Since I made it through all of the From Eroica With Love spinoffs and the series still hasn’t been license rescued, I’m going to move on to the artbooks and supplementary volumes. I could do this for years. Someone had better step in and stop me.

Plus Ultra is more or less the Yasuko Aoike artbook. As you will find out, there are dozens of others, but this is the coffee table book, the largest one with the most pages, covering the largest number of series and the longest time period. Two editions of this book exist. The earlier one features a cover image of a rainy BMW hood, and comes with a CD-ROM with the images on it. The one here is a later edition issued a little less than 10 years later, and as far as I know the only difference is the cover and CD-ROM.

There are eight sections in this book. The first and largest, at 62 pages, covers Eroica, and the second largest covers Alcazar, Aoike’s other major work. The other sections are for Z, Sons of Eve, El Halcon, and all the other things I’ve been talking about for the last few weeks.

I don’t have a whole lot to say about these illustrations that I haven’t said elsewhere. One of the best things about Aoike’s comic art is that she always brings a sense of place to it, and there are a lot of illustrations like this one that are clearly supposed to be somewhere specific. And that’s nice, given most shoujo color art has ambiguous backgrounds.

The types of images are also a mix. The one above was probably just a magazine illustration, but you can also find the cover illustrations to most/all of the volumes, images that were probably used on the cover of Princess over the years, and smaller, gag-looking illustrations that were likely used on giveaway goods.

I’m partial to the Klaus illustrations, because Dorian is usually wearing something hideous. But some of these also show Klaus in a more peaceful setting than we would normally see, which is also nice.

See what I mean?

One of the more interesting things about this book is that it’s one of the only places you can find the post-hiatus From Eroica With Love illustrations. I prefer the character designs of the older illustrations, but they tend to look more like shoujo glamour shots than the later stuff, which are usually quiet moments in some sort of setting. These are undated, which is a shame, but the one above is definitely a more recent illustration, and I believe the other two are probably both from the last 15 or so years. The Dorian one only has a stage backdrop, but even that is a more complete and realistic scene than one usually finds in shoujo color illustrations.

Dorian isn’t always dressed hideously, though. This is an older illustration, from around the time Seven Days in September was running. The shorter hair gives it away. But you can also see that the setting is more ambiguous here.

Another from that time period, but with a setting. There are plenty of illustrations of both Klaus and Dorian together. Some of them are boring, some of them are double-page illustrations (and thus I can’t scan them), but plenty of them are bizarre, like this. Dorian taking a bite out of Klaus’s newspaper. The two playing with a giant chess set in a park with dozens of Russian spies in the background. An especially strange one where Klaus is yelling at little kid versions of several of the main characters. You know. Weird stuff.

This is an early illustration that’s pretty consistent with the newer stuff, though. The illustrations in the new chapters of Princess Gold always have both of them like this, though the settings are usually a bit more concrete.

Here’s a page of illustrations that were probably used on giveaway items. You can tell because they’re mostly very simple illustrations with no backgrounds. All of these are old or very old, but Lawrence is on there, and that’s the important part. Also, Volovolonte, who I am inordinately fond of as well. He appears later in the series, for what it’s worth, but was last seen in English in volume two.

Two more for the road. Here’s one of Klaus on a horse that I like, also from around Seven Days in September…

And one of Dorian, from the cover of volume… 31, maybe.

One thing that disappointed me a little is that this isn’t comprehensive. There are 62 pages of Eroica illustrations, and while some pages may have 3 or more illustrations on them (mostly for the cover and simple giveaway illustrations), the series has been running for over 30 years, and there are hundreds of illustrations. Not even all the current ones to date appear in here, and it’s a real shame. But what does appear is probably the best of them, and there’s still plenty to like about this book.

Chapter 1-II covers illustrations from Z, with sixteen pages of illustration total. I’m skipping these for now, but there’s plenty here that is missed both in the Z artbook I’m going to talk about later and the Z Complete volume that I talked a bit about last month. Plenty of color illustrations there, but not all of them. Z Complete also has some images that don’t appear in Plus Ultra.

Chapter 2 is 42 pages of illustrations from Alcazar, a series about the life of Don Pedro de Castillo. It’s Aoike’s second-longest series, and was recently completed at around 13 volumes and a gaiden. I haven’t read it, so I can’t offer additional commentary. But she was drawing this while Eroica was on hiatus, and you can see her illustration style is very similar, right down to the fact that Don Pedro looks like Klaus. NSFW – I’ve featured him before, too.

