Our Everlasting 2
Posted: May 10, 2012 Filed under: Our Everlasting | Tags: BL Leave a comment »Toko Kawai – DMP / June – 2006 – 2 volumes
Before I get into the content of the real story in this volume, I was more interested in the short story in the back, “My Beautiful World.” In the Walnut is my favorite Toko Kawai series, and that story is where the characters first appear. Interestingly, it’s reprinted both here and in the first volume of In the Walnut. This is a much older book in terms of when it came out in English, and it’s also one of the best examples I’ve found of what a difference a good adaptation makes. This one has a much stiffer, less natural flow than the version I read in In the Walnut. It’s not bad, per se, but the newer version is much better. I love that the progress of June can be measured between the two versions of this story.
Anyway! Horyu and Shouin are who we paid to see this time, and there’s 150 pages of them to be had here. Again, this isn’t the most groundbreaking of stories, but I do like the characters a lot, and I appreciate the twists Kawai throws in to make things more interesting. Horyu’s surfing career is taking off in a big way, and one of the stories is about how he has to decide between his career or Shouin. Not in a very literal sense, like if he surfs he can’t see Shouin, but Shouin doesn’t want to live a life of following Horyu around to different beaches, and he doesn’t want to see Horyu give up surfing, either. Plus, Shouin has his own dreams. It’s more complex than this problem usually is in a BL romance like this, and I appreciate all the extra time and complications that went into it. Granted, the solution is always, always the same, but there would be something unsatisfying about it otherwise, right?
One of the other interesting things in here was that the last chapter was about Shouin and Horyu looking after someone’s infant. One of the points of contention between the two early on was that, in the past, Horyu had mentioned how much he liked children and that he wanted a family, and Shouin couldn’t stand to be with him and take that away from him. But this chapter hints at the fact that they can be a family without a wife to bear children. It paints a very happy picture for the ending, and children come up so rarely in these stories. I can think of… maybe two other books that feature children as family members. Technically, this one doesn’t really, but I love that the last chapter leaves the future wide open for the two of them like that.
It’s definitely one of Kawai’s weaker books, and it stays closer to the BL stereotypes than her others, but it’s still an enjoyable read. She’s a great writer, and that her first work is this good says a lot about just how great her later work is. This is worth picking up, but as a follow-up, try In the Walnut or The Scent of Apple Blossoms!
20th Century Boys 19
Posted: May 9, 2012 Filed under: 20th Century Boys 2 Comments »Naoki Urasawa – Viz – 2011 – 22 volumes
Well! It looks like 21st Century Boys will be a separate series. I had been including it in the volume counts with these, but I guess it counts separately.
I love Yabuki Joe. He’s completely unconcerned with everything. He’s… sort of a hero? But not really? More of a rallying point. The same thing can be said about the Friend. I also love that the rallying point is music, as if an adolescent dream of being a rock star is being fulfilled. An interesting counter-measure to the Friend’s madness, since his world domination ploy was also based around the fantasies of children. Also also interesting, as much as Yabuki Joe is using his music for good, he states in this volume that it’s not going to save the world. Even though… it kind of is. So, in that, he’s unlike the friend with his childhood dream. Perhaps the fact he’s still succeeding at being a popular musician is some sort of commentary on the dangerous weakness in crowd mentality? Hmm.
I guess I either didn’t realize or forgot that the currency in this post-apocalyptic world was the buddy. If you’re buying a forged permit, it’s going to cost you a lot of buddies. I can’t make this stuff up.
Basically, in this volume, Yabuki Joe and Chono (whose name I can’t read without thinking of the French artist CHOMO, a hermit that lived in Fontainebleau forest for 50 years) reach a checkpoint that they need to cross to get into the Kanto region and Tokyo. The problem is that you need a legit pass to get through the checkpoint, and on the non-Kanto side, there’s a booming business in forgeries that will get you shot in the head should you present them to the checkpoint guards. But Yabuki Joe convinces the lost half of the Ujiko Ujio artist duo to draw permits for every person in the border town. Madness ensues. Chono is caught for a bounty. Yabuki Joe faces off against the ruler of the checkpoint forest, a man who is obsessed with the idea of being a bad guy and who, long ago, chose Kenji to be his good guy nemesis. Well, now there’s only Yabuki Joe.
