes. The main character has some dimension (he’s good with gadgets and seems sincere about working on them), but he’s just another teenage boy mis-typed as a pervert for having remote interest in women. Eukanaria/butt cheeks is never anything more than a loud obnoxious female who is constantly trying to have sex with the main character (to remove his soul, you see, it’s the only way), the teacher is extremely one-dimensional, and we don’t really see a lot of anyone else… with the exception of maybe Bones, who I’ll have to admit is a cool character. Unfortunately, he looks exactly like the main character when not in skeleton form, so there’s a downside to him, too.

But again, the plot is pretty cool. We just don’t get very much of it in either this volume or the next. This volume lingers awhile on the characters, giving us a long scene between the teacher and the main character at the beginning, then a side story about Eukanaria imitating the teacher and teaching the class for a day. There’s a section that goes a bit into the mechanics of making enchanted weapons, where for whatever reason all the human characters had two different colored eyes like the main character, so are they all possessed by Enchanters?  Fulcanelli doesn’t have two different colored eyes.  I don’t know.  Then there’s a long section at the end where the teacher has to be saved from a huge spider-demon.  Unfortunately, the action scenes aren’t that cool either.

Give me plot!

I’ve been waiting forever for this to show up someplace, ANYPLACE. A bookstore, a comic store, I tried several options. I don’t know if it was late or what, but it shouldn’t have taken two months to show up. I also read Fruits Basket 12, but remembered halfway through the volume that I had already read that one. Having already read half, I just finished the damn thing, so this is the only review I have for you tonight.

This is a shallow, trashy series. The characters are flat and annoying, and we have either overconfident males, hyper-pushy females, or doormat younger men. There’s a ton of stupid fanservice, and none of the jokes hit their mark. Usually I can’t tolerate this kind of thing, but for some reason, I find myself somewhat drawn to this series.

The plot is very good despite its numerous flaws. It’s still kind of confusing, and I’m still not sure how Haruhiko became an Enchanter, and I’m also not entirely sure what an Enchanter is, and if it can or cannot be a demon, and why there aren’t more. I’m also not entirely sure what Eukanaria’s business with Haruhiko is, still. If his body can only hold a small part of Fulcanelli’s outside power, how is it the perfect receptacle for his soul, wouldn’t that overload it?

Anyway, the stuff at Haruhiko’s school gets on my nerves, but the fantasy stuff fascinates me. I love the way everything seems to work in this world, and I can’t wait until stuff really gets going and Haruhiko starts manufacturing weapons and using his powers et al. I want him to be as famous as Fulcanelli without any of Fulcanelli’s help. That’s my dream, and somehow this dream is strong enough that I’m willing to sit through a ton of bad fanservice to see it realized.

I also wished the omake had been in the front of the volume. I would have enjoyed reading it a lot more had I known the nickname “butt cheeks” for Eukanaria beforehand.

Note to self: Read “Day of Revolution.” Two volumes, even if it’s terrible it’s only two volumes.
Note to DMP: ads in the back of manga work.

I’d been wavering on this series for a long time, since it came out. For whatever reason, it seemed like it was really hyped, and there were a ton of copies of it every place I buy manga. I remember thinking it was something I would like, and when I went to purchase it at Borders one day, I happened to read the back while I was standing in line. It got put back so fast that the person in front of me didn’t even realize I was gone. The description that DMP gave it made it seem like it was a Tenchi-like comedy hijinx kind of series with women fighting over one man, or one man desiring two women equally, and plenty of wacky jokes to go along with embarassing situations, like the main character repeatedly walking in on the two women. *looks in Pastel’s direction*

Luckily I didn’t have anything to buy in Borders one day, so I went ahead and got it anyway, cursing myself all the while because I was sure I wasn’t going to like it.

Turns out this is a Fantasy series of the variety I’m fond of. The romantic interest got blown way out of proportion on the back, as really, the main female looks like the teacher the main male character has a crush on, so she uses this as leverage to try to get the main character to do things, usually unsuccessfully. She doesn’t have a crush on the main character, and the main character doesn’t have a crush on her. There’s some comedic moments there, but nothing too embarassing. Oh, and fanservice. Lots of fanservice.

The actual plot is that the main character inherits the soul of a demon inventor, so he winds up being half demon and half human. I’m intrigued by such metamorphoses, so I liked it a lot right away, plus the main character’s pretty okay in that he’s not too over the top and he does question some of the situations around him. But the invention thing is cool, as he’s got to build things in order to use his demon power, and building things differently causes the power to be used in different ways. The main female character’s annoying, as is the character she resembles, but the rest of the people in the series are pretty funny and okay so far.

It’s a lot like Sorcerer Hunters, which I also like. So far, it’s still really shallow, and it could sour really quickly, but if it goes the right direction, it could turn into a great series. It’s a shame the volumes don’t come out more frequently, though (this one came out in July, I believe, and the second just came out this month).