Chapter 3 is 22 pages long, and covers the Sons of Eve. These illustrations are very old, and are mostly background-less glamour shots, as I mentioned before. This one was one of the only ones with a setting. Unfortunately, it doesn’t feature my favorite thing about all these Sons of Eve illustrations, chest hair on very bishounen character designs, but I had to include it. Love those legs.

Chapter 4 includes 18 pages of illustrations from naval-themed short works, including Seven Seas, Seven Skies, El Halcon, and an unrelated series called Trafalgar (that has characters that look an awful lot like Tyrian and Benedict). I was disappointed to learn that none of the illustrations from El Halcon or Seven Seas, Seven Skies are actually The Man in Purple, the painting in From Eroica With Love. Some of them are close. But! That illustration does exist! It appears in another book, though.

Chapter 5 is four pages long, and covers illustrations from medieval-themed series. This particular illustration is two of the four pages, from a series called Brother Falco. Monks are a hard subject for shoujo manga.

Chapter 6 is simply called gallery, and includes 20 pages of images that don’t fit anywhere else. I suspect a handful, like the one above, are fantasy-themed magazine illustrations and don’t go with a particular series. There are also several crossover images, mostly with the main characters from Eroica, Eve, and Seven Seas Seven Skies. Those are mostly of the giveaway illustration ilk, with no background and drawn very simply. I’m not sure what they would have been used for (other than other artbooks), since the series ran at different publishers.

And Chapter 7 is called “origins,” and contains a lot of illustrations from her very early shoujo work, mostly with several per page. A more typical page looks like this, but the one above has those two that are actually illustrations. That is from a series/short story, though I can’t recall which one at the moment. I’ve always liked those illustrations and that ambiguous character. There are six pages total.

Availability: This book is still in print and can be bought from most major Japanese online bookselling sites new. ISBN 4835441869. It is expensive though, and a new copy will run you around $55-$60. You can find it used on eBay and other places for cheaper, though it will still be around $35-$40. The older edition starts around that price as well, though sometimes the prices creep up on that one.

Hooray! I’m always happy to read a new volume of Kamisama Kiss. It’s one of my current favorites, and features a mix of folkloric plot and great characters with an adorable romance that I am absolutely weak to.

The kamisama meeting wraps up in this volume, and the revival of Ashura-Oh is put off for a later date. At the beginning of this volume, Nanami (literally) stumbles across a tiny child tengu who is searching for a lost member of his village. He describes a late bloomer like himself that left to become someone great, a very heroic character. Neither I nor you should be surprised to find out that the one he’s looking for is Kurama, the rock star that attends Nanami’s school and periodically hits on her. This leads in to massive backstory about Kurama and the culture of the tengu village, which is currently in danger due to the failing health of their leader.

I was a bit disappointed by this, because the last volume teased another Tomoe story, and the beginning of this volume hinted that their romance might be going somewhere. Neither of these issues are touched on, really, though Tomoe is now 100% more adorable when it comes to guarding Nanami. But the tengu story is a good one. It feels strange to be getting so much depth for Kurama, who has been such a minor character up to now, but fleshing out characters like Kurama is what Suzuki does best. If this were any other shoujo manga, he would have stayed a boring, celebrity stereotype romantic rival that never did anything. But I love that about both Kamisama Kiss and Karakuri Odette. There’s a little something for all the characters here.

And again, I’m a sucker for folklore-themed stories like this. All the details of the tengu village, the child-rearing techniques, and their secession rituals were utterly fascinating. Usually I like a little variety among my demons, but there’s so much detail here that I had a good time reading it. Plus, it made me reach for the next volume of Natsume’s Book of Friends, which is never a bad thing.

So, yeah. It’s still a unique mixture of funny and sweet, with lots of details about Japanese mythology and a very interesting and in-depth cast of characters. It’s one of my three favorite shoujo manga right now, along with Skip Beat and Dengeki Daisy. Highly recommended!

This was a review copy provided by Viz.

I had to follow up Kamisama Kiss with a volume of this. Both of them are quite good, though admittedly this one is the better series. I like Kamisama Kiss because I’m a romance junkie, but Natsume’s Book of Friends is an engaging story about lonely outsider Natsume connecting with those around him, both yokai and people, and making his world a bigger and better place. Sometimes there’s commentary about which of the two is actually more monstrous, but most of the time, it’s about Natsume slowly learning to rely on others and not be such an outsider. Seeing yokai caused him to be ostracized all his life, but he’s slowly embracing his gift, and making friends with both yokai and humans. It’s a sweet story, and I love the episodic nature.