Guys. The end of this book is absolutely EPIC. The identity of the Friend is once again in question. The identity of the leader of the checkpoint is also in question, though I wonder if he actually is anyone important. Probably. He’ll be something insane, like Kanna’s father. Yabuki Joe, though. Yabuki Joe steals the scene. He tells all.
So… I’m just gonna go ahead and read volume 20 now.
Sailor Moon 3
Posted: May 9, 2012 Filed under: Sailor Moon Leave a comment »Naoko Takeuchi – Kodansha USA – 2011 – 14 volumes
You know, every volume of this I read I grow a little fonder of it. I can’t help it. It’s Sailor Moon. I still think it has some problems, but it is addictive. Also, it’s hard to hate on this volume, which starts with a big double-page color map of every single character in the first story arc. So cool!
Also cool: the ending to the first story arc. I’m always a little puzzled by the action scenes in Sailor Moon, as it’s not always super-clear what’s going on. This is a good example. It took me a minute to realize that Sailor Moon was murder-suiciding Tuxedo Mask. And… yeah. It’s a shoujo manga, and the power of love and strength of heart and blah blah blah undoes all of it, but that it happens at all is pretty fantastic. That’s a fairly dark place for any shoujo manga to go.
The… menace that Queen Metalia poses is also a little ambiguous. She… overtakes the Earth for a minute… with a black aura. That affects the weather. What she’s doing, exactly, I’m not sure. It’s bad, though, and with Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask out of the picture, the four other guardians have to save Sailor Moon and somehow resurrect the Silver Crystal. You know where this is going. I’m vaguely dissatisfied with this, because it is a little too long, and a little too abstract for my taste. The other Sailor Guardians are merely powering up until the Silver Crystal works. And then everything is okay. The sense of scale is nice, but the fight is… almost nonexistent. It’s still kinda cool, and I do like it as a finale, but… I don’t know. Maybe I’m just getting down on it unnecessarily.
So then! The Dark Moon story arc starts in this volume. The Guardians start disappearing, and small ladies appear in their place. I’ve always liked the random introduction of Chibi-Usa, who appears from nowhere and is taken in and accepted by all, despite the fact she threatened Usagi with a gun first thing. Only Usagi doesn’t like her. I never really cared for her either, but she does play an interesting part in the upcoming story.
These chapters are all one-shots in which the Guardians disappear one by one, and I liked these stories much better than the one-shots in the first story arc. Perhaps because I care about the characters now, but also because the victims here are those characters, and they don’t come back at the end of the story. It’s a bit depressing, but it makes for a good story. I also like the Dark Moon bad guys. They’re still fairly faceless (Berthier is good at chess!), but somehow, I like them better this time around.
Meh. I’m still being pretty mean to this series. I do like it now, at least, and I’m probably being overly critical and unfair. I’ll probably stop within the next few volumes, because then I’ll be distracted by Sailor Pluto. She’s my favorite.
Yebisu Celebrities 1
Posted: May 9, 2012 Filed under: Yebisu Celebrities | Tags: BL 1 Comment »Kaoru Iwamoto / Shinri Fuwa – SuBLime – 2012 – 5 volumes
I haven’t talked about a SuBLime release in awhile, and I’m a bit behind. There are many fine books over there right now, and I chose Yebisu Celebrities to read next. Basically, because I’d heard of it before, but also because a lot of the SuBLime titles are leaning towards younger couples at the moment, and I’m gravitating away from those for the time being. Yebisu Celebrities is all about professional graphic designers.