This volume has two stories in it. The first is about an old classmate of Natsume’s who comes back and threatens to tell his new friends he’s an oddball unless he helps him with a problem. He wants to know if the girl he’s fallen in love with at the park is a yokai. Natsume thinks she’s human at first, but soon realizes she’s a hungry yokai that plans on eating his former classmate. The problem is, since he’s already pronounced judgement, his classmate calls him a liar, as he did in elementary school when Natsume could see yokai. Plus, the former classmate is in love. Natsume now has to think of a way to stop him from getting eaten by the yokai.

The second story is about a festival held between the god of the harvest and the god of pestilence every ten years in a particular region. But the god of the harvest hasn’t shown up, and the local yokai recruit Natsume to stand in and fool the god of pestilence and try to win the festival. If the god of pestilence wins, the region’s crops will fail for the next 10 years. The exorcist Natori is also hired to supervise the festival by interested parties, but his job is to exorcise the god of pestilence if the god of the harvest doesn’t win. He doesn’t want to exorcise a god, and tries his best to help Natsume win the festival so that the harvest god can prevail.

The art in this volume was quite good. I loved the costume designs on the gods of pestilence and harvest, and the front cover shows off Natsume in the harvest god costume. There were also some choice moments between Nyanko-sensei and Natsume, including one where Nyanko-sensei protects Natsume in the face of the god of pestilence, knowing that he won’t be able to win. Their friendship really is the best thing about this series, and Nyanko-sensei is my favorite character. And I love that the stories in this volume have soft edges. The first one starts out with the former classmate, who appears to be vicious and out to ruin Natsume’s new life, but by the end of the story the two have bonded, in a way. Same with the festival storyline. It turns dark for a second towards the end, but like many of the large-scale yokai stories, has a happy and very fanciful ending. In addition to capturing the spirit of friendship, Midorikawa is also great at capturing the spirit of the moment.

Basically, it’s still great. I’m not tired of the formula, and watching Natsume grow and change little by little is still a fun ride. I’m along for however many more volumes of these short stories Midorikawa sees fit to draw, but part of me is also curious about how this will end, too. Maybe it will just stop, and that would be fine. But in the meantime, I’m going to savor every single page.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.

So, yeah. Still one of my favorites. I literally can’t get enough of this series. Every new volume gets read immediately, and then I start over and read the whole series again. It just hits all the right buttons for me.

After the last volume, which was all about the physical relationship between Morinaga and Souichi, this one goes back to their living arrangement and romantic life. We also get to meet Souichii’s father, who proves that being a crazy scientist is in the Tatsumi genes. He’s really awesome, but his arrival means that Morinaga has to deal with the possibility that the Tatsumi house will be rebuilt and they will no longer be living together. And also, that Souichi may not care.

There’s lots of Morinaga getting depressed, since Souichi handles his return to Japan badly and Morinaga realizes that Souichi wasn’t looking forward to their reunion as much as he was. Plus, there’s the housing situation, and Morinaga is unsure about where Souichi considers his home and how he feels about living together. But there’s lots of comedy, too. With the elder Tatsumi’s return to Japan, Tomoe returns home, and he brings Kurokawa with him. And Kurokawa doesn’t feel safe around Souichi unless Isogai is with him, so there’s the delightful return of Isogai’s torment. There’s the problem of sleeping arrangements, jealousy, anger, and everything else that goes with having Tomoe, Kurokawa, Souichi, Morinaga, and Isogai under the same roof. The humor is one of the best things about this series, and I’m so happy we still get scenes like that.

There’s plenty of emotional stuff, too, since it’s still a series about the difficult relationship between Souichi and Morinaga. Morinaga tries to get Souichi to see his feelings throughout the volume, and we get lots of cute little half-admissions from Souichi. I don’t know if that’s any sort of progress, but I enjoyed them all the same. The end of the volume was another crowd pleaser, if you can consider me the crowd. I loved it.

I’m really excited, since the next two volumes make up the final storyline of the series. I can’t wait to read it! I almost want to wait and read both at once, but volume 8 isn’t scheduled until December, and I don’t think I can’t wait that long. It’s good. It’s really good. The right mix of romance, humor, characters with great personality, and… you know. Everything. It’s exactly what I want, and every volume makes me so happy.

This was so good! I hope I’m right with the volume count. Classmate is only one volume, but it looks like there are two followup volumes called Sotsugyousei, and a spin-off volume about the teacher in this one. I want to read them all, along with anything else written by this author.

It reminded me a lot of the 2-volume Seven Days series, which was a very delicate story about two classmates falling in love almost on a bet. That makes it sound like it could be a comedy with boisterous characters, but that it’s completely serious is one of the best things about it. It explores the feelings of both boys, and takes its time to show them falling in love, rather than being a drama about one in love with the other, and will they/won’t they. Doukyusei is the same thing. Hikaru and Rihito fall in love very naturally in the first chapter, and the rest of the chapters are short stories about getting to know one another, pushing boundaries, finding limits, et cetera. There’s not a whole lot of action, but when character-centric stories like this get it right, it can be one of my absolute favorite things. And Doukyusei is very good.

The whole thing is rather innocent. It starts when Hikaru notices Rihito isn’t actually singing during music class, then catches him practicing diligently afterward. His effort makes Hikaru offer to give him music lessons, so the two meet after school until the choir concert. During the concert, Hikaru begins to get jealous and suspect that Rihito is only putting forth the effort for the music teacher. That’s when he realizes he’s fallen in love with Rihito. Rihito, meek and quiet, goes along with it, and the two begin dating.

Most of the stories are about quiet moments between them. Chances stolen at school, the two agonizing about their futures, basically just being two high school students in love. There’s a short chapter about the music teacher, who is also in love with Rihito (not being a fan of teacher/student relationships, I hate that this is such a staple of BL it even shows up in a story like this), but the teacher only serves to give Hikaru something to get worked up about. There are chapters about both of them having moments of jealousy, but the relationship is never in any danger.

It’s mostly sweet and thoughtful, but it is written so well that I’m desperate for more. The only implication that there might be more is that the physical side of their relationship isn’t really explored, though Hikaru hints in one story that he would like it to. But even if it never gets there, I really could go for three more volumes of this. If you like your BL super-romantic and character-centric, you’ll go nuts for this. It’s quite good, and I’m sad that we won’t see a print edition.

So manly! I don’t have a lot to say about these volumes, unfortunately, because there’s only so much you can comment on when Kenshiro is simply fighting. You either like it or you don’t. But it is extreme. Very extreme. And that’s one of the things I look for in my action comics. The straighter the face, the better.

Strangely, what appears to be one of the major villains as of volume one, Kenshiro’s brother, is out of the picture after the first chapter here. But it is suitably sad and epic, so you don’t have to worry. There’s also a little more about Yuria, the woman they both loved. There are some manly tears involved, and scenes where a hand gets blown up when a fist punches through it. In case you’d forgotten what you came here for, at the beginning of the next chapter, Kenshiro hits the pressure points of a bully in order to rob him of his extraordinary bullying strength, leaving him with enough strength to do “honest work.”

Then Kenshiro goes to a place called God Land and beats up a bunch of dudes that are torturing children. That’s… literally what happens in the second half of this volume. I can’t summarize it any better than that. But the fights in God Land should be what you came here for. I am well satisfied. There are boomerangs, knives, and guerrillas involved. That’s all you need to know.

Well, that and the fact that the chapters are called things like “The Tears That Quench Ambition.”

I love you, Fist of the North Star.

This one really took me by surprise. I passed over it when it was solicited, because the summary makes it sound like just another shoujo romance about a stuck-up girl finding friends and love. But A Devil and Her Love Song is a bit different. Not extraordinary, but I really, really enjoyed the first volume.

The thing that sets it apart is that the main character, Maria, really isn’t stuck-up. She just comes across that way. She’s good at observing people and nailing down personality traits, both good and bad. But she herself isn’t very good at talking and communicating with others. She’s very blunt, actually, and will often contradict people by pointing out that they are merely pretending to be nice to her face, when in fact their personalities are completely different. The fact that she’s tall, pretty, and constantly has a sneer on her face also doesn’t help.

It’s hard to make a character like that not seem mean, but Tomori does a good job at portraying Maria in this first volume. Maria is starting at a new school, and promises herself she’s going to try hard to make friends. But she starts her time off by announcing why she was expelled from her old school when she notices her classmates gossiping behind her back, then tells a boy that tries to be friendly that he shouldn’t try so hard to be friendly to everybody. She’s not wrong about any of it, and the latter example happens throughout the volume. It doesn’t make her any friends. But her narration throughout these scenes is about how she’s trying to change. She takes advice about putting a “lovely spin” on her words, basically lying to people’s faces about what she thinks, but the lovely spin makes her look really scary. She also goes through the motions when it comes to bullying, constantly walking into setups, sure that if she has faith that people really want to be her friend, she will be rewarded. It’s very bittersweet, and Maria is a great character to root for.