Poor, broke Fujinami is fresh out of school and needs a job bad. Luckily, he lands a position at the famous design firm Yebisu Graphics. They cater to only the top clients, and their staff is full of superstar designers, all good-looking young men. To have a position there is an absolute dream. The story is initially about him learning the ropes at the company and living up to their elite reputation, but of course, he also catches the eye of the head of the company, Daijou. And after that happens, the story switches gears to focus on another couple, this time with designer Akira and his boyfriend, struggling model Kei.
For various reasons, and because it popped into my mind and won’t go away, Yebisu Graphics will forever be Leo Burnett in my mind. Hilariously, if my meager job experience and college classes are any indication (I was in the design department at the Art Institute, which is a few blocks away from their headquarters, though my job experience is not there), Leo Burnett is probably the opposite of Yebisu Graphics, and is likely staffed almost entirely by women.
But this is BL, and Yebisu Graphics is full of male sexual tension. I wasn’t particularly fond of it, even going in with a background in graphic design. This is partially because a lot of time is spent on the story, and less on the characters and romance. Granted, the story is a bit more interesting than usual, and a lot of work goes into developing Fujinami’s job skills and portraying him slowly “getting it” at Yebisu. But the sexual tension between he and Daijou is simply there the entire time, and when they hook up at the end, it isn’t particularly satisfying. I just wasn’t feeling the relationship.
One thing that did bother me was the fact that it’s implied that Fujinami only got the job because the boss thought he was hot. I’m not sure why this struck me as offensive, because it is a legitimate plot device for a book that isn’t pretending to be anything but smut. I mean… really. Perhaps it bothered me since so much time was spent developing Fujinami into a good employee. This maybe would have proven the rumors wrong, except the boss clearly does think Fujinami is hot, and then they sleep together. But it’s not like it pretends otherwise! Why does it bother me so much?!
The short story about Akira and his boyfriend (and his breakup with Ryo, the art director at Yebisu) also didn’t really strike my fancy, though I liked it quite a bit better than the main story. It still feels a little predictable, and the relationship and characters not quite developed enough for my taste, but… you know. It scratches the itch.
Overall, I was a little disappointed by the first volume in what I had heard was a fairly classic series. I really wanted to like it, especially because of the graphic design theme, but it just wasn’t doing it for me. Maybe I read it in the wrong mood, or something. I’ll probably still give volume 2 a try. I’ve had mixed results on some of these longer series with multiple couples, so maybe I’ll like some of the other employees at Yebisu Graphics better.
La Vie En Rose
Posted: May 9, 2012 Filed under: La Vie En Rose | Tags: BL Leave a comment »Sakurako Yamada – DMP / June – 2007 – 1 volume
Here’s an old one, chosen entirely at random when someone sold it back to the used bookstore I work at. It’s the best way to get manga!
It starts out about the life of Fujimori, a struggling novelist who is having a hard time following up on the success of his first novel. His editor is pressuring him for another love story, but he’s nervous about delivering, especially since the first was a thinly veiled retelling of his own turbulent love life, where he’s in love with his best friend (shock! gasp!). This plays out about how you would expect a BL short to do, but along the way, he is coached by the owner of a bar, Shiraishi. Fujimori and his friend/love interest both frequent the bar.
And the bar is the framing device for all the short stories. The second story is about an older teen who comes to the bar looking for the novelist Fujimori, presumably because he is a fan. The teen loses sight of his original goal, and winds up enamored with Shiraishi by the end of the story, though Shiraishi seems uninterested in a relationship.
The rest of the stories are about regulars at the bar, the owner Shiraishi, or the other barkeep, Abe. Strangely, Shiraishi goes from sexually remote and mostly an object of affection to… suddenly caught in the bathroom having sex. There’s someone for him at the end of the book, though.
I tend not to like BL short story collections, but I did like this one. Having the bar and Shiraishi be the theme that ties all of them together was interesting, and I loved how it switched over to be entirely about Shiraishi by the end of the book. Plus, Shiraishi is an interesting and very aloof character. He was fun to follow.
Overall, it’s fairly standard stuff, from the plot devices to the character types and even the art. But I still enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s a decent one-shot, and while I wouldn’t recommend you rush out and find a copy… well, it scratched the itch. If you see it for cheap somewhere, it’s worth it.
Kimi ni Todoke 13
Posted: May 3, 2012 Filed under: Kimi ni Todoke Leave a comment »Karuho Shiina – Viz – 2012 – 15+ volumes
Still so cute! I’m a little worried, though, that the series is still in a transitional period. Sawako and company go to the beach, Sawako meets Kazehaya’s parents, everyone goes on a school trip to Okinawa. Yano and Chizu are still getting their romantic lives in order. Kazehaya and Sawako are taking things slooooooowly. They try to call each other by their first names, but neither can quite manage it. I still like it, and it’s still cute, but as much as I adored the early volumes… now that Sawako and Kazehaya are together, I’m not entirely sure where the story is going from here. Sure, they can fumble their way through the steps of being a couple, and it’s adorable, but man. It’s been, what, three volumes? And they still can’t use first names? It’s in character, to be sure, but this is some slow stuff.
Still, I love it. One of the best things in this volume was a scene where Yano and Chizu go out with Sawako underwear shopping. Later, one of them tells Kazehaya that Sawako is wearing new underwear, and what they look like. This only adds to his embarrassment, and he can’t tell Sawako. Ryu questions him about it as well, and there’s a cute interrupting scene.
Also cute: Kazehaya’s younger brother. He does everything that Kazehaya can’t, including commenting on Sawako’s small breasts (which she seems cool with).
The parts with Chizu and Yano are intriguing. One gets a new boyfriend, and the other has to make a choice about Ryu. They’re not… really going out, but there’s clearly something there, and it looks like one or the other might be forced into action based on the cliffhanger at the end of the volume. But then again, maybe not.
While it does move slow, it always has, and it’s still incredibly adorable stuff. Volume 14 just came out, and I believe that basically catches us up to Japan (there’s a volume 15, but Viz usually runs about a year behind the current Japanese volume). The slow pace will probably be less of an issue if only 1-2 volumes of Kimi ni Todoke come out a year. I may save 14 for a rainy day, because I hate to think of this series being spoiled by reading too quickly. It really is an adorable look at a mutually happy couple exploring each other’s feelings, and the friends that help them do it. There’s nothing quite like it.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Yuri Sensei Is In a Good Mood Today As Well
Posted: May 3, 2012 Filed under: Yuri-Sensei | Tags: BL Leave a comment »Keiko Kinoshita – DMP / Digital Manga Guild – 2012 – 2 volumes
I’ve been waiting impatiently for the Yuri-sensei books to become available on eManga. They were finally posted last week. The wait was totally worth it. I like Keiko Kinoshita more and more with every book I read by her, and I think the Yuri-sensei books are my favorite yet.
The plot is more or less unremarkable. The couple is a popular writer and his editor. Yuri-sensei enjoys bullying the gullible Muguruma, who has to do what he says (mostly tracking down exotic sweets) in order to placate his eccentric writer sensibilities. This develops about how you think it would, with Yuri growing an obvious fond edge to his bullying, and Muguruma not quite picking up on it until Yuri spells it out for him. Things get awkward, and then better. It’s got the same stuff as a usual BL one-shot, but because it’s Kinoshita, it’s just better.
One of the things I liked best about this book, actually, was the setting and time period. I actually thought, all the way to the end of this volume, that this was a Taisho-era Japan setting, from the 1910s or 20s, but it’s post-war. Either way, I really dug Muguruma’s suit and Yuri’s yutaka, and the home-y setting in general.