She has a beautiful singing voice too, and her rendition of Amazing Grace catches the attention of the class outcast, who doesn’t talk to anyone but the boy that tries to be friends with everyone. There’s a romance between the two by the end of the volume, just a little, but it so far is really sweet and awkward. I can’t wait to read more.

Basically, this takes the mean girl stereotype and uses it in a different way. It’s interesting to be in the head of a “mean girl” that isn’t really mean, and also seeing her call out all her other classmates on their individual personality flaws and things they try to hide from others. Her relationships with everyone in class seem almost doomed as of volume one, and it would be a shame if her very unique personality softened into something more normal by the end of the series, so I’m very curious to see where this goes. But as of volume one, it’s definitely worth picking up for any fan of shoujo romance.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.

My reviews of this series are always really short, because I really am at a loss as to what to say every time. There’s only so many times I can reiterate that this is exciting even though it’s a basketball manga. That I love it even though I have no interest in the sport. That the action is really gripping and the characters entertaining. That it’s easy to root for Sakuragi and Shohoku. It’s just a great read. Not for everyone, but fantastic all the same.

The game between Shohoku and Ryonan is on in this volume. I predicted this would last for quite some time, because there is only one more game after this in the tournament, and we have more than ten volumes left. This covered more ground than I thought, and ends at the first quarter break.

Two things happen here. One is that Gori is thrown off his game, and it takes him a minute to get his head back in things. Shohoku gives up a lot of points during this time, and the teamwork suffers. Inoue depicts this mental struggle well, and it was one of the best portrayals of random interrupting thoughts I’ve ever seen in a comic. It doesn’t sound like much, but it happens to all of us, and this is a great visual representation of it.

The second is that Sakuragi is at war with the man he is guarding. It becomes clear that Ryonan has pegged Sakuragi as a weakness, and all the points are being scored by that player breaking through Sakuragi’s guard and humiliating him. This struggle was the more interesting to me, especially in the case of a hothead like Sakuragi. He’s learned a lot of control, temper-wise, but it’s still hard work for him.

One last thing I liked about this volume was all the trash talk on court. It was perfect. Not quite as hilarious as The Bus Driver from an earlier volume, but it was still fairly spot-on as far as trash talking goes, and of course a bunch of manly guys like the players of Shohoku and Ryonan would engage in it relentlessly, and in each other’s faces.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.

Lupin III is the earliest example I’ve seen of this character type, and Lupin III is, interestingly, massively western-influenced. Monkey Punch’s style is informed heavily by the work of Sergio Aragones, a Spanish artist who gained popularity in the pages of Mad Magazine. The character of Lupin, however, is the grandson of the French thief Arsene Lupin, from the pages of a French novel series by Maurice Leblanc. The western roots are a little strange in this case because this type of character seems to come up a lot in manga, and nowhere else that I’ve read. There are examples, of course (Robin Hood, or maybe Han Solo at a stretch) but it seems like Japan loves this character a whole lot more than the rest of the world.

The kaitou is interesting to me as an example of a heroic villain, or maybe rooting for the underdog. In the case of Lupin, he’s not terribly heroic. He acts on whims, does as he pleases, and is constantly jumping in bed with women. He outwits police and criminals alike. He’s charming and goofy, which is why he’s fun to read about, but the key is that he’s not greedy. That’s true of all these characters. They aren’t actually thieves who steal for profit. And that’s the catch in manga, where a shoujo or shounen heroine would never be allowed to steal if it was actually for nefarious intent. Lupin is different than the others, but you’ll notice that many of the kaitou I list below only steal things if they are haunted or demonically possessed.

In particular though, I’m fond of the “gentlemen thief” archetype. I’ve listed all the kaitou I could think of here, but really, my heart belongs to the flashy gentlemen like Noir from Gorgeous Carat and Eroica in From Eroica With Love. And Lupin, in his way. There’s a bit more trickery in those types of stories, so they tend to lend themselves well to both good action and excellent humor. Plus, with an emphasis on the “gentlemen,” those usually have a touch of romance to them without actually being a love story. Except for Lupin III, which is totally about sweeping women off their feet.