Aside from that, Kinoshita’s great at character development. Even the bully-ish Yuri is likable in this book, and isn’t terribly forceful about pushing his feelings on Muguruma. It’s obvious that the affection runs both ways, though Muguruma isn’t quite sure what to do with himself when he realizes he’s fallen in love with the great Yuri-sensei. Kinoshita is good at nailing quiet moments between her characters, the subtleties that make the falling-in-love experience just a little more fun than it normally would be in your garden variety BL book. My favorite chapter, for instance, is one where Muguruma is pushed into asking Yuri-sensei for a rehash of a popular horror story that he did for another publisher, and tries to bring it up in a roundabout way by lying about liking ghost stories. Knowing he’s lying, Yuri invites him to stay the night so that they can tell ghost stories together. This doesn’t go where you think it does, and Yuri tells a strange story about a haunted house nearby. It’s more about Muguruma’s lies, Yuri seeing through them and bullying him until he confesses, and the two growing closer because of it, rather than any attempt at a bed scene.
Anyway, because of the slow and careful character and relationship development, it’s also true that Muguruma and Yuri make a cute couple, and my girly sensibilities were well-satisfied by this book. It simply does everything right, and is exactly what I love to read when I pick up a BL book. It’s a shame there’s no print edition available, I would re-buy it in a second.
Golgo 13: Into the Wolves’ Lair
Posted: May 3, 2012 Filed under: Golgo 13 Leave a comment »Takao Saito – Leed Publishing – 1986 – 163+ volumes
this is actually volume 1 in a 4-volume series published by Leed in the mid-80s
Ridiculous. This was absolute lunacy. But I loved every page.
Most of the volume is taken up by the title story, as opposed to the usual split. Golgo 13 is hired by Mossad to penetrate a Nazi compound with absolutely airtight security. Again and again, it is reiterated that it is impossible to get into this place. Monitors, armed guards, locked doors, the whole works.
How does Golgo 13 do it? It may or may not involve building a complete replica on a movie lot and doing timed runs through it.
He’s actually hired to recover a hostage. When the hostage, towards the end of the story, hears a commotion, he and the Nazi officers assume that there’s a team of men infiltrating the compound. Actually, it’s just Duke Togo, and he singlehandedly wipes out the entire Nazi army.
But the better question may be… what is this compound guarding? I was really hoping for one crazy extreme, and the story heavily hints at it, but the mastermind is still kind of interesting.
The second, very short story takes place in Afghanistan, and may or may not involve cornering Golgo 13 and finding out what he does. Most of the pleasure in this story is, again, knowing who Golgo 13 is and catching all the hints that the army drops while they try to track him down. It’s stories like this that are just so Golgo 13. He’s a great character, and it’s stories like this, ones that lean on his very unique and specific characteristics, that make this series such a pleasure to read. Well, that and the fact his unique and specific characteristics lend themselves well to completely insane storylines, like the Fall of the Fourth Reich story in this volume.
I’m almost through all my old Golgo 13 stories! Just one more of this volume, and the 3-issue Viz series to go. So sad. Hopefully JManga will have hooked us up with some new content before I polish this off. I keep watching the site, seeing all those Takao Saito releases, and hoping that Golgo 13 is coming soon. I really should buy some of the other titles to support the chances of that happening. I’m sure they’re just a crazy-awesome.
Arata: The Legend 9
Posted: May 3, 2012 Filed under: Arata: The Legend Leave a comment »Yuu Watase – Viz – 2011 – 13+ volumes
Hmm… still really on the fence about this one. It just feels like it’s going through the motions of a shounen manga. I no longer really care about any of the characters, and Arata is more or less a faceless good guy at this point. I’m also still having trouble with the series’ terminology, but that could be more of a personal problem, made worse by the fact I’m not really able to get into it enough to bother to remember the special words.
Arata and company are still dressed as women, and still trying to woo the shinsho Kagura, who can fly. Arata quite literally woos him when his female disguise works too well and Kagura falls in love with him, but before Arata can break the bad news about him being male, Kadowaki shows up and wants to rumble. Something tragic happens, and a decision is made there and now about which one Kagura will submit to, since he’s being forced to. Later, we learn more about the royalty of the land Arata is trying to save, and learn that there are only Queens and Princesses because a worthy King successor has never appeared. Guess who’s currently in the running?
And… yeah. There’s a lot of generic fighting, a lot of generic bonding, and a lot of generic exposition and place development. The latter was actually my favorite part, and Watase does still have a knack for making detailed worlds. The special tribe of female healers, and their history of the land, was the most interesting thing in this volume. But even that… we find out there is a “destined partner” for Arata, which of course throws a wrinkle in the romantic development. He also seems to take all this new information rather well, and… yeah. I don’t really have that much else to say, because it was just so middle-of-the-road.
The index in the back makes me wonder if perhaps he’s captured most of the 12 shinsho, save for his traveling companion? If so, maybe the story will move on to something more interesting next volume. I have volume 10, but I may just give up after that if nothing more interesting happens. I really liked this series at first, and I thought it had an interesting premise, but it’s not really doing anything with the “swapped worlds” element, and fantasy-Arata is all but forgotten in reality. Here’s hoping something exciting will occur next volume.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
Ze 6
Posted: May 3, 2012 Filed under: Ze | Tags: BL 2 Comments »Yuki Shimizu – DMP / 801 Media – 2010 – 12 volumes
801 recently announced they’d be publishing the second half of this series. I’m going to do it. I’m a little scared, but I’m going to do it. A little fear is a healthy way to approach any 801 book, and I’ve heard… uh, scary things about the second half of this series. I hated a lot of stuff in the first half, but I really liked volumes 5-6.
The first half of this book is the second half of Ryuusei and Moriya’s story. I like the casual-yet-intense vibe of their present-day relationship, and I really enjoyed the first half of their lengthy flashback, where they lived together as roommates before their relationship developed. While this sounds only polite, the relationships in Ze are master/servant-based, and with the kami-sama existing only to… heal their masters through mucus membrane contact, the romance is mostly in the dominance, if you’re into that sort of thing. I’m not, mostly because normally BL takes this to a scary extreme (Genma and Himi are a good example), but if there’s no non-con, it can be fun.
Ryuusei and Moriya’s story follows a crime-ish plot here, where a young boy gets attacked when Ryuusei doesn’t walk him all the way home, and a guilty Ryuusei tries everything he can to find the killer. The solution involves Ryuusei and Moriya growing closer, kotodama, and lots of injuries. I liked Ryuusei and Moriya a lot more than the cookie-cutter characters in the other couples featured, so I was a lot more into this story than the others. And again, I really enjoyed the way their relationship developed slowly, and that the two seem to respect each others boundaries. There’s no non-con, and the master-servant dynamic is handled strangely in their case. It really was good.
The second half of the book is short chapters about the other couples in the series. Raizou and Kon, mostly, but there’s also a Konoe and Kotoha story. The problem with these stories… hm. My taste runs to older couples, which Ryuusei and Moriya are, so it was hard to switch back to the younger ones. Especially Konoe and Kotoha. I like that couple, in theory, since the kami-sama is the one in power in that relationship. I think. But damn is Kotoha drawn to look young. I don’t think he actually is, I think he’s in his early 20s. Extra creep points since Konoe is drawn to look like a slightly scruffy 20-year-old… but technically isn’t, since he isn’t actually a real person? I don’t know? You see some of my problems with this series. I’d like to not have to think about it, but again, Kotoha and Kon are both drawn… yeah. But other than that, they’re cute short stories, heavy on the smut and light on some of the creepier things in this series, character designs aside.
Again, I’m a little shocked I liked the Ryuusei/Moriya story as much as I did. Dark, melancholy, reluctant, no non-con, older couple… all the stuff for me is in there. I’m… hoping some of the couples introduced in the second half of the series are like this. Maybe this is a trend. I’m going to tell myself that.