Man of Many Faces – CLAMP (2 volumes) – This is a strange, strange series. It exists as a tie-in to the CLAMP Campus series of books (which includes CLAMP School Detectives, a romantic comedy, and Duklyon: CLAMP School Defenders, a superhero series). The main character is 4th grader Akira Ijyuin. Upstanding sweet-as-pie student council member by day, kaitou by night, Akira is the titular Man of Many Faces. In this case, he steals because he has two mothers that tell him to. That a 4th grader is stealing artifacts, and has two mothers, is only the beginning of the messy insanity that is Man of Many Faces. It’s more of a romantic comedy than anything, though, and follows his budding relationship with kindergartner Utako Okawa, former thieving victim-turned-beau. See what I mean? The Japanese title is Nijuu Mensou ni Onegai!, or Please, 20 Faces!, which is a reference to the Edogawa Rampo character Kaijin Nijuu Mensou, or the Fiend of 20 Faces. He’s sort of like the Japanese equivalent to Professor Moriarty, and serves as a villain to the popular early 20th Century detective Kogoro Akechi.

Overall, it’s not a terribly great series, but it is an interesting example of a kaitou for a very young audience.

Gorgeous Carat – You Higuri (8+ volumes) – A gentlemen thief series set in late 19th century Paris. It’s mostly an action series with a hint of romance, and follows the exploits of expert jewel thief Noir and his… ward, Florian. Florian “helps” Noir, theoretically to pay back a debt Noir covered for his family, but for the purposes of the story, the two are more-or-less lovers. But it’s not really about that. Gorgeous Carat is one of my very favorite shoujo action series, and You Higuri has a knack for writing epic stories that span several very scenic locations. And she can draw. I’ve compared it to Indiana Jones before, and that’s still very accurate (at least for the first 4-volume series, anyway).

Noir’s role as a jewel thief only comes up occasionally, since most of the plot entanglements have to do with Noir’s background and the criminals he associates with. But his skills with a whip come in handy, and when he is in full-blown Noir mode, he’s the most gentlemanly of gentlemen thieves, with tuxedo, top hat, billowing cape, jeweled accessories, and just about anything you could ask for.

D.N.Angel – Yukiru Sugisaki (13+ volumes) – A strange premise, DNAngel is the story of a family haunted by the spirit of a thief named Dark. In every other generation, someone is forced to share the body of Dark, and in the present, the victim is Daisuke Niwa. The sharing involves a physical transformation into Dark when thieving, or, strangely, when he’s around the girl he likes. The thieving, in this case, is art objects and cultural artifacts. What seems like a strange supernatural pleasure jaunt at first is slowly revealed to have purpose: the artifacts are all things that have been enchanted by Dark’s rival, Krad. Not only is Krad Dark spelled backwards, he has also survived the years and has a similar arrangement, but by sheer coincidence, Krad shares the body of a classmate of Daisuke’s. And, for some reason, he’s the commander of the police! Such a predicament!

The thieving is again secondary to romantic hijinx and drama, but being a kaitou is what Dark does, and there’s plenty of late night adventures that go elsewhere in D.N.Angel. The thieving is very action-packed, and it’s often the journey or the destination rather than the act of stealing or the item itself. Having said that, D.N.Angel is only okay-bordering-on-confusing, and is incomplete in English. Allegedly, the ending is also rather disappointing.

From Eroica With Love – Yasuko Aoike (15+ volumes) – I would never miss an opportunity to mention this series! From Eroica With Love is the story of the international art thief Eroica and his many adventures crossing paths with NATO spy Major Eberbach. It’s an action/comedy series, with the flamboyant Earl needling the uptight and easily excitable Major Eberbach as frequently as he can. The setting changes every time, and stories have taken place in England, Alaska, Italy, Germany, Egypt, and a number of other locations. It’s a classic series, and one of my favorites.

Interestingly, both of the main characters are thieves in their way. Eroica’s goals are merely aesthetic, and his targets are always art and art objects that he wishes to keep for art’s sake, rather than for any sort of monetary gain (he has a gang early on that likes to ransom the stolen pieces, though that is quickly ditched in favor of tracking down the Earl’s favorites with two henchmen). The Major’s foes are usually communists, as the parts of Eroica that I’ve read is set during the Cold War. He is often out to steal something as well, though in his case he’s stealing something for the sake of international security. Still, he is a thief. The stories are usually structured in a way that lets us see that the Earl wants something, and it happens to be in the same place that the Major is assigned to, and they just happen to bump into each other and help/hinder one another. It’s highly enjoyable for its plot structure alone, but it’s also quite funny. One of my top three favorite manga series. Plus, there’s no thief more gentlemanly than Eroica.

Lupin III – Monkey Punch (14 volumes) – I’ve already talked a lot about Lupin in the opening. Grandson of French thief Arsene Lupin, Lupin III travels around with his crony Jigen doing whatever criminal thievery suits his fancy. He has a habit of dodging bumbling detective Zenigata and winding up enjoying the company of only the finest women at various points in the series. It’s mostly an adventure/comedy, with a lot of slapstick and bawdy humor. It’s also a true classic, and still very funny, naughty, and action-packed nearly 50 years after it was first written.

Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne – Arina Tanemura (7 volumes) – I’ve talked about this series recently, but it’s worth mentioning again in this context. This takes the magical girl genre but, instead of turning into a heroine, turns the main character into a thief. Tiny angel Finn Fish gives regular schoolgirl Kusakabe Maron special powers that transform her into Kaitou Jeanne. Kaitou Jeanne’s divine mission is to steal various works of art that have been demonically possessed and are wreaking havoc with the general populace. She has a rival kaitou that allegedly works for the other side who is also a love interest.

Things get much more interesting as the series progresses and the true extent of Kaitou Jeanne’s mission is revealed, but in structure and theme it is a lot like D.N.Angel. She steals art that isn’t really art, she has an alter ego, and her mission is for the greater good. But in the case of Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, the plot really is about Jeanne’s missions, though her relationship with Kaitou Sinbad and other characters also figures prominently as well.

Shadow Lady – Masakazu Katsura (3 volumes) – I’m just gonna… go ahead and slip this in here. Shadow Lady isn’t so much a kaitou as she is a cat burglar, more selfish than even Lupin III. It’s a series that goes about as far over the top as Katsura’s ridiculously good skills at drawing T&A can take it. Meek Aimi applies special eyeshadow to turn into boisterous, thieving Shadow Lady, born from the power of demons. Different colors of eye shadow make Shadow Lady appear in skimpier outfits with different power-ups, like a catsuit for jumping, et cetera.

Shadow Lady’s thieving skills… they’re mostly an excuse for her to trip the burglar alarms and bring down the wrath of the police force on herself, so she can jump around and rile them up with her considerable… assets, then escape flamboyantly. Later, she has to steal demon artifacts to save the world, but she still does it as flamboyantly as possible. She is the main character, and the story ends with her as the hero, but she’s very Lupin-like in her capers in that they’re for selfish reasons, but not personal gain. I liked it, though honestly, I think few others will.

Wild Act – Rie Takada (10 volumes) – This is another really bizarre shoujo series. The thief this time is Yuniko, a teenage girl who is completely obsessed with a certain actor who died before she was born. So obsessed, in fact, that she steals every item of obscure memorabilia that she hears about in the media. Anything that touched the life of this actor, Yuniko will go out of her way to steal it using rather skillful and elaborate means. She’s a very strong and quite interesting heroine, too, so when she’s not capering through the night, she’s still entertaining in her regular life as well. Her thieving causes her to cross paths with Ryu, a popular teenage actor of the present, and the two quickly fall for one another. The rest of the series is about thieving, Ryu’s career, and Yuniko’s increasingly bizarre family situation, which goes from orphan to WTF by the end of the series.

This is mostly a shoujo romance, but memorabilia thieving is so much a part of who Yuniko is that it really wouldn’t be the same without it. And the capers are some of the most elaborate on this list. Her accomplices are frequently a pair of flying squirrels that help her break, enter, and escape undetected. They don’t talk or anything, they are merely trained. One gets so excited she pees a lot. Make of that what you will.

Case Closed – Gosho Aoyama (65+ volumes) – The rest of the series on this list are only marginally related. Case Closed is mostly the story of teenage super-sleuth Jimmy Kudo and his adventures in detective work after being transformed back into a first grader. He has a variety of gadgets to help him get work done, since being six years old doesn’t lend itself to being taken seriously about anything. Plus he’s got a whole criminal super-organization after him, so he decides to lay low and pretend to be a ward of his girlfriend’s family. That’s the plot, but the majority of the many, many volumes are filled with short one-off cases where a simple crime happens and Jimmy has to solve it as Conan, his 6-year-old self.

This ties into the article because one of the semi-recurring villains in this series is the Kaitou Kid, a phantom thief who is one of the few that escapes Conan’s justice. He’s not evil, but he’s definitely a lawbreaker, and the two have a sort of antagonistic relationship. The Kaitou Kid is actually the main character in another of Aoyama’s works, called Magic Kaitou. He looks like Jimmy, so this is used to his advantage. Apparently he appears in the Detective Conan movies more frequently than he does the manga, as I’m having a hard time tracking down a Kaitou Kid storyline at the moment. His appearance, every inch the gentlemen thief with mask, top hat, tux, and cape, is inspired by Arsene Lupin. His knack for disguises also suggests an influence from the Fiend of Many Faces, but I can’t say for sure.

Sailor Moon – Naoko Takeuchi (18 volumes) – So, in this series, planet-themed teenage female guardians save the world again and again with magic powers. If you found this website, and read this far, you probably know the plot to Sailor Moon. If not, you’re missing out on one of the cornerstones of English-language otaku culture, and you should check it out. I’m not the biggest fan, but I can acknowledge its influence.

The link here comes from Tuxedo Mask. He’s a head-to-toe gentlemen thief at the beginning of the series, and he fills the role quite nicely as his goal of finding the Moon Crystal lead him on a variety of jewel heist-type capers. His appearance, much like the Kaitou Kid above, is also directly inspired by Arsene Lupin, I believe.

Dororo – Osamu Tezuka (3 volumes) – I may be incapable of making a list without including a work by Osamu Tezuka somewhere on it. I did say I was including any thief portrayed heroically, and Dororo is one of the main characters of this series. He’s a self-styled thief, though he does precious little stealing when he joins with Hyakkimaru and begins his travels. The series is actually a rather incredible tale of Hyakkimaru being sacrificed to demons after birth, and each one of 48 demons getting a piece of the infant. Found as a faceless ball of flesh with no senses whatsoever, but a will to live, a puppetmaker makes him a robot body and Hyakkimaru gets tough in order to slay the 48 demons and get his body parts back. Dororo is merely a young traveling companion that humanizes him. Again, he’s not really a thief throughout the course of the series, and it’s more adventure-focused than anything else. But the series is named for him, and his name is a corruption of the Japanese word for thief (dorobo), so I’ll just slide this in here at the bottom.

This is quite a talky manga, but man, I can’t help but get completely drawn in.

So Shujin and Saiko have to come up with a new series for Jump in the next six months, or they’ll never work for Shueisha again. They have three serialization meetings. Basically, they have to pull off something that most artists get routinely rejected for again and again. The Muto Ashirogi duo are good, but they’ve had their share of rejections, and the pressure is on.

This volume cycles through all three serialization meetings. Hattori coaches Miura from the sidelines, and Muto Ashirogi is instructed to first try an improved version of their first short story success, “The World is All About Money and Power,” then a battle-fantasy-humor manga, then… something else. I really couldn’t see where Hattori was going with all this, so I was flying through the volume waiting for the method to his madness. There’s something to it all, and it’s a very clever way to show two very talented creators (who know they’re talented) what their shortcomings are, and how to improve them.

Their successful formula at the end… I won’t say anything, lest I spoil it, but I loved what Hattori came up with for their final serialization attempt, and I liked the direction Akito went with it. The one thing that bothered me was that Hattori was praised for coming up with a new “genre,” but as the other characters point out… it’s something that you can find in a handful of series already. Otter No. 11 is the example within the series, but I would say Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is a great real-life example. It’s strange they didn’t raise the specter of Jotaro Kujo in their deliberations.

The other thing that bugged me was the final serialization meeting. The condition for Muto Ashirogi’s continued employment at Shueisha was that they had to create a series that would be better than both of Eiji Nizuma’s current projects. There was… some disagreement at the meeting. A series that everyone at the meeting admits was far better than most Jump submissions, that they would have taken unconditionally any other time, was voted on and debated quite heavily because the editors weren’t sure if it would perform better than Nizuma’s series. A series that they all felt would be a sure hit was considered for rejection. In a magazine as super-commercial as Jump, this struck me as hilariously unlikely.

Basically, just more of the same thing, but I thought this volume was particularly good since Shujin and Saiko got to work on so many series to find what fit them best. And hearing the pros and cons of each debated was also pretty fascinating. Then again, I am a huge geek that has a blog with 3,000 reviews on it. I live for this stuff. I can easily imagine that this might not do it for a lot of people who normally enjoy Shounen Jump series. But if you’re as big a nerd as I am, it is utterly fascinating, even still.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.